Thread: Not enough money for trolling?

US suspends funding for Twitter account on Iran that trolled critics

Critics of Trump administration’s hard line on Tehran voiced alarm at being targeted by the taxpayer-funded Iran Disinformation Project

WASHINGTON — The State Department is suspending funding for a taxpayer-funded Twitter account on Iran that sharply attacked critics of President Donald Trump’s hawkish policy, an official said Saturday.

The Iran Disinformation Project was set up late last year with a stated mission to expose the “nefarious influence” of the clerical regime in Tehran, including by tackling its “social media manipulation.”

The account, in English, Farsi and occasionally Arabic, is funded by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which is in charge of countering foreign propaganda.

To its modest number of Twitter followers, which stood at just over 2,700 on Saturday, @IranDisinfo offers a narrative in line with the Trump administration, highlighting human rights concerns in Iran, attacking its leaders across the spectrum and using the hashtag #40YearsOfFailure to describe the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the pro-US shah.

But some of the many US-based critics of the Trump administration’s hard line on Iran, who fear his policies could lead to war, voiced alarm at also being attacked by the account, which at times suggested they were stooges for the regime.

A State Department official said that while “the bulk” of @IranDisinfo’s work was acceptable, the Department “identified recent tweets that fall outside the scope of the project to counter foreign state propaganda or disinformation.”

On Friday, “the Department suspended the funding for the Iran Disinfo project until the implementer takes necessary steps to ensure that any future activity remains within the agreed scope of work,” he said.

Negar Mortazavi, a prominent Twitter commentator on Iran who is based in Washington, highlighted the irony that she cannot return to Iran because she has worked for US-funded Voice of America.

“@IranDisinfo uses my own tax money to attack and smear me and call me ‘Devil’s Advocate,'” she tweeted.

The account also attacked Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post journalist who was detained for a year and a half in Iran.

@IranDisInfo assailed him for using his column in the newspaper to criticize Trump’s ban on visas for Iranians and citizens of several other Muslim-majority countries, saying the former prisoner was ignoring abuses by Tehran.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-sus...olled-critics/

Why the hell do the US fund ANY Twitter account?

^WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception)...

Rand Corporation: How to Destroy Russia
25 May 2019Force the adversary to expand recklessly in order to unbalance him, and then destroy him. This is not the description of a judo hold, but a plan against Russia elaborated by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank in the USA. With a staff of thousands of experts, Rand presents itself as the world’s most reliable source for Intelligence and political analysis for the leaders of the United States and their allies.

The Rand Corp prides itself on having contributed to the elaboration of the long-term strategy which enabled the United States to win the Cold War, by forcing the Soviet Union to consume its own economic resources in the strategic confrontation. It is this model which was the inspiration for the new plan, Overextending and Unbalancing Russia, published by Rand [1].

According to their analysts, Russia remains a powerful adversary for the United States in certain fundamental sectors. To handle this opposition, the USA and their allies will have to pursue a joint long-term strategy which exploits Russia’s vulnerabilities. So Rand analyses the various means with which to unbalance Russia, indicating for each the probabilities of success, the benefits, the cost, and the risks for the USA.

The US Wants to Sanction Away Russia’s “Great Society”
Rand analysts estimate that Russia’s greatest vulnerability is that of its economy, due to its heavy dependency on oil and gas exports. The income from these exports can be reduced by strengthening sanctions and increasing the energy exports of the United States. The goal is to oblige Europe to diminish its importation of Russian natural gas, and replace it by liquefied natural gas transported by sea from other countries.

Another way of destabilising the Russian economy in the long run is to encourage the emigration of qualified personnel, particularly young Russians with a high level of education.

In the ideological and information sectors, it would be necessary to encourage internal contestation and at the same time, to undermine Russia’s image on the exterior, by excluding it from international forums and boycotting the international sporting events that it organises.

In the geopolitical sector, arming Ukraine would enable the USA to exploit the central point of Russia’s exterior vulnerability, but this would have to be carefully calculated in order to hold Russia under pressure without slipping into a major conflict, which it would win.

In the military sector, the USA could enjoy high benefits, with low costs and risks, by increasing the number of land-based troops from the NATO countries working in an anti-Russian function.

The USA can enjoy high probabilities of success and high benefits, with moderate risks, especially by investing mainly in strategic bombers and long-range attack missiles directed against Russia.

Leaving the INF Treaty and deploying in Europe new intermediate-range nuclear missiles pointed at Russia would lead to high probabilities of success, but would also present high risks.

By calibrating each option to gain the desired effect – conclude the Rand analysts – Russia would end up by paying the hardest price in a confrontation, but the USA would also have to invest huge resources, which would therefore no longer be available for other objectives. This is also prior warning of a coming major increase in USA/NATO military spending, to the disadvantage of social budgets.

This is the future that is planned out for us by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank of the Deep State – in other words the underground centre of real power gripped by the economic, financial, and military oligarchies – which determines the strategic choices not only of the USA, but all of the Western world.

The “options” set out by the plan are in reality no more than variants of the same war strategy, of which the price in sacrifices and risks is paid by us all.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/rand-c...russia/5678456

Originally Posted by Klondyke

but a plan against Russia elaborated by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank in the USA.

Overextending and Unbalancing Russia:
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/ran...ND_RB10014.pdf

This brief summarizes a report that comprehensively examines nonviolent, cost-imposing options that the United States and its allies could puracross economic, political, and military areas to stress—overextend and unbalance—Russia’s economy and armed forces and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad. Some of the options examined are clearly more promising than others, but any would need to be evaluated in terms of the overall U.S. strategy for dealing with Russia, which neither the report nor this brief has attempted to do.

Surely goldilocks twitter fee is taxpayer funded? How many hours does he, or his government paid employee, spend coming up with his hourly flow?

Don't know why the Europeans should be so worried about only Russia. If the E.U. was invaded it could be taken over by Lichtenstein by the time Brussels made a decision.