Category Archives: War in Ukraine (2022)

Russian Disinformation

Death of Truth, Democracy, Trust and Distrust, War in Ukraine (2014), War in Ukraine (2022)

 

Russian weaponized the techniques of disinformation it had used in the first war in Ukraine in 2014. in the Brexit campaign and in the 2016 US election campaign. No doubt those astounding successes, and the lack of resistance from the west led Putin to believe western democracy was weak and ready to have it feathers plucked

 

According to Carole Cadwalladr of the Guardian

 

“From 2014 to 2016 Putin had carte blanche across our entire information system. So in St. Petersburg he set up the Internet Research Agency  and we know that thousands and thousands of trolls and fake accounts flooded out information system. And that is the thing that really confused people and distracted people. It wasn’t that Putin set out to support Trump,  or had any political agenda, in 2014 it was simply about spreading confusion, making us more divided, increasing polarization. It was divide and rule if you think of it like that.”

 

He had learned what Hannah Arendt had said. It was enough to sow confusion. The Americans and English would do the rest. Putin must have been stunned at how easy it was and how successful that was it. Even after the FBI marvellously exposed his nefarious efforts, Americans were again deflected from the real issue. First, the Democrats smelled the blood of Donald Trump in the water and attacked him in a misguided frenzy. Not that I think he was innocent. They thought this would be enough to get him impeached. Then Trump hit back saying there was no collusion. When the Mueller report did not come out clearly that there had been collusion, the Republicans, were also distracted and began a similarly misguided frenzied attack on Democrats that deflected attention away from the real issue, the fact that a foreign power and the second most militarily powerful country in the world had interfered with a free election and then nobody seemed to care. He got away it completely!  Both Democrats and Republicans failed to attack the real wolf at the democratic door in their unseemly haste to attack each other. Putin perhaps without knowing how he did it, found an open path to the heart of the democracy he wanted to attack and no one was concerned about what he was doing. Each side was only concerned about what the other side was doing. No one raised a finger to stop the Russians or even criticize them. Putin must have been thunderstruck at this luck or at the foolishness or the Americans or more likely, both. It was the same in England. The opposite parties hated each other they ignored the real danger—Putin.

 

Besides the astonishingly polarization of the country, Putin was aided and abetted by the fact that the international media giants were private closed black boxes that allowed Putin to operate in complete darkness without public objection. As Cadwalladr said,

 

“we had no idea what was going on inside them and it was only in 2016 that the FBI started telling us what was going on, and only after the election journalists and academics slowly picked out the truth of what was happening. It was through the social media platforms that Putin launched this information war against Ukraine and against us. And those social media companies can still be used in that way!”

 

This attack had huge societal impacts, it was discovered and yet it was largely ignored as Americans in America and the English in the UK concentrated on attacking each other rather than the much more vicious foreign enemy that was eating their vital innards.

 

Both sides used language to minimize what Russia had done. In the US and UK the referred to Russian “meddling” in the elections. It was really a declaration of war. As Cadwalladr said,

 

“this was a military strategy and it was carried out in many ways by military intelligence! The GRU which is Russian military intelligence, they are the ones who carried out the hack and leak on Hillary Clinton emails for example. Those intelligence GRU officers are there now playing a fundamental war in Ukraine now. It was those same GRU intelligence officers who helped to poison a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, in the city of Salisbury England. Again, the English resistance to this was minimal. Again, Putin must naturally have reached the conclusion that the West was weak and ready to be plucked.”

 

As Cadwalladr said, “this was Putin using an unconventional chemical weapon on British citizens in Britain and he got away with it.” We here in Canada are fairly familiar with how many Americans did not want to hear about Russian interference in the US because they saw this as an attack on the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidency and saw all such claims of election interference as Democrats looking out for their own interests. The same thing happened in the UK. People who supported Brexit did not want to hear any allegations that Russians interfered with that referendum because they did not want to see that vote as illegitimate either. In both cases the “winners” did not want the distraction of foreign interference. In both cases Putin learned a very valuable lesson, namely, to insert himself inside the widening polarized rifts between conservatives and liberals in both countries, was easy and very profitable. In each country, Putin was handed a golden opportunity to wreak mischief and havoc on account of the host countries polarized populous!

 

Carole Cadwalladr pointed out that,

 

“All the way through this reporting we see this really clear line Brexit, Trump, and Russia. And there is a triangulation there. There is a straight and clear line through multiple individuals and organizations and via the tech platforms…I America the Mueller report got bogged down in this question did Trump collude with Russia? And actually the big takeaway from the Mueller report should have been Russia successfully attacked America! This was a military attack and it got away with it. And that same attack was across the information systems which we all use and in that year 2016 they were completely unprotected! And in Britain we have been blind to waking up to that. The US had this massive investigation by the FBI and Congressional committees. In Britain we have had not one single investigation. There was one report and Boris Johnson personally tried to suppress that report.

 

In both countries the political parties think the issue is about politics. It is not about politics. It is about power and Putin. Of course this weak response from the UK and the US emboldened Putin and he is now using the same techniques in Ukraine but not with as much success.

 

Unfortunately, Cadwalladr has been attacked by a wealthy businessman in the UK for libel based as a result of her reporting. It has cost her 1 million pounds and 2 &1/2 years of her life. She was lucky she got crowd source funding. But such efforts have a chilling effect on the search for truth. And that is now common place around the world. It is really truth itself that is under attack. In the US CNN was targeted as a news organization as “fake news” by Trumpsters. The terminology of fake news has been weaponized. These are dark times. This is what happens when we acquiesce with attacks on truth.

And attack on truth is a declaration of war.

Putin, Young People and the Information Wars

Death of Truth, War in Ukraine (2014), War in Ukraine (2022)

 

Recently, Vladimir Putin has indicated he may try to ban What’s App and Instagram as “extremist organizations.”  He has already banned Facebook and Twitter.  Will this work? Can he do it?

 

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Carole Cadwalladr of The Guardian has said this is like “trying to ban oxygen.”  She is the one who exposed the harvesting of social media data for political gain commonly referred to as the Cambridge Analytica scandal. She knows a thing or two about these issues (unlike your faithful scribe). She talked to Hariharan “Hari” Sreenivasan on the PBS television show Amanpour & Co. She recently wrote that Putin had lost the social media war. That came as a surprise to me. For years now, people like me have seen Putin as this powerful magic man who manipulates the social media for his own nefarious purposes.

 

We came to that impression in part because of the joint against truthful media in and about 2014 when he very successfully managed to spread disinformation with great success against Ukraine in the war Russia waged with them at that time and his disinformation campaign he launched very successfully in the United States to play mischief not just with the 2016 political campaign in that country but also mischief on a broader scale. As she said, Putin was considered “the master of the dark arts of disinformation.” Three was solid justification for that reputation as a result in particular of those two campaigns.

 

As Cadwalladr explained “that’s because for years he was allowed to operate in darkness inside the social media platforms.”  As she said,

 

“Since then we have seen him burst into the light, performing moves that Stalin might have done. In 2022 however there is no nuance to this, no subtlety to this. He is shutting down Facebook, he has criminalized journalism. Today we’ve learned that they’re looking to make Instagram and WhatsApp and calling them ‘extremist organizations and looking to ban them. These are the actions of a totalitarian.”

She compares Putin unfavourably to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who has shown that he is a master of modern media.

Putin is operating under the idea that in 2022 you can stop information from spreading and that is increasingly difficult. Of course, millions of Russians get their information from official Russian television, so to that extent information is controlled by the Russian state, but the fact is many people get information from many other sources. Young Russians for example, never go to Russian television for news. They know it is all fake news. Unfortunately, they tend to think all news is fake news. This is very dangerous. We have learned this during the pandemic. We need to know truth can be found.

As a result, Cadwalladr says

 

“as a result we are going to increasingly see an intergenerational war in Russia. There are a lot of older people who do get their news from television that is wholly pro-Kremlin propaganda…But this thing of banning Instagram is going to have a huge impact because that’s how young people communicate. You know in Russia WhatsApp and Instagram and their Russian social media platforms are the air that they breathe and the idea that you can just cut off the flow of that information overnight and people are just going to accept it is a whole other thing coming.”

 

People in the west, particularly to those of us who pay little attention to what is going on outside North America have not noticed that there has been a hot war going on in Ukraine for years. It has been going on since 2014 and the world has forgotten. Even when the Americans were impeaching Donald Trump in 2021 and railing about him holding back Congress approved military aid to the Ukraine in order to squeeze President Zelensky to dig up dirt on the son of his political rival, Americans paid little attention to the fact that this money being held back was vitally important to Ukraine. They seemed solely concerned with attacking Trump. I blame the left in America for this. They were blinded by their zest for getting rid of Trump that they missed this important fact.  It is crazy to think that the west is now opening up to the fact that Russia is now invading Ukraine when he has been there for 8 years already doing exactly that. Frankly, it shows how myopic and self-centred the west really is.

 

In fact, as Cadwalladr noted,

“At exactly the time Putin did that in Ukraine he began that in America and in the west. We know that in detail because of the FBI’s investigation. It catalogues that. We really have to understand that this was a joint military assault on Ukraine and the west at the same time!”

In that war in Ukraine, in 2014, before it sent in troops, Russian used and perfected impressively effective disinformation techniques. This is very ably described by Timothy Snyder in his brilliant book Road to Unfreedom. The first thing Russia did in 2014 was to “penetrate. Ukraine’s information systems and then spread Russian propaganda to destroy reality to confuse people. It did exactly what Hannah Arendt said fascists did. To them, she said, it was not necessary to convince people that their propaganda was true, only to sow confusion for the purpose of rendering them incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood. That was enough to give Russia control over Ukraine in 2014 and it has never stopped in that war against truth.

 

The war against truth is not an academic notion of little importance to people other than those interested in philosophy. The war on truth is a fascist assault on freedom and democracy! The Ukraine War of 2022 is a continuation of that war by other means.

Truth: The First Casualty of War

Death of Truth, Trust and Distrust, Tyranny and Fascism, War, War in Ukraine (2022)

 

It is not clear who first said truth is the first casualty of war. What is clear is that whoever said it was a very smart person.  It might have been Samuel Johnson for he was a very wise man and he said, “’Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.‘ (from The Idler, 1758). The second part of that statement is also important—the insidious effect of credulity is very important. Many of us have been conditioned to believe without evidence or reasoning. Critical thinking matters and the abandonment of critical reasoning is vitally important. We learned it in the pandemic and we are learning it again in the war.

Apparently in Russia about 2/3rds of the country support the war against Ukraine. Of course, they do that based on false information. Most of them don’t know the truth. They believe what they are told.

Many people in Canada and the US ask how is it possible that so many Russians believe the propaganda?

Are we any better?  It is estimated that in the US about 1/3rd of the people believe that last presidential election was “stolen” by Joe Biden, despite the fact that there is almost no evidence to support this claim and it flies in the face of any critical thinking. As Ioffe said, “it turns out it is not that difficult to fool people.”

I heard a fascinating interview with Russian born American journalist Julia Ioffe who is an acknowledged expert on Russia. She has spent a lot of time there and has friends she can trust and call to find out what is going on now. Her articles have appeared in many respected journals including some of my favourites.

In Russia people have learned that people who ask questions or protest the government actions are often severely punished. Added to that, Russians have suffered a lot of trauma. Over 50 million Russians including Ukrainians, lost their lives in wars, terror campaigns, and pogroms between 1914 and 1945. In the 4 years the Russians fought World War II they lost 15% of their population. This was after waves of political arrests. As a result Russians are among the most cynical and distrusting of all people. This includes Russians who have moved to Canada. I have talked to some of those Russians hers in Manitoba and I understand this.  They have good reason to distrust their governments. That distrust spills over to our governments too.

Ioffe pointed out that we should remember as Ioffe said, “Russians have been living under an ever tightening noose of censorship for 22 years. So, they have been conditioned not to question what they are told.” What excuse do Americans and their Canadian fellow travellers have?

Distrust is dangerous for democracies and standard fare for autocracies.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Movies, Tyranny and Fascism, War in Ukraine (2022), Wisdom

 

This is a film that all would be tyrants should watch.

 

This play is nearly 500 years old, but is clearly still relevant.  This is the perfect time to watch this film or read the play. In these times when we see tyrants challenging freedom we should turn to Macbeth for spiritual nourishment. Macbeth, like so much of Shakespeare can drizzle wisdom on us in our hour of need.

 

Early in the play, the 3 weird sisters, or witches ask us to “all  hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king.”  Remind you of anyone? Then we are told “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Is that not the 21st century?

 

This is also the land of untruth. For as honest Banquo tells us:

 

“The instruments of darkness tell us truths,

Win us with honest trifles, to betray us

In deepest consequence.”

 

I immediately felt at home in the black and white colour of the film, with ominous black birds alarmingly in the sky.

 

Lady Macbeth the Putin master of the story tries to guide Macbeth the prize of kingship:

 

“Yet I do fear thy nature;

It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;

Art not without ambition; but without

The illness should attend it: what you wouldst highly

That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,

And yet would wrongly win”

 

Like the little general from Moscow, Macbeth is filled with “vaulting ambition” and that, as we know, leads straight to pain and sorrow.  She urges Macbeth to “look like the innocent flower; but be the serpent under it.” These are the men with whom we are entirely familiar. And the man who would be king knows what he must do. He must not only commit foul acts he must also must ensure that “False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” Welcome to the 21st century.

 

In the Scotland of Macbeth, like the Ukraine of Zelensky “the earth was feverous and did shake” and as all good despots know, “Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.” And “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”

Yet the real question, the same question Shakespeare asks of Macbeth, and we ask of Putin, what is the point of this all?  Why? Tyrants must “be bloody bold and resolute” but for what end.? In the end Macbeth is described this way: “now does he fell his title hang loose upon him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.”  Who can doubt that our modern dwarfish thief will not look any more regal? And who can doubt that in the end the tyrant will be forced to acknowledge, at least if he is open to the terrible truth, as Macbeth was, that this is profoundly true:

 

“Tomorrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

 

I so wish the Putins of the world had read deeply of Shakespeare. The world would be so different.

Surrounded by Fearful Sycophants

American Fascism, Moral Humility, Trump, Truth Seeking, War in Ukraine (2022)

 

Did you see the cringe worthy (and binge worthy) scene where Putin lined up his advisors at a long table (always at a very long table to keep the riff raff away from the god) and asked them for their opinions about the war against Ukraine? When one of those advisors was insufficiently obeisant, Putin mocked him and made him retract his slight disagreement and replace it with absolute obedience.  Of course, the only advice Putin wanted was to be told how smart he was. And that is the problem that dictators have.  They cannot accept that they might be wrong. They have no moral humility.

 

Trump was the same way, when he demanded his “advisors” fawn over him.  The only advice he needed from them was to say how great he was. I wouldn’t call Trump a dictator, but he sure was an authoritarian. And authoritarians—by definition—tolerate no dissent. None. And that is their Achilles heel. And that is Putin’s Achilles heel. And that is the Achilles heel of many Republicans, because they too have given up on democracy. They have become authoritarians. They want to decide what we should do. That is made clear by their brazen attempts to rig the upcoming elections in the US. A real believer in democracy would not do that. And to the extent the Democratic Party in the US has also tried to rig elections, they are not believers in democracy either.

 

Republicans in the US have lavished their praise on Putin. Trump called Putin “savvy” and a “genius.” Putin was his kind of strong man. A man who tolerated no obstacles to his relentless will.  Now many of us are starting to realize that Putin is no genius. Trump was wrong about that. The problem with Russia is precisely that “it is ruled by a man who accepts no criticism and brooks no dissent.” That is how Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described him. That is what authoritarians do. It is part of their DNA and that is why it is so unwise of conservatives to bow before Putin.

 

Why is the American right wing so enamoured of brutal dictators? It is not just Donald Trump either.  This love affair began before the rise of Trump. Part of this comes from the love of strongmen. Paul Krugman described this in the following manner:

“Some of this dictator-love reflected the belief that Putin was a champion of anti-wokeness — someone who wouldn’t accuse you of being a racist, who denounced cancel culture and “gay propaganda.”

 

Many American conservatives despise what they call cancel culture, even though they are keen practitioners of it. Many of them also see acquiescence to acknowledging LBGTQ rights as an abomination ushered in by the devil. Many believe that it is weak and feminine to cede any rights to them. In fact, conservative attitudes are a product of toxic masculinity which they can’t give up. Putin is their hero. As Krugman said,

 

“Sarah Palin declared that he wrestled bears while President Barack Obama wore “mom jeans” — and the apparent toughness of Putin’s people. Just last year Senator Ted Cruz contrasted footage of a shaven-headed Russian soldier with a U.S. Army recruiting ad to mock our “woke, emasculated” military.”

 

That was one of the reasons Trump trusted Russian intelligence more than America’s. They were tough. Of course, many Republicans just plain prefer authoritarian rule. They lust for it. And there was no bigger fan that Trump. As Krugman said,

 

“Just a few days ago Trump, who has dialed back his praise for Putin, chose instead to express admiration for North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Kim’s generals and aides, he noted, “cowered” when the dictator spoke, adding that “I want my people to act like that.”

 

Trump actually said that. But we must remember that what Trump admires is not strength, nor is it smart. First, by now it seems that the Russian army is not as powerful as we thought. They have a huge advantage in fire power, but are not translating that into huge gains on the ground. They might still get them, but not yet.

 

But the real problem for Putin is that he is surrounded by sycophants. Trembling yes men are never a reliable source of advice. No smart business man wants that. And that is what Russia has for political and military leadership. They have all learned to toe the line. None of them seems capable of independent thought. Even though Trump is impressed with meek obeisance it is not a ladder to success. It is a slide to oblivion. That means Putin has to make the important decisions on his own.

 

Krugman put it this way:

“The invaders were also clearly shocked by Ukraine’s resistance — both by its resolve and by its competence. Realistic intelligence assessments might have warned Russia that this might happen; but would you want to have been the official standing up and saying, “Mr. President, I’m afraid we may be underestimating the Ukrainians”?

 

We actually saw an example of such cringing meekness to the great leader when the lone advisor who did not automatically tell Putin what Putin wanted to hear, was immediately humiliated by the grand leader. Putin publicly made  him retract his doubts.

 

For example, Putin thought that his $630 billion war chest would protect the country from western sanctions. He did not believe that the western leaders had the guts to impose them. That was not an entirely unreasonable presumption, but it turned out to be wrong.  Now they have learned that  cutting off Russian from the world’s banking system was brutally effective. As Krugman said,

 

“It shouldn’t have required deep analysis to realize that Putin’s $630 billion in foreign exchange reserves would become largely unusable if the world’s democracies cut off Russia’s access to the world banking system. It also shouldn’t have required deep analysis to realize that Russia’s economy is deeply dependent on imports of capital goods and other essential industrial inputs.

 

But again, would you have wanted to be the diplomat telling Putin that the West isn’t as decadent as he thinks, the banker telling him that his vaunted “war chest” will be useless in a crisis, the economist telling him that Russia needs imports?”

 

Democracies are incredibly inefficient but they have one incredible advantage over autocracies.  The leader doesn’t have to do it all on his own. As Krugman concluded:

 

“The point is that the case for an open society — a society that allows dissent and criticism — goes beyond truth and morality. Open societies are also, by and large, more effective than closed-off autocracies. That is, while you might imagine that there are big advantages to rule by a strongman who can simply tell people what to do, these advantages are more than offset by the absence of free discussion and independent thought. Nobody can tell the strongman that he’s wrong or urge him to think twice before making a disastrous decision.

 

Which brings me back to America’s erstwhile Putin admirers. I’d like to think that they’ll take Russia’s Ukraine debacle as an object lesson and rethink their own hostility to democracy. OK, I don’t really expect that to happen. But we can always hope.”

 

I am not saying the Ukrainians will defeat the Russian bear. After all the Russians have massive military  advantages and are led by a leader with no moral hesitations. I am just saying there are also some significant advantages enjoyed by democracies. And they might make a difference.

 

Near Enough to Catastrophe

War, War in Ukraine (2022)

 

I was stunned by the video of fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the Ukraine.  I believe this was near to the home of my mother when she was a very young girl emigrating to Canada. Now Russians and Ukrainians were madly fighting to control this site as it housed the largest nuclear reactor in Europe. It was under threat by Russian gunfire and missiles. The first report came from an employee at the plant, who posted on Telegram that Russian forces had fired on the facility and there was “a real threat of nuclear danger at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.”  We were told that the chances of explosion, nuclear meltdown or radioactive release are “low” by Tony Irwin, an honorary associate professor at the Australian National University. I don’t know about you, but when I think of nuclear meltdown, I would want the chances to be non-existent, not low.

 

 

 

International nuclear officials were biting their nails worrying about what would happen but assuring us that the fire was on the perimeter of the site.  The Ukrainian President Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the other hand said all of Europe was at risk. Was he amplifying the danger to put pressure on Europe political leaders to offer more help to Ukraine? Perhaps. Was the Russian attack a case of monstrous recklessness? Absolutely! Did it matter that the prevailing winds from the site are primarily to the east, putting Russians in the greatest danger? Not to Putin. Does Putin care about risks to Russian people? The answer seems obvious.

 

CBC commentator Andrew Coyne opined that the war would amount to a “slaughter” of the Ukrainians. Yet Ukrainians all say–at least those left behind–that Ukraine will never surrender. Meanwhile, Putin says the war is going according to plan. Is this what he planned? He said he wants a new government for Ukraine. This reminded me of statements by the American Vice-President Dick Cheney and his loyal henchman Donald Rumsfeld they wanted regime change in Iraq. Are Russians filled with as much hubris as Americans?

 

Fighting is always reckless. Around a nuclear plant it seems mad.

Everyday life in a War

War, War in Ukraine (2022)

 

I have learned many things about war since Russia invaded Ukraine. Some sad, some funny, some strange. One of the things that has amazed me is how life in war goes on. It gets twisted, some might say perverted, but life does go on. Not always happily, but people try to make the best of things until they can’t.

 

I saw a photograph of a young Ukrainian couple both wearing army style fatigues.  They made a lovely couple.  They were surrounded by soldiers. They were both members of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense forces. They were getting married. In the middle of war! Can you imagine?

 

During television coverage of the Russian War on Ukraine I learned that disease does not stop for war. That certainly applies to infectious diseases, including Covid-19 and others. That can cause a lot of problems in a country in which only 1/3rd of the people are vaccinated. Ukrainians, like people of many countries, but particularly like people in the former Soviet states, don’t trust the state. They have good reason not to trust the those governments that were very economical with the truth. Would you trust such a government that tried to persuade you to inject a foreign substance into your body? That lack of trust has profound consequences for a country like Ukraine, just as it did on a lesser scale for Canada and the United States.

 

During the war hospitals were unsafe places to be found.  We had been assured by the Russians that their missiles and artillery would only target military structures, but soon we noticed they also destroyed hospitals or at least made them dangerous places.  As a result in one hospital in the Ukraine all the expectant mothers were moved to the basement where beds were established with mattresses on the floor. Many were lying in one big room with social distancing impossible. What kind of care do they get there?  Is this worse than Manitoba ICU patients being sent to Ontario? Where are Ukrainian ICU patients? I guess when your city is being bombed who worries about Covid-19, but what about those in hospital that need urgent care?

 

We were all touched by stories of people fleeing the country. They seemed scary. I remember an image of a young mother with her very young child with large bewildered eyes. The child seemed to want to know what was going on. The mother clutched a pet dog to her chest and a small cage for 2 budgies as her child hung on for dear life.  Could you abandon pets during a war?  The husband was left behind to fight. He had no choice. The group was in a massive line-up outside a railway car. They were hoping to get on I, but there were many more people than there were spaces available.

 

Then there were refugees in Poland.  Early on 1,000,000 Ukrainian refugees were struggling with their families in Poland to find places to stay. Thousands crammed in refugee centres with many more outside. The eyes of young women often glazed over with fear, and above all fatigue, from lining up for hours with young children who just don’t know what is happening.  Young men were left behind to fight.  There was a young man who had accompanied his wife and children to the train station helping them leave. You could infer that the family  was in grave doubt about whether or not they would ever see him again.

 

I saw images of an old Ukrainian woman being trained to use a rifle to fend off Russian attackers. How effective will that be?  Yet is it better to do nothing?

 

I saw an interview with a young Canadian man who decided to leave his wife behind in Canada with their 11-month old child so he could go to Ukraine to fight the invaders. Why did he feel compelled to leave his family to go so far to help others? Was he heroic? Or foolish? What makes sense?

 

In one of the already iconic images of this war, we saw an elderly Ukrainian Baba confronting a rifle-toting Russian soldier offering him sunflower seeds for his pockets, so that when he dies on the streets of Ukraine, sunflowers can grow and bloom out of his corpse.  Later in scenes from the Legislature in Winnipeg I saw a poster of a Ukrainian Canadian offering more sunflower seeds for Russia.

 

I saw images of Ukrainian teenagers preparing Molotov Cocktails and camouflage sheets for soldiers. Is that course now added to the school curriculum?

 

There are horrendous images of schools, hospitals, and apartment complexes blasted by Russian shelling. Are these military targets?

 

More than 1 million Ukrainians are now refugees outside the country.  More than 50% of these are children. None of those children asked for this.

 

I saw a video of a young Ukrainian man l playing a John Lennon tune on the piano at the border of Poland and Ukraine.  What a welcome for fleeing refugees.

 

We were told a story about Canadians, and others, booking rooms at Ukrainian B & B’s without hope of ever using them, just to support real life Ukrainians.

 

A Ukrainian man  was seen driving a truck on a highway stopping at a Russian tank that has run out of gasoline when the driver asked him the tank driver if he could tow him back to Russia.

 

But I also saw a photograph of two young Ukrainian children who died on the street, and were covered with a tarp that reminded of my tenting tarp.

 

There was a video of a Ukrainian financial securities expert taking training to operate a rifle. He said,  “It’s my duty.”

 

We were shown old World War I trenches are being resurrected. Who ever thought we would see the return of trench warfare to Europe?

 

One weeping woman in a car with her children cried that her hometown no longer exists. It is just “gone,” she says. The children look perplexed. No, they look dumbfounded.

 

We saw long lines of people on streets fleeing some undescribed danger. Some were carrying weary children. Others carrying pets. How can they do it?

 

Another young woman was trying to reduce the trauma of war for her young children by convincing them that the air raid sirens they heard were a part of a children’s game. There is nothing to fear, she assured them. She was lying of course.  She lied to her children for their own good.

 

 

Tucker Carlson also likes Putin

American Fascism, Polarization, War in Ukraine (2022)

I actually don’t care that Donald Trump likes Putin. After seeing him on television every day for more than 4 years that is hardly surprising. The same goes for Tucker Carlson. I don’t care because both of them are entirely corrupt.  They are irredeemable.  Even that does not matter. What does matter is that 55 million Americans voted for Trump and many of those continue to believe in him.  Many of them also believe in Tucker Carlson a Fox News Channel commentator.

 

Tucker Carlson is the most watched American conservative in the US. More than 3 million viewers watch him every night according to recent numbers. Trump and Carlson are the two most revered conservatives in America and that is important.  How can so many people in America have faith in them? It seems completely improbable, but it’s true. As a result, what Tucker Carlson says is significant.

This is what Tucker Carlson said about Putin just before the Russian invasion of Poland that he had ordered:

” Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years?

 Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs? These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is no.

Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that. So why does permanent Washington hate him so much?”

 

Carlson is really saying he likes Putin more than American liberals or Democrats.  That is  how polarized that country is. Many prefer a brutal Russian dictator, a modern Hitler, to Democrats!

First of all, the statements Carlson made are definitely odd. Was Carlson suggesting there is no reason to challenge or even dislike a brutal dictator, who uses his resources to disinform the public around the world, who orders the murder of dissenters, who has stolen perhaps from his people the largest fortune in the world, who has led an invasion of Crimea, and Ukraine (now twice).

Moreover, is Tucker really saying there is no good reason to challenge Putin? After all he is a brutal dictator who uses his extensive resources to disinform the world, who orders the assassination of dissenters, while in power has amassed perhaps the largest fortune in the world, who has led an invasion of Crimea and Ukraine, now for the second time. Is not sufficient to discredit Putin? What more does Tucker want to denounce Putin? What more must Putin do to be worse than the Democrats?

 

Added to that,  it seems strange—very strange—to think that Putin is not evil just because he has not done anything bad personally and directly to you. Is that really the standard?  Do the lives of millions of people whom Putin  has harmed not count in this moral calculus? Is it all about Tucker Carlson? Well, actually it is just about Tucker Carlson. At least that is all that counts to Tucker Carlson. And that is exactly the attitude of the fascist. No one else matters. Harms to anyone else can be ignored. To the fascist, it is only about the fascists and his fellow travellers.

Jon Stewart said this in an interview with the New York Times, about  the right-wing in  America: “They view Putin as a defender of Western civilization. They view him as an ideological brother.” And of course, the implication is clear—i.e. western civilization to the fascists means white people. To many in the American right Russia have the right look—i.e. Christian, unfriendly to gays and lesbians, and white. Just like them in other words. That is why Jon Stewart said, “I think for years, it’s been pretty clear that they would much rather do a deal with Putin than Pelosi.”

 Those in the American right-wing movement who follow Trump and Carlson prefer to root for Putin  over Biden. It is now a little more comprehensible, but no less dastardly.  And no less shameful.

 

 

Why does the American right love Putin?

American Fascism, racism, War in Ukraine (2022)

 

You may have noticed something astonishing recently—the love that some American conservatives have for bullies and tyrants. What is that all about?

A poll that came out right after the Russians invaded Ukraine showed that 1 in 4 Republicans blamed Joe Biden and not Putin for the war. Because their  statements  are so appealing to them, the Russians are using statements by Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson on their televisions with Russian subtitles.  Trump and Carlson are producing Russian propaganda! The Russians have already used actual statements by Trump and Carlson as part of their propaganda machinery. That is how enthralled some American right-wingers are with Putin. He is their kind of strongman. They envy him! I know not all conservatives can be tarred with the same brush. Many of them have spoken out loudly against Putin, but when the two most influential conservatives in America agree on their approval of Putin we must take notice!

Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist  who lost all confidence with that party after it elected Donald Trump said Trump had “a fetish for autocracy”.  Tucker Carlson seems to share those views.

 Former Trump has consistently acted like a tin-pot dictator and no one should be surprised. While he was president, he frequently made it clear that he admired dictators such Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, Rodrigo Roa Duterte of the Philippines, and Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Trump admires strongmen.  He admires bullies and that is the mark of an authoritarian or even a fascist. While he was president, he also tried to twist the arms of Ukrainian political leaders by withholding aid payments to that country in order to dig up dirt on his political rival (at the time) Joe Biden. He also used the Department of Justice as his personal law firm against all protocols, and has done much else to make it clear to anyone who pays attention that he is an authoritarian at heart.

Then after Russia invaded Ukraine on flimsy justifications that Russia was there to save Ukrainians from a neofascist government, Donald Trump, like a true New York real estate mogul, told the world what he really thought of Putin. He said,

“Putin’s smart.  I mean he’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that is pretty smart. Listen, he’s taking over a country; really  a vast, vast location and a great piece of land with a lot of people and just walking right in.”

 

In other words, Trump was jealous of the great real estate deal Putin made by invading Ukraine. Never mind the 44 million Ukrainians who had their government taken away from them. This is the bizarro world of Trumplandia. As the journalist Julia Ioffe said about Putin and his cronies: “They take a little bit of truth and spin it into a cotton candy ball of lies.”

Bill Maher said as early as 2018, “We thought Russia would become more like us, but we have become more like the Russians.”

What really concerns me, about this issue is the 55 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump, though his popularity seems to be waning, he is a still a force to be reckoned with. So is Carlson.

Reporter Lulu Garcia-Navrro of the New York Times said, this,

 “There was just a poll. out showing that Putin was more popular among Republicans than any senior Democratic leader, including the American president.”

 

Bill Maher and others have for some time been commenting on the attraction of the American right to Putin.  In the case of Trump this was near man crush. It is really surprising what has happened. A sea change has occurred. The Republican party used to be so anti-Russia that they were nearly rabid on the subject. Ronald Reagan became Saint Ronald by defeating the Ruskies economically and calling on Mr. Gorbachev to “bring down that wall.” It didn’t happen but Reagan became a hero on the right.  George Bush attacked the evil empire and the axis of evil. Yet for some reason the Republicans have flipped on Russia. Why is that?

Anne Coulter in June 2017 said: “In 20 years, Russia will be the only country that is recognizably European.”  What was she getting at there? I think she was getting at appearance. Matt Drudge in 2013 said “Putin is the leader of the free world.” The free world? White Supremacist, David Duke in 2004 called Russia “the key to white survival.”  There is a big hint there.

All of us have noticed how the world has become a lot more diverse. London used to be completely white. When I was in London in 2017 I was struck by what a a wonderful diverse city it was. I was pleasantly surprised by this. But some people don’t like diversity. We must acknowledge that. Some people think the white people are being replaced.  They are being displaced from their positions of dominance. And that scares a lot of people.  I have talked to people like that.

Russia has resisted diversity. They don’t want diversity and make no bones about it. Gays and lesbians also have a difficult time there. Putin has made it clear that they are not welcome in Russia. He does this openly. But not only Putin, many of the Russian people are  like this.   They are attracted to what Yale Historian Timothy Snyder has called “Christian fascism of Putin” that does not tolerate diversity. To them holy Russia has no room for diversity.  They don’t want gays, lesbians, or blacks.

As Maher said, “Republicans don’t see Russian meddling in our election as bad thing. They see it as white people helping white people. To the people who are afraid of a diverse world, Russia is their savior country. ”

That is exactly what fascism is all about.  Keep the inferiors out so we can dominate the country. This attraction of American conservatives to Putin and his cohorts betrays their allegiance to fascism. Like the Nazis before them, they want white supremacy. Actually, I think it goes beyond white supremacy but that is a big part of what some of them like about Putin. In future post I will say what I mean.

 

Old Men should not fan the flames of War

Death of Truth, Modern History, violence, War, War in Ukraine (2022)

 

First, we should all realize in the democratic west that Ukraine deserves to be supported as it suffers the onslaught of a villainous bully. If the Ukraine wants to fight for freedom, we should support that.

We should remember what Putin has done so far: The Russians under Putin in 2008 invaded Georgia and the Bush Administration did nothing but complain. He invaded Crimea in 2014 and the west under Obama’s leadership again did nothing. Then Putin started a war in the eastern Ukraine that killed 13,000 people again we did nothing. Now he has invaded all of the Ukraine. Is it time to do something? All of this reminds us, as many have already mentioned , of Hitler. Do we want to go there again?

I am not a warmonger. I think the history of warfare does not fill me with confidence that it ever makes sense, though I don’t rule it out absolutely either.  I think we have an awful capacity to screw up wars so that people die. Especially young people and poor people.  Old men, like me, in particular should not fan the flames of war. Yet we must do something effective to stand up to fascist bullies. Trying to appease the bullies  has never worked well.

 

I think we should be smart enough to marshal our allies and right thinking peoples together to effectively lock out the Russian leadership from their ill got gains. Countries are incredibly tied together in modern economies. We must do all that we can to cut the thugs off from their corruptly accumulated wealth and starve the leaders into submission.

We must also deal with the war on truth. In many ways it is as terrible as the  war on the ground. We need to collectively stem the tide of Russian lies.

I just think we are smart enough to do this. I am not so sure that we are smart enough to go to war without causing more harm than we prevent.