Scott Ritter: "We are at war". "Wake the fuck up!"

 Take a moment and watch this video as Scott lays bare the reality of war.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Gonzalo Lira, the well-known Chilean-American YouTube personality, has been in the news lately. A former “lifestyle” coach, Lira re-branded himself as a geopolitical commentator in the leadup to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, providing gripping first-hand observations—often critical of the Ukrainian government and contradictory of the Ukrainian narrative—that were posted on YouTube. As his popularity grew, his social media footprint expanded, with his Twitter and Telegram accounts garnering tens of thousands of followers, and his YouTube videos garnering hundreds of thousands of views and subscribers.

Gonzalo Lira was arrested by the SBU, or Ukrainian intelligence service, on April 15, 2022, and released five days later. Lira has been circumspect about both the arrest and the conditions of his release—he blithely calls it his “missing week.” Lira does acknowledge that his computers and phone were seized by Ukrainian authorities, and that he was released under conditions of “house arrest,” implying some sort of continued monitoring and control of his activities by the SBU. Nonetheless, he was able to gain access to a computer, set up a new email account, and immediately begin posting information critical of the Ukrainian government.

There is only one logical explanation for this chain of events. Gonzalo Lira was arrested by the SBU for crimes he himself admits gets people arrested, tortured, and murdered. He is released five days later—unharmed—and immediately allowed to resume the exact same activity that led to arrest in the first place, only this time on a computer and email account controlled by the SBU.

This is a classic “catch and release” scenario, with Gonzalo Lira playing the role of “police confidential informant”—someone who provides information in exchange for lenient treatment. There literally is no other plausible explanation for what happened other than this.

And yet controversy swirls around the saga surrounding Lira’s arrest and release, as well as his subsequent actions, including his re-arrest in May 2023, his re-release on July 6, and a series of bizarre videos and tweets made by Gonzalo on July 31, released while he waited at the Ukrainian-Hungarian border, awaiting his attempt to “escape” Ukrainian custody, all the while broadcasting his intent for all the world—and the SBU—to see. According to charging documents published by the Kharkov prosecutor overseeing Lira’s case, the former lifestyle coach failed in his attempt, and is once more in the custody of the SBU awaiting trial.

Many people, including those with whom Lira had interacted with and befriended over the course of the past two years, have rallied in his support, taking umbrage—often extreme—at my contention that Lira has been, ever since his arrest in April 2022, an asset of the SBU.

Under normal circumstances, I might make common cause with these people, granting Lira the benefit of the doubt and arguing for his release and subsequent deportation from Ukraine, only addressing the anomalies and inconsistencies in his narrative once he is safely outside of Ukraine.

But these are not normal circumstances.

We are at war.

This applies to everyone reading these words, and everyone who doesn’t. The fact that a person neither accepts that he or she is a participant in this conflict, nor recognizes its existence, does not matter.

We are at war.

This conflict does not involve tanks, artillery, aircraft, bombs, bullets, drones, or bayonets.

It is a war of words, of ideas.

It is an information war, a battle of competing Russian and Ukrainian narratives fought on a global scale. The stakes are high; as Andrii Shapovalov, the acting head of the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD)—one of the frontline organizations involved in this war—recently noted in an address, “For them [Russia], as for us, this is a matter of life and death.”

Shapovalov’s words were spoken at a gathering of the National Cluster on Information Resistance, convened in Kiev on July 3, 2023. The National Cluster on Information Resistance is a group of experts and organizations that work together to counter disinformation and cyber threats in Ukraine, funded by the US Civil Research and Development Fund (Global), a private entity created by the US Congress whose presence in Ukraine was underwritten and supervised by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

Bluntly stated, if you are a US citizen who holds a position counter to the official US government/Ukrainian narrative regarding the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, you are being treated as a hostile combatant in the information war that has sprung up around this conflict, regardless of your constitutionally protected right to free speech.

And if you’re not American, you’re free game.

Just in case that point isn’t driven home strong enough, consider the following: The CCD, with the backing of the United States, has published a blacklist of persons—including many notable American citizens—of persons it has labeled as “information terrorists.” According to the CCD, it’s mission, carried out in conjunction with Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, is twofold. First, to combat information terrorism, and second, to coordinate this effort with international “partners.”

The CCD defines “information terrorism” as “a Crime against Humanity committed by means of instruments affecting the consciousness.” In short, anyone who exercises his or her right to free speech can be prosecuted as a “terrorist” in the full meaning of that term.

To drive that point home even more, the United States—Ukraine’s leading partner in this information war—kills terrorists preemptively, void of any notion of due process.

The CCD wants to mainstream this mindset on a global basis. “Having joined forces with the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine and its international partners,” the CCD has declared, it “is taking the initiative to establish this term in international practice,” calling on the international community to “unite in the face of information terrorism.”

In this regard, the CDD makes four demands. First, that Russia be declared an “infoterrorist state,” and that “infoterrorism” must be equated with “actual terrorism,” requiring “appropriate measures to counter it.” Second, that anyone associated in any way with “infoterror” be treated as an “information terrorist.” This definition is all-inclusive—editors, writers, presenters, cameramen, bloggers, etc.

In short, anyone who is involved in the production of any information that runs counter to the Ukrainian narrative regarding the war with Russia is an “infoterrorist.” Third, the financing of “infoterrorism,” both “explicit” and “implicit,” should be banned by “both international and domestic law,” and those who are involved in such financing should be treated as “accomplices to information terrorists.” And finally, any individual, company, public organization, or legal entity which is involved in “infoterrorism” should be subjected to sanctions, using the US list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism” as a model.

Anyone who has ever uttered or written a word that runs counter to the official Ukrainian narrative is, in the mind of Ukraine, an “infoterrorist.”

Ukraine is at war with “infoterrorists.”

 Scott Ritter is a former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, former United Nations Special Commission weapons inspector.

Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

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