The Covid/Crypto Connection: The Grim Saga of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Browstone Institute | November 18, 2022
A series of revealing texts and tweets by Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced CEO of FTX, the once high-flying but now belly-up crypto exchange, had the following to say about his image as a do-gooder: it is a “dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”
Very interesting. He had the whole game going: a vegan worried about climate change, supports every manner of justice (racial, social, environmental) except that which is coming for him, and shells out millions to worthy charities associated with the left. He also bought plenty of access and protection in D.C., enough to make his shady company the toast of the town.
As part of the mix, there is this thing called pandemic planning. We should know what that is by now: it means you can’t be in charge of your life because there are bad viruses out there. As bizarre as it seems, and for reasons that are still not entirely clear, favoring lockdowns, masks, and vaccine passports became part of the woke ideological stew.
This is particularly strange because covid restrictions have been proven, over and over, to harm all the groups about whom woke ideology claims to care so deeply. That includes even animal rights: who can forget the Danish mink slaughter of 2020?
Regardless, it’s just true. Masking became a symbol of being a good person, same as vaccinating, veganism, and flying into fits at the drop of a hat over climate change. None of this has much if anything to do with science or reality. It’s all tribal symbolism in the name of group political solidarity. And FTX was pretty good at it, throwing around hundreds of millions to prove the company’s loyalty to all the right causes.
Among them included the pandemic-planning racket. That’s right: there were deep connections between FTX and Covid that have been cultivated for two years. Let’s have a look.
Earlier this year, the New York Times trumpeted a study that showed no benefit at all to the use of Ivermectin. It was supposed to be definitive. The study was funded by FTX. Why? Why was a crypto exchange so interested in the debunking of repurposed drugs in order to drive governments and people into the use of patented pharmaceuticals, even those like Ramdesivir that didn’t actually work? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Regardless, the study and especially the conclusions turned out to be bogus. David Henderson and Charles Hooper further point out an interesting fact: “Some of the researchers involved in the TOGETHER trial had performed paid services for Pfizer, Merck, Regeneron, and AstraZeneca, all companies involved in developing COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines that nominally compete with ivermectin.”
For some reason, SBF just knew that he was supposed to oppose repurposed drugs, though he knew nothing about the subject at all. He was glad to fund a poor study to make it true and the New York Times played its assigned role in the whole performance.
It was just the start. A soft-peddling Washington Post investigation found that Sam and his brother Gabe, who ran a hastily founded Covid nonprofit, “have spent at least $70 million since October 2021 on research projects, campaign donations and other initiatives intended to improve biosecurity and prevent the next pandemic.”
I can do no better than to quote the Washington Post:
The shock waves from FTX’s free fall have rippled across the public health world, where numerous leaders in pandemic-preparedness had received funds from FTX funders or were seeking donations.
In other words, the “public health world” wanted more chances to say: “Give me money so I can keep advocating to lock more people down!” Alas, the collapse of the exchange, which reportedly holds a mere 0.001% of the assets it once claimed to have, makes that impossible.
Among the organizations most affected is Guarding Against Pandemics, the advocacy group headed by Gabe that took out millions in ads to back the Biden administration’s push for $30 billion in funding. As Influence Watch notes: “Guarding Against Pandemics is a left-leaning advocacy group created in 2020 to support legislation that increases government investment in pandemic prevention plans.”
Truly it gets worse:
FTX-backed projects ranged from $12 million to champion a California ballot initiative to strengthen public health programs and detect emerging virus threats (amid lackluster support, the measure was punted to 2024), to investing more than $11 million on the unsuccessful congressional primary campaign of an Oregon biosecurity expert, and even a $150,000 grant to help Moncef Slaoui, scientific adviser for the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine accelerator, write his memoir.
Leaders of the FTX Future Fund, a spinoff foundation that committed more than $25 million to preventing bio-risks, resigned in an open letter last Thursday, acknowledging that some donations from the organization are on hold.
And worse:
The FTX Future Fund’s commitments included $10 million to HelixNano, a biotech start-up seeking to develop a next-generation coronavirus vaccine; $250,000 to a University of Ottawa scientist researching how to eradicate viruses from plastic surfaces; and $175,000 to support a recent law school graduate’s job at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Overall, the Future Fund was a force for good,” said Tom Inglesby, who leads the Johns Hopkins center, lamenting the fund’s collapse. “The work they were doing was really trying to get people to think long-term … to build pandemic preparedness, to diminish the risks of biological threats.”
More:
Guarding Against Pandemics spent more than $1 million on lobbying Capitol Hill and the White House over the past year, hired at least 26 lobbyists to advocate for a still-pending bipartisan pandemic plan in Congress and other issues, and ran advertisements backing legislation that included pandemic-preparedness funding. Protect Our Future, a political action committee backed by the Bankman-Fried brothers, spent about $28 million this congressional cycle on Democratic candidates “who will be champions for pandemic prevention,” according to the group’s webpage.
I think you get the idea. This is all a racket. FTX, founded in 2019 following Biden’s announcement of his bid for the presidency, by the son of the co-founder of a major Democrat Party political action committee called Mind the Gap, was nothing but a magic-bean Ponzi scheme. It seized on the lockdowns for political, media, and academic cover. Its economic rationale was as nonexistent as its books. The first auditor to have a look has written:
“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”
It was the worst example of a phony perpetual-motion machine: a token to back a company that itself was backed by the token, which in turn was backed by nothing but political fashion and woke ideology that roped in Larry David, Tom Brady, Katy Perry, Tony Blair, and Bill Clinton to provide a cloak of legitimacy.
Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, and Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas April 2022
And you can’t make this stuff up anymore: FTX had a close relationship with the World Economic Forum and was the favored crypto exchange of the Ukrainian government. It looks for all the world like the money-laundering operation of the Democratic National Committee and the entire lockdown lobby.
I will tell you what infuriates me about these billions in fake money and deep corruptions of politics and science. For years now, my anti-lockdown friends have been hounded for being funded by supposed dark money that simply doesn’t exist. Many brave scientists, journalists, attorneys, and others gave up great careers to stand for principle, exposing the damage caused by the lockdowns, and this is how they have been treated: smeared and displaced.
Brownstone has adopted as many in this diaspora as possible for fellowships as far as the resources (real ones, contributed by caring individuals) can go. But we cannot come anywhere near what is necessary for justice, much less compete with the 8-digit funding regime of the other side.
The Great Barrington Declaration was signed at the offices of the American Institute for Economic Research, which, apparently, six years prior had received a long-spent $60,000 grant from the Koch Foundation, and thus became a “Koch-funded libertarian think tank” which supposedly discredited the GBD, even though none of the authors received a dime.
This gibberish and slander has gone on for years – at the urging of government officials! – and Brownstone itself faces much of the same nonsense, with every manner of fantasy about our supposed power, money, and influence swarming the darker realms of the social-media dudgeons. In fact, the actual Koch Foundation (probably unbeknownst to its founder) was funding the pro-lockdown work of Neil Ferguson, whose ridiculous modeling terrified the world into denying human rights to billions of people the world over.
All this time – while every type of vicious propaganda was unleashed on the world – the pro-lockdown and pro-mandate lobby, including fake scientists and fake studies, were benefiting from millions and billions thrown around by operators of a Ponzi scheme based on cheating, fraud, and $15 billion in leveraged funds that didn’t exist while its principle actors were languishing in a drug-infested $40 million villa in the Bahamas even as they preened about the virtues of “effective altruism” and their pandemic-planning machinery that has now fallen apart.
Then the New York Times, instead of decrying this criminal conspiracy for what it is, writes puff pieces on the founder and how he let his quick-growing company grow too far, too fast, and now needs mainly rest, bless his heart.
The rest of us are left with the bill for this obvious scam that implausibly links crypto and Covid. But just as the money was based on nothing but puffed air, the damage they have wrought on the world is all too real: a lost generation of kids, declined lifespans, millions missing from the workforce, a calamitous fall in public health, millions of kids in poverty due to supply-chain breakages, 19 straight months of falling real incomes, historically high increases in debt, and a dramatic fall in human morale the world over.
So yes, we should all be furious and demand full accountability at the very least. Whatever the final truth, it is likely to be far worse than even the egregious facts listed above. It’s bad enough that lockdowns wrecked life and liberty. To discover that vast support for them was funded by fraud and fakery is a deeper level of corruption that not even the most cynical among us could have imagined.
Jeffrey A. Tucker, Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, is an economist and author. He has written 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press.
American voters don’t need Russian trolls to tell them how bad things are
By Robert Bridge | RT | November 8, 2022
As US voters head to the polls for the much-anticipated Midterms, talk of Russian trolls monkeying with US democracy is back in the news. But does the country really need Russia’s help in “stoking anger” among the electorate?
If the hyper-liberal New York Times can be taken at face value just two days before an epic election, Russia’s underground army of trolls is, once again, attempting to seed the minds of malleable US voters to the Kremlin’s advantage. If those charges sounded outlandish in 2016, when the Democrats accused Russian ‘influencers’ of denying Hillary Clinton the presidency, they seem doubly so today.
The Times reported that the goal of the reactivated Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg is to “stoke anger among conservative voters and to undermine trust in the American electoral system.” Judging by the looks of things, the Russians are a bit late to the party. It would be hard to name another period in US politics when the level of anger and distrust has been so extreme, and that is something the Russian trolls, despite their supposed superhuman abilities, can’t take credit for.
Take inflation, for example, the single most pressing issue among US voters. It doesn’t require any sort of Russian mind-bending operation to inform Americans that the economic situation is deteriorating before their eyes, and has been ever since Biden entered office. They only need to look at their food and utility bills each month, and the price at the gas pump, to feel fury for what the Biden administration has done to the economy in a shockingly short period of time. Any effort to blame these negative sentiments on “the Russians” is just another way of the Democrats saying that soaring prices is “disinformation” and unworthy of your attention.
The Times mentions another point of contention among US voters, particularly the Republicans, and that is the blank-check powers that have been awarded to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Citing the work of “cybersecurity researchers,” the article alleges that the Russian influence campaign “appears intended to undermine the Biden administration’s extensive military assistance to Ukraine.” Again, here is an issue that has already been undermined by the Republicans ever since the Democrats commenced with their proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, a massively hazardous venture where no expense is considered too great.
On this point, the Democrats are able to claim, much like in 2016, that the Russians and the Republicans are working in collusion, this time against Kiev. The Russians are anxious to see US military spending on Ukraine come to an end as all of those sophisticated weapons are only prolonging the conflict. Meanwhile, some of the Republicans campaigned on promises to terminate funding to the Zelensky regime and divert those billions of dollars to national security projects, like fortifying their own border and fighting crime.
It would be a mistake to think that Americans are not acutely aware of the issues now dividing the country. Every day, social media users can see for themselves everything they need to know about crime, inflation, transgender issues, and the border, to name just a few of the hot-button issues dividing the country. To suggest that Russian trolls are required to “stoke conservative anger” is to grossly underestimate the political intelligence of the average US voter, who appears better informed than ever before. The fact is, the Democrats are afraid of being wiped out in a landslide come Tuesday. Conjuring up the ghost of Russia interference at the 11th hour reveals their insecurity and will provide them some partial excuse in the event of a blowout.
With regards to these latest accusations of election interference, Moscow is understandably losing its patience. It requires either a certain lack of self-awareness, or an astonishing excess of arrogance, for the United States to lecture any country on the question of meddling. After all, in the case of Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, we’re talking about a mere $150,000 spent on several thousand Facebook ads, many of which had no political message whatsoever. When it is considered that US presidential elections have turned into multi-billion-dollar pageants, with no expense spared on campaign attack ads, it is hard to imagine that Russia’s severely limited campaign had any effect whatsoever (it needs emphasis that not even Facebook is entirely sure where the posts originated from. Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, would only say they “likely operated out of Russia”).
Now compare that to the way the United States “meddles” in the affairs of foreign countries, like Ukraine. In November 2013, after the government of President Viktor Yanukovich opted in favor of closer ties with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union instead of the EU, protests broke out in the country. How did the United States respond? Not with internet trolls, that’s for sure. It dispatched high-ranking US officials to Kiev, like Senator John McCain and Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, where they agitated the masses against the democratically elected government. On the question of who would ultimately govern the splintered country, Nuland was overheard in a phone call with the US ambassador to Ukraine handpicking the eligible candidates.
Once again, the United States proved that there are rules for itself and rules for the rest of the world, and increasingly it is the American people who must pay the price for that supreme arrogance.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.
How sarcastic remarks became basis for resurrecting ‘Russiagate’
By Drago Bosnic | November 8, 2022
The so-called “Russiagate” conspiracy theory has been the main go-to scapegoat for the failures of the DNC, be it the 2016 presidential or 2018 midterm elections. For six years the mainstream propaganda machine has been parroting the supposed “Russian election meddling” narrative.
Despite the official investigation giving no proof to support the claims that Moscow secured the United States presidency for Donald Trump, “Russiagate” persisted even after he left office. Several major events, such as the humiliating US defeat in Afghanistan and the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, pushed the debunked conspiracy theory out of the spotlight for some time. Still, just when the world forgot about “Russiagate”, the propaganda machine decided to resurrect it as a scapegoat once again, this time for the 2022 midterms.
On November 7, The New York Times published a report claiming that the Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, the alleged “true founder and financial backer” of the “Wagner” PMC (private military company), made a “sardonic” statement about the supposed Russian meddling in 2022 US midterms. The Western mainstream media regularly accuse Prigozhin of “having close ties” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and they’ve even given him a rather cliché “supervillain” nickname – “Putin’s Chef”. Despite holding no official position in the Russian government, he is accused of conducting “clandestine operations” for the Kremlin, including alleged election interference.
“Gentlemen, we have interfered, we do interfere and we will [continue to] interfere,” Prigozhin said in a statement in response to a question from a Russian news outlet. “We will do it carefully, precisely, surgically as we are capable of doing it. During our targeted operations, we will remove both kidneys and liver at once,” he concluded in what was quite obviously a sarcastic remark. Russian news agency RIA Novosti described the comments as such as well, but the US mainstream propaganda machine is adamant that the statement is “clear proof” that Russia will supposedly affect the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections.
In 2018, Prigozhin was even indicted by the US that he funded and organized the so-called “troll factory” to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections, which was one of the staples of the “Russiagate” conspiracy theory. Despite no clear evidence that he did any of this, in 2021 the FBI put Prigozhin on its most-wanted list, while the US Treasury imposed sanctions on him for allegedly “organizing disinformation campaigns” in elections in Asia, Europe and Africa. The Biden administration placed additional sanctions on Prigozhin in March, due to his supposed “crucial role” in Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe.
The US State Department also commented on Prigozhin’s statement, with the spokesman Ned Price calling it “a bold confession”. She added that it was “clear that a person of Mr. Prigozhin’s stature would not be in a position to make such claims unless the Kremlin, at some level didn’t approve.”
According to The New York Times, the unnamed “researchers” have supposedly “detected a new, though more concentrated, campaign by Russia to try to influence Tuesday’s midterm elections.” The alleged goal is “to empower angry conservative voters with the aim of undermining faith in American democracy … at a time when soaring energy prices and inflation threaten to dent support for the war, the campaign also appears intent on undermining the Biden administration’s extensive financial and military support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.”
The report further claims that “the campaign — using accounts that pose as enraged Americans — has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most heated races, including the Senate seats being contested in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania.” The alleged “calculation appears to be that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could dent American support for the war in Ukraine.”
The claims are quite clearly yet another attempt to use foreign powers as scapegoats and an excuse between political opponents in the US. The New York Times is infamous for being one of the strongholds of the neoliberal portion of the US establishment. By accusing the “angry conservatives” of working with Russia, the outlet is obviously trying to discredit the GOP to help the Democrats and give them at least somewhat better chances in the midterms.
The Republicans themselves aren’t immune to this, as they also resort to it by accusing the DNC of working with China. However, in this particular case, the Democrats, terrified of the prospect of losing both the House of Representatives and the Senate, are trying everything in their power to sway public opinion toward supporting their policies, both domestic and foreign, the unpopularity of which has reached its peak in recent months.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
A Tale of Two Reporters in Moscow
Malcolm Muggeridge, Walter Duranty, and the collision of ideology with evidence
Malcolm Muggeridge, Moscow correspondent for the Manchester Guardian
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 7, 2022
Blinded by Ideology: Part 4 in a series on Willful Blindness
Malcolm Muggeridge was an exceptionally talented journalist who lived in Moscow in 1933, working for the Manchester Guardian. Though attracted to communism in his youth, the experience of being in Stalin’s Russia and observing what was going on in it caused him to become disillusioned. Especially disturbing was his realization that Stalin’s army and police were—as part of their collectivization program—starving millions of landowning peasants (known as kulaks) in the Ukraine by confiscating their grain. This massive organized crime—known as the Holodomor—resulted in the deaths of millions in the winter of 1933.
Muggeridge was the only western journalist to report what was going on. When his reports were published, many of his fellow writers—including George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, Jean-Paul Sartre, Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb—refused to believe them and passionately asserted that Muggeridge was spreading falsehoods about Stalin’s regime. Muggeridge was related to the Webbs by marriage, and years later he told a funny story about Beatrice.
I remember Mrs. Webb, who after all was a very cultivated upper-class liberal-minded person, an early member of the Fabian Society and so on, saying to me, ‘Yes, it’s true, people disappear in Russia.’ She said it with such great satisfaction that I couldn’t help thinking that there were a lot of people in England whose disappearance she would have liked to organize.”
For decades, Muggeridge’s accurate reporting of the Holodomor was denied and suppressed. The dominant narrative of Stalin’s Russia in the early thirties was that propagated by the New York Times Moscow bureau chief, Walter Duranty, who vehemently denied the Holodomor. While Muggeridge’s true and courageous reporting was denied, Duranty won a Pulitzer Price for his concealment of one of the greatest crimes of the 20th Century. It’s a testament to the power of Duranty’s mendacious work that most Americans have still never heard of the Holodomor.
Walter Duranty, Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times
Over the last two years I’ve often thought about Muggeridge and Duranty as I have watched courageous scholars like Dr. Peter McCullough persecuted and censored, while COVID-19 vaccine ideologues are rewarded. Most notable is the COVID-19 vaccine propagandist, Dr. Peter Hotez, who was recently nominated for the Nobel Prize.
One of the most bizarre features of our bizarre time is that an experimental, gene transfer technology has become an object of unshakable devotion. Among members of the COVID-19 Vaccine Cult, belief in the substance (about which they know nothing) is an article of faith.
In the 1930s, 40s, and even 50s, many of the most prominent journalists, writers, intellectuals, and artists believed in Stalin’s Cult of Personality. Muggeridge knew (from his own observations) that they weren’t seeing the reality of Stalin’s regime. Because they viewed the world through the highly distorting lens of ideology, they couldn’t see what was right in front of them.
Naughty Russians
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 6, 2022
According to the New York Times those naughty Russians are at it again.
Today’s online lead story entitled “Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Tuesday’s Midterms” with the subtitle “Researchers have identified a series of Russian information operations to influence American elections and, perhaps, erode support for Ukraine” marks a new low in what the Gray Lady, self-designated as one of America’s “newspapers of record,” prefers to call “journalism.” The author of the piece, clearly somewhat biased over Russia and Putin, is one “Steven Lee Myers [who] covers misinformation for The Times. He is also the author of ‘The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.’”
Here is what it is all about: “The user on Gab who identifies as Nora Berka resurfaced in August after a yearlong silence on the social media platform, reposting a handful of messages with sharply conservative political themes before writing a stream of original vitriol. The posts mostly denigrated President Biden and other prominent Democrats, sometimes obscenely. They also lamented the use of taxpayer dollars to support Ukraine in its war against invading Russian forces, depicting Ukraine’s president as a caricature straight out of Russian propaganda.”
Per the Times, “The goal, as before, is to stoke anger among conservative voters and to undermine trust in the American electoral system. This time, it also appears intended to undermine the Biden administration’s extensive military assistance to Ukraine.”
Well, one might object that Ukraine’s president is indeed a figure tailor-made for ridicule as he used to play a piano with his penis, but that is perhaps a secondary issue. The more significant theme is that people who oppose the Ukraine war, for any number of reasons, and, particularly if they are conservatives, are becoming trolls for Russia in part due to the disinformation efforts and are being influenced by way of discussion fora like Gab. The targets “are generally US conservatives who are maybe more accepting of conspiratorial claims” according to one of the cybersecurity experts consulted by the author. The Times links Berka, who might indeed be a made-up identity “posing as an outraged American,” to the secretive Russian Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg which it claims was involved in interfering in both the 2016 and 2020 US elections.
The Times also names another site that it links to Russia, electiontruth.net “For its contact information, electiontruth.net lists a cafe inside a converted gas station in Cotter, Ark., a town of 900 people on a bend in the White River. The cafe has closed, however… No one at Election Truth responded to a request for comment submitted through the site.”
One might object that neither Berka nor electiontruth.net would appear to be a major disinformation threat sponsored by a foreign government intended to bring down the Republic. Nevertheless, the article clearly adheres to the view that anyone objecting to the continuing war in Ukraine is a Russian dupe. It cites Liz Cheney, who has called the few Republicans who want to cut funding for the war as “the Putin wing of the Republican Party,” and Myers observes that the disinformation unfortunately echoes “a theme that has gained some traction among Republican lawmakers and voters who have questioned the delivery of weapons and other military assistance.”
Another “expert” cited in the article, one Edward P. Perez, a board member with the OSET Institute, a self-described “nonpartisan election security organization,” called the Russian efforts “manufactured chaos” in the country’s body politic – in part because the divisions in American society are already such fertile soil for disinformation. “Since 2016, it appears that foreign states can afford to take some of the foot off the gas because they have already created such sufficient division that there are many domestic actors to carry the water of disinformation for them.”
Myers and his agenda driven quoted “experts” do not consider for a moment that there are a lot of good reasons for opposing US involvement in the fighting in Ukraine, many of which are rooted in a conservative view of what is America’s appropriate role in what is becoming a multipolar world. First, the United States has no national interest at stake that compels it to enter the fighting on behalf of Ukraine. Second, the war itself could have been averted if the United States and Europeans had been willing to address and negotiate Russian national security concerns in a serious way before the fighting broke out. Third, even now, a push by the US and its allies would likely bring the two sides to the negotiating table and a truce could be arranged. Fourth, the United States would in fact be playing a positive role if it would opt to do whatever it takes to end the slaughter taking place. Fifth and finally, expansion of a US direct role in the conflict could prove catastrophic if someone blinks and the war goes nuclear.
So, the compelling need for the continuation of an unnecessary war is the main point being made by Mr. Myers’ featured article, which clearly reflects the views of the New York Times editorial staff. And the enemy characteristically comes from within – Americans who oppose the involvement of the United States in the war against Russia and are accused of being little more than “domestic actors” who are peddling disinformation provided by the Kremlin. Given that this article has appeared two days before national elections, the intent is clear. The Russians are, per the Times, generating disinformation about Ukraine and Americans who go along with the lies are being manipulated. Moscow is again interfering in a US national election! Vote for the Democratic candidates as they will be the ones that can be relied upon to keep the war going! Three cheers for Joe Biden!
Russia Says “Top Priority” Is To Avoid Nuclear Clash, Reiterates Purely Defensive Use
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | November 2, 2022
Russia on Wednesday warned that the world’s “top priority” should be the nuclear-armed super powers avoiding confrontation at all costs or else this would lead to “catastrophic consequences.”
“We are firmly convinced that in the current difficult and turbulent situation — a consequence of irresponsible and shameless actions aimed at undermining our national security — the top priority is to prevent any military clash of nuclear powers,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.
While not naming its chief nuclear-armed rivals the United States or the United Kingdom specifically, the Kremlin called on all other nuclear states to “abandon dangerous attempts to infringe on each other’s vital interests.”
The statement reiterated a key tenet of Russia’s official nuclear doctrine, saying, “Russia is strictly and consistently guided by the tenet that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” It reemphasized a nuclear doctrine that is “purely defensive in nature” – which only allows deployment of nuclear arms “when the very existence of our state is threatened.”
In a statement early last month, President Joe Biden expressed that he doesn’t think Russia’s Vladimir Putin will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. “Well, I don’t think he will,” Biden previously said in a CNN interview. “But I think that it’s irresponsible for him to talk about it.”
Also on Wednesday The New York Times has published some hugely significant claims…
Senior Russian military leaders recently had conversations to discuss when and how Moscow might use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, contributing to heightened concern in Washington and allied capitals, according to multiple senior American officials.
President Vladimir V. Putin was not a part of the conversations, which were held against the backdrop of Russia’s intensifying nuclear rhetoric and battlefield setbacks.
But the fact that senior Russian military leaders were even having the discussions alarmed the Biden administration because it showed how frustrated Russian generals were about their failures on the ground, and suggests that Mr. Putin’s veiled threats to use nuclear weapons might not just be words.
According to follow-up reporting in CNN, the alleged Kremlin discussion among top officials of using tactical nukes against Ukraine is based on a US intelligence assessment.
But importantly, CNN cites that there remain dissenting opinions within the US intelligence community. CNN’s reporting begins, “Russian military officials have discussed how and under what conditions Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to a US intelligence assessment described to CNN by multiple sources who have read it.”
“The assessment, drafted by the National Intelligence Council, is not a high confidence product and is not raw intelligence but rather analysis, multiple people who have read it told CNN,” the report continues, before emphasizing: “For that reason, some officials believe the conversations reflected in the document may have been taken out of context, and do not necessarily indicate that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon.”
It is a significant and eye-brow raising moment when CNN spotlights the likelihood of intelligence ‘cherry picking’ in a story which relates to Russia, which indeed casts serious doubt on the original NYT Times reporting and claims by unnamed US intelligence officials.
EU trying to play the arbiter of alleged Russian ‘war crimes’ in Ukraine
EU judicial institutions never showed interest in investigating the nearly decade-long mass murder of civilians in Donbass
By Drago Bosnic | October 17, 2022
Ever since Russia started its counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Eastern Europe, the political West has been parroting the narrative that Moscow is allegedly committing war crimes in Ukraine. Although there has been virtually zero evidence to support such claims, the mainstream propaganda machine refuses to give up. The Kiev regime and its geopolitical puppet masters in Washington DC and Brussels are also resorting to false flags and so-called deep fakes to create and maintain the narrative that Russian forces are deliberately targeting civilians. And yet, the Western mainstream propaganda machine often gets caught in its own web of lies. On October 11, The New York Times published an op-ed by Mike Ives in which he made the following claim:
“The Russian missile and drone attacks that killed at least 19 people across Ukraine on Monday were traumatic and wide-ranging, but they were not as deadly as they could have been… …That has renewed questions over the quality of Russia’s weapons and about the capacity of its forces to carry out President Vladimir V. Putin’s military designs.”
The claim clearly indicates that Russia’s recent missile strikes targeting the Kiev regime’s critical military infrastructure are somehow seen as “ineffective” because there were “too few” casualties. Such a sadistic claim serves as proof that propaganda pushed by the political West has no limits. Russia has been using advanced long-range precision weapons to target key military units and infrastructure of the Kiev regime forces. This approach is a result of both high-tech aspects of the Russian military and the fact that Moscow’s special military operation is still prioritizing the reduction of civilian casualties. And yet, even though the Western propaganda machine acknowledges this reality, the narrative of alleged Russian “war crimes” in Ukraine needs to be pushed into the mainstream. This is especially true when it comes to giving these false claims a legal and judicial aspect.
In recent days multiple reports have been published, claiming the European Union and Eurojust, the bloc’s agency dealing with judicial cooperation in criminal matters among agencies of the member states, have been working to create the judicial framework for dozens of fabricated reports of supposed Russian “war crimes” in Ukraine. According to Eurojust’s October 13 press release, this was the central theme of the 16th meeting of the Consultative Forum of Prosecutors General of EU Member States. Prosecutors General and Directors of Public Prosecutions discussed the self-appointed “expanded role” of Eurojust in matters of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. They also met with their new Kiev regime counterpart Andriy Kostin and the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim A.A. Khan KC.
Olivier Christen, Director of Criminal Affairs and Pardons of France, stated that the EU “remains fully committed” to identifying and prosecuting the perpetrators of the atrocities taking place in Ukraine. He further pointed out that Eurojust has “expanded its prerogatives” in order to improve the “fight against impunity for war crimes.” Eurojust President Ladislav Hamran stated that “never in the history of armed conflict has the legal community responded with such commitment and determination” and that the meeting “will further fuel the joint ambition to bring justice to the Ukrainian people.” Apart from alleged Russian “war crimes”, the panel members discussed what they called the “disinformation via cyberspace”, which was further expanded to include notes on “practical experiences and challenges in relation to the prosecution of violations of the current EU sanctions against Russian and Belarusian individuals and companies.”
In another press release, also published on October 13, Eurojust announced that Romania also became a member of the joint investigation team (JIT) on alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Romania was the seventh member of the JIT, which was set up on 25 March 2022 by Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine and later joined by Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia. In April of this year, the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) became a participant in the JIT. The relevant meeting was held just prior to the aforementioned 16th Meeting of the Consultative Forum of Prosecutors General. According to their own admission, Eurojust is also providing “essential logistical and operational support” to the JIT partners, including to “investigators” on the ground in Ukraine.
Needless to say, there was no mention of the Kiev regime death squads operating in the Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Kherson and Donbass. The meeting members discussed only alleged Russian “war crimes” and the supposed Moscow’s “disinformation campaign”, despite the fact that the Neo-Nazi junta henchmen are openly boasting about “killing traitors”. Numerous Telegram channels have already published gruesome videos showing the Neo-Nazi death squads killing civilians and then throwing them into mass graves. In doing so, the Kiev regime accomplishes at least two goals – it gets rid of “noncompliant” or “pro-Russian” civilians and also gets to accuse Russian troops of killing them. The propaganda machine of the political West then comes into play, while EU agencies such as Eurojust cement the narrative from a judicial and legal perspective.
It would be naive, to say the least, to believe that the EU or any other entity of the political West would ever objectively investigate actual war crimes taking place in Ukraine. Charades such as the ones in Bucha and recently in the Kharkov region serve as a testament to that. None of the so-called “international” judicial institutions, such as the aforementioned ICC, ever showed interest in investigating the nearly decade-long mass murder of civilians in Donbass. Despite approximately 15,000 deaths from 2014 to 2022, with hundreds or even thousands more in recent months, as the Kiev regime forces never stopped shelling Donetsk and other towns and areas, the mainstream propaganda machine has been successful in suppressing most information on this.
What’s more, the Neo-Nazi junta has been using NATO-supplied weapons to target civilians beyond Donbass, in Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, killing hundreds in recent months. Will Eurojust and JIT investigate those already documented war crimes or are their actions reserved only to further reinforce the Kiev regime’s propaganda war?
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
New York Times sacks Gaza journalist for expressing support for Palestinian resistance
MEMO | October 6, 2022
Palestinian photojournalist, Hosam Salem, has been fired by the New York Times for expressing support for Resistance against Israeli occupation. The Gaza- based journalist has been working as a freelancer for the American outlet since 2018, but was dismissed after a dossier compiled by a pro-Israel group, accusing Salem of anti-Semitism, was presented to the Times.
Since joining the Times, Salem has been covering critical events in Gaza, such as the weekly protests at the border fence with Israel. He carried out an investigation into the Israeli killing of field nurse Razan Al-Najjar and, more recently, the May 2021 Israeli offensive on the Gaza strip, which killed at least 254 Palestinians, including 66 children, 39 women and 17 elderly people.
Details of his dismissal were revealed by Salem himself on Twitter. He said that the decision to fire him was made based on a report prepared by a Dutch editor – who obtained Israeli citizenship two years ago – for a website called “Honest Reporting”. The anti-Palestinian group is a staunch supporter of Israel and is often accused of peddling false narratives in Western media about Israel’s human rights violations.
Salem said that the dossier used by the Times to dismiss him used examples of social media posts in which he expressed support for Palestinian Resistance against Israeli occupation. “My aforementioned posts also spoke of the resilience of my people and those who were killed by the Israeli army – my cousin included – which “Honest Reporting” described as ‘Palestinian terrorists,'” said Salem on Twitter.
Salem claims that the editor of the dossier later wrote an article stating that he had succeeded in sacking three Palestinian journalists working for the Times in the Gaza Strip, based on allegations of anti-Semitism.
“Not only has “Honest Reporting” succeeded in terminating my contract with The New York Times, it has also actively discouraged other international news agencies from collaborating with me and my two colleagues,” Salem continued, while warning of the silencing of Palestinian voices.
“What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity, simply because we cover the human rights violations that the Palestinian people undergo on a daily basis at hands of the Israeli army.”
North Korea responds to Russian arms sales claims
Samizdat | September 22, 2022
North Korea has said it has no plans to sell arms to Russia, calling the idea a “conspiracy theory” after US officials claimed that a deal is in the works involving “millions” of artillery shells and rockets.
Pyongyang’s Ministry of Defense released a statement on Wednesday responding to the claims, saying that while it does not accept United Nations penalties prohibiting all arms sales by North Korea, it also has no intention of transferring weapons to Russia.
“We have never exported weapons or ammunition to Russia in the past, and we have no plans to do so in the future,” an unnamed military official said, as cited in state media, adding, “We strongly condemn and sternly warn the United States to stop recklessly spreading anti-DPRK conspiracy theories in order to pursue vicious political and military atrocities.”
First noted in a New York Times report citing “declassified” US intelligence materials, the purported arms deal was later given official credence by State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel, who told reporters that Russia “is in the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea for use in Ukraine” earlier this month.
However, the White House walked back the charge soon afterwards, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stating that there are “no indications that that purchase has been completed and certainly no indications that those weapons are being used inside of Ukraine.”
Moscow’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, had previously dismissed the claim as “another fake being circulated around.”
The alleged weapons sale by Pyongyang mirrors similar allegations from US officials about an upcoming drone transfer from Iran to Russia. A little more than two weeks after National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Washington had clear evidence that Iran was preparing to deliver “several hundred” armed UAVs to Russia, Kirby again clarified that the US had “seen no indications of any sort of actual delivery and/or purchase of Iranian drones by the Russian Ministry of Defense.” Tehran initially denied any plans to share drone technology with Moscow, though the Pentagon has continued to claim the sales are taking place, alleging a “first shipment” of drones in late August.
New Fakes about Russia-DPRK Military Cooperation
By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 19.09.2022
More recently, the author analyzed misinformation that North Korean special forces were about to appear in the Donbass, but the global media soon encountered another misinformation launched from the West: it turned out that North Korea was preparing to supply Russia with shells and possibly military equipment on a massive scale. Or it is already supplying, but that is not certain.
It all started on September 5 with a New York Times article quoting “declassified intelligence reports” that “Russia is buying millions of artillery shells and rockets from North Korea, … a sign that global sanctions have severely restricted its supply chains and forced Moscow to turn to pariah states for military supplies.”
However, the newspaper immediately noted that there were few details about the exact weaponry, timing or size of the shipment, and generally, “there is no way yet to independently verify the sale”, but immediately went on to theorize as to why this was the case. It turns out that the Russian Federation now allegedly has no ability to buy advanced weapons or the electronics to produce them, as international sanctions on Moscow disrupt its supply chains, stocks of shells and missiles are running out and Russia is forced to look for suppliers. This, in particular, was stated by the quoted expert with the Ukrainian-speaking surname Kagan.
A little later, AP Agency gave some details and quotes, which, however, still did not clarify the situation. Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a Pentagon Press Secretary, said “the information that we have is that Russia has specifically asked for ammunition” but had no other details, including whether money changed hands and whether any deliveries were continuing.
Asked why this information was declassified, Ryder said it was important to illustrate the state of Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Ukraine. And, the author would add, against the backdrop of Ukraine’s attempted counter-offensive.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also said there was no indication yet that the arms purchase had actually taken place or that any North Korean munitions had entered the battlefield in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the talks themselves are “just further evidence of how desperate Putin is becoming”, with US intelligence suggesting that Russia is buying millions of rounds of ammunition from the DPRK.
After that, the news spread around the world media and even reached South Korea, but discussion on the relatively objectivist website NKNews showed that assessments are directly dependent on both their bias and their distance from the Russian context.
For example, Jack Watling, Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, confidently stated that since February 2022 Moscow had been buying up stocks of 152mm and 122mm shells “in any way they can. And that includes North Korea.” All this is said to be common knowledge in intelligence circles, but the source of this information is not in the public domain, and he is personally unaware of specific deliveries from North Korea to Russia. However, Watlig’s level of knowledge is better described by another quote: “Moscow had for some time pushed for Pyongyang to support its war effort,” which, he said, was not limited to supplying ammunitions.
For his part, Joost Oliemans, a specialist focused on DPRK military capabilities, expressed more restraint – Pyongyang certainly has a huge amount of old ammunition, and can produce new weapons for export, but “if this story is really true, we could expect to see video evidence of North Korean ammunition in Ukraine in the coming months.” In other words, he is not prepared to discuss the subject without evidence.
By the very next day on September 6, both Ryder and Kirby had already given up somewhat. The former said in a press briefing that “we do have indications that Russia has approached North Korea to request ammunition”, he could not provide more details, but in any case “it is indicative of the situation that Russia finds itself in, in terms of its logistics and sustainment capabilities.” And also that Moscow is asking for help precisely from those countries that the US has defined as “rogue”.
Kirby also conceded that the US doesn’t “have any indication that the purchase has actually occurred yet so it’s difficult to say what it’s actually going to end up looking like”, much less evidence that these weapons are being used in Ukraine.
The Russian side has also spoken out. According to Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Security Council, Vasily Nebenzya, “I have not heard about it and I think it’s just another spreading fake news.”
On September 7, 2022, NKNews specifically updated its piece to clarify that “there is no evidence in the public domain of Russian efforts to procure North Korean arms since February 2022”. By this time, both Russian and unbiased Western experts had formulated a set of theses indicating that the hype news was nothing more than misinformation.
- The DPRK’s arms exports to Russia are a violation of UN Security Council resolutions, which prohibit that country from exporting or importing arms from other countries. Moreover, back in the day Vladimir Putin banned the supply of small arms and light weapons to North Korea as part of the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2270 of March 2, 2016. An overt violation of this kind undermines Russia’s status as a permanent member of the UNSC, and from the author’s perspective even the hypothetical arrival of North Korean construction workers in the DLPR (a far less overt violation) is at best discussed. Perhaps this disregard for sanctions will happen later on the backdrop of a further breakdown of the old world order, but that time has not yet come.
- It is not at all clear how sending such a volume of cargo is compatible with “emergency anti-epidemic measures” and border closures. Especially considering that there is only one railroad bridge between the Russian Federation and the DPRK, which has limited capacity. How exactly Moscow will pay is also a good question in view of the sanctions.
- A comparison of Russia’s and DPRK’s weapons production capabilities also leads to the question of whether Russia does not have its own military and industrial complex at all, and whether the start of the SMO has not affected the rate of ammunition production. And also regarding the volume of Russian military stockpiles: as even Oliemans pointed out, Moscow must have a huge amount of old Soviet ammunition, which is unlikely to run out anytime soon.
- All right, let’s say that “the Russians don’t want to go below a certain level of reserves in case they face other threats”, but the same logic is all the more applicable to the DPRK, which is constantly on alert against a superior enemy. By that logic, Pyongyang needs the shells and missiles itself.
- Most importantly, there is no idea how exactly US intelligence could have obtained such data. But misinformation fits in well with the West’s propaganda mindset that the successes of Russian SMO in Ukraine are about to come to an end. It is known that these successes are largely due to technical rather than numerical superiority, and therefore the argument “we’ll talk when the Russians run out of shells” is very popular in the pro-Ukrainian environment.
Of course, if one considers this misinformation as a kind of “mental exercise”, North Korean military equipment and ammunition might well come in handy. Russian military expert Vladimir Khrustalyov lists a whole range of DPRK military equipment capable of showing off in Donbass – the arsenal turns out to be quite impressive.
But talk of “what would have been” is beyond the scope of the article, and the author is far more interested in how the US intelligence community knew about the ominous “signs”. The author has two options and the first one is that this information is not intelligence but military-psychological. In other words, the news was simply made up for propaganda purposes to cradle the “desperate Putin is trying to find a million missiles” picture, which will leave a certain residue even after the falsity of the data comes to light.
The second option is more amusing and, alas, more realistic: the source of the sensational information could be such an anonymous and specific medium as Russian politicized Telegram channels, in which the SMO is constantly discussed. However, Telegram’s anonymity often makes it impossible to identify the channel’s real author. This means that any high-school student with a glib tongue can easily portray himself as an “expert from those very structures” involved in the “secrets of the Kremlin court”, even if the information has no real basis in fact.
For the author, the validity of such anonymous channels amounts to reports of “secret informants in the DPRK” who “know the local life” and “report the truth”, but non-core or engaged experts easily cite such sources in case they fit their point of view. In addition, even a broken clock is right twice a day. On this basis, it can be assumed that a Russian-speaking US military intelligence official subscribed to a similar channel that discussed the notion that Russia would soon run out of bombs and missiles and need to buy them somewhere, probably even from North Korea.
Perhaps the scout did not distinguish the ironic context from the dramatic one. It is even more likely that he did not realize that the alleged foreign intelligence general or presidential administration official describing the secret talks was typing on his smartphone in algebra class. But the information has gone up the chain of command and in one way or another has “come in handy”.
To conclude the conversation, it is worth noting how the propaganda image of the DPRK has changed: before the SMO, the Western media presented North Korea as a starving third-world country, but now it is a superpower providing Putin with builders, soldiers and now also ammunition. Therefore, the fake about millions of missiles is clearly not the latest fake about the “Jucheans in the Donbass”.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn Revisited
BY LARRY ROMANOFF • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 2, 2022
Introduction
Dominique Strauss-Khan (DSK) was a former minister in various French governments and most latterly the Managing Director of the IMF. In 2011 he was involved in a sexual scandal in New York, eventually exonerated but ruined nonetheless. This story is of vital importance in understanding and making sense of our current geopolitical circumstances, important not because the event happened but because it was possible for such an event to happen, and that there are people with the power to make it happen.
The conspiracy theorists should have had a field day with this one, and all indications are that they would have been correct. The general rule is that if a story doesn’t make sense, it’s usually not true. As with most fabricated stories, this one has many gaps that cannot easily be plugged, and serious questions that were either not addressed or were riddled with implausible explanations.
This episode began on May 14, 2011, at the Sofitel Hotel in NYC. Around noon, a hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo, a ~35-year-old immigrant from Guinea, entered DSK’s room to clean it. Initial reports were that the man emerged naked from the bathroom and sexually assaulted the maid who eventually broke free and notified the authorities. In the meantime, DSK checked out of the hotel and left for the airport to take a flight to Germany. The NYC police took him off the plane, arrested and charged him with seven criminal acts that included four felony charges of attempted rape and sexual abuse, plus misdemeanor offences including unlawful imprisonment.[1] DSK was denied bail on the grounds of being a flight risk, and was incarcerated at Rikers Island. The following day, he was offered bail on condition that he resign his position as Managing Director of the IMF; he agreed a day later and was released into house arrest pending a hearing.
On 19 May, DSK was indicted by a grand jury on all seven charges, and ordered to stand trial. He was required to post a $1 million cash bail, wear an electronic monitoring device, surrender all his passports, and hire armed guards to ensure he didn’t violate his house arrest. He was also required to post a $5 million bond.[2]
The prosecution’s case began to fall apart almost immediately, progressively disintegrated over the following six weeks, and by July 1 prosecutors told the judge that they had “reassessed the strength of their case in the light of the housekeeper’s diminished credibility”, and sent a letter to DSK’s lawyers admitting serious inconsistencies in the maid’s tale.[3] [4] Also on July 1, DSK was freed from house arrest and had his bail dropped because the circumstances of the case had “changed substantially”.[5]
However, further hearings were still necessary to determine the extent of the charges to be prosecuted, with the next hearing date set for July 18, an important date as we will see. These hearings lingered until August 23 when all charges against DSK were finally dropped and he was free to return home to France.[6][7] [8]
However, the man’s problems weren’t over. Almost immediately upon his return to France, a young woman named Tristine Bannon attempted to file charges against DSK for an “attempted rape” that had occurred some 9 years earlier. In October, after much media publicity, the French prosecutors dropped the investigation from a lack of evidence.[9][10]
But a few months later, in March 2012, French prosecutors announced another investigation on DSK about his “possible connection” to a gang rape that supposedly occurred in Washington, D.C. At about the same time, authorities began yet another investigation in France, this time with allegations about his supposed involvement in hiring prostitutes for sex parties at hotels in Lille, Paris and Washington.[11] [12]
By October of 2012, prosecutors announced that they were discontinuing the investigation of the gang rape allegations,[12] but troubles remained. Amid a continuing media frenzy, in July of 2013 French prosecutors announced that DSK was to stand trial on allegations of “aggravated pimping” at the Carlton hotel in Lille.[13]
The accusations were that orgies had been held at this hotel and DSK had been instrumental in hiring prostitutes for the events. This court case dragged on for two years, the French media providing weekly details with very specific references to DSK and his conduct, some claiming “he had sex with every girl in the room”.[14] DSK was acquitted of all these charges in June of 2015.[15]
Still more. While the French media were hyperventilating over the juicy details of DSK’s real or imagined sexual exploits, Able Ferrara produced a feature film titled “Welcome to New York“, starring Gérard Depardieu as DSK and Jacqueline Bisset as his wife Anne Sinclair.[16] The film was built around the story in the Sofitel hotel and apparently “portrayed both characters in an unforgiving light”. Ms. Sinclair, who is by all accounts a thoroughly lovely person, said the film was “disgusting”, and DSK sued the film’s producers for libel. Then still more. In 2020, there was a Netflix “documentary” titled “Room 2806: The Accusation“, based on the Sofitel event and the other alleged accusations against DSK.[17]
By this time, after months of unfavorable exposure in the US and nearly four years of the same in France, it could be truly said that Strauss-Khan’s political, public, and social careers were at an end. After years of publicity, investigations and trials, DSK had been acquitted on all charges in all countries. It appears there never was sufficient evidence to support any of the allegations made against him, but the man would never again hold any international positions and was by this time much too toxic to ever re-enter French politics. DSK has since remarried and is doing “financial consulting” and giving speeches. The end. Well, almost the end.
The Handmaid’s Tale – a Futuristic Dystopian Novel (with due apologies to Margaret Atwood)
According to her claims to the police and her testimony at the Grand Jury hearing, and according to the New York Times, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journal and many others:
The maid inserted her card-key, opened the door, and called aloud several times to learn if the room were occupied. Receiving no response, she entered and began her tasks. Then, “the married Strauss-Kahn” emerged naked from the bathroom, chased the maid around his suite, “locked the door” so she couldn’t escape, then dragged her into a bathroom and “engaged in a criminal sexual act”. There was much confusion as to whether the criminal sexual act was anal, oral, or none of the above. However, while chasing and dragging her around the suite, DSK was apparently yelling “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know who I am?” When the maid begged the man to desist on grounds she could lose her job, DSK comforted her by saying “Oh, baby, don’t worry baby. You won’t lose your job”. There was also confusion as to injuries incurred by both parties, the maid apparently suffering “a torn shoulder ligament” in her struggles, while DSK was reported to have suffered severe bruises on his back when the maid forcefully shoved him into some furniture.
The maid then fled the man’s suite and cowered in fear in a hallway until a maintenance supervisor discovered her, after which they notified hotel security who performed an investigation, confirmed the torn pantyhose, discovered DSK’s DNA and semen on the walls and carpet, and eventually notified the police. In the meantime, DSK had dressed, packed his things, checked out of the hotel, and took a taxi to the airport in an attempt to flee the country.
But justice never sleeps. It seems that in his haste to flee the country DSK left behind one of his mobile phones. Taking a great risk, being as guilty as he was, he nevertheless called the hotel to ask if the phone had been left in his room; after some discussion, the hotel staff called him to say they had indeed found his phone and would deliver it to the airport. The NYPD then escorted DSK off the plane as the doors were closing for departure, and arrested him. You know the rest, except that none of “the rest” was as it appeared to be.
Some Chinks in the Armor
Ancillary Hotel Services, Turn-Downs Included
At the outset of this event, before all the wagons had been properly circled, the hotel security staff and the NYPD independently confirmed to DSK’s lawyers that the woman was known to act as a prostitute in the hotel, offering special services and “turn-downs”. That much appears certain, but when the claims became public too quickly, everyone rushed to deny them and a hotel representative said, “We have no knowledge about that”.
The Crime Scene: DNA “linked to Maid”
The first rule of criminal investigations is that you don’t contaminate the crime scene. Yet the maid returned to clean the room, no doubt doing so immaculately as is the standard with Accor Hotels everywhere. And she wasn’t the only one. Syed Haque, a room service employee, came to pick up the breakfast dishes which had already been collected several hours prior. Renata Markozani, the head of housekeeping, entered the room to examine the situation, and also Brian Yearwood, the hotel’s chief engineer, with no explanation as to his purpose. Then the hotel security staff who, with little or no training in criminal investigations, went to the room to perform such. Between all of these, any evidence actually existing would have been either contaminated, destroyed – or planted.
It should be noted that anyone with access to a hotel guest’s clothing, toiletry, bedding, linen or laundry, has access to everything necessary to spread that guest’s DNA (possibly including sperm and other body secretions) on any surface or clothing anywhere. In this context, it is not irrelevant that DSK apparently had a woman spend the night with him in that room. The simple fact is that nothing found in that room later by police investigators could possibly have qualified as “evidence” of the crime in question.
The mass media flooded the nation with news that DSK’s DNA had been found (almost) everywhere, linking it to ‘the maid’ without noting the method of linkage.[18][19][20]
The New York Times was there first, citing “a person briefed in the matter“, stating DSK’s DNA and semen were found on the maid, on her clothing, on the walls, on the carpet, and perhaps on the ceiling. After this information had been duly digested by the public, the police and prosecutors stated that no such evidence had actually been obtained or released. “A prominent US defense lawyer claimed that there was substantial doubt . . . [about] the so-called DNA evidence and the match . . . since accurate DNA testing normally takes several weeks.” However, the DNA linked to the maid was headline material, the denials not so much . The Wall Street Journal reported that DSK’s DNA sample and semen were found on the woman’s shirt, quoting “sources close to the investigation” and citing “law enforcement officials” who immediately stated they had never said any such thing.[21]
In fact, there was never actual confirmation of any of this, and the investigators claimed to have found no traces of semen in the sink where the maid claimed it had been spit. The NYPD and the prosecutors simply let media speculation run wild and did nothing to combat it. All of the claims were based on leaked rumors.
Hotel security officers “conducted an investigation” and claimed to have found semen on the floor and wall. They then called the police, setting off the chain of events that led to the arrest at the airport. We are to believe that the mall-cop wannabes comprising hotel security were competent to perform a criminal investigation, and equipped and able to perform lab tests.
The Perpetrator Flees, Leaving Behind ‘Valuable Items”
The US media, led by the NYT, led us to believe that DSK attacked this woman, then fled to the airport in a panic, evidenced by his leaving behind a mobile phone and “other valuables”, the authorities apprehending him during the last seconds before his “fleeing the country”. But DSK didn’t flee; on the contrary, we have a witness account from a woman who used the elevator with him who said that she found him pleasantly calm. He waited patiently in line and checked out without anybody noticing anything wrong, took a cab to a restaurant where he had lunch with his daughter and then went to the airport to take a flight with a ticket that had been purchased days earlier. DSK was leaving the US for Germany where he had an arranged appointment with Angela Merkel. And, for the record, nothing was “left behind” including “other valuables”. What did happen was that one of his mobile phones was lifted from his room.
The NYT led us to believe DSK was arrested on, and then removed from, the airplane, just as the doors were closing for departure. But that description was a bald lie. The truth was that the hotel, on instruction, called DSK to tell them they had found his missing phone. Apparently, it was the police who then called to tell him that his phone was at the gate desk, and asked him to exit from the plane to retrieve it. When he deplaned, he was arrested. Leaving the Air France plane to recover the phone was a strong indication of a lack of guilt since while on the aircraft he was technically on French sovereign territory and could not have been taken into custody. If he were concerned, he could have asked a stewardess to get his mobile phone for him or the detectives to deliver it to the steward. All of his behavior suggests the acts of an innocent man.
The NYT seemed eager to leave the impression that DSK left the hotel in a panic, overcome with fear and anxiety, and was in a headlong rush to flee the country. We have this almost certainly fictitious account: “A guest at the hotel, . . . said the livery driver who drove Mr. Strauss-Kahn to Kennedy Airport was also his driver on Saturday night. “He said Strauss-Kahn was in a huge hurry, . . . He wanted to leave as soon as possible. He looked upset and stressed.”[22] The BBC claimed this “was not the first time Mr. Strauss-Kahn had been involved in such an incident” (even though it was the first time), and further that “he had been arrested attempting to flee the country”, which of course was not true.[23]
The Mysterious Telephone Call
“Investigators with the Manhattan district attorney’s office learned that the woman made a recorded call to a prison inmate on May 15, the day after DSK’s arrest, with words to the effect of, “Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing”.[24] This would seem to confirm claims by DSK’s lawyers that the encounter (if indeed there had been an encounter) was consensual and that the woman was attempting extortion. The woman later claimed her words had been “mistranslated”. In a 3-hour interview with Newsweek, the woman said she hopes God punishes him. “We are poor, but we are good,” she said. “I don’t think about money.”[25] Diallo’s lawyer said she mentioned Strauss-Kahn’s money in the telephone call only to say that her alleged attacker was influential.[26]
More interesting was that the authorities required a full 6 weeks to translate the conversation because, according to them, it was in a “unique dialect of Fulani,” a language from the woman’s native country, Guinea. But there are no ‘unique dialects’ of the language, Fulani being one of the three major West African languages and extremely common, with the NYC area having more than 100,000 Fulani speakers. Moreover, the courts knew this, the police knew it, and local interpreting agencies claimed they had many occasions to provide Fulani interpreters, often on a daily basis. The New York Times was one of the principal promoters of this falsehood (and of many more). It is obvious the authorities lied about needing 6 weeks to arrange the translation, and it is just as obvious that they withheld the information until DSK was out of the running for the French Presidential Primaries.
The Money and the Phones
One of the threads running through the media presentations was that the prosecutors discovered flaws in the woman’s testimony and evidence of criminal activity, immediately notifying DSK’s lawyers. The NYT particularly pushed this narrative, stating “Still, it was the prosecutor’s investigators who found the information about the woman.”[27] Their claim appeared to have been almost entirely untrue. DSK’s legal team hired a private investigation company, Guidepost Solutions, which uncovered the claimant’s criminal background and reported that to the DA’s office, and which eventually exonerated DSK. Such investigations are rarely if ever done by police to help a defendant who has already been indicted.
The first discovery made by the private investigators was that someone had opened five different bank accounts in the woman’s name, with five different banks, in five different states (Arizona, Georgia, New York, Pennsylvania, and one unidentified)[28]
and had deposited US$20,000 in each one. Standard CIA practice for payoffs.[29][30][31]
Given that the woman’s ‘friend’ was in prison for minor drug offenses, the US media, led by the NYT at full volume, tried to relate the payments partially to her friend’s drug dealing, but the depositors were never identified, another sure sign of a CIA payoff. This apparently wasn’t enough of an issue for the media to question. We will never know where the money came from, but the simple fact that the media refused to touch this part of the story makes the conclusion almost certain. The NYT made a small concession to reality, stating there had been “unusual activity in her bank accounts”.[32]
The private investigators also discovered that the woman had at least 3 mobile phones with three different phone companies and was spending over $500 every month on calls. On a maid’s salary? On calls to whom? As a reporter, that’s the first question I would ask. Another almost sure sign of CIA involvement. The media reported every other trivial detail but weren’t interested in this one.
The Timeline
The maid’s account and the prosecution’s case began to unravel in many other directions at the same time. The maid initially told investigators she had hidden after the attack until she saw her alleged attacker leave, after which she reported the assault to a supervisor. But the hotel’s card key register proved that she first mysteriously entered another room for a few minutes, then cleaned a nearby room, then returned to the room in which the alleged attack took place, cleaned it, then spoke to supervisors.[33]
There is another curiosity here: the maid’s cleaning assignments until that day had always involved rooms scattered on various floors, but on this day was given the 28th floor exclusively, so there would be no other hotel staff on that floor that day. The story was that she assumed duties of a colleague on leave, but the lawyers believed this was a method to give her access to DSK “for some nefarious reason.”
According to the card key records, the maid entered another room adjacent to that of DSK three times prior to entering his room, and again immediately when leaving his room after the alleged assault occurred. This information was omitted from her police reports and her Grand Jury testimony. The hotel refused to identify the (probably CIA) occupant of that room. All indications are that she was reporting to her handlers for last-minute instructions, then reporting her success afterward. The media omitted the fact of the second hotel employee entering the room while the maid was still there. This appears to be when DSK’s mobile phone went missing.
Edward Jay Epstein wrote an excellent article that was published in the NYT’s Review of Books.[34] The full version is available here on the Financial Times;[35]
I urge you to read it; it contains scores of questionable details, excellently-researched and documented, that cast a very dirty light on everything that occurred. Also, an article in the Business Insider[36] is excellent, asking “So is Strauss-Kahn the target of some form of political plot? Even if the alleged victim isn’t a witting part of a honey trap, what has been released so far by the New York police looks like railroad job, with a rush to discredit the target for the rest of his life. Even the latest pictures are designed to make the Frenchman look guilty?” The Guardian[37] and Forbes[38] also have excellent articles that identify the inconsistencies. And two others you may care to read.[39][40]
A Few More Inconsistencies
The woman’s account is riddled with inconsistent statements. She told the grand jury in sworn testimony that she left the room, waited in the corridor until DSK left and then reported the incident, and only when confronted with electronic card key evidence, did she admit she cleaned another room and then returned to the scene of the crime before reporting the incident. She told investigators that she fled the room as soon as she could, but she told the rape counselor at the hospital that she waited in the room for DSK to get dressed. Why would she do that, after having been raped? She claimed in testimony that the two never spoke, then told ABC-TV anchor Robin Roberts that they spoke at some length. In fact, she had three completely different versions of the events that transpired and of her activity following.
If the woman had sustained injuries – including a “torn shoulder ligament” as authorities claimed, how would she then proceed to clean rooms? If the woman had been raped and injured, why wouldn’t she seek help and medical attention immediately? A “torn ligament” would be painful and require immediate treatment.
There was much more. It was discovered that the woman had “had practice at this kind of storytelling before”. “Further investigation revealed that the [maid] had lied on her 2004 asylum claim about being gang-raped in her home country of Guinea. More damaging still, she had rehearsed the narrative of lies for asylum so often, listening to them over and over on an audiotape supplied by a male accomplice, that even years later she would break down crying as she told the story—until, finally, under very tough questioning by assistant district attorneys, she admitted the asylum narrative was a fabrication.”[41] Her stories were apparently so well-told that listeners would often be driven to tears as well.
“The most seasoned professionals in the office working on this case were brought to tears by this woman’s life story. I mean literally brought to tears,” says Linda Fairstein, former chief of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit. “She was so convincing that cops, advocates, professionals, bought the story. And then the prosecutors got to work.” But with the Arizona phone call and the asylum stories as background, the more investigators examined the accuser’s story, the more anomalies began to multiply.”[42][43][44][45][46][47]
There were also questions raised about the physical possibilities of such an assault being able to take place. The maid was young with DSK in his 60s, at 5’10” much taller than DSK and more heavily-built, with one observer stating “She could have kicked the crap out of him”. “. . she’s a big woman, how could he have overpowered her?”[48] Many news reports from Europe claim the woman agreed (or offered) to perform oral sex, then attempted blackmail and extortion. Olivier Mazerolle, a senior political journalist at France’s BFM television, claimed to have obtained details from sources in the US, and maintains this is what actually occurred.[49]
“Is it reasonable to believe that a 62-year-old man, even one as oversexed as DSK is supposed to be, would emerge naked from the bathroom of his hotel suite sexually to confront a maid whom he had never met before, and whom he did not expect? Is it reasonable to believe that stark naked and wielding no weapon he could have forced a taller, younger and more muscular woman to commit oral sex twice [in 6 minutes], and that the transaction would have resulted without some level of participation on her part? And is it believable that she didn’t offer any resistance, cry out or flee when she presumably knew where the door was, having worked in the hotel for three and one-half years?”[50]
“It strains credulity to think an internationally respected financial leader would hurl himself naked from his hotel bathroom onto a decidedly unattractive maid who happened to be cleaning his room, then force her to perform oral sex on him. It’s all made to sound like the actions of a psychopath more than a lustful Frenchman.” It would seem absurd for a man who can hire young models or woo women from higher brackets, to forcibly rape a woman, then have a leisurely lunch with his daughter and finally get caught only because he himself gave away his whereabouts in multiple calls when trying to recover his mobile phone.
In the final version of events, the alleged victim committed multiple counts of perjury, tax fraud, visa and passport fraud, conspiracy to commit extortion, possible drug-related offenses, but neither the police nor the media appear to have any interest in pursuing these details. Nor was there any interest in the five bank accounts. The woman told 37 substantial lies, mostly under oath but, according to her lawyer, “She made some mistakes here, but that doesn’t mean she is not a rape victim.” Mistakes? It will be almost certain proof that this entire bizarre event was a political fraud organised at the highest levels, when we realise that no action was ever taken against the woman for her string of crimes and the unexplained cash.
The Missing Blackberry
This is exceptionally curious and one of the keys to the entire entrapment process. One of DSK’s mobile phones, a Blackberry that he used for IMF work and very personal calls, went missing. It seems that DSK had already packed his things, including his phones, prior to taking a shower and dressing to leave the hotel. After the encounter with the maid, he used this phone to call his daughter and confirm their lunch appointment. The maid admitted to remaining in the room at that time, and perhaps the other hotel employee was there at the same time. DSK then apparently placed the phone in his briefcase, after which it disappeared, and was never found.[51]
DSK had already been warned that his phone had been hacked. A friend working in Sarkozy’s election office notified him that personal messages sent to his wife from that phone had been intercepted and read at Sarkozy’s office. The records obtained from BlackBerry show that the missing phone’s GPS circuitry was disabled at 12.51, preventing the phone from sending out signals identifying its location. It appears the phone never left the Sofitel. “Evidently unaware of what was happening at the Sofitel, he called the hotel from the taxi, asking if his phone had been found. When he was called back 13 minutes later, he told a hotel employee that he was at JFK airport. The police rushed there and, at 4:45, called him off the flight and took him into custody.”[52] Blackberry could not explain how the phone had been disabled, being something requiring extreme technical knowledge.
The “Dancing Israelis”
After the maid alleged that DSK sexually harassed her, the security team called John Sheehan, the security director for Accor, the French company that owns the Sofitel. His boss has ties to Ange Mancini, who was then Sarkozy’s coordinator for intelligence. Sheehan was seen on surveillance footage with an unidentified man who accompanied Diallo to the hotel security celebrating shortly before the police arrived: “The two men high-five each other, clap their hands, and do what looks like an extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes.” One of DSK’s attorneys, William Taylor, who claims to have seen the footage, tells the Post, “They could have won the lottery. It seems directly related to speaking with Diallo and calling the police.”[53][54][55]
Media Frenzy and Speculation
“When police and prosecutors convict a suspect in the media before he is even charged, it typically means that there is no evidence against him and that demonisation is serving as the substitute.” Everything about this story has a stink of conspiracy, of sexual entrapment of the kind that got Julian Assange, Mordechai Vanunu and many others. Even more curious was that none of the mainstream media cared to connect the dots to see where they led.
When reviewing the accounts of this tale, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the mass media, at least in the English-speaking world, had been instructed to speculate as wildly as possible and to fabricate any details they considered useful or titillating. “James Cox, law professor at Duke University, said: he was surprised that the prosecution had not done more homework on their witness before making such strong statements about the case and the strength of its witness.”[56] There were many serious questions over their handling of the case, especially the notorious “perp walk”, which saw DSK paraded in front of press cameras.
The media focus centered on the story of the alleged victim rather than on who was pulling the strings behind the scenes in what visibly appears to have been a political frame-up. The NYPD, the prosecutor, the CIA, were letting the media speculate publicly. The entire story, based only on speculation and a complete absence of facts, has the look and feel of giving the gullible public just enough information to come to the wrong conclusion.
The NYT
In fact, the most likely hypothesis, which is that DSK was deliberately set up, was not only totally avoided by the mainstream media, but any reader comments at the time were either not posted (NYT ) or were deleted immediately after posting. There is ample evidence that the media – especially in the US – had been instructed to monitor and control all comment on this issue.
At the time, it was fascinating to watch the NYT during the three months of this episode. There was no way to avoid the conclusion that the editors were firmly controlling the reader comments on all their DSK articles. Not even a hint of a suggestion of a setup was permitted until one article on July 6, long after all the damage had been done. The comment threads were constantly led to topics like “rich white man, poor black woman”, or the US legal system, or how money can buy freedom or how even liars can be raped. Whenever a comment was posted that was “off-topic”, more correct ones were inserted to bring readers back into focus.
There seemed little doubt that the NYT was on the same page as the NYPD, the DA and, we must assume, the CIA and the City of London. Not only did the editors control the posts, they added some of their own, to the “Highlights”, to help readers focus. Among them was this gem: “While France will now criticize us, we should remember that French people enjoy few of the rights we do when accused. French “authorities” can hold people for up to one year without charges in an attempt to pressure them for cooperation in a criminal case. In Europe, the presumption generally is that the person accused is guilty and he must prove otherwise.”
It is astonishing that the Times had the gall to do this. France can retain a person for no more than 24 to 48 hours before release, and the NYT editors would surely be aware of this.[57] No newspaper would make such a claim without checking its accuracy, so we must conclude they knowingly made a false statement, seriously maligning France in the process and leaving a disturbingly dishonest impression on the 80% of Americans who are sufficiently uninformed and gullible to believe anything.
The “Settlement”
The New York Times first reported that DSK had agreed to pay the maid $6 million as a settlement, attributing the news to “French media sources”,[58] while the same French media sources attributed the claim to the NYT. Other media claimed that “friends of Strauss-Kahn” offered the chambermaid’s impoverished family in Guinea, West Africa, a ‘seven-figure’ sum to convince her to drop the charges. Then almost everyone joined in with the identical claim,[59][60][61] even posting a (surely) fictitious photo of the maid’s “family”.[62]
It became a circus, with DSK’s lawyers stating the claims as “flatly false”.
Perhaps another WHO Worldwide Pandemic
One of the more entertaining bits of the media having fun was the “evidence” suddenly surfacing from every corner that DSK was only one of perhaps thousands of such. My favorite was the UK Daily Mail’s claim that maids at the New York Hilton and “in various other hotels around the U.S.” were having to hide from male guests running around naked in the hotel corridors, screaming “I need sex”.[63] The newspaper helpfully suggested all hotel maids needed to wear ‘panic buttons’.
The Question of Diplomatic Immunity
This was curious. As Managing Director of the IMF, DSK should have had full diplomatic immunity, not that the US would honor it, and in fact the judge in the hearing dismissed this. But it appears the IMF had the power to demand immunity for its CEO, and in fact the IMF Board had at least one meeting to discuss the matter.[64][65]
No information was released, but IMF rules stipulate an 85% agreement on all decisions and, with the US controlling 18% of the vote, we can assume the US exercised its veto and killed DSK’s one chance to escape the trap. He would still have full immunity from civil suits, however. This aspect was totally ignored by all the media, and should not have been.
Rikers Island
Rikers Island is widely-known as one of the most brutal and dangerous prisons in the world. It “has always been a place of exceptional violence”, with weapons everywhere, with rival gangs ruling the cellblocks, a place notorious for the brutality of the prison guards and the deranged mental instability of most inmates, 1,000 of which are stabbed or killed each year.[66][67]
Only the dregs of society are sent there, and incarceration for a civilised person would be terrifying to say the least – which would have been the entire point of sending DSK there. The prospect of remaining there for months until trial, coupled with the slim prospects of survival, would encourage a man to comply with any conditions demanded for bail and removal – including resigning his job as MD of the IMF. DSK was sent to Rikers on May 17, presented with his options the next morning, and his official resignation processed on the following day, May 19, when he was released on bail.
Persons of Interest
In order to properly connect the dots, we need to identify some of the main players and their relations to each other.
Frank G. Wisner Sr.
Frank Wisner has been described as a “master diplomat” (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Dean Acheson) and also a “master spy”, (America’s least-known but most famous spy). He was none of those things. Wisner was a criminally-insane Jewish psychopath,[68] the co-founder of the CIA and the designer and operator of Operation Gladio in Europe[69] which he ran together with Allen Dulles (then head of the CIA), and which was one of the bloodiest terror programs ever inflicted on the world. He was largely responsible for the American coup that removed Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister in Iran in 1953, and also primarily responsible for the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala in 1954, one of the dirtiest, bloodiest, and most unjust of such US government atrocities.
Frank G. Wisner Jr.
Young Frank, also seconded into the US Foreign Service, was an American Ambassador to several countries as well as Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs under Bill Clinton. He also served as Deputy Executive Secretary of the Department of State under Cyrus Vance. Wisner Jr. was heavily involved in the tragedy in Yugoslavia and primarily behind the push for the independence of Kosovo to help Madeline Albright and George Soros “take over” the communications infrastructure there (an $800 million gift). However, Wisner Jr. is best known for his financial crimes for which the term “unscrupulous” would be something of an understatement. Wisner was part of the inner circle at Enron whose financial manipulations ruined countless thousands of investors, and he was the Vice-Chairman of AIG when its share prices collapsed by 95%, prior to the Khazar-dictated taxpayer bailout.[70]
Pál (Paul) Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa
This man, a Greek-Hungarian Jew, was the father of Nicolas Sarkozy who became the President of France. Paul married several times, Nicholas resulting from the first marriage with Andrée Mallah. His father and birth mother both abandoned Nicholas and he was taken in by Paul’s third wife Christine de Ganay after her divorce with Paul. Christine de Ganay subsequently married Frank Wisner Jr, who more or less raised Nicholas and taught him everything he knew (at least all the dirty parts of American and French politics and finance). “It was [Wisner] who introduced then-teenage Sarkozy to CIA insiders and facilitated his entry into French political circles”, and one of Wisner’s sons was Sarkozy’s campaign manager.
Cyrus Vance Sr.
Cyrus Roberts Vance Sr. was an American lawyer and Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter. He was also Deputy Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Army, and General Counsel of the Department of Defense.
Cyrus Vance Jr.
This is where things become interesting. Cyrus Vance was the Manhattan District Attorney, conveniently appointed just in time to handle the three most notorious sexual scandal cases in recent memory (all involving Jews): Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn. In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, Vance’s office argued in court for dismissal of charges and his removal from a sex offender’s list, claiming “there are no real victims here.”[71]
Vance would later argue that his “assistant DA” made these court representations without his knowledge. We are to believe that in the most spectacular sexual abuse and sexual-entrapment scheme ever recorded, and certainly the biggest case in his career, Vance had no idea what his own assistant was proposing in court. It was Vance (in an arranged plea bargain) who managed to free Epstein from a life sentence and give him only 13 months in prison where he was allowed out during the day (to look after business) and only slept in the prison at night.
Does anyone recall Epstein being given a ‘perp walk’? Was he incarcerated at Rikers Island? Did he have to post millions in bail, wear a bracelet and have to hire armed guards at his own expense ($240,000 per month for DSK)? Was Jeffrey Epstein denied bail because he was a flight risk? No.
Something similar occurred with Harvey Weinstein, with Vance declining to prosecute the Hollywood producer in spite of the huge amount of evidence against him. But it wasn’t all bad. Vance did manage to obtain a sentence of 428 years against another serial rapist who had the misfortune of not having been born Jewish.
Let’s review some connections. Nicholas Sarkozy, our Jewish-Hungarian midget, was raised by the Jew Frank Wisner who worked for Cyrus Vance Sr., and who introduced Sarkozy to the (Jewish-created) CIA and to US and French politics. Sarkozy and Cyrus Vance Jr. were of the same age (one year apart) and certainly knew each other well since their fathers worked together and their families socialised together. And who was appointed as the lead prosecutor against DSK? Cyrus Vance Jr. In what was clearly one of the most egregious set-ups in recent memory, Vance was later loudly applauded by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other US media, as well as by multiple government officials for “acting with integrity” in a case where a poor woman made “a credible accusation against a very powerful man”.
Sarkozy and Mossad
Nicholas Sarkozy was confirmed as a Mossad agent, the details revealed in articles by Le Figaro, an influential French daily, providing evidence of Sarkozy having been recruited as an Israeli spy, “one of the thousands of Jewish citizens of countries other than Israel who cooperate with the Mossad”. This information was apparently given to the French police in detail prior to Sarkozy’s election as president, but suppressed until the scandal emerged. “This was so important an issue that within 24 hours after Le Figaro’s exposé, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was on a state visit to France” – ostensibly to discuss Iran’s nuclear agenda, but in fact an attempt to deal with the fallout.
According to media reports, the French police were investigating documents concerning Sarkozy’s alleged espionage activities against France on behalf of Mossad, which Le Figaro claimed dated as far back as 1983, which was when Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin recruited the “young and promising” Sarkozy as part of the ordered infiltration of the French ruling Gaullist Party.
Tristane Banon
Tristane Banon, a 32-year-old journalist, claimed that DSK sexually assaulted and tried to rape her a decade earlier. She is “the daughter of one of Strauss-Kahn’s discarded mistresses and the goddaughter of his second wife.”[72] This woman, with her lingering memory of an encounter with DSK from 9 years prior, chose the correct moment to bring it to the public. And this latter is also surpassingly strange; the mother came to the defense of her daughter by “confessing” that she also had an affair with DSK at around the same time. How this would help her daughter’s case was not made clear. At least, not to me.
Her case was so weak (and 9 years too late) that there was no chance for it to lead anywhere, but it would help to keep DSK out of the Presidential Palace. Mrs. Banon worked for atlantico.fr, a pro-Sarkozy website which was co-founded by Arnaud Dassier, the man behind Sarkozy’s web campaign of 2007, and the man who started the smear campaign against DSK a few weeks before May 15th. Of interest is Banon’s claim that “politics played no part” in her decision to air this old issue again, that she “was not approached by the Right” to fire another torpedo into DSKs political career.[73][74]
Christine Lagarde
Christine Lagarde is a Jew.[75] Both the City of London and Israel wanted her as the new IMF head, which was why she had beforehand declared her availability and “eagerness to serve”. Lagarde was a hard-headed “corporatist” member of the Bilderberg Group and the WEF, and definitely in favor of the new world order intended to preserve Khazarian Jewish hegemony worldwide. The IMF Executive Board issued a press release on June 28 2011, confirming her appointment as IMF Managing Director.[76][77]
The report from the prosecutor was released to the media June 29, and presented to the court on July 1. Lagarde’s succession to the IMF occurred a few days prior to a New York Court ruling which completely exonerated Dominique Strauss Khan on the basis of lack of evidence. It apparently wasn’t of concern that Lagarde was under criminal investigation at the time for an illegal application of some $400 million in funds.
French Media Reports: Who Told Who What When?
One indication that DSK’s political enemies were implicated is the fact, made public by the French press, that Sarkozy’s political team in France knew about DSK’s arrest not only before the NYC police announced it, but before the actual arrest had occurred. In fact, Sarkozy’s office and the French media reported DSK’s arrest while he would still have been in a taxi on the way to the airport. No one has attempted to explain this. The evidence is that the NYC Hotel Manager called France’s Presidential Palace over an hour before the news was released in NYC, which is how the French media knew that DSK was going to be arrested before the arrest actually took place.
The first person in France to announce the arrest was Jonathan Pinet, a campaigner for Sarkozy’s party, who apparently tweeted the info at the time DSK was in the taxi to meet his daughter for lunch. And he apparently made other posts only minutes after the arrest itself. Shortly after, Arnaud Dassier, Sarkozy’s campaign director, was also commenting on the event, sooner than any journalist in the US. Confronted with this strange coincidence, he said he got the information from a friend who knew someone working in the NYC Sofitel hotel. How would anyone at the Sofitel know whether or when an arrest was made? Why would the NYPD report to the Sofitel, and why was all this information crossing the Atlantic in real time?
More interesting, Xavier Graff, the duty officer at Accor in Paris, sent e-mails several weeks after DSK’s arrest claiming full credit for “bringing down” the IMF chief.[78] Also worthy of note is that the top management of the ACCOR Hotel group in France was known to have close ties to Claude Gueant, Sarkozy’s closest advisor and his Minister of the Interior. The hotel’s Director of Security was a former agent of DGSE (French CIA), who had worked under Sarkozy personally. And finally, Ray Kelly, the head of the NYPD, had been decorated “Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur” by Sarkozy himself, the two men having had a close personal relationship with much contact since that time.
The French Presidential Election
DSK survived the first assault (in the US) because the widespread public feeling in France was that it was clearly a staged event, a “set-up”, and still leaving him as the favorite and with a strong political base. Thus, he was wounded but not destroyed, so the charade proceeded to Plan B, with accusations of rape or attempted rape, and of arranging the hire of prostitutes for orgies. Just as in the US, all charges were eventually dropped because there had never been any supporting evidence for those allegations, but the court cases continued until the man’s name had been sufficiently blackened that his political career descended to ground zero.
Ruining DSK would not have raised Sarkozy’s standing in the polls; he was still widely disliked and considered “crazy”. But this would have removed his most dangerous opponent, leaving no one else with sufficient public status to challenge him. So, one clear purpose of the entire event was to ensure Sarkozy’s re-election by destroying his only credible opponent. Sarkozy was definitely running scared; not only being attacked on the streets in France, but in a then-recent appearance in Algeria the crowds were all yelling “Get out! F*** off, Sarkozy”.
A former justice minister, Robert Badinter, called DSK’s treatment “a lynching, a murder by media.” The “perp walk”, the unshaven pervert-in-a-trench-coat photos, is a perverted and sadistic US tradition resurrected from the medieval era, and forms an inexcusable and humiliating breach of the principle of the presumption of innocence. Besides that, we had the “suicide watch”, the grossly unreasonable bail conditions that included from the first day his resignation from the IMF.
It was all designed to inflict the maximum possible public humiliation to forestall any chance of DSK’s return to politics. Also, the charges were not dropped, nor his passport returned, until after the French election primaries. To represent the Socialist Party and be their leader, he would have had to have been in France for the primaries which closed on July 13. However, his court date was set for July 18. This was not a mere unfortunate coincidence.
You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to smell something fishy here; in fact, it requires a leap of faith to not smell the odor. The proverbial elephant in the room should be obvious to all readers. There appears to be little question that one of two pillars of Strauss-Kahn’s demise was a perceived necessary “regime change” at the IMF. The other would appear to be desperation on the part of Israel and the City of London to remove Strauss-Kahn from French Presidential contention in order to preserve Sarkozy – their “man in Paris”. The Jews and Zionists in Israel were desperate to maintain Sarkozy in power because he would ensure the protection of Israel’s practices and the status of French Jews, while containing the anti-Israel sentiment in France. Israel’s government and French Jews and Zionists were among Sarkozy’s strongest electoral support. “We can refer to Israel’s conceited triumphalism with which they greeted Sarkozy’s election: “we are persuaded that the new president will continue eradicating anti-Israeli resistance”.
“The arrest of [DSK] has all the appearances of a frame-up ordered by powerful members of the financial establishment, in liaison with France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, whose presidency has served the interests of the US and Israel at the expense of those of France and the European Union. Immediately following Strauss Kahn’s arrest, pressures were exerted . . . to speed up his replacement as Managing Director of the IMF.”
The IMF and the Dollar
As head of the IMF, DSK was far from a saint in dealing with indebted countries. It was he who oversaw the destruction and permanent colonisation of Greece – an enormous sovereign disaster of which too few people seem aware. And in this, he was definitely following the instructions and template of the Khazarian mafia in the City of London. If you don’t know the details, you may care to read this: Humanity at the Crossroads.[79] You need reference only the brief paragraphs on Greece.
One of the circumstances that many considered a precipitating cause of DSK’s removal, was his conviction of the need for a new world currency, suggesting that SDRs be used much more broadly instead of the US dollar for international trade and payments,[80] leading to a prevailing theory that the US$ be removed. Thierry Meyssan wrote a scholarly article on this,[81]and Mike Whitney wrote an opinion piece claiming “Dominique Strauss-Kahn Was Trying to Torpedo the Dollar.”[82]
But DSK was in no way arguing for the elimination of the US$ in international settlements as for the creation of more stability since poor nations were easily whipsawed by borrowing in US$ at low rates then subjected to bankruptcy when rates rose. It’s true this wouldn’t have earned him many friends since the bankruptcies were part of the plan. But in any case, no changes to the world system could have been made without the cooperation of the US. It doesn’t seem widely-known, but changes to IMF protocols require an 85% approval vote while the US controls 17% of the votes – giving the US a de facto veto on everything.
A larger part of the problem was that the IMF (under DSK) was pushing hard for other nations like China and Russia to obtain a larger and more realistic representation at the IMF. DSK tried to push through reforms that would have considerably increased the share of emerging countries, and that would have produced enemies in all the entrenched Western countries who would be loath to surrender their financial power over the rest of the world.
But much worse than this, DSK was strongly recommending that nations abandon much of their income tax regime and draw their revenue from inheritance taxes on the extremely wealthy. A suggestion like this to the same nations that house the Rothschilds, Sassoons, Warburgs and Sebag-Montefioris would be equivalent to a declaration of war. Almost as bad, DSK was also on record as stating that the FED’s excessively loose monetary policies (directed from the City of London) were responsible for the massive transfers of wealth to the top 1% in each economic cycle. He stated flatly that it was the FED’s excess liquidity that causes the sharp rises in inequality “because that liquidity does not fall into every pocket”.
And worse again, he also stated that the nationalisation of infrastructure, land, and even corporate interests, were “indispensable” for “national independence”. In his words, “The exhaustion of the traditional tools of social democracy, notably redistribution, has led us to redefine a new socialism . . . That rests on the correction of innate market inequalities at root. That leads to a society which permits each person to develop their talents independently of their social conditions at birth. That’s a new humanism which I think we need.”
Suggesting socialism, inheritance confiscations, nationalisations and wealth redistribution to the Satanist trillionaire capitalists who are at the pinnacle of world financial power, is not a way to win friends. Nor is any suggestion of “humanism”. I suspect this latter point alone would have caused his demise, since the template of the Khazar Jews for the past 100 years has been to push small countries into unpayable debt traps and then confiscate all the nation’s infrastructure, arable land, and water aquifers in lieu of cash payment. In these three items, I believe DSK signed his own death warrant three times.[83][84 One of his allies said: “Everyone knows that his weakness is seducing women. That’s how they got to him. . . the aim was to “decapitate the IMF”.
This is perhaps an aside, but where do you suppose the World Bank and IMF obtain their trillions to lend to undeveloped nations? They are not banks that have deposits to lend. The money comes from the Jewish financiers in the City of London, and it is they who direct the terms and who push for unrepayable loans, and it is they who confiscate the infrastructure and land.[85] This is so true that the Rothschilds recently established a new “bank” just to control all their holdings of arable land that has been confiscated from poor countries. In case you don’t know, the Jewish-controlled government of Ukraine, the “breadbasket of Europe”, amended its laws to permit huge swaths of the world’s most fertile soil to disappear forever into this Khazarian abyss.
Epilogue: Who Did This?
One fact I didn’t mention above is that DSK had been warned by friends in various positions that he would become the victim of a plot using some form of sexual entrapment. Also, the French media revealed from an interview with DSK’s wife that he had said to her several months prior, “They are out to get me“. Who were “they”? Certainly not the NYPD, who had neither cause nor leverage.
Why would NYPD detectives and prosecutors be so irresponsible as to set out, deliberately and apparently vengefully, to destroy the career of the second most relevant person in France, based solely on the word of a woman who was already known as a hotel prostitute? In a real world, they could have made a complete investigation and then arrested DSK on his return to the US. He would have to return, since the IMF offices are in Washington.
Nor could it have been the US State Department. The head of the World Bank is traditionally selected by the Jewish handlers of the US government, while the head of the IMF is traditionally filled by the Jewish financiers in Europe. Thus, the US administration also had no leverage, even if they felt they had cause.
It could not have been Nicholas Sarkozy and his election team. They might well have had considerable “cause”, but Sarkozy didn’t have the power to engineer something this vast, especially in the US where it required intense cooperation from the police, the prosecutors, the courts, the media – and the silence of the US government. Sarkozy’s team was clearly kept informed, on what would appear to be nearly a minute-by-minute basis, but they weren’t the engineers. There is no way the US government would give a (disliked) European politician the freedom and power to commit such an immense theatrical crime on US soil, merely to assist his own re-election. Nor would they permit him to use their police, courts and prosecutors to fraudulently force a rival’s resignation from an unrelated UN position.
If the US were concerned that DSK was trying to torpedo the dollar, it is conceivable the White House might have sent someone to the NYPD to say, “This guy is causing us trouble; give him a hard time”. But even the President of the United States hasn’t the power to approach the NYPD and the courts and instruct them to launch a trap based entirely on fraudulent charges and faked evidence to destroy the head of the IMF and force his removal. The President doesn’t have the power to engineer something that hugely illegal which would require participation from so many parties, including the obvious payment to the “victim” for her fraudulent testimony. Such a thing would be unprecedented and would leak. The US administration might well attempt to profit from such an event already in progress, but would never dare to plan and execute something of this nature.
The only people with the power to do this, to plan and execute all the portions of the US side of this theatrical performance, and to obtain the necessary silence from all participants, are the alphabet agencies. The (Khazar-controlled) CIA has the power to say, “This is a matter of the utmost national security. You will comply with our instructions in all details and, if you dare ever breathe a word of this, you will most likely disappear and your family along with you.” The CIA could enforce obedience from the NYPD, the hotel, the prosecutor’s office, the judges and the courts, the phone companies, the airport authorities, and could easily arrange the multiple bank accounts and mobile phones. They are skilled at creating and planting evidence, and they have the power to control media information and disinformation. That’s what they do, and their authority is more or less absolute.
This is an aside, but an important one. In an interview with the wife of Lee Harvey Oswald (JFK’s alleged assassin), she was quoted as saying, “The answer to the Kennedy assassination lies with the [Rothschild-controlled] Federal Reserve. It is wrong to blame it on only James Jesus Angleton and the CIA, per se. They are all fingers on the same hand. The people who control the money are above the CIA.”
The question then remains, from whom were the CIA taking their instruction? It would not have been from the US administration, and certainly not from Sarkozy’s election team. Who was it, who was “out to get” DSK? The answers to all the questions trace to the Jewish bankers in the City of London, the master to whom both Israel’s Mossad and the CIA ultimately report, and these are the people who, for their own reasons, wanted a final extermination of DSK, to utterly ruin the man for his disobedience, and remove him forever as a potential nuisance. DSK was released on bail (from Rikers Island) only on condition that he resign his position as MD of the IMF. This wasn’t the NYPD’s idea, nor the position of the US government. This could have emanated only from the Khazarian mafia in the City of London. It was they who wanted DSK removed from office.
DSK is a Jew, until recently one of the world’s most powerful men, yet still far removed from the “inner circle” of the Khazar mafia in London. If this is what these people will so freely do to one of their own, you can imagine the rickety scaffolding on which the rest of us stand. There is no shortage of unusual and suspicious deaths of those daring to reveal inconvenient truths – or threatening to reveal them. Think of Gary Webb, Michael Hastings and Anne Heche. Think of Robert Maxwell, the Jewish media mogul (real name: Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch) and Mossad’s ‘assisted suicide’ (see note 86) in helping him fall naked off his yacht in the middle of the night to drown in the Atlantic Ocean, shortly after boasting that “they can’t do anything to me because I know where all the bodies are buried.”
Lastly, it must not go unnoticed that the New York Times was a leader in this escapade, “setting the agenda for the nation”[87] and clearly being “a finger on the same hand” as the Khazarian mafia in the City of London. All the Western media lie to their readers and viewers, but the NYT carries a special responsibility for the power of its disinformation and misinformation practices. The day needs to come soon when the NYT is no longer respected as a source of information, but instead despised as a major link in the chain of fascism and fear that will soon bind all of us.
Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
His full archive can be seen at https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com*
Notes
[1] Strauss-Kahn arrest: IMF head detained at Rikers Island
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13420440
[2] Strauss-Kahn indicted by grand jury, is granted $1 million cash bail
https://news.yahoo.com/news/strauss-kahn-indicted-grand-jury-granted-1-million-232344073.html
[3] Letter from prosecutors on Strauss-Kahn accuser’s story
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-strausskahn-accuser-idUSTRE76053W20110701
[4] Letter from prosecutors on the accuser of Strauss-Kahn
[5] Strauss-Kahn Is Released From House Arrest
https://www.npr.org/2011/07/01/137549786/strauss-kahn-sex-assault-case-may-be-crumbling
[6] Recommendation for Dismissal of Strauss-Kahn Case
[7] All charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn dismissed
[8] Strauss-Kahn Drama Ends With Short Final Scene
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/nyregion/charges-against-strauss-kahn-dismissed.html
[9] French Strauss-Kahn sex assault probe dropped
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-strausskahn-france-inquiry-idUSTRE79C3JT20111013
[10] La plainte de Tristane Banon contre Dominique Strauss-Kahn classée sans suite
[11] French prosecutor drops Strauss-Kahn ‘gang rape’ probe
https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/02/world/europe/france-strauss-kahn/index.html
[12] DSK investigated over prostitution allegations
https://www.abc.net.au/lateline/dsk-investigated-over-prostitution-allegations/3916424
[13] Dominique Strauss-Kahn to stand trial for pimping, French prosecutors say
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/26/dominique-strauss-kahn-trial-pimping
[14] DSK’s extraordinary excuse: ‘I didn’t know I was sleeping with prostitutes at orgies because they were all naked at the time’
[15] French Court Acquits Dominique Strauss-Kahn in Case That Put His Sex Life on View
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/world/europe/dsk-acquitted-aggravated-pimping-charges.html
[16] Why D.S.K. Won’t Go Away
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/opinion/sunday/why-dsk-wont-go-away.html
[17] Room 2806: The Accusation
https://www.netflix.com/pt-en/title/81068760
[18] Strauss-Kahn DNA ‘linked to maid’
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/strauss-kahn-dna-linked-to-maid-1.877071
[19] Dominique Strauss-Kahn DNA ‘linked to maid’
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13519035.amp
[20] Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers complain about police leaks
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-strausskahn-leaks-idUKTRE74P57T20110526
[21] NYPD deny they are source of reports suggesting Strauss-Kahn’s DNA matched sample taken from alleged victim’s clothes.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/5/24/police-deny-leaking-strauss-kahn-dna-report
[22] Police Seek Evidence From I.M.F. Chief on Sex Attack
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/nyregion/maid-picks-imf-chief-as-attacker-in-lineup.html
[23] Strauss-Kahn arrest: IMF head detained at Rikers Island
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13420440
[24] The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Affair: To Proceed Or Not To Proceed?
[25] “DSK Maid” Tells of Her Alleged Rape by Strauss-Kahn: Exclusive
https://www.newsweek.com/dsk-maid-tells-her-alleged-rape-strauss-kahn-exclusive-68379
[26] Sex charges dismissed against Strauss-Kahn
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/8/23/sex-charges-dismissed-against-strauss-kahn
[27] Strauss-Kahn Prosecution Said to Be Near Collapse
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyregion/strauss-kahn-case-seen-as-in-jeopardy.html
[28] Strauss-Kahn Prosecution Said to Be Near Collapse
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyregion/strauss-kahn-case-seen-as-in-jeopardy.html
[29] Dominique Strauss-Kahn released on recognizance after questions emerge about accuser’s story
[30] Dominique Strauss-Kahn freed as case details aired outside court room
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/01/dominique-strauss-kahn-court
[31] Dominique Strauss-Kahn lawyers meeting with Manhattan prosecutors
https://www.silive.com/news/2011/07/dominique_strauss-kahn_lawyers.html
[32] Strauss-Kahn Is Released From House Arrest
https://www.npr.org/2011/07/01/137549786/strauss-kahn-sex-assault-case-may-be-crumbling ?
[33] Dominique Strauss-Kahn freed as case details aired outside court room
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/01/dominique-strauss-kahn-court
[34] What Really Happened to Strauss-Kahn?
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/12/22/what-really-happened-dominique-strauss-kahn/
[35] One afternoon in Manhattan: Dominique Strauss-Kahn: what happened in the New York hotel?
https://www.ft.com/content/11e061f0-1780-11e1-b157-00144feabdc0
[36] 10 Questions About Evidence In The Case Of The Chambermaid Versus Dominique Strauss-Kahn
https://www.businessinsider.com/fully-functioning-and-operational–ten-or-so-nave-questions-about-the-evidence-in-the-case-of-the-chambermaid-versus-dominique-strauss-kahn-2011-5
[37] Six out of 10 for the Dominique Strauss-Kahn conspiracy theory
https://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2011/nov/28/dominique-strauss-kahn-conspiracy-theory
[38] The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Affair: To Proceed Or Not To Proceed?
[39] Investigative Journalist Implies DSK Was Set Up By Sarkozy’s Party
https://gothamist.com/news/investigative-journalist-implies-dsk-was-set-up-by-sarkozys-party
[40] The plot to destroy DSK
https://nypost.com/2011/11/27/the-plot-to-destroy-dsk/
[41] Christopher Dickey World News Editor Newsweek and The Daily Beast as Paris bureau chief
John Solomon Updated Jul. 13, 2017 6:57PM ET / Published Jul. 01, 2011 9:52PM ET
[42] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/01/dominique-strauss-kahn-court
Dominique Strauss-Kahn freed as case details aired outside court room
[43] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-strausskahn-accuser-idUSTRE76053W20110701
Letter from prosecutors on Strauss-Kahn accuser’s story
[44] Letter from prosecutors on the accuser of Strauss-Kahn
[45] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-strausskahn-prosecutors-idUKTRE77L6MK20110823
Strauss-Kahn accuser lies torpedo case
[46] Sex charges dismissed against Strauss-Kahn
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/8/23/sex-charges-dismissed-against-strauss-kahn
[47] Strauss-Kahn Is Released From House Arrest
[48] Dominique Strauss-Kahn lawyers meeting with Manhattan prosecutors
https://www.silive.com/news/2011/07/dominique_strauss-kahn_lawyers.html
[49] Now disgraced ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn to get $250,000 ‘golden parachute’… funded by U.S. TAXPAYERS
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390651/Disgraced-banker-Dominique-Strauss-Kahn-250-000-golden-handshake–taxpayer.html
[50] The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Affair: To Proceed Or Not To Proceed?
[51] One afternoon in Manhattan: Dominique Strauss-Kahn: what happened in the New York hotel?
https://www.ft.com/content/11e061f0-1780-11e1-b157-00144feabdc0
[52] https://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2011/nov/28/dominique-strauss-kahn-conspiracy-theorym
Six out of 10 for the Dominique Strauss-Kahn conspiracy theory
[53] One afternoon in Manhattan: Dominique Strauss-Kahn: what happened in the New York hotel?
https://www.ft.com/content/11e061f0-1780-11e1-b157-00144feabdc0m
[54] Investigative Journalist Implies DSK Was Set Up By Sarkozy’s Party
https://gothamist.com/news/investigative-journalist-implies-dsk-was-set-up-by-sarkozys-party
[55] The plot to destroy DSK
https://nypost.com/2011/11/27/the-plot-to-destroy-dsk/
[56] Dominique Strauss-Kahn freed as case details aired outside court room
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/01/dominique-strauss-kahn-court
[57] Arrested in France – Legal Framework of Police detention
https://www.sba-avocats.com/criminal-defense-attorney-paris-france-police-custody.html
[58] Hotel Worker Settles Claim Strauss-Kahn Forced Sex
[59] Strauss-Kahn’s friends ‘secretly tried to pay off “raped” hotel maid’s family in Guinea’.
[60] Strauss Kahn ‘will pay $6m to settle hotel maid’s civil suit’
[61] Strauss-Kahn to pay hotel maid $6m
https://www.smh.com.au/world/strausskahn-to-pay-hotel-maid-6m-20121201-2anca.html
[62] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2012/11/30/strauss-kahn-lawyers-deny-6m-maid-settlement
Strauss-Kahn lawyers deny $6m-maid settlement
[63] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390177/Call-New-York-hotel-maids-fitted-panic-buttons-horror-tales-dog-attacks-naked-men-emerge-Strauss-Kahn-attack.html
[64] 10 Questions About Evidence In The Case Of The Chambermaid Versus Dominique Strauss-Kahn
https://www.businessinsider.com/fully-functioning-and-operational–ten-or-so-nave-questions-about-the-evidence-in-the-case-of-the-chambermaid-versus-dominique-strauss-kahn-2011-5
[65] Former IMF boss claims immunity in civil case
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/9/27/former-imf-boss-claims-immunity-in-civil-case
[66] What Is Rikers Island?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/nyregion/rikers-island-prison-new-york.html
[67] Strauss-Kahn arrest: IMF head detained at Rikers Island
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13420440
[68] Clinton’s Jewish US. Ambassadors:
http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-occupiedgovernments-usa-ambassadors.html
[69] CIA: Frank G. Wisner arrived in Cairo
https://www.voltairenet.org/article168337.html
[70] CIA: Frank G. Wisner arrived in Cairo
https://www.voltairenet.org/article168337.html
[71] Cyrus Vance’s Office Sought Reduced Sex-Offender Status for Epstein
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/nyregion/cyrus-vance-epstein.html
[72] The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Affair: To Proceed Or Not To Proceed?
[73] How France hid the sleazy truth about the rutting chimpanzee
[74] Accused Rapist Dominique Strauss-Kahn To Settle With His Accuser
https://www.africanglobe.net/headlines/accused-rapist-dominique-strauss-kahn-settle-accuser/
[75] Promoting Peace, Tolerance, and Respect
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2018/09/30/sp092618-promoting-peace-tolerance-and-respect
[76] Strauss-Kahn arrest: IMF head detained at Rikers Island
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13420440
[77] Regime Change at the IMF: Christine Lagarde and The Frame-Up of Dominique Strauss-Kahn
https://www.globalresearch.ca/regime-change-at-the-imf-the-frame-up-of-dominique-strauss-kahn/24866
[78] The plot to destroy DSK
https://nypost.com/2011/11/27/the-plot-to-destroy-dsk/
Humanity at the Crossroads
[79] https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/humanity-at-the-crossroads-2/
[80] UK Telegraph – International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn calls for new world currency
[81] Obama, financial war and the elimination of DSK
https://www.voltairenet.org/article170083.html
[82] Dominique Strauss-Kahn Was Trying to Torpedo the Dollar
https://www.ibtimes.com/dominique-strauss-kahn-was-trying-torpedo-dollar-285599
[83] Dominique Strauss-Kahn: This Crisis Is Harder To Handle Than The Great Depression
[84] Strauss-Kahn affair turns French politics upside down
https://www.bbc.com/news/13407908
[85] World Map of Privatisation
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/5634/
[86] According to Wikipedia who always tell the truth about everything, especially everything Jewish, Maxwell’s “standard practice” when he wanted to urinate was to remove all his clothing and pee over the rail of his yacht into the Mediterranean. Documented evidence of this “standard practice” is of course non-existent, but if we can’t trust Wikipedia who can we trust.
[87] Propaganda and the Media — Part 3 – Establishing and Controlling the Narrative
Deliberate misrepresentation: Western media bias makes Israeli war on Palestinians possible
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | August 23, 2022
While US and western mainstream and corporate media remain biased in favour of Israel, they often behave as if they are a third, neutral party. This is simply not the case.
Take the New York Times coverage of the latest Israeli war on Gaza as an example. Its article on 6 August, “Israel-Gaza Fighting Flares for a Second Day” is the typical mainstream western reporting on Israel and Palestine, but with a distinct NYT flavour.
For the uninformed reader, the article succeeds in finding a balanced language between two equal sides. This misleading moral equivalence is one of the biggest intellectual blind spots for western journalists. If they do not outwardly champion Israel’s discourse on ‘security’ and ‘right to defend itself’, they create false parallels between Palestinians and Israelis, as if a military occupier and an occupied nation have comparable rights and responsibilities.
Obviously, this logic does not apply to the Russia-Ukraine war. For NYT and all mainstream western media, there is no question regarding who the good guys and the bad guys are in that bloody fight.
‘Palestinian militants’ and ‘terrorists’ have always been the West’s bad guys. Per the logic of their media coverage, Israel does not launch unprovoked wars on Palestinians, and is not an unrepentant military occupier, or a racist apartheid regime. This language can only be used by marginal ‘radical’ and ‘leftist’ media, never the mainstream.
The brief introduction of the NYT article spoke about the rising death toll, but did not initially mention that the 20 killed Palestinians include children, emphasising, instead, that Israeli attacks have killed a ‘militant leader’.
When the six children killed by Israel are revealed in the second paragraph, the article immediately, and without starting a new sentence, clarifies that “Israel said some civilian deaths were the result of militants stashing weapons in residential areas”, and that others were killed by “misfired’ Palestinian rockets.
On 16 August, the Israeli military finally admitted that it was behind the strikes that killed the 5 young Palestinian boys of Jabaliya. Whether the NYT reported on that or not matters little. The damage has been done, and that was Israel’s plan from the start.
The title of the BBC story of 16 August, ‘Gaza’s children are used to the death and bombing’, does not immediately name those responsible for the ‘death and bombing’. Even Israeli military spokesmen, as we will discover later, would agree to such a statement, though they will always lay the blame squarely on the ‘Palestinian terrorists’.
When the story finally reveals that a little girl, Layan, was killed in an Israeli strike, the language was carefully crafted to lessen the blame on her Israeli murderers. The girl, we are told, was on her way to the beach with her family, when their tuk-tuk “passed by a military camp run by the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad”, which, “at the exact moment, (…) was targeted by Israeli fire”. The author says nothing of how she reached the conclusion that the family was not the target.
One can easily glean from the story that Israel’s intention was not to kill Layan – and logically, none of the 17 other children murdered during the three-day war on Gaza. Besides, Israel has, according to the BBC, tried to save the little girl; alas, “a week of treatment in an Israeli hospital couldn’t save her life”.
Though Israeli politicians have spoken blatantly about killing Palestinian children – and, in the case of former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, “the Palestinian mothers who give birth to ‘little snakes'” – the BBC report, and other reports on the latest war, have failed to mention this. Instead, it quoted Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who reportedly said that “the death of innocent civilians, especially children is heartbreaking.” Incidentally, Lapid ordered the latest war on Gaza, which killed a total of 49 Palestinians.
Even a human-interest story about a murdered Palestinian child somehow avoided the language that could fault Israel for the gruesome killing of a little girl. Furthermore, the BBC also laboured to present Israel in a positive light, resorting to quote the occupation army’s statement that it was “devastated by (Layan’s) death and that of any civilians.”
The NYT and BBC have been selected here not because they are the worst examples of western media bias, but because they are often cited as ‘liberal’, if not ‘progressive’, media. Their reporting, however, represents an ongoing crisis in western journalism, especially relating to Palestine.
Books have been written about this subject, civil society organisations were formed to hold western media accountable and numerous editorial board meetings were organised to put some pressure on western editors, to no avail.
Desperate by the unchanging pro-Israel narratives in western media, some pro-Palestine human rights advocates often argue that there are greater margins within Israel’s own mainstream media than in the US, for example. This, too, is inaccurate.
The misnomer of the supposedly more balanced Israeli media is a direct outcome of the failure to influence western media coverage on Palestine and Israel. The erroneous notion is often buoyed by the fact that an Israeli newspaper, like Haaretz, gives marginal spaces to critical voices, like those of Israeli journalists Gideon Levy and Amira Hass.
Israeli propaganda, one of the most powerful and sophisticated in the world, however, can hardly be balanced by occasional columns written by a few dissenting journalists.
Additionally, Haaretz is often cited as an example of relatively fair journalism, simply because the alternatives – Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post and other rightwing Israeli media – are exemplary in their callousness, biased language and misconstruing of facts.
The pro-Israel prejudices in western media often spill over to Palestine sympathetic media throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world, especially those reporting on the news in English and French.
Since many newspapers and online platforms utilise western news agencies, they, often inadvertently, adopt the same language used in western news sources, thus depicting Palestinian resisters or fighters, as ‘militants’, the Israeli occupation army as “Israeli Defence Forces” and Israeli war on Gaza as ‘flare ups’ of violence.
In its totality, this language misinterprets the Palestinian struggle for freedom as random acts of violence within a protracted ‘conflict’ where innocent civilians, like Layan, are ‘caught in the crossfire.’
The deadly Israeli wars on Gaza are made possible, not only by western weapons and political support, but through an endless stream of media misinformation and misrepresentation. Though Israel has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians in recent years, western media remains as committed to defending Israel as if nothing has changed.
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From the Archives
A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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