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putin's motorbike gangs...

putinoramaputinorama

Vladimir Putin wants to reclaim Russia’s former glory, and he expects the support of Russians across the globe, wherever they may live. 

A Four Corners investigation has uncovered the activities of a cluster of dedicated pro-Russian nationalist groups operating here.

Some are explicit about their mission — to wage a propaganda war to help further the Kremlin’s global agenda — prompting analysts to warn Australia that it should be paying close attention.


 Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-15/four-corners-putin-russia-influence/13139628?nw=0
   I have the feeling that this 4C episode was written by the CIA department of news  — fake news, borderline news… I mean a current affairs program spun by the department of CIA propaganda: "this is the truth, but we’ve added that the Kremlin has a global agenda…" Do you mean that Russia wants to conquer the world? Do you really think this shit? No Russia does not want to invade anything. Ah yes, it took Crimea back and has its eyes on a portion of Ukraine where the population is nearly 90 per cent Russian… But CRIMEA WAS ALWAYS RUSSIAN (since it was last taken from the Ottoman Empire, etc…). My guess would be that the Kremlin does not want to fall into the Western fold and become subservient to the USA. Is this a sin? At this stage we need to investigate the “other” side:   Opening the CIA’s Can of Worms

 Edward Curtin 

“The CIA and the media are part of the same criminal conspiracy,” wrote Douglas Valentine in his important book, The CIA As Organized Crime.

This is true.  The corporate mainstream media are stenographers for the national security state’s ongoing psychological operations aimed at the American people, just as they have done the same for an international audience.  

We have long been subjected to this “information warfare,” whose purpose is to win the hearts and minds of the American people and pacify them into victims of their own complicity, just as it was practiced long ago by the CIA in Vietnam and by The New York Times, CBS, etc. on the American people then and over the years as the American warfare state waged endless wars, coups, false flag operations, and assassinations at home and abroad.

Another way of putting this is to say for all practical purposes when it comes to matters that bear on important foreign and domestic matters, the CIA and the corporate mainstream media cannot be distinguished.

For those who read and study history, it has long been known that the CIA has placed their operatives throughout every agency of the U.S. government, as explained by Fletcher Prouty in The Secret Team; that CIA officers Cord Myer and Frank Wisner operated secret programs to get some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom among intellectuals, journalists, and writers to be their voices for unfreedom and censorship, as explained by Frances Stonor Saunders in The Cultural Cold War and Joel Whitney in Finks, among others; that Cord Myer was especially focused on and successful in “courting the Compatible Left” since right wingers were already in the Agency’s pocket. 

All this is documented and not disputed.  It is shocking only to those who don’t do their homework and see what is happening today outside a broad historical context.

With the rise of alternate media and a wide array of dissenting voices on the internet, the establishment felt threatened and went on the defensive. It, therefore, should come as no surprise that those same elite corporate media are now leading the charge for increased censorship and the denial of free speech to those they deem dangerous, whether that involves wars, rigged elections, foreign coups, COVID-19, vaccinations, or the lies of the corporate media themselves. 

Having already banned critics from writing in their pages and or talking on their screens, these media giants want to make the quieting of dissenting voices complete.

Just the other day The New York Times had this headline: 

 

Robert Kennedy Jr. Barred From Instagram Over False Virus Claims.

 

Notice the lack of the word alleged before “false virus claims.”  This is guilt by headline.  It is a perfect piece of propaganda posing as reporting, since it accuses Kennedy, a brilliant and honorable man, of falsity and stupidity, thus justifying Instagram’s ban, and it is an inducement to further censorship of Mr. Kennedy by Facebook, Instagram’s parent company.

 

That ban should follow soon, as the Times’ reporter Jennifer Jett hopes, since she accusingly writes that RFK, Jr. “makes many of the same baseless claims to more than 300,000 followers” at Facebook. Jett made sure her report also went to msn.com and The Boston Globe.

This is one example of the censorship underway with much, much more to follow.  What was once done under the cover of omission is now done openly and brazenly, cheered on by those who, in an act of bad faith, claim to be upholders of the First Amendment and the importance of free debate in a democracy. We are quickly slipping into an unreal totalitarian social order.

Which brings me to the recent work of Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, both of whom have strongly and rightly decried this censorship. As I understand their arguments, they go like this.

First, the corporate media have today divided up the territory and speak only to their own audiences in echo chambers: liberal to liberals (read: the “allegedly” liberal Democratic Party), such as The New York Times, NBC, etc., and conservative to conservatives (read” the “allegedly” conservative Donald Trump), such as Fox News, Breitbart, etc.  

They have abandoned old school journalism that, despite its shortcomings, involved objectivity and the reporting of disparate facts and perspectives, but within limits. Since the digitization of news, their new business models are geared to these separate audiences since they are highly lucrative choices. It’s business-driven since electronic media have replaced paper as advertising revenues have shifted and people’s ability to focus on complicated issues has diminished drastically.

Old school journalism is suffering as a result and thus writers such as Greenwald and Taibbi and Chris Hedges (who interviewed Taibbi and concurs: part one here) have taken their work to the internet to escape such restrictive categories and the accompanying censorship.

Secondly, the great call for censorship is not something the Silicon Valley companies want because they want more people using their media since it means more money for them, but they are being pressured to do it by the traditional old school media, such as The New York Times, who now employ “tattletales and censors,” people who are power-hungry jerks, to sniff out dissenting voices that they can recommend should be banned. 

Greenwald says, 

 

They do it in part for power: to ensure nobody but they can control the flow of information. They do it partly for ideology and out of hubris: the belief that their worldview is so indisputably right that all dissent is inherently dangerous ‘disinformation.’”

 

Thus, the old school print and television media are not on the same page as Facebook, Twitter, etc. but have opposing agendas.

In short, these shifts and the censorship are about money and power within the media world as the business has been transformed by the digital revolution.

I think this is a half-truth that conceals a larger issue. The censorship is not being driven by power-hungry reporters at the Times or CNN or any media outlet. All these media and their employees are but the outer layer of the onion, the means by which messages are sent and people controlled.  

These companies and their employees do what they are told, whether explicitly or implicitly, for they know it is in their financial interest to do so.  If they do not play their part in this twisted and intricate propaganda game, they will suffer. They will be eliminated, as are pesky individuals who dare peel the onion to its core.

For each media company is one part of a large interconnected intelligence apparatus – a system, a complex – whose purpose is power, wealth, and domination for the very few at the expense of the many.  The CIA and media as parts of the same criminal conspiracy.

To argue that the Silicon valley companies do not want to censor but are being pressured by the legacy corporate media does not make sense.  These companies are deeply connected to U.S. intelligence agencies, as are the NY Times, CNN, NBC, etc.  They too are part of what was once called Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s program to control, use, and infiltrate the media.  Only the most naïve would think that such a program does not exist today.

In Surveillance Valley, investigative reporter Yasha Levine documents how Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google are tied to the military-industrial-intelligence-media complex in surveillance and censorship; how the Internet was created by the Pentagon; and even how these shadowy players are deeply involved in the so-called privacy movement that developed after Edward Snowden’s revelations. 

Like Valentine, and in very detailed ways, Levine shows how the military-industrial-intelligence-digital-media complex is part of the same criminal conspiracy as is the traditional media with their CIA overlords. It is one club.

Many people, however, might find this hard to believe because it bursts so many bubbles, including the one that claims that these tech companies are pressured into censorship by the likes of The New York Times, etc.  The truth is the Internet was a military and intelligence tool from the very beginning and it is not the traditional corporate media that gives it its marching orders.

 Read more: https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/14/opening-the-cias-can-of-worms/   Read also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33845

brown nosing a bit too much...


Australian sovereignty: not in our hands, and not in safe hands

By BRUCE HAIGH | On 15 February 2021

 

We hitch our wagon to a nation that is bereft of influence and respect, deploys its considerable military arsenal in a display of strength it vainly hopes will broker influence; naked power as a substitute for diplomacy. It has ever been thus.

Since World War II Australia has progressively ceded its sovereignty to the United States. The process was hastened by John Howard, who had little sense of national independence. Australia is now tied to a state suffering economic decline, a collapse in political consensus that may turn violent and diminishing international influence. In order to maintain supremacy, America has decided to confront rather than co-operate with China. And Australia is allowing itself to be dragged along behind the back of the truck.

Stand back and take a look at what is happening in America.

A movement with strong links to the Republican Party, supported by Trump and White Supremacists, stormed the Capital and the 117th Congress on 6 January with the intent of overturning Biden’s inauguration. It was violent, it was bloody and it challenged the very basis of American democracy.

There is an armed Right-Wing movement of Proud Boys, QAnon, Fascists and other crazies in America spoiling for a fight. A fight they hope will see an end to the democratic institutions they loath. The Republican Party is providing political cover. Many in America’s armed services and police forces secretly support the objectives of the movement.

As the Black Lives Matter protests demonstrated, America is a deeply divided country, in economic decline, with an uncontained Covid-19 pandemic and 300 million weapons in private hands. It is a volcano ready to blow.

Bereft of influence and respect, America deploys its considerable military arsenal in a display of strength it vainly hopes will broker influence; naked power as a substitute for diplomacy. It has ever been thus. Since the end of WWII America has used the threat of atomic weapons and military aggression in attempts to bring about outcomes favourable to its own interests.

However, the prosecution of war by America in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan failed to bring about intended outcomes. Only the ‘secret’ CIA war supporting the Mujahidin in Afghanistan against the Russians might be seen as a success. However, it gave false confidence for a conventional war in Iraq and later in Afghanistan against the elusive Taliban, a war that mirrored the failed Russian occupation of Afghanistan. And it resembled the losing war the Americans fought in Viet Nam. The lessons of war are problematic in American political and defence institutions.

America sees China as a strategic rival and trade threat. Rather than seek creative and productive co-operation it seeks containment. In so doing it has sought to conscript regional countries to its narrow and negative narrative. It is the same strategy it employed with respect to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It seeks legitimacy and support for dubious undertakings and attempting to isolate and demonise China is a dubious undertaking.

However, it is one that Canberra has swallowed hook, line and sinker, together with right-wing academics, so-called think tanks, such as the so-called Australian Strategic Policy Institute, funded by US arms manufacturers and agencies, and journalists such as Hartcher, Bagshaw and Sheridan.

The past eight months, faced with the need to negotiate with China over the loss of trade, Morrison, briefed by ASPI and the Institute for Public Affairs, has said Australia will not concede sovereignty in the face of bullying by a foreign power.

Morrison, who has a limited grasp of history and current affairs, appears unaware that we have little or no sovereignty. Much was ceded to the United States by John Howard, who took us to war in Iraq on the basis of a conversation with President Bush. No debate on going to war was undertaken in the Australian Parliament. So much for sovereignty.

Pine Gap completely compromises our sovereignty and has done so for 50 years.  But would the sneering LNP boys of Parliament House, Tim Wilson, James Paterson, Dave Sharma et al, go to war with the United States against China in the event of an ‘incident’ concerning Taiwan? Would they bypass Parliamentary consideration of an armed Australian deployment? And, given their ages, would they volunteer? John Howard, although in the right age bracket, did not volunteer for Vietnam despite his strong support for the war. He followed in the footsteps of his hero Menzies, who refused to volunteer for service in World War I despite his support for the war.

The LNP with its fawning and unquestioning ‘loyalty’ to the USA long ago ceded Australian sovereignty. Can anyone imagine the LNP saying no to the US?

Several US Senators complained to Howard that the Australian Wheat Board gave bribes to Saddam Hussein. Howard was mortified. He busted the AWB and in the process lost the best tool Australia had for negotiating wheat deals. It later transpired that the Senators were acting to marginalize the AWB and Australian wheat markets which America quickly moved to secure. Howard was a craven fool, but we know that. The purchase of the F35 further attests to that; a deal he stitched up on the back of an envelope in Washington.

True to LNP form Morrison did the same with respect to China. Trump got him to bad mouth Xi Jinping, China slapped on trade sanctions and the US stepped in to pick up our lost markets.

The new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has shown he is not averse to China-bashing along with National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan. Biden rhetoric will be more moderate toward China but US policies will remain unchanged. The US sees China as a threat to its supremacy and the US military and industrial complex is keen to sell arms.

The US is the biggest threat to US supremacy, look at what Trump and his supporters stand for and the fact that the Republican Party have gone along with a significant move to the right which increasingly looks like the path to Fascism.

Australia, it seems, is determined to sink with the USA; a country, as noted, divided and in crisis; a country with diminished international respect. Like a dog who never learns Australia has got itself excited about something called the Quad, a dialogue that has been revised into an alliance between Australia, the US, Japan and India; so-called regional heavyweights, in an arrangement designed to confront and contain China. It won’t hold together, it won’t work. Has anyone thought to ask regional states what they think of the Quad? Is it assumed regional states will fall into line? They won’t, why should they?

Australia has lost face and standing in the region over the bungled handling of its relationship with China. It is seen as inept, particularly by Viet Nam which is hard-headed, adroit and cleverly diplomatic in successfully managing its difficult relationship with China.

Does Australia want to keep its sovereignty eggs in the American basket? Under the circumstances, it would not seem wise. The rampaging mob on Capitol Hill have significantly lowered the value of the American shareholding. There are 20 or 30 million people in America who support what Trump stands for. White, right-wing and angry. How will Biden contain that, let alone bring them onside?

What has Australia gained from the gift of Australian sovereignty to the US?

Just as they are spoiling for a fight internally, they are spoiling for a fight with China. They are conjuring up the bile and racism that was mustered against Viet Nam and China by the earlier, tamer American Right, to initially push and then sustain the US involvement in the Viet Nam war.

America is a frustrated and angry country. It is ready to lash out, perhaps use an outside threat to bring about internal unity, maybe in the mistaken belief that the mob and moderates will unite around the star-spangled banner, with the threat of communism a common cause.

Time to rescue those eggs and, with them, Australian self-respect and pride.

 

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/australian-sovereignty-not-in-our-hands-and-not-in-safe-hands/

 

putin is satan incarnate...

 

Ms Pevchikh and her investigations unit are already planning their next expose. 

"We are of course affected by the fact that Alexei has been put in prison. It's not nice, it's not good. We prefer to work when he's around," she said.

"But it's not going to stop us from doing what we're doing and it's not going to make our work less noticeable or less effective." 

For now, she takes some sense of satisfaction that her team's investigations are making life more difficult for Vladimir Putin. 

 

"He definitely cannot live [at the palace] now," she said. "And I think this is probably why he is most upset with us."

 

 

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-16/maria-pevchikh-vladimir-putin-alexei-navalny/13150492

 

 

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Are these people — and the ABC — working for the CIA fiction department? Question: do you think that if Putin wanted to get rid of Navalny, he would have "his goons" botch up the process of killing him, let him go to Germany and let him come back to Russia, with a threat of placing Navalny in prison because Navalny is a crook? Like they did botch up the (fake) poisoning of the Skripals, which we have not heard of since that time and that none of the timeline as exposed by MI6 made any sense?

 

Anything, any story, to get Putin out of the way of the American world machine is going to be worth a try... And Merkel is said to have botched up the response to Covid-19, but if you know how the world game is being played, you will understand how the CIA gets its way around the world. It's called DISINFORMATION, PROPAGANDA through outlets like the Murdoch press, the ABC (remember when some ABC journalist — who will remain nameless here — was given an exclusive interview in regard to Saddam weapons of mass destruction on a secret location, etc) and the "liberal" media because we don't like Putin.

 

Putin cares far more about Russia and the Russian people than Joe Biden cares about ordinary Americans. Yes Joe Biden cares about AMERICA's hegemony and its goons. Our own Morrison cares only about protecting his bullshit. Anything to distract from finding reality is bonuses. Saying Putin poisoned Navalny is like saying Trump is a Venusian. We are prepared to believe anything because we've been primed to believe in god and Jesus bullshit... Wake up, you people...

 

 

 

Why is ASSANGE still in prison? Please...

cold war remnants?...

In a village in the Indian Himalayas, generations of residents have believed that nuclear devices lie buried under the snow and rocks in the towering mountains above.

So when Raini got hit by a huge flood earlier in February, villagers panicked and rumours flew that the devices had "exploded" and triggered the deluge. In reality, scientists believe, a piece of broken glacier was responsible for the flooding in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, in which more than 50 people have died. 

But tell that to the people of Raini - the farming mountain village with 250 households - and many don't quite believe you. "We think that the devices could have played a role. How can a glacier simply break off in winter? We think the government should investigate and find the devices," Sangram Singh Rawat, the headman of Raini, told me.

At the heart of their fears is an intriguing tale of high-altitude espionage, involving some of the world's top climbers, radioactive material to run electronic spy systems, and spooks. 

It is a story about how the US collaborated with India in the 1960s to place nuclear-powered monitoring devices across the Himalayas to spy on Chinese nuclear tests and missile firings. China had detonated its first nuclear device in 1964. 

"Cold War paranoia was at its height. No plan was too outlandish, no investment too great and no means unjustified," notes Pete Takeda, a contributing editor at US's Rock and Ice Magazine, who has written extensively on the subject.

In October 1965, a group of Indian and American climbers lugged up seven plutonium capsules along with surveillance equipment - weighing some 57kgs (125 pounds) - which were meant to be placed on top of the 7,816-metre (25,643-ft) Nanda Devi, India's second highest peak, and near India's north-eastern border with China. 

A blizzard forced the climbers to abandon the climb well short of the peak. As they scampered down, they left behind the devices - a six-foot-long antenna, two radio communication sets, a power pack, and the plutonium capsules - on a "platform". 

One magazine reported that they were left in a "sheltered cranny" on a mountainside which was sheltered by the wind. "We had to come down. Otherwise many climbers would have been killed," Manmohan Singh Kohli, a celebrated climber who worked for the main border patrol organisation and led the Indian team, said.

When the climbers returned to the mountain next spring to look for the device and haul it back to the peak, they had vanished.


More than half a century later and after a number of hunting expeditions to Nanda Devi, nobody knows what happened to the capsules.

"To this day, the lost plutonium likely lies in a glacier, perhaps being pulverised to dust, creeping towards the headwaters of the Ganges," wrote Mr Takeda. 

This could well be an exaggeration, say scientists. Plutonium is the main ingredient of an atomic bomb. But plutonium batteries use a different isotope (a variant of a chemical element) called plutonium-238, which has a half-life (the amount of time taken for one-half of a radioactive isotope to decay) of 88 years. 

What survives are the stories of a fascinating expedition. 

In his book Nanda Devi: A Journey to the Last Sanctuary, British travel writer Hugh Thompson recounts how the American climbers were asked to use an Indian sun tan lotion to darken their skins so that they didn't evoke suspicion among locals; and how the climbers were told to pretend that they were on a "high altitude programme" to study the effects of low oxygen on their bodies. The porters who carried up the nuclear luggage were told it was a "treasure of some sort, possibly gold". 

Before that, the climbers, reported Outside, an American magazine, were taken to Harvey Point, a CIA base in North Carolina, for a crash course in "nuclear espionage". There, a climber told the magazine, that "after a while, we spent most of our time playing volleyball and doing some serious drinking".

 

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56102459

 

 

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