Personal Interview: Scott Ritter

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IMPERIALISM IS ONLY THE DEGENERATE, MONOPOLY PHASE OF CAPITALISM


Interviewed by John Rachel

Events are unfolding at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we are looking to our most respected and renowned thought leaders for an honest assessment of both U.S. foreign and military policy to offer their most current thoughts and insights. We know they have some ideas for improving the prospects for peace. 

Ritter

Scott Ritter served as a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence officer (1984-1991), in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Norman Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq (1991-1998). He is author of SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump, “Iraq Confidential” (Nation Books, 2005), and “Target Iran” (Nation Books, 2006). His responses below are exactly as he provided.

The questions here are not philosophical or abstract. They focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time. They directly address the role of the U.S. in the escalating tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We also probe the role of everyday citizens in affecting the relationship the U.S. now has and will have with the rest of the world community. 

Here is what Scott Ritter had to say.


Q. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has recently put the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds before midnight. Midnight means all-out war, probably nuclear holocaust. This is the closest it has every been. Do you agree with this dire assessment?

A. No. There have been occasions in the past where the confluence of geopolitical posturing and military hubris combined to make the conditions favourable for nuclear conflict greater than those that exist today. We have reduced the amount of forward-deployed nuclear weapons and have altered our military doctrine so that the use of nuclear weapons is not assumed, but rather seen as a separate, deliberate action above and beyond the military mission at hand. This does not mean that the threat of a nuclear conflict isn’t real, or that the world should not be concerned. The point here is that it doesn’t matter where you set the Doomsday Clock; if the decision is made to use nuclear weapons, it means we are at zero, and we failed. So long as nations possess nuclear weapons and have corresponding nuclear postures that postulate scenarios for which the use of nuclear weapons are considered a viable outcome, we will always be one second away from global annihilation. The Doomsday Clock should be set at one second until all nuclear weapons are eliminated—that’s the true state of play. Anything else is simply an exercise in self-deception.

Q. The U.S. always portrays itself as the greatest force on the planet for peace, justice, human rights, racial equality, etc. Polls tell us that most other nations actually regard the U.S. as the greatest threat to stability. What in your view is the truth here?

A. Peace, justice, human rights, racial equality, etc….these are very subjective topics which mean different things to different people at different times. The human condition is not conducive to any utopian notion of universality. There will always be competition between groups of people, whether organized as states, coalitions, alliances, etc. There was a time when the confluence of global conditions positioned the US as the foremost power in defence of nations sharing similar value sets. But we should not pretend that the US is a nation which embraces the very notions is proclaims to defend. No nation lives up to the promise of its own propaganda—none. The nations that oppose the United States are not paragons of virtue themselves. Many of them are actively engaged in a competition for resources and access with the US which colours their outlook. The truth is humanity has not learned how to peacefully coexist with itself. The US has done much to help nations survive and prosper, but only if those nations are useful in the pursuit of American goals and objectives. We don’t support those who are aligned against us…we are not a benevolent nation. No nation is.

Q. Here’s a chicken-or-egg question: The U.S. accuses both Russia and China of rapidly expanding their military capabilities, claiming its own posturing and increase in weaponry is a response to its hostile adversaries, Russia and China. Both Russia and China claim they are merely responding to intimidation and military threats posed by the U.S. What’s your view? Do Russia and China have imperial ambitions or are they just trying to defend themselves against what they see as an increasingly aggressive U.S. military?

A. Where do you start the clock when answering this question? The US, Russia, and China have always been involved in a version of the “great game” that incorporates military power as a means of gaining and maintaining control over objectives deemed to be in the national interest. Picking an arbitrary point in time as your starting point and drawing conclusions based upon the resultant fact set ignores the fact that at one point or another in the past two centuries, Russia, China, and the US (along with France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Japan, and others) have all sought to use military power as a means of gaining a geopolitical advantage over others. Greed loves a vacuum, and humans are perpetually greedy; that’s one way of saying if you don’t maintain sufficient force to defend yourself, someone will take advantage of that. The US didn’t invent wars of aggression.

Q. The U.S. always denies that it has imperial ambitions. Most unbiased experts say that by any objective standards, the U.S. is an empire — indeed the most powerful, sprawling empire in history. Does the U.S. have to be an empire to be successful in the world and effectively protect and serve its citizenry?

A. All one has to do is look at the disparity between the rate of consumption of the American people and what we produce. The reality is that we are dependent upon resources that come from other nations to maintain the lifestyle we enjoy. Empires operate the same way. We are an empire.

Q. The highest ranking commanders of the U.S. military recently sounded the alarm. They have concluded that the U.S. — widely regarded as the most formidable military power in history — can’t defeat either Russia or China in a war. These military commanders are saying we need to dramatically increase our military capabilities. What do you make of this claim and the resulting demand for more DOD spending?

A. Russia has built a military that can defeat the US and NATO in a stand-up conventional fight, and yet Russia spends a fraction of what the US does on defence. The problem with the US defence system isn’t how much we spend (which is too much, by the way) but what we spend it on, and how we spend it. We have a bloated defence acquisition system geared more toward generating profits for the military defence industry than producing capable defence products. The F-35 fighter stands out as a case in point, but it is not unique. If I were Congress, I’d find a way to streamline acquisition at the same time as revising doctrine so that the US could field a lethal military force at half the cost. But then again, Congress is married to the defence industry, which underwrites their political campaigns. Military commanders always want more without ever admitting they could make do with far less.

Q. In 2009, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced a reset with Russia, heralding greater cooperation and understanding. By 2014, Obama had made a sharp reversal. A sweeping regime of sanctions has since been imposed on Russia to cripple its economy. Hillary Clinton and the Democrats now relentlessly demonize Russia and Putin, blaming them for every imaginable ill. Both in the media and from official pronouncements by government officials, Russia has become the favorite whipping boy for both the U.S. and its “special friend”, Great Britain. Why? What happened?

A. We had a moment in history, between 1988 and 1991, where we could have worked with Mikhail Gorbachev to make his vision of perestroika succeed. Instead, we allowed him to fail, without any real plan on how we would live with what emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Save for a short period of time during the Second World War where we needed the Soviet Union to defeat Germany and Japan, we have been in a continual state of political conflict with the Soviet Union. Even after the Soviet Union collapsed, we viewed the Russian Federation more as a defeated enemy that we needed to keep down, than a friend in need of a helping hand up. Yeltsin’s Russia was useful to the US and NATO only to the extent that we could exploit it economically while controlling its domestic politics in a manner that kept Russia in a perpetual state of weakness. The Obama “reset” was simply a ploy to remove Vladimir Putin, who rejected the vision of Russia projected by the West, and replace him with Dmitri Medvedev, whom Obama believed could be remade in the figure of Yeltsin. The fact that Putin believes in a strong Russia has upset the plans of the US, NATO, and Europe for post-Cold War hegemony, predicated as they were on a weak, compliant Russian state.

Q. The number of spy missions, nuclear-armed bomber flights, and war games near Russia’s borders have vastly increased over the past year. Same with China. Is all of this just business-as-usual geopolitical posturing? Or does it represent a dangerous escalation and a new ominous direction in U.S. strategic positioning? What is the justification for what Russia and China see as provocations and aggressiveness, if not actual preparation for a war?

A. To be honest, the level of intelligence collection today pales in comparison to what we were doing during the Cold War. It's all a matter of perspective. We are engaged in a global geopolitical competition with both Russia and China that has a military component attached to it. The intelligence collection and military posturing is simply a ramification of this reality. I think the Russians and Chinese are mature enough in their own assessments to distinguish between simple intelligence collection and posturing, and actual preparations for war.

Q. Between the FONOPS in the South China Sea and the recently expressed enthusiasm for Taiwan’s independence, the risk of military conflict with China keeps increasing. Where is this headed? If People’s Republic of China decides to use military force for full reunification of Taiwan, do you see the U.S. going to war in an attempt to prevent it?

A. You can’t have two competing major powers operating in the same space without conflict. The US will either have to retreat from the South China Sea, and stop supporting Taiwan, or there will be a military conflict. I don’t see the US retreating, so the question is what level of conflict will ensue. The US lacks the capacity for meaningful military engagement on either front. China will probably seek some form of low-level conflict that can be contained as a way of compelling a US retreat. But unless the US changes course, there will be a war.

Q. The U.S. against the clear objections of the government in Syria is occupying valuable land, stealing the country’s oil, and preventing access to the most agriculturally productive region, effectively starving the population. The world sees this for what it is, a cruel game sacrificing innocent people for some perceived geopolitical advantage. Is this the kind of reputation the U.S. wants? Or does it simply no longer care what the rest of the world community thinks?

A. The US doesn’t care, and frankly speaking neither does the rest of the world. Arab life has become virtually worthless in terms of generating sympathy when it is lost. The world has come to accept the cheapness of an Arab life. That the US is involved in policies that harm Arabs simply does not shock the global consciousness the way it should, if for no other reason than the Arabs themselves behave as if Arab life holds no value. How else do you explain the sectarian violence, the Saudi assault on Yemen, etc.?

Q. In a democracy, at least in theory citizens have a say in all matters of public policy. Yet, in the end none of the recent military campaigns and undeclared wars seem to achieve much popular favor or support. What is and what should be the role of everyday citizens in determining the foreign policy and military priorities of the country? Or are such matters better left to the “experts”?

A. We should stop pretending that the US is a functioning democracy; Citizens United proves we are not—when the courts grant citizenship powers to corporations, money and greed become the nations lifeblood, not the will of the people. The American people have allowed themselves to be dumbed down to the point that their opinions are easily manipulated by corporate owned and controlled mainstream media. The inability to function as a viable component of government has resulted in the “people” fracturing into competing ideological and socio-economic fiefdoms. American democracy is little more than feudalistic plutocracy. Its an unsustainable model doomed to collapse in on itself.

Q. Related to that, the citizenry and most of Congress are kept in the dark with respect to special missions, proxy funding, CIA operations, and swaths of unknown unknowns constituting psyops, cyber ops, and regime change ops, all done in our name as U.S. citizens. The funds to support this sprawling “dark world” of sabotage and terror being inflicted on the rest of the planet, is also a secret. Now there’s pervasive spying on U.S. citizens right here at home. What place does any of this have in “the land of the free”? Does this mean the government of the people, by the people, for the people is just a sham?

A. While there is a role for secret operations in the conduct of legitimate defence-related activities, every effort should be made to minimize that which is defined as secret, and to ensure that anything deemed secret is eventually revealed so that the American people can be fully informed as to what is being done in their name. Secrecy is the death of democracy. That we live in a police/military state where everything is classified is proof positive of the decline of the United State as a functioning democracy. American cannot cure itself until it reveals all of its secrets to its citizens; otherwise, we are only pretending to live in a democracy. Democracy thrives in sunlight, nor shadows.

Q. Recently we’ve seen some token but precedent-setting direct payments to citizens in the form of Covid relief. There is also the ongoing discussion about reparations to descendants of slaves. If it could be unequivocally established that the government has abused DOD funding, misused and squandered vast sums of money to promote unjustified wars, purchase unneeded equipment, unnecessarily expand U.S. military presence across the globe, and regularly lied to the American public to manufacture consent for these misadventures and fraudulent activities, practical and political considerations aside, do you see any constitutional or other legal barriers to the public identifying, expecting, or even demanding proper compensation? A cash refund or citizen reparations for massive, authenticated abuse of power?

A. The House of Representatives controls the purse—it alone can make determinations regarding the allocation of financial resources. The American people have the ability to elect new Congressional representatives every two years. The answer to all of our problems could be solved by electing the right people to represent us. And yet…look at Congress today. It is fundamentally broken, divided along ideological lines, and in the pockets of corporate sponsors and special interests. The answer is no—beyond some token Covid-like bribes, the American people will never see compensation for the mismanagement of their taxpayer dollars so long as they have a Congress configured as it currently is.

• • •

We are grateful to Scott Ritter for his thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. This effort embraces a powerful, unprecedented, end-to-end strategy for challenging the tyranny of neocon warmongers in Washington DC, ending the endless wars, and reversing the self-destructive foreign policy and military paradigm which now poisons U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Scott Ritter has also agreed to be interviewed for the full-length Peace Dividend documentary film, a devastating indictment of the corruption and fraud built into our excessive military budgets and imperial overreach. This movie will inform, unite and empower everyday citizens to have a voice in determining the future they want for themselves and their children.

John Rachel has a B. A. in Philosophy, has traveled extensively, is a songwriter, music producer, novelist, and evolutionary humanist.  He has spent his life trying to resolve the intrinsic clash between the metaphysical purity of Buddhism and the overwhelming appeal of narcissism.  Prompted by the trauma of graduating high school and having to leave his beloved city of Detroit to attend university, the development of his social skills and worldview were arrested at age 18.  This affliction figures prominently in all of his creative work. His latest book — LIVE FROM JAPAN! — is a collection of anecdotes about his life in a traditional, rural community an hour northwest of Osaka. The print version is a deluxe, full-color, large-format (8.5″ x 11″) volume with over 450 photos. We highly recommend it.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.

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Russia tells 20 Czech diplomats to leave by Monday night in response to Prague’s expulsions

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An RT.com Dispatch




It's becoming obvious this is just another US/UK hybrid war psyop. Observe how they double down on their BS by having either a jerk or a NATO troll, pulling a cheap stint for the benefit of the Western media.
—The Editor
—The Editor

A man carrying a NATO flag outside the Russian Embassy in Prague, Czech Republic on April 18, 2021 © Reuters / David W Cerny. 

Twenty Czech diplomats have been declared personae non-gratae and must now leave Russia before the end of April 19, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, a day after Czech officials expelled 18 diplomats to Moscow.

Earlier on Sunday, the Czech ambassador to Moscow, Vítezslav Pivonka, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, which expressed a “strong protest” over Prague’s actions this weekend. Citing allegations of the involvement of Russian intelligence in a 2014 blast at a military depot in the Czech Republic, which was initially thought to be an accident, the Czech government ordered 18 Russian diplomats out of the country. The decision was announced on Saturday by Prime Minister Andrej Babis and Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek.

The envoy was also informed that 20 staff members of the Czech embassy in Moscow would have to leave Russia by the end of Monday, April 19. Reports in the media on Saturday cited diplomatic sources as having said that a proportionate retaliation from Moscow would effectively shut down the embassy, but it was not immediately clear how severely the work of the diplomatic mission has actually been affected.

ALSO ON RT.COMCzechs announce expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats, as Prague claims ‘intel officers’ involved in 2014 munitions depot explosion

Notably, the diplomatic scandal rocked Czech-Russian relations on the eve of FM Hamacek’s scheduled visit to Moscow, where he was to have discussed the possible purchase of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. 

The breakdown in relations has also disrupted Russian-Czech cooperation in the field of nuclear energy. On Sunday, Czech Minister of Industry and Trade Karel Havlicek said Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation, Rosatom, would likely be barred from tendering for renovating the Czech Republic’s Dukovany nuclear power plant.

Also on Saturday, Czech police said they were looking for two Russian citizens who were in the area of the military depot at the time of the blast, apparently implying their involvement without directly saying so. The news was met with much ridicule in Russia, as the suspects are the same men who were accused by London of the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018 – an allegation denied by Moscow. Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov have previously denied any links to Russian intelligence, claiming they were businessmen and complaining that Britain’s unsubstantiated accusations had ruined their lives.


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Our main image motif: Painted by famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, Glorious Victory is a critical and condemnatory view of the 1954 CIA coup of Guatemala’s democratically elected president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. The United States removed Árbenz from power and replaced him with a dictatorial military commander because Árbenz threatened the landholdings of the United Fruit Company with his agrarian reform laws.


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NAVALNY, BELLINGCAT & THE FIFTH COLUMN IN THE FSB

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Help us break the corporate media monopoly before it kills us all. The global oligarchy depends on its disinformation machine to maintain its power. Now the malicious fog of Western propaganda has created an ocean of confusion in which even independent minds can drown. Please push back against this colossal apparatus of deception. Consider a donation today!


A Dispatch from the Stalkerzone
PUSHING BACK AGAINST WESTERN DISINFORMATION



NAVALNY, BELLINGCAT & THE FIFTH COLUMN IN THE FSB

Navalny And Others Like Him Are Not Politicians Or Fighters. They Are Puppets. We Armed Ourselves With Evidence And Made The First Attempt To Understand Whose Hands Control These “Dolls”. By The Way, Some Of These Arms Are Covered With The Sleeves Of The Uniforms Of The Russian Federal Security Service. So Who Is Behind The “Investigations” That Were Supposed To “Shake Russia”? Whose Agents Were Navalny And His Associates? The Answers Are In Our Investigation.

Tsargrad continues a series of investigations into Aleksey Navalny. This time we will talk about his colleagues – journalists of the scandalous website of anti-Russian “revelations” Bellingcat, as well as about close ties with The Insider. From the documents we found, we learned that influential and experienced agents, professionals of conducting hybrid war against Russia, now stood up for Navalny. However, today’s story casts a big shadow in the past, where there was a place for “werewolves in uniform”, and hackers, and big money from overseas.

We were not surprised to see not only the “exposé” of the Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev on Navalny, but also them together, calling, probably, a fake FSB employee. The one who confused Omsk and Tomsk, and also confessed to the strange interest of the Russian security forces in the underwear of the opposition leader. After all, Novichok was allegedly also applied to it. So who are Grozev and his team? Who sponsors the Bellingcat investigators and what does Aleksey Navalny have to do with it? About everything in order.

Buckets Of Dirt

Over the past two months, several information plantings about the case with the “poisoning” of Navalny have appeared online at the same time. The most resonant is the joint “investigation” of The Insider, Bellingcat and CNN with the participation of Der Spiegel. 
The Leader And Main Coordinator Was Christo Grozev, As We Are Kindly Told On The Bellingcat Website.

Grozev is well known in the west for his Bellingcat work. In fact, this British organisation was created [in Orwellian fashion] as a website for exposing the “propaganda of Russia”. Initially, Bellingcat employees did an investigation from which it follows that allegedly Russia was responsible for the downing of the Malaysian Boeing in Donbass.

Grozev in 2014, through all his resources, exposed Russia as an “aggressor” who attacked Ukraine. He published a large number of fakes about the presence of Russian military personnel there in characteristic camouflage, about the movement of equipment and soldiers. Even later, Grozev did not let up and did not hestitate to spread rumours that Russia was going to attack Ukraine soon with large forces. In 2020, on his Twitter, for example, he published, without a reference to sources, a certain video about the passage of a column of military equipment in the Rostov region. According to Grozev, this then indicated that Russia was preparing for an attack.

In 2016, Grozev organised a campaign to accuse Moscow of “attempting a coup in Montenegro”. It is noteworthy that this lie was not believed, first of all, by the residents of the republic themselves. They believed that Grozev was paid by then-Prime Minister Milo Đukanović to “warm up” his approval rating before the election.

Then there were the Bellingcat “investigations” into the poisoning of the Skripals, where the use of Novichok was allegedly confirmed. It said that the suspects worked for the GRU, and so on.

After that, Grozev actively promoted the position of the American Democrats through his resources, claiming that Donald Trump, who came to power in the US at that time, was also a protege of Moscow and almost personally of Vladimir Putin.

In a word, Grozev everywhere, at every step, defamed Russia as much as he could. He was engaged in this systematically, and one can not deny its scope. After all, at the instigation of Grozev, this propaganda was actively spread by the western press, after which this information poisoned the minds of Americans and Europeans. Let’s look at Christo Grozev in more detail. 

The Story Of A Propagandist

Christo Grozev was born in 1969 in Plovdiv and since his teens was interested in two things – radio and democracy. Not surprisingly, he went to study at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG), one of the key forges of “democratic” cadres in the Balkans. There is no doubt about the ideological education of students, because 80% of the teaching staff of the university was represented by Americans.

The most interesting thing is the financing of this university. The first sponsor was the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The university’s website says that USAID funds the university through the Office of American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA). The grants amounted to more than $11 million.
ASHA, in turn, is an integral part of USAID, and this information can be easily found on the organisation’s website.
The second sponsor is the George Soros Open Society Foundation, which has allocated at least $36 million to the university. Christo Grozev, after reading an article about himself in Tsargrad back in 2017, was ironic about being called an “agent of Soros”. But it’s hard to deny the facts about the funding he received from Soros, even when he was studying at a university he sponsored.

The third sponsor is no less interesting. This is the America for Bulgaria Foundation (ABF), which has allocated at least $22 million to the American University to pay scholarships and support students (information from the university’s website). The ABF’s own website says that it was founded in 1991 by the US Congress and USAID.

In 2012, the anniversary issue of the official journal of the university “AUBG Today” was published, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the university. The cover features a photo with George Soros, the special envoy of US President George H. W. Bush, Elaine Chao and the first President of independent Bulgaria, Zhelyu Zhelev. In short, it is difficult to imagine something more American in Bulgaria than this university. In such a place, Christo Grozev, who denies his ties with the money of the US and Soros, was educated.

Christo Grozev founded Bulgaria’s first private radio station, Radio Aura, on the university’s campus in 1993. In 1995, he graduated from the university, but did not go to the US (as almost all graduates want), and went to work in the media holding company Metromedia International, where the employer of a capable young graduate was the American billionaire John Kluge.

READ:  Loyalist Confusion

Kluge is known all over the world as a tycoon who bought up media assets in different countries. However, a number of no-no sources reported him as a high-ranking American intelligence officer. As the journalist Oleg Lurie told us, Kluge was responsible for the US intelligence agencies during World War II for the export of German prisoners of war, including even Wernher von Braun, who were valuable to the Americans. The goal was to create for Washington the maximum superiority over the USSR in the nuclear race. At the same time, a number of sources report that the division led by Kluge P.O. Box 1142 (District of Columbia) is famous for its sadistic torture of prisoners.

John Kluge died in 2010, but we managed to find an interesting document – a transcript of a fragment of a recording of a US Congress meeting, which contains an appeal to honour the memory of the deceased secret US intelligence officer John Kluge. Here is the most interesting quote from the document:
By the way, the western media persistently hide Kluge’s affiliation with American intelligence. They try not to trumpet about it. According to Forbes, until 1991, Kluge was considered the richest man in the US, his fortune exceeded $5 billion. A year before his death, he was ranked 35th in the Forbes ranking. The Times of London, for example, tells us that Kluge, also known as “Mr. Midas”, is simply a billionaire who founded America’s first independent media empire. But we can imagine how “independent” a career US intelligence officer could actually be.
Thus, we can say that Christo Grozev immediately after university chose a career as a propagandist and entered into a closer relationship with the American intelligence agencies, starting to work for Kluge. Moreover, Grozev, on the personal orders of his boss, went to open a network of propaganda radio stations in Russia.

One of Metromedia’s projects in Russia was, for example, “Eldoradio” (Radio Katyusha CJSC), which was opened in 1996. According to the register of radio stations for that period, the general director of “Eldoradio” was Grozev himself. An extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities for this radio station can be obtained even today, but after the change of owners in 2003, the CJSC turned into a joint-stock company and was re-registered with the assignment of a new tax code.
The newspaper Delovoy Peterburg also wrote about Grozev as a general director, noting the success of the radio station. Of course, because the station had no problems with financing.


Our colleagues from the investigative publication FLB found an indication of Grozev as the “first person” in “Radio Katyusha” CJSC.

In addition to “Eldoradio”, Grozev also launched “Channel Melody” in St. Petersburg and “Radio Nika” in Sochi. In the 2000s, Kluge noticed Grozev’s zeal and made him a top manager of the entire eastern European wing of Metromedia. This division of the corporation was engaged in broadcasting in Russia, the Baltic states, Finland, Bulgaria, and Hungary. In total, Grozev managed 26 radio stations in nine countries.

However, the network of “democratic” propaganda mouthpieces in our country eventually collapsed. As Grozev himself later stated, Vladimir Putin allegedly personally destroyed Metromedia’s business in Russia. In 1999, Viktor Ivanov, who had served in the KGB Department of the USSR for Leningrad and the Leningrad Region since 1977, became interested in the activities of Metromedia. In 1994, deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Putin appointed Ivanov head of the administrative bodies of the City Hall. In 1996, Anatoly Sobchak lost the mayoral election, Ivanov left politics and headed “Teleplus” CJSC, which was owned by one of Metromedia’s daughters. Apparently, it was there that Ivanov saw the whole “spy”background of Kluge and Grozev’s activities in Russia.

In January 2000, Vladimir Putin became acting president of Russia and appointed Ivanov as deputy head of the Presidential Administration for personnel, and as Grozev states, then his radio stations were subjected to “a decisive attack from the Putin team”. A number of sources report that the radio stations of Grozev had non-transparent accounting, and Metromedia itself evaded paying taxes. For example, in 2004, the Georgian authorities accused the son-in-law of the former President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze, Giya Dzhohtaberidze, who was the founder and co-owner of the mobile phone company “Magticom”, part of Metromedia, of corruption.

After the collapse of Metromedia shares in the late 2000s, the company started to sell off its assets in the CIS. Grozev also said that he considers Vladimir Putin his personal enemy, as he allegedly “squeezed” his business. Then the Bulgarian propagandist, apparently, decided to start “taking revenge on Putin” in a big way.

Grozev then goes to a new sponsor – the heir to the royal throne of Austria, Karl Habsburg-Lorraine, and later becomes a personal financial adviser to Habsburg. Grozev persuades him to invest in the creation of a “democratic” radio station in Ukraine.

The entire “office” was then unexpectedly “handed over” on his Facebook by Oleg Khavich – the former head of the information bloc of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. In 2016, he posted a photo of himself standing next to Karl Habsburg and Christo Grozev. Khavich called the latter a “financial adviser” to Habsburg. Supporters of Austria-Hungary in the comments could not restrain themselves and exulted: “Galicia is waiting for the return of its emperor!”

What a wonderful company, you might say. Thank you to Mr. Khavich for this photo, with which we were able to confirm the close connection between Grozev and Habsburg. After all, in 2014, Metromedia bought in Ukraine “Gala Radio”, which in 2015 received the pretentious name “EU Radio”. Grozev assumed that the station would become the mouthpiece of European “democracy”. By the way, the radio completely abandoned Russian music, so as not to promote the “aggressor country”.

The Metromedia empire eventually collapsed around the world, and its last assets were sold off in Georgia. But Grozev did not care, because then he went to work at Bellingcat, where he again fell down before the overseas feeding trough.

Bellingcat, FSB, The Insider, Hackers, Intelligence Agencies And Big Money

Let’s move on to the most interesting part of our investigation. As many may recall, in early 2017, there was a loud scandal in the FSB: the head of the 2nd department of the Central Information Security Department of the FSB Sergey Mikhailov and his deputy Dmitry Dokuchaev were arrested.

On February 26th, 2019, the Moscow District Military Court sentenced Sergey Mikhailov and associated Kaspersky Lab employee Ruslan Stoyanov to 22 and 14 years in prison, respectively, finding them guilty under Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “State Treason”.

As was established by the investigation, in 2011 Mikhailov took advantage of the fact that he was head of FSB Central Information Security Department and became a real digital mafia, or more simply, the leader of a cyber-criminal group. It was Mikhailov who “protected” the infamous Ukrainian hackers from “Anonymous International”. This group was also called “Shaltay Boltay”. Important: the investigation proved Mikhailov’s guilt and his receipt of money from the US intelligence agencies.

“Shaltay Boltay” since 2014 settled in Kiev, boldly opposed Russia and started to do powerful leaks of information so that the west could use them to accuse Moscow of aggression. By the way, it was “Shaltay Boltay” who launched the myth of “Russian hackers” at the same time. But where was this anti-Russian hysteria picked up from?

It was The Insider. Yes, yes, the same one who, in conjunction with Christo Grozev, conducted the latest investigations on Navalny, and then the publication published the plums of “Shaltay“. For example, about the fake hacking of Vladislav Surkov’s mail, whose letters allegedly prove Russia’s “aggression” against Ukraine. 

Thus, we stretch a logical thread: the money of the CIA and the State Department – Sergey Mikhailov – “Shaltay Boltay” – The Insider. Of course, Christo Grozev did not pass by these plums and joyfully picked up all such messages discrediting Russia. The chain thus extends to both Bellingcat and Grozev.

All the links in this chain have one thing in common – communication with the US intelligence agencies and receiving money from them through the State Department structures, as well as all sorts of “democratic” organisations sponsored by Soros. This is confirmed by a number of sources. Firstly, in the west, there are also unbiased media [actually alternative independent media]. The website Mint Press News in October 2018 published an article about the dirty financing of Bellingcat. Here is a quote from the publication’s article:

“For instance, Bellingcat regularly works with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which – according to the late journalist Robert Parry – ‘engages in ‘investigative journalism’ that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption.’ OCCRP is notably funded by USAID and the controversial George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations.”

The editor-in-chief of The Insider, Roman Dobrokhotov, confirmed in January 2021 in the film of Aleksey Pivovarov’s YouTube channel “Editorial” that his publication also received money from OCCRP. Here is a video fragment where Dobrokhotov speaks about this quite openly.

Now let’s see where the money comes from for OCCRP itself? This is indeed again the Open Society Foundation of George Soros, this is again USAID and even the US State Department itself. This is stated in the appropriate section of the OCCRP website.

And now let’s give the floor to Christo Grozev himself, who is trying to assure us that he paid for the investigation of Navalny out of his own pocket. Grozev admitted that the information in the “investigation” was “gray”, and Bellingcat is allegedly so transparent that it does not pay for such “leaks”. Here is a snippet of the video from the right minute.

[An Anglo-American Imperialist Disinformation Machine]

Grozev stammered and even clutched his head when he said that the Bellingcat grant-givers are state structures. He immediately corrected himself, saying that the money in the organisation is allegedly coming from some private companies. But we now know where the money came from.

But that’s not all. We managed to find documents confirming that the British MI6 and the London Institute for Statecraft are also involved in financing Bellingcat employees. We are talking about an organisation called Integrity Initiative.

Integrity Initiative is the largest anti-Russian information and lobbying company in history, with central Anglo-Saxon support and a huge aggregate budget. Among other things, its activities are aimed at interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. The members of the organisation are politicians, scientists, officials, teachers, military personnel, activists, bloggers and journalists. Such, for example, as Grozev, Dobrokhotov and Navalny.

In 2018, Anonymous hackers broke into the servers of this organisation and posted some of the internal documents. Among them are a list of the organisation’s members by cluster in different countries, a list of operations, fees, requests for seminars, a manual on how to correctly lie about “Russian propaganda”, how to interpret the “Skripal case” and the MH-17 disaster. At the end of 2018, Tsargrad, as part of a special project, considered the activities of this British network of agents of influence in Europe. Now the documents of the Integrity Initiative can be found on the website fdik.org.

The documents also found something that indicates the connection of Bellingcat with Integrity Initiative. Namely, requests for payment of royalties to Christo Grozev’s closest assistant, Bellingcat author Dan Kaszeta, for his articles on toxic warfare agents and “nerve agents” (first document, second and third). It was Kaszeta who authored the investigation into the use of sarin in Syria.

Kaszeta is also the author of the Bellingcat investigation into the poisoning of Bulgarian businessman Emelyan Gebrev. In it, the journalist establishes the connection of this incident with the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury. Finally, in the documents of the Integrity Initiative, there is a summary description of a number of members of the organisation, which says about Kaszeta:

“Director of Strongpoint Security, a UK-based security and defence consultancy. Subject matter expert in chemical, biological, and radiological/nuclear (CBRN) defence, as well as traditional physical and operational security issues. US-UK dual national, of partial Lithuanian descent. Served as a Chemical Corps officer in the US Army, CBRN and Disaster Preparedness Advisor at the White House Military Office, and as a specialist in the US Secret Service before relocating to the UK in 2008. Published author in his field. Considerable experience and connections in Baltic States. Russian linguist (moderate spoken and written).”

Is this an independent whistleblower? And this friend of Christo Grozev is not connected with American intelligence and does not receive money from it? And what, are his “investigations”about chemical attacks in Syria or the “Skripal case” reliable? It is likely that those like Kaszeta, on request, simply legalise the position of Washington and London in the information field in order to strengthen western propaganda. And they make good money from it.

Thus, The Following Facts Are Obvious To Us:

            • Christo Grozev works in close connection with Roman Dobrokhotov and The Insider, they have common funding and perform dirty information work in accordance with the desire of their clients.

        The Main Character Enters The Stage

        And what about Aleksey Navalny? He also participates in this, because Grozev is his great friend. In December, Navalny published a video in which he, sitting next to Grozev, pretended to be an assistant to Nikolay Patrushev and called allegedly an employee of the FSB Institute of Criminology Konstantin Kudryavtsev. But we have every reason to consider this video a theatrical production.

        It is already known that the stated time of this call does not coincide with the real one. Recall, as was stated by Navalny himself, his “prank” occurred at 7 a.m. Moscow time (5 a.m. local time), but the footage with Christo Grozev’s emotional reaction to what Navalny’s interlocutor said shows a different time on the wall clock – 4.15 or 16.15. The frame also includes the window through which Grozev looks. Outside the window – twilight.

        In the city of Ibach, where Navalny and Grozev were then located, sunset was at 16.35, and dawn and dusk were at 7.35. This suggests that the recording was conducted in the late afternoon, and not early in the morning, as Navalny said.

        They are also trying to convince us that a certain Mr. Ustinov, unknown to anyone, who Navalny introduced himself to, will be able to talk to an FSB officer just like that, by calling on a regular phone. And this employee will tell everything to a person he hears for the first time? This is absurd. Finally, the direct (and naive) question of the interlocutor at the end of the conversation is also alarming – is there anything wrong with the fact that the conversation was held on a regular phone.

        However, the analysis of the staged nature of the call hides the main thing from us. This is the first time we really see Grozev and Navalny together. We have received irrefutable visual evidence of their joint work. Here is how the head of the International Eurasian Movement, Aleksandr Dugin, reacted to this in an interview with us:

        “When Navalny showed up with Grozev, no other evidence of his ties to the CIA and receiving money from Soros is no longer needed. Christo Grozev is worse than the CIA, worse than MI6. He represents the spearhead of the world government.”

        What Does This Mean?

        The scope of a single investigation does not allow us to consider all the episodes of Christo Grozev’s biography and reveal all his connections with western intelligence agencies. Rather, it is a job for the investigation. However, even from the analysis of open and accessible sources, it is clear in what a tight knot the entire “sect” of anti-Russian propagandists has intertwined.

        It is Grozev, a man who has received USAID and Soros money since his student days, who is now reaching out to Navalny. There is no point in proving this, because they filmed themselves next to each other. Of course, Roman Dobrokhotov and The Insider not only published investigations into the “poisoning” of Navalny, but also continue to disperse their information attack. And we know their sources of funding very well. As well as the likely clients of these “investigations”.

        However, most importantly, through The Insider, which worked together with the traitor of the Motherland Sergey Mikhailov, Dobrokhotov is connected with Bellingcat and Christo Grozev. And he, as we now clearly see, is with Navalny. It is here that the connection between the leader of the non-systemic protest in Russia and the FSB officers who stained their uniforms is revealed. They couldn’t help but support or even guide the likes of him. As is said, draw your own conclusions.

        Egor Kucher


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U.$. Pushing For Regíme Change In Nícaragua w/ Kevin Zeese

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Published on Jul 19, 2018


Lee Camp speaks with Kevin Zeese about the situation unfolding in Nicaragua. Then, he explains the recent court ruling that airport security can sexually assault you.

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Ukraine – The Babchenko Hoax Was Part Of A Corporate Raid

DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA, BY “B”

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Dateline: June 01, 2018

The case of the death and resurrection of the Russian journalist A. Babchenko in Kiev is even more surreal than it seemed so far. According to Ukrainian sources and court documents the whole hoax was part of an attempt to raid and take over a private company. High levels of the Ukrainian security services staged the whole affair not only to blame Russia but also for someone's personal gain.

In 2017 Arkady Babchenko, despised in Russia for his open hostility against its people, came via Israel to the Ukraine. He was welcome in Kiev for his anti-Russian position. Babchenko found a job with ATR, a Crimean Tatar TV station. The fine-print on the ATR website says that it "was supported by the Media Development Fund of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine".

On May 29 the Ukrainian government claimed that Babchenko had been assassinated. As usual the death of a journalist hostile to Russia was used by NATO aligned media to blame Russia, the Kremlin and Putin. That there was zero evidence that Russia was involved did not matter at all.  A photo of the allegedly killed Babchenko laying in his blood emerged.


 

Crisis actor Arkady Babchenko at work


The very next day the General Prosecutor of the Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko and the head of the National Security Service (SBU) Vasyl Grytsak (also written as Hrytsak) held a press conference and presented a very alive and happy Arkady Babchenko. He had not been shot at all. The whole hoax, it was explained, was launched to find the people behind an alleged assassination campaign originating in Russia. In this official version the Russians hired some Ukrainian "operator" who then hired the "killer" to assassinate Babchenko. The hired killer told the police about it and the hoax of Babchenko's death was staged to find the culprits behind the plot.

All those western "journalists" who had believed Ukrainian government claims without any evidence and wrote unfounded accusations  against Russia were not amused. The Ukrainian government exposed them as the mere propaganda tools and fools they are. The "journalist"  Babchenko himself, interviewed by Bloomberg's Leonid Bershidsky, comes off as a naive and rather dim light.

Yesterday the "hired killer", one Alexey Tsymbalyuk, went public. He is a Ukrainian nationalist who had fought against the the Russia supported entities in eastern Ukraine. He has since become an orthodox priest.


via Alec Luhn Would an operator for Russia hire an Ukrainian nationalist and priest who had fought Russian aligned entities in east-Ukraine to kill a well known anti-Russian figure? Hmmm.

The SBU did not confirm that Alexey Tsymbalyuk is the "killer" but Ukrainian media seem to believe him.

The General Prosecutor of the Ukraine named one Boris German (also written Herman) as the Russian paid "operator" who had hired Alexey Tsymbalyuk to kill Arkady Babchenko.

Boris German denies that he worked for Russia.

According to Strana.ua (Russian, machine translation), Jewgenij Solodko, the attorney of the accused "operator" Boris German, rejects the accusations against his client. Boris German (the man) is co-owner of a Ukrainian joint venture with the German (the country) company Schmeisser (also written Schmyser or Shmyser) which produces optics for sniper rifles. German's company had good relation with his customers at the Ukrainian defense ministry. He had also supported the "anti-terror-operations" of Ukrainian nazi formations against the "Russians" in the east.

The attorney says that over the last six month German's apartment and company had been searched by the SBU several times. The SBU, he alleges, shook German down for some $70,000. The SBU, he writes, had not presented any evidence of any Russian involvement. The attorney denies, according to the Strava.ua report, that his client had any connection with Russians.

Meduza's report on German's court appearance presents a slightly different version:

The man charged with trying to organize the murder of the Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko announced in court on Thursday that he was acting as a Ukrainian counterintelligence agent.German says he started cooperating with Ukrainian counterintelligence after he was approached by an “old acquaintance” living in Moscow who “works at a Putin foundation, organizing unrest in Ukraine.” German says he was told to learn more about the flow of Russian money into Ukraine funding certain politicians and “terrorist groups.”

According to reports in the Ukrainian media, German said his acquaintance in Russia is named either Vyacheslav Pivovarkin or Vyacheslav Pivovarnik. It’s still unclear if German accuses this person of ordering Babchenko’s murder.


It is curious that the attorney makes claims which are partly contradicting those made by his client.

The killing, the killer and the operator who hired the killer were all fakes. Arkady Babchenko, Alexey Tsymbalyuk and Boris German all worked with the Ukrainian security service. All seem to have anti-Russian credentials.

But wait, the mess gets even deeper.

In our piece yesterday we laid out how the Ukrainian plot and other recent incidents were arranged to discredit Russia just in time for the start of the soccer World cup in Russia. It turns out that this was only one aspect of the hapless plot.

Bloomberg writer Leonid Bershidsky points to a piece by one Volodymyr Boiko, a "parachuting instructor in Kiev", who describes (in Ukrainian) an even darker level of the story.

Boiko quotes from official Ukrainian court reports giving their case numbers and dates. He starts (machine translated):

Just do not laugh. The imitation of the "murder" of Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko, which caused such anger in international diplomatic and human rights circles, was a way to resolve the corporate dispute between the founders of the Ukrainian-German joint venture "Schmayser", whose head Boris Herman, SBU head Grytsak and the Prosecutor General Lutsenko was declared the customer of murder and terrorist, acting on the tasks of Russian special services.


The court papers show that the whole affair started in February 2016 and was about an attempt to take over a company. Since 2016 German, the executive director of the company, was fighting off creditors including the founder of the company. These creditors alleged that German, or the company he led, had not paid back some loans and demanded to take over the company to cover their losses. German argued that the loan had been repaid and produced receipts. The creditors said that they were counterfeit. Several cases and many motions were filed and the whole court case ran for nearly two years. German seems to have won it.

Such attempt to take over a company via fraudulent court claims have been a distinct feature of the "wild east" after the Soviet Union broke apart. In Russia, in the Ukraine and elsewhere fraudulent legal cases, physical raids, intimidation and murder were regular means to grab industrial assets. As such the German case is nothing remarkable. But its further development into an absurd hoax makes it special.

As their attempt to raid German's company through a court campaign over minor loans failed, the raiders, with SBU chief Grytsak seemingly behind them, thought out a different way to go after German. Hence the Babchenko hoax and the "operator" allegations.

Volodymyr Boiko continues (machine translated):

But "getting" Herman through the police his opponents could not, because judges consistently refused to choose a precautionary measure due to the insignificance of the crime. And then the order was taken by the Department of Counterintelligence of the SBU. Apparently, it is a primitive provocation directed at the arrest of the head of the joint venture "Schmyser" in order to take away the share of the authorized capital of the enterprise, which he, according to the opponents, owns unlawfully.

The story Boiko tells is consistent with the claims German's attorney made about long ongoing SBU raids of German's apartment and company. The court paper Boiko cites seem valid. It likely is a real part of the Babchenko story, but it still may not be the whole truth.

The staged murder, with a fake cadaver, a fake killer and a fake operator behind it, was endorsed (video) at the highest levels of the Ukrainian government.

"Western" media used the hoax to accuse and defame Russia and its president Putin without the slightest supporting evidence. That alone is already a serious mess and reveals the utter failure of "western" journalism and media.

The background of the case, a takeover of a company by illegal means, demonstrates the total social failure of the "western" coup in Ukraine. The worst of the worst, robber barons like Poroschenko and criminal bankers like Kolomoisky went on to steal billions of "western" aid while the Ukrainian state fell apart. Defying the courts, the power of the state is secretly abused for slapstick worthy plots to grab up industrial assets.

The victims are the people of Ukraine who were robbed of their means and their security. Russia, the permanent boogeyman of the "west", is least to blame for it.

Posted by b on June 1, 2018 at 12:33 PM | Permalink

SELECT COMMENTS


Well done b, how the fok did you see that angle?
Nevertheless, the whole story defies imagination, I mean the scrips are wilder than a 3rd rate Hollywood flick, but maybe the Ukrainian Idiot unservices watch.
Ukraine has debased itself (Further) with this, the already known connections to the vile scumbag at Bellincat, Elliot Higgins, made people wary. Now they are not wary, but fully aware of the lies.
If we keep on being bombarded like this, eventually I will doubt who I am.

Posted by: Den Lille Abe | Jun 1, 2018 12:48:46 PM | 1

funny how the US/UK-established vassal puppet regime in ukraine closely resembles the ones in africa and south america. i guess you can export sociopathic ayn rand thinking anywhere and have it turn out roughly the same.

good work. it's always fun to be reminded what actual journalism looks like.

Posted by: the pair | Jun 1, 2018 1:46:23 PM | 2

thanks b... that is pretty impressive how insane and whacked out all of these ukrainian nationals are, not to mention how they have succeeded in providing another example of how the msm at present is a real joke... i am sure the reporters are not impressed though.. the fact this story is as convoluted as it is tells me how messed up ukraine and the west are at this point.. all there attempts to smear and frame russia are looking very unstable at this point.. add this to the pile of bs that includes the white helmets, syrian defense, moderate headchoppers, and etc. etc.. i think the point is already passed where ordinary people don't trust the media as they might have in the past.. this story helps in that regard..

Posted by: james | Jun 1, 2018 1:49:35 PM | 3

I don't believe a word of it, this is Banderastan Orthodox Easter.

Posted by: jsn | Jun 1, 2018 2:00:43 PM | 4

It is also possible that the Russian intelligence have cynically organized the fake murder affair with the aim of ridiculing and discrediting the western media and the western intelligence and their impatient leaders.
It could be Russia's revenge on the Skripal affair.

Posted by: Virgile | Jun 1, 2018 2:20:44 PM | 5

The EU should get serious about admitting Ukraine to the club. It would mean much less paperwork for lonely European bachelors and there would be an immediate boom in the camouflage clothing and partially used military equipment business.

If only Poland could be a bit more reasonable about Galicia.

Posted by: dh | Jun 1, 2018 2:21:27 PM | 6

Am a bit confused. Was it Boris Herman the German who headed the joint venture who is referred to as 'German' in the following text? His fellow victims being SBU head Grytsak and the Prosecutor General Lutsenko? The bad guys being unnamed creditors..?

Posted by: mbur | Jun 1, 2018 2:49:37 PM | 7

Some insignificant imperfections:
line 5: ... As usual the death of a journalist hostile to Russia ...
line 27: ... the German (the country) company Schmeisser ...
line 45: ... was only one aspect ...Other than that, another fine piece of investigative reporting!

Posted by: xor | Jun 1, 2018 2:51:43 PM | 8


About the Author
"b", whom some think is a German citizen named "Bernhard" is Moon of Alabama's founding editor. 

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