News
Convocatoria abierta: 1er Congreso Latinoamericano de Renta Básica Universal Incondicional
Entre los días 17 y 19 de julio, en San José de Costa Rica, se llevará a cabo el primer Congreso Latinoamericano de Renta Básica Universal Incondicional. Se recibirán ponencias hasta el 12 de abril. El formato será híbrido, con modalidad presencial y también online. Este primer encuentro regional es un hito en el avance […]
Convocatoria abierta: 1er Congreso Latinoamericano de Renta Básica Universal Incondicional
Bath UBI Beacon and India Basic Income Network Session, 21st March 4-6pm (Paris)
“For this session, we will be in discussion with Vibhor Mathur. Vibhor is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Bath and is a UK and Research Associate at University of Cardiff, UK. Vibhor studies the transformative potential of basic income through pilots and advocacy in South Asia and Europe. His doctoral research on the the WorkFREE project in […]
Bath UBI Beacon and India Basic Income Network Session, 21st March 4-6pm (Paris)
The Myth Of Palestinian Division, With Miko Peled
Palestinians are divided and do not know what they want; Palestinians have no leadership; Palestinians need a Nelson Mandela; these are some of the statements made by people who are “experts” on Palestine. It is time to refute these claims and place them in the appropriate place – the garbage. Let’s go through these claims one by one.
I have never met a Palestinian who does not want to see all of Palestine free and every refugee return. I do not believe such a Palestinian exists. So there is no division there. When people claim that Palestinians are divided, they are referring to the Hamas-Fateh divide. Fateh wants one thing, and Hamas and the resistance front want another, though neither has set clear goals. Once again, I say I doubt there is a single Palestinian who does not want to see their country and people free. The equation is a false one and does not represent reality.
Palestinian leadership can not be limited to these two relatively small groups. By stating that these are the only groups that are legitimate, people are, in effect, saying that the only Palestinians that count exist within a narrow equation and live only in the West Bank or Gaza.
Palestinians are actively resisting the occupation and oppression throughout all of Palestine. From the Naqab in the south to the borders of Lebanon and Syria in the north, there is a broad, almost absolute consensus that the only goal of the resistance – and I am not referring to the armed resistance alone, but to all forms of Palestinian resistance – is to free all of Palestine, from the River to the Sea and to establish a democratic Palestine with equal rights. The only exception to this is, perhaps, the Palestinian Authority, an institution that works primarily for the Zionists.
Among Palestinian activists throughout Palestine exist outstanding leaders, both men and women. One need not look far to listen to interviews with these exceptional people for themselves.
As for the Mandela claim, that holds no water. First of all, Israel has learned from the South African experience and has been assassinating Palestinian leaders for decades.
Furthermore, the model of a revolutionary leader becoming a political leader is not necessarily a good one. In the case of Palestine, one can certainly imagine a multitude of people with great leadership potential who, once Palestine is free, will run in a democratic process for various democratically elected positions. The fact that a person possesses skills as a revolutionary does not necessarily mean they would be good at running state institutions.
When the apartheid state is dismantled, and democratic elections are held in a free Palestine, political parties will be formed, and candidates will run for office. This will allow people to elect the candidates they feel are best suited for the job. There is no need for a single Nelson Mandela in Palestine because so many outstanding leaders are already operating there.
Miko Peled is a MintPress News contributing writer, published author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. His latest books are”The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”
The post The Myth Of Palestinian Division, With Miko Peled appeared first on MintPress News.
So They’re Experimenting With Military Robots In Gaza Now
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/213e799323e9570f93bcd9df97b752ee/href
One of the most horrifying facts about this dystopia we live in is that large-scale military operations are routinely used as testing grounds for new war machinery, using human bodies as guinea pigs for experimentation in what amount to giant blood-soaked field laboratories — all to benefit the strategic objectives of empire managers and the profit margins of the military-industrial complex.
Haaretz has a new article out titled “Gaza Becomes Israel’s Testing Ground for Military Robots”, which reports that “In an effort to avoid harming soldiers and dogs, the IDF has been experimenting with the use of robots and remote-controlled dogs in the Gaza War.”
(Yeah because my gosh, can you imagine how terrible it would be if Israeli soldiers and dogs got harmed while carrying out a genocide?)
The article’s author Sagi Cohen reports that drone-mounted robot dogs and remotely controlled bulldozers are two of the new apocalyptic horrors currently being battle-tested in Gaza, saying “defense establishment officials confirm that there has been a leap in the use and sophistication of robots on the battlefield.” Which is a pretty disconcerting sentence to read.
Haaretz.com on Twitter: "In an effort to avoid harming soldiers and dogs, the IDF has been experimenting with the use of robots and remote-controlled dogs in the Gaza War https://t.co/jGV1yl7pOd / Twitter"
In an effort to avoid harming soldiers and dogs, the IDF has been experimenting with the use of robots and remote-controlled dogs in the Gaza War https://t.co/jGV1yl7pOd
This news comes out at the same time as a new Public Citizen report warning of the likely imminent arrival of autonomous weapons systems which will kill people with minimal instruction from human pilots, saying “The most serious worry involving autonomous weapons is that they inherently dehumanize the people targeted and make it easier to tolerate widespread killing, including in violation of international human rights law.”
The more normalized robots become within the world’s militaries the closer we come to this point, and steps are already being taken in that direction. As Common Dreams’ Thor Benson notes in an article about the Public Citizen report, “Israel has purchased and at times deployed self-piloting, lethal drones.”
Back in January I wrote that “Gaza is a live laboratory for the military industrial complex,” saying “Data is with absolute certainty being collected on all the newer weapons being field-tested on human bodies in Gaza (just like has been happening in Ukraine) to be used to benefit the war machine and arms industry.”
What sparked this comment at the time was reports and first-hand witness accounts we’d seen coming out about the prolific use of IDF “sniper drones” in Gaza since October, with Israeli forces frequently shooting Palestinians with quad drones armed with rifles. Copious records are most assuredly being compiled on the effectiveness of these newer weapons and tactics in ending human lives, which will then be used to help market those weapons to other states and to improve their efficiency in killing.
https://medium.com/media/e8e20d3dd58f29477a6007a48ebff164/href
When I say this is most assuredly happening, I am not being hyperbolic for effect. Author and journalist Antony Loewenstein gave a lengthy interview on The Chris Hedges Report back in December about Israel’s long and extensively documented history of using Gaza as a testing ground for new weapons, spyware, surveillance and security systems, AI, drones, and tactics, which has profited scores of corporations and enabled Israel to become a player of outsized success in the global weapons industry.
“Israel’s drones, surveillance technology including spyware, facial recognition software, and biometric gathering infrastructure, along with smart fences, experimental bombs, and AI-controlled machine guns are all tried out on the captive population in Gaza, often with lethal results,” says Hedges in introduction. “These weapons and technologies are then certified as ‘battle-tested’ and sold around the world.”
This doesn’t only happen in Gaza. This past September The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “The War in Ukraine Is Also a Giant Arms Fair,” subtitled “Arms makers are getting orders for weapons being put to the test on the battlefield.” In January of last year CNN published a report titled “How Ukraine became a testbed for Western weapons and battlefield innovation,” with one source saying that Ukraine is “absolutely a weapons lab in every sense because none of this equipment has ever actually been used in a war between two industrially developed nations.”
And of course we are also seeing this same phenomenon in Africa. In 2021 Mintpress News published a report by Scott Timcke titled “West Africa is the Latest Testing Ground for US Military Artificial Intelligence” about this very same trend. In 2020 Libya saw what is believed to have been the first time a human being has ever been killed by a fully automated drone attack — that is, killed without the machine having been told to do so by a human.
The other day we discussed how the empire’s great weakness is that it depends on normal human beings to carry out its orders and turn the gears of the machine. If you look at the facts and think about them for a moment, it’s not hard to see how the empire managers are hoping to overcome this weakness in the future.
_______________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
The Debate Over the Definition of Basic Income – Online Forum
Karl Widerquist will present his new article “the Debate Over the Definition of Basic Income,” via zoom in an online open forum of BIEN’s Working Group on the Clarification of the Definition of Basic Income on March 13 in some time zones and March 14 in others:Central Time (US): 13 March, 8-9:30pmEastern Time (US): 13 […]
The Debate Over the Definition of Basic Income – Online Forum
Aaron Bushnell’s Death Can’t Rightly Be Called An Act Of Suicide
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/916028c9985cb67aef09cd28b80c568e/href
There’s a deeply moving interview on Democracy Now with a friend of Aaron Bushnell, the US airman who fatally self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy while screaming “Free Palestine” in protest of his government’s facilitation of the genocide in Gaza.
Bushnell’s friend, a conscientious objector named Levi Pierpont, met Bushnell in 2020 during basic training at an air force base in Texas. When you watch the interview you can immediately see why the two clicked; Pierpont has the same tender, gentle air to him that Bushnell displayed in his final video, very much unlike what you picture when you think of members of the world’s most murderous and destructive military. Neither of them belonged there, and they each took their exit in their own way.
Toward the end of the interview, longtime Democracy Now host Amy Goodman asked Pierpont a question which drew an answer that’s worth highlighting and reflecting upon.
“Would Aaron have described this as suicide?” Goodman asked Pierpont.
“No, absolutely not,” Pierpont replied, adding, “He didn’t have thoughts of suicide. He had thoughts of justice. That’s what this was about. It wasn’t about his life. It was about using his life to send a message.”
Democracy Now! on Twitter: "Would Aaron Bushnell have described his self-immolation as suicide?"No, absolutely not," says his friend Levi Pierpont. "He didn't have thoughts of suicide. He had thoughts of justice." pic.twitter.com/2EJW8lQIOf / Twitter"
Would Aaron Bushnell have described his self-immolation as suicide?"No, absolutely not," says his friend Levi Pierpont. "He didn't have thoughts of suicide. He had thoughts of justice." pic.twitter.com/2EJW8lQIOf
This point is worthy of our consideration at this time because as soon as it became clear what Aaron Bushnell had done and the impact it was having on our collective consciousness, there was a mad rush to pathologize his act of protest and frame it as something other than what it was. The phrase “glorifying suicide” came up over and over again from Israel apologists desperate to mitigate the damage Bushnell’s act had done to US and Israeli information interests, and we constantly saw Bushnell described as mentally ill and suicidal by spinmeisters acting in bad faith.
What Bushnell did isn’t what people think of when they hear the word “suicide”. It’s not the sort of thing suicide prevention hotlines are set up to deter. It’s not what mental health clinics are built to prevent. It’s not what the designation “suicidal” is intended to point to.
When you say someone is suicidal, you are saying they don’t want to be alive anymore and are in the process of making plans to bring about that result. They want to kill themselves because, in whatever way and for whatever reason, it hurts to live.
That isn’t what happened with Aaron Bushnell. There is no indication that he was mentally unwell, or under any psychological stress beyond that which was inflicted upon him by the moral quandary of being a member of a war machine that is backing an active genocide. From what we can tell about his internal state given the information available to us, Bushnell would have been perfectly happy to go on living. He just prioritized peace and justice over his own life. He was no more suicidal than a rescue worker who died trying to save the lives of others.
In the case of suicide as we conventionally understand it, death is the goal. It is the both the means and the end, in and of itself. Bushnell’s self-immolation was a means to a very different end: a free Palestine and the cessation of an ongoing genocide.
Such an act can’t rightly be lumped in with those who kill themselves because they can’t bear to go on living. It is different in every meaningful way. It is different in how it is experienced. It is different in how we should regard it as a society. It is different in its goals. It is different in its effects. The only thing it has in common with the conventional understanding of suicide is that it was brought about by one’s own hand.
I don’t enjoy quibbling about definitions or playing pedantic word games. Those who wish to frame what Aaron Bushnell did will object that it was a suicide per the technical dictionary definition, and they can feel as correct in doing so as they want to feel. My point here is that their continued use of that word in this context is done in bad faith, and in a way that is not conducive to truth and understanding. Far more conducive to truth and understanding would be to call what Bushnell did exactly what he himself called it: an extreme act of protest.
I will leave you with a quote that’s been rattling around in my head these last few days by Ita Ford, an American Catholic nun who in 1980 was raped and murdered by a US-backed death squad in El Salvador:
“I hope that you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you. Something worth living for — maybe even worth dying for. Something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead. I can’t tell you what it might be — that’s for you to find, to choose, to love. I can just encourage you to start looking and support you in the search.”
__________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Elvert Barnes (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Taiwan delegation learns from Boston UBI initiatives
The Youth Leadership Council of UBI Taiwan concluded a visit to Boston, Massachusetts, showcasing their projects promoting basic income. The delegation, composed of high school students from Taiwan, engaged in a series of meetings with local leaders and organizations to gain insights about Boston’s UBI initiatives. The Taiwanese delegation met with former Cambridge Mayor Sumbul […]
When The Imperial Media Report On An Israeli Massacre
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/89dbd4430ddd9ae8bba235a33f4b3c62/href
In what many are now calling the Flour Massacre, at least 112 Gazans were killed and hundreds more injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians who were waiting for food from much-needed aid trucks near Gaza City on Thursday.
Initial investigations by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor found that the crowd was fired upon by both IDF automatic rifles and by Israeli tanks, and that dozens of gunshot victims were hospitalized after the incident.
Israel’s version of events has of course changed over the course of the day as narrative managers figure out how best to frame publicly available information in a way that doesn’t harm Israel’s PR interests. Currently we’re at Israel admitting that IDF troops did indeed fire upon the crowd after previously denying this, but claiming that this isn’t what caused most of the the casualties, saying it was actually the Palestinians trampling each other in a human “stampede” which caused them harm. Essentially the current argument is “Yes we shot them, but that’s not why they died.”
The IDF claims Israeli troops only began firing on the Palestinians because the soldiers “felt threatened” by them, which goes to show that there is no atrocity Israel could possibly commit where it wouldn’t frame itself as the victim. Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir took the opportunity to praise the IDF for heroically fighting off the dangerous Palestinians and to argue that the incident proves it’s too dangerous to keep allowing aid trucks into Gaza.
Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "Some phrases the mass media is using right now to describe civilians being massacred by the IDF while waiting for food:- "food aid deaths"- "food aid-related deaths"- "chaotic incident"- "reported killed in crowd near Gaza aid convoy, Hamas-run health ministry says" pic.twitter.com/ROUkpoeA9s / Twitter"
Some phrases the mass media is using right now to describe civilians being massacred by the IDF while waiting for food:- "food aid deaths"- "food aid-related deaths"- "chaotic incident"- "reported killed in crowd near Gaza aid convoy, Hamas-run health ministry says" pic.twitter.com/ROUkpoeA9s
As terrible as the Israeli spin machine has been on this atrocity, the western imperial media have been even worse. The verbal gymnastics they’ve been performing in their headlines to avoid saying Israel massacred starving people who were waiting for food would be genuinely impressive if it wasn’t so ghoulish.
“As Hungry Gazans Crowd a Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll” reads one New York Times header, like the summary of an episode of a Netflix murder mystery show.
“Chaotic aid delivery turns deadly as Israeli, Gazan officials trade blame,” says an indecipherably cryptic headline from The Washington Post.
“Biden says Gaza food aid-related deaths complicate ceasefire talks,” says The Guardian. “Food aid-related deaths”? Seriously?
“More than 100 killed as crowd waits for aid, Hamas-run health ministry says,” reads a BBC headline. The UK’s state broadcaster is here using a tried and true tactic for casting doubt on death counts by deliberately associating them with Hamas, despite the fact that the Gaza health ministry’s death counts are considered so reliable that Israeli intelligence services use them in their own internal records.
Sana Saeed on Twitter: ""Chaotic incident"? The word you're looking for here, CNN, is massacre. https://t.co/CyUtyuWYZa / Twitter"
"Chaotic incident"? The word you're looking for here, CNN, is massacre. https://t.co/CyUtyuWYZa
“At least 100 killed and 700 injured in chaotic incident” says CNN, like it’s describing a frat party that got out of control.
“Carnage at Gaza food aid site amid Israeli gunfire” reads another CNN headline, as though the carnage and the Israeli gunfire are two unrelated phenomena which just unluckily occurred at around the same time.
CNN also repeatedly refers to the killings as “food aid deaths”, as though it’s the food aid that killed them and not the military of a very specific and very nameable state power.
(It’s probably worth noting at this point that CNN staff have been anonymously reporting through other outlets that there’s been a uniquely aggressive top-down push within the network to slant reporting heavily in favor of Israeli information interests, driven largely by the new CEO Mark Thompson.)
So that’s what happens when the imperial media report on an Israeli massacre, in case you were curious and haven’t been paying attention since October 7 or the decades which preceded it. The propaganda services of the western press operate in a way that is typically indistinguishable from the spinmeistering of officials in western governments, framing the western empire and its allies in a positive light and their enemies in a negative one.
https://medium.com/media/03da42bfc7ea53a1b71f11610b7c8436/href
This happens because the western mass media do not exist to report the news and give you information about what’s been going on in the world, but to manufacture consent for the political status quo and the globe-dominating power structure it supports. The only difference between our propaganda and the propaganda of a ruthless dictatorship is that the people who live under a dictatorship know they are being fed propaganda, whereas westerners are trained to believe they are ingesting impartial factual reporting.
The demolition of Gaza is alerting more and more westerners to the fact that this is happening, though, because the more blatant the atrocities the more ham-fisted the propaganda machine needs to be about running cover for them. It’s even opening eyes within the propaganda machine itself, which is why we’re seeing things like CNN staff blowing the whistle on their own CEO and New York Times staff telling The Intercept that their bosses committed extremely egregious journalistic malpractice in producing atrocity propaganda alleging mass rapes by Hamas on October 7.
The only good thing about what’s happening in Gaza is that it’s waking westerners up to the fact that everything they’ve been told about their society, their media and their world is a lie. Cracks are appearing in the illusion, and those of us who care about truth, peace and justice need to help draw attention to them. From there, real change becomes a genuine possibility.
_________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.
Solo shows for 2024
I’m doing a few solo poetry shows this year, starting this month with Chester, Lincoln & Scarborough.
I’ll be in Falmouth, Totnes & Launceston in April. And Belfast & Dublin in October.
If you fancy coming along to a show, you can get tickets here: https://brianbilston.com/events/
From Memes to Doxxing: Unmasking NATO’s Information Warfare Strategy
In November 2023, NATO’s “Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats” published a disturbing ‘working paper,’ “Humour in online information warfare: Case study on Russia’s war on Ukraine.” It received no mainstream attention. Yet, the contents offer unprecedented insight into the military alliance’s insidious weaponization of social media to distort public perceptions and manufacture consent for war. They also raise grave questions about online “trolling” of dissident voices over the past decade and beyond.
The working paper ostensibly “considers instances of humour put to effective use to counter disinformation and propaganda in online spaces, using Russia’s war on Ukraine.” It concludes, “humour-based responses…in the information space and in the physical domain have been found to deliver multiple clear benefits” for Ukraine and NATO.
Avowedly a “practical review seeking to identify examples of best practice from both government and civil society” for wider future application, the paper recommends Western states, militaries, and security and intelligence services master the art of online ridicule under the aegis of “counter-disinformation.”
It contends, “humour…reaches the parts that other countermeasures – like fact-checking or media user education – cannot.” Mass deployment of memes, moreover, “has the advantage of exploiting social media platform algorithms” and addressing “audiences that are not inclined to consume ‘boring’ products.”
As we shall see, the true value in weaponizing “humour” for NATO is distorting the battlefield reality in Ukraine – and future theaters of Western proxy conflict – for public consumption. Meanwhile, any social media user deviating from NATO-endorsed narratives can be subjected to intensive harassment, discrediting them and their message “among a wide sector of online audiences,” if not scaring them away from digital information spaces entirely. The working paper advocates the creation of an army of “private citizens” for the purpose.
‘Incredibly Serious’
The paper begins by noting that “state-backed parody and mockery of the enemy in conflict are nothing new,” citing satirical newspaper Wipers Times, distributed to British soldiers fighting in Western Front trenches during the First World War, and the BBC German Service, which “fought Hitler with humour.” Today though, “social media has democratised access and audience,” therefore “[opening] the playing field to self-motivated private individuals” while “[facilitating] their joining forces in informal collectives for greater effect.”
Multiple footnotes indicate weaponizing mockery is a longstanding NATO objective. A report published by the military alliance in 2017, “StratCom Laughs: in search of an analytical framework,” is cited, while an academic study, “Building a meme war machine: A comparative analysis of memetic insurgencies in cyberspace,” is said to be “forthcoming.” The former caused a mainstream stir upon release. It was, in turn, inspired by a NATO-sponsored paper authored two years earlier by Jeff Giesea, tech guru and Peter Thiel associate, which declared:
Trolling…is the social media equivalent of guerrilla warfare, and memes are its currency of propaganda. Daesh is conducting memetic warfare. The Kremlin is doing it. It’s inexpensive. The capabilities exist. Why aren’t we trying it?”
“StratCom Laughs” was highly influential. In May 2021, the Ukrainian government’s Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security wholeheartedly endorsed its findings while listing the benefits of “propagandistic humor.”
These included; “[making] perception less critical; [using] common contexts to convey messages with which the audience agrees; [simplifying] everything to the ‘obvious’; [creating] clear groups: strong and intelligent ‘we’ and clumsy and stupid ‘they.’ Of course, the audience associates itself with the former and begins to despise the latter”:
Simplified managed understanding is easily disseminated by the audience and creates the necessary social context for propagandists.”
The cover page of European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats case study, authored by Keir Giles
It’s a highly serendipitous coincidence that the North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO) was formed following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The vast, supposedly grassroots Twitter troll collective, identifiable by “doge” profile photos, inexorably blitzes “vatniks” – Russian officials and anyone failing to toe NATO’s line on the Ukraine proxy war – with a vicious blend of absurdity, ad hominem, memes, and ridicule, while raising money for Kiev’s war effort. The group embodies the pronouncements of “Stratcom Laughs” to a T.
NAFO features prominently in the working paper, with some activists quoted at length. It notes that the collective “grew from a fundraising initiative” for the Georgian Legion, a brutal paramilitary faction active in the proxy war. Unmentioned is that independent financing efforts are necessary because formal Western government backing for the group is politically and legally unfeasible. Its members openly boast of committing hideous war crimes, in particular, executing unarmed, bound Russian prisoners of war in cold blood.
NAFO founder Kamil Dyszewski is a Hitler-admiring antisemite who has heroized white supremacist mass murderers. The NATO paper quotes him saying, “all [Russians] see themselves as incredibly serious and important,” so they “struggle with being made fun of.” This perspective tallies perfectly with the military alliance’s perspective on online psychological warfare. The working paper repeatedly argues, “Russian and pro-Russian individuals and entities are intensely sensitive to mockery and show an inability to cope with being the object of derision.”
‘Courage and Resourcefulness’
The working paper judges NAFO to be an “ideal structure and format” for “countering disinformation, largely through the application of humour and mockery.” The group’s efforts were moreover found to “provide the base material for memes in the form of first-hand images and videos of Russian failures or Ukrainian determination.” This capability augmented “the responsiveness and impact” of Kiev’s “information campaigns,” which were, for example, “instrumental” in securing “US-made F-16 combat aircraft” in August 2023.
These excerpts are striking, for throughout the first 18 months of the proxy conflict, “Russian failures” and “Ukrainian determination” absolutely dominated Western media coverage of the war. The narrative that the invasion was an unmitigated disaster and huge embarrassment for Moscow in every way, and Kiev could pull off a spirited underdog victory and repel the invaders, if not ultimately march upon the Kremlin, as long as sufficient Western Wunderwaffe arrived, was universal and indomitable.
In reality, while there were undoubtedly “Russian failures” and “Ukrainian determination” aplenty from the start, Kiev was economically and militarily crippled within weeks. The “Special Military Operation” was concerned not with conquering every inch of the country but with compelling Volodymyr Zelensky’s government to implement the Minsk Accords and declare neutrality. This was almost achieved in April 2022 via Turkey-brokered peace talks. But then-Prime Minister of the UK Boris Johnson flew to Kiev, offering the Ukrainians the blankest of blank cheques to keep fighting.
The scale of Ukraine’s losses, the dire situation for the country from day one of Russia’s invasion, and British and American intelligence connivances that produced the conflict, concealed from Western audiences by their governments and media, meant siding with and arming Kiev appeared to be the objectively sensible, reasonable, moral position. After all, they were fighting an enemy that embodied absolute evil and incompetence. Helpfully, NAFO was always on hand to relentlessly remind the public of both qualities – particularly the latter.
“Stratcom Laughs” had triumphed. Public perceptions were rendered “less critical.” Serious, complex questions were simplified to “the obvious.” “Clear groups” were created – “strong and intelligent ‘we’ and clumsy and stupid ‘they.’” And Western audiences, “of course,” associated themselves with the former while “despising” the latter. Fast forward to today, and mainstream polls indicate that just one in ten Europeans believe Ukraine can win, with most believing a “compromise settlement” is the only way to end the conflict.
In June 2023, Ukraine launched a “counteroffensive.” Originally intended to start months earlier, it was much delayed due to adverse weather conditions and late weapon deliveries. Officials in Kiev, many Western journalists and pundits, and NAFO all heavily hyped the effort in advance. The group published many memes – some promoted a beach party for “fellas” in Crimea that Summer and others depicted “orcs” fleeing from swarms of leopards.
The latter played on a trope that Ukrainian political and military chiefs and the Western media were extremely keen to perpetuate – that Moscow’s soldiers, terrified of German Leopard 2 tanks, would abandon their positions as the armored vehicles advanced. Instead, they were easily blown to smithereens by extensive minefields created by Russian forces while they waited for the counteroffensive to commence and low-cost lancet drones.
Within just a month, Ukraine had lost 20% of the vehicles and armor supplied by the West, with nothing to show for it. This remained the case when the counteroffensive fizzled out at the end of 2023, with just 0.25% of the territory occupied by Russia in the initial phase of the invasion regained. Meanwhile, casualties may have exceeded 100,000. This can only be considered an absolutely horrendous catastrophe from every angle.
The Washington Post published an extensive post-mortem on the counteroffensive in December of that year. It is clear that among other failures, a fatal error in planning for the effort – overseen by the Pentagon – was the assumption that the Russians would flee in many areas. No alternative scenarios were considered. The Wall Street Journal has also highlighted other egregious strategic shortcomings, which made the counteroffensive’s calamity inevitable:
Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons – from shells to warplanes – that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.”
It seems Ukrainians were dispatched on a suicide mission because Western military apparatchiks bought into the simplistic, misleading propaganda narrative of “Russian failures” versus “Ukrainian determination.” Courage and resourcefulness are admirable qualities that Ukrainians have consistently exhibited since February 2022. But they are no match – let alone substitute – for landmines, tanks, fighter jets, artillery shells, and other weapons of war. That confirming this self-evident fact came at the cost of so many lives is a criminal tragedy.
Nobody has all the details but one thing is clear: this counteroffensive will rewrite military history.#Ukraine has stuff in the pipeline the Russians will never see coming. And much of what they do see coming, they won’t be able to stop anyway. #SpringIsComing
— Jessica Berlin (@berlin_bridge) May 6, 2023
‘Punching Upwards’
Throughout the working paper, axiomatic reference is made to how weaponizing humor “imposes costs” on “adversaries” and “aggressors.” Contradictorily, though, it is conceded that “the direct impact on Russia itself is hard to measure.” Indeed, it seems implausible that Kremlin officials and Russian soldiers on the frontline suffer any “costs” whatsoever from the mockery of anonymous Western social media users. This begs the obvious questions of why this approach is considered effective and who the true “adversaries” in NATO’s comedic crosshairs are.
A clue is offered by a passage celebrating how “the overall effect of a community built around humour has been to turn the tables on social media platforms.” As a result, “the agents of influence and other servants of authoritarian regimes, who for so long held the advantage, are turned into the targets rather than the deliverers of mockery and abuse”:
This causes both Russian officials and their extended network of influencers, enablers and trolls to realise that if they choose to serve a criminal regime, they expose themselves to mass ridicule and mockery.”
For “influencers, enablers and trolls,” read: anti-war, anti-NATO, anti-Empire journalists, researchers, activists, and private citizens who dare express the “wrong” opinions or expose inconvenient truths online that challenge NATO-endorsed narratives. This is certainly the case in my regard. The working paper cites me curtly, responding to puerile abuse from a detractor on Twitter as an example of how “those who oppose Russia, China or other hostile regimes publicly face consequences by the hostile regime itself or by its agents and sympathisers.”
Elsewhere, the paper endorses harassment, stalking, doxxing, and creating parody accounts of such “influencers, enablers and trolls” while also warning these are “potential hazards” faced by “individuals taking on authoritarian propaganda structures.” A NAFO activist is quoted as saying, “I’ve seen people get doxxed and harassed, and it doesn’t look fun. I want my family to be safe.” This sentiment is no doubt shared by NAFO’s many targets – but as they “serve a criminal regime,” they’re fair game from NATO’s perspective.
British Ministry of Defence apparatchik Keir Giles authored the working paper. It reveals he “briefly tried to earn a living as a stand-up comedian,” so “knows what it feels like when a joke falls flat.” An apologia he recently authored for Baltic state Nazi collaborators implicated in the Holocaust, in which he claimed they are misunderstood, was certainly not received with much humor. He has promoted the output of a dedicated parody account of none other than myself for some time.
Ironically enough, I would’ve found the account’s posts amusing if they were actually funny. Instead, it has mocked the victims of sexual abuse and also dabbled in antisemitism. In late January, the parody account published a post mocking me for being tormented as a child over my name. Little did I know these lame attempts at ridicule were a dedicated NATO psychological warfare operation.
The latter post gained little traction, and in response, many Twitter users expressed shock and revulsion at such playground bullying behavior. This highlights another shortcoming of NAFO’s approach – the group’s visceral, unabashed, genocidal hatred of Russia and all Russians is so extreme that they frequently repulse audiences to the extent of making them ask if they’re supporting the wrong side by backing Ukraine. Moreover, as Aleksei Navalny ally Leonid Volkov has observed, this output actively assists the Kremlin’s propaganda strategies.
Left-wing alternative comedy legend Stewart Lee has written about the paucity of right-wing standup comedians. He attributes this deficit to right-wing politics being overwhelmingly concerned with punching downward, which is simply unfunny bullying when performative comedy is “a heroic little struggle,” which “should always be punching upwards”:
Who could be on a stage, crowing about their victory and ridiculing those less fortunate than them without any sense of irony, shame or self-knowledge? That’s not a stand-up comedian. That’s just a c***.”
This may well explain why Keir Giles failed in his quest to become a standup comedian and why his “jokes” continue to fall flat to this day. But for all those who oppose war, his working paper is no laughing matter. It is advocacy for the military alliance to create a permanent online harassment battalion to inflict psychological, emotional, personal and professional damage on them while convincing decent people to hate the oppressed and cheer the oppressors.
Keir Giles was repeatedly approached for comment by MintPress News for comment, but did not respond prior to publication.
Feature photo | Keir Giles is pictured with NAFO meme mascot, the NAFO doge | Illustration by MintPress News
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
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