The Government has acknowledged the importance of “soft power” in global politics with an unprecedented £85m investment in the BBC World Service to support initiatives in Russia, North Korea, the Middle East and Africa.
‘When the legend becomes fact print the legend’. Obama is certainly doing that with Trump and his Russian ‘backers’. Obama leaves Office doing his utmost to damage Trump whilst he has the opportunity. He is rushing forward an investigation into the hacking of Clinton’s emails and is telling the world that the Russians did it…politicising the intelligence services for his own ends…never mind the ‘facts’ aren’t so clear cut…and of course glossing over the genuine story…that being Clinton’s failure to secure sensitive information…..
Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin “directing” the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said.
And that Wikileaks has denied the source of their ‘leak’ was Russia…
Julian Assange is denying that the Russian government is the source of WikiLeaks’ trove of hacked emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, that have produced embarrassing and potentially damaging messages about the Democratic nominee.
Curious how the Hero of the Left is now the enemy as his anti-Establishment site also takes on the Liberal Establishment.
There is a loud cry of ‘foul’ in the air as the Democrats try to claim Trump was only elected because of Russian interference in the election [not due to Liberal failures and incompetence then?] and outrage at the thought Russia might actually have interfered…
Incoming Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer on Saturday called for a bipartisan congressional probe into the reports of Russian electoral interference. “That any country could be meddling in our elections should shake both political parties to their core,” the New York Democrat said.
Of course what was it that would have allowed Russia to interfere? The fact that Clinton kept her sensitive emails on a private email server that could be so easily hacked.
That rather points out very clearly why the fact she kept her emails on an insecure server was important, never mind the actual contents that revealed so much ‘bad news’ for her. She enabled a foreign power to use those emails to interfere in one of the most important political events in the US calendar…the Presidential election.
The story isn’t that Trump may or may not have been helped by Russian black ops but that Clinton enabled that….note that Obama is admitting by his actions that the emails were important and damaging to Clinton…and if so then it is irrelevant if Russia hacked them…..weren’t they doing the US Public a service by bringing such ‘crime’ to light? Or is Obama saying they should have been kept in the dark about Clinton’s crime?
Then again the US has never interfered in other countries’ politics has it? Never mind past history let’s look at the current President’s record….
Barack Obama on the EU referendum: I won’t tell you how to vote but here’s how I want you to vote
Or how about the upcoming election in Germany…any favourities Mr President?
Obama Swoons Over Angela Merkel, All But Endorsing Her Re-election
I try to make it a rule not to meddle in other people’s politics…..[but]….You know, if I were here and I were German and I had to vote, I might support her.
I’m guessing Gaddafi wouldn’t be too happy about Obama’s interference in his country having been removed from power and slaughtered….and let’s not even get started on US interference in South America or the rest of the Middle East such as ‘regime change’ in Iraq.
I’m also guessing Obama wasn’t so unhappy when Cameron denounced Trump as ‘stupid, divisive and wrong’…and not a bit dangerous…
David Cameron calls Donald Trump ‘dangerous’ in fresh attack
David Cameron has refused to apologise to Donald Trump for saying the US presidential candidate was ‘divisive, stupid and wrong’ to suggest banning Muslims from entering the US.
The BBC and Guardian as we know ran a full-on anti-Trump campaign that vilified, mocked and demonised him…perhaps Obama should launch an investigation into foreign media interference in internal US politics…especially as it was so deeply dishonest and unbalanced.
Then again the BBC’s World Service is designed specifically to interfere in other countries’ politics to promote western values, democracy and liberal progressiveness on a whole range of subjects….projecting ‘soft power’ Which is why it so frequently gets blocked in countries like Iran and North Korea.
The Government has acknowledged the importance of “soft power” in global politics with an unprecedented £85m investment in the BBC World Service to support initiatives in Russia, North Korea, the Middle East and Africa.
“The World Service is one of the UK’s most important cultural exports and one of our best sources of global influence,” said Lord Hall
Weapons of mass persuasion….Soft Power…
The US was once the undisputed global powerhouse. Now it is under threat from contenders who use the influence of culture and lifestyle to fight for global economic and political dominance.
This political manipulation is referred to as soft power – achieving what you want by attracting and persuading others to adopt your customs – thriving on control, not force.
In this series, Philip Dodd investigates how this cultural rivalry is being formed and what weapons of persuasion are being deployed, from global sporting fixtures to cultural events and educational projects.
We’ve looked at the BBC’s ‘Soft Power’ before…it’s now called ‘Media Action’ but used to be called The World Service Trust and is in essence nothing more than a propaganda weapon, soft power that supposedly spreads democracy but in fact seems to be intent on encouraging dissent and protest on subjects close to the BBC’s heart such as the environment and climate change. The BBC teaches and encourages journalists in foreign countries to actively work against their own governments using actual ‘journalism’ but also by inserting propaganda into everyday broadcasts and programming such as dramas, documentaries and comedies.
Here is a taste of how important they think the media is in changing population’s minds and behaviour and subsequently how they can influence and pressurise governments and other organisations to submit to their demands….
BBC World Service Trust(where the BBC does not think you are looking…so they print the truth):
- ‘Media’ matters because it underpins how societies respond to the problems they face. This makes media not only relevant to the most urgent problems of poverty and marginalisation – it makes it critical to solutions designed to address them.
- It matters too because it is a critical part of strategies to [alter and control behaviour.]
- The media, and increasingly new technologies, is increasingly how humans communicate with each other.
- How well we communicate with each other has a good deal to do with how successful we’re likely to be in confronting the massive problems we face (and the masses.)
Making informed choices
- Media enables people to access information on issues that shape their lives, without which they cannot make choices.
- Media enables people to hold their governments to account and provides a critical check on government corruption
- Media and communication enables people and communities to understand, debate and reach decisions on the issues that confront them
Media and communication can be immense and powerful instruments for change and empowerment in society
- Media can be an important part of the solution to development challenges. But they can also be a part of the problem
- Media can be used as instruments of oppression, manipulation and hate
- Truth can be distorted as well as illuminated, malpractice hidden as well as revealed.
- The character of a country’s media tends to determine the character of a country’s democracy and society. It underpins how people learn, understand and shape change.
Engaging at high levels to gain influence:
Our initiatives and corresponding audience research seek to engage at four different ‘levels’:
The sector level with policy and decision-makers
The organisation level with state, commercial and not-for-profit entities
The practitioner level with professionals and opinion leaders; and
The individual level with various target audiences
Drama can be a powerful mechanism for development. It can build an emotional connection with target audiences over a period of time, while modelling situations or behaviours….drama, discussion programmes, public service announcements – can be most effectively used to deliver information and stimulate discussion.
Viewers or listeners become attached to characters and share in their experiences, sometimes discussing them with people around them, reflecting on their situations and actions and how they might respond if it were them.
Reinforcing the message
In building a campaign we generally use a range of formats, because they cross-promote one another and reinforce messages. Additional materials – such as posters and comics – may also be used to echo the messages and stories conveyed by other media outputs.
There’s talk of Treezer calling a snap general election.
It may be, as with Ed ‘never called for a an inquiry he didn’t like’ Miliband, I may again have to vote tactically on a lesser evil basis to prevent disaster, but if there’s wiggle room my MP is toast to me.
Along with the national treasure he has so much blind loyalty to.
Were these hacks, really hacks, or leaks? And were these so-called hacks, on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, I wonder.
If so, does that not mean, that the information damaged national security? If they did, then it is Hillary Clinton who is responsible for her loss, and more seriously, for compromising national security.
And if, as she claims, there was nothing illegal, how can the Democrats claim that it affected the election.
I just wonder. Either way, its Clinton’s “arse on the line”, as Americans would put it.
Lastly, what is causing so much disturbance in Obama, Clinton and the Democrats, that they want to muddy the waters to such an extent, that whatever revelation comes out after January 21, can be dismissed.
“RUSSIA IN RUSSIA BACKS CANDIDATE THAT DOESN’T WANT WAR WITH RUSSIA SHOCKER!!!”
Nobody on the left has even worked this part out, or how it exposes their hypocrisy once again. The same people who say war is never justified under any circumstances and claim that Trump is dangerous and wants to start WW3 – with no evidence of course, as there is none and it defies logic – are the same ones supporting a party that is actively accusing Russia, again with spurious evidence at best, of interfering with their election process and are criticising Trump of cozying up to Putin. If they’re so anti-conflict and pro-appeasement, you’d think they’d be delighted that Trump is in charge and looking to maintain civil relations rather than Clinton who seems determined to pin blame on the Kremlin for hacks already claimed by Anonymous and other independent hackers in the US.
But of course, pacifism isn’t really the left’s aim. Their aim is, and long has been, control by any means.
The Left are clinically insane and incapable of thinking things through.
Why on earth would Russia prefer Trump to win the election? Putin would have far rather dealt with a weak and confused Democrat leader. Remember that it was Obama who is on the record as promising the Russians they would get everything they wanted after he was re-elected the last time around.
Hence, savvy media with critical faculties concerned with nations and leaders meddling in the affairs of others using tried and trusted disruption techniques, may like to look into ongoing, funded activist demonstrations and propaganda still churning weeks after a decisive election result, with the aim of overturning this and trying to install a weak and confused Democrat leader.
Who knows who may be behind this, as with the Brexit efforts ongoing.
When it comes to the American e-mails, I think there are three separate matters: Clinton’s own e-mails, on her insecure server; e-mails sent or received by Clinton associate John Podesta; e-mails belonging to the Democratic National Committee. Selected e-mails from Clinton’s own source have been put into the public domain with great reluctance, after resistance from the White House and State Department, as well as from Clinton herself, and they have often been redacted by officialdom to a ludicrous degree, so that only the odd preposition or conjunction is readable.
The e-mails that came to light, via Wikileaks, during the election in America involve either the DNC, or John Podesta. It seems quite likely that the Podesta ones actually were hacked. Since it has been alleged that his password was “P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D”, gaining access may not have been a particularly intimidating challenge. It certainly wouldn’t have required the sophisticated resources of a foreign intelligence service. Since the DNC e-mails specifically damaged the DNC first and foremost, catching out Debbie Wasserman Schultz, forced to resign as DNC chairwoman, and then her successor, Donna Brazile, it does seem plausible that those were straightforward leaks. Schultz was shown to have favoured Clinton during the interminable primary season, Brazile to have colluded with media over questions asked in the presidential debates.
When Obama demands a full investigation into supposed foreign interference in the election, in the form of Russian hacking, he is definitely not interested in opening up the can of worms that is Hillary Clinton’s private server. He has been caught out lying about that already. I also suspect he is unwise to make such a song and dance about the DNC and Podesta e-mails. John Podesta seems a very odd character, who can’t speak the truth, but can’t type a lie.
Of course, this throw-up-hands-in-horror reaction to “hacking” is nothing new on the left. It’s exactly what we saw after the dump of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit of UEA, back in 2009. The content of the e-mails, which should have been dynamite, was ignored by the media, which obediently referred to the e-mails as “stolen” and sanctimoniously refused to comment further on the all-important content.
It’s the same in the present cases. Some outlets couldn’t get get out of the starting-blocks fast enough, when they thought Wikileaks would always prop up their side, but then discovered supposedly ethical behaviour, once their own side was implicated in the discoveries, and spurned “stolen” e-mails.
You are quite correct.
All that was revealed by the Podesta emails was the truth about the Democrat political machine. People did not like what they read. Bernie supporters did not like the fact their man was stitched up by the corrupt Clinton machine. Many of them probably voted Green as a result, or else did not vote at all.
The left wing elite is trying to spin this into a Russian plot to get Trump elected. Apparently, Trump does not want a war with Russia, and we are meant to think this is a bad thing. But the fact is that Podesta was an arrogant left wing moron who used “password” as his email password.
I expect the FSB did hack into his email account, along with the Chinese, the North Koreans, and teenagers looking for evidence of aliens. Who released the information to Wikileaks we don’t know. Neither do the CIA, or they would have arrested them. But what the Democrats are complaining about is that people learned the facts about their deeply corrupt political machine. Too bad morons, but thank you for your stupidity.
Alan,
you did well digging up the ‘mission statement’ of the BBC World Service Trust as bullet pointed above. This is the type of honest acknowledgement of the huge power that the media (and in particular the BBC with its extensive reach) can exercise that we just do not see on the BBC home sites.
These are the four ‘objectives’ as stated on the BBC website for the BBC’s home consumption:
Make distinctive, world-class content
Transform our offer for younger audiences
Develop a more personal BBC
Demonstrate value for money in every area of our work
They are further broken down but as with most mission statement type efforts waste words on reporting a very flimsy core message.
‘It matters too because it is a critical part of strategies to [alter and control behavior.]’
‘Media can be used as instruments of oppression, manipulation and hate’
These two bulleted statements from your text above sum up for me what the BBC are actually engaged in and have been for years. They can and do recognise the huge responsibility that comes with large scale media access but still they cannot bring themselves to report impartially and free of bias as they believe their doctrine is the only truth and everything else must be bent and twisted to conform.
Bring on the next upset.
The effort the BBC and others put into trying to prevent Mr Trump’s victory is going to come back and bite them and the UK big time.
Trump’s constant and continuing vilification is going to mean , in my opinion, that he will speed up the retreat from Nato and Europe . Why stay when the ungrateful bitchy Europeans have made it clear how much they despise him.
So he will talk to Putin. Putin has treated him with caution and respect. This is all a typical liberal left distraction to control the narrative which now will really threaten them and their power base.
If I was Trump I would recall all my Western European ambassadors for ‘consultations’ .
Dave S ,
I also hope that Trump will remove the USA from the UN. That should put an end to that racket. In terms of NATO, tell the other members , apart from the UK, that they have to pay more if they want US protection.
I’m a little puzzled as to why Billary and the Democrats think we should believe it needs the whole weight of the Russian Spy Networks for somebody hack into the off the books, insecure email accounts which Billary used for whatever she did not wish to be on any official record.
Correct me if I’m wrong but haven’t the Democrats, under Obama and the Clintons, made several attempts to have at least two perfectly ordinary, unprofessional British Hackers sent to the US for hacking into some of Americas supposedly most secure computer networks, including those such as the Pentagon and the CIA?
The US wish people to believe that ordinary British hackers with no training and with absolutely no professional espionage experience can somehow just muddle their way into Americas most secretive internet sites.
They then would have us believe that it is only with the might of the whole Russian Espionage Organisations that access can be gained to Silly Billary’s own totally unsecured email network, the sort that any self respecting schoolchild wannabe hacker would be embarrassed to admit to their pals if they had failed to gain access to.
Yet the BBC, along with the rest of the Lefty MSM, are willing to swallow the whole farcical idea completely without the slightest hesitation and are pushing it for all they are worth as if it is completely beyond question.
And then they expect us to be gullible enough to believe that everything else they report is properly checked and verified and therefore completely trustworthy? I’d rather trust a conman who had just sold somebody the Eifel Tower on behalf of the French Government as scrap metal as more trustworthy than the bBBC.