Last Call For The Other, Other Operation

Looks like China is trying to use Twitter to create an AstroTurf movement against the Hong Kong protesters, and Twitter is not only acknowledging it, but actually doing something about it.

We are disclosing a significant state-backed information operation focused on the situation in Hong Kong, specifically the protest movement and their calls for political change.
What we are disclosing
This disclosure consists of 936 accounts originating from within the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Overall, these accounts were deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground. Based on our intensive investigations, we have reliable evidence to support that this is a coordinated state-backed operation. Specifically, we identified large clusters of accounts behaving in a coordinated manner to amplify messages related to the Hong Kong protests.

As Twitter is blocked in PRC, many of these accounts accessed Twitter using VPNs. However, some accounts accessed Twitter from specific unblocked IP addresses originating in mainland China. The accounts we are sharing today represent the most active portions of this campaign; a larger, spammy network of approximately 200,000 accounts — many created following our initial suspensions — were proactively suspended before they were substantially active on the service.

All the accounts have been suspended for a range of violations of our platform manipulation policies, which we define as:
Spam
Coordinated activity
Fake accounts
Attributed activity
Ban evasion

So what is Twitter doing?

Covert, manipulative behaviors have no place on our service — they violate the fundamental principles on which our company is built. As we have said before, it is clear that information operations and coordinated inauthentic behavior will not cease. These deceptive strategies have been around for far longer than Twitter has existed. They adapt and change as the geopolitical terrain evolves worldwide and as new technologies emerge. For our part, we are committed to understanding and combating how bad-faith actors use our services.

Today we are adding archives containing complete Tweet and user information for the 936 accounts we’ve disclosed to our archive of information operations — the largest of its kind in the industry.

We will continue to be vigilant, learning from this network and proactively enforcing our policies to serve the public conversation. We hope that by being transparent and open we will empower further learning and public understanding of these nefarious tactics.

They've also made all the information available on the Chinese fake accounts available on the link at the top of the story.

A far cry from the Russian manipulation, which Twitter did its best to hide.  Maybe it's because as Twitter says, the service is openly banned in China, so it's not like they are risking the loss of ad revenue and users, or risking the wrath of Donald Trump.

On Deep Background

We've been down this road before. 

An overwhelming majority of Americans of all political stripes are open to universal background checks for firearms ownership and a national database. Suburban women are no different.

A new poll conducted by a premier Republican polling firm shows that about 3 in 4 suburban women favor stricter gun laws. The Republican Main Street Partnership, which supports moderate Republicans and has endorsed “red flag” bills under consideration in the House, commissioned a Public Opinion Strategies survey of 1,000 registered voters across five suburban House districts: Colorado’s Sixth, Kansas’s Third, North Carolina’s Ninth, Pennsylvania’s First and Virginia’s 10th. The group shared with me the topline results among women in these suburban areas:  

• 72 percent said they think gun laws should be stricter, compared to four percent who said they should be less strict and 23 percent who said they should be kept as they are now.
• 55 percent said they think stricter gun laws would help prevent gun violence.
• 90 percent support requiring universal background checks for gun purchases at gun shows or other private sales, which would require all gun owners to file with a national firearms registry.
• 88 percent said they would support requiring a 48-hour waiting period between the purchase of a firearm and when the buyer can take possession of that gun.
• 84 percent back a national red flag law that would permit law enforcement to temporarily retain firearms from a person who may present a danger to others or themselves.
• 76 percent said they would ban the purchase and use of semi-automatic assault-style weapons like the AK-47 and the AR-15.
• And 72 percent would support banning the sale and possession of high-capacity or extended ammunition magazines, which allow guns to shoot more than 10 bullets before needing to be reloaded.

The female respondents were read six issues and asked which they want their lawmaker to focus on the most. Working to prevent gun violence was No. 1, selected by 30 percent of suburban women. Health care was No. 2, with 24 percent, followed by addressing illegal immigration (14 percent) as the No. 3 priority. Further down the list were improving the economy, balancing the budget, improving the country’s infrastructure and strengthening national security.

All of those five districts are swing districts, including NC-9 of stolen absentee ballot fame, with a special election there next month, and it's a Republican poll, so if anything the numbers are shaded in favor of the NRA.

Having said that, all of these initiatives have zero chance of passage.

Following his now well-established pattern after mass shootings, Trump continues to back away from his initial support for "strong background checks." When the bodies are still being buried – whether after Las Vegas, Parkland, Fla., or El Paso – the president proclaims that he will take meaningful action to address the epidemic of gun violence. But as public attention wanes, and he faces pushback from the National Rifle Association, Trump returns to saying the problem that needs to be addressed is actually mental health.

“It's the people that pull the trigger, not the gun that pulls the trigger,” Trump said last night on the tarmac in New Jersey, as he prepared to fly back to Washington after 10 days at the golf club he owns there. “We have a very, very big mental health problem, and Congress is working on various things and I will be looking at it. … They have bipartisan committees working on background checks and various other things. And we’ll see. I don't want people to forget that this is a mental health problem. I don't want them to forget that because it is. It’s a mental health problem."

There have always been lots of violent people in the world, but they did not always have such easy access to weapons of war and massive magazines. Mass shootings did not used to happen with such regularity, and they did not used to be so deadly.

Asked last night if he’ll support universal background checks, Trump was curt and noncommittal. “I'm not saying anything,” he replied. “I'm saying Congress is going to be reporting back to me with ideas. And they'll come in from Democrats and Republicans. And I'll look at it very strongly. But just remember, we already have a lot of background checks, okay? Thank you.”

Besides, Mitch McConnell will never allow legislation to even get a floor vote.

Until we start seeing people on the evening news interviews saying "I voted for this candidate because of their support for new gun safety regulations and background checks" or better yet, "I voted against this incumbent because they've had years to do something about background checks and didn't lift a finger" then no, nothing will happen.

Meanwhile, I expect we'll visit the issue of background checks and assault weapons at least one or two more times between now and November 2020, and the same exact articles will be written and the poll results won't change, and Mitch will still do nothing.

And the American people will re-elect 95% of the incumbents who did nothing.

A Bunch Of Block(ade) Heads

Donald Trump's latest idiotic foreign policy idea is a total naval blockade of Venezuela, which would be not only immensely impractical, but an act of open war. Axios's Jon Swan:

President Trump has suggested to national security officials that the U.S. should station Navy ships along the Venezuelan coastline to prevent goods from coming in and out of the country, according to 5 current and former officials who have either directly heard the president discuss the idea or have been briefed on Trump's private comments.

Driving the news: Trump has been raising the idea of a naval blockade periodically for at least a year and a half, and as recently as several weeks ago, these officials said. They added that to their knowledge the Pentagon hasn't taken this extreme idea seriously, in part because senior officials believe it's impractical, has no legal basis and would suck resources from a Navy that is already stretched to counter China and Iran.

Trump has publicly alluded to a naval blockade of Venezuela. Earlier this month he answered "Yes, I am" when a reporter asked whether he was mulling such a move. But he hasn't elaborated on the idea publicly.

In private, Trump has expressed himself more vividly, these current and former officials say. 

"He literally just said we should get the ships out there and do a naval embargo," said one source who's heard the president’s comments. "Prevent anything going in." 

"I'm assuming he's thinking of the Cuban missile crisis," the source added. "But Cuba is an island and Venezuela is a massive coastline. And Cuba we knew what we were trying to prevent from getting in. But here what are we talking about? It would need massive, massive amounts of resources; probably more than the U.S. Navy can provide."

Hawkish GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, has a different perspective about the value of a show of military force. "I've been saying for months that when the Venezuelan military sees an American military presence gathering force, this thing ends pretty quickly," he told me.

"This thing" being the government of Nicolas Maduro, of course.  The US Navy wants nothing to do with this stupidity, but they're already being portrayed as not sufficiently patriotic to Dear Leader Trump and giving the Navy a major boost in Pentagon spending in swing states in order to get them on board with the war effort is seen as a worthwhile endeavor by right-wing goofballs like Hugh Hewitt.

When the Air Force decided in 2017 not to base F-35A fighter aircraft at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan, it missed an easy way to achieve some equity in the distribution of defense-industry dollars in the states. Trump could direct the Pentagon to reverse that decision.

The Navy’s plans for a new “large unmanned surface vessel” calls for a ship which could be built at a Great Lakes facility; near Detroit makes sense, if only out of fairness to a state that has been largely ignored in the Trump military rebuild. Given the likely long-term need for many of these ships in the future, a new facility could be planted and grown along with the program. It pains this Buckeye to say so, but somewhere along the Michigan coast next door to Ohio would be equitable. 

A focus on Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin need not be limited to the Defense Department. Recently, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) pushed successfully for the planned relocation of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colo., in a brilliant move to bring bureaucrats closer to the citizens they regulate and whom they are supposed to serve. Sending large parts of the Environmental Protection Agency to Flint, Mich., or nearby locations would drive home the same message.

Trump has the chance to drain the swamp while making government agencies much more attuned to the people in flyover country. But he must act soon.

Yet, it is really the Navy’s utter failure to deliver even a bare-bones plan to realize the president’s promise of a 355-ship Navy that ought to rankle the commander in chief. A new chief of naval operations will arrive soon. The president ought to have waiting on his desk copies of the speeches in which he promised, and then promised again, a 355-ship Navy, along with the slogan famously used by Winston Churchill scrawled with the black Sharpie that Trump likes to use: “Action this day!”

The pressure on the US Navy to make a blockade work is on...and the result will be yet another option to get us into a war at Trump's convenience.

StupidiNews!

• Newly-examined DNA evidence has potentially cracked a 36-year-old sexual assault case in Florida, the suspect is currently serving time for bank robbery in West Virginia.
• Hundreds of thousands of protesters clogged the streets of Hong Kong Sunday for a massive pro-democracy rally as China continues to decry the "terrorist-like" tactics of demonstrators.
• Islamic State is claiming responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 63 at a wedding reception in Kabul over the weekend as Taliban and US forces continue to negotiate a US withdrawal.
• Former South Carolina GOP Rep. Mark Sanford says he's pondering a primary challenge to Donald Trump, saying Trump "does not deserve" a second term.
• A new US Department of Energy survey finds that wind power is now cheaper to produce than natural gas, but only due to a renewable energy tax credit that the Trump regime is ending.