Intel Today
Wikipedia & the Spooks — The Remake? [The Philip Cross Affair]
L (Ludwig De Braeckeleer)
Philip Cross Madness Part IV
Craig Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee
An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
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.
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.
Strategic Culture FoundationToday’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....
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.
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.
His dossier was more than opposition research, it was part of a full-spectrum information operation.The American Conservative
“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....
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
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
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.
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.….
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
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....The echo chamber. Mirrors what the West is saying about Sputnik, RT, and social media "trolls."
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.
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
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 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.”The Japan Times — Opinion
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....
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.
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.