A. Serap Avanoğlu

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." Martin Luther King, Jr.

[A. Serap Avanoğlu @ayserapau]

There was a short period of time when we believed that the Western colonialism had been abolished.

[mehmet çırakoğlu @mcirakoglu48]

Bunu BİLİYORLAR.
Kasıtlı borçlandırıp ÖDEYEMEYELİM diye kaynakları ve üretim araçlarını da SATIYORLAR.

Amaçları; ülkemizi DİZLERİ ÜSTÜNE ÇÖKERTİP emperyalist efendilerine TESLİM ETMEK.

[Normal Island News @NormalIslandNws]

Okay, you’re not gonna believe me here, but I promise I’m not making any of this up. There’s no satire today, just straight reporting. It’s almost like I’m a real journalist or something. Here goes…

Israeli opposition leader Avigdor Lieberman has released campaign ads accusing Netanyahu of being pro-Palestine. Yes, the man who bombed every school and hospital in Gaza, gunned down people in food queues, and denied kids anaesthetic for operations is pro-Palestine now.

I’m not sure if you know this, but leaving a single micro-organism alive in Gaza is unacceptable to Israelis. In fact, I think it’s a form of antisemitism.

Still, I’d say it’s harsh to call the world’s biggest war criminal “pro-Palestine”. It overlooks Netanyahu’s hard work transforming Gaza into a rubble heap on Google maps. Exterminations don’t happen overnight and Bibi’s carrying out a seven-front genocide.

Not every criticism of him is unfair though. For example, he’s been rightly accused of dreadful, low-quality false flags recently. Lieberman said that if he becomes prime minister, Israel’s false flag budget will increase by 20%. Naturally, this will be paid for by Americans who can’t afford to fill their cars.

Lieberman said the only leader on the ballot who has agreed to a Palestinian state is Netanyahu. He then awkwardly pointed out that Bibi’s the one who funneled “$1 billion to Hamas. That might’ve been the knockout blow.

In Israel you win over voters by showing you hate Palestinians more than the other side does. Therefore, Lieberman called for the Palestinian Authority to be dismantled, describing it as “a failed experiment”.

Under his plans, not only would Arab parties not be allowed to stand in Israel, but Palestinians wouldn’t be allowed political representation in the West Bank. Only an antisemite would call this apartheid.

Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party posted on Twitter: “Netanyahu has agreed again to the establishment of a Palestinian state. This must not be allowed to happen.”

Netanyahu fired back that Lieberman’s actually the one who’s pro-Palestine, and he called a possible opposition coalition “the Muslim Brotherhood”. Yes, Israeli politics is basically a schoolyard game of “I know you are, but what am I?”

Netanyahu accused Lieberman of wanting to end the illegal occupations of Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. Obviously it would be unthinkable for Israel to stop breaking international law. If anyone tries to do that, it’s an immediate career ender.

Netanyahu angrily rejected the accusation of supporting a Palestinian state, saying he made those comments back in 2009 when he was young and stupid. Today, he’s in full agreement with every other Israeli party that there must never be a Palestinian state. He promised voters he would increase Palestinian suffering by at least 300% if re-elected. Lieberman then offered 350%.

Ed Miliband wished both men “good luck” and said he looks forward to working with the next Israeli government on a two-state solution.

[The Empire Files @EmpireFiles]

EARTH’S GREATEST ENEMY STREAMING NOW ::

PRIME: https://t.co/bXh9VBNqRq
APPLE TV: https://t.co/Zp94OUqEGw
WATERMELON+: https://t.co/cDWNM5GRHQ
VIMEO: https://t.co/azDCkWUFTD

The world’s greatest polluter is hiding in plain sight.

https://t.co/EJUZEcyqG2

[Nury Vittachi @NuryVittachi]

The Netherlands is following China, France, and Russia in moving to break the global stranglehold of US tech dominance, it was revealed this week.

The Dutch government was shocked into action after the US remotely disabled the computers of judges in the Hague who criticized Israel leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

The sudden loss of ICC staff’s Outlook email accounts caused significant problems.

The US reserves the right to unilaterally sanction anyone, anywhere in the world--all your Google accounts could disappear in an instant. Bye-bye, gmail.

“The Dutch government is creating its own digital work environment based on the Dutch Linux distribution NixOS,” said Jasper Bakker of news website Tweakers.

The spreading realization: smart countries protect their digital sovereignty.

.

HARDWARE, TOO
China is trying to ditch both software and hardware. Beijing in 2019 ordered government offices to switch away from foreign PCs, and fortunately has a great many locally produced computers to fill the gap.

China’s Ministry of State Security this summer told some state-linked organizations to quickly remove a customized version of Windows 10 from their machines, Bloomberg reported in August. Other organizations are set to “clean” their systems of the program by February of 2027.

Russia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy and Austria are also replacing Microsoft programs with alternatives in various government areas, particularly in military sectors.

In Hong Kong, a number of government departments have already replaced Microsoft Office products with alternatives.

.

THE PROBLEM IS THE PUBLIC
But security specialists worldwide note that large-scale switching will be a challenge.

While multiple countries are clearing their governmental systems of dominant US programs, virtually all computers owned by members of the public are filled with it—and few consumers will take the trouble to switch away from Microsoft Office, let alone from the Windows operating system.

Even in China, Microsoft is dominant at consumer level. The Windows program accounted for 87.64% of desktop web traffic in China as recently as July 2026, StatCounter reported.

Fortunately, alternative operating systems like Huawei’s HarmonyOS work well, and are growing in popularity.

Russia has enforced a total ban on Western software for government and military, mandating the use of domestic Astra Linux.

.

ALTERNATIVES
As for Europe, the best hope is the rise of easy-install alternatives. These do exist.

- France, like the Netherlands, is opting for changing the operating systems, transitioning 2.5 million civil servants to Linux. They have also been told to ditch MS Teams and use Visio, a local alternative.

- Individual German states are also opting for Linux, and are using Open Document Format and LibreOffice in place of MS Office.

.

WEAPONIZATION IS THE ISSUE
The problem is not US software, which works perfectly well. The issue is the way the programs are weaponized.

When the US weaponized GPS against a Chinese ship they (wrongly) suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction, the world realized they needed an alternative, and now has one: Baidu.

When the US weaponized SWIFT against Russia, the world realized they needed an alternative, and became aware of one: CIPS.

And when the US weaponized Microsoft Outlook against judges in the Netherlands, the Dutch government finally sprang into action. Sometimes you need a shock to get you moving.

.
.

[The Long Investor @TheLongInvest]

As a pilot for 20 years I have questions:

- where are the cabin crew here?
- where are the oxygen masks that automatically drop during a rapid emergency descent?
- how did the Capt manage to open the door while being stabbed?
- Omani pilots were not allowed to fly to Israel, why was he allowed?
- how did the offending pilot get a weapon onboard?
- why has this happened so close to elections?
- how are passengers walking around while apparently in a nosedive?
- who else was injured? Nose dives cause significant g force incidents
- why is there two perfectly positioned people recording the incident and not helping?
- why did a plumber take control and not the 2 pilots onboard who would certainly know when an aircraft was in a nosedive?
- why was the plumber speaking in English to Bibi after the flight
- why was he still in his blood soaked clothes 8 hours after the incident

False Flags have been a very effective mechanism to influence public opinion

Hitler burnt down the Reichstag just before his parliament elections and he won the election…changing the course of history.

A full and independent investigation should be carried out here.

Hopefully independent journalist will be allowed to view this too.

[David Graeber Institute @Graeber_social]

David Graeber once wrote, "In its essence direct action is the insistence, when faced with structures of unjust authority, on acting as if one is already free."

And that is what they are doing at the protest camp in Madrid. Their direct action is acting as if they are already free.

[BDS movement @BDSmovement]

The BDS movement is hosting a landmark event and you’re invited.

On 18 November, the BDS@20 Europe Regional Conference will feature some of the most influential figures advocating across Europe and beyond in the struggle for Palestinian liberation today.

https://t.co/s89iBlQmqY

[A. Serap Avanoğlu @ayserapau]

@yildarado 😄

[Internet Archive @internetarchive]

Here's a small thing you can do for the future:
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[Shaiel Ben-Ephraim @academic_la]

At 9:57 AM this morning the assessment by Israeli security was that this was a mental health issue and a suicide attempt. All the sudden the narrative shifted to 100% certainty that it was a terror attack. To say this is fishy, is an understatement.

[AHMET ŞIK @ahmetsahmets]

Hayati Yazıcı’nın oğlu Mustafa Yazıcı’nın mal varlığına tedbir uygulandığı ortaya çıktıktan sonra oluşan panik havası hata yaptırmaya devam ediyor. Önce öyle bir tedbir karar�� yok diye servis ettiler, sonra da uyguladıkları kararı kaldırdılar. Madem tedbir yoktu neyi kaldırdınız?

İlgili yazının sonunda, “İlgili kurumlar nezdinde mal varlığı ve para hareketlerine yönelik tedbir uygulanan ve aşağıda isimleri belirtilen kişiler ile ilgili olarak alınan ifadeler ve toplanılan diğer deliller doğrultusunda, söz konusu tedbirlerin ve durdurma kararının kaldırılmasına karar verilmiştir” yazmasına rağmen Adalet Bakanlığı manipülasyon ağına mensup olanlara yalan bilgi içeren “bilgi notu” geçilerek konunun üzeri örtülmeye çalışılıyor.

[Tamer Nahed @Tamer_Alnoaizy]

Write about what is happening in Gaza right now. This has literally gone beyond reason and crossed every boundary of humanity and human decency.

A transport vehicle carrying a very large number of people was just targeted. The scene is beyond words; some of the people inside the vehicle literally disappeared in the force of the explosion, while others were thrown through the air over long distances. People in the tents surrounding the vehicle were also injured.

There were children, women, and elderly people among those at the scene. Civilians who were simply on their way suddenly found themselves in the middle of an explosion that destroyed everything around them.

Where is the world? Where is the so-called Peace Council? Where is all the talk about humanity and protecting civilians? Write about this. Speak about it. Show the world what is happening in Gaza right now. Do not let these scenes pass in silence.

[A. Serap Avanoğlu @ayserapau]

@ImJulianAssange @hasanunaltr1919 This is a false Julian Assange account. The real one is @JulianAssange

[Virtual Flotilla @VirtualFlotilla]

A 🧵dedicated to #students in Gaza. Please listen to, stay in touch with and support young people who are completing school + university despite of the hardship.
Can we find students from around the world to support Layan @Ayoubgyx for example?
Join #VirtualFlotilla

[Dr Andreas Krieg @andreas_krieg]

Dubious story coming from "Israeli sources" framing the pilot as "Omani"

An Omani citizen would not have been authorized to fly to TLV and a dual national would be Emirati/Omani of which there are some (however dual citizenship has been banned in Oman as of 2022)

Important to bear in mind that Oman has been on top of Israel's list for divide-and-rule information warfare campaigns - just after Qatar - for its role as a mediator and open critic of the Israeli government
https://t.co/3GWyXR7vuG

[Rabbi Jeff @RabbiJeffx]

Hey @grok, concise no spin.

Has X ever entrusted users’ government IDs, selfies and biometric data to Israeli companies for identity verification?

[Brian Berletic @BrianJBerletic]

🇺🇸NEW ARTICLE: US Cannibalizes Its Proxies and Itself as War on Multipolarism Expands

(Because X blocks NEO links just as Twitter did, I am providing the entire article below).

For decades, the US has leveraged its many client states as extensions of its own military, economic, financial, and political power, recruiting the Western world and its dependencies into war, proxy war, economic coercion, and for generating the illusion of political legitimacy for US actions worldwide.

All of this is a continuation of the British Empire’s use of its colonies to help fight its wars and maintain global primacy up to and including throughout the World Wars.

And just as the British Empire increasingly leaned on its colonies as its power waned in its final years, extracting blood and treasure from them, draining and destroying them in the process - the US is increasingly leaning on its client states as its war on multipolarism expands against a reemerging Russia, a rising China, and a persistent Iran and many nations in between.

Just as the British used a combination of administrative control and political propaganda to induce obedience across its colonies, the US is using its political capture of its client states and unprecedented information dominance to maneuver its client states into position for war and proxy war and to justify the growing expenditure on military power at the expense of social programs and even economic viability - both at home and across its modern day empire.

The Burden Sharing Network

Spanning the Obama, first Trump, Biden, and now second Trump administrations, the US has increasingly introduced a combination of political, economic, and military alliances used to consolidate US power worldwide.

This includes everything from the “Quad,” to “AUKUS,” from an ever-expanding NATO to faux anti-US alliances like Europe’s Ukraine-centric “coalition of the willing” and proposed European Union “associate membership” for Canada. All of these arrangements are meant to streamline the administrative process of leveraging regional power across multiple client states together with political narratives meant to bring as many people within these targeted nations on board with the use of these nations against targets of US foreign policy objectives.

The Quad and AUKUS use fabricated threats of “Chinese expansion” and “aggression” to dupe millions across Asia-Pacific into transferring tremendous and still-growing amounts of resources from national development toward military spending and potential confrontation with China itself.

The so-called “coalition of the willing,” a recycled term from the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, along with the EU associate membership proposed for Canada is aimed at fabricating the threat of an “invading Russia” to leverage further resources for Washington’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine.

In West Asia, the US is using the so-called “Mecca Joint Defence Agreement” and the “Abraham Accords” to consolidate its client states in the region together despite decades of contradicting propaganda narratives maintaining a US strategy of tension across the region focused on Israel.

Manufactured public hatred and/or fear is used to drive these various attempts to consolidate the resources and power of US client states around the world amid interlinked conflicts spanning Europe, West Asia, and building tensions in the Asia-Pacific. Adjacent conflicts are also taking place everywhere from Latin America to the continent of Africa as part of this process.

Stripping away the propaganda reveals a very basic formula - all of these political alignments share a single imperative - more military spending - and spending on weapons that are either made by the US itself or part of US military interoperability around the globe. It is also military spending that is coming at the expense of social programs, economic and national development, and even the political stability of the various US client states that make up these alignments - whether they are created and led by the US or pretend to be in opposition to US actions.

While this “burden sharing network” took shape over the course of several US administrations this 21st century, it simply builds on what was always continuation of what had been the British Empire itself. The term “burden sharing network” was verbatim introduced in the 2025 US National Security Strategy and sold specifically as a means of preventing US overextension - just as the British Empire required to perpetuate its own power toward the end of its global power.

Eating Its Proxies, Eating Its Own Economy

Because China’s population and industrial base dwarfs that of the US and Europe combined, and considering the large and growing network of partners China is building as part of the emerging multipolar world, even the expanded squeezing of US client states alone is not enough.

This is why the US is seeking to convert the ailing Western economy from civilian economic production to arms production. Examples of this are rapidly appearing in Western headlines with car factories across Europe and now the US converting increasingly unused production capacity to build components for weapons and munitions.

While the West proclaims itself as a “free market” society - it is actively smothering the “free market” by forcing civilian production to transfer over to military industrial production - not through political declarations but through the careful management of socio-political and economic conditions leaving little other choice.

The US managed to force Europe’s collective economy to decouple from cheap, plentiful, and reliable energy from Russia through the US-engineered overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014 and the subsequent war US encroachment along Russia’s borders provoked. By eliminating Europe’s Russian energy imports, the US was able to shape Europe’s wider economy toward military industrial production by making any other economic activity prohibitively expensive.

While military industrial production will be likewise expensive, European governments are using stage-managed theater between themselves and the US to create the illusion of existential danger from Russia, the "abandonment" by the US to that “Russian danger,” allowing greater expenditures on military industrial production than would ever have been possible under actual free market conditions.

While recent US administrations including both the Trump and Biden administrations have declared policies to reindustrialize the United States - none of the actual policies required to do so - like reforming education, especially vocational education, investing in national infrastructure, or nationalizing key industries - have been proposed let alone implemented.

Instead, vast sums of US tax money is being transferred to the arms industry and companies upstream in the supply chains to expand production of weapons and ammunition - but because of the profit-driven nature of these companies, as little money as possible is being sent to expanding actual production.

Because the fundamentals of reindustrializing the US have not been addressed by any of the US administrations promising to do so, entire US industries find themselves in decline - including the auto industry. Rather than allow the “free market” to sweep away inefficient, incompetent corporations, the corporations are helping themselves likewise to US tax money to use increasingly unused industrial capacity to manufacture parts for weapons rather than automobiles.

GM, for example, recently boasted production of Patriot missile outer cases. GM is using underutilized computer numerical controlled machining equipment usually used for prototyping and mold making to instead produce these outer cases in quantities Lockheed Martin could not achieve without itself investing in similar equipment.

Like corrupt, incompetent corporations collapsing under the weight of their own greed and consolidating among themselves to maintain what can best be described as a pyramid scheme for as long as possible - a “civil-military fusion” is taking shape in the US where the government produces an unnecessary need for constant war and the weapons and ammunition to fight it, and US corporations help themselves to tax money to do so.

Empire mismanaging its economy amid terminal decline is nothing new. The British Empire likewise misappropriated national resources and industry in a desperate bid to maintain its global primacy rather than acknowledge the unsustainable nature of doing so and the necessity to reorganize itself from a predatory empire to a functioning and productive nation-state.

By doing so, it not only lost its empire, it was left without the socio-economic and political foundation to run a viable nation-state and has spent the entirety of its post-empire period as an extension of US empire, rather than as a sovereign, British nation-state.

The US - like the British Empire - in refusing to acknowledge this reality - is simply buying time to perpetuate its global primacy - not actually organize a viable plan to realistically sustain it. In the process, it is severely neglecting the necessary foundations required for a functioning, productive nation-state - with infrastructure rotting out from under the American people, inaccessible education and healthcare, and a divided, increasingly dysfunctional society.

Worse still - the proposed US method of perpetuating global primacy relies entirely on destabilizing and undermining the rising multipolar world rather than the US matching or exceeding multipolarism’s growing power and prosperity.

The final outcome is the US hollowing itself out while bleeding its proxies dry in a process of undermining and destabilizing the rest of the world - leaving all three in destruction and destitution if multipolarism cannot successfully contain this process and manage a relatively stable transition from US primacy to global multipolarism.

Only time will tell how exactly this entire process plays out. Interests on both sides have proposed plans and are implementing them upon the global stage. Only one has history and sustainable geopolitical and economic fundamentals on its side - and it isn’t Wall Street and Washington. That said, it is always easier to destroy than to build - thus multipolarism will have to build at incredible speed and scale to outpace the demonstrated destructive power of the US. Whomever proves more capable in their respective approach will either establish a new, better global order, or leave the globe in ruin.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

[Internet Archive @internetarchive]

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[Chris Hedges @ChrisLynnHedges]

Donald Trump exhibits the classic traits of psychopaths -- superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation and incapacity for remorse or guilt.

But is he evil?

If, as the philosopher Susan Nieman writes, evil is not simply the opposite of good but inimical to it, if the aim of evil is to destroy all moral distinctions, then Trump qualifies as evil. Morality, for Trump, is for losers. All life is transactional. Self-interest and self-enrichment usurp all other considerations. No one else matters.

In her new book, “Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era,” Neiman argues that evil “isn’t cruelty but something much worse: the ideas that allow cruelty to become ordinary.”

She continues:

There’s a difference between calling one action evil and calling another a crime. Crimes are things for which we have procedures—at least for punishing, if not for preventing. This means that a crime can be fit in some way into the rest of our experience. To call an action evil is to suggest it cannot—and that it thereby threatens the trust in the world that we need to navigate it. There’s no signpost on the border between evil and awful. Evil is what you say when your jaw begins to drop if you sense that a line has been crossed.

Trump crosses line after line. He declares wars on a whim. He enriches himself and his family in crypto schemes, from which he has made over a billion dollars. He orders assassinations and the kidnapping of heads of state. He uses billions of taxpayer dollars to sustain genocide in Palestine and since January 2025 has provided over $20 billion in new arms sales to Israel. He guts government departments designed to lift up the vulnerable and bloats the war budget. He builds rogue paramilitary forces to terrorize citizens and immigrants. He attacks and attempts to censor the news industry.

In short, he does what all who commit evil do.

He fosters a world where nothing is sacred and where democracy and civic virtues do not exist.

Read my full column, 'Donald Trump and the Age of Evil' on Substack at the link below.