Facebook has deleted all of my posts from July 2017 to last week because I am, apparently, a Russian Bot. For a while I could not add any new posts either, but we recently found a way around that, at least for now. To those of you tempted to say “So what?”, I would point out that over two thirds of visitors to my website arrive via my posting of the articles to Facebook and Twitter. Social media outlets like this blog, which offer an alternative to MSM propaganda, are hugely at the mercy of these corporate gatekeepers.
Facebook’s plunge into censorship is completely open and admitted, as is the fact it is operated for Facebook by the Atlantic Council – the extreme neo-con group part funded by NATO and whose board includes serial war criminal Henry Kissinger, Former CIA Heads Michael Hayden and Michael Morrell, and George Bush’s chief of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, among a whole list of horrors.
The staff are worse than the Board. Their lead expert on Russian bot detection is an obsessed nutter named Ben Nimmo, whose fragile grip on reality has been completely broken by his elevation to be the internet’s Witchfinder-General. Nimmo, grandly titled “Senior Fellow for Information Defense at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab”, is the go-to man for Establishment rubbishing of citizen journalists, and as with Joseph McCarthy or Matthew Clarke, one day society will sufficiently recover its balance for it to be generally acknowledged that this kind of witch-hunt nonsense was not just an aberration, but a manifestation of the evil it claimed to fight.
There is no Establishment cause Nimmo will not aid by labeling its opponents as Bots. This from the Herald newspaper two days ago, where Nimmo uncovers the secret web of Scottish Nationalist bots that dominate the internet, and had the temerity to question the stitch-up of Alex Salmond.
Nimmo’s proof? 2,000 people had used the hashtag #Dissolvetheunion on a total of 10,000 tweets in a week. That’s five tweets per person on average. In a week. Obviously a massive bot-plot, eh?
When Ben’s great expose for the Herald was met with widespread ridicule, he doubled down on it by producing his evidence – a list of the top ten bots he had uncovered in this research. Except that they are almost all, to my certain knowledge, not bots but people. But do not decry Ben’s fantastic forensic skills, for which NATO and the CIA fund the Atlantic Council. Ben’s number one suspect was definitely a bot. He had got the evil kingpin. He had seen through its identity despite its cunning disguise. That disguise included its name, IsthisAB0T, and its profile, where it called itself a bot for retweets on Independence. Thank goodness for Ben Nimmo, or nobody would ever have seen through that evil, presumably Kremlin-hatched, plan.
No wonder the Atlantic Council advertise Nimmo and his team as “Digital Sherlocks”
Nimmo’s track record is simply appalling. In this report for the Atlantic Council website, he falsely identified British pensioner @Ian56789 as a “Russian troll farm”, which led to Ian being named as such by the British government, and to perhaps the most surreal Sky News interview of all time. Perhaps still more remarkably, Nimmo searches for use of the phrase “cui bono?” in reference to the Skripal and fake Douma chemical weapons attacks. Nimmo characterises use of the phrase cui bono as evidence of pro-Assad and pro-Kremlin bots and trolls – he really does. Most people would think to consider cui bono indicates a smattering more commonsense than Nimmo himself displays.
It is at least obvious cui bono from Nimmo’s witchfinding – the capacious, NATO and CIA stuffed pockets of Ben Nimmo himself. That Facebook allows this utterly discredited neo-conservative charlatan the run of its censorship operations needs, given Facebook’s pivotal role in social media intercourse, to concern everybody. The freedom of the internet is under fundamental attack.
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Ben Nimmo is a British-based analyst of Russian information warfare and strategy. He formerly worked as a press officer at NATO and as a journalist in Brussels and the Baltic States, specializing in NATO and EU issues.
Amazing how these Censors are put back in place now Big Brother State wants to make the Internet an adjunct of BBC
I have secret video of Nimmo at work,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vDs57R6MYsY
“Trust in me, just in me
Shut your eyes, trust in me
You can sleep, safe and sound
Knowing I am around”
I believe i hear our very own right charley, Bostock, humming it while he types.
Ben Nimmo is actually a bot. Cheap and “best”. No human can be such tool.
Craig, I think you’ve made a mistake about medium.com, they also carry Insurge Intelligence and I’ve no idea what else:
Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsored violent extremists to ‘isolate’ Assad, rollback ‘Shia expansion’ by Nafeez Ahmed
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092
I think the target you were after was the Atlantic Council’s “Digital Forensic Research Lab”:
https://medium.com/dfrlab
Please recalibrate your Target Acquisition Systems!
Craig,
Could I ask if you have any guarantee that your blog won’t be taken down? I mean, do you have any safeguards against that?
I’m sure our friendly internet guardians are far too clever for that. Shutting someone down is effectively a display of guilt. Far better to relentlessly sideline, push away into obscurity by denying channels, creating a discrediting scandal etc. Or then again you could create another site that agrees with everything Craig says but links it all with UFOs, monsters from the fourth dimension, obvious anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism etc.
Although I’m an interested readers of this blog, would it really matter if it were taken down?
Let’s face it : many of the posts rely on (and are in fact sourced to) other websites and entities like RT, which are in no danger of being taken down. So the demise of this blog would not significantly reduce current readers’ access to so-called “alternative news”. And then there is the fact that 95% of all commenters take the same line on the majority of the recurring themes on here (climate change is the only significant exception I can think of). The blog is, to a large extent, an echo chamber for a very limited section of the population, whether of readers or of the population at large. That fact means on the one hand that the authorities are unlikely to have much incentive to take down the site, and on the other, that if it were taken down, there would be little loss of freedom of speech and the free dissemination of alternative views.
CB its simply wrong to identify this blog with RT. There is a world of difference between a UK voice of dissent like Craig and Russian propaganda. Your better off comparing the BBC with RT.
RT is not Russian propaganda.
It’s welfare is it?
You only have to think for a few seconds to conclude that when one nation broadcasts news in another country in that other country’s mother tongue it is propaganda. No country does this for the common good. It’s always part of something that is targeted to benefit the country paying for the station.
It may be useful to pay attention to other countries’ propaganda, and it may sometimes contain truth as well as misinformation. It may also set out to encourage dissent and doubt. Therefore one needs to remain sceptical.
– “when one nation broadcasts news in another country in that other country’s mother tongue it is propaganda”
British Broadcasting Corporation World Service
– (Service to whom? Like the Diplomatic Service, military service, secret service perhaps?)
Voice of America
But these are in English, by speakers of English! Ah, what a fortunate legacy of the British Empire, that English is such a widespread international language! So English has become the default Language of Authenticity, by accident of history.
Clark yes point taken: I should have said broadcast to another country in that country’s mother tongue or in any widely spoken language which people in that country might be prepare to listen to.
RT is far superior to BBC news. France24 is well produced but loves glorifying French military adventures (it’s quite surprising how involved militarily the French are). CNN is truly dire. Al Jazeera can be very good but when they hate someone (like Syria) they go full-on propaganda/hate mode. The Chinese equivalent is incredibly boring and non-controversial. The Japanese one is interesting a bit idiosyncratic (possibly because they are culturally so very different to the west but at the same time have equivalent lifestyles).
RT is the best of the bunch. Most of the output appears free and uncensored. The news segment (at times) gives prominence to Russian Government statement that are considered important (but that’s one of the main reasons I watch RT; to hear the Russian version/opinion of events).
Other people tend to put their fingers in their ears when you say “On RT…” which is quite strange.
I read RT regularly, and occasionally listen to the BBC to make sure it is still issuing an unbroken stream of lies and brainwashing. IMHO RT today is pretty much impeccable in terms of honesty and balance. It even carries quite a lot of British and American propaganda – someone pointed out the wisdom of the Russian government, which saves untold time, trouble and money by not bothering to issue counter-propaganda. All it does is to open the floodgates and let Russian citizens see the pure, unfiltered filth and nonsense that Western governments and media churn out. The Russians laugh a bit, but it opens their eyes. They know what they are facing.
Whereas hardly any Western citizens have a clue what the Russian government and media are saying – far less what typical Russian citizens think.
This is, unfortunately, very true. Are we the real North Koreans?
Ah Charles. You reveal yourself at last.
In his earlier incarnation, Habbabkuk repeatedly called on Craig to shut down his blog, or at least the comment sections.
Not exactly a friend of the site.
Meanwhile, it was bevin who was banned because he indicated he preferred Lepen to Macron.
Have the neoliberals like Macron not revealed themselves.to be at least as fascist as the National Front through actions like those that are the subject of this thread?
Just what we need – someone who doesn’t like this blog, although feels compelled to lecture us all about its insignificance. i think you mean it wouldn’t matter to this blog if you were to disappear and do something useful. But here you are once again, carping and cavilling, while wilfully misunderstanding it. You obviously need it as some kind of compensation for your own insignificance.
@ Charles Bostock August 28, 2018 at 19:21
Considering your obvious lack of respect for Craig’s blog, it is somewhat mystifying (?) why you spend so much time commenting on it. Have you nothing better to do?
Charles
What you say reveals that all you are doing in this blog is monitoring what is being said and making contrarian declarations. But you are really not interested in the value of this blog. So it begs the question Charles . Is somebody paying you to carry out this chore?
Charles is Habbakuk, an oft-banned and persistent sock-puppeting nuisance., whose only function is to poison the well of human discourse.
Chabbobstokk?
I prefer ‘Chabbs’, with the combined diminutives also serving as a plural.
Charles thank you but I enjoy the company I keep here and I really like the intellectual stimulation from many of them. I do not wish to see the social media, free press, disseminated discourse disappear any time soon. Not even one site at a time. I am delighting in picking my own media style and content and form thank you very much.
“I do not wish to see the social media, free press, disseminated discourse disappear any time soon”.
Social media
Free press
Disseminated discourse
Everyone spot the odd one out there?
Clue: two of them are as old as civilization itself, while the third represents huge soulless money-grubbing corporations trying to squeeze out the last penny of profit by selling their trusting members’ personal information to other money-grubbing corporations and repressive governments.
Complete and utter cobblers about Craig depending on msm sources.
The recent increase in Craig’s profile is precisely because he was the only journalist in town.
Everyone else was quoting him.
His sources and analysis.
Charles,
You’re talking about the comments. I’m talking about the blog, i.e. what Craig writes and the insight he brings to things.
Maywood
Yes, you’re absolutely right and I apologise for not having been clearer : when I wrote “many of the posts rely on (and are in fact sourced to) other websites and entities like RT” I of course meant not Craig’s lead-in posts but the comments”.
Perhaps that confusion explains why a couple of hostile commenters got it totally wrong when they wrote:
“complete and utter cobblers about CRAIG [my emphasis] depending on msm sources” (Herbie at 23,35 above) – in fact, there’s a double mistake there, I was referring neither to Craig nor to NSM sources
and
“CB its simply wrong to identify this blog with RT” (fwl at 22:00 above) – another double mistake, as (1) I was not referring to Craig but to the comments (as pointed out, my lack of clarity )and (2) I was merely using RT as an example of the kind of source many comments rely on.
Some-one is trying to back-track lol #dope.com
It’s pretty clear what you’re up to.
Bollocks, Charlie, my old teapot.
I’ve seen references sourced to the Grauniad, the Daily Heil, the Slowcoach and even dear old Auntie.
Your comment is foolish in the extreme.
>
Not everyone is a wise crusty internet pro, buddy. For some humans today is the first day they’ve ever been online. Their young supple brains ready to be manipulated. And even some crusty people can have their views altered via information (both true and false). You’re an incredibly selfish myopic dullard.
Many people quote the Bible so it is alright in your view to close down churches
I’m tempted to post a link to a Golem xiv article that has the offending words combined with the name of a certain woebegone Middle Eastern country in it’s title but I’m afraid I’d be kicking a hornets nest.
Anyone who knows Latin is obviously suspicious.
As, in my opinion, is anyone who advertises a handful of higher degrees from the world’s most prestigious universities.
Rem acu tetigisti.
As Goering is rumoured to have said, “Education is dangerous – Every educated person is a future enemy”.
Somehow I can so easily imagine that being said by George Bush (either), Obama, May… and so many others.
When I clicked on a video of Theresa May dancing I thought “Why on earth are you wasting your time?”
But it was worth it.
I am no Fred Astaire but if you wanted to bolster a government’s image as a completely incompetent bunch of excuse-making talkers who are mostly waiting to get helicoptered away from a sinking ship, this kind of event would serve you well.
Facebook is a CIA operation. This has been known for years. Shun it and shun people who use it. They are the “bots”, in the sense that they’ve got keys in their backs.
That would explain most of Facebook sudden success: easy finance etc. I guess the NSA budgets are lower than the CIA’s: they would be another perfect secret owner of Facebook.
There is now a very determined push by mainstream media and politicians to rubbish dissenting sites as fake news, with the goal of eventually having them removed.
Ironic when the mainstream has itself been ceaselessly pushing fake news for at least 15 years, with disastrous results. (Iraq; Libya; what caused the deficit and who should be forced to pay it down; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn A/S
And of course the meta TINA lie of the past generation.
Says more about the Herald than anything else, still, David Leask probably got his jollies off, at thought of the McBot’s being real, even though they weren’t. It just reinforces my opinion that any old anti-independence shit passes for uniinist news these days.
Peter A. Bell’s Twitter hashtag #dissolvetheunion trended at number one today for awhile.
lol, dream on
Those who decided to move most of their socialising to a private company’s private land, when there was still some more or less public land available to use, shouldn’t be surprised if said private company increasingly seeks to shape how they behave and chucks them out if they don’t succumb.
“Ghostbanning” is absolutely classic conditioning. That’s when they don’t tell you not to do something, but they leave it to you to notice that your acceptance in “society” decreases when you do it.
As Jack London might have put it:
After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a Facebook user.
A Facebook user is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water-logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumour of rotten principles.
When a Facebook user comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of Hell to keep him out.
No man has a right to use Facebook so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared with a Facebook user. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself. A Facebook user has not.
Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas Iscariot sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British Army. The Facebook user sells his birthright, his country, his wife, his children and his fellow men for an unfulfilled promise from his employer, trust or corporation.
Esau was a traitor to himself: Judas Iscariot was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country; a Facebook user is a traitor to his God, his country, his wife, his family and his class.
““Ghostbanning” is absolutely classic conditioning. That’s when they don’t tell you not to do something, but they leave it to you to notice that your acceptance in “society” decreases when you do it.”
There’s a lot of discussion on this.
The political YouTubers had their monetisation removed.
Now they’ve got Patreon and Super Chats on YouTube, who take 30%
Many, of course, had income from their own sites.
But yes, they’re all very much aware these days, which angle adds funding and which subtracts.
Which gets you shut down, Which does not.
There are even political YouTubers who amend their narrative to that which attracts most funds.
Still, a lot of good people out there, who are motivated by getting to the truth.
The whole bot thing is getting ludicrous. The vast majority of people should know by now that a bot is just a piece of computer code doing a repetitive task (maybe a few years ago it was a mystery, but not now). So when you are talking to a human being and asking him whether he is bot we are in madness land and engaging in a ridiculous smear. (I am just being obvious about that which Craig’s puts more elegantly.)
Not all bots are malicious and unwanted, most are very useful. Retweet bots in twitter are designed to automatically retweet messages to the bots subscribers and that is exactly what the subscribers want. It is a way for a community with a common interest to keep informed. It is beyond bizarre for Ben Nimmo to portray the retweet bot @IsThisABot (NOTBOT/McBOT) as something sinister. All political interest groups do the same. The real problem that Nimmo has is with Scottish Nationalism not with retweet bots.
Nimmo is presenting perfectly normal behaviour (within Twitter) as a plot. He is laying the groundwork for censorship and heavy-handed control.
Media Warn of ‘Russian Bots’—Despite Primary Source’s Disavowal!
https://fair.org/home/media-warn-of-russian-bots-despite-primary-sources-disavowal/
The problem with Nimmo and alike is of that they are brainwashed by their own disinformation.
I don’t think they are really brainwashed. I think they want to brainwash others to believe those stupid lies. And most sheeple will believe, trust me. They know how the average-mind human thinks and they try to shape their minds.
A wise saying says that, “A lie told once, will remain a lie. A lie told told a thousand times, someone will believe it.”
faith
I am not so sure about that, because as Clark says, we all are brainwashed in one way or another, the dangerous thing is when people like NImmo or other censors in history is having such powers to crack down on the “witches”.
Or do you see Kimmo as a rational person? IMO this guy is brainwashed beyond any doubt.
Nimmo’s public pronouncements are as mad as a box of frogs, which is entirely normal in the mass media. What an intoxicant, to have so many listening to you and propagating it, and then discussing it, whether agreeing or not, at least entertaining it as a view that must be considered – all merely because you asserted it!
Indeed, is that not part of the reason we each post comments here, so we each can partake in crumbs of influence, our little snifter of the great drug?
Clark
No one here is on witch hunt silencing people. That is the difference.
No one here get funds to seek out, out and ban people from Facebook. Thats is the difference.
Should I go on?
Jack, I’m not disagreeing. Facebook has handed power of censorship to a fool drunk on his own influence.
Clark
Ok sorry, I misunderstood your comment 🙂
Yeah a drunk at charge is a great description of this man.
All things in moderation. We post on this small-to-medium website, and our comments reach a moderately sized audience. Comments challenge us and cause us to refine our ideas. We get a modicum of the thrill of exposure, and some healthy discipline along with it. We form a network of equals.
And I wouldn’t have thought of that if you hadn’t challenged me, so thanks.
The days of centralised broadcast and the outright intoxication of immense coverage are burning themselves out, just as the corporate media organisations buy each other out, consolidating into ever fewer independent voices.
We are all “brainwashed by our own disinformation” because that’s the default configuration of the human mind – we just naturally assume that we’re mostly right. And it’s not like you can stop it by unticking its box in your psychological settings, because our default belief is that we’re not brainwashed, we’re right; there’s nothing to stop doing, no box to untick – we are not conscious of the the self-reinforcements because they are subconscious habits. That’s why we end up having arguments in which we can’t even progress, let alone converge towards agreement; we all think we’re right, and we all think we know better than anyone who disagrees.
One way to become aware of such self-deception is to practice things that if you fail, you can’t mistakenly think you’ve succeeded, ie. things that are testable. This is why people like games, sport, elections and the like. Science, engineering, programming and mathematics are among the most testable endeavours.
Indeed. We’re not, as we like to think, rational beings. Rather, we’re rationalising beings.
Well put Jake; thanks.
There are plenty of people out there who don’t know how to turn on a computer or use a phone (my father is one of them), but who still watch tv news and read a newspaper. My brother in law has never used the internet.
Are they referring to bots as snippets of computer code? Or the original meaning of the word robot;
“The word ‘robot’ itself was not new, having been in the Slavic language as robota (forced laborer), a term which classified those peasants obligated to compulsory service under the feudal system widespread in 19th century Europe”
Stop thinking and get back to robota, you bots!
Quite a lot of those bots are politically subversive haters, so it’s good that TPTB keep out thoughts safe from this computer generated mind pollution filth.
“Nimmo is presenting perfectly normal behaviour (within Twitter) as a plot. He is laying the groundwork for censorship and heavy-handed control.”
I’m a little new to the lingo but I may have picked up this action to be named “Astroturfing”? replacing grassroots principles with a fiction of abnormality.
Of relevanc and interest to those who would like to read what some Russian journalists found out about Russian troll farms:
https://medium.com/…/the-russians-who-exposed-russias…
@ Charles Bostock August 28, 2018 at 19:28
Great find, Charlie! Perhaps you should forward it to the 77th Brigade, as they are fairly new at it and might well learn a trick or two:
’77TH BRIGADE: INFLUENCE AND OUTREACH’: https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/formations-divisions-brigades/77-brigade/
By the way, the correct link to your broken one for the article you linked above is:
https://medium.com/dfrlab/the-russians-who-exposed-russias-trolls-72db132e3cd1
By the way, most technically advanced nations have them, including the ‘unmentionables’.
Hmmm.
Don’t do links is now revealed as can’t do links,
Or, is it a double bluff.
Looks like he copied the abbreviated URL line under the title/link of a Google search result. I made the same mistake a few days ago, but at least had the sense to add the full link as a reply to my own comment.
But surely a troll is not a bot?
No, and shills and astroturf are different again. But people won’t learn which words to use.
So sorry that you have to deal with this Craig. It’s horrible and I will close my Facebook account. Have you thought about alternatives. Instagram, WhatsApp and snapchat. I fully understand why Corbyn wants to tackle these things because they become instruments of state propaganda. Keep moving
”Have you thought about alternatives. Instagram, WhatsApp and snapchat.”
That made me laugh. Cheers Ros. No offence meant btw.
I have no other answers mate. I even had to get my daughter to provide those but I’m closing my Facebook account at midnight and have told people why and suggest they look at this blog. I won’t be used.
They are all owned by the same crowd was why I laughed. A real joke of a situation. The alternatives are not alternatives at all. And Craig has to maintain a presence on these parasitic companies platforms to remain in contact with his audience. What to do…….
Again no offence meant. Have a good day.
There’s always mastodon – https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/4/15177856/mastodon-social-network-twitter-clone
It’s open source
Such innocence.
Ros Thorpe, I’m sorry that various commentators have chosen to ridicule you rather than explain. All the alternatives you mention are under centralised, private control, and are therefore vulnerable to the same sort of pressure that Facebook has yielded to. A genuine alternative would be under the control of the users; that’s the point Shatnersrug was trying to make by saying that Mastodon is “open source”. I don’t know about Mastodon, but there’s an interesting project called Diaspora.
If you want to know about “open source” and software freedom, check my link below. Unfortunately I don’t have time to explain further right now.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html
Wonder if Trump has me in mind when he complains about Google’s left-iwing anti-Trump coverrage. It has increased my items on it from around 50,000 to over 2,000,000 during the last few months. I was an original opponent of him, claiming that he was a most dangerous, narcissistic nut who is demonstrating it now to the world’s expense.
Trowbridge.
Trump’s too busy slapping down Britain for the moment.
“In a fast-developing second trade spat, Washington has teamed up with Brazil, Argentina, Canada, New Zealand, Uruguay and Thailand to reject Britain’s proposed import arrangements for crucial agricultural goods such as meat, sugar and grains after Brexit. The fact that the U.K.’s opponents include the U.S., Canada and New Zealand is a significant setback because Britain is trying to style its former colonies as natural strategic and commercial allies after it has quit the EU”
https://www.politico.eu/article/us-rounds-on-britain-over-food-quotas-as-post-brexit-trade-woes-deepen/amp/
They’ll be more unionists diversionary tactics to turn heads and hearts away from the fact that Britain is about to crash and burn spectacularly.
Perhaps New Zealand and Australia remember how that arse Winston Churchill and the mighty British Empire effectively abandoned them to the Japs in 1941?
Yes they’ll go along with the sentimental Commonwealth shite – but they know which side their bread is buttered on!
Do peer into your crystal ball more often, oh wise one.
@ Trowbridge H. Ford August 28, 2018 at 19:50
‘..I was an original opponent of him, claiming that he was a most dangerous, narcissistic nut who is demonstrating it now to the world’s expense.’
And he has so much to be narcissistic about (in his mamma’s eyes).
It’s just a matter of time till the Establishment have complete control of the Internet….we just have to accept that censorship will become a feature of electronic platforms just as the print medium and TV are under their control….we have no idea just how much censorship already takes place…who is going to tell us? It is naive to expect anything else.
I like to be naive.
Why don’t people just set up their own servers.
Memory, processing power and speedy connections are relatively cheap these days.
A peer to peer internet, rather than the centralised thing it’s become.
I mean, Google isn’t the internet. It just downloads the internet and presents it as searchable on its servers.
That gives them filtering control.
They’ve taken an anarchic space and created themselves gatekeepers of it.
But only so long as people use them.
Try mastodon? It looks interesting we cannot count on twitter to save us
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/4/15177856/mastodon-social-network-twitter-clone
Ben Nimmo worked for Nato earlier (or still does), he is the top propagandist for them,
“We do not comment on alleged leaked documents. However, in general I can say that in real democracies, such as Denmark, the courts are fully independent. For any other inquiries, I refer you to the Danish judicial authorities,” press officer Ben Nimmo from NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division told RT in a letter.
US pressured Denmark to close Kurdish TV so Rasmussen would become NATO chief – lawyer
https://www.rt.com/news/169156-us-denmark-turkey-rasmussen/
So Nimmo is
funded by western governments,
works with western intelligence services,
works for Facebook to delete dissent,
he spam the social media and
crack down on dissent
and he have the nerve to call people propagandists?!
Guy is a complete nut, just check his twitter. Paranoia and conspiracy theories is pushed by him 24/7 and he is FUNDED to do that by western foreign departments and secret services, dictators and arm dealers (www.atlanticcouncil.org/support/supporters), think about that.
Its time to collect, summarize and shame this crazy pro-censorship people and groups, use the same tactics they use on us! Flood his twitter with debunking and exposing his own blatant propaganda disinformation campaigns!
Being a journalist specialising in analysing Russian affairs, does not make you an computer expert in tracing and identifying computer hacks/trolls/bots. For that you need Ch–k Fo—r.
Mary Paul
Only thing you need is russophobia apparently, then you can apply at Atlantic Council’s propaganda troll farm.
craig says
”Nimmo’s track record is simply appalling. In this report for the Atlantic Council website, he falsely identified British pensioner @Ian56789 as a “Russian troll farm”, which led to Ian being named as such by the British government, and to perhaps the most surreal Sky News interview of all time.”
Funny, I thought it a deliberate ”mistake” myself. An 1984 type mistake. The bigger message from the chain of events being; Anyone, anywhere who challenges our narrative or our agenda will face trial by media, and global humiliation, no?
@ rover1 August 28, 2018 at 20:22
‘..Anyone, anywhere who challenges our narrative or our agenda will face trial by media, and global humiliation, no?’
No. Who can believe that @Ian56789 was humiliated by that TV interview? On the contrary, he showed them, and the British government, up for what they are.
” Who can believe that @Ian56789 was humiliated by that TV interview? ”
The overwhelming majority of the population, that’s who.
What about you, Kempe? Were you convinced by that interview that Ian is a Russian bot, as the government had claimed?
“…the extreme neo-con group part funded by NATO and whose board includes serial war criminal Henry Kissinger…”
No, not that nice Mr. Kissinger who won the Nobel peace prize?
Recently visited by the UK’s ex Health Secretary/Property developer and the new Foreign Secretary, Mr Jeremy Streynsham Hunt, who basked in Kissinger’s aura.
Jeremy Hunt on Twitter: “What an honour to meet Dr Henry Kissinger just now. The world’s most experienced diplomat tutoring the world’s newest.…
https://twitter.com/Jeremy_Hunt/status/1032360933824389120
https://mobile.twitter.com › status
6 days ago · So wait a minute; Corbyn gets condemnation for not laying a wreath at a cemetery where terrorists AREN’T buried, but Hunt is merrily parading his links to a coup orchestrating war-criminal as if that’s a …
@ Sharp Ears August 28, 2018 at 21:28
At one time Kissinger was apparently lined up to be an adviser to ‘Pope’ JP II, but someone with at least a semblance of sense blocked it. And Murdoch was given a Papal Honour (maybe JP II liked page 3).
Ah yes, henry kissinger, the original choice of GWB to head up the transparently fraudulent 9/11 commission. Speaks or itself really
I think we should flood Ben Nimmos account with tweets and add the words cui bono and #Dissolvetheunion.
Let’s push him over the edge.
He’s already over it.
Craig’s list of horrors at the Atlantic Council (I prefer to refer to them as the gangsters-in-charge) featured the Board of Directors.
There is also an Advisory Board.. Stephen Kinnock’s wife, the fomer Danish PM, is there as is that old favourite, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen. Also Murdoch, Albright, Aznar, Bildt and Rudd. What a crowd of war criminals.
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/international-advisory-board
Plus a huge staff list, experts et al. Who’s funding them? The US taxpayers?
And that head case , bellingcat. It’s astounding !
Sharp Ears
Who is funding them? Brace yourself:
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/support/supporters
Peter Hitchens and Tucker Carlson. Good name checks from the harassed chap on the Sky news clip there.
When Tim Berners-Lee invented the world-wide web in 1992, he gave a great gift to mankind, that of the liberation of the expression of opinion. That should never be forgotten. The ancient French minitel you paid every minute.
You continue to have free access to Craig’s website. That’s not nothing. Here he complains about being insufficiently referenced by commercial organisations who have no particular interest whether he lives or dies.
I would say: be happy with what you’ve got. It could be worse.
@ Laguerre August 28, 2018 at 22:26
‘..It could be worse.’ Bit optimistic, aren’t you? It most assuredly WILL get worse.
A Blogger over at Blogmire has made a formal complaint to the police for endangering the lives of 3 Salisbury Children
https://www.theblogmire.com/the-10-main-holes-in-the-official-narrative-on-the-salisbury-poisonings-5-the-feeding-of-the-ducks/#comment-9654
I sent this to the Wiltshire PCC and copied John Glen and Rebecca Hudson.
Dear Sir,
I notice with increasing frustration that you continue to ignore my correspondence.
I had thought, perhaps erroneously that our elected officials were here to serve.
I wish to raise a formal complaint that Wiltshire Police failed to protect the lives of three young boys who were feeding ducks at Avon pond, and where exposed to grave harm by being in the immediate vicinity of the two Skripal victims.
Despite the Wiltshire police force having immediate access to CCTV footage clearly showing the boys interacting with the Skripals, taking bread from the Skripals and it is reported actually eating some of the bread offered by the Skripals, Wiltshire police failed to raise the alarm.
An alarm, where CCTV footage cold be telecast and transmitted on local TV stations could have saved the lives of the three boys.
They had, by your own investigative team’s account had immediate contact with the Skripals at the time after the Skripal vehicle had been parked at Sainsbury’s.
Time stamped CCTV showed this, and this footage was eventually shown to Aiden Cooper’s parents many days after the actual event.
To further increase the alarm and threat level, the boy’s parents were told that his clothing from that day was to be incinerated and the boys to report to Salisbury District Hospital for blood tests.
It is inconceivable that this time delay is anything short of negligence by the force and a clear case of child endangerment when vital CCTV footage is not being shared to prevent public harm.
I am copying local MP John Glen on this, as there seems to be a latent inability for your office to even acknowledge my correspondence.
Rebecca Hudson of the Salisbury Journal is aware of my concerns and I will copy here on this missive.
Please do not hide under “ongoing, active terror investigation” excuses.
This is very simple.
Three young boys were exposed to a deadly nerve agent. They had physical contact with the two victims. The boys were among the first contacts made by the Skripals after 1pm on Sunday March 4th.
Your official narrative has the door handle as the dose point, and later in the day, a restaurant table was found to be so badly contaminated that it too needed incineration.
It is also my understanding that over £140k worth of police vehicles have had to be destroyed and we (the UK taxpayer) are to buy the Skripal house, the Bailey house plus car and belongings.
If these items need destruction, what were the police thinking of when they first viewed the footage of the Skripals and the three young boys?
Did this apparently innocuous but in reality, potentially deadly interaction with two victims and three young boys need to be withheld?
What type of country have we now become when clandestine investigations receive priority over the duties of the force to protect and possibly follow their own motto of “First and Best”
Regards,
Duncan
@ Barry J August 28, 2018 at 22:29
Reminds me of the inquest on the three IRA terrorists shot in cold blood in Gibraltar.
I attended the inquest (and got harassed by Special Branch on the Rock for my audacity). The car said to have been believed to have contained the bomb had in fact been externally examined by a British Army expert, who decided that it did not contain a bomb, BEFORE the three were shot under the pretext they may have had a ‘button job’ (remote detonator). Yet the car was not cordoned off till 20 minutes after the killings, during which time people were free to walk past it; there was not even police tape around it.
Paul your memory of the Gibraltar incident is much keener that mine but if I remember correctly the similarity is that the guilty (authorities) in both cases were hoist by their own petard.
They had blown themselves up. In both cases the Official Account was untrue but damning however the actual truth of what had actually happened was far more damning.
I shall try to be brief and if my condensation leaves some scratching their heads I will try to elucidate if anyone gives me a prod.
The Official Account: Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a Russian Nerve Agent (the most toxic on the planet) The main source was the door handle on the Skripal home’s front door. The Skripals left their home at c 1:30pm (in doing so they became contaminated with the poison on the door handle) they drove into Salisbury and parked in Sainsburys car park at c 1:40pm.
Before going to the Restaurant and then Pub which they are believed to have visited whilst heavily contaminated (so much so they had to burn the table they were sat at in the Restaurant). So before they go anywhere they pass through a children’s play area that has a river flowing on both sides of it. They are freshly contaminated with the Nerve Agent. They are picked up on High Definition CCTV feeding ducks in the play area at 1:45pm, whilst doing this they meet with 3 children, boys aged 12 and thereabouts. Sergei (with his contaminated hand) gives bread to the children so that they too can feed the ducks. One of the boys eats some of his bread. All of this is picked up in clear detail on the CCTV.
2 weeks later the police trace the children and go to their homes and show the parents the CCTV footage and advise that the children should go to hospital for a check up.
And that is the bone of contention. The police had immediate access to the CCTV footage and were trawling through it within hours of the incident looking for clues / suspects. The question that is obviously raised is why the hell did the police not issue an immediate TV alert / appeal showing the CCTV footage with the boys and ask for assistance to urgently locate them.
The accusation raised in the complaint is that the police willfully and recklessly delayed alerting the families of the children thereby unnecessarily risking their lives.
The True and Real Account: The Skripals door handle was not treated with nerve agent until two weeks later when the OPCW came to town and took samples. They analysed the substance on the door handle and found: – * “The OPCW report released yesterday confirmed that the chemical was of high purity, with an “almost complete absence of impurities”” – which is just not possible given it had been rained on, snowed on and touched dozens of times by bare and nitrile gloved hands (nitrile / latex / rubber gloves leave behind glove material residues).
So Sergei and his daughter were clean at that stage, the people who got poisoned at the bench (who as a matter of fact were not the Skripals) were not poisoned for another 2 and a bit hours and then it was by aerosol and not touching something.
And that’s their dilemma. When the police are taken to Court on charges of all kind of things they can’t say “we knew there was no risk to the kids” because the truth is far far worse.
Hoist by their own petard . Hoist = Raised into the air, Petard = a bomb.
* https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/british-ambassador-to-russia-briefing-on-the-salisbury-attack-following-the-opcw-report-13-april-2018
Barry. Are there any links to this footage?
If you mean the Duck Feeding footage no! The police refuse to release any cctv footage they have seized which is made all the more odd when you consider they asked for the public’s help in identifying the movements of the Skripals on that fateful day
Yet they refused to say what they looked like or provide a photograph from that day
The bench and park both has working cctv cameras that day. High definition council cameras recently ungraded. All footage seized by the police
The Mill pub where a lot of the action took place had 12 cctv cameras, the police seized all recordings.
We don’t know what the Skripals were wearing that day, we don’t even know Yulia’s hair colour – which is important !!
She was caught on cctv in a Moscow airport traveling to the UK the day before on the 3rd of March. She had reddish brown hair. Witnesses on the 4th who said the saw Yulia said she had reddish brown hair that day.
The only cctv pics that made it into the media from the day in question (4th March) were from private cctv pics obtained by journalists.
One such video was taken from Snap Fitness Gym just a few yards from the bench where the poisoned couple were discovered. An eye witness (Freya Church) who happened to work at the gym and saw the couple on the bench and later saw the Sbap Fitness cctv footage of a blonde woman and an older man said that the couple in the cctv pics were “100%” “Definitely” the same couple that were on the bench.
Another eye witness who used the gym (Ollie Filed) who saw the couple on the bench referred to the female as “blonde bird”.
Remember Yulia had reddish brown hair. That is one reason why we are not shown the cctv pics but only one.
The only eyewitness evidence available to the public says it was not the Skripals on the bench.
Here you can find an account of one of the parents who saw the duck feeding video
https://www.theblogmire.com/the-salisbury-poisonings-how-the-ducks-led-down-a-rabbit-trail-then-to-some-potentially-crucial-information/
Nice one Barry, expose our criminal state for what it is.
People like Nimmo don’t care whether these accounts are actually bots or real people. Terms like “bot” and “troll” are consciously stripped of their original meaning, in order to become blanket slurs to dehumanise anyone who doesn’t toe the line of the western establishment.
Thus a bot no longer means an automated account making use of coded scripts, rather an account of a person, but one whose political views are not worthy enough to be considered coming from a real human, (i.e. a “subhuman”). Such dehumanisation serves as an excuse to not deal in any way with the actual content coming from such an account.
Nonsense. You’re insisting that everyone here does not consider each piece of information on it’s own merits merely as a pretext for guilting the gullible into paying attention to meretricious crap. Like Nimmo, you don’t believe a word of your own tripe.
“The freedom of the internet is under fundamental attack.”
Exactly. I used to comment here frequently but since my proven evidence of being shadow-banned on various platforms, including FB, I hardly use FB, rarely comment here, no longer write a blog and only deal with the most fundamental internet duties. Perhaps I should stay and fight. But I have no team to circumvent intrusions. I empathise with you and applaud your doggedness against this evil.
However I am not young any more. A round of golf is more rewarding than banging my head against a wall writing truths that nobody will ever read. All power to those continuing to fight. At the moment the cards are stacked against truthers.
Thanks to all who have supported me in my cycling for Palestine. I am concentrating my writing on the creative side even though it is doubtful it will get into mainstream. I enjoy it. And I enjoy reading this blog. Unfortunately blogs too are not free from censorship by dark forces.
John I suppose that’s the reason for this fake news mantra , the ones who promote that message actually mean it’s not their version of the news so it must be fake , Am I alone in thinking a straight jacket is gradually being tightened around all of us , daily it gets more restrictive bit by bit it closes down the choices available for everyone to follow , Like I suppose the Ministry of Truth reducing the vocabulary to fewer words , Newspeak the control language of the fictional Oceania is on the same line , so many dissenting voices out there it’s just confusing people , better to keep them happy by reducing the noise , they still hear noise but now it’s our noise , the controlled noise . Oh Christ it’s past my bedtime gibberish taking over now ha ha .
Robert Graham
No no, you are correct, especially this sums it up good:
“the reason for this fake news mantra , the ones who promote that message actually mean it’s not their version of the news so it must be fake ”
Al Qaeda gassing people in Syria? – No it cant be, it could only be Assad!
People do not like Hillary Clinton? – Impossible, russian bots is to blame!
Nato commiting warcrimes? -Stupid, dont you know that russian disinformation!!?
And so it goes…sigh.
I am not the slightest bit surprised at facebook taking this step. It is an excellent idea in the hands of a dubious clown. Anyone who uses the Atlantic Council as the censorship filter is truly an isolated but intentionally misled person.
Facebook is having a purge and it is evidently going to establish a new normal whereby dissent is crushed.
A frank and helpful discussion on alternative services would be good so that independent sites can dual post: once on FB then again on some other locality. Is there another reliable site we can go to?
Facebook originally a DARPA project financed by the CIA , ended because it couldn’t encourage users to part with personal information , so up pops Zuckerberg who with others turns it into a fun experience and a way of people connecting , The US Government surprise surprise still has control and collects the information merrily freely given by users , yep Zuckerberg solved a problem for them and he and his merry band are being well paid to keep the scam running . Use it at your peril.
Well as you predicted on a previous blog , when they decide to get you, it looks like your access among others to their Internet has to be restricted ,It appears you Craig are a problem , anyone who still believes the recent activity of these organisations and corporations flexing their muscles in order to protect the innocent from nasty things and subversive thoughts are sadly going to be really upset when their voice and opinion is censored.
The same phenomenon is present when supporters of this Union cheer on the BBC ,who’s only purpose is to act as the official opposition to the current government led by the SNP , so obvious and blatant is their treatment of the party of government it’s becoming laughable , because the ones who lead this government department are panicking now , every semblance of subtlety is gone , so it’s in your face over the top all out attack on anything resembling independence, every advance or every breakthrough that shows Scotland moving forward must be hidden , people can’t be allowed to see we are not rubbish and useless , as the media would have people believe .
When the establishment are worried mistakes are made, this BBC in Scotland have been rumbled recently and instead of taking a more measured approach they go all in , after all is any of the Scottish media going to censure them , nope they are to busy cheering them on, so the merry go round continues . Just sit back and enjoy the show it will get more entertaining every day .
When a friend and I first learned of the Khan Sheikhoun gassing, and the MSM attribution of if to Assad, we both started laughing uproariously. Because, as we are not particularly stupid, “Cui bono” was the first thing that occurred to us.
Yeah, who needs evidence when you know you’re right.
You don’t provide much evidence of anything either.
the ones who claim Assad is culpable is of course the ones that need evidence to show, they do not have that – ever, because facts do not matter for these sick people.
For decades, the likes of Noam Chomsky and Armand Mattelart were lone voices in calling out the ideological complicity/corruption of the liberal MSM. The Right didn’t care because, as well as being fundamentally pro-Capitalist (witness the longest, most intense fake news campaign of the 20th Century: the defamation of Communism), this liberal MSM also supported their tactical agenda: the post-WW2 global US interventions and all the rest of it.
However, as Wolfgang Streeck has outlined (https://newleftreview.org/II/104/wolfgang-streeck-the-return-of-the-repressed), something changed in the last couple of years: the manual working class started re-engaging with politics (reversing a trend of withdrawal since the early-1950s) but outside ‘acceptable’ liberal limits, i.e. via ‘populist’ avenues, Brexit and the election of DT being the most spectacular demonstrations of the process.
The Right has always been split into at least two major fractions: (a) a bloc favouring ‘pure’ Capitalism (in which private enterprises really do stand or fall on their own merits), and (b) a bloc amenable to “privatising profit but socialising loss”. The latter is how State systems in the West have largely operated since the early-20th Century, particularly in the neo-liberal period from the mid-1970s onwards (a reaction to the gains made by the working class following WW2).
The recent rise of ‘populist’ political movements in reaction to the success of (b) above in re-establishing the balance of reward in favour of the capitalist class has been attacked by the largely pro-globalist liberal MSM on just about every spurious ground imaginable, from the ‘serious’ (neo-fascism) to the risible (‘Trump-Russia collusion’).
These attacks have had two effects: (a) reducing the liberal MSM’s appeal to a very narrow range of opinion (they have become, in effect, echo chambers where members of the ‘cult’ talk to one another and not to the outside world), and (b) allowing (finally, under the rubric of “fake news”) their corruption to become apparent to those on the Right as well as to those on the Left.
Thus, the ‘old reality’ whereby the liberal MSM sought to, and for many decades did, “set the agenda” for the ‘chattering classes’ has finally been shattered not just by the rise of social media but also by their alienation of a class fraction they really care about: the Right. Hence their hysterical (and Freudian) reaction to the fake news charge from the latter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=NoXGV4Vw-VA.
Now that social media have become more important than the ‘traditional’ media (radio/TV/the press) and have democratised the dissemination of news they are, in turn, being subject to exactly the same techniques of censorship isolated by Chomsky decades ago: no-platforming, a restriction on the sources of news/facts, the corralling of ‘acceptable’ speech/opinions within narrow margins (“so far and no further” in Chomsky’s phrase), today under the rubric of “hate speech” et al.
A final irony: the “Left”, those “guardians of democracy” who, because they don’t like an election result, rail against free speech that they disagree with (Berkeley et al) have, in a Damascene conversion, suddenly start regarding the security/intelligence services as paragons of Truth/guardians of civic freedom despite their historical record.
I think guys like Nimmo are no more than official fascists and should be … with extreme prejudice.
Provocateur much?