The Free

EU state’s leader celebrates online Troll Movement founded by Holocaust Denier (VIDEO)

from thefreeonline 8 Jul, 2023 20:38 by banned World News

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has addressed a gathering of NAFO – an aggressive online harassment network set up by a Hitler sympathizer

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas addressed the first real-life gathering of the pro-Kiev online troll army ‘NAFO’ on Saturday, celebrating its work in “the information war” against Russia.

Founded by Kamil Dyszewski – a Polish Hitler-admiring anti-Semite who has showered praise on white-supremacist terrorists who committed mass shootings – NAFO has cheered the deaths of Russian civilians and fundraised for people accused of war crimes. Dyszewski has a lengthy history of posts praising Nazi Germany, insulting Jews, and denying the Holocaust.

Kaja Kallas addresses ‘NAFO’ trolls in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8, 2023 © Twitter / @Alex_Oloyede2

An acronym for ‘North Atlantic Fellas Organization’, ‘NAFO’ is a collective of internet users easily identified by their use of Shiba Inu avatars and their fanatical support for the Ukrainian military.

Referring to themselves as ‘Fellas’, NAFO trolls can be found on social media spreading Kiev’s talking points, ganging up to swarm polls and demand the censorship of pro-Moscow accounts, and soliciting donations for the Georgian Legion, a foreign mercenary group whose leader has admitted to multiple war crimes in Ukraine.

Some pro-Ukraine commentators have argued that the group’s online activities – including the open mockery of a Russian civilian killed by a shark in Egypt – are counterproductive to the Ukrainian cause.

Not sure what gave you that idea. Of course I see holocaust denial as antisemitic. If you did some research you’d see I follow @AuschwitzMuseum on here and have retweeted them numerous times. But really this is getting tiresome.
— The Stoic Yoda (@stoicyoda) November 4, 2022

The group held its first real-life “summit” in Vilnius on Saturday, mirroring the NATO event which starts in the Lithuanian capital on Tuesday.

Kallas, who described herself last year as one of the “fellas,” addressed a darkened room of keyboard warriors by video link. NAFO, she said, serves as an example of how to fight “Russian disinformation and bad takes with good humor, intelligence, and enthusiasm.”

Greetings to #NAFOfellas at the first-ever #NAFOSummit in Vilnius.#NAFO is a living example of how to disarm Russian disinformation with humour, intelligence and enthusiasm. Behind every Fella is a real person who believes in #Ukraine’s victory.

Thank you for your service. pic.twitter.com/VWOkAe3udr
— Kaja Kallas (@kajakallas) July 8, 2023

“Keep fighting the good fight,” she told the crowd, concluding that “NAFO expansion is non-negotiable, and Ukraine will win.”

NAFO has grown into an internet-wide phenomenon over the last year, counting US Congressman Adam Kinzinger, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace, and a host of Western analysts and spies as ‘Fellas.’ This membership roll has fueled speculation that the group is tied to Western intelligence agencies.

Kallas was not the only NATO politician to address Saturday’s “summit.” The meeting opened with a speech from Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, and its organizers received a shoutout on Twitter from the Ukrainian government. Viewers noted that a blown-up shark on the stage near Landsbergis was an apparent nod to NAFO’s cruel mockery.

According to NAFO’s official Twitter account, the event raised $3,000 for various Ukrainian military and civilian organizations.

Pro-Ukrainian NAFO troll chief outed as ‘Nazi’

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Comment

‘Russia’s illegal invasion may have stopped NATO expansion to Ukraine, but it has backfired by triggering a hornets nest of hate filled Neo-Nazi movements in the already far-right Eastern Europe. Seems like hordes of macho internet Hitler fans are wallowing in blanket approval by the evidence-free Western propaganda ‘narrative’ while defeated Ukrainian draftees are herded to the slaughter’.

Parts of Climate System are Hitting Tipping Points – June extremes suggest

from thefreeonline on 9th July 2023 by GRIST.org

Research shows heat domes, wildfires, and vanishing polar ice are the symptoms; unabated greenhouse gas emissions are the cause.

June 2023 may be remembered as the start of a big change in the climate system, with many key global indicators flashing red warning lights amid signs that some systems are tipping toward a new state from which they may not recover.

Earth’s critical reflective polar ice caps are at their lowest extent on record in the satellite era, with the sea ice around Antarctica at a record-low extent by far, spurring worried scientists to share dramatic charts of the missing ice repeatedly.

World’s coldest village sets new HIGH temperature record

In the Arctic, the month ended with the Greenland Ice Sheet experiencing one of the largest June melt events ever recorded, and with scientists reporting that June 2023 was the hottest June ever measured, breaking the 2019 record by a “staggering” 0.16 degrees Celsius.

“With the record warmth in June, 2023 as a whole is now the odds-on favorite to be the warmest year on record,” climate scientist Zeke Hausfather wrote on Twitter.

Well with @Twitter sinking, I might as well post a graph of sea ice sinking.

Graphic from https://t.co/ecHYax1cql. Data from https://t.co/aUqFYm698E. pic.twitter.com/UJ59Xk0MCn
— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) July 2, 2023

Globally, the oceans set records for warmth on the surface and down to more than 6,000 feet deep throughout the month, with temperatures so far above the norm that the conditions elicited more graphs showing the anomaly.

They’ve been shared thousands of times by scientists, policymakers, and the public.

58m long Mural depicts Genocidal suffering of Afrin people under Turkish /NATO Occupation

by thefreeonline July 9th 2023 Mural Report by Nalin Ali at North Press Agency

Large painting in Qamishli depicts suffering of Afrin people

QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The Social Affairs and Labor Board, affiliated with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), presented on Sunday a large 58-meter-long painting in the city of Qamishli, northeast Syria.

The painting, which is entitled “The Story of the Land of Olives” and is displayed at the 12 March Stadium, portrays the fate of Afrin people following the Turkish invasion of Afrin region in 2018.

In March 2018, Turkish forces and their affiliated opposition factions of the Syrian National Army (SNA) invaded Afrin, following a military operation dubbed “Olive Branch”, to push the People’s Protection Units (YPG) out of the region under the pretext of threatening Turkey’s national security.

The invasion, which ended after a 58-day resistance, displaced 300,000 people, 80% of the Kurdish majority inhabitants of Afrin. The Turkish objective , boasted of by President Erdogan, is to Turkify Afrin, and later all of North Syria, banning the Kurdish language, customs, schools, monuments and history and terrorizing the remaining inhabitants and settling their mainly Arab jihadi mercenary gangs, under the banner of the SNA.

SNA militant rapes minor girl in Syria’s Afrin July 2023

The invasion and ethnic cleansing of Afrin, with NATO arms and permission, clearly brteaks the Genocide Convention, an international treaty with has 152 state parties that criminalizes genocide . “The Convention defines genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.^[4] Wikipedia

The Afrin Genocide is completely ignored by both the West and Russia, who see rather to profit by placating Turkish regime. Not only is Afrin clearly a Genocide under International Law but it is much worse than Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, which sought to protect rather than exterminate an ethnic Russian population.

North Press monitors building 3 settlements in Syria’s Afrin by Turkey Turkey is cementing its occupation of Afrin through settlement construction June 5 2023

The painting depicted the history of the city of Afrin and the suffering of its inhabitants during the years of war, as well as their displacement.

Dear big banks: You can shove your rainbow logos up your arse!

from thefreeonline by Freedom News

It is now beyond cliché to see a wall of corporate rainbow logos. Many of these logos belong to some of the worst, most unethical companies currently operating, with a list of workers’ rights abuses the length of your arm, immeasurable environmental destruction, and histories of warmongering.

These repulsive corporations hijack a liberation movement as their own advertisement vehicle and, in doing so, consequently subsume any political character through its commercialisation.

What’s worse is that these corporations are actively invited to our spaces by corporate suck ups.

There are LGBTQ events where a small number of event organisers undemocratically accept sponsorship money from the likes of Shell and HSBC. This came to a head when the British LGBT Awards announced Shell, BP, HSBC, Santander and Macquarie Capital, among other grim names, as its sponsors for 2023 and sparked mass opposition and protest with many nominees, including Joe Lycett, pulling out of the awards.

I helped to organise an alternative awards ceremony outside the venue as part of Fossil Free Pride alongside the climate group Tipping Point, with stunning drag performances, music, and speakers from frontline community groups like Glencore Resist, Stop EACOP, Stop Rosebank, West Cumbria Coal Mine Action, and Stop the Silvertown Tunnel.

We felt that we had to show that there is an alternative to this corporate version of the LGBTQ movement.

Of course, a joyful and united grassroots-led protest in the streets, standing firmly in solidarity with the Global South, was a far better time than whatever corporate nightmare might be happening inside the British LGBT Awards.

Although I could have organised an awards ceremony in my shed and it would have been better than some celebrity bore fest with Shell and BP – and I wouldn’t have charged £800 a ticket either.

We all know by now that these companies are responsible for looting and plundering land, destroying major ecosystems, and military violence. Shell knew about the global environmental damage of fossil fuels in the 1980’s but actively concealed this information from the public.

BP lobbied the British government to invade Iran in 1953 and Iraq in 2003 and now flagrantly boasts about its Iraqi oil field contracts.

In 2022, Shell reported profits of £32.2bn and BP reported profits of £23bn. HSBC has invested $144bn into the fossil fuel industry since 2016 and Santander invested $51bn in the same period.

Macquarie Capital are one of the members of the Riverlinx Consortium who hold the contract for the Silvertown Tunnel, a £2.2bn project in London that will increase local pollution and emissions.

For these kinds of companies to be advertised at the British LGBT Awards represents a defeat for the LGBTQ community and everyone that we stand in solidarity with internationally.

This is not just a problem with the British LGBT Awards, many UK Prides are still accepting sponsorships by banks that fund fossil fuel projects to the tune of billions.

By advertising themselves in these spaces, fossil fuel companies and financiers gain social license to continue their destructive activities. Myself and a group of other grassroots organisers have launched the Fossil Free Pride Pledge.

Which calls for Prides to commit to no sponsorship with fossil fuel companies or the banks that fund them, with 10 Prides so far signing the Pledge and local groups actively campaigning across the country.

However, many continue to have sponsorship agreements with the likes of Barclays, who are Europe’s largest investors of fossil fuels.

Boycotting these banks puts pressure on them to change their investments and, without these reckless financiers, new fossil fuel projects would be stopped in their tracks.

This kind of mess would be completely unimaginable in the early LGBTQ movement. Our movement has historically been strong in refusing to accept systems that harm and dominate us.

Now, in the mainstream sphere, our movement has become unrecognisable to the dynamic, inspiring liberation movement that it once was.

When Prides embrace corporations and silence regular queer people, they can’t claim to meaningfully represent anything about the queer liberation movement or anybody in it.

The absolute minimum that we must demand is that Pride should be for queers, not rapacious multinational corporations.

The good news is that we can have liberating anti-capitalist queer Pride events without having to spend a lot of money. It doesn’t cost much to march alongside other struggles, to join a picket line for precarious workers, to disrupt the offices of BP or Shell through demonstrations, or to share skills and knowledge for our liberation.

It costs a lot less to demonstrate outside the offices of transphobic politicians than to book a celebrity performer. Give everybody who comes to Pride a copy of Beautiful Trouble with their first drink.

Our movement has a rich history of utilising these and even more revolutionary tactics to reclaim some degree of power back from capitalism.

That’s a Pride you could actually feel proud about too. Young queer people will go to Pride and watch people like them unapologetically saying that this world is not good enough for them, and that we all have the power in ourselves to change it.

In contrast, the LGBTQ movement of today says we should love who we are but with the caveat that we can’t make our corporate sponsors too uncomfortable. There is more shame and conservatism than pride in that message, and it’s the only LGBTQ movement that a lot of young queer people have ever known.

There’s still plenty of time for queer parties too, and you know the parties organised by left-wing grassroots groups are much more fun and sexy.

The LGBTQ movement can’t just be a social routine though. We don’t party together to celebrate being free, the truth is that most of us are secretly, desperately unfree in many ways.

At a time of global insecurity, rising temperatures, growing conservative and far-right movements, and economic precarity, we need a strong LGBTQ movement that can fight back against attacks, join up struggles, and cut through mass conservative psychology.

It’s impossible to have the movement we need if we are accepting companies like Shell, BP, HSBC, Santander, and Macquarie Capital into our spaces. Instead, we need to drop these sponsors, make it unmistakably clear that we do not accept their activities, and work to intervene in the violence that they cause.