Free Republic

[caption id="attachment_1512" align="aligncenter" width="620"] Image source: Wired.com[/caption] See that over-the-top, anti-Obama comment on Facebook or your favorite blog?  It could be a paid Russian troll.  See the picture above?  He's serving a life sentence without parole because he started an illegal website.  He claims to be a Libertarian, but he certainly made a ton of money (the Feds claim over $100 million) selling--well, everything, sort of like Amazon, but much smaller and very much in the shadows of the "dark web." What do Russian trolls have to do with a guy in prison for life?  One of them was caught...

Heedless of the consequences, or perhaps welcoming them, America’s Cold Warriors and their media platforms have recently escalated their rhetoric against Russia, especially in March. Anyone who has lived through or studied the preceding 40-year Cold War will recognize the ominous echoes of its most dangerous periods, when actual war was on the horizon or a policy option. Here are only a few random but representative examples: § In a March 8 Washington Post opinion article, two American professors, neither with any apparent substantive knowledge of Russia or Cold War history, warned that the Kremlin is trying “to undermine our...

Russia has done nothing to deserve its appalling treatment by Western powers and their totally controlled and subservient media - the only thing Russia did was to move into the Crimea, an area smaller than the island of Taiwan, which suited the people there as most are Russian speaking, and the reason they did that was to protect their naval base at Sevastopol after the Western inspired coup in the Ukraine. Apart from that they have done nothing and reports that they are planning to take back parts of Eastern Europe are pure fantasy. Russia has been subjected to an...

[snip] The aim of the factory’s work was either to influence voters or to undermine their faith in the U.S. political system, the 37-page indictment states. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday that while the indictment focuses on “Russian nationals,” it gives “no indication that the Russian government was involved in this in any way.” Peskov reasserted that Moscow did not interfere in the U.S. election. Mindiyarov, who failed the language exam needed to get a job on the Internet Research Agency’s Facebook desk, where the pay was double than the domestic side of the factory. The sleek operation...

Exactly who is International Research Agency? A young woman who says she was hired by a Russian company to dissemble and to promote certain political views online has come out of the shadows to shine a light on her purported former employer and the practice, known as "trolling."