Finland is at a crossroads. The choices its leaders make today could determine the fate of Finland and Finns for decades to come. The atmosphere has become toxic as the loudest voices take aggressive, black-and-white positions over the refugee crisis. The 'hunt for the guilty ones' is on, with different parties pointing the finger at each other, both through the media and on the street. When common sense is lost in the midst of so much spin, history shows that heightened rage and hysteria gives way to reactionary decision-making, social chaos and even war.

With more turmoil in the world than ever before, and in a world that is more interdependent and interconnected than ever before, is it possible for any (so-called) civilized nation to 'hold the center'? In Finland's case, has it become a pawn of geopolitics and international corporations? From where does all this social chaos and quarreling come? Is someone responsible for it, or did these things occur by chance?

Since the beginning of time, the beliefs and choices of groups of people and entire nations have been manipulated via inducing in them strong emotions, especially hatred and fear. A state of increased chaos most benefits the most unscrupulous in society: selfish opportunists and psychopaths, who cynically exploit disorder and conflict to acquire more profits and more control. This perpetuates and worsens instability because they quickly realize that it's in their interest to 'prevent things from returning to normal'.

Finns for NATO

These NATO-team players often seem to be especially self-centered opportunists and it is apparent that most of them hope for (or they are promised) monetary gain and/or status. It also appears that the desire for celebrity status is one motivation to join the "winning" team. These self-centered NATO-beneficiaries can be found in every sector of life, but the most zealous are often right-wing politicians (for example the National Coalition Party or Kokoomus), military personnel, mainstream media representatives and heads of big business. Economic warfare is also a big part of the NATO camp's activities; for example, in the Orwellian 'TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership' (TTIP) agreement, we see the foundation of an 'economic NATO', which is meant to hold back Russia and China by weakening European commercial relations with the East. (This despite the fact that Europe is suffering most from Washington's megalomaniac economic policies, as the consequences of the anti-Russian sanctions have shown.)

Pro-NATO fanatics are naturally also very enthusiastic about the "the American Dream", but apparently care little for the Washington-led theater of horrors taking place in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world. Such cheerleaders for NATO war and aggression derive a lot of strength from the many Right-Wing Authoritarian followers who will defend their leaders to the very last.

Many aspects of Washington's (and its intermediaries') cooperation with the Finnish NATO fifth column are kept secret from the public (such as the secret Porvoo NATO Conference). But what is known for sure is that Finnish government officials have "been trained" in the US and American advisors and "experts" have visited Finland. Extensive use is also made of social media, following the guidelines for Internet undercover operations, as revealed in the Snowden leaks, along with tactics of 'Strategic Communications' being regularly employed.

Fortunately for these NATO-lovers, more or less the entire Finnish mainstream media supports their efforts. Finland's largest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, announced years ago that it supports the proposed membership of Finland in NATO. Despite repeated anti-Russian rhetoric in the media over the last few years, however, a positive attitude towards NATO has not increased among the public. So a change in tactic is now being seen.

Russia and Europe's Far Right

According to recent polls, a majority of people in Finland have swallowed the NATO-team's narrative that Russia is an undemocratic rogue state. With this false belief in place, Russia and Putin are also now being connected with the right-wing extremism and fascism that is arising across Europe.

These allegations of links between Putin and the extreme right in Europe seems to be based upon a particular theme circulating in the media: the Russian National Forum (an NGO), arranged a conference in St. Petersburg in 2014, in which members of EU-critical parties from several European countries participated. There were no high-ranking Russian officials present and the Kremlin did not endorse the event. Anything related to Putin seems to be based purely on what the media claims is related, and not on evidence.

Links between Putin and the European extreme right has been "researched" by the Atlantic Council's think-tank of NATO-affiliated partisans, which the media recites uncritically. In November 2014, it was reported that Marine Le Pen's Front National party had taken money from a Russian bank, for which the media again sought far-fetched connections to Putin; just because it's a (private) Russian bank, doesn't mean Putin is behind the loan!

Their assumption betrays psychopathic projection: Europe's biggest bank, HSBC, is notorious for funding terrorist organizations and drug cartels, among other nasty things. These kind of activities are nothing new for the Anglo-American elite: after all, it was American banks and Wall Street that funded Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, enabling them to rise to power and eventually leading to WWII.

No matter, soon enough, dissent from the 'official narrative' that Russia is funding right-wing political parties in Europe and "destabilizing the entire continent" will be accepted as true, and right-wing extremist and racist thinking will be equated with having positive views of Russia.

The Real 'Euro-Extreme Right and Fascist Groups

On the back of the hysterical claims by European and US politicians about Russia planning to invade Europe, and the refugee crisis caused by US warmongering in the Middle East, street patrols made up of right-wing racists have recently made an appearance in Finland.

For pathological individuals, such as psychopaths, there is no better terrain than extreme right-wing groups. Within hard-line extreme-right groups, where harsh measures and opinions are permissible, even expected, its activities encourage hatred along with aggression - with violence being the primary method of expression. When the soil has been cultivated for fascism and when an understanding of the "big picture" is very low, it is easy for psychopaths or those who practice manipulation to "ignite" these individuals to start a revolution and do horrifying things, such as we have witnessed in Ukraine.

These pathological individuals do not base their activities on any particular ideology. They move with ease from one group to another, choosing whichever best serves their own interests. In the manner of a chameleon, a psychopath can become a credible supporter of any ideology. For this reason, psychopaths can appear in all groups: in the pursuit of their own hedonistic interests, such groups and ideologies are simply tools in the service of achieving dominance and a better chance of controling other people.

According to common estimates, psychopaths compose about 1-2% of any given population. The population of Europe is about 740 million at this time. That's around 7.5-15 million psychopaths. In 2011, there were some 1.8 million prisoners in Europe. Of the prison population, about 20% meet the clinical characteristics of a psychopath. In other words, from the entire European prison population there are approximately 360,000 psychopaths. On this basis, an incredible 95-97.5% of all psychopaths in Europe are walking around freely.

They can be found in all levels of society: ordinary psychopaths are involved mostly in petty crimes or act as parasites, causing harm mainly within their immediate social surroundings. An intelligent and gifted psychopath can instead end up as wealthy banker/businessman, military officer or popular politician, whose influence extends over a very wide section of the population. Psychopathy is in fact most common in positions of power. In general they all completely lack the ability for empathy, which inevitably leads to a different scale of tragedy. Sott editor Joe Quinn wrote about the emotional manipulation behind the refugee crisis last September, pointing out that behind it all are these 'creatures':

"In the last 4 years, the 'creatures' in the American government and their European stooges deliberately destroyed the societies of Syria and Libya, partly for profit, partly for 'fun'. So go ahead and be horrified at the images of Syrian (or Iraqi or Libyan) babies washed up on European beaches; just don't be surprised. And don't be surprised when your apathy-turned-compassion transforms into intolerant bigotry whenever some 'terrorist' among the 'migrants' kills some European(s) in another typical false-flag attack. That's what false-flags are designed for - to manipulate you - and humans are so very easily manipulated.

Most self-satisfied 'neo-liberal' Westerners have swallowed (and are currently regurgitating) the 'feel-good' narrative that the 'migrants' are both a danger and a compliment to Europe's 'high democratic ideals' and lifestyle. If I could offer such people one piece of advice, it would be that, rather than fretting about the situation, they feel grateful that the only blow-back they must endure from their government's actions is the odd 'migrant' child or family washed up on their pristine beaches.

Because if this were some other universe where the truth was universally recognized, we all might be required to look at the thousands of Syrian babies killed in the US- and EU-inspired Syrian 'revolution' to overthrow Assad, and concede that behind the feel-good narrative of 'freedom and democracy', those babies were killed for 'fun', and in your name. Then we could move on to the tens of thousands of dead Iraqi babies...

Since then we have seen attitudes towards refugees become even more hysterical, especially since the terrorist attacks in France. Through this emotional influence the psychopaths in power drive their own agenda forward. When Europeans grip each other by the throat, they will demand, in the end, that their own rights as citizens be curtailed, all the while remaining blind to 'the man behind the curtain'.

COINTELPRO and Strategic Communications

Cointelpro was/is the FBI's public surveillance program from the 50s to 70s, in which they sought to manipulate the activities of social and political groups, as well as individuals, by influencing and controlling their operations to benefit the power structure's own goals. They used many methods of sabotage and subterfuge, committing illegal activities across the board.

"COINTELPRO" was the FBI's secret program to undermine the popular upsurge which swept the country during the 1960s. Though the name stands for "Counterintelligence Program," the targets were not enemy spies. The FBI set out to eliminate "radical" political opposition inside the US. When traditional modes of repression (exposure, blatant harassment, and prosecution for political crimes) failed to counter the growing insurgency, and even helped to fuel it, the Bureau took the law into its own hands and secretly used fraud and force to sabotage constitutionally-protected political activity. Its methods ranged far beyond surveillance, and amounted to a domestic version of the covert action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world.

- Cointelpro Revisited - Spying & Disruption, by Brian Glick

Cointelpro methods remain as successful as ever. They were seen, for example, in the diversionary tactics directed at the 9/11-Truth movement, where obvious truths (like the fact that no Boeing crashed into the Pentagon) were mixed with absurd theories that promoted obscure parties who, consciously or unconsciously, alienated the majority of the population from hard science and rational thinking based on genuine evidence. Included in these techniques is the creation of "straw men", which are used to cast anyone who questions the official narrative as tin-foil-hat-wearing fools.

Instead, the starting point for the media's interpretation of world events are coincidence theories in which global events are largely random sequences and the results of naive failures (except when it comes to Putin, but more on this later), wherein states - Western countries anyway - always operate with altruistic or selfless intentions. From this perspective, the occupation of Afghanistan has continued for 15 years only due to the incompetence and misfortunes of America's military-industrial complex, and it was not done purposely in order to support a geo-strategic position. Still, it's a funny thing that these "misfortunes" of the coincidence theorists tend to always benefit the same few parties.

The terms 'information-influencing' or 'strategic communications', academically-clothed terminology, basically mean to propagandize and manipulate. In NATO-land, 'information warfare' is something only Russia engages in, not other countries - although Western countries are simultaneously engaged in exactly the same thing. Should someone other than Russia conduct 'information warfare', they are justified in doing so because their perspective is true, whereas all information coming from Russia is lies. University of Helsinki researcher Noora Kotilainen illustrates the nature of this information war:

"The recent use of the term in the Finnish public has been unclear, even misleading, largely devoid of critical and very un-historical. There is a risk that the social discussion becomes absolute, if (and when) the presentation of certain opinions is framed to be participating in a "war". It would be important to distinguish between the influence caused by providing information and conducting information warfare. Is this war continuously present and everywhere, and is having a discussion the same as participation in this war? Or are we talking about the influence of information, which communication always is? How can we distinguish between information warfare and propaganda? What value to the social (and not just to military science) debate does the concept of information warfare bring? If the identification of influence of information or information warfare becomes the work of officials,and if criteria are established with key words contained in communications mechanically classifying the messages as 'information-influencing' or even 'information warfare', we will curtail our own discussions in a potentially very dangerous way."

This 'information-influencing' is part of so-called 'strategic communication.' Journalist Robert Parry wrote:

"In this age of pervasive media, the primary method of social control is through the creation of narratives delivered to the public through newspapers, TV, radio, computers, cell phones and any other gadget that can convey information. This reality has given rise to an obsession among the power elite to control as much of this messaging as possible.

So, regarding U.S. relations toward the world, we see the State Department, the White House, Pentagon, NATO and other agencies pushing various narratives to sell the American people and other populations on how they should view U.S. policies, rivals and allies. The current hot phrase for this practice is"strategic communications" or Stratcom, which blends psychological operations, propaganda and P.R. into one mind-bending smoothie.

I have been following this process since the early 1980s when the Reagan administration sought to override "the Vietnam Syndrome," a public aversion to foreign military interventions that followed the Vietnam War. To get Americans to "kick" this syndrome, Reagan's team developed "themes" about overseas events that would push American "hot buttons."Tapping into the Central Intelligence Agency's experience in psy-ops targeted at foreign audiences, President Ronald Reagan and CIA Director William J. Casey assembled a skilled team inside the White House led by CIA propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr.

From his new perch on the National Security Council staff, Raymond oversaw inter-agency task forces to sell interventionist policies in Central America and other trouble spots. The game, as Raymond explained it in numerous memos to his underlings, was to glue black hats on adversaries and white hats on allies, whatever the truth really was."

Russia will always be the 'black sheep' in the United States' narrative, thereby setting the desired borders of discussion. Any crossing of this border (for example, taking into consideration Russia's point of view) automatically gets one labeled as a dissident. As we mentioned, 'strategic communications' and 'information warfare' are only euphemisms for propaganda, which information warriors, a.k.a trolls, spread around through various media channels.

The seeding of narratives is effected by intelligence services working in cooperation with journalists (among other methods). A former editor for an influential and internationally circulated German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Udo Ulkoffe, published a book in 2014 called 'Gekaufte Jornalisten' (Bought Journalists), in which he revealed the prescriptive role of secret services role towards the media. In an interview, Ulkoffe said:

"It is not right what I have done in the past. To manipulate people, to make propaganda. And it is not right what my colleagues do and have done in the past because they are bribed to betray people not only in Germany, but all over Europe," he told RT. "I was a journalist for 25 years and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public."

"I was bribed by the Americans not to report exactly the truth... I was invited by the German Marshall Fund of the United States to travel to the US. They paid for all my expenses and put me in contact with Americans they'd like me to meet," he said. "I became an honorary citizen of the state of Oklahoma in the US just because I wrote pro-American. I was supported by the CIA. I have helped them in several situations and I feel ashamed for that too."

Many other journalists are involved in the same practice, Ulfkotte added. "Most of the journalists you see in foreign countries, they claim to be journalists, and they might be. But many of them, like me in the past, are so-called 'non-official cover.' It means you work for an intelligence agency, you help them if they want you to. But they will never say they know you." The journalists selected for such jobs usually come from big media organizations. The relationship with the secret service starts as a friendship. "They work on your ego, make you feel like you're important. And one day one of them will ask you 'Will you do me this favor?'" Ulfkotte explained.

Both left and right groups are subject to Cointelpro programs, in which citizens' fears and insecurities are channeled towards Putin and Russia, and NATO is offered as a solution to this entirely manufactured and artificial threat.

Putin and Mainstream Media Conspiracy Theories

Observing the way the mainstream media covers Putin, one notices a schizophrenic flip. The media usually favors coincidence theories, but when it comes to Putin, inhibitions are cast aside and CIA-funded journalists embrace conspiracy theories.

Among other things, the Western media knows that Putin is secretly the world's richest man (because he wears wristwatches), who has recruited Russian ladies in a social media campaign for kebabs in order to save unsuspecting Russian citizens from the temptations of Western junk food (how treacherous!). When Putin spent a few days out of the eyes of the public, journalists began to make up stories, in true James Bond-style, about a coup involving nuclear weapons. Journalists know that Putin had face surgery in the manner of Michael Jackson (comparing studio make up pictures with an apparent double chin). And that's not all: the Western media reports that Russians believe that Putin is actually immortal - that is why he holds onto power so tightly!

Perhaps we will next hear that, in reality, it was Putin at the grassy knoll targeting JFK. Maybe he also was behind the extinction of dinosaurs? It all seems equally legitimate!

But the more subtle disinformation about Russia and Putin impresses itself easier into people's subconscious. For example, everyone 'knows' that Russia oppresses sexual minorities and that Putin supports the extreme right in Europe.

In reality, there are about 75 countries in the world where homosexuality is against the law, and Russia is not on this list. In Saudi Arabia, a key NATO vassal in the Middle East, the penalty for homosexuality is death. A political party in Holland actually campaigned for the legalization of pedophilia. There are many such organizations in Western countries. Indeed, this seems to be a particularly Western phenomenon. The Russian law barring sexual propaganda directed at minors is not unique: many states in the US have exactly the same kind of law.

Who's Behind the Refugee Crisis?

The numerous NATO military interventions around the world since the end of the Cold War are clearly the primary reason for the refugee crisis, yet the Western media is completely silent on this. In providing testimony about the refugee situation in his speech at the opening of a parliamentary session, Finnish president Sauli Niinistö was also unable to call a spade a spade, and instead ranted about the divisive effect of the crisis on citizens. Thankfully, Putin has no such foibles when it comes to telling the truth:

Finnish media has even gone so far as to blame Russia for the influx of refugees into Europe, describing asylum seekers crossing the Russian border into Finland as "threatening", and implying that Putin sent them with such headlines as:

'Russian security service pulling strings near Eastern border - Do the tracks lead to Putin?'

The fact that about 30,000 asylum seekers have crossed into Finland from Sweden, compared with about 1,000 from Russia,is apparently irrelevant when it comes to NATO anti-Russian propaganda. Then again, somewhere in the region of 100% of what Western politicians and their media say about Russia and Putin is entirely false.