albright
© AP Photo/ Zach Gibson
Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in an article published Thursday proposed taking on what she said was "anti-democratic trolling" by Russian media, such as the RT broadcaster and Sputnik news agency, the same way Washington dealt with Islamist propaganda.

"We already have systems in place to monitor Islamic State propaganda on the Internet, and we should do the same for authoritarian propaganda," she wrote in an article for the USA Today.


Comment: She's right, there should be a system to monitor authoritarian propaganda. If such a system did exist, it would have to flag everything she is saying as authoritarian propaganda otherwise it would be a faulty system. The irony is that Western media is by far the biggest propaganda outlet in the world, spouting whatever lie the US government wishes to spread without a discerning thought.


Albright reiterated accusations by US homeland security and intelligence that the Russian government was behind the sensitive leaks from the Democratic National Committee email accounts, published by WikiLeaks, claiming the website was friends with Russian officials.


Comment: Yet no one in the US intelligence community has provided any evidence of Russian involvement in the Podesta leaks. In fact, the FBI itself refused to name Russia as being responsible for the hacks, just as it also found no evidence of any connections between Trump and Putin. Albright may want to start paying attention to what her own country's top law enforcement authority is saying before she makes herself sound foolish (too late!).


News outlets like the RT channel and Sputnik agency are spreading misinformation and lies, she said, and the United States must tell the true story, specifically to audiences in Central and Eastern Europe.

"The U.S. government should work with technology companies to develop better policies to deal with anti-democratic trolling, as they have done with cyberbullying, hate speech and violent extremism," the top US diplomat under Bill Clinton wrote.

The Clinton campaign has blamed Russia for directing leaks of emails from the hacked account of US Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's election campaign chairman, John Podesta, in a bid to interfere with the US election process. Russia has denied the allegations.