Sociopath Media Report: Old Dogs & Old Tricks

[angelburst29]

A detailed report on how the News Media is used to manipulate the Public.

Sociopath Media Report: Old Dogs & Old Tricks
http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/03/sociopath-media-report-old-dogs-old.html

Land of Hope and Glory - 28th July, 1914 - the day that some consider Great Britain became no longer "Great" (if it ever was). However, it can be argued that the outbreak of World War 1 was the final nail in the coffin, but the preceding events assembled and prepared the coffin. Here are a few examples (a drop in the ocean in truth):

•September 1898: •The Dreyfus affair results in Gabriel Hanotaux leaving office, ending French cooperation with Germany over the Baghdad-Berlin railway project.

•December 1898: •Britain and France have a military confrontation in Egypt over the Suez Canal Company. French troops in the East, led by Jean-Baptiste Marchand, run into the British, led by Herbert Kitchener, at Fashoda on the River Nile. Marchand eventually withdrew, ceding industrial power in Africa to the British.

•February 1901: •British warships are sent to the Kuwaiti coast to bully the Ottomans into considering the Gulf port near Shatt al-Arab to be a British protectorate.

•April 1904: •The Entente Cordiale agreements are signed by Théophile Delcassé, who replaced Gabriel Hanotaux.

•February 1905: •Sidney Reilly, disguised as a priest, tracks down William Knox D'Arcy in Persia with the aim of hijacking the contract with the Parisian Rothschild Bank. He succeeded in giving Britain the rights to a major source of oil.

•February 1907: •Sheikh Mubarak al-Sabah signs over the land of Bandar Shwaikh to the British. Large amounts of Gold and rifles were included in the deal.

•August 1907: •The Triple Entente comes into force - Britain, France, and Russia. In order to force Russia into the jaws of the Anglo's, the British sided with Japan in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. Britain's plan to remove Sergei Witte succeeded, and thus Russia's plans to aid Germany in the creation of the Baghdad-Berlin railway were foiled.

•January 1909: •German improvements to their Dreadnaught ships resulted in the Von der Tann - 80,000 horsepower engine capable of 28 knots on coal. British naval supremacy was rapidly fading away.

•May 1910: •The Union of South Africa is formed after the defeat of the Boers. The Boer Wars were instigated and financed by Cecil Rhodes in order to bring the vast riches of the Transvaal under British control.

•January 1911: •Winston Churchill becomes the First Lord of the Admiralty, after Lord Fisher retires. From hereon in, Churchill would aggressively pursue an oil-powered navy, due to the German invention of the petroleum engine. The pillaging of Persia was no coincidence...

•August 1911: •Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian states, during a Round Table meeting, that there are two types of international morality - British/Anglosaxon and German/continental. He further states that either German Bureaucracy or the British Empire will prevail, and if it is the former that gains the upper hand, there will be another Agadir Incident unless the British people prevent the "Backwards rivals" from accepting the standards of "aggressive military powers".

•April 1912: •Deutsche Bank negotiates a concession with the Ottoman Empire, giving the projected Baghdad-Berlin railway the rights to oil and minerals 20km either side of the proposed track. At this point the track had reached Mosul.

•July 1912: •Herbert Henry Asquith appoints the Royal Commission for Oil and Oil Engines, which would be chaired by the now retired Lord John Fisher. This coincided with the majority purchase of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

•March 1913: •The first Balkan War comes to its concluding stages. The Triple Entente's plan to encircle Germany and allies involved Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria declaring war against Ottoman Turkey.

•April 1913: •Between this point and the end of World War 1, the British debt had increased 924%, to £7.4 billion. Also, American exports to Britain between this point and 1915 had increased by 68%.

•May 1913: •German smelting of Pig Iron is twofold that of Britain's.

•June 1913: •The second Balkan War, where Romania defeated Bulgaria - the final main objective in preparation for World War 1.

•October 1913: •Lieutenant Colonel Percy Cox receives a signed letter from Sheikh Mubarak al-Sabah that confirms the British will get first refusal for the development of land with oil.

*November 1913: •German electrical industry grows from 26,000 employees in 1895, to dominating half of the global market by 1913.

•December 1913: •Woodrow Wilson passes Federal Reserve Act. This essentially gave the green light for JP Morgan to fund Britain's campaign against the Kaiser. By 1917, $1,250,000,000 had been raised by Morgan, Citigroup etc...

•April 1914: •King George VII and British Foreign Minister Edward Grey meet with the French President, Raymond Poincaré, in Paris. Russian ambassador to France Alexander Izvolsky was also in attendance. An alliance was formed between France, Russia and Britain, which was kept secret from the German and Austro-Hungarian empire.

•May 1914: •Basil Blackett, senior Treasury official of Britain, drafts a confidential memo for Lloyd George entitled "The Effect of War on our Gold Reserves". The memo makes it clear that the effect of war on the gold markets is uncertain, although it is known that New York, assuming America was neutral, would remain a financial stronghold, which can be used to draw nations into the war. And so on and so forth...

In summary: The British banks and Round Table groups had decided that the Germans possessed a very real threat towards the Anglo dominance of the seas, and to colonial trade in general. As a result, Germany first had to be contained, and then later removed. It can be argued that Britain's demise began on 1815 after the Congress of Vienna, but once again we can travel back to the Medieval period and see that perhaps even then the signs were clear for all to see.

Great Agitator - One may ask what the public opinion was like during these times, with the financial sector in London purely focused on the control of the seas. The Victorian workhouses and general poor quality of life and life expectancy during Industrialisation is known to all, and preceding this, inequality and poverty was in plain sight to even the Native Americans, who were shipped over to London like performing animals to presuade the Queen to offer her financial backing for future colonial expeditions.

Edward Bernays' book "Propaganda", written in 1928, offers an insight into how public consciousness in Britain was artificially spoon-fed to the working classes. In order to shape the collective conscious of the British public into accepting World War 1 as something both necessary and beneficial, the mass media needed to be mobilised. The national newspapers available to the public included the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror, the News of the World, the Evening Standard, the Telegraph & Star, and the Daily Mail.

These newspapers were assigned the task of beating the war drums loud enough so that the general public would depict the "evil" Kaiser as a dictator that had to be removed. Arthur Ponsonby, in 1928, wrote a book that documents the methods these newspapers used to ensure a positive public attitude towards what was frankly an invasion of Germany. Here are a few examples from the book:

The Daily Mail, on September 9th 1914, published an agitative article that reinforced the rumour that Russian troops were passing through Britain towards the Western Front. There were rumours of this throughout the military circles, but no steps were taken to attempt to debunk them. Instead, the British military used this frenzy to their advantage. The green light was given for the press to run riot with the story. The Daily Mail then reported that the Russian troops were in France. The House of Commons, on November 18th 1914, were forced to admit that there were no Russian troops.
•After spending months personifying the Kaiser as the ultimate evil, the Daily Mail published a picture of him with the caption "A friend in need is a friend indeed". Shortly afterwards, the Daily Mail, the Times, and the Daily News all reverted back to attacking him in order to back the British campaign against the Boers. The Daily Mail wrote on October 1st 1914:

"He is beginning to realize the desperate character of the adventure on which the Kaiser embarked when he made his wanton war"

•On September 22nd, 1914, the Daily Mail published a letter written by William Blake Richmond, which refers to the Kaiser as a "lunatic" who wont put fear into England. It continues:

"This last act of the barbarian chief will only draw us all closer together to be rid of a scourge the like of which the civilised world has never seen before.

The madman is piling up the logs on his own pyre. We can have no terror of the monster; we shall clench our teeth in determination that if we die to the last man the modern Judas and his hell-begotten brood shall be wiped out..."

•An account by the former editor of the Sunday Times, Captain Wilson, appeared in the New York Times on February 24th 1922:

"A correspondent of the London Daily Mail, Captain Wilson, found himself in Brussels at the time the war broke out. They telegraphed out that they wanted stories of atrocities. Well, there weren't any atrocities at that time. So then they telegraphed out that they wanted stories of refugees. So I said to myself, "That's fine, I won't have to move." There was a little town outside Brussels where one went to get dinner - a very good dinner, too. I heard the Hun had been there. I supposed there must have been a baby there. So i wrote a heart-rending story about the baby of Courbeck Loo being rescued from the Hun in the light of the burning homesteads.

The next day they telegraphed out to me to send the baby along, as they had about five thousand letters offering to adopt it. The day after that babies clothes began to pour into the office. Even Queen Alexandra wired her sympathy and sent some clothes. Well, I couldn't wire back to them that there wasn't a baby. So I finally arranged with the doctor that took care of the refugees that the blessed baby died of some very contagious disease, so it couldn't even have a public burial. And we got lady Northcliffe to start a crêche with all the baby clothes.

•A falsified story about a German U-boat Commander was published in the Daily Mail on July 12th 1918:

"Staff-Paymaster Collingwood Hughes, R.N.V.R., of the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty, lecturing yesterday at the Royal Club, St. James's Square, said that one of our patrol boats in the Atlantic found a derelict U-boat. After rescuing the crew our commander inquired of the Hun captain if all were safely aboad, as it was intended to blow up the U-boat.

"Yes," came the reply, "they are here. Call the roll." Every German answered. The British Commander was about to push off before dropping a depth charge, when tapping was heard. "Are you quite sure there is no one on board your boat?" he repeated. "Yes," declared the Hun captain.

But the tapping continued, and the British officer ordered a search of the U-boat. There were found in it, tied up as prisoners, four British seamen. The rescued Germans were going to allow their prisoners to be drowned.

The story was deemed to be unverified and "without" foundation in the House of Commons on July 15th and 23rd, 1918.

If history is anything to go by, the Daily Mail sure does lie a lot. Fast forward to recent times, and, nothing has changed. Today the chief editor is Paul Dacre, who has, in the past acted as a cheerleader for the official narrative of 9/11 and Zionist Israel's ethnic cleansing, and blamed the MH17 shoot down on Putin. The general narrative of the Daily Mail in Post Modern Britain can be summarised as follows:

•Class warfare •A continuous daily barrage against the working class and the concept of welfare.

*Internal racial agitator •In line with their worshipping of the Royal Family, they insist on pure English blood - "There ain't no black in the Union Jack" - a notorious far-right slogan. There is a difference between being nationalistic and wanting the various cultures around the world to stay within their pre-prescribed UN-defined country borders, and thinking that 'foreigners' are subhuman or inferior.

*External Racial Agitator •The Daily Mail throws daily fuel on the fire of racial tension, assisting NATO in their Divide and Conquer strategy. They flexibly orientate their headlines to ebb and flow with the narrative given to them by their Atlanticist masters. One headline will say the migrants are monsters, the next will use the migrants as a weapon to demonize others.

*Maintaining the position of the Tories and medieval Feudalism The Royal Family must remain at the summit of social stratification, peasants must be humiliated and spiritually crushed. The myth of the Middle class is embodied in the Daily Mail - "you too may dress and conduct yourself like the Queen or Kate Middleton" (cognitive slavery).

*Aiding and abetting Washington's Military Industrial Complex This permanent role is assigned to ALL mainstream media outlets, whether the Hipster interns like it or not. Profit comes before human loss. 1,000,000 dead Iraqi's is almost erotic for the Daily Mail - arabs are killed, bombs are dropped, Britain gets to flaunt its macho military image, America is happy - it's win-win for everyone.

*Russiaphobia Much like the preceding paragraph, depicting Russia as an out-of-control demon is a mandatory theme for any NATO newspaper. If it rains, it's Russia's fault. Slav's are inferior, undeveloped, conniving thugs who are not British. They can't be trusted, and thus the RAF must defend the population against their aggression.

Notice the deliberate positioning of the lead story next to a different one about a Royal Baby - the Daily Mail pretends that the Royal family define what being "British" is. Thus, attacking the Royal Family is like attacking the wider "British" ,"middle-class" family.

All of the aforementioned narratives are currently in danger of not only being exposed, but also revised. Russia's strategical involvement in Syria, at the invitation of the legal Head of State, Bashar al-Assad, is a chess move that puts many of the opponents' pieces in great danger. Of course, the word 'danger' in this sense signifies the collapse of the unipolar world. In order to contend with the Anglo empire's diminishing power due to their incompetent understanding of hybrid war, the Daily Mail has resorted to throwing many stones in the glasshouse. From being a fervent supporter of an ideology represented by the English Defence League, they are now extremely concerned about not only the welfare of Syrian civilians, but also the very foreign nations that for decades they have dehumanized. (Continued in next Post).

 

[angelburst29]

The show must go on

On March 5th, 2016, the Daily Mail published an article entitled:

"Putin's weapon of mass destruction - migration: By blitzing Syria, Russia's leader is cynically stoking the migrant crisis in a bid to tear Europe apart. The response from the EU to the biggest crisis of our time is, frankly, pathetic"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3477594/Putin-s-weapon-mass-destruction-migration-blitzing-Syria-Russia-s-leader-cynically-stoking-migrant-crisis-bid-tear-Europe-apart-response-EU-biggest-crisis-time-frankly-pathetic.html

The first thing to notice is the word "Blitz", which carries extremely heavy connotations in Britain. If one were to mention the word to an elderly woman at a bus stop, images of German munitions and the Luftwaffe causing blackouts immediately will send her mind into a neurotic seizure.

There is a strange phenomenon in the UK where the media use use the word "Blitz" to denote different things, which can be summarised as:

•Using the graphic images artificially embedded in the British collective conscious, created by a barrage of media propaganda during World War 2, as a weapon to justify violations of international law: The opening section:

(Quote) For a moment, imagine you were one of Vladimir Putin’s advisers, seething with envy and resentment against the Western world, and you were summoned by your master to a meeting in the gilded sanctum of the Kremlin.

Imagine he asked you to devise a scheme that would send shockwaves through the European Union, plunge the Balkans into chaos, push Greece to the brink of anarchy, shove millions of voters into the arms of the xenophobic Far Right and even drive a wedge between Britain and France.

What would you come up with? Well, here’s a clue: just take a look at the past few days’ headlines.

In Calais, desperate migrants fight pitched battles with armed riot policemen trying to clear the notorious ‘Jungle’ camp. In Macedonia, security forces fire tear gas at thousands of migrants using a home-made battering ram to smash the fences along the Greek border.

In Hungary, the nationalist prime minister announces plans to build a 280-mile razor-wire barrier to seal his country off from its southern neighbours. In Greece, where more than 100,000 refugees have arrived in two months, government ministers thunder against the ‘lies’ and ‘hypocrisy’ of their European partners. (End quote).

The notorious Sun headline that openly called for genocide using a fictitious poll to illustrate their narrative. The Sun also has spent most of their existence promoting bigoted views, but reverse-engineers the trend when NATO demands.

•Using the word "Blitz" to laterally project meaning - i.e. linking Putin in 2016 to the SS in 1944.

Returning to the March 6th Daily Mail article, the first few words of the title are emotional 'triggers' for 9/11, Saddam Hussain, and Hitler in WW2. (Snap-shot of newspaper.)

The Daily Mail is using the tactic of descriptive writing to rely on the preconceived thought patterns of the cognitively enslaved masses. Hollywood's main purpose is to embed fear and prejudice inside the Mainstream Media consumer. It is certainly no coincidence that the majority of movie antagonists are either Russian or Arabic.

Everything that is being described is exactly what NATO themselves are doing. Destabilising the Balkans ONLY benefits the West - it disrupts Gazprom's natural gas projects, displaces orthodox christians, reestablishes Bosnia as a Salafi enclave, pulls countries like Montenegro and Belarus behind the new Iron Curtain, and damages the historical relations between Greece and Russia. But there is no need to repeat what the majority of well informed people already know, the statements in the opening section are an embarrassment.

The article claims that migrants are magically going to, unassisted, end up in Kent, bypassing the border police, the London ring road, and the Dartford crossing. I hope someone tells them about the new pay scheme for the Dartford crossing... Of course, the government will turn their backs on this to allow the influx, but the Daily Mail wants us to think that all levels of security will be physically over powered by Putin's proxies. Anyone who has been to Dover and witnessed Operation Stack knows that this is a laughable fantasy.

Next section: (Quote) Even now, I think, we have not yet grasped the colossal scale and toxic repercussions of Europe’s migration crisis. It has become a cliché that this is the crisis that defines our age. But it is, of course, only a cliché because it is so obviously true.

The humanitarian impact is bad enough, from the horrifying conditions in camps such as the Jungle, plagued by rats, crime and disease, to the terrible plight of tens of thousands of migrants stranded in southern Europe without food, water or shelter.

But the political implications are, if possible, even more alarming. Every day, almost every hour, the alliances that bind the West together are coming closer to snapping, from the latest spat between Britain and France to the simmering mistrust that has almost destroyed relations between Athens and the EU. (End quote).

The Daily Mail has found its compassion suddenly. The thought of these poor migrants being frogmarched to Europe by Putin at gunpoint tugs at the heart-strings. It is phrased to sound very organic and innocent. There is no mention of the IMF's pillaging of Greece, the rise of Marine Le Pen and the protests of French farmers against the Russia sanctions, the "rapefugees" in Cologne etc, Europe is just the innocent victim of a Vodka drinking bully.

Next section: (Quote) And at the heart of it, lurking like a spider at the centre of his web, is Russia’s President Putin, aided by his Syrian henchman Bashar al-Assad.

On the face of it, that might sound unduly paranoid. Yet it is precisely what Nato’s top commander in Europe, a man of stern and sober realism, told a U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday.

At the heart of the migration crisis, explained General Philip Breedlove, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, is a ‘resurgent, aggressive Russia’ that has ‘chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat to the United States and to our European allies and partners’.

Putin’s chosen weapon, according to the General, is the migration crisis itself.

As he put it: ‘Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponising migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.’

As evidence, General Breedlove pointed to Russia’s indiscriminate use of unguided barrel bombs, which have killed at least 20,000 Syrians since the conflict began. Their purpose, he explained, is to terrify Syrian civilians and ‘get them on the road’, pushing them north through Turkey and into Europe.

Among the thousands of migrants pouring into Europe, he added, are ‘criminals, terrorists and foreign fighters’.

And in all this toxic mix, Islamic Fundamentalism is ‘spreading like a cancer, taking advantage of paths of least resistance and threatening European nations, and our own, with terrorist attacks’.

Not surprisingly, Russian sources were quick to ridicule General Breedlove’s claims. But they would, wouldn’t they?

Whether or not you believe that Putin is behind the migration crisis, there is no doubt that his bloody bombing campaign in Syria — which is aimed not at Isis, but at other anti-Assad rebels — has made matters far, far worse. The key point, though, is that the migration crisis plays directly into Putin’s hands.

As a former KGB man who yearns to rebuild Russia into a global superpower, President Putin sees the world in terms of ruthless, hard-headed realpolitik — in stark contrast, I have to say, with our own pusillanimous leaders. (End quote).

General Breedlove defines "sober realism"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFeUBktVYIU

Published on Feb 13, 2016 Credit: Staff Sgt. John Archiquette | Date Taken: 12/02/2016
Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen Philip Breedlove holds a media pool discussion and AFN Interview at the Munich Security Conference.

Let's just follow the logic here: Assad wants to remove the Syrian people, and has dropped 20,000 barrels bombs.

1) This doesn't explain the HUNDREDS of videos on the internet of the Syrian people offering their support to Bashar and his army, and their contempt for the Jihadi NATO proxies.

2) There is not even a single smart phone video clip showing the Syrian Arab Army dropping a 'barrel bomb' on a civilian neighbourhood. There is however clips of Jaish al-Islam, a 'moderate' group according to Washington, locking Alawite women in cages for the purpose of human shields.

"It may sound unduly paranoid" - that's because it is, and the author knows it is.

Next Section: (Quote) He has not forgiven the West for imposing sanctions in response to his brutal land-grab in Crimea and dirty war in eastern Ukraine. Every day, his propaganda machine pumps out anti-Western diatribes.

And in his coldly merciless world-view, every defeat for the West is a victory for Russia — no matter how high the cost for millions of Syrian families.

Putin, remember, sees the fall of the Soviet Empire as the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century. He sees the EU as a threat to Russian security, and would like nothing better than to drive a stake deep into the heart of the continent, dividing west from east as Stalin did with such brutal effectiveness in the late 1940s.

In that context, Putin could hardly have wished for a more potent weapon to expose the incoherence, instability and mealy-mouthed weakness of the EU, the baffling passivity of the Obama administration and the simmering tensions at the heart of the Western alliance.

But while the Kremlin has approached the Syrian crisis with brutally hard-nosed self-interest, the West’s response has been nothing short of pathetic.

The migration crisis has been festering for more than a year now. Its principal victims are some of the most vulnerable people imaginable, fleeing the appalling wreckage of their native lands.

Even now, however, the ruling EU elite wastes time on infantile bickering, unable to devise a coherent response that fufils our moral obligation to those in need while also reassuring European citizens anxious at the prospect of admitting hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants.

In Germany, the continent’s most powerful politician, Angela Merkel — once feted for her unsentimental thinking and robust pragmatism — appears to have lost her marbles. Feeling sorry for the migrants is one thing. Inviting hundreds of thousands of people to roam freely across Europe is quite another.

Yet such is Mrs Merkel’s obsessive attachment to the EU’s border-free Schengen agreement (from which Britain is mercifully exempt) that she seems completely blind to political reality.

Polls show that millions of German voters have already deserted her. More worryingly, though, her ludicrously impractical devotion to the principle of open borders is pushing Germany’s neighbours into the hands of the xenophobic Far Right, who are using the migrant crisis to whip up their own nationalist supporters. (End quote).

Brutal land grab? The author must mean the time when a legally binding internationally observed referendum was conducted in Sevastopol/Crimea, where 95.5% people were in favour of returning back home.

Dirty war in Ukraine? Apparently the author also missed the Coup d'etat and Nuland phone calls.

We also see blame being assigned to Merkel, thus, because no evidence is offered for any claims in this article, we can also say that Merkel is trying to destabilise Europe and the Balkans. We can state this blindly, and yet, it would be the truth. After all, Putin isn't handing Erdogan billions in bribes...

Next section: (Quote) Meanwhile, in Greece — already suffering from the strict austerity policies imposed to save the euro — the situation is close to breaking point. With almost 25,000 refugees now stranded on the northern border, and 3,000 more arriving across the Aegean Sea daily, the country’s cash-strapped infrastructure is close to breaking point.

In a poll this week, a staggering 92 per cent of Greeks said they felt ‘abandoned’ by the EU. As one of the nation’s leading pollsters put it, ‘this is an explosive mix which could blow up at any time’.

An even more glaring example is Hungary, whose nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, never ceases to tell his people that the migrants are Muslim terrorists, imported by the EU to undermine Hungary’s national integrity. This is nonsense, of course, and nonsense of a peculiarly noxious kind.

Yet is it any wonder that, watching the appalling reports of sexual abuse by crowds of North Africans at the New Year celebrations in Cologne, so many people believe it? Indeed, given the headlines, perhaps it is little wonder that the Hungarians are working on a vast razor-wire barrier to run along their Balkan borders, explicitly designed to keep out Middle Eastern migrants.

There is an echo here, I think, of Donald Trump’s much-mocked plan to build a colossal wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. We can, I think, all agree that the Hungarian PM and Mr Trump are shamelessly cynical and exploitative demagogues, and are utterly unfit to govern their respective countries.

Both of them, by the way, happen to be keen admirers of Putin — as are their Right-wing equivalents in France and Britain, Marine le Pen (leader of the anti-migrant Front National party) and Nigel Farage. That, I think, tells you all you need to know about their democratic credentials.

But there is, alas, a reason why they are so popular, and why their talk of barriers has struck such a chord. By whipping up nationalism, they prey on the anxieties of millions of ordinary people. And by pointing to the costs of mass migration, they profit from the folly and inaction of the mainstream political elite. (End quote).

The opening sentence depicts the economical looting, conducted by Goldman Sachs, of Greece as being 'one for the team'. The IMF only has the best interests of Europe at heart!

We then see what the article is all about - defaming the threats to NATO's expansion. Le Pen, Putin, Farage (anti-EU but pro-NATO), and Trump - what do they all have in common? They do not fall into the ultra-liberal paradigm (Farage is debatable, but certainly less liberal than the Tories). Left-Right descriptions no longer have a place in politics. The Post Modern world no longer operatives in such a binary fashion. As Alexander Dugin said, "America is to the right of Trump, and to the left of Sanders". America and Britain cannot continue to conduct invasion after invasion and expect social continuity. After some time, society will grow tired of being ignored and will want to see where their taxes are going.

There is no far-right or far-left or anarchists or libertarians - there are only people who are saying 'enough is enough, there will be no more blood shed in my name'. The Us and Them (Pink Floyd knew this too). France strives for, and Russia has, a collective identity, but this is something that Britain cannot understand, as it has never had one due to the nature of Feudalism. Britain is afraid that foreigners will damage the country's 'identity', yet their 'identity' was built of colonialism and exploitation. Just ask the Native Americans.

Final section: (Quote) The Turks wouldn’t be best pleased, of course. But Turkey is a Nato member and a key Western ally, and the crisis is right on its doorstep.

To put it bluntly, the Turks would have to lump it, although the EU should have the brains to throw in several billions in aid to sweeten the pill.

Of course no one fancies spending years in a refugee camp. And yes, I understand why so many migrants dream of a better life in the West.

But wouldn’t it be better for Nato and the EU to fund accommodation in Turkey for these desperate, downtrodden people, instead of pushing them into the hands of people-smugglers and condemning them to the disease-ridden anarchy of camps like Calais, where the only law is the survival of the fittest? I can’t help wondering, too, why the Arab world has been so lamentably slow to do its bit.

Saudi Arabia, which is supposed to be a Western ally, is sitting on an oil fortune of unimaginable proportions. Isn’t it time the Americans demanded that the Saudis spend that money housing and resettling Syrian families, instead of spending it sponsoring terrorism?

Deep down, though, I am not optimistic. It is not just a question of the money, though goodness knows there is little of it around. It is the political will involved, the determination, the old-fashioned realpolitik — all of which have been completely lacking in the past few years.

But the truth is that unless Mrs Merkel and her colleagues get a grip, then Europe is heading for anarchy.

For if Putin continues to bombard Syria with impunity, sending millions of people on the road north, then I fear the crisis will drive a deep and definitive wedge between the two halves of the continent, alienating west from east for a generation.

The result would be everything Mr Putin has dreamed of since the fall of the Berlin Wall three decades ago: a Europe of borders and watchtowers, divisions and demagoguery, resentments and razor wire.

Most of us thought that divided, haunted Europe — a land of fear and hatred — had gone for good.

But now it is back. And as tempting as it is to point to Vladimir Putin’s ruthless machinations, we really have only our own utopianism, our own naivete and, above all, our own weak politicians to blame. (End quote).

There isn't much to say here, as it is all utter projection. Russia is being accused of doing what NATO actually is. The phrase "a Europe of borders and watchtowers, divisions of demagoguery, resentments and razor wire", although an attempt by the author to depict Putin as Hitler once more, is a perfect depiction of NATO. The author must receive praise for this, it's very accurate. There is one final point to make here - the UK is, and has never been, 'Europe'. America needed a conduit to project power onto the main European Banks, and that is exactly what the UK has been and is doing. It is an extended process of World War 1, where Britain was begging US banks for cash; now the US is begging the UK banks to give cash to their Wahhabi, Zionist, and Ottoman buddies.

Gladio

What is the real purpose behind this? The answer is known as Operation Gladio B. Russia must be prevented from interacting with their western neighbours, so the best way to approach the huge land mass separating the US and Russia is to use PROXIES. Of course, to answer fully how this is being done is a PhD thesis in itself, but the general idea is to firstly destabilise the Balkans, i.e. Orthodox Christianity. Secular nations, like Syria, are a huge obstacle that prevent the shifting of NATO across the globe. Thus, we see over 100 different Wahhabi groups, operating in Syria, trying to topple the democratically elected government. Of course, there are pipeline connotations involving Qatar, and other factors such as Greater Israel and Kurdistan, but the endgame is still Russia.

Sibel Edmonds on Gladio B - Part 1 Corbertt Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AARtO88G5Ag

Occasionally, the proxies need to shake up the countries in danger of pivoting East by staging "terror attacks", false flag or not, which serve the purpose of keeping people INSIDE their borders (fear), preventing interaction with Russia, and, more importantly, a chain reaction of ideological alignment. Combine this with Orwellian CCTV on every street corner and here we have the reason why the British government slashed the spending on the police force - the people are anaesthetised!

Political author Gearoid O Colmain discusses the Paris attacks with RT International Published on Nov 14, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7GAbVhjTSw

Paris Attacks: William Engdahl Explains the War in Syria Published on Nov 18, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzscE7QUjHU

The British public last received a shakedown on 22nd May 2013, when some 'lone wolf jihadis' attacked and beheaded an off-duty Army soldier in Woolwich, London. Of course, the victim had a 'Help for Heroes' hooded sweatshirt on, like from a Hollywood script. Hero? No. Naive? Yes.

These attacks are merely 'booster' injections of fear, deployed in case some people were left disillusioned after seeing British troops dying in Iraq for what is now known officially as an operation with no justification. The aim of the Woolwich incident was to maintain the intake of recruits into the Army, to maintain the stereotyped 'all Arabs are terrorists' bigoted viewpoint, and to induce a state of Stockholm Syndrome, where the public runs to the nanny state for help, who will in return reinforce their innate racism. The phrase "Wolf in sheep's clothing"is very apt here. Would this brainwashing have worked had the public been well informed by their media about what was really going on in Iraq and Afghanistan? We will never know. Perhaps there is a programmed defensive mechanism that prevents the British public from swallowing uncomfortable truths...

Concluding thoughts They say you can't teach an on old dog new tricks - this certainly applies to the United Kingdom. Struggling to find an identity post World War 2 other than being an American Lapdog, it is trapped in a paradox involving flag waving and the nanny state. The UK stages events to commemorate imperial genocide, where the public is given permission to wave the Union Jacks and St George's flags even though it might offend the 'muzzies', and at the same time continues to read liberal NATO mouthpieces like the Daily Mail. On the one hand Britain has been hijacked by the Gulf monarchies, who use the nation's assets as a business portfolio for Wall Street, and on the other hand by the AIPAC loving American Oligarchs across the Atlantic.

In order to neutralise not only the Daily Mail, but also the nationwide state of anxiety, the British public must destroy the current 'identity' (being a conduit for Wahhabi/Salafi/Zionist/Atlanticist identities) by fully rejecting the Royal Family. Elizabeth's SOLE purpose in modern times is to act as the beating heart of the nanny state, which gives the spiritually lost masses their medicine when they are close to experiencing a moment of clarity. Remember, "You can dress just like Kate Middleton too". The Daily Mail, printing masses of pro-Royal garbage, as well as articles about celebrity up-skirts (like Bild), epitomises Post Modern Britain and its illusion that the 'middle class' actually exists.

Newspapers like The Sun, despite being the bottom of the intellectual barrel, only exist as long as Rupert Murdoch & co are willing to fund and print them. The Daily Mail is emotionally tied to the Royal Bloodline, so as long as the Royals exist, the Daily Mail will too. And in case you, the reader, are unsure about the Queen's attitude towards Russia, here is your medicine, enjoy:

Queen Elizabeth Speaks on Ukraine: UK monarch vows to maintain pressure on Russia over Ukraine Published on May 27, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sCYHal4sVg

Britain's Queen Elizabeth said on Wednesday the government would pass a law paving the way for a referendum on the country's membership of the European Union, in a speech setting out Prime Minister David Cameron's legislative plan for the coming year.

 

[angelburst29]

The Caesar Photo Fraud that Undermined Syrian Negotiations. “A Pattern of Sensational but Untrue Reports that Lead to Public Acceptance of Western Military Intervention”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-caesar-photo-fraud-that-undermined-syrian-negotiations-a-pattern-of-sensational-but-untrue-reports-that-lead-to-public-acceptance-of-western-military-intervention/5512573

March 07, 2016 - Featured image: taken from the PDF version of Rick Sterling’s work The Caesar Photo Fraud that Undermined Syrian Negotiations: 12 Problems with the Story of Mass Torture and Execution in Syria. The file is available online here (free).

A 30 page investigative report on the “Caesar Torture Photos” has been released and is available online here. The following is a condensed version of the report. Readers who are especially interested are advised to get the full report which includes additional details, photographs, sources and recommendations.

Introduction There is a pattern of sensational but untrue reports that lead to public acceptance of US and Western military intervention in countries around the world:

In Gulf War 1, there were reports of Iraqi troops stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. Relying on the testimony of a Red Crescent doctor, Amnesty Interenational ‘verified’ the false claims.

Ten years later, there were reports of yellow cake uranium going to Iraq for development of weapons of mass destruction.

One decade later, there were reports of Libyan soldiers drugged on viagra and raping women as they advanced.

In 2012, NBC broadcaster Richard Engel was supposedly kidnapped by pro-Assad Syrian militia but luckily freed by Syrian opposition fighters, the “Free Syrian Army”.

All these reports were later confirmed to be fabrications and lies. They all had the goal of manipulating public opinion and they all succeeded in one way or another. Despite the consequences, which were often disastrous, none of the perpetrators were punished or paid any price.

It has been famously said “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” This report is a critical review of the “Caesar Torture Photos” story. As will be shown, there is strong evidence the accusations are entirely or substantially false.

Overview of ‘Caesar Torture Photos’ On 20 January 2014, two days before negotiations about the Syrian conflict were scheduled to begin in Switzerland, a sensational report burst onto television and front pages around the world. The story was that a former Syrian army photographer had 55,000 photographs documenting the torture and killing of 11,000 detainees by the Syrian security establishment.

The Syrian photographer was given the code-name ‘Caesar’. The story became known as the “Caesar Torture Photos”. A team of lawyers plus digital and forensic experts were hired by the Carter-Ruck law firm, on contract to Qatar, to go to the Middle East and check the veracity of “Caesar” and his story. They concluded that “Caesar” was truthful and the photographs indicated “industrial scale killing”. CNN, London’s Guardian and LeMonde broke the story which was subsequently broadcast in news reports around the world. The Caesar photo accusations were announced as negotiations began in Switzerland. With the opposition demanding the resignation of the Syrian government, negotiations quickly broke down.

For the past two years the story has been preserved with occasional bursts of publicity and supposedly corroborating reports. Most recently, in December 2015 Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report titled “If the Dead Could Speak” with significant focus on the Caesar accusations.

Following are 12 significant problems with the ‘Caesar torture photos’ story.

1. Almost half the photos show the opposite of the allegations. The Carter Ruck Inquiry Team claimed there were about 55,000 photos total with about half of them taken by ‘Caesar’ and the other half by other photographers. The Carter Ruck team claimed the photos were all ‘similar’. Together they are all known as ‘Caesar’s Torture Photos’.

The photographs are in the custody of an opposition organization called the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees (SAFMCD). In 2015, they allowed Human Rights Watch (HRW) to study all the photographs which have otherwise been secret. In December 2015, HRW released their report titled “If the Dead Could Speak”. The biggest revelation is that over 46% of the photographs (24,568) do not show people ‘tortured to death” by the Syrian government. On the contrary, they show dead Syrian soldiers and victims of car bombs and other violence (HRW pp2-3). Thus, nearly half the photos show the opposite of what was alleged. These photos, never revealed to the public, confirm that the opposition is violent and has killed large numbers of Syrian security forces and civilians.

2. The claim that other photos only show ‘tortured detainees’ is exaggerated or false. The Carter Ruck report says ‘Caesar’ only photographed bodies brought from Syrian government detention centers. In their December 2015 report, HRW said, “The largest category of photographs, 28,707 images, are photographs Human Rights Watch understands to have died in government custody, either in one of several detention facilities or after being transferred to a military hospital.” They estimate 6,786 dead individuals in the set.

The photos and the deceased are real, but how they died and the circumstances are unclear. There is strong evidence some died in conflict. Others died in the hospital. Others died and their bodies were decomposing before they were picked up. These photographs seem to document a war time situation where many combatants and civilians are killed. It seems the military hospital was doing what it had always done: maintaining a photographic and documentary record of the deceased. Bodies were picked up by different military or intelligence branches. While some may have died in detention; the big majority probably died in the conflict zones. The accusations by ‘Caesar’, the Carter Ruck report and HRW that these are all victims of “death in detention” or “death by torture” or death in ‘government custody” are almost certainly false.

3. The true identity of “Caesar” is probably not as claimed. The Carter Ruck Report says “This witness who defected from Syria and who had been working for the Syrian government was given the code-name ‘Caesar’ by the inquiry team to protect the witness and members of his family.” (CRR p.12) However, if his story is true, it would be easy for the Syrian government to determine who he really is. After all, how many military photographers took photos at Tishreen and Military 601 Hospitals during those years and then disappeared? According to the Carter Ruck report, Caesar’s family left Syria around the same time. Considering this, why is “Caesar” keeping his identity secret from the western audience? Why does “Caesar” refuse to meet even with highly sympathetic journalists or researchers?

The fact that 46% of the total photographic set is substantially the opposite of what was claimed indicates two possibilities:
Caesar and his promoters knew the contents but lied about them expecting nobody to look.
Caesar and his promoters did not know the contents and falsely assumed they were like the others.

The latter seems more likely which supports the theory that Caesar is not who he claims to be.

4. The Carter Ruck Inquiry was faulty, rushed and politically biased. The credibility of the “Caesar” story has been substantially based on the Carter-Ruck Inquiry Team which “verified” the defecting photographer and his photographs.

The following facts suggest the team was biased with a political motive:
the investigation was financed by the government of Qatar which is a major supporter of the armed opposition.

the contracted law firm, Carter Ruck and Co. has previously represented Turkey’s President Erdogan, also known for his avid support of the armed opposition.

the American on the legal inquiry team, Prof David M. Crane, has a long history working for U.S. Dept of Defense and Defense Intelligence Agency. The U.S. Government has been deeply involved in the attempt at ‘regime change’ with demands that ‘Assad must go’ beginning in summer 2011 and continuing until recently.

Prof Crane is personally partisan in the conflict. He has campaigned for a Syrian War Crimes Tribunal and testified before Congress in October 2013, three months before the Caesar revelations.

by their own admission, the inquiry team was under “time constraints” (CRR, p.11).

by their own admission, the inquiry team did not even survey most of the photographs

the inquiry team was either ignorant of the content or intentionally lied about the 46% showing dead Syrian soldiers and attack victims.

the inquiry team did their last interview with “Caesar” on January 18, quickly finalized a report and rushed it into the media on January 20, two days prior to the start of UN sponsored negotiations.

The self-proclaimed “rigor” of the Carter Ruck investigation is without foundation. The claims to a ‘scientific’ investigation are similarly without substance and verging on the ludicrous.

5. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is involved. In an interview on France24, Prof. David Crane of the inquiry team describes how ‘Caesar’ was brought to meet them by “his handler, his case officer”. The expression ‘case officer’ usually refers to the CIA. This would be a common expression for Prof. Crane who previously worked in the Defense Intelligence Agency. The involvement of the CIA additionally makes sense since there was a CIA budget of $1Billion for Syria operations in 2013.

Prof. Crane’s “Syria Accountability Project” is based at Syracuse University where the CIA actively recruits new officers despite student resistance.

Why does it matter if the CIA is connected to the ‘Caesar’ story? Because the CIA has a long history of disinformation campaigns. In 2011, false reports of viagra fueled rape by Libyan soldiers were widely broadcast in western media as the U.S. pushed for a military mandate. Decades earlier, the world was shocked to hear about Cuban troops fighting in Angola raping Angolan women. The CIA chief of station for Angola, John Stockwell, later described how they invented the false report and spread it round the world. The CIA was very proud of that disinformation achievement. Stockwell’s book, “In Search of Enemies” is still relevant.

6. The prosecutors portray simple administrative procedures as mysterious and sinister. The Carter Ruck inquiry team falsely claimed there were about 11,000 tortured and killed detainees. They then posed the question: Why would the Syrian government photograph and document the people they just killed? The Carter Ruck Report speculates that the military hospital photographed the dead to prove that the “orders to kill” had been followed. The “orders to kill” are assumed.

A more logical explanation is that dead bodies were photographed as part of normal hospital/morgue procedure to maintain a file of the deceased who were received or treated at the hospital.

The same applies to the body labeling/numbering system. The Carter Ruck report suggest there is something mysterious and possibly sinister in the coded tagging system. But all morgues need to have a tagging and identification system.

7. The photos have been manipulated. Many of the photos at the SAFMCD website have been manipulated. The information card and tape identity are covered over and sections of documents are obscured. It must have been very time consuming to do this for thousands of photos. The explanation that they are doing this to ‘protect identity’ is not credible since the faces of victims are visible. What are they hiding?

8. The Photo Catalog has duplicates and other errors There are numerous errors and anomalies in the photo catalog as presented at the SAFMCD website.

For example, some deceased persons are shown twice with different case numbers and dates.

There are other errors where different individuals are given the same identity number.

Researcher Adam Larson at A Closer Look at Syria website has done detailed investigation which reveals more errors and curious error patterns in the SAFMCD photo catalog.

9. With few exceptions, Western media uncritically accepted and promoted the story. The Carter Ruck report was labeled “Confidential” but distributed to CNN, the Guardian and LeMonde.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour gushed the story as she interviewed three of the inquiry team under the headline “EXCLUSIVE: Gruesome Syria photos may prove torture by Assad regime”. Critical journalism was replaced by leading questions and affirmation. David Crane said “This is a smoking gun”. Desmond de Silva “likened the images to those of holocaust survivors”.

The Guardian report was titled “Syrian regime document trove shows evidence of ‘industrial scale’ killing of detainees” with subtitle “Senior war crimes prosecutors say photographs and documents provide ‘clear evidence’ of systematic killing of 11,000 detainees”

One of the very few skeptical reports was by Dan Murphy in the Christian Science Monitor. Murphy echoed standard accusations about Syria but went on to say incisively, “the report itself is nowhere near as credible as it makes out and should be viewed for what it is: A well-timed propaganda exercise funded by Qatar, a regime opponent who has funded rebels fighting Assad who have committed war crimes of their own.”

Unfortunately that was one of very few critical reports in the mainstream media.

In 2012, foreign affairs journalist Jonathan Steele wrote an article describing the overall media bias on Syria.. His article was titled “Most Syrians back Assad but you’d never know from western media”. The media campaign and propaganda has continued without stop. It was in this context that the Carter Ruck Report was delivered and widely accepted without question.

10. Politicians have used the Caesar story to push for more US/NATO aggression. Politicians seeking direct US intervention for ‘regime change’ in Syria were quick to accept and broadcast the ‘Caesar’ story. They used it to demonize the Assad government and argue that the US must act so as to prevent “another holocaust’, ‘another Rwanda’, ‘another Cambodia’.

When Caesar’s photos were displayed at the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Congress, Chairman Ed Royce said “It is far past time that the world act…. It is far past time for the United States to say there is going to be a safe zone across this area in northern Syria.”

The top ranking Democrat in the House Foreign Affairs Committee is Eliot Engel. In November 2015 he said “We’re reminded of the photographer, known as Caesar, who sat in this room a year ago, showing us in searing, graphic detail what Assad has done to his own people.” Engel went on to advocate for a new authorization for the use of military force.

Rep Adam Kinzinger is another advocate for aggression against Syria. At an event at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in July 2015 he said, “If we want to destroy ISIS we have to destroy the incubator of ISIS, Bashar al-Assad.”

The irony and hypocrisy is doubly profound since Rep Kinzinger has met and coordinated with opposition leader Okaidiwho is a confirmed ally of ISIS. In contrast with Kinzinger’s false claims, it is widely known that ISIS ideology and initial funding came from Saudi Arabia and much of its recent wealth from oil sales via Turkey. The Syrian Army has fought huge battles against ISIS, winning some but losing others with horrific scenes of mass beheading.

11. The Human Rights Watch assessment is biased. HRW has been very active around Syria. After the chemical attacks in greater Damascus on August 21, 2013, HRW rushed a report which concluded that, based on a vector analysis of incoming projectiles, the source of the sarin-carrying rockets must have been Syrian government territory. This analysis was later debunked as a “junk heap of bad evidence” by highly respected investigative journalist Robert Parry. HRW’s assumption about the chemical weapon rocket flight distance was faulty. Additionally it was unrealistic to think you could determine rocket trajectory with 1% accuracy from a canister on the ground. To think you could determine flight trajectory from a canister on the ground that had deflected off a building wall was preposterous.

In spite of this, HRW stuck by its analysis which blamed the Assad government. HRW Director Ken Roth publicly indicated dissatisfaction when an agreement to remove Syrian chemical weapons was reached. Mr. Roth wanted more than a ‘symbolic’ attack.

In light of the preceding, we note the December 2015 HRW report addressing the claims of Caesar.

HRW seems to be the only non-governmental organization to receive the full set of photo files from the custodian. To its credit, HRW acknowledged that nearly half the photos do not show what has been claimed for two years: they show dead Syrian soldiers and militia along with scenes from crime scenes, car bombings, etc…

But HRW’s bias is clearly shown in how they handle this huge contradiction. Amazingly, they suggest the incorrectly identified photographs support the overall claim. They say, “This report focuses on deaths in detention. However other types of photographs are also important. From an evidentiary perspective, they reinforce the credibility of the claims of Caesar about his role as a forensic photographer of the Syrian security forces or at least with someone who has access to their photographs.” (HRW, p.31) This seems like saying if someone lies to you half the time that proves they are truthful.

The files disprove the assertion that the files all show tortured and killed. The photographs show a wide range of deceased persons, from Syrian soldiers to Syrian militia members to opposition fighters to civilians trapped in conflict zones to regular deaths in the military hospital. There may be some photos of detainees who died in custody after being tortured, or who were simply executed. We know that this happened in Iraqi detention centers under U.S. occupation. Ugly and brutal things happen in war times. But the facts strongly suggest that the ‘Caesar’ account is basically untrue or a gross exaggeration.

It is striking that the HRW report has no acknowledgment of the war conditions and circumstances in Syria. There is no acknowledgment that the government and Syrian Arab Army have been under attack by tens of thousands of weaponized fighters openly funded and supported by many of the wealthiest countries in the world.

There is no hint at the huge loss of life suffered by the Syrian army and supporters defending their country. The current estimates indicate from eighty to one hundred and twenty thousand Syrian soldiers, militia and allies having died in the conflict.

12. The legal accusations are biased and ignore the supreme crime of aggression. The Christian Science Monitor journalist Dan Murphy gave an apt warning in his article on the Carter Ruck report about ‘Caesar’. While many journalists treated the prosecutors with uncritical deference, he said:

Association with war crime prosecutions is no guarantor of credibility – far from it. Just consider Luis Moreno Ocampo’s absurd claims about Viagra and mass rape in Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya in 2011. War crimes prosecutors have, unsurprisingly, a bias towards wanting to bolster cases against people they consider war criminals (like Assad or Qadaffi) and so should be treated with caution. They also frequently favor, as a class, humanitarian interventions.

The Carter Ruck legal team demonstrated how accurate those cautions were. They were eager to accuse the Syrian government of “crimes against humanity” but the evidence of “industrial killing”, “mass killing”, “torturing to kill” is dubious and much of the hard evidence shows something else.

In contrast, there is clear and solid evidence that a “Crime against Peace” is being committed against Syria. It is public knowledge that the “armed opposition” in Syria has been funded, supplied and supported in myriad ways by various outside governments. Most of the fighters, both Syrian and foreign, receive salaries from one or another outside power. Their supplies, weapons and necessary equipment are all supplied to them. Like the “Contras” in Nicaragua in the 1980s, the use of such proxy armies is a violation of customary international law.

It is also a violation of the UN Charter which says:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other matter inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

The government of Qatar has been a major supporter of the mercenaries and fanatics attacking the sovereign state of Syria. Given that fact, isn’t it hugely ironic to hear the legal contractors for Qatar accusing the Syrian government of “crimes against humanity”?

Isn’t it time for the United Nations to make reforms so that it can start living up to its purposes? That will require demanding and enforcing compliance with the UN Charter and International Law.

 

[angelburst29]

Did Turkish Secret Service Kill a Powerful Russian Spy Chief?

Of course not. But does it matter? Usual no-proof-news trying to make Russia look bad, weak and vulnerable

http://russia-insider.com/en/did-turkish-secret-service-kill-powerful-russian-spy-chief/ri13211

The death of the powerful GRU (Russian military intelligence service) commander Igor Sergun is back in the news courtesy of The Jerusalem Post citing a Lebanese report. As if we haven’t had enough of wild conspiracy theories peddled by Stratfor and Financial Times, it’s now time to listen to the trusty "unnamed London-based diplomat". How convenient!

The anonymous source starts off his rant with:


[I cannot] “rule out that his death could have been the result of a complicated intelligence security operation in which several Arab and Middle Eastern intelligence actors may have participated. Moscow must have discovered some clues to this matter.”

In other words no sooner than he opens his mouth it becomes a guessing game: “Could”, “May”, “Must have”.

Evidence that Sergun was murdered? None whatsoever is offered. That doesn’t stop preclude even more dubious claims. The believability is pushed to the limit in saying that Sergun's death is the cause of the tensions between Turkey and Russia, implicating specifically the MIT (Turkey Secret Service) as having carried out the hit on the former GRU commander

“It is this that made Russia’s decision for confrontation with Turkey decisive and final.”

Like for MH17, Chemical attacks in Syria, Iraq’s WMD and many other issues that have shaped the course of the world in the last years, no evidence is provided to sustain the accusations against Russia or its allies. Anonymous sources are compared to hard rock-solid evidence, opinions become best-practice and hopes and wishes are used to fuel american exceptionalism and White house foreign policy strategies.

It does not matter what really happened, it’s just important to blame it on Putin no matter how anonymous, wild or ridicules the accusations look.

 

[angelburst29]

Top German Editor: CIA Bribing Journalists (Video)
http://russia-insider.com/en/2014/10/03/08-43-20am/german_journalists_cia_payroll_says_former_editor_major_german_newspaper

The allegations, while shocking, are consistent with the CIA's long and well-established history of media infiltration.

Members of the German media are paid by the CIA in return for spinning the news in a way that supports US interests, and some German outlets are nothing more than PR appendages of NATO, according to a new book by Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's largest newspapers.

Ulfkotte is a serious mainstream journalist. Here he is on Germany's leading political talk show a couple of years ago. The book is a sensation in Germany, #7 on the bestseller list. Its political dynamite, coming on the heels of German outrage of NSA tapping of their phones. Check out the RT.com story on it in the video below.

Here at Russia Insider, it has long been apparent to us that there is something distinctly odd about the German media regarding Russia. We follow it, and it is much more strident than even the anglo-saxon media regarding Russia, while German public opinion is much more positive towards Russia than in other countries.

Another interesting thing about it is that it is very disparate. Some major voices are very reasonable about Russia, but most are negative, and some are comically apocalyptic. This is what one would expect if there was some financial influence ginning the system.

We've been talking about this for a while now. German public opinion is becoming more and more fed up with the what they increasingly believe to be a rigged media, and its starting to come out everywhere.

The allegations, while shocking, are consistent with the CIA's long and well-established history of media infiltration.

Operation Mockingbird, which began in the 1950s, was a secret CIA operation which recruited journalists to serve as mouthpieces for the American government. The program was officially terminated after it was exposed by the famous Church Committee investigations, but evidence of ongoing CIA influence over the media continues to accumulate.

Just last week Glenn Greenwald's (of Edward Snowden fame) new groundbreaking investigative website, The Intercept, charged that the CIA leveraged its considerable influence - some might even say friendship - with media in order to discredit Gary Webb, the fearless American journalist who uncovered CIA cocaine trafficking as part of the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.

From The Intercept (emphasis our own):

On September 18, the agency released a trove of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agency’s in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story.” Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the document offers a unique window into the CIA’s internal reaction to what it called “a genuine public relations crisis” while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry.

Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists,” the CIA’s Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.

It's as if Operation Mockingbird never ended.



Consortium News Struck By Massive DoS Attack
http://russia-insider.com/en/consortium-news-targeted-massive-dos-attack/ri13229

The information war is heating up. A popular alternative news website, Consortium News, was struck by a severe denial-of-service attack last week. Editor Robert Parry said the following in an email to subscribers:

Last week, we were told by IT experts that Consortiumnews was the apparent victim of a sophisticated “denial of service” attack that destroyed the site’s functionality by imposing so many commands on the system that it blocked us from updating content or restoring the site to a pre-attack status.

We have spent the past week – and thousands of dollars – recovering as much of our 20 years of content as possible and migrating to a new server where we had to essentially rebuild the site from scratch. It’s still not clear how much of our 20 years of work has been lost. We also will keep working to clear up a variety of glitches that remain.

It’s not clear who may have carried out this clever attack which apparently exploited a tiny flaw in our system, a spot where an older version of the Web site had been merged
with a newer version. The encrypted malware was so subtle that it was missed by multiple virus scans and was only spotted by a tech examining the files manually.

But whoever was behind this attack, the ugly reality is that such assaults are the modern equivalent of mobs smashing the presses of old-time newspapers that challenged the status quo. In such cases, the goal was to silence dissent by raising the price for telling the truth.

Today, we find ourselves in what is sometimes called “information warfare,” an insidious concept in which powerful interests view critical facts as “enemy propaganda” that must be shut down. Though these interests already control much of the major media, they are remarkably sensitive to challenges from independent information sources.

By making information simply one battlefront in some ideological war, these forces justify attacks to silence sources of dissent that challenge the dominant official narratives. Cyber-attacking Web sites is just one tactic in that “war.” Shutting down contrary information, in turn, makes people easier to manipulate into actual wars and other costly adventures.

It is important that such intimidation not be successful.

We agree wholeheartedly with those sentiments and stand shoulder to shoulder with all alternative media in support of the principles of freedom of the press and freedom of opinion. Whether by private or state actors, all attempts to silence alternative media are doomed to ultimate failure.

That is proven by the continually skyrocketing populartity of websites, blogs, and even print magazines which challenge the distorted view of reality forced on audiences by the western mainstream media. Many alternative sites and Youtube channels now have higher traffic than mainstream outlets such as CNN or BBC.

We again thank all our readers for their continued support and are sure that our counterparts Consortium News will continue the fight for truth in journalism.

 

[angelburst29]

Clinton Emails: How Google Worked With Hillary to Try and Overthrow Syria’s Assad
_http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/03/20/clinton-emails-how-google-worked-to-help-overthrow-syrias-assad/

21st Century Wire says…

The Silicon Valley’s technotronic oligarchy have been exposed as a mere extension of the CIA in terms of playing a role in Washington’s state policy of regime change in Syria.

This latest email release reveals how then US Secretary of State, and now Democratic presidential favorite Hillary Clinton colluded with executive at Google to launch a digital PR onslaught against the president of Syria, Bashar al Assad.

This is all part of Google’s ‘color revolution’ business, and also part of the Smart Power Complex used to manufacture public consent for ‘humanitarian interventions’ globally.

The leak also reveals how Qatari network Al Jazeera played an active role in this plot too. Al Jazeera has already been caught repeatedly manipulating international news throughout the Middle East.

In a just world, Hillary would be held to account by the mainstream media for this revelation, but it seems that it’s just being ignored by the mainstream gatekeepers…

Rudy Takala
Washington Examiner

Google in 2012 sought to help insurgents overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to State Department emails receiving fresh scrutiny this week.

Messages between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s team and one of the company’s executives detailed the plan for Google to get involved in the region.

“Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool … that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from,” Jared Cohen, the head of what was then the company’s “Google Ideas” division, wrote in a July 2012 email to several top Clinton officials.

“Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition,” Cohen said, adding that the plan was for Google to surreptitiously give the tool to Middle Eastern media.

“Given how hard it is to get information into Syria right now, we are partnering with Al-Jazeera who will take primary ownership over the tool we have built, track the data, verify it, and broadcast it back into Syria,” he said.



Online attack hits Swedish media sites
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=6393804

Sat. March 19, 2016 - A suspected cyber attack shut down the websites of several national and regional media outlets Saturday night prompting Swedish police to launch a criminal investigation into the disruption.

The attack hit the websites for newspapers Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Industri, Sydsvenskan and Helsingborgs Dagblad and lasted for an hour or longer.

Karin Olsson, Espressen's deputy editor-in-chief, tells Radio Sweden that the daily paper first noticed something was wrong about 8:20 pm.

"The news site was down and we noticed that our competitors Aftonbladet had great problems updating and giving access to its readers," Olsson says.

After an hour, Olsson says the paper was able to "manage" the attack and redirect the incoming traffic that was deliberately targeting the site. Olsson says that Expressen can only speculate why media outlets were singled out.

Shortly before the sites become inaccessible, an anonymous Twitter account alluded to the cyber attack against the media writing that "this is what happens when you spread false propaganda Aftonbladet.se #offline @Aftonbladet".

The account later tweeted "The following days attacks against the Swedish goverment (sic) and media spreading false propaganda will be targetted (sic)." and, as of Sunday morning, hasn't written anything since.

Police tell Swedish Radio News they are looking into the account and warned that more coordinated attacks could follow.

"We have had these kind of attacks before, but not so coordinated like this," Anders Ahlqvist, a cybercrime expert at the police's national operations department, told Swedish Radio News.

Ahlqvist said the so-called denial-of-service, or DDoS attack, original from the "east" but declined to specify to which country or region he was referring.

He added that just because the attack, which knocks websites offline by flooding them with too much traffic, came from computers in the east, that doesn't mean the individual or people organize the disruption are based there.

Websites for Swedish Radio were spared on Saturday night. Måns Nilsson with Swedish Radio's IT department, said he checked incoming web traffic when he first heard about a possible attack and saw an increase in visitors.

However, he believes the rise in traffic came from people looking for information about what was happening.

 

[angelburst29]

Governments Admit that Much of Modern History Has Been Manipulated By False Flag Attacks
http://www.globalresearch.ca/governments-admit-that-much-of-modern-history-has-been-manipulated-by-false-flag-attacks/5517692

In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally, in writing, or through photographs or videos: (1 - 61)

(1) As admitted by secret Russian police files that are part of the Hoover Institution’s archives, the Russian Tsar’s secret police set off bombs and killed people in order to blame and arrest labor agitators. And see this.

(2) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the “Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident”. The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found: “Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the ‘Incident’ was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army ….” And see this.

(3) A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.

(4) Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson.

(5) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939 – while blaming the attack on Finland – as a basis for launching the “Winter War” against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.

(6) The Russian Parliament, current Russian president Putin and former Soviet leader Gorbachev all admit that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, and then falsely blamed it on the Nazis.

(7) The British government admits that – between 1946 and 1948 – it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews attempting to flee the Holocaust to seek safety in Palestine, set up a fake group called “Defenders of Arab Palestine”, and then had the psuedo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings (and see this, this and this).

(8) Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).

(9) The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister.

(10) The Turkish Prime Minister admitted that the Turkish government carried out the 1955 bombing on a Turkish consulate in Greece – also damaging the nearby birthplace of the founder of modern Turkey – and blamed it on Greece, for the purpose of inciting and justifying anti-Greek violence.

(11) The British Prime Minister admitted to his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change.

(12) The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s through the 1980s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.

As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” … so that “a state of emergency could be declared, so people would willingly trade part of their freedom for the security” (and see this) (Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred). And watch this BBC special. They also allegedly carried out terror attacks in France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, and other countries.

The CIA also stressed to the head of the Italian program that Italy needed to use the program to control internal uprisings.

False flag attacks carried out pursuant to this program include – by way of example only:
The murder of the Turkish Prime Minister (1960)
Bombings in Portugal (1966)
The Piazza Fontana massacre in Italy (1969)
Terror attacks in Turkey (1971)
The Peteano bombing in Italy (1972)
Shootings in Brescia, Italy and a bombing on an Italian train (1974)
Shootings in Istanbul, Turkey (1977)
The Atocha massacre in Madrid, Spain (1977)
The abduction and murder of the Italian Prime Minister (1978) (and see this)
The bombing of the Bologna railway station in Italy (1980)
Shooting and killing 28 shoppers in Brabant county, Belgium (1985)

(13) In 1960, American Senator George Smathers suggested that the U.S. launch “a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and [overthrow Castro]”.

(14) Official State Department documents show that, in 1961, the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. The plans were not carried out, but they were all discussed as serious proposals.

(15) As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in 1962, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

(16) In 1963, the U.S. Department of Defense wrote a paper promoting attacks on nations within the Organization of American States – such as Trinidad-Tobago or Jamaica – and then falsely blaming them on Cuba.

(17) The U.S. Department of Defense also suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: “The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro’s subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on Guantanamo.”

(18) A U.S. Congressional committee admitted that – as part of its “Cointelpro” campaign – the FBI had used many provocateurs in the 1950s through 1970s to carry out violent acts and falsely blame them on political activists.

(19) A top Turkish general admitted that Turkish forces burned down a mosque on Cyprus in the 1970s and blamed it on their enemy. He explained: “In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent’s incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example”.

(20) A declassified 1973 CIA document reveals a program to train foreign police and troops on how to make booby traps, pretending that they were training them on how to investigate terrorist acts:

The Agency maintains liaison in varying degrees with foreign police/security organizations through its field stations ….

[CIA provides training sessions as follows:]

a. Providing trainees with basic knowledge in the uses of commercial and military demolitions and incendiaries as they may be applied in terrorism and industrial sabotage operations.

b. Introducing the trainees to commercially available materials and home laboratory techniques, likely to he used in the manufacture of explosives and incendiaries by terrorists or saboteurs.

c. Familiarizing the trainees with the concept of target analysis and operational planning that a saboteur or terrorist must employ.

d. Introducing the trainees to booby trapping devices and techniques giving practical experience with both manufactured and improvised devices through actual fabrication.

***

The program provides the trainees with ample opportunity to develop basic familiarity and use proficiently through handling, preparing and applying the various explosive charges, incendiary agents, terrorist devices and sabotage techniques.

(21) The German government admitted (and see this) that, in 1978, the German secret service detonated a bomb in the outer wall of a prison and planted “escape tools” on a prisoner – a member of the Red Army Faction – which the secret service wished to frame the bombing on.

(22) A Mossad agent admits that, in 1984, Mossad planted a radio transmitter in Gaddaffi’s compound in Tripoli, Libya which broadcast fake terrorist transmissions recorded by Mossad, in order to frame Gaddaffi as a terrorist supporter. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya immediately thereafter.

(23) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him “to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident”, thus framing the ANC for the bombing.

(24) An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author).

(25) In 1993, a bomb in Northern Ireland killed 9 civilians. Official documents from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (i.e. the British government) show that the mastermind of the bombing was a British agent, and that the bombing was designed to inflame sectarian tensions. And see this and this.

(26) The United States Army’s 1994 publication Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces – updated in 2004 – recommends employing terrorists and using false flag operations to destabilize leftist regimes in Latin America. False flag terrorist attacks were carried out in Latin America and other regions as part of the CIA’s “Dirty Wars“. And see this.

(27) Similarly, a CIA “psychological operations” manual prepared by a CIA contractor for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels noted the value of assassinating someone on your own side to create a “martyr” for the cause. The manual was authenticated by the U.S. government. The manual received so much publicity from Associated Press, Washington Post and other news coverage that – during the 1984 presidential debate – President Reagan was confronted with the following question on national television:

At this moment, we are confronted with the extraordinary story of a CIA guerrilla manual for the anti-Sandinista contras whom we are backing, which advocates not only assassinations of Sandinistas but the hiring of criminals to assassinate the guerrillas we are supporting in order to create martyrs.

(28) An Indonesian government fact-finding team investigated violent riots which occurred in 1998, and determined that “elements of the military had been involved in the riots, some of which were deliberately provoked”.

(29) Senior Russian Senior military and intelligence officers admit that the KGB blew up Russian apartment buildings in 1999 and falsely blamed it on Chechens, in order to justify an invasion of Chechnya (and see this report and this discussion).

(30) As reported by the New York Times, BBC and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that in 2001, the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the “war on terror”. luring foreign migrants into the country, executing them in a staged gun battle, and then claiming they were a unit backed by Al Qaeda intent on attacking Western embassies”. Macedonian authorities had lured the immigrants into the country, and then – after killing them – posed the victims with planted evidence – “bags of uniforms and semiautomatic weapons at their side” – to show Western diplomats.

(31) At the July 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, black-clad thugs were videotaped getting out of police cars, and were seen by an Italian MP carrying “iron bars inside the police station”. Subsequently, senior police officials in Genoa subsequently admitted that police planted two Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing of a police officer at the G8 Summit, in order to justify a violent crackdown against protesters.

(32) The U.S. falsely blamed Iraq for playing a role in the 9/11 attacks – as shown by a memo from the defense secretary – as one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq war.

Even after the 9/11 Commission admitted that there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime, that Cheney “probably” had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties. Top U.S. government officials now admit that the Iraq war was really launched for oil … not 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction.

Despite previous “lone wolf” claims, many U.S. government officials now say that 9/11 was state-sponsored terror; but Iraq was not the state which backed the hijackers. (Many U.S. officials have alleged that 9/11 was a false flag operation by rogue elements of the U.S. government; but such a claim is beyond the scope of this discussion. The key point is that the U.S. falsely blamed it on Iraq, when it knew Iraq had nothing to do with it.).

(Additionally, the same judge who has shielded the Saudis for any liability for funding 9/11 has awarded a default judgment against Iran for $10.5 billion for carrying out 9/11 … even though no one seriously believes that Iran had any part in 9/11.)

(33) Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the white House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country. And see this.

(34) According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.

(35) The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings.

(36) Police outside of a 2003 European Union summit in Greece were filmed planting Molotov cocktails on a peaceful protester.

(37) Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.”

(38) Similarly, in 2005, Professor John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School – a renowned US defense analyst credited with developing the concept of ‘netwar’ – called for western intelligence services to create new “pseudo gang” terrorist groups, as a way of undermining “real” terror networks. According to Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh, Arquilla’s ‘pseudo-gang’ strategy was, Hersh reported, already being implemented by the Pentagon:

“Under Rumsfeld’s new approach, I was told, US military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists…

The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls ‘action teams’ in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. ‘Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?’ the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. ‘We founded them and we financed them,’ he said. ‘The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.’ A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, ‘We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.’”

(39) United Press International reported in June 2005:

U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

(40) In 2005, British soldiers dressed as Arabs were caught by Iraqi police after a shootout against the police. The soldiers apparently possessed explosives, and were accused of attempting to set off bombs. While none of the soldiers admitted that they were carrying out attacks, British soldiers and a column of British tanks stormed the jail they were held in, broke down a wall of the jail, and busted them out. The extreme measures used to free the soldiers – rather than have them face questions and potentially stand trial – could be considered an admission.

(41) Undercover Israeli soldiers admitted in 2005 to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could blame it on Palestinians, as an excuse to crack down on peaceful protests by the Palestinians.

(42) Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers (and see this).

(43) A 2008 US Army special operations field manual recommends that the U.S. military use surrogate non-state groups such as “paramilitary forces, individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistant or insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorism adversaries, disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other social or political ‘undesirables.’” The manual specifically acknowledged that U.S. special operations can involve both counterterrorism and “Terrorism” (as well as “transnational criminal activities, including narco-trafficking, illicit arms-dealing, and illegal financial transactions.”)

(44) The former Italian Prime Minister, President, and head of Secret Services (Francesco Cossiga) advised the 2008 minister in charge of the police, on how to deal with protests from teachers and students:

He should do what I did when I was Minister of the Interior … infiltrate the movement with agents provocateurs inclined to do anything …. And after that, with the strength of the gained population consent, … beat them for blood and beat for blood also those teachers that incite them. Especially the teachers. Not the elderly, of course, but the girl teachers yes.

(45) At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence.

(46) Egyptian politicians admitted (and see this) that government employees looted priceless museum artifacts 2011 to try to discredit the protesters.

(47) In 2011, a Colombian colonel admitted that he and his soldiers had lured 57 innocent civilians and killed them – after dressing many of them in uniforms – as part of a scheme to claim that Columbia was eradicating left-wing terrorists. And see this.

(48) Rioters who discredited the peaceful protests against the swearing in of the Mexican president in 2012 admitted that they were paid 300 pesos each to destroy everything in their path. According to Wikipedia, photos also show the vandals waiting in groups behind police lines prior to the violence.

(49) A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat.

(50) On November 20, 2014, Mexican agent provocateurs were transported by army vehicles to participate in the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping protests, as was shown by videos and pictures distributed via social networks.

(51) The highly-respected writer for the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that the head of Saudi intelligence – Prince Bandar – recently admitted that the Saudi government controls “Chechen” terrorists.

(52) Two members of the Turkish parliament, high-level American sources and others admitted that the Turkish government – a NATO country – carried out the chemical weapons attacks in Syria and falsely blamed them on the Syrian government; and high-ranking Turkish government admitted on tape plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian government

(53) The Ukrainian security chief admits that the sniper attacks which started the Ukrainian coup were carried out in order to frame others. Ukrainian officials admit that the Ukrainian snipers fired on both sides, to create maximum chaos.

(54) Burmese government officials admitted that Burma (renamed Myanmar) used false flag attacks against Muslim and Buddhist groups within the country to stir up hatred between the two groups, to prevent democracy from spreading.

(55) Israeli police were again filmed in 2015 dressing up as Arabs and throwing stones, then turning over Palestinian protesters to Israeli soldiers.

(56) Britain’s spy agency has admitted (and see this) that it carries out “digital false flag” attacks on targets, framing people by writing offensive or unlawful material … and blaming it on the target.

(57) U.S. soldiers have admitted that if they kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop” automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants

(58) Similarly, police frame innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit. The practice is so well-known that the New York Times noted in 1981:

In police jargon, a throwdown is a weapon planted on a victim.

Newsweek reported in 1999: Perez, himself a former [Los Angeles Police Department] cop, was caught stealing eight pounds of cocaine from police evidence lockers. After pleading guilty in September, he bargained for a lighter sentence by telling an appalling story of attempted murder and a “throwdown”–police slang for a weapon planted by cops to make a shooting legally justifiable. Perez said he and his partner, Officer Nino Durden, shot an unarmed 18th Street Gang member named Javier Ovando, then planted a semiautomatic rifle on the unconscious suspect and claimed that Ovando had tried to shoot them during a stakeout.

Wikipedia notes: As part of his plea bargain, Pérez implicated scores of officers from the Rampart Division’s anti-gang unit, describing routinely beating gang members, planting evidence on suspects, falsifying reports and covering up unprovoked shootings.

(As a side note – and while not technically false flag attacks – police have been busted framing innocent people in many other ways, as well.)

(59) A former U.S. intelligence officer recently alleged:

Most terrorists are false flag terrorists or are created by our own security services.

(60) The head and special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office said that most terror attacks are committed by the CIA and FBI as false flags. Similarly, the director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan – Lt. General William Odom said:

By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation. (audio here).

(61) Leaders throughout history have acknowledged the “benefits” of of false flags to justify their political agenda:

“Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death”.
– Adolph Hitler

“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
– Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.

“The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened”.
– Josef Stalin

Postscript: The media plays along as well. For example, in 2012, NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, was kidnapped in Syria. NBC News said that Engel and his reporting team had been abducted by forces affiliated with the Syrian government. He reported that they only escaped when some anti-Syrian government rebels killed some of the pro-government kidnappers.

However, NBC subsequently admitted that this was false. It turns out that they were really kidnapped by people associated with the U.S. backed rebels fighting the Syrian government … who wore the clothes of, faked the accent of, scrawled the slogans of, and otherwise falsely impersonated the mannerisms of people associated with the Syrian government. In reality, the group that kidnapped Engel and his crew were affiliated with the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army, and NBC should have known that it was blaming the wrong party. See the New York Times and the Nation’s reporting.

Of course, sometimes atrocities or warmongering are falsely blamed on the enemy as a justification for war … when no such event ever occurred. This is sort of like false flag terror … without the terror.

For example:
The NSA admits that it lied about what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 … manipulating data to make it look like North Vietnamese boats fired on a U.S. ship so as to create a false justification for the Vietnam war
One of the central lies used to justify the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq after Iraq invaded Kuwait was the false statement by a young Kuwaiti girl that Iraqis murdered Kuwaiti babies in hospitals. Her statement was arranged by a Congressman who knew that she was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S. – who was desperately trying to lobby the U.S. to enter the war – but the Congressman hid that fact from the public and from Congress
Another central lie used to justify the Gulf War was the statement that a quarter of a million Iraqi troops were massed on the border with Saudi Arabia (see also this article)
Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind reported that the White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a document falsely linking Iraq with Muslim terrorists and 9/11 … and that the CIA complied with those instructions and in fact created the forgery, which was then used to justify war against Iraq. And see this and this
Time magazine points out that the claim by President Bush that Iraq was attempting to buy “yellow cake” Uranium from Niger: had been checked out — and debunked — by U.S. intelligence a year before the President repeated it.
Everyone knew that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. More
The entire torture program was geared towards obtaining false confessions linking Iraq and 9/11
CIA agents and documents admit that the agency gave Iran plans for building nuclear weapons … so it could frame Iran for trying to build the bomb
The “humanitarian” wars in Syria, Libya and Yugoslavia were all justified by false reports that the leaders of those countries were committing atrocities against their people. And see this.

 

[angelburst29]

Fort Russ's exclusive investigation sheds light on the allegations of impropriety over at Russia Insider and the story behind it all.

Bausman and fraud at Russia Insider? Lavelle blows the whistle
http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/04/bausman-and-fraud-at-russia-insider.html

RT's Peter Lavelle, host of the station's flagship show "Cross Talk", sent shock-waves through the alternative media community on April 7th with a stunning revelation. He published a Facebook status which acknowledged what the Fort Russ team has been receiving information on for almost a year: the mounting controversies and possible evidence of fraud, impropriety, and the alleged lack of transparency of Russia Insider's owner and Editor in Chief, Charles Bausman.

This is what Lavelle revealed on April 7th on his Facebook status: (Facebook Post)

The concern which Fort Russ first made public in November of last year, that Russia Insider was among “questionably financed and managed sites promising an ‘inside view of Russia’”, was echoed by Lavelle in his April 7th statement: “I too question the transparency and openness of the site’s management and the entire operation. There appears to be no accountability.”

Russia Insider has become a popular news content aggregator and permanent fundraising campaign, which reproduces news stories taken from other various websites sympathetic to Russian foreign policy. Readers are asked to donate money for this content which is already readily available elsewhere for free, with the unremunerated costs of creating original content shifted onto other sites' writers. It is a very interesting business model which other popular alternative journalists have regularly criticized. This was not the model that Lavelle, nor most of the other volunteers and employees had in mind. Bausman had promised them, as well as the public, hard-hitting original and investigative journalism. This much failed to materialize, by and large.

However, this only touches on the surface of the site's problems.

Soon after it debuted in September 2014, aiming to fill a void and engage in real journalism, it quickly became clear that Russia Insider was having some delay in hiring journalists. Instead, they quickly placed ads for professional fundraisers and marketers that could help increase the coffers of one of several LLC's, controlled by Charles Bausman - one registered in the US, named 'Insider Media LLC', and the other in the Russian Federation. LLC's are not non-profits, but are for profit limited liability corporations which indemnify the personal assets of its owners from claims or suits brought about by other parties, public and private.

While the legal implications are unclear to Fort Russ in relation to how the LLC's were used and structured between the US and Russia, any regular reader of Russia Insider could attest to their marketing strategy, which strongly implied that they were a non profit organization which used all donations on salaries for journalists. On their 'Support' page, they encourage tax-deductible donations of over $1000 to go to a certain "Consortium for Independent Journalists".

The "Consortium for Independent Journalists" is actually award winning journalist Robert Parry's organization, founded in 1995, and is connected with Parry's Consortium news. It would seem that Parry and Bausman had some arrangement for contributions containing the memo line 'Russia Insider' to be transferred to Bausman. Fort Russ cannot offer any statements of fact about the relationship between the LLC and the non-profit. nor about the legality of transferring funds from a non-profit over to a LLC, or directly to Bausman himself, if indeed that was the procedure.

The website consistently claimed that 100% of the proceeds went to 'journalists'. They misinformed the public that, "We'll only spend it on journalist salaries, nothing else. Period."

In the course of Fort Russ's investigation, it has been explained to us from people very close to the operation that the above claim does not have any merit. According to one anonymous source, formerly very close to this area of Russia Insider's scheme, none (or a negligible amount) of the money raised by Russia Insider was spent on what can properly be called 'Journalist salaries'.

According to this source, instead, Bausman brought in his then wife, and her brother; saying that his brother in law was brought in on paid salary in part because she had "child support payments to make".

The source also explained that initially she had been very interested in working with Russia Insider, after being introduced to Bausman. Bausman gave her the "whole pitch", and had intimate knowledge of the fundraising methods, but was shut out from any information about what was done after the funds were raised. Indeed transparency and communicating were always mysteriously lacking at Russia Insider, according to the source. She compared notes with another employee.

What she told us is that things fell apart over the last two weeks when various employees and people working on the project started to share stories and corroborated things that Bausman had done and said to different people. "And as far as not having meetings that was kind of a big deal with Charles, is that he didn't like the idea of having meetings, that it was so corporate, and he was all about this freedom of expression, and we just kind of coast along as we do."

It appears that Bausman had some plan that wasn't explained to the team at all. "But at the same time we were having trouble figuring out which direction we were trying to go. Especially as one of the founding members was asking, are we going into a sort of volunteer driven donation based project website? Media criticism? Or are we going into a, 'how much money can we raise from investors, and you know equity, and then an exit strategy and go public? Or fully become a media company? So a lot of this stuff was going back and forth, whether it would be in speeches, emails, different stories, crowd funding, you know, nobody really knew what the direction was. But we all trusted Charles to tell us what to do, you know, to point us in the right direction.

Problems in transparency and a lack of good corporate governance really became more prominent. "And then he had his girlfriend at the time who he said, you know she's actually going to come on board, and she's gonna become our financial controller. You've got to be thinking to yourself, now that's got to be a conflict of interest."

"We just started seeing our budget increase more and more. But donations and advertising revenue were staying the same. Our traffic was staying the same ... "

Another source who we reached out to, who also briefly was very close to RI's investor outreach operations, explained that there was at least at first, no actual legal entity called 'Russia Insider', there was the LLC which listed Russia Insider as an asset. This claim about the non-entity nature of Russia Insider is corroborated in the contract which Lavelle, earlier today, posted on Facebook.

Bausman falsely claimed, according to our sources, in attempting to push for investors, that the site was worth some $2 million dollars US, in a failed attempt to get about $300,000 poured in. This figure is about 5000% (five thousand percent) higher than what it is realistically valued at. The reality was that this was just a content aggregating website with little to no original content that was only getting about 20 to 25 thousand unique interactions a day. This is less than, for example Fort Russ, but the presentation of Bausman's site and the ongoing campaigning and public misrepresentations of growth certainly painted a different story.

Robert Parry and the former employees are not the only legitimate journalists or media workers who were unwittingly brought into Bausman's "disingenuous scheme". When Bausman approached Peter Lavelle about the idea of starting a legitimate news website business, with a mission to counter the mainstream western media disinformation about Russia, Lavelle was understandably excited and supportive. He brought Bausman on his show to promote the new site, and gave Bausman access to air-time other shows as well as introducing Bausman to several of RT's most competent behind the scenes media workers. Some of these media workers were, according to them, lied to by Bausman about the nature of the organization, its status and purpose. There were no labor contracts for the 'employees', or financial statements of the sort that would indicate that Russia Insider was in fact an actual organization.

Peter Lavelle was contacted at the beginning by Bausman who had pitched the idea of Russia Insider to Lavelle, and offered Lavelle both 25% percent equity in the start-up, as well as other rights to purchase or sell parts of this non-entity. This strange status helps explain the language written on the contract (published below) between Bausman and Lavelle, which unconventionally posits that Bausman "[H]ereby agrees that when a legal entity is formed for ownership of the Russia Insider [...] news site, and other related properties, that JC will transfer 25% of his shares of the [...]"

On April 11th, Lavelle made another major statement, directly accusing Bausman of fraud. (Document screenshot)

Lavelle was concerned with the operation's lack of transparency early on, being pushed to the side by Bausman who refused to discuss details and specifics with Lavelle after their initial agreement was made. Lavelle's relationships was at arm's length, and was not privy to any of the fund raising campaigns, and his expressed concerns about those practices and the uses of those funds went unanswered for many months.

We spoke to Lavelle earlier today, who gave Fort Russ this exclusive statement:

"My relationship with RI has essentially been negative, very negative. I got involved in the project because I truly believe Russia gets a bad rap in western mainstream media. I then believed Charles Bausman was of the same opinion. I went to great lengths to support RI and Bausman. I was also a significant shareholder. It was Bausman who suggested the number of 25%, not me."

Lavelle continues, "At the same time, Bausman acted in very secretive ways. He systematically cut me out of any meaningful interaction with the site or RI team. I agreed to stay on the sidelines – after all I had a share. He often said he didn’t like meetings. Now I think I know why – he told different people different things."

"But that changed when the public started to support RI with cash. I never saw any legal documents about RI (beyond the shareholding agreement Bausman and I signed). I have no idea how contributors’ money was spent. I never saw a balance sheet. I began to believe that all money sent to support RI ended up in Bausman’s pocket. I think Bausman owes a lot people a lot explanations – he needs to step up and demonstrate he is honest and transparent."

"And when it came to my share in RI, I have witness accounts how he habitually lied about this. This really angered me. I know others who worked with Bausman and RI who were left with very negative impressions. So many promises were made; so many promises broken. Bausman has exhausted my belief in him. His actions badly tarnish RI’s journalistic mission and the great hopes of alternative media.", Lavelle concluded.

Fort Russ has learned from a trusted source Bausman has reacted to people who are exposing his malfeasance with crude personal attacks. In one case an email sent to the parents of a former RI employee, in another case a phone call to the employer of an individual who has raised the flag of fraud. In both cases, Bausman does not want to answer questions regarding his fraudulent behavior – instead he relies on below the belt personal attacks.

As it turns out, the site boasting an original “inside view” seems to be having its own inside workings exposed. The endless bombardment of crowdfunding campaigns, donation requests, and Zvezda watches for cash promotions that flood the screen of any reader of Russian Insider, are being scrutinized for allegations of fraud.

Peter Lavelle is only the latest and the most prominent voice of concern on this matter, as several have come before him, and other accounts are still surfacing. Be that as it may, the problem is now front and center: Russia Insider is being accused by fellow information warriors and honest audiences of impropriety.

Their question is as honest as it is simple: “Where is my money going?”

Such a common sense inquiry has reached the next level: is the media criticism crusader practicing the same lack of transparency that he himself claims characterizes western media?

To help answer that question, we also talked at length with the well known Russian-American geopolitical analyst, Andrew Korybko, who has contributed both to Russia Insider and Fort Russ, and knows Lavelle. Korybko was offered a position and an 'opportunity' by Bausman to get in 'on the ground floor', and a work visa in exchange for free labor. He was told by Bausman that while he couldn't be paid, that the idea was to build Russia Insider up and then sell it off to a wealthy investor, after which Korybko would be taken care of. Korybko gave us his take today:

"Russia Insider was not accountable to their crowdfunding supporters. They said before their first campaign that they would show how every dollar was spent. Instead, more than $60,000 later, not a single receipt has surfaced and nobody has any idea how much their staff members are even being paid. Looking at the public records from their crowdfunding campaigns, some numbers also don't add up, such as why some people would donate significant amounts of money that didn't correspond to any of their given "prize" amounts. Moreover, some people would repeat this donation pattern for no reason whatsoever, leading to the possibility that some accounts were being used to facilitate money laundering due to the "tax-free" status that the company publicized that they have.", Korybko stated.

He continued, "There's no smoking gun about whether "funny money" was moving in and out of the company, but the circumstantial case as evidenced by quite a few odd crowdfunding "donations" and the failure to account for even a single dollar's worth of funds is damning. Well, truth be told, donors did see what they got for their money though, as a former US military employee and current self-described lobbyist Jacob Drezin wrote a few original submissions that rival the worst of Anne Applebaum and Luke Harding's propaganda. While RI has on his profile that he's a "volunteer", this was added post facto after the controversies erupted about his anti-Russian and anti-Syrian propaganda. Even if this reprehensible individual was not receiving any money, the fact that he was given a platform on the site to spread his venom raises serious questions about the entire RI editorial process.", Korybko affirms.

Digging deeper, Korybko tells us: "The idea behind RI is honorable, but the execution is despicable and the reality failed to live up to the much-vaunted and hoped-for expectations. Some "good" came out of the initiative because of the community that it created and the popularization of some original analyses by Alexander Mercouris, Jon Hellevig, and others, but overall, this project has totally failed in living up to its "transparent" and "people not profits" motto, and for that reason, it can be seen as a fraudulent organization. The individual writers, contributors, and promoters are not to blame -- they were just as hoodwinked as I was -- but who needs to be held to account is Charles Bausman and his inner circle that deliberately mislead all of their well-intentioned supporters (both in-house volunteers and regular visitors)."

"They gave such a black eye to the whole idea of crowdfunded journalism that it will likely hurt legitimate projects that are trying to grow in its wake. I admittedly benefited from RI's platform of exposure but grew suspicious after I took the time to objectively assess everything going on with the company. The moment that I woke up was when they suddenly stopped republishing my articles and dragged their feet by ultimately never publishing a promotional article about my book, which eventually ended up going on to be quoted by NATO's Defense College as an authoritative Russian-based source on Hybrid War. Sensing some personal problem against me that was being manifested through passive aggressiveness, I thought long and hard about everything related to RI and came to the conclusions that I just shared with everyone. I wholeheartedly and fully commend Peter for bravely taking a stand and exposing the smoking gun that proves that RI was a fraud. It confirms what I and many others had suspected. I hope that a new and improved type of Russian-based crowdfunded journalism can emerge around Peter and that all of the innocent contributors and volunteers that had nothing to do with Charles' deceit can join him in rebuilding the dream that we all know is possible.", Korybko concludes.

Bureaucratic mishaps, disorganization, and a lack of a firm orientation are usually inevitable with popular sites at the start, especially when they skyrocket from such small beginnings. But Russia Insider is different. Firstly, it champions itself as a model of honest and grassroots journalism as a labor of love and conviction, rather than money. This is the point stressed in its numerous HD videos and non-stop advertisements clamoring for donations. Indeed, in the information war against NATO propaganda today, that “truth is on our side,” is one of the greatest merits, and therefore is not one to be taken lightly. Secondly, “questionable financing and management” are being exposed to be only part of the tip of the iceberg.

This is quite unfortunate for the public. The rise and fall of Russia Insider seems rooted in focusing on 'best fundraising practices' and how to 'get rich quick' at the expense of long term credibility and reader dedication.

Last November, a few of our editors who had been receiving information from disgruntled donors and former volunteers, decided to take a critical look at Russia Insider's actual presentation and layout. Readers had started to complain that Russia Insider was not actually producing any original material, but was instead engaged in almost entirely a copy-paste operation taking from other sites. Visitors to the site were inundated with pop-ups which, when clicked closed by the visitor, only revealed a page smothered in e-begging videos and various campaign banners, ranging from Indie-Go-Go, Go-fund-me, to Kickstarter and more. At that time our editors took some snapshots of the 'Russia Insider' site as it appeared then.

This part of the front page, depicted above is what is known as 'above the fold'. This what people first see when they go to a site, without scrolling. Everything one can see in a normally open-sized browser window, is 'above the fold'. This is the first impression, and the most important one. It says who you are, what your stories are, what you're all about, and chiefly what's important to you. What is taking up 75% of the space, in four different 'asks' is the fundraising campaign.

The only actual content we see is an article by John Pilger, published originally elsewhere and connected to Russia Insider in no way whatsoever.

Scrolling down the site to the second half, on the same sample day, was the below screenshot. It is evident that we see more of the same, with two more asks. Readers may have a difficult time, now in retrospect, not finding the 'Keep the Media Honest' motto, which is another ask, a bit humorous or frustrating.

This second photo is what we call below the fold or the 'bottom half'. However, on websites, its just the next chunk of page on the site, equal in size to 'above the fold'. While there's plenty below it, it also tells you a lot about the site. This is what only about 50% of readers are going to stop or focus on when they visit the site, before clicking on. The rest view above the fold, if not following a link to an actual article on Russia Insider.

The iceberg that this Titanic may hit, however, is not the barrage of fundraising campaign popups and ads, profits of investors, media moguls, or military-industrial propagandists. After all, even if Russia Insider is being managed as if it were going to be squeezed for cash like a corporate scheme, the people being alienated are the millions of ordinary people eager to escape the Western media blockade who look up to such sites as Russia Insider. Also left out in the cold are those ordinary volunteers, supporters, and associates who have spent time with RI only to leave frustrated or shoved out for asking too many questions. The Russia Insider readership is not only having its trust violated, but the very practice of “philanthropy” in information war initiatives is being soured for everyone.

Russia Insider seems to actually not involve anything like the 60 volunteers they boast, but rather three or four people at most whose main job seems to be scraping stories from the internet, and copy and pasting them to the site. What this has nothing to do with is 'citizen journalism', or even journalism at all. Even Fox News and the BBC make their own stories half of the time.

An individual who is involved in running one of the Saker websites told us: "Right as RI was getting going, this Charles Bausman found me on Skype, and started to chat me up. He gave me this Ghandiesque story about whirled peas and the like. Then he asked if I could send him my list of translators. Seemed like a genuine guy. So I did. Never heard from him again. I asked what happened, no response"

[...] The total amount of money raised by Russia Insider through paypal is still not known to us at the present time, but with several public campaigns that showed crowd funding figures in excess of $60k, its likely that this number is close to $100k.

This scandal and the desertion of much of the more capable staff of Russia Insider, has likely left Bausman without a ready machine to handle the, yes, next fundraising drive planned for this Spring. People who had previously given money or who were otherwise on the RI mailing list, received this strangely worded picture message earlier today at about 15.00 hours, GMT.

Entirely separate from the campaigns was money taken from investors. With Bausman having placed his wife (or girlfriend, depending on the account) at the head of finances, creating the appearance of a conflict of interest, it will likely require a suit with a discovery process, or charges stemming from the proper authority in Russia or the US (as there are LLC's in both countries), to determine exactly how much is allegedly hidden, and where.

At the end of the day, the apparent mismanagement at Russia Insider will sour readers everywhere. In combination with what has been explained to us as the complete lack of corporate governance structures in place, and the never ending fundraising campaigns that abused and tarnished the very idea of crowd funding with integrity, this entire scandal has dealt a serious blow to alternative media everywhere.