I Read the News. Hooo-Boy!

 

There's not as many blogs and online alternative news sources that I read nowadays.  Having read them all one day not that long ago, I turned to CBC News in desperation to read something else.  I wasn't expecting any sort of enlightenment.  But I was entertained by the vapid, obviousness of the propaganda.

First off, it seems that mainstream outlets such as the CBC have been forced to walk-back their sensationalist headlines about anti-Semitic "pogrom" in Amsterdam.

A week after Israeli soccer fans were attacked in the streets of Amsterdam, triggering damning accusations of a "Jew hunt" in a city with an ugly history of antisemitism, a clearer picture of what happened that night is slowly emerging.

It suggests a far more nuanced take on events than Dutch authorities had initially indicated.

...

But a report released by the mayor's office earlier this week, compiled with significant input from police investigators, indicates it was Israeli fans who initiated the first attacks, which then spiralled.

The 10-page document addressed to council members says the first serious incident occurred around midnight on Wednesday, the night before the soccer match. It says 50 Maccabi fans pulled down a Palestinian flag from a building in the city's centre. Some of those fans moved on to Amsterdam's red-light district and attacked a taxi. Other taxis were vandalized by other Israeli fans nearby.

The report indicates the taxi drivers then communicated with each other and mobilized as a group to confront about 400 Israelis, forcing police to keep the two groups apart.

...

One widely shared video taken at some point after sunset shows a large group of Maccabi fans entering an Amsterdam metro station and shouting racist slogans, including "Let the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] win" and "F--k the Arabs." The city report does not specifically mention the video or when it was taken.

Despite the worrisome buildup and tensions, over the next few hours, the Maccabi fans attended the game and then left the stadium with few incidents. But the trouble intensified afterward.

...

The report says after they left the stadium, some Maccabi supporters with sticks committed acts of vandalism in and around the city centre.

Other groups (the report does not say precisely who) then engaged in "violent hit and run actions" targeting Israelis, including using mopeds and motorcycles.

In response, police gathered Maccabi supporters together at several locations for their own protection, and buses were arranged to return them to their hotels.

Yes.  Apparently, if they'd have spoken to people there at the time, or viewed video footage that was posted online while everything was happening, it would have been clear that the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were hooligans attacking people who got some of their own back.  I guess they don't teach such skills in journalism school.  (As I prepared to write this post I notice that the wingnut-welfare newspaper The National Pestilence has an editorial condemning the CBC for not sticking to the ridiculous narrative of innocent Israelis being attacked simply for being Jewish.  I'm not interested in reading their stupid garbage lies.  It's clear to anyone who doesn't have shit inside their skull what happened in Amsterdam during those two days and nights.)

Next was a story about Canadian Armed Forces standing on guard against the Russian hordes just waiting to sweep westward across Europe (after they're done being decimated in Ukraine as their "human wave" assaults with their MASSIVE casualties and they agree to a ceasefire).

At the sprawling forested Ādaži military base, north east of Riga, Latvia, Capt. Harrison Burrows is one of more than 3,000 troops who has spent the past two weeks participating in a Canadian-led NATO military exercise designed to simulate an attack on the Baltic nation coming from beyond its nearly 300 km-long border with Russia. 

It's the first exercise held in Latvia since the military forces in the country were scaled up to a multinational brigade, also led by Canada, that is made up of troops and equipment from more than 13 nations. 

...

Asked about the U.S. presidential election, Burrows admitted that there was talk among troops around what would change after president-elect Donald Trump is sworn in in January.

"There's been low-level discussions, but at the end of the day, our our mandate is for NATO," said Burrows.

The Nov. 5 election of Donald Trump could potentially create friction in the 32 member alliance, given his past warnings that the U.S. will leave NATO nations to their own defences if they don't spend more on defence.

...

In February on the campaign trail Trump even said he would encourage Russia to do "whatever" it wants to allies that don't pay up. 

While at the time the White House called those comments "appalling and unhinged," NATO's Secretary General Mark Rutte, who previously served as the prime minister of the Netherlands and frequently met with Trump during his first term as president, describes Trump as someone who tries to invigorate the debate about defence spending. 

...

"No doubt he will push [NATO countries] again to do more, to take a bigger share of the burden, which is only fair," Rutte said in an interview with CBC News while attending the final day of the military exercises at Camp Ādaži. 

"The U.S. is about 50 per cent of NATO's economy, but they are doing more than 50 per cent of defence spending at the moment."

...

Gen. Jennie Carignan, Canada's chief of the defence staff told CBC News that she anticipates Canada's largest international deployment to continue well beyond that. 

 "I think considering the actions of Russia and what's going on in terms of threats, we can expect Canada to be here for a long time."

...

Latvia, which was part of the Soviet Union until 1991 and has a large Russian population, fears that the Kremlin could try to take some of its territory.

Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs expressed gratitude for Canada's commitment and hopes to see more investment, particularly in air defence.

Canada says two additional air defence systems will be put in place in Latvia in 2026, and 2027. 

"We all know what we need," said Rinkēvičs who added that NATO countries could learn from Russia, which ramped up military production and is planning to spend over six per cent of its GDP on defence in 2025. 

"We still are all living in a kind of land of hope. Unfortunately, we must face reality."

Obviously we're to believe that the Russian threat is real and not a stupid fabrication by people trying to prop-up the Military-Industrial-Complex.  As well, we're to agree that Canada does need to waste even more money on weapons and military deployments.  It seems the dastardly Donald Trump is yelling at us to spend more money and if we don't that unstable, reckless man might dissolve NATO and then Russia will kill us all and Trump and Putin will fuck each others assholes because they're gay butt-buddies.  And, lastly, we're to believe that Canada is a strong country that can help others resist Russia's plans for world domination.  All lies.  All propaganda.


Finally, the CBC discusses Trump's pick of Tulsi Gabbard for National Intelligence Director.  

The whole thing makes it seem as if the USA's traditional intelligence directors haven't been maniacs and incompetents and that Canada's survival hangs in the balance.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said this week that while some members of the incoming Donald Trump cabinet may have different views on various policy issues than the Canadian government, it wouldn't prevent a "respectful and effective relationship between the two countries."

But the elevation of Tulsi Gabbard to director of national intelligence (DNI) in Trump's second U.S. administration could cause "a lot of headaches" for Western allies, according to at least one analyst.

Tulsi Gabbard is an odd duck.  Fairly early on after hearing about her, I realized she had some problematic views.  But she also showed herself to have an open mind.  She used to favour laws that regulated morality to back her socially conservative views, but then she came to see regulating behaviour as authoritarian and while she remains personally opposed to non-traditional behaviour, she has been a consistent defender of personal freedom.  And, most importantly for her, as a veteran she has come to see the evil of US imperialism and the suffering that it causes and she has courageouly spoken out against it.

Sadly though, like Jimmy Dore and Russell Brand, she has responded to the smears and  corruption of the Democrats and progressives by moving into the even more degenerate embrace of the Republican Party and its hardcore right-wing fuck-heads.

But everything the CBC finds objectionable about her strikes me as points in her favour:

When Ukraine first came under attack from Russia in February 2022, Gabbard said it marked the Joe Biden administration's failure to acknowledge "Russia's legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine's becoming a member of NATO."

This is so fucking obvious, but it is heresy to the air-heads at the CBC.

She then said weeks later that it was an "undeniable fact" that there were several U.S.-funded bioweapons labs in Ukraine that could "release and spread deadly pathogens."

The first contention as to the reasons for Russia's aggression deviates from the view of the current U.S. administration and its Western allies, who have provided military aid to Ukraine, while the second reflects Gabbard's susceptibility, in Carvin's words, to "straight-from-the-internet conspiracy theories." 

Do you know who else said that?  Victoria Nuland!  (Mainstream, imperialist media, who pushed the "Russiagate" conspiracy theory, and the Iraqi WMD's lies, and the Azov Battalion's "evacuation" [to Russian captivity] travesty, are insisting that these 46 labs simply held samples of the common cold virus and other harmless research stuff.  That it's a right-wing conspiracy to think the US military was doing anything untoward in Ukraine.  But they can't explain Victoria Nuland's outburst.)

Elsewhere in the world, Gabbard has espoused opinions that have ranged from merely contrarian — she said that Trump meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was a positive development — to out of left field, questioning Japan's desire to evolve from strictly defensive military capabilities, "given Japan's aggression in the Pacific" in the Second World War.

So, lessening tensions between the USA and North Korea is a bad thing?  WHY?????  WHAT?!??  And Gabbard's views about Japan's military was the consensus for more than half a century.  It's up to the imperialists to explain why it's ludicrous to think that now.

In January 2017, Gabbard freelanced while a Democratic member of Congress, meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. In April of that year, Gabbard said she was "skeptical" Assad had launched a chemical weapons attack on Syrians, even as the first Trump administration expressed a "very high level of confidence" that was the case.

"Assad is not the enemy of the United States, because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States," Gabbard told MSNBC nearly two years later as she plotted a long-shot presidential bid.

The Grayzone thoroughly eviscerated the idiotic lies about Assad deliberately crossing one of Obama's "red-lines" a long time ago.  Gabbard did the world a favour by speaking out against the war mongers.

Canada, and agencies including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP, could be in a precarious position with Gabbard in such a critical role. Canada "receives more from the Five Eyes alliance than it sends to that alliance," a report on foreign interference commissioned by the government stated last year of the group that also includes the U.S., Australia, Britain and New Zealand.

That's because the USA and the UK have more people paid to spy and make up shit and fuck things up than Canada does.  And there's not a lot of spying on Canada going on because we're not that important.

While Democrats are unsurprisingly alarmed by her nomination — Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Thursday on CNN that Gabbard "has so clearly been in [Vladimir] Putin's pocket" — some conservatives are also cautioning against the pick, including former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger and onetime Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton.

"With his announcement of Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence, he's sending a signal that we've lost our mind when it comes to collecting intelligence," Bolton told NewsNation on Wednesday of Trump's choice.

Elizabeth Warren is an informed, capable person when it comes to domestic economic issues.  She is, on other issues, apparently just a willing conduit of the corrupt and delusional party-line.  And John Bolton is a pathetic wimp.  A raving idiot.  A man with nothing but a record of deceit and failure.  Going to him for a quote is a sign of stupidity.

Thus endeth my account of an isolated wading into the mainstream.