The main news item today, for me, is the Russian-made missile striking inside Polish territory. The investigation is still underway as to who fired the missile, but a report on Aljazeera states that it was likely fired as part of Ukrainian defenses against a missile barrage launched by Russia:
Moscow’s forces launched 110 missiles and 10 Iranian-made attack drones throughout the country, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said, leaving millions of households without power.
Ukraine said more than 70 missiles were shot down, but some hit the city of Lviv, near the border with Poland to the west.
Either way, it has made a stir. The fact that there are missiles flying around Europe at all should be our focus of attention. Why is this happening in the year 2022? Somewhere in the morning’s news items I did see that reports from Russia indicate that more and more people are speaking out, in social media at least, against the war and Putin. Good, please keep it up! And if there is anyone inside of Russia reading this that is still on the fence about where that country is going, in my expert opinion your trajectory is unsustainable. Or, in Russian, buduschego net. That it, unless you take action and make big changes in your government immediately.
Made With Bravery and United24
Recently I was introduced to the website Made With Bravery, a marketplace for Ukrainian businesses. The site launched in mid-September, and currently has around 250 merchants with products on the site. Not only do the merchants continue to do business, but the site donates all of their marketplace commissions, and an additional 5% if you pay with Visa, to United24. I am placing my first order today, for holiday gifts.
One of the greatest problems with history is that people refuse to pay attention to it. Libraries are full of books which essentially tell us what is going to happen in our society (meaning right now) if we would only read them. History does repeat itself. While it may not be predictable in the sense of modeling, and making definite predictions- see Karl Popper’s Poverty of Historicism, in our day and age we have seen the same events occur over and over, and they will continue to do so. Here I refer to those singular events in history that have affected millions of people at a time, the nationalistic factionalisation of societies with murder, warfare, and destruction as the ultimate outcome, something the modern world cannot escape.
Do we need examples? In the last century alone, in the western world we have “personalities” (I am loath to call them leaders) such as Hitler, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini… Milošević, and now Putin. Those are just the “big names” that everyone should know and be frightened by when put into the context of August, 2022. How many more can we come up with, how many lesser-known dictators, agitators, regional would-be authoritarians followed the model and their own psychopathic, deviant beliefs to commit mass murder, genocide, crimes against humanity? And then there is the rest of the world- Asia, Latin America, Africa, the middle east… not a very pretty picture of humanity when you think about it.
As my perennial example I always use the the Balkans, the Third Balkan War- the fall of Yugoslavia. The “personality” in this case was Slobodan Milošević. As I see it, the turning point came in 1987 with his speech at Kosovo Polje, the battlefield where the Serbs were defeated in 1389. Here he reached far back in time- a common tactic- to successfully create a nationalistic fervor that would destroy Bosnia, tear apart Kosovo and many parts of the Balkans, and cause the death of hundreds of thousands. The damage he caused has never been, and never will be, completely repaired.
The difference between the outcomes of these past events and what the outcome might be today is glaring- in 1945 the allies took control of war-ravaged Europe and rebuilt it. After the siege of Sarajevo ended money, aid, relief came and now Sarajevo, for example, appears to be a thriving European city. The mafia state of Russia invaded the sovereign country of Ukraine, and the United States, most of Europe, and many countries in the world have stepped up in opposition.
But if we, in the United States follow the same path and allow our country to be destroyed by a pathological, megalomaniacal, criminal psychopath- the path we are currently on- no one is going to come and save us. No one will come to help us rebuild- we will be on our own. We will fall, and since we will not be there to lead the world, the world will follow.
Moving on to a couple of current events. A car bomb in Russia, not surprising. Agents provocateurs at work, false flag operations, deceit? Almost certainly. And immediately the criminal state of Russia has issued a declaration, without a shred of evidence, placing blame on Ukrainian agents, and also implicating Estonia for harboring them. More Russian lies- do not believe a single word that comes from them!
Serbia and Kosovo are next. Talks broke down, of course. Serbia is another… questionable government (see above reference to Third Balkan War.) The governing body of the country does not want peace, reconciliation, prosperity for the people of Europe. Hatred, division, violence, and suffering bring power and money- the goal.
Final thought- read. Read everything, and if you haven’t read them since high school or college, today start with Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. Revisit Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s The Ox-bow Incident. And of course anything Orwell, Jack London’s Iron Heel, and maybe Lord of the Flies and Clockwork Orange thrown in.
I have never been one to sleep late, and on many summer days I start my day long before the sun is up – most days around 4 or 5 a.m. Not a bad thing, as I occasionally catch radio programs that I might otherwise miss. Saturday morning on my “local” radio station, KBYU, I listened to a Top of Mind show called Humanitarian Aid: How to Help Without Doing Harm. The opening part of the show is about the organisation called To Ukraine With Love. They are located in Oregon, and have fundraised, purchased, and organised the delivery of everything from body armor to baby food to Ukraine. This organisation definitely gets my vote as a charity doing good work. If you are thinking about donating to Ukraine, visit their site and see what they are doing.
The show goes on to more interviews- one segment with Pippa Biddle, author of the book “Ours to Explore: Privilege, Power and the Paradox of Voluntourism.” The book is about volunteering and “voluntourism” and their impacts, and brings up a couple of important questions: how much good is the effort truly doing, and why are we doing it- to help or to make ourselves feel good? Good questions, and the answer seems to be that volunteering close to home is best, if time is what you can give. In the end, donating money is always the best for all charities- it allows them to purchase exactly what they need, exactly when it is most needed.
There is also a guest from the University of Pennsylvania, Kat Rosqueta, from the Center for High Impact Philanthropy. Their mission is to make sure donations “make the greatest possible difference in the lives of others,” that, from their “what we do” page.
Finally, Guidestar is a website where you can research non-profits and charities before you donate. Another site I have used for this is Charity Navigator.
All of these sites can help a person negotiate the sometimes confusing realm of making donations to charity, and perhaps volunteering if one has the time. For now, if you can, every dollar sent to Ukraine will help them. My top donation list is in the upper right of this page- click a link, do some reading, and give what you can.
In the meantime, the war goes on. There are some 40,000 Russian soldiers dead at this point. The coming offensive will increase that number. Putin continues to murder Ukrainian citizens, send Russia’s own soldiers to their death, and lie- every word coming out of Russia, as far as I can tell is a lie. Remember that- lies, deceit, propaganda, disinformation- Russia.
I mentioned Turkey and its importance in my last post. Here is an article originally from the Foreign Policy Research Institute that clearly states the importance of Turkey in the future of European security.
According to the Telegram channel “Find Yours”, at this point there have been nearly 38,000 Russians killed in combat in the Ukraine. This number will continue to rise, unless the Russian government, or the Russian people, come to their senses. Remember that the Soviet Union was a repressive, communist state. The Russian Federation is a repressive, oligarchic kleptocracy, and will likely become equally oppressive in due course. While there are many differences, glaring and subtle, throughout the two systems, the end result is the same. The people of Russia are servants of a corrupt dictator, to be used as he sees fit, sent of to work the fields, or to die in the fields of Ukraine.
The same Telegram channel reported the following crimes committed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine to date (translated using Google Translate):
The Office of the Prosecutor General has published updated data on the war crimes of the occupiers recorded since the beginning of the war
▪️The number of dead children increased to 347, another 646 were injured
Crimes committed by the Russian aggressors during their invasion of Ukraine, as of 07 July, 2022.
I have been reading lately about the weaponisation of water, food, and other resources. We are all familiar with the concept at this point, seeing it in use in Syria, Yemen, the Palestinian territories, and of course in Ukraine, to name a few places. Water is the last commodity, and it has more value than we can imagine. It is scarce in so many regions already, and once a crisis occurs and refugees concentrate in one location, it is only a matter of time before exploitation begins. Water and food are the most basic needs, and are easily controlled by governments and non-state actors. Water and food are now weapons in the latest iteration of hybrid warfare.
I recently read an article by Robert Legvold from the journal Foreign Policy from 1977. The title, On Power: The Nature of Soviet Power says it all. It helped put the current situation in perspective. The article mentioned interdependence many times. Back then, the Soviet Union was a relatively isolated country, and globalisation as we know it today, and thus the interdependence we have come to regret, was in what we might call its infancy (again, compared to today.) The article notes how interdependence might be used as a weapon. And now, 45 years later, witness today’s sanctions against Russia. Just one point of note.
Finally Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty reporting, though obviously having a distinct agenda, is full of background information, as well as current reporting, on the situation in Russia and Ukraine. For some background on the fall of the USSR, see the article The Undoing of the USSR: How it Happened. Here is a story about one Russians’ stand against Putin’s war.
So much has happened during this last month- I have been disappearing into the desert alone for long periods, necessary for my sanity.
As of today some 35,600 Russian soldiers have been murdered by the Russian madman that claims to be the leader of that country. Way to go Putin, digging your own grave.
This week’s news alone holds so much positive information. The Ukrainians continue to defend, hold out, regain, and defeat the Russian army. The Russians continue to act in desperation, using soviet-era stock to try and win an unwinnable war, and preparing more of their young people to die, even as their financial reserves dwindle and so much of the world stands against them. The US is sending more money and weapons to Ukraine, as are other countries. Support for the defenders of Ukraine grows, as more and more people realise that this is not a war between Russia and Ukraine, but a war between Russia and Europe, if not between Russia and the entire free world.
Turkey has agreed to NATO membership of Finland and Sweden- this is huge. Turkey is certainly a country to watch, a wild card in the mix if you will. But this ups their status tremendously. We will see how Erdogan’s posturing over the last month or so pays off for his image. So far it looks like he played his hand well.
Ukrainian military Bayraktar TB2 drones
I have noticed a lot of references to the Cold War, and our return to the Cold War. I think it should be very clear at this point that what we face will be nothing like the Cold War. We are so far removed from those days, and we will never return there. The current situation is much worse for many more countries and parts of the world. Globalisation has made us all far more dependent on each other than we were even 30 years ago when the Cold War ended. Resources and products can come from the other side of the world, and any disruption is felt like never before. That combined with population increases, climate change, world fiscal instability, the pandemic exacerbating all of it, and most important of all is the fact that nuclear weapons abound with many of them held by less than responsible nations- especially Russia. All of this puts us in a place we have never been, in a completely new paradigm.
A reminder too, that Ukraine and Russia should not be our primary focus. We must not forget about other eastern European countries that are ripe for the picking so to speak. Keep a close eye on Hungary, Serbia (as well as Bosnia and Republika Srbska), Belarus, and the other non-NATO or non-EU countries that Russia or their satellites have had an eye on. These countries, if Putin had his way, would be the next to fall. They are in no way out of danger.
I have mentioned Masha Gessen’s book, The Future is History, in a previous post. I highly recommend the book if you want to understand modern Russia, and how the current Russian mafia state grew out of the post-communist USSR. Gessen’s book will give you a clear and disturbing understanding of what went on in the background, and how Russia arrived in the present day.
Digging deeper, the word “hypernormalisation” turns up. From the Wikipedia page outlining the movie of the same name, here is the first paragraph of explanation:
The word hypernormalization was coined by Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology who was born in Leningrad and later went to teach in the United States. He introduced the word in his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (2006), which describes paradoxes of Soviet life during the 1970s and 1980s.[3][4] He says that everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine an alternative to the status quo, and politicians and citizens alike were resigned to maintaining the pretense of a functioning society.[5] Over time, this delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy and the fakeness was accepted by everyone as real, an effect that Yurchak termed hypernormalisation.[6]
The bold italics are my own, to emphasise in less than two sentences where the new Russia comes from. It is a creation, a societal delusion in the 1970’s and 1980’s that was enforced by a feat of advertising and theatre from the 1990’s onward; it is a monumental hoax perpetrated on 150 million people. (And not just on Russia- to be fair we cannot leave out the rest of the world. Having survived Trump’s attempt at creating the same in the U.S.- this time- we are not very far off. The question is, can we survive it again?) As a side note, the documentary Hypernormalisation, begins in New York in 1975, with Donald Trump.
If you have a free two hours, you can watch the BBC documentary on youtube here: Hypernormalisation by Adam Curtis.
For more on one of the minds behind the creation of Putin, and the latest iteration of the Russian delusion, you can read about Vladislav Surkov on wikipedia. To summarise, he (probably) served on the GRU intelligence staff, studied theatre direction, and worked in advertising and public relations for some very influential Russians. He is credited with creating Putin’s image, he is an expert at doublespeak, and seems to have perfected the mobile truth that characterises the Russia of the past 60 years or so.
A prime example, Surkov is one of those who claims “there is no Ukraine,” and backs it up with fiction, lies, conspiracies, and historical revision, feeding it to a gullible, depressed, confused, and beaten Russian populace. And thus we arrive at the present day.
A final note on this post- please do not take any of this as the gospel truth. It is information that is available on the internet. Hypernormalisation, the documentary… borders on the conspiratorial… crosses the line in fact, here and there. Take everything with a grain of salt, and do your own digging. My personal philosophy on information I receive- even that which I see with my own eyes- vacillates between “trust but verify” and “never trust anyone.” Proceed with caution.
Lies, Losses, and the Long Road Ahead
30 April 2022
I often wonder these days if I should even make the effort to repost and refute Russian propaganda lies. One thing should be perfectly clear, for anyone who has eyes to see- every single word, phrase, statement that comes out of Russia is a lie, pure propaganda, and should only be taken for its value as a piece of propaganda to be added to all the rest in order to arrive at some shred of truth (most often the exact opposite of what is being stated.)
Remember this- dictatorships, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, and the Russian mafia state all have a common leadership style- that of maintaining an unstable society, a society of division and shortages, through terror and fear, in order to legitimise and necessitate their rule.
Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, their war crimes and crimes against humanity there, there inciting of anti-state, pro-Russian aggression in Ukraine and Moldova, and their desires in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia and elsewhere, along with their threats of nuclear war should be keeping the world awake at night. These facts should be prompting world leaders to do much more than they are doing. We are faced with an existential threat- our very lives are at stake. The lives of everyone living, and for many generations ahead, hang in the balance. Every possible action that can be taken against Russia, Russian interests, Russian partners- any country with ties to Russia must be taken.
Putin must fall, the Russian state must fail, the Russian people must be freed. Only then will Ukraine and the rest of the world be safe again.
On to Russian combat losses for today. The following comes from the Telegram channel The Center for Countering Disinformation.
Russian combat losses as of 30 April 2022
From the same Telegram channel, the morning’s Fake/Fact post:
❌Despite the position of Western countries on the inadmissibility of nuclear blackmail and the prevention of nuclear war, russian foreign minister lavrov said that russia will never flirt with the topic of nuclear war, Zelensky spoke about it in Munich
🔻Caution: it’s a fake!❌russia’s propaganda continues to spread the thesis of the return of peaceful life in the territories temporarily occupied by the russian army. Thus, the russian ambassador to the US officially stated that a peaceful life is being established in the territories liberated from the Nazis
🔻Caution: it’s a disinformation!❌russia continues to influence the world community. In particular, in an interview with the Chinese news agency Xinhua, Lavrov said that the russian military in Ukraine does everything to avoid casualties among the civilian population
🔻Caution: it’s a manipulation!
I wake every morning these days wondering what madness the day has in store. News from Ukraine is of course at the top, and today there is talk of tens of thousands killed in Mariupol, of a new Russian offensive, and war crimes. Russia seems set on continuing to murder Ukrainians, as well as sending their own citizens to be slaughtered. More war means, if the past weeks are any indication, more war crimes. That is the immediate, and then there is the trickle down- rising prices, food shortages, gas shortages, and a growing sense of fear of tomorrow, world wide. Oh, brave new world, that has such people in it!
Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, in their recent Foreign Policy article, warn against our focus changing from “restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence to a policy of active regime change in Russia.” My opinion, as always: unrelenting and increasing pressure on Russia, from all sides, in all possible forms (short of all-out third world war.) If this means regime change, and I hope it does, then so be it. It is either now, when the scene is set, or later when it will cost even more. We are only putting off the inevitable. Russia will someday fall; it is only a matter of when.
Some numbers, for perspective- in Russia there are approximately:
- 146,000,000 people
- 850,000 active duty military personnel
- 250,000 national guard troops
- 75,000 FSB “officers”
- 750,000 regular police
There are clearly more citizens than FSB, police, and military. And how many of those paid by the state would, in the end, side with the people? Always a question when a coup might be on the horizon.
In the meantime, Russian combat losses continue to increase.
Russian combat losses as of 11 April, 2022 from the Telegram channel Center for Countering Disinformation.
Momentary Observation- Changes in Russian Posture
30 March 2022
Russia seems to be backing off with its rhetoric, at least in the news sources I view. This tells me that Putin may be listening to those from his inner circle, something that is clearly a difficult prospect for paranoid, isolated dictators. The question is why? Is he threatened by the unity of the rest of the world against his criminal intentions? Is it because internal dissent is increasing and his rhetoric is backfiring internally? Maybe he is realising his tenuous situation and where his country is headed? Or perhaps he overstepped strategically, revealed to much information and all of these options are still on the table? Just guesses on my part.
Examples of Putin’s ranting from a few weeks back that are no longer at the top of the headlines:
- reports about nuclear capabilities
- talk of invading Poland, other NATO countries
- talk of retaliation “like the world has never known”
- the “de-nazification” of Ukraine
While we do not know precisely what is happening in Russia, we have a fair idea. There are clearly those who oppose the war- there is dissent. There is also endless disinformation that confuses Russians as well as westerners. What we must remember is this- nothing has changed in this geographic region. The former Soviet Union is alive and well, albeit rebranded, still controlling the media, manipulating its people through fear, threat of violence, terror, and isolation. Many Russians have not recovered from the Soviet era; they are still living under a dark, hopeless, depressing authoritarian state. Don’t be fooled by thinking otherwise.
Our only hope is that the younger generations especially, those who have felt freedom over the last 30 years, refuse to give it up. The only answer for a free Russia, and a free world, is for the removal of its current dictator and the dismantling, finally, of the Russian mafia state allowing the people of Russia to actually choose their path.
At Five AM 