Author: sheikyermami

In Loco Parentis Gone Loco

Author and conservative commentator Peachy Keenan is sick and tired of yesterday’s soccer mom being treated as today’s “domestic extremist” in public discourse by media gatekeepers and government officials alike—and all the while parents are sheepishly and too easily abdicating their natural role as captains and defenders of the household.

“They like to make us, the normal people, the moms and dads of America into extremists. But if you look around it’s pretty easy to see who the real extremists are,” Keenan told Harris Faulkner on Fox prime time Tuesday night. 

…serving as a New York Times correspondent these days cannot be easy. You have to convey utter nonsense to your readers while maintaining a straight face and a serious demeanor…

You have to suggest the Russians may have exploded a drone over the Kremlin, that they may have blown up their own gas pipeline, that their president is an out-of-touch psychotic, that their soldiers in Ukraine are drunkards using faulty equipment, that they attack with “human hordes” (Orientalism, anyone?) and on and on – all the while affecting the gravitas once associated with the traditional “Timesman.” You try it sometime.

I am reminded of that pithy passage in Daniel Boorstin’s regrettably overlooked book, The Image.

“The reporter’s task,” Boorstin wrote in 1962, “is to find a way of weaving these threads of unreality into a fabric that the reader will not recognize as entirely unreal.”

Boorstin reflected on America’s resort to imagery, illusion, and distortion as Washington geared up its gruesome follies in Vietnam. The reporter’s task is a whole lot harder now, given how much farther we have wandered into illusion and distortion since Boorstin’s day.  (More)

Hungarian PM offers his plan for “the only way out” of the war…

State Department Pleads Fifth When Asked About American Detained in Ukraine

https://www.zerohedge.com/…/state-department-pleads…

American YouTuber and columnist Gonzalo Lira was arrested in Ukraine at the start of May because he “publicly justified” the Russian invasion, according to a press release by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The statement says that Lira “has the citizenship of one of the countries of Latin America” but omits that he is also California-born U.S. citizen.

Lira is a resident of Kharkiv, Ukraine and was an outspoken critic of the nation’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Lira has written financial columns, published in Business Insider and even here at ZeroHedge. His Twitter account is still up, and a brief look reveals that — whether you agree with him or not on all stances — his opinions are largely in line with much of the American right. The SBU claimed to have confiscated “mobile phones and a computer with evidence of illegal activity” from Lira’s apartment but no such evidence was made public.

Lira has been charged under sections 2 and 3 of Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code, which was augmented at the start of the invasion to criminalize the “distribution of materials” that justify Russia’s actions in Ukraine going back to 2014. The law specifically outlaws portraying any military dispute “financed by [the] Russian Federation” in Ukraine as an “internal civil conflict,” a law The New York Times and Wired Magazine are in violation of. 

The Ukrainian government has frequently claimed that the violent conflicts in the Donbas region — which killed over 10,000 people between 2014 and 2020 — were financed and armed by the Russians. However, a former NATO official in charge of investigating arms shipments into the Donbas from 2014 to 2018 found that “there were no deliveries of weapons and military equipment from Russia” and instead that most arms were smuggled by defecting Ukrainian soldiers. This official could have been imprisoned under Article 436-2 as well.

Lira faces up to 13 years in prison if he is convicted of both charges.

Of course, American journalists are not as indignant over Lira’s arrest as they are over that of Evan Gershkovich, the WSJ reporter being detained in Russia. Federal Reserve minion Nick Timairos did not change his Twitter profile to signal “solidarity” with Lira.

Biden did not praise Lira’s “absolute courage” for speaking against the regime which he lived under nor does it appear the administration has any intent of negotiating his release, two actions it has taken on behalf of Gershkovich.

Daily Beast was the sole mainstream outlet to cover Lira and only did so to slander him.

Each of these individuals was imprisoned for speech and speech alone. Holding a principle in favor of freedom of expression would require standing up for these writers equally. Given the leverage we have over Ukraine, securing the release of Lira would not take so much as a phone call.

Stil, when asked about whether the Biden State Department was aware of Lira’s arrest and if they are working to get him freed, newly appointed spokesperson Mathew Miller said the department is aware of the matter but went no further:

All of a sudden, the obsession with whites as a Satanic collective has become a national fad…