“Russia is Manipulating US Public Opinion through Online Propaganda; We’re trying to stop it.”
Welcome to PropOrNot! This site is a resource for people who want to understand Russian influence operations targeted at US audiences, distinguish between propaganda and commercial “clickbait”, and help identify propaganda and push back.
UPDATE 2: We are clarifying some key points, publishing our updated Black Friday Report, adding FAQ entries, updating The List, and more! Please see our latest post for more information. Also, for a sense of what certain kinds of Russian trolls look and sound like in real life, check out this Samantha Bee segment, which cleverly interviews Russian social-media and comment-section propagandists:
It’s Bigger Than Just Hacked E-Mails
Russia’s attempts to influence the US election via hacking and selectively leaking sensitive US government and political information have been widely documented, but Russia is not conducting those operations in isolation. Their hacking efforts are accompanied by a large-scale, long-term, and remarkably effective campaign to build online propaganda outlets targeting US audiences. These sites have US audiences estimated in the millions, parrot Russian state-owned propaganda, and relentlessly attack the important investigative work done by actual American journalists.
Russian Propaganda Targets All Americans
While Russian influence operations resemble a marketing effort in some ways, only a few dozen individual outlets (“sources”) actually produce large amounts of original propaganda content. That content is then echoed, extended, and amplified through an immense number of secondary sites (“repeaters”). Both source and repeater outlets target a wide range of audiences: US military veterans, Wall St. insiders and finance specialists, natural-food and health enthusiasts, goldbugs, African-Americans, white Americans, peace activists, religious people, 9/11-“truthers”, and politically-active Americans across and outside the political spectrum. For example:
We at PropOrNot are assembling tools and information to help identify and neutralize Russian propaganda. We are not waiting for an official response, and we need your help!
We call on the American public to:
(wd here: oh, my, it’s a long list, but these are epic!)
Obtain news from actual reporters, who report to an editor and are professionally accountable for mistakes. We suggest NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed, VICE, etc, and especially your local papers and local TV news channels. Support them by subscribing, if you can!
We call on individuals who think they might be, or have been, unwittingly involved in producing or spreading Russian propaganda, to:
Come forward with your stories. We want to know what happened, and we encourage you to get in touch with actual reporters who can tell your story with the respect and care it deserves. We can help with that if you would like.
We call on Congressional leadership, and the Obama administration, to:
Work with our European allies to disconnect Russia from the SWIFT financial transaction system, effective immediately and lasting for at least one year, as an appropriate response to Russian manipulation of the election.
Is It Propaganda Or Not?
Your Friendly Neighborhood Propaganda Identification Service, Since 2016!
(of course it is! read the analytics involved, related projects, and THE LIST! (An Initial Set of Sites That Reliably Echo Russian Propaganda) Note that some of are spreading russian propaganda both wittingly and unwittingly. Over 200 sites! Over 200,000 million roosian-burgers sold!
And on Twitter they speak Baby Elmer Fuddly!
still roasty turned the tables and had a hella lot of fun: ‘The List (USA!USA!); An Initial Set of Sites That Reliably Echo USA!USA!’ Propaganda’ It’s great.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
“Roasty” has done us the service of identifying sites that propagandize on behalf of the USA!
Ugh. Read the whole thing, Greyson!
ha; i were about to tease ya that ya owed me my standard fee of $1.99 amerikun dollars for the slight of lauding another diarist’s post over mine, hasty pudding smythe, but…as i’m a hasty reader, too, i will forgive the charge..this time. ;-)
Oh, Wendy! Not above yours! As an adjunct! An addition!
But thank you for your indulgence. It was careless of me. Mea Maxima Culpa, and all that.
nice sucking up, sweet patootie. ;-) no, srsly, roasty’s was so fine. i’d first written that he’d noted ‘in order to initially identify (“spangle-flag”) the following as USA!USA! propaganda outlets.’ loved spangle-flag’ to bits.
i do hope you realize i’d jut been teasing you, gs. what i’d been too brain-dead last night to compare our diaries is this: roasty’s is Art; mine is pretty much copy/paste low-rent satire. i’d put the prop-er-not link on the most recent open menu here, but w/ all the other ways our heads have been swiveling, it didn’t get noticed. when juliania had mentioned a piece at robert parry’s excellent ‘consortium news’ yesterday, i reckoned that playing w/ this a bit would be purdy fun.
now i know max blumenthal has been taking a well-deserved (imo) drubbing over first supporting the proxy revolution in syria, then same for the white helmets, then had done a 180, but popular resistance sent his take on this dreck. among other things he says that the sites listed may be blocked on facebook and google now, as well as having provided plenty of ammo for the clintonistas, now stein’s: roosia hacked the election. but also this brief synopsis of the ‘partners’:
“Among the websites listed by PropOrNot as “allies” are a number of groups funded by the U.S. government or NATO. They include InterpreterMag, an anti-Russian media monitoring blog funded through Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an arm of the U.S. government, which is edited by the hardline neoconservative Michael Weiss. Polygraph Fact Check, another project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty aimed at Russian misinformation, is listed as an “ally.” So is Bellingcat, the crowdsourced military analysis blog run by Elliot Higgins through the Atlantic Council, which receives funding from the U.S. State Department, various Gulf monarchies and the weapons industry. (Bellingcat is directly funded by Google, according to Higgins.)”
he says higgins claims he was never consulted about it, nor had even heard of it before the wapo agitprop introducing it, which is hilariously full of disinformation. quite a heady read, really. hard to pick any faves, but: russian revanchism in s. ossetia was one.
Of course, WeD! The “patootie” was a clear indication you were not truly offended. There’s a lot of dreck going around; it’s pretty humorous. The Russians stealing a US election? Ha hahahahaha haha ha.!.
I’m off to read your Blumenthal link; here’s Taibbi’s latest: The ‘Washington Post’ ‘Blacklist’ Story Is Shameful and Disgusting [Sub-hed: The capital’s paper of record crashes legacy media on an iceberg]
good-o then, patootie greyson. and ‘wd’ is easier, no? hucks, i’d thought that ‘the paper of record’ was the NYT. but yeah, did the post jump the shark with every paragraph. guess that’s what’s known in parlance as ‘soft power’. cripes. the 2015 iteration re: ukraine was pretty damned fine, too.
but always remember: jill stein and her pals say the rooskies DID steal it. ;-)
i’ll try to look at taibbi’s piece in a bit; thanks for it. i’m going to cobble a diary together on the new weirdings against the water protectors in cannonball.
Well wd, you’re in good company, but, but, you’re not on the list.
The lameoids have sunk to new levels, here to fore, not previously reached. Well done CIA… ;-)
lol. even they know we’re small beans here, eh? but srsly, who is not on The List is interesting. amy goodman, ‘pierre’s place’, but instead natural foods, robert parry’s consortium news, naked capitalism, nutrition facts, veterans today?
i really love this operation. really this iteration it started with the ‘EU Parliament Approves Resolution to Counter Russian Media ‘Propaganda’, and in early 2015 w/ Nato and the EU wage war against roosian propaganda. that was: ukraine and post euromaidan. i remember posting tweeties like: ‘we’re taking cameras into kiev neigborhoods; do you see any nazis here? or here?’
now it’s an open secret that azov batallion is marching, only this time against USA! approved poroshenko. ooops. gotta love it.
the leading cause of death among 10-14 yr olds in the US is suicide.
why would Russia “hack” this system again? it makes no sense. why would they try to stop their soi-disant enemy from doing what it’s doing: driving all of its members to such despair that their children all off themselves so that in one generation the new Cold War is over b/c one side had such a hopelessly bleak hellscape of a life to offer its youth? why would R. interfere w/this out of control spiral of self-destruction again? oh right. it’s not so out of control that some people are prevented from aiming “star wars” missile “”defense”” batteries at Russia. lots of ’em.
“if i’m going down, i’m taking you w/me!” is the real US motto.
whoosh. yes, god damn america. and one of those young ‘uns was a local child (sheriff’s granddaughter) i’d mentioned last week. turns out that she killed herself because of bullying, as i’d guessed. oh, yes,open meetings at schools to discuss it, but in this area it’s been going on forever. yer in, or ya ain’t. bullies are always jocks or the parents who have juice within the system. the rabble victims get expelled, the bullies skate.
just like in RL, yanno? steal a loaf of bread: got to jail. steal millions: be lauded as a brilliant banker, faux-lanthropist, friend of clintons, gates, ___ fill in the blank. amerika. this land was made for them…and them.
By far the most entertaining part of the post-election new cycles so far. roasty somehow missed Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty.
Entertaining because for some people the Cold War between the US and Russia never dies no matter how much they change. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, to go all Mackinder-Spykman.
I’m thinking that there are lots of folks who are disappointed to have missed being put on either list. For some, badges of honor missed.
Would it not be hilarious if PropOrNot were exposed as an FSB operative?
Thought you’d be passing on Yakut, Chuvash, or Tuvinian propaganda instead of straight-up Roosian. What a disappointment! :)
Whatever happened to the honest-to-goodness news. Where is the authoritative Edward R. Murrow to lay down the truth? Or that H. V. Kaltenborn fellow to tell us we have “wonderful news tonight”? Or that folksy guy on the radio, er, um, Paul Harvey? Back before the Silent Majority was silent.
i remember mentioning to roasty that one of the ‘partners’ was voa. remember desider at my.fdl always doggin’ my tracks when i wrote about ukraine and the nazis/neonazis? ‘you’re smarter than that, wd!’ craptastic passive-aggressive honk. lives in prague, worked for…VOA. mmm, hmmm. funding? the usual suspects, i reckon. i can go w/ the on edward r., but paul harvey? ish.
i’d admire knowing who gawd’s green earth ‘Yakut, Chuvash, & Tuvinian are. sound like characters on STNG. ;-) h.v. kaltenborn? my ignorance petticoats seem to be showing again.
One of my mom’s recurrent memories of living through World War II was H.V. Kaltenborn on the radio opening with “Ah, but we have wonderful news tonight.” I believe that was from the period after D-Day. (Paul Harvey was snarky. But for a lot of the country he had the authentic news in the days before Rushbo and the Shock Jocks. The STNG crew are indigenous peoples in the Russian Federation; some have autonomous regions or other semi-autonomous political structures–some in name only, others in partial reality.
Seems to me ProPornOught to provide some useful pointers to blogs worth a visit. “Hang the Bankers” looks interesting.
Off topic, Wendy, but I did read somewhere that Ajamu Baraka did not support the “recount”. Do you know?
that ‘hang the bankers’ did look intriguing, but i hadn’t taken the time to click in, doug. i wish i knew about ajamu baraka’s thoughts, and i’ve wondered aloud several times. his twitter thing gives no clue, but stein keeps up the ‘ajamu baraka and i’ claim. jeffrey st. clair made some mention of a vote, but lemme go fetch it, ‘kay?
yes: “This smells of Stein’s campaign manager David Cobb to me, who in 2004 really wanted the Greens to run a stealth campaign so as not to be tarnished by reelection of Bush. (Indeed, the Wisconsin recount has nothing to do with the Green Party itself. The executive committee voted 5-3 to reject Stein and Cobb’s request that they sponsor the recounts.) ”
i really hope he did object; i’d been counting on him to smack crazy T policies around when they come; he’s a peach of a red. still can’t figure out why he accepted stein’s invitation to join the ticket after bernie, old soupuss hedges…was there another?
but boy, howdy, if you hear, do let me know. nov. 18 @ajamubaraka
“The democrats have demonstrated once again that they are not willing to resist fascism. That is why we need a new oppositional party.”
maybe now he gets: global working class rabble party?
tarzie just linked to the pdf of stein’s petition to the WI elections commission. if anyone here can these claims and not need an airsick bag, i’ll wonder why not. page 1, 3. a, b, and c. i can’t seem to paste them in, as they’re just images.
whole hog homage to the security state, emails hacked by foreign agents and published Wikileaks, of course), what a load of dreck. but we can see the hand of the ‘prop or not’ as an even more valuable psyop tool in aid aid of our rulers and their choices. i swear she’d been all over wikileaks while the clinton team”s were being published, and had claimed that of course there’s no evidence of russian hacking; just innuendo’. anyone else remember that?
brandy baker, national green committee member isn’t a bit amused by stein’s ‘recount’. she explains how the vote that st. clair had mentioned happened and why.
i hope she enjoys what she did to protect her brand of genuflecting to the clappers of the world sort of ‘democracy’. it’s not clear that she’d even seen that seen that petition.
margaret flowers and green insiders made a statement against it; when i have time i’ll find it. yeah, my guess is that she’s dead to the greens. where’s ajamu baraka, please?
here’s margaret flowers and the signatories, dunno if they’re all greens. but stir in the hilarity of the erm…ever burgeoning ‘attorneys’ fees zero hedge screen-shots (nov. 25), and the considerations that stein doesn’t seem to care much about ‘democracy’ within the green party itself….i’ love to hear from any of you who don’t find all of this creepy, if not despicable.
take a gander at the other 63 pdf pages note how many are simply halderman’s CV, then how many are srsly: msm crapalistic news stories quoting unnamed intel sources, the ever-suspicious ‘wired’, tra la la, and ask yourselves ‘is there something wrong w/ this picture?.
“$6,371,797.88 raised; goal: $7 mil.” (nation builder)
things are weirding further at standing rock; i plan (lord willin and the creeks don’t rise) to post about that in the a.m. for tonight: light a candle, send good thoughts and prayers their way, if you will.
S0, Samantha’s B stands for Bolshevik? Or Biometrics (of the 2 FAUX ‘News’ Roosian “hacks”); gotta B STYOOPID (Sam, too!). As an actual liberal Eternal Flamer, I personally go Far RT!
ha; i hadn’t even watched the miz bee; just plugging in what was on ‘da home page’. let’s hear it for faRTing. yanno, thom hartman is such a roosian revolutionary…
Did b of Moon of Alabama make the list? Great post today on the clearing of northeast Aleppo and Egypt’s Sisi tilting to back Assad (and also moving toward better relations with Roosia?)
I curious as all get out to see what Stein bought in terms of actual recount results with her donors’ $6 million. My current guess is that it will wind up legitimizing Trump’s wins in those three states and putting the Democrats back into having to face the failure of half-measures and sidling up to the TBTF bankers and the traditional side of Wall Street.
ach, mr. wd thought i might not have made the links to the list and the er…organization…promineent enough. here’s the list; i dunno if it’s expanded or not. oh, my yes; MoA was on it, and did a post about it. his commentariat was jiggy, and stuck in a lot orwell quotes, among them the one close to ‘in times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary’ or something close. and as you say, he’s (ahem) a bit biased, but has long been calling out the imperium’s #fake news. here’s the list. natural news was aware of it, a few others. good-o on aleppo and sisi. cripes, i couldn’t even have told you who the prez of egypt is now, arrrggh.
well, the main thing her now $6.4+ million bought was the thanks of some very dem insiders and funders. what it also bought her was a hella lot of condemnation from folks who weren’t amused by her power play. got me wondering whether in that 3-day closed-door meeting at the mandarin in deecee w/ soros and the wealthy dems…someone hatched this plan.
that petition: oy. whose fingerprints are all over that? not just doubling down on ‘the roosians did it’ with no evidence, but doubling to an order of magnitude. and where is ajamu baraka? in a deep dark badger hole? he did a BAR radio thang on the election, but i reckon he didn’t mention this, eh? it may have been st. clair who’d said that he seems to have gone back to his day job.
The Roosian stuff is just baggage IMO. If it goes to court, a judge might be interested in some actual evidence of Roosian involvement that does not have a state secrets blind on it. The audit itself is pretty standard, straightforward, and takes as much time as the problems indicate. There is a bit of one-upsmanship in this in that Hillary Clinton did not step up to the challenge; Clinton does not defend election integrity, eh. My sense is that Clinton is now tired of it all and wants to retreat to private life and salvage what they can of the Clinton Foundation, which is likely to be under continuous investigation by Trump’s DOJ or other regulators.
I’m not sure that any opposition party has come out of this election unscathed. My sense is that the Greens as a brand are about as done as the Democrats and donkey as a brand. Its going to take a new basis for coalition than that of 40 years ago to have a solid opposition to the Trump regime. In that respect, it will be interesting to see what those who have been out of sight since the election come up with as proposals. It must be based in economics but it must unite environment, PoC, and other targets of the Trump regime as well. And it should expect to be marginalized from the get-go. Somehow a lot of divisive history has got to become less important compared to the current global resugence of fascist corporatism. And whatever that new political coalition is, it must start from the premise that as ideas both neoliberalism and neoconservatism have failed bigtime. Because they demonstrably have.
It appears that the Roosian allegations serve to argue against an automatic recount on the same machinery as the original count.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/29/security-experts-join-jill-steins-election-changing-recount-campaign
It’s a hypothetical that a hand count might prove or disprove but cannot provide authoritative attribution without access to the code on the offending machines. Thus, the computer science experts signing on to the request.
It might be as much a validation of intelligence community claims as of the local voting machines.
Regardless of the outcome, it will be very clarifying to do a legitimate hand count without the jockeying we saw in the Bush v. Gore recount.
In WI and MI there are 26 votes in the electoral college. I’m not sure Stein got the three affadavits she needs in PA. It would take all three states flipping from Trump to Clinton to reverse the electoral vote. The margins right now are 24,081 in WI, 10,704 in MI, and 64,403 in PA. Those margins required a candidate to file for and pay for a recount. It is not likely that all three will flip without substantial demonstrable tampering. But a hand count might reveal sloppiness in the handling of third party ballots because “they were not important”. I don’t think that could boost Greens to having a sufficient margin to automatically put them on the ballot in 2018 or 2020, but it is likely worth last-hope Clintonista’s $6.5 million to find out.
The population centers–Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia will take the longest time to recount by hand. The rural areas can be done quickly, but will take coverage by the Greens and Democrats in multiple locations. Likely enough will be known before December 13 (two weeks from now) for the computer scientists to judge whether the full hand count is worth the effort. They will likely look at evidence of mechanical voter suppression in Clinton counties as well as inflation of votes in Trump counties. And they will look at whether the discrepancies are random or biased towards one candidate or against one or more candidates.
Enjoy yet another sideshow of the 2016 election.
The difference between now and the 2000 election. Al Gore did win the vote in Florida, thus winning the popular and electoral vote. The original count stopped with Bush ahead by 35 votes. The certified count put Bush ahead by 537 votes. The process did not adequately transmit the intentions of the voters to the totals, between judged “overvotes” and “undervotes”. Few voting systems use punch cards that have chads. Most paper ballots are marked bubbles or marked to complete an arrow, if not old-style hand-counted paper ballots. It is helpful for the legitimacy of the system for the media to pretend otherwise, but Gore did in the end concede. I suspect that Hillary’s concession will not be reversed in order to preserve the legitimacy of the system.
dunno that those ‘experts’ might not be biased, but a recount is underway in PA, didn’ click in, but she must have met the Rulez. i dunno what’s in it for her, but it sho’ don’t seem to be about ‘democracy’, especially after reading the essays, statements, and despicable pdf news media rubbish. never anything but: “seems to be what might be…a roosian signature”. stein can kiss my grits, and it seems to be a fairly universal sentiment by now. from the commentariat on b’s latest, as well.
but i’ll stir these things into the mix:
‘Did Russia Interfere in the U.S. Presidential Election?’, truthdig
stein (and her pals) just validated all this red scare fukkery , and of course we’ll see more headlines like this one at the guardian: ‘German spy chief says Russian hackers could disrupt elections; Cyber-attacks aim to legitimize democratic process and elicit political uncertainty, says Bruno Kahl’
yanno, cuz putin wants the EU to disintegrate!
but now she’s raised the goalposts to $9.5 million needed. donations seem to be slowing down, lol. $6.6 mill!
have to beg off in a semi-apology, thd. too much to read for now with RL family communication and pending ones. if there’s any time/energy left in me tonight, i’ll likely spend it at cannonball instead.
Also NakedCapitalism was on the list – extreme outrage from Yves on that – and I would think that is due to the fact she’s always clamped down on any mention of ‘Deep State’; it has been one of her ‘off the table’ subjects. And yes, ‘b’ did a great piece – many comments over there. As to us here, I’m sure you are sailing under the radar quite safely, wendye as these people do not understand satire. Oh boy, what an “I’m Spartacus!” moment it is.
I went to MoA before bed last night, and b has an amazing post, just amazing, on all that has been happening in Syria, background on Egypt, and did you know those carriers the French wouldn’t sell to Russia but did sell to Egypt are right in the mix for Aleppo (what’s a leppo?) Oh my, I cried to read it, I really did. So much I did not know. I guess I feel about Syria the way you feel about Standing Rock – but ultimately it’s Yemen down deep, so I hope this forging of alliances and freeing up of hammered and suffering peoples will extend to that tiny nation and finally give the Saudis something to think about.
If Jill is indeed one of the last of the turncoats, I will eat crow. It’s still not my thinking, because even if the nasties are trying to join the parade, truth is truth and their wiles can and should be used against them. But I was wrong about Obama at first so I can be wrong again. Her tactics so far are just that, and I’m reminded of watching the cricket last night.
It’s a big deal for individual cricketers to gain a century – a hundred runs in a turn at bat, and one of the Pakistanis was very close to that in the last stage of the game. But also, time was limited, and for the team to win, somebody had to throw caution to the winds and bat fiercely, exposing themselves to getting out, rather than using up the time on careful play (which would have gained him the 100 and go on his record proving he was a great player,and the game would have ended in a draw.)
He chose, Sami did, to start trying to heave the ball – and he did get out. To me, that’s sort of what Jill Stein is doing.
I praise Sami for thinking of his team more than I do New Zealand for winning the game, but that’s just me.
yes, my ‘help me’ was entirely by way of satire; boutique blogs like the café don’t even bear scrutiny except for mebbe key words to the security state. i’m glad you’re so pleased at the changes in aleppo that you cried, you certainly know far, far more than i do about it. but for me, i can’t even imagine trying to rank my ‘carings about’ venues and issues, from yemen to murders of blacks and others of the rabble class by police, yemenis (which i can’t write in any way intelligently about, save: saudi arabia and the US’s apparent approval of a saudi/israel proxy war), palestinians in apartheid gaza, sub-saharan african nations in the cross-hairs of the Imperium’s deadly NGOs, kashmiris…such a long list.
but for triage, this water protection at standing rock often takes precedence, as some protectors have likened it to ‘kent state coming?’. not wounded knee ’73, as some there were indeed armed and firing. and some crucial existential issues have arisen, even after the several insane militarized multi-agency injuries to hundreds of good souls there.
so yeah, i reckon we’re able to multitask our solidarity and caring, although gathering enough information on players, locales, and discerning fake news from actual…is often too daunting a task for me. coupled w/ that is the fact that i can learn, then write a piece, and two days later forget what i’d known. arrggh.
now as far as this: “If Jill is indeed one of the last of the turncoats, I will eat crow”, i’m not thinking you’ll ever see some signal that obviates her being a turncoat, if i take your meaning. if you’ve actually read brandy baker’s calm indictment of her actions, margaret flowers’ and green signatories’ public statement, essentially saying that she’d gone pretty much rogue, and read page one of her petition to the board of electors in WI, and at least scanned the many instances of hyterical msn ‘news’ that extrapolated non-proof of ‘the russians hacked our elections (and yes, one was srsly on trump telling wikileaks to publish more of something-or-other, as if…), and you’re still decided that she’s on the right track, we’ll just have to disagree.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/28/the-stein-campaign-and-the-fight-for-green-party-independence/
http://www.flowersforsenate.org/greens_speak_out_recount
to my mind, if we don’t hear ajamu baraka making a public statement against it, i’m done w/ him. remember: he claim has been ‘ajamu baracka and i’. as i’d said, i’ hope that he would be kickin’ ass and takin’ names as far as any injustices and human rights abuses under the next administration. peace to you, juliania.
oh, i just stuck this on the standing rock diary. i was on reuters’ twit thing, and had seen it. just the text, not the hideous photo; i wanna be able to eat the thai coconut/butternut squash soup i made. ;-) and we got 6-8 inches of lovely snow last night.
b may already be aware of it. @Reuters 17m17 minutes ago
“Albright, Hadley urge U.S. to use more military power in Syria. More from bipartisan report to be released tomorrow”: http://reut.rs/2guzyMr
ajamu baraka speaks (mumbles?) he would not have NOT read the ‘foreign agents’ language, nor failed to read the petition to the WI board of elections.
“…her own running mate, Ajamu Baraka, who told CNN on Tuesday: “I’m not in favor of the recount.”
Baraka said he had spoken with Stein about his concerns, telling her “it was a potentially dangerous move” because it could be mischaracterized by the broader political community.
“It would be seen as carrying the water for the Democrats,” Baraka said.”
(i’d add ‘and carrying water for clapper and other intel and security acronyms’.)
Ajamu Baraka, November 28 at 12:39pm • (facebook)
“I believe that Dr. Stein sincerely believed that she had an obligation, grounded in her commitment to the principle of election integrity, to mount a challenge to the results in those three states. And while I don’t share that position for reasons that I am not going to try and elaborate on here on Facebook, the notion that her decision was made for any other reason than that is a position that I cannot support. There are many in and outside of the Green Party who support the campaign’s decision to call for a recount. But there are also many Green Party activists and supporters who are opposed to that decision.
It is unfortunate that after waging a courageous campaign to build an independent, principled political opposition to the two racist, capitalist/imperialist parties, the recount effort has resulted in serious questions regarding the motivations of the recount that threatens to damage the standing and reputation of the Green party, its supporters, and activists.”