Media

[TsarSamuil]

UK: Tommy Robinson says guilty verdict is part of plan to get him 'killed in prison'

Ruptly
Jul 5, 2019



English Defence League co-founder Tommy Robinson said he believed that the authorities "genuinely want me to be killed in prison," after having been found guilty of contempt of court for a second time in London on Friday.

In May 2018, Robinson, who has already been to prison three times for assault, illegally entering the US, and mortgage fraud, was sentenced to 13 months in prison for contempt of court after live-streaming outside a criminal trial, in violation of reporting restrictions.

However, the court of appeal quashed the contempt finding, freeing Robinson only two months into his sentence.

The case was then referred to the attorney general, who stated that it was in the public interest to bring fresh proceedings.

Robinson was found guilty of breaching reporting restrictions on the trial by live-streaming the defendants as they left the court, while also questioning them aggressively.

Sentencing will take place on July 11 with Robinson facing a maximum of two years behind bars.

[TsarSamuil]

Russia declares Atlantic Council think tank an ‘undesirable’ organization – what exactly is it?

RT.com
25 Jul, 2019 18:44

The controversial pro-NATO Atlantic Council think tank has been added to a list of “undesirable” organizations and forbidden from operating within Russia.

Russia’s Prosecutor General said on Thursday that it had decided to recognize the activities of the Atlantic Council (AC) as those of a “foreign non-governmental organization” and as “undesirable” within the country.

“It has been established that the activities of this organization pose a threat to the fundamentals of the constitutional system and the security of the Russian Federation,” a statement said.

The Russian law forbids “undesirable organizations” from opening offices and disseminating its materials in the country. Being part of such a group may result in an administrative fine of up to 100,000 (around $1,600) rubles or criminal liability with a prison term of between two to six years. The AC is the 17th organization to be slapped with that label.

Founded in 1961, the Atlantic Council is a rabidly anti-Russia think tank based in Washington DC and is handsomely funded by a bevy of US and UK arms manufacturers, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing. It has been described by other analysts as the“propaganda arm” of the NATO military alliance. Consistent with its military funding, AC experts – or “fellows” as they call themselves – advocate for the engagement of the US military as frequently as possible in conflicts around the world.

US ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman used to be the chairman of the organization until 2017. The founder of Baring Vostok private equity fund, Michael Calvey, who is now on trial for large scale fraud in Russia, was one of its board members and the largest private investor, according to the annual report.

While the Russian prosecutor general’s statement describes the AC as an “NGO,” that seems to be not quite an accurate description, given that the organization also receives funding from the US State Department and the British Foreign Office.

The AC regularly hosts forums attended by political, business and academic figures who compete with each other to see who can suggest the most hostile Western course of action toward Russia.

Speaking at an Atlantic Council event in February, US chief of naval operations Adm. John Richardson called for more American aggression toward Russia and China, saying that when it comes to defending key waterways around the world, the US should become more “muscular,” should “strike first” and force Russia to “respond to our first move.”

Last year, Facebook teamed up with an Atlantic Council offshoot known as the ‘Digital Forensic Lab’ in an effort to combat “fake news” on the social media platform. Shortly after, Facebook went on a censorship spree, suspending pages belonging to left-leaning Venezuelan media outlets which were daring to question historically disastrous US foreign policy in Latin America.

Despite its clear bias and US and UK government funding, AC employees are regularly cited as objective ‘expert’ sources in mainstream media reports.

[TsarSamuil]

Ofcom’s £200,000 fine against RT ‘inappropriate and disproportionate’

RT.com
26 Jul, 2019 09:16

British broadcast regulator Ofcom slapped RT with a six-figure fine for allegedly breaching impartiality rules. It comes before a pending Judicial Review and dwarfs fines imposed on media outlets that gave air to hate speech.

Last December, Ofcom said that in seven instances over the year RT failed to adhere to the British impartiality rules when covering controversial issues like the Skripal poisoning case in the UK or the role played by the US in the war in Syria. RT believes the decision to be wrong and has challenged it in court. Last month, London High Court allowed the case to proceed despite Ofcom claiming that RT’s case had no merit.

On Friday, the regulator announced its decision to slap a £200,000 ($250,000) fine on RT as sanction for the alleged 2018 violations. The penalty seems “particularly inappropriate and disproportionate per Ofcom’s own track record,” RT’s press service said in response.

“It is very wrong for Ofcom to have issued a sanction against RT on the basis of its breach findings that are currently under Judicial Review by the High Court in London. RT went to court over Ofcom’s December findings against our network because we believe that they were reached in a manner contrary to the law and were wrong. Last month we received confirmation from a judge at a hearing in the High Court that, despite Ofcom's opposition, our case against Ofcom should proceed. And while we continue to contest the very legitimacy of the breach decisions themselves, we find the scale of proposed penalty to be particularly inappropriate and disproportionate per Ofcom’s own track record. It is notable that cases that involved hate speech and incitement to violence have been subject to substantially lower fines. ”

In 2016, Ofcom fined Peace TV Urdu £65,000 for airing public lectures, in which the Jewish people were called a “cursed race” possessing “evil genius” that wants “to bring the world to heel through the global banking network”.

The same year Noor TV was fined £75,000 for airing a sermon, during which a speaker said that killing a Jew would be an act of devotion to the will of Prophet Muhammed.

“It is astonishing that, in contrast, Ofcom sees RT's programmes – which Ofcom thought should have presented more alternative points of view – as worthy of greater sanction than programmes containing hate speech and incitement to violence.“We are duly considering further legal options,” RT press service said.

[TsarSamuil]

Unacceptable content? YouTube ad policy bans keyword ‘Christian’

RT.com
26 Jul, 2019 01:38

When the founder of a Christian veterans group tried to upload a YouTube ad for his organization, he received an odd rejection, informing him the keyword “Christian” was no longer acceptable under the site’s ad targeting policy.

Chad Robichaux, founder of the Mighty Oaks Foundation, a charitable group that helps veterans overcome wartime trauma, took to Twitter with a screenshot detailing his encounter with the tech giant.

“So one of the keywords to boost the ad was the word ‘Christian,’ which we use regularly. The ad was denied specifically because of the use of the word ‘Christian.’

“This is the first time we'd seen this,” Robichaux told Faithwire in an interview. Within hours of Robichaux’s post, YouTube attempted to explain the situation in a tweet of its own.

“We know that religious beliefs are personal, so we don’t allow advertisers to target users on the basis of religion,” the Google-owned platform said. “Beyond that, we don’t have policies against advertising that includes religious terms like ‘Christian.’”

The veteran fired back, arguing the company’s statement was demonstrably false and that he had used the same keyword in previous ads without problems “for years.” Moreover, he claims when he tried running the same ad but with the keyword “Muslim” instead, there was no issue.

“We’ve ran ads with the keyword ‘Christian’ for years. This year alone we had 150,000 impressions on that word in our ads,” Robichaux responded, adding “We ran the exact same ad with the keyword ‘Muslim’ & it was approved but ‘Christian’ was not.”

After speaking with Google’s help desk, however, Robichaux was told the policy was new. Google has yet to comment publicly on the matter.

[TsarSamuil]

Russia accuses German broadcaster & foreign NGOs of meddling in election protests.

RT.com
8 Aug, 2019 21:43

German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and several foreign NGOs interfered in Russia’s internal affairs by calling on people to join the unsanctioned protests in the capital, Russian authorities say.

“Such media escapades are against to the norms of professional journalist ethics and constitute an attempt by the German media corporation to meddle in the internal affairs of Russia,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, warning that Moscow will respond in line with the country’s legislation in case of a repeat violation.

Germany’s ambassador to Moscow, Beate Grzeski, was called up to the ministry on Thursday for explanations.

“Moscow, come out!” Deutsche Welle’s bureau in Russia wrote on Twitter on July 27, when 3,500 participated in an unsanctioned rally in central Moscow. Demonstrators took to the streets after opposition candidates were disqualified from the upcoming City Council election over paperwork irregularities. The event was marred by clashes, which resulted in around 1,000 detentions.

Last Saturday, when 1,500 gathered in the capital for another illegal protest, the German broadcaster informed its Twitter followers of the exact time of the rally, while an article on its website shared the route that protesters were planning to take.

The Prosecutor General’s Office said that foreign non-governmental organizations also made attempts to stir up the protest moods in the country in recent weeks.

US think tanks the Atlantic Council and Free Russia Foundation, as well as Canada-based Ukrainian World Congress “carry out anti-Russian information and propaganda campaigns” that are aimed at discrediting the country’s leadership, persuading the public opinion that the change of government is needed as well as “destabilizing the socio-political situation and escalating protest moods,” said Artur Zavalunov, head of the legal department at the Prosecutor General’s Office.

These foreign NGOs also work to undermine Russia’s economy, promote the image of Russia as an aggressor, and urge foreign governments to apply political and sanction pressure on Moscow, he added.

Meddling into electoral process in Russia is also among the activities of these NGOs, Zavalunov said, promising that the prosecutors will “pay special attention” to such activities in the run-up to the September 8 vote.

Last month, the Atlantic Council, Free Russia Foundation and Ukrainian World Congress were placed on the list of ‘undesirable’ organizations due to being “a threat to the fundamentals of the constitutional system and the security” of the country. The move meant that those groups were barred from opening offices and disseminating their materials in Russia, under threat of fines and prison sentences for violations.

The Interim Commission for the Protection of Russian State Sovereignty met on Thursday to discuss ways of protecting the upcoming election from external interference.

After the meeting, Senator Andrey Klimov told RT that “Russia’s aim isn’t to spin the confrontation” with the West. However, Moscow is determined to “shut any loopholes for such meddling to occur.”

Klimov said that the Russia already has all the needed legislation to curb any interference and the thing now is “to learn to use it effectively.”

“In line with our legislation, on our sovereign territory we can do a lot,” Klimov pointed out, adding that the Commission will formulate some new proposals in September.

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Not YouTube's business: Russian telecom watchdog tells Google to stop promoting unsanctioned rallies.

RT.com
11 Aug, 2019 16:09

Russian regulator Roskomnadzor told Google it must curb use of its video platform YouTube for promotion of opposition rallies, after sanctioned protests in Moscow ended up with some activists being spurred to take illegal action.

The regulator said “a number of structures that operate YouTube channels have been purchasing YouTube advertising instruments (i.e. push notification) to disseminate information about unsanctioned (unlawful) mass gatherings” in Russia. Some users of the platforms, who never subscribed to said channels, received such unsolicited messages, Roskomnadzor (RKN) said.

Google, which owns YouTube, was notified that it should stop such use of its platform or face consequences, the Sunday statement said. The company did not immediately respond to the allegations.

A claim that YouTube had been used to promote unsanctioned rallies was alsomade on Saturday by Senator Andery Klimov, who chairs an ad hoc commission on state sovereignty protection and foreign interference prevention. He said Russia’s “foreign opponents” tried to manipulate opposition activists and convince them to take part in an illegal demonstration earlier on in the day.

There was a sanctioned rally in Moscow on Saturday, where tens of thousands of people showed up to protest what they see as an attempt to suspend opposition candidates from the upcoming city council election. The event went smoothly, but after it was over some of the attendees, according to reports, proceeded to protest during a walk to the city’s center in what the police called an unsanctioned protest march. Some 130 of those people were detained.

According to Klimov, the unsanctioned sequel was encouraged by push notifications sent to people, who took part in the sanctioned protest. The lawmaker said this could not have happened “without the complicity of certain Western organizations, owners of the relevant network companies.”

Neither the senator nor RKN publicly offered an example of the alleged incendiary messages or detailed how many people may have received them.

[TsarSamuil]

Venezuelan Opposition Journalist Served as Agent for US, UK Gov’t.

In a U.S. diplomatic cable, Bocaranda is dubbed a “reliable source” and to be “strictly protected."

By TeleSUR English
Aug 14th 2019 at 11.18am

Venezuelan Ambassador to the United Nations Samuel Moncada revealed evidence that well-known opposition ‘journalist’ Nelson Bocaranda has served as a “local agent” of the United States and United Kingdom governments since the 1980s in a series of tweets Sunday and Monday.

“In Venezuela, there are collaborators who lend themselves to surrender their homeland to traffickers of war and colonization. For years they have presented themselves as journalists and have enjoyed an unworthy reputation,” the Venezuelan diplomat and historian said.

According to Moncada, in 1982 as the Malvinas Islands’ conflict raged between the UK and Argentina, the then UK Ambassador to Venezuela “needed a local agent who did not seem to defend the British” in order to confuse the Venezuelan public, which was pro-Argentina, with propaganda.

Their “ally” was Nelson Bocaranda, who had a primetime show on the private TV station RCTV. The ambassador then allegedly paid Bocaranda to broadcast a pro-British documentary. The agreement was done in secret as it was about disguising propaganda as “information.”

“The proof was so difficult to obtain, but we have it. They are official documents of the British government that were never written with the intention of being published,” Moncada said, sharing a document issued by the UK embassy in Caracas titled “Annual Information Report” and signed by VJ Henderson, First Secretary, and Information Officer, on July 13 and August 2, 1982.

The documents read, “We managed to persuade Nelson Bocaranda of Channel 2 to show the movie of the Information Commission about the history of the Falklands [Malvinas] dispute in his morning show. He did it with an Argentine in the studio to refute. Despite the refutation, Bocaranda received a great deal of criticism during and after the program for having broadcast ‘British propaganda’. He was clearly shocked at the end of the program.

When we spoke with him shortly after, he showed a strange mixture of euphoria for having aroused so much ‘controversy’ and concern about having been exposed too much. Nelson is an ally of ours, but we will have to take care of him for a good while. On this occasion, we spent almost all the capital we had deposited in him. To use it effectively again we will need to accumulate a little more capital.”

Yet this would not be the only time Bocaranda would be used by a foreign government to spy and act against his country.

On Monday, Venezuela’s representative to the U.N. took to Twitter again to argue that Bocaranda also served the US government.

“In 2009, the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela wrote a confidential cable to Washington, stating that Bocaranda was secretly passing on the operational capacity of the Venezuelan Air Force,” Moncada affirmed.



The leaked diplomatic cable published in WikiLeaks, dated November 20, 2009, and signed by former US Ambassador to Venezuela Patrick Duddy, reports that Bocaranda informed the foreign representative on November 16 that Venezuela only had eight pilots for its 20 F-16s.

The cable, in which Bocaranda is dubbed a “reliable source” and to be “strictly protected,” goes on to say that the journalist informed of an alleged visit to Caracas by Colombian guerrillas in what he “believed” was a plan to set up a provocation either along the Venezuelan-Colombian border or even within Colombian territory.

“This misinformation has nothing to do with the professional ethics of a journalist. It is a clear act of spreading toxic information to provide excuses for the U.S. and Colombia to attack Venezuela,” Moncada commented.

The diplomat reminded that Bocaranda violated Venezuelan laws and cited article 128 of the Venezuelan criminal code, as it states that “anyone who conspires with a foreign country, foreign enemies, terrorist groups or associations, paramilitaries, insurgents or subversives; against the integrity the territory or against its republican institutions, or harass them by any means for any of these purposes, will be punished with the imprisonment penalty of twenty to thirty years.”

[TsarSamuil]

First they came for the bots: US academics make case for 1984-style silencing of any dissent.

Helen Buyniski, RT
21 Aug, 2019 01:57

With the "Russian meddling" theory of Trump's victory on life support heading into 2020, US academic researchers have heeded the patriotic call and put forth a new definition of "disinformation" that includes inconvenient truths.

Social media platforms must expand their definitions of "coordinated inauthentic behavior" beyond the usual bots-and-trolls model to include conversations about topics harmful to the state if they hope to curb the spread of disinformation on their platforms, a trio of University of Washington researchers insist in a paper released ahead of the 2019 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. To help in this quest, the researchers have redefined "disinformation" to include truths arranged to serve a purpose.

“Evaluating disinformation is less about the truth value of one or more pieces of information and more about how those pieces fit together to serve a particular purpose.”

Such an Orwellian redefinition would include the lion's share of journalism, especially opinion journalism, and sure enough, the researchers have their knives out for those who become "unwitting agents" in the spread of disinfo by writing based on anonymous tips – otherwise known as "reporting."

All it takes is one article on a "conspiracy theory" to cause a rift in society, the researchers warn, as a single story spreads to multiple outlets and then throughout the social media infosphere. But governments may spend billions of dollars on manipulating public opinion over social media, because it's OK to lie, as long as you're helping your country.

The paper tiptoes around propaganda campaigns run by the "good guys" – acknowledged US operations like the notorious pro-Clinton Correct the Record, while New Knowledge, rather than being called out for its fake Russian bot campaign to influence the 2017 Alabama senate election, is cited as an academic source!

Understanding that bot- and troll-hunting has limited use, the researchers focus on "actors who are not explicitly coordinated and, in some cases, are not even aware of their role in the campaign" - i.e. ordinary social media users with opinions the researchers don't like.

One "case study" examines content "delegitimizing" the White Helmets while neglecting to mention that the group and the publicity surrounding it are, themselves, part of a well-funded western influence operation against the Syrian government (with a sideline in terrorism and head-chopping). The researchers complain that anti-WH voices were not the expected bots and trolls but included "western journalists" and overlapped with "'anti-war' activism" – as if "anti-war" was an artifact of a bygone era when one could, realistically, be against war. They complain that not enough accounts retweeted pro-White Helmets articles and videos – essentially that the problem here was not enough of the right kind of propaganda.

Conspiracy theories especially get under the researchers' skin, as they have trouble untangling "conspiracy pushers" from those following mainstream news and seem incapable of realizing that people looking for answers in the aftermath of a tragedy are inclined to look in multiple places.

The researchers warn their peers not to minimize the effects of Russian "influence operations" in 2016, even if their analysis shows them to be minimal – clearly, they aren't looking hard enough (i.e., if you don't see the effects, it's not that they aren't there, it's that you aren't using sophisticated enough instruments. May we interest you in this fine Hamilton68 dashboard?).

Scientists are cautioned never to allow their hypothesis to color the way they report the results of their experiments. If the lab doesn't show something, it isn't there. But these researchers are not scientists – they, like the New Knowledge "experts" they so breathlessly cite, are propagandists. They are the droids they are looking for. At one point, they even admit that they "wrestl[ed] with creeping doubt and skepticism about our interpretations of [operations promoting progressive values] as problematic – or as operations at all." Skepticism, it seems, lost.

Social media platforms are warned that their current model of deplatforming people based on "coordinated inauthentic behavior" leaves much to be desired. If they truly want to be ideal handmaidens of the national security state, they must "consider information operations at the level of a campaign and problematize content based on the strategic intent of that campaign." It's not whether the information is true, it's where it came from – and what it might lead to – that matters. Such a model would complete the transformation of platforms into weapons in the state's arsenal for suppressing dissent, and the researchers acknowledge they might be at odds with "commonly held values like 'freedom of speech'" (which they also place in quotes), but hey, do you want to root out those Russian influence operations or not? We've got an election to win!

When at first you don't succeed, redefine success. None have heeded this maxim better than the Russiagate crowd and their enablers in the national security state, and academic researchers have long provided the grist for these propaganda mills. But the sheer chutzpah of expanding the definition of disinformation to include truths arranged to have an effect – a definition that could include most of journalism, to say nothing of political speeches and government communications – is unprecedented.

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YouTube axes anti-protest channels as US Ministry of Truth battles China over Hong Kong.

Helen Buyniski, RT
23 Aug, 2019 02:30

YouTube has disabled 210 channels for posting content related to the Hong Kong protests “in a coordinated manner,” following in the footsteps of Facebook and Twitter in restricting its arbitrary censorship to pro-China accounts.

“Channels in this network behaved in a coordinated manner while uploading videos related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong,” Google threat analyst Shane Huntley claimed in a blog post on Thursday, adding that the Google team’s “discovery” was “consistent with recent observations and actions related to China announced by Facebook and Twitter.”

Translation? The channels were “sowing political discord” on behalf of the Chinese government, and had to be stopped. How did Google know it was the Chinese nefariously attempting to poison the minds against the protesters? The “use of VPNs” and “other methods of disguise” – widespread in the era of mass surveillance – was all the proof required to wipe the channels out of existence.

Twitter got the anti-China censorship ball rolling earlier this week, in perhaps the first-ever social media preemptive strike “proactively” deplatforming hundreds of thousands of accounts for the capital crime of “sowing discord.” Their crimes included “undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground.” One could argue that the protests themselves are a form of political discord, but resistance is futile when charged with such an inchoate offense.

None of the social media platforms have ever defined what exactly constitutes “attempting to sow discord,” though a common thread running through the mass deplatformings of the past year suggests it involves posting in support of a government the US doesn’t like – whether Russia, Iran, Venezuela, or China.

The social media Ministry of Truth has become increasingly open about the irrelevance of truth in what constitutes actionable disinformation. One group of “experts” in the spread of disinfo online even published a paper this week explaining that true statements could constitute disinformation if they were arranged to serve a purpose, calling for platforms to expand their definition of “inauthentic behavior” to include anyone reposting information portraying the “good guys” in a negative light.

The Chinese government challenged Twitter to explain its decision to ban state-owned media from advertising, asking “Why is it that China’s official media’s presentation is surely negative or wrong?”

Beijing has pointed to a US role in fanning the flames of unrest, a charge that grows more plausible with every day the protests continue despite having succeeded in forcing the Hong Kong government to withdraw a bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited to China. Armies of pro-protest tweeters swarm any post by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with pleas to intervene in their plight, even as US lawmakers threaten to rain down fire and fury should anyone harm a hair on a protester’s head. And photos of the protest leaders meeting with US diplomats suggest there is certainly some “coordinated inauthentic behavior” at play on the other side.

YouTube, as a subsidiary of Google, has been exposed as even more partisan than Twitter’s arbiters of truth. A whistleblower released nearly 1,000 pages of internal documentation earlier this month showing YouTube’s algorithms were aimed more at shaping reality than at accurately portraying it. The platform removed Iranian state media channels as Washington ramped up tensions with Tehran in the Strait of Hormuz, and its deactivation of pro-China channels now suggests the protests - despite achieving their initially stated goal – are far from over.

[TsarSamuil]

RT's Ruptly video agency producer detained at NATO summit in London & questioned under Terrorism Act.

RT.com
5 Dec, 2019 20:06

The accreditation of RT’s Ruptly video agency at the NATO summit in London was withdrawn without any explanation, while its producer was detained by UK police and questioned under the Terrorism Act.

NATO’s 70th anniversary gathering, which took place in the British capital on Tuesday and Wednesday, was a big event and Ruptly, of course, couldn’t ignore it. The agency applied for press credentials beforehand and received an accreditation approval letter via email.

So the assigned producer went to routinely pick up his pass to be able to film at the summit. The organizers asked him to wait in the lobby where “he was approached by a plain clothed man, who presented a police warrant and requested he went in for questioning,” Ekaterina Mavrenkova, Ruptly chief content officer, told RT on air.

The producer said he was detained and interrogated under the Terrorism Act, with the officers searching him and his belongings. Before being released, the man was told that Ruptly’s accreditation at the NATO summit had been revoked.

Mavrenkova said the whole situation came as a “complete surprise” for the agency, which does extensive coverage in the UK, including state events.

NATO’s accreditation procedure reserves the right to revoke credentials even if they were already confirmed in exceptional circumstances, she said. “So, what kind of ‘exceptional circumstances’ we’re talking about here remains unclear to us. We filed a formal request for clarification right after the incident, but we haven’t heard back from them yet.”

In 2016, Ruptly was also barred from an event, organized by the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, Mavrenkova recalled. The military organization explained back then that it denied the agency accreditation because it was part of RT.

“As they said, they don’t consider RT to be a journalist organization,” Mavrenkova recalled. But RT reporters have been working “with no problems” at the current summit in London, so the logic behind NATO’s actions remains unclear.