With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons

With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons
By Glenn Greenwald / 2017-07-17

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One of the most under-discussed yet consequential changes in the American political landscape is the reunion between the Democratic Party and the country’s most extreme and discredited neocons. While the rise of Donald Trump, whom neocons loathe, has accelerated this realignment, it began long before the ascension of Trump and is driven by far more common beliefs than contempt for the current president.

A newly formed and, by all appearances, well-funded national security advocacy group, devoted to more hawkish U.S. policies toward Russia and other adversaries, provides the most vivid evidence yet of this alliance. Calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy, the group describes itself as “a bipartisan, transatlantic initiative” that “will develop comprehensive strategies to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions,” and also “will work to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.”

It is, in fact, the ultimate union of mainstream Democratic foreign policy officials and the world’s most militant, and militaristic, neocons. The group is led by two longtime Washington foreign policy hands, one from the establishment Democratic wing and the other a key figure among leading GOP neocons.

The Democrat, Laura Rosenberger, served as a foreign policy adviser for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and chief of staff to two Obama national security officials. The Republican is Jamie Fly, who spent the last four years as counselor for foreign and national security affairs to one of the Senate’s most hawkish members, Marco Rubio; prior to that, he served in various capacities in the Bush Pentagon and National Security Council.

Fly’s neocon pedigree is impressive indeed. During the Obama years, he wrote dozens of articles for the Weekly Standard — some co-authored with Bill Kristol himself — attacking Obama for insufficient belligerence toward Iran and terrorists generally, pronouncing Obama “increasingly ill suited to the world he faces as president” by virtue of his supposed refusal to use military force frequently enough (Obama bombed seven predominantly Muslim countries during his time in office, including an average of 72 bombs dropped per day in 2016 alone).

The Democrats’ new partner Jamie Fly spent 2010 working in tandem with Bill Kristol urging military action — i.e., aggressive war — against Iran.
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Beyond working as Rubio’s foreign policy adviser, Fly was the executive director of “the Foreign Policy Initiative,” a group founded by Kristol along with two other leading neocons, Robert Kagan and Dan Senor, who was previously the chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.
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When it comes to this new group, the alliance of Democrats with the most extreme neocon elements is visible beyond the group’s staff leadership. Its board of advisers is composed of both leading Democratic foreign policy experts, along with the nation’s most extremist neocons.

Thus, alongside Jake Sullivan (national security adviser to Joe Biden and the Clinton campaign), Mike Morrell (Obama’s acting CIA director) and Mike McFaul (Obama’s ambassador to Russia) sit leading neocons such as Mike Chertoff (Bush’s homeland security secretary), Mike Rogers (the far-right, supremely hawkish former congressman who now hosts a right-wing radio show); and Bill Kristol himself.

In sum — just as was true of the first Cold War, when neocons made their home among the Cold Warriors of the Democratic Party — on the key foreign policy controversies, there is now little to no daylight between leading Democratic Party foreign policy gurus and the Bush-era neocons who had wallowed in disgrace following the debacle of Iraq and the broader abuses of the war on terror. That’s why they are able so comfortably to unify this way in support of common foreign policy objectives and beliefs.
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This Democrat/neocon reunion had been developing long before anyone believed Donald Trump could ascend to power, and this alliance extends to common perspectives, goals, and policies that have little to do with the current president.
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One finds evidence of this alliance long before the emergence of Trump. Victoria Nuland, for instance, served as one of Dick Cheney’s top foreign policy advisers during the Bush years. Married to one of the most influential neocons, Robert Kagan, Nuland then seamlessly shifted into the Obama State Department and then became a top foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign.
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The song Democrats are now singing about Russia and Putin is one the neocons wrote many years ago, and all of the accompanying rhetorical tactics — accusing those who seek better relations with Moscow of being Putin’s stooges, unpatriotic, of suspect loyalties, etc. — are the ones that have defined the neocons smear campaigns for decades.

The union of Democrats and neocons is far more than a temporary marriage of convenience designed to bring down a common enemy. ... These two groups have found common cause because, with rare and limited exception, they share common policy beliefs and foreign policy mentalities.
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The implications of this reunion are profound and long-term. Neocons have done far more damage to the U.S., and the world, than any other single group — by a good margin. They were the architects of the invasion of Iraq and the lies that accompanied it, the worldwide torture regime instituted after 9/11, and the general political climate that equated dissent with treason.
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...Particularly after his recent argument with Tucker Carlson over Russia, Democrats have practically canonized Max Boot, who has literally cheered for every possible war over the two past decades and, in 2013, wrote a column titled “No Need to Repent for Support of Iraq War.” It is now common to see Democratic pundits and office holders even favorably citing and praising Bill Kristol himself.
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More: https://theintercept.com/2017/07/17/...h-era-neocons/

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Now the merger is official.

They're circling the wagons and panicking... it's a good sign. :mad:

Good maybe we can drive them out of the Republican party entirely, and watch the Demoncrats explode when they try to let them in.

"Alliance for Securing Democracy" has been added to the Neoconservative Reference List.

They already had "Alliance for a Strong America" and "Foundation for Defense of Democracies". Bill Kristol must be running out of ideas for naming all of the neoconservative shell organizations.

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Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty

"Alliance for Securing Democracy" has been added to the Neoconservative Reference List.

They already had "Alliance for a Strong America" and "Foundation for Defense of Democracies". Bill Kristol must be running out of ideas for naming all of the neoconservative shell organizations.

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Why do they need so many?

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Originally Posted by Swordsmyth

Why do they need so many?

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More donations that way, and it creates the illusion of more support. And many are shut down after they lose credibility.

The Civil Union of Democrats-Neocons

It is … the ultimate union of mainstream Democratic foreign policy officials and the world’s most militant, and militaristic, neocons. The group is led by two longtime Washington foreign policy hands … The Democrat, Laura Rosenberger, served as a foreign policy adviser for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and chief of staff to two Obama national security officials. The Republican is Jamie Fly, who spent the last four years as counselor for foreign and national security affairs to one of the Senate’s most hawkish members, Marco Rubio; prior to that, he served in various capacities in the Bush Pentagon and National Security Council. … Fly … wrote dozens of articles for the Weekly Standard — some co-authored with Bill Kristol … The Democrats’ new partner Jamie Fly spent 2010 working in tandem with Bill Kristol urging military action — i.e., aggressive war — against Iran. … Fly was the executive director of “the Foreign Policy Initiative,” a group founded by Kristol along with two other leading neocons, Robert Kagan and Dan Senor, …

When it comes to this new group, the alliance of Democrats with the most extreme neocon elements is visible beyond the group’s staff leadership. Its board of advisers is composed of both leading Democratic foreign policy experts, along with the nation’s most extremist neocons. … Jake Sullivan … Mike Morrell … Mike McFaul … Mike Chertoff ... Mike Rogers … and Bill Kristol himself. …

they share the same fundamental beliefs about the U.S. role in the world and how to assert U.S. power. … the Democratic Party’s decades-long embrace of the Cold War belligerence that neocons love most … the natural ideological affinity between neocons and establishment Democrats … “Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.” … Victoria Nuland, for instance, served as one of Dick Cheney’s top foreign policy advisers during the Bush years. Married to one of the most influential neocons, Robert Kagan, Nuland then seamlessly shifted into the Obama State Department and then became a top foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign. …

As anti-war sentiment grew among some GOP precincts … neocons started to conclude that their agenda, which never changed, would be better advanced by realignment back into the Democratic Party. Writing in The Nation in early 2016, Matt Duss detailed how the neocon mentality was losing traction within the GOP, and predicted … the neocons will start to migrate back to the Democratic Party … But the question is, Now that the neocons has been revealed as having no real grassroots to deliver, and that their actual constituency consists almost entirely of a handful of donors subsidizing a few dozen think tankers, journalists, and letterheads, why would Democrats want them back? The answer … because, as this new group demonstrates, Democrats find large amounts of common cause with neocons when it comes to foreign policy.

The neocons may be migrating back to the Democratic Party and into the open embrace of its establishment, but their homecoming will not be a seamless affair … Sen. Chris Murphy, for instance, has been vocal in his opposition to arming the Saudis as they savage Yemen. But now that hawkish rhetoric and belligerent policies have subsumed the Democrats, it remains to be seen how much of that anti-interventionism survives. …

The song Democrats are now singing about Russia and Putin is one the neocons wrote many years ago, and all of the accompanying rhetorical tactics — accusing those who seek better relations with Moscow of being Putin’s stooges, unpatriotic, of suspect loyalties, etc. — are the ones that have defined the neocons smear campaigns for decades. …

the union is grounded in widespread ideological agreement on a broad array of foreign policy debates: from Israel to Syria to the Gulf States to Ukraine to Russia. … These two groups have found common cause because, with rare and limited exception, they share common policy beliefs and foreign policy mentalities.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF this reunion are profound and long-term. Neocons have done far more damage to the U.S., and the world, than any other single group — by a good margin. They were the architects of the invasion of Iraq and the lies that accompanied it, the worldwide torture regime instituted after 9/11, and the general political climate that equated dissent with treason.

With the full-scale discrediting and collapse of the Bush presidency, these war-loving neocons found themselves marginalized, without any constituency in either party. … confined to speaking at extremist conferences and working with fringe organizations. All of that has changed, thanks to the eagerness of Democrats to embrace them, form alliances with them, and thus rehabilitate their reputations and resurrect their power and influence. That leading Democratic Party foreign policy officials are willing to form new Beltway advocacy groups in collaboration with Bill Kristol, Mike Rogers, and Mike Chertoff, join arms with those who caused the invasion of Iraq and tried to launch a bombing campaign against Tehran, has repercussions that will easily survive the Trump presidency. …

One sees this same dynamic repeated with many other of the world’s most militaristic, war-loving neocons. Particularly after his recent argument with Tucker Carlson over Russia, Democrats have practically canonized Max Boot, who has literally cheered for every possible war over the two past decades … It is now common to see Democratic pundits and office holders even favorably citing and praising Bill Kristol himself. …

What we see instead are leading Democratic foreign policy experts joining hands with the world’s worst neocons to form new, broad-based policy advocacy groups to re-shape U.S. foreign policy toward a more hostile, belligerent and hawkish posture. … a full-scale embrace of them that is rehabilitating their standing, empowering their worst elements, and reintegrating them back into the Democratic Party power structure. …

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Originally Posted by Swordsmyth

Good maybe we can drive them out of the Republican party entirely, and watch the Demoncrats explode when they try to let them in.

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If only it were that simple. What is happening is the oringinal old school neocons are (re)joining the Democrats, and the new school teocons (neoconservative on foreign policy) are taking over the GOP. For many, it's nothing more than a facade, but some seem to be at least putting some effort into being fiscally conservative, constitutional and small government. Think Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, etc.

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Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty

If only it were that simple. What is happening is the oringinal old school neocons are (re)joining the Democrats, and the new school teocons (neoconservative on foreign policy) are taking over the GOP. For many, it's nothing more than a facade, but some seem to be at least putting some effort into being fiscally conservative, constitutional and small government. Think Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, etc.

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Politics like war and football is a game of inches, I'll take what I can get and keep pushing for more.

Neoconservatism Is An Omnicidal Death Cult, And It Must Be Stopped

This pivot back to the party of neoconservatism’s origin is one of the most significant political events of the new millennium, …

It’s absolutely insane that neoconservatism is still a thing, let alone still a thing that mainstream America tends to regard as a perfectly legitimate set of opinions … Dr. Paul Craig Roberts rightly calls “the most dangerous ideology that has ever existed,” neoconservatism has used its nonpartisan bloodlust to work with the Democratic party for the purpose of escalating tensions with Russia on multiple fronts, bringing our species to the brink of what could very well end up being a world war with a nuclear superpower and its allies.

This is not okay. Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member or a child molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives. …

how insane is it that we live in a society where a public figure can just be like, “Yeah, I’m a neocon, I advocate for using military aggression to maintain US hegemony and I think it’s great,” and have that be okay? These people kill children. Neoconservatism means piles upon piles of child corpses. It means devoting the resources of a nation that won’t even provide its citizens … to widespread warfare and all the death, destruction, chaos, terrorism, rape and suffering that necessarily comes with war. …

The tensions with Russia that these monsters have worked so hard to escalate could blow up at any moment; there are too many moving parts, too many things that could go wrong. The last Cold War brought our species within a hair’s breadth of total annihilation due to our inability to foresee all possible complications which can arise from such a contest, and these depraved death cultists are trying to drag us back into another one. …

None of us should have to live in a world where pushing for more bombing campaigns at every opportunity is an acceptable agenda for a public figure to have. Neoconservatism is a psychopathic death cult whose relentless hyper-hawkishness is a greater threat to the survival of our species than anything else in the world right now. These people are traitors to humanity … let’s stop pretending that this is okay. Let’s start calling these people the murderous psychopaths that they are whenever they rear their evil heads and stop respecting and legitimizing them. There should be a massive, massive social stigma around what these people do, so we need to create one. They should be marginalized, not leading us.

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Originally Posted by AZJoe

Neoconservatism Is An Omnicidal Death Cult, And It Must Be Stopped

This pivot back to the party of neoconservatism’s origin is one of the most significant political events of the new millennium, …

It’s absolutely insane that neoconservatism is still a thing, let alone still a thing that mainstream America tends to regard as a perfectly legitimate set of opinions … Dr. Paul Craig Roberts rightly calls “the most dangerous ideology that has ever existed,” neoconservatism has used its nonpartisan bloodlust to work with the Democratic party for the purpose of escalating tensions with Russia on multiple fronts, bringing our species to the brink of what could very well end up being a world war with a nuclear superpower and its allies.

This is not okay. Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member or a child molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives. …

how insane is it that we live in a society where a public figure can just be like, “Yeah, I’m a neocon, I advocate for using military aggression to maintain US hegemony and I think it’s great,” and have that be okay? These people kill children. Neoconservatism means piles upon piles of child corpses. It means devoting the resources of a nation that won’t even provide its citizens … to widespread warfare and all the death, destruction, chaos, terrorism, rape and suffering that necessarily comes with war. …

The tensions with Russia that these monsters have worked so hard to escalate could blow up at any moment; there are too many moving parts, too many things that could go wrong. The last Cold War brought our species within a hair’s breadth of total annihilation due to our inability to foresee all possible complications which can arise from such a contest, and these depraved death cultists are trying to drag us back into another one. …

None of us should have to live in a world where pushing for more bombing campaigns at every opportunity is an acceptable agenda for a public figure to have. Neoconservatism is a psychopathic death cult whose relentless hyper-hawkishness is a greater threat to the survival of our species than anything else in the world right now. These people are traitors to humanity … let’s stop pretending that this is okay. Let’s start calling these people the murderous psychopaths that they are whenever they rear their evil heads and stop respecting and legitimizing them. There should be a massive, massive social stigma around what these people do, so we need to create one. They should be marginalized, not leading us.

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Your heart is not Klingon.
;)

The ‘Foreign Meddling’ Double-Standard
Latest anti-Trump group is funded by foreign governments
by Justin Raimondo - July 19, 2017

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Yet this is just the beginning of the story of how foreign governments have acted to intervene in our politics and undermine the Trump administration.

I was interested to read a piece by Glenn Greenwald in The Intercept about the latest incarnation of the developing liberal-neoconservative merger, detailing the founding of a new group that calls itself the “Alliance to Secure Democracy.” This hybrid creature is a two-headed monster, with Clinton foreign policy honcho Laura Rosenberger, who served as a key figure in the Obama administration, and Jamie Fly, the neocons’ neocon, formerly with the now defunct Foreign Policy Initiative (the reincarnation of the infamous Project for a New American Century), at the helm.

My readers will not be surprised by the union of neoconservatives and liberal internationalists, which has been documented in this space continuously not only during the recent presidential campaign but also predicted as far back as 1999 (!). So no breaking news there.

While left-leaning commentators like Greenwald are understandably upset that the Democratic party, and its ostensibly “liberal” wing, are canoodling with the neocons, and people like Paul Begala are ranting about how we should “bomb the KGB,” us libertarians – and also students of history – realize that this coming together merely replicates the history of the last cold war. Just Google “cold war liberalism,” Glenn.

While reading Glenn’s piece, I noted a link to the Alliance to Secure Democracy’s web site, and later went back to click on it – and right there on the front page, in the upper left corner, are the initials “GMF.” These also appear under the Alliance’s logo. What the heck is this?, I wondered. I clicked – and wound up on the site of the German Marshall Fund of the US: indeed, the Marshall Fund site hosts the Alliance site. The headline reads: “’Alliance for Securing Democracy’ Launches at GMF.”

Don’t be misled by the “of the US” appellation: the German Marshall Fund is an instrument of the German government, which has subsidized it to the tune of several million dollars since its founding. It has offices in eight countries, including the US. And it’s not just the Germans who are involved. Aside from the German Foreign Office, the donors include:

Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs ($500,000-999,000)
Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs ($250,000-499,999)
Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs ($250, 499,999)
Compagnia di San Paolo, a quasi-governmental association of Italian banking interests ($1,000,000-1,999,999)
The government of Montenegro ($100,000-249,999)
Belgium’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs ($100,000-249,999)
The Brussels Capital Region (the municipality of Brussels) ($100,000-249,999)
Latvia’s Ministry of Foreign Affirs ($100,000-249,999)
Romania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs ($100,000-249,999)
United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office ($100,000-249,999)
Lithuania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs ($50,000-99,999)
Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office ($25,000-49,999)
France’s Ministry of Defense ($10,000-24,9999)

And last, but hardly least, the US government contributes between $1 million and $2 million via the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Oh, and there’s one donor listed as “Anonymous,” whose contribution is “$2 million and beyond.” In addition, among the listed donors there are a number of foreign foundations and trade associations with links, including financial links, to their respective governments.

The agenda of the Alliance is clear to anyone with eyes to see: when you go to their web site, the first thing you see under “Our Mission” is:

“Finding out what happened in the United States in 2016 and the impact it had is important. But that is not enough.”

Of course it isn’t: the goal is to get Trump out of the White House, and, in the process, conduct a witch-hunt on American soil that will root out “Russian influence,” i.e. anyone who opposes the new cold war,...
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In short, “The Resistance,” as the anti-Trump fanatics like to call themselves, is getting help from abroad, as well as from our own Deep State.

What’s so astonishing is how brazen the whole thing is: the German Marshall Fund isn’t hiding its relationship with the “Alliance,” which will be headquartered in the Fund’s Washington digs. It says right there on the Alliance web site who is footing the bill. The scale of this kind of foreign meddling in American politics makes the Russians – who run two little-trafficked web sites, RT and Sputnik – look like a joke, which in large part they are.
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Although much of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy agenda – NATO is “obsolete,” foreign wars are a drain we can’t afford, etc. – has fallen by the wayside, the mere expression of such sentiments is enough to enrage the internationalists. That such a man is occupying the White House is an affront to them: they cannot let it stand. Their campaign to cleanse the American political landscape of such sentiments is the most comprehensive – and well-funded – effort by foreign entities on American soil to date.

The “Alliance” is a regime change operation funded by foreign governments and corporate interests: its American servitors, such as Ms. Rosenberger and Mr. Fly, are seemingly exempt from having to register as foreign agents.
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More: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2...uble-standard/

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GOP has been part of the problem but Dems are bigger part of the problem.
No more Nobel Peace Prizes for their puppetbags.

TL;DR version: neoconservatives are being paid by foreign governments and US taxpayers to promote their agenda. Talk about foreign meddling in US politics...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DGLEY6KXkAAwrni.jpg:small

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Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty

The ‘Foreign Meddling’ Double-Standard
Latest anti-Trump group is funded by foreign governments
by Justin Raimondo - July 19, 2017

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Raimondo's great. Back in the days, he called the neocons out for the cowbirds they are, driving out actual conservatives and colonizing the Republican party.

New website aims to track Russian-backed propaganda on Twitter

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A website launched on Wednesday seeks to track Russian-supported propaganda and disinformation on Twitter, part of a growing non-governmental effort to diminish Moscow's ability to meddle in future elections in the United States and Europe.

The "Hamilton 68" dashboard (here) was built by researchers working with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan, transatlantic project set up last month to counter Russian disinformation campaigns.

The website, supported by the German Marshall Fund, displays a "near real-time" analysis of English-language tweets from a pool of 600 Twitter accounts that analysts identified as users that spread Russian propaganda.
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Twitter accounts selected by the new website include those overtly involved in disinformation campaigns pushed by Russian propaganda outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, and users that share information promoting the Russian government.
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"We're not necessarily saying everyone in this list is getting a paycheck from the Kremlin," said J.M. Berger, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, adding that the group had "very high confidence" accounts selected were spreading Russian disinformation.
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The research group is exploring ways to conduct similar analyses for other platforms, including Facebook, Alphabet's YouTube and Reddit, but such projects are more difficult because less data is openly accessible, Berger said.
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The name for the website is taken from Federalist Paper 68, which was authored by U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton in 1788 as part of a series of essays anonymously published to defend the U.S. Constitution to the public.

Hamilton wrote of "protecting America's electoral process from foreign meddling" in Federalist Paper 68, Alliance for Securing Democracy wrote in a blog post. "Today, we face foreign interference of a type Hamilton could have scarcely imagined."
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More: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN1AI2RV

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Update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qFPhi34KuI