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Ukraine's President Zelensky sees huge drop in popularity amid increasingly authoritarian rule

Jonny Tickle
RT
Thu, 21 Oct 2021 11:27 UTC
Zelensky
© REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque / Pool
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a joint news conference with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Kiev, Ukraine January 31, 2020.
The popularity rating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has plummeted almost 10% in just one month, and his party Servant of the People would come in second place if an election were held today, a poll has shown.

The fall in the favorability of both Zelensky and his faction comes as the politician has been slammed from many sides for what some see as growing authoritarian tendencies, including purging party members for disagreements and organizing a vote against the speaker of the parliament.

The poll, conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), found that just 24.7% of Ukrainians would vote for Zelensky, a significant drop from the 33.3% in September. Zelensky is still ahead of the pack, however, beating out former president, Petro Poroshenko (15.6%), and former prime minister, Yulia Timoshenko (12.2%).

Comment: Similar stats can be seen in politics throughout numerous European countries, with elections suffering low voter turnout and weak majorities that often lead to coalitions, it's notable that this also comes amid rising corruption in the country as well as a number of suspect murders:

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Black Cat

National School Board Group communicated with White House while crafting letter likening involved parents to terrorists

Caroline Downey
National Review
Fri, 22 Oct 2021 16:49 UTC
Attorney General Merrick Garland
© REUTERS/Ken Cedeno/File Photo
Attorney General Merrick Garland is asking the FBI to treat protesting parents as domestic terrorists.
The National School Board Association communicated with the White House before releasing a letter requesting federal intervention to investigate whether alleged threats leveled by parents against school-board members qualify as domestic terrorism under the Patriot Act.

Email correspondence obtained by nonprofit Parents Defending Education and first reported by the Washington Free Beacon shows that White House officials coordinated with the NSBA to iron out the details of the letter before it was officially published.

NSBA interim executive director Chip Slaven wrote, "in talks over several weeks with White House staff, they requested additional information on some of the specific threats, so the letter also details many of the incidents that have been occurring."

Comment: Rep. Steve Chabot grills Garland on his actions:



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Bullseye

'Simply monstrous': Putin says teaching young children they can easily swap genders is a 'borderline crime against humanity'


RT
Thu, 21 Oct 2021 16:14 UTC
trans rights activists
© Reuters / Valentyn Ogirenko
LGBTQ activists hold placards during a rally for the rights of transgender people in Kiev, Ukraine, May 22, 2021
A growing campaign in the West to do away with gender-based language defies reason and is subverting human nature, Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed, arguing children should not be taught biological sex does not exist.

"The discussion about the rights of men and women has turned into a total phantasmagoria in a number of Western countries," Putin said in a speech to dignitaries and reporters at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi, Russia on Thursday. "Those who risk saying that men and women still exist, and that this is a biological fact, are virtually ostracized."


He listed examples, such as banning words like "mother" and "father" in favor of terms like "parent one and parent two", as well as "banning the phrase 'breast milk' and replacing it with 'human milk' so that people insecure about their own gender wouldn't get upset."
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Star of David

Amazon and Google: partners in Israeli apartheid

Jonathan Cook
The Electronic Intifada
Tue, 19 Oct 2021 00:00 UTC
Phone google
© Arthur Widak/NurPhoto
Google depicts Israel as a democracy, while assisting the abuse of Palestinian rights.
The best-selling Irish novelist Sally Rooney is openly shunning Israel after recent reports from human rights groups warned that Israel practices apartheid, systematically oppressing Palestinians under its rule.

But while Israel risks becoming a pariah among some cultural producers, it is being aggressively embraced by globe-spanning corporations like Amazon and Google - among the wealthiest companies in history.

The two tech giants are not just lining up to do business with Israel. They are actively working to build and improve the technological infrastructure Israel needs to surveil Palestinians and confine them to the ghettos Israel's army has created for them.

Through their collaboration on Israel's Project Nimbus, both companies are helping to remove any pressure on Israel to make peace with the Palestinians and are instead becoming partners in Israeli apartheid.

Now workers for both companies are speaking out - most of them anonymously for fear of what they call "retaliation."

This month some 400 employees of the two companies published a letter in The Guardian newspaper warning that Amazon and Google were contracted to supply "dangerous technology" to the Israeli military and government that would make Israel's rule over Palestinians "even crueler and deadlier."
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Network

Donald Trump is launching a new social network called Truth Social

Steven Musil, Queenie Wong
CNET
Thu, 21 Oct 2021 11:06 UTC
Trump and cellphone app
© Trump Media and Technology Group
Former President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he's launching a new social network called Truth Social, whose goal is to push back against Big Tech, according to a press release purported to come from one of his companies. The Trump Media and Technology Group, which made the announcement, said the social network will begin a limited beta launch in November, with a wider rollout expected in the first quarter of 2022.

Trump said in the press release sent to the media:
"I created Truth Social and TMGT to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech. We live in a world where the Taliban has a presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American president has been silenced."
There's a site for Truth Social where people can join a waiting list for the social network, as well as a link to preorder the iOS app. Screenshots of the app suggest Truth will have profile pages with a Twitter-like timeline of posts.

Plans to launch a new social network underscore how Trump is trying to rejoin the online public conversation after Twitter, Facebook and Google-owned YouTube booted him from their platforms following the deadly US Capitol Hill riot in January.
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Tornado1

US 'intelligence community' and Fed issue separate reports concluding the same thing: 'Climate change' is major national security threat


AFP
Thu, 21 Oct 2021 06:30 UTC
hurricane space
US intelligence services said Thursday for the first time that climate change poses wide-ranging threats to the United States' national security and stability around the world.

More extreme weather "will increasingly exacerbate a number of risks to US national security interests, from physical impacts that could cascade into security challenges, to how countries respond to the climate challenge," the White House said in a summary of the intelligence reports.

The prediction was made in the first official assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, which oversees the sprawling US intelligence apparatus.

The document "represents the consensus view of all 18" elements in the intelligence community, the White House said.

According to the agencies, climate change is driving "increased geopolitical tension as countries argue over who should be doing more," cross-border "flashpoints" as countries respond to climate change impact by trying to secure their own interests, and fallout from climate on national stability in some countries.
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Bullseye

Feeding the Liberal flock: The real reasons for the congressional 1/6 committee

Glenn Greenwald
greenwald.substack.com
Thu, 21 Oct 2021 00:00 UTC
Schiff Raskin Cheney Kinzinger
© Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive July 27, 2021 for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Biden DOJ has not charged one 1/6 defendant with insurrection, sedition or plotting to kidnap or kill. Democrats need Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney to satiate liberal anger.

What follows is the last section of my article earlier this week, documenting why Congress's Select Committee to Investigate 1/6 is both unconstitutional and an assault on civil liberties.

Underlying so much of the anger and resentment surrounding 1/6 is the complete dissonance between the narrative fed to the citizenry by Democrats and their media allies on the one hand, and the legal realities on the other. It must be infuriating and baffling to a large sector of the population to have been convinced that what happened on January 6 was an unprecedentedly dangerous insurrection perpetrated by an organized group of seditious traitors who had plotted to kidnap and murder elected officials, only for the Biden DOJ to have charged exactly nobody with any criminal charges remotely suggesting any of those melodramatic claims.

This was the same frustration and confusion that beset a large portion of liberal America when they were led to believe for years that Robert Mueller was coming to arrest all of their political enemies for treason and criminal conspiracy with Russia, only for the FBI Superman to close his investigation without charging a single American with criminal conspiracy with Russia and then issuing a report admitting that he could not find evidence to establish any such crime. How to keep the flock loyal when the doomsday prophecies continue to be unfulfilled, as the World-Ending Date comes and goes without so much as a bang, let alone an explosion?
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Cross

Leaked audio reveals DOJ official questioning sincerity of Americans' religious exemptions to COVID vaccine

Libby Emmons
The Post Millennial
Tue, 19 Oct 2021 06:13 UTC
Protester
© AP/Seth Wenig
White House officials don't care about religious exemptions from vaccine mandates, and they don't think people who bring religious exemptions from vaccine mandates are "sincere" in their beliefs.

Human Events senior editor Jack Posobiec broke the news on Human Events Daily, exposing the Biden administration's complete disregard for Americans' religious liberty rights. DOJ attorney Marty Lederman can be heard on a phone call from September advising the administration as to how to combat employees religious exemption demands from the vaccine mandate.


Comment: Americans, in turn, are questioning the sincerity of the government to its citizens. They are coming up empty.

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Attention

Poland will be punished for challenging EU law primacy, European leader warns, as Warsaw claims Brussels is devoid of democracy


RT
Tue, 19 Oct 2021 10:16 UTC
Morawiecki
© Ronald Wittek/Pool Reuters
Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki speaking on Poland's challenge to the supremacy of EU laws
European Parliament, Strasbourg, France • October 19, 2021
The European Commission president has warned that Poland will face penalties for its move to make EU law subordinate to national law, after a Warsaw court backed the government's defiance of Brussels' supremacy.

Speaking to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said there were three options available to the EU after Poland challenged the primacy of the bloc's laws over its national law.
"This ruling calls into question the foundations of the European Union. It is a direct challenge to the unity of the European legal order."
She added that they were carefully considering their response after Poland's Constitutional Tribunal ruled that parts of European law were incompatible with the Polish constitution.

Von der Leyen said the first option is so-called infringements, where a legal challenge brought by the EC could lead to fines. Secondly, Brussels could withhold access to EU funds from Poland. Thirdly, the EU could suspend certain rights of Poland in the bloc, including the right to vote, under Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union.

Comment: The real message: Assimilate or be forsaken.
Poland's prime minister has announced that his government will dissolve the disciplinary chamber of the country's Supreme Court after the EU condemned the chamber for threatening the "unity of the European legal order."

Speaking to EU officials at the European Parliament, Polish leader Mateusz Morawiecki accepted that the chamber
"did not meet our expectations," agreeing to dissolve the "mechanisms that were introduced. There was a question about the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court. Yes. We intend to dissolve it."
The announcement by Poland's prime minister marks the conclusion of a row between Warsaw and Brussels over concerns that its disciplinary chamber made EU law subordinate to national law, sparking a reprimand from European officials.

To prevent future disagreements between member states descending into the row that's broken out between Poland and the EU, Morawiecki called on the EU Court of Justice to establish a chamber that can act as an arbiter for disputes within the bloc.

Poland's leader had pushed back on the EU's threats, by warning that it risked making the bloc a "centrally managed organism," rather than a partnership of member states. He warned:
"Unfortunately, today we are dealing with a very dangerous phenomenon whereby various European Union institutions usurp powers they do not have under the Treaties and impose their will on Member States."
See also:

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Jet4

Russia scrambles fighter jets to head off US warplanes near country's airspace, days after warship intercepted near borders


RT
Wed, 20 Oct 2021 12:39 UTC
US jets
© Russian Defense Ministry
US Airforce KC-135 Stratotanker refuels a B-1B Lancer in flight over the Black Sea, Oct. 19, 2021 recorded by Russian crew member aboard a Sukhoi Su-20 fighter jet.
The Russian Air Force has escorted two US bombers over the Black Sea, after radar operators identified the planes flying close to the border, just days after an American warship was tailed as it moved toward the country's waters.

On Wednesday, Moscow's Ministry of Defense said that a pair of the country's Su-30 fighter planes took off and followed two US B-1B strategic bombers over southeastern Europe, after the foreign aircraft were detected in the region. The ministry said in a statement:
"Russian fighter crews identified the aerial targets as two US Air Force supersonic strategic B-1B bombers, accompanied by two KC-135 refueling planes, and escorted them over the waters of the Black Sea. After the foreign warplanes had been turned away from Russia's state border, the Russian fighters safely returned to their home air base."

Comment: Provocations to distract or drill procedure...location, location, location!
The encounter, which appears to have occurred without incident, happened amid NATO's annual deterrence exercise Steadfast Noon, taking place this week all across southern Europe.

Aircraft from 14 NATO countries, including the U.S., are taking part in the drill. The U.S. B-1B Lancers operating in the Black Sea are from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas and have been carrying out missions across Europe as part of a bomber task force rotation. The U.S. military regularly flies in international airspace over the Black Sea, and encounters with Russian aircraft have become commonplace. While most intercepts occur without incident, the U.S. has cited instances in recent years of Russian planes flying too close to American aircraft or buzzing Navy ships on patrol.

The Black Sea has been a focal point this week for the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is touring the region, making stops in Georgia, Ukraine and Romania.

On Thursday, Austin will attend a NATO defense ministers meeting at alliance headquarters in Brussels.


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