Puppet MastersS


Target

AI censorship targets people who read primary sources to fact-check the news

openbook
© Brett Jordan FLICKR/CC BY 2.0
Artificial intelligence censorship tools are making sure you never read this article or share it with anyone it might persuade.

NewsGuard announced last week it's using AI to automatically prevent American citizens from seeing information online that challenges government and corporate media claims about elections ahead of the 2024 voting season.

"[P]latforms and search engines" including Microsoft's Bing use NewsGuard's "ratings" to stop people from seeing disfavored information sources, information, and topics in their social media feeds and online searches. Now censorship is being deployed not only by humans but also by automated computer code, rapidly raising an Iron Curtain around internet speech.

Bullseye

'The West thought Putin would be easily defeated, but that was not so. Trend is now for all out militarization' - Serbia's Vucic

President Aleksandar Vucic
FILE PHOTO: President Aleksandar Vucic
The Western countries are building up their military potential and pursuing a policy of total militarization in an attempt to defeat Russia, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said.

"What is happening now is madness. They all thought that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin would be easily defeated. Now they see that this is not so," Vucic said. "The current trend is toward total militarization and a five-fold build-up in all respects," he told the media while visiting the Belgrade Military Technical Institute and inspecting armaments on display.

The Serbian leader together with Defense Minister Milos Vucevic inspected new weapons of the Serbian Armed Forces. He noted the importance of increasing the production of UAVs and other weapons.

Comment: See also:


Star of David

Israel accused of torturing UN workers to obtain false testimony about UNRWA and Hamas

Unrwa gaza palestinian aid logo
© The United Nations
A recent UNRWA document says its staff report having been tortured while detained by Israeli forces, who pressed them to provide false statements about ties between the agency and Hamas.

"The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members," Reuters reports, saying UNRWA workers "reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks."

This is another one of those stories about Israeli offenses that are so stunning that at first you can mistakenly believe you must not be reading it correctly — especially since the western political-media class haven't been treating it like the jarring news that it is. If we had anything remotely like an objective news media in the western world, reports that Israel tortured United Nations staff to get them to make false statements against a UN aid agency would be the top story everywhere for days.

Bizarro Earth

After Ukraine, US readies 'transnational kill chain' for Taiwan proxy war

diagram
© BAE Systems
In many traditions, when you paint or sculpt a Buddha, the eyes are the very last to be painted. It's only after the eyes have been completed that the sculpture is fully alive and empowered.

The United States has approved a $75 million weapons package to Taiwan province, involving the sale of the Link 16 communications system.

The acquisition of Link 16 is analogous to "painting the eyes on the Buddha": a last touch, it makes Taiwan's military systems and weapons platforms live and far-seeing.

It confers deadly powers, or more prosaically, in the words of the US military, it completes Taiwan as the final, lethal link of what the US Naval Institute calls a "transnational coalition kill chain", for war against China.

What exactly is Link 16? It is a key system in the US military communications arsenal. Specifically, it's the jam-resistant tactical data network for coordinating NATO weapons systems for joint operations in war.

If this sale is completed, it signals serious, granular, and single-minded commitment to kinetic war. It would signal that the Biden administration is as serious and unwavering in its desire to provoke and wage large-scale war with China over Taiwan as it was with Russia over Ukraine, which also saw the implementation of this system.

More important than any single weapons platform, this system allows the Taiwan/ROC military to integrate and coordinate all its warfighting platforms with US, NATO, Japanese, Korean, Australian militaries in combined arms warfare.

Propaganda

CIA spills the beans about deep involvement in Ukraine: Part of ploy to undercut Republican congressional opposition to war

2 flags
© nytimes.comA home, flying Ukrainian and American flags, close to the Russian border.
Makes a Point of Slipping in Disinformation About Russia to Further Propaganda Campaign

The New York Times on February 25 published an explosive story of what purports to be the history of the CIA in Ukraine from the Maidan coup of 2014 to the present. The story, "The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin," written by Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz, is one of initial distrust, but a mutual fear and hatred of Russia that progresses to a relationship so close that Ukraine is now one of the CIA's closest intelligence partners in the world.

At the same time, the Times's publication of the piece, which relied on more than 200 interviews in Ukraine, the U.S., and "several other European countries," raises several questions: Why did the CIA not object to the article's publication, especially coming in one of the Agency's preferred outlets? When the CIA approaches a newspaper to complain about the classified information it contains, the piece is almost always killed or severely edited.

Newspaper publishers are patriots, after all. Right? Was the article published because the CIA wanted the news out there? Perhaps more importantly, was the point of the article to influence the congressional budget deliberations on aid to Ukraine? After all, was the article really just meant to brag about how great the CIA is? Or was it to warn congressional appropriators, "Look how much we've accomplished to confront the Russian bear. You wouldn't really let it all go to waste, would you?"

Attention

Biden: State of Disunion

Brandon
© coyoteprimeblog2.blogspot.com
My so-called special article has gone through various iterations - but primarily focuses on Putin's Address to the Federal Assembly — which strikes me as a visionary speech.

It's over two hours long - twice as long as Biden's March 7 State of the Union Address.

As I parsed Putin's address, I was struck by parallels in American history — principally with the tenure of FDR and his use of World War II to try to reinvent the US industrially and socially against the entrenched interests of his generation's oligarchy — what he called "organized money".

The six-year program that Putin outlined in his address is something like that — not only a Big Deal for the Russian people - but very much a New Deal.

Also, a New Deal for the people of the world beyond the Anglo-American Empire and its satellite states in Europe offering a practical path to realizing FDR's "Four Freedoms" and more.

How exactly?

Well — that's the substance of the article for my coffee buyers. I hope it will be worth the wait.

One thing that has delayed that article is Biden's March 7 State of the Union address, which I knew would offer a useful comparison and which I needed for context.

I assumed that Biden's speech would mostly lack content-- that it would be a Campaign Speech by any other name - just paid for by the taxpayer — full of the usual banalities, exaggerations, platitudes, and what is now politely called "disinformation" which campaign speeches underwritten by powerful lobbies like AIPAC contain.

It would be full of virtue signaling of all kinds, rationalizations of support for Israel, and the continuing destruction of Ukraine — not to mention increased defense spending at home — war being America's only industry.

Biden would pretend to be socially conscious and liberal - as he is always done over the years, even while gutting progressive policies.

And he would attack Trump as the Great Evil, threatening an American democracy that has never really existed.

How would he - or rather his team of writers - since Biden can barely string two words together much less write a speech — tie all this together?

Of course! He would invoke FDR — as though he were Roosevelt reborn! As Jesus was to Constantine, so FDR is to modern Democrats.

Biden began with Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech, in which Roosevelt announced to Americans that they were at war with Germany and Japan.

What amazing hypocrisy! The "Four Freedoms" are now the opposite of everything that the US has come to stand for. Certainly, everything Biden stands for, not that he really stands for anything.

Calculator

Fyodor Lukyanov: Why the EU could be the biggest loser from the Ukraine conflict

Scholz and Macron
As alarms bells ring in the West, Emmanuel Macron's talk of NATO troops in Ukraine reflects a fear of failure

French President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged that the Fifth Republic will not send its troops to Ukraine in the near future. Earlier, he had stated that Western leaders had discussed the issue but failed to reach an agreement.

The evolution of the Ukraine crisis has had paradoxical consequences. Two years since the most acute phase began, Western Europe has found itself at the spearhead of the confrontation. Not only in terms of the costs it has incurred - which have been discussed from the very beginning. Now the possibility of a military conflict with Russia is being raised much more loudly in the Old World than on the other side of the Atlantic, and France is the instigator. Macron's statement on the possibility of sending NATO troops into the war zone seemed spontaneous to many. But a week later, Paris insisted it was deliberate and well thought-out.

For many years, France has been calling for the EU to think about "strategic autonomy," but few expected this version of its realisation. On the other hand, if autonomy is indeed the objective, what does it mean today? Separation from the main ally (the United States) in the context of an acute military and political confrontation that requires consolidation is absurd. Thus, it probably means the ability to go it alone in defining military and political tasks. To lead the New World, and not the other way around.

Comment: It appears as if Europe hasn't learned important lessons of history which seriously puts us all in danger. It is clear though that the European leaders are making these decisions without consulting the people in their countries who are more interested in the domestic problems within EU. As always, war and/or the fear of war in a climate of engineered hysteria works wonders in distracting people towards an enemy 'out there' and thus protecting the real enemy 'inside'.

See also:


Cruise Missle

NATO bringing missiles closer to Russia - member state

A MIM-104 Patriot anti-aircraft missile system in Rzeszow Airport, Poland on July 24, 2022.
© Christophe Gateau / picture alliance / Getty ImagesA MIM-104 Patriot anti-aircraft missile system in Rzeszow Airport, Poland on July 24, 2022.
US-made Patriot surface-to-air systems will be deployed in Lithuania this year, the defense chief said.

NATO will station US-made Patriot anti-air missile systems in Lithuania during 2024, the Baltic country's defense minister has announced.

Lithuania shares a border with Russia's exclave of Kaliningrad, and with Russia's ally Belarus.
"This year, the rotational air defense system will finally become operational, at least partially," Arvydas Anusauskas said during a press conference in Vilnius on Thursday, as quoted by the state broadcaster LRT.
"Our goal is to have a rotation similar to the air policing mission," the minister added, referring to the regular patrol flights by NATO aircraft in the airspace of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Comment: See also:


Stormtrooper

NATO 'increasingly aggressive' - Moscow

Polish and other NATO troops take part in military maneuvers Steadfast Defender 24
© AP Photo/Czarek SokolowskiPolish and other NATO troops take part in military maneuvers Steadfast Defender 24 in Korzeniewo, in Poland on March 4, 2024.
The US-led bloc is openly rehearsing for a conflict with Moscow, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolay Patrushev has warned.

NATO's ongoing 'Steadfast Defender 2024' war games are heightening tensions globally by simulating a military confrontation with Moscow, the secretary of the Russian Security Council has said. Nikolay Patrushev also cited the alliance's growing military spending as an indication of its "increasingly aggressive nature."

The exercises hailed as the largest NATO has held in decades, kicked off in late January and will end in May. According to Supreme Allied Commander for Europe Christopher Cavoli, the drills feature some 90,000 troops from all 32 member states. In addition, 1,100 combat vehicles, including 133 tanks and 533 infantry fighting vehicles, as well as over 50 naval vessels and 80 helicopters, drones and fighter jets are taking part, it is believed.

Comment: See also:


Stop

Nobody wants to send troops to Ukraine - Germany

Fin/Ger
© Roni Rekomaa/Lehtikuva/APFinnish DM Antti Häkkänen (L) with his German counterpart Boris Pistorius • Helsinki, Finland • March 8, 2024
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has categorically rejected the French president's suggestion...

Discussions about NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine need to end, because nobody actually wants that to happen, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Friday.

Pistorius was in Finland to visit the German troops taking part in NATO's Nordic Response wargames in the Arctic Circle. While there, he held a joint press conference with his Finnish counterpart Antti Hakkanen.

"Nobody really wants to have boots on the ground in Ukraine. Discussions about that should stop." Pistorius said, responding to a question about recent remarks made by French President Emmanuel Macron suggesting that the matter was open-ended.

"Nobody is now supporting 'boots on the ground'," Hakkanen agreed.

Macron said last week that no option should be ruled out, including ground troops, because Russia can't be allowed to win. Only two Baltic states endorsed the idea, however, with most other NATO members publicly denouncing it.

Comment: See also: