rigorousintuition.ca

Is Russia Insider sponsored by a Russian oligarch with the ties to the European far right?





It is interesting to note that Bausman was born in West Germany (Frankfurt) in 1964, but then lived in Soviet Russia, "due to father's long-term assignment" there in 1968-1972 (one wonders what that assignment was about). According to his CV, Bausman was educated in the US, but has been living in Moscow since the late 1980s. He also states that "in virtue of of professional and family connections", he has "multiple high-ranking connections to the European and American media", as well as "investment and political spheres".

American Dream » Tue Apr 19, 2016 7:45 am wrote:

All you need to know about the Russia Insider scandal–and more






Bausman is a shadowy figure. Before he launched Russia Insider in 2014, he worked for AVG Capital Partners, a Russian private capital firm specializing in agribusiness. In addition to his own seed money and funds he ripped off from people like Lavelle, he relied early on from contributions from one Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch who has quite a track record. Like most Putinites, he is committed to strong family values and serves as the chairman of the Saint Basil the Great Charitable Foundation that seeks to strengthen the Russian Orthodox Church. He is also on the board of trustees of the Safe Internet League that created the original draft of Internet censorship law in Russia. And to top it all off, he hosted a secret anti-gay conference in Austria that drew upon the support of the country’s ultraright as Searchlight magazine reported.

A secret meeting discussing ways to rid Europe of the ‘satanic gay lobby’ was hosted by a Russian oligarch and attended by a host of far-right MPs and ultra-conservative Eurasian ideologists in Vienna at the weekend – just across the road from where the Life Ball was taking place the very same night.

The meeting was hosted by Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeew and his Saint Basil the Great Charitable Foundation and was attended by nationalists and Christian fundamentalists from Russia and the West. These were thought to include the chief Russian ideologist of the Eurasian movement Alexander Dugin, the nationalist painter Ilja Glasunow, and MPs from far right parties including the Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache.

https://louisproyect.org/2016/04/17/all ... -and-more/

American Dream » Wed Jun 01, 2016 1:51 pm wrote:You can always tell somebody who really drank the Kool Aid and is unlikely to ever, ever come back by their reliance on wholesale ignoring of the actual claims, when coming from most any source that deeply contradicts their sacred dogma.

What is the remedy? Critical thinking is the first and foremost ingredient.

American Dream » Wed Jun 01, 2016 1:51 pm wrote: You can always tell somebody who really drank the Kool Aid

American Dream » Wed Jun 01, 2016 1:51 pm wrote: and is unlikely to ever, ever come back

American Dream » Wed Jun 01, 2016 1:51 pm wrote: by their reliance on wholesale ignoring of the actual claims,

American Dream » Wed Jun 01, 2016 1:51 pm wrote: when coming from most any source that deeply contradicts their sacred dogma.

American Dream » Wed Jun 01, 2016 2:50 pm wrote:Still not engaged with the actual content of the piece?
Forget it- not worth the bother.
.

American Dream » Wed Jun 01, 2016 2:50 pm wrote:Still not engaged with the actual content of the piece?

Forget it- not worth the bother.

.

Russian broadcaster offers Nigel Farage his own television show

Kremlin-backed station have also approached Katie Hopkins and Russell Brand

John Wight Goes Russia Today: RT is “winning” the argument.


Post-Split Wight Planned Fight Club Musical.


After Newshound Howie revealed the split in Socialist Unity noted Pugilist John Wight was said to be distraught.

Word reached us that he had been seen sleeping in a kailyard under a pile of old Soviet Weeklies.

Others claimed to have noticed him in ancient shuin accosting passers-by in Dundee with tales of how he “used to be John Wight’.

Taking inspiration from Oor Wullie and George Galloway’s project to make a Dusty Springfield musical he was said to be planning a “comeback” with a scheme to turn Fight Club into song and bring it to the West End.

Now we know that his future is not so bleak.

Last night on RT Wight made an impassioned speech, defending the broadcaster against the Henry Jackson’s report, Putin’s Useful Idiots: Britain’s Left, Right and Russia.

Challenging the claim that, RT uses ““those on the left who can be relied upon to stand up for the West’s enemies whoever and wherever they may be, and those on the right who see Moscow as a defender of conservative values.” Wight declared that the channel is “winning” the argument.

American Dream » Tue Feb 02, 2016 10:36 pm wrote:
The demonization of the most popular Russian leader (Vladimir Putin) of all time: More Confusionisme. John Wight, Socialist Unity.



Most Popular Russian Leader of All Time……..


This Blog commented recently that “Political Confusionism” – (from our French comrades’ “Confusionnisme”) is a growing, if marginal, phenomenon on the left.

Larousse defines Confusionnisme as “Fait d’entretenir la confusion dans les esprits et d’empêcher l’analyse objective des faits.”, That is, “To bring (and keep) confusion in people’s minds and to prevent an objective analysis of facts.”

From the anti-imperialism of fools to the defence by the co-Chair of the British Young Greens of the reactionary full-face veil on the spurious grounds that it is being attacked as part of the government’s Prevent strategy we can see how this works.

Emotions, hostility to the ‘West’ and “Empire”, “Islamophobia” and “racism” are used to confuse people and prevent solidarity with our sisters and brothers fighting nationalist strongmen, communalist bullies and Islamism.

It is an entirely appropriate extension of the word in English to call “confusionism” the much more deliberate ideological strategy taken up by those promoting the defenders of Vladimir Putin.

In the comments on an excellent article on Shiraz Socialist about just how reactionary Putin is, and how he has garnered supporters ranging from the European far-right ( Front National, the Hungarian Jobbik, the Bulgarian Attack, the Slovak People’s Party, and various far-right parties in German) to some people on the ‘left’.

Whether they do so for venal reasons (the Front National has benefited from generous Russian loans) or out of conviction, that the Kremlin leader is a bulwark against decadence, or a much needed-counterweight to Western power, is irrelevant.

The facts – that is the record of Putin’s rule – are obscured and confused.

Prominent amongst British confusionists is a certain John Wight, contributor to the Socialist Unity site, run by Andy Newman, unsuccessful Labour candidate (2015) for Chippenham.

Wight, not surprisingly, pops up on Russia Today (RT).

Continues at: https://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2 ... ist-unity/

Facebook: 126 million Americans may have seen Russian pro-Trump propaganda

Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal

Inside the web of conspiracy theorists, Russian operatives, Trump campaigners and Twitter bots who manufactured the 'news' that Hillary Clinton ran a pizza-restaurant child-sex ring

By Amanda Robb


Carmen Kat'z Facebook post likely set Pizzagate in motion. "Someone or some group possibly took this unwitting woman and made her the source that they need." says Watts.



What's nearly impossible to tell is who ran @DavidGoldbergNY. The handle is not among the 2,752 Twitter accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, a disinformation shop run by the Kremlin, which the House Intelligence Committee released in November. And Twitter has yet to make public the handles of an additional 36,746 bot accounts its attorney Sean Edgett told Congress have "characteristics we used to associate an account with Russia." In any case, Russia is not the only one playing this game. "We've also had sources tell us that using bot networks has become a common practice among U.S. political campaigns," says Woolley, a practice that is difficult to trace. "They do it with subcontractors," he explains. "And the Federal Election Commission doesn't require reporting for subcontractors." One thing that does stand out, he adds, is "the more sophisticated bot nets, the ones that are successful at spreading stories, are built by people with a lot of resources. In our experience, across multiple different countries, the people that have deep pockets are the powerful political actors."

According to a sample of tweets with Pizzagate or related hashtags provided by Filippo Menczer, a professor of informatics at Indiana University, Pizzagate was shared roughly 1.4 million times by more than a quarter of a million accounts in its first five weeks of life – from @DavidGoldbergNY's tweet to the day Welch showed up at Comet Ping Pong. The vast majority of tweeters in our sample, just 10 percent of all possible hits, posted about the story only a few times. But more than 3,000 accounts in our set tweeted about Pizzagate five times or more. Among these were dozens of users who tweet so frequently – up to 900 times a day – that experts believe they were likely highly automated. Even more striking: 22 percent of the tweets in our sample were later deleted by the user. This could be a sign, Woolley says, of "someone sweeping away everything so that we can't follow the trail."

Next, we decided to cross-reference the most frequent Pizzagate tweeters with a list of 139 handles associated with Trump campaign staffers, advisers and surrogates. We also ran our entire sample against the list of accounts linked to Russia's Internet Research Agency. We found that at least 14 Russia-linked accounts had tweeted about Pizzagate, including @Pamela_Moore13, whose avatar is, aptly, an anonymous figure wrapped in an American flag; that account has been retweeted by such prominent Trump supporters as Donald Trump Jr., Ann Coulter and Roger Stone, the political operative who recommended Paul Manafort as Trump's campaign manager. (Special Counsel Robert Mueller recently indicted Manafort for money laundering as part of his investigation into possible collusion with Russian efforts to influence the presidential race.) "Well! Well! Well!" "Pamela Moore" tweeted on November 19th, 2016, above the fake news headline "FBI: Rumors About Clinton Pedophile Ring Are True."

The campaign's engagement went far deeper. We found at least 66 Trump campaign figures who followed one or more of the most prolific Pizzagate tweeters. Michael Caputo, a Trump adviser who tweeted frequently about Clinton's e-mails, followed 146 of these accounts; Corey Stewart, Trump's campaign chair in Virginia, who lost a tight primary race for governor in June, followed 115; Paula White-Cain, Trump's spiritual adviser, followed 71; Pastor Darrell Scott, a prominent member of Trump's National Diversity Coalition, followed 33. Flynn's son, Michael Flynn Jr., who followed 58 of these accounts, famously took the bait and was ousted from the Trump transition team in early December after tweeting, "Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story."

Many of the Pizzagate tweeters had the characteristics of political bots – Twitter handles made up of random or semi-random letters and numbers and twin passions for conservative politics and pets (puppies and kitties win audience, Watts says). Others were all too human. Crystal Kemp, a 50-year-old grandmother who lives in Confluence, Pennsylvania, tweeted about the story more than 4,000 times in five weeks. I reached out to her via Facebook to ask why. "Didn't want Hillary to win at any cost," Kemp tells me, "but liked Trump from day one. I don't really know that much about the Pizzagate thing. Everything I tweeted or retweeted was stuff that I found through my own research or from another follower."



Alex Jones' InfoWars covered Pizzagate before and after the election. "Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children," the host told his audience.

This plagiarism-prone Russian proxy site is at the center of some of the past year’s biggest fake news stories

YourNewsWire -- which has a verified page on Facebook -- posts easily debunked stories that spread on far-right media like wildfire. Here are its greatest hits.

Blog ››› November 7, 2017 6:35 PM EST ››› CRISTINA LóPEZ G.



Whether it’s tabloid-like narratives spouting lies about British royalty or false claims about U.S. politicians that have serious repercussions, many of the major fake news stories over the past year share a common denominator: a site accused of being a Russian proxy called YourNewsWire.

YourNewsWire looks like your typical run-of-the-mill fake news site, except its reach has earned it the attention of a European Union agency named the East StratCom Task Force, which was “set up to combat Russian propaganda” and has classified YourNewsWire as a “proxy” for Russia. Sean Adl-Tabatabai, one of the publishers of the Los Angeles-based site, has acknowledged his admiration for RT (formerly Russia Today), the Russian propaganda news outlet that YourNewsWire often uses as a source. Conversely, pro-Kremlin sites like the Centre for Research on Globalization often cite YourNewsWire, demonstrating the symbiotic relationship between Russian propaganda and the fake news industry. Adl-Tabatabai thinks of reality less as something to be reported on and more as a moving target that can be dictated by altering perceptions. “When you say facts are sacred, I would argue that no they’re not,” he said earlier this year.

Such a casual commitment to the truth is likely what has fueled YourNewsWire’s greatest hits, which range from tabloid-like fluff, like a story claiming a dying former MI5 agent confessed to killing Princess Diana, to much more damaging false political narratives with real-life consequences, like the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. YourNewsWire played an important role in pushing that narrative, which inspired a gunman to open fire inside a D.C. family pizzeria in an attempt to “self-investigate” false claims that Democratic figures ran a pedophilia ring from its basement. These insidious false political narratives have also included making up a quote by a deceased former Haitian government official to suggest the Clintons had something to do with his death.

YourNewsWire’s fake political news stories often go viral, spreading like wildfire among far-right internet users. The outlet was behind a story baselessly linking last weekend’s Texas church massacre shooter with anti-fascist protesters, and it similarly exploited the Las Vegas, NV, shooting by falsely claiming the gunman was “an Antifa member who was also linked with ISIS.” On another occasion, the fake news site reported that actor Morgan Freeman had called for the imprisonment of former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. YourNewsWire has also jumped on the recurring Russian tactic of attacking philanthropist George Soros, once claiming that the newly elected Austrian chancellor had banned Soros’ foundations from Austria, while plagiarizing entire phrases from legitimate publications.

Fake news website YourNewsWire deletes bogus story about Keanu Reeves

Facebook, YouTube, and Google all helped the story spread



Prominent fake news website YourNewsWire deleted a fabricated story headlined “Keanu Reeves: Hollywood Elites Use ‘Blood Of Babies’ To Get High” after the site was called out for its lie on Twitter -- but not before the post was widely circulated on verified Facebook pages, converted into a monetized YouTube video that became the top result when searching for the actor’s name on YouTube, and posted on other fake news sites that feature ads placed by Google. This is just the latest example of tech platforms aiding in the spread of misinformation from fake news websites.

On November 19, YourNewsWire published a post claiming Reeves said that “Hollywood elites use ‘the blood of babies to get high’” and that “‘these people believe the more innocent the child, and the more it suffered before it died, the better the high.’” The story was blatantly fake, but it quickly spread. It was posted on both of YourNewsWire’s associated Facebook pages, both of which are verified by Facebook. One of those pages is called The People’s Voice; the other, called YourNewsWire after the website, recently lost its verification under unexplained circumstances, but has since gotten it back. The false story about Reeves received more than 26,000 Facebook engagements, according to BuzzSumo. The Facebook posts have since been deleted...




Although YourNewsWire took down the fake story after it was called out, the damage had already been done: other websites have now picked up the story and people are still sharing it on Facebook and elsewhere, as noted by Mashable.

The tech companies that contribute to the spread of fake news and profit from these stories are, at least in part, responsible for them. They have also, as noted by BuzzFeed's Charlie Warzel, repeatedly bungled handling the spread of misinformation. By verifying YourNewsWire’s pages, Facebook -- which claims to be committed to fighting fake news on its platform -- is implicitly indicating to its users that the website has some kind of legitimacy, which it clearly does not merit. And YourNewsWire is not alone; although Facebook appears to have removed at least one verified page for a fake news website and blocked its links, plenty of other fake news websites’ Facebook pages remain verified.

All of these companies should be aware that YourNewsWire is a bad actor. The site, which was founded in 2014, has come under fire for repeatedly publishing fake stories like a dying former MI5 agent confessing to killing Princess Diana, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton helping run a pedophilia ring from the basement of a D.C. family pizzeria (which in fact led to a gunman to open fire in the restaurant), and actor Morgan Freeman wanting Clinton to be jailed. Some of YourNewsWire’s fake stories about Clinton and about former President Barack Obama have even been pushed by Fox News’ Sean Hannity. The website, which American and European experts have called a Russian proxy, has also published fake stories that seem to fit Russia’s anti-democratic, anti-European Union (EU), and anti-George Soros agenda. (The website has also been promoted by what appears to be a revived version of @TEN_GOP, a Russian account that was run by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency.) And recently, the website published a fake story that the gunman involved in the massacre in Sutherland Springs, TX, was a member of antifa; the false story went viral and received more than a quarter million Facebook engagements, according to social media analytics website BuzzSumo.

Saturday, December 09, 2017

Eight reasons not to let George Galloway back in the Labour Party

Back in 2015 I wrote a post with seven reasons to stop Galloway getting elected in Bradford West. As Andrew Murray, recent Communist Party of Britain member and close Jeremy Corbyn associate, has floated the idea that Galloway should be allowed back in the Labour Party, I've re-written that post, removing the two Bradford-specific reasons, but adding three more.

1. Galloway is a shill for dictators. Last time Galloway was an MP, he was , the third highest-earning MP in parliament. Why? Mainly, he is appearing on TV stations owned by authoritarian regimes: Iran's Press TV; the Kremlin-run RT (formerly Russia Today - on which see Nick Cohen, Oliver Bullough, James Bloodworth); and the Lebanon-based Al Mayadeen, which is supports Assad's murderous regime in Syria and is linked to Hezbollah (in fact, some claim it is owned by a cousin of Assad, Rami Makhlouf). These stations are not just based in authoritarian countries; they are PR mouthpieces for authoritarian regimes. Not only do they systematically distort the truth in the geopolitical interests of these extreme right-wing regimes, but they also regularly host Holocaust revisionists, 9/11 deniers, British fascists and other cranks. Galloway's politics fit in well with this. Back in the 1990s, he praised the "indefatigable" Saddam Hussein. In 2006, he famosly "glorified" Hezbollah and the Shia insurrection in Iraq. In 2005, Galloway visited Syria praised Assad as a "reformer" and "the last Arab ruler". In 2013, when Assad used chemical weapons on Ghouta, Galloway denied it was possible, saying Assad wasn't "mad enough" - a phrase he apparently repeated this year when the regime used chemical weapons on Khan Shaykhun - and speculated that Israel was behind it. And more recently, he has fully endorsed the Russian airstrikes that have killed thousands more Syrians.

2. Whether or not Galloway is personally antisemitic, he contributes to an atmosphere in which antisemitic ideas move in to the mainstream. You'll know that a couple of months ago Galloway launched a libel claim against a Jewish journalist who suggested he might be antisemitic. I wouldn't suggest Galloway is personally antisemitic, but he seems to have a lot of time for people who are, and he seems very happy to cultivate an atmosphere around himself in which antisemitism can flourish. Galloway has championed antisemitic Holocaust denier Gilad Atzmon (he reads Atzmon's book to his wife in bed, apparently.) Respect has had to apologise for antisemites again and again. In Bethnal Green in 2005, his opponent Oona King said "I have been told by several people that members of Respect have told them not to vote for me because I am Jewish". His supporters pelted her with eggs as she joined mourners at a memorial to the Jewish war dead in the East End. In Bradford in 2010-15, he declared an "Israel-free zone" and refused to debate Israelis. Before Galloway, Bradford Muslims saved its synagogue. By 2015, in an atmosphere nurtured by Galloway (and his Lib Dem twin in Bradford East) Bradford became a less comfortable place for Jews than it should be, as Ben Judah's amazing investigation showed. Galloway tweeted about Netanyahu celebrating his Muslim opponent's coming victory and retweeted his followers' aggressive tweets about the synagogue. In fact, many of his most active supporters - people he regularly retweets - come across as antisemites, Holocaust deniers and conspiracy theorists - and antisemites have been at the heart of his coterie for some time. Nasreen Khan, the ex-Respect activist who got onto a council candidate shortlist in Bradford before being revealed as an antisemite, was steeped in the culture Galloway created.

3. Galloway is a bully. Whether or not Galloway was being libelled when he was called an antisemitic, his response to the charge - immediately sending threatening legal letters - is a good example of his pattern of bullying. We can see this bullying in his interactions with Israeli students and his interactions with Syrian oppositionists. We can see it in his response to "ThingGate", the light-hearted tweet by a local small business which he threatened as if he the feudal boss of Bradford. In fact, we can see it throughout his pompous and testosterone-soaked social media style, including even his tweets to me.



Most recently, we've seen his bullying in his interactions with his parliamentary opponent. Naz Shah was forced by her parents into marriage as a teenager, and her account of this has gone viral. At a very heated hustings event in Bradford, Galloway revealed that his agents in Pakistan had tracked down her marriage certificate, calling her a liar.

4. Galloway is a rape apologist. His claim that Naz Shah's marriage was not forced because her parents consented (even though she didn't) was, as Huma Munshi puts it, "playing politics with Shah’s history as a forced marriage survivor." It indicates how reactionary Galloway's sexual politics are. Not surprisingly for someone with multiple overlapping marriages to increasingly young women (some civil, some Islamic), who works for Putin and the mullahs of Iran as his day job, and who is deeply soaked in socially conservative Catholic morals. The most striking incident was when he claimed that even if allegations against his fellow Russia Today employee Julian Assange were true, these would not constitute rape but rather just "bad sexual etiquette". Galloway just does not get that marriage without consent is rape, that sex with some not conscious and therefore not able to say no is rape. In short, he is effectively an apologist for rape.