Tons of thanks, a SMO update and some beautiful week-end music!

August 31, 2022

First, my deepest gratitude to you all!

I want to being today’s report by thanking all those of you who have reached out to help me and the blog.  In spite of the hard economic times, many of you have sent donations, offered to volunteer and, last but not least, said prayers for me.  Of course, your donations will help financially, but it is your moral support which most deeply touched me and which give me the courage and determination to keep on fighting this fight, in spite of the apparent futility of taking on an entire obscenely rich and powerful ruling classes which waging merciless warfare on all of mankind.  I wish I could thank each and every one of you personally, but I simply don’t have the material time to do so, so all I can do is thank you all here for your unwavering and kind support!  You are truly the best community any person can hope to have!

Now let’s turn to the latest news next.

The Ukrainian so-called “counter-offensive” in the south:

The biggest news out of the Ukraine is the failure if the much announced Ukrainian “counter-offensive”.  Here are the latest reports from the Russian MoD: (emphasis added)

The enemy suffered losses and was pushed back from Olginka, Thorn Ponds and Arkhangelsk.
A battalion of the 57th Motorized Infantry Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was defeated near the settlement of Sukhoi Stavki. Currently, the destruction of its remains is being completed.
To unblock the AFU units, 12 tanks supplied to the Kiev regime by Poland were transported across the Ingulets River. Some of the tanks were destroyed by the powerful fire action of the Russian troops. Several tanks were blown up in their minefield during a disorderly withdrawal. Only five Ukrainian tanks were able to break back, deep into the territory controlled by the AFU. During two days of unsuccessful attacks on Mykolaiv-Krivoy Rog and other directions, Ukrainian troops lost four combat aircraft: two Su-25, one Su-24 and one MiG-29. Three Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopters were shot down in the air. Russian troops also destroyed 63 Ukrainian tanks, 59 infantry fighting vehicles, 48 other armored combat vehicles, 14 pickups with heavy machine guns and more than 1,700 Ukrainian servicemen.

But this does not tell the full story.  1’700 KIAs might not sound like much, but in reality this is a huge deal for the following reasons:

• These 1’700 soldiers were supported by armor, artillery and even some aviation and the USA/UK had huge hopes that this much announced “counter-offensive” would yield some good PR.  The Brandon administration is absolutely desperate to show at least something vaguely successful, yet this so-called “counter-offensive” resulted in only a few tactical attacks which brought no tangible results whatsoever.
• The size of this force shows that this operation was mostly about PR (and not a real counter-offensive!).  The Ukrainians never had a chance, not on the tactical level and, even less so, to develop tactical attack into an operational counter-offensive.  Considering that it took them months to prepare this rather modest operation, this shows how much the Ukrainian armed forces have been degraded over the past months.
• Even worse for the Nazis and their US patrons is the fact that now the entire southern front just lost a lot of its best soldiers and hardware.  Considering that the Russians are reinforcing their southern forces (see below), this is an especially dangerous development for the regime in Kiev.

Also, 1’700 KIA in one single maneuver is the biggest defeat for the Nazis since 2014, even bigger than the Ilovaisk “cauldron”!

I noticed with absolute dismay that, apparently, the Ukrainians tried one more time.  The result? Another  350 personnel, 31 tanks, 22 infantry fighting vehicles, 18 of other types of armored vehicles, eight armed pickup trucks, and 17 of other types of military vehicles destroyed by Russian artillery and airpower.

This is what is left of the Ukrainian “assault barge”

And today (Thursday) there are report that the Ukrainians tried to seize control of the ZNP.  First they fired over 100 artillery shells.  Then 2 diversionary groups totaling 60 soldiers on two crafts landed near the ZNP.  They were detected and destroyed by the Russian aviation.  Two hours later, the Ukrainians used two barges carrying an entire battalion (200-300 soldiers).  They were detected and sunk.

All that while the IAEA inspectors were already at the nuclear power plant!  (I wonder if they will have the courage to report what they must have seen).

Crucially, it showed, yet again, that all that nonsense coming out of Kiev and the other Nazi capitals in the West is just total, utter and terminal nonsense with no connection to the real world.  None whatsoever.  Hence the mass freakout of the western ruling classes.

And then there is this: CNN confirms that the USA helped the Ukrainians prepare this “counter-offensive”!  Oh wow! Who would have thought 😉  But then, what else could we expect from a US military busy with “increasing its lethality” by “embracing, promoting and unleashing the potential of diversity and inclusion“?

Now, just to clarify: did the Ukrainians take a few villages and positions?  Yes.  Absolutely.  Why?  Because the Russians had absolutely NO reason in the world to do what the Nazis do and “stand immobile to their last breath” in a static defensive line.  So they did the following:

• Where the Ukrainian attack was weak, they used their infantry and armor to beat them back.
• Where the Ukrainian attack was strong, they simply moved back, let the Ukrainians advance, and then wiped them off in what can only be called a “turkey shoot” (not to mention a useless butchery).

This is nothing new.  The Russians have done that since the beginning of the SMO.  In every case, the villages or positions the Ukrainians took (and triumphantly presented as a huge “peremoгa” or victory) saw the Ukrainian forces destroyed by Russian artillery, follow by a withdrawal (or total annihilation).

So next time when you hear that the Ukrainians took control of village/location X, always make sure to follow what happens in the next 48 hours and see for yourself if this Ukrainian “victory” then developed into anything meaningful.  As soon as you do that, everything becomes quite obvious.

Western weapon deliveries to the Ukraine

This is one of the biggest canards in this war.  Today, I will deal only with one aspect: the planned delivery of ex-Soviet aircraft to the Ukraine.  Basically, this is utter nonsense.  Like with ANY advanced weapons system, combat aircraft need all of the following things to be effective:

• They need to be fully integrated into a combined arms operation.
• They need to be operated by a highly trained crews.
• They need to be used in sufficient numbers to achieve any meaningful effect, which in the case of the Ukraine means real military airfields, not dirt roads, highways or field refueling stations.
• They need to be maintained/supported by a complex and advanced supply chain and qualified specialists.

Since none of that can happen, the deliveries of MiG-29s (or any other aircraft, really) to the Ukraine will make for semi-decent PR and that’s about it.  There are even rumors that the US is now training Afghan pilots to train them on ex-Soviet fighters…  Let’s see how many pilots the US and NATO actually can convince to fly these one way missions.

In reality, it takes MANY YEARS to form a capable military pilot, and there is no substitute for this.  So no, even if the US finds enough suicidal pilots to try to fly MiG-29s (or other aircraft) against Russian Su-35S, this will achieve exactly nothing other than marginally slowing down the Russians (who will have to deal with this new threat just like they dealt with all the others Wunderwaffen: HIMARS, M777, CAESARs, etc. etc. etc.).  Even the (so far hypothetical) delivery of, say, F-16s, will make very little difference.  There is no Wunderwaffe, least of all old Soviet kit (even when somewhat upgraded with NATO equipment).

Rumors of a major Russian offensive

Okay, as of right now, this is a rumor, but there is strong evidence of two things happening:

• The Russians appear to have assembled one (some rumors say two) Army Corps composed of volunteers and equipped with modern weapons.
• These forces seem to be deployed through and near the city of Rostov-on-the-Don.

Whether these forces were deployed as reserve force in case of a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive (however unlikely) or whether these forces will be used to attack the southern front is anyone’s guess.  In fact, it could be that these forces had and still might have both tasks.  And now that the Ukrainian counter-attack was defeated, they might well be used to move towards Nikolaev along the coast (supported by the BSF) which would put immense pressure on the over-extended and weakened Ukrainian forces.

In this context, I was recently sent a pretty interesting document:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17RsQ2GgAJVrJ0JqCHTeMOZyMCKHHh2iB/preview

This is a letter from the Mayor of the Siberian City of Omsk who announces that at three battalions of volunteers have been formed in this city alone.  It is reasonable to assume that similar things are happening in most other Russian cities.

Speaking of which, there is another canard which I have to debunk:

Will Russia declare a full mobilization?

The short answer is no.  Unless NATO moves forces into the Ukraine, then all bets are off (but even in that case I doubt that a full mobilization would be needed and, not to mention, rather hard to execute) Furthermore, this question is based on a flawed assumption: that Russia’s so-called “slow progress” is due to lack of manpower (about the “slow progress” see here).  That assumption, in turn,  is based on two major mistakes: the first it conflates overall manpower with manpower available at any specific moment in time on a specific sector of the line of contact.  What matters is not overall numerical superiority, but local superiority, superiority on your main axes of attack/defense.  This is how Ze’s MILLION solider army ended up being defeated with only 1700 KIAs: there never was a million soldiers army anywhere near Zaporozhie in the first place.

Second, the Russians have been fighting this entire SMO with less than 10% of the Russian military and with a 3:1 advantage for the Nazi forces almost everywhere.  You could say that the Ukrainians are fighting a positional war while the Russians are fighting a mobile war, counting on their qualitative superiority (in most fields, with a few exceptions – such as counter-battery radars and squad level need for commercial quad-copters similar to the famous DJI Mavic series, see below – and these limited disadvantages are now being quickly addressed).

Yes, I know, there are some LDNR officials who constantly whine about the fact that Russia is not fighting this war the way they would.  But with all due respect, it is one thing to be a deputy commander of an LDNR battalion and quite another a specialist in the Russian General Staff with several academies and years of command experience under your belt.  Furthermore, the LDNR forces, for all their undisputed heroism, courage and skills do not fight the same war as the Russians.  The LDNR forces are fighting to liberate the Donbass, and they have just recently acquired the kind of capabilities needed to even contemplate an operational level offensive.  In sharp contrast, the Russians are fighting a strategic war against NATO and the US, so it is no wonder that their notions of what ought to be done differ.  Here is just one example:

What about the supposed lack of UAV/drones/quadcopter?  Did/will Russia by UAV from Iran?

The problem here is that UAV/drones/quads come in all sort of sizes, from truly tiny one which you can fit in the palm of your hand, to large, strategic ones with advanced electronics/optoelectronics/EW/etc. and even weapons of various types.  So let’s separate the two.

Example one: a reconnaissance unit from the LDNR forces is tasked with finding out what is happening, or not, behind a small forest.  You can use a relatively cheap and simple, off the shelf, DJI Mavic (even a mini model!), which you can send a kilometer or two over the forest and to take a peek what might be hiding inside/behind the trees.  If you do not have that Mavic, you have to sent a reconnaissance patrol.  Going on such a mission is very dangerous, because not only can the Nazis plant all sorts of mines in the forest and under the leaves/grass, they can also set up an ambush (the Ukrainians are pretty good at that).  So if you are the commander of this reconnaissance unit, you are going to be absolutely furious that the lack of Mavics forces you to send you soldiers into a very dangerous situation, day after day after day.  And if you are young and inexperienced, you are going to blame the Russian military’s procurement system for not sending boxes of Mavics to the LDNR.

So to the question “did the LDNR forces have enough Mavic-type quads before the SMO began?” the answer is “no they did not”.  Once the LDNR officials and their supporters raised a big enough stink over that, volunteers from all over Russia began sending quads to the LDNR and things slowly (especially for those who had to risk their lives every day!) began to improve.  But this never was the “fault” or “lack of care” from the Russian armed forces whose job is very different.

Now the Russian military has exactly *zero* need for Mavic-type quads.  Not only that, but Russia has large stores of all sorts of advanced UAVs (see here for details).  As for the Russian military, it is not in the business of supplying LDNR forces with whatever they might need, it is in the business of fighting a war against the consolidated West, this requires a totally different kind of kit and training than the LDNR forces.

Example two: Russia needs long range UAVs to detect Ukrainian columns on the move, force concentrations, assembly position, battle formations, etc.  The good news is that Russia has plenty of those more advanced UAVs.  These advanced UAVs do not fly 1-8km in distance, but for hundreds of kilometers and their flight time is not counted in minutes, but in tens of hours.  In this kind of warfare, Mavics are totally useless.

Is it possible that Russia might buy some Iranian UAV?

I would say that it is not very likely, but quite possible.  Why?  First, Russia and Iran are (informal but strong) allies and the Iranians would probably love to test their gear in real, modern, warfare conditions (Syria, Iraq or Yemen do not qualify).  Second, the Iranians have superb UAVs, not necessarily better than Russian ones (it really depends on the mission and what the rest of the forces are doing), but very good ones indeed.  Since Russia is flush with cash thanks to the western sanctions, Russia could do worse than purchase an X number of Iranian UAV and use them (or even give them to the LDNR).  Again, I don’t think that this will happen because of a simple problem: the more primitive a UAV is, the more you can use commercial, off the shelf, equipment (this is what the (in)famous Bayraktars are – assembled off the shelf commercial hardware).  But the more advanced a UAV is, the more it needs to be able to “talk” to a lot of highly specialized networks and equipment, most of which are secret to begin with.

[Sidbar: I happen to personally fly both cinematic quads – a DJI Mavic mini – and first-person-view (FPV) acrobatic/freestyle quads and, as a result, even a private civilian like myself can have equipment which could used in a reconnaissance situation like the one I describe above.  This is not different than LDNR forces using family and consumer radios (FRS and GMRS) to communicate, or the purchase of commercial laser rangefinders, GPS/GLONASS/GNSS navigation equipment and the like.  Nowadays recreational and commercial microelectronics are so capable, that you can buy most of what a reconnaissance unit might need online and for relatively cheap.  And if your pockets are deep enough, you even purchase get all sorts of very good thermal imaging systems.  So what the LDNR forces needed the most, is simply money to get all that good stuff.  Some of this is already being built in Russia but, if needed, Russia can get it all from China directly or through Kazakhstan.  For the LDNR the issue was always money, and this is why the Mayor of Omsk is asking for donations at the end of this open letter above]

In sharp contrast to the LDNR forces, the Russian military has plenty of money and capabilities which the LDNR can only dream about, including a high tech military industrial base which dwarfs anything Iran might have.

Conclusion:

Initially, the Russians got absolutely destroyed in the propaganda war, at least that was true during the early months of the SMO.  Now this entire narrative is tanking (as evidenced, for example, this interview of Jeffrey Sachs on Democracy Now! or this video by Tucker Carlson).  Of course, the Neocons and the “extreme center” of the Uniparty (call them Republicrats or Demolicans – same difference) are still in deep denial and they are going through all the usual stages of grief (how is that headline: “German minister vows to back Ukraine ‘no matter what voters think’”?).  My biggest fear is that this hate-saturated narcissistic imbeciles will do something really dumb and trigger a much larger conflict.  The Kremlin is acutely aware of this riks, and this is why the Russians are only using about 10% of their current capabilities (that is before even a mobilization).

Most of the nonsense we now hear about the Ukraine (all the plain silly theories) is now quickly falling apart.  All the hysterics of the Russian 6th columnists (à la Girkin-Strelkov & Co.) have failed to force the Russian General Staff to fight the war like the 6th column would have preferred.  Instead of listening to these “allislosters”, Putin decided to listen to his generals.  What a surprise!

Furthermore, as Putin and others have repeated innumerable times, the SMO is going pretty much according to plan (besides the undeniable mistakes made in specific locations, like moving Russian forces in columns towards the Gostomel airfield without first suppressing the Ukrainian artillery and diversionary forces along the road; but the Kiev faint itself, however, was a total success and it achieved all its goals).  All the recent developments further show that Russia will methodically achieve all of her objectives in the coming months (though the denazification of Europe will, of course, take longer, not to mention the need to denazify the USA itself).

***

Finally, since this will be a long week-end, I leave you again with some beautiful music I love.

First, I want to introduce you to an Argentinian singer and guitarist whom I consider to be the most brilliant musician of traditional Argentinian (gaucho) music: Eduardo Falu.  Listen to this track, the song, entitled “Zamba de la Candelaria“, is absolutely beautiful (as are the lyrics for those who understand Spanish) and his guitar playing is nothing short of stellar (the other two songs in this video are also quite beautiful, I think)

Next, I want to introduce you to one of my absolutely favorite US Jazz/Improvised music group, named Oregon.  In this tune, entitled “Hand in Hand“, you will hear one of their most beautiful, yet understated, compositions.  The way the harmony “moves” here is so poignantly beautiful!  Also, listen to Ralph Towner‘s guitar solo and try to sing the melody over his improvisations, and you will discover a very beautiful “improvised contrapunctus”.   I had the privilege to once see Oregon at the Blues Alley in Washington DC and it was for sure one of the most amazing performances I have ever seen.

Next, a beautiful composition by Larry Coryell which he interprets here with the (always brilliant) Joe Beck and Joe Scofield entitled “Thurman Munson“.  This is also a very understated composition, but it gives ample opportunities for some truly beautiful and poignant improvisations (including some beautifully weaved through polytonalities).

Next, I want to introduce you to a French guitarist named Pierre Bensusan.  The guy is an absolute genius both as a composer and as in interpreter.  Today I want to share one of my favorite compositions by Bensusan entitled simply “4am“.  I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I do!

Lastly, I want to introduce you to a ridiculously talented group from, I think, New York: they are called the “Nation of Five“.  Here they play one of my favorite tunes, called “The Saga of Harrison Crabfeathers” aka “Poem For No. 15.” composed by the Jazz pianist Steve Kuhn.  It is a most interesting Jazz waltz built around distinct keys (this is modal music at its best!) and which includes a very original use of something called a “hemiola“, that is “the articulation of two bars in triple time as if they were three bars in duple time” or, to quote Wikipedia’s fuller definition “a hemiola is the ratio 3:2. In pitch, hemiola refers to the interval of a perfect fifth. In rhythm, hemiola refers to three beats of equal value in the time normally occupied by two beats.  This makes the improvisation over this melody both very interesting and somewhat challenging.  I just love to explore all the possibilities this 1972 composition offers for improvisation and this is a fantastic performance by all these musicians!

MTV and and so-called “conservatories” have tried their best to stamp out real, improvised, music, and they failed.  What a joy for the rest of us, no?

Enjoy and have a wonderful week-end!

TO TIMES OF ISRAEL WRITER, APARTHEID IS OK, SYMPATHY FOR PALESTINIANS “LOATHSOME”

MAY 26TH, 2022

Source

By Miko Peled

JERUSALEM – Zionists like to admonish Palestinians by saying that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. But, according to Zionist talking points, Palestinians missed several opportunities when Israel was willing to graciously “give” them pieces of their own land. Moreover, it is alleged that Palestinians have missed so many of these great opportunities that they have no one to blame but themselves for their misfortunes.

BLAMING THE VICTIMS

A piece by Richard Cravatts published in the Times of Israel, and later republished in other publications, is a particularly asinine example of this admonition. In his piece, “An Open Letter to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Your Fellow Travelers,” Cravatts writes: “Millions of Palestinian refugees [have been] created by your people’s repeated rejection of offers of statehood – in 1937, 1947, 1967, 2000, and other occasions….”

An Open Letter to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Her Fellow Travelers | FrontpageMag https://t.co/1pLj8hLCjk

— Richard Cravatts (@rcravatts) May 25, 2022

Blaming the Palestinians for the ongoing tragedy of the refugees is not only callous but as outrageous as blaming the victims of the Holocaust for the horrors of the Nazis. I can testify that I have heard more than one Zionist claim that the Jews whom the Nazis killed had it coming because they did not heed the call of the Zionists. Had the Jews of Europe come to Palestine to steal and live on other people’s land, the Nazis would have spared them, a theme found throughout Yoav Shamir’s 2009 documentary, “Defamation.”

The claim that Palestinians are prone to missing opportunities is one of the most common Zionist lines, and they still use it because it works – because unfortunately there exists such a lack of knowledge regarding the history of Palestine that Zionists can loudly proclaim that “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity!” and go unchallenged. Another iteration of this claim is, “If only the Palestinians had the foresight to accept Zionist offers, or at least offers that the Zionists were agreeable to, things would have been so much better for them.” “Them” being the Palestinians.

Anyone familiar with the Zionist talking points has heard the claim that the Palestinians “missed opportunities” so they have no one to blame for their lot but themselves. In a recent lecture I gave in southern California, a Palestinian student asked me how to reply to this argument. His question was specifically about the Zionist accusation that Palestinians rejected the Two-State Solution.

AN OUTRIGHT LIE

We will set aside the fact that this is an outright lie for a moment. We will not get into this issue in-depth, only to say that in fact, since the 1970s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (the PLO) has been the only party striving to achieve a Two-State Solution and that their willingness to make this enormous sacrifice cost them a great deal and made things worse for Palestinians the world over.

This argument typically comes from Zionists who live in the United States or the U.K. and who think it is OK that Israel has taken all of Palestine. They never admonish Israel for annexing the Syrian Golan Heights or East Jerusalem. They have no issue with Israel’s building entire cities on Palestinian land. This accusation comes from Zionists who believe Israel has a right to colonize all of historic Palestine.

Israel has a right to do this because, so they tell us, Jewish people around the world may (or may not) be related to a tribe that resided in Palestine some two or three thousand years ago. They tell us that this tribe, called the Hebrews, which may or may not have any historical connection to modern-day Israel and the Jewish people, is the reason it is OK for the modern State of Israel to commit unspeakable crimes against an entire nation.

LEGITIMIZING THE OPPRESSOR

What is implied in the admonitions by Zionists is that Zionism and the colonization of Palestine by Zionist Jews are legitimate and that the Palestinians refuse to accept this legitimacy. However, these admonitions present us with opportunities to raise a larger question. The question that ought to be asked is: Why in the world would Palestinians accept any offer by their colonizers? Why would any colonized nation accept anything but the total defeat of their colonizers and oppressors, especially considering that these “offers” fail to include the liberation of all of historic Palestine?

The answer is that there is no reason. The attempts at partitioning and slicing Palestine have all been part of a strategy meant to legitimize the violent Zionist takeover of Palestine and delegitimize the Palestinian rejection of it.

The aforementioned senseless, mindless Zionist propaganda piece starts by addressing Rep. Tlaib as follows:

On May 16th, you and some other members of The Squad, including Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, McCollum, and others, introduced a loathsome resolution, H. RES. 1123, which had as its purpose “Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian refugees’ rights” and to “commemorate the Nakba,” the catastrophe you assign to Israel’s creation, “through official recognition and remembrance.” According to your baleful resolution, the Nakba not only took place at Israel’s founding “but [refers] to an ongoing process of Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land and its dispossession of the Palestinian people that continues to this day.”

In this typical Zionist propaganda piece, Cravatts calls the proposed legislation to recognize the Nakba “loathsome.” Amnesty International recently published a report accusing Israel of committing the crime of apartheid — a crime so heinous it is designated as a “crime against humanity.” Interestingly, the writer does not find those who commit the crime of apartheid loathsome, only the legislation recognizing the victims of the crime.

What is loathsome, however, is that the United States is complicit in the crimes against the Palestinians. It is loathsome to live in the United States and to justify, explain and provide cover – thin as it may be – for the brutal regime that has been tearing Palestine apart for over seven decades. And it is loathsome to stand by and applaud as the state of Israel continues to brutalize an entire nation while the world, and Israeli society, look the other away.

The risks, challenges, and crisis of the Ukraine war.

April 21, 2022

Source

By Zamir Awan

The last few decades have witnessed several wars, like the Iraq war, Libya war, Yemen war, Syria war, the Afghan war, etc. But all of such wars were designed by the US and executed along with NATO/ US allies. The US-style of wars, was first building a narrative, using media as propaganda, and then, involving the UN and international community, or convincing the rest of the world for its war acts. As a result, the US achieved its objectives without getting blamed for wars, aggressions, invasions, etc. Although millions were killed, millions were injured, many serious with lifetime disabilities, millions of houses were destroyed making millions of people homeless, forcing millions of people to live in refugee camps or take asylum in other countries and spend the rest of their lives in misery. Infrastructure was damaged, the economy was destroyed, social systems were damaged totally, changed regime installed puppets and dictated them to serve American interests, etc.

All wars are equally bad and harmful to humankind. Either the victims are Muslims, Christians, Jews, or any other religion. Whether, the victims are black, yellow, or white, are equally precious. Irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, or social status, all lives deserve equal treatment and respect. The UN charter guarantees the protection of all humankind equally.

But Ukraine war is very special and bears different consequences:-

• The Russia-Ukraine conflict has not only created a worldwide political, diplomatic, economic, food, and energy crisis but has also exposed the double standards of the world powers towards the principles of international politics and global governance.
• It is expected the conflict to be a long-drawn-out affair. This is reinforced by the fact that despite the inclination of the Russian leadership or military to end the war at an early stage, on the ground trends in the shape of military armament and around 50,000 non-state actors in Ukraine offer a very alarming specter.
• The war is not a choice but perhaps a strategic compulsion that Moscow felt for several reasons like challenges ranging from the global world order to the expansion of NATO and also concerns regarding the political leadership of Ukraine and its policies.
• It is an ideational conflict that shows the level of violence and degree of pain and cost that could be inflicted on Russia by the US-led western alliance. The war seems to be a grave miscalculation on Russia’s part because the ability of the western world to cause pain in an enduring fashion across several domains beyond the kinetic tactical or operational battlefield of Ukraine will make it very difficult for Moscow to sustain and achieve its objectives.
• China views this conflict with a lot of concern because it offers more challenges than opportunities. A weakened Russia is not in the Chinese interest. Moreover, the revival and rearmament of NATO also indirectly do not augur well for Beijing in terms of future prospects. Another aspect is that although China wants to sustain its global economic growth but not at the cost of disturbing its trade relations with the west.
• It is highlighted the buildup of the Quad, the Indo-Pacific strategy, and the recent rise of QUAD 2.0. If all these are added up most of these things are aimed at containing China and disrupting its global rise. This conflict has perhaps reminded Washington that they cannot afford to only concentrate the major share of their hard power only on Asia-Pacific and need to maintain their security commitment towards the west and Europe as well.
• In the regional context, India was seen in flux because its military forces are heavily dependent on Russia for meeting its technological and operational needs but it is facing a very difficult challenge due to its growing diplomatic and economic ties with the US. As such Delhi will find it rather difficult to balance these contrasting challenges.
• The Muslim world was urged to introspect because they have been accused of over 20 years of terrorism but this reality dawning in eastern Europe allows them to look at how other civilizations and value systems call upon non-state actors and militant organizations when they are challenged and how they are presented in the Western-dominated media.
• In terms of identity, it poses a simultaneous challenge in terms of race, religion, and nationalism. The western alliance sees this as the frustration of the Russian orthodox Christianity facing the challenge of the western world order which is characterized by the Protestants and Catholics.
• The societal aspect should be seen in the context of globalization and the perpetual process of the interconnectedness of the different civilizations, societies, peoples, cultures, and economies. This is perhaps the biggest challenge globalization has received in terms of a counter-globalization movement.
• The economic aspect is not just playing out in the sanctions regime but also the trade and currency wars, and the grave concern that Beijing has because to sustain its economic expansion and global influence it is heavily dependent on Western Europe and America for maintaining its export market which is worth over $600 billion. The increasing energy prices pose a huge challenge for the developing world and the governments, especially immediately after the COVID crisis.
• In the political domain, it is the greatest test of the current world order and a complex contest between the ideational powers, revivalist powers, and states that want to be identified based on nationalism. It is an ideational challenge to the status quo world order by a frustrated and provoked Russia which wants to be respected for its economic, political and strategic revival.
• In terms of the security domain, the conflict has led to the revival and rearmament of NATO, which does not augur well for China and Russia. It also has reduced Russian energy leverage and soft power on Western Europe and revived sub-conventional warfare as a means of great power contest in the east European theater.
• Russia is angered by the eastward expansion of NATO and has challenged the Western-led world order. He also said that Western sanctions could affect Pakistan’s ability to benefit from improving ties with Moscow, in terms of meeting its energy needs.
• Ukraine conflict has created a worldwide economic, energy, and food crisis that has affected all the countries including Pakistan.
• The conflict represents a Russian challenge to the US exceptionalism which the Western world is contesting by supporting the Ukraine government through militants which presents the world an opportunity to recover from its excessive focus on the Muslim world.
• The Western powers cannot have one set of rules for themselves and another for other countries in terms of security and prosperity and Russia is no longer willing to access this contradictory Western approach.
• Ukraine War is an ideational conflict for the US which should not merely be seen in a geopolitical context while Russia, through this military operation, wants to show the world that it is back on the world stage.
• This conflict offers more challenges than opportunities for Beijing and although the Western powers view China as standing on the Russian side a weakened Russia is not in Chinese interests.
• India faced a complex dilemma of maintaining its very close defense cooperation with Russia and simultaneously building deep and long-term strategic and diplomatic ties with the United States.
• Muslim societies should start thinking of alternative arrangements, such as a monetary union and common market, to address their concerns during international crises.
• The world banking system and global energy supply chain have badly suffered due to this conflict. He said that more than one trillion dollars have been stuck in the global banking system due to the war.

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Author: Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan, Sinologist (ex-Diplomat), Editor, Analyst, Non-Resident Fellow of CCG (Center for China and Globalization). (E-mail: awanzamir@yahoo.com).

Ukraine’s Propaganda War: International PR Firms, DC Lobbyists and CIA Cutouts

March 22, 2022

By Dan Cohen

WASHINGTON DC — Since the Russian offensive inside Ukraine commenced on February 24, the Ukrainian military has cultivated the image of a plucky little army standing up to the Russian Goliath. To bolster the perception of Ukrainian military mettle, Kiev has churned out a steady stream of sophisticated propaganda aimed at stirring public and official support from Western countries.

The campaign includes language guides, key messages, and hundreds of propaganda posters, some of which contain fascist imagery and even praise Neo-Nazi leaders.

Behind Ukraine’s public relations effort is an army of foreign political strategists, Washington DC lobbyists, and a network of intelligence-linked media outlets.

Ukraine’s propaganda strategy earned it praise from a NATO commander who told the Washington Post, “They are really excellent in stratcom — media, info ops, and also psy-ops.” The Post ultimately conceded that “Western officials say that while they cannot independently verify much of the information that Kyiv puts out about the evolving battlefield situation, including casualty figures for both sides, it nonetheless represents highly effective stratcom.”

Key to the propaganda effort is an international legion of public relations firms working directly with Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to wage information warfare.

According to the industry news site PRWeek, the initiative was launched by an anonymous figure who allegedly founded a Ukraine-based public relations firm.

“From the first hour of war, we decided to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them distribute the official sources to show the truth,” the nameless figure told PR Week. “This is a hybrid war: the mix of bloodily struggling fight with a huge disinformation and fake campaign lead by Russia [sic].”

According to the anonymous figure, more than 150 public relations firms have joined the propaganda blitz.

The international effort is spearheaded by public relations firm PR Network co-founder Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham, a top public relations consultant with close ties to the UK’s government. Ingraham previously worked for Britain’s Conservative Party, sits on the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council, is Chief Executive of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation, and leads the membership body for UK local government communicators, LG Comms.

“We’ve been privileged to help coordinate efforts to support the Ukrainian Government in the last few days, “ Ingham told PRovoke Media. “Agencies have offered up entire teams to support Kyiv in the communications war. Our support for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine is unwavering and will continue for as long as needed.”

With an anonymous Ukrainian figure joining two of the top public relations figures in the Kiev government’s propaganda blitz, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs distributed a dossier folder (archived)  with materials instructing public relations agencies on “key messages,” approved language, content for debunked propaganda constructs, far-right and Neo-Nazi propaganda.

The folder is run by Yaroslav Turbil, described on his LinkedIn page as “Head of Ukraine.ua — Ukraine’s digital ecosystem for global communications. Strategic Communications & Country Brand Promotion.” Turbil has worked at multiple “civil society” organizations closely linked to the U.S. government and interned at Internews, a U.S. intelligence-linked organization that operates under the guise of promoting press freedom.

Among the propaganda constructs distributed in the dossier, is a video of the Snake Island incident, which was quickly proven false, in which Ukrainian border guards stationed on a small island were reported to have been killed after they told an approaching Russian warship that had urged them to surrender to “Go f*** yourself.” President Zelensky held a press conference announcing he would award the men the Hero of Ukraine medal as mainstream media spread the story widely. However, the supposedly-dead soldiers quickly turned up alive and well, proving their heroic stand to be a farce.

Despite the story being proven as fake, the dossier contains a propaganda video promoting it.

Another folder in the dossier is run by Ukrainian MFA graphic artist Dasha Podoltseva and contains hundreds of propaganda graphics submitted by artists in Europe and the United States.

Some feature generic “no war” messages, while dozens of other images celebrate “The Ghost of Kiev” – a heroic Ukrainian pilot who turns out to be non-existent – and the phony “Snake Island 13” incident.

Many use xenophobic and racist language, and some are explicit in their praise of prominent Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, including C14 leader Yevhen Karas, the Right Sector fascist paramilitary, and the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Multiple images call for “Banderite smoothies” – a reference to Molotov cocktails named for the late OUN-B commander Stephan Bandera, who collaborated with Nazi Germany in the mass murder of Jews and ethnic Poles during World War II. Another image depicts a book titled the: ”Encyclopedia of Incurable Diseases,” listing Russia, Belorussia, North Korea, Syria, and Eritrea.

“I love NLAW” – Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon, provided by western governments to the Ukrainian military

Graphic implying fertilizing the fields with bodies reads, “Grandma advice to Moskovites: Hide in the fields, When you die in hands of our army, Sunflowers will grow better”’

“Thank You Ukrainian Army” with an Azov Battalion Wolfsengel patch emblazoned on the sleeve”

“The Encyclopedia of Incurable Disease: Russia, Belorussia, North Korea, Syria, Eritrea”

“Against Moscovian Occupation.” Moscovian is a xenophobic term used to describe Russians

Graphic calling Czar Nicholas, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Vladimir Putin incarnations of the same “Mental Moskovian Dragon”

“Putin’s orcs got whipped” – Orc is a xenophobic term for Russian used by Ukrainian nationalists

Flag of Neo-Nazi paramilitary Right Sector. Red represents “blood” and black represents “soil”

Ukraine or Valhalla – a reference to the where heroes of Norse mythological go after death, a theme commonly appropriated by neo-Nazis

A call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine with an image of a building used by the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion that Russia bombed

A call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine with an image of a building used by the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion that Russia bombed

Foreign extremists flock to Ukraine

The dossier also contains a link to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs page called “Fight for Ukraine,” which provides instructions for foreigners who wish to join Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi-infested armed forces – termed the “International Defense Legion of Ukraine.”

Following Zelensky’s call for foreign fighters to form a brigade, fighters from all over the world, including the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, Spain, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and more have traveled to face Russian forces. Others with no combat training or experience have arrived for “war tourism” – what one British soldier called “bullet-catchers.”

Official Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs recruitment graphics from the dossier

Official Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs recruitment graphics from the dossier

While the Ukrainian government says tens of thousands have answered their call, some commentators expressed doubt at those figures, calling it a “PR exercise.”

However, the foreigners who have traveled to Ukraine have encountered a much more severe reality than they anticipated.

Russia’s air force bombed military installations adjacent to where the foreign fighters were sleeping. Having fled to neighboring Poland, a Spanish fighter described the bombing as a “message” that could have killed thousands.

Similarly, an American fighter who hid in an ambulance to escape the frontlines warned that Ukrainian authorities were killing foreigners who decided not to fight, calling it a “trap.”

Correct wording

One document inside the dossier delineates acceptable language on the conflict with Russia as determined by the Ukrainian government.

“Such Russian clichés like ‘referendum in Crimea’ or ‘will of the people of Crimea’ are absolutely unacceptable,” the document states, in reference to the 2014 overwhelmingly successful referendum to separate from Ukraine.

The document deems unacceptable the terms “Civil war in Donbass,” “Internal conflict,” “Conflict in Ukraine” and “Ukrainian crisis” to describe the Ukrainian military’s war with the breakaway republics of the Donbass region. This, despite the fact that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that 14,200 people, including 3,404 civilians, have been killed in internal fighting in Ukraine since 2014.

In place of these phrases, the document calls for the use of the terms “Armed aggression by the Russian Federation in Donbass, international armed conflict, Russian war against Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian conflict armed conflict.”

Key Messages

Another document titled “Key Messages” contains specific propaganda claims that were widely disseminated in mainstream western media, but which have since been discredited. One section claims the “entire Europe was put on the brink of nuclear disaster, when the Russian troops began shelling the largest in Europe Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant.”

However, International Atomic Energy Agency’s director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said that the building hit by a Russian “projectile” at the Zaporizhzhia plant was “not part of the reactor” but instead a training center. Russian troops also left Ukrainian workers to continue operating the plant.

“If I were a Russian worried about the potential of Nazi extremists coming up with a dirty bomb, I’d need to take control of this very facility” – @realscottritter deconstructs the Ukrainian nuclear plant takeover

With @dancohen3000

Full Interview: https://t.co/KOMDd6018Y pic.twitter.com/lpANwW2rt4

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) March 8, 2022

Another section thanks Turkey for the decision “to block the access of Russian warships to the Black Sea.”

However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to all military vessels, preventing both NATO and Russian vessels from accessing the Black Sea.

Among the document’s key messages is a statement of gratitude to the “Anti-war demonstrations held by citizens of many nations throughout the world demonstrate strong support to Ukraine in defending against Russia.”

This refers to large pro-Ukraine demonstrations in Europe which have featured calls for the U.S. and NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine and shoot down Russian military aircraft, potentially transforming the conflict into a world war between nuclear-armed powers.

The NED published video of its CEO, Damon Wilson, at a rally outside the White House, declaring "Glory to Ukraine" – the salute used by Nazi collaborator Stephan Bandera's OUN-B, which carried out mass murder of Jews and Poles during World War 2. pic.twitter.com/a5hWSn9txo

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) March 7, 2022

“Despite Russia’s propaganda, there is no discrimination based on the race or nationality, including when it comes to the crossing of the state border by foreign citizens,” claims the Ukrainian document.

However, numerous videos and reports have documented Ukrainian authorities preventing Africans from fleeing the fighting. Even the New York Times – hardly a bastion of Kremlin propaganda – published a report documenting these racist practices.

One message says that “On 16 March, the Russian forces dropped a bomb on a drama theatre where up to 1300 civilians were being sheltered. The number of casualties is still unknown.”

However, as Max Blumenthal reported the explosion appears to be the result of a false flag operation designed by the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and aimed at triggering a NATO intervention.

NATO-backed troll farms

Another anonymously-penned investigation shows how Ukrainian public relations firms have used targeted advertisements to astroturf Russian internet and social media networks with messaging calling to economically isolate Moscow and “stop the war.” This effort is led by Bezlepkin Evgeny Vitalievich, who uses the alias Evgeny Korolev, along with Pavel Antonov of the Targetorium organization. From behind his Korolev pseudonym, the Ukrainian information warrior composed a post on his Facebook page (now private) boasting that his firm’s Facebook ads achieved 30 million hits in three days.

At the same time, Facebook has blocked Russian state-owned media outlets from running ads and monetizing content. Several fake accounts for media outlets like Russia 24 have sprung up, burying the authentic account under a series of impostors. Facebook has also marked statements from Russian officials, including the Ministry of Defense, as “false.”

This campaign has reportedly been carried out upon recommendation from StopFake, a self-described “fact checking” outlet that is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, Atlantic Council, Czech and UK foreign ministries, and the International Renaissance Foundation, which is funded by billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

StopFake was hired by Facebook in March 2020 to “curb the flow of Russian propaganda” but was found to be employing multiple figures closely tied to violent Neo-Nazis. The journalist who co-authored the exposé received death threats and ultimately fled Ukraine.

Those revelations have apparently not prevented Facebook from relying on the organization for censorship guidance.

Meanwhile, Russian hackers located a public Google document (since made private, uploaded here) detailing the propaganda operation, which has been distributed in Telegram channels of “creative farms.”

“Here you can find links to Ukrainian media that need promotion, bot accounts with logins and passwords from which anti-war messages and messages with fakes about the Ministry of Defense were sent to users, theses and specific instructions on which posts and which audiences to embroider,” the investigation reads.

Another campaign is run by Nataliya Popovych, the founder of the public relations agency, One Philosophy, in Kiev. Popovych’s LinkedIn profile shows she has worked with the U.S. State Department and advised former President Petro Poroshenko. She is also co-founder and board member of Ukraine Crisis Media Center, a propaganda arm funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. Embassy, and NATO, among many others.

A Campaign Asia article profiles several public relations firms involved in the effort. Among them is Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman PR. Edelman is also a member of the Atlantic Council’s Board of Directors and the World Economic Forum.

“Geopolitics has become the new test for trust. We saw this with the allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and the war between Ukraine and Russia has only reinforced it,” he said, linking the U.S. propaganda campaign surrounding China’s deradicalization campaign for Uyghur Muslims.

PR approved media outlets

An article in PRWeek profiles several figures partaking in what they describe as a “PR army” that is “fighting on the informational frontline” against Russia’s “barbaric genocide of Ukrainians.”

“Propaganda is the same as real lethal weapons,” declares Marta Dzhumaha, PR manager at healthcare company BetterMe.

Julia Petryk, head of public relations at MacPaw, offers a list of approved media outlets, authored by her colleague Tetiana Bronistka, a former employee of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office. The list includes Russian and English language sources, as well as Telegram channels. However, these “verified sources that objectively cover what is happening in Ukraine” are anything but independent. Most of them are tied to the U.S. and European governments and billionaire foundations.

She also lists several Russian-language websites:

• Novaya Gazeta – Tied to and reportedly funded by the National Endowment for Democracy
• Meduza – Funded by the government of Latvia, OAK Foundation, Open Society Foundation ​​oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorovsky, and Sweden
• Dozhd – SREDA foundation, European Commission
• Holod Media – Offshoot of Meduza – praised in PBS and CNN as “independent media”
• Proposed that Leningrad should have been surrendered to the Nazis in World War 2 and has complained that they are called a “fifth column” for being funded by western powers
• BBC Russia – British government media
• Current Time TV – Created by CIA-founded propaganda outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in collaboration with Voice of America
• Censor – funded by, editor in chief Yuri Butusov, former advisor to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine
• 200RF – A Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website that claims to publish publishes photos and documents of the Russian soldiers captured and killed in action

Among the Telegram channels listed are:

• Radio Svoboda – CIA-founded propaganda organ Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
• Espresso TV, largely owned by the wife of former Ukrainian member of parliament Mykola Knyazhytsky
• Censor.net, formerly the largest media site in Ukraine, whose motto is “To bring down Russia”, and whose owner operates a “parade of international trolls.”

Intelligence operations

While the public relations firms distribute content, CIA cutouts and billionaire foundations run the media outlets they derive it from. At the core of this operation is a project called the Russian Language News Exchange that was the product of a network of opposition media outlets founded in 2016 that operate in post-Soviet countries, as revealed by an investigation by the Russian media agency, RIA FAN.

In July 2021, a group of journalists flew to Warsaw for media training after being exempted from coronavirus-related restrictions and quarantine orders by Poland’s top medical authorities.

Among the six journalists were Andrey Lipsky, deputy editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, and Yuliia Fediv, CEO of Hromadske TV media, one of the most-watched networks in Ukraine.

Hromadske’s financial reports show it is funded by numerous governments and foundations, including the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the European Endowment for Democracy, and Free Press Unlimited. Silicon Valley billionaire Pierre Omidary was also involved in creating the outlet.

Hromadske recently hosted a commentator demanding genocide of ethnic Russians in the Donbass, saying it is populated with 1.5 “superfluous” people that “must be exterminated.”

The training, held behind closed doors from July 19 to July 21, was titled “Media Network 2021+” and closely tied to Mediaset, also known as the Russian Language News Exchange, a network founded in 2015. Russian Language News Exchange’s website is sparse, with little available information on its activities – apparently made private since the publication of RIA FAN’s investigation.

While it claims to be independent, Russian Language News Exchange is a project of Free Press Unlimited, funded by the Dutch government and the European Commission.

Today, it includes 14 media outlets that act as “nodes,” cross-publishing each other’s articles in various countries.

The website’s introductory video is hosted by Maxim Eristavi, a former Radio Free Europe reporter and founder of Hromadske. Today, he heads the Millennium Leadership Program at the NATO and arms industry-backed think tank, the Atlantic Council.

Since its inception, Mediaset has coordinated between outlets in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine. In March 2021, Mediaset expanded with the Colab Medios Project, created through the Free Press Unlimited Viable Media for Empowered Societies (VIMES) program. This program created training for journalists and saw articles from the El Salvadoran outlet El Faro published in Euroradio (Belarus), Coda (Georgia), and Ziarul de Garda (Moldova).

On March 4, several days after Russia launched its military offensive, a new project called the Media Lifeline Ukraine was created.

The next day, Free Press Unlimited held an emergency conference for Ukraine featuring Hromadske co-founders Maxim Eristavi and Nataliya Gumenyuk. The meeting called to raise 2 million euros for the project. “Only with ongoing external support, will local media entities be able to continue to do their work,” its introductory page asks.

Days later, Free Press Unlimited announced a partnership to support a new joint project of  Reporters Without Borders and its Ukrainian partner, the Institute for Mass Information, called The Lviv Press Freedom Center. The Institute for Mass Information is headed by USAID communications officer Oksana Romaniuk and funded by USAID and the UK government.

Washington DC lobbyists wag the dog

While public relations firms and intelligence-linked propaganda operations target the public, Washington DC lobbyists are agitating in Congress to extend the war in Ukraine

Daniel Vajdich, a registered foreign agent and lobbyist for the Ukrainian Federation of Employers of the Oil and Gas Industry, the largest in Ukraine, is working on behalf of Volodymyr Zelensky to lobby members of Congress to approve more weapons shipments to Ukraine. Now the head of Yorktown Solutions, he previously advised Ted Cruz and Scott Walker’s campaigns and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

“Stingers, Javelins, and let’s figure out the fighter aircraft issue,” he told Politico, claiming Russia is attempting to carry out a “genocide” and “depopulate certain areas of Ukraine.”

Vajdich also wrote Zelenskyy’s March 16 speech to U.S. Congress, in which he quoted Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech to call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Ukrainian Permanent Representative at the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya’s February 23 speech to the United Nations General Assembly was written by DC lobbying firm SKDKnickerbocker Managing Director Stephen Krupin, a former senior speechwriter to President Barack Obama who worked extensively on Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Most prominent among the registered lobbyists promoting Ukrainian government and business interests is Andrew Mac, who also contributed to writing Zeleneksyy’s speech to Congress. Mac registered as a lobbyist for Zelensky in 2019 and runs the Washington DC office of Ukrainian law firm Asters Law.

The lobbying firm Your Global Strategy, founded by Shai Franklin, who has been affiliated with numerous Zionist organizations including the World Jewish Congress and Anti-Defamation League, is also using its influence with local officials in the U.S. Franklin has set up meetings between Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov and U.S. mayors, including Eric Adams in New York City, Michelle Wu in Boston and Lori Lightfoot in Chicago. He is also attempting to set up a meeting between U.S. officials and the mayors of Odessa and Kiev. A media outlet owned by the mayor of Kiev’s wife recently featured a presenter calling for genocide against Russians, beginning with children.

Franklin said he’s working with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration to help set up virtual meetings between mayors of Odessa and Kiev and U.S. counterparts.

Maryland-based lawyer Lukas Jan Kaczmarek is also working on behalf of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to increase U.S. weapons shipments, specifically seeking to arrange shipments of guns from Kel-Tec CNC Industries based in Cocoa, Florida, to the city of Odessa, Ukraine.

Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul described the network of public relations professionals and lobbyists surrounding Zelenskyy. “These are people around Mr. Zelenskyy who are like the intermediaries and interlocutors. They’ve been interacting with the American elites and American media for a long time,” he said.

McFaul and John E. Herbst, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, act as informal advisors to Zelenskyy. McFaul told Politico that he speaks to Ukrainian government officials “probably everyday,” and “has helped them make connections with NBC or MSNBC producers.”

McFaul recently told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that “Hitler did not kill German-speaking people, facing accusations of Holocaust denial.

Zelenskyy also held a “strategic video call” with McFaul before he spoke to House democrats.

With a powerful Russian military fighting alongside DPR and LPR forces, the Ukrainian military’s defeat seems to be imminent unless the United States and NATO directly confront Russian forces, a scenario President Biden has already ruled out. Lobbyists nevertheless persist in their campaign to portray the Ukrainian military as underdogs scoring blow after blow against Russian hordes. In doing so, they help extend the war and continue the carnage.

Dan Cohen is the Washington DC correspondent for Behind The Headlines. He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine. He tweets at @DanCohen3000.

This is too funny to miss!!! (MUST SEE!)

March 14, 2022

First, a video from our heroic information warriors:

Then realize this:

https://www.rt.com/news/550717-snake-island-guards-surrendered/

Then look at this:

This is a satellite view of Snake Island AFTER the Russian either killed all the Ukie martyrs or evacuated the Ukie traitors (you pick).

And, finally, the commentary by Andrei Maryanov:

They invent a “story” of some defiant ukie grunts (long since debunked), and now, by showing some MLRS (Grad most likely) salvo, they claim the sinking of Vasily Bykov patrol ship. By MLRS no less)). “In accordance to reports”, without mentioning, of course, that these are not “reports” but propaganda fake by ukies and their masters. Of course, no video or photographic evidence of sinking of Vasily Bykov is provided. Of course, it is not provided. 

But this whole BS, together with hundreds of Russia’s combat aircraft “destroyed” and thousands upon thousands of Russkies killed on the battlefield,  exists only in the inflamed imagination of the US “journalists”, who, apart from being whores (sorry, whores, for comparing you to US propaganda–I know, it is a huge insult to whores) and the brainwashed Western public which is utterly illiterate on such matters as operations of combat fleets and basic targeting. Obviously, the destruction of the moving target (ships do move in the sea and do not really stop during combat) by MLRS in the absence of targeting (most ukie radar, including those along the coast of the Black Sea are gone now) is something out of fantasy or cheap war-gaming on Commodore computer. Obviously for morons from ABC it is unknown that MLRS ukies have are classic “area impact” weapons designed only to work at the spread out ground targets based on accurate targeting. 

No doubt, the United States may try to provide targeting to ukies (you see–I am going now into a full blown “what if” BS scenario), but the main issue here is that the Black Sea Fleet currently completely blocked the 404 coast and with it it also brought to bear some damn effective AD ranging from Fort at RKR Moskva to Shtil on pr. 11356 frigates for which slow ballistic MLRS rockets are an easy target and no ship of the Black Sea Fleet operates out of the AD areas of the task group. At this stage one can only do a facepalm and admit that the West cannot even provide a believable BS. Not surprising, once one looks at the “elites” Western “education” provide for this kind of psyops. Recall, I already discussed this issue before. They are simply that incompetent and have no grasp of modern warfare, especially involving issues of C4ISR. 

So please visit Andrei’s website: https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/
and support him here: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=60459185

Nikita Mikhalkov: BesogonTV.

This needs to be watched with Telegram.

The subtitles are excellent.

https://t.me/MFARussia/11938?embed=1&tme_mode=1

https://telegram.org/js/telegram-widget.js?16

The Modernization of “Traditional Society”

Nov 13 2021

Source: Al Mayadeen

By Karim Sharara

This is how the US used its propaganda and influence to spread its ideals during the Cold War to “modernize” (i.e Americanize) the Middle East.

The Modernization of “Traditional Society”

At the height of the Cold War, print media, and more importantly, the radio, proved to be extremely important tools of influence. The Voice of America, Radio Free Liberty, and Radio Free Europe, were all, for example, very efficient tools of US propaganda, though they all adopted different forms of influence. The VOA, being the media machine of the Department of State, was constrained by bureaucracy and official policy.

The RFL and RFE, on the other hand, were founded as private enterprises by ex-intelligence and military operatives, and employed foreign nationals. The US didn’t just want to influence people from various countries as the USSR’s reach was growing, it sought to employ people from inside those communities in order to have Ukrainians speaking to Ukrainians, Poles to Poles. Why? Because if “reform” was to happen, it would happen from within, through voices sympathetic to the US and the “liberties” it espoused.

This is where Daniel Lerner’s chef-d’oeuvre comes into play. Lerner was tasked by the University of Columbia, which was in turn tasked by the Voice of America (as an extension of the State Department), to conduct a comprehensive study of media consumption in the “Middle East.” The aim was to propagate Western ideals in the “Middle East” through media. Hollywood films, radio music broadcasts, news broadcasts, print media, were all heavily consumed tools of influence. On the receiving end, peoples in different “Middle Eastern” countries needed to be studied: their aspirations, thoughts, political leanings were to be discerned, to best learn how best to approach them. This resulted in what is now known as one of the “bibles” of modernization, Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East.

Interviewing the “Middle East”

A total of 1600 interviews were conducted in Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, and Syria by local anthropologists in 1950-1951. Through these interviews, three personality types were constructed, based on their degree of “empathy”, the gold standard for judging how modern a person is (according to the author), thereby informing Lerner how modern a society is. The more empathy one possesses, the more they are able to imagine themselves as other people. Lerner categorized people into 3 classes: the empathetic modern, the semi-empathetic “transitional”, and the unempathetic traditional.

For Lerner, the features of modernity lay in urbanization, literacy, and a participant lifestyle. The literate urban dweller, who is engaged in democracy and has opinions exceeding his immediate needs, is the modern. The modern is presented as being the polar opposite of the illiterate country dweller who only cares about his immediate needs, thus presenting a clear dichotomy that the “aspiring” transitional lies in between. This helped him classify societies in his “Middle East” along these lines. 

Lerner’s model of modernization, that of communication, was in fact the dominant model throughout the golden age of modernization, so much so that it is in fact still in use by UN organizations and US NGOs (USAID being a major example). Its basic premise was that for modernization to take place, people must be influenced to adopt modern ideals, and let go of tradition, either through communication and media or through government (and non-government) influence. The interviews were not only meant to classify people, but to study them in a manner so detailed as to see what their wants and leanings are, and adjust propaganda efforts accordingly. 

The message that needed to be delivered to receivers, was that the West’s “superiority” and their “inferiority” were largely thanks to the US’ ideals and way of life, the driving forces behind its progress. Tradition, and everything associated with it, is restrictive and constraining, it is outdated and backward, rather it is destructive and counter-progressive. If societies are to move forward and emulate the West, they need to adopt its ideals.  Practically speaking, this would further propagate cultural and economic consumerism in these societies, increasing dependency on the West, instead of the independence they claim to propagate.

The Grocer and the Chief

The story of the book, to sum it up, lies in the author’s parable of the Grocer and the Chief. Lerner learned of the small village of Balgat as he was reading the interview conducted by one Tosun B., which he dispatched to the village. 

Balgat was a small village, located some eight kilometers outside of Ankara, and the interview in question was conducted in 1950, long after Ataturk’s modernization policies began to take root. However, Balgat was still a village, its youth were still farmers, and they all followed the Chief (the Muhtar), who Lerner described as a traditional leader (despite his being an adamant supporter of Ataturk), who wears traditional clothing, and thinks along traditional (read, unempathetic) lines.

Though everyone followed the Muhtar’s word, as he was the leader, the village did have one “dissident”, the grocer. 

The grocer is portrayed as the village’s most “modern” person: a tradesman who enjoys his trips to the city – where he wishes he can live later on – and loves the fact he can put on Western clothing there, who goes to the cinema and loves watching American flicks. 

Four years later, in 1954, Balgat is revisited, but this time it’s changed. The village has roads, transmission towers, power lines, and its youth live in the city where they went to lead an urban lifestyle and make more money. The Muhtar is portrayed as having lost his traditional power, with the grocer, the transitional, having ultimately won. The lesson to be learned is: if we can change the grocer, we can change the “Middle East.”

The book’s ideological underpinnings

Lerner is a veteran of propaganda, serving as a “propaganda officer” in the US Psychological Warfare department during World War II. He is a seasoned propagandist who knows how best to target “the other” in influence campaigns.

Looking into Lerner’s other writings, one can clearly see how Lerner’s worldview and his ideological biases are present. This is a man who, citing other works, believes that a group of psychological conditions and cultural behaviors form an “oriental mentality”. This mentality, according to Lerner, acts as an impediment to “development”, and comprises religion, language, writing, tradition (culture), and fashion (how they dress).

One can clearly see his anti-Islam and anti-Arab bias when he describes them as impediments to change when discussing Ataturk’s approach to modernization:

Cultural rather than phonetic languages were what he [Attaturk] sought in the change. He knew that so long as Turkish was written from right to left it could never properly diffuse the ideals of European civilization. The picturesque involutions and intricacies of Arabic script afforded a psychological background to the Oriental mentality which stood as the real enemy of the republic; its mere difficulty acted as a barrier against the universal diffusion of reading and writing. 

How does he conclude that religion is complicit in this backwardness? Quite simply because the more “modernized” or “developed” social groups in the “Middle East” were the “non-Muslim” ones, according to his understanding.

Christianity and Westernization grew together. Channels of communication with the West were ready-made for members of the Uniate,
Orthodox and Protestant sects [in the Middle East, specifically Lebanon].
They, in turn, relayed Western influence internally.

Quite simply, Lerner is another orientalist, who made use of the scientific method and academic know-how to justify the Americanization of the world at the height of the Cold War. He constructed an “other” and sought to show them as inferior, and in need of the helping hand of change that the US can offer. 

Sure, this is yet another example of the West’s mission civilisatrice at play, but that doesn’t mean that the book isn’t a valuable piece of work. It offers a very real and very important study into how “Middle East” was at the time, how people’s political and media leanings were, and most importantly, a tangible example of how the US was able to employ media so effectively in the Cold War to gain such an important foothold in the “Middle East” and influence its people.

Sources: 

– Daniel Lerner (1964) The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, First Free Press Paperback Edition.

– Hemant Shah (2011), The Production of Modernization: Daniel Lerner, Mass Media, and The Passing of Traditional Society, Temple University Press.

– Umaru Bah (2008), Rereading The Passing of Traditional Society, Cultural Studies, 22:6, 795-819.

– John Gulick (1959), Review: The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East by Daniel Lerner, American Anthropologist, Vol. 61, No. 1, pp. 135-138

Top New York Times, WaPo Experts Affiliated With Pentagon-Funded CNAS Think Tank

August 04th, 2021

By Dan Cohen

Source

Watch Behind The Headlines correspondent Dan Cohen explain how top foreign policy reporters are linked to the U.S. government, weapons industry and oil corporations – the very forces they are supposed to hold accountable. 

Imagine a country where there’s no separation between the government, the military, and the media. A lot of Americans would think of China, Russia or North Korea, but it’s a perfect description of the United States today. And here in Washington, the think tank inside this nondescript building – Center For A New American Security (CNAS) – is the clearest example of just that.

CNAS is a premier militarist think tank in the nation’s capital, especially for Democratic Party administrations. It is funded by the State Department and Pentagon and has taken more money from weapons companies over the last several years than any other think tank. On top of that, it’s funded by oil companies, big banks, and right wing governments – basically the most destructive forces on the planet.

For President Joe Biden, CNAS serves as a farm, from which key positions in his administration are cultivated. In fact, at least 16 CNAS alumni are now in key positions in the Biden Pentagon and State Department.

But what’s most shocking is that several national security and foreign policy reporters from elite U.S. media outlets are affiliated with CNAS – and therefore indirectly affiliated with, and likely paid by, the U.S. government and corporations – the very forces that they should be holding accountable.

For more than twenty years, New York Times Washington correspondent David Sanger has relentlessly pushed deceptions to con the public into supporting U.S. aggression and war.

From the George W. Bush administration’s lies about WMDs in Iraq to lies about Iran attempting to create nuclear weapons and evidence-free claims from intelligence agencies about Russian cyberattacks – these incendiary allegations were taken at face value with a clear goal to pressure then-President Donald Trump to ramp up aggression against Moscow while conveniently filling the pockets of Sanger’s weapons-industry benefactors.

Sanger’s neocon cyberwar fantasy was even turned into a movie by HBO. Today, David Sanger is onto the COVID-19 lab leak theory. He’s been at the forefront of every propaganda campaign that not only provides justification for aggression and war but also helps generate huge profits for CNAS funders.

Sanger is just one of several New York Times, Washington Post and Foreign Policy reporters who have residencies at CNAS. Presumably, that comes with a sizable financial component. I emailed CNAS to ask whether it pays these reporters but they didn’t respond.

Sanger’s colleague Eric Schmitt, senior correspondent covering national security for The New York Times, is also in residence at CNAS.

Back in 2020, Schmitt was promoting the obviously false Russian bounties story, which was later retracted after it had served its political purpose to force Trump to take a harder anti-Russia stance.

Of course, Schmitt was a reliable promoter of intelligence claims about Russian hacking – never displaying a scintilla of skepticism.

And he dutifully portrayed the Trump administration’s aggression against Iran as defensive.

The Washington Post, at one point, found this kind of blatant media corruption at least questionable. In 2011, Time magazine launched a series in collaboration with CNAS to promote war propaganda; the Post published an article questioning the ethics of that partnership.

Fast-forward to 2013: billionaire Jeff Bezos buys the Post, and its correspondent, David Finkel, becomes a writer in residence at CNAS. During that time, Finkel wrote two books on the U.S. war in Iraq: “The Good Soldiers” and “Thank You For Your Service.” Just the kind of whitewash of the war that CNAS’s funders would want the public to consume.

Michael Gordon is another. He spent three decades at the Times. Among his greatest accomplishments was, alongside Judith Miller, promoting the Bush administration’s Iraqi WMD deception. Gordon wrote that “Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb” – citing anonymous U.S. officials.

Now at The Wall Street Journal, Gordon has spent months pumping out Wuhan lab-leak propaganda – once again promoting claims of intelligence officials without any skepticism.

Greg Jaffe is a Washington Post national security reporter and another writer in residence at CNAS. His article on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan quotes Eliot Cohen – a former Bush administration official who is now a fellow at CNAS. Jaffe and Cohen’s shared affiliation is never disclosed in the article – an obvious breach of the most basic journalistic ethics.

Thom Shanker used to be part of the CNAS writer-in-residence program when he was at the Times writing on U.S. wars. In 2012, Shanker wrote this blog post promoting a CNAS study without revealing his affiliation. Once again, a major conflict of interest and ethics out the window.

There’s also Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who spent two decades doing public relations for U.S. wars at the Post and is now doing PR for Starbucks.

And Thomas Ricks, whose career has spanned posts at The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Foreign Policy magazine. Ricks is a cold-warrior who has publicly stated that Putin is attacking the United States just like Osama Bin Laden did and that Americans defending Putin are no different from those defending Bin Laden.

Some of this information isn’t new. It was reported in The Nation more than a decade ago, but the issue has only gotten worse as U.S. politics have shifted right, spy agencies have gained more power in the media, and the new cold war has accelerated.

There’s no real separation between the myriad of revolving doors and cash flow between the weapons manufacturers, think tanks, the U.S. government and media. It’s an incestuous, bloviating blob capable of producing one thing and one thing only: war.

So when you think of the military industrial complex and the permanent war state, don’t forget about what might be the most important component of all: the media.

Demonize first, then kill: a note on the role of media and social networks in imperialist domination

Sociologist, political scientist, and journalist.

Atilio A. Boron

5 Jul 2021

Source: Al Mayadeen

“Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to dictatorship” – Noam Chomsky 

The sentence of the great American linguist offers a good starting point for these reflections that we intend to propose as inputs for a discussion as crucial as pressing. This is so because, according to experts in hybrid or Fifth-Generation Wars, the capacity to control consciences and hearts – or “minds and souls” to put it in a poetic form- has reached unmatched levels, unthinkable until a decade ago. The progress of neurosciences and political neuro-marketing has enormously increased the ability of the dominant classes and imperialist powers to control the beliefs, desires, and behavior of millions of people worldwide.

Demonize first, then kill

The revolutionary advances in Artificial intelligence, the “Internet of Things”, communications technologies (5G), along with the unprecedented penetration of Social Networks and the mass media, have created a new battlefield in which popular movements of national liberation will have to wage their struggles. 

Unfortunately, this transition from conventional warfare to media and cyber warfare has only been recently acknowledged in its full effectiveness by the anti-imperialist forces, at a time it has been thoroughly used by the dominant powers of the international system, especially the United States government. Few examples would be more illustrative than the following to clarify our argument. At a hearing before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this century, a four-star general said that “in today’s world, the anti-subversive war is waged in the media, and no longer in the jungles or the decaying slums of the Third World.” Therefore, he concluded, “now the media and the social networks are our main operational theater.”  

Both Fidel and Chávez were precociously aware that the media oligarchies constituted one of the most serious threats hanging over the future of democracies and anti-imperialist struggles. Indeed, their uncontrolled power and nefarious role in the calculated processes of “de-education”, alienation and brutalization of the citizenry, became formidable bulwarks against the advancement of the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist consciousness. Their complete abandonment of the journalistic function in favor of a propagandistic work also constituted a fortification to that end. This is proven day by day in Latin America by observing the news manipulation intended to cover up the crimes perpetrated by the Iván Duque regime in Colombia against peaceful protesters. This was also evident in the brutal repression launched by the Añez dictatorship in Bolivia, the acts of the Piñera government in Chile, and, today, the manipulation of the electoral institutes and the dominant circles to prevent the proclamation of Pedro Castillo as the new president of Perú.   

The negative role of media is also patent in press operations intended to “iron armor” information that is not supposed to be known by the public. For instance, the open links between the successive “narco-governments” in Colombia and the cocaine cartels; or the corruption of the Macri government in Argentina as proved in the Panama Papers were all carefully concealed by the hegemonic media. Moreover, nothing is said about the unjust, scandalous imprisonment of Julian Assange, one of the heroes of press freedom on a global scale.

As the writings of the imperial strategists recognized, the media and, more recently, “digital networks” have been key players in the destabilization of progressive or left-wing governments around the world. Wherever the empire, through its own troops, its cultural mercenaries, and its local henchmen, decides to attack, the media immediately occupies the vanguard positions. The demonization of the adversary and his government – let’s say leaders like Nicolás Maduro, Evo Morales, Bashar al Assad, Saddam Hussein, Muammar al Gadaffi, and Vladimir Putin – is the first step. Then, their methodical defamation and the disinformation applied on a large scale through the press, television, radio, and digital networks become crucial weapons in creating the climate of opinion required to be able to apply naked violence against those rulers. The “artillery of thought” seeks the demolition of the attacked population’s defense mechanisms. The end goal is to confuse it and make it doubt the integrity or patriotism of its rulers by presenting them to the public opinion as wicked monsters and their governments as infamous “regimes”, depicting them as ferocious police states that violate the most basic human rights. Under this storm of misinformation and “fake news”, many people will be led to think that perhaps their attackers are right and really want to free the people from the sway of their nasty oppressors. Even more, it is aimed at making them think that the pretense of “changing the world” is nonsense; – a childish illusion to build the paradise on earth that could only result in falling in the inferno. Once the cultural defenses of society are “softened” (equivalent to the bombings that prepare the way for the frontal assault) and the media battering ram has pierced the wall of social conscience poisoned it with hundreds of “fake news” and “post-truth”, and demoralized or at least confused the population and the cadres of the anti-imperialist social forces, then the ground will be ready for the final assault. It is the moment in which the imperialist forces launch an all-out attack displaying the full capacity of their arsenal to give the shot of grace to their demonized enemies: Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gadaffi, for instance. 

This is not only an account of the heartbreaking past but a description of today’s strategies that the US government applies worldwide. We should be aware of this and be prepared to start an adequate counter-offensive, and the broadcasting of the Al Mayadeen programs in English is a significant step in this direction.

In Wake of HRW Apartheid Report, Israeli Propagandists Launch Global PR Offensive

By Alan Macleod

Source

Much of the online anger at the Human Rights Watch report was actually manufactured by an Israeli government-sponsored app, Act.IL, which organized supporters of the Jewish state to act in sync to create an artificial groundswell of opposition to it. 

NEW YORK — A recently released bombshell Human Rights Watch (HRW) report has made waves around the world. For the first time, the New York-based non-governmental organization has categorized Israel as an apartheid state guilty of “crimes against humanity.”

The 213-page study goes into detail about a range of racist laws and policies carried out by successive administrations, concluding that there is an “overarching Israeli government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians and grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem.”

The report accuses the state of Israel of widespread “institutional discrimination” and of “denying millions of Palestinians their fundamental rights…solely because they are Palestinian and not Jewish.” It further notes that, across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, it has “sought to maximize the land available for Jewish communities and to concentrate most Palestinians in dense population centers.”

“Prominent voices have warned for years that apartheid lurks just around the corner if the trajectory of Israel’s rule over Palestinians does not change,” said the organization’s executive director, Kenneth Roth. “This detailed study shows that Israeli authorities have already turned that corner and today are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.

Perhaps most importantly, Human Rights Watch is now openly calling for global action to end the repression. The report asks the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute those involved in Palestinian persecution. While not explicitly endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sactions (BDS) movement, Human Rights Watch directly advocates that “[s]tates should impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against officials and individuals responsible for the continued commission of these serious crimes,” and for businesses to “cease business activities that directly contribute to the crimes of apartheid and persecution.”

A big splash

The report was widely covered across the world and has been heralded by Palestine solidarity activists, with experts seeing it as a potential turning point in the struggle for Palestinian sovereignty. “It was inevitable that Human Rights Watch would have to declare Israel an Apartheid state and, from what I hear, Amnesty International is going to be next to say it,” Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada told MintPress. “It puts Israel’s backers in a difficult spot because Human Rights Watch is really part of the establishment so they cannot just dismiss it and it makes it impossible to ignore… It is harder for them to say Human Rights Watch is anti-Semitic, but they’re trying it anyway,” he added.

Trying indeed. Michigan Congresswoman Lisa McClain tweeted that “Human Rights Watch has shown again how they have an anti-Israel agenda,” suggesting they instead focus their attention on China or Iran’s repressive governments. “Hostility and hypocrisy are HRW’s hallmarks when it comes to Israel,” wrote the American Jewish Committee. The Jerusalem Post’s editorial board was equally condemnatory, denouncing what they saw as the “cynical appropriation of the suffering of the victims of the actual apartheid regime.” Other Israeli journalists described the report as “a disgrace to the memory of the millions who suffered under that policy [apartheid] in South Africa.” The news even made enough waves to force a response from the White House. Press Secretary Jen Psaki replied that “[a]s to the question of whether Israel’s actions constitute apartheid, that is not the view of this administration.”

Organized spontaneity

Yet much of the online anger at the report was actually manufactured by an Israeli government-sponsored app, Act.IL, which organized supporters of the Jewish state to act in sync to create an artificial groundswell of opposition to it. The app, which reportedly has a budget of over $1 million per year, instructed users to leave combative comments on Facebook, Twitter, and popular news outlets, and to like and promote others who did the same.

Human Rights Watch’s Facebook post announcing the report’s release has received over 1,400 comments, hundreds of them written in a similar, scathingly negative tone. One that the app directly told users to signal boost, for instance, described Palestinians as a people “indoctrinated with hate for Israel and Jews for over 100 years,” and claimed they were paid salaries to murder Israelis. It also presented the 1967 war and occupation as a humanitarian effort to bring electricity and other infrastructure to Arabs.

Another “mission” Act.IL gave its users was to promote a Facebook comment attacking the report as “nothing more than hate speech” and calling its lead author a “rabid anti-Zionist and Israel hater.”

One of the many images provided to Act.IL users for their astroturfing campaign against HRW

Act.IL is one of the chief tools in Israel’s online public relations enterprise. The app debuted in 2017 and is part of what Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan called an “Iron Dome of Truth.” “Our cell phones are the number one weapon against us,” he explained, noting that public opinion in the U.S. was beginning to turn against them. While most of the app’s nearly 20,000 users are volunteers, a core of them are paid operatives, with many students receiving scholarships as a reward for their work.

The app has been designed to feel like a game, with points assigned for completing “missions” such as sharing pro-Israel videos, reporting anti-Israel content, signing petitions, or attending online seminars. Users can track their progress on leaderboards, earn badges and prizes, and chat with other members of the community. While it might feel like Animal Crossing or World of Warcraft for some, its creators see this very much as a new front in the war against Palestine. Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked categorizes BDS as “another branch of terrorism in the modern age,” and has been an important voice in taking the fight to a new front.

An Act.IL mission encouraging astroturfing of online discussions. Source |
@AntiBDSApp

There is also an online toolkit full of folders of responses to typical questions and issues that arise. Users can, for instance, go to the BDS folder to find stock replies to their arguments. Or they can go to a specific folder to find articles, images and videos they can use to demonize Hamas.

The missions are organized by outlet, so users can, for instance, target only Facebook, Telegram, or other platforms they are most familiar with. At the time of writing, there are 10 missions each to complete on Facebook and YouTube, 30 on Instagram, 25 on Twitter.

One current challenge is to upvote an answer to a question on Quora that asks about the validity and purpose of checkpoints in the West Bank. The answer claims they are purely about protection from terror attacks, and claims that Red Crescent ambulances are used to ferry bombs around the area. Other missions include pressuring an online store to remove a bag with a message stating “Make Israel Palestine Again.”

An Act.IL “mission” encouraging users to demand the removal of products with pro-Palestinian messaging

“It is quite astounding how openly they do it. But, of course, when you see a comment online, you wouldn’t necessarily think that it was coming from the Israeli government, but this is essentially what is happening,” Winstanley said. “Israel is not the only state to do this, but they do it fairly successfully.”

For all this, however, it is clear that Act.IL has a serious problem with user retention and lacks the volunteer numbers for it to be truly game changing.

Controlling the message

In a time of heightened awareness about foreign government interference online, it is particularly surprising that these operations can be openly carried out across virtually every major platform. Big tech companies like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are constantly deleting tens of thousands of Russian, Chinese, Iranian and Cuban accounts belonging to what they claim are organized, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns.

In an effort to gauge the legality of its operations, MintPress reached out to Facebook, YouTube, Quora, and other big platforms used by Act.IL. We received no response from any of them. While this is particularly noteworthy — as these companies have teams of public relations representatives and are extremely forthright and timely with responses on other issues — it is perhaps not surprising. Facebook especially has long been working closely with the Israeli government in deciding which voices to censor. As far back as 2016, Ayelet Shaked boasted that Facebook removed 95% of the posts her office asked them to. Yet when Shaked herself called for a genocidal war against Palestine and its women, who give birth to “little snakes,” not only did the post remain online, it received thousands of likes and was widely circulated.

“The concern is that Facebook is adopting Israeli policy and terminology when it comes to defining what incitement is,” said Nadim Nashif, co-founder of 7amleh, the Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media. 7amleh was therefore dismayed when last year, Facebook appointed former Israeli Minister of Justice Emi Palmor to its Oversight Board, the council having the final say in the moderation of content on the platform used by 2.6 billion people worldwide. In her role as justice minister, Palmor was directly implicated in the persecution and subjugation of Palestinians.

Earlier this year, an Israeli Defense Forces soldier attempted to sue a Palestinian-American activist living in California over an allegedly slanderous Facebook post condemning her for participating in ethnic cleansing. Remarkably, the plaintiff attempted to convince a California judge to apply Israeli law to the incident, despite the fact that both she and the defendant are American citizens.

Inside the world of academia, professors critical of Israel have found themselves pushed out of the profession. In 2007, prominent critic of Israel Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University for political reasons. Seven years later, the University of Illinois “unhired” Steven Sailata for his comments denouncing Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza. Emails showed that wealthy donors put significant pressure on the university to pull the plug on him. More recently, Cornel West was blocked from a tenured job at Harvard this year, despite having previously held tenure at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. “Being the faculty advisor for the Palestinian student group was the one that probably went outside of the line for many Harvard staff,” West told Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski. “It’s a joke. It’s ridiculous. It’s ludicrous. It’s preposterous that it wouldn’t have something to do with politics.”

Top media figures have also paid the price for their support of BDS. CNN fired commentator Marc Lamont Hill after he made a speech at the United Nations calling for a free Palestine. Meanwhile, journalist Abby Martin was blocked from speaking at a conference at Georgia Southern University last year after she refused to sign a contract promising to renounce BDS. Georgia is one of dozens of U.S. states to have anti-BDS legislation, essentially forcing any would-be recipient of public contracts or funds, including government employees, to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel. Martin is currently suing the state of Georgia.

Perhaps the greatest PR victory for the Israel lobby in recent years was its defamation campaign against British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. The lifelong pacifist, anti-racist campaigner was transformed into a raging anti-Semite in the minds of many, thanks to a massive propaganda onslaught. In the three months before the 2019 election, there were 1,450 articles in national British newspapers linking Corbyn with anti-Semitism, chiefly because of his support for Palestinian liberation. Much of this was orchestrated by Israel and its lobby, which worked closely with journalists and politicians keen to see the socialist politician’s demise. The media blitz succeeded. When media researchers asked the public what percentage of Labour members faced official complaints over anti-Semitism, the average guess was 34%. The actual answer was less than 0.1%; and more than half of those complaints were made by one person. Corbyn lost the election and the U.K. chose Boris Johnson.

Winstanley, whose documentary “How they brought down Corbyn” premiered last week, told MintPress:

“The most effective propaganda strategy against [Corbyn] was the fabrication that he was an anti-Semite on the basis of his past criticisms of Israel and his Palestinian solidarity. In my view, the maliciously fabricated anti-Semitism crisis against the Labour Party was the main factor in his [being deposed] as Labour Party leader. Without this factor, he would have made it to Number 10 Downing Street and become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.”

Apartheid states

While Human Rights Watch’s report is new, the charge of apartheid is not. In 2017, a United Nations report “clearly and frankly concludes” that Israel is “a racist state that has established an apartheid system that persecutes the Palestinian people.” Earlier this year, Israeli human rights organization B’TSelem also used the word “apartheid,” claiming that Israel had established “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”

In the wake of World War Two and the Holocaust, Israel was created by the United Nations in 1947, cutting a section of territory from the British mandate of Palestine to form a new state. While it was immediately recognized by the international powers, Arabs who lived in the region were dead against it, leading to a war in 1948. David Ben Gurion and the founding fathers of Israel immediately began a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the local population, razing their villages and forcing them to flee. Today there are more than 5 million Palestinians registered as refugees.

While many defenders of Israel today balk at the comparison to apartheid South Africa, the two countries were close friends for much of the late 20th century, seeing themselves as similar settler colonial projects surrounded by hostile nations. Furthermore, leaders of the African liberation movement saw themselves as part of the same struggle as those in Palestine. “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” Nelson Mandela said in 1997. “I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu in a statement endorsing BDS. “Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government,” he added.

A turning tide

The Human Rights Watch report is the latest reference point showing Western public sympathies swaying towards Palestine. During the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination race, a number of top-tier candidates very publicly shunned the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, refusing to attend the AIPAC conference. Last week, the Pilsbury family called for a global boycott of the food company that bears its name. “As long as General Mills [which owns the Pilsbury brand] continues to profit from the dispossession and suffering of the Palestinian people, we will not buy any Pillsbury products,” they stated, denouncing the building of a factory on illegal settlement land.

Advocates for Palestine hailed Human Rights Watch’s study. Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies wrote:

There can be little doubt that much of HRW’s decision to issue this report now was based on the recognition that not only is it no longer political suicide to call Israeli apartheid what it is, but that we are now at a tipping point whereby failing to call out apartheid risks losing credibility for a human rights organization. It’s a huge victory for our movement.”

The battle, however, is far from won, and it is clear that the Israel lobby will continue to fight to hold back the tide until it is insurmountable.

Xinjiang Native Speaks Out: “Western Media Jeopardizing Uyghurs Interests”

By Dan Cohen

Source

Dan Cohen speaks with Gordon Gao, an ethnic minority and Xinjiang native on the realities of life in Xinjiang, Western media coverage and US-China tensions.

WASHINGTON — Dan Cohen speaks with Gordon Gao, Director of Strategic Research at Tsinghua University Endowment Fund in Beijing and a native of Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Gao discusses growing up as a Mongolian ethnic minority in XUAR, and how the propaganda war against China hurts Uyghur interests, but will ultimately backfire on the United States. Gao and Coden also discuss the U.S.-China artificial intelligence arms race as well as the comparative strengths of the two countries.

Recognizing and Resisting the Hasbara Pandemic

March 27, 2020 Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

Robert Levinson, former FBI agent.

Steady media reports on the rising number of the novel Coronavirus infections and its human toll have contributed to a global psychology of fear where entire populations are succumbing their free will to those in positions of authority, elected and otherwise.   But while we try to keep ourselves safe during this pandemic, a deadlier and more destructive virus creeping in the shadows for years is also reaching its peak.  The virus is called hasbara or better understood as propaganda.

Lest you think it is not contagious or deadly, think Iraq.  The Iraq war alone cost the American taxpayers trillions of Dollars but the Iraqi population bore the brunt of the pain and suffering from America’s sanctioned terror attack and invasion with over one million souls lost and counting.  Just like COVID-19 which may be dismissed as a cold, the hasbara virus may be taken for the truth – and therein lies the threat.  As we surrender our will to the officials so that we can survive this pandemic, the spinners have upped their hasbara in order to coax us into embracing their terrorism, their wars, and their genocide.

Abandon your will, if you must, but not your common sense. As someone who has studied propaganda for fifteen years, I have never seen it so prevalent and so dangerous at a time when we are distracted by a viral disease.  Having allowed the hasbara virus to spread and go undetected for such a long time, we’ve lost all ability to recognize it. The spinners know this and are taking full advantage of it. Let me give you two examples from the last 24 hours alone.

First one is a heartwarming ‘news item’ – even benign.

How can the picture of this cute dog not touch your heart? More so when you read on that his owner is in quarantine in Mexico with the coronavirus.  His chips cravings prompt him to tie a note to the dog, send him to the store with a $20 bill and instructions to the shopkeeper to give the dog a bag of “Cheetos”.   Now didn’t that give you the warm fuzzies?  The story is shared over and over and the ‘news reporter’ gets a kudos from his boss for writing this sweet story which would no doubt increase circulation.  I loved it.

But then I had to ask myself why a man in Mexico would tie a 20 Dollar bill to his dog and not Pesos.  That is a lot of Mexican Pesos, and no change was returned.  I mean where would the poor dog keep the change, a lot of change, in Mexican Pesos.

I shared the story with many friends, some of whom included university professors.  None noted the oddness of the Dollar bill.    Even when I asked if they noted something strange about the story, they did not point to it until I told them.  The story was heartwarming and the incident was something they all wanted to accept – a feel good story.   Nothing else was noted.  We want to believe a story that appeals to our sense of reality, our values, no matter how unrealistic.

On the opposite side is the news story about a former FBI agent Robert Levinson.  Levinson disappeared in 2007 and the United States had accused Iran of holding him hostage.  Iran has no information about him.  Yesterday, out of nowhere, various hasbara outlets cited Levinson’s family releasing a statement citing that they recently received information from US officials that led them to conclude that “our wonderful husband and father died while in Iranian custody.”

Iran denied having held him in custody and the news of his death was news to them.  Why was this unbelievable?  After all, I have no way of knowing who is lying, the US or Iran.  Though one certainly may question the timing of this report.

But it was not just the timing that was odd.  It was the orange prison uniform.  Orange prison uniform is easy to process for Americans, and the West.  Images of prisoners wearing orange jumpsuit in Guantanamo are embedded in our minds.  More disturbing still are the images of prisoners captured by ISIS and wearing orange jumpsuits as they are being executed.   I always wondered where did ISIS get all the orange jumpsuits their prisoner wore.  But that is beside the point.  In Iran, prisoners do not wear orange.  The uniforms are different shades of blue depending on their status. Ordinary prisoners wear the striped while political prisoners the plain blue uniforms.

Prison uniforms in Iran.

Aside from the wrong color uniform, I was struck by Levinson’s appearance as portrayed in Western media.  It was hard to process the tanned face which contrasted so sharply with his pale hands.   It didn’t make sense.  It is not clear to me as to why America would choose this moment to stage this death. I can only imagine that it is to present an image of a ruthless Iran in order to justify its terrorism by way of sanctions at a time when Iran, like the rest of the world, is fighting this pandemic.    But even the lies will not hide the shameless stain of America’s cruel madness. Hence, we must resist and fight the propaganda.

For decades, we have been victims of propaganda to the point that we are no longer aware of it.  In spite of it, we have not managed to build an immunity to the lies.  Quite the opposite — we have become more vulnerable as our resistance erodes with every shot of hasbara.  But we are not broken – not yet.  It can only affect us if left undetected.  Like COVID-19, the hasbara virus goes undetected until it’s tested for and discovered.  We must therefore learn to test for, detect, and reject it.  We can do this by refusing to abandon our critical thinking.  Pleasant or not, we cannot allow our underlying bias guide us and use commonsense. Don’t let the hasbara virus infect you — it is deadlier than you can imagine.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on US foreign policy.

Censorship Is the Way that Any Dictatorship — and NO Democracy — Functions

Eric Zuesse February 15, 2020

No democracy can survive censorship. If there is censorship, then each individual cannot make his/her own decisions (voting decisions or otherwise) on the basis of truth but only on the basis of whatever passes through the censor’s filter, which is always whatever supports the censoring regime and implants it evermore deeply into the public’s mind — regardless of its actual truthfulness.

The public does have a mind, as a collective constituting the majority of the residents in the given land, which majority rules any democratic government. If the government doesn’t really represent the majority, it’s no democracy, at all, but instead represents other individuals, the real rulers, who might be hidden. Consequently, if a democracy exists but a censor somehow becomes allowed, and emerges into existence in a given land, then democracy will inevitably be snuffed-out there, and dictatorship will inevitably be the result — merely because censorship has been applied there, which blocks some essential truths (truths that the rulers don’t want the public to know) from reaching the public.

Nothing is as toxic to democracy as is censorship. Censorship prevents democracy.

If a dictatorship already exists in a given land, then it does so by means of censorship, because only by that means will the public be willing to pay taxes to the regime and to go to war for it and to kill and die for it. Without censorship, none of that could happen, except in an authentic democracy. An authentic democracy has no censorship.

This is why democracy is so rare. Almost every dictatorship calls itself a ‘democracy’. But a government which calls itself “democratic” isn’t necessarily democratic, but more likely it has simply fooled its public to think that it is one (such as the United States has by now been scientifically proven to be — an actual dictatorship).

Anyone who endorses censorship is a totalitarian, a supporter of totalitarianism, even without recognizing the fact. If the person fails to recognize the fact that censorship is applied only in a totalitarian regime, then that person has bought into the most basic belief of totalitarianism: the idea that censorship can be justified in some circumstances. Dictatorships always pump that lie, so as to be able to continue to exist as a dictatorship. There is no circumstance which ever can justify censorship, unless one believes that dictatorship is, or can be, good instead of bad.

If you think that some censorship is good, then you have bought into the fundamental belief that is promulgated in any dictatorship. It’s a lie, but it fools the majority of people, in a dictatorship.

No writing, nor any other statement, should ever be censored, no matter how vile it is. Indeed, if it is vile, then it needs to be exposed, not hidden; because, if it is hidden, then it will fester until it grows in the dark and finally becomes sprung upon a public who have never been inoculated against it by truth, and therefore the false belief becomes actually seriously dangerous and likely to spread like wildfire, because it had been censored before it became public. The most deadly infections are those that grow in the dark and then become released upon a population who have no pre-existing protection against it.

Every religion, and every evil regime, seeks to censor-out whatever contradicts its propaganda, and is therefore intrinsically hostile toward democracy, but the danger is always being presented not by the writers and speakers of the propaganda, but by its publishers (regardless of media: print, broadcast, or online) — they are the source of all censorship. They are the censors. The people who select what to publish, and what not to publish, are the censors. The regime’s media are what perpetrate censorship, routinely, because those media are actually essential arms of the dictatorship, even if they are not directly owned by the government but instead by the clique who actually possess control over the government because they possess control over the mainstream (and much of the non-mainstream) media and thus the public’s mind in a ‘democracy’ in order to make it the dictatorship that it actually is.

Much has been written about how this censorship has been perpetrated in the post-WW-II (post-26-July-1945) USA., such as here, and here, and here, and here. (All of that has been censored-out from the major media — they don’t report that they represent the regime instead of the public.) As a consequence of that censorship against truth, history is being revised to be ‘history’ so as to portray a false ‘reality’ to people today. And there are numerous other examples of this, by the U.S. regime, each instance, of which lying, is affirmed as being truth by the regime’s agents, but is actually nothing more than vicious lies that are spread by the regime and its agents. What goes on behind the scenes is hidden from the American public, not really in order to protect them, but purely in order to deceive them. The deception of the American people, and of the residents in all of the U.S. Government’s foreign vassal-states (or ‘allies’) in Europe and elsewhere, is extreme, in all fields of international relations. Whereas Julian Assange was the world’s strongest enemy against censorship, he has been almost ten years now under some form or another of imprisonment, including solitary confinement and torture, all without ever having been convicted of anything, and all because he is an enemy against censorship instead of a flak for censorship. And Twitter and other ‘social media’ are hiding from the public — censoring — the sheer outrageousness of it all.

The solution to the problem of lies is not censorship, it is banning censorship. On 7 June 2019, the need for this seemed even clearer to me after Russia’s RT headlined on that date “Glenn Greenwald rips liberals who ‘beg for censorship’”, and that brilliant lawyer and investigative journalist presented powerfully the case against any censorship at all. As one can see from the accompanying video interview there of him, Greenwald was like a force of nature, in that video, or (to use a different metaphor) a huge dose of mental draino for clogged minds.

This also means that issues of libel and slander are only to be addressed in the civil courts, and not, at all, in the government’s prosecutions, the criminal courts.

All censorship needs to be banned. The question therefore becomes: How can this be done? That’s a question I have never seen discussed, perhaps because it is being censored. It’s a very serious question. Any ‘political science’ which exists that has no extensive literature about this question is fake. Perhaps draino for clogged minds is needed especially for scholars.

Things are worse than we know, because censorship exists. Maybe censorship is pervasive.

So: I shall venture a solution to this problem: By law, all media which discuss national and/or international affairs will fire all editors and producers of “news,” but not the employees who have only managerial, presentational, and/or stylistic assignments, and replace these people (all personnel who select what to present and what not to present) by a randomized algorithm being applied to each topic, so that, if, for example, something is entered into a search-box, then the order or presentation of the findings will be listed either (at the user’s selection) from earliest-posted to latest-posted, or latest-posted to earliest-posted, but not by anything that is chosen or determined by the search-engine itself. (In other words: no search-engine will be allowed to censor.) On print or broadcast media, every news-piece will be controlled in real time by its audience so as to determine what the questions are and then to bring into the presentation randomly selected scientifically qualified experts regarding each such question. For example: on the question of climate-change, the experts would be individuals who have terminal graduate-level degrees in each of the related climatology sub-specialties, such as those listed at Wikipedia, but also in essential related fields such as economics (an important climatological sub-specialty that’s not listed there). If, indeed, over 90% of climatologists agree that man-made global warming is a reality, then the result of this method of selecting the “experts” who will be presented is that that viewpoint will be represented by over 90% of the experts — and this outcome would not be controlled by the given ‘news’-medium, nor affected by its advertisers. In other words: only the subject-matter and academic qualifications — no governmental positions or background — would qualify individuals as being “experts” on the given topic. If a terminal degree isn’t a qualification for expertise on a topic, then what is? Aren’t government officials supposed to be relying on them? And if, for example, the topic is Syria, then shouldn’t all individuals who have terminal degrees on Syria be the “experts” who are invited, on a randomized basis, to comment to the public about Syria-related issues? If that were the case, then perhaps many Americans would know that the U.S. and NATO “began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria,” “organizing defectors in Syria,” and “smuggle U.S. weapons into Syria, participate in U.S. psychological and information warfare inside Syria” to produce regime-change there, and that Syria had never posed any threat to U.S. national security. And Barack Obama was hoping for such opportunities to overthrow Syria’s Government even when he became President in 2009. If the American public didn’t know those things at the time, then perhaps America’s censorship was total — which would indicate how absolutely crucial a randomization of the public’s information-sources is, so as to replace the power that the existing mainstrean ‘news’-media have over the public’s mind, in America, and in its vassal-nations (which don’t yet include Syria). If the public do not have unprejudiced — which means entirely uncensored — information presented routinely to them, then democracy isn’t even possible.

Anyway: that is one proposed way of replacing censorship, and overcoming dictatorship. How many politicians are proposing such changes? Why aren’t any? Are all of them afraid of the dictators? Is there no basis for hope, at all?

Countering Syria’s Liberating Struggle

By Stephen Lendman

Source

Whenever Syrian forces make significant advances in liberating areas controlled by US supported jihadists, establishment media counterattack with state-approved propaganda.

Reports read like US/Western press releases, sticking to the official narrative, hard truths about years of US aggression ignored, Syria/Russia bashing featured as more cities, towns, and villages are liberated from the scourge of US-supported jihadists.

Hollywood is involved, studio bosses colluding in glorifying US wars and demonizing its enemies.

In propaganda films, Washington has final say on content, wanting its agenda promoted.

History is reinvented, villains portrayed as heroes. Supporting America’s imperial agenda overrides truth-telling.

At Hollywood’s 89th Academy Awards, The White Helmets propaganda film was honored as best documentary short – al-Qaeda-connected terrorists portrayed as heroic.

On Sunday at the 92nd Academy Awards, will best documentary nominee For Sama be awarded an Oscar in support of the US war machine.

Win or lose it won by promotion surrounding its nomination.\

A promo for the film calls it “(a)n intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war, a love letter from a young mother to her daughter…while cataclysmic war rises around her…captur(ing) stories of loss…and survival.”

Ignored are years of US aggression, Obama/Trump regimes’ support for ISIS and other jihadists, Pentagon terror-bombing massacring tens of thousands, US responsibility for the gravest refugee crisis since WW II, and raging forever war, aiming to transform Syria into a US vassal state.

British Independent Film Awards named For Sama the year’s best documentary. So did the Cannes Film Festival. Is Hollywood next?

For movie moguls, annual Academy awards are all about  film promotion for profits, unrelated to the industry’s best.

When called on by the Pentagon and/or CIA, Hollywood produces films that portray hostile US actions as liberating struggles and democracy promotion — victims falsely blamed for high crimes committed against them.

Establishment media do most pro-war heavy lifting, featuring all propaganda all the time about Washington’s imperial agenda, supporting what demands condemnation.

Ahead of Sunday’s Academy Awards spectacle, the NYT featured a propaganda op-ed by Waad al-Kateab, For Sama’s co-director.

She falsely portrayed liberating efforts by Syrian and Russian forces as high crimes — committed by the US and its jihadist proxies left unexplained.

Focusing on the ongoing Idlib province campaign, she claimed “the world…abandoned the Syrian people.”

It’s clearly true about the Western world and their regional imperial allies.

Falsely calling Idlib a “sanctuary” for millions of Syrians, she ignored their captivity as human shields by US/Turkish supported jihadists.

She said nothing about scores of daily attacks by their fighters against government forces and residential areas.

She falsely called al-Qaeda-connected White Helmets “civil defense” workers.

She lied accusing Syrian and Russian forces of massacres, ignoring jihadists’ responsibility for what’s gone on throughout the war — along with Pentagon-led terror-bombing of cities, towns, villages, and vital infrastructure.

Kateab’s propaganda film is supported by US officials, Hollywood, and establishment media, notably the NYT.

Instead of truth-telling about US aggression, it features anti-Syria/anti-Russia propaganda.

Will Hollywood dishonor itself again like countless times before by honoring For Sama propaganda as best documentary this year?

The film isn’t worth the celluloid it’s produced on for suppressing what’s most important to explain.

ISRAEL MUST PERISH! The Book that the Jews Fear By Arthur Topham

by admin on January 17, 2020

The Book that the Jews Fear
By Arthur Topham

May 27, 2011

Author’s Preface:

What is contained herein is but a synopsis and partial review of the verbatim text of an actual book first published in the USA back in early 1941 when America was still a neutral country. That book, Germany Must Perish! was written by a Jewish writer by the name of Theodore N. Kaufman. Its exact proposals are those contained herein.

It is assumed that the reader will already be fully cognizant of the Zionist agenda for global governance that is a given in today’s political reality, especially within the alternative media and on the Internet where Zionist “hate” laws are still not fully in place to restrict the natural flow of ideas and opinions that proceed from historical research and experience.

In 1941 Kaufman’s book was a brilliant piece of Zionist Jew propaganda designed to stir up anti-German hatred in America. Some say that it formed the basis of the infamous “Morgenthau Plan” that was later signed in Quebec, Canada by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill; one designed to dismember Germany after its defeat and reduce it to the status of “a goat pasture.” It was, and probably remains to this day, the foremost example of hate literature ever to have been published and dispensed to the general public.

As the reader will surmise from viewing the image of the back page of Kaufman’s book some of America’s most prestigious newspapers and magazines were in full support of the objectives set down in this classic book of Jewish hate literature. Again, the reader is cautioned to bear in mind that I have changed the word “Nazi” to “Jew” in the quote from the Philadelphia Record as I have changed all the other words “German” and “Nazi” to “Jew” and “Zionist,” etc.

The striking thing about the vileness of the text is how, today, it seems to roll off the mind’s tongue as if it were as truthful and factual as the rising sun. As such I firmly believe that all of what the Zionist Jews write about others is actually but a reflection of their own inner, perverse, dislocated self. By projecting outward on to others their innate paranoid and deep-seated hatred for the rest of the world they’re able to meet the requirements of the Israeli state’s motto which reads, “By Way of Deception Though Shalt Cause War” and feel a sense of superiority and self-righteousness in doing so.

I would humbly ask the reader to be aware of these features as they read both the text and the context in which it was first written. I have, as the saying goes, only changed the names to protect the innocent. As for any further extrapolation I will leave that up to the reader.

________________

ISRAEL MUST PERISH! The Book that the Jews Fear By Roy Arthur Topham

Beginning with the Table of Contents page Topham makes this dramatic initial statement:

“This dynamic volume outlines a comprehensive plan for the extinction of the Jewish nation and the total eradication from the earth, of all her people.”

How do you like those apples so far? Talk about cutting to the chase!

from Chapter One: About This Book

“Today’s wars are not wars against Netanyahu.

Nor are they wars against the Zionists…

Netanyahu is no more to be blamed for these Israeli wars than was Sharon for the last one. Nor Begin before. These men did not originate or wage Israel’s wars against the world. They were merely the mirrors reflecting centuries-old inbred lust of the Jewish nation for conquest and mass murder.

These wars are being waged by the Jewish people. It is they who are responsible. It is they who must be made to pay for the wars.

…This time Israel has forced a TOTAL WAR upon the world.

As a result, she must be prepared to pay a TOTAL PENALTY.

And there is one, and only one, such Total Penalty:

Israel must perish forever!

In fact – not in fancy!”

*******************

“For quite patently, to fight once more in democratic defense against Israel with any goal in view save that country’s extinction constitutes, even though it lose the war, a Jewish victory. To fight, to win, and not this time to end Jewish Zionism forever by exterminating completely those people who spread its doctrine is to herald the outbreak of another Jewish war within a generation.”

When this day of reckoning with Israel comes, as come it will, there will be only one obvious answer. No statesman or politician or leader responsible for post-war settlements will have the right to indulge in the personal luxury of false sentiment and specious sanctimony and declare that Israel, misled by her leaders, shall deserve the right of resurrection!

… the beast that is Israel shall never roam the earth again!

It is a definite obligation which the world owes to those who struggled and died against the Jews…to make certain that the vicious fangs of the Jewish serpent shall never strike again. And since the venom of those fangs derives its fatal poison not from within the body, but from the war-soul of the Jews, nothing else would assure humanity safety and security but that that war-soul be forever expunged, and the diseased carcass which harbors it be forever removed from this world. There is no longer any alternative:

Israel Must Perish!

… And so it is with the people of Israel. They may respond for a while to civilizing forces; they may seemingly adopt the superficial mannerisms and exterior behaviorisms of civilized peoples but all the while there remains ever present within them that war-soul which eventually drives them, as it drives the tiger, to kill. And no amount of conditioning, or reasoning, or civilizing – past, present or future – will ever be able to change this basic nature. For if no impress has been made upon this war-soul over the period of some two thousand years is it to be expected that of a sudden, on the morrow, this miracle will occur?

This analogous linking of the people of Israel with a savage beast is no vulgar comparison. I feel no more personal hatred for these people than I might feel for a herd of wild animals or a cluster of poisonous reptiles. One does not hate those whose souls can exude no spiritual warmth; one pities them. If the Jewish people wish to live by themselves, in darkness, it would be strictly their own affair. But when they make constant attempts to enshroud the souls of other people in those fetid wrappings which cloak their own, it becomes time to remove them from the realm of civilized mankind among which they can have no place or right to existence.

We need not condemn the Jews. They stand self-condemned. For it suffices us to read and hear those words written and spoken only by Jews; to observe deeds performed solely by Jews; to endure sufferings and dislocations caused solely by the Jewish people in pursuit of their megalomaniacal ideals and daemonic aspirations to realize that it is the Jews themselves who decree, almost demand, their ostracism from their fellow man. They have lost the wish to be human beings. They are but beasts; they must be dealt with as such.

This is an objective viewpoint, carefully considered and factually sustained. It is the viewpoint taken of them in this book.

War must be fought … with penalties infinitely more frightful and hazardous than war itself.

This book sincerely believes that it has found such a penalty; and by its imposition upon the people of Israel, this book believes that not only would a great scourge be removed from the world, but a great good born to it.”

from Chapter Two: Background of Jewish Zionism

“Jews are an execrable people! They think and dream of nothing but chicanery. Their great joy consists in fault-finding, shrieking and threats. They brandish arms which are like barbed clubs; from their mouths instead of ordinary human speech, issue the rumbling of artillery and the clash of steel; their life is one of perpetual explosion. The Jew does not live on the heights; he avoids light, and from his hiding place he picks to pieces treaties, exercises his malign influence on newspaper articles, pores over maps, measures angles, and traces with gloating eagerness the lines of frontiers. To love their country is for them to despise, flout and insult every other country. They are capable of little else but cheating and lying, even to themselves. They meddle in everyone else’s affairs, poking their nose into matters that do not concern them, criticizing everything, bossing everything, lowering and distorting everything. What a pity that twenty-three centuries after Socrates and Plato, two thousand years after Christ, the voice of men like these should still be heard in the world, worse still that they should be listened to, and worst of all that any one should believe them! Country for them is an isolated organism and they admit it is possible for them to live and breathe in an atmosphere of haughty contempt for their neighbors. They conceive their country as a permanent element of dissolution like a devouring and insatiable monster, a beast of prey, whose one function is to plunder. All that it does not possess it has been robbed of. The universe belongs to it by right. Whoever attempts to escape from its tyranny is a rebel. This jingo country, this bloodthirsty fetish of which they are the champions, they endow, with the capriciousness of potentates, when it suits their purpose, with every marvelous and charming attribute. Whoever does not at once agree with their extravagances is a barbarian. You must love their country in full armor, with dervish-like celebrations and howls, eyes shut and body trembling with ecstasy; a deaf ear must be turned to the rest of the world on its failings. Everything that is not Jewish must be hated. Hate is sacred. Love and hate are in connection with your country two terms proceeding from one condition of mind. For them Industrial progress is not a happy sign of national prosperity but a means of domination. Geography is not the science of the earth, but a mere revelation of the boundaries between which are elaborated strategical schemes of conquest. Every neighbor is of necessity a jealous one, and the enemy who is vigilant is jealous too. The world is populated by hyenas crouching on the plots of earth from which they ought to be dislodged.

The Jew has decided that his race has been elected by God to order the modern world. Anyone who resists him will be an arrogant usurper, who ought to be crushed. The Jew professes to want peace, but it must be his own sort of peace, after the pattern of the Persian satrap’s who, out of love for peace and concord, throws everyone to the lions who dares dispute him. His voice is raucous and resounding; he does not argue but makes sweeping assertions and lays down the law. At the first sign of resistance he grows crimson in the face, and has recourse to thunder and lightning. He holds forth on the authority of a sacred categorical imperative which stands in the stead of truth and order; he respects nothing and no one. Should he find himself confronted by the law, he says that it needs reforming. Ministers are mere clerks to be used as pawns in his maneuvering. He is exacting and cantankerous; whoever undertakes to shout with him never shouts loud enough. To give in to him means becoming enlisted as his civil agent. He is an agitator and swashbuckler. He dips his pen in gall and he sets in motion with his antics the marionettes which appeal to the nation and may come to conquer it. The fundamental superiority of the Jewish race, the necessity of expanding Jewish prestige in all quarters of the globe, of protecting the Jew wherever he may be found, no matter what he may be, because he bears within him a residuum of the race; that is what the educators of youth coming down the years in disciplined array like battalions crossing the maneuver fields, have never ceased to drum into the popular understanding and the flame of victory rising to the sky will be the signal for it to boil over.

…Time cannot change the infernal breed, whatever its label. Time merely enlarges the field in which the Jew can, with ever-increasing intensity and thoroughness, practice those monstrous acts which his fevered, war-intoxicated brain dictates, and his vile instincts and barbaric, savage soul prompts. If today the urge of his war-soul can prompt the Jew to murder innocent hostages imagine, if you can, how that same soul will express itself through the thousandfold-more-fanatic Jew of tomorrow?

…Make no mistake about it; world-dominion is not a mirage to the Jew; it never was, and so long as Israel exists as a nation, it never will be. A belief to the contrary, if too-long sustained, may well result in the world’s enslavement by the Jew.

As fantastic and as cyclonic as Zionist “accomplishments” might seem, it is still more fantastic to note as a fact that in the entire annals of history no doctrine ever existed which has all its major beliefs so clearly defined, its methods so concisely detailed, and its aims so vividly, comprehensively, and boldly stated beforehand. It is in every respect a deliberate, ruthlessly calculated plot to rule the world or, failing that, to annihilate it! And so long as the Jewish nation exists it intends, in one form or another, now or later, to bring about just such a catastrophe.

…The poisonous wine of destruction has long before been distilled; Netanyahu is merely the agent decanting the poisonous fluid from its bottle, which is the Jewish war-soul, into the jug that is world humanity. In detailing those ingredients which combine to constitute the toxic formula of Jewish Zionism the author shall quote, wherever confirmation of his statements may be deemed advisable, principally from Jewish sources. For after all no one can explain the Jew so well as he himself. He has made no secret of his character, his ambitions and his intentions. By his acts he has himself bared his heart and soul; by his words, by his own hand he will someday come to dig his own grave.

It is not to be wondered at that the nations of the Western world regard the avowed program of the Zionist Jew for world conquest and dominion with a great deal of amazement and incredulity. For such an idea is entirely alien to those basic principles and instincts of the western civilization which, painfully and gradually, arose out of the chaos of the past thousands of years. Such civilized nations regard individual rights, the sacredness of human life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the virtues of mankind and itself, the individual States, as guarantor of those rights. And though, at one time or another during their existence nations may have sought political and economic adjustments, even territorial aggrandizement through force of arms, it must be noted that no Western nation has ever made such a religion of war, such idolatry of armaments, and such a cult of mass murder and destruction as has Israel and her peoples.

According to her own writers, teachers and statesmen Israel has but one great reason for existing; that of achieving world-dominion! Since that is its highest aim, therefore, Israel constantly claims that it has every right to make free and liberal use of chicanery, deceit, intolerance, lust, persecution and oppression, in order to achieve that goal. Consequently such a perverted nation, such a State of human negation, views its vice as being the only true virtue in life, whereas to the Jews the virtues as they are known and may be practiced by the rest of the world are merely vices due to the latter’s decay and degeneration! As though there exists anywhere in the world a nation which can boast of degeneration in the same degree as Israel!

The primary reason which stirs Jewish lust for world dominion was best summarized by a Jewish professor who declared that since Israel will never be able to understand the world, the latter must be conquered and reformed so that it will be able to conform to Jewish thought!

It is just such mass megalomania, crass egoism and intellectual aberrancy which stirred the demented brain of the Jew of yesterday to foment his wars; which animates the insane Zionist today in continuing those wars and which will, if the schizophrenic Ashkenazim continue to exist, direct the policies and actions of any party in control of Israel in the future. For, to reiterate, the Jewish idea of world-dominion and enslavement of its peoples is no political belief: it is a fierce and burning gospel of hate and intolerance, of murder and destruction and the unloosing of a sadistic blood lust. It is, in every literal sense, a savage and pagan religion which incites its worshippers first to a barbaric frenzy and then prompts them to vent their animal ferocity in the practice of every horrible, ruthless and unmentionable atrocity upon innocent men, women and children. Such are the true Jewish virtues! And the world will feel their sting so long as they continue to tolerate Israel and her peoples on the earth, for those Jewish traits are the same as those which, emanating from the Jewish soul, animated the Jewish tribes of yore. We have but to examine the development of those tribes to perceive just to what extent within the Jewish soul, the Jewish ideal of world conquest and dominion really lies.

… Such is the ” Chosen Master-Race” of the world!

from Chapter 3. Organized Jewish Zionism

…Zionism — the theory of a master race of Jews destined to enslave a weak world by force and brutality — had been an unvoiced doctrine of Jewish belief since tribal days until the latter part of the last century when it reached its maturity by becoming fashioned into a vast and well-organized movement [World Zionist Organization. A.T.]. Its astounding and ambitious program amalgamated all the major doctrines and beliefs of such Jewish teachers, writers, statesmen and philosophers as Rabbi Yehudah Akalai, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, Moses Hess, Eliezer Ben-Yehudah, Moshe Leib Lilienblum, Leo Pinsker, Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, Ahad Ha-am aka Asher Zvi Ginsberg, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Jacob Klatzkin, Nahman Syrkin, Rabbi Samuel Mohilever, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Martin Buber, Bernard Lazare, Solomon Schecter, Nahum Sokolow, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, Mordecai Menahem Kaplan, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion. And because the doctrine which it preached touched upon the very roots of the Jewish soul, and embraced the fundamental tenets of the Jewish intellect, the movement met with immediate and tremendously popular response. In fact its program was so popular with the Jews that within ten years after its inception its malignant dogma was already spread throughout the entire world.

…The World Zionist Organization combined various doctrines into a program of action and issued, among its statutes, four main principles which lay down broadly its chief objectives. They were:

1. To watch over and support all Jewish national movements in all countries where Jews have to sustain a struggle in support of Zionism with the object of embracing and uniting all Jews on the globe.

2. To promote an active Jewish policy in interests in Europe and across the seas and especially to further all colonial movements for practical purposes.

3. To treat and solve all questions bearing upon the bringing up of children and higher education in the Jewish sense.

4. To quicken patriotic self-consciousness of Jews, and to offer opposition to all movements antagonistic to Israeli national development.

…Branches of the World Zionist Organization (now working covertly under the name B’nai Brith International) sprang up in major cities of the world…. With the spread of its propaganda, B’nai Brith International Israel’s Mossad scattered a large number of secret agents throughout the world for the purpose of supplying it with confidential reports relating to the gospel of Zionism. These agents were the forerunners of the present day fifth-columnists [working within the Zionist media and on the Internet. A.T.]; it was their work which started the compilation of the notorious Jewish “scrap-book” in which the Israeli government listed all its enemies, and enemies to the idea of a Jewish-dominated world. To a nation such as Israel blackmail pales in insignificance to its other crimes. And so, with every passing hour, the members of B’nai Brith International continued with their nefarious work which, teaching and enforcing the great common Zionist Jew ideal of world-enslavement, quickly became an integral part of the average Jew’s life and dreams…. The vicious virus of Zionism had been injected into the life stream of the public, and the Jews awaited the epidemic which they felt must sooner or later infest the world.

As a matter of fact, the work and program as well as the propaganda which they spread had reached such a pitch that as far back as 1897 various Jewish writers were already busy prophesying how and when the ideological goal of Zionist world-dominion would be attained! These prophets were by no means few in number; there exists a large number of serious works by Jewish authors in which the destiny of Israel is elaborately worked out in full detail and the deification of Zionism and the Holocaust Myth as a world religion depicted.

from Chapter 4. Jewish Zionism Abroad

…The task of spreading the heathenish cult of Zionism in foreign lands was delegated to the World Zionist Organization, an organization maintained by the Rothschilds and B’nai Brith International. Beginning its operations in 1897 that association was the first to prepare the ground and develop and test the tactics which are being used today by all Zionist Jew fifth-columnists.

…True Zionism, being as it is a purely primitive paganism with some modern “refinements” finds that it can express itself best by committing truly barbaric and bestial acts of violence against innocent civilized peoples [such as the Palestinians. A.T.] Thus, if Zionism were ever to prevail upon this earth, we can be sure that every step would be taken — though few indeed are these steps which the Jews have not already taken! — to reawaken every dormant animal instinct and vicious trait in man.

Thus it has been a chief aim of the Jew to eradicate each and every one of the three principal religions from the earth. However, the Jew was practical enough to realize that he could not successfully combat all these religions at one time with any hope of emerging supreme. But since their extinction was absolutely necessary to the propagation of the Zionist dogma of hate and destruction, the Jews conceived their now infamous and oft-tried trick of pitting first the believers in one religion against those of another until, at a single coup, they could deliver the final knock-out blow against the single remaining adversary.

…Zionism was born ages ago, its growth has been proceeding for centuries, and it has now reached an advanced stage of flowering. Netanyahu is but a bud indicative of what kind of “flower” when it comes to full bloom, the world may expect to see!

Because she made no effort thousands of years ago, to become civilized as did her neighbors, Israel today is an outsider among all civilized nations. The processes which it has taken other nations thousands of years to absorb, cannot be suddenly absorbed by Israel overnight. Consequently, the continued existence of Israel among them becomes increasingly inimical to the best interests of civilized nations.

The deliberate and perverse distortions of what should have been a sane and normal course of development — as in other nations — now gives to Israel and her people a capacity unexcelled by any other peoples on earth, for fostering and propagating every indecent and inhuman precept of life. And as she seeks to distribute her own poisonous brew she has herself become so intoxicated by its ingredients that she can no longer escape the ever-constant desire, the urgent compulsion and the burning lust which it incites in her to extinguish any and all signs of good which she sees developed or practiced in other lands. Thus in self-justification Israel would excuse her own unnatural and perverse life by polluting others with her malignant infection. Israel is now well beyond all saving. The world had best look to its own preservation and welfare, lest some of those Jewish poisons run through her system also and come to destroy it!

With each succeeding world war which she plans, plots and starts Zionism comes ever closer and closer to her goal of world-dominion. At the present time Netanyahu, who has merely striven to remedy mistakes which previous Jewish leaders made in attempts at world-subjection, may bring the Jewish people very close to realizing their goal. And Netanyahu is not the last of the Jewish leaders!

How much misery, suffering, death and destruction are needed before it becomes apparent to the world that any compromise with Zionism will, of itself, be a certain guarantee that soon thereafter, Israel must again embark upon her unholy crusade to dominate it. How many more chances will be vouchsafed it to beat back Zionism? Suppose there comes a time when Israel can not be halted? Dare we risk waiting? One never knows the exact hour one is scheduled to die; can we, with any more certitude and assurance tell which opportunity shall be our last? It may well be that this is our last chance. Suppose we pass it by; look ahead. Next time, the so-called elder generation of Israel will be the Mossad-trained youth of today, and this elder generation, now mothers and fathers, will already have instilled and encouraged their children with the idea of world-dominion. Thus the next Israeli leader may come to lead a nation of born fanatics! As a consequence of this there may come to be welded a machine so gigantic in proportions, so overwhelming in destructive power, that it may well overcome every possible obstacle in its path. For assuredly the Israeli youth of the next generation — today schooled in Talmudic Zionist schools — will find a leader, as past generations of Jewish youth have always found a leader, to incarnate and personify the body and soul of that nation and dominate its collective Will.

A leader who will feed that Israeli body and soul the only food upon which it can subsist: War!

from Chapter 6. A Middle Road?

…With Zionism shown thus to be the very soul of conquest and world-dominion, may we not then pose this question: Is it possible for the world, in any manner, to find some compromise that will allow both it and Israel to exist side by side in peace and justice? In concrete terms, were peace declared tomorrow to Israel’s apparent satisfaction, could this nation born and bred on blood, be expected to be appeased for more than the immediate future?

We should like to hope so; but the history of that nation cuts the hope out of our heart.

…What then of a democratic Israel?

Democracy for a people who believe only in superiority, not equality?

…Israel already has given us her answer:

“Israel does not want a share of anything. She wants, she demands, all or nothing.

…A final solution: Let Israel be policed forever by an international armed force?

Even if such a huge undertaking were feasible life itself would not have it so. As war begets war, suppression begets rebellion. Undreamed horrors would unfold.

Thus we find that there is no middle course; no act of mediation, no compromise to be compounded, no political or economic sharing to be considered. There is, in fine, no other solution except one: That Israel must perish forever from this earth!

And, fortunately, as we shall now come to see, that is no longer impossible of accomplishment.

from 7. Death to Israel

…When an Individual commits premeditated murder, he must be prepared to forfeit his own life in consequence. When a nation commits premeditated murder upon its fellow nations, it must be prepared to forfeit its own national life.

On that point the laws of man and God are explicit:

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life.”

But what is the law of man or God to Israel? Nothing.

She recognizes only Jewish law; so be it.

It must then be Jewish law, if such a law there be, which decrees her penalty — the penalty of death.

And there is such a Jewish law which decrees that death to her:

As in all human affairs, there must also be in every system of punishment a last limit, a ne plus ultra that no punishment can overstep. Thus even from the point of view of pure theory the necessity of the depth-penalty is postulated; it is, as the ultimate punishment on earth, the indispensable keystone of every ordered system of criminal law. No apparent reasons which are alleged against it can withstand any serious criticism. The State, which has the right to sacrifice for its own protection the flower of its youth, is to feel so nice a regard for the life of a murderer? We much rather allow to the State the right to make away with men who are undoubtedly injurious to the common weal. That the powers that be must bear the sword is an expression which runs deep in the blood of the honest man; if this truth is to be banished out of the world, great wrong is done to the simple moral feeling of the people. The ultimate problems of the moral life are to be solved in the domain of the practical, not of the theoretical, reason. The conscience of every earnest man demands that blood be atoned by blood, and the common man must simply grow doubtful of the existence of justice on earth, of this last and highest punishment is not inflicted. The State makes itself ridiculous and contemptible if it cannot finally dispose of a criminal. There must be a limit for mercy and indulgence, as for the law, a last limit at which the State says: “This is the end, humanity is not longer possible here.” It must be possible to inflict at last a punishment beyond which there is nothing, and that is the punishment of death.

Let Jewish Will be done!

There remains now but to determine the best way, the most practical and expeditious manner in which the ultimate penalty must be levied upon the Israeli nation. Quite naturally, massacre and wholesale execution must be ruled out. In addition to being impractical when applied to a population of some five million, such methods are inconsistent with the moral obligations and ethical practices of civilization. There remains then but one mode of ridding the world forces of Zionism — and that is to stem the source from which issue those war-lusted souls, by preventing the people of Israel from ever again reproducing their kind. This modern method, known to science as Eugenic Sterilization, is at once practical, humane and thorough. Sterilization has become a byword of science, as the best means of ridding the human race of its misfits: the degenerate, the insane, the hereditary criminal.

Sterilization is not to be confused with castration. It is a safe and simple operation, quite harmless and painless, neither mutilating nor unsexing the patient. Its effects are most often less distressing than vaccination and not more serious than a tooth extraction. Too, the operation is extremely rapid requiring no more than ten minutes to complete. The patient may resume his work immediately afterwards. Even in the case of the female the operation, though taking longer to perform, is as safe and simple. Performed thousands of times, no records indicate cases of complication or death. When one realizes that such health measures as vaccination and serum treatments are considered as direct benefits to the community, certainly sterilization of the Jewish people cannot but be considered a great health measure promoted by humanity to immunize itself forever against the virus of Zionism.

…Concerning the males subject to sterilization the army groups, as organized units, would be the easiest and quickest to deal with. Taking 2,000 surgeons as an arbitrary number and on the assumption that each will perform a minimum of 25 operations daily, it would take no more than one month, at the maximum, to complete their sterilization. Naturally the more doctors available, and many more than the 2,000 we mention would be available considering all the nations to be drawn upon, the less time would be required. The balance of the male civilian population of Israel could be treated within three months. Inasmuch as sterilization of women needs somewhat more time, it may be computed that the entire female population of Israel could be sterilized within a period of a year or less. Complete sterilization of both sexes, and not only one, is to be considered necessary in view of the present Jewish doctrine that so much as one drop of true Jewish blood constitutes a Jew.

Of course, after complete sterilization, there will cease to be a birth rate in Israel. At the normal death rate of 2 per cent per annum, Jewish life will diminish considerably. Accordingly in the span of two generations that which cost millions of lives and centuries of useless effort, namely, the elimination of Zionism and its carriers, will have been an accomplished fact. By virtue of its loss of self-perpetuation Israel will have atrophied and Jewish power reduced to negligible importance.

Reviewing the foregoing case of sterilization we find that several factors resulting from it firmly establish its advocacy.

Firstly, no physical pain will be imposed upon the inhabitants of Israel through its application, a decidedly more humane treatment than they will have deserved.

Secondly, execution of the plan would in no way disorganize the present population nor would it cause any sudden mass upheavals and dislocations. The consequent gradual disappearance of the Jews from Arab territory will leave no more negative effect upon that continent than did the gradual disappearance of the Indians upon this.

…A detailed program of the manner in which the outraged victims of the Zionism onslaught might make certain that Israel leave no gap might be put hypothetically:

Israel has lost its war. She sues for peace. The imperative demands of the victor people that Israel must perish forever makes it obligatory for the leaders to select mass sterilization of the Jews as the best means of wiping them out permanently. They proceed to:

1. Immediately and completely disarm the Israeli army and have all armaments removed from Israeli territory.

2. Place all Israeli utility and heavy industrial plants under heavy guard, and replace Jewish workers by those of Allied nationality.

3. Segregate the Israeli army into groups, concentrate them in severely restricted areas, and summarily sterilize them.

4. Organize the civilian population, both male and female, within territorial sectors, and effect their sterilization.

5. Divide the Israeli army (after its sterilization has been completed) into labor battalions, and allocate their services toward the rebuilding of those cities which they ruined.

6. Partition Israel and apportion its lands to the existing Arab population.

7. Restrict all Jewish civilian travel beyond established borders until all sterilization has been completed.

8. Compel the Jewish population of the apportioned territories to learn the language of its area, and within one year to cease the publication of all books, newspapers and notices in the Hebrew language, as well as to restrict Hebrew-language broadcasts and discontinue the maintenance of Hebrew-language schools.

9. Make one exception to an otherwise severely strict enforcement of total sterilization, by exempting from such treatment only those Jews whose relatives, being citizens of various victor nations, assume financial responsibility for their actions. Thus, into an oblivion which she would have visited upon the world, exits Israel.

from 8. ‘Lest We Forget …’

Perhaps in the Future …

United States has entered the war. The struggle is long and bitter but at last the Allies forge ahead. Their armies surround Israel.

Israel realizes that she has lost. She does not want invasions. She fears the vengeance long overdue her. So she sues for peace. Comes the Armistice!

And immediately thereafter, as once before, Israel finds that the words “Humanity” — which she has debased; “Justice” — which she has distorted; and “God” whom she has profaned, have an irresistible sales appeal to Allied Statesmen.

Israel puts her Zionist propaganda machine to work.

Soon men in the victor nations are urging:

“Peace with Honor!” — “Justice without Rancor!” — “God and Mercy!”, and all those other weak, sticky phrases which befuddle the weary minds and exhausted emotions of the long-suffering people of the war-decimated democracies.

Forgotten in the sudden lush of a peace that is no peace, are all the brave sons who were sacrificed to the monster Israhell: forgotten is the plight of the countries whose resources were drained, and whose energies were sapped in stemming the Talmudic onslaught. Forgotten, too, is the duty owed to generations yet to be born.

Yes: all forgotten because the Allies cannot resist such an appeal. And so, even though a hundred years and a hundred instances have shown the hypocrisy of a Jewish promise, the Allies fall once again its victim.

They forget that the struggle they waged was not a sport’s contest: that their adversary was a beast, not a human being! And so, filled to overflowing with the infectious germ of sentiment, they stretch out their hand to their fallen opponent and help him arise. They pat him on the back with a hearty “No hard feelings, old man!” and, happy that the war is now over and done with, return to their homes.

Believing, sincerely, that Jewish war will not come again.

Believing that somehow, in some inexplicable manner, Israel has accepted Christ.

A decade passes. A decade of hard work and many sacrifices.

A decade of much sweat and little pleasure.

But the democratic peoples do not mind. They are building a better world for their children.

So they think.

Meanwhile Israel grows strong and robust.

Her army is larger and more powerful than ever before; she has developed new weapons whose frightfulness surpass all imagination. She had found a new leader. And her war-souled people are bent once again upon conquering the world. Once more the earth trembles beneath the depleted uranium missiles of the Jewish defense forces.

Like a cobra Israel is poised:

She strikes!

The people of the civilized nations are stunned.

They exclaim, “But it cannot be again!”

But it is.

And this time it is Too Late!

For Israel wins. She is master of the world.

…and so a thousand years of peace was sold to the Devil for a moment’s respite! And only because men tried to placate the body, instead of expunging forever the bestial war-soul, of the Jew!

The sun now shivers as it rises upon a Dark world.

For slaves to the Jews are children once free.

Civilization is no more. Perversity is raged rampant.

Even the moon shudders as it wanes in a frightening chill.

This is, finally the, “New World Order!”

Shall it be so?

Our choice lies still before us:

False sentiment or courageous decision —

Which shall it be?

The End

Next? After Iraq, Saudi Social Media Bots Deployed to Influence Lebanon Protests

By Staff

Less than a month after exposing the involvement of Saudi Arabian social media bots in the protests that engulfed Iraq, today’s analyses revealed the same electronic hands behind provoking hatred during Lebanon protests.

A study published by Tansikeyah News on Tuesday revealed that 78% of the accounts using hashtags to incite hatred in the Lebanese society were Saudi.

Additionally, Assistant Professor in Middle East Studies and Digital Humanities Marc Owen Jones studied the suspicious hashtags that were used during the still ongoing protests in Lebanon.

In a thread of tweets he published on his Twitter account, Owen said I looked at suspected influence campaigns criticizing Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

“I analyzed around 6,500 tweets from around 4,494 unique accounts. There were a few things I found quite striking. Firstly, the spike in accounts created in September 2019, which was obviously before the escalation of protests in Lebanon. Again this might not be unusual for suspicious accounts, which will become active when required and high suspension rates means usually they are ‘newer’,” Owen noted.

“The 180 accounts created in September 2019 compares to around the 31 per month average – a large difference. Although I assume it goes without saying (perhaps I shouldn’t) it is also common for dramatic events to drive people to creating Twitter events. Although I am not sure why September 2019 outstrips October 2019,” he added.

He went on to explain that “many of the new accounts have tell-tale signs of spam accounts – such as usernames that look like random strings. Much of the content on the hashtags are the type of crude cartoons you’d expect on influence campaigns.”

A brief locational analysis of the tweets also suggested that most of the accounts are based in Saudi Arabia, Owen stated.

“Around 35% of the 2,297 accounts with location data were from Saudi.”

While Saudi has the highest Twitter population in the world, Owen said he usually sees this kind of turnout on hashtags criticizing Iran and Hezbollah. Some of the almost brand-new accounts created in Sept/Oct 2019 are ‘very spammy.’

A couple of them, which RT a lot of Saudi loyalist accounts have as many as 10,000 + tweets, despite only being a month and a half old.

Owen concluded that there is certainly some sort of Twitter campaign afoot to demonize Nasrallah. 

“So yes, as has become the custom on Twitter, different forces are trying to inflame tensions in other countries, polluting organic discussions with inorganic content.”

Earlier in the month, analytics revealed that the trending hashtag that was most used regarding rallies in Iraq was used by only 6% users in the country, while 79% were from Saudi Arabia.

The hashtag was precisely used by 58000 Twitter users based in Saudi Arabia, who definitely caused more escalation in the already tense situation.

Relatively, 200 robots retweeted 13000 related tweets at the time.

Now the question is which country will be the next target of Saudi Arabia’s continued hatred-spreading propaganda? And the repeated question is why Saudi Arabia is deploying its social bots to do this dirty job?

Iranophobic propaganda factory of fake martyrs: the case of the Blue Girl

by *Ivan Kesić for the Saker Blog

September 30, 2019

In the last two weeks, a heartbreaking story from Iran hit the world’s headlines. The storyline goes something like this: a female football fan, nicknamed as the Blue Girl, tried to enter the men-only Tehran’s Azadi Stadium in March this year and she was arrested by the security guards only because she was a woman. Six months later, more precisely in early September, she was ordered to attend a court in Tehran and after she found out about the prison sentence, she poured petrol on herself and set herself on fire outside the courthouse. She died in hospital one week later due to the third-degree burns. These reports in the Western media quickly gained a vast readership and triggered numerous reactions. Some compared her to Jan Palach, some wrote to international sports organizations seeking sanctions against Iran, and some went so far as to argue that the case would cause mass unrest or even revolution.

As is almost always the case with Western stories about Iran which target the audience’s emotions, by fact-checking the story details and comparing them with the statements of victim’s family given to the Persian-language media, it turns out that virtually all of the claims are incorrect, or even contrary. First of all, she was not arrested because she was a woman who wanted to go to the stadium, but because she violently attacked the policemen at the stadium gates, after refusing the security check. According to her sister, strife erupted when she told the security guards that they shouldn’t touch her because she is a girl from a conservative family. It means that the alleged liberal feminist, implied as such by the Western media, in reality was someone completely opposite, a conservative girl from the holy city of Qom. Most important of all, she did not attack the guards due to any sort of political protest, but because she was a mentally ill girl who had a hysterical attack. Unfortunately, she was alone so there was no one to explain her about the stadium rules, or to the guards about her mental health.

Unknowing about her medical record, police placed her in three-day detention, which led to a worsening of her mental condition. Her family came from Qom to Tehran, paid bail and showed documents about her health. When her scheduled trial came six months later, the judge was away so no verdict had been issued. There is no sentence of six months or two years in prison, as falsely claimed. Whether it’s due to a judge’s absence, rumors about potential penalties or something else, eventually setting fire to herself outside the building. It had nothing to do with football, politics or verdicts, only her mental disorder and an unfortunate set of circumstances. Her family further noted about her suicide attempt several years ago when she was a university student and was hospitalized for a while, adding that all related medical documents also exist. All these information were systematically ignored in the Western mass media. Even alleged image of the victim wearing a blue hat, circulated widely on the Internet, is false. It actually shows a transgender boy.

Her death is undoubtedly a tragedy and it provoked a number of reactions within Iran, especially among fans of the Esteghlal FC. Some public figures have criticized security guards for treating her as a normal citizen, and some also criticized the Iranian judiciary for the alleged prison sentence, which proved to be only a rumor. Still, these public criticisms have nothing in common with a distorted story from the foreign press, based on the misinformation by political activists who recognized the tragedy as the perfect opportunity to spread propaganda and manipulate the emotions of the world public. Their main focus was on sex-segregation in certain football stadiums and they have been seeking to stir an online outcry to call on the world football’s governing body to ban Iran from international competitions.

The hypocritical sex segregation debate

Speaking of sex segregation, which is completely irrelevant to this case, it is true that certain sports venues implement a policy of sex separation. Some have exclusive male audiences for men’s team matches, others have special sections for both men and women, while third ones are mixed. However, anyone who has visited Iran can testify that the country is far from some kind of segregationist society, since it does not exist in universities, theaters, cinemas, restaurants, urban transport, offices, mosques, holy shrines, etc. Certain football stadiums are rare exceptions, along with prayer halls, schools and public baths.

Furthermore, there are a number of problems in defining “discrimination,” whether at Iranian or international level. All those who are holding moral lectures about “discriminated women banned from stadiums” forget or intentionally ignore the fact that, in their own words, there are also “discriminated men banned from stadiums.” To be more precise, as there are stadiums for men’s matches with a men-only audience, there are also stadiums for women’s matches with an exclusively female audience. One example is the Ararat Stadium in Tehran, used by the Iran women’s national football team.

Debates over two-way segregation in stadiums are being waged within Iran itself, but foreign individuals and organizations operating under the guise of human rights and equality are always hypocritically invoking one-way segregation, specifically female spectators at men’s matches. The reason is apparent; the advocacy of this kind fits perfectly into the archaic Orientalist narrative about “oppressed women,” long propagated in the West and covered extensively in academic literature. The same one-way argument can be applied, for example, to the male-only schools in Iran, ignoring the fact that there are also female-only schools, or that there are plenty of single-sex schools in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and other countries.

One may say that the focus on female spectators is due to the popularity of men’s football, which is partly true. For example, the match between Iran and Belarus at Ararat Stadium in last March was attended by less than one hundred female spectators. Even women’s matches in other countries are not better attended, but this tells us about the global discrimination against women’s football and sports in general. Advocating alleged equality by seeking mixed audience for single-sex matches is a bit ironic itself, despite the fact that female football players can hardly physically compete with their male counterparts. Similar justification is however difficult to find for sports segregation in numerous international motor racing competitions, which implicitly suggest that women are bad drivers. But this is not the case in Iran, its female racing drivers like Laleh Seddigh and Mitra Fallahpour competed against their male counterparts and won medals, which is a hard-to-find example in most countries of the world.

The only valid argument about sex segregation in football stadiums is the fact that Iran is one of the rare exceptions in a global context. Nevertheless, as in the example of the aforementioned female racing drivers, Iran is also a rare exception in various other fields of women’s emancipation. For example, Iran has women like Zohreh Sefati in the highest level of clergy, while the vast majority of other countries, including Western ones, have none. There is still no media circus or public debate on the issue. Another example is that despite being 4-5 times less populous, Iran has more female students at technical universities than the five largest EU countries combined, or twice as many as the second-ranked United States. Therefore, if you feel morally superior to give Iran lectures on the topic of women in stadiums, keep in mind that Iran can also do the same, but on much more serious topics. And if you believe that female cheerleaders are a better indicator of women’s emancipation than female engineers, then you have a serious problem in understanding gender equality.

The last ones who have a moral right to participate in this public debate are precisely those who were among the first and the loudest about the Blue Girl case, namely counter-revolutionary activists and the Saudi media clique. The former ones because in the pre-revolutionary period only a quarter of Iranian women were literate, and the latter ones because they represent the country with the most rigid sex segregation in the world, present in virtually all public places. This fact did not hamper The Independent, a half Saudi-owned British newspaper, from being among the first to publish a heartwarming false story, based largely on rumors by the apologists of Pahlavi regime.

The propaganda factory of fake martyrs

A particularly intriguing case is the role of the United States and the United Kingdom whose mass media and PR agencies have a long tradition of manufacturing fake martyrs for Iranophobic propaganda purposes. Notable cases include Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, executed in 2005 for allegedly being “gay lovers,” Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, allegedly sentenced to death in 2010 because of “her love for another man,” Zahra Bahrami, alleged “democracy activist” executed in 2011, and Hashem Shabani, an alleged “poet and human rights campaigner” executed in 2014. In reality, the first two were sentenced for raping a 13-year-old boy, the second one for murdering her husband, the third one for drug trafficking, and the fourth one for Takfiri terrorism. These criminals were misrepresented as brave individuals who stood for freedom, and the Internet contains tons of heartbreaking reviews, fake biographies and quotes, calls to action, and so on.

All these cases have a lot more in common: they all emerged during the fiercest tensions between Iran and the United States, they all followed the same propaganda modus operandi, and all were promoted by the same media, organizations and individuals. For example, if you intend to learn more about these controversies on the highly popular English Wikipedia, do not expect anything credible in most cases and bear in mind that literally all articles were arranged by the same person, a pro-Israeli activist nicknamed as Plot Spoiler, who got indefinitely banned only since last year after administrators had uncovered that he was paid for contributions. The current version of the Blue Girl article is arranged by a user who openly declares himself as a monarchist and a hater of the Iranian political system. Do not expect much more from Internet search engines because fake news stories from the days of media hypes will appear at the top, while relevant critical reviews and scholarly articles are technically “hidden” for ordinary people.

In all the above cases, a propaganda campaign followed the same order. First, a particular judicial case was selected, to which rumors and false information were added. Secondly, a distorted version was released in the mass media, causing a moral crusade which involves politicians, organizations, celebrities and others. Everyone is asked for an (emotional) reaction. Thirdly, after the official Tehran denies false information, they accuse it of hiding facts or seeking excuses. A media hype thus keeps going on, along with demonization in the eyes of the world public. Such repetitive method was also used on the eve of aggression against Iraq, misinformation were repeated and the public debate has been prolonged until the majority of Americans were misled that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction and military invasion was justified. A propaganda campaign sometimes includes a fourth step: when certain trial does not end in line with false sensationalist announcements, they claim that Iran has withdrawn under international pressure. This gives an impetus for a new round of same games, particularly among benevolent but manipulated activist volunteers, who believe that their babbling on social networks has an impact on the Iranian judiciary.

There is no shortage of resources for such games and potential “martyrs,” especially pseudo-feminist ones, as there are currently 7,440 women in Iranian prisons. It is easy to dig up domestic news, turn numerous stories upside down, and claim that trials are “dubious” or “unfair.” Theoretically, it is, even more, easier to do the same with the United States, considering there are 211,870 women imprisoned in that country or proportionally seven times higher than in Iran, but in practice virtually no one bothers with such facts and all find it quite normal when Americans are holding moral lectures. One may wonder whether it is because of the well-known “credibility” of the US courts, the same ones that seized billions of Iranian assets, delivered a verdict holding Iran responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and ordered the sale of Iranian antique art from American museums. Or perhaps many find the US trustworthy because their official criticism is always confirmed and joined by “eminent” Human Rights Watch?

Human Rights Watch (HRW), as well as similar US-funded organizations allegedly in charge of “promoting human rights,” plays an already seen game. Their modus operandi is to act in symbiosis with the mass media and Washington’s politics: at the beginning of propaganda campaigns, they back the biased claims and timely participate in provoking mass outrage, but after the media circus passes and its purpose was served, then they publish a more factual review, thus building the reputation of a credible and neutral institution. In this particular case, the HRW’s report about the Blue Girl contains a false balance, i.e., they do mention her mental illness and certain statements by her sister, but the title and most of the text deals with unfounded criticism, thus serving as a reference for the more aggressive mass media. Later, they can simply deny earlier allegations or the whole story; however, media coverage will then be absent. The most (in)famous example of such modus operandi is the false testimony of a Kuwaiti girl that helped build public support for the First Persian Gulf War. Both Human Rights Watch and their British equivalent Amnesty International initially supported the story of Iraqi tearing Kuwaiti babies from incubators and issued corrections only after the war. In other words, they fulfilled the task of their governments, and as “truthful organizations that acknowledge their own mistakes,” they continued to fulfill the same tasks later.

Even if the Blue Girl was a sane girl and immolated herself in political protest, which is definitely not the case, the United States would be among the last in a position to criticize. In just a few months before the self-immolation of Czech student Jan Palach, a celebrated anti-Soviet dissident who gained huge media coverage in the West, eight US citizens self-immolated themselves in protest against the Vietnam War. The media coverage of these American examples was negligible, as was in cases with ten other US citizens who later set themselves on fire in various political protests. On the other hand, no such case has been recorded in Iran, with the exception of two rumors based on dubious dissident sources.

The only valid criticism of the Iranian authorities over the Blue Girl case is that they treated her as an average sane person in the first three days. The security forces defended themselves that they did not know about her mental condition, further explaining that it was not even possible to know in given circumstances, which can be seen as a valid excuse. Even with regard to the treatment of people with a mental health condition, the United States would be the last candidate to sit on a high horse. We do not have to deal with hypothetical questions about what would happen if someone refuses a security check and violently attacks policemen at the US stadium gates, it is enough to recall the empirically confirmed cases of Artogi Groshe, Kevin Thorpe, Ronald Madison and many others. All of them were shot for resisting the police, and the responsible police officers later confronted them with fact that they killed people with mental disabilities, not arrogant criminals.

Exploiting the tragic death of a mentally ill person for political purposes of any kind is disgustingly shameful and below any human level. The same goes for this article, its purpose is not to justify any state policy, security guards or stadium rules, but merely to point out lies, hypocrisy, double standards and mass propaganda. Out of respect for the victim and her family who criticized the intense politicization in the foreign media, the identity of Blue Girl is deliberately not mentioned in the text. It’s not hard to notice that these media manipulations emerged in the midst of US-Iranian tensions and warmongering propaganda, orchestrated by the same group of people who called Iranians as “a terrorist nation,” sanctioned Iranian humanitarian organizations like Setad, along with child cancer patients and flood victims. They had previously manipulated the emotions of the world public with the aim of provoking a war with hundreds of thousands dead, and judging by their latest actions, they would be happy to repeat it all. Ultimately, we should remember that one of the basic points of John Bolton’s policy towards Iran included “a close cooperation with the media.” He may be gone, but his policies and old manipulation methods are still alive.

* Ivan Kesić is a Croatia-based freelance writer and open-source data analyst. He worked as a writer at the Cultural Center of Iran in Zagreb from 2010 to 2016. His articles has appeared on the Consortium News, the Anti War, the Strategic Culture, the UNZ Review, & Mintpress News among the many.

New World Order in Meltdown, But Russia Stronger Than Ever

August 30, 2019

by Jon Hellevig for The Saker Blog

Last week was full of portentous events. Only somebody who has not been awake for the last few years will fail to realize how these at first sight unconnected events are part of the same matrix. There was the ever louder talk in mainstream media about an approaching global recession, inverted yield curves and the negative yields, which tell us that the Western financial system is basically in coma and kept alive only by generous IV injections of central bank liquidity. By now it has dawned on people that the central bankers acting as central planners in a command economy and printing money (aka quantitative easing) to fuel asset bubbles are about to wipe off the last vestiges of what used to be a market economy.

Then we saw Trump taking new twitter swipes at China in his on-and-off “great trade deal” and the stock markets moving like a roller coaster in reaction to each new twitter salvo. Also, we had both Trump and Macron sweet talking about getting Russia back and again renaming their club G8. Last Tuesday at a G7 presser in Biarritz, the Rothschild groomed Macron took it one step further opening up about the reasons why they all of a sudden longed for friendship with Russia: “We are living the end of Western hegemony.” In the same series, Britain’s new government under Boris Johnson was telling his colleagues in Biarritz that he is now decisively going for a no-deal Brexit, after which he went back to London and staged a coup d’état by suspending parliament to ensure no elected opposition interfered with it.

Perhaps the weirdest news to crown it all, came from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where the Western central bankers were holed up for their annual retreat. The president of Bank of England Mark Carney shocked everybody (at least those not present) by announcing that the US dollar was past its best-before and should be replaced with something the central bankers have up their sleeves.

The New World Order is in its death throes

What these events have in common is that they amount to an admission that the globalist New World Order project in its present form is dead, or at least in its death throes. It has bumped its head against an impenetrable Sino-Russian wall of resistance. The heated totalitarian propaganda against Russia since 2001 (when the NWO realized that Putin wasn’t their man); regime change and color revolutions in neighboring countries; attempts at Maidan style coups in Moscow; and finally the sanctions since 2014 were key to the Anglo-Zionist empires strategy. They needed to take over either China or Russia to gain absolute world hegemony. Taking over either one, they would have checkmated the remaining one, and after that the entire world. They rightly deemed Russia as the weaker piece and went all out in that direction. The NWO wanted to take advantage of Russia’s weakness in form of its Western minded comprador class and a shell-shocked liberal intelligentsia (dominating media, culture and business, just like in Hong Kong, BTW), which is constitutional uncapable of thinking with their own brains to liberate themselves from Soviet era stereotypes (“Soviet Union/Russia bad, West good”).

They then figured that economic and cultural sanctions (e.g. Olympic ban) coupled with doubling down on the propaganda would break the country. Luckily, the Russian narod, the common people saw through it all and would not play along with the enemy. At the same time, Russia paraded its resurrected military in Crimea and Syria as well as its formidable new hypersonic doomsday weapons. The military option to take over Russia was not in the cards any longer.

Russian economy from strength to strength

And the Russian economy. Believing their own propaganda, they had got that totally wrong. Endlessly repeating their own self-serving talking points they must have truly fancied that Russia’s economy amounted to nothing else than export of fossil fuels, that “Russia’s economy is the size of Holland’s,” that “Russia does not produce anything,” and that Russia was “nothing but a gas station with nukes” (somehow managing to ignore the significance of the nukes part). I seriously believe, that the propaganda had become so complete that the Western leaders and the intelligence people actually had come to adapt their own propaganda as the truth. What is for sure, is that all Western media, including what should be the most respected business journals and all those think tanks, had not published one honest appraisal of the Russian economy in 15 years. Every single piece I read over the years had clearly been written with the aim to denigrate Russia’s achievements and economic development. Nowhere to be found were reports on how Putin by 2013 had totally overhauled the economy transforming Russia into the most self-sufficient diversified major country in the world with all the capabilities of the foremost industrial powers. In fact, I tend to think that even the US presidents from Bush to Obama were fed in their intelligence briefings cooked up fake reports about the Russian economy and the whole nation. Actually, I would go one step further. I bet that the CIA itself in the end believed the propaganda it had given birth to. (It has been said that at some point the genuine Russia analysts had all been dismissed or demoted and replaced with a team specializing in anti-Russian propaganda).

But actually all the data was there in plain view. I myself took the trouble to compile a report on the real conditions of Russia’s economy fresh at the onset of the 2014 crisis. In the report, I set out to show that Russia indeed had modernized and diversified its economy; that it had a vibrant manufacturing industry in addition to its energy and minerals sector; and that its budget revenues and economy at large were not at all as dependent on oil and gas as it was claimed. Among other things, we pointed out that Russia’s industrial production had by then grown more than 50% (between 2000 and 2013) while having undergone a total modernization at the same time. In the same period, production of food had surged by 100% and exports had skyrocketed by almost 400%, outdoing all major Western countries. Even the growth of exports of other than oil and gas products had been 250%.

The gist of the study https://www.awaragroup.com/blog/putin-midterm-interim-results/ may be summarized with this quote from it: “The crisis-torn economy battered by years of robber capitalism and anarchy of the 1990’s, which Putin inherited in 2000, has now reached sufficient maturity to justify a belief that Russia can make the industrial breakthrough that the President has announced.” Events have borne out this insight. And it is therefore that Russia won the sanctions battle.

The report represented an appeal to the Western leaders to give up on their vain hope of destroying Russia through their sanctions and risking nuclear war at it. Russia was invincible even in this respect. For that purpose I expressly added this missive in the introduction to the report:

“We strongly believe that everyone benefits from knowing the true state of Russia’s economy, its real track record over the past decade, and its true potential. Having knowledge of the actual state of affairs is equally useful for the friends and foes of Russia, for investors, for the Russian population – and indeed for its government, which has not been very vocal in telling about the real progress. I think there is a great need for accurate data on Russia, especially among the leaders of its geopolitical foes. Correct data will help investors to make a profit. And correct data will help political leaders to maintain peace. Knowing that Russia is not the economic basket case that it is portrayed to be would help to stave off the foes from the collision course with Russia they have embarked on.”

A follow-up report https://www.awaragroup.com/blog/russian-economy-2014-2016-the-years-of-sanctions-warfare/ of June 2017 covering the sanctions years 2014 – 2016, showed how Russia went from strength to strength never mind the Western attempts at isolation. This report stressed that Russia’s economy had now become the most diversified in the world making Russia the most self-sufficient country on this earth.

In this report we exposed the single biggest error of the propaganda driven Russia analysis. This was the ridiculous belief that Russia supposedly was totally dependent on oil and gas just because those commodities made up the bulk of the country’s exports. Confusing exports with the total economy, they had foolishly confused the share of oil and gas in total exports – which was and remains at the level of 60% – with the share of these commodities of the total economy. In 2013 the share of oil and gas of Russia’s GDP was 12% (today 10%). Had the “experts” cared to take a closer look they would have realized that on the other side of the equation Russia’s imports were by far the lowest (as a share of GDP) of all major countries. The difference here is that while Russia does not export a great deal of manufactured goods, it produces by far a bigger share of those for the domestic market than any other country in the whole world. Taking the 60% of exports to stand for the whole economy was how the “Russia produces nothing” meme was created.

Finally in a November 2018 report https://www.awaragroup.com/blog/russian-economy-strong-and-stable/#chapter2, I could declare that Russia had won hands down the sanctions war having emerged from it as a quadruple superpower: industrial superpower, agricultural superpower, military superpower and geopolitical superpower.

Macron et co. realizes that Russia actually is a superpower

These facts have now finally dawned on certain key stakeholders of the globalist regime can be discerned from the fact that they have tasked their handpicked puppet president Macron to make up with Russia. Trump has got the same assignment, which is evident from the siren calls of the two leaders in Putin’s address. Both want to invite Putin to their future G7-8 get-togethers.

As it was said, Macron went as far as unilaterally capitulating and declaring the decline of the West. He went on to spell out that the reason for this spectacular geopolitical about-face was the rise of the Beijing – Moscow (de facto) alliance that has caused a terminal shift on the world scene. Curiously, he also openly blamed the errors of the United States for the dire state of affairs pointing out that “not just the current administration” were to be blamed. No doubt, the foremost of these errors, Macron had in mind, was the alienation of Russia and pushing the country into the warm embrace of China. It is quite clear, that this is what they want to remedy, snatch the bear back from the dragon. Fortunately, that won’t happen. Good if there will be rapprochement and good if the West will try, but after all what Russia has learnt by now it will not sell out on China under any circumstances. I think Putin and the Russian powers that be have clearly opted for a multipolar world order. That is definitely not what Macron’s and Trump’s employers have in mind but let them try.

Until Trump took office, the strategy of the US regime had been to pursue only Russia in its geopolitical ambitions, but by then it had dawned on them that Russia was invincible especially in the de facto alliance with China. In a sign of desperation, the empire then opened big time another front with China. Essentially going from bad to worse.

The world order is being shaken like never before

“The world order is being shaken like never before…”, that’s another quote from Macron. Obviously, it refers to the military and geopolitical strengths of the Sino-Russian alliance, but certainly also to the economic shifts as the West has lost – and will keep losing – its economic domination. This brings us back to Mark Carney of Bank of England and his unprecedented attack on the US dollar (*1) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-24/why-mark-carney-thinks-dollar-can-no-longer-be-worlds-reserve-currency arguing that it was time to end its global reserve currency status. As one option Carney brought up that the major Western central banks would instead issue a digital cryptocurrency. That is to say, a NWO currency controlled by the central banks. That would effectively mean the replacement of the Federal Reserve cartel with a cartel of the Western central banks (the Fed obviously being a part of it). That’s yet one step further north from any kind of democratic control and a giant step towards world government.

What could possibly have prompted such a radical US hegemony puncturing idea to be put forward? One reason obviously is that the Western economies really are in that extreme critical condition that more and more analysts caution about. (We shall look at the economic facts further down). There’s a very real possibility that we will be hit by a doomsday recession. What’s sure is that Carney’s bizarre speech could possibly not have occurred in a normal economic environment (any more than Macron’s admission that the Western hegemony is done with). According to Zerohedge (*2) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-26/things-will-never-be-same-again-here-are-20-questions-central-banks-admit-defeat Financial Times, the party organ of the globalist elite, admitted as much in its report on the Jackson Hole meeting. The central bankers “acknowledged they had reached a turning point in the way they viewed the global system. They cannot rely on the tools they used before the financial crisis to shape the economic environment, and the US can no longer be considered a predictable actor in economic or trade policy — even though there is no imminent replacement for the US dollar in sight.” There was an effective admission that the central bankers had run out of tricks to pull the economies out of the everything-bubble mess, not to mention the looming doomsday recession. According to FT, Carney went as far as flashing the war card saying: “past instances of very low rates have tended to coincide with high risk events such as wars, financial crises, and breaks in the monetary regime.” On the one hand this can be seen as an admission on how deeply tormented they are about the financial situation and what could happen when it comes crashing down. On the other hand, it can be seen as a sales pitch, “only we can fix it, trust us, give us a carte blanche.” Or more probably, both.

Note from above Carney saying: “the US can no longer be considered a predictable actor in economic or trade policy.” Bank of England President here directly attacking President Trump.

And just a couple of days later William Dudley an ex-president of New York Federal Reserve Bank (the most influential of the 12 federal reserve banks that comprise the Federal Reserve System) followed up on a direct attack on Trump. But as they say about spies, there are no ex-spies, and I would think the same applies for the global financial elite. And yes indeed, Dudley is a card carrying member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Dudley had penned an op-ed for Bloomberg titled “The Fed Shouldn’t Enable Donald Trump.” (*3) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-28/member-elite-bill-dudley-could-open-can-worms-quite-staggering , where he openly lobbies for the Fed to deliberately damage the economy in order to neutralize the policies (namely trade wars) of the sitting president and prevent his reelection chances by willfully ruining the economy.

One thing is for sure, the elite is desperate and in serious disarray. Very probable that the elite is split, too. It seems as if there were two globalist factions competing with each other and wanting to follow vastly different strategies. One faction supports Trump and the other is against him. Possibly, one that wants to do things with force and another that wants to gain by stealth. That could be Pentagon and the military-industrial complex vs. the financial elite, who also owns the media. My argument does not hinge on the veracity of those division lines, but that some rupture exists among the elites must be taken for granted, otherwise Trump would have been ousted by now with all that pressure on him.

To summarize this introduction. The Western world is in turmoil: the previous overwhelming geopolitical domination is gone and over with; military solutions against the main adversaries – China and Russia – are off the books; hybrid wars against them have failed; China and Russia are economically stronger than ever, too strong for the adversary; and to boot the domestic Western economies are in extraordinary bad shape, risking a depression of epic proportions.

Further down in this report, I will look at the one aspect of the question I am best equipped to handle, namely the economy. I will outline just in how bad shape the Western debt-fueled casino economies are. Having that as the background, I will then show how surprisingly strong the Russian economy is, at least in comparison with the Western gambling nations. Most importantly, Russia is virtually debtless, and that’s really the clue to survival in this extraordinary economic environment. In addition to the solid finances, Russia has other things going for it, too, as we will see below. I will not provide comparative data on China. One reason for that is, that China is not an economic risk. China does not have the debt problem that it is frequently touted in Western press to have. China, as the world’s number one export country, would of course take a hit in a serious global crisis, but that would not kill the economy. Although, China is the biggest exporter, there has been a shift from export-led growth towards domestic investment and consumption. The share of exports of goods and services in the country’s GDP was by 2018 down to 19.5%, half of the 2006 peak of 36%. On the contrary, the Chinese economy would stay vivid and therefore also help to sustain Russia’s exports.

I may add as one more piece of background, that it is my firm belief that the approaching economic disaster has long been evident to the central bankers and the globalist elite decision makers. Most likely the game plan was to establish the absolute world hegemony – which they not long ago thought was within early reach – and then after that deal with the debts as they saw fit as democratic dissent would not matter a bit anymore by then. That’s why they felt confident in building up the asset bubbles to carry them over to the final solution. Reminds me about a story told about Moscow’s so-called Khrushchyovka tenement buildings. These are low-cost three- to five-storied houses built quickly and cheap during the Khrushchev era to address the dire housing shortages of the 1960s. According to the story, the planners knew they would serve only for a few decades, but that would not matter all that much because by that time there would be Communism and everything would be perfect anyway. No Communism materialized, but presently the Moscow government under Mayor Sobyanin has initiated a program to tear them all down and erect new buildings where flats with title will be given for free to house the 1.5 million present residents of those buildings slated for replacement. – Well, that’s sort of Communism, isn’t it? – This kind of wishful thinking must have kept the globalist elite going, too. Unfortunately for the dreamers, though, their plans hit a snag in form of Russia and China.

Central bank fueled asset bubbles

Russia is low in debt, but you can’t say the same about the US and other Western nations. And that debt really is what got the world in the present mess and brought it teetering on the brink of financial collapse. Since the late 80s, the US central bank, the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan developed an addiction to cure any downward tick on Wall Street with easy credit, eventually requiring after every downturn ever bigger central bank liquidity injections to keep the stock indices on a growth curve. Greenspan was experimenting with a policy aimed at creating a “wealth effect” aka “trickle-down.” The idea being that Wall Street bankers and big corporations be stuffed with all the free money they can swallow for the purpose of keeping stock and bond prices high. The theoretical frame told that doing so something would eventually trickle down to the real economy, and everybody would live happily ever after. After stocks and bonds, Greenspan’s wealth effect policy was addressed to inflate home prices and all real estate with that. That was the road that eventually led to the 2008 subprime loan crisis, which took down Lehman Brothers and then all of Wall Street and the whole global economy.

But Wall Street recovered soon, because Greenspan’s successor Ben Bernanke had set forth to blow up an even bigger asset bubble. And the Europeans followed suit. The Fed fueled the market frenzy with creating money out of thin air (aka quantitative easing) in favor of governments, banks and corporations to the tune of $3.5 trillion in the decade following the 2008 collapse.

The European Central Bank has done the same for Europe in volumes more than 2.5 trillion euro to date. All the other Western central banks joined the gambling by flooding the markets with fiat money at same levels relatively speaking.

But anyway this astronomic leverage and the humongous budget deficits of the Western countries didn’t get the real economy anywhere. They have blown up asset bubbles of phantasmagorical proportions with preciously little trickle-down. Since the pre-crash peak in October 2007, the broadest US stock index (Wilshire 5000) has gained 95% (on top of covering the nearly 60% crash from in between). In the same 12-year period industrial production (manufacturing, mining, energy, utilities) has grown only 5% combined over all those years. (*4) https://www.deepstatedeclassified.com/heres-what-happens-when-the-fed-cuts-rates/ Deduct – the in itself lossmaking – shale oil and gas and there is barely no growth left in the 12 years. In fact, the US manufacturing sector was in June still 1.6% below the pre-crisis peak in December 2007. (*5) https://www.deepstatedeclassified.com/industrial-production-is-punk/ So we have a 5% gain in the most important part of the real economy vs. 95% in stock market gambling. The absurdity of the stock market growth is further evidenced by the gap between growth of real final sales and stock valuations since 2007 peak. Since then, the former has grown on an average 1.6% per year, while the stock market has delivered annualized growth at levels of 15%. Total industrial production share of the GDP in the US has sunk to 18%. (For comparison, the figure for Russia was 32% and growing.)

Trickle-down, anyone?

It would be false to claim there has not been any trickle-down at all. Millions of people have kept their jobs because of it. But at the same time they have had their real wages squeezed and the overwhelming majority have seen their standards of living drop. Only massive loads of consumer credits and ultra-cheap mortgages have kept up an illusion of superficial prosperity among the middle classes. This debt-fueled prosperity and it’s cursory result, the artificial real estate asset bubble will prove a wolf in sheep’s clothing when the everything-bubble bursts.

There’s been another form of trickle-down, too, a much more real and actually beneficial one. By creating the debt-fueled illusion of prosperity, the Western central banks have actually subsidized China, Russia and all of the emerging world as they have flushed their export goods on the global markets where the Western nations have picked it all up on borrowed money. Thanks for that, though. At the same time, that has driven production costs up in the West with the consequence that their own industries have been priced out.

The humongous borrowings fail to produce GDP growth

Every year since the last bout of the crisis in 2008, growth of debt in the national economies of each Western country has far exceeded the growth of economic output measured as GDP. Below chart shows just how bad it has been in the US.

The debt and GDP growth curves started to diverge in the late 70s, but from 2000 debt has spiraled out of control delivering preciously little incremental GDP. Deduct the wasteful debt and wasteful spending and there would be no growth whatsoever.

Not only has there been no real GDP growth but even the nominal growth has to a crucial extent been provided for by means of the enormous government borrowings. We see from below table that that in each year from 2008 to 2017 even the nominal GDP growth has been less than the growth of government debt, with 2015 and 2015 as the only exceptions when they were on par.

In the peak crisis years 2008 and 2009, debt growth was a staggering 5.7 and 6.3 times that of GDP growth.

The debt game has been equally miserable all over the West, perhaps with the only exception of Germany, who has wisely refrained from participating, even when egged on by liberal economists calling Germany’s more prudent policy unfair to the gambling nations. Below chart shows how much more the Western governments have borrowed than produced economic growth. The chart covers years 2004 to 2013, but the trend has been the same ever since. GDP growth has been vastly less than the growth of the colossal debtberg.

Note Russia there as the shining exception.

Below chart ranks countries according to their debt burden relative to GDP. And again you see how debtless Russia is compared with the squandering nations.

These charts concerned only government debt, when we add private debt to it, the picture is doubly worse. From the point of view of a national economy it really doesn’t matter in which form the excess debt expands, public or private. In fact, on an average in the West the situation with household debt is equally dire. Below chart tells you just how bad. And again note Russia as the one shining exception.

And it’s no better with corporations, which have throughout the last decade been enjoying mindboggling levels of central bank largesse in form of virtually unlimited interest-free financing. For example, compared to earnings, US bond issuers are about 50% more leveraged now than in 2007. (*6) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-24/corporate-debt-risk-flash-crash

Finally, there is the black hole containing trillions and trillions of bankers derivative risks. Deutsche Bank – which was recently placed in emergency care – alone is said to have 49 trillion dollars in exposure to derivatives. These risks alone could take down the whole global financial system. (*7) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-20/bank-49-trillion-derivatives-exposure-melting-down-our-eyes

First no real interest, then on to negative yields

One of the many deadly side effects of the central bankers’ practice on gambling with the national economies is that they first eliminated real interest rates (pushed rates below inflation) and then doubled down on the destruction of sound economic principles by cooking up a system with negative yielding bonds (bonds which yield below zero). By now $30 trillion of the $60 trillion US bond market yield below inflation (no real interest) and nearly $17 trillion worth of bonds are in negative yield territory. That’s mostly made up by sovereign debt of Japan and European governments (12 at the moment) but recently the mass of negative yielding corporate bonds has also doubled to $1.2 trillion. Half of the $5 trillion worth of European government bonds sport a negative yield as well as 20% of European investment grade corporate bonds.

Inflation risk

Normally, this kind of excess liquidity artificially put on the market (aka money printing) would have led to high inflation if not hyperinflation. Several factors have helped to keep prices in check. First, it needs to be pointed out, though, that inflation is actually a lot higher than what the government reports. This has been pretty convincingly proven in the case of the United States. (See, for example, (*8) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-17/cpi-constantly-understates-inflation-why-will-lead-catastrophe?fbclid=IwAR0byF4lMciG77ItFvkFhftV9qEnkXAuKaj9oYLmnZn5c8C4ds4E8mie7rk). Official statistics may not see it, but people sure feel it.

Secondly, the asset price bubbles in real estate and financial markets in fact represent inflation, it’s just not officially recorded as such. As it is only the 10% (and increasingly, the 1%) who get the money, they spend it on the stuff that counts for them, stocks and real estate. Keeping their loot offshore also helps to dampen inflation at home. The squeeze on the middle classes and stagnating wages, is sadly an important factor in keeping inflation down. Ordinary people just can’t afford to buy.

One should also note, that resulting from the illusionary debt-fueled prosperity and its effect on keeping the local Western currencies artificially high, there has actually been an inflation in wages and production costs, but only in relative terms in comparison with the emerging world. This in turn has led to further offshoring of manufacturing jobs.

A crucial factor, which in the crazy money printing environment has kept consumer goods from hyperinflating has been imports from the emerging Asia and especially China. Huge growth of the Chinese manufacturing industry coupled with massive influx of cheap labor from the rural countryside into the cities enabled China for a couple of decades to constantly increase its exports to the US and Europe and these countries to keep prices down. (Including by domestic industries having to lower prices in competition). With the Trump trade wars and dramatically increasing protectionism, this will change. And it could get very ugly.

Finally, there is an important consideration that few if anyone seem to understand. That is the fact that the US and other Western countries have been able to print the stupendous amounts of money while keeping rates down and without the currency values crashing only because they enjoy local currency monopolies in their respective territories. The USD has of course been enjoying a global monopoly, but that is fast fading. All the other factors mentioned above (and several other ones), have enabled to prop up and prolong these currency monopolies, but there is a limit to everything. In the coming recession, I would expect some of the lesser currencies to lose their monopoly trust and that would shatter the position of the bigger currencies USD and Euro and force them to raise interest rates. I have earlier written more in detail about this in a report titled How the Dollar and Euro Monopolies Destroyed the Real Market Economy. https://www.awaragroup.com/blog/dollar-euro-monopolies-destroyed-market-economy/

The below chart suggests that the Western countries are already on the way to lose their respective currency monopolies. The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) now have a combined GDP (measured in PPP, which is the only correct way to measure the relative size of national economies) larger than not only the G7 countries, but the US and Eurozone economies combined.

At its foundation in 1973, the G7 countries had a combined GDP PPP of 50% of the world economy, by today it is down to 30%. In the same time the nominal GDP share of world economy has crashed from 80% to 40%. The currency monopolies came with the economic superiority, it is therefore only natural that with the economic domination goes the currency domination, too. If we haven’t reached the tipping point yet, then that will happen within 5 to 10 years.

In summary, everything else unchanged, the risk of inflation picking up with just a few percentage points could have the entire Western financial systems coming crashing down due to the pressure on interest rates growing. The Fed and the ECB are continuously speaking about their inflation targets and how they want to pump the markets with more liquidity to raise inflation. There could yet be a big surprise in store for them. Interest rates as such could also be the primary trigger (even without inflation first rising), as nations would have to protect their currencies and attract financing for their colossal debtbergs.

Must add as a P.S. that the incipient flight to gold might well be one of the trigger events for those currencies to lose their monopolies. (Gold price is up 20% since May).

Deleveraging will come

These massive borrowings have delivered nothing of tangible value. Now, when the party is nearly over all there is left are the debt bubbles that have hit the roof. The real values of all the assets below bear no relation to the money that went into inflating the balloons. What’s left is economic hardship for 80% of the people, a crumbling infrastructure and simmering social tensions.

The debt saturation point has been reached, therefore this time it will be different, the central bankers have lost their magic wand and won’t be able to renew the debt binge and extend it with one more decade. Instead, there will be a day of reckoning. Governments and corporations will have to put their act together and let the market weed out the failed entities. Those who cannot carry the debt, will have to shed it. There will be bloodbath with defaults, bankruptcies and massive unemployment. – Perhaps a revolution here and there. – There will be no choice, deleveraging must happen.

Now, whether this system will come crashing down or just slowly die as it trundles downhill will not matter all that much. It will eventually die either way. Most people would prefer the slow motion option, but only with the crash would a cure come. Whatever, it has become increasingly difficult to stave off the crash and this time around, the financial markets would take the real economy down with them big time.

The impressive figures on Russia

The question then is, who would be left standing? Naturally, those who are less leveraged. Now, scroll back to have a new look at the above charts on government and household debt. Find the position of Russia there? That’s right. Russia is the country with – by far – the least debt, both public and private. Having after 2014 following sanctions been cut off from the Western debt orgy, even Russian corporations are shielded against a possible Western debt apocalypse.

In a global recession, no country is safe, but Russia looks to have quite a lot going for it in terms of economic advantages. Russia’s national balance sheet is next to none with by far the lowest debt of all major countries. All economic actors, the government, corporations and households are economically solid and minimally leveraged. Not only is the government virtually debtless, but it has again replenished its spectacular forex and sovereign wealth fund reserves. On top of that comes a hefty budget surplus. – Yes, you heard that right, surplus. In a time when all Western countries are in a chronic fight against deficits, you rarely even hear the term budget surplus. And more, Russia runs the world’s third biggest trade surplus. Add to that the current account surplus, and there’s the hat trick in form of your classic triple surpluses. Russia has a lot more going for it, too, as we will see.

Let’s look at Russia’s present financial health report.

Thanks to import substitution (domestic production instead of imports to neutralize sanctions) Russia’s industrial production rose 2.6% year-on-year in June. (USA +1.1%, UK +0.8%, Japan -2.4%, Germany -5.9%). Above, we mentioned that US industrial production was up with as little as a cumulative 5% since 2008 to date. In the same period Russia’s industry grew 18% notwithstanding the hardships of sanctions and sharp drop in oil price. In fact, since 2014 when the sanctions were first imposed, Russia’s industry has grown 12%.

Russia’s merchandise trade surplus for the first half of 2019 was $93 billion, ranking third in the world after China and Germany and before South Korea. Imports were down by 3%, the other side of the coin of growing domestic manufacturing. Even when exports also were slightly down, lower imports will keep the surplus on track to reach levels near $200 billion for the full year, just under last year’s record $212 billion.

Q1 current account surplus clocked in at $33 billion, up 10% over the year.

In this connection, it might be helpful to remind that Russia’s economy is nowhere near as dependent on fossil fuel extraction as it is habitually believed in the West. In fact, oil and gas only account for 10% of Russia’s GDP according to World Bank statistics. (In 2017, total natural resources share of GDP was 10.7%, but that includes minerals and forest, too).

We also need to point out that Russia has an enormous strength by way of being the world’s most self-sufficient major country. Russia has the by far lowest level of imports relative to GDP of all countries, as evidenced by below table. It shows that Russia’s imports as a share of GDP was as low as 7.2%, while the corresponding level for Western European countries was between 30 to 40%. The extraordinary low levels of imports in a global comparison obviously signifies that Russia produces domestically a much higher share of all that it consumes (and invests), this in turn means that the economy is superbly diversified contrary to the claims of most so-called Russia experts.

Despite initial scares, inflation has remained low even when the VAT rate was from the new year raised from 18% to 20%. The rolling 12-month inflation runs at 4.6% but with the declining trend the full year inflation is expected to hit the central bank’s target 4%.

The job market continues strong with record low unemployment levels, while the job participation rate has not deteriorated (so no tricks here). The July reading of 4.6% translates to 3.4 million unemployed, which is low for a country with a population of 146 million. The strength of the labor market was underscored by an increase of real salaries by 3.5% by July. This while disposable income otherwise has remained subdued.

Whereas the US is combating persistent budget deficits (latest reading, a deficit of 4.5% of GDP) – likewise the EU countries – Russia mustered a huge budget surplus equal to 3.4% of the GDP by July this year.

Russia’s foreign exchange and gold reserves have also done a spectacular comeback reaching $520 billion.

The Russia sovereign wealth fund surged in July to reach a value equal to 7.2% of GDP.

Despite the wholesome macroeconomic environment and impressive figures, Russia’s GDP growth has been less than 1% so far this year (year-on-year 0.6% in Q1 and 0.9% in Q2). However, by the looks of it the fundamental economy seems to be growing and modernizing, while the drag on the growth comes from depressed household consumption. What’s more important, though, is that while Russia’s growth is hovering around the 1%, so is that of all of the Western world. (Accuse me of whataboutism if you will, but these things need to be put in perspective). Q2 growth in the Eurozone was 1.1%, with Germany even about to slide into recession. UK clocked in at 1.2% and Japan at 0.4%. (All figures, year-on-year). The US showed only 2% (revised down 28 August) even when fueled by a mountainous budget deficit set to reach $1 trillion for the fiscal year and despite all that easy money the Fed keeps pumping out. Only China remained firmly in growth territory with 6.2%.

But, the real conundrum is, how can Russia produce the same GDP as all the Western countries with their seemingly limitless injections of give-away money? How is it possible that all those trillions and trillions that the Western central bankers have thrown on the economy do not produce any real incremental economic output?

The big disadvantage Russia has compared with the Western countries is the exorbitant real interest rate that the central bank maintains. The steering rate is presently 7.25%, with inflation predicted to be 4%, that translates into a primary real interest of 3.25%. Compare that with the negative real interest – and even negative yields – of competitor countries. As, the Russian central bank has failed to create a real banking sector which would lend according to international standards to the country’s businesses, the ones that are lucky to get a loan at all would look to pay interest at the level of 15% of more (save the largest corporations). The Governor of the Russian Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina does not see this as a problem, though. She has said that instead she would pin her hopes on improving the countries investment climate (sic!). (She calls for improvement of corporate governance, development of human capital, and all kinds of nice things. That would sure do it). (*9) http://ibcongress.com/en/news/nabiullina-nazvala-glavnye-ogranichenija-dlja-razvitija-ekonomiki-rossii/

Just this week, Putin called a high profile meeting with Nabiullina, the minister for economic development Maxim Oreshkin, and the finance minister Anton Sulanov, to express his deep concern with the sluggish GDP growth and stagnating income. No doubt, that the depressed income is not only a drag on the economy but on the president’s popularity. There is only one quick fix for it. The government and the CBR must ditch their overzealous austerity programs. It’s good that Russia is not over leveraged with debt, but certainly some debt would be in order to finance the infrastructure and other national strategic development programs instead of ripping it off people’s backs. Free the funds for raising pensions and public service salaries instead. And most importantly, Nabiullina must lower the rates and not run real interests in excess of 3% when the rest of the developed world is in negative territory. There is no other quick remedy for raising people’s income. That’s Putin’s choice. Hope somebody tells that to him.

In conclusion, we are not saying that Russia would not be hurt by the coming recession, we merely express our confidence that Russia is among the world’s countries best placed to cope with it.

Jon Hellevig, originally from Finland, works and lives in Moscow since the early 1990s. By education lawyer and MBA, Hellevig first worked in Moscow as a financial controller for a Russia-American joint venture engaged in shipment of oil and later became founder together with Russian partners of a business administration and consulting firm. Hellevig has written several books on Russian taxation and labor law. From mid-2000, Hellevig has written books on philosophy and social practices. The combination of his experience of actual life and governance in Russia with the theoretical framework pushed Hellevig to engage in the public debate about Russia’s development path including by way of writing articles for the part of the media, which is interested in the truth. Having at least a working knowledge of seven languages (English, Russian, Finnish, Swedish, Spanish, German, and French), Hellevig has been able to follow first-hand the news across the Western hemisphere. Doing so, he realized a decade or so ago, that all the Western media in unison report the same stories about Russia and circulate the same fabricated scandals in the same words at the same time. Frustrated with the totalitarian style propaganda lies about Russia, Hellevig began to regularly produce fundamental analysis reports on the Russian economy in the wake of the sanctions that the Western powers imposed on Russia following the Ukrainian crisis in 2014

CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE – WHITE HELMETS, “BANA AL-ABED” AND KILLING “EVIL RUSSIANS”

South Front

Since the formal defeat of ISIS’ self-proclaimed caliphate and so-called “moderate rebels” in most of Syria, the Middle Eastern country, has largely disappeared from the front-pages of mainstream media outlets. Nonetheless, the narrative management operation to distort the real situation in the war-torn country and demonize the Damascus government and its allies fighting foreign-backed radical militant groups continues.

The upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is an obvious example of the scale and spread of this campaign. The official trailer for the new part of the franchise features “heroic actions” of the White Helmets, “big bad Russians” bombing civilians and a kid in a gas mask apparently signaling the expected usage of “Assad’s chemical weapons” mantra in the story-telling.

The description of the first missions of the coming part of the world franchise reveals that they will incorporate Russian soldiers laughing while killing civilians as well as using chemical weapons against civilians. So, a “Bana al-Abed”-styled girl will have to kill some “evil Russkies”.

It appears that the goal of this effort is to bring back into attention some propaganda narratives that appear to have, at least partially, died down in recent years under pressure of facts. It’s an open secret that the White Helmets have deep ties with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the official branch of al-Qaeda in Syria) and other radical groups de-facto playing a role in their propaganda wing and participating in staging chemical attack provocations.

The Twitter account of Bana al-Abed became widely known during the battle for Aleppo in 2016. The account operator, using the name and photos of the then 7yo girl, was writing scripted tweets blaming the “Assad regime” and Russia for civilian casualties, spreading fake news and even calling to start a new world war if that’s what’s needed to rescue what the account described as “innocent civilians”. After defeat of the radical groups controlling her part of the city, Bana and her parents withdrew from Aleppo alongside other members of militant groups that had reached a surrender deal with the Damascus government. Later, she and her family appeared in Turkey where Bana’s image continued to be used as a tool of the ongoing campaign against Syria. Her case is a sad example of how kids are being used for war propaganda purposes.

An interesting fact is that the “Call of Duty” game writer is not even hiding that the mainstream video game franchise seeks to indoctrinate its users. Taylor Kurosaki said that “he wants “Call of Duty” to be spoken of as on par with the best war films, and he hopes ‘Modern Warfare’ will inspire fans to check out the harrowing and eye-opening documentaries ‘The White Helmets’ or ‘Last Man in Aleppo”.” It’s no surprise that both mentioned “documentaries” were designed to glorify the White Helmets and militant groups they were assisting by their work and had little in common with the real situation in parts of the country, including, at some point, eastern Aleppo, controlled by MSM-promoted “moderate rebels”.

However, the latest Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game, underlined a tendency that is by no means new. In some cases, modern video games, movies and even comic books are infested with war propaganda even more than news pieces released by CNN and similar media outlets.

Even DC comics, in late 2018, in its Doomsday Clock crossover with Watchmen showcased a superhero from Syria, called Sandstorm, who could control the desert sands. The generic stereotype boy called Nabil Azmah was from Douma, which isn’t even in the desert. He was later killed in the comics, fighting against the “Assad regime.” According to his fictional biography, his family were killed by fighters allied to Assad and his sister was gassed.

To top it off, in the next issue, Russian President Vladimir Putin was portrayed as the bad guy and even picked a fight with Superman, after a US superhero – Firestorm – democratically turned Russian citizens on Red Square into glass.

These tendencies are nothing new. DC comics, in the 80s, portrayed Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, who concludes a deal with Batman’s infamous enemy the Joker. The Joker then says that Iranians and him have a lot in common, namely “being insane.”

The mainstream entertainment industry is doing its best to “inform”  American youth of who the “good guys” are in Syria and around the world, even if these “good guys” accidentally appear to be members of al-Qaeda.

This situation is a demonstration of how little propaganda capabilities Syria, Venezuela, China, Iran or Russia really do have in comparison with their “Western partners”. In most cases, the US and the EU use bogeyman stories about the mighty Russian, Chinese, Iranian and even Syrian propagandists as formal justification to tighten censorship and to increase their own propaganda efforts.

When CNN Crew Blew Up the Oil Pipeline in Homs

Source

February 20, 2019

CNN, along with all other Western corporate media, is not a news reporting establishment as people are told, it can be described as a News Faking Establishment, better even call it: The Pentagon’s Propaganda Arm.

They’re not innocent of any blood drop shed during any of the US and its cronies adventures worldwide throughout their lifespan. CNN is relatively new comparing with corporations like the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Reuters, and alike.

We have repeated many times and in many forums how the manager of Reuters office in Syria, a Jordanian Khaled Oweis, actually doctored an interview he made with a wounded Syrian Arab Army soldier who received a bullet from the ‘Peaceful Protesters’ in Daraa, and the Reuters ‘journalist’ covered his voice and repeated: ‘The Syrian security officer shot you because you refused to shoot at the protesters?’.

That’s just one sick example exposed by a vigilant Syrian presenter who caught the same interview on his camera and displayed in full on Syrian TV channels at the very early days of the crisis in Syria.

Reuters office manager in Syria was arrested and as you would expect the entire West went lunatic exerting super pressure on the Syrian state, aided with Syria’s own allies sad to say, to release the ‘journalist’ and ‘respect free speech’.

Eventually, the Syrian state released the criminal, dubbed journalist, and expelled him from the country, and expelled with him all foreign-based news channels, and allowed only selected ones with no previous lying track record, again to the madness of Western countries.

The expelling of Western news agencies, the likes of Reuters, AFP, AP, New York Times, Washington Post, DW, BBC, France 24, and their Arabic versions like Al Jazeera, and Al Arabiya, Qatari and Saudi state-owned channels respectively, their expelling from Syria at the critical early days have saved countless lives of innocent Syrians.

We have exposed numerous times the lies of these establishments and their ilks, especially in regards to the War of Terror the US and its lackeys waged against Syria.

The following is part of longer report how a Syrian activist Rafic Lutf managed to expose how the CNN crew led by anchor Arwa Damon (or Deamon) participated in blowing up an oil pipeline in Homs in one of the coldest winters the country witnessed just to have a news line accusing the Syrian state with this heinous crime they committed. The full report was deleted by YouTube when they suspended our channel with no proper justification. Watch:

We urge each state tha has an office or a representative of one of these news channels to treat them as criminals, or at least to deal with them with extra care, no one knows when they will be activated.

Corporate Media: WMDs Weapons of Mass Deception

Just for a comparison: Syrian-based media are not allowed to air in the EU, USA, Canada, and Australia, since 2012, they’re also banned from satellite transmission on all Western and Arab owned satellites, that’s to ‘Promote Freedom of Speech’, we were told. Many Syrian media related individuals, private and public, are on Western sanctions lists.

I have a saying I kept repeating to Western citizens and it’s relative to all the crimes against humanity committed by their politicians in their names with their tax monies: ‘They fool you, they keep fooling you, and they enjoy fooling you, not because they’re smart, it’s because you’re foolable.‘

Sheeple: A typical western family following mainstream media