However, not all of it comes from those firms because the controlling stockholders in them have their own foundations that in turn fund those think tanks; and, so, the percentages that the Quincy Institute cited — high though they may be — certainly understate the reality here. Furthermore, many of the hired experts are professors whose pay comes instead largely from huge donations by big investors in firms such as Raytheon to their university, and some of those professors hold endowed chairs from these investors. In any case, the firms that derive most if not all of their income from selling weapons to the U.S. Government and to the Governments that it has allied itself with are basically controlling the moneybags that pay the experts that those journalists rely upon in order to interpret to the public Russia and China and make sense out of international relations.
The top two, most-frequently consulted and hired, sources of this expertise were the Atlantic Council, which is the propaganda-arm of NATO, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which derives most of its income from the Pentagon and from the megacorporations that derive most if not all of their income, directly and indirectly, from the Pentagon.
For example, on 4 December 2018, the Atlantic Council published their “The Kremlin’s Trojan Horses 3.0”, which opened:
“Two years ago, the Kremlin attacked the United States through a coordinated influence operation targeting the 2016 presidential elections,” writes Dr. Alina Polyakova in The Kremlin’s Trojan Horses 3.0: Russian Influence in Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, a new report from the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Following successful installments on Russian influence in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, the report examines Russian efforts to establish a political presence in Northern Europe.
This report is the final installment of a three-year-long project that sought to expose a less often discussed element of the Kremlin’s political warfare: the cultivation of political allies in Europe’s core. The aim of the project is to draw attention to Western Europe, where for far too long the Russian threat was either dismissed, ignored, or overlooked.
It was written by five neoconservatives (advocates for the U.S. to control all countries and not merely its present allies). For example: “Mr. Henrik Sundbom, fellow, Stockholm Free World Forum.” The Stockholm Free World Forum is a libertarian or extreme-capitalist and anti-socialist — and especially anti social democratic or anti democratic socialist — think tank, which advocates privatizing if not eliminating Sweden’s social services such as health care. In turn, the Stockholm Free World Forum is “funded by the Swedish Free Enterprise Foundation [sv], which also funds the free-market think tank Timbro” and in turn Timbro is “financed by the Swedish Free Enterprise Foundation [sv].” And, in turn, the Swedish Free Enterprise Foundation was founded during the Second World War with the explicit purpose of providing the political debate with new and independent research, and a different way of posing questions on economics and enterprise. In the mid-forties business leaders in Sweden felt that the radical social democratic leaders were merely waiting for the war to end and the period of coalition government to be over in order to start implementing radical socialistic policies. So in defence of free enterprise and market economics …
They were the political opposition to the social democrats who had created the Swedish social welfare state that’s finally now being dismantled by this defeat of democratic socialism in Sweden. This is the domestic-policy side of what NATO represents.
In other words: neoconservatism is simply the international-affairs portion of the neoliberal or “libertarian” (one-dollar-one-vote, like in a corporation) instead of democratic (one-person-one-vote) government. It’s fascism, instead of democracy. That’s why Mussolini said that “corporationism” and “fascism” are the same. It’s neoliberalism-neoconservatism. (It has been the American Way ever since FDR died.)
One of the Atlantic Council study‘s alleged “Trojan Horses” from Russia is “DUTCH POLITICIANS’ AFFILIATIONS WITH RUSSIA” which attacks Dutch politicians who don’t endorse the NATO anti-Russian policy. “Thierry Baudet, leader of the Forum for Democracy, has frequently taken a pro-Russia view and has shared a fair amount of disinformation on social media concerning MH17.” However, in my own 7 October 2019 “Update on the MH17 Case” I proved by links directly through to the primary evidence (which the NATO propaganda hides), that the Dutch Government was lying through its teeth and rabidly violating the evidence to accuse Russia instead of Ukraine and America’s President Barack Obama for that shoot-down or an airliner and killing of 298 people. This constant lying is typical for the U.S. and its allies. And that’s merely ONE example of it.
Another prominent example is the lie-filled passage that opens the Introduction to the entire 40-page document:
Two years ago, the Kremlin attacked the United States through a coordinated influence operation targeting the 2016 presidential elections. It also sought to interfere in subsequent elections across Europe. Heightened public attention to Russian influence operations, ongoing governmental and civil society investigations, and increased scrutiny of manipulation by social media companies of their platforms have revealed the inner workings of Russia’s political warfare against the West. It is a full spectrum strategy aimed at undermining democratic institutions, sowing distrust, and destabilizing societies by amplifying what divides them. To achieve those goals, the Kremlin has deployed digital disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks. It has carried out intelligence operations on European and American soil. The Russian government and its proxies have sought to gain a foothold in Europe through illicit finance, corruption, and politically motivated energy deals such as Nord Stream 2.
They don’t need evidence, no links directly through to the evidence so that the reader can check it out and find whether it shows what the writer is saying that it shows; all they need instead is true-believers who take everything on the basis of pure faith in the type of lies and propaganda that such think tanks and the ‘news’-media that rely upon them spew constantly. Unfortunately, in the U.S.-and-allied world, that’s the vast majority of the public. The controlling owners of such corporations as General Dynamics and of the Establishment ‘news’-media can only be delighted that this is so. But now it threatens to bring on WW III, on the basis of their lies. If there is any reason for hope, it will be that those publics will stop believing the lies before the first invasion in WW III flies. Because the U.S. and its allies have no case — none at all. ONLY lies. And the entire U.S.-and-allied case on Ukraine is built on them.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.