Trolls, trolls, trolls! Western mainstream media is made up of Uber-trolls trained to point a finger and to shout a warning, TROLL! Reading the news in English each day is for me, a bit like a nightmarish version of the bedtime story, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, only with the boy being the wolf. A story on Newsweek this week is a perfect example of all that is wrong with media these days.
What if the CIA or the Pentagon could just disseminate propaganda using the “Freedom of the Press”? What if every message a nation heard led to the formulation of a derisive, dastardly, and disastrous conclusion? Why this would be a dangerous truth, now wouldn’t it?
The Atlantic Council is a Washington think tank that manages ten regional centers and functional programs related to international security and global economic prosperity. Its stated mission has been to, “encourage the continuation of cooperation between North America and Europe that began after World War II”. Regardless of whatever else the Atlantic Council ever did, when former chairman James L. Jones stepped down in order to serve as President Obama’s new National Security Advisor, the subversive and secret mission of the council was illuminated. In fact, the Obama administration security and policy team is made up of half a dozen members of the council, and former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and Chuck Hagel owe allegiance as well. The fact the Atlantic Council is a “spook” nest, and the revelations that the council is funded by nations abroad are common knowledge. What most people do not realize is how vast is the reach of these “thinkers” ideas.
This Atlantic Council propaganda by Ben Nimmo was a big enough lie without Newsweek syndicating its spread to its readership. That’s right, a “Spook Tank” has space in the news just as if Obama policy were the word of God. Let me quote the lead paragraph Newsweek and Atlantic Council aficionados read on MH17:
“The Kremlin has turned its disinformation machine on those who are investigating the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine in July of 2014, using state employees, state-run media, and the state-run, though unacknowledged, “troll factory” of fake Internet accounts.”
Let that sink in. A few hours after the Dutch supposedly investigating MH17 come out with a detailed “poof” of nothing on the downing of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, Obama’s disinformation machine goes into hyper drive – and then points a finger at guess who – Putin.
What’s more, Newsweek and the Atlantic Council find it necessary to immortalize the west’s most prolific “troll”, Bellingcat (AKA Eliot Higgins) a proven liar. The man who conjured up fuzzy YouTube video compilations implicating the Russians in moving a BUK missile launcher around Ukraine, he’s the centerpiece of a larger organization (Obama trolls) that dwarfs the numbers of Russia sympathizers. I’ll not get into Higgins’ colleagues, just know that the State Department and the DOD task their people with social media duties like a beast. But let’s barbeque the council and Higgins with this admission on their story:
[Editor’s note: Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, is a nonresident senior fellow for Digital Forensic Research Lab with the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe program.]
Fellows, oh my God the fellows Russia has as enemies now. And the names these geniuses come up with – Imminent Resolve, Future Europe, the Open Society Foundations, USAID – excuse me, digressing always happens when deep diving into my country’s policy bullshit. But wait, there’s more.
Not only has Obama (audible uh-hum),I mean the Atlantic Council spread the troll story to Newsweek, they distributed it to Yahoo! News as well, not to mention a “special” Facebook account named “Boycott Russia Today”. And here is where the story gets interesting, really, really, really, really interesting, for Boycott Russia Today is on Facebook in a dozen languages – as if manufactured by some policy factory no less! Eeek! A troll factory against Mother Russia! Say it isn’t so.
What so interesting about Boycott Russia Today is the fact it is clearly so well funded and organized. Most social media initiatives don’t have the funds to hire lawyers to write their “terms of use”, and hardly any Russia sympathetic Facebook entities have redirects from a dozen different language profiles. The screen provided shows Norwegian, Italian, and Czech variants, but clicking on them signed into Facebook, I am directed to the English variant. But let’s look at who’s behind Boycott Russia Today.
9660 people “like” this anti-Russia page. I haven’t the time to profile all of them, so let me randomly expose some from comments on posts.
- Amnesty International Deutschland activist, Klaus Walther works at Euromaidan NRWin Berlin.
- Finland Border Guard and former Finnish Defense Forces officer, Ilja Iljina graduated from Frontex Consortium’s Masters program – his interests are NATO, NATO, and NATO
- Peter Cato is an American disc jockey who helped oust Russian language Radio Sputnik form Helsinki to be replaced with English language radio.
- Joseph Koba works at the Syrian Revolution Network, the same entity San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook followed along with the Free Syrian Army accounts.
- Ludwig C. Hetzel, a politician for Austrian liberal party NEOS interacts with these NATO trolls. Liberal NGOs from Soros’ Open Society Foundations to the Croatian People’s Party are associated.
- Joel Harding is a former Army Information Operations officer who was the J2 Liaison for IO to NSA, CIA, DISA, and the FBI. Independent media has classified the former Brigadier General a “Super-troll” for NATO, a supposed leader of a brigade of State Department backed cyber crazies.
Like I said, this is just a sampling I took from comments on the Boycott Russia Today posts on Facebook. The point is, a vast network of cyber “warriors” exists for the purposes of disseminating Washington’s new Cold War strategies. While MH17 remains a mystery akin to the JFK assassination, a massive network of counter-intelligence operators is maintained to keep the fires of Russophobia stoked. These people America’s leadership counts on, dwarf Putin-Russia support. Count mainstream media, academia, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the corporate vested interests, and idiotic zealots who just need to hate – and subtract Russian media and a few hundred or thousands of Russia sympathizers – you come up with tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of Obama evangelists versus RT, Sputnik, and mostly hurt Russians who inhabit the digital realm.
When all is said and done, even if Vladimir Putin had a “troll legion” and propaganda channels like detractors suggest, the most powerful media and communications assets on Earth seem to be losing a Goliath propaganda war to a little biblical David of media spending.
If I were an advisor to the Atlantic Council, I’d hang my head in shame over the “network’s” mediocrity. And if I were the boss of Newsweek, I’d expect a lot more for my bribe money. By the way, Newsweek’s mystery boy bosses, ITB Media’s Etienne Uzac and Johnathan Davis have close ties to the notorious pastor slash Christ reincarnated David Jang. News from the New York Post suggests Newsweek is bleeding money profusely, which may be just cause for towing the State Department line.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.