JOHN VAROLI
SUBSTACK.COM

Five months remain before the elections in November, and no election in modern America is complete without a witch hunt for “Russian spies and agents of influence”. If you believe the White House, these extraordinary super-agents can dupe millions of Americans into voting for ‘right-wing’ candidates just by posting videos on websites that few people have seen, as well as humorous memes on social media.

In their effort to root out ‘Russian influence’ the White House has a number of tools at its disposal — from the muscle of FBI goons and criminal cases that bankrupt the accused, to the defamatory pen of New York Times propagandists. On the hit list over the past month have been two independent American journalists and one activist in New York whose only ‘crime’ is being interested in Russian history.

1) In early May, the FBI stepped up its investigation into the organizers of the New York chapter of the Russian historical movement, The Immortal Regiment. 2) In early June, Biden’s goons went after Scott Ritter, a critic of U.S. militarism and proponent of friendly relations with Russia. 3) The New York Times did a hit piece on John Mark Dougan, another critic of U.S. militarism who fled to Russia in 2016 after facing persecution for his investigation into local corruption in his home state of Florida.

These certainly won’t be the last victims caught up in the White House’s anti-Russian witch hunt before the November elections. Let’s take a closer look at the three cases.

Founded in Russia in 2012, The Immortal Regiment is an annual non-political event that is now global. Participants meet once a year — on May 9 — to commemorate their ancestors who served in the Soviet army that defeated European Nazism. It’s a beautiful and inspiring event. (Unless, of course, you are a Nazi sympathizer).

"The main front of World War 3 is on the field of information and psychological warfare. Each of us is on the front lines. There’s a battle raging for your mind and soul..."

Since the White House avidly supports the regime in Kiev, which openly glorifies Nazi butchers, it’s not surprising that the U.S. government harasses and threatens members of The Immortal Regiment. Because of their hatred for Russians, even Nazis are now heroes for western liberal elites. (Remember how last autumn Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s government publicly honored a Ukrainian Nazi).

Igor Kochan, a long-time New York resident and Russian citizen, was one of the organizers of the recent (and last) Immortal Regiment march in New York City, on May 9. He had long faced FBI harassment, but this spring the threats reached a boiling point when they confiscated his cell phone — an act indicating that a criminal case is being fabricated. In mid May, Mr Kochan fled the U.S. for the safety of Russia where he now has the freedom to speak out.

For years, Mr Kochan had faced FBI harassment and was even fired from his job due to his Russian ethnicity, a severe violation of U.S. federal law. But in the U.S., Russians have no rights, are widely viewed as “the enemy” and therefore stripped of any legal protections. “Russians are persecuted in the U.S.,” Mr Kochan recently said in a TV interview in Moscow.

The FBI’s harassment of other organizers and participants in The Immortal Regiment in New York continues, and concocted charges against some of them are highly likely as November approaches. The FBI has to justify its vast budget fighting “Russian election interference”.

The next incident came on June 3 when military analyst Scott Ritter was prevented from boarding a plane in New York to travel to Russia to attend the St Petersburg Economic Forum. Several men claiming to be police officers demanded his passport and still haven’t returned it — an ominous sign.

I’ve never heard of the U.S. confiscating someone’s passport,* and I wonder if it means the White House is fabricating a criminal case against Mr Ritter. He is certainly a huge thorn in Biden’s side.

A statement from Mr Ritter’s podcast producer, Jeff Norman, said: “Just prior to boarding the plane, he was prevented from doing so by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, who confiscated his passport. They told him they were acting on orders from the U.S. State Department. He was given no other explanation, and wasn't given a receipt for his passport. Scott has sent a letter to the State Department seeking an explanation and the return of his passport.”

Later, on his podcast, Mr Ritter said that the White House wants “to send a signal to anyone who wants to travel to Russia. They were afraid about what I was going to say and where I was going to say it”. The St Petersburg Economic forum is a “giant megaphone to the whole world”.

Mr Ritter is already on “Mirotvorets” the hit list run by Ukrainian nationalists and that receives support from the U.S. government. Mirotvorets labels Mr Ritter an “information terrorist”, which is an open call to have him killed. (Assassination of journalists supported by our tax dollars. Where are you George Clooney?!).

Despite the threats, Mr Ritter said on his recent podcast: “We’re not giving up. I’ve been at war with the U.S. government 24/7, for 30 years. It wears you down, but the cause — to stop a nuclear war and promoting peace — is very important.”

The second thing that surprised me is the article’s length — over 2,600 words (about five A4 pages) and an audio version that runs almost 21 minutes. Articles of this size are usually reserved only for very important public figures and events.

With all due respect to Mr Dougan, who I do not know and have never met, the fact is that he’s an unknown and minor figure. Devoting so much space and time to a man whose life and actions have little impact on the world is quite bizarre. But Meyers has to justify his high salary — he has to produce ‘evidence’ that supports the White House’s fake narrative of ‘Russian interference’ in our elections.

Meyers writes: “Mr. Dougan, 51, who received political asylum in Moscow, is now a key player in Russia’s disinformation operations against the West. …Working from an apartment crowded with servers and other computer equipment, Mr. Dougan has built an ever-growing network of more than 160 fake websites that mimic news outlets in the U.S., Britain and France. …With the help of commercially available artificial intelligence tools, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E 3, he has filled the sites with tens of thousands of articles, many based on actual news events.”

Intriguing. But is it true? Is there any evidence? Look closely at the article. In fact, there’s none. Nothing. We’re supposed to blindly trust Meyers and the NYT. The article’s main premise revolves around the dubious testimony of two characters who provide no evidence.

POST SCRIPTUM: I take no pleasure in writing these articles, exposing American corruption, mass murder, and the rise of a totalitarian state in Washington DC. Like many of you, I was raised to love my country and take pride in it. Today, however, there’s little to love and take pride in. Everywhere I look I only see reason for eternal shame. And don’t think for a moment that we’ll escape the Almighty’s judgement.

I’ve decided to make deconstructing and exposing western media lies a main focus of my labors. Today I’m launching my Telegram channel (link here). It’s in Russian only, precisely because it’s meant to be a tool to help Russian parents and teachers help their children/ students who might be susceptible to western disinformation. The main front of World War 3 is on the field of information and psychological warfare. Each of us is on the front lines. There’s a battle raging for your mind and soul.

ADDENDA BY THE EDITORS

* A case also worth remembering is that of Paul Robeson.
Here's a rather fair account (excerpted) of Robeson's trials with the US Government, of all places in Politico,  a liberal interventionist publication, via WWW.HISTORY.COM

Paul Robeson gestures May 31, 1948, as he tells the Senate Judiciary Committee he is willing to go to jail rather than answer a question as to whether or not he is a communist. | HUAC Photo By ANDREW GLASS 08/16/2018 12:01 AM EDT Before World War II, Paul Robeson, an African-American advocate for civil rights and an entertainer renowned for his work on Broadway and in films, became so dismayed over racism that he left the country and lived in Europe until 1939. During his 11 years abroad, Robeson became enamored by the Soviet Union, focusing on its disavowals of racial bias. During the war, while the United States was allied with Soviets against Nazi Germany, Robeson often performed before U.S. troops around the world. With the advent of the Cold War, the political climate changed; Robeson’s public statements in support of the Soviet Union began to draw pushback from official Washington. Before and after his performances, Robeson gave numerous interviews condemning segregation and discrimination. Some U.S. policymakers, including John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, viewed America’s race relations as the nation’s “Achilles’ heel” in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union. Witnessing a well-known, globally popular African-American denounce segregation while praising the Russians was deemed unacceptable. In 1950, Robeson attempted to renew his passport so that he could travel abroad to fulfill his performance contracts. State Department officials insisted that before a renewal occurred Robeson sign an affidavit declaring that he was not a member of the Communist Party and that he was loyal to the United States. Robeson refused to do so and filed suit in federal court. On this day in 1955, a federal judge ruled that the State Department was within its legal rights to deny Robeson a passport. After the decision, Robeson declared that it was “rather absurd” that he was not “allowed to travel because of my friendship — open, spoken friendship — for the Soviet people and the peoples of all the world.” At a 1956 hearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Robeson said: “Whether I am or not a Communist is irrelevant. The question is whether American citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or sympathies, may enjoy their constitutional rights.” In 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court in Kent v. Dulles affirmed painter Rockwell Kent’s right to travel, declaring the denial of a passport a violation of his civil rights. The majority opinion, written by Justice William O. Douglas, found that “the right to travel is a part of the ‘liberty’ of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment.” Six years later, in Aptheker v. Secretary of State, the court found that a law that barred communists from traveling abroad violated First Amendment principles, while leaving unsettled the extent to which this “liberty” can in any circumstances be curtailed. The 5-4 decision in 1958 also led to the restoration of Robeson’s passport. The damage to Robeson’s professional career, however, was done. He performed for a few more years before retiring in the 1960s, although the FBI continued to investigate him until his death in 1976 at age 77.

ADDENDUM 2
Leading civil libertarian and geopolitical analyst Garland Nixon sounds the tocsin about our vanishing constitutional rights—every American should listen
Here's Garland Nixon's trenchant analysis of the ruling elites' intensifying harassment of dissidents, as typified by their attacks on geopolitical analyst Scott Ritter, and the slandering and framing of independent websites opposing imperialist war and the rapid unraveling of Constitutional rights in the US, such as The Grayzone and The Greanville Post, both mentioned in this video commentary. 

Garland Nixon

PHILIP GIRALDI

Ritter: Obviously an "enemy of the state". So what are now the goons' next move?

Many individuals who actually care about the United States Constitution and its guarantee of basic liberties for the American people have been seriously concerned over how recent Administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have taken steps to control and limit the rights of citizens to exercise free speech as well as freedom to travel and associate freely. This abuse of power, for that is what it is, has unfortunately escalated sharply due to the uncompromising commitment of the Joe Biden White House to both Israel and Ukraine. It manifests itself in many ways, but most often includes steps to make it difficult for concerned Americans to learn for themselves the truth about what is taking place in the various international hot spots that the US State Department appears to be cultivating in such a fashion as to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. Those truth-tellers who persist in exposing the criminality in high places have been targeted and labeled in some government circles as “info-terrorists” and there has been what appears to be a sustained effort underway to undermine the credibility of journalists who are daring to report favorably on either Russia or the Palestinians. Interestingly enough, the Ukrainians have established the gold standard in identifying dissident journalists through their Department of Disinformation called “Myrotvorets.” It includes a list of names of those individuals who might be assassinated to silence them. The US has, not surprisingly, been seeking to establish a similar government agency, though hopefully without the kill list.

In the latest manifestation of denial of fundamental rights in an attempt to shut down a critic, on June 3^rd the State Department forced former Marine intelligence officer, Chief UN weapons inspector, journalist and author Scott Ritter off a plane headed to Russia by way of Istanbul and confiscated his passport. According to Scott “As I was boarding my flight out of New York I was pulled aside by three armed Customs and Border Patrol officers, who seized my passport. When asked why, they said orders of the State Department. No further information was provided. My bags were removed from the flight, and I was escorted out of the airport.” Ritter, who has been a persistent critic of both the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, was traveling to participate in the highly respected annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum as a guest speaker. The seizure of the passport to block his travel is a violation of the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

an interview later that day with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Ritter admitted that he had been taken aback by what had happened to him and should have been more aggressive in defense of his rights. He did not, for example, demand to see a warrant or be given a receipt for the passport and did not get the names of the three officers who had taken it away and escorted him out. He also should have demanded the name of the State Department Official who had signed the order to accost him in the most embarrassing fashion possible as he was boarding the plane and take his document.

Interestingly, Scott Ritter’s name appeared prominently on the Ukrainian “Disinformation” hit list. And not terribly surprisingly, the mainstream media, which is in sync with the government on the wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, did not give the Ritter story much coverage. The silence is particularly remarkable as the press, which has been protecting President Joe Biden and his Homeland Security lackeys as they watched millions of people illegally cross the Mexican border into the US failed to exercise any vigilance when a single American citizen was unsuccessful in trying to go the other way completely legally.

Has anyone in America lost a job for promoting an ongoing and highly visible genocide, i.e. Israel’s apparent inherent right to kill tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians? No, that is considered acceptable speech by those who govern us and make up the rules.

Ritter, to be sure, has been a powerful voice critiquing the Iraq War, where his inspections turned up no WMD and he declared, in August 2002, that a case had not been made for attacking Saddam Hussein. If George W. Bush and his gang of neocons plus Congress had only paid attention to Scott Ritter, the US would have been spared the loss of thousands of soldiers and the utter waste of trillions of tax dollars. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis also died as a result of the US attack on their country.

Since that time, Ritter has been an activist who calls for dialogue, negotiation and diplomacy to avoid wars, particularly in the current context where the United States is supplying tens of billions of dollars in arms to expand the war with Russia, sustain the attacks on Gazans and establish a pretext for a war with China over Taiwan. Ritter has traveled to Russia and Iran, as well as to other hot spots, without regard for his personal safety, driven by the desire to tell the truth about what is being propagandized in hopes that he will make politicians think twice about what they are doing. Scott has reported what he sees and describes the conversations he has had with local people without fear or favor, always with the objective of avoiding war and death. For his pains, he inevitably is accused of being a source of Russian and anti-Israeli disinformation and even acting as “Putin’s poodle,” but his information has proven to be overwhelmingly reliable.

Interestingly, this week’s incident was not the first time when Ritter was targeted by the US government for truth-telling. In the wake of the passport seizure, he recounted on X how “The similarities between what happened to me on June 3, and what transpired some 21 1/2 years ago, are disconcerting. Then, the FBI carried out a concerted effort to prevent me from making a documentary movie, ‘Shifting Sands,’ about the flawed case for war being promulgated by the US government. They threatened me with arrest, they engaged in acts of physical intimidation, and—when this didn’t work—they played a role in manufacturing a case designed to destroy my personal character in the eyes of the general public. The 2001 incidents were a warning shot across the bow for me to begin toeing the line. When I refused to do so, releasing my documentary film and actively speaking out against the US case for war with Iraq, the FBI then arranged to have the information about the 2001 incidents leaked to the press in an effort to destroy my credibility on the eve of a February 2003 trip I was planning to take to Iraq, together with a high-profile international delegation, that was designed to prevent a war between the US and the government of Saddam Hussein.”

Scott is not alone in being a target for government attempts to discredit him. Almost anyone who has good access to media and audiences and crosses the established line will be confronted to a greater or lesser extent. Sometimes the confrontation does real damage as in the recent cases of employees of universities and government who have lost their jobs for speaking out in defense of the Palestinians. Has anyone in America lost a job for promoting an ongoing and highly visible genocide, i.e. Israel’s apparent inherent right to kill tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians? No, that is considered acceptable speech by those who govern us and make up the rules.

Those of us who are under attack regularly for going against government writ sometimes exchange jokes about how defying the administration or Congress means going it largely alone in a fight against thousands of government lawyers who will be able to write or interpret the “rules” to crucify you staged in a selected court house before a co-opted judge where you will be certainly convicted. The threat is real, think of what Julian Assange is going through driven by a vengeful US government aided and abetted by those of a like mind in Britain, the home of the Official Secrets Act. The government nearly always wins when it comes to ruining one’s life on spurious or transmutable charges like the Espionage Act of 1918. Scott will have to get a lawyer and sue the government in an attempt to get his passport back and along the way a faceless bureaucrat will no doubt accuse him of high crimes and misdemeanors.

This latest outrage reminds me of something that I and others went through a few years ago relating to Iran, another preferred target of Israeli/US government rage. In May 2018 I and others from many nations, including Israelis and even an American rabbi, attended what was a public media annual conference in Masshad, Iran hosted by the Iranian NGO New Horizon foundation to discuss “Jerusalem/al-Quds the Eternal Capital of Palestine.” The discussions were wide ranging and include some sharp criticisms of Iranian policy. At the time, the Trump Administration was preparing to withdraw from the JCPOA agreement which monitored the Iranian nuclear program and was also ready to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, an illegal move. Trump’s Treasury Department was pursuing a policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran and groups like the Jewish Anti-Defamation League were calling the conference an “anti-Semitic gathering” that “included US and international anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and anti-war activists.” The conference nevertheless proceeded peacefully, culminating in a press conference in Tehran that I and others spoke at which was open to the international media.

Unfortunately, someone in Washington did not like the idea of a conference that brought together people from many nations and beliefs to discuss a contentious international problem. In February 2019, Sigal Pearl Mandelker, then Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence and an Israeli citizen, ordered the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to sanction the American-educated founder of New Horizon Nader Talebzadeh Ordoubadi as well as his Lebanese wife, Zeina Mehanna, his organization The New Horizon Conference (NHC), and some of its staff for holding the conference. Ostensibly and perhaps inevitably the reason was “anti-Semitism, Holocaust Denial, and allowing Iranian intelligence to recruit attendees.” Mandelker, by the way, was suspected of having links to Israeli intelligence, Mossad. She was inter alia reportedly involved in brokering the infamous Florida deal that allowed the wealthy child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and probable Israeli spy to avoid federal charges.

In order to place in context what took place, I would point out that any international conference almost anywhere in the world like the one we attended in Mashhad would be covered by the local intelligence service in an attempt to make recruitments and obtain information. The CIA has an entire division called National Collection which spends much of its time going to conferences in the US where foreign targets will be present. In like fashion operate the British, French, Mossad, Russian and Chinese services. In my opinion, targeting New Horizon for sanctions because an event hosted by it was exploited by its country’s intelligence service is wrong because NH clearly had no choice in the matter. And it is what the United States and other countries do regularly.

The sanctioning of New Horizon became relevant when NH sought to host another conference in Beirut, Lebanon in September 2019. Roughly the same group of Americans, myself included, was invited to speak or otherwise participate. Several of the Americans were approached in advance by FBI agents, evidently acting under orders from Sigal Mandelker. The Agents warned that any participants in the conference might be subject to criminal indictment upon return to the US because New Horizon was under sanctions. One of those who was approached by the Bureau elaborated how “They’re interpreting the regulations to say that even if you only associate with someone who has been sanctioned, you are subject to fines and imprisonment…” The Bureau went on to explain how Iranian sanctions are somewhat unique. That’s because Iran is a “comprehensively sanctioned” country, meaning that anything having to do with “supporting it” is sanctionable, including tourist visits that aid its economy. We were informed confidentially that if we attended the conference we would be arrested upon our return and would face criminal prosecution as well as possible fines up to $300,000. We all decided not to go and the conference gathering proceeded peacefully without any US input.

The point I am trying to make is that this has been going on for quite some time and rather aggressively by the US government, yet even a well-informed American is probably completely unaware of how he or she can be stripped of fundamental constitutional rights without any ability to push back against the system. And it comes from both Democratic and Republican administrations as well as from government agencies that have been corrupted to the point where they exist to serve their political masters rather than the American people. Hopefully, Scott Ritter will get his passport back and be free both to travel again and speak his mind. We need him and also millions more voices challenging the horrors that have been coming out of Washington.

Please see Phil's bio profile below. 

About the Author(s)

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax-deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

Lili News 029

• In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
• Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
• Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

Things to keep in mind...

Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.

AND...where the US Government is at: LYING 24/7

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Judge Napolitano • Scott Ritter

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Lili News 029

• In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
• Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
• Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

Things to keep in mind...

Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.

AND...where the US Government is at: LYING 24/7

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ERIC ZUESSE
Eric's Substack

The U.S. Government’s Many Lies About the War in Ukraine

 

Who is the true owner of Lloyd Austin? That's why he can talk about Russia's "unprovoked invasion".

Lili News 029

• In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
• Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
• Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

Things to keep in mind...

Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.

AND...where the US Government is at: LYING 24/7

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 By Gary Olson

Pro-Palestinian demonstration in Washington DC. Photo : (Yasin Ozturk - AA )

Those protesters have started a fire that’s going to burn straight through the whole system.