Isn’t the Kyiv Independent one of the outlets getting tons of money from the US and EU propaganda funding cutouts? I can’t find sources at the moment but I remember reading a bunch about that in the spring. A media organization has got to have more than the word independent in their name to qualify for the term.
Additionally, external funding or not, the UA government has banned all journalistic organizations which didn’t act as government mouthpieces or which weren’t owned by people close to the government (ie. also government mouthpieces).
Yes, Tusk is right on this one. There just one year to elections and they are starting unofficially, and next months will be critical since the inflation and energy crisis is gonna hit hard. PiS main tactics was always to stoke some horrendous shitstorm to divert people from what is important.
That said, PiS have great supporters - opposition. They fear anything left of Tusk and their own sponsors much more than they fear Kaczyński, so they will sooner lose than make (or even promise) anything to ease the coming hard times for the people.
So they now have a higher life expectancy than a country with an obesity problem, poorly regulated food market and almost completely privatized healthcare? Um, congrats.
Ok, I should have been more specific: the way it is often framed (and the way I have seen it framed, and how the linked article frames it) is as if these were US-affiliated labs working on bioweapons. That is not what Nuland said. Biological research facilities do not have to be bioweapons labs, just as explosives research facilities need not be arms manufacturers.
Greenwald (the author of the linked article) of course does what Greenwald recently is hell-bent on doing, which is to try to scandalize anything he can. I used to respect the man, but that was a long while ago.
It is functionally identical, given the close recent history between the two countries. For that matter, all humans are close, especially at a population level. People are trying to make this too complicated. Conventional weapons are perfectly capable of doing massive damage to an army without insane amounts of collateral damage, both to civilians and allies.
The pentagon has pivoted by claiming things like anthrax, “aren’t offensive weapons”. Those two articles you posted are just rehashing the pentagon press release,which you would have to be extremely ignorant or heavily propagandized to believe.
Could you point out where the Pentagon claims anthrax isn’t a bioweapon? At least in that press release, the only reference to anthrax is weaponization (anthrax is minimally dangerous until in a weaponized form).
They are intentionally vague and don’t get into details.
Ukraine Has No Biological Weapons Program…no other European state nor the United States possessed any biological weapon development programs, in compliance with their obligations under the BWC.
Here’s just a few of the times the US has used biological agents and chemical weapons on innocent people and animals.
In 1976, the US tested Agent White, a powerful pesticide developed by Dow Chemical, in Cherokee county, North Carolina. Within 3 years, the rate of cancer deaths leapt to 60% above the national average.
In 2018 after the release of a suppressed ISC (International Scientific Commission) report, and the release of declassified CIA communications daily reports in 2020, it was revealed that the US used germ warfare in the Korean war, 2. Many of these attacks involved the dropping of insects or small mammals infected with viruses such as anthrax, plague, cholera, and encephalitis. After discovering evidence of germ warfare, China invited the ISC headed by famed British scientist Joseph Needham, to investigate, but the report was suppressed for over 70 years.
US dropped large amounts of Agent Orange, an herbicide developed by monsanto and dow chemical for the department of defense, in vietnam. Its use, in particular the contaminant dioxin, causes multiple health problems, including cleft palate, mental disabilities, hernias, still births, poisoned breast milk, and extra fingers and toes, as well as destroying local species of plants and animals. The Red Cross of Vietnam estimates that up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems due to Agent Orange.1, 2
In 1950, the US Navy secretly infected over 800,000 residents of the San Fransisco Bay Area with Serratia marcescens, a human pathogen known to cause urinary and respiratory infections, during Operation Sea-Spray, in one of the largest human experiments in history. The residents of the area were not informed, making the event a serious violation of the Nuremberg Code on medical ethics. In the following month, 11 residents checked in at a local hospital with a rare urinary tract infection (one patient, Edward J. Nevin died as a result), and the area saw a spike in pneumonia cases. The military tested biological agents on US citizens in at least six other similar tests causing a variety of symptoms such as whooping cough throughout the 50s and 60s in Florida, the Midwest, New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. 1
In 1968, the US army tested VX gas, a nerve agent to be used in biological warfare, in the Skull valley Indian reservation in Utah. 27 miles away from the test, 6,000 sheep died, known as the Dugway sheep incident. Since its founding in 1941, much of the activity at Dugway Proving Ground has been a closely guarded secret. Activities at Dugway included aerial nerve agent testing.[2] According to reports from New Scientist, Dugway was still producing small quantities of non-infectious anthrax of a type used in the making of vaccines as late as 1998, 30 years after the United States renounced biological weapons.[3] There were at least 1,100 other chemical tests at Dugway during the time period of the Dugway sheep incident. In total, almost 500,000 lb (230,000 kg) of nerve agent were dispersed during open-air tests.[2] There were also tests at Dugway with other weapons of mass destruction, including 332 open-air tests of biological weapons, 74 dirty bomb tests, and eight furnace heatings of nuclear material under open air conditions to simulate the dispersal of fallout in the case of meltdown of aeronautic nuclear reactors.
In 1981, in an act of biological warfare, the US released a strain of Dengue fever into Cuba, developed at Fort Dietrich. A total of 320k people were infected, 158 people died, including 101 children under the age of 15.
In 1971, A CIA operative told a reporter he delivered a strain of the African Swine Fever virus from an army base in the Canal Zone to anti-Castro Cubans. An outbreak of the disease then occurred in Cuba, resulting in the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic. It was labeled the “most alarming event” of 1971 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.1
They are being intentionally vague, and playing tricks, as I stated above. Its like someone asking you “do you have a gun?” And you responding: “I have no offensive weapons”.
I just showed you plenty of cases of the US killing people with chemical and biological agents. People had to discover these atrocities, because the pentagon didn’t have press releases stated they did them (shocker).
Question: Do you think anyone has the pressure to get the US to close down their biochemical warfare departments? What’s the solution to getting them to stop killing innocent people with bioweapons?
Your question has a poor premise. All of your examples are at least forty years old, well predating the fall of the Soviet Union. Asking the US to stop now would be like staging an intervention for a 40 years sober alcoholic.
I’m not sure if this is correct, but I have heard that the jet stream really only sends balloons on a course from China to the US. Sending balloons the other way around, as China has claimed, entails sending them over a billion people and many different country’s airspace.
I love that you say that like the US would never dream of sending stuff over a country without their consent. The US was spying on allies such as top German politicans, they have like ten different spy plane, spy drone, spy shapeship, etc projects currently running that we know about, they invaded friendly Pakistan to get Osama… Do you really think the CIA would pause for a second before flying a balloon over Tajikistan?
I love that you say that like the US would never dream of sending stuff over a country without their consent.
You misinterpret me. Of course US surveillance has a long arm. I’m not denying that. It’s less a question of whether they would and more whether they can. For that matter, it doesn’t even make that much sense to.
LMAO so this is 100% a Chinese propaganda website. Have you looked at the articles there? Not saying it’s true or not true. But first of all, this article is from 2021 and secondly I don’t buy Chinese propaganda.
Why on earth would you assume I consume US media, let alone what kind of US media I allegedly consume? Unlike you I actually was born and grew up in a dictatorship with actual state approved media. Your stupid comment is an insult to the victims of dictatorships everywhere.
It’s yog- he’s 100% a propagandist across multiple platforms. Whatever he posts you can safely assume is pure propaganda and only tangentially related to reality.
Maybe educate yourself on the subject then. A democracy is a government that works in the interest of the majority and is held accountable to the people of the country. A government like that would ensure that everybody had food, housing, healthcare, education, jobs, and retirement the way USSR did and the way none of western “democracies” seem to be able to.
You are really delusional and a liar. I do not believe for one second you grew up in the USSR, not one nano second. If you were present during that that period you would have noticed that these proud USSR population did not walk but ran towards the west and all the things they really wanted. Not what USSR barely could provide (remember the lines before shops? No you don’t, you were not there) but what the west could and would provide. You casually forgot that. Well, you could not forget little liar as you lied about being alive and present in that period.
You can’t believe that I grew up in USSR and actually liked my life there because you’re smooth brained victim of western propaganda. And when you’re faced with people who actually lived in USSR and liked it, you’re incapable of processing this information. Meanwhile, you can stop calling me a liar, cause I still even have my original USSR passport. Learn to deal with it troll.
There are a few too many compression artefacts and the small/strange aspect ratio/resolution of something you would’ve used a phone to snap a picture of…
Post one with you holding or giving me the middle finger or something and I’ll believe you. I’ll even go snap one of my Ukrainian passport (I burnt my soviet one). I might have my Polish one somewhere though…
You’re such a bad troll, it’s hilarious. Maybe learn how jpeg compression works there before playing detective. 😂 Hilarious how you think I’m going to dox myself for you here. You believe whatever you like though, it’s pretty clear that you live in your own alternate reality.
Thanks for letting us know that you don’t understand how jpeg compresison works. 😂 It’s not uniform across the image, it compresses similar regions. And enjoy:
Take your chance to support your beloved Russia by heroically joining the frontline troops to fight the evil west like a real Russian warrior, unlike a tankie, would!
I’m advocating for the war to end. Seems to me the people who want the war to keep going are the ones who should get a gun and put their worthless asses where their big mouth is. Why don’t you go sign up and fight the evil ruskies that you hate so much instead of shitposting safely on the internet while people are dying while scumbags keep cheering that on?
So, without balls, you’d be the first one fleeing the country, like your parents did? True patriotic Russians stop talking shit and join the special operation, unlike you.
This is such a disengenuous statement dripping with derision. Honestly trotting out this glib phrase is a clear declaration that you’re not interested in a good faith discussion.
A democracy is a government that works in the interest of the majority and is held accountable to the people of the country.
The vast majority of people in “shithole western countries” would say that this is true of their government. I’m not sure that’s true for people living in the USSR.
everybody had food, housing, healthcare, education, jobs, and retirement the way USSR did
We have all of those things. Sure they’re not directly provided by the government, but the government develops legislation to ensure that the overwhelming majority of citizens have great access to those things. The idea of a food shortage in Australia is unheard of. Was that true of the USSR?
This is such a disengenuous statement dripping with derision. Honestly trotting out this glib phrase is a clear declaration that you’re not interested in a good faith discussion.
Don’t pretend you were ever interested in having any sort of good faith discussion here.
The vast majority of people in “shithole western countries” would say that this is true of their government. I’m not sure that’s true for people living in the USSR.
Given the level of discontent in western societies right now, I don’t believe you. Meanwhile, as opinion polls show majority of people who lived in USSR now say they prefer the old system after getting a taste of the capitalist paradise.
We have all of those things.
There are literal tent cities of homeless people growing in many G7 countries each and every year:
A lot of people who actually live there seem to disagree with you, and say things got a lot worse for them once they got to experience enlightened western democracy. Obviously we should take your word for it though, since you’ve clearly shown yourself to be a knowledgeable intellectual in this thread.
Typical yog- posts a bunch of articles from a decade ago as if they are still relevant- fails to read the next page that completely discredits his argument and/or posts from an obviously biased source e. Lol. Dismiss and move along- nothing to see here… again.
Thank you :) i just read the first link. Research from 2010 and it kinda states the opposite of what the linked text suggests. I’ll skip the rest then.
Here is the projection. When faced with your own methods you are quick to point out the bad faith which you yourself have systematically applied in every single comment in this very thread.
And here is the whataboutism. Instead of replying to the question you attempt to deflect by pointing fingers. Again, typical of your bad faith behaviour.
Very on the nose for you to use a logical fallacy as a form of argument. Comparing democracy in USSR to the available alternatives is precisely how you determine the quality of the democracy.
After USSR collapsed life got very hard, and my family ended up moving around a lot to make ends meet. I don’t think people in the west understand the kinds of horrors we had to live through after the collapse. I can tell you a personal anecdote where we started to have food shortages, and people would line up in front of a grocery store early in the morning like a black friday sale. Then people working at the store would just wheel out a cart with whatever they had and people would rush to grab what they could. Since I was a small kid at a time, I could weave between people easier to get to the food. I was literally risking my life getting trampled just so I wouldn’t starve for the day.
Anybody who cheers the collapse of USSR and claims it was a good thing is a piece of human garbage.
I was pretty happy with my life in USSR, so I definitely would move back if that was to happen. However, I don’t really see a path towards that in the foreseeable future. Russia is very much capitalist nowadays, and I don’t think there’s any real political will to go back to a communist system at the moment. That said, there is no stigma against communism within Russian public. Lots of people who grew up in USSR are still alive today, and they overwhelmingly prefer the old system. They obviously have influence on the younger generation as well, so communism is generally seen in a positive light in Russia. Perhaps now that Russia is falling into Chinese sphere of influence that may result in a similar model at some point.
I think it’s also worth acknowledging that USSR did collapse, so clearly it wouldn’t make sense to try and recreate the same system. What needs to happen is that people need to look critically at what USSR did well, and what the problems were to build a better system informed by that experience. I hope that happens within my lifetime, but you can never know what the future will hold.
If people make idiotic comments then they shouldn’t expect generous replies. I don’t ever make any glib comments when somebody makes a respectful reply that’s on topic. Respect is earned.
You are implying that the media in the US is as state controlled and state supporting as the media in China and therefore that neither is more true than the other, merely a viewpoint. Is that actually what you’re saying?
I mean entire books have been written on the subject of how US oligarchs who own the government use the media to manipulate public opinion. Here are a couple you should read
I don’t read very much US news. A bit of WP and occasionally CNN, but it’s certainly not where I get my news from. I don’t live in the US FWIW.
You still haven’t answered my question: Do you believe that the US press and the Chinese press is both lying to the same extent? Do you believe the US and Chinese press are in service of the state to the same extent?
I’m not disputing the press is influenced in the US. You keep speaking in absolutes though … I’m speaking about degrees. So let’s compare degrees, instead of saying “influenced” or “free” as some absolute binary measures.
If you live in the west then exact same dynamics apply. The media is owned by the oligarchs, and much of the media in all the western sphere is dominated by US.
And to answer your question it’s clear to anybody who follows news that US press lies to a far greater extent. The whole notion that privately owned press in the hands of the oligarchs is somehow more objective than government owned press has no basis in logic or reality.
I’m also not speaking in any absolutes, I’m simply telling you that objectively speaking there is plenty of evidence that western press regularly engages in outright misinformation and lies. Chinese press has a bias, because any press has a bias, but I’ve yet to see it spread conspiracy theories like Russiagate. This is a perfect example of a huge misinformation campaign orchestrated by western media that has been thoroughly debunked, yet large portion of western public still believes it and regurgitates it today. That’s just one example.
We must live in two different worlds. If your view is that the Chinese media is more objective than the US media, I simply don’t think we have a basis for finding any consensus. I no longer know what to say. Have a good day and wish you the best.
I get that it’s hard for people in the west to see the brainwashing they’re exposed to because you swim in it since the day you’re born, it becomes the natural medium. However, for somebody who grew out outside the west this is very transparent. I grew up in USSR, and then my family eventually moved to the west after the collapse. I was absolutely shocked to see the nonsense people believed about USSR. People who never set foot in USSR would argue with me about my lived experience as if they knew better. This is the strength of western propaganda machine.
You can find people who are unhappy in every human society, that’s not the gotcha you seem to think it is. The question is whether a society is able to provide a decent life for the majority of the people. Given the horrors we are seeing after the collapse of USSR, I think the answer to which system is better is pretty clear.
Ah yes, because there have been no genocides under capitalism. Turns out Jewish people aren’t above doing a little genocide of their own once they get in charge either as we see in Israel. So, maybe don’t make an idiotic argument blaming communism for something that has absolutely fuck all to do with communism.
First of all big ole whataboutismw. On context we are discussing what Soviets did. We can have a separate conversation re: capitalism, which I’m sure we’d hugley align.
Second, I am very much anti Israel for exactly those reason, free Palestine ✊ but it’s your second whataboutism…
Third, Soviet Russia literally killed gay people, Jews, etc. Hell they liberated Jews from camps only to send them to the gulag.
First of all, whataboutism is just a way to create a double moral standard and anybody calling whataboutism exposes themselves as being intellectually bankrupt. The context is you claiming that communist system is responsible for the problems USSR had. That’s obvious nonsense given that exact same problems and worse exist under capitalism. Last I checked a bunch of US states have sodomy laws today.
Second, Israel is an example capitalist shithole with a predominantly Jewish population, so can’t blame the genocide there on communism and the soviets.
Third, the west has killed far more people of all kinds than Russia did. Yet, you ally with the west and see it as a friend. So, clearly you don’t give a shit about people being killed, turns out that you’re just a racist who hates Russians. You’ll happily dig up an ancient document from Stalin while ignoring the fact that your trusted allies are doing the exact thing you’re decrying happening in USSR. Way to show utter lack of intellectual integrity here.
You’ve also wandered very far from the original point here which was that the communist system objectively resulted in better conditions for majority of the people than the capitalist hell that followed it. You completely ignored that and went on completely vapid rant that has nothing to do with the point I was making.
Exactly! Who the fuck is “Friday Everyday”? I tried to look up the web site on Wikipedia, and it doesn’t exist. All I saw was their own self-description here:
FRIDAYEVERYDAY is the online arm of Friday Culture Ltd, a group of friends from Hong Kong who want to present our beloved city and country through the eyes of people who live here.
Translation: “We are extremist fuckwits that nobody in our community likes, but we still think we are awesome because we lack self-reflection. Thus we put our idiocy on the internet because that’s cheap and easy!”
Last I checked, Russian economy is doing better than pretty much any western economy right now. Of course, if the goal of the sanctions was to destroy Europe’s industry and to make it dependent on US, then the sanctions worked spectacularly.
It looks like the Biden administration is in a bind here, since it’s being kept from rescinding the Remain in Mexico policy by conservative judges. To me, the morality is clear: desperate asylum seekers should not be treated like criminals. It’s also bizarre to refuse entry when the US is experiencing a labor shortage. The courts must expedite a resolution to end this stupid policy.
I also see this as a moral obligation on the part of the US for many of the asylum seekers. Much of the turmoil in Latin America is in one way or another linked to the United States, whether it be foreign policy, flow of drugs to the US’s market, or a history of meddling. Of course it’s not totally on the US, like with Venezuelans fleeing Maduro’s regime. But there too, there are important humanitarian principles involved.
Venezuelans are fleeing the conditions that US sanctions created. The whole region has been destabilized by your murderous regime, and now its putting people who are fleeing the conditions your fascist government created are being put into concentration camps.
Anybody who actually wants to know why Latin America is the way it is today need to read Killing Hope to understand the kinds of crimes against humanity US regime has been committing there.
That comment shows such an infantile understanding of democracy. Having a single party simply means that Cuba decided on the approach how to do things, which is communism. There are lots of different approaches you can take towards achieving the goals within that scope.
Elections with one party have exact same purpose as elections with multiple parties. The citizens select candidates based on their ideas and proposals. The main difference in a multiparty system is that people still haven’t figured out what the right way to run the economy is, and each time a different party gets elected they pull things in a different direction. This is why it’s practically impossible to do any large scale projects in the west.
Go read up on Deng reforms in China which introduced aspects of capitalism into the system. It’s worth noting that nothing equivalent would be possible in a western style democracy. It’s absolutely unthinkable for any western country to integrate aspects of Marxism into the system.
Bob’s Red Mill is owned by its employees. Providing shares as part of compensation is fairly common. Does that not qualify as integrating aspects of Marxism (workers owning the means of production), albeit implemented in a different way?
The main difference in a multiparty system is that people still haven’t figured out what the right way to run the economy is, and each time a different party gets elected they pull things in a different direction
If the party dictates “the right way to run the economy” as you say, then doesn’t that blunt people’s ability to reform the direction of their leader’s policies because of the framework enforced by the party?
I’m not arguing that Western democracy provides superior remedies to public disatisfaction or that socialism is not the correct path for prosperity but, if the argument is about allowing people to meaningfully oppose the policies of their elected representatives, then, in a one party system, changing those policies also requires reforming the ideology of the party, which is an additional barrier. Multi-party systems are by no means perfect but at least they provide some alternative path where an outside party can be formed with radically different ideas that can challenge the larger parties and try to pick off support.
And, yes, there is always the threat of smaller parties being squashed using political/financial power, but that, to me, seems like more a product of corruption than an inherent aspect of a democratic system. Not to mention, the same could be done to factions within a party trying to facilitate similar reforms, no?
The only principle is that the economy should be publicly owned and work in the interests of the majority. I think that’s a pretty reasonable framework to start with.
I really don’t see what multiple parties actually add in practice. You can handle all the disagreements and arguments within a single party. The argument that a single party approach somehow restricts development isn’t really supported by any real world evidence I’m aware of.
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