Listen to a reading of this article:
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Major western news publications are running a story about a sinister plot by the Russian government, and — you may want to sit down for this — the sources of the report are anonymous, and the evidence for it is secret.
The New York Times reports that according to anonymous individuals within the US and British governments, Russia is currently plotting to topple the existing government of Ukraine in some way using some method and then somehow install a puppet regime that is sympathetic to Moscow using some sort of means. What specifically those means and methods might be are not revealed to us in this very serious news report.
“The communiqué provided few details about how Russia might go about imposing a new government on Ukraine, and did not say whether such plans were contingent on an invasion by Russian troops,” the Paper of Record informs us. “British officials familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent was both to head off the activation of such plans as well as to put Mr. Putin on notice that this plot had been exposed.”
Sounds like Britain has taken what the US actually did to Ukraine in 2014, and rebooted it for Russia. Here's Obama-Biden official Victoria Nuland & then-US Amb. Geoffrey Pyatt privately deciding to install Arseniy Yatsenyuk ("Yats is the guy") as Ukraine's next Prime Minister: https://t.co/PDoXBIY5kM pic.twitter.com/0fTraRMEvl
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) January 22, 2022
Now if you are hoping to be provided with some sort of evidence for these incendiary claims, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you, because get this: the journalists reporting on this story have not seen any evidence. Apparently they’re just passing on unverified government assertions made by unknown spies to their readers because they were told to, which I guess is something journalists can do now?
I know, I know, I was a little surprised when I learned that too. But here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth:
“The British communiqué provided no evidence to back up its assertion that Russia was plotting to overthrow the Ukrainian government,” the Times reports.
You will be reassured however to learn that despite the actual evidence of the actual Russian nefariousness being kept invisible to us, anonymous officials within the US government have reviewed the intelligence gathered by anonymous British spies for us and concluded on our behalf that the evidence is solid.
“In Washington, officials said they believe the British intelligence is correct. Two officials said it had been collected by British intelligence services,” The New York Times informs us.
You see that? These claims about a devious Russian conspiracy have been confirmed by anonymous government operatives in both the US and the UK. That’s two separate, completely unconnected governments independently verifying that these claims are true. That’s called independent corroboration, gentlesirs. Basically the same as ironclad proof.
https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1485183529621209088?s=20
It does seem a little strange to me, though, that after taking great license to report anonymous government assertions without evidence The New York Times seems to take issue with the Russian government making unevidenced claims.
“Russian officials have repeatedly denied any intention of launching an attack against Ukraine, dismissing such accusations as ‘hysteria’ and claiming without providing evidence that it is the government in Kyiv that is seeking to escalate tensions,” write the article’s authors.
When this report came out I was a bit surprised by the way unproven claims by anonymous government sources are treated as actual news stories for grown adults to read instead of empty nothing stuff to be ignored and flushed down our mental toilet tubes, as I’m sure you were too. But I did a little digging and it turns out that this sort of thing is actually quite commonplace within western news media institutions, like when we were told without evidence that the Russians were plotting a false flag operation in Ukraine, or like when we were told without evidence that the Russians are using high-tech ray guns to scramble the brains of US diplomats and spies and it turned out to be baseless, or like when we were told without evidence that the Russians were paying Afghan resistance fighters to kill western occupying troops and it turned out to be false and wrong, or like when we were told without evidence that Russians interfered in the United States election and it monopolized all news reports and political discourse for years, or like when we were told without evidence for years and years that Russia was about to invade Ukraine any minute now and then it kept not happening.
I’m sure this time is different, though. After all that practice and all that trial and error, I’m sure our trusted news media institutions have perfected their craft and are now masters at reporting the truth.
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38 responses to “Anonymous Officials Claim There’s An Evil Russian Plot Again But The Evidence Is Secret Again”
After weeks of weighty deliberation on matters of war and peace potentially affecting the life or cessation thereof by most inhabitants of this beaten down planet, the Biden Administration clears its throat and regurgitates the following bit of brilliant diplomacy: “Badges? Badges?! We don’t need no steenking badges!!” In other words: “rules based order” be fucked, we do what we please! If we say it’s war, goddam war it is! You will own nothing, you will stop metabolizing and you will like it! Because we say so!!!
~
That’s “them.” “Biden’s” best and brightest. They desperately want war, with the most formidable adversary they could ever find in all the Earth who truly wants no part of their bullshit. But they are ready to face America’s shit show. Except that America, in its rush to glory, has even forgotten to check off the first box in the “Consumer’s Guide to World Wars” i.e., “Before You Begin: How to successfully wrap up your war, or extricate one’s self from a disastrous conflict.” One can appreciate the relevance of that chapter when reminiscing over the Vietnam and Afghanistan Wars. Ah, but no problemo for these hotshots!
~
One thing that rampaging war mongers never think of before they start the shooting and commit to a “fight to the finish” is how, exactly, do they intend to end the damned war and extricate themselves without lasting damage to their society and humiliation before the entire world when things inevitably go a cropper and they wish they had not been so gung-ho seeking glory and conquest? In this particular fight between the American egomaniacs and a Russian people they consider inferior and incapable of ever defeating them (recall Obama’s endless trash talk when he started all this), I fear that an inexorable escalation will lead to a thermonuclear ending for all of civilisation. Washington’s “friends” and “allies,” like Germany and France (Britain has a death wish), had better talk them out of this or the entire world will pay the price.
~
But Blinken, Biden and Nod just cannot see that far ahead or anticipate more than a single possible glorious outcome, securing America’s unipolar hegemony of the entire planet forever and all time. Oh, joy, endless presidential mandates from the sleepy (but Woke!) talking turnip.
I don’t normally find common cause with you Caitlin, not politically, however this is far larger than either of us, it is the press of the “one world order” against the whole of the world.
I was shocked at the fall of Australia, we took to Crocodile Dundee, and revelled in his antics in “New York City”, and it seemed an appropriate caricature of the Aussie Freedom mindset, we believed well followed our own.
I admire your guts, I’ve come to believe Canada may lead the West back to our senses, and throw the lying, cheating bastards out. I am watching American truckers join the convoy, and am reminded of a “convoy” which locked D.C. down solid, sometime while I was in a foreign Country, putting down an “insurgency”, a lied about one, but we put down the real bastards.
I hope you, and all those who follow, can instigate a similar protest, Truckers are the life-blood even of the evil state, it’s been proven once again, and even lily livered Americans are beginning to understand.
Canada has stood half-way between the US, and Australia, in measures, We have the will, but the vast majority remain fools. You have allowed “how to cook a frog” work, but you can, I pray you will, decide victory or death, as your ancestors did, and got their freedom, in blood.
I’ve been dying from the Gulf War since 90, had “five years to live”, been through 2870 self administered interferons, over fifteen years, 157 mono-clonal antibody infusions, in 13 and half years, and walked out of treatment, off my prescriptions, in June, with the last lies of my neurologist, and the hospital admin.
I never did mind dying, plan on it, we all have an expiration date, “no one gets out alive”. As per one of my favorite movies, “The Princess Bride”, to the pain, all the way, death should always come as a relief, if one has truly lived. Semper Fidelis, John McClain, GySgt, USMC, ret., Vanceboro, NC, USA
Maybe co-president Cack-a-lot-at-us could parachute in, seduce half-witted shit-whistlers with a dazzling speech on the dangers of Xanax inhalation and Rohypnol suppositories (on the same day), show every inch of booby-crack and ask numerous idiotic questions as a disarming psychological operation.
Let’s be honest-no one of conscience or maturity beats up the mental kid, and I don’t think anyone doubts the US is headed by a group of half-baked wackaloons slow-stroking the world through one gutless utterance after another.
Did anyone else enjoy BlinkyTheClown going full rabbit [word salad] on SpaceTheBrainless this AM? He might be more fun than RedJenny and her constant hand-chattering or MayoPete and his ‘let’s get some votes’ tour.
SmurfClub is more entertaining than an Ex-Lax cake at a nudist buffet.
The only part I understood was Ex-Lax. And yes, it can be very entertaining.
Plots calling the kettle black.
It’s perverse, when anyone with two functioning neurons and half a synapse, knows the epicentre of plots is South of Canada and North of Mexico.
With anything coming out of the ‘official’ US channels, I tend to think that the opposite is probably true. Therefore, if the US and UK are accusing Russia of an evil plot then it is the US and UK that are hatching the evil plot – to use the accusation as justification for whatever nastiness they are planning.
Can anyone think of a single reason why we should believe the US puppet media?
Sad but true. Reverse whatever the mass media narratives are and you’ll be closer to the truth than what they are telling you is true. And it’s not just the USA puppet media, it’s the whole western world’s network.
Hilarious. They’re accusing Russia of doing exactly what they did … or the US State Department, McCain and Victoria Nudelman et al did to Yanukovich in 2014. And it wasn’t bloodless. The reality is that a large proportion of the population of Ukraine is Russian speaking, and they would love to be a part of Russia’s success, instead of the penury imposed upon them by the West plundering Ukraine and leaving them in poverty. They’re even shipping out Ukraine’s rich soil. Nothing is sacred when the West plunders a captive nation.
But, isn’t TRUTH anti-vax or something? With our betters going Nyah-nyah-na-na-NYAH, fingers rammed knuckle deep, into empty skulls. Bell¿ngcat, Atlantic Council seem to be rip & reading 1853 agitprop?
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/12/08/understanding-what-happened-in-ukraine-in-2014/
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/10/biden-timeline.html
https://www.mintpressnews.com/emma-watson-j-k-rowling-connections-hollywood-national-security-state-alan-macleod/279511/
Evidence not needed. America is about taking things on faith. Without faith the wheels fall off.
I recall something about Dick Cheney going to the CIA headquarters to pressure them to produce evidence of WMD possession by Saddam Hussein.
I am reading in a book by J. Canfield that “Scientists used to believe that humans responded to information flowing into the brain from the outside world. But today, they’re learning instead that we respond to what the brain, on the basis of previous experience, expects to happen next.”
The US Government, claiming it is fighting disinformation, restricts the free flow of information, and the MSM tell us falsely what to expect next. This is how $#%* propaganda functions.
The solution is of course to compare the narrative to your own real experiences, as opposed to imaginary horrors (in fact this same thing is taught to overcome trauma).
Of course, when things don’t make sense – and having a war with Russia over Ukraine doesn’t make a bit of sense -, it’s always interesting to interview Mammon. We could observe that the first phase of this hoax unfolded in early December when the increased Pentagon budget was in Congress for approval. It was time to rally the American people by showing them that although the US had left Afghanistan and they could therefore expect the tax dollars that had been spent there for twenty years to be from now on used at home for the common good, things were not so simple because the big bad wolf was showing its ugly nose somewhere else. You don’t say… Yes! The Russians were about to invade Ukraine! So what? A bigger budget had to be voted because it’s a well-known fact that Russia has a common border with each and every American state and, as a US website recently clickbaited, “Russian soldiers could soon be in your backyard!” Wow! So the bloated budget passed with flying colors on this fear mongering wave. Now we’re in the commercial phase: sell stuff to Ukraine to defend itself. Nobody in Ukraine believes that the Russians are going to invade. The reason number one is that if the very same Russian president had ever had any intention to invade, he would have done it long ago – especially in the first winter when the Donbass people really suffered. He was very careful not to give the UN reasons to complain even if it ruffled a few feathers in the Donbass and if the US media said he sent troops anyway – having a long habit of not letting the truth get in the way of a good narrative. We know that the Anglos are hell bent on selling weapons to Ukraine because they’re the ones crying wolf. The fact that the French prez and the German admiral downplay the threat means they’re blocked from selling their own shit by the Anglos. Classic… Of course, the beauty of it is that when the Russians don’t invade, the arms dealers will say: “See? It’s because you bought our stuff. That scared them shitless!” Poor Volodymyr (Zelensky) tries to explain that the whole situation could be defused by sanctions. Are you kidding? These guys have taken the trouble to build weapons! What do you want them to do? There’s a limit to what military bases can absorb! So Ukraine’s gonna have to open its mouth and swallow. But they’re the poorest country in Europe! How are they gonna pay? Never mind that… Fortunately, there’s credit and when they can’t pay the interests, they can always put some family jewels (water, electricity, railways, airports…) up for sale at a friendly price that Bill Gates and his pals will be only too pleased to pay. Don’t forget, they’re here to help, Volo! As Henry Kissinger famously said, “Being an enemy of the US can be dangerous! But being its friend is fatal…” :o)
Why should Russia be any different to the competition? They have swallowed Crimea at little cost and it is the only really great place to have a dacha. And they don’t have to invade if they can destabilise the government. It’s the Norwegian gambit all over again and peace will never break out until there is another Lukashenko at the helm in Kiev. And like America in their half of the world if you keep a vicious and corrupt dictator in power he has to stick with you or….remember Manuel Noriega. Or Quisling who was executed. There is no going back here. Pinochet had the right idea, he had read and profited from the Chicago school of Economics, sold out his country, took all the gold and died of old age.
Crimea had been Russian since 1783, which doesn’t make us any younger, after being occupied for centuries by invading steppe nomads like the Golden Horde who often raided south Russia for slaves. The Russians built a naval base there and without going into the details of the changes of political background over time, it was always under Russian control like the base on Okinawa (and a whole lot of other places in the world) is under American control. Whichever way one wants to split hair about the referendum, the UN stance et al, polls show that a large majority of residents of Crimea support the annexation – a lot of them being ethnic Russians working on the base to start with -, which is all we should be concerned about. As for the datcha, it looks like Sotchi and all that coast just next door is a pretty nice place too. The difference is that the Americans want to govern the world and the Russians just want to be left alone, having already got the largest country on Earth as well as a lot of oil and gas – coveted by the USG because coveting is in the nature of the USG – and being underpopulated. And that makes a hell of a difference!
…..a brecht anecdote for the time being……three young people once came to an old arab and said: “our father is dead. he left us seventeen camels, but he laid down in his will that the eldest son should have half, the second son a third, and the youngest a ninth part of his possessions. try as we will, we cannot agree on how to divide up the camels. so we’d like to leave it up to you to decide”. the old man thought it over before replying: ” i see that you need another camel before you can share them out properly. take mine. it’s the only one i have but it’s at your disposal. take it, divide the beasts up, and bring me back whatever you have left over”. the young men thanked him for his friendly offer, took his camel and divided up the eighteen animals as follows: the eldest took a half, which was nine camels, the second son took a third, which was six, and the youngest took his ninth, which was two. to everyone’s surprise there was still one camel remaining, and this they promptly returned with renewed thanks to their old friend……………….
Stuff like this used to be identified, if used at all, as a “trial balloon.” Information of this type is also a “softening up” attack, relatively similar to an artillery barrage ahead of attacking ground troops.
There are various subterfuges as well. In 1975 (or 76 but I think 75) I was filling in for another reporter, Chris, on our paper who was on vacation for two weeks. His regular coverage was the county legislature. While I was there, the county attorney (GOP) made a very public denunciation of me, really excoriated me before the assembly. It was Thursday or Friday. On Monday I got a call to come to his office but no reason given. I expected some further complaint, probably formal, on paper. I never saw John but his secretary handed me a thick Manilla envelope and sent me off. Inside were stacks of documents “revealing” misdeeds of his democratic opponent, Danny, a county judge, elected the year before in what then seemed a vile campaign against Danny. Because it was Chris’ beat I took them to our executive editor, Don, who said he would go over them with Chris. Don was the doorstop. It went nowhere. The reason John the county attorney had made the public show of venom (which, I assure you, he did have toward us) was to keep anyone from thinking that the “leaker” could have been him.
But this is not just directed at reporters. Recently, reviewing CIA and state department documents on the Iranian revolution in 79/80 and its direct connection with the coup of 19 August 1953 which removed Mohammad Mossadegh and put the Shah Pahlavi in charge (along with SAVAK) – the internal documents, the same ones going to the president and cabinet, were filled with the same propagandist swill. In other words the CIA and other security services were concocting this entire “regime change” and pushing their view inside as well.
To make further note, one of the reasons I was looking through that material was to try to figure out when, if even, Ted Koppel, told us there were actual reasons the Iranians could have become so supposedly savage and unhinged in the revolution of 40+ years ago, to have overrun our embassy and taken prisoners hostage. Not once in 444 broadcasts did Ted even mention that coup or Mossadegh. Not once. The first broadcast was 24 March 1980, day 142 for the hostages. Not until after leaving ABC in 2006, in a New York Times (the NYT just keeps showing up) op-ed, in order to back up his statement (about the Iraq invasion) that the sole reason for US policy the previous 50 years was oil. Once stated, he returns to the same calumnies about communism and Soviet (then) influence.
I suppose I could cite ancient smears as well, including the Exodus and all those cities in Canaan which supposed Joshua supposedly massacred (genocide: every man, woman, child and animal), with God’s official approval, of course. (this was written in the 6th century BCE, at a time when the writer(s?) didn’t realize that going from Egypt’s Nile valley to the Sinai was still in Egypt and so was all of Canaan (2cnd Empire boundaries – kinda like going from Dallas to Little Rock to get out of the US.) The authors were justifying their takeover of the (bloody) Holy Land. That claim follows us today with the Zionist project.
These methods are persistent.
Oh, a point I forgot and meant to say from the start because I didn’t spot it in Caitlin’s article, then lost in my over-verbiage, The part of the New York Times article that said what an unusual break in British intelligence behavior it was to share such secret information. Nah. And if you wonder what Ted Koppel didn’t go into the CIA coup background or the years of SAVAK secret police detentions, tortures and murders, you have to ask yourself who his sources were, and how indebted to that “access” he felt.
BTW – The Shah was persuaded in 1953 to come to Iran for the coup by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf (Sr), pappy to “Stormin’ Norman” of the later Gulf War. Senior was a personal friend of the Shah. Norman was also responsible in large part for organizing the Shah’s security service into what became SAVAK, as he had also been the chief of the New Jersey police after WWI (where he was gassed) until 1937 when politics threw him out and he returned to the Army in time for WWII and the 1941 Anglo/Soviet invasion of Iran (never heard of this? look it up).
Other well known name Kermit Roosevelt Jr who organized, on the ground, the 1953 coup, including pulling it out of the fire personally, when it looked like a failure and the Shah fled to Baghdad. Later he wrote a book about it. Fascinating reading. Also fascinating is the 8 October 1953 President Eisenhower diary entry where he talks about what he had learned personally from Kermit Jr. (Don’t be fooled by two recent writers who took Ike’s diary entry out of his own context to claim the account was fictional.)
So, okay, apologies, I’ve overblathered. T’anks.
This is why nobody employed in government can challenge any false narrative:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/23/europe/german-navy-chief-resignation-intl/index.html
And, NYT praises British Government role (creating propaganda stories) as “muscular”.
English news channels now spreading false FCO propaganda that Russia is going to attempt to install a puppet president in Ukraine, the FCO hasn’t produced one shred of evidence that Russia intends to do this, its the old manufacturing of consent chestnut that we’ve seen wheeled out on numerous occasions.
On the contrary US backed the coup in Ukraine in 2014, orchestrated from the US embassy in Kiev by Victoria Nuland.
It’s maddening, the big fear inspiring story of the year is that Russia might start acting like America someday.
This has been going on for like 60-70 years but I just don’t see Americans waking up. We’ve printed money after 9-11, we’ve bailed out banks, printed trillion for Covid yet retail numbers are contracting so our leaders need to create more crises and Macron, Johnson are assisting our dementos
Michael Schwirtz, David E. Sanger and Mark Landler
They need get to a foreign embassy immediately and seek asylum
Well said.
No need to comment on the obvious. People who want to believe it will, just like their faith in God and religion controls their behavior, though they can’t prove any of that either.
As a German admiral says that Russia’s plan to invade Ukraine is nonsense, and ends up resigning for having common sense, and the French president Macron also appears to be dialing down the hysteria that Russia is somehow going to start a war, England’s government and its media, are pushing this outrageous rubbish, in an attempt to bolster the USA’s position and to further garner consent from the UK public that Putin and Russia are evil.
I can only hope that more European countries officials and European countries that are members of Nato officials also speak out against the madness that could lead to a widespread war in Europe have the leaders of the EU/Nato countries backing the US and the UK learned nothing from the two world wars that cost millions of lives.
This is a good article on the subject.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/01/23/ukraine-crisis-german-navy-chief-resigns-britain-spreads-fears-of-russian-coup-wider-war/
i think the brits even had a name of who the russian stooge-president was supposed to be. turned out he had been under russian sanctions since 2018 and several assets of related corporations had been seized or frozen in russia … but they were probably blackmailing him into working for them with that, right?
A New York Time newsletter reports it like this:
The Kremlin appears to be developing plans to install a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine as President Vladimir Putin weighs whether to invade, the British government said.
(The first part, through “Ukraine”, is in bold in the original).
Note the subtle manipulation of language and even typography. This should be “The British government claims that…”, but that is not inflammatory or tendentious enough.
“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate, and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of personal integrity.” -Theodore Dalrymple
Thanks for admitting that you are anti-communist.
The US and UK are romping towards communist style government, where the people have no freedom of speech, and are totally controlled by mandates. I think that was your point.
“In my study of any cooperative, mutually beneficial ideology, I came to the conclusion that the ‘ruling elite’ will secretly organize infiltration of it and either turn it into a controlled opposition, or, engineer a controlled demolition of it.” – Me
I think the purpose of this non-stop reporting about Russia’s upcoming evildoing is to convince us that a pre-emptive action against Russia is necessary.
Ukrainian President was asking for (additional) pre-emptive sanctions against Russia already.
And that Fox News journalist asking a “stupid” question “Why are you waiting on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to make the first move, sir?”
Since George W. adopted Wolfowitz’s doctrine and started pre-emptive war on Saddam Hussein, they are looking to apply it in more various situations (Sen. Wiker being a voice for the first nuclear strike)
However, the background remains the same, preventing authoritarian regime from becoming dominant.
I am baffled why the US (with NATO) calls itself “international liberal order”. Maybe because they do as they please without any regard for international law, acting without a reason or evidence.
On a side note, when the MSM news that Russia is going to start a war caused a run on banks and stores, Ukrainian President made an attempt to calm his citizens, by telling them they are already at war since 2014! They should know that it is too late to choose sides, and they are stuck with the US- installed puppet government in Kyiv.
The narrative has to change now from war to coup, so people can go back to normal commerce, and shopping, and we cannot allow the banks to fail, of course!
Sounds like Elliot Higgins from Bellingcat is at it again .It is getting old already .
If Russia does want to invade Ukraine (and I’m not saying it does), surely all it has to do is say Ukraine has weapons of mass destruction. And if none are ever found, that’s no big deal, is it?
And then we have that fool Vindman who knows with absolute certainty Russia is going to invade Ukraine and we have no choice but to accept inevitable war against Russia–all without a shred of evidence to back up his certitudes. That’s good enough for all corporate media to parrot and help manufacture consent for exactly what Vindman and his co-conspirators want.
You mean Windbag? :o)
Brilliant! The NYT in particular, and mainstream media in general have become Pravda (Truth) and Izvestia (News) from the long defunct USSR. And as the old Soviet joke went:
“There is no izvestia in Pravda, and no pravda in Izvestia.”