Serbia may change its stance on Ukraine’s territorial integrity after Kiev abstained during a vote on accepting the breakaway region of Kosovo’s request to join the Council of Europe, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic has said.
The Ministerial Committee of the Council of Europe held an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday to decide the fate of Kosovo’s application. The bid was supported by 33 members out of 46, with seven against, and five abstaining.
“I must say that Ukraine has surprised us unpleasantly” by being among the abstaining members, Dacic said shortly after the vote.
“This whole story is based on territorial integrity when it comes to [the conflict in] Ukraine. You know how much effort it takes for [Serbia] to vote for all the resolutions, to condemn the violation of territorial integrity of Ukraine,” he said.
The diplomat pointed out that “foreign policy is based on reciprocity. This will certainly affect our views in the future on territorial integrity of those countries,” he said, referring to Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Slovakia, Armenia as some of the nations whose votes surprised him.
Serbia, which has close ties with Russia, has been resisting Western pressure to sanction Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine. However, it has condemned the use of force by Moscow and insisted that the territorial integrity of the Ukrainian state should be respected.
The majority ethnic Albanian region of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia back in 2008. The US and many of its allies recognized the province as a sovereign state almost immediately. However, Belgrade still considers Kosovo to be part of its territory and the region is not recognized by Russia, China and several other nations.
Pristina’s Foreign Minister Donika Gervalla-Schwarz hailed the vote as “a historic step, perhaps the most important after our independence.” The final verdict on the bid by Pristina is to be delivered by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Dacic condemned the development, warning that it may well lead to a situation where “a part of some other country is going to be offered to join the Council of Europe.”
Apparently, it is increasingly difficult to hide the Western participation in attacks against Russians abroad. In a recent report it was revealed that the US and its proxies had a secret plan to assassinate some commanders of the private military company Wagner Group in Africa. Wagner’s representatives would be in Mali at the time of the attack, which would make them easier targets than inside Russia. The case shows how in fact Washington and Kiev coordinate and jointly perform terrorism and sabotage actions against Russian citizens, which brings possible answers to other recent cases.
The plan was leaked by sources to an important western media outlet. The purpose of the operation would be to prevent the growth of Russian influence in Africa. As well known, the Wagner Group operates in some African countries, responding to requests made by the local governments themselves. Faced with the failure of initiatives by western countries – mainly France – to halt the advance of terrorism in Africa, cooperation in defense and security with Russia has emerged as an alternative for some countries on the continent, which apparently worries western authorities.
It was reported in the media that the Ukrainian intelligence agency GUR planned to operate an attack in Mali, which would be commanded by Kiev’s officer Kirill Budanov. On that occasion, several Wagner officers would die at once, seriously damaging the Group’s presence in Africa – and consequently boosting the growth of terrorism, as Wagner combats criminal organizations on the continent. However, for reasons still unknown, the operation did not happen – perhaps because there were more serious priorities on the Ukrainian battlefield.
On the other hand, the report exposes a successful plan by the same agents interested in assassinating Wagner’s officials. The case supposedly occurred in Libya, where a Wagner logistics aircraft would have been shot down. No details were given about the case, and there is no concrete data on what exactly the contents of the aircraft’s cargo would be. However, the report makes it clear that US and Ukrainian agents in fact operate together to kill Russian nationals outside the combat zone, which suggests answers to many other questions.
In several recent cases, Russian authorities have claimed that Ukrainian agents are involved in attacks against ordinary, innocent citizens, as well as against civilian infrastructure in the country’s demilitarized zones. In most cases, there is also a strong suspicion of US involvement, as Ukrainian forces are too weak to coordinate major attacks and intelligence actions abroad.
For example, Russian authorities have claimed on several occasions that the GUR was responsible for the attack on the Crimean Bridge, which took place in October last year. On that occasion, a truck driver who was transporting a bomb in his vehicle (apparently involuntarily) died after detonating the explosive, also killing two other civilians who were on the bridge at the time. In fact, knowing that the GUR planned to kill Russians in Africa and probably participated in the attack on a Wagner’s aircraft in Libya, the suspicions surrounding the participation in the Crimea case gain even more strength, since it is clear that terrorism is really a practice of the Ukrainian agency.
The same can be said for attacks against specific human targets. The homicides of Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky, both journalists with no military involvement, were the ones that made obvious the existence of Ukrainian terrorism abroad. Moscow identified those responsible for both attacks and exposed their connections with Ukrainian intelligence. In the specific case of Daria, US military informants even admitted Kiev’s responsibility. It only remains to be seen to what extent the Ukrainians would be acting “alone” in such incidents.
Kiev’s neo-Nazi regime has proved many times that it is not capable of acting alone. The actions of the Ukrainian armed forces are nothing more than the execution of orders coming from Washington. This becomes clear in the mere fact that the Ukrainian army and its allied militias continue to fight against the Russians despite being heavily weakened, without any possibility of reversing the military scenario of the conflict. So, it is to be expected that the same happens with Kiev’s intelligence agencies, which certainly work as mere proxies for the US, in addition to being extremely dependent on foreign aid to operate any kind of complex action – even more so when outside Ukrainian territory.
Knowing that Americans and Ukrainians jointly planned attacks against Russians in Africa, it is even more difficult to deny that the same certainly happened in the attacks inside Russian territory. Washington will certainly not admit this and will try to blame its neo-Nazi proxy alone, but it is evident that the Ukrainians do not have the operational force, technical capacity or even autonomy to make these decisions on their own. In this sense, as American participation in brutal crimes committed by Ukrainians becomes clearer, the greater the need for an international reaction to NATO, which must begin to be seen as an organization that sponsors terrorism.
Lucas Leiroz is a journalist and a researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
Having formally joined NATO earlier this month, Finland has recorded its highest year-on-year spike in defense spending since 1962, the height of the Cold War.
Finland, which shares the longest border with Russia in Europe at 1,300 kilometers, recorded the most drastic spending boost in the EU (36 percent), underpinned by a number of costly purchases, such as a new fleet of 64 F-35 fighter jets from US weapons company Lockheed Martin. The 10-billion-euro procurement was billed as the single largest splurge in the Nordic country’s history.
During the late Cold War-era, Finland spent approximately 1.9 percent of its GDP on defense, yet saw its spending plummet in the subsequent years and reach its lowest in 2001 at 1.1 percent of GDP. Barely two years earlier, the defense expenditure still stood at a meager 1.3 percent of GDP. However, last year alone, Finland’s outgoing five-party government led by the Social Democrats agreed to add more than 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) in defense spending, citing hostilities in Ukraine as a pretext.
In doing so, Finland notably eclipsed its fellow European nations, such as Lithuania, Sweden and Poland, which saw the next biggest spikes in their defense budgets at 27 percent, 12 percent and 11 percent, respectively.
As a new-fledged NATO member, Finland has emerged as one of the top military spenders in the alliance, spending about 2 percent of GDP. In 2022, only the US (3.5 percent of GDP), Poland (2.4 percent), Estonia (2.3 percent) and the UK (2.1 percent) spent more on defense per capita than Finland. Despite NATO’s spending goal of 2 percent, many nations fall well below this target. For instance, Finland’s neighbor Norway had a spending level of just 1.55 percent. Its neighbor Sweden, with which it filed a joint NATO bid only to part ways later on, has pledged to reach the bloc’s target of military spending “as soon as possible,” whereas Denmark seeks to reach NATO’s target within a decade, by 2033.
Meanwhile, global military expenditure rose to a record high last year amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which spurred European nations and, broadly, the West, into reaching spending levels unseen since the Cold War. European military spending alone shot up 13 percent last year.
According to an estimate by researchers from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), last year’s total global military spending rose by 3.7 percent in real terms to $2.24 trillion. SIPRI stressed that the hike rests on multi-year plans to boost spending from several governments, which is why it is reasonable to expect military expenditure in Central and Western Europe to keep rising in the years to come.
The importance of global cooperation and international law has never been more pronounced in the post-WWII era than it is today. The world’s most important organization in this regard is certainly the United Nations, with one of its main tasks being to uphold international law and maintain its impartiality, regardless of which country or entity it is engaged with. Unfortunately, the UN has failed on both counts, but its role as an international forum of sorts that serves as the last frontier of dialogue between states is still evident. And yet, it seems that even this largely ceremonial role is too much for the political West, as it undermines its desire for total dominance through the so-called “rules-based world order“.
Perhaps the best example (although “the worst” would probably be a more suitable word) of this is the atrocious treatment of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the UN. The latest UN Security Council meeting (chaired by FM Lavrov) should serve as a textbook example of how not to conduct diplomacy, probably for decades to come. The tensions have been quite high at the UNSC due to the political West’s frustrations after Russia took over the council in April, a rule based on the regular monthly rotation. Lavrov warned against this and stated that the world has become a more dangerous place, possibly more so than at the height of the Cold War.
“As was the case in the Cold War, we have reached the dangerous, possibly even more dangerous, threshold,” Lavrov said.
The meeting, titled the “Maintenance of international peace and security”, came under fire as Western diplomats repeatedly grumbled about Russia taking over chairing of the UNSC on April 1 and that it allegedly “must be an April Fool’s joke”. Lavrov himself slammed the United States and its vassals and satellite states for abandoning diplomacy and called for the clarification of relations on the battlefield. However, Western “diplomats” went about with their hostility, including Olaf Skoog, the official representative of the European Union to the UN. Skoog openly called Russia “cynical” for allegedly “trying to portray itself as a defender of the UN charter and multilateralism”.
“We all know that while Russia is destroying, we are building. While they violate, we protect,” he said.
This statement alone shows the immeasurable level of EU/NATO’s self-delusion, as the political West’s truly unprovoked and brutal aggression against the world stands as a stark reminder of just how opposite of truth this is. However, it wasn’t just Western officials that took aim at Russia. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also stated that “Russia’s invasion is causing massive suffering and devastation to the country and its people” and then (rather inexplicably) added that “it’s fueling global economic dislocation triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic”. Neither of these statements makes much sense, as he has said virtually nothing about the suffering of the people of Donbass in the six years since taking office.
“Tensions between major powers are at an historic high. So are the risks of conflict, through misadventure or miscalculation,” Guterres also warned.
Apparently, he stated this to “even out” his previous one-sided statement, but he failed in this too, as he never mentioned which side was responsible for stoking the tensions to a boiling point. Still, perhaps the most laughable example of endless hypocrisy came from the US, when its UN representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield called Lavrov himself “hypocritical” and criticized Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression.
“Our hypocritical convener today, Russia, invaded its neighbor, Ukraine, and struck at the heart of the UN Charter. This illegal, unprovoked and unnecessary war runs directly counter to our most shared principles – that a war of aggression and territorial conquest is never, ever acceptable,” she said.
Again, such statements are beyond laughable or even enraging to dozens of countries that have been invaded or targeted by Washington DC. However, what’s truly disturbing is how the US is abusing its status as the UN’s permanent host country. There have been countless examples of Russian, Belarussian, Syrian, North Korean and many other officials, diplomats, journalists, etc. that have been denied entry into the US, preventing access to what is supposed to be an impartial organization.
These incessant Western-induced tensions serve as a testament to the notion that the UN should be reformed significantly. Liz Truss, one of the UK’s recent fast-track prime ministers, floated the idea last year, one of the very few things she was right about. Of course, her reasoning for the move was quite the opposite, but the point still stands. The actual world should start creating truly international institutions that are completely divorced from the malign influence of the US-led political West. This includes either relocating or even completely replacing the UN itself.
The very idea that increasingly irrelevant countries such as France or the UK have permanent seats at the UNSC, unlike actual giants such as Brazil or India, is geopolitically ludicrous. If the political West aims to control so-called “international institutions”, then it can do so within its own geopolitical boundaries. But the issue is that it aims to control quite literally everyone, which has been preventing the emergence of a truly independent multipolar world for decades. To say nothing of how the political West has been (ab)using the UN to promote or even impose its so-called “values” on the rest of the world, something that the vast majority of civilizations find repugnant.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
When New Zealand Civil liberties activist, Billy Te Kahika, was arrested in 2021 at a peaceful freedom rally in Auckland, he had no idea the legal battle he would face. Currently out on appeal, hear about the shocking 4 month jail sentence he’s facing for simply organizing a peaceful protest.
Government regulatory agencies are not weapons to be used against political opponents. Dr. Jensen is preparing a lawsuit to vindicate the rights of physicians and other health care professionals, cosmetologists, and anyone else who recognizes this grave threat to free speech and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
The purpose of the suit will be twofold: First, to aid the courts in further drawing the line between protected speech and professional conduct subject to regulation. Second, we will hold accountable those responsible for the outrageous weaponization of government against Dr. Jensen and countless other professionals with the courage to speak out against censors and regulators run amok.
After being an outspoken voice during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Jensen had his medical license threatened 5 times by political activists who leveraged Minnesota’s Board of Medical Practice against him. These attacks on speech continued throughout his campaign for Governor of the State of Minnesota.
Others around the country lost their livelihoods and had their professional careers threatened because of similar government overreach. Their freedom to speak freely and question authority was crushed and their recourse was oftentimes nonexistent. We are pursuing this lawsuit to vindicate Dr. Scott Jensen and to set a precedent so that ALL healthcare professionals and beyond will have free speech protections.
The chief executive officer of Iran Electronics Industries (IEI) says Iranian experts have employed an array of electronic warfare tactics to successfully hack three hostile aircraft as they were on reconnaissance missions in the country’s airspace.
“A while ago, a hostile aircraft breached our flight information region (FIR) and started emitting waves in order to collect information. We confronted the plane straight away. The enemy pilot thought there was a technical glitch with his aircraft system; so he contacted his command center and informed them of the problem and the decision to return. That communication is in our possession,” Brigadier General Amir Rastegari, whose company is a state-owned subsidiary of Iran’s Ministry of Defense, told Tasnim news agency on Monday.
In aviation, FIR is a specified region of airspace in which a flight information service and an alerting service (ALRS) are provided.
Rastegari added, “The following day, two more enemy aircraft flew over the area in close proximity to each other. We disrupted their activities in yet another hacking operation as we had already detected and uncovered the bandwidth.”
“As soon as we started jamming, the two planes realized that Iranian ground systems were disrupting them. They, therefore, informed their command center about the presence of a jamming system in the area and their inability to operate there,” he added.
Rastegari underscored that the capability now exists in all units of the Iranian Armed Forces, and Iranian forces can at anytime jam hostile aircraft from a distance of several hundred kilometers away.
The Iranian Defense Ministry official went on to say that Iran’s military technicians have been for years engaged in electronic warfare to protect the country’s airspace, emphasizing that any intruding aircraft which has sought to penetrate into Iranian skies knows all about such indisputable prowess.
Earlier this month, the Iranian Army’s Ground Force unveiled its first indigenously-manufactured jammer drone, which is designed to disrupt the communication between hostile unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their controllers.
Mohajer-6 jammer drone, equipped with a high-tech system capable of transmitting interfering radio signals, was inaugurated in a ceremony attended by Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi, the chief commander of the Iranian Army, and a number of senior commanders of the Army’s Ground Force on April 11.
The jammer drone is the Army’s first UAV with the capability to operate and support electronic warfare and electronic offense against the enemy’s communication networks.
Iranian military experts and engineers have in recent years made remarkable breakthroughs in manufacturing a broad range of indigenous equipment, making the armed forces self-sufficient.
Iranian officials have repeatedly underscored that the country will not hesitate to strengthen its military capabilities, including its missile power, which are entirely meant for defense, and that Iran’s defense capabilities will be never open for negotiations.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has repeatedly called for efforts to maintain and boost Iran’s defense capabilities, decrying enemies for questioning the country’s missile program.
Elon Musk appears to have convinced the Twitter masses that he is their champion of free speech, with his recent appearance on the BBC providing yet another opportunity to burnish his bona fides in this regard.
“Who’s to say that something is misinformation?” Musk asked the BBC’s befuddled interviewer, “Who’s the arbiter of that?”
Good point and fair enough.
But the problem with this and all of Musk’s critical remarks about the very notions of “misinformation” and “disinformation” is that Elon Musk’s Twitter is itself a signatory of the European Union’s so-called “Code of Practice on Disinformation” and “The Code” requires platforms like Twitter precisely to censor “mis-” and “disinformation.”
And “require” here means require: as discussed in my previous articles here and here, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) renders the commitments undertaken in the Code mandatory on pain of massive fines. As I have likewise documented in those articles, Elon Musk has repeatedly flagged not only his compliance with, but indeed his full-throated approval of the DSA.
How in the world is he able to square that circle?
Furthermore, Twitter is even a member of a Permanent Task-Force on “disinformation” that has been set up under the Code and that meets at least every six months, as well as in sub-groups in between the plenary sessions. (See Section IX of The Code, which is available here.)
The task-force is chaired by none other than the EU’s executive body, the European Commission: the very same European Commission that the DSA invests with the exclusive power to assess compliance with the Code and apply penalties if a platform is found to be wanting.
Who is to say something is misinformation, who is the arbiter of that? Well, there you have it. In the case of Twitter and all the platforms cooperating with the EU, the European Commission is the arbiter of that, since it is the Commission that will decide if Twitter and the other platforms are doing enough to combat it.
So, here is my question for Elon Musk: What exactly are you or your representatives doing in the EU’s Permanent Task-Force on disinformation?
In a much celebrated Twitter bon mot, you said, “People who throw the disinformation word around constantly are almost certainly guilty of engaging in it.” Okay. Well, what are you or your representatives discussing in the Permanent Task-Force then? Wouldn’t it be “disinformation?” Because discussing “disinformation” and how to “combat” it to the EU’s satisfaction is the whole point of the task-force!
Furthermore, what sub-groups on specific issues is Twitter participating in, per Commitment 37.4 of “The Code?”
To what extent has the European Commissiwon or perhaps the European foreign service (the EEAS), which is also present in the Permanent Task-Force, had input into the development of Twitter’s “algorithm,” which regulates the “reach” and visibility of Twitter users?
For, as discussed in my last article on this subject, the European Commission is setting up a “Centre for Algorithmic Transparency” specifically for this purpose. Furthermore, as parts of the algorithm that you have published make clear, suppressing “misinformation” is built right into it. See below, for instance.
Getting flagged for such “violations” will result in restricting of visibility and/or “downranking.” So, yes, who’s to say that something is misinformation, who is the arbiter of that? Because Twitter is saying that right in its code and it must be recognizing someone or something as the arbiter.
Speaking of which, it is surely no coincidence that the general categories of misinformation employed in the algorithm mirror the main areas of concern targeted by the EU in its efforts to “regulate” online speech: “medical misinfo,” of course, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also “civic misinfo” in the context of contested elections – for instance, reports of fraud in recent elections in France or Brazil – or “crisis misinfo” in the context of the war in Ukraine.
Under the new Twitter regime, the stealth censorship of the algorithm has largely replaced the open censorship of the permaban. Shadow-banning has, in effect, become the norm.
Once upon a time, Elon Musk pledged to inform Twitter users if they are being shadow-banned and the reason why. (See here). But like his promise of a “general amnesty” for all banned Twitter accounts, this pledge too has gone unfulfilled.
Perhaps the European Commission prefers the censorship to remain in the shadows and has thus vetoed the idea, as it vetoed the “general amnesty.”
But, in any case, why does Elon Musk never address his platform’s involvement with the European Union’s censorship regime? He talks all the time about incidental contacts with US government agencies. What is going on in the Permanent Task-Force on disinformation, Elon Musk, and how can it possibly be compatible with your ostensible commitment to free speech?
Robert Kogon is a pen name for a widely-published financial journalist, a translator, and researcher working in Europe.Follow him at Twitter here.
Like infectious disease pandemics, chronic illnesses can rise up and become dominant in clinical practice and in the media. No one would deny that the news cycle has adeptly replaced COVID-19 stories with the rise of transgenderism. Is there a real epidemic of gender dysphoria? What could be causing it?
Warrier et al, published a detailed analysis using multiple psychological instruments among a large sample size (N=641,860) with gender dysphoria treated with transgender hormonal/surgical therapy. The results are striking. Compared to normal reference groups, transgender individuals had up to a 12-fold increased risk of autism.
Warrier V, Greenberg DM, Weir E, Buckingham C, Smith P, Lai MC, Allison C, Baron-Cohen S. Elevated rates of autism, other neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses, and autistic traits in transgender and gender-diverse individuals. Nat Commun. 2020 Aug 7;11(1):3959. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17794-1. PMID: 32770077; PMCID: PMC7415151.
The authors summarized: “In conclusion, our study demonstrates that transgender and gender-diverse individuals have elevated rates of autism diagnosis, related neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, and autistic traits compared to cisgender (normal) individuals. This study has clinical implications by highlighting that we need to improve access to care and tailored support for this under-served population.”
They are implying that neuropsychiatric care could be pivotal instead of the suggestion and promotion of gender change procedures in this vulnerable population. The implications of this paper are wide-ranging. School counselors should refer students for psychological assessment of autism and related disorder instead of prompting gender change to young, suggestable children. Furthermore, there should be a moratorium on transgender medicine while the full role of skyrocketing autism is evaluated among children with gender ambiguity approaching puberty.
WASHINGTON – The United States should not send additional assistance to fund a “proxy war” in Ukraine, and an audit must be conducted on US aid already provided to Kiev, Congressman Paul Gosar told Sputnik on Monday.
“Biden and Congress have already wasted nearly $200 billion American taxpayer dollars funding a proxy war in Ukraine. We should not send another dime to Ukraine and we should audit the money already sent there,” Gosar said in a statement.
The Republican lawmaker recently joined a group of other party lawmakers to introduce a resolution demanding an audit of the funds appropriated by Congress to Ukraine.
Gosar’s spokesperson told Sputnik that to-date the Biden administration has yet to provide Congress with copies of all documents and any financial statements detailing purchases, recipients, and government expenditures related to congressionally appropriated funds given to Ukraine.
US journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh recently told Russian media that countries in the West are aware of the fact that some of the weapons sent to Ukraine are ending up in illicit markets, but their media are deliberately silent about it.
Months after the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, there were concerns about reselling of advanced man-portable air defense missiles the West had sent to Ukraine, the journalist said, adding that US broadcaster CBS had wanted to publish a story about it but was forced to retract it.
Hersh also said, according to his source, that the CIA estimates Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has embezzled at least $400 million from US aid sent to Ukraine.
Western countries have been supplying military aid to Ukraine since the start of hostilities in February 2022. The aid evolved from lighter artillery munitions and training in 2022 to heavier weapons, including tanks, later that year and in 2023. For the past several months Ukraine has been pushing to be supplied with fighter jets. The Kremlin, in turn, has repeatedly warned against continued arms deliveries to Kiev.
Holy, Rupert Murdoch! Several sources are now reporting that Tucker Carlson is gone from Fox News.
This might be the biggest media news in years – the one TV journalist/commentator who routinely challenged many faux or dubious “authorized narratives” is now looking for another job.
Quick takes:
The value of Fox News is getting ready to plummet lower than the value of Project Veritas. Carlson was THE reason so many truth-seeking Americans watched Fox News.
If you watched “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (and it was “must-watch TV” for many Americans), you know the show wasn’t pulling in great advertising revenue. Indeed, every major company that advertises on TV boycotted the show. My Pillow was the one big loyal advertiser in recent years, which is a giant “tell” right there.
However, Fox News probably gets most of its revenue from cable and satellite companies that pay Fox News for the rights to air the network.
These cable TV customers weren’t paying premiums to get Fox News so they could watch more Neil Cavuto (or even Sean Hannity).
They were buying the one on-air personality who wasn’t afraid to take on Big Pharma, the neocons, many of the faux Covid narratives and myriad other “woke” or politically correct agendas.
I’ve written several articles opining that Tucker was late to the fight on Covid lies, but I also give him major props for making up for his belated start.
He also has been conspicuous challenging the “Russia! Russia! Russia!” storylines and skewering the ridiculous narrative that January 6, 2021 events qualified as some kind of national “insurrection” on par with the Civil War.
Carlson also gave credence to the possibility the 2020 presidential election could have been manipulated or the result of election fraud in certain key swing states (and big cities in those states). Indeed, a recent successful lawsuit filed by Dominion perhaps played a rule in this stunning, out-of-the-blue decision.
Where will Tucker go now?
What we don’t know yet is what Carlson is going to do now.
In recent years, Carlson has become THE most influential journalist/commentator in the world. So one would think Carlson has plenty of opportunities to take his sizable audience with him wherever he goes.
For a while now, I’ve been thinking that just such a “ouster” or “divorce” could happen. It takes no brilliant media observer to pick up on the seeming tension between Tucker and his bosses at Fox News.
I always got the sense that Tucker was pushing the envelope with Fox News’ executives. For example, why were they letting him fire both barrels almost every night at Big Pharma, which still spends advertising money with Fox?
I always got the impression Tucker wanted to go further than even his scathing monologues and apostate booking of certain guests suggested.
I also got the impression Tucker knew he might either be let go or ultimately decide to leave on his own. This must be why he created and then promoted his own website and documentary company.
If push came to shove, Carlson would raise the white flag and take his ball (his audience) with him.
In the next iteration of his career, Carlson could do the type stories and monologues that his Fox bosses were never really comfortable with.
If this is the case – and Carlson’s audience does follow him – this move might backfire on the Powers that Be.
The above sentences assume that the Powers that Be actually want Tucker off the air and cancelled or silenced for good, which I think is a safe assumption.
However, Sage Hana and others have always argued Tucker was “controlled opposition” and working for the Bad Guys all along.
If this is the case – if Tucker was a pawn in some 3-D chess game being played by BlackRock and the Deep State, why would the real powers want him off the airwaves? Wasn’t he letting people like me “blow off steam” and keeping us from getting really fired up about our captured and corrupt system?
Did Fox just fire or run off its most-important controlled opposition mouthpiece?
I still say, no. Every member of the “opposition” who is trying to ruin this country probably wanted what just happened to happen.
If they can get Tucker …
My first reaction is this is a very scary or troubling development.
In all the media outlets in all the world, “our side” had ONE person who said some of the things many of us think – and now this person is gone (or at least he won’t have such a high-profile nightly soap box to recite his monologues).
Carlson will re-surface somewhere else – but it won’t be on a TV platform this big.
And if the Powers that Be can get rid of someone like Tucker Carlson (the undisputed ratings king of prime-time TV), can’t they dispatch just about anyone?
Is Substack the next target? If it is, then every Substack contrarian is on the target list, which should send a chill through all of us.
As every clear-thinking citizen knows by now, the real war is the battle between free speech and authoritarianism. The only battle that matters is if dissenters and skeptics will still be able to question the policies and mandates of our alleged “leaders.”
I happen to believe Carlson is very smart, which means he must have known this day was coming … and thus has a plan for how he can continue to participate in a meaningful way in future policy “debates.”
But, at the moment, we don’t know how this particular chess move will affect our future.
Every battle hinges on decisions made by key leaders. Tucker Carlson would be a media piece as powerful as a chessboard’s queen. If our side’s “queen” has now been captured, the outcome of the game might be in doubt.
Or: The other side might have just given Carlson even more power and influence. We simply don’t know yet.
I (think) I know this: Whoever controls the narrative ultimately controls the world. And it’s the media or press that largely controls the key narrative.
In our mainstream media environment, we have shockingly few sources of information who challenge the authorized narratives … and the best-known of those sources has now left the top-rated cable news network on the planet.
Just like Tucker replaced Bill O’Reilly, someone will replace Tucker in the 8 p.m. EST time slot. In my opinion, Tucker was much better and braver than O’Reilly. Nor do I see anyone in Fox’s bullpen who can bring the heat like Tucker did.
If I was right in my recent column about “The Law of Opposite Effects,” this move to “silence” Tucker Carlson will probably backfire.
I hope it does, but I don’t know what will happen. I just know what was announced today is probably a very big deal.
I wish Tucker well and appreciate Fox giving him a contrarian platform for as long as it did. If nothing else, our side had one intelligent voice with a large audience who was screaming that our “New Normal” is FUBAR. The good news is many Americans agreed with him.
Whatever happens in the future won’t be determined by Tucker Carlson, but by all the people who share some of Carlson’s contrarian views.
If those voices don’t disappear, but instead grow louder, April 24 will be an important day in recent media history.
As for Fox News executives, I’m sure I’m speaking for tens of millions of Americans when I say you just ran off the one employee who made me want to watch your network.
Seongju – South Koreans have been protesting against a US missile base south of the capital, Seoul. They want the base, and US troops, gone as tensions grow with the North on the Korean Peninsula.
Peace activists and local leaders in South Korea opposed to a US anti-ballistic missile base have been demonstrating outside the Presidential office in Seoul.
The system known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, was deployed in early 2017.
US officials say it protects against missiles fired from North Korea. Local residents argue it generates warlike tension and want it removed.
Anti-THAAD protestors have held a rally near the base in Seongju, 250 kilometers south of Seoul.
The government has indicated it would make the base permanent, and President Yoon Suk-yeol has suggested the country may get a second THAAD system.
“These villagers and their supporters recognize that hosting a missile base makes their home a prime target. Not only for North Korea, but also for China, as Thaad’s radar also reaches into Chinese territory.”
The THAAD base occupies a former mountain golf course and is near a Won Buddhist temple, whose monks also oppose the missile base.
Protests have disturbed the operation of the base with occasional blockades, as recent US-South Korean military discussions suggested routine and unfettered access had been lacking.
The “rules-based order” concept is sold by the West as upholding the UN-enshrined system, but it’s really about the arbitrary implementation of double standards designed to advance America’s interests. Certain objective observations are exploited in pursuit of manipulating perceptions about a given issue, which is intended to precondition the targeted audience to support a unilateral change to the status quo that always in one way or another serves the US’ interests.
For instance, the observation that the Communist Party of China (CPC) hasn’t ever controlled Taiwan is exploited to extend credence to the latter’s tacit separatist agenda, which is in turn spun in order to justify the West comprehensively expanding its relations with that island. Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Shaye just taught the West a lesson about how this feels after sharing his thoughts on the legal status of former Soviet Republics.
In his personal view, “Even these ex-Soviet countries don’t have an effective status in international law because there was no international agreement to materialize their status as sovereign countries.” He also referenced Crimea’s original legal status as part of the USSR’s Russian constituent prior to it being gifted by former Soviet leader Khruschev to Ukraine. Since Ambassador Lu shared these thoughts during a TV interview, it was assumed by many that he was officially reflecting a new Chinese position.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning clarified her country’s stance on Monday in response to a related question fromTASS:
“After the demise of the Soviet Union, China was one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with the [newly created] countries. Since the inception of diplomatic relations, China has always adhered to the principle of mutual respect and equal treatment while fostering bilateral relations of friendship and cooperation. China respects the sovereign status of the republics that were founded after the Soviet Union disintegrated.”
As can be seen, there exists no change in China’s position, thus meaning that Ambassador Lu was indeed speaking in a personal capacity.
Nevertheless, he didn’t explicitly say so when sharing his thoughts on this subject, though it’s unlikely that this was a faux pas from the man whose civilization-state has literally millennia worth of diplomatic experience. Rather, it was almost certainly the case that he was tasked with indirectly sending them a message on a “plausibly deniable” basis about how the “rules-based order” concept feels whenever it’s applied to imply an impending unilateral revision of the status quo with respect to Western interests.
South China Morning Post columnist Alex Lo compellingly explained this in his piece about how “China’s questioning sovereignty of post-Soviet states is tit-for-tat over Taiwan”. Basically, Beijing finally got fed up the West flirting with tacit Taiwanese separatism, hence why it had one of its most prominent diplomats in that de facto New Cold War bloc make a tit-for-tat comment in the way that Ambassador Lu did. By doing so, China taught the West a lesson that it’ll never forget even if they don’t ultimately learn from it.
If regional military developments take a decisively negative turn against Russia, however, then China might feel forced to arm its strategic partneras a last resort to ensure its national security interests. In that case, the “plausibly deniable” basis upon which China just made its point about the “rules-based order” could be returned to, albeit as a more official position in that case. The chances of events unfolding in that direction remain low, but this scenario adds further context to the examined incident.
President Donald Trump scrapped the nuclear deal with Iran and continued to risk war with Iran based on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim to have proven definitively that Iran was determined to manufacture nuclear weapons. Netanyahu not only spun Trump but much of the corporate media as well, duping them with the public unveiling of what he claimed was the entire secret Iranian “nuclear archive.”
In early April 2018, Netanyahu briefed Trump privately on the supposed Iranian nuclear archive and secured his promise to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That April 30, Netanyahu took the briefing to the public in a characteristically dramatic live performance in which he claimed Israel’s Mossad intelligence services had stolen Iran’s entire nuclear archive from Tehran. “You may well know that Iran’s leaders repeatedly deny ever pursuing nuclear weapons…” Netanyahu declared. “Well, tonight, I’m here to tell you one thing: Iran lied. Big time.”
However, an investigation of the supposed Iranian nuclear documents by The Grayzone reveals them to be the product of an Israeli disinformation operation that helped trigger the most serious threat of war since the conflict with Iran began nearly four decades ago. This investigation found multiple indications that the story of Mossad’s heist of 50,000 pages of secret nuclear files from Tehran was very likely an elaborate fiction and that the documents were fabricated by the Mossad itself. … continue
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