[U]thorbiorn[/U] Yesterday at 10:57 PM
And then there was:
EU-wide ‘anti-Russian psy-ops’ program confirms UK govt funding, Anonymous denies leak
EU-wide ‘anti-Russian psy-ops’ program confirms UK govt funding, Anonymous denies leak
Click to expand...
Published time: 26 Nov, 2018 14:12
A network exposed by leaked documents as a Europe-wide PR operation aimed at curbing “Russian propaganda” has confirmed receiving money from the British government, while Anonymous has denied on Twitter that it’s behind the leak.
The Integrity Initiative (II) is a network claiming to fight disinformation that threatens democracy. A trove of alleged II documents, which purports to show costs and internal guidelines as well as names of individuals cooperating with it, has been published by people claiming to be part of the Anonymous collective. A major Anonymous-linked Twitter account has denied it was linked to the leak.
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My apologies, Thorbiorn. I happened to Post - much of the same information - about an hour after your entry and had failed to notice your Post in this thread? So, sorry. We must be on the same wavelength?
I would like to ask a Moderator ... to please delete the thread "Major Psy-Op in Europe Exposed" in "suggest an article for SOTT"
Thank You.
11.26.2018 - Major Psy-Op in Europe Exposed: UK Government Tramples on Values It Vowed to Protect
Major Psy-Op in Europe Exposed: UK Government Tramples on Values It Vowed to Protect
Those who have been saying that the West has turned Russia into a scapegoat to be blamed for each and every thing that goes wrong have been proved right. We have witnessed concocted stories invented to denigrate Moscow that have gone viral as directed by the secret services.
The UK, the country that is spearheading the anti-Russian information campaign, offers a good example that illustrates how this is being done.
An online group of hackers known as Anonymous has just revealed covert UK activities in the EU. According to the documents released by that group, London is in the midst of a major program to interfere in the internal affairs of EU members, the US, and Canada.
Document - https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/operation-integrity-initiative-british-informational-war-against-all/
Anonymous threatens to release more information on the clandestine operations of the UK government, unless it agrees to remove the shroud of secrecy protecting those information-warfare efforts. On Nov. 24 Twitter deleted RT comments on the issue. The UK knows it has friends it can rely on in a crunch.
The Integrity Initiative is a London-based organization set up and funded by the government-friendly Institute for Statecraft, in cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to wage information-warfare operations against Russia. Anonymous calls it a "large-scale information secret service." It aims to “change attitudes in Russia itself” as well as the influence of Russian natives living abroad. The Integrity Initiative’s budget for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2019 is estimated at £1.96 million ($2.51 million). The network has received grants from NATO, the US State Department, and Facebook.
The Initiative’s operations have been kept under wraps.
Its activities are conducted by “clusters” of local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists, and academics involved in anti-Russian propaganda efforts. The list includes William Browder, a US-British businessman convicted in absentia in Russia for tax evasion.
The Integrity Initiative network has offices from which to conduct its covert operations in France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Norway, Serbia, Spain, and Montenegro. Its plans to expand to the US, Canada, Eastern Europe, and the MENA region are already underway.
The Anonymous hackers mention
Operation Moncloa that was launched in June in Spain to
prevent Pedro Baños, a colonel known for his Russia-friendly views, from being appointed the new head of Spain's influential national security agency.
It’s all part of a broader picture.
In March, Prime Minister Theresa May promised to “defeat” Russia with a new cyber-warfare initiative titled the Fusion Doctrine. Back then, Ms. May
told British intelligence services to use social media “to prevent the spread of misinformation.” In other words, she has pulled the military into this anti-Russian propaganda effort. Security sources have floated the idea that that the UK
must harness “soft power” and “counter-propaganda” on social media networks.
Is it possible to imagine any media remaining independent in a country where they're part of a "soft power strategy" implemented by the government under the rallying cry of protecting national security?
This is the origin of so many fantasies about Russia and the imaginary threat it poses. The plan
included an enhanced role for the BBC World Service to promote British “values” abroad, ensuring that the Ofcom shuts down media organizations that fail to meet “high British standards.” Only gullible people can believe that such “values” and “standards” exist.
Russia has been used as a bogeyman to justify measures aimed at killing off the freedom of the media. Any story about Russia’s nefarious deeds spread by British news outlets should be taken with a grain of salt.
The UK government is facing some hard times. The Brexit deal with the EU is headed to parliament for approval. It’s impossible to predict whether the MPs will vote yes or no. Both outcomes
threaten the very existence of the United Kingdom. The use of the “Russian threat” is seen as one way to keep the nation united and the media under control.
Keeping its activities out of the public eye, the government is doing exactly what it has so indignantly accused Russia of. The pot is calling the kettle black. As the freedom of the press is being suppressed and the media networks are following the government’s instructions about what information they should offer their readers, UK officials continue to brazenly deliver their pompous speeches about the need to protect those very values to which the government itself poses the greatest challenge. Anonymous is right — any responsible government must explain the intentions behind the Integrity Initiative, how exactly it is funded, and why its activities should be shielded from public view.
* Example:
11.26.2018 - British Army Chief Jumps on the Anti-Russian Bandwagon
British Army Chief Jumps on the Anti-Russian Bandwagon
On November 24 the head of the British army, Lieutenant General Mark Carleton-Smith,
was reported as saying that “Russia today indisputably represents a far greater threat to our national security than Islamic extremist threats such as al-Qaida and Isil,” and that “The Russians seek to exploit vulnerability and weakness wherever they detect it... We cannot be complacent about the threat Russia poses or leave it uncontested.”
What threat? Does Britain really feel threatened militarily by Russia? The absurdity of this assertion beggars belief.
Carleton-Smith is apparently
convinced that “Russia has embarked on a systematic effort to explore and exploit Western vulnerabilities, particularly in some of the non-traditional areas of cyber, space, undersea warfare.”
Let’s ignore the fact that undersea warfare might be reasonably described as “traditional” because it has been conducted since at least
the siege of Syracuse in 414 BC, while the first functioning (if unsuccessful) military submarine was
the Turtle in the American Revolutionary War of 1776, and consider cyber warfare.
In 2014
NBC News reported that “Documents taken from the National Security Agency... describe techniques developed by a secret British spy unit called the Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG) as part of a growing mission to go on offense and attack adversaries ranging from Iran to the hacktivists of Anonymous. According to the documents, which come from presentations prepped in 2010 and 2012 for NSA cyber spy conferences, the agency’s goal was to ‘destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt’ enemies by ‘discrediting them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications’.”
NBC went on that “According to notes on the 2012 documents, a computer virus called Ambassadors Reception was ‘used in a variety of different areas’ and was ‘very effective.’ When sent to adversaries, says the presentation, the virus will ‘encrypt itself, delete all emails, encrypt all files, make [the] screen shake’ and block the computer user from logging on . . .”
So Carleton-Smith thinks Russia is entirely at fault, and a greater threat to Britain than Islamic State, because it is taking action in cyber-world to try to counter all the British (and US and Australian) efforts to “destroy, deny, degrade and disrupt” un-named “enemies” by “discrediting them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications.”
As to space, perhaps Carleton-Smith needs to be reminded that a week after he was appointed head of the British army on June 11, 2018, President Trump
declared “I am hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a space force as the sixth branch of the armed forces. Our destiny beyond the Earth is not only a matter of national identity but a matter of national security.”
In one of his disjointed rambling speeches Trump had already
given notice that “Space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea. We may even have a Space Force, develop another one, Space Force. We have the Air Force, we'll have the Space Force.”
His initial comments were off-script, but his potentially devastating fantasies were given substance by later actions — and it is therefore not surprising that the world sat up and took notice, and that China and Russia are developing plans to counter this obscene extension of the global aggression displayed by Washington’s Military Industrial Complex and its well-rewarded Congressional cheerleaders.
Then we come to Carleton-Smith’s “undersea warfare” (which happens
to be the title of the US Navy’s “professional magazine of the undersea warfare community”). This is an intriguing inclusion in his list of Russian threats to Britain, because recently there were other (“non-traditional”?) undersea operations in the Arctic, named ICEX 2018. Concerning these manoeuvres it
was reported that the submarines USS Connecticut, USS Hartford and the Royal Navy’s HMS Trenchant, “spent 105 days under ice while steaming over 21,000 nautical miles. Combined, they performed 20 through-ice surfacings including the first three-submarine ICEX since 1991.”
The Arctic is extremely important to Russia as a potential source of minerals and a commercially important shipping route, as the ice continues to melt. As
observed by Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, “The Arctic has turned into an object of territorial, resource and military-strategic interest for a number of states. This could lead to growth in the potential for conflict in this region.”
The potential for conflict was highlighted by the US-UK submarine manoeuvres and a number of other indicators
described in SCF, not the least of which is Britain’s
parliamentary declaration that “NATO’s renewed focus on the North Atlantic is welcome and the Government should be congratulated on the leadership the UK has shown on this issue.”
Which brings us, finally, to Carleton-Smith and NATO, which organisation he greatly admires. He believes the military alliance represents the “centre of gravity of European security”, insisting that it has been “extraordinarily successful” and therefore “In my experience, we should reinforce success.”
That would be the NATO “success” that destroyed Libya in a nine-month aerial blitz that resulted in anarchy and expansion westwards of Islamic State. As I write, Voice of America
is reporting that “at least nine security service members were killed in a suspected Islamic State group attack in the south-eastern Libyan town of Tazerbo” which rather makes nonsense of the Carleton-Smith claim, in his
interview with the Daily Telegraph’s foreign editor, a sycophantic creep called Con Coughlin, that “The physical manifestation of the Islamist threat has diminished with the complete destruction of the geography of the so-called Caliphate.”
Then there is the US-NATO “extraordinarily successful” conflict in Afghanistan, where the death of yet another US soldier has just
been notified along with
news that 27 Afghan soldiers were killed in a bomb explosion while they were praying. This is somewhat at variance with views of Carleton-Smith’s father, Major General (retired) Sir Michael Carleton-Smith, who told
his local newspaper that the war in Afghanistan “undoubtedly it has been worth it. Afghanistan still has massive problems, but it’s a better place now than it was when we went in.” What garbage.
But then we realize that there is a bigger picture,
as explained in the UK Defense Journal which tells us that “Further to the
Defense Select Committee’s report... Carleton-Smith stated that the defense budget ‘should be in direct proportion to the threat’. This remark was made more poignant by the fact that the previous day, Lt Gen Frank Leidenberger from Germany referred to “the good old days of the Cold War”, and suggested that in 2018, we are in a ‘lukewarm war’. Mark Lancaster MP (Minister of State for the Armed Forces) was another who argued that the threat now is as bad as it was during the Cold War.”
When you want more money, you hype the threat.
Carleton-Smith ended his address
to the Royal United Services Institute in London by saying “we are all custodians of something exceptionally precious, not just our Army, but our nation’s Army and it’s made of flesh and blood - and beating hearts.”
And damn-fool generals.
