Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Mar 4, 2023 25 tweets 13 min read Read on X
In today's #vatnik soup, I'll introduce a Spanish writer, colonel and attention-seeker,Pedro Baños. He's best-known for his takes on "geostrategy" (his Twitter handle is @geoestratego), for his hate on "Anglo-Saxon" world and for his long-lasting, low-key support for Russia.
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Baños started his long military career in the early 80's, and he was even the head of Counterintelligence and Security of the European Army in Strasbourg during the early 2000's. In 2017 he published a book called "Así se domina el mundo" ("How They Rule The World").

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The book focuses on the idea that world is ruled via realpolitik, a system of politics based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations. British writer Jeremy Duns compared the Spanish and English versions of the book, and noticed that Baños had deleted...

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...around 30000 words from the English version. In these deleted passages,Baños had referred to the Jewish Rothschild family in connection with the antisemitic fabricated text and conspiracy theory called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in Russia in 1903.4/24 Image
In the TV show "Cuarto Milenio" he flirted with the idea that the Rothschilds together with Israel were behind the JFK assassination. Still back in Jan, 2022, he claimed in a YouTube show that the world was in the hands of "ten-twelve families who run everything".

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Back in 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, Baños condemned the attack and called it a "Pyrrhic victory" for Putin. His views on both Russia and the US apparently changed around 2014, after the Russians annexed Crimea and started their false flag operation in Donbas.

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After the shoot down of MH17, he suggested on an interview on RT that, according to "alternative sources", it might have been shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet.

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During the Syrian War, Pedro accused the US and president Obama of "imprisoning Russia through NATO". He also supported the Russian version of the Douma chemical attack, denying the use of chemical weapons by the al-Assad regime. A year later his stance on this battle of...

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...empires became even more evident, when he wrote an article for the Spanish military publication "Ejército", praising Putin's ambitions to return Russia to its "former glory". Baños stated that the EU's sanctions to annexation of Crimea was an "unnecessary mistake".

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In Jun, 2018, he was going to be appointed as the director of National Security of Spain, but the nomination was contested by Partido Popular and Ciudadanos parties due to Pedro's "public positions in favor of the Kremlin", and he was never chosen for the job.

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Spanish political analyst and political scientist José Ignacio Torreblanca (@jitorreblanca) went as far as comparing him to Michael Flynn, a US general with solid pro-Russian connections and who also believes in various conspiracy theories.

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Baños also downplayed the Russian interference during the 2017 Catalonia referendum, blaming the journalist, Nicolás de Pedro (@nicolasdepedro), who wrote about the incident to be employed by a "fake think tank" funded by the British secret service MI6.

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NYT had earlier uncovered that the group calling for the independence met with FSB colonels and that even the infamous GRU unit 29155, a group best-known for the Salisbury poisonings, was somehow meddling with the independence process.

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In Nov, 2021, when Russia was gathering its troops along the Ukrainian border, Pedro called those who warned about the invasion "warmongers". When Zelensky was preparing Ukraine for war, Baños called it a ruse, "steering away the attention from internal politics".

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Baños spent the months before the invasion on mocking analysts who were warning about it. In Apr, 2022, he said in an interview that "providing weapons to Ukraine is not the right way". In another interview he predicted that "hundreds of thousands could die of cold" in...

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...wintertime due to the sanctions on Russia. Pedro's comments haven't gone unnoticed in the Spanish media: an article by Julio Valdeón (@JulioValdeon) on El Mundo explicitly accused Baños of being paid by the Kremlin.

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Lately Baños has been going around every possible TV show, touting about classic Kremlin propaganda like Ukrainian biolabs and COVID-19 being a US experiment.

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It is rather alarming when colonels and "geostrategists" mix conspiracy theories and strong anti-US and NATO rhetoric with geopolitical views. His fandom for Putin & his regime has been evident on many occasions, and even though he has condemned Russia's illegal invasion,...18/24 ImageImage
... he keeps on promoting the "mistakes of the Anglo-Saxons", barely mentioning the genocidal events conducted by Russia in Ukraine.

Baños seems to love attention and being in the spotlight. I mean, the man is 63 and has an active TikTok account.

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He also attempts to control the narrative: after I announced that I'm looking for help in translating Spanish for project "Pedro Baños", he immediately went into damage control mode, even suggesting that there's a "disinformation campaign" against him, and that #NAFO...

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...mostly consists of bots. He claimed that this campaign is organized from Finland, and his friend, claiming to be "digital analyst", continued that it this might cost "as much as 10 000 EUR" each month.

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Why is Baños doing this? For money and fame, of course. Since he lost his cozy job in the military, he now somehow has to stay relevant, which is why he makes silly TikToks, spreads conspiracy theories on populist TV shows and blames people for plotting against him.

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So, @geoestratego, here's a litmus test: Let us know what you think of the massacres in Bucha and Izium, tell us how you feel about the FSB-organized kid's torture chambers in Kherson, please enlighten us with your thoughts on the mass bombings of civilian targets,...

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...conducted by the Russian troops. This would be the moment to truly condemn Russia's war atrocities and illegal invasion.

This thread will be published also in Spanish in the near future. Thank you for the sous-chef @Victor_Vas_Her for helping me to deliver this soup.

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Support my work (and get some AI art!): buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi

Past soups: vatniksoup.com
Related soups:
Michael Flynn:

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Jun 14
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll talk about the recent EU elections and what are their implications for both the Kremlin and Ukraine. Right-wing political parties, some pro-Kremlin, won a lot of seats around Europe, and this result can also change the EU’s stance on Ukraine.

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But before we start, I want to promote a truck fundraiser I'm doing together with the fantastic @ArturRehi and @69thSB.

Our goal is 20 000 USD, and you can contribute to this important fundraiser here:

2/19artursarmy.com/contribute/reh…
EU’s support of Ukraine is essential for their survival against genocidal Russia. So far,this support has been delayed mostly by Orban’s Hungary (& to some degree, Fico’s Slovakia). Now, this support will probably be challenged by many new members of the European Parliament.
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Read 20 tweets
Jun 14
None of these clowns (Wallace, Zdanoka and Daly) were elected to the European Parliament.

It's a bad day for authoritarian regime apologists around the world.

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Read 4 tweets
Jun 12
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss a specific propaganda/disinformation that the Kremlin likes to use – antisemitism. I also talk about how the Russian society itself has become riddled with antisemitism & how this has led to a decrease in Jewish population in the country.
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Russian antisemitism works on many levels, and their narratives vary depending whether they’re targeting a local audience or people in Europe and the US. For example for the latter, Russia attempts to create a false narrative of Ukraine being an antisemitic “Nazi state”.

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But before diving deeper, let’s look at a survey data of Russians in 2023: Nearly 30 million Russians harbour antisemitic attitudes, and 15% of those surveyed believed that “Jews were responsible for most of the world’s wars.” 38% think that the Jews have...

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Jun 5
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Ukrainian media personality and propagandist, Diana Panchenko (@Panchenko_X). She’s best-known for betraying her own country by peddling anti-Zelenskyy and anti-Ukraine propaganda and disinformation for the Kremlin.

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Panchenko was born in 1988 in the Mykolaev Oblast in Ukrainian SSR in 1988. She studied publishing and editing at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and later graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv with a degree in law.

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After graduating, Diana worked briefly for the news site . Between 2010 and 2015, Panchenko was a presenter for KyivTV, but she found her true calling as a pro-Kremlin propagandist after she was hired by a national “news channel” called NewsOne.

3/22 Gazeta.ua

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May 30
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Belarusian politician and dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. He’s best-known for giving up his country to Russia, and for cracking up political opposition and dissidents in Belarus, ruling the country with an iron fist.

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Alexander was born in the Byelorussian SSR, living an unhappy childhood with his mother, taunted by his schoolmates due to being fatherless. His father’s identity is not known, but there’s a rumour that his father was a Roma traveler passing through the region.

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Lukashenko joined the Soviet Communist Party in 1979, and a few years later he became the deputy chairman of a collective farm. By 1990, he had risen to the rank of Deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR. He claimed to be an opponent of corruption…

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Read 20 tweets
May 27
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss social media superspreaders. Due to their effectiveness, superspreader accounts are often used to spread "low credibility" content, disinformation and propaganda, and today this is more often done by hostile state actors such as Russia.

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DeVerna et al. (2024) described superspreaders as "users who consistently disseminate a disproportionately large amount of low-credibility content," also known as bullshit. It’s worth noting, that some of these people may actually believe the lies they spread.

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The numbers behind these accounts are astonishing – a study by Grinberg et al. (2019) found out that 0,1% of Twitter accounts were responsible for sharing approximately 80% of the mis/disinformation related to the 2016 US presidential election.

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Read 15 tweets

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