Monday, February 28, 2022

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)


Watch on YouTube here: Marcus X on the Community Violence that led to Black Lives da Streetz
Via Christian Gasper
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The Single Most Important Question In The World Right Now

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❖

There is one question today that is more important than any other question that could possibly be asked, and it’s this:

“Is what the US and its allies are trying to accomplish in Ukraine worth continually risking nuclear armageddon for?”

Russian state media have confirmed that Vladimir Putin’s orders to move the nation’s nuclear deterrent forces into “special combat duty mode” have been carried out, citing “aggressive statements from NATO related to the Russian military operation in Ukraine.”

“Russia’s ground, air and submarine-based nuclear deterrent forces have begun standby alert duty with reinforced personnel, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has informed President Putin,” Sputnik reports.

This comes days after Putin issued a thinly veiled threat of an immediate nuclear strike should western powers interfere in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying, “Whoever tries to hinder us, and even more so, to create threats to our country, to our people, should know that Russia’s response will be immediate. And it will lead you to such consequences that you have never encountered in your history.”

This also comes as the US and EU countries commit to sending fighter jets and stinger missiles to assist Ukraine in fighting an unwinnable war against a longtime target of the US empire, perhaps with the hope of dragging Moscow into a costly military quagmire like it deliberately worked to do in Afghanistan and in Syria.

This also comes as the ruble crashes following crushing sanctions and the banning of Russian banks from the international money transfer system SWIFT by the US and its allies. The economic hardship that follows will hurt ordinary people and may foment unrest, and it is here worth noting that in 2019 then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted that the goal of brutal sanctions on Iran was to push people to rise up and overthrow their government.

We’re also seeing the all-too-familiar phrase “regime change” used in reference to Putin by prominent western narrative managers like Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haas, European Council on Foreign Relations Co-Chair Carl Bildt, Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institute and Hoover Institution, as well as USA Today.

All of this has made nuclear war in the near term a whole lot more likely than it was just a few days ago… which is a really strange thing to type.

As I’m always saying, the primary risk of nuclear war is not that anyone will choose to start one, it’s that one could be triggered by any combination of miscommunication, miscalculation, misunderstanding or technical malfunction amid the chaos and confusion of escalating cold war tensions. This nearly happened, repeatedly, in the last cold war. The more tense things get, the greater the likelihood of an unthinkable chain of events from which there is no coming back.

Cold war brinkmanship has far too many small, unpredictable moving parts for anyone to feel confident that they can ramp up aggressions without triggering a nuclear exchange. Anyone who feels safe with these games of nuclear chicken simply does not understand them.

To get some insight into how easily an unpredictable scenario can lead to nuclear war I recommend watching this hour-long documentary or reading this article about Vasili Arkhipov, the Soviet submariner who single-handedly saved the world from obliteration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was one of three senior officers aboard a nuclear-armed sub that was cornered near Cuba by US war ships who did not know the sub had a nuclear weapon on board.

The US navy was dropping explosives onto the sub to get it to surface, and the Soviets didn’t know what they were doing as they had cut off all communications. It took all three senior officers to launch the nuke their ship was armed with, and two of them, thinking this was the beginning of World War 3, saw it as their duty to use it. Only Arkhipov, who had witnessed the horrific effects that radiation can have on the human body during a nuclear-powered submarine meltdown years earlier, refused.

You, and everyone you know, exist because Arkhipov made that decision. Had his personal history and conditioning been a little bit different, or had another officer been on board that particular ship on that particular day, nothing around you right now would be there. We got lucky. So lucky it’s uncomfortable to even think about it. But it’s important to.

This again is just one of the many nuclear close calls we’ve experienced since our species began its insane practice of stockpiling armageddon weapons around the world. We survived the last cold war by sheer, dumb luck. We were never in control. Not once. And there’s no reason to believe we’ll get lucky again.

So I repeat again the world’s most important question: is what the US and its allies are trying to accomplish in Ukraine worth continually risking nuclear armageddon for?

Well? Is it?

It’s not really a question you can just compartmentalize away from if you have integrity. It demands to be answered.

Is it worth it to continue along this trajectory? Is it? Is it really? Perhaps there might be some things that would be worth risking the life of every creature on earth to obtain, but is refusing to concede to Moscow’s demands in Ukraine one of them?

Whatever your values are, whatever your analysis is, whatever beliefs you’ve been holding to justify your support for the west’s side of this conflict, will you still proudly stand by them if you look outside and see a mushroom cloud growing in the distance?

Well? Will you?

Here’s a hint: if your answer to this question is premised on the assumption that nuclear war can’t or will never happen, then you don’t have a position that’s grounded in reality, because you’re not accounting for real possibilities. You’re justifying your position with fantasy.

I understand the argument that if we let tyrants do whatever they want just because they have nukes they’ll just do whatever they want. I understand the argument that if we don’t stop Putin now he’s going to take over all of Europe because he’s literally Hitler and blah blah blah. I understand why people ask “Well if we don’t stand up to him now, then when? Where is your line??” I really do.

But the US has been making risk-to-benefit calculations based on the fact that Russia has nuclear weapons every single day since Stalin got the bomb. There are things Russia has been permitted to do that weaker nations would have been forcefully stopped from doing, like annexing Crimea and intervening in Syria, exactly because they have nukes. If those weren’t the line, why specifically does Ukraine have to be? Surely there’s a line somewhere, but it would have to exist at a point where it would be worth risking the life of every living creature for.

So is it? Is keeping the possibility of NATO membership open and retaining control of the Donbas really so important that we should roll the dice on the existence of the entire human species on it? Is maintaining a hostile client state on Russia’s border truly worth gambling the life of every terrestrial organism for? Are the desperate unipolarist grand chessboard maneuverings of a few powerful people in Washington, Langley and Arlington really worth risking the life of everyone you know and love?

If the answer is no, then building some opposition to what we’re seeing here becomes a very urgent matter. Very urgent indeed.

____________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. 

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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/02/28/the-single-most-important-question-in-the-world-right-now/
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Police and Far-Right Continue to Attack and Harass Ongoing Tent Protest Demanding Housing Access in Boise

Report on ongoing tent protest outside of the Boise state capitol to demand access to low-income housing and an end to police harassment.

This Sunday marks the 6th week of the tent protest in so-called Boise, Idaho. The state has intervened and attempted to halt progress towards goals with ongoing harassment, raids, and attempts at creating division amongst the protestors. But, it hasn’t been effective in ending the protest. Cops have continued to show themselves as the predators they are, stealing donated blankets, sleeping bags and heaters/propane from folks who are putting their lives on the line in well below freezing temperatures to stand up for themselves and their community. The community has continued to support and resupply stolen survival gear, putting the state and law enforcement to shame. They have also continued arresting protesters during raids and have set exorbitant bails to make more difficult the release of folks experiencing houselessness.

When the state police aren’t harassing and raiding the protest, the fash (specifically the Idaho Liberty Dogs – who have documented ties with the Idaho state police) make their entrance. They have shown up three times this weekend alone and report they will be returning nightly to harass and record folks at the protest. They taunted folks with vulgar fat shaming, asked if they could shit in people’s tents, threatened to kill people, and tried to set someone’s tarp that was laying over their tent on fire (with the person inside of it).

Despite all the hate and violence perpetrated by the state, cops, and fash, folks have refocused with their goals and demands in the protest. An email went out earlier this week to the mayor, it reads:

Mayor McLean our past attempt to contact you to organize and facilitate solutions for those of us experiencing poverty and homelessness have gone unheard. We feel disheartened at your lack of concern for our situation.

For the well-being, safety and security of the homeless community we are asking for:

-Immediate indoor space to compensate for the services that are already in place for the homeless across the board. Unused, foreclosed and/or abandoned structures throughout the city can be assets for our needs to rectify the over-burdened system that is in dire need of expansion.

-An immediate end to Police Department ticketing, harassment, arrest and confiscation of property from the homeless community. We are tired of being kicked awake in the morning and having our belonings thrown into a trash compactor. City homeless services are inadequate and inaccesible to many in our community. The City’s criminalization of our very survival is an offense to our basic human dignity.

-Representation from the houseless community on any decision-making body regarding homelessness.

-5 acres of land, to be placed into a self-governed community land trust free from surveillance and police. $3 million to finance and build appropriate infrastructure.

We can and will assist in any possible way to speed this process along.

We feel demoralized and frustrated that our needs as well as our dignity has been overlooked for so long. We know that homelessness will not disappear overnight, but simply ignoring us or treating us as taboo or as a blight upon the community isn’t getting any of us anywhere.

We once again welcome you to our table to discuss terms of a viable solution for all sides. When our request is acknowledged please contact us for a place and time. We look forward to hearing back from you.

This email received no direct response, though the mayor responded in a news article. “Let me stress that I will never encourage a tent encampment in this city. It is not a solution to the very real problems that our neighbors experiencing homelessness are facing. People deserve better,” wrote the mayor. “That being said, I would never tolerate any harassment of Boiseans experiencing homelessness. City of Boise Police have not been involved with the current protest on state property. If someone believes they have been harassed by Boise officers, I urge them to contact both the Mayor’s Office and the Office of Police Accountability immediately.”

The folks protesting began their demonstration because there was no space for them to stay warm overnight during the middle of winter with weather falling below 10 degrees nightly – and city police constantly harassing, ticketing, taking survival gear and arresting folks sleeping outside. She is far from innocent in the harm the city and cops have caused and the evidence is everywhere.

The demonstration continues despite the many attempts by the state to destroy it. It is happening across the country, and the world and it will continue until change has crystalized. Those in power cannot make invisible the intrinsic failure of their system when the expense of their luxury and greed are humans without spaces to exist and survive. There cannot be a system built around housing as survival and at the same time excluding portions of the community from that staple. We can point to resiliency and tenacity as the reason that folks will not stop with their resistance, and it’s true. But even further there is a guarantee that folks shut out from access to resources will exist as an interruption to the facade of success and pleasures of folks having much, due to the fact that they simply have nowhere else to go.


by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down
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Lessons from #RiseUp4Rojava for the Anti-War Struggles to Come: A Strategic Proposal

A look at autonomous anti-war struggles and interventions in the recent past and how they could inform a struggle against the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

photo: @alloutbay

With a ground war between Russia and Ukraine now playing out in real time, anti-authoritarians in the U.S. will have to decide what is the best form of participation to take within a broader anti-war struggle. This document is one strategic proposal for possible participation and intervention.

Lessons from #RiseUp4Rojava

A recent analogous comparison to this potential anti-war movement are the actions which took place in 2019 under the banner of #riseup4rojava. In this case, anti-authoritarians along with members of the Kurdish Diaspora were the main participants. This was not a mass movement like the anti-Iraq War protests were. The movements high points were shutting down Turkish Airlines in San Francisco (3) and blockading railroad tracks that were in connection to a war profiteering company in Atlanta (1). There were also dignified marches mostly made up of members of the Kurdish Diaspora and anti-authoritarians (2). Lastly there were banner drops, pickets, and other smaller interventions.

One aspect to any possible anti-war movement regarding Ukraine and Russia that will not be analogous to #riseup4rojava is that there will certainty be the presence of authoritarian communists, some of whom will be members of various authoritarian communist sects (these people will be referred to as Tankies for the rest of this piece) as well as some fascists. This wasn’t the case in #riseup4rojava because U.S. based Tankies by and large supported the Assad regime in Syria and fascists would find the Rojava Revolution anathema due to its struggle being explicitly antifascist, feminist, and liberatory.

Tankies and fascists were both present in the January 2020 protests against a possible war between the U.S. and Iran. While on the surface, many American fascists present themselves as paleoconservatives with an isolationist foreign policy, at their core, they hope to wield state violence to create a global “white hegemony,” and are willing to resort to genocide and ethnic cleansing to achieve this goal. On the situation in the Ukraine, the fascists will be split, as some will side with Ukraine and some side with Russia, thus potentially diluting any effect they could have on the anti-war movement. The Tankies on the other hand, participate in anti-war movements out of leftover Cold War allegiances to various countries (including Russia) and placing opposition to US imperialism above all else.

Members of the Ukrainian Diaspora will be a subgroup of the broader population that will most likely mobilize in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. In this respect, the Ukrainian Diaspora is comparable to the Kurdish Diaspora during #riseup4rojava. Other Eastern European diasporic groups, such as Moldovans and peoples from the Baltic states, may also decide to hit the streets.

Dealing with Fascists and Tankies

The fascists should be given no space to operate within any anti-war movement. An excellent flyer for dealing with fascists present at anti-war protests was made by Atlanta Antifascists during the no war with Iran protests (6). Fascists were also ejected from an anti-war demonstration in Pittsburgh around the same time (7). Similar efforts should be made at protests against the Russia invasion of Ukraine. Ideally, an anti-war movement that utilizes direct action will emerge and this will also push fascists out.

Tankies will attempt to use their front groups, such as ANSWER, to call for anti-war rallies and protests. These will probably only be attended by people in or adjacent to the existing activist Left. Those within the ethnic Ukrainian community and other eastern Europeans will almost certainly not attend these protests or leave in disgust due to the Tankies allegiance to Russia and for use of communist imagery. There is little likelihood these protests will be a space for direct action or fierce protests.

Best Forms of Participation

Anti-authoritarians should seek to work with and mobilize alongside the wider Ukrainian community. This strategy worked and was useful during #riseup4rojava (2). This will allow us to build lasting relationships and also build capacity for numbers on the streets.

We should however not expect a huge mass movement immediately to be the form that an anti-war movement takes. Anti-authoritarians are often unable to consciously start mass movements but we can participate in them when they occur. Based on the amount of energy and participants there have been in anti-war demonstrations after the invasion of Iraq, we should not expect crowds numbering in the thousands unless the U.S. committed to or made moves towards significant numbers of troops on the ground in Ukraine.

Rallies only consisting of speeches filled with platitudes, marching in circles, and chanting outside of empty buildings is not a winning strategy. We should leave these symbolic protests that only leave people feeling disempowered to the Tankies and NGO’s. We need to push for direct action, blockades, and fierce demonstrations.

In 2021, mass protests against Israeli state aggression towards Palestinians swept the world (9). While the vast majority of actions consisted of symbolic protests, in Ontario, hundreds of people blockaded railroad tracks for several hours (10) and in Oakland and in other cities, people blockaded the unloading of Israeli goods at key ports.

The actions undertaken in solidarity with the Rojavan revolution over the past few years offer us examples of what is possible even if thousands aren’t on the streets, as do actions in solidarity with Palestinians show us what can be done in the midst of a mass movement dominated by largely scripted demonstrations. If we are willing to reach out to other communities in struggle and build real relationships, we can continue to organize and carry out actions that have a real impact on the war machine, while also mobilizing to support refugees, ejecting authoritarians of all stripes from movement spaces, and promoting a liberatory perspective on the unfolding conflict. Lastly, if a mass movement does arise against the war, we must participate and push the struggle to its limits.

Conclusion

Hopefully war will be avoided and this text will only be useful as a proposal for future anti-war endeavors. As the 21st Century unfolds, nation states and the goons that control them will seek to use war as a means to ‘stabilize’ their domestic populations, while capitalists will be all too happy to reap the profits from being merchants of death. Anti-authoritarians will have to play a role in stopping these sort of conflicts while simultaneously pushing for new horizons with liberatory potential.

Links:

6. Informational Flyer on dealing with fascists at antiwar demonstrations: https://twitter.com/afainatl/status/1215089677348278273/photo/1  
7. Fascists being ejected from an antiwar demonstration in Pittsburgh in January 2020: https://twitter.com/MikeElk/status/1213521498763415553 
10. Railroad Blockade in Ontario in Solidarity with Palestine: https://itsgoingdown.org/railroad-blockaded-in-ontario-block-the-boat/ 
11. Liaisons 1 Chapter A Very Long Winter: https://en.liaisonshq.com/in-the-name-of-the-people/ 

by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down
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New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)


Watch on YouTube here: Vigil for Jahmari Rice, Son of Activist Cortez Rice
Via Christian Gasper
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Sunday, February 27, 2022

‘Russian Propaganda’ Is The Latest Excuse To Expand Censorship

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“I’m concerned about Russian disinformation spreading online, so today I wrote to the CEOs of major tech companies to ask them to restrict the spread of Russian propaganda,” US Senator Mark Warner tweeted on Friday.

Since then YouTube has announced that it has suppressed videos by Russian state media channels so that they’ll be seen by fewer people in accordance with its openly acknowledged policy of algorithmically censoring unauthorized content, as well as de-monetizing all such videos on the platform. Google and Facebook/Instagram parent company Meta both banned Russian state media from running ads and monetizing on their platforms in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Twitter announced a pause on ads in both Russia and Ukraine.

“Glad to see action from tech companies to reign in Russian propaganda and disinformation after my letter to their CEOs yesterday,” Warner tweeted on Saturday. “These are important first steps, but I’ll keep pushing for more.”

For years US lawmakers have been using threats of profit-destroying consequences to pressure Silicon Valley companies into limiting online speech in a way that aligns with the interests of Washington, effectively creating a system of government censorship by proxy. It would appear that we’re seeing a new expansion of this phenomenon today.

And the imperial media are pushing for more. Articles and news segments warning of the sinister threat posed by Russian propaganda to misinform and divide western populations using the internet are being churned out at a rate that’s only likely to increase as this latest narrative management campaign gets into full gear. The Associated Press has a new article out for example titled “War via TikTok: Russia’s new tool for propaganda machine“.

“Armies of trolls and bots stir up anti-Ukrainian sentiment. State-controlled media outlets look to divide Western audiences. Clever TikTok videos serve up Russian nationalism with a side of humor,” AP warns.

“Analysts at several different research organizations contacted by The Associated Press said they are seeing a sharp increase in online activity by groups affiliated with the Russian state,” AP writes. “That’s in keeping with Russia’s strategy of using social media and state-run outlets to galvanize domestic support while seeking to destabilize the Western alliance.”

The “different research organizations” AP ends up citing include “Cyabra, an Israeli tech company that works to detect disinformation,” as well as the state-funded NATO narrative management firm The Atlantic Council.

As tends to happen whenever a consensus begins to form that a certain category of speech must be purged from the internet, imperial spinmeisters are already working to expand the definition of “Russian propaganda” which must be purged from the internet to include independent anti-imperialist commentators like myself.

Imperial narrative manager Robert Potter has a thread on Twitter currently calling for me and other anti-imperialist content creators to be labeled “State-Affiliated Media” on Twitter and ideally de-platformed across all western social media, in my case solely because RT is one of the many outlets who occasionally choose to republish some of my blog posts for free.

I am not as Potter claims “an OP Ed columnist for Russia Today.” I don’t work for RT, I don’t write for RT, I don’t submit articles to RT, and I’ve never been paid by RT or the Russian government. RT is just one of the outlets who sometimes avail themselves of my longstanding invitation for anyone who wants to to republish my work free of charge. That RT editors would find my daily rants against western imperialism agreeable is not scandalous or conspiratorial but normal and self-evident.

Yet for agents of imperial narrative control like Potter (who ironically works directly for the US State Department but thinks my posts should be labeled “State-Affiliated Media” by Twitter), even this is enough to justify complete silencing. I will not be in the slightest bit surprised to see a great deal more of these efforts as the new cold war continues to escalate.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, an empire-loyal NGO ostensibly focused primarily on fighting racism and prejudice, has published a report accusing Facebook of failing to label Russian propaganda as such 91 percent of the times it occurs. The CCDH decried Mark Zuckerberg’s “failure to stop Facebook being weaponized by the Russian state”.

This sudden narrative management thrust has also seen RT taken off the air in nations like Australia, Germany and Poland, with pressures mounting in France and the UK to follow suit.

This despite the fact that all western powers would have to do to eliminate RT completely is simply start allowing leftist and anti-imperialist voices to be heard on mainstream media platforms. It would immediately suck up RT’s entire foreign audience as people who’d previously needed to look outside the mainstream for sane perspectives gravitate toward media made with much better funding and a higher level of talent.

But of course we all know that’s never going to happen. The imperial media aren’t going to subvert RT by platforming voices who dispute the empire’s narratives no matter how badly they hate it, because the exact reason they hate RT is because it disputes the empire’s narratives. They’re not worried about Russian propaganda operations, they’re worried about someone else running interference on their own propaganda operations.

RT’s audience makes up about 0.04% of TV viewing in the UK. This isn’t about RT, it’s about the the agenda to continually expand and normalize the censorship of unauthorized speech. That’s what it was about when they were pretending it was about the need to fight Covid misinformation before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to fight domestic US extremism before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to defend election security before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to fight Russian propaganda the first time before that one cycled back around again.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Humans are storytelling creatures, so whoever can control the stories the humans are telling themselves about what’s going on in the world has a great deal of control over the humans. Our mental chatter tends to dominate such a large percentage of our existence that if it can be controlled the controller can exert a tremendous amount of influence over the way we think, act, and vote.

The powerful understand this, while the general public mostly does not. That’s all we’ve been seeing in these attempts to regulate ideas and information as human communication becomes more and more rapid and networked. An entire oligarchic empire is built on the ability to prevent us from realizing at mass scale that that empire does not serve us and inflicts great evil upon our world. The question of whether our species can awaken to its highest potential or not boils down to whether our dominators will succeed in locking down our minds, or if we will find some way to break free.

_____________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. 

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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/02/27/russian-propaganda-is-the-latest-excuse-to-expand-censorship/
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Saturday, February 26, 2022

Civilized Nations Kill With Sanctions And Proxy Armies: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

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Pouring more weapons into Ukraine is not how you save lives; you save lives by negotiating a ceasefire. Pouring more weapons into Ukraine is how you create a long and expensive military quagmire for Russia at the cost of many thousands of lives to advance US strategic interests. While making a vast fortune for the arms industry.

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Issuing a guarantee that you would never add a nation to NATO who you don’t plan on adding anyway is a no-brainer when the alternative is mass military butchery.

I mean, unless your goal was to provoke mass military butchery.

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If the Kremlin wanted to kill large numbers of people it should have done so with starvation sanctions and proxy militias like a civilized government.

Fashion has moved on since the early 2000s, you savages.

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You’re not allowed to talk about the known US/NATO/Ukraine actions which experts have been warning for many years would lead us to where we’re at. You’re only allowed to say Putin attacked Ukraine completely unprovoked, in a vacuum, solely because he is evil and hates freedom.

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Only talking about the guilt of the invader and not the things that were done to provoke that invasion is exactly what I’d want people to be doing if I’d just provoked an invasion.

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Believe it or not it’s actually always completely legitimate to criticize the actions of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, especially when those actions clearly paved the way to a war.

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The fact that western media cover Ukraine in a wildly different way from US-led wars is actually immensely important and points to a problem that urgently need attention. Anyone who takes issue with that should shut the fuck up and stop interrupting adult conversations.

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Literally every single time I say NATO powers paved the way to the Ukraine invasion I get some liberal claiming that’s like asking what a rape victim was wearing. No, actually, victim blaming a rape survivor is not at all like criticizing the most powerful and deadly power structure in the world.

Liberals have been bleating this line ad nauseum for days, and it’s about the most obnoxious and most shitlib thing you could possibly come up with.

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Empire apologists always try to distort power dynamics to make it seem like they’re the brave up-punchers sticking up for the little guy. It’s tiny Ukraine against big bad Russia, not Russia against a globe-dominating empire of which Ukraine is just one member state. It’s the brave freedom fighters of Syria versus Assad, not Assad against a planetary unipolar hegemon using proxy forces to effect regime change. It’s Israel against the big strong Muslim nations which surround it, not an entire empire of which Israel is just one member state picking on far weaker powers. Etc.

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For years anti-imperialists have been calling for detente and warning that all this cold war brinkmanship with Russia could lead to hot war. Now hot war is here as a direct result of refusing to pursue detente and they’re trying to act like we’re the assholes.

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Gonna be real fun when the consensus that it’s fine for government-tied Silicon Valley corporations to censor online speech in the fight against “misinformation” moves from targeting Covid skeptics to targeting people who disagree with mainstream cold war narratives about Russia.

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The solution to a crisis that was created by brinkmanship is not more brinkmanship. The solution to a crisis that was created by brinkmanship is detente.

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Saying the US government is still a far worse offender in the mass military slaughter department than Russia will be met with hysterical shrieking and the rending of garments now, but it’s still indisputably true and if you disagree with it it’s because you’re propagandized.

That the US is the most murderous government in today’s world is just an easily quantifiable fact. Putin will have to work very, very hard to catch up to those numbers. This is important to note not because of some genocidal dick measuring contest, but because it points to what a healthy attitude toward US military butchery would look like through eyes untinted by propaganda manipulation.

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Theoretically the actual US/NATO military decision makers know imposing a no fly zone over Kyiv would be insane, since it’s a one-way ticket to another world war; probably a very fast and radioactive one. But the fact that so much of the official US political/media class has been calling for one discredits it forever.

They sincerely don’t seem to understand what it is that would be stopping the Russian planes from flying under such a scenario. They think it’s like a rule you make and then the Russians go “Aww shucks I wanted to fly there but it’s against the rules now.”

This is the only appropriate level of response to this madness:

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Obviously anyone who had anything whatsoever to do with supporting the Iraq invasion should shut the whole entire fuck up about Ukraine for all eternity.

Don’t let people act like Iraq is some distant memory. It happened 19 years ago. The Simpsons stopped making good episodes longer ago than that. It just happened, the consequences are still unfolding, the occupation is still ongoing, and they’re still using the same old tricks.

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Hollywood teaches us that heroism looks like an individual stopping a bank robbery or leaving a criminal tied up outside the police station so we don’t realize that real heroism looks like a collective rising up against our plutocratic rulers and creating a healthy world.

________________________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. 

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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/02/26/civilized-nations-kill-with-sanctions-and-proxy-armies-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
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Portland Mobilizes to Defend Fallout Camp from Sweeps; Provide Mutual Aid to Houseless Community

Report on ongoing defense of Fallout Camp in so-called Portland, Oregon from the PDX Houseless Radicals Collective.

photo: @PDXHRC

On Thursday, February 17th, park rangers and Portland police showed up to the PDX Houseless Radicals Collective’s Fallout Camp on Park’s land in southeast Portland, Oregon.  Their intended eviction of the camp was prevented by the presence of several comrades who were there in support. They promised to return in force the following Tuesday.

Organizing for a sweep defense started ramping up that weekend. A community potluck was called for that Sunday at Fallout Camp, where a meeting was held discussing strategy. A public-facing campaign combined with a civil disobedience-style sweep defense was the chosen strategy. A phone zap flyer and a petition began to circulate online, and support was gathered through social media and word-of-mouth. By 7am on Tuesday, February 22nd, we were gathered at the locked gate blocking the steep road leading up into the park, anticipating the arrival of park rangers and police.

The turnout was strong and a festive atmosphere prevailed as people awaited the arrival of the police. Impromptu kazoo concerts sprang up (someone had arrived with a big bag of kazoos) and a trash cleanup in front of the gate filled a dozen trash bags. Antifascist and anarchist flags fluttered in the cold morning air as people huddled around a campfire to keep warm. A local donation-based kitchen provided food.

The cops never showed up. Perhaps because of the aggressive online flyering, or maybe because of the impressive numbers on the ground. PDXHRC has organized sweep defenses before, and has frequently seen cops not show up for months once that happens. Maybe a strategy of broad sweep deterrence, with many more defense campaigns, could be effective.

Before people started heading home in the early afternoon, they were encouraged to call up the parks offices and leave their opinion on the planned sweep. Houseless comrades in Portland face constant police harassment and a recent directive by the Mayor’s office has further criminalized camping near roadways. Yet out-of-the-way, sustainable, low-impact camps such as Fallout Camp, which also serves as a community mutual aid hub, are still targeted and swept. There’s no place for people to go except for the Mayor’s planned concentration camps.

The sweep defense achieved its goals and turnout was high on short notice. Everyone is aware, however, that this is an ongoing sweep defense and camp support campaign. The stresses of living under constant threat of eviction and arrest are enormous, and began to take their toll on the campers of Fallout Camp. But solidarity means that if the city makes another move, we’ll be there in force.

We are committed to continuing our defense of Fallout Camp. We say to the city: Hands off Fallout Camp!  Stop the Sweeps!

You can call the Portland Parks & Recs office and tell them to leave Fallout Camp on Kelly Butte alone at: (503) 823-1637

And sign the petition at: chng.it/hmvFFd62SQ

Find out more about the Portland Houseless Radicals Collective at www.pdxhrc.org and @PDXHRC on Twitter


by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down
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Friday, February 25, 2022

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)


Watch on YouTube here: Minneapolis Rallies in Solidarity With Portland Shooting Victims
Via Christian Gasper
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Experts Warned For Years That NATO Expansion Would Lead To This

Chris Hedges introduces his latest article for Scheer Post, titled “Chronicle of a War Foretold“, with the following:

“After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a near universal understanding among political leaders that NATO expansion would be a foolish provocation against Russia. How naive we were to think the military-industrial complex would allow such sanity to prevail.”

Imperial narrative managers have been falling all over themselves working to dismiss and discredit the abundantly evidenced idea that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was due largely to Moscow’s fear of NATO expansion and the refusal of Washington and Kyiv to solidify a policy that Ukraine would not be added to the alliance.

Take Michael McFaul, the mass media’s go-to pundit on all things Russia:

Or New Jersey Congressman Tom Malinowski:

Or Just Security editor Ryan Goodman:

It makes sense that they would have to do this. After all, if westerners were to get it into their heads that this whole terrible war could have been avoided by simply solidifying a policy of neutrality for Ukraine and issuing a guarantee that it would never be added to NATO, they would begin asking why this did not happen. NATO powers had no interest in adding Ukraine to the alliance anyway, so it doesn’t really make sense to refuse to make such low-cost concessions if the only alternative is mass military slaughter. I mean, unless your goal was to provoke mass military slaughter to advance your own geostrategic objectives.

So they work hard to present the narrative that the invasion has nothing to do with NATO at all, and occurred solely because Putin is an evil madman who hates freedom and wants to destroy democracy. Most western analysis goes no deeper than this:

But these herculean propaganda efforts have one pretty significant plot hole: if the attack on Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO expansion, then how come so many western experts have spent years warning that NATO expansion will lead to an attack on Ukraine?

Check out this 2015 video clip by John Mearsheimer, for example:

Or this one by the late great Stephen F Cohen back in 2010:

Or this excerpt from a summary by The Nation of points made by Cohen in a 2017 dialogue with John Batchelor titled “Have 20 Years of NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer?“:

NATO promises that Georgia might one day become a member state was an underlying cause of the Georgian-Russian war of 2008, in effect a US-Russian proxy war. The result was the near ruination of Georgia. NATO remains active in Georgia today.

 

Similar NATO overtures to Ukraine also underlay the crisis in that country in 2014, which resulted in Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the still ongoing Ukrainian civil war in Donbass, and in effect another US-Russian proxy war. Meanwhile, US-backed Kiev remains in profound economic and political crisis, and Ukraine fraught with the possibility of a direct American-Russian military conflict.

Or this from Stephen M Walt in 2015:

Today, those who want to arm Ukraine are demanding that Russia cease all of its activities in Ukraine, withdraw from Crimea, and let Ukraine join the EU and/or NATO if it wants and if it meets the membership requirements. In other words, they expect Moscow to abandon its own interests in Ukraine, full stop. It would be wonderful if Western diplomacy could pull off this miracle, but how likely is it? Given Russia’s history, its proximity to Ukraine, and its long-term security concerns, it is hard to imagine Putin capitulating to our demands without a long and costly struggle that will do enormous additional damage to Ukraine.

…

The solution to this crisis is for the United States and its allies to abandon the dangerous and unnecessary goal of endless NATO expansion and do whatever it takes to convince Russia that we want Ukraine to be a neutral buffer state in perpetuity. We should then work with Russia, the EU, and the IMF to develop an economic program that puts that unfortunate country back on its feet.

Or this from George Kennan right after the US Senate approved NATO expansion all the way back in 1998:

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves… Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”

Or how about now-CIA Director William Burns’s 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

Or what the last US ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock recently wrote about the Ukraine conflict, calling it “an avoidable crisis that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense”:

In 1997, when the question of adding more members to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), I was asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In my introductory remarks, I made the following statement: “I consider the Administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.”

So many people who’ve worked hard to gain an understanding of the Russian government have been warning for years that NATO expansionism would lead to a disastrous conflict, strongly emphasising Ukraine as a powderkeg where that conflict could ignite. Yet we’re being asked to believe that what we’re seeing in Ukraine has nothing whatsoever to do with NATO expansion and is due rather to Vladimir Putin simply being a mean jerk who wants to ruin everything.

The aforementioned Michael McFaul even goes so far as to pretend this thing we were warned about for decades was never anything anyone ever mentioned until the end of last year:

Imperial spinmeisters have even gone so far as to deceitfully claim Putin makes no mention of NATO in a speech about intervening in Ukraine and citing that as evidence that he’s just a land-grabbing Hitler-like monster, hoping no one would fact check them:

When he most certainly did:

So I dunno, if experts have been warning for many years that NATO expansion would provoke an attack, and the guy launching the attack is explicitly citing NATO expansion as a driving motive for his actions, it seems like maybe it’s sorta kinda got something to do with NATO expansion.

Which would be great news, because it would mean that the US and its allies actually have a lot more power to end this war than they’ve been letting on, and no good reason not to do so immediately.

_________________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. 

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2



source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/02/25/experts-warned-for-years-that-nato-expansion-would-lead-to-this/
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