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A Trip to the Woodshed

by Cat Fri Nov 3rd, 2017 at 11:46:42 PM EST

31 October 2017, the US Senate Judiciary Committee, Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee (running time: 03:00:00) met with Colin Stretch, VP & General Counsel, Facebook, Sean Edgett, Acting General Counsel, Twitter, and Richard Salgado, Dir. of Law Enforcement and Information Security, Googgle, in a hearing of "Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online." What follows is this author's transcription of the chairman's opening remarks and ten minutes, the saddest ten minutes, of the interrogatory  which followed. May it be a lesson for us all.


SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: All of you have enriched America. We have more information available to us because of what you do. We can find an answere to almost any question, for instance, the Pentagon bill.  We can share aspects of our lives with those who mean the most to us and we can talk among ourselves in one hundred forty characters. Some people are better at that than others. Some people should probably do less of it. But at the bottom line is that these technologies also can be  undermine our democracy and put our nation at risk. The platforms that I've just described are, that add value to individual American lives  and to our country also can be used by terrorists to recruit in cyberworld people to their cause, can be used to buy foreign governments. We've seen an example of that in 2016 to create chaos within our democracy. Information is power. Ideas are the essence of democracy, the exchange of ideas, being able to criticize each other is one of the things we cherish most, but what we have to be on guard as a nation is having people who want to undermine our way of life using these platforms, um, against us. And I think that this is the national security challenge of the twenty-first century. Here's what General Patraeus said about jihadists online ...

Below, without embellishment, ten minutes of the interrogatory which immediately followed Gen. Patraeus' grave concerns about loose lips.

::

GRAHAM: ... What nations do you worry about other than Russia interfering in our elections? Anybody comes to the top of your head there, Mr. Stretch .

STRETCH: We worry about nation-state actors, really, from around the globe. Starting in 2014 we stood up a threat intelligence team that was dedicated primarily to reviewing and monitoring for attacks from threat actors tied to nation-states. That work was mostly directed at traditional cyber-security, account compromise, surveillance, dissemination of stolen information. It's really only recently that we  have seen this threat evolve into what we were talking about, that I was talking about in my testimony this morning, dissemination of misinformation. Ah in terms of specific countries, it really is a global threat we think of it, and um I'd certainly be happy to come back to the committee to provide more details on specific actors.

GRAHAM: Is that true for they rest of you?

EDGETT: That's true for us as well. We ... as we said in our written testimony also see a disproportionate amount spam or automated accounts coming out of Russia. But our tools and technology are agnostic obviously to countries.

GRAHAM: Could Iran and North Korea potentially do this?
[RESPONDENTS PAUSE TO CONFER]
STRETCH: Certainly potentially. The internet is borderless.

GRAHAM: So let's talk about time period. You said you started picking up foreign interference two years ago. Is that right, Mr Stretch?

STRETCH: We've been been tracking threat actors for several years, yes.

GRAHAM: Before the 2016 election cycle.

STRETCH: Yes, that's correct.

GRAHAM: Okay. Did you find activity after the election?

STRETCH: Yes, we did.

GRAHAM: Okay. What happened after the election?

STRETCH: Following the election the activity we'd seen really continued in the sense that if you viewed the activity as a whole we saw this concerted effort to sow division and discord in the wake of the election. Ah and (how) President Trump's election, we saw a lot of activity directed at fomenting discord about the validity of his election.

GRAHAM: So did this continue after his election?

STRETCH: It continued until we disabled the account.

GRAHAM: Okay. What about you Mr. Edgett?

EDGETT: Yeah, we saw similar activity. On the advertising side was interesting what we saw all the activity drop off after the election. But these automated accounts continue so we focus on making sure that they're removed from our platform.

GRAHAM: Mr Salgado?

SALGADO: The same is true for Google. The limited use of our platforms certainly decreased once we terminated accounts, and we expect that.

GRAHAM: Did you see any activity in the primary, Mr Stretch?

STRETCH: The activity that we've now attributed to the Internet Research Agency really started in 2015 and was ongoing through the primary, yes.

GRAHAM: Were these ads pro-Clinton or anti-Clinton or could you tell? (what) were these activities?

STRETCH: Viewed in the aggregate the activity, again, really appears to address a wide range of hot button topics and appears to be directed at fomenting discord and inflaming discourse.

GRAHAM: In terms of volume, what ... How much volume are we talking about?

STRETCH: About, approximately, ninety percent of the volume we saw on the ad side appears issues-based primarily. A much smaller portion were directed at particular candidates we saw.

GRAHAM: But in terms of the actual Facebook ... I think somebody said 23,000. I don't know. Maybe that was another company.

STRETCH: Correct. So in terms of the total volume of material on the site, it's a very small percentage. We estimate that the Internet Research Agency content was approximately zero point zero zero four percent of the content in news feed during the time period in question.

GRAHAM: So to sum this up, and I'll come back with the jihadists in Round Two, Russia as a nation-state started interfering in the election cycle back in 2015. And they continued after the election. During the election they were trying to create discord between Americans, most  directed against Clinton. After the election you saw Russian-tied groups and organizations trying to undermine President Trump's legitimacy. Is that what you saw on Facebook?

STRETCH: I'd say that's an accurate statement.

EDGETT: That's an accurate statement.

SALGADO: I'm not sure I can characterize on our network which way the content went.

GRAHAM: Thank you.

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: Thank you, Chairman. So I take it we can all agree that the Russians did in fact interfere and meddle in the 2016 elections. Your observations on that are consistent with what our intelligence community reports. Is that correct? Mr. Stretch?

STRETCH: That's correct, Senator.

WHITEHOUSE: Mr. Edgett?

EDGETT: That's correct.

WHITEHOUSE: Mr. Salgado?

SALGADO: That's true.

WHITEHOUSE: Okay. And I gather that all of your companies have moved beyond any notion that your job is only to provide a platform, and whatever goes across it is not your affair?

STRETCH: Senator, I, our commitment to addressing this problem is unwavering. We take this very seriously are committed to investing as is necessary to prevent this from happening again. Absolutely.

WHITEHOUSE: Mr Edgett?

EDGETT: Yes, I absolutely agree with Mr. Stretch and this set of activity not only creates a bad user experience but distrust for the platform. So we are committed to working every single day to get that  better at solving this problem.

WHITEHOUSE: Mr. Salgado?

SALGADO: That's the same for Google. We take that very seriously. We've made changes and we will continue to get better.

Display:
Thank you especially for this:
Here's what General Patraeus said about jihadists online ...

The babble was becoming unbearable. Senator Whitehouse was, by comparison, admirably concise and to the point.

Graham could not say anything very useful so he said it profusely, annoyingly and irrelevantly. After all, as Chair of the subcommittee he could hardly say nothing.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Nov 6th, 2017 at 04:09:46 PM EST
NPR |Petraeus Set for Another Shot at Iraq2007
"'Saddam didn't allow us to speak our mind but at least there was gas at the gas station.'"
CFR |
"Gen. Petraeus' statement was thus incomplete, and potentially misleading in its emphasis, but not inaccurate as such."
NYT | F.B.I. and Justice Dept. Said to Seek Charges for Petraeus 2015
"he provided classified information to a lover while he was director of the C.I.A."
WaPoo | How David Petraeus avoided felony charges and possible prison time 2016
"The government would never file those charges."
David Petraeus sentenced to probation for sharing classified information
Guardian | David Petraeus, the retired US army general and former CIA director responsible for the development of the hugely influential "counter-insurgency" strategy used in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced on Thursday to two years' probation and ordered to pay a fine of $100,000 ...


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Mon Nov 6th, 2017 at 05:14:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]
"WHITEHOUSE: Okay. And I gather that all of your companies have moved beyond any notion that your job is only to provide a platform, and whatever goes across it is not your affair?"

This is a crunch question for these companies - do they merely provide a platform for others, or do they bear some responsibility for the content they deliver.

They didn't answer this question directly, because to do so would be to open themselves open to civil liability for any defamations appearing on their platform.

Instead they answered specifically in the context of Russian interference in US elections because it "not only creates a bad user experience but distrust for the platform."

The same could be said for Trump - that he "creates not only a bad user experience but distrust for the platform of government..."

Understatement of the year, perhaps...

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Mon Nov 6th, 2017 at 05:02:19 PM EST
This exchange between the witnesses and subcommittee members is a performance of their agreement, "social media platform" (publishers) will execute US government laws prohibiting "hate speech" and foreign-funded electioneering to the best of their ability. This 10 minutes is precise of two-hours more of witness interrogation by other subcommittee members to ascertain current technical abilities and capacities and obtain explicit agreement from each corporation's officer.

To summarize: The witnesses testified, each relies on paid human-int (employees), user complaints, and automated rules ("algorithms") in combination to identify, evaluate, or validate objectionable "user content". Note also SALGADO's responses and silences throughout the hearing as subtle counterfactual.

The headline topic "Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online" is pretext to secure far more ranging cooperation from these publishers to police "user content", eg. number of cell text message responses to a posted solicitation, and legal identity of "users", eg. "beneficial owner of a (shell) corporation". In generally, Democratic Party members were preoccupied with instances of suspected Russian "meddling and interference" such as false voter instructions; Republican Party members were skeptical of witnesses' claims in terms of operating capacities and technical expertise to avoid first amendment violations.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Mon Nov 6th, 2017 at 05:48:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Learning to Love McCarthyism
Trying to appease Congress and fend off threats of government regulation, the rich tech companies displayed their eagerness to eradicate any Russian taint.


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Tue Nov 7th, 2017 at 04:30:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
@ 00:39:07
WHITEHOUSE: And ultimately you are American companies and threats to American election security and threats to our peace and order are things that concern you greatly. Correct?
STRETCH: That is certainly correct.
SALGADO: That's right.
WHITEHOUSE: What I would like to do, and I don't have the time for here is to ask you all to answer a question for the record that I will ask now which is, Give us the key benchmarks of how you have improved with dealing with this problem in recent months or recent years; what your goal posts are ahead that you have not yet achieved but you're slated or intend to achieve to deal with this problem? Now that's two. Three would be, What does success look like to you? What can you come to us to say, We have accomplished X, therefore you as a congress don't need to worry about legislating in this space or creating regulations or holding more hearings because we have now gotten America's back? Can you do that for me?
STRETCH: Yes.
WHITEHOUSE: You are all also corporations have I believe headquarters and significant operations in the state of California. California has a state law regarding disclosure. Presumably you comply with that state law with regard to customers in California ah Are there lessons and recommendations that you would have for us in evaluating the effectiveness of the California disclosure law? [PAUSE] And given the short amount of time I have, I suppose, give me just a very very brief do you follow that law and, and very brief response to it, and then we can flesh out any question for the record how much of a model that might be for this committee to look at.
STRETCH: So, Senator, we comply with all applicable law. In terms of disclosure going forward we made an announcement last week that we drew on some of the ideas from the ah Honest Ads Act which Senator Klobuchar had introduced ah intended to ah bring ads' transparency um really into the political realm, creating a repository of searchable ads, providing innovative ways to  for advertisers to meet their disclosure requirements, and requiring documentation and information so that we can ensure that advertisers are not running political ads on Facebook in violation of federal election law.
WHITEHOUSE: So let me ask what will probably be my last question of this round anyway which is that you are all prepared as I understand it to undertake to make sure that you can trace content that goes across your platform that qualifies for concern in this area back to a legitimate source. So you know if it's a Russian who's actually running it, so if you know it's an imaginary entity that's actually running it. How do you deal with the problem of a legitimate and lawful but phony American shell corporation? One that calls itself, say, Americans for Puppies and Prosperity has a drop box as its address and a fifty million dollar check in its bank book that it''s using to spend to manipulate election outcomes?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Tue Nov 7th, 2017 at 05:50:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Identifying Twitter, Facebook, Google principle business should not be controversial. But it is as is the meaning of "cloud" computing. SEN. KENNEDY's examination --Are you a publisher?-- at one point leads SCHRECHT to acknowledge on behalf of the other witnesses, although the Facebook publishes only "user content", Facebook is not a publisher.

47 U.S. Code § 153 - Definitions

(14) Consumer generated media The term "consumer generated media" means content created and made available by consumers to online websites and services on the Internet, including video, audio, and multimedia content.

(24) Information service The term "information service" means the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications, and includes electronic publishing, but does not include any use of any such capability for the management, control, or operation of a telecommunications system or the management of a telecommunications service.

US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) | NAICS 51
NOTE: The NAICS 2002 subsector Internet Publishing and Broadcasting: NAICS 516 has been discontinued in NAICS 2007 and the establishments that had been classified in this subsector have been moved into Other Information Services: NAICS 519.

Industries in the Other Information Services subsector group establishments supplying information, storing and providing access to information, searching and retrieving information, operating Web sites that use search engines to allow for searching information on the Internet, or publishing and/or broadcasting content exclusively on the Internet. The main components of the subsector are news syndicates, libraries, archives, exclusive Internet publishing and/or broadcasting, and Web Search Portals.

Principal business being that activity by which the majority of revenue is derived, neither is their business "telecommunication service" or "information technology provider" according to USC or NAICS. Which is not suggest any complementary lines of business such as software development do not bear on quid pro quo relations with government purchasing authorities.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Mon Nov 6th, 2017 at 07:29:38 PM EST
https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads

"We're building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time, says techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. In an eye-opening talk, she details how the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organize your access to political and social information. And the machines aren't even the real threat. What we need to understand is how the powerful might use AI to control us -- and what we can do in response."

Solar IS Civil Defense

by gmoke on Mon Nov 6th, 2017 at 08:28:09 PM EST
https:/theintercept.com/2017/11/06/how-twitter-secretly-benefits-from-bots-and-fake-accounts

Apparently Twitter has known that they had a lot of fake accounts and bots - often from Ukraine and Russia - and avoided doing anything about them, not to decrease their growth figures.

by fjallstrom on Mon Nov 6th, 2017 at 08:35:10 PM EST
Entered the internet chat lexicon Day 1, last century.
There is no honest reason therefore why anyone  should have taken Facebook (or any other "platform") claim of user accounts at face value. None.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Tue Nov 7th, 2017 at 04:27:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Why Twitter Is the Best Social Media Platform for Disinformation - Thomas Rid (Opinion) - Motherboard
Twitter's poor market performance makes the problem worse. The social news platform, in contrast to Facebook or Google, has never made money. It therefore pays more attention to its shareholders. One of the most important metrics for its stock price is the "active user base." Millions of bots and fake accounts are boosting the numbers, making the active user base appear much larger than it actually is. The open market is thus creating an incentive to hide the bots. Were Twitter forced to admit the true extent of fake accounts and fake traffic on its platform, it could be the death of the little blue bird.
All of this makes Twitter a convenient disinformation platform. Jack Dorsey, the CEO, has built a news platform optimised for disinformation--not by intention, but in effect.
by Bernard (bernard) on Tue Nov 7th, 2017 at 09:27:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Frontpage headline

Inside Article Title
Researchers Balk at Social Media Disclosures on Russian Meddling

Of this 1,339 word story, 97 words --exactly three complete sentences-- accurately represent proceedings of the senate subcommittee hearing 31 Oct 2017. How would reporter's "computational propaganda" research informants characterize his own "content", misinformation or disinformation?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Tue Nov 7th, 2017 at 04:10:23 AM EST
Here is a digest of 31 Oct and 1 Nov proceedings appearing to corroborate witness' testimony. McClatchy's editorial management is center-right of euractiv.
How a Russian troll sowed conflict using fake photos and news coverage
McClatchy has identified eight stories that included tweets from accounts that have now been identified as Russian trolls. An entire story was written based on this particular account, misstating that it was the unofficial account of the Tennessee GOP, while the other stories embedded a troll tweet as part of reaction within a larger story. Those tweets have now been removed.

McClatchy was one of several news organizations, including the Washington Post, AP and BuzzFeed, that wrote about false tweets by Russian troll accounts such as TEN_GOP, and experts say it perfectly illustrates what the Russian trolls hope to accomplish - division.



Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Wed Nov 8th, 2017 at 04:23:32 PM EST
@ 00:49:24
SEN. DIANE FEINSTEIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Stretch, we know that Russian operatives built misleading pages like Black Matters US and United Muslims of America to attract Facebook users. They then exploited a powerful Facebook tool called Custom Audiences to track down those users and send them targeted messages. Can you explain who was targeted using Facebook's Custom Audiences tool?
STRETCH: Thank you for the, for the question, Senator. As a threshold matter you're correct that much of the content that we've seen is essentially imitative of social causes very meaningful ones to many members of the community in the Facebook community and it's what makes this content so vile, so upsetting, so cynical, its attempt to exploit divisions in our society. In terms of the advertising tools that we use to promote these pages that were masquerading essentially the advertising targeting that was used in the main was a combination of very broad geographic targeting. Most of the ads about seventy-five percent of the corpus we've given you was targeted to the United States as a whole. And about a quarter of the ads were targeting at a more granular level to states. Um and they were targeted to interest groups. So we have various, what we call Like-based or Interest-based targeting that was apparently intended to attract people who following the causes you've identified to subscribe to those pages.
FEINSTEIN: Thank you. And what have you done with the tool since?
STRETCH:: Thank you for the question. It's an important one for us because we do believe these tools are powerful and yet we have a responsibility to make sure they're not used to inflame divisions. So what we're doing in making a number of changes to our ad targeting policies. We're tightening the restrictions on hate speech in ads generally. We're adding additional layers of review where people use people use potentially sensitive categories for targeting. And we're also limiting the ad  content permissions so that where are that, where ads are targeting at potentially divisive issues, we're trying to tighten our standards to make sure that they're not targeting individuals or communities.
@ 00:53:32
FEINSTEIN: A quick one for Twitter. Twitter produced images from tweets that contain false voting information, example, telling voters they could vote by sending a text message, all targeting likely Clinton voters just before the election. Twitter initially responded to complaints saying Twitter had, quote, determined that it was not in violation of our rules . Twitter has said that there was no obvious Russian origin. The posts were removed only after Twitter's CEO was directly notified by a Twitter user That's the facts as I understand them. Why was this false content allowed to remain in place?
EDGETT: My understanding is, once we had user reports of the content we began to remove it as a illegal voter suppression And the interesting thing about the text-to-vote tweets that we shared  with your staff was uh there was a small amount of tweets relative to the size of the platform. But impressions of tweets calling out those things as fake were eight time as large. We had ten times the number of re-tweets calling out those things as fake.
FEINSTEIN: Could you say that again? Impressions? I don't quite understand.
EDGETT: Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your question so we're all on the same page. Impressions is a metric we use to determine whether a tweet has been in view on our product so potentially seen by a user. But the interesting thing about the text-to-vote tweets were that we saw the complete counter-narrative around them. The Twitter community coming together and seizing on them to let everyone know that they were, that they were fake. But Twitter did action those tweets and remove them from the platform.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Wed Nov 8th, 2017 at 04:31:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]
@00:44:00
SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to both of the senators for leading this discussion and thanks to the companies for their cooperation. The press has reported that the Russian government placed ads in facebook that were largely aimed at influencing the election. So I want to highlight what I consider and inaccuracy in that reporting. The committee is reviewing the ads that Facebook has produced. Although all the ads do not support a specific candidate either republican or democrat and about half of the ads my staff have reviewed were placed after the election the large majority exploits controversial issues  in our country and an effort to further divide us as a country. For example, some ads target users in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Cleveland. These ads spread stories about abuse of black Americans by law enforcement. These ads are clearly intended to worsen racial tensions and possibly violence in those cities. It might true that those ads were intended to influence elections, but it's important to be clear that the nature of the ads Russia does not have loyalty to a political party in the United States. Their goal is divide us and discredit our democracy. So question for you Mr. Stretch. The ads that Facebook has produced are all about, all from Internet Research Agency, What is Facebook doing to identify ads and contents placed by other bad actors?
STRETCH: Thank you question. Thank you, Senator, for the question. We are focused on broadly on addressing questions of authenticity in the content that's placed on our platform. And the investments we're making around security and around transparency sweep across the entire platform. So for example the learning that we gain from the twenty sixteen election and from our expansive investigation into it now informs the automated tools that we use to detect and remove fake accounts from anywhere.
@ 01:02:33
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Last night, Mr. Stretch, nineteen major civil rights organizations sent a letter [1],[2],[3]  to Facebook which explain their, quote, deep concerning ads, pages,and hateful content on your platform used to divide our country and in particular to promote anti-muslim, anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ animus. The organizations referenced (sic) a number of examples that have previously been reported by the media inclusing a Russian Facebook account that, quote, not only promoted anti-immigrant messaging (sic) online but also managed to organize an in-person anti-refugee rally in Twin Falls, Idaho, August of 2016. The letter also detailed a reported situation that Facebook offers its expertise to a bigoted advocacy group by creating a case study  testing different video formats and advising on how to enhance the reach of the group's anti-refugee campaign in swing states during the final weeks of the 2016 election. What is your response to this letter? Is it true that Facebook assisted an anti-muslim effort?

::archive
gratuitous invocation of "black children"

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Wed Nov 8th, 2017 at 04:49:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Race, Repression and Russiagate: Defending Radical Black Self-Determination
... Today, the new McCarthyism is being led by centrist and liberal democrats utilizing the almost comical notion that capitalist Russia possesses the power and influence to not only impact elections but also create racial tensions. And once again, Black opposition is being casted as somehow foreign influenced and, therefore, a security threat that justifies special targeted repression...

archived: Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948-1968

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu Nov 9th, 2017 at 02:18:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Russia is trying to influence Dutch public opinion with fake news: minister
Spreading disinformation is not a new phenomenon but it is `easy, anonymous, fast and cheap', the minister said. In particular, Russia has attempted to influence people's ideas about the MH17 disaster, she said, referring to a website which was full of false information but had been made to look like an official Dutch operation.
[...]
In February, for example, the New York Times reported that opponents of the Ukraine treaty with the EU used a special `Ukrainian team,' a group of émigrés whose sympathies lay with Russia to help tilt Dutch public opinion. In the US an investigation is under way into Russian efforts to influence the presidential election. Madrid also claims that Russia is trying to have an impact on the Catalonia independence campaign. And on Tuesday, British prime minister Theresa May has accused Moscow of using fake news to undermine democracy.

CDA MP does not have to resign, despite role in priming fake MH17 witness

archived:
Dutch Senate votes to grant intel agencies new surveillance powers

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Tue Nov 14th, 2017 at 08:32:19 PM EST
The Dutch with Mark Rutte have been the America's best pupil to advocate US interests in the EU.

Using American fake news aka propaganda to establish the "facts" around the MH17 disaster from the very beginning. Using Ukraine to aupport NATO in eastward expansion. Cutting off Russian energy interests towards Europe where the Dutch have played an important role as an energy hub and partner for Russia.

The Dutch news media quoting biased organisations and persons with an anti-Russia agenda such as favorite daughter Anne Applebaum. The Dutch have jumped the shark and are quite close to the British Conservative "values". For the purpose of NATO strength [read: U.S.  leadership] the Dutch want to keep the British in the EU. The Dutch have been part of the Nine Eyes espionage network for a long time.

Dutch PM says he 'hates Brexit from every angle' and calls for form of continued EU membership for UK

'Sapere aude'

by Oui (Oui) on Wed Nov 15th, 2017 at 03:14:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]
who knew Anne Applebaum has fans in Netherlands? Angry Arab no like Anne Applebaum. Angry Arab big critic.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Thu Nov 16th, 2017 at 12:43:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The gravity of moral failures is still coming to light.
Growing the First Draft Coalition 13 Sep 2016
That's why in June of last year, we announced the First Draft Coalition, bringing together a group of thought leaders and pioneers in social media journalism--Bellingcat, Dig Deeper Media, Emergent, Storyful, Reportedly, Meedan, Verification Junkie and Eyewitness Media Hub--to create educational resources on how to approach and verify eyewitness media, and how to consider the ethics of using it in news reporting.



Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Fri Nov 17th, 2017 at 12:47:59 AM EST


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