Guradian exposes secret document about secret unit doing secret work to secretly infiltrate web forums and taint Al Quaida "brand"
Stef points to a very odd story in Tuesday's Guradian Revealed: Britain's secret propaganda war against al-Qaida - BBC and website forums targeted by Home Office unit .
If this story about a ," Whitehall counter-terrorism unit .. targeting the BBC and other media organisations ..."taint the al-Qaida brand", it is an outrageous scandal and waste of money.
In time honoured fashion ," secret Home Office paper" has been seen , preusmably in secret by the Guradian.
This crack elite counter-terrorism experts group is/will/are already "channel(ling) messages through volunteers in internet forums" as part of their campaign.
John Reid before he really set about the whisky bottle set up a Research, Information and Communication unit, [RICU] to counter al-Qaida propaganda at home and overseas. It is staffed by officials from several(?) government departments.
This secret report read in secret by the Guradian crack expert team of journalistic anti terrorism RICU observers got to see the title of this secret document ... "Challenging violent extremist ideology through communications" - the use of "Challenging" dates the document as post June 12th 2007, says our crack team of expert, elite mathematical crytpographic gifted team of archair generalists ..
Oh Christ the will to live has gone ... read the fucking article. or even listen to the author Guradian Home Affairs Editor whisper about it on their exclusive audio newsclip.
But then of course if you go here you can find out about a secret Foreign Office unit staffed by civil servants led by Norman Reddaway , closely linked to MI6 , approved by PM Ted Heath to conspire against those concerned public (especially the ‘Keep Britain Out’ campaign) opposed to Britain joining the EEC in the early 1970s. Also read ‘Britain’s Secret Propaganda War’ (a title curiously stolen by the Guradian piece) by Paul Lashmar and James Oliver published in 1998 - Amazon
This secret unit was said to be given the name : Information Research Department, or IRD for short. Allegedly Heath's secret tool for getting an unwilling public and Parliament to accept entry and General de Gaulle to say "Non!"
When William (later Lord) Armstrong, who was head of the Civil Service, found out about the unit and it’s ‘dubious activities’, which he considered ‘scandalous’, he went to Heath and demanded funds were withdrawn. Dr David Owen had it closed down after Labour got in after the 1974 general Election.
Sleepless night for this guy then ....
3 comments:
cf.
Hasbara (not to be confused with this)
and, of course...
Editorial Intelligence
and one or two well-publicised blogs which come to mind
hmmmm, astroturftastic
More on the apparently unconnected RUCI/Beeb nexus here, including a feeble excuse from the beeb.
I suspect the Home Office Intarweb Attack Unit is the product of a civil servant getting caught out.
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