The constant barrage of anti-Russian propaganda has started acquiring purely paranoid features, notes the German Weltexpress, and it’s really hard to argue with this. At the same time, anyone who is trying to express a different opinion is immediately singled out, intimidated and bullied into obedient silence.
It is not difficult to notice distinctive traits behind this whole anti-Russian hysteria, traits of certain organizations that are tied directly to the US governments and a number of individual European capitals. A wide range of NGOs implanted across the world by special interests is working to advance a certain agenda dictated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and nobody is making a big secret out of the fact a great many of the so-called investigative journalists are being trained to push the claims that they wouldn’t otherwise make by a number of US-linked companies, such as Internews and the likes.
Such notions like ethics and moral principles do not prevent these people from getting actively engaged in highly dubious activities. This, in particular, is illustrated by the the latest incident with the staged false assassination of Ukrainian journalist Arkady Babchenko that was staged by Ukrainian intelligence agencies. The former demanded local media sources to hand him over 50 thousand dollars so he could tell them all about the alleged “Russian trace” in this ridiculous performance.
However, if fake anti-Russian provocations are relatively cheap when the West is dealing with Ukraine, most Washington-related PR people are willing to get paid a little extra before they get back to their routine Russia-bashing activities with renewed determination. For instance, the Independent has recently blown the lid off the so-called Russiagate by announcing that a Washington-based Fusion GP hired an ex-MI-6 employee Christopher Steele to fabricate a dossier about Trump’s connections with Russia. The media source is convinced that Steele got 168 thousand dollars to do the dirty job, however Donald Trump himself announced in his Twitter that he convinced that the above mentioned former agent got 12 million dollars for his services.
Nobody would argue that any propaganda campaign is extremely expensive, but it seems that these days Washington spares no dime on its anti-Russian activities. For instance, the staging of the show known as the Salisbury incident the blame for which was blamed on Russia from the first hours after the event, resulted in the British security services wasting a total of 10 million dollars.
But it goes even further that than, if we are to believe The Telegraph that reported that Boris Johnson announced the plan of spending a considerable chunk of British budget on various anti-Russian media activities. Out of the total budget of 12 billion pounds London is planning to spend, the sitting UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs allocated 700 million pounds to establish the so-called Empowerment Fund, that will be entrusted with the goal of fighting Vladimir Putin (sic). As it was confined by an unnamed source in the British government to the above mentioned media source, this course of action is considered one of the best ways to strengthen the global influence of the UK after its withdrawal from the EU.
The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) which oversees the activities of Radio Liberty, Voice of America, and a number of TV stations has wasted over 21.7 million dollars on anti-Russian propaganda last year alone, which amount to 40% of all of its spendings in the Eurasia region. To carry on its propaganda operations in the field of international and media communications, the US allocated has allocate 769 million dollars. American lawmakers are determined to sharpen the propaganda tools that were developed during the Cold War days. In particular, we are talking about the growing sponsorship of such projects as Current Time – a collaboration between Radio Liberty and Voice of America; Lexicon – Voices of America’s exclusive project; local news sites in Chechen, Tatar and Bashkir languages sponsored by Radio Liberty; projects for the solidarity of journalists on social networks.
The majority of anti-Russian propaganda agencies increased their activities ahead of the recent presidential elections in Russia and supported a wide variety of projects on social networks that have been actively criticizing Russian authorities. Working for an in-Russian audience and even having separate language versions for different regions of Russia, Radio Liberty and Voice of America directly interfered in Russia’s domestic political processes, supporting all sorts of protest movement and the so-called opposition.
Recently, an employee of Radio Liberty in Crimea complained about his superiors editing his reports without his knowledge, virtually leaving no room for honesty or objectivity in his writing. From his contract it is clear that Radio Liberty, in fact, is controlled and financed entirely by the US State Department and that it is engaged in an information war against Russia.
The authority that American intelligence agencies exercise over the global information war against Russia becomes evident when you take at the statement that has recently been released by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) about its so-called cooperation with the government of Ukraine in the information sphere, that was triggered by a number of visits that DAPRA representatives paid to Kiev in October 2016. In this regard, one can’t help but ask was the recent fake assassination of Arkady Babchenko a direct result of this cooperation?
Those states that were lecturing the rest of the world about human rights observance, freedom of the press, are now suddenly desperate to isolate their virtual information world, with a NATO official Elizabeth Brough declaring the need to establish a NATO communication unit for information war with Russia.
The Western propaganda machine has been working overtime producing half-truths and complete lies in a bid to fool the world. By looking at the massive anti-Russian propaganda campaign launched by Washington, one can’t help but to get reminded about a Nazi war criminal, Hermann Goering who is credited with following lines:
Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship…
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Ordinary people will never root for war. Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany… So it’s imperative for Washington to get them properly scared before they can be turned into cannon fodder.
But we must not forget that, speaking of the great threat from Russia, Western elites are not really afraid of Russia’s military might – they are afraid of losing the opportunity to arbitrarily decide the fate of ordinary people both in their own country and abroad!
Grete Mautner is an independent researcher and journalist from Germany, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
