#america bans russian officials

[catgirlforeskin]

Just so that everyone is on the same page: if we are going to analogize the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the American invasion of Iraq, Russia is playing the role of America.

Russia is even running the same bullshit "our enemies are fascist" propaganda campaign.

If you're anti war, you should be protesting Russian warmongering, not American aid to those resisting.

I’ve talked extensively about how Russia is doing the “war on terror” routine, and how the invasion, which I oppose, is causing Ukraine to become more fascist in reaction (banning of all opposition parties, welcoming of neonazi militias into the national guard, etc).

I’ve been analogizing to Afghanistan, not Iraq, which if you recall, was also invaded by Russia (then the Soviet Union) and the US trained and armed the mujahideen in response. Something I think we can agree was a bad move, given that the Taliban now controls the country, no?

I do not live in Russia, I can’t meaningfully protest their government, but I can protest mine sending over fucking cluster munitions man. Government officials in the US (and a number of European countries, Germany most recently) have outright said they don’t care if Ukrainians want to surrender, they will keep pushing for total victory. It’s a meat grinder that NATO is pouring Ukrainians into and reaping the benefits of. I want it to end.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared Tuesday that Moscow was suspending its participation in the New START treaty — the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States — sharply upping the ante amid tensions with Washington over the fighting in Ukraine.

Speaking in his state-of-the-nation address, Putin also said that Russia should stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the U.S. does so, a move that would end a global ban on nuclear weapons tests in place since Cold War times.

Explaining his decision to suspend Russia's obligations under New START, Putin accused the U.S. and its NATO allies of openly declaring the goal of Russia's defeat in Ukraine.

“They want to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on us and try to get to our nuclear facilities at the same time," he said, declaring his decision to suspend Russia’s participation in the treaty. "In this context, I have to declare today that Russia is suspending its participation in the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Arms.”

New START's official name is The Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg voiced regret about Putin’s move, saying that “with today’s decision on New START, full arms control architecture has been dismantled.”

"I strongly encourage Russia to reconsider its decision and respect existing agreements,” he told reporters.

Putin argued that while the U.S. has pushed for the resumption of inspections of Russian nuclear facilities under the treaty, NATO allies had helped Ukraine mount drone attacks on Russian air bases hosting nuclear-capable strategic bombers. The Russian military said that it shot down the Soviet-built drones that struck two bomber bases deep inside Russia in December, but acknowledged that several servicemen were killed by debris that also damaged some aircraft.

Putin on Tuesday mocked NATO's statement urging Russia to allow the resumption of the U.S. inspections of Russian nuclear weapons sites as “some kind of theater of the absurd.”

“The drones used for it were equipped and modernized with NATO's expert assistance,” Putin said. “And now they want to inspect our defense facilities? In the conditions of today's confrontation, it sounds like sheer nonsense.”

He said that a week ago he signed an order to deploy new land-based strategic missiles and asked: “Are they also going to poke their noses there?”

The Russian leader also noted that NATO's statement on New START raises the issue of the nuclear weapons of Britain and France that are part of the alliance's nuclear capability but aren't included in the U.S.-Russian pact.

“They are also aimed against us. They are aimed against Russia,” he said. “Before we return to discussing the treaty, we need to understand what are the aspirations of NATO members Britain and France and how we take it into account their strategic arsenals that are part of the alliance's combined strike potential."

Putin emphasized that Russia is suspending its involvement in New START and not entirely withdrawing from the pact yet.

The New START treaty, signed in 2010 by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. The agreement envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance. Just days before the treaty was due to expire in February 2021, Russia and the United States agreed to extend it for another five years.

Russia and the U.S. have suspended mutual inspections under New START since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Moscow last fall refused to allow their resumption, raising uncertainty about the pact’s future. Russia also indefinitely postponed a planned round of consultations under the treaty.

The U.S. State Department has said that Russia’s refusal to allow the inspections “prevents the United States from exercising important rights under the treaty and threatens the viability of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control.” It noted that nothing prevents Russian inspectors from conducting inspections of U.S. facilities.

Putin on Tuesday challenged the U.S. assertion, alleging that Washington has rejected some Russian requests for visits to specific U.S. facilities. “We aren't allowed to conduct full-fledged inspections under the treaty," he said. “We can't really check anything on their side.”

He alleged that the U.S. was working on nuclear weapons and some in the U.S. were pondering plans to resume nuclear tests banned under the global test ban that took effect after the end of the Cold War.

“In this situation, Rosatom (Russia's state nuclear corporation) and the Defense Ministry must ensure readiness for Russian nuclear weapons tests,” Putin said. “We naturally won't be the first to do it, but if the U.S. conducts tests we will also do it. No one should have dangerous illusions that the global strategic parity could be destroyed.”

[libertariantaoist]

News Roundup 11/6/2023 | The Libertarian Institute

Here is your daily roundup of today's news:

News Roundup 11/6/2023

by Kyle Anzalone

Ukraine 

Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny acknowledged in comments to The Economist that the war in Ukraine is a stalemate and that there will “most likely” be no Ukrainian breakthrough. AWC

A top Ukrainian official said Kiev is seeking to become one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world. The statement comes as the Biden administration has begun pushing Ukraine to engage in talks with Russia on ending the war. Ukraine developing a large weapons industry and selling those arms to the enemies of Russia will likely interfere with any deals to end the conflict. The Institute

The US rolled out its 50th weapons package for Ukraine. The arms shipment will include air defenses, artillery rounds, and anti-armor weapons. The Pentagon will purchase $300 million in arms on behalf of Kyiv, depleting all the funds in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). AWC

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed a bill into law that formally withdrew Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). AWC

Israel

During a trip to Israel, America’s top diplomat pushed Tel Aviv to agree to limited “humanitarian pauses” to allow aid into Gaza and facilitate negotiations for Hamas to release prisoners. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said there would not be a temporary pause in the fighting. AWC

Despite the massive bombing campaign and ground invasion in Gaza, a senior Pentagon official believes Israel has not come close to taking out Hamas’s leadership, The New York Times reported Saturday. AWC

The Pentagon has acknowledged that the US is flying drones over Gaza to help Israel locate hostages, demonstrating deep US involvement in the war. AWC

Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu on Sunday said that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was an option for Israel and claimed there are no innocent civilians in the enclave. AWC

The House on Thursday passed a bill to provide Israel with $14.3 billion in military aid, a strong show of support for the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, which has killed over 9,000 people so far. AWC

Twenty-seven days into Israel’s brutal bombing campaign, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) became the first member of the US Senate to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. AWC

Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), dismissed the idea there are “innocent Palestinian civilians” in a debate on the House floor. AWC

Middle East

The House on Wednesday passed a resolution that suggested the US would use force against Iran in the future in the name of preventing the country from acquiring nuclear weapons. AWC

Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Sunday amid a spate of attacks on US troops in the region over US support for Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. AWC

Read More

[tyrannosaurus-trainwreck]

I feel like one of the more overlooked things about Goncharov (1973) is its place as yet another near-miss in the Cold War.

The novelist Roberto Saviano, well-regarded in his native Italy but not particularly famous at the time, was certainly unknown outside its borders.  He was free to set his thriller in a 1969 in which the Soviet Union was in the last throes of a shambolic dissolution without anyone in NATO calling his publisher up and asking them to please have a word with him.

The book’s modest European success did nothing to change that.  When director Matteo JWHJ0715, flush off his first successful film--a collaboration with Vittorio De Sica and Lina Wertmüller--was looking for a new project, he felt that the milieu would add a spark of notoriety to the picture without alienating the Cinecittà crowd.

Enter Martin fucking Scorsese, who’d just blown everybody’s tits off with Woodstock and was palling around with Brian De Palma, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg, in addition to having Roger Ebert declaring him the second coming of Movie Christ.  He was also, critically, extremely American.

JWHJ0715 had yet to run into his first political landmine (1975′s La grande abbuffata, which authorities correctly read as a critique of the eucharist and whose broad domestic success resulted in Vatican City closing its gates until JWHJ0715 personally assured the Pope that he hadn’t meant it and was very sorry), and so he was ignorant of what including an American producer and shooting with an American cast would mean for his film. 

(In spite of  JWHJ0715′s position as director, Goncharov was definitely Scorsese’s problem once it was released, since no one in Russia or America knew who the hell JWHJ0715 was yet.)

Once word started getting around of the particulars of Goncharov’s setting, sales of the book ticked up, particularly in quarters that were known to be responsible for disseminating banned Western media in the Soviet bloc.  Scorsese was aware that the ‘dissolving Soviet Union’ part of the script could be a hot button issue, but since they were shooting on a small budget with a cast of nascent but not full-blown stars on location in Italy, he thought that part of things was likely to fly under the radar. 

To hedge their bets, Scorsese talked JWHJ0715 into shooting the scenes where the Soviet Union’s status was most explicit in (extremely bad) Russian, with the rationale that they could just change the subtitles if it caused distribution problems. 

Unfortunately, making the scenes immediately understandable to Russian viewers did not make things better.

By the time shooting wrapped in early 1973, Soviet ministers were already advising Brezhnev to make as much political hay about it as possible.  The film didn’t properly exist yet, but there was an expectation in Russia that the adaptation would stick fairly close to the book’s plot (it... did its best). They felt confident in rushing two domestic films into distribution to answer the decadent capitalist wetdream of Mother Russia’s failure: Mikhail Bogin‘s Looking for a Man (basically Goncharov-the-novel, but some of the United States were seceding again due to the excesses of the capitalists, which comes up once per 8 minutes of run-time with or without on-screen justification) and Vladimir Vajnshtok’s Russo-Cuban take on America’s founding myth, the cowboy.

(Ironically, Vajnshtok’s The Headless Horseman getting fast-tracked past committee review to combat the presumptive anti-communist menace of Goncharov resulted in the responsible officials later being accused of subversion due to Headless Horseman’s now-famous caricature of the Stalin family.)

Low-budget film editing in Italy being what it was in the ‘70s, both of the Soviet answers to Goncharov had come and gone before JWHJ0715 had a copy ready for screening in September.  It generated an immediate interest among both cineastes and critics due to the unusually high production values and the undeniable talent of its crew.  The initial buzz due to its quality was quickly augmented by word that it might get denied a full release for political reasons, guaranteeing the film would shoot to number one at the box office in Italy, Monaco, and Spain the week it dropped for mainstream audiences.

The studio and censors hadn’t requested any changes to the Russian scenes, and so the film’s milieu was untouched.

Unfortunately for all involved, October saw a joint attack by Soviet-armed Egyptian and Syrian forces on America-backed Israel, which sparked a superpower pissing match involving a naval standoff, North Korea, and Henry Kissinger telling Hafez al-Assad to kiss his entire ass on the floor of the UN.  Brezhnev found himself denying requests for Soviet troops in a proxy war with the West just as the American film press began mailing issues celebrating a revolutionary new film in which the Soviet Union had fallen to pieces.

That the alternate-present reality of the film didn’t affect much of the film’s action and barely registered with most of its audience was lost on the diplomats handling an already-tense situation.  The studio pressured Scorsese and JWHJ0715 to cut a new version that was less politically charged.  War-hawks characterized cutting a new version of the film as showing weakness in the face of the enemy.

In spite of continued public interest in the film, the distribution ground to a halt, studio support evaporated, and paid publicity campaigns were cancelled.  Kissinger’s success with shuttle diplomacy meant a return to the nuclear powers’ detente, but the film’s fate as a lost classic had been sealed that first week.  Everybody who knew anything about film had heard about Goncharov, but very few had actually gotten to see it. 

By the time a rushed English-language translation of the novel hit American bookstands, interest had faded in all but the most die-hard Scorsese fans.  As the crew went on to do spectacular, genre-defining work in other films, interest in their time on Goncharov waned. 

Aside from the occasional luck-of-the-draw screening with old copies in arthouse cinemas and private European showrooms (JWHJ0715 was reportedly fond of screening it for new ADs to see if they were artistically a good match), it was effectively a lost film until the bootleg DVD trade of the late ‘90s made it possible to obtain poorly-dubbed and badly transferred editions that still gave movie buffs a taste of what it must have been at its best.

With any luck, current interest in the film will get Scorsese and Criterion to produce a new, fully-restored director’s cut so that everyone can see it as it was meant to be seen, and the world can finally enjoy JWHJ0715′s definitive moment behind the camera.

[mariacallous]

Who, exactly, is the enemy Russia has targeted in its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine? Not Ukrainians, who, as the Russian media continually remind us, don’t actually exist. Not NATO and the “collective West,” however much they might fit the bill; Russian television has been demonizing them for more than a decade, but there is little appetite for a direct confrontation. Throughout most of the war, the “Kyiv Junta” has been labeled a band of homosexuals, drug addicts, and, most prominently, Nazis. Yet somehow even Nazis are not quite evil enough. So, who is the true enemy? Could it be … Satan?

Apparently, yes. 

On November 4, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, who just 15 years ago was the gadget-happy, reformist president on whom the country’s liberals pinned their few remaining hopes, gave a speech worthy of a wannabe suicide bomber: 

We listen to the words of the Creator in our hearts and obey them. These words give us our holy goal. The goal of stopping the supreme leader of hell, whatever name he might use — Satan, Lucifer, or Iblis.

As Artem Efimov notes in his excellent contribution to Meduza’s “Signal” Russian-language newsletter (all the Satanic news fit for pixels, if not print), it was Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov who, while apparently moonlighting as a demonologist on his Telegram channel, called for the “desatanization” of Ukraine. This is the sort of language we have come to expect from Kadyrov, who rails against “shaitans” so often that they may as well be one of the odd filler words that notoriously pepper most of his sentences. We not only expect Satan from Kadyrov — we’re disappointed if he forgets to mention him.

If both the Muslim Kadyrov and the Russian Orthodox Medvedev are warring against Satan, then this isn’t simply a matter of the ongoing mind meld between the Russian (Orthodox) Church and State. One need not believe in God to worry about Satan (although it certainly helps). 

The U.S. has been beset by waves of demonically-inflected hysteria since the infamous Satanic Panic of the 1980s, when a confluence of concerned parents, “experts,” and media personalities turned a few unhinged accusations of so-called “satanic ritual abuse” into a threat that stalked America’s schools and daycare centers. The officially atheist Soviet Union was spared this particular wave of hysteria, but, as Efimov points out, the moral panic over new religious movements (“cults”) in the 1990s brought satanism into the Russian popular consciousness.

By the 2000s, activists associated with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) were ferreting out Satanists left and right. And they involved the government whenever possible. When the Moscow Education Department banned Halloween in the city schools, it claimed that the holiday promoted a “cult of death” and pointed to concerns about “rituals of Satanically oriented religious sects.” The popularity of the Harry Potter franchise put the morality police into overdrive. In December 2002, a woman filed a complaint with Moscow Prosecutor’s Office against Rosmen, the publisher of Harry Potter, for “occult propaganda” (the prosecutors declined to charge Rosmen, due to a lack of evidence).

Something was spreading throughout Russia since the collapse of the USSR, but it was not Satanism: it was the crusade against Satanism. 

This was a movement that crossed church and state boundaries long before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The demonization of “cults” in the 1990s was an important step, but it was only in the past decade that both scholars and state actors indulged in a crucial slippage between the religious and the political. The Center for Combating Extremism, founded in 2008, fights both political opposition and unrecognized religious organizations, tacitly making them equivalent “threats.” In 2020, Roman Silantev, one of the leading experts combating new religious movements, published a book called Destructology, which provides the ideological justification for the Center’s work. For Silantev, undesirable political and social movements such as pyramid schemes, “fascist” and “antifascist” groups, and even the pensioners who insist that the USSR still exists, are structurally exactly the same as “totalitarian cults.” From here to Satanism is just a small step.

Since February 24, disaffected Russians have been asking themselves the grimly ironic question: “So, are we North Korea now, or Iran?” If the country is going to be explicitly fighting Satan, then Iran seems like the better bet. But the irony goes even deeper. There’s something about looking for Satan around every corner that is suspiciously …American.

The rise of the Russian anti-cult movement and the fundamentalist fight against secular culture are part of an ideological pipeline that leads back to the Great Satan itself, with American far-right and evangelical organizations taking a strong interest in the post-Soviet space even before Fox News became Russian television’s favorite American channel.

All of which suggests that we should not take the Russian state’s anti-Satanic zeal at face value. And yet something about Russia’s war in Ukraine has repeatedly activated theocratic, reactionary forces. In November 2014, one of the military leaders of the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic” announced plans to forbid women from entering bars, when they should be sitting at home practicing their cross-stitching. (“It’s time to remember that you’re Russian! Remember your spirituality!”)

It’s highly unlikely that Medvedev, Putin, or anyone high up in the Russian government believes they are fighting Satan, but their beliefs matter only so much. They are providing a permission structure for fanatics who are only too happy to stamp out the devil’s work wherever they might find it. Just as Putinism has always been a delicately calibrated mix of top-down initiatives and responses to the more belligerent sentiments in Russian society, so too is this Satanic vocabulary both the logical outcome of decades of mild moral panics and the latest (and possibly last) rhetorical ploy on the part of a regime that has backed itself into a corner.

The escalation from gays to Nazis to Satan follows a kind of video game logic: keeping the players engaged means finding ever-bigger bosses for them to fight. But where can you go after Satan? One hopes that the leadership of the Russian Federation is not charting a deliberately apocalyptic course, despite the disturbing chatter about nuclear warfare and Russians “going to heaven, while their enemies just croak.” But when your enemy is Satan, there is little room for negotiation, retreat, or surrender.

All of which scares the hell out of anyone paying attention. Still, there is one cause for hope: If there is any world leader who must have vast experience in making deals with the devil, it’s Vladimir Putin.

[ohsalome]

I hope I’m not bothering you by asking (i saw you receive a previous ask about it), but I was wondering why is it that the narrative around caucasian (especially chechnyan) people being called terrorists is so easily accepted by tankies; like i know the reason “why” (because America Bad™ is all those idiots repeat ad nauseam) but not the “how.” There’s a lot of information regarding muslims and arabs and people know how that is often framed to justify american and general western violence against them; but there’s not a lot of info about chechnyans that hasn’t been filtered through a russian lens and a lot of people seem to be perfectly fine with that. How on earth did that happen?

I think you've answered your question already - prejudice against foreigners (especially Muslims) + distrust of the mainstream western media + lack of info that hasn't been filtered through a russian lens. But I will try to add more details.

(full disclaimer I was a small bebé during these times so everything I know I have learned many years after these events have occurred)

I. During the First Chechen War, russia has not yet established itself as a media monopolist, which has led to them losing the informational war. A lot of journalists, including the russian ones, had covered the events on the Chechens' side. In both russian and western media, there were two narratives - about the russian government fighting terrorism, but also about the Chechens fighting for independence. Russia has learned from its mistakes, and by the time of the Second Chechen War, it went full-on with the informational war. They have established the russian Informational Centre to coordinate the media coverage of the conflict. Just before the invasion, the russian government committed several terrorist attacks in moscow, volgodonsk and makhachkala and blamed them on the "terrorists" to get an official justification for the invasion & to get the support of the population. They have also had an unprecedented xenophobic campaign in the media. This time, any journalist who wanted to cover the war had to be accredited by the russian government, which meant that only those who agreed to promote their version of the events were allowed in. This included the foreign parites, e.g. abc got banned from entering Chechnya. This gave russia a full control of the narrative.

Add to these circumstances the fact that we are talking about times preceding wide internet access. We can see today how differently the russian army acts when their actions can be caught on camera vs when they have the protection of the informational void. Without access to unbiased outlets, the Chechen side of the war was slienced. As a result, the narrative of "bloodthirsty barbaric terrorists that russia just had to destroy for their own protection" became the only one.

The current clan ruling the region (infamous kadyrovtsy), are de-facto collaborators of the russian regime.

The reaction of the west, typically, was weak and unimpactful. PACE has issued two recommendations that justified russia’s actions in the Chechen Republic. In 2000 they revoked the russian delegation’s voting rights, but completely reverted them within a year. OSCE mission had worked for a year and then got kicked out.

A sidenote: I asked my mom about her memories of that time. She lived in Taganrog (southwestern russia), which had a significant population of caucasian people - approx. 60% of her colleagues were from that region. According to her, people believed caucasians instead of russian media. I can't say for sure if it was the same or different in other regions, but my educated guess would be that more monogenous and marginalised regions would be more likely to belive the official narrative. 

II. Like you've mentioned, it is a well-known fact in the leftist circles that Muslim people are often framed to be terrorists to justify violence against them; and, therefore, we have a kind of expectation that people who support these ideals would not fall for islamophobic propaganda as easily. Unfortunately, the psychological aspect says that our awareness of prejudices does not always help us overcome them. In psychology, there is a distinction between two types of biases - explicit and implicit ones. Explicit biases are those presented by open racists. Implicit biases can be carried by people who are outwardly non-xenophobic and can even be a part of the social justice movement. However, unconscious prejudices can still influence their attitudes and behaviour. In this case, it would mean that they would be more likely to believe that Chechens were terrorists and russia's actions were justified. 

III. If we are talking about tankies specifically, they have a long-standing bromance with the russian state-sponsored media. From what I've read, it dates back to the times of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. Russia Today (RT) channel, created after the failure of the informational war in Chechnya, has given voices to the most fringe leftist organisations that weren't taken seriously by the more established media outlets. Later the relationship was strengthened during the Snowden and Assange events. RT has gained the tankies' trust by giving them a free platform, and through this trust, they have started feeding them any narrative kremlin wanted - about Chechnya, Libia, Syria, Ukraine or any other country. 

And this does not even touch the fact that kremlin has been founding many far-left and far-right european & american parties and think tanks for years.

Hope this helps)

[cozykali]

The Congress hearing involving the CEO of TikTok was an absolute embarrassment. They did not give the man a moment to speak after asking him ridiculous question after question.

They are claiming it has to do with privacy concerns and the fact that TikTok is owned by a company in China called ByteDance. the Xenophobia in the hearing was unbelievable.

The boomers were asking Mr. Chew questions like ‘does my phone connect to my home wifi?’ ARE YOU SERIOUS? How do we have such technologically illiterate geezers making decisions on this?

TIkTok does not collect any more data on it’s users than Google, Amazon, Meta, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter etc. In fact, TikTok’s data is stored in serves on US soil using a company called Oracle.

The worst part about it is Mark Zuckerberg has paid off the government by lobbying over $20 Million to get them to squash his competition.

Is there misinformation and harmful images on TikTok, yea but it’s EVERYWHERE else on the internet as well. Russian and Chinese boys have infiltrated Twitter and Facebook to change the course of both American and Canadian elections. Meta (Facebook and Instagram) has sold millions of data to Cambridge Analytica.

If China wanted to harvest our data they do not need TikTok to do that. Nothing is stopping them from collecting data from Meta and there is no proof the Chinese government has even accessed data via TikTok.

I understand government officials not having acess to TikTok on their personal devices for privacy concerns but it should include ALL social media platforms.

I have made countless friends on TikTok in the past 5 years that I’ve had my account. I have learned more than I have learned in my entire adult life. You can understand more about what’s happening in the world by following independent journalist on the app than watching the main stream news. Millions of small businesses and creators make their entire living through TikTok. We can’t let them take it away.

Ironically, TikTok has been banned in China for years. All well as Facebook, YouTube, instagram, and many other social media sites. That’s because theyre a dictatorship and who censor what information their population has access to.

Here in North America we value free speach and are proud that our internet isn’t censored. If the TikTok ban goes through what will they censor next?

If you are American contact your local congress office and let them know you do not support a ban on TikTok and will not be re-electing them in the primaries if they vote in favour of banning it. We’ll be watching closely in Canada as well since we like to copy American policy.

If the TikTok ban goes through I will be deleting all of my accounts owned by Meta including Facebook, Instagram, Messager and WhatsApp as this is partially Mark Zuckerburg’s fault for lobbying to congress to try to squash his competition.

End rant.

[theculturedmarxist]

A World Gone MAD

The obvious diplomatic solution to the Ukrainian issue would have been a prosperous, neutral, demilitarized Ukraine, providing a buffer state both for Russia on its east and the Eastern Europeans on their west. Indeed, this is all that Putin has demanded. And if Putin were removed, as American neocons dream, his successor would demand it as well: it is an eternal Russian life-interest.

[...]

According to Harry Kazianis, editor of the The National Interest, repeated war simulations by American military officials, which eerily predict the course of events that have occurred so far, suggest that NATO and Russia will continue to escalate until there are over a billion dead: MAD.21 Let us hope the warning of the simulations prevents the U.S. from escalating the conflict so as to threaten the survival of the Russian state and also that Russia has unforeseen deterrent capabilities to prevent the need to jump to nuclear escalation.

15 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-georgia-russia-report/georgia-started-war-with-russia-eu-backed-report-idUSTRE58T4MO20090930 16 https://harpers.org/2013/10/the-bloom-comes-off-the-georgian-rose/ 17 https://www.cato.org/commentary/americas-ukraine-hypocrisy 18 https://twitter.com/jackposobiec/status/1499762190387195904?s=21 19 https://tinyurl.com/3fspz7rz 20 https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-russia-putin-highlights/key-quotes-from-russian-president-putins-annual-phone-in-idUKKCN1J30X 21 https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/04/nato-involvement-in-ukraine-could-spark-nuclear-genocide-heres-how-it-could-happen/

[...]

Neocon policy supports the U.S. war footing, but its immediate cause may also be the Democrats’ dismal election prospects after badly mishandling the recent health crisis. It is not just the example of Clinton’s foreign adventures that guides them. In 1935, six years before the U.S. entered World War II, historian Charles Beard perceived: “Confronted by the difficulties of a deepening domestic [economic] crisis and by the comparative ease of a foreign war, what will President Roosevelt do? Judging by the past history of American politicians, he will choose the latter, or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, amid powerful conflicting emotions he will ‘stumble into’ the latter.”22 As Chodorov wrote: “war is the state’s escape from a collapsed internal economy.”

[...]

Those not familiar with commodity markets may not understand how supply interacts with price. If oil production halved, price would not double: it would have to rise far enough to destroy the demand of half of consumption. Short-term oil demand elasticity is estimated to be around -0.1: a 10% increase in price results in a 1% decrease in demand. If Russian oil exports are truly cut off, 12% of the world’s oil supply disappears. Food is also extremely price inelastic, especially in poorer countries, where price elasticity approaches zero, at least until people starve.

In addition to the supply of Russian and Ukrainian wheat being interrupted (a quarter of global supply), other suppliers have started limiting exports. Hungary just banned food exports to ensure supply for its population. Argentina, a major grain exporter, has demanded that flour mills supply domestic needs first to keep local prices stable before exporting any surplus.

Russia also exports 22% of the world’s supply of ammonia and 14% each of urea and monoammonium phosphate, all critical ingredients of fertilizers. Global fertilizer prices had already tripled before the conflict erupted. Increases in food prices are going to be shocking.

[...]

America’s army is not at risk in the current conflict, but its economy and financial system may be overthrown even if Russia is defeated on the battlefield. If Russia “falls apart,” Cheney’s hope with the intrigue in Georgia, the ensuing chaos in terms of commodity prices and migration would be worse for Western countries than the relative geopolitical stability to be gained by a swift Russian military victory.

The best outcome would a diplomatic settlement that allows Russia to dominate the Russian-speaking portions of eastern Ukraine and keeps the rest of Ukraine independent and out of NATO. Eastern Europeans NATO members would demand and receive additional U.S. military hardware. If the 2024 election were to bring a new president aligned with the tradition of America’s founding values, the U.S. could work to resolve Eastern European tensions. Even assuming deescalation, however, America’s vulnerabilities have been revealed to the world, allies and adversaries alike. Notably, both Brazil and India have refused to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

American policy has been so destructive that the conspiracy theorist might credibly argue that it must have been executed by design. Ignorance, incompetence, hubris, and corruption are, however, more likely agents of government action. One cannot but wonder to what extent U.S. policy is affected by payments by Ukrainian oligarchs to the Clinton foundation (its largest donors), Hunter Biden, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and a host of others in the Washington establishment (to be fair, Hunter was also paid by the Russians and Chinese).

[desert-bluffs-and-me]

WTNV Quick Rundown - 22 - The Whispering Forest

Welcome to to my rundowns, I hope we know the jist by now~ please check out the rest using my wtnv quick rundown tag.

There's a thin, semantic line separating weird and beautiful, and that line is covered in jellyfish. Welcome to Night Vale.

Despite being in a desert, a vast forest has grown in east of NV. It whispers compliments and sweet things to those who get close. Larry Leroy is the first to find out that entering makes all your pain go away and the forest is absolutely beautiful, however he retreats because he wants to catch the Iron Chef America marathon. It is Intern Richard who discovers that if you choose to stay there too long, you also become a tree. This means that all or at least most of the trees were probably people once.

Larry Leroy apparently has a very nice beard, which he has stopped dying black, so it is now a 'smooth even blanket of peppery wisdom'. Simone Rigaudeau is pro-everyone becoming a tree. Cecil says they didn't really lose anyone, as the trees gained each other and will probably live for a very long time. But he also says he once owned a hamster as a child which only lived two weeks so what does he know?

'The Night Vale School District announced that schools will be closed all of next week because nothing really matters and is anything even real?' Some parents, including the previously mentioned Diane Crayton (treasurer of the NV PTA) reject this idea but she gives in to her own existential crisis eventually too. The Glow Cloud (All Hail) is the school board president.

The NV Psychological Association, in conjunction with a vague, yet menacing, government agency, asks all citizens to start keeping dream journals. 'Dream journals can be a spiritually-satisfying exercise in understanding your unconscious mind, helping you to fully examine your being and balance your emotions. They also can be rife with useful data for government officials and corporate marketing executives.'

Cecil has apparently been keeping one for years. Since there is a ban on writing utensils, Cecil has been using a makeshift non-pen make out of a cocktail straw, some cotton and colourful municipal foodpastes.

The NVPA has created a How-To for Dream Journaling. One: find a foreign dictionary or hymnal, preferably in Russian or Ukrainian, but German is ok. Two: carve out several pages, creating a secret compartment in the book. Three: write down your dream, in great detail, the moment you wake up. Four: and this is the most important step of all: eat the paper you wrote your dream on and then place a bird skeleton in the book. Finally, bury the book near a magnolia or willow tree and repeat each day.

'The sooner you start this process, listeners, the sooner you can start actualizing your existence, exploring your inner self, and the sooner the Sheriff's Secret Police can track down and arrest those vile miscreants who keep dreaming about horses.'

Monday: There is a new exhibit at the Children's Science Museum about how the moon is fake. Tuesday: Buddy Holly is back in Dark Owl Records to hover over patrons shoulders and judge their music taste, weeping when they make incorrect choices. Thursday: recycling pick up day. Any teeth lost due to 'last weeks' public water mishap should be gently placed in a wooden box and set on fire. Friday: cooking classes at the NV Rec centre, including a seminar on whether deer feel pain or are just sad. Saturday: secret parade. Sunday: is the day 'we' decided 'last fall' to clean up. Do it.

Next the sound of a rapidly-beating heart. As always, good night, Night Vale. Good Night.

Proverb: If you love someone set them free. Set them free now. This is the police and we have you surrounded.

[sleepysera]

8.2.22 Headlines

WORLD NEWS

Afghanistan: Shock in Kabul as US kills al-Qaeda leader (BBC)

“The US has killed the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a drone strike in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden has confirmed. He was killed in a counter-terrorism operation carried out by the CIA in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday. He and Osama Bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks together, and he was one of America's most wanted terrorists. Mr Biden said al-Zawahiri had "carved a trail of murder and violence against American citizens".”

Russia: Brands Ukrainian steel plant defenders terrorists (AP)

“Russia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday declared Ukraine’s Azov Regiment a terrorist organization, a designation that could lead to terror charges against some of the captured fighters who made their last stand inside Mariupol’s shattered steel plant. Scores of Azov fighters are being held prisoner by Moscow since their surrender in mid-May. Russian authorities have opened criminal cases against them, accusing them of killing civilians. The addition of terrorism charges could mean even longer prison sentences.”

Lebanon: Clears ship Ukraine says is carrying stolen grain (AP)

“Lebanon’s prosecutor general decided a Syrian ship allegedly carrying Ukrainian grain stolen by Russia may leave a port in the country’s north, officials said Tuesday. The move came after an investigation showed the vessel wasn’t carrying stolen goods. However, the Laodicea cannot immediately leave the port of Tripoli because a judge ordered Monday that it may not sail for 72 hours at the request of Ukrainian authorities. If the judge does not extend the order, the ship could sail in two days, a move likely to anger Ukraine.”

US NEWS

Climate Crisis: Harris cites climate ‘crisis,’ pushes $1B for floods, storms (AP)

“Vice President Kamala Harris called climate change an “immediate” and “urgent” crisis Monday as she detailed more than $1 billion in federal spending to respond to disasters such as deadly flooding in Kentucky and wildfires ravaging her home state of California. On a visit to Miami, Harris announced a series of grants being made available to states to help communities across the nation prepare for and respond to climate-related disasters.”

Abortion: Appeals court reinstates Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban (AP)

“A Kentucky appeals court has reinstated a near-total abortion ban that took effect when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling means most abortions are illegal in the state, for now.”

Floods: After the rain comes the heat in flooded Kentucky towns (AP)

“The death toll stood at 37 on Tuesday after more bodies were found Monday in the ruined landscape, and while more than 1,300 people have been rescued, crews were still trying to reach some people who remain cut off by floods or mudslides, he said. Hundreds remained unaccounted for, a number that should drop once cell phone service is restored and people can tell each other they’re alive.”

[t-jfh]

Aleksei Navalny [4 June 1976 – 16 February 2024] pictured in 2013 while contesting the election for Mayor of Moscow. Navalny honed his political ideas and activism as an anticorruption campaigner, and steadily rose to become Russia’s most prominent opposition leader and critic of President Vladimir Putin.

(Photo: Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)

A portrait of Aleksei Navalny on Friday at a monument honoring victims of political repression in St. Petersburg, Russia.

(Photo: Reuters)

The IK-3 "Polar Wolf" Arctic penal colony, where Aleksei Navalny served his prison term, in the settlement of Kharp, in Russia’s Yamal-Nenets region. (Photo: Reuters)

Navalny was one of scores imprisoned for their political beliefs, rights group says.

Aleksei A. Navalny may have been Russia’s best-known opposition figure, but hundreds of people are imprisoned for their political beliefs in Russia, according to Memorial, the Nobel-winning human rights organization, which is banned in Russia. A number of them are politicians and activists.

By Valerie Hopkins and Gaya Gupta

The New York Times - February 16, 2024

Russian opposition politician, Vladimir Kara-Murza, pictured while visiting America in 2016.

(Photo: Al Drago/The New York Times)

Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, is a longtime opposition politician, independent journalist and historian who comes from a well-known family of Soviet dissidents. He has long campaigned for a democratic Russia, running for election to the Russian Parliament and serving as a deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party. He was arrested in Moscow in April 2022 and accused of treason for condemning Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the news media and to American lawmakers.

Mr. Kara-Murza obtained British citizenship as a teenager and played an important role in lobbying Washington more than a decade ago for the Magnitsky Act, which punished officials deemed responsible for the death of a tax lawyer in a Russian jail. Mr. Kara-Murza is believed to have been poisoned twice, in 2015 and 2017.

Still, like Mr. Navalny, he returned to Russia in 2022, saying he believed it was important to protest the invasion of Ukraine.

He was arrested that April on charges of disobeying police orders and was later charged with “spreading false information about the Russian military.”

In April 2023, he was sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony on that charge and for being affiliated with an “undesirable” organization. It was the longest sentence given to any opposition politician in modern Russia.

•

[newstfionline]

Friday, February 16, 2024

Dispute may have led to the mass shooting after the Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade, police say (AP) The mass shooting that unfolded amid throngs of people at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration, killing one person and wounding almost two dozen others, appeared to stem from a dispute between several people, authorities said Thursday. Police Chief Stacey Graves said the 22 people injured Wednesday ranged between 8 and 47 years old, with half under 16. A mother of two was killed. The shooting outside Union Station occurred despite the presence of more than 800 police officers who were in the building and area, including on top of nearby structures.

Argentina’s soup kitchens on brink of collapse from high inflation (Reuters) A week ago, 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of pasta was enough to feed the dozens of families who visit the Sal de la Tierra soup kitchen in Villa Fiorito, a poor Buenos Aires suburb beset by the economic crisis ravaging Argentina. But with monthly inflation topping 20%, the number of hungry residents has soared. This week, the soup kitchen, which relies on private contributions and volunteer work, had to prepare 30 kg of pasta. “There’s less and less to give and more and more hunger,” said Maria Torres, a volunteer cook with the charity, who is currently unemployed. Today there are around 70 families to feed, up from 20 families a few months ago, she said. “These people are in a financial situation where if they don’t go to a soup kitchen, they don’t eat,” she added. Argentina’s statistics agency on Wednesday published annual inflation of 254%.

Europe Wants to Stand on Its Own Militarily. Is It Too Little, Too Late? (NYT) As Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany broke ground for a new ammunition factory this week, he celebrated a move that should enable the country to restore its almost entirely depleted arsenal of artillery shells. But despite his portrayal of the groundbreaking as another German response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began two years ago this month, it was also a reminder of how slow the European reaction has been. It will be a year before the new factory is able to produce 50,000 rounds annually, with hopes of doubling that in 2026. That is too little and too late to help Ukraine at a moment of greatest need, and just as Washington’s own aid package may be faltering. And it is arguably late for Europe as a whole, as leaders warn that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, should he succeed in taking and holding even part of Ukraine, may try to test NATO’s commitment to defend every inch of its territory in the coming years.

Russia’s Advances on Space-Based Nuclear Weapon Draw U.S. Concerns (NYT) The United States has informed Congress and its allies in Europe about Russian advances on a new, space-based nuclear weapon designed to threaten America’s extensive satellite network, according to current and former officials briefed on the matter. Such a satellite-killing weapon, if deployed, could destroy civilian communications, surveillance from space and military command-and control operations by the United States and its allies. At the moment, the United States does not have the ability to counter such a weapon and defend its satellites, a former official said. Officials said that the new intelligence, which they did not describe in detail, raised serious questions about whether Russia was preparing to abandon the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which bans all orbital nuclear weapons. But since Russia does not appear close to deploying the weapon, they said, it is not considered an urgent threat.

Young Chinese, fed up with family pressure, opt out of Lunar New Year (Washington Post) This Lunar New Year holiday season, China’s leaders are worried the kids aren’t all right. The ruling Communist Party already has its hands full with young Chinese who prefer to “lie flat” in the face of a slumping economy, “let it rot” rather than join the job-seeking rat race or “run” abroad to escape eroding personal freedoms. Now, the passive resistance of millennials and Gen Z has spread to the annual tradition of celebrating the Lunar New Year with family. Many young Chinese are choosing to “duanqin”—literally meaning to “cut off relatives,” or shun interactions with one’s extended family—rather than go home for the week-long holiday that runs through this weekend. A growing number of recent graduates are fed up with outmoded holiday traditions and crushing family expectations. They chafe at the excess of grand banquets and lavish gift-giving and loathe the intense pressure to settle down and have children.

Geopolitics might make Vietnam wealthy (The Week) The United States and China have seen their relationship continue to sour as the two countries compete on the global stage. But while the superpower pair seeks to edge each other out in a race to own the next decade, there is a third party that could benefit most of all: Vietnam. Vietnam has “shrewdly positioned itself halfway between China and America, prompting both superpowers to woo it,” The Economist said. Notably, Vietnam was the only country in 2023 to receive state visits from both President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Hanoi’s balancing act between these complex, competing geopolitical interests is now known as “bamboo diplomacy.” Vietnam seemingly has more in common with China than with the U.S. However, Vietnam’s system of government is generally considered more democratic and less restrictive than China’s. As a result, many “ordinary Vietnamese are deeply suspicious of their giant, bullying neighbor,” The Economist said, largely as a consequence of China staking claims on Vietnam’s portions of the South China Sea. This has led the U.S. and China to jostle for a position at Vietnam’s side.

Japan slips into a recession (AP) Japan’s economy is now the world’s fourth-largest after it contracted in the last quarter of 2023 and fell behind Germany. The government reported the economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.4% in October to December, according to Cabinet Office data on real GDP released Thursday, though it grew 1.9% for all of 2023. It contracted 2.9% in July-September. Two straight quarters of contraction are considered an indicator an economy is in a technical recession. Japan’s economy was the second largest until 2010, when it was overtaken by China’s. Japan’s nominal GDP totaled $4.2 trillion last year, while Germany’s was $4.4 trillion, or $4.5 trillion, depending on the currency conversion.

Israel complains after Vatican denounces ‘carnage’ and disproportionate response in Gaza (AP) Israel has formally complained after a senior Vatican official spoke of “carnage” in Gaza and what he termed a disproportionate Israeli military operation following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. The Israeli Embassy to the Holy See called the comments by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, “deplorable.” Speaking Monday at a reception, Parolin condemned the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks against Israel and all forms of antisemitism. But he questioned Israel’s claim to be acting in self-defense by inflicting “carnage” on Gaza. “Israel’s right to self-defense has been invoked to justify that this operation is proportional, but with 30,000 dead, it’s not,” he said. In its statement complaining about Parolin, the Israeli Embassy accused Hamas of turning the Gaza Strip into “the biggest terrorist base ever seen.” It said Israeli armed forces were acting according to international law and said the proportion of Palestinian civilians to “terrorists” killed was less than in other conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Israeli forces storm main hospital in southern Gaza after prolonged standoff (AP) Israeli forces stormed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday, hours after Israeli fire killed a patient and wounded six others inside the complex, the Gaza Health Ministry said. The raid came a day after the army sought to evacuate thousands of displaced people who had taken shelter at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The southern city has been the main target of Israel’s offensive against Hamas in recent weeks. Nasser Hospital, in the southern city of Khan Younis, has struggled to treat scores of patients wounded in daily bombardments. Video of the aftermath of the strike showed medics scrambling to wheel patients on stretchers through a corridor filled with smoke or dust. A medic used a cellphone flashlight to illuminate a darkened room where a wounded man screamed out in pain as gunfire echoed outside.

Egypt Builds Walled Enclosure on Border as Israeli Offensive Looms (WSJ) Egyptian authorities, fearful that an Israeli military push further into southern Gaza will set off a flood of refugees, are building an 8-square-mile walled enclosure in the Sinai Desert near the border, according to Egyptian officials and security analysts. For weeks, Egypt has sought to bolster security along the frontier to keep Palestinians out, deploying soldiers and armored vehicles and reinforcing fences. The massive new compound is part of contingency plans if large numbers of Gazans do manage to get in. More than 100,000 people could be accommodated in the camp, Egyptian officials said. It is surrounded by concrete walls and far from any Egyptian settlements. Large numbers of tents, as yet unassembled, have been delivered to the site, these people said. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying his army will need to fight Hamas in Rafah, a Palestinian city on the Egyptian border, Egyptian officials think a broad Israeli offensive could happen within weeks.

Surviving on ‘throwaway rice’ (BBC) As they’re facing the harshest inflation in 30 years, struggling Nigerians are turning to afafata rice, a lower quality grain that’s usually discarded or used as fish food. Saminu Uba, who works in Kano city’s Medile market, said the afafata side of his business is booming. “Most people can no longer afford normal rice and they come for this which is cheaper even though it tastes less good,” he told the BBC. One of his customers, Hashimu Dahiru, admits people are having to find ways of adapting. “The cost of goods is alarming—in just two months the price of everything has doubled,” he said. “Our wives spend hours removing stones and dirt from the rice before cooking and even at that it ends up tasting not nice, but we have to eat to survive.”

Longtime cobbler posts meticulous shoe repair videos, becomes sensation (Washington Post) As a shoe cobbler, Jim McFarland has spent his career with his eyes trained downward on his work. He never expected anyone to care much about his craft. But McFarland, 59, now has more than 1 million followers on TikTok and hundreds of thousands on Instagram. He posts videos of his work as a cobbler—from replacing thin soles to fixing zippers, reviving rubber heels to adding customized touches to timeworn pieces. McFarland breathes new life into seemingly unwearable shoes from his shop in Lakeland, Fla. “If you would have told me three years ago that shoe repairs could have a stage, I would have laughed,” McFarland said from his shop, McFarland’s Shoe Repair, while shining a pair of leather dress shoes from the 1980s. McFarland is an advocate for buying high-quality shoes and mending them as needed, rather than purchasing inexpensive and trendy shoes that tend to not weather well. He said he frequently fixes shoes that are more than 40 years old. When he’s finished with them, “they’ll be good for probably another 30 to 50 years if you take care of them,” he said.

[libertariantaoist]

Here is your daily roundup of today's news:

News Roundup 5/17/2023

by Kyle Anzalone

US News

The far-reaching effects of America’s War on Terror may have contributed to the deaths of some 4.5 million people, according to new research by Brown University’s ‘Costs of War’ project. While many of the fatalities were the direct result of violent conflict, indirect causes such as economic collapse and food insecurity have taken a far greater toll. The Institute

Russia

The leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) will adopt a prohibition on restarting oil imports from Russia, according to the Financial Times. The “highly symbolic” ban falls well short of the total export embargo proposed by Washington. The Institute

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have agreed to host a delegation of African leaders to discuss a potential peace plan for the conflict in Ukraine. AWC

Germany on Saturday announced its largest package of military aid for Kyiv worth $2.95 billion, Berlin’s largest since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. AWC

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Britain Monday and secured pledges for more military equipment from London, including air defense missiles and long-range attack drones. AWC

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has privately plotted major attacks inside Russia while pledging publicly that his forces won’t use Western-provided arms to target Russian territory, The Washington Post reported on Saturday. AWC

The Washington Post deleted a portion of an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, where he accused the paper of helping Russia by posing a question about information contained in leaked classified documents. AWC

The Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday said Ukrainian forces have already used British-provided long-range Storm Shadow missiles in attacks on the Russian-controlled Donbas city of Luhansk. AWC

The last massive aid package Congress authorized for Ukraine has about $6 billion left, which is expected to be used up by mid-summer, POLITICO reported Monday. AWC

Warsaw received its first shipment of US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), manufactured by Lockheed Martin, and announced plans to deploy the launchers near the country’s shared border with Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave. The Institute

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, dismissed claims made by The Washington Post that he offered Ukraine Russian troop positions in exchange for a Ukrainian withdrawal from Bakhmut, calling the report “laughable.” AWC

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization conducted war games aimed at tracking and eliminating submarines. The 12-nation exercises were the alliance’s largest ever military drills simulating underwater warfare. The Institute

Russia’s military said Tuesday that it hit a US-made Patriot air defense system in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv with a hypersonic missile, which was later confirmed by a US official. AWC

Kiev officially joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Cyber Defense Center on Tuesday. Ukraine’s flag was raised at the headquarters of NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) in Tallinn, according to a Ukrainian Foreign Ministry statement. The Institute

On Monday, the CIA published a video on YouTube and Telegram urging Russians to contact the agency in an effort to recruit intelligence assets inside Russia. AWC

China

A high-level Chinese envoy is set to begin a trip that will bring him to Russia, Ukraine, and several other European countries as Beijing hopes to broker a ceasefire to bring an end to the fighting in Ukraine. AWC

Beijing says on 1/5/2021 the US conducted an antisubmarine operation about 100 miles from Hong Kong. When Chinese forces attempted to seize some American equipment, Washington destroyed it. SCMP

On Tuesday, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) responded to US plans to provide Taiwan with $500 million in unprecedented military aid and reports that said hundreds of US troops have been deployed to the island, warning it will “firmly crush attempts at external interference.” AWC

A US envoy said Monday that the US and the Federated States of Micronesia have agreed to extend a strategic pact that will allow the US to maintain military access to the Pacific Island nation. AWC

President Biden has canceled planned visits to Papua New Guinea and Australia to focus on the debt ceiling debate that’s ongoing in Washington, The Associated Press reported on Tuesday. AWC

Middle East

European countries are pressing Biden to resume talks with Iran about reviving the nuclear agreement. WSJ

The US military says it’s looking into reports that it killed a civilian in a recent airstrike it launched in northwest Syria. AWC

The Cradle reported on Tuesday that the US and Syria have been engaged in secret, direct negotiations in the Omani capital of Muscat. AWC

Read More

[palmoilnews]

GRAINS-Soybeans hold gains as dry weather hits Brazilian supply outlook CANBERRA, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Chicago soybean futures on Wednesday held on to gains made in the previous session amid expectations that hot and dry weather in Brazil would reduce yields in the world's top producer. Wheat futures rose while corn fell. FUNDAMENTALS The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) Sv1 was unchanged at $13.46-1/2 a bushel by 0213 GMT after rising 1.3% on Tuesday. CBOT corn Cv1 fell 0.1% to $4.73 a bushel and wheat Wv1 rose 0.6% to $5.75-1/2 a bushel. Brazilian farmers should reap 155 million metric tons of soybeans in the 2023/24 cycle, 10 million tons below initial expectations, after drought affected those in Mato Grosso state who planted their crop early, a consultant at MB Agro said. The forecast was below the 163 million metric ton harvest expected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Also supporting prices was a USDA confirmation that U.S. exporters sold 123,300 metric tons of soybeans to unknown destinations for 2023/24 delivery. Soybeans rose to a 2-1/2-month high of $13.98-1/2 a bushel in mid-November on fears that dry weather in South America would reduce harvests. Prices have since drifted lower, but speculators still hold a net long soybean position. Commodity funds were net buyers of CBOT soybeans, wheat and soyoil futures on Tuesday and sellers of corn and soymeal, traders said. In wheat markets, Agritel said Russian production could reach 90 million tons in 2024 after favourable autumn sowing and Russian supply including that drawn from stocks could be above 100 million tons for a third consecutive season in 2024/25. Russia is the world's biggest wheat exporter. Plentiful shipments from the country have held wheat prices near 3-year lows in recent months. However, Russia's Izvestia newspaper reported that the government may impose a ban on grain exports if its stockpiles fall to 10 million tons. Russian export prices for 12.5% protein wheat for FOB delivery in January rose by $5 last week to $235 a ton, helped by a drop in shipments due to stormy weather in ports, the IKAR agriculture consultancy reported. Ukrainian farmers have almost completed their winter crop sowing, seeding about 5.96 million hectares as of Nov. 28, the country's agriculture ministry said on Tuesday. MARKETS NEWS MSCI's global stock index advanced on Tuesday while the dollar fell as a Federal Reserve official signalled that the U.S. central bank was done raising rates and could even consider rate cuts if inflation keeps easing.

[mariacallous]

Almost every day, new videos encouraging Russians to join the military appear on “I’ve Been Mobilized,” a public page on the social media site VKontakte. Most of the clips depict poor and debt-ridden villagers whose lives are radically transformed for the better after stints in the Russian army. Journalists from the independent news outlet iStories contacted some of the actors from these videos and asked them why they agreed to the roles, whether they support the ads’ mission, and how they feel about Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Sergey used to spend every waking hour struggling to make ends meet; in his rare free evenings, he would get drunk with his best friends, but the booze couldn’t quiet his sense that he was wasting his life. Then he decided to fight in Russia’s war against Ukraine as a volunteer. Now, he has a new car and a new apartment and is the envy of his friends.

Dmitry used to be skinny and shy. He and his girlfriend talked about getting married, but in the end, she didn’t appreciate him enough and wasn’t ready to make his dreams of having two children come true. Then he went to war in Ukraine. Now, his ex-girlfriend is ready to leave her husband and son to be with him, but with his newfound confidence as a military man, he doesn’t need her anymore.

Alina was saving up for an iPhone. But when her pitiful father’s meager paycheck was delayed yet again, he had no choice but to ask her to pitch in, crushing her dreams of purchasing the iconic American device. Then he spent six months helping his country wage aggressive war in Ukraine. When he returned, he was greeted as a hero by his neighbors and the local media and was finally able to buy an iPhone for his daughter.

None of these people are real, of course; all of them are characters from propaganda videos that have appeared on the pro-war social media page I’ve Been Mobilized. Journalists from the independent Russian outlet iStories reached out to some of the actors that took part in clips like these ones to find out why they did it.

Like several of the actors, Alexey Zheleznyak told iStories his decision to be in a pro-war ad was strictly mercenary: he couldn't say no to the 8,000-ruble ($115) fee the producers were offering. He played the best friend of a character who decided to go to war because his city offered “two life options: either you drink yourself to death or you go to prison.”

When asked whether he supports the premise of these videos — that more people should sign up to go to war against Ukraine — Alexey Zheleznyak paused for a moment before saying yes and ending the conversation.

In another clip, ex-TikToker Denis Dekhan played a young man who works in a factory and is unable to make ends meet. After reminiscing with his friends about experiencing “real life” in the army, they decide to enlist to fight in Ukraine.

In a phone conversation with iStories, Dekhan said that he “doesn’t care” whether people volunteer to go to the front, and that he doesn’t like the war because it led TikTok to ban Russian users from uploading new content. “Of course [I have a] negative [view of the war]. I wish it hadn’t happened. It’s caused me a lot of problems. They shut down TikTok,” he said. “[…] But I support my country and my president. In my view, whatever he chooses — that’s the right choice. I don’t support the fact that people are being killed there, but I support the fact that our enemies are being confronted.”

“And who are our enemies?” iStories’s correspondent asked.

 “America,” Dekhan said. “What do you want from me? What are you bothering me for? These are unpleasant questions, if I’m being honest. What are you asking me for? Ask the people fighting the war or ask Putin.” The actor then swore before hanging up the phone.

Oleg Kosyanenko, who played a character in the same video, was also short-spoken: “I don’t want to express my position officially, but I participated in this, which means I’m not against [this video],” he said.

Another actor played a man living in a small village who decides to sign a military contract because he’s sick of earning only 10,000 rubles ($155) per month and waking up at 4:00 a.m. Requesting anonymity, the actor told iStories that he didn’t learn what kind of video he would be acting in until he was already on set. He was also paid 8,000 rubles ($115).

“I don’t share the position that people should sign up to serve as volunteers in Ukraine,” he admitted. “The majority of actors [in the video] were already on set by the time they learned what was happening. Plus, we were told that this video was for some company’s internal use. They deceived us somewhat. I didn’t learn I would end up in a military uniform until I was on set, and I didn’t process it until afterwards. It was mostly just a job.”

Still, the man said he doesn’t believe videos like the one he acted in will convince anybody to go to war: “I don’t think anyone takes these clips seriously. These videos are very poorly made, of course. This one was terribly made, which is why I thought they were [for internal use]; I didn’t think this crap would ever actually be released. They could have been done better. Next time, I won’t act in these kinds of [propaganda videos].”

In another video, actor Alexander Knyazyev played a factory manager whose employee resigns with the words, “I’ve been driving a tractor for 15 years; I raised my son [in that time], and the tractor hasn’t changed. [But] I’ve signed a contract at the military commissariat, and now I’ll be driving a new armored personnel carrier.”

Knyazyev told iStories he only agreed to act in the clip for the money, and that he didn’t read the script ahead of time: “I was only interested in the fee. Not because I’m greedy, but because I need to live — you can’t survive on a pension.”

Knyazyev said the video’s message is at odds with his own beliefs. “I’m not such a bad guy, not completely. I signed a contract, but I didn’t even read the script. During the shoot, the director or his assistant told me that this guy was joining the army as a contract fighter. But I’d already signed the contract. I should have looked ahead of time and read the script, [or at least enough of it to know] what this was about, but I didn’t. [It was] a minor sin, I think. But in general, it’s important to figure out what shit you’re acting in. It was a lesson for me,” he said.

At the same time, Alexander said he doesn’t think these videos will cause significant harm, unlike the aggressive military propaganda shown on Russian television. “My role in this small clip was so meager, so tiny, that you can’t compare it to the propaganda playing on all of the television channels in our country. It’s a drop in the sea. I don’t even know who’s going to see this video. I have some regrets [about the video], of course. But I hope it won’t influence viewers. And viewers, of course, should use their brains. [...] Decide for yourself whether to get on this armored personnel carrier or not. It’s people’s own fault that they’re going to die, not mine. We have a lot of idiots. A lot of idiots who are going voluntarily and who are being drafted without asking any questions,” said Knyazyev.

[leviathangourmet]

The far-left New York Times quietly admitted this week that deaths from the coronavirus were overcounted by 30 percent.

Gee, another “right-wing conspiracy theory” is proven true…

The Times’ dishonesty is on full display even in the reporting of this breathtaking news.

Does this amazing revelation earn its own headline? Nope.

Does this amazing revelation sit at the top of the story? Nope.

Here’s how the propagandists at the Times bury the truth:

Headline: “A Positive Covid Milestone.”

Sub-headline: “In a sign that the pandemic really is over, the total number of Americans dying each day is no longer historically abnormal.”

And it is only after reading some 17 paragraphs where you will finally find the buried truth…

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

One-third.

We shut down the country, we closed schools, we bankrupted people, we bankrupted small businesses, we destroyed our economy, we transferred enormous wealth to the top one percent… All based on data that was off by a full third.

Here’s how the Times responded when Trump suggested the death count was over-hyped:

Last Friday, Mr. Trump told reporters that he accepted the current death toll, but that the figures could be “lower than” the official count, which now totals nearly 95,000. Most statisticians and public health experts say he is wrong; the death toll is probably far higher than what is publicly known. … Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told lawmakers this month that the overall toll was likely an undercount. “I don’t know exactly what percent higher but almost certainly it is higher[.]”

Here’s St. Fauci again:

Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious diseases expert, has warned that baseless “conspiracy theories” are swirling around the coronavirus crisis following claims that America’s official death toll from Covid-19 has been overstated.

Far-left PolitiFact gave the claim COVID deaths were overcounted a “pants on fire.”

CNNLOL: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doubled down against rumors — spread mostly on social media — suggesting that coronavirus deaths have been greatly exaggerated.”

We will now add this latest conspiracy theory-come-true to our ongoing list of blatant media lies:

Russia Collusion Hoax

Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax

Jussie Smollett Hoax

Covington KKKids Hoax

Very Fine People Hoax

Seven-Hour Gap Hoax

Global Warming Hoax

Russian Bounties Hoax

Trump Trashes Troops Hoax

Policemen Killed at Mostly Peaceful January 6 Protest Hoax

Rittenhouse Hoax

Eating While Black Hoax

Border Agents Whipping Illegals Hoax

NASCAR Noose Hoax

The Georgia Jim Crow 2.0 Hoax

Trump Assaulted Secret Service Agents and Grabbed Steering Wheel of Beast Hoax

Frame MAGA for Alleged Paul Pelosi Assault Narrative

The COVID Lab Leak Theory Is Racist

Hunter Biden’s Laptop Is Russian Disinformation

Joe Biden Will Never Ban Gas Stoves Hoax

Claim COVID Deaths are Over-Counted Is a Conspiracy Theory

All the government does is lie, lie, lie, lie, and then lie some more.

All the corporate media do is lie, lie, lie, lie, and then lie some more.

And then, when the facts become too obvious to hide, the truth is buried under 17 paragraphs.