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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

This published-sources-based story has been around for a few weeks but has so far gone completely unreported in Australian media: which is odd, because it is in my opinion quite an important foreign affairs story for Australia.

A lengthy set of files, made up of downloaded (or hacked) Integrity Initiative and Institute for Statecraft papers, was published online in late November by British contrarian writer Tim Hayward, as a ‘working file in progress’, under the title ‘Briefing note on the Integrity Initiative’, with authors Paul McKeigue, David Miller, Jake Mason, and Piers Robinson (who call themselves the ‘Working Group on Syria Propaganda and Media’). The URL is here.

The authors introduce their set of papers as follows:

A close examination of past and present posts held by individuals associated with the Integrity Initiative indicates that [TK- British] specialists in military intelligence and other senior military personnel with responsibility for StratCom (strategic communication) operations are closely involved in the programme.

The activities of the Integrity Initiative include:

  • setting up covert networks (“clusters”) of journalists, academics and military/foreign service StratCom practitioners in each country including the UK: “The programme has begun to create a critical mass of individuals from across society (think tanks, academia, politics, the media, government and the military) whose work is proving to be mutually reinforcing.”
  • covert manipulation of the public sphere, including campaigns to smear and suppress dissenters and block their appointment to public office. The “silencing of pro-Kremlin voices on Serbian TV” is listed as an “achievement”.
  • overt attacks on British politicians, academics and other critics of UK government policies, most notably on the Leader of the Opposition [TK – Jeremy Corbyn] and his staff.
  • in the Baltic states and Ukraine, working closely with organizations and governments that foment hatred of ethnic Russian minorities and encourage Holocaust revisionism.
  • promotion of a hate campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church in the Balkans.’

In response to these published leaked documents, Chris Donnelly, a senior staffer in the Institute for Statecraft, produced in December a fascinating seven-minute Youtube video, professionally filmed in a cosy kitchen in a house or flat (possibly his own) in London. Here is the URL

I have transcribed Mr Donnelly’s talk and will send this by following email. Here are the sections that were of most interest to me:

We have across Europe ‘networks’ – we call them ‘clusters’ – of people who understand the issue, and have agreed voluntarily to band themselves together in order to tackle the issue in their own country, and to share information between each country, on the problems, on how to tackle them, and on how to improve their own governmental capacity to deal with them. The Integrity Initiative program is really important right at this moment, because the threat from disinformation and malign influence is increasing, whether that comes from Russia, or from jihadist organisations, like Daesh, targeting specific elements of the population in different European countries.

To understand why disinformation is such a big issue nowadays, we have to understand that the whole nature of conflict in the 21st century is changing. Whereas if you think of the 20th century, the main form of combat, of conflict, that we are aware of, was world war. During the current situation, it’s a new kind of warfare, a new kind of conflict, a new kind of competition, in which everything becomes a weapon: information, energy supplies, cyber-attack which everyone is aware of, corruption itself, financial investment – all of these things are now weapons in modern conflict between states, and between states and sub-state actors like Daesh. And disinformation is the issue which unites all the other weapons of this conflict and which gives them a third dimension.

Over the last month or so, we have had a serious problem. We have been hacked, attacked, by organisations which have exposed a lot of our emails and papers onto the Web. And we have been wondering of course why this is, and the answer seems to me to be clear. It is because we have been being so effective with our Integrity Initiative program, exposing disinformation, so we have become a threat to someone’s operation against democracy, and they are trying to take us down. And we have simply not got to let that happen. We have got to fight back. We have to win this one, because if we don’t, democracy will be undermined. And we can win this by upping our game, by strengthening our efforts, by getting more support, to tackle the problem in all those countries of Europe where disinformation is a growing threat to democracy. This is not a problem that’s going to go away. This is an issue which is going to become more and more important, more and more of a threat, as the 21st century moves on, and it’s for that reason that we have to develop what we are doing, we have to grow it, we have to educate people to understand it, to understand the significance of disinformation and of the attack on our democratic institutions, the efforts to undermine our very concept of democracy, to undermine the very understanding of truth, to undermine our values. Only if we can educate people in this, only if we can expose the attacks on us, can we enable our societies, our democracies, to fight back, to defend themselves, and to prevail.

As NATO Honorary Colonel Donnelly, a retired senior intelligence officer, bumbles around in his little kitchen, a modest wine rack on the wall behind him, he offers to viewers a mild, cuddly George Smiley sort of image. But the fierce glint in his eye and the passion of his words I have selected above shows he is anything but mild. He is a dedicated ideological crusader with a keen professional expertise in strategic communication tradecraft (Stratcom). The Institute’s and the Initiative’s cover having been blown, it is the best possible defence to try to de-fang them: to make them look as familiar and unthreatening as possible, a sort of quaint Dad’s Army operation. But it would be a mistake to underestimate their dedication, expertise or influence, as a reading of the contents of the ‘Briefing Note on the Integrity Initiative’ will show. This is a big story.

The authors of the ‘Briefing Note’ estimate an overt 2018/19 budget of about £2.6 million, of which £1.96 million comes from the UK Foreign Office and the rest from other NATO government agencies and commercial donors like Facebook. Most of the Foreign Office funding comes from the Conflict Security and Stability Fund’s ‘Russian Language Programme’, now merged with a secret ‘Counter Disinformation and Media Programme’. Office space in central London (undeclared) and most of the staff salaries appear to be provided as covert benefits in kind. I would estimate these separately budgeted items to be worth an additional £2 million, making a total 2018/19 annual budget in the vicinity of £4 to £5 million.

The key point which makes this newsworthy – or it should, if we still had serious investigative journalism in Australia – is that we now know that there is a concerted international effort by large numbers of experienced former British StratCom intelligence professionals, and their many and diverse contacts in the Foreign Office and in British media and abroad, that is putting out a steadily directed and prioritised flow of anti-Russian disinformation. All the time. And they do it well, as we have seen on the Skripals, on Ukraine, and on Syria. These men and women are professionals in the manipulation of disinformation online, using networks and clusters of key people strategically to drive desired discussion themes in major public fora, in mainstream media, and even in online comment sites. It is no accident that various Anglosphere disinformation offensives sometimes look disciplined and centrally guided. Because they are.

Chris Donnelly may think of these activities as countering Russian disinformation: to me, they are simply in themselves expert disinformation practice. We need to know this as we read Anglosphere foreign affairs published content or listen to talks. We need to ask ourselves critical questions like: Where is this originating? With what objectives?

I think this is all disturbing and newsworthy, but I have yet to persuade anybody in Australian media that it is.

Tony Kevin, a former Australian senior diplomat, is an independent non-fiction author. His most recent book is ‘Return to Moscow’, a literary travel memoir published by UWA Publishing in 2017.

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Wolfe tone
Wolfe tone
Jan 12, 2019 5:50 PM

These these so called ‘leaks’ or ‘hacks’ shouldn’t deflect from the fact that the skripal case was a hoax, a fraud and a psyop.

mark
mark
Jan 10, 2019 11:32 PM

With Gavin Williamson in charge and Luke Harding doing his stuff, what could possibly go wrong?

Jo
Jo
Jan 10, 2019 12:12 PM

http://freesuriyah.eu/?p=2825

Vanessa Beeley…similar report…the more the merrier…..

tutisicecream
tutisicecream
Jan 10, 2019 4:11 AM

These wolves in sheep clothing have not realised that the British Empire collapsed in the early part of the last century.
Russia has troll farms where NATO has strategic communication centres.
This kind of faux intelligence is just a cover for supplementing their pension plans.

ZigZagWanderer
ZigZagWanderer
Jan 10, 2019 1:06 AM

Chris Donnelly has done a fine job of warming up my laughing gear. I implore you to take a look at this side splitting expose of russophobic clusters by Glenn Greenwald. https://theintercept.com/2019/01/07/nbc-and-msnbc-blamed-russia-for-using-sophisticated-microwaves-to-cause-brain-injuries-in-u-s-diplomats-in-cuba-the-culprits-were-likely-crickets/?comments=1#comments

Peter Schmidt
Peter Schmidt
Jan 9, 2019 11:58 PM

The Guardian has produced an article about Integrity Initiative. It was so poorly written that they had to close the comment section after 138 comments. People do know a lot more than the Guardian thinks.

John A
John A
Jan 10, 2019 3:53 PM
Reply to  Peter Schmidt

I posted a very inoccuous comment to the effect that the writer had stated as bald fact that the MH17 was shot down by Russian rebels even though this was far from proven.
Naturally this was deleted by the moderators.

Interestingly Viner has popped up again begging for financial contributions from readers, while still not answering any questions about the Gruaniad/Harding ‘scoop’ that Manafort had met Assange at the Ecuator embassy several times.

Paolo
Paolo
Jan 9, 2019 10:42 PM

4 minutes 10. Donnelly logs on to CIF to police and manage another wave of anti Russian astroturfing. What a cuddly old turd. Busted (as they say).

bob
bob
Jan 9, 2019 4:39 PM

why is posting on this site so difficult?

uk column has been given no credit for exposing this matter in mid-Decembe 2018

here’s a link:

https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/integrity-initiative-follow-money

ron
ron
Jan 9, 2019 2:56 PM

UK Column broke this information in mid december and have never been given any credit for it!

here’s a link:

https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/integrity-initiative-follow-money

Jim'll Fix It
Jim'll Fix It
Jan 9, 2019 2:10 PM

I don’t care what anybody says, I think these are very competent fellows. I like their sophisticated use of language. Like clusters instead of networks. In their after-action reports cluster fuck is going to be much catchier than network fuck.

Loverat
Loverat
Jan 9, 2019 3:36 PM
Reply to  Jim'll Fix It

Interesting. I guess in a way it’s a bit like the structure of ISIS. A cluster in Syria, another in Iraq, and here and there..

Please remind me, which governments guilty of treason created ISIS?

And which governments fund Al Qaeda – the group that allegedly were behind 9/11?

And which government funds the far more dangerous traitors working for Integrity Initiative?

Yes, if any of you are reading here you are traitors and a danger to humanity. Have the guts to admit you were wrong to be taken in by this project. Your work is killing people and may kill us all.

Jo
Jo
Jan 9, 2019 11:17 AM

Labour Mp Chris Williamson on rt.com underground today on the chase of this…..

Haltonbrat
Haltonbrat
Jan 9, 2019 10:18 PM
Reply to  Jo

Chris Williamson is useless. He signed a petition on behalf of Gilad Atzmon but then backed out when he came under pressure, saying that he did not realise that Gilad was an anti-semite. In other words he is gutless.

Martin Usher
Martin Usher
Jan 9, 2019 8:20 AM

This needs to be seen in the context of the current investigation into “Russian interference” in US elections and revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and the like. Put simply, “They’re all at it” and the “they” isn’t necessarily a state actor, it could be a private individual, corporations, think tanks, basically anyone with sufficient money and an agenda they wish to push. The location for these service organizations is significant, you’re looking for somewhere which is accessible but still somewhat out of the way and the name of the organization doing the work needs to be something that’s not memorable since the organization will essentially be a ‘pop up’ — it will appear, get rumbled, and then disappear only to reappear reconstituted under a different, also instantly forgettable, name.

The unforgivable part of all this is the role of journalists. Journalists are supposed to be the people who unmask this sort of thing but with exceptions (like the Daily Record team that first broke this story) they seem to be only interested in feeding off the spiel that’s supplied to them, spinning fantasies of punditry rather than bothering with finding and breaking hard news. Its small wonder that organizations like the BBC have lost their credibility in recent years.

Antonym
Antonym
Jan 9, 2019 2:23 AM

Don’t insult my favourite old serial, Dad’s Army. They were quite transparent in their clumsiness and age was/is a good reason apart from lack of experience.
Integrity Initiative, Religion of Peace etc.: word inflation has gotten massive. It targets as usual people who only read headlines and don’t delve deeper.

Frankly Speaking
Frankly Speaking
Jan 9, 2019 12:50 AM

I’ve tried to hope otherwise for the past few years, but it’s even more starkly clear now, NATO is either preparing to trigger a full war against Russia, or they are so utterly delusional that they’ll inadvertently and surely trigger one anyway.

The anti war leftists who we need so desperately to protest on the streets against this utter madness and camp outside our nuclear bases are instead diverted and preoccupied by identity politics, Brexit, defending Corbyn against scurrilous accusations of Antisemitism and other distractions and projects cooked up by the warmongering, out of control Deep State.

It’s truly time to start praying and hoping ffor divine or alien intervention.

Frankly Speaking
Frankly Speaking
Jan 9, 2019 1:03 AM

We shouldn’t dismiss this event out of hand:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=jFrFoCY6kxI

John
John
Jan 9, 2019 1:55 AM

Cointelpro to make us look bad or you’re genuine it’s hard to tell

Frankly Speaking
Frankly Speaking
Jan 9, 2019 11:32 AM
Reply to  John

???
Don’t accuse me of such a thing, now go wash your mouth out.
Or you are yourself one of those trying to discredit people on here?

flamingosarepink
flamingosarepink
Jan 9, 2019 8:51 AM

On the contrary Frankly Speaking the left is not distracted bu identity politics or Brexit or blah, blah, blah. Some people are distracted and to lump those people as ‘leftists’ is just baloney. This is what the disinfo traitors at Institute for Statecraft do, they conflate things and create bogeymen and distractions. The leftists I yarn with are abundantly aware of the enormity of this situation and the continuation of the permanent state and its buffoon distracters.

But to cut to the chase on this imbecile Chris Donnelly: He and his organisation used Government funding to attack the opposition party and its leader. SEDITION! Do you see that Frankly Speaking. They will stop at nothing. Sedition is a serious offense in most democratic law systems and I trust the UK Labor Party and other leftists will prosecute. Ditto in Australia, has anyone in the various political parties in Australia moved to circumscribe this entity and its affiliates and any journalist or UK embassy staff from Australia? Has Getup said anything yet? or are they too busy with coal miners and migrant incarceration to see that there are cockroaches in the pantry.

Might be a good idea to start writing and facebooking and so on to get these criminals and their minions eradicated.

Frankly Speaking
Frankly Speaking
Jan 9, 2019 11:36 AM

Erm, I’m a leftist myself. I’m saying that far too many of us are getting distracted by these other things, and some of these things are planted in order to distract us. Their distraction is against the goosestepping towards another World War, the hope we don’t notice, and they are right, the vast majority of people are not noticing, due to all these distractions.

Frankly Speaking
Frankly Speaking
Jan 9, 2019 11:39 AM

When I say leftist I mean traditional, old fashioned Labour voter, born and bred working class and in a Yorkshire “dark satanic” mill town.

binra
binra
Jan 9, 2019 1:54 PM

Yin’s with hidden Yang and Yang’s with hidden Yin
defined each from the other’s sin,
Agreed to have a quarrel.
But hide the agreement
by quarrelling.

Is distraction in fact
something we give hidden permission for?
and then claim the telly made me watch it?

Is the denial of a voice by power
the power by which we choose not to speak
as the framing of our thought and belief?

Exponentially rising distractions
don’t speak to me of the power to ‘control reality’
but of a stark insanity.
whose primary trick is to attack themself
but flag it to an ‘other’
believing to have got away with it.
Become more upon the other’s loss.

But ‘something else’
has in got away with them.

Feeling alright
Feels good
unless someone is left out.
Then it isn’t really all right
But a right taken
wrongly.

Imagine a 3 legged race
where a leftie and a rightie
share a leg in common.
Can we?

binra
binra
Jan 9, 2019 2:15 PM

The prayer for the alien intervention was in fact answered.
In belief and experience if not in Fact.
But insofar as a divine recognition can stir within the subjecting mind
is surely the natural result of ceasing to give allegiance
to an alien intervention.
Let fear be the stranger here
and know yourself anew.

Perhaps it serves to accept there is ‘nowhere else to think’ or nothing that manufactured thinking can lead to but more of the same.
You are the divine intervention – or rather the gift that restores you to yourself in exchange for a nightmare. But this cant make any sense in the frame of the nightmare – excepting a stirring within from which you look an what you thought you were.

Haltonbrat
Haltonbrat
Jan 9, 2019 10:27 PM

It’s important to defend Corbyn. The Integrity Initiative are involved in smearing Corbyn. Israel want rid of Corbyn. Last thing Israel wants is a leader whom they cannot control and who supports justice for the Palestinians. If we are not careful Corbyn will go for an early bath.

Jo
Jo
Jan 8, 2019 10:56 PM

https://www.rt.com/news/448325-integrity-initiative-shut-down-leaks/

Prof Paul Miller in Bristol has been studying the hacks and consequences.

Patrick Armstrong
Patrick Armstrong
Jan 8, 2019 7:15 PM

I say the poor man has had his brains scrambled by listening to too many of Putin’s crickets.

Loverat
Loverat
Jan 8, 2019 6:29 PM

As others have commented, Donnelly is quite literally a threat to us all. He is playing games with our lives and his children and grand-children – if he has any. He is a coward.

He and others connected to this evil organisation need to urgently change their behaviour. If they don’t they and others will quite likely be responsible for the wipeout of much of the human race. Any fool looking at this from outside can see the grave risks. It’s almost as if they want nuclear war.

You have a maniac in Bolton in power in the US, the UK filled with similar people and widespread ignorance, and lunatic leaders in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey. That with all the anti- Russian propaganda promoteed by Oliver Kamm, Luke Harding, Nimmo, Lucas, York, Higgins and the other brain-dead morons and criminals.

Syria still likely to be spark which kicks it all off.

We need more whistle-blowers and the above people and any decent minded journalists (if there are any) to be persuaded to put the future of humanity over their career and wage packet.

One consolation in the worst scenario is that these people probably won’t have time to spend the proceeds of their selfish deceit given the acceleration towards all out war.. Plus I suspect for all the god fearing platitudes, as with McCann and past American criminals , they willl end up at the gates of hell.

Jo
Jo
Jan 8, 2019 6:13 PM

These insidious groups referred to…their connections…hiding under such scurrulous names that deliberately falsely suggest a genuine authority of moral purpose….must be even more exposed( articles in other websites too all worth checking out to the full extent eg Sputniknews

https://sputniknews.com/search/?query=integrity+initiative
)…..because they were compiling lists of persons- a link that said one could check on it did not work yesterday anyone out there can find it???…media etc just like the Ukrainians had published they had claimed were subversives so these could be neutralised…plus the propornot lists.. such a coincidence in last few weeks I had recorded phone calls saying from BT saying they were suspending my internet due to suspicious activity…
…it all sounds like a secret cabal with hidden militaristic objectives considering their connections eg Atlantic Council…UK Security Council …it feels like military intelligence. Uk police in the handling of Skripal case GCHQ have been infiltrated , and feels like these kinds of people have been deliberately winding up Gavin Williamsons elastic band and actually he is being promoted as a civic public face future leader on their behalf eg him saying UK will build up its military status again with foreign bases emulating the USA …the UK foreign plicy and nato policy is being driven by such peoples as Bill Browder one of the lead names in a cluster list and friends with their deliberate intentio to provoke and denigrate Russia by any means possible despite their claims they only want dialogue….are there influences over the EU with their actions against Russia in the Council of Europe and in the EU dept or facility set up so promulgate their truths against so called Russian propaganda….good that the Austrians and Italians seem to have some intelligence in actually working out what is going on and are engaging in meetings with Russia.

These groups are a direct threat to democracy what is left of it….they have subversive agendas that are only just beginning to be revealed to us…even maybe writing mission statements and protocols and instructions for even more subversive groups than white helmets with taxpayers monies to carry out their agendas along side the David Steeles and Pablo Millers and Skripal with his trips to Estonia…Spain….
thank goodness for the hacking by anonymous. And what a sign of rhe times that we have to rely on such groups as these and cyberberkyt for the revealing of the truths in our corrupt political societial system.

Jo
Jo
Jan 8, 2019 6:37 PM
Reply to  Jo

Eg such stuff as this they are behind surely…”The Daily Telegraph reported, citing unnamed sources from the UK government, that the Skripals were supposedly living in the south of the United Kingdom and undergoing medical treatment supervised by a narrow circle of experts. According to the newspaper, the UK authorities had established all the details of the Skripal case.” Etc https://sputniknews.com/world/201901081071306401-skripal-life-fake/

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201901081071285928-skripal-case-investigation/

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201901061071260928-integrity-initiative-russophobia/

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201901051071236221-uk-anonymous-eu-disinformation/

Etc etc

http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-integrity-initiative

Essential reference.

John
John
Jan 9, 2019 9:56 AM
Reply to  Jo

The daily telegraph got that info because it is the paper of MI6 and MI5

Jerry Alatalo
Jerry Alatalo
Jan 8, 2019 5:05 PM

Chris “Grandpa Psyop” Donnelly is the mild-mannered, kindly, maximally vague and non-specific, ex-intelligence agent all the grand kids love. Mr. Donnelly would make a very good New Age channel or QAnon riddle-poster, because of his expertise in delivering smoky, threadbare messages without facts/specificity … without names, dates, details, etc. to the gullible “believer” children.

bc
bc
Jan 8, 2019 6:22 PM
Reply to  Jerry Alatalo

The most specific thing i managed to glean from his ramblings was that he sees himself as a defender of “democracy”. Yet he simultaneously seems to believe he should never be questioned, because he is annoyed that people have dared to draw attention to his “grassroots” institute of statecraft and ask rudimentary questions about it.

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Jan 10, 2019 4:09 AM
Reply to  bc

‘The most specific thing i managed to glean from his ramblings was that he sees himself as a defender of “democracy”.’

Perhaps you weren’t paying enough attention. For instance, thanks to the video, I’ve found out who stole our teapot.

John
John
Jan 9, 2019 9:57 AM
Reply to  Jerry Alatalo

Hes very much like a politician in that he has the ability to talk and talk and talk but doesn’t say anything at all

Gary Weglarz
Gary Weglarz
Jan 8, 2019 4:41 PM

But, but, what were Western governments and intelligence agencies supposed to do to counter the massive Russian propaganda attack that put Trump in power?! I mean scores of Facebook click-bait ads featuring puppies and Pokemon literally destroyed American “democracy” as we know it. How can Western governments hope to complete with puppies, much less Pokemon, unless they resort to simply lying to us non-stop, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year? How will we ever get the “official message” if the diabolical Russian’s are constantly diverting our gaze with photos of cute puppies?!

Our intelligence agency vetted and sanctioned “official lies” are now the new “official truths” in the West. U.S. media is completely uninterested in reporting on this incredibly important story for the same reason Australian media is uninterested. Because the story itself pulls back the curtain and exposes the secret soft white underbelly of the completely ever deceitful Western propaganda apparatus and Western war machine. Do you need enemies? – simply “manufacture them.” Do you need war? – simply “manufacture it.”

Anyone who followed the MSM reporting in the last U.S. election knows that a similar intelligence operation was undoubtedly underway to discredit the Sander’s campaign just as in the U.K. the Integrity Initiative has discredited Corbyn. Hey, who needs “puppies” to do your dirty work when you have the CIA & MI6 & MSM?

Yonatan
Yonatan
Jan 8, 2019 4:28 PM

Chris Donnelly is totally correct in his fear that the Soviet Union will contaminate his bodly fluids.

Jules Moules
Jules Moules
Jan 9, 2019 12:57 AM
Reply to  Yonatan

Mr President, we find ourselves with an idiot gap.

Einstein
Einstein
Jan 8, 2019 3:46 PM

Dear Mr Donnelly,
You seem sincere in your beliefs but have you ever questioned whether you have the right targets?
Joel Bakan, in his book ‘The Corporation’ describes how corporations necessarily have the ethics of psychopaths. Drug money from the likes of Mexican and Colombian cartels, now oils the wheels of the world’s banks and the ethics of these Mafiosi come as part of the package. I cannot believe you support a world ruled by psychopaths, yet that is what is happening to Europe and America.
They (corporate financial power) stoop at nothing. They funded the blood-thirsty jihadis that publicly execute children and traffick their organs. They shoot down airliners (such as MH17 and PanAm 103) full of innocent passengers without the slightest compunction.
I cannot believe, from the manner of your talk, that you would subscribe to such ends, let alone means.
I would therefore request you and your colleagues seriously review the targets of your principled actions because it seems you are the unwitting instrument of very unprincipled actors.
Yours sincerely,
John Marks

wardropper
wardropper
Jan 8, 2019 2:32 PM

“They have hacked us and exposed our documents on the Web”…

Yes… and the content of those documents tells us precisely what… ?
Oh, dammit. How embarrassing for us… We’d better pretend that the content of the documents is of no importance whatever…

bevin
bevin
Jan 8, 2019 1:54 PM

The essential feature of this “Integrity Initiative” is that it is purportedly a charity or an NGO. Like Atlantic Council, or Bellingcat, it is funded by government(s) but it has, as this video demonstrates, the capacity to distance itself from government, Deniability.
Deniability is the central feature of all British regime change operations since 1945. The UK takes (took?) the UN Charter and Nuremberg seriously. Not in the sense that it follows the rules but in so far as it tries not to get caught waging aggressive wars and interfering in sovereign states by carrying out regime change operations.
Britain has become very good not just at keeping its secret operations secret and deniable. But , through its controls over the media, stopping leaks by ensuring that whistle blowers are not heard.
What this case indicates is that people like Donnelly, contemptible careerists playing games with humanity’s very existence, have prevailed over the more cautious and sensible Civil Servants in the Foreign Office, who used to keep a lid on the irrespresible folliy of psychopaths like Christopher Nigel, and have been given license not only to kill but to do so without reference to ‘M’ and Whitehall.
In this case, thanks to the weakness and demoralised state of the current government what has happened is that Donnelly has improved on the rolling regime change operation against Russia, (consisting of taking advantage of opportunities to castigate the Kremlin and blaming Putin for everything that goes wrong, every Russian expatriate’s death, every botched poison gas gambit by the White Helmets (another one of these NGOs run by ‘retired MI types),).. improved on it to the extent that, now, rather than waiting to comment on, and build frames around such events as Litvinenko’s death, they are constructing them out of whole cloth.
The key word here is bricolage, as used by Levi Strauss to describe one of the characteristic reactions of traditional societies to the irruption of western imperialism.
Donnelly, his acolytes and his dupes in the media are taking whatever they find lying around in the world and twisting it together to form apparent events. The White Helmets, for example, attempt a chlorine gas attack on Syrian forces. It fails but rather than deny that it ever happened British Intelligence convinces the media that, in fact the attack was not by the Jihadists but upon them. The media dutifully takes its cues, from the clusters and, almost before you know it, the US is bombing Damascus on the ground that Assad is carrying out poison gas attacks.
The MH17 affair is another instance: an airliner gets shot down, whether deliberately or not doesn’t matter, and Russia is blamed. All manner of phony ‘evidence’ is publicised. The real evidence such as Air Traffic Control records is suppressed. Sanctions are imposed. Russia further isolated etc. Then we had the DNC emails, again, a leak probably by a decent person disgruntled by the utter cynicism and criminality of the DNC’s tactics in the primary elections. Twisted into something resembling a Russian conspiracy against Clinton. Not one that anyone with enough brain to tie his shoelaces would credit but just enough to set the media lynch mobs, led by their clusters, into operation.
All of which leads inexorably to Salisbury and the Skripals.
And here perhaps there is more than bricolage: rather than picking up what providence has delivered and making a passably plausible story of it, here, one suspects, the matter was put together in advance. This wasn’t an accident blamed on Putin but a planned semi-assassination in which at least one of the victims was unaware of the plan… designed from the beginning to be used in the rolling anti-Putinb regime change operation..
Which, and this is something that the old FO mandarins knew would happen if policy were left in the hands of Donnelly and Co, (straight out of Magnet or Hotspur), has proved to be exactly what Russia needed: a series of kicks at the Kremlin which drove it into the arms of Beijing and forced it to form an iron alliance which will lead not to regime change in Moscow but to the destruction of the Atlantic empire before it reaches its five and a half century anniversary.

binra
binra
Jan 8, 2019 12:58 PM

Studying at the feet of the deceiver is under the belief that :

We are threatened by pain and humiliation of loss and dispossession and reckoning.

We haven’t any substance from which to extend an integrity (are compromised and captive to disintegrity on which we believe we are dependent).

We are powerless/bankrupt/captured/owned.

We are prostituted to anything that seems to offer power and protection for the ‘self that yet remains’.

We pay whatever cost or sacrifice to such power because it is too big to fail. (Our investment is overextended and with no way out or back – ‘pay or die’).

Foxy Loxy is leading us to Owlsy Wowsy, who knows what to do when the sky is about to fall.

The sky hasn’t actually fallen, but Foxy Loxy is the ingenious thinking by which to repackage fear into complex stories that protect all the farmyard animals and Chicken Licken for salvation when we get to Owlsy Wowsy.

The other animals ‘disappear’ but Foxy Loxy is our protector and guide and will see us safely across the river of our powerlessness to where he says Owlsy Wowsy can be found. Or rather, seems the lesser evil.

We are not being predated upon, degraded and destroyed (by our own cleverness and blindness) – but are temporarily atoned of such sins by serving under a new world order where the sky shall never fall again – but only while we pay the price.

binra
binra
Jan 8, 2019 11:54 AM

The blatant enemy to any democratic basis or contribution to society is the presumptive use of lies or disinformation in defence of it. This indicates a capacity for self denial or dissociation that beggars belief – or of course a willingness to lie under a plausible cover story in return for favour or for withholding or mitigation of penalty under the power to confer either – or indeed the belief and fear of such power to provide pain or gain.

There is a truth to recognising the marketisation and weaponisation of everything – but this is not IN the ‘enemy’ or ‘rival’ but in our psychic-emotional foundations as a separative and segregative self-will of a private agenda set against the other and the whole – and therefor set against the true good of the self.

Disinformation or false witness and misperception stems from misidentification under fear and guilt arising from a ‘self-identification’ based in lack and specialness as the intent and attempt to get or become ‘more’ as a self definition of prediction and control.

A manipulative mind in its own self-reinforcing engagement and exploitation of others is masked in forms of alliance or mutual agreements that are generally tacit and codified to run a narrative control in terms of accepted expression and communication.

Reality as allowed – is thus determined by the sense of possession and control in any given ‘engagement’ or context of rules that can be overt or psychologically conditioned habits over personal conflict issues.

In this context reality Itself can seem to attack the self-in image or social identity bubble. This is existentially traumatic or even psychotic in terms of its deep sense of personal conflict – and the self-protective gesture is the dissociative denial of the problem where it is – for the displacement to the projecting of the conflict onto others – such that diverting the psychic emotional charge of the hated and feared ‘Reality’ of ‘unknown’ and ‘uncontrolled chaos’ onto the ‘Other’ as enemy or rival who would ‘dispossess’ and ‘dominate’ provides the ‘evil’ against which to mitigate or frame our own as lesser or even hidden by righteousness taken from hate or terror that serves the ‘Order’ against which an evil ‘chaos’ must not be allowed to enter or destroy.

But note – the self identity taken in IMAGE is a symbolic representation of a movement of communication or living informational intelligence of self-awareness as a purely energetic quality, and the fixation in image as an inter face or relational differentiation seeking object permanence, is the setting up of rules of selection and rejection so as to hold the continuity of the expression as a conscious construct – through which to open the exploration and experience of a ‘self-differentiation’.

The sense of support and sustenance for such a self is from the Field of its Cause and not IN the imaged construct through which a focus of awareness balances Self-Awareness with its local or specific sense of self-consciousness.

When self-consciousness operates self-conflicting or oppositional thought and response it log-jams or blocks its own receptive – and this in principle is the ‘chaotic sense of fear of loss of self-existence’ that becomes uniquely assigned to and associated with specific conditions that colour or inform the nature of our displacement or projection issues. The complexity of the entanglement of the ‘persona’ or personality construct is all the power we give it to possess and control our lives – from a fear of being possessed or dominated by others or dispossessed to a sense of naked powerlessness and loss of face, or humiliation.

It may be apparent that the segregative movement has a divisive, conflicted and destructive underbelly to a surface sense of developing ability and achievement.
When this is recognized within our own mind as part of a collective or relational dissonance – instead of ‘outsourced’ and attacked in the ‘other’, the reintegrative movement of the undoing of a segregative self to a greater embrace of expansion and NOT as a destructive or vengeful repossession of a stolen self – becomes conscious within the field of our attention – as a seed that opens perspective or witnesses of an energetic predicate to or living relational field that is already a quality of living information or communication – prior to the separative gesture of possession and control – and the results or reflections of conflicted self that arise from getting in our own way and blaming our tools instead of attuning to a more unified and balanced desire.

A cornered animal can be dangerous – and humanity has painted itself into merely animal terms AND a corner, such that appetites and fears become the leverages of systemic control where the system is itself a means of generating charge from denial of life and the management of debt, sickness and war through ‘noble lies’ such as to protect the SYSTEM from Reality and predate upon the Living as the means to maintain a ‘control’ that has become not only hollow and meaningless, but actively targeting the meaningful as the intent to undermine and subvert it to serve the purpose of the segregative or private agenda at expense of the Whole upon which it of course absolutely depends. There is no independence FROM relational being – excepting the fantasy of a self in its own imaged isolation.

Relationships are not something to get from or get away from, exploit or use or dump hate onto for a personal moment of relief or private gratification. They are the very source and nature of our existence – whether we recognize and align in truth or ‘see’ only in terms of ancient fears – kept ever new by allegiance to a past made in anger.

Separation trauma are not the exclusive realm of those who are exposed or un-lidded to such fears but are a sort of jack-in-the-box always about to go off.
The focus on the difficult frames us in its terms – but unless we look on what we are predicated to hide and hide from, we cannot but persist and replicate the reflex or conditioned reaction that effectively does the thing we say we hate and attack in others.

How we move on from such a state of paralysis given to destructive ‘escape’ is for the living and sharing, but without owning what is ours we put the possibility of sharing in the answer outside us and effectively enact the helplessness that must assert power to protect the helplessness that must survive…
If we are truly helpless in ourselves then the truth is needing Help. But insofar as we attack and recoil from Help under the fear that it will weaken or demand sacrifice is the false sense of self-possession using the mask of concern to justify power for its own sake – divorced from any meaningful service or relationship but its own isolating and ephemeral fantasy gratifications.

Self interest operates exactly along the definitional lines of its current acceptance.
Rather than control the narrative – OPEN genuine communication – and protect an integrity of being by aligning only in true witness instead of in aligning in hate of what we perceive false in others.
If you don’t have something loving to share – you need to learn to receive it through willingness to relate truly. Not because I say so – but because the recognition of truth is always within the vibrational resonance and communication of love – which is being with what is – and not the attempt to determine what is should or must be as your private possession or empowerment.

Secrets and lies make a world where anything goes… and comes back to you with interest. This is not because the world is ‘evil’ but a direct correspondence in the terms of giving and receiving. Depreciating assets or an appreciating appreciation. There is a real choice and choice cannot be coerced or enforced and BE choice. Tyranny results from false or blind choices in those who know not what they do – but THINK they are in some sense of protected freedom that demands war and subjection of relational expression to remain ‘free’.

Disinformation as an intent to deceive is destructive to life and the capacity to share and recognize life. Disclosure of an alien agenda is the revealing of a self-alienating denial. Who WANTS not to know – shall seem to ‘know’ something else. No one can make another (or themselves) see what they are not willing to accept – regardless the enforcement of behavioural conformity.

Point counterpoint and synthesis is properly the embracing and transcending of a seeming conflict in an expanded recognition that is the GIFT to such a willingness.
The Good Cop/Bad Cop and manipulated outcome is the intent to subvert the alloy of true and false being brought into communication by manipulating reaction in terms of good and evil – targeted as the carrot and the stick. To let the ends justify the means is to reverse the order of Creation – in a private substitute reality. This is how fixation in a past asserts a presentation that ensure the future continues the past as the ongoing denial of presence. It is not control of the present – but control of the narrative presentation. Presence is not part of such drama – excepting as like to a screen on which it plays. Waking presence is of a different purpose and not an oppositional righteousness in more of the same. Because the ego-conflict is the same whatever shifting forms it takes – and so the phished mind has to be abandoned for a true discernment if you are unwilling to feed and protect your hate with your energy and attention – which in truth is your love or extension of accepted worth. But a negatively expressed love is of course hurt. Deep, persistent and overwhelming hurt polarises us to an enraged and evasive sense of self and reality. While suffering can induce questioning our reality, that does not equate it with wisdom that can then reach us, nor is it the best or only way to awaken such a truly relational self-responsibility.

vexarb
vexarb
Jan 8, 2019 1:12 PM
Reply to  binra

@Binra: “The blatant enemy to any democratic basis or contribution to society is the presumptive use of lies or disinformation in defence of it.”

Thanx. Now I understand why Solon of Athens made it a crime to conceal one’s political opinion.

binra
binra
Jan 8, 2019 7:40 PM
Reply to  vexarb

I don’t know about that – but I know that the art of concealment is an area of great expertise in regard to the human persona. Whatever is presented and judged in appearance, we likely know vastly less than we think.
A mind that’s changed against its will is of the same opinion still.
So conformity to surface behaviours does not mean unity – but likely a tower of Babel as soon as the coercive force is released. Or perhaps a re-alignment to our natural desire once the old bilge water has cleared.

Suppressing symptoms does not heal disease but may displace it to seem to be somewhere else. Healing a breakdown in communication is one step at a time – with my focus on my part – because I am the one who can play my part in withdrawing my support from fuelling a source of ongoing pain and loss. And as I release I find it. that does not mean letting criminals out of jail – but releasing other beings of my judgement upon the intentions I give them from my own past. Then I can meet whoever from a clearer sense of who I am, instead of replaying a past that might not even by relevant to who I am now.

My sense of the development of human consciousness is of increasing subtlety in its masking ability – which makes us more entangled in the demands of the mask (personal, social and political) while running (thinking) we are ‘free’.
However if we recognize we are free to accept a different purpose for the abilities we have developed, then we gather a different set of witnesses from the same apparent situation.

John A
John A
Jan 8, 2019 10:56 AM

I have yet to see any mainstream media coverage of the Integrity Initiative. And I am not holding my breath that I ever will.

Haltonbrat
Haltonbrat
Jan 8, 2019 12:39 PM
Reply to  John A

Even just the mention of this evil organisation in a Guardian post is sufficient to get the post deleted. As expected the Guardian is in on the local Cluster.

Yarkob
Yarkob
Jan 8, 2019 2:04 PM
Reply to  Haltonbrat

“on the local cluster”

actual LOL – Cadwalladr IS the local cluster.

I wonder if she feels duped or is as clueless as she comes across

Antonym
Antonym
Jan 9, 2019 2:54 AM
Reply to  Yarkob

Living as a presstitute in London is expensive, so she had to do what she had to do… Mouths to feed etc.

0use4msm
0use4msm
Jan 8, 2019 3:44 PM
Reply to  John A

The gWardian put two very flimsy articles on its website about the Integrity Initiative’s smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn on Twitter. This limited hangout was necessary after Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan was forced to respond to questions in Parliament following a Daily Mail exposé. Of course the articles provided as little background on the Integrity Initiative as possible; instead ample room for Duncan to deny the allegations and <a href="lengthy quotations of the anti-Corbyn tweets.

ZigZagWanderer
ZigZagWanderer
Jan 9, 2019 11:10 PM
Reply to  John A

Guardian eventually offered up poor old James Ball to write his own Integ Init ‘opinion piece’ today. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/09/free-societies-russia-misinformation-integrity-initiative
Basically the Russians are comin’ …. and people like us OffG readers are easily duped by the mindbenders at Sputnik and RT.

Whether it’s worth giving the G any traffic is entirely up to you.

kingfelix
kingfelix
Jan 8, 2019 10:05 AM

“We have to win this one, because if we don’t, democracy will be undermined…”

Priceless. This is utterly transparent: for all the talk of ‘fake news’, the IoS and II are going one better and producing fake events. These documents suggest the Skripals were as much victims of a nerve gas attack as that Ukrainian gentleman who the entire corporate media informed us was killed by Putin, only for him to reappear alive hours later.

Equally, on the anti-Russia front in the US, a group tied to the Democrats, and who wrote a report that Congress cited as justifying more measures against Putin, are now revealed as having created a fake Russian bot farm to smear a GOP senator in a tight election race.

https://grayzoneproject.com

The intelligence services are seeking to both direct policy, thus operating over the heads of elected politicians, and to implant lies in the heads of the population through the use of ‘clusters’ of opinion-forming journalists in the corporate media, making informed public debate impossible. It’s a multi-pronged assault on the very democratic principles these same agencies are supposedly meant to guard. To hear this piece of human garbage speak of serving ‘democracy’ is stomach-churning.

DavidKNZ
DavidKNZ
Jan 8, 2019 9:23 AM

There were 32 comments on Chris Donnellys video -most of them scathing, none of them favourable. So thats a start. It would seem that ‘ordinary folks’ are starting to wake up to the way the UK /US ‘establishment’ is trying to deceive them. And not a small deception either. The likely endpoint of this insanity is the destruction of human society. The destruction of a million or so Iraqis was just a warmup cameo to show us where this deranged thinking will lead.

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Jan 8, 2019 8:59 AM

The cross eyed Five Eyes, or the shortsighted Five Eyes perhaps?
We’ve got Nazis on the beach and Nasties in the kitchens.
Holy shit!!

Yarkob
Yarkob
Jan 8, 2019 2:05 PM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

in the kingdom of the blind, the 1-eyed (5-eyed) man is king