EXCELLENT as usual, esp on how increasing US labor productivity does NOT go to increasing worker pay, and the crimes against workers perpetuated by judge-and-now-SCOTUS-nominee (and Corporate Party fave) Michelle Childs
Krystal and Saagar cover the placement of troops on Ukraine's border, Jeff Zucker's resignation as the boss of CNN, corporate profiteering off inflation, Jeff Bezos's destructive superyacht, Whoopi Goldberg's comments on the holocaust, billionaires selling suicide hotline data, America's silent obesity crisis, and the left & right case against college for all.
would probably be very good for someone who does not yet know this history (which after all can only be cursorily covered in a ~90-min episode), but still worth a listen even for the more knowledgeable
EXCELLENT interview, plus good section before that on the shitlibs' Rogan {Great Cancellation, moral panic}. Very first section ("literary Felixes" mentioned in the episode text) is skippable
The boys look at the phenomenon of literary Felixes, plus discuss a few current censorship debates. Plus, we’re joined once again by lawyer Steven Donziger, who is now back under house arrest after the Department of Corrections sent him home from Jail. We discuss the end stages of case, his corporate prosecution, and the future for the people of Ecuador in their case against Chevron.
EXCELLENT as usual, esp Krystal's radar/monolog on US court snuffing BNSF railroad-workers strike over their very legitimate grievances
Krystal and Saagar break down the Ukrainian leadership's discontent with hawkish media, liberal dark money, polling on covid and SCOTUS, a convoy of Truckers protesting in Canada, NBC News hiring more neocons, Rogan's response to Spotify, railway workers getting railroaded, Joe Rogan vs hedge funds, the stock market with Dylan Ratigan, & more!
Good discussion, but discussion omits 2 major problems/criteria:
1. Not sure if Mill discusses this, but everyone else does: argument from {competence, 'progressive improvement' (below)}. E.g.: most agree it's OK to prevent an incompetent other (e.g., a child) from making a bad choice s.t. probable consequential harm will probably vastly exceed {gain from experience, 'progressive improvement'}. E.g.: child wants to cross very busy street but is likely to incur death or major damage. You violate child's liberty to prevent great harm because
- child is incompetent to decide - harm to child will prevent his/her subsequent progressive improvement
> The belief that freedom of speech would advance society presupposed a society sufficiently culturally and institutionally advanced to be capable of progressive improvement. If any argument is really wrong or harmful, the public will judge it as wrong or harmful, and then those arguments cannot be sustained and will be excluded. Mill argued that even any arguments which are used in justifying murder or rebellion against the government shouldn't be politically suppressed or socially persecuted. According to him, if rebellion is really necessary, people should rebel; if murder is truly proper, it should be allowed. However, the way to express those arguments should be a public speech or writing, not in a way that causes actual harm to others.
Note that the only cite given for the above text is
Mill, John Stuart. [1859] 1863. On Liberty. Ticknor and Fields. p. 23'
but I have previously heard this argument claimed as Mill's.
This month, Toby Buckle, host of the Political Philosophy Podcast, returns to talk about John Stuart Mill’s liberty principle!
(Also sometimes called the ‘harm principle’.)
The occasion for the episode is the recent release of Toby’s cool new book, What is Freedom?, which is out now from Oxford University Press. Get it while it’s hot!
John Stuart Mill is probably one of the most influential intellectuals of the 19th century, having penned treatises on markets, logic, feminism, utilitarianism, and freedom of speech that people continue to pick up and read today. In this episode, we talk about how he had one foot in the free market-oriented tradition of liberalism and another in the more social justice-oriented type of liberalism, how he was raised under the world’s most ambitious parenting/education regime, and how he had a lifelong collaboration with Harriet Taylor. We also introduce what gets called his ‘liberty princple’.
The idea behind the liberty principle is that we want as much freedom for each person as possible: they should have the ability to set their own agenda and carry it out. But we also need to limit it somewhat, because if everyone was completely unconstrained in how they set their agenda and carried it out, they’d interfere with each other. We’d have one person’s freedom detracting from other people’s freedom. So in order to achieve the perfect equilibrium we want, the thing to do is aim for sort of a greatest lower bound: every person should be allowed to do whatever they want for whatever reason they want, only stopping shy once they reach the point where doing whatever they want would harm another person. It might seem like an obvious principle to us now, but arguably that’s because we’re all living in the shadow of Mill!
Part of the background context for this principle is a worry about paternalism. There’s a natural tendency for Person A to prevent Person B from doing what they want because Person A thinks it’s obvious that what Person B wants to do right now is harmful to them. The liberty principle tells us that that’s not a good reason to have laws prohibiting some course of action. We should only have a law prohibiting some course of action if allowing that course of action would interfere with other people’s freedom. That way, Mill argued, we keep the decision about whether to pass a law prohibiting something grounded in empirical facts about what would actually happen if it were passed. He also wanted to emphasize that each person has the right to be their own arbiter of what kinds of risk they will assume.
I hope you enjoy our discussion! It was a fun one.
Further Reading
If you’d like to hear more along the lines of what Toby and I discuss in this episode, you can do no better than to take a look at Mill’s exquisite On Liberty, which you can get for free here:
And if you missed the link up at the top, definitely check out Toby’s edited volume, which gathers together a number of the interviews from his own podcast. The overarching theme is what freedom is and what it can be.
interesting, probably worth your listen, but too hagiographic, and entirely fails to evaluate the main/salient moral position they collectively (and IMHO ludicrously) advanced, i.e., moral objectivism.
In Oxford during the Second World War four women philosophers came to prominence. Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, and Mary Midgley were friends and met to discuss their ideas, particulary about ethics. Benjamin Lipscomb, author of a recent book about them, The Women Are Up To Something, speaks to David Edmonds in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.
EXCELLENT though Harris' enunciation could be improved--not sure if he suffered from bad recording or speech impediment, but anyway his enthusiasm and knowledge shows through
Leonard Harris explains how Locke's value theory was the basis for his aesthetics and theories of democracy and race.
VERY EXCELLENT: continuing Dolan (with Ames' support) thesis that pre-CW northern-US elites conspired with their southern, slaveowning counterparts to attempt to either - if possible, prevent the war - if they could not stop the war, rig it to empower the CSA and enable a status-quo-ante peace
good overview of Australian_politics c1990-2021, esp Australian Labor Party decline from Keating deindustrializing neoliberalism to current political oblivion and near-irrelevance
As we kick off an election year, a timely collection of Australian political essays has been released. They include analysis of Labor's loss of the 'unlosable' 2019 election.
Guest: Kit Klarenberg. Kit Klarenberg returns to the show, again with leaked documents related to information and psychological warfare. We discuss his Grayzone article titled: “Leaked files expose Syria psyops veteran astroturfing BreadTube star to counter Covid restriction critics.” In this case a state-sponsored influence operation was created to undermine critics of coronavirus policies and they’re covertly using at least one prominent YouTube personality as their media conduit for elite, establishment, imperial narratives. In a bonus question we talk about strategies for finding genuine media sources and channels.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist who explores the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions and he has been published by numerous media outlets including The Grayzone, Cradle, Electronic Intifada, RT and more.
FOLLOW @KitKlarenberg, follow his work on his substack https://substack.com/profile/29599137-kit-klarenberg
Around the Empire aroundtheempire.com is listener supported, independent media.
The Classic Album Dissection of the eponymous 1971 'John Prine' is *excellent* ... and you should probably stop there, because next is - skippable listener feedback, then ... - ... a very brief obit of a very forgettable US pop-music personality (Michael Lee Aday aka Meat Loaf), and finally ... - ... the *absolutely ludicrous* claim that his 1977 'Bat Out of Hell' is a classic of American music up there with Springsteen and the Ramones.
Hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot do a classic album dissection of John Prine's debut album with author Erin Osmon. They also listen to feedback on recent episodes from listeners and bid farewell to Meat Loaf.
excellent: more raconteurish than analytic, but all-the-more fun as a listen
Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate
The US is pouring more weapons into Ukraine amid bellicose threats against Russia and the US-backed Saudi war on Yemen continues to massacre civilians. But not everyone sees a downside: “I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it,” Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes said this week of these and other flashpoints.
Andrew Cockburn, Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine and author of “The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine,” discusses the US arms industry’s role in promoting and profiting from today’s global conflicts, from Ukraine to Yemen to Syria.
Cockburn also looks back on his groundbreaking 1988 PBS documentary, made with his wife Leslie Cockburn, “Guns, Drugs, and the CIA,” about the agency’s role in the global drug trade.
Guest: Andrew Cockburn. Washington editor for Harper’s Magazine. His latest book is “The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine.”
excellent as usual, except that now there's one more author to Read Before I Die.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French writers of the twentieth century. The novels of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873 - 1954) always had women at their centre, from youth to mid-life to old age, and they were phenomenally popular, at first for their freshness and frankness about women’s lives, as in the Claudine stories, and soon for their sheer quality as she developed as a writer. Throughout her career she intrigued readers by inserting herself, or a character with her name, into her works, fictionalising her life as a way to share her insight into the human experience.
With
Diana Holmes
Professor of French at the University of Leeds
Michèle Roberts
Writer, novelist, poet and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia
And
Belinda Jack
Fellow and Tutor in French Literature and Language at Christ Church, University of Oxford
good banter, excellent (but very truncated) Chariton interview. Àpropos the show notes (see below): the interview is *much* more about how Corporate Democrats in general are shit, and specifically a spirited denunciation of Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel. Shots are also taken at Obama, because he's such a giant sack of shitlib, but this episode is much more about Nessel (who they unfortunately don't mention is another Identity First--in this case, MI's 1st lesbian and 1st Jewish AG).
“But if Obama knew,” Aaron and Katie ask Status Coup’s Jordan Chariton, “why didn’t he go to Flint and bust Wall Street and the Republicans for poisoning the city? It would’ve been an easy political win.”
“If Obama didn’t go after Wall Street for tanking the global economy,” responds Chariton, “what makes you think he would’ve done anything to go after them for a fraud financial deal that led to a city being poisoned?”
Today, Chariton is breaking stories in Flint about Obama’s complicity, Wall Street’s greed, a state-government coverup, and the continued pandemic of Flint residents who are still dying.
“I talk to people who are still getting rashes, whose hair falls out in the shower, whose children are growing with learning disabilities, people with early development of Parkinson’s. If you just look at the cherry-picked data, it seems like everything’s fine. These people are still in an 8 year pandemic. It’s not over.”
But why don’t we hear about it? No one wants to run the story.
“The hardest part of investigative journalism should be breaking the story, not getting outlets to pick it up.” Chariton laments. “But the amount of time and money is not worth the amount of clicks for the New York Times and CNN. Some, like Mother Jones, even asked: ‘Is there a connection to Trump?’”
And, darker still, when he publishes his reports himself, it’s hard for people to see them. Youtube refuses to send video notifications even to his subscribers and they dampen every video and livestream. It’s the reason we couldn’t put “Flint” in the title and why Jordan thinks it might be easier to just start making videos about who’s feuding in the political punditry world.
So go subscribe to Status Coup on Youtube. It’s real journalism that you will miss if you look anywhere else.
One silver lining, however, is that the children of Flint may be reassured that the US Government just sent 200,000 pounds of new weapons to Ukraine. So they’ve got that going for them.
It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out.
Plus, watch the ad-free episode here, and stay tuned for the full interview with Jordan on Monday at 7am. Peace out, Useful Idiots.
pullquote (in Markdown, since TOR's link handler chokes on Org-mode): > LaTeX’s [letter class](https://www.ctan.org/pkg/letter) is made for [writing formal letters] (see also [this](https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Letters)), but making it work in Org takes a small bit of configuration and some attention to how the letter is set up.
When I need to send a formal (or at least not handwritten) letter, I want to do it in LaTeX, and if I do something in LaTeX, I want to do it in Org and then export it. LaTeX’s letter class is made for this purpose (see also this), but making it work in Org takes a small bit of configuration and some attention to how the letter is set up. Here’s how I made it work.
First, you need to tell Org about the letter class, because it’s not one of the defaults. Letters don’t have chapters or sections so you just specify the document class.
Here’s the Org file with the sample letter I used. It’s from chapter five of Dracula by Bram Stoker. I removed some of the content of the letter to keep things shorter. It looks very plain here because there’s no syntax highlighting in this web page to fancy it up.
# #+title: Comment out, or do not use
#+date: Wednesday
#+options: toc:nil
#+latex_header: \usepackage[osf]{Baskervaldx}
#+latex_class: letter
#+latex_header: \signature{Lucy}
#+latex_header: \address{17, Chatham Street}
#+latex: \begin{letter}{[s.l.]}
#+latex: \opening{My dearest Mina,---}
I must say you tax me very unfairly with being a bad correspondent.
I wrote to you /twice/ since we parted, and your last letter was only your /second/.
Besides, I have nothing to tell you. There is really nothing to interest you.
Town is very pleasant just now, and we go a good deal to picture-galleries
and for walks and rides in the park. As to the tall, curly-haired man,
I suppose it was the one who was with me at the last Pop. Some one has evidently
been telling tales. That was Mr. Holmwood. He often comes to see us, and he and
mamma get on very well together; they have so many things to talk about in common.
We met some time ago a man that would just /do for you/, if you were not already
engaged to Jonathan. He is an excellent /parti/, being handsome, well off, and
of good birth. He is a doctor and really clever. Just fancy!
He is only nine-and-twenty, and he has an immense lunatic asylum all under his own care.
#+latex: \closing{Sincerely,}
#+latex: \ps{P.S. I need not tell you this is a secret. Good-night again.}
#+latex: \end{letter}
It looks like this in Emacs (the image is linked to a larger one).
Screenshot of Emacs editing this file
Some notes:
Don’t use a title. If you want one for your own reference, comment it out.
The table of contents needs to be turned off.
I found it safest to use the #+latex: way of including LaTeX fragments. It doesn’t mess up the syntax highlight or the exporting.
The letter class needs some options to go in the header and some in the body, as shown here.
The “[s.l.]” is for sine loco, Latin for “no location.” (Library cataloguers used to use this when no place of publication was known.) This is where the recipient’s address would go; there isn’t one in this letter, but I wanted to show how to set it up.
The letter class has lots of other options. They work like the ones shown.
The only extra thing I’ve added is the Baskervald X typeface, which is LaTeX’s Baskerville. I really like it. The [osf] option turns on text figures: notice how the 7 in “17” descends below the 1.
When exported (C-c C-e l o, the command for “export to PDF and open the file;” C-c C-e is “export,” l is “to LaTeX,” o is “then open the PDF”) the letter looks like this.
The full letter
This is the text block, larger so easier to see.
Close up of the text block
It looks very nice. Now I have a good template to use for formal letters.
excellent overview of US corporate-funded media pro-empire anti-Russia propaganda
The Washington Post (11/26/21) placed an article on “tensions between Ukraine and Russia” under the heading “Asia.” As the Post (4/7/14) has noted, “The less Americans know about Ukraine’s location, the more they want US to intervene.”
As tensions began to rise over Ukraine, US media produced a stream of articles attempting to explain the situation with headlines like “Ukraine Explained” (New York Times, 12/8/21) and “What You Need to Know About Tensions Between Ukraine and Russia” (Washington Post, 11/26/21). Sidebars would have notes that tried to provide context for the current headlines. But to truly understand this crisis, you would need to know much more than what these articles offered.
These “explainer” pieces are emblematic of Ukraine coverage in the rest of corporate media, which almost universally gave a pro-Western view of US/Russia relations and the history behind them. Media echoed the point of view of those who believe the US should have an active role in Ukrainian politics and enforce its perspective through military threats.
The official line goes something like this: Russia is challenging NATO and the “international rules-based order” by threatening to invade Ukraine, and the Biden administration needed to deter Russia by providing more security guarantees to the Zelensky government. The official account seizes on Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula as a starting point for US/Russian relations, and as evidence of Putin’s goals of rebuilding Russia’s long-lost empire.
Russia’s demand that NATO cease its expansion to Russia’s borders is viewed as such an obviously impossible demand that it can only be understood as a pretext to invade Ukraine. Therefore, the US should send weapons and troops to Ukraine, and guarantee its security with military threats to Russia (FAIR.org, 1/15/22).
The Washington Post asked: “Why is there tension between Russia and Ukraine?” Its answer:
In March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. A month later, war erupted between Russian-allied separatists and Ukraine’s military in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas. The United Nations human rights office estimates that more than 13,000 people have been killed.
But that account is highly misleading, because it leaves out the crucial role the US has played in escalating tensions in the region. In nearly every case we looked at, the reports omitted the US’s extensive role in the 2014 coup that preceded Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Focusing on the latter part only serves to manufacture consent for US intervention abroad.
The West Wants Investor-Friendly Policies in Ukraine
David Leonhardt (New York Times, 12/8/21) explains it all: “Putin believes that Ukraine — a country of 44 million people that was previously part of the Soviet Union — should be subservient to Russia.”
The backdrop to the 2014 coup and annexation cannot be understood without looking at the US strategy to open Ukrainian markets to foreign investors and give control of its economy to giant multinational corporations.
A key tool for this has been the International Monetary Fund, which leverages aid loans to push governments to adopt policies friendly to foreign investors. The IMF is funded by and represents Western financial capital and governments and has been at the forefront of efforts to reshape economies around the world for decades, often with disastrous results. The civil war in Yemen and the coup in Bolivia both followed a rejection of IMF terms.
In Ukraine, the IMF had long planned to implement a series of economic reforms to make the country more attractive to investors. These included cutting wage controls (i.e., lowering wages), “reform[ing] and reduc[ing]” health and education sectors (which made up the bulk of employment in Ukraine), and cutting natural gas subsidies to Ukrainian citizens that made energy affordable to the general public. Coup plotters like US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland repeatedly stressed the need for the Ukrainian government to enact the “necessary” reforms.
In 2013, after early steps to integrate with the West, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych turned against these changes and ended trade integration talks with the European Union. Months before his overthrow, he restarted economic negotiations with Russia, in a major snub to the Western economic sphere. By then, the nationalist protests were heating up that would go on to topple his government.
After the 2014 coup, the new government quickly restarted the EU deal. After cutting heating subsidies in half, it secured a $27 billion commitment from the IMF. The IMF’s goals still include “reducing the role of the state and vested interests in the economy” in order to attract more foreign capital.
The IMF is one of the many global institutions whose role in maintaining global inequities often goes unreported and unnoticed by the general public. The US economic quest to open global markets to capital is a key driver of international affairs, but if the press chooses to ignore it, the public debate is incomplete and shallow.
The US Helped Overthrow Ukraine’s Elected President
During the tug of war between the US and Russia, the Americans were engaged in a destabilization campaign against the Yanukovych government. The campaign culminated with the overthrow of the elected president in the Maidan Revolution—also known as the Maidan Coup—named for the Kiev square that hosted the bulk of the protests.
As political turmoil engulfed the country in the leadup to 2014, the US was fueling anti-government sentiment through mechanisms like USAID and National Endowment for Democracy (NED), just as they had done in 2004. In December 2013, Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European affairs and a long-time regime change advocate, said that the US government had spent $5 billion promoting “democracy” in Ukraine since 1991. The money went toward supporting “senior officials in the Ukraine government…[members of] the business community as well as opposition civil society” who agree with US goals.
The NED is a key organization in the network of American soft power that pours $170 million a year into organizations dedicated to defending or installing US-friendly regimes. The Washington Post‘s David Ignatius (9/22/91) once wrote that the organization functions by “doing in public what the CIA used to do in private.” The NED targets governments who oppose US military or economic policy, stirring up anti-government opposition.
The NED board of directors includes Elliott Abrams, whose sordid record runs from the Iran/Contra affair in the ’80s to the Trump administration’s effort to overthrow the Venezuelan government. In 2013, NED president Carl Gershman wrote a piece in the Washington Post (9/26/13) that described Ukraine as the “biggest prize” in the East/West rivalry. After the Obama administration, Nuland joined the NED board of directors before returning to the State Department in the Biden administration as undersecretary of state for political affairs.
One of the many recipients of NED money for projects in Ukraine was the International Republican Institute. The IRI, once chaired by Sen. John McCain, has long had a hand in US regime change operations. During the protests that eventually brought down the government, McCain and other US officials personally flew into Ukraine to encourage protesters.
US Officials Were Caught Picking the New Government
Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (BBC, 2/7/14) picks the new Ukrainian president: “I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience.”
On February 6, 2014, as the anti-government protests were intensifying, an anonymous party (assumed by many to be Russia) leaked a call between Assistant Secretary of State Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. The two officials discussed which opposition officials would staff a prospective new government, agreeing that Arseniy Yatsenyuk—Nuland referred to him by the nickname “Yats”—should be in charge. It was also agreed that someone “high profile” be brought in to push things along. That someone was Joe Biden.
Weeks later, on February 22, after a massacre by suspicious snipers brought tensions to a head, the Ukrainian parliament quickly removed Yanukovych from office in a constitutionally questionable maneuver. Yanukovych then fled the country, calling the overthrow a coup. On February 27, Yatsenyuk became prime minister.
At the time the call leaked, media were quick to pounce on Nuland’s saying “Fuck the EU.” The comment dominated the headlines (Daily Beast, 2/6/14; BuzzFeed, 2/6/14; Atlantic, 2/6/14; Guardian, 2/6/14), while the evidence of US regime change efforts was downplayed. With the headline “Russia Claims US Is Meddling Over Ukraine,” the New York Times (2/6/14) put the facts of US involvement in the mouth of an official enemy, blunting their impact on the audience. The Times (2/6/14) later described the two officials as benignly “talking about the political crisis in Kiev” and sharing “their views of how it might be resolved.”
The Washington Post (2/6/14) acknowledged that the call showed “a deep degree of US involvement in affairs that Washington officially says are Ukraine’s to resolve,” but that fact rarely factored into future coverage of the US/Ukraine/Russia relationship.
Washington Used Nazis to Help Overthrow the Government
Ignoring the fascist element in Ukrainian politics has been corporate media policy for some time now (FAIR.org, 3/7/14).
The Washington-backed opposition that toppled the government was fueled by far-right and openly Nazi elements like the Right Sector. One far-right group that grew out of the protests was the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary militia of neo-Nazi extremists. Their leaders made up the vanguard of the anti-Yanukovych protests, and even spoke at opposition events in the Maidan alongside US regime change advocates like McCain and Nuland.
After the violent coup, these groups were later incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces—the same armed forces that the US has now given $2.5 billion. Though Congress technically restricted money from flowing to the Azov Battalion in 2018, trainers on the ground say there’s no mechanism to actually enforce the provision. Since the coup, the Ukrainian nationalist forces have been responsible for a wide variety of atrocities in the counterinsurgency war.
Far-right influence has increased across Ukraine as a result of Washington’s actions. A recent UN Human Rights council has noted that “fundamental freedoms in Ukraine have been squeezed” since 2014, further weakening the argument that the US is involved in the country on behalf of liberal values.
Among American neo-Nazis, there’s even a movement aimed at encouraging right-wing extremists to join the Battalion in order to “gain actual combat experience” in preparation for a potential civil war in the US.
In a recent UN vote on “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism,” the US and Ukraine were the only two countries to vote no.
As FAIR (1/15/22) has reported, between December 6, 2021, and January 6, 2022, the New York Times ran 228 articles that refer to Ukraine, but none of them reference the pro-Nazi elements in Ukraine’s politics or government. The same can be said of the WashingtonPost’s 201 articles on the topic.
There’s a Lot More to the Crimean Annexation
The facts above give more context to Russian actions following the coup, and ought to counter the caricature of a Russian Empire bent on expansion. From Russia’s point of view, a longtime adversary had successfully overthrown a neighboring government using violent far-right extremists.
The Crimean peninsula, which was part of Russia until it was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954, is home to one of two Russian naval bases with access to the Black and Mediterranean seas, one of history’s most important maritime theaters. A Crimea controlled by a US-backed Ukrainian government was a major threat to Russian naval access.
The peninsula—82% of whose households speak Russian, and only 2% mainly Ukrainian—held a plebiscite in March 2014 on whether or not they should join Russia, or remain under the new Ukrainian government. The Pro-Russia camp won with 95% of the vote. The UN General Assembly, led by the US, voted to ignore the referendum results on the grounds that it was contrary to Ukraine’s constitution. This same constitution had been set aside to oust President Yanukovych a month earlier.
All of this is dropped from Western coverage.
The US Wants to Expand NATO
A pair of maps from Der Spiegel (11/26/09) illustrates NATO’s drive toward Russia’s borders.
In addition to integrating Ukraine into the US-dominated economic sphere, Western planners also want to integrate Ukraine militarily. For years, the US has sought the expansion of NATO, an explicitly anti-Russian military alliance. NATO was originally billed as a counterforce to the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, but after the demise of the Soviet Union, the US promised the new Russia that it would not expand NATO east of Germany. Despite this agreement, the US continued building out its military alliance,growing closer and closer to Russia’s borders and ignoring Russia’s objections.
This history is sometimes admitted but usually downplayed in corporate media. In an interview with the Washington Post (12/1/21), professor Mary Sarotte, author of Not One Inch: America, Russia and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, recounted that after the Soviet collapse, “Washington realized that it could not only win big, but win bigger. Not one inch of territory needed to be off-limits to full NATO membership.” The US “all-or-nothing approach to expansionism…maximized conflict with Moscow,” she noted. Unfortunately, one interview does little to cut through the drumbeat of pro-NATO talking points.
In 2008, NATO members pledged to extend membership to Ukraine. The removal of the pro-Russian government in 2014 was a giant leap towards the pledge becoming a reality. Recently, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg announced that the alliance stands by plans to integrate Ukraine into the alliance.
Bret Stephens in the New York Times (1/11/21) maintained that if Ukraine wasn’t allowed to join the organization, it would “break the spine of NATO” and “end the Western alliance as we have known it since the Atlantic Charter.”
The US Wouldn’t Tolerate What Russia Is Expected to Accept
“A successful invasion of Russia…could embolden Russia” to engage in “cyberattacks, election meddling and influence campaigns,” says USA Today‘s “expert” (print edition, 1/26/22).
Much has been written about the Russian buildup on the Ukraine border. Reports of the buildup have been intensified by US intelligence officials’ warnings of an attack. Media often echo the claim of an inevitable invasion. The Washington Post editorial board (1/24/22) wrote that “Putin can—and will—use any measures the United States and its NATO allies either take or refrain from taking as a pretext for aggression.”
But Putin has been clear about a path to de-escalation. His main demand has been for direct negotiations to end the expansion of the hostile military alliance to his borders. He announced, “We have made it clear that NATO’s move to the east is unacceptable,” and that “the United States is standing with missiles on our doorstep.” Putin asked, “How would the Americans react if missiles were placed at the border with Canada or Mexico?”
In corporate media coverage, no one bothers to ask this important question. Instead, the assumption is that Putin ought to tolerate a hostile military alliance directly across its border. The US, it seems, is the only country allowed to have a sphere of influence.
The New York Times (1/26/22) asked: “Can the West Stop Russia From Invading Ukraine?” but shrugs at the US dismissal of Putin’s terms as “nonstarters.” The Washington Post (12/10/21) reported: “Some analysts have expressed worry that the Russian leader is making demands that he knows Washington will reject, possibly as a pretext for military action once he is spurned.” The Post quoted one analyst, “I don’t see us giving them anything that would suffice relative to their demands, and what troubles me is they know that.”
Audiences have also been assured that Putin’s reaction to Western expansionism is actually a prelude to more aggressive actions. “Ukraine Is Only One Small Part of Putin’s Plans,” warned the New York Times (1/7/22). The Times (1/26/22) later described Putin’s Ukraine policy as an attempt at “restoring what he views as Russia’s rightful place among the world’s great powers,” rather than an attempt to avoid having the US military directly on its border. USA Today (1/18/22) warned readers that “Putin ‘Won’t Stop’ with Ukraine.”
But taking this view is diplomatic malpractice. Anatol Lieven (Responsible Statecraft, 1/3/22), an analyst at the Quincy Institute, wrote that US acquiescence to a neutral Ukraine would be a “golden bridge” that, in addition to reducing US/Russia tensions, could enable a political solution to Ukraine’s civil war. This restraint-oriented policy is considered fringe thinking in the Washington foreign policy establishment.
The Memory Hole
John Deni (Wall Street Journal, 12/22/21): “The West ought to stand firm, even if it means another Russian invasion of Ukraine,” because even though “the human toll will be extensive… the long-term damage suffered by Moscow…is likely to be substantial as well.”
All of this missing context allows hawks to promote disastrous escalation of tensions. The Wall Street Journal (12/22/21) published an opinion piece trying to convince readers there was a “Strategic Advantage to Risking War In Ukraine.” The piece, by John Deni of the US Army War College, summarized the familiar hawkish talking points, and claimed that a neutral Ukraine is “anathema to Western values of national self-determination and sovereignty.”
In a modern rendition of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Afghan Trap, Deni asserted that war in Ukraine could actually serve US interests by weakening Russia: Such a war, however disastrous, would “forge an even stronger anti-Russian consensus across Europe,” refocusing NATO against the main enemy, result in “economic sanctions that would further weaken Russia’s economy” and “sap the strength and morale of Russia’s military while undercutting Mr. Putin’s domestic popularity.” Thus escalating tensions is a win/win for Washington.
Few of the recent wave of Ukraine pieces recount the crucial history given above. Including the truth about US foreign policy goals in the post-Cold War era makes the current picture look a lot less one-sided. Imagine for one second how the US would behave if Putin began trying to add a US neighbor to a hostile military alliance after helping to overthrow its government.
The economic imperative for opening foreign markets, the NATO drive to push up against Russia, US support for the 2014 coup and the direct hand in shaping the new government all need to be pushed down the memory hole if the official line is to have any credibility. Absent all of that, it is easy to accept the fiction that Ukraine is a battleground between a “rules-based order” and Russian autocracy.
If Biden is Chamberlain, as Marc Thiessen (Washington Post,12/10/21) suggests, then Putin is of course Hitler.
Indeed, the Washington Post editorial board (12/8/21) recently compared negotiating with Putin to appeasing Hitler at Munich. It called on Biden to “resist Putin’s trumped-up demands on Ukraine,” “lest he destabilize all of Europe to autocratic Russia’s advantage.” This wasn’t the only time the paper has made the Munich analogy; the Post (12/10/21) ran a piece by former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen headlined “On Ukraine, Biden Is Channeling His Inner Neville Chamberlain.”
In the New York Times (12/10/21), Trump NSC aide Alexander Vindman told readers “How the United States Can Break Putin’s Hold on Ukraine,” and urged the Biden administration to send active US troops to the country. A “free and sovereign Ukraine,” he said, is vital in “advancing US interests against those of Russia and China.” Times reporter Michael Crowley (12/16/21) also framed the Ukraine standoff as another “Test of US Credibility Abroad,” after that credibility was supposedly damaged after ending the war in Afghanistan.
In a New York Times major feature (1/16/21) on Ukraine, the US role in bringing tensions to this point was completely omitted, in favor of exclusively blaming “Russian Belligerence.”
As a result of this coverage, the interventionist mentality has trickled down to the public. One poll found that, should Russia actually invade Ukraine, 50% of Americans support embroiling the US in yet another quagmire, up from just 30% in 2014. Biden, however, has said that no US troops will be sent to Ukraine. Instead, the US and EU have threatened sanctions or support for a rebel insurgency should Russia invade.
The past few weeks have seen several failed talks between the US and Russians, as the US refuses to alter its plans for Ukraine. The US Congress is rushing a “lethal aid” package to send more weapons to the troubled border. Perhaps if the public were better informed, there would be more domestic pressure on Biden to end the brinkmanship and seek a genuine solution to the problem.
more great work from Multipolarista and the totally-hot (in more ways than one :-) Rania Khalek
Journalist Rania Khalek discusses her reporting trip to Cuba, where she got a firsthand look at its socialist health system, under the brutal US blockade.
Another excellent Chapo Book Club episode, today on the recent/2022 Vanity Fair profile-exposé of pervert/failson Jerry Falwell Jr, his wife, JF Sr, and the whole Falwell family (some of whom, surprisingly, are *not* sick!), with sidenotes on the history of evangelical Protestantism in US politics.
A follow-up to our episode [349 - The Righteous Falwells (9/12/19)], we look at a new in-depth profile of Jerry Fallwell Jr., perhaps one of the most singularly emblematic individuals of our era.
Generally excellent except for Saagar's monolog on COVID-19 and kids (yet another variation on one he's been doing lots lately). Esp excellent is Krystal's monolog (63:24-69:37) comparing Cuba's COVID-19 altruism to the corporate-friendly weakness and posturing from Biden/US and Gates/WHO.
Krystal and Saagar talk about the SCOTUS shakeup caused by Justice Breyer's retirement, bipartisan support for war in Ukraine, good news as companies invest billions into rust belt manufacturing, Amazon propaganda being taught in schools, Spotify choosing Joe Rogan over Neil Young, the need to free children from school masking, Biden's humiliation on global vaccine distribution, and how our attention has been stolen by corporate interests with Johann Hari.
Consistently good LOL episode. Matt Wright (1st set) does amusing lowkey observational comedy; Rachel Schaefer (2nd set--a repeat, but still EXCELLENT) does hilarious edgy bits.
From Hecklers in Victoria BC, Rachel Schaefer talks about when bathroom etiquette goes wrong, and from Winnipeg last October, Matt Wright warns you about about your Fitbit steps!
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