In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American political consultant and lobbyist, Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr). He's best-known for his work as an advisor to Donald Trump & for his alleged connections with Julian Assange and the GRU in relation to the leaked DNC e-mails.
1/20
Stone has been involved US politics for a long time, and he'd started his dirty tricks already in 1972, when he contributed money to Nixon's rival under the name of Trotskyist youth group, and tipped about this to the local news.
2/20
In 1977, he won the presidency of the Young Republicans with Paul Manafort as his campaign manager. In 1980, Stone and Manafort launched a lobbying company, BMS, together with partner Charlie Black. The company represented basically anyone with money, including Zaire's...
3/20
...dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, and Filipino dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. This led to the company being nicknamed "The Torturers' Lobby".
Stone has described himself as "an agent provocateur," stating that his strategy is to "attack, attack, attack – never defend" ...
4/20
...and "Admit nothing, deny everything, and launch a counterattack," a strategy very similar to the Russian style of "Firehose of Falsehood" information operations.
5/20
Roger officially left his position as Trump's campaign adviser in 2015, but he allegedly collaborated still in 2016 with Julian Assange to discredit Hillary Clinton. In 2020, unsealed search warrants revealed contacts between the two, and that Stone had...
6/20
...organized a "couple of hundred" fake FB accounts to spread the anti-Clinton message on social media. The Washington Times reported that Stone DM'd with the alleged DNC hacker Guccifer 2.0, a persona believed to be created by the Russian intelligence agency GRU.
7/20
Few months before the Podesta e-mails were leaked, he tweeted "Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel".
On Jan 2019, Roger was arrested and charged with witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and five counts of making false statements.
8/20
In one case, he told a witness to "prepare to die". In Nov 2019, he was convicted on all seven felony counts, and was sentenced to 40 months in prison. Few days before he was scheduled to report to prison, his sentence was commuted and finally pardoned by Trump.
9/20
After Trump's loss at the 2020 presidential election, Stone was actively participating in the Stop the Steal movement, claiming that Trump actually won. A Danish film crew allegedly caught Stone declaring "Fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence".
10/20
Stone was also involved in the ReAwaken America, a far-right, Christian nationalist political movement that promotes a range of conspiracy theories related to COVID-19, Stop the Steal movement, WEF, and to QAnon.
11/20
After his speech, Stone collected money for his legal and medical bills.
Other notable speakers at the tour were Michael Flynn, Alex Jones and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
12/20
In Apr 2021, The US Justice Department filed a civil law suit against Roger and his wife for alleged unpaid federal taxes, amounting to around 2 million USD. It is unclear if Stone collected money for this lawsuit at the ReAwaken America Tour.
13/20
Stone defended Putin in an interview conducted by Real America's Voice by saying that "Putin is acting defensively," continuing that "you won’t read that in the mainstream media". He referred to Zelensky as an "undemocratic" after he'd shut down Medvedchuk's media empire.
14/20
Medvedchuk is best-known for being Putin's lapdog. He also claimed that "The Ukrainians have used their soil to place dual-launch missile pads, missiles that will be aimed at the Soviet Union [sic]," and also suggested that the US and Ukraine are ...
15/20
..."cooking up who knows what pestilence to dump on the Russian people" in the Ukrainian biolabs.
In Apr 2022, he suggested that Zelensky is no "different than Putin," continuing that "Ukrainian soldiers are reliably involved in atrocities, so that makes him as big a ...
16/20
...murderer as the Russians. Nobody has the moral high ground here, that’s for sure."
Stone actively tries to undermine the support of US to Ukraine on his Rumble channel, where he interviews figures like Michael Flynn, Tara Reade, and Alex Jones.
17/20
He also seems to oppose the "globalists" and the "deep state", and promotes conspiracy theories like The Great Reset.
Funnily, Roger Stone uses social media like most baby boomers - he occasionally forgets that everyone can see his tweets.
18/20
He's called people "stupid ignorant ugly bitch", stating that he'd "enjoy crush u in court and forcing you to eat shit". He's called @yashar a "talentless asswipe" and @ananavarro "fat" and "stupid". Roger's also called Washingon Post "CIA controlled" media.
19/20
As is tradition in the US, you can buy all kinds of crap from his web store, ranging from "hand signed" paperweights to "personally hand signed Presidential pardons".
Banks started his work career at the insurance market, eventually becoming a relatively successful businessman. According to The Guardian, Banks had set up 37 different companies with slight variations of his name.
4/20
Three of them had the same date of birth but listed different companies. When asked about this, Arron's spokesperson declared that he'd prefer to "correct [the Guardian’s] mistakes in court".
One of Banks' companies, Eldon Insurance, increased its profits by almost...
5/20
...17 million £ for the first half of 2017. He claimed that this profit increase was due to the same AI technology that they used in the Brexit campaign. Banks is also involved in mining in South Africa and has connections to companies based in Gibraltar and the Isle of Man.
6/20
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll discuss Russian online information operations, and how they are perceived around the world. In the West, we often perceive this propaganda only targeted at us, which is far from the truth.
1/17
As I've written previously, the idea of Russian information operations date back to days of KGB, and it is part of the, aktivnye meropriyatiya, or active measures. Active measures includes activities like espionage, propaganda, sabotage and assassination, and it is ...
2/17
...and was part of Russia's foreign policy. Another related term related to info ops is hybrid warfare, which is a theory of military strategy that blends conventional warfare with irregular warfare, cyberwarfare and warfare in the information space.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Russo-Ukrainian businessman and politician, Oleg Tsaryov (@OlegTsarov). He's best-known for acting as a pro-Russian separatist officer in Donetsk, Ukraine, and revealing Yanukovych's plan to become the dictator of Ukraine.
1/19
Oleg was born in 1970 in Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro) in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union. He became an MP in the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada in 2002, later joining Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions. He was re-elected again in 2006, in 2007, and in 2012.
2/19
When the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity got in full swing, Tsaryov was one of the most fervent supporters of using violent against the protestors, whom he called "terrorists, bandits and extremists."
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a German-Finnish entrepreneur, conspiracy theorist and propagandist, Kim Dotcom. He's best-known for his illegal online activities and projects, for his hate towards the US, and for his unwavering support for Putin's imperialism.
1/18
During the 90s, Kim rose to notoriety in Germany for various hacking activities. In 1998 he was convicted on several charges of computer fraud and data espionage and received a 2-year suspended sentence. In 2003, he was arrested in Thailand and was deported to Germany,...
2/18
...where Kim pleaded guilty to embezzlement and was sentenced to jail, only to flee to Hong Kong to avoid going to prison. He was eventually granted a citizenship in New Zealand through their "investor plus" system, after he'd invested over 10 million USD in the country.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll talk about a phenomenon called information laundering. It refers to an activity where false or deceitful information is legimitised through a network of intermediaries, such as fake news blogs and/or social media networks.
1/20
When for example the Kremlin wants to spread a narrative, they spread it through various channels to legitimatize it. As basically no one trusts the Russian TASS anymore, Russian propagandists must get creative and use various backchannels to legimitise the information...
2/20
...in order to inject into the mainstream. To do this, they'll have to "pass the information" around some other news outlets, preferably that the people (at least some) trusts. The groundwork for these outlets has been created a long time ago - for example a well-known...
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American propagandist, Florida Man and ex-cop, John "Badvolf" Mark Dougan (@RealBadVolf). He's best-known for his battle against the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, and for his propaganda work for the Kremlin.
1/21
Before he became a grifter for Moscow, Dougan worked as a cop. He actually wanted to be a super cop, and in his first job as a small town cop he wrote more traffic tickets than the 11 other officers combined.
2/21
But all this was too boring for an ex-marine wanting to get in on the real action, which is why he transferred Belle Glade, Florida, a hotspot of criminal activity and the HIV capital of the US of A.