55bill

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

History is being written right now.

Not in fifty years.
Not when the archives are declassified and the memoirs are published and the documentaries are made.

Right now.

Every government in the Muslim world is making a record.

The votes at the United Nations are on record.
The defense cooperation agreements are on record.
The normalizations are on record.
The statements calling Iran an enemy while Israel bombed are on record.
The silence during the siege of Gaza is on record.
The bases made available to American forces striking Muslim targets are on record.

And on the other side of the record: Iran.

Under sanctions.
Under assassination.
Under bombardment.

Still standing.
Still armed.
Still the country that fired back when everyone else was drafting statements.

Still the country that answered the hadith while others were explaining why the hadith had to be understood in context.

Still the country whose answer to "on which side do you stand?" is legible, consistent, and paid for in blood.

Future generations of Muslims will read this record.

They will ask their grandparents: where were you?

They will ask their governments: what did you do?

The record will answer for you.

The record is already being written.

Make sure you understand what it currently says about you.

Because the Muslims you abandoned already know.

[Rogue Kite @RogueKite]

The endless subscriptions are just a financial rent-seeking step... the real issue is in surveillance and the ability to shut down peoples subscriptions who piss them off. Remember what happened to the ICC with all their Microsoft systems getting shut down? They can access anything you write, film or edit and shut it down at any minute... also true for companies like Adobe or anything cloud-based like Google. The time to move to Linux, Libre Office and companies that offer offline software is... well yesterday TBH.

[audrey White @RedRosa91940184]

Why are people saying, “ wasted” instead of stolen??
10billion is an immense amount of money and of course who knows how many lives were “wasted “- or stolen ? These people were, and are monsters as well as thieves and murderers- in my opinion.

[tern @1goodtern]

We're gonna need a bigger chart.

[The Information Rights Project @theinforights]

Andrew Wilkie was the only serving intelligence official in Australia, the UK or the US to resign publicly before the Iraq invasion. He read the intelligence and knew the case for war did not hold. He was right.

Whistleblower Diaries #5. Tuesday 4 August, 6:30pm AEST, online.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

In this new authoritarian climate, truth is defined as whatever the state wants their citizens to know. Meanwhile, disinformation – “Russian propaganda” or “antisemitism” – is whatever those same states insist their citizenry must not hear.

This is a brazen reversal of 350 years of the western Enlightenment, with its professed belief both in the primacy of reason and that ideas must be tested through debate and critical scrutiny.

Now it matters not what is being said, but only who is saying it.

And unsurprisingly, the billionaire-owned, western media has endorsed this new regime. After all, its voice – representing the interests of the super-rich – is guaranteed a hearing.

No surprise, then, that this same privileged media corps has continued to meekly accept its exclusion from Gaza by Israel as the biggest crime in modern history unfolds – even now, in the midst of a supposed ceasefire that Israel keeps breaking.

Because what matters is who is allowed to speak: Israel, not Gaza’s Palestinians, whether what Israel says is true or, as invariably turns out to be the case, a lie.

In line with this precept, the billionaire-owned media has barely raised a murmur as Israel has slaughtered Gaza’s journalists in unprecedented numbers – killing more of them than in two world wars, Vietnam, the Yugoslav wars and Afghanistan combined.

The lives of Palestinian journalists – like the reporting they have had to do alone under Israel bombardment – count for nothing in the western media because of who they are.

Genocide – the what – has been erased as a crime because it is we – the West – who are helping to carry it out.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, reportedly facing a political and donor backlash, scrapped last year its annual Global Impunity Index – which measured where journalists are murdered with impunity – after it became clear Israel would top the rankings.

Now the same committee is being accused of caving in to these pressures by raising doubts about who counts as a journalist in Gaza – doubts that will serve to embolden Israel, which claims that Palestinian journalists, indeed all Palestinians, are terrorists in disguise.

The who has to be rewritten because the what cannot be denied.

The same story is unfolding in the UK, where independent British journalists have been detained at the airport or had their homes raided at dawn by counterterrorism police for “wrong-think” about the Gaza genocide and British complicity in it. They too face up to 14 years in jail.

That has sent a chilling message to other journalists, those that lack the protection of a billionaire patron or the state, about what can be said.

This is an extract from my latest article Britain's Big Brother state is already here - we just don't realise it yet. Find a link to the rest in the reply post below ⬇️

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

Let's be specific about what sanctions do to a human body.

Sanctions are described in policy language as "economic pressure." "Diplomatic tools." "Alternatives to military force." "The civilized option."

Here is what they do on the ground.

They reduce the foreign currency reserves needed to import medicine.

Hospital supply chains collapse.

Equipment cannot be replaced.

Drugs that treat cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease become unavailable or prohibitively expensive.

They cause inflation that destroys the savings of the middle class faster than the political class they're supposed to pressure.

They collapse employment in sectors tied to international trade, which in countries with limited economic diversity means mass unemployment.

They kill slowly.

They kill without a visible weapon.

They kill children with preventable diseases, elderly people without medication, pregnant women without adequate obstetric care.

And when people in those countries rage against the country imposing these conditions, Americans say:

"Why do they hate us?"

Because you are killing them.

You are killing them with paperwork and executive orders and Treasury Department designations.

Without a soldier. Without a missile. Without anything that looks, on your evening news, like violence.

But the people dying do not experience it as non-violence.

They experience it as dying.

And they know who signed the order.

[Andrew Feinstein @andrewfeinstein]

‘I’m proud to announce the release of my new film “Complicit: Bankrolling the Occupation”, my final work for Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit. It dissects Western complicity in the Zionist settlement project inside the West Bank, and shows how western donors evade charity law to provide aid to illegal Zionist settlements.’

https://t.co/zdmyhXwzWx

[Linda Mamoun @mamoun_linda]

A dozen dead Israelis would be called a massacre. A dozen dead Palestinians is called a ceasefire.

[Carlos @agent_of_change]

For decades, Washington has been able to console itself with the notion that, whatever the world thought of its never-ending criminal wars, it could always rely on its vast apparatus of cultural hegemony to win hearts and minds around the world. At some level, it has always remained the land of the free and the home of the brave. But nothing lasts forever.

According to a new Pew Research Center survey of 42,151 people across 36 countries, China is now viewed more positively than the United States in most of the countries surveyed – and more people worldwide express confidence in Xi Jinping than in Donald Trump.

Even Canadians view China more favourably. In 2023, 57 percent of Canadians had a positive view of the US and just 14 percent viewed China positively; today China leads by 44 percent to 33.

In 17 middle-income countries, a median of 75 percent say the US interferes in the affairs of other countries, against 45 percent for China. In South Africa, 72 percent call China a reliable partner, compared with 46 percent for the US; in Pakistan the figures are 84 and 36. Even on “personal freedoms” – over which the West considers itself to have a monopoly – the share saying the US government respects the freedoms of its own people has collapsed, falling in Sweden from 61 percent in 2021 to 27 percent today, with drops of 25 points or more in Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

There are several factors undermining global confidence in the West, but the most important is the war on Gaza. A generation has watched a genocide unfold on its phones, in real time, for more than two years: the flattened hospitals, the famine as policy, the mass graves, the torture of prisoners, the deaths of tens of thousands of children. And it has watched the governments of North America and Western Europe arm, finance and provide diplomatic cover for this genocide – vetoing ceasefire resolutions, keeping the weapons flowing, and shielding Israel from accountability at every international forum, all while lecturing humanity about the “rules-based international order”.

China, by contrast, called for a ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from the first days of the onslaught. It brought 14 Palestinian factions to Beijing to work for reconciliation, and affirmed at the International Court of Justice the Palestinian people’s right under international law to resist occupation. China stood with the UN Charter and the most fundamental principles of justice; Washington stood with mass murder, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. The world noticed.

Another consequence of the Gaza genocide has been the collapse of the “Uyghur genocide” narrative which was so pervasive only a few years ago. People now know what a genocide actually looks like. They have seen the bodies, the rubble, the trauma. And they have registered that the politicians and journalists who deny the genocide in Gaza are the very ones who insisted that China was committing one in Xinjiang – without bodies, without bombs, without refugees. A few years ago the accusation was widely believed; today it is quietly evaporating, another casualty of the West’s squandered credibility.

A similar pattern repeated with Iran. In February, the US and Israel launched a criminal war of aggression against a sovereign nation that was in negotiations when the bombs started falling – a war that killed Iran’s top leader and dragged the region to the brink of catastrophe. China condemned the assault from the outset, called consistently for de-escalation and dialogue, and joined Russia in vetoing a Security Council resolution that would have opened the door to further escalation. Incidentally, a recent Asia Group report concluded that the war’s clear winner was China – vindicated diplomatically, and resilient economically even when the Strait of Hormuz closed, thanks in no small part to a renewable energy programme that reduces its dependence on imported hydrocarbons with every passing year.

The comparison between China and the US is also about development. China has lifted an estimated 800 million people out of poverty – the greatest anti-poverty achievement in history – and is working with governments across the Global South to apply that experience abroad. It installed 315 gigawatts of new solar capacity last year, more than half the global total, and its solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles are driving the energy transition worldwide.

Just this week, Zambia signed contracts with Chinese firms to build a solar plant with battery storage in every one of its 156 constituencies – decentralised clean power for an entire nation, on terms that leave ownership in Zambian hands. Cuba, strangled by the US blockade, is carrying out one of the fastest solar transitions in history with Chinese support. The countries that spent centuries extracting Africa’s copper offer lectures; China offers modernisation.

There is one more crucial factor: visibility. Platforms such as RedNote (Xiaohongshu) and TikTok, along with a wave of Western streamers living in or travelling through China, have given hundreds of millions of people unmediated access to Chinese life – its safe cities, high-speed rail, thriving public spaces – bypassing the dystopian filter of the Western press. Among young people this has fed a wave of curiosity and admiration about China that would have been unthinkable five years ago. It turns out that when people can see for themselves, the propaganda stops working.

None of this means the New Cold War is over; indeed, a declining hegemon deprived of the world’s consent may become more dangerous, not less. But the Pew findings record something historic: the moral collapse of the US-led order in the eyes of the world’s peoples, and the emergence of a credible alternative grounded in sovereignty, development, international law and peace. Between a superpower that bombs and blockades, and one that builds solar plants and brokers ceasefires, the world is making its choice.

https://t.co/iDqFU8dlDv

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

There is a reason some rulers get angrier at Iran than at Israel.

Israel humiliates Muslims.

Iran embarrasses collaborators.

One wounds the body.

The other exposes the soul.

It is one thing to watch a genocide and remain silent.

It is another to watch someone resist it and realize your silence was never necessity.

It was choice.

That is why the language becomes so frantic.

"Iran is destabilizing the region."

No.

Iran is destabilizing the fantasy that cowardice is diplomacy.

The region was already destabilized by occupations, invasions, sanctions, and bases.

What Iran destabilizes is the lie that submission is moderation.

[Dr Sheep Person Podge @noplaceforsheep]

Criticism of Israel’s slaughter of 20,000 children must always be “respectful?”

Criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza must always be “respectful?”

What is wrong with these people, seriously, what the hell is wrong with them, to have such warped priorities????

[Sarah Wilkinson @swilkinsonbc]

The gov’t is lying, says Professor Nick Maynard: Keir Starmer knew the israelis were starving children to death, but he chose not to do anything

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

The NATO-backed coup in Ukraine was on February 22, 2014. In the article below, the New York Times confirms that two days later, on February 24, the new Ukrainian intelligence chief of the government that the US had handpicked, called the CIA and MI6 to establish a partnership against Russia. Only a few days earlier, Russia had been the main security partner of Ukraine - after the coup, it would become NATO's frontline state against Russia.

The CIA operation against Russia developed from 2014-2022:
- "12 newly-built, forward operating bases constructed along the Russian border. From each base, General Kondratiuk said, the Ukrainian officers ran networks of agents who gathered intelligence inside Russia. C.I.A. officers installed equipment at the bases to help gather intelligence and also identified some of the most skilled Ukrainian graduates of the Operation Goldfish program, working with them to approach potential Russian sources."

- "The listening post in the Ukrainian forest is part of a C.I.A.-supported network of spy bases constructed in the past eight years that includes 12 secret locations along the Russian border... Around 2016, the C.I.A. began training an elite Ukrainian commando force — known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that C.I.A. technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems.

The CIA/MI6 presence in Ukraine became a key motivation for the Russian invasion:
- "Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Mr. Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the C.I.A., together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow."

*** The war in Ukraine was clearly provoked (and even started) by NATO. The amount of evidence makes this undeniable. However, the political-media establishment defends the "unprovoked invasion" narrative by dismissing and criminalising all explanations of NATO's involvement as efforts to "legitimise" the Russian invasion. Why is NATO's contribution to starting this war important? If we recognise NATO's contribution and the legitimate Russian security concerns, then it opens up an opportunity for compromise and peace. By clinging to the "unprovoked invasion" narrative, weapons are the path to peace, and NATO gets to continue its war against Russia to the last Ukrainian.
https://t.co/gmmWD698bx

[susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى @susanabulhawa]

Israel's strategy in one sentence:

colonialism acre by acre, genocide family by family.

slow and steady evil beyond comprehension.

[Media Lens @medialens]

'Ideology' is too generous. There's no systematic set of beliefs, values and ideas; just blind, suicidal greed. Noam Chomsky said it best:

‘I don’t know what word in the language – I can’t find one – that applies to people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice the literal… the existence of organised human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly overstuffed pockets. The word “evil” doesn’t begin to approach it.’

[Middle East Eye @MiddleEastEye]

"The prime minister today falsely claimed that Labour was found to be ‘institutionally antisemitic’ under my leadership. There was no such finding, and Keir Starmer should have the decency to correct the record"

- Jeremy Corbyn
https://t.co/fQ39hiNlWG

[IRAN EMBASSY in KENYA @IRANinKENYA]

BREAKING: US missile/shrapnel hits Abuzar Children’s Hospital in Ahvaz, Iran.
The entire hospital is being evacuated.
Trump claims the US is “very careful with civilians” while bombing Iran.
Killing children and then lying about it.
This is who they are.

[Nasser Mashni @iamthenas]

It’s not @netanyahu it’s Zionism… watch and share.

[Antonella Illuminati 🥖 🌹 @JoanneHorniman]

In Australia: swimmingly. We are arguing In a RC about whether antizionism has a hyphen or not, and if so, which version is antisemitic. The hyphenated? Non-hyphenated? Who knows or cares? Israel is a terrorist state, hyphen or not.