Brave New World

**bsnub** · 19-08-2022, 07:05 AM

Originally Posted by panama hat

You and him . . . Yes.

I agree, especially skiddy. He is the biggest imbecile on TD, a multi-nick, and he contributes nothing of value to the forum. He belongs in the doghouse.

**harrybarracuda** · 19-08-2022, 07:52 AM

Originally Posted by sabang

So your 'argument' is "Oh, but They do it too. So it's OK if We do it too". That argument doesn't wash with me, and neither should it wash with any citizen of a free society. Unless of course, you don't want it to be a free society any more- in which case, you are no different to those 'Others' you lambast for their lack of liberties. Our hard won freedoms and rights are there for a reason, and it is downright shameful to see so many people voluntarily allowing themselves to be systematically stripped of them. Even, encouraging it.

There are no "hard won freedoms and rights" in Chinkystan OR Russia. They are both run by dictators who crush anyone who opposes them.

This whole thread is a fucking joke, and so are you.

**sabang** · 19-08-2022, 08:30 AM

So ignore it 'arryboy. Your absence will not be missed.

**pickel** · 19-08-2022, 08:47 AM

Originally Posted by sabang

So your 'argument' is "Oh, but They do it too. So it's OK if We do it too". That argument doesn't wash with me, and neither should it wash with any citizen of a free society

You are pretty much the King of whataboutism. Russia and China are not free societies. You've lost your mind.

**bsnub** · 19-08-2022, 08:58 AM

Originally Posted by pickel

You are pretty much the King of whataboutism.

It is all he has.

Originally Posted by pickel

You've lost your mind.

Sometime ago, in fact.

**cyrille** · 19-08-2022, 09:01 AM

Originally Posted by bsnub

He is the biggest imbecile on TD.

While yasojack is resting.

**panama hat** · 19-08-2022, 09:06 AM

Originally Posted by sabang

So ignore it 'arryboy. Your absence will not be missed.

Says the poster who is leading all these threads by a large margin . . . you're simply trying too hard at being an imbecile . . .

Originally Posted by sabang

Our hard won freedoms and rights are there for a reason, and it is downright shameful to see so many people voluntarily allowing themselves to be systematically stripped of them. Even, encouraging it.

You're a keyboard warrior on an open forum . . . espousing the wonders of murderous dictatorships.

Impressive

**Backspin** · 19-08-2022, 11:55 PM

Speaking of 1984, there are 1000's of different news broadcasts in the US saying the exact same words.

**misskit** · 20-08-2022, 08:21 AM

Originally Posted by Backspin

Speaking of 1984, there are 1000's of different news broadcasts in the US saying the exact same words.

Backspin, this is a flat out lie. There were not 1000’s broadcasts repeating the exact words. There were a couple of hundred. You really need to link your bullshit and control your hyperbole. Also, there is a whole thread devoted to just this subject somewhere in SC.

This thread has slid off into lalaland and needs to recover some reality or going bye bye.

**misskit** · 22-08-2022, 07:09 AM

^^^I posted this just the other day. You must have missed it.

Russian Anti-War Journalist Marina Ovsyannikova Placed Under House Arrest In Moscow, Faces 10-Year Prison Sentence

Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who became a symbol of fearless dissent when she interrupted a live TV broadcast in March to protest her country’s invasion of Ukraine, has been placed under house arrest in Moscow pending a trial related to a fresh anti-war protest in July.

Ovsyannikova was arrested on August 10 in a police raid on her Moscow home. She appeared in court on Thursday (August 11) where she was charged with spreading fake news about the military, an offense that carries up to ten years in prison under Russian law.

The charges are not related to her original TV protest but rather a fresh action in mid-July in which she stood opposite the Kremlin, holding a placard with slogans criticizing President Vladimir Putin and the Russian army. At her feet lay two dolls covered in red dye to highlight the deaths of children in the conflict.

Following her first protest in March, which resulted in a brief arrest and $527 fine (30,000 rubles), Ovsyannikova left Russia and worked briefly for the German newspaper Die Welt on a temporary contract.

She returned to Russia in early July to fight for access to her two children after her ex-husband filed a lawsuit asking for sole custody in Moscow.

Ovsyannikova said in an Instagram post that she knew she could be arrested on her return but despite these fears, she staged further public protests against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

She continued her protests in the courtroom on Thursday. Sitting in the glass defendant’s cage, she defiantly held up an A4 piece of paper bearing the words “May the murdered kids haunt your dreams tonight.”

Local media outlets and human rights groups reported that Ovsyannikova had been placed under house arrest until October 9, pending her trial.

There has been a widespread crackdown on anti-war protests and dissent across Russia since the start of its war in Ukraine on February 24.

Russian independent human rights watchdog OVD-info, estimates that there have been more than 15,000 detentions and at least 178 people are currently going through the courts and could face lengthy prison sentences.

Russian Journalist Marina Ovsyannikova Faces 10-Year Prison Sentence – Deadline

So, sabang, when the world’s eyes were on her protest, the Russians made out like her protest was allowed. Now she’s in the lock-up.

**sabang** · 22-08-2022, 08:15 AM

She is under house arrest, to be precise. In Australia we call that home detention. And whatever MSM may say she' faces', let's see what she actually gets. Then compare that to Julian Assange.

**harrybarracuda** · 22-08-2022, 09:25 AM

Originally Posted by sabang

She is under house arrest, to be precise. In Australia we call that home detention. And whatever MSM may say she' faces', let's see what she actually gets. Then compare that to Julian Assange.

You should compare it to Alexei Navalny. Or Alexander Litvinenko. Or Boris Nemtsov. Or Sergei Ivanov. Or Valery Kondakov. Or Yuri Shchekochikhin. Or Aleksei Sidarov. Or Ivan Safronov. Or Magomed Yevlovev. Or Natalya Estemirova. Or Mikhail Beketov. Or....

You witless fucking moron.

**sabang** · 22-08-2022, 10:02 AM

Or Boris the bore, or Ivan the insufferable. If you actually have any details to provide witless child, do feel free to post them here.

**pickel** · 22-08-2022, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by sabang

Have you read the Moscow Times?

The Moscow Times had to move their offices to Amsterdam, because puffy Putin would have shut them down and had them arrested. Brave New World, eh?

**harrybarracuda** · 25-08-2022, 09:55 AM

Gosh, imagine facing jail for having an opinion.

This must be the "brave new world" that sabang keeps banging on about.

The former mayor of Russia’s fourth-largest city — and a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin — was arrested on Wednesday for speaking out against the war in Ukraine.
Yevgeny Roizman, 59, who served as the mayor of Yekaterinburg from 2013 to 2018, was taken into custody by police following raids on his apartment and office — as part of the Kremlin’s nationwide crackdown against dissidents.
Roizman told reporters he was charged with discrediting Russia’s military, which is illegal under a law that was adopted after the invasion of Ukraine in February. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.

Ex-Russian mayor and Putin critic arrested for blasting Ukraine war

**sabang** · 25-08-2022, 10:04 AM

Does Julian Assange's extended period of detention have something to do with discrediting America's military? Still, if we do it it must be alright.

**Switch** · 25-08-2022, 10:12 AM

Originally Posted by sabang

She is under house arrest, to be precise. In Australia we call that home detention. And whatever MSM may say she' faces', let's see what she actually gets. Then compare that to Julian Assange.

Did Assange start a war and blame it all on NATO? If this is the way Putin deals with criticism from a well known media figure, how do you think they deal with the general public.

No need to wait. Her career is over already.

**panama hat** · 25-08-2022, 10:24 AM

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

This must be the "brave new world" that sabang keeps banging on about.

Originally Posted by sabang

Does... whatbaoutism whatbaoutism whatbaoutism whatbaoutismwhatbaoutism whatbaoutismwhatbaoutism whatbaoutismwhatbaoutism whatbaoutismwhatbaoutism whatbaoutismwhatbaoutism whatbaoutismwhatbaoutism whatbaoutismwhatbaoutism whatbaoutism

Whatamoron

**sabang** · 25-08-2022, 10:25 AM

Free Julian!

**Switch** · 25-08-2022, 01:04 PM

You have make that price to get offers?

**misskit** · 25-08-2022, 02:09 PM

Originally Posted by sabang

Free Julian!

Poor Julian. I bet he gets out before some of these poor sods do.

Six months in, 16500 Detained in Russia for War Opposition

Almost 16,500 people have been detained across Russia for protesting the war in the 6 months since the invasion of Ukraine, according to data published Wednesday by an independent human rights group.

The overwhelming majority of detentions came in the first month of the fighting before Russian lawmakers passed legislation criminalizing virtually any speech or act criticizing the war, the OVD-Info website said.

Since then, according to OVD-Info, there has been a fall from 800 detentions between March 24 and June 24 to 89 in the two subsequent months.

Moscow and St. Petersburg had the highest number of detentions.

More than 3,800 of those detained have been charged with offenses that carry fines as punishment. Such cases fell from close to 900 at their peak in April to 333 so far in August.

At least 224 people face criminal prosecution for acts like referring to Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine as a “war” or “invasion,” OVD-Info said in its roundup of the legal fallout from the conflict.

Some of them face up to 15 years in prison for spreading what authorities determine to be “fake” information about the Russian Armed Forces.

In addition, Russia has designated 74 organizations “foreign agents” and another 15 “undesirable” over the last six months, according to OVD-Info.

Meanwhile, Russia’s independent internet watchdog Roskomsvoboda reported Tuesday that around 7,000 websites, including those of prominent Russian and international independent news media, have been blocked for their content about the war.

Russia’s prosecutor general said earlier this month that 138,000 websites have been blocked or deleted since the start of the war.

Six months in, 16,500 Detained in Russia For War Opposition – Rights Group - The Moscow Times

**misskit** · 25-08-2022, 02:23 PM

^First person incarcerated in Russia for calling the invasion of Ukraine ‘a war’ says he’s being denied vital medical aid in prison

The first person to be incarcerated in Russia for spreading supposed “disinformation” about the invasion of Ukraine says his health is rapidly deteriorating behind bars. Former Moscow municipal deputy Alexey Gorinov was sentenced to seven years in prison for calling Russia’s attack “a war” in a speech to his fellow council members.

In a handwritten letter shared on Telegram, Gorinov said he’s developed a persistent cough and difficulty breathing, eating, and sleeping. “I’m not getting any medical assistance, and my condition is getting worse. I’m asking for help.” According to his lawyer, Gorinov has also lost a dangerous amount of weight in prison.

On July 8, a Moscow court sentenced municipal deputy Alexey Gorinov to seven years in prison for spreading “false information” about the Russian army. The 60-year-old was charged with violating military censorship laws introduced after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. His crime? Calling the invasion a war during a session of the local assembly where he is a deputy. Throughout the trial, Gorinov insisted that his statements reflected nothing more than his personal opinion. But Judge Olesya Mendeleeva, who has presided over a number of high-profile cases, found him guilty nevertheless. Gorinov’s verdict marks the first time a Russian court has sent anyone to prison for sharing “disinformation” about the military.

Here is his story. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/07...-need-this-war

**panama hat** · 26-08-2022, 11:53 AM

Originally Posted by sabang

Free Julian!

Originally Posted by misskit

oor Julian. I bet he gets out before some of these poor sods do.

Six months in, 16500 Detained in Russia for War Opposition

Oh dear . . . that'd hurt sabang's feelings (though I do agree with his Assange stance)

**harrybarracuda** · 27-08-2022, 08:38 AM

Another dictator at work.

Istanbul (CNN)Turkish pop star Gulsen Colakoglu has been jailed on charges of "inciting or insulting the public to hatred and enmity" after she made a joke about religious schools in Turkey, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.

The charges appear to be related to a video circulating on social media from a Gulsen concert in April, when she joked about one of the musicians.
He "graduated from Imam Hatip (religious schools). That's where his pervert side comes from," she said.

Several Twitter users could be seen sharing the video on Thursday with a hashtag calling for her arrest and saying it is offensive to associate the schools with perverts.

Gulsen denies that she has committed any crime and is appealing the arrest, according to her lawyer Emek Emre.
After her detention, Gulsen shared a message on her official Twitter and Instagram accounts, apologizing to "anyone who was offended" by the joke and saying it had been twisted by "malicious people who aim to polarize our country."

Turkish pop star Gulsen Colakoglu jailed after a joke about religious schools in Turkey - CNN

**sabang** · 30-08-2022, 07:25 AM

No one, including the most bullish supporters of Ukraine, expect the nation’s war with Russia to end soon. The fighting has been reduced to artillery duels across hundreds of miles of front lines and creeping advances and retreats. Ukraine, like Afghanistan, will bleed for a very long time. This is by design.

On August 24, the Biden administration announced yet another massive military aid package to Ukraine worth nearly $3 billion. It will take months, and in some cases years, for this military equipment to reach Ukraine. In another sign that Washington assumes the conflict will be a long war of attrition it will give a name to the U.S. military assistance mission in Ukraine and make it a separate command overseen by a two- or three-star general. Since August 2021, Biden has approved more than $8 billion in weapons transfers from existing stockpiles, known as drawdowns, to be shipped to Ukraine, which do not require Congressional approval.

Including humanitarian assistance, replenishing depleting U.S. weapons stocks and expanding U.S. troop presence in Europe, Congress has approved over $53.6 billion ($13.6 billion in March and a further $40.1 billion in May) since Russia's February 24 invasion. War takes precedence over the most serious existential threats we face. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion while the proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Our approved assistance to Ukraine is more than twice these amounts.

The militarists who have waged permanent war costing trillions of dollars over the past two decades have invested heavily in controlling the public narrative. The enemy, whether Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin, is always the epitome of evil, the new Hitler. Those we support are always heroic defenders of liberty and democracy. Anyone who questions the righteousness of the cause is accused of being an agent of a foreign power and a traitor.

The mass media cravenly disseminates these binary absurdities in 24-hour news cycles. Its news celebrities and experts, universally drawn from the intelligence community and military, rarely deviate from the approved script. Day and night, the drums of war never stop beating. Its goal: to keep billions of dollars flowing into the hands of the war industry and prevent the public from asking inconvenient questions.

In the face of this barrage, no dissent is permitted.CBS News caved to pressure and retracted its documentary which charged that only 30 percent of arms shipped to Ukraine were making it to the front lines, with the rest siphoned off to the black market, a finding that was separately reported upon by U.S. journalist Lindsey Snell. CNN has acknowledged there is no oversight of weapons once they arrive in Ukraine, long considered the most corrupt country in Europe. According to a poll of executives responsible for tackling fraud, completed by Ernst & Young in 2018, Ukraine was ranked the ninth-most corrupt nation from 53 surveyed.

There is little ostensible reason for censoring critics of the war in Ukraine. The U.S. is not at war with Russia. No U.S. troops are fighting in Ukraine. Criticism of the war in Ukraine does not jeopardize our national security. There are no long-standing cultural and historical ties to Ukraine, as there are to Great Britain. But if permanent war, with potentially tenuous public support, is the primary objective, censorship makes sense.

War is the primary business of the U.S. empire and the bedrock of the U.S. economy. The two ruling political parties slavishly perpetuate permanent war, as they do austerity programs, trade deals, the virtual tax boycott for corporations and the rich, wholesale government surveillance, the militarization of the police and the maintenance of the largest prison system in the world. They bow before the dictates of the militarists, who have created a state within a state. This militarism, as Seymour Melman writes in The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline, “is fundamentally contradictory to the formation of a new political economy based upon democracy, instead of hierarchy, in the workplace and the rest of society.”

“The idea that war economy brings prosperity has become more than an American illusion,” Melman writes. “When converted, as it has been, into ideology that justifies the militarization of society and moral debasement, as in Vietnam, then critical reassessment of that illusion is a matter of urgency. It is a primary responsibility of thoughtful people who are committed to humane values to confront and respond to the prospect that deterioration of American economy and society, owing to the ravages of war economy, can become irreversible.”

If permanent war is to be halted, as Melman writes, the ideological control of the war industry must be shattered. The war industry’s funding of politicians, research centers and think tanks, as well as its domination of the media monopolies, must end. The public must be made aware, Melman writes, of how the federal government “sustains itself as the directorate of the largest industrial corporate empire in the world; how the war economy is organized and operated in parallel with centralized political power — often contradicting the laws of Congress and the Constitution itself; how the directorate of the war economy converts pro-peace sentiment in the population into pro-militarist majorities in the Congress; how ideology and fears of job losses are manipulated to marshal support in Congress and the general public for war economy; how the directorate of the war economy uses its power to prevent planning for orderly conversion to an economy of peace.”

Rampant, unchecked militarism, as historian Arnold Toynbee notes, “has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations.”

This breakdown is accelerated by the rigid standardization and uniformity of public discourse. The manipulation of public opinion, what Walter Lippman calls “the manufacture of consent,” is imperative as the militarists gut social programs; let the nation’s crumbling infrastructure decay; refuse to raise the minimum wage; sustain an inept, mercenary for-profit health care system that resulted in 25 percent of global Covid deaths — although we are less than 5 percent of the world’s population — to gouge the public; carries out deindustrialization; do nothing to curb the predatory behavior of banks and corporations or invest in substantial programs to combat the climate crisis.

Critics, already shut out from the corporate media, are relentlessly attacked, discredited and silenced for speaking a truth that threatens the public’s quiescence while the U.S. Treasury is pillaged by the war industry and the nation disemboweled.

You can watch my discussion with Matt Taibbi about the rot that infects journalism .

The war industry, deified by the mass media, including the entertainment industry, is never held accountable for the military fiascos, cost overruns, dud weapons systems and profligate waste. No matter how many disasters — from Vietnam to Afghanistan — it orchestrates, it is showered with larger and larger amounts of federal funds, nearly half of all the government’s discretionary spending. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the U.S. debt to over $30 trillion, $6 trillion more than the U.S. GDP of $24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spend more on the military, $813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.

An organization like NewsGuard, which has been rating what it says are trustworthy and untrustworthy sites based on their reporting on Ukraine, is one of the many indoctrination tools of the war industry. Sites that raise what are deemed “false” assertions about Ukraine, including that there was a U.S.-backed coup in 2014 and neo-Nazi forces are part of Ukraine’s military and power structure, are tagged as unreliable. Consortium News, Daily Kos, Mint Press and Grayzone have been given a red warning label. Sites that do not raise these issues, such as CNN, receive the “green” rating” for truth and credibility. (NewsGuard, after being heavily criticized for giving Fox News a green rating of approval in July revised its rating for Fox News and MSNBC, giving them red labels.)

The ratings are arbitrary. The Daily Caller, which published fake naked pictures of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was given a green rating, along with a media outlet owned and operated by The Heritage Foundation. NewsGuard gives WikiLeaks a red label for "failing" to publish retractions despite admitting that all of the information WikiLeaks has published thus far is accurate. What WikiLeaks was supposed to retract remains a mystery. The New York Timesand The Washington Post, which shared a Pulitzer in 2018 for reporting that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to help sway the 2016 election, a conspiracy theory the Mueller investigation imploded, are awarded perfect scores. These ratings are not about vetting journalism. They are about enforcing conformity.

NewsGuard, established in 2018, “partners” with the State Department and the Pentagon, as well as corporations such as Microsoft. Its advisory board includes the former Director of the CIA and NSA, Gen. Michael Hayden; the first U.S. Homeland Security director Tom Ridge and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former secretary general of NATO.

Readers who regularly go to targeted sites could probably care less if they are tagged with a red label. But that is not the point. The point is to rate these sites so that anyone who has a NewsGuard extension installed on their devices will be warned away from visiting them. NewsGuard is being installed in libraries and schools and on the computers of active-duty troops. A warning pops up on targeted sites that reads: “Proceed with caution: This website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability.”

Negative ratings will the evils of U.S. militarism.

In an exhaustive rebuttal to NewsGuard, which is worth reading, Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News, ends with this observation:

is hiding behind its reasons, but CN trades in information and nothing else.

NewsGuard’s accusations against Consortium News that could potentially limit its readership and financial support must be seen in the context of the West’s war mania over Ukraine, about which dissenting voices are being suppressed. Three CN writers have been kicked off Twitter.

PayPal’s cancellation of Consortium News’ account is an evident attempt to defund it for what is almost certainly the company’s view that CN violated its restrictions on “providing false or misleading information.” It cannot be known with 100 percent certainty because PayPal

CN supports no side in the Ukraine war but seeks to examine the causes of the conflict within its recent historical context, all of which are being whitewashed from mainstream Western media.

Those causes are: NATO’s expansion eastward despite its promise not to do so; the coup and eight-year war on Donbass against coup resisters; the lack of implementation of the Minsk Accords to end that conflict; and the outright rejection of treaty proposals by Moscow to create a new security architecture in Europe taking Russia’s security concerns into account.

Historians who point out the onerous Versailles conditions imposed on Germany after World War I as a cause of Nazism and World War II are neither excusing Nazi Germany nor are they smeared as its defenders.

The frantic effort to corral viewers and readers into the embrace of the establishment media — only 16 percent of Americans have a great deal/quite a lot of confidence in newspapers and only 11 percent have some degree of confidence in television news — is a sign of desperation.

As the persecution of his fellow Germans in World War I, are the enemy within.

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https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/u...s-of-permanent

Chris Hedges should need no introduction. As always, an excellent article

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