https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1618657777072885760
"We are working closely with the Belarusian opposition" - Victoria Nuland
the files are IN THE COMPUTER
Most of the Jews killed by the Nazis were citizens of the USSR, this is our common pain - Putin
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1618654053722112002
Who made this?
Victoria Nuland celebrated the Nord Stream 2 pipeline bombing:
"Senator Cruz, like you, I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea."
https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1618763049007198208
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzyE_R9vuY
Ukraine war testimony to be given to US Congress
US officials are set to give testimony on the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia as the conflict enters its twelfth month.
Victoria Nuland, the under-secretary of state for political affairs will address the committee, along with assistant administrator for Europe and Eurasia Erin McKee.
The assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs with the DOD, Celeste Wallander, will also be speaking.
The full hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee comes after Joe Biden confirmed more tanks will be sent for Ukrainian troops.
2:24:50
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/04/friend-of-satan-how-lucien-greaves-and-his-satanic-temple-are-fighting-the-religious-right
Friend of Satan: how Lucien Greaves and his Satanic Temple are fighting the religious right
They have protested against a homophobic church and opposed prayer in classrooms. Now this minority religion is defending the right to abortion
A statue of Baphomet – a pagan idol used in popular culture as a representation of the devil, with the head, horns and feet of a goat, the torso of a man and the wings of an angel – is the centrepiece of the Satanic Temple’s headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts.
More than 8ft (2.4 metres) tall, jet black and altogether unnerving, Baphomet serves as a reminder of what brought the Satanic Temple to fame. In 2013, the group, which is acknowledged as a religion by the US government, responded to the installation of a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Oklahoma state capitol building – seemingly a flagrant abuse of the US constitution’s separation of church and state – by demanding that its own Baphomet statue also be positioned in the grounds. According to the first amendment, which protects freedom of religion, public spaces should be open to all religions or none, it argued.
It turned out that Republican politicians did not want a big statue of a goat-headed pagan deity on capitol grounds. Amid lawsuits, the Oklahoma supreme court eventually ordered that the Ten Commandments monument should be removed.
The tactic, with its wry and anarchic undertones, is typical of the Satanic Temple’s battle against the religious right in the US. In the decade since the spat over the statue, the Temple has tackled prayer in classrooms, religious holiday displays and the distribution of Bibles in schools.
Now, it is taking on another fundamental issue: the right to abortion.
The overturning of Roe v Wade last June opened the door for more than half of US states to effectively ban abortion or restrict access to it, horrifying supporters of reproductive rights. The Satanic Temple – and many other observers – believe the decision of the supreme court was made on the basis of religion: specifically the extreme form of Christianity that has come to dominate Republican politics in the US.
The Temple has “seven fundamental tenets”, one of which states: “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.” This, it believes, offers a way around these draconian new laws. It is arguing that its members are exempt from bans or restrictions on abortion, due to their right to a “Satanic Temple religious abortion ritual”, more of which later. With lawsuits already filed in Indiana, Idaho, Texas and Missouri, the Satanic Temple is about to find out whether US courts agree.
Legal battles are long-running, expensive and frustrating for people desperate for immediate change. But Lucien Greaves, who co-founded the Satanic Temple in 2012, points to the success the Republican party has had in overturning Roe v Wade – a decision brought before the court through decades of lobbying and legislating.
“I get messages from people denigrating us for taking legal action to assert our rights, saying: ‘You can’t change the system from within the system,’” Greaves says.
“And I keep asking them: ‘What the fuck do you think you just saw happen? That’s what they just did.’”
Tall, slim, pale and dressed in black, Greaves is a fitting frontman for a group that is regularly demonised by its Christian opponents. A leather strap wrapped around his wrist, his thin blond ponytail tied up with black bands, he could be in one of the heavy metal bands that terrified neurotic parents in the 1980s and 90s.
“We have to play the long game,” Greaves says. “They spent generations doing this.”
Satanists don’t believe in Satan in a literal, demonic sense, Greaves explains, but rather as a symbol of rebellion and opposition to authoritarianism. According to the Satanic Temple’s website: “To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions.”
The Satanic Temple held its first public activity in January 2013, and a decade on it has more than 700,000 members, with congregations in 24 states and six countries, including the UK, Germany and Finland.