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EU has ‘globalized’ Ukraine crisis – Hungary

RT | September 14, 2023

The European Union’s response to the Ukraine crisis is causing the world to fragment, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has claimed. He added that Budapest wants to see initiatives that can unify states, such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The EU “has given a very bad answer to the war in Ukraine that unfortunately seems to be ending up in a world being divided into blocs again,” the Hungarian diplomat told CNBC on the sidelines of the Belt and Road summit in Hong Kong.

Brussels “should have isolated this war, but instead of that the EU has globalized” it, he said in the interview broadcast on Wednesday.

Szijjarto argued that a lack of communication between opposing countries has led to them giving up on achieving peace, while states that benefit from good East-West relations – such as Hungary – have been hurt economically.

The minister contrasted this to how the BRI aims to bring the world together for mutual prosperity and security, which is why Hungary welcomes China’s presence.

He criticized rich Western European nations who are now talking about decoupling from the Chinese economy or “derisking” due to political concerns. Quietly, they seek Chinese investment just like small nations, Szijjarto said.

“They can be hypocritical, they can afford [it],” he argued.

Unlike those countries, Budapest states its foreign policy openly, the diplomat said, warning that if ‘decoupling’ with China were to succeed, it would “kill the European economy.”

The Hungarian government has been a vocal critic of the Western response to the Ukrainian conflict since its outset. It has called for peace talks, while speaking out against sanctioning Russia and arming Ukraine. Most EU nations, following in the US lead, have pledged to support Kiev for “as long as it takes” to defeat Moscow.

September 14, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

China and India have ‘low intellectual potential’ – top Zelensky aide

RT | September 13, 2023

The people leading India and China lack the ability to predict the long-term consequences of their policies, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has claimed.

Mikhail Podoliak pointed to what he called “the problem of the modern world,” singling out India and China, in an interview with Ukrainian media on Tuesday.

“The problem with these countries is that they do not analyze the consequences of their own moves. These countries, unfortunately, have low intellectual potential,” he said.

Podoliak suggested that even though India has a lunar exploration program, it “does not mean that this nation understands what the modern world precisely is.”

The dismissive remarks were in the context of Beijing and New Delhi’s refusal to support Kiev in its conflict with Moscow. Podoliak complained that India, China and Türkiye were “profiting” from the war by maintaining trade with Russia.

“Technically, it is in their national interests,” he acknowledged, before presenting his view of what would benefit China in the long-run.

“China should be interested in Russia disappearing, because it is an archaic nation that drags China into unnecessary conflicts,” he claimed.

“It would be in their interest now to distance themselves from Russia as far as possible, take all the resources it has, and take part of the Russian territory under their legal control. In fact, they will do that,” he added.

Following the interview, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman urged Podoliak to clarify his remarks, when asked about them during a media briefing on Wednesday.

Podoliak has a record of lashing out at nations, organizations and public figures seen as not sufficiently supportive of Kiev.

Among his latest targets was Pope Francis, whom he had branded an “instrument of Russian propaganda” who “continues to reduce the influence of Catholicism in the world to zero.” The pontiff had encouraged Russian Catholics to cherish their nation’s historic legacy.

The Ukrainian official also recently hit out at Elon Musk, who Podoliak claimed “enabled evil” by refusing Kiev’s request to use his Starlink communications system to launch drone attacks against the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

Podoliak isn’t the first high-ranking Ukrainian official to make derogatory remarks about Asian countries. In August, Aleksey Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, suggested that Asian people were less humane compared to Europeans, including Ukrainians. “I’m fine with Asians, but Russians are Asians. They have a completely different culture, vision. Our key difference from them is humanity,” Danilov said.

September 13, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Western exodus from Russia a boon for Chinese companies – leading entrepreneur

RT | September 10, 2023

Chinese companies have greatly benefited from the pullout of Western companies from the Russian market, Zhou Liqun, chairman of the Chinese Entrepreneurs’ Union of Russia, told RT on Sunday.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok, Zhou said Chinese businesses have been actively filling the niches left by the exit of Western companies and are eager to expand their presence in Russia further.

“The withdrawal of Western companies from Russia has created vast opportunities for Chinese businessmen and enterprises to cooperate with Russia. For example, in the vehicle manufacturing sector: many Chinese carmakers have entered the Russian market throughout the past year. While previously they made up only 5-6% of the market, now it is almost 40%,” Zhou stated.

He noted that China has been among Russia’s major trade partners for the past 14 years, and both countries have created many platforms and opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation.

“Our cooperation framework is very convenient for both sides, stable political relations between our countries promote the development of trade and business relations. Chinese businessmen are interested in Russia’s raw materials, Russian businessmen are interested in Chinese machinery and equipment. This makes our cooperation mutually beneficial and opens up potential for development,” he added.

Zhou noted that since the introduction of Western sanctions on Moscow, Russia and China have accelerated the use of their own currencies in trade, which has benefitted both nations. To date, 80-85% of all transactions between Russia and China are carried out in either yuan or rubles, and given the rapid expansion of mutual trade and cooperation, this percentage is likely to grow further.

“Businesses in both Russia and China are already accustomed to using national currencies in cross-border transactions. It is very convenient for direct cooperation. We expect the ratio of yuan and ruble transactions in mutual trade to grow to 90%, depending on the type of product,” he said.

Zhou added that China takes great interest in the development of Russia’s Far East, both as a supply source and trade partner. He noted that to date, China is involved in 58 projects in the area, including the construction of a petrochemical complex in Amur Region, as well as a number of projects in agriculture and infrastructure.

“China’s cooperation with the Far East has great potential,” Zhou said.

September 10, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The EU’s best weapon against free speech isn’t working

The EU has just realized that it can’t rule the internet with an iron fist by throwing around the ‘Kremlin propaganda’ label

EC President Ursula von der Leyen speaks to the press after a meeting with Joe Biden in the White House on March 10, 2023 in Washington, DC. © Alex Wong/Getty Images
By Rachel Marsden | RT | September 7, 2023

The European Commission has concluded in a new report that despite making pinky-promises to “mitigate the reach and influence of Kremlin-sponsored disinformation,” large social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook were “unsuccessful” in doing so. What a shocker that this research by oversight advocates has ended up advocating in favor of more oversight. Russia just happens to be the most convenient scapegoat.

Using the same kind of smear tactics that the bloc has used previously – like when it included Russia alongside Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in previous security and threat reports – this time it involved conflating “pro-Kremlin” social media accounts with those that it considers to be “Kremlin-aligned” or “Kremlin-backed.” In other words, mere disagreement with the Western narrative is enough to land anyone in the “pro-Kremlin” camp and to be considered worthy of content moderation or banning by the EU. And now they’re frustrated that social media platforms have dropped the ball on carrying out that censorship.

“Platforms rarely reviewed and removed more than 50 percent of the clearly violative content we flagged in repeated tests,” the report said. What kind of content would that be, exactly? It’s hard to tell, because their examples conflate the legitimately debatable with the patently absurd, and suggest that both warrant censorship. They cite, for example, content that accuses Ukraine of being run by Nazis – which is a legitimate concern, given that the Western press has reported extensively on the powerful role played by neo-Nazis in Ukraine, which are “aggressively trying to impose their agenda on Ukrainian society, including by using force against those with opposite political and cultural views,” according to a publication by the Washington-based Freedom House prior to the conflict, adding that “they are a real physical threat to left-wing, feminist, liberal, and LGBT activists, human rights defenders, as well as ethnic and religious minorities” in Ukraine. The Council of Europe had made similar observations.

There’s also the fact that the West trained the neo-Nazi Azov battalion to fight Russians, and that Reuters reported way back in 2018 that then-president Petro Poroshenko “would risk major repercussions” should he take action against neo-Nazis.

That kind of does sound like there’s a neo-Nazi issue that’s at the very least worthy of highlighting and debating. Yet the EU dismisses any such suggestion as Russian disinformation.

The report also takes issue with accounts “denying war crimes,” using events in Bucha as an example. I’m sorry, but was there a war crimes tribunal that we missed? We’re talking here about events taking place in the immediate fog of war. Attempting to sort through facts, realities, and manipulations is precisely the kind of thing with which social media is meant to assist. Everyone by this point knows that it’s about having access to as much raw data as possible. We expect to see a chaotic mess online – not a curated Encyclopedia Britannica set or the evening news. What makes Brussels think it is entitled to a monopoly on that process?

The report places these examples of inconvenient debates alongside a blatantly ridiculous example of sh*tposting whereby someone made up the name of a fake media outlet and announced that Ukraine was sending a radioactive cloud towards Europe. Look, if anyone is so dumb as to believe something like that, then it certainly isn’t the EU that’s going to save them from their own stupidity. Not for long, anyway. Just let them spend their entire next week digging a fallout shelter while their neighbors have a good laugh.

In a line that just begs to be read repeatedly out of sheer incredulity that someone could be so tone-deaf, the report notes that so-called Kremlin disinfo efforts are “designed to foment political and social instability among its adversaries by stoking ethnic conflict, promoting isolationism, and distracting public attention away from Ukraine and onto domestic affairs.” How dare the people of Europe insist that their leaders focus on the considerable problems faced by their own country and citizens, which have long been exacerbated by misguided national and EU-level policies, rather than riveting their attention to Ukraine! Indeed, if it wasn’t for those meddling Russians, Europe would be a utopia of sunshine and rainbows, everyone holding hands and singing Kumbaya, with nothing else for citizens to concern themselves with besides what’s happening in Ukraine.

The EU laments that “the Kremlin and its proxies captured growing audiences with highly produced propaganda content, and steered users to unregulated online spaces, where democratic norms have eroded and hate and lies could spread with impunity.” They have it all backwards. People wanting to engage in debate and discussion of topics and viewpoints that the EU — in all its arrogance as the self-appointed arbiter of truth — is keen to censor, have been driven to other platforms specifically because they support free speech in all its glory and imperfection.

“Over the course of 2022, the audience and reach of Kremlin-aligned social media accounts increased substantially all over Europe,” according to the report, adding that “the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023, driven in particular by the dismantling of Twitter’s safety standards.” In other words, Elon Musk, who considers himself a “free speech absolutist,” came along and bought Twitter, leveled the playing field by opening up debate and reducing censorship, and what ended up happening is that people flooded to the platform as a refreshing alternative to the curated and censored Western establishment narrative that they’re spoon-fed elsewhere.

So what’s the EU going to do about it now? Well, mandatory compliance with its Digital Services Act is now in effect as of last month. This means that, theoretically, all the major social media platforms are obligated to work with the EU’s handpicked “civil society” actors to moderate and censor content – no doubt in alignment with the EU’s narrative. Musk should play along and take notes about the kind of censorship requests that are made of him by Brussels. Then he should publish them on Twitter in the interest of radical transparency and the kind of uncompromising defense of democracy to which the EU is constantly paying lip service as a pretext for its crackdowns on our fundamental freedoms.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

September 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Poland’s Top Military Official Accidentally Discredited NATO On Several Counts

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces General Rajmund Andrzejczak spoke at the Karpacz Economic Forum in southwestern Poland earlier this week about the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine, during which time he shared some very interesting information that was reported on by The Guardian. The present piece will highlight the most important parts prior to explaining how they accidentally discredited NATO on several counts.

———-

* Poland speculates that China might tacitly approve North Korean arms shipments to Russia

– “I don’t believe North Korea is strong enough or so free to make such an offer, so maybe it is testing our determination, attention and political will, but what is even more important is what China says about this than the North Korean leadership.”

* Warsaw is worried that Moscow might meddle in the upcoming elections on 15 October

– “Andrzejczak also predicted that Russia would try to create a crisis in next month’s Polish election but gave no details in public. He warned that Russia was on a permanent war footing and was ‘very much active in Poland, looking for some gaps in the system, trying to interfere in the media’.”

* The NATO-Russian proxy war is viewed by Poland as part of a civilizational competition with China

– “Andrzejczak also warned that if Ukraine lost the war and Belarus went further into Russia’s orbit, Poland would find that limiting defence spending to 5% of its gross domestic product and a standing army of 300,000-strong would not be enough. ‘If we lose credibility as Nato, as a civilisation, China is watching, so this is a big game,’ he said.”

* Andrzejczak wants NATO to proactively engage in nuclear saber-rattling against Russia

– “Nato is a nuclear treaty organisation; it should be much more proactive and stronger to the Russians. In the 70s and 80s, 30% of B-52 bombers were flying permanently and had nuclear weapons with pilots ready to act. Today we have a challenge to say the word B61 [the primary US thermonuclear gravity bomb], so let us change narratives.”

* He’s also upset that the bloc ignored his government’s request to host US nuclear weapons

– “He said there had been complete silence since Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, asked to join Nato’s nuclear sharing programme owing to the deployment of Russian nuclear missiles to Belarus.”

* Poland lacks confidence that NATO would react to a hypothetical attack from Wagner

– “He asked: ‘Who is the Wagner group today? Is it a national action by Russia or, as the Russian minister of defence says, just a private military company? Is it enough for Article 5?’”

———-

From the above, it’s clear that Andrzejczak is doubling down on the ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS) party’s national security focus that forms the crux of its re-election platform, but he’s arguably going too far. For example, reframing the NATO-Russian proxy war as part of a civilizational competition with China implies that Poland is indirectly fighting the People’s Republic via its military assistance to Kiev, which isn’t true. Spewing this false narrative, however, is likely an attempt to rally PiS’ conservative-nationalist base.

That party and its supporters believe that Poland has historically functioned as the West’s bulwark for protecting their shared civilization from what they depict as “Eastern barbarians”. PiS taps into that interpretation to justify its diehard opposition to everything Russia-related, but now the country’s top military official unexpectedly added an anti-Chinese twist to this shortly before the next elections. Andrzejczak’s hyperbole thus suggests that PiS doesn’t think Russophobia is enough to win re-election.

He himself is also channeling that sentiment by fearmongering about an alleged Kremlin meddling plot sometime around the vote, most probably for the purpose of preemptively discrediting the opposition if they perform better than expected, but it’s clearly not sufficient as evidenced by his tacit Sinophobia. In an attempt to artificially manufacture a sense of utmost urgency, Andrzejczak crossed an informal red line in Polish politics by hinting that NATO isn’t reliable, nor is its American leader either by extension.

He did this by complaining about the bloc ignoring his country’s nuclear-sharing request and then publicly questioning the sacrosanctity of Article 5 in the hypothetical event of a Wagner attack. The first is attributable to NATO’s reluctance thus far to escalate its security dilemma with Russia to potentially uncontrollable proportions while the second is based on a scenario debunked by the New York Times. Andrzejczak knows the truth about both, yet he’s still shamelessly manipulating the public’s perceptions.

The preceding point reinforces suspicions that he exploited his authority as Poland’s top military official to informally campaign for the ruling party during his latest remarks about the NATO-Russian proxy war by hyping up security threats and therefore betrayed his oath to be purely apolitical. In his passion to help them win re-election, he went too far by implying that NATO isn’t doing enough to stop the Sino–Russo Entente and suggesting that Article 5 isn’t sacrosanct, thus likely angering its US leader.

September 7, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

WW3 has already begun – Ukraine’s security chief

RT | September 6, 2023

The head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council has claimed a third world war is already underway, with the Moscow-Kiev conflict pulling in countries far beyond the region.

Speaking at the Kiev Security Forum on Tuesday, Aleksey Danilov argued that NATO needs Ukraine as a member, as global turbulence is set to continue. “We’re going to strengthen the alliance,” he insisted.

“If somebody thinks that World War III hasn’t started then it’s a huge mistake. It has already begun. It had been underway in a hybrid period for some time and has now entered an active phase,” he said.

Sitting on stage beside former CIA Director General David Petraeus, Danilov said that “if somebody thinks that it [the conflict in Ukraine] is about settling the scores between Kiev and Moscow then it’s a mistake. Things are much more complicated.”

Petraeus also highlighted the scale of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, saying: “I haven’t seen anything like it since World War II,” he said.

“The Russians are not particularly impressive in terms of knowledge or performance on the battlefield, but they have created a rather outstanding defense system, and it is quite difficult to punch it through,” he claimed.

On Tuesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that during the three months of its counteroffensive, Ukraine has lost some 66,000 troops and 7,600 pieces of heavy weaponry while failing to achieve any significant gains. Kiev has so far claimed the capture of several small villages, but they are some distance from the main Russian defense lines. Speaking about the Ukrainian counteroffensive earlier this week, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin insisted that it “is not stalled; it is a failure.”

Moscow has been saying for months that the fighting in Ukraine is a “proxy war” waged by the US and its NATO allies against Russia. It warned that the supply of arms and training to Kiev’s troops and intelligence-sharing means that Western nations are already de-facto parties to the conflict.

Russia, which views NATO as a hostile bloc and vigorously opposes its eastward expansion, has also highlighted Kiev’s aspirations of joining the US-led military alliance among the main reasons for launching its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022.

September 6, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Anti-Russian paranoia turns against Estonian prime minister

By Lucas Leiroz | September 6, 2023

A crisis of legitimacy is rising in Estonia, with collective anti-Russian paranoia turning against the government itself. Local media spread data proving the involvement of Arvo Hallik, husband of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, with business in the transport sector in Russia. Given the pro-Kiev mentality of Estonian politicians, the reaction was immediate, with the country’s president demanding explanations and even suggesting that Kallas should resign.

Hallik is one of the partners in the transport company Stark Logistics, which is said to have continued operating in Russia after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, violating the Western sanctions imposed on Moscow. Outraged by the situation, the country’s president, Alar Karis, said at the time that Estonian society was “waiting for explanations” from the prime minister.

On that occasion, Kallas stated that she had no knowledge of her husband’s business and asked not to be questioned about matters concerning her personal life. But obviously that was not enough to stop the scrutiny against her. The case continued to have repercussions in the media, generating a real national scandal.

Kallas has not renounced her severely anti-Russian stance, stressing again and again that all business with Moscow must cease to comply with European sanctions on the country. She also maintained a solid attitude in saying that she would not resign from her post because of the pressure she was under. Her husband, in the same vein, announced that he was selling all his shares in the company so that he could end all his businesses involving Russia.

The situation became even more complicated when the investigators of Kallas’ personal life discovered that she had made loans to her husband in recent years, totaling 372,000 euros. Kallas explained that the loans were made before the Russian military intervention, but the opposition in Parliament began to question the source of these funds, investigating the possibility of corruption.

The political crisis has been getting worse over the days. A special budget control and anti-corruption parliamentary committee was opened in order to investigate Kallas and her husband’s business. The Prime Minister criticized the measure and did not attend the committee’s sessions, stating that her family’s personal affairs are not of interest to the Estonian State.

More than that, Kallas’ image is already becoming disapproved by the Estonian population itself. In recent polls, it was revealed that 57% of citizens want her to resign. The numbers are significant and reflect the advanced level of anti-Russian indoctrination to which the population was subjected, resulting in a collective paranoia that now turns against the country’s own leaders.

In the same vein, the Estonian president commented on the case once again on August 4, stating that Kallas should have resigned from her post at the beginning of the crisis. According to him, this would be the appropriate way for Kallas to deal with the case, as this would preserve herself and her family from the criticism of public opinion, avoiding the increase of scandals.

“Personally, I would have liked it if the prime minister had resigned at the beginning of the series of events that has made her the focus of the crisis (…) It would have spared her, her loved ones, the effectiveness of the government, and the credibility of messages coming out of Estonia”, he said.

In response to all the criticisms and demands for her resignation, Kallas emphasized that she intends to remain in her post, in which she claims to have always been fighting “for the freedom of Estonia and Ukraine”. For her, the opposition’s criticisms are an unjustified “witch hunt”, which is why she hopes that everything will be resolved soon.

“The witch hunt for me, unleashed by the opposition regarding the activities of my husband’s business partner, has exceeded all tolerable limits (…) [In Estonia] moral standards are much higher than in most countries”, she said.

In fact, this is the inevitable result of a problem created by the Baltic countries themselves: the extremist anti-Russian mentality. Choosing to automatically align themselves with NATO, the Baltic countries willingly embraced Western racist ideologies, ignoring the Soviet past and promoting ultranationalism and the rehabilitation of Nazism. The result of this is an irrational hate against everything involving Russia. Obviously, political leaders are not immune to this problem – and the Kallas’ case clearly shows this.

In the same sense, the situation reveals how much European sanctions are unreasonable and impossible to be fully respected. It is inevitable that bordering countries have some degree of cooperation in transport. The case is being politicized simply because it was spread by the media, but it is very difficult for there to be a complete end to the movement of transport companies from both countries in the border region.

It would be wise for Kallas not to seek a conciliatory policy between the anti-Russian mentality and her family businesses, but break with sanctions and launch policies to contain the advance of ultranationalism in the country. However, this scenario seems impossible to achieve, as she remains committed to the agendas that are being used against her.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

September 6, 2023 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Nonstop Media Bias From Russiagate to the Biden-Crime-Family Coverup

By Victor Davis Hanson | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 4, 2023 

Joe Biden lied repeatedly when he claimed he knew nothing of his son Hunter’s influence-peddling businesses.

The president further prevaricated that he had no involvement in Hunter’s various shake down schemes.

Yet, the media continued to misinform by serially ignoring these facts.

Had journalists just been honest and independent, then-candidate Joe Biden might have lost a presidential debate and even the 2020 election.

The public would have learned that Hunter’s business associates and his laptop proved Joe was deeply involved in his son’s illicit businesses.

Later, as the evidence from IRS whistleblowers mounted, the White House stonewalled subpoenaed efforts and sought to craft an outrageous plea deal reduction in Hunter’s legal exposure.

Reporters ignored the Ukrainians who claimed Joe Biden himself talked to them about quid pro quo arrangements.

They again discounted Hunter’s laptop that explicitly demonstrated that Hunter was whining that he had handed over large percentages of his income to his father Joe — variously referred to as the Big Guy and a “ten percent” recipient on many deals.

They played dumb about Joe Biden’s use of pseudonyms and alias email accounts to hide thousands of his communications to Hunter and associates.

They attacked the former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who now claims Biden was likely bribed by Ukrainians.

Yet the media can no longer hide the reality that the president of the United States likely took bribes to influence or alter US policy to suit his payers.

Those two crimes — bribery and treason — are specifically delineated in the Constitution as impeachable offenses.

In denial, the media has instead pivoted with hysterical glee over various weaponized prosecutions of former President Donald Trump.

But now, to use a progressive catchphrase, the proverbial “walls are closing in” on Joe Biden.

So will we at last expect the media finally to confront the truth?

Answer — only if Joe Biden’s cognitive and physical health continues to deteriorate geometrically to the point that he can no longer finish his term or run for reelection — and thus becomes expendable.

Such a cynical view of the media is justified given their record of both incompetence and unapologetic deceit.

From 2015 to 2019, we were suffocated 24/7 with lies like “Russian collusion,” “Putin’s puppet,” “election rigging” and the “Steele dossier.”

When all such “evidence” was proven to be a complete fraud cooked up through Hillary Clinton’s stealthy hiring of and collusion with a discredited ex-British spy, a Russian fabulist at the Brookings Institution and a Clinton toady in Moscow, did the media apologize for their untruth?

Was there any media confessional that perhaps Robert Mueller and his leftwing legal team (the giddy media-dubbed “all-stars,” “dream team,” and “hunter killers”) proved a colossal waste of time?

Not at all.

Instead, the media went next right on to “the phone call” and “impeachment.”

The country then wasted another year.

The same biased reporters now claimed that the heroic Andrew Vindman had caught Trump fabricating lies about the Bidens — given Joe Biden was a possible 2020 opponent — to force Ukraine to investigate them or lose American foreign aid.

On that accusation Trump was impeached.

A group of 51 former intelligence agency officials claimed that The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation.

Then the truth emerged that unlike Joe Biden, Trump never threatened to cancel aid, but merely to delay it.

Trump was right that the Bidens were knee deep in Ukrainian bribes and influence peddling.

And that the whistleblower had no first-hand knowledge of the Trump call but was spoon fed a script cooked up by the gadfly Vindman and California Rep. Adam Schiff.

The result was journalistic glee that we impeached a president for crimes that he did not commit but exempted another president, Biden, who had likely committed them.

Then came the next hoax of the Russian fabricated facsimile of Hunter’s laptop.

The FBI later admitted it had verified the authenticity of Hunter’s laptop.

The 2020 Biden campaign along with an ex-CIA head rounded up “51 intelligence authorities” to mislead the country into believing that Russian gremlins in the Kremlin had fabricated a fake laptop.

Ponder that absurd fantasy: Moscow supposedly had created fake nude pictures, fake photos of Hunter’s drug use, and fake email and text messages from Hunter to the other Bidens.

The media preposterously convinced the country that the Russians and by extension Trump had once again sandbagged the Biden campaign.

No apologies followed when the FBI later admitted it had kept the laptop under wraps for more than a year, knew it was authentic, and yet said nothing as the media and former spooks misled the country and warped an election.

Now we are enmeshed in at least four court trials on cooked-up charges that could as easily apply to a host of Democrats as to Trump.

For the last eight years, a discredited media has never expressed remorse for any of the damage they did to the country. And they will not again, when their latest mythological indictments are eventually exposed.

September 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sanctions against Russia turning Germany into ‘kamikaze’ – MP

RT | September 2, 2023

Western sanctions have failed to destabilize Russia and are now backfiring on the countries that imposed them, including Germany, Sevim Dagdelen, a German MP from the Left Party (Die Linke) wrote in an op-ed for the Berliner Zeitung published on Friday.

According to the lawmaker, Russia’s economy has successfully weathered the restrictions and is steadily adjusting to the new economic realities.

“In order to ruin Russia, it was hoped that the punitive measures that violate international law will have a long-lasting effect. But the reality is different. Even the Russian auto industry is recovering. Chinese companies are stepping in for the German manufacturers who leave Russia,” Dagdelen wrote.

“Contrary to what was hoped, Russia has not been ruined. The consequences of the sanctions are evident, but on our side. While Germany’s economy collapsed by 0.3% in the last quarter and stagnation is also threatening the Eurozone, Russia is now forecast to grow by 2.5% this year. As is often the case, a merciless idealism characteristic of the German ruling party obscures the view of reality.”

According to the lawmaker, the sanctions are strengthening Russia while the German government “is ruining domestic economy with open eyes.”

“The federal government acts here like a kamikaze pilot, replacing politics with dubious morality and is happy about a friendly nod from Washington,” she stated, noting that double-digit inflation in Germany is the product of sanctions, as well as the “ever increasing military support for Ukraine.” Dagdelen also noted that the sanctions war has prompted the largest redistribution of capital in the country, with large corporations boosting profits while ordinary German consumers suffer from a drop in real wages and a cost-of-living crisis.

The lawmaker criticized the government that “wants nothing to do with diplomacy” and urged Berlin to distance itself from Washington and NATO. She suggested closer ties with BRICS, a G7 rival economic bloc of countries that includes Russia and that will represent nearly 40% of global GDP after it officially admits new members at the beginning of next year. According to Dagdelen, Germany should “react accordingly to the new multipolarity.”

“Germany and Europe need a sovereign foreign policy that is no longer subordinate to the US and NATO. Supporting the BRICS peace initiative would be a first step towards freeing ourselves from the socially and politically fatal paternalism of the US. It would represent a step towards democratic sovereignty. No war is our war, not even this one.”

September 2, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

“You Don’t Listen to the Press . . . I’m Telling You”: Post Columnist Strikes Out at Those Questioning Prior False Claims

By Jonathan Turley | September 1, 2023

I recently wrote how the Washington Post issued a statement that declared that the newspaper was “standing by” columnist Philip Bump on his proven false claims on subjects ranging from Lafayette Park to Russian collusion. Bump’s prior claims have not only been conclusively shown to be false but other major media outlets have now rejected those claims. However, the Post claimed this week that they are in fact true in response to one of my earlier columns.

Now, Miranda Devine at the New York Post has written about a meltdown by Bump in a podcast interview with Noam Dworman, owner of New York’s own Comedy Cellar. Dworman had asked Bump to explain some of his claims and Bump offered one of the most vivid examples of the new media and it is chilling. After declaring that “I’m gonna lose my mind,” he stormed out of the interview after refusing to address the contradictions and dubious claims in his prior columns.

Dworman’s podcast interview stands as one of the most revealing and vivid examples of how the media has changed in the age of rage.  Bump moves quickly from the conversational to crazed when simply asked about the basis for his claims in the Washington Post.

Dworman was asking about the mounting evidence and contradictions in the Biden corruption scandal. Some of us have said that there is evidence of obvious corruption and influence peddling, but more investigation is needed to establish any basis for impeachment or criminal charges involving President Biden.  Bump, however, will have none of it. The Post writer (who demanded investigations of a wide array of Republicans on false stories with little evidence) is vehement that there is nothing to see here . . . and the public just has to take his word for it.

Dworman remains polite and pushes Bump to simply engage him in explaining some of the countervailing evidence. Bump responds “I just I’m gonna lose my mind. I’m gonna lose my mind.”

As the interview shuts down, Dworman asks “is there nothing we can talk about … half the country believes this stuff.”

Bump: “I know, because half the country doesn’t actually dig into the issues.”

Dworman: “Here’s your chance to disabuse people. They don’t read the Washington Post.”

Bump will have nothing of it as Dworman continues to try to get him to explain his controversial writings: “There’s just no point, because all you want to do is you want to have me here as the putative expert so that you can present me with things that have been debunked multiple times that I’ve written about.”

Dworman: “What’s been debunked?”

Bump: “These, these claims. I’ve written about this, this argument about his dad calling him. I’ve written about this. Did you read what I wrote?”

Dworman: “It’s not debunked. Neither of us were there.”

Bump: “Well, I debunked it in the standpoint that I’ve already addressed this and presented the counterarguments to it.”

Of course, Bump has been repeatedly shown to have pushed false claims and then refused to admit to his errors. Moreover, he has repeatedly been criticized for not honestly presenting the counterarguments.

Dworman makes another valiant effort: “I have two issues here. One is Joe Biden’s behavior and one is the issue of the press. The press actually bothers me more than Joe Biden.”

Bump, however, has all but left the building: “Because you don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen, and you continue to insist upon things that are, you know, parsing of language. And it’s just, it’s this is why I keep saying it’s silly.” He then says that he is leaving.

Dworman responded “Well, it’s a shame because this is a good conversation.”

Bump: “It’s not a good conversation, because you refuse to listen to what I’m saying to you. You asked me on to present evidence. I keep telling you.”

However, what he “keeps telling” Dworman and the public is to just accept his conclusions and not question his support and analysis.

Bump then walks out with a statement that captures perfectly the new media. He first attacks independent journalist Matt Taibbi and says that he has “an agenda.”

Dworman delivers a haymaker in response and states “You have no agenda.”

That is when Bump delivers his exit line that foreshadowed the Post statement on my column: “I do have an agenda … My agenda is to do my best to try and present accurate information to the public. And I have an institution behind me to hold me to account when I don’t do that, which I think is an important consideration.”

Indeed, the Post would then stand entirely behind Bump and claim that all of his false statements were true.  Even when other media have acknowledged that these claims were false, the Post insists that they remain true. Thus, the Post is now saying that the following are true despite findings by inspector generals and special counsels to the contrary: (1) Bill Barr did order the clearing of Lafayette Park for the Trump photo op, (2) Barr also lied when he denied the use of tear gas by federal personnel in Lafayette Park, (3) there was never any spying on the Trump campaign by the FBI, (4) Hunter Biden’s laptop was seeded with Russian disinformation, and (5) the Clinton campaign was not behind false Russian collusion claims. It is all now deemed true by the Post. It appears that, if “Democracy dies in darkness,” journalism more often dies in the light of day.

After all, the problem is not that they are false but that people just “don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen.”

September 1, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

HUNGARY’S PM VIKTOR ORBÁN INTERVIEW BY TUCKER CARLSON

Tucker Carlson | August 29, 2023

Ep. 20 Hungary shares a border with Ukraine. We traveled to Budapest to speak with the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

August 30, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Latvia’s Planned Expulsion of Russian Nationals ‘Grossly Contradicts’ UN, EU Norms

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 29.08.2023

Russian human rights activists have condemned Latvia’s decision to expel about 6,000 Russian residents, who had lived in Latvia with a residence permit and did not pass the Latvian language exam. The process of expulsion will start as of September 1, 2023.

The members of the Commission for International Cooperation with the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights under the Russian President have sent a letter to the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in connection with the “threat of forced eviction of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia.”

One of the Commission’s members is Kirill Vyshinsky, executive director of the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, a parent company of the Sputnik News Agency.

The Commission’s message was delivered to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic, and OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Kairat Abdrakhmanov.

“We draw your attention to the gross violation of the rights of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia who have Russian citizenship and live on Latvian territory on the basis of a residence permit (RP) issued by the country’s authorities,” the letter reads.

The members of the Russian presidential human rights commission recalled that more than 6,000 such residents “are threatened with expulsion from Latvia as of September 1, 2023 due to last year’s changes in the country’s legislation and under the pretext that they did not pass the mandatory Latvian language exam.”

“They are mainly people of advanced retirement age who came to Latvia before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their long-standing work added to creating the economic basis of Latvia and until the autumn of last year, Latvian legislation did not oblige them to take any language tests so that they can live with Russian citizenship in the country. Moreover, the very fact that these people lived in Latvia for many years proved that their knowledge of Latvian language was enough to organize their own daily life,” according to the letter.

The Russian rights activists stressed that “especially cynical in relation to these people is Latvian authorities’ requirement to not only pass the language exam, but also fill out questionnaires indicating their attitude to Russia’s foreign policy.”

“In fact, these people are required to not only take language tests, but also reveal their political views and give documented condemnation of Russia’s actions,” the letter points out.

“We believe that such actions by Latvian authorities grossly contradict the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of the UN and the European Convention on Human Rights. We urge you to intervene in the situation and prevent the forced eviction of those who have Russian citizenship and residence permits issued by Latvian authorities,” the document concludes.

The letter comes after Ingmars Lidaka, head of Latvia’s Parliamentary Commission for Citizenship, Migration and Public Mobilization, said that between 5,000 and 6,000 Russian citizens, who have a residence permit and have not passed the Latvian language exam, will receive official notifications to leave the country “within three months.”

He added that the decision is in line with Latvia’s legislation and that its implementation will be enforced by the country’s Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs.

In September 2022, Latvia’s parliament passed a bill on the transition of all education to the Latvian language within three years, a document stipulating that the Russian can now only be studied as a “minority language”.

About 40 percent of Latvia’s 1.8 million population are Russian native speakers. The country’s state language is Latvian, while the Russian has the status of a foreign language.

August 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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