[Peace-discuss] This is where the new cold war between the U.S. and Russia began

Fri Jan 12 00:39:31 UTC 2018

This is where the new cold war between the U.S. and Russia began. This
article by journalist Robert Perry ( who exposed much of the Iran Contra
scandal ) Describes the American vulture capitalist turned UK citizen ( in
order to avoid paying U.S. taxes ) Bill Browder, began the process when he (
Browder ) was facing arrest warrants for fraud and tax evasion from the
Russian government and fled the country and then began a phony story about
how he ( Browder ) was not a crook but instead a " crusader " against
Russian government corruption. Through Browder's immense wealth and lobbying
( bribing ) U.S. lawmakers he was able to get the U.S. and then Canada to
enact the Magnitsky act ( economic sanctions against Russia ) .The producer
of the documentary who is a critic of Putin originally began the film to
tell Browder's story and in the process of research determined that
Browder's story was all lies. The film has been essentially banned in the
U.S. and Canada and is difficult to even find on the internet.

How Russia-gate Met the Magnitsky Myth

July 13, 2017 

Exclusive: A documentary debunking the Magnitsky myth, which was an opening
salvo in the New Cold War, was largely blocked from viewing in the West but
has now become a factor in Russia-gate, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Near the center of the current furor over Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a
Russian lawyer in June 2016 is a documentary that almost no one in the West
has been allowed to see, a film that flips the script on the story of the
late Sergei Magnitsky and his employer, hedge-fund operator William Browder.

The Russian lawyer, Natalie Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump Jr. and other
advisers to Donald Trump Sr.'s campaign, represented a company that had run
afoul of a U.S. investigation into money-laundering allegedly connected to
the Magnitsky case and his death in a Russian prison in 2009. His death
sparked a campaign spearheaded by Browder, who used his wealth and clout to
lobby the U.S. Congress in 2012 to enact the Magnitsky Act to punish alleged
human rights abusers in Russia. The law became what might be called the
first shot in the New Cold War.

According to Browder's narrative, companies ostensibly under his control had
been hijacked by corrupt Russian officials in furtherance of a $230 million
tax-fraud scheme; he then dispatched his "lawyer" Magnitsky to investigate
and - after supposedly uncovering evidence of the fraud - Magnitsky blew the
whistle only to be arrested by the same corrupt officials who then had him
locked up in prison where he died of heart failure from physical abuse.

Despite Russian denials - and the "dog ate my homework" quality of Browder's
self-serving narrative - the dramatic tale became a cause celebre in the
West. The story eventually attracted the attention of Russian filmmaker
Andrei Nekrasov, a known critic of President Vladimir Putin. Nekrasov
decided to produce a docu-drama that would present Browder's narrative to a
wider public. Nekrasov even said he hoped that he might recruit Browder as
the narrator of the tale.

However,
<https://consortiumnews.com/2016/06/21/destroying-the-magnitsky-myth/> the
project took an unexpected turn when Nekrasov's research kept turning up
contradictions to Browder's storyline, which began to look more and more
like a corporate cover story. Nekrasov discovered that a woman working in
Browder's company was the actual whistleblower and that Magnitsky - rather
than a crusading lawyer - was an accountant who was implicated in the
scheme.

So, the planned docudrama suddenly was transformed into a documentary with a
dramatic reversal as Nekrasov struggles with what he knows will be a
dangerous decision to confront Browder with what appear to be deceptions. In
the film, you see Browder go from a friendly collaborator into an angry
adversary who tries to bully Nekrasov into backing down.

Blocked Premiere

Ultimately, Nekrasov completes his extraordinary film - entitled "The
Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes" - and it was set for a premiere at the
European Parliament in Brussels in April 2016. However, at the last moment -
faced with Browder's legal threats - the parliamentarians pulled the plug.
Nekrasov encountered similar resistance in the United States, a situation
that, in part, brought Natalie Veselnitskaya into this controversy.

<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mdswofj6-860x400.jpg>
https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mdswofj6-860x400-300x1
40.jpg

Film director Andrei Nekrasov, who produced "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the
Scenes."

As a lawyer defending Prevezon, a real-estate company registered in Cyprus,
on a money-laundering charge, she
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russian-lawyer-who-met-with-trump-jr-h
as-long-history-fighting-sanctions/2017/07/11/05e2467c-65b1-11e7-94ab-5b1f0f
f459df_story.html?utm_term=.e5103d0fdc7e> was dealing with U.S. prosecutors
in New York City and, in that role, became an advocate for lifting the U.S.
sanctions, The Washington Post reported.

That was when she turned to promoter Rob Goldstone to set up a meeting at
Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. To secure the sit-down on June 9, 2016,
Goldstone dangled the prospect that Veselnitskaya had some derogatory
financial information from the Russian government about Russians supporting
the Democratic National Committee. Trump Jr. jumped at the possibility and
brought senior Trump campaign advisers, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner,
along.

By all accounts, Veselnitskaya had little or nothing to offer about the DNC
and turned the conversation instead to the Magnitsky Act and Putin's
retaliatory measure to the sanctions, canceling a program in which American
parents adopted Russian children. One source told me that Veselnitskaya also
wanted to enhance her stature in Russia with the boast that she had taken a
meeting at Trump Tower with Trump's son.

But another goal of Veselnitskaya's U.S. trip was to participate in an
effort to give Americans a chance to see Nekrasov's blacklisted documentary.
She traveled to Washington in the days after her Trump Tower meeting and
attended a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, according to The
Washington Post.

There were hopes to show the documentary to members of Congress but the
offer was rebuffed. Instead a room was rented at the Newseum near Capitol
Hill. Browder's lawyers. who had successfully intimidated the European
Parliament, also tried to strong arm the Newseum, but its officials
responded that they were only renting out a room and that they had allowed
other controversial presentations in the past.

Their stand wasn't exactly a profile in courage. "We're not going to allow
them not to show the film," said Scott Williams, the chief operating officer
of the Newseum. "We often have people renting for events that other people
would love not to have happen."

In an article about the controversy in June 2016, The New York Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/world/europe/sergei-magnitsky-russia-vla
dimir-putin.html?mcubz=0&_r=0> added that "A screening at the Newseum is
especially controversial because it could attract lawmakers or their aides."
Heaven forbid!

One-Time Showing

So, Nekrasov's documentary got a one-time showing with Veselnitskaya
reportedly in attendance and with a follow-up discussion moderated by
journalist Seymour Hersh. However, except for that audience, the public of
the United States and Europe has been essentially shielded from the
documentary's discoveries, all the better for the Magnitsky myth to retain
its power as a seminal propaganda moment of the New Cold War.

<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/a854ac3c8d4c9e816cb55
690ca3da446-800x.jpg>
https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/a854ac3c8d4c9e816cb556
90ca3da446-800x-300x273.jpg

Financier William Browder (right) with Magnitsky's widow and son, along with
European parliamentarians.

After the Newseum presentation,
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/russian-agitprop-lands-in-washingto
n/2016/06/19/784805ec-33dc-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html> a Washington
Post editorial branded Nekrasov's documentary Russian "agit-prop" and sought
to discredit Nekrasov without addressing his many documented examples of
Browder's misrepresenting both big and small facts in the case. Instead, the
Post accused Nekrasov of using "facts highly selectively" and insinuated
that he was merely a pawn in the Kremlin's "campaign to discredit Mr.
Browder and the Magnitsky Act."

The Post also misrepresented the structure of the film by noting that it
mixed fictional scenes with real-life interviews and action, a point that
was technically true but willfully misleading because the fictional scenes
were from Nekrasov's original idea for a docu-drama that he shows as part of
explaining his evolution from a believer in Browder's self-exculpatory story
to a skeptic. But the Post's deception is something that almost no American
would realize because almost no one got to see the film.

The Post concluded smugly: "The film won't grab a wide audience, but it
offers yet another example of the Kremlin's increasingly sophisticated
efforts to spread its illiberal values and mind-set abroad. In the European
Parliament and on French and German television networks, showings were put
off recently after questions were raised about the accuracy of the film,
including by Magnitsky's family.

"We don't worry that Mr. Nekrasov's film was screened here, in an open
society. But it is important that such slick spin be fully exposed for its
twisted story and sly deceptions."

The Post's gleeful editorial had the feel of something you
<https://consortiumnews.com/2016/06/21/wposts-agit-prop-for-the-new-cold-war
/> might read in a totalitarian society where the public only hears about
dissent when the Official Organs of the State denounce some almost unknown
person for saying something that almost no one heard.

New Paradigm

The Post's satisfaction that Nekrasov's documentary would not draw a large
audience represents what is becoming a new paradigm in U.S. mainstream
journalism, the idea that it is the media's duty to protect the American
people from seeing divergent narratives on sensitive geopolitical issues.

 <https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/twp26p1.jpg>
https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/twp26p1-300x188.jpg

The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit:
Washington Post)

Over the past year, we have seen a growing hysteria about
<https://consortiumnews.com/2016/11/27/washington-posts-fake-news-guilt/>
"Russian propaganda" and "fake news" with The New York Times and other major
news outlets
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/02/nyt-cheers-the-rise-of-censorship-alg
orithms/> eagerly awaiting algorithms that can be unleashed on the Internet
to eradicate information that groups like Google's First Draft Coalition
deem "false."

First Draft consists of the Times, the Post, other mainstream outlets, and
establishment-approved online news sites, such as Bellingcat with links to
the pro-NATO think tank, Atlantic Council. First Draft's job will be to
serve as a kind of Ministry of Truth and thus shield the public from
information that is deemed propaganda or untrue.

In the meantime, there is the ad hoc approach that was applied to Nekrasov's
documentary. Having missed the Newseum showing, I was only able to view the
film because I was given a special password to an online version.

>From searches that I did on Wednesday, Nekrasov's film was not available on
Amazon although a pro-Magnitsky documentary was. I did find a streaming
service that appeared to have the film available.

But the Post's editors were right in their expectation that "The film won't
grab a wide audience." Instead, it has become a good example of how
political and legal pressure can effectively black out what we used to call
"the other side of the story." The film now, however, has unexpectedly
become a factor in the larger drama of Russia-gate and the drive to remove
Donald Trump Sr. from the White House.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in
<https://org.salsalabs.com/o/1868/t/12126/shop/shop.jsp?storefront_KEY=1037>
print here or as an e-book (from
<http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Stolen-Narrative-Washington-ebook/dp/B009RXX
OIG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350755575&sr=8-1&keywords=americas+stolen+narrat
ive> Amazon and
<http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/americas-stolen-narrative?keyword=americas+
stolen+narrative&store=ebook&iehack=%E2%98%A0> barnesandnoble.com).

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