A C.I.A. whistleblower languishes awaiting trial in a federal prison under inhumane conditions and almost nobody is paying attention. 

Joshua Schulte is a former C.I.A. hacker, one of those computer geniuses whose job it is to work his way into the computer systems of our country’s enemies in support of some of the most highly-classified operations the C.I.A. carries out. 

The government believes that Schulte was a malcontent who released to WikiLeaks in 2017 the equivalent of 2 billion pages of top secret C.I.A. data with code names like Brutal Kangaroo, AngerQuake and McNugget. 

Remembering the Falklands conflict: How Argentina's 'little victorious war' instead became a huge success for Margaret Thatcher

The story of what became arguably Britain's last stand as a major global military power

World history has recorded a lot of rulers who have attempted to use a small war to gain a popularity boost but overestimated the strength of their forces and reaped disaster instead of triumph. One of the clearest examples of this was the late 20th century conflict in the Falkland Islands.

By Evgeny Norin

The speaker of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, may have created the defining acronym for the emerging multipolar world: “the new G8”.

As Volodin noted, “the United States has created conditions with its own hands so that countries wishing to build an equal dialogue and mutually beneficial relations will actually form a ‘new G8’ together with Russia.”

This non Russia-sanctioning G8, he added, is 24.4% ahead of the old one, which is in fact the G7, in terms of GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP), as G7 economies are on the verge of collapsing and the U.S. registers record inflation.

“Rejection of Russian energy resources means that Europe will become the region with the highest energy costs in the world. This will seriously undermine the competitiveness of European industry which is already losing the competition to companies in other parts of the world…. Our Western colleagues seem to have forgotten the elementary laws of economics, or simply prefer to ignore them.” Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation

 In 1898, Hermon Bumpus gathered 136 house sparrows immobilized by an ice storm, noting that the averages of several morphological traits differed between survivors and nonsurvivors. This was one of the first attempts to measure the phenotypic selection component of Charles Darwin’s thesis, that adaptation is driven by heritable traits that affect fitness.

After the failure of numerous Washington emissaries’ attempts to change Saudi Arabia’s perception of the world and force it to take a place in the ranks of “US supporters”, the current US administration has decided to use its latest weapon in this effort by “throwing President Biden to the wolves”.

As a republican, I’m not sure whether to rejoice or rage at the latest display of idiocy by the presumptive future King of Australia, Prince Charles. One the one hand (hooray!) he has demonstrated once again his unfitness to succeed Queen Elizabeth, who, understandably, is beginning to show her considerable age and restrict her public engagements. On the other (shame!) the fact that he demonstrates his unfitness on a regular basis has done nothing to increase the prospect of Australia cutting our constitutional links with the British monarchy.

BY David Solomon

The corporate media landscape has saturated our feeds with images of NATO allies as superheroes, science fiction and fantasy protagonists, and pop culture icons. NATO’s enemies are villainized as the primary antagonists of major fandoms. The indoctrinated masses therefore cannot break free from seeing the wars their country started as a game where you merely root for the right team. Distancing wars from geopolitical realities and likening them to cartoon characters and childrens’ stories invents a reality in which morality is undisputed and it’s always the good guys who have to win. In just the past two months, an explosion of such images has defined the liberal discourse and obfuscated the gruesome realities of the preventable, NATO-instigated conflict in Ukraine.

Babushka Z: The woman who became a Russian propaganda icon

By Sofia Bettiza & Svyatoslav Khomenko

BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61757667

An elderly Ukrainian woman brandishing a red Soviet flag has become the unlikely face of Kremlin propaganda after a video of her encounter with Ukrainian soldiers went viral. The BBC tracked down "Babushka Z" to try to establish the truth behind the incident.

"I don't think they should glorify me. I am just a peasant woman. I don't understand why I've become a celebrity."

In a time of multiple crises the sophistry of our leaders is more than dangerous. The narratives their words weave might advance their personal agendas but will leave the world ill-equipped to handle pandemics, wars, social upheaval, and climate disruption.

Sophistry much concerned Plato. In Gorgias he has Socrates compare sophistry to “cosmetics” or “self-adornment”. Condemnation of sophistry is also a common theme throughout Plato’s Phaedrus, Sophist, and Protagoras. Plato associates sophistry with appearance and therefore as being distanced from reality. 

BY Mike Scrafton

It should come as no surprise that Gus-the-LeonMinus and his loony old mad mates of useless pub-trivia losers think that Volodymyr Zelenskyyy-y is not very intelligent. Not intelligent at all.

Zelenskyyy-y is a clever play-actor for his jewish handlers, but he has been overtaken by reality. He does not understand the moment. Like most of us — the average Sunday barbecuing bloke who has forgotten the sausages of the previous burn-off on the hot plate, now greasy ciders — he has no understanding nor any skill in understanding the minutiae of diplomacy. We know boofheadry...

There is a surprising debate taking place in in the West – they are arguing about French President Emmanuel Macron’s call not to humiliate Russia.  

The point here is not that the question itself is ridiculous – generally speaking, the West cannot currently humble our country. Because you can only humiliate someone who depends on you (and with whom you have, if not common values, then at least a harmonized system), but nothing like this can be said about relations between Russia and those countries today.  

Poland and Ukraine have a complex history of massacres on both sides. However, for eight years, they have been united against Russia. After having considered annexing a Russian territory if Moscow loses the war, Warsaw would like to annex a Ukrainian territory, if Kiev loses. President Andrzej Duda has reportedly received guarantees from his counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky that, in gratitude for his military aid against the Russians, his country could annex Galicia.

RISING TENSIONS (22)

Poland and Ukraine

by Thierry Meyssan

This is an old story but it fell again on the laps of the Leonisky gods today. So here we go:

US President Joe Biden has pushed back against criticism that excessive government spending on his watch has contributed to the US inflation crisis, furiously denying that he has been fiscally reckless and blaming Republicans for obstructing him from curbing runaway prices. 

“I don’t want to hear any more of these lies about reckless spending,” Biden shouted on Tuesday at the AFL-CIO’s convention in Philadelphia. “We’re changing people’s lives.”

The president argued that in contrast to his predecessor, Donald Trump, he has reduced federal budget deficits. In fact, he claimed to have achieved the largest deficit cut on record, a targeted $1.6 trillion in the government’s current fiscal year after paring $350 billion in his first budget.