FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
‘Integrity Initiative’ Targets Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, in Pretext of Countering Russian ‘Fake News’
Dec. 10, 2018 (EIRNS)—A report in the Sunday, Dec. 9, edition of Scotland’s Daily Record and its sister publication Sunday Mail, reports that Integrity Initiative (II) is attacking Labour Party leader Jeremey Corbyn, and that it has received more than £2 million from the British Foreign Office, which is the usual conduit for MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence agency. The exposé has created outrage in the Labour Party, with demands for a probe to be launched against the Integrity Initiative, including how it came to receive £2 million pounds in government money and began targetting Jeremy Corbyn.
The Daily Record further reported that the Institute for Statecraft, listed as a “charity” based in Fife, Scotland, is the mother organization of the Integrity Initiative, which latter received £2 million from the government and is run by military intelligence specialists. The senior manager of Integrity Initiative is one Chris Donnelly, who, was Special Adviser for Central and Eastern European Affairs to the Secretary General of NATO in 1989-2003; and previous to that was an instructor at the Royal Military Academy in Russian and Soviet affairs for 20 years; the last 10 of those as head of the Soviet Research Centre; from 1970 to 1993 he served as a reserve officer in the British Territorial Army. He graduated Manchester University, according to his NATO biography. The Integrity Initiative claims that its purpose is to counter Russian online propaganda by forming “clusters” of friendly journalists and “key influencers” throughout Europe who use social media to strike back against “disinformation,” according to the Daily Record.
The Daily Record found what they call “worrying evidence” that the organization’s official Twitter account has been used to attack Corbyn, his Labour Party, and other party officials. As an example they quote one of the tweets from a newspaper, that Integrity Initiative re-posted, reading: “What he [Corbyn] has done, wittingly or unwittingly, is work with the Kremlin agenda.” This violates the organization’s stated purpose of countering so-called fake news.
“It is simply outrageous that the clearly mis-named ‘Integrity Initiative’—funded by the Foreign Office to the tune of £2.25 million over the past two years—has routinely been using its Twitter feed to disseminate personal attacks and smears against the Leader of the Opposition, the Labour Party and Labour officials,” said MP Emily Thornberry, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, in her statement.
Labour MP Chris Williamson tweeted: “We need decisive action to unearth precisely what is going on. This is unacceptable in any democracy.”
The Integrity Initiative’s spokesman Stephen Dalziel has said he is “not aware” of any Corbyn attacks on the official social media account. “I’m not the one who controls the Twitter account. If it was criticism of one of our politicians, then that shouldn’t be on there.”
Another leading Labour MP, Jon Trikett, tweeted in reply to Thornberry’s statement: “If it is true that there is a deep state, taxpayer funded operation against our party it is totally unacceptable and an explanation plus an enquiry must be conducted immediately.”
Through its Twitter account, the Integrity Initiative retweeted a journalist who attacked both Corbyn and Seumas Milne, Labour’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications. The re-tweet read: “Just as he [Corbyn] supports the Russian bombardment of Syria, Seumas Milne supported the Russian slaughter of Afghanistan, which resulted in more than a million deaths.”
The daily reports that the Integrity Initiative gets support from anti-Putin “far-right” (i.e., neo-Nazi) Ukrainian politicians.
Significantly, it also revealed that the Integrity Initiative ran an international media and Twitter campaign against Col. Pedro Baños, a well-known Spanish commentator on strategic and military issues, which resulted in his being denied a position in the Madrid government. The Integrity Initiative “Spanish cluster” went into action on hearing that the Spanish government wanted to appoint Baños as director of the national security department. Documents received by the Daily Record detailed how the Integrity Initiative alerted “key influencers” around Europe, who then launched an online campaign against Baños.
