I would imagine most people are not familiar with the recent drama surrounding one Gonzalo Lira. A few months ago, I wrote about his disappearance and asked people to pray for him, because it seemed like he had been arrested for, essentially, telling the truth.
It is possible I may have been wrong about his motives and/or background. What follows is an attempt to think critically and objectively about the facts.
Let me state right here and now that, although I dislike Gonzo’s style and way of doing things, I wish him no personal ill will, at all. I hope he is all right, and that he will find a way to get the hell out of Banderastan, to a sane, non-Nazi-controlled country, out of reach of the Empire of Lies.
However, when he resurfaced a few days ago, and posted a VERY long Twatter thread about his plans to flee Banderastan through Hungary… my Bullshit-O-Meter went into full-on screaming overdrive.
Here is the thread itself – read through it in your own time:
Essentially, Gonzo showed up about 5Km away from the Hungarian border, and then spent at least an hour Twatting about it, and filming YOOTOOBZ videos about his situation:
That was when my BS-meter went off. I figured something was very wrong, because I know a little about the geography of Banderastan. I did not have to think for more than 10 seconds before coming to a conclusion that something was way off.
If you look at a map of 404, you will find that Kharkov, where Gonzo was arrested, is in the Ukrainian northeast – and it is a major stronghold for the Ukrainian SBU. Yet, he claimed to show up on the Hungarian border.
Since, as I said, I know something about 404’s geography, and I know those two points are basically on opposite ends of Banderastan, that seemed rather odd to me.
At the time, I figured that was that – something seemed off, but I had rather more pressing questions to occupy my attention, and gave it no further thought.
Then another drama blew up all over TEH INNARWEBZ today, when Brian Berletic of The New Atlas took a full SEVENTEEN MINUTES of a live-stream with the Greek gentlemen of The Duran, and proceeded to rail on and on about one Scott Ritter and his perceived lies and inconsistencies on the subject of Gonzo:
You can see in that video that Mr. Berletic is clearly deeply emotional about whatever it was that went down between him and Mr. Ritter. He goes on, and on, and ON, about it, to the point where the two Alexes were clearly very uncomfortable about it, and wanted to move on – but Baldy there just couldn’t let it go.
That was when I started going down the rabbit-hole, because Maj. Scott Ritter is (obviously) someone whom I respect, and whose opinion I regard highly. Of course, he is hardly infallible – maybe he got something wrong?
So I started looking into things a little, and thinking about them a bit more deeply.
I started by looking at what Mr. Ritter actually said about Gonzo. Turns out, it was quite a lot – he commented on Gonzo’s original epic-length thread:
And then he commented further in a 17-minute excerpt from his last “Ask the Inspector” episode:
It didn’t take much more searching to discover the source of the beef between him and Mr. Berletic. That particular thread ended with Mr. Berletic blocking Mr. Ritter, which is usually a sure-fire sign of someone who is too emotional to think straight. Reading Mr. Berletic’s comments in that thread, and listening to what he said in his live-stream with The Duran, all I can say is, he is the one misrepresenting what Mr. Ritter wrote and said.
Whereas, if you actually listen to/read what Mr. Ritter said, the points he raises are eminently sensible, and he is not misrepresenting what Gonzo did, said, wrote, and posted.
There are a whole bunch of red flags which just jump straight out of this whole situation. Something about all of this just smelled and looked WRONG.
Still and all, I was willing to give Gonzo the benefit of the doubt, and argue that perhaps he was just very, very lucky.
Then I started looking into other material around the issue – and I realised something is truly fishy about all of this.
Let us start with Mr. Lira’s Twatter thread. If you read through the thread carefully, you will see that he started posting at 23:23 – and finished at 23:25 on Jul 31. Now, I can type pretty damn fast – but I would have a VERY hard time writing that quickly, even if I had my entire thought process completely mapped out beforehand, and I would have to do that on a laptop keyboard. So, perhaps he had all of that text and all of the images saved up on his phone.
But… what the hell was he doing with a phone, a passport, and transportation, just a few days before his trial???
I mean, I get that 404 is perhaps the most corrupt country in the ENTIRE WORLD, but this is the SBU we are talking about. These people are very, very dangerous – they are fanatical ideologues, and they have greatly enhanced their capabilities with everything the CIA has given them. They are literal Nazis, and they crazy, but they are NOT stupid.
And then there is the fact that he was standing 5Km from the Hungarian border. First, that is a HUGE distance to travel. If you actually measure the driving distance from Kharkov to the nearest Hungarian border town, that is some 810 miles – over 1,300Km, for those of us who use proper units that actually make some damn SENSE.
That is no trivial distance, and certainly not an easy one to cover on a motorcycle. How, exactly, does one cross through all of Ukraine, which, let us remind ourselves, is fighting a WAR, without being stopped even ONCE, in a country where all eligible adult males are subject to on-the-spot conscription for the Khokholistani meat assaults?
I mean, I know God loves fools, drunks, and gamblers, but travelling over 1,300Km without being stopped even ONCE, despite being on a watch list, stretches credulity well past the breaking point.
Let us give Gonzo the maximum benefit of the doubt, because he DID say he was in “the Sizo Prison”. A little research will tell you that Banderastan has a system of “Sizo Prisons” (pre-trial detention centres) across the country, and one of them is in Queef. So perhaps he escaped from Queef instead, which would make his overall journey quite a lot shorter.
That still doesn’t change the fact that he drove across hundreds of kilometres of a country at war, and undoubtedly had to stop and pay for things along the way, presumably in cash.
Why the Hungarian border, rather than the (much closer and more easily accessible) Russian one? That, at least, has a sensible and easy answer – that whole front is a war zone. The Belorussian border isn’t any better- the Ukies have mined and barricaded that to a frightening degree.
None of this changes the fact that travelling to Hungary for asylum is a long, dangerous, difficult route with a very low probability of success. Again, something just does not add up there.
Then we get to the fact that he was able to send videos from near the Hungarian border, as he claims. Just what in the hell possessed him to do that??? Surely he would know that posting something from a phone would allow quick the SBU to find him using geolocation techniques?
An interesting video by one George Eliason, an independent investigator, rather like Eva Bartlett, living in Donbass, laid it all out quite nicely – the evidence here is circumstantial, as Mr. Eliason himself states up front, but the analysis is, I think, pretty solid:
On top of all that, it appears that Gonzo was indeed arrested at the border and sent right back into 404.
Overall, the entire story stinks to heaven of something like an intel operation. I strongly suspect Mr. Ritter is correct, and Gonzo is in fact a pawn, unwitting or otherwise, of the SBU.
I would like very much to believe otherwise, and I hope I am wrong. It is not good or right to think ill of a man who has been tortured by evil people. But, as Mr. Eliason’s video points out, something about Gonzo’s conduct in all of this indicates a kind of sting operation.
We shall see. All I can say for sure is that we should all be careful about whom we trust and listen to, and we should actively question what we read and see.
The same goes for what you read on this site, of course. That is why I try to give links to sources – though I do not do this for everything, as I expect a certain level of intelligence and due diligence from my readership. You do not have to believe anything I tell you – indeed, I encourage scepticism. Given my appallingly bad track record with predicting anything in the 404 War, one would be forgiven for thinking I have no idea what is going on. All I can say is, I try to go where the facts point me.
And, in this case, the facts would indicate, but do not yet confirm, that Gonzo is not perhaps everything we thought.
Again, we shall see. The truth will come out eventually. But right now, it is a very, very strange time.
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