CTH | Arguably, Glenn Greenwald has been the most critical voice about the
rise of the U.S. surveillance state and generational shift of the U.S.
intelligence apparatus to conduct domestic surveillance on American
citizens. There’s a reason Greenwald lives in Brazil where no
extradition treaties with the U.S. government exist.
Curiously, when it came time to release information about DHS
connections to Twitter, Glenn Greenwald was not considered as an
acceptable outlet for the information. Instead, Matt Taibbi and Bari
Weiss were selected by Elon Musk to represent his sunlight and
transparency interests. However, in this brief video Greenwald gets to
interview Taibbi about his findings. {Direct Rumble Link}
Interested viewers will note Taibbi’s #1 takeaway from his review of
the Twitter Files data is that evidence of the DHS connection to Twitter
exists. Taibbi speaks of the “instructions” coming into Twitter from
U.S. government officials. Yet, curiously missing from the documented
evidence provided by Taibbi was anything showing a paper trail of this
instruction pathway he is describing.
Greenwald is smart, strategically smart; Greenwald also knows why he was
not selected to review the files. Glenn artfully guides Taibbi to
discuss elements of the story that perhaps Taibbi himself doesn’t
recognize are being shaped for his reporting. Note: “we don’t know how the ‘ask’ works yet.”
Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Carol Guzy, and Dmytro Kozatsky,
a Ukrainian soldier and photographer who was held in the Mariupol steel
plant, join Andrea Mitchell to discuss “Relentless Courage: Ukraine and
the World at War,” a new book featuring a collection of images
capturing Ukrainians’ enduring fight. Ambassador Markarova, who writes
in the book about a journalist lost to the war, tells Mitchell: “He was a
very beautiful human being, full of light,” and Russia’s targeting of
civilians “shows how inhumane this aggressive regime is, and how this
war is about the values, democracy.” She adds, “We will not stop until
there is accountability.”
I’m afraid I don’t have an earth-quake of a conclusion here; what
stuns me is the ease with which Kozatsky is penetrating our cultural
institutions. Booking agents, facilities managers, press agents, board
members who organize such things, fashion editors, network anchors: All
combining their efforts to service a Nazi professionally, as if it were
the most normal thing in the world, which at this point perhaps it is.
It would also be nice to know if how many other Ukrainian efforts like
this are going on, and if they are… facilitated by anyone “in
government.”
grahamhancock | What is Western civilization all about? What are its greatest achievements and highest aspirations?
It’s my guess that most people’s replies to these questions would
touch—before all the other splendid achievements of science, literature,
technology, and the economy—on the nurture and growth of freedom.
Individual freedom.
Including, but not limited to freedom from the unruly power of
monarchs, freedom from the unwarranted intrusions of the state and its
agents into our personal lives, freedom from the tyranny of the Church
and its Inquisition, freedom from hunger and want, freedom from slavery
and servitude, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of
thought and speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to elect our own
leaders, freedom to be homosexual—and so on and so forth.
The list of freedoms we enjoy today that were not enjoyed by our
ancestors is indeed a long and impressive one. It is therefore
exceedingly strange that Western civilization in the twenty- first
century enjoys no real freedom of consciousness.
There can be no more intimate and elemental part of the individual
than his or her own consciousness. At the deepest level, our
consciousness is what we are—to the extent that if we are not sovereign
over our own consciousness then we cannot in any meaningful sense be
sovereign over anything else either. So it has to be highly significant
that, far from encouraging freedom of consciousness, our societies in
fact violently deny our right to sovereignty in this intensely personal
area, and have effectively outlawed all states of consciousness other
than those on a very narrowly defined and officially approved list. The
“War on Drugs” has thus unexpectedly succeeded in engineering a stark
reversal of the true direction of Western history by empowering faceless
bureaucratic authorities to send armed agents to break into our homes,
arrest us, throw us into prison, and deprive us of our income and
reputation simply because we wish to explore the sometimes radical,
though always temporary, alterations in our own consciousness that drugs
facilitate.
Other than being against arbitrary rules that the state has imposed
on us, personal drug use by adults is not a “crime” in any true moral or
ethical sense and usually takes place in the privacy of our own homes,
where it cannot possibly do any harm to others. For some it is a simple
lifestyle choice. For others, particularly where the hallucinogens such
as LSD, psilocybin, and DMT are concerned, it is a means to make contact
with alternate realms and parallel dimensions, and perhaps even with
the divine. For some, drugs are an aid to creativity and focussed mental
effort. For others they are a means to tune out for a while from
everyday cares and worries. But in all cases it seems probable that the
drive to alter consciousness, from which all drug use stems, has deep
genetic roots.
Other adult lifestyle choices with deep genetic roots also used to be violently persecuted by our societies.
A notable example is homosexuality, once punishable by death or long
periods of imprisonment, which is now entirely legal between consenting
adults—and fully recognized as being none of the state’s business—in all
Western cultures. (Although approximately thirteen US states have
“anti-sodomy” laws outlawing homosexuality, these statutes have rarely
been enforced in recent years, and in 2003 the US Supreme Court
invalidated those laws.) The legalization of homosexuality lifted a huge
burden of human misery, secretiveness, paranoia, and genuine fear from
our societies, and at the same time not a single one of the homophobic
lobby’s fire-and-brimstone predictions about the end of Western
civilization came true.
Likewise, it was not so long ago that natural seers, mediums, and
healers who felt the calling to become “witches” were burned at the
stake for “crimes” that we now look back on as harmless eccentricities
at worst.
Perhaps it will be the same with drugs? Perhaps in a century or two,
if we have not destroyed human civilization by then, our descendants
will look back with disgust on the barbaric laws of our time that
punished a minority so harshly (with imprisonment, financial ruin, and
worse) for responsibly, quietly, and in the privacy of their own homes
seeking alterations in their own consciousness through the use of drugs.
Perhaps we will even end up looking back on the persecution of drug
users with the same sense of shame and horror that we now view the
persecution of gays and lesbians, the burning of “witches,” and the
imposition of slavery on others.
Meanwhile it’s no accident that the “War on Drugs” has been
accompanied by an unprecedented expansion of governmental power into the
previously inviolable inner sanctum of individual consciousness. On the
contrary, it seems to me that the state’s urge to power has all along
been the real reason for this “war”—not an honest desire on the part of
the authorities to rescue society and the individual from the harms
caused by drugs, but the thin of a wedge intended to legitimize
increasing bureaucratic control and intervention in almost every other
area of our lives as well.
This is the way freedom is hijacked—not all at once, out in the open,
but stealthily, little by little, behind closed doors, and with our own
agreement. How will we be able to resist when so many of us have
already willingly handed over the keys to our own consciousness to the
state and accepted without protest that it is OK to be told what we may
and may not do, what we may and may not explore, even what we may and
may not experience, with this most precious, sapient, unique, and
individual part of ourselves?
If we are willing to accept that then we can be persuaded to accept anything.
slate | Netflix’s new hit Ancient Apocalypse
is an odd duck: a docuseries filmed in many gorgeous and historic
locations (Turkey, Mexico, Indonesia, … uh, Ohio) that advances a
provocative thesis aimed furiously at a single academic discipline. The argument is essentially this:The
authorities who study human prehistory are ignoring—or covering up—the
true foundations of the world as we know it today. And the consequences
could be catastrophic.
Graham
Hancock, the journalist who hosts the series, returns again and again
to his anger at this state of affairs and his status as an outsider to
“mainstream archaeology,” his assessment of how terrible “mainstream
archaeology” is about accepting new theories, and his insistence that
there’s all this evidence out there but “mainstream archaeologists” just
won’t look for it. His bitter disposition, I’m sure, accounts for some of the interest in this show. Hancock, a fascinating figure with an interesting past
as a left-leaning foreign correspondent, has for decades been
elaborating variations on this thinking: Humans, as he says in the
docuseries, have “amnesia” about our past. An “advanced” society that
existed around 12,000 years ago was extinguished when the climate
changed drastically in a period scientists call the Younger Dryas.
Before dying out completely, this civilization sent out emissaries to
the corners of the world, spreading knowledge, including building
techniques that can be found in use at many ancient sites, and sparking
the creation of mythologies that are oddly similar the world over. It’s
important for us to think about this history, Hancock adds, because we
also face impending cataclysm. It is a warning.
Scientists,
Hancock says, don’t want to believe any of this because they don’t like
to think about mythology or astronomy, both of which he often uses to
prove his points. Coming to terms with this paradigm shift would also
rock the foundations of their discipline. Hancock, scientists say,
doesn’t understand how eagerly they’d leap at this evidence if it really
existed, in an empirical and reproducible form. (As archaeologist Carl
Feagans writes in a review of Ancient Apocalypse, “Every single archaeologist I know would be elated to discover any previously unknown civilization of the Ice Age. Or any age for that matter.”)
One of the oddest aspects of Ancient Apocalypse
is how largely absent these nasty mainstream archaeologists are from
its run time. Joe Rogan, who has had Hancock on his podcast multiple
times, makes a few appearances, lauding Hancock’s free-thinking ways.
The other talking heads are either pro-Hancock or edited to look that
way. Michael Shermer, of Skeptic magazine, who debated Hancock on Rogan’s
show in 2017, merits a 20-second appearance in which he manages to get
across one single argument against Hancock’s theory: “If this
civilization existed, where are their trash heaps, where are their
homes, where are their stone tools or metal tools, where is the
writing?” That’s it—then back to Hancock, the “just asking questions,”
the rancor.
John Hoopes,
an archaeologist at the University of Kansas, is one of the mainstream
archaeologist naysayers of the kind Hancock targets without naming.
Hoopes has often written about the history of alternative and
pseudoarchaeology, and about Hancock himself; his Twitter feed has been full, over the past week, with conversation between academic archaeologists about the specific claims in Ancient Apocalypse.
I
called him to ask what people who aren’t up to speed with Hancock’s
work should know if they watch this show. Our conversation has been
edited and condensed for clarity.
Rebecca
Onion: What can you say about the difference between the way academic
archaeology approaches evidence and how Graham Hancock does?
John Hoopes:
Graham Hancock is not and does not want to be seen as a scientist or a
historian. He is coming from a metaphysical place. He’s inspired by
Western esoterica. For him, the significance of a lot of this
information is sort of intuitive and is confirmed to him through his
personal revelatory experiences.
There’s a TEDx presentation he did back in 2013,
called “The War on Consciousness,” in which he explained that he had
been smoking cannabis daily for 25 years and finally stopped using it
because he had an ayahuasca experience and found that it was a more
meaningful and revelatory experience than his daily use of cannabis. [This TEDx talk sparked controversy within the TED organization after it went up on YouTube, described here.] So, if it seems like, in watching the show, his perspective has been influenced by drugs, it’s because it has.
pagesix | Beloved celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak appeared to threaten to
“institutionalize” Kanye West so that the rapper would be medicated into
“Zombieland forever.”
Following his anti-Semitic rants, West shared texts purportedly sent
by Pasternak, who is Jewish, that began by offering to have a “loving,
open conversation” with him based on “fact.” Pasternak also asked his
former friend and client to refrain from “cuss words” or “crazy stuff.”
“Second option, I have you institutionalized again where they
medicate the crap out of you, and you go back to Zombieland forever.
Play date with the kids just won’t be the same,” the message continued.
“This is how a Hollywood trainer speaks to a far more influential black celebrity when we get out of line,” West added in a follow-up tweet.
Pasternak, 48, didn’t immediately return Page Six’s request for
comment. He did, however, change his Instagram profile to private.
The texts purportedly sent by Pasternak, who has worked with Jessica
Simpson, Jack Black, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and more celebrities, confirm reports that he made the phone call that resulted in West’s 2016 hospitalization.
The Grammy winner’s treatment came after he had a meltdown onstage right before the rest of his tour was canceled.
“He’s been suffering from exhaustion and sleep deprivation and went
to the hospital today on his own will and under the consultation of his
physician,” a source close to West said at the time.
The Los Angeles Police Department told The Post at the time that its
officers responded to a call for a “disturbance,” but once they arrived
at the address, the incident was classified as a “medical emergency.”
igorchudov |Pfizer is “pausing advertising on Twitter”
because it is “concerned that Mr. Musk could scale back content
moderation, which they worry would lead to an increase in objectionable
content on the platform.”
Pfizer
was one of the most significant sources of revenue for Twitter. I
constantly saw Pfizer ads and promoted posts, such as this creepy one:
(If you are not sure why “the human brain” becomes so sweaty once pink “science” grabs it firmly from behind, neither am I)
What
is interesting is that this advertising pause involves not only Pfizer
but other large multinationals with no specific issues related to
Twitter censorship, such as General Mills, a producer of popular but
unhealthy breakfast cereals.
Who is behind this? Meet a new “action coalition” called “Accountable Tech”
that is directing efforts to withhold advertising money from
misbehaving technology companies. You may be very surprised, or not, but
“Accountable Tech” is packed with Democratic operatives:
Accountable Tech is spearheading this letter to Twitter advertisers:
Accountable Tech joined more than 25 groups to deliver the below message in a letter to Twitter’s top advertisers to demand nonnegotiable requirements for their ad business in the midst of Elon Musk’s acquisition:
To whom it may concern:
Elon
Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information
ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among
those already most vulnerable and marginalized.
The undersigned organizations believe that Twitter should continue to uphold the practices that serve as guideposts for other Big Tech platforms. We
call on you – Twitter’s top advertisers – to commit to these standards
as non-negotiable requirements for advertising on the platform:
Keep
accounts including those of public figures and politicians that were
removed for egregious violations of Twitter Rules – such as harassment,
violence, and hateful conduct – off the platform
All
these coalitions attempt to influence large advertisers into doing
their bidding by withholding ad money from tech companies that
“Accountable Tech” wants to punish.
I understand why Pfizer, a
company selling the fraudulent “Covid vaccine” and relying on censorship
for continued sales, has a vested interest in Twitter continuing to
censor vaccine skeptics. However, other companies mentioned above do not
have such reasons.
TCH | On February 24, 2022, Deputy National Security Advisor and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, Daleep Singh, told the world what to expect about the U.S. and allied response to the war in Ukraine. We called the white house strategy “World War Reddit.” Here’s what Deputy NSA Singh said:
…”Strategic success in the 21st
century is not about a physical land grab of territory; that’s what
Putin has done. In this century, strategic power is increasingly measured and exercised by economic strength, by technological sophistication and your story –
who you are, what your values are; can you attract ideas and talent and
goodwill? And on each of those measures, this will be a failure for
Russia.” ~ Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh
Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh boiled down geopolitical power to a cultural issue of social likeability. Realize that what he said is the White House strategy leading our foreign policy. That strategy is why the White House enlisted TikTok influencers for their Ukraine effort [link]. Remember, the State Dept is also leading this effort.
TCH |THIS video from the White House briefing today, you
absolutely must watch to gain a fulsome understanding of how the modern
political left views the world of geopolitical contests in 2022.
Deputy National Security Advisor and Deputy Director of the National
Economic Council, Daleep Singh, was presented at the podium today to
explain the strategic policy of the Biden administration toward Russia.
Singh’s remarks outlining the view of the ‘west’ toward defeating
Russia are eloquent yet batshit crazy in their ideological context.
Daleep Singh sounds like the senior head of a Google Human Resources
operation telling the department heads how they need to convey their
feelings in order to hire the talent for continued growth in the
industry. This is a direct quote:
…”Ultimately, the goal of our
sanctions is to make this a strategic failure for Russia; and let’s
define a little bit of what that means. Strategic success in the 21st
century is not about a physical land grab of territory; that’s what
Putin has done. In this century, strategic power is increasingly measured and exercised by economic strength, by technological sophistication and your story
– who you are, what your values are; can you attract ideas and talent
and goodwill? And on each of those measures, this will be a failure for
Russia.”
zerohedge | Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was confronted by anti-war
protesters during a Wednesday town hall event she hosted in the Bronx.
The crowd at the sparsely attended event was dominated by her own
progressive constituency, but who loudly voiced their anger and
frustration over selling out on foreign policy, especially when it comes to her positions and votes
on the Ukraine war, which has seen the US hand over an unprecedented
tens of billions of dollars in weapons and aid. This has made her
indistinguishable from her establishment colleagues on both sides of the
aisle, including neocon Republicans and hawkish Dems.
One protester loudly denounced her for policy positions that will lead to a "nuclear war" with Russia as seen in a now viral clip. Indeed an article in Unherd observed starting last Spring: The Squad nowhere to be seenas Ukraine package sails through- a
trend which has only continued. Though AOC and Democratic party
leadership under her friend and "mentor" Nancy Pelosi have worked hard
to protect her image as a leading young Progressive, she stood helpless
on the stage as the crowd turned against her, calling her out as a
fraud.
While discussing ongoing escalation among nuclear-armed powers over Ukraine, a protester had enough, yelling back at AOC: "None of this matters unless there’s a nuclear war, which you voted to send arms and weapons to Ukraine."
He
then called her out for her initial "outsider" views on the campaign
trail, which are now anything but. She was accused of "playing with
lives of American citizens" by stoking proxy war in Ukraine, leading to
nuclear showdown with Russia:
"You ran as an outsider, yet you’ve been voting to start this war in Ukraine. You’re voting to start a third nuclear war with Russia and China. Why are you playing with the lives of American citizens?"
Previously
after the New York Democrat voted in favor of sending $40 billion in
military and humanitarian aid in May, she's made multiple statements in
favor of ramping up aid to the Ukrainians amid the Russian invasion. "As
Ukraine fights against the Russian invasion, we have a moral obligation
to assist any way we can," Ocasio-Cortez had said.
Ironically
this is the very week former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has come
under mainstream media fire and an avalanche of online denunciations and
attacks for her stance on Russia-Ukraine which runs deeply counter to
Washington orthodoxy. She announced this week she'll be leaving the
Democratic Pary, "an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness" - as she described in her own blistering video commentary.
In
the viral AOC town hall clip, a second protester can be seen loudly
asking why she can't be more like Gabbard. "Tulsi Gabbard, she's left
the Democratic Party because they are war hawks," he began.
"Tulsi Gabbard has shown guts where you’ve shown cowardice," the second protester said. "I believed in you, and you became the very thing you sought to fight against."
"That what you've become, you are the establishment! And you are the reason why everybody will end up in a nuclear war..."
unz |Russian
President Vladimir Putin has certainly been a naughty boy! The always
unreliable and unofficial government-originating disinformation source The Hillis reporting that Moscow has spent the equivalent of $300,000,000 in an effort to “influence” world politics in its favor. The story relies on and follows a New York Timesspecial report
which again seeks to revive the claim that the Kremlin has been
interfering effectively in American elections. Is it a coincidence that
all the Russian bashing is surfacing right now before US elections at a
time when the President Joe Biden Administration is agonizing over what
it describes as sometimes “foreign supported” domestic extremists? I don’t think so.
The Hill report establishes the framework, claiming that “Russia has provided at least $300
million to political parties and political leaders since 2014 in a
covert attempt to influence foreign politics, the US State Department
alleges. Multiple news outlets reported that a cable released by the
State Department reveals that Russia has likely spent at least hundreds
of millions more on parties and officials who are sympathetic to Russia…
According to the Associated Press… Russia used front organizations to
send money to preferred causes or politicians. The organizations include
think tanks in Europe and state-owned entities in Central America,
Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. State Department spokesman Ned
Price said in a press briefing on Tuesday that Russia’s election
meddling is an ‘assault on sovereignty… It is an effort to chip away at
the ability of people around the world to choose the government that
they see best fit to represent them, to represent their interests, to
represent their values.’”
And why is Russia behaving as it allegedly does? According to another State Department source who spoke to The Hill
the Joe Biden Administration’s concern is not regarding any single
country but the entire world as “we continue to face challenges against
democratic societies.” Oddly enough, that Russia should be disinclined
to waste its money and other resources on such a quixotic objective
never appears to have occurred to the Department of State or to the
editors at The Hill.
Typically,
the State Department has shared information with select media but has
refused to publicly release any parts of the cable which allegedly
provide the intelligence-based evidence supporting the claims of Russian
meddling. The Hill, perhaps inadvertently, reveals what the whole story
really is about when it concludes its piece with “Intelligence
assessments have determined that Russia interfered in the 2016
presidential election in spreading disinformation online that was
designed to help then-candidate Donald Trump over his opponent, Hillary
Clinton. Russia also tried to help Trump in his reelection battle
against President Biden in 2020.” So yes, it’s all about Moscow helping
Trump against the Democratic candidates. Interestingly, however, most
non-Democratic Party aligned sources have come to agree that it was the
Democrats who were trying to damage Trump in 2016 through use of a
fabricated dossier that sought to impugn his character and portray him
as a Russian stooge. Far worse, they also used the national security
apparatus to “get Trump.”
newyorker | When
we first spoke, in early September, Goemans predicted a protracted
conflict. None of the three main variables of war-termination
theory—information, credible commitment, and domestic politics—had been
resolved. Both sides still believed that they could win, and their
distrust for each other was deepening by the day. As for domestic
politics, Putin was exactly the sort of leader that Goemans had warned
about. Despite his significant repressive apparatus, he did not have
total control of the country. He kept calling the war a “special
military operation” and delaying a mass mobilization, so as not to have
to face domestic unrest. If he started losing, Goemans predicted, he
would simply escalate.
And then, in the weeks
after Goemans and I first spoke, events accelerated rapidly. Ukraine
launched a remarkably successful counter-offensive, retaking large
swaths of territory in the Kharkiv region and threatening to retake the
occupied city of Kherson. Putin, as predicted, struck back, declaring a
“partial mobilization” of troops and staging hasty “referendums” on
joining the Russian Federation in the occupied territories. The partial mobilization
was carried out in a chaotic fashion, and, as at the beginning of the
war, caused tens of thousands of people to flee Russia. There were
sporadic protests across the nation, and these threatened to grow in
size. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces continued to advance in the east of
their country.
In a terrifying blog post,
Goemans’s former student Branislav Slantchev laid out a few potential
scenarios. He believes that the Russian front in the Donbas is still in
danger of imminent collapse. If this were to happen, Putin would need to
escalate even further. This could take the form of more attacks on
Ukrainian infrastructure, but, if the goal is to stop Ukrainian
advances, a likelier option would be a small tactical nuclear strike.
Slantchev suggests that it would be under one kiloton—that is, about
fifteen times smaller than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
It would nonetheless be devastating, and would almost certainly lead to
an intense reaction from the West. Slantchev does not think that NATO
would respond with nuclear strikes of its own, but it could, for
example, destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet. This could lead to yet
another round of escalation. In such a situation, the West may be
tempted, finally, to retreat. Slantchev urged them not to. “This is it
now,” he wrote. “This is for all the marbles.”
“Branislav
is very worried,” Goemans told me, “and he is not a scaredy-cat.”
Goemans was also worried, though his hypothetical time line was more
extended. He believes that the new Russian reinforcements, however
ill-trained and ill-equipped, and the onset of an early winter will
pause the Ukrainian campaign and save the Russians, for the moment.
“People think it’s going to be over quickly, but, unfortunately, war
doesn’t work like that,” he said. But he also believes that Ukraine will
resume its offensive in the spring, at which point the same dynamic and
the same dangers will be back in play. “For a war to end,” Goemans
said, “the minimum demands of at least one of the sides must change.”
This is the first rule of war termination. And we have not yet reached a
point where war aims have changed enough for a peace deal to be
possible.
The theorists’ predictions for what
would happen next depended, in part, on how they evaluated the
variables. Would the Russian front in the Donbas really collapse, and,
if so, how soon? If it did collapse, how much of the information about
it would the Kremlin be able to control? These things were
unpredictable, but one had to make predictions. Dan Reiter, for example,
was slightly more sanguine than Goemans about Putin’s ability to sell a
partial victory to the Russian people, because of his mastery of the Russian media. To Reiter, Putin was enough of a dictator that he would be able to back off.
Despite
being the preëminent theorist of credible commitment, Reiter believes
that the war could end short of an absolute outcome, such as the
destruction of the Russian Federation. “You really don’t like to leave
in place a country that is going to offer some kind of lingering
threat,” he said. “However, sometimes that’s just the world you have to
live in, because it’s just too costly to actually remove the threat
completely.” He saw a future in which Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire and
then gradually turned itself into a “military hedgehog,” a prickly
country that no one would want to invade. “Medium-sized states can
protect themselves even from very dangerous adversaries,” Reiter said.
“Ukraine can make itself more defensible into the future, but it will
look a lot different as a country and as a society than it did before
the invasion.” It would look more like Israel, with high taxes, military
spending, and lengthy mandatory military service. “But Ukraine is
defensible,” Reiter said. “They’ve proven that.”
Goemans
was feeling more worried. Once again, his thoughts took him to the
First World War. In 1917, Germany, faced with no hope of victory,
decided to gamble for resurrection. It unleashed its secret weapon, the
U-boat, to conduct unlimited operations on the high seas. The risk of
the strategy was that it would bring the United States into the war; the
hope was that it would choke off Great Britain and lead to victory.
This was a “high variance” strategy, in Goemans’s words, meaning that it
could lead to a great reward or a great calamity. In the event, it did
lead to the U.S. entering the war, and the defeat of Germany, and the
Kaiser’s removal from power.
In this situation,
the secret weapon is nuclear. And its use carries with it the risk,
again, of even greater involvement in the war by the U.S. But it could
also, at least temporarily, halt the advance of the Ukrainian Army. If
used effectively, it could even bring about a victory. “People get very
excited about the front collapsing,” Goemans said. “But for me it’s,
like, ‘Ah-h-h!’ ” At that point, Putin would really be trapped.
For
the moment, Goemans still believes that the nuclear option is unlikely.
And he believes that Ukraine will win the war. But that will also take a
long time, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
tabletmag | Behind
the closed doors of an unassuming philanthropic consultancy in
Washington, D.C., is one of the most powerful lobbying forces in the
United States. The Atlantic has called
it “the massive progressive dark-money group you’ve never heard of” and
“the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money.” TheWashington Post believes its potent lobbying arm is reason enough for Congress to enact forced donor disclosure laws, while Politicolabelled
it a “dark-money behemoth.” “The system of political financing, which
often obscures the identities of donors, is known as dark money,” wroteTheNew York Times, “and Arabella’s network is a leading vehicle for it on the left.”
Meet Arabella Advisors, the brainchild of ex-Clinton administration staffer Eric Kessler
and the favorite tool of anonymous, billionaire donors on the
progressive left. Since 2006, the Arabella hub has overseen a growing
network of nonprofits—call them the “spokes”—that collected $2.4 billion in the 2019-20 election cycle, nearly twice as much as the Republican and Democratic national committees combined.
These nonprofits in turn manage and supervise a vast array of “pop-up”
groups—mainly political attack-dog websites, ad campaigns, and
“spontaneous” demonstrations staffed by Arabella’s network of activist
professionals who pose as members of independent activist organizations.
These groups—such as Fix Our Senate, the Hub Project, and Floridians for a Fair Shake—typically
emerge very suddenly in order to savage the political opposition on the
policy or outrage of that particular day or week, then vanish just as
quickly. The pop-ups do not file IRS disclosures or report their
budgets, boards, or staff. In most cases, their connection to Arabella
goes unreported. Many of them have offered sympathetic ordinary voters
the opportunity to donate to whatever the “grassroots” cause happens to
be, when in fact the money feeds back into Arabella’s enormous
dark-money network.
The
relatively novel and innovative model of political activism perfected
by Arabella, which was founded 2005, went more or less unnoticed until
2018, when I was reporting on the activist groups that attempted to
prevent the Senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett
Kavanaugh. Among the sea of picket signs outside the court in July 2018
was the name of an unfamiliar group: Demand Justice.
A search of the IRS nonprofit archives showed the name itself wasn’t
listed. What did turn up in an online search was a downtown address on
Connecticut Avenue shared by dozens of other organizations, including
the Arabella “spoke” that appeared to be running Demand Justice, Sixteen Thirty Fund.
It isn’t uncommon for political groups to share expensive D.C. office space, especially when they’re affiliated, like the Center for American Progress (CAP) and its lobbying arm, CAP Action.
But Arabella’s arrangement is unique: A for-profit consultancy
(Arabella Advisors) is the central hub; four (perhaps five) tax-exempt
nonprofits (New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund,
Windward Fund, and possibly North Fund, all founded and led by Arabella
leadership) are the spokes; and countless ephemeral pop-ups branching
out from the nonprofits.
In early 2019, the Capital Research Center (where I work) released a report on the network. Since then, my colleagues and I have collected large amounts of data
on Arabella’s origins, lobbying, pop-up campaigns, board connections,
and donors, which helped lay the groundwork for later reporting on
Arabella in mainstream outlets like The Atlantic and New York Times—which have since acknowledged that the political “left” has outraised and outspent the political “right” using dark money in recent years by a margin of nearly 2 to 1.
And
yet today, the vast majority of American voters remain unaware of
Arabella’s existence, even as it promises to play an increasingly
central role in American politics, and as the culture wars and fight for
control of federal institutions reaches a fever pitch in the fall of
2022.
tabletmag | Tides
was founded in 1976 by Drummond Pike, a California real estate investor
who named the entity after a Bay Area bookstore popular among
left-leaning activists. From the beginning, according to their own documents,
Tides was designed unlike most other nonprofit institutions. Rather
than building up or spending down an endowment, it sought to become more
like a sophisticated piece of software—a financial instrument that
would allow wealthy individuals and donors to contribute to the causes
of their choosing with more anonymity than is generally allowed by the
laws governing ordinary nonprofits.
Recently,
after Pike stepped away, the Tides network has taken on a distinctly
political role, whose guiding star appears to be Barack Obama. The
secretary of the Tides board
is Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America and a former deputy assistant
secretary of state for international organizations in the Obama
administration; board member Cheryl Alston was appointed by Obama to the
advisory committee of the federal pension program. Peter Buttenwieser,
the heir to the Lehman Brothers fortune who passed away in 2018,
financed a fund in his own name which is administered and distributed
entirely by the Tides Foundation. A “major behind-the-scenes supporter of Democratic candidates,”
Buttenwieser was one of President Obama’s earliest high profile
backers, helping the then-senator organize his bid for the White House.
Moreover, Atlantic Philanthropies, a nonprofit created by billionaire retailer Chuck Feeney in the 1980s, has directed more than $42 million in grants through the Tides network since 2000. Based in Bermuda,
Atlantic Philanthropies was able to participate in political lobbying
efforts in ways that continental United States nonprofits cannot.
Atlantic became increasingly aggressive under the Obama administration.
As Gara LaMarche, Atlantic’s president, said in one think tank address,
when Obama was elected “we saw opportunities to assist our grantees in
moving forward more rapidly and broadly in a number of areas central to
our mission.” In return, Atlantic dispensed $27 million to help push Obamacare through Congress. At the ceremony to sign Obamacare into law, LaMarche stood beside President Obama in the East Room of the White House.
In
any case, what’s clear is that there is now a sophisticated and complex
structure underneath what many assume to be an organic and spontaneous
social movement, one with deep pockets and ambitious goals. “After over
fourteen years of learning and over 700 million dollars invested ... the
collapse we have been expecting is surely underway,” reads the NoVo
Foundation’s website. Right now there’s only this one statement on the
site, which is under construction as noted: “Working on solutions now so
old patterns of power can’t, once again, re-form to rebuild and
continue to repress.”
caityjohnstone | None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
None are more hopelessly ignorant than those who falsely believe they’re informed.
None are more hopelessly propagandized than those who don’t know they are propagandized.
Living
in a liberal western democracy means having the freedom to criticize
the tyranny of your government, but instead spending your time
criticizing the tyranny of foreign governments who your government
doesn’t like.
Free
speech in a liberal western democracy means you have the freedom to say
whatever you want about the abuses of your government, and the press
has the freedom to hammer you with propaganda to ensure that you never
do.
In
a liberal western democracy you are free to criticize your government,
but instead you are propagandized into criticizing the impotent puppets
who get rotated in and out of office while your government continues
doing all the same evil things regardless of who gets elected.
In
liberal western democracies you are free to call the president “Drumpf”
or “Brandon”, but you are not free to know who’s actually calling the
shots in your country underneath the official government.
In
liberal western democracies people say, “I’m so glad I don’t live in a
country like Russia or China where people are forbidden to criticize
their government. I live in the west, where I’m free to criticize Russia
and China all I want.”
It
doesn’t matter if you have freedom of speech if those in power can
control what you will say. And in liberal western democracies, this is
exactly what happens.
We
grow up saturated with US empire propaganda in the west. We marinate in
it. It pervades our consciousness. But because it’s all we’ve ever
known, most of us don’t even notice it.
We
think it’s normal that we’re always told our government is on the good
and righteous side of every international conflict. We think it’s normal
that we hear constantly about the tyranny of foreign governments while
only occasionally hearing about bad things our own government did years
ago (but it was an innocent mistake and it’ll never happen again).
“If we were being propagandized, I’m sure we’d have heard about it in the news,” we tell ourselves.
But the news is the propaganda. And it will never report on that bombshell story.
Propaganda
is the single most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of our
society. In controls how the public thinks, acts, votes and behaves, but
hardly anyone ever talks about it. Because the sources they’ve been
trained to look to for information never say anything about it.
So
people say what’s on their mind, after what’s on their mind has been
carefully curated by the imperial narrative managers who are responsible
for controlling what information goes into their mind.
gilbertdoctorow | To be sure, the demand that all Russians be barred from Europe as
punishment for their war on Ukraine has not met with universal approval
within the EU. Even Germany came out against the initiative, with Scholz
saying that exceptions must be made for humanitarian reasons. Others
have debated the legality under EU law of such generalized prohibitions
directed at an entire population. But the debate rages on.
Finally, a statement made yesterday by Latvian President Egils Levits
got the full attention of Moscow. He said that Russian-speaking
residents of Latvia should be ‘isolated from society’ if they oppose his
government’s policies with respect to the war in Ukraine. Just what is
meant by “isolate” is not clear. Does Levits intend to intern them in
concentration camps? Given the absolute failure of Latvia to respect EU
human rights norms going back from the first days of the country’s
independence from the USSR in 1991, such an atrocity would not be out of
character.
I have dealt with precisely this issue in essays going back to 2014 which were included in my collection Does Russia Have a Future?:
see chapter 22 “Latvia’s 300,000 Non-Citizens and the Ukrainian Crisis
Today” and chapter 33 “Latvia’s failed U.S. inspired policies towards
Russia and Russians.” I further explored these issues in my 2019 book A Belgian Perspective on International Relations, chapter38 “Republic of Latvia, Apartheid State Within the EU.”
The point is that upon achieving independence thanks to the active
support of many of its Russian-speaking citizenry, the government of
Latvia turned around and stripped 400,000 of them of their citizenship,
close to 40% of the total population at the time, and offered them a
path to regain passports that only a tiny fraction of them could
follow. When President Levits speaks today of Russian-speaking
“residents” of Latvia, he has in mind those who were deprived of civil
rights including passports and remain stateless up to the present time.
Everything that Latvia did to its Russian-speaking population going
back 30 years set the precedents for Kiev’s repressive policies towards
its own 40% who are Russian speakers after the nationalists from Lvov
came to power in 2014.
These various developments were the main topic for discussion in yesterday’s Evening with Vladimir Solovyov
political talk show, which stood out as especially valuable. Although I
have made reference to this particular talk show frequently over the
years as a good source of information about what Russia’s political and
social elites are thinking, I freely acknowledge that the presenter
cannot and does not fill every program with material and panelists worth
listening to. Indeed, there is a lot of sludge on air between the
gems. By ‘sludge’ I mean the kind of ‘kitchen talk’ in which expert
panelists talk the same non-facts-based drivel that ordinary Russians
will engage in when they follow the principle of socializing described
by Chekhov in Act Two of The Three Sisters: “They are not serving us tea, so let’s philosophize.”
In any case, last night’s Solovyov was definitely worth
listening to. The question of neo-Nazism in Europe was the glue binding
together different elements of the discussion, ranging from Levits’
obnoxious declaration of the same day to the fate of ordinary Russians
in Kazakhstan and Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
and what to do about all of these challenges to the Russian World.
The overriding point was that the Russophobia and ‘cancel Russian
culture’ movements that have swept Europe during 2022 mean that
Russians are the Jews of today. They are what the Hitlerites called Untermenschen,
against whom all manner of rights violations if not outright murder can
be practiced. This arises in its worst form in Ukraine, where Russians
as a people are systematically dehumanized in statements from the top
leadership of the country. In Ukraine, the ultra-nationalists call
Russians “Colorado,” a reference to the bugs that infest potato crops.
These insects carry the orange and black colors of the St George’s
ribbons that patriotic Russians wear. This is the same logic that made
possible the biological weapons attack on Russian soldiers in the
Zaporozhie that was carried out last week by Ukrainian forces, sending
the victims to intensive care treatment for botulism poisoning. That
development probably did not get coverage in your daily newspaper.
The conversation on Solovyov was particularly interesting in
the ‘what is to be done’ segment. Acknowledging that a ‘special
military operation’ against Latvia is not practicable yet given Latvia’s
membership in NATO, a panelist who heads the State Duma committee on
relations with the Former Soviet Union states, said that those Russians
who profited from the transit business between Russia and Latvia for
decades should now pay up and contribute financially to relocating the
Russian speakers in Riga to the Russian Federation, meaning providing
good housing and jobs that till now were never on offer to incentivize
immigration. A fellow panelist broadened the proposed assistance to
suggest a government program of resettlement modeled on what Israel did
some decades ago to facilitate the relocation of certain Black African
Jews from their country of persecution to the State of Israel. And it
was suggested that similar relocation offers should be extended to
Russian speakers in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries where
they have all been second class citizens since these countries became
independent of the USSR.
jonathanturley | One of the most glaring contradictions in the
Mar-a-Lago controversy has been the Justice Department demanding
absolute and unwavering secrecy over the FBI raid while officials have
been leaking details on the raid. The latest example is a report in the New York Times
that the Justice Department recovered more than 300 documents with
classified markings, citing multiple sources connected to the
investigation. Most judges would be a tad annoyed by the contradiction
as the government continues to frame the public debate with its own
selective leaks while using secrecy to bar other disclosures. That
includes sections of the affidavit that detail the communications with
the Trump team, information that is already known to the target.
Someone is clearly lying. The Trump Team
said that it was cooperating and would have given access to the
government if it raised further objections. The Justice Department has
clearly indicated that time was of the essence to justify this
unprecedented raid on the home of a former president. Yet, Attorney
General Merrick Garland reportedly waited for weeks to sign off on the
application for a warrant and the FBI then waited a weekend to execute
that warrant. It is difficult to understand why such communications
could not be released in a redacted affidavit while protecting more
sensitive sections.
Previous leaks discussed various
undisclosed facts that are presumably part of the affidavit, including
the government was seeking vital nuclear weapons materials and then how
video camera evidence outside of the Mar-a-Lago storage area led the FBI
to act without delay.
The latest leak to to the New York Times
offers details on what was gathered from Mar-a-Lago. Officials state
that they collected more than 150 documents marked as classified in
January with another 150 being gathered in June and then in the August
raid.
Washington has long
floated on a sea of leaks but this is notable in that the government is
opposing even modest disclosures from the court while it has steadily
leaked details to its own advantage. It undermines the credibility of
the government and raises questions of the motivations behind the
absolute secrecy claims.
The level of detail is extraordinary
including the very account of past dealings that some of us have argued
could be released in the affidavit as well as the contents of the boxes.
The leaks describe the June meeting in Mar-a-Lago and reveals that Jay
Bratt, the chief of the counterespionage section of the national
security division of the Justice Department, met with two of Mr. Trump’s
lawyers, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb. He then went through the
boxes himself to identify classified material. (The Trump motion
this week also described this meeting with Bratt, which again raises
why the same information in the affidavit cannot be disclosed).
This information is likely contained in the
affidavit, which the Justice Department claimed could not be released
without harming its investigation and endangering national security.
dissidentvoice | A military funded academic, working at a school launched by
Condoleezza Rice, claims leftist and anti-war journalists engage in
Russian disinformation. His report doesn’t provide any evidence or
refute anyone’s argument, but the legacy media laps it up.
While “Disinformation and Russia-Ukrainian war on Canadian social
media” reveals little, it has served its political purpose. It will
further insulate Canadian officials from criticism of their policies by
suggesting anyone questioning Ottawa’s Ukraine/NATO policies are part of
a Russian disinformation campaign.
Boucher is a product of the Canadian military’s vast publicly financed ideological apparatus, which I detail in A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Exploitation.
He has been a fellow at the military and arms industry funded Canadian
Global Affairs Institute and Dalhousie Centre for the Study of Security
and Development. He advocates theories amenable to the military’s
interests, including “strategic retrenchment:
falling back on the people you can really trust”, which is a
sophisticated way of saying Canada should deepen its alliance with the
US empire. His academic profile says Boucher “is a co-lead
of the Canadian Network on Information and Security, funded by the
Department of National Defence” while his Canadian Global Affairs
Institute bio notes that “he is currently responsible for more than $2.4M of funding from the Department of National Defence (DND) to study information operations.”
apnews | President Joe Biden,
speaking to donors at a Democratic fundraiser here, said Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “didn’t want to hear it” when U.S.
intelligence gathered information that Russia was preparing to invade.
The
remarks came as Biden was talking about his work to rally and solidify
support for Ukraine as the war continues into its fourth month.
“Nothing
like this has happened since World War II. I know a lot of people
thought I was maybe exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain he” —
meaning Russian President Vladimir Putin — “was going to go in, off the
border.”
“There was no doubt,” Biden said. “And Zelenskyy didn’t want to hear it.”
Although
Zelenskyy has inspired people with his leadership during the war, his
preparation for the invasion — or lack thereof — has remained a
controversial issue.
In
the weeks before the war began on Feb. 24, Zelenskyy publicly bristled
as Biden administration officials repeatedly warned that a Russian
invasion was highly likely.
moa | The New York Times, here via Yahoo, has some rather weird piece over alleged lack of intelligence on Ukrainian warplanes:
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has provided
near-daily updates of Russia’s invasion on social media; viral video
posts have shown the effectiveness of Western weapons in the hands of
Ukrainian forces; and the Pentagon has regularly held briefings on
developments in the war.
But despite the flow of all this news to the public, U.S. intelligence agencies have less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military, its planned operations and its successes and failures, according to current and former officials.
Governments often withhold information from the public for
operational security. But these information gaps within the U.S.
government could make it more difficult for the Biden administration to
decide how to target military aid as it sends billions of dollars in
weapons to Ukraine. ... Avril D. Haines, the director of national
intelligence, testified at a Senate hearing last month that “it was
very hard to tell” how much additional aid Ukraine could absorb.
She added: “We have, in fact, more insight, probably, on the Russian side than we do on the Ukrainian side.”
One key question is what measures Zelenskyy intends to call for in
Donbas. Ukraine faces a strategic choice there: withdraw its forces or
risk having them encircled by Russia.
Well, NYT decided to start steering clear of this whole
Russia "lost in Ukraine" BS it promoted together with neocon crazies,
and begins this ever familiar tune of the "intel failure". Right.
U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine's War Strategy, Officials Say
Hm, how about I put it bluntly--the U.S. never had clear picture on
anything, especially on Russia, or, as a private case, [the Special
Military Operation] and completely bought into Ukie propaganda, which
shows a complete incompetence of the "intel" in the US. ... The
narrative on [the Special Military Operation], in reality, is dead and
the failure is not being set, it already happened. It is a fait accompli
no matter how one wants to put a lipstick on the pig.
Larry Johnson thinks there is another another motive behind the story:
Frankly, I find it hard to believe that there are not solid
analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency who know the answers to all
these questions. The real problem may not be a lack of intelligence.
Nope. It is the fear of telling the politicians hard truths they do not want to hear.
Given the billions of dollars the United States is spending on
“intelligence” collection systems, it is time for the Congress and the
American public to demand that the intelligence services do their damn
job.
I do not believe for one moment that U.S. intelligence services do
not know what is going on in Ukraine and in Kiev. They know that the
Ukraine has lost the war and will have to sue for peace as soon as
possible.
They also have told the White House that this is a case and that the
whole idea of setting up the Ukraine to tickle the Russian bear was
idiotic from the get go. The question now is who will take the blame for
the outcome. Who can the buck be passed to?
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...