Mereja Forum

[C beyond]

[C beyond]

90 years old priest/ Patriarch /monk stripped of his title languishes in detention....only in ERITREA .

[QB]

{SBS Radio} ኣመሪካ፡ ሳልሳይ ፓትሪያርክ ኣቡነ እንጦንዮስ ካብ ማእሰርቶም ክፍትሑ ብወግዒ ሓቲታ።


https://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/tig ... O-qaFluKeE

[QB]

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[QB]

[C beyond]

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[Zmeselo]

PRESS RELEASE

https://english.eritreantewahdo.org/?se ... e-antonios

The Holy Synod Statement about Abune Antonios
In the name of the Father, the Son and The Holy Spirit one God Amen.

This is the day the Lord has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it.

[Psalm 118:24]

After many efforts taken by the Union of the Monasteries and Church Scholars of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church, the issue of Patriarch Abune Antonios the Third has come to an end on 07/11/2017. We gladly want to inform to all its faithful Christians and friends that the Holy Synod Meeting has come to conclusion with full reconciliation, peace and love with Abune Antonios in the presence of Union of the Monasteries and Church Scholars.

The Holy Synod of Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church
Asmara, Eritrea
07/13/2017

Original press release from the Holy Synod in Tigrigna:

[Zmeselo]

SOCIETY

The US Police-State Is Now Undeniable: The Assange Case

Eric Zuesse

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/ ... ange-case/

July 20, 2019

It’s not just that the United States has a higher percentage of its people in prison than does any other nation on the planet. http://archive.is/f7rz1 (El Salvador — the land that was largely made what it today is, by its US trained-and-equipped death squads

— is now number 2 on that measure. In another country the US controls, Honduras, protesters tried to burn down the US Embassy on 31 May 2019. https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/12/why- ... s-embassy/)

This police-state operates also in far subtler ways. Here is one of those subtler ways, which has global importance:

The US Constitution has become thoroughly removed from the functioning US Government — no restraint whatsoever upon governmental powers. For a prominent example of this: What is left of the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech (freedom to communicate to the public) and freedom of the press (freedom to transmit to the public) if even online publication (and increasingly notonly printed and broadcast publication) is being censored by the government, and/or by the billionaires (such as the neoconservative Democrat Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter), the 607 http://archive.is/jRf2u individuals whose political donations collectively, and very effectively, control the US Government? https://represent.us/action/theproblem-3/

If the public do not possess the means to communicate freely with one-another, then do they possess any meaningful freedom, at all? Or would such a nation instead be a dictatorship, no democracy, at all https://washingtonsblog.com/2019/02/how ... works.html (except on paper, such as the now-irrelevant US Constitution)?

The case of Julian Assange is especially instructive here:

On July 12th, Caitlin Johnstone headlined “Top Assange Defense Account Deleted By Twitter”, and she reported that,

One of the biggest Twitter accounts dedicated to circulating information and advocacy for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, @Unity4J, has been completely removed from the site. The operators of the account report that they have been given no reason for its removal by Twitter staff, and have received no response to their appeals.

Mrs Christine Assange https://twitter.com/AssangeMrs

@AssangeMrs

HELP!! @Twitter suspended @Unity4J
The global #FreeAssange supporters account!

Its a central point for updates, interviews & actions re my son politically persecuted journalist JULIAN ASSANGE!

Please demand @TwitterSupport & @Jack re-instate it.
Many thanks #Unity4J
4:31 PM – Jul 11, 2019

This is suppression not only of American speech, but of global speech (Wikileaks is global), and it is perpetrated by one of the corporations of the neoconservative (i.e., imperialistic American) supporters of the liberal American Democratic Party, Jack Dorsey, who thinks that his corporation, Twitter, has the right to do this.

Billionaires’ control over the US Government is so total, that they now are so brazen as to impose their censorship even directly, by the companies and ’nonprofits’ (think tanks etc., such as Dorsey’s friend and fellow-Democrat, the liberal neocon http://berggruen.org/activities/65 billionaire Nicholas Berggruen‘s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Berggruen Berggruen Institute, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berggruen_Institute which is tied to the liberal Huffington Post, https://www.huffpost.com/author/nicolas-berggruen which such wealthy people control even more directly than they control the US Government). This is how these people pretend to be ‘progressive’, even while they actually are peddling their international corporate empire, by means of hiding the corruption that stands behind and underneath this empire. Even liberal billionaires, such as these, are neoconservatives (US imperialists), because neoconservatism is US imperialism; and, for example, the progressive independent Julian Assange is the world’s leading investigative journalist and publisher against imperialism itself — against any imperialism. To him, there is no decent imperialism: it’s always international dictatorship, never international democracy; and he (just as any progressive) is committed to democracy, not just nationally, but internationally. Democracy is his ideological commitment. Americans call American imperialism “regime change” operations, but it’s always just raw imperialism — the grabbing of other countries, and WikiLeaks is against that; he’s against international dictatorship. So: how can the public vote in a truthfully-informed way, when the chief corruptors run the entire ’news’ show, and thus can freely censor-out whatever they do not like? It’s simply not possible.

How can Dempsey do this, while also being a huge supporter of liberal ‘causes’, such as the ACLU? https://thehill.com/policy/technology/t ... tion-order Here is how: The ACLU and the other ‘causes’ that liberal billionaires contribute to, avoid the issue of imperialism, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07- ... -functions and avoid any other economic-class-focussed issue, and focus instead on other types of cases (including Black versus White, Jew versus Christian, male versus female, [deleted] versus straight, etc.), which (whatever their own importance) pose no real threat to billionaires’ personal wealth. The ACLU wouldn’t be able to get the huge amounts of donations that they get from liberal billionaires and their corporations, unless it excluded the basic political issue, of the super-rich versus everyone else, and so it does this: it avoids this issue — which is what makes it be a liberal organization, instead of a progressive organization (which, by its very nature, focuses on precisely issues of economic class, such as imperialism).

Imperialism has always been practiced by the aristocracy, never by the public — never by the people who aren’t agents of the aristocracy. Many billionaires are liberal. Virtually, if not entirely, none of them are progressive, because progressivism is the opposite of conservatism, whereas liberalism is a mixture of both. Every billionaire is conservative, though some of them (such as Dorsey) are liberal (mixed) conservatives. Not all of them are pure conservatives, such as the Koch brothers are. Every billionaire benefits from imperialism, because international corporations (which are the main thing that billionaires control) benefit from imperialism. Imperialism benefits only the super-rich, because the super-rich have become, and remain, super-rich only because of the military might that enforces their will when international diplomacy (the cheaper alternative) has failed. The entire taxpaying public — 99+% of which are NOT billionaires — pays the tab for this enormously expensive global military (half https://washingtonsblog.com/2018/05/ame ... tures.html of which is American). (America has emerged to become today’s Sparta. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta) But the beneficiaries from imperialism are exclusively the super-rich — it’s an enormous public subsidy to international corporations, and to their investors. It’s the biggest welfare-program that exists, and it is welfare for only the super-rich, at everybody else’s expense. And especially at the expense of the publics in the lands that American billionaires want to grab — such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Ukraine, Venezuela, China, and Russia. It enormously transfers wealth from the rest of the world, to the world’s billionaires.

All of the world’s millionaires, put together, are only 0.8% of the world’s total population, but they own 44.8% of all of the world’s privately owned wealth. The world’s poorest 63.9% own just 1.9%. https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/[deleted] ... 018-en.pdf (Those facts are documented on page 20 there.) Thus, the entire poorest 63.9%, which are 3.211 billion people, own around 4% as much as do the few richest 0.8%, which are 42 million people. And, of course, according to Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/2 ... since-2016 there are only 2,153 billionaires. So, there’s 1 billionaire for every 19,531 millionaires. Billionaires are the rarest of the rare, and they control virtually all international corporations.

Those percentages — the enormous inequality — are about the same within the US as they are globally. How is it possible for democracy to exist in such conditions? It’s not. Money is power. Corruption runs the world. And America’s billionaires are the global masters of it. But all billionaires hate Julian Assange, because they cannot corrupt him. That’s why not a single one of them is even trying to protect him from all of the others of them: they are united in their hatred of him.

No one has done as much to reveal the corruption that stands behind empire as Julian Assange has. Billionaires are disunited on lots of things — for examples: fossil fuels, immigration, feminism — but they are united in favor of imperialism. And, all throughout history, the aristocracy has been that way: imperialistic.

And America’s imprisonment-rate, and the Assange case, are hardly the only indications that the US is no democracy but only a dictatorship. Here are some other such indications. http://archive.is/aCk8t

NOTE: Although in terms of per-capita military expenditure the US is higher than any other country (shown by MSN https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... ar-AAwCnM2 as being second-highest after Saudi Arabia, but this was only because the US systematically under-reports https://washingtonsblog.com/2018/05/ame ... tures.html its actual annual military expenditures), the US is nowhere near the top for the percentage of its population who are employed in the military: it’s #75 out of 170 countries, http://web.archive.org/web/201907171806 ... Per-capita with North Korea being #1 on that. What this demonstrates is the extraordinarily high percentage of America’s military expenditures that go to paying not soldiers but the military contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics, the giant weapons-making firms. Those are the firms whose markets are virtually 100% the US Government and its allied regimes or vassal nations (such as NATO), America’s allies. The controlling investors in those corporations are the chief beneficiaries of America’s police-state. However, extractive corporations such as ExxonMobil are close behind, because only by means of this enormous military are they enabled to offer foreign regimes “an offer they can’t refuse.” Thus, the arms contractors, and the extractors, control US foreign policies, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Neoconservatism is America’s bipartisan foreign policy.

[pastlast]

SOCIETY

The US Police-State Is Now Undeniable: The Assange Case

Eric Zuesse

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/ ... ange-case/

July 20, 2019

It’s not just that the United States has a higher percentage of its people in prison than does any other nation on the planet. http://archive.is/f7rz1 (El Salvador — the land that was largely made what it today is, by its US trained-and-equipped death squads

— is now number 2 on that measure. In another country the US controls, Honduras, protesters tried to burn down the US Embassy on 31 May 2019. https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/12/why- ... s-embassy/)

This police-state operates also in far subtler ways. Here is one of those subtler ways, which has global importance:

The US Constitution has become thoroughly removed from the functioning US Government — no restraint whatsoever upon governmental powers. For a prominent example of this: What is left of the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech (freedom to communicate to the public) and freedom of the press (freedom to transmit to the public) if even online publication (and increasingly notonly printed and broadcast publication) is being censored by the government, and/or by the billionaires (such as the neoconservative Democrat Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter), the 607 http://archive.is/jRf2u individuals whose political donations collectively, and very effectively, control the US Government? https://represent.us/action/theproblem-3/

If the public do not possess the means to communicate freely with one-another, then do they possess any meaningful freedom, at all? Or would such a nation instead be a dictatorship, no democracy, at all https://washingtonsblog.com/2019/02/how ... works.html (except on paper, such as the now-irrelevant US Constitution)?

The case of Julian Assange is especially instructive here:

On July 12th, Caitlin Johnstone headlined “Top Assange Defense Account Deleted By Twitter”, and she reported that,

One of the biggest Twitter accounts dedicated to circulating information and advocacy for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, @Unity4J, has been completely removed from the site. The operators of the account report that they have been given no reason for its removal by Twitter staff, and have received no response to their appeals.

Mrs Christine Assange https://twitter.com/AssangeMrs

@AssangeMrs

HELP!! @Twitter suspended @Unity4J
The global #FreeAssange supporters account!

Its a central point for updates, interviews & actions re my son politically persecuted journalist JULIAN ASSANGE!

Please demand @TwitterSupport & @Jack re-instate it.
Many thanks #Unity4J
4:31 PM – Jul 11, 2019

This is suppression not only of American speech, but of global speech (Wikileaks is global), and it is perpetrated by one of the corporations of the neoconservative (i.e., imperialistic American) supporters of the liberal American Democratic Party, Jack Dorsey, who thinks that his corporation, Twitter, has the right to do this.

Billionaires’ control over the US Government is so total, that they now are so brazen as to impose their censorship even directly, by the companies and ’nonprofits’ (think tanks etc., such as Dorsey’s friend and fellow-Democrat, the liberal neocon http://berggruen.org/activities/65 billionaire Nicholas Berggruen‘s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Berggruen Berggruen Institute, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berggruen_Institute which is tied to the liberal Huffington Post, https://www.huffpost.com/author/nicolas-berggruen which such wealthy people control even more directly than they control the US Government). This is how these people pretend to be ‘progressive’, even while they actually are peddling their international corporate empire, by means of hiding the corruption that stands behind and underneath this empire. Even liberal billionaires, such as these, are neoconservatives (US imperialists), because neoconservatism is US imperialism; and, for example, the progressive independent Julian Assange is the world’s leading investigative journalist and publisher against imperialism itself — against any imperialism. To him, there is no decent imperialism: it’s always international dictatorship, never international democracy; and he (just as any progressive) is committed to democracy, not just nationally, but internationally. Democracy is his ideological commitment. Americans call American imperialism “regime change” operations, but it’s always just raw imperialism — the grabbing of other countries, and WikiLeaks is against that; he’s against international dictatorship. So: how can the public vote in a truthfully-informed way, when the chief corruptors run the entire ’news’ show, and thus can freely censor-out whatever they do not like? It’s simply not possible.

How can Dempsey do this, while also being a huge supporter of liberal ‘causes’, such as the ACLU? https://thehill.com/policy/technology/t ... tion-order Here is how: The ACLU and the other ‘causes’ that liberal billionaires contribute to, avoid the issue of imperialism, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07- ... -functions and avoid any other economic-class-focussed issue, and focus instead on other types of cases (including Black versus White, Jew versus Christian, male versus female, [deleted] versus straight, etc.), which (whatever their own importance) pose no real threat to billionaires’ personal wealth. The ACLU wouldn’t be able to get the huge amounts of donations that they get from liberal billionaires and their corporations, unless it excluded the basic political issue, of the super-rich versus everyone else, and so it does this: it avoids this issue — which is what makes it be a liberal organization, instead of a progressive organization (which, by its very nature, focuses on precisely issues of economic class, such as imperialism).

Imperialism has always been practiced by the aristocracy, never by the public — never by the people who aren’t agents of the aristocracy. Many billionaires are liberal. Virtually, if not entirely, none of them are progressive, because progressivism is the opposite of conservatism, whereas liberalism is a mixture of both. Every billionaire is conservative, though some of them (such as Dorsey) are liberal (mixed) conservatives. Not all of them are pure conservatives, such as the Koch brothers are. Every billionaire benefits from imperialism, because international corporations (which are the main thing that billionaires control) benefit from imperialism. Imperialism benefits only the super-rich, because the super-rich have become, and remain, super-rich only because of the military might that enforces their will when international diplomacy (the cheaper alternative) has failed. The entire taxpaying public — 99+% of which are NOT billionaires — pays the tab for this enormously expensive global military (half https://washingtonsblog.com/2018/05/ame ... tures.html of which is American). (America has emerged to become today’s Sparta. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta) But the beneficiaries from imperialism are exclusively the super-rich — it’s an enormous public subsidy to international corporations, and to their investors. It’s the biggest welfare-program that exists, and it is welfare for only the super-rich, at everybody else’s expense. And especially at the expense of the publics in the lands that American billionaires want to grab — such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Ukraine, Venezuela, China, and Russia. It enormously transfers wealth from the rest of the world, to the world’s billionaires.

All of the world’s millionaires, put together, are only 0.8% of the world’s total population, but they own 44.8% of all of the world’s privately owned wealth. The world’s poorest 63.9% own just 1.9%. https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/[deleted] ... 018-en.pdf (Those facts are documented on page 20 there.) Thus, the entire poorest 63.9%, which are 3.211 billion people, own around 4% as much as do the few richest 0.8%, which are 42 million people. And, of course, according to Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/2 ... since-2016 there are only 2,153 billionaires. So, there’s 1 billionaire for every 19,531 millionaires. Billionaires are the rarest of the rare, and they control virtually all international corporations.

Those percentages — the enormous inequality — are about the same within the US as they are globally. How is it possible for democracy to exist in such conditions? It’s not. Money is power. Corruption runs the world. And America’s billionaires are the global masters of it. But all billionaires hate Julian Assange, because they cannot corrupt him. That’s why not a single one of them is even trying to protect him from all of the others of them: they are united in their hatred of him.

No one has done as much to reveal the corruption that stands behind empire as Julian Assange has. Billionaires are disunited on lots of things — for examples: fossil fuels, immigration, feminism — but they are united in favor of imperialism. And, all throughout history, the aristocracy has been that way: imperialistic.

And America’s imprisonment-rate, and the Assange case, are hardly the only indications that the US is no democracy but only a dictatorship. Here are some other such indications. http://archive.is/aCk8t

NOTE: Although in terms of per-capita military expenditure the US is higher than any other country (shown by MSN https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... ar-AAwCnM2 as being second-highest after Saudi Arabia, but this was only because the US systematically under-reports https://washingtonsblog.com/2018/05/ame ... tures.html its actual annual military expenditures), the US is nowhere near the top for the percentage of its population who are employed in the military: it’s #75 out of 170 countries, http://web.archive.org/web/201907171806 ... Per-capita with North Korea being #1 on that. What this demonstrates is the extraordinarily high percentage of America’s military expenditures that go to paying not soldiers but the military contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics, the giant weapons-making firms. Those are the firms whose markets are virtually 100% the US Government and its allied regimes or vassal nations (such as NATO), America’s allies. The controlling investors in those corporations are the chief beneficiaries of America’s police-state. However, extractive corporations such as ExxonMobil are close behind, because only by means of this enormous military are they enabled to offer foreign regimes “an offer they can’t refuse.” Thus, the arms contractors, and the extractors, control US foreign policies, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Neoconservatism is America’s bipartisan foreign policy.

[C beyond]

Zmeselo is the other side of the coin to Joseph Goebbels "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty"

[Zmeselo]

Are you telling me, they aren't guilty? I didn't writer the article.

Besides, do you want me to list the 50 years long US crimes against Eritrea?

Zmeselo is the other side of the coin to Joseph Goebbels "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty"

[pastlast]

PFDJ is Guilty whether the US is Guilty 10 times...PFDJ is STILL GUILTY!!!
And you Went to Scour the Internet to find the Article to make your Stupid "Whataboutism" point!

Are you telling me, they aren't guilty? I didn't writer the article.

Besides, do you want me to list the 50 years long US crimes against Eritrea?

Zmeselo is the other side of the coin to Joseph Goebbels "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... in-meaning

What About 'Whataboutism'?
If everyone is guilty of something, is no one guilty of anything?
Some of the terms we use to describe political rhetoric are as old as politics itself (see ad hominem attacks, or such devices as synecdoche, metonymy, or zeugma). Others are more recent additions, driven by the evolution of the news cycle (like fake news and dog whistles).

But hey, aren’t we ignoring a bigger subject here? How can we talk about rhetorical devices and not mention whataboutism?

alt 59aefd866dfc3
Essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse

Whataboutism gives a clue to its meaning in its name. It is not merely the changing of a subject ("What about the economy?") to deflect away from an earlier subject as a political strategy; it’s essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse than what the original party was accused of doing, however unconnected the offenses may be.

The tactic behind whataboutism has been around for a long time. Rhetoricians generally consider it to be a form of tu quoque, which means "you too" in Latin and involves charging your accuser with whatever it is you've just been accused of rather than refuting the truth of the accusation made against you. Tu quoque is considered to be a logical fallacy, because whether or not the original accuser is likewise guilty of an offense has no bearing on the truth value of the original accusation.

Whataboutism adds a twist to tu quoque by directing its energies into establishing an equivalence between two or more disparate actions, thereby defaming the accuser with the insinuation that their priorities are backwards. The CNN correspondent Jill Dougherty, in a 2016 article about allegations of Russian doping during the Olympics, defined whataboutism in terms of a more familiar English idiom:

There's another attitude toward doping allegations that many Russians seem to share, what used to be called in the Soviet Union "whataboutism," in other words, "who are you to call the kettle black?"
—Jill Dougherty, CNN.com, 24 July 2016

The association of whataboutism with the Soviet Union began during the Cold War. As the regimes of Josef Stalin and his successors were criticized by the West for human rights atrocities, the Soviet propaganda machine would be ready with a comeback alleging atrocities of equal reprehensibility for which the West was guilty.

The weaknesses of whataboutism—which dictates that no one must get away with an attack on the Kremlin's abuses without tossing a few bricks at South Africa, no one must indict the Cuban police State without castigating President Park, no one must mention Irak, Libya or the PLO without having a bash at Israel, &c. – have been canvassed in this column before.
—Michael Bernard, The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 17 Jun. 1978

Before the 2016 presidential election, more instances of whataboutism applied to criticism among regimes than between individual politicians:

Events in Ferguson have caused whataboutism to go global. As Robin Wright notes in the Wall Street Journal a whole bunch o' authoritarian states have seized on Ferguson to criticize the United States…
—Daniel W. Drezner, Slate, 20 Aug. 2014

Since the Cold War, Moscow has engaged in a political points-scoring exercise known as "whataboutism" used to shut down criticism of Russia's own rights record by pointing out abuses elsewhere. All criticism of Russia is invalid, the idea goes, because problems exist in other countries too.
—Max Seddon, Buzzfeed, 25 Nov. 2014

The term is seeing a bit of a renaissance in our current political climate. Philip Bump writes in The Washington Post that President Donald Trump has utilized whataboutism frequently as a way of deflecting criticism for his actions, such as his pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

“f you look at, as an example, President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, who was charged with crimes going back decades, including illegally buying oil from Iran while it held 53 American hostages — wasn’t allowed to do that, selling to the enemies of the United States,” Trump said at a news conference on Monday. “He was pardoned after his wife donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clintons.” He went on with his list: pardons of “dangerous criminals,” of drug dealers, President Barack Obama’s commutation of the sentences of Chelsea Manning and Oscar López Rivera. What about them, he asked? Why is he being maligned when what Clinton and Obama did was so bad?
—Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2017

The specific application of whataboutism to Donald Trump might be prompted in part by his fondness for language that alerts to the tactic itself:

[C beyond]

28 years of nonstop crimes against Eritreans by PFDJ/Isayas are tattooed on my mind ………. America ??????????

[Zmeselo]

First off, I was responding to c beyond. Stop following me everywhere, like a rejected girlfriend.

Then, this is not "whataboutism". I was describing how it is simply a continuation, of US anti Eritrea policy.

Saudi Arabia is their friend, for Christ's sake.

Go figure that out!

PFDJ is Guilty whether the US is Guilty 10 times...PFDJ is STILL GUILTY!!!
And you Went to Scour the Internet to find the Article to make your Stupid "Whataboutism" point!

Are you telling me, they aren't guilty? I didn't writer the article.

Besides, do you want me to list the 50 years long US crimes against Eritrea?

Zmeselo is the other side of the coin to Joseph Goebbels "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... in-meaning

What About 'Whataboutism'?
If everyone is guilty of something, is no one guilty of anything?
Some of the terms we use to describe political rhetoric are as old as politics itself (see ad hominem attacks, or such devices as synecdoche, metonymy, or zeugma). Others are more recent additions, driven by the evolution of the news cycle (like fake news and dog whistles).

But hey, aren’t we ignoring a bigger subject here? How can we talk about rhetorical devices and not mention whataboutism?

alt 59aefd866dfc3
Essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse

Whataboutism gives a clue to its meaning in its name. It is not merely the changing of a subject ("What about the economy?") to deflect away from an earlier subject as a political strategy; it’s essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse than what the original party was accused of doing, however unconnected the offenses may be.

The tactic behind whataboutism has been around for a long time. Rhetoricians generally consider it to be a form of tu quoque, which means "you too" in Latin and involves charging your accuser with whatever it is you've just been accused of rather than refuting the truth of the accusation made against you. Tu quoque is considered to be a logical fallacy, because whether or not the original accuser is likewise guilty of an offense has no bearing on the truth value of the original accusation.

Whataboutism adds a twist to tu quoque by directing its energies into establishing an equivalence between two or more disparate actions, thereby defaming the accuser with the insinuation that their priorities are backwards. The CNN correspondent Jill Dougherty, in a 2016 article about allegations of Russian doping during the Olympics, defined whataboutism in terms of a more familiar English idiom:

There's another attitude toward doping allegations that many Russians seem to share, what used to be called in the Soviet Union "whataboutism," in other words, "who are you to call the kettle black?"
—Jill Dougherty, CNN.com, 24 July 2016

The association of whataboutism with the Soviet Union began during the Cold War. As the regimes of Josef Stalin and his successors were criticized by the West for human rights atrocities, the Soviet propaganda machine would be ready with a comeback alleging atrocities of equal reprehensibility for which the West was guilty.

The weaknesses of whataboutism—which dictates that no one must get away with an attack on the Kremlin's abuses without tossing a few bricks at South Africa, no one must indict the Cuban police State without castigating President Park, no one must mention Irak, Libya or the PLO without having a bash at Israel, &c. – have been canvassed in this column before.
—Michael Bernard, The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 17 Jun. 1978

Before the 2016 presidential election, more instances of whataboutism applied to criticism among regimes than between individual politicians:

Events in Ferguson have caused whataboutism to go global. As Robin Wright notes in the Wall Street Journal a whole bunch o' authoritarian states have seized on Ferguson to criticize the United States…
—Daniel W. Drezner, Slate, 20 Aug. 2014

Since the Cold War, Moscow has engaged in a political points-scoring exercise known as "whataboutism" used to shut down criticism of Russia's own rights record by pointing out abuses elsewhere. All criticism of Russia is invalid, the idea goes, because problems exist in other countries too.
—Max Seddon, Buzzfeed, 25 Nov. 2014

The term is seeing a bit of a renaissance in our current political climate. Philip Bump writes in The Washington Post that President Donald Trump has utilized whataboutism frequently as a way of deflecting criticism for his actions, such as his pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

“f you look at, as an example, President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, who was charged with crimes going back decades, including illegally buying oil from Iran while it held 53 American hostages — wasn’t allowed to do that, selling to the enemies of the United States,” Trump said at a news conference on Monday. “He was pardoned after his wife donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clintons.” He went on with his list: pardons of “dangerous criminals,” of drug dealers, President Barack Obama’s commutation of the sentences of Chelsea Manning and Oscar López Rivera. What about them, he asked? Why is he being maligned when what Clinton and Obama did was so bad?
—Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2017

The specific application of whataboutism to Donald Trump might be prompted in part by his fondness for language that alerts to the tactic itself:

[pastlast]

Whatever loser, your sh1thole whataboutist mentality is the problem!

You are the Problem and no pointing at others will change that!

First off, I was responding to c beyond. Stop following me everywhere, like a rejected girlfriend.

Then, this is not "whataboutism". I was describing how it is simply a continuation, of US anti Eritrea policy.

Saudi Arabia is their friend, for Christ's sake.

Go figure that out!

PFDJ is Guilty whether the US is Guilty 10 times...PFDJ is STILL GUILTY!!!
And you Went to Scour the Internet to find the Article to make your Stupid "Whataboutism" point!

Are you telling me, they aren't guilty? I didn't writer the article.

Besides, do you want me to list the 50 years long US crimes against Eritrea?

Zmeselo is the other side of the coin to Joseph Goebbels "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... in-meaning

What About 'Whataboutism'?
If everyone is guilty of something, is no one guilty of anything?
Some of the terms we use to describe political rhetoric are as old as politics itself (see ad hominem attacks, or such devices as synecdoche, metonymy, or zeugma). Others are more recent additions, driven by the evolution of the news cycle (like fake news and dog whistles).

But hey, aren’t we ignoring a bigger subject here? How can we talk about rhetorical devices and not mention whataboutism?

alt 59aefd866dfc3
Essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse

Whataboutism gives a clue to its meaning in its name. It is not merely the changing of a subject ("What about the economy?") to deflect away from an earlier subject as a political strategy; it’s essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse than what the original party was accused of doing, however unconnected the offenses may be.

The tactic behind whataboutism has been around for a long time. Rhetoricians generally consider it to be a form of tu quoque, which means "you too" in Latin and involves charging your accuser with whatever it is you've just been accused of rather than refuting the truth of the accusation made against you. Tu quoque is considered to be a logical fallacy, because whether or not the original accuser is likewise guilty of an offense has no bearing on the truth value of the original accusation.

Whataboutism adds a twist to tu quoque by directing its energies into establishing an equivalence between two or more disparate actions, thereby defaming the accuser with the insinuation that their priorities are backwards. The CNN correspondent Jill Dougherty, in a 2016 article about allegations of Russian doping during the Olympics, defined whataboutism in terms of a more familiar English idiom:

There's another attitude toward doping allegations that many Russians seem to share, what used to be called in the Soviet Union "whataboutism," in other words, "who are you to call the kettle black?"
—Jill Dougherty, CNN.com, 24 July 2016

The association of whataboutism with the Soviet Union began during the Cold War. As the regimes of Josef Stalin and his successors were criticized by the West for human rights atrocities, the Soviet propaganda machine would be ready with a comeback alleging atrocities of equal reprehensibility for which the West was guilty.

The weaknesses of whataboutism—which dictates that no one must get away with an attack on the Kremlin's abuses without tossing a few bricks at South Africa, no one must indict the Cuban police State without castigating President Park, no one must mention Irak, Libya or the PLO without having a bash at Israel, &c. – have been canvassed in this column before.
—Michael Bernard, The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 17 Jun. 1978

Before the 2016 presidential election, more instances of whataboutism applied to criticism among regimes than between individual politicians:

Events in Ferguson have caused whataboutism to go global. As Robin Wright notes in the Wall Street Journal a whole bunch o' authoritarian states have seized on Ferguson to criticize the United States…
—Daniel W. Drezner, Slate, 20 Aug. 2014

Since the Cold War, Moscow has engaged in a political points-scoring exercise known as "whataboutism" used to shut down criticism of Russia's own rights record by pointing out abuses elsewhere. All criticism of Russia is invalid, the idea goes, because problems exist in other countries too.
—Max Seddon, Buzzfeed, 25 Nov. 2014

The term is seeing a bit of a renaissance in our current political climate. Philip Bump writes in The Washington Post that President Donald Trump has utilized whataboutism frequently as a way of deflecting criticism for his actions, such as his pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

“f you look at, as an example, President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, who was charged with crimes going back decades, including illegally buying oil from Iran while it held 53 American hostages — wasn’t allowed to do that, selling to the enemies of the United States,” Trump said at a news conference on Monday. “He was pardoned after his wife donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clintons.” He went on with his list: pardons of “dangerous criminals,” of drug dealers, President Barack Obama’s commutation of the sentences of Chelsea Manning and Oscar López Rivera. What about them, he asked? Why is he being maligned when what Clinton and Obama did was so bad?
—Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2017

The specific application of whataboutism to Donald Trump might be prompted in part by his fondness for language that alerts to the tactic itself:

[Zmeselo]

Have you come to that conclusion, then good for you.

Now, stop talking to me.

FOREVER!

Whatever loser, your sh1thole whataboutist mentality is the problem!

You are the Problem and no pointing at others will change that!

First off, I was responding to c beyond. Stop following me everywhere, like a rejected girlfriend.

Then, this is not "whataboutism". I was describing how it is simply a continuation, of US anti Eritrea policy.

Saudi Arabia is their friend, for Christ's sake.

Go figure that out!

PFDJ is Guilty whether the US is Guilty 10 times...PFDJ is STILL GUILTY!!!
And you Went to Scour the Internet to find the Article to make your Stupid "Whataboutism" point!

Are you telling me, they aren't guilty? I didn't writer the article.

Besides, do you want me to list the 50 years long US crimes against Eritrea?

Zmeselo is the other side of the coin to Joseph Goebbels "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... in-meaning

What About 'Whataboutism'?
If everyone is guilty of something, is no one guilty of anything?
Some of the terms we use to describe political rhetoric are as old as politics itself (see ad hominem attacks, or such devices as synecdoche, metonymy, or zeugma). Others are more recent additions, driven by the evolution of the news cycle (like fake news and dog whistles).

But hey, aren’t we ignoring a bigger subject here? How can we talk about rhetorical devices and not mention whataboutism?

alt 59aefd866dfc3
Essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse

Whataboutism gives a clue to its meaning in its name. It is not merely the changing of a subject ("What about the economy?") to deflect away from an earlier subject as a political strategy; it’s essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse than what the original party was accused of doing, however unconnected the offenses may be.

The tactic behind whataboutism has been around for a long time. Rhetoricians generally consider it to be a form of tu quoque, which means "you too" in Latin and involves charging your accuser with whatever it is you've just been accused of rather than refuting the truth of the accusation made against you. Tu quoque is considered to be a logical fallacy, because whether or not the original accuser is likewise guilty of an offense has no bearing on the truth value of the original accusation.

Whataboutism adds a twist to tu quoque by directing its energies into establishing an equivalence between two or more disparate actions, thereby defaming the accuser with the insinuation that their priorities are backwards. The CNN correspondent Jill Dougherty, in a 2016 article about allegations of Russian doping during the Olympics, defined whataboutism in terms of a more familiar English idiom:

There's another attitude toward doping allegations that many Russians seem to share, what used to be called in the Soviet Union "whataboutism," in other words, "who are you to call the kettle black?"
—Jill Dougherty, CNN.com, 24 July 2016

The association of whataboutism with the Soviet Union began during the Cold War. As the regimes of Josef Stalin and his successors were criticized by the West for human rights atrocities, the Soviet propaganda machine would be ready with a comeback alleging atrocities of equal reprehensibility for which the West was guilty.

The weaknesses of whataboutism—which dictates that no one must get away with an attack on the Kremlin's abuses without tossing a few bricks at South Africa, no one must indict the Cuban police State without castigating President Park, no one must mention Irak, Libya or the PLO without having a bash at Israel, &c. – have been canvassed in this column before.
—Michael Bernard, The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 17 Jun. 1978

Before the 2016 presidential election, more instances of whataboutism applied to criticism among regimes than between individual politicians:

Events in Ferguson have caused whataboutism to go global. As Robin Wright notes in the Wall Street Journal a whole bunch o' authoritarian states have seized on Ferguson to criticize the United States…
—Daniel W. Drezner, Slate, 20 Aug. 2014

Since the Cold War, Moscow has engaged in a political points-scoring exercise known as "whataboutism" used to shut down criticism of Russia's own rights record by pointing out abuses elsewhere. All criticism of Russia is invalid, the idea goes, because problems exist in other countries too.
—Max Seddon, Buzzfeed, 25 Nov. 2014

The term is seeing a bit of a renaissance in our current political climate. Philip Bump writes in The Washington Post that President Donald Trump has utilized whataboutism frequently as a way of deflecting criticism for his actions, such as his pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

“f you look at, as an example, President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, who was charged with crimes going back decades, including illegally buying oil from Iran while it held 53 American hostages — wasn’t allowed to do that, selling to the enemies of the United States,” Trump said at a news conference on Monday. “He was pardoned after his wife donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clintons.” He went on with his list: pardons of “dangerous criminals,” of drug dealers, President Barack Obama’s commutation of the sentences of Chelsea Manning and Oscar López Rivera. What about them, he asked? Why is he being maligned when what Clinton and Obama did was so bad?
—Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2017

The specific application of whataboutism to Donald Trump might be prompted in part by his fondness for language that alerts to the tactic itself:

[pastlast]

NO GIMP, you Can't Bark Orders or even make suggestions....

Isayas Afwrki brings out his Gimp, (meselo)...Lol!!!!

Have you come to that conclusion, then good for you.

Now, stop talking to me.

FOREVER!

Whatever loser, your sh1thole whataboutist mentality is the problem!

You are the Problem and no pointing at others will change that!

First off, I was responding to c beyond. Stop following me everywhere, like a rejected girlfriend.

Then, this is not "whataboutism". I was describing how it is simply a continuation, of US anti Eritrea policy.

Saudi Arabia is their friend, for Christ's sake.

Go figure that out!

PFDJ is Guilty whether the US is Guilty 10 times...PFDJ is STILL GUILTY!!!
And you Went to Scour the Internet to find the Article to make your Stupid "Whataboutism" point!

Are you telling me, they aren't guilty? I didn't writer the article.

Besides, do you want me to list the 50 years long US crimes against Eritrea?

Zmeselo is the other side of the coin to Joseph Goebbels "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... in-meaning

What About 'Whataboutism'?
If everyone is guilty of something, is no one guilty of anything?
Some of the terms we use to describe political rhetoric are as old as politics itself (see ad hominem attacks, or such devices as synecdoche, metonymy, or zeugma). Others are more recent additions, driven by the evolution of the news cycle (like fake news and dog whistles).

But hey, aren’t we ignoring a bigger subject here? How can we talk about rhetorical devices and not mention whataboutism?

alt 59aefd866dfc3
Essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse

Whataboutism gives a clue to its meaning in its name. It is not merely the changing of a subject ("What about the economy?") to deflect away from an earlier subject as a political strategy; it’s essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse than what the original party was accused of doing, however unconnected the offenses may be.

The tactic behind whataboutism has been around for a long time. Rhetoricians generally consider it to be a form of tu quoque, which means "you too" in Latin and involves charging your accuser with whatever it is you've just been accused of rather than refuting the truth of the accusation made against you. Tu quoque is considered to be a logical fallacy, because whether or not the original accuser is likewise guilty of an offense has no bearing on the truth value of the original accusation.

Whataboutism adds a twist to tu quoque by directing its energies into establishing an equivalence between two or more disparate actions, thereby defaming the accuser with the insinuation that their priorities are backwards. The CNN correspondent Jill Dougherty, in a 2016 article about allegations of Russian doping during the Olympics, defined whataboutism in terms of a more familiar English idiom:

There's another attitude toward doping allegations that many Russians seem to share, what used to be called in the Soviet Union "whataboutism," in other words, "who are you to call the kettle black?"
—Jill Dougherty, CNN.com, 24 July 2016

The association of whataboutism with the Soviet Union began during the Cold War. As the regimes of Josef Stalin and his successors were criticized by the West for human rights atrocities, the Soviet propaganda machine would be ready with a comeback alleging atrocities of equal reprehensibility for which the West was guilty.

The weaknesses of whataboutism—which dictates that no one must get away with an attack on the Kremlin's abuses without tossing a few bricks at South Africa, no one must indict the Cuban police State without castigating President Park, no one must mention Irak, Libya or the PLO without having a bash at Israel, &c. – have been canvassed in this column before.
—Michael Bernard, The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 17 Jun. 1978

Before the 2016 presidential election, more instances of whataboutism applied to criticism among regimes than between individual politicians:

Events in Ferguson have caused whataboutism to go global. As Robin Wright notes in the Wall Street Journal a whole bunch o' authoritarian states have seized on Ferguson to criticize the United States…
—Daniel W. Drezner, Slate, 20 Aug. 2014

Since the Cold War, Moscow has engaged in a political points-scoring exercise known as "whataboutism" used to shut down criticism of Russia's own rights record by pointing out abuses elsewhere. All criticism of Russia is invalid, the idea goes, because problems exist in other countries too.
—Max Seddon, Buzzfeed, 25 Nov. 2014

The term is seeing a bit of a renaissance in our current political climate. Philip Bump writes in The Washington Post that President Donald Trump has utilized whataboutism frequently as a way of deflecting criticism for his actions, such as his pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

“f you look at, as an example, President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, who was charged with crimes going back decades, including illegally buying oil from Iran while it held 53 American hostages — wasn’t allowed to do that, selling to the enemies of the United States,” Trump said at a news conference on Monday. “He was pardoned after his wife donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clintons.” He went on with his list: pardons of “dangerous criminals,” of drug dealers, President Barack Obama’s commutation of the sentences of Chelsea Manning and Oscar López Rivera. What about them, he asked? Why is he being maligned when what Clinton and Obama did was so bad?
—Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2017

The specific application of whataboutism to Donald Trump might be prompted in part by his fondness for language that alerts to the tactic itself: