Tag: Alan Malcher

Now it can be told: School for Danger (public information film)

The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was an ultra-secret branch of the British military and this public information film released in 1947, one-year after the executive was disbanded, is one of the first public acknowledgements of SOE’s existence during the war.

Every member of the cast were former members of SOE’s French Section, hence the poor acting, and each scene was based on actual events during the war.

Those familiar with this Section will recognise the two main characters: Harry Ree and Jaqueline Nearne whose sister Eileen also served with SOE and escaped from Ravensbruck Concentration camp.

War Memories of John Mellor, RAF Bomber Command

Through a chance encounter I came across 95-year-old John Mellor a veteran of RAF Bomber Command during WW2 who has just self-published his memoirs. John is one of the few who survived the bombing sorties and described himself as “one of the lucky.”

Over 76 years later few who served during WW2 remain alive and I believe John’s recollection of his war service is of major historical importance, and after receiving the following message from John I decided to do whatever I could to promote his war memoir ‘The Boy with one shoe’. 

“Thank you, Alan all proceeds go to the RAF Benevolent Fund, but for my sake I want this book to be read so that the sacrifice my friends made will not be forgotten or misunderstood.”

More information can be found at:

www. jhmeller.com

https://amazon.co.uk/Boy-Only-One-Shoe

http://jhmeller.com

The Mutin- SOE clandestine sea transport.

After being acquired by SOE the ‘Mutin’ (Mutineer) was based in the Helford Estuary in Cornwall. Its paintwork was aged and was disguised as a French tuna fishing vessel and the all British crew dressed as Breton fishermen. Part of her refit was a more powerful diesel engine and a wireless using RAF frequencies to support the illusion that transmissions were not from an ocean vessel and its long aerial was built into the rigging. There is an account from a Quartermaster in the Royal Navy who volunteered for clandestine operations without being told what these operations were. This new volunteer later said, on his arrival at the quay he saw Mutin which had just returned from Brittany after dropping off agents: “I saw heaps of sail on the deck covered in blood. Shipwrights were digging shrapnel from bow to stern and I thought, God what have I let myself in for”?… “I was later told, after dropping off agents Mutin was spotted by a German aircraft and raked by cannon fire during which the engineer was killed.

More details in my forthcoming book SOE in France

Russian and Soviet Information Operations against the west

KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov reveals Russian Subversion Tactics – Full Interview (2016)

 

KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News | NYT Opinion

 

How Disinformation Is Taking Over the World | NYT Opinion

Although this video concentrates on the USA narrative warfare continues to be misunderstood by many western nations including the UK along with its power as a socio-political and economic weapon which also supports kinetic warfare.

Narrative Warfare (MA Global Security)

More on the MA in global security: https://spgs.asu.edu/global-security-ma

Ajit Maan, a new professor of practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies and an affiliated faculty member with the Center on Future of War, was in Tempe this July to film a lecture for her first semester teaching online at Arizona State University. Maan is an internationally-recognized security and defense analysist and narrative strategist. In 1999, she published her breakthrough theory of Internarrative Identity. Then in 2014 Maan published, Counter-Terrorism: Narrative Strategies, which focuses on deconstructing dominant and coercive narratives and demonstrates how certain narrative structures lend themselves to manipulation and how the weaknesses of those structures can be exploited. Most recently, in 2017, she coined the term “Narrative Warfare” to refine what has been referred to as information wars and psychological warfare

The Coronavirus Disinformation System: Useful links

Russian pro-Kremlin media have mounted a “significant disinformation campaign” to aggravate the coronavirus pandemic crisis in western countries by destroying confidence in the emergency response, according to an internal EU report. 

The effort aims to stoke “confusion, panic and fear” and stop people obtaining good information about the contagion, as part of a broader strategy to “subvert European societies from within”, the European diplomatic service analysis says… Read more

https://www.ft.com/content/d65736da-684e-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3

EEAS SPECIAL REPORT: Disinformation on the CORONAVIRUS – Sort Assessment of the information environment

The Coronavirus Disinformation System: How It Works

The Coronavirus Disinformation System: How It Works
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/eeas-special-report-disinformation-on-the-coronavirus-short-assessment-of-the-information-environment/

Fighting disinformation fighting facts from fiction

https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/health/coronavirus-response/fighting-disinformation_en

Stemming the Tide of Global Disinformation

Council on Foreign Relations

Panellists discuss the extent of disinformation, its impact on democracy, and what can be done to prevent, mitigate, and stop its spread.

Although the panellists discuss threats against American democracy it is important to stress all democratic nations continue to be bombarded with disinformation from state and non-state players and disinformation is a serious global issue.

Speakers

Paul M. Barrett

Deputy Director, Center for Business and Human Rights, NYU Stern School of Business; Adjunct Professor of Law, NYU School of Law

Amanda Bennett

Director, Voice of America

Richard Stengel

Former Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State; Author, Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation, and What We Can Do About It.

Presider

Nicholas Thompson, Editor in Chief, Wired Magazine

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) promotes itself as:  “an independent, nonpartisan membership organisation, think tank, and publisher.”