Neocon dark money front launches desperate ad blitz as support for Ukraine forever war craters

A PR offensive to inundate the American public with pro-Ukraine war advertisements during the 2024 election is the latest initiative of neocon chickenhawk Bill Kristol. While targeted at GOP voters, the campaign appears to be another Democratic Party front.

Neocon dark money front launches desperate ad blitz as support for Ukraine forever war craters

Related:

Conservative group launches campaign to push for GOP support for Ukraine

CJ Hopkins has been given a choice of jail time or a fine for two tweets and a book cover

American satirist and playwright C.J. Hopkins has been sent a “punishment order” and a choice: 60 days or 3,600 Euros.

What is his crime? Essentially, his “crime” is insulting the German health minister in a tweet, and using a scarcely-visible image of a Swastika on a mask in a book critical of the global pandemic response.

CJ Hopkins has been given a choice of jail time or a fine for two tweets and a book cover

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The Road to Totalitarianism (Part 3)

Soros Foundation to End Most EU Operations in Radical Shift

Soros Foundation to End Most EU Operations in Radical Shift

The foundation will also continue to fund initiatives promoting human rights, democracy and accountable government across eastern Europe and central Asia, particularly in non-EU members Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, and the Western Balkans, the spokesperson said. The focus of grants in the new model will be determined in the coming months.

In the EU, OSF financed a wide range of philanthropic programs in the bloc’s eastern former communist members, including Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and elsewhere.*

Regime Change coming to Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia, and the Western Balkans soon?!

H/T: SDer Friedensstifter

Related:

Soros Foundation to be restructured to focus on non-EU countries

They will also continue to support NGOs in Europe, including groups working on the EU’s foreign policy, the Roma community, and human rights, democracy and accountable governance in the region, and the spokesperson specifically mentioned Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and the Western Balkans here.

*NGOs, “Unions”, & Media Outlets in the Service of Imperialism

Why the U.S. Government Cares About the Coup in Niger + More

Let us travel back in time to April 9, 1999. It was the middle of hot season in the West African country of Niger and 120 degrees in the shade. Jocelyn, one of the authors, was a newly minted Peace Corps volunteer and had recently arrived in a rural community 60 miles south of Niamey, the capital, where she would spend the next two years. That day, President Ibrahim Bare Mainassara and five other people were shot dead at the airport, a mutiny by his presidential guard. But there was no international outcry, no evacuation of Americans and Europeans. Jocelyn was told to stay put in the small community where she was living. Life went on as usual.

Why the U.S. Government Cares About the Coup in Niger | Opinion

Related:

“Divide and Rule”: Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni Is Biden’s “Political Asset”. U.S. Behind Niger Coup d’Etat. America’s Hegemonic Wars Against Europe and Africa

SouthFront.Org Blocked By U.S.-Controlled Global Internet Supervisor

On the night of 18 August, the “international domain name registry” blocked southfront.org without any warning or explanation. Despite the fact that this organisation has been formally independent since 1998, it is actually controlled by the US Department of Commerce. What they have done is an unprecedented action in the history of modern information society. This is the American way of democracy, freedom of speech and the rule of law.

SouthFront.Org Blocked By U.S.-Controlled Global Internet Supervisor

H/T: Dave DeCamp

The Atlas Network and the Building of Argentina’s Donald Trump

Yves here. We’re featuring a post from openDemocracy on Argentina’s primary results that had far-right candidate Javier Milei beating the candidates of the two parties that have been in power for two decades. The post is telling, and not in a good way. Milei does advocate extreme views (not that he can go as far as he likes since even if he won a plurality again, he would still be leading a coalition government). And too many commentators forget that voters regularly move to the right in bad economic times, which Argentina is certainly suffering. It’s that the piece depicts him as a Trumpian outsider/madman, when Nick Corbishley’s post right after the primary results were in describes Milei’s considerable, if sometimes seamy, establishment connections…including to the Kochs:

How Javier Milei Upset Argentina’s Political Status Quo

Previously:

Is Argentina’s presidential frontrunner Javier Milei US’ “boy?” Rejects China+Mercosur, embraces $$

Orinoco Tribune Editor: There Was a Coup Against Pedro Castillo in Peru + Some Notes

[2017] Libertarian Atlas Network Pushes Latin America Right

Biden’s ally in Guatemala?

CHIUL, Guatemala − Life in Bartolo Báten’s village has been defined by corruption: A teacher who can’t get a job at the school until she pays a bribe. A water project that runs out of money before the pipes reached town. Sick residents who can’t afford the medicine that’s available elsewhere.

Insurgent candidate tells Guatemalans: Stay, don’t go to the U.S. This time, they’re listening. (archived)

Related:

Seven Decades After Guatemala Coup, Bernardo Arévalo Sees a Dramatic Rise (Will Freeman, CFR)

Arévalo and Semilla are centrists—but in a country where politics habitually skews right, they are often described as center-left. “Semilla has a social democratic element, but its program is centrist, and it also has some center-right followers,” said Lucas Perelló, a political scientist who has spent time studying the party’s formation. Arévalo says he wants to gradually universalize existing social assistance programs to include a greater share of poor Guatemalans, reduce the cost of medicines and healthcare, and link isolated parts of the country through new infrastructure—doable tasks, given Guatemala’s exceptionally low share of debt as GDP, and necessary ones, given the country’s soaring poverty and malnutrition rates.

On security issues, another major concern for Guatemalans, Arévalo promises to increase state presence in crime hotspots, reclaim jails from gangs, and use intelligence-gathering to dismantle mafias. He says Bukele’s anti-gang strategy is not applicable to Guatemala. He is also critical of human rights abuses in Venezuela and Nicaragua and Putin’s war on Ukraine and has no stated plans to recognize China over Taiwan. Asked for a leader he admires, he named the ex-president, José Pepe Mujica, of Uruguay, where he was born during his father’s exile.

France furious with US over Niger, as US Considers Ways to Keep Its Military Presence in Niger

Washington has chosen its own interests over its allies, a French diplomat has told the newspaper, following Victoria Nuland’s visit to Niger

France furious with US over Niger – Le Figaro

Related:

US Considers Ways to Keep Its Military Presence in Niger

Turse explained in a recent article that in 2002 and 2003, the first years of US counterterrorism assistance to Niger, the State Department counted just nine terrorist attacks in all of Africa.

“Last year, the number of violent events in Burkina Faso, Mali, and western Niger alone reached 2,737, according to a report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research institution. This represents a jump of more than 30,000 percent since the US began its counterterrorism efforts,” Turse wrote.