Jacobin Magazine: Russia Was a Latecomer to the Cyberwar Game

“Authoritarian regimes tend to learn from democracies, and really all this stuff started with the United States in 2010” — three years before Russia’s Internet Research Agency was founded — says Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher on the Computational Propaganda Project at Oxford University, who co-authored a report last year titled “Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation,” documenting such manipulation by governments in twenty-eight countries. [...]

Other governments have no qualms with using such tools to manipulate both their own and other countries’ populations, China and Russia being foremost among them. The Philippines’ Duterte, meanwhile, is renowned for heading a virtual army that uses Facebook to promote the president and attack his critics, especially potent given the powerful position social media has in the country. [...]

The best evidence we have for this are the NSA files leaked by Edward Snowden. In a series of stories in 2014, the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald exposed the array of capabilities at the disposal of UK and US intelligence agencies. A “menu” of cyber tools used by the GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), for instance, included a system for using complaints to sites like YouTube about offensive comment to get material removed, the ability to change the outcome of online polls, the manipulation of a website’s internet traffic and search ranking, the ability to “masquerade Facebook Wall Posts for individuals or entire countries,” and much more. The latter two are particularly notable, given the recent SMIC-funded research into the effects of the different ordering of content on social media and the web. [...]

There’s evidence that the United States is engaged in similar activities. In 2014, the Associated Press revealed a secret effort by the US government to foment anti-government unrest in Cuba by creating a clandestine, Twitter-like service on mobile-phone networks called ZunZeo. The plan was to first build up a critical mass of subscribers by promoting “noncontroversial content,” then start introducing political material that would provoke Cubans into organizing protests and, eventually, a mass uprising.

read the article

CityLab: Where Hate Groups Are Concentrated in the U.S.

The geography of organized hate in America is at once significantly concentrated and considerably spread out. On the one hand, hate groups are found in slightly more than 10 percent of U.S. counties (340 of 3,142), according to the study. But on the other, hate groups span the entire country, and can be found in every single state. While the heartland—stretching from the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Nebraska to Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas—has among the highest levels of hate groups, the East and West Coasts have a high density of these groups as well, as the map below shows.

The study finds that, not surprisingly, the geography of organized hate is shaped by factors like race and ethnicity, education, poverty, religion, and political conservatism. Organized hate is concentrated in places that are poorer, less educated, less diverse, and whiter, more religious, and more conservative. But the precise extent to which these factors affect hate differs somewhat in different parts of the country. The maps below chart the connection between hate groups and these variables for the 340 counties that are home to hate groups. [...]

The study shows that while organized hate groups are concentrated in U.S. counties, no geographic region is immune to hate. Indeed, hate in America has a long, distressing history that cuts across America’s major geographic regions. The Midwest was a hotbed of white supremacy before the Civil War and is home to the Michigan Militia. The South and Southwest have long been centers for the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist groups. The Northwest saw a striking rise in white-supremacist groups in the 1980s. And the Northeast has had its share of organized hate as well: In the ‘30s and ‘40s, a wave of anti-Semitic and racially motivated violence hit what we now think of progressive states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.

read the article

openDemocracy: Cable’s confusion – on Brexit imperial “nostalgia” and what it means to be English

For all its historic resentment of its larger southern neighbour, Scotland was as invested in the British Empire as any part of England. From the financial elites to the active colonialists and administrators to the working classes in the shipyards and the protected textile industries, Scots appear to have as much reason to be nostalgic for Empire as most in England. Yet Scotland voted strongly for Remain, as did Northern Ireland. True, Wales voted narrowly for Leave, but much less than England outside London. London, significantly, also voted Remain. [...]

In other parts of Britain, the story was very different. As the empire diminished, other nations wanted to redefine their relationship with the union state. Nationalism rose in Scotland and Wales in broadly progressive forms; violently and tragically in Northern Ireland. Ultimately these pressures led to new governance arrangements, through the creation of elected parliaments and assemblies and devolved administrations. Only in England did the unitary state inherited from Empire remain unchallenged. England is the only part of the UK permanently ruled by the UK government. And England is the only part of the UK not to have enjoyed a real debate about its own identity. [...]

In other parts of Britain, the story was very different. As the empire diminished, other nations wanted to redefine their relationship with the union state. Nationalism rose in Scotland and Wales in broadly progressive forms; violently and tragically in Northern Ireland. Ultimately these pressures led to new governance arrangements, through the creation of elected parliaments and assemblies and devolved administrations. Only in England did the unitary state inherited from Empire remain unchallenged. England is the only part of the UK permanently ruled by the UK government. And England is the only part of the UK not to have enjoyed a real debate about its own identity.

read the article

Vox: Why Puerto Rico is not a US state

As residents of the US Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans have US passports, can travel freely throughout the country and can serve in the military. But that doesn’t mean the US citizens who live in Puerto Rico get the same rights and benefits as US citizens stateside.

Watch the video above to understand how Puerto Rico became a US commonwealth, the tangled relationship that developed, and how it all affects prosperity and development on the island today. 

Haaretz: How Foreign Powers Keep Assad From Retaking 'Every Inch' of Syria

Some believe a divided Syria may stabilise for some time - perhaps years - with Assad forced to accept a de facto partition and no prospect of a negotiated peace. Others fear further escalation involving Turkey, the United States, Israel, Iran and Russia.  [...]

Reflecting confidence in Damascus, first lady Asma al-Assad, has stepped back into public life. She has visited special needs children and accompanied Assad to meet the wounded. Assad has appeared on the currency for the first time. [...]

At its weakest point in 2015, the Syrian state held less than a fifth of Syria. Russia's air force arrived to turn the tide in September of that year, working with Iranian and Iranian-backed forces spearheaded by Lebanon's Hezbollah, which has been fighting in support of Assad since 2012. [...]

Assad now holds 58 percent of Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, including the main cities, the coast, and an expanse of desert west of the Euphrates.

read the article

Al Jazeera: Greek police: Racist hate crimes nearly tripled in 2017

Hate crimes of this type - among them attacks and hate speech - soared to 133 last year, according to the Hellenic Police's statistics.

In 2016, police documented 48 such crimes.  Meanwhile, the total number of hate crimes more than doubled from 2016 to 2017, growing from 84 to 184 incidents.

Greek police divide hate crimes into five motivating categories: race, national origin or skin colour (133); religion (28); sexual preference (29); sexual identity (12); and disability (nine). [...]

Of the total number of hate crimes carried out in 2017, Greek police said at least 84 of the perpetrators were civilians, five were organised groups, 24 were police officers, 12 were both civilians and unknown actors and 59 were unknown actors.

read the article

Quartz: Data from Texas show that US-born Americans commit more rape and murder than immigrants

Immigrants’ conviction rates are lower than those of natives across a wide range of crimes, including sexual assault and homicide—two types of attacks that Trump has associated with immigrants.

Undocumented immigrants made up about 6.4% of the Texas population in 2015, but accounted for 5.4% of homicide convictions, according to the Cato study. US-born Texas residents, meanwhile, made up 83% of the state’s population, but 93% of homicide convictions.

Conviction rates for sexual assault are also slightly higher for natives than for undocumented immigrants—and much higher when compared to immigrants in the US legally.

read the article

The Guardian: Trump’s presidency is unravelling. But he won’t fall without a push

While all this was going on, voters in south-west Pennsylvania’s 18th district went to the polls in a byelection, in a district Republicans have held for the past 15 years. It was so safe that Democrats didn’t even bother contesting the last two elections. Trump trounced Hillary Clinton there by about 20 points. It should have been a shoo-in for the Republicans. By the end of the night Democrats were celebrating a wafer-thin victory, though this may yet be challenged. [...]

But the problem is not simply that things will get worse. It’s that it’s not at all obvious that, electorally at least, there’s a clear sense of what “better” would look like, beyond getting rid of Trump. Politically the country is clearly shifting leftwards. The nationwide walkouts of schoolchildren against gun violence on Wednesday, the women’s marches and teachers’ strikes, all suggest a swelling resistance to the Trump agenda. Pennsylvania is just the latest evidence that this has had an electoral impact. [...]

Conor Lamb’s victory in Pennsylvania was a progressive advance insofar as it was a setback for Trump. That’s great as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. He was introduced at one rally as a “God-fearing, union-supporting, gun-owning, job-protecting, pension-defending, social-security-believing, healthcare-greeting, sending-drug-dealers-to-jail Democrat”. That, arguably, is what you have to be to get elected in south-west Pennsylvania. But nationally Democrats need a more hopeful message with a broader appeal.

read the article