Hmm, is this not something they can swallow, and put an end to the inevitable further destruction, loss of life...eventually Putin will die, and perhaps negotiations can restart.
Everyone has played a part in this tragedy...
ââNot A Very Nice Person At All,â she read. âI wonder what kind of person would put that on a wallet?â âSomeone who wasnât a very nice person,â said William.â âTerry Pratchett, The Truth
In this extremely short and simplistic post, I will do what it says on the tin: Scrape away the already deeply impacted layers of wartime propaganda<1>. I propose to do this in the old-fashioned American way: By following the money. (I was inspired to write this post by Gonzalo Lira, former NC contributor (!), streaming from Kharkiv (!!). His video, âWho Is Zelensky? A Puppetâand Hereâs Why,â is perceptive, lucid, and convincing, albeit NSFW. I recommend you listen to it, on the off chance that the more hits this video has, the more of a public figure â hence, safer â Lira will be.)
As a caveat: Iâm going to be looking at the dealings of a billionaire, the armed militants he funds, and a politician he funds. All these relationships are so complicated and intricate as to make, say, The Clinton Foundation look like a childâs scribbled drawing. All these relationships are deeply rooted in the history of Ukrainian nationalism as well, with plenty of heroism and villainy to go around. By taking a transactional approach (âfollow the moneyâ) I abstract away from all that. (For example, Watergate exploded because it involved cash payoffs, not because of the often bizarre personal histories of the participants.)
Some of Ukraineâs private battalions have blackened the countryâs international reputation with their extremist views. The Azov battalion, partially funded by Taruta and Kolomoisky, uses the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol as its logo, and many of its members openly espouse neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic views. The battalion members have spoken about âbringing the war to Kiev,â and said that Ukraine needs âa strong dictator to come to power who could shed plenty of blood but unite the nation in the process.â
(Thereâs that âredemptive violenceâ thing.)
And besides funding the Azov Battalion, Kolomoyskyi is funding somebody else, seriously and for some time.
The Politician: Volodymyr Zelensky
That would be the current President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky<5>. From the BBC:
n the Ukrainian political television dramedy Servant of the People, Volodymyr Zelensky plays a teacher who becomes president after a video of him ranting against government corruption goes viral. Itâs typical of the programmeâs slapstick take on the countryâs struggles with oligarchy and overindulgent bureaucrats during its 18 years as an independent, post-Soviet nation. But scenes like this one have taken on a new significance now that Zelensky has become the real president of Ukraine, thanks to his popularity as a fictional leader.
Ironic, history. More:
Servant of the People premiered in Ukraine in 2015, starring Zelensky â then known as a comic actor â as a regular guy-turned-president named Vasyl Petrovych Holoborodko. The show ran for three seasons on the countryâs 1+1 channel
In terms of quality, Servant of the People holds its own against any internationally known prestige comedy, which likely contributed to its effectiveness in both pointing out such corruption and crowning a real president. It falls somewhere between Armando Iannucciâs dark, cutting political satires, The Thick of It and Veep, and the sunny American take on local politics, Parks and Recreation. Servant of the People hits close to the bone at times, but offers a ray of hope too, packaged in smooth production, tight writing, fine performances, and laugh-out-loud sequences.
Itâs little wonder that such a series, coupled with Zelenskyâs winning performance as a smart, moral everyman, added up to a presidential victory that exceeded the showâs fantasy version of election night: on Servant of the People, he won 67% of the vote; in real life, he won 73.2%.
And the kicker:
Kolomoisky owns 1+1, which broadcast Servant of the People and ostensibly helped to bring Zelensky to power.
âOstensiblyâ is doing more work there than any mere adverb should every have to do. And Zelensky fits into the West Wing-shaped hole in the liberal Democrat brain. A telling detail on the 2019 election:
With the Ukrainian economy stalled and Poroshenkoâs approval rating approaching single digits, it seemed likely that the 2019 presidential election would be a repeat of the 2014 contest, with the incumbent facing Orange Revolution veteran Yulia Tymoshenko. Instead, more than three dozen candidates entered the race, and Zelensky emerged as one of the front-runners virtually from the moment of the declaration of his candidacy. That announcement was made on 1+1 on December 31, 2018, preempting Poroshenkoâs annual New Yearâs address. The provocative move raised questions about the involvement of 1+1 owner Kolomoisky in Zelenskyâs campaign.
AJC Boone is back with the kind of post that is destined to become the default reference for everyone trying to separate propaganda from empirical reality over the manufactured Ukraine crisis. A former diplomat, Boone is very much on her home turf here, and it shows: for the first time you will read about the real nature of Ukraine â its history, culture, leadership disaster and political corruption; and you can follow the evidenced blow-by-blow story of just how little Putin really âwantsâ in relation to the country â as well as just how much diplomatic demonisation has been used by American and European media-military machines in search of an ethereal âthreatâ. In a theatre where Truth long ago left by the back door, Amy Boone is a class act. Enjoy.
What I Saw Then
In my Kievan summer of 1992, the US embassy was staffed largely by the diasporan-offspring of WWII Displaced Persons, slavically world-weary Americans called Ihor and Natalja and Bohdan. The subject of lunchtime chatter in the canteen ambled from no-goodnik relatives nicknamed âSnake,â to the unwelcome prospect of obligatory visits to country-cousins at the weekend. My own three staffers were not Americans but local-hires. These included an administrator-of-a-certain-age with dreamy blue Mitford eyes, who sighed like a Xanaxed Chekhov sister over lost romance; and soon-departing Oleh, who on the basis of his Jewish ethnicity had finagled permission to emigrate to Israel. This felt like a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket escape from a place whence there literally was no escape (the USSR a mere three years before had been exactly such a place). I could hardly imagine that any Jews survived the predations of the 20th c in this part of the world. Oh, hang on a second, Oleh was not, strictly-speaking, Jewish, I learned. His wife, from whom he was long-divorced â she was Jewishâ¦. Oh.
I thought at the time that it must be Popadiukâs peculiar self-regard that drove his outsized (not to say delusional) diplomatic expectations, so ill-matched to the place where he was stationed. He seemed occasionally to notice the mismatch himself, as his voice would taper off in mid-soliloquy, a sour twinkle in his eye reflecting the dawning realisation of the frankly comical limits of his environment. I now realise that Popadiuk was far more likely to have been carrying Washingtonâs brief than any private one. Popadiuk was therefore not so much an ambitious eccentric, as a man dangling in the abyss between what Washington needed Ukraine to be, and what Ukraine actually was.
What Washington has needed Ukraine to be since the end of the Cold War â given President George Bush Srâs Administrationâs fateful and oft-quoted (by Russians) promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not extend itself âeastward by a single inchâ â is a plucky little damsel-in-distress, a restless democratic republic yearning-to-breathe-free, who will invite the Americans in to rescue her from the big bad monster next-door. In rescuing the damsel/Ukrainian land-mass, the US-NATO alliance will be able to snuggle right up against the pancreas of its old Soviet foe. And everybody will cheer and hoist the FBI/CIA operatives on their shouldersâ¦
What Iâve Noticed Since
As for what Ukraine actually is, I offer this little string of pearls:
BTW â-> AnimalFarm's html-table further down ist killing this thread for smaller screeens!
Unfortunately, it was quoted by someone.... so now there'd be more than one post to edit,
in order to fix that mess.
âââââââââââââââââââââââââââââââââââââââ-
BTW —-> AnimalFarm's html-table further down ist killing this thread for smaller screeens! Unfortunately, it was quoted by someone.... so now there'd be more than one post to edit, in order to fix that mess. ———————————————————————————————————————-
took care of my post if that is what you were referring to.
You have revealed your true self. On behalf of all the blue collar white trash in flyover country (who cling to their guns and Bibles, to complete the thought) ... you can go fuck yourself. Lord only knows what you think of all the minorities that also live here. .
Hear! Hear! What amazes me... the ones who tout this stuff are the same ones who condemn "those rich people!" Who can afford to live to live on those coast?
Thanks.
As a refugee from the West Coast before it became the Left Coast, the only way old natives like yourself can afford to still live there in some kind of comfort is Prop 13. Otherwise, you have to be either rich, come in illegally and sponge off the system or have lots of roommates.
Oh, there is another option ... be a self contained bio hazard unit living on the street somewhere, aka as a homeless person.
Location: Really deep in the heart of South California Gender:
Posted:
Mar 7, 2022 - 9:52pm
kurtster wrote:
You have revealed your true self.
On behalf of all the blue collar white trash in flyover country (who cling to their guns and Bibles, to complete the thought) ... you can go fuck yourself.
Lord only knows what you think of all the minorities that also live here.
.
Hear! Hear!
What amazes me... the ones who tout this stuff are the same ones who condemn "those rich people!"
Who can afford to live on those coast?
.. maybe you should then quieten down a bit and go out for a walk. (ps deleting your post doesn't count as exercise)
I was building on the previous comments. No worries.
I'm not sure I'd call that building but if you want some real world info, we have Ukrainian refugees arriving here now. It's real. Civilians are getting bombed, cities destroyed. Just like it ever was..
Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Arthur Koestler are all easy reading and great novelists. .. and none of them are any bleaker than the news is at the moment.
And I don't even know what the news is saying or if I can believe it
.. maybe you should then quieten down a bit and go out for a walk. (ps deleting your post doesn't count as exercise)
The remark that got Bill Maher fired from his original show, Politically Incorrect, way back when ... Israel is our girlfriend and Saudi Arabia is our dope dealer. I saw that show when it aired. Within a week it was over.
just government Though Police. The people themselves participate, willfully, in "double think". I point this out because the rise of online journalism has meant the rise of editing old articles to conform to changing political realities — just like in 1984, but done willfully, without government mandate. Wikipedia articles and news stories change subtly, "corrected" not because of factual errors, but because of political errors. Consider the example in the book 1984 regarding the ongoing war between the three superstates of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia (representing English, Russian, and Chinese empires respectively). At the start of the book, Oceania is at war with Eurasia. They have always been at war with Eurasia. That's the political consensus, and all historic documents agree. However, Winston Smith (the protagonist) remembers a time five years ago when Oceania was instead at war with Eastasia. Winston Smith struggles with philosophical idea of "truth". Which is more true, what everyone knows and what's in the newspapers, or the memories within his head? Then Ocean's allegiance switched back again. On the sixth day of Hate Week, as crowds gathered to denounce Eurasia, the Party switched enemies to Eastasia. In a particularly rousing speech against their enemy, the speaker was handed a slip of paper, and in mid-sentence, without pause, without change in content or tone, he changed the name of the enemy he was speaking against to Eastasia. Eurasia was now their dearest friends. Those holding banners denouncing their enemy were suddenly embarrassed to discover they had unaccountably written the wrong name, and quickly trampled and destroyed them. This change meant work for Winston in the Ministry of Truth:
Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographs—all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere.
I never did read 1984 or any Orwell for that matter that I can recall. Attempted to read 1984 but it was just too dark for me in 1968. I went with Aldous Huxley instead. 1984 to me was about "Big Brother" and social manipulation. Never got to the back story, was irrelevant to me, then Also never read Animal Farm, but I know the gist. Too late in life to find and read them now. The take away's will likely not change.
People will be sheeple and quite willingly. News feeds are tailor made for confirmation bias reinforcement purposes, imo. Don't have any or use any. I prefer to find news on my own and take it to wherever it leads me, rather then be fed and led by algorithms.
I could relate to Huxley and his future take was a little brighter and his indulgence with psychedelics also helped. He made sense to me.
Orwell's point in 1984 was that it's more than just government Though Police. The people themselves participate, willfully, in "double think".
I point this out because the rise of online journalism has meant the rise of editing old articles to conform to changing political realities â just like in 1984, but done willfully, without government mandate. Wikipedia articles and news stories change subtly, "corrected" not because of factual errors, but because of political errors.
Consider the example in the book 1984 regarding the ongoing war between the three superstates of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia (representing English, Russian, and Chinese empires respectively).
At the start of the book, Oceania is at war with Eurasia. They have always been at war with Eurasia. That's the political consensus, and all historic documents agree. However, Winston Smith (the protagonist) remembers a time five years ago when Oceania was instead at war with Eastasia. Winston Smith struggles with philosophical idea of "truth". Which is more true, what everyone knows and what's in the newspapers, or the memories within his head?
Then Ocean's allegiance switched back again. On the sixth day of Hate Week, as crowds gathered to denounce Eurasia, the Party switched enemies to Eastasia. In a particularly rousing speech against their enemy, the speaker was handed a slip of paper, and in mid-sentence, without pause, without change in content or tone, he changed the name of the enemy he was speaking against to Eastasia. Eurasia was now their dearest friends. Those holding banners denouncing their enemy were suddenly embarrassed to discover they had unaccountably written the wrong name, and quickly trampled and destroyed them.
This change meant work for Winston in the Ministry of Truth:
Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with
Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now
completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books,
pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographsâall had to be rectified at
lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that
the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference
to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in
existence anywhere.