socialmedia

Is the Angela Carini vs Imane Khelif boxing scandal a larger Russian disinformation campaign? Did Western conservatives fall for a stress test on how effective Russian soft power can be? by MRG Staff.

Notes: (1) The Russian controlled, International Boxing Association, who may pay Carini reward money after her lost to Khelif, has largely been discredited and was banned by the International Olympics Committee. The IBA in response has banned Ukraine for example. Thus, the IBA vs the IOC is a part of the larger West vs Russia conflict, but conservatives jumping to Carini’s defense so quickly proves the effectiveness of Russian psychological operations and infiltration campaigns into Western conservative politics to the delight to the Kremlin.   

According to Greg Beacham (2024) of the Associated Press as published by PBS, stated that the Olympics has tightened rules relating to gender such as since the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the World Aquatics (organization), World Athletics, and the International Cycling Union having changed rules on the matter. These new restrictions span from banning athlete’s born male who went through male puberty but transitioned to female after puberty, and to testing testosterone levels of people assigned female at birth who may have more masculine characteristics, e.g., being intersexual, not trans-sexual.

So, we are in an Olympic games where qualifying international organizations clamped down on possible trans-athletes, but…that still hasn’t prevented conservatives from threating the Paris Olympic Games as a showcasing for “the fall of Western Civilization”.

But this paper I am writing is about a theory I have.

The theory being (1) Russia worked a deal with Angela Carini – who outside of boxing is an Italian cop – to be a plant to throw the fight, to help Russia in their psychological war with the West. By Carini being beat by Khelif it would enrage many Christians, conservatives, Right Wingers, etc., and help paint the West as a decadent, immoral, ungodly, woke, etc. The Russia led International Boxing Association, i.e., the IBA, would then pay Carini outside of the Olympics for her throwing the fight and would make it seem like Russia cares about women’s rights and fairness in sports. This is the same IBA that disqualified Khelif from the 2023 IBA World Championship, or (2) Carini wasn’t actively involved but the IBA intended to use her regardless for their own propaganda campaigns.

The irony of Russia “defending femininity” is that Russia legalized domestic abuse. See article by Jenny Stallard of the British Broadcasting Corporation [Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/0dd0ab91-145a-4137-bf87-28d0498c8d56]

The only reason why I may suspect the number one theory of Carini possibly being complicit is that Carini did appear to “flop” when fighting against a Turkish female fighter Busenaz Suremeneli (the current defending IBA world champion and Gold Medalist at the Tokyo Olympics) in the 2022 IBA Women’s World Champion Boxing event. So that’s two events that Carini has been caught up in some form controversy, or suspicion by onlookers, etc.

At minute 4:09 you can see Carini slip against Busenaz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_medalists_at_the_IBA_Women%27s_World_Boxing_Championships

According to Beacham (2024) of the Associated Press, “Kremlev (leader of the IBA) also said he intends to award $25,000 to Italy’s national federation and $25,000 to Carini’s coach after her dramatic opening-round exit against Khelif.  Further, Kremlev regarding Carini said, ““I couldn’t look at her tears,””.

Russia, who oversees the International Boxing Association, was disqualified from the Olympics for their invasion of Ukraine and has a gripe with the International Olympics Committee (IOC) for the banning of Russian athletes suspected of doping at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games.

Russia has also been proven as having tried to infiltrate American conservative and right-wing politics, e.g., Trump Tower Meeting, Trump Bayrock Scandal, Tucker Carlson & Alex Jones being platformed by Russian State media, Marina Butina with the NRA, the Neo Nazi group – The Base – being in Moscow and ran by an American in exile, David Duke having an apartment in Moscow, etc.

Also, Russia has been doing ongoing irregular warfare campaigns against the United States and European NATO allied nations. By irregular warfare I am referring to online warfare such as troll and bot farms, sometimes posing as American’s and Europeans across the political spectrums to sow unrest, tension, foster culture war, etc. Yet, it is not only the Russians doing this irregular warfare but the Israelis (who have some ties to the Russian state, both politically and culturally), Iranians, Chinese, Cubans, North Koreans, etc. Russia has diplomatic ties with all these nations that are hostile to the United States, and often steps in to be a savior to these pariah regimes when the larger international community condemns their actions.  

If Imane Khelif, who beat Italian amateur boxer, Angela Carini, were to be a male, many people are assuming that all men are stronger than females. However, Imane Khelif is a woman who was assigned that birth, and this gender is on her passport, but she has more masculine features. Imane Khelif has lost to women before such has having lost to Ireland’s Kellie Harrington during the Tokyo Olympics and had been on the international circuit for some time now, even having been assigned as a UNICEF Ambassador (according to Beachman, 2024). So, in theory Angela Carini had a possibility of putting up a fight or even beating Khelif, yet, Carini called the fight herself in less than one minute. Currently, Khelif will square off next after the Carini fight against Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamouri who outright said she isn’t scared of Khelif and Khelif isn’t even considered the best in the games.

People’s instant, unresearched reactions are more about instilled implicit biases which paints women as being scared, feeble, and weak and that men have automatic advantages across the board over females, even if the females are better trained, conditioned, etc. In other words, the world is using the scandal to project their patriarchal sentiments and ambitions onto others. The out of shape, balding, middle-aged divorcee can feel a sense of accomplishment knowing that he can beat women no matter how much they accomplish, sort of thing.

 To me this means that Carini, may just be…soft. Yes, I said it. If Khelif was beat by other women, then maybe Carini wasn’t as tough for what a female Olympian is expected to be.

Yet, Carini has already been coddle by far-right, Pro-Mussolini Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who as a candidate won on the larger wave or Euroskeptic, Anti-EU, far right politicians that swept over Europe in the wake of the European Financial Crisis (onset by the poor financial management of Greece and others) and the refugee crises of the Syrian War, Libyan Civil War, Arab Spring, and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

People are using this boxing “scandal” to be political, with the critics being opportunistic and trying to weave this the woodegy-boodgedy narrative of the “ungodly, Neo-Marxist, Luciferians” who are trying to attack, flatten and distort the godly, hierarchical, traditional order best typified by Western (often synonymous with White, Patriarchal, European) Civilization. This scandal is just shy of the earlier Olympics opening ceremony scandal that featured either a depiction of the Last Supper or the Feast of Dionysius, or a combination of both, that featured gender-bending drag queens, queer people, and plus size models. That scandal had already activated the masses of Christians – many who have adopted a conspiratorial mindset in our post-COVID 19 post-lockdown world – but, now with this boxing scandal the hungry masses were already primed for more blood.

The irony of conservatives jumping on this scandal and pretending to defend Carini is that many Right Wingers, notably the men within it, don’t care about women’s sports. These are the same type of men that you can see on any WNBA post making fun of the WNBA and how it isn’t as profitable as the NBA. These are the same people within the larger contemporary conservative movement who…repealed federal abortion protection under Roe vs. Wade, are pushing the “Trad Wife” lifestyle where women don’t work or control their finances, and admire a leader such as Donald Trump who called Stormy Daniel’s “horseface” (even though he had unprotected sex with her while his wife was pregnant), was civilly charged with sexual assault, and of course was caught on camera talking about “grabbing women” by the p-ssy.

The Right-Wing men often speaking on this boxing controversy are not defending women’s rights to support women in being free or equal but are trying to get women to reject feminism and comeback to the overlordship of patriarchy which requires rigid gender conformance (largely to coddle and inflate the male’s ego and sense of self-worth). The men often commenting on behalf of Carini, first off spoke without hearing all the facts, but that is irrelevant because they already have their agenda in mind. It is fake sympathy with hidden intent. The intent being of convincing women with the tactic of “See, I told you so”, so come back to men protecting women because you (women) can’t protect yourself.

However, there are plenty of women as you can see online commenting that are embracing this patriarchal framing of the matter. These women span your run-of-the-mill, freaking out at PTA meeting, 1980’s -like Satanic Panic Karens, to this new movement of “Biblical Femininity” “Trad Wives” (women who want to live at home and not work despite technology having replaced the duties of domestic work such as microwaves, dishwashers, laundry machines, grocery deliveries, etc. – note, yes, being a stay at home mother is not just about cooking and cleaning), and, of course the Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists (TERFs). On TERFs, I find TERFs to be nonsensical because they claim to want to “destroy patriarchy” so they’re at odds with conservative men but they are in agreement with conservatives on excluding trans-people, though trans-women specifically have voluntarily given up their male privilege in order to fit into and honor femininity (some going as far as getting bottom surgery). The fact that radical feminists believe in destroying patriarchy, you would think they would ally with someone who voluntarily gives up their male privilege, but TERFs are in theory adjacent to purist supremacist forms of fascism.

But what does this boxing scandal have to do with Russia? The paranoia and backlash feeds into the larger anti-West propaganda in part from Russia to label the West as decadent, liberal, but the Russians as being strong, Orthodox, traditionally masculine, etc. Which is ironic because Putin has tried to pay people to have children. No, seriously. He had to ordain a baby-making day to encourage Russians to have babies. If Russians were as much of a caricature as Putin and Western conservatives wish the Russian people were, then they wouldn’t need any problem pushing out children in a very homophobic culture.

Further, is the fact that Angela Carini is being paid by the International Boxing Association which is now based in Russia.  According to Greg Beacham of the Associated Press, as quoted in an online article by PBS on 2 August 2024, “The IBA is controlled by Umar Kremlev, who is Russian and brought in the state-owned energy supplier Gazprom as its primary sponsor and moved much of the governing body’s operations to Russia.” The irony of the Gazprom connection is that Gazprom’s football club, FC Zenit, has been accused multiple times of racism and xenophobia, and was later banned form European competition.

It is important to know that Khelif was disqualified by the IBA in 2023 for “failing unspecified and untransparent eligibility tests for women’s competition from the now-banned International Boxing Association” (Beacham, 2024). Her 2023 disqualification came interestingly after Khelif beat Russian Azalia Amineva in 2023 according to Beacham (2024).

I can’t prove it, and it does seem conspiratorial, but it could appear that Angela was promised to have been paid by the IBA if she threw the fight with Khelif, and by her throwing the fight it would feed into the narrative that Khalif was transsexual and beating up on a “poor, innocent, beautiful” women who trained her whole life just have it taken away by the “woke, Social Justice” mob. This therefore feeds back to the Kremlin’s psychological warfare operation of trying to posit themselves as the saviors of Christendom against the “failed experiment” of liberal democracies where “women have rights”, “white populations are in decline” “LGBTQ+ aren’t forced to live in hiding and are able to get married”, etc.

The talking points regarding the west being “degenerate” are straight from Putin intellectual Aleksandr Dugin, a man who became a key foundational figure of the Western Alt-Right movement (alongside other figures such as Juilus Evola). Dugin has been associated with Right Wing conspiracy theorists, Alex Jones and Jay Dyer, but also former Fox News contributor, Tucker Carlson, and even white supremacist Lauren Southern, who was platformed by Fox’s Australia outlet, Sky News.

According to Thomas Saintourens of Le Monde (2022), Umar Kremlev has ties to Putin, in which Kremlev, a former Russian military man who is a member of the Order of St. George (Russia’s Medal of Honor) used Russian troops for ceremonies for his International Boxing Association. Further, Saintourens (2022) mentioned that Kremlex is part of the patriot biker association known as the “Night Wolves”, and in 2004 and 2006, the former amateur boxer was convicted of violence. “Under the chairmanship of Mr. Kremlev, the IBA hoists the Russian colors high up in boxing rings around the world and defies the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Mr. Putin himself has made the case a personal one in a long-distance fight against IOC president, Germany’s Thomas Bach, in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russia following the disclosure of a “state-sponsored” doping program after the Sochi Olympic Games (2014). Overseeing amateur boxing, which is a popular sport on every continent, is seen as an opportunity to promote Russia’s soft power.” (Saintourens, 2022).

Sources:

Saintourens, T. Putin’s ally running world amateur boxing looks to uphold Russian soft power. (2022) Le Monde. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/sports/article/2022/12/11/putin-s-ally-running-world-amateur-boxing-looks-to-uphold-russian-soft-power_6007349_9.html#

Beachman, G (2024). Boxer Angela Carini could receive $50,000 award from banned IBA after her loss to Imane Khelif.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/boxer-angela-carini-could-receive-50-000-award-from-banned-iba-after-her-loss-to-imane-khelif/ar-AA1oaFDz?ocid=BingNewsSerp

Beacham, G. (2024). Who is Olympian Imane Khelif? An Algerian woman boxer is facing gender backlash. Associated Press, published by PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/who-is-olympian-imane-khelif-an-algerian-woman-boxer-is-facing-anti-trans-backlash

#olympics #2024olympics #parisolympicgames

Social Media Destroyed the World. Let’s Be Real. It ruined so much by Quinton Mitchell

Referencing the film Fight Club is quasi-cringey because it represents every angry, in your twenties, posters on the wall without a frame, cliff-note Bukowski, jaded, wannabe Nietzschean “edge lord” that most of us, especially men, have dealt with.

But almost in my forties, over most things, and arguably…content mostly, etc., I do admit I daydream about how Edward Norton saw the banking buildings at the end of the film go down in rubble, but instead of banks, I envision social media companies. Seeing all the symbols come crashing down to Earth. The blue bird of Twitter, well – now the way too bright X shinning down in San Franscisco as drug addicts hiss in piss filled streets being bought up by hedge funds like BlackRock or Vanguard. The F of Facebook. The almost Hello Kitty looking camera symbol of Instagram. This, that, whatever. Yet, before I get flagged, I just want to say I’m not really serious – at least about any violence or destruction, though a world without social media, at least as it is now, would be much better, healthier, etc.

But I don’t hate Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, etc., though, yes, Elon is lame, but when I think of a person like Mark or Jack, I see optimists who had a dream they couldn’t’ control and still can’t control but can’t admit they don’t have control because they’re in charge of capitalist enterprises bent on profits. In other words, Mark, etc., signed out and could care less if the world burns. This adds on more to the irony. Analogous to demi-gods they created a universe but are letting it crumble because they didn’t comprehend the sheer power.

Books aren’t dead but they very well may be dead. To read means to sign out, and to feel catharsis must now be shared instead of silently appreciated by oneself. Basic cable, though organized and safe, doesn’t stimulate us as much as streaming where we can customize our experiences. Social media reigns supreme but still it’s…inhuman. Maybe it’s too convenient? With such an easy way of getting information, maybe it’s making us dumber, yet living in a world that requires us to keep track of the ever-growing interconnectivity of things, that is why people are…depressed? Stupidity mixed with complexity creates a dialectical tension that leads to hopelessness as one realizes they become masters-of-none, just repositories of trivial information.

Twitter stands to make up to $19m a year from ads on just ten toxic reinstated accounts

At least, you get off with porn, though sure, many will say that too is bad, yet at least you get a spike of some naturally occurring chemicals in your body.

With basic social media…what is it even really for? To feel bad? To flex wealth? To juxtapose our romantic relationships against that of others to remind us that we should be happy where we are rather than being “single” or with someone else? To pretend to be a wise sage even though deep down instead you’re just speaking to yourself but through others without the fear of having to actually deal with…people? Are we just projecting our fears out onto the electric ether just like how a child who sees a scary movie will tell his or her friends about it, so they too are afraid but in that collective fear comes comfort, solace?

I think a healthy New Years resolution would be to spend less time on social media. And I get that is hard because in many ways we have “social media friends”, i.e., people we’ve met online who we’ve vetted who are people we consider to be on friendly terms with though you may not have ever physically have met the person. People who know you exist and are a person with a life in a world that may not see that. There are also legitimate close ties with people in your actual personal lives (friends, family, co-workers, business connections, etc.). Yet, the good parts aside, the truth is social media has destroyed the planet.

As with most tools, humans get utility out of it, but most tools become corrupted because of our innate nature as self-serving, self-preserving, aggressive yet passive-aggressive creatures. Instead of saying hello, we spy and snoop. Instead of trying to find common ground, we instead agitate an already agitated public. Instead of pursing our dreams in the real world, we scroll.

We don’t even need to fear Artificial Intelligence because we as humans have a good enough job at driving ourselves crazy, making alternative universes, pushing a culture of solipsistic post-truths, etc.

It will take us as a society to teach the social media companies a lesson by not spending so much on time so they can’t mine our data, etc.

Social media is a postmodern cesspool of racial tension against all groups, conspiracy theories (spanning the Great Replacement Theory, the New World Order, Blood Libel by Jews, a belief we are being turned gay, etc.), racial conspiracy theories, antisemitism, misogyny, sovereign citizens, Qanon, Manosphere & Men’s Rights shaming videos that feed the insatiable appetites of Incels across the blob of angry men who LARP (live action role play) in video games about killing people or dying honorably in battle. Men who struggle with women and publicly commit to “no fapping” (masturbating) as a means of tapping into their inner Marcus Aurelius but taking out their sexual repression on women by providing “fatherly words of wisdom” to women who they think have no minds of their own. How many Pakistanis, Saudis, or other horny Middle Eastern men using VPNs to access Western porn/women are the ones actually crying about their alleged addictions?

Let’s not forget the Instagram “thirst trap” models of large squat sculpted buttocks, sultry MILFs, what have you, but also…bot accounts, covert government operations both foreign and domestic, etc. Or wait, the annoying street interviewers attempting to make people seem stupid or lost for whatever agenda they are really about, such as “drinking liberal snowflake tears.” 

You never know if its Iranian intelligence firms with bot armies infiltrating black “woke” Marxist liberation sites to stoke anti-whitey sentiments because Iran knows they have a backdoor plug into the Black American community via Muslim adjacent hate groups such as the Nation of Islam with figures such as Rizza Islam.

You never know if Israel Unit 8200 bot accounts ran by drafted Israeli teens are stoking racial division to keep the eyes away from Israel and that it’s not Jews behind the scenes but rather hordes of Muslim refugees flooding Europe who will topple the West.

You never know if Russian bot accounts are stoking unrest by infiltrating American Conservative politics as a means of depicting the West as a “corrupt, amoral, Sodom and Gomorrah” so more and more paranoid white Americans and Europeans see Putin as “big daddy savior” of Christendom.

You never know if what you’re seeing is being ran by a legitimate cult who are pushing every New Age conspiracy theory that intends to unravel our linear view of history apart. You never know if hate groups like the Aryan Brotherhood, or any other aspiring group are behind many accounts. You never know if it’s the CIA, FBI, DEA, ATF, local police, MI5/6, Mossad, etc.

We are literally living in a William Gibson Neuromancer nightmare, and we all know it, but we don’t know how to express it because outside of social media, in perfect American fashion for example, we’ve all been trained to be self-serving individuals. Despite out own quiet desperations and ennui, if we see such melancholy elsewhere, we are now trained to simple walk over the dying bodies of others, because we are too busy “manifesting” our own happy little worlds. Any whiff of negativity could lead to the dreaded…unfollow.

It is everything that Philip K Dick lost his mind over.

Social Media is arguably MK Ultra 2.0. A brainwashing tool for various parties, some in unison, and some in opposition, who fart out toxicity to scramble the general public’s brain.

I’ve literally been seeing people get murdered on social media. Seeing the N word is just commonplace now and even if reported, sites like Instagram do nothing. Nudity is even acceptable.

The thing is…it’s all insanity. It’s to the point where I make it a hobby to block accounts. I’ll literally try to block 50 a day because many are just replica accounts, often pushing Right Wing social conditioning that mixes a denunciation of progressive politics with a worship of capitalist greed, misogyny, Abrahamic religion, doomsday Revelation fears, etc. It’s as if the Koch Brother Foundation along with the John Birch Society wrote a blank check and gave it to a bunch of Young Republican college kids and shills like Charley Kirk to fart out as many bot accounts as they can as a means of pulling the youth to the far right, just because rich people or aspiring rich people want a tax break.

Social media is a joke

Deconstructed to an animal impulse the only thing on social media that makes me somewhat happy is a combination of food porn, glamour shots of retro porn actresses from the 90s to 80s, history stuff, and models in yoga pants.

Sex, food, daydreams

The only way to really fix social media is to (1) Dox everyone, i.e., make it some everyone’s real first name, age, and country of origin is on their profile because this will expose the armies of chaos agents stoking tension. Imagine if that Right Wing Anti-SJW account is owned by Boris in some oblast in Russia or Ahmed as the IT guy working with the Iranian Revolutionary guard or a Jewish kid with braces doing a high school project funded by the IDF. (2) Limit the number of accounts a person can have/hunt down replica accounts and limiting how many times a specific video can be uploaded or using digital forensics of some sort to post the date that photos or videos were taken in order to add context to conversations. For example, a racist account intent of shaming black people will upload frequent videos of black crime or racial tension when certain videos may be very old, but pretending they are new helps to feed the current narrative that black people are these “ungrateful criminals” intent on “killing the white man”. (3) More culturally sensitive content moderators because an Indian person in a cubical may not get certain American nuances or vice versa. (4) An active campaign to fight conspiracy theories by having users list sources. (5) Partnerships with sites such as Ground News to help show the political biases of articles (6) continued parental controls

Social media is too cerebral.

It reveals everything ugly about us without any way of making us better. Even most self-help just serve to reduce one into a consumerist bot.

But I saw some good food and yes, some great feminine, squat-sculpted powerful buttocks in an array of multi-colored synthetic material leggings. At least I am honest.

Am I Jack Gladney from White Noise? Are we all?

#philosophy #relationships #socialmedia #technology #books