I spent the past 2 days reading this
40 page request for funding for "Phase 2" of the Integrity Initiative. This is the most dystopian thing I've ever heard of.
Journalists need to read this whole document closely because y'all are being targeted.I'm going to skip to page 15 because this is extremely f***ed up. In phase 2, each new cluster will be commissioned to produce a study & disseminate (e.g. as an II report,
or fed anonymously into local media outlets) **fed anonymously into local media outlets.** Excuse me?
How will journalists know if any of their sources are in these clusters? Will the cluster members be stating their affiliations to journalists? Will articles be labeled?
Or is this research going to be presented to the public with no attribution to a government-funded group?
Back to page 2. Phase 2 involves "Expanding our network of specialists, journalists, academics and political actors across Europe." Are the journalists in the clusters stating their affiliations clearly when publishing articles?
How about academics who are cited in media?
Phase 2 completion date is March 31, 2019, 2 months from now. Some of the funding sources: NATO, US State Dept, Facebook... Should be obvious why it's extremely bad (also highly unethical) for research from this project to be "fed anonymously into local media outlets."
Page 7.
9 clusters were set up in Phase 1. Assuming Phase 2 is almost finished, 5 other "latent clusters" will be fully functional by March and 10 additional clusters will be established. That's 24 countries by my math. Plus whatever extending networks into MENA involves.
In Phase 1 they learned once a cluster is established,
it has measurable impact within 3 months and the cluster is "fully effective within 6-9 months" - "should be possible to set up functioning clusters in all countries named in column 1" April '18 - April '19.
How can we retroactively measure what "impact" the already functioning clusters have had to date? Page 7 names one incident which I already know was problematic. The
El Pais coverage of the Catalan referendum. I
noted a few issues at the time.
Guess who was cited as "definitive proof" that an army of pro-Russian bots was tweeting about the referendum?
The tweets I made at the time (linked above) cited a "
study" by Javier Lesaca from George Washington University which was never made public. Same guy also wrote this piece:
'The Zombies of disinformation: The global financial crisis and the information technology revolution have created a perfect storm. Governments must act'That's three El Pais articles in 2 languages claiming Russian interference in the Catalan referendum. Those pieces were cited in how many other media outlets? Were any of those articles labeled as coming from the Integrity Initiative?
I'll refer you to page 9 for details on the structures of this network of clusters.
A small admin hub (1-3 people) plus a network of 10-20 active members disseminating materials to 100+ key individuals and institutions.
Fighting state propaganda with more state propaganda. Corrupting journalists & academics in the process. This is some dystopian state-sponsored Sense8 f***ery. Makes me nauseous, to be honest.
Orwell must be rolling in grave watching the West's amoral insanity fester, rot and destroy every vestige of truth and decency that might remain anywhere this sordid morass we call the Western democratic world.