Quote:
Originally Posted by
Azor
Any truth to this?
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(From Sputnik)
In a dramatic move, Germany is set to become the first western nation and NATO member to break ranks and begin cooperating with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and set up an intelligence agency branch in Damascus.
Although there has been no official announcement, anonymous sources quoted in the German Bild newspaper, confirmed that the federal government is keen to establish a branch of its Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in Damascus in an effort to counter Daesh, also known as Islamic State (IS).
The source said a decision on the move to renew ties with the Syrian intelligence agencies could be made as early as 2016 and may even involve reopening the German embassy in Damascus, which was closed in February 2012, when the German ambassador was withdrawn.
The BND is reported to be anxious to quickly set up as a so-called Residentur in the Syrian capital, with a view to permanently stationing staff there.
There has been a long history of intelligence-sharing between Berlin and Damascus, which Germany believes is an important partner in the fight against radical Islamists.
Diplomatic relations were broken off in 2012 when, the then Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, expelled the Syrian ambassador from Germany. The German ambassador to Damascus was withdrawn and the embassy closed for safety reasons.
The IS can be defeated in less than a year if the US and its allies stop supporting rebel fighters, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Dutch NPO2 television in an interview.
The US has sponsored and supplied anti-government rebel fighters, including those who do not fight IS, thereby detracting resource from the Syrian army.
“If the responsible countries take action against the flood and the flowing of terrorists and the logistic support, I can guarantee that it will take less than one year,” Assad said.
Azor......Russian propaganda/disinformation works with the 6 Ds principle..
Quote:
Frankly, this column wasn’t designed to address the current environment. This format doesn’t make sense. I’ve spoken to several researchers and academics about this lately, because it’s started to feel a little pointless. Walter Quattrociocchi, the head of the Laboratory of Computational Social Science at IMT Lucca in Italy, has spent several years studying how conspiracy theories and misinformation spread online, and he confirmed some of my fears: Essentially, he explained, institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always, that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views — even when it’s demonstrably fake.
[A researcher explains why hoaxes flourish on the social Web]
Had I written this column as normal this week, I probably would have included, say, this widely shared post on Before It’s News that claimed an Alaska judge called for Obama’s arrest. But Quattrociocchi has found (and this is perhaps intuitive) that the sort of readers who would unskeptically share such a far-fetched story site are exactly the readers who will not be convinced by The Washington Post’s debunking.
To me, at least, that represents a very weird moment in Internet discourse — an issue I also addressed earlier this week. At which point does society become utterly irrational? Is it the point at which we start segmenting off into alternate realities?
“What Was Fake” has had a good run, but the nature of Internet misinformation has changed — so as the year winds up, we’re going to change, as well. Thanks for reading over the past year and a half! And remember: If in doubt about a news item on an unfamiliar source, please click the “about” or “disclaimer” tab.
BTW--the Russian info warfare is light years ahead of anything the US could ever put together as they fully understand just how to use the net just as IS knows how to.....we are nowhere in this game regardless of what DoD and Obama state.....