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Vatnik Soup Profile picture
@P_Kallioniemi
May 17, 2023 • 24 tweets • 17 min read • Read on X
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In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a US non-profit organization CODEPINK (@codepink), and its founders Jodie Evans (@MsJodieEvans) and Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin). It's best-known for its anti-US stance & for its support of totalitarian regimes around the world.

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In 2006, Benjamin said in an interview with Tucker Carlson that Hugo Chávez, the President of Venezuela, hadn't eroded freedom of speech and civil rights in the country, calling it a "myth". Carlson blamed Medea for "the squelching of minority views", to which Medea...

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..replied: "They [a local TV network] falsified information. They got people out on the street." Later, Chávez's regime seized control of the Supreme Court and undercut the ability of journalists,human rights defenders & other Venezuelans to exercise their fundamental rights.3/23 Image
In 2014, Benjamin attended the New Horizon conference in Tehran, Iran. The event included a panel titled "Mossad’s Role in the 9/11 Coup d’Etat", and it hosted figures like Randy Short, who claims that "Boko Haram was created and funded by the CIA", and Wayne Madsen, ...

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... who has declared that 9/11 attacks were carried out by Mossad together with CIA and Saudi intelligence. The event also hosted German neo-Nazis Manuel Ochsenreiter & Kevin Barrett, and in 2018 one of the keynote speakers at New Horizon was one Aleksander Dugin.

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Benjamin later stated that she was "uncomfortable" but learned a lot.

In Mar 2019 while visiting Iran, CODEPINK, a "grassroots peace and social justice movement", voiced their support over Iran's developing missile technology because the US has military bases around Iran.

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People's Support Foundation (PSF), an NGO co-founded by Evans, has invested heavily on companies that cooperate with the Israeli Defense Force, including Israel Chemicals Ltd., Caterpillar, and Atlas Copco. These investments seem strange, when we consider Evans' ...

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..strong anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian stance. PSF has also funneled 700 000 USD into Tricontinental, which describes itself as an "Institute for Social Research". It's ran by Vijay Prashad, a gentleman seen here holding a sign that seems to support both China and Russia.

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When there's an actual, well-documented genocide of the Uyghur population going on in China, CODEPINK falls silent. In Jodie's case, this could be due to her personal relations. Her current partner is Neville Roy Singham, a tech entrepreneur who's been connected to the...

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...funneling of 65 million USD to "various entities connected with people who have defended the Chinese government and downplayed or denied documented human rights violations" of the Uyghurs. In Sep 2020, Evans was a speaker at far-left conference, calling for the US to...

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..."de-escalate" relations with China. Imagine being a "peace activist" & completely disregarding a genocide involving 2 million people.The genocide denial of CODEPINK key figures has made them popular interviewees on CCP-controlled propaganda outlets like The Global Times.
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Regarding Ukraine, both Evans and Benjamin cheer for Russia. By CODEPINK's logic, "If that money flow [to Ukraine] stops, the war will come to an end because both sides will sit down and negotiate." Their coordinator continued that "I don't think that the Russians...
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are that interested in war either." Yet there they are, invading.
In Nov 2022, Medea joined RT journalist Chris Hedges for an interview. By Hedges' view, the invasion itself is a war crime conducted by Putin, but Medea focuses more on the NATO's involvement and "meddling"..
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..in Ukraine. The interview is full of false and biased statements, including "Crimea is Russia", oppression against the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine,NATO expansion, calling the events in Donbas in 2014 a "civil war", and of course the "Ukrainian neo-Nazis" trope.
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Benjamin also refers to the controversial CBS report that only 30% of military aid arrives to the front. The article has been partially retracted and updated with the actual data. To summarize the interview, there's only little mention or talk about Russia, and she mostly..
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..focuses on the "far-right elements" and the coup-that-never-happened in Ukraine. Most of this stuff is also promoted in Benjamin's 2022 book "War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict", which again focuses on bashing NATO and the US, & even supports Russia's...
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... intervention in Syria. She also casts doubt on Russian-Syrian chemical attacks on civilians. A common narrative these days is the one where pro-Kremlin propagandists compare the establishment of Russian bases in Canada or in Mexico. The problem with this speculative...

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... scenario is that the US really hasn't had any major conflicts between its neighbors. These countries have had free trade agreements like NAFTA and USMCA since the 90s and there is a lot of immigration coming into the US from both Canada and Mexico.

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Hell, there's even speculation that the fake news blogger @aaronjmate married a former NPR journalist, Starlee Kine (@StarleeKine), to be able to work in the US, a country that he seems to despise so much.

Why don't people flock to Russia the same way they do to the US?

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In Feb 2023, Medea was planned to be one of the speakers at the "antiwar" event Rage Against the War Machine, but she stepped down after she was criticized by her CODEPINK fellows. This didn't stop her from attending the event & even joining the speaker's "VIP area".

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In my mind, there's no doubt whose side in the world stage both CODEPINK founders have taken: they systematically support the anti-West totalitarian and authoritarian regimes around the world. Putin, Xi, Maduro and Chávez are/were the good guys, and US is the actual enemy.

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We all know that you're not going to answer any questions, Jodie and Medea, but here's few anyway:

What are your thoughts on the Bucha massacre?
What about the mass graves in Izium?
Children's torture chambers in Kherson?
Why are you so afraid to talk about Putin?

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And what about the Uyghur genocide in Xinjian, China?
When will PSF stop investing in companies that support the Israeli Defense Force?

I know you're busy bootlicking various dictators, but please try and find the time to respond!

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Sources: newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-…

Ping: @areidross @mrubin1971 @LavrovsFELLA

Support my work: buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi
Past soups: vatniksoup.com

Related soups:
Antiwar coalition:
Russian narratives:

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Mar 29
In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.

1/7 A flight of French and Polish Rafale and F-16 fighter jets above a NATO flag during the opening of the exhibition “Powerful because we are united”, dedicated to the 19th anniversary of Lithuania’s 2004 accession to NATO (OTD 22 years ago), in the bastion of the Vilnius defensive wall on March 29, 2023 (OTD 3 years ago) in Vilnius, Lithuania. (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)
NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”.
2/7 Trump aides struggle with how to spend $500 billion more on military, Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/02/21/trump-hegseth-budget-military/
Trump calls for US military spending to rise more than 50% to $1.5tn https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy59kxl2xwzo
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To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.

3/7 Newsweek falsely claiming that the US pays 68% of NATO’s budget. The real number is 15%.

Elon Musk falsely claiming that the US pays for 2/3 of European defense. In another post he claimed it was 1/4. Both made-up numbers. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1870903805845598428 https://x.com/i/birdwatch/t/1870903805845598428
NATO has annual budgets and programs worth around EUR 4.6 billion in 2025 (representing 0.3% of total Allied defence spending), and up to EUR 5.3 billion in 2026. The US share for 2026-2027 is 15% of that: 0.8 billion. Source: Funding NATO https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/funding-nato
Read 7 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Mar 9
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.

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War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.

But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:

2/20
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Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.

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Read 20 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Mar 2
In this second (and possibly last) Basiji Soup, we’ll explore how the Islamic Republic of Iran has prepared for a conflict with the US and Israel. We won’t cover the military aspects, but another kind of war — information warfare.

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In the 1st Basiji Soup, we souped the Islamic Republic, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, its support of terrorism including Russia’s, its (one-sided?) relationship with Putin, and the mass protests against it that started two months ago:

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The Internet blackout has been crucial in allowing the regime to cover up its massacre of the protesters and especially the scope of it, making it difficult to assess the number of victims. They went to great lengths to jam Starlink, after having made its use illegal.

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Read 20 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Feb 25
In this 7th Debunk of the Day, we’ll expose the “Chickenhawk” fallacy. The chickenhawk accusation or the “go to the front!” imperative is a dishonest attempt to silence anyone supporting Ukraine by pushing them to go fight. A barely hidden death wish, as it’s always uttered…
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…with zero regard for who you are or what your personal circumstances might be — you could already be there, on your way there, a veteran, or unable to fight. More broadly, not everyone can or should be a soldier, just as not everyone can or should be a policeman or a nurse.
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Yet a society still needs those things to be done, and the fact that not everyone can go to medical school or fight crime does not mean that we have to surrender to invaders and criminals, nor that we cannot all have an opinion on healthcare.
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Read 5 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Feb 18
In this 6th Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about a complex and controversial topic: conscription. It is used by vatniks to attack Ukraine for drafting men to fight, while conveniently ignoring the alternative, including the horrors of conscription into the Russian army.
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Military obligations are a reality in many countries, from the most peaceful democracies to the most tyrannical dictatorships — unless you have “bone spurs”. Some argue it is a necessity for defense against invading armies, especially for small countries.
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Others point out that it goes against individual rights or that a professional army is better. And Zelenskyy might agree: he did in fact end conscription. But then a full-scale invasion happened: exactly why many nations, including the US, still keep some form of draft.
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Read 8 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Feb 13
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce the International Olympic Committee (IOC) @Olympics . It’s mostly known for organizing sporting events, and for being supposed to foster the Olympic ideal while actually submitting to dictators.

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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 in Paris by Pierre de Coubertin with a noble goal: promote peace through sports. Politics out, sportsmanship in: sounds great in theory.

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But in practice, the IOC has a long history of accommodating authoritarian regimes, always in the name of “neutrality,” “dialogue,” and “keeping sports separate from politics”, usually not in a particularly consistent or moral way.

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Read 16 tweets

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