UK covered up intelligence training with Bahrain’s police, amid death sentence
Reprieve | February 5, 2017
UK authorities trained Bahrain’s police how to gather intelligence on protestors, and then tried to cover up the scheme, international human rights group Reprieve has found. The project took place after protestors in the Gulf kingdom were rounded up and sentenced to death.
Britain’s Foreign Office paid for half a dozen Bahraini police officers to visit Belfast in August 2015, where the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) shared its expertise on gathering intelligence ahead of demonstrations.
Protestors in Bahrain, such as Mohammed Ramadan, have been targeted by police and tortured into falsely confessing to capital crimes. Mr Ramadan, a father of three young children, is now on death row and could be executed at any time.
The training, which also included sessions on water cannons, dog handling and public order tactics, was kept secret. The UK government has repeatedly denied providing public order training to Bahrain.
The Cabinet Office claimed that “The UK does not fund any programmes in Bahrain focused on public order”. However, documents obtained by Reprieve show that Bahrain’s police received an “Introduction to Combined Operational Training with a focus on Public Order.”
The training was prepared by Northern Irish police officers during a week-long “scoping visit” to Bahrain over April-May 2015, where they assessed Bahrain’s public order systems. The Stormont-owned company NI-CO played a key role in organising all the training.
It has also emerged that Bahrain’s Chief of Police and his deputies visited Belfast in June 2014. The itinerary included another session with the PSNI on “Community Intelligence”. The police chief attended a “demonstration of PSNI Public Order systems” and received a “Tour of North and West Belfast ‘Flashpoints’ with 2 or 3 PSNI Armoured Vehicles”.
Bahrain’s Chief of Police had to postpone a visit to Belfast earlier in 2014 because there was a “security emergency in Bahrain at the moment and it is felt that the Chief of Police and other senior officers cannot leave the country at this critical time.” This was a month after death-row prisoner Mohammed Ramadan was tortured. “The situation on the ground is becoming increasingly tense”, an email explained.
Bahrain’s Chief of Police has command level responsibility for violations carried out by lower ranking officers. Months after the police chief visited Belfast for training, teenager Ali al-Singace was arrested and tortured by Bahrain’s police with electric shocks, until he made a false confession to a capital crime. He was executed by firing squad in January 2017.
Commenting, Maya Foa, a director of Reprieve, said:
“It is outrageous that the government has covered up this project, which risks supporting the execution of protesters in Bahrain.
“Bahrain is notorious for arresting, torturing and sentencing to death people involved in protests – such as Mohammed Ramadan, a father of three who is held on death row and faces execution at any moment.
“By training Bahrain’s police how to gather intelligence on protesters, there is a serious risk that Britain is helping them arrest and execute people who are guilty of nothing more than calling for reform. It is scandalous that the Government has sought to sweep this under the carpet.”
German intel finds no proof of Russian ‘disinformation ops’ against Berlin – govt source
RT | February 7, 2017
Following a year-long inquiry, German intelligence agencies have found no reliable evidence of a Russian “disinformation campaign” against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, according to media citing cabinet and security sources.
The German intelligence service (BND) and the counterintelligence agency (BfV) had been searching for evidence of Russian interference in the country’s domestic affairs for nearly a year, Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported on Tuesday.
“We have not found any smoking gun,” a cabinet source told the paper.
The inquiry was similar to the US intelligence community’s efforts to attribute the notorious 2016 Democratic National Convention email leak to Russian ‘hacking groups.’
Initially, the secret services planned to release excerpts of their classified inquiry, but given the lack of evidence, the move would make Russian-German relations even more strained, according to the newspaper.
Chancellor Merkel’s office has, however, now directed the intelligence agencies to conduct a new inquiry. Notably, a ‘psychological operations group’ jointly run by the BND and BfV will specifically look at Russian news agencies’ coverage in Germany.
Despite the findings, the German intelligence services maintain that Russia has pursued a “more confrontational course” towards Germany since 2014, and call the coverage of Russian media, including RT Deutsch and Sputnik, “hostile.”
Germany’s intelligence community admits a difference between “excessive or false reporting” and “targeted disinformation,” Sueddeutsche Zeitung wrote.
The revelations do not sit well with previous statements by Bruno Kahl, the head of the BND, who claimed in November last year that his agency had obtained evidence that Russia may have manipulated the vote during the 2016 US election.
He alleged that “Europe, and Germany in particular, is in the focus of these experiments,” adding that German-language internet sites had also been increasingly targeted by so-called ‘troll factories’ distributing targeted misinformation.
“The perpetrators are interested in delegitimizing the democratic process as such, no matter who that subsequently helps,” he said in a rare interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung in November. He also acknowledged that “[finding] an attribution to a state actor is technically difficult.”
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‘Panicked’ British advertisers pull airtime on RT UK after phone calls from Sunday Times
RT | February 7, 2017
Several British advertisers “panicked” and pulled airtime on RT UK after the Sunday Times called them to ask for comment for an upcoming article about RT, according to a sales house used by advertisers on the channel.
“The Agencies on behalf of their clients pulled their airtime for the reason that they had been contacted by the Sunday Times. The Sunday Times asked them to make comment on their advertising on RT for the Sunday 5th February edition. These advertisers have panicked about the content of the article and pulled their airtime,” the sales house said in comments on Tuesday.
“The sales house the advertisers use to order airtime on RT UK has informed us that several companies at once decided to break up with RT after phone calls from the Sunday Times,” RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said.
“Meanwhile, the Sunday Times article alleges that the advertisers refused to cooperate with us because of ‘Kremlin propaganda,’ and it also cites a British MP urging to boycott RT, though in fact he didn’t say that,” she emphasized.
The RT Press Office said that “the calls from the sales house with requests to pull advertisements from several companies came shortly after the Sunday Times requested comment from RT for their story.”
In the article published on February 5, an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times, Josh Boswell, claimed that “top British brands are pulling their advertisements from the television channel RT UK amid accusations that it is spreading ‘propaganda and fake news’ for Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin,” naming the manufacturers of Gaviscon, Strepsils and Vanish and the make-up brand Max Factor among those advertisers.
Boswell goes on to claim that last weekend Damian Collins, chairman of the UK Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, “called for all British companies to boycott the ‘disinformation and propaganda’ channel.”
The MP is also quoted as saying that “British companies should not be advertising on channels that disseminate fake news designed to spread fear and confusion… I would call on any such company that has not already done so to withdraw their advertising.”
As the newspaper inserted the definite article ‘the’ into the explanatory sentence – “the ‘disinformation and propaganda’ channel” – the reader can’t help but draw the conclusion that the MP’s statement was made about RT.
However, when asked by RT to clarify the comment he made for the Sunday Times, Collins confirmed the statement contained no specific attribution, and was intended as a broader remark.
“Yes, I am happy for you to use the quotation from the Times. My comments were aimed broadly at any channel or website which produces and broadcasts fake news. I did not name any individual organization in my remarks,” Collins explained.
Before the article was published, Boswell contacted RT “to give you an opportunity to comment” on the story. The RT Press Office responded to the request with a comprehensive email, including an explanation of how the channel is publicly funded, much like the BBC and France 24, and how the channel’s mission is clearly stated as exploring underreported stories and providing more balance in the international news arena.
Boswell skipped most of this, however, and reduced RT’s response to a brief quote: “RT, formerly Russia Today, said it was an ‘editorially independent, autonomous non-profit global news organization.”
After RT asked the Sunday Times for comment, the newspaper’s public relations team answered: “Thank you for your enquiry. Due to the high volume of emails we receive, we will only be able to respond if we are in a position to help with your request.”
The Russian embassy in the UK has dismissed the Sunday Times article, writing in a statement: “We understand that not everyone in the UK is happy about the popularity of the Russian channel and the alternative worldview it represents. But this shouldn’t be a reason for a blatant crusade against the channel in such a foul fashion.”
Foreign policy analyst Michael Hughes told RT that the whole approach of the Sunday Times towards RT “is horrible, one-sided and biased.”
“They don’t treat any other stations this way except [RT]. It has nothing to do with the actual programming, they don’t like Russian policy, so they are doing whatever they can to target Russian stations right now.
“It is an obvious violation of the basic standards of journalism. You couldn’t be more obvious in violating journalistic integrity,” he added.
In the past there have been similar instances of Western mainstream media discussing the prospect of RT coverage being restricted, subjected to greater scrutiny or given less equal treatment.
In January, the Wall Street Journal speculated on what would happen if US pay TV operators were to consider dropping RT from their networks. The story followed the US intelligence community’s findings on alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, with seven of the report’s 13 pages devoted to RT.
The prospect of dropping RT appeared unrealistic, however, with Frederick Thomas, chief executive of MHz Networks, saying: “The reality is we live in an age where every nth degree of opinion is available 24/7 and 98 percent of people know that you either just turn the channel off if it’s TV, or if it’s a website, you go to another one.”
In a separate article in January, the Atlantic noted that “RT stories regularly appear toward the top of Google search results,” and that there are more than 4 million ‘likes’ on RT’s Facebook page. The magazine asked Google for information on whether the company had any policies “for how to rank and display news stories and videos from state-sponsored outlets like RT,” but a spokesperson for the search engine declined to comment.
The Atlantic also contacted a spokesperson for Facebook to clarify “if articles or videos from state-sponsored outlets are treated the same way as content from the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.”
Facebook responded by mentioning “changes the company has already announced, which suppress the circulation of links to news stories that users report as false.” However, RT stories “are more likely to be biased than to be ‘purposefully fake or deceitful,’” alleged the article’s author, Kaveh Waddell.
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Why are US tech firms suddenly trying to restrict RT’s access to social media?
Liberals Morph from Peaceniks to Warhawks on Government Intelligence Agencies
By Stephen J. Sniegoski • Unz Review • January 28, 2017
During the latter decades of the Cold War with Soviet Russia, the charge of being “unpatriotic” or “anti-American” caused American liberals (excluding those who had to rely on the votes of regular Americans to hold political office) to burst into spasms of ridicule and howls of “Red-baiting,” “war-mongering,” “witch-hunting,” and “fascism.” Sophisticated folks, liberals implied, would never even deign to think of doing anything so gauche as to automatically support their country in its fight against what they sarcastically called the “Red Menace.” America’s very possession of nuclear weapons was considered a danger to all humanity and many liberals flirted with the idea of U.S. unilateral nuclear disarmament. And the slogan of the Democratic candidate for president in 1972, George McGovern, was “Come Home, America” — which meant U.S. military retrenchment that mainstream liberals now lambast as “isolationism.”
During this not-too-long-ago era (at least, it was not too long ago for me, who is too rapidly approaching the biblically allotted three-score and ten), the CIA and the FBI were considered the bête noire in this liberal Weltanschauung. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, with his penchant for spying on innocent people, was regarded as thoroughly vicious. The CIA was notorious for being involved in the overthrow of nice democratic governments (at least, that is how liberals viewed them) in such countries as Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, and spying on leftist critics in the United States. The villainous nature of the CIA and FBI was a theme in many Hollywood movies of the era.[1]
Now let’s return to the present and the liberal hysteria over purported Russian interference with the U.S. presidential election. The most bandied about charge involves “hacking” the DNC and Podesta emails and providing these to WikiLeaks to denigrate Hillary Clinton, thus preventing her from becoming president. The support for this claim, at least as it has been presented to the America public, rests only on assertions made by the U.S. Intelligence Community, and this dearth of proof was continued in the most recent report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” released to the public on January 6. The report represents the unclassified findings of the intelligence community’s investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. In the words of the report: “Thus, while the conclusions in the report are all reflected in the classified assessment, the declassified report does not and cannot include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence and sources and methods.”[2]
Even some believers, especially those who might know something about cyber technology and the capabilities of America’s intelligence agencies, evinced some concern about the report’s lack of substantiating evidence. For example, Wired, a high-tech webzine that usually follows the current progressive line, published an article titled “Feds’ Damning Report on Russian Election Hack Won’t Convince Skeptics,” in which Robert Graham, an analyst for the cybersecurity firm Erratasec, was quoted as saying: “But knowing what data they [U.S. intelligence agencies] probably have, they could have given us more details. And that really pisses me off.”[3] The thrust of the article is that the lack of substantial proof fails to convince skeptics, not that the intelligence report’s claims could be wrong. This position is rather understandable since skepticism about traditional beliefs such as Christianity is highly lauded by progressives, but skepticism is not allowed to cast doubt on the progressive narrative of the day.
President Obama went somewhat further in his attack on non-believers. In an interview on ABC News on January 6, Obama insinuated, and, in some cases, openly stated that people who express skepticism about the findings and conclusions drawn by the U.S. Intelligence Community are not on America’s “team” and are siding with Putin; in fact, he maintains that they “love” Putin. In short, Obama has come to assume that the American people must not question the sanctity of the U.S. “Intelligence Community.” To do otherwise signifies not merely a lack of patriotism but actual love for America’s alleged number one adversary—Vladimir Putin. “One of the things that I’ve urged the president-elect to do is to develop a strong working relationship with the intelligence community,” Obama stated. “We have to remind ourselves we’re on the same team. Vladimir Putin’s not on our team.” Obama warned that “If we get to a point where people in this country feel more affinity with a leader who is an adversary and view the United States and our way of life as a threat to him, then we’re gonna have bigger problems than just cyber hacking.” It appears to Obama that some politicians and reporters “seem to have more confidence in Vladimir Putin than fellow Americans because those fellow Americans are Democrats.” And he solemnly pontificated: “That cannot be.”[4]
Obama continued with this rather dystopian view: “[I]n this new information age, it is possible for misinformation, for cyber hacking and so forth to have an impact on our open societies, our open systems, to insinuate themselves into our democratic practices in ways that I think are accelerating.” Although “cyber hacking” existed even before Obama entered the White House and “misinformation,” according to the Bible, existed even when Adam and Eve resided in the Garden of Eden, Obama implies that he only now became aware of this possibility.[5]
Now the term “open society” was popularized (at least in intellectual circles) by the philosopher Karl Popper.”[6] and its most prominent proponent today is billionaire George Soros (a student of Popper’s). Soros’ Open Society Institute has as its goal spreading the “open society” world-wide. An open society, as Popper presented it, would be open to all types of ideas with people being free to make their own decisions. Soros, in contrast, expressed a view similar to that of Obama, contending that “Popper failed to recognize that in democratic politics, gathering public support takes precedence over the pursuit of truth. In other areas, such as science and industry, the impulse to impose one’s views on the world encounters the resistance of external reality. But in politics the electorate’s perception of reality can be easily manipulated. As a result, political discourse, even in democratic societies, does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of reality.”[7] The implication is that gatekeepers are needed to protect “truth.” As one critic puts it: “the Open Society Institute embodies Popper’s idea of an open society the way the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) embodied democracy.”[8]
Moving away from the focus on hacking, the recent ODNI report describes the Russian effort to affect the US election as “multifaceted” and devotes almost half of the report to propaganda (despite the negative connotation, propaganda can be true) spread by Russia, especially by its major government-sponsored television network for foreign countries, RT.
Moreover, the intelligence report interprets the alleged Russian effort to aid Trump in the election as only one part of a broader goal to combat the United States’ “liberal democratic order,” stating: “Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.”[9] Moreover, the report considers any type of criticism of the United States as a “desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order.” And the report deals with aspects of this broader goal that are entirely unrelated to any Russian effort to aid Trump. This is of the utmost importance since the media narrative focuses on the idea that Russia aided Trump in the 2016 election but, for proof, relies on a report that deals with a much broader subject. That Russian media provides a negative view of America does not mean that this propaganda played a role in making Trump president. And it is not only the mainstream media but even the leaders of the intelligence community who blur this distinction.
Illustrating the point made above about the report’s concern with Russia’s alleged broader goal is its devotion of considerable space to Russian news stories casting the United States government and economic system in a negative light, but having nothing to do with Trump or the 2016 election. For example, the report observed that “RT aired a documentary about the Occupy Wall Street movement on 1, 2, and 4 November [2016]. RT framed the movement as a fight against ‘the ruling class’ and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations. RT advertising for the documentary featured Occupy movement calls to ‘take back’ the government. The documentary claimed that the US system cannot be changed democratically, but only through ‘revolution.’”[10] Although this report disparages the existing economic system in the United States, it could hardly be interpreted as encouraging anyone to vote for billionaire Donald Trump with his proposed agenda that included lower tax rates—especially the corporate tax rate–and a reduction in economic regulation that liberals and Democrats claimed helped only the wealthy.
The study also points out that “RT runs anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health. This is likely reflective of the Russian Government’s concern about the impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom’s profitability.”[11] That Russia’s alleged favored candidate Trump was pro-fracking whereas Hillary straddled the issue would mean that the RT anti-fracking program could militate against supporting Trump.
The report also maintains that “RT’s reports often characterize the United States as a ‘surveillance state’ and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use.”[12] Again, this would not seem to generate support for Trump.
The report refers to articles written in 2012 that deal with the U.S. presidential election that year, which did not involve Trump, and reflects the fact the study covers, as the title states, recent U.S. elections, not just the 2016 election. For example, “In the runup to the 2012 US presidential election in November, English-language channel RT America . . . intensified its usually critical coverage of the United States. The channel portrayed the US electoral process as undemocratic and featured calls by US protesters for the public to rise up and ‘take this government back.’”[13]
Still dealing with the 2012 election, the intelligence report stated: “From August to November 2012, RT ran numerous reports on alleged US election fraud and voting machine vulnerabilities, contending that US election results cannot be trusted and do not reflect the popular will.”[14] Oddly, this is almost identical to what the mainstream media has been saying since Trump won the election.
But what about the “fake news” — fictitious articles deliberately fabricated to deceive–that the mainstream media claimed helped Trump, largely by harming Clinton? For example, a Washington Post article, dated November 24, 2016, was titled: “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.”[15] CNN, in its article, “The reality behind Russia’s fake news,” dated December 2, made similar claims, relying heavily on the aforementioned Washington Post article. [16]
(After extensive criticism including legal threats from the sites the Washington Post described as Russian propaganda outlets, the Post added its lengthy editor’s note distancing itself from the anonymous group that provided the key claims of Russian “fake news” saying that the Post would not vouch for its validity.) [17]
Even Director of National Intelligence James Clapper referred to the Russians making use of “fake news” during the election. In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on “Foreign Cyber Threats to the United States” on January 5. 2017, Senator Jack Reed (Democrat, Rhode Island) asked Clapper about media reports that held that Russia was engaged in the creation of “fake news.” Clapper responded: “This was a multifaceted campaign. So, the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news.”[18] When the January 6 ODNI report was released, NBC News even claimed that it mentioned “a series of fake news stories damaging to Clinton, many of which got their start with Russian-backed outlets.” [19]
Considering the many references to “fake news,” even by the Director of National Intelligence, it is astonishing that the January 6 report did not cite any examples of this alleged phenomenon—or even mention it. What stands out is the absence of the term “fake news.” Did “fake news” itself turn out to be “fake news”? Whatever the case, the mainstream media did not seem to notice the absence of “fake news” from the report.
While the Intelligence Community did not make any mention of “fake news” in its report, it did make general claims—assessments by the intelligence community — that held that Russia favored Trump over Hillary Clinton. For example: “We assess the influence campaign aspired to help President-elect Trump’s chances of victory when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to the President-elect.”[20] The report also states: “RT’s coverage of Secretary Clinton throughout the US presidential campaign was consistently negative and focused on her leaked e-mails and accused her of corruption, poor physical and mental health, and ties to Islamic extremism. Some Russian officials echoed Russian lines for the influence campaign that Secretary Clinton’s election could lead to a war between the United States and Russia.”[21] None of these political views differed from what the anti-Clinton media in the U.S. expressed, so it is not apparent how Russia would add any credibility to these claims. It might even have tended to detract from them, which seems to be the case after the election. And since Russian officials did make the aforementioned claim about war, the mention of it does not seem to reflect any type of bias.
In contrast to the Russian depiction of Clinton, the intelligence report stated that Russian government media outlets RT and Sputnik “consistently cast President-elect Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional US media outlets that they claimed were subservient to a corrupt political establishment.”[22] This view was also commonly expressed by the more conservative media in the U.S., even that media which was not supportive of Trump.
RT put forth an extensive refutation of the intelligence report’s claims in an article entitled, “All the ways RT ‘influenced’ American politics ‒ it’s not what the ODNI thinks,” dated January7.[23] In many cases, RT made an effort to show that it also presented news stories that were contrary to those that the report cited—in essence, that its reporting was balanced while the intelligence report “cherry picked” RT stories to fit its narrative. It should be noted that no supporter of the Intelligence Community’s findings, from either the U.S. Intelligence Community itself or the private media, made the effort to rebut RT’s detailed criticism of the report.
It would seem to be self-evident that Russian media would act to promote Russian interests—although information used to achieve this goal might be true–just as US government-sponsored international media is intended to promote the interests of the United States. However, while the intelligence report holds that the Russian media was biased in favor of Trump, it fails to prove that bias. The report, for example, did not come up with any obvious erroneous information, such as the U.S. media’s account of the alleged killing of the incubator babies during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990; the WMD story in the run-up to the 2003 war on Iraq; and the recent story about the Russians hacking the Vermont power grid.
The report could have relied upon a statistical analysis of the Russian media’s election reporting. Numerous efforts have been made in the United States to use statistics and computer analysis in assessing media bias. Analyses that stand out tend to conclude that the U.S. media have a liberal bias. They include: The News Twisters (1976) by Edith Efron; T he Media Elite (1986) by Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter; Press Bias and Politics: How the Media Frame Controversial Issues (2002) by Jim A. Kuypers; and Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, (2012) by Tim Groseclose. Many statisticians have found fault with these studies despite their often extensive use of statistical data and comparisons among various media outlets. If this extensive information can be rejected, how could one accept the intelligence report’s claims of Russian media bias where no statistical proof or even standards for determining bias exist? The intelligence report, indeed, not only eschews statistical analysis for its bias claims, but acknowledges that it does not even make a comparison between Russian media and U.S. media, stating that “it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.”[24]
Moreover, it is not apparent that the Russian media would affect how any significant number of Americans vote. And the report explicitly states: “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.”[25] With all the uproar about Russian meddling in the US election, and allegations by prominent figures that Trump is not a legitimate president, it would be expected that the report would try to determine if this alleged meddling had any effect on the election’s outcome.
The study does hint that Russian media might have had some effect on voting by using graphs that show it is competitive with leading international media—Al Jazeera English, BBC World, CNN/CNN International. The Economist, however, provides an effective statistical refutation of this claim: “In Twitter and Facebook, RT’s reach is narrower than that of other news networks . . . . Its biggest claim to dominance is on YouTube, where it bills itself as the ‘most watched news network’ on the platform. As the intelligence report fretfully notes, RT videos get 1m views a day, far surpassing other outlets. But this is mostly down to [due to] the network’s practice of buying the rights to sensational footage, for instance of Japan’s 2011 tsunami, and repackaging it with the company logo.”[26] A September 2015 article in The Daily Beast, “Putin’s Propaganda TV Lies about Its Popularity,” states: “As of 2015, RT is still largely absent from cable news rankings.”[27] Moreover, RT’s influence would seem to pale to insignificance compared to the totality of American media.
Considering all the information provided by the U.S. Intelligence Community, it would appear that the entire issue of the alleged Russian meddling in the election turns out to be, to quote the Bard, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
[1] Maria Lauino, “Hollywood Presents: Government as Villain,” New York Times, February 12, 1995, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/12/movies/film-hollywood-presents-government-as-villain.html?pagewanted=all
[2] “Background to ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections’: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution,” January 6, 2016, p. 1.
[3] Andy Greenberg, “Feds’ Damning Report on Russian Election Hack Won’t Convince Skeptics,” Wired, January 6, 2017, https://www.wired.com/2017/01/feds-damning-report-russian-election-hack-wont-convince-skeptics/
[4] Kevin Liptak, “Obama: ‘Vladimir Putin is not on our team,’” CNN, January 6, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/06/politics/obama-vladimir-putin-is-not-on-our-team/
[5] Liptak.
[6] Noted philosopher Henri Bergson actually introduced the term “open society.”
[7] George Soros, Project Syndicate, November 8, 2007, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/from-karl-popper-to-karl-rove—and-back?barrier=accessreg
[8] Jonathan David Carson, “The Left’s Theft of the Open Society and the Scientific Method,” American Thinker, April 24, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2008/04/the_lefts_theft_of_the_open_so.html
[9] Intelligence Community Assessment, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” p. ii.
[10] Assessing, p.7.
[11] Assessing, p.8.
[12] Assessing, p. 7.
[13] Assessing, p. 6.
[14] Assessing, p. 6.
[15] Craig Timberg, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,” Washington Post, November 24, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_term=.715bb
[16] Jill Dougherty, “The reality behind Russia’s fake news,” CNN, December 2, 2016,http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/02/politics/russia-fake-news-reality/
[17] Glenn Greenwald, “WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived,” The Intercept, January 4, 2017, https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/washpost-is-richly-rewarded-for-false-news-about-russia-threat-while-public-is-deceived/
[18] Alex Griswold, “James Clapper Confirms Russia Was Behind Fake News During 2016 Election,” Mediaite, January 5, 2017, http://www.mediaite.com/tv/james-clapper-confirms-russia-was-behind-fake-news-during-2016-election/
[19] Ken Dilanian, “Report: Putin, Russia Tried to Help Trump By ‘Discrediting’ Clinton,” NBC News, January 6, 2017, http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/report-putin-russia-tried-help-trump-discrediting-clinton-n703981
[20] Assessing, p.2.
[21] Assessing, p. 4.
[22] Assessing, p.4.
[23] RT, “All the ways RT ‘influenced’ American politics ‒ it’s not what the ODNI thinks,” January 7, 2017, https://www.rt.com/usa/372890-odni-rt-influenced-election/
[24] Assessing, p. i.
[25] Assessing, p. i.
[26] RT’s propaganda is far less influential than Westerners fear,” The Economist, January 19, 2017, http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21715031-kremlin-backed-network-inflates-its-viewership-youtube-disaster-videos-rts-propaganda
[27] Katie Zavadski, ‘Putin’s Propaganda TV Its Lies About Popularity,” The Daily Beast, September17, 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/17/putin-s-propaganda-tv-lies-about-ratings.html
US Fact-Checking Institute Sponsored by Soros on War Path Against ‘Fake News’
Sputnik – 26.01.2017
The fake news “hysteria” has recently resulted in a number of initiatives to fight against the so-called misleading information and false statements. The campaign has been launched by such Internet giants, as Facebook and Google.
For instance, Google has permanently blocked 200 publishers which are labelled by the search engine giants as fake news content sites. In its turn, German Facebook tasked the fact-checking Correctiv research center with filtering out fake news in its news feed.
In an interview with Sputnik Germany, experienced freelance journalist Paul Schreyer revealed some surprising facts about fact-checking teams.
According to Schreyer’s research, the fake news campaign was originally born in the US in a journalist school called the Poynter Institute in Florida. The school had been running a so-called International Fact Checking Network for over a year, consisting of journalists working for such major media outlets like AP or ABC.
“The Poynter Institute’s network is indirectly sponsored by the US government via a think tank, but also by the Bill Gates foundation, Google, George Soros and some other foundations. So you see in the background of the campaign against fake news there is a network of very financially strong elites and the government. You should keep in mind that there are not just journalists who are concerned about the reputation of the industry, but also very influential financiers in the background,” the journalist told Sputnik Germany.
In particular, Schreyer found out that the German Correctiv team also receives a lot of money from influential supporters.
“Correctiv has existed since 2014 and is, according to own data, an independent research center. It is funded by the Brost Foundation, a foundation of a well-known journalist, who built the WAZ media group in the post-war period. Correctiv receives about one million euros every year according to official figures, and there are also funds from private sponsors, from the Federal Center for Political Education and some media groups,” Schreyer stated.
The journalist also pointed out that the members of the team have not yet worked out certain criteria which they will use to fact-check the information and define false statements.
Although Correctiv consists of professional journalists, who worked for major German media outlets, like Der Stern und Der Spiegel, exactly this can be a problem during their work. In particular, it is not quite clear what kind of approach they will use to independently and unbiasedly check the content of large media groups with whom they have connections with. According to Schreyer, it is very difficult to define what fake news, actually, is.
“David Schraven [Correctiv team member] repeatedly said that they do not want to assess opinions, but rather check factual statements. This sounds quite reasonable, but when you think about it, you realize that you can’t separate opinions and factual statements so clearly at all. There can be statement in the middle of the two. For example, “Putin jeopardizes the security of Europe.” Is this now an opinion or a factual statement? Can this be checked? What criteria should be used to check it? There you have a grey zone which can very fast fall into the area of the censorship,” the journalist said.
Earlier, it was reported that German Facebook will trial a fake news filtering system for German users of the site, allowing individuals to fact-check and report stories they suspect to be untrue. The users will be able to flag any story that appears in their newsfeed they suspect is fake news.The story will then be dispatched to Correctiv and if the team determines the story to be fake, it will be marked as false and users seeing it in their feeds will be warned about its doubted authenticity. It will also be blocked from being promoted in users’ feeds.
Commenting on the new initiative, Schreyer stated that it sounds to him, like censorship and added that “the whole fake news topic has turned into an incredibly hysterical debate at the moment.”
Facebook representatives, in their turn, stated that by adding additional context to stories deemed fake, it gives people an opportunity to decide for themselves what to believe and what information they share.
See also:
Google Blacklists 200 Publisher Sites to Quell ‘Fake News’
UK University Scientists Consider ‘Vaccine’ Against Fake News
‘Neo-Liberals’ and ‘Fake News’: The West’s Campaign Against Free Speech
Imprisoned journalist threatened with administrative detention, his wife summoned to interrogation
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – January 26, 2017
Imprisoned Palestinian journalist and former long-term hunger striker Mohammed al-Qeeq will be brought before the Ofer military court today, 26 January, and may be ordered to administrative detention without charge or trial. Fayha Shalash, fellow journalist and al-Qeeq’s wife, said that the Israeli military court ordered his arrest extended for 72 hours on Monday, 23 January.
Shalash said to Wattan TV that occupation authorities have not garnered any confessions or charges against al-Qeeq since they seized him on 15 January as he returned from a protest in Bethlehem demanding the release of the detained bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. She emphasized that he will begin a hunger strike if he is ordered again to administrative detention.
Shalash herself was ordered to interrogation by Israeli intelligence on Wednesday, 25 January after al-Qeeq’s family home in al-Khalil and their apartment in Ramallah were raided by occupation forces in pre-dawn attacks ransacking the home and subjecting Shalash to a strip search. Al-Qeeq was transferred yesterday to the Petah Tikva interrogation center.
Al-Qeeq previously engaged in a 94-day hunger strike against his imprisonment without charge or trial, winning his release in May 2016 and drawing international attention to the persecution of Palestinian journalists and the imprisonment of Palestinians without charge or trial under administrative detention.
Google, Facebook purge ‘fake news’ sites
RT | January 25, 2017
Under increased scrutiny for supporting the spread of false and misleading news, Google and Facebook are taking steps to purge networks of several hundred fake news sites.
On Wednesday, Google announced it had reviewed some 550 sites since its policy changes, permanently banning nearly 200 published sites and temporarily cutting off another 140 sites from the company ad dollar source, according to Variety.
Among the typical culprits was a conspiracy blog that appeared as the first item found for the search “who won the popular vote,” which suggested Donald Trump had won the popular vote. Another was a made-up story about President Barack Obama supposedly seeking a third term.
Google regularly weeds out advertisers for false and misleading claims, but the search giant has now booted publishers off its ad network for fake news.
The company responded to criticism that it supported fake news by changing its Adsense policy, prohibiting sites that “misrepresent, misstate, on conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the primary purpose” of the site from using Google ads for monetization.
An annual report of ad violations shows that Google took down 1.7 billion ads for various policy violations in 2016, including 17 million ads for illegal gambling, 5 million payday loans and 80 million misleading or shocking ads.
The company declined to release a list of the banned sites.
Facebook also announced it is overhauling its “trending topics” box, as part of its effort to curb fake news.
Beginning on Wednesday, its software will track only topics that have been covered by a significant number of credible publishers.
“If just one story or post went viral, it wouldn’t make it into the trending as it might previously,” Will Cathcart, a Facebook vice president of product management told the Wall Street Journal. “It really takes a mass of publishers writing about the same topic to make the cut.”
Facebook will take into account how long a publisher has maintained a presence on the social network.
The trending feature appears in a box on the right side of the Facebook page.
The change, however, will do little to affect what is reflected in users’ newsfeeds. In December, Facebook had fact-checking groups flag stories if they were false, which would then be demoted in the news feed.
Another popular social media company, Snapchat, is embracing the fake news challenge. In a redesign rolled out Wednesday, the company will restrict publishers from using images or headlines in Discover that lack editorial value. The Discover channels, which were introduced last summer, are a grid of tiles that are scrollable by users.
Future plans will be an age-gating tool to prevent minors from seeing inappropriate content on the Discover feed.
RT Fending Off Attacks in Fight Without Rules
By Alex GORKA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 25.01.2017
The access of RT (Russia Today), a Russian state-funded media company, to its Facebook page was partially blocked by the social network. The ban would have coincided with President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. The pretext was a copyright complaint about an Associated Press (AP) video stream of Barack Obama’s press conference on RT’s Facebook page on January 18. The ban, initially set to last until January 21, was lifted on January 19. RT has a sizable Facebook presence, with 4.1 million likes.
This is the first time that Facebook has ever blocked the content of any media outlet from appearing on the service. No other news outlet has been punished by Facebook in a manner like this.
The event is part of a broader picture. A few hours after the Facebook ban, RT claimed that some users had complained about not being able to see news from the broadcaster on other social media platforms. It was corrected later. Dataminr, a news-alert service partly owned by Twitter, has terminated its contract with the broadcaster. RT has received a request from YouTube to show that its employees were not among the individuals sanctioned by the US over Ukraine.
RT appears to come under attacks coming from all sides. The journalists and university professors in the United States who have appeared on RT television have been blacklisted. Last October, the National Westminster Bank informed RT that it would no longer have the broadcaster among its clients. The bank provided no explanation for the decision. «They closed our accounts in Britain. All of them. ‘Decision not to be discussed’. Long live freedom of speech!» RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said on her Twitter account.
The US intelligence report on Russia’s alleged hacking issued this January says «RT — as well as Sputnik, another Russian government–funded English-language propaganda outlet — began aggressively producing pro-Trump and anti-Clinton content starting in March 2016. That just so happens to be the exact same time the Russian hacking campaign targeting Democrats began». The authors of the paper affirm that «During the 2016 campaign, RT aired a number of weird, conspiratorial segments — some starring WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange — that cast Clinton as corrupt and funded by ISIS and portrayed the US electoral system as rigged».
The idea to use soft power for political ends has been glorified in the West, becoming part of all foreign policy concepts. Freedom of speech has always been extolled, any attempts to curtail it have been slammed. Now the West is losing the battle to the Russian outlet offering its own opinions and it is ready to go to any length in an effort to reverse the trend, including outright pressure.
RT challenges the West’s hegemonic grip on shaping and controlling the global media agenda. The broadcaster is popular with Western audiences because it offers a refreshingly different perspective. The RT broadcasting is called «propaganda» simply because it says something different.
Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, believes that US media are a «disgrace» and the quality of published material is «embarrassingly low». According to him, «we have a system that’s owned and dominated by a handful of huge corporations».
RT has provided independent journalists and professors a chance to make detailed arguments often contradicting the views expounded by Western mainstream media. Remember how the US and UK «pro-establishment» outlets defended the idea of military intervention in Iraq? That’s life. Governments are prone to employ strategies of manipulation to shape public opinions.
Alternative sources of information are the only way to shape impartial views. One has the right to choose news sources. Useful insights and information may be gained from a variety of the media outlets and RT is the one.
Until now RT has fended off the attacks. It has mustered broad support, including in social networks. The AP has not openly accused RT of running a pirated live-stream of outgoing President Barack Obama’s final speech. Nothing was said openly. Facebook has not responded to RT to explain why the restrictions have been placed on its account. YouTube’s request on sanctioned RT employees was said to be not politically motivated. But it’s not the end. The pressure will grow stronger to threaten the very same values the West has sworn to protect.
For instance, the human rights situation in America evokes concern serious enough to be addressed by media independent from the US government. For instance, Paul Craig Roberts, former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, asked for Russian citizenship accused of being a Russian agent for speaking his mind fearlessly. In particular, in an appearance on RT Mr. Roberts dared to support Senator Bernie Sanders for president.
Many hold an opinion that an information war is being waged. But even wars have certain laws to abide by but RT appears to be engaged in a fight without rules.
David Icke and the meaning of Jewish power
By Gilad Atzmon | January 24, 2017
Jewish power is the power to suppress discussion on Jewish power.
Seemingly this power is waning these days.
Jewish media outlets have reported today that campaigners are calling for a Manchester venue to be fined after it hosted “notorious anti-Semite” David Icke in front of a sold-out crowd this weekend.
But what is it that makes Icke into a “notorious anti-Semite?” He reckons that Jews control the world and started WWI. Icke also believes that Jews dominated the Versailles Peace Conference and created the circumstances which made the Second World War inevitable.
It is rather obvious to every reasonable human being that in a free society, Icke is entitled to his thoughts and should be free to share them with the rest of us.
Apparently, Stephen Silverman, the director of Campaign against Anti-Semitism (CAA) doesn’t agree at all. Jewish history, he believes, can’t be discussed freely. But can you think of any other people who attempt to block the rest of us from looking into their past? Can Muslims, for instance, stop us from looking into their history? As things stand, even the British ruling class doesn’t attempt to prevent us from looking into the crimes of British imperialism.
In Britain, some Jewish organisations attempt to stifle the discussion of the Jewish past. They probably know that they have a lot to hide. The truth of the matter is that Jews are often ashamed of their history. Early Zionism was, in fact, a promise to wipe out the Jewish past and introduce a new Jewish beginning on someone’s else land….
I learned today that Stephen Silverman isn’t just concerned with Icke’s take on Jewish history, he is also disturbed by the fact that some gentiles have managed to profit from Icke’s popularity. “Not only did the O2 Apollo allow him to address their packed venue for twelve hours, they profited from it.”
Silverman knows that looking at the current international blunders (inflicted on us by the likes of Soros, Goldman Sachs, Israel, neocons and others) in historical perspectives can’t be ignored anymore.
David Icke’s is on the road at the moment. Israel and its Sayanim are desperately trying to stop him for a reason… he is, obviously, a truth teller.
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Secret document reveals plans for civil war in Lebanon, Israeli false flags, and invasion
By Randi Nord | Geopolitics Alert | April 5, 2019
Beirut – During his visit with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Lebanese President Michael Aoun reportedly received a US-Israeli document detailing plans for creating a civil war in Lebanon with covert false flag operations and possible Israeli invasion.
Although the source of the document is Israeli and created in partnership with Washington, no one knows who presented it to Aoun. The Lebanese TV station, Al-Jadeed, initially reported the document on Lebanese TV and a video on its website. Geopolitics Alert translated the report for this article. … continue
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