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'Beacon of liberty': 10 years since Georgia attacked South Ossetia and Russia - not the other way around


RT
Wed, 08 Aug 2018 19:20 UTC
Children play with an empty grenade launcher
© Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters
Children play with an empty grenade launcher in Tskhinval on September 1, 2008
Wednesday marks exactly a decade since an ambitious Georgian leader shook world politics and ushered in a new era of antagonism between Russia and the West.

Ten years ago Western audiences learned about breaking news. Russia was doing it again - attacking its weaker neighbor Georgia with tanks and warplanes. Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili was giving exclusive interviews right and left, explaining how his country was being attacked because it wants freedom and how the battle was for values, nothing less. Anchors reminded viewers that Georgia provided troops to missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and wanted to be part of NATO.


On the same day Russian audiences learned that Saakashvili went on his latest military adventures, sending tanks and heavy artillery to shell the rebellious city of Tskhinval. Russian peacekeepers stationed there had been killed. President Dmitry Medvedev, visiting the Olympic Games in Beijing, ordered a military response to enforce peace in South Ossetia.

Comment: A nurse from South Ossetia, who rescued 19 people from a burning psychiatric ward in Tskhinval during the Georgian raid and spent days in a cellar with terrified mental patients, has recalled the tragic events of August 2008.
Irina Bibilova was on a night shift on August 8 when the Georgian forces launched a sudden, large-scale attack on the breakaway Republic of South Ossetia. Its capital Tskhinval immediately came under indiscriminate shelling, with a local psychiatric ward becoming one of the targets.

As the first explosions were heard, Irina and other medics decided to gather the patients on the first floor of the hospital. But they quickly realized that it wasn't safe there either and began evacuating the facility.

"Under the garage building [not far from the hospital] there was a trench to repair the cars. And they let us in and we stayed in that hole for 24 hours," Irina told RT's Ruptly video agency.
...
Irina recalled that she and other nurses even tried to extinguish the flames, saying: "Despite the shelling, we managed to get three buckets of water there, but, of course, we couldn't save our hospital."

"But, thank God, we managed to save the patients," Irina recalled, barely able to hold back her tears.
Ten years after Georgia tried to seize the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force, RT spoke to survivors about how they have coped with the mental and physical scars suffered in those few days.
From a boy who was born to a cannonade of Georgian shelling in Tskhinval, to a nurse injured while trying to treat Russian peacekeepers besieged by Georgian troops, to a Florida man, whose Ossetian wife was caught in the crossfire - thousands of people were affected by the August 2008 war.

RT's documentary tells the stories of ordinary people, and of the burdens they have been carrying, in an attempt to answer a question: Can there be lasting peace on the war-scarred land of South Ossetia?

Arsen turned 10 on August 8. When he was born, his home city was under heavy shelling by the Georgian troops. Doctors were preparing to assist with the delivery in a basement, which offered some protection from incoming projectiles and debris.

"An ambulance came to take me to the hospital," recalled Arsen's mother Shorena Kachmazova. "There was heavy gunfire. When I reached the city, it was burned out and lay in ruins. There were burnt-out cars everywhere. That's how I got to the maternity hospital."

"We delivered him as the shells came down!" said Nellu Khugaeva, a nurse. "It was terrifying! We were shaking!"

Arsen said he was told a grenade blew up outside the hospital just as he was born.


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Propaganda

NYT implies Alex Jones' content removal from Apple, Facebook and YouTube is not enough

Jack Nicas
The New York Times
Mon, 06 Aug 2018 00:01 UTC
Alex Jones
Top technology companies erased most of the posts and videos on their services from Alex Jones, the internet's notorious conspiracy theorist, thrusting themselves into a fraught debate over their role in regulating what can be said online.

Apple, Google, Facebook and Spotify severely restricted the reach of Mr. Jones and Infowars, his right-wing site that has been a leading peddler of false information online. Mr. Jones and Infowars have used social media for years to spread dark and bizarre theories, such as that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax and that Democrats run a global child-sex ring. Apple made its move on Sunday and the others followed on Monday.

The actions, one of the tech companies' most aggressive efforts against misinformation, highlighted a difficult dilemma for their businesses. They have long desired to combat misinformation online, but they have also been reluctant to be arbiters of truth.

Comment: Alex Jones is certainly not a bastion of truth in the current political landscape which makes it awkward for some to get behind calling out this injustice for fear of being associated with Jones or approving of his opinions. But remember that censorship often sneaks in in exactly this way - first going for the radicals few align themselves with, and slowly going further along the spectrum until the reasonable voices are similarly silenced. Those who don't voice their dissent now will find it's too late once their own speech is being threatened.

See also:


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X

Chilling Precedent? InfoWars Purge Exposes Big Tech as no Friend of Free Speech

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Tue, 07 Aug 2018 11:51 UTC
Alex Jones
© Lucas Jackson / Reuters
Alex Jones at a rally during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 18, 2016
Editor's note: Cnet has revealed that Jones' Linkedin account has also been deleted by Linkedin. This makes it clear that the "hate speech" justification given by Youtube, FB et al, is a narrative hiding the real reason: deliberate censorship.
The US Constitution explicitly forbids government censorship. So Silicon Valley big-tech companies made themselves the gatekeepers of 'goodthink,' de-platforming anyone who runs afoul of their arbitrary 'community standards.'

Alex Jones, the host of InfoWars, has often been derided by establishment media as a conspiracy theorist. Yet on Monday, Apple, Spotify, YouTube and Facebook proved right the motto of his show - "There's a war on for your mind!" - by blocking or deleting InfoWars accounts from their platforms, saying he allegedly engaged in "hate speech" and violated their "community standards."

Simply put, these corporations appointed themselves arbiters of acceptable political thought, and censored Jones for failing to comply with arbitrary political standards set in Silicon Valley boardrooms, not at the ballot box.


Comment: That these corporations have been doing this is no secret. However with this latest concerted effort to ban InfoWars from their platforms under their vague "community standards", will we see more alternative sources hit by the ban-hammer? And will the blatant censorship and constant oppression drive users to other platforms? Although they don't (yet) have the reach, these newer ones (like Steemit or Dtube), are decentralized, put power back into the hands of the people and are growing in number. It might be our best chance at fighting back. See also: In America, corporate censorship is state censorship

Facebook shut down InfoWars permanently, calling it 'hate speech', without notifying them what precisely constituted the hate speech. Apple removed all their podcasts for the same 'reason'. Jones's YouTube channel had 2.4 million subscribers. After YT banned him, subscribers were met with an invitation to unsubscribe from the now inaccessible channel. The absurd thing is this: it's not the government doing the censorship (i.e. Trump's White House) - it's the high-level corporate world; the 'Deep State'. That should show everyone where the real power lies. It's no coincidence that their behavior bears a striking resemblance to the Soviets...

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No Entry

In America, Corporate Censorship is State Censorship

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Tue, 07 Aug 2018 09:38 UTC
Alex Jones
Last year, representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google were instructed on the US Senate floor that it is their responsibility to "quell information rebellions" and adopt a "mission statement" expressing their commitment to "prevent the fomenting of discord."

"Civil wars don't start with gunshots, they start with words," the representatives were told. "America's war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America."

Yes, this really happened.



Comment: See also:

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Alarm Clock

Terrorism, Immigration and Racism in Canada: The Backlash has Begun

Timothy C. Trepanier
Sott.net
Mon, 06 Aug 2018 21:41 UTC
Chinese Canadian Protest
© The National Post
Chinese Canadians in Markham Ontario demonstrate against illegal border crossings.
There's a strange confluence happening in Canada that is likely to alter the fate of all citizens across the country and leave an indelible mark upon the psyche of what was once considered a peaceful and friendly nation. A perfect storm is brewing of seemingly unrelated, but loosely connected events, that have transpired to increase tension and foment division between formerly amicable citizens in a profound and significant way.

Uncontrolled illegal mass immigration, along with the spectre of potential Islamic terrorism, combined with the forcible imposition of absurd and counter-productive neo-Marxist, social-justice inspired government policies, has resulted in a very public backlash recently, which has at times taken the form of several highly publicized incidents deemed as racially motivated "hate crimes" by Canada's progressive liberal media.

Contrary to all appearances, this confluence may not be merely an accidental and independent series of events, but is arguably a direct result of a deliberate and conscious plan by those in power to weaken national sovereignty and sow discord, mistrust and hostility between different groups of people. The signs are all there. It's time to put the pieces together...

Comment: For a short but comprehensive understanding of the ideology that drives the progressive policies of governments like Justin Truedeau's, this video on cultural Marxism serves as an excellent primer...



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SOTT Logo Radio

The Truth Perspective: Solzhenitsyn's Warning to the West: Why It's Still Relevant Today

Elan Martin, Harrison Koehli, Corey Schink
Sott.net
Sat, 04 Aug 2018 16:00 UTC
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Dead write: many of Solzhenitsyn's predictions for the future of Ukraine have come to a painful fruition
Shortly after being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave a series of talks in the U.S. and UK. Those talks, including his Harvard Address of 1978, caused many in the West to turn against him. Once the hero of the anti-Communist movement in the West, his criticisms of Western culture, including its materialism, legalism, shallowness and cowardice, cut a little too close to the bone. His warning to the West - that we are in a weak enough state to be susceptible to the infection of totalitarianism - was stern. And while it did not come to pass - and the Soviet Union collapsed - his warning still applies.

Today on the Truth Perspective we discuss Solzhenitsyn's criticisms of the West, of Communism, and why his warning is still relevant. The problems he elucidated are not just still present, they have gotten worse. Solzhenitsyn worried that the West would have to learn through experience, and not through the example of those who had already suffered. It looks like he was probably right.

Running Time: 01:28:23

Download: MP3

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Stock Down

Americans Are Living in a World of Lies

Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Fri, 03 Aug 2018 08:54 UTC
News Lies
© The Right Angle
The US government and the presstitutes that serve it continue to lie to us about everything. Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics told us that the unemployment rate was 3.9%. How can this be when the BLS also reports that the labor force participation rate has declined for a decade throughout the length of the alleged economic recovery and there is no upward pressure on wages from full employment. When jobs are plentiful, people enter the labor force to take advantage of the work opportunities. This raises the labor force participation rate. When employment is full - which is what a 3.9% unemlpoyment rate means - wages are bid up as employers compete for scarce labor. Full employment with no wage pressure and no rise in the labor force participation rate is impossible.

The 3.9% unemployment rate is not due to employment. It results from not counting discouraged workers who have ceased to search for jobs because there are no jobs to be had. If an unemployed person is not actively searching for a job, he is not counted as being in the labor force. The way the unemployment rate is measured makes it a hoax.

The government tells us that there is essentially no inflation despite the fact that prices have been rising strongly - the price of food, the price of home repairs, the price of drugs, the price of almost everything. Two years ago the American Association of Retired People's Public Policy Institute reported that the average retail drug price has been increasing "at a worrying pace of 10 percent a year, and about 20 drugs have astoundingly had their prices quadruple since just December. Sixty drugs doubled over the same period. Turing Pharmaceuticals, headed by Martin Shkreli, is one of the most pronounced examples of this kind of behavior. The company bought a lifesaving cancer medication only to increase its price from $13.50 to $750 per pill."

Comment: See also:

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Gingerbread

How Identity Politics Divides The Left And Has Caused it to Lose Sight of Its Collective Identity And Purpose in The West

Tomasz Pierscionek
RT
Thu, 02 Aug 2018 12:36 UTC
protestors
© Stefan Wermuth / Reuters
The identity politics phenomenon sweeping across the Western world is a divide and conquer strategy that prevents the emergence of a genuine resistance to the elites.

A core principle of socialism is the idea of an overarching supra-national solidarity that unites the international working class and overrides any factor that might divide it, such as nation, race, or gender. Workers of all nations are partners, having equal worth and responsibility in a struggle against those who profit from their brain and muscle.

Capitalism, especially in its most evolved, exploitative and heartless form - imperialism - has wronged certain groups of people more than others. Colonial empires tended to reserve their greatest brutality for subjugated peoples whilst the working class of these imperialist nations fared better in comparison, being closer to the crumbs that fell from the table of empire. The international class struggle aims to liberate all people everywhere from the drudgery of capitalism regardless of their past or present degree of oppression. The phrase 'an injury to one is an injury to all' encapsulates this mindset and conflicts with the idea of prioritising the interests of one faction of the working class over the entire collective.
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Russian Flag

Grand Deception: The 1990s Russian Catastrophe Could Have Been Avoided

Alex Krainer
The Naked Hedgie
Fri, 03 Aug 2018 22:09 UTC
It is commonly accepted that, after 70 years of Communist dictatorship, Russia's 1990s transition was inevitably going to be a massive train wreck. This is yet another convenient misconception that western intellectuals like to embrace. The foregoing article seeks to dispel this notion and set the historical record straight. It is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of my book, Grand Deception: the Truth About Bill Browder, the Magnitsky Act, and Anti-Russia Sanctions. The book's previous incarnation was banned last summer.

This is the last in a six-part series on Russia's 1990s transition from communism to capitalism. Links to previous posts: introduction, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.
"Americans, who thought their money was helping a stricken land, have been dishonored; and the Russian people who trusted us are now in debt twice what they were in 1991 and rightly feel themselves betrayed."

¬ Reporter Anne Williamson before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives, 21 September 1999
bush yeltsin harvard
Was there a better way for Russia to move from communism to capitalism? Was her traumatic experience under the Yeltsin regime inevitable, or was the pain intentionally inflicted? To this day many intellectuals in the West maintain that the transition could not have gone otherwise, arguing that Russia had emerged from 70 years of communist rule with a state-controlled economy, with private property outlawed and a nonexistent culture of entrepreneurship. The shift between two drastically different economic systems together with the most complex privatization project ever undertaken could never have gone smoothly. The Russians themselves are usually assumed to have been ignorant about the workings of free markets and unprepared for the transition's challenges. However, this is simply not true.

Well before the Soviet Union began to unravel, it was clear to most of its thinking citizens that their system would capsize unless it drastically changed.
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SOTT Logo Radio

The Health & Wellness Show: Is Talking About Racism Racist?


Sott.net
Fri, 03 Aug 2018 15:00 UTC
four babies
Race is a hotbed topic that many people continue to tiptoe around (mainly out of fear of being labeled a racist or an Uncle Tom). White privilege, police shootings, the Black Lives Matter movement, strident calls for 'diversity' and 'inclusion', race-baiting, seeing racism everywhere, affirmative action, racial sensitivity training, racial equity policies -- in today's political and social environment issues surrounding race have become more polarizing than ever.

We're not living in a post-racial world but does race have the impact that left-leaning racial scholars would have us believe? Is racism hard-wired into human beings or is seeing the world through a racial lens part of evolutionary adaptation? On this episode of The Health and Wellness Show we discuss these topics and risk being labeled racist by talking about racism.

And stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment, where she talks about raccoons - cute, but destructive!

Running Time: 01:22:54

Download: MP3

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