The U.K. government has poured over £25 million into private “counter-disinformation” organisations since January 2018 and four of these are directed by people linked to the British or U.S. foreign policy establishment.

Yet, while publishing information deriving from these groups, much of it on the Ukraine war, media outlets are failing to inform their readers of these organisations’ ties to the U.K. government.

The latest issue of the French edition of Playboy, which features the country’s citizenship minister Marlene Schiappa on its cover, sold out its initial run of 100,000 copies just hours after hitting newsstands on Monday, its publisher Jean-Christophe Florentin told media.

The magazine typically sells just 30,000 issues a month, Florentin told FranceInfo. An additional 60,000 are going to the presses to satisfy public demand, he added.

The interest in this particular issue is being put down to a wide-ranging interview the minister gives in the magazine regarding women’s and LGBTQ rights. Its popularity is also considered a public riposte to opposition from Paris’ political infrastructure to her appearance in the infamous publication – including from the country’s Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.

In facing the great challenge of our time, a super-state resident in continental Asia and an itinerant naval power seeking to maintain primacy – the foreign minister was unable to nominate a single piece of strategic statecraft by Australia that would attempt a solution for both powers. 

Paul Keating’s response to Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s speech at the National Press Club, 17 April 2023.

I never expected more than platitudes from Penny Wong’s press club speech and as it turned out, I was not disappointed.

In facing the great challenge of our time, a super-state resident in continental Asia and an itinerant naval power seeking to maintain primacy – the foreign minister was unable to nominate a single piece of strategic statecraft by Australia that would attempt a solution for both powers.

The role of the US dollar as the world reserve currency could diminish due to Washington using its leverage over the global financial system to pursue its geopolitical goals through sanctions, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen has admitted. However, there is no obvious candidate to is replace it, she insisted.

Yellen was asked during an interview on Sunday by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria about the efficiency of the anti-Russia sanctions and about Washington’s track record of what he described as the “weaponization of the dollar.”

Zakaria cited recent statements by Brazil’s President Lula da Silva and other politicians about the risk of dependency on the US currency. He asked whether the present time would be remembered as the moment when “the dollar’s hegemony and its status as a reserve currency began to falter.”

Billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk has claimed he was shocked to find out the true scale of US government involvement and access to Twitter communications when he purchased and took full control over the social media giant last year.

“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,” Musk told Fox News host Tucker Carlson, claiming he “was not aware of that” until he eventually purchased Twitter for $44 billion last October.

Chaim Topol, the late, award-winning actor who starred in such films as ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and ‘For Your Eyes Only’, lived a double life as an agent for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, his family has claimed in an interview with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.

Topol, who died in Tel Aviv last month at the age of 87, was one of Israel’s most respected cultural figures – but this was, according to several members of his family, balanced with a life of conducting clandestine operations on behalf of his country’s intelligence services in London.

“I don’t know exactly what the appropriate definition is for the missions and duties he performed,”his son Omer, 61, told Haaretz. “But what is clear is that Dad was involved in secret missions on behalf of Mossad.” 

Our Russian friends cling, like pubic crabs, to international rights and treaties, more than reason. The Russian do nothing if the universal legal framework does not allow it. In a normal world where everyone respects conventions and common charters, this very fussy behaviour is normal if not commendable. However, Russia’s declared enemy is devious. As soon as international law does not serve the ambitions of the United States, America squashes it. The observation of American actions for the past 78 years certainly proves it. Uncle Sam is just a serial killer with well-identified parasitic tendencies. Its hegemonic desire is no secret to anyone. Wolfowitz is one of the notorious promoters who brainwashes us with talks of American empire.

Pentagon Leaked Papers Are Probably Fake. So Who’s Behind Them?

We should be cautious about authenticating these documents because no one has either confirmed their authenticity or dismissed them entirely as fake.

In World War II, Winston Churchill said that ‘in wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’ Could this infamous quotation be one we should remember when we watch U.S. news outlets reporting on the bombshell leak lately supposedly from the Pentagon, which dominated western news for a few days in mid-April?

BY Martin JAY

Pentagon Leaked Papers Are Probably Fake. So Who’s Behind Them?

We should be cautious about authenticating these documents because no one has either confirmed their authenticity or dismissed them entirely as fake.

In World War II, Winston Churchill said that ‘in wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’ Could this infamous quotation be one we should remember when we watch U.S. news outlets reporting on the bombshell leak lately supposedly from the Pentagon, which dominated western news for a few days in mid-April?

BY Martin JAY

Or, put a different way, are the Americans taking us all for a ride and pretending that the leak is genuine and therefore encouraging media to examine every minutia of the documents in the hope that many of the nuggets are reported as facts?

This is the tale of two pilgrims following the road that really matters in the young 21st century; one coming from NATOstan and another one from BRICS.

Let’s start with Le Petit Roi, Emmanuel Macron. Picture him with a plastic grin in his face strolling alongside Xi Jinping in Guangzhou. Following the – long and gentle – sound of classic “High Mountain and Flowing Water”, they enter the Baiyun Hall  to listen to it played by the 1000-year-old Guqin (a beautiful instrument). They taste the fragrance of 1000-year-old tea – and muse on the rise and fall of great powers in the new millennium.

BY Pepe ESCOBAR

Unable to accept the reality of a growing multipolar world order, U.S. elites are willing to risk nuclear war.

In May 2022, Henry Kissinger gave a remarkable speech at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where he urged the Biden administration to seek a peace agreement in Ukraine that satisfies the Russians because “pursuing the war beyond this point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine but a new war against Russia itself.”

BY Jeremy Kuzmarov

Joe Biden confused the All Blacks rugby team with the Black and Tans during his visit to Ireland in the US President’s latest gaffe.

Mr Biden appeared to mix up the New Zealand side with former British soldiers recruited as reinforcement constables during Ireland’s war of independence.

The Black and Tans earned a reputation for violence and carrying out reprisals on Irish civilians and their property. Mr Biden said,

The Pentagon documents leak could be part of a campaign by Washington to deceive Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has claimed. 

“Because the US is a party in the conflict [in Ukraine] and is essentially waging a hybrid war against us, such tricks to deceive the enemy, meaning Russia, are possible,” Ryabkov told reporters on Wednesday. “I am not saying anything definitively, but I assume different scenarios are plausible here.” 

The diplomat acknowledged that authentic classified documents have been leaked in the past. However, he added that “how much the current buzz and reports are grounded in reality is an open question for me personally.” 

LOATH HIM OR LOVE HIM, TRUMP-THE-DONALD (AND FAMILY!) IS THERE TO MASSAGE AMERICAN POLITICS (AND BUSINESS AND LIFE AND CARPETS) WITH TROMPE L'OEIL DISPLAYS OF MASTERFUL ILLUSIONS.

NOTE: THIS IS THE ENGLISH ORIGINAL OF A COLUMN SPECIALLY COMMISSIONED BY LEADING RUSSIAN BUSINESS DAILY VEDOMOSTI:

https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/columns/2023/04/10/970144-konets-sveta-dlya-gegemona