zaterdag 24 november 2018

Western Government-Funded Smear Campaign Against Russia

Moon of Alabama Unveils Western Government-Funded Smear Campaign Against Russia

Moon of Alabama (the great German journalist Bernhard Horstmann, who does more real journalism every day than the entire US mainstream media combined) has now blown the cover of the “Integrity Initiative” — a project run by The Institute for Statecraft, an NGO funded primarily by the British government, U.S. State Department, and NATO — whose stated purpose is to smear the Russian government at every possible opportunity:
Here are some excerpts:
In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia propaganda into the western media stream.
We have already seen many consequences of this and similar programs which are designed to smear anyone who does not follow the anti-Russian government lines. The ‘Russian collusion’ smear campaign against Donald Trump based on the Steele dossier was also a largely British operation but seems to be part of a different project.
The ‘Integrity Initiative’ builds ‘cluster’ or contact groups of trusted journalists, military personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via social media to take action when the British center perceives a need.
The Initiative and its operations were unveiled when someone liberated some of its documents, including its budget applications to the British Foreign Office, and posted them under the ‘Anonymous’ label at cyberguerrilla.org.
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The Initiative is nominally run under the (government financed) non-government-organisation The Institute For Statecraft. Its internal handbook (pdf) describes its purpose:
The Integrity Initiative was set up in autumn 2015 by The Institute for Statecraft in cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to bring to the attention of politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North America.
It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as “partner organisations”….
— — —
On its About page it claims: “We are not a government body but we do work with government departments and agencies who share our aims.” The now published budget plans show that more than 95% of the Initiative’s funding is coming directly from the British government, NATO and the U.S. State Department. All the ‘contact persons’ for creating ‘clusters’ in foreign countries are British embassy officers. It amounts to a foreign influence campaign by the British government that hides behind a ‘civil society’ NGO.
“Integrity Initiative” — How could that name be more Orwellian?
But none of this should come as any surprise.
The anti-Russian lies that are being shoved down our throats by the Deep State and its compliant MSM include:
The entire “Russia interfered in the 2016 election” BS — and the pendant “Trump colluded” claims;
The associated claim that Julian Assange is a stooge of the Kremlin;
The idiotic characterization of the profit-seeking activities of the Internet Research Agency as a Russian-government-sponsored effort to either elect Trump or “sow confusion and destroy faith in our democracy”;
The claim that the Russian state was responsible for the Skripals’ poisoning;
The claim that Russia or the Ukrainian Russophile rebels shot down MH-17;
The mis-characterization of the brutal coup in Ukraine in 2014 — in which Ukrainian neo-Nazis shot both protesters and police as a false flag which our MSM blamed on Yanukovich — as a democratic liberation from tyranny and corruption;
The mis-characterization of Crimea’s annexation by Russia as resulting from a Russian invasion — when in fact the Russian troops were already there legally under agreement with Ukraine, and the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking Crimeans demanded to be re-united with Russia in a plebiscite organized by their own elected congress;
The claims that Russia’s ally Assad has repeatedly used poison gas on his own people;
Bill Browder’s outright lies which fomented sanctions against Russia via the Magnitsky Act.
If I were better informed, I’m sure I could list additional calumnies.
Note the prominence given to the Atlantic Council and Bellingcat in the master plan to continuously smear Russia. Bellingcat has played a key role in formulating Rube-Goldberg-style “evidence” that Russia shot down MH-17 and attacked the Skripals, and that Assad’s troops were responsible for multiple gassings in Syria. And note that Crowdstrike, the creator of the lie that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC to provide Wikileaks with its DNC releases, is a close affiliate of the Atlantic Council.
Sadly, even Bernie Sanders buys into many of these blatant smears, because he takes the MSM seriously.
I have no inherent need to exalt Russia. In fact, I have never known a Russian. But what I do know is that this vendetta against Russia is all intended to insure that, to the Western public, Russia remains a boogeyman necessitating limitless expenditures on arms and armies, so that NATO and the MIC can continue to bleed us dry while our own needs at home go unmet. And all the while putting the planet under threat of nuclear annihilation in the event of an accident or a military confrontation that gets out of hand.
In a just world, everyone involved in this would be convicted of Incitement to War, and put away for life.

Remember!!!



LATEST

NEWS

Leaked cable confirms 

Israel and Saudi Arabia 

are working together to 

start a Middle East war

Evidence proving that Saudis and Israelis are coordinating to escalate
the situation in the Middle East.
Alex Christoforou
Published
 
on
 
88,314 Views

Israeli Channel 10 News published a leaked diplomatic cable sent to Israeli ambassadors concerning recent events in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia which, according to Zerohedge, began with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s unexpected resignation after he was summoned to Riyadh by his Saudi-backers, and led to the Saudis announcing that Lebanon had “declared war” against Saudi Arabia.
Zerohedge notes that “the classified embassy cable, written in Hebrew, constitutes the first formal evidence proving that the Saudis and Israelis are deliberately coordinating to escalate the situation in the Middle East.”
This is a EXPLOSIVE thread that proves how Saudi and Israel are deliberately coordinating to escalate the situation in the MidEast.


This is a EXPLOSIVE thread that proves how Saudi and Israel are deliberately coordinating to escalate the situation in the MidEast.

Zerohedge reports that the explosive classified Israeli cable reveals the following:
– On Sunday, just after Lebanese PM Hariri’s shocking resignation, Israel sent a cable to all of its embassies with the request that its diplomats do everything possible to ramp up diplomatic pressure against Hezbollah and Iran.
– The cable urged support for Saudi Arabia’s war against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.
– The cable stressed that Iran was engaged in “regional subversion”.
– Israeli diplomats were urged to appeal to the “highest officials” within their host countries to attempt to expel Hezbollah from Lebanese government and politics.

As is already well-known, the Saudi and Israeli common cause against perceived Iranian influence and expansion in places like Syria, Lebanon and Iraq of late has led the historic bitter enemies down a pragmatic path of unspoken cooperation as both seem to have placed the break up of the so-called “Shia crescent” as their primary policy goal in the region. For Israel, Hezbollah has long been its greatest foe, which Israeli leaders see as an extension of Iran’s territorial presence right up against the Jewish state’s northern border.
The Israeli reporter who obtained the document is Barak Ravid, senior diplomatic correspondent for Channel 10 NewsRavid announced via Twitter…
  • I published on channel 10 a cable sent to Israeli diplomats asking to lobby for Saudis/Harir and against Hezbollah. The cable sent from the MFA in Jerusalem [Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs] to all Israeli embassies toes the Saudi line regarding the Hariri resignation.
  • The Israeli diplomats were instructed to demarch their host governments over the domestic political situation in Lebanon – a very rare move.
  • The cable said: “You need to stress that the Hariri resignation shows how dangerous Iran and Hezbollah are for Lebanon’s security.”
  • “Hariri’s resignation proves wrong the argument that Hezbollah participation in the government stabilizes Lebanon,” the cable added.
  • The cable instructed Israeli diplomats to support Saudi Arabia over its war with the Houthis in Yemen. The cable also stressed: “The missile launch by the Houthis towards Riyadh calls for applying more pressure on Iran & Hezbollah.” 

1 \ I published on channel 10 a cable sent to Israeli diplomats asking to lobby for Saudis\Hariri &against Hezbollah
Screenshot from the Channel 10 News report which features the Israeli diplomatic cable is below…
Below is a rough translation of the classified Israeli embassy cable using Google Translate as released by Israel’s Channel 10 News…
“To the Director-General: you are requested to urgently contact the Foreign Ministry and other relevant government officials [of your host country] and emphasize that the resignation of Al-Hariri and his comments on the reasons that led him to resign illustrate once again the destructive nature of Iran and Hezbollah and their danger to the stability of Lebanon and the countries of the region. 
Al-Hariri’s resignation proves that the international argument that Hezbollah’s inclusion in the government is a recipe for stability is basically wrong. This artificial unity creates paralysis and the inability of local sovereign powers to make decisions that serve their national interest. It effectively turns them into hostages under physical threat and are forced to promote the interests of a foreign power – Iran – even if this may endanger the security of their country.
The events in Lebanon and the launching of a ballistic missile by the signatories to the Riyadh agreement require increased pressure on Iran and Hezbollah on a range of issues from the production of ballistic missiles to regional subversion.”
Via Zerohedge
Thus, as things increasingly heat up in the Middle East, it appears the anti-Iran and anti-Shia alliance of convenience between the Saudis and Israelis appears to have placed Lebanon in the cross hairs of yet another looming Israeli-Hezbollah war. And the war in Yemen will also continue to escalate – perhaps now with increasingly overt Israeli political support. According to Channel 10’s commentary (translation), “In the cable, Israeli ambassadors were also asked to convey an unusual message of support for Saudi Arabia in light of the war in which it is involved in Yemen against the Iranian-backed rebels.”
All of this this comes, perhaps not coincidentally, at the very moment ISIS is on the verge of complete annihilation (partly at the hands of Hezbollah), and as both Israel and Saudi Arabia have of late increasingly declared “red lines” concerning perceived Iranian influence across the region as well as broad Hezbollah acceptance and popularity within Lebanon.
What has both Israel and the Saudis worried is the fact that the Syrian war has strengthened Hezbollah, not weakened it. And now we have smoking gun internal evidence that Israel is quietly formalizing its unusual alliance with Saudi Arabia and its power-hungry and hawkish crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
http://theduran.com/leaked-cable-confirms-israel-and-saudi-arabia-coordination-to-start-a-middle-east-war/?fbclid=IwAR0cXT1k9qfMVtAfWUqB7JkTEx_v2ZCJf7arcUFMvzeuTdROMeDO6X_kaos


Paul Craig Roberts 308

Revenge Is Mine Saith Washington


Revenge Is Mine Saith Washington
Paul Craig Roberts
Justice has disappeared in the West. In Justice’s place stands Revenge. This fact is conclusively illustrated by Julian Assange’s ongoing eight year ordeal. 
For eight years Julian Assange’s life has been lived in a Kafka Police State. He has been incarcerated first under British house arrest and then in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, despite the absence of any charges filed against him.
Meanwhile, the entirety of the Western world, with the exception of former Educadoran President Rafael Correa and a UN agency that examined the case and ruled Assange was being illegally detained by the UK government’s refusal to honor his grant of political asylum, has turned its back to the injustice. 
Assange is locked away in the Ecuadoran Embassy, because to protect him from false arrest, former Ecuadoran President Correa gave him political asylum. However, the corrupt and servile UK government that serves Washington, and not justice or law, refused to honor Assange’s asylum. The US vassal known as the UK stands ready to arrest Assange on Washington’s orders if he steps outside the embassy and to hand him over to Washington, where a large number of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have said he should be executed. The Trump regime, carrying on the illegal practices of its forebears, has a secret indictment waiting to be revealed once they have their hands on Assange.
The current president of Ecuador a servant of Washington, Lenin Moreno—a person so lacking in character that his name is an insult to Lenin— is working a deal with Washington to rescind Assange’s grant of asylum so that the Ecuadoran Embassy in London has to expel Assange into the hands of Washington.
What has Assange done? He has done nothing but to tell the truth. He is a journalist who heads Wikileaks, a news organization that publishes leaked documents—exactly as the New York Times published the leaked Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. Just as the publication of the Pentagon Papers embarrassed the US government and helped to bring about the end of the senseless Vietnam War, the documents leaked to Wikileaks embarrassed the US government by revealing Washington’s war crimes, lies, and deception of the American people and US allies. 
The allies, of course, were bought off by Washington and remained silent, but Washington intends to crucify Assange for the embarrassment and payoff expense he caused the criminal government in Washington.
In order to assert authority over Assange, Washington is using the extra-territoriality of US law, a claim that Washington bases not on law but on might alone and uses to violate the sovereignty of independent countries. Assange is a citizen of Australia and Ecuador. He is not subject to US law. Even if he were, he has committed no espionage. The false equivalence Washington is trying to establish between the exercise of the First Amendment and treason shows how totally lost are the American people. The silence of the US media demonstrates that the presstitutes don’t mind losing the First Amendment’s protection as they have no intention of telling any truths.
Washington’s secret indictment—it is secret so that two-bit punks such as James Ball can write in the Guardian that Assange faces no threat of arrest ( https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/11/18/empire-keeps-proving-assange-right-about-everything.html) —most likely accuses Assange of espionage. But it is not legally possible to accuse a non-citizen operating outside the country of espionage. All countries engage in espionage. Every country on earth could accuse Washington of espionage and arrest the CIA. The CIA could, as it often has, accuse Israel of espionage. Of course, any Israeli, such as Jonathan Pollard, who is convicted of espionage in the US becomes a point of contention between Washington and Israel and Israel always wins. The corrupt Obama regime released Pollard from his life sentence on orders and, no doubt, generous bribes, from Israel.
If Assange were Israeli, he would be home free, but he is a citizen of two countries whose governments place high value on being Washington’s vassals. 
There was a time in America, many decades ago, when the Democrats stood for justice and the Republicans stood for greed.
There was a time in America, prior to 9/11, when the media would have rushed to the defense of the freedom of the press and defended Assange from his mistreatment and false charges. To be sure that the reader understands the mistreatment of Assange, it is identical to the mistreatment of Cardinal Josef Mindszenty of Hungary whose asylum in the US Embassy in Budapest was not acknowledged by the Soviet government, forcing Mindszenty to live out all but three years of his remaining life in the US embassy. President Nixon negotiated his release in 1971, but the Nixon haters give Nixon no credit for his attention to one man locked away in an injustice part of the earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/József_Mindszenty 
Today there is no such attention to injustice except for the “victim” groups in Identity Politics. Where is the champion of Assange now that Rafael Correa has to live abroad to avoid persecution by Washington’s puppet Moreno?
The weakness of the intellect in the West is scary. Caitlin Johnstone tells us about it: “Trump’s despicable prosecution of Assange, and corporate liberalism’s full-throated support for it, has fully discredited all of mainstream US politics on both sides of the aisle. Nobody in that hot mess stands for anything. If you’re still looking to Trump or the Democrats to protect you from the rising tide of fascism, the time to make your exit is now.”
The entirety of the Western print and TV media—even Russia’s RT—serves as a propaganda ministry for Washington against Assange. For example, we read over and over that Assange is hiding out in the London Ecuadoran Embassy to avoid rape charges in Sweden. That the presstitutes and the feminists can keep this bogus claim alive despite all the official repudiation of it shows the Matrix in which Western peoples are corralled. 
Assange has never been charged with rape. The two Swedish women who seduced him and brought him into their beds in their homes never said he raped them. Assange’s tribulations began when one of the women who seduced him worried that he did not use a condom and that he might have HIV or Aids. She asked Assange to take a test to see if he was sex disease free, and Assange, offended, refused. This was his mistake. He should have said, “of course, I understand your concern” and taken the test. 
The woman went to the police to see if Assange could be forced to take the test. It was the police who turned this into a rape investigation. Charges were brought, and the Swedish prosecutorial office investigated and dropped all charges as the sex was consensual. 
Assange left Sweden legally, not in flight as the story that Washington has planted has it. He went to England, another mistake as England is Washington’s playground. Washington and/or lesbian feminists lusting for the conviction of a heterosexual male convinced a female Swedish prosecutor to reopen the closed case. 
In an unprecedented act, the Swedish prosecutor issued an order to the UK for Assange to be handed over for questioning. Extradition orders are only valid for filed charges, and there were no filed charges, only dismissed charges. Never before had even the corrupt UK government granted an extradition order for questioning. The UK government, Washington’s puppet, agreed to hand over Assange to Sweden. It was completely clear as there was no case in Sweden against Assange that the Swedish prosecutor, probably for a large sum, would turn Assange over to Washington, a place in which no legal protections exist for anyone, not even for those, such as whistleblowers, who are protected by US law, but, despite the protection of law, nevertheless go to prison.
Seeing what was coming, Assange was granted political asylum by President Correa and escaped house detention in the UK to make it to the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, where he has been ever since, despite the Swedish government’s dropping of all charges against Assange and again closing the investigation.
In the meantime a US attorney, corrupt as they all are—never believe any federal indictment as they are created out of whole cloth without any need of evidence—managed to convince an incompetent American grand jury to indict Assange for what we do not yet know, but most likely for espionage.
The US grand jury that approved the secret indictment has no comprehension that they indicted a person for telling the truth precisely as protected—and required if government is to be controlled by the people—by the US Constitution. All Assange did was to publish documents sent to Wikileaks by a person with a moral conscience who was disturbed at the blatant criminality and inhumanity of the US government.
There is no legal difference whatsoever between Wikileaks publishing the documents leaked to Wikileaks, and the New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers leaked to the New York Times.
The difference is the difference in time. When Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, the media had not been concentrated into a few hands by the corrupt Clinton regime, and 9/11, which was used by Dick Cheney to criminalize truth-telling, had not occurred. Therefore in the 1970s it was still possible that some important part of the media might tell the truth. Nevertheless, the only reason that the NYTimes published the Pentagon Papers is that the newspaper hated Richard Nixon, who the Democratic media blamed for the Vietnam War even though it was Democratic President Johnson’s war and Nixon wanted to end it.
When the insouciant American and Western peoples accept their governments’ lies, they accept their own demise and servitude. The willingness and abandon with which the Western peoples submit makes one conclude that they prefer servitude. They don’t want to be free, because freedom has too many responsibilities, and they don’t want the responsibilities. They want go watch a movie, or a TV program, or play video games, or have sex, go shopping, get drunk, have a drug high, or whatever form of amusement that they value far more than they value liberty, or truth, or justice.
To a person of my disappearing generation, it is inexplicable that the nations of the world, much less Americans, would stand moot while the world’s best, most trusted and most honest journalist is set up by a totally corrupt US government for destruction. The result of Assange’s persecution will be to criminalize embarrassing the US government.
When I contemplate this massive injustice to which the peoples of the world reply with silence, I wonder if those trying to save Western Civilization are not misguided. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/11/19/merkel-deep-sixed-germany-diversity-deep-sixed-western-civilization/ What is the point of saving a totally corrupt civilization? 
Those who attack Assange are despicable. If you have a chance to push one or more of those who are members of the lynch mob in front of a truck, think of the act as a cleansing opportunity.