I’d recently noticed an interesting ‘cyber-phenomenon’ when surfing online news outlets, here is last night and this morning’s result (Central Europe Time.) Don’t get me wrong, I’m no internet expert, but sometimes even a computer-troglodyte can detect a bad cyber-odor.
What I’d noticed is, an on-off-on-again-off again (over these past months), very interesting, ability or inability to access information, depending solely on where the cyber-robots decide one can read … indicating where the robot believes you are located. For instance, in today’s case, if I route my VPN [virtual private network] through Russia, to the English language pages of two Spanish publications, I am allowed to read at one, but not the other. This is when it gets interesting.
The Local (thelocal.es) runs much more balanced articles on Catalonia’s succession effort to break with Spain, whereas El Pais in English (elpais.com) is goosestepping with ‘the Russians did it’ western intelligence agencies information operations (PSYOPS) meme.
El Pais features ‘Russia is interfering in Catalonia’ headlines…
…running highly disputed (elsewhere) allegations of Russia interfering in Spain’s crisis. Furthermore, El Pais is putting out patently false information in the numerous articles it is running on the leadership of the Catalan independence movement, here is an example:
“It is false that we have ignored the Constitution… because there are international treaties that contemplate the right to self-determination, and constitutions are favorable to interpretation under international law”…
Here the Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont is quoted, and he is correct to state [paraphrased] treaties subscribed to under international law bind nations that have signed those treaties and there are such treaties with language that could be construed to favor Catalan independence; but El Pais falsely interprets this statement, deliberately discrediting Puigdemont’s stance, by adding on:
…he [Puigdemont] said, alluding to the United Nations resolution 50/6, which only acknowledges this right for people “under colonial or other forms of alien domination or foreign occupation”
Noting a UN resolution is not a treaty, the misrepresentation is clear. By way of example, here is my email to El Pais correcting this, pointing to a valid, in force treaty Spain is a party to, to which Puigdemont could easily be referring:
Dear El Pais
When I lived in Catalonia 7 and 8 years ago, I very much appreciated your newspaper. I cannot say this now, the bias has become palpable. Case in point would be your recent articles emphasizing ’The Right of Self Determination’ is only applicable to colonialism. In fact, this is a very much unsettled question in international law, as demonstrated in article one, paragraph one, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, where the self determination principle’s language is unequivocal; this is a right of ALL peoples:
Article 1
i) All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of the right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
“The relatively straightforward language of the first paragraph, in particular, is commonly cited as evidence of the universality of the right to self-determination, although its formulation does little to make the scope of the right more precise. Nevertheless, both the reference to “all” peoples and the fact that the article is found in human rights treaties intended to have universal applicability suggest a scope beyond that of decolonization”
https://pesd.princeton.edu/?q=node/254
As a party to a published international law study specific to the Right of Self Determination…
…I can inform El Pais that, Rajoy’s policy of jailing Catalonia’s elected leadership could be the determining factor taken in arguing the Spanish state is delivering to the Catalans what is described as “The offensive right of self determination” or, and an earned right of independence, due to disproportionate Spanish state actions, in addition to any as yet unenforced right of self determination specified elsewhere in human rights treaty law.
Beyond this, Spain’s judiciary clearly IS politicized, as claimed by Puigdemont, when comparing the present arrests to cases which are not prosecuted, for instance the secret Catholic militia El Yunque. There are even worse, to now unpublicized cases, where Spain’s institutions, for political reasons, have failed to pursue prosecutions of patent criminal activities of an egregious nature, I invite a read at:
https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2017/11/03/catalonia-paradox/
With sincere regards
Ron West
“The history of the great events of this world are scarcely more than a history of crime” -Voltaire
Of course El Pais did not respond to my mail and I did not expect they would; the point of the mail is covering future possible circumstance of El Pais editors claiming ignorance in a case of ‘journalistic’ denial.
Now, back to the robot: If, I happen to be an English literate person the robot thinks is located in Russia (because of my VPN identifying my location in Russia, with routing through a Russian server) and I want to read western press, I’m allowed to read the rank propaganda at El Pais, but not the much more accurate reporting at The Local:
403. That’s an error.
Your client does not have permission to get URL / from this server. That’s all we know.
But if I run my VPN through a western country, in this case Greece, I can load The Local page, no problem:
Now, I seriously doubt The Local’s servers are going to be configured to fence out Russian readers, that simply makes no sense (except in the case of The Local servers hacked by western intelligence, a distinct possibility) because The Local is much less biased towards Russia in its coverage of the news in Catalonia and doesn’t print the, in some cases, outright false, and in other cases seriously misleading, sort of articles one finds at El Pais. It is even less likely Russia itself is blocking The Local, if Russia were to block one of sites, it would be El Pais.
What we appear to be looking at, and it is highly doubtful there is an otherwise innocent explanation, is cyber war, where Russians, those who happen to be English literate readers, are directed to western media that is propagandized; along the lines of ‘look, Mr or Ms Russian citizen, at the evil meddling of Putin in the liberal democracies affairs.’
The unanswered question (for myself) is, why is it a Google robot provides the outright lie of ‘something is broken and we don’t know what it is’, when clearly something is broken deliberately and whoever is behind it DOES know what it is. This has gone on for too long, too consistently, for Google not to know what it is. Who gives a Google robot the assignment of announcing to web-surfers located in Russia what amounts to an unspoken but matter of fact ‘sorry you can only read biased propaganda pieces and outright lies, because the system is ‘fixed.’ Central Intelligence Agency? Google, after all, practically sleeps with western intelligence.
It’s when encountering the preceding, one more than wonders at the veracity of claims it is Russia is the cyber-war boogeyman everywhere one looks… considering our liberal democracies obsession with controlling the narrative:
“Control over the narrative has more and more replaced truth seeking. It is the old Goebbels dictum: If you repeat the same lie over and over enough, it becomes the truth…
“Recent examples abound, but the golden egg prize goes to the claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 Presidential elections to secure a victory for Donald Trump. This narrative was presented in January 2017, after the Trump victory but before his inauguration, in an intelligence community assessment. Go back and re-read that 25-page “narrative” today and you will be shocked. It contains no evidence, but relies on a pseudo-psychological profile of Russian President Vladimir Putin…
“In a methodological annex to the report, the authors acknowledged that they had no facts to back up their conclusions:
“”Estimative language consists of two elements: judgments about the likelihood of developments or events occurring and levels of confidence in the sources and analytic reasoning supporting the judgments. Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents…””
Yes, dear reader, that’s our liberal democracies’ intelligence agencies, in a ‘cover your ass culture’, admitting ‘we make this shit up’
*
Ronald Thomas West 