The Week The Trans Spell Was Broken

unherd |  Not very long ago, the fear of being denounced as a transphobe meant that doubts about extreme gender ideology were confined to private WhatsApp groups and quiet conversations among friends. This is very much no longer the case. Two weeks ago, the Times’s chief sports writer, Matt Dickinson, wrote on Twitter, “Are we really talking about fairness in sport in the transgender debate – or fear and prejudice?”

“Fairness” replied hundreds of women, including some from his own paper. The only replies agreeing with Dickinson were from other male sports writers, insisting that the way the trans women athletes had been treated was “horrendous and disgusting” (John Cross, Daily Mirror ) and “awful” (Martyn Ziegler, The Times) It’s sweet how males always stick together, isn’t it?

Gender ideologues complain that this shift in public tolerance is merely a conservative backlash against trans rights, but they are wrong. What we are seeing is the inevitable result of trans activists – and, most of all, Stonewall – pushing far beyond civil rights for trans people and insisting instead on unpopular and unworkable policies, such as trans women in sport, child transition and any open acknowledgement of female biology.

This third issue caused the Labour Party to have one of its regular internal breakdowns, as its politicians – and leader – became unable to answer the question, what is a woman? And not only could they not answer the question, they couldn’t think of a way to not answer the question, hemming and hawing about it being a “gotcha” question. Yes, it is, interviewers replied, and what we’re trying to get is an answer that a three-year old could provide. Last month, Angela Rayner came up with a solution: “I think we should be taking it off social media and taking it away from commentators,” she intoned solemnly. Ah yes, censorship from the left. That always plays so well! Oddly, only a month earlier Rayner had been loudly insisting that the next leader of the Labour party will be a woman. Presumably that kind of woman-chat is permitted by Rayner, just not what a woman actually is.

The Tories have certainly not been spared from all this. On 30 March, at 2:48am, the Tory MP Jamie Wallis posted on Twitter to say that he’d been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and would like to be trans. Suddenly, his long history of dodginess – from running companies that attracted more than 800 complaints, to being affiliated with a sugar daddy website, to fleeing the site of a car crash – was instantly forgotten and his honesty and courage were trumpeted to parliament’s rafters by, among others, the Prime Minister. It was strikingly reminiscent of that time, in 2015, when Glamour magazine named Caitlyn Jenner Woman of the Year, two months after she was involved in a car accident in which a woman, Kim Howe, died. The district attorney ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to convict Jenner, but Glamour decided they had all the evidence they needed to cite her as the year’s best woman. At least Caitlyn bothered to make an effort: in the sobering light of day, Wallis tweeted, “I remain the same person I was yesterday, and so will continue to use he/him/his pronouns.” So no change at all, then, other than the identity of being trans. Or wanting to be, anyway.

 

Dudes Out'Chere Getting Knocked Up Like Hotcakes - So - Pregnant PEOPLE Not Pregnant Women

WaPo  | Pregnant people who are vaccinated against the coronavirus are nearly twice as likely to get covid-19 as those who are not pregnant, according to a new study that offers the broadest evidence to date of the odds of infections among vaccinated patients with different medical circumstances.

The analysis, based on medical records of nearly 14 million U.S. patients since coronavirus immunization became available, found that pregnant people who are vaccinated have the greatest risk of developing covid among a dozen medical states, including being an organ transplant recipient and having cancer.

The findings come on top of research showing that people who are pregnant or gave birth recently and became infected are especially prone to getting seriously ill from covid-19. And covid has been found to increase the risk of pregnancy complications, such as premature births.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been urging people to get coronavirus shots before or during pregnancy, seeking to dispel fear — widespread in some communities, without scientific basis — that those vaccinations could be harmful. As of March, nearly 70 percent of people who were pregnant had been vaccinated before or during their pregnancy, according to federal data, though disparities persist among racial and ethnic groups.

The new study goes beyond what has previously been understood, suggesting that even pregnant people who are fully vaccinated tend to have less protection from the virus than many other patients with significant medical problems.

“If you are fully vaccinated, that’s magnificent,” said a lead author of the study, David R. Little, a physician who is a researcher at Epic, a Wisconsin company that maintains electronic patient records for nearly 1,000 hospitals and more than 20,000 clinics across the country. “But if you are fully vaccinated and become pregnant, you remain at higher risk of acquiring covid.”

Little said the findings buttress CDC recommendations that additional precautions against the virus should be taken during pregnancy, such as wearing masks and maintaining safe distances. He said the study also suggests that health-care workers should “be on the lookout” for symptoms and encourage testing to detect the virus early, when it is easier to treat.

The data also raises scientific questions that warrant further research into how best to protect pregnant individuals and their babies from infection, according to public health leaders and specialists in pregnancy.

All Russia Needs Do Now Is Wait

 

The cauldron has already been formed. It is already complete: Russia has destroyed all rail lines into Donbass, and now has full fire control (artillery and air power–especially drones) over all roads leading into the fortified regions where the Ukrainian government had amassed its forces for the planned ethnic cleansing of DPR and LPR. Nothing can get into Donbass–nor can anything get out of it–without Russian consent.

All Russia needs to do is wait, as the Ukronazis in the Donbass run out of food and ammunition and are forced to surrender. If they refuse to surrender, then it’s simply a charge up the middle, pushing the massed Ukrainian forces back to the Dnieper, all the while killing them in their bunkers with “smart weaponry” and artillery, or along the roads as they try and flee.

Also, that map Moulitsos is using is both spectacularly incomplete and just as spectacularly inaccurate regarding the current deployment of Russian forces. It looks to be about a week old, maybe older (and it was incomplete even then). For instance, the Russians as of mid-yesterday had already advanced well beyond the fronts laid out on his map.

Finally, his reasoning simply isn’t sound. The Ukrainian forces C3 systems have been entirely wiped out, so there will be no means of coordinating maneuvers of any kind, much less flank maneuvers that will require a great deal of detailed minute-by-minute intelligence–as well as a lack of ranking officers to coordinate them. The fuel reserves of all of Ukraine have been mostly destroyed, military transport has been mostly wiped out, and there are two sustained and increasingly rapid advances taking place from the east and north-east which are tying down the vast majority of the troops that would be needed for the flanking maneuvers he envisions (which are impossible, now, for reasons stated above).

Now that Mariupol has been taken, the troops there will likely be redeployed and advance into Zaporzhzhia, parts of which are already held by Russian forces. Those freed up troops may also be deployed into Donestk. For the last two days we’ve been seeing video coming out of Ukraine showing Russia deploying fresh, top-tier weaponry (tanks, artillery, rocket/missile systems, troop transports) into place for a sustained attack from the east, north-east, and south-east.

Frankly, Moulitsos’ assertion that Russian troops have been “shredded” is as laughable a fantasy as is his assertion that Russian troops were “defeated” at Kiev. The Russian troops at Kiev were sent there to hold the Ukrainian troops in place while Russia destroyed any means they might have to redeploy to Donbass and relieve or resupply the troops in the east. Once Russia had degraded Ukrainian transport, C3 capabilities, anti-aircraft/artillery power, and armor to such a level that those troops were no longer a credible means of relief or resupply, they were withdrawn and redeployed in the east, in preparation for a full run to the Dnieper.

The Russian air force now has full control of the skies over all of Ukraine, so I really have no idea where Moulitsos is getting this idea that Russian forces are “shredded.” Russia is clearly doing the shredding–or rather, grinding–here, and doing it in a methodical, determined way with an attention to detail that indicates iot will not end until their stated political objectives are achieved.

From the videos I’ve seen (50 or so, over the last three days) coming out of Mariupol, the Russian forces seem to have excellent morale and are conducting themselves in a highly disciplined, professional fashion. There are lots of videos coming out of mopping up operations by Russian forces–Kadyrov’s Chechen urban warfare commandos particularly like to post videos–and Russian morale appears quite high and determined. There are also lots of videos of long lines and big crowds of civilians welcoming the Russian forces in as liberators, thanking them for their work and celebrating their arrival.

What we see of the Ukrainian forces, they seem extremely demoralized. The Ukrainians, in contrast to the Russians, have posted videos of the torture and execution of Russian POWs, with at least one high ranking commander bragging about these executions in social media. The position of the Tochka rocket booster that detached during flight just before it landed on the train station certainly and undeniably demonstrates the direction the missile arrived from: the Ukrainian side (false flag to gain NATO sympathy, 50 dead ethnically Russian civilians). Timelines, body decomposition, and photographic evidence of the massacre in Bucha firmly determines those deaths as having occurred well after the Russian withdrawal, reprisals by the Azov battalion against Russian “collaborators” (apparently, anyone who accepted food from the “occupiers”). The “mass graves” of which there is so much talk were casualties–both civilian and military–which occurred in the sustained fighting in that suburb over the last two months, most likely from Ukrainian artillery, since the Russians were positioned between the suburb and the Ukrainian forces. Thus, the Ukrainians were firing towards the city, and the Russians away.

Then there are the interviews with citizens of Mariupol, where unspeakable crimes against ordinary civilians are being described, such as the purposeful and indiscriminate shelling of entire neighborhoods, the locking of civilians in basements while the Ukrainian forces set up firing positions in the house above, the takeover of an old folks’ home where a firing position was established on the roof and all of the residents were locked up on the first floor–then fired upon with artillery once the Ukrainians were forced to retreat–which seems to have been a pretty common maneuver, since it has been described by several witnesses from different neighborhoods. All of these tactics and war crimes are totally consistent with actions of the Ukrainian military against Donbass civilians going back to 2014.

There have already been several mass surrenders of what appear to be two or three thousand Ukrainian troops in Mariupol. The Azov battalion is, along with its foreign advisers, holed up underground in the Azovstal steel works, which they (apparently) had earlier transformed into a command base. Russian forces have sealed them in, cut off their water, and rumors have it that fire trucks, cement trucks, and anything that can carry water are being brought in with the aim of flooding the ventilation system with water until the personnel inside finally decide to surrender–or not. It’s up to them, after all.

What makes matters worse is Putin’s artificial timetable of a major victory in the Donbas by 9 May…

The Russian forces have already achieved that victory in Mariupol, and the mayor of that city has been told to begin preparations for a military parade on May 9th. That is the first of the five major cities the Russian Federation plans on liberating: Mariupol, Kharkhiv, Dniepro, Odessa, and Kiev, perhaps in that order. Kadyrov unequivocally affirmed in an interview today that the Russian federation would definitely take the fight into Kiev.

The plan, apparently, is to liberate everything east of the Dnieper and turn that over to DPR and LPR control. There is some debate whether the Russian forces will continue their advance into western Ukraine; the people who I have read tend to be divided on that based on their interpretation of what Russia means by “denazification.” Some think that such a thing can be negotiated and legally enshrined without capturing the main players and putting them on trial, while others believe that actual prosecution and trials are a necessity. I don’t know enough about the situation to have any real opinion, but my WAG would be that yes, Russia likely will fight into the West until it gets a full surrender, whereupon it will hunt down the war criminals, Nazi leaders, and Nazi funders it has identified, dictate the terms of a new constitution, and guarantee a few more cultural reforms are promulgated (textbooks, for instance).

The West Needs World War III

USAWatchdog |  The West needs World War III.  They just need it.  The real problem here is they went to negative interest rates in 2014 in Europe.  They have been unable to stimulate the economy, and Keynesian economics have completely failed. . . . I would say this is mismanagement of government on a global scale.  The problem is that central banks have no control over the economy.  Add to this, this type of inflation is substantially different than a speculative boom.  This inflation is based upon shortages.  These morons with covid . . . with lockdowns, ended up destroying the supply chains. . . . Things that are there, I buy extra of because next time it might be gone.  So, everybody is increasing their hoarding. . . . So, what we have with Europe, with its negative interest rates, they have wiped out all the pension funds.  They need 8% to break even, not negative rates.  There is not a pension fund in Europe that is solvent at this stage of the game. . . . The European government is collapsing.  If they end up defaulting, you are going to have millions of people down there with pitch forks storming the parliament.  So, to avoid that, they need war. . . . The Biden Administration has deliberately destroyed the world economy.”

If there is war in Europe, the “U.S. dollar will get stronger initially and not weaker” according to Armstrong.  Armstrong also says, “This is all deliberate.  There is no return to normal here.  Unfortunately, this is where we are headed.”

Armstrong contends, war in Europe could break out in a couple of weeks, and the EU and NATO are pushing this.  Armstrong says, “They want Russia to do something. . . . This thing with Russia is the same thing all over again.  Unfortunately, we are headed for war.”

Armstrong also talks in detail about the following subjects:  Digital currency and why the Deep State is pushing so hard for it; gold, silver, food and just about everything going way up in price because of shortages.  Armstrong recommends that people “stockpile two years of food.”  Armstrong has other tips for what the common man needs to stock up on; Armstrong also says President Trump is the only President he knew that cared about U.S. soldiers dying in combat.  This is why Trump wanted to bring the troops home, and the Deep State warmongers hated him for it.  Armstrong also gives his predictions on who wins the midterm election this coming November.  Will it matter which party comes out on top?

In closing, Armstrong says, “We are not getting back to normal.  The system is crumbling from within, and it’s just like the fall of Rome, basically.   (There is much more in the nearly 1 hour interview.)

Not Much Longer Now....,

rutherford |   The U.S. ranks as the 12th most indebted nation in the world, with much of that debt owed to the Federal Reserve, large investment funds and foreign governments, namely, Japan and China.

Essentially, the U.S. government is funding its very existence with a credit card.

In 2021, we paid more than $562 billion in interest on that public debt, which according to journalist Rob Garver, “is more than the annual budget of every individual federal agency except for the Treasury, the Department of Health and Human Services (which manages the Medicare and Medicaid government health insurance programs), and the Department of Defense.”

According to the Committee for a Reasonable Federal Budget, the interest we’ve paid on this borrowed money is “nearly twice what the federal government will spend on transportation infrastructure, over four times as much as it will spend on K-12 education, almost four times what it will spend on housing, and over eight times what it will spend on science, space, and technology.”

Clearly, the national debt isn’t going away anytime soon, especially not with government spending on the rise and interest payments making up such a large chunk of the budget.

Still, the government remains unrepentant, unfazed and undeterred in its wanton spending.

Indeed, the national deficit (the difference between what the government spends and the revenue it takes in) remains at more than $1.5 trillion.

If Americans managed their personal finances the way the government mismanages the nation’s finances, we’d all be in debtors’ prison by now.

Despite the government propaganda being peddled by the politicians and news media, however, the government isn’t spending our tax dollars to make our lives better.

We’re being robbed blind so the governmental elite can get richer.

We’re not living the American dream. We’re living a financial nightmare.

In the eyes of the government, “we the people, the voters, the consumers, and the taxpayers” are little more than pocketbooks waiting to be picked.

“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.

The Economics Of The Russian Victory

thecradle |  Sergey Glazyev is a man living right in the eye of our current geopolitical and geo-economic hurricane. One of the most influential economists in the world, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a former adviser to the Kremlin from 2012 to 2019, for the past three years he has helmed Moscow’s uber strategic portfolio as Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).

Glazyev’s recent intellectual production has been nothing short of transformative, epitomized by his essay Sanctions and Sovereignty and an extensive discussion of the new, emerging geo-economic paradigm in an interview to a Russian business magazine.

In another of his recent essays, Glazyev comments on how “I grew up in Zaporozhye, near which heavy fighting is now taking place in order to destroy the Ukrainian Nazis, who never existed in my small Motherland. I studied at a Ukrainian school and I know Ukrainian literature and language well, which from a scientific point of view is a dialect of Russian. I did not notice anything Russophobic in Ukrainian culture. In the 17 years of my life in Zaporozhye, I have never met a single Banderist.”

Glazyev was gracious to take some time from his packed schedule to provide detailed answers to a first series of questions in what we expect to become a running conversation, especially focused to the Global South. This is his first interview with a foreign publication since the start of Operation Z. Many thanks to Alexey Subottin for the Russian-English translation.

The Cradle: You are at the forefront of a game-changing geo-economic development: the design of a new monetary/financial system via an association between the EAEU and China, bypassing the US dollar, with a draft soon to be concluded. Could you possibly advance some of the features of this system – which is certainly not a Bretton Woods III – but seems to be a clear alternative to the Washington consensus and very close to the necessities of the Global South?

Glazyev: In a bout of Russophobic hysteria, the ruling elite of the United States played its last “trump ace” in the hybrid war against Russia. Having “frozen” Russian foreign exchange reserves in custody accounts of western central banks, financial regulators of the US, EU, and the UK undermined the status of the dollar, euro, and pound as global reserve currencies. This step sharply accelerated the ongoing dismantling of the dollar-based economic world order.

Over a decade ago, my colleagues at the Astana Economic Forum and I proposed to transition to a new global economic system based on a new synthetic trading currency based on an index of currencies of participating countries. Later, we proposed to expand the underlying currency basket by adding around twenty exchange-traded commodities. A monetary unit based on such an expanded basket was mathematically modeled and demonstrated a high degree of resilience and stability.

At around the same time, we proposed to create a wide international coalition of resistance in the hybrid war for global dominance that the financial and power elite of the US unleashed on the countries that remained outside of its control. My book The Last World War: the USA to Move and Lose, published in 2016, scientifically explained the nature of this coming war and argued for its inevitability – a conclusion based on objective laws of long-term economic development. Based on the same objective laws, the book argued the inevitability of the defeat of the old dominant power.

Currently, the US is fighting to maintain its dominance, but just as Britain previously, which provoked two world wars but was unable to keep its empire and its central position in the world due to the obsolescence of its colonial economic system, it is destined to fail. The British colonial economic system based on slave labor was overtaken by structurally more efficient economic systems of the US and the USSR. Both the US and the USSR were more efficient at managing human capital in vertically integrated systems, which split the world into their zones of influence. A transition to a new world economic order started after the disintegration of the USSR. This transition is now reaching its conclusion with the imminent disintegration of the dollar-based global economic system, which provided the foundation of the United States global dominance.

You Had Just One Job!!!

businessinsider |  The Russian warship that was confirmed as sunk on Thursday may have been carrying a holy relic when it went down.

The Moskva, a missile cruiser that was the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, sank on Thursday following an explosion onboard, Russian state media reported.

Claim that after the sinking of Flagship Moskva, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Igor Osipov, was violently arrested.
Needs to be confirmed. https://t.co/thVNdhRBdd

— Anders Åslund (@anders_aslund) April 14, 2022

A news report from 2020 has given rise to the question of whether the vessel sank with a Christian relic —  a piece of the "true cross" — onboard.

The Russian Orthodox Church announced in February 2020 that the relic had been delivered to the then-commander of the Black Sea fleet, Vice Admiral Igor Osipov, and was at the fleet's headquarters, ready to deliver it to the ship "shortly," the state-run Tass news agency reported at the time. 

The relic in question is a fragment of wood just millimeters large that, according to believers, is a piece of the cross on which Christ was crucified, Tass said. That fragment is embedded in a 19th-century metal cross which is itself kept in a reliquary, according to the outlet. 

The Moskva had a chapel onboard where sailors could pray, Sergiy Khalyuta, archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church's Sevastopol District, told Tass. He said the fragment was to be transferred at the request of its owner, an anonymous collector.

Insider was unable to establish when the relic was finally transferred to the Moskva or if it was onboard at the time of the vessel's sinking. The Russian embassy in London did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The sinking of the Moskva, a prized flagship, is a major blow to Russian morale, Western officials said.

A Little Spring Housekeeping Underway In The Kremlin

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.

 

Gleichschaltung: The System Of Totalitarian Control And Coordination Of All Aspects Of Western Society

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]

One day after the Reichstag fire on 27 February 1933, President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg, acting at Hitler's request and on the basis of the emergency powers in article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, issued the Reichstag Fire Decree. This decree suspended most citizen rights provided for by the constitution and thus allowed for the arrest of political adversaries, mostly Communists, and for terrorizing of other electors by the Sturmabteilung (SA) (Nazi paramilitary branch) before the upcoming election.^[8]

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]

 

Scott Ritter Permanently Banished From Twitter

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.

Land of the free pic.twitter.com/3bzYAW7h6R

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) April 13, 2022

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.

The End Is Near And The Plan Is To Keep Ukraine Broken

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.

 

The Longstanding Western Goal Is To Keep Russia And Germany Divided

schweizer-standpunkt  | Russia's goal of demilitarization and denazification

How do you assess the Russian offensive?

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.

US/NATO Command And Control Of UkroNazis Fitna Get Caught Or Killed...,

thesaker  |  American Secretary of Defense Lloyd addresses Ukrainian troops: https://twitter.com/SecDef/status/1513205552700174340

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.”

Of course as things progress towards a potential showdown, we continue to hear how badly unprepared NATO really is: https://twitter.com/Navsteva/status/1513149802527313929

But a new 8 mile convoy of Russian reinforcements is heading towards the northern front: https://twitter.com/Dr_ShahidPk/status/1513115975847223296

https://twitter.com/Suriyakmaps/status/1513084749081985026/photo/1

And other videos pour in of the long lines of Russian reinforcements in preparation for Phase 2

https://www.bitchute.com/video/qGXWoFHX6PPF/

Russian Chemical Weapon Hit Brandon As He Was Whooping His Gums In Iowa

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.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Zelensky Can't Sue For Peace Until Russia Completes Its DeNazification Of Ukraine

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

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 10, 2022

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.

Not A Single Ukrainian "Refugee" Should Be Allowed Into The U.S.

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).

Inside Ukraine's Extremist Militias...,

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!