Showing posts with label stratcomm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stratcomm. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

More on Wikipedia, Philip Cross and Wikispooks — 22 May 2018


Intel Today
Wikipedia & the Spooks — The Remake? [The Philip Cross Affair]
L (Ludwig De Braeckeleer)

Craig Murray Blog
Philip Cross Madness Part IV
Craig Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Caitlin Johnstone — Wikipedia Is An Establishment Psyop

As we discussed last time, the only real power in this world is the ability to control the dominant narrative about what’s going on. The only reason government works the way it works, money operates the way it operates, and authority rests where it rests is because everyone has agreed to pretend that that’s how things are. In actuality, government, money and authority are all man-made conceptual constructs and the collective can choose to change them whenever it wants. The only reason this hasn’t happened in our deeply dysfunctional society yet is because the plutocrats who rule us have been successful in controlling the narrative.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. This has always been the case....
Push is coming to shove.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Wikipedia Is An Establishment Psyop
Caitlin Johnstone

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Philip Giraldi — How False Flag Operations Are Carried Out Today

False Flag is a concept that goes back centuries. It was considered to be a legitimate ploy by the Greeks and Romans, where a military force would pretend to be friendly to get close to an enemy before dropping the pretense and raising its banners to reveal its own affiliation just before launching an attack. In the sea battles of the eighteenth century among Spain, France and Britain hoisting an enemy flag instead of one’s own to confuse the opponent was considered to be a legitimate ruse de guerre, but it was only “honorable” if one reverted to one’s own flag before engaging in combat.
Today’s false flag operations are generally carried out by intelligence agencies and non-government actors including terrorist groups, but they are only considered successful if the true attribution of an action remains secret. There is nothing honorable about them as their intention is to blame an innocent party for something that it did not do. There has been a lot of such activity lately and it was interesting to learn by way of a leak that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has developed a capability to mimic the internet fingerprints of other foreign intelligence services. That means that when the media is trumpeting news reports that the Russians or Chinese hacked into U.S. government websites or the sites of major corporations, it could actually have been the CIA carrying out the intrusion and making it look like it originated in Moscow or Beijing. Given that capability, there has been considerable speculation in the alternative media that it was actually the CIA that interfered in the 2016 national elections in the United States....
Strategic Culture Foundation
How False Flag Operations Are Carried Out Today
Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer, now Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and founding member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Caitlin Johnstone — MSM Is Frantically Attacking Dissenting Syria Narratives, And It Looks Really Bad

Many of these recent hit pieces are coming out of the UK, which is interesting given the way a BBC reporter recently admonished her interviewee for questioning the official story about the alleged Douma chemical attacks because his words could hurt the “information war” effort against Russia. If this view is widespread among British journalists (and recent headlines by the Times, the Independent and the Telegraphsuggest that it may be), this means we’re looking at an environment wherein reporters aren’t even pretending it’s their job to be truthful, tell all sides of a story and hold power to account, but rather to manufacture support for escalations against Russia and undermine anyone who resists....
Overreach.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
MSM Is Frantically Attacking Dissenting Syria Narratives, And It Looks Really Bad
Caitlin Johnston

See also

Ed Schulz, Cenk Uygur, Mika Brzezinski, Phil Donahue, Ashleigh Banfield.
People scoff at state-funded channels like RT, while singing the praises of channels like MSNBC and CNN. Those networks benefit hugely from the myth that because they are not state-funded, they are somehow independent.
These are networks owned by giant parent corporations with plenty of skin in the political game — yet, it is rarely acknowledged that these corporations have a detrimental influence on the quality of journalism produced by their employees. The truth is rarely uttered, that network stars like Rachel Maddow are completely beholden to those corporate and political interests — and that this basic fact massively influences their reporting....
And this is just MSNBC, hardly the worst of the lot of US media.

RT
Former MSNBC journalists expose the channel’s ‘pro-establishment bias’
Danielle Ryan, Irish freelance journalist

ht Naked Capitalism for both links.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Peter Van Buren — Christopher Steele: The Real Foreign Influence in the 2016 Election?

His dossier was more than opposition research, it was part of a full-spectrum information operation.
The American Conservative
Christopher Steele: The Real Foreign Influence in the 2016 Election?
Peter Van Buren, 24-year US State Department veteran

Glenn Greenwald — Dutch Official Admits Lying About Meeting With Putin: Is Fake News Used by Russia or About Russia?

“Fake news” is certainly something to worry about when it emanates from foreign adversaries, but it is at least as concerning and threatening, if not more so, when emanating from one’s own governments and media. And there are countless, highly significant examples beyond today’s of such propaganda that emanates from within....
The Intercept
Dutch Official Admits Lying About Meeting With Putin: Is Fake News Used by Russia or About Russia?
Glenn Greenwald

See also

AntiMedia
The US Now Admits There Is No Evidence Assad Used Sarin Gas in Syria
Truth in Media

also

The Telegraph
Macron: 'France will strike' if use of chemical weapons in Syria is proven

Fort Russ
Macron admits there are no chemical weapons being used by Syrian army

Also

RT
Tip-off received on Al-Nusra, White Helmets plotting chemical weapons provocation in Syria – Moscow

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Tim Hayward — The Guardian, White Helmets, and silenced comment


Setting the record straight on the fake news about the White Helmets and suppression of dissent.

Renegade News
The Guardian, White Helmets, and silenced comment
Tim Hayward | Professor of Environmental Political Theory at At Edinburgh University and founding Director of the Just World Institute and the Ethics Forum. He is a founding member of the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought

See also
It's so absurd it's hard to believe, but when it comes to US policy absurdity has been par for the course over the past years. At an international meeting hosted by France on global chemical weapons proliferation Secretary of State Rex Tillerson blamed both Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and Russia for carrying out a purported new chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta. Speaking from Paris on Tuesday, Tillerson said, "Whoever conducted the attacks Russia ultimately bears responsibility for the victims in eastern Ghouta and countless other Syrians targeted with chemical weapons since Russia became involved in Syria."
That's right - in the same sentence Tillerson leveled the accusation against Russia, while simultaneously pointing the finger at Assad, he admitted that he really doesn't know much at all about "whoever conducted the attacks"....
Zero Hedge
Tillerson Blames Russia For Alleged Syria Chemical Attack After Admitting He Doesn't Actually Know Who Did It
Tyler Durden

Monday, January 22, 2018

Gordon M. Hahn — Russian Propaganda Machine: Much Ado About Little as Compared with Western Stratcomm

Much is being made about the ostensibly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Russian propaganda machine. In the Western view, it decides Western elections and threatens the ‘global liberal order’. In fact, an anti-Putin media organ has published a comparison of the resources devoted to propaganda or ‘strategic communications (stratcomm) by Russian and just the US (excluding European) governments. It demonstrates that the American propaganda machine alone is approximately 3-4 times more robust than Moscow’s (https://meduza.io/en/short/2017/09/14/comparing-russian-and-american-government-propaganda)....
Russian and Eurasian Politics
Russian Propaganda Machine: Much Ado About Little as Compared with Western Stratcomm
Gordon M. Hahn, analyst and Advisory Board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, member of the Executive Advisory Board at the American Institute of Geostrategy, a contributing expert for Russia Direct, a senior researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, Akribis Group, and; and an analyst and consultant for Russia – Other Points of View

See also

RT
Wish I had direct line with Putin, but I don’t – RT Editor-in-Chief

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Glenn Greenwald — Four Viral Claims Spread by Journalists on Twitter in the Last Week Alone That are False

There is ample talk, particularly of late, about the threats posed by social media to democracy and political discourse. Yet one of the primary ways that democracy is degraded by platforms such and Facebook and Twitter is, for obvious reasons, typically ignored in such discussions: the way they are used by American journalists to endorse factually false claims that quickly spread and become viral, entrenched into narratives, and thus can never be adequately corrected.
The design of Twitter, where many political journalists spend their time, is in large part responsible for this damage. Its space constraints mean that tweeted headlines or tiny summaries of reporting are often assumed to be true with no critical analysis of their accuracy, and are easily spread. Claims from journalists that people want to believe are shared like wildfire, while less popular, subsequent corrections or nuanced debunking are easily ignored. Whatever one’s views are on the actual impact of Twitter Russian bots, surely the propensity of journalistic falsehoods to spread far and wide is at least as significant.
Just in the last week alone, there have been four major factually false claims that have gone viral because journalists on Twitter endorsed and spread them: three about the controversy involving Donna Brazile and the DNC, and one about documents and emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. It’s well worth examining them, both to document what the actual truth is as well as to understand how often and easily this online journalistic misleading occurs:
"Our" fake news is just innocent spin. "Theirs" is propaganda designed to undermine democracy.

Most significant:
Viral Falsehood #4: Evidence has emerged proving that the content of WikiLeaks documents and emails was doctored.

From the time WikiLeaks began last year publishing emails and documents from the DNC and John Podesta’s email inbox, Clinton officials and their media supporters have constantly insinuated, and sometimes outright stated, that the WikiLeaks documents were frauds because they had been altered. What was most notable about this accusation was how easy it would have been prove it had it really been true: all anyone had to do was show the actual, original email that they sent or received, and then compare it to the altered WikiLeaks version, and that would have been proof that WikiLeaks archive was unreliable.
But that never happened. Never once did any of the dozens of Democratic Party operatives who sent or received the emails published by WikiLeaks point to a single specific case of an alteration – something that, obviously, they would have eagerly done had they been able to.….

Saturday, November 4, 2017

Gordon M. Hahn — Who’s Been Interfering in Whose Politics?


Setting the record straight.
We are hearing much about Russian efforts to interfere in American politics. This is justifiable if overstated. Less justified is the deadly silence in the Western media regarding persistent post-cold war American meddling in Russian domestic politics, including the same interference by Americans and the American government in Russian elections that Russians and the Russian government are accused of regarding the recent U.S. elections. A key instrument is America’s and the West’s elaborate and robust ‘strategic communications’ or propaganda network, spearheaded by Radio Free Liberty/Free Europe (RFERL). Aside from propaganda efforts, direct involvement has occurred in Russian and other countries’ internal politics.
Indeed, U.S. government entities acknowledge this openly in their internal discussions. For example, a Marine Corps University Journal article explicitly stated that democracy-promotion and stratcomm support prodemocratic parties “to bring about a crisis” in regimes deemed authoritarian in order “to encourage a democratic transition.” In examining democracy-promotion’s “international dimension,” the article discusses “coercive” and “intrusive” measures in support of creating democratic regimes in authoritarian states as well as more benign methods of “prodemocratic public diplomacy.”
Its author defined democracy promotion as “combined action of government agencies and private partners” that seeks to “influence opinion and mobilize the public in ways that support interests and policies of foreign states” within the target state. Its “essence” is “strategic communication,” which is modern-speak for propaganda and “aims to capture the hearts and minds of the general public in recipient countries” (my emphasis from Alessandra Pinna, “The International Dimension of Democratization: Actors, Motivations, and Strategies,” Marine Corps University Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 27-57, at pp. 49-50 and 55). More importantly, the US has a long history of actually destabilizing regimes to the benefit of its own interests, not just democracy....
Russian and Eurasian Politics
Who’s Been Interfering in Whose Politics?
Gordon M. Hahn, analyst and Advisory Board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, member of the Executive Advisory Board at the American Institute of Geostrategy, a contributing expert for Russia Direct, a senior researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, Akribis Group, and; and an analyst and consultant for Russia – Other Points of View

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Andrey Afanasyev — Information warfare: tools and methods

It's no secret that the US runs the organization BBG - Broadcasting Board of Governors - which is responsible for coordinating the international American media abroad, and in Russia. For instance, these are well-known media "Voice of America" and "Radio Liberty". Also, a new project "Present Time" has recently appeared and it is designed for a new audience in social networks.
However, it is worth paying attention to how these three media work. And mostly they work methodically and as a kind of entry points of information. The scheme is simple: firstly, a publication appears on one of three sites or in the social networks and accounts of these structures that are openly controlled by the US government and do not hide this fact, and then this information goes through the so-called opposition media to the national level as something already well-known and understandable . Being biased and nonobjective, the information is spread among Western journalists....
For example, let’s consider the arrest of Mr. Udaltsov, who participated in unauthorized rallies. Firstly, the information appeared on the website of Radio Liberty, and then it spread through “Novaya Gazeta” and “Echo of Moscow”. It took 30-40 minutes to do it, and the articles coincided totally with the original one.…
This is an extremely complicated hybrid threat. It is hard to prove this threat legally: you will be accused immediately of conspiracy. But it is possible to apply some kind of philological expertise in order to demonstrate it, for example, to demonstrate that there were several levels of this information attack....

On the one hand, it's clearly controlled by BBG, but it's getting harder and harder, and in the end, every message and information mutates, and it's even integrated into a number of national media. And it turns out that the mass consciousness gets inherently fake and anti-Russian information.
The echo chamber. Mirrors what the West is saying about Sputnik, RT, and social media "trolls."

The difference is that the US has a long history of this going back to the Cold War, whereas the Russian reaction is recent.

Katehon think tank. Geopolitics & Tradition
Andrey Afanasyev: Information warfare: tools and methods

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Gordon M. Hahn — Russian Propaganda Machine: Much Ado About Little as Compared with Western Stratcomm

Much is being made about the ostensibly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Russian propaganda machine. In the Western view, it decides Western elections and threatens the ‘global liberal order’. In fact, an anti-Putin media organ has published a comparison of the resources devoted to propaganda or ‘strategic communications (stratcomm) by Russian and just the US (excluding European) governments. It demonstrates that the American propaganda machine alone is approximately 3-4 times more robust than Moscow’s (https://meduza.io/en/short/2017/09/14/comparing-russian-and-american-government-propaganda).
Moreover, the US stratcomm machine is growing in leaps and bounds ever since the Ukraine crisis provoked by endless NATO expansion. Just one example, is a NATO-tied American think tank, the Central European Policy Center, funded by US tax payer dollars, is like many other such institutes springing up in the US and Europe specializing in strategic communications to advance the mission of NATO expansion. For the last quarter of a century that expansion eastward to Russia’s borders has undermined Western-Russian relations and Russia’s early post-Cold War Western trajectory, alienated Russia from democracy and the free market, and ushered in the poorly labeled ‘New Cold War.’ CEPA’s stratcomm is representative of a general deficient US stratcomm deployed by a series of old and new ‘research institutes’ and media spread across the frontier between Russia and Eastern/Central Europe.
A recent CEPA stratcomm piece demonstrates the irony that while Washington and Brusslels decry Moscow’s propaganda on RT, by trolls, and other media, they lag behind in such activity only by the quality of their own strategic communications....
Russian and Eurasian Politics
Russian Propaganda Machine: Much Ado About Little as Compared with Western StratcommGordon M. Hahn, analyst and Advisory Board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, member of the Executive Advisory Board at the American Institute of Geostrategy, a contributing expert for Russia Direct, a senior researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, Akribis Group, and; and an analyst and consultant for Russia – Other Points of View

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

James Carden — Our Russia Fixation Is Devolving Into an Assault on Political Discourse

A new project by the German Marshall Fund claims to track the influence of foreign propaganda—but warps reality to accommodate an alarming new Russophobia.
Anyone see a pattern emerging?

The Nation
Our Russia Fixation Is Devolving Into an Assault on Political Discourse
James Carden, contributing writer at The Nation and the executive editor for the American Committee for East-West Accord

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Gregory Clark — False claims and false flag stories

The April 4 incident is just the last in a long list of false flag or false claim incidents used to justify the aggressive use of U.S. power. They began back in 1960 with Operation Mongoose in Cuba, the faked 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident of the coast of Vietnam, claimed WMD in Iraq and now what we see in Syria. We also see the easily refutable campaigns to demonize alleged enemies, Russia especially. For example, over alleged Russian aggression in the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine we need only read the text of the 2015 Minsk Agreement seeking to end the dispute to see that continued hostilities are entirely the responsibility of a Ukraine that still refuses the constitutional amendments to give the area promised autonomy. But you will not see anything about this in the biased U.S. media, which loses no opportunity to carry on about “Russian aggression.”

Equally alarming is the way the biased U.S. media now accuse the foreign media seeking to correct these falsehoods as biased and deserving of suppression, the RT (Russia Today) channel especially....
The Japan Times — Opinion
False claims and false flag stories
Western governments and media are free to say whatever they like, no matter how phoney
Gregory Clark | former Australian diplomat long involved in East-West diplomatic relations who now lives in Japan

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Brian Cloughley — Escalation of the Propaganda War — A Rerun of the Zinoviev Letter

On 27 June the London Daily Telegraph newspaper, a sad remnant of its former admirable self, carried a piece captioned «Britain's new £3bn warship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, set to squeeze out of dockyard for the first time — and Russian spies are watching». The fact that this vastly expensive floating white elephant will not be deployable until 2021 — if it has aircraft by that time — is neither here nor there. What is intriguing is the statement, without the slightest evidence, that Russia is spying on it....
This is what governments do when preparing the population for impending war.

Strategic Culture Foundation — Opinion
Escalation of the Propaganda War — A Rerun of the Zinoviev Letter
Brian Cloughley | British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan

RT — Not a single war in recent years has started without powerful press ‘artillery’ – RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan

There has not been a war in recent times that began without “a powerful press artillery” and “precision bombing” by media, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said, speaking in front of President Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Simonyan expressed her concern over the media’s growing, and often boundless, influence and the way it changes the world around us, during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Moscow.
“We live in unique times, when media – the so-called fourth estate – in many countries is trying to become, and sometimes becomes, the first: sets the rules of the game, controls public opinion, doesn’t just change people’s attitude towards a leader or a state, but alters the values of entire societies,” RT’s editor-in-chief said... 
What she doesn't mention is that much of the disinformation and psyops is planted by intel agencies.

RT
Not a single war in recent years has started without powerful press ‘artillery’ – RT editor-in-chief