Zelensky’s Comic Insults… Gimme HIMARS, Tanks, F-16s and Now America’s Sons & Daughters

March 3, 2023

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The glib talk of people dying for no good cause, but rather only for a clique of clowns and their imperial circus, is the ultimate sick joke.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky sparked indignation and outrage this week with his grim warning that America’s sons and daughters will end up fighting and dying if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine.

His presumptuous comments were made at a press conference on February 24 but only gained notoriety this week, provoking howls of derision and disgust. The reckless insanity of the war in Ukraine – and the catastrophe it is leading to – has become unbearable.

U.S. politicians – mainly on the Republican side – as well as ordinary citizens have become rightly alarmed by the blank-check policy of the Biden administration to prop up the Kiev regime with up to $100 billion in military and financial support over the past year.

There is growing public anger both in the United States and across the European Union with the bottomless pit of money that governments have unaccountably reached into and thrown at Ukraine. Western states have increasingly escalated the war with supplies of heavier and longer-range weapons. Not one Western so-called leader has made any diplomatic effort to resolve the conflict. The United States and European Union have mobilized totally in war mode, without any public debate or accountability.

The Kiev regime is the perfect partner for the NATO war machines because of its insatiable demand for ever more weaponry.

Zelensky and his cabal of corrupt cronies have like ventriloquist puppets played their squalid part by poaching for the conveyor belt of weaponry to be sped up. It’s almost comical when NATO leaders are at other times quietly calling on the Kiev regime to slow down its consumption of ammunition because their own arsenals are being depleted and leaving their states undefended.

The charade has worked a treat up to a point. American and NATO military manufacturers have made record profits and have seen unprecedented stock-market investment gains from the war racket that is Ukraine.

However, the comic actor-turned-politician is in serious danger of overplaying his wheedling role. President Joe Biden has even resorted to cautioning Zelensky to tamp down his zealous public demands for weapons and money out of concern that the “gimme, gimme, gimme” attitude is running the risk of infuriating American and European taxpayers who will foot the bill of goodies at a time of unprecedented social and economic hardships.

So when Zelensky went further to warn that American sons and daughters will end up fighting and dying if more weapons are not supplied to Ukraine there is a sense that an unacceptable level of forbearance has been surpassed. The proverbial last straw.

Western media immediately rushed to cover up his remarks by claiming – incredibly – that Zelensky did not say what he did.

The Western public is right to see through the appalling racket. Not only has the Western military-industrial complex gotten obscenely rich, but Zelensky and his junta have also milked the American and European public like a cash cow. Zelensky and his cronies have made multi-millions in offshore funds and assets. The weapons flooding into Ukraine have been sold off on the black market ending up in the hands of terrorists and criminal networks all over the world. Even the Pentagon’s inspectors admit they don’t know where all the weapons have gone.

Not only that but the endless arms bazaar has prolonged the war in Ukraine with horrendous casualties among Ukrainians drafted to fight a NATO proxy war against Russia. A war that the Ukrainian regime has no chance of winning. The imminent Russian victory at Bakhmut spells the collapse of the NATO-backed regime. And with that collapse will come the crashing of NATO’s much-vaunted prestige. If you thought the Afghanistan debacle was bad, wait to see the gnashing of teeth over Ukraine.

Tragically, this war – the biggest in Europe since World War Two – could have been avoided if Washington and its European minions had heeded Russia’s security concerns about NATO’s expansion that had long been raised. The Western rulers chose not to deal with Moscow through politics and diplomacy, making an armed confrontation inevitable.

Washington and its imperial lackeys have made the conflict into an existential crisis with fraudulent claims about “defending democracy and freedom” from alleged Russian aggression. The grandiose deception covers up the real agenda of American hegemonic ambitions towards Russia and China.

The Zelensky puppet regime – infested with corruption and Nazi paramilitaries armed by NATO – is claiming that if it falls to Russia’s military then Western states will be facing Russian aggression. That’s why he made the ridiculous claim that without more weapons being sent, Russia will next invade NATO states, and American sons and daughters will end up fighting and dying.

This is a grotesque distortion of what is happening in Ukraine and what the real causes of the conflict are about.

The reality is Ukraine has been destroyed by American imperialist machinations since the 2014 CIA-backed in Kiev. Russia has been forced to eliminate a Neo-Nazi regime that the NATO powers deliberately and covertly weaponized. President Biden and his feckless corrupt son Hunter have been personally involved in the creation of the Frankenstein monster, as have senior members of this White House administration, including Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan. These same people sanctioned the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines in an act of international terrorism against supposed NATO allies, such is their criminality.

The ceaseless corruption of Ukraine under American and European indulgence has led to the abysmal danger of an all-out war with Russia that if it were to happen could end the world in a nuclear conflagration. Washington and its NATO minions are precluding any diplomatic way out of the crisis because of their lies and criminal Russophobia. The war racket is too addictive for the NATO war junkies and their crime syndicate intel agencies. The logical endpoint of this perverse charade involves the potential of all-out world war. Zelensky in his sordid comic star-turn inadvertently went off script with his shocking ad-lib remarks.

Those remarks – among many other inanities uttered by Zelensky, Biden, Scholz, Macron, Sunak, Von der Leyen, Borrell, Stoltenberg and other NATO war-pimps – are akin to the clown’s mask slipping, revealing the ugly face beneath. The American people and all others around the world should be horrified and furious.

The glib talk of people dying for no good cause, but rather only for a clique of clowns and their imperial circus, is the ultimate sick joke.

Ukraine Tried To Trick NATO Into Starting World War III After It Accidentally Bombed Poland

Nov 16, 2022

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By Andrew Korybko

The Ukrainian leadership was well aware of what happened but decided to propagate the most dangerous conspiracy theory in history in an attempt to spark World War III. The Western public would do well to dwell on this since it means that they’ve been forced by their governments into subsidizing what can objectively be described as a literal apocalyptic death cult that lied to their leaders in an attempt to get them to bomb Russia and thus likely end the world.

NATO and Russia briefly stood on the brink of World War III Tuesday evening after Ukraine accidentally bombed Poland. The incident happened as its forces were trying to intercept incoming Russian missiles during what’s been described as Moscow’s fiercest attack of its special operation thus far that some speculated coincided with the failure of rumored ceasefire talks. Instead of shooting down the Russian missile, Kiev’s S-300 malfunctioned and ended up dropping into Poland, where it killed two people.

The Ukrainian leadership was well aware of what happened but decided to propagate the most dangerous conspiracy theory in history in an attempt to literally spark World War III. Zelensky lied to the world by describing his forces’ accidental bombing of Poland as “a Russian missile strike on collective security” and telling NATO that “We need to act.” His Foreign Minister in turn gaslit by claiming that all allegations that his side was responsible for this incident are nothing but “Russian propaganda”.

To his credit, Biden told the press in response to a question about whether Russia was responsible that “There is preliminary information that contests that. It is unlikely in the lines of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia, but we’ll see.” In the same article reporting his words, the Associated Press also cited three unnamed US officials who said “preliminary assessments suggested the missile was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian missile”.

There’s no reason to doubt Biden’s assessment nor that of those three unnamed US officials. After all, if any of them had any credible reason to suspect that Russia bombed NATO-ally Poland – whether accidentally or not – then they’d have reacted very differently due to their collective security commitments under Article 5. Quite clearly, just like with the Nord Stream terrorist attack that was in all likelihood carried out by the Anglo-American Axis, NATO doesn’t truly hold Moscow responsible.

This objective conclusion, which is informed by the public assessment shared by none other than the US President and therefore can’t by any stretch of the imagination of described as so-called “Russian propaganda”, proves that Kiev was indeed conspiring to trick NATO into starting World War III. That realization contradictions so-called “conventional wisdom” of the Ukrainian Conflict thus far since the public in the US-led West’s Golden Billion has been under the false impression that Kiev is “winning”.

Had that really been the case, then its President and Foreign Minister wouldn’t have lied to the world by blaming Russia after their own forces accidentally bombed Poland, which was indisputably an attempt to manipulate NATO into directly reacting in what almost certainly would have been a kinetic manner. A conventional attack by NATO against Russia, whether within its universally recognized pre-2014 borders or those former Ukrainian regions that reunified with it afterwards, would have sparked a wider war.

The very fact that Kiev’s top officials literally conspired to set that apocalyptic scenario into motion suggests that their side isn’t as confident with its newfound on-the-ground gains as it publicly claims. Rather, they seem to fear that the rumored ceasefire talks between Russia and the US over the past week coupled with its NATO patrons’ limited military-industrial capacity to maintain the scope, scale, and pace of their aid will inevitably result in unbearable pressure upon it to compromise with Moscow.

That’s unacceptable to its hyper-nationalist leadership and those of its people who’ve been brainwashed into expecting the maximum fulfilment of their side’s objectives in the conflict, which translates into reconquering the Crimea, Donbass, and Novorosissya regions that all reunified with Russia. Failing that, it’s unlikely that Zelensky and his clique could maintain their grip on power in the face of populist protests, especially if hyper-nationalist elements of the SBU support that Color Revolution scenario.

It was therefore purely with their own political interests in mind that they conspired to trick NATO into starting World War III by lying to their allies in claiming that it was Russia that deliberately bombed Poland and not their own forces that accidentally did so while trying to shoot down its enemy’s missiles. Put simply, the Ukrainian leadership would rather risk a nuclear apocalypse provoked by their conspiracy theory than risk being overthrown through a popular uprising backed by the SBU.  

The Western public would do well to dwell on this since it means that they’ve been forced by their governments into subsidizing what can objectively be described as a literal apocalyptic death cult that lied to their leaders in an attempt to get them to bomb Russia and thus likely spark World War III. The Ukrainian leadership is therefore a danger not just to its own people and Russia’s, but to the entire world. There’s no doubt that its patrons must urgently force it to accept a ceasefire before it’s too late.

WORLDMuslim Brotherhood Mob Boss Qaradawi Dies

September 30, 2022

Declan Hayes

The only tragedy about the death at 96 years of age of Youssef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s deadliest terrorist grouping, is that the Muslim Brotherhood did not die along with him.

The only tragedy about the death at 96 years of age of Youssef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s deadliest terrorist grouping, is that the Muslim Brotherhood did not die along with him.

Qaradawi was the Egyptian born spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood murder gang. Typical of the beliefs Qaradawi espoused was that Hitler went too easy on the Jews, that the world’s 100 million Shia, along with all apostates from Sunni Islam, must be exterminated and that his Islamic Caliphate should rule over us all. He lived in Qatar and, when not spewing out misogynistic, Shiaphobic, anti Semitic bile from that excuse for a country on al Jazeera’s top rating TV show. this hateful, Hitler loving demagogue issued fatwas to the Muslim Brotherhood faithful to slaughter Syria’s minorites and “apostates”.

The Muslim Brotherhood, its strong links with Western intelligence forces and dubious Trotsykist groups notwithstanding, is the Arab world’s original, most subversive, and most dangerous terrorist organization. It strongly believes in imposing the Caliphate and, as their countless atrocities in Egypt and Syria show, murdering or subjugating all who resist them. There will be no peace in the Arab or Western worlds until the Muslim Brotherhood is crushed in its Egyptian and Syrian spawning grounds and in those areas of the Western world NATO has allowed it colonize. Syria’s former ruler, the late Hafez el Assad, accurately described these NATO aligned devils in this video.

Following their failed 1982 coup, most Syrian Muslim Brotherhood terrorists fled into safe haven bolt holes from where they built a network of dedicated and highly professional cadres to spew their toxins. Though the Muslim Brotherhood Support Network in the West deserves a lot more scrutiny to determine why supposed left wing groups support these sectarian cut throats, they are, from my experience at least, protected by MI5 and allied intelligence agencies.

Take the case of Omar Gabbar, who shared a platform with prominent child sex jihad proponent Muhammed al-Arefe. Not only did Gabbar’s Hand in Hand for Syria front group secure one of the world’s top child sex jihadist recruiters in their first month of operation “from a Leicester kitchen table” but their original posters were designed by Turkish-based hacks of the terrorist Free Syrian Army, whose flag is emblazoned on the logo of Hand in Hand for Syria. Gabbar should, together with the legal hounds and British armed response units he set on me, consider that decent people, who are not members of the Muslim Brotherhood or any of its satellites, have got very lengthy prison tariffs for much less. Though al-Arefe is now barred from Britain, Omar Gabbar remains there and, like many others, who brought al-Arefe to Britain, is allowed work, as a hospital consultant in his case, where he has access to the young and impressionable children al-Arefe expects to do sex jihad.

The Muslim Brotherhood are allowed leverage the professional status of operatives like Gabbar not only to bring sex jihadist recruiting sergeants like Al Arefe to England to help the Canadian secret service ferry child brides like Shamima Begum to their Syrian caliphate but to collect tens of millions of dollars for the Caliphate under false pretenses thanks, in large part to the control MI5 have over the Charity Commission which can be seen, inter alia, by the example of Samara’s Appeal, a dodgy Anglican cult charity focused on Syria, which is exempted from having to list its trustees.

Gabbar is not the Muslim Brotherhood’s only well placed British asset. Dr Rola Hallam is the daughter of Mousa al Kurdi, one of the head honchos in the supposedly moderate wing of Syria’s Murder Inc; she can drive through ISIS checkpoints at will, as this website based on BBC Panorama’s farcical puff piece plainly illustrates.. Though Hand in Hand for Syria’s collusion with ISIS, as evidenced by their ability to sail through ISIS checkpoints and to work in ISIS strongholds, is a further indication that the moderate and less moderate wings of Syria’s Murder Inc are in bed together and that the British and Irish authorities should consider rounding up the flotsam working with them, that will not happen because Qaradawi’s Muslim Brotherhood are so well engrained at the heart of British and Irish political life.

At the center of the effort to hijack Ireland’s traditional tolerance stand the extremists of the Clonskeagh Mosque aka The Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland, which Wikileaks’ leaked U.S. cable and all informed writers say, have embedded ties to the most extreme elements of the Muslim Brotherhood murder gang. The mosque or “cultural center”, which gets massive subsidies from the opaque Dubai-based Al Maktoum foundation and sources linked to other totalitarian Gulf states, regularly hosts such “scholars” as Saudi cleric Salman al Awda, who calls for the total extermination of all Americans, and Egyptian demagogue Wagdy Ghoneim, whose views likewise make him an international pariah in places where the writ of the Muslim Brotherhood does not run as deeply as it does in Ireland.

The “cultural center’s” head religious figure is Hussein Halawa, an Egyptian blow-in, who has lived in Ireland for decades but who cannot speak either English or Irish. Halawa reported directly to Yusuf al-Qaradawi through The European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) which al Qaradawi controlled. Although the arch-bigot Qaradawi was eventually banned from Ireland, Halawa not only remains at large but his children, who were arrested on Muslim Brotherhood related terror charges in Egypt, became a cause célèbre amongst Ireland’s media and large sections of Ireland’s political class, despite Halawa being a leading supporter of Qaradawi and his cut throats. If Halawa was just an otherwise parasitical, functionally illiterate Egyptian blow-in and if female Irish “reverts” were not ending up in accident and emergency wards after “honor beatings”, some of this idiot’s utterances might be tolerable but the fact that his children felt compelled to rush to aid Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as they persecuted Copts and lynched Shias should be definite warning flags even if an alarmingly large number of Irish politicians and other useful idiots opportunistically support him.

In an earlier piece on MI5 subversion in Iran, I cited the great Gamal Nasser mocking the Muslim Brotherhood over their attempts to destroy secular Egypt. Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood could claim to have got the last laugh both in Egypt and Syria, thanks both to their outright terrorism and the massive support they have received from the intelligence agencies of the United States, Canada, Britain, Israel, Ireland and a host of other countries with no more regard to the harm they do than have any other comparable bunch of sociopaths. Although Syria’s current President has repeatedly warned the West against the spill over effects of Muslim Brotherhood terrorism, Western leaders do not care because it is not how they are hard wired.

As long as the Biden, Obama, Clinton, Cheney, Blair and Bush families, together with their minions, can benefit from promoting the Zelenskys and Qaradawis of this world, innocents will continue to die in Armenia, Syria, Yemen, Russia or anywhere else, Western Europe included, they choose to make a wasteland. So, to conclude, grieve not for Qaradawi but only that the Muslim Brotherhood and all its obnoxious tentacles have survived him.

Why Russia is Ready to Check-mate the U.S. and its Western Empire

January 11, 2022

By Finian Cunningham

Source

The Western empire-builders are weakened and exposed in the eyes of their own populations and thus are disarmed politically to pursue confrontation.

Author and commentator Alex Krainer explains in the following interview why Russia is now strong enough to take a definitive stand against the United States and its Western empire-builders. This is the wider historical context for high-level negotiations being conducted this week between Russia and the U.S. and NATO in which Moscow has asserted red lines for its national security.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S.-led Western powers became deluded with arrogant entitlement. As Krainer points out, the Western empire-builders presumed to have the right to wage wars and flout international law. For much of the past three-decade period, Russia was too weak economically and politically to challenge this reckless aggression. But now it has grown strong enough to “check-mate the empire’s global ambitions”. This is why war or regime change in Russia has become an obsessive goal for the U.S. and Western partners. It accounts for the relentless sanctions, Russophobia and surge in tensions over Ukraine and more recently Kazakhstan.

Russia is perceived as an obstacle to Western control over the strategically vital Eurasian continent. The prize of Eurasia has long been coveted by Western imperialists, from the British Empire’s Sir Halford Mackinder to the U.S. strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski. As Krainer notes, it was this imperial calculation by the Anglo-American capitalists that led to the building up of Nazi Germany as a bludgeon to destroy the Soviet Union and purportedly to give the empire-builders global hegemony. This imperial machination led to World War II and the greatest conflagration in human history with as many as 85 million dead. The Soviet Union and China accounted for more than half of the death toll.

Today, the Western imperialists are prepared to start another catastrophic war, even if it risks a nuclear Armageddon, contends Krainer. But he says that Russia is strong enough to now force the Western imperialists into political detente. He believes that the Russian leadership has calculated that the Western empire-builders are weakened and exposed in the eyes of their own populations and thus are disarmed politically to pursue confrontation.

Alex Krainer is a commodities trader and hedge fund manager whose market analysis can be found at I-System Trend Following. He is also a commentator on international politics at thenakedhedgie.com. A recent article reassesses the British “appeasement policy” towards Hitler in the 1930s arguing the real aim was to weaponize the Third Reich against the Soviet Union. He refers to this deeper historical account to demolish false analogies made today by Western politicians and pundits who absurdly compare Russia and Putin with Nazi Germany and Hitler. Krainer is the author of the ground-breaking book “Grand Deception: the Truth About Bill Browder, the Magnitsky Act and Anti-Russian Sanctions”.

Alex Krainer

Interview

Question: Some American and European politicians are demanding that there should be “no appeasement” towards Russia over the mounting tensions and security crisis regarding Ukraine and Europe generally. The insinuation is that Russia is comparable to Nazi Germany in the 1930s by allegedly posing an existential threat to Europe’s security. You point out that there is a grossly distorted analogy here with how Britain and France are accused of “appeasement” of Nazi Germany in the lead-up to the Second World War. Can you explain?

Alex Krainer: Western powers seem to have largely lost institutional brakes on waging war. Someone cries “human rights,” and we seem prepared to obliterate entire nations with hardly any debate, discussion, or any long-term plan. The consent for war, or “kinetic action”, is simply contrived by myriad think-tanks, often directly or indirectly funded by the military-industrial complex. With unhindered access to the media, these organizations produce rhetoric that rationalizes hostility, demonization of targeted adversaries and justifications for war. Today, as tensions with Russia have escalated to a boiling point, some of them draw historical parallels between today’s Russia and Nazi Germany. Among others, Victoria Nuland and Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger have recently invoked Britain’s 1938 policy of appeasement that caused the destruction of Czechoslovakia and empowered Hitler. The insinuation is that today, Ukraine is Czechoslovakia, Donbas is Sudetenland and that Vladimir Putin is Hitler. If the parallels were valid, they would imply that we should pay almost any price to avoid repeating Neville Chamberlain’s errors of judgment that plunged Europe into the tragedy of World War II. Of course, the parallels are entirely false, but unfortunately, this is not widely understood.

Question: Going deeper into the history of that fateful pre-WWII period, you contend that the British Conservative government of Neville Chamberlain was not so much “appeasing” Hitler’s Nazi Germany but rather London was covertly green lighting Berlin’s expansionism and the annexation of the Czech Sudetenland territory. Therefore, can British policy be blamed for starting the war in Europe and the subsequent criminal aggression of Nazi Germany?

Alex Krainer: London was definitely covertly green lighting Berlin’s expansionism. However, it’s quite possible that they did much more than that. Today we have compelling evidence that Hitler was actually recruited, cultivated and empowered to carry water for the globalist agenda of the empire builders based on Wall Street and the City of London. In fact, Western powers do this as a matter of course: they incubate nationalistic leaders they can plant in different nations but who would remain loyal to them. Examples include Russia’s Alexey Navalny and Venezuela’s Juan Guaido. The problem was that Adolf Hitler was massively empowered with capital and military technology and became something of a monster in the heart of Europe. He also had his own ideas about his historical mission and didn’t hesitate to bite the hands that had fed him. But some of these facts remain obscured to this day as the victors made sure to write a sanitized and airbrushed history of World War II. With regard to appeasement, the distortion was that the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain only appeased Hitler and sacrificed Czechoslovakia in order to preserve peace in Europe. In other words, Chamberlain had good intentions but made a bad error of judgment. This is not what happened; Chamberlain and his foreign policy cabal which included Lord Halifax, Sir Horace Wilson, Sir John Simon, Lord Runciman, and Sir Samuel Hoare took a very active role in the negotiations between Hitler’s Germany and Czechoslovakia and the result – Germany’s taking over of Czechoslovakia’s most developed and most industrialized region of Sudetenland – was exactly what they had intended.

Question: It is not widely known, as you point out, that British and American finance capital was heavily supporting the Third Reich in the run-up to WWII. What were the geopolitical objectives behind this support from Britain and the United States for Nazi Germany?

Alex Krainer: As with every empire, the British Empire’s objective was world domination, and the arrangement they had envisioned and planned was a “three-block” system. As Lord Halifax articulated it after the Munich conference in September 1938, the three blocks included control of the far-Eastern dominions in alliance with Japan, control of the Euro-Atlantic block in alliance with the United States and the control of central and eastern European continent through Germany as the hegemon in that region. Germany was also intended as the bludgeon to wield against and destroy Russia and thus eliminate the British Empire’s perennial rival in controlling the Eurasian landmass. The empire builders have not given up on this three-block vision of the new global order, which is perhaps most visibly exemplified by the Trilateral Commission, co-founded in 1973 by Zbigniew Brzezinski. The difference is that today the agenda is being pursued through ostensibly democratic institutions of the European Union while still consistently empowering Germany as the dominant power among the supposed equals. And Russia remains the rival to destroy either through war or regime change. However, it seems to me that their game is up and the fantasy of dominating the world has receded beyond reach today.

Question: If we apply that kind of understanding of history to today, are you contending that the United States, Britain and other NATO powers are trying to similarly contain Russia through fomenting tensions and aggression in Europe, albeit in the language of “defending Ukraine”?

Alex Krainer: There’s no doubt about that – the more you pay attention, the more obvious it is. The foundational principle of the conflict between Russia and the U.S. and Britain is the struggle for control of the Eurasian landmass which has been the empire builders’ overarching imperative ever since Sir Halford Mackinder explicitly formulated it in 1904 in his Heartland Theory. In “Democratic Ideals and Reality,” he wrote that, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-island; who rules the World-island controls the world.” Since then, the empire changed headquarters from London to Washington DC, but this imperative has not changed. Zbigniew Brzezinski reaffirmed it again in his 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard,” explaining also the empire builders’ rationale for this ambition: “For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. … About 75% of the world’s people live in Eurasia and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60% of the world’s GDP and about 3/4ths of the world’s known energy resources.”

This obsession is part and parcel of Western policy toward Russia continuously to this day. In August 2018 in a briefing to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee by the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Wess Mitchell stated that the “central aim of the [Trump] administration’s foreign policy is to defend U.S. domination of Eurasian landmass as the foremost U.S. national security interest and to prepare the nation for this challenge.” Mitchell also said that the administration was “working with our close ally the UK to form an international coalition for coordinating efforts in this field.” Now, if Russia reasserts itself as the dominant power in Eastern Europe, this pretty much check-mates the empire’s global ambitions, so containing Russia and limiting its influence in Europe is absolutely critical and I think they will not give up on this even at the price of a nuclear war.

Question: Russia has put forward security proposals to the U.S. and NATO calling for a written guarantee of no further eastward expansion of the bloc to include membership of Ukraine and other neighboring countries. Moscow also wants guarantees of no American strike weapons to be installed in neighboring territories. Critics of Russia say these demands are an unreasonable ultimatum from Moscow that impinges on nations’ freedom of choice to determine their security options. How do you see it?

Alex Krainer: I think that much of the West is torn between cooperation and trade with Russia and the policy of Cold War and confrontation. As British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has recently put it addressing “our friends” in Europe, “a choice is shortly coming between mainlining ever more Russian hydrocarbons in giant new pipelines and sticking up for Ukraine” and championing the cause of peace and stability. He literally put it in those terms and I think his words do reflect the continent’s dilemma. For the ordinary people and most businesses, the choice is between having a strong export market for their products and abundant energy keeping their homes warm and their societies running and an acute energy crisis and the risk of a hot war with a nuclear power. For the empire builders it is equally clear: no matter how delusional, they will never give up on their ambition to rule the world. As late John Kenneth Galbraith noted, “People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage”.

I think that the Russian leadership has no illusions about the nature of their conflict with the West, but in putting forward their tough security proposals they have chosen the moment of fractious politics across much of the West to force a showdown between the forces representing legitimate democratic concerns in the Western societies and those representing the interest of the empire builders. Today those proposals may seem unreasonable to some, but this is only because we all got accustomed to the idea that Western powers somehow have the right to do as they well please while other powers have no right to object or assert their own security concerns.

Question: Do you think Russia can be faulted for not being more proactive in past years on objecting to NATO expansion? Moscow maintains it was given verbal guarantees in the late 1990s by U.S. leaders that there would be no eastward expansion of the military bloc. Yet as we know, NATO membership was given to former Warsaw Pact nations Poland and Hungary in 1999, then to the Baltic states in 2004, and in 2008 an offer made to the former Soviet Republics of Ukraine and Georgia. Therefore, has Russia been complacent in passively allowing the present security crisis to evolve in Europe? In other words, does the appeasement argument actually run in reverse, namely that Russia has been at fault for appeasing the United States and NATO?

Alex Krainer: After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia very nearly disintegrated. Its economy collapsed and experienced the longest depression recorded anywhere during the 20th century. It was in a very weak position and Western powers took advantage of that weakness to expand NATO eastward to secure that imperative of dominating Eastern Europe and through it the Eurasian landmass. It is true that Russia suffered this breach of faith rather passively, but Russian leadership probably judged that they were not in the position to credibly counter the West, that they were too vulnerable to Western sanctions and that they needed to rebuild their economic, political, diplomatic and military muscle. I think you have a point in saying that the appeasement argument might run in reverse, but in this case, I believe Russia’s strategy has been to play a long game and wait to confront the West from a position of strength. Twenty years ago, Russia was broken while today it is a force to reckon with. We’ll see how things play out, but one thing is certain – the empire builders now have a worthy adversary.

Question: Do you see a diplomatic solution to the crisis?

Alex Krainer: A diplomatic solution will have to be found – this is inevitable. Even if we see a hot war break out between Russia and the U.S. and NATO, such a conflict would not last forever and in the end the adversaries would still have to sit at a table and sign some sort of a treaty. Of course, for 99.99% of all involved, a diplomatic solution now would be preferable to one following a nuclear Armageddon. I tend to be more optimistic and hope that we won’t see a war break out, but I’ve already lived through the breakout of war and I know firsthand that the unthinkable can actually happen so we shouldn’t be complacent either. To the extent that the legitimate institutions and mechanisms of democracy still function in the West, we ought to use them to put pressure on our policymakers to defend peace. I would certainly prefer to see Russian hydrocarbons in giant new pipelines rather than another tragic European war fought ultimately for someone’s delusional agenda of world domination.

Endnote: By way of demonstrating the reality of which nation is most responsible for war and destruction since the end of World War II, Alex Krainer cited the following study and comment. The astounding disconnect with public perception says a lot about the propaganda function of Western media:

He writes: In June of 2014, a group of American researchers published an article in the American Journal of Public Health, pointing out that, “Since the end of World War II, there have been 248 armed conflicts in 153 locations around the world. The United States launched 201 overseas military operations between the end of World War II and 2001, and since then, others, including Afghanistan and Iraq.” To be sure, each of these wars was duly explained and justified to the American public and for all those Americans who believe that their government would never deceive them, each war was defensible and fought for a good reason. Nonetheless, the fact that one nation initiated more than 80% of all wars in the last seventy years does require an explanation.”

Why is Russia Walking Away from NATO and European Union

October 30, 2021

By Finian Cunningham

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NATO feels no need to concede. Nor does it feel under any moral or political obligation to do so. Russia, on the other hand, is not the Russia of the 1990s, says Paul Robinson in an interview with SCF.

Sometimes things get so bad that one party feels it is best just to walk away from the relationship. That reasoning, notes Professor Paul Robinson in the following interview, seems to be behind Russia’s recent decision to cut diplomatic links with the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Russia has similarly rebuffed relations with the European Union, lamenting that they also have broken down and become dysfunctional. These moves do not signify a sinister Russian agenda, according to Robinson. It simply reflects a frustration with and disillusionment in diplomatic channels that Moscow has pursued over several decades with both blocs. Henceforth, it may be more productive for Moscow to deal with individual states on a bilateral basis rather than through mediation with collective groups. This is because, as Robinson explains, both NATO and the EU have become encumbered with “groupthink” and “group polarization” whereby the blocs have adopted extremely prejudicial attitudes towards Russia. Paradoxically, the group position tends to be not representative of all individual members. He cautions, however, that tensions between East and West may persist and even escalate.

Paul Robinson’s biography includes currently being Professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa where he teaches Russian and military history, among other topics. He writes extensively for international media on relations between Russia and the West. Prior to graduate studies at Toronto and Oxford Universities, he served as a regular officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps from 1989 to 1994, and as a reserve officer in the Canadian Forces from 1994 to 1996. He also worked as a media research executive in Moscow in 1995. Robinson is the author of six books, including Russian Conservatism: An Ideology or a Natural Attitude?

Interview

Question: You recently described the now suspended NATO-Russia Council as something of a “charade” – where little was achieved in terms of meaningful communication between NATO and Russia. Why was this forum so ineffective? Moscow claims its views were not being listened to. Is that a reasonable grievance?

Paul Robinson: I think that there were perhaps clashing expectations on both sides as to what such an arrangement was for and what it could achieve, which led both of them to feel frustrated with the results. Ultimately, the problem is that they have different perceptions of their interests. As the more powerful party, NATO feels no need to concede. Nor does it feel under any moral or political obligation to do so. Russia, on the other hand, is not the Russia of the 1990s, when NATO-Russia cooperation began. It is stronger, more confident, more self-assertive. It too is not in a mood to concede. The result is an ever-growing confrontation.

Question: Russia appears to be now moving toward trying to set up bilateral communications with individual members of NATO. You have mentioned the problem of “groupthink” and “group polarization”. Can you elaborate on how those dynamics operate and how they limited NATO dialogue with Russia?

Paul Robinson: Groupthink tends to suppress dissent, as dissenters don’t want to cause trouble or stand out from the crowd. The prevailing narrative or dominant position therefore tends to go unchallenged. And, of course, the more it goes unchallenged, the more it becomes accepted as gospel truth and the harder it is to counter it. At present, the dominant narrative in the West is the malign nature of the “Putin regime” and of Russian foreign and defense policy. Groupthink means that even if somebody within NATO disagreed with this, they would be unlikely to challenge it.

Group polarization works slightly differently. It is a process whereby discussion pushes members of a group towards extremes, normally towards an extreme version of the dominant position at the start. Within the EU and NATO, this process has become more pronounced, I think, since the inclusion of eastern European states, some of whom, particularly Poland and the Baltic States, are very hostile towards Russia. Their presence within the EU and NATO has pushed those organizations towards a more extreme version of anti-Russianism than would otherwise have been the case. Both institutions work on consensus, and to reach consensus they concede to the most Russophobic elements.

Question: There appears to be an analogy with how Russia’s diplomatic dealings with NATO have also been manifest with regard to Russia’s relations with the European Union as a bloc. Would you agree that there is something of the same kind of dynamics at play frustrating meaningful dialogue?

Paul Robinson: The EU and NATO have similar membership but are constructed in different ways. EU decision-making is very complex, and it requires the agreement of almost all involved. As a result, it can be very difficult for the EU to come to any sort of decision, let alone come to it quickly. This can make dealing with the EU very frustrating for outside parties, who therefore prefer to deal with individual members. In addition to that, the EU, like NATO, has to take into account the deeply anti-Russian stances of some of its members, and as such will always be more anti-Russia than will much of the EU’s membership. This provides another incentive for Russia to skirt EU institutions whenever possible and deal with members one on one.

Question: No doubt Russia will now be accused more than ever of trying to split Western alliances by going down the route of opting for bilateral negotiations with individual nations. How do you ascertain Russia’s motives? Is it genuine reaching out, or something more Machiavellian?

Paul Robinson: I don’t see anything Machiavellian in what Russia is doing. While some will accuse it of trying to split NATO and the EU, in reality it’s just pursuing its national interests, and it finds it easier to do so bilaterally than by working with NATO and/or the EU. That’s really all there is to it.

Question: You have expressed doubt about Moscow’s political prudence in closing down the NATO diplomatic links, suggesting that the move leaves Russia open to criticism of being non-communicative and worsening already fraught relations with the West. However, do you not think it is better to clear the air, so to speak, and disabuse any illusions of “partnership”?

Paul Robinson: There are perhaps times when things get so bad that the only thing left to do is walk away. Clearly, Moscow has decided that that time is now. I think that the step is more symbolic than anything else, as the diplomatic links were not achieving anything positive in practice. If relations improve, the links can be quite easily restored. I think, though, that that is very unlikely for a very long time, if ever. The rift seems pretty permanent and I am not optimistic for a reduction of East-West tensions.

Question: At the latest NATO summit of defense ministers held last week there were the familiar accusations of Russia threatening Europe’s security and that of Ukraine in particular. Moscow, on the other hand, points to NATO expansion over many years in contravention of the NATO-Russia Founding Act in 1997, as well as more recently supplying Ukraine with billions of dollars worth of lethal weaponry. Which narrative is more credible: Russia as aggressor, or NATO as aggressor?

Paul Robinson: I consider the situation to be a classic example of what international scholars call the “security dilemma”. Mutual suspicions lead each side to take measures to defend themselves against the other; those measures are then seen as threatening by the other party, sparking further measures, which are in turn seen as threatening, thus inducing yet more measures, and so on, in a process of escalation. So, Russian actions to protect itself induce fear in NATO, which takes action to protect itself, which induces fear in Moscow, which takes measures, etc, etc. Once you’re on this spiral, it’s hard to get off.

Question: U.S. President Joe Biden talks about not wanting a Cold War with China or Russia. But U.S. conduct and policy contradicts this seeming aspiration of not wanting confrontation. What is going on with U.S. policy? Is it deception, duplicity or plain incoherence with nobody in control?

Paul Robinson: I don’t believe that this is duplicity. I do think that policy is poorly thought through, and the likely reactions of China and Russia to U.S. policy are not properly considered. This may be in part because policy is rarely coherent in the sense of being the product of a single will, resulting in a single, clear objective with actions being coordinated carefully with that objective. Multiple, often competing interest groups contribute to policy-making. Economic interests dictate good relations with China. But the military-industrial complex profits from depicting China as a dangerous threat. And so on. The result is some sort of compromise in which the state seeks both to have good relations with China and to “contain”/“deter” China in a way that of course threatens it and may contribute to worsening relations. The fact that the various elements of policy don’t fit each other well is simply a product of how policy is made in a large, complex state such as the USA.

Question: What steps need to be taken by the United States, Russia and China in order to alleviate tensions and improve global security?

Paul Robinson: Those involved need a little less self-assurance and a little more understanding of the other side’s perspective. Military expenditures need to be cut – war between the large powers is unthinkable, given the destruction it would cause, so in my opinion there is no justification for most of the military capacity currently deployed and being developed. The reality is that the richest parts of the world live in considerable security. This is especially true of countries in the West: we have no need for military capabilities. By reducing them we would send positive signals to other parties that could help cut through the Gordian knot of the security dilemma and help to de-escalate international tensions.

NATO Junta at UN Monthly Chemical Weapons Meeting against Syria

 MIRI WOOD APRIL 8, 2021

The ruling NATO junta at the UN held its monthly chemical weapons lying meeting against Syria, on 6 April. The rabid hyenas once again vomited up and then ate each others’ emesis, though even they are becoming bored with their nonsense. The US ambassador did not bother to post a self-aggrandizing tweet, UK issued a blurb without statement, and the High Representative on Disarmament apparently also had better things to do than to issue a tweet on her statement to the UNSC. Colonialist France — which has never forgiven the Levantine republic for ejecting its occupiers, seventy-five years ago on 17 April — did issue an arrogant and menacing statement based on the NATO klansmen’s chemical weapons lies against the SAR.

UK’s tweet once again showed Great Britain’s support of al Qaeda in Syria. The Ltamenah chemical weapons lies came from terrorists of whom the OPCW FFM investigators were too terrified to actually investigate, so the team basically took the savages at their word, having “assessed the credibility of the allegations based on information collected from open sources and information received from several non-governmental organizations (NGOs).” In Khan Sheikhoun, the primary source of the lies came from the Brit illegal in Idlib, the fake doctor whose medical license in his home country was permanently revoked, and the place where the terrorists were too terrifying for the fake FFM to do any physical inspecting, as admitted in the OPCW report of 19 May 2017.

Regarding Douma, the Brits continue to lie that chemical weapons were used, and continue to lie that Syria — which immediately invited the OPCW investigators to come and investigate, but they first were inexplicably detained in Belgium — and Russia had blocked entry, after the team belatedly arrived. Though the criminal OPCW reports on the teams non-inspections of Ltamenah and Khan Sheikhoun were published in a timely fashion, it took almost a year for the once noble, and subsequently corrupted by NATO klansmen to jerry-rig a report that could barely concoct a meaningless conclusion that “the objects from which the samples were taken at both locations had been in contact with one or more substances containing reactive chlorine.” [2.6]. Syria News has provided massive evidence provided by the savages’ own videos and photographs, that al Qaeda’s Jaish al Islam faction, with the assistance of its humanitarian benefactors kidnapped dozens of civilians, especially woman and their children, slaughtered most of them, engaged in acts of necrophilia with their corpses, and terrorized children taken from their moms, stripped some half-naked and turned power hoses on them in a fake hospital setting on a chilly night.

The FFM team could not enter Douma until almost a week after arrival due to the
high security risk to the team, which included the presence of unexploded ordinance,
explosives and sleeper cells still suspected of being active in Douma. On 18 April,
during a reconnaissance visit to two sites of interest, the security detail was
confronted by a hostile crowd and came under small arms fire and a hand-grenade
explosion. The incident reportedly resulted in two fatalities and one injury. — 2.2 Summary, 106 pp OPCW report on Douma, 1 March 2019

The once-noble OPCW showed its turn to corruption when it ejected Jose Bustani per the dictate of neocon Dick Cheney, via his errand boy neocon, John Bolton, who threatened the lives of Bustani’s children. Since October 2020, this organization has shown its revulsion to integrity by ending open, civilized, discourse to its Twitter account.

OPCW only permits comments by its designated elites; the serfs who pay for the now phony watchdog group are excluded from civilized discourse.

The devastating photo posted by La France looks like it could be Libya after NATO obliterated it, or al Raqqa after the fascist coalition of war criminals led by the US bombed it, though it also could be CGI, as it is not found in a reverse image check of 46.7 billion images on the web.

In her second consecutive monthly address on the never-ending Syria files dedicated to the never-ending implementation of UNSCR 2118 (2013), Zakamitsu sallied for against the difficulties regarding COVID being in the way, reported on previously unreported September 2020 samples having been analyzed with cryptically unexpected results to which the UNSC chemical weapons gathering is not yet privy. Due course has also not yet arrived as, per the UN press release, she made no mention of the collected November 2020 samplings.

At the 4 March chemical weapons propaganda party.

In meticulously diplomatic language, First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy told the Council of the upcoming, unprecedented plot by the NATO klan to illicitly remove Syria from the CWC at the upcoming Conference. Such an attempt to “incapacitate” Syria at the OPCW is a breach of the OPCW noble Charter and is based on the “illegitimate” IIT which “defied the principles of investigation, including the so-called ‘chain of custody.’” What Representative Polyanskiy diplomatically did not say is that the removal of the SAR from its membership to the CWC would facilitate new false flag chemical attacks by various al Qaeda terrorist factions, many of which have been thwarted over the recent period (here, here, here, here, here.)

#Polyanskiy: If #Syria’s opponents (who at the same time oppose real eradication of CW at its entire territory) achieve their goal, we will be living through very hard times, promising no good to the #OPCW and the international cooperation in this & many other areas. @mfa_russia https://t.co/oONwDW64Un

— Russia at the United Nations (@RussiaUN) April 7, 2021

Though POTUS’ and ambassadors may change, the chemical weapons lies at the SC are constant. Tweet from 5 October 2020.

His Excellency Bassam Sabbagh reaffirmed that Syria has never used chemical weapons, that it willingly ascended to the CWC, that it gave full accounting of its stockpile, and continues to work closely with the OPCW and the High Representative. He decried the ongoing politicization by ‘some members’ [NATO klan bullies who have hijacked the UN], the omission of any mention of the Courage Foundation of 11 March, which forcefully condemned the unscientific OPCW reports on the Douma ”chemical weapons” attack, as culled from the mass murderers and NGOs with charitable status, conveniently aligned with State Department and other NATO countries anti-Syria propaganda (

The seemingly long silence at the beginning of the Syrian ambassador’s statement is actually short, and likely part of the ongoing subtle sabotage of the Syrian Mission to the UN, which includes such things as getting stuck with the worst simultaneous translators on the planet, and introducers choking on the pronunciations of Syria, Arab, Syrian Arab Republic.

— Miri Wood

APPENDIX:

While in search of a criminal lie tweeted about Douma and the OPCW investigative team (not found), the author stumbled into a lengthy lying statement by the UK to the OPCW, issued two days after UK, France, and the US bombed Syria on behalf of al Qaeda kidnappers, mass-murderers, and necrophiliacs of Douma. The Couture Beauty Diamond Lipstick wearing pig lied about a chemical weapons attack, lied that breaching the Geneva Agreements was “humanitarian intervention.” The Couture-wearing pig flagrantly flaunted the use of open source — i.e., mass murderers and necrophiliacs of various al Qaeda factions – as ‘evidence’ of his war criminal lies.

Quite disturbing was his blanket statement that “The World Health Organization has reported that 500 patients, seen by its partners in Syria, had symptoms consistent with chemical weapons exposure.” While the WHO was ”deeply alarmed by reports of the suspected use of toxic chemicals in Douma city,” its actual statement does not say that, but does open up a can of maggots involving its unnamed Health Cluster partners, given that the reports all came from kidnappers and killers:

According to reports from Health Cluster partners, during the shelling of Douma on Saturday, an estimated 500 patients presented to health facilities exhibiting signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic chemicals. In particular, there were signs of severe irritation of mucous membranes, respiratory failure and disruption to central nervous systems of those exposed.

The WHO also made the outrageous claims that “[m]ore than 70 people sheltering in basements have reportedly died, with 43 of those deaths related to symptoms consistent with exposure to highly toxic chemicals. Two health facilities were also reportedly affected by these attacks.”

The subsequent outrage demanded by WHO Deputy Director-General Peter Salama, “at these horrifying reports and images from Douma” should be directed to the criminally insane savages who slaughtered dozens, dumped them like garbage, next to empty dog food bowls and rusting bicycles, dumped them in a way that even persons forced to stand jammed like human sardines could not have possibly fallen when murdered, corpses shown as rearranged for more emotional impact, murdered children whose bodies have been stripped half naked, photographed with useless ambu bags nearby, EKG electrodes wrongly positioned, something unidentifiable placed between the legs of a murdered, half-naked child, non-existent hospitals where kidnapped children separated from their moms, were emotionally terrorized and physically abused.

Only idiots or degenerates who touch themselves watching murder porn videos could possibly see hospitals where none exist, or human beings slaughtered to give the NATO war criminals the excuse to murder more Syrians, would lie that these obscene photographs are evidence of civilians who died from a chemical weapons attack. Infamia.

Let us also finally put to rest the horror of perverts smearing shaving cream and other concoctions onto the faces of corpses — many in varying states of decomposition — so that the rabid hyenas can claim the “foaming at the mouth” reputedly caused by chemical toxins. “Foaming — or frothing — at the mouth” is a simplified way to describe pleural effusion, and the body’s attempt to excrete excessive fluid in the lungs, caused by a variety of diseases and disorders, including an acute episode of congestive heart failure (CHF). The excretion may look like small bubbles on the lips, which do not have the drama of shaving cream applied by perverts.

Look on these terrible works by the criminally psychotic, and despair, but do not dare to suggest these heinous atrocities perpetrated against Syrian human beings are anything other than mass slaughter for the unfettered rabid dogs of war.

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Facebook Hires NATO Press Officer Ben Nimmo as Intelligence Chief

By Alan Macleod

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Ben Nimmo

Ben Nimmo, a former NATO press officer and current senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, has announced Facebook has hired him to “lead global threat intelligence strategy against influence operations” and “emerging threats.” Nimmo specifically named Russia, Iran and China as potential dangers to the platform.

His announcement was greeted with joy by several NATO officials but was not met with such enthusiasm by others. “More censorship on the way as the former NATO press officer turned Pentagon-funded ‘researcher’ who labeled real people as Russian bots and peddled disinformation to link Jeremy Corbyn to Russian active measures moves to big tech,” responded investigative journalist Max Blumenthal.

Nimmo’s questionable past certainly raises questions over whether such an official having a substantial say in what 2.8 billion Facebook users worldwide see in their feeds is such a positive step for the free and open exchange of information.

“Disinformation agents”

For example, in 2019, U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn revealed secret Conservative Party documents showing negotiations the Tory government had with the U.S. over the privatization of the National Health Service (NHS). With just days to go before the U.K. general election, the scandal could have toppled the government and brought into power the most radical antiwar, anti-establishment government in the country’s history. Corporate media went into overdrive to spin the news, and Nimmo was a key part of this, immediately announcing, without evidence, that the documents “closely resemble…a known Russian operation.” His supposedly expert conjecture allowed the story to become “Corbyn’s links to Russia” rather than “Tories privatizing the NHS in secret.” Nimmo’s work helped the Conservatives to an election victory and consigned Corbyn to the scrapheap.

This was much to the relief of Nimmo’s Atlantic Council, who had branded Corbyn the “Kremlin’s Trojan Horse” — someone pushing Moscow’s agenda abroad. A British Army general was of a similar opinion, claiming that if Corbyn were to win the election, the military would respond. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said that the U.S. government was “doing its best” to prevent a radical leftist from winning power in the U.K.

Nimmo has been extremely liberal with whom he labels Russian disinformation agents. In 2018, his research identified one Twitter user, @Ian56789, as a “Kremlin troll.” In reality, the user, Ian Shilling, was a British pensioner, as Sky News was easily able to confirm, interviewing him on air and asking him the patently absurd question if he was actually a Russian bot or not. Despite clearly being a flesh and blood human, Shilling’s account was later deleted anyway.

In the past, Nimmo has also insisted that Ruslana Boshirova was an influential Russian bot. In reality, she is an internationally known concert pianist, as one Google search would have shown. This sort of behavior does not augur well for those critical of Western foreign policy, who have faced constant harassment, suspension, or outright bans from social media.

Pro-war putsch

The Atlantic Council began as an offshoot of NATO itself and maintains extremely close connections to the military alliance. It continues to receive major funding from Western governments and weapons contractors, and its board of directors is filled to the brim with senior American statespersons, such as Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Henry Kissinger. Also appearing on the board are no fewer than seven former CIA directors and a number of top military generals, such as Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis, Wesley Clark, and David Petraeus.

In recent years, the council’s employees have penetrated deep into big tech and social media organizations. In 2018, it announced it had partnered with Facebook to aid in the curation of Facebook news feeds of users worldwide, giving it considerable power over what sort of views to highlight and which to demote. One year previously, Jessica Ashooh left the position of the council’s Deputy Director of Middle Eastern Strategy to take the position of Director of Policy at Reddit, the eighth-most visited website in the United States. However, as with many intelligence agencies, it is unclear whether one truly “leaves” the Atlantic Council.

It is not just Russia that is in NATO’s crosshairs. Last week, the Atlantic Council published an anonymous, 26,000-word report stating that their goal for China was regime change and advising President Biden to draw a number of “red lines” around it, beyond which the U.S. would respond militarily. Meanwhile, the head of STRATCOM, Admiral Charles A. Richard, wrote that the U.S. must prepare for a potential nuclear war with Beijing.

Greater control

The military escalation has been mirrored by an intensifying online propaganda war, where the U.S. has attempted to isolate China economically and stop advancing Chinese technologies such as Huawei’s 5G network, mobile phone, and semiconductor manufacturer Xiaomi, and video sharing app TikTok. Nimmo has played his part in ramping up suspicions of nefarious Chinese activity online, claiming the existence of a wide-ranging pro-Beijing bot network encouraging Americans to believe that China has handled the COVID-19 pandemic far better than the United States. That Americans might have come to that conclusion on their own appears not to have been considered.

There is an enormous government effort to convince its population of the existence of (foreign) government efforts to manipulate their opinions online. In a massive case of projection, Western governmental organizations point the finger at their enemies, all the while securing greater access and control over the means of communication themselves, to the point where it is now difficult to distinguish where the deep state ends and the fourth estate begins. Nimmo’s move from NATO to NATO-aligned think tank to Facebook is just another example of this phenomenon. Perhaps the reason Nimmo is not looking for any Western influence operations online is that he is part of one.