11-22-2020, 10:51 AM (This post was last modified: 11-22-2020, 10:52 AM by BIAD.)
Here's a fine piece that offers a glimpse under the soft blanket that the MSM continually convince
to lie on. We have been currently suffering with -not a bad lung-debilitating disease, but the results
of maverick behaviour in the banking systems that has been going on for decades.
It's a long read, but worth the trudge. I often say 'life is simple', it is and in this article you'll see how
that simplistic view of who we are and how we exist has been exploited by those who scoff at an
elementary belief we learned as children.
Trust.
.......................................................................
Quote:What the Great Reset Architects Don’t Want You To Understand About Economics
By Matthew Ehret.
'It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Vice President of the World Bank Carmen Reinhardt recently warned
on October 15 that a new financial disaster looms ominously over the horizon with a vast sovereign default
and a corporate debt default.
Just in the past 6 months of bailouts unleashed by the blowout of the system induced by the Coronavirus lockdown, Reinhardt noted that the U.S. Federal Reserve created $3.4 Trillion out of thin air while it took 40 years to create $14 Trillion.
Meanwhile panicking economists are screaming in tandem that banks across Trans Atlantic must unleash ever
more hyperinflationary quantitative easing which threatens to turn our money into toilet paper while at the same
time acquiescing to infinite lockdowns in response to a disease which has the fatality levels of a common flu.
The fact of the oncoming collapse itself should not be a surprise- especially when one is reminded of the $1.5
quadrillion of derivatives which has taken over a world economy which generates a mere $80 trillion/year in
measurable goods and trade.
These nebulous bets on insurance on bets on collateralized debts known as derivatives didn’t even exist a few
decades ago, and the fact is that no matter what the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank have attempted
to do to stop a new rupture of this overextended casino bubble of an economy in recent months, nothing has worked.
Zero to negative percent interest rates haven’t worked, opening overnight repo loans of $100 billion/night to failing
banks hasn’t worked- nor has $4.5 trillion of bailout unleashed since March 2020. No matter what these financial
wizards try to do, things just keep getting worse.
Rather than acknowledge what is actually happening, scapegoats have been selected to shift the blame away from
reality to the point that the current crisis is actually being blamed on the Coronavirus!
This Goes Far Beyond COVID-19
Let me just state outright: That while the coronavirus may in fact be the catalyzer for the oncoming financial blowout,
it is the height of stupidity to believe that it is the cause, as the seeds of the crisis goes deeper and originated much
earlier than most people are prepared to admit.
To start getting at a more truthful diagnostic, it is useful to think of an economy in real (vs purely financial) terms
–That is: Simply think of the economy as total system in which the body of humanity (all cultures, nations and families
of the world) exist.
This co-existence is predicated on certain necessary powers of production of food, clothing, capital goods (hard and
soft infrastructure), transportation and energy production. After raw materials are transformed into finished goods,
these physical goods and services move from points A to B and are consumed.
This is very much akin to the metabolism that maintains a living body.
Now since populations tend to grow geometrically, while resources deplete arithmetically, constant demands on new
creative discoveries and technological application are also needed to meet and improve upon the needs of a growing
humanity.
This last factor is actually the most important because it touches on the principled element that distinguishes humanity
from all other forms of life in the ecosystem which Lincoln identified wonderfully in his 1859 Discoveries and Inventions
Speech:
Quote:“All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various “leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny...
Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his
workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions.”
In a 2016 speech by President Xi Jinping, the principles of Lincoln’s understanding were laid out by the Chinese statesman
who said:
Quote:We must consider innovation as the primary driving force of growth and the core in this whole undertaking, and human resources as the primary source to support development.
We should promote innovation in theory, systems, science and technology, and culture, and make innovation the dominant theme in the work of the Party, and government, and everyday activity in society...
In the 16th century, human society entered an unprecedented period of active innovation. Achievements in scientific innovation over the past five centuries have exceeded the sum total of several previous millennia...
Each and every scientific and industrial revolution has profoundly changed the outlook and pattern of world development...
Since the second Industrial Revolution, the U.S. has maintained global hegemony because it has always been the leader and the largest beneficiary of scientific and industrial progress.”
What Lincoln and Xi laid 150 years apart are not mere hypotheses, but elementary facts of life which even the most ardent
money-worshipper cannot get around.
Of course money is a perfectly useful tool to facilitate trade and get around the awkward problem of lugging bartered goods
around on your back all day, but it really is just that: a supporting element to a physical process of maintenance and
improvement of trans-generational existence.
When fools allow themselves to loose sight of that fact and elevate money to the status of a cause of all value (simply because
everyone wants it), then we find ourselves far outside the sphere of reality and in the Alice in Wonderland world of Alan
Greenspan’s fantasy world where up is down, good is evil, and humans are little more than vicious monkeys.
So with that in mind, let’s take this concept and look back upon today’s crisis.
London’s ‘Big Bang’
The great “liberalization” of world commerce began with a series of waves through the 1970s, and moved into high gear with
the interest rate hikes of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker in 1980-82, the effects of which both annihilated much of
the small and medium sized entrepreneurs, opened the speculative gates into the “Savings and Loan” debacle and also
helped cartelize mineral, food, and financial institutions into ever greater behemoths.
Volcker himself described this process as the “controlled disintegration of the US economy” upon becoming Fed Chairman
in 1978. The raising of interest rates to 20-21% not only shut down the life blood of much of the US economic base, but also
threw the third world into greater debt slavery, as nations now had to pay usurious interest on US loans.
In 1986, the City of London announced the beginning of a new era of economic irrationalism with Margaret Thatcher’s “Big Bang”
deregulation. This wave of liberalization took the world by storm as it swept aside the separation of commercial, deposit and
investment banking which had been the post-world war cornerstone in ensuring that the will of private finance would never again
hold more sway than the power of sovereign nation-states.
For those who are confused about London’s guiding hand in this process, I encourage you to read Cynthia Chung’s impeccable
essay “Sugar and Spice, and Everything Vice: The Empire’s Sin City of London”.
Greenspan and the Controlled Disintegration of the Economy
When Alan Greenspan confronted the financial crisis of October1987, markets had collapsed by 28.5% and the American economy
was already suffering from a decay begun 16 years earlier when the dollar was removed from the fixed exchange rate and was
“floated” into a world of speculation.
This departure from the 1938-1971 Industrial growth model ushered in a new paradigm of “post-industrialism” (aka: nation stripping)
under the new logic of “globalization”. This foolish decision was celebrated as the consumer-driven, “white collar society” which would
no longer worry about “intangible things” like “the future”, infrastructure maintenance, or “growth”.
Under this new paradigm, if something couldn’t generate a monetary profit within 3 years, it wasn’t worth doing.
Paul Volcker (Greenspan’s predecessor at the Federal Reserve) exemplified this detachment from reality when he called for the
“controlled disintegration of society” in 1977, and acted accordingly by keeping interest rates above 20% for two years which
destroyed small and medium agro-industrial enterprises across America (and the world).
Greenspan confronted the 1987 crisis with all the gusto of a black magician, and rather than re-connect the economy to physical reality
and rebuild the decaying industrial base, he chose instead to normalize “creative financial instruments” in the form of derivatives
(aka: “creative financial instruments”), which quickly grew from several billion in 1988 to $2 trillion in 1992 to $70 trillion in 1999.
“Creative financial instruments” was the Orwellian name given to the new financial asset popularized by Greenspan, but otherwise
known as “derivatives”. New supercomputing technologies were increasingly used in this new venture, not as the support for higher
nation building practices, and space exploration programs as their NASA origins intended, but would rather become perverted to
accommodate the creation of new complex formulas which could associate values to price differentials on securities and insured
debts that could then be “hedged” on those very spot and futures markets made possible via the destruction of the Bretton Woods
system in 1971.
So while an exponentially self-generating monster was created that could end nowhere but in a meltdown, “market confidence” rallied
back in force with the new flux of easy money. The physical potential to sustain human life continued to plummet.
NAFTA, the Euro and the End of History
It is no coincidence that within this period, another deadly treaty was passed called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
With this Agreement made law, protective programs that had kept North American factories in the U.S and Canada were struck down,
allowing for the export of the lifeblood of highly skilled industrial workforce to Mexico where skills were low, technologies lower, and
salaries lower still.
With a stripping of its productive assets, North America became increasingly reliant on exporting cheap resources and services for its
means of existence. Again, the physically productive powers of society would collapse, yet monetary profits in the ephemeral “now”
would skyrocket.
This was replicated in Europe with the creation of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 establishing the Euro by 1994 while the “liberalization”
process of Perestroika replicated this agenda in the former Soviet Union. While some personalities gave this agenda the name
“End of History” and others “the New World Order”, the effect was the same.
Universal Banking, NAFTA, Euro integration and the creation of the derivative economy in a space of just several years would induce a
cartelization of finance through newly legalized mergers and acquisitions at a rate never before seen. The multitude of financial institutions
that had existed in the early 1980s were absorbed into each other at great speed through the 1990s in true “survival of the fittest” fashion.
No matter what level of regulation were attempted under this new structure, the degree of conflict of interest, and private political power
was uncontrollable, as evidenced in the United States, by the shutdown of any attempt by Securities and Exchange Commission head
Brooksley Born to fight the derivative cancer at its early stages.
When Bill Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall bank separation of commercial and investment banks as his last act in office in 1999, speculators had un-bounded access to savings and pensions which they used with relish and went to town gambling with other
people’s money.
This new bubble continued for a few more years until the $700 trillion derivatives time bomb found a new trigger and the subprime
mortgage market nearly burned the system down. Just like in 1987, and the collapse of the Y2K bubble in 2001, the Mammon
worshipping wizards in the ECB and Fed solved this crisis by creating a new system of “bailout” which continued for another decade.
The 2000-2008 Frenzy
With Glass-Steagall now removed, legitimate capital such as pension funds could be used to start a hedge to end all hedges.
Billions were now poured into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), a market which had been artificially plunged to record-breaking
interest rate lows of 1-2% for over a year by the US Federal Reserve making borrowing easy, and the returns on the investments
into the MBSs obscene.
The obscenity swelled as the values of the houses skyrocketed far beyond the real values to the tune of one hundred thousand dollar
homes selling for 5-6 times that price within the span of several years. As long as no one assumed this growth was ab-normal, and
the un-payable nature of the capital underlying the leveraged assets locked up in the now infamous “sub-primes” and other illegitimate
debt obligations was ignored, then profits were supposed to just continue infinitely.
Anyone who questioned this logic was considered a heretic by the latter-day priesthood.
The stunning “success” of securitizing housing debts immediately induced a wave of sovereign wealth funds to come into prominence
applying the same model that had been used in the case of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations
(CDO) to the debts of entire nations.
The securitizing of bundled packages of sovereign debts that could then be infinitely leveraged on the de-regulated world markets would
no longer be considered an act of national treason, but the key to easy money.
The Ugly Truth of Today’s Crisis
New “sub-prime” bubbles have been created in the Corporate Debt sector which has risen to over $13.8 trillion (up 16% from the year earlier).
A quarter of which is considered junk, and another half graded at BB by Moodies (a step above junk).
Household debt, student and auto debt has skyrocketed and since wages have not kept up with inflation causing even more unpayable debts
have been incurred in desperation. Industrial jobs have collapsed consistently since 1971, and low paying service jobs have taken over like a plague.
The last report from the American Society of Civil Engineers concluded that America desperately needs to spend $4.5 trillion just to bring its
decayed infrastructure up to safety levels. Roads, bridges, rail, dams, airports, schools all received near failing grades with the average age
of Dams clocking in at 56 years, and many water pipes over 100 years old, and transmission/distribution lines are well over 60 years.
The factories which once supplied those infrastructure needs are long outsourced, and much of the productive workforce that had that living
knowledge to build a nation are retired or dead leaving a deadly generation knowledge gap in its place filled with millennials who never knew
what a productive economy looked like.
American farmers have probably been the most devastated in all this with dramatic population losses across the entire farm belt of America
and the average age of farmers now 60 years. It was recently reported that 82% of U.S. Agricultural family income comes from off farms, as mega cartels have taken over all aspects of farming (from equipment/supplies, packaging and the even the actual farming in between).
Combined with the controlled destruction of global food supplies internationally, COVID has ensured that strategic food chain supplies ar
being ripped to shreds with the UN reporting the worst food crisis in over 50 years (and that is not accounting for the oncoming blowout
of the bubble economy).
Why was this permitted to happen? Well besides the obvious intention to induce “a controlled disintegration of the economy” as Volcker
so coldly stated, the idea was always to create the conditions described by the late Maurice Strong (sociopath and Rothschild cut-out
extraordinaire) in 1992 when he rhetorically asked:
“What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?
And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment.
Will they do it?
The group’s conclusion is ‘no’. The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change.
So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse?
Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
How do we get back to health?
Like any addict who wakes up one morning at rock bottom with the sudden terror that his death is nigh, the first step is admitting we
have a problem. This means simply: acknowledging the true nature of the current economic calamity instead of trying to blame
“coronavirus” or China, or some other scapegoat.
The next step is begin to act on reality instead of continuing to take heroine (a fine metaphor for the addiction to derivatives speculation).
An obvious first step to this recovery involves restoring Glass-Steagall in order to 1) break up the Too Big to Fail banks and 2)
impose a standard of judging “false” value from “legitimate” value which is currently absent from the modern psycho that lost all
sense of needs vs wants.
This would allow nations to re-create a purge of the unpayable fictitious debt and other claims from the system while preserving whatever
is tied to the real economy (whatever is directly connected to life). This process is sort of akin to cutting a cancer.
This act would look very similar to what Franklin Roosevelt did in 1933 which I outlined in my recent paper Hyperinflation,
Fascism and War: How the New World Order May be Defeated Once More.
At this point nation states will have re-asserted their true authority over the pirates of private finance controlling the Trans-Atlantic financial
system like would-be gods of Olympus (unbounded perverted vices and all).
It should be obvious to all that the United States must get its head out of its proverbial ass before it is too late by imposing these reforms
onto the murderous sociopaths on Wall Street and London who would rather promote a “Great Reset” onto the world economy under the
fog of COVD in order to control the terms of the blowout and also the rules of the new post-nation state operating system which they wish
to see brought online as a (final) “solution”...'
I haven't posted TruReporting 2.0 in awhile, so let's give him some free advertising. He shares lots of important news and is one of the few left on You Tube.
(11-27-2020, 12:19 PM)BIAD Wrote: If nothing else, try to remember who you were before they began to work on you.
That is Correct,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, SHEEPLE,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, TOTAL CONTROL!
They want to control your movement.
They want to control what you eat and how much you eat. (Michelle Obama proved that Link).
They want to control what you watch on TV and the Movies.
They Want YOUR Life Under Their Total Control, it is called the NWO and the EU was the First Test and now it is Spreading.
FIGHT, RESIST, don't let them lead you into the Re-Education/FEMA Camps!
(11-27-2020, 12:19 PM)BIAD Wrote: If nothing else, try to remember who you were before they began to work on you.
Thanks @"BIAD". This is scary, and exactly where things are heading if people don't wake up.
It all started with 9-11 here in the U.S. They took away our privacy little by little behind the curtain until now, here we are. They are getting ready to take that last step as they turn up the heat on the boiling pot.
RedPill78 was talking about Bill Gates coming out with a vaccine that has a wire tracking device in it. It attaches to body in a short amount of time and can never be removed. People will need it to travel, go inside grocery stores, work, whatever.
This is what some are saying is the mark of the beast that the Bible warns us about. I don't know; sounds pretty close to me.
If anyone wants to hear RedPill's video on this, click below. It starts at the 30:26 mark towards the end.
(11-27-2020, 12:19 PM)BIAD Wrote: If nothing else, try to remember who you were before they began to work on you.
Thanks @"BIAD". This is scary, and exactly where things are heading if people don't wake up.
It all started with 9-11 here in the U.S. They took away our privacy little by little behind the curtain until now, here we are. They are getting ready to take that last step as they turn up the heat on the boiling pot.
RedPill78 was talking about Bill Gates coming out with a vaccine that has a wire tracking device in it. It attaches to body in a short amount of time and can never be removed. People will need it to travel, go inside grocery stores, work, whatever.
This is what some are saying is the mark of the beast that the Bible warns us about. I don't know; sounds pretty close to me.
If anyone wants to hear RedPill's video on this, click below. It starts at the 30:26 mark towards the end.
11-27-2020, 10:35 PM (This post was last modified: 11-27-2020, 10:35 PM by BIAD.)
(11-27-2020, 06:07 PM)Mystic Wanderer Wrote: This is what some are saying is the mark of the beast that the Bible warns us about. I don't know; sounds pretty close to me...
For anyone who looks at that section of the Revelation verse and smiles at the 'scary' warning, a serious business person
would realise any type of device or nanoparticle system would be compared to such a mark of the Devil.
Even if a successful business person scoffed at the idea of evil-minded beings with horns and flames, the perception would
be enough to pour water on the idea of an injected transponder being a good idea.
Unless...
12-02-2020, 11:18 PM (This post was last modified: 12-02-2020, 11:18 PM by BIAD.)
When your goal in life is to fling sh*t at your enemy, any type of crap is valid.
Quote:Trump pardons: US justice department unveils bribery inquiry
'The US justice department is looking into claims that lobbyists have tried to use bribes to secure
a presidential pardon, unsealed court papers show. They say that in August investigators began
investigating a "secret lobbying scheme" possibly involving attempts to contact White House officials.
The redacted filings do not give any names, but the justice department says no government official
is being probed...'
Oh my, the headline alone tells me sinister goings-on are afoot in the White House and the first couple
of sentences reinforce the narrative. I suppose there's no need to read more.
Quote:In a tweet, President Trump referred to the investigation as "fake news".
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
17h
Pardon investigation is Fake News!
Fake news...! Dear President Trump, the BBC does not just write false information! The headline
represents what the British Broadcasting Corporation stands for!
Now lets add some level-headedness.
Quote:'...It is common for outgoing presidents to use their right to issue pardons, which wipe out convictions.
President Trump - who is due to leave office in January, although he is still contesting his election
defeat in the courts - has used the procedure a number of times.
Last week he pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying
to the FBI...'
Oh go on... this sounds interesting, please explain. Nah, just skirt around that lil' embarrassing story!
Quote:'Meanwhile, US media say Mr Trump has been discussing the possibility of pardoning family members.
The document released by a federal court in Washington DC on Tuesday relates to a request by the
Department of Justice (DOJ) to use emails and other communications seized in a bribery-for-pardon
inquiry...
Pardoning family members?! Oh my God! What have they been up to? Please elaborate.
Quote:'The data, prosecutors say in the paper, points to potential "criminal activity".
They say individuals - whose identities are redacted - appear to have "acted as lobbyists to senior
White House officials without complying with the registration requirements" for such activity.
Their aim, according to the papers, may have been to secure "a pardon or reprieve of sentence" for
another unidentified individual...
Wait a mo... you keep saying 'US media say, the prosecutors, they say' like you're laying-off any blame
of what you're writing. Surely this can't be just a hit-piece?!
Quote:'According to the documents, prosecutors in August sought a court order "so that the investigative team
[could] access" the communications and confront the suspects. It is unknown who the people targeted
were...'
I thought this was about pardoning Trump's family? Anyway, the DOJ will back-up this article.
Quote:On Tuesday the DOJ said: "No government official was or is currently a subject or target of the investigation
disclosed in this filing."
Quote:Who has Trump pardoned?
Mr Trump has so far been less enthusiastic in using his right to grant clemency than any of his recent
predecessors, according to the Pew Research Center...'
Er, this is a bit contrary to the story's theme, President Trump doesn't seem to abusing this right of
his office. However, to save some face, you could wheel your favourite President onto the stage and
bask in all the good things he did.
Quote:'...Barack Obama, whom Mr Trump replaced in 2017, granted 212 pardons and 1,715 commutations
-the most since President Harry Truman in the 1940s and 1950s.
President Trump, by contrast, had granted just 28 pardons and 16 commutations as of late November...'
Boo-Hiss, Trump the grinch, huh?!
Quote:'Apart from Michael Flynn - who was convicted in 2017 of lying about his contacts with the Russian
ambassador the year before - people pardoned by Mr Trump include political strategist Roger Stone,
ex-Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, and former vice-presidential aide Scooter Libby.
A number of Trump allies are reportedly hoping for clemency, including ex-advisers Rick Gates and
George Papadopoulos, who were both convicted in the investigation into Russian interference in
the 2016 election...'
'Russian interference'? I thought it was Russian collusion that was the cover for the 2006 money
-laundering Papadopoulos was supposed to be involved in. The others... there's tales that the BBC
omitted to mention in other articles.
Quote:'...US media also say the president is considering issuing pardons for family members - even though
none has been accused of any crime.'
Oh my, we must be getting near the end of this pile of [REDACTED]!
Quote:'...One source told NBC News that the suggestion has arisen because the president feels embattled
-not because he believes that he or any of his relatives are guilty of wrongdoing...'
Someone unidentified told another Journalist that a 'suggestion' is in regards
of weariness and not anything anyone can be held accountable for!
Quote:The New York Times says Mr Trump appears concerned that under future President Joe Biden, the
Democratic administration might target his children Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka Trump, as well as
Ivanka's husband Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser.
There are precedents for granting clemency to people who have not been indicted.
Another quote from another news-outlet, did the hack wrote this actually leave his/her desk?!
Quote:'In 1974, President Gerald Ford pre-emptively pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon, ended any
possibility of prosecution following the Watergate scandal...'
For those who want to stay ahead of the MSM narrative, you really need to watch this interview with Patrick Byrne, the ex-CEO of OverStocked.com.
He worked in stings during Obummer's time in office, and he has some revelations to share that haven't been heard until now.
He comes on the second hour, so if you're in a hurry, go to marker 57:00 and start from there.
Quote:Evidence of Chinese CCP compromise of elected officials, all of them DEMs has been released, at the same time America is sending troops and aircraft carriers to our East and West borders. Are we preparing for the invasion of the Chinese military?
Go to mark 18:35 to listen to the story about the ships. Things are getting scary, if you ask me.
12-10-2020, 10:26 AM (This post was last modified: 12-10-2020, 10:29 AM by BIAD.)
Is this an exposed disinformation operation or is it just another facet of the rabbit-hole of propaganda?
After all, it's from the BBC! The truth is we have no idea about anything we see on the internet.
As I've said before, everyone is involved.
Quote:The dead professor and the vast pro-India disinformation campaign
By Abid Hussain & Shruti Menon
BBC Urdu & BBC Reality Check
'A dead professor and numerous defunct organisations were resurrected and used alongside at least 750 fake media
outlets in a vast 15-year global disinformation campaign to serve Indian interests, a new investigation has revealed.
The man whose identity was stolen was regarded as one of the founding fathers of international human rights law,
who died aged 92 in 2006.
"It is the largest network we have exposed," said Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of EU DisinfoLab, which
undertook the investigation and published an extensive report on Wednesday. The network was designed primarily to
"discredit Pakistan internationally" and influence decision-making at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and
European Parliament, EU DisinfoLab said.
EU DisinfoLab partially exposed the network last year but now says the operation is much larger and more resilient
than it first suspected. There is no evidence the network is linked to India's government, but it relies heavily on amplifying
content produced on fake media outlets with the help of Asian News International (ANI) - India's largest wire service and
a key focus of the investigation.
The EU DisinfoLab researchers, who are based in Brussels, believe the network's purpose is to disseminate propaganda
against India's neighbour and rival Pakistan. Both countries have long sought to control the narrative against the other.
All fake news-outlets and websites.
Last year, the researchers uncovered 265 pro-Indian sites operating across 65 countries, and traced them back to
Delhi-based Indian holding company, the Srivastava Group (SG). Wednesday's report, titled Indian Chronicles, reveals that
the operation, run by SG, is spread over at least 116 countries and has targeted members of the European Parliament
and the United Nations - raising questions about how much EU and UN staff knew about SG's activities, and whether they
could have done more to counter those activities, especially after last year's report.
Mr Alaphilippe said the EU DisinfoLab researchers had never encountered such co-ordination between different stakeholders
to spread disinformation. "During the last 15 years, and even after being exposed last year, the fact that this network
managed to operate so effectively shows the sophistication and the drive of the actors behind Indian Chronicles," he said.
Conversation
EU DisinfoLab
@DisinfoEU
REVEALED: Indian Chronicles – how a massive 15-year influence operation successfully
targeted the EU & UN with 750+ fake local media and 10+ zombie-NGOs.
Executive Summary & full report: http://indianchronicles.eu
Here are the facts Down pointing backhand index (1/n)
"You need more than a few computers to plan and sustain such an action," he said.
The researchers cautioned against "definitively attributing Indian Chronicles to some specific actors such as Indian intelligence
services" without further investigation. Ben Nimmo, a disinformation network expert, told the BBC the uncovered network was
"one of the most persistent and complex operations" he had seen, but he too was wary of attributing it to a specific actor.
Mr Nimmo, who is director of investigations at digital monitoring firm Graphika, cited previous examples of privately-run large
-scale troll operations. "Just because they're big, it doesn't necessarily mean they're directly run by the state," he said.
The BBC approached the Indian government for comment but had received no response by the time of publication.
Of ghosts and defunct NGOs
One of the most important findings of the open-source investigation was establishing direct links between the Srivastava Group
(SG) and at least 10 UN-accredited NGOs, along with several others, which were used to promote Indian interests and criticise
Pakistan internationally.
"In Geneva, these think tanks and NGOs are in charge of lobbying, of organising demonstrations, speaking during press
conferences and UN side-events, and they were often given the floor at the UN on behalf of the accredited organisations,"
the report says.
The investigation shows that the operation led by SG began in late 2005, a few months after the UNHRC was founded in
its current form. One particular NGO which caught the eye of the researchers was the Commission to Study the Organisation
of Peace (CSOP). The CSOP was founded in the 1930s and won UN-accreditation in 1975 but became inactive later in the 1970s.
The investigation found that a former chairman of the CSOP - Prof Louis B Sohn, one of the 20th Century's leading international law
scholars and a Harvard Law faculty member for 39 years - was listed under the name Louis Shon as a CSOP participant at the
UNHRC session in 2007 and at a separate event in Washington DC in 2011.
The listings shocked the researchers because Prof Sohn died in 2006.
Professor Louis B Sohn.
The authors dedicated their investigation to the professor's memory, writing that his name had been "usurped by the malicious
actors in this report". They said CSOP "had been resurrected, and its identity hijacked in 2005 by the same actors depicted in
our first investigation".
The investigation also shows there were several hundred pro-Indian interventions by the non-accredited NGOs, which were
repeatedly given the floor at the UNHRC on behalf of the accredited organisations, pursuing the same agenda of maligning Pakistan.
On other occasions, NGOs and organisations which seemingly had nothing to do with Pakistan or India according to their stated
objectives would get the opportunity to speak at the UNHRC and target Pakistan.
In March 2019, during the UNHRC's 40th session, United Schools International (USI), another UN-accredited organisation with direct
links to SG, allowed its slot to be used by Yoana Barakova, a research analyst with an Amsterdam-based think-tank called the
European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS).
Ms Barakova spoke about "atrocities committed by Pakistan" during the session. She told the BBC that EFSAS was a partner
with USI and she was "not responsible for organisational logistics". The BBC received no reply when it contacted the director of
EFSAS, who also represented USI at the same session to criticise Pakistan.
The primary news agency re-packaging and boosting pro-India content related to SG appears to be ANI, established in 1971,
which describes itself as "South Asia's leading multimedia news agency, with more than 100 bureaus in India, South Asia and
across the globe". Indian news media, especially broadcast media, thrive on content provided by ANI.
EU DisinfoLab found at least 13 instances of ANI re-publishing mostly anti-Pakistan and sometimes anti-China op-eds by Members
of the European Parliament (MEPs), originally published on EU Chronicle, one of the fake news sites linked to SG.
EU Chronicle was born in May this year when EP Today, a site flagged in the previous disinformation report, was simply discontinued
and renamed.
The EU DisinfoLab report said: "The actors behind the operation hijacked the names of others, tried to impersonate regular media
such as the EU Observer... used the letterhead of the European Parliament, registered websites under avatars with fake phone
numbers, provided fake addresses to the United Nations, created publishing companies to print books of the think-tanks they owned.
"They used layers of fake media that would quote and republish one another. They used politicians who genuinely wanted to defend
women or minority rights to ultimately serve geopolitical interests and gave a platform to far-right politicians when convergent
objectives could be reached."
The routes take to fool the public.
Mr Alaphilippe said the news agency ANI was being used to give legitimacy to the entire "influence operation", which relied "more on
ANI than on any other distribution channel" to give it "both credibility and a wide reach to its content".
ANI's news reports have found space in many mainstream Indian news outlets and publishers. Its content was further reproduced on
more than 500 fake media websites across 95 countries, the researchers found.
Demonstrations in Europe conducted by organisations linked to the Srivastava Group have also been covered by ANI, as well as by
fake media websites linked to SG.
Focus on the EU and UN
According to the findings of the investigation, the disinformation network had a two-pronged strategy to spread influence.
In Geneva, the think-tanks and NGOs were in charge of lobbying and protesting, and taking the floor at the UNHRC on behalf
of accredited organisations.
In Brussels, the focus was on the MEPs, who were taken on international trips and solicited to write "exclusive" op-eds for fake
outlets like EU Chronicle, which would then be amplified using ANI, the researchers found.
A group of MEPs appear regularly in the investigation. One of them, French MEP Thierry Mariani, has written two op-eds for EU
Chronicle and was also part of a controversial visit to Indian-administered Kashmir last year.
"If the Indian government is behind the newspaper [EU Chronicle], it is not my problem," Mr Mariani, a member of France's far-right
National Rally, told the BBC.
"I sign what I want and I feel, it is my opinion. I have connections in [India's governing] Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and I support
the government of [Narendra] Modi," he said. Two other MEPs named in the report - Angel Dzhambazki from Bulgaria and Grzegorz
Tobiszowski from Poland - denied having written op-eds that were published on EU Chronicle.
The articles under their names were also reproduced on ANI.
Asked what the EU is doing to fight disinformation networks, EU spokesperson on foreign affairs Peter Stano pointed to the action
taken to expose EP Today last year. "Exposing the disinformation and those who spread it is one of our main instruments," he told
the BBC. "We will continue to identify them and call them out."
But he said questions about finances and transparency of NGOs registered in Brussels were for Belgian authorities to answer.
Rolando Gomez, a spokesperson for the UNHRC, told the BBC that it was the prerogative of NGOs to raise whichever issue they
wish to address and whoever they grant space to speak on the floor. "There are no rules stating that an NGO must speak to specific
issues. Doing so would amount to infringing on their freedom of speech," Mr Gomez said.
Gary Machado, managing director of EU DisinfoLab, said he thought the muted reaction to the revelation of the disinformation network
was partly because it was "clearly managed by Indian stakeholders". "Imagine if the same operation was run by China or Russia.
How do you think the world would have reacted? Probably with international outrage, leading to public inquiries and probably
sanctions," he told the BBC.
But the activities of MEPs named in the report prompted criticism from some of their colleagues. MEP Daniel Freund from the Greens
said fellow members needed to declare their activities. "There have been at least 24 breaches of rules in the past years.
Not a single violation has been sanctioned. So there is little incentive to respect the rules when the worst that can happen is to file
a declaration after you have been caught," he said.
Another member, who did not want to be named, said MEPs contributing to sites like EU Chronicles had been identified as
"election tourists". "A ragtag group of MEPs from the bottom of the parliamentary barrel who prefer to travel on sponsored trips
by unsavoury governments rather than invest in their mandate," the MEP told the BBC. "How PR stunts with such individuals
could be even conceived as helpful is baffling."
The BBC put questions to ANI and to nine other MEPs who have written op-eds for the EU Chronicle and made visits to India,
Bangladesh and the Maldives, but received no response.
Who are the Srivastavas - and what next?
The investigations from last year and this year show a man called Ankit Srivastava at the centre of the entire global operation that
was uncovered. More than 400 domain names have been bought through Mr Srivastava's private email address or through email
addresses belonging to his organisations, the EU DisinfoLab investigations found.
Then, there's a case of the mysterious SG-owned tech firm Aglaya. Its website has been inaccessible since at least February this year
but in the past the company has advertised products for "hacking/spy tools" and "information warfare services". Aglaya's marketing
brochure mentioned the ability to "hamper country level reputations" and described some of its services as "Cyber Nukes".
In a 2017 interview with Forbes magazine, a man called Ankur Srivastava claimed he "only sold to Indian intelligence agencies".
It's unclear what relation, if any, he has to Ankit Srivastava.
A third Srivastava appears to be Dr Pramila Srivastava, chairperson of the group and mother of Ankit Srivastava.
Dr Harshindar Kaur, a paediatrician from the Indian state of Punjab, told the EU DisinfoLab researchers that in 2009 she had been
invited to the UNHRC in Geneva to give a lecture on female foeticide when she was threatened by a woman called Dr P Srivastava,
who claimed to be a "very senior government official from India".
Dr Kaur told the BBC it was Pramila Srivastava who had threatened her.
The BBC emailed Ankit Srivastava asking him to respond to this and the other allegations in the report, but received no reply.
When the BBC visited the firm's offices in Delhi's Safdarjung Enclave, staff there would not answer questions.
What might happen to the network, or how it might evolve, in the light of the latest investigation is unclear.
The authors of Indian Chronicles say their findings "should serve as a call to action for decision-makers to put in place a relevant
framework to sanction actors abusing international institutions". Mr Alaphilippe said following the 2019 investigation there had been
"no official communication, no sanction, nothing. This passivity gave a message to Indian Chronicles: you've been exposed,
but no consequences".
"We think there should be consequences to disinformation and we expect actions to be taken. The biggest failure from institutions
would be if another report is released next year on the same actors with the same techniques," he told the BBC.
"This would mean that EU institutions are ok with foreign interference."...'
12-17-2020, 01:29 PM (This post was last modified: 12-17-2020, 01:31 PM by BIAD.)
Since I tend to investigate the manner that a Government-led Broadcaster abuses its trust in informing a British public,
here's a very small -but still relevant, example of that subtle exploitation.
I was discussing the eternal problem of what we call in the UK 'The North-South Divide' with my smart wife and thought
it may be a good idea to acquire some exemplars to generate evidence of such a phenomena. The alleged division in such
a small nation traditionally leans towards a fiscal and class gulf between northern England and London.
Rarely -and sadly, are Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland used in the mathematics of what makes Great Britain have
differences in social-wellbeing. Just this alone is a fine example of the contrast of the kingdom on the whole!
But on a BBC webpage, a place where youngsters -from an educational standpoint, who wish to understand how Britain
works, can browse the factors that reflect the social differences of the regions that make up what is deemed England.
As one of the negative examples, Glasgow is used to show how high unemployment impacts compared to the abundance
of jobs in the South (London really). Glasgow is in Scotland.
The main theme that is offered is a London-based perception of the whole country, but I'm getting off on a tangent here
in what the BBC website is offering, it's the falsehood that shines a positive light on the BBC that really caught my attention.
Quote:Strategies to resolve regional differences
Resolving regional differences is a difficult task.
The government have agreed devolution measures, which gives additional power and money to councils in the north.
An example is the election of the Mayor for Greater Manchester, who has been given £1 billion of devolved funds to
spend on improving the city and attracting new businesses.
This will mean that fewer decisions about the city are made in London and more decisions are made by the people
of Manchester. Other local councils are demanding the same control.
MediaCityUK, SalfordMediaCityUK, Salford
Some people believe that professional jobs need to be created in the north.
The popularity of universities such as Manchester and Leeds has encouraged professionals to settle in the north.
The relocation of some businesses and organisations can also help.
For example, the BBC built MediaCityUK in Manchester and moved many of its offices there in 2011. Since then, the multiplier effect has led to other companies locating close by, eg the Holiday Inn....
If the BBC built 'MediaCityUK', it means that a publically-funded Broadcaster used licence-payer money and other
finance -presumably from the British Government, to construct facilities in the Salford area of Greater Manchester.
Something I'd believe would've been seen problematic by the many regions of the country that pay such fees to
the Broadcaster, when suggested.
Luckily, that is all bullshit.
Quote:MediaCityUK is a 200-acre (81 ha) mixed-use property development on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal
in Salford and Trafford, Greater Manchester, England.
The project was developed by Peel Media; its principal tenants are media organisations and the University of Salford...
Quote:'The Peel Group (commonly known by its former name Peel Holdings) is an infrastructure, transport and real estate
investment group. It owns holdings in land and property, transport, logistics, retail, energy and media.
Peel's direct and indirect investments extend to 40m/(9 million square feet) of investment property and over 13,000
hectares of land. Peel is one of the largest property investment companies in the United Kingdom, and has its UK
head office at the Trafford Centre, in Greater Manchester.
The Trafford Centre which opened in 1998, is widely regarded as Peel's first landmark development.
The centre was sold in 2011 to Capital Shopping Centres (now Intu) for £1.6 billion, making it the largest property
acquisition in British history and the biggest European property deal of 2011.
Other projects which Peel have developed include MediaCityUK, Liverpool John Lennon Airport, Doncaster Sheffield
Airport, Gloucester Quays and Frodsham Wind Farm. The group is led by John Whittaker, who maintains a 75% majority
stake in the group, with the Olayan Group owning a 25% stake...'
Now many people understand how the people of Europe felt as they seen the monster of war sharping its claws as WWII started.
Yes... we were recovering from 1929, things seemed good yet alarming, but I imagine there was intense angst and terror being spread across Europe of impending doom. Americans were affected differently, after all we had an ocean insulating us... you are right
![[Image: EoLHAhrVoAAblnN?format=png&name=large]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoLHAhrVoAAblnN?format=png&name=large)
Oh my, we must be getting near the end of this pile of [REDACTED]!
