Tag: russia

US To Bring Back Pirates To Seize Russian Yachts

Centuries ago, whenever Kings and Queens wanted to quietly wage an unofficial war against their enemies, they issued something called a “Letter of Marque” to private sailors known as Privateers.

The Letter would legally authorize these Privateers (which was just a polite way of saying ‘Pirate’) to seize other kingdom’s ships and cargo while at sea.

It was essentially government-sanctioned theft.

Well, the United States Congress is bringing back this practice.

A recent bill that was introduced would “authorize the President of the United States to issue letters of marque and reprisal for the purpose of seizing the assets of certain Russian citizens.”

So, if the bill passes, children can once again legitimately dream of becoming a pirate when they grow up.

The last time the US authorized privateers was during the War of 1812.

Keep reading

The Only ‘Agency’ Ukraine Has Is The Central Intelligence Kind

Seemingly overnight it became not just wrong to say that the US hegemon has played a role in giving rise to this war, but actually monstrous and evil. My online notifications are currently flooded with furious empire apologists screaming at me for assigning any degree of responsibility in this conflict to western power structures with the kind of vitriol people normally reserve for Holocaust deniers or pedophelia advocates.

Imperial narrative managers have even been working overtime to make the word “westsplaining” happen, which is their progressive-sounding term for when one makes the self-evident observation that western powers influence world events. Mainstream westerners are actively trained to regurgitate lines like “Stop westsplaining to Ukrainians about coups and proxy conflicts! You’re denying their agency!”

Calling this a “proxy war” between Russia and the United States or calling Kyiv a “puppet regime” of Washington is strictly taboo now. That Ukraine has lacked independent agency in this war and the events leading up to it is something you are simply not allowed to say.

Well, I’m saying it. This is a proxy war. Kyiv is a puppet regime. Ukraine does not have independent agency in any meaningful way. This is not the fault of the Ukrainian people, who are obviously far and away the greatest victims of the Russian invasion, but of the giant western power structure which deliberately worked to take away the nation’s agency many years before the invasion took place.

I mean, my god. The US and its allies are pouring billions of dollars worth of weapons into Ukraine from around the world, the CIA has been training Ukrainians to kill Russians, the US intelligence cartel is directly sharing military intelligence with Kyiv as we speak, and this follows US-backed coups in Ukraine in 2014 and in 2004 before that.

This is a proxy war. This is exactly the thing that a proxy war is. The only “agency” Ukraine has is the Central Intelligence kind.

Keep reading

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Ukrainian Officials Keep Getting Caught Fleeing Country with Suitcases Full of Cash and Euros

The US Senate passed a bipartisan $1.5 trillion bill on March 10th that included $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine.

Chuck Schumer touted the aid to Ukraine and pointed to it as a pressing reason for the Senate to quickly pass the massive $1.5 trillion spending bill. This was the same week that inflation hit 7.9% in the US — the highest inflation rate in 40 years.

So where is the money going? Does anyone know? Does anyone care?

Here’s one answer.

The wife of former Ukrainian MP Ihor Kotvitskyi declared 28 million dollars and 1.3 million euros when entering Hungary.

Keep reading

Elite Flock to Doomsday Bunkers as World Bank Tells Peasant Class NOT to Store Food

Since the invasion of Ukraine began, manufacturers of doomsday bunkers have seen a massive spike in sales. This is typical during any crisis as people wait until the last minute to start preparing. What sets this rush toward prepping apart from ones in the past is the fact that the World Bank is warning against such actions — despite many of their elite friends doing exactly that.

During a virtual event hosted by the Washington Post on Monday, World Bank President David Malpass told people not to store food or gasoline in spite of the massive spike in prices since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“The right thing to do in these current circumstances is not to go out and buy extra flour or extra gasoline, it’s to recognize that the world is a dynamic global economy and will respond. There’ll be enough to go around,” Malpass said.

Malpass’ intentions are clear — don’t create fear to further hurt the supply chain. But it is too late for that and people should definitely be preparing. In fact, it may be too late.

While high prices and inflation are being blamed on Russia, it is important to point out that we have been headed in this direction well before the invasion. Russia was just an easy scapegoat.

While the president blames high prices on “corporate greed” and the Federal Reserve blames supply chain dysfunction, no one is looking at the elephant in the room — massive expansion of the money supply and insane deficit spending which has reached historical proportions in the last two years.

Keep reading

Corporate media spreads hoax that Russian cosmonauts wore yellow suits to ‘support Ukraine’

When photos began to circulate online of Russian cosmonauts boarding the International Space Station (ISS), media outlets online quickly spread the hoax that the group had deliberately chosen to wear yellow and blue flight suits in solidarity with Ukraine by wearing the country’s national colors.

The connection between the color of the attire and the conflict in Ukraine spread to outlets like the BBC, Bloomberg Quicktake, The Times, and NPR.

But what many had hoped was an act of heroic defiance against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime turned out to be an unrelated coincidence.  

Veteran cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, the mission commander for the Russian team aboard the ISS, quickly debunked the story, Reuters reported. In a news conference from the space station, he said the suits had been created six months ago, predating Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine. Moreover, Artemyev expressed solidarity with his country, voicing no sympathy for Ukraine.

“Color is just color,” Artemyev said. “It has nothing to do with Ukraine. In these days, even though we are in space, we are together with our president and people!”

He explained that the team had selected its colors based off of the team’s common alma mater—a college whose primary colors also used yellow and blue. “Every crew picks a color that looks different. It was our turn to pick a color,” he said.

“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’s press service said on its Telegram channel. “To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”

Keep reading

People Overestimate The US War Machine And Underestimate The US Propaganda Machine

The European Endowment for Democracy is a spinoff of the US government-funded “NGO” National Endowment for Democracy, which according to its own co-founder was set up to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly, namely orchestrate coups and manage narratives to advance US interests. A page on an NED website says that “All EU member states are members of EED’s Board of Governors, together with members of the European Parliament and civil society experts.”

So this is a media outlet funded by a government-run “NGO” being forcefully pushed in front of millions of western eyeballs by a major Silicon Valley corporation that people have come to rely on for getting information about the world. In the same way Silicon Valley facilitates government censorship by proxy, it also facilitates government propaganda by proxy.

The Globe and Mail reports that the Canadian government also put $200,000 toward Kyiv Independent’s funding. The outlet is being so loudly amplified by Twitter that not only has its Twitter account secured nearly two million followers since its creation in November, but one of its reporters (who calls the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion his “brothers in arms“) has gained a million followers since the start of the Russian invasion.

Do you see how sophisticated just that one tiny component of the US-centralized empire‘s propaganda campaign is? How many seemingly disparate and unrelated elements it has? Multiple countries, NGOs, an ostensibly independent social media platform, an ostensibly independent news outlet. It’s very difficult to see how any of it connects at all if you don’t know where to look. And almost nobody knows where to look.

This highly advanced perception management operation is happening all around the world about any issue the empire has a vested interest in. As anti-imperialist author and podcaster Justin Podur recently put it, “The US Empire is based on the mastery of storytelling. Making reality through propaganda.”

Keep reading