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

Anti-social media Facebook’s intention to rank what it considers “trustworthiness” of news sources is the organization’s latest censorship scheme. It’s an unstated aim to censor truth-telling on vital issues, wanting content diverging from the official narrative restricted or blocked.

I’ve experienced the effects firsthand. Articles posted on my FB page were deleted. In 2016, I was banished from FB altogether for weeks – for refusing voluntarily to remove content it considered objectionable. I wrote about what happened at the time, accusing FB and other anti-social media of conspiring with dark forces in Washington to censor content diverging from the official narrative – flagrantly violating First Amendment rights.

What happened before can happen again – maybe permanent banishment for truth-telling journalism, what US dark forces want established, aiming to have fake news drown out what’s vital for everyone to know. Google transformed itself from a search engine to gatekeeper. Facebook increasingly operates the same way, its news feed ranking system the latest example. It wants untrustworthy establishment news sources promoted over reliable alternative ones. It intends conducting so-called user surveys to determine undefined “trustworthy” sources, rankings to follow.

Facebook is increasing its gatekeeper/thought control activities, using so-called “fact-checkers,” perhaps intending to eliminate independent content falsely designated “fake news.” I and others like me could be banished altogether. Some of my articles and FB friends were deleted, much more of the same likely coming.

Censoring content diverging from mainstream views constitutes a slippery slope toward undermining First Amendment rights altogether, a step toward greater totalitarian rule than already. Facebook considers what it calls “false narratives (content diverging from establishment views) intentionally divisive headlines and language that exploit disagreements and sow conflict” – a vague standard only censors could love, giving themselves latitude to do what they please extrajudicially.

Ranking information sources isn’t what media and speech freedom are all about. Censoring content is how tyrannical regimes operate. Facebook is an establishment organization serving privileged interests, increasingly hostile to what free societies cherish most.

While the last act of the 'Novichok' drama, the seasonally appropriate resurrection of the Skripals, proceeds, some additional details of the history of 'Novichok' nerve agents come to light.

Details on 'Novichok' nerve agents were published in a 2007 book by Vil Mirzayanaov, a Soviet scientist offered asylum in the United States.

After the publication the U.S. and the UK actively suppressed international discussions about the book and the 'Novichok' chemical weapon agents. Documents from the U.S. State Department published by Wikileaks show that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directed her diplomats to not talk about Novichok and to play down the matter should it arise in chemical weapon control talks.

The so called 'Novichok' group of nerve agents were developed in the 1970s and 80s by Pyotr Kirpichev and Vladimir Uglev under a Soviet program codenamed 'Foilant'.

Later on the development group handed the project off to Professor Leonid Rink for further developments of the substances into binary agents which would make them usable as military weapons. But the Soviet Union broke down and stopped paying its scientists. Rink secretly produced a small dosage of one of the Novichok agents and sold it to a Latvian mafia contact. In 1995 the poison was used to kill a Russian mobster kingpin/banker and his secretary in Moscow. Rink produced several more doses and sold them. Their whereabouts are unknown but such substances are supposedly unstable and they will likely have lost their effect.

Another scientist at those laboratories, the chemical analyst Vil Mirzayanov was tasked with detecting environmental and security leaks from the laboratories. He knew of the 'Foliant' program and the developed 'Novichok' agents. In the early 1990s he blew the whistle about them, was harassed by the state and in 1996 was allowed to go to the United States. There he spilled his beans (pdf) and told the U.S. whatever he knew.

In 1997 the Russian Federation and other states of the former Soviet Union joined the Chemical Weapons Convention and destroyed their chemical weapon stocks and production facilities. One production and test facility for the 'Novichok' agents was in Nukus, Uzbekistan. In 1999 the U.S. helped to dismantle that facility. It surely acquired additional knowledge about everything that was produced there.

In 2008 Mirzayanov published a book about his story and the chemical agents developed under the 'Foilant' program. The book included the chemical formulas of the agents.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]oday Mirzayanov lives in a million dollar home in Princeton, New Jersey.The book created new interest in the international community of chemical weapon scientists. People involved with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were highly interested in this. Was there really a new '4th generation' of chemical weapons that could be easily made from freely available industrial precursors? Naturally the U.S. diplomats involved in the arms control efforts and in the OPCW were asked about this.

U.S. State Department documents published by Wikileaks provide that the U.S. and the UK tried to suppress any discussion of the book. (A big thank you to Stephen McIntyre of Climate Audit who found these cables.)

From these U.S. State Department cables we learn of several meetings in March and April 2009, shortly after Mirzayanov's 'Novichok' book came out, where the issue was discussed. U.S. diplomats at The Hague asked the CIA, the National Security Council and the State Department how to react to questions about Mirzayanov's book:

CWC: INQUIRIES IN THE HAGUE ABOUT MIRZAYANOV "STATE SECRETS" BOOK

2. (S) On March 25, in a private conversation, Canadian delegate asked U.S. and UK Delreps whether they had heard of the Mirzayanov book "State Secrets: An Insider's View of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program." Canadian Rep added that Mirzayanov now appeared on YouTube. UK Rep acknowledged she had heard of it, but said this was the first time she had heard of "novichoks" and thought the entire discussion was best left to experts in capital. U.S. Delrep indicated a lack of familiarity with the subject matter and indicated no interest in pursuing the discussion further.3. (S) On March 4, Delrep met with U.S. Rep to the OPCW Data Validation Group. In addition to a routine report on the activities of the Validation Group the week of March 2, U.S. Rep informed Delrep that representatives of several countries (Finland, Netherlands, UK) had begun discussing the Mirzayanov book on the margins of the meeting. All participants in the discussion seemed to be simply gauging the level of awareness; these same individuals also expressed some doubt as to the credibility/accuracy of the information in the book. U.S. Rep to the Validation Group confirmed that no other members of the group took part in or were listening to this conversation.

4. (S) Del Note: U.S. Del understands from OSD that the UK Ministry of Defense has spoken to its counterparts in the Netherlands and Finland, apprised them of the conversation, and asked each country to provide guidance to its del members not/not to raise this issue in the future. End Note.

(The (S) denote these paragraphs as "Secret".)

On March 2 delegates from Finland, the Netherlands and the UK discussed the book. Afterwards the UK Ministry of Defense asked the other governments to "shut the f*** up" about it. In a March 25 meeting a Canadian delegate came up with questions about the book. The U.S. and the UK delegate played dumb. The U.S. delegate then asks how to handle the issue in future meetings:

5. (S) Action Request: As the implications of this book for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) are likely to come up at future OPCW meetings (particularly technical meetings like the upcoming Scientific Advisory Board meeting 30 March - 1 April 2009), Del requests guidance as to how this issue is to be handled if raised by others. U.S. members of OPCW technical advisory bodies do not necessarily have contact with the U.S. delegation during their time in The Hague; guidance will need to be provided directly to these individuals.

The requested guidance came in a message from the State Department on April 3:

AUSTRALIA GROUP: GUIDANCE FOR INFORMAL INTERSESSIONAL MEETING IN LONDON, APRIL 6-7, 2009

(The Australia Group is an informal U.S. led group of 'western' countries which harmonizes export controls of materials related to weapons of mass destruction.)

1. (U) This message provides guidance for the U.S. delegation to the Australia Group's informal intersessional meeting in London on April 6-7, 2009.

The guidance lists five "objectives" for the meeting. The fifth one is:

-- Avoid any substantive discussion of the Mirazayanov book "State Secrets: An Insider's View of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program" or so-called 'Fourth Generation Agents.'

Further down it details:

7. (C) If AG participants raise the issue of Vils Mirazayonov's book "State Secrets: An Insider's View of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program," the Del should:-- Report any instances in which the book is raised.

-- Not/not start or provoke conversations about the book or engage substantively if it comes up in conversation.

-- Express a lack of familiarity with the issue.

-- Quietly discourage substantive discussions by suggesting that the issue is 'best left to experts in capitals.'

CLINTON

The follow-up U.S. delegation report after the meeting of the Australia Group does not mention 'Novichok' or the book. The issue was kept off the table.

The above is not the only involvement of "CLINTON" in the 'Novichok' and Skripal affair. The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign paid the British company Orbis to create the 'dirty dossier' about Trump and his alleged connections to Russia. Christopher Steele, a former(?) MI6 agent, and his former(?) MI6 colleague Pablo Miller wrote the dossier, claiming that its information came from Russian sources. Pablo Miller was the MI6 agent who had recruited Sergej Skripal as a spy for the UK. Miller lives in Salisbury where Sergej Skripal lives and where he and his daughter were allegedly attacked with a 'Novichok' nerve agent. Miller was a friend of Sergej Skripal and regularly met him. It is quite possible that some of the shoddy rumors in the Steele dossier were sourced from Skripal or from his daughter Yulia. The incident in Salisbury could well be related to the dossier or other dubiously alleged campaign issues.

It is intriguing that the U.S. and the UK tried to downplay any discussion of 'Novichoks' and the book. Why did they do so?

Until 2016 the OPCW's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) as well as scientists at the UK weapon laboratory in Porton Down sowed doubts about the very existence of 'Novichoks'. We fell for this when we asked if 'Novichocks' exist at all. Until late 2016 the OPCW did not list the substances and their precursors. This was no oversight but intent.  Active U.S. suppression efforts against any mentioning of 'Novichoks' in the OPCW already occurred in 2006:

7. (C) Drawing on the points provided in reftel, del rep met with delegates from the UK (Mark Matthews), Switzerland (Ruth flint), Austria (Hans Schramml) and Czech Republic (Jitka Brodska) to discuss the recent ill-considered comments made by Scientific Advisory Board Chairman Matousek to the Western Group. All of the delegates appreciated the clarification that the U.S. did not develop or weaponize NGA, including "Novichoks." They also agreed with the U.S. that it is a bad idea to have a discussion on whether to add NGAs to the CWC Schedules of Chemicals. Finally, they all also stated that they had not heard of any interest by any delegation in pursuing such an effort, and the issue has not/not resurfaced in WEOG.

Jiri Matousek, a Czech scientist leading the SAB, was told to shut up. A U.S. diplomat contacted the Czech government and later reported his success. The headline of his cable is telling: MTAG: CZECHS MUZZLE ADVISORY BOARD CHAIRMAN ON NEXT GENERATION AGENTS.

It is clear now that the professed ignorance of the OPCW about 'Novichocks' was a consequences of U.S. and British pressure to discourage any discussion of the issue.

In 2016 a group of Iranian scientists synthesized five 'Novichok' substances. It devised ways to detect them. The results were published and added to the OPCW database.

The British government insinuates that Russia is the only country that could make 'Novichok' agents and must therefore have attacked the Skripals. This is obviously nonsense. The U.S. and the UK were deeply involved in the 'Novichok' issue. They certainly tried and succeeded to re-create these substances. After the formulas of the nerve agents were published by Mirzayanov the U.S. and the UK suppressed discussion of the issue. The OPCW professed to know nothing about them. Only after Iranian scientists independently re-created the agents and published about them were they added to the OPCW database.

Three questions come to mind which the U.S. and British government should be pressed to answer:

• Why did the Clinton State Department and the British government suppress international talks about the 'Novichok' agents?
• Why did they try, successfully it seems, to keep the issue out of the OPCW's Scientific Advisory Board?
• Why were the substances kept out of the OPCW database until independent Iranian scientists finally re-created them?

---Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the Skripal case:

• March 8 - Poisioned British-Russian Double-Agent Has Links To Clinton Campaign
• March 12 - Theresa May's "45 Minutes" Moment
• March 14 - Are 'Novichok' Poisons Real? - May's Claims Fall Apart
• March 16 - The British Government's 'Novichok' Drama Was Written By Whom?
• March 18 - NHS Doctor: "No Patients Have Experienced Symptoms Of Nerve Agent Poisoning In Salisbury"
• March 21 - Russian Scientists Explain 'Novichok' - High Time For Britain To Come Clean (Updated)
• March 29 - Last Act Of 'Novichok' Drama Revealed - "The Skripals' Resurrection"

---Sidenote:

There is another Wikileaks document that mentions Vil Mirzanayov. It includes (point 20) the translation of a December 2009 report by the Russian daily paper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, owned by the Berezovsky Media Group, about U.S. attempts to split the tiny Republic of Tatarstan from the Russian Federation. With less than four million inhabitants Tatarstan in the Volga region is a rather irrelevant sub-state of Russia. But even president Obama was involved in the scheme and in October 2009 U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the Tatar capital Kazan. Vil Mirazayanov played a prominent role in the rather stupid game:

As though in confirmation, the so called "government of Tatarstan in exile" was formed in the United States in December 2008. It is headed by US citizen Vil Mirzayanov, a Russian scientist granted political asylum in the United States. Along with Mirzayanov himself, the alleged government includes two Germans and a Turk. This self-proclaimed government already appealed to the UN to recognize independence of Tatarstan in the manner sovereignty of Kosovo, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia had been.

Vil Mirzayanaov signed the bombastic Declaration of Independence of Tatarstan. But as far as I can tell nothing significant came out of the 'Independent Tatarstan' project. In 2014 the U.S. and Turkey used groups of jihadist Tatars they had trained in their unsuccessful attempts to gain control of Crimea. These issues could be related.

Posted by b on March 31, 2018 at 07:19 AM | Permalink