S.T.

FEB 20, 2024 by 🗽 🦅 SCOTT RITTER



SNIPPETS (of DETAILED, HARD TRUTH FILLED, LENGTHY ARTICLE):

Biden cast the blame for Navalny’s death squarely at the feet of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Make no mistake. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible. What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled, not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world.” Navalny, Biden said, “was so many things that Putin was not. He was brave. He was principled. He was dedicated to building a Russia where the rule of law existed and of where it applied to everybody. Navalny believed in that Russia, that Russia. He knew it was a cause worth fighting for, and obviously even dying for.”

Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, addressed his death before the Munich Security Conference, with Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in attendance. “I want Putin and his entire surrounding…Putin’s friends, his government [to] know – that they will have to pay for what they’ve done with our country, with my family, and my husband. And that day will come very soon," she declared, adding that “Vladimir Putin must be held accountable for all the horrors they are doing to my country, to our country – to Russia.”

Similar outpourings of grief and support have emerged from the leaders and media of nations that have historically been aligned against Russia. Navalny, it seems, has been able to rally more support to his cause in death than he could while alive.

Navalny has been elevated into near mythical status as the idealized symbol of “Russian democracy.”

But the truth is far different. ... ...

If United Russia could be denied its Duma majority, then Putin would not be able to serve as Prime Minister. And a United Russia defeat in the Duma elections in December 2007 could pave the way for a similar defeat in the presidential election in March 2008. For Kasparov, Gaidar, Navalny, and other leaders of the opposition, this was an opportunity to bring an end to what they viewed as the autocratic rule of Vladimir Putin.

The promoters of “democratic reform” (i.e., regime change) in the State Department likewise believed this to be a unique opportunity for change. Already, US-funded “color revolutions” had swept aside autocratic governments in Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia. The hope was that a similar “revolution” could be organized in Russia. One of the key elements for making this happen was making sure that the opposition groups received the funding necessary to enable their training and organization. In addition to the NED and its two affiliates, the NDI and IRI, money was dispatched to various NGOs and Russian individuals covertly, using the CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).

The CIA was also involved in identifying, grooming, recruiting and managing Russian political dissidents who could help implement the American regime change strategy which targeted Putin and his United Russia Party for the 2007-2008 election cycle. One such dissident was a Russian journalist named Yevgenia Albats.

Albats graduated from Moscow State University in 1980 with a degree in journalism. She was the recipient of an Alfred Friendly fellowship which saw her assigned to the Chicago Tribune as a visiting journalist in 1990. Albats spent 1993 at Harvard University after winning a prestigious Nieman Fellowship, where she spent two semesters “auditing classes with some of the university’s greatest thinkers, participating in Nieman events and collaborating with peers.” ... ...

Albats had been placed on the CIA’s radar through her Alfred Friendly fellowship. While at Harvard there is little doubt that she was further groomed—perhaps without her being cognizant that it was happening. ... ...

Albats returned to Russia in 2004, after successfully defending her PhD thesis in political science. One of the first things Albats did was to turn her Moscow apartment into a political science parlor where she gathered young activists together for the purpose of organizing them into politically viable entities capable of impacting the upcoming Russian elections in 2007-2008.

One of these young activists she attracted was Alexei Navalny.

The Albats-run political parlor sessions, which began in 2004, helped bring Navalny together with Maria Gaidar, and led to the creation of the Democratic Alternative organization, as well as Gary Kasparov (another member of the Albats parlor scene) and his United Civil Front movement. One of the goals of the parlor was to try and find a way to recreate in Russia the kind of youth movement that was created in 2004 in Ukraine that helped bring about the so-called Orange Revolution that prevented Viktor Yanukovich from becoming president. This movement, Pora, played an essential role in mobilizing opposition to Yanukovich. Albats and her team of aspiring political scientists conceived a Russian equivalent, which was called Oborona, or “defense.” The hope of Albats, Gaidar, Kasparov, and Navalny was that Oborona could serve as the impetus for the mobilization of the Russian youth to oust Vladimir Putin from power.

As Albats worked to organize political dissent in Russia, the foundation of western support upon which Russian political opposition was built, namely the funding provided by non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) such as the NED, was exposed as being little more than a vehicle for the channeling of illicit foreign intelligence services. In the winter of 2005-2006, the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, broke up a sophisticated ring run out of the British Embassy involving a so-called “spy rock”—a sophisticated digital communications platform disguised as a rock—which enabled British spies to communicate with their Russian agents without ever having to meet with them.

The Russian agent would pass near the rock and, using a hand-held communication device like a Blackberry, download an electronic message onto a server contained inside the rock. The British spies would then approach the rock and, using the same kind of device, upload the message to their own device. The scheme was discovered when a British spy, unable to retrieve the message, approached the rock and gave it a few kicks to see if the system would work. This attracted the attention of the FSB officers following him, which led to the rock being 🧐 seized and evaluated. One 😈 Russian citizen, said to be employed by a sensitive military industrial facility, was arrested.

The “Spy Rock” used by British intelligence officers to covertly communicate with Russian agents.

But the most surprising aspect of the data retrieved from the “spy rock” was the fact that at least one of the British spies was using the device to transmit information about how various NGOs could access covert  funds being provided by the British government. Persons from the NGOs in question, who had been issued similar devices to those used by their British masters, would download these instructions from the “rock.” Based upon the intelligence gathered from the captured server, the FSB was able to inform the Russian leadership about the specific NGOs involved in these illicit transactions. All in all, 12 Russian 😈 NGOs—including the Committee Against Torture, the Center for Development of Democracy, the Eurasia Foundation, and the Moscow Helsinki Group—were identified as receiving the 💰 illicit funds, which were administered as part of the British Foreign Office’s Global Opportunities Fund.

In the aftermath of the “spy rock” scandal, the Russian government moved to create a new law on NGOs that imposed harsh conditions on the registration and operation of NGOs, effectively banning any NGO involved in politics from receiving foreign funding. While the NGOs impacted by this new law, which took effect in April 2006, denied any wrongdoing, they acknowledged that the impact of the law would be to stifle dissent before the 2007 Duma elections and the 2008 presidential race.

Despite the crackdown on the British-affiliated NGOs, the Albats-run “political parlor” continued to aggressively try to coalesce a viable opposition effort in Russia. Egged on by Albats and her theories about the political potential of ethnic nationalism, in 2007 Navalny co-founded the democratic nationalist National Russian Liberation Movement, an umbrella organization which attracted far-right, ultranationalist movements. The ideology of these groups is perhaps best explained by Navalny’s efforts in coopting them to his cause. Navalny made two videos during this time as a means of introducing the new party to a larger Russian public. The first video had Navalny comparing Muslims in Russia to pests and ended with Navalny shooting a Muslim with a handgun, then declaring that pistols were to Muslims like flyswatters and slippers were to flies and cockroaches. 👀 😠 The second video had Navalny comparing interethnic conflict to dental cavities 🤦‍♂️, implying that the only solution was extraction.

Alexei Navalny in a 2007 video where he likens Muslims to cockroaches who should be shot.

Navalny was kicked out of Yabloko in the summer of 2007, his affiliation with far-right wing Russian nationalism a bridge too far for the neo-liberal political party. But before his falling out, Navalny was able to make an impression on his underwriters. In March 2007 Navalny participated in the so-called “Dissenter’s March,” walking side-by-side with one of the major organizers of the protest, Gary Kasparov.

In the aftermath of the Russian crackdown on foreign funding for NGOs, Kasparov had turned to a network of Russian oligarchs operating out of London, where they colluded with the British Secret Intelligence Service to fund political opposition in Russia. The leader of this effort was the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who had founded a non-profit organization, the International Foundation for Civil Liberties, which served as a front to accomplish Berezovsky’s publicly stated mission of bringing down Putin “by force” or by bloodless revolution.  ... ...

Albats’ influence on Navalny was discernable. Later, when explaining why he had embraced right-wing nationalism, Navalny’s response sounded like it could have been lifted from Albats’ Harvard doctoral thesis. ... ...

The 2007-2008 election cycle represented a devastating defeat for the political opponents of Vladimir Putin and their western supporters. For Navalny, however, it was liberating—he had grown weary of the constant infighting and jostling for power within the ranks of Russia’s political opposition. Instead, Navalny began to pour himself into his new passion—"shareholder activism.” ... ...

For the better part of the next year, Alexei Navalny focused on his work with the Minority Shareholders Association, which he publicly chronicled through his LiveJournal blog. Navalny was still a relatively unknown person in Russia, but his David versus Goliath approach toward uncovering corruption was starting to attract the attention of government officials and political junkies alike. Some people accused Navalny, through his shareholder activism, of simply running a giant grift, exposing corruption to extort payouts from the targeted entities. Others questioned how he was able to pay for all of his work, suggesting that he was being underwritten by entities who did not have the best interests of the Russian government in mind.

Others worried about his security. Navalny spoke about this aspect of his life with a journalist in the winter of 2009, noting that his fears revolved around being arrested “or in the worst-case scenario with someone quietly having me killed.”

Before he had left Kirov, Alexei Navalny met with Maria Gaidar to discuss his future. Gaidar had been a part of the political science parlor run by Yevgenia Albats, and shared the opinion expressed by Albats and Gary Kasparov that Navalny had potential as an activist but lacked the kind of political refinement needed to break out on the national stage. Gaidar was aware of the Yale World Fellows Program, and strongly encouraged Navalny to apply. ... ...

Albats turned to her Yale connections, and put Navalny in touch with Oleg Tsyvinsky, a Yale economics professor, who helped guide Navalny through the application process. Navalny was put in touch with Maxim Trudolyubov, an editor with the well-regarded Vedomosti business daily and an alumni of the Yale World Fellow Program, Class of 2009. Trudolyubov used his connections to have Vedomosti name Navalny its “Private Individual of the Year” for 2009, helping firm up his resumé. ... ...

On April 28, 2010, Alexei Navalny made the following announcement in his LiveJournal blog:

“Girls and Boys, I was lucky enough to get into the Yale World fellows program at Yale University. It was not easy, the competition was something like 1000 people for 15 places. Therefore, I will spend the second half of 2010 in the city of New Haven, Connecticut.” ... ...

In early August, Navalny, his wife Yulia, and their two children left Moscow for New Haven. There, a new world order beckoned that would forever change, and eventually cost, Navalny’s life.

Full article:

FEB 23, 2024 by 🗽 🦅 SCOTT RITTER



SNIPPET:

Deliberate neglect, followed by a blockade and now war have failed to break the resolve of the peninsula’s inhabitants.

As the Russian military operation against Ukraine approaches its third year, the focus on the ongoing conflict has allowed another anniversary to go relatively unnoticed – it’s now around ten years since the violent events in Kiev’s Maidan Square that put in motion the circumstances which precipitated the current conflict.

Over the course of five days, from February 18 to 23, 2014, neo-Nazi provocateurs from the Svoboda (All Ukrainian Union ‘Freedom’) Party and the Right Sector, a coalition of far-right Ukrainian nationalists who follow the political teachings of Stepan Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, engaged in targeted violence against the government of President Viktor Yanukovich. It was designed to remove him from power and replace him with a new, US-backed government. They were successful; Yanukovich fled to Russia on February 23, 2014.

Soon thereafter, the predominantly Russian-speaking population of Crimea undertook actions to separate from the new Ukrainian nationalist government in Kiev. On March 16, 2014, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, both of which at that time were legally considered to be part of Ukraine, held a referendum on whether to join Russia or remain part of Ukraine. Over 97% of the votes cast were in favor of joining Russia. Five days later, on March 21, Crimea formally became part of the Russian Federation.

The Northern Crimea Canal after Ukraine blocked the water supply.

Shortly afterwards, Ukraine built a concrete dam on the North Crimean Canal, a Soviet-era conduit transporting water from the Dnieper River that provided around 85% of the peninsula’s water supply. In doing so, Ukraine effectively destroyed Crimea’s agricultural industry. Then, in November 2015, Ukrainian nationalists blew up pylons carrying power lines from Ukraine to Crimea, thrusting the peninsula into a blackout that prompted a declaration of emergency by the regional government.

The Ukrainian assault on Crimea’s water and electricity was merely an extension of the lack of regard shown to the Crimean population during the two-plus decades that Kiev ruled the peninsula. The local economy was stagnant, and the pro-Russian locals were subjected to a policy of total Ukrainization. In general, the Gross Regional Product (GRP) of Crimea was well below the average of Ukraine (43.6% less in 2000, and 29.5% less in 2013). In short, the Kiev government made no meaningful attempt to develop Crimea culturally or infrastructurally. The Crimean Peninsula was in a state of decay perpetrated by Ukrainian governments.

The damming of the North Crimean Canal and the destruction of the electrical transmission lines were simply the radical expression of the indifference shown by Kiev.

Scott Ritter will discuss this article and answer audience questions on Ep. 138 of Ask the Inspector.

In the years that followed the return of the peninsula to Russian control, there has been a gradual improvement in the economy of Crimea. The Russian government undertook a $680 million program to bolster water supplies which involved repairing long-neglected infrastructure, drilling wells, adding storage capacity, and building desalination plants. While this effort wasn’t sufficient to save much of Crimea’s agriculture, it did provide for the basic needs of the population. The Russian government also constructed the Crimean ‘Energy Bridge,’ laying down several undersea energy cables across the Kerch Strait that effectively compensated for the loss of power brought on by the destruction of the Ukrainian power lines.

The Crimean Bridge at night.

But the greatest symbol of Russia’s commitment to the people of Crimea was the construction of a $3.7 billion, 19-kilometer-long road-and-rail bridge connecting Krasnodar Region in southern Russia with the Crimean Peninsula. The bridge is the longest in Europe. Construction began in 2016, and it was opened for car traffic in a little more than two years. It has become a symbol of pride for the Russian people and their leadership; President Vladimir Putin personally drove across the bridge during its formal opening ceremony in 2018. The rail line was opened to passenger traffic in 2019, and freight traffic in 2020. The construction of the Crimean Bridge coincided with the building of the Tavrida Highway, a 250-kilometer, $2.5 billion four-lane road connecting the Crimean Bridge with the cities of Sevastopol and Simferopol. Construction of the road began in 2017 and is still ongoing.

From 2014 to 2022, Crimea saw its population grow by more than 200,000 (from 2.28 million to nearly 2.5 million) as families forced to flee from Ukrainian oppression arrived, and other Russians were attracted by the business opportunities that came with Crimea’s economic revival. With the population surge came new investments by the Russian government in schools, roads, hospitals, and power stations. Tourism flourished as Russians flocked to the beaches of the Crimean coast. A modern airport was built in Simferopol to help manage the flow of visitors.

Life in Crimea was looking up.

And then came the war.

Full article:

AGelbert NOTE: I added some map graphics to Scott's article below to help readers 🧐 understand why Russia feels entitled to Novorossiya territories (i.e. Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Mikolayiv and Odessa).

March 13, 2024 by 🗽 🦅 SCOTT RITTER



In my recent trip to Russia, I visited the “New Territories” of the Russian Federation and witnessed firsthand their struggle for identity and survival.
The author (left) looks over a map of Kherson with Governor of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo (right)

SNIPPET:

Tucker Carlson’s confused exasperation over Russian President Vladmir Putin’s extemporaneous history lesson at the start of their landmark interview, which was aired on February 9, 2024 (and which has since been seen by more than a billion people worldwide), underscored the reality that, for a western audience, the question of the historical bona fides of Russia’s claim of sovereign interest in territories located on the left bank of the Dnieper River, and which are currently claimed by Ukraine, is confusing to the point of incomprehension (for the cartographically challenged, the determination of what constitutes the “left” and “right” banks of a river is determined by the direction of flow of the river; the Dnieper River flows from the north to the south, and as such the “left” bank is the land located to the east of the Dnieper River).

Vladimir Putin, however, did not manufacture his history lesson from thin air. Anyone who followed the speeches and writings of the Russian President over the years would have found his comments to Mr. Carlson quite familiar, echoing both in tone and content previous statements made concerning both the viability of the Ukrainian state from a historic perspective, and the historical ties between what Putin has called Novorossiya (New Russia) and the Russian nation.

Scott Ritter discussed this article on Ep. 143 of Ask the Inspector.

For example, on March 18, 2014, during his announcement regarding the annexation of Crimea, the Russian President observed that “After the [Russian] Revolution [of 1917], for a number of reasons the Bolsheviks—let God judge them—added historical sections of the south of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine. This was done with no consideration for the ethnic composition of the population, and these regions today form the south-east of Ukraine.”

Later during a televised question and answer session, Putin declared that “what was called Novorossiya back in tsarist days—Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Mikolayiv and Odessa—were not part of Ukraine then.

These territories were given to Ukraine in the 1920s by the Soviet Government. Why? Who knows? They were won by Potemkin and Catherine the Great in a series of well-known wars. The center of that territory was Novorossiysk, so the region is called Novorossiya. Russia lost these territories for various reasons, but the people remained.”

Vladimir Putin arrives to address the Russian Parliament about Crimea, March 14, 2014

Novorossiya wasn’t just a construct of Vladimir Putin’s psyche, but rather a notion drawn from historic fact that resonated with the people who populated the territories so encompassed. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was an abortive effort by pro-Russian citizens of the new Ukrainian state to restore Novorossiya as an independent region which would initially encompass Odessa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Crimea, with the possibility of later expanding into other regions, such as Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkov.

While this effort failed, the concept of a greater Novorossiya confederation was revived in May 2014 by the newly proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics. But this effort, too, was short lived, being put on ice in 2015. This, however, did not mean the death of the idea of Novorossiya. On February 21, 2022, Vladimir Putin delivered a lengthy address to the Russian nation on the eve of his decision to send Russian troops into Ukraine as part of what he termed a Special Military Operation. Those who watched Tucker Carlson’s February 9, 2024 interview with Putin would have been struck by the similarity between the two presentations.

While Putin did not make a direct reference to Novorossiya, he did outline fundamental historic and cultural linkages which serve as the foundation for any discussion about the viability and legitimacy of Novorossiya in the context of Russian-Ukrainian relations. “I would like to emphasize,” Putin said, “once again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space. It is our friends, our relatives, not only colleagues, friends, and former work colleagues, but also our relatives and close family members. Since the oldest times,” Putin continued, “the inhabitants of the south-western historical territories of ancient Russia have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. It was the same in the 17th century, when a part of these territories [i.e., Novorossiya] was reunited with the Russian state, and even after that.”

The Russian President set forth his contention that the modern state of Ukraine was an invention of Vladimir Lenin, the founding father of the Soviet Union. “As a result of Bolshevik policy,” Putin stated, “Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine.’ He is its author and architect. This is fully confirmed by archive documents.”

Ukrainian protesters topple a statue of Lenin in Kharkov, January 2015

Putin went on to issue a threat which, when seen in the context of the present, proved ominously prescient. “And now grateful descendants have demolished monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. This is what they call decommunization. Do you want decommunization? Well, that suits us just fine. But it is unnecessary, as they say, to stop halfway. We are ready to show you what real decommunization means for Ukraine.”

Full article:

March 23, 2024 by 🕯️🗽🕊️ Chris Hedges




SNIPPET:

PEN America may continue to exist, indeed its obsequiousness to governmental and corporate power will probably assure its funding, but it is a hollow brand used to  justify the crimes and lies of the U.S. government and Israel.

The best writers in the Soviet Union refused to join the Union of Soviet Writers or were expelled. Those left were propagandists, third rate writers and careerists. PEN America is fast becoming its doppelgänger.

Full article:


EXCELLENT COMMENT:    
Liana Chenoweth Kornfield March 24, 2024
Thank you so much for writing this! I did not know. I encouraged my young fledgling granddaughter to join them 10 years ago because of all those members I respected (sounds like most now gone from PEN). I will forward this to her.

I'm wondering how someone the likes of Nossel can fool so many smart intelligent people - at PEN, at Amnesty, etc.? She must be one of the growing number of very smooth, very convincing charismatic narcissistic sociopaths this country is producing in all fields in these convoluted and morally stunted times. When such people target you, their cunning and utter (appearance of) belief in whatever they are saying sound completely convincing. (maybe she has wealth and certainly potential donor connections as well.) I think of the sorcerer Saruman (Trump, Biden, et al) speaking from his tower, his voice impossible to resist, but the trees of the forest warning that his mind was made of "metal and wheels" (CEO in modern parlance) from long study of the arts of his enemies in the Empire of Sauron.

I'm surprised she (as PEN) didn't say: "“our 'thoughts and prayers are with' the suffering endured by so many Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” The systematic tools of seduction, control and overreach into all areas of the arts, writing, educational institutions, media, by this Military Industrial Colonial Empire are truly frightening. I'm reminded of my Palestinian friend, Salam Khalili, a journalist and artist in East Jerusalem who wrote and painted what he saw, for which he was arrested right after the 1967 six day war and tortured in prison for 7 years (freed by Amnesty and later dying young from of his wounds). He said that for years the IDF would break into artists/writers homes in the middle of the night and confiscate and burn all of their art, printing presses, and also that for many years artists were not even allowed to use red, black, white or green paint!

We need to take what has happened to PEN, the media, and the book banning now taking place very seriously - for the future, for Life on Mother Earth and especially as empowered responses, like the letter to PEN you describe, to the martyrdom of our brothers and sisters in Gaza. Countless people around the world are waking up because of the Palestinians! This has never happened before on this scale.

DUST 3.14M subscribers Jul 19, 2023  #TheFutureAwaits #DUST #scifi
Richard James, AKA "Reaper Rick," a simple Red-blooded, paranoid, country man is caught in the middle of the strangest day of his life.

"Imminent Arrival" by Justin Kruse

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it” -- George Orwell

👉 Graphics and emojies by AGelbert. 👈

COUNTERPUNCH

MAY 24, 2024 BY 🕊️ ANIS SHIVANI Anis Shivani is the author of many critically-acclaimed books of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism. His recent political books include Why Did Trump Win?, A Radical Human Rights Approach to Immigration, and Confronting American Fascism.

Why Is the Literary World Silent on Gaza?
SNIPPETS:

You might have noticed the complete silence of any major literary figure—and until very recently, when the campus protests took off, hardly any leading mainstream intellectual or academic personality—since the present holocaust began seven months ago. What’s striking is the sudden and complete muteness of these same well-known gatekeepers of outrage about any of the issues that used to trigger them for the last many years. Their performative gestures about trivial culture war issues have utterly disappeared from the media and general discussion. I think their last big bout of outrage may have been about Barbie, a few months before the latest and most inhuman Israeli annihilation of the Palestinian people began, when the coast was still clear.

Together these two facts, the silence on the holocaust as well as the total disappearance of the liberal outrage machine for the duration that this genocide continues, tell us all we need to know about the actual 🦖🎩 place of the 🐍 literary community in the wars of empire. ... ...

Anis, I’m disturbed by the banner image you chose which paints Israel as a [sic] evil monolith—this is a particularly disturbing image as it draws on the antisemitic trope of blood libel. But beyond that, the image shows the Star of David with an impaled child—again, this pulls on some of the very worst anti-Semitic tropes.
– Natalie Lyalin

🗽 Me: I find the image just fine. The overwhelming majority of Israelis support Netanyahu’s genocide. The image suggests that for the sake of Zionist ideology Israel is crucifying Palestinian children. You 🐍 step in only when there is the slightest chance of anything being misinterpreted as 🙄 “anti-Semitic.” As a writer, have you had anything to say all these months about the genocide? Have the actual deaths and dismemberments of thousands of Palestinian children, impaled on the flag of Israeli racism, bothered 🙊🙉🙈 you as much as this image? ... ...

🐍 They had been repeating the empire’s talking points on Vladimir Putin and Ukraine, but that posture too has been rendered mostly invisible in the wake of the Gaza holocaust. It suggests something about the magnitude of the horror that has been unfolding for seven months now that the usual dynamics of conversation among those in the literary community with large platforms and audiences have had to be suspended. At the same time, I know from past experience that they are quietly watching and studying, waiting to reappear at the opportune time, more empowered than ever before with their valueless virtue signaling about issues that matter to no one in real life. Had the worldwide agitation against Israel shown the least signs of actual anti-Semitism (rather than the imagined one university administrators and AIPAC-funded politicians in America rail against), or had the campus protests strayed outside the bounds of the most politically correct behavior, we would already have heard from the literary gatekeepers—and they wouldn’t have spared any of us. ... ...

It is not a good idea to compare the intensity of one genocide against another, but reporters who were present at the scene in the former Yugoslavia describe the quantitative scale of the present holocaust as fifty to one hundred times greater than in the savage Balkans of that era. All of this, unlike the genocides of the nineties, has been live-streamed every moment of every hour for seven months, and yet we haven’t heard a word of substance from the kind of literary figures who would have been outspoken in matters involving identity politics in the past.

Which is all the more interesting because identity politics has been the 🐍💵 bread and butter of literary activism for more than two decades now, and the Palestinian situation would seem to check off every single one of the triggers on the activist menu: racism, settler-colonialism, abuse of women and children, inhuman policing, in short outright annihilation of a colonized 🥵 people.

But of course Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslims, particularly outside the U.S., have generally not been the focus of American activism, as is true about brown people in general, although the tendency toward blindness is infinitely more manifest in the Palestinian case. ... ...

Clearly, the lack of visibility isn’t the problem, and in fact, the visibility of this oppression is the problem for the 🐍 gatekeepers.


Intersectionality , as I wrote in an essay many years ago, carves out a special dispensation for Zionism, which is not ❗❓ racism according to leading intersectionalist theorists; in that respect, the present holocaust is a threat to these theorists, and camp followers like 🐍 Ibram X. Kendi, 🐍 Robin DiAngelo, and others who have made it their lucrative business to advocate racial tone-policing in the professions.


Confronted with actual genocide, 🐍 they have had 😈 nothing to say, just as they have never had anything to say about anything genocidal, or even a lower order of crimes, the 🦍 empire might commit against the outcast and irredeemable.

... ...

A bit of context about literary writers, now nearly one hundred percent ensconced in the academy, and their engagement with politics. Once we stopped having writers who found nourishment in life and activity outside academia—i.e., real writers—writers in the eighties and nineties generally advocated removal from politics. Theodor Adorno’s misinterpreted dictum that there was no writing after Auschwitz was often used to justify disengagement from politics and restriction to domestic affairs in novels and literary writing in general. Even in the early George W. Bush years, it was rare to find a writer who engaged in any way with the wholesale destruction of civil liberties in pursuit of a chimeric war on terror, including such abominations as torture and the mass annihilation of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Later in the aughts, academic identity politics merged enough with literary writing that writers at last had a ready-made politics, which was generally the empire-supporting politics of the Democratic party, making out the equally neoliberal Republican party to be the enemy. This trend reached a culmination during the Trump years as academic identity politics and literary writing merged completely, so that writers, in order to be popular, generally wrote texts to buttress one or another theoretical proposition of identity politics, being very careful never to engage in any kind of class analysis. To this day, any understanding of neoliberalism, our actual reigning political economy for the last forty years, is beyond the grasp of most literary writers.

Enter Gaza, and all writers can do is look for clues to their masters as to what they are supposed to say. In a sense, Bill Ackman and others who came down heavily against the mildest defense of social critique, as represented by Claudine Gay of Harvard, were threateningly dictating the terms for how literary writers should behave in this matter. Months before the campus protests took off, students had already been warned that they could say goodbye to lucrative jobs with employers who were watching those taking a stand. The recent campus protests have provided the tiniest of windows to a few brown writers to call for a ceasefire, but they have not gone out of their way to make themselves heard, and have refrained from any critique of Zionism per se, or the American sponsorship of the holocaust. Note that it was ordinary students, not intellectual leaders on campus, who took the lead, although by now many among the faculty, particularly those outside the social sciences and humanities, are visible supporters of the campus divestment movement.

It is the literary guardians above all who have shown that they have no heart and soul when confronted by the most devastating images of death and dismemberment any of us have ever known or will know. ... ...

The moral stink is unbearable. These demons are your publishers, your editors, and your teachers, blessed with the morals of the IDF. Do you really want to be close to  them in the future? At what personal cost, now that you know better than ever who they are , realizing that they won’t lift a finger in the face of an indisputable genocide? ... ...

I put nothing past 🐍 them, and wouldn’t be surprised if 🐍 they quickly rewrote the narrative of what just happened in these most intense months of the genocide, converting it into an exclusive tale of anti-Semitism among dissenters and protestors, which they will then 😈 seek to punish at unbearable costs. That does seem to be the likeliest outcome we can expect from this 🐍 dehumanized lot.

Full article:

LOCATION Al-Ahli Hospital, Gaza City, Gaza

PUBLICATION DATE 15.02.2024

METHODOLOGIES Audio Analysis 3D Modelling Image Complex Synchronisation


SNIPPET:

On 17 October 2023, a devastating explosion took place in the car park of the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. The Gaza Health Ministry reported that 471 people were killed and 342 injured, with US intelligence agencies estimating between 100 and 300 casualties.

In the hours after the blast, doctors working at al-Ahli held a press conference amongst the bodies of those killed in the blast. Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta stated, ‘We were performing surgery at the Baptist hospital when a strong explosion occurred and the ceiling fell on the operating room… This is a massacre’.

Israeli officials have suggested that a failed rocket launch by Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) was responsible for the explosion, while Palestinian authorities and reports from the ground blame an Israeli airstrike. Specifically, Israeli officials pointed to a salvo of seventeen rockets fired from within Gaza in the direction of the hospital, claiming that one of these rockets misfired and was responsible for the blast at al-Ahli and resulting destruction.

Using 3D trajectory analysis, we dispute the Israeli military’s claim that:

Footage of a mid-air explosion before the blast shows the misfired Palestinian rocket that allegedly struck al-Ahli. According to our analysis, this footage in fact shows an exploding Israeli interceptor.

Most of the damage to the hospital and its courtyard was caused by unspent rocket propellant from a misfired rocket in the salvo. Our analysis of open source footage suggests that all seventeen of the rockets in question had finished burning their propellant while in flight.


Play Video (at link - EXCELLENT VIDEO! PRECISELY tracks rocket back to WHERE it was fired OUTSIDE of Gaza!)

Israeli Military Disinformation

After the explosion, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesperson appeared on 🐍 CNN and the 🐍 BBC, pointing to a still from an Al Jazeera livestream showing a mid-air explosion. Lerner claimed that this footage captured the misfiring rocket responsible for the blast at al-Ahli. According to our analysis, this missile is likely an Israeli interceptor, unrelated to the al-Ahli blast.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner on CNN holding a printed frame from an Al-Jazeera Livestream, 18 October 2023.


Trajectory Tracking Methodology

The original Al Jazeera footage Lerner referenced captures a bright light in the sky, followed by a mid-air explosion. Eight seconds later, the footage shows the blast at the hospital. In a 3D model of Gaza, we geolocated, stabilised, and positioned two videos capturing the same mid-air explosion that Lerner claimed was responsible for the al-Ahli blast.

The first video was filmed on the phone of an Al Jazeera journalist in Gaza City and the second video was filmed by a stationary camera in Tel Aviv, by triangulating the position of the missile at each frame, we determined its full trajectory.

Geolocation of two videos capturing an Israeli interceptor. (Forensic Architecture, 2023) (at link)

Using the open-source modelling software Blender, we first tracked the motion of the camera by identifying static features in the footage that can be tracked frame by frame. Here, we used lights across Gaza City as ‘anchor points’ by which to stabilise the camera.

Full article with several more videos:

Geopolitical Economy Report 274K subscribers Aug 2, 2024

As part of a new coup attempt in Venezuela, the US has recognized opposition leader Edmundo González as supposed president, after Trump tried to impose puppet Juan Guaidó in 2019. The State Department cited only US government-funded sources to accuse President Maduro of "electoral fraud". Ben Norton shows how misleading - and hypocritical - Washington's claims are.

USA backs another coup attempt in Venezuela - with Elon Musk's help:    • USA backs another coup attempt in Ven... 

Why is USA obsessed with overthrowing Venezuela? Is it oil, China, Russia, socialism, multipolarity?:    • Why is USA obsessed with overthrowing... 

US gov’t-linked firm is source of exit poll claiming Venezuelan opposition won election: ...

Topics
0:00 US recognizes Venezuelan opposition leader as "president"
1:53 Hypocrisy: US supports dictatorships, wars, coups against democracies
3:39 Why Washington hates Venezuela
4:48 2002 US-backed coup in Venezuela
6:57 Latin America is divided on Venezuela
9:18 OAS: tool of US meddling
10:33 Mexico condemns OAS "interventionism"
12:34 China, Russia, Iran support Venezuela
13:08 Peru's dictatorship backs Venezuelan opposition
14:00 Oligarchs like Elon Musk
14:44 USAID operative hints at invasion
16:14 Fake news
17:28 Mercenary Erik Prince threatens Maduro
19:29 State Dep't cites US gov't-funded groups to allege "fraud"
19:59 Carter Center: funded by US, UK, EU, Gulf monarchies
23:39 Exit polls
25:36 CIA-linked firm's shady polling
28:58 María Corina Machado: US government-backed fanatic
29:51 Geopolitical changes: Multipolarity vs unipolarity
31:59 Possible US military intervention?
33:28 Outro

|| Geopolitical Economy Report ||

Please consider supporting us at

Patreon:   / geopoliticaleconomy 
Podcast:   / geopoliticaleconomy 
Newsletter:



PERTINENT COMMENTS by dmorista at Class Struggle: