NORA HOPPE—Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony was written in 1941, primarily during the Siege of Leningrad by the Nazi forces. When it had its premiere in the war-torn city on 9th August 1942 – performed by the emaciated, surviving musicians of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra that was supplemented with military performers, before a starving but euphoric audience – it was hailed as a universal beacon of resistance to barbarism. The conductor, Karl Eliasberg, concluded that “in that moment, we triumphed over the soulless Nazi war machine”.
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JOHN RACHEL—Yes, while everyday people are personally struggling with accelerating inflation, stagnant wages, job insecurity and shrinking opportunity, business closures, out-of-control housing costs, food shortages, energy shortages, baby formula shortages, on and on, and because of the exploding deficit — now pushing our national debt beyond the legal debt ceiling — there’s no relief in sight from Uncle Sam for us regular folks. Yet by some stroke of magic or divine intervention, there are limitless piles of money to send to Ukraine; plenty of funding to ship increasingly lethal weaponry to the psychopathic, neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, in order to keep the war going; plenty in the vault to vastly increase US/NATO military readiness in Europe; mountains of resources available to rebuild Ukraine, relocate its refugees, prop up its comedian/puppet/war-to-the-death-of-the-last-Ukrainian marketeer, Volodymyr Zelensky, and keep the sickenly corrupt, anti-democratic regime of one of the most corrupt, anti-democratic nations on Planet Earth in power.
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CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—“Why don’t you ever criticize RUSSIA’S warmongering?” is a question I am often asked with great indignation. People cannot comprehend why I would spend all my time criticizing the warmongering of the power structure I live under without spending any time criticizing the government they’re used to hearing criticisms of. It’s a question born of delusion and propaganda brainwashing, and it has several good answers. Here are some of my favorites.
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KOLLIBRI SONNENBLUME—We are living in a very dangerous moment. Tensions between the US and Russia are high. Lines of communication between the two countries are more frayed than during the Cold War. Militant rhetoric is steadily ratcheting up on both sides. In such a strained atmosphere, the risk of setting off a deadly nuclear exchange is all too real, even just by accident in a heat-of-the-moment misunderstanding. If the situation goes nuclear, it won’t matter who started it. It will only matter that it wasn’t stopped before it got there.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses the Russian people (and the world) on the accession of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Zaporozhye Region and the Kherson Region to the Russian Federation, September 30, 2022. This speech, which just about every thinking person in the West should watch, has been effectively banned and buried by Western media, which, never impartial and certainly never trustworthy, has now plainly become little more than depraved totalitarian propaganda.
