Colour Revolutions in the West

A primer on the strange netherworld of gov't, 'the intelligence community', and legacy media

So, we talked a lot about what I call ‘Stupid Watergate’ in Germany, and since we spent a lot of time on its ‘useless idiots’ (by which I mean the oligarch-funded leftish radicals who do a lot of groundwork), we may as well talk a bit about the implications here and there, right? Right.

Speaking of ‘useless idiots’, here’s what piqued my interest:

Caption: ‘The mastermind of “Ibiza” wants to rehabilitate himself’, according to stuff published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

You see, when Jean Peters of Correctiv was still ‘inventing direct actions and inventing stories’ (i.e., back in April 2023), he once did a live discussion with one Julian Hessenthaler.

Mr. Hessenthaler, you see, is no stranger to media activism to bring down governments or political opponents. As I wrote a bit over two years ago, here’s the essential background:

[Former Austrian chancellor Sebastian] Kurz’ and a small coterie of his close collaborators back from his pre-national politics in 2000s Vienna managed to torpedo the ÖVP’s governing coalition (as a junior partner) with the Social Democrats in 2017; Kurz then re-banded the ÖVP by adding the moniker ‘new’ and changed its colour—and won the 2017 elections.

At first, he entered into a coalition with the Freedom Party under Heinz-Christian Strache (2017-19), which broke apart in spring 2019 after the unveiling of the infamous ‘Ibiza Video’. In short: before entering government in autumn 2017, Strache met an alleged Russian oligarch’s female relative who promised campaign contributions in exchange for political favours; in ‘reality’, it is alleged that a P.I. single-handedly organised this meeting (which took place in Ibiza, hence the name of this affair), got Strache pretty drunk, filmed it all, and then sat on the kompromat for two years. German newspapers Der Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung ran a couple of compromising articles in spring 2017, Strache resigned, and the coalition government collapsed after two days of instrumentalised protests. President Alexander van der Bellen appointing a caretaker government until new elections were held in autumn 2019.

Yep, you read this correctly: for the ‘deed-crime’ of getting drunk on camera while being an opposition party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache was viciously attacked by legacy media, booted out of office, and subjected to—so far—five years of lawsuits of various kinds. His marriage didn’t survive these strains, and neither did his public image—but, guess what, none of the charges stuck: they ranged from the plausible (did Mr. Strache promise quid-pro-quo stuff in 2017?) to allegations of embezzlement and virtually everything else. In short, they threw the everything and the kitchen sink at the rising (of course ‘right-wing’) opposition leader, but despite ending up in bankruptcy, prosecutors were so far unable to prove any crime or even misdemeanour beyond reasonable doubt.

In short—Mr. Hessenthaler proved instrumental in ushering in régime change in spring 2019 by having his then-two year-old illegal video trigger protests, indignation, a media shit-storm, and ultimately causing the ÖVP-FPÖ gov’t to collapse. Mr. Hessenthaler has since steadfastly refused to acknowledge any help he may or may not have had in these matters. Although I personally consider it unlikely that the entrapment op—which cost up to 1m euros, which I think is quite a bit for a private detective—was carried out by one person only, there is, so far, no evidence forthcoming about anyone else’s involvement.

With the ground thus prepared, let’s look at the ‘quasi-official’ version (via Wikipedia, with emphases added):

The Ibiza affair (German: Ibiza-Affäre)…was triggered on 17 May 2019 by the publication of a secretly recorded video, which was commissioned by Iranian-born lawyer Ramin Mirfakhra, of a meeting in Ibiza, Spain in July 2017, which shows then opposition politicians Strache and Gudenus discussing their party's underhanded practices and intentions…

The scandal caused the collapse of the Austrian governing coalition on 18 May 2019 and the announcement of an early election.

Remember: ‘underhanded practices and intentions’ are, of course, bad optics, but there’s nothing illegal there—apart from, of course, the fact that the kompromat was ‘secretly recorded’, i.e., illegal. Put differently, we’re dealing with a perpetrator-victim inversion.

On 17 May 2019, Der Spiegel and the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that in 2017, Strache and Freedom Party member Johann Gudenus had been offered electoral support by a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch named Igor Makarov. The source of the allegations was a video secretly recorded at a rented villa on Ibiza in July 2017, which apparently shows Strache agreeing to offer the woman assistance in acquiring business contracts in Austria in exchange for rendering support in the upcoming October 2017 election in Austria. [line break added]

Five people took part in the videotaped meeting, according to the German news outlets, which had examined parts of the tape but had not released the full recordings available to them…

Let that sink in: there’s illegally obtained footage running some 8 hours in total, of which the same 8-10 minutes worth of clips and outtakes were shown repeatedly by legacy media more or less constantly until the gov’t collapsed.

Every single attempt, incl. suits by the putative victim Heinz-Christian Strache, to compel Der Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung to release the entire video to the public have failed. Both legacy media outlets continue to say, ‘trust us on this one’.

In the footage, according to Der Spiegel, Strache told the putative investor that he had visited Russia on many occasions and that he had had meetings with advisers of Russia's president Vladimir Putin with a view to forging a ‘strategic collaboration’…

Strache is recorded to have said he wanted to ‘build a media landscape like Orbán’.

Let me remind you that I’m not a fan of Mr. Strache, but what has happened here is—a ‘colour revolution’. And given what happened after Mr. Hessenthaler’s identity was revealed, I think that my reading has grown in validity.

The Guardian Joins the Fray

In autumn 2021, in the midst of ‘the Delta wave’, Mr. Hessenthaler appeared in court. I’ll let The Guardian tell you the de facto official version of events (emphases added):

The ‘remarkable’ prosecution of Hessenthaler, who was arrested in Germany late last year and extradited to Austria, aims to send ‘a clear signal’ to future whistleblowers, allege the 15 NGOs, which include Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, the Centre for Investigative Journalism and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

‘Publication of the video, made possible by Julian Hessenthaler, initiated a discussion of great public interest and allowed the public to form an opinion about Strache’s suitability to hold public office’, said Heinz Patzelt, the secretary general of Amnesty International Austria. [we note, in passing, the absence of any such ‘discussion’ about the ‘suitability to hold public office’ for a wide variety of characters in politics, ranging from Boris Johnson to Joe Biden to Annalena Baerbock; also, isn’t it wild that the ‘smell test’ is only required of ‘right-wing’ politicians? Jus’ sayin’…]

A judicial investigation launched after the video was released led to no fewer than 12 separate inquiries into allegations of wrongdoing by Strache and others. Kurz is also under investigation for alleged false statements to a parliamentary committee over the affair. He says he has always answered questions truthfully.

And this is where I would need to add that the Kurz cabal is still under investigation by both parliamentary committees and the judiciary; I do think they’re highly incapable and very much unsuited to hold public office, but given statutes of limitations and lack of documentation (apart from hilarious text messages, among other things), it’s going to be hard to make any charge stick.

Multiple European investigation orders were executed against Hessenthaler, allowing extensive physical surveillance, access to bank accounts, home searches, telephone surveillance, and the retrieval of passenger name records from airlines. [remember, Mr. Hessenthaler illegally videotaped the meeting he arranged, hence I suppose, by all intents and purposes, this is exactly what police and the judiciary should be doing—but note that The Guardian spins this differently]

He also faces charges of falsifying documents relating to the video, as well as drug charges based on conflicting testimony from a convicted dealer who was released from prison after speaking to investigators, while initial investigations into his case were led by a civil servant with close associations to Strache, the NGOs said, citing legal documents and media reporting [Mr. Hessenthaler stands also accused of forging documents and using/buying illicit substances in this matter, but I’m sure that his intentions and aims were ‘honest’, right? Right!]

‘Whether he committed the document- and drug-related offences he is now charged with must be resolved in a court of law’, Lohninger said. ‘However, the intensity and resources used to investigate Julian Hessenthaler—who is entitled to the presumption of innocence—are remarkable.’ [remember: always accuse the other side of that which you’re guilty of, the wise Dr. Goebbels said about propaganda]

The signal was clear, Lohninger alleged: ‘Those who bring too much truth to light will face criminal investigation, if necessary across international borders. This inevitably acts as a deterrent that discourages other whistleblowers from making revelations and can ultimately limit freedom of opinion and the press in Austria.’

By spinning this entire charade as a kind of lone fighter for truth vs. ‘da system’, the entire situation is inverted, almost in a dialectical manner: here we have facts (Mr. Hessenthaler engaging in all kinds of shady activities to entrap Mr. Strache) and fiction (Mr. Hessenthaler’s allegedly ‘pure’ intentions—and legacy media with documented ties to the intelligence community and donations from the likes of Bill Gates (The Guardian, Der Spiegel) coughing up a ‘synthetic’ version of events.

If that wouldn’t be bad enough, Mr. Peters of Correctiv and Peng! Collective ‘fame’ also plays a role, to which we now turn.

Correctiv Portrays Mr. Hessenthaler

Again, translation and emphases mine; source, dated 17 April 2023.

Someone Has to Pay

The Ibiza video led to one of Europe's biggest political scandals. Julian Hessenthaler, the maker of the video, was imprisoned. He is now free and is speaking to Correctiv for the first time since his release. His story and new documents are likely to keep Austria busy again…

In 2019, Hessenthaler used a hidden camera to show the world that top FPÖ politicians were prepared to offer state contracts to an alleged Russian oligarch in order to gain political influence [the video was illegally taped in 2017 when the FPÖ was in opposition; the big first question thus is: why was is released only in 2019, which, naturally, Correctiv doesn’t bother to ask]. The blurred images of the living room meeting with lots of alcohol on the table and the grandiose promises made that evening went viral around the world [because it was pushed by some of the biggest legacy media outlets in German-speaking Europe, Der Spiegel and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, jus’ sayin’…]…

Everyone could see how corruptible the politicians were. The video brought down the Austrian government coalition, triggered major protests, and forced politicians to reform their laws. And [Hessenthaler] himself ended up in prison, wrongly convicted, as he says [which the courts saw differently].

It is a Monday, 16 January 2023, eight o'clock in the morning, when he steps out of the prison door. A permitted walk out, three months before his final release from prison after more than two years. A quiet side street lies ahead of him, Hessenthaler does not hesitate. He sets off as if he didn't have another minute to lose. He has an appointment for a first meeting with Correctiv. His request: he wants to write what is possibly the final chapter of the Ibiza affair, which has since been filmed and documented many times over.

A short time later, he will give his first interview after prison and talk to Correctiv in detail about how the idea of the trap for the FPÖ politicians came about; how the filming went at the time; but also what he experienced afterwards: he was arrested for drug dealing, convicted on the basis of dodgy witness statements. And how he now wants to defend himself.

So, a few paragraphs into the piece the reader finally learns why Mr. Hessenthaler was convicted: for possession of an illicit substance; now, I’m the last one to claim that Justice is actually ‘blindfolded’, but in this case—let’s keep in mind that Mr. Hessenthaler wasn’t convicted for illegally videotaping two politicians but for something else.

As Hessenthaler himself sees it, the trial was a conspiracy with an intended effect: ‘It provides a blueprint for how to eliminate a politically unpopular actor—by simply accusing him of criminal offences.’ [note that the words Ed Snowden or Julian Assange don’t appear in this piece]

In fact, the trial was heavily criticised and still raises unpleasant questions that go far beyond the Hessenthaler case: what if corruption and dirty deals can only be uncovered with risky manoeuvres? And how do the judiciary and politicians deal with people who bring abuses to light? [these are actually valid questions]

Correctiv has obtained internal documents that cast doubt on the course of the criminal proceedings [o.k., maybe, but they don’t cite them, don’t provide information about their provenance, and they infer that Correctiv must be believed]. They show the risk that individuals take when they bring structural abuse of power to the public [again, why not talk to Mr. Snowden or Mr. Assange?]

Julian Hessenthaler's lawyer on the German side has now lodged an appeal against the conviction with the European Court of Human Rights in February. He sees a ‘(party) political background to the case’ [sure, but then again, Mr. Hessenthaler stated explicitly that he did the entrapment because he disliked the prospect of the FPÖ returning to power, which says to me ‘fair game’]. Among other things, he accuses the judge of not having taken into account the ‘doubts about the evidence’ in the proceedings and describes the lack of credibility of two witnesses for the prosecution.

Remember: Mr. Hessenthaler’s lawyer conflates to issues here: he alleges political persecution while questions about the credibility of the witnesses in the trial about illicit substances are, I’d think, two quite different things.

However, a crime, including drug trafficking, usually involves a time and place of the offence. Both are unclear in the verdict, always vague, based on witness statements that largely contradict each other or were even distorted in the judgement. Massive doubts about the trial were already expressed during the proceedings [I don’t doubt that these were shady proceedings…]

If such a judgement had been passed in an autocratic regime, the commentary would probably be clear: a case was to be constructed in order to lock up a disliked person. But is this also possible in Austria? [hahahahaha, good one—please check out the ‘Lucona’ affair or the many abuses of due process and the constitution Austrian governments of all stripes and colours have committed]

As to the important background, the entire charade began in 2016 when Mr. Strache ditched his long-time bodyguard, allegedly because of the latter’s cancer:

When his bodyguard is diagnosed with cancer, Strache wants to replace him. For him, the loyal employee, this is the second heavy blow after the illness. At the time this article goes to press, the bodyguard has not responded to enquiries [no confirmation of this story, but, I suppose, whatever at this point].

The bodyguard begins to collect expense reports to show how his boss helps himself to his own FPÖ party funds. As we know today from the documents of the public prosecutor's office, expenses for a mobile phone game called Clash of Clans, for expensive watches, and for parking tickets were documented, among other things [this is actually true].

But there are also documented photos of money bags in Strache's car boot, which were first published in Der Spiegel years later. It is said to have come from three Ukrainian investors who apparently wanted to buy a mandate for the Austrian parliament for an entrepreneur friend of the FPÖ. It is also documented that Strache presented this entrepreneur three days later as a candidate for the next National Council election [no evidence is cited]. And as Profil magazine writes, the sale of election list places was legal in Austria [again, note the conflation of ‘bags of cash’ in the trunk, allegedly from ‘Ukrainian investors’, although ‘the sale of election list places was legal’ at that time—sure, the optics are bad, but there’s little evidence that would hold up in court].

So, how did Mr. Hessenthaler come up with the scheme?

According to Hessenthaler's memories, the idea for the Ibiza video was born in 2016. He and a lawyer friend are sitting in a Viennese pub with a Grey Goose Vodka on ice in front of them. This lawyer directs Hessenthaler to the Strache case: at the time, the lawyer is also representing the bodyguard, who has cancer and has the many incriminating documents and photos in his filing cabinet. And he asks Hessenthaler if he doesn't want to up the ante [note what happened: the attorney representing the aggrieved bodyguard shares presumably privileged information he had received from his client with a third party (Hessenthaler), but to my knowledge, the lawyer (sic) has not faced any consequences for doing so; it apparently didn’t cross Correctiv’s minds to find this…odd-to-problematic, if not illegal]

Julian Hessenthaler is a private investigator, an ‘intelligence analyst’, as he calls himself. With his company, he carries out research operations for companies and state authorities. He deals with organised crime and cigarette smuggling. He moves in milieus that nobody wants to be in. He dug deep into criminal smuggling rings and was considered a talented tipster. The lawyer asks if he can do something about [Mr Strache].

If you thought, this reeks more of a cheap 1920s vaudeville routine done by amateurs, well, you’re not wrong:

Hessenthaler remembers saying: ‘If you're serious about this, you'll just have to put some money down.’ The lawyer did [remember: it takes but two to form a ‘conspiracy to commit a crime’, according to ‘the law’]. According to Hessenthaler, he invested around 30,000 euros for the first coup. The lawyer generally confirms this, but tells Correctiv that he ‘can't remember exactly whether it was 30,000 or 40,000 euros’.

The private investigator uses the money to organise a venue in which Gudenus, Strache's confidant and then deputy mayor of Vienna, is invited to corrupt deals. The alleged oligarch's niece, who wants to invest a lot of money in real estate, serves as honey trap. Gudenus is delighted because, according to Hessenthaler, the niece wants to pay twelve million euros for land that belonged to his family and was worth considerably less. That sounds like a lucrative deal. What Gudenus doesn't know is that she is not the niece of an oligarch, but a woman who owes Hessenthaler a favour [see what I mean? It’s all extra-fishy].

What Hessenthaler doesn't know at the same time is that the SD cards are missing from the cameras he has hidden in the specially rented room of the Grand Hotel in Vienna. Around 30,000 euros, spent by the lawyer on the alleged niece's security staff, on the hired Maybach luxury limousine, all for nothing.

Now it is Hessenthaler who owes the lawyer a favour. And then comes the decisive sentence that sets the next ball rolling: ‘If we can do it once, we can do it a second time’, Hessenthaler is said to have told the lawyer. [if this isn’t something that is a textbook case of a ‘conspiracy to commit a crime’, I dunno].

Here, the Correctiv piece fast-forwards a few years; Mr. Hessenthaler has just been released from prison and this is how the story continues:

The Ibiza affair is now history. Hessenthaler has two and a half years in prison behind him and is now getting ready for his next fight: he wants to defend himself against his conviction and the apparatus that had him locked up. But first he has to open a bank account. No account, no work [oh, well, this is, of course, bad and evil if it happens to ‘the good guys’, but o.k. if meted out vs. ‘right-wingers’, such as Nigel Farage or Martin Sellner] According to his own statement, he is de facto insolvent with debts of around 400,000 euros.

‘I know for myself that I'm innocent’, he says. ‘And so of course it's hard to bear that years of my life have been taken from me.’ The trial has shaken his trust in the rule of law [no shit], says Hessenthaler's lawyer Oliver Scherbaum. Until the end of the trial, he had pleaded ‘not guilty’.

But it is not only the accused who says that the trial in Austria raises fundamental questions—the renowned human rights lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck also writes this. So says investigative journalist Florian Klenk, editor-in-chief of the renowned Austrian magazine Falter [muahahahaha; note that Mr. Klenk likes masks, dislikes unmasked people, and prefers spending his train rides on the toilet because of his fear; oh, lest I forget, the ‘renowned…magazine Falter is heavily subsidised by the SPÖ-led government of the City of Vienna, which I thought you should know]. And in the Wiener Zeitung, former UN special envoy Manfred Nowak says: ‘The illegal recordings in Spain would never have led to a European arrest warrant. In other words, more serious charges were needed.’ Were charges fabricated in this highly political Hessenthaler case?

Here, Correctiv adds the following letter by Mr. Hessenthaler, which he addressed to the (Green) federal president on the eve of the disclosure of the ‘Ibiza video’. In it, he expressed his fear of reprisals because… (note the highlighted paragraph below the image; emphases in the translation mine):

Given media coverage on 18 May 2019, I expect reprisals (clear and present threats to my bodily integrity) against myself, my family, and all those individuals who—knowingly or unknowingly—collaborated with me on this issue.

As it stands, Mr. Hessenthaler involved an unknown number of people (Wikipedia states ‘five’) in this charade, some of whom did not consent to the operation. And he is the one who claims to be the victim of ‘reprisals’ in the future.

One of the hallmarks of adulthood is accepting responsibility for one’s actions. Here is prima facie evidence that Mr. Hessenthaler seeks protection for his actions and blatantly disregards those whom he—in his own words—’unknowingly’ dragged along for the ride.

By contrast, this is how Correctiv spins this:

A few weeks before the Ibiza video was published on 17 May 2019, the Ministry of the Interior is said to have sent someone to warn Hessenthaler. This is how Hessenthaler and his lawyer describe it in a written statement. The man allegedly said that if the video was published, there would be enough ‘freelance police officers’ in Austria to put three kilograms of cocaine in his car trunk. This threat is said to have been secretly recorded in Vienna. Correctiv has not seen the recordings. Hessenthaler's lawyer quotes from it in his complaint to the European Court of Human Rights.

At this juncture, I shall stop quoting at length from the Correctiv piece (which contains many more nuggets, though), to both stop boring you with these absurd details and point to one overarching issue.

Although Correctiv—much link in ‘Stupid Watergate’—admits that they have ‘not seen the recordings’ alleged by Mr. Hessenthaler and his lawyer (which one is unclear), they treat the ‘written statement’ (presumably an affidavit, but it’s not specified either) akin to gospel truth.

And this is where it gets wild: Jean Peters who, until a week ago, boasted online to ‘invent stories’, was the ‘journalist’ who conducted that long-form interview with Mr. Hessenthaler. Despite the above-discussed questionable conduct by Mr. Hessenthaler and this Viennese lawyer ‘friend’ of his, Correctiv treats the statements by Hessenthaler as factually correct.

Now, I don’t know if Mr. Hessenthaler is that credible, but I do have a lot of questions about Correctiv’s credibility. In fact, I had a lot of questions about the entire ‘Ibiza affair’ and ‘Stupid Watergate’ did nothing to dispel my mistrust; quite to the contrary.

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Bottom Lines: What Does Mean?

I’m arguing that what we’re observing in both Austria in 2019 and Germany these days are attempts by ‘the Deep State’ to figure out how to engineer a successful ‘colour revolution’ in a Western country.

We now know for a fact that Correctiv has ties to the German domestic intelligence services.

We’ve known for a while that philantropathic actors, such as Mr. Omidyar or Bill Gates funnel money (‘donations’ or ‘projects’) to legacy media outlets, including The Guardian and Der Spiegel.

In Austria in 2020, the conservative-in-name-only ÖVP entered into a coalition with the Greens that remains in power as of today (there are federal elections later this year).

In Germany today, the Greens are in power, so what unites both cases? The alleged ‘fear’ (but mostly loathing) of the established cartel parties of having to share power with the ‘far-right’ Alternative for Germany or the FPÖ.

Who stands to benefit from the current upheavals? Everyone but the AfD and the FPÖ, which indicates that, however unsavoury these parties may be, they are the only parliamentary options for ‘the people’ to extend a middle finder to ‘the establishment’.

In truth, neither AfD nor FPÖ have come out vs. the EU and NATO, although I suspect this to be due to the (partial) subversion of both parties by globalist-transatlanticist interests.

Finally, should we trust anything in media (incl. myself)? Of course not, but in light of the recent revelations concerning Correctiv’s ‘reporting’ about the AfD, a re-appraisal of the Austrian charade appeared in order.

Oh, lest I forget—why did Correctiv organise a theatrical staging of ‘Stupid Watergate’? My money is on ‘artistic licence’ and ‘plausible deniability’ with respect to yet another illegally obtained recording.

Change my mind, will you?!