Parallels between Kremlin intervention in Belarus and Trump behavior toward 2020 US election. Commonality is kowtowing to Putin, via Kremlin spies
Putin is testing out his latest nation wrecking tools in Belarus as can be seen here
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/your-friendly-local-pro-kremlin-outlet-disinformation-in-belarus/
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AUGUST 12, 2019
YOUR FRIENDLY LOCAL PRO-KREMLIN OUTLET: DISINFORMATION IN BELARUS
Pro-Kremlin disinformation increasingly exploits Belarusians’ trust in local news to question sovereignty of Belarus and undermine its people, language and culture.
“Over 40 crews of harvester operators reached the milestone of 1 thousand tons of grain” – a proud headline informs the readers of a regional news website in the Grodno region in the west of Belarus. But beyond the impressive achievements of Grodno harvester operators the website provides more sinister reports claiming that Western embassies impose same-sex marriages to divide Belarusian society.
In the same vein, a regional online outlet in the Mahilio? region cheerfully informs its 170,000 monthly visitors about the summer festival for families, but browsing further one stumbles upon an alarming piece of “news” according to which the OSCE wants to fill the Belarusian internet with terrorists and anarchists
These are traces of the pro-Kremlin disinformation network in Belarus, which according to the researchers of the Eurasian States in Transition (EAST) Centre is rapidly growing.
From bad to worse
Back in 2016, the researchers found that from sporadic attacks in marginal online sources, pro-Kremlin disinformation campaigns targeting Belarus had moved to high-profile media, including Russian federal TV channels and mainstream websites (unsettling news for a country where over 70 percent of the population trust messages carried by the Russian media).
Now the researchers warn that in the past two years there have been significant changes for the worse: the number of online sources regularly publishing disinformation about Belarus increased several-fold to about 40 active sites, while new websites devoted entirely to Belarus and publishing both disinformation and hate speech have appeared. The absolute majority of those websites publish in Russian.
One of the defining features of pro-Kremlin disinformation in Belarus is that it heavily relies on a co-coordinated network of regional websites seemingly created to report local news. This is a good illustration of the well-known “Trojan horse” tactic used by the pro-Kremlin disinformation. Ahead of the 2016 US presidential elections, the Russian influence campaign created a number of Twitter accounts which posted as America’s home town outlets, to exploit people’s trust in local news.
Today, pro-Kremlin disinformation websites in Belarus use content from regional government and independent websites as well as national portals, to disguise as run-of-the-mill regional news outlets. They hide under neutral design and images referencing historical emblems of the regional centres or memorial buildings. But while their design might be neutral, their language is not. The websites frequently use hate speech against independent journalists and anyone who does not consider the Belarusian nation as “one” with the Russian people. Chauvinistic, pseudo-scientific content, historical revisionism and conspiracy theories are often posted under pseudonyms and shared with other pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets.
Insidiously, the pro-Kremlin disinformation network is trying to convince the Belarusian people that their language is artificial, their history is fake and their country only has a future as a part of the union state with Russia
Regional websites of the pro-Kremlin disinformation network in Belarus. Source: EAST Center
Russian connection
Even though the websites pretend to be regional outlets in Belarus, the Russian trail is not hard to find. Researchers from the EAST Centre discovered that the domains of four regional disinformation websites were purchased in February 2019 by the same person based in Moscow region.
The owner of the domains shares the same first and last names with an employee of CIS-EMO, an organisation that claims to monitor elections across the Commonwealth of Independent States. As such, it served as an umbrella organisation for the so-called international observers of the 2014 “referendum” in Crimea, which is recognized neither by the EU nor the UN. The organization also claims to have observed “elections” in the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where Russian military continues its illegal presence, as well as in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniester, whose Russian-backed authorities are under EU sanctions.
The regional pro-Kremlin disinformation network in Belarus posts publications about CIS-EMO activities. Its executive director, who appears to control at least 4 domains of pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets in Belarus, is also a contributor to Sputnik, and Teleskop – one of the most aggressive disinformation sites that serve as a nationwide resource in Belarus.
Just as the clothes do not make the man, the packaging does not make the website. And Belarus is no exception.
Based on:
Andrei Yeliseyeu “Fundamental Shifts in Anti-Belarusian Disinformation and Propaganda: Analysis of Quantitative and Qualitative Changes”, EAST Centre.
https://east-center.org/fundamental-shifts-in-anti-belarus-disinformation-and-propaganda/
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Basically the strategic procedure is to close off critical thinking alternatives to not voting for Kremlin agents in Belarus, and to intimidate the population. Let us now go to how the same playbook is being used in America
A. The existence of Fox news and QAnon itself in America are direct parallels to Sputnik and other such disinformation outlets in Belarus
B. Next we can see how Trump is taking the Dictator's playbook, due to Putin Mentoring to do it, no matter what in his destruction of the US postal service to sabotage the right to vote
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Trump basically just admitted he's killing the Postal Service to sabotage mail-in voting
Aug. 13, 2020
In 1789, an elderly Benjamin Franklin famously wrote to French physicist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy that "in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
With all due respect to both Franklin and Le Roy, I'd like to humbly submit a third certainty to the list: President Trump, in moments of flailing unpopularity, will call up a painfully sycophantic conservative media outlet to blabber about his latest extremely illegal scheme.
On Thursday, amid stalled negotiations for a new coronavirus relief package, and multiple reports that the president's newly installed mail chief is kneecapping his staff to deliberately wreak havoc with the U.S. Postal Service, Trump called in to Fox Business where he said the quiet (if painfully obvious) part loud: He is withholding funding to the struggling, essential postal system, because he doesn't want people safely voting by mail during a global pandemic.
"They want three and a half trill ... billion dollars for the mail-in votes, okay? Universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion — billion — for the Post Office," Trump told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo. "Now they need that money in order to have the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots."
"Now in the meantime, they aren't getting there," he continued. "By the way, those are just two items, but if they don't get those two items that means you can't have universal mail-in voting."
That the president has made universal (and universally safe) mail-in voting his preferred electoral bogeyman this year is not exactly a secret — the thinking being that the more people who can vote, the more danger he is in. Nor is the fact that his handpicked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a former campaign contributor, is gleefully dismantling the Postal Service's operational capacity ahead of an election that will rely heavily on mail-in ballots due to fears of voting in person during the coronavirus pandemic.
Still, the fact Trump finally just came out and casually put the two pieces together so matter-of-factly is noteworthy, if for no other reason than it is the most brazen he's been to date when it comes to laying out one of his plans to manipulate the upcoming election in his favor. The only question now is: Will he get away with it?
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C. Next we have Kudlow in the WH asserting that voting rights are a "liberal" wish list plot against Trump
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White House's Kudlow: Voting rights are part of 'liberal wish list'
Larry Kudlow characterized voting rights -- a cornerstone of any healthy democracy -- as something found on "really liberal, left wish lists."
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow speaks about coronavirus at the White House on Feb. 28, 2020.Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
Aug. 13, 2020, 12:45 PM EDT
By Steve Benen
Two weeks after CARES Act benefits expired, talks between the White House and Congress on a new economic aid package have effectively collapsed. Donald Trump, who really ought to want to reach an agreement in order to improve his election prospects, conceded yesterday that he believes a deal is "not going to happen."
There's no shortage of stumbling blocks, though part of the problem is fundamental: the parties disagree on what's important and worth prioritizing. A leading White House voice made that painfully clear again this morning on CNBC.
President Donald Trump will not support a coronavirus relief deal that includes "voting rights" provisions backed by Democrats, White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said Thursday. "So much of the Democratic asks are really liberal, left wish lists -- voting rights and aid to aliens and so forth," he told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" when asked about the administration's stalled aid talks with Democratic leaders.
"That's not our game, and the president can't accept that kind of deal," the director of the National Economic Council added.
Just to help provide some additional context to this, the president this morning effectively confessed that he's trying to undermine his own country's Postal System in order to derail mail-in voting -- a process he and his team rely on to cast their own ballots, but which Trump believes will cause him to lose if widely embraced by the public.
"Now, they need that money in order to have the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," Trump said this morning, referring to the U.S. Postal Service. "But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it."
It was soon after that the top economics voice in the White House characterized voting rights -- a cornerstone of any healthy democracy -- as something found on "really liberal, left wish lists."
I can only hope Kudlow wasn't condemning voting rights in general, and was instead arguing that the White House wouldn't tolerate provisions related to voting rights in an economic aid package.
Either way, there are a variety of questions Kudlow and the rest of Team Trump should try to answer at this point:
* Why is the idea of protecting voting rights during the coronavirus pandemic, in a bill related to responding to the coronavirus pandemic, so offensive to the White House?
* Why does Team Trump consider voting rights a priority limited to "liberals" and the "left"?
* If the White House sees voting rights as irrelevant in a coronavirus bill, can Team Trump explain why it's fighting to include funding for a new FBI building and multiple fighter jets in the same legislation?
It's worth emphasizing that congressional Democrats are, in fact, pushing for voting protections as part of the "Phase IV" economic plan. In fact, as Axios noted this morning, Democrats want $3.6 billion for universal mail-in voting and $25 billion for the USPS in the bill.
I expected Trump and other Republicans to come up with some kind of pretextual explanation for opposing such investments. Instead, White House officials, including the president, are being quite candid in their position: they want to make it harder for Americans to vote.
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D. Next, we have demonization of Harris as allegedly " Un American", or at least allegedly not Black American because her parents were born overseas,. Buzor alert, Harris was born in OAKLAND, California and is a citizen due to the 14 US Constitutional amendment.
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Here we go with the racist birtherism crap about Kamala Harris already
Bill Palmer | 10:50 pm EDT August 12, 2020
It’s been clear for months that there was a strong chance Joe Biden would pick Kamala Harris as his running mate, meaning Team Trump has had a long time to come with a plan of attack against her. Over the past thirty hours we’ve seen Trump and his allies push scattered, incoherent, and conflicting narratives about Harris, suggesting they have no idea how to attack her effectively.
When the Republicans aren’t sure how to attack someone, they usually resort to pure histrionics. They couldn’t figure out how to attack Barack Obama in 2008, so they tried simultaneously pushing the false claim that he was secretly born in Kenya, thus making him “too Black” in the eyes of white suburban voters, while also pushing the notion that he “wasn’t Black enough” because of his multiethnic background. That narrative worked so poorly for Republicans, Obama was elected twice.
Nonetheless, we’re now seeing Republicans trotting out the same set of conflicting and histrionic narratives about Kamala Harris. For instance, Newsweek inexplicably published an article from a conservative professor who is insisting that Kamala may not be constitutionally eligible to be President because her parents weren’t U.S. citizens at the time she was born. Nevermind that she was born in Oakland, and therefore is very clearly a natural born citizen, as defined by the 14th Amendment.
At the same time, some of Trump’s other loyalists are trying to make the argument that because Kamala Harris is of Jamaican ethnicity, that means she isn’t “African-American.” Of course this stands in total ignorance of Jamaica’s history, and it’s just a bizarre argument for Republicans to be trying to make. Do Trump’s goons really think they’re going to convince Black voters that Kamala isn’t really Black, at the same time they’re arguing that she’s too much of a “foreigner” to even be a natural born citizen? The arguments coming out of Team Trump are as repulsive as they are ineffective. These are people of no character and no clue. They have no idea how to put a dent in Kamala Harris.
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E. Next, we have that Trump has latched like a lamprey upon Putin's fake Covid 19 vaccine as a magic cure all. This is the magical thinking department in overdrive
Outline as to how Putin's fake Covid 19 vaccine announcement affects Trump and why Trump is counting on this vaccine as his magic bullet to help him
- Published on August 12, 2020
We shall begin with a description as to what Putin came up with, using an UNTESTED by several stages of trial Covid 19 as his magic bullet. We will begin first with the announcement, then go to what Dr. Fauci had to say about it, and then go to an analysis of why Trump is using this bogus announcement as justification for his ties to Vladimir Putin.,
Now why did Putin do this ?
A1. The Putin regime is in trouble in the Russian Federation. This announcement is just as much for Russian voters and citizens as anyone else
B1. Trump needs a justification of his alliance with Vladimir Putin. Trump hopes a successful Russian Covid 19 Vaccine would provide forgiveness in the USA for his botched Convid 19 response and cement his alliance with Putin as a win - win for America
C1. The Russian Vaccine would be a gold mine financially for Vladimir Putin,. If one thinks Putin does not think this way, you got to be kidding
D1,. By making countries dependent upon this vaccine, if it worked, Putin wishes to re create the geopolitical reach of the USSR for the Russian Federation.
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Oh boy. All this is Trump utilizing the Dictator's playbook given to him by PUTIN. FTR here are the points summarized. Bonus, PUTIN has given Agent Trump his marching orders
A. The existence of Fox news and QAnon itself in America are direct parallels to Sputnik and other such disinformation outlets in Belarus
B. Next we can see how Trump is taking the Dictator's playbook, due to Putin Mentoring to do it, no matter what in his destruction of the US postal service to sabotage the right to vote
C. Next we have Kudlow in the WH asserting that voting rights are a "liberal" wish list plot against Trump
D. Next, we have demonization of Harris as allegedly " Un American", or at least allegedly not Black American because her parents were born overseas,. Buzor alert, Harris was born in OAKLAND, California and is a citizen due to the 14 US Constitutional amendment.
E. Next, we have that Trump has latched like a lamprey upon Putin's fake Covid 19 vaccine as a magic cure all. This is the magical thinking department in overdrive
What more do we want? Why does not Trump let it all hang out and appoint the Russian Federation ambassador to the USA in Washington DC as Trump's acting vice president ? It would be a rare moment of candor on the part of Trump if he did it.
Andrew Beckwith, PhD
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-postal-service-mail-in-voting-coronavirus-funding-151003445.html