Empire’s relentless and murderous persecution of journalists who reveal the truth
Journalists who care about doing their job and informing the public are very rare in the West, but fortunately there are still some, even if everything is done to prevent them from delivering information contrary to the dominant doxa. The most obvious example is Julian Assange, who is locked up in the British high-security prison of Belmarsh as a terrorist, and who faces a 175-year prison sentence if extradited to the United States – even though he is an Australian national – just for doing his job as a journalist. Those who dare to speak out against Western propaganda are ostracized, accused of conspiracy and disinformation, threatened, banned from the media, fired, taken to court, even imprisoned, their bank accounts frozen and their assets seized, as in the case of British journalist Graham Phillips for his coverage of the war in Donbass. Or the Frenchwoman Anne-Laure Bonnel, who lost her teaching position at the University of Paris 1 because her report entitled Donbass shows the fate of Russian-speaking inhabitants of eastern Ukraine bombed by the Kiev army since 2014. Her work earned her the reputation of being “pro-Putin” and subject to numerous threats and insults. Let’s also mention the German Alina Lipp, who also went to cover the reality of the Donbass and is threatened with three years in prison if she sets foot in Germany again. The fact that she put a Z – a letter now banned in Germany – on her Telegram account is considered a crime. In retaliation, her bank account as well as her father’s has been frozen. There is also the Spanish freelance reporter Pablo Gonzalez who has been in prison in Poland since February 27, 2022 because he wanted to cover the war in Ukraine. And the list is not exhaustive.
You speak, you die. You don’t speak… you live
Some journalists even lose their lives when they get too close to certain truths. They are then victims of acts of barbarism disguised as accidents such as, for example, an unfortunate fall from the fifth floor, like the one that killed Didier Contant in February 2004, who was investigating the death of the monks of Tibhirine and who felt spied upon and watched because he was about to publish a version that did not please the champions of the «qui-tue-qui» (we don’t know who kills who), the anti-Algerian doctrine dear to Jean-Baptiste Rivoire and his clique of “human rights”franchouillard. Anthropologist Rina Sherman, Didier Contant’s companion, has written a book entitled Le Huitième Mort de Tibhirine (The Eighth Death of Tibhirine) in which she recounts the hell that the journalist lived through before his death, victim of a slanderous campaign and deprived of means of subsistence by the relentless censorship he suffered.
Others are riddled with bullets like the young Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée who were shot dead in their home in February 2018 while the journalist was investigating the Slovak government’s links to the Calabrian mafia. Let’s also mention Italian photojournalist Andrea Rochelli who was targeted by Ukrainian forces in the Donbass in May 2014. And, closer to home, the car bombing last August near Moscow of Russian journalist Daria Dugina, who died before the eyes of her father Alexander Dugin.
And we will not mention all those who are listed on the Ukrainian website Myrotvorets which posts online personal data such as addresses and passport numbers of many journalists and other Ukrainian or foreign persons declared as “pro-Russian”, or “traitors to the fatherland”, and therefore “enemies of Ukraine”, among which are more than 300 minors. This platform is nothing but a list of people to be killed, a call to murder issued by Kiev and when one of these people is killed, his picture is crossed out with “liquidated” written in red.
It is a well-known method of fascists to draw up lists of people to be eliminated, and we have experienced this in Algeria during the black decade. Among the people listed on this site, in addition to journalists, we find some French politicians, from all parties, such as Ségolène Royal, François Asselineau, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Marine Le Pen, and others who, with one or two exceptions, have never questioned France’s Atlanticist policy. There are also artists like Samy Naceri, Gerard Depardieu or Emir Kusturica. Such are the “values” of the West shared by the “democratic” Ukraine. And the Western self-righteousness continues, in spite of everything, to bombard us with the “freedom of expression” propaganda.
McCarthyism 2.0
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Seymour Hersh, a legend of journalism.
I personally worked for an American site called American Herald Tribune, which featured the publications of the cream of anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist activists, most of them Americans, who were not afraid to express what they thought of American policy. The FBI proved to us that it had not buried the practices of J. Edgar Hoover since the site was closed down, its publications being judged too critical of American foreign policy. Just like in the good old days of McCarthyism. The director of the site, Anthony J. Hall, was fired from the university where he taught under the pretext of “anti-Semitism”. Shortly before the site was closed, I was contacted by a “journalist” from CNN, Donie O’Sullivan, who wanted to know how much the newspaper paid me to publish my articles. I told him that I was working for free and that I didn’t get a cent, which was true. This guy sounded to me like an agent rather than a journalist and his profile in CNN indicates that he is paid to track and identify online disinformation campaigns. He also wrote a false article stating that AH Tribune was paying those who wrote for the site, which led to its closure.
This testimony is a typical example of the “values” of democracy, freedom of expression and other bullshit with which the West is continually assaulting us. We can also mention the more recent case of the channel RT France which was censored since the first sanctions package enacted by Von der Leyen, and which ended with the freezing of the channel’s bank accounts and 123 unemployed employees. It takes a lot of courage to dare to challenge the established order by reporting the real facts.
Seymour Hersh is a world-renowned American investigative journalist, a true legend of journalism who has always “carried the pen in his wound”, as Albert Londres said. He has written for major newspapers such as The New Yorker and The New York Times. He was the one who revealed the My Lai massacre by American troops during the Vietnam War, which earned him the Pulitzer Prize in 1970, and decades later he published an investigation into the practice of torture in Abu Ghraib for which he received the prestigious Polk Prize. He refuted Barak Obama’s accusation that Bashar Al-Assad had launched a chemical attack against his own people. He investigated the CIA’s hostile actions on American soil against peace movements and other opponents under the guise of counter-intelligence, which cost the CIA’s counter-intelligence chief his job. He revealed the existence of the OSP, Office of Special Plans, an intelligence unit of the US Department of Defense set up by Ronald Rumsfeld in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. He revealed that Hillary Clinton was financed by the Israeli lobby. He also claimed that the U.S. government lied about the raid that eliminated Osama bin Laden and that his body was not thrown into the sea. His investigative work and his publications exposing the turpitude of the empire earned him, of course, a lot of enmity from those whose actions he was exposing. And today, at the age of 85, Seymour Hersh proves once again that he is one of the greatest journalists by publishing on his personal blog an investigation on the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, on September 26 last year, in the Baltic Sea. (How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline)
Invasion of Ukraine versus destruction of Nord Stream
It turns out that the investigation conducted by Seymour Hersh, the result of the testimony of a “deep throat” from the American intelligence services, in the manner of the Watergate scandal of 1974 – on which, by the way, Hersh investigated for the New York Times and in particular the involvement of Henry Kissinger – points directly to Joe Biden and the Straussians. The investigation reveals, in fact, that the operation was ordered by Joe Biden and planned by the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, the Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, and the National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, the same neo-conservative poisons, therefore, that have infested the American administration for years and whose hegemonic ideology risks plunging the world into apocalypse at any moment.
The preparation of this attack began in December 2021, that is to say three months before the Russian special operation in Ukraine, involving various people from different intelligence agencies, including William Burns, the boss of the CIA, who were meeting in the greatest secrecy to work out the plan to destroy the gas pipelines. Throughout the development of this attack, the question was not whether to carry out the mission, but how to carry it out without anyone being able to determine who was responsible.
Hersh’s publication is a real bombshell that describes in great detail the secret meetings that took place over nine months and that allowed for the implementation of the planning, selection of the divers, who were not to be part of the military to avoid the operation being reported to Congress and to the Gang of Eight (a group of eight leaders within the United States Congress who are informed on classified intelligence matters by the executive branch), the organization of the timing ; in short, the entire course of what is nothing less than an act of war by the United States against allied Europe, involving, moreover, one of NATO’s members, namely Norway, which has shown itself particularly enthusiastic about participating in this mission.
It was in June 2022, during the military training exercise Baltops, that divers placed explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, explosives that were then remotely detonated on September 26. All Europeans should spare a thought for Victoria Nuland as they recall her famous “Fuck Europe!” she uttered in 2014 during a phone call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine about who the U.S. would put in power following the coup it had planned and funded.
It took two days before the mainstream media, stunned and confused by this “explosive” news, decided to talk about it. Above all, before reacting, they impatiently awaited a reaction from the White House, which, of course, categorically denied the information, followed by the CIA, which declared, hand on heart, that the whole story was totally false.
The Norwegian Foreign Minister also denied any involvement of his country in the sabotage.
It is interesting to note that since this publication, the people involved in this attack, Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland and Burns, have kept a low profile and avoided appearing before the press. Everyone also seems to have forgotten the White House press conference of February 7, 2022, during the visit of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, during which Joseph Robinette Biden said that if Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States would stop Nord Stream. A journalist asked him how they would do it, and Biden replied that they had the means to do it. All this, it should be noted, in the presence of Olaf Scholz, who has been a stooge for Washington and should give the German people pause.
In any case, following these revelations, the Western media, the watchdogs of imperialist propaganda, all repeated the same phrases like parrots, namely that “the articles of this famous reporter have been controversial for some years, and that one cannot give credence to an investigation based on a single source”. Hersh has even become a conspiracy theorist, with the reliability of his sources and his professionalism being questioned by some TV hacks who claim to be “journalists”.
This monument to investigative journalism is treated as a mere doddering old man. However, a whistleblower who was present at the Baltops military exercises in the Baltic Sea confirmed the presence of the “special” divers and reported on the jobs they did.
“Thank you, USA.”
Most of us remember the day when the Nord Stream pipeline bringing Russian gas to Europe via Germany exploded. The images of the gas gushing into the Baltic Sea were seen around the world. This act of sabotage can be seen as a casus belli against the whole of Europe but, above all, against Germany, which was totally dependent on Russian gas and which sees its entire economy threatened. Germany, which was considered as the locomotive of Europe, is witnessing the collapse of its industry because it cannot remain competitive when it has to run its factories with energy whose prices are soaring.
Immediately, the Western media accused Russia of destroying its own gas pipeline, as if the Russian government was crazy enough to pulverize a multi-billion dollar investment at the bottom of the sea, not to mention the thousands of wasted cubic meters bubbling away in the waters. But one reaction on Twitter caught the interest of some Internet users, that of former Polish foreign minister and MEP Radoslaw Sikorski, who posted a message the day after the explosion saying, “Thank you, USA,” accompanied by an aerial image of the blast site. And some of us also wondered about the cryptic text message that Liz Truss, then British Prime Minister, sent to Antony Blinken moments after the explosion: “It’s done”. It seems that many people in the West were “in cahoots” in this sabotage.
Sikorski is interesting in more ways than one. A former British-educated journalist with dual Polish and British citizenship, he worked for several British and American media, including Voice of America, before embarking on a political career. He is married to the American journalist Anne Applebaum, from a Belarusian Jewish family, a neo-conservative who spreads his hatred of the former USSR which, nevertheless, no longer exists, through purportedly scientific books which are nothing more than imperialist and anti-communist propaganda, such as The History of the Gulag, awarded a Pulitzer Prize, an institution which is decidedly no longer what it used to be, Red Famine, Stalin’s War in the Ukraine, Iron Curtain: Crushed Eastern Europe, in short, a whole disheveled literature against the evil Soviet communists.
Applebaum is an editorial writer for the Washington Post and a member of the American Enterprise Institute, a veritable nest of Straussians. A neo-conservative think tank, this institute is close to the American business community and is known for its support of military intervention. In addition to Applebaum, her husband Radoslaw Sikorski, John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor, Lee Raymond, former CEO of ExxonMobil, Lynne Cheney, wife of George W. Bush’s former vice president, have been or are still on board. Bush; Reuel Marc Gerecht, former CIA Middle East specialist and former director of the Project for the New American Century’s Middle East Initiative; and Richard Perle, nicknamed the “Prince of Darkness,” a person accused by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker of March 9, 2003, of conflict of interest and collusion with Israeli businessmen representing an arms manufacturing company, as well as with a company linked to the preparations for the invasion of Iraq, of which he was one of the most fervent supporters. At the time, Perle was appointed chairman of the Defense Policy Committee by George W. Bush, a position from which he was forced to resign on March 27 following the article by Seymour Hersh, whom he called a “terrorist. This is the power of the press when it does its job.
Article 5
One of the greatest acts of terrorism in history – far surpassing the attacks of September 11, 2001, in its impact on the European economy, starting with Germany’s – has been completely ignored.
The media have stopped talking about it and European politicians have not commented on it. There is not even a serious investigation.
We remember that the New York attacks were front-page news for weeks, with TV channels showing images of the destroyed buildings over and over again. NATO’s Article 5 was immediately activated. It reads:
“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them occurring in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against all of them and, accordingly, they agree that, if such an attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of self-defence Consequently, they agree that, if such an attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of self-defence, individual or collective, recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in agreement with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and any action taken in consequence thereof shall be immediately reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”
But how can Article 5 be activated when two NATO countries, the United States and Norway, commit a terrorist attack against their own partners? Moreover, the United Kingdom, Poland and Denmark are under suspicion, as the latter is responsible for monitoring the area where the attack took place.
Today, the bourgeois oligarchy that runs Europe, completely subservient to imperialism, looks the other way and buys shale gas from the United States without batting an eyelid, which doesn’t seem to bother the war-mongering German ecologists like Baerbock and Habeck, who have little to do with the color green. Uncle Sam, on the other hand, is rubbing his hands together because the programmed deindustrialization of Europe will incite European factories to relocate to the United States, which will lead to employment and wealth in the United States, but also to millions of job losses in Europe and endemic pauperization going hand in hand with a drastic increase in the cost of living due to unaffordable energy. But schuuut, let’s let the swirls in the water of the Baltic calm down and move on.
No one in the media is talking about this anymore. The blanket of silence that has fallen over Seymour Hersh’s revelation brings us back to the concept of “freedom of expression” as it is practiced in the West. Better yet, to distract the public from the terrorist attack on Nord Stream, the Russian defeat of NATO in Ukraine, and the environmental disaster in one of the most fertile regions of Ohio, with the derailment of a train carrying dangerous chemicals including vinyl chloride, which caused a veritable Seveso, Washington has found nothing better than to involve the world in a hunt for balloons and UFOs. This diversion prompted Edward Snowden to comment on Twitter on February 13: “It’s not alien. I wish it was extraterrestrial but it’s not extraterrestrial, it’s just the old artificial panic, an attractive nuisance ensuring that Natsec (ed. note: national security) reporters are assigned to investigate balloon bullshit rather than budgets or bombings (on Nord Stream) until next time.”
Russia won’t fall. Putin is a chess player.
The West is beginning to understand that, contrary to its belief, Russia will not fall, neither economically, nor militarily, nor politically, and that it is ready to continue its special operation in Ukraine as long as it takes despite the sanctions, the sending of mercenaries, weapons and tanks from NATO countries, which end up as fodder and scrap piles.
Antony Blinken can continue to sermonize his mantra that “the world cannot be allowed to remain without American leadership”, China, Russia and Iran are intensifying their cooperation, followed by the BRICS and emerging countries, paving the way for a multi-polar world. Washington’s puppet Jens Stoltenberg may demand more weapons for Kiev from NATO countries, while acknowledging that there is a shortage of ammunition, but his agitation during his press appearances shows a deep malaise and he has declared that he will not renew his mandate next October.
The Pentagon has also declared that it will not send long-range missiles to Ukraine either, as it prefers to keep them for its army.
Another sign of weakening was the visit to Europe of the most famous beggar on the planet, Volodymyr Zelensky, who returned to his bunker in Lviv with his tail between his legs, failing to play the piano, because his European tour proved to be a fiasco despite the hypocritical pampering of various parties. Only one European leader stood out by refusing to applaud the clown in khaki, Viktor Orban, proving by his attitude that there is at least one European politician who knows the meaning of the word “dignity”.
The response of the empire was not long in coming. USAID’s boss, the detestable interventionist Samantha Power, went to Budapest where she met with Hungarian students to discuss their “aspirations”, she also spoke with “independent” journalists and NGO representatives, as well as with LGBTQI+ communities and “human rights” activists. In short, Agent Power has been busy lighting fuses all over Hungary. Let’s expect to see a color revolution to overthrow Orban in the near future.
Confronted with what is becoming a headache for the empire, which is losing control of events, some voices are beginning to be raised to propose negotiations. For example, the Rand Corporation, which is a showcase for the CIA, has suggested that a Korean-style plan be considered in a report it published at the end of January. According to the report, it would be wise to “minimize the risk of major escalation” because “American interests would be better served by avoiding a prolonged conflict.
In particular, the think tank advocates “giving assurances about Washington’s neutrality and considering easing sanctions against Russia.” Zelensky’s former adviser, Oleksiy Arestovich, who has been featured on the famous Myrotvorets website since he revealed that the residential building destroyed by a missile on January 14, 2023 in Dnipro, killing 40 people, was not Russian but Ukrainian, which forced him to resign, is also a supporter of negotiations and the Korean-style solution.
From now on, there is no longer any question of bombing Crimea, as had been envisaged very recently, of sending long-range missiles and testing Russia with bellicose bravado, and the fact that the Russian navy went out for the first time loaded with missiles with nuclear warheads ready for use has calmed the ardor.
Biden’s upcoming visit to Poland will have all the stooges agreeing. Ukraine will not be in the geographical atlases for much longer, it will be split into two parts, one going to Poland and the other to the Russian Federation. And everything leads us to believe that the Ukrainian straw man, the “hero” Zelensky, now useless, will come to an end without honor and without glory in front of a mountain of cocaine.
Europe is disintegrating before our eyes, the revelation of Seymour Hersh having been the pin that pierced the balloon.
There was a NATO meeting on February 14 and 15 in Brussels, bringing together the chiefs of staff and the various defense ministers of the alliance countries, and Denmark and the Netherlands have already announced that they will not send tanks to Ukraine. There will be no British fighter planes in the Ukrainian sky either. Everyone seems to have understood that Vladimir Putin is a chess player, not a poker player, and that he was not bluffing when he said that a world without the Russian Federation would simply not exist.
The Original Article was Published in French.
English Translation by Internationalist 360°
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 