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Idrees Ahmad | idreesahmad.bsky.social Profile picture
@im_PULSE
Aug 24, 2019 • 13 tweets • 17 min read • Read on X
A brief thread on war and distraction:

Today I was on @BBCRadioScot to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Idlib. It's a brief segment on @BBCWeekendGMS that starts at 1:38:00. I gave a bit of context and explained the scale of the catastrophe.

bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS The segment was retweeted among others by my department @stirjournalism. What happened next is a useful case study in how the Kremlin's troll network manufactures controversy, deflects attention, and annihilates the truth.
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS @stirjournalism Shortly after the tweet went out, a small but prolific troll network was activated. Some of the figures involved are familiar. They include a German fascist working for Sputnik news, and an American blogger who produces propaganda content for Russia Today.
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS @stirjournalism Both the lead trolls have a history of harassment. One of them came to my attention after he started harassing a student in my department and published a long and malicious piece about her, falsely accusing her of working as an agent of NATO.
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS @stirjournalism After this, the German troll started harassing student event organisers at @StirUni, threatening to disrupt their events. My colleagues and I made a point of standing with the students to make them feel safe (and being the weasel that he is, he never turned up).
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS @stirjournalism @StirUni The other is Max Blumenthal, an American blogger who changed his entire politics after a Kremlin-funded trip to Moscow in December 2015. His stock in trade is harassing children and journalists in combat zones. pulsemedia.org/2017/08/22/did…
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS @stirjournalism @StirUni Blumenthal is a dangerous propagandist, a racist, and an Islamophobe. He is currently the subject of lawsuit by journalist @SulomeAnderson whom he slandered. In other instances he has actually put the lives of journalist at risk. medium.com/@romancandle85…
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS @stirjournalism @StirUni @SulomeAnderson A smear campaign initiated by Blumenthal against journalist Carl David Goette-Luciak led to his arrest in Nicaragua and was condemned by @pressfreedom.

thedailybeast.com/in-nicaragua-t…
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS @stirjournalism @StirUni @SulomeAnderson @pressfreedom Blumenthal's shady blog "Grayzone Project" also published a story under a false byline that relied on the testimony of a Nicaraguan student extracted under torture, absolving Daniel Ortega of responsibility for his repression. Ortega rewarded Blumenthal with a florid tryst.
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS @stirjournalism @StirUni @SulomeAnderson @pressfreedom Blumenthal has slandered Syrian rescuers and doctors as "Al Qaeda"; he has endangered the lives of respected journalists like @clarissaward by accusing them of working with Al Qaeda; but he reached real depths when he harassed children and mocked survivors of chemical attacks.
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS @stirjournalism @StirUni @SulomeAnderson @pressfreedom @clarissaward Why does all of this matter? Because I am not supposed to be talking about this; I'm supposed to be talking about Idlib. 3 million civilians at risk; 576,000 displaced; over 500 killed, including 180 children. The aim of the trolls is to deflect attention, hijack the conversation
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS @stirjournalism @StirUni @SulomeAnderson @pressfreedom @clarissaward They bait and provoke in the hope of getting an intemperate reaction so that these genocide-denying lemmings can paint YOU as the irrational one. They slander, abuse, lie, harass. The aim is deflection, obfuscation, erasing the distinction between victim & perpetrator.
@BBCRadioScot @BBCWeekendGMS @stirjournalism @StirUni @SulomeAnderson @pressfreedom @clarissaward In their version, Assad is the liberator, the 3 million civilians in Idlib are "Al Qaeda", when Assad and Putin bomb hospitals, the aggressor is "the West". It's an almost pathological inversion of reality, a madness induced by ambition and resentments. Banality of evil.

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More from @im_PULSE

Idrees Ahmad | idreesahmad.bsky.social Profile picture
Apr 6, 2023
This is why I will never forgive the likes of Noam Chomsky and Seymour Hersh and @LRB and @welt. After Assad's repeated and incontrovertible use of Sarin—one of the most excruciating forms of killing ever invented—they spent years trying to absolve the mass murderer.
The @LRB gave several front pages to Seymour Hersh to promote his patently false claims based on a single unnamed source. I identified the source and, as I pointed out, he had lifted his story from the Canadian conspiracy site Globalresearch.ca. lareviewofbooks.org/article/danger…
The irony is that @LRB's few middle east specialists had advised against publishing the story. It was commissioned by their literary editor Christian Lorentzen as a way of generating controversy and driving traffic. gawker.com/5541021/new-yo….
Read 12 tweets
Idrees Ahmad | idreesahmad.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 20, 2023
At an "antiwar" event in DC featuring more Russian flags than at the Moscow Victory Day Parade, and bringing together the far-left and the alt-right, @rogerwaters videoed in to boldly condemn the man he believes is responsible for the destruction of Ukraine...Volodymyr Zelenskyy!
It got even more comical. He claims Zelenskyy also blew up the Nordstream pipeline and thus is responsible for "a blatant act of war" and an "extreme act of global terrorism".
As you can tell from this picture of @codepink founder @medeabenjamin surrounded by the Russian invading force’s “Z” symbol, these people are only concerned about peace (photo: @ciaglepada100)
Read 5 tweets
Idrees Ahmad | idreesahmad.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 18, 2023
I grew up on @RATM & have respect for @tmorello as a musician. But I try to avoid his Twitter because I dread finding crap like this, a string of retweets from Putin/Assad/Xi/Maduro apologists making bumper sticker statements about western hypocrisy. Here's why it's so offensive.
Let's start with Alan MacLeod, one of the people @tmorello frequently boosts. The man works for an Iranian regime-linked propaganda site whose main preoccupation is Putin and Assad apologia. buzzfeednews.com/article/rosieg…
Why does this matter? Because @tmorello is using Alan MacLeod to comment on how the west fail's refugees. Yes, he's using an apologist for Putin/Assad/Maduro who between them have created over 20 million refugees. Who actually bomb refugee camps, deliberately and systematically.
Read 16 tweets
Idrees Ahmad | idreesahmad.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 3, 2023
It's clear by now that there is no depth to which @intifada won't sink. But exploiting the plight of an oppressed people to launch a malicious attack against a young Palestinian woman who lived through the actual intifada and has always spoken up for her people is truly depraved.
It's not just that the ghouls that run this publication used a Russian leak to construct a story. But because it wasn't much of a story, they dragged in a Palestinian scholar to give it a sinister framing even though it is contradicted by their own actual report.
Samar Batrawi is one of the smartest and most principled advocate for the Palestinian people. If you want to get a sense of where she stands, read her blistering reply to the Israeli embassy in the UK which had invited her to share her research.
Read 8 tweets
Idrees Ahmad | idreesahmad.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 3, 2023
In 2018, @CJR published a hagiographic piece on Seymour Hersh 5 years after he had embarrassed himself with a false report on Syria, whose main claims were sourced from the Canadian conspiracy cite Globalresearch.ca. @kylepope refused to retract or publish a response.
This was egregious because Hersh had been subsequently exposed for directly reproducing Russian propaganda in a report on the Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack (which he had to publish in @Welt because even the @LRB had discovered by then that Hersh was fabricating).
Hersh had gone further in his 2018 book "Reporter" and made the false claim that General Mattis had said there was no evidence that Assad was responsible for the Khan Sheikhoun massacre (Mattis actually said the opposite in the interview Hersh cited).
Read 6 tweets
Idrees Ahmad | idreesahmad.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 2, 2023
This is astonishing. @CJR has published in four parts an article which is supposed to be an indictment of the press for being overzealous in its criticism of Trump. Its sources? Three Russia-friendly conspiracy theorists. @jelani9: what gives?
Is @columbiajourn fine with its reputation being tarnished like this? Does @CJR know that its source Aaron Mate was fired from three journalism jobs and now does podcast for a Kremlin-linked conspiracy site and has actually aided the Russian government in covering up war crimes?
Does @CJR know that Matt Taibbi's history with Russia or that @RollingStone magazine let him go because he had turned its podcast "Useful Idiots" into a forum for pro-Assad conspiracy theorists?
Read 5 tweets

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