Kissingers Atlantic Council: NATO propaganda for war machine

[TonyGosling]

he NATO campaign against freedom of expression
by Thierry Meyssan
http://www.voltairenet.org/article194344.html

From its creation, NATO’s Centre of Strategic Communication incorporated a service of the Atlantic Council, the Digital Forensics Research Lab. A Manual of Strategic Communication was drawn up by NATO. It was intended to co-ordinate and replace the old system in terms of Public Diplomacy, Public Relations (Public Affairs), Public Military Relations, Operations on Electronic Communication Systems (Information Operations) and Psychological Operations.

Inspired by NATO, on 23 November 2016, the Polish ex-Minister for Foreign Affairs and now European Deputy, Anna Fotyga, forced through the European Parliament a resolution about «Strategic Communication of the Union aimed at countering propaganda directed against her by third parties» [10]. Once again the target had been displaced - it was no longer a case of countering the dispute over 9/11 (now 15 years old), nor that of the war against Syria, but to create an amalgam between the contesting positions on the events in Ukraine, and Daesh. So we had come full circle – according to NATO, those who contested 9/11 were attempting to rehabilitate al-Qaïda, and those who were playing Russia’s game were attempting to destroy the West, like Daesh. And so what if NATO supports al-Qaïda in East Aleppo?

Launched by a resounding article in the Washington Post, on 24 Novembre 2016 [11], a mysterious group entitled Propaganda or Not? established a list of de 200 Internet sites – including Voltairenet.org – who were allegedly tasked by the Kremlin with relaying Russian propaganda and intoxicating US public opinion to the point where they elected Donald Trump.

While Propaganda or Not? does not publish the names of its directors, it does indicate that it unites four organisations - Polygraph, The Interpreter, the Center for European Policy Analysis and the Digital Forensic Research Lab.

Polygraph is one of the sites of Voice of America, the US public radio and television organisation controlled by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
The Interpreter is a magazine of the Institute of Modern Russia, now broadcast by Voice of America.
The Center for European Policy Analysis is a pseudopod of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) directed by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Madeleine Albright.
And finally, the Digital Forensic Research Lab is a programme of the Atlantic Council.

In a document distributed by Propaganda or Not?, this pseudo-NGO, born of associations financed by the Obama administration, clearly names its enemy - Russia. It accuses Russia of having been the origin of the 9/11 Truth Movement and the Internet sites supporting Syria and Crimea.

[TonyGosling]

Facebook Censorship and the Atlantic Council
https://www.globalresearch.ca/facebook-censorship-and-the-atlantic-cou ncil/5656896

By Jonathan Sigrist
Global Research, October 14, 2018

Yesterday we witnessed one of the greatest Facebook account and page purges since its formation over a decade ago. In total, 559 pages and 251 personal accounts were instantly removed from the platform, for having “consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior” according to Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity and former White House National Security Council Director of Cybersecurity Policy under Obama. This is but one of similar yet smaller purges that have been unfolding in front of our eyes over the last year, all in the name of fighting “fake news” and so called “Russian propaganda”.

What very few people know though, is that about 5 months ago, Facebook announced that is was officially partnering with the Atlantic Council in the form of an “election partnership […] to prevent [their] service from being abused during elections.” Indeed, the US midterm elections are only a couple of weeks away, so the Atlantic Council and its Digital Forensic Research Lab are now going at it with full force, closing facebook accounts left and right that they personally deem could be fake accounts, or accounts spreading misinformation, based on very shady criterias.

One doesn’t need to look far to understand who the Atlantic Council are and what they stand for : it is a think tank essentially funded by NATO, weapons manufacturers, Middle-Eastern oil-state monarchies, billionaires and different branches of the US military. In short, it has been described as being nothing less than NATO’s unofficial propaganda wing. The Atlantic Council doesn’t shy away from its political intents across the world, which can be seen solely by looking at who sits on its directors board – the crème de la crème when it comes to US neocons & war criminals: Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Carlucci, James A. Baker, R. George P. Shultz, James Woolsey, Leon Panetta, Colin Powell, Robert Gates, and many more.

Needless to say, the Atlantic Council has been on the same side as every single war and conflict engendered by US and NATO imperialism over the last 50 years, and has itself played a role in abusing democratic elections around the world as well as spreading propaganda and misinformation both in home countries and abroad to achieve its political means.

Facebook and The Atlantic Council Unite: Now Social Media Giant Serves NATO’s Agenda


https://atlanticcouncil.org/support/supporters

Hence, it should come as no surprise that when the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab gets down to work weeks before the upcoming midterms, it has little intention of putting a stop to actual disinformation groups and rather silences those that speak a message opposing their own. Many of the pages and accounts taken down have been political (often leftist), anti-war, independent journalists and media outlets that are known to go against the grain of mainstream media outlets. Anti-Media (antimedia.com), a reputable source of independent journalism, saw its page with over 2 million followers taken down overnight with no concrete explanation as to why. Shortly after, Twitter decided to take them down as well, as well as Carey Wedler‘s (editor at Anti-Media) own personal account for literally no reason:



Many of the pages taken down had already been targeted back in 2016 by the McCarthyist webpage PropOrNot.not, endorsed by the Washington Post, in an effort to arbitrarily mark pages that they believe somehow are connected to Russian propaganda efforts. Already back then it was clear that many of the pages targeted by PropOrNot were leftist, anti-war pages, and almost none of them had anything to do with Russia whatsoever. The Washington Post finally later on retracted their article endorsing PropOrNot, but this didn’t help the fact that these websites had now already been flagged as propaganda by many.

Other pages taken down are The Free Thought Project, also an anti-war critic of establishment politics with around 3.1 million followers on Facebook. RT Reporter Rachel Blevins with 70.000 followers on facebook and investigative journalist Dan Dicks with 350.000 followers also both saw their accounts taken down overnight – both were very critical of mainstream journalism. These are but some of the many accounts affected, with certain accounts on the fringe far right also targeted. Facebook has suffered great pressure lately from Congress for its apparent role in the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, being blamed for not having taken on enough active measures to fight the spread of fake news. Under such pressure it is not surprising that Facebook choses to cooperate with a congress-approved think tank – the Atlantic Council -, and basically give them a free hand to censor as much as they want, in order for themselves to avoid any future heat from the US government. This can be argued as to seriously stain the name of Facebook as an independent social media platform, if it is going to bend down to any unreasonable demands coming from the US government.

In the name of fighting fake news and targeting “inauthentic behavior” and “misleading users”, Facebook has essentially indulged in what was in 1934 Germany called the “Gleichschaltung” of the media – a synchronized outphasing of dissident voices in the media and a consolidation of political opinions. The internet has traditionally always been a bastion of free speech, and it is hence not surprising that those in power seek to undermine its ability to openly criticize the powerful. The truth does not do them favor, hence they would rather not have it expressed too far and wide – something that the internet has otherwise made possible. Given that censorship is still extremely frowned upon by the general public, doing so (just like when seeking to sell a war) requires the majority of people to approve of it. The fight against fake news and foreign propaganda efforts has done just that : it has given those in power a pretext to openly censor dissident voices all while being praised in the making for so-called “safeguarding western democracies”. More of the same behaviour can be expected from both Facebook and Twitter in the future, and we cannot expect major media outlets like The New York Times,The Washington Post, CNN or MSNBC to stand up against it. After all, many of these censored independent medias are the only actors left who dare hold the mainstream media into account for their role as mere propaganda outlets of the establishment.

*

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Jonathan Sigrist is a student at the University of Tromsø in Northern Norway, currently studying the geopolitical, environmental, cultural and economic relations between the Arctic nations (The US, Canada, Russia, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark/Greenland and Iceland), as well as the future of the Arctic’s role in global politics. He has lived in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and France, and is a fervent observer and critic of US foreign policy.

[TonyGosling]

Who is the Atlantic Council?

The Atlantic Council is an increasingly influential body whose board of directors is a who’s who of American state power. From war planners like Henry Kissinger to Bush administration officials like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, army generals like David Petraeus and Wesley Clark, and former CIA directors such as Leon Panetta, Michael Chertoff, and Robert Gates, the organization is as close to a representation of the so-called “deep state” as is possible to get.

The Council has also been the driving force behind many of the most hawkish RussiaGate stories in recent years, putting out a series of widely cited reports claiming that virtually every political party in Europe not representing the established political center is secretly controlled by Vladimir Putin. From Labour and UKIP in Britain, Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece to the Five Star Movement in Italy, all, according to Atlantic Council reports, are the “Kremlin’s Trojan Horses.” These reports have provided the basis for much of the most breathless stories regarding Russia since 2016.

The Council is also in charge of curating Facebook’s news feed, deciding which sources are high quality and newsworthy, and which sources are fake news, and are taken down from the site. Since around 40 percent of Americans (and similar numbers across the globe) get their news from Facebook, the partnership with an organization like the Atlantic Council is as close to worldwide state media censorship as is likely to be achieved in the modern era. Yet few even know about this connection at all, nor how much of an influence the group has over modern media.

War drums

Throughout 2020, President Trump has used China as a method of deflecting attention away from his own response to the coronavirus pandemic, which, as of October 21, has claimed the lives of over 226,000 Americans. Trump has constantly condemned China for its response and labeled COVID-19 as the “Wuhan China Virus” or similar.


Defense Sectary Visits Hawkish Atlantic Council to Announce US Troop Buildup on Russia Border
US Defense Secretary Mark Esper visited the notorious Atlantic Council, funded by a who’s who of weapons makers and despotic regimes, to announce that the US would not, indeed, be withdrawing troops from Germany but sending them to Russia’s border instead.

by Alan Macleod October 21st, 2020 - By Alan Macleod
https://www.mintpressnews.com/defense-sectary-mark-esper-atlantic-coun cil-us-troop-buildup-russia/272189/

The United States was supposed to be sending thousands of troops home from Germany. But Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced yesterday that they would instead be redeployed eastwards, right on the Russian border in some cases, supposedly to deter “growing Russian and Chinese threats.”

“It’s common sense,” the senior Trump administration official said. “You don’t need to be Napoleon or MacArthur to look at the map and realize that the further east you are, the more reassurance you could provide for those allies and partners on the frontlines—whether it’s in the northeast, it’s the Baltic states, Poland, just due east of Germany, or in Bulgaria and Romania in the southeast along the Black Sea.” Thus, for the U.S. government, the “frontline” against an “aggressive” Russia includes countries that until recently were a part of the Soviet Union and that sit directly on Russia’s border. In July, Trump announced the impending withdrawal of thousands of U.S. armed forces from Germany (a country it has militarily occupied since World War Two).

Esper was speaking at the Atlantic Council, an influential think tank started as a NATO cutout organization funded by Western governments, Middle Eastern dictatorships, weapons companies like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing, as well many of the world’s largest corporations such as Goldman Sachs, BP, and FedEx.






The administration’s plan to ramp down the U.S. military presence from 36,000 troops to 24,000 was met with overwhelming hostility in Washington when it was first announced in July; the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives even included an amendment to its version of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act to block funding for any withdrawal. Both Republican Sen. Mitt Romney and CNN described the idea as Trump’s “gift to Russia,” while Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez claimed that “champagne must be flowing freely this evening at the Kremlin.” Thus, the news of a change of course will likely be greeted warmly in “resistance” circles.



A new arms race
Even during a worldwide pandemic that has destroyed the economy, the U.S. government is strong-arming its allies, NATO and non-NATO alike, into rearming for a potential global war against both Russia and China. Esper presented the United States as a protector nation, unfairly having to pay for the defense of other countries. “To overcome the increasingly complex threats in the 21st century and defend our shared values, there can be no free riders to our common security,” he said, adding that it was imperative that other states “share the burden” and increase their military spending to at least two percent of their gross domestic product “as the floor.” “We also expect them to be ready, capable, and willing to deploy when trouble calls. And we expect them to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States in confronting Chinese bad behavior and Russian aggression,” he added.

What is this Chinese and Russian aggression? Esper noted an increased Chinese military presence in the South China Sea, where throughout the summer, the U.S. has also been expanding its footprint. U.S. warships have been patrolling as close as 41 nautical miles from the Chinese coast. He pointed to the Russian presence in Ukraine (a country the U.S. is also flooding with weapons) as justification for the “defensive” action of sending thousands of troops mere miles from Russia itself.

Esper also called for a wholescale “modernization” of the military and the arms industry, which, he claimed, had too many restrictions on it regarding foreign sales, meaning the West’s “asymmetric advantage” was at risk. But, as many have explored previously, “modernization” is a favorite political euphemism used when wanting to discuss or promote a new arms race.



Who is the Atlantic Council?
The Atlantic Council is an increasingly influential body whose board of directors is a who’s who of American state power. From war planners like Henry Kissinger to Bush administration officials like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, army generals like David Petraeus and Wesley Clark, and former CIA directors such as Leon Panetta, Michael Chertoff, and Robert Gates, the organization is as close to a representation of the so-called “deep state” as is possible to get.

The Council has also been the driving force behind many of the most hawkish RussiaGate stories in recent years, putting out a series of widely cited reports claiming that virtually every political party in Europe not representing the established political center is secretly controlled by Vladimir Putin. From Labour and UKIP in Britain, Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece to the Five Star Movement in Italy, all, according to Atlantic Council reports, are the “Kremlin’s Trojan Horses.” These reports have provided the basis for much of the most breathless stories regarding Russia since 2016.

The Council is also in charge of curating Facebook’s news feed, deciding which sources are high quality and newsworthy, and which sources are fake news, and are taken down from the site. Since around 40 percent of Americans (and similar numbers across the globe) get their news from Facebook, the partnership with an organization like the Atlantic Council is as close to worldwide state media censorship as is likely to be achieved in the modern era. Yet few even know about this connection at all, nor how much of an influence the group has over modern media.



War drums
Throughout 2020, President Trump has used China as a method of deflecting attention away from his own response to the coronavirus pandemic, which, as of October 21, has claimed the lives of over 226,000 Americans. Trump has constantly condemned China for its response and labeled COVID-19 as the “Wuhan China Virus” or similar.

Democrats have largely decided to attack Trump on the right on the issue, however, with both parties claiming the other’s leader is in the pocket of Beijing. As a result, the public’s view of China has reached a new low, with only 22 percent of Americans expressing a positive view of the world’s most populous state, and 73 percent holding a negative opinion.

Polls are currently not looking good for Trump. Yet Joe Biden’s campaign team has strongly hinted at increased conflict with both Russia and China if their candidate is to win in November, suggesting that, when it comes to foreign policy, war is a bipartisan issue.

Feature photo | US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper with Atlantic Council CEO Frederick Kempe to discuss alliances and partnership in US national security, October 20, 2020 in Washington D.C. Marvin Lynchard | DoD

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.