US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8961

Russia targeted U.S. military personnel and veterans in a cyber campaign last spring by spreading messages on social media networks that promoted Kremlin propaganda as well as conspiracy theories, according to a new study.

The Oxford University study found that three websites with Kremlin ties — Veteranstoday.com, Veteransnewsnow.com and Southfront.org — engaged in “significant and persistent interactions” with the U.S. military community, McClatchy highlighted Monday.

“We’ve found an entire ecosystem of junk news about national security issues that is deliberately crafted for U.S. veterans and active military personnel,” professor Philip Howard, who led the research in the study, told the newswire.

“It’s a complex blend of content with a Russian view of the world — wild rumors and conspiracies.”

Despite their attempts to gain influence through social media platforms last June, the study found that they did not make "very deep" inroads with the group on Twitter. The sites, however, did have more success with Twitter than Facebook."

Jimmy Carter has reportedly said he is willing to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in a bid to defuse tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes, and bring “permanent peace” to the Korean peninsula.

In an intervention that is likely to irritate Donald Trump, the 93-year-old former president told a South Korean academic that he was willing to travel to the North Korean capital if it meant preventing war.

“Should former president Carter be able to visit North Korea, he would like to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and discuss a peace treaty between the United States and the North, and a complete denuclearisation of North Korea,” Park Han-shik, a professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, told South Korea’s JoongAng Daily newspaper.

Park said Carter told him during a meeting at his home in Georgia at the end of September that he wanted to “contribute toward establishing a permanent peace regime on the Korean peninsula.

“He wants to employ his experience visiting North Korea to prevent a second Korean war,” he added.

Carter’s recent comments on North Korea have angered the White House, which last month reportedly asked him not to speak publicly about the crisis amid fears he was undermining Trump, who refuses to entertain any form of rapprochement with the regime.

Media reports said a senior US state department official had visited Carter at his home to pass on Trump’s request.

Carter’s conciliatory stance sits uneasily with attempts by the Trump administration to intensify sanctions against Pyongyang and threats to use military force if the US or its allies are threatened by the regime.

Carter, however, does not appear to be listening to his successor in the White House.

In an opinion piece in the Washington Post last week, he described the North Korean situation as “the most serious existential threat to world peace” and implored Washington and Pyongyang to find a peaceful way to defuse tensions and “reach a lasting, peaceful agreement”.

Carter said all the North Korean officials he had met, including the former leader Kim Il-sung, had told him that all they wanted were direct talks with the US to negotiate a peace treaty to replace the uneasy ceasefire reached at the end of the 1950-53 Korean war.

Attempts to pressure the North into abandoning its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes will fail for as long as the regime believes its survival is at stake, Carter wrote.

“The next step should be for the United States to offer to send a high-level delegation to Pyongyang for peace talks or to support an international conference including North and South Korea, the United States and China, at a mutually acceptable site.”

Carter’s brand of gentle diplomacy has won concessions from the North Koreans before.

In 1994, during Bill Clinton’s presidency, he persuaded Kim Il-sung to freeze his country’s nuclear programme in a deal that may have averted conflict with the US.

In August 2010, he secured the release of Aijalon Gomes, an American who had been sentenced to eight years in prison for entering North Korea illegally.

Park, who helped organise the 1994 and 2010 trips to North Korea, said he had communicated to Pyongyang Carter’s wish to lead a US delegation to the country.

“We have yet to get answers from the North Koreans, but I’m sure they’re giving it deep consideration,” Park told the Yonhap news agency.

“We still have to watch North Korea’s reaction. We might be able talk with Trump again if North Korea sends an official invitation. Should Trump steadfastly oppose the idea then we have to think about what we’ll do next.”

Even an unofficial delegation led by Carter would need to be approved by the US government following the recent introduction of a ban on American citizens traveling to North Korea.

On October 10 2017 15:04 RvB wrote:
There's an obvious difference between Columbus and the claims of africans (or any other country) discovering America. We pretty much know that Columbus went there and he left his mark. The Africans ever landing is highly doubtful and if they did there's very little left to prove it.

The comparison with ancient Egypt is laughable. There are very few historians who dispute the achievements of ancient Egypt. On the other hand there are very few historians who believe that Africans landed in the Americas before Columbus.

On October 10 2017 16:31 Falling wrote:
Do you hold the same view of discovering the Law of Gravity? It was always there- it's not like it didn't exist before scientists started systematizing their knowledge. How can you discover something that was always there? Right. But now it is known. By us. So it's discovered.

Just the same. There was a time when Europeans didn't know what was over there and the indigenous didn't know what was across their waters. Then there was a time when both sides did know about each other. And whole bunch of people even helpfully sailed around every single bay and inlet and mapped the whole thing out. We call that switching from one state of affairs (mutual ignorance of the other) to a different state of affairs (knowledge of the other), discovery. And discovery is a perfectly adequate and indeed acceptable word to describe that point of switching from one to the other. How else would you describe that switching of affairs, sensibly and concisely with one word?

edit
Yeah, there was the whole deciphering of the hieroglyphs that was a bit of hang up, But since cracking that, we've been at it ever since. Modern archaeology is a relatively recent phenomenon and the amount of material to go through worldwide is staggering. (There's loads and loads of Sumerian tablets that are hardly touched, I believe.) I hardly think our inadequate understanding of Egypt is due to systematic suppression. Besides Egyptology is a pretty dominant field as far as I can tell.

On October 10 2017 16:30 Velr wrote:
Are you actually serious?

1. Aliens that would find us, would totally discover earth (for themselves). What else would they do?
2. Stonehenge is/was also "Alien built" for many people, yet i don't see you bitching about that.
3. Europe also did a brilliant job of forgetting much of its own history/technologies (Stonehenge, Romans - let alone other cultures that didn't write). Thats actually how early british/european archeology startet (chinese also had something like it, earlier).
4. The veneration of the genius of egypt is also not recent, its as old as widespread knowledge of it. What makes you even think that? Modern "scientific" archeology kinda just started in the late 19th century. Egypt/The Pyramids were one of its first big targets.

This "knowledge of the other" is some romanticized crap I'm really not interested in at the moment.

On October 10 2017 17:41 Falling wrote:

You have some funny hang ups on a pretty straight forward concept. Europeans and indigenous people were literally ignorant of each other. Then they have knowledge about what they were ignorant about, thereby making them no longer ignorant. That movement from ignorance to knowledge on a certain subject can be termed as discovery. There's nothing romanticized about that unless you want it to be romantic.

On October 10 2017 22:22 brian wrote:
and does that really deserve a holiday? that’s the kind of thing i can’t get behind. like i said earlier, i’m not necessarily against it. i’m just not for it. how can people get so defensive over columbus day? why?

it seems like we’re just trying to make as much noise as possible whenever any kind of change comes about. is that the new politics? CHANGE BAD?

i have to admit i’ve only read probably every other page of the last 5, but it seems to be the gist of it. arguing for arguments sake really. it’s just not a significant anything.