The Kremlin paid an army of more than 1,000 people to create fake anti-Hillary Clinton news stories targeting key swing states, the leading Democrat on the committee looking into alleged Russian interference in the US election has said, like reported by independent.co.uk .

Senator Mark Warner, the Democrat ranking member, and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Republican Senator Richard Burr, appeared together at a press conference to give an update on the investigation ahead of the first witnesses appearing today.

Mr Warner said: “We know about the hacking, and selective leaks, but what really concerns me as a former tech guy is at least some reports – and we’ve got to get to the bottom of this – that there were upwards of a thousand internet trolls working out of a facility in Russia, in effect taking over a series of computers which are then called botnets, that can then generate news down to specific areas.

“It’s been reported to me, and we’ve got to find this out, whether they were able to affect specific areas in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, where you would not have been receiving off of whoever your vendor might have been, Trump versus Clinton, during the waning days of the election, but instead, ‘Clinton is sick’, or ‘Clinton is taking money from whoever for some source’ … fake news.

“An outside foreign adversary effectively sought to hi-jack the most critical democratic process, the election of a President, and in that process, decided to favour one candidate over another.”

The key states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania which Mr Warner named all fell narrowly – and unexpectedly – to Donald Trump.

The Senate Committee will examine whether the Trump campaign co-ordinated with the Russians to hire the army of trolls.

Mr Warner and Mr Burr were keen to stress they were unified in the investigation, in spite of reported in-fighting along political lines.

Mr Burr said he did not want to “take snapshots” of where the investigation stood but hinted the committee had spoken to Ret Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Mr Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence who stepped down from his post after ties to foreign governments were revealed.

A parallel investigation is running in the lower House of Representatives, but this has been marred by calls for chairman Devin Nunes to step down following allegations he is co-operating with the White House.

A CBS poll revealed half of Americans now believe the Russians interfered with the election to help Mr Trump, while 10 per cent believe there was Russian interference but that it was not specifically designed to benefit the tycoon.

Speaker of the House, Republican Paul Ryan, said the US had a responsibility to the rest of the world to get to the bottom of the alleged Russian interference.

“They’re doing it to other countries right now,” he said.

“We all knew this before the election, we all knew Russia was trying to meddle with our election, and we already know right now they’re trying to do it with other countries.”

Seven staffers are probing Mr Trump’s alleged links to Russia and said his son-in-law Jared Kushner had agreed to be interviewed by the Senate committee, although it is not known if he will appear under oath or on camera.

Journalist Adam Chen, now a staff writer at the New Yorker but a freelancer when he investigated alleged interference in the US election, claimed in a podcast with Longform that a large number of Russian trolls were now churning out support for Mr Trump

“I created this list of Russian trolls when I was researching. And I check on it once in a while, still. And a lot of them have turned into conservative accounts, like fake conservatives. I don’t know what’s going on, but they’re all tweeting about Donald Trump and stuff,” he said.

A total of 20 individuals have been asked to appear before the committee members for private interviews, but no names apart from Mr Kushner’s were confirmed during the press conference.

There has been a lot of talk about attempted Russian influence in the US elections. There have been multiple warnings against information operations before the upcoming French Presidential elections (where Emmanuel Macron seems to be the main target), or the German elections in the autumn, like reported by euvsdisinfo.eu.

Now the Wall Street Journal reveals concerns over targeting of the presidential elections carried out last year in Bulgaria (last Sunday, 26 March, Bulgaria conducted Parliamentary elections): five current or former Bulgarian officials described to WSJ the role played by “a secret strategy document proposing a road map to victory at the ballot box (…) Among its recommendations: plant fake news and promote exaggerated polling data.”

The article mentions the important role played by Leonid Reshetnikov – a Russian former foreign intelligence service agent, and later head of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies – a Kremlin-loyal think tank based in Moscow. The Disinformation Review has frequently (e.g. here) highlighted how members of this think tank have spread pro-Kremlin disinformation lines, e.g. about alleged Nazis governing Ukraine, or about Ukraine’s alleged preparations for a direct attack on Russia.

According to the Bulgarian officials quoted by the WSJ, it was Reshetnikov who crafted the detailed election campaign game plan. A copy of this document was later acquired by the Bulgarian State Agency for National Security.

“The document offered advice on how to burnish the candidate’s image by planting stories with Moscow-friendly news outlets. The stories were to be closely coordinated, publishing first in fringe blogs before entering mainstream media en masse to create maximum impact and ultimately become election talking points”. The report recommended emphasising issues that “dovetailed with Kremlin policy: calling for an end to Russian sanctions, criticizing NATO and talking up the U.K.’s vote to leave the EU.”

Pro-Russian and anti-Western news outlets mushroomed just before the elections, and their messaging was further multiplied by an army of social media accounts, pushing messages like “Death of the European Union”, “NATO is a tumor”, or “Attack against Putin”. The number of such stories in Bulgarian media rose from around 50 a day during the summer months to up to 400 a day in the two weeks before the election, a former government official told the Wall Street Journal.

The fight against fake news online sees new initiatives in different countries. This week, the German government announced that they wish to increase the pressure on social networks to stop defamation, hate speech and fake news, like reported by euvsdisinfo.eu.

According to Heiko Maas, the German Justice Minister, Facebook and Twitter are not taking down defamatory content fast enough. A new bill that will be put to the German Parliament in an effort to combat malicious activity and disinformation campaigns online includes levying fines of up to €50 million for not meeting the time frame of taking defamatory content down.

As we have previously noticed, German authorities have recently warned of the risks of the disinformation campaign targeting Germany, which will hold federal elections in September this year. Facebook has already taken measures to address the problem by adding a fact-check button for users of the social network in Germany. According to the German justice minister, the voluntary steps taken by social media companies – although they had led to some improvement – were not enough.

Russian state TV has recently targeted Chancellor Merkel with personal attacks. In January 2017, the Disinformation Review underlined that German authorities have warned of the risk of a disinformation campaign targeting Germany.

“In a post-truth world, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between what is real and what is fake news”. This is how Russia Today (RT) presents its most recent initiative called “FakeCheck“. According to RT, which is fully funded by the Russian authorities, the project “helps you to separate fact from fiction and transit into a post-fake reality”, like reported by euvsdisinfo.eu .

https://www.rt.com/news/380771-rt-fakecheck-news-project/

It seems that the popularity of the “fake news” topic has now reached such heights that even those outlets which are regularly accused of spreading disinformation, such as Russia Today, start talking about it. And it is no surprise that they accuse others of spreading it. What is the rationale behind Russia Today suddenly being so concerned about fake news?

A closer look at Russia Today’s new platform reveals that it promotes the very same political messages we find in the pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign and in the political communication of the Russian authorities. The platform is no more and no less than another tool, which looks like media but which instead presents well-known pro-Kremlin disinformation and policy lines as facts.

Inside RT’s “FakeCheck”, the user clicks through a series of images and short texts, which explain the alleged fake news. In each story, the user is first asked a quiz question. For example, after reading that “The White Helmets had a documentary about their work win the 2017 Academy Awards”, users are prompted to answer the question: “What’s wrong with this story?” Three possible answers are provided, one of which is presented as correct, namely that “the reputation of the group is dubious”. In other words, the alleged fake news is that no positive credit can be given to this NGO, given that Russia disapproves of it.

Another story handles the accusation – wrongful, says RT – that Russian state media have been trying to meddle in the French presidential election campaign. The “correct” quiz answer here is that “Russian media don’t bash French presidential candidates”. But even here, RT does mention that some French Twitter users were “saluting Russian media for bringing some balance to the presidential race coverage”, in spite of its wish to disprove the claim that it has directly involved itself in French politics.

As we have shown earlier, RT and Sputnik are far from covering the French election campaign in balanced terms. Attacks on the Syrian NGO White Helmets from Russian authorities and media loyal to them are not new, but, as we have shown, they are a central part of the pro-Kremlin disinformation about Syria and a more general scepticism about the role of civil society organisations.

The fact that Russia Today creates a platform that claims to counter disinformation only to continue its contribution to the pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign just confirms a well-established fact: Russia Today is by no means media in the traditional sense; rather it is a channel with a political agenda that fully correlates with the line of the Russian authorities, and which does not shy away from forgetting about the truth when urging us to “question more”.

The fight against fake news online sees new initiatives in different countries. This week, the German government announced that they wish to increase the pressure on social networks to stop defamation, hate speech and fake news, like reported by euvsdisinfo.eu .

According to Heiko Maas, the German Justice Minister, Facebook and Twitter are not taking down defamatory content fast enough. A new bill that will be put to the German Parliament in an effort to combat malicious activity and disinformation campaigns online includes levying fines of up to €50 million for not meeting the time frame of taking defamatory content down.

As we have previously noticed, German authorities have recently warned of the risks of the disinformation campaign targeting Germany, which will hold federal elections in September this year. Facebook has already taken measures to address the problem by adding a fact-check button for users of the social network in Germany. According to the German justice minister, the voluntary steps taken by social media companies – although they had led to some improvement – were not enough.

Russian state TV has recently targeted Chancellor Merkel with personal attacks. In January 2017, the Disinformation Review underlined that German authorities have warned of the risk of a disinformation campaign targeting Germany.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has once again stoked political outrage in Europe by accusing German Chancellor Angela Merkel of backing terrorists.

“Mrs. Merkel, you are supporting terrorists,” he said in an interview with Turkish television channel A-Haber on Monday.

https://global.handelsblatt.com/politics/erdogan-accuses-merkel-of-supporting-terrorism-725844

“Growing number of nations denounce Dutch government for blocking Turkish ministers from meeting expats”, according to  aa.com.tr

WHICH COUNTRIES?

“Commander of Asa’eb al-Haq Movement affiliated to the Iraqi popular forces of Hashd al-Shaabi said that the US forces have carried out a rapid heliborne operation and evacuated two commanders of ISIL terrorists from Western Mosul in Northern Iraq”.

http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13951219000621

BUT YOU HAVE TO KNOW THAT Hashd al-Shaabi is an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization composed of some 40 militias, which are Shia Muslim groups SPONSORED BY IRAN!!!

Russia has militarised its information operations with a special unit working with “cyber warfare and ‘counterpropaganda’” – Russian top officials are clear that they see information and media as weapons, like reported by euvsdisinfo.eu .

This week, The Moscow Times revealed some excerpts from an unauthorized reprint of the Russian military intelligence services (GRU) textbook on psychological warfare, which can shed some light on methods used. The paper interviewed a former Russian officer whose role was to oversee psychological operations against NATO troops and civilians in the event of a conflict between Russia and NATO.

In the publication, different methods for different NATO members are outlined, based on an analysis of the features of each nationality. We learn that Germans have an “abstract-logical” way of thinking, but “prefer clearly reasoned facts and calculations”. At the same time, the “French and Americans love visuals. The Germans also love visuals, but only those which have double meanings. While the French prefer catchy ideas, emotional expressions and loud words.”

Three categories of propaganda are described: white, grey and black. White propaganda has a clearly attributed source and discernible motive, for example leaflets. Grey propaganda is defined as “information that has no obvious source, and uses a mix of proven and unproven facts to promote a favourable narrative”. The black type refers to so-called “false flag” operations. Here the former officer gives an insight into a specific black propaganda technique used during the Chechen conflict: according to the article, a Russian psychological warfare expert spread rumours that foreign fighters had raped the 13-year-old daughter of a Chechen village elder. These rumours helped sow discord between Chechen fighters and Arab Islamist volunteers, undermining the unity of the rebels.

Does it sound familiar? You are probably thinking of the infamous ‘Lisa-case’ in which pro-Kremlin media falsely reported that a thirteen-year-old girl of Russian origin had been raped by migrants in Germany. Or, maybe you are thinking of the more recent incident in Lithuania, where emails claimed that a German member of NATO troops in Lithuania raped an underage girl. It is a disinformation technique that has happened before, and that we should expect to happen again.