PETER KOENIG—Belarus is in turmoil, after an election where the incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko – 25 years already in power (in office since 1994) – has won with 80% of the popular vote. That’s what the official stats and media say. True or false? Does it matter? The margin is large enough that it cannot be contested or questioned by “recounters”. So, people take to the streets. First police reaction against protesters is violent.
US EXCEPTIONALISM
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MoA—There don’t seem to be many rich city kids in Minsk. Throughout the week the protests groups in Belarus were rather small. The ‘western’ media have pushed high number counts and talked of countrywide protest when twenty women stood on a sidewalk in Minsk. Photos can tell the real story in such situations. Some observers got very excited when some 200 staff of the MTZ Minsk Tractor Works staged a short walkout. But MTZ Minsk Tractor Works has 17,000 employees.
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U.S., UK, & Dutch, Governments Are Anti-Russia Propagandists
17 minutes readERIC ZUESSE–Why can’t the U.S.-UK team get anti-Russian propagandists who are at least halfway honest and trustworthy? Could it be because honesty and truthfulness aren’t what they are looking for?
But the Netherlands Government is at least as bad. They now are resolutely set upon convicting Russia for having shot down the MH17 airliner over Ukraine’s civil-war zone on 17 July 2014, on the basis of evidence that, if real, convicts instead the Government of Ukraine, and not just for Ukraine’s having shot it down but for that Government’s having done it intentionally — and Netherlands is so brazen as to refuse to allow Russia to provide evidence about that evidence.
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The Grayzone exposes Chinese fake fueling anti-Beijing protests
42 minutes readMAX BLUMENTHAL—This August, Kong Tsung-gan published a long-winded diatribe against China’s National Security Law in the Mekong Review, clamoring for harsh US sanctions on Beijing. While acknowledging in small print at the end of the essay that Kong was a pen name, Kern continued to insinuate that he was a Hong Kong native. “An indication of just how draconian the CCP edict is, is that I could be arrested, charged with ‘colluding with foreign forces’, and face up to life in prison just for calling for sanctions on CCP and HK officials,” he wrote. In reality, the author was not colluding with foreign forces. He was the foreign force.
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Looking back on the Maidan events and its consequences
30 minutes readFRANCIS LEE—Throughout this period the EU and high-ranking US officials were openly engaged in Ukraine’s internal affairs. The US Ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, were strolling around Independence Square reassuring the protestors that America stood behind them. Also basking in the political sunlight were US NGOs (such as the National Endowment for Democracy – NED – directly funded by the US Government) and (USAID). Also involved was the US Human Rights Watch (HRW) and not forgetting of course the ubiquitous Mr. Soros.