anthonyhowelljournal

Richard Cobden 1836

Russia’s support for Syria (updated)

The South African Information Scandal

Putin’s ejection of the oligarchs

The takeover of the Guardian

The Magnitsky Act

Novichok and the Skripals

If you try to discover anything about recent Russian history online, you will only come across articles that project an uncompromising loathing of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin. The only books that get reviewed about Russia are those such as Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia and then took on the West – a book expressing loathing of Putin, which, as might be expected, secured a glowing review in the Washington Post. But loathing of Russia goes back further – to the Crimean War – and to the notion that the UK and Russia were rival empires – as is well explained by Professor Glenn Diesen discussing Russophobia historically considered. He is the author of Russophobia: Propaganda in International Politics (2022). The discussion takes its point of departure with Richard Cobden’s “Cure for the Russo-phobia” pamphlet (1836), and it can be found on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKQzFzhEmvk&t=544s

Russophobia relaxed somewhat in the Yeltsin era. However it revived tenfold when President Putin came to power.

The story of why the West seemingly “loathes” Russia today cannot be separated from the takeover of US, British and European media outlets by right wing magnates and Jewish oligarchs. Their antipathy to Russia’s very popular president has its roots in the aftermath of that corrupt Yeltsin time, when, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was ruthlessly exploited by an unchecked capitalism that preyed on all Russia’s natural resources and thriving industries, pretty much bankrupting the country so as to line the pockets of these latter day colonists. In the early years of this century, when Putin very sensibly decided to re-nationalise the extractive industries of this huge country, confiscating Yukos Oil, and booting out or jailing corrupt magnates and media barons – known in Russia as oligarchs, the ancient Athenian name for a tyrannical elite of wealthy bandits – thus ridding Russia of Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikail Khodorkovsky, Bill Browder et al – these corrupt millionaires fled to Israel, to the Ukraine, to Cyprus and to the USA.

With much of their immense wealth already salted away overseas, these unsavoury characters were welcomed by the far right players already incumbent in Western intelligence and security services – the CIA, the NSA, MI6 and Mossad among others. These far right players had first been installed in the aftermath of the second world war, when many high-ranking Nazis were spirited away from any risk of trial and punishment at Nuremburg, in order to share their knowledge about Russian intelligence with Western security officers (see also “Operation Gladio”). Several of these shadowy and highly compromised figures ultimately rose to prominence in the upper echelons of NATO. These were the parties who welcomed the tycoons expelled from Russia. Many of these tycoons had already invested in Hollywood. And it is the case that this story of how we learnt to loathe Russia cannot be told without reference to the corruption of what is now known as the “legacy media” – the mass media institutions that dominated our lives prior to the “Information Age” introduced by the computer.

Another factor in the development of Russiaphobia is the long term support by Russia of Syria, since the time when Syria was nearly overwhelmed by Muslim extremists supplied with weapons by the West via the spurious Syrian Liberation Front. Basically, Israel and its lackey the USA have been depicting President Assad and his father as dictators for years and years because Israel considers Syria a major threat (having stolen the Golen Heights from Syria). While Sunni Islam is the largest party, Assad always gains the Alawite vote which, combined with Shia and Christian votes clearly carries the majority – so he is definitely a democratically elected leader. Again, note the role of the media in accusing Assad of war crimes (utterly spurious). Note also that Donald Trump assassinated generals Qasem Soleimani and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Soleimani’s memory is revered in Iran because he had been the general who defeated Daesh and the violent Sunni Jihadists entirely and thus destroyed any chance of a sharia Caliphate being established. Trump is a Zionist and acted at the behest of Israel in revenge for this – which clearly establishes that it is in Israel’s interests to support the Jihadists, several of whom are Mossad agents. It also explains why Sunni Saudi Arabia sits on its hands regarding the slaughter of the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, however, I have now to update the view put forward in the above paragraph, since Assad has fallen and Julani – a Sunni Jihadist – is now master of Syria and slaughtering its Christian, Alawite, Druze and Shia minorities. Most alarming, to a supporter of Russia such as myself, is President Putin’s recent welcoming of Julani in Moscow. Here is a link to Vanessa Beeley’s analysis of what may be going on – and it makes for depressing viewing. All I can do here is reiterate the old saying, “Nil admirari.”

Legacy media refers in particular to print media, film studios, music studios, advertising agencies, radio broadcasting, and television. Legacy media institutions are centralized and communicate with one-way technologies to a generally anonymous mass audience. They address ‘couch potatoes’ and are popular with that stratum of the middle classes that still likes to sit reading their favourite paper while sipping their coffee on a Sunday morning. And what is wrong with that? I hear the indignant response. Nothing, except that these old media can no longer be trusted to deliver an independent and unbiased account of what is happening in the world. Where did that perversion of what mass media tells us begin? Well, at some level, it has always been true that mass information has been controlled, but there used to be an ethos of ‘putting the other point-of-view’ across, of a Vox pop, perceived as integral to democratic ideals. You can see this notion being threatened by a scandal that affected South Africa in the months prior to the ending of apartheid: it was known as the “South African Information Scandal”.

This refers to a covert campaign to influence Western public opinion in favour of keeping the apartheid system. Here are some quotes from The Life of Secret Agent turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan by Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman Gefen Books 2011. They concern the attempt to erase criticism of apartheid from the world media between 1977 and 1979.

If there was one key financial facilitator in South Africa’s covert global propaganda campaign to improve the image of South Africa, it was Milchan. “I acted at the request of my own country,” Milchan told us. Eschel Rhoodie directed a steady flow of funds from the Department of Information’s front company Thor Communicators, through European accounts controlled by Milchan, who created multiple front companies to purchase key media outlets critical of South Africa.

He and South African operatives David Abramson and Stuart Pegg focused at first on African media such as West Africa, an important magazine published by Afrimedia International Ltd. He purchased administrative control over African Development, a quarterly magazine. He was involved in the purchase of EurAfrique, a monthly magazine read in all of the French-speaking African states. He then spearheaded an effort to gain control of the British publishing giant Morgan-Grampian, which was to be the crown jewel of the operation.

Through Morgan-Grampian, the plan was to take control over several prominent newspapers and magazines in the West, including the Observer in England, L‘Expresse in France, and the Washington Star in the United States. “What better vehicle than Morgan-Grampian to be in charge of such takeovers?” Eschel Rhoodie wrote in his 1983 book The Real Information Scandal.

In November 1977, Rhoodie released $1.8 million for the purchase of enough shares to assume control of the Investors Chronicle in the UK, a deal that failed to materialize. Essentially, Rhoodie and Milchan, acting as partners, coordinated all of these activities using the secret funds. It would explode in their faces.

          P 117-8

The South African Information Scandal was a worldwide sensation that detailed a campaign involving dozens of projects to cow the opposition press at home and buy friendly coverage abroad. (In 1978) Rhoodie took the brunt of the blame in the scandal while the key financial figure, Arnon Milchan, dodged the bullet. …..

Shortly before the fall of apartheid, South Africa transferred almost all of its nuclear material to Israel, including the tritium and its six existing bombs. The South African government then reported to international agencies that it had “dismantled” all of its nuclear weapons.

While ambivalent toward apartheid at first, Arnon gradually grew to oppose it in an active way.”

P 126

But today one can see clearly that a very similar operation has led to the successful takeover of the BBC, the Guardian, the Times, the Washington Post and countless other legacy media outlets and, of course, Hollywood itself (consider the documentary about the Jihadist “white helmets”), in order to erase criticism of Israel’s policy towards Palestinians and its neighbours since Netanyahu came into power, if not before – and this operation has actually been welcomed by the British and US secret services – because they were infiltrated by extreme right wing elements a long while before. It has also been put into place in order to vilify President Putin and Russia, because the oligarchs booted out of Russia, the settlers installed from the Ukraine on the West Bank and the corrupt regime that took over Kiev through Victoria Nuland’s support of the Maidan coup d’etat in 2014 are all part of the same swamp. Israel and Ukraine remind me of a Moebius Strip – and Cyprus and Kosovo can also be included in these territories given over to criminals, globalist criminals, who hate the multi-nodal BRICS countries and who wish to destroy and break up the unified state of Russia.

A brilliant account of how the formerly liberal-minded Guardian newspaper has been taken over by these anti-Russian and indeed anti-libertarian views to become a mouth-piece of our security and intelligence services has been written by Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis and published by the website Declassified:

But there is more to this story. A figure that often appears on talk shows, always welcomed as a hero and always vehemently critical of Putin and Russia is the oligarch Bill Browder, who engineered it so that Obama would pass the Magnitsky Act. The Magnitsky Act, formally known as the Russia and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, is a bipartisan bill passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama, intending to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009 and also to grant permanent normal trade relations status to Russia. Furthermore, the Global Magnitsky Act of 2016 within the NDAA 2017 authorizes the U.S. government to sanction those foreign government officials worldwide that are human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S

Bill Browder is one of the most vehement US critics of Russia. He made a huge amount of money in Russia after the end of the Soviet Union. Basically he is an out-and-out oligarch in Russian eyes.

So remember that from after Glasnost, instigated by Gorbachev in the 1980s to Putin kicking the oligarchs out of Russia in the early years of the millennium, we welcomed Russians. They bought our handbags and came to dance tango with us. And then after the oligarchs settled in Ukraine, Israel and elsewhere, we decided to switch the cold war on again. I date a great deal of this new hatred of Russia to this Magnitsky Act, passed by Obama when he expelled a slew of Russian diplomats from the US and imposed sanctions. However the Magnitsky Act was based on a colossal fraud perpetrated by a crook. That crook was Browder.

The link on Vimeo I posted on my journal several years back will not work. But Vimeo used to be the only way to watch The Magnitsky Act. This is a film about Bill Browder’s fraud (which he attributed falsely to the Russians). It is made by an anti-Putin Russian film-maker, who initially started making it for Browder, until, as he did his research, he realised what a crook Browder was. Browder has successfully blocked this film on every conceivable platform and channel.

I posted this link August 2018. Back then it worked, and one could watch the film that exposes the evil manipulations of this evil guy.  I’m sorry, Browder has managed to close it down on Vimeo. You can try the Off-Guardian for more information. I have asked Piraya Films to message me about how it may be possible to upload or buy this documentary. If there is a way, I will post it here.

https://www.magnitskyact.com/?

This link currently does allow you to rent the movie for £5.0 or buy it for £10. Top right hand corner links to where and how to get it. Scroll down below for updates. How long this link, which came directly from the film company, will last, I am not sure.

Meanwhile the link at the very foot of this page gives a good resume of this business. Most Europeans don’t know what the Magnitsky Act is. Most Americans believe Obama was right to impose sanctions on Russia based on it. Turns out Obama was manipulated by Browder –and aided and abetted by John McCain et al. Turns out, the story of the theft of millions by Russian police and authorities, and the murder in prison of a “lawyer” working for Browder, is a fake.

This Act is one origin of all efforts to return to the cold war. And this is why it is important that all of us should watch it. Meanwhile Browder has had the movie blocked on all social media channels and public outlets, so this is the only way to get to see it, for now. Browder will find a means to block it soon, you bet your life.

Also, listen to the interview with Alex Krainer at 35 mins on the broadcast – scroll down to find it. His book Grand Deception has of course been pulled from Amazon and other sites.

UNDERSTAND – your right to see the truth has been taken from you.

Browder is also implicated by the Panama papers. In these there is  a fraudulent attempt to link Browder’s “stolen” money to Sergei Roldugin – who is supposedly Putin’s “bag man”. Only, as Nekrasov points out in the film, the dates and amounts do not add up. The Papers also link Browder to Soros – through the Soros Institute and US Gov front OCCRP (which can also be linked to the Ukrainian coup). The late, great Robert Parry was over the case. Unfortunately, it was among the last reports he wrote. RIP.

So as you can see, everything in the West, social media included, conspires to encourage your fear and loathing of Russia and its president. And you have to do a lot of work to get underneath this carpet of lies and realise how dark forces are attempting to manipulate your view. This is gaslighting on a grand scale.

*****

Another cog helping turn the wheel of Russia hatred is the purported poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his wife. We were all told that Novickok was used to do this, and that other British citizens had died as a result. This is all a fiction created by the British deep state. Novichok is a total invention, a fiction devised by MI6 to rid themselves of the Skripals. Skripal, a spy for the West arrested in Russia and subsequently exchanged and released to live in the UK, had helped the totally discredited Christopher Steele invent slanders on Trump prior to his first election. MI6 were scared he would spill the beans on this.Wikipedia’s post on Novichok should be taken with a massive pinch of salt. It is all “allegedly” or “reportedly” – in other words it is all bollocks. If there was any poison involved in the Skripal case, it came from Porton Down, our own chemical weapons hub near Salisbury.

For comprehensive analysis and total exposure of this fraudulent story, read Long Live Novichok – the British poison which fooled the World by John Helmer, the sequel to Skripal in Prison. (see also “Dancing with Bears”)

Alexander Perepilichnyy, who collapsed and died outside his Surrey home in 2012, was allegedly due to give evidence in a case which implicated Russian tax officials, and was also said to have been poisoned by some radioactive substance developed by Russia. This was dismissed in court. But the smear in the press at the time shows us again how Russophobia has been engineered by the UK press, by British authorities and their nefarious intelligence services (which are not in the business of intelligence gathering, only in the business of spreading slander of all things Russian to the British public and to the Western world. We have already seen how Russian tax officials were the target of libellous attacks by the criminal oligarch Bill Browder.

The globalist West, particularly US war-hawks, Europeans and Zionists, are desperate to engage in full-scale war with Russia – to counter the rise of BRICS and the ushering in of a multi-polar society. US hegemony is at risk. But this is also an elitist hegemony that unites all Western oligarchs. NATO, the EU and Keir Starmer (with his flat in Tel Aviv) are all committed to expanding the proxy war in the Ukraine into a full-scale war with Russia. To my mind, Russia began the Special Military Operation in 2022 with justification, Zelensky having banned the speaking of Russian and education in Russian to Russian speakers in districts (oblasts) which had been under the control of Kiev. Remember that this happened after the Maidan coup – organised by PNAC co-founder Victoria Nuland and the UK in 2014 – which installed a puppet government of Nazis in Kiev. Remember too that the contested oblasts all voted overwhelmingly to secede from the authority of the Kiev regime.

Many of my liberal friends still believe that it was wrong of Russia to have launched the SMO, even though they are humane enough to condemn the slaughter of Palestinians by Israelis. But Tel Aviv and Kiev exist on the same surface of a Moebius Strip. Russia advances slowly in the liberation of these Russian-speaking districts because they are humane and do not wish to risk civilian lives or cause unnecessary bloodshed. By defending and arming Ukraine, the West is aiming to paint Russia yet again as an enemy. But it is an enemy the oligarchs who run the “deep state” in the West have invented for their own benefit. Indeed they have invented a reason for war which justifies a massive increase in military spending, at the cost of disability benefits, pensions and social services. But this enemy is a fake enemy. Mossad, MI6 and the CIA are all committed to the Nazification of the West, just as Kiev is already Nazified. This is their agenda.

These evil forces have brought us to the brink of war with Russia and its increasing number of very powerful allies. The West should bear in mind the trap of Thucydides.

Where can all this anti-Russian feeling be countered? I suggest that you ditch the legacy media and follow Judge Napolitano and his guests, as well as following the Duran on independent media such as Youtube, Rumble, Odysee and Substack. The experts interviewed on these channels are far better qualified than I am to analyse current events and trace their histories. But the truth of the matter is that more and more of us are waking up to how the deep state controls our opinions. And finally, it is worth investigating the Bank for International Settlements – but that is another story.

Anthony Howell