KIM PETERSEN—changes are afoot at Twitter. Musk has cut the Twitter workforce in half. This is unfortunate for the ordinary workers just trying to earn an honest living; but, as far as cleaning out the anti-free-speech riff raff at Twitter, it might signal an opening for free-speech advocates.
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ERIC ZUESSE—In Davos a group of U.S. lawmakers were repeatedly pressed on whether Congress is united in support for Ukraine and would continue with financial aid in the coming months even if Republicans take control of both chambers after the 2022 midterm elections. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Chris Coons (D-DE), and Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY) participated in the conversation. All participants supported increasing military spending and slashing everything else, in order for Ukraine to defeat Russia on Ukraine’s battlefields.
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SHARMINE NARWANI—ast week, a cache of around 17,000 documents allegedly hacked from Iranian media outlet Press TV, began making their rounds on social media. Among them are documents which bear my name, passport photo, and signature.
For the past six days, I have been subject to ceaseless attacks on Twitter by supposed “Iranian” accounts accusing me of being a paid propagandist of the Iranian government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), based on a scurrilous piecing together of fragments of information to create a false perception of my journalism. In the main, these social media “warriors for women’s rights” leach onto my posts and followers, and spew derogatory slurs related to my gender. -
LARRY ROMANOFF—Democracy had always been hyped in the West as the most perfect form of government, but under the influence of an enormous propaganda campaign it soon morphed into the pinnacle of enlightened human evolution, and to a religion in its own right, certainly in the minds of Americans, but in the West generally. Since a multi-party electoral system formed the underpinnings of external (foreign and parasitic) control of the US government, it was imperative to inject this fiction directly into the American psyche. They did so, to the extent that “democracy”, with its thousands of meanings, is today equivalent to a bible passage – a message from God that by its nature cannot be questioned. Bernays and his people were the source of the deep, abiding – and patently false – conviction in every American heart that democracy is a “universal value”.
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JIMMY DORE—Ever since achieving independence 200 years ago from a vengeful France, Haiti has borne the brunt of U.S. imperialism, suffering repeated military invasions, political interference and ongoing economic exploitation at the hands of the hemisphere’s dominant power. And now, with unrest growing in the Caribbean nation over austerity and political corruption, the United States and Canada are sending “help” in the form of armored vehicles and military personnel. Because what’s better for hungry, suffering people than an invading military force? Jimmy and America’s Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss the centuries of suffering Haiti has experienced – and continues to experience – under the pretense of “help” from the United States.
