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All posts for the day June 18th, 2023
When the nun Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku she was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long time.
At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old pail bound with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the bottom fell out of the pail, and at that moment Chiyono was set free!
In commemoration, she wrote a poem:
In this way and that I tried to save the old pail Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break Until at last the bottom fell out. No more water in the pail! No more moon in the water!
Source: No Water, No Moon » Zen Stories « Ancient Words of Wisdom
I mean, the biggest story ever of humanity is unravelling and most people are too dumbed down to realize it. They are cattle, husbanded like sheep. I am losing my compassion toward them all.
“Yes, Aunt Mildred, aliens are real, religion is not, go quantum and stop believing whatever crap you have been told by everyone and everything.”
Possibly the biggest prison on the planet. How come the Western world does not stop such atrocity? It’s all books, talks, bullshit, and more words, and this demonic genocide continues. Where’s the Western media?
The Western media is a hypocritical creature devoid of any moral values except profit. To ignore such atrocity that is right in front of your face, with the internet you cannot say you did not know, is worse than hypocrisy, it is a moral failure of the highest order. Cowards.
Bonus:
An editor at Radio New Zealand has been suspended and is under investigation for the time-honored practices of providing balanced and factual reporting, writes Tony Kevin.
Australian Broadcasting Company journalists edit incoming feeds from Reuters and other wire services all the time. They add context, link to previous stories, and add Australian-relevant material. The problem is, this person in RNZ was adding such context from the “wrong ‘side.’”
Violent Maidan coup in Ukraine, 2014. (Wikipedia)
By Tony Kevin
in Canberra
Special to Consortium News
June 13, 2023
On Friday The Guardian Australia website carried a news report, with a follow-up piece on Monday, whose implications for free speech are profoundly disturbing.
They concern a Radio New Zealand, or RNZ, broadcasting employee — unnamed, but everyone in the small New Zealand broadcasting world will soon know who it is — who has been placed on leave while their professional conduct is investigated. Obviously, a career hangs in the balance.
The malign ghosts of Orwell’s 1984 stalk this story.
‘Russian Garbage’
This unnamed person in RNZ committed the cardinal sin of “inappropriate editing” of incoming Reuters news feeds on the war in Ukraine to insert “Russian garbage” in the contemptuous words of Paul Thompson, chief executive of RNZ. That is to say, they drew on Russian news sources to insert balancing pro-Russian material to the incoming Western news agency feeds.
The Guardian tells us that in fact accurate information about Ukraine was added to the Reuters copy:
“The articles in question made a range of amendments: adding the word ‘coup’ to describe the Maidan revolution; changing a description of Ukraine’s former ‘pro-Russian president’ to read ‘pro-Russian elected government’; adding references to a ‘pro-western government’ that had ‘suppressed ethnic Russians’; and on several occasions adding references to Russian concerns about ‘neo-Nazi elements’ in Ukraine.”
And more truth was added to the story, The Guardian says:
“In one article, a paragraph was added reading: ‘The Kremlin also said its invasion was sparked by a failure to implement the Minsk agreement peace accords, designed to give Russia speakers autonomy and protection, and the rise of a neo-Nazi element in Ukraine since a coup ousted a Russian-friendly Ukrainian government in 2014.’
Another added that Russia launched its invasion ‘claiming that a US-backed coup in 2014 with the help of neo-Nazis had created a threat to its borders and had ignited a civil war that saw Russian-speaking minorities persecuted.’”
This, it seems, is an offence not to be countenanced any longer in New Zealand. “An RNZ spokesperson, John Barr, said in a statement after the first article came to public attention that ‘RNZ is taking the issue extremely seriously and is investigating how the situation arose,’” the newspaper wrote.
The Guardian, in its effort to “correct” the story, says: “Ukraine says these claims are discredited Kremlin propaganda … The anti-corruption movement was peaceful and had widespread public support. Yanukovych fled to Russia months later after his security forces shot dead more than 100 unarmed protesters.”
[Consortium News has published numerous stories laying out the facts of the events of 2014, including these two exhaustively corroborated accounts: On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine and Evidence of US-Backed Coup in Kiev]
‘Gutted’
The RNZ executive Thompson was “gutted” to learn what has been going on under his watch. We read that 250 past published articles have been gone through “with a fine tooth comb” to investigate and counter such offensive inserted material, and thousands more are being reviewed.
Sixteen such offending articles have been found and warning commentaries added to them. Investigations continue while the staffer remains indefinitely suspended. The responsible minister is being briefed. Clearly, these editors have not delved very deeply into the Ukraine story.
Luke Harding’s Involvement
Both Guardian articles carry a tagline that says “Additional reporting by Luke Harding.” This should be a key warning to everyone in New Zealand’s and Australia’s broadcasting world, indeed in the entire English-speaking world.
Luke Harding at the Nordic Media Festival, 2018. (Thor Brødreskift / Nordiske Mediedager/ Wikimedia Commons)
Harding carries a formidable reputation as an inveterate anti-Russian British journalist with alleged strong links to the U.K. anti-Russian disinformation system and even to MI6, the U.K.’s secret intelligence service.
He was heavily involved in the Julian Assange affair and in the now discredited campaign to label former U.S. President Donald Trump as under Russian control. He is known as a leading Western disinformation warrior.
Normal Editorial Practice
Australian Broadcasting Company journalists edit incoming feeds from Reuters and other wire services all the time. They add context, link to previous stories, and add Australian-relevant material.
The problem is, this person in RNZ was adding such context from the “wrong ‘side.’”
The ABC has long been exposed as an obedient servant of the U.S.-dominated Five Eyes intelligence network and runs along approved anti-Russian and anti-Chinese editorial lines. RNZ, by contrast, is still widely respected in New Zealand. But it committed the sin of allowing counter-perspectives to be heard on the responsibility for the present tragic war in Ukraine.
Rendering of the “Five Eyes” intelligence network that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., the U.S. (@GDJ, Openclipart)
Read the two Guardian articles to see what exactly Harding in London and his colleagues in U.K. disinformation appear to be objecting to. It sends a strong message across the Tasman Sea, from New Zealand to the Australian media world: We watch every word you say and every word you write.
Cancelled for the Same Thought Crimes
The examples of journalistic misconduct identified in the two articles match exactly research and opinions on the historical context and causes of the war in Ukraine and mounting Russia-West tensions that I have been trying to express publicly in Australia as an expert former senior diplomat since the publication of my book Return to Moscow in 2017.
As a result, I have been cancelled, unpersoned, silenced — dropped down the Australia Broadcasting Company memory hole, never to be allowed on its airwaves again.
[Related: Caitlin Johnstone: 60 Minutes Australia Churning Out War-with-China Propaganda]
An innocuous interview I conducted from Moscow with Paul Barclay for the respected ABC program “Big Ideas” in February 2022 was “disarchived” — yes, you read it right — a few weeks later, under pressure from unidentified critics.
Ukraine is Losing
The war in Ukraine now winds steadily towards its inevitable pro-Russian denouement. Russia clearly has the military edge and this will not change now. Billions of dollars worth of supplied U.S./NATO equipment continue to be destroyed in combat.
In suicidal offensives ordered by the doomed Zelensky regime in Kiev, an estimated half a million Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or crippled since February 2022. [Exact casualty figures are very hard to come by]. Many more proxy warriors will die in the coming weeks as this brutal war of attrition demanded by the U.S. and NATO continues to destroy what is left of poor Ukraine.
Australians and New Zealanders with naïve faith in the professional integrity of their national broadcasters will continue to be insulated from these tragic truths.
Fortunately, for those who dare to read them, there are now plenty of accessible reliable sources of alternative perspectives on Russia-West relations and the pivotal importance of the war in Ukraine in transforming the world. This world now looks very different from outside the Western laager. We are in the midst of huge global changes.
But, thanks to the likes of Harding and his Anglo-American friends, we won’t find such information anywhere on the ABC or RNZ. We Antipodeans in the colonies will be the last to know.
Tony Kevin is a former Australian senior diplomat, having served as ambassador to Cambodia and Poland, as well as being posted to Australia’s embassy in Moscow. He is the author of six published books on public policy and international relations.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Guns as a cause of death overtook car accidents in 2020 for children and teens.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/suicide-homicide-rates-among-young-americans-decade-high
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, JUN 17, 2023
Suicide and homicide rates among young people in the U.S. have reached levels not seen in decades, new numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.
Among those 10 to 24 years old, 11 suicides and 10.7 homicides per 100,000 people occurred in 2021.
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz shows in the chart below, suicide rates in the age group have been hitting new records every year since 2017, while for homicides, 2021 marks the highest rate since 1997.
However, homicide rates for Americans aged 10 to 24 are still lower today than in the early 1990s, when they hit a high of 16.3 per 100,000 individuals in 1993.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Suicide and homicide are the second and third most common causes of death for the age group after unintentional injury.
According to CNN, poisonings are common in suicides by younger children and they rose dramatically in the Covid-19 pandemic.
Many suicides and homicides in the U.S. are carried out with guns, which made them the cause of 1 in 5 childhood and teen deaths overall in 2021. Guns as a cause of death overtook car accidents in 2020 for children and teens.
“It was the Kiev regime that unleashed this war in 2014, whereas we, under Article 51 of the UN Charter, had every right to offer them help, invoking the self-defense clause,” Putin said
https://tass.com/politics/1634459
June 17, 2023
ST. PETERSBURG, June 17. /TASS/. It was Kiev that unleashed the war in Ukraine in 2014, and therefore Russia had every right to help Donbass in accordance with the United Nations Charter, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with the African delegation on Saturday.
“The Kiev regime has undertaken multiple attempts to resolve this problem [in Donbass] with arms, and in fact launched combat operations in 2014, using aircraft, tanks and artillery against those civilians. It was the Kiev regime that unleashed this war in 2014, whereas we, under Article 51 of the UN Charter, had every right to offer them help, invoking the self-defense clause,” Putin said.
Putin pointed out that “all problems of Ukraine emerged after the state, unconstitutional, armed and bloody coup in 2014.”
“That coup was supported by Western sponsors. They did not hesitate to talk about it and they spoke about it, even revealing how much money they had spent on preparation and implementation of that coup. Therefore, the source of the power of the current rulers in Kiev is a coup d’etat,” Putin said.
The Russian president recalled that back in 2014, some Ukrainians did not support the coup in the country and announced that the people living in these areas would not obey the new rulers.
“Russia was forced to stand up for those people, bearing in mind our historical bonds both with the territories as well as cultural and linguistic ties with the people who live in those territories. For a long time we sought to resolve the situation in Ukraine through peaceful means,” Putin said.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/tracey-government-keeps-lying-us-about-ukraine-where-outrage
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, JUN 17, 2023
Authored by Michael Tracey, op-ed via Newsweek.com,
On June 4, a group referring to itself as the “Polish Volunteer Corps” issued a boastful announcement confirming its participation in a series of cross-border ground offensives into Russia.
News of these audacious raids was jarring enough, given the many prior assurances of U.S. and Ukrainian war planners, who insisted no attacks would be carried out inside Russian territory. It was all the more conspicuous that the incursion units were apparently comprised of Polish soldiers.
Poland, of course, is not only a NATO member state, but the NATO member state with which the U.S. has most assiduously aligned itself since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine (Polish government officials deny any formal connection to the “Polish Volunteer Corps”).
So the raids raised an obvious, yet oft-neglected question: Just what the hell is U.S. policy in Ukraine?
If you turn on the TV, you’ll find pundits on every channel loyally reciting from memory the broad parameters of the U.S. mission—at least as it’s being conveyed in daily rhetorical flourishes by Biden Administration officials, assorted Congressional chest-thumpers, and brave think tank warriors. Freedom and autocracy are locked in a great cosmic battle of good versus evil, or so goes the usual storyline—most often narrated with a degree of moral complexity that can be generously compared to a lower-tier Marvel Movie.
But apart from this steady stream of heavily recycled platitudes, was it ever plainly disclosed to Americans—the chief financial sponsors of the Ukraine war effort, after all—that the scope of the war effort they’ve found themselves subsidizing would eventually expand to include platoons of Polish soldiers marching straight into Russia? Did anyone back in Washington, D.C. sign off on this, or was there ever an opportunity granted for public consideration of its potentially foreboding implications?
At least in theory, the U.S. is treaty-bound to come to the defense of Poland in the event of an armed attack. And while Poland may nominally disavow the Polish Volunteer Corps, a Polish journalist writing for Poland’s largest digital publication says he was in attendance at a founding organizational meeting in Kyiv this past February, during which the unit was established not as a ragtag group of untested amateurs, but as an elite “sabotage and reconnaissance” force—which from the get-go was “reporting directly to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.” Per this account, the unit was to consist of Poland’s “most experienced soldiers,” with notable imprecision as to where specifically those soldiers hailed from.
Ukrainian servicemen fire a BM-21 ‘Grad’ multiple rocket launcher towards Russian positions near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region on June 13, 2023. Ukrainian forces have now begun their long-awaited counteroffensive at several points along the front.ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Then there’s the fact that shortly before the formation of the “Polish Volunteer Corps,” a cross-coalition bill was submitted to the Polish parliament which would make it legal for Polish nationals to fight in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The war against Russia was to be recognized as “a special situation from the point of view of the national security of the Republic of Poland,” the text reads, “requiring non-standard political and legislative actions on the part of the state.”
The “Polish Volunteer Corps” has been conducting joint operations with the “Russian Volunteer Corps,” another fully integrated “special unit within the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine”—euphemistically referred to in “Western” media headlines with plausible-deniability monikers like “Pro-Ukraine group of partisans.” Given how these ostensibly unattached “partisans” have been bragging about taking Russian hostages and otherwise getting themselves involved in increasingly spectacular, provocative attacks, one understands why Ukraine might wish to sustain plausible deniability.
“The ground war has come to Russia,” proclaimed one Polish state-backed media organ at the news that their soldiers had breached the border.
For many, the footage provided an occasion for rapturous joy, awash as they are in the primal euphoria of armed retribution. Meanwhile, these elite soldiers billed as “volunteers” have been razing Russian border settlements with U.S.-provided weaponry, according to the New York Times and Washington Post. The units “lobbed shells and missiles on residential areas,” the Times reported, and they appeared to be aiming their attacks at “no apparent military target.”
Convoys of armored vehicles called MRAPs, initially produced for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, were observed barreling into Russia from Ukraine, with still no explanation forthcoming as to how precisely they wound up there. Maybe someone in Kyiv just happened to leave a garage full of U.S.-supplied armored vehicles unlocked. Either way, the Ukraine military was conclusively shown to have used U.S. weapons to attack Russia—the very thing President Biden and other administration officials have emphatically maintained they do not support and are not enabling.
Strangely though, this revelation of systematic government deception doesn’t seem to have moved the needle much in terms of the wider debate over U.S. involvement in Ukraine. Donald Trump could misstate the temperature outside by half-a-degree Fahrenheit and the entire U.S. media would be falling over themselves to piously accuse him of “lying”—but pile up mounds of incontrovertible evidence that Americans have been chronically deceived about a sprawling U.S. military intervention, and you’ll mostly get eye-rolls from the savvy-minded commentariat. That is, if you’re fortunate enough to be spared the standard sneering accusations of “Russian propagandist.”
Speaking of claims that might arguably be considered “propaganda,” almost exactly one year ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky embarked on a U.S. media tour promising Americans from the bottom of his heart that “We are not planning to attack Russia.” These claims were echoed simultaneously by President Biden, who insisted that “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders.”
Yet here we are a year later, and there’s no longer any reasonable doubt that Ukraine is “striking beyond its borders,” and in increasingly aggressive fashion—from the cross-border raids to the drone-strike on the Kremlin to the bombing barrage on a residential Moscow neighborhood. And that’s only a smattering of examples from the past several weeks.
Still, it’s harder than one might expect to rouse much critical interest—especially among a media that has been politically, ideologically, and emotionally invested in Ukraine’s glorious war-fighting cause from the outset. One perfect example of late was a CNN article in which “senior U.S. officials” were reported confiding that while they had “condemned the strikes inside Russia,” they of course privately “believe the cross-border attacks are a smart military strategy.” A state official saying one thing in public but another in private used to be the most surefire sign of official deceit a journalist could hope to uncover. Yet CNN seemed to just let it flow by like a gentle spring breeze, almost as though they were actually impressed with the guile of the “senior U.S. officials” they’d been given the honor of anonymously paraphrasing.
As it stands, the U.S. government continuously pelts the American people with provable untruths in service of maintaining a war policy that bears almost no resemblance to how it was initially presented. And in the sectors of society allegedly tasked with scrutinizing government conduct, this is mostly met with a shrug.
How much more extreme does the deception need to get before sustained pushback is no longer avoidable?
If Polish soldiers launching a self-proclaimed “ground war” in Russia isn’t enough to rattle off the complacency, one shudders to think how severe of a shock would be necessary.
* * *
Michael Tracey is an independent reporter with Substack. Follow him on Twitter @mtracey.