I have actually been to the Stans – significantly been there. The whole place constantly feels like it’s about to pop. It’s dark and cold and everyone is angry all the time, and all of these Turkic tribal groups hate each other and claim that their neighbors stole their land.

RT:

Border guards from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan once again exchanged fire on Friday morning, following an escalation of tensions earlier in the week. 

Kyrgyz military officials accused Tajikistan of a “treacherous attack on border and civilian facilities” and claimed that sporadic clashes were taking place “all along the border.” The situation remained tense as of 3am GMT. The government in Bishkek reportedly ordered evacuations from several border areas.

Tajikistan in turn claimed that Kyrgyz border guards had shelled one of their border posts with mortars, and accused the neighboring state of conducting an unprovoked “armed attack” on several settlements.

There was no official confirmation of any fatalities from the latest flare-up. A similar incident on Wednesday morning claimed the life of at least one soldier, with several others wounded.

Tensions occasionally spike between the two Central Asian countries, as they are unable to fully agree on their 1,000km-long border.

It would be really easy to start any kind of conflict in this area.

Pelosi is going to Armenia to promote war.

RT:

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and fellow California Democrat Jackie Speier will visit Armenia this weekend in a show of support for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Politico reported on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The congressional visit comes shortly after border clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia resulted in over 170 deaths.

Pelosi is already in Germany, where she is attending the G7 Speakers’ Summit in Berlin in support of “Ukraine’s heroic fight” against Russia. According to Politico, she will fly out to Yerevan after the conference with Speier, who is Armenian-American.

Speier’s office has not commented on the report, while Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, told Politico that they “don’t confirm or deny international travel in advance due to longstanding security protocols.”

This seems to be a key part of the plan of the US to deal with the fact they are losing in the Ukraine – they are just going to start fires everywhere on Russia’s border.

This seems totally fake.

Virtually all media on the planet is some form of US state propaganda. Like, just pick any random show on Netflix, and I can show you dozens of elements of social and political messaging from the Anal Empire. Of course, a lot of that is people who just believe in the empire themselves, spreading the message. But a lot of it is messed with – no true artist wants to replace all their characters with blacks for no reason, or add in gay sex randomly.

With the news media – it is all the same, all over the world. Look at Britain, Germany, France, and even Eastern Europe – all news media is promoting a single perception of reality, which is the official position of the Anal Empire.

A lot of people know this, instinctively, and more and more people are becoming aware of it as this stuff gets weirder and weirder. All US-based social media enforces rules of censorship, where no one is allowed to oppose the doctrine of the Anal Empire. Facebook and Twitter have censorship people trying to rig elections in Black Africa. It’s ridiculous, the level of global power these companies have. The cavalier way in which they wield that power is even more ridiculous than the power itself.

So what to do? How about have the social media companies identify a series of accounts as “US propaganda”? This will then make people think that these companies have some kind of integrity, and that outright disinformation from the US government is being removed. They will then have more faith in these companies, which act as de facto arms of the US government in literally everything they do.

Euronews:

For the first time, a major covert pro-US propaganda campaign has been taken down by social media giants.

According to a report by Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory, Twitter and Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) have removed dozens of accounts used to promote US interests abroad.

These accounts targeted audiences in the Middle East and in Central Asia in multiple languages.

They promoted narratives to support the US and its allies, while opposing countries like Russia, China and Iran.

One example used by the researchers was how this campaign portrayed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to different audiences.

The narratives included anti-extremism messaging, pro-Western foreign policy boosterism, and, more recently, content critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (incl the activities of Wagner Group). pic.twitter.com/UwcsjLiZ5y

— Renee DiResta (@noUpside) August 24, 2022

We see dubious engagement, copypasta, efforts to draw attention to particular hashtags. pic.twitter.com/B4L4RoTg9z

— Renee DiResta (@noUpside) August 24, 2022

We see the now-ubiquitous personas with GANS-generated profile pictures, though w/slightly more effort than the norm – they were incorporated into collages of other images, presumably to avoid tells like blurry backgrounds and bad ears. pic.twitter.com/3gT1LGseN8

— Renee DiResta (@noUpside) August 24, 2022

There is also a distinct Twitter data subset linked to a prior overt ~2008-14 CENTCOM operation, a network of sites known as the Trans Regional Web Initiative. Report notes our assessment that the covert network & TRWI network appear to be separate efforts; we focused on covert.

— Renee DiResta (@noUpside) August 24, 2022

“What was interesting was how they customized it for different countries. For example, when they targeted people in Iran, they talked about how the Iranian government was selling drones to Russia to kill innocent civilians and that Iran’s cooperation with Russia was hurting Iranians,” said Shelby Grossman, a researcher for the Stanford Internet Observatory in an interview with Euronews.

Meanwhile, when these accounts targeted users in Central Asian countries they would posts statements like “Russia invaded Ukraine, you’re next! You need to stand up to Russia now.”

The campaign mirrored common propaganda tactics that have been used against the West by countries like Russia or Iran.

Shelby Grossman said she was even surprised by how ordinary this campaign was: “I was shocked that the tactics we saw being used were identical to the tactics used by authoritarian regimes,” she said.

These accounts used classic online propaganda tactics such as creating fake persona accounts, generating profile pictures using artificial intelligence.

The accounts published sometimes also posed as independent news media organisations, posting short-form videos, memes, and political cartoons, all of which are very common tactics according to the researchers.

There is some interesting information there, I suppose.

Someone might get prosecuted for “revealing sources and methods.”

But I doubt it. These seems very clearly like a staged appeal to intelligent people to give an impression that there are checks and balances on these social media companies, when in fact, there are absolutely none.

America used to have far better propaganda

“I wish my country were more like Uzbekistan” is not something most people would suppose they’d ever be thinking.

But this is at least the second time I’ve thought it.

The Guardian:

Uzbekistan’s LGBTQ+ community says it is facing increasing threats and repression after anti-LGBTQ+ protests turned violent and new laws were passed this week banning the publication of content deemed to show disrespect for society and the state.

Human rights groups say that the legislation, passed on Tuesday, will prevent media or online commentators arguing for the decriminalisation of sexual conduct between men, which is illegal and punishable by up to three years in prison. Uzbekistan – along with Turkmenistan – are the only post-Soviet states that prohibit sexual relations between men.

Anti-LGBTQ+ violence erupted in Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital, last weekend after heated social media debate around calls to reform the penal code on homosexuality. Two teenagers were badly injured in the clashes.

Miraziz Bazarov, a popular blogger and critic of Uzbek conservative values who actively supported LGBTQ+ rights, was also beaten by a group of masked men and hospitalised. Three days later, his house was searched by the security services and documents and a computer confiscated.

…

“Fear has appeared in my life. I am afraid of dying here and there is nowhere to escape. These days, many of us are staying home out of fear,” said Shukhrat – not his real name – a 20-year-old gay man.

“We only want freedom and peace but it’s all got worse. Panic attacks, depression and a recurring thought that something can happen to me have returned. I don’t want to live like this.”

Yeah, just like they only want “freedom and peace” everywhere.

They want the freedom to destroy society and the peace to not have to suffer any backlash.

Uzbek is actually upping the ante in response to global pressure to go full-anal.

 

The government has recently proposed to amend the country’s criminal code to change the charge against homosexuality from “sodomy” to a crime against family, morality and children.

“LGBT people in Uzbekistan were already vulnerable to harassment, threats, abuse and violence, even before the events on Sunday, given the criminalisation of consensual same-sex conduct and widespread homophobia,” said Mihra Rittmann, senior central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Mihra Rittmann is a world-renowned expert in Uzbek anuses

“Now, with increasing hostility toward an already vulnerable group, and outward displays of intolerance and violence, it’s critical that Uzbekistan’s leadership unequivocally condemn such violence, and for authorities to hold perpetrators accountable.”

Conservative bloggers have said that the increasing visibility of LGBTQ+ activists, and campaigns for the rights of sexual minorities, were eroding conservative values.

“Our youth is being raised in the spirit of conservatism and respect for traditions,” said Abu Muslim, an Islamic blogger. “Our society sees it as an attack against Uzbek religious values. It will never be accepted.”

The hilarious thing is that Uzbek is one of the few central Asian countries which doesn’t have Russian as its primary language, so the CIA has had a harder time pushing an anal agenda on the country via social media.

The Western think tank and intelligence apparatus has plenty of resources ready to push this anal agenda in Russian, but most Uzbeks don’t speak Russian fluently.

This just shows that without the influence of the West on the internet, most countries anywhere on earth will start swinging back towards the natural order of human society, which is always anti-anal

Funnily enough, Uzbek is also the country that used the collapse of the USSR as an opportunity to round up and deport all Jews.

I’ve read a book about this, but the “History of Jews in Uzbekistan” Wikipedia page mentions it, angrily:

The Jewish population of Uzbekistan (then known as the Uzbek SSR) nearly tripled between 1926 and 1970, then slowly declined between 1970 and 1989, followed by a much more rapid decline since 1989, when the collapse of Communism began to occur. According to the Soviet census, there were 103,000 Jews in Uzbekistan in 1970.

Between 1989 and 2002, over ninety percent of Uzbekistan’s Jewish population left Uzbekistan and moved to other countries, mostly to Israel.

From what I’ve read, “over 90%” was more like “pretty much 100%.”

Uzbeks are annoying, when you see them in Moscow or whatever – but hey, good on them.

Interesting that the Guardian failed to connect the anti-anal agenda to the expulsion of Jews.

Let’s hope they make it to Sweden as quickly as possible

Not a lot of media outlets are reporting on this new victory for diversity, for some reason.

BBC:

At least 10 people have died and dozens have been injured in reported ethnic clashes in Kazakhstan.

About 30 houses and 15 commercial properties were destroyed during the clash in Masanchi village on Friday.

Ethnic Kazakhs clashed with members of the Dungans, a Muslim group of Chinese origin, reports say.

Both Kazakhs and Dungans are Moslem orientals, virtually indistinguishable from each other by looking at them…

…and they still can’t get along, at all.

Kinda makes you wonder why it’s supposedly a good idea to flood White countries with every sentient simian on the planet, and why that’s somehow supposed to work out.

People who have very few differences between one another slaughter each other on a daily basis, but wild and severe diversity involving everyone from Filipinos to Somalians is our greatest strength.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the area was “under the control” of the police and national guard. Officers arrested 47 people.

Fighting occurred in a number of settlements in the Kordai district between local residents, Mr Tokayev said at a press conference.

Mr Tokayev instructed security agencies to prosecute those spreading hate speech, “provocative rumours and disinformation”.

Arresting people for meanspeak, huh?

Baby you can Kaz my Stan any time you like.

I guess Kazakhstan has freedom and democracy after all.

Although at least when there are actual race riots, they have an ostensibly logical reason for enforcing freedom and democracy.

Footage posted to social media on Friday showed scenes of young men, some armed with clubs, marching along the road of a village with buildings ablaze on either side, AFP news agency reports.

A driver who takes passengers from Kazakhstan’s border with Kyrgyzstan to the Kazakh city of Almaty said Masanchi had been blocked off.

“It is calm. But you can’t get there now. The police and the army are there,” he added.

Information Minister Dauren Abayev claimed the incident had been sparked by an “everyday confrontation”. He added the bazaars (markets) had been closed in Almaty.

I think I just realized how diversity is our greatest strength.

When any minor scuffle between two people can lead to massive brawls and riots, you have to keep in shape or else you won’t survive.

Diversity is our greatest anti-obesity campaign!

Do you see any fat people here?