TruePublica Editor
This story should make all our readers pretty angry. It’s about how the government picked on two Twitter accounts to help prove the story that automated Putin-bots are wrecking the Skripal/Novichok/Douma gas attack story, about how the Guardian newspaper is helping with this narrative and how Sky News then attack British citizens as Assad apologists and Russian sympathisers for questioning this narrative. They are all linked and it’s all rather pathetic to witness. It goes like this:
On the 19th of April, The Guardian (International Edition) published an article making the assertion that two Twitter accounts were Russian propaganda operations or as they like to put it ‘trolls and bots’ to unleash disinformation on to social media in the wake of the Salisbury poisoning.
The article is written by a rather unsuspecting and maybe, let’s be charitable here, nieve Heather Stewart, who went along with the government operative who fed this nonsense to her in the first place. Either that or she and The Guardian is deliberately distributing stories that are fake.
Stewart says “according to fresh Whitehall analysis – Government sources said experts had uncovered an increase of up to 4,000% in the spread of propaganda from Russia-based accounts since the attack,– many of which were identifiable as automated bots. But civil servants identified a sharp increase in the flow of fake news after the Salisbury poisoning, which continued in the runup to the airstrikes on Syria.
One bot, @Ian56789, was sending 100 posts a day during a 12-day period from 7 April, and reached 23 million users, before the account was suspended. It focused on claims that the chemical weapons attack on Douma had been falsified, using the hashtag #falseflag. Another, @Partisangirl, reached 61 million users with 2,300 posts over the same 12-day period.”
The article went on to promote how “Theresa May highlighted the cyber-threat from Russia in her Mansion House speech earlier this year, telling the Kremlin: “I have a very simple message for Russia. We know what you are doing. And you will not succeed.”
But there’s a problem with this.
The owners of both these Twitter accounts quickly stepped forward and on video too, remonstrating in no uncertain terms that they were, indeed are, in fact, real humans – and weren’t even Russian. They have defended themselves to prove they are definitely not software programs.
The Guardian should have taken this story down – its fake news, but they haven’t.
Ian of @Ian56789 even went on national TV, Sky News to be precise and he was quite definitely miffed about being called an automated Russian bot. How miffed – “Government lies are very transparent and very easy to see and anyone who applies a smattering of critical thinking can see that the government story completely collapses,” says Ian.
Ian’s bio reads: “Advocate of Common Sense & Bill of Rights. Stock Mkt trader. Politics Analyst. Disseminating info. Calling out disinfo in the media. Stay curious!”
Sky News didn’t do their homework when it came to interviewing Ian. Ian took centre stage, went into peak livid mode and lambasted the government citing a Sky News report that confirmed Assad was no nutter and wouldn’t have brought this upon himself just at the point of winning the war. 7 minutes and 37 seconds later, Ian had reeled out more facts and figures about the Syrian war than anyone at Sky News.
The Sky News presenter then went on the attack and got Defence Correspondent Alistair Bunkell to snarl the accusation that @Ian56789 was being anti-British. What is interesting here is that SkyNews then confirmed it was the British government who had pinpointed Ian’s account as a fake ‘Putin-bot’.
Ian went ashen, was beside himself and was in no way going to let some spotty nosed so-called expert representing the lying spies from the establishment get one over on him. Bunkell consistently interrupted our Ian and then brought up a tweet from 2012 – that is one tweet from the 157,000 tweets our Ian has spurted out since 2011.
Ian, clearly suffering from a bit of high blood pressure by now has turned red and is still consistently being attacked and interrupted by both SkyNews presenters.
Ian is rediculously forced to confirm he is not Russian or connected to Russian spies and proudly states “I am an ordinary British citizen” Our Ian has been sharpening the knives and pulls out sabre number one – “my research is based on credible journalists – now, there aren’t any of them on Sky News.” @Ian56789 is locked and loaded, out comes sabre number two – “the only people, journalists that is, that knows whats going on and reporting honestly are Peter Hitchins and Tucker Carlson in the US.”
Sky News presenters now on the backfoot interrupt our Ian again and then try to put the seed of doubt in his story by asking if there was any possibility that Russian propagandists had seeped into his tweet fan base, that frankly, to everyone’s surprise, Ian included, has now suddenly risen to 37,500. Ian whips out his sabre once again, wipes the mainstream media blood still dripping off its deadly edges and goes for one final fatal blow – “What does it mean by being pro-British – does it mean being interested in the 60 million British people or the interests of the clique in the UK government, the cabinet – who are doing things for their own personal benefit and the benefit of their cronies. Theresa May’s husband runs a large hedge fund who has profited heavily from bombing Syria – I speak on behalf on 59.9 million people – I do not speak for the UK government who do not work for the British people“.
@Ian56789 – THREE, Sky News presenters NIL.
Sky News ends the interview whilst our Ian continues to complain about Theresa May – before he’s turned off and they switch to the all-important news that a foreigner called – Arsène Wenger has retired from a game called football somewhere in the capital.
What is evident here is that the government have clearly, mistakenly, tried to create a cover story for their disastrous Skripal story as the pretext for bombing Syria. Yet again, they had not done their homework.
The Guardian article was published on the 19th, was called out as 100 percent wrong the following day and 8 days later is still being promoted. It’s fake news.
Then, national television attempts to discredit a member of the general public – who is not a trained professional, who is put up as bait to be discredited in the eyes of the general public, family and friends.
Well done Ian. Not afraid to stand up for himself and his beliefs as a British citizen, not afraid that his own government and the mainstream media would attack him live on air in front of millions – and not afraid to air his critical views.
There aren’t enough people like Ian.
These are the false claims of The Guardian Newspaper, the false claims of the government and false claims of Sky News – shame on them. The only one thing that one can say in Sky News’ defence is that they aired it at all. But then again, it was live, they weren’t expecting Ian, because they too, had not done their homework.
Watch fearless Ian56789 take a stand. It might not be pretty but it is real.
