A $100,000 Democrat psyop to fake Russian interference in an Alabama election was brushed aside by the US media as nonconsequential. But the alleged Russian operation of similar cost is treated as a Pearl Harbor-like attack.Update: Facebook suspends "researcher" Jonathon Morgan:
RT's Murad Gazdiev wonders why a false flag operation involving Russia is not a bigger scandal for the US media. After all, they eagerly reported Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, which is claimed to have a similar budget, as a major crime or even an act of war on par with Pearl Harbor.
Watch the video and take a guess.
Facebook has suspended the account of Jonathon Morgan, the researcher behind a disinformation campaign against an Alabama Republican candidate who ended up losing the race for a Senate seat. Morgan claimed it was "research."
In a statement, Facebook said it had yanked "five accounts run by multiple individuals for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior" and was investigating them.
"We've removed thousands of Pages, Groups and accounts for this kind of behavior, as well as accounts that were violating our policies on spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior during the Alabama special election last year," Facebook said.
The Times reported on Wednesday that Morgan and his team attempted to paint Moore as a Kremlin candidate, linking thousands of alleged Russian Twitter bots to his account and alerting the media to the fact.
A wide-ranging campaign was also launched by New Knowledge-handled accounts on Facebook. According to the report, a specially created generic page boosted Watson's campaign, getting him TV gigs and more recognition. Morgan admitted that he was in contact with Watson, but argued that his false flag campaign did not aim to endorse him or manage to influence the outcome of the vote.
The researcher argued the goal of the campaign was innocuous - to get firsthand knowledge of how the disinformation campaign works in a real-life situation.
In the end, Democrat Doug Jones celebrated a nail-biting win, becoming the first Democrat to represent Alabama in the Senate in over 25 years. Moore lost by 1.5 percentage points in what was described as a shocking defeat.
In the wake of the revelation, Jones said that he "was outraged as anyone else" calling for the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice to investigate New Knowledge's interference.
In an uncharacteristic pitch for a US lawmaker, Jones said that the Americans seemed to be a bit too obsessed with hunting for Russian meddling.
"I think we've all focused too much on just the Russians and not picked up on the fact that some nefarious groups, whether they're right or left, could take those same playbooks and start interfering with the elections for their own benefit," he said.
Comment: Netanyahu may be feeling a little shaky after the US announced its intention to withdraw from Syria. Turkey has everything to gain and Israel much to lose from this move.