When a joint investigation by The Sunday Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism is headlined “Fake News and False Flags” you know that something is so rotten in the state of Denmark (or the District of Criminals) that the stench can no longer be ignored.

Long story short:

“The Pentagon gave a controversial UK PR firm over half a billion dollars to run a top secret propaganda programme in Iraq, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal. Bell Pottinger’s output included short TV segments made in the style of Arabic news networks and fake insurgent videos which could be used to track the people who watched them, according to a former employee.”

So does all of this sound hauntingly familiar to you? It should. Every single feature of this story has happened before. Multiple times. Let’s go through the checklist.

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