Felicia Sonmez Stirred Up A Wokestorm At The Bezos Post

vanityfair | The Post’s guild responded Tuesday to the disputes playing out online. “Guild leadership has tried hard to run our union in a way that centers kindness, respect, fairness, and empathy while holding people and institutions we care about accountable. It’s our hope that all Washington Post employees keep that in mind when one of us makes a mistake and we are tasked with being part of the accountability process,” Katie Mettler, who has been cochair of the Post Guild for more than three years, told me. “In the last few years, hundreds of guild members—often led by women and people of color—have worked relentlessly and thoughtfully together to advocate for more fair and inclusive systems at the Post.” She added, “We are doing the work to hold all our institutions and ourselves to a high standard, and we will keep doing that work in ways big and small, public and private.”

In the past, Sonmez has had widespread support in the newsroom; hundreds of colleagues signed a letter on her behalf in 2020, after Baron suspended her for tweeting an article detailing a rape allegation against NBA legend Kobe Bryant shortly after his death. (A “newsroom revolt” is how this publication described it at the time.) Soon after the paper’s guild sent that letter to management, she was reinstated. But since then, there have been multiple instances of Sonmez calling out the paper publicly—and she has done so internally in response to a staff email as well.

About two weeks ago, Gold, the National editor, sent out an email urging colleagues to “take time to assess how you are doing” and “seek help if you need to talk to someone” in the wake of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde and the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. “Just a reminder that I was punished after I told an editor that I had to take a walk around the block after reading a difficult story,” Sonmez replied—to the entire National staff—according to emails reviewed by Vanity Fair. One reporter noted that Sonmez has said both publicly and privately that she’s still at the Post because she wants to help fix things. “Discouraging reporters at the Post from seeking help they need—that’s actively being part of the problem,” they told me. “This idea that she’s fighting for sexism and gender, while that might have felt true at some point, now just rings disingenuous, even for people who want to give her the benefit of the doubt.” 

On Thursday, after the initial publication of this article, Sonmez responded on Twitter: “I stand by what I wrote in that email. In 2018, I was punished after I told my editors I needed to take a walk around the block after reading a difficult story. Other colleagues have been punished for their trauma far more recently, but their stories aren’t mine to tell. I’m not ‘discouraging reporters at the Post from seeking help they need.’ Far from it. The Washington Post’s own actions are doing that. I care deeply about my colleagues, and I want this institution to provide support for all employees. Right now, the Post is a place where many of us fear our trauma will be used against us, based on the company’s past actions.”

The thrust of Sonmez’s critique over the past few days has been about how the Post holds different journalists to different standards, and what message that sends about the Post’s values. Sonmez tweeted Sunday that Del Real had “publicly attacked” her for highlighting Weigel’s sexist retweet, writing, “When women stand up for themselves, some people respond with even more vitriol.” In another tweet in the thread, she dismissed the idea that objecting to sexism was “clout chasing”—Del Real’s words—and tagged Buzbee and Gold to ask if the paper agreed with her. On Monday and Tuesday, she was once again urging management, via Twitter, to intervene. 

“Working at a huge news organization—the Post, The New York Times, CNN—is like living in a big city where there are always emergencies,” one staffer said. An embarrassing correction for the Styles desk might be a fire; a story the Times beats the Post on, a flood. “As a colleague, you probably should be trying to help fund the fire department or city services and make it a better place to live; at worst, you’re not paying your taxes,” they continued. “And then you have Felicia, who is essentially pouring gasoline on every fire and inviting people to watch.”

Sonmez responded Thursday on Twitter: “To borrow an analogy, working at a big news organization is like living in a big city. Emergencies like corrections come up every day. That’s normal. Are sexist or racist tweets ‘normal’ emergencies? Is the denigration of a class of people a ‘normal’ emergency? Or are those things a sign of deeper problems within a newsroom rife with unequal treatment?”

Pentagram Wishes It Had Massive Drone Swarming Capabilities

asiatimes  |  Hyten noted at the time that the first US Joint Warfare Concept (JWC) simply improved on the long-standing US strategy of gathering and using ubiquitous information to coordinate forces and structure battles. However, the JWC “failed miserably” in the October 2020 simulation, since it presumed information dominance in a simulation wherein US forces had to act without that advantage.

In response, Hyten espoused a new concept he termed “expanded maneuver”, which entails aggregating capabilities to provide significant effect, and disaggregating to survive any kind of threat.

This is enabled by AI, cloud computing and machine learning, and could take place in multiple domains under a single command structure, a concept known as Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), which is the US’ concept to connect sensors from all branches of the US military into a single network.

Former US Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work has stated publicly that in the most realistic Taiwan invasion simulations that the US can come up the US has lost to China with a score of 18-0. These defeats have shown that China’s A2/AD capabilities have evolved to the point that the US can no longer expect to quickly achieve air, space or maritime superiority.

China is not far behind in deploying autonomous drone swarms against US, Taiwanese and allied forces.  Following missile strikes to destroy Taiwan’s command and control nodes and offensive cyber operations to degrade Taiwan’s space-based systems, China may launch its own drone swarms to knock out Taiwan’s air defenses, going against the latter’s air defense radars and missile batteries.

The potential use of drone swarms may fuel an AI arms race between major military powers. Russia, China and the US are already seeking to outdo each other in creating new algorithms and gaining access to critical technologies for autonomous AI, such as high-end microchips.

Increasingly capable AI coupled with the proliferation of drone swarms may thus lead to “flash wars,” wherein autonomous weapons systems react against each other in an uncontrolled chain reaction of escalation.

Nina Jankowicz Worked For CIA/Zelensky Now Defended By Taylor Lorenz

What, specifically, is the "DHS's work" when it comes to disinformation? Do they decide what is and is not disinformation? Do they use specific powers to "combat" it? It's not just the new Board itself that is unclear. DHS's entire role in all of this is unclear - and creepy. https://t.co/0PJGcTlqul

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 18, 2022

politico  |  President Zelensky has made ending the war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region—which was instigated and is sustained by Russia and has claimed 13,000 lives and counting—his administration’s top priority. He has made some progress toward that goal, overseeing a historic prisoner swap with Russia that saw one of Ukraine’s most respected filmmakers as well as 24 sailors captured last November returned home. According to information from the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, fewer civilians have been killed in the conflict this year than any year previously. A July cease-fire at the contact line seems to be holding firmer than its previous incarnations.

For Zelensky, Trump could be the key to ending the war in the Donbas. The American president has made his admiration for and cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin no secret. Likewise, Trump’s views about Ukraine—ambivalence about the status of Crimea, which Russia illegally seized in 2014, and support for ending the sanctions placed on Russia in response to its activities in Ukraine—make Ukrainians nervous. A cordial relationship between Trump and Zelensky could give Trump insight into Ukraine’s perspective and give Ukraine leverage it did not enjoy under former President Petro Poroshenko, who struggled to connect with the U.S. leader.

Ukraine does not have the luxury to pick and choose its international partners, something I learned when I served as an adviser to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in 2016 and 2017 under the auspices of a Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship. Ukraine relies on its larger, richer allies as it attempts to shed its post-Soviet legacy. The United States—its largest and richest ally—provides not only for the now-famous military aid package, but hundreds of millions of dollars in civilian aid, supporting projects in just about every sector. The containment of the Chernobyl nuclear site, fighting HIV/AIDS, building cybersecurity capabilities, and creating government bodies that are more responsive to citizens are just a few of the projects that U.S assistance makes possible. Continued reform, including the pursuit of energy independence from Russia and the cleanup of the court system, the biggest obstacle to Ukrainian anti-corruption efforts, would be imperiled without this assistance. The United States also plays a key role in corralling European partners to uphold their own sanctions on Russia and to continue to support Ukraine as it walks the long and often bumpy road of democratic reform.

There are reasons to believe Zelensky’s slippery answers to President Trump’s repeated requests that he investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter were deliberate. According to congressional staff who recently visited Ukraine and spoke with senior Ukrainian officials, the Zelensky administration was upset at feeling that it was being used and didn’t want to be a pawn in America’s domestic political machinations. In the phone call and at the meeting of the two presidents Wednesday at the U.N. General Assembly, Zelensky was careful not to let the name Biden cross his lips. Instead, Zelensky says he will “look into the situation” related to Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat, more generally. At the U.N., Zelensky also mentioned a few of the other important cases he hoped his new prosecutor would investigate in addition to Burisma, and maintained that he didn’t want to be dragged into American politics. 

Nina Jankowicz, who served as a Fulbright fellow, works in a press room at Volodymyr Zelensky's campaign headquarters in 2019 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Jankowicz was recently named the head of the Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board.

WaPo  | On the morning of April 27, the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the first Disinformation Governance Board with the stated goal to “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security.” The Biden administration tapped Nina Jankowicz, a well-known figure in the field of fighting disinformation and extremism, as the board’s executive director.

In naming the 33-year-old Jankowicz to run the newly created board, the administration chose someone with extensive experience in the field of disinformation, which has emerged as an urgent and important issue. The author of the books “How to Be a Woman Online” and “How to Lose the Information War,” her career also featured stints at multiple nonpartisan think tanks and nonprofits and included work that focused on strengthening democratic institutions. Within the small community of disinformation researchers, her work was well-regarded.

But within hours of news of her appointment, Jankowicz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating. The board itself and DHS received criticism for both its somewhat ominous name and scant details of specific mission (Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said it “could have done a better job of communicating what it is and what it isn’t”), but Jankowicz was on the receiving end of the harshest attacks, with her role mischaracterized as she became a primary target on the right-wing Internet. She has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral.

Pure Malarky Reported In The WaPo Yesterday...,

WaPo | Ending one of the most dramatic battles of the Ukraine war, hundreds of Ukrainian fighters, many seriously wounded, gave up their weeks-long defense of a besieged steel plant in the strategic port city of Mariupol on Monday and were taken to Russian-controlled territory, while hundreds more remained trapped in the plant Tuesday as delicate negotiations continued.

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“Ukraine needs Ukrainian heroes alive,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address, as the delicate operation took place. “We hope that we will be able to save the lives of our guys. Among them are the seriously wounded. They are being provided with medical aid.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry portrayed the exit of 264 Ukrainian soldiers from the Azovstal steel plant as a surrender and a Russian victory. To Ukrainian officials, the fighters were heroes whose desperate last stand changed the course of the war, by tying up Russian forces for weeks in the battle for Mariupol, preventing them from sweeping across southern Ukraine.

Russia won effective control of Mariupol weeks ago, securing a crucial land bridge from Russia to Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula it annexed in 2014. But fate of fighters trapped in tunnels under the steel plant became a desperate symbol of Ukrainians’ will to fight and die for their land, a key factor in Ukraine’s military successes against Russia’s larger, more powerful army.

Mariupol’s Azovstal Iron and Steel Works and its network of underground tunnels served as a shelter and final foothold for hundreds of Ukrainian fighters, including many from the controversial far-right Azov Regiment, as well as trapped civilians.

They were holed up in the facility for weeks under an intense Russian assault, before all women, children and elderly people were evacuated under an agreement earlier this month. Those who made it to safety described a brutal siege in cold and fetid bunkers, where they lived without sunlight as food and water supplies dwindled.

Retired Chief Petty Officer BooBoo Pretending To Play Soldier In Ukraine...,

consortiumnews  |  It was — literally — a made-for-television moment. A former U.S. Navy chief petty officer turned cable news pundit, dressed in a fresh out-of-the-box camouflage uniform replete with body armor and magazine pouches, wearing matching camouflage helmet and gloves, and cradling an automatic rifle, stared into the camera and announced “I am here to help this country [Ukraine] fight what is essentially a war of extermination.”

With a Ukrainian flag on his left shoulder, and a U.S. flag emblazoned on his body armor, the man, Malcolm Nance, declared that “This is an existential war, and Russia has brought it to these people and is mass murdering civilians.”

A day before, Nance had tweeted a black-and-white photograph of himself, similarly clad, announcing “I’m DONE talking.”

Nance spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy as a cryptologic technician, interpretive (CTI), specializing in the Arabic language, and has turned his career into a thing of legend, so much so that when he speaks of his journey from news desk to Ukraine, it almost sounds convincing.

“Ukraine announced that there was an international force on Feb. 27,” Nance told one reporter,

“and I started looking into it on Feb. 28 … I called the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, and I said: ‘Hey, I want an appointment.’ They were a little slow, so I just went down there and put in my application. The guy asked if I had combat experience and I said ‘Yep.’ Then he looked at my application and said, ‘You’re on the team.’”

Just like that.

But the hype doesn’t match the reality. Although he sports a combat action ribbon on the lapel of his coat jacket (when not attired in full combat regalia), Nance has never actually participated in ground combat operations, according to a serviceman who served with him. His “combat” experience was limited to providing linguistic support onboard a U.S. Navy ship off the coast of Beirut in 1983. Important work, but not combat.

Despite this resume enhancement, Nance was — according to Nance — a natural for recruitment by Ukraine. In the days before the Russian invasion, Nance was in Ukraine, reporting for MSNBC.

But being Malcolm Nance, he claimed to be doing so much more. “I spent a month in Ukraine,” Nance recalled, “driving around, mapping out the Russian order of battle, driving up and down the highways and analyzing where the invasion routes would come and go. So I knew the country backward and forwards by the time of the invasion.”

(It might be time to remind the reader that Nance’s Navy specialism in Arabic gave him neither the training nor the experience to conduct the kind of battlefield intelligence preparation that he described.)

The Ukrainians know this. So why would they take on a 61-year old Arabic linguist whose physical presence on any battlefield would be seen as a detriment?

 

There Is A Pattern Here: And Clinton - Despite Her Efforts - Only Served To Point It Out In Her Interview...,

I am insufficiently informed as to how the Russian internal economy works at this point to fully parse Hitlery's assertions.  But, even without that information it is possible to infer some things.

Resource economies are not unusual among developing nations, and Russia has had less than thirty years to date in order to redevelop and modernize its’ infrastructure. Why would anyone expect a fully industrialized economy without the financial basis upon which to build one? Perhaps those leftist economists have expected too much in the face of the kinds of sanctions regimes leveled upon them to prevent just such an economy as they are claiming he is unwilling to create? In light of the present situation, they may now be more forgiving of having invested in guns rather than butter. It is they, after all, who are possessed of hypersonic weapons that we have no defense from.

Investments of any sort are subject to a cost benefit analysis; industrialization costs money, and one might forgive them for declining what the IMF has to offer in view of what has been required of those who take them up on their loans in the past. That may have rendered full integration into the Western economy on their terms unwise in the face of the kinds of hostility that have faced them since the fall of the Soviet Union. Slower growth appears to have benefited them, and Putin appears to have tamed his oligarch problem in the process.

The Russian economy that evolved under Putin from the basket case that US shock therapy left is now sufficiently diversified to handle all of the shocks that the west has leveled upon it. That would imply that it is not being handled in such a way as to sow chaos and mine it for the benefit of oligarchs, as it was initially designed to do by Larry Summers’ Harvard boys. 

Present day Ukraine would be a perfect example of how that paradigm works out; Kolomoisky is clearly not a Putin, and it was not Russia that Bidens’, Kerrys’, Pelosi’s, Clinton’s and Romney’s kids were invested in. It sounded like Clinton was trying to make that case, but it has been her own cadre of political wrecking balls that have left the kinds of devastation which would normally result from such actions. If there is a “mean neighbor” out there trying to strip Ukraine of its’ assets, one might first look at the efforts made on behalf of Shell and Monsanto to do precisely that in 2014 rather than the Gazprom that has done yeoman’s work in stabilizing Russia’s foreign exchange.

“…just like boosting defense contractor revenues was not the primary reason for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.” 

It was a nice bonus, but Iraq, Libya, Iran and Venezuela were never in a position to eliminate the petro-dollar/reserve currency as handily as Russia presently is. Nevertheless, there appear to be a lot of bankers who have found other nations gold and foreign reserves to be irresistible. The proposed playbook WRT Russia appears to be identical. Russia has not featured the cast of characters that we routinely find pirating them away while they are common as dirt here in our own failing Monopoly board paradigm. 

The irony is that Hillary is like a broken clock in that clip.

First, one of the consistent critiques of the Putin regime by Russian leftists is that his government has spent the past twenty years or so transitioning to a so-called “semi-peripheral, resource-based” economy. That is – export lower-end goods, such as natural resources and low-processed materials, and import higher-end products. [E.g. export raw material for fertilizer, import finished fertilizer.] Then take the euro and dollar surplus thus received, and instead of investing it internally (as would have been done in the Soviet era) export it back to the West both as oligarchic wealth and as central bank deposits abroad, thus also creating a shortage of euros and dollars internally and artificially depressing the exchange rate (further inflating private fortunes – in rubles). Komolov has done multiple presentations and papers on this, and other left-wing or left-leaning economists have as well.

So in a sense, yes, the Putin regime, instead of building up the internal economy and industry, either dismantled it or let it go fallow so as to pour everything into this semi-peripheral scheme. But that was not a “failure” of policy – it was the policy, designed to benefit specific groups. Putin, thus, from the standpoint of the socio-economic elites that back him, has been an incredibly successful president. One might even call him the Russian Obama or some such, if framed in those terms.
This, incidentally, is exactly how a bourgeois republic of any kind is supposed to work, after adjusting for local nuances.

Secondly, she notes that “Putin now wants to take what Ukraine has”. Well, to be sure, when the war is finally over, or at least when the situation is stabilised, then yes, one would fully expect the oligarchs close to the government to engage in vigorous redistribution of formerly Ukrainian assets (land, port facilities, mines, whatever), not to mention in competing for fat reconstruction contracts. This was not the primary reason for going to war, of course, just like boosting defence contractor revenues was not the primary reason for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. But it is a nice bonus, and again, exactly the way imperialism (as in, highest form of capitalism) is supposed to function. Incidentally, she also very quickly elides when it comes to listing what is it exactly that Ukraine “has” that Putin “wants – because Ukraine, too, had downshifted into a peripheral-type resource-export economy over the past three decades, so essentially Russia is not getting any new industry or technology or whatnot; Russia is getting more of the same resources, plus an infusion of cheap labour, plus, of course, some security enhancements offset by countervailing nonsense happening elsewhere such as Finland wishing to join NATO.

[For fun, look up the length of the Finnish-Russian land border and then consider that this is the stretch that NATO will now have to “defend” against “Russian aggression”…]

Ukrainians In The Russian Meat Grinder: Attack, Dig-In, Then DIE...,

readingjunkie | Here’s the thing, as correctly observed by CNN, the Ukrainian strategy of holing up in densely populated cities and using human shields is very effective. There is also enough passive and sometimes even active loyalty from the civilian population for this strategy to work without significant backlash. So why are Ukrainians suddenly doing the opposite? Why not get out of the kill zone in the Donets basin and retreat to more defensible positions? Furthermore, why is the West enabling this strategy by funneling billions of dollars of equipment into a meat grinder where most of it is just destroyed immediately? Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to retreat, even if this means abandoning their equipment?

Refusing to capitulate to Russia is morally indefensible, but from a pragmatic point of view, it would make sense, if there was a chance of the situation improving. If the Ukrainian army were to escape from Donbass, that would presumably give the Zelensky government more bargaining power at the negotiation table. But instead they’re sitting in their fortifications and being destroyed wholesale.

Without artillery support in good quantity the Ukrainian military has no chance to hold the line and to stop Russian moves. Any unit which attempts is hold the line will simply be mauled by Russian artillery until it is no longer able to fight. That is happening now. As the Ukrainians have orders not to leave or move their defense lines they either have to give up or die defending them.

By giving ‘hold the line’ orders the Ukrainian leadership is contributing to the Russian demilitarization of the Ukraine.

It is the ‘west’ that is preventing Zelensky from suing for peace.

The ‘west’ has fallen for its own propaganda. It believes that the Russian troops near Kiev were defeated by Ukrainian forces. In reality they retreated in good order after the diversion they constituted was no longer needed. The ‘western’ fairytale that they were ‘defeated’ gave hope that Russia could be ‘weakened’, as the U.S. Secretary of State said.

The war will hardly ‘weaken’ Russia. But the war will destroy the Ukrainian military and many, many of its men.

So no matter which way you look at this situation, it seems unsustainable, both for Ukraine and for NATO. While the writers at Moon of Alabama are probably correct that there is downward pressure on Kiev to keep their forces committed in Donbass, there is another possible explanation. Here’s my theory on what is happening.

Russia is using their contract soldiers, and spent years rotating them all through large-scale training exercises, including the exercise they just finished in February. Thanks to this, they rolled into this war with a warm start, as opposed to a cold one. They can perform adequately on a strategic and operational level. Tactical inadequacies in the face of a real-life enemy could be quickly corrected.

As for the Ukrainian side, it looks like they are a NATO-quality force rebuilt from the ground up after their serious failures in 2014-15. As individuals and small units, they can hold their own against their Russian and often win, especially with the added advantage of being on the defensive. The problem is that so far they have never demonstrated the ability to push back Russian forces and retake ground. And no, recapturing terrain that the enemy voluntarily abandoned doesn’t count. Ukrainians recapturing suburbs around Kiev was a victory in the same sense as water filling a bowl. Wars are won by shaping the battlefield to your advantage and forcing the enemy to conform to it. Flowing into channels the enemy created for you is the opposite of winning.

Eight years was enough time to build a huge army almost from scratch, but it was not enough time to properly train them to function at anything higher than a battalion level, and I think we are seeing that deficiency play out in Donbass. In previous months they couldn’t maneuver to exploit Russian mistakes and tactical defeats, and now they can’t maneuver to escape destruction. Aside from losing a huge number of their vehicles, they don’t have the doctrine and cohesion to move 40-100 thousand men to safety.

The logistical complexity of uprooting and moving that many people is enormous and there is also the morale factor. Standing your ground is one thing, but if these soldiers moved westward in a clear retreat, there would be an overwhelming urge to desert and go home, and that’s what many of them would probably do.

Ukrainians can’t capitulate, they can’t retreat, so all they can do is stay where they are and die. Rather than conserve their resources, Kiev is doing the opposite and sending a continuous stream of additional men and equipment to be destroyed in the Donbass pocket.

BidenCorp® - The Russia Problem Has Never Been About Human Rights Or Democracy

thepostil  |  Since 2007, Putin was systematically demonized in the West. Whether or not he is a “dictator” Is a matter of discussion; but it is worth noting that his approval rate in Russia never fell below 59 % in the last 20 years. I take my figures from the Levada Center, which is labeled as “foreign agent” in Russia, and hence doesn’t reflect the Kremlin’s views. It is also interesting to see that in France, some of the most influential so-called “experts” on Russia are in fact working for the British MI-6’s “Integrity Initiative.”

Third, in the West, there is a sense that you can do whatever you want if it is in the name of western values. This is why the Russian offensive in Ukraine is passionately sanctioned, while FUKUS (France, UK, US) wars get strong political support, even if they are notoriously based on lies. “Do what I say, not what I do!” One could ask what makes the conflict in Ukraine worse than other wars. In fact, each new sanction we apply to Russia highlights the sanctions we haven’t applied earlier to the US, the UK or France.

The purpose of this incredible polarization is to prevent any dialogue or negotiation with Russia. We are back to what happened in 1914, just before the start of WWI…

TP: What will Russia gain or lose with this involvement in the Ukraine (which is likely to be long-term)? Russia is facing a conflict on “two fronts,” it would seem: a military one and an economic one (with the endless sanctions and “canceling” of Russia).

JB: With the end of the Cold War, Russia expected being able to develop closer relations with its Western neighbors. It even considered joining NATO. But the US resisted every attempt of rapprochement. NATO structure does not allow for the coexistence of two nuclear superpowers. The US wanted to keep its supremacy.

Since 2002, the quality of the relations with Russia decayed slowly, but steadily. It reached a first negative “peak” in 2014 after the Maidan coup. The sanctions have become US and EU primary foreign policy tool. The Western narrative of a Russian intervention in Ukraine got traction, although it was never substantiated. Since 2014, I haven’t met any intelligence professional who could confirm any Russian military presence in the Donbass. In fact, Crimea became the main “evidence” of Russian “intervention.” Of course, Western historians ignore superbly that Crimea was separated from Ukraine by referendum in January 1990, six months before Ukrainian independence and under Soviet rule. In fact, it’s Ukraine that illegally annexed Crimea in 1995. Yet, western countries sanctioned Russia for that…

Since 2014 sanctions severely affected east-west relations. After the signature of the Minsk Agreements in September 2014 and February 2015, the West—namely France, Germany as guarantors for Ukraine, and the US—made no effort whatsoever to make Kiev comply, despite repeated requests from Moscow.

Russia’s perception is that whatever it will do, it will face an irrational response from the West. This is why, in February 2022, Vladimir Putin realized he would gain nothing in doing nothing. If you take into account his mounting approval rate in the country, the resilience of the Russian economy after the sanctions, the loss of trust in the US dollar, the threatening inflation in the West, the consolidation of the Moscow-Beijing axis with the support of India (which the US has failed to keep in the “Quad”), Putin’s calculation was unfortunately not wrong.

Regardless of what Russia does, US and western strategy is to weaken it. From that point on, Russia has no real stake in its relations with us. Again, the US objective is not to have a “better” Ukraine or a “better” Russia, but a weaker Russia. But it also shows that the United States is not able to rise higher than Russia and that the only way to overcome it is to weaken it. This should ring an alarm bell in our countries…

TP: You have written a very interesting book on Putin. Please tell us a little about it.

JB: In fact, I started my book in October 2021, after a show on French state TV about Vladimir Putin. I am definitely not an admirer of Vladimir Putin, nor of any Western leader, by the way. But the so-called experts had so little understanding of Russia, international security and even of simple plain facts, that I decided to write a book. Later, as the situation around Ukraine developed, I adjusted my approach to cover this mounting conflict.
The idea was definitely not to relay Russian propaganda. In fact, my book is based exclusively on western sources, official reports, declassified intelligence reports, Ukrainian official medias, and reports provided by the Russian opposition. The approach was to demonstrate that we can have a sound and factual alternative understanding of the situation just with accessible information and without relying on what we call “Russian propaganda.”

The underlying thinking is that we can only achieve peace if we have a more balanced view of the situation. To achieve this, we have to go back to the facts. Now, these facts exist and are abundantly available and accessible. The problem is that some individuals make every effort to prevent this and tend to hide the facts that disturb them. This is exemplified by some so-called journalist who dubbed me “The spy who loved Putin!” This is the kind of “journalists” who live from stirring tensions and extremism. All figures and data provided by our media about the conflict come from Ukraine, and those coming from Russia are automatically dismissed as propaganda. My view is that both are propaganda. But as soon as you come up with western data that do not fit into the mainstream narrative, you have extremists claiming you “love Putin.”

Our media are so worried about finding rationality in Putin’s actions that they turn a blind eye to the crimes committed by Ukraine, thus generating a feeling of impunity for which Ukrainians are paying the price. This is the case of the attack on civilians by a missile in Kramatorsk—we no longer talk about it because the responsibility of Ukraine is very likely, but this means that the Ukrainians could do it again with impunity.

On the contrary, my book aims at reducing the current hysteria that prevent any political solution. I do not want to deny the Ukrainians the right to resist the invasion with arms. If I were Ukrainian, I would probably take the arms to defend my land. The issue here is that it must be their decision. The role of the international community should not be to add fuel to the fire by supplying arms but to promote a negotiated solution.

To move in this direction, we must make the conflict dispassionate and bring it back into the realm of rationality. In any conflict the problems come from both sides; but here, strangely, our media show us that they all come from one side only. This is obviously not true; and, in the end, it is the Ukrainian people who pay the price of our policy against Vladimir Putin.

TP: Why is Putin hated so much by the Western elite?

JB: Putin became Western elite’s “bête noire” in 2007 with his famous speech in Munich. Until then, Russia had only moderately reacted to NATO expansion. But as the US withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002 and started negotiations with some East European countries to deploy anti-ballistic missiles, Russia felt the heat and Putin virulently criticized the US and NATO.

This was the start of a relentless effort to demonize Vladimir Putin and to weaken Russia. The problem was definitely not human rights or democracy, but the fact that Putin dared to challenge the western approach. The Russians have in common with the Swiss the fact that they are very legalistic. They try to strictly follow the rules of international law. They tend to follow “law-based International order.” Of course, this is not the image we have, because we are used to hiding certain facts. Crimea is a case in point.

In the West, since the early 2000s, the US has started to impose a “rules-based international order.” As an example, although the US officially recognizes that there is only one China and that Taiwan is only a part of it, it maintains a military presence on the island and supplies weapons. Imagine if China would supply weapons to Hawaii (which was illegally annexed in the 19th century)!

What the West is promoting is an international order based on the “law of the strongest.” As long as the US was the sole superpower, everything was fine. But as soon as China and Russia started to emerge as world powers, the US tried to contain them. This is exactly what Joe Biden said in March 2021, shortly after taking office: “The rest of the world is closing in and closing in fast. We can’t allow this to continue.”

As Henry Kissinger said in the Washington Post: “For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” This is why I felt we need to have a more factual approach to this conflict.

TP: Do you know who was involved and when it was decided by the US and NATO that regime change in Russia was a primary geopolitical objective?

JB: I think everything started in the early 2000s. I am not sure the objective was a regime change in Moscow, but it was certainly to contain Russia. This is what we have witnessed since then. The 2014 events in Kiev have boosted US efforts.

These were clearly defined in 2019, in two publications of the RAND Corporation [James Dobbins, Raphael S. Cohen, Nathan Chandler, Bryan Frederick, Edward Geist, Paul DeLuca, Forrest E. Morgan, Howard J. Shatz, Brent Williams, “Extending Russia : Competing from Advantageous Ground,” RAND Corporation, 2019; James Dobbins & al., “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia,” RAND Corporation, (Doc Nr. RB-10014-A), 2019]. .This has nothing to do with the rule of law, democracy or human rights, but only with maintaining US supremacy in the world. In other words, nobody cares about Ukraine. This is why the international community (that is, Western countries) make every effort to prolong the conflict.

Since 2014, this is exactly what happened. Everything the West did was to fulfill US strategic objectives.

BidenCorp® - What Has Become Of India Chastiser And Russia Sanctions Architect Daleep Singh?

Firstpost |  The first event was the ‘sudden departure from the scene’ of US Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh, who was the architect of the brutal sanctions imposed on Russia. Such an apt instance of a pithy phrase trademarked by a TV journalist named Karan Thapar about Narendra Modi: A Freudian slip that confirmed what we suspected was Thapar’s deep desire.

The second event is the God-awful keening and weeping by the lunatic-fringe-Left and Deep State over the proposed purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk. One would have thought that the heavens were, literally, falling. It’s merely that one rather popular social media site is being taken over by someone who claims he is fed up with their partisan censorship. Funny, these are the same people who ‘cancelled’ Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

I must admit to a certain prejudice against Daleep Singh for his hatchet-job in India, where he threatened grave but unnamed “consequences” if India didn’t abjectly toe the US line on sanctions. In the event, in one of those “the dog it was that died” scenarios that show how Karma loves a good joke, it was Singh who lost his job, and the Russian rouble is at levels above where it was before his supposedly crippling sanctions were imposed.

I figure I am permitted schadenfreude for a moment about Singh, but then reality strikes. (In truth, you can’t blame him alone: There are tons of Indian-origin people in the US who work assiduously against India’s interests, such as Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Vijay Prashad, Biju Mathews, Sunitha Viswanathan, et al). But the real story is how badly his sanctions have fared.

Despite the coercive pressure on India to not buy Russian oil, which India has largely adhered to, at significant cost because the Russians are willing to give large discounts, it turns out that the US itself has bought more Russian oil than India since the war began. Not to speak of massive EU oil and gas purchases, and most recently Poland and Hungary agreed to pay in roubles. So the gamble has failed, but EU energy security has been damaged.

In fact, the entire gamut of Western actions could be seen as counter-productive. The only cohort that has benefited at all is the Deep State, especially the Military Industrial Complex in the US, which needs a good little war somewhere to support its raison d’etre and to make reliable profits. The $80 billion of arms left behind in Afghanistan is water under the bridge (the US taxpayer has already paid for it), and nobody cares where it ends up (probably in India).

The sanctions on Russia are not quite so crippling because the EU needs Russian gas, if it is to keep the factories humming. For instance, the German economy may grind to a halt if the Russians turn off the taps. There is the irony that all the climate-change noise has eviscerated alternatives such as coal and nuclear, and there simply isn’t enough renewable energy available to compensate. This is what happens when you outsource policy to teen-aged Greta Thunberg.

But there are other, longer-term consequences for the US as well. The nascent rouble trade and even the declaration that the rouble will be backed by gold (although I am not sure how practicable that is) suggests that there will be a bifurcation of the global financial system, which has long dominated by the US dollar. For instance, China would just love it if more and more trade happened in the renminbi/yuan.

The threat of confiscation of national forex reserves held in the US is also non-trivial. The US recently did this with Afghanistan’s reserves, arbitrarily allocating a significant portion of it to the families of the victims of 9/11. India has the majority of its gold reserves (some 400 tons out of a total of 700) held in the UK and at the Bank of International Settlements. Are these safe?

Technical solutions may come to the rescue of the rouble which is now out of the SWIFT inter-bank transfer system. There was a news item that Russian banks have tied up with China’s UPI-like digital payments infrastructure. So why not with UPI, if the downside risks are judged worthwhile by the Indian government? It is possible to visualise a fragmented financial system, with increasing transaction costs, where the US dollar is only primus inter pares.

This may affect the US economy and the lifestyle of Americans. There are several issues: One is that the US has become the largest debtor nation in the world, and has been pretty much living beyond its means. For instance, China is sending its massive savings, along with its plethora of products, to the US, and this cannot go on forever. The effects of the deindustrialisation of America are being exacerbated by the war.

As Brahma Chellaney puts it, “For China, Biden’s coming to power has been the gift that keeps on giving. US pressure on it has eased. China’s trade surplus with the US jumped 21.5 per cent in 2021 over a year earlier to $396.6 billion, and now makes up 58.6 per cent of China’s total trade surplus.”

American reliability is also in question. Quoting the South China Morning Post, here’s Chellaney again: “Team Biden, even at the risk of leaving Taiwan vulnerable to a Chinese amphibious invasion, informs Taipei that the delivery of an important artillery system would be delayed until 2026 at the earliest. Biden has prioritised Ukraine over Taiwan’s defence.”

Is Unselfconscious Absurdity A Symptom Of Senile Dementia?

NYPost |  President Biden on Friday celebrated Earth Day in Seattle with a rambling speech vowing to make “every vehicle” in the military “climate-friendly” while admitting his personal fleet includes a prized Corvette that “does nothing but pollute.”

Biden didn’t offer specifics while telling local Democrats in a park that he intends to cut the emissions of war machines like tanks, helicopters and fighter jets.

“I’m going to start the process where every vehicle in the United States military — every vehicle is going to be climate-friendly. Every vehicle. No, I mean it. We’re spending billions of dollars to do it,” Biden said.

The president, who uses large amounts of fossil fuels for regular weekend trips home to Delaware, admitted he’s had a hard time practicing what he is preaching.

“I’m an automobile buff. I have a ’68 Corvette that does nothing but pollute the air. But I don’t drive it very much,” Biden joked, appearing to refer to his 1967 Corvette Stingray.

The gaffe-prone president’s week began with an aide dressed as an Easter bunny intervening to stop him from talking to reporters, but no staffers stepped in as he proceeded to use baby-talk to imitate a child’s plea for him to”pwomise” him to “pwease” protect the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.

UkroNazi Weynch - Cut The Nonsense And Go Fix Me A Sandwich....,

RT  |  Russia’s Investigative Committee launched a criminal probe on Monday over a Ukrainian social media advertisement, which called for violence against Russian soldiers. The advertisement, shot in a distinctive style resembling propaganda videos by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists, features the mock execution of a Russian soldier.

The controversial post emerged on social media over the weekend, sparking outrage in Russia. It features a woman, apparently portraying Ukraine, delivering a hateful speech against Russians with a ‘prisoner’ in clothes resembling the Russian military uniform kneeling by her side. The actress accuses Russian “pigs” of mocking, oppressing and killing Ukrainians for a long time and states that the situation has now changed.

“Something terrible woke up the peace-loving and grain-growing nation. Something that has been dormant for centuries in the bowels of the Dneper banks. Primordial and antique Ukrainian god. And now we’re reaping a bloody harvest. Death awaits you all,” the actress states, ‘slitting’ the throat of the ‘prisoner’ with a sickle.

The woman also vowed revenge for the northwestern Kiev suburb of Bucha, as well as for other Ukrainian towns and cities that allegedly suffered at the hands of Russian troops. Ukraine accused the Russian military of massacring civilians in Bucha early in April after troops withdrew from the area. Moscow denied any involvement in the deaths, insisting the whole Bucha affair was a staged “provocation” by Kiev to frame the country’s military.

The woman who appears in the video has been identified as Andrianna Kurilets, a small-time professional actress from the western Ukrainian city of Lvov. The questionable ‘fame’ and media attention, however, have apparently done little for the actress, as she has deleted her social media profiles amid the fallout from the ad’s premiere.

Apart from the outrage online, the role also prompted a criminal probe by Russia’s Investigative Committee. The actress voiced “calls for violence against officers of the Russian Armed Forces,” the committee said in a statement on Monday.

 

Tightassed Little Cap Must Be Cutting Off The Flow Of BloodTo Ali Velshi's Conehead....,

caitlinjohnstone  |  In an appearance on the MSNBC show Velshi, The Modern War Institute’s John Spencer explicitly advocated direct US military conflict with Russia due to allegations of war crimes in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

“I’m ready to commit at this moment — unlike I was before this day — to put people in direct contact with Russia, to stop Russia,” Spencer said. “Call it peacekeeping. Call it what you will. We have to do more than provide weapons. And by ‘we,’ I mean the United States. Yes, we’ll do it as a coalition with lots of other people, but we are the example. So put boots on the ground, send weapons directly at Russia.”

Notice the bizarre verbal gymnastics being used by Spencer to obfuscate the fact that he is advocating a hot war with a nuclear superpower: “put people in direct contact with Russia,” “send weapons directly at Russia”. Who talks like that? He’s calling for the US military to fire upon the Russian military, he’s just saying it really weird.

To be clear this isn’t just some arms industry-funded think tanker saying this; The Modern War Institute is part of the Department of Military Instruction for the United States Military Academy, which is operated directly by the Pentagon.

Asked by the show’s host Ali Velshi what he thought of warnings that direct military confrontation with Russia could lead to nuclear war, Spencer said, “It is a huge risk, I understand that. But today is different.”

Velshi himself was much more to the point than his guest, both online and on social media.

“We are past the point of sanctions and strongly-worded condemnations and the seizing of oligarchs’ megayachts,” Velshi told his MSNBC audience. “If this is not the kind of moment that the United Nations and NATO and the UN and the G-20 and the Council of Europe and the G-7 were made for, what was the point of these alliances if not to stop this? The world cannot sit by as Vladimir Putin continues this reign of terror.”

“The turning point for the west and NATO will come when the sun rises over Kyiv on Sunday, and the war crimes against civilian non-combatants becomes visible to all,” Velshi said on Twitter over the weekend. “There is no more time for prevarication. If ‘never again’ means anything, then this is the time to act.”

Asked what specifically he meant by this, Velshi clarified that he was advocating “Direct military involvement.”

“Lines have been crossed and war crimes have been committed by Putin that make direct military intervention something NATO now must seriously consider,” Velshi added.

Incapacitated, Incompetent, Impotent - The Reasons, The Reasons That We're Here...,

johnhelmer  |  In the history of the world wars, or the last century of wars in Europe, or the wars the US has waged since 1945, it has never happened that what the President of the US says, and what the head of the front-line country which the US is fighting to defend says, have mattered less than what Joseph Biden and Vladimir Zelensky say now.

The reason is that no US president running a war has ever been as incapacitated in command and control as Biden, nor as impotent among his own officials as Zelensky. Rule by crock and rule by stooge aren’t rule at all.

US public opinion polls measuring Biden’s job approval rating demonstrate that most American voters already realize this. The growing spread between American voters’ disapproval and approval of Biden’s performance since the Russian operation began on February 24 indicates also that this understanding is growing.

But this isn’t anti-war sentiment, let alone an American stop-the-war movement. At present US officials headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken aim to fight the war to the capitulation or destruction of Russia; they will fight to the last Ukrainian to achieve this goal; they will negotiate no end-of-war terms;  they are not influenced or constrained by American public opinion or votes. Not yet.

Zelensky has declared he is in favour of negotiations to end the war; he has declared he is opposed to the terms which President Vladimir Putin and the Russian leadership have made clear, long before the war began and ever since, were the casus belli, the objectives for which they are fighting. The reason Zelensky regularly contradicts himself is that his power – his survival in office – depends on the Galician faction headquartered around Lvov, whose  only occupation is permanent warfighting, and whose only income flows from the US and the NATO alliance. They are as committed as Blinken to operating the Ukraine as a gun platform targeted at Russia; the Galicians will destroy all of eastern Ukraine as they withdraw, in order to keep firing. The Germans thought and did as much on the same battlefields eighty years ago.

Biden, Blinken, Zelensky, and the Galicians also hate Russians with more racial virulence than has ever been shown by Americans towards a European enemy in the history of American wars.

Race hatred towards Russians now far exceeds American public opinion measured towards Germans during World War I or World War II.  It is only matched, according to the US War Department’s surveys of American soldiers, by hatred towards the Japanese. During that war, six times the number of GIs polled said they “would really like to kill” a Japanese soldier as said the same for a German. When combat veterans were asked “what would you like to see happen to the Japanese and the Germans after the war”, almost one in two GIs from the Pacific theatre supported wiping out the entire Japanese nation; one in eight from the European theatre said that of Germany. During the Vietnam War, US race hatred for the Vietnamese was even less.

If these lessons are true, or if the commands in Moscow and in Washington believe them, what end to the war can be negotiated short of the destruction of one side or the other?

The simpleton’s conclusion is none – there can be no end to this war unless the Ukraine is destroyed, or Russia, or Europe, or the US. How simple-minded is that?

Is This Octogenarian Dementia Or Syphilis?

 

Did Anybody Even Pretend To Imagine Zelensky Was More Than A Juan Guido Type Trick?

nakedcapitalism |  Let’s begin with the money man.

The Billionaire: Igor Kolomoyskyi

Long-time Naked Capitalism readers will recall that our own Richard Smith introduced us to Igor Kolomoyskyi[2] eight years ago, in 2014:

Kolomoyskyi is one of the oligarchs charged with holding down the Eastern provinces of Ukraine[3], and recently mocked Putin, reputedly sensitive about his height, as a “schizophrenic shortarse” (apologies for the English intonation: American alternatives are invited); definitely a bridge-burning moment. Putin, meanwhile, shut down as much of Kolomoyskyi ’s bank as he could, in Crimea and Moscow. I’m not sure who started it, but we can certainly mark it down as a first-rate spat.

While that was brewing up, Kolomoyskyi might well have wanted something that looked an American protector, and got it, in the form of the VP’s son[, Hunter Biden]. Another guess: Kolomoyskyi is far too ebulliently Jewish to look like a neo-Nazi. A US connection with Kolomoyskyi might play well in circles keen to counter Russian complaints that the interim Kiev regime is dominated by “Fascists”.

No, I’m not going down this Hunter Biden rathole; those are not the transactions I am interested in now. I will note in passing that Kolomoyskyi ‘s style could be considered — let’s just go ahead and say it — crude. Kolomoyskyi and his running buddy, Gennadiy Bogolyubov, were business partners and founders of a thing called Privat Group:

Kolomoyskyi and Bogolyubo]fostered strong reputations as corporate raiders in the mid-2000s, becoming notorious for a series of hostile takeovers. Hostile takeovers Ukrainian style, that is, which often included the active involvement of Privat’s quasi-military teams. These schemes included, among others, a literal raid on the Kremenchuk steel plant in 2006, in which hundreds of hired rowdies armed with baseball bats, iron bars, gas and rubber bullet pistols and chainsaws forcibly took over the plant.

As of this writing, Kolomoyskyi was #1750 on the Forbes billionaires list, with a real time net worth (assuming Forbes didn’t outsource the data gathering to CDC) of $1.8 billion. Kolomoyskyi has also fallen out with the United States, amusingly including the Atlantic Council, but I assume all these tiresome bureaucratic obstacles will at some point be swept away, so that’s another rathole I’m not going down. Suffice to say that Kolomoyskyi still has his billions, which I expect go farther in Ukraine than they would here, and isn’t at all shy about funding thugs. Kolomoyskyi, like any billionaire, holds a portfolio of projects in the political field. I don’t know how many he has in toto, but there are at least two. Let’s look at them.

When The Zelensky Toilet Paper Hit The Biden/Schwab Butt Crack....,

thehill |  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday slammed NATO as being "weak" and "underconfident" for refusing to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine as his country fights in "the worst invasion since World War II."

In a Facebook video shared and translated by Axios on Friday, Zelensky said Ukrainians have fought fearlessly against Russians invading their country — and will continue to — but have been thrown into "nine days of darkness" without assistance from NATO.

"Knowing that new strikes and casualties are inevitable, NATO deliberately decided not to close the sky over Ukraine," Zelensky said in an emotional video address.

The president urged NATO to think about "all those people who will die because of you."

"Because of your weakness, because of your disunity, all the alliance has managed to do so far is to carry fifty tons of diesel fuel for Ukraine," he said. "Is this the alliance you were building?"

A no-fly zone, implemented to prohibit enemy aircraft from flying into a region and attacking, would cut off Russian air support and blunt the advance of Russian troops toward Kyiv.

The Biden administration, along with the NATO security alliance, has so far rebuffed Ukrainian calls to establish a no-fly zone over fears that it could spark a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia.

“It would require, essentially, the U.S. military shooting down Russian planes and prompting a potential direct war with Russia, the exact step that we want to avoid," press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday.

In his video address, Zelensky disputed the fact that it would result in a direct confrontation between NATO countries and Russia, calling it "self-hypnosis."

"I do not know how you can protect and whether you can protect NATO countries," Zelensky said. "You will not be able to buy us off with liters of fuel for liters of our blood."

Who Is A Fan Of T-Shirt Churchill's Greatest Hits?

“Zelensky was elected in a landslide victory in 2019 on the promise of easing tensions with Russia and resolving the crisis in the breakaway republics in east Ukraine. He has made no attempt to keep his word on either issue.” https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/the-man-who-sold-ukraine/#comment-5212744  He betrayed the electorate.

slate |  Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the public response from pundits and online observers alike has largely involved going bananas over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. For a guy who used to be a comedian, his leadership has demonstrated qualities many people—particularly in the military subreddits I’ve been reading, full of young service members and vets—just haven’t witnessed except in movies and history books. Having come of age in a world where major world leaders are so insulated from personal risk that they’re whisked away by security teams at the first whiff of danger, many members of the American military are stunned that a commander in chief would actually risk his or her own skin—let alone brashly announce, when the United States offered him safety, that he needs “ammunition, not a ride.” The U.S. Marine Corps subreddit contains a post titled “Volodymyr Zelensky is about as motivating of a leader as I’ve seen in our lifetime,” with one sample reply reading: “Yep. I’d follow that guy into hell.” The idea of a political leader willing to die with his people has struck many outside the military, too, as unthinkably brave. And more than a little thrilling. Zelensky has become a hero to much of the world—even inspiring citizens of other nations to ask how to volunteer to fight for Ukraine. To the extent that this has been an information war for hearts and minds in much of the world, Ukraine has undoubtedly won.

An information war that successful deserves to be examined, both for its own sake and in order to better understand the desires the Ukrainian spectacle seems to be so spectacularly satisfying in the international audience (beyond the natural moral sympathy the country is receiving). The Zelensky legend, while not being false, also isn’t purely organic. It’s being quite skillfully produced. This is a mediated war, calibrated to appeal to a specific brand of international solidarity—of sides in a global struggle—that hasn’t been around in a very long time.

And it’s working: There’s a drunkenness to the explosion of pro-Ukrainian sentiment. Public anger on behalf of Ukrainians has gone beyond official sanctions and into a plethora of bizarrely small-bore initiatives—like bars no longer serving Russian vodka—intended to recognize the aggressor’s villainy. Pro-Ukrainian observers are saying some wild things as they try to explain their outrage and grief at the invasion, and the expressive extremes are telling. One journalist said, for instance, that “the unthinkable has happened to them. This is not a developing Third World nation. This is Europe.” CBS News foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata said last Friday that Ukraine “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European—I have to choose those words carefully, too—city, where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.” Civilized. He later apologized, but it’s essential that we understand exactly what he meant, because it may not be elegant or inclusive, but it is telling. These aren’t isolated episodes. Something weird is happening, and I think it’s this: Pro-Ukraine feelings in search of an organizing principle are coalescing around a category of identification that hasn’t enjoyed real, popular international relevance in a good long while. I’m speaking of “the West”—a category Vladimir Putin has long railed against, but which Westerners themselves haven’t, at least in recent years, claimed with much personal attachment or ideological loyalty.

And these are feelings being shaped and inspired in part by the “cinematic” quality of the media coming out of Ukraine.

Take Zelensky. He’s become a star because he already was one. The man has great dramatic instincts. He is doing brave things and he’s very ably disseminating media of himself doing it. In one viral clip, he’s in only a T-shirt, unshaven, answering questions before being informed on camera that the Holocaust memorial was being bombed and saying, “That is Russia, my congratulations.” The clip has mostly circulated as a “reaction video”; people are extremely interested in watching Zelensky react.

 

In The Event Of Nuclear War Be Sure To Social Distance...,

ready.gov |  Nuclear explosions can cause significant damage and casualties from blast, heat, and radiation but you can keep your family safe by knowing what to do and being prepared if it occurs.

A nuclear weapon is a device that uses a nuclear reaction to create an explosion.

Nuclear devices range from a small portable device carried by an individual to a weapon carried by a missile.

A nuclear explosion may occur with or without a few minutes warning.

Fallout is most dangerous in the first few hours after the detonation when it is giving off the highest levels of radiation. It takes time for fallout to arrive back to ground level, often more than 15 minutes for areas outside of the immediate blast damage zones. This is enough time for you to be able to prevent significant radiation exposure by following these simple steps:

GET INSIDE

Get inside the nearest building to avoid radiation. Brick or concrete are best.

Remove contaminated clothing and wipe off or wash unprotected skin if you were outside after the fallout arrived. Hand sanitizer does not protect against fall out. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth, if possible. Do not use disinfectant wipes on your skin.

Go to the basement or middle of the building. Stay away from the outer walls and roof. Try to maintain a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household. If possible, wear a mask if you’re sheltering with people who are not a part of your household. Children under two years old, people who have trouble breathing, and those who are unable to remove masks on their own should not wear them.

STAY INSIDE

Stay inside for 24 hours unless local authorities provide other instructions. Continue to practice social distancing by wearing a mask and by keeping a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who not part of your household.

Family should stay where they are inside. Reunite later to avoid exposure to dangerous radiation.

Keep your pets inside.

STAY TUNED

Tune into any media available for official information such as when it is safe to exit and where you should go.

Battery operated and hand crank radios will function after a nuclear detonation.

Cell phone, text messaging, television, and internet services may be disrupted or unavailable.

HOW TO STAY SAFE IN THE EVENT OF A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION

Prepare NOW

Identify shelter locations. Identify the best shelter location near where you spend a lot of time, such as home, work, and school. The best locations are underground and in the middle of larger buildings.

While commuting, identify appropriate shelters to seek in the event of a detonation. Due to COVID-19, many places you may pass on the way to and from work may be closed or may not have regular operating hours.

Outdoor areas, vehicles, mobile homes do NOT provide adequate shelter. Look for basements or the center of large multistory buildings.

Make sure you have an Emergency Supply Kit for places you frequent and might have to stay for 24 hours. It should include bottled water, packaged foods, emergency medicines, a hand-crank or battery-powered radio to get information in case power is out, a flashlight, and extra batteries for essential items. If possible, store supplies for three or more days.

• If you are able to, set aside items like soap, hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol, disinfecting wipes, and general household cleaning supplies that you can use to disinfect surfaces you touch regularly. After a flood, you may not have access to these supplies for days or even weeks. Keep in mind each person’s specific needs, including medication. Don’t forget the needs of pets. Obtain extra batteries and charging devices for phones and other critical equipment.
• Being prepared allows you to avoid unnecessary excursions and to address minor medical issues at home, alleviating the burden on urgent care centers and hospitals.
• Remember that not everyone can afford to respond by stocking up on necessities. For those who can afford it, making essential purchases and slowly building up supplies in advance will allow for longer time periods between shopping trips. This helps to protect those who are unable to procure essentials in advance of the pandemic and must shop more frequently. In addition, consider avoiding WIC-labeled products so that those who rely on these products can access them.

Survive DURING

If warned of an imminent attack, immediately get inside the nearest building and move away from windows. This will help provide protection from the blast, heat, and radiation of the detonation.

• When you have reached a safe place, try to maintain a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household. If possible, wear a mask if you’re sheltering with people who are not a part of your household. Children under two years old, people who have trouble breathing, and those who are unable to remove masks on their own should not wear them.

If you are outdoors when a detonation occurs take cover from the blast behind anything that might offer protection. Lie face down to protect exposed skin from the heat and flying debris. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth, if possible. If you are in a vehicle, stop safely, and duck down within the vehicle.

After the shock wave passes, get inside the nearest, best shelter location for protection from potential fallout. You will have 10 minutes or more to find an adequate shelter.

Be inside before the fallout arrives. The highest outdoor radiation levels from fallout occur immediately after the fallout arrives and then decrease with time.

Stay tuned for updated instructions from emergency response officials. If advised to evacuate, listen for information about routes, shelters, and procedures.

If you have evacuated, do not return until you are told it is safe to do so by local officials.