Paul Antonopoulos, independent geopolitical analyst  

With the 2020 U.S. Presidential elections just a few months away, American media are back into overdrive to concoct a narrative that Russia is interfering in American democracy, just as it attempted to do with embarrassing affect in 2016. Without dwelling heavily on the already debunked notion that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, we remember that the foundation of this allegation was based on Moscow hacking into the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Robert Mueller was assigned as the Special Counsel for the Department of Justice to investigate Russian interference. It was hoped his investigation would confirm beyond reasonable doubt that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections. This was a curious decision by the Department of Justice considering Mueller had an active role in promoting the conspiracy that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He was one of many that ‘legitimized’ the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

As part of his investigations, Mueller refused to interview former National Security Agency technical director William Binney, who through forensic analysis proved that the DNC emails were leaked from within rather than hacked by Russia. Mueller, a combat veteran from the American war against Vietnam, also signed off that 17 different intelligence services concluded that Russia had hacked the servers. In actual fact it was only three intelligence services, in which one of them, the National Security Agency, only had “moderate confidence” that Russia hacked the servers.

There are many other serious problems and holes in the allegations that Russia hacked the DNC servers, in which the whole narrative that the 2016 U.S. elections experienced Russian interference is built on. This concocted narrative pushed by American media was not enough to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president. U.S. false flags and fake news narratives have achieved their goals in the past. The Gulf of Tonkin incident and the myth of weapons of mass destruction, which legitimized American invasions of Vietnam and Iraq respectively, are such examples. However, we now live in an age of rapid communication and information dissemination. Such hoaxes are much more difficult to achieve today than it was before social media and broadband internet.

Despite the monumental failure of pushing the Russian interference story in 2016, The New York Times and Associated Press have now resurrected the same failed tactic. Both the NYT and AP in articles published this week claim that InfoBrics, InfoRos and OneWorld are a media front and have strong connections to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (GRU).

Both the NYT and AP claim that InfoBrics is used to “spread of disinformation” and cites the article “Beijing Believes COVID-19 is a Biological Weapon” as an example of this. Both agencies omit the careful language used by the author, such as “possibility,” “hypothesis,” and the clearly written statement that “Obviously, it is possible that [coronavirus] is not a biological weapon.” However, even more damning is that the NYT says “InfoBrics.org published reports about Beijing’s contention that the coronavirus was originally an American biological weapon,” as if it was conclusive evidence of the conspiratorial nature of InfoBrics. The NYT however omit that it too also published the same allegations by China. AP then accuses InfoBrics of having “amplified statements by the Chinese” about the coronavirus bioweapon allegation, having contradictorily amplified those very same statements themselves.

When it comes to foreign policy issues, U.S. mainstream media outlets are sometimes doggedly united. This is why despite their domestic differences, they collectively call for regime change operations in Syria and Venezuela to the point of whitewashing jihadist groups and narcotic smugglers, concoct narratives of Russian interference in the elections of the most powerful country in the world, and push Chinaphobia onto their audiences.

The U.S. sees every independent opinion as an act of espionage – mostly from Russian state structures such as the GRU. For a country that prides itself as “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave,” 90% of American media is owned by only six companies. Media freedom in the U.S., according to the Reporters Without Borders 2020 World Press Freedom Index, is ranked 45 in the whole world, behind countries like Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Trinidad and Tobago. The U.S. has the illusion of media freedoms, but in practise, news in the U.S. is monopolized.

What makes InfoBrics different compared to the monotony of American media is that it publishes different views for its readers to contemplate current developments in the world. This allows a diversity of opinions to be expressed, rather than the repeated arguments heard all across American media when it comes to foreign policy issues.