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Propaganda

Best of the Web: For a hot minute, Wagner's Prigozhin was a hero for Western regime change enthusiasts

Rachel Marsden
RT
Thu, 29 Jun 2023 17:17 UTC
Prigozhin
Yevgeny Prigozhin
Even as last weekend's mutiny failed to live up to their wishful thinking, commentators kept harping on about imminent chaos in Russia

Western figures who have long dreamed of Russian regime change saw an open window with the Wagner mutiny, and apparently saw a prime opportunity to toss their credibility out of it.

They couldn't stop grafting their disaster porn fantasies onto the events, even as facts and reality started distancing themselves from all the wishful thinking. Who cares that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin himself had said that his beef was with Russian military leadership - Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, about whom he previously complained for insufficient ammunition and support. Or that his armed march towards Moscow was for "justice" for his men who he said had done the heavy lifting in the grueling months-long battle of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), leading to an eventual Russian victory. So what if Prigozhin explicitly denied that he was mounting a coup, and hadn't at all evoked Russian President Vladimir Putin as his target? This whole drama, viewed from here in Moscow, where people continued to go about their daily lives as usual, just seemed like a tiff between siblings, one of whom was hell-bent on getting Daddy Putin's attention by tossing his toys out of the pram - at Rostov-on-Don and Moscow.

Comment:

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Rocket

Best of the Web: Nuclear falseflag on Zaporozhye NPP heats up + major Wagner updates and more

Simplicius The Thinker
simplicius76.substack.com
Sun, 25 Jun 2023 07:53 UTC
The situation can only be considered urgent as Ukraine has now made their full intentions crystal clear. If before we suspected with high confidence, now it is plain fact. They intend to destroy the ZNPP plant as a last ditch attempt to 'activate NATO' by blaming Russia.

A completely coordinated campaign over the last few days has affirmed this. Not only was Budanov's maiden speech after reappearing from his Kalibrated cranial trepanation centered on Russia's alleged 'mining of the ZNPP' basement, but now several new instances of highly coordinated messaging have been released by Ukraine and its Western controllers.

(I re-post Budanov's video just to have them all here in one place for easy reference)


In fact, since that video from days ago, he's released a new, even more urgently threatening message:
Nuclear Falseflag on Zaporozhye NPP 1
🇺🇦🤡 "The 4th and 6th power units of the Zaporozhye NPP were mined by Russia," - Kyrylo Budanov

"The situation has never been as serious as it is now.

The plan of the terrorist attack at the ZNPP has been fully developed and approved. To accelerate the catastrophe, they can use technical means," Budanov stated
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Megaphone

Best of the Web: 'EU is on the brink of bankruptcy' says Hungary's PM Orbán at EU summit

Magyar Nemzet
rmx.news
Fri, 30 Jun 2023 11:06 UTC

Comment: By American design, or Eurocratic fecklessness?


orban
The money that was approved to be spent and was supposed to be there for the next five years has already been spent, says Hungary's PM
The first question asked by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in his Facebook post is: "The only question everyone is asking here in Brussels is: Where has the money gone?"

Orbán is currently attending the two-day summit of EU leaders in Brussels, and one of the hottest topics is the question as to where the EU's budget money has disappeared to. The Hungarian prime minister said that the European Commission had submitted a budget amendment proposal asking member states to pay tens of billions of euros.

"The question arises: How did this situation come about and how did they bring the European Union to the brink of bankruptcy?" Orbán asked.

Comment:



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Syringe

Best of the Web: Pfizer vaccine batches in the EU were placebos, say scientists

Robert Kogon
Daily Sceptic
Wed, 28 Jun 2023 11:27 UTC
pfizer vax
Scientists have uncovered startling evidence that a substantial portion of the batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine deployed in the European Union may in fact have consisted of placebos - and that the German regulator knew this and did not subject them to quality-control testing.

The scientists, Dr. Gerald Dyker, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Ruhr University Bochum, and Dr. Jörg Matysik, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Leipzig, are part of a group of five German-speaking scientists who have been publicly raising questions about the quality and safety of the BioNTech vaccine (as it is known in Germany) for the last year and a half.

They recently appeared on the Punkt.Preradovic online programme of the German journalist Milena Preradovic to discuss batch variability. Their starting point was the recent Danish study showing enormous variation in the adverse events associated with different batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or BNT162b2 per its scientific codename. The below figure from the Danish study illustrates this variation.
dosage
It shows that the batches used in Denmark, which are represented by the points in the graph, essentially break down into three groups.
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UFO

Best of the Web: Senator Rubio heard shocking 'firsthand' accounts of UFOs from top Pentagon officials

Citizen Frank
CF.org
Tue, 27 Jun 2023 11:41 UTC
rubio ufo
More whistleblowers in the Pentagon have come forward with 'first-hand knowledge' of secret UFO crash retrieval programs, US Senator Marco Rubio has revealed.

The Republican Florida Sen said officials with 'very high clearances' who have occupied 'high positions within our government' have come forward with 'first-hand knowledge or first-hand claims' of top secret Government programs.

Ex-Air Force officer David Grusch made worldwide news earlier this month when he claimed alien craft and bodies had been recovered and back-engineered by US officials.


Comment: See: Unclassified version of David Grusch's UFO-related reprisal complaint released


Comment: The question hanging over all of these recent whistleblower revelations is 'why now?' It seems highly likely that all of this is serving some larger agenda, which for now remains hazy. Eyes and ears open.

See also:

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Cloud Precipitation

Best of the Web: Over 300 severe summer storm reports across US as dangerous weather continues

Max Golembo, Melissa Griffin, and Morgan Winsor
ABC News
Tue, 27 Jun 2023 11:43 UTC
Lightning lights up the sky as storms move over
© Al Camardella Jr.Lightning lights up the sky as storms move over Abington, Pa., June 26, 2023.
There were more than 300 severe storm reports in the United States on Monday, mostly along the East Coast from New Hampshire to South Carolina, as threatening weather and dangerous heat plagues the nation.

Gusty winds of 60 to 66 miles per hour were reported from New York to North Carolina, with golf ball-sized hail damaging cars in the latter.

Some areas in New Jersey received close to half a foot of rain, which flooded roadways. There were even tornado warnings in the Garden State but, as of Tuesday morning, no actual twisters reported.

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Russian Flag

Best of the Web: What happens in Russia after The Longest Day?

Pepe Escobar
The Cradle
Tue, 27 Jun 2023 18:33 UTC
Following Wagner's 'rebellion' - which was nothing more than a blatant coup attempt, and a PR stunt demonstrated by Prighozin's top-notch theatrics - NATO and the Collective West's excitement over the possibility of Russia descending into chaos and civil war were quickly turned into utter disappointment.
Putin and the 'Coup'
© The Cradle
The first draft of the extraordinary events that took place in Russia on The Longest Day - Saturday, June 24 - leads us to a whole new can of worms.

The Global Majority badly wants to know what happens next. Let's examine the key pieces in the chessboard.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is cutting to the chase: he has reminded everyone that the Hegemon's modus operandi is to back coup attempts whenever it can benefit. This dovetails with the fact that the FSB is actively investigating whether and how Western intel was involved in The Longest Day.

President Putin could not have been more unequivocal:
"They [the West and Ukraine] wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other, so that soldiers and civilians would die, so that in the end Russia would lose, and our society would break apart and choke on bloody civil strife (...) They rubbed their hands, dreaming of getting revenge for their failures at the front and during the so-called counter-offensive, but they miscalculated."
Cue to the collective West - from Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on down - frantically trying to distance itself even as the CIA leaked, via its trademark mouthpiece, the Washington Post, that they knew about "the rebellion."

The agenda was painfully obvious: Kiev losing on all fronts would be ritually buried by wall-to-wall coverage of the fake Russian "civil war."

There's no smoking gun - yet. But the FSB is following several leads to demonstrate how the "the rebellion" was set up by CIA/NATO. The spectacular failure makes the upcoming NATO July 11 summit in Vilnius even more incandescent.

The Chinese, much like Lavrov, also cut to the chase: the Global Times asserted that the idea of "Wagner's revolt weakening Putin's authority is wishful thinking of the West," with the Kremlin's "strong capacity of deterrence" further increasing its authority. That's exactly the reading of the Russian street.

The Chinese reached their conclusion after a crucial visit by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Rudenko, who promptly flew to Beijing on Sunday, June 25. This is how the iron-clad strategic partnership works in practice.
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Stop

Best of the Web: From Pugachev to Lebed - The Muzhik Rebellion fizzles out without bloodshed - Prigozhin to exile

John Helmer
Dances with Bears
Sat, 24 Jun 2023 00:00 UTC
3 boxes
© unknown
Without the public support of any political figure in Russia, military or police unit, regional governor, or the officers of his Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his thousand rank-and-filers have agreed to return to their base camps on terms negotiated late on Saturday afternoon between Prigozhin and Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarus President.

The one-armed rebellion has failed with recriminations, immunity from prosecution, and almost no bloodshed. The Kremlin solution has followed the precedent of General Alexander Lebed's rebellion against President Boris Yeltsin in 1996, not the violent end of the rebellion of Yemelyan Pugachev (left) of 1773-75.

Dmitry Rogozin, who was one of the strategists of Lebed's campaign for the presidency and later became a deputy prime minister under President Vladimir Putin, made the difference clear in a statement he issued early on Saturday, before Putin spoke at 10 o'clock.
"I know the situation at the front as well as Prigozhin and I have never hidden my position, but whatever the explanation for an armed rebellion, it is still an armed rebellion in the rear of a belligerent army. In a war, you have to shove your political ambitions up your ass and support the front with all your might. Any attempts to weaken it are nothing but aiding the enemy."
Another of Lebed's comrades of 27 years ago, Sergei Glazyev, followed with a repudiation of Prigozhin of his own. None of the well-known critics of Putin on domestic policy, nor the military bloggers who have attacked the tactical management and strategic priorities of the Special Military Operation, supported Prigozhin.
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Footprints

Best of the Web: John Kerry admits Iraq invasion was based on lie, but says 'we did not know it was a lie at the time'


RT
Mon, 26 Jun 2023 17:29 UTC
Kerry
© Jeff Mitchell/Getty ImagesJohn Kerry, Special Envoy for Climate Change
The 2003 war was not a crime because President George W. Bush was never charged, John Kerry has insisted...

The US-led invasion of Iraq was completely different to the current Ukraine conflict, Washington's special envoy for climate change John Kerry has told French TV channel LCI.

He appeared on LCI's Sunday evening show hosted by Darius Rochebin, who had previously interviewed him for a Swiss outlet in 2017. Rochebin tweeted a video segment of the interview, in which he confronted Kerry about the West accusing Russia of aggression regarding Ukraine. The French journalist noted that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was an actual war of aggression, based on the lie that Baghdad secretly possessed weapons of mass destruction.

"No," Kerry replied. "Because there's never even been, you know, a process of direct accusation of President [George W.] Bush himself."

He added that there had been "abuses" in the course of that conflict, and that he "spoke out against them." When Rochebin asked him directly whether the Iraq War had been a crime of aggression, Kerry repeatedly denied it.

"No, No, No. Well, you didn't know it was a lie at the time. The evidence that was produced, people didn't know that it was a lie," the former diplomat said, before telling Rochebin that he doesn't intend to "re-debate the Iraq War" at this point.
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Putin

Best of the Web: Putin speaks again to the nation: Mutiny organizers wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other, Kiev wanted the same


Sputnik News
Mon, 26 Jun 2023 19:53 UTC
Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin has chastised the organizers of the recent aborted mutiny perpetrated by forces of the PMC Wagner Group, stating that these people betrayed not only their country and their people but also the men whom they duped into participating in this "crime."

In a speech delivered today from Kremlin, Putin said that Russia's enemies and the "neo-Nazis in Kiev" along with their Western sponsors wanted the same outcome as the mutiny organizers: an internecine conflict in Russia where Russian soldiers would have been killing each other.

He pointed out that the mutiny organizers were well aware of the fact that their mutiny would have been inevitably crushed, and that their actions were ultimately aimed at weakening Russia.

At the same time, he stressed that the vast majority of the Wagner Group's soldiers and commanders are "Russian patriots devoted to their people and state," who proved their patriotism "with their courage on the battlefield, liberating Donbass and Novorossiya."

Comment: A transcript via Deepl is below:
Dear friends!

Today I once again appeal to all citizens of Russia. Thank you for your endurance, solidarity and patriotism. This civic solidarity has shown that any blackmail, any attempt to create internal turmoil is doomed to failure.

I repeat, the highest consolidation of society, executive and legislative power at all levels was shown. A firm, unambiguous position in support of the constitutional order was taken by public organizations, religious denominations, leading political parties, in fact, the entire Russian society. Everyone was united and rallied by the main thing - responsibility for the fate of the Fatherland.

I emphasize that from the very beginning of the events, all the necessary decisions were immediately taken to neutralize the threat that had arisen, to protect the constitutional order, the life and security of our citizens.

An armed rebellion would have been suppressed in any case. The organizers of the rebellion, despite the loss of adequacy, could not fail to understand this. They understood everything, including that they went to criminal acts, to split and weaken the country, which is now confronting a colossal external threat, unprecedented pressure from outside. When at the front with the words 'not a step back!' our comrades are dying.

However, the organizers of the rebellion, betraying their country, their people, betrayed those who were drawn into the crime. They lied to them, pushed them to death, under fire, to shoot at their own.

It was precisely this outcome - fratricide - that Russia's enemies wanted: both the neo-Nazis in Kyiv, and their Western patrons, and all sorts of national traitors. They wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other, to kill military personnel and civilians, so that in the end Russia would lose, and our society would split, choke in bloody civil strife.

They rubbed their hands, dreaming of taking revenge for their failures at the front and during the so-called counteroffensive, but they miscalculated.

I thank all our military personnel, law enforcement officers, special services who stood in the way of the rebels, remained faithful to their duty, oath and their people. The courage and self-sacrifice of the fallen heroes-pilots saved Russia from tragic devastating consequences.

At the same time, we knew and we know that the overwhelming majority of the fighters and commanders of the Wagner group are also Russian patriots, devoted to their people and state. They proved it with their courage on the battlefield, liberating the Donbass and Novorossiya. They tried to use them in the dark against their brothers in arms, with whom they fought together for the sake of the country and its future.

Therefore, from the very beginning of the events, on my direct instructions, steps were taken to avoid a lot of bloodshed. This took time, including to give those who made a mistake a chance to think again, to understand that their actions are strongly rejected by society, and to what tragic, destructive consequences for Russia, for our state, the adventure in which they were dragged leads.

I thank those soldiers and commanders of the Wagner group who made the only right decision - they did not go to fratricidal bloodshed, they stopped at the last line.

Today you have the opportunity to continue serving Russia by entering into a contract with the Ministry of Defense or other law enforcement agencies, or to return to your family and friends. Whoever wants to can go to Belarus. The promise I made will be fulfilled. I repeat, the choice is yours, but I am sure it will be the choice of Russian soldiers who have realized their tragic mistake.

I am grateful to the President of Belarus Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko for his efforts and contribution to the peaceful resolution of the situation.

But I repeat, it was the patriotic spirit of the citizens, the consolidation of the entire Russian society that played a decisive role these days. This support allowed us to overcome the most difficult trials for our Motherland together.

Thank you for that. Thank you.
Putin is magnanimous and displays the rarely seen virtue of mercy, giving those who realise their mistake a choice to change their ways and to continue to fight for a united Russia. Ceasar was known for showing mercy, something which also back then was rarely seen.

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