Corruption is Everywhere > Spies tried to force me to take anti-Russia stance – Serbian minister; Timoshenko outs 'scam of the century'; Pr Charles and Bin Laden money

..

Spies tried to force me to take anti-Russia stance – Serbian minister

Serbian interior minister claims foreign spies have been pressing him

into taking anti-Russia stance

FILE PHOTO. Aleksandar Vulin. © Global Look Press / MOD Russia

A major foreign intelligence service has been pressing Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin over his attitude towards Russia and China, the official revealed on Saturday. The minister expects a large media campaign against him to kick off next week.

“One of the largest intelligence services in the world, if not the largest, told me that my stance was unacceptable and that if I do not change [it] and do not abandon the policy that I am pursuing ... then I will not be a member of the government and they will do absolutely everything to smear me,” Vulin told media outlet Pink.

A media campaign against him is expected to begin next week, Vulin claimed. Despite the pressure, the minister said he refused to cooperate in any way with the foreign spies. “I haven’t worked and won’t work for anyone except for the Serbian people, the Serbian state, and I won’t be completely loyal to anyone, except for the president of all Serbs, Aleksandar Vucic,” the minister said.

The condition was that I start working for this foreign intelligence service. I will not, even at the cost of my own life.

The minister also urged the country’s president to keep Serbia neutral, as well as to maintain good relations with Russia and China, regardless of external pressure.

Top Serbian officials have repeatedly said the country faced mounting foreign pressure amid the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Belgrade, however, has refused to join any anti-Russian sanctions or other hostile acts by the collective West, maintaining that Serbia will continue pursuing its own interests, while keeping its long-standing ties with Moscow.

Vulin has taken a particularly strong position amid the ongoing crisis. Early in July, the minister said the US and the EU have been openly pressing Serbia into becoming “a NATO foot soldier” in order to become “someone who wants to engage in a conflict with Russia.”

“We are very clear: We will not engage in a conflict with Russia, we will not engage in other people’s wars, we will not be someone else’s foot soldiers,” he declared back then.

Ukrainian MP reveals ‘scam of the century’

Ukraine’s state-owned Naftogaz gas company has sought to embezzle $8 billion,

Yulia Timoshenko claims

FILE PHOTO: Yulia Timoshenko, an Ukrainian MP and the head of the 'Fatherland' party.

©  Global Look Press / Dimitrios Karvountzis

Ukraine’s state-owned Naftogaz gas company is supposedly running a massive embezzlement scheme as it seeks to get billions of dollars from the government for alleged gas purchases even though Ukraine presumably does not need additional gas for the winter, Yulia Timoshenko, an MP and the head of the ‘Fatherland’ party, claimed on Monday.

According to Timoshenko, the lawmakers were about to pass several bills that would grant Naftogaz additional funding for gas purchases ahead of the winter. One of them would grant the company “compensation” from the budget that was worth 150 billion hryvnas ($4.08 billion) to purchase an additional six billion cubic meters of natural gas abroad.

 The government planned to use international financial aid provided to Ukraine by Western nations for that “compensation,” Timoshenko’s party wrote in a statement last week. According to Timoshenko herself, Naftogaz also sought to request another 150 billion hryvnas ($4.08 billion) from the budget to increase its authorized share capital and then use the money to buy the gas. 

Timoshenko, who also served as Ukraine’s prime minister between 2007 and 2010, also argued that this additional gas purchase for the upcoming winter heating season was not needed at all. According to the MP, Ukraine already produces and stores enough gas for the winter and might even get up to seven billion excessive cubic meters of gas during the upcoming heating season.

On Monday, Timoshenko claimed that Naftogaz was still planning the “scam of the century” by embezzling up to 264 billion hryvnas ($7.18 billion) and “sending them to offshores.” She also called on the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky to organize a meeting between his administration officials, MPs, and independent experts, as well as diplomats from the G7 nations to discuss the situation.

“Could the president not be aware? Are you not aware of the ‘scam of the century’ that Naftogaz is currently implementing?” she wondered in her post.

The lawmaker said that the Ukrainian MPs are set to discuss the relevant bills later in July. Last week, her party said it had blocked bills to supposedly prevent embezzlement by Naftogaz. RT could not independently verify Timoshenko’s claims related to the Naftogaz activities. Neither the Ukrainian presidential office nor the company itself have commented on the issue yet. 

Earlier on Tuesday, the Ukrainian media reported that Naftogaz creditors had rejected the company’s request for a two-year debt payment freeze. Naftogaz made the proposal earlier this month, citing “significant economic and business decline in Ukraine” caused by the ongoing conflict with Russia.

Naftogaz is Ukraine’s largest state-owned oil and gas company and a major source of income, accounting for almost 17% of the country’s total state budget revenue last year.

Prince Charles agreed to take £1million from Bin Laden family 

for his charity despite objections from advisers

Charles said to have accepted funds from two half-brothers of Osama Bin Laden

Agreement made following private meeting between Charles and Bakr Bin Laden

The payment came despite protestations from his advisers to return the money

Charles reportedly warned of reputational damage if it became known to public

By JAMIE PHILLIPS FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 15:57 EDT, 30 July 2022 | UPDATED: 16:01 EDT, 30 July 2022

The rest of this article can be found at Daily Mail.

==========================================================================================

The Media is the Message > Trust in Media Tanking; WaPos Self-Contradiction; UK's Express and Sun Admit Fake News

..

Trust in US media drops near record low with only 36%

of Americans expressing confidence in reporting

7 Oct, 2021 18:38

Protesters are shown in front of a damaged CNN sign at the media outlet's Atlanta headquarters during a demonstration in May 2020. © Reuters / Dustin Chambers

A new Gallup poll shows that Americans’ trust in mass media outlets has tumbled to the second-lowest level on record, and the relatively few US adults who think they’re seeing truth in news reports are predominantly Democrats.

Just 36% of American adults expressed some level of trust in mass media in a survey done last month, down from 40% last year and historic highs around 70% in the 1970s, Gallup said on Thursday. In fact, only 7% of respondents said they have “a great deal” of trust in newspaper, television and radio news reporting, while 29% have “a fair amount” of trust.

The all-time low of 32% was set in 2016, when Donald Trump blasted the political press as “slime” and “lying, disgusting people” on his way to defeating Hillary Clinton in that year’s contentious presidential election.

Trump’s presidency and his disputed election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 appears to have widened the political divide in media perceptions. While 68% of Democrats polled by Gallup said they trust the media, just 31% of Independents and 11% of Republicans still believe in the Fourth Estate.

The media-trust gap between Democrats and Republicans has widened from 23 percentage points in 2015, at 55-32, to 57 points in 2021, Gallup’s polling shows. At the start of the century, that gap was just six points, at 53-47.

This, of course, reveals how far left MSM has gone.

Democrat voters perhaps liked what they saw from the media’s treatment of Trump during his presidency and its coverage of the 2020 election, as their trust level shot up to as high as 76% in 2018 from 51% in 2016. It has remained around 70% for the past five years.

For example, mainstream outlets joined Big Tech in suppressing October 2020 reports on the Biden family’s overseas influence-peddling. Revelations from a laptop that Biden’s son, Hunter, allegedly left at a Delaware repair shop were portrayed as ‘Russian disinformation’. Nearly a year later, with the Democrat safely installed as president, a reporter from one of the outlets that promoted the Russian-disinformation theory, Politico, revealed that he had independently confirmed several of the most damaging emails from the laptop.

And when a January 6 protest over claims of election fraud at the US Capitol escalated into a riot, CNN and other mainstream outlets joined Democrat politicians in touting the event as a deadly and racially motivated “insurrection.” The only person killed during the riot was a Trump supporter who was shot by police, while four others, including one officer, died of natural causes.

While coverage of the Trump era apparently pleased Democrats and alienated many Republicans, Independents are taking an increasingly skeptical view of the media. Trust in the media among Independents has dropped from 42% in 2018 to 31% in 2021, Gallup’s figures showed.

Coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic also may have diminished public trust in the media. A hidden-camera investigation by Project Veritas in April purported to show CNN technical director Charlie Chester saying that the network hyped fears of the virus to boost ratings.

“Covid? Gangbusters with ratings, right? Which is why we constantly have the death toll on the side,” Chester was shown saying in the Project Veritas video.

Gallup’s findings are in line with those of the Pew Research Center, which said in August that Democrats were more than twice as likely as Republicans to say they had at least some trust in information from national news organizations. That gap went from 13 percentage points in 2016, at 83-70, to 43 points this year, at 78-35.

Reaction to Gallup’s latest poll was similarly divided. Greg Scott, a staffer for the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, said the results showed that it’s a “good time for some introspection, journos.”

At the other end of the spectrum, a left-wing Twitter user interpreted the poll as a reflection of Democrats rejecting “Trump- and GOP-enabling lies” and Republicans distrusting the media “every time the press tells the truth.”

===========================================================================================

Washington Post's ‘conspiracy theory’ quiz declares existence of

‘deep state’ fake news, contradicting its own reporting

8 Oct, 2021 15:49

FILE PHOTO: A protester holding a sign referring to the QAnon conspiracy theory speaks at a protest against the 2020 presidential election results in Phoenix, Arizona, November 5, 2020 © Reuters / Cheney Orr

If you believe in a “Deep State” embedded in the US government, then you’re falling down the conspiracy “rabbit hole,” the Washington Post claims. Yet the Post believes this theory too. It just doesn’t call it a ‘Deep State’.

Nine in 10 Americans believe at least one conspiracy theory, researchers found earlier this summer. Yet conspiracy theories run the gamut from ‘Bigfoot exists’ to ‘the Holocaust never happened’, and the Washington Post published a quiz this week to remind its readers which ones to believe and which to discard. The answers tell a story in themselves.

In a series of multiple-choice questions, the statement “There is a ‘deep state’ embedded in the government that operates in secret and without oversight” is marked as false. 

“For much of the past four years, Republicans have speculated that a ‘deep state’ was working to undermine President Donald Trump,” the Post explained, adding: “While the FBI and CIA do conduct covert operations, there’s little evidence for a separate Deep State.”

Yet this is untrue, according to the Washington Post’s own reporting. The Post revealed in 2013 that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence maintains a “black budget” of $52.6 billion mapping “a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny,” which spends these funds on spy operations and occasionally lethal action abroad. The public didn’t know that the NSA spied on Americans’ communications for a long time, until the Post published Edward Snowden’s leaks that same year, and the Post was instrumental in drawing attention to the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program.

Even before Snowden’s revelations, the Post in 2010 described the US national security and intelligence apparatus as “a hidden world, growing beyond control.” This leviathan, the paper described, is “hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight,” while “no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it, or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who first reported Snowden’s leaks, described the Post’s about-turn on the existence of the Deep State as an example of “how the Trump era corrupted almost every mainstream institution in the US, especially media corporations.”

The CIA’s experiments with mind-control and psychological torture, which were carried out on Americans during multiple presidential administrations, are not the stuff of conspiracy theory. These experiments took place between 1953 and 1973, with some information on the program, known as MKUltra, only declassified in 2001. Another question in the Washington Post’s quiz even highlights this CIA program as an example of a conspiracy that actually took place.

The term ‘Deep State’ has been used in recent years to describe the bureaucrats and intelligence agency operatives who worked to frustrate and stymie former President Donald Trump’s agenda. When invoked by Republicans and Trump supporters, the term is ridiculed as a conspiracy theory, but those involved openly admit to working against the former president from behind the scenes.

General Mark Milley, commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went behind Trump’s back to assure his Chinese counterpart that he and the national security establishment wouldn’t let Trump do anything “rogue” after his election loss last year. Milley admitted to consorting with Beijing, and with Democrat politicians, in a recent book by Washington Post reporters Robert Costa and Bob Woodward.

Time Magazine lionized the “well-funded cabal of powerful people” who worked to ensure that Trump lost his re-election bid. In the words of the magazine, “they were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.” 

New Yorker author David Rohde, who has written a book on the Deep State and the conspiracies surrounding it, told Vox last year that the Deep State exists, and can be described as “a permanent government or an institutional government” made up of “incredibly large and powerful organizations like the FBI and the CIA and the NSA.” Whether by the FBI’s ‘Russiagate’ investigation – which was predicated on several lies – or unnamed ‘intelligence sources’ planting false stories in the media to hamper Trump’s planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, this “permanent government” did work against Trump before and during his four years in office. 

Curiously, the Washington Post’s quiz now describes the claim that “Donald Trump colluded with Russians to steal the presidency in 2016” as false, after four years of articles pushing the notion that there was, in fact, “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact, it seems, largely depends on who’s in office.

Bild roasts YouTube for stifling free speech in Germany after

court rules it was wrong to delete Covid-19 interviews

12 Oct, 2021 13:45

Screenshot © allesaufdentisch.tv; (inset) © Reuters / Lucy Nicholson

YouTube censorship of Covid-19 debate is a “dangerous encroachment” on the freedom of speech, an editor at leading German tabloid Bild has said, after the platform deleted two videos of an online debate on the pandemic.

The preliminary injunction was issued by the Cologne Regional Court in response to a legal challenge filed by the people behind the #allesaufdentisch (#EverythingOnTheTable) online campaign. It’s basically a collection of interviews with various experts and public figures about the Covid-19 pandemic that the initiators touted as a “wide-ranging, fact-based, open and factual discourse” on their website. Some of them challenged the government handling of the pandemic and raised all sorts of controversial vaccine-related issues.

YouTube found two of those interviews unfit for its hosting and erased them. The flagged videos showed discussions with mathematics professor Stephan Luckhaus and the neurobiologist Gerald Huther. The court called YouTube’s move “unjustified”, saying that the platform failed to explain which exact parts of the interviews it deemed in violation of its community rules for health-related content, according to German media.

The explanation of why the videos were deleted was kept pretty vague, claiming that some opinions about the vaccination against Covid-19 went against the scientific consensus. Overall, the videos contained “a large number of clearly permissible statements”, the court said, which gave credence to the plaintiffs’ argument that YouTube had unfairly restricted their freedom of expression. The injunction said the court decision can be appealed.

The #allesaufdentisch campaign was launched in late September and was considered a spiritual successor of a similar #allesdichtmachen (#CloseEverythig) anti-lockdown online movement, which tilted more to satirical content.

Critics say the newer interviews are a mixture of justified criticism, trivialities and “targeted disinformation”, as the daily Die Zeit described it. But many people believe the public deserves the right to see those opinions and judge their validity for themselves, without interference from American tech giants.

Jan Schafer, the political director of the influential German tabloid Bild, hailed the court’s decision, calling YouTube’s increasingly broad use of censorship a “dangerous encroachment” on public discourse in Germany.

Bild was the first to obtain and cover the court injunction on Sunday evening. It remains unclear how much influence the opinion of the German justice system will have on US-based Google, the owner of YouTube.

Basically, none, unless there is strong legislation, or very large fines or lawsuits.

Last month, YouTube shut down two popular channels of RT DE, the Berlin-based German-language version of RT, using the same “Covid-19 misinformation” justification. The decision caused a major rift in German-Russian relationships, as Moscow accused Berlin of tacitly approving the move, if not orchestrating it behind the scene. Germany denied the allegation.

RT DE has been facing an increasingly hostile environment in Germany, with local banks refusing to serve it and some media outlets branding it a Russian propaganda arm bombarding Germans with misinformation. RT DE turned to German courts to defend its reputation from what it argued to be slanderous accusations, securing injunctions in its favor.

Bild was in no rush to defend RT DE from YouTube censorship. In fact, it described the erasure of its channels as a blow to “the central component of [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] disinformation campaign” and lamented that the channels’ content remained available on other platforms, reaching “hundreds of thousands” of viewers.

Daily Express retracts story on Russia ‘stealing’ Sputnik V vaccine recipe, but the original fake-news publisher the Sun persists

12 Oct, 2021 18:40

(L) Screenshot © express.co.uk; (R) Screenshot © thesun.co.uk

The Daily Express has retracted the claim Russia stole the coronavirus vaccine recipe from UK’s AstraZeneca, replacing it with a statement by Sputnik V’s developers. The Sun merely appended a quote and stands by its false story.

In a Monday ‘bombshell,’ the Sun claimed UK spies “have proof” that Moscow’s flagship Covid-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, was actually inspired by documents “swiped” from AstraZeneca “by a foreign agent in person.” The Express later published its own story, citing the Sun.

On Tuesday, however, the latter tabloid retracted the story entirely – leaving the original headline, but replacing the copy with the text of a statement by the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the outfit that funded Sputnik V’s development at the Gamaleya National Research Center in Moscow.

“The article also contained false information. As an apology, we are happy to set the record straight,” the Express noted in the correction. 

The RDIF statement explains that Sputnik V uses two human adenovirus vectors, whereas the AstraZeneca jab opted for a chimpanzee adenovirus. Sputnik V, which is the world’s first registered vaccine against the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, was also based on years of prior research in the field – a fact that’s easily verifiable via public records.

“Rather than spreading fake stories, the UK media and Government services should better protect the reputation of AstraZeneca, a safe and efficient vaccine that is constantly attacked by competitors in the media with facts taken out of context,” the RDIF said.

The Sun has not retracted or corrected Monday’s article, however. The tabloid merely added a one-sentence quote from a London PR firm representing the RDIF to the end of the article, describing the original story as “another fake news and blatant lie based on anonymous sources.”

Monday’s claims by British spies, laundered by the tabloid of Hillsborough infamy, drew sharp criticism in Moscow. Gennady Onishchenko, a lawmaker from the ruling United Russia party who previously served as head of Russia’s health authority and a presidential aide, said that the people involved in the story ought to be fired and to seek psychiatric help.

“I suggest they send the Sun’s journalists for a psychological evaluation,” he told RIA Novosti. “And the MI6 employees should be fired for losing the ability to do their jobs.”

Russophobia - Skripal Poisoning Handling Leaves Room for Manipulation

..

UK Defense ministry document reveals Skripals blood samples

could have been manipulated

By Dilyana Gaytandzhieva - Dilyana.BG

September 3, 20210

Incredible transformation: Yulia Skripal (left) following the alleged poisoning with the deadliest known nerve agent Novichok. Yulia and her father Sergei Skripal (right) before the alleged nerve agent poisoning.

New evidence has emerged of gross violations during the UK investigation into the alleged poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on 4th March 2018. The new revelations put into question the main evidence that the Skripals were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok.

The blood samples taken from the Skripals could have been tampered with so that they test positive for Novichok, newly disclosed information obtained from the UK Ministry of Defense reveals. Furthermore, documents show that Russia was not the only country in the world that could be linked to the nerve agent Novichok.

The US had covered up its own Novichok program masked as research on fourth generation nerve agents (FGAs) and muzzled the Organisation for the prohibition of chemical weapons (OPCW) a decade before the Skripals attack.

Breach of chain of custody

Newly disclosed information obtained from the UK Ministry of Defense (MOD) under the Freedom of Information Act questions the integrity of the main evidence that the Skripals were poisoned with Novichok, namely their blood samples. The ministry is in charge of the British military laboratory DSTL Porton Down which analyzed the Skripals blood samples and reportedly identified Novichok.

“Our searches have failed to locate any information that provides the exact time that the samples were collected”, the ministry states. The information held by MOD therefore indicates that the samples were collected at some point between 16:15 on 4 March 2018 and 18:45 on 5 March 2018 (the approximate time according to MOD when the samples arrived at DSTL Porton Down). Even the time of arrival at Porton Down is indicated as “approximate”.

The lack of this information is gross violation and breach of the chain of custody. The UK NHS protocol requires that a request form accompany all specimens sent to the laboratory and clearly state the exact (not approximate) date and time of collection. This newly disclosed information questions the whole Skripals Novichok poisoning story. The fact that the chain of custody of these blood samples was broken directly suggests that they could have been manipulated and tampered with.

There is so much more on this story, some of it a little technical. There is also some reference to the Navalny poisoning. Read it at DILYANA.BG. 

Russophobia - And the Organizations That Create It

..

US regime-change agency NED admits its role in the strife in Belarus, but leaked documents also implicate the UK Foreign Office

21 May, 2021 07:50

FILE PHOTO. Demonstration to protest against presidential election results, in Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus. © Reuters / Vasily Fedosenko; (inset) Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. © Wikipedia

By Kit Klarenberg, an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. 'Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg

The full extent of Western meddling in Belarus prior to the country’s contested August 2020 election may never be known. Yet the outlines of a wide-ranging foreign effort to destabilize the government are becoming ever clearer.

As RT reported earlier this week, a pair of Russian pranksters posing as Belarusian opposition figures have duped high-ranking representatives of US regime-change arm the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) into exposing the extent of Washington’s clandestine involvement in the unrest that erupted across the country throughout 2020.

Among other bombshell disclosures, Nina Ognianova, who oversees the NED’s work with local groups in the country, suggested “a lot of the people” who were “trained” and “educated” via the organization’s various endeavors there were pivotal to “the events, or the build-up to the events, of last summer.”

Long-time NED chief Carl Gershman – who in September 2013, less than six months prior to the coup that shifted Kiev’s political orientation, dubbed Ukraine “the biggest prize” for Washington – added that his organization was working with controversial opposition figure Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and her team “very, very closely.” In all, the agency bankrolled at least 159 civil society initiatives in Belarus, costing $7,690,689, from 2016 to 2020 alone.

The team’s unguarded comments represent a rare public admission of the insidious, destabilizing role played by the NED – in 1991, its then-president acknowledged, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” However, leaked UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) files indicate that the US is far from the only foreign power attempting to undermine the country’s government.

Happy birthday, international spying network! Britain’s GCHQ and America’s NSA hail 75th anniversary of their alliance

In 2017, then-Prime Minister Theresa May unveiled a £100 million kitty, ostensibly for battling Kremlin disinformation. In practice, internal FCDO files leaked by hacktivist collective Anonymous made clear the effort was primarily concerned with “weakening the Russian state’s influence,” particularly in its “near abroad.” As a close neighbor and arguably most important ally of Moscow, Belarus was unsurprisingly very much in the FCDO’s crosshairs.

In January of that year, Whitehall commissioned an extensive analysis of Belarusian citizens’ perceptions, motivations, and habits, in order to “identify opportunities” to “appropriately communicate” with them. In particular, London was interested in “existing or potential grievances against their national government” that could be exploited, and “channels and messages” by which the UK government could “appropriately engage with different sub-groups.”

The analysis was conducted by shadowy FCDO contractor Albany Associates, which has, in recent years, also conducted numerous information warfare operations in the Baltic states, in order to “develop greater affinity” among the region’s Russian-speaking minority for the UK, European Union and NATO. While carrying out another Whitehall-funded project targeted at Moscow, the firm closely collaborated with NED-connected French NGO IREX Europe.

An accompanying bio notes IREX has been working in Belarus since 2006 “with print, online and radio outlets,” to “improve the quality of their coverage,” and “increase their understanding of the EU and EU member states.” As part of its youth audience offering in the country, the organization was said to have founded the Warsaw-based Euroradio, along with online outlet 34mag.

Footage produced by Euroradio of violent crackdowns on protesters in Minsk was regularly aired by the Western media, including the BBC, during the strife. The outlet even specifically amplified calls from the British state broadcaster for activists to submit pictures and videos for use in news coverage. Franak Viacorka – an Atlantic Council senior fellow, and now senior advisor to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya – prominently hailed its “fearless” reporting of the upheaval.

Euroradio also repeatedly crops up in documents related to the Open Information Partnership (OIP), which is the “flagship” strand within Whitehall’s multi-pronged propaganda assault on Russia. Bankrolled by the FCDO to the tune of £10 million, the organization maintains a network of 44 partners across Central and Eastern Europe, including “journalists, charities, think tanks, academics, NGOs, activists, and factcheckers.” One of the collective’s primary, covert objectives is influencing “elections taking place in countries of particular interest” to the FCDO.

The classified files make clear the OIP has engaged in numerous astroturfing initiatives throughout the region, helping organizations and individuals produce slick propaganda masquerading as independent citizen journalism, which is then amplified globally via its network.

For instance, in Ukraine, the OIP worked with a 12-strong group of online ‘influencers’ “to counter Kremlin-backed messaging through innovative editorial strategies, audience segmentation, and production models that reflected the complex and sensitive political environment,” in the process allowing them to “reach wider audiences with compelling content that received over four million views.”

In Russia and Central Asia, the OIP established a covert network of YouTubers, helping them create videos “promoting media integrity and democratic values.” Participants were also taught how to “make and receive international payments without being registered as external sources of funding” and “develop editorial strategies to deliver key messages,” while the consortium minimized their “risk of prosecution” and managed “project communications” to ensure the existence of the network, and indeed the OIP’s role, were kept “confidential.”

It would be entirely unsurprising if similar efforts were being undertaken in Belarus. After all, the country – along with Moldova and Ukraine – is referred to in the leaked documents as “the most vital space in the entire network,” and a “high-impact priority” for London, suggesting its 2020 election was very much “of interest” to Whitehall. If so, it would likewise be entirely unsurprising if many of the alleged so-called citizen journalists and media outlets covering the unrest in Minsk received funding and training from the OIP.

All along, too, MEMO 98, an OIP member coincidentally also funded by NED, kept a close eye on the incendiary proceedings, publishing several analyses of media coverage and social media activity related to the protests. It drew particular attention to the output of Belsat TV, a Warsaw-based channel – founded in December 2007 by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it seeks to influence political change in Belarus. MEMO 98 praised the station’s “extensive coverage of protests and related intimidation of activists.”

Strikingly, the leaked FCDO files indicate that Belsat TV received intensive, Whitehall-financed support from the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the newswire’s international “charitable” wing, including 150 days’ consultancy in improving “TV output quality and audience reach.”

While the protests have largely fizzled out in recent months, and Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s calls for Western leaders to recognise her as the legitimate president of Belarus continue to fall on deaf ears, there are clear signs many other media platforms in Belarus receive life-giving sponsorship from London to this day.

In March 2021, the FCDO published an update on the progress of its global ‘Media Freedom Campaign’, which revealed that, over the past year, Whitehall had allocated £950,000 in financing to Belarusian news outlets, enabling them to “remain open and maintain a functional level of equipment.”

“Without this support, they would otherwise have been forced to close by government measures,” the document stated. “The funding has saved jobs and ensured that independent media can still hold the government to account during a period of increasingly violent action by the security forces.”

Evidently, even during a global pandemic, the regime-change show must go on – and the UK government is committed to ensuring people the world over continue to receive a steady deluge of slanted agitprop from the streets of Minsk, in order to turn public opinion against the government not only of Belarus, but of Russia too.

Lest anyone call me communist, or something worse, for criticizing the UK, USA, NATO, etc for the relentless efforts to demonize Russia, may it be known that for the first decade and part of the 2nd decade in this century, I was persuaded that Putin was determined to re-create the old Russia, or perhaps the USSR with himself as Czar.

In the past few years, I have begun to think that he has outgrown that adolescent dream and is now more on the defensive than offensive as the west has become very offensive in its pursuit of Russia's neighbours. That, in itself, might be a good thing, but it is still 'playing a game' that feeds military industrial manufacturers, creating a spectacular waste of money. 

It's time for key players to grow past adolescence and start helping each other instead of threatening to destroy each other. It's time to grow up! What do you think the odds are of that happening?

NBC Shooting Themselves in the Foot With Their Fanatical Attacks on Tulsi Gabbard

Who Do You Trust More? NBC Journalist’s Stab at RT

Backfires Spectacularly

Eager to defend NBC News’ claim that Democrat Tulsi Gabbard was being promoted by a ‘Russian machine,’ journalist Kasie Hunt asked Twitter if they trusted her network or RT more. The results were not what she'd hoped for.

Fresh from a disastrous interview with Gabbard (D-Hawaii) on Wednesday morning, in which Hunt claimed that US troops were sent to Syria “pushing back against [President Bashar] Assad” rather than to fight Islamic State, Hunt asked her Twitter followers to compare the NBC story that claimed that Russia was “boosting” the congresswoman, to the report from “Russian state media” RT.

Kasie Hunt✔
@kasie
 Here is ⁦@NBCNews⁩’ excellent reporting on the Russian machine that now appears to be boosting Tulsi Gabbard https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna964261 …

Experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.

nbcnews.com
Kasie Hunt✔
@kasie
Here is the “debunking” of the NBC News report from RT, the Russian state media. You tell me which you think is more credible https://www.rt.com/usa/450613-nbc-gabbard-new-knowledge-smear/ …

NBC’s claim Tulsi Gabbard is supported by a Kremlin propaganda effort is based on data from a cybersecurity firm already exposed for creating fake Russian bot accounts, prompting a sharp rebuke from...

NBC’s “excellent reporting” was based on “experts” from New Knowledge – a shady outfit that was exposed in December for making up fake Russian bot accounts to help Democrats during a 2017 Senate election. It was Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept that pushed back on NBC’s claim first, a fact duly noted in RT’s article – but not in Hunt’s tweets.

Greenwald responded by comparing NBC journalists to being more obsessed with Russia that J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the FBI for almost 50 years.

Glenn Greenwald✔
@ggreenwald
 NBC personalities find more Russian infiltration than J. Edgar Hoover ever did. Also, @Kasie, you "forgot" to mention that the "experts" on which NBC relied for its McCarthyite smearing just got caught fabricating Russia data on behalf of Democrats. https://theintercept.com/2019/02/03/nbc-news-to-claim-russia-supports-tulsi-gabbard-relies-on-firm-just-caught-fabricating-russia-data-for-the-democratic-party/ …

Kasie Hunt✔
@kasie
Here is ⁦@NBCNews⁩’ excellent reporting on the Russian machine that now appears to be boosting Tulsi Gabbard https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna964261 …

There were hundreds of replies to Hunt’s question. While some expressed support for NBC and repeated the claim that Gabbard is a Russian agent somehow, the majority sided with RT and The Intercept.

When the author of the original NBC report, Ben Popken, jumped to Hunt’s defense, The Nation’s Aaron Mate called him out for “sleazy McCarthyite tactics.”

Aaron Maté✔
@aaronjmate
 Correct, and Glenn Greenwald completely discredited your report. (https://theintercept.com/2019/02/03/nbc-news-to-claim-russia-supports-tulsi-gabbard-relies-on-firm-just-caught-fabricating-russia-data-for-the-democratic-party/ …) That’s why you have to resort to repeating your report’s sleazy McCarthyite tactics — “look everyone, a Russian outlet is talking about ____!” — to try to defend it.

Ben Popken✔
@bpopken
Pressed by @kasie on NBC's reporting, Gabbard didn't dispute a single fact and instead said it had been discredited. When asked by whom she wouldn't name them. I'll tell you who: RT, Russia Insider, Sputnik, and Glenn Greenwald.

Lest one think the Intercept is supporting Gabbard’s candidacy, the publication actually ran a fiercely critical piece about her in early January, accusing the congresswoman of being close to Hindu nationalist groups in India.

Of the candidates that have announced their intent to compete for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2020, Gabbard is the only one so far to campaign on opposing foreign wars, including the US intervention in Syria, ostensibly against ISIS, and the ongoing effort to force regime change in Venezuela.

Being an outsider to the war-mongering establishment (read Deep State) in Washington, expect Mainstream Media to keep pounding Tulsi with shoddy, dishonest and fabricated reporting. 

Majority of Americans Fear Surveillance & ‘Deep State’ Power – Poll

© Damir Sagolj / Reuters

Over 70 percent of US citizens in the Republican and Democratic parties believe America is controlled by a “deep state” of unelected government officials, according to a new poll. They also fear state surveillance, it reveals.

Although most Americans interviewed are not familiar with the term ‘deep state’, when they heard the definition as a cadre of unelected government and military officials who secretly influence government policies, a majority expressed belief in its ‘probable existence’ according to the Monmouth University poll released Monday.

Additionally six in 10 of those polled think that these unelected government figures wield too much power when it comes to shaping federal policy.  

“We usually expect opinions on the operation of government to shift depending on which party is in charge. But there’s an ominous feeling by Democrats and Republicans alike that a ‘deep state’ of unelected operatives are pulling the levers of power,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Donald Trump has popularized the term ‘deep state’ over the course of his presidency. In January he blasted the ‘deep state’ Department of Justice for allegedly shielding a Hillary Clinton aide  who used a non-secure private email account while conducting government business. 

The poll also highlights widespread fears of state surveillance, with 80 percent of Americans believing that the US government currently spies on the activities of its citizens. 

“This is a worrisome finding. The strength of our government relies on public faith in protecting our freedoms, which is not particularly robust. And it’s not a Democratic or Republican issue. These concerns span the political spectrum,” Murray added.

In 2013 ex-CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the existence of a massive surveillance programme by US and UK authorities. The leaks exposed that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on tens of millions of Americans by collecting their telephone and internet records.

The Monmouth University Poll was conducted by telephone from March 2 to 5, 2018, with 803 adults in the United States.

Unfortunately, I believe that 'Deep State' is not restricted to American civil servants and military. I believe it goes higher into the US government and extends into many western governments including NATO. It is 'Deep State' that is pulling the strings on the Russia hysteria. And, I suspect, Deep State may possibly be involved in chemical weapons attacks in false flag operations in Syria.

Dutch Lies Over Putin’s ‘Aggression’ Expose NATO War Agenda

By finian cunningham 

Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte was this week forced to bear a parliamentary vote of no confidence after his foreign minister finally came clean over a dangerous lie he has been telling for two years concerning Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Halbe Zijlstra quit in shame on Monday as the country’s foreign minister after admitting that a story he had peddled about personally hearing Putin plotting to create a “greater Russia” was false. That then forced premier Rutte to endure a “no confidence” motion from parliamentarians. In the end, Rutte survived the vote. If a majority had voted against his leadership, his coalition government may have collapsed.

But the deep damage done to the Dutch authorities will not be so easily repaired by Rutte’s survival as premier. What has been exposed this week is a senior member of government recklessly telling bare-faced lies in an attempt to slander Russia, poison international relations, and ratchet up already dangerous geopolitical tensions.

Zijlstra had claimed two years ago, in 2016, that he had personally witnessed Russian leader Vladimir Putin boasting about creating a “greater Russia” which, it is claimed, would incorporate Ukraine, the Baltic states, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The newly resigned Dutch top diplomat claimed he heard Putin making the remarks while present with others at the Russian leader’s dacha (summer house) back in 2006.

This week, Zijlstra finally came clean and admitted before parliament that he hadn't in fact been present at the alleged gathering. He still maintains, however, that a confidante who was among the guests at Putin’s dacha informed him of the alleged “greater Russia” plan. But how can we now trust the word of a self-confessed liar?

Zijlstra’s boss, Prime Minister Rutte, also sought to downplay the debacle, claiming that his foreign minister had made “a big mistake” – but that “lying was not a deadly sin.”

Unless it starts a war - then it's pretty deadly!

Rutte is in for a rude awakening due to his complacent thinking. For indeed his government has been caught telling a very grave lie whose ramifications concern issues of war and peace in Europe.

Disgraced former minister Zijlstra stands accused of gross distortion of Russia’s foreign policy.

Since the US and European-backed illegal coup in Ukraine in early 2014, geopolitical reality has been turned upside-down. American and European corporate media have peddled relentless anti-Russia propaganda accusing Moscow of “aggression” and “expansionism” in Europe.

This torrent of Russophobia spewed out by Washington, the Pentagon, NATO, and the European Union has created the worst crisis in relations with Russia since the Cold War ended nearly three decades ago. There are real fears that the mounting crisis could escalate into an all-out war involving nuclear powers.

Zijlstra’s offense therefore is not merely a “mistaken” lie. His flagrant public distortion has contributed directly to the grave deterioration in geopolitical relations. One could even argue such reprehensible remarks amount to incitement of war, which is a cardinal crime under Nuremberg legal principles.

Lamentably, the mendacious senior Dutch politician is not an isolated case. Recall how former Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski was caught out telling similar defamatory lies about Russia in 2014.

Sikorski, who has been an ardent supporter of NATO force build-up against Russia, reportedly claimed that he personally overheard Vladimir Putin in 2008 plotting to annex Ukrainian territory in a covert plot. Sikorski claimed that he heard Putin propositioning then Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk with a carve-up deal of Ukraine between Poland and Russia.

Sikorski was obliged to swiftly retract the claims published in US media, and awkwardly admitting that he was not present at the alleged meeting with Putin, and that his quoted remarks were meant as a “surreal joke.”

But, again, this is no joke or mistake. It is deadly serious disinformation by senior government officials, which is recklessly inciting war tensions with Russia. Sikorski is prominently associated with pro-NATO think-tanks like the hawkish American Enterprise Institute. He is married to Anne Applebaum who makes a living from writing anti-Russian screeds for news outlets like the Washington Post.

Zijlstra and Sikorski join the ranks of Russophobia regurgitated by other European foreign ministers like Britain’s Boris Johnson who issued the outlandish claim earlier this year that Russia is “targeting” British infrastructure; or French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian who has impugned Russia for chemical weapons use in Syria – only for the French President Emmanuel Macron to admit this week that his government has actually no evidence about the use of such weapons in Syria.

Macron has made his own contribution to Russophobia by leveling unsubstantiated allegations that his presidential election campaign last year was “hacked” by Kremlin agents. He has since banned Russian news media from attending his press conferences.

All these senior government figures are irresponsibly fueling a climate of demonization against Russia which is compounding other unhinged claims made by politicians in Washington and the Baltic states. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, for example, recently claimed that Russian Iskander missiles based on Russian sovereign territory of Kaliningrad were targeting half of Europe, an alarmist claim which has been amplified by US secretary of defense James Mattis in the Pentagon’s recent Nuclear Posture Review.

The climate of hysteria – based on false, fevered official claims – is militating against normal political and diplomatic relations, which is, in turn, exacerbating the war in Ukraine and leading to wider war tensions with Russia across Europe.

A good question is why the ousted Dutch minister decided to own up this week to his lies about Putin.

The answer may be related to the bigger credibility crisis of the Dutch government and its NATO allies with regard to the whole Russophobia propaganda war.

Next month, the Netherlands is to hold a national referendum on extending powers of Dutch state intelligence to monitor public electronic communications. To convince the Dutch public to vote for more snooping powers, the authorities are relying on the hackneyed claims about Russian “meddling” and “interference”.

It seems significant that Dutch media reported last month that the country’s secret services allegedly “hacked into” Russian state hackers who were allegedly penetrating the American Democratic party’s databases during the US presidential elections back in 2015-2016. As usual, no evidence was provided to support the claims. We know from other credible reports that the Democratic party was quite possibly not hacked at all, but rather was leaked from inside by a Democrat staffer. So the Dutch intel story smearing Russia is highly dubious.

But it seems that the purported “good deed” performed by the Dutch intelligence services was pitched in the media as a way to ingratiate bona fides with the Netherlands public. The aim being to dispose the public toward voting in the referendum next month to give the Dutch state more intrusive powers over citizens to “protect” them from “nefarious Russians”.

Now, if the Dutch minister had held on to his office any longer there was a risk that his lies may have become public embarrassingly close to the March referendum, which could have resulted in the public rejecting the authorities’ desire for more snooping powers.

Perhaps then the decision was taken in high office for the minister to take the fall now in order to get rid sooner of an embarrassing story concerning his lies over Russia.

Whatever the explanation about the timing, the admission of Dutch government lying about Russian aggression in Europe is nevertheless an illuminating and appalling insight into how Russophobia and war is being fomented by the US and its European NATO allies.

Abominably, European government officials are willing to risk plunging millions of citizens into a war with Russia based on lies and warped, self-serving prejudices.