Information Warfare

If you enter "opcw" as a search term now in Google News the three top stories that pop up are

• Reuters, "Russia presents unharmed Syrians at OPCW, Western allies stay away"
• AP, "Russia chided for "obscene masquerade" on alleged Syria chemical attack"
• Reuters, "UK envoy: Russian briefing at OPCW chemical arms body is stunt"

The "breaking news" is not the Ghouta residents who can bear witness to being used as players in a chemical weapons theater staged by the White Helmets. The breaking news are the denunciations by the French and British envoys to the OPCW. This is basic rudimentary information warfare.

Russia is making this move no doubt because the OPCW is stacked against it and some ruse is afoot to skew the Douma investigation to find traces of chlorine and hence blur the conclusion that there was no chemical attack.

Darkness is descending over the neoliberal West. Craig Murray's latest post, "Blocked By Facebook and the Vulnerability of New Media," speaks to this:

I am among those who argue that the strength of the state and corporate media is being increasingly and happily undermined by our ability to communicate via social media. But social media has developed in such a way that the channels of communication are dominated by corporations – Facebook, Twitter and Google – which can in effect turn off the traffic to a citizen journalism site in a second. The site is not taken down, and the determined person can still navigate directly to it, but the vast bulk of the traffic is cut off. What is more this is done secretly, without your being informed, and in a manner deliberately hard to detect. The ability to simply block the avenues by which people get to see dissenting opinions, is terrifying.

Furthermore neither Facebook nor Twitter contact you when they block traffic to your site to tell you this is happening, let alone tell you why, and let alone give you a chance to counter whatever argument they make. I do not know if I am blocked by Facebook as an alleged Russian bot, or for any other reason. I do know that it appears to have happened shortly after I published the transcript of the Israeli general discussing the procedures for shooting children.

Likely "shadow banning" will become the norm. All web sites will be filtered. The cat will be put back in its bag.