- Spitfire List - https://spitfirelist.com -

FTR #998 “In Politics, Nothing Happens by Accident”: Weaponized Feminism and the #MeToo Movement

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained HERE [1]. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by the fall of 2017. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more.)

WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE [2].

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE [3].

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE [3].

You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself HERE [4].

This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [5].

“A lib­er­al’s idea of courage is eat­ing at a restau­rant that has­n’t been reviewed yet.”–Mort Sahl [6].

Intro­duc­tion: NOTE: The pro­gram will have far more mean­ing for lis­ten­ers IF they use this descrip­tion and the attached pho­tos of Leann Twee­den and Al Franken on the fate­ful USO tour. They are sig­nif­i­cant, in that they con­vey the gen­er­al­ly (ligh­heart­ed­ly) bawdy aes­thet­ic and tone of the event in ques­tion.

We begin our dis­cus­sion of weaponized fem­i­nism with its ulti­mate man­i­fes­ta­tion–a joint call [7] by NATO Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Jens Stoltenberg and Har­vey Wein­stein accuser Angeli­na Jolie for NATO to com­mit its resources to defend­ing wom­en’s rights.

Note that they cite Koso­vo as a salient exam­ple of their fem­i­nist “call to arms.” As dis­cussed in FTR # [8]161 [8] , among oth­er pro­grams, fight­ers in the Koso­vo Lib­er­a­tion Army were large­ly descen­dants of World War II fas­cist fight­ing for­ma­tions, includ­ing the 21st Waf­fen SS Division–the Skan­der­beg Divi­sion.

The irony in Stoltenberg and Jolie’s call for NATO [9] to enforce wom­en’s rights in Koso­vo, among oth­er places, could not be more pro­found: ” . . . . Kosovo’s Prime Min­is­ter Hashim Thaci is fac­ing a wide range of crim­i­nal alle­ga­tions, includ­ing own­ing a harem with 52 female sex slaves . . . . Accord­ing to the news agency, a Ukrain­ian woman escaped from Thaci’s harem and revealed damn­ing infor­ma­tion about sex slav­ery in Koso­vo. The woman claims 52 female sex slaves are forced to work night and day to ser­vice the Prime Min­is­ter and his rich friends in busi­ness and gov­ern­ment. . . .”

Next, we turn to what may well be anoth­er exam­ple of NATO weaponized fem­i­nism. Among the vic­tims of the #MeToo move­ment was Rep. John Cony­ers (D‑MI), a promi­nent con­gres­sion­al crit­ic of the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion, receiv­ing arms and train­ing from the U.S.

In 2018, NATO forces are sched­uled to engage in maneu­vers in Ukraine.

It is not sur­pris­ing that Kristofer Har­ri­son [10] (the author of an apolo­gia for the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion [11] in Ukraine) is a for­mer Defense Depart­ment and State Depart­ment advi­sor to George W. Bush (and from the same polit­i­cal milieu of Kurt Volk­er, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s CIA-trained rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Ukraine [12].) Note­wor­thy in his pro­pa­gan­da piece dis­miss­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Cony­ers (D‑MI) as “the Krem­lin’s Man in Con­gress” and dis­count­ing any­one else dis­cussing the ascen­sion of the OUN/B fas­cists in Ukraine in a sim­i­lar vein, is the iden­ti­ty of his source for assur­ances that Azov is not a Nazi unit.

The Azov’s spokesman is Roman Zvarych, the per­son­al sec­re­tary [13] to Jaroslav Stet­sko in the 1980’s. Stet­sko was the head of the World War II OUN/B gov­ern­ment that col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis!

After emi­grat­ing to Ukraine in the ear­ly ’90’s Zvarych and form­ing the Con­gress of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists with Sla­va Stet­sko (Jaroslav’s wid­ow) Zvarych became: Jus­tice Min­is­ter (the equiv­a­lent of Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States) under the gov­ern­ments of Vik­tor Yuschenko and both Yulia Tim­o­shenko gov­ern­ments. He has been serv­ing as an advis­er to pres­i­dent Poroshenko.

We then take stock of how Cony­ers, “The Krem­lin’s Man in Con­gress,” was removed fol­low­ing a gam­bit by “Alt-Right” blog­ger, Trump ally and misog­y­nist Mike Cer­novich [14] to finance the solic­i­ta­tion of pro­fes­sion­al­ly dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion about polit­i­cal oppo­nents. “. . . . In Novem­ber, the Trump-back­ing social media agi­ta­tor Mike Cer­novich offered to pay $10,000.00 for details of any con­gres­sion­al sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ments, and said on Twit­ter that he would cov­er the expens­es of ‘any VICTIM of a Con­gress­man who wants to come for­ward to tell her sto­ry.’ Short­ly before post­ing that offer, a source pro­vid­ed Mr. Cer­novich with a copy of a sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ment that led in Decem­ber to the res­ig­na­tion of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Cony­ers Jr., Demo­c­rat of Michi­gan, until then the longest-serv­ing mem­ber of the House. . . .”

With Al Franken’s depar­ture from the Senate–an event that fig­ures to make the Democ­rats’ chances of regain­ing con­trol of the cham­ber more precarious–we reflect on aspects of Franken’s depar­ture:

  1. Franken’s trou­bles were fore­shad­owed [15] by long-time GOP (and Trump) dirty tricks oper­a­tive Roger Stone. Might Stone, as is his wont, have played a role in arrang­ing this gam­bit?
  2. Leeann Twee­den worked for Fox News [16] for years.
  3. Twee­den’s CV also includes mod­el­ing stints for Play­boy [16], among oth­er out­lets.
  4. We do not pass judge­ment on Twee­den’s work for out­fits like Play­boy and Hoot­ers. In a soci­ety that is sex­ist and hier­ar­chi­cal, “strut­ting one’s stuff” is a com­mon tac­tic on a career path­way for women for­tu­nate enough to be suf­fi­cient­ly endowed to effect such a move. Nonethe­less, for her to emerge as an icon for sex­u­al harass­ment is “dif­fer­ent.” It is impor­tant to note that Twee­den is obvi­ous­ly will­ing to lever­age her con­sid­er­able charms for pro­fes­sion­al gain. Did she do that in her attack on Franken, almost ten years after the fate­ful USO tour?
  5. Twee­den’s accu­sa­tions have been echoed by oth­er accusers, sev­er­al of whom have cho­sen to remain anony­mous.
  6. Even before enter­ing the Sen­ate, Franken would have been in the GOP’s crosshairs. We note that he relat­ed stri­dent­ly misog­y­nist behav­ior by GOP finan­cial bene­fac­tor Richard Mel­lon Scaife–a main fun­der of the far right and a mem­ber of the sto­ried, extreme­ly wealthy Mel­lon fam­i­ly. Scaife’s remark–to a reporter from the Colum­bia Jour­nal­ism Review no less–has not gar­nered much atten­tion. Scaife was using the kind of lan­guage we might expect from–Edward Snow­den! [17]
  7. All of this is not to say that many–perhaps most–of the sex­u­al harass­ment charges sur­fac­ing in recent weeks against var­i­ous fig­ures may not be true. One pays a price for doing work of this kind. After close to forty years on the air, part of the price I have paid is mis­an­thropy. Echo­ing Ham­let “I care not for man.” I have a VERY low opin­ion of human nature. It is not unusu­al for peo­ple com­mand­ing pow­er and influ­ence to rou­tine­ly lever­age such grav­i­tas for finan­cial and/or sex­u­al gain. Nonethe­less, in the con­text of the Four B’s of Amer­i­can politics–Bullets, Bribes, Beds and Black­mail, the Cony­ers and Franken sit­u­a­tions bear more scruti­ny than they have received.
  8. From the stand­point of counter-intel­li­gence analy­sis, the #MeToo phe­nom­e­non sig­nals a superb tac­tic for polit­i­cal destruc­tion: a) infil­trate a woman into the entourage or pro­fes­sion­al envi­ron­ment of a male politi­cian, media or busi­ness fig­ure tar­get­ed for destruc­tion; b) have her gain the trust of her polit­i­cal tar­get and his asso­ciates (the car­di­nal rule for a good dou­ble agent is “make your­self indis­pens­able to the effort”); c) after suf­fi­cient pas­sage of time, sur­face the alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al harass­ment; d) IF the oppor­tu­ni­ty for actu­al sex play and/or flir­ta­tion presents itself, take advan­tage of it for lat­er use as political/rhetorical ammu­ni­tion; e) with accusers hav­ing the tac­ti­cal lux­u­ry of remain­ing anony­mous, the oper­a­tional tem­plate for a form of sex­u­al McCarthy­ism and the prece­dent-set­ting con­tem­po­rary man­i­fes­ta­tion of a sex­u­al Star Cham­ber is very real–the oper­a­tional sim­i­lar­i­ties between much of the #metoo move­ment and the Salem Witch Tri­als should not be lost on the per­se­ver­ing observ­er; f) prop­er vet­ting of the accu­sa­tions is absent in such a process; g) for a pub­lic fig­ure in the U.S., prov­ing delib­er­ate defama­tion (libel/slander) is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult and lit­i­ga­tion is very expensive–the mere sur­fac­ing of charges is enough to taint some­one for life and the exor­bi­tant expense of lit­i­ga­tion is pro­hib­i­tive for all but the wealth­i­est among us.
  9. The CIA has long been involved with the wom­en’s move­ment. (Check out Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M4 [18]: Glo­ria in Excel­sis [19]: The CIA, the Wom­en’s Move­ment and the News Media [20].)
  10. We can’t help but feel a bru­tal­ly iron­ic degree of schaden­freude, with the so-called “pro­gres­sive sec­tor” now being impaled on the very one-dimen­sion­al iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics they have cham­pi­oned for so long. If Adolf Hitler had been a Pales­tin­ian les­bian, folks in Berke­ley would be walk­ing around in brown­shirt uni­forms, Sam Brown belts, jack­boots and swasti­ka arm­bands.
  11. The so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor has had lit­tle to say about the rape charges against Julian Assange.
  12. We don’t expect so-called pro­gres­sives to take a crit­i­cal look at the issues we have raised here. Polit­i­cal come­di­an Mort Sahl hit the nail on the head decades ago, when he observed: “A lib­er­al’s idea of courage is eat­ing at a restau­rant that has­n’t been reviewed yet.”
  13. Past a point, we find it impos­si­ble to stom­ach what is going on. In the last elec­tion, with the first female major par­ty can­di­date in this coun­try’s his­to­ry (Hillary Clin­ton) and an open­ly avowed sex­u­al preda­tor (Don­ald Trump) run­ning against each oth­er, 52% of white Amer­i­can women vot­ed for Trump–#PhysiciansHealThyselves!

We note that the now-famous pho­to­graph of Franken “grop­ing” Leann Twee­den’s breasts was obvi­ous­ly a staged event, not to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. (The taste here is ques­tion­able, although as can be seen from two oth­er pho­tos of the same USO tour, the dom­i­nant aes­thet­ic of this tour was bawdy, tongue-in-cheek. Note the pho­tos of Twee­den goos­ing a male C &W per­former and Franken and Twee­den mug­ging over a skimpy under­gar­ment. It is clear that nei­ther is to be tak­en seri­ous­ly.)

We con­clude the pro­gram with exam­i­na­tion of tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism in action–the Twit­ter bot role in the take­down of Franken. [21]

On Novem­ber 15th, a Japan­ese devel­op­er named Atsu­fu­mi Otsu­ka reg­is­ter­ing a web domain in Japan called RealUSA.site, on the same day Roger Stone announced over Twit­ter that it’s Franken’s “time in the barrel”–one day before the sto­ry broke.

Then, on Novem­ber 20th, Alt-Right provo­ca­teur Charles John­son tweet­ed, “Think­ing of offer­ing mon­ey to peo­ple who go on tv and say Al Frank is a preda­tor.” That same day, Otsu­ka reg­is­tered a sec­ond domain in Japan for anoth­er fake-news site, VotyUS.me.

The two fake news sites were final­ly put to use on Decem­ber 7, short­ly before Democ­rats start­ed call­ing for Franken to step down. The sites re-pub­lished an arti­cle by Ijeo­ma Oluo, a lib­er­al writer, urg­ing women and activists to stop sup­port­ing Franken. Oluo’s piece, titled “Dear Al Franken, I’ll Miss You but You Can’t Mat­ter Any­more,” was post­ed on rel­a­tive­ly obscure web­site that only had a reach of of 10,000 fol­low­ers. But once the arti­cle got repost­ed to those two fake news sites the twit­ter bot net­work­ing sud­den­ly sprang into action, with thou­sands of fake Twit­ter accounts tweet­ing the title of the article—but link­ing back to repost of the arti­cle on the fake news sites, RealUSA.site or VotyUS.me.

Although it’s not clear who paid for the Twit­ter-bot activ­i­ty, it’s hard to ignore the coin­ci­den­tal tim­ing. Researchers have con­clud­ed that it wasn’t cheap. They esti­mate that it required dozens of hours of ini­tial devel­op­ment time and at least one per­son work­ing full time to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute con­tent. The whole task of set­ting up this Japan­ese Twit­ter [21] bot army to ampli­fy the calls for Sen­a­tor Franken to step down was deemed by who­ev­er paid for it to be worth the time and mon­ey.

“ . . . . A pair of Japan-based web­sites, cre­at­ed the day before Twee­den came for­ward, and a swarm of relat­ed Twit­ter bots made the Twee­den sto­ry go viral and then weaponized a lib­er­al writer’s crit­i­cism of Franken. The bot army—in tan­dem with promi­nent real, live mem­bers of the far right who have Twit­ter fol­low­ers in the mil­lions, such as Mike Cernovich—spewed thou­sands of posts, help­ing the #Franken­Fon­dles hash­tag and the “Franken is a grop­er” meme effec­tive­ly silence the tes­ti­monies of eight for­mer female staffers who defend­ed the Min­neso­ta Demo­c­rat before he resigned last year. . . . ”

” . . . . One ques­tion remains: Who is pay­ing for this oper­a­tion? The researchers believe that the oper­a­tion was expen­sive. ‘We esti­mate dozens of hours of ini­tial devel­op­ment time and at least one per­son work­ing full time to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute con­tent,’ one of the researchers told Newsweek. ‘Addi­tion­al­ly, it’s like­ly that an exist­ing bot farm of com­pro­mised com­put­ers is basi­cal­ly being rent­ed as a dis­trib­uted host for these accounts.’ . . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

  1. Dis­cus­sion of Gand­hi’s belief that one should not mix sex and pol­i­tics.
  2. Dis­cus­sion of the amoral aspect of gen­der or sex­u­al pref­er­ence typ­ing of indi­vid­u­als.
  3. Franken’s sec­ond accuser, Lind­say Menz [22], is a Trump backer who sup­pos­ed­ly was groped by Franken sev­en years before, in the pres­ence of her father and fel­low Trump backer/husband Jere­my Menz. ” . . . . the inci­dent took place at the 2010 Min­neso­ta State Fair. . . . Menz said she was at the fair with her father . . . . As they pre­pared for the pho­tos, Franken ‘pulled (her) in real­ly close, like awk­ward close’ as her hus­band was tak­ing the pic­ture. . . . Menz said that her and [hus­band] Jere­my vot­ed for Don­ald Trump [23] dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion . . . .”

1a. We begin our dis­cus­sion of weaponized fem­i­nism with its ulti­mate manifestation–a joint call by  NATO Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Jens Stoltenberg and Har­vey Wein­stein accuser Angeli­na Jolie for NATO to com­mit its resources to defend­ing wom­en’s rights.

Note that they cite Koso­vo as a salient exam­ple of their fem­i­nist “call to arms.” As dis­cussed in FTR # [8]161 [8],  among oth­er pro­grams, fight­ers in the Koso­vo Lib­er­a­tion Army were large­ly descen­dants of World War II fas­cist fight­ing for­ma­tions, includ­ing the 21st Waf­fen SS Division–the Skan­der­beg Divi­sion.

“Why NATO Must Defend Wom­en’s Rights” by Jens Stoltenberg and Angeli­na Jolie; The Guardian; 12/10/2017. [7]

. . . . Despite being pro­hib­it­ed by inter­na­tion­al law, sex­u­al vio­lence con­tin­ues to be employed as a tac­tic of war in numer­ous con­flicts from Myan­mar to Ukraine and Syr­ia to Soma­lia. It includes mass rape, gang rape, sex­u­al slav­ery, and rape as a form of tor­ture, eth­nic cleans­ing and ter­ror­ism. It accounts in large part for why it is often more dan­ger­ous to be a woman in a war­zone today than it is to be a sol­dier. . . .

. . . . We believe that NATO has the respon­si­bil­i­ty and oppor­tu­ni­ty to be a lead­ing pro­tec­tor of women’s rights.

In par­tic­u­lar, we believe NATO can become the glob­al mil­i­tary leader in how to pre­vent and respond to sex­u­al vio­lence in con­flict, draw­ing on the strengths and capa­bil­i­ties of its mem­ber states and work­ing with its many part­ner coun­tries. . . . .

. . . . Nato already deploys gen­der advis­ers to local com­mu­ni­ties in Koso­vo and Afghanistan, while NATO’s female sol­diers are able to reach and engage with local com­mu­ni­ties. . . .

1b. The irony in Stoltenberg and Jolie’s call for NATO to enforce wom­en’s rights in Koso­vo, among oth­er places could not be more pro­found: ” . . . . Kosovo’s Prime Min­is­ter Hashim Thaci is fac­ing a wide range of crim­i­nal alle­ga­tions, includ­ing own­ing a harem with 52 female sex slaves . . . . Accord­ing to the news agency, a Ukrain­ian woman escaped from Thaci’s harem and revealed damn­ing infor­ma­tion about sex slav­ery in Koso­vo. The woman claims 52 female sex slaves are forced to work night and day to ser­vice the Prime Min­is­ter and his rich friends in busi­ness and gov­ern­ment. . . .”

“Koso­vo PM Thaci Owns a Harem with Female Slaves, Traf­fics Drugs and Organs, Accord­ing to Reports” by Wolff Bach­n­er; The Inquisitr; 11/20/2012. [9]

Kosovo’s Prime Min­is­ter Hashim Thaci is fac­ing a wide range of crim­i­nal alle­ga­tions, includ­ing own­ing a harem with 52 female sex slaves, drug traf­fick­ing and the sale of human organs. The Prime Min­is­ter has been accused of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty in sev­er­al major Euro­pean news sources; among them are Berlin-based dai­ly Der TagesspiegelThe Guardian [24], and MINA.

MINA (Mace­don­ian Inter­na­tion­al News Agency) [25] is the source of today’s arti­cle about the sus­pect­ed crimes of the con­tro­ver­sial leader of Koso­vo. Accord­ing to the news agency, a Ukrain­ian woman escaped from Thaci’s harem and revealed damn­ing infor­ma­tion about sex slav­ery in Koso­vo. The woman claims 52 female sex slaves are forced to work night and day to ser­vice the Prime Min­is­ter and his rich friends in busi­ness and gov­ern­ment. . . .

1c. It is not sur­pris­ing that Kristofer Har­ri­son (the author of an apolo­gia for the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion [11] in Ukraine) is a for­mer Defense Depart­ment and State Depart­ment advi­sor to George W. Bush (and from the same polit­i­cal milieu of Kurt Volk­er, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s CIA-trained rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Ukraine [12].) Note­wor­thy in his pro­pa­gan­da piece dis­miss­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Cony­ers (D‑MI) as “the Krem­lin’s Man in Con­gress” and dis­count­ing any­one else dis­cussing the ascen­sion of the OUN/B fas­cists in Ukraine in a sim­i­lar vein, is the iden­ti­ty of his source for assur­ances that Azov is not a Nazi unit.

The Azov’s spokesman is Roman Zvarych, the per­son­al sec­re­tary [13] to Jaroslav Stet­sko in the 1980’s. Stet­sko was the head of the World War II OUN/B gov­ern­ment that col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis!

After emi­grat­ing to Ukraine in the ear­ly ’90’s Zvarych and form­ing the Con­gress of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists with Sla­va Stet­sko (Jaroslav’s wid­ow) Zvarych became: Jus­tice Min­is­ter (the equiv­a­lent of Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States) under the gov­ern­ments of Vik­tor Yuschenko and both Yulia Tim­o­shenko gov­ern­ments. He has been serv­ing as an advis­er to pres­i­dent Poroshenko.

“Putin’s Man in Con­gress” by Kristofer Har­ri­son; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 8/7/2015. [10]

. . . .The Azov’s spokesman, Roman Zvarych, told me that the bat­tal­ion has a selec­tive screen­ing pro­gram that accepts only 50 out of almost 300 recruits each month. He says they have a thor­ough back­ground check and reject mem­bers for var­i­ous rea­sons, includ­ing hav­ing fas­cist lean­ings. . . .

. . . . Rep. Cony­ers played an impor­tant role in help­ing the Russ­ian Nazi meme evolve from the stuff of con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, kooks and fel­low-trav­el­ers into some­thing the main­stream press hap­pi­ly prints. Rep. Cony­ers took to the floor of the House to sub­mit his amend­ment and label the unit, “The repul­sive Neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion.” From there, the Dai­ly Beast ran a sto­ry [26] titled “Is Amer­i­ca Train­ing Neon­azis in Ukraine?” using Cony­ers’ bill as fac­tu­al sup­port. The day after the amendment’s pas­sage, Leonoid Bershid­sky ran a Bloomberg View arti­cle [27] titled “Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis Won’t Get U.S. Mon­ey.” Even the Cana­di­ans have been affect­ed. On June 16th, the Nation­al Post ran a sto­ry [28] titled “Fears that Cana­di­an Mis­sion in Ukraine May Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Help Neon­azi Groups.”. . . .

1d. Next, we take stock of how Cony­ers, “The Krem­lin’s Man in Con­gress,” was removed fol­low­ing a gam­bit by “Alt-Right” blog­ger, Trump ally and misog­y­nist Mike Cer­novich to finance the solic­i­ta­tion of pro­fes­sion­al­ly dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion about polit­i­cal oppo­nents. “. . . . In Novem­ber, the Trump-back­ing social media agi­ta­tor Mike Cer­novich offered to pay $10,000.00 for details of any con­gres­sion­al sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ments, and said on Twit­ter that he would cov­er the expens­es of ‘any VICTIM of a Con­gress­man who wants to come for­ward to tell her sto­ry.’ Short­ly before post­ing that offer, a source pro­vid­ed Mr. Cer­novich with a copy of a sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ment that led in Decem­ber to the res­ig­na­tion of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Cony­ers Jr., Demo­c­rat of Michi­gan, until then the longest-serv­ing mem­ber of the House. . . .”

” . . . . Mr. Cer­novich is an unlike­ly cham­pi­on for sex­u­al harass­ment vic­tims, giv­en his pre­vi­ous career as an anti-fem­i­nist blog­ger who cast doubt on date-rape alle­ga­tions and wrote posts with head­lines like ‘Misog­y­ny Gets You Laid.’ . . . .

“Par­ti­sans, Wield­ing Mon­ey, Begin Seek­ing to Exploit Harass­ment Claims” by Ken­neth P. Vogel; The New York Times; 12/31/2017. [14]

. . . . In Novem­ber, the Trump-back­ing social media agi­ta­tor Mike Cer­novich offered to pay $10,000.00 for details of any con­gres­sion­al sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ments, and said on Twit­ter that he would cov­er the expens­es of “any VICTIM of a Con­gress­man who wants to come for­ward to tell her sto­ry.” Short­ly before post­ing that offer, a source pro­vid­ed Mr. Cer­novich with a copy of a sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ment that led in Decem­ber to the res­ig­na­tion of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Cony­ers Jr., Demo­c­rat of Michi­gan, until then the longest-serv­ing mem­ber of the House. . . .

. . . . “You got to sweet­en the pot a lit­tle bit,” Mr. Cer­novich said. A lawyer by train­ing, he said he was shocked that the per­son who gave him the Cony­ers doc­u­ments declined his offer to pay for them.

But, he said, “if some­body had a set­tle­ment like Cony­ers, I would glad­ly, glad­ly pay for that.” . . . .

. . . . Mr. Cer­novich and the far-right activist Charles C. John­son, had to back away from claims that they pos­sessed a sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ment that would bring down a lead­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor when it became appar­ent that the document–which tar­get­ed the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York–was a forgery, lift­ing pas­sages ver­ba­tim from the Cony­ers com­plaint unearthed by Mr. Cer­novich. Mr. Schumer referred the mat­ter to the Capi­tol Hill police for a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion.

. . . . “I like to hype things in advance, and this looked pret­ty good,” Mr. Cer­novich said. “I def­i­nite­ly learned my les­son there.”

Mr. Cer­novich is an unlike­ly cham­pi­on for sex­u­al harass­ment vic­tims, giv­en his pre­vi­ous career as an anti-fem­i­nist blog­ger who cast doubt on date-rape alle­ga­tions and wrote posts with head­lines like “Misog­y­ny Gets You Laid.” . . . .

2a. With Al Franken’s depar­ture from the Senate–an event that fig­ures to make the Democ­rats’ chances of regain­ing con­trol of the cham­ber more precarious–we reflect on aspects of Franken’s depar­ture:

  1. Franken’s trou­bles were fore­shad­owed [15] by long-time GOP (and Trump) dirty tricks oper­a­tive Roger Stone. Might Stone, as is his wont, have played a role in arrang­ing this gam­bit?
  2. Leeann Twee­den worked for Fox News [16] for years.
  3. Twee­den’s CV also includes mod­el­ing stints for Play­boy [16], among oth­er out­lets.
  4. We do not pass judge­ment on Twee­den’s work for out­fits like Play­boy and Hoot­ers. In a soci­ety that is sex­ist and hier­ar­chi­cal, “strut­ting one’s stuff” is a com­mon tac­tic on a career path­way for women for­tu­nate enough to be suf­fi­cient­ly endowed to effect such a move. Nonethe­less, for her to emerge as an icon for sex­u­al harass­ment is “dif­fer­ent.” It is impor­tant to note that Twee­den is obvi­ous­ly will­ing to lever­age her con­sid­er­able charms for pro­fes­sion­al gain. Did she do that in her attack on Franken, almost ten years after the fate­ful USO tour?
  5. Twee­den’s accu­sa­tions have been echoed by oth­er accusers, sev­er­al of whom have cho­sen to remain anony­mous.
  6. Even before enter­ing the Sen­ate, Franken would have been in the GOP’s crosshairs. We note that he relat­ed stri­dent­ly misog­y­nist behav­ior by GOP finan­cial bene­fac­tor Richard Mel­lon Scaife–a main fun­der of the far right and a mem­ber of the sto­ried, extreme­ly wealthy Mel­lon fam­i­ly. Scaife’s remark–to a reporter from the Colum­bia Jour­nal­ism Review no less–has not gar­nered much atten­tion. Scaife was using the kind of lan­guage we might expect from–Edward Snow­den! [17]
  7. All of this is not to say that many–perhaps most–of the sex­u­al harass­ment charges sur­fac­ing in recent weeks against var­i­ous fig­ures may not be true. One pays a price for doing work of this kind. After close to forty years on the air, part of the price I have paid is mis­an­thropy. Echo­ing Ham­let “I care not for man.” I have a VERY low opin­ion of human nature. It is not unusu­al for peo­ple com­mand­ing pow­er and influ­ence to rou­tine­ly lever­age such grav­i­tas for finan­cial and/or sex­u­al gain. Nonethe­less, in the con­text of the Four B’s of Amer­i­can politics–Bullets, Bribes, Beds and Black­mail, I think the Cony­ers and Franken sit­u­a­tions bear more scruti­ny than they have received.
  8. From the stand­point of counter-intel­li­gence analy­sis, the #MeToo phe­nom­e­non sig­nals a superb tac­tic for polit­i­cal destruc­tion: a) infil­trate a woman into the entourage or pro­fes­sion­al envi­ron­ment of a male politi­cian, media or busi­ness fig­ure tar­get­ed for destruc­tion; b) have her gain the trust of her polit­i­cal tar­get and his asso­ciates (the car­di­nal rule for a good dou­ble agent is “make your­self indis­pens­able to the effort”); c) after suf­fi­cient pas­sage of time, sur­face the alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al harass­ment; d) IF the oppor­tu­ni­ty for actu­al sex play and/or flir­ta­tion presents itself, take advan­tage of it for lat­er use as political/rhetorical ammu­ni­tion; e) with accusers hav­ing the tac­ti­cal lux­u­ry of remain­ing anony­mous, the oper­a­tional tem­plate for a form of sex­u­al McCarthy­ism and the prece­dent-set­ting con­tem­po­rary man­i­fes­ta­tion of a sex­u­al Star Cham­ber is very real–the oper­a­tional sim­i­lar­i­ties between much of the #metoo move­ment and the Salem Witch Tri­als should not be lost on the per­se­ver­ing observ­er; f) prop­er vet­ting of the accu­sa­tions is absent in such a process; g) for a pub­lic fig­ure in the U.S., prov­ing delib­er­ate defama­tion (libel/slander) is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult and lit­i­ga­tion is very expensive–the mere sur­fac­ing of charges is enough to taint some­one for life and the exor­bi­tant expense of lit­i­ga­tion is pro­hib­i­tive for all but the wealth­i­est among us.
  9. The CIA has long been involved with the wom­en’s move­ment. (Check out Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M4 [18]: Glo­ria in Excel­sis [19]: The CIA, the Wom­en’s Move­ment and the News Media [20].)
  10. We can’t help but feel a bru­tal­ly iron­ic degree of schaden­freude, with the so-called “pro­gres­sive sec­tor” now being impaled on the very one-dimen­sion­al iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics they have cham­pi­oned for so long. If Adolf Hitler had been a Pales­tin­ian les­bian, folks in Berke­ley would be walk­ing around in brown­shirt uni­forms, Sam Brown belts, jack­boots and swasti­ka arm­bands.
  11. The so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor has had lit­tle to say about the rape charges against Julian Assange.
  12. We don’t expect so-called pro­gres­sives to take a crit­i­cal look at the issues we have raised here. Polit­i­cal come­di­an Mort Sahl hit the nail on the head decades ago, when he observed: “A lib­er­al’s idea of courage is eat­ing at a restau­rant that has­n’t been reviewed yet.”
  13. Past a point, we find it impos­si­ble to stom­ach what is going on. In the last elec­tion, with the first female major par­ty can­di­date in this coun­try’s his­to­ry (Hillary Clin­ton) and an open­ly avowed sex­u­al preda­tor (Don­ald Trump) run­ning against each oth­er, 52% of white Amer­i­can women vot­ed for Trump–#PhysiciansHealThyselves!

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them [29]by Al Franken; Dut­ton [HC]; Copy­right 2003 by Al Franken; ISBN 0–525-94764–7; p. 132. [29]

. . . . Where did this mali­cious tone come from in the first place? I sub­mit that it can be traced to a day in 1981, when bil­lion­aire Richard Mel­lon Scaife field­ed a reporter’s ques­tion about his finan­cial back­ing of con­ser­v­a­tive groups.

“You fuck­ing Com­mu­nist cunt, get out of here,” he said to Karen Roth­my­er of the Colum­bia Jour­nal­ism Review. He went on to tell her that she was ugly and that her teeth were “ter­ri­ble.” Of Ms. Roth­my­er’s moth­er, who was not present, he said, “She’s ugly, too.” Sens­ing that it was time to wrap up the inter­view, ms. Roth­my­er thanked Scaife for his time. He bade her farewell with a cheery “Don’t look behind you.” . . . .

2b. Franken’s next accuser, Lind­say Menz, is a Trump backer who sup­pos­ed­ly was groped by Franken sev­en years before, in the pres­ence of her father and fel­low Trump backer/husband Jere­my Menz.

” . . . . the inci­dent took place at the 2010 Min­neso­ta State Fair. . . . Menz said she was at the fair with her father . . . . As they pre­pared for the pho­tos, Franken ‘pulled (her) in real­ly close, like awk­ward close’ as her hus­band was tak­ing the pic­ture. . . . Menz said that her and [hus­band] Jere­my vot­ed for Don­ald Trump [23] dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion . . . .”

We are more than a lit­tle skep­ti­cal.

“Lind­say Menz, Sen. Al Franken Accuser: 5 Facts You Need to Know” by Chris Buch­er; Heavy.com; 11/20/2017. [22]

. . . . Menz’s accu­sa­tions against Franken are the first to sur­face from while he was in office. Menz told CNN that the inci­dent took place at the 2010 Min­neso­ta State Fair. She reached out to CNN after the first accu­sa­tions were made against Franken, call­ing his con­duct “uncom­fort­able,” adding that it left her feel­ing “gross.”

Menz said she was at the fair with her father, whose small com­pa­ny was spon­sor­ing a radio booth. She was there meet­ing elect­ed offi­cials and var­i­ous can­di­dates for office, she said, tak­ing pic­tures with them as they came to the booth. Franken was one of the politi­cians to walk into the radio booth, and Menz said she and her hus­band rec­og­nized the for­mer Sat­ur­day Night Live! cast mem­ber imme­di­ate­ly. They had a brief con­ver­sa­tion before pos­ing togeth­er for a pho­to.

As they pre­pared for the pho­tos, Franken “pulled (her) in real­ly close, like awk­ward close” as her hus­band was tak­ing the pic­ture. She accus­es Franken of putting “his hand full-fledge” on her butt, she told CNN. . . .

. . . . Menz said that her and [hus­band] Jere­my vot­ed for Don­ald Trump [23] dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion . . . .

3.  It looks like the ‘Alt-Right’ cam­paign to push for­mer Sen­a­tor Al Franken to resign [30] had help from an unex­pect­ed source: Japan­ese twit­ter bots.

Accord­ing to research by ana­lysts at Unhack the Vote [31], a vot­ing rights out­fit, Roger Stone isn’t the only indi­vid­ual who demon­strat­ed fore­knowl­edge of the sto­ry of Leann Tweeden’s accu­sa­tions. It turns out there was a Japan­ese twit­ter bot net­work which con­trols a large pool of dum­my Twit­ter accounts (the “bots”) that also demon­strat­ed such fore­knowl­edge.

On Novem­ber 15th, a Japan­ese devel­op­er named Atsu­fu­mi Otsu­ka reg­is­ter­ing a web domain in Japan called RealUSA.site, on the same day Roger Stone announced over Twit­ter that it’s Franken’s “time in the barrel”–one day before the sto­ry broke.

Then, on Novem­ber 20th, Alt-Right provo­ca­teur Charles John­son tweet­ed, “Think­ing of offer­ing mon­ey to peo­ple who go on tv and say Al Frank is a preda­tor.” That same day, Otsu­ka reg­is­tered a sec­ond domain in Japan for anoth­er fake-news site, VotyUS.me.

The two fake news sites were final­ly put to use on Decem­ber 7, short­ly before Democ­rats start­ed call­ing for Franken to step down. The sites re-pub­lished an arti­cle by Ijeo­ma Oluo, a lib­er­al writer, urg­ing women and activists to stop sup­port­ing Franken. Oluo’s piece, titled “Dear Al Franken, I’ll Miss You but You Can’t Mat­ter Any­more,” was post­ed on rel­a­tive­ly obscure web­site that only had a reach of of 10,000 fol­low­ers. But once the arti­cle got repost­ed to those two fake news sites the twit­ter bot net­work­ing sud­den­ly sprang into action, with thou­sands of fake Twit­ter accounts tweet­ing the title of the article—but link­ing back to repost of the arti­cle on the fake news sites, RealUSA.site or VotyUS.me.

Although it’s not clear who paid for the Twit­ter-bot activ­i­ty, it’s hard to ignore the coin­ci­den­tal tim­ing. Researchers have con­clud­ed that it wasn’t cheap. They esti­mate that it required dozens of hours of ini­tial devel­op­ment time and at least one per­son work­ing full time to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute con­tent. The whole task of set­ting up this Japan­ese Twit­ter [21] bot army to ampli­fy the calls for Sen­a­tor Franken to step down was deemed by who­ev­er paid for it to be worth the time and mon­ey.

“ . . . . A pair of Japan-based web­sites, cre­at­ed the day before Twee­den came for­ward, and a swarm of relat­ed Twit­ter bots made the Twee­den sto­ry go viral and then weaponized a lib­er­al writer’s crit­i­cism of Franken. The bot army—in tan­dem with promi­nent real, live mem­bers of the far right who have Twit­ter fol­low­ers in the mil­lions, such as Mike Cernovich—spewed thou­sands of posts, help­ing the #Franken­Fon­dles hash­tag and the “Franken is a grop­er” meme effec­tive­ly silence the tes­ti­monies of eight for­mer female staffers who defend­ed the Min­neso­ta Demo­c­rat before he resigned last year. . . . ”

” . . . . One ques­tion remains: Who is pay­ing for this oper­a­tion? The researchers believe that the oper­a­tion was expen­sive. ‘We esti­mate dozens of hours of ini­tial devel­op­ment time and at least one per­son work­ing full time to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute con­tent,’ one of the researchers told Newsweek. ‘Addi­tion­al­ly, it’s like­ly that an exist­ing bot farm of com­pro­mised com­put­ers is basi­cal­ly being rent­ed as a dis­trib­uted host for these accounts.’ . . . .”

 

“How an Alt-Right Bot Net­work Took Down Al Franken” by Nina Burleigh; Newsweek;
2/19/2018

White nation­al­ist provo­ca­teurs, a pair of fake news sites, an army of Twit­ter bots and oth­er cyber tricks helped derail Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Al Franken last year, new research shows.

While every­one has been focused on Russ­ian med­dling in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to sup­port Don­ald Trump, the Franken take­down orig­i­nat­ed in—and was pro­pelled by—a strate­gic online cam­paign with dig­i­tal ten­ta­cles reach­ing to, of all places, Japan. Ana­lysts have now mapped out how Hoot­ers pin­up girl [32] and lad-mag mod­el [33] Leeann Tweeden’s ini­tial accu­sa­tion against Franken became effec­tive pro­pa­gan­da after right-wing black ops mas­ter Roger Stone first hint­ed at the alle­ga­tion.

A pair of Japan-based web­sites, cre­at­ed the day before Twee­den came for­ward, and a swarm of relat­ed Twit­ter bots made the Twee­den sto­ry go viral and then weaponized a lib­er­al writer’s crit­i­cism of Franken. The bot army—in tan­dem with promi­nent real, live mem­bers of the far right who have Twit­ter fol­low­ers in the mil­lions, such as Mike Cernovich—spewed thou­sands of posts, help­ing the #Franken­Fon­dles hash­tag and the “Franken is a grop­er” meme effec­tive­ly silence the tes­ti­monies of eight for­mer female staffers who defend­ed the Min­neso­ta Demo­c­rat before he resigned last year.

The oper­a­tion com­menced on Novem­ber 15, when Stone—who is now banned from Twit­ter [34] for racism and profanity—tweeted from one of his accounts “Roger Stone says it’s Al Franken’s ‘time in the bar­rel.’ Franken next in long list of Democ­rats accused of ‘grab­by’ behav­ior.”

On the same day, a devel­op­er named Atsu­fu­mi Otsu­ka reg­is­tered a web domain in Japan called RealUSA.site, and a fake-news web­site soon emerged at that web address, accord­ing to research shared with the vot­ing rights out­fit Unhack the Vote [31].

Tweeden’s account of Franken grop­ing her was first ampli­fied by a net­work of right-wing media, includ­ing KABC in Los Ange­les, where Twee­den has a radio show, The Hill, Infowars and Bre­it­bart, which mobi­lized with­in hours of Stone’s tweet and the release of a pic­ture of a Twee­den and Franken at a USO per­for­mance before he was a sen­a­tor. . . .

. . . . Five days lat­er, on Novem­ber 20, right-wing provo­ca­teur Charles John­son tweet­ed, “Think­ing of offer­ing mon­ey to peo­ple who go on tv and say Al Frank is a preda­tor.”

That same day, Otsu­ka reg­is­tered a sec­ond domain in Japan for anoth­er fake-news site, VotyUS.me. Both accounts used the same Google ana­lyt­ics account ID and Apple app ID, and the name of the servers and reg­is­tra­tion for both sites were vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal, researchers found.

On Decem­ber 7, just before Democ­rats start­ed call­ing for Franken to step down, the fresh­ly mint­ed Japan-based fake sites went to work and re-pub­lished an arti­cle by Ijeo­ma Oluo, a lib­er­al writer, urg­ing women and activists to stop sup­port­ing Franken. Oluo had post­ed the opin­ion piece, titled “Dear Al Franken, I’ll Miss You but You Can’t Mat­ter Any­more,” on a much small­er web­site, with a reach of 10,000 fol­low­ers.

Sud­den­ly, thou­sands of appar­ent­ly fake Twit­ter accounts were tweet­ing the title of the article—but link­ing back to one of the two Japan­ese-reg­is­tered fake-news sites cre­at­ed in con­junc­tion with the right-wing anti-Franken cam­paign. The bot accounts nor­mal­ly tweet­ed about celebri­ties, bit­coin and sports, but on that day, they were mobi­lized against Franken. Researchers have found that each bot account had 30 to 60 fol­low­ers, all Japan­ese. . . . 

‘We began to sus­pect that this legit­i­mate opin­ion piece [by Oluo] had been weaponized for polit­i­cal gain by dozens of twit­ter accounts, all of them repeat­ed­ly tweet­ing links to the two domains reg­is­tered in Japan in late Novem­ber,’ Unhack the Vote’s Mike Farb wrote in Medi­um [35]. “Strong sim­i­lar­i­ties between the accounts com­bined with clear con­nec­tion to the two recent­ly-estab­lished Japan­ese web­sites ver­i­fied our sus­pi­cions.”

Soon, Farb and com­pa­ny real­ized they had “stum­bled upon a sophis­ti­cat­ed bot­net being used to spread alt-right pro­pa­gan­da.”

The researcher who dis­cov­ered the bot­net has nick­named it “the Voty bot­net,” and it is still alive today, although cur­rent­ly not oper­at­ing in ser­vice of any polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da. The researchers esti­mate that more than 400 accounts are in the bot­net, although at any giv­en time, only a sub­set are being deployed in the online Amer­i­can polit­i­cal wars.

I will ful­ly cov­er the legal expens­es of any VICTIM of a Con­gress­man who wants to come for­ward to tell her sto­ry. Break the secre­cy. #UnsealTheDeals [36]— Mike Cer­novich ???? (@Cernovich) Novem­ber 21, 2017 [37]

The bot­net has been spread­ing pro­pa­gan­da ‘for over two months now,’ accord­ing to the researchers, and Twit­ter is aware of it, and has not stopped it. “We know this because Twit­ter has sus­pend­ed some spam accounts that fol­low our Voty bots,” the researcher told Newsweek. “This shows that Twit­ter is aware that these ‘fol­low­er’ accounts are not legit­i­mate. But if you look at the ‘who to fol­low’ sug­ges­tion win­dow when you are on a Voty bot­net account, the sug­ges­tions are almost always oth­er Voty Twit­ter bot accounts. This shows that Twit­ter is aware that these accounts are inter­re­lat­ed.”

One ques­tion remains: Who is pay­ing for this oper­a­tion? The researchers believe that the oper­a­tion was expen­sive. “We esti­mate dozens of hours of ini­tial devel­op­ment time and at least one per­son work­ing full time to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute con­tent,” one of the researchers told Newsweek. “Addi­tion­al­ly, it’s like­ly that an exist­ing bot farm of com­pro­mised com­put­ers is basi­cal­ly being rent­ed as a dis­trib­uted host for these accounts.”

. . . .  since the 2016 elec­tion, arguably lost due to the right’s supe­ri­or uti­liza­tion of dark­er online strate­gies, the left is not known to have cre­at­ed or mobi­lized its own fake cyber army to ampli­fy its view­point.

“Agreed we need one,” Demo­c­ra­t­ic dig­i­tal media strate­gist Jess McIn­tosh, who worked on Franken’s cam­paign and for Hillary Clinton’s bid for pres­i­dent, said in an email to Newsweek. “But it’s hard­er to use these tac­tics when you can’t rely on either lies OR hate to do it.”