The Arrest of Julian Assange

A few minutes after Juli­an Assange was scan­dal­ously arres­ted and dragged out of the Ecuadori­an Embassy in Lon­don last week, I was con­tac­ted by RT​.com to do an inter­view. While fur­ther com­ments will fol­low, here are my ini­tial thoughts:

UK and EU Security

A couple of recent inter­views about the themes of UK and EU secur­ity, going forward.

Europe_and_the_current_security_situation from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

And:

Post_Brexit_UK_EU_Security from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Attack on Wikileaks threatens press freedom everywhere

My inter­view on RT​.com about yet anoth­er attack against Juli­an Assange, edit­or in chief of Wikileaks, that threatens press free­dom everywhere:

Whistleblowers — RT Interview

In the wake of anoth­er appar­ently vic­tim­ised whis­tleblower emer­ging from the US intel­li­gence com­munity, here is an inter­view on the sub­ject on RT:

Sergei Skripal — some of my interviews

Ever since the story broke on 5th March about the strange case of the pois­on­ing the former MI6 agent and Rus­si­an mil­it­ary intel­li­gence officer, Sergei Skri­p­al, I have been asked to do inter­view after inter­view, com­ment­ing on this hideous case.

Of course, as the case developed the points I made also evolved, but my gen­er­al theme has remained con­sist­ent: that, des­pite the imme­di­ate UK media hys­teria that “it must be the Rus­si­ans”, we needed to let the police and intel­li­gence agen­cies the space and time to get on and build up an evid­en­tial chain before the UK gov­ern­ment took action.

Unfor­tu­nately, this has not come to pass, with the UK encour­aging its allies in an unpre­ced­en­ted wave of mass dip­lo­mat­ic expul­sions around the world.  One might say that per­haps Theresa May has some shit-hot secret intel­li­gence with which to con­vince these allies. But intel­li­gence is not evid­ence and, as we all too pain­fully remem­ber from the Iraq War débâcle in 2003, any intel­li­gence can be spun to fit the facts around a pre-determ­ined policy, as was revealed in the leaked Down­ing Street Memo.

Any­way, from the bot­tom up in terms of chro­no­logy, here are a few of the inter­views I have man­aged to har­vest from the last few, crazy weeks. More will be added as they come in. And here are a couple of extras: a BBC Break­fast News item and a Talk Radio inter­view.

A longer and more detailed art­icle will fol­low shortly.

CGTN “Dia­logue” dis­cus­sion about the Skri­p­al case 26 03 2018 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

 

RT Inter­na­tion­al News Inter­view 10 03 2018 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

 

CrossTalk on Sergei Skri­p­al ‘Pub­li­city Murder’ from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

 

Al Jaz­eer­a’s “Inside Story” 08 03 2018 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

 

Good Morn­ing Bri­tain Inter­view 06 03 2018 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

 

BBC News­night 05 03 2018 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

RT Inter­view about the Skri­p­al case 05 03 2018 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

More Russiagate Rubbish

An RT inter­view about the over-reac­tion around the head of the CIA, Mike Pom­peo, meet­ing his Rus­si­an counter-part:

More Rus­siagate Rub­bish from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

The Art of State Trolling — a Growing Market

Last week, while I was doing a num­ber of talks for Fun​z​ing​.com in Lon­don, I was invited into RT to dis­cuss a new report about the US mil­it­ary advert­ising for pro­gram­mers who could devel­op soft­ware that tar­geted Ira­ni­an, Chinese and Rus­si­an audi­ences via social media.

The tim­ing proved inter­est­ing. Only days before, it was revealed by @musalbas at the CCC and then via Wikileaks that the UK gov­ern­ment listen­ing post, GCHQ, had appar­ently been doing the same thing since 2009.

And then, coin­cid­ent­ally, only a couple of days after the US dis­clos­ure, it was repor­ted that Rus­sia was now trolling Wiki­pe­dia.

A war of words ensued — and let’s hope that is all it remains. How­ever, this report in the NYT today fills me with dread.

Here is my con­tri­bu­tion from last week:

Pentagon devel­op­ing auto­mated social media troll farms from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Useful Idiots”

Yet anoth­er trans-Atlantic think tank has cranked out a report attack­ing Rus­sia, and yet again the focus of their ire is RT​.com.

Of course, all media out­lets get attacked for “pro­pa­ganda” (you should see the Daily Mail BTL com­ments about the BBC!), but this par­tic­u­lar play book is get­ting old.

Here’s my take on the sub­ject on, you’ve guessed it, RT:

New “Putin’s Use­ful Idi­ots” Report from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

French intelligence exonerates Russia of election hacking

My recent RT inter­view about the French intel­li­gence report that exon­er­ated Rus­sia of try­ing to hack the recent pres­id­en­tial elec­tion, des­pite the claims of new Pres­id­ent, Emmanu­al Mac­ron. The same thing has happened in Ger­many too, much to Merkel’s displeasure..

And so the tapestry of lies begins to fray:

No Evid­ence of Rus­si­an Hack­ing of French Elec­tion from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

No evidence of Trump/Russia Collusion

My RT inter­view today about the state­ment made by the Chair of the US Con­gres­sion­al Chair of the Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, Dev­in Nunes, about the lack of any evid­ence of col­lu­sion between the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and Russia:

US Con­gress­man — No Evid­ence of Rus­sia-Trump Col­lu­sion from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

CIA and MI5 hacking our “Internet of Things”

Yet again Wikileaks has come good by expos­ing just how much we are being spied upon in this brave new digit­al world — the Vault 7 release has provided the proof for what many of us already knew/suspected — that our smart gad­gets are little spy devices.

Here are a couple of inter­views I did for the BBC and RT on the subject:

BBCCIA and MI5 Hack our TVs from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

And:

Wikileaks release info re CIA/MI5 hacks from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Recent interviews: UK Cyber Security, Kim Dotcom, and Iraq

I’ve done a few more inter­views this month for RT, on a vari­ety of issues:

US boots on the ground in Iraq

USA Boots on the Ground in Iraq — again. from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

The extra­di­tion case against Megaup­load’s founder, Kim Dotcom

Megaup­load’s Kim Dot­com faces extra­di­tion from NZ to USA from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

And the launch of the UK’s new Cyber Secur­ity Centre, soon after the new Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Act (aka the “snoop­ers’ charter”) became law

The launch of the UK’s new Nation­al Cyber Secur­ity Centre from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Fake Intelligence

Here’s a recent inter­view I did for RT UK’s flag­ship news pro­gramme, Going Under­ground with Afsh­in Rat­tansi, about the whole fake news, fake intel­li­gence alleg­a­tions swirl­ing around Pres­id­ent Trump’ admin­is­tra­tion at the moment:

RT Going Under­ground — the Issue of US Fake Intel­li­gence from Annie Machon on Vimeo.