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“Human Rights NGOs” and the Corruption of Civil Society

BY GLENN DIESEN | JUNE 10, 2024

The organisations operating under the banner of “human rights non-governmental organisations” (NGOs) have become key actors in disseminating war propaganda, intimidating academics, and corrupting civil society. The NGOs act as gatekeepers determining which voices should be elevated and which should be censored and cancelled.

Civil society is imperative to balance the power of the state, yet the state is increasingly seeking to hijack the representation of civil society through NGOs. The NGOs can be problematic on their own as they can enable a loud minority to override a silent majority. Yet, the Reagan doctrine exacerbated the problem as these “human rights NGOs” were financed by the government and staffed by people with ties to intelligence agencies to ensure civil society does not deviate significantly from government policies.

The ability of academics to speak openly and honestly is restricted by these gatekeepers. Case in point, the NGOs limit dissent in academic debates about the great power rivalry in Ukraine. Well-documented and proven facts that are imperative to understanding the conflict are simply not reported in the media, and any efforts to address these facts are confronted with vague accusations of being “controversial” or “pro-Russian”, a transgression that must be punished with intimidation, censorship, and cancellation.

I will outline here first my personal experiences with one of these NGOs, and second how the NGOs are hijacking civil society.

My Encounter with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is one of these “NGOs” financed by the government and the CIA-cutout National Endowment for Democracy (NED). They regularly publish hit pieces about me and rarely miss their weekly tweets that label me a propagandist for Russia. It is always name-calling and smearing rather than anything that can be considered a coherent argument.

The standard formula for cancellation is to shame my university in every article and tweet for allowing academic freedom, with the implicit offer of redemption by terminating my employment as a professor. Peak absurdity occurred with a 7-page article in a newspaper in which it was argued I violated international law by spreading war propaganda. They grudgingly had to admit that I have opposed the war from day one, although for a professor in Russian politics to engage with Russian media allegedly made me complicit in spreading war propaganda.

Every single time I am invited to give a speech at any event, this NGO will appear to publicly shame and pressure the organisers to cancel my invitation. The NGO also openly attempt to incite academics to rally against me to strengthen their case for censorship in a trial of public opinion. Besides whipping up hatred in the media by labelling me a propagandist for Russia, they incite online troll armies such as NAFO to cancel me online and in the real world. After subsequent intimidations through social media, emails, SMS and phone calls, the police advised me to remove my home address and phone number from public access. One of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee recently responded by posting a sale ad for my house, which included photos of my home with my address for their social media followers.

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee also infiltrates and corrupts other institutions. One of the more eager Helsinki Committee employees is also a board member at the Norwegian organisation for non-fictional authors and translators (NFFO) and used his position there to cancel the organisation’s co-hosting of an event as I had been invited to speak. The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is also overrepresented in the Nobel Committee to ensure the right candidates are picked.

Why would a humanitarian NGO act like modern Brownshirts by limiting academic freedom? One could similarly ask why a human rights NGO spends more effort to demonise Julian Assange rather than exploring the human rights abuses he exposed.

This “human rights NGO” is devoted primarily to addressing human rights abuses in the East. Subsequently, all great power politics is framed as a competition between good values versus bad values. Constructing stereotypes for the in-group versus the out-groups as a conflict between good and evil is a key component of political propaganda. The complexity of security competition between the great powers is dumbed down and propagandised as a mere struggle between liberal democracy versus authoritarianism. Furthermore, they rest on the source credibility of being “non-governmental” and merely devoted to human rights, which increases the effectiveness of their messaging.

By framing the world as a conflict between good and evil, mutual understanding and compromise are tantamount to appeasement while peace is achieved by defeating enemies. Thus, these “human rights NGOs” call for confrontation and escalation against whoever is the most recent reincarnation of Hitler, while the people calling for diplomacy are denounced and censored as traitors.

NGOs Hijacking Civil Society

After the Second World War, American intelligence agencies took on a profound role in manipulating civil society in Europe. The intelligence agencies were embarrassed when they were caught, and the solution was to hide in plain sight.

The Reagan Doctrine entailed setting up NGOs that would openly interfere in the civil society of other states under the guise of supporting human rights. The well-documented objective was to conceal influence operations by US intelligence as work on democracy and human rights. The “non-governmental” aspect of the NGOs is fraudulent as they are almost completely funded by the government and staffed with people connected to the intelligence community. Case in point, during Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” in 2004, an anti-corruption protest was transformed into a pro-NATO/anti-Russian government. The head of the influential NGO Freedom House in Ukraine was the former Director of the CIA.

Reagan himself gave the inauguration speech when he established the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 1983. The Washington Post wrote that NED has been the “sugar daddy of overt operations” and “what used to be called ‘propaganda’ and can now simply be called ‘information'”.[1] Documents released reveal that NED cooperated closely with CIA propaganda initiatives. Allen Weinstein, a cofounder of NED, acknowledged: “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”.[2] Philip Agee, a CIA whistle-blower, explained that NED was established as a “propaganda and inducement program” to subvert foreign nations and style it as a democracy promotion initiative. NED also finances the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.

The NGOs enable a loud Western-backed minority to marginalise a silent majority, and then sell it as “democracy”. Protests can therefore legitimise the overthrow of elected governments. The Guardian referred to the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004 as “an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing” for the purpose of “winning other people’s elections”.[3] Another article by the Guardian labelled the Orange Revolution as a “postmodern coup d’état” and a “CIA-sponsored third world uprising of cold war days, adapted to post-Soviet conditions”.[4] A similar regime change operation was repeated in Ukraine in 2014 to mobilise Ukrainian civil society against their government, resulting in overthrowing the democratically elected government against the will of the majority of Ukrainians. The NGOs branded it a “democratic revolution” and was followed by Washington asserting its dominance over key levers of power in Kiev.

Similar NGO operations were also launched against Georgia. The NGOs staged Georgia’s “Rose Revolution” in 2003 which eventually resulted in war with Russia after the new authorities in Georgia attacked South Ossetia. Recently, the Prime Minister of Georgia cautioned that the US was yet again using NGOs in an effort to topple the government to use his country as a second front against Russia.[5] Georgia’s democratically elected parliament passed a law with an overwhelming majority (83 in favour vs 23 against), for greater transparency over the funding of NGOs. Unsurprisingly, the Western NGOs decided that transparency over funding of NGOs was undemocratic, and it was labelled a “Russian law”. The Western public was fed footage of protests for democratic credibility, and they were reassured that the Georgian Prime Minister was merely a Russian puppet. The US and EU subsequently responded by threatening Georgia with sanctions in the name of “supporting” Georgia’s civil society.

Civil Society Corrupted

Society rests on three legs – the government, the market and civil society. Initially, the free market was seen as the main instrument to elevate the freedom of the individual from government. Yet, as immense power concentrated in large industries in the late 19th century, some liberals looked to the government as an ally to limit the power of large businesses. The challenge of our time is that government and corporate interests go increasingly hand-in-hand, which only intensifies with the rise of the tech giants. This makes it much more difficult for civil society to operate independently. The universities should be a bastion of freedom and not policed by fake NGOs.

National Endowment for Democracy - generator of coups and chaos - ANALYSIS

[1] D. Ignatius, ‘Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups’, Washington Post, 22 September 1991.

[2] Ibid.

[3] I. Traynor, ‘US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev’, The Guardian, 26 November 2004.

[4] J. Steele, ‘Ukraine’s postmodern coup d’état’, The Guardian, 26 November 2004.

[5] L Kelly, ‘Georgian prime minister accuses US of fueling ‘revolution attempts’’, The Hill, 3 May 2024.

June 14, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Ex-Press TV reporter at center of WaPo’s smear campaign against Grayzone

By Maryam Qarehgozlou | Press TV | June 11, 2024

The Washington Post reports that Grayzone journalist Wyatt Reed took funds from Iran, and the report is based on testimonies of anti-Iran elements or those linked to US arms manufacturers.

In another desperate bid to muzzle alternative media that has been revealing Western complicity in Gaza and Ukraine, The Washington Post recently published a hit piece targeting The Grayzone news outlet.

The article alleged that The Grayzone is financially backed by Iran and Russia to “spread falsehoods.”

Authored by Joseph Menn, the article claimed to have “exposed” The Grayzone’s journalist Wyatt Reed’s ties with Iran’s state media, relying on what it said were hacked emails and quotes from sources either anti-Iran elements or linked to the US government or arms manufacturers.

The oldest newspaper in Washington, owned by pro-Israel business tycoon Jeff Bezos, insinuated that since Reed, now a managing director at The Grayzone, appeared on Press TV many years ago, he is on the Islamic Republic’s payroll.

The piece went as far as to suggest that he should be jailed for reporting for the Iranian news channel.

The Washington Post report repeated the same claims about Reed’s reporting for Russia’s state-run news agency Sputnik.

Reed, for his part, has never hidden his work for Press TV. At the start of his journalistic career in 2020, Reed appeared on Press TV several dozen times and openly tweeted his reports. The “correspondent @PressTV” was also featured in his Twitter bio at the time.

“For weeks, we’ve been waiting to see how they would target us. Now we know. Congrats to the @washingtonpost’s ‘Digital threats reporter’ on this earth-shattering reporting on my appearances on Press TV years before I edited Grayzone,” Reed wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, last week.

“How could they possibly have figured it out?” he added.

Dan Cohen, an American journalist and filmmaker, also took to X to assert that The Washington Post’s “sloppy attempt” to discredit independent journalism only highlights the media group’s own corruption.

“The Washington Post is targeting Grayzone journalist @wyattreed13 for having previously worked for Iran state media outlet Press TV and Russian state outlet Sputnik, as if that’s somehow a breach of journalist ethics,” Cohen wrote in a post.

He said The Washington Post reporter Greg Jaffe has a fellowship at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a permanent war think tank funded by the US State Department and Pentagon.

The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal, responded that supporters of the Israeli war on Gaza and the Western proxy war in Ukraine are angry with The Grayzone and Reed because of their truthful reporting.

“The motive behind this malicious attack is abundantly clear: Wyatt now works for The Grayzone, and The Grayzone’s factual reporting has infuriated boosters of the Ukraine proxy war and members of Israel’s international propaganda network,” he said.

‘Embarrassing’ correction

Stung by the backlash, The Washington Post was forced to retract some of its allegations. While the story initially claimed that editors of The Grayzone had received payments from Iranian media, it soon corrected the story, saying only Reed received such payments.

“Less than 24 hours after @JosephMenn’s hatchet job on @TheGrayzoneNews landed, WaPo has been forced into a massive and deeply embarrassing correction,” Kit Klarenberg, a British investigative journalist and contributor to the Press TV website, wrote in a post on X.

“Other egregious distortions and falsehoods remain extant. But it’s a start. And certainly the foundation of future legal action,” he added.

Reed also said in an X post that more corrections are expected in the coming days.

“The ‘journalists’ attempting to get me jailed for journalism just had to issue a major correction to their hit piece. Expect more in the coming days as we expose the US government cutouts, pro-Israel zealots, and federal informants they relied on to target us.”

Bogus claims

Despite the correction, the piece is still filled with false, twisted, and distorted accounts. For example, the author of the article, Menn, claims Blumenthal did not answer emails seeking comment. However, Blumenthal said in a post on X that he received no emails.

“Unless Menn can prove that he emailed me and I somehow missed it, this is malicious conduct that demonstrates reckless disregard for journalistic ethics,” he said.

Blumenthal added that if he had received any emails from Menn, he would have stated clearly that Reed reported for Press TV three years before he joined The Grayzone and that Wyatt’s position at The Grayzone was created through “a public, grassroots crowd-funding campaign” in which readers pooled together small donations.

“I would have also stated that The Grayzone does not accept funding from any government, unlike nearly every intel front Menn quoted against us,” he added.

According to Blumenthal, these facts would have undermined the entire premise of Menn’s “malicious” smear piece, which may be why he did not email him.

WaPo quotes NATO-backed groups

Blumenthal also revealed that Menn’s key sources for the article included Neil Rauhauser, a “shady online troll” who is also believed to be an FBI informant, and some NATO-backed outfits.

The article cited the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI, a Canberra-based think tank funded by Australia’s Department of Defence, NATO, and the US Department of State.

The Atlantic Council, the semi-official DC think tank of NATO, is another source cited by The Washington Post, which has taken in substantial funding from the US Department of State, EU states, and arms manufacturers.

It also quoted Ali Herischi, personal lawyer of Masih Alinejad, a US-based, exiled Iranian rabble-rouser who is on Washington’s payroll for instigating anti-Iran sentiments inside and outside the country.

Alinejad has advocated for Israeli military attacks on Iran and received $305,000 from the US government for her work at Voice of America, the US state broadcaster, between 2015 and 2019.

“At no point did Menn inform his readers that his sources were state-funded pro-war entities,” Blumenthal said.

Misinforming readers

The Washington Post story also alleged that The Grayzone is spreading misinformation by reporting “widespread Israeli attacks against its [settlers] on October 7” when Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories.

However, the newspaper conveniently failed to inform its readers that Israeli media have corroborated The Grayzone’s assessment that the Israeli military explicitly ordered attacks on Israeli settlers who had been taken captive on October 7, killing many.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported last month that Israeli Gen. Barak Hiram ordered an Israeli tank to shell a home in Kibbutz Beeri filled with over a dozen Israeli captives on October 7, killing all but two.

Desperate attempts

According to Hermela Aregawi, a US-based independent journalist, the targeting of American journalists who challenge mainstream narratives is likely to ramp up ahead of the US presidential elections.

“If you read beyond the headline, the ‘editor’s ties’ are that… ‘The files appear to show that the Iranian broadcaster paid [journalist Wyatt] Reed for occasional contributions to its programming’… The reality is US outlets, UK outlets, Qatar (Al Jazeera) etc. pay some of their contributors for their analysis,” she wrote on X.

Journalist Mark Ames also said that the piece was a desperate attempt to trigger a federal investigation against independent journalists.

“This is the second WaPo hit piece against Grayzone this year. Based on the sourcing/media here, you get the sense Langley & DC press corps are so frustrated that their ‘disinformation’ hex cast upon [The Grayzone ] has had no effect, so they’re trying to summon the Feds to shut [The Grayzone ] down.”

The Australia-based anti-war commentator Caitlin Johnstone also said on X that The Grayzone staff worked for foreign media outlets like Press TV because there are no major Western media outlets that platform dissident voices like theirs, who “criticize the Western empire and its actions.”

“The Washington Post is one of the worst propaganda rags ever to exist in any country. If I’d published such an article for such a depraved empire propaganda outlet, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”

June 11, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Scholz and Macron belong to ‘ash heap of history’ – Medvedev

RT | June 10, 2024

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron should abandon politics after their respective parties suffered damaging setbacks in the European Parliament elections, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev believes.

Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) is projected to finish third in the key ballot, behind the center-right Christian Democrats and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Macron’s Besoin d’Europe coalition is expected to win less than half of the votes received by the right-wing National Rally party associated with Marine Le Pen, prompting the French president to call a snap parliamentary election after preliminary results emerged on Sunday.

In a social media post on Monday, Medvedev claimed the outcome proves that Scholz and Macron are “respected by no one.” The former Russian leader linked the poor performance at the ballot box with the “idiotic economic and migration policy” pursued by the two leaders and their support for Ukraine “at the cost of [their] own citizens.”

“Time to retire. To the ash heap of history!” said Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, earlier called on Scholz and Macron to resign and to “stop victimizing the citizens of their states.”

Officials in Moscow have accused leaders of EU nations of betraying the interests of their populations in favor of US geopolitical goals. Responding to the Ukraine crisis in 2022, the bloc vowed to support Kiev militarily for “as long as it takes,” and imposed an array of economic sanctions against Russia. Most notably, Brussels has pushed EU countries to stop buying Russian natural gas.

Large consumers such as Germany have struggled to substitute cheap Russian pipeline fuel with other sources, including renewables and expensive liquified natural gas. American LNG producers have since taken over a large share of the European market. A hike in energy prices has forced many energy-intensive businesses to either move out of the EU or shut down entirely.

June 10, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Neocon Star Julie Smith is ‘Worthy’ Successor of Warmongering Victoria Nuland

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 06.06.2024

US Permanent Representative to NATO Julianne Smith was nominated on June 5 to fill Victoria Nuland’s shoes and become under secretary of state for political affairs. What’s known about Smith?

  • From 2009 to 2012, Julie Smith served as the director of European and NATO policy at the United States Department of Defense and then as the deputy national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden from 2012 to 2013.
  • In 2016, The Intercept called Smith a “rising star in the Democratic foreign policy establishment” akin to neocon and warmonger Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland’s husband.
    In January 2016, Smith signed Hillary Clinton’s anti-Bernie Sanders letter, bashing his desire to normalize ties with Iran. The letter was part of Clinton’s broad smear campaign against Sanders, then her Democratic presidential rival.
  • Testifying before the Senate in February 2017, Smith accused Russia of continuously undermining US interests at home and abroad and peddled the “Trump-Russia collusion” hoax.
  • Between 2014 and 2018, Smith worked in the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) funded by major US defense contractors.
  • She also worked at consultancy firm WestExec Advisors, founded by Antony Blinken and Michele A. Flournoy in 2017, that is suspected of secret lobbying on behalf of US military corporations. Over a dozen WestExec alums joined the Biden administration, triggering concerns “about the potential for groupthink, conflicts of interest, (…) legalized corruption” and “monopolization of foreign policymaking” by corporate interests, per The Intercept. According to the New York Times, some of WestExec’s clients – which the firm keeps on the hush-hush – got hefty contracts from the Pentagon.
  • In May 2020, Smith accused China of undermining US leadership by providing aid to Europe to fight the COVID-19 pandemic; in July 2020 she called to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
  • In March 2022, Smith groundlessly accused Russia of using chemical and biological weapons amid Russia’s revelations with regard to a network of Pentagon-funded secret bio-weapons labs in Ukraine.
  • In December 2022, she announced an effort to step up arms production by NATO member states amid the Ukraine conflict and strongly advocated enhancing NATO military presence in Europe “to ensure that Russia can never attack NATO” in December 2023.
  • “We do consider the Russian threat to the NATO alliance to be the preeminent threat that we’re grappling with,” Smith told an online briefing on April 4, 2020.
  • At the same press briefing she stressed that NATO’s engagements will not be limited to one region, expressing willingness to challenge Russia and China simultaneously and adding that “a lot of the security challenges we face today don’t have any geographic boundaries.”
  • In October 2023, Smith asserted to the press that the US and NATO will continue to support Ukraine and Israel amid the latter’s Gaza war.

Being a darling of the military-industrial complex, Smith is likely to follow in the footsteps of her predecessor, Victoria Nuland, and continue stoking tensions in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

June 6, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Greek EPAM Party Calls for Lifting Sanctions Against Russia, Dialogue

Sputnik – 05.06.2024

Greece’s non-parliamentary United People’s Front party (EPAM), which is running in the elections in the European Parliament, supports Russia and calls for lifting sanctions against the country along with ceasing arms transfers to Ukraine, Liudmila Bogila, the party’s candidate for the elections, told Sputnik.

Bogila was born in the Lugansk region of the USSR. She is a professional doctor and the head of the Center for scientific and social initiatives.

“Only EPAM demands the lifting of sanctions against Russia and, moreover, supports Russia. EPAM has consistently taken a clear position in relations with Russia since the beginning of the [Ukrainian] crisis several years ago — it opposes the adoption of sanctions and is in favor of dialogue, for the preservation of friendly relations with Russia both in economy and in politics. And we want to convey this position to the voters,” Bogila said.

The Ukrainian crisis began 10 years ago, but has worsened and gotten to a new, dangerous level, the candidate added.

“Our party’s election program directly says that today, when Europe, under US directions, is drawn into a war with Russia, the politicians of our country are preparing to sacrifice us to foreign interests. We are fighting to end the war in Ukraine and the lifting of sanctions against Russia, the only result of which is impoverishment of the people and enrichment of the elites,” Bogila said.

The interests of the United States, not Russia’s intentions, spurred the conflict, the candidate said.

“People must understand, what is happening in Ukraine today is not the result of Russia’s alleged invasive sentiment. It is the outcome of the invasive sentiments of the US and its satellites and Russia’s forced actions,” Bogila said, adding that most of the people she communicates with support this position.

Western countries and their allies rolled out a comprehensive sanctions campaign against Russia after it launched a military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. The EU, in particular, has already adopted 13 sanctions packages targeting Russia’s economy, energy and banking services, among other areas. Moscow says that Western sanctions against Russia have failed.

June 5, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Persecution against Scott Ritter shows US not democracy anymore

By Lucas Leiroz | June 4, 2024

The persecution of political dissidents in the US is becoming commonplace. People who oppose Washington’s aggressive foreign policy are being seen as enemies and treated as criminals, even when there is no plausible reason to charge them. Recently, military analyst Scott Ritter had his passport confiscated by US authorities without any specific reason, showing the advanced levels of tyranny in the country.

Ritter was on a plane at the New York airport. His plan was to travel to the Russian Federation, as he had a special invitation to participate in the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, which will begin in the next few days. Ritter was already boarding when three policemen suddenly forcibly removed him and seized his documents. When asked about the reason for this action, the policemen said they were following orders from the US State Department and refused to clarify any details about the case.

“I was boarding the flight. Three [police] officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said ‘orders of the State Department’. They had no further information for me (…) They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport,” he told journalists.

Without his passport, Ritter is unable to leave the US territory. In practice, he will begin living under a regime similar to house arrest, not only being monitored by American authorities, but also being prevented from leaving the country. It is curious that this happened precisely during a trip by Ritter to Russia. It seems that Washington is trying to make it clear to all its citizens that there will be no tolerance for citizens who maintain any form of ties with Moscow.

Ritter has long been one of the most vocal critics of military support for Ukraine. In his interviews and articles, he openly advocates for an end to arms supply and for a friendly policy between the US and Russia. Ritter has repeatedly exposed the truth about Ukrainian Nazism and Western collusion with ultranationalism and racism. In addition, his main work as a military analyst consists of providing detailed, technical analyses that show the situation of the sides in the conflict.

While Western media have long claimed that Kiev is “winning the war,” Ritter has emerged as a dissenting voice proving the opposite, saying that military control of the conflict belongs to the Russian Federation. He has refuted fallacious narratives such as the “Ukrainian victory in Kiev” or the “Kherson counteroffensive.” Using impartial and technical military analysis, Ritter has substantiated each of his arguments about Russia winning the war. Today, his work is recognized as one of the best among military experts around the world, with many of his predictions having come true.

This is not the first time that Ritter has suffered persecution in his own country. In the past, he has been criticized, defamed and even detained by American authorities because of his stance against Washington’s war initiatives. Ritter severely criticized the American decision to invade Iraq, stating that there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country. At the time, he was a UN weapons inspector and had privileged information about the real situation in the Middle East.

Currently, in addition to providing military analysis on the war in Ukraine, Ritter has also been strongly critical of Israeli violence in the Gaza Strip, which has certainly generated discontent among radical Zionists in American domestic politics. In addition, he has worked to refute fallacies and stereotypes about Russia and the Russian people, making frequent trips to Russia to show the local reality. Recently, Ritter was in Chechnya, Moscow and St. Petersburg and spoke to the Western media about what real life is like in Russia today, explaining that the country is in a favorable economic situation, without any effect of Western sanctions.

It is already clear that persecution is the fate of any American dissident. When US citizens disagree with their country’s policies, the authorities attack, arrest and defame them. Unfortunately, this is the reality in the country that claims to be the global guardian of democracy. However, this lie is increasingly discredited. Despite all the propaganda efforts, it is already clear to the world that the US is no longer a democracy.

Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.

You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.

June 4, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

US seizes Scott Ritter’s passport

Scott Ritter. © David McNew/Getty Images
RT | June 3, 2024

The US State Department has seized the passport of former Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, he told RT on Monday.

Ritter was on his way to Russia for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) when he was pulled off the plane and had his documents confiscated.

“I was boarding the flight. Three [police] officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said ‘orders of the State Department’. They had no further information for me,” Ritter told RT. “They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport.”

Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, who later served as the US and UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He is also a RT contributor, writing about international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation.

He most recently visited Russia in January, spending time in Chechnya, Moscow and St. Petersburg, among other places.

The most recent post on Ritter’s Telegram channel put the Clooney Foundation for Justice on notice for its alleged crusade against “Russian propagandists.”

“Here I am. In your face. If telling the truth about Russia makes me a propagandist in your book, then I accept the title,” he wrote. “Bring it on. I’ll school you on the First Amendment.”

“You have zero concept of what free speech is. Try and arrest me and you’ll find out. In spades. It’s war,” he added.

June 3, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Senior German Lawmaker Demands Activation of 900,000 Reservists Amid Anti-Russia Hysteria

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 01.06.2024

Germany went from doing its best to avoid getting dragged into the Ukraine quagmire to one of the NATO proxy war’s biggest cheerleaders, committing over 10 billion euros in military and economic support to Kiev, and suffering major economic losses due to spiking energy costs after cutting itself off from cheap and plentiful Russian pipeline gas.

Bundestag Defense Committee Chairwoman Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann has urged the government and armed forces to activate 900,000 reservists in light of the so-called Russian threat.

“Putin is preparing his people for war and positioning them against the West. We must therefore become capable of defending ourselves as quickly as possible,” Strack-Zimmermann told the Funke Media Group on Saturday.

“Russia produces only weapons. School books are being printed that portray Germany as an aggressor,” the lawmaker claimed.

Therefore, she recommended, Germany needs to “activate the approximately 900,000 reservists,” first by making them register with the state. “If we could get half [of those with military experience] as reservists, that would be an incredible pool.”

Strack-Zimmermann, whose Free Democratic Party is part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Traffic Light Coalition alongside the Social Democrats and the Greens, has been an avid proponent of a military solution to the Ukraine crisis from its outset, actively promoting the delivery of German heavy armor to Kiev.

Her remarks come just days after Defense Minister Boris Pistorius apparently dropped plans to reintroduce conscription under his campaign to make Germany a “war-ready” nation, and promised a new, “largely voluntary” recruitment scheme after months of internal debate in the government over the severely unpopular proposal ahead of upcoming elections for the European Parliament later this month.

The new government proposal does not mention “compulsory military service,” but could force Germans over 18 years old to fill out a physical fitness assessment questionnaire for reference. Other proposals include the waiver of administrative fees for driver’s licenses, discounts on student loan repayments, and other enticements.

The Bundeswehr has experienced a years-long slump in its recruitment numbers, with troop numbers shrinking (by 1,500 personnel to 181,500 total in 2023) despite plans to grow its ranks to at least 203,000 personnel by the early 2030s.

Germany indefinitely suspended conscription in 2011.

To deal with the dearth in recruitment and the political unpopularity of conscription, German Reservist Association Chairman Patrick Sensburg recently called on the military to systematically record the health status and availability of all former military personnel in order to create plans for their deployment for homeland security and national and alliance defense in case of a crisis. Germany counts “reservists” as all former military service members of the Bundeswehr, but does not count troops from the defunct National People’s Army of the German Democratic Republic – the pro-Soviet East Germany annexed by the Federal Republic in 1990 with Mikhail Gorbachev’s blessing on the condition that NATO does not expand the alliance to the east. Veterans of the defunct National People’s Army number in the hundreds of thousands, and faced widespread dismissal in the 1990s, miserly pension benefits, and difficulties finding work in the new Germany.

Berlin has allocated some 10 billion euros ($10.85 billion US) in military aid to Ukraine over the past two years, more than any other country in NATO besides the United States. This support has included an array of heavy weapons – from tanks and armored vehicles to air defense batteries and artillery, with Leopard 1s and 2s making up the backbone of Ukraine’s NATO main battle tanks, and destroyed by the dozens by Russia during last year’s Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Berlin joined lockstep with Washington on Friday by formally greenlighting Ukrainian strikes against targets deep inside Russia using long-range NATO strike systems, but has yet to deliver its Taurus missiles, which have a range of up to 500 km.

At home, German generals and politicians have complained of major problems with the Bundeswehr’s capabilities, including the inability to scrape together even a single 20,000-troop-strong combat-ready division after sending billions in equipment to Ukraine, and controversial plans to send “panzer battalions without panzers” to guard NATO’s eastern flanks in light of the Russian threat.”

Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin have said repeatedly that Moscow has no interest – “neither geopolitical, nor economic, nor political, nor military” – in getting into a conflict with NATO, while warning of the dangers of the Ukraine proxy war’s potential for escalation.

At the same time as Germany has ramped up defense spending and sought to increase the size and strength of its military, the country has suffered major economic difficulties throughout the course of the Ukraine crisis. Hundreds of major companies have relocated industrial production overseas amid unbearably high energy prices after the German government unilaterally rejected pipeline gas deliveries from Russia, and after US Navy divers allegedly destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline network. The traditional European industrial powerhouse’s recession has dipped in and out of recession, with Economy Minister Robert Habeck admitting in February that the country’s economy was in “troubled waters” and performing “dramatically bad.”

June 1, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Russia’s Growing Media Influence in the World Sparks Alarm in the West

Sputnik – 28.05.2024

Russian broadcasters such as Sputnik may be outperforming their Western counterparts in terms of media coverage abroad, UK-based non-profit called Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) claims.

In its written evidence submission to the UK Parliament International Development Committee’s Inquiry into Future funding of the BBC World Service, AIB stated that “the global distribution of Russia’s international [media] operations is possibly greater than that of Western broadcasters.”

Sputnik and RT TV and radio services are being broadcast in many of the Global South countries – “including, but not limited to Venezuela, Syria, Mexico, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and South Africa” – and these media operations help Russia spread its influence around the world, AIB laments.

All this praise, however, should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, seeing how the main purpose of the AIB’s document appears to be securing more British government funding for the BBC.

May 28, 2024 Posted by | Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

The Drive for War

By Craig Murray | May 18, 2024

The collective shrug with which the Western media and political class noted the attempted assassination of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has been telling.

Can you imagine the outrage and emotion that would have been expressed by Western powers if not Fico but a pro-Ukraine, anti-Russian leader within the EU had been attacked? The new orders for weapons that would have been presented to the arms manufacturers, the troops that would have been deployed, the sabres that would have been rattled?

Instead we have the media telling us that Fico opposed sending arms to Ukraine and opposed threatening Russia. We are told he did not accept the mainstream narrative on Covid vaccinations. The media do not quite say he deserved to be shot, but they come very, very close.

Fellow EU leaders followed correct form in making statements of shock and disgust at the attack on Fico, but they were formal and perfunctory. The “not actually one of us” message was very clear.

There are now an ordered set of neoliberal beliefs to which anybody in a Western nation participating in public affairs must subscribe, or they are beyond the pale.

Not to subscribe to all of these beliefs makes you a “populist”, a “conspiracy theorist”, a “Putin puppet” or a “useful idiot”.

These are some of the “key beliefs”:

No. 1) Wealth is only created by a small number of ultra-wealthy capitalists on whom the employment of everybody else ultimately depends.
No. 2) The laws governing financial structures must therefore tend to concentrate wealth to these individuals, so that they may deploy it as they choose.
No. 3) State-created currency must only be concentrated in and distributed to private financial institutions.
No. 4) Public spending is always less efficient than private spending.
No. 5) Russia, China and Iran pose an existential threat to the West. That comprises both an economic threat and a physical, military threat.
No. 6) Colonialism was a boon to the world, bringing economic development, trade and education to people of inferior cultures.
No. 7) Islam is a threat to Western values and to world development.
No. 8) Israel is a necessary project for spreading Western values to the uncivilised Middle East.
No. 9) Security necessitates devoting very substantial resources to arms production and the waging of continual war.
No. 10) Nothing must threaten the military and arms industry interest. No battle against corruption or crime can override the need for the security military industrial complex to be completely unchallenged and internally supreme.

Dependent Orthodoxies

Within this architecture of belief, other orthodoxies hang dependent, such as the correct way to respond to a complex pandemic, or support for NATO and impunity for the security services. (Support for Israel is probably better portrayed as a dependent point, but with the subject of Gaza so prominent at the moment I have figuratively moved it into the main structure.)

Any deviation on any point of belief is a challenge to the entire system, and thus must be eradicated. You will note there is no room whatsoever, within this architecture of thought, for values like freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. They simply do not fit. Nor is it possible within this architecture to incorporate actual democracy, which would give people a choice of what to believe.

If you accept this architecture of thought, then you must argue that the genocide in Gaza is a good thing, and it threatens the entire structure if you state that it is not a good thing. That is why we have witnessed the spectacle of politicians defying and then repressing their own people, willing to place all of their political capital at the service of genocidal Zionism.

Words struggle to convey the horrors we have all seen from Gaza, and in no way does it lessen the terrible suffering nor the extent of the crime to observe that it has caused a major rift in the neoliberal belief system which cannot be hidden from the people.

Gaza has ramifications leading to questioning throughout the system. Why is Tik Tok being banned, to stop people getting information on Gaza? Why is it a problem that the platform is owned by China?

What has China done that makes it an enemy? China has no military designs on the West. Of recent purchases most of us have made of physical goods, a high proportion have come from China. Why is an important trade partner an “enemy”?

Why is Russia our enemy? The notion that the Russian army is going to land on the Wash is utterly implausible. The Russian state, over centuries and wildly differing regimes, has never had the slightest desire to invade the British Isles. In the U.K., under various governments, for almost three centuries charlatans have been claiming a threat of Russian invasion to justify higher defence expenditure.

Why the need to have “enemies” at all?

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support.

May 28, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Record numbers of ‘external and internal enemies’ threaten EU – Macron

RT | May 26, 2024

The EU is facing a record number of “external and internal enemies,” who pose an existential threat to the bloc, French President Emmanuel Macron has said, doubling down on a warning he’d given earlier, that “our Europe” could end up dying.

Macron made the remarks while speaking alongside Germany’s head of state, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on the first of his three-day state visit. The two attended the Festival of Democracy, held in Berlin’s government quarter, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the country’s constitution.

“I think that we are experiencing a moment in our Europe which is existential because I really believe that our Europe can die,” Macron stated, referring to a keynote speech he’d delivered in April.

The French president urged a vote for pro-EU forces in the upcoming European elections, warning the bloc has “never had so many enemies inside and outside” as it has now. The purported internal enemies are apparently European nationalists, with their rise raising questions about democracy itself, Macron asserted.

“There is a form of fascination with authoritarianism which is born in our own democracies … which also feeds nationalism and other extremes on our continent,” he claimed.

Macron painted a grim picture of “nationalists” entering government, alleging that they would have failed to tackle Covid-19 and shown “no capacity to respond to migration challenges,” climate change issues, and so on.

“We would have abandoned backing Ukraine against Russia, which all the nationalists in our countries support. And, therefore, history would have not been the same,” the president alleged.

“For all these reasons, it is important to vote in the Europeans,” he concluded.

The call was backed by Steinmeier, who said that the mere fact that Macron had shown up at the Festival of Democracy was somehow “a signal that we need an alliance of democrats in Europe.”

May 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Russophobia, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

NATO Cries Wolf Over Finnish Islands to Hype ‘Russian Threat’ Narrative

Finland’s autonomous Aland Islands. © AFP 2023 / ALESSANDRO RAMPAZZO
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 25.05.2024

Western-peddled fears of an alleged potential threat posed to NATO by Moscow have become the norm amid the alliance’s relentless expansion closer to Russia’s borders and hiked up military spending benefiting the military-industrial complex.

NATO is increasingly crying wolf over an archipelago in the Baltic Sea as part of its “Russian threat” propaganda.

The Åland Islands have been dubbed the “Achilles’ heel” of the alliance’s newest member — Finland — Bloomberg reported.

The self-governing, demilitarised Swedish-speaking region of Finland sits at the crossroads of major trade routes worth an estimated $160 billion annually. Key energy and communication infrastructure, undersea electricity and internet cables are located in the area.

But what has NATO stymied is the fact that “Russia is tasked with enforcing an accord that has banned any military presence on its shores for over a century,” the news site pointed out.

Now the Nordic country is a NATO member, warmongering hawks see the archipelago as a huge blind spot, “giving Moscow an open field should it ever decide to invade.”

“If you have all the Åland Islands, you can block maritime traffic both to the Gulf of Bothnia and to the Gulf of Finland… Then we are pretty screwed,” claimed Pekka Toveri, a former major general in Finland’s armed forces.

Finland’s demilitarized Aland Islands. © Photo : Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission; Finnish Border Guard; Finnish Navy

The Agreement between the-then Soviet Union and Finland on the Åland Islands was signed in 1940 following the end of the Winter War. The Finnish side pledged “to demilitarise the Åland Islands, not to fortify them, and not to put them at the disposal of the armed forces of foreign states.” A Soviet Consulate was established in Åland’s capital, Mariehamn.

According to Toveri, the Russian consulate on the Åland Islands needs to be shut down, and Finnish forces must begin training there.

The member of parliament for the center-right National Coalition Party added that archipelago is more important to Finland than Gotland Island is to Sweden. As with Gotland, control of Åland is perceived as key to military dominance in Baltic waters.

In the summer of 2022, Sweden hosted NATO’s BALTOPS 22 exercises on Gotland Island. After Stockholm joined NATO, abandoning long-standing neutrality, Sweden’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson expressed openness to “reinforcing” Gotland’s defenses, in a nod to NATO plans for the Baltic. Sweden’s plans to create a NATO base on the island of Gotland were slammed as provocative by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

After a recdnt review of the Åland islands’ status, the Finnish government saw no need to make any changes. That stance is backed by recent polls among Åland’s residents.

Bloomberg acknowledged that shredding any international demilitarization agreements would be a time-consuming feat, and is unlikely to happen, “for now.”

Developments around both Gotland and the Åland Islands fit the ongoing “Russia threat” narrative NATO has been pushing — while continuing its eastward expansion.

At the Antalya Diplomacy Forum held in Turkey earlier this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took Finland and Sweden to task for abandoning their longstanding neutrality to join NATO.

He said that their decision marked the end of “decades of good neighborliness.” Lavrov also warned that Russia would respond by taking additional measures “appropriate to the threats that could appear on the territory of Finland and Sweden.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently scotched those claims, highlighting NATO’s hostile posture towards Moscow.

“They’re trying to intimidate their own population with an imaginary Russian threat. This is an obvious fact,” Putin noted in his interview with Tucker Carlson, adding that “smart people understand perfectly well that this is a fake.”

May 25, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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