Founder of Scotland-based ‘charity’ also admitted it broke charity law – and Foreign Office rules
The Integrity Initiative(II), the organisation that received £2 million of state funding yet had interfered in the affairs of other nations such as Spain and listed numerous ‘mainstream’ journalists as resources, has apologised to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for negative social media messages about him.
The II’s founder, the Institute for Statecraft (IFS) also admitted that II had broken charity laws and Foreign Office rules by its political output. Chris Donnelly – an honorary colonel in military intelligence – said:
About 400 [of our tweets] made reference to some political party or politician, and they were roughly equal between the main political parties, but we should not have sent [them] because the Foreign Office does not allow us to make any party political comment, nor does Scottish charity law.
The Scottish Sunday Mail, which first exposed II’s activities, commented last week on the number of ‘mainstream’ journalists acting as ‘outliers’ (presumably ‘outriders’) of the previously-opaque organisation and called for an urgent investigation – as did Scottish Labour MSP Neil Findlay, who said:
This is a charity registered in Scotland and overseen by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, funded by UK Government contributions. It should never have been spewing out political attacks on the Labour Party and the Labour movement.
Such clear political attacks shouldn’t be coming from any charity. We need to know why the Foreign Office has been funding it.
This cannot be allowed to pass. We need a full inquiry into the actions of this organisation and its links to the Conservative Government.
SKWAWKBOX comment:
The apology may be part of an attempt to rehabilitate the image of the organisation. Articles last month claimed that II, notionally founded to ‘combat Russian disinformation’, had been the victim of a Russian state-sponsored hacking attack – articles written by journalists named in leaked II documents as friendly resources. The articles – condemned by many as a whitewash – did not mention their authors’ conflict of interest and only mentioned the nature of many of the revelations of II’s activities.
Calls for an urgent investigation are entirely merited – and, given the nature or the organisation and the claims about it, it must be 100% public.
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There are many political organisations operating in the UK masquerading as charities. One such is the JNF – Jewish National Fund. According to Haaretz it is Israel’s surrogate money pot for political purposes and wants it shut down.
‘About 400 [of our tweets] made reference to some political party or politician, and they were roughly equal between the main political parties, but we should not have sent [them]….’
Oh, right, so WHY did you? And what about all your thousands – probably TENS of thousands – of derogatory comments about JC and the left in the Comments sections of the Mail and Express and Telegraph and Guardian and Independent etc any and every time there’s an article about Jeremy Corbyn or his political allies, or Momentum, etc, etc, etc! And no doubt on dozens of blogs and websites.
And this is an organisation supposedly set up to counter Russian disinformation/propaganda! What a joke!!!
And talking of disinformation and propaganda, if you haven’t done so already and you can spare a few quid, please make a donation to help Tony in his legal battle against the hideous, corrupt, and totally fraudulent Campaign Against Anti-Semitism:
https://www.gofundme.com/saying-no-2-the-antisemitism-libel?
Tony Greenstein cuts through the lies and smears and falsehoods again:
‘Despite Zionist attempts to stoke fears of antisemitism fewer Jews than ever are leaving Britain for Israel.’
https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/04/despite-zionist-attempts-to-stoke-fears.html
NB And are most of those who move to Israel every year people who have recently retired. I would have thought so.
“About 400 [of our tweets] made reference to some political party or politician, and they were roughly equal between the main political parties”
M’Lud, the prosecution has proved the tweets in question to be universally and mendaciously biased in favour of the Conservatives and the accused, therefore, to be a lying, cosmically incompetent, worthless piece of Tory shit – guilty of treason in that he and his 313 co-defendants conspired to subvert the democracy of our Nation.
The jury reached their unanimous verdict before they reached the jury room.
Having found all defendants guilty of aggravated treason with menaces we ask your Lordship to pronounce the sentence of the Court.
“This Court finds that the offences had no material effect on the outcome of the election and that the breach of the Treason Act was merely a technicality.
The Court also wishes to extend its congratulations to Prime Minister Rees-Mogg.
Two weeks probation.”
In case you’ve missed this.
Seems that Smeeth is a CIA asset…
https://www.globalresearch.ca/epicentre-corbyns-antisemitism-story/5673905
A brilliant and explosive article, the details of which the corporate media will duly keep from the general public. And it links to another brilliant article:
‘When some focus their ire on the behaviour of the Trump administration, it is not because they are anti-American. When others focus on the growing Brexit shambles in the UK, it is not because they are anti-British. And when still others grieve over so many lost Palestinian lives and seek to hold the Israeli government to account, it is not because they are anti-Semitic. It’s because they are human: with empathy and compassion for those continuing to endure profound injustice.’
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/enough-of-these-disgraceful-slurs-against-jeremy-corbyn/
The silence from Smeeth regarding this fact ( CIA involvement ) is deafening and tells you all thats needed .
And further more she is still engaging in acts undermining Corbyn and the LAbour party right now , as per extract from the Graun today
“Activists from Labour’s Jewish affiliate could refuse to campaign in upcoming elections unless the party takes radical steps to tackle antisemitism allegations.
The new chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, Mike Katz, and the Labour MP Ruth Smeeth have backed moves by members to give a scorecard to Labour politicians based on their action on antisemitism ”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/09/jewish-labour-movement-radical-steps-antisemitism
Talk about bloody blackmail . So these pair of party members would happily prefer to risk a Tory winning than support a Labour candidate .
If this is not bringing the party into disrepute than I don’t know what is ?
Thus in future can we now expect that any actions that these JLM members don’t agree with will be used to blackmail Labour , bearing in mind you don’t need to be a Labour Party member or even a Jew to belong to the JLM.
Can our BAME and Palestinian members now expect the same score cards to be introduced for them , perhaps the JLM Katz and Smeeth might like to help with that for the Palestinians .
It’s telling that the JLM still refuse to publish to Labour just how many of it’s membership are actually Labour party members.
This is one organisation that IMO should be dis-affiliated immediately from Labour and replaced with the JVL.
As an aside ,, I’ve seen Mike Katz in action at the Party Conf 2016 and his podium speech which , shall I say , so incensed other Jewish members in the audience they felt compelled to shout and scream out at him for his diatribe , that he in no way represented all the Jews in Labour .
For me it was quite shocking to witness and the look of shock on Katz face was self evident . It was a lesson that he has obviously forgot or more likely chooses to ignore.
In any case Katz / Smeeth I am out campaigning and leafleting for my Labour candidates no matter what any pathetic score card would say .
It is an indication of how much control Zionists have over the Labour Party when someone such as Mike Katz is allowed to speak from the podium yet the CAC called the police to eject Miko Peled, an anti-Zionist Jew and internationally admired peace campaigner, from last years conference in Liverpool.
When Chris Williamson one of the very few Labour MPs with the courage to speak out about Labour’s subservience to the Zionists, he gets suspended for his troubles.
One could very well ask “is Labour institutionally Zionist”
“Can our BAME and Palestinian members now expect the same score cards to be introduced for them”
A pertinent question, Rob. When you add up the crocodile tears about the small oddball minority of antisemites in comparison with the drought of action on the patent victimisation of a whole national group, something is patently out of kilter.
@JackT
It’s utterly infested.
After I saw Shai Masot with Joan Ryan, and read about his offers to take out a Labour MP (the rabbit hole is very, very deep. An apology was issued over Masot, and it was immediately dropped. Imagine Masot being of Iranian origins…) I knew Labour had serious problems.
Since then, more and more evidence has confirmed to me that Labour is, for all intents and purposes, lost and unfit for purpose.
We would be better to start again, rather than put our faith into this sordid mess.
The information about BAP has been in circulation for a long time – if you cared to look and knew how to add up.
It pays to have a sceptical eye on conspiracy theories. The web produces such a thicket of them that not seeing the wood for the trees works to the advantage of those who *are* actually engaged in conspiracy.
But this stuff is spot-on – and actually pretty obvious if you join up the dots. In essence, it’s not new – the engagement of right-wing Labour with BAP and associated networks has long been known.
It’s importance is in putting the current ‘antisemitism’ scam into a wider context with joint US/Israeli imperial interests and the global right.
As a P.S. related to the above, and relevant to the focus of this item : the us of ‘think tanks’ and other funded bodies as front organizations has long been a primary tool of the US right
Ruth Smeeth is also a member of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. It recently issued a report that blamed Russia solely for the collapse of the INF missile treaty. Claims that Russia is violating the treaty were fully accepted despite a lack of serious evidence.
All of the Labour MPs on that committee are from the hard right of the party.
https://cnduk.org/parliamentary-report-fails-to-uncover-real-reasons-for-inf-treaty-collapse/
Don’t get sentimental about Russia. It’s part of the same complex of competing power and control hierarchies. CIA or Russian ex-KGB Mafia? What’s the difference?
Smeeth was also Tom Watson’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, a role she quit in order to vote against holding a fresh EU referendum last month.
Interesting company he keeps…
I just did a search (on duckduckgo) to see how widely – or not – this has been reported, and was surprised to find that The Times had covered it. Well, sort of. It goes through the stuff about the forty tweets and the apology to JC, but then it gets onto propaganda contrived and designed to dismiss and discredit free-thinkers – critical thinkers – as conspiracy theorists. At one point it comes out with the following Goebbels-type Big Lie:
The term “useful idiot” is used by Russian intelligence to describe those whose views make them unwittingly susceptible to propaganda.
(Ends)
It is of course a term used by black propagandists (in the UK and US etc) to portray those who don’t swallow their lies and deceit and distortion as gullible fools. The article then continues thus:
Mr Donnelly said that the hacks [it was those pesky Russians again of course!] had identified academics, politicians and journalists who are critical of IFS [Institute For Statecraft] work. He urged them to see beyond the Russian smears and engage constructively [they were in fact identified as working WITH the IFS].
He said: “The hacking has gained virtually no traction in the UK mainstream, but it has thrown up these people who support Russia for ideological or other reasons, who swallow Russian propaganda, or are conspiracy theorists who imagine things like ‘the deep state’. The only thing ‘deep’ about us is that our offices are in a cellar because we can’t afford anything better.
“They see things through their own world view. If you start from a position of prejudice, where you are ready to believe anything that is derogatory of the British state, then you don’t want to check because you don’t want to be disproved.
(Ends)
The funny thing is that just prior to turning my laptop on and coming back to this page on skwawkbox, I had been thinking about how you would convey to younger people, who were just kids at the time, the gravity of the Big Lies and the black propaganda the Establishment dissembled (mainly through Blair) to justify their long-planned invasion of Iraq, which led to the deaths of around a million people, and maimed hundreds of thousands more, and left the country in ruins (just as they have since done with Libya and Syria). And every single time it follows the same pattern – ie first you demonise the leader and transform them into another Adolf Hitler…….
As George Bush senior said: “If the people knew what we get up to they would chase us down the road and linch us”. And of course it’s the people who DO know what they get up to who are dismissed by the propagandists as conspiracy theorists and “usefull idiots” etc, etc. And for the obvious reason!
PS And I should have pointed out that the Times article appears to be freely available – as opposed to being behind their paywall – and linked to it as such:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hacker-hit-research-group-the-integrity-initiative-is-sorry-for-jeremy-corbyn-tweets-7852vhs63
And the following article came up as well on the veteranstoday website when I did a search (and it wasn’t the pesky Russians who hacked the IFS but Anonymous!):
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2019/01/03/the-integrity-initiative-spies-and-their-lies/
And here’s the background to it all for anyone who isn’t familiar with it:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-integrity-initiative-and-the-uks-scandalous-information-war/253014/
Just came across a documentary by Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal entitled Killing Gaza. The following is one of the comments someone left about the film:
Extremely powerful film, excellently filmed, produced and narrated. Deeply moving and shocking. I’ve been on two study tours of Palestine, the second one for medical and other health personnel but we weren’t allowed to enter Gaza. This documentary does what our mainstream broadcasters and news outlets should be doing but so seldom do. I hope (in the UK) the BBC show it, although it might be more likely that ITN or Channel 4 do. For many years it wasn’t so much that I was supportive of Palestinians any more than of other oppressed peoples around the world, it was that as a Jew I hated and opposed what fellow Jews were doing to another people, and so often declared by Israeli politicians to be doing so in the name of Jews everywhere. More recently however I’ve felt much more for the Palestinians as a suffering, oppressed people and not just through anguish that fellow Jews are inflicting such cruelties on them. I’m not religious and I’d never want to change being culturally Jewish, but I can’t hold any identification with any community that supports, endorses, apologises for such barbarous behaviour. I’d feel the same about Christian Zionists were I a Christian. This film has spoken powerfully to these feelings. It must be shown widely to every community, be it Jewish or otherwise, that propagandises for Israel — and in the present climate, especially in the USA. Thanks to the film makers for this clear-eyed, unsentimental, bleak but ultimately inspiring film.
(Ends)
It’s available to rent for a couple of quid and to buy for £3.69
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/killinggaza
Just came across this, and note what it says in the last paragraph (as opposed to the FIRST, or near the beginning of the article!), but at least they mention it:
Labour MP Margaret Hodge: I’ll step up action on Jeremy Corbyn over anti-Semitism
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/labour-mp-margaret-hodge-i-ll-step-up-action-on-jeremy-corbyn-over-antisemitism-a4111916.html?
Perhaps Hodge might like to step up pressure on Bibi over the Israeli murder of Palestinians .
She is not ( thank God ) leader of Labour and will NEVER be PM and is a foul mouthed back bencher where she will stay until the grim reaper in due time deals with her .
Here’s an insight into what the Palestinian people have to endure day after day, week after week……
https://bamenewshighgatelabour.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/palestinians-fear-a-trump-led-conspiracy-to-phase-out-un-refugee-camps/
And here’s a statement by Jeremy re Gaza and the indiscriminate killing of civilians:
https://bamenewshighgatelabour.wordpress.com/2018/06/06/labour-party-leader-jeremy-corbyn-tells-israel-we-cannot-turn-a-blind-eye-to-these-repeated-and-dangerous-breaches-of-international-law/