A Kremlin-backed media outlet masquerading as a left-wing news source has been racking up likes and shares on its posts about Ukraine.
— Read on www.vice.com/en/article/wxdb5z/redfish-media-russia-propaganda-misinformation
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WEDNESDAY 9 MARCH 2022
Ukraine Update: 11:30 AM
MSNBC
- Blinken speaking.
- More excuses about the No-Fly Zone. Blinken: Ukrainians are amazing, I (like Zelensky) would be asking for everything possible. The US and UK have done “extraordinary things,” we have made sure they have everything to defend themselves. (Note: If they lose it’s their fault.) The goal is to “save lives.” Have to see to it that this war doesn’t expand, that the war is not prolonged. We don’t want this was to be “even deadlier, involve more people…make things harder to resolve in Ukraine itself.” (Note: Bullshit.)
- UK Foreign Minister: (Note: London is awash with Russian money.) She is citing the action of private industry. (Note: So now we are relying on McDonalds to stand up for democracy and using them as an excuse for why governments in the West don’t need to.)
- Blinken: “I’m absolutely convinced that Putin will fail.” (Note: So now we are just sitting and waiting for Putin to fail. What a laudable position.)
- “We’re committed to defending them. We’re committed to standing for them until we succeed in making it clear that they will hold and Putin’s efforts to undermine them will fail.” (Read: We will stand up for Ukraine until it wins. We ain’t fighting.”)
CNN
- Vindman: US. defense systems have been moved to show that we will defend NATO. That defense system on Ukrainian soil would defend against missiles. Patriot batteries moved closer to the Ukraine border.
- An aircraft carrier has been moved into the Aegean Sea. Vindman: It’s more than the ship and its planes. It’s mainly a deterrent.
- Offer of fighter jets from Poland. Offer was to fly them to Germany and then fly them back to Ukraine. The US has declined that as an option.
- Vindman: The US tried to stop discussion of planes being provided earlier. They think it’s way too provocative. This is a “fundamentally flawed assumption.” There is no reason for us to limit ourselves and not supply Ukraine with what they need. Vindman fears that the blocking of the offer from Poland is a sign that the Biden administration is not willing to go for more serious weaponry. This is a mistake.
FOX
- I was going to say that this note wasn’t about Ukraine, but it is. Fox News is evidently marketing (using the shill Huckaby) children’s books about how wonderful Trump is. The books are illustrated with badly drawn cartoons. One of them shows Donald Trump with Abraham Lincoln. These are being used to indoctrinate children. As always, the right complains that the left is doing what they are doing (cheating on elections, indoctrinating children, attempting an authoritarian take over of democracy, on and on and on). Just as an aside, I would like to remind you that the right accuses the left of organizing a child sex traffic ring and also eating children. Just think about that one.
- Fox advances the narrative that a rise in oil prices has nothing to do with oil and gas companies. They are pimping the line that Biden is using that as a distraction for his own bad administration.
- Fox is interviewing the CEO of the American Petroleum Institute. He’s trying to scare people about policies that don’t allow the oil and gas industry to drill without constraints. Sommers (CEO) trying to portray oil and gas as responsible for winning WWII.
- Fox and the right never let an opportunity go by to advance their interests, not even a war. See the book: “Disaster Capitalism.”
- Horrible woman on Fox argues that when Trump was in office the bureaucracy was wiped away. What is that woman’s name? Harris?
- Note: Yesterday she was telling these long-convoluted stories about what her father always told her. Usually, these stories are composed of short, pithy statements. No, she was going on and on about what her father supposedly always told her. Something like: My father always told me that you had to give oil and gas free hand to do whatever the fuck they wanted to do because it was essential to the freedom of black people and the free world. You have to watch this stuff to believe it.
- Fox is reporting that the RT editor resigns in protest over Putin’s war.
- Fox News hosts Petraeus on to comment on Ukraine. Petraeus who gave classified information to his lover so she could write a great biography of him. This is who they have on?
TWITTER
- The EU has agreed on a ban on the provision of euro banknotes to Belarus.
NOTES
- There are so many things to learn about Ukraine and Russia, but the corporate media keeps spending hours and hours of time interviewing individuals on the ground in Ukraine. I understand the effort to make the war personal, human, but I think we get it by now that there are real people involved in this disaster. Simply repeating story after story after story of people who are fleeing serves only the purpose of filling air time and not talking about the things that brought us here. The corporate media refuses to educate. We need an educated population, not an entertained population.
- I used to tell my students: I’m not here to make you happy. I’m here to make you think.
- I’ve been thinking lately about what this point in history could mean. If people see by watching the Ukrainians, what ordinary people can do, how they can change the conditions of their existence, it may have profound implications beyond Ukraine. That, in fact, is what Putin is so afraid of, the demand for democracy from the Ukrainians, the fact that the Ukrainians with just their bodies, threw a Russian stooge president out of the country.
- On the podcast @skullduggery, they have a Ukrainian MP on the phone and the question? The significant question? Whether we can expect there to be more refugees. Jesus. Michael Isikoff
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A speech by Andrew Cuomo and an article by a college student suggest what’s really behind the lamentations about “left-wing censorship.”
— Read on www.thenation.com/article/society/cuomo-camp-canceled-not/ -
By the way, I am on twitter @cjjohns1951
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I’m going to put two of my nine cats in carriers and take them to the vet for booster shots. I am dreading the disapproval. I, however, can come home with my cats. They will be fed and safe tonight. I will have dinner and sleep in a warm bed. Democracy is not a given, a state of being. Peace is not a given.
I really wonder if people too young to have had parents in WWII even grasp that this reality they are experiencing is fragile. People in the U.S. were not attacked in WWII. They only experienced the war on other people’s territory. I think that younger people assume this post-war stability is a given, that it cannot go away. It can.
Elites in this country are dealing with Putin the same way they are dealing with Trump. There is no accountability for the bullies, the authoritarians, the soldiers against justice and democracy. They will not stand up and fight Putin over Ukraine, and they will not stand up and put Trump and his henchmen in jail after a coup.
Weakness in the face of tyranny ensures disaster.
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CNN
• The Russians want to use the evacuation routes as targets according to military commentator on CNN.
• Kimberly Dozier on CNN. This tactic (attacking routes) creates fear and distrust of evacuation routes. Men will escort women and children because they don’t trust the routes. This will leave less men to fight. It makes Russia look as if they are cooperating with a humanitarian effort. She notes the “image fatigue” of Western populations. (Note: This is a pathetic statement.)
• There are now calls for “humanitarian” no-fly zones.
• Military expert argues that there is no such thing. Talks about a “level of desperation” experienced by Putin. (Note: I am so tired of listening to people tell us they know what Putin is experiencing. First, I don’t care and second, they don’t f…king know.)
• Biden announces a banning of Russian oil. (11:25 AM). Some of the European countries cannot afford to do this, they import more oil.
• Zelensky: “We are looking for the help of the civilized nations.” “Please make sure that the Ukrainian skies are safe.” Speaking to the UK Parliament.
MSNBC
FOX NEWS
• Fox is, of course, after the Biden announcement about cutting off Russian oil, blaming Biden for the increase in the price of oil and maintaining that the Biden administration is blaming Russia and the invasion for the increase in prices.
KYIV INDEPENDENT
• The Irish Times reported that the UN had told its employees not to use the word “war” to refer to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The UN denies this.
• UK to phase out Russian oil imports by the end of 2022.
• 27 Foreign policy leaders urged a limited “no fly zone.”
• Belarus conducted phishing attacks against Ukraine.
NOTES:
• ALJAZEERA publishes a Ukraine War summary.
• Refugee numbers have reached 2 million.
• Moscow threatens to close a major pipeline to Germany. Note: This was the purpose in the first place).
• Ukraine says that it has killed more than 11,000 Russian Troops.
• Access to what’s going on in Ukraine is increasingly difficult. People we have followed on Twitter in Ukraine have gone silent.
• Corporate media is reporting that Biden is “increasing troop strength in Europe” BY 500 soldiers? The media is just outrageous.
THOM HARTMAN, The Hartman Report, March 7, 2022
• If houses had solar panels, the cutting off of central power sources would be less devastating. Germany and California are requiring this on all new construction. (Note: But still Republicans and scum like Joe Scarborough are back to the “Drill Baby Drill” narrative.
• Centralized power generation is not a reliable wad of money that for-profit companies can appropriate after the Republicans allowed them to privatize the energy business. They are no longer reliable (See Texas).
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MONDAY 7 MARCH 2022
MSNBC: 4 pm
• A dozen cities shelled to dust in Ukraine.
• People are without water and heat and food. They are freezing to death while they are being shelled and cannot leave shelters.
• There is no trust for the humanitarian corridors because of the shelling of them by Russian forces.
• Interview with Cal Perry. Lviv, Ukraine. The Ukrainians are showing interrogations of POWs on TV. They are young boys. Ukrainians are moving from shock to disappointment to anger. When reporters say, a no-fly zone could cause WWIII, Ukrainians say, where do you think I came from. “The anger is starting to creep in.” (Note: If we fail to stand up and defend, fight for the Ukraians, there is no moral high ground for us in the future.)
• There is more talk on MSNBC about Putin’s failures. (Note: This is self-serving. The elites in this country want to believe that Putin is going to defeat himself, that we don’t have to fight for them. People in this country are more concerned with their careers than stepping up and helping save democracy.)
• Zelensky: Putin is in an information bubble.
• It the truth was reaching the Russians there would be more protest according to Nicolle Wallace.
• Putin’s stability being asked about by Wallace AGAIN. Along with the “Putin will defeat himself” narrative, the “Putin is a madman” narrative is one the corporate media spends an incredible amount of time pumping. Both narratives are an excuse for not doing anything.
- When asked by Wallace about Putin’s “stability,” Katy Kay, another light-weight, answers that the Russian representative before UN said today that Ukrainians were shelling themselves. (Note: This is an example of the Russian information campaign, not evidence of mental illness. In fact, it is smart and evidently in regions of Russia where this is the only information, working. A woman related a story of being in Ukraine and arguing with her mother and father who are in Russia. The parents would not believe her when she said that there was a good chance that she would be killed by Russian bombs.)
• Now, Jeremy Bash is saying that “stepping over the NATO line” would be “irrational” for Putin. (Note: A few days ago, all these commentators were saying that Putin invading Ukraine would be “irrational.”
UKRAINE WORLD @ukraine_world (Note: This is one of the best twitter feeds out there and they also have a very interesting podcast. Go back and listen to the podcasts that were made before the invasion.)
• Kharkiv is under airstrikes now.3:40 PM 4:40 PM the airstrikes were described as “massive airstrikes.”
• Staying at home for people is dangerous. (Note: For those disparaging people trying to save their beloved pets, the Cubans learned during hurricane evacuations that people will not leave their homes without their animals. If you want them to evacuate, you must allow them to bring their loved animals.)
• Chernihiv is experiencing a horrible humanitarian crisis. There is no gasoline to leave the city. People have been shot leaving.
• Retweet from Volodymyr Yermolenko (In Ukraine): To those who have claimed that the Maidans have been “paid” by the “Western curators,” who is paying Ukrainians now, fighting with their hands and their bodies?
• Bakery shelled by troops in Makariv, Kyiv.
• Former Ukrainian MP who fled to Russia is on Russian media urging Zelensky to transfer power to Viktor Yanukovych, dictator ousted in 2014. (Note: If you want to read the history of this determination to reinstall Yanokovych, which goes back years, read Luke Harding’s book, “Shadow State.”)
KYIV INDEPENDENT
• U.S. sending additional troops to Europe. (Note: How about a no-fly zone, or as Zelensky asked, how many people have to die before a no-fly zone.)
• Two oil depots in Zhytomyr Oblast on fire after air strikes.
• According to Reuters, U.S. may ban Russian oil imports without Europe. (Note: Europe is dependent on this gas, we are not. We can afford to do this.)
• The state company that runs Chornobyl, says that after staff refused to participate in Russian video, Russians dressed their troops up in uniforms of the French company that evidently manages the site.
• Canada imposes sanctions on 10 more individuals. (Note: The U.S. has only imposed sanctions on 10, 10, oligarchs. Pathetic.)
• Man arrested in Dublin for backing a truck through the gates of the Russian embassy. “I want the ambassador and his colleagues to leave this country,” he said. (Note: I love the Irish.)
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SUNDAY 6 MARCH 2022
MSNBC
- Commentator talking about Putin: “He’s made a mistake.” (Note: This is part of the “Putin will defeat himself” narrative. Ergo, we don’t have to do anything.) Velshi says: “This is going to be like Afghanistan.” What Velshi means is that the Russians have involved themselves in a quagmire and this will be a disaster for them. (Note: Meanwhile, while the U.S. elite is waiting for the Russians to get bogged down, a lot of people die.)
- Commentator adds to the “Putin will defeat himself narrative, promising that the occupation will be “damaging, costly and bloody.” (Note: Again, while we wait, people are dying and losing everything.)
- Mariupol green corridor has collapsed due to shelling by the Russian side.
- (Note: U.S. taking credit for the heroic behavior of the Ukrainian people.)
- Republican political analyst is saying that there is “bipartisan” support for not taking action to create a no-fly zone. She reminds us that implementing a no-fly zone requires taking action against Russians on Russian soil. (Note: This is because they have made up a rule that if they try to implement a no-fly zone, they first have to take out military capabilities of Russia. THEY MADE UP THIS RULE. There is nobody enforcing it. This is supposedly so that none of our pilots will be shot down. IT IS A WAR. This is very like one military expert warning us that whenever we established a no-fly zone before it was against militaries that couldn’t even begin to compete. So, what this says is that we cannot try to establish a no-fly zone if we are not massively more powerful than our enemy. This is shameful. This is a political calculation. I don’t want to be lectured by the likes of Susan DelPercio
CNN
- Biden’s approval rating is up on his handling of Ukraine. (Note: Why?)
- (Note: I find it obnoxious that the panel is talking about Biden’s approval ratings and how he considers Ukraine as his destiny, or the thing that will define his predency. He needs to be implementing a no-fly zone, cutting off purchase of Russian oil, opening immigration to Ukrainians not worrying about his f…ing political legacy.)
UKRAINE WORLD @ukraine_world
- The Ministry of Defense of Moldova says that the eight shells that hit the civilian airport in Vinnytsia were not launched from Transnistria, but from the Black Sea.
- Zelensky video Statement: They are destroying our life, “our life built by us…Close the sky over Ukraine….Make a humanitarian zone….it is your humanitarian duty….” If you don’t give us a closed airspace…”You also want us to be slowly killed…it is the responsibilities of world politicians, Western leaders….”
- An evacuation of people from Mariupol was prevented from happening today.
- Russian occupants damaged the Donetsk-Mariupol gas pipeline, and settlements from Vugledar to Berdyansk will soon be without gas.
KYIV INDEPENDENT
- Putin says that Russia will stop the war only if Ukraine surrenders. Russia is ready to negotiate after “all known Russian demands are met.”
- Ukrainian Foreign Minister says that foreigners from 52 countries have applied to join Ukraine’s military.
- Moody’s downgrades Russia’s credit rating to close to default.
- Zelensky: “The world has the power to close our skies for Russian rockets and aircraft.”
MERCENARIES: AZOV BATTALION
- The Azov Battlion is a neo-nazi group in Ukraine, fighting for Ukrainian independence. Its existence is widely used to support the Russian false narrative of trying to save Russian speaking Ukrainians from the Ukrainian government. But there are Nazi and neo-Nazi groups in the United States, they don’t control the government.
- As some have noted, it is important to keep Azov Battalion marginalized.
- Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) notes that a mainstream Canadian newspaper has published a “fawning portrait of a member of the Azov Battalion” describing him as a “movie star.” Heer wars against attempts to normalize the Battlion. (Note: This is the danger of a disastrously ignorant and shallow press).
TWITTER:
- Reuters is reporting that Russia is maintaining that its sovereign bond payments will depend on sanctions. This raises the specter of the first major default on foreign bonds since the 1917 Revolution.
- Pay Pal has shut down services in Russia.
- Video of workers in a Russian plant staging a spontaneous strike due to the fact that they were not paid all of their salary because of the decline in the ruble.
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These GOP senators put the safety of Ukrainian President Zelensky at grave risk.
— Read on occupydemocrats.com/2022/03/06/insecure-gop-senators-endanger-ukrainian-president-with-an-unconscionable-decision/ -
A man casually plunges a knife through a woman’s hand, pinning her to the table in a prelude to rape. Another attacker murders her baby. These atrocities belon
— Read on www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wagner-group-the-russian-mercenaries-hunting-zelensky-dttx20zj6 -
CNN
- Russia is going to send in 1,000 more mercenaries.
- Note: The mercenaries allow the Russians to be more brutal and attempt to escape credit for it. The Wagner Group is a mercenary group used all over the world by the Russians.
- Note: I just heard for the second time a CNN narrator questioning the morality of holding heads of state responsible for war crimes. The head of state, he reasons, might not know about the war crimes. What utter bullshit. If you live in a housing project and your grandchild’s friend brings some dope over and smokes it you can be thrown out of your home and arrested. Nobody whines about whether you knew. There is no functioning legal system in this country for the rich.
- There may soon be 5 million displaced people in Ukraine.
UKRAINE WORLD
- Visa and Mastercard suspend Russia operations.
- There are reports that Russian forces are going door to door in Kyiv suburbs executing people.
- 71% of Russians support the war against Ukraine.
- Massive civilian resistance in Kherson.
- Protests against Russians in Melitopol.
- North of Kyiv, there is no electricity, water. There is massive destruction.
THE KYIV INDEPENDENT
- Mariupol has been blockaded and denied a humanitarian corridor. The city is without electricity for 400,000 people.
- Shell continues to buy oil from Russia.
TWITTER
- Mig Greengard points out that Russia couldn’t or didn’t bother to surround Grozny or Aleppo. They just bombed them into rubble.
- Zelensky: “Every meter of our Ukrainian land won back by protests and humiliation of the invaders is a step towards victory for all of Ukraine.”
- Halya Coynash: Russia is forcing Ukrainians from occupied Donbas and Crimea to fight in its invasion of Ukraine.
- Alexander: Posting a video which he says shows Ukrainian children being taught to be Nazis. “…it’s got worse since then.” Note: The Russian bots are hot and heavy tonight.
THE WAGNER GROUP
- According to Ukraine’s armed forces, the Russian paramilitary group, Wagner Group, set up a base in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-don. They are recruiting mercenaries to fight against Ukraine. Reported by the Kyiv Independent, 3/5/22
- Note: The Wagner Group is a Russian paramilitary group used by Russia all over the world. They provide a way for the Russian government to deny culpability in activity by saying the mercenaries aren’t government forces. The Wagner Group has a reputation for brutality.
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SATURDAY 5 MARCH 2022
CNN
• Moldovans are moving West in fear that they too will be invaded.
• Note: Russia controls the eastern part of Moldova, much like they control the Donbas. The region is called Transnistria
• McRaven is not supporting the no-fly zone. It would expand the war instead of containing it, he says. Note: The Ukrainians might disagree.
• McRaven is suggesting that the Ukrainians have a good chance of winning. So, like in Afghanistan, we are going to blame the population if they lose.
• McRaven has evidently said in the past that Putin has “outplayed us” but, now he is saying; “Putin has lost.”
• Smerconish is asking the “Putin is a madman” question. McRaven is saying that before this he would say Putin is a “rational actor.” He says it’s hard to tell whether he’s imbalanced or just miscalculated.
• You don’t have to attack a nuclear facility, just turn off the electricity so that it can’t cool.
• Russians are employing more mercenaries.
CSPAN
• Washington Journal: Ryan Evans, War on the Rocks, answering questions.
• “risks escalation” if you implement the no-fly zone. “It would create more human suffering…” Note: Glib statements without any evidence.
• “Putin drank some of his own kool-aide.”
• Note: This notion that Putin has done a “remarkably incompetent war,” and that he will defeat himself, or that the Ukrainians will do our job for us, or that one of the Russian inner circle will take Putin out, is very convenient.
• “I think he miscalculated but that doesn’t mean he’s irrational or crazy.” Yep, exactly.
MSNBC
• Latvia has been a member of NATO for 18 years. Permanent Rep. to the United Nations on MSNBC.
• Tiffany Cross Show: The Mueller Report cited Russian interference in 2016. Trump was doing the work of Putin. The narrative of white supremacy that characterizes Putin and Trump.
• Olivia Troye had “Havannah Syndrome” (HS).
• Miles Taylor, experienced HS as well. U.S. intelligence says that it caused by “directed energy.” Why did they feel emboldened to do this to U.S. citizens? Trump’s failure to respond.
• Nayyera Haq: Instances of Russian cyber warfare. “Opens the us up to cyber attack.” Note: We have already been attacked as she has just pointed out.
UKRAINE WORLD
• Mariupol evacuation has been cancelled.
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What makes Russia’s aggression so terrifying is that it’s determined solely by the perceived self-interest of one man.
— Read on www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-04/six-scenarios-for-how-putin-s-war-in-ukraine-could-end
