Seraphangelo

Don`t care for ideology/beliefs. Politics, Media, Academia are compromised. Ignorance is cancer. No endorsements, all is FYI. No DMs asking for money please.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

BREAKING: "Greater Israel" is now marketed in London. Like in Montreal and in New York.
Apartheid without borders.

P.S. This explains why criticism of Israel is being restricted (and "anti-antisemitism" laws keep appearing). Apartheid is not only a crime. It is a business model.

[Alternative News @AlternatNews]

Ukrainian weapons outgunning European police - German TV ARD

Powerful weapons that were supplied to Ukraine by supporting states, are turning up on weapons websites.

This point was first dismissed as Russian propaganda – and has now turned out to be quite clearly true.

[RJ Moreau 🇧🇹 @toxictiramisu]

Odyssey Foundation charged membership fees & mailed catalogs w/ photos of children. After a raid on Norman's apt, police found about 30K index cards listing members, including prominent figures/federal workers. Dallas Investigators sent the evidence to DC, where it was destroyed.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

Zeteo reports that ousted 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega was in the middle of producing a high-profile segment on Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories and a prominent critic of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, when she was abruptly fired.

The report, by journalist Justin Baragona, offers new insight into the upheaval at CBS News following its acquisition by Israel supporter David Ellison and the installation of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief.

[Seyed Mohammad Marandi @s_m_marandi]

While the US made a noticeable concession in the text of the agreement on Wednesday and presented it to Iran through the Qatari mediator, it also launched a media and intimidation campaign to suggest that Iran had backed down under the threat of bombardment.

But now, in the real world, Trump has backed down, accepted the same text from two weeks ago, and is awaiting final approval from Iranian officials.

[Ikkyu Sojun @ConciousLabRat]

The promises were made explicitly, repeatedly, and in black-and-white.

Declassified Western documents (US, German, British, French archives) prove it clearly.

Western leaders assured Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward into Eastern Europe at all.

On March 6, 1991, German diplomat Jürgen Chrobog stated plainly in a high-level meeting:

“We made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations that we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe.

We could therefore not offer membership of NATO to Poland and the others.”

Over 30 such records exist.

Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” to Gorbachev.

Genscher, Kohl, Major all said the same thing in 1990-91.

The West got German reunification inside NATO.

Then, the moment the USSR collapsed, they broke every assurance and began swallowing Eastern Europe anyway.

This wasn’t a “misunderstanding.”

It was a classic betrayal that Russia has never forgotten and one major reason we’re in this mess today.

History isn’t whatever the Empire’s propagandists claim it is.

The documents don’t lie.

[Patricia Marins @pati_marins64]

Trump Recalibrates offensive after Iran targets radars and base in Jordan

Donald Trump, right after Netanyahu’s offensive, decided to open fire against Iran, allegedly claiming the loss of a helicopter in a confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz.

Obviously, this talk has no basis in reality. If you employ helicopters to combat fast boats, some of which have anti-aircraft systems, you obviously already work with the chance of losing helicopters.

Trump bombarded more than 20 targets in Iran, focusing mainly on the coast, but several targets in the interior of the country were also hit, as I reported in yesterday’s post.

Iran retaliated and, although it did not fire a large number of missiles and drones, it used some upgraded missiles, hitting important targets that led CENTCOM to re-evaluate the continuity of the offensive in the way it was planned.

For example, the missiles fired against the Muwaffaq Salti airbase in Jordan seem to have hit their targets not only because of the two columns of smoke visible from several kilometers away, but the explosions were so powerful that its echoes were being heard in the West Bank and Jerusalem around 200 km away.

In the 40-day war, Iran had immense difficulty hitting this same base and only managed to improve its results against targets in Jordan after the destruction of numerous American radars, opening a corridor.

A similar situation had occurred the night before, when it was confirmed that at least one Iranian missile hit RAMAT DAVID AIRBASE IN ISRAEL.

This time, Iran also began targeting long-range radars, destroying the Jabal al-Dukhan Long Range Radar site, which was one of the main ones in Bahrain.

Some other radars were also targeted by drones , though without confirmation yet that they were actually hit.

Full Article
https://t.co/bGC2wzQ6GK

(Illustrative footage)

[Thomas Fazi @battleforeurope]

Von der Leyen is coming for Europe’s wallet

The Multiannual Financial Framework. Even for a body as jargon-prone as the European Union, the phrase feels almost bewilderingly dull. Perhaps that’s the point. For hidden amid the technical language of the EU’s new budget is a kind of technocratic coup — one that promises more power for the Commission, less for member states, and which would ultimately make Brussels even less accountable than it already is today.

Over the past decade, the EU’s institutional balance has already tilted heavily towards the Commission, which has extended its reach into areas once considered the preserve of national governments — from fiscal policy and public health to foreign affairs and defence. The mechanism has been consistent: each crisis — the sovereign debt crisis, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ukraine war — has served as a pretext for the Commission to assume more authority, make “emergency” decisions and lock in permanent changes to the exercise of EU power. None of this has required formal treaty changes. It has occurred surreptitiously, outside the arena of democratic debate, through what scholars have called “integration by stealth”. The result has been a creeping “Commissionisation” and supranationalisation of European decision-making, with a corresponding erosion of national sovereignty and democratic accountability.

Now the Commission is using negotiations over the EU’s next seven-year budget — the aforementioned Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2028-2034 — to push this process further still. And precisely for this reason it is keen to wrap up a deal by the end of the year. Brussels insiders are acutely aware that the French presidential election of April 2027 could produce a government led by Jordan Bardella of the National Rally — a party hostile to the integrationist agenda underpinning the new MFF. Since the framework requires unanimous approval in the Council, a Eurosceptic France could strangle the budget at birth. The unstated but operative goal is to seal the deal before that risk appears. That this is never said openly only underscores the contempt for democratic deliberation that now pervades the process.

Read my article on the EU’s latest power grab here: https://t.co/JckGAaGzqE

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is an absolutely major story and almost no Western media covered it: India's water minister CR Patil said on Tuesday that "it is certain, not a single drop of water will go (to Pakistan) in the coming years."

Patil said that India is "actively working on it" after "directives" from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As a reminder, Pakistan's dependence on water from India is close to total: the country is essentially built around the Indus river system, all of whose rivers flow through India before entering Pakistan.

The Indus system irrigates 80% of Pakistan's farmland, generates a third of its electricity, supplies its major cities with drinking water, and sustains the livelihoods of some 240 million people.

So, essentially, no water from India = annihilation of Pakistan as a state.

Pretty damn consequential, all the more given we're talking about 2 nuclear powers here. And all the more because, understandably, Pakistan's formal position is that water diversion would constitute "an act of war" (https://t.co/WLoDpGzc2W).

Unfortunately, Patil's statement isn't just talk: India already set up the legal framework to make this possible. Last year, they unilaterally suspended the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, despite the treaty containing no withdrawal clause.

It used to be the one piece of India-Pakistan relations that worked, and had survived multiple wars and over six decades of hostility. Now India is saying officially that it will "never be restored" (https://t.co/2SnUNevFbX).

The one mitigating factor here is physics: you don't just "turn off" a major Himalayan river system. Diverting rivers of this magnitude means building massive storage and canal infrastructure in Himalayan terrain: projects measured in years.

But India IS ACTUALLY BUILDING that infrastructure: for instance it just approved in May the building of the so-called "Chenab–Beas Link Tunnel," an 8.7km ₹2,352 crore (~$280M) tunnel designed to divert water from the Chenab basin into India's Beas river system. The Chenab is one of the main tributaries of the Indus - and one of the three "western rivers" (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) allocated to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty.

Which means that, unfortunately, Patil's "not a single drop of water in the coming years" looks like a roadmap: the infrastructure to strangle Pakistan's water supply is being approved and tendered in plain sight.

This is also a story about selective media coverage and double standards: I'm willing to bet that 99% of people in the West have never heard of any of this.

Now make this thought experiment: imagine China announced it was building infrastructure to cut off every drop of water flowing to India and its ministers proclaimed on television that "not a single drop" would cross the border. It would be wall-to-wall coverage, sanctions packages, and a thousand op-eds about Beijing "weaponizing water."

Heck we don't need to imagine because the simple fact of China merely building a hydropower dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo (the upstream Brahmaputra) generated exactly the wall-to-wall alarm I'm describing, even though China threatened nothing and even though Indian officials said the threat is a "myth" given the fact that the river gathers most of its volume inside India from monsoon rains (https://t.co/GBgBybBPoE). Malign intent was still presumed from the act of construction, because it's China.

In India's case, the intent couldn't possibly be clearer: it's proclaimed by ministers on the record, and backed by India's actions. But because they're a courted Western partner, what they're doing - arguably the most extreme form of economic warfare imaginable, directed at a nuclear state - largely gets silence.

Src for screenshot: https://t.co/qav4muNkij

[Michael T. Lester @MichaelTLester]

My post on Sazan Island went viral yesterday because the verifiable facts are shocking.

Here's what I left out: Sazan is just one piece of a much bigger operation.

Jared Kushner started Affinity Partners in July 2021. One day after leaving the White House.

Within weeks, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund wired him $2 billion. Senior Saudi officials objected. Mohammed bin Salman overruled them.

By the end of 2024, Affinity was managing $4.8 billion, almost entirely from foreign governments. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE. Today that number is $6.16 billion. 99% from foreign nationals.

The fee structure, disclosed to the Senate Finance Committee under investigation: Kushner charges the Saudis 1.25% annually on $2 billion in committed capital. Other investors pay closer to 2%. The Senate's own investigators called this "unusually high" for a firm with Kushner's experience level, or more correctly, complete lack of experience. As of mid-2024, Affinity had generated zero return on investment and had not distributed a penny of earnings back to any client.

He's charging governments tens of millions a year to have their money sit in a bank account.

In late 2024, Senator Wyden referred Kushner to the Department of Justice for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The same law that put Paul Manafort in prison.

Now Kushner is back in government. Trump's "Special Envoy for Peace." Negotiating with Iran. Negotiating with Russia. Negotiating ceasefire terms in Gaza. On behalf of the United States. Not chosen by Americans. No experience running an investment firm. No training or experience in international relations. His sole credential is that he married the president's daughter. All while managing $6 billion from the governments he is negotiating with.

Before Trump's second term started, Kushner publicly promised he would not raise additional capital while serving. The New York Times then reported he was actively soliciting $5 billion more from foreign governments. His lawyers confirmed the conversations. They said he "does not intend" to take it.

He said the same thing before he took it the first time.

The Senate Finance Committee and the House Oversight Committee are both demanding answers. They've asked for every communication between Kushner and foreign governments. They've asked Affinity to preserve all documents. Any destruction of records, they said in writing, will be treated as obstruction.

Now look at the ownership chart below. It was produced as part of a corporate investigation published June 3rd titled "Exporting the Abraham Accords: The Hidden Network Converging on Albania's Shoreline." My follower @SlavicWoman777 flagged it in my replies.

Five unnamed Albanian shareholders. 24% combined stake. Structured deliberately just below the 25% threshold that would require public disclosure under Dutch law.

That is someone trying to hide who is behind the money.

This is what corruption looks like when it's wearing a suit and has a law firm on retainer.

What do you call it when your government's negotiator is on the payroll of the governments he's negotiating with?

[Jan Mainka @jan_mainka]

Durch Nazi-Deutschland starben weit mehr als doppelt so viele Russen wie Juden.
Warum steht #Deutschland 🇩🇪 wegen der „historischen Verantwortung“ dann heute nicht genauso selbstverständlich und „unverrückbar“ an der Seite von #Russland 🇷🇺 wie an der Seite Israels?
Warum ist die Sicherheit Russlands nicht ebenfalls eine „nicht verhandelbare deutsche Staatsräson“?
Warum ist Deutschland die Sicherheit Russlands stattdessen völlig egal?
Warum beteiligt es sich sogar wieder aktiv an der Zerstörung Russlands und der Tötung weiterer Russen? 😱
#Schande #Geschichtsvergessenheit

[Reza Nasri @RezaNasri1]

Nonsense!

There is no such thing as a “self-defense strike” when you are the initial aggressor. No state can invoke self-defense while stationing helicopters and drones along another country’s borders for the purpose of enforcing an unlawful naval blockade, systematically and repeatedly violating that country’s airspace, particularly when the entire operation is being conducted 8,000 miles from its own mainland.

Any military action undertaken by the initial aggressor in response to a state’s lawful exercise of self-defense is not "defensive" by any standard. It is merely a continuation of the original unlawful use of force and act of aggression.

Furthermore, attacking Iran’s water infrastructure in response to the downing of a single intruding helicopter cannot plausibly be described as “proportionate” either. Such an attack constitutes a serious war crime, both because it violates the principle of proportionality and because of the civilian nature of the targets.

[Mel @Villgecrazylady]

Just reading these for the first time… and the freak out by Zionists every time I post that ABC News segment about the “Dancing Israelis” makes a lot more sense.

I wouldn’t want anyone reading these either if I supported Israel.

[Craig Mokhiber @CraigMokhiber]

The decision by the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties, a political body dominated by Western states and their allies, to suspend ICC Prosecutor Khan, despite the exculpatory findings of both the judicial panel that reviewed the case and the OIOS oversight body, can only be seen as just the latest step in a long campaign by the Israeli regime and its US and other allies to obstruct, delay, and punish the prosecutor and the court for their attempts to hold Israeli regime perpetrators to account, and to send a message to judges and future prosecutors: ‘challenge the Israeli regime and we will crush you.’ The full Assembly must overturn this scandalous action, and take concrete steps to protect the court and prosecutors from Israeli, US, and Western persecution. If they fail to do so, the still nascent ICC will whither and die on the vine, and with it, any hope of international criminal accountability in our time.

[RJ Moreau 🇧🇹 @toxictiramisu]

The Groucho Club is a private London celebrity club for media/creative industries whose guests have included Bill Clinton, had hidden cameras (probably for blackmail) & ran a 42K member CP forum. Despite evidence: media blackout, no police action, suggesting MI5/MI6 involvement.

[Zlatti71 @Zlatti_71]

“I don’t want war with Russia, and I don’t want to see in the EU a country where Nazis are honored” — French politician Nicolas Dupont-Aignan.

•If Ukraine joins the EU, France will find itself at war with Russia. That is madness. If Ukraine joins the EU, it will ruin our farmers, and that too is madness. If Ukraine joins the EU, we will once again be spending billions. And we are going to admit a country whose president has not been re-elected, where there have been no elections for two years now, and where former Nazi collaborators are honored at state ceremonies. I do not want this. And I know that peace is possible. Trump wants peace with Putin. And France should want it too.
•But does Putin want it?
•Of course, he needs peace just as much as anyone else.

👍 Skabeeva in Max

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

The Israeli government has said explicitly that they see social media control as their most important war -- especially in the US -- and will use a combination of censorship and buying up platforms and influencers (like they did with TikTok and CBS) to re-propganized Americans:

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is extraordinarily rare.

In fact, according to a key figure in the German business community (who is a dear friend of mine), it's unprecedented.

An op-ed, two pages, centerpiece, in Germany’s most important economic newspaper (the Handelsblatt) that begs the German establishment to stop looking at China via the prism of propaganda. And it's by their Shanghai bureau chief - not some outside contributor.

The title is "The China debate cannot continue like this!" and the article makes the case that it's suicidal, from a German and European standpoint, to keep reducing China to false caricatures rather than facts.

In effect it's rubbish in, rubbish out: if you tell people lies about China - whichever direction they go (anti or pro) - then obviously the policies that come out will be rubbish, designed for a mirage of a country that exists only in people's imagination.

Needless to say, this is absolutely music to my ears because it's literally the main point I've been making in my advocacy around China for now almost 10 years. Some are finally seeing the light...

I also believe, as I argued in my article "Are Western media turning China-friendly?" last year (https://t.co/Xg1hoSRtNy) that this type of coverage was bound to happen, and there will be more and more of it.

Why? For a very simple structural reason: China is now too powerful to coerce. The West, and Europe in particular, just don't have the leverage anymore. Which means that if you tell China to do something and they don't want to, they just won't do it. Period.

In this situation, incapable of coercing, your only remaining choice is... convincing. And what do you need if you want to convince someone? Well, you need to understand them: understand how they think, how they behave, what drives them, what they actually want.

In other words: the moment coercion stops being an option, not only does propaganda stop being useful, it begins to be actively harmful as genuine understand becomes a strategic necessity. Reality is finally becoming profitable again.

Which means, if you're a journalist reading this and you're peddling some of your usual lies, describing China as some sort of cartoonish dictatorial dystopia that's simultaneously on the verge of collapse yet a "threat" to the whole world (in short, if you write on China for The Economist or the FT), be on notice: the real threat to your country isn't China. It's you.

[𝐙𝐮𝐤𝐮𝐧𝐟𝐭𝟑𝟕 - Bernd F. - F wie Freiheit! 🗽 @zukunft37]

Es ist erschreckend, dass jemand, der offenbar zu blöde ist einen Wahlzettel in die Urne zu stecken, NATO-Generalsekretär werden kann.
Was Mark Rutte hier treibt, ist unglaublich...
...aber wahr! 😅🤦🏻‍♂️

[RJ Moreau 🇧🇹 @toxictiramisu]

J. Edgar Hoover worked with Sherman Kaminsky, 👁️Đ Ꞙ veteran who ran a sexual blackmail ring called "The Chickens and the Bulls" that used young men to entrap a Navy admiral, two generals, and a US congressman, to build Hoover's own secret blackmail files on DC's powerful elite.