 the prophecies are true |
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Soviet Union Returns The SIMPSONS S09E19 – The Simpsons Tide 29March1998 |
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m o d e r n i t y 7Posted 02March2022 Paul Joseph Watson: Nuclear fallout edition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dHBPBNGg5c&t=87s |
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Weird Al Yankovic – Foil [Do people think of you as this?] |
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Israeli Humor – Hope kindergarten |
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The War of Gog and Magog is Starting!Dr. Steve Turley: BOMBSHELL Senate Testimony Confirms BIOLABS In Ukraine!!! [Obama Ukraine coup d’état]]Full Background Details: Military biological activities of the United States in Ukraine |
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The Reform 1885 Pittsburgh Platform and the resultsThe Reform in their 1885 Pittsburgh Platform formally rejected the Torah of Israel and Israel both as a State of Israel, The People of Israel and the Land of Israel: Pittsburgh Platform
Para.# 1. We recognize in every religion an attempt to grasp the Infinite, and in every mode, source or book of revelation held sacred in any religious system the consciousness of the indwelling of God in man. We hold that Judaism presents the highest conception of the God-idea as taught in our Holy Scriptures and developed and spiritualized by the Jewish teachers, in accordance with the moral and philosophical progress of their respective ages. We maintain that Judaism preserved and defended midst continual struggles and trials and under enforced isolation, this God-idea as the central religious truth for the human race. Para.# 2. We recognize in the Bible the record of the consecration of the Jewish people to its mission as the priest of the one God, and value it as the most potent instrument of religious and moral instruction. We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domain of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of Judaism, the Bible reflecting the primitive ideas of its own age, and at times clothing its conception of divine Providence and Justice dealing with men in miraculous narratives. Para.# 3. We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization. Para.# 4. We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation. Para.# 5. We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state. Para.# 6. We recognize in Judaism a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason. We are convinced of the utmost necessity of preserving the historical identity with our great past. Christianity and Islam, being daughter religions of Judaism, we appreciate their providential mission, to aid in the spreading of monotheistic and moral truth. We acknowledge that the spirit of broad humanity of our age is our ally in the fulfillment of our mission, and therefore we extend the hand of fellowship to all who cooperate with us in the establishment of the reign of truth and righteousness among men. Para.# 7. We reassert the doctrine of Judaism that the soul is immortal, grounding the belief on the divine nature of human spirit, which forever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness. We reject as ideas not rooted in Judaism, the beliefs both in bodily resurrection and in Gehenna and Eden (Hell and Paradise) as abodes for everlasting punishment and reward. Para.# 8. In full accordance with the spirit of the Mosaic legislation, which strives to regulate the relations between rich and poor, we deem it our duty to participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society.[2] |
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This is the result! Pew-2016-03-08-Israel Reform Essay static identify Relatively few Israeli Jews identify with either Conservative (2%) or Reform (3%) Judaism.  intermarriage in the US vs. Israel If you want a Jewish spouse and have your children marry Jewish spouses make Aliyah http://www.pewforum.org/2016/03/08/comparisons-between-jews-in-israel-and-the-u-s/ . According to Pew, August 29, 2018 (The Religious Typology – A new way to categorize Americans by religion) http://www.pewforum.org/2018/08/29/the-religious-typology/ 42% of American Jews have completely abandoned their tradition. They have reject Judaism, God, ritual, prayer and religion, 25% called themselves Solidly Secular (What Israeli call Hiloni). According to Pew “A Portrait of Jewish Americans”(2013) ”The Jewish Population went down from 5.2 Million in 2000 to 4.2 Million +/- 3% today” http://www.pewforum.org/2016/03/08/comparisons-between-jews-in-israel-and-the-u-s/ The US has an 85% intermarriage rate for secular Jews vs. 2% for Israel.
Mark Zuckerberg was raised a reform Jew and is married to a Shiksa (non Jew) and look at all the antisemitism and terror he is supporting via Facebook.  UNRWA teacher Hiba Yassin’s Facebook page:”The #intifada of Ramadan” (meaning July 2014. Yes, UNRWA teachers were calling for a new intifada last year too,) Examples such as: Zuckerberg’s shameful whitewash of Holocaust denial https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Terra-Incognita-Zuckerbergs-shameful-whitewash-of-Holocaust-denial-562989 This is why Natan Sharansky said: Many in Israel think Reform Judaism is some kind of hostile [dangerous] sect. https://www.timesofisrael.com/sharansky-many-in-israel-think-reform-judaism-is-some-kind-of-hostile-sect/ |
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Macbeth, Act V, Scene VMACBETH: |
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Examples of what has happened to Jews in New York City:
Friday, March 4, 2016 Guest Post: Greek Jews Syrian Jewshttps://shilohmusings.blogspot.co.il/2016/03/greek-jews-syrian-jews.html * * * Greek NYC Jews and Syrian NYC Jews * * * a short historical essay by Mr. Cohen, the moderator of the Derech Emet Yahoo Group: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Over the past 35 years, I noticed that the highest intermarriage rates [between Jews and non-Jews] are found in communities where Reform Judaism is most dominant, and the lowest intermarriage rates are found in communities where Reform Judaism does not exist.
Around the 1920s [of the Common Era], tens of thousands of Jews came from Greece to New York City, and tens of thousands of Jews came from Syria to New York City. In the 1920s, the numbers of Greek Jews and Syrian Jews in New York City were approximately equal. Their observance of Jewish rituals was also approximately equal.
Around that time, the Greek Jews of NYC decided to follow Reform Judaism, while the Syrian Jews followed Orthodox Judaism.
By the 1980s, the Greek Jews of NYC [and the USA] were so few in number that there was only ONE Greek Synagogue in NYC, and that ONE Greek Synagogue functioned mostly as a museum. The very few Greek Jews of NYC were intermarrying with Gentiles at a very high rate, and very few participated in any kind Jewish activities. One Greek Jew who I personally spoke to had decided to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day instead of Purim.
By the 1990s, the Syrian Jews of NYC had grown exponentially, with many new synagogues that did not exist in previous decades, and more-than-enough new Syrian Jews to fill those new synagogues with active members. Their rate of intermarriage with non-Jews was LESS THAN ONE PERCENT [<1%].
By year 2015, the Greek Jews of NYC were so few in number that their community had basically ceased to exist. They had no schools, and only that one synagogue which mostly functioned as a museum.
The Syrian Jews of NYC also added new mikvahs to their infrastructure, while the Greek Jews of NYC had no mikvahs. By year 2015 the Syrian Jews of NYC had two of their own monthly magazines, while the Greek Jews had none. By year 2015 the Syrian Jews of NYC had produced dozens of Rabbis, while the Greek Jews had none. In the early 1980s the Greek Jews still had their own social club, called The Pashas. In dramatic contrast, the Sephardic Community Center (which is misnamed, because it is really the Syrian-Jewish Community Center) has often been filled to capacity or near-capacity since it was built in year 1982, which is impressive, when you consider the large size of the SCC building.
The Sephardic Bikur Cholim (which is misnamed, because it is really the Syrian-Jewish Bikur Cholim) is very active with many programs and its own building. The Greek Jews of NYC do not have their own Bikur Cholim organization.
Less than a century later, the Greeks Jews [of NYC], who chose Reform Judaism, have vanished; while the Syrian Jews [of NYC], who chose Orthodox Judaism, enjoy a rapidly-growing community and seem to have a bright future. BOTTOM LINE: Reform Judaism causes entire communities of Jews to become extinct,
PS: This short essay reveals a piece of Jewish History
PS: The Persian Jewish community of NYC, which has never known Reform Judaism, also has an extremely low intermarriage rate. While I do not have exact statistics for Persian Jews, their intermarriage rate seems to be so low that it cannot possibly threaten their future.
PS: The difference between Greeks Jews and Syrian Jews is also demonstrated by their Hollywood celebrity representatives: 4 comments:Batya Medad said… Thanks for posting. Very interesting. 5/3/16 19:10 Anonymous said… Have always had the greatest respect for the Syrian Jewish community. They are probably the most intact Jewish community of all. Intermarriage was always almost unheard of; they were even reluctant for their offspring to marry within the Ashkenazic community; today, that is not true and, fortunately, the east/west are intramarrying, as should be. We are one people. They are even reluctant to having conversions within their midst. A great yasher koach to them – true descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. Whereas, apparently, the Greek community has kept up with the same hellinization as their ancestors, r’l. Just by turning to the Reform, rather than true Judaism, shows their mindset. 6/3/16 04:38 CDG, Yerushalayim, Eretz Yisrael Shlemah said… Unfortunately, my mother was cut off from the Syrian community she was born into by well-meaning Ashkenazi social workers in the 1930s and given to a non-religious Ashkenazi family. Long story; but to make it short, she married a non-religious Ashkenazi and I am the result. So, what’s a virtually infinitesimal percentage lost? It means a lot to me because I had a 100% chance of suffering the hardship it took me to return to Judaism at all, never mind the Syrian community; and, thankfully, I was still acceptable to return to our homeland. It’s been even harder for my mother. Note to Mr. Cohen: I just want to let you know that http://www.ArabsForIsrael.com doesn’t work any longer. You might want to check out the links you post to make sure they all work. It’s good that you spread them around. And, if your family comes from Haifa and goes back at least as long as 1900CE there (and probably much longer than that), there’s a chance I might be distantly related to you, sir. 6/3/16 19:39 Mr. Cohen said… www.ArabsForIsrael.com had been replaced by: http://ArabsForIsrael.blogspot.com/ |
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This is what you get with NATO Military Aid
 Geopolitics & Empire-tweet-15December2023-ukrainian-legislator-throws-grenades
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UKRAINE INC.UKRAINE INC. Episode 1: The Meat GrinderPosted 12March2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/ Art is imitating Life. This is a “War of Attrition”. There is a new animated series Ukraine. Inc, in which the president of “Ukraine” Vladimir Zelensky became the main character. The cartoon reflects the grim realities of the political regime in Ukraine. Zelensky, in order to increase his own rating and increase financial capital, as shown in the cartoon he throws his people into a meat grinder. Everyone is sent for slaughter without exception: men, women, children and the elderly.
UKRAINE INC. Episode 2:The PartyPosted 5April2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/ Olena Zelenska, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife is at a EU/NATO party. She is slapped around by men such as Bill Clinton, Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz.
UKRAINE INC. Episode 3: The FraudsterPosted 11May2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is an actor playing various parts.
UKRAINE INC. Episode 4: The Bakhmut ChessboardPosted 14June2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is on a Chessboard of War. At the end the Wagner Group plays the violin.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a Auto Race. At the end the a Calendar with the Date May 15, 2024 is circled in both Ukraine and Russia
UKRAINE INC. Episode 6: The Fortune-tellerPosted 31August2023 : https://ukraine-inc.info/ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky goes to Anna the Fortune-teller At the end President Volodymyr Zelensky is in his office with 2004.2014.2024 scrolling through
UKRAINE INC. Episode 7: The HospitalPosted 23October2023 :https://ukraine-inc.info/ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky goes to the Hospital after breaking his leg. The Doctor Put a “Fit for Service” Sticker on his cast. He was put inline for the Recruitment Center.
UKRAINE INC. Episode 8: Elon Musk PrankPosted 23November2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/ Elon Musk plays a prank on the President of “Ukraine” Vladimir Zelensky
UKRAINE INC. Episode 9: The Stolen Christmas PresentsPosted 14December2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Stolen Christmas Presents
UKRAINE INC. Episode 10: ChickenPosted 3February2024 https://ukraine-inc.info/ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and corrupt Farming.
UKRAINE INC. Episode 11: Invite Ukraine to NATOPosted 28March2024 https://ukraine-inc.info/ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is invited to join NATO
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Today’s AntisemitismThe Real Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
Scott Ritter: Trudeau’s Nazi Debacle a HUGE DEFEAT for NATO’s Ukraine War
 StopAntisemitism-tweet-24September-2023-INSANITY- Yaroslav Hunka, now 98, was a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS in Ukraine, the military wing of the Nazi Party (SS Galichina). Galichina members burned 1,000 Polish villagers ALIVE. This man is a MONSTER!
 Holocaust In Ukraine-tweet-26September2023- Freeland ; Canada’s deputy Prime Minister, knew who Yaroslav Yunka was ! Her Ukrainian grandfather Micheal Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator and worked in their propaganda department. Surely ! Even if she didn’t know beforehand ; something would have clicked in her mind…  Chrystia Freeland Canada’s deputy Prime Minister-Ukrainian grandfather-Micheal Chomiak-Nazi collaborator
 Holocaust In Ukraine-tweet-25September2023-Some liberal and pro Ukrainian accounts white wash SS 14th Waffen Division
 noa tishby-tweet-27January2023-What is Holocaust Revisionism?
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How so many Ukrainian Nazis, such as Yaroslav Hunka, ended up in Canada after World War II.
 Holocaust In Ukraine-tweet-2October2023-How so many Ukrainian Nazis ended up in Canada after World War II
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Jewish Zelensky scams Trudeau to honor Nazi war veteran as “Ukrainian and Canadian hero”01October2023 // Belle Carter // https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-10-01-zelensky-scams-trudeau-to-honor-nazi-veteran.html
A war veteran who fought for the Nazis and pledged allegiance to Austrian-born German dictator Adolf Hitler appeared at the House of Commons. He was even honored as a hero during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s momentous visit to Canada last week.
Right after Zelensky delivered an address in front of the Canadian Parliament, the lawmakers celebrated 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka when Speaker Anthony Rota drew attention to him. The speaker introduced Hunka as a “Canadian and Ukrainian war hero” who fought for the First Ukrainian Division. Hunka, then, waved and nodded to the gallery as he received two standing ovations from the Parliament and the Ukrainian president, who is, by the way, Jewish. (Related: Trudeau and Zelensky emphatically honored a Nazi SS soldier before the Canadian Parliament in “deeply embarrassing” incident.)
The First Ukrainian Division was a voluntary unit commanded by the Nazis that was also known as the Waffen-SS Galicia Division or the SS 14th Waffen Division. It was responsible for “mass murder” and “crimes against humanity during the Holocaust,” according to Canada’s Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a non-profit human rights organization dedicated to Holocaust education and antisemitism programs.
For independent news outlet the Gateway Pundit (GP), this was a massive public relations bomb that exploded during the said event and is continuing to set off secondary and tertiary explosions. “Why did Zelensky order the pre-production of a stamp celebrating a retired member of the Waffen SS as a ‘Hero’ before he showed up in Canada? This was pre-planned. I think Zelensky and his team genuinely thought this would be a PR victory,” the GP’s Larry Johnson commented, referring to Kriv’s stamp with Hunka’s elderly mug featured prominently with the accompanying title, “Heroes Don’t Die.”
 Maria Dubovikova-tweet-26September2023-Ukraine printed new stamps
“Unbelievable. But this is not just a story about Canada celebrating a Nazi murderer. I think the real story is that Zelensky played a direct role in making this happen. If the stamp pictured above is legit, it gives away the game,” he added. “This would mean that someone on Zelensky’s side asked [Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau and his advisors to invite Hunka to Parliament… and the gullible and ignorant Trudeau accepted the easily disprovable claim that Hunka was a Ukrainian warrior who fought Russians in World War II.
Meanwhile, reports revealed that the image of the stamp in question is not real. “It was produced by Ukrainian intelligence as part of an operation to inject a piece of false information into the public debate about Hunka to raise doubts about all claims surrounding Hunka’s Nazi past,” the GP article further indicated but with or without a stamp, the central question remains, “Who proposed honoring Hunka as part of Zelensky’s speech?”
According to CBC, ahead of Zelenskyy’s visit, Hunka’s son contacted Rota’s constituency office and asked whether it would be possible for him to attend. Rota gave him one of the seats in his own viewing gallery. Generally, the process of who gets invited to such events is “pretty opaque,” according to one former official, but the speaker would certainly have sway. “He certainly would’ve invited a number of people himself,” said Roy Norton who, as chief of protocol, was Canada’s most senior official overseeing high-level international visits and other diplomatic matters.
Trudeau washes hands, blames House of Commons speaker for recognition of HunkaFollowing the scandalous event, Trudeau apologized for his Parliament’s recognition of a man who fought alongside the Nazis. According to the prime minister, the Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota, who stepped down earlier in the week, was “solely responsible” for the invitation and recognition of the man. However, he admitted that this was a mistake that has deeply embarrassed Parliament and Canada.
“All of us who were in the House on Friday regret deeply having stood and clapped, even though we did so unaware of the context,” Trudeau said before he entered the House of Commons. “It was a horrendous violation of the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust, and was deeply, deeply painful for Jewish people.”
House government leader Karina Gould said that Rota invited and recognized Hunka without informing the government or the delegation from Ukraine and that his lack of due diligence had broken the trust of lawmakers.
Moreover, Trudeau even blamed the “PR bomb explosion on Russia. He said that it was extremely troubling that this egregious error is being politicized by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime to provide false propaganda about what Ukraine is fighting for.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this week that the standing ovation for Hunka was “outrageous.” He blamed it on the “sloppy attitude” toward remembering the Nazi regime. Putin has painted his enemies in Ukraine as “neo-Nazis,” although Zelensky is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust. The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies has called the incident “a stain on our country’s venerable legislature with profound implications both in Canada and globally.”
FalseFlag.news has more stories similar to this.
Sources for this article include:
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JerusalemCats Comments: Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook, Now Meta, should know better. He claims to be Jewish, At lest that is what his Mother said.
Meta Welcomes Neo-Nazi Azov Regiment Back On Facebook, Removes “Dangerous Organization” Listingby Tyler Durden, 25January2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/political/meta-welcomes-neo-nazi-azov-regiment-back-facebook-removes-dangerous-organization-listing Days ago Facebook, which is now Meta, announced it is welcoming Ukraine’s Azov Regiment to its platform. Azov had up until recently, and throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine, been on Meta’s of “dangerous organizations” list. It was on this banned list because the militia’s members regularly display Nazi symbols and signs on their uniforms and as part of the their media content. But now, pro-Azov content can be freely posted, and the group can create its own official accounts on Facebook and Instagram for the first time.
 Ukrainian veterans of the Azov battalion attend a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2020. NurPhoto via Getty Images Ukrainian veterans of the Azov volunteer battalion attend a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2020. NurPhoto via Getty Images The Washington Post recently detailed that the change “will allow members of the Azov Regiment to create accounts on Facebook and Instagram and post content without fear of it being removed unless it breaks the company’s content rules.” Additionally, “The move will also enable other users to explicitly praise and support the group’s work.”
The company headed by Mark Zuckerberg still sought to emphasize that “Hate speech, hate symbols, calls for violence and any other content which violates our Community Standards are still banned, and we will remove this content if we find it.”
Ukrainian officials have especially since the summer lobbied hard for Facebook/Meta’s Oversight Board to loosen up its restrictions on Azov, saying it was ‘unfair’ and that it’s keeping Ukrainian media organizations from sharing accurate information about the war in real-time.
 The Kyiv Independent-tweet-19January2023-Facebook no longer designates Azov Regiment as a dangerous organization Facebook’s changing approach started about a year ago, when it began allowing some pro-Azov posts in instances where they were fighting the Russian invasion, as The Intercept reported in Feb. 2022:
Azov’s formal Facebook ban goes back to 2019, when the US social media giant acknowledged it as a hate group. An example of the type of imagery that’s long filled Azov social media channels in general…  Azov battalion Ukraine Oops… from Bellingcat in 2020:  Ukraine Annual Neo-Nazi Music Festival 2020 Now that Azov is fully free to create accounts and post on Facebook, one wonders what changed? After all, there are still endless examples of Azov members sporting neo-Nazi imagery, as well as ongoing public displays of support for historic Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. |
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Journalists
 Paul Hookem-tweet-22September2023-If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough, It Becomes Journalism  If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough, It Becomes Journalism
 Paul Hookem-tweet-22September2023-Journalist-Then and Now  Journalist-Then and Now
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A quick guide to media literacy.
 HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-quick guide to media literacy
 HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-1 Consume more news
 HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-2 Read the news story not just the headline
 HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-3 Know your author
 HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-4 Look for evidence
 HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-5 Question what you read
 HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-6 Fact check Everything
 HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-Have tips
 Tali-tweet-7February2024-scour the X feeds of writers
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Why You Can’t Rely on Journalists for the Truth23July2018 http://www.myrtlerising.com/blog/why-you-cant-rely-on-journalists-for-the-truth Journeying through Journalist Territory on the Way to ChevronWhen I first immigrated to Eretz Yisrael in my early twenties, I found myself in Kiryat Arba on Shabbat with a friend of mine.
Our generous hosts had several children included a 16-year-old girl with a serious commitment to Torah and Eretz Yisrael. (We’ll call her Moriah.)
Excited about davening at Ma’arat Hamachpela/Cave of the Patriarchs in Chevron/Hebron for Shabbat Shacharit, we 3 girls decided we’d join the armed Jewish men also going to Ma’arat Hamachpela for Shacharit as they did every Shabbat.
But we didn’t catch them in time (can’t remember why).
So now it became a security issue.
But when the mother noticed our gloom over missing a special Shabbat Shacharit right next to Avraham Avinu and Sara Imeinu, she quietly remarked that there were soldiers along the entire way.
Moriah knew the way, having walked it several times.
Then Moriah announced we were going and that not only were there fully armed soldiers along the route, but also Hashem protects a shaliach mitzvah from harm.
Seeing as every 4 amot in Eretz Yisrael is a mitzvah and that davening at the gravesite of tzaddikim is a praiseworthy act, then Hashem would look out for us.
We were on!
We headed out with Moriah in her long dishwater blonde ponytail and owlish glasses marching ahead of us with the resolve of generations of dedicated bnot Yisrael.
As illogical as it may sound, I felt very safe with Moriah. When one has solid emuna and bitachon, it provides much more protection than any weapon.
As we left the Kiryat Arba resedential neighborhood, we came upon a short tunnel of bricks. Moriah didn’t say anything until we came out the other end and pointed to a dark plaque outside the exit of the short tunnel.
It was a memorial to a good Jew who’d been stabbed by a you-know-who (hint: not a Bahai nor a Baptist) lying in ambush at the very place we stood.
This did not give me a reassuring feeling.
I looked around to see if there were any terrorists hiding nearby, but fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any.
“Do we need to come back this way?” I asked Moriah. “Is there another way where we don’t need to go through this tunnel?”
Alas, there wasn’t.
But then Moriah firmly reminded me that terrorism cannot and does not stop us. We strode on fearless in our faith and trust in God!
My admiration of Moriah increased even more.
Anyway, we soon came up on our first soldier. In fact, there was a soldier stationed every few yards within clear vision of each other.
Dressed in full combat gear—helmets, fully automatic rifles, bulletproof vests, etc.—they each stood in their position, there eyes carefully scanning all around them, including above them, as if wondering, Will something fall on my head?
They also looked a bit self-amused, like “I’m just standing here in the middle of a field of flattened grass like a sitting duck.”
And what’s really funny is that each time we approached each soldier, he did a double-take.
First, he tensed as he caught our movement from the corner of his eye, then he did a double-take when he saw 3 girls.
And each time, Moriah snapped up her palm in greeting and declared: “Shabbat Shalom!”
Each time she did this, the soldier looked even more surprised (but pleasantly so) and responded with amused disbelief, “Shabbat Shalom, girls!”
This happened repeatedly throughout the entire line of soldiers.
I found it all both amusing and heart-warming.
I really appreciated them being there and they really appreciated our spiritual gutsiness (although to be completely honest, I was being swept along by Moriah’s lionhearted bitachon rather than my own).
And after having survived the wishy-washy secular culture of the US, it was rejuvenating to be in the presence of such a young Jewish woman who possessed such serious commitment and resolve.
Also, the contrast was funny.
Apparently, the area was dangerous enough so that they needed full combat gear, but here we were striding along in our Shabbat dresses without even a small bottle of pepper spray.
And then…
…we saw two scuzzy-looking guys standing right next to one of the soldiers. One guy held a big camera. The other scuzzbag sported shoulder-length sandy-colored gritty-looking hair and wore jeans and held a pen and pad in his hands.
They were obviously journalists for a secular newspaper.
“Hey, giiiiiirls,” he said in this really sleazy way and introduced himself as being from one of the major Israeli newspapers (either Yediot Acharonot or Maariv; I always got them confused).
”Can I ask yoooou a few questionnnns?” (Picture this being said in the greasiest way possible.)
My friend & I put on our polite pleasant American faces, thinking that being receptive to his questions and being nice would be a kiddush Hashem.
But just as we opened our mouths, Moriah stepped up to plate and stated, “NO. It’s Shabbat and we don’t do interviews! Writing and taking pictures is forbidden on Shabbat and we don’t allow it!”
Okay, I admit I was shocked at the time.
This was a far cry from the nice compassionate approach to tinok sheh nishba, an attitude most baalei teshuvah cultivate and is also strongly encouraged in the frum community.
But Moriah knew a lot more than I about these types and had correctly identified him as a total snake, like the original Nachash in Gan Eden.
Or maybe just a weasel.
“Oh, c’mon, giiiirls,” he sneered. “Just a couple of queeeestioooons…”
(I can’t fully convey this in writing, but everything about his tone of voice, his body language, and his persona gave the impression of him being a total sleazebag who’d slithered out from under the most scum-fested rock possible.)
I sensed his attitude had to do with us being religious, and being associated with “settlers,” but I couldn’t prove it. Yet I got a very strong feeling that was the case.
In other words, he loathed us for the Divine values he saw in us.
“I said NO,” Moriah said.
He bent his knees to squat and spread out his arms and said, “But why noooot, giiirls?”
Giving him a stern look, Moriah repeated, “Because it’s Shabbat and we don’t do interviews on Shabbat! Writing and taking pictures is forbidden on Shabbat and we don’t allow it!”
The journalist said he would be doing the writing, not her. Moriah exhorted that it was forbidden for him too.
He smirked.
Then we turned to keep walking, but Moriah knew just how sneaky and disrespectful these guys are and to my surprise, she suddenly whipped around to face them and said, “PLEASE. I said no pictures on Shabbat! I insist that you respect our wishes!”
I was shocked to see the camera up in front of the photographer’s face. The really scuzzy journalist spread his arms out again in obviously fake innocence.
“What’s wroooong, giiiiirls?” he said.
Moriah gave them a hard glare and the camera went down while the journalist’s arms slowly dropped to his sides.
We passed another soldier just then, who looked at us with twinkling eyes as he murmured, “Kol hakavod, girls!”
I glanced back at the scuzzbags. They were staring after us, the photographer looking bored and the journalist looking like he wasn’t sure what just happened.
I felt so YUCK after that brief interaction, and I felt the YUCK in a way I haven’t felt before or since.
And that was the end of our journalistic encounter.
I know I don’t usually write with such negative descriptions of people, but I really can’t emphasize enough the unusual & disconcerting feeling that we were facing 2 giant cockroaches. The above experience imparted several lessons to me, baruch Hashem.
And one of them was an unsettling realization that the really sleazy guy wrote for a major national newspaper.
This granted him influence and likely meant that he wrote well.
I wondered whether his overpowering sleaziness seeped through his writing or whether he came off as an intelligent and sincere articulate guy, as many successful journalists do?
It unnerved me to think that such a repellant person had the power to influence others and could command journalistic respect. Creative ConcernYears ago, upon reading the column of another journalist who (as usual) picked apart the charedi community, I realized that I had a friend who had family connections to the very street this journalist mentioned in the column.
(The column claimed there was a charedi rebbetzin living in a building storage room after having been forcibly divorced & rejected by her entire community, and forbidden to see her own children.)
An actual rebbetzin, eh? Good golly!
My friend also had extensive professional experience in helping abused women and the mentally ill.
What a perfect shidduch!
I figured that not only could I get help for the persecuted homeless rebbetzin featured in the column, but it might also be a kiddush Hashem for the columnist to see that some charedim did care about injustices in our community enough to take action.
(You can also see that my eager young newly frum enthusiasm was out in full force at that time.)
Anyway, I called my friend and asked her if she’d heard about this situation. She had tons of cousins on this street and visited there often.
Yet my friend hadn’t heard a thing about it.
“The woman living in the abandon bomb shelter of one of the buildings is supposed to be a big rebbetzin,” I said.
“Mm-hmm,” said my friend who’d already cottoned on to the truth, but figured she’d let me work it out on my own.
“Uh, you haven’t heard of any big rebbetzin living in one of the buildings like that?” I probed.
“Nope,” she said pleasantly.
I bit my bottom lip and frowned. That didn’t make sense according to the column, which portrayed it as a major community scandal.
Yet if it was a major community scandal, why hadn’t my friend even heard of it?
“You didn’t see any abandoned lady down there when you went to visit your cousins?”
“Mmmm…nope.”
Well, maybe my friend hadn’t gone into THAT specific building.
Knowing that my friend was deeply involved with programs and counseling for women suffering abuse or mental illness, I asked her if the columnist could contact her.
My friend generously agreed and told me the exact number to reach her by—a number I knew well because I’d frequently called her at that very number.
Bursting with goody-goodyness, I emailed the columnist with the information.
I received a cooing email in reply, one that flattered me as being “one of the few who cared” and reassurance that the call would be made.
But then the columnist added other details of the situation (which were expressed in a huffy self-righteous style).
That’s when I got my first “uh-oh” vibe.
Because what the columnist now described sounded a lot like one of those schizophrenic ladies you sometimes see hanging out on the streets of the frum neighborhoods of Jerusalem—neighborhoods where these mentally ill stragglers enjoy more safety and more compassion than in other areas.
A a couple of days later, I got another email from the columnist stating that my friend couldn’t be reached because the number connected to a fax.
That was my 2nd “uh-oh” vibe.
I’d been calling my friend at that exact number for years and never encountered a fax.
I frowned as I tried to work out what was going on.
So I called my friend and asked whether the columnist’s claim had any validity.
“I never have a fax connected to this number,” said my friend.
“Maybe it happened just one time?” I suggested, thinking maybe the columnist had tried to call at that one time.
“Nope. Never,” said my friend.
My puzzlement grew.
I couldn’t accept the fact that the columnist was outright lying, in direct contrast to the columnist’s self-portrayal in every column as a crusader for fairness and truth.
I checked the number I’d emailed with the way it was written in my phonebook (even though I knew it from memory).
No difference.
Maybe the number changed via some glitch when it was emailed?
I created a new email and included the number within. Again.
The columnist continued to insist that the number connected to a fax, no matter how many attempts were made.
I wrote back explaining that couldn’t be because there was no fax.
In reply, I received an email from the columnist expressing regret that our efforts simply weren’t working and how could things progress if the phone number didn’t even work and my professional activist friend could not be reached?
So this was the end. I was praised again for caring “so much.”
And that was that.
I came away with the feeling I’d been had, but I couldn’t figure out exactly how.
(Another time, I read a statement by that same columnist that couldn’t possibly be true by bare objective fact, I found it hard to believe that a person would outright lie in a public forum. Also, I could see how the person could weasel out from the lie with other lies there’d be no way for me to prove.)
Looking back, she acted like a gaslighter (a form of emotional abuse). False InsinuationsThis one popped up in the list of Yeranen Yaakov’sarticles of interest:
Is that the journalist’s fault?
Less so in this case.
After all, the reporter got the original tidbit from directly an official source.
But real journalists are supposed double-check “facts” & other journalistic responsibilities.
The problem today is the pressure to crank things out, to report news as it’s happening, and to stay relevant.
Combine this with the fact that as long as it supports a journalist personal point of view, then why bother double-checking?
(I don’t know whether it did with these particular reporters, but many people are ready to believe anything about the frum community as long as it is negative.) Who’s Behind the Byline?In addition to the encounters above, I’ve personally met reporters, editors, graphic designers, proofreaders, and others involved in Jewish media across the spectrum of the Jewish population and in working for either Hebrew or English publications.
(Note: There is often a slew of editors and proofreaders & copyeditors & graphic artists working behind the scenes, in addition the writer whose name appears on the article. Their names don’t always appear even on the masthead.)
As far as the frum publications go, please rest assured that the majority of people involved with producing their magazine or newspaper are decent sincere people.
But not all of them.
And it only takes one or two people positioned in just the right (or wrong, as the case may be) place to produce topics, slants, and attitudes that are actually not Torah nor even well-intended.
If any person behind the article (and there are several people behind each article, not just the writer) is not a decent person, if they’re narcissistic or unspiritual or mean-spirited or a religious fake, then that can influence the information you’re imbibing.
Furthermore, everyone has issues and biases.
(I’m no exception either, BTW.)
If any person involved in an article is stunted by a blind spot, then that will affect the slant and accuracy of the information being offered.
And you can’t always know who has had the final say on any article you read.
For example, one editor working for a secular Jewish publication was just plain strange.
Not a bad person, but definitely a strange person with little sense of self & not the kind of person you’d want deciding what you should read.
Also, when you read a frum publication that declares its allegiance to rabbinical supervision, do you think that means the entire publication is scrutinized by a group of rabbis?
It doesn’t necessarily mean that. It could mean that, but it doesn’t have to.
It could also mean that the publication only shows the rabbi articles it has questions about.
In some cases, the rabbi sees only the questionable parts of the article and not even the whole article.
Do you know what your publication means when it says it submits to a rabbinical va’ad?
Maybe it doesn’t bother you either way, but if you do care, you might want to find out. Personal AnecdotesWriters
“I feel like such a fake,” the writer confided. “But what else could I do? I couldn’t have that person’s eccentricity exposed in writing forevermore to thousands of people.” Another writer fumed about how someone changed a word of the article to imbue it with the opposite meaning of what was intended:
“I even got a couple of angry letters about it—which were also published in Letters to the Editor!” said the writer.
”But the thing is, I never said that! I don’t even think it! I’m not sure exactly who changed it—though I have my suspicions. And I was told that if I responded, I needed to send my response through the staff first. I didn’t bother because I didn’t think they’d expose how they alter an article’s meaning—not just grammar or typos, but the actual meaning—without consulting the writer.” Interviewees “My husband gets interviewed by all different kinds of publications,” one woman said. “And we just got used to them getting details wrong.” She sighed.
”They get his age wrong, sometimes they delete his sister and sometimes they add another sister, they get wrong the years he did different things. But it’s small stuff so we just try to ignore it.” One frum writer wrote of her experience being interviewed by a journalist who initially seemed trustworthy, but then misrepresented her in the published article, including words in quotation marks—words she never said. Readers Said by the acquaintance of a woman interviewed by a frum publication:
“I can’t believe what they wrote about this woman I know! They made this whole article about how a woman combines her music with family life and domestic responsibilities. But I know her and she doesn’t combine her music with her domestic responsibilities! Think about it. If a woman spends the entire morning composing songs and playing instruments, then when does she have time for making dinner or cleaning or laundry? She doesn’t! I know her. Yes, she greets her children very warmly when they come home from school, but then she sends them out to buy hamburgers for lunch.
“She does spend time with her children in the afternoons and she teaches them music, and that’s really lovely. But then her husband comes home and gets them supper and puts them to bed so that she can immerse herself in her music again.
“It’s not that I mind what she does. It’s her life and her family really does seem happy. But she’s not ‘combining her domestic responsibilities with her music.’ Her husband and oldest child do everything. She simply doesn’t do most of her domestic responsibilities, like housework or meal-preparation. But the article made it sound like she does. And she really doesn’t.” Said by a former neighbor regarding a frum publication:
“I came across an article I knew about a person known as a very unrefined person and a very abusive parent. Yet the article presented this person as baalas chesed who excelled in visiting and caring for the sick! I knew this person brought over meals for sick people in the community and would gossip about what she saw in the homes she’d visited. The ill women felt they couldn’t stop her from talking and risk losing her services because they were weak and desperate for any help they could get. I guess she was like the Typhoid Mary of lashon hara.
“And the abuse of her child was very distressing. Once, she grabbed her 7-year-old by the face and yanked from both sides of the child’s face at the same time—all because the child didn’t want to taste a new food. I jumped to my feet and my hand jerked out as I cried out for her to stop. I’d never seen such a thing, even though I’ve witnessed parents hitting their kids in public. But attacking them like this, especially over something so trivial? Never.
“Yet she wasn’t at all embarrassed. With obvious self-righteousness, she even snapped at me that she used to do much worse and that this is an improvement over how she used to be. For the child’s sake, I tried to remain calm and soothe the mother by praising the mother for her self-improvement. But she was angry that I intervened at all. She stuck her nose in the air and left the table, refusing to look at me as if I was the loathsome person in this situation.
“And then I have to read this article on how she’s such a selfless nurse to the ill. I don’t blame the publication because the editors have no way of knowing, but how could the writer not know the truth? After all, if I remember correctly, he’s from her community—and her behavior is no secret.” What You Don’t KnowWith frum publications, you at least have the reassurance of knowing that most of the people are decent, sincere, and (at least externally) committed to Torah Law.
But what of the secular or non-Jewish publications?
Some are well-meaning and some are truth-seekers who still believe in honest-to-gosh investigative journalism. But others are agenda-driven, biased, and uphold false beliefs and terrible values.
Finally, it’s important to realize that people can be gifted and skilled without being good. We see this all the time. If someone is a superb writer, they’ll be able to present themselves and their topics in a compelling, appealing manner even if their personality and value system stink.
Case in point: There’s a popular non-Jewish writer whose books are always well-received.
When this writer writes about himself, he comes off as so sympathetic and appealing.
But taking a step back and looking at the topics he writes about in his novels and how he writes about them, plus the things he says in his non-fiction—like how he’s treated close family members like garbage—it’s possible to realize that the guy is a self-centered macabre escapist who cares little how his writing affects others (and there are people who’ve committed horrific crimes claiming to have been inspired by his novels).
He claims to care about others (in a Leftist way) and like most immoral people he donates money to a couple of pet causes (likely for feel-good or feel-superior reasons).
But tachlis?
His writings and attitude shows that not only does he feel no desire to make the world a better place; he even makes it a worse place and that’s fine with him. Yet he comes off as appealing and sympathetic.
So…who’s behind the byline? What’s the agenda or the bias?
You don’t really know.
And this goes for online articles and blogs too.
You don’t really know unless you do know. How to be Your Own FilterWhile the desire for “kosher” and interesting reading is very understandable, a good idea is to ask yourself how you feel after reading an article or publication or blog (including this blog).
For example, after I read a certain frum publication, I felt hopeless and bleak.
I realized that many of the articles actually consisted of despair and unrealistic advice based on secular psychology and presented in a guilt-tripping way while trying to sound encouraging.
Some frum writers or publications uphold a very secular hashkafah in certain areas without even realizing it. Others violate halacha without realizing it.
(Again, this includes online publications and blogs.)
It doesn’t mean that an entire publication should be avoided (although it could mean that).
Maybe only read certain authors or certain topics in a particular publication?
Or only read certain topics covered by that author?
Also, publications pay attention to sales and letters to the editor, but if it’s online, then pageviews and sales count for more.
Even if they get a lot of angry letters about an issue, if the sales (or pageviews and visits) go up, then the publication considers that “a hot-button issue” and not necessarily one to be avoided.
But letters do matter to them & influence their decisions. So it’s good to write to them.
Note: If you choose to write a letter to the editor, the following is recommended:
(And don’t think I haven’t violated any of the above ever…learn from my mistakes! 😉
But whatever you decide, it’s helpful to do a self-check:
Better to double-check “facts,” do your own research, and include in your daily reading (even if it’s only a couple of lines a day) books by truly good and wise rabbis and rebbetzins to keep your soul infused with real daat and wisdom.  What I Didn’t Post on Instagram |
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How Israel’s Jewish and other media lie to youA reader needs very serious analytic skills to read a news report (Arutz Sheva, which is posting this, is an exception…). Op-ed.Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer 24July2023 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/374594 This article offers a partial guide to cutting through the lies, deceit, and deceptions of what liars and truth-tellers alike call “Journalism.”
1. The Source: Any article on Judaism, Israel, or other Jewish issues that originates from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) should be assumed ab initio, unless proven otherwise, to be extreme-left-propaganda against normative Orthodox Judaism and against centrist or conservative political perspectives. The same is true for reports and op-eds originating in Forward and often Times of Israel. Also Hebrew publications like Maariv and Yediot Acharonot (Ynet).
Of course, there are exceptions to everything, and even a broken clock is correct twice daily. These publications invariably employ techniques and tactics discussed below. JTA merits extra attention because they send “news” stories to others as a sort-of “Associated Press” news service. When a fine Jewish publication runs a “news” item or op-ed whose leftist or anti-Orthodox bias surprises you, look whether it originated at JTA.
2. Headlines:Compare “100,000 Demonstrate Against Government Efforts to Suppress Court Freedom” with “Thousands at Tel Aviv Demonstration.” Both headlines are assumed accurate. Which seems larger? In this case, the latter demonstration was larger — as many as 200,000 people, possibly 300,000 — but it was for the government’s proposed reform. See?
Try another: Compare “Six Jews and Arabs Killed in West Bank Shootout” with “Israeli Security Forces Kill 2 Hamas Terrorists After 4 Jews Murdered in Terror Attack.” See?
3. Placement: Leftist and anti-Orthodox stories get placed as “The Lede” at the top on page one in print or at the top of the web page. Other stories of comparable consequence but encouraging disfavored perspectives get buried lower on the page or in middle or back pages.
4. Organizations Quoted: Reporters contact organizations whose views they know will be left-wing or anti-Orthodox, seeking quotes for their stories. To create the veneer of “balance,” they sometimes select one or two statements from the opposite perspective. Even so, the agreeable views appear at the beginning paragraphs of the story for two reasons: First, the reader’s perspective toward the subject is strongly influenced by a first impression gleaned from the opening paragraphs. Secondly, many read only the first paragraph or two and then rapidly skim the rest.
Similarly, preferred groups and quotes will appear at the end of the story, again for two reasons: First, the last paragraph or two leave the reader with a final impression from the story. Second, many read the first paragraph or two, race through the rest, and then read the last paragraph or two. Accordingly, organizations or quotes that the reporter disfavors are buried in the middle.
5. Experts Quoted: Similar to “Organizations Quoted,” above. Secondary players get inordinate coverage if media wish to promote their left-wing or anti-Orthodox views. In America, this is why Ocasio-Cortez is quoted so often, even though she represents an insignificant Congressional district with above-average poverty and below-average achievements. The leftist media adore her leftist views so they solicit quotes daily.
Similarly, Jewish media cover Israel, Judaism, and other Jewish issues that way. They seek out leftist spokespersons, creating celebrities, while ignoring others to their right — unless a right-winger misspeaks. Then they have a field day. The religious and conservative voices that get quoted invariably appear buried in the middle.
A favorite tactic to seem “balanced” and “fair” without being so is to call a conservative or pro-religious spokesperson for a quote only minutes before “deadline.” That way, the person does not get interviewed if not at the phone that minute because there is no time left to call back before the story appears. Then the report says “Calls made to [Mr. X] were not returned by press time.”
6. Distortion of Quotes: Many experienced political conservatives and spokespeople for Orthodox Judaism now insist on the right to record their interviews before the reporter culls quotes to use in a story. Alternatively, they insist the reporter submit all questions in writing, and they will supply their interview answers in writing. Otherwise, they are at the mercy of dishonest or incompetent reporters who misquote their oral answers or supply quotes accurately but out of context.
7. Surveys and Polls. Left-wing media degrade right-wing electoral victories by conducting endless polls and surveys, trying to demonstrate that right-wing election results were aberrations, no longer true. Despite a general tendency for people surveyed to change their minds back-and-forth until actual elections approach and everyone gets serious, it is equally important to note how the left media selectively treat polls.
Presently, they highlight polls suggesting some Israelis now would vote differently than they repeatedly have the past five elections in four years. Yet, the same media aggressively hide and cover up polls showing the majority of Jerusalem residents oppose Homosexual Parades in their streets. Similarly, they whitewash polls showing a majority of Israelis support building more Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and even outright annexing parts.
8. Adjectives, Adverbs. Haredi Jews get described as “Ultra” Orthodox, a pejorative according to Goodle. By contrast, Hamas never is called “Ultra” Violent. In America,“The Squad” that includes Ocasio, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib never are called “Ultra” liberal or “Ultra” progressive. Arab political parties who will not even join left-wing Israeli governments never are called “Ultra” Arab.
The present freely elected Israeli government regularly gets described in leftist media as “extreme right wing.” Yet their policies are consistent with traditional conservative Israeli political platforms. They have not restricted civil rights or liberties despite the Left’s dire warnings.
They have not mass-arrested dissenters, despite the Left’s wholesale law-breaking, public calls from Ehud Barak bordering on sedition, and Ehud Olmert bordering on “treason lite.” The government has leaned over backward. No territory has been annexed. Every time they announce new construction, they next announce yet another temporary freeze on building. They have not forced people to observe Shabbat. They want bread kept out of hospitals during Pesach but do not impose chametz laws on private lives.
It is a centrist-conservative, pro-tradition government, nothing extreme. They still have yet to significantly advance the Judicial Reform package, and have not advanced amending the “Grandfather Clause” that has opened Israel to massive non-Jewish immigration.
9. Quotation Marks. Compare “Israel Claims It Killed 4 ‘Terrorists’ ” with “Israel Reports It Killed 4 Terrorists.” See what those quotation marks do?
10. Verbs. And see the difference between “Claims” and “Reports” in the above example?
11. Non-Reporting of Important News. Publications employ biases to elevate non-stories into significant events or to ignore significant stories whose urgency demands coverage. In America, important religion stories get ignored regularly except for when a Catholic priest or prominent Protestant pastor gets implicated in scandal. It is legion how left media blacked out all news of the Hunter Biden laptop during the 2020 presidential election or allocated absurdly undue attention to lies that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin.
And consider friendships: How often have you heard about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s friendship with Arnon Milchin (although no one remembers that before the accusations against him, the media regularly wrote that Netanyahu has no friends)? OK. And how often of Ehud Barak’s much closer relationship with sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein? Barak spent time with Epstein — at least thirty times — and flew on his infamous plane. Barak was “almost a fixture” at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion. Not news?
12. Photographs. Any person’s eyes shut as he blinks or as he rubs his eyes, and people momentarily place their hands on their cheeks or foreheads. Which photo will appear the next day? Or they may wave at an audience with an outstretched arm. Will it be called friendly waving or a Nazi salute? Typically, the same speech includes moments of warm smiling while telling a joke, and also angry scowling while criticizing something deplorable. Editors decide which one picture to use. Similarly, an editor’s biased viewpoint selects the photograph at a demonstration. At media-favored demonstrations against the government of Israel, they show photographs of Israeli flags and hide those of demonstrators waving “Palestine” flags. By contrast, if there is even one “Kach” poster at a demonstration of 200,000 people favoring the government, that photo is chosen.
13. Distortion of Comparative Data. Media will report on numbers of Gazan Arabs killed in a justified Israeli bombing without delineating: (i) how many were terrorists as opposed to civilians, (ii) that the targeted Hamas rocket launchers deliberately were based in apartment buildings, hospital campuses, and school yards, and (iii) how many of the Gazan Arabs were killed by Hamas rockets that fell short and incinerated their own people.
A third example: The media banner that hundreds of reserve soldiers have promised not to report but fail to tell you (i) how many are over age 60, over 70, over 80; (ii) how many of them actually have not shownup when due; and that (iii) well over 100,000 Israeli active duty and reserve military personnel are on record rejecting the calls to refuse service.
14. Outright Advocacy Couched as “News”. The honest approach is to distinguish for readers and viewers very formally between “news” and “opinion.” Israel’s television news is notorious for anchors “reporting” personal subjective opinions as documented objective facts. When Ben Caspit publishes his daily Maariv personal attack on Netanyahu, he fairly presents as an opinion writer. Others are not as honest.
15. Semantics. Words color everything. “West Bank” or “Judea and Samaria”? “Settlements” or “Jewish communities”? Ariel, the capital of Samaria, has a population exceeding 20,000 with another 11,000 studying at Ariel University. But Wikipedia calls it a “settlement.” Ariel is twice the population of Malibu, California (10,654); three times the population of Lexington, Virginia (7,320) and Aspen, Colorado (7,004); seven times Gatlinburg, Tennessee (3,577) and Carmel, California (3,220); and ten times Lake Placid, New York (2,269) and Cooperstown, New York (1,769). Opponents snark back: “Oh, stop quibbling over semantics!”
Semantics, huh? So it is OK to call married women “Mrs.” and unmarried women “Miss” instead of “Ms.”? Don’t bet on it. Or to call people “homosexual” instead of “Gay”? Yeah, right. Try it. And over the century, in a sincere effort to be sensitive, people were educated first to show respect by using the term “Colored People” as in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Then the public was urged: Show some sensitivity and stop using that horrible term; use “Negro.” And then: “Negro is insensitive; it is a Spanish word, and we do not call Caucasians ‘Blanco.’” Fair point. So, from now on, use “Black.” OK. But then it became insensitive to designate by skin color because Americans are described by ethnicity — Irish-American, Italian-American, German-American — so it became “African-American.” Finally — wouldn’t you know? — it has gone full cycle from “Colored People” to “Negro” to “Black” to “African American” to . . . “People of Color.” So, apparently, semantics do matter.
In fact, our haters now engage in semantics distinguishing how they despise us: “I am not anti-Semitic. I am anti-Zionist.” So a reporter’s semantics expose biased reporting.
16. Focus on a Person’s Past. Every left-wing report on Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir includes his life of decades ago. The same sorts love the likes of Angela Davis. Davis was a member of the Communist Party and purchased firearms used in the murder of a judge and three others. She was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List and fled her state. Yet we never hear of her past. She is a hero of the left. Bill Ayers co-founded the Weather Underground, a terror group that conducted bombings across America. He fled justice for several years. Yet, his past did not stop Obama from associating with him.
By contrast, Ben-Gvir has no such criminal past, and his bar admittance to practice law reflects he was professionally vetted and found to be worthy of character to be an officer of the court, to practice law. And yet perpetual references to the political activism of his youth are included to prejudice the reader.
Know these dirty “journalism” tricks. The truth is elusive, but this guide may help. |
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FTX: The Dominoes Of Financial Fraud Have Yet To Fallby Tyler Durden, Nov 17November2022 – 02:20 PM https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/ftx-dominoes-financial-fraud-have-yet-fall Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, Once assets are revealed as worth far less than claimed, insolvency is the inevitable result.  Chinese-Sign mistranslated as-Carefully Fall into the Cliff – zhuì yá 小心坠崖 (“beware / be careful of falling off the cliff; careful not to fall off the cliff”)
If you haven’t plowed through dozens of post-collapse commentaries on FTX, I’m saving you the trouble: here’s a distillation of what matters going forward. If you’re seeking a forensic accounting of FTX, others have done this work already. If you’re seeking an ideological diatribe, you won’t find that here, either.
What you will find is insight into the real innovation of FTX: FTX compressed the entire playbook and history of financial fraud into one brief cycle of the credulous bamboozled, Charles Ponzi bested and creative accounting being revealed for what it really is, fraud.
All financial frauds share the same set of tools. The toolbox of financial fraud, whether it is traditional or crypto-based, contains variations of these basic mechanisms:
I have often recommended Herman Melville’s novel The Confidence-Man for its masterful depiction of how The Confidence-Man persuades the skeptic that not only is The Confidence-Man trustworthy, but he is doing the mark a favor in taking his money.
Note that there are quasi-legal versions of some of these tools. The full exposure to the risks inherent in extreme leverage and illiquidity can be cloaked, buried in off-balance sheet assets and liabilities, etc., while pages of mind-numbing disclosures were duly signed by blinded-by-greed marks.
These quasi-legal versions are just as prone to unraveling and collapse as the blatantly fraudulent varieties. Properly disclosed leverage and illiquidity are just as prone to unraveling as undisclosed leverage and illiquidity.
Mismatches of duration, liquidity and risk are just as toxic to full-disclosure firms as they are to fraudulent firms.
This is why we can predict the dominoes of FTX’s financial fraud have yet to fall. When there are mismatches in counterparty asset durations and liquidity, assets that theoretically cover loans that are called can’t be sold or can only be sold at ruinous discounts.
Leverage works both ways, and so the 100-to-1 leverage that’s so glorious when the $1 yields $100 in gains also triggers the mass liquidation of illiquid assets when small losses unwind all that leverage.
Everyone caught short by losses, redemptions and counterparty claims will be desperate to hide their exposure to insolvency. But humans are herd animals, and once the herd gets spooked, trust in assurances quickly plummets and all eyes are on counterparty risks and the actual market for lightly traded assets.
Once assets are revealed as worth far less than claimed, insolvency is the inevitable result. How far will the lines of toppling dominoes extend? Quite possibly much farther than the credulous believe possible. * * * |
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Is the West aiding and supporting the Hamas Nazis like it is supporting the Ukrainian Nazis? Hamas Child suicide Bomb Terrorist  Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing was the suicide bombing of a crowded public bus (Egged bus 2) in the Shmuel HaNavi quarter in Jerusalem, Israel, on August 19, 2003. Twenty-four people were killed and over 130 wounded. Many of the victims were children, some of them infants. The Islamist militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.  Gaza “protesters” loft molotov cocktail on swastika kite over Israeli border |
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 International Neo Nazi Fund
 Victoria Nulland meets with Svoboda neo-nazis
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Stockman: No More Ukrainesby Tyler Durden, 28February, 2023 – 11:45 PM https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/stockman-no-more-ukraines Authored by David Stockman via LewRockwell.com, Joe Biden must think that he’s the world’s Rich Uncle. In a meeting with the so-called Bucharest Nine today he promised these former Warsaw Pact nations—which should never have been admitted to NATO in the first place—unlimited economic and military support. Nine more Ukraines if need be. Biden conveyed reassurances that the United States is prepared to speed to their defense if they come under offensive action by Moscow. These nations include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
For want of doubt, here’s the just-in-case-you-missed-the-message amplification from NSC spokesman John Kirby. Said the Deep State’s favorite shill, who is apparently serving the national security complex in endless rotation, having moved from State to DOD and then to the National Security Council during the last decade, with a stop in between at CNN:
He said the president’s purpose in the meeting is to “reaffirm the United States’ unwavering support for the security of that alliance and trans-Atlantic unity.” It’s also meant to send a message to Putin that his country can’t intimidate these democracies, some of them relatively new and fragile.
Well, let’s see. Where is it documented that Putin has ever threatened Bulgaria or Hungary or Slovakia or Lithuania or any of the others for that matter? As it transpired, Hungary’s leader even refused to attend this pointless Biden photo op.
After all, what in the world could Putin gain by attacking these nations and occupying what would be hostile populations and damaged economies? A tremendous fiscal drain on his already beleaguered finances would be the only certainty.
The fact is, Washington has become so crazed with anti-Putin war fever that it doesn’t even ask, let alone answer, these foundational questions. Instead, it has just lapsed into grade school reasoning by analogy. If Putin attacked the government of Ukraine, why then it’s a sure bet that the nine yellow dominoes highlighted in the map below are next on the list to fall.  Bucharest Nine NATO European Countries
No, not at all. Ukraine is sui generis. It’s a hodge-podge of variant histories, ethnicities and religious traditions that never belonged under the roof of a single state.
Moreover, its propinquity to things Russian is an unassailable matter of history. Prior to the arrival of communist rule after WWI, its various regions had marinated for centuries as vassals under the tutelage of Czarist Russia. Ukraine’s historically meandering boundaries, in fact, were only finally frozen in current form by the brutal dictates of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev.
During the long amalgamated history of these neighboring, mainly Slavic populations the eastern and southern portions of the current Ukraine map became populated and economically developed by Russian speaking migrants. At length, they converted the largely empty, herder-dominated steppes into the flourishing bread basket, mining district and industrial work shop of old Russia.
This arrangement was essentially continued by the communist commissars after they consolidated control in 1922, save only for an arbitrary administrative re-arrangement which put the old “Novorossiya” (New Russia) of Catherine the Great’s time into a wholly unnatural state rechristened as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine.
These artificial borders and the ethnic hodge-podge within them were held together at the gun point of Ukraine’s local communist rulers until 1991, when the scourge of Soviet Communism perished from the earth. And almost immediately thereafter, the elections showed that the state confected by Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev had never been built to last; and that the verdict of Ukraine’s nascent democracy was that partition would someday be the only answer.
As it happened, Viktor Yanukovych was the last democratically elected politician before Washington essentially took-over the country. Of course, by the writ of the Ukraine’s de facto rulers on the Potomac he was illegally deposed and driven out of the country via the coup d’ etat in February 2014.
Needless to say, Yanukovych had been the champion of the Russian speaking populations of the Donbas and southern rim of the Black Sea. He ran on what was called the “Regions” party platform in both 2004 and 2010, against vehemently pro-Ukrainian candidates, whose bases of support were in the central and west geographies.
As shown in the two maps below, both elections were a case of red state versus blue state electoral division on steroids. Except unlike the US where a GOP gubernatorial candidate actually got a 47% showing in the deep blue state of New York this past election, the vote split in the most hard core of the respective regions (dark red and dark blue) was upwards of 90/10 in many localities.
In the 2004 election, Yanukovych narrowly lost the overall count, even as he dominated overwhelmingly in the east and south. 2004 Election Results in Ukraine  2004 Election Results in Ukraine
By contrast, in 2010 Yanukovych retraced the same massive domination of his own Russian-speaking regions while striking out in the west. But this time with the help of Washington-based election consultants (i.e. the infamous Paul Manafort) he managed to accumulate enough incremental votes to come out on top in the nation-wide tally. 2010 Election Results in Ukraine  2010 Election Results in Ukraine
Needless to say, when the foolish neocons led by the detestable Victoria Nuland, who surrounded then Vice-President Joe Biden, fomented the coup against Yanukovych in February 2014 they had no clue as to the tenuous political balance they were upending. But it didn’t take long to strike the match. In short order the followers of the WWII Hitler ally, Stephan Bandera, who dominated the unelected, Washington-installed government in Kiev, made two destructive moves that amounted to a signal to “let the partition begin”.
The first of these was to abolish Russian as an official language in the Donbass and elsewhere. And the second was the massacre by fire of pro-Russian trade unionists in a building in Odessa by supporters of the Kiev government.
It was only a matter of time, therefore, before most of the red-colored territories on the maps above declared their independence. It was also in short order that the people of what had been the Russian province of Crimea after Catherine the Great purchased it from the Ottoman’s in 1783 voted overwhelmingly to re-join the Russian Federation. That ended their brief sojourn in the Ukrainian state, which had been Khrushchev’s 1954 gift to the communist thugs in Kiev who had helped him seize power after Stalin’s death.
Also, in short order the new proto-Fascist government in Kiev moved to deeply antagonize its historic neighbor and former fealty overlord in Moscow by seeking to join NATO and launching a brutal, unrelenting war on the breakaway Republics of the Donbas. This onslaught ended up killing upwards of 15,000 civilians during the eight year run-up to Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
Needless to say, Putin was no more interested in having nuclear missiles planted even closer to his own border than was President John Kennedy in October 1962. Nor was he about to countenance the continued slaughter of Russian speakers in the Donbass after Kiev launched a drastically stepped up shelling and bombing campaign on these beleaguered areas one week before the February 24th invasion.
Below, we will amplify further on the overwhelming reasons why the Ukraine situation is a one-off civil war situation and the unfinished and unstable residue of a state which was never built to last.
Accordingly, it is not a case at all of legitimate sovereign borders being violated. Nor does it involve an assault on the hypocritical notion of a “liberal international order” that has not actually ever existed and which, instead, has been a cover for Washington’s global hegemony all along.
But the lessons are nonetheless profound. History accumulates and eventually leads to destructive, but wholly unnecessary outcomes.
That is the case today with the utterly foolish action of Washington during the 1990s and 2000s to bring former Warsaw Pact Nations, and even breakaway Soviet Republics into a NATO alliance whose mission was over and done in 1991.
It should have been dismantled then and there. When the old Soviet monster with its 50,000 tanks and 7,000 nuclear warheads posed along-side the Bucharest Nine pictured above disappeared into the dustbin of history, there was no longer a threat to the east. There was no “front line” to defend.
At that point Washington should have and easily could have led the world to disarmament and to a revival of the lasting peace that had disappeared in the “Guns of August” in 1914.
But now the NATO section 5 mutual defense commitment to these nations is equivalent to a stupid charity that the nearly bankrupt Federal government cannot afford in any case.
There is absolutely nothing in it for the enhancement of America’s homeland security, and huge incentives for the politicians of these nations to caterwaul against Russia rather than seek peaceful accommodation.
But Sleepy Joe is a captive of the Dems “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and cannot think rationally for a moment about the Russian President.
Still, the latter most definitely did not cause the Dems to loose the 2016 election. They brought Trump’s freakish victory upon themselves by their choice of candidate and embrace of policies that much of Flyover America found deeply repugnant.
When Washington began its foolish campaign to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep in 1997, there was one American who actually possessed more knowledge, experience and analytical savvy about Russia and eastern Europe than the entire treaty-ratifying US Senate combined.
We are referring, of course, to Ambassador George F. Kennan. The latter was the intellectual father of the post-war containment policy against the Soviet Union and had spent decades in the US embassies of Europe and the Soviet Union, before going on to hold high rank in the State Department during the crucial years after WWII when the Cold War was born. Thereafter he joined academia at Princeton, where he produced a prodigious flow of scholarly work on national security policy, including a ringing dissent on the folly of LBJ’s war on Vietnam.
So by the time he penned a New York Times op ed upon the initial expansion of NATO in 1997, which he succinctly entitled “A Fateful Error”, the 93-year old Kennan had decades and decades of wisdom under his belt as a policy-maker and historian. And almost all of it was directly pertinent to the disorder left behind in the wake of the sudden collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991.
Kennan pulled no punches on the matter of NATO expansion:
A fair share of the script readers and stenographers who comprise today’s mainstream media, of course, have a faint knowledge of George Kennan and his unequivocal stance against NATO expansion, if any at all. Their blinders are simply the product of a quarter-century of accumulated recency bias—a process by which the once unthinkable becomes the unchallenged status quo.
The fact is, once the Soviet Union with its 50,000 tanks, 40,000 nuclear warheads, 5 million men under arms and frightfully militarized economy disappeared into the dustbin of history there was no purpose whatsoever for the perpetuation of NATO.
In that sense, Kennan’s “containment” policy had achieved 100% of its goal. The fearsome enemy on the eastern flank of Europe had literally vanished, meaning that what had been a one-time expedient of the Cold War could and should have been disbanded. In the rubble of the dismembered Soviet Union there was no threat left and nothing to defend or contain.
NATO’s warranted interment didn’t happen, however, and for the immensely trivial reason that the utterly unprincipled Bill Clinton determined to make hay one more time in the political posturing grounds of the “Captive Nations”. And with respect to this long forgotten matter your editor happened to have held a front row seat.
When we went to work on Capitol Hill for a GOP congressman at the peak of the Cold War in 1970 our first assignment was drafting a resolution during Captive Nations Week calling for the liberation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania etc from yoke of Soviet tyranny. Such resolutions had nothing to do with actual policy, of course, which was to leave the Great Russian Bear undisturbed in his lair called the Warsaw Pact. But as a home-front politicking matter such resolutions were catnip to the eastern European constituencies.
After eastern Europe was peacefully liberated in 1991, however, this Captive Nations gambit became self-evidently obsolete, but the Clinton Administration soon had a handy PR substitute. Namely, NATO membership for the woebegone remnants of the Warsaw Pact—a seemingly harmless gesture that had no real purpose other than to express solidarity with back home constituencies of eastern European descent.
NATO expansion, in effect, was a way for Washington politicians to say: We are still with you! Indeed, since there was no plausible reason for maintaining a war alliance against an enemy that didn’t exist, NATO became the equivalent of a diplomatic American Legion hall. It was a place for bureaucratic veterans of the Cold War to swap combat stories and to pretend they still had something worthwhile to do.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that harmless. The military-industrial complex soon realized that it needed a tangible enemy to justify current procurement and new weapons systems and also that the former Captive Nations comprised an expanded market for its wares.
So the 14 new NATO nations formed a ready-made shopping mall for additional weapons sales.  new NATO nations by Date
That all might have been harmless enough, save for two untoward developments. The first was the designation of Russia and Putin as enemy #1 by the neocons after their adventures against “terrorism” in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the middle east came a cropper a few years after the memory of 9/11 had dimmed.
The demonization of Putin became especially urgent in late 2013 when he deftly put the kibosh on the neocon’s plan for regime change in Syria. By convincing Assad to give up his chemical weapons under international supervision, the case for military removal of the Syrian president quickly evaporated.
In short order, however, these same neocons got their revenge by fomenting a coup d’ etat on Putin’s doorstep in Ukraine. And it was led by Washington’s hand-picked proto-fascists who detested all things Russian, including the considerable populations and regions of Ukraine which were Russian-speaking.
As it happened, you don’t need a tinfoil hat to recognize the near-conspiracy on the banks of the Potomac that sent the fragile politics of the artificial state of Ukraine into a tail-spin, and which at length paved the way to the catastrophe underway there at present.
The fact is, the detestable Kagan family comprises the high preisthood of the neocon synod that has infiltrated the foreign policy establishment of both parties. And it just so happens that the very high priest of that lamentable synod, Robert Kagan, is married to Victoria Nuland, a war-mongering national security apparatchik who has served every administration since Bush the Younger, and who was the archetict of the Maidan coup on the streets of Kiev in February 2014.
From that moment on, Putin was transformed from a mere bad guy into the incarnation of evil itself in the neocon narrative. And his rational actions after the coup to reclaim Moscow’s centuries old naval bases in Russian Crimea and to offer succor to the imperiled Russian-speaking populations of the Donbas only added fuel to the fire.
But then came the deluge. In a word, the freakish election of Donald Trump in 2016 was falsely laid at Putin’s doorstep, even as Washington’s bipartisan ruling elites and their henchman in the mainstream media went berserk against the Donald.
At length, it turned into a a full-fledged mania—a Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) that pales into insignificance prior outbreaks of American political irrationality, such as the McCarthyism of the 1950s and the Red Hunts of 1919.
In a word, the TDS has utterly destroyed Washington’s foreign policy compass. The demonization of Putin has become so extreme and un-moored from reality that Washington is literally possessed by a ghost of the old Soviet Union. That is, it imagines a ferocious and powerful enemy on the “eastern front” that simply does not exist.
For crying out loud, GDP is a measure of latent capacity to make war, but the GDP of NATO is 26 times larger than that of Russia. Likewise, defense budgets are a measure of actual current military capacity, of which NATO’s war spending is 15 times larger. And that’s in the here and now.
Moreover, from the point of view of Vlad Putin leaping over the Atlantic and Pacific ocean moats to invade the American shores, the question recurs: How many aircraft carriers does he have compared to America’s 20 aircraft and heliocraft carriers? One! And it’s 38 years old! In a word, the absurdity of Washington’s proxy war against Russia and this week’s meeting of the so-called Bucharest Nine is the product of a foreign policy compass that has been shattered by two decades worth of myths and lies that served the short-term interests of Washington’s career politicians and their Deep State masters.
But go back to the fact that George Kennan was right 26 years ago and the truth that nothing has changed in the interim to alter his judgement.
In that context, what would a president not entombed in the false narrative of the past quarter century actually do? Here are a few possible starters:
That would be a start. It would put America back on the road toward rational homeland security, and enable a global future not imperiled by the threat of Nuclear Armageddon. * * * Originally posted at David Stockman’s Contra Corner. |
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Possible Outcomes Of The War In Ukraineby Tyler Durden, 03June2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/possible-outcomes-war-ukraine Both sides have been fighting in Ukraine using World War I tactics, and developments in the war have so far recapitulated World War I. Towards the end of World War I, the Germans, finally realizing they were going to lose the war of attrition, because of the immense industrial capability of America, attempted to regain war of movement, with underwhelming success, and eventually could no longer attempt to do so. They gained considerable territory, which gains merely put them in a worse position to fight the war of attrition. Like Ukraine, tactical victories but strategic defeats, as with the costly attempt to relieve Bakhmut, which has resulted in them advancing on the flanks of Bakhmut to a position far worse for them in attritive warfare.
Ukraine has been throwing reserves at various points on the front, with underwhelming success similar to that of the Germans in World War I, which similarly has resulted in gains that put them in a worse position for fighting a war of attrition.
They are now moving troops around from one active front to another, which you only do when desperately short of reserves. I previously posted that the Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive had started some time ago, and had not been announced for lack of impressive results. That they are redeploying troops involved in active fighting suggests that the Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive is now most likely over for lack of reserves, though fog of war makes it hard to speak confidently.
In World War I, the incapacity to mount further attempts at war of movement was followed by 100 days of increasingly rapid and costly German defeats and retreats in attritive warfare, and it became apparent that if the Germans did not make peace on any terms they could get, then eventually there would be attritive warfare all the way to Berlin, most German men would die, and Berlin would be flattened. So they cut a deal where they handed over their heavy weapons, but the army and the nation remained an army and a nation. Without that deal, the war would likely have gone on for years, with enormous costs for everyone, but by far the greatest costs for Germans.
And a sane and capable Global American Empire would accept, in a hundred days or so, the deal that Putin has been offering – assuming it will still be on offer after major retreats and losses in attritive warfare.
But a sane and capable Global American Empire would probably have been capable of winning.
So a possible and likely outcome is that the war goes on till Kiev starts being flattened and most Ukrainian men are dead. Which may well take quite a while. At which point there is a significant likelihood that Nato will be thrown in to relieve Kiev.
In a full war between Russia and Nato, neither side has any incentive to refrain escalating all the way to nukes.  full nuclear war between Russia and NATO
If Nato intervenes the rationale will be that quick decisive victory is attainable, which is unlikely to be the case. So, nukes.
Do anyone’s nukes still work?
My guess is that Global American Empire nukes stopped working a long time ago, but some Russian nukes still work.
Nukes were and are made out of components that deteriorate over time, and have to regularly refurbished, reconditioned and sometimes rebuilt. And if you are not testing, your maintenance process is likely to go off the rails when the men that built those bombs retire. The test ban treaty was a stealth slow motion nuclear disarmament treaty.
If someone’s nukes still work, this is likely to bring the war to a quick and decisive end, with relatively small destruction and casualties. I estimate that only about twenty percent of Americans would die in the course of losing a nuclear war, deaths insignificant compared to abortion and all that, and destruction insignificant compared to the Rust Belt and all the Detroits. No big deal in the broad historical sweep that this blog looks at.
If, on the other hand, technological decay means we fight World War I all over again, but this time political decay means that it is fought all the way to the end, the death and destruction could be considerably greater. But perhaps, in a hundred days or so, while the Global American Empire still holds most of the Ukraine, as the Germans still held most of Europe, the Global American Empire will figure out that it is 1918-11-11 all over again.
We shall see. |
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The Baal Shem Tov’s Mysterious Journey to LeipzigBy Tuvia Bolton https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/421880/jewish/The-Mysterious-Journey-to-Leipzig.htm Late one Wednesday night, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (“the Besht“) informed one of his younger disciples that the next morning they would be traveling to the city of Leipzig, where they would be spending the Shabbat.
The disciple was overjoyed. He was flattered to have been chosen by his master and was sure that he would learn many important things on the journey. In addition, this would be an opportunity to visit his parents, who lived in Leipzig.
They set off early Thursday morning. It was a ten-hour journey, so they had plenty of time to arrive before evening. But as they boarded the wagon the Besht turned to the young man and mysteriously said: “Don’t count on seeing your parents, we won’t have time.”
The Besht turned to his wagon driver, Alexi, and told him that after they left the city he could let the reins drop and go to sleep.
The entire duration of the trip the Baal Shem did not stop whispering words of Torah to himself. The wagon moved swiftly and it seemed they were making good time; strangely, however, after some fifteen hours of travel, as night was falling, they still had not reached their destination.
They hitched the wagon to a tree by the side of the empty road. Our young disciple fell asleep almost immediately. When he awoke next morning, the wagon was already moving, but he was certain that the Besht had not slept all night.
After several hours it seemed clear that they were going nowhere and that they probably would have to spend Shabbat in the wagon as well. Suddenly a house appeared in the distance. As they got closer, the young man was overjoyed to see a mezuzah on the door. At least they would have a place to stay.
The wagon stopped before the house. An old woman, beaming with joy, appeared, called to her husband, and greeted the Besht with blessings.
From behind her emerged her husband, an old man with a radiant face who ran toward the Besht and warmly embraced him before escorting him into the house.
“Just wait in the wagon, I’ll return shortly”, the Besht said to his pupil just before he closed the door behind him.
Fifteen minutes later he returned and they were on their way.
“I thought we would stay here for Shabbat,” said the worried young man. But the Besht just told the driver to let the reins drop as soon as the hut was out of sight. A short while later the horses strayed off the road, crossed a field, then entered a forest and stopped. The Besht got out, took a silver cup from his bag, motioned to his bewildered pupil to follow, and after several minutes suddenly stopped and said: “Listen! Water!”
Sure enough, from within a thicket they heard a bubbling brook. They cleared away the vegetation. The Besht dipped his cup into the water, stood to his full height and recited the blessing over water: Blessed are You L-rd our G‑d, King of the Universe, by whose word everything came to being. But what a blessing! It seemed as though the entire forest reverberated with each word the tzaddik uttered. The chassid had never really heard or seen anything like it in his life.
The Besht finished drinking, recited the “after-blessing” with the same deliberate intensity, and then motioned for his pupil to return to the wagon.
It was beginning to hint of sunset. A cool wind blew across the grasses and the young chassid wondered where and how they would spend Shabbat.
He was lost in his thoughts when suddenly he heard the Besht say to the wagon driver “Here, turn down this street!”
He looked up to see that… they were in Leipzig! In fact if they just continued straight they would be in the Jewish section. They could stay with his parents! What a miracle!
But the Besht had other ideas. “Here, Alexi, turn right!”
“No, NO! Not here!” The pupil cried. The street to which his master had directed the wagon driver was the infamous Shillergass, a street lined with taverns adjoining the university. No Jew dared show his face on that street. “If we turn here it will be the end of us!”
But the Besht paid no attention. They turned and after a few moments he told the driver to stop. “Here is where we are staying. But hurry! It’s almost Shabbat.”
They took their bags and got out in front of a door that had a big sign hanging over it saying “Tailor”. The Besht knocked loudly at the door. A small peep hole opened. They heard numerous locks swiftly unlocking and in no time the door opened revealing an elderly Jew dressed for Shabbat with several young men standing in the brightly lit room behind him.
“Come in!” He whispered fearfully. “Who are you? Are you mad? Come in quickly!”
They entered, the old man closed the door and said as he was turning the locks, “You are furtunate that no one was in the street. These people are animals — real animals. They study in their universities but they are nothing but bloodthirsty animals. The sight of a Jew — especially when there is beer or vodka in their blood — turns them into instant killers. They tolerate me here because they need a tailor — otherwise they would kill me in a minute. Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The Besht promised he would explain but because it was very late he wanted to begin to lead the afternoon prayers. The tailor had seven sons and together with the Besht and his pupil they made a minyan (quorum of ten). The Besht began to pray aloud at the top of his voice.
The old tailor was astounded. At first he was filled with fear but then he suddenly felt as though his heart was exploding with love for G‑d. He had never heard such prayer before.
But when the prayers finished the sound of bottles crashing against his door from outside abruptly brought him back to reality. The Besht simply walked to the door opened it and stepped outside to the drunken crowd.
“Kill him! Kill the Jew!” Someone yelled and threw a rock but it missed.
One student ran toward the Besht with an iron bar screaming “You dirty..” Suddenly he froze, his hand paralyzed in midair, screaming with pain. Another student drew a large knife, with the same alarming results. The two of them just stood there screaming and weeping until the crowd dropped their rocks and bottles and began begging the Besht to take away the spell.
The Besht said something, and the paralyzed students fell unconscious to the ground. Their friends carried them away. The mob scattered in fear, leaving only their rocks and bottles strewn in the street.
The Besht returned inside leaving the door wide open behind him and, after washing his hands, began the evening prayer greeting the Holy Shabbat.
Again the room was magically transformed, and all felt as if they were in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in the days of King Solomon. A few minutes later, a tall thin man, wrapped in a black cloak, suddenly appeared at the open door. He looked silently around the room, walked to a corner and just stood there, staring at the Besht and his praying.
After the prayers, they sat down to eat the Shabbat meal amidst song and wondrous words of Torah. All this time the tall stranger stood and stared, and the Besht paid him no attention at all.
Only when they finished the meal did the man approach the tailor, asked him when they would be praying in the morning, and left as soon as he got the answer.
“That man,” said the tailor to the Besht’s pupil, “is none other than Professor Shlanger — one of the most anti-Semitic intellectuals in the country. I have no idea what brought him here…”
The next morning, the professor returned. Again he stood silently staring at the Besht’s praying and speaking. He left after the meal, and did not return again.
After Shabbat, the Besht and his pupil bade their host farewell, boarded their wagon and in less than five hours were back home.
“You see, I told you that you wouldn’t have time to visit your parents.” The Besht said with a smile. The young man, however, was burning with curiosity.
“Who was the old man whose house we stopped at on the way? Why did you wander into the forest to drink a cup of water, and what did we accomplish by spending Shabbat at the tailor’s house?” he asked.
The Besht hesitated for a few seconds and then said:
“The man I spoke to is one of the thirty-six hidden righteous individuals in whose merit the world exists. He will be the first to know when Moshiach is supposed to arrive, and that is what we spoke about.
“The reason we stopped in the forest was because I saw that, since the beginning of creation no one had ever made a blessing on the water in that stream. In another few moments it would have been too late — the spring would have died without fulfilling its purpose in the world.
“And what we accomplished in the tailor’s house you will know one day.”
Twenty years later, long after the Besht had left this world, the disciple happened to be in the city of Minsk when a distinguished looking Jew stopped him in the street and asked him if he had been a pupil of the Baal Shem Tov and if he had ever spent a Shabbat in Leipzig with his master. When the chassid answered in the affirmative, the stranger embraced him and kissed him. “I was the professor who visited you that Shabbat. I was at a turning point in my life at the time, full of unanswerable questions as to my purpose in life. When I heard of how your teacher paralyzed those students I knew I had to see him for myself.
“The sight of his praying and teaching had such a profound effect on me that a few months later I disappeared from the University, moved to another country, and converted to Judaism. I don’t know how your master could possibly have known that in a Jew-hater like me dwelled a Jewish soul crying out to be redeemed.” |
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 Nefesh B’Nefesh: Live the Dream US & CAN 1-866-4-ALIYAH | UK 020-8150-6690 or 0800-085-2105 | Israel 02-659-5800 https://www.nbn.org.il/ info@nbn.org.il It’s time to come home! Nefesh B’Nefesh: Live the Dream 1-866-4-ALIYAH |
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Why This Russian-Ukrainian War Should Never Have Happened, Plus More Reasons Not to Support the Sleazy Ukrainian Leader9March2023 http://www.myrtlerising.com/blog/why-this-russian-ukrainian-war-should-never-have-happened-plus-more-reasons-not-to-support-the-sleazy-ukrainian-leader I would really like to stop writing about the sleazy Ukrainian elected as leader of the Ukraine, but because the media — and most disturbingly the Jewish media, including some Orthodox outlets — exalted him, then we must emphasize the FACTS. In addition to doubts about his actual Jewish status (who is his mother?), his behavior and objects of admiration condemn him. (BTW, even if proof comes out of a Jewish maternal line, then that would make him Erev Rav, and not of a Yisrael soul.) First of all, while I don’t have access to video to confirm this, you can apparently find English-subtitled clips of his stand-up routines in which he “jokes” about robbing Russians and Jews. Are you laughing? I’m not. We see how much he hates Russians. Apparently, he lumps Jews in the same category…but he simply hasn’t acted on it yet. Or maybe he has. After all, photos and other evidence appear to show him previously aligned with the Ukrainian Nazis organization. Again, I’m not personally able to confirm this. But I put it out there as evidence why we should NOT support him or even think of him as more than something gross stuck to the bottom of a dirty sneaker. Show Me Who Your Heroes are and I’ll Show You Who You areUkrainians built a monument to their national hero, Stefan Bandera. Bandera inspired the Ukrainians to massacre Jews during the Holocaust. The Great Ukrainian Sleazebag Leader also considers Bandera a national hero. Furthermore, the Great Ukrainian Sleazebag Leader recently lauded fellow Ukrainian sleazebag, Dimitro Kotsyubaylo, as a hero. Disturbingly, Kotsyubaylo jokes about feeding the bones of Russian children to his pet wolf. Please note: He doesn’t even make the gruesome joke about Russians, but davka about the children. Sick. (FYI: My heroes are Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld and Recha Sternbuch.) The 13-Point Minsk Agreement, What’s In It, and Why the Ukraine Would’ve Been Better Off Submitting to the AgreementTo avoid war with Russia, all V.Z. had to do was adhere to the 13-Point Minsk Agreement, which says:
(Source: https://byjus.com/free-ias-prep/minsk-agreement/) As you can see, the agreement is perfectly reasonable — especially for a pathetic, incompetent country like the Ukraine. As evidenced in previous posts, the Ukraine as a newly independent nation was an impoverished, profoundly corrupt, conflicted, bigoted, alcoholic mess. (Yes, there are good people & successful people there too. But as a society, the numbers show the country as a failure in almost every way.) The millions of displaced Ukrainians who lost their homes, communities, and livelihoods & now live as undesirable and resented refugees in other countries are NOT better off than they would have been under the Minsk Agreement. Certainly, the Ukrainians killed or maimed by the war are NOT better off than alive and whole under the Minsk Agreement. Furthermore, if the nuclear-armed Russian bear decides to put a quick end to the fighting and turn the Ukraine into glass, that is NOT better than agreeing to the Minsk Agreement. Note: Reports coming out of the Ukraine claim the Ukrainians murder captured Russian soldiers with gory viciousness. No one who knows the history of the Ukraine should be surprised; many Ukrainians throughout history have displayed a particularly bloodthirsty barbarian side. (Ironic how so many of them are ending up in Germany & Poland…) Rather than continuing to send in Russian soldiers to die and to die in such torturous ways, the Russians might just nuke the Ukraine. How Do I Despise Thee? Let Me Count the Ways…My loathing of V.Z. stems from his eagerness to involve Israel in his war against Russia, thereby making Israel a target of the heavily armed and vast Russian bear (who is already on our border in Syria, by the way). Just that alone makes him mud in my book. Everything else just provides more evidence of his despicable character. Predictably, Ukrainian refugees — mostly non-Jewish — started flooding into Israel. We already have a problem with the negative impact of the vast non-Jewish Soviet immigration to Israel. Intermarriage, unemployment, anti-Torah positions, alcoholism, pritzus, crime, antisemitic incidents, and support of the same socialist policies that oppress Eastern European countries — all this shot up with the predominantly non-Jewish immigration from Soviet countries. Furthermore, Eastern Europeans who immigrate to America tend to want to blend into American society. But in Israel, these same non-Jewish Eastern Europeans tend to want to maintain their culture & make Israeli society more like them. And I’m genuinely flabbergasted why the Orthodox Jewish media did not immediately cotton on to the real V.Z. and davka did the opposite — they started lauding him. To me, with my limited access to news & research, the truth about this sleazebag was obvious from the beginning. With all their access to research, why didn’t they see it immediately? How disgusting that Israel sent its representative to speak directly with the Great Ukrainian Sleazebag and promise him Israel’s support. Not my support! Why should anyone support him when he is an immoral, greedy, sleazy, psychopathic war-mongering Jew-hater? |
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The Comic and the Cossack14March2022 by Lazer Brody  Ukraine’s Jewish president Volodymyr Zelensky and Statue of Ivan Gonta, Cossack murderer of Uman’s 33,000 Jews in 1768 For many people, the imminent coming of Moshiach seems utterly irrational. The reason is that they view the world through eyes of logic and reason. It doesn’t work that way… Blueprint of EventsIn the beginning of the Zohar, Rebbe Shimon bar Yochai teaches that the Almighty “looked in the Torah and created the world.” In other words, the Almighty wrote the Torah long before the creation of the universe. Subsequently, the Torah was the Almighty’s blueprint for creating the universe. As such, the events described in the Torah become the template for all future events. What’s more, in our first principle of emuna, we learn that the Almighty is not only the Creator, but the ongoing Director of all creation as well. As He in His Divine wisdom defies logic, so do current events defy logic. Take for example, the juxtaposition of a comic and a Cossack, both in Kiev. The Megillas Esther Template, ThenThe final book of the written Torah is the Scroll of Esther, Megillas Esther. The theme of the “Megillas Esther template” is nahafoch hu – “just the opposite.” Here’s a taste:
Achashverosh was a crude, mafia-type gangster who muscled his way to the thrown of Persia. He was the biggest Jew-hater of his day, even worse than Haman. He married Vashti. She was the granddaughter of Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed the First Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Logical match, right? Hold on…
Achashverosh appointed the radical anti-Semite Haman as his closest advisor and right-hand man. Haman was the great grandson of arch Jew-hater Amalek (grandson of Esau). Logical match, right? Hold on…
When Vashti refuses the wishes of her husband, Haman advises Achashverosh to kill her. Not so logical…
Achashverosh, who can choose any of the young beauties from the 127 countries that he rules, chooses Esther as his new queen. Esther is a highly religious Jewish girl, an orphan, and first cousin of the generation’s greatest tzaddik, Mordechai, who raised and adopted her.
A decree is signed to annihilate all the Jewish People around the world, Heaven forbid. Ultimately, the Jews thrive and terminate the Jew-haters around the world.
Haman builds a gallows to hang Mordechai. Achashverosh commands the Haman hang on those very same gallows.
Mordechai the pious Jew becomes the right-hand man of Achashverosh.
Achashverosh and Esther have a son, Darius, who sanctioned the rebuilding of the Second Holy Temple and the return of the exiles to Zion. The Megilla-Moshiach Template, NowUkraine for centuries has been the worst hotbed of anti-Semitism. The notorious Bohdan Khmelnitsky, is a major hero in the Ukraine, to this day. A city is named after him. All over Ukraine, streets are named after him. His statue overlooks a square in downtown Kiev (image above, to the right of President Zelensky). That statue is known as “The Statue of Eternal Glory”. Ukrainians don’t seem to be upset that Khmelnitsky was the Cossack leader who invented the pogroms. He destroyed 300 Jewish communities in the Ukraine. He killed half of the Ukraine’s Jews in 1648-1649, which amounted to a third of European Jewry at the time, over 100,000 Jews. Indeed, he is the symbol of Ukrainian national pride.  Statue of Ivan Gonta, Cossack murderer of Uman’s 33,000 Jews in 1768 Statue of Ivan Gonta, Cossack murderer of Uman’s 33,000 Jews in 1768 The Cossack leader Ivan Gonta is also a Ukrainian national hero. He commanded the total annihilation of Uman’s 33,000 Jewish men, women and children in 1768. His statue stands proudly in downtown Uman.
The same Ukraine that reveres its Cossack roots in general, and Khmelnitsky and Gonta in particular, elected a Jewish president in 2019. Today, they revere a Jew.
Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky is a former comedian and gentle individual who never served a day in the military. He, not a Cossack, is the hero who leads the Ukrainian people in their toughest hour. Nahafoch Hu: Just the Opposite… More Surprises on the WayNo one knows what the future holds. We do know that the process of Redemption and Moshiach has started. The birth-pains of the Messianic arrival are just like a physical birth – there is no reverse and they’ll just get stronger until the happy day comes.
As each day goes by, the ingathering of the exiles from both Russia and the Ukraine increases. Other countries will soon follow suit.
If a Jew can lead the Ukraine and become its new national hero, then believe that Moshiach will be here soon. |
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The Uman MassacreWhat really happened in Uman? Why did Rebbe Nachman want to be buried there? Tal Rotem gives an historical overview of a monumental “Kiddush Hashem”. Uman and Emuna go together…Tal Rotem Posted on 31.05.08 https://breslev.com/307327/ The Massacre of Uman took place in the year 1768, a mere four years before the birth of Rebbe Nachman of Breslev. 33,000 Jews from Uman and the surrounding villages who took refuge from the murderous Jew-hating Ivan Gonta, the Ukrainian rebel that led the revolution against Poland, who then governed the Ukraine and was relatively decent to the Jews. Uman and the HaidameksUman was a well-fortified city where a major part of Polish troops in the Ukraine were stationed. This fact made Uman one of the primary objectives of the Kolivivschyna movement, known popularly as the “Haidameks”, the organization of bitterly anti-Semitic Ukrainian Cossacks and their peasant supporters who revolted against Poland. Commanded by cut-throat Ivan Gonta who prided himself that he drank a fresh glass of his enemies’ blood every morning, the Cossacks began their siege on Uman.
In early June of 1768, on the way to Uman, the Ukrainian rebels by Gonta and Maxim Zalizniak razed a number of Jewish cities in one of history’s most cruel pogroms. As Zalizniak openly encouraged the slaughter of Jews, Uman filled with refugees from all over the Podolia region of the Central Ukraine in the Jewish Pale of Settlement.
A large camp filled with Polish nobility and their private militia, regular soldiers and Jewish refugees was stationed outside the city walls. The Cossacks routed the Polish encampment on June 14th and tried to take the city by surprise but to no avail. After this first unsuccessful attempt, the siege on Uman began on June 17th. The very first day large number of Ukrainians deserted the ranks of Polish forces and joined the rebel Cossacks when the city was surrounded.
After three days of the siege the city fell to Zalizniak in spite of a courageous defense in which the Jews also played an active role. The tragic point occurred during the peace negotiation on the third day of the siege that concluded in a combat and subsequent takeover of the city. It is unclear whether the resulting fight was initiated by Ukrainian or Polish side as the accounts of the event differ. What we do know is that the Jewish fighters led by Leib Shargorodski and Moses Menaker in an attempt to defend themselves, and barricaded themselves in one of Uman’s synagogues, but they were destroyed by cannon fire. All but a handful of Uman’s 33,000 Jews were subsequently killed by Gonta and his henchmen. Martyrs in “Kiddush Hashem”Gonta set up a tremendous cross in a lot in front of a church. He then set up a low canopy in front of the cross. After his men rouned up all the Jews that weren’t slaughtered in the fierce hand-to-hand and house-to-house fighting, he told them that anyone who passed through the canopy would be spared. But, in order to do so, one would have to prostrate oneself before the cross. Not a single Jewish man, woman, or child agreed to do so, despite the fact that parents were slaughtered in front of their children and children were brutally maimed in front of their parents. This became the greatest sanctification of Hashem’s name in history. Gonta’s ExecutionFearing that the rebellion would spread into her domain, Catherine the Great, then Empress of Russia, dispatched a regiment of her best soldiers to help Poland suppress the rebellion. The commander of the Russian unit, Guriev, made the Haidameks believe he was siding with them against Poland and managed to capture approximately 900 of them without firing a single shot. He siezed Ivan Gonta and handed him over to the irate Poles and was tried for high treason. Sentenced to a bitter and agonizing death by grand, Gonta’s nailed to gallows and exhibited in 14 towns of Podolia. The Ukranian View of GontaAlthough an arch-criminal and murderer, Gonta is a Ukrainian folk hero, immortalized in songs, legends, and poetry, such as Shevchenko’s controversial epic poem “Haidamaki”.
As a whole, the Cossacks and the haidameks are respected and worshipped in Ukraine, considered defenders of their motherland who fought against invaders. Ukrainians believe that the rowdy, brutal, and bloodthirsty insurgents defended social freedoms, the Ukrainian Orthodox faith and Ukraine’s independence. They view the Haidameks as paragons of courage, patriotism and dignity. Ukrainian many parents used to bring up their children. One Ukrainian history book. To this day, Ukrainians believe that the Haidameks fought against “Polish occupiers and Jewish landlords,” as one high school teacher in Uman told me, but this is of course a falsity since Jews were not allowed to own land in the Ukraine. Why Uman?Why did Rebbe Nachman choose Uman as his place of eternal rest?
Once, on the way from eastern Ukraine to his new home in Brelev, he passed by the mass grave of Uman’s Jews. He stopped the wagon driver, pondered, took a deep breath and said, “Here is the scent of Heaven. This is a good place to lay in rest.” He chose Uman because of its many holy martyrs who gave their lives for their “emuna”, their pure and complete faith in Hashem. Uman is therefore an eternal monument of emuna, may the holy martyrs lay in eternal peace, amen. (Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Gonta) |
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Ivan GontaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Gonta
Ivan Gonta (Ukrainian: Іван Ґонта; died 1768) was one of the leaders of the Koliivshchyna, an armed rebellion of peasants and Ukrainian Cossacks against Bar confederation in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Born in Rożyszki (modern Rozsishky) near Uman’ in Bracław Voivodship, Gonta served as a sotnik (captain) of Cossack household militia of Franciszek Salezy Potocki, the Voivode of Kiev, and commanded a small unit in the garrison of Uman since 1757. During the Koliivshchyna he was ordered to fight the approaching haidamaka forces of Maksym Zalizniak. Instead, he and his militia joined the rebels, and the joint forces captured and ravaged the town of Uman on June 21, 1768. In what became known as the Massacre of Uman, thousands of local Polish szlachta, Jews, Uniates and other people were slaughtered. After that, Gonta was proclaimed colonel and commanded the garrison of Uman.
When Gonta sent a detachment to spread rebellion into the Ottoman Empire, Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, dispatched a regiment of Don Cossacks fighting against Bar confederation to help Poland suppress the rebellion to prevent Ottomans from waging a war against Russia. The commander of the Russian unit, Guriev, made the rebels believe he was siding with them for the joint trip against Bar confederation and managed to capture approximately 900 of them without a single shot. After that, Ivan Gonta was handed over to the Poles and was tried for high treason. Sentenced to death by grand Crown Hetman Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, he was then executed in the village of Serby (modern Gontivka) in the Podolian Voivodship. As an added measure, his body was partitioned and nailed to gallows in 14 towns of Podolia.
Although largely non-notable during his life, after his death he became a hero of countless folk songs and legends that portrayed him as a hero and a martyr. He was immortalized in Taras Shevchenko‘s controversial epic poem Haidamaky though Gonta had never killed his Roman Catholic sons, because his wife and children were of Orthodox faith and in fact he had never initiated the massacre of Uman himself. |
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The real warOne of the commentators wanted to know if Rav Berland had said anything about ‘war with China’.I try and read the Hebrew digest of his weekly shiurim called Shivivei Or on Shabbat every week. The last two weeks, I haven’t managed to read the whole thing, but to my knowledge, he hasn’t been speaking about war with China.
If I come across anything relevant in the meantime, I’ll try to translate it, and to post it up.
But I think there is a much deeper phenomenon going on with all these ‘wars’ being threatened and arranged right now, which I wanted to try to set out here. Why? Because then you’ll start to feel way better, and way calmer, about what’s really going on, and what we can all really do to improve things.==== From the time I’ve been following the Rav, there have been so very many threats of ‘war’ in the background.Iran’s nuke, rockets from Gaza, stabbing intifadas, war with Syria, the list goes on and on and on. And that’s just in Israel.
And the Rav has spoken out many times in the past, about an incipient, threatened ‘war’ that needs to be sweetened with tehillim, prayer rallies, Tikkun Haklalis, bi-weekly fasts – and of course, huge amounts of bizayon, shaming and disgrace for the Rav himself, and his community.
And each time this has happened – and it’s happened literally more than a score of times, that I’m personally aware of – everything has been ‘sweetened’ somehow, and that war, that wave of terror, that threat, somehow disappears and everything calms down again. ==== The main ‘disagreement’ between the Rav and the autistics, if we can call it that, is that the autistics kept banging the war drum, and scaring the pants off people.In the meantime, the Rav kept saying there will be no big war, because everything is being sweetened with prayers, Tikkun Haklalis, rallies in Hevron – and of course, huge doses of bizayon and disgrace for the Rav and his community. It’s crucial to understand that THE REAL WAR IS SPIRITUAL.And it’s also crucial to understand that the media lies about everything, literally everything.
When we buy into their lies about ‘wars’, and ‘pandemics’ and ‘food shortages’ – and all the rest – we typically fall into yeoush (despair), feel far away from God, and start to despair of our prayers, our efforts, our yearning for good making any difference at all. And that’s the whole point of trying to pump us all full of ‘fear porn’, 24/7.Because when a person is full of fallen fears, they are very easy to manipulate and control, and they forget that God is really in charge of EVERYTHING, and by God, there is ALWAYS a solution to the problem. ==== I don’t think anyone could accuse me of being a rosy-tinted optimist.I see so much of the ‘bad’ that is really going on, I’m not trying to cover it over, or run away from it, or bury my head in the sand and go into denial. But what I’m saying is, there is ALWAYS something you and I can really do, to swing the balance in some radical ways between good and evil.We can pray sincerely, from our hearts, and ask God to get openly involved.
We can really get behind the Rav, the real Tzaddik HaDor, and when he’s putting a call out to say some Tikkun Haklalis every day, or to show up to a prayer gathering, or to undertake a special learning seder, we can take that seriously and try to participate, to the best of our abilities.
We can start doing some regular hitbodedut, to start transforming all of our ‘fallen fears’ into some real yirat shemayim, and do the hard work of building up our emuna, and acknowledging that really, there is only God going on here. There’s really a million different options for tipping the balance here, because THE REAL WAR IS ONLY SPIRITUAL, AND INTERNAL.==== I have a few friends who are going through a lot of difficult situations right now, and who sometimes feel like all they do is struggle with themselves, and their own bad middot.There are days they struggle to get out of bed.
Days they struggle to clean their houses.
Days where they really wonder what on earth they are doing with their lives, because sometimes it all seems just so banal and pointless, to keep putting food on the table for their families, to keep cleaning toilets, to keep sweeping the floor. I tell them: We are living in the olam hafuch, the upside-down world.It’s dafka the big internal battles that we small people are waging, that is making all the difference in the world right now. ==== Each time I manage to wean off disgusting Netflix, or binging on Youtube – I am striking a massive blow against the forces of darkness.Every tiny kindness I do, especially for my husband and kids and other family members – I am striking a massive blow, against the forces of darkness.
Each time I avoid getting angry, or put myself out for something ‘holy’, or even just find the strength to get out of bed again to start the day – I am striking a massive blow, against the forces of evil. Dafka, it’s these internal battles of ours that give God the most pleasure, and that ultimately make the most difference in the world.==== Some days, I also get overwhelmed by everything that is going on.Sometimes, I also feel like giving up.
That’s where the whole principle of ‘running and returning’ comes in, that Rabbenu talks about.
On those days, I will eat an icecream, I will ‘tune out the bad’, I will stay away from the internet for a day, or two, or three, until I have the energy to deal with it all again.
That’s ok. I’m a human being, and I can’t maintain this pace ad infinitum, without taking big breaks and holidays, when required, in all sorts of ways. ==== Some days, I also start day-dreaming about writing about way happier things, and just leaving all this crud and yucky stuff totally behind.Then I remember that part of my job down here, part of my own ‘spiritual battle’ is to carry on plugging away ‘unblocking the toilet’ that is real Jewish history.
Why? So that more people can start to really beg Hashem to show them what is true, and who our real tzaddikim are.Because then that’s game over, the whole enchilada. ==== I don’t have a nice way of wrapping this post up today, so instead, I’m going to share some of the more interesting links I’ve been sent, the last few days by other people. EXHIBIT 1: RABBANIT ROTHSCHILD, THE NEW ‘CHIEF RABBANIT’ OF EUROPERead more about that HERE. ==== EXHIBIT 2: THERE IS GRAPHENE OXIDE – LOTS OF IT! – IN YOUR NUROFEN==== EXHIBIT 3: THE VATICAN ALSO HAS AN ‘ORDER OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE’Read more about that HERE, as a starting point.
Here’s what really took my eye:
==== This ‘order’ got started at the same time as the Knights Templar, and the Knights Hospitaller / SMOM.I have a feeling that it basically ‘took over’ from the Knights Templar when that formally ‘disappeared’, because 30,000 members!?!?!?!
Including a whole bunch of royals and heads of state?!?!?!?!
All pledged to: “Support the Christian presence in the Holy Land”….Now, we start to understand what the Jewish nation is really up again, in Eretz Yisrael. ==== Let’s stop here for now. The war is definitely raging, and the battle continues.But we win that battle with prayers, teshuva and by sticking close to God and His true tzaddikim.
And no other way. |
The following posts are Real. |
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 PRRESS – Trending Italian News  Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hidingby Alex Viajaenmoto https://prress.com/world/heres-what-the-azov-battalion-tattoos-are-hiding/ [EDD: Original Post: Ecco cosa nascondono i tatuaggi del Battaglione Azov23 Maggio 2022 – 08:57 Il ministero della Difesa russo mostra le immagini dei prigionieri del Battaglione Azov, accusato di simpatie neonaziste. Abbiamo analizzato i tatuaggi dei militari ucraini: cosa rappresentano23May2022 https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/mondo/ecco-cosa-nascondono-i-tatuaggi-battaglione-azov-2036447.html ] The soldiers of the Azov Battalion they are called one by one. A nod from the Russian soldiers, who ask
The most common symbol is that of the Battalion, wrapped in the yellow and blue colors of the Ukrainian flag. As we have already explained, it is the Wolfsangel the love of the wolves, which was the first coat of arms of the party founded by Adolf Hitler then also entered the iconography of SS.
Other soldiers wear the black Sun used before by the Thule company one of the esoteric organizations that contributed to the thought and rise of Nazism, and then from the Schutzstaffel, the aforementioned SS.  Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 2 Another frequently recurring element is the Totenkrof, the “death’s head”. It is a skull from whose nape emerge some crossbones. Starting in 1809, this symbol was widely used in German military and political iconography. But it is during the Third Reich that the use of the Totenkrof reaches its peak. It is used by the SS and, in particular, by SS-Totenkopfverbände. Founded in 1936, after the annexation of Austria by Germany, Hitler entrusted them with the custody of the concentration camps.  Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 3 Runes are widely used by Battalion soldiers. In particular the Ôþalan, literally “heritage, inheritance”. Symbol of iron, in ancient times it was worn to protect against trolls and, in general, evil influences. Under the Nazis, this rune was used by the Seventh Mountain Division “Prinz Eugen”, a unit of the SS that was used on the Yugoslav front during the Second World War.  Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 4 In addition to the Ôþalan, some soldiers of the Battalion were branded with the Lebensrune used by the SS used in the (insane) Lebensborn eugenics project strongly supported and supported by Heinrich Himmler, to defend the Aryan race. Tattooed swastikas seem widespread. And it is hard to believe – as stated by Michail Pirog, chief of the 4th Azov Battalion stationed in Zaporizhzhia – whether it is just an “ancient Slavic, pan-European, even Indian symbol”.  Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 5 Also because there are those who have had the Sigrunea symbol that indicated the sun but which was then associated with victory (in German Siegin fact) and then at the initials of the SS. These images were recorded outside the Azovstal factory, as can be guessed from the background and the long avenue behind the soldiers of the Azov Battalion.  Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 6 However, the Russian Defense Ministry has also released other photos, taken in an indoor location, impossible to identify. So we don’t know if they are pictures of Azov prisoners or not. But they are significant, as long as they are taken with some caution (like all the images that come from this conflict). In the first weeks of the war, in fact, various Russian media released some carefully edited videos and photographs in which Nazi flags and copies of the Mein Kampf, strangely intact  Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 7 Yet another soldier preferred to immortalize Hitler, with swastika in the arm. Another one, Stepan Bandera the  Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 8 Then there is a last vein that the Azov soldiers have decided to represent on their bodies, that one esoteric,  Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 9 Putin is not fighting to “denazify” Ukraine. Just look at the numbers to figure it out. The Ukrainian army can count on about 200,000 troops, which can reach 900,000 if we consider reservists. The Azov Battalion, which in 2014 had a few hundred followers, today can count on a few thousand men. A minimal percentage if you compare it to the armed forces of Kiev. Yet the tattoos on the body of Ukrainian volunteers demonstrate the link between them and the Third Reich. A bond that, in these eighty days of conflict, has been forgotten for too long to justify their resistance to the troops of Moscow.
We want to thank the author of this article for this outstanding content Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding Explore our social media accounts along with other pages related to themhttps://prress.com/related-pages/ |
Interview with a StormtrooperPublished by on https://thedreizinreport.com/2022/07/01/interview-with-a-stormtrooper/  Star Wars Stormtrooper If the Star Wars rebels took as prisoner an Imperial stormtrooper clone, and sat him down for an on-camera interview, without his armor, with a cigarette, he would come across much like this.
This Azov prisoner was recently interviewed in captivity. Among other things: He is supernaturally calm and confident, cocky at times, knows he won’t be mistreated, says he is safe because he is on Russian territory (i.e. not in Donetsk.)
He says about five times that he is a soldier and not a war criminal, his unit was ethical, his unit was ethical, Russia has nothing to charge him with, “I am a prisoner of war, I am not a criminal, I am a soldier”, his unit was ethical, basically you got nothin’ on me, detective. He’s obviously repeating a short script that was drilled into him and all his comrades before the Azov’s surrender.
He claims that his sniper squad (in which he was the number two in rank) didn’t know if they actually killed anyone; they absolutely never kept any records of how many they shot, they never even talked about it. (LOL, this is fantastical, but at least he’s not claiming to have been just a cook or mechanic.)
He says, OK sure there were Azov guys with swastika tattoos, but not in his squad. He’s not a Nazi, the Azov are not Nazis. All the guys with Swastikas, checked out of the Azov by late 2015 (which contradicts the first sentence of this paragraph.) In fact, he knows a guy in Russia with a swastika tattoo, so what’s the big deal about all this Ukraine Nazi stuff?
(If you didn’t know, ticky-tacky Viking-ism is a quasi-religion among “ultranationalist” young Ukrainian men of low intelligence. It was likely introduced by more intelligent people as an “acceptable”—to foreign sponsors—alternative to Nazism, although many of its adherents do have Nazi tattoos and/or collect Nazi paraphernalia.)
He claims the Azov never shot any Russian prisoners, the infamous video from the Azov’s Kharkov affiliate is fake, or they’re lying when they say there’s a video, whatever.
He says Bandera is THE national hero of the Ukraine. Bandera couldn’t have been a bad guy, because the Germans locked him up at one point.
He claims to know Ukrainian history very well. Claims that Kharkov was founded by a Cossack named Kharko (this is a folk story or sort of a joke, not historical.)
He claims that his squad released 11 Russian/Donetsk prisoners for no particular reason—just didn’t feel like bringing them to the bunkers when the Azov was retreating into the steel plant. (LOL. As I said, this guy has been “coached.”)
One of the Russian prisoners, whom he so much enjoyed talking to, and with whom he really hit it off, was a Caucasus guy with the given name of Shakh (which means Shah, as in the Shah of Persia—literally no one in Russia, or perhaps anywhere, has this name.) There are family names like Shakhnazarov and other derivatives, but Shakh by itself, as a given or family name, is fantastical.)
He is grateful for the protection that the vakk-seenz continue to provide. (Haha, just kidding, he didn’t say that, but surely this guy has much in common with people you know!)
(1) The Azov is a cult. Literally. (2) The Azov’s zampolits (political officers) are/were operating on a very high level. (3) The practice of inculcating dumb “talking points” into the broad population, is as well developed in the Ukraine as it is in the USA—indeed, Russia lags far behind in this capacity. Just remember please, since 2015, the Azov was the main “behind the scenes but not always” authority in Mariupol, and operated a business empire in the city, also setting up affiliates in Kharkov and Kiev, as well as running the Ukraine’s single largest politically-oriented youth organization.
At its peak (just prior to the Russian invasion), the Azov had likely close to 10,000 uniformed personnel and civilian employees. It was by far the single largest military component within the Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, and also the only one that was essentially also a political organization in its own right.
The Azov is not marginal in the Ukraine, the Azov is the Ukraine, or one of the Ukraines, anyway—the dominant one.
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The Azov Battalion: Laboratory of NazismThe Alternative World 23 May2022 https://thealtworld.com/thealtworld/the-azov-battalion-laboratory-of-nazism  The Azov Battalion Western propaganda continues to present the defenders of Mariupol as heroic martyrs, but every day it becomes harder to do so. They have been involved in the murder and brutal torture of women and children. The Azov Battalion is a symbol of hell and years of terror for the people of Donbass.
On 30 October 2014, Ganja was detained in Mariupol by five men in military uniform with Azov Battalion chevrons and balaclavas. Already in a car, they beat her with their guns and urinated on her. They took her out of her car, kicked her, and fired a volley of shots over her head. They took her to Mariupol airport, where they carried on torturing her until 8 November. After that, they took her to court and a pre-trial detention centre.
Tatiana was a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine, now outlawed in the country. She took part in protest rallies in Mariupol and the 11 May referendum over the future of the Donetsk region. She was not even aware that she was blacklisted as an “intransigent separatist”.
In March 2019 during a press conference in Moscow, former officer of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) Vasily Prozorov spoke about “The Library”: a secret prison at Mariupol airport, a city controlled by the Azov Battalion. The “Library” contained “books”, the name given to captured DPR militiamembers and ordinary citizens “suspected of separatism”. They were tortured there. The place had two disconnected refrigerated cells with sealed doors and no furniture. Prozorov showed photographs of nine prisoners from the “Library” – among them were a teenager in a khaki t-shirt and two old men. All of them showed signs of beatings.  Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov shows a picture of one of the “Library” prisoners at a press conference in Moscow. Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov shows a picture of one of the “Library” prisoners at a press conference in Moscow. © Sputnik / Vladimir Astapkovich Azov survivors also confirmed his declarations to Sputnik Former “Library” inmate Tatiana Ganja described the prison as a “real hell and place of death”.
On 8 November 2014, Ganja was taken from the airport for investigative actions. She was released following a prisoner exchange between Ukraine and the Donetsk People’s Republic on 26 December. Since then, she has been living in Donetsk in one of the dormitories for refugees. Azov looted her home in Mariupol.
One day, Elena Blokha, a journalist from Mariupol, also found herself in the “Library’s ‘fridge’”.
They detained Blokha along with her son and placed him in a male cell with several other prisoners.
Azov: The Beginning In April 2014, after the Maidan triumph and when a street war between supporters and opponents [of Maidan] broke out in all major cities in southeastern Ukraine, the then-Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov announced an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) in Donbass. While the NATO was started in order to form “volunteer battalions”, these batallions later became infamous for their atrocities against civilians and captured militiamembers.
The Azov Battalion was officially established on 5 May 2014 in the Kharkov neo-Nazi organisation Patriots of Ukraine*, the power wing of the Social-National Assembly. The “patriots” opened their first congress in 1999 with a torchlit procession similar to the marches seen in Hitler’s Germany.
The unit of 50-60 fighters possessed several smooth bore rifles and traumatic pistols. The head of the press service, Stepan Baida, described the Azov’s level of equipment at the time as “reinforced troops”.
The Black Corps patches, which directly allude to Reichsführer SS Himmler’s military (“Das Schwarze Korps”, translated from the German as “Black Corps”, the official printed media of the SS), continued to be used by the Azov even after its incorporation into legalranks commanded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
At first, it was a deemed a volunteer battalion in the Special Tasks Patrol Police of Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Then, in October 2014, it became a regiment of the National Guard. As a military unit, Azov was authorised to acquire artillery and tanks.  Azov Battalion cadets deployed in the conflict zone in southeastern Ukraine, 2014. Azov Battalion cadets deployed in the conflict zone in southeastern Ukraine, 2014. Mariupol Massacre The presence of Azov became fatal for the residents of Mariupol long before 2022. What happened there in the spring of 2014 was the most important episode of the Donbass conflict.
The Victory Day demonstration on 9 May 2014 ended in clashes near the city police headquarters. According to Kiev’s official information, 13 people were killed, including police officers, National Guard members and Azov Battalion fighters, as well as civilians.
The local police were sympathetic to the Donetsk People’s Republic, but did not take any action against their own superiors or the Ukrainian authorities in general.  Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov addressing the situation in Ukraine after the coup at a press conference in Moscow. Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov addressing the situation in Ukraine after the coup at a press conference in Moscow. A referendum on the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic was scheduled for 11 May 2014. According to Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Prozorov, Mariupol police officers received orders to prevent the voting by blocking polling stations and detaining election commission members. However, the majority refused to obey, as they wanted to avoid conflicts with their fellow compatriots, including relatives.
 Flowers and candles in memory of those killed at Mariupol police headquarters in May 2015. Flowers and candles in memory of those killed at Mariupol police headquarters in May 2015. The list of those killed in Mariupol that day include only police officers, security forces and civilians. ‘White Leader’  Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the National Corps political party. Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the National Corps political party. Andriy Biletsky, a neo-Nazi known as White Leader (a nickname that a civilised person would find absurd which was given to him by his supporters before the Maidan), became Azov’s leader. That same year, 2014, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament].
So what did White Leader do before Azov? Shortly before heading the battalion, Biletsky was released from prison. He was freed from the Kharkov pre-trial detention centre in late February 2014 thanks to Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who favoured Azov and admitted that he had “special plans” for the unit.
Biletsky and his accomplices were imprisoned on charges of assaulting Sergei Kolesnik, who, as a result of an incident, sustained open skull and brain injuries and multiple stab wounds. The case was opened under the article of “robbery”.
The reason for the attack stemmed from an online argument in which the victim had been careless in speaking out against fascism. Biletsky was arrested and immediately became a “martyr” to the victorious Euromaidan; his detention was seen as political repression.
Biletsky has never concealed his Nazi views. Here are some of his most striking quotes.
On his mission and Jews:
On blood purity:
On his perception of Nazi collaborators the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA, an extremist organisation banned in Russia):
According to Kharkov journalists, Biletsky’s supporters began holding more or less visible actions in the fall of 2005. As early as 14 April 2006, on the anniversary of Koliivshchyna (the Cossack uprising of 1768, which led to a mass slaughter of Poles and Jews), they organised a xenophobic “Ukraine against the occupation” march in the city’s centre. According to various estimates, between 100 and 200 people took part in the rally. This event was followed by actions against the Vietnamese hostels in Kharkov.
Biletsky’s unit skillfully recruited or attracted representatives of far-right youth subcultures to join its ranks. The young neo-Nazis were drawn by their focus on violent methods of struggle: beatings, raids and pogroms.
The “vyshkols” – training camps – of the Patriots of Ukraine organisation were completely different from, for example, the [far-right paramilitary organisations] Tryzub of Stepan Bandera (another extremist organisation banned in Russia), the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists or the Youth Nationalist Congress. In these camps, the organisation held activities for schoolchildren shooting air rifles, marching through forests and singing songs around a campfire. Biletsky, in turn, taught how to storm buildings or “remove” a guardsman from behind (how to strangle and stab him in the heart).
The Kharkov branch alone had between 200 and 300 fighters in the early 2010s, some of whom lived permanently in the barracks at the organisation’s premises.  Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev Where Did the Money Come From?
The Azov was funded – at least partially – by oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, as was the case with the other volunteer battalions operating in the ATO. Furthermore, Svetlana Zvarich, director of the Ukrainian National Information Service (one of the largest companies in the local information collection, transmission and processing market), provided assistance.
On 16 April 2015, Ukrayinska Pravda mentioned the charity foundation for educational innovations, which officially “works with Azov and provides it with everything it needs” in a report from Azov’s base at the ATEK engineering plant in Kiev , citing a comment by “the chairman of the supervisory board of the foundation, Svetlana Zvarich”.  Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev SBU Chief Vasyl Hrytsak said at the time that the Secret Service was checking Azov’s involvement in at least ten similar crimes.
There is also knowlegde of a bribe of two million hryvnias ($68,000) extorted from a Kiev businessman by the battalion’s head of manning Vladimir Brzezinski and former Azov Chief of Staff Vadym Troyan under threats of reprisals.
In other words, the Azov militiamembers were simply engaged in racketeering. According to the owner of one of the gambling halls, the so-called patriots showed up in mid-2015. Couriers from local radical organisations visited all the gambling halls, offering to “negotiate”.
‘Laboratory of Nazism’ The Azov Battalion stands out for its strong ideological background. Neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and racists are at the forefront of the unit. Its symbols contain elements that refer to the emblems of Third Reich military units.  Fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Sophia Square in Kiev before being sent to Donbass. Members of the Nazi battalion have committed hundreds of war crimes against the population of Donbass over eight years. The Azov flag has an inverted image of the runic symbol “Wolfsangel”, which was used by the Nazis. Fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Sophia Square in Kiev before being sent to Donbass. Members of the Nazi battalion have committed hundreds of war crimes against the population of Donbass over eight years. The Azov flag has an inverted image of the runic symbol “Wolfsangel”, which was used by the Nazis.
The photo shows Azov fighters taking the oath of allegiance before being sent to Donbass in July 2014. The regiment’s flag bears a black Wolfsangel (“wolf’s hook” in German). This sign was the emblem of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). Subsequently, the Wolfsangel became the tactical mark of the SS Panzer Division “Das Reich”, and was also used in other SS and Wehrmacht units, in particular, the 34th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division “Landstorm Nederland”.
Over time, representatives of the Social National Assembly, Automaidan and Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists activists, ultras (hooligans) of the Dynamo (Kiev) and Shakhtar football clubs, members of Dmytro Korchynsky’s Bratstvo party* and the Cossack Rifle Brotherhood joined Azov.
The open demonstration of misanthropy attracted radicals and neo-Nazis from all over the world to join the Azov Battalion.
Biletsky said in an interview that there were representatives of three dozen nationalities in Azov, but “not once did a Chinese or a Nigerian come to them”.
The Azov expanded, fought against the Donbass militia, and attracting new volunteers, including foreigners.
A series of video interviews with foreigners associated with the regiment were published on the page of the National Corps and National Druzhina units, both projects set up in 2016 by the Azov.
Alexei Levkin from Tver, Russia, is one of the typical characters. He is a neo-Nazi fugitive convicted of being part of a gang that committed numerous ethnic murders. He is also the lead singer of the band M8L8TH, which glorifies fascism, the SS and the concentration camps of the Third Reich.
Quotes from Levkin’s diary hit the internet in 2008.
Another volunteer, Joachim Fürholm from Norway, calls himself a “national socialist revolutionary” and “admires” what [2011 far-right Norway bomber Anders] Breivik did. In an interview with the Nazi radio Radio Wehrwolf, found by Bellingcat (an organisation recognised as a foreign agent in Russia), Fürholm considers Azov to be a “laboratory of fascism”.
Beat the Dog Before the Lion From the outset, all of the volunteer battalions were haunted by scandals: looting and sexual violence (Shakhtersk and Tornado Battalions were the most prominent), kidnapping and killing of civilians (by the notorious Donbass Battalion) and the seizure of businesses.
There was less talk about the Azov. After all, it was an extremely closed unit and the strict hierarchy and the constant threat of reprisals against one’s own people played a role.
However, some who joined Azov as volunteers without right-wing radical ideas could not get along in the Nazi environment and revolted. They were the ones who made the White Leader’s unpleasant juicy details public.
From ‘Hateful’ to ‘Heroes’ Now, almost 80 years after the demise of the Third Reich, Nazi battalions openly marching through the streets of European cities with their symbols which are banned in the civilized world, the unpunished killing of civilians, looting, extortion, reprisals and punitive operations are again a reality.
Back in 2015, the US Congress banned the Pentagon from supplying portable anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine and from training and equipping the Azov Battalion. Congressional representatives called it a “disgusting Nazi formation”. This was a reaction to a number of publications in the US press in which shocked journalists wrote about the openly Nazi views of both the leadership and fighters of Azov.
But seven years later, the world is witnessing how the “hideous Nazi formation” began to be fashioned into valiant heroes, the “defenders of Mariupol”.
https://sputniknews.com/20220522/the-azov-battalion-laboratory-of-nazism-1095700345.html |
This is who the West/EU/NATO is supportingThe following is a “People to Kill List” put out by the NAZI Ukraine SBU
Security Service of UkraineFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Security Service of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Служба безпеки України, romanized: Sluzhba bezpeky Ukrayiny) or SBU (Ukrainian: СБУ) is the law enforcement authority and main intelligence and security agency of the Ukrainian government, in the areas of counter-intelligence activity and combating terrorism.  Ukraine SBU Hitlist-myrotvorets.center-Banner source: https://rumble.com/v1gxbrr-live-stream-monday-august-22nd-2022-news-from-saint-petersburg.html JerusalemCats Comments: If an Antisemite such as Roger Waters is on the Ukraine SBU Azov Hitlist (People to Kill List), what about Jew who want to visit Rebbe Nachman’s Kever In Uman, Ukraine? https://myrotvorets.center/criminal/uoters-rodzher/  Roger Waters added to Ukraine Myrotvorets SBU-Hitlist-Chrome The Homepage of the Ukrainian Security Service SBU Kill list Warning Graphic screenshots – website of Ukraine SBU Hitlist myrotvorets center https://myrotvorets.center/ Ukrainian Nazis Celebrate Independance Day With PoW ISIS VideoPosted 25August2022 iEarlGreyTV:https://rumble.com/v1hatx5-ukrainian-nazis-celebrate-independance-day-with-pow-isis-video.html Journalists who challenge NATO narratives are now ‘information terrorists’: https://beeley.substack.com/p/journalists-who-challenge-nato-narratives |
The Influencer’s Dilemma (Why Elon Musk Is Probably Right About Twitter)by Tyler Durden 30June2022 – 03:20 AM https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/influencers-dilemma-why-elon-musk-probably-right-about-twitter Authored by Omid Malekan via Medium.com, The following in an excerpt from my new book: Re-Architecting Trust, The Curse of History and the Crypto Cure for Money, Markets and Platforms. It provides context on the ongoing breakdown of traditional social medial. The prevalence of digital fakery is an underrated contributor to the breakdown of respect in every online setting. It leads to a toxic environment where the worst behaviors are rewarded. To see why, we must first recognize that online influence is valuable. Having a lot of likes, retweets, positive reviews, and followers is an asset, one that increasingly impacts the offline economy. A restaurant that has a lot of five-star reviews is more likely to get new customers and a pundit who has a lot of Twitter subscribers is more likely to get a book deal.
The digital attestations of likes and followers and so on are a form of social capital, and everyone is motivated to acquire as much as they can. The question is how.
Some people try to acquire their social capital by doing something useful, like running a quality restaurant or putting out valuable content.
They hustle, put in long hours, and work to earn every like, retweet, positive review, and follower. This is the social capital equivalent of proof of work: do the work, earn the reward.
Other people cheat. They don’t put in the hours or hustle, they instead buy enough fake followers and reviews on the black market to make it look like they did. This is the social capital version of a Sybil attack. On any centralized platform such as Seamless or Twitter, the second group is guaranteed to win.
As the comedian Groucho Marx once said, “the secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
To understand why, recall that the target audience — the consumers who order food from an app, watch TikTok videos, and subscribe to Instagram feeds — have no idea what’s real and what’s fake. Facebook doesn’t tell them what percentage of an Instagram influencer’s likes were generated by a click farm (if it did, advertising revenues would plummet). This lack of information puts every would-be influencer in a bind. If viewers can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake, then what’s the best strategy for becoming popular? Should they work hard to earn real users or pay up to acquire fake ones? The answer is both. After all, those who decide to both build and buy will always be more popular than those who only do one. In game theory, this is known as the Nash equilibrium. In real life, it’s a race to the bottom.
But now we have a new problem because Instagram users aren’t that gullible. They understand that some chicanery is going on. There are too many content creators who are suspiciously popular, and the numbers only ever go up, sometimes too quickly. There are also academic studies and media reports that confirm their suspicions. But there is no obvious tell, so the most reasonable response from the users perspective is to assume that everything is a little fake, and to discount every number — every like, retweet, five-star review, and follower count — accordingly. Since tomorrow will bring more fakery, then discount a little more with each passing day. It helps that the human brain is uniquely adept at performing this invisible calculus. People have been doing it for millennia. Not with social capital of course, but with money.
Online social capital in any centralized setting is an inflationary currency. It does not enjoy scarcity of any kind and is easy to counterfeit so its purchasing power falls on a daily basis. That’s why it takes much higher numbers to impress users today than it used to. Here the world’s centralized platform operators are even more irresponsible than central banks. The Federal Reserve might be profligate with its printing, but it at least tries to preserve the integrity of its currency after it’s been issued. That’s why $100 bills are difficult to counterfeit. One hundred (or one hundred thousand) likes on any social media platform, on the other hand, are easy to counterfeit.
In economics, Gresham’s Law is the phenomenon by which “bad money eventually drives out good.” It’s more of a principle than a law but explains why lower quality representations of the same currency, like diluted coins with less gold that still have the same face value, tend to force higher quality money out of circulation. It’s best understood from the perspective of ordinary people making sensible decisions. In any economy where legal tender laws force citizens to treat coins of different metal content as having the same value, people are going to try to spend the diluted coins (to get rid of them) and save the denser ones. Maybe the laws will be changed, or the currency will fail, and all coins will have to be melted down to capture their pure metallic value. A similar phenomenon also explains why Bitcoin is increasingly viewed as a store of value, not the medium of exchange it was invented to be. The more fiat money that is printed by the world’s central banks, the greater the perception that fiat is a form of bad money, leading people to want to spend their dollars and hoard their bitcoins.
Kabessa’s Law is the social capital equivalent of this dynamic, named after a popular crypto pundit who first postulated the dilemma that every would-be influencer faces in a centralized setting — to build or to buy. This law states that counterfeit online social capital eventually drives out the quality kind, taking over.
The higher the percentage of fake activity on any platform, the lower the incentive to bother trying to create the real deal. Put differently, the easier it is to buy one thousand Twitter followers, the lower the incentive to try to earn one. * * * About the book: Re-Architecting Trust is a thought-provoking exploration of how decentralized blockchain networks and the digital assets that they enable can reinvent our most important trust frameworks by creating new types of money, reinvigorating how we transact the old kind, disintermediating the least trustworthy financial institutions, and enabling meaningful business models for artists and influencers. You can order a copy here |
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What’s that smell? Big Food corporations are quietly adding crickets and other insects into meal bars, cookies and snacks16August2022 by: Ethan Huff https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-08-16-food-corporations-quietly-adding-crickets-insects-food.html This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author  A plate of Crickets (Natural News) Be careful when buying “health food” as some corporations have already begun quietly adding cricket “flour” and other insect-based ingredients to products labeled “sustainable” and “nutritious.”
One company called Actually Foods is now selling a Cheddar Cheese Puffs product that contains “organic cricket flour” in the “puff” ingredients list. The product, which comes from Canada, is labeled using the terms “nutritious,” “sustainable,” and “delicious.”
The Cheddar Cheese Puffs product from Actually Foods is also branded as being high in protein because it is “powered by crickets” – the suggestion being that crickets are a “superfood.”
It turns out that Entomo Farms, the parent company of Actually Foods, is on a mission “to make cricket-based foods the first choice for individuals interested in high-quality, sustainable protein.” The company offers an entire line of products with cricket ingredients, including cricket protein powder and whole roasted crickets, both in regular and “organic.”
Exo Protein’s Savory Meal Bar is another food product that contains cricket flour as a protein source. Competitor Snowpiercer likewise offers a “cricket protein bar” that is marketed as a health food product. Globalists will gorge on meat while their human slaves are forced to eat bugsAnother creepy brand called Human Improvement (hi!), the branding of which is reminiscent of the film Soylent Green, offers a cricket protein powder that contains “crazy fiber” and other “unique ingredients.”
The company claims that its insect powder is an “actual whole food” that is great “for muscle” and does not cause bloat. It aims to be a replacement for whey protein from goats and cows.
Then we have Hoppy Planet Foods’ “Chocolate Chirp Cookies,” which are labeled on the front of the package as containing “3x protein” compared to regular chocolate chip cookies.
What is not apparent from the front of the package is the fact that Chocolate Chirp Cookies contain cricket ingredients that are not prominent upon first glance. This is one of the more deceptive brands that appears to be trying to hide cricket ingredients from customers.
Roberts Bakery in the United Kingdom also offers a cricket bread loaf that contains dried, ground-up cricket carcasses in the flour. The result is “a lovely tasty loaf with a crunchy finish.”
As we reported, crickets are also now on the menu at some public schools in Wales, another country that has been co-opted by globalists from the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is behind the cricket push.
“The world’s population will reach 9.7 billion people by 2050. This means that despite only 4% of arable land remaining available on the surface of our planet an additional 2 billion more humans will have to be fed,” the WEF wrote in an article published last year.
“In order to address this impending crisis, world experts and leaders will meet this autumn at the UN Food Summit and then the COP26. Often overlooked in these discussions is the potential role insects can play in helping meet this challenge.”
Self-appointed elitists like WEF head Klaus Schwab would never stoop so low themselves as to consume crickets and other insects. No, those are for the peons – the human slaves whom the globalists see as cattle, hence the push for the masses to eat bugs.
All the talk about bugs being “carbon-friendly” is climate-deranged nonsense and deception to corral the human herd into a “sustainable,” meat-free future. The question is: will you let the globalists do this to you without a fight?
“Now there’s some food factories we won’t see any fires at,” wrote a commenter at Infowars about how the cricket factories are safe from the globalists’ terrorism spree.
To learn more about the “green” push away from meat and into crickets and other insects, visit Frankenfood.news. Sources for this article include: Comments: Jon • 17August2022 JerusalemCats → Jon  Look for these Kosher Certification Agencies official identification symbol, or hecksher in Israel |
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Fake Meat Fail: Sales Collapse At Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods As 20% Of Staff Laid Offby Tyler Durden, 06February2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/fake-meat-fail-sales-collapse-beyond-meat-impossible-foods-20-staff-fired The fake meat industry appears to be in a death-spiral as sales at plant-based ‘meat’ companies Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have imploded.  Woman has a bad burger As Axios reports, “after years of hype, the tide is turning against the first generation of plant-based protein makers.”
Last year, both companies were riding high – with prime placement on supermarket shelves, and Burger King even adding an Impossible Whopper to its menu.
Impossible Meat even began to branch out – looking to expand offerings to highly processed meats such as chicken nuggets and sausages. Sales have collapsed, however, which according to a recent Bloomberg report, has resulted in Impossible Foods planning to lay off around 20% of its workers.
Beyond Meat’s sales fell over 22% in the third quarter of 2022, as the company is preparing to similarly cut 20% of its workers. The company has also lost several executives.
According to the report, supermarket sales fell by 15% y/y as of Jan. 1, according to market-research firm IRI, while orders in restaurants dropped 9% in the12 months ended in November, according to NPD Group.
Meanwhile, data from consumer-experience strategy firm HundredX suggests waning interest in general – as the percentage of shoppers polled who have eaten Impossible products and say they won’t do it again has risen. Beyond Meat stock is also down around 67% vs. one year ago. |
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First bugs, now CANNIBALISM: scientist says humans need to eat other humans to “fight climate change”31July2022 by: Ethan Huff https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-07-31-scientist-says-cannibalism-key-fight-climate-change.html This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author  Cannibal Eye (Natural News) Prof. Magnus Soderland, a professor of who even cares at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden, argued on television the other day that humanity needs to “awaken” to the idea of cannibalism as the solution to “climate change.” Human flesh, Soderland claims, is much more “sustainable” than meat and dairy when it comes to meeting one’s nutritional needs – especially if normal food becomes scarcer in the future because of “global warming.”
Having a “conversation” about eating human flesh will help to destigmatize the idea, according to Soderland, who believes that the general public can and should be “tricked” into cannibalism – or what he refers to as “making the right decisions” concerning diet.
When asked at a recent Gastro Summit if he would personally opt to eat human flesh, Soderland said he is open to it. He also claimed that about 10 percent of his audience is also open to trying human flesh.
“I feel somewhat hesitant, but to not appear overly conservative … I’d have to say … I’d be open to at least tasting it,” he told TV4 in Sweden. Katy Perry says human flesh is “the absolute best” and is “super healthy and good for you”During the “Can you Imagine Eating Human Flesh?” panel at which he spoke, Soderland also pushed the increasingly popular globalist agenda of bug eating, stating that humans need to learn to eat insects instead of meat because … reasons.
Soderland also suggested that people cut up and bake their dead pets rather than bury them in the ground or cremate them – because of global warming.
Pop singer Katy Perry, by the way, also believes that cannibalism is the way forward for humanity. She recently stated that human flesh “is the best meat,” and that cannibalism “got a bad rap.”
Cannibalism is “way more popular than you might think,” Perry suggested, adding that “so many people in Hollywood tell you that human meat is the best, the absolute best, meat in the world.”
Perry, who was raised in a religious household, went on to blast those who oppose cannibalism, including “squeamish Christians and their hypocritical virtues and morals.”
According to Perry, who is apparently a cannibal herself, human flesh is “super healthy and good for you.”
The New York Times is another supporter and promoter of cannibalism, having run numerous pieces in recent years that aim to destigmatize the consumption of human flesh, stating that it “has a time and place” – and that time is apparently now.
Such flagrant promotion of evil is tough for even many leftists to stomach, as evidenced by the onslaught of negative responses that the Times received on Twitter, a notoriously far-left social media platform.
“We have known since the 1920s that cannibalism causes mad cow disease,” wrote someone who reads Newspunch. “This is true of cannibalism in most, if not all, places. If a cow eats cow meat, he will eventually get mad cow disease, aka prion disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.”
“Apparently there are several variants, but they are all basically the same thing. It destroys your brain and makes you crazy. Kuru is also a variant. You may read that CJD is not related to mad cow disease, but this comes from the CDC, another agency that lies through its teeth. This has been known for a very long time and this info comes from a virologist with 55 years research behind him who worked in Public Health with a Nobel prize-winning scientist. CJD can kill you within a year, while some variants take much longer. The ‘elites’ have been endorsing cannibalism for quite a while.”
The latest news about climate insanity can be found at Climate.news. Sources include: JerusalemCats Comments: This is the Leftist University Professors and what they have achieved. Prof. Magnus Soderland having lunch break with a colleague-LG |
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Do Empty Cradles Matter? Look At Japanby Tyler Durden 05June2019 https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-05/do-empty-cradles-matter-look-japan  cradle America’s fertility rate has fallen to its lowest point in history, 1.73 babies per woman, according to data just released by the Centers for Disease Control. The truth is starker still around much of the developed world, as noted by a new Institute for Family Studies report. Across Europe and Asia especially, each year brings more countries hitting their lowest fertility rates in history. In South Korea, for instance, the average woman can now expect to have less than one child.
In the face of global climate change, this worldwide birth dearth might seem okay. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York recently noted that some may even be wondering: “Is it OK to still have children?” Some experts have a different question: should we even care? Conrad Hackett, senior demographer at the Pew Research Center, recently asked this question at a forum on family issues hosted by the Brookings Institution. Why do we care if fertility is low?
In fact, we should care that fertility is falling, for at least three big reasons.
First and foremost, the reality is that fertility rates around the world, and in the United States, are lower than what women themselves say they want. About 40 percent of American women in their 40s report that they would like to have more children than they currently do. This figure is markedly larger than the approximately 20 percent of their peers who say they have more children than they would like. Such numbers are worrying because research tells us that women who “miss” their fertility ideals tend to be less happy than those who make them.
Secondly, low birth rates can also have seismic economic consequences. A growing chorus of economists have begun to argue that slow population growth makes us all poorer. Declines in childbearing often “portend ominous change in economic prospects [for countries]: major increases in public debt burdens, and slower economic growth” because they eventually lead to declines in the number of adults working, absent major immigration, as the political economists Nicholas Eberstadt and Hans Groth have noted.
This may seem counterintuitive. Most people visualize the economy as a pie, and with more people, the pie must be divided into smaller pieces. So fertility reduction should make us richer!
But this argument falls apart under a little scrutiny. It’s true that with fewer people, the pie needn’t be shared. But we all know how parties really work: if fewer people are coming, you cook less food. The economy is no different. Businesses only invest in growing markets. If the market is expected to shrink in the future due to low population growth, then businesses won’t invest . Consider how hard it is to grow a business in a shrinking state. The entire business case for investment depends on a growing market . Real estate prices in Appalachia or Detroit, places where populations are falling, aren’t helping families build wealth. Wages in Japan, where fertility has been below replacement for decades, have been even more stagnant than America’s in recent years. Debt and entitlement burdens in declining Eastern European countries are monumental. Academic research from the United States clearly shows that birth rates drive future entrepreneurship.
Thus, if population is shrinking, we can expect to see less investment and less growth. When the party gets smaller, we cook less food, and fewer people bring extra side dishes, leaving us with fewer total food options. Demographic stagnation leads to a diminished material quality of life.
Finally, as JD Vance wryly observed at The American Conservative ‘s annual gala in May, “We should care about declining fertility, not just because it’s bad for our economy, but because we think babies are good, and we think babies are good because we’re not sociopaths.” Babies can be transformative for the men and women who have them, and for the families they build and grow.
“I care about declining fertility because I’ve seen the role of fatherhood, the positive role that it can play in the lives of my friends and in my community. I’ve seen young men who are relatively driftless, but became rooted and grounded when they had children,” Vance said, adding, “And in my own life, I’ve felt the demons that come from a traumatic childhood melt away in the laughter, in the love, of my own son.”
For evidence in support of Vance’s view, one need only look to Japan. In the land of the setting sun, long-term low fertility has dealt a devastating blow to kinship ties and family life. Thanks to the very rapid fertility transition in Japan two generations ago, scores of older Japanese men and women face the prospect of lonely lives and lonelier deaths. Japanese retirees with fewer children, not to mention grandchildren, are often unvisited and cut off from the life of the young.As The New York Times reported in a harrowing account of the lonely old in Japan, “The extreme isolation of elderly Japanese is so common that an entire industry has emerged around it, specializing in cleaning out apartments where decomposing remains are found.”
In other words, over the next century, long-term low fertility will leave many countries with dramatically smaller families, more isolated and family-less individuals, stagnating economics, underfunded public pensions, and millions of old people dying alone and untended. Oh, and lots of women will not be able to realize their dream of having two or three children.
If we are not careful, the United States could face a demographic challenge akin to that now facing much of Europe and East Asia. That is why all those empty cradles matter. |
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China Launches Nationwide Program To Encourage People To Marry And Have More Childrenby Tyler Durden, 17May2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-launches-nationwide-program-encourage-people-marry-and-have-more-children Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News, Fearing demographic collapse, China is launching a new nationwide program to “build a new-era marriage and childbearing culture” within its population.  Chinese family The pro-natalist scheme was announced by way of state media outlet the Global Times, which said it was intended to coincide with the United Nations’ International Day of Families after the UN expressed concern about fertility decline and “demographic change”.
Officials said the venture will “focus on tasks including promoting marriage and having children at appropriate ages, encouraging parents to share child-rearing responsibilities, and curbing high ‘bride prices’ and other outdated customs.”
The reference to ‘high bride prices’ is a Chinese custom whereby the family of the groom gift the bride’s family a large financial contribution known as a caili.
Young women in China are now being urged to sign pledges where they promise not to demand a caili from the groom.
China Family Planning Association vice president Yao Ying said the policy is “expected to take innovative and proactive measures to help foster childbearing-friendly atmospheres and contribute to advancing Chinese modernization with the support from the high-quality development of the population.”
According to current projections, China’s population is likely to drop below 1 billion by 2080 and below 800 million by 2100.
Demographer demographer He Yafu told Global Times, “The society needs to guide young people more on the concept of marriage and childbirth, and encourage young people to get married and have children.”
Chinese municipal governments are making an effort across the country to hold job fair-style events where they hand out quick and easy marriage licences to encourage couples to tie the knot in order to address the “low willingness to marry and have children” given the financial burden this now places on couples.
China’s new policy is a far cry from its notorious one child policy, which was introduced in 1980 to curb population growth but ended in 2016.
The approach is a massive contrast to western nations, which are relying on huge immigration influxes to maintain their population levels, at the cost of their identity and social cohesion, while popular culture promotes the so-called ‘freedom’ of childless relationships.
In the UK, Dr Paul Morland warns that white British children are likely to become a minority in primary schools by the year 2060.
Despite Conservative Party promises to bring immigration down, more than a million new migrants are expected to enter Britain before the next general election.
Net migration to the UK already hit a new year on year record of 504,000 last summer. * * * |
The Weather report 1 Adar II-5782
The Weather report 1 Adar II-5782-Page 1
The Weather report 1 Adar II-5782-Page 2
The Godfather Theme Song
Countries sanctioning Russia 2022
The Rest of the World wants nothing to do with this mess!
JerusalemCats Comments: The following is for your information.
Azov-patch-2022-5-17 Ukraine Nazi Azov Battalion – source https://thedreizinreport.com/2022/05/17/the-fall-of-the-azov/
Ukraine Nazi Azov Battalion
The Dreizin Report – 2022-05-17 – The Fall of the Azov
Posted 17May2022 The Dreizin Report:
How did the Azov come about? Why were they never a part of the Ukrainian army? Why are almost all of them bearded? What is their place in history? What is the significance of their downfall? And everything else you ever wanted to know about the Azov! Stepan Bandera
-https://thedreizinreport.com/2022/05/17/the-fall-of-the-azov/
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Why the War? Cui bono? Who benefits? :
Ukraine is a proxy war between the US Military Industrial Complex/Corrupt Deep State and Russia
The Truth about Russian Ukraine War
23February2023 Brachaim’s:
The truth about the war with Russian and Ukraine: The same corrupt Elite Globalists who orchestrated the Pandemic and Covid-19 are now pushing the world into World War 3.
https://reesereport.com/
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The Russian do a lot to let the Ukrainians know how to get help to surrender but this video is as powerful and truthful as they come
Parsin_5_25-tweet-29August2023-The Russian do a lot to let the Ukrainians know how to get help to surrender
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Inside Russia’s Military Operation
Posted 09Novembe2022 iEarlGrey:
The West is shipping arms to Ukraine, and American and EU leaders keep discussing more supplies of tanks and planes instead of peaceful solutions. Military aid provided to Ukraine don’t change the course of the conflict and only increases the number of deaths among civilians and soldiers. Why the ongoing fighting in Ukraine is the fault of a years-long policy of the West and a boon for the American defence industry – in this documentary.
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Kyiv Seizes Assets Of Russian Orthodox Clerics
by Tyler Durden, 14December2022 – 10:30 AM https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/kyiv-seizes-assets-russian-orthodox-clerics
Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,
Ukraine has ratcheted up its campaign against a branch of the Eastern Orthodox church with ties to Russia. On the order of President Volodymyr Zelensky, seven senior clerics from the Russian Orthodox church will have their assets seized and face bans on a range of economic and legal activities.
During his nightly video address on Sunday, the Ukrainian president said “by decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, sanctions were applied against seven people,” adding that his administration is “doing everything to ensure that the aggressor state does not have a single string of Ukrainian society to pull.”
St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kiev, Ukraine. Wikipedia image
According to Reuters, the new penalties mean that the seven clerics will have “their assets seized and are subject to a ban on a range of economic and legal activities as well as a de facto travel ban.”
The vast majority of Ukrainians belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, with many worshiping in parishes that take direction from the Moscow Patriarchate. On December 1, Zelensky announced that Kiev would attempt to expel all religious institutions with ties to Russia, arguing the move would make it “impossible for religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation to operate in Ukraine.”
The president went on the claim that the Russian Orthodox Church poses a threat to Ukrainian culture, saying “we will never allow anyone to build an empire inside the Ukrainian soul.”
He additionally denounced Ukrainians who continue to attend the allegedly Russia-controlled parishes as succumbing to “the temptation of evil.”
Orthodox Christianity-tweet-13December2022-Ukraine sanctions five more hierarchs
Kiev has conducted a series of raids on Russian Orthodox parishes and claims to have uncovered clerics attempting to subvert the Ukrainian government, though has provided little evidence to support its assertions.
Nonetheless, Kiev sanctioned 10 top clerics of the church last week, suggesting they threatened “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Max Blumenthal-tweet-11December2022-Ukraine Russian books music banned
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Nuclear Blackmail | The shelling of Zaporozhye power plant puts intl safety at risk (the shelling by Ukraine)
Posted 07Novmeber2022 iEarlGrey “Nuclear Blackmail | The shelling of Zaporozhye power plant puts intl safety at risk”:
The Zaporozhye nuclear plant in Energodar is the largest in Europe. Since March 2022 it has been under Russian control and Zaporozhye Region recently voted in a referendum to join Russia. In the meantime, Kiev continues to attack the plant, putting Europe at risk of a disaster six times bigger than the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Despite IAEA warnings and the referendum, Kiev continues to use the Zaporozhye plant as a blackmail tool. The documentary shows the timeline of the attacks and focuses on potential risks of Ukrainian provocations.
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Donbass: I’m Alive! | Mariupol survivors of Ukrainian attacks find shelter
Posted 15November2022 iEarlGreyTV: These are the NAZI Terrorist that Biden and the Neocon Democrats have installed in Ukraine and are supporting. Thank you, Victoria Nuland for the needless death and destruction, May you roast in Hell.
“It’s the Azov battalion. They forced people out of their houses and into basements. Then tanks started shooting from here, from there,” a Mariupol resident shared her story with the film crew. Over 400,000 people in Mariupol had to go underground because they couldn’t leave the city. The film tracks stories of people who had to survive in Mariupol under Ukrainian shelling. Sheltering in cellars and watching Ukrainian tanks firing at residential buildings. They have all gone through hell and back. Now they’re happy to be alive and hope for a new beginning.
A Russian military officer drives across shelled Mariupol to distribute humanitarian aid. A volunteer from Texas, who came to Donbass eight years ago, as he refused to believe American propaganda, helps reunite families separated during the evacuation. A hieromonk who was taken hostage by Azov members and tortured miraculously survived and dedicated his life to studying the origins of nazism in Ukraine. A courageous OB-GYN who runs a maternity ward helped give birth to 25 women during the bombing.
Hundreds of people who got a chance to be evacuated lost connections with the rest of their families who stayed. With no cell service and internet connection, their only hope was to get a word through Russian soldiers who would find relatives and friends and relay their messages.
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Is the West aiding and supporting the Hamas Nazis like it is supporting the Ukrainian Nazis?
Hamas Child suicide Bomb Terrorist
Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing was the suicide bombing of a crowded public bus (Egged bus 2) in the Shmuel HaNavi quarter in Jerusalem, Israel, on August 19, 2003. Twenty-four people were killed and over 130 wounded. Many of the victims were children, some of them infants. The Islamist militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Gaza “protesters” loft molotov cocktail on swastika kite over Israeli border
International Neo Nazi Fund
Victoria Nulland meets with Svoboda neo-nazis
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Stockman: No More Ukraines
by Tyler Durden, 28February, 2023 – 11:45 PM https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/stockman-no-more-ukraines
Authored by David Stockman via LewRockwell.com,
Joe Biden must think that he’s the world’s Rich Uncle. In a meeting with the so-called Bucharest Nine today he promised these former Warsaw Pact nations—which should never have been admitted to NATO in the first place—unlimited economic and military support.
Nine more Ukraines if need be.
Biden conveyed reassurances that the United States is prepared to speed to their defense if they come under offensive action by Moscow. These nations include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
For want of doubt, here’s the just-in-case-you-missed-the-message amplification from NSC spokesman John Kirby. Said the Deep State’s favorite shill, who is apparently serving the national security complex in endless rotation, having moved from State to DOD and then to the National Security Council during the last decade, with a stop in between at CNN:
He said the president’s purpose in the meeting is to “reaffirm the United States’ unwavering support for the security of that alliance and trans-Atlantic unity.” It’s also meant to send a message to Putin that his country can’t intimidate these democracies, some of them relatively new and fragile.
Well, let’s see. Where is it documented that Putin has ever threatened Bulgaria or Hungary or Slovakia or Lithuania or any of the others for that matter? As it transpired, Hungary’s leader even refused to attend this pointless Biden photo op.
After all, what in the world could Putin gain by attacking these nations and occupying what would be hostile populations and damaged economies? A tremendous fiscal drain on his already beleaguered finances would be the only certainty.
The fact is, Washington has become so crazed with anti-Putin war fever that it doesn’t even ask, let alone answer, these foundational questions. Instead, it has just lapsed into grade school reasoning by analogy. If Putin attacked the government of Ukraine, why then it’s a sure bet that the nine yellow dominoes highlighted in the map below are next on the list to fall.
Bucharest Nine NATO European Countries
No, not at all. Ukraine is sui generis. It’s a hodge-podge of variant histories, ethnicities and religious traditions that never belonged under the roof of a single state.
Moreover, its propinquity to things Russian is an unassailable matter of history. Prior to the arrival of communist rule after WWI, its various regions had marinated for centuries as vassals under the tutelage of Czarist Russia. Ukraine’s historically meandering boundaries, in fact, were only finally frozen in current form by the brutal dictates of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev.
During the long amalgamated history of these neighboring, mainly Slavic populations the eastern and southern portions of the current Ukraine map became populated and economically developed by Russian speaking migrants. At length, they converted the largely empty, herder-dominated steppes into the flourishing bread basket, mining district and industrial work shop of old Russia.
This arrangement was essentially continued by the communist commissars after they consolidated control in 1922, save only for an arbitrary administrative re-arrangement which put the old “Novorossiya” (New Russia) of Catherine the Great’s time into a wholly unnatural state rechristened as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine.
These artificial borders and the ethnic hodge-podge within them were held together at the gun point of Ukraine’s local communist rulers until 1991, when the scourge of Soviet Communism perished from the earth. And almost immediately thereafter, the elections showed that the state confected by Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev had never been built to last; and that the verdict of Ukraine’s nascent democracy was that partition would someday be the only answer.
As it happened, Viktor Yanukovych was the last democratically elected politician before Washington essentially took-over the country. Of course, by the writ of the Ukraine’s de facto rulers on the Potomac he was illegally deposed and driven out of the country via the coup d’ etat in February 2014.
Needless to say, Yanukovych had been the champion of the Russian speaking populations of the Donbas and southern rim of the Black Sea. He ran on what was called the “Regions” party platform in both 2004 and 2010, against vehemently pro-Ukrainian candidates, whose bases of support were in the central and west geographies.
As shown in the two maps below, both elections were a case of red state versus blue state electoral division on steroids. Except unlike the US where a GOP gubernatorial candidate actually got a 47% showing in the deep blue state of New York this past election, the vote split in the most hard core of the respective regions (dark red and dark blue) was upwards of 90/10 in many localities.
In the 2004 election, Yanukovych narrowly lost the overall count, even as he dominated overwhelmingly in the east and south.
2004 Election Results in Ukraine
2004 Election Results in Ukraine
By contrast, in 2010 Yanukovych retraced the same massive domination of his own Russian-speaking regions while striking out in the west. But this time with the help of Washington-based election consultants (i.e. the infamous Paul Manafort) he managed to accumulate enough incremental votes to come out on top in the nation-wide tally.
2010 Election Results in Ukraine
2010 Election Results in Ukraine
Needless to say, when the foolish neocons led by the detestable Victoria Nuland, who surrounded then Vice-President Joe Biden, fomented the coup against Yanukovych in February 2014 they had no clue as to the tenuous political balance they were upending.
But it didn’t take long to strike the match. In short order the followers of the WWII Hitler ally, Stephan Bandera, who dominated the unelected, Washington-installed government in Kiev, made two destructive moves that amounted to a signal to “let the partition begin”.
The first of these was to abolish Russian as an official language in the Donbass and elsewhere. And the second was the massacre by fire of pro-Russian trade unionists in a building in Odessa by supporters of the Kiev government.
It was only a matter of time, therefore, before most of the red-colored territories on the maps above declared their independence. It was also in short order that the people of what had been the Russian province of Crimea after Catherine the Great purchased it from the Ottoman’s in 1783 voted overwhelmingly to re-join the Russian Federation. That ended their brief sojourn in the Ukrainian state, which had been Khrushchev’s 1954 gift to the communist thugs in Kiev who had helped him seize power after Stalin’s death.
Also, in short order the new proto-Fascist government in Kiev moved to deeply antagonize its historic neighbor and former fealty overlord in Moscow by seeking to join NATO and launching a brutal, unrelenting war on the breakaway Republics of the Donbas. This onslaught ended up killing upwards of 15,000 civilians during the eight year run-up to Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
Needless to say, Putin was no more interested in having nuclear missiles planted even closer to his own border than was President John Kennedy in October 1962. Nor was he about to countenance the continued slaughter of Russian speakers in the Donbass after Kiev launched a drastically stepped up shelling and bombing campaign on these beleaguered areas one week before the February 24th invasion.
Below, we will amplify further on the overwhelming reasons why the Ukraine situation is a one-off civil war situation and the unfinished and unstable residue of a state which was never built to last.
Accordingly, it is not a case at all of legitimate sovereign borders being violated. Nor does it involve an assault on the hypocritical notion of a “liberal international order” that has not actually ever existed and which, instead, has been a cover for Washington’s global hegemony all along.
But the lessons are nonetheless profound. History accumulates and eventually leads to destructive, but wholly unnecessary outcomes.
That is the case today with the utterly foolish action of Washington during the 1990s and 2000s to bring former Warsaw Pact Nations, and even breakaway Soviet Republics into a NATO alliance whose mission was over and done in 1991.
It should have been dismantled then and there. When the old Soviet monster with its 50,000 tanks and 7,000 nuclear warheads posed along-side the Bucharest Nine pictured above disappeared into the dustbin of history, there was no longer a threat to the east. There was no “front line” to defend.
At that point Washington should have and easily could have led the world to disarmament and to a revival of the lasting peace that had disappeared in the “Guns of August” in 1914.
But now the NATO section 5 mutual defense commitment to these nations is equivalent to a stupid charity that the nearly bankrupt Federal government cannot afford in any case.
There is absolutely nothing in it for the enhancement of America’s homeland security, and huge incentives for the politicians of these nations to caterwaul against Russia rather than seek peaceful accommodation.
But Sleepy Joe is a captive of the Dems “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and cannot think rationally for a moment about the Russian President.
Still, the latter most definitely did not cause the Dems to loose the 2016 election. They brought Trump’s freakish victory upon themselves by their choice of candidate and embrace of policies that much of Flyover America found deeply repugnant.
When Washington began its foolish campaign to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep in 1997, there was one American who actually possessed more knowledge, experience and analytical savvy about Russia and eastern Europe than the entire treaty-ratifying US Senate combined.
We are referring, of course, to Ambassador George F. Kennan. The latter was the intellectual father of the post-war containment policy against the Soviet Union and had spent decades in the US embassies of Europe and the Soviet Union, before going on to hold high rank in the State Department during the crucial years after WWII when the Cold War was born. Thereafter he joined academia at Princeton, where he produced a prodigious flow of scholarly work on national security policy, including a ringing dissent on the folly of LBJ’s war on Vietnam.
So by the time he penned a New York Times op ed upon the initial expansion of NATO in 1997, which he succinctly entitled “A Fateful Error”, the 93-year old Kennan had decades and decades of wisdom under his belt as a policy-maker and historian. And almost all of it was directly pertinent to the disorder left behind in the wake of the sudden collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991.
Kennan pulled no punches on the matter of NATO expansion:
A fair share of the script readers and stenographers who comprise today’s mainstream media, of course, have a faint knowledge of George Kennan and his unequivocal stance against NATO expansion, if any at all. Their blinders are simply the product of a quarter-century of accumulated recency bias—a process by which the once unthinkable becomes the unchallenged status quo.
The fact is, once the Soviet Union with its 50,000 tanks, 40,000 nuclear warheads, 5 million men under arms and frightfully militarized economy disappeared into the dustbin of history there was no purpose whatsoever for the perpetuation of NATO.
In that sense, Kennan’s “containment” policy had achieved 100% of its goal. The fearsome enemy on the eastern flank of Europe had literally vanished, meaning that what had been a one-time expedient of the Cold War could and should have been disbanded. In the rubble of the dismembered Soviet Union there was no threat left and nothing to defend or contain.
NATO’s warranted interment didn’t happen, however, and for the immensely trivial reason that the utterly unprincipled Bill Clinton determined to make hay one more time in the political posturing grounds of the “Captive Nations”. And with respect to this long forgotten matter your editor happened to have held a front row seat.
When we went to work on Capitol Hill for a GOP congressman at the peak of the Cold War in 1970 our first assignment was drafting a resolution during Captive Nations Week calling for the liberation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania etc from yoke of Soviet tyranny. Such resolutions had nothing to do with actual policy, of course, which was to leave the Great Russian Bear undisturbed in his lair called the Warsaw Pact. But as a home-front politicking matter such resolutions were catnip to the eastern European constituencies.
After eastern Europe was peacefully liberated in 1991, however, this Captive Nations gambit became self-evidently obsolete, but the Clinton Administration soon had a handy PR substitute. Namely, NATO membership for the woebegone remnants of the Warsaw Pact—a seemingly harmless gesture that had no real purpose other than to express solidarity with back home constituencies of eastern European descent.
NATO expansion, in effect, was a way for Washington politicians to say: We are still with you!
Indeed, since there was no plausible reason for maintaining a war alliance against an enemy that didn’t exist, NATO became the equivalent of a diplomatic American Legion hall. It was a place for bureaucratic veterans of the Cold War to swap combat stories and to pretend they still had something worthwhile to do.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that harmless. The military-industrial complex soon realized that it needed a tangible enemy to justify current procurement and new weapons systems and also that the former Captive Nations comprised an expanded market for its wares.
So the 14 new NATO nations formed a ready-made shopping mall for additional weapons sales.
new NATO nations by Date
That all might have been harmless enough, save for two untoward developments. The first was the designation of Russia and Putin as enemy #1 by the neocons after their adventures against “terrorism” in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the middle east came a cropper a few years after the memory of 9/11 had dimmed.
The demonization of Putin became especially urgent in late 2013 when he deftly put the kibosh on the neocon’s plan for regime change in Syria. By convincing Assad to give up his chemical weapons under international supervision, the case for military removal of the Syrian president quickly evaporated.
In short order, however, these same neocons got their revenge by fomenting a coup d’ etat on Putin’s doorstep in Ukraine. And it was led by Washington’s hand-picked proto-fascists who detested all things Russian, including the considerable populations and regions of Ukraine which were Russian-speaking.
As it happened, you don’t need a tinfoil hat to recognize the near-conspiracy on the banks of the Potomac that sent the fragile politics of the artificial state of Ukraine into a tail-spin, and which at length paved the way to the catastrophe underway there at present.
The fact is, the detestable Kagan family comprises the high preisthood of the neocon synod that has infiltrated the foreign policy establishment of both parties. And it just so happens that the very high priest of that lamentable synod, Robert Kagan, is married to Victoria Nuland, a war-mongering national security apparatchik who has served every administration since Bush the Younger, and who was the archetict of the Maidan coup on the streets of Kiev in February 2014.
From that moment on, Putin was transformed from a mere bad guy into the incarnation of evil itself in the neocon narrative. And his rational actions after the coup to reclaim Moscow’s centuries old naval bases in Russian Crimea and to offer succor to the imperiled Russian-speaking populations of the Donbas only added fuel to the fire.
But then came the deluge. In a word, the freakish election of Donald Trump in 2016 was falsely laid at Putin’s doorstep, even as Washington’s bipartisan ruling elites and their henchman in the mainstream media went berserk against the Donald.
At length, it turned into a a full-fledged mania—a Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) that pales into insignificance prior outbreaks of American political irrationality, such as the McCarthyism of the 1950s and the Red Hunts of 1919.
In a word, the TDS has utterly destroyed Washington’s foreign policy compass. The demonization of Putin has become so extreme and un-moored from reality that Washington is literally possessed by a ghost of the old Soviet Union. That is, it imagines a ferocious and powerful enemy on the “eastern front” that simply does not exist.
For crying out loud, GDP is a measure of latent capacity to make war, but the GDP of NATO is 26 times larger than that of Russia. Likewise, defense budgets are a measure of actual current military capacity, of which NATO’s war spending is 15 times larger. And that’s in the here and now.
Moreover, from the point of view of Vlad Putin leaping over the Atlantic and Pacific ocean moats to invade the American shores, the question recurs: How many aircraft carriers does he have compared to America’s 20 aircraft and heliocraft carriers?
One!
And it’s 38 years old!
In a word, the absurdity of Washington’s proxy war against Russia and this week’s meeting of the so-called Bucharest Nine is the product of a foreign policy compass that has been shattered by two decades worth of myths and lies that served the short-term interests of Washington’s career politicians and their Deep State masters.
But go back to the fact that George Kennan was right 26 years ago and the truth that nothing has changed in the interim to alter his judgement.
In that context, what would a president not entombed in the false narrative of the past quarter century actually do?
Here are a few possible starters:
That would be a start. It would put America back on the road toward rational homeland security, and enable a global future not imperiled by the threat of Nuclear Armageddon.
* * *
Originally posted at David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
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Fast Forward to Fascism [Ukraine today]
Posted 12November2022 iEarlGreyTV:
The nationalist movement in Ukraine didn’t just happen; it took years to build. It’s been growing for years, nurtured by western curators and supported by western funds. By the beginning of the Maidan, an entire network of neo-nazi units had already been up and running in Ukraine, but the Ukrainian government didn’t prosecute them. Ready and able military and terrorist units dispersed and showed up at anti-Maidan meetings in Ukraine’s cities. The years 2019 and 2020 saw meetings and protests in Kiev demanding the denial of special status for the DNR and LNR breakaway regions.
One of its main goals was to form an ideology that would dehumanize Russians and break all ties that existed for decades before. Initially, Russians weren’t seen as a minority in Ukraine, but the anti-Russian sentiment gradually became overwhelming. Nationalists have been taught how to lead a war on social media, eventually launching a guided communication battle against the Russian people.
Stepan Bandera was the head of the Ukrainian nationalist organisation in 1929. In 1934, the Gestapo accepted the Berlin chapter of the organization — he organized terrorist acts, killing officials. In 1941, the Ukrainian nationalist organization was responsible for the biggest Jewish pogrom in Lvov, killing about 7,000 people. Yet, in 2010, Stepan Bandera was pronounced a national hero, with torch-lit marches in his honour ever since.
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Zelensky awards Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the ‘Hero of Ukraine’ award
How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia
Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal, March 4, 2022 https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/04/nazis-ukrainian-war-russia/
While Western media deploys Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewish heritage to refute accusations of Nazi influence in Ukraine, the president has ceded to neo-Nazi forces and now depends on them as front line fighters.
Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away.
Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.
In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy.
With appeals for disengagement from the frontlines firmly rejected, Zelensky melted down on camera. “I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelensky implored the fighters.
Liveuamap-tweet-26October2019-Zelensky has visited disengaging area in Zolote today
Once video of the stormy confrontation spread across Ukrainian social media channels, Zelensky became the target of an angry backlash.
Andriy Biletsky, the proudly fascist Azov Battalion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen”, vowed to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky pressed any further. Meanwhile, a parliamentarian from the party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko openly fantasized about Zelensky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.
Though Zelensky achieved a minor disengagement, the neo-Nazi paramilitaries escalated their “No Capitulation” campaign. And within months, fighting began to heat up again in Zolote, sparking a new cycle of violations of the Minsk Agreement.
By this point, Azov had been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its street vigilante wing, known as the National Corps, was deployed across the country under the watch of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and alongside the National Police. In December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament.
A full-scale conflict with Russia was approaching, and the distance between Zelensky and the extremist paramilitaries was closing fast.
This February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukrainian territory on a stated mission to “demilitarize and denazify” the country, US media embarked on a mission of its own: to deny the power of neo-Nazi paramilitaries over the country’s military and political sphere. As the US government-funded National Public Radio insisted, “Putin’s language [about denazification] is offensive and factually wrong.”
In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, US media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky, a former TV star and comedian from a Jewish background. It is a role the actor-turned-politician has eagerly assumed.
But as we will see, Zelensky has not only ceded ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrusted them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russian and Russian forces.
The president’s Jewishness as Western media PR device
Hours before President Putin’s February 24 speech declaring denazification as the goal of Russian operations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “asked how a people who lost eight million of its citizens fighting Nazis could support Nazism,” according to the BBC.
Raised in a non-religious Jewish family in the Soviet Union during the 1980’s, Zelensky has downplayed his heritage in the past. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked during a 2019 interview in which he declined to go into further detail about his religious background.
Today, as Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion, Zelensky is no longer ashamed to broadcast his Jewishness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he wondered aloud during a public address. For a US media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool.
Alex Rubinstein-tweet-28February2022-Watch left & right wing factions of MSM unite
A few examples of the US media’s deployment of Zelensky as a shield against allegations of rampant Nazism in Ukraine are below (see mash-up above for video):
Behind the corporate media spin lies the complex and increasingly close relationship Zelensky’s administration has enjoyed with the neo-Nazi forces invested with key military and political posts by the Ukrainian state, and the power these open fascists have enjoyed since Washington installed a Western-aligned regime through a coup in 2014.
In fact, Zelensky’s top financial backer, the Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, has been a key benefactor of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and other extremists militias.
The Azov Battalion marches with Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel flags in Mariupol, August 2020
Backed by Zelensky’s top financier, neo-Nazi militants unleash a wave of intimidation
Incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, the Azov Battalion is considered the most ideologically zealous and militarily motivated unit fighting pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region.
With Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel insignia on the uniforms of its fighters, who have been photographed with Nazi SS symbols on their helmets, Azov “is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology…[and] is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing US-based white supremacy organizations,” according to an FBI indictment of several US white nationalists that traveled to Kiev to train with Azov.
Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian energy baron of Jewish heritage, has been a top funder of Azov since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions, and has deployed them as a personal thug squad to protect his financial interests.
In 2019, Kolomoisky emerged as the top backer of Zelensky’s presidential bid. Though Zelensky made anti-corruption the signature issue of his campaign, the Pandora Papers exposed him and members of his inner circle stashing large payments from Kolomoisky in a shadowy web of offshore accounts.
President Zelensky (C) meets with billionaire oligarch and business associate Ihor Kolomoisky on September 10, 2019
When Zelensky took office in May 2019, the Azov Battalion maintained de facto control of the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol and its surrounding villages. As Open Democracy noted, “Azov has certainly established political control of the streets in Mariupol. To maintain this control, they have to react violently, even if not officially, to any public event which diverges sufficiently from their political agenda.”
Attacks by Azov in Mariupol have included assaults on “feminists and liberals” marching on International Women’s Day among other incidents.
In March 2019, members of the Azov Battalion’s National Corps attacked the home of Viktor Medvedchuk, the leading opposition figure in Ukraine, accusing him of treason for his friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.
Zelensky’s administration escalated the attack on Medvedchuk, shuttering several media outlets he controlled in February 2021 with the open approval of the US State Department, and jailing the opposition leader for treason three months later. Zelensky justified his actions on the grounds that he needed to “fight against the danger of Russian aggression in the information arena.”
Next, in August 2020, Azov’s National Corps opened fire on a bus containing members of Medvedchuk’s party, Patriots for Life, wounding several with rubber-coated steel bullets.
The Eurasianist-tweet-27August2020-bus carrying members of Ukraine’s opposition party was attacked by Ukrainian National Corps
Zelensky failed to rein in neo-Nazis, wound up collaborating with them
Following his failed attempt to demobilize neo-Nazi militants in the town of Zolote in October 2019, Zelensky called the fighters to the table, telling reporters “I met with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and everyone else.”
A few seats away from the Jewish president was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.
Zelensky meets with “veterans” including Yehven Karas (far right) and Dmytro Shatrovsky, an Azov Battalion leader (bottom left).
During the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” that ousted Ukraine’s elected president in 2014, C14 activists took over Kiev’s city hall and plastered its walls with neo-Nazi insignia before taking shelter in the Canadian embassy.
As the former youth wing of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, C14 appears to draw its name from the infamous 14 words of US neo-Nazi leader David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
By offering to carry out acts of spectacular violence on behalf of anyone willing to pay, the hooligans have fostered a cozy relationship with various governing bodies and powerful elites across Ukraine.
C14 neo-Nazi gang offers to carry out violence-for-hire: “C14 works for you. Help us keep afloat, and we will help you. For regular donors, we are opening a box for wishes. Which of your enemies would you like to make life difficult for? We’ll try to do that.”
A March 2018 report by Reuters stated that “C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a ‘municipal guard’ to patrol the streets,” effectively giving them the sanction of the state to carry out pogroms.
As The Grayzone reported, C14 led raid to “purge” Romani from Kiev’s railway station in collaboration with the Kiev police.
Alex Rubinstein-tweet-28February2022-C14 Nazi terror gang carrying out a pogrom against a Romani camp
Not only was this activity sanctioned by the Kiev city government, the US government itself saw little problem with it, hosting Bondar at an official US government institution in Kiev where he bragged about the pogroms. C14 continued to receive state funding throughout 2018 for “national-patriotic education.”
Karas has claimed that the Ukrainian Security Serves would “pass on” information regarding pro-separatist rallies “not only [to] us, but also Azov, the Right Sector and so on.”
“In general, deputies of all factions, the National Guard, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs work for us. You can joke like that,” Karas said.
Throughout 2019, Zelensky and his administration deepened their ties with ultra-nationalist elements across Ukraine.
Then-Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk onstage at the neo-Nazi “Veterans Strong” concert
After Prime Minister attends neo-Nazi concert, Zelensky honors Right Sector leader
Just days after Zelensky’s meeting with Karas and other neo-Nazi leaders in November 2019, Oleksiy Honcharuk – then the Prime Minister and deputy head of Zelensky’s presidential office – appeared on stage at a neo-Nazi concert organized by C14 figure and accused murderer Andriy Medvedko.
Zelensky’s Minister for Veterans Affairs not only attended the concert, which featured several antisemitic metal bands, she promoted the concert on Facebook.
Also in 2019, Zelensky defended Ukrainian footballer Roman Zolzulya against Spanish fans taunting him as a “Nazi.” Zolzulya had posed beside photos of the World War II-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and openly supported the Azov Battalion. Zelensky responded to the controversy by proclaiming that all of Ukraine backed Zolzulya, describing him as “not only a cool football player but a true patriot.”
In November 2021, one of Ukraine’s most prominent ultra-nationalist militiamen, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Bandera who led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.
Dmytro Yarosh poses with Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces
A month later, as war with Russia drew closer, Zelensky awarded Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the “Hero of Ukraine” commendation. Known as “Da Vinci,” Kosyubaylo keeps a pet wolf in his frontline base, and likes to joke to visiting reporters that his fighters “feed it the bones of Russian-speaking children.”
Zelensky awards Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the ‘Hero of Ukraine’ award
Zelensky awards Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the ‘Hero of Ukraine’ award
Ukrainian state-backed neo-Nazi leader flaunts influence on the eve of war with Russia
On February 5, 2022, only days before full-scale war with Russia erupted, Yevhen Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 delivered a stem-winding public address in Kiev intended to highlight the influence his organization and others like it enjoyed over Ukrainian politics.
Alex Rubinstein-tweet-27February2022-Yevhen Karas the leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi terror gang C14’s speech
“LGBT and foreign embassies say ‘there were not many Nazis at Maidan, maybe about 10 percent of real ideological ones,’” Karas remarked. “If not for those eight percent [of neo-Nazis] the effectiveness [of the Maidan coup] would have dropped by 90 percent.”
The 2014 Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” would have been a “gay parade” if not for the instrumental role of neo-Nazis, he proclaimed.
Karas went on to opine that the West armed Ukrainian ultra-nationalists because “we have fun killing.” He also fantasized about the balkanization of Russia, declaring that it should be broken up into “five different” countries.
Yevhen Karas delivering the Nazi salute
“If we get killed…we died fighting a holy war”
When Russian forces entered Ukraine this February 24, encircling the Ukrainian military in the east and driving towards Kiev, President Zelensky announced a national mobilization that included the release of criminals from prison, among them accused murderers wanted in Russia. He also blessed the distribution of arms to average citizens, and their training by battle-hardened paramilitaries like the Azov Battalion.
With fighting underway, Azov’s National Corps gathered hundreds of ordinary civilians, including grandmothers and children, to train in public squares and warehouses from Kharviv to Kiev to Lviv.
Max Blumenthal-tweet-1March2022-Azov Battalion’s fighters training and passing out arms to residents of Kharkiv
On February 27, the official Twitter account of the National Guard of Ukraine posted video of “Azov Fighters” greasing their bullets with pig fat to humiliate Russian Muslim fighters from Chechnya.
НГУ-tweet-27February2022-Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs
A day later, the Azov Battalion’s National Corps announced that the Azov Battalion’s Kharkiv Regional Police would begin using the city’s Regional State Administration building as a defense headquarters. Footage posted to Telegram the following day shows the Azov-occupied building being hit by a Russian airstrike.
Besides authorizing the release of hardcore criminals to join the battle against Russia, Zelensky has ordered all males of fighting age to remain in the country. Azov militants have proceeded to enforce the policy by brutalizing civilians attempting to flee from the fighting around Mariupol.
According to one Greek resident in Mariupol recently interviewed by a Greek news station, “When you try to leave you run the risk of running into a patrol of the Ukrainian fascists, the Azov Battalion,” he said, adding “they would kill me and are responsible for everything.”
Footage posted online appears to show uniformed members of a fascist Ukrainian militia in Mariupol violently pulling fleeing residents out of their vehicles at gunpoint.
Deus Abscondis-tweet-26February2022-Ukrainian NAZI are preventing people from leaving Mariupol and are shooting at them
Other video filmed at checkpoints around Mariupol showed Azov fighters shooting and killing civilians attempting to flee.
On March 1, Zelensky replaced the regional administrator of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbass region.
Meanwhile, as a massive convoy of Russian armored vehicles bore down on Kiev, Yehven Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 posted a video on YouTube from inside a vehicle presumably transporting fighters.
“If we get killed, it’s fucking great because it means we died fighting a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we survive, it’s going to be even fucking better! That’s why I don’t see a downside to this, only upside!”
Alex Rubinstein
Alexander Rubinstein
Alex Rubinstein is an independent reporter on Substack. You can subscribe to get free articles from him delivered to your inbox here. If you want to support his journalism, which is never put behind a paywall, you can give a one-time donation to him through PayPal here or sustain his reporting through Patreon here.
Max Blumenthal
Max Blumenthal
Editor-in-Chief
The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
The Real Politick with Mark Sleboda
Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief is an Open Banderite Fascist
Mark Sleboda
Mark Sleboda, 14January2023 https://marksleboda.substack.com/p/ukraines-commander-in-chief-is-an?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
The Real Politick with Mark Sleboda – Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief is an Open Banderite Fascist
Since the openly West-backed Maidan Putsch in 2014, January 1st has been proclaimed a national holiday in Ukraine, celebrating the birthday of the genocidal WW2-era West Ukrainian fascist and anti-semite ideologue, terrorist insurgent leader, Nazi collaborator, and Holocaust perpetrator, Stepan Bandera.
Nazi Stepan Bandera
celebration of Stepan Bandera
For the last eight years it has been marked by horrifying torchlit nighttime parades of the regime’s NeoNazi deathsquads and brownshirts goose-stepping through the streets of the capital, Kiev.
Ukraine: march for Bandera’s birthday
This year the Kiev Putsch regime’s Parliamentary body the Rada, celebrated the fascist holiday with a tweet, now deleted, on Twitter showing the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 4 star general Valery Zaluzhny, standing smiling smugly, in front of a portrait of Stepan Bandera, accompanied by one of Bandera’s quotes,
“The complete and final victory of Ukrainian nationalism will come when the Russian empire ceases to exist.” And then added, “A fight against the Russian empire is currently underway. And the precepts of Stepan Bandera are well known to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.”
Christopher Lash-tweet-2January2023-tweet commemorating Stepan Bandera
This is hardly the first such revelation. Zaluzhnyi is infamously known as open ideological supporter of Stepan Bandera, now officially glorified by the West-backed Kiev Putsch regime as a hero and “founding father” of the new Ukraine under their rule and vision.
This is almost certainly one of the criteria for which he was chosen to lead the Kiev regime’s military forces.
In 2021, right after becoming the Kiev regime’s Commander-In-Chief, Zaluzhny officially appointed Dmitry Yarosh, the head and founder of the NeoNazi & white supremacist paramilitary group, the Right Sector, as his personal “senior military advisor”.
Ukraine appoints former neo-Nazi paramilitray leader to senior army advisory role
And Zaluzhny obviously loves throwing around pr photo shoots of himself brazenly displaying his Banderite fascist bona fides. Yes –despite the fact that his President, Zelenskiy, has a Jewish daddy.
This year, the Kiev regime’s Commander-in-Chief posted to his own Twitter account a “frontline” photo of him striding in uniform, with assault rifle in hand, prominently displaying a bracelet carved with swastikas.
Lamely the Western MSM echoed every crypto-NeoNazi ever by claiming, “Its not a swastika, its just an ancient Viking symbol”. Seriously?
Yeah, I’m sure the Bandera-worshipping head of the Ukrainian military was wearing swastikas just because he’s secretly a Norse pagan.
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine-tweet-6October2022
Ukrainian army’s commander-in-chief poses with swastika bracelet
In another photo from this year, Zaluzhnyi is shown in uniform standing in a military office with several other soldiers in front of a desk adorned with busts of OUN-B leaders and Nazi-collaborators Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. Photos of both Shukhevych and Bandera are also prominently hanging on the wall in the background along with the red and black Banderite flag.
Zaluzhnyi is shown in uniform standing in a military office
A separate photo taken of Zaluzhnyi’s office also has a bust of Bandera displayed prominently for all to see on a table against the wall.
Zaluzhnyi’s office also has a bust of Bandera
In a recent interview with the Economist, Zaluzhny said flat out-
“We’ve been at war since 2014… And the most important experience we had and the one which we have practiced almost like a religion is that Russians and any other enemies must be killed, just killed, and most importantly, we should not be afraid, not hesitate, to do it. And this is what we are doing.”
Yes they have been indeed killing Russians since 2014.
In a civil conflict in country where 20% of the population is ethnic Russian and a significant proportion of the rest, particularly in the East, are Russian-speaking and regard Russians as a brother people, not as “the enemy”.
Percentage of Ethnic Russian in Ukraine by region in 2001 Ukrainian census
Ukraine and Crimea by ethnic identity
This is the Banderite fascist Commander-in-Chief of a military armed, trained, given C4ISR, directed and puppeted by NATO and funded to the cost of now hundreds of billions of Western taxpayer dollars in a proxy war on Russia. He’s celebrated in Western media reports, magazine covers, and newspaper front pages as a hero!
How can this be?
The grim reality is that as long as Zaluzhny’s hatred and violence, and that of his NeoNazi hordes, are directed, for the moment, primarily against ethnic Russians, “pro-Russian Eastern Ukrainians” and leftists, then his brand of Banderite fascism is geopolitically useful to the West, and thus “kosher”.
Indeed the US and Canada have a long documented history of supporting Banderite fascists in Ukraine, and their analoques in the Baltics, back to the immediate aftermath of WW2.
Zaluschny…Hey – the bastard may be a fascist, but he’s OUR fascist, god-damn it!
Ukraine’s Commander in Chief is an Open Fascist
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PRRESS – Trending Italian News
Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding
Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding
by Alex Viajaenmoto https://prress.com/world/heres-what-the-azov-battalion-tattoos-are-hiding/
[EDD: Original Post:
Ecco cosa nascondono i tatuaggi del Battaglione Azov
23 Maggio 2022 – 08:57
Il ministero della Difesa russo mostra le immagini dei prigionieri del Battaglione Azov, accusato di simpatie neonaziste. Abbiamo analizzato i tatuaggi dei militari ucraini: cosa rappresentano
Matteo Carnieletto
23May2022 Matteo Carnieletto https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/mondo/ecco-cosa-nascondono-i-tatuaggi-battaglione-azov-2036447.html ]
The soldiers of the Azov Battalion they are called one by one. A nod from the Russian soldiers, who ask
the surrendered to lift their shirt and put on their underwear, is enough. The men of the Kremlin scan the militiamen in search of tattoos that, in some way, recall the Nazi symbolism. And they find many.
After all, the president Vladimir Putin – announcing the start of the “special operation”, as the Kremlin called it – he promised he would “denazify“ Ukraine.
And these images, released by the Ministry of Defense and aimed primarily at the Russian people, prove it. What the soldiers of Moscow are fighting is a war against the new Nazism.
The most common symbol is that of the Battalion, wrapped in the yellow and blue colors of the Ukrainian flag. As we have already explained, it is the Wolfsangel the love of the wolves, which was the first coat of arms of the party founded by Adolf Hitler then also entered the iconography of SS.
Other soldiers wear the black Sun used before by the Thule company one of the esoteric organizations that contributed to the thought and rise of Nazism, and then from the Schutzstaffel, the aforementioned SS.
Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 2
Another frequently recurring element is the Totenkrof, the “death’s head”. It is a skull from whose nape emerge some crossbones. Starting in 1809, this symbol was widely used in German military and political iconography. But it is during the Third Reich that the use of the Totenkrof reaches its peak. It is used by the SS and, in particular, by SS-Totenkopfverbände. Founded in 1936, after the annexation of Austria by Germany, Hitler entrusted them with the custody of the concentration camps.
Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 3
Runes are widely used by Battalion soldiers. In particular the Ôþalan, literally “heritage, inheritance”. Symbol of iron, in ancient times it was worn to protect against trolls and, in general, evil influences. Under the Nazis, this rune was used by the Seventh Mountain Division “Prinz Eugen”, a unit of the SS that was used on the Yugoslav front during the Second World War.
Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 4
In addition to the Ôþalan, some soldiers of the Battalion were branded with the Lebensrune used by the SS used in the (insane) Lebensborn eugenics project strongly supported and supported by Heinrich Himmler, to defend the Aryan race. Tattooed swastikas seem widespread. And it is hard to believe – as stated by Michail Pirog, chief of the 4th Azov Battalion stationed in Zaporizhzhia – whether it is just an “ancient Slavic, pan-European, even Indian symbol”.
Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 5
Also because there are those who have had the Sigrunea symbol that indicated the sun but which was then associated with victory (in German Siegin fact) and then at the initials of the SS. These images were recorded outside the Azovstal factory, as can be guessed from the background and the long avenue behind the soldiers of the Azov Battalion.
Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 6
However, the Russian Defense Ministry has also released other photos, taken in an indoor location, impossible to identify. So we don’t know if they are pictures of Azov prisoners or not. But they are significant, as long as they are taken with some caution (like all the images that come from this conflict). In the first weeks of the war, in fact, various Russian media released some carefully edited videos and photographs in which Nazi flags and copies of the Mein Kampf, strangely intact
among the incinerated walls. More recently, the same media also showed a helmet, fresh from green paint, on which the Sigrune of the SS stands out. It is difficult to say where the documentation ends and where the propaganda. Having made this necessary premise, among the frame widespread by the Russians we see a soldier with a large tattoo on his
chest that depicts a hooded man who seems to be holding a torch or, perhaps, a Molotov cocktail. A scene depicting a stadium curve (a man with a megaphone is also present) or an image celebrating the Euromaidan? Impossible to say. But one cannot fail to notice the great one Celtic cross that dominates the chest of man. A little further up, two digits: 14 And 88. The site ofAnti defamation league explains the meaning of these numbers: “It is a combination of two popular white supremacist number symbols. 14 is short for the slogan 14 words: we must guarantee the existence of our people and a future for white children. “88 instead represents the exclamation Heil Hitler (the H is in fact the eighth letter of the alphabet).
Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 7
Yet another soldier preferred to immortalize Hitler, with swastika in the arm. Another one, Stepan Bandera the
leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Oun) who collaborated – in a very turbulent way – with the Nazis against the Soviets and was one of the ones responsible for the extermination of Jews in Ukraine.
Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 8
Then there is a last vein that the Azov soldiers have decided to represent on their bodies, that one esoteric,
obviously also present in the runes that have, in fact, a hidden meaning. Some militiamen have tattoos with goats, mythological animals and pentacles which recall Satanism. After all, Nazism, even before being a political movement, was first of all an (esoteric) culture born in the undergrowth of German circles between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, as the political scientist Giorgio has documented in detail.
Gauls.
Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 9
Putin is not fighting to “denazify” Ukraine. Just look at the numbers to figure it out. The Ukrainian army can count on about 200,000 troops, which can reach 900,000 if we consider reservists. The Azov Battalion, which in 2014 had a few hundred followers, today can count on a few thousand men. A minimal percentage if you compare it to the armed forces of Kiev. Yet the tattoos on the body of Ukrainian volunteers demonstrate the link between them and the Third Reich. A bond that, in these eighty days of conflict, has been forgotten for too long to justify their resistance to the troops of Moscow.
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Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding
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Interview with a Stormtrooper
Published bydreizinreport on https://thedreizinreport.com/2022/07/01/interview-with-a-stormtrooper/
Star Wars Stormtrooper
If the Star Wars rebels took as prisoner an Imperial stormtrooper clone, and sat him down for an on-camera interview, without his armor, with a cigarette, he would come across much like this.
This Azov prisoner was recently interviewed in captivity. Among other things:
He is supernaturally calm and confident, cocky at times, knows he won’t be mistreated, says he is safe because he is on Russian territory (i.e. not in Donetsk.)
He says about five times that he is a soldier and not a war criminal, his unit was ethical, his unit was ethical, Russia has nothing to charge him with, “I am a prisoner of war, I am not a criminal, I am a soldier”, his unit was ethical, basically you got nothin’ on me, detective. He’s obviously repeating a short script that was drilled into him and all his comrades before the Azov’s surrender.
He claims that his sniper squad (in which he was the number two in rank) didn’t know if they actually killed anyone; they absolutely never kept any records of how many they shot, they never even talked about it. (LOL, this is fantastical, but at least he’s not claiming to have been just a cook or mechanic.)
He says, OK sure there were Azov guys with swastika tattoos, but not in his squad. He’s not a Nazi, the Azov are not Nazis. All the guys with Swastikas, checked out of the Azov by late 2015 (which contradicts the first sentence of this paragraph.) In fact, he knows a guy in Russia with a swastika tattoo, so what’s the big deal about all this Ukraine Nazi stuff?
(If you didn’t know, ticky-tacky Viking-ism is a quasi-religion among “ultranationalist” young Ukrainian men of low intelligence. It was likely introduced by more intelligent people as an “acceptable”—to foreign sponsors—alternative to Nazism, although many of its adherents do have Nazi tattoos and/or collect Nazi paraphernalia.)
He claims the Azov never shot any Russian prisoners, the infamous video from the Azov’s Kharkov affiliate is fake, or they’re lying when they say there’s a video, whatever.
He says Bandera is THE national hero of the Ukraine. Bandera couldn’t have been a bad guy, because the Germans locked him up at one point.
He claims to know Ukrainian history very well. Claims that Kharkov was founded by a Cossack named Kharko (this is a folk story or sort of a joke, not historical.)
He claims that his squad released 11 Russian/Donetsk prisoners for no particular reason—just didn’t feel like bringing them to the bunkers when the Azov was retreating into the steel plant. (LOL. As I said, this guy has been “coached.”)
One of the Russian prisoners, whom he so much enjoyed talking to, and with whom he really hit it off, was a Caucasus guy with the given name of Shakh (which means Shah, as in the Shah of Persia—literally no one in Russia, or perhaps anywhere, has this name.) There are family names like Shakhnazarov and other derivatives, but Shakh by itself, as a given or family name, is fantastical.)
He is grateful for the protection that the vakk-seenz continue to provide. (Haha, just kidding, he didn’t say that, but surely this guy has much in common with people you know!)
(1) The Azov is a cult. Literally.
(2) The Azov’s zampolits (political officers) are/were operating on a very high level.
(3) The practice of inculcating dumb “talking points” into the broad population, is as well developed in the Ukraine as it is in the USA—indeed, Russia lags far behind in this capacity.
Just remember please, since 2015, the Azov was the main “behind the scenes but not always” authority in Mariupol, and operated a business empire in the city, also setting up affiliates in Kharkov and Kiev, as well as running the Ukraine’s single largest politically-oriented youth organization.
At its peak (just prior to the Russian invasion), the Azov had likely close to 10,000 uniformed personnel and civilian employees. It was by far the single largest military component within the Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, and also the only one that was essentially also a political organization in its own right.
The Azov is not marginal in the Ukraine, the Azov is the Ukraine, or one of the Ukraines, anyway—the dominant one.
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The Azov Battalion: Laboratory of Nazism
The Alternative World 23 May2022 https://thealtworld.com/thealtworld/the-azov-battalion-laboratory-of-nazism
The Azov Battalion
Western propaganda continues to present the defenders of Mariupol as heroic martyrs, but every day it becomes harder to do so. They have been involved in the murder and brutal torture of women and children. The Azov Battalion is a symbol of hell and years of terror for the people of Donbass.
On 30 October 2014, Ganja was detained in Mariupol by five men in military uniform with Azov Battalion chevrons and balaclavas. Already in a car, they beat her with their guns and urinated on her. They took her out of her car, kicked her, and fired a volley of shots over her head. They took her to Mariupol airport, where they carried on torturing her until 8 November. After that, they took her to court and a pre-trial detention centre.
Tatiana was a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine, now outlawed in the country. She took part in protest rallies in Mariupol and the 11 May referendum over the future of the Donetsk region. She was not even aware that she was blacklisted as an “intransigent separatist”.
In March 2019 during a press conference in Moscow, former officer of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) Vasily Prozorov spoke about “The Library”: a secret prison at Mariupol airport, a city controlled by the Azov Battalion. The “Library” contained “books”, the name given to captured DPR militiamembers and ordinary citizens “suspected of separatism”. They were tortured there. The place had two disconnected refrigerated cells with sealed doors and no furniture. Prozorov showed photographs of nine prisoners from the “Library” – among them were a teenager in a khaki t-shirt and two old men. All of them showed signs of beatings.
Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov shows a picture of one of the “Library” prisoners at a press conference in Moscow.
© Sputnik / Vladimir Astapkovich
Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov shows a picture of one of the “Library” prisoners at a press conference in Moscow.
© Sputnik / Vladimir Astapkovich
Azov survivors also confirmed his declarations to Sputnik
Former “Library” inmate Tatiana Ganja described the prison as a “real hell and place of death”.
On 8 November 2014, Ganja was taken from the airport for investigative actions. She was released following a prisoner exchange between Ukraine and the Donetsk People’s Republic on 26 December. Since then, she has been living in Donetsk in one of the dormitories for refugees. Azov looted her home in Mariupol.
One day, Elena Blokha, a journalist from Mariupol, also found herself in the “Library’s ‘fridge’”.
They detained Blokha along with her son and placed him in a male cell with several other prisoners.
Azov: The Beginning
In April 2014, after the Maidan triumph and when a street war between supporters and opponents [of Maidan] broke out in all major cities in southeastern Ukraine, the then-Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov announced an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) in Donbass. While the NATO was started in order to form “volunteer battalions”, these batallions later became infamous for their atrocities against civilians and captured militiamembers.
The Azov Battalion was officially established on 5 May 2014 in the Kharkov neo-Nazi organisation Patriots of Ukraine*, the power wing of the Social-National Assembly. The “patriots” opened their first congress in 1999 with a torchlit procession similar to the marches seen in Hitler’s Germany.
The unit of 50-60 fighters possessed several smooth bore rifles and traumatic pistols. The head of the press service, Stepan Baida, described the Azov’s level of equipment at the time as “reinforced troops”.
The Black Corps patches, which directly allude to Reichsführer SS Himmler’s military (“Das Schwarze Korps”, translated from the German as “Black Corps”, the official printed media of the SS), continued to be used by the Azov even after its incorporation into legalranks commanded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
At first, it was a deemed a volunteer battalion in the Special Tasks Patrol Police of Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Then, in October 2014, it became a regiment of the National Guard. As a military unit, Azov was authorised to acquire artillery and tanks.
Azov Battalion cadets deployed in the conflict zone in southeastern Ukraine, 2014.
© Sputnik / Alexander Maksimenko / Go to the photo bank
Azov Battalion cadets deployed in the conflict zone in southeastern Ukraine, 2014.
© Sputnik / Alexander Maksimenko / Go to the photo bank
Mariupol Massacre
The presence of Azov became fatal for the residents of Mariupol long before 2022. What happened there in the spring of 2014 was the most important episode of the Donbass conflict.
The Victory Day demonstration on 9 May 2014 ended in clashes near the city police headquarters. According to Kiev’s official information, 13 people were killed, including police officers, National Guard members and Azov Battalion fighters, as well as civilians.
The local police were sympathetic to the Donetsk People’s Republic, but did not take any action against their own superiors or the Ukrainian authorities in general.
Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov addressing the situation in Ukraine after the coup at a press conference in Moscow.
© Sputnik / Vladimir Trefilov / Go to the photo bank
Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov addressing the situation in Ukraine after the coup at a press conference in Moscow.
© Sputnik / Vladimir Trefilov / Go to the photo bank
A referendum on the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic was scheduled for 11 May 2014. According to Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Prozorov, Mariupol police officers received orders to prevent the voting by blocking polling stations and detaining election commission members. However, the majority refused to obey, as they wanted to avoid conflicts with their fellow compatriots, including relatives.
Flowers and candles in memory of those killed at Mariupol police headquarters in May 2015.
© Sputnik / Natalia Seliverstova
Flowers and candles in memory of those killed at Mariupol police headquarters in May 2015.
© Sputnik / Natalia Seliverstova
The list of those killed in Mariupol that day include only police officers, security forces and civilians.
‘White Leader’
Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the National Corps political party.
© Sputnik / Stringer
Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the National Corps political party.
© Sputnik / Stringer
Andriy Biletsky, a neo-Nazi known as White Leader (a nickname that a civilised person would find absurd which was given to him by his supporters before the Maidan), became Azov’s leader. That same year, 2014, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament].
So what did White Leader do before Azov? Shortly before heading the battalion, Biletsky was released from prison. He was freed from the Kharkov pre-trial detention centre in late February 2014 thanks to Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who favoured Azov and admitted that he had “special plans” for the unit.
Biletsky and his accomplices were imprisoned on charges of assaulting Sergei Kolesnik, who, as a result of an incident, sustained open skull and brain injuries and multiple stab wounds. The case was opened under the article of “robbery”.
The reason for the attack stemmed from an online argument in which the victim had been careless in speaking out against fascism. Biletsky was arrested and immediately became a “martyr” to the victorious Euromaidan; his detention was seen as political repression.
Biletsky has never concealed his Nazi views. Here are some of his most striking quotes.
On his mission and Jews:
On blood purity:
On his perception of Nazi collaborators the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA, an extremist organisation banned in Russia):
According to Kharkov journalists, Biletsky’s supporters began holding more or less visible actions in the fall of 2005. As early as 14 April 2006, on the anniversary of Koliivshchyna (the Cossack uprising of 1768, which led to a mass slaughter of Poles and Jews), they organised a xenophobic “Ukraine against the occupation” march in the city’s centre. According to various estimates, between 100 and 200 people took part in the rally. This event was followed by actions against the Vietnamese hostels in Kharkov.
Biletsky’s unit skillfully recruited or attracted representatives of far-right youth subcultures to join its ranks. The young neo-Nazis were drawn by their focus on violent methods of struggle: beatings, raids and pogroms.
The “vyshkols” – training camps – of the Patriots of Ukraine organisation were completely different from, for example, the [far-right paramilitary organisations] Tryzub of Stepan Bandera (another extremist organisation banned in Russia), the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists or the Youth Nationalist Congress. In these camps, the organisation held activities for schoolchildren shooting air rifles, marching through forests and singing songs around a campfire. Biletsky, in turn, taught how to storm buildings or “remove” a guardsman from behind (how to strangle and stab him in the heart).
The Kharkov branch alone had between 200 and 300 fighters in the early 2010s, some of whom lived permanently in the barracks at the organisation’s premises.
Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev
© Sputnik / Stringer / Go to the photo bank
Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev
© Sputnik / Stringer / Go to the photo bank
Where Did the Money Come From?
The Azov was funded – at least partially – by oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, as was the case with the other volunteer battalions operating in the ATO. Furthermore, Svetlana Zvarich, director of the Ukrainian National Information Service (one of the largest companies in the local information collection, transmission and processing market), provided assistance.
On 16 April 2015, Ukrayinska Pravda mentioned the charity foundation for educational innovations, which officially “works with Azov and provides it with everything it needs” in a report from Azov’s base at the ATEK engineering plant in Kiev , citing a comment by “the chairman of the supervisory board of the foundation, Svetlana Zvarich”.
But that is not the whole story. On 15 July 2016, the public learned that Azov had links to criminals when SBU Special Forces liquidated a group of Azov officers armed with assault rifles and a grenade launcher in Zaporozhye . They had attacked a money collectors’ car, a raid that was clearly not their first.
Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev
© Sputnik / Alexei Vovk / Go to the photo bank
Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev
© Sputnik / Alexei Vovk / Go to the photo bank
SBU Chief Vasyl Hrytsak said at the time that the Secret Service was checking Azov’s involvement in at least ten similar crimes.
There is also knowlegde of a bribe of two million hryvnias ($68,000) extorted from a Kiev businessman by the battalion’s head of manning Vladimir Brzezinski and former Azov Chief of Staff Vadym Troyan under threats of reprisals.
In other words, the Azov militiamembers were simply engaged in racketeering. According to the owner of one of the gambling halls, the so-called patriots showed up in mid-2015. Couriers from local radical organisations visited all the gambling halls, offering to “negotiate”.
‘Laboratory of Nazism’
The Azov Battalion stands out for its strong ideological background. Neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and racists are at the forefront of the unit. Its symbols contain elements that refer to the emblems of Third Reich military units.
Fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Sophia Square in Kiev before being sent to Donbass. Members of the Nazi battalion have committed hundreds of war crimes against the population of Donbass over eight years. The Azov flag has an inverted image of the runic symbol “Wolfsangel”, which was used by the Nazis.
© Sputnik / Alexander Maksimenko
Fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Sophia Square in Kiev before being sent to Donbass. Members of the Nazi battalion have committed hundreds of war crimes against the population of Donbass over eight years. The Azov flag has an inverted image of the runic symbol “Wolfsangel”, which was used by the Nazis.
© Sputnik / Alexander Maksimenko
The photo shows Azov fighters taking the oath of allegiance before being sent to Donbass in July 2014. The regiment’s flag bears a black Wolfsangel (“wolf’s hook” in German). This sign was the emblem of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). Subsequently, the Wolfsangel became the tactical mark of the SS Panzer Division “Das Reich”, and was also used in other SS and Wehrmacht units, in particular, the 34th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division “Landstorm Nederland”.
Over time, representatives of the Social National Assembly, Automaidan and Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists activists, ultras (hooligans) of the Dynamo (Kiev) and Shakhtar football clubs, members of Dmytro Korchynsky’s Bratstvo party* and the Cossack Rifle Brotherhood joined Azov.
The open demonstration of misanthropy attracted radicals and neo-Nazis from all over the world to join the Azov Battalion.
Biletsky said in an interview that there were representatives of three dozen nationalities in Azov, but “not once did a Chinese or a Nigerian come to them”.
The Azov expanded, fought against the Donbass militia, and attracting new volunteers, including foreigners.
A series of video interviews with foreigners associated with the regiment were published on the page of the National Corps and National Druzhina units, both projects set up in 2016 by the Azov.
Alexei Levkin from Tver, Russia, is one of the typical characters. He is a neo-Nazi fugitive convicted of being part of a gang that committed numerous ethnic murders. He is also the lead singer of the band M8L8TH, which glorifies fascism, the SS and the concentration camps of the Third Reich.
Quotes from Levkin’s diary hit the internet in 2008.
Another volunteer, Joachim Fürholm from Norway, calls himself a “national socialist revolutionary” and “admires” what [2011 far-right Norway bomber Anders] Breivik did. In an interview with the Nazi radio Radio Wehrwolf, found by Bellingcat (an organisation recognised as a foreign agent in Russia), Fürholm considers Azov to be a “laboratory of fascism”.
Beat the Dog Before the Lion
From the outset, all of the volunteer battalions were haunted by scandals: looting and sexual violence (Shakhtersk and Tornado Battalions were the most prominent), kidnapping and killing of civilians (by the notorious Donbass Battalion) and the seizure of businesses.
There was less talk about the Azov. After all, it was an extremely closed unit and the strict hierarchy and the constant threat of reprisals against one’s own people played a role.
However, some who joined Azov as volunteers without right-wing radical ideas could not get along in the Nazi environment and revolted. They were the ones who made the White Leader’s unpleasant juicy details public.
From ‘Hateful’ to ‘Heroes’
Now, almost 80 years after the demise of the Third Reich, Nazi battalions openly marching through the streets of European cities with their symbols which are banned in the civilized world, the unpunished killing of civilians, looting, extortion, reprisals and punitive operations are again a reality.
Back in 2015, the US Congress banned the Pentagon from supplying portable anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine and from training and equipping the Azov Battalion. Congressional representatives called it a “disgusting Nazi formation”. This was a reaction to a number of publications in the US press in which shocked journalists wrote about the openly Nazi views of both the leadership and fighters of Azov.
But seven years later, the world is witnessing how the “hideous Nazi formation” began to be fashioned into valiant heroes, the “defenders of Mariupol”.
https://sputniknews.com/20220522/the-azov-battalion-laboratory-of-nazism-1095700345.html
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This is who the West/EU/NATO is supporting
The following is a “People to Kill List” put out by the NAZI Ukraine SBU
Security Service of Ukraine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Service_of_Ukraine
The Security Service of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Служба безпеки України, romanized: Sluzhba bezpeky Ukrayiny) or SBU (Ukrainian: СБУ) is the law enforcement authority and main intelligence and security agency of the Ukrainian government, in the areas of counter-intelligence activity and combating terrorism.
Ukraine SBU Hitlist-myrotvorets.center-Banner
source: https://rumble.com/v1gxbrr-live-stream-monday-august-22nd-2022-news-from-saint-petersburg.html
JerusalemCats Comments: If an Antisemite such as Roger Waters is on the Ukraine SBU Azov Hitlist (People to Kill List), what about Jew who want to visit Rebbe Nachman’s Kever In Uman, Ukraine?
https://myrotvorets.center/criminal/uoters-rodzher/
Roger Waters added to Ukraine Myrotvorets SBU-Hitlist-Chrome
The Homepage of the Ukrainian Security Service SBU Kill list Warning Graphic
https://myrotvorets.center/
screenshots – website of Ukraine SBU Hitlist myrotvorets center https://myrotvorets.center/
Ukrainian Nazis Celebrate Independance Day With PoW ISIS Video
Posted 25August2022 iEarlGreyTV:https://rumble.com/v1hatx5-ukrainian-nazis-celebrate-independance-day-with-pow-isis-video.html
Journalists who challenge NATO narratives are now ‘information terrorists’: https://beeley.substack.com/p/journalists-who-challenge-nato-narratives
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Stepan Bandera
Stepan Bandera
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming conventions, the patronymic is Andriyovych and the family name is Bandera.
Stepan Andriyovych Bandera (Ukrainian: Степа́н Андрі́йович Банде́ра, romanized: Stepán Andríyovyč Bandéra, IPA: [steˈpɑn ɐnˈd⁽ʲ⁾r⁽ʲ⁾ijoʋɪt͡ʃ bɐnˈdɛrɐ]; Polish: Stepan Andrijowycz Bandera; 1 January 1909 – 15 October 1959) was an Ukrainian nationalist leader, politician and theorist of the militant wing (OUN-B), served as head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists,[1][2] organization responsible for ethnic cleansings and also implicated in collaboration with Nazi Germany.[1][3]
Born in the economically backward Galicia (officially Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, created after the first partition of Poland) into the family of a priest of Eastern Catholic Church.[4] After the Empire disintegrated in the wake of World War I, Galicia briefly became a West Ukrainian People’s Republic; following the Polish–Ukrainian War of 1918–1919, it was again integrated into eastern Poland. In this period, Bandera became radicalized. He enrolled at the Lviv Polytechnic, where he organized Ukrainian nationalist organizations. For orchestrating the 1934 assassination of Poland’s Minister of the Interior Bronisław Pieracki, Bandera was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In September 1939, as a result of the invasion of Poland, he was freed from Bereza Kartuska prison, and moved to Kraków, in the German-occupied zone, where he maintained close connections with Abwehr and Wehrmacht.[5][6]
For a time, Bandera collaborated with Nazi Germany. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, he prepared the 30 June 1941 Proclamation of Ukrainian statehood in Lviv, pledging to work with Nazi Germany.[7][5] For his refusal to rescind the decree, Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo and on 5 July 1941 held under house arrest.[8] After January 1942 Bandera was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp but kept in special, comparatively comfortable detention.[9][10][11] In 1944, with Germany rapidly losing ground in the war in the face of the advancing Allied armies, Bandera was released in the hope that he would be instrumental in deterring the advancing Soviet forces. He set up the headquarters of the re-established Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council, which worked underground. After the war, Bandera with his family settled in West Germany where he remained the leader of the OUN-B and worked with several anti-communist organizations such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations[12] as well as with the US and British intelligence agencies.[12][4] Fourteen years after the end of the war, Bandera was assassinated in 1959 by KGB agents in Munich, West Germany.[13][14]
On 22 January 2010, the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine.[15] The European Parliament condemned the award, as did Russia, Poland and Jewish politicians and organizations.[16][17][18][19][20] President Viktor Yanukovych declared the award illegal, since Bandera was never a citizen of Ukraine, a stipulation necessary for getting the award. This announcement was confirmed by a court decision in April 2010.[21] In January 2011, the award was officially annulled.[22][23] A proposal to confer the award on Bandera was rejected by the Ukrainian parliament in August 2019.[24]
Bandera remains a highly controversial figure in Ukraine,[25][26][27] with some Ukrainians hailing him as a liberator who fought against the Soviet Union, Poland and Nazi Germany trying to establish an independent Ukraine, while other Ukrainians condemn him as a fascist[28] and a war criminal[28] who was, together with his followers, largely responsible for the massacres of Polish civilians[29] and partially for the Holocaust in Ukraine.[30][31][32][33]
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BURNT ALIVE IN ODESSA. Documentary | 2May2014 Odessa, Ukraine firebombed by Nationalist
Posted 27December2021 Bonanza Media: May 2, 2014 people of Ukrainian Odessa were trapped in a building and set on fire. Because they protested against new nationalist government that came to power in Kiev as a result of a coup d’état. Officially, 42 were announced dead, including 7 women and 1 minor. No one has been held responsible for this massacre. Alexander, one of the few survivors, shares his memories of what really happened and new battles he has to fight in the aftermath.
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The Uman Massacre
What really happened in Uman? Why did Rebbe Nachman want to be buried there? Tal Rotem gives an historical overview of a monumental “Kiddush Hashem”. Uman and Emuna go together…
Tal Rotem Posted on 31.05.08 https://breslev.com/307327/
The Massacre of Uman took place in the year 1768, a mere four years before the birth of Rebbe Nachman of Breslev. 33,000 Jews from Uman and the surrounding villages who took refuge from the murderous Jew-hating Ivan Gonta, the Ukrainian rebel that led the revolution against Poland, who then governed the Ukraine and was relatively decent to the Jews.
Uman and the Haidameks
Uman was a well-fortified city where a major part of Polish troops in the Ukraine were stationed. This fact made Uman one of the primary objectives of the Kolivivschyna movement, known popularly as the “Haidameks”, the organization of bitterly anti-Semitic Ukrainian Cossacks and their peasant supporters who revolted against Poland. Commanded by cut-throat Ivan Gonta who prided himself that he drank a fresh glass of his enemies’ blood every morning, the Cossacks began their siege on Uman.
In early June of 1768, on the way to Uman, the Ukrainian rebels by Gonta and Maxim Zalizniak razed a number of Jewish cities in one of history’s most cruel pogroms. As Zalizniak openly encouraged the slaughter of Jews, Uman filled with refugees from all over the Podolia region of the Central Ukraine in the Jewish Pale of Settlement.
A large camp filled with Polish nobility and their private militia, regular soldiers and Jewish refugees was stationed outside the city walls. The Cossacks routed the Polish encampment on June 14th and tried to take the city by surprise but to no avail. After this first unsuccessful attempt, the siege on Uman began on June 17th. The very first day large number of Ukrainians deserted the ranks of Polish forces and joined the rebel Cossacks when the city was surrounded.
After three days of the siege the city fell to Zalizniak in spite of a courageous defense in which the Jews also played an active role. The tragic point occurred during the peace negotiation on the third day of the siege that concluded in a combat and subsequent takeover of the city. It is unclear whether the resulting fight was initiated by Ukrainian or Polish side as the accounts of the event differ. What we do know is that the Jewish fighters led by Leib Shargorodski and Moses Menaker in an attempt to defend themselves, and barricaded themselves in one of Uman’s synagogues, but they were destroyed by cannon fire. All but a handful of Uman’s 33,000 Jews were subsequently killed by Gonta and his henchmen.
Martyrs in “Kiddush Hashem”
Gonta set up a tremendous cross in a lot in front of a church. He then set up a low canopy in front of the cross. After his men rouned up all the Jews that weren’t slaughtered in the fierce hand-to-hand and house-to-house fighting, he told them that anyone who passed through the canopy would be spared. But, in order to do so, one would have to prostrate oneself before the cross. Not a single Jewish man, woman, or child agreed to do so, despite the fact that parents were slaughtered in front of their children and children were brutally maimed in front of their parents. This became the greatest sanctification of Hashem’s name in history.
Gonta’s Execution
Fearing that the rebellion would spread into her domain, Catherine the Great, then Empress of Russia, dispatched a regiment of her best soldiers to help Poland suppress the rebellion. The commander of the Russian unit, Guriev, made the Haidameks believe he was siding with them against Poland and managed to capture approximately 900 of them without firing a single shot. He siezed Ivan Gonta and handed him over to the irate Poles and was tried for high treason. Sentenced to a bitter and agonizing death by grand, Gonta’s nailed to gallows and exhibited in 14 towns of Podolia.
The Ukranian View of Gonta
Although an arch-criminal and murderer, Gonta is a Ukrainian folk hero, immortalized in songs, legends, and poetry, such as Shevchenko’s controversial epic poem “Haidamaki”.
As a whole, the Cossacks and the haidameks are respected and worshipped in Ukraine, considered defenders of their motherland who fought against invaders. Ukrainians believe that the rowdy, brutal, and bloodthirsty insurgents defended social freedoms, the Ukrainian Orthodox faith and Ukraine’s independence. They view the Haidameks as paragons of courage, patriotism and dignity. Ukrainian many parents used to bring up their children. One Ukrainian history book. To this day, Ukrainians believe that the Haidameks fought against “Polish occupiers and Jewish landlords,” as one high school teacher in Uman told me, but this is of course a falsity since Jews were not allowed to own land in the Ukraine.
Why Uman?
Why did Rebbe Nachman choose Uman as his place of eternal rest?
Once, on the way from eastern Ukraine to his new home in Brelev, he passed by the mass grave of Uman’s Jews. He stopped the wagon driver, pondered, took a deep breath and said, “Here is the scent of Heaven. This is a good place to lay in rest.” He chose Uman because of its many holy martyrs who gave their lives for their “emuna”, their pure and complete faith in Hashem. Uman is therefore an eternal monument of emuna, may the holy martyrs lay in eternal peace, amen.
(Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Gonta)
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Statue of Ivan Gonta, Cossack murderer of Uman’s 33,000 Jews in 1768
Ivan Gonta
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Gonta
Ivan Gonta (Ukrainian: Іван Ґонта; died 1768) was one of the leaders of the Koliivshchyna, an armed rebellion of peasants and Ukrainian Cossacks against Bar confederation in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Born in Rożyszki (modern Rozsishky) near Uman’ in Bracław Voivodship, Gonta served as a sotnik (captain) of Cossack household militia of Franciszek Salezy Potocki, the Voivode of Kiev, and commanded a small unit in the garrison of Uman since 1757. During the Koliivshchyna he was ordered to fight the approaching haidamaka forces of Maksym Zalizniak. Instead, he and his militia joined the rebels, and the joint forces captured and ravaged the town of Uman on June 21, 1768. In what became known as the Massacre of Uman, thousands of local Polish szlachta, Jews, Uniates and other people were slaughtered. After that, Gonta was proclaimed colonel and commanded the garrison of Uman.
When Gonta sent a detachment to spread rebellion into the Ottoman Empire, Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, dispatched a regiment of Don Cossacks fighting against Bar confederation to help Poland suppress the rebellion to prevent Ottomans from waging a war against Russia. The commander of the Russian unit, Guriev, made the rebels believe he was siding with them for the joint trip against Bar confederation and managed to capture approximately 900 of them without a single shot. After that, Ivan Gonta was handed over to the Poles and was tried for high treason. Sentenced to death by grand Crown Hetman Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, he was then executed in the village of Serby (modern Gontivka) in the Podolian Voivodship. As an added measure, his body was partitioned and nailed to gallows in 14 towns of Podolia.
Although largely non-notable during his life, after his death he became a hero of countless folk songs and legends that portrayed him as a hero and a martyr. He was immortalized in Taras Shevchenko‘s controversial epic poem Haidamaky though Gonta had never killed his Roman Catholic sons, because his wife and children were of Orthodox faith and in fact he had never initiated the massacre of Uman himself.
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UKRAINE: DONBASS. YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW (Warning: Graphic)
4March2022 TruthFreedom
WARNING: Not for the faint of heart. Learn some background about Ukraine. It’s been almost eight years since a US-inspired coup divided Ukraine and war erupted in the country’s east. The Donetsk and Lugansk republics, next to Russia’s border, are collectively known as Donbass, a coal-mining industrial centre. The two declared independence from Kiev in 2014, and civil war erupted.
There are mass graves scattered across Donbass, from which bodies of civilians are regularly exhumed. Yet, while the shelling and killings continued, Western media remained silent. According to UN estimates, over 13,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
The Donbass people call it a ‘genocide of the Russian-speaking population’. Kiev outlawed the Russian language from everyday life, endeavouring to limit its use, despite Russian being the native language in large areas of the country.
Donbass. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow takes a look back at events that unfolded before the start of the crisis in 2014. Historians and journalists share their views on the conflict, players and motives, while ordinary citizens from the Donetsk and Lugansk regions describe the horrors of war.
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From Rabbi Lazer Brody’s Lazer Beams website:
Donetsk: Nuremburg Laws with a Russian Accent
17 April 2014 http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2014/04/donetsk-nuremburg-laws-with-a-russian-accent.html
Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20140424135614/http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2014/04/donetsk-nuremburg-laws-with-a-russian-accent.html
Ukraine-Donetsk Jewish property registration fee
Donetsk. This is a name that could end up being Nuremburg revisited.
Suppose you’re watching a boxing match between a rapist and a murderer. Who do you cheer for? I would cheer for both, hoping that they’d knock each other out simultaneously…
One cannot walk a single meter in the Ukraine without stepping on ground that’s soaked with Jewish blood. A third of our people lost there lives in the uprisings of 1648-49, the Cossack rebellion of 1768 and intermittent pogroms that continued until the Soviet Revolution.
Hitler could not have accomplished what he did without the cooperation of the vehemently anti-Semitic Ukraine population.
So, don’t shed a tear for the Ukraine, which is on the verge of a civil war. Before Moshiach comes, Hashem is systematically giving each nation what it deserves.
As for the Russians, maybe they didn’t kill Jewish bodies like Hitler and the Ukrainian Cossacks did, but they killed millions of Jewish souls, waging their seventy-year war against Torah and Judaism while the Communists were in power from 1921-1991. Don’t think the Russian on the street loves Jews any more than the Communists did.
The Russian nationalists who have taken over the Donetsk region in the Eastern Ukraine yesterday disturbed the sanctity of Pesach prayers in the local synagogue to pass an official leaflet demanding Donetsk Jews to register, declare their property, or be deported. This is something that the civilized world should not tolerate for a moment, yet it’s no surprise. We now see the pro-Russian militias – none other than KGB operatives – in all their disgusting ugliness. The Russians and the Ukraines deserve each other.
We pray for the welfare of our Jewish brethren in Donetsk. I for one call them to make Aliya immediately and not wait until they’re herded into a ghetto.
Historically, whenever there was war between Poland, the Ukraine and Russia, the Jews were caught in the middle and killed by both sides.
Gunte, the Cossack who murdered Uman’s 33,000 Jewish martyrs in 1768, is celebrated as a Ukrainian national hero.
The Jews of the Ukraine should leave en masse and come to Israel immediately. Donetsk is only the beginning. Brothers and sisters, it’s time to come home and be free. Time is running out. Don’t stay in your 21st Century version of Egypt. No wonder this is happening during Pesach. We’re waiting for you with open arms.
– See more at: http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2014/04/donetsk-nuremburg-laws-with-a-russian-accent.html#sthash.DR28edE7.dpuf
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From Rabbi Lazer Brody’s Lazer Beams website:
Svoboda: Another State Department Bad Bet
24April2014 http://www.lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2014/04/svoboda-another-state-department-bad-bet.html Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20140503105533/http://www.lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2014/04/svoboda-another-state-department-bad-bet.html
Ukraine Svoboda-neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok
The Israeli media reports that the USA is really pieved about Israel’s failure to condemn Russia about the Crimean annexation and recent tension in Eastern Ukraine.
I’m sharply critical about our current government in Israel for a long list of reasons, but they did do one thing right: they didn’t vote in favor of the USA’s condemnation of Russia in the UN.
The facts on the ground are that, according to the highly authoratative Global Research Center, the USA has spent over $5 billion to install an extreme right-wing government in the Ukraine, while giving support and legitimacy to the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party. This is not hearsay, for the facts have been confirmed by US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.
Don’t shed a tear for the Ukraine. Antisemitism there is getting worse by the minute. In recent days alone, the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s brother has been desecrated and a synagogue firebombed. Try Googling “Ukraine Antisemitism”, and see how many millions of results you get in less than a quarter of a second. What’s so disgusting is that the current forces behind the perpetrators of hate crimes against the Ukrainian Jews is the United States State Department. This is the same State Department that supported the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt and supports Al Qaida in Syria. How do you like where your tax dollars are going, America?
Yet, we look at everything in the world through eyes of emuna. Like everything else in the world, the chaos in the Ukraine is also from Hashem. How much more must Hashem shout at our brethern in the Jew-hating Ukraine to leave there right away? Why a Ukrainian Jew remains for another 5 minutes in the Ukraine is beyond my comprehension. It’s time to get out of there and to come home to the only true home a Jew has on earth – the Land of Israel.
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From Rabbi Lazer Brody’s Lazer Beams website:
Uman, Ukraine and Geula
06 May 2014 http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2014/05/ukraine-and-geula.html
Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20140509131414/http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2014/05/ukraine-and-geula.html
According to Breslever tradition, the annual gathering of Breslever Chassidim in Uman on Rosh Hashana and the Geula, the full and final redemption of our people, are closely intertwined. Hashem gave Rebbe Nachman both secrets. Consequently, Rebbe Nachman said before his death that we should all come to Uman on Rosh Hashana. He also said that his fire shall burn until the coming of Moshiach. That could be ever so close, as many of today’s spiritual leaders are saying.
Let’s see what’s happening now in the Ukraine:
Map: Ukraine 9 May 2014
Double-click on the above map of the Ukraine to view it enlarged and more clearly
The red circle in the center of the map is Uman, the site where Rebbe Nachman of Breslev is buried. Uman is slightly north of the imaginary line, which I drew in blue, that separates the northwestern pro-Ukraine half of the Ukraine from the southeastern pro-Russia side of the Ukraine. The purple box at the bottom right is the Crimean Peninsula, which has already been annexed by Russia. The black boxes indicate places where violence has already erupted on a large scale.
According to Reuters, the Ukraine is quickly slipping into a civil war. Few would have believed that several days ago, but since 42 people were killed in Odessa this past Friday, violence has been spreading fast. Odessa is a mere 2.5 hour drive from Uman.
People have been writing and asking what will be with Uman this Rosh Hashana. As it is, the USA and Germany have already issued travel restrictions to the Ukraine. Israel has not at this point. Flights are on schedule between Kiev and Tel Aviv, and every day, new immigrants from the Ukraine are arriving in Israel in growing numbers.
I can’t verbally explain how, but my heart tells me that the unrest in the Ukraine is closely tied to the Geula. Interestingly, Uman is the pivot point between the two sides. If the hostilities blow over, then we’ll certainly be in Uman on Rosh Hashana. And if the Ukraine is ablaze, with travel there impossible, then it means that we’ll hopefully celebrate this coming Rosh Hashana in our rebuilt Holy Temple in Jerusalem, amen!
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Is the West aiding and supporting the Hamas Nazis like it is supporting the Ukrainian Nazis?
Hamas Child suicide Bomb Terrorist
Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing was the suicide bombing of a crowded public bus (Egged bus 2) in the Shmuel HaNavi quarter in Jerusalem, Israel, on August 19, 2003. Twenty-four people were killed and over 130 wounded. Many of the victims were children, some of them infants. The Islamist militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Gaza “protesters” loft molotov cocktail on swastika kite over Israeli border
International Neo Nazi Fund
Victoria Nulland meets with Svoboda neo-nazis
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Explosive Report Confirms Expansive CIA ‘Stealth Network’ Of Spies & Commandos Inside Ukraine
by Tyler Durden 27June2022 – 02:00 AM https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/explosive-report-confirms-expansive-cia-stealth-network-spies-commandos-inside-ukraine
A fresh New York Times report has confirmed what many already suspected – that the CIA is still very active inside Ukraine – especially with training as well coordinating weapons among its Ukrainian allies. The Times report details “a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training,” based on US and European intelligence officials with knowledge of the operations. The report says Ukrainian forces are reliant on this Western clandestine network “more than ever” while outgunned by the Russians.
This comes months after investigative journalist Zach Dorfman’s bombshell expose in Yahoo News which detailed how a prior 8-year long CIA covert program to train Ukrainian fighters helped provoke the Russian invasion. The only question that remained after that March report was the extent to which the CIA was still active in the ongoing fight against the invading Russians.
Special operations file image via Sandboxx
The new Times reporting confirms that the US program is not only active and ongoing, but appears larger in scale than previously thought given the CIA’s close cooperation with the Ukrainians is happening both inside and outside the country, across multiple locations.
“Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials,” the report indicates.
It appears much the CIA’s work in Ukraine is centered on coordinating intelligence with local intel services and counterparts. “Few other details have emerged about what the C.I.A. personnel or the commandos are doing, but their presence in the country — on top of the diplomatic staff members who returned after Russia gave up its siege of Kyiv — hints at the scale of the secretive effort to assist Ukraine that is underway and the risks that Washington and its allies are taking,” NY Times continues.
Over the weekend, Canada also has been reported to have special operations troops inside Ukraine. This was reported months ago, but with a separate NYT report offering further confirmation. “Both CTV and Global News reported in late January that Canadian special forces had been sent to Ukraine, but National Defence did not comment on that deployment,” Ottawa Citizen writes Sunday. Back in January, a full two months before the invasion, Yahoo News disclosed the following:
These details further seems to authenticate those voices which have been insisting NATO and Russia are in fact waging a proxy war inside Ukraine, a label which Biden administration officials have previously sought to deny and downplay.
Caitlin Johnstone-tweet-25June2022-Ukraine is full of CIA personnel.
Writes NY Times further of the international nature of Ukraine’s on-the-ground assistance, “At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine.”
But the report adds the caveat that “The United States withdrew its own 150 military instructors before the war began in February, but commandos from these allies either remained or have gone in and out of the country since then, training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing an on-the-ground conduit for weapons and other aid, three U.S. officials said.”
This strongly suggests the very scenario that many long suspected: that CIA operations which had gone on for eight years in Ukraine didn’t wind down or cease upon the Feb.24 start of the Russian invasion, but only increased and were ramped up. Of course, the same goes for the Pentagon’s special operations presence inside the country and along its Western borders, particularly in Poland.
On Sunday, the Kremlin underscored angrily that even as such clandestine programs are made public via deliberate “leaks” to the media, Washington has refused to answer simple questions regarding Western operatives and mercenaries inside Ukraine – also after a couple of American fighters were recently captured.
Michael Tracey-tweet-26June2022–CIA and NATO ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday:
She charged the West with only seeking to perpetuate the conflict, saying, “They are sparing no effort so that the conflict in Ukraine continued as long as possible. We remember what US 43rd President George Bush Jr said: Ukraine’s mission is to kill as many Russians as possible…. They have endowed Ukraine and the Kiev regime with this duty.
“They are using (Ukraine – TASS) as an instrument and the entire logistics are centered round that – weapons supplies, sending people, anything to keep the conflict burning, as [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson told [French President Emmanuel] Macron today, to prevent the settlement of this situation. Otherwise, their plan will fail,” Zakharova said according to TASS.
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Escobar: Megalopolis x Russia – Total War
by Tyler Durden 09May2022 – 04:00 AM https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-megalopolis-x-russia-total-war
Authored by Pepe Escobar,
After careful evaluation, the Kremlin is rearranging the geopolitical chessboard to end the unipolar hegemony of the “indispensable nation”.
Operation Z is the first salvo of a titanic struggle: three decades after the fall of the USSR, and 77 years after the end of WWII, after careful evaluation, the Kremlin is rearranging the geopolitical chessboard to end the unipolar hegemony of the “indispensable nation”. No wonder the Empire of Lies has gone completely berserk, obsessed in completely expelling Russia from the West-centric system.
Russian President Putin and a European chessboard – opinion
The U.S. and its NATO puppies cannot possibly come to grips with their perplexity when faced with a staggering loss: no more entitlement allowing exclusive geopolitical use of force to perpetuate “our values”. No more Full Spectrum Dominance.
The micro-picture is also clear. The U.S. Deep State is milking to Kingdom Come its planned Ukraine gambit to cloak a strategic attack on Russia. The “secret” was to force Moscow into an intra-Slav war in Ukraine to break Nord Stream 2 – and thus German reliance on Russian natural resources. That ends – at least for the foreseeable future – the prospect of a Bismarckian Russo-German connection that would ultimately cause the U.S. to lose control of the Eurasian landmass from the English Channel to the Pacific to an emerging China-Russia-Germany pact.
The American strategic gambit, so far, has worked wonders. But the battle is far from over. Psycho neo-con/neoliberalcon silos inside the Deep State consider Russia such a serious threat to the “rules-based international order” that they are ready to risk if not incur a “limited” nuclear war out of their gambit. What’s at stake is nothing less than the loss of Ruling the World by the Anglo-Saxons.
Mastering the Five Seas
Russia, based on purchasing power parity (PPP), is the 6th economy in the world, right behind Germany and ahead of both the UK and France. Its “hard” economy is similar to the U.S. Steel production may be about the same, but intellectual capacity is vastly superior. Russia has roughly the same number of engineers as the U.S., but they are much better educated.
The Mossad attributes Israel’s economic miracle in creating an equivalent of Silicon Valley to a base of a million Russian immigrants. This Israeli Silicon Valley happens to be a key asset of the American MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex), as indelibly named by Ray McGovern.
NATOstan media hysterically barking that Russia’s GDP is the size of Texas is nonsense. PPP is what really counts; that and Russia’s superior engineers is why their hypersonic weapons are at least two or three generations ahead of the U.S. Just ask the indispensable Andrei Martyanov.
The Empire of Lies has no defensive missiles worthy of the name, and no equivalents to Mr. Zircon and Mr. Sarmat. The NATOstan sphere simply cannot win a war, any war against Russia for this reason alone.
The deafening NATOstan “narrative” that Ukraine is defeating Russia does not even qualify as an innocuous joke (compare it with Russia’s “Reach Out and Touch Someone” strategy). The corrupt system of SBU fanatics intermingled with UkroNazi factions is kaput. The Pentagon knows it. The CIA cannot possibly admit it. What the Empire of Lies has sort of won, so far, is a media “victory” for the UkroNazis, not a military victory.
Gen Aleksandr Dvornikov, of Syria fame, has a clear mandate: to conquer the whole of Donbass, totally free up Crimea and prepare the advance towards Odessa and Transnistria while reducing a rump Ukraine to the status of failed state without any access to the sea.
The Sea of Azov – linked to the Caspian by the Don-Volga canal – is already a Russian lake. And the Black Sea is next, the key connection between the Heartland and the Mediterranean. The Five Seas system – Black, Azov, Caspian, Baltic, White – enshrines Russia as a de facto continental naval power. Who needs warm waters?
Moving “at the speed of war”
The pain dial, from now on, will go up non-stop. Reality – as in facts on the ground – will soon become apparent even to the NATOstan-wide LugenPresse.
The woke Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley, expects Operation Z to last years. That’s nonsense. The Russian Armed Forces may afford to be quite methodical and take all the time needed to properly demilitarize Ukraine. The collective West for its part is pressed for time – because the blowback from the real economy is already on and bound to become vicious.
Defense Minister Shoigu has made it quite clear: any NATO vehicles bringing weapons to Kiev will be destroyed as “legitimate military targets”.
A report by the scientific service of the Bundestag established that training of Ukrainian soldiers on German soil may amount, under international law, to participation in war. And that gets even trickier when coupled with NATO weapons deliveries: “Only if, in addition to the supply of weapons, the instruction of the conflict party or training in such weapons were also an issue would one leave the secure area of non-warfare.”
Now at least it’s irretrievably clear how the Empire of Lies “moves at the speed of war” – as described in public by weapons peddler turned Pentagon head, Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin. In Pentagonese, that was explained by the proverbial “official” as “a combination of a call center, a watch floor, meeting rooms. They execute a battle rhythm to support decision-makers.”
The Pentagonese “battle rhythm” offered to a supposedly “credible, resilient and combat-capable Ukraine military” is fed by a EUCom system that essentially moves weapons orders from Pentagon warehouses in the U.S. to branches of the Empire of Bases in Europe and then to the NATO eastern front in Poland, where they are trucked across Ukraine just in time to be duly incinerated by Russian precision strikes: the wealth of options include supersonic P-800 Onyx missiles, two types of Iskander, and Mr. Khinzal launched from Mig-31Ks.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed Moscow is perfectly aware the U.S., NATO and UK are transferring not only weapons but also loads of intel. In parallel, the collective West turns everything upside down 24/7 shaping a new environment totally geared against Russia, not caring for even a semblance of partnership in any area. The collective West does not even consider the possibility of dialogue with Russia.
Hence talking to Putin is “a waste of time” unless a “Russian defeat” in Ukraine (echoing strident Kiev P.R.) would make him “more realistic”. For all his faults, Le Petit Roi Macron/McKinsey has been an exception, on the phone with Putin earlier this week.
The neo-Orwellian Hitlerization of Putin reduces him, even among the so-called Euro-intelligentzia, to the status of dictator of a nation chloroformed into its 19th century nationalism. Forget about any semblance of historical/political/cultural analysis. Putin is a late Augustus, dressing up his Imperium as a Republic.
At best the Europeans preach and pray – chihuahuas yapping to His Master’s Voice – for a hybrid strategy of “containment and engagement” to be unleashed by the U.S., clumsily parroting the scribblings of denizens of that intellectual no-fly zone, Think Tankland.
Yet in fact the Europeans would rather “isolate” Russia – as in 12% of the world’s population “isolating” 88% (of course: their Westoxified “vision” completely ignores the Global South). “Help” to Russia will only come when sanctions are effective (as in never: blowback will be the norm) or – the ultimate wet dream – there’s regime change in Moscow.
The Fall
UkroNazi P.R. agent Ursula von der Lugen presented the sixth sanction package of the Europoodle (Dis)Union.
Top of the bill is to exclude three more Russian banks from SWIFT, including Sberbank. Seven banks are already excluded. This will enforce Russia’s “total isolation”. It’s idle to comment on something that only fools the LugenPresse.
Then there’s the “progressive” embargo on oil imports. No more crude imported to the EU in six months and no more refined products before the end of 2022. As it stands, the IEA shows that 45% of Russia’s oil exports go to the EU (with 22% to China and 10% to the U.S.). His Master’s Voice continues and will continue to import Russian oil.
And of course 58 “personal” sanctions also show up, targeting very dangerous characters such as Patriarch Kirill of the Orthodox Church, and the wife, son and daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.
This stunning display of stupidity will have to be approved by all EU members. Internal revolt is guaranteed, especially from Hungary, even as so many remain willing to commit energy suicide and mess up with the lives of their citizens big time to defend a neo-Nazi regime.
Alastair Crooke called my attention to a startling, original interpretation of what’s goin’ on, offered in Russian by a Serbian analyst, Prof. Slobodan Vladusic. His main thesis, in a nutshell: “Megalopolis hates Russia because it is not Megalopolis – it has not entered the sphere of anti-humanism and that is why it remains a civilization alternative. Hence Russophobia.”
Vladusic contends that the intra-Slav war in Ukraine is “a great catastrophe for Orthodox civilization” – mirroring my recent first attempt to open a serious debate on a Clash of Christianities.
Yet the major schism is not on religion but culture: “The key difference between the former West and today’s Megalopolis is that Megalopolis programmatically renounces the humanistic heritage of the West.”
So now “it is possible to erase not only the musical canon, but also the entire European humanistic heritage: the entire literature, fine arts, philosophy” because of a “trivialization of knowledge”. What’s left is an empty space, actually a cultural black hole, “filled by promoting terms such as ‘posthumanism’ and ‘transhumanism’.”
And here Vladusic gets to the heart of the matter: Russia fiercely opposes the Great Reset concocted by the “hackable”, self-described “elites” of Megalopolis.
Sergey Glazyev, now coordinating the draft of a new financial/monetary system by the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) in partnership with the Chinese, adapts Vladusic to the facts on the ground (here in Russian, here in an imperfect English translation).
Glazyev is way more blunt than in his meticulous economic analyses. While noting the Deep State’s aims of destroying the Russian world, Iran and block China, he stresses the U.S. “will not be able to win the global hybrid war”. A key reason is that the collective West has “put all independent countries in front of the need to find new global currency instruments, risk insurance mechanisms, restore the norms of international law and create their own economic security systems.”
So yes, this is Totalen Krieg, Total War – as Glazyev spells it out with no attenuation, and how Russia denounced it this week at the UN: “Russia needs to stand up to the United States and NATO in its confrontation, bringing it to its logical conclusion, so as not to be torn between them and China, which is irrevocably becoming the leader of the world economy.”
History may eventually register, 77 years after the end of WWII, that neocon/neoliberalcon psychos in Washington silos instigating an inter-Slavic war by ordering Kiev to launch a blitzkrieg against Donbass was the spark that led to the Fall of the U.S. Empire.
Map: Ukraine 9 May 2014
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The real reasons why Ukraine is so important To Biden, Clinton and their ‘global crime cabal’: Ukraine is their ‘little crime playground’ where their devastating secrets are hidden
04March2022 by: News Editors https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-03-04-reasons-ukraine-important-biden-clinton-crime-cabal.html
This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author
(Natural News) If anyone needed to see the ‘bigger picture‘ of everything now happening in Ukraine, Russia, here in America and all across the world, we get it in numerous new stories out recently, and some time ago, across the internet.
Summed up perfectly in this new story over at The Week titled “REMEMBER AFGHANISTAN: U.S. and Britain reportedly believe the Ukraine war could last 10-20 years, become a Russian quagmire”, the ‘military industrial complex‘ we were warned of over 61 years ago by then President Dwight Eisenhower NEEDS new wars to fill the coffers with the 20-year war/occupation of Afghanistan having come to an end.
(Article by Stefan Stanford republished from AllNewsPipeline.com)
And while we could never see what’s happening in Ukraine going on for 10 to 20 years with Russia’s unstoppable hypersonic nuclear missiles and the potential of an EMP or two that sends America and Europe back to the dark ages thrown into the mix, we get several HUGE pieces of the puzzle into what is REALLY going on in Ukraine, and why, if we look back at news stories over the past several years.
As we’ll explore within this ANP story, Ukraine is nothing less than the ‘Playground‘ of the ‘global elite crime cabal‘ that ‘runs the world‘, with huge amounts of drugs and human trafficking being run out of the country, along with their ‘world disinfo/control‘ operation, and Ukraine also gives them a ‘front doorstep‘ into Russia, not a word of any of this reported by their ‘controlled‘ mainstream media.
Each of the videos at the bottom of this story take looks at various aspects of that ‘Ukrainian cabal playground‘ that Joe Biden is risking America’s nuclear annihilation over, with the 1st video below featuring US Army Colonel Doug MacGregor joining former US Senator Trey Gowdy on Fox News and telling him and America that the Ukrainian government is deeply corrupt, and Biden and America definitely shouldn’t help them.
Yet it appears another one of the ‘real reasons‘ that Biden will most likely get America involved in the ‘quagmire‘ there is because there are some absolutely devastating ‘Biden family secrets‘ hidden in Ukraine, as well as secrets held by the ‘global crime cabal‘, secrets that Russia could possibly get ahold of if they take Ukraine if they haven’t all been destroyed by then.
And just listen to the desperation and panic in the voices of Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi as heard in these linked twitter videos. What are they hiding? After everything that’s now happening we can surely see that the globalist crime cabal playground runs deep in Ukraine.
So are you ready to financially support a US ‘war‘ in Ukraine that lasts for 10 to 20 years as this new story over at The Week suggests is a very real possibility? Reporting within it that ‘lawmakers‘ at the US Capitol had been told on Monday that this mess that just recently restarted will likely last 10, 15, or 20 years, although ultimately in their minds, Russia will lose, just think about how much TAXPAYER money a long, drawn-out quagmire would bring in to that military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about 61 years ago!
And while Joe Biden, Democrats, the mainstream media and the ‘globalist cabal‘ attempt to paint Ukraine as a ‘democracy‘ and a ‘free country‘ which ‘freely elected‘ their President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, anybody paying attention to ‘real history‘ remembers that Ukraine’s government consists of very real neo-Nazi’s, many who were ‘installed‘ as ‘puppets‘ by the globalists cabal.
And while this story is certainly no attempt to paint Vladimir Putin as a ‘hero‘, as we hear in the 1st video below, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt, globalist-owned countries in the entire world, quite literally the ‘headquarters‘ of the globalist crime cabal.
One of the only countries in the world that they can fully control that has had the stability and infrastructure to be used for money laundering, bioweapons research and fully controlled by the ‘puppets‘ of the ‘cabal‘ itself, Ukraine in 2022 is also much like America in 2022, a country where nearly all the govt movers and shakers are totally compromised so there’s a big fat ZERO PERCENT chance of anything being investigated.
100% proven by none other than Joe Biden himself as seen in the 3rd video at the bottom of this story when he was talking to the “Council on Foreign Relations” and he quite literally bragged about how he’d hold back a Billion Dollars in aid to Ukraine unless a Ukrainian prosecutor stopped investigating him and his sons dealings, then laughed about it as the crowd joined in, let that sink in for a moment.
Read more at: AllNewsPipeline.comTOP
Regardless Of Who’s Elected, Imperial Corruption Rules The Nation
by Tyler Durdeny, Nov 10November2022 – 12:00 AM https://www.zerohedge.com/political/regardless-whos-elected-imperial-corruption-rules-nation
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
But in the meantime, enjoy the political theatrics down on the sand-strewn floor of the Coliseum.
Are you not Entertained-Roman Coliseum
While the much-touted differences between America’s political parties get obsessive, hysterical attention, the sameness of Imperial corruption, waste and squalor regardless of who’s in power gets little notice.
Scrape away the differences–mostly in domestic issues–and we see the dead hand of Imperial Corruption is on the tiller.
The core of Imperial Corruption is the disconnect between the nation’s ideals of representational democracy and open markets and the sordid reality: elites serve their interests by corrupting both democracy and open markets.
Unfettered democracy and markets cannot be controlled by a tiny, self-serving elite.
Stripped of corruption, democracy and markets are free-for-alls that are constantly evolving, as highly adaptive islands of coherence coalesce that influence the quasi-chaos, competing with other islands of coherence but never gaining dominance due to the open-ended dynamism of collaboration-competition that is the beating heart of both democracy and open markets.
The only way to control democracy and markets to serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many is to corrupt them completely by destroying the dynamism of collaboration-competition.
Democracy is replaced by an auction of political power to the highest bidder that rewards cronies and devotes all its resources not to solving the nation’s problems but to whipping up conflagrations of divisiveness and partisan hysteria that wash away the middle ground where problems can actually be addressed.
This crippling of the nation’s ability to actually solve difficult problems serves the interests of self-serving elites whose sole interest is accumulating personal wealth and power. Their proclaimed interest in solving the nations’ real-world problems are fraudulent tissues designed to hide the putrid reality that all their so-called “solutions” distill down to sluicing huge sums of state money to cronies and campaign contributors under the guise of “solving problems.”
The only “problem” America’s elites know how to solve is the “problem” of how to get personally richer while tightening their control of the nation-state’s vast flood of (taxed / borrowed) money.
Cronies and contributors get tax breaks hidden in 1,000-page legislation and overflowing rivers of money (here’s looking at you, Big Pharma, Big Defense, Higher Education, Sickcare, et al.).
America’s elites are masters at misdirection and distraction: it’s always the other side’s fault that the nation is sliding down the wrong side of the S-Curve.
The Lifecycle of States and Empires-Expansion and Collapse
The elites don’t really care which side is in power, as they control them both to serve their own interests.
But something funny happens on the way to gaining control of complex emerging systems: that control destroys the system’s self-correcting mechanisms and adaptability.
Rigging the system to serve one’s own interests destroys the system’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances and selective pressures.
Once a system has been crippled to serve the interest of an elite, when forced to adapt or die, it can only die as its mechanisms of adaptation were destroyed by the power-grab of elites.
An economy dominated by a handful of cartels and quasi-monopolies is an economy that is doomed to slide into the dustbin of history, as cartels and monopolies “win” by crushing competition and competing islands of coherence, as competition threatens their profits and control of markets and governance, a.k.a. “democracy.”
Any system that serves the interests of the few by choking off adaptability and the dynamisms of a free-for-all churn lacks the tools needed to avoid systemic collapse.
By enabling elites to organize the nation to serve their personal interests, America has been stripped of the dynamics needed to adapt. Without these dynamics, collapse is the only possible outcome.
But in the meantime, enjoy the political theatrics down on the sand-strewn floor of the Coliseum. While Imperial Corruption undermines what’s left of the nation’s ability to adapt fast enough and successfully enough to survive what lies ahead, we can cheer the “winners” of the bloodsport and ignore the winds of disorder sweeping the land.
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Escobar: How Russia Will Counterpunch The US/EU Declaration Of War
by Tyler Durden 05MarchMar 05, 2022 – https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-how-russia-will-counterpunch-useu-declaration-war
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,
Only self-sufficiency affords total independence. And the Big Picture has also been keenly understood by the Global South…
One of the key underlying themes of the Russia/Ukraine/NATO matrix is that the Empire of Lies (copyright Putin) has been rattled to the core by the combined ability of Russian hypersonic missiles and a defensive shield capable of blocking incoming nuclear missiles from the West, thereby ending Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.)
This has led the Americans to nearly risk a hot war to be able to place hypersonic missiles that they still don’t have on Ukraine’s western borders, and so be within three minutes of Moscow. For that, of course, they need Ukraine, as well as Poland and Romania in Eastern Europe.
In Ukraine, the Americans are determined to fight to the last European soul – if that’s what it takes. This may be the last roll of the (nuclear) dice. Thus the next-to-last gasp at coercing Russia into submission by using the remaining, workable American weapon of mass destruction: SWIFT.
Yet this weapon can be easily neutralized by rapid adoption of self-sufficiency.
With essential input by the inestimable Michael Hudson I have outlined possibilities for Russia to weather the sanction storm. That didn’t even consider the full extent of Russia’s “black box defense” – and counter-attack – as outlined by John Helmer in his introduction to an essay that heralds no less then The Return of Sergei Glaziev.
Glaziev, predictably detested across Atlanticist circles, was a key economic adviser to President Putin and is now the Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). He has always been a fierce critic of the Russian Central Bank and the oligarch gang closely linked to Anglo-American finance.
His latest essay, Sanctions and Sovereignty, originally published by expert.ru and translated by Helmer, deserves serious scrutiny.
This is one of the key takeaways:
De-offshore or bust
Glaziev essentially recommends:
The Russian Central Bank seems to be listening. Most of these measures are already in place. And there are signs that Putin and the government are finally ready to grab the Russian oligarchy by the balls and force them to share risks and losses at an extremely difficult for the nation. Goodbye to stockpiling funds taken out of Russia offshore and in Londongrad.
Glaziev is the real deal. In December 2014 I was at a conference in Rome, and Glaziev joined us on the phone. Reviewing a subsequent column I wrote at the time, between Rome and Beijing, I was stunned: it’s as if Glaziev was saying these things literally today.
Allow me to quote two paragraphs:
Gotta pay the “tax on independence”
A consensus seems to be emerging in Moscow that the Russian economy will stabilize quickly, as there will be a shortage of personnel for industry and a lot of extra hands will be required. Hence no unemployment. There may be shortages, but no inflation. Sales of – Western – luxury goods have already been curtailed. Imported products will be placed under price controls. All the necessary rubles will be available though price controls – as happened in the U.S. in WWII.
A wave of nationalization of assets may be ahead. ExxonMobil announced it will withdraw from the $4 billion Sakhalin-1 project (they had bailed out on Sakhalin-2, deemed too expensive), producing 200,000 barrels of oil a day, after BP and Norway’s Equinor announced they were withdrawing from projects with Rosneft. BP was actually dreaming of taking all of Rosneft’s participation.
According to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, the Kremlin is now blocking asset sales by foreign investors looking to divest. In parallel, Rosneft, for instance, is bound to raise capital from China and India, who are already minority investors in several projects, and buy them out 100%: an excellent opportunity for Russian business.
What could be construed as the Mother of All Counter-Sanctions has not yet been announced. Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev himself hinted all options are on the table.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, channeling the patience of 10,000 Taoist monks, still expecting the current hysteria to fade away, describes the sanctions as “some kind of a tax on independence”, with countries barring their companies from working in Russia under “huge pressure.”
Lethal counterpunches though are not excluded. Apart from completely de-dollarizing – as Glaviev recommends – Russia may ban the export of titanium, rare earth, nuclear fuel and, already in effect, rocket engines.
Very toxic moves would include seizing all foreign assets of hostile nations; freeze all loan repayments to Western banks and place the funds in a frozen account in a Russian bank; completely ban all hostile foreign media, foreign media ownership, assorted NGOs and CIA fronts; and supply friendly nations with state of the art weapons, intel sharing and joint training and exercises.
What’s certain is that a new architecture of payment systems – as discussed by Michael Hudson and others – uniting the Russian SPFS and the Chinese CHIPS, may soon be offered to scores of nations across Eurasia and the Global South – several among them already under sanctions, such as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the DPRK.
Slowly but surely, we are already on the way to the emergence of a sizeable Global South bloc immune to American financial warfare.
The RIC in BRICS – Russia, India and China – are already increasing trade in their own currencies. If we look at the list of nations at the UN that voted against Russia or abstained from condemning Operation Z in Ukraine, plus those that did not sanction Russia, we have at least 70% of the whole Global South.
So once again is the West – plus satrapies/colonies such as Japan and Singapore in Asia – against the Rest: Eurasia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America.
The coming European collapse
Michael Hudson told me, “the U.S. and Western Europe expected a Froelicher Krieg (“happy war”). Germany and other countries haven’t begun to feel the pain of gas and mineral and food deprivation. THAT’S going to be the real game. The aim would be to break Europe away from U.S. control via NATO. This will involve “meddling” by creating a New World Order political movement and party, like Communism was a century ago. You could call it a new Great Awakening.”
A possible Great Awakening certainly will not involve the NATOstan sphere anytime soon. The collective West is rather in serious Great Decoupling mode, its entire economy weaponized with the aim, expressed in the open, of destroying Russia and even – the perennial wet dream – provoking regime change.
Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the SVR, succinctly described it:
Arguably the apex of Western hysteria is the onset of a 2022 Neo-Nazi Jihad: a 20,000-strong mercenary army being assembled in Poland under CIA supervision. The bulk comes from private military companies such as Blackwater/Academi and DynCorp. Their cover: “return of Ukrainians from the French Foreign Legion.” This Afghan remix comes straight from the only playbook the CIA knows.
Back in reality, facts on the ground will eventually lead entire economies in the West to become roadkill – with chaos in the commodities sphere leading to skyrocketing energy and food costs. As an example, up to 60% of German and 70% of Italian manufacturing industries may be forced to shut down for good – with catastrophic social consequences.
The unelected, uber-Kafkaesque EU machine in Brussels has chosen to commit a triple hara-kiri by grandstanding as abject vassals of the Empire, destroying any remaining French and German sovereignty impulses and imposing alienation from Russia-China.
Meanwhile, Russia will be showing the way: only self-sufficiency affords total independence. And the Big Picture has also been keenly understood by the Global South: one day someone had to stand up and say, “That’s Enough”. With maximum raw power to back it up.
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Test Of Russia-Iran-India Trade Route Highlights Shifting Geopolitics
by Tyler Durden 14June2022 – 12:20 AM https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/test-russia-iran-india-trade-route-highlights-shifting-geopolitics
Forty-one tons of wood laminate sheeting is on its way from Russia to India. The cargo isn’t newsworthy, but the fact that it’s traveling through Iran absolutely is—potentially marking the opening of a significant new trade corridor that strengthens Iran’s relationship with India…with big geopolitical implications.
On Saturday, Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) announced that a pilot run for the new trade route was underway, with the wood laminate’s transit being managed by the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines Group. The shipping arrangement enables the use of one bill of lading for the entire journey, which reduces transport costs, red tape and wait times, reports IRNA.
Testing the ease of logistics, customs and other processes, two 40-foot shipping containers will first make their way from Saint Petersburg to the Caspian Sea. After arriving by ship at the northern Iranian port of Anzali, they’ll be trucked across Iran to the Persian Gulf port of Bandar Abbas, and then shipped to the Indian port of Nhava Sheva. The trip is expected to take 25 days, according to an Iranian official.
IRNA portrayed the pilot as a partial realization of the long-brewing International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). That 22-year old initiative aspires to link the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf via Iran—connecting major ports and dramatically reducing transit times compared to alternative routes through the Suez Canal, Mediterranean Sea, Atlantic Ocean and North Sea.
Russia-Iran-India – International North-South Transport Corridor map
Initiated by India, Russia and Iran in 2000, the INSTC association now includes Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Oman and Syria.
Iran’s INSTC aspirations include building a rail line from the Caspian Sea to the southeastern Iranian port of Chabahar. A far more ambitious vision calls for the construction of a canal directly linking the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. Spanning 750 miles from north to south, the Caspian Sea is the world’s largest inland water body, covering an area larger than Japan.
The INSTC pilot comes on the heels of a friendly official visit to India by Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who was granted meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India’s national security advisor.
The Indian government’s official statement summarizing the visit said the countries “share close historical and civilizational ties. Our bilateral relations are marked by strong linkages across institutions, culture and people-to-people ties.” India lauded Iran for facilitating India’s medical assistance to Afghanistan, and the provision of Covid-19 vaccines to Afghan citizens living in Iran.
India also noted the value of Iran’s Persian Gulf port of Chabahar, which “has provided much needed sea-access to landlocked Afghanistan and has also emerged as a commercial transit hub for the region, including for Central Asia.”
At The Diplomat, Rajeev Agarwal argues that India-Iran ties are ripe for a reset:
Caving to U.S. pressure, India stopped buying Iranian oil in mid-2019. Before that, India was Iran’s second-biggest customer, behind China. With negotiations to resume the Iran nuclear deal at an impasse, Agarwal speculates that India’s calculations could change:
India is the world’s sixth-largest economy. If it were to opt out of the Iran sanctions regime, other countries might follow its lead.
Note that India has been building stronger economic links to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. In what could be a complementary development, Iran has been entertaining reconciliation with Saudi Arabia, via five rounds of talks hosted by Iraq.
In May, Saudi foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said, “We continue to encourage our neighbors in Iran to lean into what can be a very, very important sea change in our region…a new era of cooperation” could be beneficial to everyone.
All these developments point to the potential for a significant geopolitical shift, writes Argawal:
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India’s Largest Cement Maker “Circumventing The Dollar” In Russian-Coal-For-Yuan Deal
by Tyler Durden 29June2022 – 11:20 PM https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/indias-largest-cement-maker-circumventing-dollar-russian-coal-yuan-deal
The Russian economy is currently experiencing unprecedented pressure from a group of countries led by the United States, with more than 10,000 sanctions imposed on the country, its citizens, and companies.
Despite all the amplification of sanctions threats by the media, and vilification of anything Russian by western leaders, many of the world’s largest nations (by population and economy), are continuing to adjust to current conditions, ignoring the virtue-signaling, and sending Russia’s currency and current account balance soaring.
But, in yet another example of the far-less-unified-than-Biden-claims new world order, it appears Indian industrialists have no problem dealing with Putin for their key materials.
UltraTech Cement – India’s biggest cement producer
The latest example comes from India as Reuters reports that UltraTech Cement – India’s biggest cement producer – is importing a cargo of Russian coal and paying for it using Chinese Yuan.
UltraTech is bringing in 157,000 tonnes of coal from Russian producer SUEK that loaded on the bulk carrier MV Mangas from the Russian Far East port of Vanino, the document showed. It cites an invoice dated June 5 that values the cargo at 172,652,900 yuan ($25.81 million).
The increasing use of the yuan to settle payments could help insulate Moscow from the effects of western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and bolster Beijing’s push to further internationalise the currency and chip away at the dominance of the U.S. dollar in global trade.
India has explored setting up a rupee payment mechanism for trade with Russia, but that has not materialized. Chinese businesses have used the yuan in trade settlements with Russia for years.
An Indian government official familiar with the matter said the government was aware of payments in yuan.
Finally, we are reminded of what First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told The Financial Times earlier in the year: that the recent financial sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine are threatening to weaken the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world currency,
Russia had been planning for years to reduce its dependence on the petrodollar since the United States imposed sanctions in retaliation for its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The current crisis in Ukraine has only accelerated those plans… and it now seems the entire BRICS group may be ready to cross the chasm as Bretton Woods III begins to form.
The implications, needless to say, are staggering (and, worse, while Zoltan Poszar does not explicitly state it, he clearly believes that world war is coming):
A BRICS-based payment system would be the ultimate challenge to the dollar-hegemon-based system in place today.
At a BRICS summit earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the bloc, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, is currently working on setting up a new global reserve currency that would be based on the currency basket of the five nations. Earlier, the bloc said it was working on establishing a joint payment network to abate the reliance on the Western financial system.
BRICS 14th Summit-2022-06-29_Country Leaders
Even if this is nothing but talk, it underscores the fact that the dollar is on shaky ground. US policymakers would be wise to consider future dollar weaponization carefully.
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Escobar: Everybody Wants To Hop On The BRICS Express
by Tyler Durden 29October2022 – 07:00 AM https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-everybody-wants-hop-brics-express
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,
Eurasia is about to get a whole lot larger as countries line up to join the Chinese and Russian-led BRICS and SCO, to the detriment of the west…
Russia and Chinas BRICS and SCO lead the Global South
Let’s start with what is in fact a tale of Global South trade between two members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). At its heart is the already notorious Shahed-136 drone – or Geranium-2, in its Russian denomination: the AK-47 of postmodern aerial warfare.
The US, in yet another trademark hysteria fit rife with irony, accused Tehran of weaponizing the Russian Armed Forces. For both Tehran and Moscow, the superstar, value-for-money, and terribly efficient drone let loose in the Ukrainian battlefield is a state secret: its deployment prompted a flurry of denials from both sides. Whether these are made in Iran drones, or the design was bought and manufacturing takes place in Russia (the realistic option), is immaterial.
The record shows that the US weaponizes Ukraine to the hilt against Russia.
The Empire is a de facto war combatant via an array of “consultants,” advisers, trainers, mercenaries, heavy weapons, munitions, satellite intel, and electronic warfare. And yet imperial functionaries swear they are not part of the war. They are, once again, lying.
Welcome to yet another graphic instance of the “rules-based international order” at work. The Hegemon always decides which rules apply, and when. Anyone opposing it is an enemy of “freedom,” “democracy,” or whatever platitude du jour, and should be – what else – punished by arbitrary sanctions.
In the case of sanctioned-to-oblivion Iran, for decades now, the result has been predictably another round of sanctions. That’s irrelevant. What matters is that, according to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), no less than 22 nations – and counting – are joining the queue because they also want to get into the Shahed groove.
Even Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gleefully joined the fray, commenting on how the Shahed-136 is no photoshop.
The race towards BRICS+
What the new sanctions package against Iran really “accomplished” is to deliver an additional blow to the increasingly problematic signing of the revived nuclear deal in Vienna. More Iranian oil on the market would actually relieve Washington’s predicament after the recent epic snub by OPEC+.
A categorical imperative though remains. Iranophobia – just like Russophobia – always prevails for the Straussians/neo-con war advocates in charge of US foreign policy and their European vassals.
So here we have yet another hostile escalation in both Iran-US and Iran-EU relations, as the unelected junta in Brussels also sanctioned manufacturer Shahed Aviation Industries and three Iranian generals.
Now compare this with the fate of the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone – which unlike the “flowers in the sky” (Russia’s Geraniums) has performed miserably in the battlefield.
Kiev tried to convince the Turks to use a Motor Sich weapons factory in Ukraine or come up with a new company in Transcarpathia/Lviv to build Bayraktars. Motor Sich’s oligarch President Vyacheslav Boguslayev, aged 84, has been charged with treason because of his links to Russia, and may be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
In the end, the deal fizzled out because of Ankara’s exceptional enthusiasm in working to establish a new gas hub in Turkey – a personal suggestion from Russian President Vladimir Putin to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
And that bring us to the advancing interconnection between BRICS and the 9-member SCO – to which this Russia-Iran instance of military trade is inextricably linked.
The SCO, led by China and Russia, is a pan-Eurasian institution originally focused on counter-terrorism but now increasingly geared towards geoeconomic – and geopolitical – cooperation. BRICS, led by the triad of Russia, India, and China overlaps with the SCO agenda geoeconomically and geopoliticallly, expanding it to Africa, Latin America and beyond: that’s the concept of BRICS+, analyzed in detail in a recent Valdai Club report, and fully embraced by the Russia-China strategic partnership.
The report weighs the pros and cons of three scenarios involving possible, upcoming BRICS+ candidates:
And then there’s Iran, which has already already shown interest in joining BRICS.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has recently confirmed that “several countries” are absolutely dying to join BRICS. Among them, a crucial West Asia player: Saudi Arabia.
What makes it even more astonishing is that only three years ago, under former US President Donald Trump’s administration, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MbS) – the kingdom’s de fact ruler – was dead set on joining a sort of Arab NATO as a privileged imperial ally.
Diplomatic sources confirm that the day after the US pulled out of Afghanistan, MbS’s envoys started seriously negotiating with both Moscow and Beijing.
Assuming BRICS approves Riyadh’s candidacy in 2023 by the necessary consensus, one can barely imagine its earth-shattering consequences for the petrodollar. At the same time, it is important not to underestimate the capacity of US foreign policy controllers to wreak havoc.
The only reason Washington tolerates Riyadh’s regime is the petrodollar. The Saudis cannot be allowed to pursue an independent, truly sovereign foreign policy. If that happens, the geopolitical realignment will concern not only Saudi Arabia but the entire Persian Gulf.
Yet that’s increasingly likely after OPEC+ de facto chose the BRICS/SCO path led by Russia-China – in what can be interpreted as a “soft” preamble for the end of the petrodollar.
The Riyadh-Tehran-Ankara triad
Iran made known its interest to join BRICS even before Saudi Arabia. According to Persian Gulf diplomatic sources, they are already engaged in a somewhat secret channel via Iraq trying to get their act together. Turkey will soon follow – certainly on BRICS and possibly the SCO, where Ankara currently carries the status of extremely interested observer.
Now imagine this triad – Riyadh, Tehran, Ankara – closely joined with Russia, India, China (the actual core of the BRICS), and eventually in the SCO, where Iran is as yet the only West Asian nation to be inducted as a full member.
The strategic blow to the Empire will go off the charts. The discussions leading to BRICS+ are focusing on the challenging path towards a commodity-backed global currency capable of bypassing US dollar primacy.
Several interconnected steps point towards increasing symbiosis between BRICS+ and SCO. The latter’s members states have already agreed on a road map for gradually increasing trade in national currencies in mutual settlements.
The State Bank of India – the nation’s top lender – is opening special rupee accounts for Russia-related trade.
Russian natural gas to Turkey will be paid 25 percent in rubles and Turkish lira, complete with a 25 percent discount Erdogan personally asked of Putin.
Russian bank VTB has launched money transfers to China in yuan, bypassing SWIFT, while Sberbank has started lending out money in yuan. Russian energy behemoth Gazprom agreed with China that gas supply payments should shift to rubles and yuan, split evenly.
Iran and Russia are unifying their banking systems for trade in rubles/rial.
Egypt’s Central Bank is moving to establish an index for the pound – through a group of currencies plus gold – to move the national currency away from the US dollar.
And then there’s the TurkStream saga.
That gas hub gift
Ankara for years has been trying to position itself as a privileged East-West gas hub. After the sabotage of the Nord Streams, Putin has handed it on a plate by offering Turkey the possibility to increase Russian gas supplies to the EU via such a hub. The Turkish Energy Ministry stated that Ankara and Moscow have already reached an agreement in principle.
This will mean in practice Turkey controlling the gas flow to Europe not only from Russia but also Azerbaijan and a great deal of West Asia, perhaps even including Iran, as well as Libya in northeast Africa. LNG terminals in Egypt, Greece and Turkiye itself may complete the network.
Russian gas travels via the TurkStream and Blue Stream pipelines. The total capacity of Russian pipelines is 39 billion cubic meters a year.
Turkey and Russia proposed pipelines
Map of Russian gas route via Turkey
TurkStream was initially projected as a four-strand pipeline, with a nominal capacity of 63 million cubic meters a year. As it stands, only two strands – with a total capacity of 31,5 billion cubic meters – have been built.
So an extension in theory is more than feasible – with all the equipment made in Russia. The problem, once again, is laying the pipes. The necessary vessels belong to the Swiss Allseas Group – and Switzerland is part of the sanctions craze. In the Baltic Sea, Russian vessels were used to finish building Nord Stream 2. But for a TurkStream extension, they would need to operate much deeper in the ocean.
TurkStream would not be able to completely replace Nord Stream; it carries much smaller volumes. The upside for Russia is not being canceled from the EU market. Evidently Gazprom would only tackle the substantial investment on an extension if there are ironclad guarantees about its security. And there’s the additional drawback that the extension would also carry gas from Russia’s competitors.
Whatever happens, the fact remains that the US-UK combo still exerts a lot of influence in Turkey – and BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell, for instance, are actors in virtually every oil extraction project across West Asia. So they would certainly interfere on the way the Turkish gas hub functions, as well on determining the gas price. Moscow has to weigh all these variables before committing to such a project.
NATO, of course, will be livid. But never underestimate hedging bet specialist Sultan Erdogan. His love story with both the BRICS and the SCO is just beginning.
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Breaking China: A rupture looms between Israel and the United States
For years, Israel has been working to dramatically expand trade with China. Now, that push is running up against strong opposition from the White House.
By RON KAMPEAS/JTA
Published: 3JUNE2020 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/breaking-china-a-rupture-looms-between-israel-and-the-united-states-630101
PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands ahead of their talks in China in March 2017 (photo credit: ETIENNE OLIVEAU/POOL/REUTERS)
Israel’s announcement last week that an Israeli consortium would build Sorek 2, the world’s largest desalination plant, surprised many who had been watching the deal: The contract had been expected to go to a Hong Kong-based company.
But that was before the Trump administration ramped up pressure on Israel to diminish its ties to China.
For years, Israel has been working to dramatically expand trade with China, one of the world’s largest markets. That push is suddenly running up against strong opposition from the White House, as the Trump administration pivots from the decades-old policy of increasing US engagement with China to treating the country as an increasingly bitter rival.
The Sorek 2 deal was widely seen as a bow to pressure from the Trump administration, which is pushing Israel and other key allies to curtail trade with China. But observers of this deepening dynamic say it may not be enough to head off a US-Israel crisis over China.
A Chinese company, SIPG, is building a major port in Haifa and will control it for 25 years. The Trump administration, according to multiple insiders, wants Israel to roll back at least part of that deal. The Israelis consider it a done deal, even if they may have regrets over it.
“It’s a bit of a shock to the system,” Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president of a think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, that has close ties with the Trump administration and with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said of the looming crisis. “We had been hearing from the administration officials and even some Israeli diplomats about some of the complications arising from the intensification of the great power competition between the U.S. and China.”
In mid-May, the Trump administration unveiled a 16-page revised approach for relating to China amid American fury with the Chinese for obfuscating the origins of the coronavirus and failing to contain the pandemic. The US has not publicly spelled out potential consequences for countries that do not go along with its anti-China push.
But those with ties to both the Israeli and US government said there is a real risk of diminished security cooperation if Israel does not accede to American pressure to stringently review any commercial deals with China and nix those that might impinge on Israeli and US security interests.
Doug Feith, a top Pentagon official under President George W. Bush who helped resolve the last US-Israel crisis over China — over Israel’s weapons sales to China in the mid-2000s — said the Trump administration was poised to act unless Israel took steps to alleviate US concerns.
Feith pointed to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s brief trip to Israel in mid-May — only his second visit abroad since the coronavirus pandemic shut down the United States — to make sure Jerusalem got the message. During his one-day visit, Pompeo openly accused China of “obfuscating” and “hiding” information related to the pandemic. (China’s ambassador to Israel responded by calling the accusations “absurd,” saying China “has never covered up the outbreak.” He died of an apparent heart attack in his apartment in Israel less than a week later.)
Pompeo had warned Israel earlier in the month “that further Israeli economic linkage with China will hurt relations with the US,” Feith, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, wrote in a May 15 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Feith said he learned of Pompeo’s warning from Israeli and American officials. (Requests for comment from the State Department and from Israel’s embassy here were not returned.)
Israel is not alone, Feith said, noting similar recent warnings issued by Trump administration officials to Britain and Australia.
“What the government is saying is that it applies to Israel in the same way that it would apply to other countries, including very close friends,” he said.
Those warnings could rupture the close relationship between President Donald Trump and Netanyahu, who have been joined at the hip on policy and politics, ranging from Israel’s claims to territories won in the 1967 Six-Day War, to heightening confrontation with Iran, to disdain for the Democratic Party’s left wing.
“This administration likely feels particularly empowered to have tachlis discussions with Israel about limitations since it [rightly] views itself as having provided Netanyahu and the last government with wall-to-wall support,” said Scott Lasensky, a visiting professor at the University of Maryland and an adviser on Israel policy to the Obama administration.
A resolution to the crisis could sink in Haifa’s port
The biggest deal Israel has signed with a Chinese company was in December: The Shanghai International Port Group, or SIPG, is to build and operate a port in Haifa for 25 years. The agreement followed years of negotiations.
The Trump administration wants controls in place to limit Chinese malfeasance, if not a complete abrogation of the deal. Breaking the contract is unlikely, as Israel does not want to risk alienating its trade relationship with China. Those ties, according to an analysis last year by the Rand Corp., a think tank that advises the Pentagon, was worth $8 billion in Chinese exports to Israel and $3 billion in Israeli exports to China in 2016.
Netanyahu has made his cultivation of ties with China a feather in his cap, and China has already warned Israel against acquiescing to “US bullying.”
SIPG’s control of the port allows the Chinese intelligence-gathering proximity to Israeli naval bases, and to information that flows from the port, as well as the ability to frustrate access in an emergency.
“Ports are high-tech,” Gary Roughead, a retired U.S. Navy admiral who last year co-authored with Feith a Hudson Institute report on US-Israel cooperation in the eastern Mediterranean, said in an interview. Port operators “have control systems and the data that goes with it.”
Roughead said that could give China eyes into Israeli-US communications and, more broadly, into Israel’s military, which would raise concerns for its allies.
“It would be important to know, do [Israel’s] security services have access to the port to monitor for the capabilities that are focused on your naval base, is that allowed, or does Shanghai say, ‘No, you can’t sweep the port, or peer into the types of activity or intercept the communications,’” he said.
Other concerns Roughead noted: US military vessels that stop in Haifa for servicing and whether China would be able to intervene in U.S. assistance to Israel during a military crisis.
Feith said that Israeli officials have endeavored to reassure Americans that they have checks in place at the port, but the Americans remain wary.
Shaul Chorev, a retired rear admiral in the Israeli Navy and a co-author with Feith and Roughead of the Hudson Institute report, said the port deal was a mistake on national security grounds, but Israel was not about to substantially retreat.
“If Israel goes to China and says let’s roll back, we will lose face, we will lose our economic relations,” said Chorev, who directs the Haifa Research Center for Maritime Policy and Strategy.
The crisis has come on suddenly
Until around 2018, few in Israel or the United States saw this crisis coming. Dealing with China, with its deep pockets and resources, had been a no-brainer across the planet for years. Its Belt and Road initiative, bringing infrastructure on the cheap to developing countries, is transforming Africa.
But then some critics began to claim that Chinese information technology companies were allowing China’s government to spy on countries that use their cellular technology. And Beijing also began facing claims that it was using Belt and Road to squeeze diplomatic concessions from participating countries. In 2018, Trump administration officials began to aggressively warn allies against deals with China. Lawmakers from both parties have issued similar warnings.
Those concerns were simply not on anyone’s radar in 2015, said Daniel Shapiro, then the US ambassador to Israel. Yisrael Katz, then Israel’s transportation minister, approached Shapiro seeking US contractors to redo Haifa’s port. That never eventuated, in part because the project was seen as too small by US contractors, so Israel turned to the Shanghai International Port Group.
“They went ahead with their process, they signed a deal with the firm,” Shapiro said. “No one in the US government — not in the Navy, not in the Defense Department — called me and said ‘Hey, we have a problem.’”
A renewed process to vet Israel’s international deals
Last year, Israel launched a foreign investment review board at the behest of John Bolton, then Trump’s national security adviser and one of Israel’s closest-ever friends in US government. The goal of the board is to ensure that agreements are vetted with national security concerns in mind — and avoid a situation like the Haifa port deal, where negotiations took place for several years, yet parts of Israel’s security establishment were caught off-guard by the agreement.
The review board is seen as feckless and ineffectual, in part because it was formed under Israel’s interim government and lacked a mandate. Now that Netanyahu has set up a government, the Americans expect him to strengthen the mechanism.
“The first thing that Israel should do for its own sake, even if America and China were not on this collision path, is to have a real foreign investment screening mechanism,” said Shira Efron, a visiting fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies who co-authored the 2019 Rand report.
Efron said the mechanism should be legislated — the committee last year was a Cabinet decision — which would give it the power to compel compliance. Its scope should be extended to the technological sector, she said, and it should be an independent entity.
The Israeli government should make clear that strengthening the mechanism is in Israel’s interest and not at the behest of the United States, Efron added.
“If it’s in response to US pressure, it’s insulting to China,” she said.
It’s not about 5G
Trump administration officials have formally warned Britain and Australia that allowing Huawei, the Chinese communications giant, to help establish 5G communications networks in their countries would adversely affect intelligence sharing. The US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network.
Democrats and Republicans alike see Chinese communications companies as arms of China’s intelligence network.
There were concerns last year that Israel was considering similar contracts, but Israel has put them to rest, said a March report by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.
“In view of the absence of Chinese technology from previous generations of communications infrastructure in Israel, and despite the lack of clear official announcements by the Israeli government on the matter, the likelihood of its 5G infrastructure being built with Chinese technology is low to nonexistent,” the report said.
But there’s a lot more to talk about
China has been building infrastructure in Israel since at least 2007, when the China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. brought in 300 workers to build the tunnel system linking the southern entrance to Haifa with the suburbs to the city’s north. That success has led to a thirst for Chinese construction, and there was talk of China building new rail links in Israel. China’s Bright Food Group owns a controlling stake in Tnuva, Israel’s preeminent dairy.
Decoupling from China won’t be easy. And China appears prepared to place its own pressure on Israel.
After Pompeo’s visit last month, the Chinese embassy’s spokesman declared that his country trusted that its “Jewish friends are not only able to defeat the coronavirus but also the ‘political virus,’ and choose the course of action that best serves their interests.”
Still, Israel’s willingness last week to cut China out of the Sorek 2 desalination deal shows it is ready to roll back engagement on some fronts.
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies released a paper last month outlining how to avert a deeper crisis. Its recommendation: “The United States should work with Israel and other allies to facilitate alternatives to help Israel pivot away from China.
“Other Indo-Pacific countries, such as Japan, Canada, India, Australia, South Korea, and Taiwan, already invest in Israel and may be eager to increase their engagement to replace Chinese investment,” the paper said.
There are other spheres in which Israel will be under US pressure to apply greater scrutiny, including Chinese investment in Israel’s high-tech sector, said Vance Serchuk, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and once a foreign policy adviser to former US Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.
“In many cases on the surface, the companies that are working in these areas are not primarily focused on military applications, but the capabilities themselves have the potential to be leveraged for strategic impact,” Serchuk said. “Both Israelis and Americans agree that Israeli capabilities should never be leveraged or weaponized against the United States, but figuring out exactly what that means is very tricky.”
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The Sultan 2.0 will heavily tilt east
It’s not that Erdogan has a scheme to head east at the west’s expense. It’s just that the world’s grandest infrastructure, development, and geopolitical projects are all in the east today.
By Pepe Escobar
31May2023 https://thecradle.co/article-view/25429/the-sultan-20-will-heavily-tilt-east
Pepe Escobar on Erdogan and the Turkish elections Photo Credit: The Cradle
The collective west was dying to bury him – yet another strategic mistake that did not take into account the mood of Turkish voters in deep Anatolia.
In the end, Recep Tayyip Erdogan did it – again. Against all his shortcomings, like an aging neo-Ottoman Sinatra, he did it “my way,” comfortably retaining Turkiye’s presidency after naysayers had all but buried him.
The first order of geopolitical priority is who will be named Minister of Foreign Affairs. The prime candidate is Ibrahim Kalin – the current all-powerful Erdogan press secretary cum top adviser.
Compared to incumbent Cavusoglu, Kalin, in theory, may be qualified as more pro-west. Yet it’s the Sultan who calls the shots. It will be fascinating to watch how Turkiye under Erdogan 2.0 will navigate the strengthening of ties with West Asia and the accelerating process of Eurasia integration.
The first immediate priority, from Erdogan’s point of view, is to get rid of the “terrorist corridor” in Syria. This means, in practice, reigning in the US-backed Kurdish YPG/PYD, who are effectively Syrian affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – which is also the issue at the heart of a possible normalization of relations with Damascus.
Now that Syria has been enthusiastically welcomed back to the Arab League after a 12-year freeze, a Moscow-brokered entente between the Turkish and Syrian presidents, already in progress, may represent the ultimate win-win for Erdogan: allowing control of Kurds in north Syria while facilitating the repatriation of roughly 4 million refugees (tens of thousands will stay, as a source of cheap labor).
The Sultan is at his prime when it comes to hedging his bets between east and west. He knows well how to profit from Turkiye’s status as a key NATO member – complete with one of its largest armies, veto power, and control of the entry to the uber-strategic Black Sea.
And all that while exercising real foreign policy independence, from West Asia to the Eastern Mediterranean.
So expect Erdogan 2.0 to remain an inextinguishable source of irritation for the neocons and neoliberals in charge of US foreign policy, along with their EU vassals, who will never refrain from trying to subdue Ankara to fight the Russia-China-Iran Eurasia integration entente. The Sultan, though, knows how to play this game beautifully.
How to manage Russia and China
Whatever happens next, Erdogan will not hop on board the sanctions-against-Russia sinking ship. The Kremlin bought Turkish bonds tied to the development of the Russian-built Akkuyu nuclear power plant, Turkiye’s first nuclear reactor. Moscow allowed Ankara to postpone nearly $4 billion in energy payments until 2024. Best of all, Ankara pays for Russian gas in rubles.
So an array of deals related to the supply of Russian energy trump possible secondary sanctions that might target the steady rise in Turkiye’s exports. Still, it’s a given the US will revert to its one and only “diplomatic” policy – sanctions. The 2018 sanctions did push Turkiye into recession after all.
But Erdogan can easily count on popular support across the Turkish realm. Early this year, a Gezici poll revealed that 72.8 percent of Turkish citizens privilege good relations with Russia while nearly 90 percent rate the US as a “hostile” nation. That’s what allows Interior Minister Soylu to remark, bluntly, “we will wipe out whoever is causing trouble, including American troops.”
China-Turkiye strategic cooperation falls under what Erdogan defines as “turning to the East” – and is mostly about China’s multi-continent infrastructure behemoth, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Turk Silk Road branch of the BRI focuses on what Beijing defines as the “Middle Corridor,” a prime cost-effective/secure trade route that connects Asia to Europe.
The driver is the China Railway Express, which turned the Middle Corridor arguably into BRI’s backbone. For instance, electronics parts and an array of household items routinely arriving via cargo planes from Osaka, Japan are loaded onto freight trains going to Duisburg and Hamburg in Germany, via the China Railway Express departing from Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Changsha – and crossing from Xinjiang to Kazakhstan and beyond via the Alataw Pass. Shipments from Chongqing to Germany take a maximum of 13 days.
It’s no wonder that nearly 10 years ago, when he first unveiled his ambitious, multi-trillion dollar BRI in Astana, Kazakhstan, Chinese President Xi Jinping placed the China Railway Express as a core BRI component.
Direct freight trains from Xian to Istanbul are plying the route since December 2020, using the Baku-Tblisi-Kars (BTK) railway with less than two weeks travel time – and plans afoot to increase their frequency. Beijing is well aware of Turkiye’s asset as a transportation hub and crossroads for markets in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, West Asia, and North Africa, not to mention a customs union with the EU that allows direct access to European markets.
Moreover, Baku’s victory in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war came with a ceasefire deal bonus: the Zangezur corridor, which will eventually facilitate Turkiye’s direct access to neighbors from the Caucasus to Central Asia.
A pan-Turkic offensive?
And here we enter a fascinating territory: the possible incoming interpolations between the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BRICS+ – and all that also linked to a boost in Saudi and Emirati investments in the Turkish economy.
Sultan 2.0 wants to become a full member of both the Chinese-led SCO and multipolar BRICS+. This means a much closer entente with the Russia-China strategic partnership as well as with the Arab powerhouses, which are also hopping on the BRICS+ high-speed train.
Erdogan 2.0 is already focusing on two key players in Central Asia and South Asia: Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Both happen to be SCO members.
Ankara and Islamabad are very much in sync. They express the same judgment on the extremely delicate Kashmir question, and both backed Azerbaijan against Armenia.
But the key developments may lie in Central Asia. Ankara and Tashkent have a strategic defense agreement – including intel sharing and logistics cooperation.
The Organization of Turkic States (OTS), with a HQ in Istanbul, is the prime energizer of pan-Turkism or pan-Turanism. Turkiye, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are full members, with Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Hungary, and Ukraine cultivated as observers. The Turk-Azeri relationship is billed as “one nation, two states” in pan-Turkic terms.
The basic idea is a still hazy “cooperation platform” between Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus. Yet some serious proposals have already been floated. The OTS summit in Samarkand late last year advanced the idea of a TURANCEZ free trade bloc, comprising Turkiye, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and as observers, Hungary (representing the EU) and Northern Cyprus.
Meanwhile, hard business prevails. To fully profit from the status of the energy transit hub, Turkiye needs not only Russian gas but also gas from Turkmenistan feeding the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) as well as Kazakh oil coming via the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.
The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) is heavy on economic cooperation, active in a series of projects in transportation, construction, mining, and oil and gas. Ankara has already invested a whopping $85 billion across Central Asia, with nearly 4,000 companies scattered across all the “stans.”
Of course, when compared to Russia and China, Turkiye is not a major player in Central Asia. Moreover, the bridge to Central Asia goes via Iran. So far, rivalry between Ankara and Tehran seems to be the norm, but everything may change, lightning fast, with the simultaneous development of the Russia-Iran-India-led International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which will profit both – and the fact that the Iranians and Turks may soon become full BRICS+ members.
Sultan 2.0 is bound to boost investment in Central Asia as a new geoeconomic frontier. That in itself encapsulates the possibility of Turkiye soon joining the SCO.
We will then have a “turning to the East” in full effect, in parallel to closer ties with the Russia-China strategic partnership. Take note that Turkiye’s ties with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are also strategic partnerships.
Not bad for a neo-Ottoman who, until a few days ago, was dismissed as a has-been.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
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Failures Of An Economic Hitman In Turkey: Erdogan Re-elected
by Tyler Durden, 04June2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/failures-economic-hitman-turkey-erdogan-re-elected
Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,
President Erdogan’s re-election in Turkey is a monumental failure of Western pressure. Because of it, it’s time to take our eyes off Ukraine and look at a different theater of World War III with equal if not bigger implications.
Turkey is another in a now long string of failed Economic Hitman operations cum Color Revolutions. The last big one to fail was in Belarus in 2020 following the re-election of Alexander Lukashenko.
Turkey has been the subject of a seven-year campaign to be rid of Erdogan, beginning with the 2016 coup attempt organized out of the NATO airbase at Incerlik. Turkey’s been through a persistent five-year brutal devaluation of its currency, the lira, seeing it drop from less than 2 versus the US dollar to nearly 21 this week in the wake of Erdogan’s victory.
I’ve covered this story in detail (see my Turkey archives here) being one of the lone voices out there trying to parse Erdogan’s monetary policy actions which I’ve argued sought to de-dollarize Turkey’s foreign exchange liabilities and forge an independent path.
Erdogan, wily as a fox, has been deftly playing the US and Russia/China off each other for years, positioning Turkey simultaneously as a member of NATO, the gatekeeper to the Black Sea, and the financial and trade crossroads linking East and West.
The West’s campaign to overthrow President Assad in Syria beginning in 2011 couldn’t have gone forward without Erdogan’s help. He went along with it very willingly having been promised Turkey claiming Idlib province in the West and taking most of the north. Vladimir Putin accepting Assad’s invitation for assistance in fighting ISIS and Erdogan’s pets in Idlib (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or HTS) began the unraveling of those plans.
Turkey shooting down a Russian SU-31 in November 2015 was supposed to push Putin to war against Turkey, giving NATO every reason to engage the Russians directly. But Putin and Erdogan came to an understanding over this incident, implying that it wasn’t on Erdogan’s orders the Russian plane was shot down, but rather the usual suspects at Foggy Bottom, Langley, GCHQ in London who did.
If you wonder why I’m never worried by the latest lame attempt to draw Russia into a wider conflict in Ukraine by events like the Nordstream or Kerch Strait bridge bombings it was Putin’s handling of this moment with Erdogan and then later the shooting down of the Russian IL-20 ELINT plane over Syria by someone who definitely wasn’t Syria, who took the blame to avert WWIII.
These were moments where Russia and NATO were being pressed into conflict and Putin refused to follow the ready-made Tom Clancy script prepared for him by the spooks who never seem to run out of at-bats no matter how many times they strike out.
It is against this background that we have to analyze the complete failure that is the West’s campaign to unseat Erdogan and his AKP party from power in Turkey.
The ZIRP years in the West coincided with the big degradation of Turkey’s finances as Erdogan invited Western investment into the country to support his territorial ambitions. But, Erdogan, as pointed out by Baris Doster of Marmara University noted:
I agree. In effect, Erdogan’s pragmatism led him to nearly every move he’s made over the past decade, going along with NATO when they were on the offensive, but quickly pivoting and cutting bait on a policy the minute they were put on the defensive, c.f. my above comments about Syria.
In fact, it’s easy to argue that Erdogan’s breaking point with the West over Syria is what has dominated geopolitical headlines for the past seven years. He relishes the role as the guy with the leverage over all NATO policy in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, whose access he controls thanks to the 1936 Treaty of Montreaux.
He’s still holding Sweden’s entry hostage, something I get the feeling the new government in Stockholm prefers.
With his re-election and Turkey’s finances improving Turkey’s importance will only grow. He will not leave NATO willingly, instead using his veto power to slow the roll of the neocons, Eurocrats, and globalists who have betrayed not only him but Turkey. For all of his aspirations, Erdogan is a Turkish nationalist through and through.
He will now throw more sand in the gearworks of NATO’s plans for wider conflict in the region from Ukraine to Iran and Armenia until the West kicks Turkey out or someone assassinates him.
All the while he will continue to invite Russian, Iranian and Chinese money into Turkey with the goal of lowering its dependence on foreign energy trades settled in the dollar.
The Turkish people have given him another five years to complete this transition away from the West to an independent trade hub. If the West is smart they will not antagonize him further.
I was asked by Sputnik News for my thoughts earlier this week on these issues directly. You can find my comments in these two articles (here and here). As always, I am publishing the full Q&A below the break in the interests of transparency and to ensure that the context of my comments haven’t been lost.
In the run-up to election day on 28 May, the Turkish lira came under unprecedented pressure from major financial giants. For example, analysts of Western banks JPMorgan Chase and HSBC Holdings began to spread information about the inevitable weakening of the lira to levels of 24-25 lire per dollar. We also saw many other Western financial investors short selling the Turkish lira.
Here are the questions we were thinking about:
Why do you think that Western financial giants have taken these moves against the lira in recent days? Could this be an effort to influence the Turkish election?
Yes, absolutely. The US has made no bones about their unhappiness with the way President Erdogan has conducted foreign policy in recent years. I’ve felt and published previously that the lira has been under consistent foreign actor attack since the summer of 2018, when this issue first reared its ugly head.
Back then only the admission that Italian and French banks had loaded up on dollar-denominated Turkish corporate debt, putting their balance sheets at risk ended that round of pressure. Erdogan, for his part, saw the situation for what it was and took control over the central bank to wrest control of monetary policy from the IMF.
There was little option and the lira was destined for this hyper-devaluation versus the dollar. Turkey’s net foreign exchange liability position, which in 2018 was over $240 billion, was its Achilles heel.
Today that number is down to ~$80 billion, according to recent Bank of Turkey data. So, while the situation is improving, it is still the vector on which Erdogan is most vulnerable. To fix this Erdogan has rightly invited Chinese and Russian capital into Turkey and cut major energy deals with Putin to mitigate their chronic current account and trade deficits as a major energy importer.
So, yes, financial and monetary instability, crushing hyperinflation of the lira, and questionable geopolitical interventions have undermined Erdogan’s popular support putting him in today’s runoff election.
The recent notes from US banks are simply pushing the situation to the extreme. Turkey has few options but to continue to de-dollarize.
Who do you think the Biden admin and Western financial giants prefer in this election? Why?
Clearly not Erdogan. They have put considerable support behind his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu, cobbling together a Not-Erdogan “Table of Six” coalition which is the only thing they agree on. It is reminiscent of last year’s Not-Orban coalition in Hungary.
The results there were far more embarrassing for the EU/US neoliberals because Orban wasn’t dealing with the chronic currency issues plaguing Erdogan. That said, Erdogan’s victory wasn’t really in doubt after the general election which he nearly won outright.
Biden and Europe want a Turkey loyal to NATO and their program to maximally confront the Russia/China/Iran axis. Erdogan has been a thorn in that program since late 2015 and Russia’s intervention in Syria laid bare both his and NATO’s complicity in balkanizing it.
He has played both sides against each other to forge an independent path for Turkey. Many of his moves have been questionable but viewed through that lens the pattern of his behavior is quite clear. His attempts to forge a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia last year was likely the last straw for the West.
Turkey is the lynchpin to the Eastern Mediterranean and continued US presence in the Middle East. Despite the economic troubles of Turkey, he was able to communicate them as continued US anti-Arab behavior. From here, with him in power for another four years (and likely the last four), he has a big task in front of him to stabilize Turkey’s finances. He’s already made the case successfully that NATO turned its back on Turkey, now he’s going to have to turn that into a definitive policy.
Erdogan’s unorthodox monetary policy has been the topic of extensive discussion among Western economists. What is your assessment of it?
I’ve written about this in detail in the past here. Erdogan’s ‘unconventional’ monetary policy was the basis for his exit strategy from the West for Turkey. Erdogan challenged conventional IMF policy of raising interest rates to attract foreign investors.
Why would you want to attract the same people who previously pulled their money out of your country, destabilizing it. Foreign capital inflow under this model is just blackmail, leaving the government dependent on foreign largesse.
If they don’t like your policies, they pull their money out, crash the currency and hope to effect political reform more to their liking. What Erdogan did at the end of 2021 when the lira hit a peak of 18.2 versus the dollar was to use Turkey’s relatively clean balance sheet (less than 40% debt-to-GDP) to encourage Turks to save and invest in lira (which I went into detail in the article linked above) while encouraging Russian and Chinese investment in Turkish sovereign debt and infrastructure/trade projects.
Those have been excellent investments for those investors. In November 2021, Turkish 10-year debt was yielding more than 23%. Today that number is 9.2%. The lira depreciated from an average of 15 to today’s 20 versus the dollar. Even accounting for the exchange rate losses, these have been excellent returns. Remember bond prices rise as yield falls.
Now, with his re-election, Erdogan and Turkey are on the other side of political risk of new leadership changing the course. Turkey isn’t out of the woods yet, but the economic data is improving, in some areas like Manufacturing Confidence (108) and Capacity Utilization (75.4%) quite rapidly.
Political stability is what is needed now. Militaristic adventurism isn’t. Erdogan has been given another four years to complete the turnaround and reimagining of the Turkish economy.
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5 Reasons Why Much Of The Global South Isn’t Automatically Supporting The West In Ukraine
by Tyler Durden, 27February2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/5-reasons-why-much-global-south-isnt-automatically-supporting-west-ukraine
Authored by Krishen Mehta via EurAsiaReview.com,
In October 2022, about eight months after the war in Ukraine started, the University of Cambridge in the UK harmonized surveys conducted in 137 countries about their attitudes towards the West and towards Russia and China.
The findings in the study, while not free of a margin of error, are robust enough to take seriously.
These are:
Sentiments of this nature have caused some ire, surprise, and even anger in the West. It is difficult for them to believe that two-thirds of the world’s population is not siding with the West.
What are some of the reasons or causes for this?
global chess
I believe there are five reasons as explained in this brief essay.
1. The Global South does not believe that the West understands or empathizes with their problems.
India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, summed it up succinctly in a recent interview: “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” He is referring to the many challenges that developing countries face whether they relate to the aftermath of the pandemic, the high cost of debt service, the climate crisis that is ravaging their lives, the pain of poverty, food shortages, droughts, and high energy prices. The West has barely given lip service to the Global South on many of these problems. Yet the West is insisting that the Global South join it in sanctioning Russia.
The Covid pandemic is a perfect example—despite the Global South’s repeated pleas to share intellectual property on the vaccines, with the goal of saving lives, no Western nation was willing to do so. Africa remains to this day the most unvaccinated continent in the world. Africa had the capability to make the vaccines but without the intellectual property they could not do it.
But help did come from Russia, China, and India. Algeria launched a vaccination program in January 2021 after it received its first batch of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccines. Egypt started vaccinations after it got China’s Sinopharm vaccine at about the same time. South Africa procured a million doses of AstraZeneca from the Serum Institute of India. In Argentina, Sputnik became the backbone of their vaccine program. All of this was happening while the West was using its financial resources to buy millions of doses in advance, and often destroying them when they became outdated. The message to the Global South was clear—your problems are your problems, they are not our problems.
2. History Matters: Who stood where during colonialism and after independence?
Many countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia view the war in Ukraine through a different lens than the West. Many of them see their former colonial powers regrouped as members of the Western alliance. The countries that have sanctioned Russia are either members of the European Union and NATO or the closest allies of the United States in the Asia Pacific region. By contrast, many countries in Asia, and almost all countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America have tried to remain on good terms with both Russia and the West, and to shun sanctions against Russia. Could it be because they remember their history at the receiving end of the West’s colonial policies, a trauma that they still live with but which the West has mostly forgotten.
Nelson Mandela often said that it was the Soviet Union’s support, both moral and material, that helped inspire Southern Africans to overthrow the Apartheid regime. It is because of this that Russia is still viewed in a favorable light by many African countries. And once Independence came for these countries, it was the Soviet Union that supported them even though it had limited resources itself. The Aswan Dam in Egypt which took 11 years to build, from 1960 to 1971, was designed by the Moscow based Hydro project Institute and financed in large part by the Soviet Union. The Bhilai Steel Plant in India, one of the first large infrastructure projects in a newly independent India, was set up by the USSR in 1959. Other countries also benefited from the support provided by the former Soviet Union, both political and economic, including Ghana, Mali, Sudan, Angola, Benin, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Mozambique.
On February 18, 2023, at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the foreign minister of Uganda, Jeje Odongo, had this to say, “We were colonized and forgave those who colonized us. Now the colonizers are asking us to be enemies of Russia, who never colonized us. Is that fair? Not for us. Their enemies are their enemies. Our friends are our friends.”
Rightly or wrongly, present day Russia is seen by many countries in the Global South as an ideological successor to the former Soviet Union. These countries have a long memory that makes them view Russia in a somewhat different light. Given the history, can we blame them?
3. The war in Ukraine is seen by the Global South as mainly about the future of Europe rather than the future of the entire world.
The history of the Cold War has taught developing countries that getting embroiled in great power conflicts generates few benefits for them yet carries enormous risks. And they view the Ukraine proxy war as one that is more about the future of European security than the future of the entire world. Furthermore, the war is seen by the Global South as an expensive distraction from the most pressing issues that they are dealing with. These include higher fuel prices, food prices, higher debt service costs, and more inflation, all of which have become more aggravated because of the Western sanctions that have been imposed on Russia.
A recent survey published by Nature Energy states that up to 140 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty due to the higher energy prices that have come about over the past year.
Soaring energy prices not only directly impact energy bills, but they also lead to upward price pressures on all supply chains and consumer items, including food and other necessities. This hurts the developing countries even more than it hurts the West.
The West can sustain the war “as long as it takes” since they have the financial resources and the capital markets to do so. But the Global South does not have the same luxury. A war for the future of European security has the potential of devastating the security of the entire world.
The Global South is also alarmed that the West is not pursuing negotiations that could bring this war to an early end. There were missed opportunities in December 2021 when Russia proposed revised security treaties for Europe that could have prevented the war and which were rejected by the West. The peace negotiations of April 2022 in Istanbul were also rejected by the West in part to “weaken” Russia. And now the entire world is paying the price for an invasion that the Western media like to call “unprovoked” and which could have been avoided.
4. The world economy is no longer American dominated or Western led and the Global South does have other options.
Several countries in the Global South increasingly see their future tied to countries that are no longer in the Western sphere of influence. Whether this is their perception of how the power balance is shifting away from the West, or wishful thinking as part of their colonial legacy, let us look at some metrics that may be relevant.
The U.S. share of global output declined from 21 percent in 1991 to 15 percent in 2021, while China’s share rose from 4 percent to 19 percent during the same period. China is the largest trading partner for most of the world, and its GDP in purchasing power parity already exceeds that of the United States. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa) had a combined GDP in 2021 of $42 trillion compared with $41 trillion in the G7. Their population of 3.2 billion is more than 4.5 times the combined population of the G7 countries, at 700 million.
The BRICS are not imposing sanctions on Russia nor supplying arms to the opposing side. While Russia is the biggest supplier of energy and foodgrains for the Global South, China remains the biggest supplier of financing and infrastructure projects to them through the Belt and Road Initiative. And now Russia and China are closer than ever before because of the war. What does it all mean for developing countries?
It means that when it comes to financing, food, energy, and infrastructure, the Global South must rely more on China and Russia more than on the West. The Global South is also seeing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization expanding, more countries wanting to join the BRICS, and many countries now trading in currencies that move them away from the dollar, the Euro, or the West. They also see a deindustrialization taking place in some countries in Europe because of higher energy costs, along with higher inflation. This makes quite apparent an economic vulnerability in the West that was not so evident before the war. With developing countries having an obligation to put the interests of their own citizens first, is it any wonder that they see their future tied more to countries that are not Western led or American dominated?
5. The “rule based international order” is lacking in credibility and is in decline.
The “rule based international order” is a concept that is seen by many countries in the Global South as one that has been conceived by the West and imposed unilaterally on other countries. Few if any non-Western countries ever signed on to this order. The South is not opposed to a rule-based order, but rather to the present content of these rules as conceived by the West.
But one must also ask, does the rule based international order apply even to the West?
For decades now, for many in the Global South, the West is seen to have had its way with the world without regard to anyone else’s views. Several countries were invaded at will, mostly without Security Council authorization. These include the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Under what “rules” were those countries attacked or devastated, and were those wars provoked or unprovoked? Julian Assange is languishing in prison, and Ed Snowden is in exile, for having the courage (or perhaps the audacity) to expose the truths behind these actions.
Sanctions imposed on over 40 countries by the West impose considerable hardship and suffering. Under what international law or “rules-based order” did the West use its economic strength to impose these sanctions? Why are the assets of Afghanistan still frozen in Western banks while the country is facing starvation and famine? Why is Venezuelan gold still held hostage in the UK while the people of Venezuela are living at subsistence levels? And if Sy Hersh’s expose is true, under what “rules-based order” did the West destroy the Nord Stream pipelines?
There appears to be a paradigm shift that is taking place away from a Western dominated world and into a more multipolar world. And the war in Ukraine has made more evident those differences or chasms that are part of this paradigm shift. Partly because of its own history, and partly because of the economic realities that are emerging, the Global South sees a multipolar world as a preferable outcome in which their voices are more likely to be heard.
President Kennedy ended his American University speech in 1963 with the following words: “We must do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless for its success. Confident and unafraid, we must labor on towards a strategy of peace.”
That strategy of peace was the challenge before us in 1963 and they remain a challenge for us today. And the voices for peace, including those of the Global South, need to be heard.
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