CNN and Its Fake Venezuela Narrative

Thanks to the web archive at the Wayback Machine which never forgets what appears on the internet, we have a prime example of how the American mainstream media lies to its consumers in a desperate attempt to get them to believe whatever narrative they are promoting, in this case, the narrative that is being fed to American voters about the situation in Venezuela.

This story appeared on CNN this past weekend where it resided throughout Sunday May 5th, 2019 through to 11:09 am EST on Monday May 6th  when it was altered:

You will note that the story, written by two of CNN's senior writers, Jeanne Bonner and Jackie Castillo who actually is an Emmy Award wining journalist, states that:

"....pressure is mounting on Maduro to step down following elections in January in which voters chose Juan Guaido over him for president."

In fact, there was no presidential election in Venezuela in January 2019.  The last presidential vote  in Venezuela was held on May 20, 2018 and was boycotted by the opposition, facts that can be very easily confirmed using Google had the two "journalists" actually cared to provide their readers with the facts rather than the anti-Maduro/pro-Guaido narrative.  While the Lima Group of Latin American nations plus Canada stated that they did not recognize the legitimacy of the election, Nicolas Maduro actually did win 67.7 percent of the votes cast (a total of 6,190,612 votes), giving him a second term in office after he won his first term in 2013.  His opponents in May 2018 and the number of votes that each received were as follows:

Henri Falcon - 1,917,036 votes

Javier Bertucci Carrero - 988,761 votes

Reinado Jose Quijada - 36,246 votes

Even though voter turnout was very low by historical standards as shown on this graphic:

...we do know one thing for certain; despite what CNN may say, Juan Guaido did NOT run in Venezuela's 2018 presidential election.

By the way, this is what CNN's coverage of the Venezuelan military helicopter crash looked like after it realized that its coverage was wrong:

In this version of CNN's reality, Juan Guaido declared himself interim president in January.

We certainly do live in a fake news world.  CNN should be ashamed...but I rather doubt that they are.  Caveat emptor.

Facebook and Its Close Links to Washington

With Facebook taking a very strong stance against so-called fake news and foreign interference in what passes for democracy in the United States and particularly given its recent association with the Atlantic Council and its Digital Forensic Research Lab.  I would be remiss if I didn't thank Matt Agorist at the Free Thought Project, one of the entities that was purged by Facebook in October 2018, for inspiring this posting

In no particular order, let's look at some of Facebook's key personnel and their relationship to Washington:

1.) Katie Harbath: Ms. Harbath is currently Director of Global Politics and Government Outreach at Facebook as shown here:

...and has very close links to the Republican Party (a relative rarity among Facebook key personnel) including Deputy eCampaign Director for Rudy Giuliani's run at the Oval Office both before and during her tenure at Facebook as shown here:

It was Ms. Harbath who announced Facebook's "exciting new partnership" with the Atlantic Council on May 17, 2018:

"Today, we’re excited to launch a new partnership with the Atlantic Council, which has a stellar reputation looking at innovative solutions to hard problems. Experts from their Digital Forensic Research Lab will work closely with our security, policy and product teams to get Facebook real-time insights and updates on emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world. This will help increase the number of “eyes and ears” we have working to spot potential abuse on our service — enabling us to more effectively identify gaps in our systems, preempt obstacles, and ensure that Facebook plays a positive role during elections all around the world."

2.) Nathaniel Gleicher:  Mr. Gleicher is Head of Cybersecurity Policy at Facebook as shown here:

...and was former Director for Cybersecurity Policy for the National Security Council at the White House, Senior Counsel for Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the United States Department of Justice and a Law Clerk for Senator Patrick Leahy as shown here:

Just so you can get a sense of Mr. Gleicher's belief system, here is what he said in a blog posting on January 17, 2019 entitled "Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour from Russia":

"Today we removed 364 Facebook Pages and accounts for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior as part of a network that originated in Russia and operated in the Baltics, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Central and Eastern European countries. The Page administrators and account owners primarily represented themselves as independent news Pages or general interest Pages on topics like weather, travel, sports, economics, or politicians in Romania, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan. Despite their misrepresentations of their identities, we found that these Pages and accounts were linked to employees of Sputnik, a news agency based in Moscow, and that some of the Pages frequently posted about topics like anti-NATO sentiment, protest movements, and anti-corruption." (my bolds)

Yes, imagine being anti-NATO and anti-corruption!  That's totally unAmerican not to mention totally without merit!

3.) David Recordon: Mr. Recordon lists himself as a "doer" on his Linkedin page as shown here:

...however, his "real position" is Engineering Director for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a company founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan which has the goal of "advancing human potential and promoting equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research and energy".

Between March 2015 and January 2017, Mr. Recordon was the Special Assistant to the President and Director of White House IT and a consultant for the U.S. Digital Service at the White House as you can see here:

Please note that prior to his tenure with the federal government, Mr. Recordon was Engineering Director at Facebook.

4.) Aneesh Raman:  Mr. Raman is currently the Head of Economic and Social Impact at Facebook as you can see here:

 ...and was the former speechwriter to President Obama and worked in Strategic Communications at the Pentagon as shown here:

5.) Meredith Carden: Ms. Carden is currently working on Facebook's News Integrity Partnerships as shown here:

..and spent two years working in the Office of First Lady Michelle Obama and spent seven months as a Press Intern for Obama For America as shown here:

6.) Joel Benenson: Mr. Benenson, founder of Benenson Strategy Group, is conducting research for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as shown here:

...and was a former senior strategist to Hillary Clinton during her most recent run for the Oval Office as well as doing research and polling programs for President Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns and working on President Bill Clinton's campaign during the 1996 election as shown here:

Let's close with this.  Remembering that Facebook is now tied to the Atlantic Council who functions as its censor, here is a screen capture that shows the close links between Washington and the Atlantic Council when it comes to leadership:

...and funding:

While I'm quite certain that there are other examples of the very close links between Washington and Facebook, I believe that you have enough information from this posting to come to the conclusion that Facebook is far from a benign, private entity.  Facebook put in place an inordinate number of men and women who hail from the federal government and, as such, one might almost conclude that the publicly traded Facebook functions as an extension of the federal government and, more pointedly, the Democratic Party.  Perhaps that's why Facebook has had its proverbial "panties in a knot" about Russian-sourced fake news since Hillary Clinton lost the election that was supposed to be hers.

Washington and Social Media Platforms - A Tool for Propagandizing

Updated August 2018

Since mid-2016, we've hear endless stories about how those sneaky Russians managed to surreptitiously invade the United States and influence the 2016 presidential election in favour of their preferred candidate, Donald Trump.  According to a who's who of social media outlets including but not limited to Twitter and Facebook, Russians and their bots managed to convince Americans to vote for Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton who, as we know, is relatively unpopular with Vladimir Putin given her alleged interference in the Russian elections of 2011:

Thanks to Twitter's blog, we now have some idea of what Russian propaganda Tweets influenced American voters in 2016 and ended up helping Ms. Clinton lose the election:

Twitter states that they have emailed notifications to 677,775 people from the United States who either followed, retweeted or liked one of the tweets from one of the accounts that Twitter has identified as being "...potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russia government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency or IRA."  In total, Twitter has identified 3814 IRA-linked accounts that posted 175,993 Tweets during the ten week period preceding the 2016 election with approximately 8.4 percent of those Tweets being election related.  Given that, according to Twitter's 2016 annual report, they had 319 million average Monthly Active Users (MAUs) in the fourth quarter of 2016 as shown here:

...we can see just how successful the Russians were with their measly 3814 Twitter accounts which accounts for 0.001percent of total monthly users in Q4 2016.

With this in mind and given that the Russians have allegedly created fake social media accounts to fool gullible voters, I want to take a look back in time when the United States took similar actions to convince the global village of its agenda.  Let's start with this from the Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps) website from June 22, 2010:

The United States Air Force was looking for a company to develop software that would allow 50 users the ability to create 10 fake personas (aka sock puppets) each; these personas must appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and interact through various social media platforms.  Each of these personas must appear to be legitimate and must also be culturally and geographically consistent.  Operators should be able to switch from persona to persona at the same work station.  It is believed that this contract was awarded as part of the U.S. military's Operation Earnest Voice, a tool originally designed to wage psychological warfare against Islamic terrorists.  This contract was ultimately granted to a California-based company, Ntrepid which has the following mission:

"People, Focus, and Passion describe what enables Ntrepid to make products of magnitude. With the right people, obsessive focus, and a passion for the work to be delivered, it is possible to do what others cannot."

Yes indeed.

Let's move forward in time.  Here is a look at the first two pages of House Resolution (H.R. 5730 aka the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012) from the 112th Congress which amended the United States Information and Education Exchange Act of 1948 to "...authorize the domestic dissemination of information and material about the United Starts intended primarily for foreign audiences and for other purposes":

On the second page of the Act, you will notice that, under the Act, funds were being authorized to:

"...provide for the preparation, dissemination, and use of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United States, its people, and its policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures, the Internet, and other information media, including social media, and through information centers, instructors, and other direct or indirect means of communication." (my bold) 

While the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 only reached the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, you can see that at least some members of Congress were not adverse to using social media to influence the outside world.  In fact, this was the second attempt by members of Congress to pass this type of legislation as shown here:

In 2010, H.R. 5729 had 23 cosponsors from the House.

Let's close this posting with an excerpt from a recent posting written by Samidh Chakrabarti, Product Manager, Civil Engagement at Facebook, on the Facebook Newsroom website regarding the impact of social media on democracy:

"Let’s start with the elephant in the room. Around the US 2016 election, Russian entities set up and promoted fake Pages on Facebook to influence public sentiment — essentially using social media as an information weapon.

Although we didn’t know it at the time, we discovered that these Russian actors created 80,000 posts that reached around 126 million people in the US over a two-year period. This kind of activity goes against everything we stand for. It’s abhorrent to us that a nation-state used our platform to wage a cyberwar intended to divide society. This was a new kind of threat that we couldn’t easily predict, but we should have done better.

Now we’re making up for lost time. The Russian interference worked in part by promoting inauthentic Pages, so we’re working to make politics on Facebook more transparent. We’re making it possible to visit an advertiser’s Page and see the ads they’re currently running. We’ll soon also require organizations running election-related ads to confirm their identities so we can show viewers of their ads who exactly paid for them. Finally, we’ll archive electoral ads and make them searchable to enhance accountability."

Facebook's answer to the problem?

"If there’s one fundamental truth about social media’s impact on democracy it’s that it amplifies human intent — both good and bad. At its best, it allows us to express ourselves and take action. At its worst, it allows people to spread misinformation and corrode democracy.

I wish I could guarantee that the positives are destined to outweigh the negatives, but I can’t. That’s why we have a moral duty to understand how these technologies are being used and what can be done to make communities like Facebook as representative, civil and trustworthy as possible." (my bold)

This begs the question; do Facebook, Twitter and other purveyors of social media platforms plan to weed out the type of U.S. government interference in the online world as we've seen in this posting?  As we all know, it's a fine line between information, propaganda and election interference.

The Long-Term Invasion of Fake News in America

With the "fake news" mantra haunting the U.S. media, a look back in time would suggest that there is something at least a bit curious about a significant happening in the post-September 11th, 2001 events that is, at the very least, question worthy.  In the interest of maintaining at least some balance, I have selected one leading news source from each side of the American political spectrum.

Here is a report from Fox News on December 26th, 2001:

Here is a similar report from the New York Times, also on December 26th, 2001:

Osama bin Laden's death was also reported in an Egyptian newspaper, al-Wafd, on the same date (with thanks to Paul Craig Roberts):

Here's the translation:

"News of Bin Laden’s Death and Funeral 10 days ago

Islamabad –

A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement announced yesterday the death of Osama bin Laden, the chief of al-Qa’da organization, stating that binLaden suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death.

The official, who asked to remain anonymous, stated to The Observer of Pakistan that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial in Tora Bora 10 days ago. He mentioned that 30 of al-Qa’da fighters attended the burial as well as members of his family and some friends from the Taleban.

In the farewell ceremony to his final rest guns were fired in the air. The official stated that it is difficult to pinpoint the burial location of bin Laden because according to the Wahhabi tradition no mark is left by the grave. He stressed that it is unlikely that the American forces would ever uncover any traces of bin Laden."

Now, let's look at the "new" narrative.

Here's what Fox News had to say about Osama bin Laden's "state of health" on May 1, 2011:

 

Here is what the New York Times had to say on May 1, 2011:

If you read through the entire New York Times article, you will see that there is no mention of Osama bin Laden's "previous death" in December of 2001 as reported by the NYT.

What does this tell us?  For one, the mainstream media in the United States is untrustworthy.  While not wanting to sound like a "tin foil wearing nut", there are many among us who question the entire Osama bin Laden narrative.  Why was his body dumped at sea?  The line that Islam requires burial within 24 hours of death seems to hold little water given that the man was allegedly responsible for the deaths of nearly 3000 Americans.  Bu then again, according to this FOIA release by Judicial Watch:

...it appears that Washington is doing whatever it can to ensure that we'll never really know the "real truth" of the matter.

It appears that American history has a very bad habit of rewriting itself and, given enough time, the voting public is certain to forget the previous versions.  One thing we do know for certain; fake news is definitely not a new phenomenon in the United States.