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September 14, 2024
The Oleaginous Jamie Rubin And RT

Here is Jamie Rubin yesterday trying to justify the launching of the global war against @RT_com.

Thanks to RT, apparently, the world isn't as supportive of the US proxy war is Ukraine as it should be. If only RT didn't exist, the world would be lining up behind freedom-loving, national sovereignty-loving US. Never mind the innumerable instances of US aggression against Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia, etc.

Jamie Rubin, the former Madeleine Albright flack who claimed in April 1999 that the Serbs had executed 500, 000 Kosovo Albanians, is one of the worst liars to have ever worked for the US government--and that really is saying something.

On April 23, 1999, NATO bombed Radio Television of Serbia headquarters in Belgrade. Sixteen civilian technicians were killed. The Rubin gang exulted that NATO had hit Milošević's propaganda apparatus. Rubin himself defended NATO's action, stating that RTS was "part of the apparatus that keeps [Milošević] in power and supports the military campaign." Rubin claimed that RTS was "spreading disinformation that fueled ethnic tensions and justified atrocities committed by the Yugoslav government."

Rubin boasted that NATO's bombing was a legitimate military action aimed at disrupting Milošević's control over media and communication. Does all that sound familiar? Rubin has been nothing if not consistent. He has always sought to crush--literally--all sources of news unfavorable to the US government.

As it turned out, Rubin's exultations were an embarrassment to NATO. NATO's lawyers pointed out that, while RTS may have been a "propaganda" outlet, that didn't make it any less a civilian target. Bombing RTS was thus a war crime. In the coming days, NATO had to distance itself from Rubin and to proclaim that RTS was integrated into Yugoslavia's command-and-control system, and was thus a legitimate military target.

Needless to say, NATO provided no evidence for this new claim. And it took NATO more than three weeks to come up with this new justification for its attack, and was ludicrous on its face. How could the RTS office building in Belgrade be part of Yugoslavia's command-and-control apparatus?

What military objective did NATO’s attack on RTS achieve? Following the bombing, RTS was off the air for a grand total of three hours. International humanitarian law is quite explicit on the issue of proportionality: Article 51(5)(b) of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions prohibits attacks “which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”

Sixteen deaths for the sake of a three-hour interruption would surely merit the characterization of “excessive.” Moreover, if RTS were such an important military target, why didn't NATO ever try to attack it again?

In April 2009, on the 10th anniversary of the RTS attack, Sian Jones, Amnesty International’s Balkans expert, said that “The bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime.”

He went on to say, “Justifying an attack on the grounds of combating propaganda stretches the meaning of ‘effective contribution to military action’ and ‘definite military advantage’—essential requirements of the legal definition of a military objective—bey- ond acceptable bounds of interpretation. Even if NATO genuinely believed RTS was a legitimate target, the attack was disproportionate and hence a war crime.”

Thus, Jamie Rubin, the would-be arbiter of what constitutes journalism and what constitutes "disinformation."

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TG 1993: Is The Budapest Summit Really Off?

George Szamuely discusses the sharply different stories the U.S. and the Russian sides are putting out as to the status of the Budapest summit, and argues that the summit may still take place.

00:52:04
October 21, 2025
The Gaggle Music Club: Sibelius's Symphony No. 3 in C Major

This week's selection for The Gaggle Symphony No. 3 in C major, Op. 52 (1907) by Jean Sibelius. Composed in 1907, the work occupies a pivotal position in his output, marking the transition from the expansive romanticism of his early works to the distilled classicism of his later compositions.

Sibelius’s Second Symphony (1902), often interpreted as a celebration of resistance to Russian imperial domination, had made the composer a national hero in Finland. However, by 1904–05, Sibelius was uneasy with that success. He feared becoming known as yet another nationalist symphonist rather than as a serious, international composer. He had also become self-critical about what he saw as the rhetorical excesses and emotional indulgence of his early symphonies.

In 1904, Sibelius moved with his family from Helsinki to Järvenpää, to his newly built villa Ainola, named after his wife, Aino. The peace of the Finnish countryside gave him a sense of detachment from Helsinki’s intellectual and political ...

00:35:55
October 20, 2025
Monday Night At The Movies: "Lord Of The Flies" (1963)

Join Gagglers for "Lord of the Flies"!
The screening starts at 3 p.m. ET sharp.
Share all of your thoughts, comments and criticisms on the Live Chat.

01:30:48
14 hours ago

Welcome to the Trump style of nepotis... sorry, I meant driving policy

Brian Allen
@allenanalysis
·
10 h
🚨 JD Vance just admitted, on camera, that Jared Kushner — Trump’s son-in-law with no official role in government — is “the investor” in the Middle East peace talks.

Let that sink in. A private citizen, fresh off billions from foreign sovereign funds, is now negotiating peace deals on behalf of the United States. https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/1980733622203396244

11 hours ago

Trump gives zero fucks about regular Americans, exhibit #478231

The Lincoln Project
@ProjectLincoln
While our US farmers face bankruptcy and farm closures, Trump's billionaire buddies celebrate with Argentina's president who he just gave $20 Billion of your tax dollars to. https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1980755984781046022

15 hours ago

I remember Mercouris telling us two years ago how Russia will take Sloviansk and Kramatorsk any second now after Bakhmut (which he spent seven months talking about every single freaking day :)))
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/20/putin-trump-peace-donetsk-ukraine-zelensky-fortress-belt/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/21/the-ukrainian-resistance-is-torching-vladimir-putins-dreams/ I reckon they will indeed bleed the Russians dry much more than the Iraqi insurgency

January 21, 2023
More Leftie Than Thou
"Jacobin" Magazine Celebrates A Strike Against Ol' Blue Eyes

Here at "The Gaggle" we have very little time for the "more Leftie than thou" school of thought--that's the approach to life according to which the only thing that matters is whether you take the right position on every issue under the sun from Abortion to Zelensky. No one in the world meets the exacting standards of this school of thought; any Leftie leader anywhere is always selling out to the bankers and the capitalists. The perfect exemplar of this is the unreadable Jacobin magazine. 

The other day I came across this article from 2021. It's a celebration of trade union power. And not simply trade union power, but the use of trade union power to secure political goals. Of course (and this is always the case with the "more Leftie than thou" crowd), this glorious, never-to-be-forgotten moment on the history of organized labor took place many years ago--in the summer of 1974 to be exact. Yes, almost half a century has gone by since that thrilling moment when the working-class movement of Australia mobilized and prepared to seize the means of production, distribution and exchange. 

Well, not quite. Organized labor went into action against...Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the Voice; yes, Frank Sinatra. Why? What had Sinatra done? Sinatra was certainly very rich, and he owned a variety of properties and businesses. But if the Australian trade union movement were, understandably, searching for the bright, incandescent spark that would finally awaken the working class from its slumber there were surely richer, greedier, more dishonest, more decadent, above all more Australian individuals it could have discovered. Australia was never short of them. Rupert Murdoch immediately springs to mind. Why Sinatra?

 

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