I see lots of data on gray areas and many suppositions and assertions, but zero real proof that ZH is actually paid by Russia. Your posts even bear enough accusations to resemble an actual PR operation whose purpose is to discourage anyone from ever visiting there, or severely darken their reputation like the CIA might do.
I assume that you're aware of US DoD and CIA troll and PR operations that are quite similar to what the FSB does and like Goebbels did. There are also likely hundreds of links available for them, how about posting some for balance?
It is of course possible that they're being paid by Russia, but its much more likely in my opinion that it's just a super patriot as you allowed as a possibility, like many bloggers in the US that attack Russia for its less than sane actions, management, 1984 modes etc. As far as them republishing some stuff from their Russian site, ZH ranks in the low thousands in the US and worldwide for traffic, so there's obviously some substantial income to be had besides ads if you think about it and have marketing background. Everything isn't a conspiracy, and I must admit to being bemused by your reference to a hotel that went from daily to hourly rates; sounds more like a bordello or place for independent hookers from here.
In my experience, there are many factual articles at ZH that expose Fed and US shortcomings and worse and frequently the data is posted there very early in time compared to other blogs. All I suggest is if someone reads their stuff, pull the strings and references and checks to see if they got it right before believing what they say, and don't bother with most of the comments (they're some wackos posting there that love preaching to the severe gloom and doom choir, there are some here that do the same in the political area), the site can be quite useful sometimes. And they're far from the only place on the internet that gets things wrong sometimes. |
