saker.is | While we wait for a video and transcript to be available, I’ve
gathered these quotes from Mr Lavrov’s interview with Rossiya 24 –
“Our special military operation is designed to put
an end to the reckless expansion and reckless course towards complete
domination by the United States and, under them, the remainder of
Western countries on the world stage.
“This
domination is built on gross violations of international law and under
some rules, which they are now hyping so much and which they make up on a
case-by-case basis,”
“Kosovo can be recognized as
independent without a referendum. Crimea cannot, despite holding a
referendum observed by [many international monitors],”
“In
Iraq, 10,000 kilometers away from the US, they imagined some threat to
their national security. They bombed it, found no threat. And didn’t
even say they were sorry,”“But when right at our border they
grow neo-Nazi ultra-radicals, create dozens of biolabs … working on
bioweapons, as documents prove, we are told we are not allowed to react
to those threats,” he added.
The EU’s role has shifted during the Ukraine security crisis. Previously it didn’t act as a military organization “fighting collectively against an invented threat.”
Lavrov said the change was the result of pressure put on the bloc’s
members by Washington, which has pushed it closer to NATO.
“This
is an utterly serious change, even in the policy that the EU and the
West under US leadership – there is no doubt about it – began to pursue
after the start of our special military operation. A policy that
reflects anger, in some ways even frenzy, and which, of course, is
determined not only by [the situation in] Ukraine, but by Ukraine being
transformed into a foothold for the final suppression of Russia”,
Regarding Josep Borrell
“When
a diplomatic chief … says a certain conflict can only be resolved
through military action… Well, it must be something personal. He either
misspoke or spoke without thinking, making a statement that nobody asked
him to make. But it’s an outrageous remark,”
“Western
propaganda shifted gear into depicting Russia as pure evil and [Ukraine]
as pure good. The current Ukrainian regime is presumably a beacon of
democracy, justice, freedom that is drawn to everything European, to the
values that Europe claims it always adhered to,” the minister said.
taibbi | Not long ago, candidate Joe Biden’s most troubling behavioral
tendency was the surprise outburst of belligerence. He’d challenge
questioners to push-up contests, jam fingers in the sternums even of
supporters, and plunge into rambling monologues about leg hairs and
chain-fights.
Now, the president’s face is often a mask of
terror, like a man unsure of how he came to be standing in the middle of
an intersection. Mental cars racing past, he met the press
Monday, to clarify a statement made last week about Vladimir Putin:
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Many interpreted this
as a call for regime change. Not at all, Biden said, reading from a large-print cheat sheet
— this really happened — that reminded him to say he was merely
expressing “moral outrage,” and “not articulating a change in policy.”
When he ran out of prepared remarks, he drifted back to danger, saying:
It’s more an aspiration than anything. He shouldn’t be in power.
The AP writeup
offered help: “He said he was expressing an ‘aspiration’ rather than a
goal of American foreign policy.” (I’m sure nuclear-armed Putin
appreciated the semantic difference). When Biden moved more toward
candor, saying he made “no apologies” for his remarks, another reporter
quickly tried to guide him back to a safe harbor:
Q: Your personal feelings, sir? Your personal feelings?
THE PRESIDENT: Personal. My personal feelings.
Although administration mouthpieces Tony Blinken and Jen Psaki
scrambled to reassure a nervous world that the U.S. is not intent on
“doing regime change” in Russia, officials everywhere have been telling
reporters the opposite on background.
This cat was out of the bag weeks ago. As Joe Lauria at Consortiumpoints out,
Biden was asked on February 24th, at the start of the invasion, what
sanctions would accomplish if they hadn’t prevented war. His answer:
No
one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening. That has
to sh- — this is going to take time. And we have to show resolve, so
he knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them. That’s what this is all about.
Biden said virtually the same thing in Brussels last week:
Sanctions never deter… The maintenance of sanctions, the increasing the pain … we will sustain what we’re doing not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year. That’s what will stop him.
We heard this more explicitly from Boris Johnson on March 1st, “The measures we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime,” Johnson said. Lauria points out this was two days after British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey wrote in the Telegraphthat “His failure must be complete… the Russian people empowered to see how little he cares for them. In showing them that, Putin’s days as President will surely be numbered… He’ll lose power and he won’t get to choose his successor.”
WSJ | The U.S.
has trained thousands of African soldiers, from infantrymen rehearsing
counterterrorism raids on the edge of the Sahara to senior commanders
attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The programs are a
linchpin of U.S. policy on the continent, intended to help African
allies professionalize their armed forces to fight armed opponents both
foreign and domestic.
But U.S. commanders have watched with dismay over the past year as military leaders in several African allies—including
officers with extensive American schooling—have overthrown civilian
governments and seized power for themselves, triggering laws that forbid
the U.S. government from providing them with weapons or training.
“There’s
no one more surprised or disappointed when partners that we’re working
with—or have been working with for a while in some cases—decide to
overthrow their government,” Rear Adm. Jamie Sands, commander of U.S.
special-operations forces in Africa, said this week. “We have not found
ourselves able to prevent it, and we certainly don’t assess that we’re
causing it.”
The
strategic setback was apparent in recent weeks here at Fort Benning,
where the U.S. Army hosted its annual gathering of top ground-force
commanders from around Africa. Senior soldiers from three dozen African
countries watched American recruits tackle boot-camp obstacle courses,
witnessed parachute training and saw live-ammo tank and mortar
demonstrations.
The
Army withheld invitations from coup leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso,
West African countries engaged in existential struggles with al Qaeda
and Islamic State. Guinean soldiers, who in Septembertoppled the West African nation’s civilian government, were left out of the Fort Benning events and are no longer included in U.S.-led special-operations exercises.
Sudan’s
ruling junta, which last year reversed a U.S.-supported transition to
democratic rule, was unwelcome at the Fort Benning summit. Ethiopia
hosted the last such gathering in 2020; this year its military is on the
outs with the U.S. over alleged human-rights abuses in its war against
Tigrayan rebels.
“We
don’t control what happens when we leave,” said U.S. Army Col. Michael
Sullivan, commander of the 2d Security Force Assistance Brigade, a unit
created to advise and train African armies. “We always hope we’re
helping countries do the right thing.”
Last
year, a logistics advisory team from Col. Sullivan’s brigade had just
arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, and was waiting out its
Covid-19 quarantine at a hotel when the Biden administration decided to
cancel the deployment “due to our deep concerns about the conflict in
northern Ethiopia and human-rights violations and abuses being committed
against civilians,” according to a State Department spokesperson.
gilbertdoctorow | Now that the capture of Mariupol is in its final phase, some
information of value has been published in alternative Russian media and
I propose to present that here to give readers a sense of how this war
is being prosecuted and why. Main source: https://www.9111.ru/questions/7777777771838727/
In effect, most of the city proper has been taken by the Russian army
and Donetsk militias, with significant assistance from a battalion of
Chechens headed by their leader Kadyrov. As the routes out of the city
heading east were freed and as the snipers and other Azov forces were
pushed back to provide some level of safety in the streets, large
numbers of civilians have left the city in the past week. It is
estimated that the civilian population remaining in Mariupol at present
is about one third what it was at the start of the conflict.
The Azov fighters, other irregulars and Ukrainian army forces
numbered about 4,000 at the start and now have been reduced due to
casualties. They include among them “foreign mercenaries” as the
Russians have said for some time. Now from intercepted phone
conversations of these belligerents, it appears that among the
foreigners are NATO instructors. This means that the proxy war between
Russia and the USA/NATO begins to approximate a direct confrontation,
contradicting the public pronouncements coming from the Biden
administration. Should the Russians succeed in taking these NATO
instructors alive, which is one of their priority tasks, the next
sessions of the UN Security Council could be very tense.
To be sure, the 4,000 enemy forces mentioned above were only those
within the city. Ukrainian forces numbering perhaps ten times more were
positioned to the west of the city at the start of hostilities.
Presumably they have been pushed back to the West.
As we have known for a week or so, the remaining Azov and other
Ukrainian forces have retreated from the city proper to two locations on
the outskirts of Mariupol: the port and the Azovstal industrial
territory. The Russians have now entirely encircled both.
The port runs for about 3 kilometers along the sea and reaches inland
about 300 meters. It is from here that in the past week, the Azov group
tried to send out by helicopter a dozen or more of its top officers.
The helicopter was shot down by the Russians, killing all aboard. A
relief helicopter also was destroyed by the Russians, but here one
Ukrainian survived and he was interrogated about the failed operation.
The port is now being cleared of enemy forces, with the Donbas militia taking the lead.
notesfromdisgraceland |Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. (George Carlin)
Things don’t look encouraging when
observed at higher resolution. This is a graph of the IQ distribution.
The average IQ is around 100 with 68% of population residing inside the
two standard deviations range, between 85 and 115, which means that
about 16% are of deep sub-average intelligence. These numbers are fairly
robust across different countries in the developed world.
This distribution becomes particularly
alarming when applied to a large relatively non-oppressive country. In
the context of modern liberal societies, the synergy of stupidity, size,
and democracy reinforces the malignant potential of the stupidity of
the collective.
Transcription
of these numbers to America implies that about 53 million (16%) people
(entire population of France) are of sub-average intelligence, out of
which 7 million (entire Bulgaria) is seriously impaired. These people
are empowered to express their opinion and impose their will in the
ballot box.
By mobilizing the left side of the
distribution behind a single political movement – a maneuver that
represents a collectivization of mediocrity — makes them even stupider
by lowering their collective IQ further, and persuading them to believe
in pretty much anything. When their discontent is streamlined and
wrapped into a single narrative, in an electoral democratic system,
these 16-percenters can become a decisive factor[2].
Empowered by their malignant stupidity, such people are capable of
committing the most extreme atrocities as they have been throughout
human history.
Humanity cannot outgrow its own death drive
Intelligence is not a theoretical quantity, but represents a behavioral quality of creatures in an open environment. (Peter Sloterdijk)
Humans are generally intelligent, but this
individual intelligence fails to get collectivized. This has only
become worse with progress and the general trend of increasing
acceleration and addiction to speed. The long term has become so long
that it now exceeds our capacity for statistical prediction, but the
short-term has accelerated so much that snap decisions are the only
decisions ever made. The stakes have become higher – short-term survival
is no longer guaranteed, which leads to a shift of focus.
In the face of the urgency of short-term
survival, long-term foresight collapses. This defines the tradeoff — the
lower the odds of survival, the weaker the desires and capacities for
grasping the long-term. As the group size increases and individuality
fades away, collectivization inevitably leads to abdication of
responsibilities. This leads to collective myopia, which attracts its
membership and supports the group’s desire to grow. As a consequence, we
no longer engage in intergenerational projects — passing the baton to
the next generation is the best we can do (as a collective).
This removal of the long-term perspective,
its subversion, leaves power dominated by short-term forces, which
under the capricious conditions of the market forces requires adaptive, liquid or transient strategies as a basic skill set. At
a systemic level, change is taking the form of positive feedback. In
conditions of general info acceleration and hypercomplexity, as
conscious and rational will become unable to adjust to the trends, the
trends themselves become self-reinforcing (up to the point of collapse)[3].
For years now, the Right-wing populism of
the capitalist West has been tapping into the left side of the IQ
distribution. This has proven to be a very successful strategy for their
project. Unsurprisingly, in the most spectacular staging of abdication
of collective responsibility, thus cultivated populist movement became
the epicenter of insane resistance to simple measures of containment of
the COVID pandemic.
At
the core of the incoherent response to the pandemic – the spectacular
failure of adjusting to the most straightforward problem of self-defense
of the collective body – resides collective abdication of
responsibility. This was a simple test of common sense, accepting the
most basic measures any single human would normally have no problems
accepting, but which collectively encountered resistance on a large
scale (bordering on hysterical) causing, at the end, massive casualties,
financial and economic damages, and unnecessary complications and
extension of the pandemic. The resistance to alignment with simple and
logical adjustment to an existential threat is just another illustration
of the erosion of basic survival instincts caused by decades of
deliberate and programmatic anti-science project and glorification of
mediocrity.
In the world of infinite acceleration,
humanity is spontaneously converging towards a state of maximum
cognitive incompetence, a collective Dunning-Kruger effect. According to
the latest statistics, there are about 41 million Q-anon believers in
the United States.
However, this does not mean that
capitalist democracies carry exclusive blame for the degradation of
intellect and the rising rate of malignant stupidity. Rather, it is a
combination of human nature and the law of large numbers. As much as
Soviet-style communism pretended to have sought to divert the inevitable
self-destructiveness of capitalism, it merely reinvented different and
more efficient ways of self-destruction. A similar story goes with
fascism. Communism’s record of ecological misconduct, which has
penetrated deep into the territory of criminal, is just one of many
examples of its self-destructive overdrive. Its pretended ideological
attempts to be something else from what it really was were just failed
diversions that merely accelerated the inevitable.
jonathanturley | It appears that some media have a new narrative after admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop is legitimate after all.
According to Atlantic Magazine writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Anne
Applebaum, the story never did matter because it was just not
interesting and “totally irrelevant” to her. Strangely, however, it once
did. Applebaum pushed the false narrative as she was slamming others
for publishing “Russian disinformation” and using the Hunter Biden story
as an example. It only became uninteresting when it turned out to be
true. The one convincing assertion, however, is that it was simply not
viewed as “relevant.” What was clearly relevant for Twitter and most
media outlets was the election of Joe Biden. Otherwise, as captured by Gaston de La Touche, it is a matter of sheer boredom.
Applebaum was at my alma mater, The University of Chicago, for the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference
on Wednesday. The conference appeared largely an echo-chamber, a
disappointing lineup for UChicago which is known to value a diversity of
opinion. Applebaum slammed Fox and its viewers: “Those who live outside
the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need
to learn any of this stuff.” (For the record, I work as a legal analyst
at Fox).
That is when University of Chicago Student Daniel Schmidt delivered a haymaker after citing her dig:
“A poll, later after that, found that if
voters knew about the content of the laptop, 16% of Joe Biden voters
would have acted differently. ‘Do you think the media acted
inappropriately when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as
Russian disinformation, and what can we learn from that in ensuring that
what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation, and not
reality?”
Applebaum responded by saying that she really did not care if the laptop was legitimate because she did not find it interesting.
“My problem with Hunter Biden’s laptop is I
think it’s totally irrelevant,” she said. “I mean, it’s not whether
it’s disinformation… I didn’t think Hunter Biden’s business
relationships have anything to do with who should be President of the
United States.”
So, if the Biden family was engaged in selling
access to foreign interests, it really has nothing to do with the
President of the United States. It is not interesting that there are
references to Joe Biden’s knowledge or involvement and possible
benefitting from the millions passing through his son. It does not
matter that Hunter is shown telling his daughter
Naomi: “I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for
this entire family for 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry,
unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
The
officials say the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out
"intelligence" about Russia's plans in Ukraine that is "low-confidence"
or "based more on analysis than hard evidence", or even just plain
false, in order to fight an information war against Putin.
Psyops in the U.S. targeting the public used to be illegal, even though the way they got around it was to plant stories in the foreign press. But over the last five years beginning with Russiagate & now Ukraine, it is clear that U.S. public is fair game: https://t.co/gcEWoCZbkB
The
report says that toward this end the US government has deliberately
circulated false or poorly evidenced claims about impending chemical
weapons attacks, about Russian plans to orchestrate a false flag attack
in the Donbass to justify an invasion, about Putin's advisors
misinforming him, and about Russia seeking arms supplies from China.
Excerpt, emphasis mine:
It was an
attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S.
officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might
be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.
President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.
It’s
one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with
recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an
information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when
the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian
President Vladimir Putin off balance.
So they lied.
They may hold that they lied for a noble reason, but they lied. They
knowingly circulated information they had no reason to believe was true,
and that lie was amplified by all the most influential media outlets in
the western world.
Another example of the Biden administration releasing a false narrative as part of its "information war":
Likewise, a charge that Russia had turned to China for potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official and two U.S. officials said.
The U.S. officials said there are no indications China is considering providing weapons to Russia. The Biden administration put that out as a warning to China not to do so, they said.
On the empire's claim last week
that Putin is being misled by his advisors because they are afraid of
telling him the truth, NBC reports that this assessment "wasn’t
conclusive — based more on analysis than hard evidence."
I'd actually made fun of this ridiculous CIA press release when it was uncritically published disguised as a breaking news report by The New York Times
truthout | Wall Street’s sinister influence on the political process has, rightly, been a major topic
during this presidential campaign. But, history has taught us that the
role that the media industry plays in Washington poses a comparable
threat to our democracy. Yet, this is a topic rarely discussed by the
dominant media, or on the campaign trail.
But now is a good time to discuss our growing media crises. Twenty years ago this week, President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
The act, signed into law on February 8, 1996, was “essentially bought
and paid for by corporate media lobbies,” as Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting (FAIR) described it, and radically “opened the floodgates on mergers.”
The negative impact of the law cannot be overstated. The law, which
was the first major reform of telecommunications policy since 1934, according to media scholar
Robert McChesney, “is widely considered to be one of the three or four
most important federal laws of this generation.” The act dramatically
reduced important Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on
cross ownership, and allowed giant corporations to buy up thousands of
media outlets across the country, increasing their monopoly on the flow
of information in the United States and around the world.
“Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few,” said Eduardo Galeano, the Latin American journalist, in response to the act.
Twenty years later the devastating impact of the legislation is
undeniable: About 90 percent of the country’s major media companies are owned by six corporations. Bill Clinton’s legacy in empowering the consolidation of corporate media is right up there with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and welfare reform, as being among the most tragic and destructive policies of his administration.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not merely a regrettable part of
history. It serves as a stern warning about what is at stake in the
future. In a media world that is going through a massive transformation,
media companies have dramatically increased efforts to wield influence in Washington, with a massive lobbying presence and a steady dose of campaign donations to politicians in both parties – with the goal of allowing more consolidation, and privatizing and commodifying the internet.
foreignpolicy | For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S.
government’s mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to
American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the
implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an
unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and
TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts. So what just happened?
Until this month, a vast ocean of U.S. programming produced by the
Broadcasting Board of Governors such as Voice of America, Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks could
only be viewed or listened to at broadcast quality in foreign countries.
The programming varies in tone and quality, but its breadth is vast:
It’s viewed in more than 100 countries in 61 languages. The topics
covered include human rights abuses in Iran, self-immolation in Tibet,
human trafficking across Asia, and on-the-ground reporting in Egypt and
Iraq.
The restriction of these broadcasts was due to the Smith-Mundt Act, a
long-standing piece of legislation that has been amended numerous times
over the years, perhaps most consequentially by Arkansas Senator J.
William Fulbright. In the 1970s, Fulbright was no friend of VOA and
Radio Free Europe, and moved to restrict them from domestic
distribution, saying
they "should be given the opportunity to take their rightful place in
the graveyard of Cold War relics." Fulbright’s amendment to Smith-Mundt
was bolstered in 1985 by Nebraska Senator Edward Zorinsky, who argued
that such "propaganda" should be kept out of America as to distinguish the U.S. "from the Soviet Union where domestic propaganda is a principal government activity."
Zorinsky and Fulbright sold their amendments on sensible rhetoric:
American taxpayers shouldn’t be funding propaganda for American
audiences. So did Congress just tear down the American public’s last
defense against domestic propaganda?
BBG spokeswoman Lynne Weil insists BBG is not a propaganda outlet,
and its flagship services such as VOA "present fair and accurate news."
"They don’t shy away from stories that don’t shed the best light on the United States," she told The Cable. She pointed to the charters
of VOA and RFE: "Our journalists provide what many people cannot get
locally: uncensored news, responsible discussion, and open debate."
A former U.S. government source with knowledge of the BBG says the organization is no Pravda,
but it does advance U.S. interests in more subtle ways. In Somalia, for
instance, VOA serves as counterprogramming to outlets peddling
anti-American or jihadist sentiment. "Somalis have three options for
news," the source said, "word of mouth, al-Shabab, or VOA Somalia."
This partially explains the push to allow BBG broadcasts on local
radio stations in the United States. The agency wants to reach diaspora
communities, such as St. Paul, Minnesota’s significant Somali expat
community. "Those people can get al-Shabab, they can get Russia Today,
but they couldn’t get access to their taxpayer-funded news sources like
VOA Somalia," the source said. "It was silly."
Lynne added that the reform has a transparency benefit as well. "Now
Americans will be able to know more about what they are paying for with
their tax dollars — greater transparency is a win-win for all
involved," she said. And so with that we have the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, which passed as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, and went into effect this month.
But if anyone needed a reminder of the dangers of domestic
propaganda efforts, the past 12 months provided ample reasons. Last
year, two USA Today journalists were ensnared
in a propaganda campaign after reporting about millions of dollars in
back taxes owed by the Pentagon’s top propaganda contractor in
Afghanistan. Eventually, one of the co-owners of the firm confessed to creating phony websites and Twitter accounts to smear the journalists anonymously. Additionally, just this month, the Washington Post exposed
a counter-propaganda program by the Pentagon that recommended posting
comments on a U.S. website run by a Somali expat with readers opposing
al-Shabab. "Today, the military is more focused on manipulating news and
commentary on the Internet, especially social media, by posting
material and images without necessarily claiming ownership," reported
the Post.
reaganlibrary | The
Fairness Doctrine, enforced by the Federal Communications Council, was
rooted in the media world of 1949. Lawmakers became concerned that the
monopoly audience control of the three main networks, NBC, ABC and CBS,
could misuse their broadcast licenses to set a biased public agenda.
The Fairness Doctrine mandated broadcast networks devote time to
contrasting views on issues of public importance. Congress backed the
policy in 1954 and by the 1970s the FCC called the doctrine the “single
most important requirement of operation in the public interest – the sine quanon for grant of a renewal of license.
The Supreme Court upheld the doctrine. In 1969’s Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC,
journalist Fred Cook sued a Pennsylvania Christian Crusade radio
program after a radio host attacked him on air. In a unanimous decision,
the Supreme Court upheld Cook's right to an on-air response under the
Fairness Doctrine, arguing that nothing in the First Amendment gives a
broadcast license holder the exclusive right to the airwaves they
operate on.
The doctrine stayed in effect, and was enforced until the Reagan
Administration. In 1985, under FCC Chairman, Mark S. Fowler, a
communications attorney who had served on Ronald Reagan's presidential
campaign staff in 1976 and 1980, the FCC released a report stating that
the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights
guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Fowler began rolling the application of the doctrine back during
Reagan's second term - despite complaints from some in the
Administration that it was all that kept broadcast journalists from
thoroughly lambasting Reagan's policies on air. In 1987, the FCC panel,
under new chairman Dennis Patrick, repealed the Fairness Doctrine
altogether with a 4-0 vote
The FCC vote was opposed by members of Congress who said the FCC had
tried to "flout the will of Congress" and the decision was "wrongheaded,
misguided and illogical." The decision drew political fire and
tangling, where cooperation with Congress was at issue. In June 1987,
Congress attempted to preempt the FCC decision and codify the Fairness
Doctrine, (Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987 S. 742).
The bill passed but the legislation was vetoed by President Ronald
Reagan. Congress was unable to muster enough votes to overturn the
President’s veto.
This topic guide contains material on the doctrine itself, the vote
on the Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987, the President’s subsequent
veto and the aftermath of this vote.
thelastamericanvagabond | While much of the “mainstream” world has spent the last few days
obsessing over and debating the celebrity spectacle surrounding American
actor Will Smith slapping American comedian Chris Rock, the
international elitists were meeting in Dubai for the 2022 World Government Summit.
From March 28th to the 30th, corporate media journalists, heads of
state, and CEOs of some of the most profitable companies in the world
met for discussions on shaping the direction of the next decade and
beyond. Anyone with a functioning brain should ignore the tabloids and
instead pay attention to this little known gathering of globalist
Technocrats.
Let’s take a look at the speakers and the panels, starting with Mr.
Great Reset himself, Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum.
Schwab gave a talk entitled, Our World Today… Why Government Must Act Now?. “Thank you, to his excellency for enabling this initiative to define a longer-term narrative to make the world more resilient more inclusive and more sustainable,”
Schwab stated during his address. The use of the term narrative is
important because in January 2021, Klaus and the World Economic Forum
announced the next phase of The Great Reset, The Great Narrative.
As with The Great Narrative event, the World Government Summit was
also held in Dubai. As I wrote during the Great Narrative meeting:
“While the political leaders of the UAE and Klaus
Schwab may promote themselves as the heroes of our times, we should
judge them according to their actions and the company they keep, not the
flowery language they use to distract us. The simple fact is the UAE
has a horrible record on human rights. The nation is known for deporting
those who renounce Islam, limited press freedoms, and enforcing
elements of Sharia law.”
During Schwab’s short talk he also mentioned his pet project “the 4th Industrial Revolution“,
which is essentially the digital panopticon of the future, where
digital surveillance is omnipresent and humanity uses digital technology
to alter our lives. Often associated with terms like the Internet of
Things, the Internet of Bodies, the Internet of Humans, and the Internet
of Senses, this world will be powered by 5G and
6G technology. Of course, for Schwab and other globalists, the 4IR also
lends itself towards more central planning and top-down control. The
goal is a track and trace society where all transactions are logged,
every person has a digital ID that can be tracked, and social
malcontents are locked out of society via social credit scores.
Immediately following Schwab was a panel which made no attempt to hide the goals of the globalists. The panel, Are We Ready for A New World Order?, featured Fred Kempe, president
and CEO of the Atlantic Council since 2007, as well as an anchor for
CNN and a former advisor to former US president George W. Bush. Before
joining the Council, Kempe was a prize-winning editor and reporter at
the Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years.
In fact, the Atlantic Council had a fairly large presence at the World Government Summit, including appearances by Defne Arslan, senior director of the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY program, and Olga Khakova, Deputy Director of Global Energy Center of Atlantic Council.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Atlantic Council, I first reported in May 2018 that Facebook had partnered with the thinktank connected to NATO. I wrote:
“The Atlantic Council of the United States was
established in 1961 to bolster support for international relations.
Although not officially connected to the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, the Atlantic Council has spent decades promoting causes
and issues which are beneficial to NATO member states. In addition, The
Atlantic Council is a member of the Atlantic Treaty Organization, an
umbrella organization which “acts as a network facilitator in the
Euro-Atlantic and beyond.” The ATO works similarly to the Atlantic
Council, bringing together political leaders, academics, military
officials, journalists and diplomats to promote values that are
favorable to the NATO member states. Officially, ATO is independent of
NATO, but the line between the two is razor thin.
Essentially, the Atlantic Council is a think tank which can offer
companies or nation states access to military officials, politicians,
journalists, diplomats, etc. to help them develop a plan to implement
their strategy or vision. These strategies often involve getting NATO
governments or industry insiders to make decisions they might not have
made without a visit from the Atlantic Council team. This allows
individuals or nations to push forth their ideas under the cover of
hiring what appears to be a public relations agency but is actually
selling access to high-profile individuals with power to affect public
policy. Indeed, everyone from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton to the
family of international agent of disorder Zbigniew Brzezinski have
spoken at or attended council events.”
BAR |Having a new Black SCOTUS justice or bringing Barack Obama out of
retirement for a photo opportunity won't raise Joe Biden's poll numbers
or stave off defeat in the mid-term elections. Only fulfilling campaign
promises and giving the people what they need will help Biden and the
democrats.
The Black political class and the democratic party are once again
infantilizing Black voters instead of giving them what they need and
want. They pass useless legislation and stage political performances
because they have lost the trust of the people. Biden’s poll numbers
continue to drop. He now has a lackluster 40 percent approval rating for
the simple reason that he hasn’t done what he promised during his 2020
presidential campaign.
Biden said he would provide student loan debt relief, raise the
minimum wage, and improve the government response to the covid crisis.
His friends in corporate media covered for him by claiming that stimulus
and child tax credit payments would “cut child poverty in half.” That
claim was never true and now that tax credit is gone along with the much
touted Build Back Better legislation. Not only does covid continue to
kill, with 1 million dead in the past two years, but the millions of
Americans who are uninsured no longer have free treatment, testing, or
vaccinations.
The Black political class have so little to show for their efforts
that they now resort to passing legislation so meaningless that it
insults the collective intelligence of Black people. One example is the
passage of the Emmett Till Anti Lynching bill. Congress failed to pass
anti-lynching legislation when the public murder of Black people was a
common occurrence. But now the lynchers are not local white citizens
councils and Ku Klux Klan members. It is the police who kill an average
of three people every day, and one of those persons will be Black.
Despite this continuing bloodshed committed against their
constituents, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has never even
attempted to pass legislation which would protect the public from
summary police execution. There is plenty of kente cloth and posturing
but the CBC go along with Biden’s plan to add $30 billion in funding to states and localities to hire more police, the people who actually commit lynch law in this country.
When they aren’t virtue signaling about lynching, Black politicians
are passing legislation about hairstyles. The legislation, Create a
Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (CROWN Act) would prohibit
discrimination against people with natural hair. The House of
Representatives passed the CROWN Act but it faces what is called an
uncertain future in the Senate. That means it probably won’t be taken up
at all.
No Black person is in favor of hair based discrimination, but there
are far more important issues that need to be addressed. The democrats
are rightfully worried about the November 2022 mid-term elections and
are in danger of losing control of the House. Their response is what one
would expect from a faux leftish party.
They bring out their faux leftish former president, Barack Obama.
Obama appeared at the white house to celebrate the Affordable Care Act
(ACA), popularly known as Obamacare. Obamacare enshrined corporate
control over health care and gave people the right to purchase insurance
which is too expensive. Medicaid expansion was the most important
aspect of Obamacare but it was never accepted by most of the southern
states, the region with the largest Black population.
Pulling out the Barack Obama card didn’t help Hillary Clinton secure
votes where she needed them in 2016. Similarly, his presence is unlikely
to help Biden in 2022. Biden and the democrats are hamstrung by their
reliance on the oligarchic class, the people he promised, “Nothing will
fundamentally change.” They won’t allow Build Back Better or student
loan debt relief or universal health care and so the people go without
what they need the most. Thus the CROWN Act is born.
The problem for Biden and the democrats is that the entire political
system is in disrepute. They post on Twitter about expensive health care
and give the impression they will actually do something about this
crisis. But they can’t fool all the people all the time. Inflation is
eating away at the well being of millions of people. The party in power
takes a hit when times are hard. Ridiculous propaganda about “Putin’s
price hike” won’t get the votes they need.
What Scott Ritter tweeted contained no call for abuse or harassment of any individuals. He didn't wish or hope that anyone experienced physical harm. He did express a dissenting view, and this shows how Twitter Rules can be twisted to silence US foreign policy critics.
Well, it looks like I’ve been reinstated. No official word from Twitter about what the problem was or how/why it was resolved. But I’m sure they took notice at the concern expressed by many of you here on Twitter. Thanks for speaking up in defense of free speech. Goodnight!
rollingstone | Biden’s effectiveness as a president is up for debate, but conservative
media feeling the need to doctor video clips of the president proves
there isn’t as much evidence that he can’t do the job as they’d like
there to be.
antiwar | Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that post-war Ukraine will be like a “big Israel” and won’t be “liberal” like Europe.
“Ukraine will definitely not be what we wanted it to be from the
beginning. It is impossible. Absolutely liberal, European — it will not
be like that. It [Ukraine] will definitely come from the strength of
every house, every building, every person,” Zelensky said. “We will
become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”
The Ukrainian leader said he expects society to be highly
militarized. “We will not be surprised if we have representatives of the
Armed Forces or the National Guard in cinemas, supermarkets, and people
with weapons. I am confident that the question of security will be the
issue number one for the next 10 years. I am sure of it,” he added,” he
said.
Zelensky insisted that such measures wouldn’t threaten democracy and
wouldn’t turn Ukraine into an authoritarian state. “An authoritarian
state would lose to Russia. People know what they are fighting for,” he
said.
tomluongo | All the roads to RussiaGate lead through Ukraine and British
Intelligence. At some point you just have to face the face of the
agitator. Every one of those stories have logical inconsistencies wide
enough to drive a column of tanks through.
These are painstakingly worked through by investigative journalists
pushed to the fringe by the technocrats’ willing partners in Silicon
Valley to minimize their influence over the narrative.
That, in itself, should be considered prima facia evidence of malfeasance but sadly it isn’t.
From the moment Russia’s troops crossed the border into Ukraine on
February 24th there has been a clear strategy by the Russian Ministries
of Defense and Foreign Affairs to head off potential false flags
publicly before they could be pulled off.
The Russian Foreign Ministry singled out the UK for its histrionics
saying if they wanted to lead the charge, they’ll get the worst
treatment.
With the pullout of Russian troops from around Kiev however, they
have little control over the preparing of the stage. You believe what
you want to believe about Bucha, I don’t care.
Given the track record of Russia’s accusers here I’m taking the
position that these allegations have to be incontrovertibly proven
publicly for me to believe a word of them. Here’s one version of the story (warning: very graphic).
That is how low the credibility of the sources on this are. The UK
government has been, along with Biden’s Dept. of State and National
Security Council, the most belligerent in their response to Russia’s
military operation. Their history and naked hatred of all things
Russian stretches back multiple centuries.
In short, they have motive, means and opportunity to stage a false
flag to push public sentiment further towards NATO’s intervention into
Ukraine officially, therefore a false flag is the most likely scenario.
Complaints about how Russia waged the initial part of this war have
centered on their unwillingness (but not opposition) to target
civilians. Kiev could have easily been taken if the Russians wanted to
commit massive atrocities against civilians.
They did not do so. That flies in the face of what’s being alleged
about Bucha. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen the way it is being
alleged, but the burden of proof lies with the accuser (Ukraine) and
their allies (The US and UK).
And the main amplifier of this story, the UK, blocked not one but two
proposals by the Russian Federation to investigate what happened in
Bucha. We can’t have that, there’s a war to escalate.
Remember this story is only possible because the Russians first got
repulsed from taking Kiev and then pulled back from the areas
surrounding it. They are redeploying forces and regrouping for a major
push against Ukrainian forces trapped in the eastern part of Ukraine.
That operation will likely wipe out what’s left of the UAF troops
there and push the next phase of this war on the ground to its natural
state of equilibrium for the next few months.
There are so many people whose crimes in Ukraine would be exposed by a
Russian win there that it is truly existential to keep that from
happening. It goes deeper than even the ideology of the West which
needs to subjugate Russia if the Davos plan for global governance is going to have any hope of succeeding.
This is also personal for everyone from Joe Biden himself to
hundreds, if not thousands of people complicit in the various schemes,
plots and crimes committed in the petrie dish of corruption they’ve
staged their attacks on common decency from.
So, when I say they have motive, means and opportunity, I mean it.
These are the same people who impeached Donald Trump over a phone call.
Of course they will say the quiet parts out loud about what they want
to do to Putin for screwing up their grand plans.
This brings me back to my article from the other day
handicapping the Hungarian elections. Because Hungary is now in a very
strong position I posited they’d be in if Viktor Orban won the
election, which he did, emphatically. And that means the EU is in a
very precarious position to continue supporting an anti-Russia policy
stance.
AP | As Hungary’s
nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban prepares to continue his
autocratic governance of Hungary for another four years, he faces a
shattered opposition at home but an increasingly isolated position
abroad, where his flouting of democratic standards and approach to the
war in Ukraine has riled the European Union and other nations.
On
Sunday, as officials from his right-wing Fidesz party gathered at an
election night event on the Danube river in Budapest, Orban told
supporters that their landslide victory in the country’s national
election was a message to Europe that his model of “illiberal democracy”
was a prophecy for the continent’s future.
“The
whole world has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic
politics, conservative civic politics and patriotic politics have won.
We are telling Europe that this is not the past, this is the future, our
common European future,” Orban said.
But while Orban’s party won 53% of the vote in Hungary, convincing
Europe to get on board won’t be so easy. Orban already faces heavy
pressure in the EU to change tack on his approach to corruption,
minority rights and media freedom, and as war rages in neighboring
Ukraine, his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin have alienated
even some of his closest allies.
During Hungary’s
election campaign, a Western-looking coalition of opposition parties
challenging Orban called for Hungary to support its embattled neighbor
and act in lockstep with its EU and NATO partners.
Yet
Orban, considered to be Putin’s closest ally in the EU, insisted that
Hungary remain neutral and maintain its close economic ties with Moscow,
including continuing to import Russian gas and oil on favorable terms.
“I’m
ready to commit at this moment — unlike I was before this day — to put
people in direct contact with Russia, to stop Russia,” Spencer said.
“Call it peacekeeping. Call it what you will. We have to do more than
provide weapons. And by ‘we,’ I mean the United States. Yes, we’ll do it
as a coalition with lots of other people, but we are the example. So
put boots on the ground, send weapons directly at Russia.”
Notice
the bizarre verbal gymnastics being used by Spencer to obfuscate the
fact that he is advocating a hot war with a nuclear superpower: “put
people in direct contact with Russia,” “send weapons directly at
Russia”. Who talks like that? He’s calling for the US military to fire
upon the Russian military, he’s just saying it really weird.
Asked by the show’s host Ali Velshi what he thought of warnings that
direct military confrontation with Russia could lead to nuclear war,
Spencer said, “It is a huge risk, I understand that. But today is different.”
Velshi himself was much more to the point than his guest, both online and on social media.
“We are past the point of sanctions and strongly-worded condemnations and the seizing of oligarchs’ megayachts,” Velshi told his MSNBC audience.
“If this is not the kind of moment that the United Nations and NATO and
the UN and the G-20 and the Council of Europe and the G-7 were made
for, what was the point of these alliances if not to stop this? The
world cannot sit by as Vladimir Putin continues this reign of terror.”
“The
turning point for the west and NATO will come when the sun rises over
Kyiv on Sunday, and the war crimes against civilian non-combatants
becomes visible to all,” Velshi said on Twitter over the weekend. “There is no more time for prevarication. If ‘never again’ means anything, then this is the time to act.”
Asked what specifically he meant by this, Velshi clarified that he was advocating “Direct military involvement.”
“Lines
have been crossed and war crimes have been committed by Putin that make
direct military intervention something NATO now must seriously
consider,” Velshi added.
libertarianinstitute | Are Biden’s off-the-cuff-and-wall remarks signs of dementia? Or are
they just the Bidenesque “Kinsley gaffes” we’ve become accustomed to? (A
Kinsley gaffe occurs when someone important speaks his mind when he or
his handlers know he shouldn’t.)
By now, Biden’s irresponsibly provocative remarks have made the rounds. He has said
that Russia’s use of chemical weapons in Ukraine would bring a NATO
response, but left the nature of the response vague. His administration
seems to be shying away from explicitly declaring “red lines.”
And yet, when ABC News asked
Biden, “If chemical weapons were used in Ukraine could that trigger a
military response from NATO?” Biden responded, “It would trigger a response in kind. Whether or not — you’re asking whether NATO would cross — we’d make that decision at the time.” (Emphasis added.)
Say what? Response in kind? Does that mean he might order a chemical-weapons counterattack?
As others have pointed out, even a de facto red line is an invitation
for a false-flag attack in which a Ukrainian group, hoping to bring
NATO into the fight, would use chemical weapons while making the
perpetrator appear to be Russian. This sort of thing seems likely to have happened in Syria.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky is still lobbying
for even more NATO intervention (in addition to arms and sanctions) in
the form of a no-fly zone, which is now called “close the sky.” The
shameless public appeal includes this video,
with the lyric “If you don’t close the sky/I will die.” The lyricist
neglected to point out that if the sky is closed and the U.S. Air Force
shoots down a Russian jet, we all could die in a nuclear exchange.
Biden still says no to closing the sky, but if he started saying the opposite, who’d be surprised?
As everyone knows, while abroad Biden also seemed to call for
regime change in Russia with this ad-lib: “For God’s sake, this man
cannot remain in power.” History teaches that implied policies such as
that do not facilitate ceasefires and peace. The Gaffer-in-Chief and his people tried to walk it back,
but the attempts were lame. “I was expressing the moral outrage that I
feel,” he said while insisting he wasn’t walking back his statement,
“and I make no apologies for it.” (American presidents are always
morally outraged whenever countries they don’t like do what the U.S.
government regularly does.)
A White House official dutifully insisted that what his boss meant
“was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors
or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime
change.” If you buy that, they have a bridge you might be interested in.
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April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
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He ...
