Puppet MastersS


Attention

Africa will not be a loaf of bread to be shared by Europeans again


The Zimbabwe Mail
Sun, 05 Mar 2023 05:39 UTC
Le Pew and African Leaders
© Guillaume Horcajuelo/Pool Photo via AP)/ENA152/20013734461512/Pool/2001132130French President Emmanuel Macron, center, flanked by Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou right and Chad's President Idriss Deby left speaks during a press conference following the G5 Sahel summit in Pau, southwestern France, Monday Jan.13, 2020. France is preparing its military to better target Islamic extremists in a West African region that has seen a surge of deadly violence.
In his classic rendition of the African "postcolony," the philosopher and political theorist, Achille Mbembe, observed that thinking about Africa in the present world does not come easy.

I observe that thinking and writing about Africa and the world in the present does not only not come easy, but it can also be inconvenient and traumatic. In the light and the weight of ongoing geopolitical struggles for global supremacy that pit the USA and its NATO allies against China, Russia and their allies, covert and overt, Africa as a phenomenon and as political food for thought, is a hot potato and what I can call a "political hard hat area" that may not be for the fainted hearted.

Observing, thinking and writing about the position of Africa in the present "world disorder" demands a radical loss of innocence for the political observer and the analyst. It demands what Enrique Dussel calls philosophical atheism where one has to disbelieve in powers that have turned themselves into gods on earth.

That is why most African analysts, when they observe, think and write, do so to endorse the USA and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) narrative that enjoys hegemony in the global media.

According to the narrative of the USA and the NATO alliance, China and Russia are the anti-Christ of the world system and no country, at the pain of severe sanctions, should be seen to be associating with the two countries and their allies, overt and covert.

The very fact that China and Russia have many allies that have chosen to practice their alliance covertly illustrates the trouble that the USA and the NATO collective reserve severe punishment for any country, especially an African country, that may perform any sympathies or support for China and Russia.

Did Namibia speak back to empire?
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Clipboard

Spinning the Polls: European Council think-tankers fabricate research results to conceal opposition to NATO war against Russia


Dance with Bears
Wed, 01 Mar 2023 02:32 UTC
Spin Masters - Timothy Garton Ash (lead image, left) and Mark Leonard (right), and Ivan Krastev (centre)
Timothy Garton Ash (lead image, left) and Mark Leonard (right), and Ivan Krastev (centre), a Bulgarian, claim to have discovered from opinion polls they conducted in nine European Union (EU) countries during January that "since Russia's war on Ukraine began, the US and its European allies have regained their unity and sense of purpose...Russia's aggression in Ukraine marks both the consolidation of the West and the emergence of the long-heralded post-Western international order."

"The growing hostility of Europeans towards Russia is reflected in their preference not to buy Russian fossil fuels even if it results in energy supply problems. This is the prevailing view in every one of the nine EU countries polled, with an average of 55 per cent of these EU citizens supporting it. It is now clear that, contrary to the Kremlin's expectations, the war has consolidated the West, rather than weakened it."

"Average" is a telltale admission from Ash, Leonard, and Krastev.
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Bullseye

Xi says US seeking to contain China, Foreign Minister says it risks provoking 'conflict and confrontation'


RT
Tue, 07 Mar 2023 10:59 UTC
Xi-Jinping
Washington's actions pose a "severe challenge," the Chinese president says
Chinese President Xi Jinping has publicly criticized the US and accused it of leading a Western attempt to "contain" his country. Foreign Minister Qin Gang also warned Washington to "hit the brakes" or risk "conflict and confrontation."

"Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our nation's development," Xi said in a rare verbal attack on Monday, as quoted by state media.

The Chinese leader was meeting with industry and business groups during an annual gathering of an advisory body to the Communist Party. His speech focused on the national economy, with the remark about Washington's policy illustrating what he called "uncertain and unpredictable factors" in the international environment, which also included the Covid-19 pandemic.

Comment: For more on the topic, check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Enter The Dragon: China Sides With Russia Against America



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Bizarro Earth

Poland's ruling party under fire after outing opposition MP's son as victim of pedophile, son committed suicide after being identified

Jon Henley
The Guardian
Tue, 07 Mar 2023 15:11 UTC
Magdalena Filiks
© Attila Husejnow/Sopa Images/Rex/ShutterstockThe teenager’s mother, Magdalena Filiks (pictured in 2022), is an MP from Poland’s main opposition party, Civic Platform.
Poland's ruling Law & Justice party has come under fire over the death of an opposition MP's 15-year-old son, who killed himself after a report by a state-run radio station led to his identification as the victim of a paedophile.

The Polish parliament, the Sejm, stood for a minute's silence on Tuesday during the funeral of Mikolaj Filiks. His mother, Magdalena Filiks, an MP from Poland's main opposition party, Civic Platform, said last week that he had died in February.

The teenager took his life weeks after a report on a convicted paedophile by Radio Szczecin, part of the state-run broadcaster Polskie Radio network, revealed details about the victims that allowed Filiks to be easily publicly identified.
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Newspaper

Belarus opposition leader handed 15-year jail term for 'treason & conspiracy to seize power' during unrest of 2020


Reuters
Tue, 07 Mar 2023 03:53 UTC
Belarus Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya
© ReutersRights activists estimate about 1,500 people are in jail in Belarus on politically motivated charges.
Mass protests against Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, then erupted which his security forces suppressed, locking up his opponents or forcing them to flee.

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was handed a 15-year jail term on Monday after being convicted in absentia for treason and "conspiracy to seize power", a verdict she said was punishment for her efforts to promote democracy.

Tsikhanouskaya, 40, a former English teacher, fled to neighbouring Lithuania in 2020 after running against incumbent leader Alexander Lukashenko in a presidential election, which official results showed Lukashenko won by a landslide.

Comment: For obvious reasons, treason is most often met with a serious punishment. Looking at the current state of the countries that became vassals of the West, it's understandable that a country like Belarus would want to deter others from attempting to do the same to theirs.

However it's likely that Tsikhanouskaya will receive significantly better treatment than whistleblower Julian Assange who, according to the UN has suffered torture during his detention by the West.

Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Enter The Dragon: China Sides With Russia Against America



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Boat

Allegorical Intermezzo

James Howard Kunstler
Clusterfuck Nation
Mon, 06 Mar 2023 00:00 UTC
titanic
© Universal History Archive/Getty ImagesThe Titanic
"If, however, as Pareto suggested... a governing elite is inevitable, then we are certainly under the wrong elites. Whether a circulation of elites can be completed in time to save the world economic system from ruin and the majority from destitution and veritable slavery is a question of no little urgency."
— Michael Rectenwald
Imagine that on an April evening in 1912, the captain of the RMS Titanic had announced a grand ball at which the male passengers were asked to wear their wives' clothing and vice-versa.... That was approximately the condition of Western Civ verging on springtime in 2023: preoccupied with silliness while the iceberg awaits.

But who would have thought the sinking of civilization would occur with such fantastic comic ornamentation? Men, in more ways than mere costuming, pretending to be women... incompetence honored, feted, even worshipped... intellect reduced to anti-thinking... anything of value thrown overboard in some weird post-modern potlatch ceremony of twisted moral righteousness...? But the hour is late, the party is near its end, and the iceberg is struck. The rest of the story will be you holding onto a few valuables, including your life, while the lifeboats get lowered.
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Seismograph

Seismic Diplomacy: Erdogan and the aftermath of the Turkish earthquakes

Pepe Escobar
Strategic Culture
Fri, 03 Mar 2023 00:00 UTC
Erdogan
© RepublicworldTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
President Erdogan may be instrumentalizing what happens in the aftermath to craft his P.R. campaign ahead of the next elections.

The setting: a cosy Ossetian restaurant owned by two Ossetian ladies close to Istiklal street, a very busy central area of Istanbul.

The players: a smatter of Istanbul intelligentsia - academics, media, liberal professionals, lawyers, highly educated, secular, very critical of the AKP ruling party.

The questions: during dinner, I asked the table their analysis of the state's response to the deadly earthquakes in Turkey, and how President Erdogan may be instrumentalizing what happens in the aftermath to craft his P.R. campaign ahead of the next elections.

After our conversation, it was still not officially confirmed whether the next presidential elections will be held on May or June 2023.

So the stage is set for an unedited exercise in direct democracy, with some stunning answers, and way more enlightening than what Turkish media and think tanks may be spinning. One of the participants coined the definitive neologism for what Erdogan will be engaged on for the next few weeks and months: Seismic Diplomacy.
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Padlock

Britain's descent into authoritarianism

Guy de la Bédoyére
Daily Sceptic
Sat, 04 Mar 2023 02:00 UTC
Brit police
© Unknown
Quamquam animus meminisse horret - Although my mind shudders to remember. So says Aeneas in Book 2 of Virgil's Aeneid when he embarks on telling Dido the terrible story of the fall of Troy.

And that's exactly how I feel every time I think back to the dark days of 2020 and 2021. Not because of the virus but the dizzying and reckless speed with which this country plunged into authoritarianism.

The revelations of Hancockgate are all over the news and on this website. There's no need for me to recount them here. Toby has already pointed out it was the usual political clown show. No doubt there are plenty more revelations to come.

One of the common threads filtering through now though is the disgust with which the government presided over the creation of a totalitarian state. Rod Liddle is one, with his 'Unmasking the truth about Covid' telling us:
It was the authoritarian mindset which demanded that countervailing opinions should not even be heard and that the people voicing them should be silenced as 'Covid deniers'. This totalitarianism was quite explicit, such as when the BBC ran a debate on herd immunity and agreed with one of the participants - [Susan] Michie, natch - that it should not be 'even-handed'. As she said: "I'd got prior agreement from R[adio] 4 about the framing of the item. I was assured that this would not be held as an even-handed debate."
Like Mr. Liddle, I used to work for BBC Radio News. I was proud of that job several decades ago. Not anymore: I was assured this would not be held as an even-handed debate - and said with pride and pleasure!

Comment: The departure from reality takes its toll. For some, there is (literally) no return.

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Attention

Dogs of war: Here's why the Ukraine conflict could be about to spread to another European country

George Trenin, Georgiy Berezovsky
RT
Mon, 06 Mar 2023 17:48 UTC
troops
© Press service of the Ministry of Defense of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian RepublicMoldavian Troops
What lies behind concerns in Moldova, and the breakaway region of Transnistria?

For the past several weeks, Eastern Europe has been on the verge of a new war. Moldova risks returning to active conflict with the self-proclaimed republic of Transnistria - a separatist region, with a slavic majority, which broke away from Chisinau during the collapse of the USSR.

Ukraine has a special interest in the territory, because launching a military action there could be doubly beneficial for Kiev. It would embarrass Moscow, which only has 1,500 peacekeepers stationed and no way to currently reinforce them, and would also allow Kiev potential access to a huge arms dump. The facility at Kolbasna - with a reported 22,000 tons of weaponry - is one of the largest in Europe, and it's located only 2km from the Ukrainian border.

During Soviet times, the strategic reserves of the Western Military District were stored here. However, most of the ammunition was brought to the warehouse after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the countries of the former Warsaw Pact - such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
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Star of David

Netanyahu justifies strikes on nuclear facilities


RT
Mon, 06 Mar 2023 00:36 UTC
Netanyahu
© Mario Tama/Getty Images/fileRemember this UN presentation?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that the option of attacking an Iranian nuclear facility in "self-defense" must be left on the table, arguing that the chief of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made an "unworthy" statement when he declared that any such strikes are banned.

Netanyahu said on Sunday in a cabinet meeting:
"Are we forbidden to defend ourselves? Of course, we are allowed, and of course, we are doing this... Nothing will prevent us from protecting our country and preventing oppressors from destroying the Jewish state."
Netanyahu's remarks came a day after IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi was asked by a reporter about US and Israeli threats to attack Iran if it doesn't agree to curb its nuclear program.

"Any military attack on a nuclear facility is outlawed, is out of the normative structures that we all abide by," Grossi said at a press briefing in Tehran after meeting with Iranian leaders. That principle applies to all nuclear facilities, including Europe's biggest atomic facility in Zaporozhye.
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