Did the FBI Swing the 2020 Election?
By James Bovard | Future of Freedom | July 2022
Joe Biden won the 2020 election as a result of 43,000 votes in three states. The election was far closer than the media has usually admitted. There were plenty of dubious factors that could have tipped the scales for a Biden victory, including machinations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The long history of FBI abuse
Though the media usually portray the FBI as the ultimate good guys, the bureau has long history of intervening in presidential elections. Shortly after taking office after Franklin Roosevelt’s death, President Harry Truman commented in his diary: “We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail… This must stop.” But FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover outfoxed Truman and every subsequent president.
In the 1948 presidential campaign, Hoover brazenly championed Republican candidate Thomas Dewey, leaking allegations that Truman was part of a corrupt Kansas City political machine. In 1952, Hoover sought to undermine Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson by spreading rumors that he was a closet homosexual.
In 1964, the FBI illegally wiretapped Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’s presidential headquarters and plane and conducted background checks on his campaign staff for evidence of homosexual activity. The FBI also conducted an extensive surveillance operation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention to prevent embarrassing challenges to President Lyndon Johnson.
In 2016, the FBI whitewashed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, protecting her despite her various crimes regarding handling of classified information and destruction of emails and other evidence from her time as secretary of state. An Inspector General report revealed in 2018 that the key FBI agents in the investigations were raving partisans. “We’ll stop” Donald Trump from becoming president, lead FBI investigator Peter Strzok texted his mistress/girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, in August 2016. One FBI agent labeled Trump supporters as “retarded” and declared “I’m with her” [Hillary Clinton]. Another FBI employee texted that “Trump’s supporters are all poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS.” The FBI failed to make any audio or video recordings of its interviews with Clinton aides and staffers. It also delayed speaking to Clinton until the end of the investigation and planned to absolve her “absent a confession from Clinton,” the Inspector General noted.
The FBI failed to stop Trump from winning in 2016, but FBI officials devoted themselves to crippling his presidency with fabricated evidence implying that Russia had illicitly intervened in the presidential election. One top FBI lawyer was convicted for falsifying evidence to secure a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to target Trump campaign officials. FBI chief James Comey leaked official memos to friendly reporters, thereby spurring the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Trump. Mueller’s investigation generated endless allegations and controversies and helped Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in 2018 prior to admitting in 2019 that there was no such Russian conspiracy. Not one FBI official has spent a single day in jail for the abuses.
The ongoing Hunter Biden laptop scandal
In December 2019, FBI agents came into possession of a laptop that Hunter Biden had abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. That laptop was a treasure trove of crimes, including evidence that Hunter and other Bidens had collected millions in payments from foreign sources for providing access in Washington and other favors. That laptop provided ample documentation that Joe Biden could be compromised by foreign powers.
When news finally leaked out about the laptop in October 2020, 50 former intelligence officials effectively torpedoed the story by claiming that the laptop was a Russian disinformation ploy. The FBI knew that the laptop was bona fide but said nothing to undercut the falsehoods by the former spooks. The Justice Department commenced an investigation of Hunter Biden in 2019, but Attorney General William Barr made sure that information did not surface publicly before the 2020 election. (The investigation is ongoing.)
The FBI has continued its pro-Democrat campaigns
The FBI’s most brazen intervention in the 2020 election consisted of fabricating a ludicrous plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, one of Biden’s favorite governors. Michigan was a swing state in the election. Whitmer enraged many Michiganders by placing the entire state under house arrest after the outbreak of COVID-19. Anyone who left their home to visit family or friends risked a $1,000 fine, and business owners faced three years in prison for refusing to close their stores. Unemployment soared to 24 percent statewide, but Whitmer’s policies failed to prevent more than 2 million Michiganers from contracting COVID.
The FBI exploited the anger against Whitmer to try to add some scalps to their collection. A few weeks before the 2020 election, the FBI announced the arrests of individuals who had been lured by FBI informants and undercover agents to talk about capturing Whitmer and putting her on trial. After the arrests were announced, Whitmer speedily denounced Trump for inciting “domestic terrorism” and declared, “When our leaders meet with, encourage, and or fraternize with domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions. They are complicit.”
Joe Biden claimed that the arrests showed President Trump’s “tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one.” Former FBI official Frank Figluzzi told MSNBC that Trump should be investigated for “aiding and abetting” the Michigan plot. Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe announced on CNN: “The person most responsible for fomenting this kind of unrest, this sort of division, this sort of violence in this country right now is the president of the United States.” Law professor Jonathan Turley noted:
The media went into a frenzy, declaring that the case proved that: ‘Trump’s rhetoric and policies have unleashed a second pandemic in the form of far-right domestic terrorism.’ The breathless accounts of this plot by three ‘Boogaloo’ militiamen fit like a glove with the narrative just before the election.
There was plenty of reason to doubt the plot from the start. As I noted in an American Institute for Economic Research article on the day after the arrests were announced, “The alleged Michigan plot is almost too idiotic to believe.”
A Michigan jury in April effectively concluded that the plotters had been entrapped in an FBI-fabricated plot. There were as many FBI informants and undercover agents involved in the plot as private citizens. From the start, the FBI steered the participants into saying and doing things that would supposedly seal their legal doom. Stephen Robeson, an FBI informant with a list of felonies and other crimes, organized key events to build the movement. Dan Chapel, another FBI informant who was paid $54,000, became second-in-command and masterminded the military training for the group, even as he helped the feds wiretap their messages.
FBI operatives took the participants, who prattled idiotically about stealing a Blackhawk helicopter, for drives near Whitmer’s vacation home, which supposedly proved they were going to nab the governor and unleash havoc. Shortly before that excursion, an FBI agent texted instructions to Chapel: “Mission is to kill the governor specifically.”
The conspiracy began unraveling even before the trial began in March. Robert Trask, the lead FBI agent and “the public face” of the kidnapping case, was fired after he was arrested for “beating his wife during an argument over an orgy that the two had attended at a hotel in Kalamazoo, Mich.,” the New York Times reported. Two other key FBI agents were sidelined from the case for misconduct (including creating a side hustle with their own cybersecurity firm).
Thanks to Supreme Court rulings minimizing entrapment defenses, federal Judge Robert Jonker blocked defense attorneys from informing the jury of almost all the evidence of federal misconduct in the Whitmer case.
As BuzzFeed’s Ken Bensinger reported, the jury refused to convict “despite the government’s extraordinary efforts to muzzle the defense… Prosecutors went to extraordinary lengths to exclude evidence and witnesses that might undermine their arguments, while winning the right to bring in almost anything favorable to their own side.” BuzzFeed also noted that the judge “ruled that defendants could not inquire about the past conduct of several FBI agents, though the government would be allowed to question the defendants about episodes in their own past.”
The jury saw enough to smell a federal rat. As Turley wrote:
The Whitmer conspiracy was a production written, funded, and largely populated by FBI agents and informants. At every point, FBI literally drove the conspirators and controlled their actions. That is worthy of investigation by Congress, but neither house seems even marginally interested.
The Michigan jury verdict spurred plenty of howls by the friends of Leviathan. Former Justice Department lawyer Barbara McQuade lamented, “This verdict concerns me because it could embolden other anti-government extremists to engage in dangerous conduct in the name of vigilante justice. In a time when we see a growing number of threats of violence against public officials, it is important to hold such conduct accountable.” But the establishment media has perennially disregarded holding government officials accountable for violating Americans’ rights.
The ongoing FBI threat to liberty
Shortly before the Michigan trial began, the New York Times noted that it was “being closely watched as one of the most significant recent domestic terrorism cases, a test of Washington’s commitment in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to pursue far-right groups who seek to kindle a violent, anti-government insurgency or even a new civil war.” FBI chief Christopher Wray told Congress last year that the FBI has 2,000 ongoing domestic terrorism investigations. How many additional crimes or conspiracies is the FBI fomenting at this moment? Will Americans ever learn what role, if any, the FBI had in goading some of those arrested in the Jan. 6 Capitol clash into committing a crime? And what about Team Biden’s efforts to continually expand the definition of “dangerous extremist” to sanctify its power? Last June, the Biden administration revealed that guys who can’t get laid may be terrorist threats due to “involuntary celibate–violent extremism.” No wonder the terrorist watch list is expanding at breakneck pace.
The Founding Fathers wisely did not create a national police force, but federal law-enforcement agencies have multiplied like mushrooms. Almost 100 years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union warned that the FBI had become “a secret police system of a political character.” Neither Congress nor federal courts have since effectively reined in the most powerful domestic federal agency. What mischief will the FBI commit to influence future elections? And what are the odds that Americans will know about it before the polling booths close?
Coincidence or Conspiracy: What Are the Odds?
You do the math
BY KEVIN BARRETT • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 4, 2022
A man takes out a lavish, grossly excessive insurance policy on his wife. The next day she keels over dead. Which hypothesis should guide the detective assigned to the case? (A) It’s probably just a coincidence, no need to investigate. (B) There’s a significant probability of foul play, so the husband should be considered a suspect, at least until a thorough investigation definitively clears him.
Intuitively, most of us know that the correct answer is “B.” We don’t need probability theory to tell us that, any more than we need Einstein to tell us that Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.
But wait! Here comes a mathematically-inclined professional debunker, who explains: “Actually, more than ten million life insurance policies are taken out every year, with the insured person averaging 19.2 years of life expectancy after the initial policy purchase, so 500,000 annually-insured people die each year which means more than 1300 annually-insured people die each day. The insured wife in your example could easily have been one of those 1300 people who just happened to die on that particular day, which just happened to be the day after the husband bought the policy. So it must have been a coincidence. No need to investigate.”
Wikipedia, The New York Times, Snopes, DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board, and assorted fact-checkers all agree. Social media labels people who suspect the husband of murder and insurance fraud “conspiracy theorists” and disables the accounts of those who voice their suspicions.
And then it gets worse. The husband uses part of his gargantuan insurance settlement (with additional help from unknown but very wealthy parties) to sue selected alternative media outlets for libel. He says the alternative media has tormented him by reporting on the people who want him investigated for murder and insurance fraud. He says his feelings have been hurt and he has had to move and change his phone number and seek psychological counseling. He says the “conspiracy theorists” are tormenting him by being so disrespectful of the dead (his wife) and the grieving survivor (himself).
A reasonable judge and/or jury might rule:
“We’re terribly sorry, Mr. Innocent Widower, but even assuming that you really are innocent, it was and remains entirely reasonable for alternative media outlets to voice their suspicions based on the undeniable fact that you bought a grossly excessive insurance policy on your wife the day before she keeled over dead.”
But what if Mr. Innocent Widower could produce an expert witness: a mathematician who swears on a stack of Principia Mathematicas that probability theory proves the odds are over 95% that Mr. Widower is innocent, and the timing of the insurance purchase was just a coincidence? In the absence of expert testimony to the contrary, and with the entire mainstream media supporting poor bullied Mr. Widower, the judge and jury might jettison common sense and say: “Jeepers, that pretty much proves the guy’s innocent! Those conspiracy theorists sure are a stupid, nasty bunch of reality deniers! Why won’t they just ‘trust the science’?”
The above example is, of course, fictitious and hypothetical. But its resemblance to actual events is more than coincidental.
Take Richard Gutjahr—please! Gutjahr has a way of popping up in the strangest places. As I wrote in 2018:
Remember the amazing “terror journalist” Richard Gutjahr? The man with the uncanny ability to show up, pre-positioned, to take iconic footage of “Islamic terror” attacks?
Gutjahr, married to Israeli black ops specialist Einat Wilf, just happened to be on a balcony in Nice, France to film the beginning of the “truck attack.” His footage was essentially the ONLY footage of the event ever seen by the world.
Then one week later, Gutjahr and his daughter both just happened to be at the shopping mall in Munich where the next big “Islamic terror” event burst into the headlines. Once again, the MSM led with Gutjahr’s (and his daughter’s) footage.
It takes chutzpah to pre-position yourself to get the lead footage of two “terror attacks” one week, and 800 km, apart. But it takes even more chutzpah to sue journalists who report your apparent foreknowledge.
Gutjahr, apparently not lacking in chutzpah, sued German journalist Gerhard Wisnewski for reporting the highly suspicious facts. But even in Zionist-owned-and-operated Germany, such chutzpah was too much for the courts to stomach. Below is Wisnewski’s report on his legal victory over the hapless Gutjahr, a more obvious terror suspect than Bin Laden ever was, who obviously needs to be arrested and interrogated. Anybody out there who can rendition him?
I stand by my 2018 statement that Gutjahr is an obvious terror suspect. But he’s just a suspect. He could be innocent. It could be just a coincidence that he happened to be perfectly positioned to film the most-used media footage of two spectacular, ultra-media-hyped “Islamist terror attacks,” in two different nations, in the same week…and that he also just happens to be married to an Israeli intelligence officer. But… what are the odds?!
Now here is where it really gets weird. Gutjahr has just “shown up” at another “suspicious location”: A seemingly well-financed website called Rootclaim that pretends to have developed an app for determining the odds that any given “conspiracy theory” is true:
Rootclaim was developed by one of Gutjahr’s in-laws, a certain Saar Wilf, who is presumably related to Gutjahr’s wife Einat. (These people know how to keep it in the family!) Saar and Einat Wilf not only share a last name, but have co-authored an article on COVID. Of course that might be mere coincidence; they could be completely unrelated. But…what are the odds?
Rootclaim seems reasonably open to non-mainstream perspectives… at least on issues where the Wilf-Gutjahr family doesn’t have skin in the game. It tells us there is an 86% chance that Putin does not have cancer, a 96% chance that the anti-Assad US-NATO backed forces (not Assad) attacked al-Ghouta with chemical weapons, and an 86% chance that COVID-19 “was developed during gain-of-function research and was released by accident.”
That’s all well-and-good. But again: What are the odds that Richard Gutjahr, or any TV host for that matter, would just happen to be the unique person in position to shoot the first and most-used footage of two successive major terror attacks? For some strange reason, Rootclaim hasn’t run those calculations.
When we estimate the odds of such things, we need to consider background information. For example: How relevant is the fact, attested to by Wikipedia, that Richard Gutjahr is married to a former Israeli intelligence officer?
Wikipedia tells us that Gutjahr’s “coincidental presence at events gave rise to conspiracy theories, alleging his presence at both events could not have been a coincidence. Gutjahr has pressed charges against those who make the allegations,[21][22] which he sees mostly motivated by antisemitism against his wife considering the often antisemitic nature of the hostilities.” (Funny how Wikipedia tells us that Gutjahr “pressed charges” against journalists like Gerhard Wisnewski but fails to mention the outcome: Gutjahr suffered a crushing defeat in court.)
And then…bring on the obligatory charges of anti-Semitism! Whoever is editing Wikipedia apparently thinks it is “anti-Semitic” to notice that Israel is the only nation that has benefited from the “war on terror,” an episode of international mass hysteria elicited by a string of alleged “Islamic terror attacks” in which the Israeli government in general, and its intelligence community in particular, is the leading suspect.
Was it just a coincidence that the people who happened to be pre-positioned near the New Jersey waterfront at the perfect spot to film the attack on the Twin Towers, and who filmed and wildly celebrated the attacks before being arrested, were Israeli spies who later confessed they had been sent there “to document the event”?
Was it just a coincidence that the mysterious “Janek” who was pre-positioned on a rooftop to film the iconic footage of “the Charlie Hebdo terrorists’ escape” turned out to be an Israeli agent? As Hicham Hamza wrote:
At the origin of this (iconic Charlie Hebdo) video – filmed, oddly enough, without apparent fear of being hit by a stray bullet – in which one of the Charlie Hebdo attackers (who would soon flee in the direction of a Parisian establishment used by the Israeli army) declaims, with his left index finger pointed towards the sky, that he had “avenged the Prophet” – is a mysterious anonymous Pole, blurred by the television media, who vanishes without a trace – having been employed by a long-standing family enterprise of Laurent Dassault, ultra-Zionist multimillionaire connected to the military and radical wing of the Tel Aviv regime.
There is a mass of evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, that implicates Israel in 9/11, the 7/7/2005 London bombings, the Paris attacks of January and November 2015, and indeed most of the highest-profile GWOT terror incidents attributed to “Islamic extremists.” So Richard Gutjahr’s being married to an Israeli intelligence officer, and then magically showing up to film the beginnings of two successive terror attacks, does seem a tad suspicious. And his presence at a website selling an app that claims to mathematically arbitrate between mainstream and non-mainstream narratives seems not just suspicious, but bizarre… if not downright absurd. If noticing such things makes you “anti-Semitic,” then the alternative to “anti-Semitism” is sheer unmitigated idiocy.
Is mainstream media idiotic… or complicit? What are the odds?
NATO-backed network of Syria dirty war propagandists identified
Defaming journalism on the OPCW’s Syria cover-up scandal, The Guardian and its NATO-funded sources out themselves as the real “network of conspiracy theorists.”
By Aaron Maté | August 1, 2022
On June 10th, The Guardian’s Mark Townsend published an article headlined “Russia-backed network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified.” (“Russia-backed” has since been removed).
The article is based on what Townsend calls a “new analysis” that “reveals” a “network more than two dozen conspiracy theorists, frequently backed by a coordinated Russian campaign.” This network, Townsend claims, is “focused on the denial or distortion of facts about the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons and on attacking the findings of the world’s foremost chemical weapons watchdog,” the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). According to Townsend, I am named “as the most prolific spreader of disinformation” among the nefarious bunch.
In hawking this purported exposé of “disinformation”, Townsend violated every basic standard of journalism. He did not contact me before publishing his allegations; fails to offer a shred of evidence for them; and does not cite a single example of my alleged “prolific” disinformation. Instead, Townsend bases his claims entirely on a think-tank report that also provides no evidence, nor even assert that I have said anything false. In the process, Townsend failed to disclose that the report’s authors — the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the Syria Campaign — are groups funded by the US government and other belligerents in the Syria proxy war. To top it off, Townsend fabricates additional allegations that his state-funded sources do not even make.
As a result, Townsend and the Guardian have engaged in the exact sort of conduct that they falsely impute to me and others: spreading Syria-related disinformation with coordinated support from state-funded actors. The aim of this propaganda network is transparent: defaming journalism that exposes the OPCW’s ongoing Syria cover-up scandal and the dirty war waged by Western powers on Syria.
The OPCW cover-up is arguably the most copiously documented pro-war deception since the US-led drive to invade Iraq. In Western media, as The Guardian’s behavior newly demonstrates, it is also without question the most suppressed.
At the center of the story are two veteran OPCW scientists, Dr. Brendan Whelan and Ian Henderson. The pair were among a team that deployed to Syria in April 2018 to investigate an alleged chemical attack in the town of Douma. They have since accused senior OPCW officials of manipulating the Douma probe to reach a conclusion that baselessly implicated the Syrian government in a chlorine gas attack. Their claims are backed up by a trove of leaked documents and emails that show extensive doctoring and censoring of the Douma team’s findings.
The Douma cover-up extends far beyond the OPCW’s executive suite. It also implicates NATO governments led by the US, which bombed Syria over the Douma chemical weapons allegation, and then, weeks later, privately pressured the OPCW to validate it. Since the OPCW scandal became public, the US and its allies have thwarted efforts to address it.
At the most criminal level, the scandal implicates sectarian death squads armed and funded by the US and allies during their decade-long campaign for regime change in Syria.
At the time of the incident, Douma was occupied by the Saudi-backed jihadi militia Jaysh-al-Islam and under bombardment from Syrian army forces attempting to retake control. Shortly before their surrender, local allies of Jaysh-al-Islam accused Syrian forces of using chemical weapons. They released gruesome footage of an apartment building filled with slain civilians. A gas cylinder was filmed positioned above a crater on the roof. Concurrently, the White Helmets, a NATO and Gulf state-funded, insurgent-adjacent organization, released footage of what it claimed were gas attack victims in a Douma field hospital. Several journalists, including Riam Dalati of the BBC, Robert Fisk of the Independent, and James Harkin of the Intercept, found evidence that the hospital scene was staged. (In February 2019, Dalati claimed that he can “prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged.” Oddly, more than three years later, he has not released his findings).
The White Helmets’ alleged fakery of a chemical attack aftermath, coupled with the censored OPCW findings showing no evidence that a chemical attack occurred, suggest the inescapable conclusion that insurgents in Douma carried out a deception to frame the Syrian government. And given the unexplained deaths of the more than 40 victims filmed in the Douma apartment building, that deception may have entailed a murderous war crime.
Unlike the Iraq WMD hoax, the very existence of the OPCW’s Douma scandal is unknown to much of the Western world. With few exceptions, establishment media outlets have refused to acknowledge the OPCW whistleblowers and the leaks that brought their story to light.
After largely ignoring the OPCW cover-up since it first surfaced in May 2019, the Guardian has now published defamatory claims about journalists, myself included, who have dared to report on the censored facts.
When I wrote The Guardian about the Townsend article’s journalistic lapses, I did not get a response. One week later, I phoned Townsend, who was now back in the office but had yet to reply. In our conservation, which I recorded and recently published, I repeatedly asked Townsend to substantiate his claims about me and identify even a single example of my alleged disinformation.
Townsend did not attempt to defend his article’s assertions, beyond claiming that they were based on what was “in a report.” When I pressed further, he claimed that he had to “dash for a meeting” and promised that I would soon hear from the paper’s reader’s editor. (Before I published our phone call, and this article, I emailed Townsend a detailed list of questions and invited him to offer any additional comment. He did not respond).
“Deadly Disinformation”
Townsend could not provide any evidence for his assertions because the report that he parroted offers none as well.
The report, titled “Deadly Disinformation” and authored by The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the Syria Campaign, contains bare references to my reporting and makes no effort to refute it. Nowhere does the report even claim that I have said anything false. It simply claims to have “identified 28 individuals, outlets and organisations who have spread disinformation about the Syrian conflict,” and that I am “the most prolific spreader of disinformation” among them.
When the report bothers to mention of anything that I have actually said, it engages in distortion. In its first mention, the report states that I wrote an article that “attacks Bellingcat for its contributions to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).” Here, they not only fail to assert that I said anything false, but offer a false portrayal of what happened.
As for “attacking” Bellingcat — a website that, like the report’s authors, is funded by NATO states that were belligerents in the Syria dirty war – what I really did was expose its disinformation.
In this case, Bellingcat fraudulently attacked Whelan (the key OPCW whistleblower), along with several journalists (myself included) by falsely accusing us of concealing an OPCW letter that, I quickly revealed, did not in fact exist. Bellingcat was forced to add a correction, delete embarrassing tweets, and apologize to one of the article’s targets, the journalist Peter Hitchens (who resides in the UK, home to strict libel laws). I later exposed that Bellingcat copied a hidden, external author for some of their false material.
In short, the ISD/Syria Campaign’s first purported example of my alleged “disinformation” is an easily verifiable case where I’ve exposed state-backed lies.
The report’s only other substantive example comes when it notes that I have argued that the OPCW probe’s Douma probe “was flawed.” This far understates my case: the OPCW’s Douma investigation wasn’t “flawed”; it’s a scandalous cover-up worthy of global attention. Regardless, yet again, the report does not even assert that my argument is false, let alone try to explain why.
In a July 13th email, I asked the ISD to substantiate their claim that I have spread disinformation, and provide even one example of it. On its website, the ISD claims to “take complaints seriously,” and promises a response “within ten working days.” As of this writing, after 13 working days, I have not heard back.
At The Guardian, OPCW leaks are “problematic”
When I emailed a complaint about Townsend’s reporting, The Guardian admitted fault only on failing to contact me before publishing his evidence-free allegations. This was the result, they claimed, of a “breakdown of communication internally.” I was then offered the chance to respond to the article in 200 words.
A key point in my reply (which can be read here) was that The Guardian and its state-funded source is unable to identify any falsehoods in anything I’ve written “because my reporting on the OPCW’s Douma cover-up scandal is based on damning OPCW leaks.” These leaks, I added, “reveal that veteran inspectors found no evidence of a chemical attack in Douma, and that expert toxicologists ruled out chlorine gas as the victims’ cause of death. But these findings were doctored and censored by senior OPCW officials.”
At The Guardian, this passage set off an apparent alarm. After disparaging my reporting on the OPCW leaks, The Guardian informed me that they would now prevent me from even mentioning them. In a July 8 email, a Guardian editor wrote that the “the part about the OPCW” in my reply “continues to be problematic.” My reference to the OPCW leaks, the editor claimed, “makes an assertion that has been rebutted by an independent inquiry.”
I responded by asking the editor to specify exactly which “assertion” of mine has been rebutted. I also proposed that, if they believe that I have said anything “problematic,” they publish their own rebuttal.
In multiple follow-up emails, the editor failed to identify any “rebutted” assertion of mine. Despite that, the Guardian proceeded to publish my reply without its reference to the OPCW leaks. But this raised a new problem: in censoring my statement, they misquoted me. When I pointed out that error, they updated my reply to finally allow a (minimal) mention of the OPCW leaks.
The Guardian also took me up on my proposal that they publish their own rebuttal:
Editor’s note: Both the ISD and the Syria Campaign list a diverse range of funders and describe themselves as “fiercely independent”. In 2020 the OPCW rebutted claims about its investigation into the Douma incident (Inquiry strikes blow to Russian denials of Syria chemical attack).
As for the “inquiry” that The Guardian claims “rebutted claims about its investigation into the Douma incident,” the inquiry was not independent, and did not rebut anything.
The “inquiry” was appointed by the OPCW’s Director General’s office, the very body that presided over the cover-up. It was also staffed by two “investigators” from the US and UK. These happen to be the two states that bombed Syria based on the Douma allegations that the OPCW fraudulently validated, and that have since tried to bury the scandal at every stage.
Accordingly, the OPCW “inquiry” avoided the allegations of censorship in the Douma probe and instead disingenuously minimized the whistleblowers’ role. The whistleblowers themselves have rebutted the inquiry’s claims about them, as have I in subsequent reporting.
A network of NATO disinformation
As for what the Guardian calls the ISD and Syria Campaign’s “diverse range of funders,” both groups indeed enjoy a diverse range of funders: everyone from NATO governments to NATO government-funded organizations. They also receive support from billionaire-funded foundations that often work in concert with these same NATO governments’ foreign policy objectives.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s “diverse range of funders,” according to The Guardian.
The ISD’s “diverse” funders include the US State Department, the US Department of Homeland Security, three other US state-funded organizations, and more than two dozen other NATO government agencies. On the private side, the ISD’s funders include the foundations of three of the world’s richest oligarchs: Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Group, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In using the ISD as a source, The Guardian has a conflict of interest that its article did not disclose. The latter two ISD donors have also given sizeable grants to The Guardian: at least $625,000 from Open Society Foundations since 2019, and at least $12.9 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation since 2011.
Omidyar’s foundation has a direct role in the ISD/Syria Campaign report. The Omidyar Group’s Luminate Strategic Initiatives is listed alongside the German government-funded Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung foundation as the report’s fiscal sponsor.
Omidyar’s sponsorship of an attack on journalism about the OPCW scandal is highly fitting. The Intercept, the self-described “fearless and adversarial” outlet that Omidyar also funds with his vast fortune, has never once acknowledged the OPCW leaks or whistleblowers’ existence. While ignoring the OPCW scandal for more than three years, The Intercept has published multiple articles promoting the allegation that Syria committed a chemical attack in Douma.
Like the ISD, the Syria Campaign is also funded by governments and other belligerents in the Syria dirty war. As The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal reported in 2017, the Syria Campaign was founded by Ayman Asfari, a Syrian-British billionaire oil tycoon and leading financial supporter of the Syrian National Coalition, the largest government-in-exile group established after the Syria conflict erupted in 2011. The Syria Campaign has also done extensive P.R. and fundraising for the White Helmets, the insurgent-adjacent, NATO state-funded organization implicated in the Douma incident.
That these two state-funded groups “describe themselves as ‘fiercely independent'” is apparently enough for The Guardian. I trust that the Guardian would feel differently if they were dealing with self-described “fiercely independent” groups funded by the Russian and Syrian governments.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of sources quoted in the ISD/Syria Campaign report are funded or employed by the same NATO state and private sponsors. This includes the White Helmets; the Global Public Policy Institute; Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS); self-described journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou of the BBC, who produced a podcast series that disparaged the OPCW whistleblowers and whitewashed the Douma cover-up; and James Jeffrey, the former US Special Envoy for Syria.
For a report that claims to be concerned with protecting Syrians from “real-world harm,” Jeffrey is a particularly interesting interview subject. Few US officials have been as candid about their willingness to immiserate Syrian civilians in pursuit of hegemonic US goals in their country.
Jeffrey has declared that al-Qaeda is a US “asset” in Syria, and has admitted to misleading the Trump White House to undermine an effort to withdraw the US military, whose illegal occupation deliberately deprives Syria of its own wheat and fuel. Jeffrey has openly bragged about his “effective strategy” to ensure “no reconstruction assistance” in Syria — even though the war-ravaged country is “desperate for it.” And he has also taken credit for helping to impose crippling US sanctions on Syria that have “crushed the country’s economy.”
Jeffrey’s proudly self-acknowledged real-world harms on millions of Syrians don’t seem to bother the study’s authors, presumably because their Western state sponsors implement them.
The report is so invested in its state funders’ aims in Syria that it approvingly airs frustration that other governments are failing to toe the NATO line. A “former Western diplomat” complains that “disinformation” on Syria is helping states “avoid making the decisions that we want them to make, say in the Security Council or elsewhere.” (emphasis added). From the point of view of Western officials, the anonymous diplomat is employing an accurate operative definition of what constitutes “disinformation”: any information that causes those deemed subordinate to “avoid making the decisions that we want them to make.”
Fittingly, another anonymous “senior diplomat” laments that supposed Syria disinformation is intended “ultimately to cast doubt upon the legitimacy and integrity of the people doing this kind of [policy] work.” Daring to question the “legitimacy and integrity” of Western policymakers who oversaw a multi-billion dollar CIA-led dirty war on Syria that knowingly empowered al-Qaeda and other sectarian death squads while leaving hundreds of thousands dead — another intolerable act that can only result from “disinformation.”
A member of the US-funded, insurgent-adjacent White Helmets is also given space to lament that alleged “disinformation” is hurting its donations. “We hear about billions of dollars for aid at conferences on Syria but most of that funding goes to the UN,” a White Helmets manager complains. Unmentioned is that European governments have cut funding to the group after their late founder, the lavishly paid UK military veteran James le Mesurier, admitted to pocketing donor funds and financial fraud right before he took his own life.
Having promoted the hegemonic agenda of its state sponsors, the report closes with a thinly veiled call to censor the dissenting voices it targets.
The ISD and Syria Campaign urge policymakers to “adopt a whole-of-government approach in tackling disinformation” and “ensure that loopholes or special privileges are not created for ‘media’ which would only exacerbate the spread of disinformation.” These “privileges” presumably refer to free speech. The report also notes favorably that platforms have addressed “thematic harms such as public health disinformation or foreign interference in elections.” As a result, the report calls on these platforms to “commit to applying similar levels of resourcing… in the context of the ongoing Syrian conflict.” Perhaps they have in mind the censorship of journalism about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election, on the fake grounds that the story was “Russian disinformation.”
The fact that this network of state-funded actors is devoting energy to disparaging journalism about the OPCW’s Syria cover-up — and even advocating that it be censored – reflects their powerful sponsors’ desperation to bury a damning scandal.
In public, OPCW Director General Fernando Arias has provided misleading and outright false answers about the Douma probe, including why he refuses to meet with the dissenting inspectors and the rest of the original investigative team.
On top of the two known whistleblowers, Arias has ignored calls for accountability from his original predecessor, founding OPCW chief Jose Bustani, as well as four other former senior OPCW officials. Along with Bustani, former senior UN official Hans von Sponeck has spearheaded the Berlin Group 21, a global initiative to address the OPCW scandal. The US has responded to Bustani by blocking his testimony at the United Nations. Arias meanwhile refused to open a letter that he received from Sponeck’s group, returning it back to sender.
The response of Western media outlets like the Guardian to the stonewalling of these veteran diplomats and senior OPCW officials has simply been to ignore it.
In whitewashing the OPCW cover-up, the preponderance of state sources parroted by The Guardian reveals the ultimate irony in its allegations. While claiming to “identify” a fictional network of Russia-backed disinformation actors about Syria, The Guardian’s Townsend is himself spreading the disinformation of a NATO-funded network that defames voices who expose the dirty war on Syria.
In fact, one of Townsend’s central allegations goes well beyond his state-funded sources. Although Townsend’s article is premised on identifying a “network of conspiracy theorists,” Townsend’s sole source – the ISD/Syria Campaign report – never alleges that such a “network” exists. Nowhere in the report does the word “network” even appear.
Thus, Townsend has not only parroted state-funded sources, but concocted an additional allegation in the service of their narrative. This is not just an ordinary fabrication: in creating the fantasy of a “coordinated”, “Russia-backed”, “network of conspiracy theorists,” Townsend also reveals himself to be the very thing that he accuses his targets of being: a conspiracy theorist.
And given that Townsend not only parrots his state-backed sources but works for an outlet funded by some of the same sponsors, it is fair to say that The Guardian and these state-funded think tanks are a part of the same network.
Consequently, reading the article’s headline — “Network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified”—as a description of The Guardian and the NATO-funded sources that it relied on, the claim is no longer inaccurate.
The Old Dogs Need Some New Tricks
By Eamon McKinney | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 1, 2022
The Globalists’ agenda has progressed steadily over the years, it’s evil intent has brought us to the lamentable condition that the world finds itself in today. It is no exaggeration to say that the Cabal are attempting to implement a mass extinction event upon humanity. Bill gates and the rest of the NWO Davos crowd have been enthusiastically talking up the need for “De-population” for years. There are according to them, too many “useless eaters”. The genocidal Covid atrocity that was imposed on the world more than two years ago served that agenda, to a point. The full extent of the fatalities from what was a criminal live human trial are as yet unknown, it may be years before the long term effects are fully understood. Yet, the obvious fact that the wave of deaths and injuries apparently confounding the Mainstream media are concentrated exclusively among those that trusted their Governments and took, reluctantly or not, the experimental jab. Athletes and the young are dropping dead at alarming rates yet the MSM can find no correlation between that and the jab, is climate change the cause they wonder? The onslaught of propaganda that enabled the Covid lie was possible only with the complicity of the MSM. Using every tool of disinformation at their disposal they silenced any contrary opinion, even those coming from some of the World’s leading experts in the field. Dr. Robert Malone the inventor of the MRNA technology, Cary Mullis the creator of the PCR test, and many other esteemed scientists were silenced. And of course, the dissenters, the “anti-vaxxers” were ridiculed as “conspiracy theorists.” A term created by the CIA to discredit and marginalise those who questioned the assassination of J.F.K. nearly 60 years ago. Without gloating over the tragedy there is now some vindication, the group at the lowest risk from Covid? the “conspiracy theorists” who knew enough not the trust the pharmaceutical industry, their governments or the MSM.
The same MSM are equally complicit in all of the Western atrocities of recent years. 9/11, the Iraq war, Afghanistan, Syria and most recently the Ukraine crisis. The MSM, be they supposed liberal or conservative, have all served as enthusiastic cheerleaders for every conflict America and NATO have perpetrated. Without them enabling and promoting the agenda, implementing it would not have been possible. When the time for reckoning arrives, and it will, they will have much to answer for. If there is a “silver lining” among the horror of current events it is that this particular tool of population control is rapidly losing its ability to influence the people. So absurd and egregious has it become that few believe in it anymore. In America recent polls show that trust in TV news is in single figure percentage points, print media figures are marginally higher but still pitifully low. Similar statistics are to be found around the world. Throughout Covid most media channels were supported by government funding to adhere strictly to the Covid narrative, without government money most would already be rightfully out of business. With less and less people watching it and even less believing, this is no longer an effective means of control. This is understood, a major topic at the recent WEF meeting was the lack of trust shown in the globalists and the MSM, and they wonder why? Censoring the alternative, non corporate media seems to be the only thing they have left, “if they don’t believe the lie, we can at least block the truth”. Aided and abetted by Big Tech this has only partially worked, some truths are just too obvious to ignore and there has been a mass exodus away from the MSM as people are shunning it in record numbers.
The World changed forever after the events of 9/11. It was the casus belli to justify the fabricated war on terror and the invasion and destruction of ancient civilisations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. None of which had anything to do with terror threats, just more corporate wars to enrich a greedy minority of powerful men. And when the Western Governments spoke of ’weapons of mass destruction“, it was again the MSM who unquestioningly repeated the lies. But like the failing MSM, “false flags”, a long favoured tool to justify whatever atrocity is planned next are now well recognised. The Gulf of Tonkin was fabricated to justify the Vietnam war, the 7/7 bombings in London was Britain’s 9/11 to bring it line with the war on terror. But these false flags are also no longer effective. Attempts to frame Syria for a chemical weapons attack on its own people was quickly exposed as such. Many anticipate that another such event will be used in the Ukraine to reinvigorate the rapidly failing narrative there. Few will be fooled next time, but the MSM will doubtless unquestionably promote the narrative anyway.
“Colour revolutions” have been used to remove and replace non-compliant Governments for years. Usually backed by George Soros through his funding of NGOs such as the National Endowment of Democracy. It worked in the Ukraine in 2014 with the “Maidan” overthrow of the democratically elected Government. Which was then replaced with a Nazi-supported oligarchy. This is when the Ukraine conflict actually started, not 5 months ago as the MSM would have us believe. It worked in Libya to remove Gaddafi and block his plans for the gold-backed dinar for the African nations. Yet, they failed in China in 1989 with Tiananmen Square, and Hong Kong in 2020. They have failed in Syria to overthrow the Assad government, and most recently failed spectacularly in Kazakhstan due to swift and decisive action by the CSTO States led by Russia. We can hope that the reviled Soros lives long enough to witness the failure of his life’s work. If he has more tricks up his sleeve, now would be the time, because his old playbook is obsolete.
While the world slides towards a chaotic future the MSM remains wilfully oblivious to the suffering it has enabled. There has been little to no honest coverage of the global uprising of protesters demonstrating against the starvation agenda, the Great Reset, Covid, vaccine passports and rapidly increasing totalitarianism. Yet much enthusiasm for the prospect of a diet of bugs to save the environment. Britain’s BBC is a leading offender, no room for dissenting voices but always time for some disgruntled member of the LBGTB (whatever) community complaining about being mis-gendered or some other “woke” absurdity. Without any sense of shame the MSM are always keen to display their sickening “virtue signalling” so that may preserve their presumed monopoly on piety. Yet they appear to remain largely oblivious to the fact that for most distrust has turned to disgust and journalists are among the least admired professions. Rightfully so.
The tools of oppression have run their course, false flags, colour revolutions and the unprincipled charlatans that pretend to be journalists no longer further the Globalist cause effectively. If the latter think that somehow their complicity has bought them a place in whatever Utopian future the Globalist have planned for themselves, they are sadly mistaken. They were just pawns in the game and when they have outlived their usefulness, they will find themselves just “useless eaters” like the rest of us.
Force and violence are the only tools left to the Globalists to control an increasingly angry populace. It has been witnessed to widespread disgust in once assumed free countries like Australia and Canada, among others. Unnecessarily heavy-handed police tactics have been used to suppress otherwise peaceful protests. The use of provocateurs among the protestors to incite violence and discredit them have been recognised and called out by the demonstrators. George Orwell famously said, “if you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever” We have almost arrived at that future, a future where that is all they have to control the people, fear and violence. Yet this future is not set. All governments grant themselves a monopoly on force and violence, and they have the police and when required the military to enforce it. The hope is that the same police and military will realise that they and their families have also been poisoned by the enforced jabs, and that yes, they are just useless eaters too. We can hope that enough of them will decide that they are defending the indefensible and side with the people.
Is Pelosi’s Trip to Taiwan the ‘Pearl Harbour Moment’ Jake Sullivan Called for?
By Cynthia Chung | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 30, 2022
In October 2019, Jake Sullivan, who became U.S. National Security Advisor in 2021, stated in an interview that the U.S. needed a clear threat to rally the world and play the role of saviour of mankind and that China could be that organizing principle for U.S. foreign policy. In the 2019 interview, he acknowledges that the problem was that people were not going to believe that China is a global threat, that their view of China is too positive and that the United States would need a “Pearl Harbour moment,” a real focusing event to change their minds, something he calmly stated that “would scare the hell out of the American people.”
According to Sullivan, from the same man who called for Libyan and Syrian military interventionism, American exceptionalism needed “rescuing” and “reclaiming,” not of course with actual qualitative actions that would earn one’s position as a model of true democratic governance with American citizens and the world, but rather through ever aggressive PR and media shame-based social conditioning, labeling whoever points out the clear hypocrisy of these statements as “threats to national security.” Actors like Sullivan have shown that they are willing to do anything to achieve that “Pearl Harbour moment,” even if acts of terrorism on their own people are required in order to paint their “enemy” as a monster in the eyes of their citizens.
This is by no means a new strategy. Operation Gladio is a perfect example of how NATO conducted a decades-long secret war against its own European citizens and elected governments under the guise of “communist terrorism.”
In 1962, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proposed Operation Northwoods, which was a proposed false-flag operation against American citizens, which called for CIA operatives to both stage and actually commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets and subsequently blame the Cuban government in order to justify a war against Cuba. The plan was drafted by General Lemnitzer specifically and has a striking similarity with NATO’s Operation Gladio.
The logic of Northwoods was the stripe of Gladio. The general staff inclined towards prefabricated violence because they believed benefits gained by the state count more than injustice against individuals. The only important criterion is reaching the objective and the objective was right-wing government.
Operation Northwoods memorandum March 13, 1962.
There was not a single item in the Northwoods manual that did not amount to a blatant act of treason, yet the U.S. military establishment dispatched “Top Secret – Justification for U.S. military Intervention in Cuba” straight to the desk of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, for onward transmission to President Kennedy.
Needless to say, President Kennedy rejected the proposal and a few months later General Lemnitzer’s term was not renewed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, having served from October 1st 1960 to September 30th 1962.
However, NATO lost no time, and in November 1962 Lemnitzer was appointed commander of U.S. European Command and as Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, the latter to which he served from January 1st, 1963 to July 1st, 1969.
Lemnitzer’s was a perfect fit to oversee the cross-continental Gladio operations in Europe. Lemnitzer was a prime motivating force in setting up the Special Forces Group in 1952 at Fort Bragg, where commandos were trained in the arts of guerilla insurgency in the event of a Soviet invasion of Europe. Before long, the men who proudly wore distinctive green berets were cooperating discreetly with the armed forces of a string of European countries and participating in direct military operations, some of them extremely sensitive and of highly dubious legality.
The New American Century
Jake Sullivan’s statement that we need a “Pearl Harbour moment” is nothing new.
In September 2000 a report titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century” was published by none other than The Project for the New American Century. In the report it is written (pg. 51):
“… the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
Interestingly, within this same report, published by The Project for the New American Century, it is written (pg. 60):
“Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and ‘combat’ likely will take place in a new dimensions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and perhaps the world of microbes… advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.”
Richard Perle, called the “Prince of Darkness,” by his adversaries and the “Pentagon’s Brains” by his admirers was an acolyte of Albert Wohlstetter, you could say the “brains” behind the RAND Corporation (for more on this refer here). Paul Wolfowitz was another of Wohlstetter’s acolytes. The followers of Wohlstetter were so numerous, whom Perle said Donald Rumsfeld was among (1), that they called themselves “the St. Andrews prep” boys. (2)
Perle stated (3) the 2003 invasion of Iraq was “the first war that’s been fought in a way that would recognize Albert [Wohlstetter]’s vision of future wars. That it was won so quickly and decisively, with so few casualties and so little damage, was in fact an implementation of his strategy and his vision.”
In fact, this call for the need of a “Pearl Harbour moment” originally came from the Wohlstetters themselves.
A New Pearl Harbour Moment
In the mid-1950s, Roberta Wohlstetter, Albert’s wife and RAND peer, produced her seminal analysis of Pearl Harbour, recognised by the Pentagon as a definitive work of twentieth-century American military history. The study began as an internal RAND document based on unclassified documents drawn from the congressional record.
Warner Schilling noted in his perceptive review of Roberta’s work on Pearl Harbour that “The main concept that Mrs. Wohlstetter brings to bear on these events [is that]… the pictures of the world that government officials build from intelligence… are not so much a matter of the ‘facts’ their sources make available as they are a function of the ‘theories’ about politics already in their minds which guide both their recognition and their interpretation of said ‘facts’.”
The primary practical lesson of Roberta’s Pearl Harbour was that the United States should invest in rapid and aggressive means for responding to surprise attacks (for more on this story refer here).
On January 12, 2003, Los Angeles Times published an article titled “Agenda Unmasked,” where they write:
“In the hours immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, long before anyone was certain who was responsible for them, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld reportedly asked that plans be drawn up for an American assault on Iraq…
At first consideration, Rumsfeld’s early targeting of Iraq seems odd. Too little was known, too much uncertain. But the Defense secretary’s desire to attack Iraq was neither impulsive nor reactive. In fact, ever since the first American war against Iraq in 1991, Rumsfeld and others who planned and executed that war have wanted to go back and finish what they started. They said so in reports written for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in the last years of the George H.W. Bush administration, and they continued the push when they were out of power during the Clinton years. In the spring of 1997, their efforts coalesced when Rumsfeld, Cheney and others joined together to form the Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, and began concerted lobbying for regime change in Iraq.
In an open letter to President Clinton dated Jan. 26, 1998, the group called for “the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power,” and in a letter dated May 29, 1998, to then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.)… Signatories to one or both letters included Rumsfeld; William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine and chairman of the PNAC; Elliott Abrams, the convicted Iran-Contra conspirator whom President Bush last year named director of Middle Eastern policy for the National Security Council; Paul D. Wolfowitz, now Rumsfeld’s deputy at the Pentagon; John R. Bolton, now undersecretary of state for arms control; Richard N. Perle, now chairman of the Defense Science Board; Richard Armitage, now Colin Powell’s deputy at the State Department; and Zalmay Khalilzad [another Wohlstetter acolyte(4)], former Unocal Corp. consultant and now special envoy to Afghanistan.
… They expected that the radical changes in U.S. military policy they favored would have to come slowly in the absence of, as the PNAC report “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” put it, a “catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” On Sept. 11, 2001, they got their Pearl Harbor.”
As the Los Angeles Times article also observes, without 9/11 as their Pearl Harbor, their entire campaign against terror in the Middle East could never have been justified.
In fact, since the disastrous PR campaign of the Vietnam War, most Americans had become horrified at the prospect of entering any more foreign wars on the clearly false and hypocritical terms of bringers of “peace” and “freedom.”
9/11 changed all that.
Thus, when Jake Sullivan observes that there is not enough anti-China sentiment to bolster an image of the United States as a “saviour of mankind” against China and that America is in need of a “Pearl Harbour moment” I would be very wary.
The circus around Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in the coming days, and evident glee that is coming forth from many of these neocons frothing at the mouth over this prospect is a clear sign that something incredibly reckless and stupid is about to happen.
Pelosi’s airplane might indeed be shot down on her completely irrelevant and unnecessary trip to Taiwan, and if it is, don’t be surprised if it was the Americans themselves who are behind it, who have shown they are willing to do anything for that “Pearl Harbour moment.”
FBI manipulating domestic terror stats – whistleblowers
Samizdat | July 28, 2022
The FBI is instructing its agents to reclassify cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’, Republican Representative Jim Jordan has claimed, citing agency whistleblowers. Jordan argued that the FBI may be inflating the statistics to satisfy the Biden administration’s crackdown on the supposed threat of homegrown terror.
“From recent protected disclosures, we have learned that FBI officials are pressuring agents to reclassify cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’ even if the cases do not meet the criteria for such a classification,” Jordan wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday.
“Given the narrative pushed by the Biden administration that domestic violent extremism is the ‘greatest threat’ facing our country, the revelation that the FBI may be artificially padding domestic terrorism data is scandalous,” Jordan continued.
In the days after he took office in January 2021, Biden repeatedly talked up the threat of “domestic terrorism” in the US, describing the pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill earlier that month as a prime example of this threat. He followed this rhetoric with a domestic terrorism strategy that increased funding to the Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department, while the former agency issued a memo classifying a broad range of dissidents and criminals – from racial extremists to animal rights activists and all others with “personal grievances and beliefs with political bias” – as domestic violent extremists.
This crackdown was necessary, Wray told Congress last summer, stating in June that the FBI had a “very, very active domestic terrorism investigation program,” and that it had “doubled the amount of domestic terrorism investigations.” Attorney General Merrick Garland cited this apparent doubling of investigations as proof that domestic extremism, particularly that involving white supremacists, was the “most lethal” threat facing the US at the time.
However, whistleblower testimony indicates “that the Biden administration’s narrative may be misleading,” Jordan, who is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Wray.
“One whistleblower explained that because agents are not finding enough DVE [domestic violent extremism] cases, they are encouraged and incentivized to reclassify cases as DVE cases even though there is minimal, circumstantial evidence to support the reclassification,” Jordan continued, adding that the agent in charge of one field office offered awards and promotions to subordinates who could reclassify the most cases as domestic extremism.
“This information … reinforces our concerns regarding the FBI’s politicization under your leadership,” Jordan told Wray. Citing an alleged “purge” of FBI employees with conservative views, the Ohio Republican argued that the FBI seems “more focused on classifying investigations to meet a woke left-wing agenda” than addressing his committee’s concerns.
As of Thursday afternoon, the FBI has not publicly addressed Jordan’s allegations.
Kiev gathering information about chemical facilities in Donbass, might use HIMARS to target them
By Uriel Araujo | July 15, 2022
Kiev is now employing the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) provided by Washington to strike Moscow-controlled areas. Such missiles hit warehouses in Nova Kakhovka – in the Kherson region – containing saltpetre, a chemical compound that is used to make gunpowder and fertilizers. Ukraine claims the target was an ammunition dump. The strike caused a major explosion and fires. Shops, gas stations, pharmacies, a church, and other civilian buildings were also hit. At least seven people were killed and 60 have been wounded, according to Vladimir Leontyev, head of the Russian-controlled Kakhovka District military-civilian administration.
The first M142 HIMARS arrived in Ukraine at the end of June and have been linked to explosions in the Donbass region and southern Ukraine. In its counter-offensive, the Ukrainian authorities are indiscriminately attacking the areas whose control they lost and are basically shelling the very population they consider to be their own people – using American weapons for that. City districts have been leveled, with civilian infrastructure destroyed and many civilians killed in the process.
Last week, Alexandr Shulguin, Moscow’s permanent representative at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), warned that Kiev is preparing provocations with chemical weapons at the Nikolaevka thermal power plant and also at other locations in Kharkiv. He told Rossiya 24 channel that a note was sent to the technical secretariat of the OPCW.
Kiev was in control of the Azot chemical factory in Severodonetsk (now taken by the Russians forces), and, on June 25, Ukrainian shelling forced Russian forces to suspend the evacuation of civilians from the plant. Hundreds of people had taken shelter there. Ukrainian troops also shelled the Yasinovka coking chemical plant in the Kirovsky district of Makiivka in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on June 19.
Already in May there were reports that Ukrainian nationalist battalions were plotting provocations at the chemical facilities in the so-called “chemical industry triangle” (Severodonetsk, Lisichansk, and Rubezhnoye), which is home to over 30 chemical factories. On May 6, Mikhail Mizintsev, chief of Russia’s National Defense Management Center, had already warned about Kiev’s plans to deploy “heavy weapons” against chemical plants in the region. In fact, the Ukrainian military has been gathering information about chemical facilities in the Donbass, both in the DPR and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR).
Thus, the Ukrainian strategy that is unfolding now seems to involve attacking chemical plants and facilities. And US-provided missile systems might be used for that very purpose. The environmental hazards of this are quite obvious, not to mention the humanitarian disaster and the potential long-term health effects on the population even after the end of the conflict for many years to come (due to soil and water contamination). A lot of chemicals are stored in Donbass, which is a heavily industrialized region. It is also home to a number of mines which are currently closed. If a dam is broken, mercury and sulfur from the flooded mines could end up in the Sea of Azov.
Currently, eight American HIMARs are in Ukraine and four more are expected to arrive by the end of July. Even though Kiev claims this new development is a game changer, it can only protract the conflict and in fact cannot ensure Ukrainians will retake terrain. Last week, on July 6, the Russian defense ministry announced Moscow had destroyed two Ukrainian HIMARS and their ammunition depots in a village south of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region.
If Kiev keeps targeting chemical facilities, a Russian offensive is sure to follow, and it will include an aerial onslaught. In this scenario, the HIMARs batteries will be helpless, according to a Ukrainian military official quoted by Jack Detsch, a Pentagon correspondent writing for Foreign Policy.
The proxy war the US-led West is waging against Moscow in Ukraine does not seem to have a way out or an exit strategy right now. Even with all the heavy weaponry provided, Russia and its artillery machine cannot be defeated. In fact, the Russian Federation controls three-quarters of the Donbass and still has five times more artillery than Ukraine. Ukrainian officials say there are 10 Russian canons for every Ukrainian one.
Kiev’s other weaknesses are well known, such as its lack of skilled infantry – not to mention the bad shape of its economy. Moreover, there are no real diplomatic endeavors toward peace or a compromise. So, the Western strategy apparently consists in keeping the flow of weapons to Ukraine to prolong an already disastrous conflict, at an enormous humanitarian, environmental and economic cost.
Parents Catch FBI In Plot To Force Mentally Ill Son To Be A Right Wing Terrorist
By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | August 17, 2017
It’s become a near-weekly occurrence. Somewhere in some state, the FBI will announce that they’ve foiled yet another terrorist plot and saved lives. However, as the data shows, the majority of these cases involve psychologically diminished patsies who’ve been entirely groomed, armed, and entrapped by FBI agents. Simply put, the FBI manufactures terror threats and then takes credit for stopping them.
While many of these cases have garnered attention and been exposed in the alternative media, a recent case out of Oklahoma sets a new low for FBI and exposes how insidious these plots can be.
Through the hundreds of ‘foiled terror plots’ the FBI has ‘busted’ over the years, many of them have been focused on people of Middle Eastern descent or people associated with ISIS or al-Qaeda. This time, in the case of Jerry Drake Varnell, the 23-year-old diagnosed schizophrenic, accused of attempting to bomb a bank, the FBI fomented terror from a right wing dialogue.
In a June meeting with the agent, according to FBI documents, Varnell described himself as a believer in “Three Percenter” ideology, a right-wing group claiming to be committed to standing against and exposing corruption and injustice.
According to federal documents, Varnell drove what he believed was a stolen van containing a 1,000-pound ammonium nitrate bomb on Saturday morning to blow up an Oklahoma City bank. Vile, indeed.
However, if we backtrack just a bit, to when the FBI began grooming their would-be right-wing militia terrorist, the vileness comes directly from the government.
“The FBI knew he was schizophrenic,” Varnell’s parents declared on Wednesday in an open letter bravely published by NewsOK.
“Underneath his condition, he is a sweet-hearted person and we are extremely shocked that this event has happened. However, what truly has us flabbergasted is the fact that the FBI knew he was schizophrenic. The State of Oklahoma found him mentally incompetent and we, his parents have legal guardianship over him by the Court. These documents are sealed from the public, which is why no news media outlet has been able to obtain them. The FBI clearly knew that he was schizophrenic because they have gathered every ounce of information on him.”
Yet they knowingly continued to groom him, despite the clear immoral implications.
When they began grooming him, according to the family, the FBI knew that Varnell was declared mentally unfit to live by himself and that he was a paranoid schizophrenic. Without their criminal informant and the FBI tactics playing mind games with this vulnerable man, the idea of him committing an act of terror would have likely never materialized.
“What the public should be looking at is the fact that the FBI gave our son the means to make this happen. He has no job, no money, no vehicle, and no driver’s license, due to the fact that he is schizophrenic and we; his parents do everything we can possible to keep him safe and functional….. He has suffered through countless serious full-blown schizophrenic delusional episodes and he has been put in numerous mental hospitals since he was 16 years old. The FBI came and picked him up from our home, they gave him a vehicle, gave him a fake bomb, and every means to make this happen none of which he had access to on his own.”
The parents noted that during the setup, they suspected something was going on and Jerry’s father told the informant to stay away from their son. However, according to the parents, the informant “continued to sneak onto our residence. The FBI paid him to continue this operation and I believe they have cleared his criminal record.”
Because they knew Varnell had severe mental disabilities, the FBI should have had stopped their plans to do this and immediately sought an option of hospitalization. However, they pressed on.
Knowing a sane person would likely never attempt to blow up a bank, the FBI deliberately targeted a severely delusional and mentally ill person. This is wrong on so many levels. Will the next mass murderer they groom come directly from a mental institution?
“The FBI should have filed conspiracy on our son and had him committed to a mental institution. They should not have aided and abetted a paranoid schizophrenic to commit this act. There are many more facts that I will not make public that will support my son and the disturbing acts made by the FBI.
I realize that many will say my son could have found another person to commit this act. Yet, any person that has access to the materials and the state of mind necessary to bomb a building would not have any need for a schizophrenic who has no resources to contribute.”
Clifford and Melonie Varnell, Jerry’s parents make a powerful point. No one — other than the FBI — would’ve attempted to get a schizophrenic man with nothing to contribute to do their bidding as it would most likely be a futile effort — unless you are the FBI looking for an easy patsy to keep fear alive.
David Steele, a 20-year Marine Corps intelligence officer, the second-highest-ranking civilian in the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer, had this to say about these most unscrupulous operations:
“Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We’ve become a lunatic asylum.”
Indeed, we’ve become a lunatic asylum.
FBI rented Istanbul villa for Daesh suspects before alerting Turkish authorities, report reveals
MEMO | July 3, 2022
The United States’ domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), is revealed to have rented a villa in Istanbul as a safe house for alleged members of the Daesh terror group, in a case that further proves the bureau’s use of entrapment methods.
According to the London-based news outlet Middle East Eye, a veteran undercover FBI operative named Kamran Faridi signed a tenancy agreement and paid the rent for a luxury villa on Istanbul’s seafront suburb of Silivri in 2015.
The property was then used as a safe house by several alleged members of Daesh, including a British man named Aine Davis, who is accused of being part of the terror group’s cell of British militants labelled the ‘Beatles’.
In November that year, Turkish security forces then raided the property arresting the six men hiding inside it. At the time, Turkish authorities hailed the interception of preparations for a major attack in Istanbul.
Almost seven years later, however, the news outlet’s report sheds light on the FBI’s involvement, citing court papers which show that Turkish prosecutors did not find evidence of any plot but rather that the raid was conducted after the bureau itself tipped-off Turkish authorities about a potential attack.
In a note dated April 2016, the prosecutors stated that “Sufficient evidence could not be obtained to file a public lawsuit… other than the intelligence report of a foreign country, which does not have the quality of evidence”.
While it is unknown whether Turkish officials knew of Faridi – the FBI operative – and his work for the bureau, Middle East Eye cited a source familiar with the matter as saying that the FBI approached Turkish officials in February 2016 to offer Turkish intelligence Faridi’s undercover services. According to the outlet, however, the officials rejected the proposal due to the operative already having been exposed.
Faridi – a 58-year-old of Pakistani origin who had worked for the FBI as an informant since the mid-1990s and then abroad numerous countries in the bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force during the two decades of the ‘war on terror’ – was reportedly fired from his service in 2020. He was then arrested and jailed the following year after sending death threats to his former superiors.
The former operative’s activities, however, especially in Istanbul as well as his work while being “loaned out” to other western intelligence agencies, is set to further draw light on the FBI and other agencies’ use of “entrapment” methods.
Under such methods, intelligence agencies attract, draw in, and recruit impressionable individuals to criminal or terrorist groups – or so the individuals are led to believe – before being set up, arrested, and prosecuted on charges of joining those groups. It has long been a controversial practice, but has been either denied or justified by agencies on the basis of rooting out potential terrorists.
As a result of that raid in 2015, Davis and two other suspected militants were convicted and jailed two years later on the charge of being part of Daesh – which they denied – while three other men arrested at the villa were released due to lack of evidence. According to the outlet, though, Davis is now scheduled to be deported from Turkey to the UK within days.
Ukraine War: 120 Days
A no-nonsense analysis of the ongoing Ukraine war and its global impact
Military situation in Ukraine on June 28 (SouthFront)
Swiss Policy Research | July 2022
Military Situation
The initial Russian offensive (“phase 1”) consisted in a direct advance from Belarus to the northern gates of Kiev and the simultaneous opening of multiple fronts in the north-east, east, and south of Ukraine. There have been various theories as to what the initial Russian strategy was (e.g. conquering Kiev or ‘binding Ukrainian forces’), but most likely, Russia tried to force a collapse or capitulation of the Ukrainian government, in which case Russia would have won the war without really fighting it.
Indeed, just one day after the beginning of the invasion, Russian President Putin proposed a kind of “military coup” in Ukraine to make it easier to “reach an agreement”. There were also several rounds of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev in Belarus and Turkey.
Yet this initial, political-military plan failed and was halted in late March, about one month after the beginning of the invasion.
Nevertheless, already by early March Russia had conquered extensive territories in southern Ukraine connecting the Donbas and Crimea and had been able to restore water supply to the Crimean Peninsula (which had been cut off by Ukraine since 2014; see map above).
By late April, Russia had essentially conquered the important southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol (500k pre-war inhabitants), and by late May, the remaining Ukrainian forces in the Azovstal steel plant of Mariupol had surrendered. In addition, Russia conquered the southern Ukrainian cities of Melitopol (150k inhabitants) and Kherson (300k) without meeting much resistance.
After the failure of the initial political-military strategy, Russia in early April withdrew all of its troops from the north of Kiev and redeployed them to the east in an attempt to encircle and defeat the main positions of the Ukrainian military and conquer the entire Donbas region.
However, the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine was much slower than expected by many observers, and Russian forces advanced only about 25 kilometers in about two months.
Many Western analysts got the impression that the Russian military was weaker than previously assumed, while many Russian and pro-Russian analysts have argued that the Russian military was advancing slow “on purpose”, allegedly to “minimize losses”.
Yet neither of these explanations were convincing. Instead, there are several substantial reasons that explain the steady, but rather slow advance of the Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.
First, in terms of the number of soldiers and tanks, the Ukrainian military is the largest military in Europe, second only to the Russian military (not counting the Turkish military).
Second, while Ukraine has already mobilized large parts of its men of fighting age, Russia has not yet mobilized at all, i.e. Russia is using only active soldiers, no reservists or conscripts. In fact, Russia has essentially deployed its peace-time army, which has resulted in a notable lack of manpower and infantry. A likely explanation for this decision is that the Russian government wants to keep up the impression, at least domestically, that it is just conducting a “special military operation”, not a full-scale war, and that it wants to avoid the political repercussions of having to conscript additional men (i.e. civilians). This is consistent with the fact that Russia has offered high-paid short-term military contracts to volunteers, again avoiding conscription.
Third, Eastern Ukraine is probably the most strongly fortified region in Europe today, having been prepared against a potential Russian invasion for several years. Although some Ukrainian units have surrendered due to a lack of supply or guidance, the overall Ukrainian resistance against Russian forces remains at a very high level.
Fourth, the Ukrainian military has received large amounts of weapons from the US and NATO countries, including powerful artillery and modern anti-tank weapons. Without these supplies, the Ukrainian front would likely have collapsed rather quickly.
Fifth, the Ukrainian military has greatly enhanced the effectiveness of its artillery by using reconnaissance data from its own drones as well as from US satellites. Indeed, the use of commercial and simple military drones appears to have fundamentally transformed modern warfare at the tactical level.
Sixth, and contrary to claims by Western media, the Russian military is still trying to minimize civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, likely because it views Eastern Ukraine as Russian territory anyway. For instance, it has been noted that the Russian military delivered fewer airstrikes and fewer missiles during the entire first month than the United States did during the Iraq war in just one day. However, as the Ukrainian military has been fiercely defending most cities and villages, the end result is still large-scale destruction of urban infrastructure.
Although Russia has had the upper hand in Eastern Ukraine, it remains uncertain if the current Russian military strategy will be viable in the longer run, especially if Russia intends to conquer some of the larger Ukrainian cities, such as Kharkiv, Odessa or Dnipro (1M-1.5M) or even Kiev (3M). If the Ukrainian government or military do not surrender or agree to a negotiated solution, the Russian military may have to call up reservists and conscripts and/or switch to an (even) more destructive mode of warfare against the cities it intends to “liberate”.
Currently, the main Russian military advantage consists in relative (but not absolute) air superiority, more powerful artillery, and cruise missiles that can destroy strategic targets anywhere in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the Ukraine war is currently not an “asymmetric war”.
In terms of military strength, it is estimated that Russia deployed about 160,000 soldiers, the pro-Russian Donbas republics about 40,000 soldiers, and Ukraine about 300,000 military and paramilitary forces, of which about 50,000 in Eastern Ukraine. In terms of military losses, it is estimated that by late June, Ukraine may have lost close to 20,000 soldiers, Russia close to 5,000 soldiers, and the Donbas republics about 10,000 soldiers.
Future Developments
Russia will certainly try to fully conquer (or liberate) the Donbas republics, including the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk (100k-150k pre-war inhabitants). Russia may also try to conquer Mykolaiv (500k) and Odessa (1M) in the south of Ukraine in order to establish a corridor to Moldova/Transnistria, which would cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea and turn the country into a landlocked rump state. After conquering the Donbas republics, Russia may further try to conquer or encircle Kharkov (1.5M) and advance to the Dnipr river.
Cities or districts conquered by Russia will likely hold referendums on becoming part of Russia. These referendums will likely turn out in favor of Russia, as a majority of the people in the east and south-east of Ukraine do indeed identify as Russians (or are leaning towards Russia), and Russia may then annex or absorb these territories. However, such a strategy will not work in Kiev, nor in northern and western Ukraine (see map below).
In terms of potential escalations, a Russian advance towards Moldova may trigger a preemptive Romanian invasion (“by invitation”) of Moldova. A further destabilization of Ukraine may trigger a Polish invasion (“peace mission”) of western Ukraine, which in turn could trigger a war between Poland and Belarus in western Ukraine.
Moreover, NATO countries could decide to deliver more powerful weapons to Ukraine or to establish a “safe zone” in western Ukraine (similar to the situation in eastern Syria). In general, the US will likely try to prolong the Ukraine war as much as possible in order to weaken Russia financially and politically (similar to the Afghanistan war in the 1980s.)
Outside of Ukraine, the situation in the Baltics (Lithuania/Kaliningrad), the Balkans (Bosnia-Serbia-Kosovo) and in the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia-Azerbaijan) could further deteriorate. The situation in Syria, where the US, Israel, Turkey, Iran and Russia are already involved, could also further escalate. In Asia, China could decide to invade and annex Taiwan.
The global economic situation will also likely continue to deteriorate, especially in the fields of energy and food supply, price inflation and financial market stability. This deterioration is driven not just by the war itself, but also by Western sanctions against Russia as well as by two years of misguided pandemic lockdown policies, which have caused serious global supply chain disruptions.
The possibility of a nuclear escalation will be discussed further below.
War Crimes
In terms of war crimes, the current situation is in stark contrast to claims by Western media and Western governments, as most war crimes have been committed not by the Russian side, but by the Ukrainian side. This includes many major war crimes blamed on the Russian side, such as the infamous Bucha massacre, the Mariupol theater bombing, or the Kramatorsk railway station bombing. Other supposed Russian war crimes were simply made up by Ukrainian officials, such as allegations of systematic rape and mass looting.
Yet other events were taken out of context, such as the alleged Russian bombing of Ukrainian schools and hospitals or shopping centers, which in almost all cases had been turned into Ukrainian military bases or ammunition depots. In other cases, civilian buildings supposedly destroyed by Russian missiles were in fact destroyed by Ukrainian air-defense missiles (e.g. in Kiev) or Ukrainian artillery missiles (e.g. in Borodyanka).
In yet other cases, Ukrainian forces, poorly disguised as Russian forces, executed Ukrainian civilians that welcomed the false “Russian liberators”; Western media then presented the execution as a Russian war crime. In even other cases, the Ukrainian bombing of Donbas cities was presented as the Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities.
In the case of Bucha, the bodies seen in the streets were victims of Ukrainian shelling of residential areas during the Russian occupation and retreat, and of subsequent Ukrainian executions of “collaborators” (hence the white armbands, a sign of friendly status during Russian occupation). The bodies were then presented as victims of a supposed “Russian massacre”.
Ironically, the Ukrainian commander who oversaw the Bucha massacre previously was a Russian intelligence asset who had built up “neonazi groups” in Russia and Belarus. The international “marketing” of the Bucha massacre as a supposed Russian war crime may have been coordinated by British intelligence, similar to numerous chemical false-flag attacks in Syria.
In the case of the Mariupol maternity clinic, Western media claimed it was a Russian airstrike, but they could not provide any evidence for this hypothesis, and witnesses at the clinic said there was no airstrike. Yet the incident remains unresolved, and both a Russian attack (possibly targeting a nearby Ukrainian base) or a Ukrainian operation remain possible.
In the case of the recent Kremenchuk shopping center incident, the Ukrainian government claimed a Russian missile hit the shopping center with 1,000 people inside; in reality, the Russian missiles hit an adjacent military plant and the shopping center was either closed (non-operational) or almost empty. However, one of the Russian missiles did hit very close to the shopping center, which then caught fire and burnt down.
Documented, confirmed or potential Russian war crimes currently consist mainly in the shooting and killing of civilians that approached Russian checkpoints or military columns, on foot or by car, although the context of these events is sometimes unclear (e.g. if there were any warning shots). There are also allegations of several other crimes against individual Russian soldiers that are currently difficult to verify independently.
On the Ukrainian side, documented war crimes encompass mass torture and mass executions, both against prisoners of war and their own people (if deemed pro-Russian collaborators or sympathizers), including several cases of decapitation; the military use of civilian infrastructure (including schools) and “human shields”; and large-scale shelling of residential areas behind front lines, especially against the city of Donetsk (in one case even hitting a maternity clinic).
Moreover, several Western journalists, whose death was blamed on the Russian side, were in fact killed by the Ukrainian side (in friendly fire incidents).
False claims of major Russian war crimes (i.e. atrocity propaganda) have been used by Western governments to justify weapons supplies to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. The heavy use of such atrocity propaganda is not a new phenomenon, of course. Important recent examples include the US/NATO wars against Yugoslavia and against Syria.
The topic of war crimes will be covered in a separate, detailed event-by-event analysis.
Propaganda and Censorship
On the Russian side, propaganda efforts depict the Ukraine war as a kind of continuation of the Second World War or Great Patriotic War against National Socialist Germany, focusing on the supposed “denazification” of Ukraine. At the same time, Russian President Putin has criticized Soviet leaders for having made Ukraine a quasi-independent political entity in the first place. Thus, Russian propaganda combines elements of both the former Soviet Union and the earlier Russian Tsarist empire.
Overall, the “Nazi narrative” appears to be quite effective, both in Russia and in the West, in part because many key aspects of the Second World War and NS Germany still cannot be questioned, neither in Russia nor in the sphere of Anglo-American countries, which during the Second World War were allied with Stalin’s Soviet Union against Hitler’s Germany.
On the NATO side, propaganda efforts mainly focus on Russian aggression, supposed Russian war crimes and supposed Ukrainian successes. NATO propaganda is produced by multiple PR agencies, coordinated by intelligence services, and distributed to Western media outlets by the three global news agencies AP (American), AFP (French) and Reuters (British-Canadian). The total number of NATO propaganda messages in Western media is likely approaching about one thousand.
In addition, both sides have introduced significant media censorship. In NATO countries, this includes the removal of Russian and pro-Russian media outlets from major Internet search engines Google, Microsoft Bing and even DuckDuckGo. Furthermore, British security state operatives were caught trying to suppress independent media coverage of the Ukraine war.
Nevertheless, independent media outlets and uncensored Telegram channels have continued to provide important real-time footage and analysis of the situation in Ukraine.
NATO Expansion or Russian Expansion?
Is the Ukraine war about NATO expansion or rather about Russian expansion? In truth, it is likely about both NATO and Russian expansion, although one may argue that the Russian expansion is a response to NATO expansion. It is clear that the current Russian government sees large parts of Ukraine as “historically Russian territory”, or indeed Ukraine as part of Russia. Only by seeking a neutral status and by accepting the loss of Crimea and the autonomy of the Donbas republics might Ukraine have avoided a Russian invasion.
It has been argued that NATO expansion into Ukraine wouldn’t be a threat to nuclear Russia, but this is hardly true. NATO expansion into Ukraine would pose a geostrategic threat (control over pipelines, ports etc.), a direct military threat (planned recapture of Crimea and the Donbas republics), and a strategic military threat (NATO military infrastructure and missile bases). For similar reasons, the US did not and would not accept Russian bases in Cuba, Mexico or Venezuela.
It has been noted that Russia is unlikely to invade Finland or Sweden, despite their intention to join NATO (in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine). In fact, Russia already has a (small) land border with NATO founding member Norway and with Baltic states. Yet Finland and Sweden do not currently threaten Russian territory or Russian interests. Otherwise, a Russian military response may in fact be conceivable (see below).
Is the Russian military operation in Ukraine legal or illegal? From a Western perspective, the Russian operation is clearly illegal, not unlike previous US invasions (e.g. of Grenada, Panama and Iraq) and most US/NATO wars (e.g. against Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria). From a Russian perspective, the military operation is a legitimate intervention into an ongoing, illegal eight-year war against the Donbas republics. Russia will likely annex large parts of Ukraine, but it will try to “legitimize” these annexations by prior referendums.
Energy War: By Whom?
It has also been argued that Russia is waging an energy war by restricting oil and gas exports in order to destabilize NATO countries and especially Europe. Yet upon closer inspection, it is clear that the energy war is in fact waged via sanctions by NATO countries in order to financially destabilize Russia, although so far this seems to have failed and indeed backfired, with energy security in Europe becoming rather uncertain.
For instance, a reduction in gas flow through the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia to Germany was (and is) due to a broken turbine sent by Germany to Canada for repair, but then retained by Canada due to sanctions against Russia. Similarly, the Russian decision to accept energy payments only after conversion into rubles was simply in response to the prior freezing of billions of Russian Euro and dollar reserves by Western countries.
Indeed, neither during nor after the Cold War has Russia (or the USSR) ever used the “energy weapon” against (Western) Europe, as Russia is very much interested in both being seen as a reliable supplier and in foreign currency export revenue.
However, one can argue that Russia is relying on a kind of “indirect energy weapon”: by being a reliable energy supplier, Russia may hope that Europe and NATO will not turn hostile, regardless of Russian military actions. Moreover, if relations should further deteriorate, Russia could of course use the “energy weapon” and stop energy exports to Europe altogether.
The Russian government likes to emphasize that the impact of Western sanctions is rather minor and that the Russian ruble has remained strong. But Russia had to impose capital controls (i.e. the ruble is no longer free floating), and the economic impact is substantial, with tens of thousands of IT specialists having already left the country, for instance.
Nuclear War?
How likely is a nuclear war as a potential escalation of the Ukraine war?
A direct nuclear war targeting the mainland of nuclear states remains very unlikely, as this would lead to the destruction of all states involved. However, from a purely military and geostrategic perspective, there are two rational offensive uses of nuclear weapons, in addition to their defensive use as a deterrent: against hostile non-nuclear states and against overseas military infrastructure of nuclear states.
In this regard, there is a major geostrategic asymmetry between Russia and China on the one hand and the US on the other hand: whereas the US has several hundred overseas military bases and several dozen non-nuclear allies or client states (both in Europe and in Asia), Russia and China have almost no overseas military bases and very few non-nuclear allies.
Thus, Russia and China could consider coordinated nuclear strikes against all US overseas military bases in Eurasia (i.e. in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and East Asia). In addition, Russia and China could consider nuclear strikes against hostile non-nuclear countries, both in Europe and in Asia, targeting military/industrial centers or even population centers.
Theoretically, such a coordinated nuclear operation might remove the US military from the Eurasian continent (and by extension from Africa), limiting US military influence to North and South America. Thereafter, a new geo-economic Cold War between Eurasia/Africa, led by China and Russia, and the Americas would likely ensue.
Nuclear allies of the US in Eurasia, most notably Britain, France and Israel, would have to ensure robust sea- and air-based second strike capability even against modern hypersonic missiles with multiple nuclear warheads, in order to avoid being targeted themselves.
A nuclear attack against non-nuclear NATO states would be seen as an attack against NATO, and a nuclear attack against US overseas military bases would be seen as an attack against the United States, but because of the above-mentioned asymmetry, the US could not respond in a meaningful way without forcing its own destruction.
While such a scenario seems militarily conceivable and even rational (given the breakdown of the post-WWII security architecture), both China and Russia currently seem to follow a different economic, diplomatic and military strategy, using novel alliances such as BRICS, RCEP, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
In contrast, the US may attempt to contain Russia and China via economic and political sanctions and to ultimately overturn regimes in both countries, thus paving the way for global US predominance, which was almost achieved after the end of the Cold War.
Figures
1) Results of 2010 Ukrainian presidential election.
Janukovych was the pro-Russian candidate, Tymoshenko was the pro-Western candidate.
Results of 2010 Ukrainian presidential election (Wikimedia)
2) Mariupol: Before and after Russian conquest
Mariupol: Before and after Russian conquest (Telegram)
3) Western propaganda vs. Russian propaganda
Western propaganda vs. Russian propaganda (Lynn PR)
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