National security…
Tag: intelligence community
Russian Invasion Prognosticators Are Like Cult Leaders Repeatedly Predicting The Apocalypse
Back in November The Military Times published a Ukrainian intelligence claim, which was picked up and repeated by numerous other mainstream publications, alleging that Russia was going to invade Ukraine by the end of January.
Then in late January when the calendar debunked the Military Times incendiary headline “Russia preparing to attack Ukraine by late January”, that same outlet ran a much less viral story with the headline “Russia not yet ready for full-scale attack says Ukraine“.
This past Friday the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, Melinda Haring, tweeted the following:
“Putin has big weekend plans in Ukraine: 1) he’s going to cut power and heat, knock out Ukrainian navy and air force, kill general staff and hit them with cyber attack; 2) then install pro-Russian president and 3) resort to full-scale military invasion if Ukraine doesn’t give in.”
And, of course, none of these things happened. The weekend came and went, Haring issued a sheepish admission that she got it wrong, then immediately turned around and proclaimed that “Putin may strike on Weds”, then later pivoted to “We’ve been so focused on Russian troops and tanks that we missed Moscow’s strategy: strangle Ukraine’s economy and sap the resolve of its people.”
False Predictions About Russia Invading Ukraine Are Making People Fear WW3
If you have been following the mainstream NATO member-state media over the past few weeks, you may be now fearing another world war. Here is why you should not be listening to these discredited mouth pieces for corporate governments in the West.
On the third of February, the White House indicated that “intelligence information” supposedly in their possession had indicated Russia would use crisis actors and staged videos to justify invading Ukraine. This information was eaten up almost uncritically by most Western media outlets. Even those reporting on it with a somewhat critical take still promoted the idea as valid. Matt Lee, a journalist for the Associated Press (AP), repeatedly called on White House spokesperson, Ned Price, for proof of the US government’s allegations during a press conference earlier this month. Needless to say, Price deflected and refused to provide any solid information other than the US accusation itself, which Matt Lee framed as getting into “Alex Jones territory”.
Since then, there have been numerous predictions about when Russia will invade Ukraine, in all of which Moscow is painted as being the irrational aggressor. Tabloid newspapers have gone with headlines like “ON THE BRINK Will there be World War 3?“, whilst others used unnamed “intelligence sources” to conjure up headlines claiming “Russian invasion of Ukraine set for ‘3am tomorrow’ with missiles and tank attack“. It’s not only the “untrusted” tabloids, which interestingly have a lot of readers, that are conjuring up ridiculous claims and conspiracy theories, almost all the more ostensibly reputable news outlets like the New York Times, BBC and the Guardian have led their readers to believe that Putin is a madman ready to invade Ukraine at any moment. The United States government has stated that an invasion could occur “at any time.” What is interesting is that far before any talk of Russia-Ukraine tensions had surfaced, the Washington Post published a piece on the 3rd of December (2021), claiming that US intelligence sources believed Russia would invade Ukraine with 175,000 troops.
Despite all the fear-mongering of a sudden Russian offensive, all talk from Russia has indicated it wishes to solve the ongoing tensions through dialogue. Russian President, Vladimir Putin, states that his country does not seek war and that they would only engage in a war in self-defense, much to the dismay of Western journalists eager to warmonger and paint Moscow in a similar light to that of the reporting during the Cold War.
What is interesting is that anyone who would dare indicate that the White Helmets in Syria had some role in attempting to stage chemical weapons attacks, specifically the attacks used to justify Western military aggression, would still be laughed out of the room by corporate media in the West. Interestingly, Russia has frequently predicted the tactic of staging attacks to justify US military aggression itself in the past, which were instantly slapped aside as akin to “conspiracy theories”. Yet, when Washington alleges something very similar, without any indication that what they are saying could actually be true, we should believe them?
The United States itself has such a long history of false flag attacks, including the Gulf of Tonkin incident leading to US military intervention in Vietnam, that it has no position to sit and accuse others whilst refusing to accept skepticism towards its own propensity to commit such acts. The problem is that the conspiracy theories of Western governments, their intelligence agencies, and complicit mouthpieces in corporate media, lead to real devastating consequences.
Are Warnings About “Imminent Russian Invasion Of Ukraine” Any More Than A Deep-State Intel Operation?
I think what is happening overall is brinkmanship by a number of parties, which is not uncommon in geopolitics, and it is unlikely anything significant happens.
But lets discuss the interests of different parties in each state:
Ukrainian interests
There are interest groups in Ukraine that want Nord Stream 2 sanctioned as it going live in June 2022 would end $3bn of transit revenues that the Ukraine government gets.
The oligarchs in the Ukraine owe a lot of their wealth to milking the state budgets.
Then there are Neo-Nazi militias that were folded into the military without much ‘re-education’ who dream of taking Donbass region back and like to wear WWII Galician division insignia.
So we had a Ukraine forces build up last Feb/ March then a climb down (NS2 was supposed to go live last summer but a German court said the legal structure was not compliant and needed to be changed and then re-approved) now is the last gamble before it goes live.
Ottawa Police Team Up With Federal Intelligence Agencies, Including US DHS and FBI, to Launch “Enhanced Intelligence Operations and Investigations” Against Truckers For Freedom Convoy
Thousands of trucks have gridlocked the Canadian capital city of Ottawa for almost a week, with protesters aiming to pressure Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end all mandates and lockdowns associated with Covid-19. Participants are refusing to leave until the authoritarian restrictions are lifted completely, and with both sides not budging, the Canadian government is turning to drastic measures in an attempt to crush the grassroots uprising.
On Friday, the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) announced they are pairing with several federal intelligence agencies and other law enforcement divisions to launch “enhanced intelligence operations and investigations” that will target individuals who are participating in the Canadian Truckers For Freedom Convoy.
US law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will also assist with the crackdown by investigating “online threats that originated in the US,” despite little to no evidence or behavior that has indicated any violence is being planned.
According to the OPS statement, the ‘enhanced investigation’ will begin targeting the key figures who are behind the organization of the convoy as part of the Canadian government’s “increased effort to identify and target protestors who are funding/supporting/enabling unlawful and harmful activity by protesters.”
RUSSIA MOCKS U.S. FALSE FLAG VIDEO ACCUSATION AS “DELUSIONAL”
Russia has responded to the United States’ elaborate and bizarre accusations that it will produce a propaganda false flag video to use a pretext to invade Ukraine, calling the US narrative “delusional” and “nonsense”. “The delusional nature of such fabrications — and there are more and more of them every day — is obvious to any more or less experienced political scientist,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in televised remarks Friday.
“It’s not my call to guess why our Western colleagues can be surprised now,” Lavrov added. “They are surprised with or without reason, mostly for no reason, or at some reasons that they make up themselves.”
Referring to a US State Department explanation on Thursday, which was met with considerable pushback even from US mainstream reporters, Lavrov described, “I saw on the Internet some statements by the Department of State that Russia was plotting to film some fake videos of an alleged Ukrainian attack on the Donbass. The craziness of such ideas… is obvious to any more or less experienced political scientist,” the Russian top diplomat said.
When pressed for evidence by AP journalist Matt Lee, the State Department’s Ned Price tried to shut down the line of inquiry by suggesting Lee and other skeptics “find solace in information that the Russians are putting out” – to which Lee audibly laughed, given he was the most veteran American journalist in the room.
Earlier on Thursday the Biden administration and US intelligence came out with some explosive and outlandish claims, saying Russia is planning to release a video depicting graphic scenes of a “staged false explosion with corpses, actors depicting mourners, and images of destroyed locations and military equipment,” as CNN described it. The story was featured initially in The Washington Post and New York Times – and as usual was anonymously sourced to “officials say…”.
Graphika: The Deep State’s Beard for Controlling the Information Age
Graphika is the toast of the town. The private social-media and tech-intelligence agency that tracks down bots and exposes foreign influence operations online is constantly quoted, referenced and profiled in the nation’s most important outlets. For example, in 2020, The New York Times published a fawning profile of the company’s head of investigations, Ben Nimmo. “He Combs the Web for Russian Bots. That Makes Him a Target,” ran its headline, the article presenting him as a crusader risking his life to keep our internet safe and free. Last year, business magazine Fast Company labeled Graphika as among the 10 most innovative companies in the world.
There is no doubt that Graphika leans into this cool and dynamic corporate image. From its beginnings in 2013, the company has expanded to employ dozens of people at its trendy Manhattan office. Describing themselves as “cartographers of the internet age,” the company puts out investigation after investigation about foreign influence operations online, especially concentrating on Russian, Chinese or Iranian attempts to manipulate social media. A layperson could certainly be blinded by its science and impressed by the complex and innovative graphs and charts. Yet when it comes to similar but far larger U.S. government programs, the intelligence and analysis agency is silent.
Playing into their hands…
Lee Harvey Oswald’s Last Phone Call
The man Oswald was trying to call, John David Hurt, was someone whose name had never been mentioned in connection to the JFK assassination in any of the voluminous records — and John David Hurt was an experienced former Special Agent of U.S. Army Counter Intelligence.
As Senator Richard Schweiker had said during the Church Committee Investigations, “”We don’t know what happened, but we do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look with him, there are the fingerprints of intelligence.”
The US Has As Much Moral Authority As Saudi Arabia On The Legitimacy Of Elections
“Let there be no mistake – Sunday’s regional and municipal elections in Venezuela are nothing more than a sham,” reads a recent statement authored by Republican US Senators Jim Risch and Michael McCaul. “The illegitimate Maduro regime has taken drastic measures to dismantle or control every independent institution in the country, including hijacking political parties and the National Electoral Council to ensure state-sponsored electoral fraud.”
“Today’s elections in Venezuela are as illegitimate as Maduro’s tyrannical regime,” reads a tweet by Republican Senator Rick Scott. “The Venezuelan people deserve free and democratic elections NOW. The U.S. and all freedom-loving nations must stand up, condemn these sham elections and support the people in their fight for freedom.”
The imperial media are lining up behind the official US government line on Venezuela’s gubernatorial and mayoral elections, with The New York Times assuring us that conditions “are far from freely democratic” and The Washington Post reporting that opposition parties “say the elections have been stacked against them by the socialist government of President Nicolás Maduro,” who sees the elections as “a chance to reassert strength while projecting a veneer of legitimacy.”
This level of intrusiveness into Venezuela’s heavily internationally monitored democratic process is typical of what we’ve been seeing from the US political/media class with regard to electoral contests in empire-targeted Latin American nations like Bolivia and Nicaragua. Which is really silly, because the US has no more moral authority over the legitimacy of democratic processes than a totalitarian monarchy like Saudi Arabia.
US elections are of course corrupt and fraudulent, entirely dominated at the federal level by legalized oligarchic bribery in the form of campaign contributions, manipulated primaries, gerrymandering, voter suppression, shutting out third parties, and the worst voting system in the western world.
More than this, though, the United States is also the world’s single most egregious offender when it comes to interfering in foreign elections. As Claire Bernish has observed in The Free Thought Project, the US government’s own data shows that it interfered in no fewer than 81 foreign elections just between the years 1946 and 2000. You’d never know it from the shrieking of the political/media class post-2016, but this would also include brazenly interfering in Russia’s elections in the nineties to ensure the presidency of Washington lackey Boris Yeltsin.
And that’s just election interferences. It doesn’t include more brazen interferences in who governs foreign nations like direct military invasions, staged coups, color revolutions and proxy wars.
Hellbound and Down 
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