dailymail | A top FSB intelligence official has been moved to a high security jail in Moscow as Vladimir Putin purges his secret services over the botched Ukraine invasion, say reports.
Col-General Sergei Beseda, 68, head of the 5th Service of the Federal Security Service (FSB), was previously under house arrest.
He
has now been placed in pre-trial detention in notorious Lefortovo
Prison, suggesting he will face major charges for intelligence failings,
it is claimed.
Beseda’s case is being investigated by the Military Investigative
Department of the Investigative Committee, said Russian intelligence
expert Andrei Soldatov, who revealed the Lefortovo move.
Beseda, in charge of FSB intelligence and
political subversion in the ex-USSR, had been on a trip to Ukraine
shortly before he was detained.
Putin
is said to fear that moles leaked invasion plans to the West, and Beseda
was detained along with his deputy Anatoly Bolyukh, but had been held
under house arrest until now. The current status of Bolyukh is unclear.
The Russian leader had been convinced by
secret services briefings that his troops would be welcomed by many
Ukrainians, and achieve a speedy victory. In reality they have faced
implacable opposition.
Lefortovo jail notoriously held political prisoners in the Soviet era and is routinely used to incarcerate suspected traitors.
Last month Putin also fired the deputy head of the Russian national guard.
Beseda
had been a longtime trusted Putin secret services official, and was in
his role as head of the 5th service of the FSB since 2009.
Russia has not confirmed his arrest or detention in Lefortovo.
wikipedia | The Nazis used the word Gleichschaltung for the process of successively establishing a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society and societies occupied by Nazi Germany. It has been variously translated as "co-ordination",[2][3][4] "Nazification of state and society",[5] "synchronization'", and "bringing into line",[5]
but English texts often use the untranslated German word to convey its
unique historical meaning. In their seminal work on National Socialist
vernacular, Nazi-Deutsch/Nazi-German: An English Lexicon of the Language of the Third Reich, historians Robert Michael and Karin Doerr define Gleichschaltung as: "Consolidation. All of the German Volk’s
social, political, and cultural organizations to be controlled and run
according to Nazi ideology and policy. All opposition to be eliminated."[6]
The Nazis were able to put Gleichschaltung into effect due to the legal measures taken by the government during the 20 months following 30 January 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.[7]
In this atmosphere the general election of the Reichstag took place on 5 March 1933.[9] The Nazis had hoped to win an outright majority and push aside their coalition partners, the German National People's Party. However, the Nazis won only 43.9 percent of the vote, well short of a majority.[10]
Nevertheless, though the Party did not receive enough votes to amend
the federal constitution, the disaffection with the Weimar government's
attempt at democracy was palpable and violence followed. SA units
stormed the Social Democrats' headquarters in Königsberg, destroying the premises, even beating Communist Reichstag deputy Walter Schütz to death.[11] Other non-Nazi party officials were attacked by the SA in Wuppertal, Cologne, Braunschweig, Chemnitz,
and elsewhere throughout Germany, in a series of violent acts that
continued to escalate through the summer of 1933; meanwhile the SA's
membership grew to some two-million members.[12]
One of the most important steps towards Gleichschaltung of German society was the introduction of the "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda" under Joseph Goebbels
in March 1933 and the subsequent steps taken by the Propaganda Ministry
to assume full control of the press and all means of social
communication. This included oversight of newspapers, magazines, films,
books, public meetings and ceremonies, foreign press relations, theater,
art and music, radio, and television.[23] To this end, Goebbels said:
[T]he secret of propaganda [is to] permeate the person it aims to grasp, without his even noticing that he is being permeated. Of course
propaganda has a purpose, but the purpose must be concealed with such
cleverness and virtuosity that the person on whom this purpose is to be
carried out doesn't notice it at all.[24]
This was also the purpose of "co-ordination": to ensure that every
aspect of the lives of German citizens was permeated with the ideas and
prejudices of the Nazis. From March to July 1933 and continuing
afterwards, the Nazi Party systematically eliminated or co-opted
non-Nazi organizations that could potentially influence people. Those
critical of Hitler and the Nazis were suppressed, intimidated or
murdered.[7]
Every national voluntary association, and every local
club, was brought under Nazi control, from industrial and agricultural
pressure groups to sports associations, football clubs, male voice
choirs, women's organizations—in short, the whole fabric of
associational life was Nazified. Rival, politically oriented clubs or
societies were merged into a single Nazi body. Existing leaders of
voluntary associations were either unceremoniously ousted, or knuckled
under of their own accord. Many organizations expelled leftish or
liberal members and declared their allegiance to the new state and its
institutions. The whole process ... went on all over Germany. ... By
the end, virtually the only non-Nazi associations left were the army and
the Churches with their lay organizations.[25]
For example, in 1934, the government founded the Deutscher Reichsbund für Leibesübungen, later the Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen,
as the official sports governing body. All other German sport
associations gradually lost their freedom and were coopted into it.[26]
Besides sports, another more important part of the "co-ordination"
effort was the purging of the civil service, both at the Federal and
state level. Top Federal civil servants—the State Secretaries—were
largely replaced if they weren't sympathetic to the Nazi program, as
were the equivalent bureaucrats in the states, but Nazification took
place at every level. Civil servants rushed to join the Nazi Party,
fearing that if they did not they would lose their jobs. At the local
level, mayors and councils were terrorized by Nazi stormtroopers of the SA and SS
into resigning or following orders to replace officials and workers at
local public institutions who were Jewish or belonged to other political
parties.[27]
consortiumnews |One
of my reasons for joining Twitter was to contribute to the overall
process of engaging in responsible debate, dialogue, and discussion
about issues of importance in my life and the lives of others, in order
to empower people with knowledge and information they might not
otherwise have access to, so that those who participate in such
interaction, myself included, could hold those whom we elect to higher
office accountable for what they do in our name.
To
me, such an exercise is the essence of democracy and, for better or for
worse, Twitter had become the primary social media platform I used to
engage in this activity.
From
my perspective, credibility is the key to a good Twitter relationship. I
follow experts on a variety of topics because I view them as genuine
specialists in their respective fields (I also follow several dog and
cat accounts because, frankly speaking, dogs and cats make me laugh.)
People follow me, I assume, for similar reasons. Often I find myself in
in-depth exchanges with people who follow me, or people I follow, where
reasoned fact-based discourse proves beneficial to both parties, as well
as to those who are following the dialogue.
Before
my Twitter account was suspended, I had close to 95,000 “followers.”
I’d like to believe that the majority of these followed me because of
the integrity and expertise I brought to the discussion.
Having
someone hijack my identity and seek to resurrect my suspended account
by appealing to those who had previously followed me can only be
damaging to whatever “brand” I had possessed that managed to attract a
following that was pushing 100,000. When one speaks of injury, one
cannot ignore the fact that reputations can be injured just as much as
the physical body.
Indeed,
while a body can heal itself, reputations cannot. The fact that Twitter
has facilitated the wrongful impersonation of me and my Twitter account
makes it a party to whatever damage has been accrued due to this
activity.
It is not as though Twitter can, or ever will, be held accountable for such actions. Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934,
enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA), holds
that internet platforms that host third-party content — think of tweets
on Twitter—are not (with few exceptions) liable for what those third
parties post or do.
Like
the issue of Freedom of Speech, the concept of holding Twitter
accountable for facilitating the fraudulent misappropriation of a
Twitter user’s online identity is a legal bridge too far. Twitter, it
seems, is a law unto itself.
My
Twitter War came to an end today when I received an email from Twitter
Support proclaiming that “Your account has been suspended and will not
be restored because it was found to be violating the Twitter Terms of
Service, specifically the Twitter Rules against participating in
targeted abuse,” adding that “In order to ensure that people feel safe
expressing diverse opinions and beliefs on our platform, we do not
tolerate abusive behavior. This includes inciting other people to engage
in the targeted harassment of someone.”
This ruling, it seems, is not appealable.
At
some point in time, the U.S. people, and those they elect to higher
office to represent their interests, need to bring Twitter in line with
the ideals and values Americans collectively espouse when it comes to
issues like free speech and online identity protection.
If
Twitter is to be absolved of any responsibility for the content of
ideas expressed on its platform, then it should be treated as a free
speech empowerment zone and prohibited from interfering with speech that
otherwise would be protected by law.
The
U.S. Constitution assumes that society will govern itself when deciding
the weight that should be put behind the words expressed by its
citizens. Thus, in a nation that has outlawed slavery and racial
discrimination, organizations like the Klu Klux Klan are allowed to
demonstrate and give voice to their odious ideology.
America
is a literal battlefield of ideas, and society is better for it. Giving
voice to hateful thought allows society to rally against it and
ultimately defeat it by confronting it and destroying it through the
power of informed debate, discussion, and dialogue; censoring hateful
speech does not defeat it, but rather drives it underground, where it
can fester and grow in the alternative universe created because of
censorship.
In
many ways, my Twitter Wars represent a struggle for the future of
America. If Twitter and other social media platforms are permitted to
operate in a manner that does not reflect the ideals and values of the
nation, and yet is permitted to mainstream itself so that the platform
controls the manner in which the American people interact when it comes
to consuming information and ideas, then the nation will lose touch with
what it stands for, including the basic precepts of freedom of speech
that define us as a people.
Mainstreaming
censorship is never a good idea, and yet by giving Twitter a free hand
to do just that, the American people are sowing the seeds of their own
demise.
johnhelmer | A Canadian military veteran with NATO warfighting expertise analyzes
the operational map this way: “I believe that the Stavka is sucking the
Ukrainians in by leaving the east-west corridors open so they are none
too concerned, rightly or wrongly, about the deliveries coming from the
west. The Ukrainians are being drawn into the cauldron east of the
Dnieper River; this move is also fed by their deep belief in their own
propaganda – ‘we chased them away from Kiev!’ ‘We’ve stopped them in
Kharkov and the Donbass!’ ‘Mariupol is still resisting!’ They also
believe what their US trainers and advisers have been telling them is
the effectiveness of NATO weaponry and other support. The constant
nonsense about Russian weakness spouted by the media and politicians in
safe havens over here does them no good either. This attitude seems to
suit the Russians just fine.”
“One thing is certain – the Stavka is calling up very significant
reserves while the Ukrainians are scraping the bottom of the barrel
domestically and internationally in order to stiffen their lines. A huge
fight is certainly brewing now. Will there be a concerted attack on
Ukrainian logistics in concert with the offensive in the East? This is a
strong possibility. It also appears that the Ukrainians are feeling the
impact of fuel shortages due to the sea blockade and Russian strikes on
all fuel depots and stocks from the western borders to eastern hubs
like Dniepropetrovsk.”
“What happens when the Stavka says Go! and all those Ukrainians,
foreign white supremacists, and mercenaries get bottled up and
destroyed, despite the weapons deliveries? What happens when the major
US tactic for this war – the establishment of the proxy army flying the
SS and other fascist flags — is openly and soundly defeated in this
relatively short period of time – a very short period of time for a war
fought by a US-led army armed to better than NATO equipment, training
and readiness standards?
“What I am seeing are Russians rehabilitating civil authority, that’s
Russian authority from Kherson in the south to Sumy in the north. I
don’t believe the Galicians will end up with Odesssa or Kharkov and
Sumy. If and when the eastern army is destroyed, Zelensky’s regime may
collapse into infighting. He may be lynched or spirited away before the
Russians get there.”
A well-informed Moscow source with close contacts among the Donbass
leadership expects the future map of the Ukraine to become clear once
the next two major battles have been closed – the first for Kramatorsk,
the second for Kharkov.
The Russian plan, according to the Donbass leadership, is to reform
the Ukraine into “a loose confederation in which the controlling regions
will be the eastern Russian-speaking, Orthodox regions of Kharkov,
Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Nikolaev, Mariupol, and Odessa.
They will be run by newly installed administrations and locally
recruited security forces, both controlled by Russia. Dniepropetrovsk,
Poltava and Kremenchuk are likely to be part of this federal alliance,
which will be strong enough to win the next Ukrainian presidential
election, replacing Vladimir Zelensky.” Zelensky’s term is scheduled to
end in March 2024. It is likely to end sooner.
The future for Kiev in this new federal polity is still undecided, the sources acknowledge.
According to the Donbass leadership, the future of Galicia in the
west is to become “a mini-federation of competing ethnic national groups
– Catholic Ukrainians, Hungarians, Slovakians, Poles, Romanians, and
others. Landlocked, without exportable resources except refugees,
mercenaries, and girls, blocked by Belarus to the north and Russia to
the east, the Galician gun platform which the US and Canada have created
around Lvov will be stripped of its political power in Kiev. Their
heavy arms, fuel stocks and command centres destroyed, they will be
motivated to turn their ideologies and their personal weapons on each
other. Between them and the east, this Russian plan for the
demilitarization of the country will prevent the return of mass threats
and NATO bases east of the Dnieper River.
The sources say this is not a plan for the breakup of the old
Ukraine, nor is it a plan for the accession of Novorussia. It is a
plan “to keep the Ukraine broken”, in which the big fracture lines will
be moved to the west — and kept there.
Attacking another State is
against the principles of international law. But one should also
consider the background of such a decision. First of all, it must be
made clear that Putin is neither crazy nor has he lost touch with
reality. He is a very methodical and systematic person, in other words,
very Russian. I believe that he was aware of the consequences of his
operation in Ukraine. He assessed – obviously rightly – that whether he
carried out a "small" operation to protect the Donbas population or a
"massive" operation in favour of the national interests of Russia and
the Donbas population, the consequences would be the same. He then went
for the maximum solution.
What do you see as his goal?
It is certainly not directed
against the Ukrainian population. Putin has said that again and again.
You can also see it in the facts. Russia is still supplying gas to
Ukraine. The Russians have not stopped that. They have not shut down the
internet. They haven't destroyed the electricity plants and the water
supply. Of course, such services may have stopped in fighting areas. But
you see a very different approach from the Americans, for example, in
former Yugoslavia, Iraq or even Libya. When Western countries attacked
them, they first destroyed the electricity and water supply and the
entire infrastructure.
Why does the West act in this way?
The Western approach – it is
also interesting to see this from the point of view of the operational
doctrine – is based on the idea that if you destroy the infrastructure,
the population will revolt against the unpopular dictator, and you will
get rid of him that way. This was also the strategy during the Second
World War, when German cities such as Cologne, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden
etc. were bombed. They targeted the civilian population directly so that
there would be an uprising. The government loses its power through an
uprising, and you have won the war without endangering your own troops.
That is the theory.
What is the Russian approach?
It is completely different.
They have clearly announced their goal. They want "demilitarisation" and
"denazification". If you honestly follow the situation, that is exactly
what they are doing. Of course, a war is a war, and regrettably there
are always deaths in the process, but it is interesting to see what the
numbers say. On Friday (4 March), the UN reported 265 Ukrainian
civilians killed. In the evening, the Russian Defence Ministry put the
number of dead soldiers at 498. This means that there are more victims
among the Russian military than among the civilians on the Ukrainian
side. If you now compare this with Iraq or Libya, then it is exactly the
opposite with Western warfare.
Does it contradict the way the West represents the situation?
Yes, our media claim that the
Russians want to destroy everything, but that is obviously not true. I
am also disturbed by the way our media portrays Putin suddenly deciding
to attack and conquer Ukraine. The US warned for several months that
there would be a surprise attack, but nothing happened. By the way,
intelligence services and the Ukrainian leadership have repeatedly
denied such American warnings. If you look carefully at the military
reports and the preparations on the ground, you can see pretty clearly:
Putin had no intention of attacking Ukraine until mid-February.
Why did that change? What has happened?
You have to know a few things first, otherwise you won't understand. On 24 March 2021, Ukrainian President Zelensky
issued a Presidential decree to recapture Crimea. He then began to move
the Ukrainian army south and southeast, towards the Donbas. So, for a
year now, we have had a permanent build-up of the army on Ukraine's
southern border. This explains why there were no Ukrainian troops on the
Russian-Ukrainian border at the end of February. Zelensky has always
claimed that the Russians will not attack Ukraine. The Ukrainian defence
minister has also repeatedly confirmed this. Similarly, the head of the
Ukrainian Security Council confirmed in December and in January that
there were no signs of a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Was this a trick?
No, they said that several
times, and I am sure that Putin, who also said that repeatedly, by the
way, did not want to attack. Obviously, there was pressure from the US.
The US has little interest in
Ukraine itself. At this point, they wanted to increase pressure on
Germany to shut down Nord Stream II. They wanted Ukraine to provoke
Russia and, if Russia reacted, Nord Stream II would be put on ice. Such a
scenario was alluded to when Olaf Scholz visited Washington, and Scholz
clearly did not want to go along with it. That is not just my opinion,
there was also Americans who understood it that way: The target was Nord
Stream II, and one must not forget that Nord Stream II was built at the
request of the Germans. It is fundamentally a German project. Because
Germany needs more gas to achieve its energy and climate goals.
This
comes on the heels of new revelations of how deeply embedded U.S. and
NATO command structures (and troops) are in Ukraine. A French journalist
here describes what he saw in his time in Ukraine: https://www.bitchute.com/video/aVZeyycQgXBk/ (video with translations)
In
short, he says he was shocked to see American generals running the
entire show on the ground, and he says the names of them will be
revealed in his new exposé in the French Figaro newspaper this week.
This is further proof that this conflict is truly NATO vs. Russia, and NATO is losing badly.
Another report states: “the
United States is moving its advanced headquarters units to the western
borders of Ukraine. In particular, the 5th Corps is being relocated.
This suggests that it is not the General Staff of the Armed Forces of
Ukraine that controls military operations, but NATO officers. And we are
at war not with some puppet regime in Kiev, but with the collective
West.”
politico | Alleged and unconfirmed claims of
chemical weapons use by Russia in Ukraine has forced a scramble inside
the White House to match President Joe Biden’s promise of an “in kind”
response while avoiding further escalation of the conflict.
The White House is urging caution,
noting that the use of chemical weapons remains unverified. U.S.
officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive
subject, said they have been running scenario-planning exercises on the
possible use of chemical weapons, having publicly raised the alarm that
Russian President Vladimir Putin may take such a step. The officials
said that military options in Ukraine aren’t on the table — echoing
Biden’s repeated position of not wanting to spark World War III.
The
word used by multiple U.S. officials who’ve been involved in
contingency planning for such an attack for at least a month is
“proportional,” meaning America and its allies intend to respond in a
manner befitting the potential war crime.
Instead,
some suggested America and its allies could impose further sanctions on
Moscow or further bolster Ukraine’s defenses with advanced weaponry.
Biden aides have also speculated that the use of chemical weapons may be
the final impetus for European nations to stop importing Russian
energy, funds for which have fueled Putin’s war machine and filled his
country’s coffers.
Before
doing any of that, the first step is to confirm a Ukrainian military
group’s charge that Russia on Monday deployed a chemical substance in
Mariupol. The Azov regiment,
a frontline fighting unit that has fought Russia in the Donbas since
2014 and has been tied to neo-Nazi groups and white supremacists, said
Russian troops dropped a chemical weapon from a drone and poisoned at least three people,
though the group said the affected soldiers are not facing disastrous
health effects. If true, that’d be the first known use of chemical
weapons in the war since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
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.
thepostil | In cities like Kharkov, Mariupol and Odessa, the defense is provided
by paramilitary militias. They know that the objective of
“denazification” is aimed primarily at them.
For an attacker in an urbanized area, civilians are a problem. This
is why Russia is seeking to create humanitarian corridors to empty
cities of civilians and leave only the militias, to fight them more
easily.
This week, John Mearsheimer, speaking to @KatrinaNation, noted the continued alliance between DC and Ukraine's far-right:
"The Americans will side with the Ukrainian right... Both do not want Zelensky cutting a deal with the Russians that makes it look like the Russians won." pic.twitter.com/yxDOlEaBLG
Conversely, these militias seek to keep civilians in the cities in
order to dissuade the Russian army from fighting there. This is why they
are reluctant to implement these corridors and do everything to ensure
that Russian efforts are unsuccessful—they can use the civilian
population as “human shields. Videos showing civilians trying to leave
Mariupol and beaten up by fighters of the Azov regiment are of course
carefully censored here.
On Facebook, the Azov group was considered in the same category as
the Islamic State and subject to the platform’s “policy on dangerous
individuals and organizations.” It was therefore forbidden to glorify
it, and “posts” that were favorable to it were systematically banned.
But on February 24, Facebook changed its policy and allowed posts favorable to the militia. In the same spirit, in March, the platform authorized, in the former Eastern countries, calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire our leaders, as we shall see.
Our media propagate a romantic image of popular resistance. It is
this image that led the European Union to finance the distribution of
arms to the civilian population. This is a criminal act. In my capacity
as head of peacekeeping doctrine at the UN, I worked on the issue of
civilian protection. We found that violence against civilians occurred
in very specific contexts. In particular, when weapons are abundant and
there are no command structures.
These command structures are the essence of armies: their function is
to channel the use of force towards an objective. By arming citizens in
a haphazard manner, as is currently the case, the EU is turning them
into combatants, with the consequential effect of making them potential
targets. Moreover, without command, without operational goals, the
distribution of arms leads inevitably to settling of scores, banditry
and actions that are more deadly than effective. War becomes a matter of
emotions. Force becomes violence. This is what happened in Tawarga
(Libya) from 11 to 13 August 2011, where 30,000 black Africans were
massacred with weapons parachuted (illegally) by France. By the way, the
British Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (RUSI) does not see any added value in these arms deliveries.
Moreover, by delivering arms to a country at war, one exposes oneself
to being considered a belligerent. The Russian strikes of March 13,
2022, against the Mykolayev air base follow Russian warnings that arms shipments would be treated as hostile targets.
The EU is repeating the disastrous experience of the Third Reich in
the final hours of the Battle of Berlin. War must be left to the
military and when one side has lost, it must be admitted. And if there
is to be resistance, it must be led and structured. But we are doing
exactly the opposite—we are pushing citizens to go and fight and at the
same time, Facebook authorizes calls for the murder of Russian soldiers
and leaders. So much for the values that inspire us.
Some intelligence services see this irresponsible decision as a way
to use the Ukrainian population as cannon fodder to fight Vladimir
Putin’s Russia. This kind of murderous decision should have been left to
the colleagues of Ursula von der Leyen’s grandfather. It would have
been better to engage in negotiations and thus obtain guarantees for the
civilian population than to add fuel to the fire. It is easy to be
combative with the blood of others.
thepostil | It was during this time that a distinct Ukrainian “identity” was also
fashioned, one which stated that the “real” Ukrainians were supposed
descendants of Vikings who set up Kievan Rus. There is no real
historical or genetic basis
for this designation, but it was a convenient merging with Nazi
ideology. In other words, in the “true Ukraine,” there were the superior
humans and the sub-humans. This “Germanic identity” of Ukraine would
have tragic consequences down to today.
The inevitable result of all this was mass slaughter of those that
were “undesirable,” the bloodiest of which occurred in June and July of
1941, all coordinated by Bandera, and in which some 9,000 people were
murdered (Jews, Poles, and “Muscovites”).
Given the success of this violence and thinking that he had the upper
hand, Bandera blundered and declared the Ukraine as independent, and so
was promptly arrested by his friends, the Nazis, who sent him off to
Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he stayed until 1944, when he
was released to coordinate resistance against the Red Army, a task he
took up with renewed fervor.
After the war, the Banderites were reorganized by the British (MI6)
and the CIA, as a way to fight the Soviets. During this time, Bandera
moved about, often in disguise and in secret, and always protected by
the many members of the former SS, who had found convenient shelter in
Ukraine and who formed an extensive underground network.
During this time, Bandera and his organizations killed thousands;
some say hundreds of thousands; and all the while he worked closely with
the BND, the Federal Intelligence Service of what was then West
Germany.
Finally, Bandera was assassinated by the Soviets in Munich, in 1959.
But this did not end the deep influence of Hitler and the Nazis in the
aspirations of Ukraine nationalists—so much so that it is now difficult
to say where Nazism ends and Ukrainian nationalism begins.
In the new Ukraine, statues of Bandera are everywhere. He is the official, national hero.
Which Ukrainians?
In view of the above, it is important to note that theme of the
“Ukrainian people” is again at the center of the current Ukraine-Russia
conflict. In the West, this has come to mean an alliance with the
“Ukrainians” in order to defeat the Russians who are regarded as aliens
and who do not belong to “us.” Such is the legacy of Nazism in Ukraine,
in that people repeat its core tenet of the inferior Other, in their
“defense” of Ukraine. Russians are not “Western” and so must be fought
and defeated. That is the gist of the hysterical Russophobia that now
grips the West, where “innocent Ukraine” and the “bully Russia” has
become “settled science.”
Few in the grip of this hysteria seem to want to understand the
complexity involved, let alone the near-impossibility of separating
Ukrainian nationalism from Nazism—for the Banderites never went
away—meaning that the Ukraine was never de-Nazified. Rather, the
Banderites became inseparable from the country’s power-structures and
institutions. This relationship only intensified with the dissolution of
the Soviet Union when Ukraine became independent in 1991, and when
Ukrainian nationalism gained full legitimacy.
And the myth of a “superior, Germanic Ukrainian” was central to the
“new Ukraine,” which in turn was central to Euromaidan and what came
later—the relentless slaughter of the “sub-humans” in the Donbas
regions, as many have meticulously catalogued from 2014 to today.
And according to current Ukrainian law, there are two kinds of
“Ukrainians”—the “Germanic Ukrainians,” along with allied people, the
Tatars and Karaites (neither of whom actually live in Ukraine).
Then, there are the undesirable people, who are not legally
“Ukrainians.” These are the Slavs, and a few others like the Magyars and
the Romani who are denied the use of their own language in public. They
have to use the official “Ukrainian” language which officially has
nothing to do with Russian (!!).
This is the “Law of the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” which states
that only Germanic Ukrainians, Tatars and Karaites have “the right to
fully enjoy all human rights and all fundamental freedoms.” It was
signed into law by the current BFF of the West, President Volodymyr
Zelensky, on July 21, 2021. In other words, racial segregation of
society into the Uebermenschen and the Untermenschen.
This law is not an aberration; rather it reflects the widespread view of where Ukraine “belongs.” For example, in 2018, a book appeared
(which became a bestseller and won the Stepan Bandera Prize) in which
wide-ranging claims were made about ancient Aryan Ukrainians who
invented all kinds of things, including civilization itself. The book
was happily “reviewed” by three professors of history and philology at
Lviv University (Iryna Kochan, Viktor Golubko and Iosif Los).
Harpers | Ukraine is among the poorest countries in Europe and
the closest thing the continent has to a failing state. It is mired in a
smoldering conflict with Russian-backed separatists in its eastern
provinces, and its state institutions have been almost entirely captured
by competing oligarchs. Corruption pervades almost every level of
government. Outside Kyiv’s metro stations, elderly women in head scarves
and bedraggled war veterans beg for change, while nearby the streets
are lined with luxury shops and petty gangsters run red lights in black
SUVs without fear of rebuke. Millions have emigrated to Poland or Russia
for work. The capital has the uncanny feel, at times, of a postmodern
Weimar, where Instagram influencers brunch in cafés tricked out in the
international hipster style opposite billboards adorned with the faces
of Ukraine’s martyrs in the war against Russia.
But perhaps Ukraine’s clearest departure from the standard model of
European liberalism is its proliferation of armed far-right factions,
considered by analysts and ordinary Ukrainians alike to be the secretly
funded private armies of the elite oligarch class. They fought in the
trenches outside Donetsk and now patrol city streets, enforcing a
particular vision of order with the blessing of overstretched and
underfunded police departments. In some regions, they serve as official
election monitors.
Recruitment posters for these militias can be found across Kyiv,
calling on disenchanted veterans and disaffected youths to join them in
their mission to remake the world by crushing liberalism. To their
supporters, these groups are enforcers of the popular will, defenders of
the nation against Russian encroachment from the East and liberal
values from the West. To others, especially Ukraine’s Western-funded
NGOs, increasingly isolated outposts of liberal order, they pose a
serious and growing challenge to Ukraine’s social harmony, and,
ultimately, to the state itself.
The most powerful and ambitious of these militias is Azov. Like many
of the country’s armed far-right groups, it was founded during the 2014
revolution, when the Moscow-friendly autocrat Viktor Yanukovych was
ousted in bloody clashes around Kyiv’s central square, Maidan
Nezalezhnosti. More than one hundred protesters were killed in the city,
mostly by snipers from the elite Berkut police force, before Yanukovych
was overthrown and forced to flee to Russia. Amid the chaos, former
members of Patriot of Ukraine, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group,
established Azov. The militia first fought in the capital, then aided
the military in battles against Russian-backed separatist forces,
including the reconquest of the city of Mariupol. In November 2014, Azov
was officially integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine, with its
own armored units and artillery battery. Since then, it has built a
wide-ranging infrastructure of civil and military groups—including the
National Militia, an auxiliary police force—and spawned a variety of
summer camps, training centers, and veterans’ programs. In 2016,
Biletsky launched the National Corps. While they have thus far polled at
around 1 percent, their failure to generate electoral enthusiasm belies
their growing presence both on the streets and within the organs of
the state.
This spring, as the novel coronavirus triggered an economic crisis
across Europe, Azov capitalized on the uncertainty by pumping out a
stream of social-media propaganda that highlighted its humanitarian
efforts targeting poor Ukrainians. Azov press releases showed masked
volunteers disinfecting trams and common spaces in apartment buildings,
handing out packages of food to families and retirees under quarantine,
and delivering surgical masks to underfunded clinics and hospitals in
neglected provincial towns. “During this time, our Volunteers already
know better than social services who really needs help,” claimed
one post.
Volunteers are not shown on TV channels, but activists do their job
every day. We help those who really need it. Who needed it before
quarantine, and became even more vulnerable during quarantine.
National Corps members repaired crumbling orphanages, sewed face
masks, and plastered walls with advice on hygiene and social
distancing—making a show of performing basic services the Ukrainian
state was failing to provide. At the bottom of each press release was a
phone number and the exhortation join us! together we will overcome all difficulties!
saker.is | While we wait for a video and transcript to be available, I’ve
gathered these quotes from Mr Lavrov’s interview with Rossiya 24 –
“Our special military operation is designed to put
an end to the reckless expansion and reckless course towards complete
domination by the United States and, under them, the remainder of
Western countries on the world stage.
“This
domination is built on gross violations of international law and under
some rules, which they are now hyping so much and which they make up on a
case-by-case basis,”
“Kosovo can be recognized as
independent without a referendum. Crimea cannot, despite holding a
referendum observed by [many international monitors],”
“In
Iraq, 10,000 kilometers away from the US, they imagined some threat to
their national security. They bombed it, found no threat. And didn’t
even say they were sorry,”“But when right at our border they
grow neo-Nazi ultra-radicals, create dozens of biolabs … working on
bioweapons, as documents prove, we are told we are not allowed to react
to those threats,” he added.
The EU’s role has shifted during the Ukraine security crisis. Previously it didn’t act as a military organization “fighting collectively against an invented threat.”
Lavrov said the change was the result of pressure put on the bloc’s
members by Washington, which has pushed it closer to NATO.
“This
is an utterly serious change, even in the policy that the EU and the
West under US leadership – there is no doubt about it – began to pursue
after the start of our special military operation. A policy that
reflects anger, in some ways even frenzy, and which, of course, is
determined not only by [the situation in] Ukraine, but by Ukraine being
transformed into a foothold for the final suppression of Russia”,
Regarding Josep Borrell
“When
a diplomatic chief … says a certain conflict can only be resolved
through military action… Well, it must be something personal. He either
misspoke or spoke without thinking, making a statement that nobody asked
him to make. But it’s an outrageous remark,”
“Western
propaganda shifted gear into depicting Russia as pure evil and [Ukraine]
as pure good. The current Ukrainian regime is presumably a beacon of
democracy, justice, freedom that is drawn to everything European, to the
values that Europe claims it always adhered to,” the minister said.
taibbi | Not long ago, candidate Joe Biden’s most troubling behavioral
tendency was the surprise outburst of belligerence. He’d challenge
questioners to push-up contests, jam fingers in the sternums even of
supporters, and plunge into rambling monologues about leg hairs and
chain-fights.
Now, the president’s face is often a mask of
terror, like a man unsure of how he came to be standing in the middle of
an intersection. Mental cars racing past, he met the press
Monday, to clarify a statement made last week about Vladimir Putin:
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Many interpreted this
as a call for regime change. Not at all, Biden said, reading from a large-print cheat sheet
— this really happened — that reminded him to say he was merely
expressing “moral outrage,” and “not articulating a change in policy.”
When he ran out of prepared remarks, he drifted back to danger, saying:
It’s more an aspiration than anything. He shouldn’t be in power.
The AP writeup
offered help: “He said he was expressing an ‘aspiration’ rather than a
goal of American foreign policy.” (I’m sure nuclear-armed Putin
appreciated the semantic difference). When Biden moved more toward
candor, saying he made “no apologies” for his remarks, another reporter
quickly tried to guide him back to a safe harbor:
Q: Your personal feelings, sir? Your personal feelings?
THE PRESIDENT: Personal. My personal feelings.
Although administration mouthpieces Tony Blinken and Jen Psaki
scrambled to reassure a nervous world that the U.S. is not intent on
“doing regime change” in Russia, officials everywhere have been telling
reporters the opposite on background.
This cat was out of the bag weeks ago. As Joe Lauria at Consortiumpoints out,
Biden was asked on February 24th, at the start of the invasion, what
sanctions would accomplish if they hadn’t prevented war. His answer:
No
one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening. That has
to sh- — this is going to take time. And we have to show resolve, so
he knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them. That’s what this is all about.
Biden said virtually the same thing in Brussels last week:
Sanctions never deter… The maintenance of sanctions, the increasing the pain … we will sustain what we’re doing not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year. That’s what will stop him.
We heard this more explicitly from Boris Johnson on March 1st, “The measures we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime,” Johnson said. Lauria points out this was two days after British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey wrote in the Telegraphthat “His failure must be complete… the Russian people empowered to see how little he cares for them. In showing them that, Putin’s days as President will surely be numbered… He’ll lose power and he won’t get to choose his successor.”
WSJ | The U.S.
has trained thousands of African soldiers, from infantrymen rehearsing
counterterrorism raids on the edge of the Sahara to senior commanders
attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The programs are a
linchpin of U.S. policy on the continent, intended to help African
allies professionalize their armed forces to fight armed opponents both
foreign and domestic.
But U.S. commanders have watched with dismay over the past year as military leaders in several African allies—including
officers with extensive American schooling—have overthrown civilian
governments and seized power for themselves, triggering laws that forbid
the U.S. government from providing them with weapons or training.
“There’s
no one more surprised or disappointed when partners that we’re working
with—or have been working with for a while in some cases—decide to
overthrow their government,” Rear Adm. Jamie Sands, commander of U.S.
special-operations forces in Africa, said this week. “We have not found
ourselves able to prevent it, and we certainly don’t assess that we’re
causing it.”
The
strategic setback was apparent in recent weeks here at Fort Benning,
where the U.S. Army hosted its annual gathering of top ground-force
commanders from around Africa. Senior soldiers from three dozen African
countries watched American recruits tackle boot-camp obstacle courses,
witnessed parachute training and saw live-ammo tank and mortar
demonstrations.
The
Army withheld invitations from coup leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso,
West African countries engaged in existential struggles with al Qaeda
and Islamic State. Guinean soldiers, who in Septembertoppled the West African nation’s civilian government, were left out of the Fort Benning events and are no longer included in U.S.-led special-operations exercises.
Sudan’s
ruling junta, which last year reversed a U.S.-supported transition to
democratic rule, was unwelcome at the Fort Benning summit. Ethiopia
hosted the last such gathering in 2020; this year its military is on the
outs with the U.S. over alleged human-rights abuses in its war against
Tigrayan rebels.
“We
don’t control what happens when we leave,” said U.S. Army Col. Michael
Sullivan, commander of the 2d Security Force Assistance Brigade, a unit
created to advise and train African armies. “We always hope we’re
helping countries do the right thing.”
Last
year, a logistics advisory team from Col. Sullivan’s brigade had just
arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, and was waiting out its
Covid-19 quarantine at a hotel when the Biden administration decided to
cancel the deployment “due to our deep concerns about the conflict in
northern Ethiopia and human-rights violations and abuses being committed
against civilians,” according to a State Department spokesperson.
gilbertdoctorow | Now that the capture of Mariupol is in its final phase, some
information of value has been published in alternative Russian media and
I propose to present that here to give readers a sense of how this war
is being prosecuted and why. Main source: https://www.9111.ru/questions/7777777771838727/
In effect, most of the city proper has been taken by the Russian army
and Donetsk militias, with significant assistance from a battalion of
Chechens headed by their leader Kadyrov. As the routes out of the city
heading east were freed and as the snipers and other Azov forces were
pushed back to provide some level of safety in the streets, large
numbers of civilians have left the city in the past week. It is
estimated that the civilian population remaining in Mariupol at present
is about one third what it was at the start of the conflict.
The Azov fighters, other irregulars and Ukrainian army forces
numbered about 4,000 at the start and now have been reduced due to
casualties. They include among them “foreign mercenaries” as the
Russians have said for some time. Now from intercepted phone
conversations of these belligerents, it appears that among the
foreigners are NATO instructors. This means that the proxy war between
Russia and the USA/NATO begins to approximate a direct confrontation,
contradicting the public pronouncements coming from the Biden
administration. Should the Russians succeed in taking these NATO
instructors alive, which is one of their priority tasks, the next
sessions of the UN Security Council could be very tense.
To be sure, the 4,000 enemy forces mentioned above were only those
within the city. Ukrainian forces numbering perhaps ten times more were
positioned to the west of the city at the start of hostilities.
Presumably they have been pushed back to the West.
As we have known for a week or so, the remaining Azov and other
Ukrainian forces have retreated from the city proper to two locations on
the outskirts of Mariupol: the port and the Azovstal industrial
territory. The Russians have now entirely encircled both.
The port runs for about 3 kilometers along the sea and reaches inland
about 300 meters. It is from here that in the past week, the Azov group
tried to send out by helicopter a dozen or more of its top officers.
The helicopter was shot down by the Russians, killing all aboard. A
relief helicopter also was destroyed by the Russians, but here one
Ukrainian survived and he was interrogated about the failed operation.
The port is now being cleared of enemy forces, with the Donbas militia taking the lead.
notesfromdisgraceland |Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. (George Carlin)
Things don’t look encouraging when
observed at higher resolution. This is a graph of the IQ distribution.
The average IQ is around 100 with 68% of population residing inside the
two standard deviations range, between 85 and 115, which means that
about 16% are of deep sub-average intelligence. These numbers are fairly
robust across different countries in the developed world.
This distribution becomes particularly
alarming when applied to a large relatively non-oppressive country. In
the context of modern liberal societies, the synergy of stupidity, size,
and democracy reinforces the malignant potential of the stupidity of
the collective.
Transcription
of these numbers to America implies that about 53 million (16%) people
(entire population of France) are of sub-average intelligence, out of
which 7 million (entire Bulgaria) is seriously impaired. These people
are empowered to express their opinion and impose their will in the
ballot box.
By mobilizing the left side of the
distribution behind a single political movement – a maneuver that
represents a collectivization of mediocrity — makes them even stupider
by lowering their collective IQ further, and persuading them to believe
in pretty much anything. When their discontent is streamlined and
wrapped into a single narrative, in an electoral democratic system,
these 16-percenters can become a decisive factor[2].
Empowered by their malignant stupidity, such people are capable of
committing the most extreme atrocities as they have been throughout
human history.
Humanity cannot outgrow its own death drive
Intelligence is not a theoretical quantity, but represents a behavioral quality of creatures in an open environment. (Peter Sloterdijk)
Humans are generally intelligent, but this
individual intelligence fails to get collectivized. This has only
become worse with progress and the general trend of increasing
acceleration and addiction to speed. The long term has become so long
that it now exceeds our capacity for statistical prediction, but the
short-term has accelerated so much that snap decisions are the only
decisions ever made. The stakes have become higher – short-term survival
is no longer guaranteed, which leads to a shift of focus.
In the face of the urgency of short-term
survival, long-term foresight collapses. This defines the tradeoff — the
lower the odds of survival, the weaker the desires and capacities for
grasping the long-term. As the group size increases and individuality
fades away, collectivization inevitably leads to abdication of
responsibilities. This leads to collective myopia, which attracts its
membership and supports the group’s desire to grow. As a consequence, we
no longer engage in intergenerational projects — passing the baton to
the next generation is the best we can do (as a collective).
This removal of the long-term perspective,
its subversion, leaves power dominated by short-term forces, which
under the capricious conditions of the market forces requires adaptive, liquid or transient strategies as a basic skill set. At
a systemic level, change is taking the form of positive feedback. In
conditions of general info acceleration and hypercomplexity, as
conscious and rational will become unable to adjust to the trends, the
trends themselves become self-reinforcing (up to the point of collapse)[3].
For years now, the Right-wing populism of
the capitalist West has been tapping into the left side of the IQ
distribution. This has proven to be a very successful strategy for their
project. Unsurprisingly, in the most spectacular staging of abdication
of collective responsibility, thus cultivated populist movement became
the epicenter of insane resistance to simple measures of containment of
the COVID pandemic.
At
the core of the incoherent response to the pandemic – the spectacular
failure of adjusting to the most straightforward problem of self-defense
of the collective body – resides collective abdication of
responsibility. This was a simple test of common sense, accepting the
most basic measures any single human would normally have no problems
accepting, but which collectively encountered resistance on a large
scale (bordering on hysterical) causing, at the end, massive casualties,
financial and economic damages, and unnecessary complications and
extension of the pandemic. The resistance to alignment with simple and
logical adjustment to an existential threat is just another illustration
of the erosion of basic survival instincts caused by decades of
deliberate and programmatic anti-science project and glorification of
mediocrity.
In the world of infinite acceleration,
humanity is spontaneously converging towards a state of maximum
cognitive incompetence, a collective Dunning-Kruger effect. According to
the latest statistics, there are about 41 million Q-anon believers in
the United States.
However, this does not mean that
capitalist democracies carry exclusive blame for the degradation of
intellect and the rising rate of malignant stupidity. Rather, it is a
combination of human nature and the law of large numbers. As much as
Soviet-style communism pretended to have sought to divert the inevitable
self-destructiveness of capitalism, it merely reinvented different and
more efficient ways of self-destruction. A similar story goes with
fascism. Communism’s record of ecological misconduct, which has
penetrated deep into the territory of criminal, is just one of many
examples of its self-destructive overdrive. Its pretended ideological
attempts to be something else from what it really was were just failed
diversions that merely accelerated the inevitable.
jonathanturley | It appears that some media have a new narrative after admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop is legitimate after all.
According to Atlantic Magazine writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Anne
Applebaum, the story never did matter because it was just not
interesting and “totally irrelevant” to her. Strangely, however, it once
did. Applebaum pushed the false narrative as she was slamming others
for publishing “Russian disinformation” and using the Hunter Biden story
as an example. It only became uninteresting when it turned out to be
true. The one convincing assertion, however, is that it was simply not
viewed as “relevant.” What was clearly relevant for Twitter and most
media outlets was the election of Joe Biden. Otherwise, as captured by Gaston de La Touche, it is a matter of sheer boredom.
Applebaum was at my alma mater, The University of Chicago, for the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference
on Wednesday. The conference appeared largely an echo-chamber, a
disappointing lineup for UChicago which is known to value a diversity of
opinion. Applebaum slammed Fox and its viewers: “Those who live outside
the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need
to learn any of this stuff.” (For the record, I work as a legal analyst
at Fox).
That is when University of Chicago Student Daniel Schmidt delivered a haymaker after citing her dig:
“A poll, later after that, found that if
voters knew about the content of the laptop, 16% of Joe Biden voters
would have acted differently. ‘Do you think the media acted
inappropriately when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as
Russian disinformation, and what can we learn from that in ensuring that
what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation, and not
reality?”
Applebaum responded by saying that she really did not care if the laptop was legitimate because she did not find it interesting.
“My problem with Hunter Biden’s laptop is I
think it’s totally irrelevant,” she said. “I mean, it’s not whether
it’s disinformation… I didn’t think Hunter Biden’s business
relationships have anything to do with who should be President of the
United States.”
So, if the Biden family was engaged in selling
access to foreign interests, it really has nothing to do with the
President of the United States. It is not interesting that there are
references to Joe Biden’s knowledge or involvement and possible
benefitting from the millions passing through his son. It does not
matter that Hunter is shown telling his daughter
Naomi: “I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for
this entire family for 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry,
unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
The
officials say the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out
"intelligence" about Russia's plans in Ukraine that is "low-confidence"
or "based more on analysis than hard evidence", or even just plain
false, in order to fight an information war against Putin.
Psyops in the U.S. targeting the public used to be illegal, even though the way they got around it was to plant stories in the foreign press. But over the last five years beginning with Russiagate & now Ukraine, it is clear that U.S. public is fair game: https://t.co/gcEWoCZbkB
The
report says that toward this end the US government has deliberately
circulated false or poorly evidenced claims about impending chemical
weapons attacks, about Russian plans to orchestrate a false flag attack
in the Donbass to justify an invasion, about Putin's advisors
misinforming him, and about Russia seeking arms supplies from China.
Excerpt, emphasis mine:
It was an
attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S.
officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might
be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.
President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.
It’s
one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with
recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an
information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when
the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian
President Vladimir Putin off balance.
So they lied.
They may hold that they lied for a noble reason, but they lied. They
knowingly circulated information they had no reason to believe was true,
and that lie was amplified by all the most influential media outlets in
the western world.
Another example of the Biden administration releasing a false narrative as part of its "information war":
Likewise, a charge that Russia had turned to China for potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official and two U.S. officials said.
The U.S. officials said there are no indications China is considering providing weapons to Russia. The Biden administration put that out as a warning to China not to do so, they said.
On the empire's claim last week
that Putin is being misled by his advisors because they are afraid of
telling him the truth, NBC reports that this assessment "wasn’t
conclusive — based more on analysis than hard evidence."
I'd actually made fun of this ridiculous CIA press release when it was uncritically published disguised as a breaking news report by The New York Times
truthout | Wall Street’s sinister influence on the political process has, rightly, been a major topic
during this presidential campaign. But, history has taught us that the
role that the media industry plays in Washington poses a comparable
threat to our democracy. Yet, this is a topic rarely discussed by the
dominant media, or on the campaign trail.
But now is a good time to discuss our growing media crises. Twenty years ago this week, President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
The act, signed into law on February 8, 1996, was “essentially bought
and paid for by corporate media lobbies,” as Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting (FAIR) described it, and radically “opened the floodgates on mergers.”
The negative impact of the law cannot be overstated. The law, which
was the first major reform of telecommunications policy since 1934, according to media scholar
Robert McChesney, “is widely considered to be one of the three or four
most important federal laws of this generation.” The act dramatically
reduced important Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on
cross ownership, and allowed giant corporations to buy up thousands of
media outlets across the country, increasing their monopoly on the flow
of information in the United States and around the world.
“Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few,” said Eduardo Galeano, the Latin American journalist, in response to the act.
Twenty years later the devastating impact of the legislation is
undeniable: About 90 percent of the country’s major media companies are owned by six corporations. Bill Clinton’s legacy in empowering the consolidation of corporate media is right up there with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and welfare reform, as being among the most tragic and destructive policies of his administration.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not merely a regrettable part of
history. It serves as a stern warning about what is at stake in the
future. In a media world that is going through a massive transformation,
media companies have dramatically increased efforts to wield influence in Washington, with a massive lobbying presence and a steady dose of campaign donations to politicians in both parties – with the goal of allowing more consolidation, and privatizing and commodifying the internet.
Celebrating 113 years of Mama Rosa McCauley Parks
-
*February 4, 1913 -- February 4, 2026*
*Some notes: The life of the courageous activist Mama Rosa McCauley Parks*
Mama Rosa's grandfather Sylvester Ed...
Monsters are people too
-
Comet 3I/Atlas is on its way out on a hyberbolic course to, I don't know
where. I do know that 1I/Oumuamua is heading for the constellation Pegasus,
and ...
Remembering the Spanish Civil War
-
This year marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Spanish Civil
War, an epoch-defining event for the international working class, whose
close study...
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...
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 ...
-
(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
-
With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
