By John Helmer, Moscow
Three years ago precisely, on January 12, 2014 – just before the Anglo-American war against Russia began in earnest — we reported that the Moscow School of Management at Skolkovo was publishing what it called a market atlas of the jobs and professions which will be newly needed by the year 2020, and those to be needed no longer. One of the new ones was what the Skolkovo atlas called a cyber-cleaner (кибердворник). This is a specialist in removing from the internet and all digital data archives whatever information someone pays to have cleaned or deleted entirely, and its substitution with what the specialist is paid to put there – fake news, kompromat, disinformation, PR, advertising, fraud. One of the professions the cyber-cleaners will replace, according to the atlas, is journalism.
That was six years away when first reported. In the three years intervening years, journalism as readers recognized it has ceased at the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Guardian, London Times; the rest of the mainstream media in the US and UK; and everything that appears in physical print in Canada and Australia. What used to distinguish their journalism from state or corporate controlled media has disappeared. That’s outside Russia.
Inside Russia, for at least a handful of the Skolkovo school’s coordination council — Roman Abramovich, Alexander Abramov, Alexander Voloshin – the elimination of journalists by cyber-cleaners will be none too soon. Anatoly Chubais (pictured below, left) was on the Skolkovo council three years ago; he’s been replaced by his shadow, Leonid Melamed (centre), who has been under house arrest since July 2015; he is charged with embezzlement at Rusnanotech, the state technology holding now directed by Chubais. Another Chubais trustie, whose personal enrichment depended on the breakup of the state electricity utility UES when Chubais was in charge there, is also on the Skolkovo council now; he is Valentin Zavadnikov (right).
His Skolkovo bio refers to his claim that “from 2001 to 2012 worked at the Council of Federation, where Mr. Zavadnikov has fought for the establishment of a competitive market economy in Russia.”.
The truer story of how Zavadnikov was forced to resign in order to avoid disclosing the fruit of his stake in the competitive market economy, his foreign assets, and his partnership with the Leonid Lebedev — also a runaway senator from the Federation Council with foreign assets to hide — can be found here. Their dossiers are small by comparison with that of Chubais.
So ask yourself the question — will they too be cleaned or washed up this year, or by 2020? For the answer, a little old-fashioned journalism may go a long way. Read on.
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