Diogenes, one of the ancient world’s illustrious philosophers, believed that lies were the currency of politics, and those lies were the ones he sought to expose and debase. To make his point, Diogenes occasionally carried a lit lantern through the streets of Athens in the daylight. If asked why, Diogenes would say he was searching for an honest man.

An artificial atmosphere of hostility, sustained by geopolitical agendas, double standards, fake news and skewed narratives has made it difficult to tackle specific human rights problems particularly in Xinjiang.

As former UN rapporteurs we are committed to the promotion and protection of human rights in all corners of the world, including China. Progress can only be achieved on the basis on good faith implementation of the UN Charter and UN human rights treaties, and requires patience, perseverance, and international solidarity.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have long been criticized for the onerous influence they exert over the domestic policies of many states. Especially since the 1990s, they have been excoriated for imposing policies—such as structural adjustment reforms and austerity measures—on client states that deepen inequality in the Global South, which, in turn, benefits the powerful countries of the Global North.

Hendrik Webber: As a politician, I tried to be a voice of reason on Ukraine. For that, my party expelled me

Western European elites willfully ignore the context and history that led to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as well as reality on the ground

By Hendrik Weber, former Norwegian politician and member of the Rødt party, head of the People's Diplomacy Norway NGO

Western countries have found themselves in a difficult situation since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine. Almost all of their governments condemn the “invasion of Ukraine” by Russian troops. I am convinced that the current situation in Western countries is very tense and aggressive.

Petro Poroshenko has admitted that the 2015 ceasefire in Donbass, which he negotiated with Russia, France and Germany as president of Ukraine, was merely a distraction intended to buy time for Kiev to rebuild its military.

He made the comments in interviews with several news outlets this week, including Germany’s Deutsche Welle television and the Ukrainian branch of the US state-run Radio Free Europe. Poroshenko also defended his record as president between 2014 and 2019.

“We had achieved everything we wanted,” he said of the peace deal. “Our goal was to, first, stop the threat, or at least to delay the war – to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces.”

J.K. Rowling has given her permission for a killing curse from Harry Potter to be inscribed on Ukrainian missiles during a call with Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus, who were pretending to be President Volodymyr Zelensky.

In the course of the conversation, which was published on Thursday, the fake Zelensky thanked Rowling for her decision to remove her books from sale in Russia.

The author explained that she did this out of “solidarity with Ukraine” amid Moscow’s military operation, which has been underway in Ukraine since late February.

Rowling didn’t seem to regret the loss of her Russian audience, saying “they certainly didn’t understand” her books.

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."