American politicians have accused Russia of attempting to manipulate and influence elections in the US and abroad. However, a recent story has exposed that it was not the Russians, but an Israeli military contractor who set up thousands of accounts on Facebook and spent close to $800,000 USD to to influence elections in a host of Sub-Saharan African nations:
In keeping with their spectacular reputation of violating privacy and rigging elections, Facebook has said that it removed “hundreds of accounts” from Facebook and Instagram that were used to influence elections in Africa, according to CNN. Only it wasn’t Russia who was behind this latest intervention, but Israel.
Archimedes Group, an Israeli company, reportedly spent more than $800,000 in advertising (far more than the Kremlin allegedly spent on its “ad campaign” to crush Hillary Clinton and get Trump elected) and ran accounts that had nearly 3 million followers, for the purpose of targeting African elections. The group primarily targeted Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia.
For perspective, the $800,000 reportedly spent by the group compares to the $100,000 that has been claimed by the U.S. mainstream media to have been spent for ‘Russian bots’ used to allegedly sway the 2016 US presidential election, according to RT.
The company “used fake accounts to run Pages, disseminate their content and artificially increase engagement” and also “represented themselves as locals, including local news organizations, and published allegedly leaked information about politicians,” according to Facebook.
Facebook’s Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of cybersecurity policy said: “The individuals behind this network attempted to conceal their identities.”
“This organization and all its subsidiaries are now banned from Facebook, and it has been issued a cease and desist letter,” Facebook wrote in a blog post. It detailed the group’s presence on the site by disclosing:
Presence on Facebook and Instagram: 65 Facebook accounts, 161 Pages, 23 Groups, 12 events and four Instagram accounts.
Followers: About 2.8 million accounts followed one or more of these Pages, about 5,500 accounts joined at least one of these Groups and around 920 people followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.
Advertising: Around $812,000 in spending for ads on Facebook paid for in Brazilian reals, Israeli shekel, and US dollars. The first ad ran in December 2012 and the most recent ad ran in April 2019.
Events: Nine events were hosted by these Pages. The first was scheduled for October 2017 and the most recent was scheduled for May 2019. Up to 2,900 people expressed interest in at least one of these events, and a portion of their accounts were previously identified and disabled as fake. We cannot confirm whether any of these events actually occurred.
Meanwhile, the website that reportedly links to Archimedes Group claims it “took significant roles in many political and public campaigns, among them Presidential elections and other social media projects all over the world.”
“Archimedes has created and operates in it’s [sic] own unique field within the social media realm.”
RT notes that the firm has interesting similarities to a former Israeli social media manipulation firm:
Archimedes’ slogan is oddly reminiscent of another secretive Israeli social media manipulation firm, Psy-Group (motto: “Shape reality”), which closed its doors after coming under scrutiny during the Mueller investigation for its possible involvement in the election of Donald Trump. Psy-Group drew up a detailed prospectus for a Facebook meddling campaign seven months before the 2016 election, but supposedly never deployed it in real life. Both Psy-Group and Archimedes touted their ability to operate multiple fake online avatars simultaneously.
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Airbus group is quoted in a judicial investigation for scam on a Malian gold mine in balance sheet deposit, whose shareholders have been ruined. The investment project of the aerospace giant in this mine, LED by a close to Malian power, seemed intended to clear occult funds to facilitate the obtaining of military markets in the country. This is a very embarrassing new business….
Incidentally, just a days ago we reported how another secretive Israeli company used WhatsApp voice calls to install spyware across countless phones. WhatsApp, which is used by 1.5bn people worldwide, discovered in early May that attackers were able to install surveillance software on both iPhones and Android phones by ringing up targets using the app’s phone call function. The malicious code, developed by the secretive NSO Group, a notorious and controversial Israeli hacking and surveillance tools vendor, could be transmitted even if users did not answer their phones, and the calls often disappeared from call logs.
It is unclear how many apps were infected with the spyware trojan, which could for example, allow anyone to get access to John Podesta’s email password (and then blame say, Vladimir Putin for example) as WhatsApp is too early into its own investigations of the vulnerability to estimate how many phones were targeted using this method, although it is likely a substantial number.
Still, one should perhaps ask: is it Russia – already the usual suspect for any alleged rigging on the internet – that is the true culprit here, or Israel, which never makes mainstream media headlines, yet whose actions are far more flagrant, bold and manipulative. (source, source)
Note the following nations highlighted: Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia. It is known that Israel is a US and German ally, and that all of these nations serve crucial roles in either already existing or planned oil production routes.
The first oil production began in Azerbaijan in 1846. This immediately attracted interest from all nations around the world, especially from Germany and Russia, as both had a historical presence in the Caucasus region and both realized that given the increased use of oil for industrial processes, that he who controlled the flow of oil could determine the outcome of a future war as he would have the ability to produce the tools needed for war.
This lesson proved itself true in both world wars and was the reason for Germany’s eventual defeat in both. In World War I, Germany negotiated with Turkey for access to oil but still was unable to secure enough to meet her industrial needs. Because of this, she was forced to invade Ukraine as part of what became a failed march to the Caspian Sea to secure oil. Her failure do to this was a significant cause behind her defeat.
Germany drew on her past lessons during the Second World War, and after seizing the oilfields throughout Europe she marched into North Africa and Azerbaijan to secure oil. She quickly conquered Ukraine but was unable to take the key city of Stalingrad, which controlled access to southern Russia and the Caucasus. Germany eventually was forced to confront the USSR at Stalingrad in Operation Blue, which was the highest casualty battle in all of the war. Half-a-million Germans and over a million Soviets perished at the city as well as almost the entire population of 400,000. Germany was defeated, and her loss at Stalingrad marked a turning point in the war that eventually brought about her defeat.
European history shows that conflicts in Germany that are rooted in nationalism have strong chance of leading to larger wars on the continent. The “refugee crisis” in Germany has triggered a strong revival of German nationalism with calls for inter-continental separatism and German militarism in the name of self-determination. The historical signs of war are showing themselves again in the continent while the Western powers are now expanding their economic holdings into Africa and Central Asia.
Germany has lost two world wars, and it is likely that if she is going to be involved in a third world war, she is going to need to firmly secure access to oil along with a network of multiple or effectively redundant pipelines so to ensure the complete dependency of other nations not involved in the war on them as well as that they will remain operational in the event that large segments are damaged or destroyed. She cannot rely on one or two nations to serve as a sole conduit for her oil needs, but needs a multiplicity of nations as no promise is guaranteed in a war.
Germany is in central Europe, and there are only certain routes that she can use to bring oil to her from other nations, as she does not have large natural deposits. Currently, there are three main networks that she uses: through Russia, through Turkey, and through Algeria.
The Russian networks are the largest, but they are also the most unreliable. While Germany will ally with Russia in a war, history shows that she does so in order to divide and conquer Eastern Europe with Russia, such as with the Molotov-Ribbentropf pact that divided Poland in World War II, and before that the partitioning of Poland in the 18th century. After this, Germany and Russia will then go to war with each other. Russia has large natural gas supplies throughout Siberia that she can rely upon, and as soon as she goes to war with Germany she will turn off Germany’s oil access.
Germany knows this will happen, and this is the reason for the constant fighting in Ukraine since 2014. Ukrainian nationalism is synonymous throughout history with geopolitical wars, and in modern times with the struggle for oil access. This is the reason why Russia forcibly annexed the Crimean Peninisula from Ukraine as well as seized the port city of Kerch, as she is seeking to cut off western access into the Caucasus. At the same time this is happening, Turkey and Germany have been investing into oil pipelines and railroads in Azerbaijan going throughout northern Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and into Central Asia with further plans to go to the Far East.
The Turkish pipelines are another critical source of oil for Europe, and because Turkey is a historical ally of Germany and an enemy of Russia there is strong chance that she will allow for continued access. It is one of the reasons why the US and Germany built the Turkish military into the eighth strongest in the world and the second largest in size in Europe after Russia as a part of Operation Gladio in order that she would be a “counterbalance” to Russia. While it is likely that Turkey cannot defeat Russia in a war, she would be able to stall or obstruct the Russian military for long enough before either American or Western European reinforcements could arrive.
Turkey has been building upon her already existing pipelines and railroads. She is reinforcing networks and creating new ones such as with Azerbaijan and Georgia. There are also oil pipelines coming from Iraq and Syria, where the Turks have been exercising a military presence, going into Israel and through Cyprus, to Greece, then Albania, and finally Italy and Germany that are being constructed as well.
Algeria is the other major hub of oil for Europe, drawing on fields throughout the nation and her neighbors as well as far sought as Nigeria, where The Trans-Mediterranean Pipeline brings oil from Nigeria’s southernmost coast on the Atlantic across the Sahara to Algeria before heading to Europe. Nigeria is an oil-exporting nation and a major powerhouse in West Africa. She is also a close ally of China, and the Chinese have used this to build up their presence in West Africa. In the event of a war, while it is likely that she could rely on Nigeria, it is not a guarantee. Additionally, the pipelines in North Africa may come under attack again, and so Germany would need to ensure their protection as well as additional networks of oil access in the event of damage or destruction.
In 2007, US AFRICOM suggested the presence of large deposits of untapped oil resources in West Africa stretching from Senegal to the Congo. If this is true, it would be then for the western powers to secure politically favorable climates so to allow for oil prospecting and having done this, to build the transportation systems to bring the oil from source to refinery to distribution centers in Europe.
Right now there has been a near constant series of terrorist attacks throughout West Africa, where much of the oil is said to be located. It is a known fact that Islamic terrorism has been used as a tool of foreign policy by the western powers following World War II as a part of operation Gladio, and has its roots in the American support of the Ottoman Empire as recommended by US Diplomat Oscar Straus beginning in 1888.
Of the six nations targeted by this Israeli company, four of them- Senegal, Nigeria, Togo, and Niger -are in West Africa. Togo, a former colony of the German Empire before World War I and which retains many historical ties to Germany, and Niger both share a border with Burkina Faso, a country that has seen constant terrorist attacks throughout 2019. Togo is also home to the West African Gas Pipeline, which goes from Nigeria to Ghana along the Atlantic coast and which is going to be accompanied by another and larger pipeline called the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline that will travel from Nigeria to Morocco all along the African Coast, being proposed in December 2016 and signed off on in June 2018.
Note the route of this pipeline, as while it includes Nigeria, it also involves a host of other African nations and completely bypasses the need for Nigeria as well as Algeria, using Morocco as a conduit for entry into Europe. If this was build in conjunction with additional and smaller lines going from the inland regions of West Africa to the coast where this and other pipelines are located, it provides the capacity for a constant flow of oil from those nations to consumers.
Moving south in Africa, Angola is a former Portuguese colony and oil exporter. She has been working with her inland neighbor and former British colony of Zambia to build a pipeline to carry oil. At the same time, Zambia has also been in talks with Mozambique to build a pipeline from her to Zambia.
If such two pipelines were to be constructed, it would create a cross-African line that would be able to tie into proposed oil lines on the eastern regions of South Africa that has the potential to cut off Chinese access to oil in South Africa, which she has been using to build up her military. This is also why the Chinese have been moving into Zimbabwe with more force, including attempts to build a massive road from Zimbabwe to Mozambique since as Zimbabwe is between South Africa, Zambia, and Mozambique, it would be an attempt to create a choke point for oil access. As Germany has a historical presence in that region through her former colony in Namibia as well as with assistance from the Boer peoples in South Africa, she could stand to benefit greatly from it.
Moving northwards to the Mediterranean coast, the tiny nation of Tunisia that sits between Algeria and Libya has discovered large oil reserves in her southern regions and is currently constructing the Southern Tunisian Gas Pipeline that is set to become operational in June 2019.
These are the oil pipeline projects that are taking place at the moment in those nations. This does not include the talk of restarting or developing pipelines in the former German colony of Tanzania, Central African Republic, South Sudan, the former German colony of Cameroon, and Chad.
The “network” theory put forth by Shoebat.com appears to be coming true. There is a network of pipelines, some connected to each other, and others not, from all around the world that appears to be either routing oil to Europe or securing oil for European interests in large quantities so much that it would be difficult to shut them all down. This will naturally reduce the necessity for dependence on oil from Russia or even current lines in the Middle East. It is not about “independence” from Russia, but preparation for Russia to shut down access to her lines.
The situation with oil pipelines in Africa will be critical to watch, as well as the political situation in these nations. One nation to focus on will be Mali, as she currently has US troops in the nation training people in combat and she is geographically in the middle of where many of the pipelines will go around or through on their way to Europe.
The future of Europe can be told in the story of following the oil and mineral expeditions, for the more secure and exploited these areas become, so too will the manufacturing capacity of these nations increase to produce the goods and munitions needed for war.
Many have said “never again” following the horrors of World War II, but this appears not to be so anymore. The rise of paganism along with nationalism, a decline in Christianity, and German power all point to a coming revival of a Fourth Reich, and with fewer of the obstacles that existed in the past to realizing the creation of a new European-wide pagan order.