Obama Classifies Numbers of Muslim Refugees, Terror

Frontgpage: Obama is big on making up his own laws and rules. He rules by executive order and he’s gotten into the truly illegal habit of unilaterally signing treaties with foreign governments.

This is a very basic problem. And in the context of his deal to take in Muslim migrants rejected by Australia, he is being warned once again that his actions are grossly illegal and unconstitutional.

The U.S. government has agreed to accept refugees being held in Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Sunday. Mr. Turnbull didn’t disclose how many were likely to resettled by the U.S. or on what terms, but he stressed the arrangement wouldn’t be repeated or be extended to asylum seekers not already in the camps.

The conservative government has maintained a tough line on asylum seekers who have sought to cross the dangerous waters between Asia and Australia but has moved to empty the offshore immigration detention centers that critics have called Australia’s “Guantanamo Bay.” Negotiations in recent months with various countries to resettle the refugees became more urgent in April when Papua New Guinea’s highest court ordered the closure of Manus, ruling that hundreds of asylum seekers were being held there illegally on Australia’s behalf.

We’re not even being told the total numbers who will shortly be making their way to our shores, but the Journal notes that two of the camps located on Naru and Manus Islands currently hold a combined total of more than 1,300 of them. And where do these migrants come from? The majority are from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and Sri Lanka.

Some Republicans are challenging the legality of the deal.

“This situation is concerning for many reasons,” the letter states. “First, your department s negotiated an international agreement regarding refugees without consulting or notifying Congress. Such information was not disclosed to Congress during the annual refugee consultation that occurred on September 13, 2016, even though your staff confirmed that the agreement had, at the time, been negotiated ‘for months.’ Second, the agreement and the number of refugees to be resettled has been deemed by your departments as classified, thus the American people are left in the dark as to the rationale for this agreement.”

Why exactly should it be classified? The only people the numbers need to be hidden from are the American people.

**** Meanwhile, a terror attack occurred at Ohio State University:

“Buckeye Alert: Active Shooter on campus. Run Hide Fight. Watts Hall. 19th and College.”

They continued to demand people to look for shelter with another message shortly following the first one.

“Buckeye Alert: Continue to shelter in place. Avoid area of College. More information to follow.”

***** The terrorists has been identified by officials as Abdul Razak Ali Artan as the now-deceased suspect. He was born in Somalia and living in the United States as a legal permanent resident., an 18 year old legal Somali refugee and student at the university who was shot dead by law enforcement. Ali was a student at Ohio State University and was a legal resident of the United States, reports NBC News. The network adds that Ali was a refugee from Somalia. According to NBC’s Pete Williams, Artan was admitted to the U.S. in 2014 having previously lived in Pakistan since 2007. He first lived in Dallas upon entering the United States.

It should be noted that ISIS posted instructions in a video published November 26th that made its way through social media. Additionally, 2 days later, ISIS also hit social media with instructions to use vehicles for attacks.

 

We also cannot forget the attack that took place earlier in February 2016 at the Nazareth restaurant in Columbus. The attacker was also Somalian.

To All those Paying Tribute to Fidel Castro

In 2014: Fidel Castro has signed an international manifesto “supporting Palestine,” demanding that Israel respect UN resolutions and withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Obama Directs Intelligence to be Shared with Cuba

Fidel Castro at the National Press Club, April 20, 1959

By the time Castro arrived in New York City in September 1960, relations between the United States and Cuba were rapidly deteriorating. Since taking power in January 1959, Castro had infuriated the American government with his policies of nationalizing U.S. companies and investments in Cuba. Some American officials, such as Vice President Richard Nixon, believed that Castro was leaning perilously toward communism. (Castro did not publicly proclaim his adherence to communism until late-1961, when he declared that he was a “Marxist-Leninist”.) More here.

Forbes: Founded by their wealthy landowner father in 1915, Fidel and younger brother Raul Castro’s childhood home in Birán burnt down in 1954 but a replica was erected in its place in 1974.

Cuban President Fidel Castro examines photos of his relatives at his native house in Birán, Cuba. (Photo by Pablo Pildain/AFP/Getty Images)

A picture of Cuban leader Fidel Castro in his ancestral home which is now a museum. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Fidel and Raul’s parents, Ángel Castro and Lina Ruz González, are laid to rest at the Birán plantation. Castro’s privileged background (although non-bourgeois) contradicted his message, so to give himself street cred, he touted his grandparent’s background as “exploited Galician peasants” from Spain.

The burial site of Cuban leaders Fidel and Raul Castro’s parents on the grounds of their childhood home in Birán, Cuba. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Like JFK, Castro’s father sent him to boarding school where he received a quality education (despite mediocre grades). Baseball, reading, and politics were among his interests. At 14, he even penned a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt congratulating him on his re-election while brazenly asking for $10 American cash (sounds like a secret capitalist).

As a 14-year old, Fidel Castro congratulated FDR on his re-election in 1940.

As a 14-year old, Fidel Castro congratulated FDR on his re-election in 1940. (National Archives document)

The Birán estate was more than a working sugar plantation. Prominent landowner Ángel Castro also established a primary school, hotel, pub, post office, a market store, and a ring for cockfighting (again, it sounds like a capitalist venture).

A building that served as a guest house on the Birán sugar plantation, founded by Fidel Castro’s father in 1915. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Castro ruled Cuba for 49 paranoid years. He moved frequently due to an estimated 600 assassination attempts by the CIA and other foes. The failed plots are infamous—exploding cigars and poison milkshakes included. Castro eventually ceded power to his brother Raul and retired to the gated community “Punto Cero” (Point Zero), his top-secret 75-acre suburban Havana home which resembled a vast military compound.

Fidel Castro meets with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his brother President Raul Castro at Punto Cero near Havana in 2010. (Photo by Ricardo Stuckert/AFP/Getty Images)

Fidel Castro, Cuba’s communist dictator, former president and divisive world figure, died on November 25 at 90 years old—53 years and three days after his nemesis U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Despite their adversarial status, both men were born into wealth via extremely ambitious fathers, both loved sports, both had a mistress weakness, and both fought for their country to oust dictators. That’s where the similarities end.

JFK died young and Castro lived a long, well-heeled life. Castro survived 10 U.S. presidents. Although he didn’t live in a palace and streets weren’t named for him, Castro still lived more extravagantly and hypocritically than he wanted the world to know. Cuba’s revolution leader wasn’t as modest as he led on. A decade ago, Forbes estimated Fidel Castro’s personal net worth at $900 million. That’s a lot of socialist rationing for one person. Luxurious living arrangements were especially appealing to Castro. But for security reasons (after hundreds of assassination attempts), Castro’s paranoid personal life and residences were top secret. Even Cuban citizens didn’t know where he resided.

Fidel Castro was born on his father Ángel Castro’s prosperous 25,000-acre, 400-employee sugar plantation (called Las Manacas farm) in small town Birán, Cuba—about 500 miles from Havana on the eastern end of the island. The property now serves as a Castro museum.

Punto Cero, a pre-revolution golf course property, was reportedly set up by Castro in the 1970s. According to Castro’s former bodyguard, the estate complex includes orange, lemon, mandarin, grapefruit and banana trees, as well as cows and six greenhouses to grow food.

Castro's compound is on the former grounds of the Havana Biltmore Yacht and Country Club.

Castro’s compound is reportedly on the former grounds of the Havana Biltmore Yacht and Country Club.

Punto Cero was far from the “fisherman’s cottage” Castro publicly claimed as his main asset. The luxurious complex in the Jaimanitas neighborhood (15 miles outside Havana proper) served as Castro’s summer residence near the capital city’s embassy district. According to Castro’s former bodyguard (as reported by InCuba Today), he also owned a residences in Cayo Piedra (a stones throw from the Bay of Pigs), La Caleta del Rosario, which featured a private marina; and La Deseada, a chalet in Pinar del Río—reportedly one of Castro’s favorite duck hunting spots.

Fidel Castro in Pinar del Río after the 1959 Cuban revolution. Castro frequently visited and took up residence in the area too.

Fidel Castro in Pinar del Río after the 1959 Cuban revolution. Castro frequently visited and took up residence in the area too.

Retired Fidel Castro met foreign leaders, dignitaries and Popes at Punto Cero, including Pope John Paul II in 1998, Pope Benedict in 2012, and Pope Francis in 2015. Despite his Jesuit background, Castro was an atheist. Yet he still reveled meeting Popes, even exchanging religious books with them.

Pope Francis meets Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba in 2015. The Vatican described the meeting at Castro’s residence as informal and familial, with an exchange of books. (AP Photo/Alex Castro)

New Terror Tactic: Arson, Burning Cities in Israel

Drone footage of damage in Haifa (Photo: Ilan Barsheshet) (Photo: Ilan Barsheshet)

Faced for the past four days with blazes across the country fed by drought and high winds, Israel received airborne assistance from Russia, Turkey, Greece and Croatia.

The flames in many places appeared to be easing somewhat despite the persistent wind, but a new fire erupted close to Jerusalem on Friday afternoon that the emergency services said was apparently started deliberately.

“Things can change and develop as we speak,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.

Support from France, Spain and others was due while a US Supertanker, considered the largest firefighting aircraft in the world, was expected to arrive Friday night. More here.

****

180 injured, 560 homes burnt after 5 days of raging fires
Some 2,500 firefighters marshalled, half a million tons of water and flame retardant unleashed in 480 missions to battle the flames which incinerated hundreds of homes, forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands; after 5 days of blazes, authorities report that flames finally brought under control.

YNet: Haifa, Israel’s third largest city, bore the main brunt of the wave of the fires with 527 apartments rendered uninhabitable as the flames engulfed vast areas.

Haifa city engineers found that 527 apartments and 77 buildings are no longer inhabitable after the fires that ravaged the city.

Fire in Haifa (Photo: AFP) (Photo: AFP)

Fire in Haifa (Photo: AFP)

Haifa (Photo: AFP)

Haifa (Photo: AFP)

As swathes of the country were still smouldering, security forces began making arrests against a number of individuals suspected of deliberately starting the fires in an act of terror, along with those caught on social media networks inciting readers to arson.

Green in Haifa tuned to black (Photo: AFP)

Green in Haifa tuned to black (Photo: AFP)

During a press conference held on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself warned that the the population could be witnessing a new phenomenon of terror.

Homes in Haifa left uninhabitable (Photo: AFP)

Homes in Haifa left uninhabitable (Photo: AFP)

Overall, three people were moderately injured as a result of the conflagrations, one senior from Haifa, two from Ma’ale Adumim and another 129 who were left in light condition. According to estimates, another 50 people admitted themselves to hospital in light condition.

Over the weekend, 186 fresh fires lit up the country, marking a marginal decrease from an average of 200-250 daily fire incidents.

Photo: Gil Yohanan

Photo: Gil Yohanan

 

As fire crews fought around the clock to quench the flames, last week saw the deployment of approximately 2,000 firefighters, along with 450 IDF Search and Rescue soldiers and 69 Cypriot soldiers.

The firefighting forces unleashed a total of half a million tons of water and flame retardant. Ten countries contributed to the effort while 14 Israeli firefighting planes took to the skies, with the number of combined missions reaching 480. Some of the buildings have infrastructural problems and have thus been declared as dangerous for residence. A total of 1,616 residents have been left homeless.

 

Fidel Castro dead at 90, Cubans in Miami Celebrate

 

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies aged 90

Reuters: Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States and for five decades defied U.S. efforts to topple him, died on Friday, his younger brother announced to the nation. He was 90.

A towering figure of the second half of the 20th Century, Castro had been in poor health since an intestinal ailment nearly killed him in 2006. He formally ceded power to his younger brother two years later.

Wearing a green military uniform, Cuba’s President Raul Castro appeared on state television to announce his brother’s death.

“At 10.29 at night, the chief commander of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, died,” he said, without giving a cause of death.

“Ever onward, to victory.”

The streets were quiet in Havana, but some residents reacted with sadness to the news, while in Miami, where many exiles from the Communist government live, a large crowd waving Cuban flags cheered, danced and banged on pots and pans, a video on social media showed.

“I am very upset. Whatever you want to say, he is public figure that the whole world respected and loved,” said Havana student Sariel Valdespino.

Castro’s remains will be cremated, according to his wishes. His brother said details of his funeral would be given on Saturday.

The bearded Fidel Castro took power in a 1959 revolution and ruled Cuba for 49 years with a mix of charisma and iron will, creating a one-party state and becoming a central figure in the Cold War.

He was demonized by the United States and its allies but admired by many leftists around the world, especially socialist revolutionaries in Latin America and Africa.

“I lament the death of Fidel Castro Ruz, leader of the Cuban revolution and emblematic reference of the 20th Century,” Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said on Twitter.

Transforming Cuba from a playground for rich Americans into a symbol of resistance to Washington, Castro outlasted nine U.S. presidents in power.

He fended off a CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 as well as countless assassination attempts.

His alliance with Moscow helped trigger the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, a 13-day showdown with the United States that brought the world the closest it has been to nuclear war.

Wearing green military fatigues and chomping on cigars for many of his years in power, Castro was famous for long, fist-pounding speeches filled with blistering rhetoric, often aimed at the United States.

At home, he swept away capitalism and won support for bringing schools and hospitals to the poor. But he also created legions of enemies and critics, concentrated among Cuban exiles in Miami who fled his rule and saw him as a ruthless tyrant.

In the end it was not the efforts of Washington and Cuban exiles nor the collapse of Soviet communism that ended his rule. Instead, illness forced him to cede power to his younger brother Raul Castro, provisionally in 2006 and definitively in 2008.

Although Raul Castro always glorified his older brother, he has changed Cuba since taking over by introducing market-style economic reforms and agreeing with the United States in December 2014 to re-establish diplomatic ties and end decades of hostility.

Six weeks later, Fidel Castro offered only lukewarm support for the deal, raising questions about whether he approved of ending hostilities with his longtime enemy.

He lived to witness the visit of U.S. President Barack Obama to Cuba earlier this year, the first trip by a U.S. president to the island since 1928.

Castro did not meet Obama, and days later wrote a scathing column condemning the U.S. president’s “honey-coated” words and reminding Cubans of the many U.S. efforts to overthrow and weaken the Communist government.

In his final years, Fidel Castro no longer held leadership posts. He wrote newspaper commentaries on world affairs and occasionally met with foreign leaders but he lived in semi-seclusion.

His death – which would once have thrown a question mark over Cuba’s future – seems unlikely to trigger a crisis as Raul Castro, 85, is firmly ensconced in power.

Still, the passing of the man known to most Cubans as “El Comandante” – the commander – or simply “Fidel” leaves a huge void in the country he dominated for so long. It also underlines the generational change in Cuba’s communist leadership.

Raul Castro vows to step down when his term ends in 2018 and the Communist Party has elevated younger leaders to its Politburo, including 56-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel, who is first vice-president and the heir apparent.

Others in their 50s include Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and economic reform czar Marino Murillo.

The reforms have led to more private enterprise and the lifting of some restrictions on personal freedoms but they aim to strengthen Communist Party rule, not weaken it.

“I don’t think Fidel’s passing is the big test. The big test is handing the revolution over to the next generation and that will happen when Raul steps down,” Cuba expert Phil Peters of the Lexington Institute in Virginia said before Castro’s death.

REVOLUTIONARY ICON

A Jesuit-educated lawyer, Fidel Castro led the revolution that ousted U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista on Jan 1, 1959. Aged 32, he quickly took control of Cuba and sought to transform it into an egalitarian society.

His government improved the living conditions of the very poor, achieved health and literacy levels on a par with rich countries and rid Cuba of a powerful Mafia presence.

But he also tolerated little dissent, jailed opponents, seized private businesses and monopolized the media.

Castro’s opponents labeled him a dictator and hundreds of thousands fled the island.

Many settled in Florida, influencing U.S. policy toward Cuba and plotting Castro’s demise. Some even trained in the Florida swamps for the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.

But they could never dislodge him.

Generations of Latin American leftists applauded Castro for his socialist policies and for thumbing his nose at the United States from its doorstep just 90 miles (145 km) from Florida.

Castro claimed he survived or evaded hundreds of assassination attempts, including some conjured up by the CIA.

In 1962, the United States imposed a damaging trade embargo that Castro blamed for most of Cuba’s ills, using it to his advantage to rally patriotic fury.

Over the years, he expanded his influence by sending Cuban troops into far-away wars, including 350,000 to fight in Africa. They provided critical support to a left-wing government in Angola and contributed to the independence of Namibia in a war that helped end apartheid in South Africa.

He also won friends by sending tens of thousands of Cuban doctors abroad to treat the poor and bringing young people from developing countries to train them as physicians

‘HISTORY WILL ABSOLVE ME’

Born on August 13, 1926 in Biran in eastern Cuba, Castro was the son of a Spanish immigrant who became a wealthy landowner.

Angry at social conditions and Batista’s dictatorship, Fidel Castro launched his revolution on July 26, 1953, with a failed assault on the Moncada barracks in the eastern city of Santiago.

He was sentenced to 15 years in prison but was released in 1955 after a pardon that would come back to haunt Batista.

Castro went into exile in Mexico and prepared a small rebel army to fight Batista. It included Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who became his comrade-in-arms.

In December 1956, Castro and a rag-tag band of 81 followers sailed to Cuba aboard a badly overloaded yacht called “Granma”.

Only 12, including him, his brother and Guevara, escaped a government ambush when they landed in eastern Cuba.

Taking refuge in the rugged Sierra Maestra mountains, they built a guerrilla force of several thousand fighters who, along with urban rebel groups, defeated Batista’s military in just over two years.

Early in his rule, at the height of the Cold War, Castro allied Cuba to the Soviet Union, which protected the Caribbean island and was its principal benefactor for three decades.

The alliance brought in $4 billion worth of aid annually, including everything from oil to guns, but also provoked the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States discovered Soviet missiles on the island.

Convinced that the United States was about to invade Cuba, Castro urged the Soviets to launch a nuclear attack.

Cooler heads prevailed. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. President John F. Kennedy agreed the Soviets would withdraw the missiles in return for a U.S. promise never to invade Cuba. The United States also secretly agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey.

‘SPECIAL PERIOD’

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, an isolated Cuba fell into a deep economic crisis that lasted for years and was known as the “special period”. Food, transport and basics such as soap were scarce and energy shortages led to frequent and long blackouts.

Castro undertook a series of tentative economic reforms to get through the crisis, including opening up to foreign tourism.

The economy improved when Venezuela’s socialist leader Hugo Chavez, who looked up to Castro as a hero, came to the rescue with cheap oil. Aid from communist-run China also helped, but an economic downturn in Venezuela since Chavez’s death in 2013 have raised fears it will scale back its support for Cuba.

Plagued by chronic economic problems, Cuba’s population of 11 million has endured years of hardship, although not the deep poverty, violent crime and government neglect of many other developing countries.

For most Cubans, Fidel Castro has been the ubiquitous figure of their entire life.

Many still love him and share his faith in a communist future, and even some who abandoned their political belief still view him with respect. But others see him as an autocrat and feel he drove the country to ruin.

Cubans earn on average the equivalent of $20 a month and struggle to make ends meet even in an economy where education and health care are free and many basic goods and services are heavily subsidized.

It was never clear whether Fidel Castro fully backed his brother’s reform efforts of recent years. Some analysts believed his mere presence kept Raul from moving further and faster while others saw him as either quietly supportive or increasingly irrelevant.

 

 

Are you Promoting Fake News?

Mixing fine jewelry with costume jewelry gives the appearance it is all real, same with the news and who is promoting it or wearing it. So, how well did you read the WHOLE story and share it? Did you check it with other sources? Did you consider the original source or check the author?

Consider the following of which this site has previously published several times with warnings.

One more important item, the fake news and propaganda is NOT all political or simply centered about candidates or the election. This is where ‘group-think’ begins and festers, which is NOT thinking at all.

More and more, posts and commentaries on the Internet in Russia and even abroad are generated by professional trolls, many of whom receive a higher-than-average salary for perpetuating a pro-Kremlin dialogue online.

There are thousands of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and vKontakte, all increasingly focused on the war in Ukraine. Many emanate from Russia’s most famous “troll factory,” the Internet Research center, an unassuming building on St. Petersburg’s Savushkina Street, which runs on a 24-hour cycle. In recent weeks, former employees have come forward to talk to RFE/RL about life inside the factory, where hundreds of people work grinding, 12-hour shifts in exchange for 40,000 rubles ($700) a month or more.

St. Petersburg blogger Marat Burkhard spent two months working at Internet Research in the department tasked with clogging the forums on Russia’s municipal websites with pro-Kremlin comments. In the following interview, he describes a typical day and the type of assignments he encountered. The interview is here.

***** 

Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say

WaPo: The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.

Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.

Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.

There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. The tactics included penetrating the computers of election officials in several states and releasing troves of hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton in the final months of her campaign.

“They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who along with two other researchers has tracked Russian propaganda since 2014. “This was their standard mode during the Cold War. The problem is that this was hard to do before social media.”

Watts’s report on this work, with colleagues Andrew Weisburd and J.M. Berger, appeared on the national security blog War on the Rocks this month under the headline “Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy.” Another group, called PropOrNot, a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds, planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns.

The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity.

PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times.

Some players in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded, while others were “useful idiots” — a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts.

The Russian campaign during this election season, researchers from both groups say, worked by harnessing the online world’s fascination with “buzzy” content that is surprising and emotionally potent, and tracks with popular conspiracy theories about how secret forces dictate world events.

Some of these stories originated with RT and Sputnik, state-funded Russian information services that mimic the style and tone of independent news organizations yet sometimes include false and misleading stories in their reports, the researchers say. On other occasions, RT, Sputnik and other Russian sites used social-media accounts to amplify misleading stories already circulating online, causing news algorithms to identify them as “trending” topics that sometimes prompted coverage from mainstream American news organizations.

The speed and coordination of these efforts allowed Russian-backed phony news to outcompete traditional news organizations for audience. Some of the first and most alarming tweets after Clinton fell ill at a Sept. 11 memorial event in New York, for example, came from Russian botnets and trolls, researchers found. (She was treated for pneumonia and returned to the campaign trail a few days later.)

This followed a spate of other misleading stories in August about Clinton’s supposedly troubled health. The Daily Beast debunked a particularly widely read piece in an article that reached 1,700 Facebook accounts and was read online more than 30,000 times. But the PropOrNot researchers found that the version supported by Russian propaganda reached 90,000 Facebook accounts and was read more than 8 million times. The researchers said the true Daily Beast story was like “shouting into a hurricane” of false stories supported by the Russians.

This propaganda machinery also helped push the phony story that an anti-Trump protester was paid thousands of dollars to participate in demonstrations, an allegation initially made by a self-described satirist and later repeated publicly by the Trump campaign. Researchers from both groups traced a variety of other false stories — fake reports of a coup launched at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and stories about how the United States was going to conduct a military attack and blame it on Russia — to Russian propaganda efforts.

The final weeks of the campaign featured a heavy dose of stories about supposed election irregularities, allegations of vote-rigging and the potential for Election Day violence should Clinton win, researchers said.

“The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. . . . It worked.”

He and other researchers expressed concern that the U.S. government has few tools for detecting or combating foreign propaganda. They expressed hope that their research detailing the power of Russian propaganda would spur official action.

A former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael A. McFaul, said he was struck by the overt support that RT and Sputnik expressed for Trump during the campaign, even using the #CrookedHillary hashtag pushed by the candidate.

McFaul said Russian propaganda typically is aimed at weakening opponents and critics. Trump’s victory, though reportedly celebrated by Putin and his allies in Moscow, may have been an unexpected benefit of an operation that already had fueled division in the United States. “They don’t try to win the argument,” said McFaul, now director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “It’s to make everything seem relative. It’s kind of an appeal to cynicism.”

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied interfering in the U.S. election or hacking the accounts of election officials. “This is some sort of nonsense,” Dmitry Peskov, press secretary for Putin, said last month when U.S. officials accused Russia of penetrating the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations.

The findings about the mechanics of Russian propaganda operations largely track previous research by the Rand Corp. and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

“They use our technologies and values against us to sow doubt,” said Robert Orttung, a GWU professor who studies Russia. “It’s starting to undermine our democratic system.”

The Rand report — which dubbed Russian propaganda efforts a “firehose of falsehood” because of their speed, power and relentlessness — traced the country’s current generation of online propaganda work to the 2008 incursion into neighboring Georgia, when Russia sought to blunt international criticism of its aggression by pushing alternative explanations online.

The same tactics, researchers said, helped Russia shape international opinions about its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military intervention in Syria, which started last year. Russian propaganda operations also worked to promote the “Brexit” departure of Britain from the European Union.

Another crucial moment, several researchers say, came in 2011 when the party of Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused of rigging elections, sparking protests that Putin blamed the Obama administration — and then-Secretary of State Clinton — for instigating.

Putin, a former KGB officer, announced his desire to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams” during a 2013 visit to the broadcast center for RT, formerly known as Russia Today.

“For them, it’s actually a real war, an ideological war, this clash between two systems,” said Sufian Zhemukhov, a former Russian journalist conducting research at GWU. “In their minds, they’re just trying to do what the West does to Russia.”

RT broadcasts news reports worldwide in several languages, but the most effective way it reaches U.S. audiences is online.

Its English-language flagship YouTube channel, launched in 2007, has 1.85 million subscribers and has had a total of 1.8 billion views, making it more widely viewed than CNN’s YouTube channel, according to a George Washington University report this month.

Though widely seen as a propaganda organ, the Russian site has gained credibility with some American conservatives. Trump sat for an interview with RT in September. His nominee for national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, traveled to Russia last year for a gala sponsored by the network. He later compared it to CNN.

The content from Russian sites has offered ready fodder for U.S.-based websites pushing far-right conservative messages. A former contractor for one, the Next News Network, said he was instructed by the site’s founder, Gary S. Franchi Jr., to weave together reports from traditional sources such as the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times with ones from RT, Sputnik and others that provided articles that often spread explosively online.

“The readers are more likely to share the fake stories, and they’re more profitable,” said Dyan Bermeo, who said he helped assemble scripts and book guests for Next News Network before leaving because of a pay dispute and concerns that “fake news” was crowding out real news.

In just the past 90 days — a period that has included the closing weeks of the campaign, Election Day and its aftermath — the YouTube audience of Next News Network has jumped from a few hundred thousand views a day to a few million, according to analytics firm Tubular Labs. In October alone, videos from Next News Network were viewed more than 56 million times.

Franchi said in an e-mail statement that Next News Network seeks “a global perspective” while providing commentary aimed at U.S. audiences, especially with regard to Russian military activity. “Understanding the threat of global war is the first step to preventing it,” he said, “and we feel our coverage assisted in preventing a possible World War 3 scenario.”