The 'Integrity Initiative' -

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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby Harvey » Sun Jan 06, 2019 11:10 pm

Private Eye: John rendon helped 'Integrity initiative' set up shop.

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This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby chump » Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:47 pm

Your mention of Rendon reminded me of this:



Psywar transcript

[…]

That story happened the same day that the tanks were rolling into Baghdad. That’s the same day that we shelled the Palestine hotel where the independent journalists were. The same day we blew up Al Jazeera’s television station and killed one of their journalists. All we’re getting on the front pages of the papers and in the news is the rescue of Jessica Lynch.

So, that was a PR substitute story. Toppling the Saddam statue, they got Chalabi’s group. The Rendon Group had actually formed them. The CIA paid the Rendon Group to form the Iraqi Congress as a counter-group to Saddam Hussein, and they were based here in the U.S. Then they flew them over there and they shipped them into Iraq. They were the ones that were standing around the statue as a tank was used to pull it over.

The Rendon Group had been around -- he worked for George W.’s father and he worked for Clinton too. His firm ... he used to be a public relations press guy for Carter. And he created a PR firm that specialized in war.

Mikela Jay: The head of the Rendon Group, John Rendon, denies that he is a “national security strategist” or a “military tactician”. Rather, he states: “I am a politician and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager.”

Following the First Gulf War, Rendon was paid $23 million by the CIA to create anti-Saddam propaganda. Following 9/11, he was charged with public relations for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.

Rendon is far from alone. Public relations has mushroomed into a $200 billion a year industry with PR “flacks” in the United States now outnumbering journalists.

Propaganda has become the primary means by which the wealthy communicate with the rest of society. Whether selling a product, a political candidate, a law, or a war, seldom do the powerful deliver messages to the public before consulting their colleagues in the public relations industry.


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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby conniption » Tue Jan 08, 2019 7:34 pm

off-guardian

Published on Jan, 8, 2019
Comments 25
Dad’s Army’s cover blown

A formidable and secret UK government-funded anti-Russian StratCom (strategic communication) enterprise, its cover having recently been embarrassingly blown, now presents itself as a bumbling Dad’s Army outfit. But don’t be fooled: this pussycat is a tiger.


Tony Kevin

...

Chris Donnelly on Disinformation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn5qyyDInTk
The Institute for Statecraft
Published on Dec 23, 2018

Institute for Statecraft director, Chris Donnelly, talks about the threat to democracies from disinformation, the work of the integrity initiative and the recent hack attack on the Institute for Statecraft.

...

https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/08/dad ... ver-blown/
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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby conniption » Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:05 am

consortium news

The Twitter Smearing of Corbyn and Assange

January 14, 2019 • 32 Comments

Historian and U.K. analyst Mark Curtis checks out the Twitter accounts of journalists whose names have been associated with the Integrity Initiative, a British “counter disinformation” program.

By Mark Curtis
British Foreign Policy Declassified

The U.K.-financed Integrity Initiative, managed by the Institute for Statecraft, is ostensibly a “counter disinformation” program to challenge Russian information operations. However, it has been revealed that the Integrity Initiative Twitter handle and some individuals associated with this program have also been tweeting messages attacking Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. This takes on special meaning in light of the numerous U.K. military and intelligence personnel associated with the program, documented in an important briefing by academics in the Working Group on Syria Propaganda and Media.

Several journalists have been named as associated with the Integrity Initiative, either in program “clusters” or having been invited to an Integrity Initiative event, in the documents that have been posted online. (For more on this see section 7.1 of this briefing note, the “UK” section of the “Xcountry” document and journalists invited to speak at an Integrity Initiative event in London in November 2018.)

Analysis of 11 of these individuals has been undertaken to assess to what extent their tweets have linked Corbyn unfairly (for a definition see below) to Russia. The results show two things:

> first, the smearing of Corbyn about Russia is more extensive than has been revealed so far;
> second, many of the same individuals have also been attacking a second target – Julian Assange, trying to also falsely link him to the Kremlin.

Many of these 11 individuals are associated with The Times and The Guardian in the U.K. and the Atlantic Council in the U.S. The research does not show, however, that these tweets are associated with the Integrity Initiative (see further below).

Linking Corbyn to Russia

The Integrity Initiative said in a tweet, “we are not ‘anti-Russian’ and do not ‘target’ Mr Corbyn.” However, that tweet was preceded by the following tweets:

> “Skripal poisoning: It’s time for the Corbyn left to confront its Putin problem.”
> “An alleged British Corbyn supporter wants to vote for Putin.”
> “’Mr Corbyn was a ‘useful idiot’, in the phrase apocryphally attributed to Lenin. His visceral anti-Westernism helped the Kremlin cause, as surely as if he had been secretly peddling Westminster tittle-tattle for money.’” This tweet was a quote from an article by Edward Lucas in The Times, “Corbyn’s sickening support of Soviet Empire.”

Here are examples of tweets from the 11 individuals.

Times columnist Edward Lucas has published an article on the Integrity Initiative website and been quoted as saying that his work with the Initiative has not been paid or involved anything improper. (See section 7.1.3 of this briefing note.) On Twitter, he has accused Corbyn of having blind spots on Putin’s plutocracy and Kremlin imperialism.”

continues... https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/14/t ... d-assange/


~~~

off-guardian

Published on Jan, 16, 2019
Comments 28

Disbelief, Magic Realism and Doublethink Alive and Well in 2018

James O’Neill

Image

In the Lyrical Ballads, a collection of essays and poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the latter coined the phrase “the willing suspension of disbelief.” It enabled the reader to overlook the logical improbabilities or fanciful concoctions to achieve “poetic faith”.

A modern equivalent might be “magical realism,” a term conceived by the German writer Franz Roh in 1925. Magical realism was a style of fiction that painted a realistic view of the modern world while also adding magical elements.

Both terms are appropriate when one considers modern journalism, especially as applied to some of the major stories of 2018. Four events during that year illustrate the point.

continues... https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/16/dis ... l-in-2018/


~~~

mint press news

New Documents Reveal Covert UK Military-Intelligence Smear Machine Meddling In US Politics

The Integrity Initiative has mobilized an international disinformation campaign across Europe. Now, with government and right-wing foundation money, this massive “political smear unit” is infiltrating the US.

January 09th, 2019

By Mark Ames and
Max Blumenthal


Grayzone Project — A bombshell domestic spy scandal has been unfolding in Britain after hacked internal communications exposed a covert UK state military-intelligence psychological warfare operation targeting its own citizens and political figures in allied NATO countries under the cover of fighting “Russian disinformation.”

The leaked documents revealed a secret network of spies, prominent journalists, and think-tanks colluding under the umbrella of a group called “Integrity Initiative” to shape domestic opinion—and to smear political opponents of the right-wing Tory government, including the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.

Until now, this Integrity Initiative domestic spy scandal has been ignored in the American media, perhaps because it has mostly involved British names. But it is clear that the influence operation has already been activated in the US. Hacked documents reveal that the Integrity Initiative is cultivating powerful allies inside the State Department, top DC think tanks, the FBI and the DHS, where it has gained access to Katharine Gorka and her husband, the fascist-linked cable news pundit Sebastian Gorka.

The Integrity Initiative has spelled out plans to expand its network across the US, meddling in American politics and recruiting “a new generation of Russia watchers” behind the false guise of a non-partisan charity. Moreover, the group has hired one of the most notorious American “perception management” specialists, John Rendon, to train its clusters of pundits and cultivate relationships with the media.

Back in the UK, Member of Parliament Chris Williamson has clamored for an investigation into the Integrity Initiative’s abuse of public money.

continues... https://www.mintpressnews.com/new-docum ... cs/253658/
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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 18, 2019 7:51 pm

Russian attack on the Integrity Initiative: what makes the Mafia different from the police

2019/01/17 - 20:24 •

Hybrid War



Article by: Kseniya Kirillova

In late November, a scandal erupted in the largest Russian media. Propaganda publications told us about the “British anti-Russian program,” The Integrity Initiative, which, according to RIA Novosti, “was used to interfere in the internal affairs of European countries and for the information war against Russia.”

The Russians refer to internal documents of the British project, saying that the hacker group Anonymous claimed responsibility for obtaining them. At the same time, even the Russian media don’t deny that the goal of the Integrity Initiative was not creating propaganda but fighting against it.

“The stated goal of the Integrity Initiative project is to fight against ‘Russian propaganda and information attacks.’ The way to do it is to form a network of knowledgeable people from the political, military, academic, and expert areas,” RIA Novosti quotes the British project in one of their articles (as of now, this website contains over 30 publications about the Integrity Initiative).

Nevertheless, Moscow is trying to prove with all its might that the goal of the project is to deliberately denigrate Russia and “interfere in the affairs of other countries.” Through the mouths of hackers, Russia states: “Hiding behind noble intentions, Britain actually created a large information secret service in Europe, the USA and Canada… As part of the project, Britain has repeatedly interfered in the internal affairs of independent European states.”

At the same time, Russian propagandists claim that the project is nothing but a brainchild of British intelligence services and is “closely connected with British intelligence.”

The scandal has grown so large that members of the Russian State Duma have already stated their willingness to conduct an investigation into the Russians cooperating with the project, and the Russian embassy asked the British Foreign Ministry for clarification about the authenticity of the published documents on the activities of the Integrity Initiative, as well as the information about all the projects on Russia funded by the Ministry.

What are the Russians accusing The Integrity Initiative of?

Let’s try to figure out what the Russians base their accusations on, and what makes the British project the main “evidence of malicious purposes”? Focusing on publications in the main Russian propaganda media devoted to the analysis of the published documents, one can single out the main “complaints” presented by the Russian authorities.

Effective organization of activities in different countries, built through a system of “clusters”.
Coordination and interaction between clusters, which is carried out both electronically and, sometimes, through British embassies.
Great analytical work on Russian propaganda in each region, conducting seminars and studies.
Promotion of the results of this work in social networks, the use of information platforms to counter Russian “active measures.”
Partial financing of the project by the British government and NATO, the participation of Western security experts in the project.
The Russian authorities were particularly insulted by the project documents mentioning of one of the people most hated by Vladimir Putin – financier and lobbyist of the “Magnitsky Act” William Browder, as well as Vladimir Ashurkov, an associate of corruption fighter Alexei Navalny, and the Russian scientist Igor Sutyagin, convicted in the past for spying.

It is important to bear in mind the documents laid out by hackers may partially be faked. However, the project’s management does not deny that the program dedicated to fighting against disinformation in Europe really does have to spend most of its time studying the activities of Russia, including those carried out through intelligence services. The Integrity Initiative considers the hacker attack carried out under the name Anonymous itself as one of the Kremlin’s propaganda operations.

Thus, both parties recognize as generally truthful information about the structure, scale of activities and contacts of the project. The fundamental difference between what Russian propagandists say and the real work of the Integrity Initiative is primarily in the goals and methods of the British organization. In order to understand which of the parties is right, it is important to answer the main question: does the fight against Russian propaganda really require such complex organization, coordination, and funding as is being used in the British project?

How does Russian propaganda work?

Over the past years, many experts have described the strategies and tactics of Russian propaganda and “information operations,” which are part of the “active measures” of the special services. However, the most accurate information about these tactics can be obtained from legal documents. In particular, the indictment by US special counsel Robert Mueller against 13 Russians accused of interfering in the elections in the United States, describes some of them in detail.

According to the document, the accused conducted campaigns in support of Donald Trump and undermined the image of the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on social networks and beyond, used the stolen personal data of American citizens to create accounts and profiles on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook, and also infiltrated the US under false pretense. The Internet Research Agency based in St. Petersburg, led by Yevgeniy Prigozhin and partly funded by two of his other companies, Concord Management and Concord Catering, conducted this work. The monthly budget of the “troll factory,” as the Internet Research Agency is often called, was about 73 million rubles as of September 2016 (more than $1.25 mn). Concord, among other things, acted as a contractor in several government contracts. Then it was transformed into a new project called “Lakhta.”

The employees of the “troll factory” worked day and night in two shifts for many months and created hundreds of social media profiles using the names of the Americans. Since 2014, they have created the web pages of organizations fighting for immigration, the importance of the lives of African Americans (“Blacktivists”), Muslim and Christian groups, etc., which then pitted the Americans against each other. In 2015, Lakhta employees have started buying advertising on social networks and have become more active on Twitter. Their work and the main topics of agitation in the meantime were carefully supervised from Moscow.

Lakhta also acquired servers in the United States and created virtual private networks, trying to disguise themselves as a domestic American network. E-mail addresses for non-existent Americans were also created. With their help, they communicated with other activists and circulated appeals to local media for the purpose of promotion of their events.

In 2016, Lakhta employees began using real social security numbers and genuine birth dates of actual Americans without their knowledge. With the help of this information, “wallets” were created in the PayPal payment system, driver’s licenses were obtained, and then pages of organizations controlled by Lakhta were created under the names of the victims of theft, and advertising on social networks was bought.

Starting in February 2016, Lakhta began to use any opportunity to criticize Hillary Clinton and support Trump, including organizing rallies in his support. Rallies “in support of” the Democrats were also held but were actually aimed at discrediting them (for example, their organizers called for the introduction of Sharia law in the USA). Lakhta also called on the Democrats’ potential electorate not to vote.

After the elections, the Russians did not stop interfering in the affairs of the United States. In particular, they conducted campaigns to undermine American security, discredit law enforcement agencies and ongoing investigations.

A vivid example of the “flow” of Russian slander into American mass media is a smear against James Comey published in an English-language source, but using the Russian word pravda (truth), written in Latin letters.

Separately, it’s worth mentioning the activity of Russian trolls that preceded the release of the Nunes Memorandum, in which the FBI and the Department of Justice were accused of bias against President Donald Trump. The Twitter hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo was originally published by several Republican senators on 18 January 2018, and on the same day, it was picked up by Wikileaks.

At the same time, as indicated on the website of the American Alliance for Securing Democracy, from 14-31 January 2018, members of the Alliance studied 159 major articles distributed from the URLs of Kremlin-linked accounts on Twitter. As a result, it turned out that 31% of the trending links were devoted to the legends of the “Deep State” and attacks on the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Mueller probe. Half of these articles were devoted to the release of the “Nunes Memo.” Other targets of Russian trolls were Hillary Clinton, Andrew McCabe and Lindsey Graham. An anti-immigration theme was also trending. Based on this data, congressmen Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff sent a letter to the Twitter and Facebook management asking them to investigate the bot activity.

The Lakhta project reappears in another indictment, issued by the US Justice Department against Russian citizen Elena Husyainova. She was involved in accounting for finances, which were used, in particular, for conducting operations to influence American elections. Cash flows were used for payments to activists, political advertising in social networks, registration of domain names, purchase of proxy servers, etc. This time the interference was also directed at the mid-term elections to the US Congress in 2018.

The operational budget of the project, according to the investigation, in 2016-2018 was $35 million; moreover, only part of it was spent on the operations in the USA. Also, part of the funds was allocated for the campaign to discredit Republicans John McCain and Paul Ryan, who were contrasted with Trump as a “defender of America’s true interests”. Trolls were encouraged to support all of Trump’s initiatives as president.

If we look away from the American realities, we can recall one of the largest revelations of Russian “active measures” in Ukraine, in particular, the publication of the letters of the “gray cardinal of the Kremlin” Vladislav Surkov in 2016 and 2017.

Editor’s Note

The hacked emails range from those proving Russia’s involvement in the proxy “republics” in eastern Ukraine to financing electoral campaigns of ex-Communists to massive psy-ops aiming at the federalization of Ukraine. Activists were paid to protest the perceived economic ruination that the cessation of economic ties with Russia may bring, “foot soldiers” on a salary hung up banners calling to bring in Russian troops, journalists were bribed to cover Russian-organized activities, and an operation to set up an alternative center of power in the multi-ethnic region of Besarabia was unfolded. This all was carried out against the backdrop of lobbying to change Ukraine’s Constitution with the aim of legalizing Russia’s proxy “republics” in Donbas and attempting to convince the Ukrainians that they can never become part of the EU and should go back to “Mother Russia” – Ed.
Why is the Integrity Initiative necessary?

I mentioned and described only a few examples of the actions of Russian propaganda in just two of the many countries where Moscow conducts its “active measures.” However, they show how much effort Russia directs at destabilizing sovereign states, trying to split their societies and supporting candidates loyal to the Kremlin. Naturally, the victims of such interventions try to defend themselves from hostile attacks. By the way, according to the above-mentioned indictment against Husayinova, the Russians informally call intervention in the American elections an “information war against the USA.”

In 2015, a group of American volunteer enthusiasts led by the former senior CIA officer Charles Leven created an informal group to combat Russian disinformation in Linkedin in the United States. The work of this group was described in major American media.

However, their project only lasted a year – the Russian trolls, funded by the Russian government, well-organized and much more numerous, succeeded in blocking the American volunteers by using the standard social media complaint mechanism. It became obvious that ordinary people with limited resources are unable to stop the flow of misinformation from a huge totalitarian country which made the spread of fake news and trolls one of its priorities. At the same time, it is no less obvious that protection against such aggressive intervention is a national security issue for victims of Russian “information operations.”

Now, let’s return to the points listed above on the basis of which the project The Integrity Initiative was condemned by the Russian media, and try to understand whether they constitute necessary conditions for protection against Kremlin propaganda.

1. State funding and participation. It is clear from the above-mentioned facts and figures that volunteers, working at their own expense, are not able to withstand a huge propaganda machine, whose work is worth millions of dollars a month on a single country from the list. The participation of government funding in the Integrity Initiative is also understandable: “active measures” are a professional area of activity of Russian special services for the destruction of democratic institutions in other countries, thus protection against them is a matter of national security. These issues, of course, fall within the purview of the government of any country.

2. “Clusters.” The work of the Russian propaganda described above is carried out in all countries which the Integrity Initiative interacts with. For the above-mentioned reason, enthusiasts engaged in combating this propaganda need help, including organizational assistance. Coordination of common work is perfectly normal for any serious business.

3. Participation of security experts and other professionals in the activities of the clusters. Fighting Russian propaganda is a matter of national security for many countries, since in some of them this propaganda is aimed at weakening and destabilizing the country, and in others (in particular, post-Soviet ones) threatens the very existence of the state. A group of volunteers cannot effectively confront the special services – this should be done by professionals, at least veterans, as well as professional journalists, linguists, and other experts. It is also quite normal that these experts share their knowledge with less experienced community members.

4. Analytical work. From the above documents, we see that Russian trolls disguise themselves as the ordinary residents of the victim countries; therefore, in order to identify propagandists, understand their tactics, and effectively resist disinformation, serious analytics are needed. Moreover, Russian propagandists, while publishing the stolen documents, unwittingly confirm that the activity of the Integrity Initiative is not aimed at creating propaganda, but on the contrary, at identifying and studying it.

“Once again, answering the main question of the report: why is Putin ‘lying,’ the British summarize: because of power and wealth, as well as the exploitation of Western freedom of speech. According to them, power and wealth are the reasons why Putin ‘bombarded’ the West with disinformation,” reports one of the Russian propaganda websites, thus showing that the Integrity Initiative’s activities fully meet the stated goals: to understand the causes of misinformation in order to realize how to confront it.

5. When the analytical work is done, and misinformation is revealed and refuted, spreading the truth in the media space becomes a completely natural next step. It is also important to inform the public about the ties of this or that official or politician with Russia since Russia behaves in relation to the countries involved in the project like a hostile state. At the same time, the participants of the British project, unlike the Kremlin, spread the truth, not lies, do not use stolen names and fake data and do not violate the law.

Participation of Russian dissidents in the project is also quite understandable – they understand in-depth propaganda techniques and the mentality of certain parts of the Russian population that can be indoctrinated.

Thus, the Russian “active measures” and the activities of The Integrity Initiative aimed to counter them relate roughly in the same way as the activities of criminals and the police designed to counteract them. In fact, the “people’s militia” is not able to resist organized crime. To combat the mafia, government funding, professional staff, good coordination, high-quality analytical and research work are needed. The police also needs international coordination – Interpol (just recently Moscow unsuccessfully tried to gain control over it using the standard “active measure”: winning the election for the position of its president.) At the same time, not all police activities are publicized: secrecy is needed to protect sources and continue to investigate and prevent criminals from “covering their tracks.”

The hacker attack on The Integrity Initiative and the scandal that followed is an attempt by Russian propaganda to swap the criminal for the one who is trying to investigate his crimes. But the difference between those spreading lies to destroy other countries and those spreading the truth to protect their own countries is equal to that between an aggressor and a victim. Even if the way of organizing their activities seems similar at first glance.




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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby conniption » Wed Jan 23, 2019 6:06 pm

disobedient media
(embedded links)

Integrity Initiative And Affiliates Behind Multiple Attacks On Disobedient Media

January 15, 2019
Elizabeth Vos


Last month, an anonymous hacking group published a slew of documents that revealed a vast operation by the Integrity Initiative and its parent group, the Institute for Statecraft. The organizations and their slew of affiliates sought to propagandize a Western audience by crafting false narratives, creating smears out of whole cloth, and in all of these efforts, backed by the UK intelligence community. In other words, make psychological warfare sound like journalism, while accusing Russia of the same.

The influence of the group and its contacts stretches from news outlets in Europe to Washington DC insiders to Silicon Valley. Multiple reports published by Grayzone, the World Socialist Website and others map this infinite array of relationships, which we will not endeavor to outline in full here.

The revelation is not merely an embarrassment to some factions within the British intelligence community, but represents a glimpse into the inner workings of the propaganda machine that keeps the plutocratic class in control of the public.

John Pilger once wrote of Edward Bernays, the founder of modern propaganda: “Bernays’ influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing the American public to join the slaughter of the First World War. The secret, he said, was “engineering the consent” of people in order to “control and regiment [them] according to our will without their knowing about it. He described this as “the true ruling power in our society” and called it an “invisible government.”

It is this same invisible controlling force that has been exposed at work in the anonymous hack of the Integrity Initiative.

Grayzone’s Mohamed Elmaazi and Max Blumenthal summarized the scandal, writing: “Recent hacked documents have revealed an international network of politicians, journalists, academics, researchers and military officers, all engaged in highly deceptive covert propaganda campaigns funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), NATO, Facebook and hardline national security institutions… The whole operation appears to be run by, and in conjunction with, members of British military intelligence… The exposing of the Integrity Initiative has just scratched the surface of what appears to be a much more sophisticated, insidious, and extremely online version of Operation Mockingbird.”

In the weeks following the hack, major narratives pushed by the legacy press in the last two years have been exposed as state-friendly propaganda, including but not limited to: Russiagate, the Skripal poisoning, the smearing of Jeremy Corbyn, and the pushback against the Catalan independence movement. Grayzone also illustrated the group’s ties to Trump-insiders Katharine and Sebastian Gorka and neoconservative interests, detailing the direct involvement of the State Department’s Todd Leventhal.

The Integrity Initiative was not only involved with propagandizing against Russia. The group also interfered in American politics, according to Grayzone: “It is clear that the influence operation has already been activated in the US. Hacked documents reveal that the Integrity Initiative is cultivating powerful allies inside the State Department, top DC think tanks, the FBI and the DHS, where it has gained access to Katharine Gorka and her husband, the fascist-linked cable news pundit Sebastian Gorka.”

As commented on by Jimmy Dore, the leaked documents reveal the identity of a probable British intelligence asset, Bracey-Lane, who worked for the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign. Again, this suggests that the group was not simply aimed at scare-mongering against Russia, but also actively worked to interfere in American politics while blaming Russia for the same thing.

The World Socialist Website described the sources of funding for the Initiative, writing: ” … with £1.96 million from the FCO and the rest from the US State Department, NATO and the American neoconservative Smith Richardson Foundation. Facebook, which plays an integral role in imposing censorship on behalf of US imperialism, donated £100,000.”

The larger-than-life quality of the story included in Grayzone’s discovery of a fake, derelict location and real offices located in an area known as “the Temple,” that is filled with “barristers’ chambers and used to serve as the precinct for the Knights of Templar.” Grayzone also cites UK Parliament Member Chris Williamson, who directly compared the machinations of the Integrity Initiative with the CIA’s cold-war Operation Mockingbird: “These tactics resemble those deployed by the CIA in Operation Mockingbird that was launched at the height of the cold war in the early 1950s. Its aims included using the mainstream news media as a propaganda tool.”

Despite the story’s historic significance of the scandal, Western corporate media’s glaring refusal to cover the story requires little explanation. Disobedient Media’s William Craddick noted last year that Richard Stengel, a former Editor of Time Magazine revealed in the leak to be tied to the Integrity Initiative via the Global Engagement Center and Todd Leventhal, had publicly advocated for the use of domestic propaganda.

That the Integrity Initiative would be unmasked as a front for state-backed propaganda is not without precedent. In the series Decipher You, this writer and President of the Internet Party of New Zealand Suzie Dawson noted the use of NGOs as proxy organizations used by intelligence agencies.

Virtually simultaneous to the revelations stemming from the anonymously hacked documents, Disobedient Media‘s William Craddick also reported allegations that a British intelligence asset had infiltrated right-wing outlets including the Voice of Europe. The report was not the first time that British influence has been noted interfering in various US affairs.

In April last year, Disobedient Media reported on Joseph Mifsud’s ties to UK intelligence figures, and other connections suggesting British influence at the heart of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, concluding:

“Is British intelligence involvement in RussiaGate, as outlined above, the international version of CrowdStrike and former FBI figures manufacturing the Guccifer 2.0 persona specifically to smear WikiLeaks via false allegations of a Russian hack of the DNC? Have we been looking in the wrong place – at the wrong country – to unearth the so-called ‘foreign meddling’ in the 2016 US election all along?”

In light of evidence showing that Mifsud’s real ties are to British intelligence, not the Russian government, the possibility arises that the UK made efforts to subvert the Presidency of Donald Trump by creating false evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election. In this vein, former Reagan NSC staff-member Richard Levine discussed the role of the GCHQ in the evolution of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, explaining the context in which Trump’s election to the US Presidency would have been seen as totally unacceptable in British establishment and intelligence circles:

“As perceived throughout 2016, Donald Trump and his enunciated views on Muslims constituted a threat to cohesion within the United Kingdom as well as to its external affairs, for if Trump became President, a continuance of the special relationship between Britain and America could undercut Britain’s position vis-à-vis the nation’s burgeoning Muslim population as well as its relations with Muslim-majority nations. If Britain were to suspend its special relationship with America in the wake of a Trump presidency, the island nation’s economy and security could suffer grievous harm. Further, the next British monarch might be precluded from becoming the head of the Commonwealth of Nations due to friction with Muslim-majority members incensed by Washington. Thus, both courses appeared unacceptable.”

Levine added: “It may therefore be contended that former or current operatives, with decades-long associations with American and British intelligence, took part in activities, which one of these individuals alleged was penetrated by Russia. Of course, these persons were not part of the Trump campaign or presidency: rather they are connected to the CIA, the FBI, and MI6.“

“As perceived throughout 2016, Donald Trump and his enunciated views on Muslims constituted a threat to cohesion within the United Kingdom as well as to its external affairs, for if Trump became President, a continuance of the special relationship between Britain and America could undercut Britain’s position vis-à-vis the nation’s burgeoning Muslim population as well as its relations with Muslim-majority nations. If Britain were to suspend its special relationship with America in the wake of a Trump presidency, the island nation’s economy and security could suffer grievous harm. Further, the next British monarch might be precluded from becoming the head of the Commonwealth of Nations due to friction with Muslim-majority members incensed by Washington. Thus, both courses appeared unacceptable.”

Levine added: “It may therefore be contended that former or current operatives, with decades-long associations with American and British intelligence, took part in activities, which one of these individuals alleged was penetrated by Russia. Of course, these persons were not part of the Trump campaign or presidency: rather they are connected to the CIA, the FBI, and MI6.“

“As perceived throughout 2016, Donald Trump and his enunciated views on Muslims constituted a threat to cohesion within the United Kingdom as well as to its external affairs, for if Trump became President, a continuance of the special relationship between Britain and America could undercut Britain’s position vis-à-vis the nation’s burgeoning Muslim population as well as its relations with Muslim-majority nations. If Britain were to suspend its special relationship with America in the wake of a Trump presidency, the island nation’s economy and security could suffer grievous harm. Further, the next British monarch might be precluded from becoming the head of the Commonwealth of Nations due to friction with Muslim-majority members incensed by Washington. Thus, both courses appeared unacceptable.”

Levine added: “It may therefore be contended that former or current operatives, with decades-long associations with American and British intelligence, took part in activities, which one of these individuals alleged was penetrated by Russia. Of course, these persons were not part of the Trump campaign or presidency: rather they are connected to the CIA, the FBI, and MI6.“

Disobedient Media’s coverage of the EU Army in particular noted the role of NATO in supplying the new fighting force with equipment and weaponry that was being shipped to Europe under the auspices of Operation Atlantic Resolve. Atlantic Resolve is an ongoing NATO operation intended to counteract Russia, a major geostrategic opponent of the United Kingdom. It should be of little surprise to anyone that British government propaganda programs would attack Disobedient Media’s coverage of operations that have allowed them to use the United States as a proxy in their centuries-long competition with Russia for political dominance both in Europe and around the globe.

An even closer proxy of the Integrity Initiative attacked this writer in 2017, shortly after Disobedient Media covered the violent suppression of the Catalan independence movement by authorities in Spain. The Spanish paper of record El Pais then published a hit piece against this outlet, representing our coverage as a Russian disinformation front. Never mind that all individuals associated with Disobedient Media are US or UK citizens with no ties, financial or otherwise, to Russia. We are proud to accept zero financial incentive from anyone, Russian or not. We decline to so much as include Google advertising on our site, to maintain total independence.

After being translated electronically from Spanish to English, the passage reads:

“The digital armies of the Kremlin operate with the same pattern: viralize exaggerated or false messages and news to exacerbate a crisis and encourage division in the US or Europe, something that ends up benefiting the position of Moscow. For that, these guerrillas use websites that look like serious diaries that create or host the news that is later shared. One of the most popular is DisobedientMedia.com, which is presented under the guise of a research journalism website, but which has been dedicated to promoting all sorts of false conspiracy theories such as the one that linked Hillary Clinton to a pedophile network. According to the Atlantic Council think tank, the employees of that supposed newspaper have also spread false news in the German campaign, as Angela Merkel allowed the entrance of ISIS jihadists in Europe to achieve greater military power.” [Emphasis added]

The smear attempt continued: “Now that same medium and those same employees have launched to disseminate information about the Catalan crisis, often interacting with Assange himself. On September 15 they published a new in which they made false claims that the cancellation of the referendum has cast doubt on the permanence of Spain in the EU, that the Spanish government has restricted press freedom or that Amnesty International has condemned the illegal vote on the independence. The news ends with a photo of Francisco Franco on horseback and its author refers to “the enduring influence of the fascist dictator Francisco Franco in Spanish politics.” That same author, Elizabeth Lea Vos (@ElizabethleaVos) shared his information in Twitter seven days ago with messages like “Where is the EU’s response to Spanish authoritarianism?”

Unsurprisingly, Grayzone has described El Pais as a specifically “friendly host” to the Integrity Initiative, and the World Socialist Website reported that a key focusing of the Integrity Initiative included meddling in Spanish affairs, specifically regarding Catalan independence:

“By showing the real sources of information on which they rely, newspapers like El País or El Mundo are exposed as conduits of the intelligence services to support the suppression of maverick political viewpoints… Last year, El País carried out a frenzied and paranoid campaign claiming that the Catalan crisis was not sparked by the Popular Party government’s violent repression of the secessionists, but was the result of Moscow and its “fake news.” It quoted experts and specialists working for Spanish think tanks like Instituto Elcano and Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), and the European Council on Foreign Relations. The leaked documents show that many members of these think tanks are members of the “Spanish Cluster” of the Integrity Initiative.”

It appears that El Pais’s attack on this author and Disobedient Media was likely a part of the now-unmasked efforts of the Integrity Initiative’s to propagandize against anyone critical of the West or their allies. El Pais’s attempt to tie this author and Disobedient Media to the so-called “digital army of the Kremlin” didn’t so much as attempt to provide a single tie between this author or Disobedient Media and Russia, much less the Russian government. However, it would not be the last time that this outlet would be accused of acting on behalf of Russia despite all evidence to the contrary.

Last year, Disobedient Media’s technical correspondent was shamelessly doxxed and attacked in a hit-piece authored by Duncan Campbell. Campbell, much like the Atlantic Council, similarly attacked Disobedient Media’s coverage of the EU Army and ties between certain British officials and organizations linked to terrorist networks. While multiple writers have since thoroughly debunked the claims made in Campbell’s farce of an article, Carter informed this writer that shortly before the piece was published, a photographer and journalist from the Sunday Times appeared at his residence unannounced. This would suggest that the journalists in question had been tipped off as to Carter’s real identity and address, as well as the imminent publication of Campbell’s report. Carter added that shortly after Campbell’s article was published, he received a follow-up email from Sunday Times reporter Ian Williams.

Fascinatingly, Ian Williams is part of the ‘Russian Outer Core group of II‘ described in the Integrity Initiative scandal. While Carter cannot confirm that Ian Williams was the same reporter who appeared on his doorstep just prior to the publication of Campbell’s article, it is nonetheless relatively predictable that a reporter associated with the Integrity Initiative’s efforts to propagandize against Russia would seize on Campbell’s ad-hominem-drenched hysteria.

It goes without saying that Disobedient Media is far from the only outlet targeted by organizations and individuals associated with the Integrity Initiative. However, by discussing the targeting of this single, minor independent outlet, one realizes the gravity of state-backed resources devoting to smearing domestic, independent voices. It provides a piece of a larger pattern seen repetitively across the independent media sphere, wherein critical thinkers are attacked viciously under the guise of “protecting democracy” and “countering pro-Russia talking-points.”

These groundbreaking revelations documented meticulously by Grazyone and others form the latest in a series of reports linking British intelligence to meddling in US political affairs, a twisted reflection of the reality deflected from in the Russiagate saga. That state-sponsored organizations targeted the leader of a political party is a revelation whose shockwaves should reverberate for a long time to come.

If the incestuous relationship between the State and corporate world hadn’t already been proven, the revelation of this nefarious project should put the final nail in the coffin of the separation between technocracy, plutocracy and governance.

Disobedient Media will continue to report on this story as it develops.


https://disobedientmedia.com/2019/01/in ... ent-media/


~~~

RT

UK-funded psyop outfit Integrity Initiative locks Twitter account after wiping content from website

Published time: 23 Jan, 2019

Image

After wiping its website clean pending a ‘probe’ into embarrassing leaks, the British state-funded Integrity Initiative (II) has hidden its Twitter account from the public, meaning only ‘approved’ followers can see its activity.

The Scotland-based organization, which received roughly £2 million in government funding over the last 18 months, had fashioned itself as a benign charity fighting “disinformation” online.

That was until a series of leaks, posted online by a group that claimed to be associated with the Anonymous hacker collective, revealed that it had been working with “clusters” of journalists, politicians and academics to engage in shady anti-Russia ‘influence’ campaigns across Europe, as well as a domestic smear campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who it tried to frame as a tool of the Kremlin.

The decision to lock its Twitter account comes just a day after the II announced (via that Twitter account) that it had deleted all content from its website pending an investigation into the “theft” of its data.

A statement posted on the site claimed that some of the leaks had been “falsified” but didn’t include any evidence to back that up, leading to speculation that the organization was simply trying to clean house and prepare a credible excuse in the wake of the disturbing leaks.

continues... https://www.rt.com/uk/449518-integrity- ... protected/
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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby conniption » Fri Jan 25, 2019 7:16 am

Dances with Bears
(embedded links)

OPERATION INTEGRITY INITIATIVE — BRITISH INTELLIGENCE CELEBRATES A CENTURY OF RUSSIA LIES AND SELF-DECEPTION

By John Helmer, Moscow
January 13th, 2019

There’s a reason Albion is well-known as perfidious. Like leopards and spots, it’s because he’s always been that way.

In the 1920s the British secret services pursued Russians in the UK with the same zealous tactics and purposes as they have been doing in the past decade. The partial release of the 1920s archives, documented in a newly published book, reveals the same fabrications, false flags, contrived press leaks, meretricious politicians and journalists, sanctions, expulsions, and deep state deceptions as the British continue to pursue against Russia today.

Why is clearer then than now. A century ago, the British government, the country’s military leaders, and media proprietors were all agreed on the necessity of hanging on to the British empire and its colonies, especially India; and to neutralize – if necessary, liquidate – the locals seeking national independence. There were also British business interests in maintaining cheap commodity imports of oil, rubber, wool, and other raw materials in exchange for over-priced machine and manufactured exports into captive markets. The threats of nationalism abroad, unionism and wage bargaining at home were real. Blaming Russia, Bolshevism and Communism for “meddling” then was an obvious expedient for the police and military measures, and for the state budget funds required to protect the status quo.

But now, without an empire of captive peoples and markets; without army or navy with global reach; without credible British political party alternatives for the domestic terms of economic exchange; and also without Russian ideology to contend with, what explains the revival of Russia-hating as Conservative Party politicians and the chiefs of MI6, MI5 and the Special Branch police practiced it one hundred years ago? This new book is written by an academic who is a true-believer in Russia-hating as British state policy, so he doesn’t answer the question. What can be learned instead from his book are the many flashes of déjà vu — and also the way the flashes, repeated often enough, cause British blindness. For this, the author demonstrates by his own example, there is no cure.

Timothy Phillips (right), Image author of The Secret Twenties, British Intelligence, the Russians and the Jazz Age, doesn’t have much of a background for this job, at least not in public. His publisher says he studied Russian at Oxford University, and since graduating “he has travelled widely in the former Soviet Union and has worked extensively as a translator.” How he makes his living at that may be paid for, according to the publisher, by the BBC — a state propaganda unit in the 1920s, acknowledges Phillips himself. According to the newly released lists of British journalists and academics recruited by the secret services into what is nowadays called the Integrity Initiative, Phillips’s name doesn’t appear; more of those names in a moment, and the source of their pay.

Perhaps Phillips inherited his money or married it. The money shot isn’t a personal matter; in British operations against Russia, the money which pays for writers and media – today no less than a century ago – tells the real story.

Phillips’s book has dropped through the London market like a stone; sales are still stuck in the first printing. A newspaper in Scotland and a radio station in Australia gave it brief mentions. One London newspaper reviewed it positively; the Guardian reviewer also added something Phillips had left out – that many of the 1920s files on secret service fake news and press plants have been “accidentally and mysteriously ‘lost’ by Home Office civil servants.” The Guardian book review editor didn’t notice how the rest of the Guardian newspaper has accidentally and mysteriously revived the same techniques of inventing Russia stories, then ‘losing’ the sources.

The Guardian isn’t exceptional. There is no mainstream British newspaper or publishing house today which isn’t. Phillips’s book comes from Granta, a London publisher funded by the Tetra Pak family fortune of Sweden, and by the Russia-hating daughter of that family. The other minor, alternative and left-wing publishers in the UK sit on different sources of money, but say the same things. Compared to the 1920s, today’s media are more uniform and conformist in their sentiment towards Russia, and far less critical of the British secret service line. Nowadays only among a handful of internet websites and blogs can investigation be found at the standard of proof required by the British courts.

This, by the way, is an interesting circumstance Phillips reveals by not mentioning it. In his book the secret services and government ministries carefully avoided the courts. Search warrants, arrests, interrogations, forensic examinations, confiscations and deportations were all implemented in secret by administrative fiat; so none of the evidence of Russian culpability was ever tested by cross-examination, conviction or acquittal by judge or jury. For the Litvinenko, MH17 and Skripal cases, it’s the same now.

There’s also an entertaining difference. In one of the longest-running British intelligence operations, starting in 1917 after the Revolution nationalized Russian crown and aristocratic property, the flow of diamonds and other gemstones was traced from Moscow and Leningrad through Poland and Estonia into cutting factories in Amsterdam, and the sales proceeds into London.

Image
A US-published photograph of Russian crown jewels from an album issued in 1922 intended to stimulate buyer interest. The Russian valuation of the jewels for sale at the time was more than $250 million. Source: http://www.palagems.com/

From there the British authorities tried to track the money into left-wing organizations around the UK, also western Europe, and most “horrifying” – Phillips’s judgement – to nationalist organizations in the Punjab. “A princess’s tiara, glimpsed at a ball in 1916, really could turn into sticks of dynamite or machine guns in the hands of violent rebels who wished Britain ill… This was just one aspect of Soviet financial wrongdoing” – Phillips again. He also converts the sterling numbers in the secret files into current pounds – altogether, less than £100 million current equivalent.

This number is less than the proceeds removed to London in 2004 and subsequently invested in residential and commercial assets in the city by a single runaway Russian banker, Vladimir Chernukhin; on that individual the Home Office has conferred citizenship and immunity from prosecution. Since 1991 the combined financial resources removed from Russia and invested in London by Russians with Home Office immunity runs into dozens of billions of pounds. “Horrifying” – but not to Phillips; not now; not even with High Court judgements of liability, perjury, or dishonesty, nor the threat of the Home Office’s Unexplained Wealth Orders; for more details, click.

Among the successful, if minor, secret service operations identified by Phillips from the UK archives, one was the banning of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film, Battleship Potemkin. That was stopped by the British Board of Film Censorship (BBFC) in 1926 after a campaign started at the Admiralty characterising the film as “very objectionable propaganda against the discipline of the Fighting Forces.” Secret briefings for the BBFC followed from Home Office officials and secret service agents. The censorship board’s criteria for banning Russian films included “Bolshevist propaganda”, “realism in death bed scenes”, “lampoons of the institution of monarchy”, and “officers in British regiments shown in a disgraceful light”. British support for releasing the film remained too weak to lift the ban for thirty years.

The two most successful operations of the decade were the Zinoviev Letter of 1924 and the police raid on the London office of the Russian Trade Delegation and the All-Russia Cooperative Society (ARCOS) in 1927. The first was purportedly a secret communication to British “comrades” from Grigory Zinoviev, then head of the Communist International (Comintern) organization in Moscow. “Typical Bolshevik prose”, according to Phillips – “verbosity, didacticism and condescension”. But as the archive he reports revealed, ideal material to demonstrate Russian intervention in British politics during the national election campaign of October 1924. Phillips concedes the document was planted in the press by the secret services and government officials to help the Conservative Party win the election. Because the Labour Party vote gained substantially in numbers, Phillips isn’t sure the letter made any difference to Labour voters. But to Liberal voters who switched to the Tories, Phillips concludes “there can be no question that the scale of the [Conservative] triumph was boosted by the Zinoviev Letter. A year of scaremongering had culminated in the scariest tactic of all: the production of apparent proof that the first Labour Government in history had been in cahoots with a hostile foreign power.”

Image

Only the Zinoviev Letter was, Phillips admits, a forgery.

His research in the files isn’t new on this point. His fresh evidence is less than clear on how the document “fell into the hands of SIS officers in Estonia”. He thinks the forgers were White Russians. He concludes “there is no proof” that the forgery started in London ; “nor of any…British spy actually being aware that the September letter was a fake.” He records from the files that Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald was “absolutely sure that it was fraudulent”. He reports the names and methods of the secret service officials who managed to force MacDonald’s hand by deceptive official memoranda and false press leaks.

(If this sounds familiar — if it reminds you of the fabrication of the Golden Showers dossier by US and UK secret services and government officials to discredit Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the US election of November 2016, it deserves to; click to compare.)

continues... http://johnhelmer.net/operation-integri ... deception/
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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby conniption » Sat Jan 26, 2019 7:52 am

off-guardian
(embedded links)

Selling Integrity

David Macilwain
Published on Jan, 25, 2019
Comments 19

Ever since Dud and Pete put a price on “Integrity” in their Welsh music teacher sketch of the ‘60s, the word has had suspicious undertones. Rebuffed by the teacher for thinking he can be bought, the rich industrialist says “- Integrity! – that’s a valuable thing and I’m willing to pay for it!” For a little light relief in these dark days I’d recommend listening to this classic and timeless social comment.

It’s probably not just by chance that the “Integrity Initiative” was the title chosen to describe a program – or operation – that is the absolute antithesis of what it suggests. In fact the more that the activities of the organisation, and objectives of its overseer the Institute for Statecraft, are examined, the clearer this becomes; – the Initiative exists to spread disinformation about every action correctly perceived and acted upon by Russia.

But far worse than that, the focus of the “Statecraft” of Chris Donnelly’s Institute is in manipulating public perceptions so as to craft States suiting the interests of the NATO enterprise, and opposing the interests of Russia and her allies.

It seems as though the Integrity Initiative has been so successful in this manipulation – along with its horde of fellow agents and organisations – that it is not possible to interest people in this shock-horror show of the 21st century; they just don’t seem to get it!

Perhaps it’s not a true measure of the state of Australian media, but the lack of any reaction to a letter I had published this week in a regional daily paper – the “Border Mail” has rather stunned me. Over the years this rather independent newspaper has been prepared to publish similar dissenting opinion while all others stay silent, and at least generated local interest amongst ordinary folk who are not prejudiced by being “well-misinformed”.

(my letter, sadly behind a paywall, noted that true democracy depends on true information, as it is corrupted by disinformation; an issue with local relevance thanks to our Independent Federal MP Cathy McGowan – a woman who stands out for her personal integrity and dedication to representative democracy)

But “destroying democracy” failed to stir the swamp this time it seems, which is cause for great concern, and the need for this analysis. without labouring the issue, at least to the point of being tiresome, it’s necessary to spell out details of the most serious crimes of the Institute for Statecraft’s Initiative Strategy – ISIS – and of those in the UK and US state apparatus who have devised and commanded them.

While not forgetting that MH17 didn’t just fall out of the sky on the orders of one Ukrainian commander, or with the collaboration of the Ukie secret services alone, the connection of that atrocity to the IfS is barely proven, yet. Which leaves “Salisbury and Syria” as the areas where certifiable crimes have been committed – in contrast to simple ‘cyber-operations’ such as the targeting of Jeremy Corbyn, or false claims about Russian interference in European affairs.

Salisbury and Syria have in fact been identified already, not just as closely linked but as the key focal points of the Integrity Initiative AND the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. This particular document from the last cache of hacked documents spells out all the details we need, and from the horse’s mouth – the Head of Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme at HMG’s Russia Unit, Andy Pryce, who sent this email to “engaged” partners:

Sunday 15/04/18 13.03pm

This e-mail focussed on the Russian disinformation campaigns surrounding the chemical attack in Douma, subsequent military action, the Salisbury incident and the subsequent investigation. It is not intended to cover Russian responses as a whole but deliberate distortions and obfuscation of the facts by the Russian state and its proxies.

Please use as background for your own work and only share it with trusted colleagues and partners.”


The “subsequent military action” Pryce refers to took place less than 24 hours earlier! Examining the activities of NATO officials and Intelligence agencies in the interregnum between the carefully timed White Helmets attack on Douma on April 6th and the joint missile strikes leads to more questions than I have already asked, as here.

Pryce goes on to detail “31 different disinformation narratives deployed by the Russian State on the bungled assassination attempt in Salisbury and the horrific chemical weapons attack in Douma.” He also concludes that: “The Russian State is claiming that there is a joint UK, US and French effort on information warfare from Salisbury to Syria.”

This is also a particularly interesting statement to make, as the conclusion that there was a linkage between the Salisbury Operation and Russia’s actions in Syria was not yet made – by the Russian State. It was only being suspected at that time, and a link claimed by myself a week later. From my close attention to the statements of UK officials, I actually became suspicious that they were cleverly avoiding making any connection between the two “Chemical Weapons” operations publicly, while using every dog whistle they had to make the connection in the public’s mind. Boris Johnson was I think the first to chuck “and in Syria” into one of his public utterances.

This was despite the constant stream of propaganda in the Western media about the impending humanitarian disaster for the people of Eastern Ghouta, accompanied by nightly White Helmets child rescues. Looking back also, it appears that there were other “chemical attacks” staged by the White Helmets, but never picked upon –as if waiting till the timing was just right in the UK. We shouldn’t overlook the time of the Russian Presidential election either – March 18th – as the FCO certainly didn’t.

Looking at the “timeline” of events since before “Operation Nina” (or was it “Iris”?) has become something of an obsession for many of us, because there are so many incomprehensible discrepancies, both in Salisbury and Syria; the time lapse between the Skripals’ admission to hospital and that of Det. Inspector Nick Bailey is certainly one. As Rob Slane has pointed out, Bailey seems to have had some indecision on which time he went to Salisbury Hospital, with a delay before any antidote might be administered of up to 48 hours.

What is more astounding is that Nick Bailey’s very own testimony, given in detail to Jane Corbin in the BBC Salisbury special, destroys any claim that he ever came into contact with a lethal nerve agent. Without the slightest apparent recognition of its meaning, Bailey described how he “remained conscious throughout the treatment” – which involved a variety of injections and drugs. Bailey does however appear to have been another innocent victim of “friendly fire”, like Yulia, accepting the lies told to him about both the cause of his condition and its treatment.

As before, in the end it comes down to “who knew” that they were involved in the most devious and dangerous campaign of disinformation and criminal provocations in history, and who simply acted as “useful idiots” or helpless victims of their own states’ propaganda? And who knows now, that the need to conceal their complicity and collusion in these dastardly deceptions may also necessitate some further extreme measures, including lethal operations?

But perhaps those who do know are worse than we imagine; perhaps they are willing combatants in this war to rescue the West’s collapsing empire and its towers of Babel? In the light of our new knowledge – that what were conspiracy “theories” are now conspiracy studies, every new move by the NATO camp comes under suspicion, while all previous actions must be reviewed.

For example I recollect how the Australian PM at the time, Malcolm Turnbull, turned up in London only three days after the 14th April missile strike on Syria, and was involved in Five Eyes discussions on cyber security. What then seemed meerly suspect now appears revelatory, as Turnbull’s remarks mirror those written only four days earlier by Andy Pryce:

Whether it is a chemical attack in Syria, the use of a nerve agent on British soil, or the expanding cyber attacks across the internet… these must be resisted, they must be protected, they must be identified,” Mr Turnbull told the meeting in London on Thursday morning.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May said Russia has also been trying to distort the truth of what happened in chemical weapons attacks in Salisbury and in Syria.


Now it appears that Australia’s favoured solidarity with the Five Eyes also extends to life after Brexit – a deal or no deal Brexit evidently planned for and welcomed by Liam Fox, the UK’s International Trade and Development Minister. Following the Brexit crisis in Parliament, Liam Fox had a special meeting with Australia’s new High Commissioner in London, George Brandis, with mutual reassurance that trade and political links between the UK and its former colony would survive and blossom.

Just as “Honorary Colonel” Chris Donnelly wanted.
________

David Macilwain
Sixties drop out, Scientist-farmer, cheesemaker-Luddite, late life activist for the Resistance, Putin/Assad/Nasrallah lover. Atheist. Traveller-student through MENA-Russia-Europe. Abandoned UK frying pan for Australian fire. Marginalised dissident. Author for Russia Insider/AHT and OffG.


https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/25/selling-integrity/


selected comments:
tutisicecream

Jan, 26, 2019

Good article David I like the reference to Peter Cook at the start I can imagine him saying something like…

“Aye,aye. What we got ‘ere mi lad? The Integrity Initiative too many “I’s” – some kind of warped oxymoron – seems to have evaporated like the proverbial scotch mist from where it came. Taking with it countless millions of unaccounted tax payers money.”

The Integrity Initiative is/was an anti-Russian propaganda outfit funded to the tune of 140 million by the British Foreign office.

“…throughout the 20th century, as Mueller/the Five Eyes/Integrity Initiative are not new phenomena but actually follow a modus operandi set down for already more than a century.”

Matthew J.L. Ehret.

Read here his historical background to this not entirely now phenomenon of Anglo-Saxon imperialism.
https://www.sott.net/article/405721-The ... ed-America



balkydj

Jan, 26, 2019

That’s a ‘Roger’ , Stone the crows , check this !

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/18/e ... ittle-eye/

A long read, but , Truly brilliant ole’ school journalism … well worth digesting.



intergenerationaltrauma

Jan, 25, 2019

Excellent post. This is a HUGELY important story that should be covered endlessly in MSM, but of course to even suggest it should is a “thought crime.” As P.C. Roberts points out, to simply attempt to discuss “reality” today makes one a “conspiracy theorist” in these strange times. The corruption of our Western institutions is complete, total, absolute and irrefutable. They exist as the most dangerous and destructive forces ever directed against collective global humanity.

What a bizarre world we live in David that we must turn the – “cheesemaker-Luddite-farmers” – of the world to bring us the “truth.” Thank you for your quite obvious – integrity.


and many more...

conniption
 
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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby conniption » Tue Jan 29, 2019 7:17 pm

Straight from the Cold War? Integrity Initiative Infiltrated Bernie 2016 Campaign, Attacks Corbyn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBX1rBHqXF8
goingundergroundRT
Published on Jan 9, 2019
Chris Williamson MP discusses the new Integrity Initiative leaks revelations including the organisation infiltrating Bernie Sanders’ campaign, it’s efforts to influence the entertainment industry and it's attacks on Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.
________

RT

The Integrity Initiative scandal is getting worse — and British media keeps ignoring it

Danielle Ryan

Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer based in Dublin. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Nation, Rethinking Russia, teleSUR, RBTH, The Calvert Journal and others. Follow her on Twitter @DanielleRyanJ

Published time: 29 Jan, 2019

Things just keep getting worse for the poor, embattled disinformation-busting warriors at the Integrity Initiative. New leaks have revealed more embarrassing tidbits confirming yet again the shady nature of the busted operation.

This time, the spotlight is on the II’s targeting of anti-fracking activists, its ties to HSBC bank, its obsessive (near-fetishizing) focus on nuclear war with Russia and its plans to foster “a long-term appreciation” of NATO among Muslim youth.

In another blow to the image of itself as an unbiased exposer of fake news which the II had worked hard to cultivate, one of the documents details its support for and "close relationship" with Britain's Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI), which was masterminded by Chris Donnelly, a key player at the II's parent organization, the London-based Institute for Statecraft (IfS).

The SGMI has recruited civilian experts including hedge fund managers and senior bankers who donate their time to the SGMI as "patriots" — out of sheer generosity, no doubt. Two of those so-called patriots, Ian Cohen and James Townsend, are top executives at HSBC bank. Why is that so interesting?

Mr Ethical

@nw_nicholas
· Jan 25, 2019

I haven't got the energy to write a blog, so here's a short thread about HSBC and the Integrity Initiative. II is part of the Institute for Statecraft, a charity. It has "supported the creation of" an organisation called SGMI, Specialist Group Military Intelligence

Image

Chris Corney @ChrisCorney1

"Hedge fund managers...who donate their time as patriots" are fighting a new war embedded in a secret British army unit. Nothing to see here.
4:52 PM - Jan 25, 2019


Well, another document, based on discussions with Cohen (who has his own fancy MoD email address), appears to be a blueprint for sniffing out organizations or groups that might potentially have ties to Russia. Cohen suggests perhaps universities with “an anti-fracking agenda” could be investigated — and then of course smeared if they received any financing from Russian companies.

It must be sheer coincidence that HSBC is heavily involved in financing the fracking industry, providing banking services to multiple fossil fuel companies including Cuadrilla. Between 2007 and 2009, HSBC reportedly provided $5 billion in financing for tar sands projects in Canada. According to a BankTrack report on climate change, HSBC was in the top ten banks worldwide in 2017 for financing the fossil fuel industry. It was also named as one of the top ten "backsliders" — banks which drastically increased their fossil fuel financing between 2016 and 2017. HSBC has since pledged to get out of the fossil fuel industry, but it should be no surprise that its executives were interested in targeting anti-fracking activists with II’s help. What part of smearing environmentalists on behalf of banks, can legitimately be described as fighting against “disinformation” online?

II’s links to HSBC could also have something to do with British media’s continued lack of interest in covering the leaks. We are now approaching three months since the first batch of documents were dumped online and yet, the scandal has received scant coverage from mainstream British media, very likely due to the fact that a number of high profile journalists and academics have been named in the files for their work with various II projects. Some have since distanced themselves from the organization and it’s likely others were not even aware of how exactly II operated. Speaking notes from an address by IfS director Daniel Lafayeedney in Israel last year show that he pitched the Institute as "completely independent.”...

continues... https://www.rt.com/op-ed/450058-integri ... ish-media/

...final two paragraphs:
The answer, of course, is that the Integrity Initiative has been thoroughly exposed as a dirty psyop and any journalist with a shred of integrity — pardon the pun — would henceforth have nothing to do with the shady operation. They might even start covering it.

We already knew that the Integrity Initiative was essentially a British military intelligence cut out. Now we have even more proof that its operatives are much less interested in countering genuine disinformation and much more interested in covertly promoting NATO, hyping potential military conflict with Russia and now, as the latest leaks reveal, conspiring with banks and fossil fuel companies using British taxpayers’ money.

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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby Grizzly » Tue Jan 29, 2019 11:46 pm

Man, if we could just get sleuth hound slad on to the 'Brits'!
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby conniption » Wed Feb 06, 2019 1:58 am

RT
(embedded tweets and stuff)

Huge Psy-op in UK? Not interested. British media silent on Integrity Initiative months on

Published time: 5 Feb, 2019

Image
© Getty Images / RapidEye

It’s been months since the Integrity Initiative was exposed as a UK-funded psyop outfit — but anyone who has been closely following the scandal will know that the British media has not joined them in that pursuit.

For reasons they don't seem interested in sharing, major media didn’t bite on the story which Scottish newspaper the Daily Record called "one of the biggest political scandals of the year.”

For anyone who (understandably) hasn’t heard, the Integrity Initiative has been masquerading as a“completely independent” charity project aiming to highlight “disinformation” online – while using its government money to run anti-Russia “influence” operations all around Europe (including interfering in the domestic politics of other countries), conspiring with fossil fuel-friendly banks to target anti-fracking activists and smearing the opposition leader as a Kremlin asset.

Its cover was blown when leaks revealed last November that that organization was receiving funding from the British Foreign Office (FCO) and Ministry of Defense, and that it was run by people with extensive backgrounds in military intelligence. In short, it was a sneaky psyop.

RT contacted multiple UK outlets and asked why they had chosen not to touch the Integrity Initiative story. Only one – The Sun – deigned a response.

It’s one thing to say that the media has ignored the scandal and another thing to actually prove it. So, here’s a breakdown of exactly how much coverage the major outlets devoted to the leaks.

The Guardian

When the FCO said it would investigate whether state funds had gone toward smearing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn online — one of the Integrity Initiative’s social media activities — the Guardian reported it. Three days later, when the FCO denied the accusation (despite all proof to the contrary), the Guardian dutifully published a quick follow up — and that was it. Perhaps, the quick cessation of coverage by the Guardian had something to do with the fact that two of its writers, Carole Cadwalladr and James Ball, were linked to the II in the leaks? Ball wrote a self-defense oped on the scandal two months after the documents were first dumped.

BBC, Sky News, Channel 4 and ITV

A Google search reveals that the BBC has published one article on the leaks, which ironically, almost completely ignores their contents and instead acts more like a defense of the II. The article focuses heavily on the fact that Russian media has covered the scandal — a sly way of implying that the II is simply the target of a Russian campaign to discredit it. The only other time the scandal got a look-in from the BBC was when the channel broadcast live coverage of House of Commons proceedings during which a question was put about the FCO funding.

Sky News, for its part, published one story about the scandal, detailing the row between Labour and the Foreign Office over the II’s funding and its Corbyn-bashing activities. Meanwhile, Channel 4 and ITV had no coverage of the story at all.

The Times

Coverage of the II leaks by the conservative-leaning Times has been fawning. The Times, like the Guardian, reported that the FCO was “investigating” itself over the revelation that its pet project was using government funds to smear the opposition online. A day later, the Times proceeded to link the II leaks to Russia without any evidence whatsoever. Then, when the II mysteriously wiped its website clean, the Times reported that the embattled “anti-propaganda” site had been “forced offline” by potentially Russian hackers. Oh, and the Times also ran an oped arguing that real coverage of the scandal would “play into the Kremlin’s hands.” It was authored by Edward Lucas, who is employed as a lobbyist at a think tank which is funded by US weapons manufacturers. So, go figure.

The Telegraph, The Independent, The Financial Times

There’s not much to say about coverage of the II leaks at these newspapers, given that it seems to be entirely non-existent. A quick Google search reveals, however, that the FT has cited ‘experts’ from the Institute for Statecraft (IfS) — the II’s parent organization — in the past. The Daily Express tabloid also joins the FT as an outlet which published zero coverage of the II leaks, but has previously used IfS analysts in other unrelated stories.

The Sun, The Daily Star, the Evening Standard and Metro

Four more tabloids, four more missed opportunities to cover the leaks. Searches for any mention of the Integrity Initiative at these four papers came up with nothing at all. The Mirror and the Scotland-based Courier did devote a whopping one articleeach to covering the controversy, however.

In a response that, again, shifts the discussion from the II’s questionable practices to smearing Russian media, a spokesman for The Sun, Andy Silvester, told RT: "Unlike other outlets whose editorial focus might be influenced by, say, their links to the Kremlin regime, our editorial decisions remain independent and do not need to be justified to Russia Today or anybody else."

The Morning Star and the Canary

Left-wing outlets The Morning Star newspaper and the online Canary publication are among the only relatively big and well-known outlets to have covered the scandal more extensively, with the Morning Star publishing a few pieces about the leaks, one detailing the"chilling manipulations"of the IfS and its II project. The Canary called the II a "government-funded destabilisation network" and published detailed accounts of the II’s “propaganda projects” and compared the controversy to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The Integrity Initiative, with its “clusters” of allied journalists, has been compared by Labour MP Chris Williamson to a modern-day version of Operation Mockingbird — a secret 1950s Cold War propaganda project during which the CIA paid journalists at major media outlets to stick to certain US government-approved narratives in their stories.

Three months on since the first batch of Integrity Initiative leaks were dumped, we won’t be holding our breath for any more coverage from British media.


https://www.rt.com/uk/450723-british-me ... nitiative/
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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby conniption » Wed Feb 06, 2019 9:44 am

wsws

Integrity Initiative: UK interference in Norway

By Bjørn Halvorsen
5 February 2019


Hacked Integrity Initiative (II) documents have exposed the scale of the UK’s anti-Russia foreign interference activities in northern Europe. Norway has been targeted, with the II operating a secret “cluster,” whose stated aim is to overturn the views of the Norwegian public that are deemed “soft” on Russia.

The Integrity Initiative is a network of UK military and intelligence operatives, academics and journalists spreading anti-Russia propaganda and fake news. It includes “specialist Army Reserve units” linking to “very senior civilian experts” including “hedge fund managers” and “senior bankers” who have volunteered as “patriots.” The group’s existence was made public by the Anonymous hacking collective in November.

Among a fourth trove of documents leaked by Anonymous last month is a memo by Chris Donnelly, who co-ordinates II’s activities from a basement office at 2 Temple Place in London. He details sinister operations in Norway, including psy-ops targeting the Norwegian public. The II is financed by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Image
Integrity Initiative Director Chris Donnelly

In August 2016, Donnelly visited Oslo and outlined the “current situation” in Norway: “The Norwegian public are generally inclined to be soft on Russia as a near neighbor in the North (where there is a tradition of freindship [sic] and a good working relationship). Although the public can be hard-nosed about Putin and Moscow’s policies, their scepticism of US/western politics can lead to their being less critical of Russia’s position at times.” This problematic public attitude to Russia was expressed in a 2017 Sentio poll, which found that 76 percent of north Norwegians think authorities should do more to improve Norway’s relationship with Russia.

The leaked memo included Donnelly’s packed itinerary. He attended meetings with Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Justice and Police officials. At a workshop on “Fighting the Information War” chaired by the Defence Research Institute’s Henning-Andre Sogaard, they discussed how “the project” could be “generated in Norway nationally, across Nordic states, and internationally. Building the cooperation between the classified and unclassified world, keeping in mind that one of the main targets is the hearts and minds of the public.”

The Anonymous leaks expose an anti-democratic conspiracy aimed at subverting public discourse and shifting the political climate in a right-wing militarist direction.

Despite evidence of such top-level intrigue, Norway’s mainstream media and political parties have been virtually silent on the matter. The online newspaper ABC Nyheter was alone in publishing an article, in which the named Norwegian cluster members denied involvement (echoing the response of those contacted in the UK). The Norwegian left-radical news blog, Steigen.no, having probed more deeply, was able to establish the likely involvement of those named.

Such diplomatic silence contrasts markedly with the media frenzy that followed unsubstantiated allegations of Russian interference in Norway. In February 2017, Norway’s Police Security Services (PST) claimed Russia was behind an attempt to hack the Norwegian Labour Party, the Defence and Foreign ministries and the PST itself. Its allegations mirrored the FBI’s equally bogus claims of Russian hacking of the US Democratic National Committee. Norway’s biggest media outlets published the PST’s allegations without question, with screaming headlines about a “Russian Hacker Attack against Norway” (national broadcaster NRK).

The PST’s allegations fueled an ongoing media barrage. Just days before, Aftenposten, Norway’s largest circulation daily newspaper, was warning that “Russian hackers—with the support of the Kremlin—are in the process of influencing the major, important elections in Europe.”

Image
The Atlantic Council’s November 2018 report alleging “Kremlin influence” across Scandinavia

The Integrity Initiative leaks follow last year’s “The Kremlin’s Trojan Horses 3” report by the Atlantic Council, a US-backed partner to the II. The report alleged “Russian Influence in Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden” and denounced Kremlin “allies” among politicians, journalists and public servants. “[T]he Kremlin’s tentacles do not stop in Ukraine, Georgia, or East Central Europe,” the Atlantic Council claimed. “They reach far and deep in the core of western societies.” The report targeted three Norwegian parliamentary parties—the Socialist Left, the Red Party and the far-right Progress Party—whose representatives had questioned aspects of US/NATO policy or were insufficiently hostile to Russia.

Norway was a founding member of NATO in 1949, but it prohibited foreign troops from being stationed in the country. Norway’s post-war Labour governments cultivated an image of semi-neutrality, aligning with the United States during the Cold War, while eschewing overtly aggressive measures along its 106-kilometre north-eastern border with the Soviet Union. But the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 and the eruption of US military efforts to encircle and confront Russia produced a fundamental shift. Norway is integrating ever more openly with US-UK provocations against Russia:

In 2016, Norway announced 300 US marines would be stationed at Vaernes military base in central Norway. This number has since doubled.

In 2017, Norway announced plans to join the US-NATO Missile Defence System (MDS) aimed at Russia. A global network of missile launchers, control centres, radars, airbases and sea-based missiles, the MDS is at the centre of US-NATO plans for a “winnable” nuclear war.

In 2018, Norway hosted Exercise Trident Juncture, NATO’s biggest military exercise since the cold war, a display of force involving 40,000 soldiers and 10,000 vehicles.

Last year, Conservative Party Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s government cut all funding to peace organisations, while boosting its defence spending commitment to NATO. For this she was awarded a “Global Citizen Award” by the Atlantic Council. The opposition Labour Party has backed Norway’s militarist trajectory, criticising the government for not spending enough on defence. Norway is one of the highest per-capita defence spenders in the world.

The actions of Norway’s political establishment are sharply opposed to the anti-war views of the public. Fully 80 percent opposed the Iraq war, with mass protests in Oslo in February 2003 the largest ever held in the country. Public opposition saw Norway’s government refrain from openly supporting the invasion. But Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik’s Conservative Party government sent 150 troops in July 2003 as engineers and mine clearers operating under British command. A smaller number of Norwegian troops remained until 2006, and in 2015 Norway again sent troops as part of the international coalition “to counter ISIL.”

The official left parties in Norway have opened the gates for Norwegian militarism. The Labour Party has been the staunchest supporter of Norway’s military alliance with the US, exemplified by the seamless transition of its party leader of 12 years, Jens Stoltenberg, to become secretary general of NATO in 2014. The Socialist Left party likewise supported NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia and Libya, and, during its time as coalition partner in the Labour-led government of 2005-2013, dropped its previous opposition to the war in Afghanistan.

The public’s well-founded “scepticism” in Norway towards “US/western politics” has nothing whatsoever to do with “Russian interference.” It is fueled by the bloody reality of US-led wars and regime change operations from North Africa to the Ukraine. It is these sentiments that the UK’s Integrity Initiative and the CIA-backed Atlantic Council have targeted as their chief obstacle to securing Norway as a frontline state in the West’s offensive against Russia.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/0 ... w-f05.html
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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby conniption » Wed Feb 06, 2019 8:44 pm

21stcenturywire


Integrity Initiative, Browder & The HSBC Connection
February 6, 2019
By 21wire 1 Comment


Real Media
“2 Degrees of separation” – a theory whistleblower Nicholas Wilson has, that wherever in the world a financial scandal occurs HSBC is to be found nearby.

Nicholas has been campaigning for 13 years after blowing the whistle on a High Street fraud of excessive bank charges applied to store cards administered by HSBC. He has recently been vindicated by a Financial Conduct Authority ruling and HSBC have had to begin paying back some of the money defrauded from customers. He was dubbed “Mr. Ethical” by his boss at the time for refusing to defraud debtors. In this first of several interviews for Real Media, he connects Government funding and the security services to the recently revealed psyops outfit, Institute for Statecraft and its ‘integrity initiative’. He asks whether there might be a connection with the suspicious death of accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who was working for the Hermitage Fund there. HSBC bankrolled and jointly managed the Hermitage Fund with Bill Browder, who appears in Institute of Statecraft’s documents. Browder, convicted of tax fraud in Russia connected with the Magnitsky affair, has spent years pointing the finger at the Russians over both the killing and the disappearance of nearly quarter of a billion pounds, but a film by Andrei Nekrasov casts suspicion on Browder and HSBC. If the film is to be believed, it would make sense that Browder is involved with a shadowy group set up to counter Russian “disinformation”.

Nicholas Wilson reveals the close associations between HSBC and the UK security forces, and asks whether the Foreign and Commonwealth Office should be giving public funding to the Institute of Statecraft. Watch:

Integrity Initiative - The HSBC Connection

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-i-DpaCljU
Real Media
Published on Feb 3, 2019

More HSBC revelations at nicholaswilson.com

READ MORE INTEGRITY INITIATIVE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Integrity Files
https://21stcenturywire.com/2019/02/06/ ... onnection/
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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby Grizzly » Wed Feb 06, 2019 9:37 pm

Excellent thread, conniption, thanks

[youtube]v=pgpTxY1__v8[/youtube]

[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgpTxY1__v8[url]



Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite A two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist takes us inside the world revealed by the Panama Papers, a landscape of illicit money, political corruption, and fraud on a global scale. A hidden circulatory system flows beneath the surface of global finance, carrying trillions of dollars from drug trafficking, tax evasion, bribery, and other illegal enterprises. This network


Sorry about the above. it was done from my phone, which I find impossible to use on RI
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
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Re: The 'Integrity Initiative' -

Postby conniption » Wed Feb 13, 2019 8:33 pm

thanks griz


RT
(embedded links and missing tweets at source)

Integrity Initiative: New leaks show UK-funded project sought £5.5m for Balkans influence campaign

Published time: 12 Feb, 2019

Image

Hackers have released a sixth batch of Integrity Initiative leaks, this time focusing on how the project sought £5.5 million in funding from the British government to establish an influence campaign in the Western Balkans.

According to the leaks, Chris Donnelly, who heads the Institute for Statecraft (IfS) — the Integrity Initiative’s parent organization — used his NATO contacts and extensive background in military intelligence to try to secure the money for the program.

The Integrity Initiative (II) had been positioning itself as an “independent” anti-disinformation charity until hackers began dumping batches of internal documents last November which revealed its government funding and the fact that it was running Europe-wide anti-Russia influence campaigns using “clusters” of cooperative journalists, academics and politicians. In response to the leaks, the II wiped all content from its website and claimed that while some of the documents were “genuine,” others were “falsified” — but did not provide any proof that this was the case.

Also on rt.com Media not covering Integrity Initiative scandal because they might be ‘involved’ – Labour MP to RT

The latest leaks show that the Balkan program would be run in conjunction with global marketing and communications firm Edelman, which Donnelly said could help produce “advertising campaigns on TV promoting change,” English-language training promoting the “right messages” and even “a TV soap opera looking at the problem of corruption.”

To aid ‘Her Majesty’s Government’

In a letter to former MI6 employee Guy Spindler and good governance expert Keith Sargent — who would be a key figure in the Balkan effort — Donnelly explains how the project would need "local partners" in the WB6 countries. The partners will help find journalists "who can be allies" in their efforts and who could be brought "on trips to London, HQ NATO etc."

Donnelly’s letter is dated October 15, but no year is given. It appears, however, that it is from 2018, based on the fact that the proposal documents for the Balkan project make reference to the year 2018 and January 2019 as the potential start date.

The letter focuses on the efforts to set up the “anti-corruption” and “good governance” influence campaign across the Western Balkans, which a separate document says would “contribute to the aims and strategy of HMG” (Her Majesty’s Government) and would shield the region from corruption "being used as a method of external influence.”

Stumbling blocks and help from the BBC

Perceptively, the document — which lays out the projected three-year costs of £5.5 million ($7.87mn) — also recognizes that the program itself could be "identified as external interference" in the domestic affairs of the Balkan countries. Another leaked document notes “Russian hostility” and “traditional Soviet ties” as potential stumbling blocks to the Western influence campaign.

One serious concern is that many Serbian organizations “promote friendly ties with Russia” and it is suggested that BBC broadcasts could help to “counter Russian fake news” in the region. The fact that Serbia, Russia and a number of other countries do not recognize Kosovo's independence is also cited as a “major problem” for the project.

‘A Bellingcat for counter-corruption’

To achieve success Donnelly said they would need to “identify a national goal” that could be used as a “lever”— citing Macedonia's efforts to join NATO as an example. Donnelly boasts about his efforts in Slovakia in the 1990s using MPs to teach businesses how they could lobby government “legitimately in a democracy” rather than using “their then model of cash in brown envelopes.”

Part of the so-called anti-corruption program would entail building “training courses for journalists, students and wider public activists” to help them obtain the relevant investigative tools. Such a program could be “a Bellingcat for counter corruption,” the proposal document states. Bellingcat shot to prominence as a controversial one-man investigative website, which later expanded, received money from the notorious US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and was also linked to the II.

Also on rt.com Lights, camera, propaganda! US government anti-Russia campaign invades Hollywood

Anti-Russia entertainment

The latest leaks also reveal contacts between IfS fellow Euan Grant and a number of journalists, academics and think tank lobbyists. Grant sent a “memorandum of cooperation” to US writer Martha Bayles after a “detailed Skype call” in July 2018. He was looking for her “input into media documentaries and fictional entertainment” to counter Russian narratives.

Governments seeking help from writers and the entertainment industry to counter Russian narratives is nothing new. The 2014 hack of Sony Pictures revealed that the US State Department enlisted Hollywood's help with "anti-Russia messaging" for movies and TV shows. It appears from these leaks that the British government is also trying to use thinly-disguised entertainment propaganda to promote divisive anti-Russia messaging onto TV screens in politically volatile regions of Europe.

The leaks say that the II should “alert” the press, radio and TV journalists to the "relevance" of already-made entertainment like the BBC series 'McMafia’ which focuses on a London-based corrupt Russian family.

‘Sympathy for Russia’ in Scotland

There was also contact between the IfS and Neal Stewart, an adviser to the Scottish National Party’s Westminster front bench about “considerable sympathy for Russia” in Scotland in general, but particularly within academia. The “significant Russian speaking presence in private schools and in the Universities could fuel such attitudes,” the document warns. Another leaked document also cites "academic sympathies with Russia" as an indicator of “malign influence and disinformation.”

Targeting academics and students for their ‘Russian sympathies’ brings up rather negative historical parallels, particularly with the McCarthy era in the US, during which entertainers, academics and left-leaning activists were aggressively accused of being Communist sympathizers or agents and were placed on industry blacklists.

More recently, in Britain, a group of academics were smeared on the front page of the Times for similar sympathies, based on the fact that they publicly expressed doubts over certain anti-Russia media narratives. One of the academics involved called it a"coordinated smear campaign" against anti-war journalists and activists. The authors of the Times report were later named in Integrity Initiative documents, proving the existence of collusion between the British government and pro-establishment journalists to target those who do not stick to certain narratives.

Also on rt.com Do it CIA style: What you need to know about latest leak on UK-funded psyop

High profile names & media ties

In an II“weekly report,” Grant names University of Exeter Professor Jeremy Black and Sunday Times journalist Roland White as two people who expressed interest in collaborating with the II. Roderick Parkes of the Paris-based ISS think tank and Nigel Gould-Davies, an associate fellow at Chatham House, were also named.

The leaks also say that Deborah Haynes of Sky News (a co-author of the aforementioned Times report) and Jonathan Beale of the BBC attended a speech by Air Marshal Sir Philip Osborn on the future of intelligence and information warfare in May 2018. The speech was described in the document as “manna from heaven for the Integrity Initiative.”

Grant writes that the government-funded IfS has “particular links with the Times, Telegraph, Guardian and BBC TV and radio” but says that it needs to “strengthen” its relationship with the Mail.

Times writer and CEPA lobbyist Edward Lucas also crops up in the latest leaks and due to his “considerable interest” is named as the II’s way into getting “articles and references” in the Times. Lucas recently defended the II in an op-ed for the newspaper and argued that criticism of the project would “play into the Kremlin’s hands.”

NGOs and the ‘Australian cluster’

The documents also reveal that the II wanted to provide NGOs with manuals on Russian corruption. Among the named organizations are Transparency International, Global Witness and the World Wildlife Fund.

One of the newly leaked documents also shows just how far the II has extended its reach, referencing an"Australian cluster." Given the issue of Russian and Chinese influence in that region, Grant writes that there is "scope for a lot of crossover with media in Europe" and Australia relating to "Russian issues.”

Presenting the new leaks, the Anonymous-linked hackers claim that the Integrity Initiative has been trying to “divert people’s attention from the organisation’s wrongful activity” since the documents were made public. The leakers bash the II’s “pathetic attempt” to cover its tracks and say all its efforts have been “shattered to pieces by irrefutable evidence” of wrongdoing that has been shared with the public.

RT sent requests for comment to the people named in the story who were linked to the Integrity Initiative in the latest leaks.

https://www.rt.com/uk/451312-integrity- ... -campaign/
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