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Syria’s East Ghouta battleground distorted by MSM propaganda

RT | February 23, 2018

The information battle on the E. Ghouta front is turning into Aleppo 2.0, with Western media, often relying on dubious sources, describing – in unison – the Syrian regime atrocities while nearly glorifying terrorists’ resistance.

Over the last few days, mainstream media have simultaneously turned their attention to the ongoing anti-terrorist operation in Eastern Ghouta, a militant-controlled suburb of Damascus, which is seeing a new wave of clashes between Syrian government forces and Islamist factions.

While the army aims to clear the area of such terrorist units as Jaysh al-Islam, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly known as al-Nusra Front), Ahrar al-Sham and Failaq al-Rahman, Western media, often relying on militant-embedded sources, continue to paint an ominous picture, in which the government troops are deliberately slaughtering civilians.

“Right now we see very concerted Western media attempt to paint the Syrian government as the bad guy, the evil, and giving breathing space for the terrorists who are having the last bastion,” Kaveh Afrasiabi, a former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, explained to RT. “The Syrian government has the legitimate security concerns because of the daily shelling of its capital city by the rebels.”

“A naive viewer might imagine that Assad was just bombing civilians for the hell of it because the jihadi fighters are totally absent from the picture. And the pictures are literally provided by the jihadists themselves,” Peter Ford, former UK ambassador to Syria and Bahrain, told RT, referring to the controversial White Helmets, who have long been hailed by the mainstream western media as heroes. However, the UK-backed NGO has been plagued by allegations of having close ties with terrorist groups.

Before the Syrian government forces intensified operations against jihadist factions in the area, Russia had been trying to broker a deal with armed groups to stop using civilians as human shields and surrender their weapons. Moscow has also been working relentlessly to allow humanitarian aid in. On Thursday, however, Russia had to reject a Western-backed UN resolution for a 30-day ceasefire in Syria as “utopian,” with Russia’s envoy Vassily Nebenzia pointing out that the “propaganda-driven” approach to the coverage of the conflict was only encouraging militants to continue their armed provocations.

“As the saying goes, truth is the first casualty of war,” Afrasiabi laments. The New York Times on Tuesday, for instance, published a piece based on the information provided by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a one-man Britain-based war-monitoring group. The piece paints the Assad regime as pure evil, whose only intention is to butcher civilians. The British Guardian newspaper, meanwhile, went as far as to compare the civilian suffering in Eastern Ghouta to Bosnia’s Srebrenica.

Russia has also been repeatedly attacked for the failure of its de-escalation zone initiative and its support of Damascus. Together with Iran and Turkey, Russia is tasked with enforcing the ceasefire in Eastern Ghouta, one of the de-escalation zones established as a result of the Astana talks in May 2017. Despite the ongoing armed provocations, the Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria enabled the militants to leave the area, but the proposal was rejected.

What is also being downplayed is the Syrian and Russian resolve to end the Ghouta crisis, similar to the one during the Battle of Aleppo, where special corridors were organized to evacuate civilians out of the city, before extending the offer to terrorists for a mass exodus. NYT and the Guardian are not the only western media sources to have shown bias in reporting the events in Eastern Ghouta. A number of experts have pointed out that the Western media coverage of the current events follows a pattern developed in covering the operation to liberate Aleppo, which ended in July 2016.

“We have seen this kind of atrocity level pulled over and over again a few months ago, with Aleppo for example,” Jim Jatras, political analyst, and media and government affairs specialist, told RT. “Every time the Al Qaeda linked groups are on the ropes and the Syrian army is on the verge of liberating territory, then we hear all these horror stories, some of which may have a basis in truth, some not, about how civilians are suffering but nothing on who the terrorists are who are controlling these areas and oppressing the people who live there.”

The Aleppo campaign, initially backed by Russian airstrikes, received mostly one-sided, negative coverage in the Western media, with reporters and politicians accusing Moscow of “war crimes” and causing a “humanitarian disaster,” despite the fact that Moscow and Damascus maintained a ‘no-fly zone’ over the city. The liberation of the city was presented as its “fall” and “destruction,” as media outlets chose footage of shelled-out buildings rather than scenes of Aleppo civilians celebrating in the streets. Eventually, that narrative fell apart as tens of thousands of refugees started returning to the city and rebuilding of ruined areas began.

Now the same tactic is being used by the Western media today. This week, CNN used a 15-year-old, Muhammad Najem, and selfie videos he posted on social media, to base their report on the bloody atrocities allegedly committed by the government forces in Damascus suburbs. “The children of Ghouta die every day by the bombing of the Assad regime and Russia,” Najem says, in a segment featured on CNN.

The Syrian boy with flawless English serves as a stark reminder of a seven-year-old Bana al-Abed, who became the “voice” of many civilians trapped under the government siege in Aleppo. While many had only fondness and concern for the Aleppo girl, to others her accounts raised doubt and were seen as a directed propaganda effort.

“We saw this very much with Aleppo. We saw the same kind of coverage from the Western media. Atrocities were being predicted and reported and it turned out that most of those, if not all of them, were actually false propaganda claims. And we are seeing the repeat of this situation again,” Charles Shoebridge, a security analyst and former UK army officer, pointed out.

In a stark contrast, any concern over civilians’ fate miraculously disappeared from Western media coverage during the US-led coalition’s ‘liberation’ of Raqqa and Mosul.

“There was actually no coverage of the situation of Raqqa and Mosul. There were occasional articles,” Shoebridge told RT. “The reason why these things are not being covered is because it is not conducive to supporting UK and US foreign policy which is, of course, still, even now, to destabilize and undermine the Assad government.”

“The Western media are so closely linked to information or misinformation coming out of their governments that it is really misleading the public in the Western countries,” Jim Jatras added.

Real images of destruction from Raqqa and Mosul were there for British and American media outlets to beat the drums of a humanitarian catastrophe. Yet most outlets stayed silent to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Syrian and Iraqi cities by the US-led Inherent Resolve coalition. No objection was voiced to the lack of civilian evacuation or the refusal to negotiate a ceasefire with the hardcore Islamists holding civilians as human shields.

“There were no calls … for a ceasefire to take place” during the British and the American led bombardment of Mosul and of Raqqa, Shoebridge noted. “The US bombardment and sieges of these areas were causing immense suffering and loss of life among civilian populations.” Yet any remote calls to have a ceasefire so that civilians could leave the besieged cities were met with the response “no, this would help terrorists who are occupying that area,” Shoebridge added.

The same selective anti-Assad coverage is continuing in East Ghouta, where the Western media continues to neglect the atrocities committed by the jihadists in the region.

“What the media failed to point out also is that the Islamic State is one of the groups which hold Yarmuk camp, which is one corner of Ghouta, and then you have an affiliate of Al Qaeda which is holding another corner,” former ambassador Ford points out. “So these are really bad guys. Exactly the guys that were wrinkled out of Mosul and Raqqa, with many civilian casualties in the process.”

February 23, 2018 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

Painting an Israeli Attack on Syria as Israeli ‘Retaliation’

By Gregory Shupak | FAIR | February 21, 2018

Israel claimed that it intercepted an Iranian drone in Israeli airspace on Saturday, February 10; Iran denied that it had a drone there. Israel then bombed a Syrian airbase, saying it was the command-and-control center from which Iran had launched the drone. The Syrian government shot down an Israeli jet that had bombed the base, and Israel subsequently launched more airstrikes against Syria.

Reuters (2/13/18) described the latter airstrikes as Israel having “retaliated” for the downing of its aircraft. Vice (2/13/18) too characterized them as “retaliatory”; the Los Angeles Times (2/11/18) did the same three times. These word choices wrongly imply that Israel was acting defensively, when it was Israel who fired the first shots in the weekend’s exchanges: These outlets were saying that Israel was “retaliating” against Syria for defending itself against an ongoing Israeli attack.

“Retaliation” is an exculpatory term. To say that a party is “retaliating” is to say that their actions are an understandable response to another party’s provocation. As FAIR’s Rachel Coen and Peter Hart (Extra!, 5–6/02) wrote more than a decade and a half ago, the term “lays responsibility for the cycle of violence at the doorstep of the party being ‘retaliated’ against, since they presumably initiated the conflict.” In this case, casting Syria and Iran as the aggressors rests on the dubious assumption that flying a drone over Israel—if Israel’s charge is accurate—is more aggressive than Israel dropping bombs on Syria.

CNN: Israel: Jets Faced Heavy Syrian Anti-Aircraft Fire

Painting warplanes carrying out an aggressive bombing raid as victims

It also rests on the flawed assumption that the timeline of hostilities between Israel and the Syrian government began on Friday, February 9. However, despite the Associated Press’s untenable claim (2/10/18) that “Israel has mostly stayed out of the prolonged fighting in Syria,” Israel admits to having bombed the Syrian government and its ally Hezbollah nearly 100 times since the war in Syria began in 2011 (Reuters, 2/6/18). If Brigadier General Amnon Ein Dar, the head of the Israeli Air Force’s Air Division, is to be believed (Ynet, 2/11/18), the Israeli military has “carried out thousands of missions in Syria in the last year alone.”

A Washington Post article (2/10/18) made the similarly dubious assertion that “Israel has largely stood on the sidelines of the Syrian conflict over the past seven years.” In the next paragraph, though, the author acknowledges that “Israel has conducted dozens of covert airstrikes against [the Syrian government-aligned] Hezbollah weapons convoys in Syria,” and the piece goes on, in a spectacular display of self-contradiction, to note that “Israel has carried out a number of significant attacks in Syria in recent months.”

Israel has also supported the Syrian armed opposition for years, the Wall Street Journal (6/18/17) reported, supplying fighters with food, fuel, medical supplies “and money payments to commanders that help pay salaries of fighters and buy ammunition and weapons.” According to the Journal, the Israeli army “is in regular communication with rebel groups,” and Israel “has established a military unit that oversees the support in Syria—a country that it has been in a state of war with for decades—and set aside a specific budget for the aid, said one person familiar with Israeli operation.” There is even reason to believe that Israel has had an alliance with the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria (Middle East Monitor, 5/26/15; Electronic Intifada, 6/16/15). None of the articles cited here on the February 10 clashes mentioned this important backdrop.

Turning an Occupation Into a ‘Border’

Coverage of these events also failed to correctly describe the status of the Golan Heights, a piece of land that is central to the Israeli/Syrian conflict. Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 war, fought off a Syrian effort to reclaim it in 1973, and illegally annexed it in 1981. Israel has sought to take advantage of the war that has devastated Syria for nearly seven years by, as Matt Broomfield writes in the Electronic Intifada (11/11/16), planning a fivefold increase in the number of Israeli settlers in the Golan, allocating $108 million for 750 new Israeli agricultural projects in the territory, and significantly expanding military forces along the boundary between Syria and the area under Israeli control.

The New York Times (2/10/18) made two references to “the Israeli-held portion of the Golan Heights,”  a rather anodyne depiction of territory that is internationally recognized as Syrian, but which Israel seized by force of arms and claimed for itself.

The Washington Post (2/10/18) said that “Israel shares a contentious border with Syria—the Golan Heights.” But the Golan isn’t “a contentious border”; it’s a territory that, despite Israeli claims to the contrary, unambiguously belongs to Syria under international law.

A CNN report (2/11/18) closed by saying that “authorities also accused Syria in November of violating the 1974 ceasefire agreement [with Israel] by “conducting construction work” in the northern part of the Golan Demilitarized Zone.” While it’s unclear which authorities are being referenced, this passage neglects to mention that by late 2015, Israel had built 30 settlements, housing 20,000 settlers, in the Golan, or that a year later it announced plans for 1,600 new homes in the territory, “construction work” that has been roundly condemned by “authorities” like the United Nations.

Moreover, 20,000 Syrians live in the Golan, and many are directly harmed by Israeli policies. According to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Israel’s discriminatory land, housing and development policies in the territory have made it hard for Syrians to get building permits, leading to increasingly overcrowded Syrian towns and villages. The UNHRC also points out that Israel has demolished a Syrian home, and that a number of Syrian homeowners have reportedly received demolition notices.

This larger context of Israel’s Syria policies would have helped news readers make sense of what occurred on February 10, but it was absent. Given that Israel had just launched an airstrike on a Syrian base, has apparently bombed Syria close to 100 times in the past six years, has carried out perhaps 1,000 attacks against it in the last year, has backed an armed insurgency against the Syrian government, and has stolen and illegally colonized Syrian land while oppressing and dispossessing Syrian civilians, it is far more accurate to say that Syria retaliated against Israel on February 10.

February 23, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 12 Comments

YouTube Has Informed Me That It Will Soon Delete The Richie Allen Show Channel

By Richie Allen | February 22, 2018

YouTube operates a three strikes and you are out policy. Content creators are told that if they violate community standards three times, their channel and all its content will be deleted. Two weeks ago The Richie Allen Show received a strike. Incredibly, I was informed that I had violated the bullying and harassment guidelines. The video in question was of an interview I conducted with Wolfgang Halbig over two years ago about The Sandy Hook school shooting. There was nothing harassing about it, there was certainly no bullying. I repeatedly challenged Wolfgang in the interview and pressed him for evidence to support his theory. Nevertheless that was strike one. YouTube said that as punishment, I couldn’t live stream for three months. I don’t live stream anyway. But of course I was worried. I had been warned repeatedly, by commercial presenters and producers and former colleagues of mine, that the show would be targeted.

Strike two came this morning. The offending video this time was an interview I did with Michael Rivero about the shooting of journalist Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward in Virginia in August 2015. Yes that’s right, YouTube has issued me with a community guideline strike for an interview I uploaded two and a half years ago. Get this, in the interview, Mike clearly states that he does not believe that the shooting was staged or a false flag. Mike talked about the background of the shooter Bryce Williams and what led him to murder the journalists. This morning, YouTube told me that the interview violated its guidelines on bullying and harassment. Again, there was no harassment or bullying. Mike went with the official story, as did I. Tough shit Paddy, that’s strike two. I was told today, that a third strike will see the channel deleted. A third strike is inevitable, as there are 1,400 interviews on the channel which was created in 2014. Oh and the punishment for strike two? We have been banned from uploading content to YouTube for the next three weeks.

This is fascism, this is tyranny, this is terrifying and we knew that this was coming didn’t we? Yes, there are other platforms but Google/YouTube is the only game in town. I could upload elsewhere, but those platforms don’t have the subscribers, it would be a waste of a lot of time for very little reward. The establishment knows this. This is why these monopolies were allowed to develop, so that they could come after shows like The Richie Allen Show when they felt like it. Over the last eighteen months, they have limited the reach of the channel by shadow banning it, in other words making it difficult for users to discover it. They even began demonetising the videos before they had even been published and then re-monetising them after they’d been watched over 5,000 times, meaning by the time the ads went on the vids, most people had watched them. I’ve talked about this and demonstrated it with photographic evidence. Now they’re about to delete the channel, the coup de grace.

Now I mentioned that colleagues of mine in commercial TV/Radio had warned me that our channel would be specifically targeted. I’ve been warned time and again, but I knew it was coming anyway. Why The RA show specifically? The reason is simple. There is no other show like it in the independent media. We hold ourselves to the highest professional standards, our production values are second to none and uniquely, we put politicians, academics and other journalists on the air and ask them questions that they would never be asked on mainstream media. That has seen the show become the most listened to independent news show in Europe, the most downloaded podcast in news/politics on Podomatic and has seen us listed on Spotify and iheartradio.

Don’t call me arrogant. I am not now and never have been. I worked for and worked with the best producers and presenters in the world. I served my time and bring all that experience to bear on our show, it’s as simple as that. I am not important, the show is not and never has been about me. The information is the star, I’m just a gobby curmudgeonly Irishman, who learned his trade well. It’s always been about the amazing researchers who come on and share their discoveries and it is about getting their information to people who otherwise would be dismissive of conspiracy research. David Icke implicitly understood the importance of bringing mainstream production values to independent radio and the conspiracy research arena. We talked about it often and back in 2014, when he asked me to consider making my own show, produced edited and introduced by me and me alone, he said, “you can make alternative radio sound as good as or better than commercial radio.”

Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, ultimately the audience decides whether a show is any good or not, but there is overwhelming evidence here, that someone/something wants to make life very difficult for me, by removing our YouTube channel and deleting over 1,400 archived interviews.  Google has served notice on The Richie Allen Show today, that there is no room for a professionally produced radio show, which asks uncomfortable questions and presents credible evidence that challenges the mainstream narrative.

February 23, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Mindblowing Corruption At FBI – NSA Whistleblower Reveals

The Jimmy Dore Show | February 20, 2018

February 23, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | 4 Comments

North Korea Calls US-Japan Missile Drills Provocation Against Intra-Korean Dialogue

Sputnik – 22.02.2018

MOSCOW – North Korea’s committee on Korean reconciliation condemned on Thursday an upcoming joint US-Japan missile defense drill as an attempt to reignite regional tensions and obstruct the ongoing thaw between Pyongyang and Seoul.

“Branding this as a ferocious gangster-like act aimed to tarnish the hard-won atmosphere for the improvement of the North-South ties and for peace on the Korean Peninsula, and as a dangerous military provocation to ignite the train of a war,” the [North’s] Korean National Peace Committee said in a statement, announced by state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and quoted by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

The statement was made after on February 15, the Japanese Defense Ministry announced that this year’s joint ballistic missile defense exercise, which is due to start on Friday and last for a week, would have a larger scale than the previous ones and involve not only the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force and the US Navy but also the two countries’ air force units and the US Marine Corps. The ministry stressed the importance of the drill, citing November’s North Korean ballistic missile activities.

The committee also noted “greater bellicosity” and the danger of the forthcoming exercise, pointing to the planned involvement of fighter jets and US marines.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have further escalated as North Korea achieved significant progress in its nuclear and missile programs last year. Pyongyang tested several ballistic missiles, including its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile in November, which it said was capable of hitting any part of the mainland of the United States. In turn, Washington has led a number of diplomatic initiatives to put pressure on Pyongyang and held several drills in the region.

In January, Pyongyang and Seoul resumed bilateral talks ahead of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. As a result, their national teams marched together under a “unification flag” at the opening ceremony and are jointly participating in a number of sporting events.

The sides also reportedly agreed to delay their military activities until after the Olympics, which will last through Sunday.

February 23, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Activist: Time to ‘Formally End the Korean War’ After 65 Years of Armistice

Sputnik – 23.02.2018

The brief respite on the Korean Peninsula seems fated to end with the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang after North Korean leaders canceled a planned secret meeting with US Vice President Mike Pence. Washington is also expected to soon resume postponed military exercises alongside South Korea, exercises that North Korea has labeled provocative.

​Brian Becker and John Kiriakou of Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear were joined by Christine Ahn, a co-founder of the Korea Policy Institute, a think tank that advises American politicians to foster diplomacy and friendship with both Koreas, as well as the International Coordinator of Women Cross DMZ, an organization of peace activists.

“I feel like we’re in a funhouse with a lot of smoke and mirrors and doublespeak and confusion, especially coming from the Trump administration,” said Ahn. “This spin coming from the White House that it’s North Korea that canceled the secret meeting, but [the US] were also noting that they were just going to reiterate their hardline stance — which they publicly did in Tokyo as [Pence] was meeting with [Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo] Abe.”

“As for the military exercises — I have heard different things. I have heard that South Korea has now been in conversation that they will consider stalling the military exercises, and we have the US jumping the gun and saying that the exercises are going to resume. We are in a critical window and it is urgent now for the US peace movement to raise our voices and to say we must support the inter-Korean peace process that is underway.”

“We must urge our government to halt the military exercises, to listen to the people of Korea — both North and South — that want the inter-Korean reconciliation to continue. Clearly resuming these military exercises, that include provocative decapitation strikes and regime-change exercises, would intrude on inter-Korean dialogue,” she went on to say.

In response to North Korea’s myriad missile tests, the US, South Korea and Japan launched a series of military exercises on and near the peninsula. This includes December air drills between the US and South Korea that involved hundreds of aircraft, including nuclear-capable B-1B bombers.

“The national security law in South Korea [considers] any contact with North Koreans to be a threat to their national security,” said Ahn. “I think you have a situation where South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has gone to the 2007 summit in North Korea, having his mother come from the northern part of the Korean Peninsula before it was divided, deeply understands the complex situation that South Korea is in.”

“They have this ‘alliance’ with the US which includes wartime operational control over South Korea’s military. I think you also have… this older generation, who are maintaining that Cold War paradigm that has really hobbled the advancement of South Korean democracy.”

“It’s a historic moment, we know that. [Moon] has said he is trying to get a peace treaty between the US and North Korea, as promised under the armistice agreement that was signed in 1953.”

The agreement that ended hostilities on the Korean Peninsula, was not a peace treaty, merely an armistice, so the Korean War technically continues 65 years later. While the stated intention of the armistice was to eventually replace it with a permanent peace treaty, attempts to actually do so have never gotten far.

“It’s time right now for Americans to really put pressure on our government to formally end the Korean War,” said Ahn. “Not just for the Korean people, but also for the soul of this nation.”

February 22, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , | 2 Comments

My First Day as CIA Director

By Ray McGovern | Consortium News | February 22, 2018

Now that I have been nominated again – this time by author Paul Craig Roberts – to be CIA director, I am preparing to hit the ground running.

Ray McGovern

Last time my name was offered in nomination for the position – by The Nation publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel – I did not hold my breath waiting for a call from the White House. Her nomination came in the afterglow of my fortuitous, four-minute debate with then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when I confronted him on his lies about the attack on Iraq, on May 4, 2006 on national TV. Since it was abundantly clear that Rumsfeld and I would not get along, I felt confident I had royally disqualified myself.

This time around, on the off-chance I do get the nod, I have taken the time to prepare the agenda for my first few days as CIA director. Here’s how Day One looks so far:

Get former National Security Agency Technical Director William Binney back to CIA to join me and the “handpicked” CIA analysts who, with other “handpicked” analysts (as described by former National Intelligence Director James Clapper on May 8, 2017) from the FBI and NSA, prepared the so-called Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Jan. 6, 2017. That evidence-impoverished assessment argued the case that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his minions “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton.”

When my predecessor, CIA Director Mike Pompeo invited Binney to his office on Oct. 24, 2017 to discuss cyber-attacks, he told Pompeo that he had been fed a pack of lies on “Russian hacking” and that he could prove it. Why Pompeo left that hanging is puzzling, but I believe this is the kind of low-hanging fruit we should pick pronto.

The low-calorie Jan. 6 ICA was clumsily cobbled together:

“We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence … used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks.”

Binney and other highly experienced NSA alumni, as well as other members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), drawing on their intimate familiarity with how the technical systems and hacking work, have been saying for a year and a half that this CIA/FBI/NSA conclusion is a red herring, so to speak. Last summer, the results of forensic investigation enabled VIPS to apply the principles of physics and the known capacity of the internet to confirm that conclusion.

Oddly, the FBI chose not to do forensics on the so-called “Russian hack” of the Democratic National Committee computers and, by all appearances, neither did the drafters of the ICA.

Again, Binney says that the main conclusions he and his VIPS colleagues reached are based largely on principles of physics – simple ones like fluid dynamics. I want to hear what that’s all about, how that applies to the “Russian hack,” and hear what my own CIA analysts have to say about that.

I will have Binney’s clearances updated to remove any unnecessary barriers to a no-holds-barred discussion at a highly classified level. After which I shall have a transcript prepared, sanitized to protect sources and methods, and promptly released to the media.

Like Sisyphus Up the Media Mountain

At that point things are bound to get very interesting. Far too few people realize that they get a very warped view on such issues from the New York Times. And, no doubt, it would take some time, for the Times and other outlets to get used to some candor from the CIA, instead of the far more common tendentious leaks.  In any event, we will try to speak truth to the media – as well as to power.

I happen to share the view of the handful of my predecessor directors who believed we have an important secondary obligation to do what we possibly can to inform/educate the public as well as the rest of the government – especially on such volatile and contentious issues like “Russian hacking.”

What troubles me greatly is that the NYT and other mainstream print and TV media seem to be bloated with the thin gruel-cum-Kool Aid they have been slurping at our CIA trough for a year and a half; and then treating the meager fare consumed as some sort of holy sacrament. That goes in spades for media handling of the celebrated ICA of Jan. 6, 2017 cobbled together by those “handpicked” analysts from CIA, FBI, and NSA. It is, in all candor, an embarrassment to the profession of intelligence analysis and yet, for political reasons, it has attained the status of Holy Writ.

The Paper of (Dubious) Record

I recall the banner headline spanning the top of the entire front page of the NYT on Jan. 7, 2017: “Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says;” and the electronic version headed “Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds.” I said to myself sarcastically, “Well there you go!  That’s exactly what Mrs. Clinton – not to mention the NY Times, the Washington Post and The Establishment – have been saying for many months.”

Buried in that same edition of the Times was a short paragraph by Scott Shane: “What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. That is a significant omission.”

Omission? No hard evidence? No problem. The publication of the Jan. 6, 2017 assessment got the ball rolling. And Democrats like Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, were kicking the ball hard down the streets of Washington. On Jan. 25, 2017, I had a chance to confront Schiff personally about the lack of evidence — something that even Obama had acknowledged just before slipping out the door. I think our two-minute conversation speaks volumes.

Now I absolutely look forward to dealing with Adam Schiff from my new position as CIA director. I will ask him to show me the evidence of “Russian hacking” that he said he could not show me on Jan. 25, 2017 – on the chance his evidence includes more than reports from the New York Times.

Sources

Intelligence analysts put great weight, of course, on sources. The authors of the lede, banner-headlined NYT article of Jan. 7, 2017 were Michael D. Shear and David E. Sanger; Sanger has had a particularly checkered career, while always landing on his feet. Despite his record of parroting CIA handouts (or perhaps partly because of it), Sanger is now the NYT’s chief Washington correspondent.

Those whose memories go back more than 15 years may recall his promoting weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as flat fact. In a July 29, 2002 article co-written with Them Shanker, for example, Iraq’s (non-existent) “weapons of mass destruction” appear no fewer than seven times as flat fact.

More instructive still, in May 2005, when first-hand documentary evidence from the now-famous “Downing Street Memorandum” showed that President George W. Bush had decided by early summer 2002 to attack Iraq, the NYT ignored it for six weeks until David Sanger rose to the occasion with a tortured report claiming just the opposite. The title given his article of June 13 2005 was “Prewar British Memo Says War Decision Wasn’t Made.”

Against this peculiar reporting record, I was not inclined to take at face value the Jan. 7, 2017 report he co-authored with Michael D. Shear – “Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds.”

Nor am I inclined to take seriously former National Intelligence Director James Clapper’s stated views on the proclivity of Russians to be, well, just really bad people — like it’s in their genes. I plan to avail myself of the opportunity to discover whether intelligence analysts who labored under his “aegis” were infected by his quaint view of the Russians.

I shall ask any of the “handpicked” analysts who specialize in analysis of Russia (and, hopefully, there are at least a few): Do you share Clapper’s view, as he explained it to NBC’s Meet the Press on May 30, 2017, that Russians are “typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever”? I truly do not know what to expect by way of reply.

End of Day One

In sum, my priority for Day One is to hear both sides of the story regarding “Russian hacking” with all cards on the table. All cards. That means no questions are out of order, including what, if any, role the “Steele dossier” may have played in the preparation of the Jan. 6, 2017 assessment.

I may decide to seek some independent, disinterested technical input, as well. But it should not take me very long to figure out which of the two interpretations of alleged “Russian hacking” is more straight-up fact-based and unbiased. That done, in the following days I shall brief both the Chair, Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and ranking member Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee, as well as the Chair and ranking member of its counterpart in the Senate. I will then personally brief the NYT’s David Sanger and follow closely what he and his masters decide to do with the facts I present.

On the chance that the Times and other media might decide to play it straight, and that the “straight” diverges from the prevailing, Clapperesque narrative of Russian perfidy, the various mainstream outlets will face a formidable problem of their own making. Mark Twain put it this way: “It is easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled.”

And that will probably be enough for Day One.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Savior in inner-city Washington.  He served 30 years as an U.S. Army Intelligence and CIA analyst, and in retirement co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

February 22, 2018 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment

Hamas: Abbas’s speech did not rise up to the desired level

Palestine Information Center – February 22, 2018

GAZA – Palestinian resistance group Hamas criticized Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas following his speech at the UN Security Council on Wednesday.

In a press release, Hamas underlined that the political plan presented by Abbas in his speech does not reflect the national position which calls for an end to the Oslo Accords and which opposes a resumption of negotiations with Israel.

“Abbas’s speech did not rise up to the desired level, nor did it reflect the national consensus, which wants to terminate the Oslo agreements and rejects negotiations with the occupiers,” Hamas said.

Abbas is working to create a new mechanism for the failed peace process despite Israel’s violations and crimes against Palestinian women and children and the dangerous bias of the United States in favor of Israel on Jerusalem and the refugees and the encouragement it gives Israel to commit crimes and liquidate the Palestinian cause, the statement reads.

In this context, Hamas demanded an end to Abbas’s unilateral decision-making, and instead of following the path of a political process, to accelerate the unification of the ranks within the Palestinian arena and reach an agreement on a national strategy that focuses on the path of resistance.

February 22, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Crimes of compassion, Iraq’s long war and Canada’s bloody hands

By Matthew Behrens | Rabble | February 22, 2018

Canadians should prepare themselves for an onslaught of feel-good propaganda in the coming weeks as the world marks the 15th anniversary of one of the most horrific war crimes of the 21st century, the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by forces including the U.S., U.K., and Canada.

It will be disheartening to watch as liberal commentators from the Toronto Star and CBC engage in the most dishonest kind of smug, self-satisfied flag saluting, praising then-Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien for allegedly “declining” to sign on to the war. Yet the notion that Canada somehow decided not to be part of the Shock and Awe invasion of Iraq is a complete falsehood, and is well-documented elsewhere .

Lost within any of this self-congratulatory coverage will be the people of Iraq themselves, for whom 2018 marks 38 years of almost non-stop warfare and repression, during which they have endured hardships that are incomprehensible to most of us. The blood of the Iraqi people — millions of them killed, maimed, poisoned, irradiated, traumatized — is on the hands of many Canadian corporate, military, and political leaders who profited from weapons sales and political brinksmanship.

And while every Canadian government from Pierre Trudeau through to Justin Trudeau is in part responsible for this misery, no one has been held to account for aiding and abetting the crimes against humanity that have marked decades of aerial bombardment, the use of chemical and radioactive weapons (resulting in a massive spike in previously unseen birth defects), and an economic sanctions regime described by former UN inspectors as a “genocide.”

Was the price ‘worth it’?

Enforced throughout the 1990s in part with $1 billion in Canadian military muscle, those sanctions led to the monthly deaths of over 5,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, and provoked the high-profile resignations of UN humanitarian co-ordinators Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck. When Halliday resigned in 1998, he stated: “I’ve been using the word ‘genocide’ because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq. I’m afraid I have no other view.”

What was one to make of a policy that deliberately targeted the importation of civilian goods that allegedly had “dual use,” from pencils and baby dolls to eyeglasses and shampoo? The equipment needed to fix electrical generating stations and water purification systems destroyed during the 1991 U.S. and Canadian bombing runs of Desert Storm was not permitted entry, so water-borne diseases ran rampant. The medicines needed to treat the spike in cancer (a result of tons of depleted uranium munitions dust that wound up in the Iraqi soil, air and water) didn’t get through either.

Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, asked on the CBS program 60 Minutes if the sanctions-related deaths of a half million Iraqi children were worth it, famously replied, “We think the price is worth it.”

The people of Iraq were subjected to a Stalingrad-style siege, and while the general responsible for the Russian siege was charged as a war criminal at Nuremberg, Clinton now struts about the world stage as a self-styled “elder statesman” who runs a foundation where he paints himself as the second coming of Mother Theresa.

“In my life now, I am obsessed with only two things: I don’t want anybody to die before their time, and I don’t want to see good people spend their energies without making a difference,” Clinton crowed when the foundation began.

As Clinton continues to rake in obscene six-figure speaking fees for trotting out such tripe and basks in the “at least he wasn’t like Donald Trump” comparisons, New York oncologist Dr. Rafil Dhafir, who also believed no one should die before their time — especially in Iraq — remains behind the same prison walls that have marked his existence since his arrest 15 years ago this week for an alleged crime of compassion.

A crime of compassion

Dr. Dhafir was sentenced to 22 years for consciously violating the sanctions against the people of Iraq. Many individuals and groups who were not Muslim also violated the sanctions — fines were the worst punishment directed at a number of groups — yet Dhafir, as the driving force behind the Help the Needy Foundation, which provided millions in aid, was the only one to suffer such a fate. Needless to say, corporations that quietly went around the sanctions not for humanitarian goals, but to profit from their relationship with the Hussein dictatorship, did not face charges either.

Dhafir’s imprisonment began on the morning of February 26, 2003, when hundreds of federal agents swooped down on the community of Syracuse, New York. They knocked down his door, pointed a gun at his wife’s head, and ransacked his house, taking away any books related to Islam while leaving behind the Bible and tomes on American history.

Agents proceeded to terrorize patients at Dhafir’s clinic, and interrogated almost 150 primarily Muslim Help the Needy donors about how often they prayed, whether they had family in the Middle East, and whether they celebrated Christmas.

Cynically framed as a terrorism-related arrest as the U.S. prepared its invasion of Iraq, the first indictment of Dhafir contained 14 charges of violating sanctions. But when he refused a plea bargain, the government ratcheted up its already hyperbolic case, alleging an additional 45 alleged breaches of various financial laws related to the running of a charity as well as alleged Medicare fraud. The non-sanctions charges were speciously vague, and related to things like incorrectly filling out the complicated Medicare forms (many doctors refuse to treat Medicare patients as a result of their burdensome regulations, and even Medicare officials themselves appeared confused about them during the trial). Charges also arose from using another organization to issue Help the Needy’s tax receipts, a not uncommon practice. In any event, most such “white collar” cases, should they actually result in a trial, do not produce such serious consequences.

Refusing to be silent

As community members could testify, Dhafir was a hugely generous person, and opened his office not in Syracuse, where he could have made more money, but an hour away in Rome, New York, an under-served community. His reputation for providing interest-free loans, treating low-income patients, donating large chunks of money for schools and mosques, and assisting newcomers to the U.S. was legendary.

But Dhafir’s refusal to be silent in the face of genocide resulted in seven government agencies investigating Help the Needy and intercepting his mail, email, faxes and telephone calls, bugging his office and hotel rooms, combing through his trash, and also conducting physical surveillance. They were unable to find any evidence of terrorism links, yet the stench of such alleged associations infused the trial as a result of headline-grabbing outbursts from New York Governor George Pataki and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

After a six-week trial, Dhafir was convicted in February, 2005, though as the Syracuse New Standard pointed out, “The defense was forbidden during the trial to tell the jury that the government’s investigation of Dhafir had apparently begun as a terrorism hunt, nor was the defense allowed to argue that Dhafir had been selectively prosecuted for alleged crimes that are relatively common and do not usually result in criminal charges.”

Said former UN representative Denis Halliday: “I am stunned by the conviction of this humanitarian, especially as the US State Department breached its own sanctions to the tune of $10 billion. The policy of sanctions against Iraq undermined not only the UN’s own charter, but the Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention as well.”

During his time behind bars, Dhafir has developed a range of debilitating conditions, from an untreated hernia and diabetes, to chronic gout, significant back pain, and incipient cataracts. Even though he was originally sentenced to a medium-security prison within driving distance of his community, he was transferred to the notorious Communication Management Unit in Terre Haute, Indiana (a.k.a., “Little Guantanamo”), which was “home” to dozens of Muslims arrested as part of post-9/11 racial profiling paranoia. At the CMU, he could not have contact visits, his freedom to worship was severely limited, phone calls were rare, and he was harshly treated along with his fellow, isolated inmates.

When Barack Obama was getting ready to leave the White House, Dhafir, now aged 69, had the opportunity to apply for clemency, but declined to do so.

“How can an innocent person like me ask for this alleged commutation from a criminal, regardless of who she/he is?” he asked. While he is considering applying for non-medical compassionate release given his age and the fact that he has served so much time in prison, he watches as the world continues to treat the people of Iraq as a geopolitical punching bag and a $1 trillion economic opportunity. Indeed, Canadian companies are salivating at the chance to help “rebuild” the very infrastructure that they helped to destroy.

Dr. Dhafir, if forced to serve the remainder of his term, will not be released until he is 76 years of age. The lives of those he tried to save in Iraq — as well as the lives of patients who no longer had access to his compassionate and accessible medical services in New York State — are nameless victims to almost all of us, just some of the millions who have been sacrificed in the name of state security, war profiteers, and politicians addicted to militarism.

Further details of Dr. Dhafir’s case are available at www.dhafirtrial.net

February 22, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

US Violates Iranian Nuclear Deal Almost Every Day – Tehran

Sputnik – February 22, 2018

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday that the US violated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) almost every day, while Trump’s public statements contribute to this.

“It is a fact that the United States is not implementing the JCPOA [the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], it is a fact that it violates it almost daily,” he told the BBC.

According to him, Trump’s statements regarding the deal being “bad,” or seeking to change it are a violation of the agreement.

“This violates the letter, not the spirit of the agreement,” the deputy minister added.

Speaking further, the senior Iranian official said that Iran would withdraw from the agreement if there would be no economic benefits for the country and major banks wouldn’t work with Iran.

“The deal would not survive this way even if the ultimatum is passed and waivers are extended,” Araqchi said.

The statement comes almost two weeks after US President Donald Trump delivered an ultimatum to the heads of European countries, saying that he wouldn’t extend the US sanctions relief on Iran if the sides refused to “fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal.

“The day before, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an exclusive interview with Sputnik that “the US has never adhered to its liabilities within the JCPOA.”

Fears of Syrian War Tearing Middle East Apart

Araghchi also commented on the on-going conflict in Syria, which has recently escalated after an Israeli F-16 jet was shot down by the Syrian Army as it was about to attack Iranian positions for allegedly flying a drone into Israel’s airspace.

The Deputy FM denied the accusations, claiming that the drone in fact belonged to the Syrian government.

At the same time, he underlined the policy of double standards on the part of Israeli  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had earlier branded Iran as the “greatest threat to our world,” while the Israeli military itself is frequently flying drones over Syria and  neighboring countries.

“They shouldn’t be angry when they are faced with something that they are doing against others on a daily basis,” Araghchi said.

The deputy minister noted that the incident has had a significant destabilizing impact on the de-escalation process in Syria and on the maintenance of peace in the Middle East.

“Fear of war is everywhere in our region,” Araghchi stated.

Nevertheless, Araghchi stressed that the presence of Iranian forces in Syria should not be misinterpreted as a threat to Israel, since their sole objective is to assist the government of Bashar al-Assad in combating terrorists.

“Just imagine if we were not there. Now you would have Daesh [the Islamic State group] in Damascus, and maybe in Beirut and other places,” he said.

The Deputy FM affirmed that the “de-escalation of tensions” is “very important” to the Iranian strategy in Syria, and the country has “worked hard to achieve that.”

February 22, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Time to Admit the Afghan War is ‘Nonsense’

By Jonathan Marshall | Consortium News | February 22, 2018

Whatever happened to the Donald Trump who tweeted in 2013, “Let’s get out of Afghanistan … we waste billions there. Nonsense!”

And whatever happened to the reality TV star who used to tell under-performers, “you’re fired”?

Today, as commander in chief, President Trump is indefinitely extending the Afghan war’s record as the longest in U.S. history. He’s wasting $45 billion to wage it this year alone. And he’s not even thinking of firing his huckster generals who claim that sending a few thousand more troops and stepping up the bombing will be a “game changer.”

Much like the Vietnam War, every day’s news of war from Afghanistan puts the lie to optimistic claims of a military solution. A recent BBC study concluded that Taliban forces are now active in 70 percent of the country, more than at any time since the end of 2001. Unofficial U.S. estimates of their strength have soared from about 20,000 in 2014 to at least 60,000 today.

Afghan government forces number several times as many, but—like their counterparts in the Vietnam War—they “lack the one thing the U.S. cannot provide: the will to fight a protracted campaign against a committed enemy,” in the words of Bill Roggio, editor of the Long War Journal at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The Taliban have proven that no place in Afghanistan is safe from their long arm. At the beginning of February, they infiltrated a bomb-laden ambulance into Kabul, just blocks from a meeting at the Afghan Ministry of Defense with the head of the U.S. Central Command. Its blast killed more than 100 people and injured 235. It followed only days after Taliban gunmen stormed the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, killing at least 20 people, including four Americans.

Inspector General Finds No Progress

The latest Inspector General report on the status of “Operation Freedom’s Sentinel,” issued Feb. 18, declares that U.S. and Afghan government forces made no progress last year in expanding their control of the country or in forcing the Taliban to the peace table, one of the administration’s stated goals.

“In addition,” the report said, “there were growing concerns about whether Afghanistan will be able to hold parliamentary elections as planned in July 2018, and the country was struggling to provide assistance to nearly two-million internally displaced persons.”

The report also highlighted the lethality of Taliban operations against Afghan military and police forces, but it declined to offer numbers, noting that the U.S. military had classified them at the request of the Afghan government.

To justify its optimism, the Trump administration has touted its ostensibly new tactic of bombing drug labs to deny the Taliban revenue. The Inspector General notes that such operations were undertaken as far back as 2009, to no end:

“The United Nations reported that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan set a new record in 2017. Cultivated land increased 63 percent over 2016 levels and potential opium production set a new record at 9,000 tons. The United Nations stated that the Afghan government’s strategic focus on protecting population centers in 2017 might have made rural populations more vulnerable to the influence of anti-government entities who pay local farmers to grow poppy and protect farmers from government eradication efforts.”

Similarly, U.S. military operations have failed to suppress Afghanistan’s version of ISIS, which recently conducted several spectacular terror attacks in Kabul. The U.S. command made “no discernible progress” on convincing Pakistan to close its borders to insurgents. Last but not least, the Afghan government remains a mess, riven by factional fights between President Ashraf Ghani and provincial warlords.

An Incoherent Policy

Meanwhile, unaddressed by the IG is the basic incoherence of a policy of bombing the Taliban into reconciliation. On paper, Washington aims to force the Taliban to the negotiating table, acknowledging that outright victory is impossible. But only this January, President Trump told members of the UN Security Council, “we don’t want to talk with the Taliban,” and a spokesman for President Ghani said recently, “We never negotiate with groups who resort to crime and the brutal killing of people and then claim responsibility for it.”

That sounds like a policy of stalemate if ever there was one.

“For years, we have been pursuing a strategy that will not win, but at the same time, we are doing just enough to ensure that we do not entirely lose,” concedes Kevin Hulbert, former CIA station chief in Kabul. “The way forward will be determined by clarifying our objectives, which to this point, have remained ambiguous at best.”

Clarifying our objectives would certainly help, but just as important are clarity about U.S. interests and capabilities.

Ever since 9/11, policy makers have largely taken American interests for granted. Yet aside from fantasies about developing Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, it’s hard to make a serious case that American lives and treasure will be more at risk from getting out of Afghanistan than continuing an endless war. The only significant interest at stake is political: no president wants to lose such a war.

And as to capabilities, the Obama-era surge proved that even with 100,000 troops, the United States cannot win a war against committed, indigenous insurgents who enjoy unlimited funding and protected foreign sanctuaries. Unlike the United States, the Taliban have nowhere to go. They will wait us out, even if that means fighting for another 16 years.

A decade ago, a top-level policy analysis requested by President George W. Bush admitted, “The United States is not losing in Afghanistan, but it is not winning either, and that is not good enough.” Those words are as true in 2018 as they were in 2008. The situation is still not good enough, and there’s no chance of it getting any better. It’s time for President Trump to wake up and say “you’re fired!” to anyone on his team who pretends otherwise.

Jonathan Marshall is the author or co-author of five books on U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. His articles on Afghanistan include “The Goal of ‘Not Losing’ in Afghanistan,”  “Blaming the Afghan War Failure on — Russia,” and “Afghanistan: President Obama’s Vietnam.”

February 22, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , | 4 Comments

‘Russian bots’ outcry: Is Twitter cracking down on people who ‘challenge the status quo’?

RT | February 22, 2018

It seems that ‘the bots’ (especially the ‘Russian bots’) narrative is being used as a kind of defensive mechanism, journalist and human rights activist Mike Raddie told RT amid reports of a massive account purge on Twitter.

A crackdown on bot spam or dissent?

“The whole meme of the bots, especially the ‘Russian bots,’ is actually being used as a kind of defensive mechanism,” said Mike Raddie. “Whenever people criticize the corporate media in the West – we’ve done it with the Guardian – they come back and say, ‘oh, you’re part of a Russian bot army,’ or a typical question is, ‘what’s the weather like in St. Petersburg? Is it snowing in Moscow yet?’ So it’s a very useful meme for corporate journalists to deflect any kind of criticism, especially over hot topics such as Syria, Ukraine – things like this.”

A number of Twitter accounts are said to have been flagged over the past few days, in what many have speculated is part of the company’s efforts to clamp down on the much-touted army of Russian-controlled automated accounts, or “bots.” However, Twitter has yet to elaborate on the reported mass purge, which allegedly also targeted users with right-wing views – raising concerns of political censorship on the popular social media platform. The hashtag #TwitterLockOut began trending on the site shortly after the suspensions.

“If Twitter has begun this campaign of eliminating or blocking people that have different ideas than the company wants to portray or the message that they want to get out, I think it’s very harming to democracy and freedom of speech,” Christian Mancera, a lawyer and 2018 congressional candidate, told RT. “We have to keep every single channel of communication open, and just because a person has a conservative view doesn’t make that person an enemy, or make that person politically incorrect. So I hope that Twitter comes forward and clarifies.”

Although his own outlet’s Twitter account recently received a 12-hour suspension, allegedly for “criticizing a multi-billionaire,” Raddie suggested that most users who get hit with the ban hammer are likely victims of the company’s “crude algorithm,” and not singled out by an actual Twitter employee. However, he said the company’s recent behavior suggests that when Twitter “sees challenges, serious challenges, to the status quo, they’re likely to limit activity or even block accounts or delete accounts.”

Hunting for ‘Russian links’

Dragged in front of the US Senate last year as part of efforts to expose “Russian influence” in the 2016 presidential elections, Twitter initially revealed that it had identified 201 “Russia-linked” accounts operating on its platform. After Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) expressed disappointment in the anticlimactic findings, Twitter raised its figure to 36,746.

As part of its autumn crackdown, Twitter banned an account owned by an African-American political activist from Atlanta – allegedly for her “links” to Russia. “This whole suppression of voices in using this Russian scare tactic is just way too far,” Charlie Peach, who has absolutely no ties to Russia, told RT back in October.

“In my lifetime I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t remember the McCarthyism era, obviously, because I’m not that old, but my parents talked to me about it and things that were occurring at the time,” Peach told RT. “It ensures that the 1 percent continues to have a narrative and that anyone who opposes that are no longer allowed to speak. You look at CNN, MSNBC ‒ they gave us the Iraq War. This is what they do. The main media houses that run everything are the ones that continue to push the propaganda and make sure we’re shut down.”

In January, the US Senate Intelligence Committee published answers provided by Twitter, Facebook and Google in response to questions concerning Russia’s alleged use of social media to meddle with American democracy. In its written response, Twitter disclosed that it had identified nine accounts as being “potentially linked to Russia that promoted election-related, English-language content.” Of these nine nefarious accounts “potentially linked” to Russia, “the most significant use of advertising was by @RT_com and @RT_America. Those two accounts collectively ran 44 different ad campaigns, accounting for nearly all of the relevant advertising we reviewed,” according to Twitter. Conspicuously absent from Twitter’s written statement was the fact that the American tech giant traveled to Moscow to pitch a proposal for RT to spend huge sums on advertising for the US presidential election – an offer which RT declined.

‘Shadow ban’ controversy

More recently, in January, conservative journalism watchdog Project Veritas released undercover footage of current and former Twitter staff who appear to admit to silencing conservative voices using “shadow bans” – which block a user or their content from reaching a wider audience without their knowledge.

“We’re giving away an awful lot to these companies, but when they come out and publicly say they want to be the public forum for free speech, yet they’re censoring free speech and they are slanting what free speech can or cannot be heard, then there’s a problem,” Project Veritas executive director Russell Verney told RT.

Read more:

Buzz kill: Tech giants struggle to find ‘Russian meddling’ in written answers to US Senate

February 22, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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