CITIZENS COUNTER-PROPAGANDA

PATRICK LAWRENCE—The Deep State — and at this point it is mere pretense to object to this term — long ago made it a priority to turn the mainstream press and broadcasters to its purposes — to make a free press unfree. This has gone on since the earliest Cold War decades and is well and responsibly documented.

PATRICK LAWRENCE—No subtlety of thought survives in the culture of unreason. Public space is populated with poseurs, cutouts, and imposters. Public discourse, with some exceptions, is much of the time not worth bothering with.

To understand this condition, we must recognize it as the work of a diabolic alliance comprised of the Democratic Party’s corrupt leadership, the F.B.I. and other law-enforcement agencies, the national security apparatus and its many appendages, and the media. It is no longer in the slightest objectionable to speak or write of a Deep State that controls this country.

PETER KOENIG—The tradition of gladiator games lasted for almost a thousand years, until the 6th Century AD. Their origins appear like ceremonial, but later, when the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire – they served as brutal entertainments for the masses to deviate their attention from what the empire was doing at home, or “cooking” abroad, in foreign lands, with resources – “taxes” – taken from the people. Resources of the people being diverted to causes that served only a small elite.

PEPE ESCOBAR—Essentially, Moscow is reviving the Collective Security Concept for the Persian Gulf Region, an idea that has been simmering since the 1990s. Here is what the concept is all about.

So if the US administration’s reasoning is predictably short-term – we need Iranian oil back in the market – the Russian vision points to systemic change.

The Collective Security Concept calls for true multilateralism – not exactly Washington’s cup of tea – and “the adherence of all states to international law, the fundamental provisions of the UN Charter and the resolutions of the UN Security Council.”

All that is in direct contrast with the imperial “rules-based international order.”

Navina Heyden, a German blogger, pointed this out: I don’t get the idea of some people – as long as China becomes stronger, its ties with the world will get better… No one in Europe would think so.

Some netizens sensed a subtext here: When China becomes stronger, its relations with the world could get worse. This is obviously believed by quite a few Germans in particular and Westerners in general. 

Compared with most German influencers, Heyden is relatively objective in her views about China. However, she has suffered waves of cyber violence from within Germany since 2020 simply because she said something in fairness to China’s fight against COVID-19. Her case is a vivid example of how people in Germany and other Western countries deal with China-related information through distortion. They won’t embrace voices that contradict their stereotype about China, or those that can prove China has done something right.