In today's #vatniksoup I'll introduce a British blogger and propagandist, Vanessa Beeley (@VanessaBeeley). She's best-known for spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation about both the Syrian civil war and about the Russo-Ukrainian War.
1/19
Beeley is a daughter of a former diplomat from the UK, Harold Beeley. Like so many other "independent journalist" who defends dictator-ruled regimes around the world, Vanessa started her blogging career writing about the Palestine-Israel conflict.
2/19
Then in 2015, she started focusing on the Syrian civil war. In 2016 she met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus as part of a US Peace Council. She later described the event as her "proudest moment". Beeley was also on the steering committee for the Syria...
3/19
...Solidarity Movement, an association that has received almost 2 million USD in support from undisclosed donors. This association supports he Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a fascist and "rabidly anti-Semitic" political party.
4/19
After Syria, Vanessa naturally moved on to Russia, where she met with Russia's deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov and Maria Zakharova. Bogdanov has been described as one of the main strategists for Syria in Russia.
5/19
Beeley's been appearing frequently on RT and Sputnik, providing a pro-al-Assad and pro-Russian point of view on the war.
Like so many like her, Vanessa has received the "Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism" from a pro-Assad lobby group the...
6/19
...Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees. Other prominent activists that have received this prestigious award are Jackson "Z" Hinkle, the "MAGA communist" grifter, and Max Blumenthal, the Grayzone blogger.
7/19
It was suggested that Beeley was a finalist for the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, however it was later revealed that there are no finalists for said award and only winners are published.
8/19
As a "journalist", Vanessa has published some weird takes on world events. Some examples include calling the Human Rights Watch a "fake" NGO, claiming that the Charlie Hebdo shooting was a false flag operation, and that Al-Qaeda had nothing to do with 9/11.
9/19
Beeley is part of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, which is another pro-Assad group that tries to defame the White Helmets. White Helmets are a group of people who help Syrian civilians in war zones.
10/19
They have also documented bombings of hospitals and use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, and for this reason they have been a target of disinformation campaigning for years.
11/19
Beeley has suggested together with the Russian government that they are connected to Al-Qaeda and that they are involved, among other things, in organ harvesting. She has also suggested that the group is a "legitimate military target".
12/19
Hackers hacked and obtained Beeley's private Facebook conversations with the blogger Scott Gaulke, where she admitted that the Syrian government has tortured but that she would never say it publicly.
13/19
Vanessa was one of the "foreign observers" in the sham vote for the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. Russia accepted anyone who'd come to "observe the legality of the vote", and she was of course one of the volunteers.
14/19
James Delingpole interviewed Beeley on Rumble in Oct, 2022, and the whole thing was pure comedy. They showed the West as a main source of disinformation, whereas Russia was presented as a beacon of truth.
15/19
They also said that the Russian economy is thriving she even called herself an "independent delegate" for the annexation vote. She also claimed that Russia hasn't committed any war crimes and that many Ukrainian refugees she has interviewed have praised Russia.
16/19
Beeley is a big fan of the conspiracy theory "deep state", and often refers to this in her rambles. She's also shared several conspiracy theories about COVID-19. Vanessa's also claimed that she's on a "UK kill list" along with 300 children, but it is unclear if she...
17/19
...actually referred to Myrotvorets, a list of who the authors call to be "enemies of Ukraine". At some point pro-Russians started calling it a "official Ukrainian government kill list", which it of course isn't: disinfowatch.org/disinfo/russia…
18/19
Even though Beeley is mostly focusing on events in Syria, he's still a prominent figure in spreading Russian disinformation and propaganda, even participating in their hoax referendums.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American streamer and millionaire. He’s best known for his champagne socialism, rabid criticism of the US and Israel, support for the Soviet Union and for Chinese and Russian invasions, and for mistreating his dog.
1/20
Born in 1991, Piker grew up in a privileged and well-connected environment. His father held senior roles at big corporations and his uncle, Cenk Uygur, is the founder of The Young Turks media network. He graduated cum laude from Rutgers, a top-tier university in New Jersey.
2/20
His main activity and primary source of income consists of hours-long livestreams on Twitch where he comments on news and yells at videos. He also keeps his dog in place the whole time with a shock collar.
What you see happening here is coordinated strategic communication by the Trump cult. Elon’s baby mama and former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair explained this ecosystem in a long video. They have built platforms where people can find narratives to spread and get paid for doing so.
Even though the system technically breaks the platform's ToS, this is perfectly fine for @nikitabier and the rest of the X crew, because Elon pays their salaries and this is part of his election interference machinery.
If you wanna know how the system works, read this:
Here’s Ashley’s video, where she explains how the system works. She was immediately attacked by various MAGA actors, which suggests that what she said hit a nerve.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician. He’s best known for rising to power at the height of the Greek debt crisis, not solving anything but endearing himself to the left, and using his fame to promote Russian imperialism.
1/20
Born in 1961 in Athens, Varoufakis studied economics in the UK and built an academic career in Australia, the US, and Europe. His early work focused on game theory, political economy, and critiques of capitalism.
2/20
Presenting himself as the fearless, unorthodox economist willing to confront the EU’s “neoliberal” elites, he rose to prominence during Greece’s debt crisis. At its height in 2015, he was appointed finance minister under the left-wing Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras.
In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.
1/7
NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”. 2/7
To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.
1/20
War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.
But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:
Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.
In this second (and possibly last) Basiji Soup, we’ll explore how the Islamic Republic of Iran has prepared for a conflict with the US and Israel. We won’t cover the military aspects, but another kind of war — information warfare.
1/20
In the 1st Basiji Soup, we souped the Islamic Republic, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, its support of terrorism including Russia’s, its (one-sided?) relationship with Putin, and the mass protests against it that started two months ago:
The Internet blackout has been crucial in allowing the regime to cover up its massacre of the protesters and especially the scope of it, making it difficult to assess the number of victims. They went to great lengths to jam Starlink, after having made its use illegal.