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Best of the Web: Der Spiegel's Exposé of Con-Man Bill Browder: Questions Cloud Story Behind US Sanctions

bill broder
© Chris Gloag/ WirtschaftsWocheBill Browder at his office in London.
There's a tombstone in northeastern Moscow that bears the portrait of a man with a friendly yet somewhat uneasy smile. His name is Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky. He was born in April 1972 in Odessa, Ukraine, and died in November 2009 in Moscow. To this day, 10 years after the fact, the circumstances of his death in a Russian pretrial detention facility remain unclear.

There are two versions of what happened to Magnitsky. The more well-known version has all the makings of a conspiracy thriller. It's been repeated in thousands of articles, TV interviews and in parliamentary hearings. In this version of the story, the man from the Moscow cemetery fought nobly against a corrupt system and was murdered for it.

The other version is more complicated. In it, nobody is a hero.

The first version has had geopolitical implications. In 2012, the United States passed the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions against Russian officials who were believed to have played a role in his death. The measure was signed into law by then-President Barack Obama after receiving a broad bipartisan majority. Back then, if there was one thing that politicians on both sides of the aisle could agree on, it was their opposition to a nefarious Russian state. In 2017, Congress passed the Global Magnitsky Act, which enabled the U.S. to impose sanctions against Russia for human rights violations worldwide.

The facilitator behind these pieces of legislation is Bill Browder, Magnitsky's former boss in Moscow. "When he was put to the ultimate test, he became the ultimate hero," Browder says of Magnitsky. Browder was born in the U.S. For years, his company, Hermitage Capital Management, was one of the largest foreign investors in Russia. At the time, Browder was an advocate for Russian President Vladimir Putin in the West. That is, until he was prohibited from entering Russia in 2005.

V

Best of the Web: Tucker Carlson questions Douma 'chemical attack proof' and roots for Russia on air. Off with his head, cry MSM

tucker carlson
© Reuters / Brendan McDermid
Fox News host Tucker Carlson has crossed an MSM Rubicon and questioned the Douma "gas attack" fraud on air, bringing up the OPCW whistleblower. Then he "rooted for Russia" over Ukraine. Was it a "betrayal," or epic truth-trolling?

Carlson boldly went where no mainstream TV host had gone before, unpacking the explosive story of April 2018's Douma "chemical weapons attack." While the "attack" was attributed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by an altered report from the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, two whistleblowers within the group accused it of omitting evidence to craft a misleading narrative - a fact that has never crossed the lips of US media until Monday night.

The polarizing Fox host dismantled the official Western media narrative in a seven-minute segment that included an interview with the Guardian correspondent who personally witnessed the second whistleblower present evidence to the agency.

Gold Seal

Best of the Web: The lies about Assange must stop now

assange
© Getty Images / Leon Neal
Newspapers and other media in the United States, Britain and Australia have recently declared a passion for freedom of speech, especially their right to publish freely. They are worried by the "Assange effect".

It is as if the struggle of truth-tellers like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning is now a warning to them: that the thugs who dragged Assange out of the Ecuadorian embassy in April may one day come for them.

A common refrain was echoed by the Guardian last week. The extradition of Assange, said the paper, "is not a question of how wise Mr. Assange is, still less how likable. It's not about his character, nor his judgement. It's a matter of press freedom and the public's right to know."

What the Guardian is trying to do is separate Assange from his landmark achievements, which have both profited the Guardian and exposed its own vulnerability, along with its propensity to suck up to rapacious power and smear those who reveal its double standards.

Hourglass

Best of the Web: 100 years ago, a gigantic meteor shook Michigan on Thanksgiving eve

Chelyabinsk Meteor
© Associated PressIn this frame grab made from a dashboard video camera, a meteor streaks through the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia, Friday, Feb. 15, 2013.
A century ago, on Thanksgiving eve, people across Michigan saw something that would mark Nov. 26 in their memories for years to come. Fog and rain rolled across the Great Lakes region, when just before 8 p.m. something unusual cut through the dark.

"The road, trees, houses and even ourselves were bathed in a blinding phosphorescent-like glow which had its center in a bright streak in the sky above us," highway construction superintendent Leroy Milhan of Centerville, Michigan, would recall in a paper published the following year. "It passed over us toward the west. Immediately came a muffled report or jar that shook houses and the very earth like an earthquake."

The following day, the Washington Times reported that "telegraph and telephone communications and electric lighting plants in several cities in southern Michigan and northern Indiana are out of commission" as a result of "a remarkable phenomenon believed by several scientists to have been a gigantic meteor."

Comment: You can read more about the hazards to humanity from cometary bombardment in SOTT's Comets and Catastrophe Series by Laura Knight-Jadczyk.


Cow

Best of the Web: India is NOT a 'Vegetarian Country' like the EAT-Lancet report would have us believe

indian children plates
© Reuters/Babu/FilesChildren holding plates wait in a queue to receive food at an orphanage run by a non-governmental organisation on World Hunger Day, in Chennai May 28, 2014.
Currently, food politics in India spearheads an aggressive new Hindu nationalism that has led to many of India's meat eating minority communities being treated as inferior.

Vegetarians, far less vegans, let us be frank, would not like to be compelled to eat meat. Yet the reverse compulsion is what lurks in the current proposals for a new 'planetary diet'. Nowhere is this more visible than in India.

The subcontinent is often stereotyped by the West as a vegetarian utopia, where transcendental wisdom, longevity, and asceticism go hand in hand.

Earlier this year, the EAT-Lancet Commission released its global report on nutrition and called for a global shift to a more plant based diet: "The scientific targets set by this Commission provide guidance for the necessary shift, which consists of increasing consumption of plant-based foods and substantially reducing consumption of animal source foods".

Comment: Like much of the EAT-Lancet report, the idea that India is a vegetarian country is nothing but propaganda, propped up to fulfill an agenda. That agenda, the 'vegan pusch', is a house of cards, upheld by these blatant lies in an attempt to sway the global population into strict dietary austerity.

See also:


Snakes in Suits

Best of the Web: You're FIRED! Trump ousts Navy Secretary for insubordination over presidential commutation of SEALs

esper spencer navy
US Defense Secreaty Mark Esper (right) has fired US Navy Secretary Richard Spencer for insubordination
In an extraordinary move, the Pentagon chief "fired" the Navy secretary Sunday for going outside his chain of command by proposing a "secret agreement with the White House," according to a senior defense official.

The agreement that led to Navy Secretary Richard Spencer's forced resignation involved the case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, one of three service members facing war crimes allegations whose cases have caused unprecedented tension between the Pentagon and President Donald Trump.

Spencer had appeared to be seeking a way to resolve a standoff between the Pentagon and White House over Gallagher's case, but competing narratives that emerged in the chaotic hours after Spencer's dismissal suggest the depth of the upheaval, disconnection and discord that remains.

Trump suggested on Twitter that Spencer's dismissal had to do with cost overruns and the way Gallagher had been treated by the Navy. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he asked Spencer to resign because he had lost "trust and confidence in him regarding his lack of candor," according to a Pentagon spokesman.


Comment: Clearly, the Navy brass went behind Trump's back just to 'git Trump'.


Comment: Should military personnel be held responsible for behaving the way they are trained and ordered to behave?

A better solution would be for the society to impose higher standards on the organization, not punish the little guys.

In any event, whether or not Trump was correct to defend Gallagher and the other Navy SEALs, the only reason this became an issue is because the #Resistance has jumped on it as yet another stick to beat Trump with.


Eye 2

Best of the Web: Der Spiegel finds Browder's Magnitsky narrative riddled with lies: Anti-Russian sanctions are based on fraudster's tales

browder magnitsky
© Bill Browder / AFP / Drew Angerer; Sergey Magnitsky / AFP / Hermitage Capital ManagementBill Browder and Sergey Magnitsky (inset)
British investor Bill Browder has made a name for himself in the West through blaming Moscow for the death of his auditor, Sergey Magnitsky. Der Spiegel has picked apart his story and uncovers it has major credibility problems.

For years Browder - Russian President Vladimir Putin's self-proclaimed "enemy number one" and head of the Hermitage Capital Management fund - has been waging what can only be described as his personal anti-Russian campaign.

The passionate Kremlin critic relentlessly lobbied for sanctions against Russian officials everywhere from the US to Europe - all under the premise of seeking justice for his deceased employee, who died in Russia, while in pre-trial detention, where he'd been placed while accused of complicity in a major tax evasion scheme.

Comment: The MSM seems to be slowly getting up to speed on fraudster Browder. Andrei Nekrasov has been shouting the same facts from the rooftops for years, after discovering the truth while making a documentary that was initially sympathetic to the Magnitsky affair. It has had very few public screenings and was banned from Youtube due to Browder's legal threats. Alex Krainer wrote a book which Browder got banned from Amazon. Browder has so far been successful at shutting down anyone conducting a serious investigation into his criminal enterprises. Will the Der Speigel report break the mainstream media silence?


Better Earth

Best of the Web: The road toward Greater Eurasia

Eurasia
© Asia TimesKazakhstan's first president has road map for 21st century: global alliance of leaders for nuclear-free world
The Astana Club is one of the most crucial annual meetings in Eurasia, alongside the Boao forum in China and the Valdai discussions in Russia. China, Russia and Kazakhstan are all at the forefront of Eurasia integration. No wonder, then, that the 5th meeting of the Astana Club had to focus on Greater Eurasia - synonymous, it may be hoped, with a "new architecture of global cooperation."

Astana Club congregates a fascinating mix of Eurasia-wide notables with Europeans and Americans. Virtually all relevant shades of the geopolitical spectrum are represented. Panels are very well structured (I moderated two of them). Discussions are frank and non-denial denials are heavily discouraged. Here is just a taste of what was discussed in Nur-Sultan, under the spectacular shallow dome designed by Norman Foster.

Great stabilizer

Comment: See also:


USA

Best of the Web: The Day John Kennedy Died

John F Kennedy
© Off Guardian Org
There is a vast literature on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who died on a November 22nd Friday like this in 1963.

I have contributed my small share to such writing in an effort to tell the truth, honor him, and emphasize its profound importance in understanding the history of the last fifty-six years, but more importantly, what is happening in the U.S.A. today.

In other words, to understand it in its most gut-wrenching reality: that the American national security state will obliterate any president that dares to buck its imperial war-making machine. It is a lesson not lost on all presidents since Kennedy.

Unless one is a government disinformation agent or is unaware of the enormous documentary evidence, one knows that it was the CIA that carried out JFK's murder. Confirmation of this fact keeps arriving in easily accessible forms for anyone interested in the truth.

A case in point is James DiEugenio's recent posting at his website, KennedysandKing, of James Wilcott's affidavit and interrogation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, declassified by the Assassinations Record Review Board in 1998.

In that document, Wilcott, who worked in the finance department for the CIA and was not questioned by the Warren Commission, discusses how he unwittingly paid Lee Harvey Oswald, the government's alleged assassin, through a cryptonym and how it was widely known and celebrated at his CIA station in Tokyo that the CIA killed Kennedy and Oswald worked for the Agency, although he did not shoot JFK.

I highly recommend reading the document.

Snakes in Suits

Best of the Web: Grenfell Tower contractor's hiring for new project in London highlights neoliberal outsourcing nightmare

grenfell tower
© ZUMAPRESS.com
News that the principal Grenfell Tower contractor won a new contract worth almost £100 million to redevelop a London council estate might seem shocking, but really it's unsurprising given the way the system operates in the UK.

You couldn't make it up, could you?

Despite the secretary of state saying it should not bid for public works until investigations into the Grenfell fire had been completed, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan signing an order to that effect, Rydon - the principal contractor for Grenfell - has just been awarded a new contract worth almost £100 million ($129 million) for more redevelopment work from Ealing Council in London.

Ealing says it selected Rydon as a 'partner' for their project to demolish the 264-home High Lane estate and replace it with 450 homes in April 2017, i.e. two months before the Grenfell Fire. But why couldn't they have put the decision on hold until after the inquiry into the fire which, lest we forget, caused the death of 72 people?

What this highlights is how outsourcing in the neoliberal era allows councils and companies to evade proper responsibility. Only last month, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the judge in charge of the Grenfell Inquiry, said in his report into the first phase of the fire that the aluminium composite material cladding on the outside of the tower was the 'primary cause' of the flames spreading up the building. He said the external facade failed to comply with building regulations.