The hypocrisy of Western governments & media

[nadir]

https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1642918629258985472?s=46&t=fgkWfKCeMHNTP58vSU0TeA

[SeanAU]

Labels of Hypocrisy don't even scratch the surface in the depth of violent psychopathic evils perpetrated, willfully with intent, by the Global Empire of the United States of America, and it's self-serving Media and Intel propaganda apparatus.

[nadir]

This is on point again and again, now given the coverage the dead of the Russian blogger has received from mainstream media

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/27/western-media-coverage-ukraine-russia-invasion-criticism

[nadir]

Germany is in denial about Ukraine

https://unherd.com/2023/01/germany-is-in-denial-about-ukraine/

[nadir]

Marxist point of view


https://www.marxist.com/ukraine-the-refugee-crisis-and-the-hypocrisy-of-the-west.htm

[SeanAU]

Shock horror. Their tender sensibilities have been unsettled. During times of stress people default to their natural state of core values and attitudes. Neocolonialist White Supremacy is a core European value.

People with 'blue eyes and blonde hair' dropping bombs all over the Middle East, Asia and Africa is OK. As is people with 'blue eyes and blonde hair' dropping bombs all over the Donbas for 8 long years, and over Serbia and Russia as well is OK too.

Terrorist attacks on civilians and infrastructure is fine when it is is done by 'blue eyed and blonde haired' Neo-nazi fascist Ukrainians, Norwegians and Americans intelligence services and military.

It is what it is. It is what the empire of lies does. The entire uncivilized so-called 'civilized western world' is stuck in denial.

[SeanAU]

US efforts to ban TikTok are pure projection by the world’s biggest spy power

As the United States contemplates a possible ban on TikTok, it relentlessly accuses Beijing of using the popular Chinese-owned social media application as a means of espionage, claiming that the Communist Party has access to user data.

HYPOCRITICALLY, Washington itself is known to be doing exactly what US politicians are accusing China of doing. Using the unique advantage of having jurisdiction over the world’s top internet companies, the US has given itself the right to look into the private communications of foreign officials and citizens anywhere in the world. Combine that data-sharing between intelligence agencies of the US and its allies, and you get the most comprehensive UNTRUSTWORTHY DUPLICITOUS espionage regime in the world.

While American politicians and media constantly talk about FANTASIES & DISHONEST PROPAGANDA  of Chinese espionage, the near-absence of coverage of Washington’s own spying efforts ought to be a reminder of where the true power lies. When it comes to the shady activities of the CIA and the NSA, the public tends to only learn what they did years later from declassified documents, or what they “have been doing all along” from rare whistleblowers like Edward Snowden.

All discussion and speculation about what illegal activities US  spy agencies “may be doing right now” tends to be dismissed as conspiracy theories. Conversely, allegations of Chinese spying activities are constantly explained as “we all know they’re doing it” in the public eye, despite the lack of solid proof, an iota of evidence to support the unhinged claims being made, or the lack of even basic rational thinking and logic.

These warning signs remind us that the most cryptic source of all spying in the world is not China, but the US. they have created a number of communication interception and surveillance programs, as revealed by Snowden, such as PRISM, ECHELON, XKEYSCORE, etc.

Of course, the US nearly holds a monopoly over the means of information and data gathering – definitely more so than any other country. This is because it has the privilege of having the world’s most dominant internet companies located on its own soil, such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Meta. These organizations are required by law to share data with the US government and authorities should they request it.

The real problem Washington has with TikTok is not the falsely alleged spying for Beijing’s benefit – it’s the fact that TikTok is the first global-spanning social media network of its magnitude that isn’t under US control – and thus, cannot be weaponized by the US for its own espionage.

It’s more than a matter of spy games – it’s a matter of hegemony, and as such, it’s pure projection on Washington’s part to sound the alarm over TikTok’s alleged unproven breaches of privacy.

As it stands, the US has an unrivaled digital spying network and is the greatest single threat to individual privacy online.

[SeanAU]

Then there is the Twitter Files - The Elephant in the Room - The Twitter files continue to confirm our long held suspicion of nefarious anti-Russian influence in mainstream media.

THREAD: Twitter Files #14 THE RUSSIAGATE LIES
One: The Fake Tale of Russian Bots and the #ReleaseTheMemo Hashtag
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589031773769739


TWITTER FILES & THE DEATH OF RUSSIAGATE
Matt Taibbi, Chris Hedges & John Kiriakou
Streamed live on 2 Feb 2023
"It's like fighting with somebody who won't punch back. There's more of this stuff coming, and it's just going to get worse." Matt Taibbi
https://www.youtube.com/live/kEymiIyDJx0?feature=share&t=1354 


Twitter Files Debunk Hamilton 68

The Twitter Files reveal (and confirm prior reporting and warnings by Jimmy Dore, Glen Greenwald and Aaron Mate and more) that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a intel services / media scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork.

Matt Taibbi writes:

Ambitious media frauds Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair crippled the reputations of the New Republic and New York Times, respectively, by slipping years of invented news stories into their pages. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we can welcome a new member to their infamous club: Hamilton 68.

If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as the single greatest case of media fabulism in American history. Virtually every major news organization in America is implicated, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post. Mother Jones alone did at least 14 stories pegged to the group’s “research.” Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as a source.

[...] The company (Twitter) was concerned enough about the proliferation of news stories linked to Hamilton 68 that it also ordered a forensic analysis. [..] Twitter was checking to see how many of Hamilton’s accounts were spammy, phony, or bot-like. Note that out of 644 accounts, just 36 were registered in Russia, and many of those were associated with RT.

Examining further, Twitter execs were shocked. The accounts Hamilton 68 claimed were linked to “Russian influence activities online” were not only overwhelmingly English-language (86%), but mostly “legitimate people,” largely in the U.S., Canada, and Britain. Grasping right away that Twitter might be implicated in a moral outrage, they wrote that these account-holders “need to know they’ve been unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.”
...
“The selection of accounts is… bizarre and seemingly quite arbitrary,” wrote [Twitter's Trust and Safety chief Yoel] Roth. “They appear to strongly preference pro-Trump accounts (which they FRAUDULENTLY use to assert that Russia is expressing a preference for Trump… even though there’s not good evidence any of them are Russian).”

[...] I asked for comment from a huge range of actors — from the Alliance for Securing Democracy to Watts and McFaul and Podesta and Kristol to editors and news directors at MSNBC, Politico, Mother Jones, the Washington Post, Politifact, and others. Not one answered. They’re all going to pretend this didn’t happen.

The few reporters who got this right contemporaneously, from Glenn Greenwald to Max Blumenthal to Miriam Elder and Charlie Wurzel of Buzzfeed to sites like Moon of Alabama, can take a victory lap. Almost every other news organization ran these stories and needs to come clean about it.

educate yourself better:
https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton

THREAD: Twitter Files #15
MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029772977455105
( In the video you may notice Jake Sullivan, Amb. McFaul, and Podester in the GMF/ASD group photo )

The Hamilton 68 dashboard, like the Steele dossier, was so obviously fake and dangerous that it did not take much effort to debunk it.

In 2018 Moon of Alabama was one of the few sides that dug into this and called the media out:

    The fraudsters who created the Hamilton 68 crap seem to have filled their database with rather normal people from all over the world who's opinions they personally dislike. Those then are the "Russian bots" who spread "Russian influence" and divisiveness.

    Moreover - what is the value of its information when six normal people out of millions of active Twitter users can push a hashtag with a handful of tweets to the top of the dashboard?

    But the U.S. media writes long gushing stories about the dashboard and how it somehow shows automated Russian propaganda. They go to length to explain that this shows "Russian influence" and a "Russian" attempt to sow "divisiveness" into people's minds.

    This is nuts.

    Last August, when the Hamilton 68 project was first released, the Nation was the only site critical of it. It predicted:

       

The import of GMF's project is clear: Reporting on anything that might put the US in a bad light is now tantamount to spreading Russian propaganda.

    It is now even worse than that. The top ranking of the #merrychristmas hashtag shows that the algorithm does not even care about good or bad news. The tracked twitter accounts are normal people.

    The whole project is just a means to push fake stories about alleged "Russian influence" into U.S. media. Whenever some issue creeps up on its dashboard that somehow fits its false "Russian bots" and "divisiveness" narrative the Alliance for Securing Democracy contacts the media to spread its poison. The U.S. media, - CNN, Wired, the New York Times -  are by now obviously devoid of thinking journalists and fact checkers. They simple re-package the venom and spread it to the public.

    How long will it take until people die from it?

It only took four years.

The public sentiment created by the anti-Russia campaign was one of the conditions for the war in Ukraine. Some 150,000 Ukrainian soldiers, some 20,000 men fighting on the Russian side (source Col. Doug Macgregor) and some 10,000 civilians (UN) have so far died in it (@Jan.23)

But the media and politicians who willingly fell for the scam and furthered the anti-Russian disinformation will never acknowledge that they were wrong and are guilty of causing so many deaths.

[SeanAU]

More than the hypocrisy, which is awful in itself, it is the outrageous lying of the Western governments & media that gets to me most. Individual people do this lying - not nameless unseen bureaucracies.

But speaking of hypocrisy, the US Government is a State Sponsor of Terrorism. It funds and militarily supports the Govt of Ukraine, whose military and secret services (SBU) has been responsible for multiple deadly terrorist attacks in the Donbas and on Russian territory, including targeted assassinations using IEDs, no different than Al Qaeda and ISIS Terrorists.

The US Govt has even acknowledged these acts were planned and carried out by Ukraine officials and operatives, and yet the US still continues to fund and arm this corrupt terrorist state. More than that the US Government is itself a Terrorist state, carrying out extra-judicial mass murders and blowing up the Nordstream Gas pipelines among other things.

The US is a belligerent militarily aggressive terrorist state that must be held accountable for it's crimes. It must be completely demilitarized and permanently removed from the UN Security Council.

One day it will be. I hope I live to see it happen. Long before that I expect to see the US nation looking just like Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine do. Torn apart, destroyed and utterly dysfunctional as a country.

[nadir]

Just take a direct ride from Long Beach Downtown to LA Downtown avoiding the freeways, then park and take a walk. You won’t believe the way things are looking already.

[A-Team]

UCLA seems to be suggesting the solution is to expand the gallery district. Here in Tucson we have vast sprawl, little public transportation, deadly summer heat, no downtown, free one-way bus tickets to Phoenix and consequently no visible homeless, problem solved.

Annual US deaths from drug addiction, mainly fentanyl via precursors from India and China mailed to Mexico, have supposedly reached 75,000 a year which in weekly terms 1500 is comparable to daily war casualties in Bahkmut.

My question is how long can this go on, where does the next 75,000 come from year after year? Surely this is rapidly depleting the homeless pool. (Admittedly that will be growing this year due to transient inflation and unaffordability* of rent and used cars).

*word not in forum spellcheck table.

[SeanAU]

US efforts to ban TikTok are pure projection by the world’s biggest spy power

As the United States contemplates a possible ban on TikTok, it relentlessly accuses Beijing of using the popular Chinese-owned social media application as a means of espionage, claiming that the Communist Party has access to user data.

This software reveals true color of ‘Summit for Democracy’: Global Times editorial
Global Times Apr 04 2023

In the just concluded so-called Summit for Democracy, US President Joe Biden, as the host, declared that a coalition will be formed to combat governments "who misuse surveillance technologies for repression." He also used an executive order that prohibits the US government's use of commercial spyware as a prominent example of the US' leadership in strengthening "democracy," portraying the US as the "defender" of global cyberspace.

However, when Washington's facade is still fresh and new, the New York Times on Sunday published an article about the US government's secret use of spyware from the Israeli firm NSO Group, which once again completely exposes the US' true nature as a fake defender of global cyberspace.

NSO, mentioned in the New York Times, is the same company that created the spyware Pegasus, known as "perhaps the most powerful spyware ever created." The Pegasus scandal once caused a global sensation. The spyware has a daunting ability to collect information about location, photos and passwords without the users' permission. It has spied on at least 50,000 phone numbers from 50 countries, including those of hundreds of politicians and government officials. This triggered a chain reaction and even a political storm. The incident was called "one of the biggest spy scandals of our time" by some media.

[......]

Washington's hypocritical and sinister side is also reflected in the fact that after NSO was targeted by the US and fell into difficulties, other partners were "scared away," and then the US defense contractor giant L3Harris Technologies Inc "coincidentally" appeared and began acquisition negotiations. According to reports, L3Harris Technologies has had close communication with US intelligence agencies and the US Department of Commerce and has made some progress. Perhaps at this point, the real reason why the US Department of Commerce sanctioned NSO has become apparent. Even the Israeli side couldn't help but feel angry at the US' hypocrisy.

Many media outlets, including the New York Times, have reported that the "Five Eyes Alliance" is considered by NSO as its largest potential market, and it is highly likely that they have already cooperated. As China has become the main target of the "Five Eyes Alliance" in recent years, we have reason to suspect that it will use Pegasus to spy on China. Given the US' consistent style, we can only speculate on the worst-case scenario regarding its bottom line.

Of course, this does not prevent the US from putting on an enthusiastic performance at the "Summit for Democracy," nor does it prevent many Americans from constantly hyping the so-called Chinese hackers issue and shifting attention by slandering other countries. However, from the PRISM scandal to Bvp47 and Dirty COW to Irritant Horn and MUSCULAR project, the "moral" banner raised by Washington is riddled with holes. The image that Washington has left in the eyes of the world is already that of a "false preacher" who shouts slogans louder and pulls the bottom line lower.

https://enapp.globaltimes.cn/article/1288521

The native Americans used to label it white man speaks with forked tongue .... or was that only another made up Hollywood myth?

[nadir]

The recent terrorist bombing that killed a Russian journalist , blogger, propagandist, whatever, not the point, in a cafe full of civilians, has been received with so much hypocrisy. Here we have a Canadian “diplomat” showing a total disregard for human life. His narrative has been the narrative adopted by mainstream media as well.

https://twitter.com/bobrae48/status/1643235809888272384?s=46&t=fgkWfKCeMHNTP58vSU0TeA

[SeanAU]

It is only natural nadir. It's just the way it is.

What can we do with a problem like Maria?

Maria Zakharova during today's weekly briefing: 05.04.2023
https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1862066/

    The reaction [to the terrorist attack in St. Petersburg], or rather its complete absence, on the part of the "democratic" West is indicative. They call themselves "civilized," "exceptional," "leading." Not like everyone else, but better than everyone else. They call themselves a "blossoming garden." This "blossoming garden" did not say a word or say anything about sympathy, empathy. There was not even a dry statement of the fact that this was a terrorist attack. This is impossible to believe for those who do not know the mechanics of their actions, their philosophy and ideology.

For those who know, there is nothing surprising. Absolute composure, because they knew why they needed the Kiev regime. They know why they use Ukraine. They talk a lot about doing everything for this country. That's not really true. They cynically use it as a springboard, a testing ground, a tool to counter Russia. Here's another track. Hence the silence. Lack of an elementary statement of fact about the terrorist attack.

    We need to be objective. Not all of them remain silent. Permanent Representative of Canada to the UN, well-known Russophobe Rob Ray wrote in his account in social networks that Vladlen Tatarsky was not a journalist, but an "ardent" propagandist who spread hatred and disinformation. Does the Ministry of Truth be located in Canada? There is some international understanding that it is in Canada that they determine who is the "right" journalist and who is the "wrong"? There is no international agreement that Canada had the right to do so. That's the first thing.

    Secondly, I have a question for the official authorities of Canada. Our Embassy will duplicate this issue. It turns out that there are people, professions, characteristics, characters, personality traits against whom terrorist acts can be committed? It's something new. Could You elaborate on this topic in Canada? I'm not asking for an explanation. The logic itself is interesting. To be honest, for the first time I hear that from the point of view of the Western "progressive" community, there are certain categories of citizens, people against whom a terrorist act can be considered something natural, normal. We have heard a lot of things that testify to the logic of segregation of people into "right" and "wrong", "worthy" and "unworthy", "creating" and "obeying".

I have repeatedly said and quoted Jean-Claude Borrell, as it were, the chief diplomat from the European Union, who divided the world into a "blossoming garden" and a "wild jungle". But for the first time, we hear about the segregation of people on the grounds that some are victims of terrorist attacks, and the second are not, because in relation to them a terrorist attack seems to be a normal phenomenon. We demand that Canada explain itself and demonstrate its logic. Because it's something new.

    Indeed, we know historical periods when this logic was not just recognized as normal, but dominated in some countries. It's called Nazism. It was then in the 1930s and 1940s that those who swore allegiance to Nazism and fascism believed that there were people not just worthy of destruction, but who should be destroyed. Because they are "not like that", worse, genetically do not correspond to the parameters of the future of mankind, approved in these countries. Unfortunately, Canada has many direct descendants of Nazis and fascists in its ranks. But I still didn't know that this was already the official position of Ottawa.

    We saw the silence of the "collective West" when Dariya Dugina was killed.

    But the reaction on Bankova Street was not long in coming. It's also revealing. It's different and it's changed. Immediately after the terrorist attack became known, Vladimir Zelensky said that he was not following the events in Moscow and St Petersburg, hinting that Kiev was not involved in this. However, the suspect began to testify about cooperation with the Ukrainian special services, with representatives of the Kiev regime and people associated with it. And then something went wrong. Something broke in the very dramatization that was carefully developed in the ranks of mentally ill people of the Kiev regime. And the rhetoric began to change dramatically. We have taken note of a petition registered on the website of the President of Ukraine calling for a street to be renamed in honor of a person suspected of committing a terrorist act.

    If you are told that this is some kind of technical accident or so it should be, if people have a desire to post something like this on the president's website, then they can do it – do not believe it. A huge number of humanitarian initiatives that should have been registered, and obviously "overripe", were not registered. Even "hanging" on the website of the President of Ukraine, they were deleted from there. No further reaction.

    According to some media reports, Bankova thanked the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine for the successfully conducted "operation". Do we need to add anything to this? I think so. Our law enforcement and investigative agencies will add it. They will definitely do it. As they do now, publishing all the information that is checked and which is confirmed.

    The whole story with the collective silence of the West, the remarks of the most odious representatives of Western regimes, with this ardent malice demonstrated by the Kiev regime and all those who are inspired by it, is no longer about V.A. Zelensky, as an enfant terrible of the West. This is about the fact that the "collective West" (I mean the ruling regimes) have become enfant terrible of the world community. And V.A. Zelensky is like that. Just implements.

Maria then speaks to the attacks against the Orthodox Church and attacks the seemingly same silence "heard" from the Collective West:

    I would like to draw your attention to the fact that no one should be silent: not representatives of Orthodox countries, where Christianity is the most popular religion. No one should be silent. Neither countries, nor public organizations, peoples in whose states the fundamental religion is Islam, Buddhism, Judaism. This will also affect those who profess these same religions on the territory of Ukraine. They won't stop. Because the prefix "pro-Russian" is irrelevant. They leave only the currents, parties, public figures, ideology, philosophy that serve their regime. All. Nothing else. There should be no other possibilities for alternative opinion, dissent, pluralism. Probably, those who are silent can wait out this situation. But this is a false opinion. Those who do not actively defend their values, do not go against the regime and do not actively defend their values. Maybe they don't feel that kind of pressure right now. But this is a false sense of security. It will let you down.

    All this proves that the Kiev regime has turned the religious sphere into one of the instruments of its nationalist policy aimed at cleansing the country of dissenters.

    The silence of Washington, its satellites and its "tame" expert community in connection with the criminal prosecution of the UOC by the Kiev regime is indicative. We've talked about this many times. Usually, Americans instantly expose any facts of violation of rights and freedoms, especially if it is connected with Russia. However, this time, official support for the actions of the Ukrainian authorities against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church would contradict Washington's declared goals of the "summit for democracy", which was held at the end of last week under the auspices of the White House. This is not just a political double standard. It's hypocrisy. That's a lie.

    In February of this year, the Ukrainian journalist D. Skvortsov was injured, denouncing the state's persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He was arrested by the security service of Ukraine right on the territory of the Orthodox monastery and sent to a pre-trial detention center for 53 days.

His sentence expires in mid-April. Where are the specialized bodies of the UN? Where is UNESCO? Where is the OSCE? Where are all these Reporters Without Borders and human rights groups? Or is he not a journalist either? Or is he not a journalist like the others?

Everyone is silent. Everyone from the world community is so comfortable.

-------------------------

In other news: UK US Youtube and dozens of Vassal states of the Empire of Lies, block video of a presentation at UNSC

MFA Twitter - What the MSM & the West do not want you to hear & see.
First-hand accounts & undistorted reports incl. by Maria Lvova-Belova 👇

UNSC Arria formula meeting “Children & armed conflict: Ukrainian crisis. Evacuating children from conflict zone”

In full: [blocked]
youtube.com
Arria formula “Children & armed conflict: Ukrainian crisis. Evacuat...
UNSC Arria formula meeting on the topic “Children and armed conflict:
Ukrainian crisis. Evacuating children from conflict zone”
https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1643737495501250563?cxt=HHwWhoC9teKi3c8tAAAA

 


Linda Thomas-Greenfield (United States) on blocking webcast of Russian Arria Formula - Security Council Media Stakeout video
https://media.un.org/en/asset/k14/k1452i59rr

You see, by pulling up the covers over your head, no one can see you anymore, you no longer exist except in 'your own make believe world' - the external reality has completely disappeared as well.

[SeanAU]

There dozens of new examples of Western Hypocrisy that could be added to this thread every day.


6 Apr, 2023 NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has urged China to halt its “growing alignment” with Russia, warning that any military assistance from Beijing to Moscow during the conflict in Ukraine would be a “historic mistake” with major consequences.

Speaking after the conclusion of a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, Stoltenberg sounded the alarm over Moscow’s friendly ties with the People’s Republic, insisting Beijing could soon offer weapons to Russia despite its repeated confirmation that it has no plans to do so.

Stoltenberg was asked when Kiev would be admitted into the bloc, but could not provide an answer, merely saying that NATO’s “position on membership is unchanged.”
end quotes

-------------------------------------

"Let Finland be a lesson to President Putin (and Xi in CHINA). Finland chose to join, based on their own free will. The freedom to choose their alliances as a sovereign state is a matter for their citizens and their citizens alone."
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-latest-updates-wagner-boss-claims-to-have-taken-legal-control-of-bakhmut-12541713?postid=5732256

MR PATEL: Countries are going to make their own sovereign decisions as it relates to relationships with any country in the world, including the PRC.
https://www.state.gov/?post_type=state_briefing&%3Bp=92333

- Citizens in a democracy have an inherent right to determine their country’s future.  
These principles extend beyond Ukraine.  
They principles extend beyond Europe.  
These principles are the underpinnings of the international order that together the United States and our Allies and partners have built and sustained. 
https://www.state.gov/united-with-ukraine/

[SeanAU]

Hypocrisy of the Month nomination:

CNN  — December 27, 2021

An 8-year-old sobs every night after her aunt puts her to bed.

A 17-year-old wakes up clutching his pillow and calling out his little brother’s name.

And hundreds of children who remain in US government custody keep asking questions no one knows how to answer.

They’re among the roughly 1,450 Afghan children who’ve been evacuated to the United States without their parents since August.

Months after they arrived, it’s unclear when, how – or even if – some of their families will be able to reunite.

The large number, first reported by Reuters and updated in recent figures CNN obtained from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, reveals a devastating reality of the evacuations and their aftermath.

“It’s shocking…the idea that there are over 1,000 kids without their family right now, and that they’re potentially feeling alone and feeling scared,” says Dr. Sabrina Perrino, an Afghan American pediatrician in California who is hoping to become a foster parent to help. 

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/27/us/afghan-children-evacuated-without-parents-cec/index.html

War crimes, War crimes, War crimes!

An excellent article at Counter Punch, almost Onionesc ... well worth reading:

Arresting Development: The ICC Arrest Warrant for Putin is a Weapon of War
by Jim Kavanagh

The accumulation of ludicrous moves by the United States and its pawns over the past few months has reached a stage that would be risible if it were not so dangerous. The danger is exacerbated by the insistence of American media on, first, ignoring the most provocative and reckless moves, then proposing explanations for them that can’t withstand three minutes of critical thought. The object is to keep the American public ignorant, make it stupid, and maintain the national-security state’s prerogative to do anything it wants.

High on the list, of course, is the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline and the various attempts to divert attention away from the obvious culprit. The US and its poodles’ initial story—that Russia blew up its own pipeline—was put forward under the correct assumption that compliant media would report it as implied fact and then forget about it. [...]
 
But the epitome of delusional and dangerous gestures was reached with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin.

To be more precise, in the ICC’s legal terms, it’s a warrant for the arrest of Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, on the “war crime” charge of “the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

To be more precise, in real terms, as articulated by Finian Cunningham: It’s a “cheap political stunt” that demonstrates “the ICC is a Kangaroo Court and a political plaything that Western imperialism uses to pursue political enemies.”

The cringe-worthy sense alone tells you it is a fit-up.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/07/arresting-development-the-icc-arrest-warrant-for-putin-is-a-weapon-of-war/

related post -
UNSC video presentations explaining clearly what the Russians really are doing for traumatised children (with moronic duplicitous Western diplomats refusing to look and listen)  including orphans from the war regions, and my earlier ref to the exposure Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) mis-used by the ICC report  by an excellent piece in The Grayzone (GZ) demolishing that report.
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,3471.msg364041.html#msg364041

[SeanAU]

Hypocrisy of the Month nomination:

PS
The whole world sees the ICC’s hypocrisy and selective prosecution. This is the culmination of a process that’s been going on at least since the late 90s, in which The United States and its allies have systematically destroyed the already imperfect and fragile architecture of international law based on the United Nations Charter, replacing it with the U.S.-undefined “rules” of the U.S.-selected “international community.” - AKA The Rules Based International Order ...-

Too many international institutions have now demonstrated they are captured by, and willing to go along with, this obvious imperialist re-arrangement, and have consequently lost all credibility.

Vladimir Putin will not be arrested in South Africa. He will not be arrested if he goes to India. He won’t be arrested by any member or non-member of the ICC. He won’t even be arrested if he comes to the United States, so cheap this trick is. Vladimir Putin is never going to be arrested. And he is not meant to be. The point of the ICC warrant, like the Swedish warrant for Julian Assange, is not to adjudicate the ostensible offense, but to leave the “Hitlerite baby kidnapper” charge hanging over his head forever.

No American or Israeli general or politician will ever be indicted by the ICC. All the countries of the world have seen that the ICC has only ever indicted Africans and America’s enemies, and they know the ICC never will indict anyone else. The ICC has become a court of imperialist injustice only.

Everybody knows who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, and everybody knows who engineered the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin. The former explosion destroyed the infrastructure of Russian-European economic relations. The latter is a deadly shaped charge that demolishes the remnants of a credible international justice system.

The world is telling the United States and its humanitarian-imperialist allies:
You cannot bring questions of international justice to the table because there is no table. If you want to build one, you will have to sit down with everybody, including Russia, China, Iran, etc. And you won’t be at the head of it; it will be round. If you want, with your usual self-righteous hypocrisy, to keep pretending you’re in the seat of judgement, we’ll ignore you.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/07/arresting-development-the-icc-arrest-warrant-for-putin-is-a-weapon-of-war/


HARVARD
From “Invade the Hague” to “Support the ICC”: America’s shifting stance on the International Criminal Court April 27, 2022

 Introduced by Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Senate Resolution 546 (S.Res.546) in part “encourages member states to petition the ICC or other appropriate international tribunal to take any appropriate steps to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Russian Armed Forces and their proxies and President Putin's military commanders, at the direction of President Vladimir Putin.”

S.Res.546 was sponsored by twelve Republicans, twelve Democrats, and one Independent, and agreed to in the Senate by voice vote on March 15.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/ksikkink/blog/%E2%80%9Cinvade-hague%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%9Csupport-icc%E2%80%9D-america%E2%80%99s-shifting-stance-international-criminal-court

120 Countries that have Signed Article 98 Agreements with the U.S. not to extradite any of their nationals to the ICC
https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/c.php?g=363527&p=2456099

[SeanAU]

I think this fits this thread topic, one example about the anti-TikTok push in the US. Has some connections to the recent series of Twitter Files exposures.

TikTok Ban: Gabbard Reveals Orwellian Dangers of RESTRICT Act
By Constantin von Hoffmeister8 April 2023
https://arktos.com/2023/04/08/tiktok-ban-gabbard-reveals-orwellian-dangers-of-restrict-act/

Tulsi Gabbard, the outspoken political maverick, has sounded the alarm about the spine-chilling Orwellian undertones of the RESTRICT Act.

Gabbard revealed that although the legislation is being sold as a mere TikTok ban, it’s actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She alerted us to the fact that shadowy, unelected officials in the Commerce Department would be granted carte blanche to decide which social media apps the public can and cannot use

In her fervent speech, Gabbard unveiled the terrifying truth about how the RESTRICT Act would permit these bureaucrats unrestricted access to users’ data, browsing history, and app habits.

Gabbard courageously condemned the act for criminalizing VPNs, which could have potentially devastating repercussions – all under the cloak of “national security.” 

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” In an era where the PATRIOT Act has facilitated an intrusive government presence, the RESTRICT Act threatens to destabilize the very foundations of democracy and personal freedom.

Tulsi Gabbard minced no words when she urged the American people not to be hoodwinked by this legislative trap once again. She lambasted those behind the RESTRICT Act, accusing them of being hell-bent on stripping away citizens’ rights, despite having sworn to uphold the Constitution and civil liberties.

Gabbard expressed her deep concerns over the RESTRICT Act’s attempt to rob Americans of their right to challenge the government’s actions in court. She stressed that this bill poses a grave threat to the very bedrock of democracy and the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Unquestionably, the US wields significant control over information and data collection – certainly more than any other nation. This dominance stems from hosting the world’s most powerful internet companies – such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Meta – on its territory. Legally obligated to share data with the US government and authorities upon request, these corporations bolster American surveillance capabilities.


other refs

The Restrict Act does a lot more than just make it illegal for Americans to use TikTok. It will give unelected bureaucrats the power to make it illegal for Americans to use any other app or website, monitor our every move, censor our online speech, and crush any dissent, all under the guise of “national security”.
https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1644296408118460416


Tulsi Gabbard: RESTRICT Act Not Only Bans TikTok, It Is PATRIOT Act 2.0
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/04/07/tulsi_gabbard_restrict_act_not_only_bans_tiktok_it_is_patriot_act_20.html

[SeanAU]

We Want RT & Russian Media Closed Worldwide — US State Department

James Rubin, the special envoy and coordinator of the US State Department's Center for Global Engagement, admitted that Washington wants to shut down Russian media worldwide, including RT.

He made particular mention of RT opening an office in Serbia. "We wouldn't want to see Russia Today or [other] Russian media anywhere in the world. We want them shut down,” he told Radio Free Europe, which incidentally is funded by the US government.

Following the claim that Russian media should be shuttered, Rubin reportedly lectured about the importance of freedom of speech. Which, it seems, only applies to US media.

[SeanAU]

The brutal beatings of protesters in France continue. Why is the Western press silent? Where are the incomplete journalists and human rights activists?

Or are the press and human rights activists only for the “right” demonstrators?
https://t.me/infodefENGLAND/5852 (short vids)

It's pretty wild over there.

In Paris, police use batons and tear gas to disperse people who are dissatisfied with the pension reform.🔥🔥

Hundreds of people wanted to break into the building of the Constitutional Council, which yesterday recognized the reform as legal and approved a September 1 increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64 years for all. The activists burned trash cans in the streets of the city as a sign of protest.
https://t.me/infodefENGLAND/5848 (vids)

[Neven]

Caitlin Johnstone:

The US is raging about Russia jailing a Wall Street Journal reporter on espionage charges, while the US is:

- Jailing Julian Assange for doing good journalism.
- Threatening to imprison Matt Taibbi.
- Charging African People's Socialist Party members with "propaganda" crimes.

Such hypocrisy is damning not because hypocrisy itself is a particularly terrible thing, but because it shows that the US does not actually value press freedoms or free speech; it only pretends to in order to advance its own foreign policy objectives. It only cares about these freedoms insofar as it can rhetorically bludgeon governments it dislikes for not having them.

[SeanAU]

I'm unsure if this would fit here either. But I'll post it because it reinforces what I was presenting on the war war war thread, re media, elite propaganda and so on.

The Duran "... because we are at a point right now Alexander where these same people are lying to the American public every single day about what's going on in Ukraine and what could possibly go on in China and the stakes cannot be any higher than than where we are right now."

Ex-CIA Mike Morell reveals, Blinken behind 'Intel officials Russia disinfo' letter
(20 mins, speed it up x 1.25 )




Alexander: "It's incredibly reckless. It's unbelievably dangerous and by the way you're totally right. If we had not RussiaGate we would not have had the war that we have in Ukraine now!

I mean it is as simple as that. It's inconceivable. I mean we would have had a different policy from the U.S government. We would have had different relations between the United States and Russia.

RussiaGate is at the core of this, and this affair with Biden and Laptop is is making all that even worse."

[nadir]

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/04/23/the-empire-of-hypocrisy-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/

The US is raging about Russia jailing a Wall Street Journal reporter on espionage charges, while the US is:

Jailing Julian Assange for doing good journalism.
Threatening to imprison Matt Taibbi.
Charging African People’s Socialist Party members with “propaganda” crimes.

Such hypocrisy is damning not because hypocrisy itself is a particularly terrible thing, but because it shows that the US does not actually value press freedoms or free speech; it only pretends to in order to advance its own foreign policy objectives. It only cares about these freedoms insofar as it can rhetorically bludgeon governments it dislikes for not having them

[SeanAU]

“Independent” Ukrainian “Kill List” Actually Run By Kiev, Backed by Washington 

[...] Of course, the defamatory attacks encourage an atmosphere where social media threats can be made. But the issue of Nazism in Ukraine will be seen in retrospect as a defining issue of our era and it is important to remember that the reason I and many others are threatened by the Ukraine government and their NATO backers is because we in turn threaten to expose them for what they are: Nazi collaborators.

The NATO-backed kill list

But what is the Center for Countering Disinformation? It is an official governmental body created in late March 2021, along with a similar organization, the Center for Strategic Communication, by President Zelensky himself. But are they related to other blacklisting websites like Myrotvorets (“Peacemaker”), widely seen as a “kill list”?  Peeling back the layers of cover and deception enables us to trace the origins of the kill list, which is still being hosted in Ukraine.

As it turns out, the covert “kill list” website is a product of the Ukraine regime, effectively funded by the CIA (amongst others) and is hosted by NATO. One extraordinary thing is that many American citizens, including ex-military and intelligence operatives, are included, as well as a significant number of citizens of NATO member countries. Perhaps the most remarkable element is that NATO has hosted the site (and a collection of affiliated websites) on its servers in Brussels. At the same time as NATO think tank the Atlantic Council boasts that Henry Kissinger is on its Board of Directors, NATO also hosts a kill list website on which Kissinger appears.

Don’t believe me?  Let’s take a look.

Let’s start with the kill list website itself, Myrotvorets. Today it is located at Myrotvorets.center, but it was originally at psb4ukr.org. That domain was first registered on 14 August 2014, some six months after the U.S.-backed Maidan coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych. Other similar domain names were later logged for the group, including the following 
.........................
Operation Butterfly – the prototype kill list

Tinko is also the registrant of a series of domains that appear to be components of the Myrotvorets project and one that appears to have been a prototype. It is particularly stark in its intention to use the website to kill traitors or “terrorists”. The domain Metelyk.org was first claimed on 21 July 2014, three weeks before the first Myrotvorets domain.
...........................
Myrotvorets lists thousands of “saboteurs”, “separatists”, “terrorists” and “traitors”. Sometimes, it has crossed out their photographs once they had been killed, with the label “liquidated”.
( such as Daria Dugina )
....................
The NATO connection

Kolesnikov and Tinko were successive registrants on Natocdn.work (from March 11, 2015).  Tinko registered a follow on domain Natocdn.net (28 January 2019). These obscure-sounding web addresses were used to host the files needed for the Myrotvorets site as can be seen by examining the “page source”
.............................
The letters CDN perhaps refer to a Content Delivery Network, a device to speed up the delivery of web pages when they are searched from an otherwise remote location, such as the California based name servers also used by the site. In fact, the Natocdn.net domain is hosted at none other than the official website NATO.int, based at its headquarters in Brussels.
.................................
Back on 17 April 2015, several interested people had also tracked the original web address (psb4ukr.org) directly to nato.int without the intermediary “CDN” domain suggesting that Myrotvorets had been hosted there from near the beginning.
...................................
A day or so after this exposure in April 2015, Oxsana Tinko registered a new site for the project: psb4ukr.ninja.  Perhaps foolishly, perhaps in an attempt to lean into the disclosure, she gave her location as Estonia and her company as NATO CCDCOE – the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence. For added authenticity, she used the correct street address and phone number.
...................................
(NATO denies it) ... It is also noteworthy, however, that a Ukraine Ministry of Defense psyops Powerpoint from 2015, leaked in the same month of that year (April), refers to the NATO cyber center as one of seven Western groups with which it had “cooperation”.
....................................
Nevertheless, the link to the NATO servers remained in the page source of the Myrotvorets websites. It was not until the NATO connection became an issue again in late August 2022 that anything was done about this. This was after Henry Kissinger had been added to the site in May.

Then on August 24, independent journalist Eva Bartlett (who was named on both the Myrotvorets and Center for Countering Disinformation lists) reported that the page source code for Myrotvorets included links to resources held at psb4ukr.natocdn.net.

Later, on October 14, she drew attention to the fact that Elon Musk had been listed on the site briefly after he threatened not to continue supplying his Starlink system to the Ukraine military for free. Musk responded “Is this list real?” Within eight days the page source links to natocdn.net were gone.
.............................................
and later
Back to NATO

InformNaplam boasts in its list of achievements of working closely with NATO run groups such as the Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Lab and MI6/CIA cutout Bellingcat. It claimed to have identified “persons who could be involved in the shootdown of Flight MH17 …(this information was used in the reports by our colleagues from Bellingcat team).” The organisation also claims to have conducted “exclusive analysis of SurkovLeaks – the email dump belonging to [Russian politician] Surkov’s reception office obtained by Ukrainian Cyber Alliance (the authenticity of the emails was reconfirmed by several reputable organizations, including Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab)”. The DFR Lab and Bellingcat, are not “reputable” organizations but rather are part of NATO information operations against Russia.

These boasts put both the DFR Lab and Bellingcat in the frame as collaborators with the Nazi kill list, which is itself based on the OSINT techniques pioneered by both groups. Now that we know that the “volunteers” of Mirotvorets, InformNapalm and the Ukraine Hacker Alliance are a project of the Ukrainian government with significant NATO support, the role of the DFR Labs and Bellingcat appears to be part of that support for the Nazi kill list.

see the rest
https://www.mintpressnews.com/independent-ukraine-kill-list-actually-run-by-kiev-backed-by-washington/284639/

[SeanAU]

It's getting wild out there ....

A senior EU official has warned that pro-Russian narratives are on the rise in the bloc and that more people are seeing the Ukraine conflict in those terms. EU Commissioner Vera Jourova, in an interview with the German newspaper Bild on Sunday, demanded that EU member states spend more money on “strategic communications” because “Russian propaganda” is having a strong impact on citizens.

RT must remain banned in the region, while “independent” Russian media based in European nations need support, she added.

The Czech politician and European Commission veteran, who currently serves as its vice president for values and transparency, expressed her concern about the growing popularity of Russian positions on issues like the conflict in Ukraine.

“In many countries, the narrative that Russia is not the aggressor but the victim is on the rise,” Jourova told the outlet. “In Slovakia, more than 50% of the population believe in conspiracy theories, including those about the Russian war of aggression. To this day, we underestimate the influence of Russian propaganda.”

Moscow maintains that the conflict in Ukraine stems from NATO’s unchecked expansion in Europe and the failure of Western nations to heed Russian warnings. A last-ditch attempt to de-escalate the situation was taken by the Russian government in 2021, but it was told that its concerns were unfounded and that Ukraine had a right to seek membership of the US-led military bloc. From Russia’s perspective, the conflict is part of a proxy war against it by the West.

The problem with EU citizens agreeing with the Russian position is that Moscow “invests billions in its propaganda and we hardly do anything to counter it,” Jourova claimed. She urged member states to invest more in “strategic communications and the fight against disinformation.”

Germany, Jourova suggested, is a particularly important target for Russia. She said she was worried about “infiltration of the peace movement” in the country.

“Claiming that anyone supplying arms is a warmonger is extremely dangerous,” she explained. “This only serves to weaken the support for Ukraine.”

The commissioner praised the EU’s censorship of RT, describing the channel as “not a media outlet” but rather a “wartime propaganda weapon” that has no place in Europe.

“We should instead support the independent Russian media,” she suggested. “Many of them are here in Berlin and in other European cities.”

https://www.rt.com/news/576362-eu-transparency-russian-propaganda/ 

Meanwhile .....

 Seven UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles shot down – Moscow
Other Western-made munitions and 22 drones were also intercepted, Russia’s Defense Ministry says

(Could be propaganda, and it never happened .... yeah?)

[NevB]

It's getting wild out there ....

Russia started this war by choice, Putin was not forced to invade Ukraine in defiance of the peace agreement Russia had signed when Ukraine gave up their Nukes.
Russia has consistently lied about everything from 2014 when Russian troops stopped the UR rebels being defeated, shooting down the aircraft, the UK poisonings, the tortures and massacres in Ukraine and so much more.

The aim of Ukraine to remain free and independent and not revert back to the Orwellian horror of the Soviet Union which is also why eastern European nations are giving them so much support.
The west is far from perfect but their is no question at all who we should be supporting in this war.

[SeanAU]

Safeguarding Your Mental Health from the Harmful Effects of Western War Propaganda
– Ten Top Tips
By
Geoffrey Roberts FRHistS, MRIA
Emeritus Professor of History
University College Cork

1. Beg, borrow, or buy a copy of Robert H. Thoules’s Straight and Crooked
Thinking. Pay particular attention to the sections on the manipulative use of
emotive language (’Russia’s unprovoked, criminal, aggressive and genocidal
war on Ukraine’), diversionary arguments (‘you can’t negotiate peace with an
indicted war criminal’) and drumbeat repetition (‘Ukraine has won, is winning
and will win the war’).

2. Beware bait and switch articles. Promising pieces with headlines like ‘in
reality, the Ukrainian are losing’ or ‘West exaggerates Russian losses’ often
turn out to be Neocon op-eds arguing for all-out western military support for
Ukraine whilst blandly asserting that Putin would be crazy to escalate the war.

3. Get into the habit of scanning articles about the war before reading them. If
you espy the words ‘Hitler’, ‘appeasement’, ‘Munich’ in the same piece - bin
it, unless it is written by a trustworthy historian with the initials GR.

4. Unsourced casualty claims from the Pentagon or the British MoD are a no-
brainer: simply divide those for Russia by 10 and multiply those for Ukraine
by the same factor.

5. Keep to hand a stack of old Ritter and MacGregor interviews predicting that a
storm of Russian armoured steel will soon sweep all before it and bring the
war to a rapid conclusion.

6. When things are going badly for the Russkies, mute the sound on reports from
Weeb Union and the Military Summary Channel. Then close your eyes and re-
imagine the meaning of all those little arrows flickering across the screen.

7. When things are going really badly, restrict your YouTube viewing to
Alexander Mercouris’’s nightly vlog. Nothing is more reassuring than
Alexander’s dulcet tones reminding us for the umpteenth time that he is not a
military man before launching into a lengthy explanation as to why a 50-metre
advance by the remnants of the Azov Brigade may not be as strategically
significant as some panic-mongering Russian bloggers would have us believe.

8. Goebbels was wrong. The Big Lie is not the most effective propaganda: it is
the cumulative effect of little lies, evasions, distortions and misdirection. The
best antidote is a daily dose of Responsible Statecraft supplemented by a
generous dollop of Naked Capitalism, Moon of Alabama and Antiwar.com.

9. If you don’t read Russian, invest in a machine-translation programme that will
enable you to follow Strana.UA’s sane and sensible coverage of the war.

10. Subscribe to a curated list of links that – at no cost to you - filters out the most
mentally damaging western war propaganda.

[LeftyLarry]

The brutal beatings of protesters in France continue. Why is the Western press silent? Where are the incomplete journalists and human rights activists?

Or are the press and human rights activists only for the “right” demonstrators?
https://t.me/infodefENGLAND/5852 (short vids)

It's pretty wild over there.

In Paris, police use batons and tear gas to disperse people who are dissatisfied with the pension reform.🔥🔥

Hundreds of people wanted to break into the building of the Constitutional Council, which yesterday recognized the reform as legal and approved a September 1 increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64 years for all. The activists burned trash cans in the streets of the city as a sign of protest.
https://t.me/infodefENGLAND/5848 (vids)

Just returned from Paris, not much bad going on, pickpockets are abundant but mostly people there seem to like to work as little as possible, eat cheese and drink wine, while feeling superior to Americans , nothing much new.

[Neven]

Just returned from Paris, not much bad going on, pickpockets are abundant but mostly people there seem to like to work as little as possible, eat cheese and drink wine, while feeling superior to Americans , nothing much new.

It's not so much feeling superior, as perceiving that American culture is completely degenerated. Hence the hypocrisy of Western governments & media.

But good to know you're still flying around the world to do the hard work of being a fat tourist.

[LeftyLarry]

Just returned from Paris, not much bad going on, pickpockets are abundant but mostly people there seem to like to work as little as possible, eat cheese and drink wine, while feeling superior to Americans , nothing much new.

It's not so much feeling superior, as perceiving that American culture is completely degenerated. Hence the hypocrisy of Western governments & media.

But good to know you're still flying around the world to do the hard work of being a fat tourist.

Oh please, I’m in great shape, just lost my Covid weight , we took a River cruise on the Seine with friends, two medical Drs and our wives, cruised to Normandy, hadn’t been to Omaha Beach or the American Cemetery and wanted to pay my respects,  I’m not young anymore, my wife isn’t as spry as I am, so we are doing what she might not be able to do , 5-7 years from now, I’m not retired either, came back on a  Sunday late afternoon and was in the office Monday morning , played golf Tuesday late afternoon.
America popular culture is degenerated and who can we thank for that? Hollywood, The Leftist press, the Leftists running the teachers Unions, Schools and universities, the people who believe inferior, woke,  drug culture is superior to family and religion , who believe they shouldn’t have children themselves but it’s OK to invite 40 million who will have children, many children that the fools in America will support with the dollars they have because they didn’t marry and have children themselves.
The Left has pretty much won, it’s very sad that they have in such a short amount of time been able to destroy Western culture, which GUARANTEED will be replaced by something much worse, much inferior.

[Freegrass]

Just returned from Paris, not much bad going on, pickpockets are abundant but mostly people there seem to like to work as little as possible, eat cheese and drink wine, while feeling superior to Americans , nothing much new.

It's not so much feeling superior, as perceiving that American culture is completely degenerated. Hence the hypocrisy of Western governments & media.

But good to know you're still flying around the world to do the hard work of being a fat tourist.

Oh please, I’m in great shape, just lost my Covid weight , we took a River cruise on the Seine with friends, two medical Drs and our wives, cruised to Normandy, hadn’t been to Omaha Beach or the American Cemetery and wanted to pay my respects,  I’m not young anymore, my wife isn’t as spry as I am, so we are doing what she might not be able to do , 5-7 years from now, I’m not retired either, came back on a  Sunday late afternoon and was in the office Monday morning , played golf Tuesday late afternoon.
America popular culture is degenerated and who can we thank for that? Hollywood, The Leftist press, the Leftists running the teachers Unions, Schools and universities, the people who believe inferior, woke,  drug culture is superior to family and religion , who believe they shouldn’t have children themselves but it’s OK to invite 40 million who will have children, many children that the fools in America will support with the dollars they have because they didn’t marry and have children themselves.
The Left has pretty much won, it’s very sad that they have in such a short amount of time been able to destroy Western culture, which GUARANTEED will be replaced by something much worse, much inferior.

When you're on the extreme right wing of the political spectrum, it's very normal to think that the entire world is on the left from you. Even those in the center are lefties for you. So please, go take your extreme right wing BS somewhere else. Try a Fucks News forum, or the Trump Lie Antisocial forum, and let normal people talk about normal things.

[etienne]

I didn't know where to publish this :

The later Weizenbaum was increasingly pessimistic about the future, much more so than he had been in the 1970s. Climate change terrified him. Still, he held out hope for the possibility of radical change. As he put it in a January 2008 article for Süddeutsche Zeitung: “The belief that science and technology will save the Earth from the effects of climate breakdown is misleading. Nothing will save our children and grandchildren from an Earthly hell. Unless: we organise resistance against the greed of global capitalism.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/25/joseph-weizenbaum-inventor-eliza-chatbot-turned-against-artificial-intelligence-ai

[nadir]

Just returned from Paris, not much bad going on, pickpockets are abundant but mostly people there seem to like to work as little as possible, eat cheese and drink wine, while feeling superior to Americans , nothing much new.

It's not so much feeling superior, as perceiving that American culture is completely degenerated. Hence the hypocrisy of Western governments & media.

But good to know you're still flying around the world to do the hard work of being a fat tourist.

Oh please, I’m in great shape, just lost my Covid weight , we took a River cruise on the Seine with friends, two medical Drs and our wives, cruised to Normandy, hadn’t been to Omaha Beach or the American Cemetery and wanted to pay my respects,  I’m not young anymore, my wife isn’t as spry as I am, so we are doing what she might not be able to do , 5-7 years from now, I’m not retired either, came back on a  Sunday late afternoon and was in the office Monday morning , played golf Tuesday late afternoon.
America popular culture is degenerated and who can we thank for that? Hollywood, The Leftist press, the Leftists running the teachers Unions, Schools and universities, the people who believe inferior, woke,  drug culture is superior to family and religion , who believe they shouldn’t have children themselves but it’s OK to invite 40 million who will have children, many children that the fools in America will support with the dollars they have because they didn’t marry and have children themselves.
The Left has pretty much won, it’s very sad that they have in such a short amount of time been able to destroy Western culture, which GUARANTEED will be replaced by something much worse, much inferior.

When you're on the extreme right wing of the political spectrum, it's very normal to think that the entire world is on the left from you. Even those in the center are lefties for you. So please, go take your extreme right wing BS somewhere else. Try a Fucks News forum, or the Trump Lie Antisocial forum, and let normal people talk about normal things.

Sometimes I think LeftyLarry is a parody account, or a great liar. The thing is, if you’re so bigoted you wouldn’t even think of engaging in a site like this. No purpose.

[SeanAU]

When you're on the extreme right wing of the political spectrum, it's very normal to think that the entire world is on the left from you. Even those in the center are lefties for you. So please, go take your extreme right wing BS somewhere else. Try a Fucks News forum, or the Trump Lie Antisocial forum, and let normal people talk about normal things.

Sometimes I think LeftyLarry is a parody account, or a great liar. The thing is, if you’re so bigoted you wouldn’t even think of engaging in a site like this. No purpose.

It is as simple as being an offensive manipulative lying disingenuous Internet Troll:101

And should be treated as such.

The beginning and end of it.

They should have been banned the day they arrived here.

[SeanAU]

Biden taps another 50 year long US Govt Jewish War Criminal - an Evil Lying Whore of Babylon Neocon Careerist appointee - to a position of Power and Influence in 2023

 In the 1980s there was no bigger cheerleader for U.S. foreign policy in Central America — involving widespread massacres of peasants in Honduras and Guatemala and support for the murderous rebel “Contras” in Nicaragua and apologist for war criminals of El Salvadoran military — than the Reagan administration’s Elliott Abrams. Now Abrams has resurfaced, taking time away from his work as a Gargamel impersonator, after being tapped by Joe Biden to join the administration’s public diplomacy commission.

He should serving a life sentence for his crimes against humanity and not serving on a US Govt Commission on the public purse.

"... so what he's doing here is he's bragging
about the United States deciding that
what kind of government a South American
country gets to have - they get to decide -
not every nation not the people of the
country - [evil lying whores] like this
decide okay we need to make sure they're
in order in case a crazy person like
Putin invades a Sovereign Nation and so
what they do, what guys like this do is
they take billions of dollars from the
CIAs coffers and they give it to people
to start FASCIST NEO NAZI militias
and they start Civil Wars ---
yes, that is what they do --- "

And the American people, the western world in general, the global media corporations and Hollywood, and politicians throughout the OECD nations, have been cheering this evil on for over half a century!

Instead all the psychopath Neocon Jews like Eliot Abrams warrant a firing squad not a Govt job.



Glenn Greenwald says:
In the pantheon of neocon monsters and sociopaths Eliot Abrams resides in the top tier: supporting death squads, criminal concealing evidence, cheer leading every war from a safe distance.

It's also completely unsurprising that Biden chose him for this position

[Neven]

You mention Abrams being a Jew twice. What does that matter?

[SeanAU]

You mention Abrams being a Jew twice. What does that matter?

Fair question. In the US it is a powerful majority stream that feeds into the neocons. People with a similar ideological bent. There are not many Apache neocons for example. While other streams of Jews lean toward the legal profession, human rights issues and kibbutz life. And Russian/Greek orthodox tend not to be Nazis or Neonazis, but catholic galacians and poles do ie they don't only come with the label of "western Ukrainians". Sins of the father and all that.... our childhood greatly influences us.  Eliot Abrams was not immune - he is a classic imho. I have seen his "work" and his "style" before today and I simply do not like it one bit. 

try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_in_Ukraine

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera#Early_life for a start.

Then there is the WW2 Fascist Right Wing Anti-Communist Anti-Russian Pope in Rome .... another historical fact of life.

Most don't go there about these "cultural-religious" backgrounds but they should for they are REAL issues that matter (to varying degrees - it depends.) Jewish Ukrainians tend not to be Fascist Neo-nazis either. There are historical and cultural reasons for these differences - everywhere including in the US. And the majority Ukrainians who ended up in Canada and why they "think/act" like they do.

Has anyone ever wondered why the majority of west Ukrainians are not all Neonazis thugs who hate Russia and Russians and leftists/socialists with all their might? But a minority who throw their weight around do?

These things (these facts and nuances) matter whether we aware of it or not.  Eliot Abrams, foundation member of the PNAC group is  a red rag to bull for me for good reasons. Not so Lady Gaga. 

Similarly Victoria Nuland's husband, Robert Kagan, is a historian, foreign policy commentator at the Brookings Institution, and co-founder in 1998 of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Much can be said about Victoria and why she is like she is and acts as she does. But that's another story entirely not worth getting into. Or one could evaluate the influences that going to Yale (Bonesmen) or Standford have on many people's careers, politics, and world views.  At times it is relevant other times not so much. It depends. 

Elliot Abrams became the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs in 1985. Along with NSC staff member Oliver North and CIA agent Alan Fiers Jr., he dealt with Central American issues as part of the Restricted Interagency Group (RIG). In his work at RIG, Abrams was made aware of North's covert military support for the Contras and encouraged foreign countries to contribute to the rebel group, though he later denied that knowledge and involvement when testifying before Congress.
https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/profile-abrams.php

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Elliott_Abrams

Abrams wrote widely on foreign policy issues, especially Mideast policy, and on cultural issues, including on what he saw as the threats posed by U.S. secular society to Jewish identity. 
It explicitly sought to unify the Christian right with the neoconservative religious right, which was mostly made up of agnostics back then. A central part of its political project was to "clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy." Directed by Abrams from 1996 to 2001, EPPC counts among its board members well-connected figures in the neocon matrix including Richard Neuhaus, Bill Kristol, and Mary Ann Glendon.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Elliott_Abrams/Foreign_Policy_Hawk

https://www.cfr.org/expert/elliott-abrams

https://vandenbergcoalition.org/experts/elliott-abrams/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Abrams wiki only give the pro-establishment light touch these days.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/kissinger-elliott-abrams-war-crimes/ 

https://progressive.international/movement/action/sign-elliott-abrams-is-a-war-criminal-sack-him-now--a83a967a-fe5b-4143-a405-c9f1090c6b15/en

https://therealnews.com/elliott-abrams-the-war-criminal-running-us-policy-in-venezuela

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#People_associated_with_the_PNAC

[SeanAU]

as per above links - Highly recommended tip of an iceberg of intrigue, extremism, pro-israel no matter what, pseudo human rights pro-democracy/freedom BS, and operating in the shadows..

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Elliott_Abrams/Foreign_Policy_Hawk#Abrams_.26_the_Middle_East

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Elliott_Abrams/Foreign_Policy_Hawk#The_Foreign_Policy_Insider

Working closely with Feith, Abrams quickly became the leading behind-the-scenes actor in managing the administration's policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. In the process, he sidelined the Mideast experts in the NSC, CIA, and State Department regarded by the neoconservatives as "Arabists."

In one of the many oddities of the Christian Right-neoconservative alliance that bolsters the Republican Party and forms a backbone of the George W. Bush administration, many neoconservative government officials are radical separatists, indeed segregationists. As Abrams, who has argued against Jews dating or attending elementary schools with non-Jews, put it in his book Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America: "Outside the land of Israel, there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart—except in Israel—from the rest of the population". [22] Judaism, according to Abrams, demands "apartness"—not in the sense of confining oneself to a physical ghetto, but all necessary measures should be taken to prevent "prolonged and intimate exposure to non-Jewish culture." Abrams takes care to insist that his positions imply no "disloyalty" to the United States, but at the same times insists that Jews must be loyal to Israel because they "are in a permanent covenant with God and with the land of Israel and its people. Their commitment will not weaken if the Israeli government pursues unpopular policies."
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Elliott_Abrams/Foreign_Policy_Hawk#Moving_Into_the_Think_Tank_World


People who put their extremist Jewishness badge out front and centre on their chest in all they do in their political career for 50 plus years deserve to be called on it for what it is. Evil Racist Disingenuous Crap!
 
In my humble opinion - or read the whole thing and keep looking up other sources if interested in all that gets memory holed by the "empire"

[etienne]

You say yourself that all Jews are not the same, so please avoid using terms (Blacks, LGBTQ+, Russians, Christians...) that put together different people according to some arbitrary concept when talking of politics because none of these groups are homogeneous.
The same way you shouldn't use political terms when talking of religions, national or cultural groups - all neocons are not Hindus and all Hindus are not neocons.
It important to always keep in mind that people are free to think what they want independently of their origins.
There is a cultural biais, but if you emphasis it, it becomes like a prison. Even if most Korean eat spicy, ask before pouring the Tabasco.

[solartim27]

To whomever it may help:
At the top of the page there is a link to your Profile.  After clicking on that there is a drop down menu on the Modify Profile button. At the bottom of that list is a selection for a Buddies/Ignore list. Do with that what you will. Unfortunately it does not work if someone foolishly quotes a post.

[Neven]

People who put their extremist Jewishness badge out front and centre on their chest in all they do in their political career for 50 plus years deserve to be called on it for what it is.

I fully agree, but you don't do that by just saying 'Jew'. Abrams is absolute scum. The 'Jew' stuff distracts from it.

Then again, it is on-topic. Jews doing Nazi stuff for a western government, like Abrams, is highly hypocritical.

[etienne]

People who put their extremist Jewishness badge out front and centre on their chest in all they do in their political career for 50 plus years deserve to be called on it for what it is.

I fully agree, but you don't do that by just saying 'Jew'. Abrams is absolute scum. The 'Jew' stuff distracts from it.

Then again, it is on-topic. Jews doing Nazi stuff for a western government, like Abrams, is highly hypocritical.

Sorry, but I fully disagree, people who put their extremist Jewishness badge out front and centre on their chest in all they do in their political career for 50 plus years deserve to be called idiots, extremists... whatever you want, but not Jews, that would be unfair toward the Jewish community.

[Neven]

Sorry, but I fully disagree, people who put their extremist Jewishness badge out front and centre on their chest in all they do in their political career for 50 plus years deserve to be called idiots, extremists...

As you can see when you read my comment a bit better, I agree that a scumbag like Abrams deserves to be called what he is: idiot, extremist, scumbag. Just 'Jew' doesn't make sense.

Maybe Zionist would be a better label, to differentiate from just 'Jew', but I don't know if it's strictly applicable to scumbag Abrams. 'Extremist Jew' would be an accurate description prima facie, but a) it sounds a bit silly (like saying 'extremist Catholic X'), and b) the faint antisemitism still distracts from the main point, namely that Abrams is a scumbag who should be in some form of isolation.

It's a sensitive word, and not out of political correctness or anything, but I wouldn't use it, unless necessary.

[SeanAU]

You say yourself that all Jews are not the same, so please avoid using terms (Blacks, LGBTQ+, Russians, Christians...) that put together different people according to some arbitrary concept when talking of politics because none of these groups are homogeneous.
The same way you shouldn't use political terms when talking of religions, national or cultural groups - all neocons are not Hindus and all Hindus are not neocons.
It important to always keep in mind that people are free to think what they want independently of their origins.
There is a cultural biais, but if you emphasis it, it becomes like a prison. Even if most Korean eat spicy, ask before pouring the Tabasco.

No I can't. The Prison (to the extent there is one) is being created by yourself, not me. My opinion and judgment stands based on the facts the evidence and the truth of it. The descriptor fits perfectly and is justifiable.

People should actually read the refs I posted ... and think about what it means and what else might be accessible eg https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Elliott_Abrams/Foreign_Policy_Hawk#Moving_Into_the_Think_Tank_World

Myself, I literally detest Abrams for everything he is. Which includes his particular form of malignant psychopathic Jewish heritage and the brainwashing that literally made him what he is in public life. He like so many others in and out of Israel belong in front of a firing squad and not working for the President of any nation. He did not become what he is by some mysterious accident of 'life'. It was ordained, taught and driven.  He's not the only one either.

[SeanAU]

Sorry, but I fully disagree, people who put their extremist Jewishness badge out front and centre on their chest in all they do in their political career for 50 plus years deserve to be called idiots, extremists...

As you can see when you read my comment a bit better, I agree that a scumbag like Abrams deserves to be called what he is: idiot, extremist, scumbag. Just 'Jew' doesn't make sense.

Maybe Zionist would be a better label, to differentiate from just 'Jew', but I don't know if it's strictly applicable to scumbag Abrams. 'Extremist Jew' would be an accurate description prima facie, but a) it sounds a bit silly (like saying 'extremist Catholic X'), and b) the faint antisemitism still distracts from the main point, namely that Abrams is a scumbag who should be in some form of isolation.

It's a sensitive word, and not out of political correctness or anything, but I wouldn't use it, unless necessary.

I see it as 100% circumstantially appropriate - HE brought it up, he stands by it, and he preaches it's 'values' he acts upon in public life. You can take the Zionist out of Israel but you cannot take the Jew out of the extreme Racist Zionist. ;-)

an 'extremist Catholic X' (or Protestant) fits when talking about Northern Ireland during the troubles and still today, as well as during WW2 and Nazi collaborators. Abrams' Jewishness fits the space he created in his life.

Sorry, but I fully disagree, people who put their extremist Jewishness badge out front and centre on their chest in all they do in their political career for 50 plus years deserve to be called idiots, extremists... whatever you want, but not Jews, that would be unfair toward the Jewish community.

 

Oh well you get that on the big jobs. No need to apologize. 

[etienne]

Most Zionists are Jews, like most Neocons are white Americans and Nazis are Christians.

So why would you associate some and not the others. Why don't we say, well it's just another Christian Nazi for example in the Ukrainian context?

If you do it with the Jews, you follow a political agenda, just like the Zionist do. Why do you help them? It's just what they want, so that they look stronger than what they really are.

[SeanAU]

Most Zionists are Jews, like most Neocons are white Americans and Nazis are Christians.

So why would you associate some and not the others. Why don't we say, well it's just another Christian Nazi for example in the Ukrainian context?

If you do it with the Jews, you follow a political agenda, just like the Zionist do. Why do you help them? It's just what they want, so that they look stronger than what they really are.

Really? So you know just what these Jewish Zionists want do you?

I'm quite happy saying the things I want to say. And making up my own mind, thank you. Feel free to do you.

[etienne]

Don't know if this is the right place to post this. The China thread is in the Policies and Solutions section.
 
Don't know what to think about it, but I found it worth posting.

https://www.adbusters.org/article/weve-been-here-before

We've Been Here Before

Years before Chamberlain caved in to the Nazis, we knew where Hitler was going, aware of what was at stake, felt what was coming, yet we kept putting up with his ever escalating swipes, indignities and arrogances. We just didn’t have the guts to take him on — until it was too late.

Now the very same thing is happening with Xi Jinping’s China. We’re appeasing him, tolerating his mounting pugnaciousness, compromising our values for economic favors — blindly following the same script that got us into World War II.

Be warned, nothing short of an all-out meme war can avert World War III.

If we can’t heal our divisions ...

Rally around our democratic values ...

If we can’t come up with a better story to believe in than never-ending growth and consumerist distractions ...

If we can’t look Xi Jinping in the eye and ask why he is keeping vital information hidden from his people, why he is committing genocide in Xinjiang, why he is building artificial islands in the South China Sea, and why he is slapping punitive sanctions on every nation that dares challenge his predominance ...

If we can’t meet might with ideological might ... then halfway through the 21st century (or much sooner), we’ll wake up one fine morning, shake our heads and wonder why we’re now vassals in a China-dominated slave state more horrifying than anything Orwell ever dreamed of.
Kalle Lasn

[nadir]

Don't know if this is the right place to post this. The China thread is in the Policies and Solutions section.
 
Don't know what to think about it, but I found it worth posting.

https://www.adbusters.org/article/weve-been-here-before

We've Been Here Before

Years before Chamberlain caved in to the Nazis, we knew where Hitler was going, aware of what was at stake, felt what was coming, yet we kept putting up with his ever escalating swipes, indignities and arrogances. We just didn’t have the guts to take him on — until it was too late.

Now the very same thing is happening with Xi Jinping’s China. We’re appeasing him, tolerating his mounting pugnaciousness, compromising our values for economic favors — blindly following the same script that got us into World War II.

Be warned, nothing short of an all-out meme war can avert World War III.

If we can’t heal our divisions ...

Rally around our democratic values ...

If we can’t come up with a better story to believe in than never-ending growth and consumerist distractions ...

If we can’t look Xi Jinping in the eye and ask why he is keeping vital information hidden from his people, why he is committing genocide in Xinjiang, why he is building artificial islands in the South China Sea, and why he is slapping punitive sanctions on every nation that dares challenge his predominance ...

If we can’t meet might with ideological might ... then halfway through the 21st century (or much sooner), we’ll wake up one fine morning, shake our heads and wonder why we’re now vassals in a China-dominated slave state more horrifying than anything Orwell ever dreamed of.
Kalle Lasn

Sounds a bit deranged if you ask me.
So this guy is proposing to start World War III against Chinese regime because it is unavoidable and if Western nations continue appeasing China, we’ll all end up being slaves?

We are already more or less slaves of a system that works well with the cooperation of the West and China: it’s called unregulated global markets, and obsession to buy and possess is what distracts us from our condition of slaves.

Mm, that sounds a bit deranged too.

[etienne]

Adbuster is a non violent organisation, they want us to boycott Chinese products.