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Facebook Reportedly Removes Russia References From Report on Election Influence

Sputnik – 06.10.2017

Despite its recently released report claiming that Russia-linked entities allegedly bought $100,000 worth of political ads before and after the US presidential election, Facebook has decided to omit Russia references from its April 2017 white paper covering the influence on the public opinion, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Facebook staff were debating on whether to include references to Russia in a public report on “false news” spread via the social network and eventually decided against it, so the white paper issued in April makes no mention of it, according to the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

Some people working in the company insisted that Russia should not be mentioned in the report on the attempt to influence the US presidential campaign in 2016 as Facebook had no proof of subversive activities, the WSJ reported on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the situation.

The April report said that “malicious actors” were involved in an attempt to compromise certain political targets and to push certain narratives, but stressed that it could not say with any certainty who was sponsoring these activities. Facebook said in April that it would add new technologies to weed out fake accounts and improve security.

The media report comes after Facebook said in early September that supposedly Russia-linked entities bought $100,000 worth of political ads linked to inauthentic pages in a two-year period up to May of this year. According to the company, these pages were found to be linked and were “likely operated” out of Russia. Most of the ads did not reference the US presidential election, but focused on amplifying divisive social and political messages.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow was not behind the ads or even aware of them.

According to media reports, the US Senate Intelligence Committee has asked senior managers from Facebook, Google and Twitter to testify in front of the US Congress at a public hearing scheduled for October as part of the probe into Russia’s alleged attempts to use social media to influence the election. Russia has faced persistent allegations of having interfered in the 2016 US election, many of them suggesting that an information campaign took place on social media. Russian officials have denied meddling in other states’ domestic affairs.

October 6, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

Russian election meddling probe will show media ran untrue stories – head of US investigation

RT | October 6, 2017

The investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election will ultimately show that “quite a few” news outlets ran stories that were not factual, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee told Politico.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said that although his committee will not be investigating news organizations, it does plan on providing the public with the information needed to hold them responsible for what they reported.

“We’re not going to investigate news organizations, but we will use the findings of our report to let the American people hold every news organization accountable for what they portrayed as fact, in many cases without sources — at least, no sources that would admit to it,” Burr told Politico on Thursday.

“And I think, when we finish our report, we will find that quite a few news organizations ran stories that were not factual,” he added.

He went on to state that some incorrect news stories had also emerged since Wednesday’s news conference held by himself and Senator Mark Warner, which was aimed at providing an update on the status of the investigation into alleged Russian meddling.

Burr’s comments come after US President Donald Trump questioned why the Senate Intelligence Committee fails to investigate so-called “fake news.”

Trump has often criticized the mainstream media for its reporting of alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election, and has referred to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the matter as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.”

Russia, for its part, has consistently denied any interference in the election.

October 6, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | 1 Comment

Iran Rejects Reuters Report, Says Missile Program Non-negotiable

Al-Manar | October 6, 2017

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi says the Islamic Republic’s missile program is for defensive purposes and is not open to any negotiations.

Qassemi on Friday firmly rejected a Reuters report quoting unnamed Iranian and Western officials as saying that Iran has signaled to the six world powers with which it signed the historic nuclear agreement in 2015 that it is open to talks about its ballistic missile arsenal.

“Iran regards defensive missile programs as its absolute right and will definitely continue them within the framework of its defensive, conventional and specified plans and strategies,” the Iranian spokesperson said.

He added that Iran “has repeatedly in diplomatic meetings with foreign officials” emphasized that its “defensive missile program is not negotiable” and that Tehran “does not regard it as inconsistent with [UN Security Council] Resolution 2231.”

In all his meetings and interviews with international media on the sidelines of last month’s 72th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reiterated the non-negotiable nature of the Islamic Republic’s defensive missile program.

According to the Reuters report, the sources said that given US President Donald Trump’s threats to ditch the nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reached under his predecessor Barack Obama, Tehran had approached the powers recently about possible talks on some “dimensions” of its missile program.

October 6, 2017 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

UK Condemns Boris Johnson’s Joke But Refuses to Admit It Helped Destroy Libya

Sputnik – 06.10.2017

Alexander Mercouris, editor-in-chief of The Duran, told Radio Sputnik that he found UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s joke about “clearing away dead bodies” in Libya “outrageous,” given that the UK played a large role in destroying the North African state.

Speaking about Libya’s tourism potential at a Conservative Party conference fringe meeting, the UK’s chief diplomat said that the war-torn city of Sirte could become the new Dubai, adding that “the only thing they have to do is clear the dead bodies away.”

The members of Libya’s House of Representatives based in Tobruk on Thursday demanded Johnson’s apology for the remark.

Mercouris told Sputnik in an interview that he expected the people of Libya to be shocked and infuriated by Johnson’s “extremely crude” comments, given that he made a joke about a city that the British destroyed in a country the British played a large role in smashing.

​”If we take Sirte, the city which he was referring to, it was incredibly heavily bombed by the [Royal] Air Force amongst others during the Libyan intervention that took place in 2011, which Britain played a very large role in instigating,” he said. “It was Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown, and he was murdered in the most appalling fashion not far from there.”

Mercouris added that although Johnson is under fire for his remarks in his home country as well — with some British politicians calling for him to be sacked — most critics fail to note the UK’s role in destroying Libya in the first place.

In a similar fashion, he noted, members of Johnson’s party always talk about the threat of terrorism in Europe without ever bringing up the foreign policy choices that the UK government has made, which created the conditions for terrorist groups to thrive in North Africa and for Libya becoming a major recruiting ground for militant fighters.

“This comes back to Boris Johnson’s comments,” Mercouris said. “He has been strongly criticized within Britain for making them, but always that criticism stops at the point of admitting any British responsibility for the disaster that is Libya today. And of course that responsibility is enormous.”

Libya has been in a state of turmoil since 2011 when a civil war began in the country and its longtime leader Gaddafi was overthrown. In December 2015, Libya’s rival governments — the Council of Deputies based in Tobruk and the Tripoli-based General National Congress — agreed to create the Government of National Accord, to form the Presidency Council and to end the political impasse.

October 6, 2017 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , | 2 Comments

Bangladesh set to relocate all Rohingya to mega refugee camp: Official

Press TV – October 5, 2017

Bangladesh says it plans to expand a massive settlement under construction in its southernmost district to house nearly 900,000 persecuted Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in Myanmar.

Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya, minister for disaster management and relief, said on Thursday that the estimated 890,000 refugees would eventually be moved to the new site near the border town of Cox’s Bazar.

“All of those who are living in scattered places… would be brought into one place. That’s why more land is needed. Slowly all of them will come,” media outlets quoted the minister as saying.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the minister said that families were already moving to the new site, known as the Kutupalong Extension.

There are currently nearly two dozen camps and other makeshift camps along the border. Two of the existing settlements have already been shut down.

Last month, two thousand acres of land next to the existing Kutupalong camp were set aside for the new Rohingya arrivals. Another 1,000 acres were later set aside for the new camp.

The number of newcomers has exceeded 500,000 — adding to 300,000 already in Bangladesh.

The mega camp project has, however, caused concern among doctors and charities on the ground that they fear a disease like cholera could spread quickly through such a congested, overpopulated site.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says the situation is “slowly spiraling into a catastrophe of biblical proportions.”

According to Mark Lowcock, UN emergency relief coordinator, the world body would be seeking around $430 million to scale up the humanitarian operation for the destitute Rohingya.

In a fresh bout of violence in Myanmar, soldiers and Buddhist mobs have been attacking Rohingya Muslims and torching their villages since October 2016. The attacks have seen a sharp rise since August 25, following a number of purported armed attacks on police and military posts in the western state of Rakhine.

Many witnesses and rights groups have reported systematic attacks, including rape, murder and arson, at the hands of the army and Buddhist mobs against Rohingya Muslims, forcing them to leave their generations-old homes and flee to overcrowded and squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh.

The UN has described the crackdown on Rohingya in Myanmar as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

October 6, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | | 1 Comment

Road to nowhere: NATO increased military presence in Europe

Dr Alexander Yakovenko | RT | October 5, 2017

As part of the implementation of the conclusions of the NATO Summit in Warsaw, four multinational battle groups have been deployed in Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia with the total number of troops exceeding 4,500.

The idea of creating units to rotate through Bulgaria and Romania next year is being widely discussed within NATO. Taken together, these battle groups amount to a motorized infantry brigade with heavy weapons.

The presence of US forces in Europe is also rapidly growing. In January, the most significant American military unit (an armored brigade consisting of 3,500 troops and 2,500 pieces of equipment, including 87 tanks, 144 infantry fighting vehicles, 18 self-propelled artillery) was relocated on a rotational basis to Poland. This unit was involved in military training in the Baltic countries, Bulgaria, Romania, and Germany.

NATO activity along Russia’s borders contradicts the 1997 Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation, and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation. According to this document, “in the current and foreseeable security environment, the Alliance will carry out its collective defense and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces.” Unfortunately, the Founding Act does not specify what “interoperability,” “integration,” “capability reinforcement” and “substantial combat forces” mean.

Since 1997, Russia has been bringing up the issue of the mutually acceptable definition of “substantial combat forces.” In December 2009, at the ministerial meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, Russia proposed a draft Agreement on the basic elements of the security relationship between the members of the NATO-Russia Council.

According to Article 4 of the draft document: “the Russian Federation and all the states, which were members of NATO on 27 May 1997, respectively, abstain from permanently deploying (including a temporary deployment of more than 42 days in a calendar year) their substantial combat forces (combat brigade or combat support brigade), air wing/aviation regiment, helicopter battalion/helicopter regiment, or having more than 41 tanks, or 188 armored vehicles, or 90 artillery units of 100 mm caliber or more, or 24 combat aircraft, or 24 attack helicopters) on the territory of all other European states in addition to the forces deployed on this territory as of 27 May 1997. In the event of the need to neutralize the threat to the security of one or several parties to the Agreement, this must be carried out with the consent of all the members of the NATO-Russia Council.”

Unfortunately, NATO members refused to discuss Russia’s proposals, that’s why the characteristics of “significant combat forces” still remain unspecified.

The intention of the US to provide “a constant rotational presence” on the so-called “eastern flank” is alarming (military personnel are rotated while equipment remains). These actions run counter to and are on the edge of breaking the provisions of the Founding Act. The lack of clarity on “permanent stationing of substantial combat forces” is used by NATO and the US to legitimize their efforts to build up a military presence and infrastructure along the Russian borders under the pretext of an alleged “Russian threat.”

If nothing changes, this would seriously undermine the European and global security system.

Dr Alexander Yakovenko, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Deputy foreign minister (2005-2011). Follow him on Twitter @Amb_Yakovenko

October 6, 2017 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

KPFA’s Antiwar Voice

By Daniel Borgström | Dissident Voice | October 5, 2017

When people ask me why I joined the Marine Corps (at age 18, back in 1959), I tell them, “Because where I grew up there was no KPFA or Pacifica Radio affiliate.” There was just the constant corporate drumbeat of anti-Communism which took many forms, often pretending to advocate world peace, but always in one way or another campaigning against China and Russia.

I’m told that KPFA bravely exposed Cold War propaganda during the McCarthy era. But in recent years our station has been backsliding, subtly but increasingly echoing the corporate media’s calls for “humanitarian” interventions around the world. Some KPFA hosts feature guests from NGOs aligned with the U.S. State Department, giving them airtime, presenting them as though they were doing good work abroad, and not asking them hard questions or revealing where they get their funding.

Since Trump’s election, KPFA has taken a sharp turn for the worse, presenting itself as a voice of “resistance” — a resistance that does not resist war. While vigorously bashing Trump (who does deserve bashing), the station often functions as a pseudo-progressive voice of the Deep State, echoing the mainstream media and the neoliberals and neocons.

Children and impressionable teenage listeners (potential future military recruits such as I once was) could get the perception from some KPFA programs that America’s proper mission in today’s world should be to sally forth to find and slay monsters.

Once upon a time it was KPFA’s mission to expose such propaganda, and that’s what KPFA needs to get back to doing, to find its soul and once again become an antiwar voice.

Daniel Borgström is an ex-Marine against the war, a veteran occupier. He can be reached at: danielfortyone@gmail.com.

October 6, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment