What do Wikipedia, notorious Russian mafioso, nincompoop Putin adversaries, dissident Russian business TV, CNN, CNBC, Facebook, Google, Twitter and the United States Senate have in common? Well, Jimmy Wales’ Wikipedia once had nothing much to do with fake news and globalist propaganda, but the rest of these share the stain of obvious wickedness that comes from pursuing malicious skulduggery. This is a good story, read on.
What if you woke up this morning and learned that the globalist bankster cartel had funded Russian mafioso to promote blogger Alex Nevalny, whose minions scampered about the web fabricating false evidence so that CNN could propagandize for deep state political subversion in the US? It would have been incomprehensible five years ago. But not today. While researching some last points for my upcoming book yesterday, I found a common thread that runs through the whole Russiagate fiasco. And of all the places to find this thread, I was a bit shocked to find myself back at Wikipedia, where I was an early adopter way back when. The thread ties together a new Wikipedia user, a questionable article on the world’s most famous digital encyclopedia, and common linkages all the way from Russia back to powerful Washington politicians driving deadly policies.
This story begins with a CNN article entitled “Exclusive: Putin’s ‘chef,’ the man behind the troll factory”, which attempted to resuscitate an urban legend and implicate the Russian president in election meddling. On first reading the Russiagate fairytale from the fake news network, I almost believed the authors Tim Lister, Jim Sciutto and Mary Ilyushina. The trio slung together a seemingly viable string of connections between a Russian businessman named Yevgeny Prigozhin, who the CNN writers styled a “chef” and tried to tie to Russiagate as a financier funding an army of Russky trolls. Then I dug down into the fabrication.
Looking for the source of CNN’s story I ended up at the dissident Russian business broadcasting network RBC, which had previously implicated an entity called the Internet Research Agency as a Kremlin troll farm. According to CNN, citing an article at Moscow Times, Prigozhin’s companies funded the same agency New York Times writer Adrian Chen sold as a St. Petersburg troll farm in his article “The Agency” in 2015. But there are problems, inconsistencies, and new implications in this CNN construction to support the Russiagate fairytale. First and foremost among these is the lack of proof that Yevgeny Prigozhin has ever been linked to Vladimir Putin. As it turns out it was RBC business news that created the hype that Prigozhin was Putin’s “chef”. I won’t get into the idiotic story line Moscow Times told, but instead I’ll focus on RBC TV, the only channel in Russia I could find that was launched in partnership with either CNN or CNBC. Yes, you read that correctly. The same cable TV network found to be bashing Russia for ratings is also in cahoots with the Putin haters inside Russia. But wait, there’s more.
The notion of Yevgeny Prigozhin being inserted into the matrix of alleged connections between the Kremlin and a supposed troll operation struck me as thin indeed, so I dug a little deeper into the online presence of the Russian businessman. As it turns out, the only solid connection between Prigozhin and the Russian president is the story that he once served dinner to Putin and some of his foreign colleagues. If you’re like me, the comic notion of other would be Putin associates popping up all over CNN headlines appeared for you on reading this. “Putin’s plumber” or “Putin’s gardener” come to mind immediately. But regarding the creation of Mr. Prigozhin’s Wikipedia presence, further digging turned up several questionable Wikipedia articles where “somebody” is attempting to establish the idea that Putin’s chef is some dark and sinister web denizen operating a clandestine network. As an editor and contributor to Wikipedia myself, a new user popping up with page creations and edits about Prigozhin were a red flag for me instantly.
For those unfamiliar, Wikipedia is unique where contributions to and editing of the encyclopedia are concerned, and especially where the community there goes. Jimmy Wales’ magnificent idea has grown into a kind of subculture of information and ideology, in a way. Suffice it to say, editors there are both brilliant and anal retentive – pardon me, passionate – about biographies and other articles. So a new user with the handle Kap677-2 introducing a biographical page on “Putin’s Chef” drew immediate suspicion from several Wikipedia editors other than me. The article you’ll find under review to be deleted here, it’s a big breadcrumb leading to none other than the pitiful blogger and Putin adversary, Alex Nevalny. Without going into infinite detail, one of the Wikipedia editors scrutinizing this new biography asked the newcomer Kap677-2 point blank, whether or not the user was tied to the Nevalny network associated via another article the user created entitled “Anti-corruption Foundation”. Here is the meat of that “talk” conversation:
“Hi, I’m UNSC Luke 1021. I went to the article Anti-corruption Foundation, which you created. Reading through the article, I got the feeling that the main editor was related to the topic. I’m just wondering if you are closely connected to the article topic (the ACF), because I have to tag it as such.”
Of course, our new Wikipedia aficionado denied any connection, but the activity of this user betrays this denial. It’s clear for me this Kap677-2 joined Wikipedia to edit and/or create pro-Nevalny articles to serve myriad purposes. Then there’s another Kap677-2 editing point where the article Don’t Call Him Dimon is being considered for quick deletion by Wikipedia editors on account of its not being “notable” enough. For those unaware, Don’t Call Him Dimon is Nevalny’s documentary attempting to smear Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. In the conversations at Wikipedia over this, Kap677-2 calls Nevalny “brilliant” and enters an aggressive tit-for-tat with Wikipedia editors with the aid of anonymous users who only have IP addresses as names. Only an idiot would believe Kap677-2 and his supporters do not have a vested interest in seeing these articles published, Wikipedia editing is just not that easy and painless, trust me. Looking at this conversation from an insider perspective, one can find Nevalny sympathizers who are key editors at Wikipedia too. One with the handle “CopperKettle” is fighting for inclusion of the Medvedev bashing documentary, and this user was clearly at the Anti-corruption demonstration in Yekaterinburg on 26 March 2017, for having submitted personal photographs from the rally to Wikipedia. There’s a lot more, but I’ll leave off here for the sake of expediency. The Wikipedia rhetoric stinks of Euromaidan PR and carries the tone of the Daily Beast or the Mikhail Khodorkovsky backed Interpreter. Based on IP addresses within the conversation and the cutting smartass of this Kap677-2, I’d say there’s a Ukraine Nazi in the CNN network’s source brigade. But let’s move to ousted Russian mafioso Khodorkovsky and the CNN to US Senate propaganda channels.
So far, I’ve established linkages in between the Alex Nevalny movement and what I believe is a PR effort to apply SEO and brand effect to anti-Medvedev, anti-Putin content before the upcoming Russian presidential elections. Yes, PR companies like one I used to run create content all over the web in order to expand the brands of clients. This includes using Facebook and the other social channels, SEO and SEM, content distribution, media outreach, ads, and so forth. So, the problem for CNN and even the US Senate is, there is a method footprint left on the web no matter what. Yes, be afraid, I can track one like a bloodhound (just fund the effort for six months and see). Sorry, back to the hunt for CNN’s fake news mission.
Back to RBC channel, which attempts to smear Putin via the lame Panama Papers and cheers for the Yukos oil thief like the second coming at every turn. While Khodorkovsky is only a favored saint of the news channel, another Russian privateer named Mikhail Prokhorov is a billionaire angel of the globalists who’s bent on destroying Putin and carving up Russia with the Rothschilds. Prokhorov, who is the owner of the Brooklyn Nets NBA team, essentially betrayed Vladimir Putin when his RBC channel aired hyped coverage of the Panama Papers. Since that time, news that he’s dumping assets in Russia and worldwide indicates that his logical migration west has been underway ever since the FSB raided the headquarters of his Onexim group in Moscow. To briefly sum up who stands behind Prokhorov, a quoted citation from Wikipedia concerning his investment company Renaissance Capital serves well:
“Each year, Renaissance Capital holds their annual investment conference in Moscow and invites keynote speakers from world leaders in various fields of expertise. In 2008, Tony Blair, the former UK Prime Minister and Henry Kissinger were keynote speakers. In 2010, Bill Clinton was paid $500k to speak.”
Any questions on this network of connections so far? Good, let’s move on and finish up.
Enter George Soros, the world’s most infamous Russian asset predator. Soros, who pledged support for Prokhorov when he ran against Putin in 2012, joined forces with the Onexim boss and Albanian/American billionaire Sahit Muja in order to invest in (that is, steal) Russia’s gold and mining industry back in 2011. Muja, who’s accused of being a gun running privateer and mafioso himself, made millions off the destruction when Yugoslavia was deconstructed. But once again, the globalist rabbit hole is getting way too deep here. The “network” I once again attempt to describe is made up of former US Presidents who were just puppets, Putin-ejected Russian mobsters posing as business people, the media channels they run, and the politicians we all know are owned by whoever has the most money and influence. A Russian TV channel cooks up a story to help create a Putin adversary. Its CNN partner passes the lie along. And crazed Russophobes in the US Senate like Senator John McCain (himself linked to the US mafia) paste together a “case” against their enemies – mighty Putin and Russia. Soros, the Clintons, Khodorkovsky and his benefactor Rothschild, and the latest version of “Putin did it” to mimic those Panama Papers effects!
So, CNN, the network that hates Russia, parrots the Facebook ad story which Senator McCain and harpies like Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee need in order to get their anti-Russia and pro-militarism legislation passed. Let us not forget CNN being hammered for sensationalizing anti-Russia stories just to get viewers. And especially not the fact three network investigative journalists working with their the network had to resign over “fake news” related to Russiagate. When Thomas Frank, Eric Lichtblau, and Lex Haris reportedly chose to voluntarily resign from CNN over a retracted President Trump-Russia story that incorrectly connected Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci to a $10 billion Russian investment fund, the rest of mainstream American media turned a blind eye. Finally, CNN was previously convicted in the court of truth and logic by WikiLeaks, when it published emails from John Podesta that showed CNN contributor Donna Brazile passing the questions for a CNN-sponsored debate to the Clinton campaign. You see, it’s the trend and the chosen sides of these issues that reveals the connectivity. For the same reason me and many of my colleagues are labeled “Kremlin Trolls” or “Putin Fans”, these Russia destroyers are all linked together too. In my aforementioned book, many of the top independent voices championing Russia readily admit taking the side of Putin. And there is ample reason for anyone to do so. Putin is trying to keep his country’s resources from being pirated and his people from being split into helpless factions. Meanwhile, the failed consumerists and money lenders battle to keep a sinking hyper-capitalistic and unsustainable ship afloat.
On a final note, CNN and CNBC partnered with Putin fan turned enemy Mikhail Prokhorov and not other networks like RT, TASS, or even RIA. I wonder why.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.