As Amnesty International confirms the inconvenient truths, which many independent journalists and political observers already knew, about the Ukrainian army’s behavior in Donbass, it’s worth examining how manipulating the truth has become—not only an everyday occurrence but a central element of the West’s proxy war in Ukraine.
An increasing number of mainstream journalists, commentators and ordinary individuals who had rushed to “Stand with Ukraine ” are finding the inconvenient truths about the Zelensky regime and its Army harder and harder to ignore.
It was the icon of American democracy, President Abraham Lincoln that said “You can fool part of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.” Of course, even though Lincoln’s astute observation has been widely misquoted, it certainly has a particular resonance when we consider the recent misadventures and persistent foreign policy failures of his beloved United States.
Most particularly are American efforts to maintain an increasingly skeptical public’s support for its faltering and hugely costly geopolitical ambitions in Ukraine.
So far it hasn’t been too difficult to package a message for general consumption, a drive-through narrative if you will, that is easily accessible and digestible by a trusting public, particularly when that same public has been globally denied key factual insights into the background of a long running complex conflict into which they have been seduced as blindfolded supporters.
The current crisis in Ukraine is however different; it has seen the pro-Western media machine cultivate and disseminate disinformation, propaganda and fake news on a previously unseen scale. While the U.S. and its NATO allies prosecute their proxy conflict on the ground, in the air, and at sea, another illicit battle is being fought on social media, TV and radio.
Of course, propaganda and the winning of “hearts and minds” is nothing new when it comes to conflict. As far back as the 19th century Governments were aware of how important the narrative was at home, they actively sought to suppress details which they thought may be offensive or unhelpful to the home audience.
In the second Boer war in South Africa (1899-1902), when the British Army’s colonial war was failing it resorted to imprisoning Boer Women and children in vast ill equipped concentration camps where a stunning 26,000 of them would die from starvation, ill treatment and disease. The British actively considered creating a publicity campaign to hide the true horror of the hellish camps, including false reports and newspaper stories.
Again, during World War I the gruesome details of mass casualties in the horrendous and inhumane trenches of the western front were also sterilized and minimized for the home audience. As far as the public were concerned the Kaiser was the killer, the Germans ate Belgian babies and the repulsive Teutonic octopus had to be stopped at all costs.
Of course, the fact that the entire conflict was about imperial power, commerce and competition between the three grandchildren of the British Queen Victoria was conveniently ignored. In July 1916 British newspaper reports on the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in human history, famously read “Our casualties are not heavy,” an utterly misleading headline which sounds disturbingly familiar today.
When we consider Americas most recent large-scale military misadventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya these ill-advised and bloody failures have yet again been portrayed as the “good guys against the bad guys”, it’s the Cowboys against the Indians, the dangerous and untrustworthy Muslim savages against the very existence of Western civilisation.
The immeasurable human suffering that these wars have visited on the innocent populations seldom features. American complicity and responsibility for creating the very problems they now seek to “solve” is bizarrely entirely ignored in its client media.
Today’s conflict in Ukraine is no exception, a similar narrative is peddled with the historical truths about where conflict grew from remaining unreported. Some of the most critical facts relating to Ukraine are routinely and conveniently rendered invisible by the mainstream media, such as when this civil war began and most crucially, who paid for and built the scaffolding on which it is now burning.
It is of course unpopular in any instance to swim against the flow of the tide, to be the child suggesting the emperor has no clothes, and to challenge “realities” that have been broadly accepted by a trusting public. Despite the gross imbalance in the presentation of the facts, up to now at least dissent was something accepted as a privilege of western democratic society, that freedom of speech and opinion is however in grave danger, particularly if it is based on inconvenient truths.
The “Absolute Truth”
When it comes to Ukraine a new, dangerous and lavishly funded weapon in the counter truth war has been deployed by western governments and media, I call it “Absolute Truth”. The Absolute truth doesn’t tolerate any challenges, when its allegations are proven false those realities are suppressed and ignored.
It immediately and efficiently targets any dissent from the prescribed narrative and brands challengers as “enemies,” “foreign agents,” or “useful idiots.” Critically there is no room for debate of any kind, there is no analysis of facts, there is only their Absolute Truth.
Should a journalist, State or individual question this Absolute Truth or merely suggest an objective analysis of the facts they are immediately and brutally marginalised and then targeted for retribution. This determined and choreographed punishment can range from the loss of a job to the isolation of an entire nation with threats of violence commonplace.
The fact that the West’s “Absolute Truth” narrative relies implicitly on mass censorship and the wholesale destruction of freedom of speech is apparently irrelevant to its architects and disciples, if these pillars of liberal democracy must be abandoned in this war against the facts, so be it.
Absolute truth also has a selective attitude when it comes to the behavior of its idols, when Mr Zelensky’s election with the assistance, cash and muscle of a corrupt oligarch is highlighted this is ignored, when his antidemocratic banning of all opposition and the imprisonment of its leaders comes up, its fine. if the Absolute Truth requires the acceptance and deployment of brutal Nazi militias against civilians, (previously designated by the west as terrorists) that is again entirely acceptable.
Indeed, the Absolute truth brigade have a magical ability to erase history, assign hero status to mass murders (Stepan Bandera) and demonise those that defeated Nazism in Europe. The Absolute Truth now defines the narrative, the facts do not, facts and independent evidence will be selectively deployed if at all, those that challenge this are immediately designated as collaborators, war mongers and enemies of democracy.
Another sinister element of the cult of Absolute Truth is the reluctance to correct the record or admit when you get it wrong, from the “massacre” at Snake Island that never happened to the fake headlines about the Mariupol maternity hospital to name but a few, there is never any attempt to correct the record which begs the question how sincere were the allegations in the first place?
Interestingly, when the internationally respected Amnesty international bravely countered the Absolute truth with indisputable facts, it was itself attacked by an increasingly paranoid Zelensky. There is now a distinct element of “the boy who cried wolf” about Zelensky’s persistent and now routine allegations of genocide, targeting of civilians and the apparent desire to “erase Ukraine from the map”.
Any cursory examination of the facts around the Ukrainian Army’s “counter terrorist” operation against its own people in 2014 in Donbas would suggest it was an increasingly radicalised Ukrainian military that first assaulted the ethnic Russian populations in the east in 2014.
As NATOs exceptionally costly and increasingly destructive proxy war against Russia grinds on, the prospect of any military victory for Ukraine fades almost hourly, the likelihood that Russia will seek settlement also fades by the day, any incentive to do so now strategically valueless.
Western support for Zelensky’s seemingly rudderless and incompetent regime is privately wavering as the impact of ham-fisted sanctions against Russia threatens social cohesion in Europe and America alongside a global energy crisis.
Promised counter offensives in the south have not materialized, the much vaunted “Million-man army” has failed to appear and yet again, the American and European press that presented this as fact have not rowed back on their outlandish claims.
The harsh reality of war is seemingly lost on the “absolute Truth” brigade who are happy to “stand with Ukraine” but will never stand in Ukraine.
The western public are a fickle audience, given the lack of initial scrutiny generally applied to the mainstream narrative on Ukraine it’s likely that as more of the inconvenient truths about Zelensky, his junta and the realities of this conflict appear, more and more westerns will be creeping into their yards in the dead of night to take down their hastily hoisted Ukrainian flags.
Contrary to the best efforts of those that have funded, molded and justified this proxy war the truth has a habit of resurfacing. It will be impossible to “manage” the oncoming tide of reality that will gush out of Ukraine as the western powers refocus on their self-inflicted domestic troubles this winter, Zelensky himself may become the fall guy for the failed NATO escapade in Ukraine.
That’s the thing about those inconvenient facts, they keep persisting under the surface, the truth doesn’t have a sell by date, and it is patient, the memory of the countless dead demands it to be.
And of course, as good old Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool part of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.”
“Hybrid war”. Western propagandists love the expression “The bad guys are doing nasty underhand things to counter our clean-cut decent and wholly justified activities” but they are just making noise. As Clausewitz knew, however, there is an actual meaning:
We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to War relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses (…) for the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception.
In this sense, all intelligently-conducted wars are “hybrid wars” advancing on many levels to achieve the “political object” by “other means”.
What is the “object”?Moscow knows that NATO/USA is the real enemy and that the wretched Ukrainians are its puppets and their looted and worn-out country is the arena. Putin himself has said that NATO’s threat to Russia must be stopped. NATO, and the European Union with which it is closely linked, must be exposed as useless, actively harmful to their members and their hostility defeated.
NATO, which loves to pose as peaceful (despite the five or six wars it’s started in the last quarter-century), cannot or will not understand Russia’s point of view. Moscow will shove its face in it. Putin says that he has many times tried other means (Munich 2007 being one of the earliest). Those means having failed, he’s using these means this time.
Far-ranging aims require a multi-front attack. Let us consider the fronts.
MILITARY FRONT. Putin has explained the aims – denazification and demilitarization Maybe they could have been achieved through negotiation – although years of Kiev ignoring the Minsk Agreements suggest not – but that didn’t happen. Maybe Moscow hoped that its feint on Kiev might prevent a bloody slog but that didn’t happen either. And so the battle of annihilation is on – Ukraine’s military power is being smashed and the Nazis killed.
It’s taking a long time for several reasons. Imagine the Western Front trench line but with three times as long to build it and concrete rather than sandbags and wood. Russia and its allies attacked with smaller forces. The allied forces are moving slowly to reduce their casualties and because they are in no particular hurry. The Ukrainians are resisting very tenaciously and NATO is egging them on. The Ukrainian forces are being methodically slaughtered, allied casualties are a fraction of that because “artillery conquers and infantry occupies”.
DIPLOMATIC FRONT. The West likes claim that Russia is isolated. But, in terms of population, the so-called “International Community” represents only 15 to 20 percent of the world and the Russians are well-received elsewhere. Here’s Lavrov very much in the thick of things at ASEAN, in Africa (note media attempts to spin it away) and the Arab world.
Russia isn’t isolated at all and its diplomacy is having effect. US diplomacy, on the other hand, is just threats – Africa is warned, China threatened.
ECONOMIC FRONT. When Moscow began its “special military operation”, it expected that Nordstream 2 would be stopped because it knew the West was stuck on the idea that the Russian economy is dependent on selling energy to Europe – “Russia cannot afford to cut its sales of oil“. Moscow had its response ready – hostile countries have to pay in rubles.
What’s Europe’s response? Hurt Putin by not showering. Don’t, he doesn’t care. Of course the price went up and Moscow has probably completely funded the operation out of the increased revenue. The West is discovering – and, advised as it is by people like Aslund, to its astonishment – that “the country that doesn’t make anything” is a big producer of lots of essential things.
Moscow knew Washington would stick Europeans with the check – just as Washington will fight to the last Ukrainian, it will sanction until the last European freezes. The economic war is doing more damage to Russia’s enemies. They will either figure this out and change their behavior or they won’t and they’ll suffer. Moscow waits knowing that it wins either way.
PROPAGANDA FRONT. It is a common sentiment that Moscow is losing the propaganda war but I’m not convinced. Propaganda has to have some basis in truth – instead we have the martyrs of Snake Island miraculously reviving, the ghostly Ghost of Kiev, million-man armies disappearing, Kherson counter attacks put off again, maternity hospital bombings exposed by the bombed-out mothers, bodies thoughtfully left out to be seen, Russia begging China, Iran or North Korea for weapons, another “game-changer” weapon.
“Putin’s propagandists” chides The Times; “cannot be tolerated” says Zelensky; “Russian propaganda” as she quits. No news to us who have seen Azov fighters sheltering behind civilians in Mariupol, weapons hidden in shopping centers, troops setting up in schools. But it’s a shocker to believers of the Western narrative (especially Vogue readers!).
JUDO. Putin is well known to be a judo master. Judo is the art of using the opponent’s movements against it. That’s what we are seeing. On every front Russia has time on its side and escalation dominance. The impotence of NATO and the EU – in fact the actual damage that membership in either brings – is more perceptible every day as winter approaches.
Europe’s, the West’s, predominance stood on three legs. The power to compel others. The captivating halo of success. The wealth to fund the other two. Watch this little video – not much respect there. I expect we will see more vignettes like this.
The statue is hollow, the Mandate of Heaven is shifting.
Satan is the father of lies and we have become Satanic, being and doing evil, most especially to ourselves….
hat’s ahead — like a few months down the road? Hysteria and chaos, if the “Joe Biden” regime can help it… and they’re helping it all they can. Twice vaxxed, twice boosted, and twice recent Covid-19 patient Dr. Anthony Fauci warned this week that the unvaxxed would “get into trouble” as the seasons turn this year. The part he left out is: the unvaxxed will be in trouble trying to keep up with helping their sick and dying vaccinated relatives whose immune systems have been damaged by their multiple vaxxes.
The boldness of Dr. Fauci’s lying is really something to behold. Who in the entire HHS-NIH-CDC bureaucracy has failed to notice that the mRNA “vaccines” have no efficacy whatever against Covid-19? The vaccinated are by far those still getting sick and increasingly disabled from the disease and even more from the vaxxes themselves. The emperor’s new clothes hang in shreds. Rumor is that many upper-level employees in these public health agencies are increasingly freaked out by their now-obvious complicity in a momentous crime. They know they will have to answer for allowing the mRNA fiasco to get this far, for going along to get along, and they’re preparing to mutiny to save their own asses. Wait for it.
The regime’s back-up plan is the comical monkeypox, transmitted to date mainly via all-male orgies. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra declared a national monkeypox emergency this week, saying he’d “explore every option on the table” (except an official advisory against homosexual orgies). There is, of course, reasonable suspicion that monkeypox is but one device for shutting down the November mid-term election, or, more deviously, closing polling places and allowing only mail-in ballots — the easiest way to rig elections.
That will lead naturally to several state’s attorneys general seeking relief in the Supreme Court against the federal government’s unconstitutional takeover of the states’ duty to conduct their elections. The “Joe Biden” regime will lose that one, but not before royally pissing off at least half the adults in the land, leading to even greater-than-anticipated election losses for the Party of Chaos.
Meanwhile, the Party of Chaos is about to unleash its “Inflation Reduction Act,” which proposes to spend three quarters of a trillion dollars created from thin air into an economy already hyperventilating on three years of multi-trillion-dollar injections derived from no productive activity. At the same time, the act will raise taxes especially for low-end wage earners and small businesses, completing the regime’s destruction of the middle-class. The cherry-on-top is the provision to double the size of the Internal Revenue Service by hiring 87,000 new employees to harass ordinary American taxpayers. Is that what you voted for in 2020? I thought not.
None of that is going to work as intended. More likely, passage of the act will trigger destruction of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and a stampede out of dollar-denominated investments, which is to say, a very severe financial crisis. Credit will freeze, the distribution and sales of goods will cease, interest will stop being paid on virtually all outstanding debt, the bond market will implode, few will have anything identifiable as money, and there will be little in the way of everyday goods like food and gasoline to buy anyway.
You realize, of course, that this is a description of economic collapse. If things roll that way, there will be absolutely no trust left in the US government. It will be either ignored or opposed. And in places like my own New York, under the tyrannical and titanically incompetent accidental Governor Kathy Hochul, there will be no trust in state government either. Meaning, we’re on our own, community-by-community. This will be a very interesting experiment in the dynamics of emergence — the self-organizing properties of systems in chaos. I doubt that it will resolve in the direction of the globalists’ dreams of transhuman technocracy. Every macro trend now runs against centralization.
But the process could conceivably invite an attempted Chinese takeover of the USA, if not militarily, then in a way similar to America’s asset-stripping operations in the collapsed Soviet Union of the 1990s, a looting spree — as seen many other times in history when empires founder. Or else, the rest of the world will just kick back and witness the spectacle of our struggle as the lights of Western Civ flicker out. (Europe will be right in it with us, by the way.) The other nations of the world are tired of us trying to push them around, with increasingly evil intentions. They will enjoy watching our tribulations. They will be convinced we deserve it.
This is what comes from a culture of immersive and pervasive dishonesty. Satan is the father of lies and we have become Satanic, being and doing evil, most especially to ourselves, whether you believe in a literal Satan or not. So, do you think now that being transgressive is… fun? You’ll be changing what’s left of your mind about that soon. Along with the threat of literal starvation will also arise a terrible hunger for truth: How did this happen? How did we come to do this? Who was behind it? It won’t be hard to find out, once we’re motivated to look.
Defaming journalism on the OPCW’s Syria cover-up scandal, The Guardian and its NATO-funded sources out themselves as the real “network of conspiracy theorists.”
The article is based on what Townsend calls a “new analysis” that “reveals” a “network more than two dozen conspiracy theorists, frequently backed by a coordinated Russian campaign.” This network, Townsend claims, is “focused on the denial or distortion of facts about the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons and on attacking the findings of the world’s foremost chemical weapons watchdog,” the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). According to Townsend, I am named “as the most prolific spreader of disinformation” among the nefarious bunch.
In hawking this purported exposé of “disinformation”, Townsend violated every basic standard of journalism. He did not contact me before publishing his allegations; fails to offer a shred of evidence for them; and does not cite a single example of my alleged “prolific” disinformation. Instead, Townsend bases his claims entirely on a think-tank report that also provides no evidence, nor even assert that I have said anything false. In the process, Townsend failed to disclose that the report’s authors — the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the Syria Campaign — are groups funded by the US government and other belligerents in the Syria proxy war. To top it off, Townsend fabricates additional allegations that his state-funded sources do not even make.
As a result, Townsend and the Guardian have engaged in the exact sort of conduct that they falsely impute to me and others: spreading Syria-related disinformation with coordinated support from state-funded actors. The aim of this propaganda network is transparent: defaming journalism that exposes the OPCW’s ongoing Syria cover-up scandal and the dirty war waged by Western powers on Syria.
The OPCW cover-up is arguably the most copiously documented pro-war deception since the US-led drive to invade Iraq. In Western media, as The Guardian’s behavior newly demonstrates, it is also without question the most suppressed.
At the center of the story are two veteran OPCW scientists, Dr. Brendan Whelan and Ian Henderson. The pair were among a team that deployed to Syria in April 2018 to investigate an alleged chemical attack in the town of Douma. They have since accused senior OPCW officials of manipulating the Douma probe to reach a conclusion that baselessly implicated the Syrian government in a chlorine gas attack. Their claims are backed up by a trove of leaked documents and emails that show extensive doctoring and censoring of the Douma team’s findings.
The Douma cover-up extends far beyond the OPCW’s executive suite. It also implicates NATO governments led by the US, which bombed Syria over the Douma chemical weapons allegation, and then, weeks later, privately pressured the OPCW to validate it. Since the OPCW scandal became public, the US and its allies have thwarted efforts to address it.
At the most criminal level, the scandal implicates sectarian death squads armed and funded by the US and allies during their decade-long campaign for regime change in Syria.
At the time of the incident, Douma was occupied by the Saudi-backed jihadi militia Jaysh-al-Islam and under bombardment from Syrian army forces attempting to retake control. Shortly before their surrender, local allies of Jaysh-al-Islam accused Syrian forces of using chemical weapons. They released gruesome footage of an apartment building filled with slain civilians. A gas cylinder was filmed positioned above a crater on the roof. Concurrently, the White Helmets, a NATO and Gulf state-funded, insurgent-adjacent organization, released footage of what it claimed were gas attack victims in a Douma field hospital. Several journalists, including Riam Dalati of the BBC, Robert Fisk of the Independent, and James Harkin of the Intercept, found evidence that the hospital scene was staged. (In February 2019, Dalati claimed that he can “prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged.” Oddly, more than three years later, he has not released his findings).
The White Helmets’ alleged fakery of a chemical attack aftermath, coupled with the censored OPCW findings showing no evidence that a chemical attack occurred, suggest the inescapable conclusion that insurgents in Douma carried out a deception to frame the Syrian government. And given the unexplained deaths of the more than 40 victims filmed in the Douma apartment building, that deception may have entailed a murderous war crime.
Unlike the Iraq WMD hoax, the very existence of the OPCW’s Douma scandal is unknown to much of the Western world. With few exceptions, establishment media outlets have refused to acknowledge the OPCW whistleblowers and the leaks that brought their story to light.
After largely ignoring the OPCW cover-up since it first surfaced in May 2019, the Guardian has now published defamatory claims about journalists, myself included, who have dared to report on the censored facts.
When I wrote The Guardian about the Townsend article’s journalistic lapses, I did not get a response. One week later, I phoned Townsend, who was now back in the office but had yet to reply. In our conservation, which I recorded and recently published, I repeatedly asked Townsend to substantiate his claims about me and identify even a single example of my alleged disinformation.
Townsend did not attempt to defend his article’s assertions, beyond claiming that they were based on what was “in a report.” When I pressed further, he claimed that he had to “dash for a meeting” and promised that I would soon hear from the paper’s reader’s editor. (Before I published our phone call, and this article, I emailed Townsend a detailed list of questions and invited him to offer any additional comment. He did not respond).
“Deadly Disinformation”
Townsend could not provide any evidence for his assertions because the report that he parroted offers none as well.
The report, titled “Deadly Disinformation” and authored by The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the Syria Campaign, contains bare references to my reporting and makes no effort to refute it. Nowhere does the report even claim that I have said anything false. It simply claims to have “identified 28 individuals, outlets and organisations who have spread disinformation about the Syrian conflict,” and that I am “the most prolific spreader of disinformation” among them.
When the report bothers to mention of anything that I have actually said, it engages in distortion. In its first mention, the report states that I wrote an article that “attacks Bellingcat for its contributions to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).” Here, they not only fail to assert that I said anything false, but offer a false portrayal of what happened.
As for “attacking” Bellingcat — a website that, like the report’s authors, is funded by NATO states that were belligerents in the Syria dirty war – what I really did was expose its disinformation.
In short, the ISD/Syria Campaign’s first purported example of my alleged “disinformation” is an easily verifiable case where I’ve exposed state-backed lies.
The report’s only other substantive example comes when it notes that I have argued that the OPCW probe’s Douma probe “was flawed.” This far understates my case: the OPCW’s Douma investigation wasn’t “flawed”; it’s a scandalous cover-up worthy of global attention. Regardless, yet again, the report does not even assert that my argument is false, let alone try to explain why.
In a July 13th email, I asked the ISD to substantiate their claim that I have spread disinformation, and provide even one example of it. On its website, the ISD claims to “take complaints seriously,” and promises a response “within ten working days.” As of this writing, after 13 working days, I have not heard back.
At The Guardian, OPCW leaks are “problematic”
When I emailed a complaint about Townsend’s reporting, The Guardian admitted fault only on failing to contact me before publishing his evidence-free allegations. This was the result, they claimed, of a “breakdown of communication internally.” I was then offered the chance to respond to the article in 200 words.
A key point in my reply (which can be read here) was that The Guardian and its state-funded source are unable to identify any falsehoods in anything I’ve written “because my reporting on the OPCW’s Douma cover-up scandal is based on damning OPCW leaks.” These leaks, I added, “reveal that veteran inspectors found no evidence of a chemical attack in Douma, and that expert toxicologists ruled out chlorine gas as the victims’ cause of death. But these findings were doctored and censored by senior OPCW officials.”
At The Guardian, this passage set off an apparent alarm. After disparaging my reporting on the OPCW leaks, The Guardian informed me that they would now prevent me from even mentioning them. In a July 8 email, a Guardian editor wrote that the “the part about the OPCW” in my reply “continues to be problematic.” My reference to the OPCW leaks, the editor claimed, “makes an assertion that has been rebutted by an independent inquiry.”
I responded by asking the editor to specify exactly which “assertion” of mine has been rebutted. I also proposed that, if they believe that I have said anything “problematic,” they publish their own rebuttal.
In multiple follow-up emails, the editor failed to identify any “rebutted” assertion of mine. Despite that, the Guardian proceeded to publish my reply without its reference to the OPCW leaks. But this raised a new problem: in censoring my statement, they misquoted me. When I pointed out that error, they updated my reply to finally allow a (minimal) mention of the OPCW leaks.
The Guardian also took me up on my proposal that they publish their own rebuttal:
Editor’s note: Both the ISD and the Syria Campaign list a diverse range of funders and describe themselves as “fiercely independent”. In 2020 the OPCW rebutted claims about its investigation into the Douma incident (Inquiry strikes blow to Russian denials of Syria chemical attack).
As for the “inquiry” that The Guardian claims “rebutted claims about its investigation into the Douma incident,” the inquiry was not independent, and did not rebut anything.
The “inquiry” was appointed by the OPCW’s Director General’s office, the very body that presided over the cover-up. It was also staffed by two “investigators” from the US and UK. These happen to be the two states that bombed Syria based on the Douma allegations that the OPCW fraudulently validated, and that have since tried to bury the scandal at every stage.
As for what the Guardian calls the ISD and Syria Campaign’s “diverse range of funders,” both groups indeed enjoy a diverse range of funders: everyone from NATO governments to NATO government-funded organizations. They also receive support from billionaire-funded foundations that often work in concert with these same NATO governments’ foreign policy objectives.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s “diverse range of funders,” according to The Guardian.
The ISD’s “diverse” funders include the US State Department, the US Department of Homeland Security, three other US state-funded organizations, and more than two dozen other NATO government agencies. On the private side, the ISD’s funders include the foundations of three of the world’s richest oligarchs: Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Group, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In using the ISD as a source, The Guardian has a conflict of interest that its article did not disclose. The latter two ISD donors have also given sizeable grants to The Guardian: at least $625,000 from Open Society Foundations since 2019, and at least $12.9 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation since 2011.
Omidyar’s foundation has a direct role in the ISD/Syria Campaign report. The Omidyar Group’s Luminate Strategic Initiatives is listed alongside the German government-funded Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung foundation as the report’s fiscal sponsor.
Omidyar’s sponsorship of an attack on journalism about the OPCW scandal is highly fitting. The Intercept, the self-described “fearless and adversarial” outlet that Omidyar also funds with his vast fortune, has never once acknowledged the OPCW leaks or whistleblowers’ existence. While ignoring the OPCW scandal for more than three years, The Intercept has published multiple articles promoting the allegation that Syria committed a chemical attack in Douma.
Like the ISD, the Syria Campaign is also funded by governments and other belligerents in the Syria dirty war. As The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal reported in 2017, the Syria Campaign was founded by Ayman Asfari, a Syrian-British billionaire oil tycoon and leading financial supporter of the Syrian National Coalition, the largest government-in-exile group established after the Syria conflict erupted in 2011. The Syria Campaign has also done extensive P.R. and fundraising for the White Helmets, the insurgent-adjacent, NATO state-funded organization implicated in the Douma incident.
That these two state-funded groups “describe themselves as ‘fiercely independent'” is apparently enough for The Guardian. I trust that the Guardian would feel differently if they were dealing with self-described “fiercely independent” groups funded by the Russian and Syrian governments.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of sources quoted in the ISD/Syria Campaign report are funded or employed by the same NATO state and private sponsors. This includes the White Helmets; the Global Public Policy Institute; Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS); self-described journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou of the BBC, who produced a podcast series that disparaged the OPCW whistleblowers and whitewashed the Douma cover-up; and James Jeffrey, the former US Special Envoy for Syria.
For a report that claims to be concerned with protecting Syrians from “real-world harm,” Jeffrey is a particularly interesting interview subject. Few US officials have been as candid about their willingness to immiserate Syrian civilians in pursuit of hegemonic US goals in their country.
Jeffrey’s proudly self-acknowledged real-world harms on millions of Syrians don’t seem to bother the study’s authors, presumably because their Western state sponsors implement them.
The report is so invested in its state funders’ aims in Syria that it approvingly airs frustration that other governments are failing to toe the NATO line. A “former Western diplomat” complains that “disinformation” on Syria is helping states “avoid making the decisions that we want them to make, say in the Security Council or elsewhere.” (emphasis added). From the point of view of Western officials, the anonymous diplomat is employing an accurate operative definition of what constitutes “disinformation”: any information that causes those deemed subordinate to “avoid making the decisions that we want them to make.”
Fittingly, another anonymous “senior diplomat” laments that supposed Syria disinformation is intended “ultimately to cast doubt upon the legitimacy and integrity of the people doing this kind of [policy] work.” Daring to question the “legitimacy and integrity” of Western policymakers who oversaw a multi-billion dollar CIA-led dirty war on Syria that knowingly empowered al-Qaeda and other sectarian death squads while leaving hundreds of thousands dead — another intolerable act that can only result from “disinformation.”
A member of the US-funded, insurgent-adjacent White Helmets is also given space to lament that alleged “disinformation” is hurting its donations. “We hear about billions of dollars for aid at conferences on Syria but most of that funding goes to the UN,” a White Helmets manager complains. Unmentioned is that European governments have cut funding to the group after their late founder, the lavishly paid UK military veteran James le Mesurier, admitted to pocketing donor funds and financial fraud right before he took his own life.
Having promoted the hegemonic agenda of its state sponsors, the report closes with a thinly veiled call to censor the dissenting voices it targets.
The ISD and Syria Campaign urge policymakers to “adopt a whole-of-government approach in tackling disinformation” and “ensure that loopholes or special privileges are not created for ‘media’ which would only exacerbate the spread of disinformation.” These “privileges” presumably refer to free speech. The report also notes favorably that platforms have addressed “thematic harms such as public health disinformation or foreign interference in elections.” As a result, the report calls on these platforms to “commit to applying similar levels of resourcing… in the context of the ongoing Syrian conflict.” Perhaps they have in mind the censorship of journalism about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election, on the fake grounds that the story was “Russian disinformation.”
The fact that this network of state-funded actors is devoting energy to disparaging journalism about the OPCW’s Syria cover-up — and even advocating that it be censored – reflects their powerful sponsors’ desperation to bury a damning scandal.
On top of the two known whistleblowers, Arias has ignored calls for accountability from his original predecessor, founding OPCW chief Jose Bustani, as well as four other former senior OPCW officials. Along with Bustani, former senior UN official Hans von Sponeck has spearheaded the Berlin Group 21, a global initiative to address the OPCW scandal. The US has responded to Bustani by blocking his testimony at the United Nations. Arias meanwhile refused to open a letter that he received from Sponeck’s group, returning it back to sender.
The response of Western media outlets like the Guardian to the stonewalling of these veteran diplomats and senior OPCW officials has simply been to ignore it.
In whitewashing the OPCW cover-up, the preponderance of state sources parroted by The Guardian reveals the ultimate irony in its allegations. While claiming to “identify” a fictional network of Russia-backed disinformation actors about Syria, The Guardian’s Townsend is himself spreading the disinformation of a NATO-funded network that defames voices who expose the dirty war on Syria.
In fact, one of Townsend’s central allegations goes well beyond his state-funded sources. Although Townsend’s article is premised on identifying a “network of conspiracy theorists,” Townsend’s sole source – the ISD/Syria Campaign report – never alleges that such a “network” exists. Nowhere in the report does the word “network” even appear.
Thus, Townsend has not only parroted state-funded sources, but concocted an additional allegation in the service of their narrative. This is not just an ordinary fabrication: in creating the fantasy of a “coordinated”, “Russia-backed”, “network of conspiracy theorists,” Townsend also reveals himself to be the very thing that he accuses his targets of being: a conspiracy theorist.
And given that Townsend not only parrots his state-backed sources but works for an outlet funded by some of the same sponsors, it is fair to say that The Guardian and these state-funded think tanks are a part of the same network.
Consequently, reading the article’s headline — “Network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified”—as a description of The Guardian and the NATO-funded sources that it relied on, the claim is no longer inaccurate.
This is the way the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) ends, over and over again: not with a bang, but a whimper.
Two Hellfire R9-X missiles launched from a MQ9 Reaper drone on the balcony of a house in Kabul. The target was Ayman Al-Zawahiri with a $25 million bounty on his head. The once invisible leader of ‘historic’ Al-Qaeda since 2011, is finally terminated.
All of us who spent years of our lives, especially throughout the 2000s, writing about and tracking Al-Zawahiri know how US ‘intel’ played every trick in the book – and outside the book – to find him. Well, he never exposed himself on the balcony of a house, much less in Kabul.
Another disposable asset
Why now? Simple. Not useful anymore – and way past his expiration date. His fate was sealed as a tawdry foreign policy ‘victory’ – the remixed Obama ‘Osama bin Laden moment’ that won’t even register across most of the Global South. After all, a perception reigns that George W. Bush’s GWOT has long metastasized into the “rules-based,” actually “economic sanctions-based” international order.
Cue to 48 hours later, when hundreds of thousands across the west were glued to the screen of flighradar24.com (until the website was hacked), tracking “SPAR19” – the US Air Force jet carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – as it slowly crossed Kalimantan from east to west, the Celebes Sea, went northward parallel to the eastern Philippines, and then made a sharp swing westwards towards Taiwan, in a spectacular waste of jet fuel to evade the South China Sea.
No “Pearl Harbor moment”
Now compare it with hundreds of millions of Chinese who are not on Twitter but on Weibo, and a leadership in Beijing that is impervious to western-manufactured pre-war, post-modern hysteria.
Anyone who understands Chinese culture knew there would never be a “missile on a Kabul balcony” moment over Taiwanese airspace. There would never be a replay of the perennial neocon wet dream: a “Pearl Harbor moment.” That’s simply not the Chinese way.
The day after, as the narcissist Speaker, so proud of accomplishing her stunt, was awarded the Order of Auspicious Clouds for her promotion of bilateral US-Taiwan relations, the Chinese Foreign Minister issued a sobering comment: the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland is a historical inevitability.
That’s how you focus, strategically, in the long game.
What happens next had already been telegraphed, somewhat hidden in a Global Times report. Here are the two key points:
Point 1: “China will see it as a provocative action permitted by the Biden administration rather than a personal decision made by Pelosi.”
That’s exactly what President Xi Jinping had personally told the teleprompt-reading White House tenant during a tense phone call last week. And that concerns the ultimate red line.
Xi is now reaching the exact same conclusion reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year: the United States is “non-agreement capable,” and there’s no point in expecting it to respect diplomacy and/or rule of law in international relations.
Point 2 concerns the consequences, reflecting a consensus among top Chinese analysts that mirrors the consensus at the Politburo: “The Russia-Ukraine crisis has just let the world see the consequence of pushing a major power into a corner… China will steadily speed up its process of reunification and declare the end of US domination of the world order.”
Chess, not checkers
The Sinophobic matrix predictably dismissed Xi’s reaction to the fact on the ground – and in the skies – in Taiwan, complete with rhetoric exposing the “provocation by American reactionaries” and the “uncivilized campaign of the imperialists.”
This may be seen as Xi playing Chairman Mao. He may have a point, but the rhetoric is pro forma. The crucial fact is that Xi was personally humiliated by Washington and so was the Communist Party of China (CPC), a major loss of face – something that in Chinese culture is unforgivable. And all that compounded with a US tactical victory.
So the response will be inevitable, and it will be classic Sun Tzu: calculated, precise, tough, long-term and strategic – not tactical. That takes time because Beijing is not ready yet in an array of mostly technological domains. Putin had to wait years for Russia to act decisively. China’s time will come.
For now, what’s clear is that as much as with Russia-US relations last February, the Rubicon has been crossed in the US-China sphere.
The price of collateral damage
The Central Bank of Afghanistan bagged a paltry $40 million in cash as ‘humanitarian aid’ soon after that missile on a balcony in Kabul.
So that was the price of the Al-Zawahiri operation, intermediated by the currently US-aligned Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). So cheap.
The MQ-9 Reaper drone carrying the two Hellfire R9X that killed Al-Zawahiri had to fly over Pakistani airspace – taking off from a US base in the Persian Gulf, traversing the Arabian Sea, and flying over Balochistan to enter Afghanistan from the south. The Americans may have also got human intelligence as a bonus.
A 2003 deal, according to which Islamabad facilitates air corridors for US military flights, may have expired with the American withdrawal debacle last August, but could always be revived.
No one should expect a deep dive investigation on what exactly the ISI – historically very close to the Taliban – gave to Washington on a silver platter.
Dodgy dealings
Cue to an intriguing phone call last week between the all-powerful Chief of Staff of the Pakistani Army, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, and US deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Bajwa was lobbying for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to release a crucial loan at the soonest, otherwise Pakistan will default on its foreign debt.
Were deposed former Prime Minister Imran Khan still in power, he would never have allowed that phone call.
The plot thickens, as Al-Zawahiri’s Kabul digs in a posh neighborhood is owned by a close advisor to Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of the “terrorist” (US-defined) Haqqani network and currently Taliban Interior Minister. The Haqqani network, needless to add, was always very cozy with the ISI.
And then, three months ago, we had the head of ISI, Lieutenant General Nadeem Anjum, meeting with Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Washington – allegedly to get their former, joint, covert, counter-terrorism machinery back on track.
Once again, the only question revolves around the terms of the “offer you can’t refuse” – and that may be connected to IMF relief. Under these circumstances, Al-Zawahiri was just paltry collateral damage.
Sun Tzu deploys his six blades
Following Speaker Pelosi’s caper in Taiwan, collateral damage is bound to multiply like the blades of a R9-X missile.
The first stage is the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) already having engaged in live fire drills, with massive shelling in the direction of the Taiwan Strait out of Fujian province.
The first sanctions are on too, against two Taiwanese funds. Export of sable to Taiwan is forbidden; sable is an essential commodity for the electronics industry – so that will ratchet up the pain dial in high-tech sectors of the global economy.
Chinese CATL, the world’s largest fuel cell and lithium-ion battery maker, is indefinitely postponing the building of a massive $5 billion, 10,000-employee factory that would manufacture batteries for electric vehicles across North America, supplying Tesla and Ford among others.
So the Sun Tzu maneuvering ahead will essentially concentrate on a progressive economic blockade of Taiwan, the imposition of a partial no-fly zone, severe restrictions of maritime traffic, cyber warfare, and the Big Prize: inflicting pain on the US economy.
The War on Eurasia
For Beijing, playing the long game means the acceleration of the process involving an array of nations across Eurasia and beyond, trading in commodities and manufactured products in their own currencies. They will be progressively testing a new system that will see the advent of a BRICS+/SCO/Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) basket of currencies, and in the near future, a new reserve currency.
The Speaker’s escapade was concomitant to the definitive burial of the “war on terror” cycle and its metastasis into the “war on Eurasia” era.
It may have unwittingly provided the last missing cog to turbo-charge the complex machinery of the Russia-China strategic partnership. That’s all there is to know about the ‘strategic’ capability of the US political ruling class. And this time no missile on a balcony will be able to erase the new era.
The biggest mistake the elites made with the scamdemic was to let us see what good buddies they really are, because this instantly and inadvertently presented the 99.9% with a shocking and previously quite carefully hidden reality about the true nature of power and geopolitics.
Horizontal conflict narratives have for centuries been a major part of how elites control their populations. Catholic v Protestant, Moslem v Christian, black v white, male v female, gay v straight etc etc. It’s a tried and trusted method of channeling frustrations, shaping minds and keeping people’s minds off the real authors of their misfortunes.
Behind the facade of conflict the elites have always shared a common bond of mutual interest. Kings (mostly) knew to honor the divinity of other kings even in defeat. Even when they killed each other they did it reluctantly and in the guise of “natural causes”. They knew their own populations were the real common enemies against which they knew to make common cause.
War was just another method of achieving this as well as gratifying some degree of personal pride.
Nothing much has changed in the modern era. And a great deal of the legacy media’s energy has long been devoted to helping to conceal the reality of the “big (supranational) club” that we ain’t in.
Until, that is, the recent huge error of judgement by the world’s leaders when they chose to abandon the carefully maintained “horizontal divisions” narrative in favor of some New Age, New Normal narrative of “international solidarity and co-operation to beat the virus”.
They were clearly going for some “Independence Day” type hug-fest psychic effect. Humanity falling into each other’s arms and deciding to work together in WHO-created mutual New Normal benevolence to defeat an invisible enemy that will, of course, never be defeated.
It did not go over as planned.
They just tried to sell it too hard too fast. And they blew it.
Gordon Brown reacting to a few hundred “COVID” deaths by saying we needed a world government (not yet, Gordon, too soon!).
Goldfinger Schwab and his stupid book of “happy peasant” delusional raving.
Insane overkill on the “nothing will ever be the same” meme based on a few flu cases.
All pushing their own magically produced untested toxic concoctions, all unctuously mouthing the same lies in a hundred different languages.
They goofed and made it just too obvious how closely in sync they are.
Sure they did also seed a few “alternative” deadly virus narratives that halfheartedly muddied the waters by blaming China, or maybe the US, but it wasn’t enough to counter the truly stunning images of international elite solidarity. Most particularly east-west solidarity.
Why were the Chinese elites spearheading this lie? Why were the Russian elites promoting it?
This was a big wake up moment for many many people all over the world.
Not for the majority, of course. For the majority there was nothing but zombified lockstep, absolute obedience, bizarre levels of willing self-destruction.
But for a large and growing minority the very opposite began to happen.
This growing minority began realizing, not only that the pandemic was a massive lie, but also began to discern that most carefully hidden and most explosive truth — that the elites of the world – all the world – owe allegiance to each other above and beyond any trapping of national identity.
And that convincing us this is not true had heretofore been a huge part of retaining their power.
Faced with this awakening some people began to see they had no choice but to take control of their own destiny rather than wait for their governments to save them.
Small grass roots and spontaneous rebellions began sprouting. First it was just a very few but then more and more people began challenging the pandemic lie. There were mass marches in cities across the globe and small local “stand in the park” protests. People were speaking out, reaching out. The truckers began their convoy.
Suddenly from a place of darkness there was real hope. Not invested in some phony hero politician or some noisy celebrity populist, but in ourselves. Groups of ordinary people began realizing they could take back their lives.
And simultaneously the pandemic narrative began to falter.
Vaccine uptake was not meeting expectations. Even people who had one jab were getting reluctant to have another. Some of those who had once been compliant began to feel they’d had enough.
By autumn 2021 the New Normal – and, more importantly, the system promoting it – were actually in some trouble. The worst trouble they had known for a while.
Faced with overwhelming resistance the “Independence Day hug-fest”, and indeed the whole pandemic narrative, began to go into panic-reverse. Mask mandates began to be canceled. Quarantines abandoned. QR codes likewise.
And the elites began to recall the benefits of those good old tried and true horizontal conflict narratives.
The US began accusing Russia, China began accusing the US. Israel began bombing everyone again.
But not because they wanted to distract you from that awkward realization about how chummy they really are behind the scenes!
No. Never. Not at all.
It was because Russia suddenly got extra scary. And those Nazis in Ukraine suddenly became seriously worrying. And Israel got all worried about terrorists and Iran again. And Taiwan….yada yada.
And, obviously, those elites who can all agree to tell the same lies in the same words at the same time and produce the same “response” and promote the same “solutions” in lockstep over covid just can’t agree at all over anything else.
Because deep seated ideological and strategical differences make it impossible.
Oops.
So, the US had no option but to start provocations in the China Sea and flood Ukraine with weapons and advisors, and Russia had no option but to invade Ukraine.
It was all inevitable. Like death and taxes. Just something that wise people know had to happen.
And the fact it rescued the power structure from a dicey little moment is absolutely and totally a coincidence.
Yes, it did reinstate all the old conflict narratives and allow the media to make a lot of noise and distract people while the embarrassing “Independence Day co-operation” narrative snuck out the room.
And yes, it did rescue the New Normal and provide a lovely new reason for potential rationing, belt-tightening, forever shortages, travel restrictions and all the other things Goldfinger Schwab and his billionaire supranational globalist chums really like.
But coincidences are like that.
Coincidental. Convenient. And no need to look any further.
I mean – would your favourite world leader really start or provoke a war just for convenience or profit? Would they really sacrifice lives just to benefit themselves?
Ok, maybe the Americans would, because Imperialism.
But Russia? China? They’re more moral, right. Higher ethical plain.
I mean sure, they are all equally happy to let their citizens get injected with untested toxic sludge, and sure they just worked with the West to joint-perpetrate an unprecedented global scam that may have killed or maimed millions.
And sure there is quite a lot to be gained from “winning” in Ukraine, aside from defeating Nazis. Fat rebuilding contracts. Access to a lot of resources.
And of course the same convenient distraction equally serves West and East.
But no, come on. Sure they were all in lockstep in 2020. And, ok they still are in lockstep in 2022 – but only over the pandemic lie!
They are absolutely opposed and forced into conflict about everything else, and we need to take a side, support the good guys who are rooting for a better world.
The only alternative is to recognize that horizontal divisions benefit them not us. That neither side is good, or rooting for anything but their own advantage, and that fundamentally, as ever, the global 0.1% take care of their own interests while striving hard to deter and divert us from doing the same.
I suggest we stop being diverted and deterred, remember the lesson of 2020 and continue on the path of personal and collective awakening they are doing their best to lure us from.
[This article is derived from a speech I made at the July 23rd Peace and Freedom Rally in Kingston New York]
There are some things that I believe to be true about the anarchy that purports to be US foreign policy. First, and most important, I do not believe that any voter cast a ballot for Joe Biden because he or she wanted him to relentlessly pursue a needless conflict with Russia that could easily escalate into a nuclear war with unimaginable consequences for all parties. Biden has recently declared that the US will support Ukraine “until we win” and, as there are already tens of billions of dollars of weapons going to Ukraine plus American “advisers” on the ground, it constitutes a scenario in which American and Russian soldiers will soon likely be shooting at each other. The President of Serbia and columnists like Pat Buchanan and Tulsi Gabbard believe that we are already de facto in World War 3 and one has to wonder how the White House is getting away with ignoring the War Powers mandates in the US Constitution.
Second, I believe that the Russians approached the United States and its allies with some quite reasonable requests regarding their own national security given that a hostile military alliance was about to land on its doorsteps. The issues at stake were fully negotiable but the US refused to budge on anything and Russia felt compelled to take military action. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a good war. I categorically reject anyone invading anyone else unless there is a dire and immediate threat, but the onus on how the Ukraine situation developed the way it did is on Washington.
Third, I believe that the US and British governments in particularly have been relentlessly lying to the people and that the media in most of west is party to the dissemination of the lies to sustain the war effort against Russia in Ukraine. The lies include both the genesis and progress of the war and there has also been a sustained effort to demonize President Vladimir Putin and anything Russian, including food, drinks, the Russian language and culture and even professional athletes. The latest victim is a Tchaikovsky symphony banned in Canada. Putin is being personally blamed for inflation, food shortages and energy problems which more properly are the fault of the Washington-led ill-thought-out reaction to him. There is considerable irony in the fact that Biden is giving Ukraine $1.7 billion for healthcare, while healthcare in the US is generally considered among the poorest in the developed world.
I believe that Russia is winning the war comfortably and Ukraine will be forced to give up territory while the American taxpayer gets the bill for the reckless spending policies, currently totaling more than $60 billion, while also looking forward to runaway inflation, energy shortages, and, in a worst-case scenario, a possible collapse of the dollar.
All of the above and the politics behind it has led me to believe that the United States, assisted by some of its allies, has become addicted to war as an excuse for domestic failures as well as a replacement for diplomacy to settle international disputes. The White House hypocritically describes its role as “global leadership” or maintaining a “rules based international order” or even defending “democracy against authoritarianism.” But at the same time the Biden Administration has just completed a fiasco evacuation that ended a twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan. Not having learned anything from Afghanistan, there are now US troops illegally present in Syria and Iraq and Washington is conniving to attack Iran over false claims made by Israel that the Iranians are developing a nuclear weapon. Neither Syria nor Iraq nor Iran in any way threaten the United States, just as the Russians did not threaten Americans prior to a regime change intervention in Ukraine starting in 2014, when the US arranged the overthrow of a government that was friendly to Moscow. The US has also begun to energize NATO to start looking at steps to take to confront the alleged Chinese threat.
The toll coming from constant warfare and fearmongering has also enabled a steady erosion of the liberties that Americans once enjoyed, including free speech and freedom to associate. I would like to discuss what the ordinary concerned citizen can do to cut through all the lies surrounding what is currently taking place, which might well be described as the most aggressive propaganda campaign the world has ever seen, far more extensive than the lying and dissimulation by the White House and Pentagon officials that preceded the disastrous Iraq war. It is an information plus propaganda war that sustains the actual fighting on the ground, and it is in some senses far more dangerous as it seeks to involve more countries in the carnage while also creating a global threat perception that will be used to justify further military interventions.
Part of the problem is that the US government is awash with bad information that it does not know how to manage so it makes it hard to identify anything that might actually be true. Back in my time as an intelligence officer operating overseas, there were a number of short cuts that were used to categorize and evaluate information. For example, if one were hanging out in a local bar and overheard two apparent government officials discussing something of interest that might be happening in the next week, one might report it to Washington with a source description FNU/LNU, which stood for “first name unknown” and “last name unknown.” In other words, it was unverifiable hearsay coming from two individuals who could not be identified. As such it was pretty much worthless, but it clogged up the system and invited speculation.
My personal favorite, however, was the more precise source descriptions developed by military intelligence using an alphabet letter followed by a number in a sequence running from A-1 to F-6. At the top of an intelligence report there would be an assessment of the source, or agent. A-1 meant a piece of information that was both credible and had been confirmed by other sources and that was also produced by an agent that had actual access to the information in question. At the other end of the scale, an F-6 was information that was dubious produced by a source that appeared to have no actual access to the information.
By that standard, we Americans have been fed a lot of largely fabricated F-6 “fake information” coming from both the government and the media to justify the Ukraine disaster. Here is how you can spot it. If it is a newspaper or magazine article skim all the way down the text until you reach a point towards the end where the sourcing of the information is generally hidden. If it is attributed to a named individual who indeed indisputably had direct access to the information it would at least suggest that the reporting contains a kernel of truth. But that is almost never the case, and one normally sees the source described as an “anonymous source” or a “government official” or even, in many cases, there is no source attribution at all. That generally means that the information conveyed in the reporting is completely unreliable and should be considered the product of a fabricator or a government and media propaganda mill. When a story is written by a journalist who claims to be on the scene it is also important to check out whether he or she is actually on site or working from a pool operating safely in Poland to produce the reporting. Yahoo News takes the prize in spreading propaganda as it currently reproduces press releases originating with the Ukrainian government and posts them as if they are unbiased reporting on what is taking place on the ground.
Another trick to making fake news look real is to route it through a third country. When I was in Turkey we in CIA never placed a story in the media there directly. Instead, a journalist on our payroll in France would do the story and the Turkish media would pick it up, believing that because it had appeared in Paris it must be true even though it was not. Currently, I have noted that a lot of apparently MI-6 produced fake stories on Ukraine have been appearing in the British media, most notably the Telegraph and Guardian. They are then replayed in the US media and elsewhere to validate stories that are essentially fabricated.
Television and radio media is even worse than print media as it almost never identifies the sources for the stories that it carries. So my advice is to be skeptical of what you read or hear regarding wars and rumors of wars. The war party is bipartisan in the United States and it is just itching to seize the opportunity to get a new venture going, and they are oblivious to the fact that they might in the process be about to destroy the world as we know it. We must expose their lies and unite and fight to make sure that they can’t get away with it!
On Tuesday in response to Pelosi’s affront to Chinese sovereignty, the PLA began conducting live-fire maritime and aerial drills around Taiwan — surrounding the island.
According to China’s Global Times, they feature “J-20 stealth fighter jets and test-firing of conventional missiles…with additional important drills announced for days to come.”
Beginning moments after Pelosi arrived in Taipei, they’re ongoing in waters and airspace “north, southwest and southeast of the island…”
They include “live-fire shooting…in the Taiwan Strait and…missile test launches…east of the island.”
While ongoing for a number of days, “Taiwan will be surrounded by PLA drills in five directions.”
Drills are likely designed to develop PLA capabilities to seize the island militarily if unable to do it peacefully.
According to PLA Eastern Theater Command deputy chief of staff, Gu Zhong, as reported by GT:
Drills involve “courses like joint blockade, sea assault, land attack and air superiority seizing plus live-fire shooting of precision weapons.”
They’re “comprehensively test(ing) the performance of weapons and equipment as well as the troops’ joint operational capabilities, making preparations for all crises.”
Separately, Xinhua reported that live-fire drills are being conducted in six maritime and air space areas around Taiwan — north, northeast, east, south, southwest and northwest of the island.
Entry into areas where they’re ongoing is prohibited.
Last Sunday, China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier embarked from its Qingdao homeport to waters near Taiwan — accompanied by “a Type 075 amphibious assault ship.”
Chinese military expert, Song Zhongping, said the purpose of ongoing drills is to enhance the PLA’s military preparedness in light of Pelosi’s unacceptable visit to Taiwan.
During her meeting with Taiwan’s so-called president Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday — in a display of imperial arrogance — Pelosi assaulted China’s sovereignty again as follows, saying:
Hegemon USA’s vow to preserve (fantasy) democracy in Taiwan and around the world (is) ironclad.”
She barely stopped short of vowing to defend the island if China uses military force to reunite it with the mainland.
In cahoots with dominant Biden regime and congressional hardliners, Pelosi is pushing things recklessly for possible direct confrontation between two nuclear powers — ones able to transform cities of targeted nations into smoldering rubble.
Indeed, hostile-to-peace-and-stability Pelosi and the Biden regime are playing with fire against Russia, China and Iran — humanity’s fate hanging in the balance.
Separately in response to Taiwan’s complicity with Pelosi’s effrontery, Beijing retaliated by suspending exports of certain food products to the island.
According to Bloomberg News, the suspension includes “some fish and fruit imports,” as well as “natural sand used in construction.”
The Financial Times said that China “suspend(ed) (imports of) 2,000 food products,” along with “suspend(ing) exports of natural sand” to Taiwan.
Beijing’s Mainland Affairs Council deputy chair, Chiu Chui-cheng, said the following:
“In the past, China hit single products from the primary sector such as specific fruit or fish.”
In “that way, (it) kept the overall macroeconomic impact on Taiwan limited but could target regions where the (ruling) Democratic Progressive party is strong.”
“But now (Beijing is) broadening this immensely as (it’s) targeting processed foods, so what’s going on is much more broad-based.
“This is probably only the beginning.”
“We are certain that (China) will further step up (its) economic coercion measures.”
According to the FT, Beijing’s suspension “cover(s) 35 categories including fish and seafood, edible oils, citrus fruits and biscuits and cakes, hitting publicly listed companies such as instant noodle and soy sauce producer Ve Wong and Chi Mei, which makes frozen foods.”
At this time, China’s likely short-term import and export suspensions are largely shots across the bow warnings to Taiwan.
Economist Ma Tieying said the following:
“What needs to be watched is whether Beijing will broaden the trade bans into the manufacturing sector, particularly semiconductors/electronics going forward.”
China is Taiwan’s largest trade partner, bilateral volume last year totaling $328.3 billion, around 52% from the island to the mainland.
Beijing relies on imports of Taiwanese semiconductors.
The island exports about one-fifth of its agricultural products to the mainland.
Chinese media reported that the country’s General Administration of Customs suspended imports of “refrigerated large-head hair-tail and frozen Japanese horse mackerel from Taiwan.”
Taiwan’s state-controlled CNA said that the mainland temporarily halted imports of from “over 100 Taiwanese food manufacturers, including the well-known brands I-Mei Foods, Wei Chuan and Kuai Kuai Co.”
According to Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture (COA):
Hundreds of temporarily “blacklisted companies include producers of tea leaves, dried fruits, honey, cocoa beans, and vegetables, as well as catches from around 700 fishing vessels.”
Separately, CNA said China largely, but not entirely, suspended imports of coffee beans, stuffed pasta and bread, health foods and supplements, baby food and formula, foods for medicinal purposes, plant based oil, candy, beverages, cereal-based products, seasonings and condiments.
Center for Counter Hegemonic Studies’ director, Tim Anderson, believes that Pelosi’s provocative visit was planned to trigger US confrontation with China in similar fashion to its proxy war on Russia, adding:
“Imagine if the Chinese military went into Puerto Rico or some other part of the US territories.”
“It’s unacceptable, and I can’t say that any good would come out of it.”
The Biden regime provoked Russia to launch its SMO in self-defense.
After the Crash 