Middleboro Review and so on

  How Russian trolls helped disrupt the Women's March against Trump: "Accounts at the Internet Research Agency, an organization based in St. Petersburg, and controlled by an ally of Putin, had boasted of propelling Trump to victory. That year, the group's budget nearly doubled, according to internal communications made public by American prosecutors. Under these auspicious conditions, their goals shifted from electoral politics to something more general - the goal of deepening rifts in American society. The job was not to put forward arguments, but to prompt a visceral, emotional reaction, ideally one of 'indignation'. The task is to make a kind of explosion, to cause controversy. As the Women's March drew nearer, the Russian trolls tested different approaches on different audiences, as they had during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. They posed as resentful trans women, poor women, and anti-abortion women. They dismissed the marchers as pawns of...

Why Am I Speaking Out? The truth is what it is Dan Rather  and  Elliot Kirschner Sep 21   Of all the messages I have shared over my career, as a field reporter, from the anchor chair, and most recently through my platforms on social media and this Steady newsletter, this is among the most important. At least to me personally.  I hope those of you who have followed and supported me help me share it widely. I hope those who have been my critics read it with an open mind.  For what I wish to share is an answer to a question that has animated my life now for many years.  It is a question that I ask myself daily in an effort to keep myself honest.  It is a question that my longtime collaborator on these recent efforts — Elliot Kirschner — and I have discussed over hours of conversation and long text message chains.  The question has a lot of complexity around it, but it can be boiled down to one word:  Why ? Why  have I taken such a strong po...