Tag: perpetual war

US Suddenly Pretends To Care About Rights Abuses In India

The United States is suddenly very concerned about human rights violations in India, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken telling the press on Monday that “we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials.”

While it is true that India’s right-wing government is guilty of human rights abuses and has been for years, it is also true that the US State Department does not actually care about human rights abuses.

A leaked State Department memo from the early days of the Trump administration showed neoconservative empire manager Brian Hook teaching a previously uninitiated Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that for the US government, “human rights” are only a weapon to be used for keeping other nations in line. In a remarkable insight into the cynical nature of imperial narrative management, Hook told Tillerson that it is US policy to overlook human rights abuses committed by nations aligned with US interests while exploiting and weaponizing them against nations who aren’t.

“In the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights,” Hook explained in the memo.

“One useful guideline for a realistic and successful foreign policy is that allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries,” Hook wrote. “We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them. For this reason, we should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to US relations with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. And this is not only because of moral concern for practices inside those countries. It is also because pressing those regimes on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”

No, the US State Department does not care about human rights abuses. Blinken’s remarks are just the latest in a series of shots across the bow that the US empire has been firing at New Delhi to warn it against moving into alignment with Moscow.

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Evidence that the Missile that Caused the Massacre in Kramatorsk Is Not Russian but Ukrainian

The serial number of the Tochka-U missile that hit the Kramatorsk railway station on 8 April 2022 is Ш91579 (in Russian) or Sh91579 (in English). This serial number marks the stock of Tochka-U missiles in the possession of the Ukrainian Army. Only the Ukrainian Armed Forces have Tochka-U missiles. Russia has not had them since 2019: they have all been deactivated. The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics do not have and have never had Tochka-U.

The direction of the cone and the tail section of the missile that landed on the ground near the Kramatorsk train station clearly shows that it was fired from the 19th Ukrainian Missile Brigade, deployed near Dobropolie 45 km from Kramatorsk.

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Dick Cheney’s Daughter Wants War

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), was interviewed by CNN’s Jake Tapper today. During the friendly discussion, Cheney, referring to the tragic bombing of a train station in Ukraine, made the outrageous claim that Russia is conducting a “genocidal campaign.” The embattled congresswoman has joined with many other Democrats and Republicans in dangerous hyperbole that could easily escalate already heightened tensions.

By any definition of the word, Russia is not involved in a “genocide” against the Ukrainian people. But if there is some new definition that we’re not aware of, Cheney should be careful with her condemnations.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, a key architect for the invasion of Iraq, would be just as guilty, if not much more guilty, as Russian President Vladimir Putin of “genocide,” if this new definition describes Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Liz Cheney is singing the tune of the New York Times, the Washington Post and a who’s who of regime change proponents, all itching for a fight — or, at least, the threat of a fight.

And the chorus sounds very familiar. The band broke up after the 2003 invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq. But leading up to that war, they were playing on every radio station.

There are many reasons that a war — or the talk of war — is desirable for policymakers and media “elites.” The first three that come to mind in this situation are the excuses offered by conflict for a disastrous economy, the need to bury years of U.S. political corruption in Ukraine, and Raytheon stock.

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CIA Admits Feeding Americans False Info About Ukraine

Last week an extraordinary article appeared in, of all places, NBC News, reporting that the US intelligence community is knowingly feeding information it does not believe accurate to the US mainstream media for the American audience to consume.

In other words, the article reports that the US “deep state” admits to being actively engaged in lying to the American people in the hopes that it can manipulate public opinion

According to the NBC News article, “multiple US officials acknowledged that the US has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect…”

Readers will recall the shocking headlines that Russia was prepared to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, that China would be providing military equipment to Russia, that Russian President Putin was being fed misinformation by his advisors, and more.

All of these were churned out by the CIA to be repeated in the American media even though they were known to be false. It was all about, as one intelligence officer said in the article, “trying to get inside Putin’s head.”

That may have been the goal, but what the CIA actually did was get inside America’s head with false information meant to shape public perception of the conflict. They lied to propagandize us in favor of the Biden Administration’s narrative.

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If It Feels Like You’re Being Manipulated, It’s Because You Are

If you’ve got a gut feeling that your rulers are working to control your perception of the war in Ukraine, it is safe to trust that feeling.

If you feel like there’s been a concerted effort from the most powerful government and media institutions in the western world to manipulate your understanding of what’s going on with this war, it’s because that’s exactly what has been happening.

If you can’t recall ever seeing such intense mass media spin about a war before, it’s because you haven’t.

If you get the distinct impression that this may be the most aggressively perception-managed and psyop-intensive war in human history, it’s because it is.

If it looks like Silicon Valley platforms are controlling the content that people see to give them a perspective on this war that is wildly biased in favor of the US narrative, it’s because that is indeed the case.

If it seems like a suspicious coincidence that Russiagate manufactured mainstream consent for all the same shady agendas we’re seeing ramped up now like cold war brinkmanship against Moscow, internet censorship, and being constantly lied to by the mass media for the greater good, it’s because it is a mighty suspicious coincidence.

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US lawmakers welcomed notorious Georgian warlord now boasting of war crimes in Ukraine

Having taken up arms against Russia for a fifth time, Georgian Legion commander Mamuka Mamulashvili has bragged on video about his unit carrying out field executions of captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine. 

While Western media pundits howled about images of dead bodies in the city of Bucha, echoing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy’s accusation that Russia is guilty of “genocide,” they have largely overlooked the apparent admission of atrocities by an avowed ally of the United States who was welcomed on Capitol Hill by senior lawmakers overseeing congressional foreign policy committees.

Having fought in four wars against Russia, and despite allegations that he played a leading role in the massacre of 49 protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014, Mamulashvili has taken multiple trips to the United States, where he received a warm welcome from members of Congress, the New York Police Department, and Ukrainian diaspora community. 

In an interview this April, Mamulashvili, was asked about a video showing Russian fighters who had been extrajudicially executed in Dmitrovka, a town just five miles from Bucha. Mamulashvili was candid about his unit’s take-no-prisoners tactics, though he has denied involvement in the specific crimes depicted.

“We will not take Russian soldiers, as well as Kadyrovites [Chechnyan fighters]; in any case, we will not take prisoners, not a single person will be captured,” Mamulashvili said, implying that his fighters execute POWs.

The warlord’s battle dress shirt was emblazoned with a patch reading, “Mama says I’m special.” 

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Twitter Just Banned Ex-UN Weapons Inspector For Revealing Crimes Against Humanity Committed By Ukraine

On Wednesday, Twitter ‘permanently suspended’ retired US Marine Corps officer Scott Ritter.

By disputing Ukrainian authorities’ accusations that Russian soldiers massacred residents in Bucha near Kiev, Twitter accused the former UN weapons inspector of participating in prohibited behavior.

On his Telegram channel, Ritter shared a screenshot of the message he received.

“So apparently I’ve been suspended from Twitter for the crime of challenging the orthodox narrative of the so-called Bucha massacre”

He said hehad appealed the decision adding that “Freedom of speech in America today is an endangered concept.”

RT reports: According to the screenshot, Twitter’s censors had decided that Ritter violated their rules against “harassment and abuse” by saying the Ukrainian police had committed crimes against humanity in Bucha, and were trying to shift blame onto Russia with US help.

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How the U.S. Paid for Putin’s War on Ukraine

Did the US inadvertently finance Putin’s war on Ukraine with short-sighted, politically motivated, and irrational energy and climate policies? And did those failed policies fuel inflation to the obscene rate of 7.87%? Were the geopolitical consequences and the enormous economic costs of those policies predictable and avoidable? The short answers are yes, yes, and yes. Anyone in the Biden Administration could have “done the math” and seen how rising energy prices would continue to fill Putin’s coffers, funding his military build-up, and contribute to runaway inflation here at home.

The oil and gas industry is the cornerstone of the US economy and will continue to be for years to come. Crude oil and natural gas prices impact not only the price of gas at the pump but virtually everything we buy. Petroleum is an ingredient in all types of consumer goods, which are then transported using ships, planes, trains, and trucks fueled with petroleum products. Natural gas powers over 40% of our electrical grid, heats our homes, and is a substantial component in the cost of manufacturing almost everything.

Crude oil and natural gas prices also impact the economic health and behavior of global adversaries like Russia and China. Russia is one of the top three largest oil and natural gas producers in the world. According to the Russian Ministry of Finance, oil and natural gas export revenues constituted 36% of their total federal revenues in 2021. That amounts to over 9 trillion rubles or $121 billion in 2021 alone. Russia sold 48% of its oil and 72% of its natural gas production to European countries.

By contrast, in 2021, America bought only 1% of Russia’s crude oil and none of their natural gas in 2021. 1% doesn’t sound like much but it does amount to 245 million barrels and over $16 billion in revenue to Russia (@$65/barrel average). But our imports of Russian crude are only a small part of the story.

The real story of how Putin financed his war on Ukraine is about the rapidly rising price of crude oil and natural gas over the past several years. If the market price of oil and natural gas had remained relatively stable, Russia would only have made modest profits on its fossil fuel exports. As prices rose, Putin began making a killing and is using those windfalls to build and maintain his war machine.

Russia’s total cost (excluding taxes) of crude oil production is estimated to be between $32 and $44 per barrel. In 2019, the average price for crude was about $60 per barrel. Assuming a production cost of say $40 per barrel, Russia earned a profit of $20 per barrel. But when the average price reached $100 per barrel, their profits triple to $60 per barrel. For reference, Russia’s baseline oil production rose to 11.5 million barrels per day in 2021 and they exported 4.7 million barrels per day.

This translates to a total of 1.7 billion barrels exported in 2021 alone (4.7 x 365). A reasonable crude oil price of $60 per barrel and a profit of $20 per barrel nets Russia $34 billion per year. When crude is over $100 as it is today, Russia makes $60 a barrel and a whopping $102 billion per year! That’s a $68 billion windfall ($102-$34), simply because the US allowed the market price of crude to become artificially and unnecessarily high.

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Biden Admin Prioritizes Climate Fantasies While Famine Threatens The World

President Joe Biden says he is “working out” how to mitigate global food shortages. But action speaks louder than words — and so does inaction.

Global food supply chain chaos has increased due to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Countries across the globe are scrambling to increase food production. However, America is not one of them, because President Joe Biden would seemingly rather virtue signal about climate change than act on the near-term implications of a global famine.

Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe, with soil similar to that of the American Midwest. It is one of the largest exporters of wheat and corn in the world. Those exports were a lifeline for millions of people, including many who live in “global crisis zones” and have no reliable agriculture of their own — until now.

The World Food Program warned Ukraine’s supply chain is “falling apart.” Those problems will worsen if Ukrainians cannot plant crops this spring.

On top of this, Putin threatened to restrict food sales from Russia — also one of the world’s largest exporters — to only “friendly” countries. Understanding the impending crisis, the European Commission has opened up conserved agricultural land for cultivation and distributed $550 million to European farmers to increase production.

Last week, I asked the Biden administration to take similar steps by opening “approximately four million acres of high quality farmland” for production that are currently held under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).

President Biden refused. As an explanation, his Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told the National Grain and Feed Association that re-opening the farm land would have “a significant and detrimental impact on producers’ efforts to mitigate climate change.”

This is not the first time President Biden placed his environmentalist image above common sense and human life. U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry’s obsession with cutting a Green New Deal with Communist China caused him to overlook slave labor in Xinjiang. Moreover, President Biden refuses to expand domestic energy production because, in the words of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, additional domestic production would be “upending our initiatives to save the planet from the climate crisis.”

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Perception Vs. Reality

If you only get your news from the mainstream media, you would be tempted to believe that global conditions are relatively stable right now. 

Yes, there is a war between Russia and Ukraine, but the mainstream media is assuring us that Ukraine is winning that war. 

Other than that, the mainstream media seems to think that everything is just fine.

Of course the truth is that our planet is facing a whole host of extremely challenging problems at the moment.  The UN has warned that we are entering the worst global food crisis since World War II, inflation has started to spiral out of control all over the world, the war in Ukraine is making our supply chain nightmares even worse and an absolutely horrifying bird flu plague is killing millions upon millions of chickens and turkeys.

But if you flip on one of the corporate news channels tonight, they will be focusing on other things.

And you probably won’t even hear them talk about the food riots that have suddenly begun erupting around the world at all.

For example, a “curfew” has just been imposed on the capital of Peru after a series of extremely passionate protests that were sparked by rapidly rising fuel and food prices…

Peruvian President Pedro Castillo announced a curfew for Tuesday in the capital Lima and neighboring port city Callao, after demonstrations across the country over fuel prices caused roadblocks and “acts of violence”.

Protests had erupted across Peru in recent days due to a hike in fuel prices and tolls, during a time of rising food prices.

Is this the first time that you have heard about this?

For many of you it will be, and that is because the mainstream media in the U.S. is largely ignoring this.

In Sri Lanka, severe shortages of “food, medicine and fuel” have caused a full-blown economic collapse and tremendous chaos in the streets…

In Sri Lanka, where an economic crisis is growing, more than 40 lawmakers walked out of the ruling coalition today. That leaves the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the minority in Parliament. There have been new calls today for both the president and prime minister to step down after the entire Cabinet resigned on Sunday. Shortages of food, medicine and fuel have sparked countrywide protests, and security forces have fired tear gas and water cannons at protesters marching on the president’s home.

Most of you have probably not heard about that either, and that is because our largest news outlets are being really quiet about it.

But USA Today wants to make sure that you know about a new promotion that McDonald’s is running: “McDonald’s brings back Spicy Chicken McNuggets to select restaurants for a limited time”.

More than ever before, our perception of the world around us is shaped by the corporate elite.  Americans get more than 90 percent of the “television news” that they consume from just five giant media corporations, and so that gives those corporations an incredible amount of influence over how our society views reality.

For example, far more Americans are talking about “the slap” at the Academy Awards than about the fact that North Korea just threatened South Korea with nuclear war…

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