Het wachten is op een volgend onderwerp dat wordt toegevoegd aan deze propaganda, te denken valt aan protesten tegen de algehele vernieuwde kernwapendoctrine, de inzet van het kernwapen als eerste aanvalswapen, althans als je daar nog mensen voor op straat krijgt...... (waar de VS zelfs een cyberaanval als reden voor die inzet ziet....) De situatie nu is veel ernstiger dan die in de 70er en 80er jaren van de vorige eeuw, terwijl er toen miljoenen mensen de straat op gingen tegen kernwapens, is er nu zelfs geen aanzet tot het organiseren van (wereldwijde) demonstraties.....
Nu
worden dus ook de anti-pijpleiding protesten van de laatste paar jaar in de VS toegeschreven aan Rusland......... Zelfs hare kwaadaardigheid Hillary
Clinton, die het gore lef heeft zich af te schilderen als
milieubewust, durfde Rusland als verantwoordelijke voor de protesten
aan te wijzen........
Lees het
volgende hoofdstuk van de Russiagate soap en zie hoe door en door
verrot de VS politiek is:
No, Russia Didn’t Use Propaganda on Social Media to Incite US Pipeline Protests
March
6, 2018 at 6:21 am
Written
by Kevin
Gosztola
(SP Op-ed) — A
“staff report” from Republicans on the United States House
Science, Space, and Technology Committee offers little evidence to
prove allegations of Russian efforts to influence U.S. energy markets
through “social media propaganda” to incite pipeline protests.
Nonetheless, the
report,
pushed by Republican chairman Representative Lamar Smith, went
virtually unquestioned when it was covered by U.S. media.
What
the report reveals are several Twitter and Instagram posts that
Republicans claim were posted by “Russian agents” linked to the
Internet Research Agency (IRA), the troll farm which has become a
focus of narratives that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential
election.
The
report recycles unsubstantiated news reporting that strongly
suggested the Russian government was behind anti-fracking activism in
the U.S. It contends these posts and tweets demonstrate the “broad
nature of Russia’s meddling and to reveal Russia’s attempts to
deceive and influence the American public, especially as related to
domestic energy issues.”
“Between
2015 and 2017, there were an estimated 9,097 Russian posts or tweets
regarding U.S. energy policy or a current energy event on Twitter,
Facebook and Instagram,” according to the report. “Between 2015
and 2017, there were an estimated 4,334 IRA accounts across Twitter,
Facebook and Instagram.”
To
understand how these numbers are incredibly minuscule, there are
about 95 million posts to Instagram per day and 800 million or more
users, as of September 2017. About 500,000 comments, 293,000 status
updates, and 136,000 photos are posted to Facebook daily. There are
over 2 billion active users on Facebook. On Twitter, about 500
million or more tweets are posted each day. There are 330 million
active monthly users.
House
Republicans did not break down the number of IRA accounts by
platform. But if the 4,334 accounts were all Twitter accounts, it
would mean the number of active Russian accounts represented less
than 0.0013 percent of Twitter users. That percentage would be much
smaller for Facebook and Instagram.
As
for reported posts and tweets, because Republicans are pulling from
contents that appeared between 2015 and 2017, they are essentially
revealing an average of 3,000 or so posts and tweets appeared each
year.
What
is 3,000 out of the 95 million posts to Instagram? What is 3,000 out
of the hundreds of thousands of comments and updates to Facebook?
What is 3,000 out of 500 million or more tweets?
These
are smaller than microscopic numbers. They barely can be said to
represent a broad influence campaign by Russia to undermine U.S.
fossil fuel industries and incite opposition to American “energy
independence.”
The
“Russian tweets” are not even disinformation. They mostly appear
to be messages containing advocacy from Senator Bernie Sanders,
presidential candidate in the 2016 election, and his supporters. For
example:
These tweets reference the health impact of natural gas fracking. They mention the link between earthquakes and fracking. They note political efforts to ban fracking through state ballot initiatives. What they do not do is promote disinformation, such as falsehoods about the fossil fuel industry.
The
report continues a blatant agenda by Republicans to discredit climate
activism against oil and gas pipelines. It even argues Russians are
trying to make “useful idiots” of “unwitting
environmental groups and activists in furtherance of its energy
influence operations.”
In
July 2017, Smith and Republican Representative Randy
Weber urged Treasury
Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “investigate whether the Kremlin [was]
bankrolling green campaigns against the fracking technology that
helped the U.S. overtake Russia in gas production.”
But
as POLITICO noted, “Allegations have circulated for years that
Moscow has sought to discourage European countries from developing
their own natural gas supplies as an alternative to Russian fuel. And
conservatives have sought to extend those concerns to the U.S.—though
there’s little but innuendo to base them on.”
A
surge in activism against pipeline projects, especially as the
impacts of climate change intensify, has brought pressure to fossil
fuel industry interests. Smith is one of the industry’s most ardent
defenders. He even publicly contends climate change is still subject
to debate when it is settled science.
An
Inside Climate News report details how
the fossil fuel industry is a major contributor to science committee
members. It donated $8 million from 2006 to 2016, making it the
leading source of “industry political action committee money.”
The oil and gas industry is one of Smith’s biggest
contributors, “with $764,000 in donations over the course of his
career in Congress.”
Smith
frequently alleges charges of “secret science” against government
agencies that seek to regulate coal-fired power plants, oil
refineries, and energy pollution in general. He engages in the very
kind of efforts to provoke discord and disruption that the House
science committee report condemns. It is all to manufacture doubt in
order to tie up policy deliberations in debate so they do not affect
companies’ profits.
While
this report is clearly rubbish, Democrats have not said anything to
challenge the allegations. Perhaps, this is because they are fully
invested in the narrative that Russia is meddling in all parts of
American discourse on social media.
Smith
invokes the bipartisan consensus on “Russian manipulation.”
Democratic Senator Ben Cardin recently published a report that
stated, “According to NATO officials, Russian intelligence agencies
also reportedly provide covert support to European environmental
groups to campaign against fracking for natural gas,
thereby keeping the EU more dependent on Russian supplies. A study by
the Wilfried Martens Center for European Studies reports that the
Russian government has invested $95 million in NGOs that seek to
persuade EU governments to end shale gas exploration.”
During
a tinePublic speech in
2014, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton accused
“phony environmental groups” that she believes are funded by the
Russians of being responsible for the opposition to oil pipelines and
natural gas fracking. “I’m a big environmentalist, but these were
funded by the Russians to stand against any effort, oh that pipeline,
that fracking, that whatever will be a problem for you, and a lot of
the money supporting that message was coming from Russia.”
Much
of the notion among conservatives that U.S. climate activism is
funded by Russia stems from a report by a front group, the
Environmental Policy Alliance, operated by Berman & Co., which is
run by Rick Berman.
Berman
is known for attacks against
Mothers Against Drunk Driving. He also has defended Big Tobacco from
anti-smoking campaigns. He previously boasted,
“If the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from
slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to
employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about
environmentalists and liberal celebrities” and urged industry
executives “to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn
them against the environmental groups.”
Part
of Berman’s efforts to exploit emotions involved accusing U.S.
environmental organization of accepting money from the Sea Change
Foundation, which allegedly accepted funds from a Bermuda-based
company called Klein Limited with executives tied to Russian oil and
gas companies.
“We
double-check confirmed that the origin of the funds we’re getting
from Sea Change is through a donor, not from Russia,” Melinda
Pierce, Sierra Club’s legislative director, declared.
“It’s a private U.S. citizen who cares about climate change and
has invested in the kind of work that the Sierra Club does to move us
off dirty energy to clean energy.”
This
campaign to smear U.S. environmental organizations as agents of the
Russian oil and gas industry was picked up by Republicans. It
influenced a 2014 report,
“The Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and
Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s
EPA.”
Back
then, it was innuendo and unsubstantiated claims intended to help the
industry defend itself against pipeline activists. It remains
industry-driven propaganda.
The
only difference now is that the current political climate embraces a
bipartisan consensus that Russians will stop at nothing to sow
discord. Democrats do not see conservative political action
committees and right-wing industry front groups as responsible for
political turmoil over issues mired in contentious debate. They see
Russians, and even if they do not deny the reality of climate change,
that leaves U.S. policy vulnerable to actions that are aimed at
protecting fossil fuel companies and drowning out protest from
citizens concerned about climate change.
Zie voor de hiervoor genoemde corruptie van Lamar Smith: 'Exxon lobbyist (politicus) dagvaardt milieugroepen voor kennis bij Exxon over klimaatverandering.......'
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