The sole filter for information about Russia for decades have been the media, which have given a very slanted and frankly dishonest picture of the country — due to a bitter anti-Russian bias among its owners, editors and writers.
Actually, the deception goes back much further. It got started in late 18th c. England as Russia emerged as the British Empire’s greatest global adversary. The deception was sustained by enlightenment, democratic, and liberal forces in Europe throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, whom Russia saw as mortal enemies, which they indeed turned out to be.
It is fair to say that the average Westerner, even the average highly-educated one, has a very faulty and slanted knowledge of Russia, tainted as it has been now for three centuries of outright hostility. I see it again and again when talking to highly educated and fair-minded people, especially older ones.
Perhaps we are on the cusp of a new era, when observers can write and think about Russia with a new eye, and begin to understand her majesty and promise, as Russia is only now beginning to do herself. She truly has much to offer the world, in knowledge, wisdom, and spirituality, like some vastly rich lost uncle we only recently became aware of.
There is a catastrophic shortage of Western writers who speak Russian well enough to really understand her. Amazingly, 90% of the people who write about her are more or less illiterate in her tongue, as are most Russians in English. This clearly needs to be overcome. There is a dangerous gap in communication, the harmful effects of which I observe on a daily basis.
The hearty enthusiasm which we met on a popular level is one of the fun distractions from the daily grind. Right-minded foreigners picking up shield and buckler and striking blows for Russia? — This can’t help but warm the cockles of the Slavic heart.
The rollicking and popular political talk shows discovered us and as I speak Russian fluently enough, when in Russia, I sometimes go on, usually to explain the zany convulsions of American foreign policy.
As in the US, these shows feature top politicians, journalists, and academics, and it gives me a chance to meet and talk with them, and get insight into how they see the world, and their role in it. In this way, our team has access to some of the leading public personalities in Russia, sometimes forming strong friendships.
They often understand what is happening in the West far better than most Westerners. Their sources of information are excellent, and not hopelessly warped by the miasma of bias and deception Western policy-makers struggle under.
We were even awarded a prestigious Russian journalism prize, named after the Ukrainian author Oles Buzina. Accepting it was a truly humbling experience, borne as it was of the death and suffering of Ukrainian innocents on both sides.
Russia Insider continues to grow and deepen with each passing month. It is truly gratifying work, for it exposes lies and hypocrisy which wreak untold suffering around the world, not just in Russia.
We receive countless emails from readers with words to the effect that we have changed their life, struck the scales from their eyes, made them realize that a massive fraud and deception was being perpetrated, and how thankful they are to us.
It makes you want to get up in the morning and keep ramming the gates.
Chapter VI: Agents of Influence
As I suggested, my involvement with Russia Insider ratcheted up after a visit by Charles Bausman to my home in Germany. During that visit the RI founder and I had occasion to visit nearby Trier Cathedral (Dom St. Peter), where the seamless robe of Christ is enshrined. Bausman, who’s devout Orthodox, was fascinated by this icon of faith as I recall. After our visit to the cathedral the Russia Insider founder asked me to help make use of volunteers attracted to the project, and to extend the social media, internet and political reach of the news outlet. Bausman, as an experienced Moscow businessman, had a “tiger by the tail” so to speak, for Russia
Insider served a growing community of people unwilling to accept the anti-Russia message. From its inception, Russia Insider was an alternative media hub, a source to turn to outside the mainstream and the propaganda of Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, the media weapons of the globalists.
One of the most important facets of my work with Bausman and associates was an increasing ability to tap the growing community of pro-Russia readers and journalists, to gather, filter, and distribute the other side of news and opinion about the Euromaidan coup d’etat in Ukraine and other topics. With western mainstream media operating in “parrot” mode, Russia Insider and other independent media became magnetic, attracting anyone interested in the dissenting view.
As for my role, I was the publisher of Russia Insider only in name. My real role was in evangelizing the platform, and in doing research needed to dig out the truth of critical stories. Russia Insider allowed contributors including me a lot more flexibility and freedom to look deep inside the extended network of actors in this new geopolitical drama unfolding. As a hub of media activity surrounding the anti-Russia issue, RI was a perfect vantage point from which to view the big picture. So, helping Russia Insider and using it to publish my own research was logical, as it was for other journalists who sought platforms outside the mainstream.
While MH17 dominated Russia Insider and most other pro-Russian media throughout the latter part of 2014, other crises would soon cause even more extensive independent media involvement, and Russia Insider offered an advantage for dissemination of the dissenting Russia view. As it turned out, the truth of matters concerning Russia would not have gotten as much traction without Russia Insider and the various collaborators with Bausman. So, when I appeared on RT to discuss the preposterousness of the western storyline on the Malaysian jet catastrophe, the focus was on the tabloid-like nature of media in the west.
The advantages of being an independent media outlet became apparent very early on with the situation surrounding the so-called “Peacemaker Kill List,” a website the Kiev fascists put up to reveal and target pro-Russian sympathizers. Russia Insider was one of the outlets breaking the story of the website in April 2015. This quote from one of the initial articles spells out the purpose of the “Peacemaker” web presence:
“The website publishes personal data about the traitors, separatists, supporters of the Russian invaders and the militants of illegal armed groups currently living in the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea (Ukraine).”
Shortly after Russia Insider and other pro-Russian media broke the story of this “kill list”, me and my small team set out to discover who was supporting such a dastardly effort to target anti-Maidan support in Ukraine. It did not take long to uncover the thinly veiled source of the effort. Sharing computer data, digital sources, and some social media profiling, we identified not only the persons behind the creation of the website and the domain, but we traced “Peacemaker” down to NATO servers via a series of fairly simple DOS commands like “tracert” (trace route). All this research revealed many of the people involved in the effort to target the Kiev government’s opposition. We later traced those people back to the British Embassy in Ukraine, the German Foreign Ministry, and even the Ukraine OSCE through a loose connection with one of the perpetrators of the hit list. Many of the details were revealed in mine and Holger Eekhof’s article, “What’s Behind the “Peacekeeper” Killings in Ukraine?”, which provided linkages deep inside the network the globalists are using to this day to undermine Russia and her relations with Ukraine.