Organizing resistance to Internet censorship

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Streamed live on Jan 16, 2018



On January 16, 2018, the World Socialist Web Site livestreamed a discussion on Internet censorship, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and WSWS International Editorial Board Chairperson David North. WSWS reporter Andre Damon moderated the discussion.

The webinar explored the political context of the efforts to censor the Internet and abolish net neutrality, examine the pretexts used to justify the suppression of free speech (i.e., “fake news”), and discuss political strategies to defend democratic rights. Hedges and North also fielded questions from on-line listeners. The webinar was streamed live by the WSWS on YouTube and Facebook on Tuesday, January 16 at 7:00 pm EST (midnight in London, 1:00am in Berlin, 3:00am in Moscow and 11:00 am January 17 in Sydney. Full Time Zone Conversions).

• Chris Hedges is the host of RT’s On Contact and a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who worked as a foreign correspondent for nearly two decades for The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio. He presently writes a weekly column for Truthdig, an on-line magazine based in Los Angeles. Hedges is also the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.


 

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Thus Spake Oprah As The New York Times Spots UFOs Over The Comb Over Empire


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The hucksters in younger years.

I remember my first impression of the Reality Television program American Idol. I cringed at the thought, what if, a young Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, or the members of The Clash had been forced to have their talents appraised by the sort of shallow celebrities, supercilious moderators, and gallery of lowest common denominator-giddy cretins attendant to the hype-driven fare. 

Yet now, there is serious talk among abjectly unserious people that the next presidential election might pit a billionaire, Reality Television grifter versus a billionaire, Reality Television grifter. All hail, The President of the United States Of Reality Television.

Oprah Winfrey is and has been since her entrance into the US mass media hologram one of the capitalist elite’s most effective propagandists. By intention, her New Age snake oil-peddling patter never connects capitalist exploitation as the dominant source of individual suffering. Of course not. Oprah is a US American huckster in the model of Norman Vincent Peale.

She retails in the con job that a paucity of positive thinking — in essence, personal failings — is the source of individual angst, alienation, anomie, and suffering in general under the neoliberal order. Yet there is hope, she confides. A positive change in attitude will shift the course of one’s destiny. Thereby, she steers her rapt adherents away from the shedding of internalised, capitalist engendered false consciousness, and, on a cultural basis, the paradigmatic shift required to steer humankind away from ecological catastrophe.

It should go without saying that me-first-er Oprah, the obscenely wealthy virgin queen of the neoliberal order, would become a prominent promulgator of me-too myopia and its bourgeois feminist refusal to connect capitalist exploitation of any and all aspects of human life imposed by her fellow members of capitalism’s criminal class. Wealth inequity and wage and debt slavery are forms of predation. Yet notice this dominant and guiding feature of the mindset, a given since the rise of the Weltanschauung in the Western, Christian imagination: Oprah’s breed of Calvinist crusader animus, as a rule, will be incurred when the human genitals can be blamed as a key source of human misery.

Collectively, according to its gospel, we wretches can start the slog back from our exile within the sin-ridden precincts sprawling east of Eden, if only we scour away the denizens of darkness by a devotion to the purifying gospel of positivity. Resultantly, sinners will become doubt-cleansed devotees of a quasi-religious order, a righteous order in which its canticles and catechisms will vanquish all negative thoughts and untoward inclinations. Redemption and rebirth will be bestowed by the cultivation of a right-thinking, true believer aura thereby a variable pentecost of prosperity will descend upon the keepers of the faith. Never question the degradations of capitalism; instead, keep your eye on the prize of careerist success, a given and deserved destiny for the right thinking but a perpetual rebuke to those possessed by the imps of negativity and the demons of carnality. 

Oprah preaches a Gospel Of Redemption. Yet, in ways both explicit and implicit, she urges her followers to attempt to adapt to an economic system that is irredeemable.

She retails Horatio Alger bunkum to a soul sick audience inhabiting a planet taxed to the point of ecological catastrophe. The old verities have ossified. Levels of discontent and despair, mirroring rates of greenhouse emission engendered methane feedback loops, are increasing at exponential rates. Yet Oprah continues shilling reality-veiling palliatives to a populace languishing in depression, drug dependency, and an addiction to manic forms of distraction.


Oprah preaches a Gospel Of Redemption. Yet, in ways both explicit and implicit, she urges her followers to attempt to adapt to an economic system that is irredeemable. She retails Horatio Alger bunkum to a soul sick audience inhabiting a planet taxed to the point of ecological catastrophe.

At this point, I request readers bear with me for a moment until I arrive at my point by means of a series of digressive, rhetorical tropes, both anecdotal and collective in form. Recently, on Facebook, I have witnessed, hovering on my newsfeed, a proliferation of recent New York Times pieces addressing seemingly tabloid fodder and 1950s B movie plot lines, bearing headlines such as: 

“2 Navy Airmen and an Object That 'Accelerated Like Nothing I've Ever Seen’” 

“Glowing auras and 'black money': The Pentagon's mysterious UFO program” 

“U.F.O.s: Is This All There Is?”  

When I posted a (humorous) take on the subject on my Facebook page, both the number of and emotional charged nature of responses to the post was striking, even by the less than decorous to outright bughouse standards of social media.  

The post read as follows: 

“We are not alone. And we should be embarrassed. No species with a scintilla of common sense and common decency should be carrying on in this manner in the public (albeit cosmic) sphere.

“OK aliens, we've had a few bad millennia...I mean, who hasn't. You went and caught us with our guards down. But we promise we will clean up for company real nice. Never mind that space junk orbiting our front yard and the fact we keep up our planet like a trailer court inhabited by methheads.

“We promise we will clean up for company. Is there perhaps a rehab planet that our entire population can be checked into in order to work some shit out? The other living things on our planet would be forever grateful for any help you can offer.

“You don't happen to possess any galactic range super weapons, do you? Because, to paraphrase an insight by the alien genius Flannery O'Connor, we could be a good species if someone was there to fire a super weapon at us, twenty four-seven.” 

https://www.facebook.com/phil.rockstroh/posts/1808938205806559?pnref=story

I cannot speak for other writers but when reportage of events, or even humorous goof-takes on the situation, as was the case with my Facebook post, prove highly provocative, my curiosity is piqued. A hidden door to a room of the collective unconscious has swung open. 

It is not my intention in this essay to either advocate for the existence of UFOs or express skepticism. My theme involves the public’s yearning for a paradigmatic shift, a crucial rearrangement of cultural verities.  

When I examine my own reactions to UFO phenomenon, I discover I am drawn to and find inspiration in the mystery of it all and its attendant ineffable quality. Carl Jung viewed UFO phenomenon as a collectively manifesting apprehension of an emerging aeon. At present, the New York Times and other keepers of accepted opinion are signalling a sea change in regard to cultural narrative and prevailing mythos. 

Given the fact that a radical shift in cultural, economic and political systems of belief must come to pass if the human race is going to survive the catastrophic effects of capitalism-inflicted Anthropocene Epoch. Is it possible UFO narratives augur the arrival of an incipient mythos? Withal, when the numinous comes into play all manner of responses are evoked, from the mindlessly reactionary to the outré, before psychical integration and eventual acceptance occurs. 

Then there is the following, insofar as, recent phenomenon that has evoke an upwelling of passion: the consternation, the bandying of ridicule, and the general agitation of Democrats and liberals in regard to the revelations pertaining to The Oval Office-squatting Orange Beast Of A Billion Tweets and his inner circle chronicled in Michael Wolff’s inflammatory, fly-on-the-wall book. 

Yet somehow amid the ensuing snark extravaganza evinced by Democratic partisans, a fact remains unnoticed: Only Democrats could manage to be beaten by, and to this day, cannot manage to create a viable resistance against this klavern of inept arrivistes and noxious buffoons, who, according to Wolff’s book, fully expected to lose and were flat out gobsmacked by the election results, and have yet to recover from the reversal of fortune inflicted by their victory. 

Moreover, this aspect of Trump’s ascendancy is shunted from the duopolist dynamic and the narrow, acceptable discourse of political and media elites: Trump’s pathetic dye job, fake tan, and combover mirror the US empire. Its decline and deterioration simply cannot be covered up by the desperate application of cosmetic measures. Therefore, let's term the US -- the Combover Empire. We should view Trump as not only an emblem but a catalyst of the decline and ultimate demise of the neoliberal capitalist order. He is its scion, now passed into decrepitude.

Donald Trump and Oprah Winfrey are axiomatic of a perishing paradigm, while UFOs, albeit our projections upon the phenomenon not their actual, unknown nature, mirror a collective yearning for a transformation of the stultifying and destructive nature of political and cultural realities. Contemplate how hard evidence of intelligent life outside of our tiny sphere of existence would shatter dogmatic thought and petrified perceptions. It comes down to this: Collective myopia and mass media facilitated superficiality must give way to a larger sense of vision and a deeper understanding of the human species’ place among the order of earthly life or paradigm’s end will prove to be humankind’s perishing.  

 


About the Author
philrockstroh.scribe@gmail.com. Visit Phil's Facebook page.


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Parting shot—a word from the editors

The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 

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It’s Time to Nationalize the Internet

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“Private network providers prioritize only those they expect to provide a return on investment.”

Defying widespread popular objection, on December 14 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to repeal net neutrality. The principle regulates broadband as a utility, thus forbidding cable companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) from throttling, blocking or otherwise discriminating against online traffic. While net neutrality was only enacted in early 2015, it swiftly proved a key component of an open Internet.

Private network providers prioritize only those they expect to provide a return on investment, thus excluding poor and sparsely populated areas.

While the assault on net neutrality is formidable, it’s not without formal opposition. The Republican-helmed FCC’s two Democrat Commissioners, Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, have censured the decision and urged dissent. A number of state attorneys general—including those in New York, California, and Illinois—have vowed to sue the FCC over the ruling. Congressional Democrats, shepherded by Mass. Sen. Ed Markey, plan to file legislation to reverse the repeal.

“The transition to corporate stewardship has stratified the digital landscape and isolated disenfranchised populations.”

Relying on such reactive regulatory appeals to herald the fight for a fair Internet, however, won’t guarantee one. The FCC’s revocation of net neutrality isn’t a call to merely restore the technocratic 2015 rules, but to reclaim the Internet as a public good to which all have the right to access.

The Internet was initially a product of public spending. The U.S. Defense Department first conceived it in the 1960s, following a period of feverish technological competition with the Soviet Union. By the early 1990s, the government ceded control of the Internet to the private sector, which had the putative capacity to host its rapid growth. Since then, the transition to corporate stewardship has stratified the digital landscape and isolated disenfranchised populations.

Consider the monopolization of ISPs. Because different network providers, such as AT&T and Comcast, sell broadband to discrete geographic regions with little overlap, they have immense power to manipulate speeds and charge prohibitively expensive rates. Comcast, the nation’s largest private broadband provider, is notorious for overcharging its users and stifling speeds. Users and politicians alike echo these concerns for other ISPs on a seemingly regular basis, rendering the telecom industry one of the country’s most reviled.

“The FCC’s revocation of net neutrality isn’t a call to merely restore the technocratic 2015 rules, but to reclaim the Internet as a public good to which all have the right to access.”

Such profiteering tactics have disproportionately affected low-income and rural communities. ISPs have long redlined these demographic groups, creating what’s commonly known as the “digital divide.” Thirty-nine percent of Americans lack access to service fast enough to meet the federal definition of broadband. More than 50 percent of adults with household incomes below $30,000 have home broadband—a problem plaguing users of color most acutely. In contrast, internet access is near-universal for households with an annual income of $100,000 or more.

The reason for such chasms is simple: Private network providers prioritize only those they expect to provide a return on investment, thus excluding poor and sparsely populated areas.

Previously, the government has intervened, requiring telecoms to proffer discounted service to low-income areas. These initiatives, however, have fallen short. In 2016, AT&T introduced low-cost regional broadband for Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) users, an FCC-mandated condition of its merger with DirecTV. To receive the service, users had to live in neighborhoods that could accommodate a minimum speed of three megabits per second (Mbps). The significant number of people whose addresses didn’t meet that criteria, meanwhile, were forced to either pay full price or forego access. (The National Digital Inclusion Alliance detailed the company’s egregious redlining of impoverished communities in Cleveland.)

“Thirty-nine percent of Americans lack access to service fast enough to meet the federal definition of broadband.”

Chattanooga, Tennessee, has seen more success in addressing redlining. Since 2010, the city has offered public broadband via its municipal power organization, Electric Power Board (EPB). The project has become a rousing success: At half the price, its service is approximately 85 percent faster than that of Comcast, the region’s primary ISP prior to EPB’s inception. Coupled with a discounted program for low-income residents, Chattanooga’s publicly run broadband reaches about 82,000 residents—more than half of the area’s Internet users—and is only expected to grow.

Chattanooga’s achievements have radiated to other locales. More than 450 communities have introduced publicly-owned broadband. And more than 110 communities in 24 states have access to publicly owned networks with one gigabit-per-second (Gbps) service. (AT&T, for example, has yet to introduce speeds this high.) Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant proposed a pilot project in 2015 and has recently urged her city to invest in municipal broadband. Hawaii congressperson Kaniela Ing is drafting a bill for publicly-owned Internet for the state legislature to consider next year. In November, residents of Fort Collins, Colo. voted to authorize the city to build municipal broadband infrastructure.

“More than 450 communities have introduced publicly-owned broadband.”

The Fort Collins vote reveals a widening aperture between public needs and corporate ISPs’ interests. The state of Colorado—among others—prohibits cities from building municipal broadband infrastructure. In many cases, such prohibitions can be traced to telecom-sponsored legislators. Yet in Colorado, 31 counties have protested the strictures such lobbying has produced, and it’s likely that other state residents, if given the opportunity to weigh in, won’t be far behind.

City-operated networks have the power to increase speeds, decrease costs and broaden availability. Yet restoring public broadband ownership can’t be a piecemeal municipal effort, as hordes of communities will continue to be neglected. Rather, public ownership must be won on a national level to eradicate ISP lobbying and monopolies, and corporate ISPs themselves, thus guaranteeing universal access.

The potential absence of net neutrality is simply a symptom of an unfettered free market—the corollary to decades of privatized network providers’ free rein to overcharge and underserve. Advocating for the preservation of net neutrality is necessary, but it won’t suffice if equitable internet access is to be achieved. Under such high stakes, it’s time to regain the digital infrastructure that could have—and always should have—been ours. 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Julianne Tveten writes about the intersection of the technology industry and socioeconomic issues. Her work has appeared in Current Affairs, The Outline, Motherboard, and Hazlitt, among others. This article previously appeared in Portside and In These Times

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Paul Craig Roberts: Declining America & How Much Death and Destruction Awaits Us in 2018?

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I have returned
(Dateline: December 19, 2017)

How Much Death and Destrution Awaits Us in 2018?

 

The New Year is one full of economic, political, and war threats.

Among the economic threats are stock, bond, and real estate markets artificially pumped up by years of central bank money creation and by false reports of full employment. It is an open question whether participants in these markets are aware that underlying reality does not support the asset values. Central banks support stock markets not only with abundant liquidity but also with direct stock purchases. The Japanese central bank is now one of the largest owners of Japanese equities. Central banks, which are supposed to provide economic stability, have created a massive fraud.

Throughout the Western world politics has degenerated into fraud. (1) No government serves the public’s interest. (See: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/12/29/eric-zuesse-explains-americas-worst-enemy/ ) Except for some former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, European governments have defied the will of the people by admitting vast numbers of refugees from Washington’s wars and others pretending to be refugees. The European governments further imperil their citizens with their support for Washington’s rising aggression toward Russia. The universal failure of democratic politics is leading directly to war.

The Saker explains that Americans with intelligence, honor, courage, and integrity have disappeared from the US national security establishment. In their place are arrogant morons high on hubris who believe: (1) We can buy anybody, (2) Those we cannot buy, we bully, (3) Those we cannot bully, we kill, (4) Nothing can happen to us, we live in total impunity no matter what we do. http://www.unz.com/tsaker/2018-war-or-no-war/

Scott Bennett reports that US soldiers are being propagandized that Russia is an enemy with whom we are headed to war. https://www.facebook.com/capsule.ninetynine.7/videos/1992321041038611/
The Anglo-Zionist empire is trying to overturn the Iranian agreement and to restart the attempt to overthrow the government of Syria. Lebanon’s Hezbollah is also in the empire’s sights. Washington is arming Ukraine in order to enable an attack on the breakaway provinces of Novorussia. Threats against North Korea escalate. Even little Venezuela is threatened with military intervention simply because the country wants to control its own destiny and not be controlled by Washington and the New York banks.

In the opinion of some, Russia’s very cautious diplomacy has increased the likelihood that Washington will miscalculate and give the world a third world war. By not accepting the requests of the breakaway Russian provinces in Ukraine to be reunited with Russia, the Russian government paved the way for Washington to provide the military means for its Ukrainian puppet to attempt to reconquer the provinces. Success would damage Russian prestige and encourage Washington in its aggressive actions. Sooner or later Russia will have to stand and fight.

Russia’s premature declaration of victory in Syria and withdrawal has made it possible for US forces to remain in Syria and attempt to restart the effort to overthrow the Assad government. Russia would have to defend its victory, or by the failure to do so encourage more aggressive actions by Washington.

Hopes have evaporated that President Trump would restore the normalized relations between the nuclear powers that Reagan and Gorbachev made possible. The question for the New Year is when does Washington’s aggression against Russia ignite a hot war.

Your website will be examining these issues as they unfold in 2018. From the perspective of today, it is unlikely that the New Year will be a happy one. Nowhere in the West is there a sign of leadership toward peace and the well-being of humanity. 

(1) In terms of its foreign policy the US has been criminal and fraudulent for at least 150 years, and counting. Its entire foreign policy, wrapped in Orwellian lies, is a long list of crimes. In the domestic arrea, the US had a highly defective (plutocrat-controlled democracy from the very start, with some degree of responsiveness to the public will due to its higher degree of class mobilization. Now that all of that has vanished, and that the media are 100% simply an instrument for the propaganda of the imperial plutocratic regime controlling Washington and its vast agencies of global destruction, domestic policy has also degenerated to a level that completely erases the notion of any democratic accountability or loyal representativeness in the halls of power. 


About the Author
  Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

 

 

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 

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The Guardian’s Nazification

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By Philip Butler


Let us recall that the Guardian parades around as a pillar of liberal press integrity in "the free world."

Vygaudas Ušackas

A recent opinion piece on The Guardian entitled “The west must defend its values against Putin’s Russia” reminds us, that subversion, propaganda, and neo-fascism are alive and well here on Earth. This story affords us all a window looking out onto the twisted landscape of European geo-policy. Pay close attention.

I never cease being amazed at the access western mainstream media gives to vested interests and outright liars these days. It’s almost as if all information channels have simply become ad platforms for whoever pays the freight, or at worst whichever message needs to be disseminated. In the case of the Putin bashing, all we need do is research the author, outgoing EU Ambassador to Russia, Vygaudas Ušackas. For those of you already informed about new Nazi activities surrounding the Russian frontiers, the fact Ušackas is a Russophobe from Lithuania may not come as any surprise. For everyone else, let me explain my contention here.

Ušackas is the founder of something called “Mission Siberia”, which he established along with the Lithuanian Youth Council (LIJOT) back in 2005. Project “Mission Siberia” basically sent expeditions of Lithuanian young people to 70 locations inside Siberia to maintain the cemeteries of Lithuanian deportees who perished in Soviet prisons and forced-labor camps there during Soviet times. This effort was obviously based on a noble principle, but looking at who and what stands behind offers clues to larger crises in the eastern European region. Stay with me here.

Misija Sibiras”  (or Mission Siberia) is funded by several interesting individuals and groups. The most interesting being the Kazickas Family Foundation, which was set up by the late American-Lithuanian billionaire Juozas Kazickas. It’s here the story of anti-Putin propaganda gets interesting, for Kazickas’ ties to Hitler’s Germany add a familiar Russophobic tint to The Guardian opinion piece.

Juozas Petras Kazickas is described in Wikipedia as a “self-made billionaire”, whose grandparents had been deported to Siberia after the 1863 Uprisings where present-day Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Latvian, Ukrainian, and western Russian citizens rose up to refuse conscription into the Czar’s army. Without the deep history lesson here, this period was immediately after Russia had lost the Crimean War (interesting parallel, no?). However, it’s Kazickas’ role in the Lithuanian resistance against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944 that should interest readers. Furthermore, his retreating with the Nazis to Germany when the Soviets turned the tide in WWII cast a familiar light on anti-Putin narratives in general. If we follow Kazickas back to Germany and to the ancient University of Tübingen, we find still darker implications against pro-Nazi Lithuanians. The University of Tübingen was at that time involved in legitimizing the policies of the Third Reich as “scientific”, and in sterilization on an epic scale. Also at Tübingen, research into genetic flaws led to the extermination of more than 30,000 Roma people (Shaping the Superman: Fascist Body as Political Icon – Aryan Fascism, by J A Mangan). It was at Tübingen and other Nazi era institutions, under the credentials of notorious Nazi intellectuals like Gerhard Kittel, that the Hitler’s “Final Solution” was transformed into science. As I suggested, my report here is not appropriate for Nazi philosophies or dramas. But the “heritage” of western media’s voices these days, it does bear investigation (See – Theologians Under Hitler, by Robert P. Ericksen, Yale Press).

Breaking it all down. The European Union’s outgoing ambassador to Russia is pounding the message “Putin must go” at The Guardian, The Observer, at The Baltic Times, and elsewhere (See Emma Graham-Harrison’s piece citing Ušackas – “West’s rift with Russia ‘will last until Vladimir Putin goes’). One of his favorite projects was largely funded by a Nazi sympathizer/collaborator who later became a multi-million dollar consultant to western corporations including; ExxonEl Paso Natural GasColumbia GasRockwell InternationalPhilip MorrisCoca-ColaKawasaki Heavy Industries, and many others. And the European Union in its infinite wisdom sent a certifiable Russia hater to Moscow to mediate on behalf of the peoples of Europe with Putin.

I cannot decide what is more preposterous. Should I be vexed at The Guardian for publishing anti-Russia bias views at ever turn? Or is it more ridiculous for the European Union to insult Russia at every moment and appointment possible? No, I think the whole Russophobic mess dwarfs these smaller Nazification concerns. But what do you think?  


About the Author
  Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine  https://journal-neo.org/2017/10/05/the-guardian-s-nazification/

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