Spanish cops snatch suspected top spammer as US moves against Kelihos botnet Police in Barcelona have arrested a man suspected of being one of the web's top spammers and the possible operator of a major botnet. Pyotr Levashov, 36, was arrested on Friday by Spanish police in a joint operation with the FBI. The local authorities told the AP that the arrest was part of an investigation into the Kelihos …
> Yeah and the BBC is a paragon of virtue and unbiased reporting!
Exactly. In every case their primary function is promoting their "values" and pushing their respective agendas, which is of course a valid and more or less useful endeavour, provided it is done within certain limits of respect for journalistic standards and respect of basic moral values.
Calling Russia Today a "propaganda" station is of course accurate, insofar as they aim to present a certain point of view to an international public (otherwise they wouldn't bother broadcasting in English, Spanish, etc.); but that is precisely what the BBC World Service also does (otherwise they wouldn't bother broadcasting in Russian, Spanish, etc.), yet because of in-group bias one does not tend to refer to the latter as a "propaganda" station.
Incidentally, where I had the opportunity of experiencing events first-hand, the BBC have shown themselves to be utterly unreliable--not because of any ideological bias (there is that too) but because of elementary factual errors, such as reporting an attack on the *wrong city*; shouting down *their own journalist* when he pointed out facts that did not fit with the line they wanted to push; ignoring actual industry experts in favour of media "experts" (media whores who are all too happy to spout sensationalist rubbish in front of camera, with little or no knowledge or experience to their credit); and of course running reports from their "partners" without even cursory checking: On this one I will give one specific example: the Madrid protests in front of the ruling Popular Party headquarters in 2004, when following a series of bombings on commuter trains, the government insisted on putting the blame on ETA, against all logic and against direct statements by both ETA and the Spanish police forces. Only TVE, the Spanish national broadcaster and the BBC were still parroting the government line that the Basques were responsible and keeping mum on the massive protests in the centre of Madrid. It's not like we didn't already have internet back then and anyone with a passing interest could not see exactly what was going on.
"...prepared to offer military aid to chemical weapons using dictators"
Do you mean the USA assisting Erdogan? I was just thinking back to May 2013, when Turkish police seized 2.2 Kg of sarin gas that was being smuggled from Turkey to Syria. Turkish intelligence agents attempted to intervene and the journalists who reported the events were arrested.
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