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The Skripal Case – Two Years On

OffGuardian | March 4, 2020

It’s been two years to the day since disgraced former military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, were allegedly found on a park bench in Salisbury, near unconscious and apparently very unwell.

A lot has been said about the unanswered questions revolving around the incident. But perhaps the best of way of demonstrating the peculiarity of the alleged situation is to simply relate, in full, the “official version”.

Here it is:

  • Sergei Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer, was found guilty of spying for the UK in 2006, and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
  • In 2010 he was released and traded to the United Kingdom as part of a spy swap. Having settled in the UK Sergei lived a quiet and comfortable life of retirement, so far as we know
  • Eight years later, in early 2018, with a Presidential election looming and just weeks before Russia was due to host the FIFA World Cup, Vladimir Putin decided to assassinate him for as yet obscure reasons.
  • The GU, Russia’s military intelligence unit, dispatched two of their elite officers, who proceeded to fly direct from Moscow under aliases they had allegedly already employed and using Russian passports.
  • These alleged assassins carried with them two perfume bottles full of “Novichok”, allegedly one of the deadliest nerve agents ever devised. This would be enough to kill around 800,000 people.
  • On arriving in the UK these highly-trained covert agents book a hotel with a CCTV camera on the front door, and the next day, March 3, they travel to Salisbury by train, allegedly to recon the area, then return to London. They are apparently observed by CCTV camera’s the entire time.
  • The day following, March 4, they again travel to Salisbury, this time the master assassins walk to Skripal’s house and somehow “smear” the liquid Novichok on the handle of his front door.
  • No eye-witness, photograph or piece of CCTV footage has ever been made publicly available to show either of these two men anywhere in the area of Sergei Skripal’s house.
  • The whereabouts of the opened bottle of poison have never been established.
  • Having applied the poison, the two highly trained assassins do two things before returning to London. 1) They drop their second, unopened, bottle of novichok (presumably enough to kill approx 400,000 people) in a charity donation bin, rather than destroying it or taking it back to Russia. 2) They stop by an antiques store to browse.
  • The two assassins leave the country that afternoon, flying direct to Moscow, without knowing if their alleged target is dead, and again making no effort to conceal their origins.
  • Despite both handling the poison, and somehow carrying enough of it back to contaminate their hotel room, neither of the men – nor any of the staff, train passengers or passersby who come into contact with them – ever become sick, even though only 0.2mg of Novichok is an allegedly lethal dose.
  • Later that afternoon, Sergei and Yulia Skripal are found “almost unconscious”on a park bench in Salisbury town centre. It is claimed this was due to contact with the Novichok smeared on Sergei’s door handle, though reports originally stated neither he nor his daughter had returned to the house, and the timing seems to make it unlikely they did
  • The person who found them was the most senior nurse in the British Army (likely in the area as part of Toxic Dagger, the British Military’s landmark chemical weapons training exercise which began Feb 20th and ran on until March 12th).
  • The nurse and her family administer “emergency aid” to the two alleged poisoning victims. Neither she nor anyone else on the scene, nor any of the first responders, ever experience any symptoms of nerve agent poisoning. Neither do any of the other people the Skripal’s came into contact with that day.
  • DS Nick Bailey, a CID officer is in contact with the Skripals or their home at this time and subsequently becomes ill. It has never been stated how exactly he was exposed. It was initially reported he was a first responder to the scene, but that story was changed and it was later claimed he visited the Skripal hpouse. Despite the alleged lethality of novichok in even very minute doses, Bailey is fit to return home after 18 days.
  • Porton Down, the British government’s chemical weapons research centre, is brought in to help identify what chemical – if any – the Skripals/Bailey were exposed to.
  • Within a month they release a statement claiming the poison was “a novichok like agent”, but that they could not pinpoint its origin. How they were able to test for a (at the time) theoretical chemical without having a sample to test against, has never been explained.
  • Porton Down is 8 minutes away from Salisbury by car.
  • Nearly four months later, in late June of 2018, Charlie Rowley finds the unopened perfume bottle a full of novichok (whether he bought it from a charity shop or found it in a bin is unclear, both stories have been reported). Upon using the perfume Rowley’s partner, Dawn Sturgess, falls ill. Later that day Rowley also falls ill. Sturgess dies in hospital two weeks later. But Rowley survives. Making him the fourth person in this narrative to survive exposure to an agent lethal in doses as small as 0.2mg.
  • Sergei Skripal and Julia both recovered and allegedly chose to live secluded lives. Sergei has not appeared in public at all since allegedly being found on that park bench. Yulia made one brief press statement. Their current whereabouts are totally unknown. Their family in Russia have apparently been denied all access to them. DS Bailey was initially also keen to maintain his privacy but has subsequently given at least one interview some while after the event.

This is the UK government’s version of what happened. Unvarnished and unsatirised. None of it is disputed, exaggerated or speculative.

If you can see any unanswered questions, logical gaps or peculiar coincidences…you are likely a Russian bot.

Interesting commentary

March 4, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Salisbury poisoning unleashed Russian bogeyman … but where are the Skripals 2 years on?

By Simon Rite | RT | March 4, 2020

Forget Where’s Wally, what we really want to know is where are the Skripals? It’s exactly two years to the day since the Russian spy and his daughter were novichoked in Salisbury, and we’ve still not seen hide nor hair of them.

Former double agent Sergei has been completely off-grid, while Yulia Skripal was seen in a highly staged video in 2018, filmed in an anonymous but pleasant leafy glade shortly after recovering from her poisoning ordeal; but, apart from that, there have been no statements or updates about them at all.

The most recent piece of ‘information’, and I use that term loosely, to leak out about their whereabouts came this weekend from Britain’s Mail on Sunday, courtesy of a source which became ubiquitous throughout the Skripal saga, the reliably unreliable “security insiders.” It’s always amazing how willing these apparent insiders are to release top-level secrets to the home of the “sidebar of shame.”

The latest speculation from ‘security insiders’ is that the Skripals are hoping to head for a new life down under in Australia after “effectively living under house arrest since the attack.” This means either those insiders are the leakiest spies in the world, or the Skripals are going to be nowhere near Australia anytime soon.

The house arrest must be at Julian Assange in Belmarsh levels of security, because even the Skripals’ family in Russia say they haven’t heard from them in months.

So all quiet on the Skripal front and, frankly speaking, it’s all quiet on the geopolitical front, too, and in the media. The disputed events of March 4, 2018, over poisoned spies and their aftermath formed the biggest story on the planet, and not just because the whole world finally started paying attention to the majesty of Salisbury cathedral’s glorious 123-metre spire.

This incident seemed like it might have genuine life-changing political consequences. Britain entered the phrase “highly likely” into the lexicon of geopolitics, and [then-PM] Theresa May’s declaration that it was “highly likely” that the Kremlin was to blame was deemed strong enough to see the West turn en masse against Moscow, and Russian diplomats and ‘diplomats’ were expelled by the dozen, by London and its allies across the world. It seemed the bar for state-to-state accusations had been lowered.

Russia to this day denies involvement in what happened in Salisbury.

So what has changed? If anything, all that has changed over the last two years is a desire to get back to business, to rebuild ties and move on. Some of those expelled diplomats have reportedly moved back.

French leader Emmanuel Macron is pushing hard for relations between the West and Moscow to be repaired, something Germany needs little encouragement for.

Britain is still pretending to be in a huff, but British imports of Russian oil were up 57 percent last year, so realpolitik reigns supreme in London, as ever.

Boris Johnson is now the prime minister and with a thumping majority doesn’t need to use bogeyman Russia as a tool to look strong quite as much as his predecessor did. Johnson and Putin even met in January and there are reports the prime minister is considering an invitation to attend a second world war commemoration parade in Moscow this May.

And as for the media, it’s all gone quiet there, too. Skripal coverage is about as common in the mainstream now as coverage of Julian Assange’s imprisonment. He’s a journalist whose supporters say is ‘highly likely’ a victim of a demonstrable state campaign against him because he attempted to uncover the misdeeds of power. However, a boring attack on free speech is nowhere near as exciting as a poisoned spy, is it?!

Simon Rite is a writer based in London for RT, in charge of several projects including the political satire group #ICYMI. Follow him on Twitter @SiWrites

March 4, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

US Judge Demands Company Charged in Russiagate Present Subpoenaed Evidence in Person

Sputnik – March 3, 2020

A US federal judge has threatened to hold Concord Management, a Russian company indicted by former special counsel Robert Mueller, in civil contempt if it does not present subpoenaed company records in person.

On Monday, US District Judge Dabney Freidrich demanded that St. Petersburg-based Concord Management supply her Washington, DC, court with subpoenaed company records by sending someone tasked with record-keeping to deliver them from Russia in person. She rejected a sworn statement, Courthouse News reported.

Concord’s legal representative, attorney Eric Dubelier, adamantly rejected Freidrich’s suggestion that the defense was engaged in something “sneaky,” calling the US government’s position “a ridiculous argument.”

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors urged the judge to hold Concord in civil contempt in a Thursday court filing.

“We are starting to have some concerns about whether Concord is participating in this case,” US Attorney Adam Jed said in court on Monday. “It gives us pause … that they are just going to write something down and give it to the US government,” he said of the sworn statement.

Concord replied on Friday with its own filing arguing its case for not being held in civil contempt, accusing the US Department of Justice of showing a “manifest disregard of the record and controlling law.”

“The primary foundation for its demand – that Concord’s counsel did not thoroughly explain the bases for Concord’s responses to the subpoenas – not only is not found in any court order but this Court expressly rejected the notion that such an explanation could be required,” Dubelier argued in the filing. The attorney noted that no court order had ever required such an explanation.

“And here again, the government’s incredulity over the adequacy of the response, real or feigned, does not reveal a failure to respond, much less a violation of any court order related to such a response. Simply put, the basis for a contempt finding is a product of the government’s argument, not the relevant record,” he noted.

The trial is anticipated to begin next month, with the discovery process having dragged on for nearly two years as Concord lawyers challenged Mueller’s authority to charge the company, then urged the DoJ to hold Mueller and Attorney General William Barr in contempt for publishing the Mueller report.

In a highly unorthodox move, the DoJ has refused the sharing of discovery materials with the defense, arguing that since Concord is partially owned by Russian businessman Yevgeniy Prigozhin, doing so would help the Russian government react to US attempts to thwart alleged criminal activities. During discovery, the prosecution and defense typically share their positions and the evidence supporting them before the trial itself begins.

Concord is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States by allegedly financing the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election because Prigozhin is allegedly tied to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), which the Office of the Director of National Intelligence claimed is the ‘troll farm’ behind the alleged interference. Along with Concord, Mueller indicted a dozen IRA employees in February 2018.

March 3, 2020 Posted by | Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Trump campaign sues Washington Post for ‘millions of dollars’ over ‘false and defamatory’ statements on ‘Russia collusion’

RT | March 3, 2020

Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign has reportedly filed a libel suit against the Washington Post for “millions of dollars,” accusing the newspaper of publishing “false and defamatory” statements about alleged collusion with Russia.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the US District Court in Washington, DC on Tuesday, highlights two articles published by the Post in 2019 linking Trump’s team to alleged foreign interference in the 2016 election, Fox News reported.

The complaint, which was seen by the news outlet, alleges that the Post was “well aware” that the statements were false but published them anyway for the “intentional purpose” of hurting Trump’s campaign. The articles were part of the newspaper’s “systematic pattern of bias” against Trump, it said.

One of the articles, published on June 13, stated that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s extensive investigation into alleged collusion concluded that Trump’s campaign “tried to conspire with” a “sweeping and systematic” attack by Russia during the 2016 election.

Trump’s team noted that Mueller’s report in fact “concluded there was no conspiracy” between then-candidate Trump’s campaign and Russia – and that no US person intentionally coordinated with any alleged Russian effort to interfere with the 2016 election.

The second article, published on June 20, suggested Trump had “invited” both Russia and North Korea to “offer their assistance” to his campaign. This was also described as “false and defamatory” since there “has never been any statement” by anyone associated with Trump’s campaign inviting the two countries to interfere or assist.

The lawsuit also says there is “an extensive record” of statements from Trump’s campaign and the White House disavowing any notion of Russian assistance and “not a shred of evidence” that there were contacts between the campaign and North Korea.

Trump’s campaign said the lawsuit had been filed in order to “publicly establish the truth” and “properly inform” readers, as well as to seek “appropriate remedies for the harm caused.” The complaint says Trump’s campaign was damaged “in the millions of dollars” – the exact amount to be determined in court.

The suit against the Post comes on the heels of a similar lawsuit filed by Trump’s campaign against the New York Times last week in relation to a 2019 op-ed, which it said contained similarly false statements intended to influence the 2020 presidential election.

March 3, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

IOC presented forged signatures in doping case against Russian biathletes, lawyers say

RT | March 2, 2020

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been given one day to provide an explanation regarding alleged forged signatures on documents presented as evidence against Russian biathletes accused of doping.

On Monday the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) considered a claim by Russian lawyer Alexey Panich, who said that IOC documents on the case involving three Russian biathletes – Olga Zaitseva, Yana Romanova and Olga Vilukhina – contained fake signatures of former Moscow Anti-Doping laboratory chief Grigory Rodchenkov.

The trio of Russian athletes were slapped with lifetime bans in 2017 and stripped of medals over alleged doping violations.

According to TASS, the IOC will need to provide an explanation regarding the documents – the key evidence against the Russian athletes – by Tuesday.

The athletes retired from sport in 2017, but filed an appeal with CAS attempting to overturn the decision imposed by the IOC on the verge of the 2018 Olympics in South Korea.

The athletes are seeking monetary compensation for damage inflicted to their reputation and sporting career.

The former head of the Moscow laboratory Rodchenkov fled Russia at the end of 2015, becoming WADA’s key informant in the case on the alleged state sponsored doping program in the country.

His accusations instigated a massive crackdown against Russia, which affected the country’s participation at the 2016 and 2018 Games in Brazil and South Korea respectively.

At the 2018 PyeongChang Games, Russian athletes are competing under a neutral flag and under the name Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) without national emblems, which were banned by the IOC.

March 2, 2020 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Seth Rich, Julian Assange and Dana Rohrabacher – Will We Ever Know the Truth About the Stolen DNC Files?

Seth Rich, Julian Assange and Dana Rohrabacher. Credit: Public domain/Gage Skidmore/ Flickr
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | February 29, 2020

The media is doing its best to make the  story go away, but it seems to have a life of its own, possibly due to the fact that the accepted narrative about how Rich died makes no sense. In its Iatest manifestation, it provides an alternative explanation for just how the information from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer somehow made its way to Wikileaks. If you believe that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide and that he was just a nasty pedophile rather than an Israeli intelligence agent, read no farther because you will not be interested in Rich. But if you appreciate that it was unlikely that the Russians were behind the stealing of the DNC information you will begin to understand that other interested players must have been at work.

For those who are not familiar with it, the backstory to the murder of apparently disgruntled Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, who some days before may have been the leaker of that organization’s confidential emails to Wikileaks, suggests that a possibly motiveless crime might have been anything but. The Washington D.C. police investigated what they believed to be an attempted robbery gone bad but that theory fails to explain why Rich’s money, credit cards, cell phone and watch were not taken. Wikileaks has never confirmed that Rich was their source in the theft of the proprietary emails that had hitherto been blamed on Russia but it subsequently offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to resolution of the case and Julian Assange, perhaps tellingly, has never publicly clarified whether Rich was or was not one of his contacts, though there is at least one report that he confirmed the relationship during a private meeting.

Answers to the question who exactly stole the files from the DNC server and the emails from John Podesta have led to what has been called Russiagate, a tale that has been embroidered upon and which continues to resonate in American politics. At this point, all that is clearly known is that in the Summer of 2016 files and emails pertaining to the election were copied and then made their way to WikiLeaks, which published some of them at a time that was damaging to the Clinton campaign. Those who are blaming Russia believe that there was a hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server and also of John Podesta’s emails that was carried out by a Russian surrogate or directly by Moscow’s military intelligence arm. They base their conclusion on a statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security on October 7, 2016, and on a longer assessment prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on January 6, 2017. Both government appraisals implied that there was a U.S. government intelligence agency consensus that there was a Russian hack, though they provided little in the way of actual evidence that that was the case and, in particular, failed to demonstrate how the information was obtained and what the chain of custody was as it moved from that point to the office of WikiLeaks. The January report was particularly criticized as unconvincing, rightly so, because the most important one of its three key contributors, the National Security Agency, had only moderate confidence in its conclusions, suggesting that whatever evidence existed was far from solid.

An alternative view that has been circulating for several years suggests that it was not a hack at all, that it was a deliberate whistleblower-style leak of information carried out by an as yet unknown party, possibly Rich, that may have been provided to WikiLeaks for possible political reasons, i.e. to express disgust with the DNC manipulation of the nominating process to damage Bernie Sanders and favor Hillary Clinton.

There are, of course, still other equally non-mainstream explanations for how the bundle of information got from point A to point B, including that the intrusion into the DNC server was carried out by the CIA which then made it look like it had been the Russians as perpetrators. And then there is the hybrid point of view, which is essentially that the Russians or a surrogate did indeed intrude into the DNC computers but it was all part of normal intelligence agency probing and did not lead to anything. Meanwhile and independently, someone else who had access to the server was downloading the information, which in some fashion made its way from there to WikiLeaks.

Both the hack vs. leak viewpoints have marshaled considerable technical analysis in the media to bolster their arguments, but the analysis suffers from the decidedly strange fact that the FBI never even examined the DNC servers that may have been involved. The hack school of thought has stressed that Russia had both the ability and motive to interfere in the election by exposing the stolen material while the leakers have recently asserted that the sheer volume of material downloaded indicates that something like a higher speed thumb drive was used, meaning that it had to be done by someone with actual physical direct access to the DNC system. Someone like Seth Rich.

What the many commentators on the DNC server issue choose to conclude is frequently shaped by their own broader political views, producing a result that favors one approach over another depending on how one feels about Trump or Clinton. Or the Russians. Perhaps it would be clarifying to regard the information obtained and transferred as a theft rather than either a hack or a leak since the two expressions have taken on a political meaning of their own in the Russiagate context. With all the posturing going on, the bottom line is that the American people and government have no idea who actually stole the material in question, though the Obama Administration was extraordinarily careless in its investigation and Russian President Vladimir Putin has generally speaking been blamed for what took place.

The story currently bouncing around the media concerns an offer allegedly made in 2017 by former Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher to imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. According to Assange’s lawyers, Rohrabacher offered a pardon from President Trump if Assange were to provide information that would attribute the theft or hack of the Democratic National Committee emails to someone other than the Russians. He was presumably referring to Seth Rich.

Assange did not accept the offer, but it should be noted that he has repeatedly stated in any event that he did not obtain the material from a Russian or Russian-linked source. In reality, he might not know the original source of the information. Since Rohrabacher’s original statement, both he and Trump have denied any suggestion that there was a firm offer with a quid pro quo for Assange. Trump claims to hardly know Rohrabacher and also asserts that he has never had a one-on-one meeting with him.

The U.S. media’s coverage of the story has emphasized that Assange’s cooperation would have helped to absolve Russia from the charge of having interfered decisively in the U.S. election, but the possible motive for doing so remains unclear. Russian-American relations are at their lowest point since the Cold War and that has largely been due to policies embraced by Donald Trump, to include the cancellation of START and medium range missile agreements. Trump has also approved NATO military maneuvers and exercises right up to the Russian border and has provided lethal weapons to Ukraine, something that his predecessor Barack Obama balked at. He has also openly confronted the Russians in Syria.

Given all of that back story, it would be odd to find Trump making an offer that focuses only on one issue and does not actually refute the broader claims of Russian interference, which are based on a number of pieces of admittedly often dubious evidence, not just the Clinton and Podesta emails. Which brings the tale back to Seth Rich. If Rich was indeed responsible for the theft of the information and was possibly killed for his treachery, it most materially impacts on the Democratic Party as it reminds everyone of what the Clintons and their allies are capable of. It will also serve as a warning of what might be coming at the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee in July as the party establishment uses fair means or foul to stop Bernie Sanders. How this will all play out is anyone’s guess, but many of those who pause to observe the process will be thinking of Seth Rich.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests.

February 29, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Interview with Diana Johnstone by the Saker Italia

The Saker | February 29, 2020

Saker Italia interviewed Diana Johnstone, journalist and political writer, whose articles on politics and analysis on the contemporary global “hot” issues have already been published on Saker Italia. Thanks to her experience and activism (“the political is personal”), Diana offers an always lucid and uncompromising look at current issues. In fact, you may well remember the controversy and the censorship suffered for her position on Srebrenica (“Well, I am very much a genocide denier, and I’m proud of it and I can say why”), and the support Noam Chomsky also gave her on that.

With this interview to Diana, we want to face what we now consider most urgent issues: the gap between the Eastern (Russia, China, Iran) and the Atlantic bloc, USA’s global role and its deep “identity crisis”, and the current social and political movements fleeing the European model. Trying to take a look at our geopolitical future.

S.I. One of the hot and “macro” topics is the so-called “new world order”, in particular the evolution of the model of power balance from bipolar to multipolar. The historic opposition between the USA and Russia has been enriched with new players (China and Iran), and of course the American role is changing, a role that also influences the European balance and dynamics. What is the “picture” you can take of this moment? What evolution? Which new players do you think will appear? What is Israel’s role and/or the Israeli lobby’s influence in this context?

Is there really “historic opposition” between the USA and Russia?  Russia supported the North in the U.S. Civil War while Britain and France were on the side of the South, and Russia and the USA were on the same side in two world wars. The historic opposition to Russia was more British, recalling the “Great Game” of 19th century rivalry in Central Asia.

Russia was seen as a U.S. adversary on grounds of communism. The communist scare emerged as the perfect ideological pretext for the United States to maintain the dominance it gained from World War.  Western Europe had to be defended from communism. Third World countries had to be prevented from going communist.

Russians themselves evidently believed that U.S. animosity was purely ideological, based on communism. I think they really believed that the fall of Soviet communism would make the two nations into friendly partners.

All that happened is that the opposition was exposed as purely a matter of power relations. It becomes clearer that this is not an ideological battle between “liberal democracy” and “communist dictatorship” but between the United States and whoever resists U.S. world hegemony.

After two major twentieth century wars that ruined all the major powers, the United States moved in and occupied the power vacuum. Educated to consider America morally superior to the “old world”, U.S. leaders easily considered their new supremacy to be natural, inevitable and eternal. They are psychologically ill-equipped to think in Putin’s terms of “a world of equals”.

This attitude has been very successfully exploited by Israel’s champions, whether the neoconservative policy elite, Hollywood or AIPAC. They have managed to identify Israel as a little America, land of those who escaped wicked European persecution to create a free nation in the wilderness and who must forever fend off the enemies of democracy. The Israeli influence has had a very negative effect on both the American ideology and American methods, from targeted assassinations of political enemies to methods of crowd control.

I would not call Iran a “new player”. The United States holds an old grudge against the Islamic Republic dating back to the 1979 embassy hostage crisis. Saudi Arabia and especially Israel exploit this to portray their own most powerful regional adversary as a threat to the United States, when in reality Iran only seeks peaceful relations with the West.

The “new players” that could make a difference would be Western European countries whose leaders would manage to free themselves from the military and ideological occupation by the United States that has lasted over seventy years. But so far, Europe’s irresponsible obedience provides the decisive support to U.S. worldwide pretensions.


S.I.  Focusing on Europe, the EU is increasingly perceived by its citizens as a bureaucratic rather than a political or cultural entity. Also considering the foreign policy of Macron and Merkel, what’s your view on the current EU’s state of health?

The EU is indeed a bureaucratic rather than a political or cultural entity. Still worse, its treaties lock its member States into neoliberal economic policies and bind its defense to NATO. In short, the EU is the most advanced experiment in U.S.-dominated globalization.

In this context, neither the EU itself nor its member states can pursue their own foreign policy. That is why they are flailing about helplessly as they recognize that following the United States is leading them off the cliff.

French President has been widely quoted for remarking that NATO is “brain dead”. I just read an interview with Alain de Benoist who rightly observed that it is the European Union which is brain dead, whereas NATO is flourishing. That is all too true. NATO is actually making Europe’s foreign policy through its military buildup against Russia, and they all go along, although only Poland and the little Baltic States really approve.

The EU’s domestic policies are widely unpopular, and the foreign policy is dictated by NATO. Yet the EU persists because populations have been indoctrinated for generations that only these particular supranational structures preserve Europe from war – even as Europe has been being dragged into wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria… and what comes next?


S.I.  The resolution of the European Parliament, which historically equated Nazism with communism, has recently aroused much controversy. Recalling also that the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazism will be celebrated this year in May – a victory obtained mainly thanks to the Soviet government – what is your opinion on this ideological operation, easy to become a decisive political-cultural watershed for the identity of the European Union itself?

The European Parliament has no authority to do much of anything, least of all to define historic truth. This shameful resolution illustrates the intellectual vacuity of the current European political class as a whole.

The equation of Nazism with Soviet communism is based on the propagandistic practice of throwing both of them into a bag labeled “totalitarianism”, a questionable abstract concept which refers to techniques of ideological control, ignoring the sharp differences of intention and practice. The point is to discredit extreme left and extreme right and preserve the “liberal center” as the only innocent place to be. By installing an official version of history and an official liberal ideology, the European Parliament seems to be leaning toward a bit of totalitarianism itself. Since there is no such thing as a common European sensibility, the EU tries to identify itself with abstract ideas and historic myths, much like its sponsor, the United States.


S.I. Still talking about Europe, we see the movement of the yellow vests and the recent victory of Sinn Fein in the Irish elections. We see all these movements and expressions that are strongly in contrast not only with the concept of the EU but are also openly anti-establishment. What kind of future do you see for these movements? Which others are possibly ready to explode?

The European Construction was designed (notably along the lines laid out by Jean Monnet) to put an end to nation states and even to politics, replaced by capitalism and technocratic governance. But politics is reasserting itself in various ways. The lid is shaking and may come off. In France, the problem with the EU is that the neoliberal straitjacket blocks the sort of mixed economy, with a strong State role, an industrial policy, public services and social benefits. For Hungary, EU immigration policy threatens the identity of a small nation with a difficult language. These movements call attention to the growing differences between historic nations that according to the concept of the EU were supposed to grow into one European people. But right in the very center of the EU, Belgium is coming apart because prosperous right-leaning Dutch-speaking Flanders doesn’t want to share social costs with French-speaking, left-leaning Wallonia. This illustrates a North-South split that haunts the EU. If little Belgium can’t hold together after two hundred years, a King and a good soccer team, how will Finland and Portugal, Malta and Denmark, Germany and Greece merge into a nation?


S.I. In what is geographically Europe, we are witnessing the terrible conflict in Ukraine. Can you give us your opinion on the role of Europe? Do you think that the end of the conflict is likely to happen, and if so, how?

The role of Europe is simply deplorable. Seen from Washington, Ukraine is a big wedge to drive into Russia. Using Ukraine against Russia has been U.S. policy since the end of World War II. The usual U.S. tactic is exploitation of minority discontent to promote regime change, and the massive immigration of anti-Soviet, anti-Russian Ukrainians to North America has provided plenty of encouragement.

European policy makers should have had a more profound understanding of how dangerous it would be to exploit internal Ukrainian differences, stemming from a violent and complicated history marked by conflicting interpretations of history.

In the contrary, the whole current mess began with demands that Ukraine make a sharp choice in favor of economic accords with the EU, cutting ties with Russia, its main trading partner with strong historic links.  This was bound to revive and exacerbate divisions between the two halves of the country – Western Ukraine which looks West and Eastern Ukraine which looks East. Germany had its own pawns in Ukraine, and was pushing the EU takeover, but lost to the Americans. The United States exploited the uproar to back a coup giving control of the Kiev government to forces favorable to NATO membership. This amounted to a clear threat to bring Russia’s principal naval base in Crimea under US control. Russia was able to fend off this unacceptable threat peacefully, thanks to the well-established fact that most Crimeans wanted their territory to return to Russia. This was overwhelmingly demonstrated by referendum.

Now, any seriously educated person in Europe can understand that this was not a “Russian invasion” of Ukraine but a deft move to head off a potential military confrontation. Contrary to the NATO bombing that detached Kosovo from Serbia, it was both peaceful and democratic.

Meanwhile, the people of the Russian-speaking Donbass region revolted against the coup that overthrew the President they had voted for in favor of a hostile regime including neo-Nazi elements. Russia very easily could have invaded Eastern Ukraine in support of Donbass rebels but did not do so. Yet Atlantic solidarity obliged everyone to proclaim that Russia “invaded Ukraine” and thus “threatens to invade its neighbors”.

So Ukraine is mired in a frozen conflict. Yet the way out was clear enough almost from the beginning, when leaders from France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine met in 2014 during commemorations of the D-Day Normandy landings in an attempt to work towards a solution. The outlines of a solution have been obvious from the beginning: a decentralized Ukraine, perhaps a federation on the German model, which would enable the regions to enjoy self-government. Only the Americans have an interest in the ongoing Ukrainian civil war, as a thorn in the side of Russia. The United States made it clear during the Yugoslav crisis of the 1990s that it could not stand back and allow Europeans to solve their own problems. Ukraine is a critical test of that control.


S.I. Looking at the world map, what are your thoughts and predictions on the near geopolitical future?

Today, Syria is still the central point of confrontation between great powers. I try to understand the past and the present, and never venture to predict the future. But I can worry. I worry about insane NATO military exercises on Russia’s borders. I worry today about the reckless and totally illegal Turkish intervention in Syria, which is bringing a NATO member into direct conflict with Russia. The very existence of NATO is a threat to the world, and if European leaders weren’t “brain dead”, they would demand its dissolution. Meanwhile, I read that there is strong opposition to Erdogan’s adventurism from the Turkish people. Instead of artificial “regime change” engineered by U.S. agencies, we need more genuine critical movements of European peoples demanding that governments meet domestic needs and end military confrontation.

Diana Johnstone is an American political writer, focusing primarily on European politics and Western foreign policy. She received a BA in Russian Area studies and a PhD in French literature at the University of Minnesota. Active in the movement against the Vietnam War, she organized the first international contacts between American citizens and Vietnamese representatives.

Diana worked for Agence France Presse, for In These Times as European Correspondent, and she was press officer of the Green group in the European Parliament from 1990 to 1996. Most of Johnstone’s adult life has been spent in France, Germany, and Italy, and from 1990 she has lived in Paris. Her writings have been published in New Left Review, Counterpunch, and Covert Action Quarterly.

She is author of the books “The Politics of Euromissiles: Europe’s Role in America’s World” (1984),  “The Politics of Euromissiles: Europe’s Role in America’s World (1985), Fools’ Crusade , Nato, and Western Delusions” (2003),  Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton (2015 – Disponibile in italiano col titolo “Hillary Clinton. Regina del caos”). In 2020 she published “Circle in the Darkness: Memoir of a World Watcher”, a book recounting Diana’s lifelong effort to understand what is going on in the world, seeking the truth about our troubled times beyond the veils of government propaganda and media deception.

February 29, 2020 Posted by | Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tulsi Gabbard: Presidential candidates must also condemn election interference by US intelligence agencies

By Tulsi Gabbard – The Hill – 02/27/20

Reckless claims by anonymous intelligence officials that Russia is “helping” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are deeply irresponsible. So was former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s calculated decision Tuesday to repeat this unsubstantiated accusation on the debate stage in South Carolina. Enough is enough. I am calling on all presidential candidates to stop playing these dangerous political games and immediately condemn any interference in our elections by out-of-control intelligence agencies.

A “news article” published last week in the Washington Post, which set off yet another manufactured media firestorm, alleges that the goal of Russia is to trick people into criticizing establishment Democrats. This is a laughably obvious ploy to stifle legitimate criticism and cast aspersions on Americans who are rightly skeptical of the powerful forces exerting control over the primary election process. We are told the aim of Russia is to “sow division,” but the aim of corporate media and self-serving politicians pushing this narrative is clearly to sow division of their own — by generating baseless suspicion against the Sanders campaign.

It’s extremely disingenuous for “journalists” and rival candidates to publicize a news article that merely asserts, without presenting any evidence, that Russia is “helping” Bernie Sanders — but provides no information as to what that “help” allegedly consists of.

The American people have the right to know this information, in order to put Russia’s alleged “interference” into proper perspective. It is a mystery why the Intelligence Community would want to hide these details from us. Instead they are relying on highly dubious and vague insinuations filtered through their preferred media outlets, which seem designed to create a panic rather than actually inform the public about a genuine threat.

All this does is undermine voters’ trust in our elections, which is what we are constantly told is the goal of Russia.

If the CIA, FBI or any other intelligence agency is going to tell voters that “Russians” are interfering in this election to help certain candidates — or simply “sow discord” — then they need to immediately provide us with the details of what exactly they’re alleging. Otherwise, all they are doing is fomenting a sense of powerlessness and paranoia in the voting public, which could suppress engagement in the electoral process. And, at least according to the anonymous officials speaking menacingly to the media, that is precisely what Russia wants.

If our political leaders and those in the media were really concerned with protecting the integrity of our elections from outside manipulation — instead of just making money from manufactured hysteria — they would presumably devote more coverage to proposals to institute backup paper ballots, which would ensure that no malicious actors can ever alter our votes or hack into our election infrastructure. The bill I reintroduced last year, the Securing America’s Elections Act, does exactly that — but the media has never shown much interest because it would not generate the so-called “bombshell” headlines they so desperately crave.

The FBI, CIA or any other intelligence agency should immediately stop smearing presidential candidates with innuendo and vague, evidence-free assertions. That is antithetical to their role in a free democracy. The American people cannot have faith in our intelligence agencies if they are pushing an agenda to harm candidates they dislike.

Any attempts to keep the American people quiet — with the threat that if they dare criticize the Democratic Party establishment, they will be labeled hostile foreign agents — are unacceptable and disgraceful.

This new McCarthyism must be renounced by every presidential candidate, otherwise we must conclude they lack the foresight and integrity required to lead our country. If candidates are too afraid to stand up against those who would suppress the voices of the American people with McCarthyist smears, they are not real leaders. They are just power-hungry, self-serving politicians whose goal is to play-act as president — rather than actually defend the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.

It is now clear that the mainstream corporate media and the warmongering political establishment are seeking to do two things:

1) Create enough suspicion around Sanders, by falsely tarnishing him as a puppet of Russia, that he loses the election.

2) Or, at the very least, if Bernie wins the Democratic nomination, force him to engage in inflammatory anti-Russia rhetoric and perpetuate the New Cold War and nuclear arms race, which are existential threats to our country and the world.

That strategy worked very well with Trump. Trump has spent his entire presidency trying to “prove” to the media that he is not Putin’s puppet by carrying out extremely aggressive policies that have brought us closer to nuclear war with Russia than we have been in decades.

If Sanders is the Democratic nominee, the corporate media will do everything they can to turn the general election into a contest of who is going to be “tougher” on Russia. This tactic is necessary to propagandize the American people into shelling over their hard-earned tax dollars to the Pentagon to fund the highly lucrative nuclear arms race that the military-industrial complex craves. In the most recent appropriations bill last year, the Pentagon was handed $738 billion — which includes a blank check for dangerous new nuclear warheads and destabilizing missile systems that increase the likelihood of catastrophic war with Russia.

The question facing any potential Democratic nominee is this: Am I going to allow myself to be manipulated and forced into a corner by overreaching intelligence agencies and the corporate media where, in order for me to win the presidency, I’m going to have to do what I know is not in the interests of the American people and world peace?

Or will I stand up to the corrupt neocon and neoliberal establishment, condemn their lies and smears, and act with the integrity and foresight necessary to forge a rational policy that will serve all our interests?

The problem with President Trump is that he talks tough against the media and the intelligence agencies, but he was not strong enough to stand up to their pressure. He was cowed into trying to prove that he’s not a puppet of Russia, and as a consequence has brought us closer and closer to nuclear war. The Democratic nominee cannot make the same mistake; our country and the world are depending on it.

February 28, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Anonymous sources and the guys and gals who made the Iraq war a reality are now claiming that the Kremlin is at it again!

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 27, 2020

Those hapless individuals who run the United States are again slipping into a fantasy world where Americans are besieged by imaginary threats coming from both inside and outside the country. Of course, it is particularly convenient to warn of foreign threats, as it makes the people in government seem relevant and needed, but one might recommend that the tune be changed as it is getting a bit boring. After all, there are only so many hours in the day and Russian President Vladimir Putin must pause occasionally to eat or sleep, so the plotting to destroy American democracy must be on hold at least some of the time.

Yes, anonymous sources and the guys and gals who made the Iraq war a reality are now claiming that the Kremlin is at it again! Hints over the past year that Putin might try to replay 2016 in 2020 only do it better this time have now been confirmed! Per one news report the enemy is already at the gates: “U.S. intelligence officials told lawmakers last week that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election campaign by aiming to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote and boost President Donald Trump’s re-election.”

And there’s more! In a New York Times article headlined “Same Goal, Different Playbook: Why Russia Would Support Trump and Sanders: Vladimir Putin is eager both to take the sheen off U.S. democracy and for a counterpart who is less likely to challenge his territorial and nuclear ambitions,” it was revealed that the Kremlin is intending to also help Bernie Sanders, so whichever way the election goes they win.

According to the Times Bernie has been “warn[ed]… of evidence that he is the Russian president’s favorite Democrat.” The article then goes on to explain, relying on its anonymous sources, that “…to the intelligence analysts and outside experts who have spent the past three years dissecting Russian motives in the 2016 election, and who tried to limit the effect of Moscow’s meddling in the 2018 midterms, what is unfolding in 2020 makes perfect sense. Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders represent the most divergent ends of their respective parties, and both are backed by supporters known more for their passion than their policy rigor, which makes them ripe for exploitation by Russian trolls, disinformation specialists and hackers for hire seeking to widen divisions in American society.”

The Times article was written by David Sanger, the paper’s venerable national security correspondent. He is reliably wedded to Establishment views of the Russian threat, as is his newspaper, and strikes rock bottom in his assessment when he cites none other than “Victoria Nuland, who in a long diplomatic career had served both Republican and Democratic administrations, and had her phone calls intercepted and broadcast by Russian intelligence services.” Nuland, clearly the victim of a nefarious Russian intelligence operation that recorded her saying “fuck the EU,” opined that “Any figures that radicalize politics and do harm to center views and unity in the United States are good for Putin’s Russia.” Nuland is perhaps best known for her role in spending $5 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to overthrow the legitimate government of Ukraine. She is married to leading neoconservative Robert Kagan, which Sanger fails to mention, and is currently a nonresident fellow at the liberal interventionist Brookings Institution. She also works at former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s consultancy, presumably for the Benjamins. Albright, one might recall, thought that killing 500,000 Iraqi children through U.S. sanctions was “worth it.”

Given the fact that Russia will have very limited resources in their effort to corrupt American democracy, which is, by the way, doing a very good job of self-destruction without any outside help, how exactly will they do it? Sanger explains “As they focus on evading more vigilant government agencies and technology companies trying to identify and counter malicious online activity, the Russians are boring into Iranian cyberoffense units, apparently so that they can initiate attacks that look as if they originate in Iran — which itself has shown interest in messing with the American electoral process… And, in one of the most effective twists, they are feeding disinformation to unsuspecting Americans on Facebook and other social media. By seeding conspiracy theories and baseless claims on the platforms, Russians hope everyday Americans will retransmit those falsehoods from their own accounts. That is an attempt to elude Facebook’s efforts to remove disinformation, which it can do more easily when it flags ‘inauthentic activity,’ like Russians posing as Americans. It is much harder to ban the words of real Americans, who may be parroting a Russian story line, even unintentionally.”

So those wily Russians are making themselves look like Iranians and they are planning on “feeding disinformation” to “unsuspecting Americans” consisting of “conspiracy theories” and “baseless claims.” Sounds like a plan to me as the various occupants of the White House and Congress have been doing exactly that for the past twenty years. That we had a national election in 2016 in which a reality television personality ran against an unindicted criminal would seem to indicate that the effort to brainwash the American people has already been successful.

The usual bottom feeders are also piling on to the Russian interference story. Jane Harman, former congresswoman who once colluded with Israeli intelligence to lobby the Department of Justice to drop criminal charges against two employees of AIPAC in exchange for Israel’s support to make her chair of the House Intelligence Committee, warns “How dangerous it would be if we lose the tip of the spear against those who would destroy us.”

Former CIA Director John Brennan also has something to say. He is “very disturbed” by his conviction that Russia is actively meddling in the 2020 campaign in support of President Trump. He said “We are now in a full-blown national security crisis. By trying to prevent the flow of intelligence to Congress, Trump is abetting a Russian covert operation to keep him in office for Moscow’s interests, not America’s.” Brennan is best known for having orchestrated the illegal campaign to vilify Trump and his associates prior to, during and after the 2016 election. He also participated in a weekly meeting with Barack Obama where he and the president would add and remove names from a “kill list” of U.S. citizens residing overseas. He and his boss should both be in prison, but they are instead fêted as American patriots. Go figure.

Time to take a step back from the developing panic. As usual, the U.S. government intelligence agencies have produced no actual evidence that Moscow is up to anything, and there are already reports that the Office of National Intelligence briefer “overstated” her case against the Kremlin in her briefing of the House Intelligence Committee. Sure, the Russians have an interest in an American election and will favor candidates like Trump and Sanders that are not outright hostile to them, but to claim as the NY Times does that Russia has incompatible “territorial and nuclear interests” is a stretch. And yes, Moscow will definitely use its available intelligence resources to monitor the nomination and election process while also clandestinely doing what it can to improve the chances of those individuals they approve of. That is what intelligence agencies do.

In American Establishment groupthink there is one standard for what Washington does and quite a different standard for everyone else. Does it shock any American to know that the United States has interfered in scores of elections all over the world ever since the Second World War, to include those in places like France and Italy well into the 1980s? And in somewhat more kinetic covert actions, actually removing Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran, Salvador Allende in Chile, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Mohamed Morsi in Egypt just for starters, not even considering the multiple plots to kill Fidel Castro. And it continues to do so today openly in places like Iran and Venezuela while also claiming hypocritically that the U.S. is “exceptional” and also a “force for good.” That anyone should be genuinely worrying about Russian proxies buying and distributing a couple of hundred thousands of dollars’ worth of ads in an election in which many billions of dollars’ worth of propaganda will be on the table is ridiculous. It is time to stop blaming Russia for the failure of America’s ruling class to provide an honest and accountable government and one that does not go around the world looking for trouble. That is what the 2020 election should really be all about.

February 27, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Rohrabacher, Mueller, and Assange

By Daniel Lazare | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 26, 2020

Reports that Donald Trump offered to pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange if he could prove that Russia didn’t hack Democratic National Committee caused a good-sized media storm when they came out in a British court last week. But then Dana Rohrabacher, the ex-US congressman supposedly serving as a go-between, issued an all-points denial, and the tempest blew over as fast as it arose.

But that doesn’t mean that the Russia-WikiLeaks story is kaput. To the contrary, it’s still brimming with unanswered questions no matter how much the corporate media wishes they would go away.

The most important question is the simplest: why didn’t Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller sit down with Julian Assange and ask him about the 20,000 DNC emails himself?

It’s not as if Assange would have said no.  According to Craig Murray, the former British diplomat who serves as an unofficial WikiLeaks spokesman, he “was very willing to give evidence to Mueller, which could have been done by video-link, by interview in the [Ecuadorean] Embassy, or by written communication.” While Assange refuses as a matter of policy to disclose his sources, he had already made a partial exception in the case of the DNC by declaring, “Our source is not a state party.” Conceivably, he had more to say along such lines, information that Mueller might have then used to determine what role, if any, Russia played in the email release.

But he didn’t bother. Without making the slightest effort to get Assange’s side of the story, he assembled page after page of evidence purporting to show that WikiLeaks had collaborated with Russian intelligence in order to disseminate stolen material. Rather than an organization dedicated to exposing official secrets so that voters could learn what their government was really up to, WikiLeaks, in the eyes of the special prosecutor, was the opposite: an organization seeking to help Russia pull the wool over people’s eyes so they would vote for Donald Trump.

This is the super-sensational charge that has roiled US politics since 2016.  Yet there is little to back it up.

Even though Mueller is confident that the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU routed the emails to WikiLeaks, for instance, he still hasn’t figured out how. “Both the GRU and WikiLeaks sought to hide their communications, which has limited the [Special Prosecutor’s] Office’s ability to collect all of the communications between them,” his report confesses on page 45. “The Office cannot rule out that stolen documents were transferred to WikiLeaks through intermediaries who visited during the summer of 2016,” it adds on page 47. “For example, public reporting identified Andrew Müller-Maguhn as a WikiLeaks associate who may have assisted with the transfer of these stolen documents to WikiLeaks.”

But Müller-Maguhn, a German cyber-expert who has worked with WikiLeaks for years, dismisses any such suggestion as “insane,” a claim the Mueller report makes no effort to rebut. The public is thus left with a blank where a dotted trail the GRU and WikiLeaks ought to be. Then there’s the issue of chronology. The Mueller report says that a GRU website known as DCLeaks.com reached out to WikiLeaks on June 14, 2016, with an offer of “sensitive information” related to Hillary Clinton. Considering that WikiLeaks would release a treasure trove of DNC emails on July 22, less than seven weeks later, the implication that the GRU was the source does not, at first glance, seem implausible.

But hold on. Although the report doesn’t mention it, Assange told a British TV station on June 12: “We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton, which is great.” Either he was amazingly clairvoyant in foreseeing an offer that the GRU would make two days hence or he got the material from someone else.

To be sure, the Mueller report adds that an alleged Russian intelligence “cutout” known as Guccifer 2.0 sent WikiLeaks an encrypted data file on July 14, which is to say eight days prior to publication. But since WikiLeaks didn’t confirm opening the file until July 18, this means that it would have had just four days to vet thousands of emails and other documents to insure they were genuine and unaltered. If just one had turned out to be doctored, its hard-earned reputation for accuracy would have been in shreds. So the review process had to be painstaking and thorough, and four days would not be remotely enough time.

Nothing about the Mueller account – timing, plausibility, the crucial question of how the stolen DNC emails made their way to WikiLeaks – adds up.  Yet Mueller went public with it regardless. Which leads to another question: why?

One reason is because he knew he could get away with it, at least temporarily, since it was clear that corporate media howling for Trump’s scalp would accept whatever he put out as gospel. But another is that he’s a dutiful servant of the ruling class. After all, Mueller is the person who, as FBI director from 2001 to 2013, spent much of his time covering up Saudi Arabia’s not-inconsiderable role in 9/11, as investigative reporter James Ridgeway has pointed out on a number of occasions. Mueller is also the man who assured the Senate Intelligence Committee in February 2003 that “Iraq’s WMD program poses a clear threat to our national security,” a claim that the upcoming Iraqi invasion would reveal as fraudulent to the core.

Toeing the official line is therefore more important in his book than telling the truth. This is why he didn’t sit down with Assange – because he was afraid of what he might tell him.  In January 2017, the CIA, NSA, and FBI officially reported that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016” and “that Russian military intelligence … used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com” to relay stolen computer data to WikiLeaks. Four months later, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo went even farther by describing WikiLeaks as “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

This was the official narrative that Mueller felt dutybound to defend when he was appointed special prosecutor a month after Pompeo made his remarks. Even though the CIA account would not hold up to close inspection, his self-perceived mission was to disregard certain facts and cherry-pick others in order to convince the public that it was true.

This leads us to a third question: how do Americans get themselves out of the hole that Mueller has dug for them? Not only does Assange face 170 years in prison for espionage, but the impact in terms of freedom of the press will be devastating. The prosecution’s case rests on an explosive theory that receiving inside information is effectively the same  thing as supplying it. Just as a fence encourages people to steal, the idea is that a journalist encourages insiders to hack computers and rifle through file cabinets by offering to publish what they come up with. If upheld, it means that journalists would have to think twice before even talking to an inside for fear of incurring a similar penalty. Armed with such a legal instrument, Richard Nixon would have had no trouble dealing with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. He would merely have charged them with espionage and locked them away until the break-in was forgotten.

If Assange goes down, in other words, democracy will take a major hit. Yet by labeling him a Russian agent, Mueller has seen to it that liberals are as unsympathetic to his plight as the most militant conservative, if not more so.  He transformed Assange into the perfect scapegoat for Democrats and Russians to bash with bipartisan glee.

This is why a defense based purely on the First Amendment will not do. Rather, it’s important to deal with the charge of Russian collaboration that – completely unjustly – has turned him into an object of public opprobrium. It’s time to give the Mueller report the scrutiny it deserves before its collective falsehoods undermine democracy even more than they already have.

February 26, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Brazil in Search for False Enemies

By Lucas Leiroz | February 25, 2020

Recently, the Brazilian Ministry of Defense published a dossier on possible threats to national security over the next two decades. The document, however, is far from showing any sign of seriousness, being full of unfounded predictions, which call into question even the quality of the academic training of the military involved – or their commitment to the truth.

In the document, the Brazilian military set up a series of hypothetical scenarios and warn that France could become a real threat to Brazil in the coming years. The reason is due to a brief tension and war of words between the Presidents Jair Bolsonaro and Emmanuel Macron over the past year, due to the environmental crisis and bushfires in the Amazon Rainforest. For Brazilian generals, this is already a sufficient basis to see France as a real threat to national security, ignoring notable facts, such as that both countries are the biggest trading partners in military industry and that the tension between Bolsonaro and Macron has already calmed down months ago, in addition to the fact that the French interest in starting a transcontinental war over the Amazon territory is absolutely minimal.

Continuing with forecasts, the document testifies to a future of great tensions in South America, with Venezuela and Guyana fighting conflicts in the north and Bolivia and Chile in the south, in addition to the installation of Chinese and American military bases across the continent. Brazil, aligning itself with the USA, will act as a mediator of regional conflicts and will receive advanced armaments from Washington. The document also foresees the installation of three American military bases in Colombia and a conflict between this country and Venezuela. It is also speculated that Argentina will grow economically with oil exploration and that it will align with China, but that Brazil will veto the installation of Chinese bases in the neighboring country.

Brazil’s role in internal tensions and international geopolitics will depend exclusively on its good relations with the United States. The dossier speculates that China will overtake the United States as an economic power, but that Washington will remain the global military leader. Brazilian alignment with American hegemonic power, then, will be a matter of survival and will allow Brazil to mediate regional conflicts, pacify neighboring countries and curb Chinese influence in South America. The generals go even further with their unfounded speculations and claim that Brazil will arouse the fury of “ultranationalist groups in Southeast Asia” that, in retaliation, will launch biological weapons against the Brazilian population on the occasion of the musical festival “Rock in Rio” in its 2039 edition.

In brief summary, the document creates a hypothetical scenario in which Brazil’s alignment with the United States will no longer be a matter of political will, but of necessity and survival. In practice, a group of more than 500 military researchers created a myth to justify alignment with Washington, using predictions that lack meaning and material bases. The ultimate goal is simply to forcibly instill the belief that Brazil should become an American ally.

But the Brazilian military does not stop there. Recently, the Russian ship Yantar approached the Brazilian coast, having anchored for a few days in the state of Rio de Janeiro. When the ship was about 50 miles away from the beaches of Rio, the Brazilian Navy issued a communication signal that was not answered immediately. It happens, however, that the vessel responded to the communication attempts issued later, which was not enough for the Brazilian Navy to retreat in its false alarm that the Russian ship would be performing espionage services on the Brazilian coast, spreading the lie through several media agencies and creating an unnecessary tension atmosphere.

The scandal made by the Brazilian Navy would make any specialist in military and intelligence operations laugh. Do they really believe that such a vessel would be used for espionage purposes with such public exposure? Would the Brazilian State be irresponsible to the point of creating such an atmosphere of tension with Russia for absolutely nothing?

The scenario leads one to believe that it is not a collective idiocy of Brazilian generals, but rather a very well-designed project to create an environment of fear in relation to everything that is not of interest to the United States. Chinese military presence in South America, Russian espionage, French threat, regional wars, biological terrorism – these are all imaginary threats meticulously created by the military who are no longer interested in national defense, but in the country’s subordination to the hegemonic global power.

Brazil seems to be experiencing one of the worst moments in its history. Again, the higher generals are more committed to external interests than to the defense of their own country and seem to be willing to do anything to see Brazil become an American dependency.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

February 25, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

US Democrats Call for Sanctions on Russia Over Alleged 2020 Election Meddling – Letter

Sputnik – February 24, 2020

WASHINGTON – US Senators Chuck Schumer and Sherrod Brown are urging the Trump administration to impose sanctions on Russia following reports alleging that the country is meddling in the 2020 presidential election, a letter published on Monday showed.

“We urge you to immediately and forcefully impose sanctions on the government of the Russian Federation, any Russian actors determined to be responsible for such interference, and those acting on their behalf or providing material or financial support for these election interference efforts,” the senators wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The list of Russian officials who the senators said should be designated includes Russian President Vladimir Putin and other government. Schumer and Brown noted that the US Congress has provided the administration with a broad range of sanction tools through the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), a bill signed into law in 2017.

More Claims of “Russian Meddling” to Come?

As the senators demanded new sanctions on Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Facebook has been unable to substantiate claims that Russia is involved in any inauthentic activity in the run up to the 2020 vote.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told the newspaper that the company investigated a claim made by an independent researcher over suspicious content in support of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.

But the investigation yielded no evidence to substantiate the researcher’s claims, Stone told the Wall Street Journal.

In a separate development on Thursday, the New York Times reported, citing a senior Intelligence official who warned members of the House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee of Russia’s alleged meddling in the election process to help Trump win the 2020 presidential race.

Trump hit back the following day, blasting Democrats for launching “another misinformation campaign.”

​Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was preparing for an inflow of new allegations of Russian interference in the US election, noting that the claims are baseless.

Russian officials have repeatedly said Russia does not interfere in the US political system and have insisted that the allegations of collusion were made up to excuse the election loss of Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton, as well as deflect public attention from instances of election fraud and corruption.

February 24, 2020 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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