Ben Nimmo
Written by Alan Macleod; Originally appeared at mintpressnews.com
Ben Nimmo, a former NATO press officer and current senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, has announced Facebook has hired him to “lead global threat intelligence strategy against influence operations” and “emerging threats.” Nimmo specifically named Russia, Iran and China as potential dangers to the platform.
His announcement was greeted with joy by several NATO officials but was not met with such enthusiasm by others. “More censorship on the way as the former NATO press officer turned Pentagon-funded ‘researcher’ who labeled real people as Russian bots and peddled disinformation to link Jeremy Corbyn to Russian active measures moves to big tech,” responded investigative journalist Max Blumenthal.
Nimmo’s questionable past certainly raises questions over whether such an official having a substantial say in what 2.8 billion Facebook users worldwide see in their feeds is such a positive step for the free and open exchange of information.
“Disinformation agents”
For example, in 2019, U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn revealed secret Conservative Party documents showing negotiations the Tory government had with the U.S. over the privatization of the National Health Service (NHS). With just days to go before the U.K. general election, the scandal could have toppled the government and brought into power the most radical antiwar, anti-establishment government in the country’s history. Corporate media went into overdrive to spin the news, and Nimmo was a key part of this, immediately announcing, without evidence, that the documents “closely resemble…a known Russian operation.” His supposedly expert conjecture allowed the story to become “Corbyn’s links to Russia” rather than “Tories privatizing the NHS in secret.” Nimmo’s work helped the Conservatives to an election victory and consigned Corbyn to the scrapheap.
This was much to the relief of Nimmo’s Atlantic Council, who had branded Corbyn the “Kremlin’s Trojan Horse” — someone pushing Moscow’s agenda abroad. A British Army general was of a similar opinion, claiming that if Corbyn were to win the election, the military would respond. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said that the U.S. government was “doing its best” to prevent a radical leftist from winning power in the U.K.
More censorship on the way as the former NATO press officer turned Pentagon-funded “researcher” who labeled real people as Russian bots and peddled disinformation to link Jeremy Corbyn to Russian active measures moves to Big Tech https://t.co/XcfGbdPJtv
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 7, 2021
Nimmo has been extremely liberal with whom he labels Russian disinformation agents. In 2018, his research identified one Twitter user, @Ian56789, as a “Kremlin troll.” In reality, the user, Ian Shilling, was a British pensioner, as Sky News was easily able to confirm, interviewing him on air and asking him the patently absurd question if he was actually a Russian bot or not. Despite clearly being a flesh and blood human, Shilling’s account was later deleted anyway.
In the past, Nimmo has also insisted that Ruslana Boshirova was an influential Russian bot. In reality, she is an internationally known concert pianist, as one Google search would have shown. This sort of behavior does not augur well for those critical of Western foreign policy, who have faced constant harassment, suspension, or outright bans from social media.
Pro-war putsch
The Atlantic Council began as an offshoot of NATO itself and maintains extremely close connections to the military alliance. It continues to receive major funding from Western governments and weapons contractors, and its board of directors is filled to the brim with senior American statespersons, such as Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Henry Kissinger. Also appearing on the board are no fewer than seven former CIA directors and a number of top military generals, such as Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis, Wesley Clark, and David Petraeus.
In recent years, the council’s employees have penetrated deep into big tech and social media organizations. In 2018, it announced it had partnered with Facebook to aid in the curation of Facebook news feeds of users worldwide, giving it considerable power over what sort of views to highlight and which to demote. One year previously, Jessica Ashooh left the position of the council’s Deputy Director of Middle Eastern Strategy to take the position of Director of Policy at Reddit, the eighth-most visited website in the United States. However, as with many intelligence agencies, it is unclear whether one truly “leaves” the Atlantic Council.
NATO's Atlantic Council "analyst" @benimmo has called me an influential Russian bot.
Influential? You bet.
With 170 000 000 YouTube views
and 400 000 subscribers.
Russian? Oh well, Ukrainian-American?, but take it as a compliment. ?
Bot? Yeah. Humans can't play like this. pic.twitter.com/pReCwBBaZ5— Ruslana Boshirova Альянс пианистов (@ValLisitsa) March 27, 2018
It is not just Russia that is in NATO’s crosshairs. Last week, the Atlantic Council published an anonymous, 26,000-word report stating that their goal for China was regime change and advising President Biden to draw a number of “red lines” around it, beyond which the U.S. would respond militarily. Meanwhile, the head of STRATCOM, Admiral Charles A. Richard, wrote that the U.S. must prepare for a potential nuclear war with Beijing.
Greater control
The military escalation has been mirrored by an intensifying online propaganda war, where the U.S. has attempted to isolate China economically and stop advancing Chinese technologies such as Huawei’s 5G network, mobile phone, and semiconductor manufacturer Xiaomi, and video sharing app TikTok. Nimmo has played his part in ramping up suspicions of nefarious Chinese activity online, claiming the existence of a wide-ranging pro-Beijing bot network encouraging Americans to believe that China has handled the COVID-19 pandemic far better than the United States. That Americans might have come to that conclusion on their own appears not to have been considered.
There is an enormous government effort to convince its population of the existence of (foreign) government efforts to manipulate their opinions online. In a massive case of projection, Western governmental organizations point the finger at their enemies, all the while securing greater access and control over the means of communication themselves, to the point where it is now difficult to distinguish where the deep state ends and the fourth estate begins. Nimmo’s move from NATO to NATO-aligned think tank to Facebook is just another example of this phenomenon. Perhaps the reason Nimmo is not looking for any Western influence operations online is that he is part of one.
Fakebook was designed, and financed at a loss for years, as an espionage business, now it is just returning to the fold, NATO is its perfect home.
And when I put a Panasonic air to air heater and cooler on my house, its no Danish anymore – Haha.
Do I speak Korean or Japanese too.
Im always impressed with Chinese small children which speak Chinese that well. I once tryed, but its a no go from here.
What could go wrong… Zuckerfuckers Facefook…
It was funded by NSA and CIA for global surveillance tool. Anyone one with an IQ over 70 would be better off being on Fuckbook, which is more fun than Zionist Facebook.
I have great difficulty in believing Facebook has 2.8 billion members from a possible customer base world population of 7.6 billion.
Once you eliminate areas that don’t have an electric supply let alone the spare wealth for computerised equipment that number gets dramatically reduced jungles, deserts, mountains, remote outback’s and the odd ice-age areas
Bang goes most not all but most of the following Africa 1.36 billion
India 1.33 billion
All of China Iran North Korea and Syria where it is outright banned 1.51 billion
Half of South America and Caribbean 500,000,000
Most of Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan Nepal Laos Philippines Kazakhstan Tajikistan 900,000,000
Virtually everyone under 13 and over 65
I live in an urban white western area with excellent internet coverage and disposable income in my street there are 114 semi-detached houses with an average 4 to a house. During a local survey in Feb 2019 it was noted that of the combined 423 people in the street 27 were actual Facebook users, just over 80 had been users at one time or another but that the number of current users was down to 27 as people deleted accounts or just stopped using it.
So I have major doubts on their 2.8 billion users
Facefook is dying. Indeed. Fortune 500 companies get free loans from the FED, they than start buying up their own stocks en mass to increase their value, all under the carpet of course, than when the bubble is big enough they start selling their artificially inflated stocks and exchange it for real money, gold, silver, than the FED has to bail out everybody again and the cycle starts over again. Its not capitalism, thats socialism for the elite. Thats why they have to lie about their numbers, so the sheeple can believe it. Its all fake, smoke and mirrors. In reality the U.S. economy is toast, Germany alone exports more than the whole U.S.
I watched a film about Snowden last night,the CIA and NSA make the Stasi look like boy scouts.
Not surprised…
Something has to be done by the medias or the states. I hope the best but dont expect much. Focus on those countries is fine, but the rest has too many bad omens too.
I have no proposals.
Of course you dont.
Reject social.media to start. If it wasent obviously a tool to manufacture consent before, it sure is now.
You also have no brain.
Another fucking JEW a$$hole. Facebook was a CIA/NSA meta data collection system anyway, so what’s new. Now NATO and Benjamin are openly spying via Facebook.
Here is the problem…
Another Jew, Jens StoltZenberg, was once head of Norway, promoting the “Face Recognition Book” as the “savior to democracy and even a platform to have the Norwegian ELECTIONS.
There was a few functional and popular Social Networks in Norway already. The went in black as soon as the NATO zionist project Facebook came along, like others outside Norway, in order to pave way for the new project.
So it seems to me like both Facebook and NATO is jewish projects all the way to the bank (or war). We see this clearly now as Israel was a big part of establishing Stay Behind in Norway and that is NATO secret Army.
Jens father was the secret boss of this illegal army that sold drugs in Norway to pay their bills and made Norway into the heroin capital of the world, while they started out their drug business by selling amfetamin that was a part of their weapons and gear cache tucked away all over Norway.
So that this Benjamin guy is head of intel in NATO and now Facebook, is not a change of job, but department within the destructive forces on planet earth.
He still works for the same top guys…
Ben Nimmo is a UK deep state functionary with close connection to Israeli security services. He was listed as a senior fellow of the Institute for Statecraft website on 25 November 2018, but his name was gone by 10 January 2019 . His speciality was listed as “Information & Influence, Russia”. CIA Director Bill Burns termed him “witchfinder-general for Russian Bots”. A senior fellow at the NATO-aligned think-tank Atlantic Council, in February 2021, he started working for Facebook, “helping to lead global threat intelligence strategy against Russian influence operations”.
What a sick joke this is. Their facade is being shown for the intel op that it always has been. No more hiding their collusion, now they openly show their real face. I see a big push coming on all fronts.
‘Cancel Culture’ is alive and well among the ill informed social media types … eh?
It’s easy to ‘pile on’ those that are from the wrong ‘crowd’ / the ‘wrong’ religion / those carrying the ‘wrong worldview’ / the wrong beliefs’ … eh?
It’s as if ‘Big Brother’ has ALREADY arrived … the ‘thought police’ are HERE NOW … no need for waiting … eh?
I’m OK with it … really
Those ‘outsiders’ are then available with their ‘skill sets’ to man the Future World … some of us can see … eh?
The Future is About to Land …
The ‘nose’ comes outta the closet, would never have guessed…