Alexei Navalny, Russia's son

Rest in peace, Alexei Navalny. Gone too soon.

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny dies, prison service says | CNN

Things that make go hhmmm...🤔

every time you think how can it get worse it still finds a way

You can't say "russian elections are rigged" and "everyone in russia supports putin" in the same breath and be taken seriously.

एलेक्सी नवलनी की विधवा ने पुतिन पर हत्या का आरोप लगाया, लड़ाई जारी रखने का लिया संकल्प

Moscow: रूस के विपक्षी नेता अलेक्सी नवलनी, जिनकी कथित तौर पर टहल कर आने के बाद मौत हो गई थी, की विधवा यूलिया नवलनाया ने रूसी राष्ट्रपति वलादिमीर पुतिन पर अपने पति की हत्या का आरोप लगाया है और उनके काम को आगे बढ़ाने का वादा किया है। नौ मिनट के एक वीडियो में 47 वर्षीय नवलनाया ने सोमवार को कहा: “तीन दिन पहले, व्लादिमीर पुतिन ने मेरे पति, मेरे बच्चों के पिता एलेक्सी नवलनी को मार डाला और मेरी सबसे…

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I hope no one is excited for Navalny winning the Oscar 

why do zionists always assume its antisemitic to think that zionism a settler colonial idea

Modern Zionists aren't actually well-read into their own history. I could invoke the likes of Theodore Herlz, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, David Ben Gurion, and many other political Zionists and how they were ardent supporters of settler colonialism, yet it wouldn't get through their head, because they genuinely believe the land of Palestine is their right to claim, despite the people inhabitating the area. But to claim that the establishment of the Settler state was necessary due to antisemitism is not correct.

The pogrom of the Jewish people in the Pale of Settlement in Imperial Russia resulted in the mass displacement of Jews. But most Jews did not flee to Palestine, but to the US and Western Europe to live relatively better lives, due to the French revolution and so on. They had no desire whatsoever to move to Palestine due to its harsh climate and environment. Although the repression of Jews in the 19th century added to Zionism's appeal, Zionism did not emerge because of it as is often portrayed.

Jewish historian Michael Stanislawiski explains:

The first expression of this new ideology were published well before the spread of the new anti-semitic ideology and before the pogroms of the ealy 1880s. The fundamental cause of the emergence of modern Jewish nationalism was the rise, on the part of Jews themselves, of new ideologies that applied the basic tenets of modern nationalism to the Jews, and not a response to persecution.

-- Zionism, a short introduction (Stanislawski, 2017)

As was the case for that time, the doctrine of nationalism became prevalent across Europe. Many versions of it gained hold of European intellectuals and the upper-classes. One of these were ethnonationalism, which emphasised common ancestry. Such a view was popular among Germans, Hungarians, Russians, Poles and etc, who saw their "tribes" as being distinct, and therefore needed to be preserved from foreign threats. Zionism would mirror some of these aspects, which was prevalent in Eastern Europe. The founding father of Revisionist Zionism (and the precursor to the Likud party), Ze'ev Jabotinsky stated:

"The creation of a Jewish majority, was the fundamental aim of Zionism, the term "Jewish State", means a Jewish majority and Palestine will become a Jewish country at the moment when it has a Jewish majority".

-- Zionism, and the Arabs, 1882-1948 A study of ideology (Yosef Gorny, 1987)

However, there was another ideology emerging which was far more popular among the oppressed Jewish people, which would propell them to emancipate themselves where they lived. Revolutionary Socialism.

According Ilan Pappe, the doctrine of Zionism was vehemently opposed by Jewish leaders all around Europe on the basis of Talmudic violations, the rise of revolutionary socialism and the rise of Jewish assimilationism. Additionally, in a conference in Frankfurt, rabbis decided to omit the mentioning of "the return" from Jewish prayers as a reaction to Zionism. However, Zionism would face intense opposition from Socialist Jews, especially the Bundists, who openly declared Zionism to be anti-Socialist, opportunistic and reactionary. Zionism was an alien idea, and revolutionary socialism emphasised the importance of the liberation of Jews where they lived, resulting in an ideological feud between the Bundists and Political Zionists. Even the likes of the Chaim Weizmann, the first president of the Settler state, and David Ben Gurion, the first PM of the settler state, would condemn the Bundists for their opposition to Political Zionism.

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in jail, the country’s prison service has said, in what is likely to be seen as a political assassination attributable to Vladimir Putin.

Navalny, 47, one of Putin’s most visible and persistent critics, was being held in a jail about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle where he had been sentenced to 19 years under a “special regime”. In a video from the prison in January, he had appeared gaunt with his head shaved.

The Kremlin said it had no information on the cause of death.

In early December he had disappeared from a prison in the Vladimir region, where he was serving a 30-year sentence on extremism and fraud charges that he had called political retribution for leading the anti-Kremlin opposition of the 2010s. He did not expect to be released during Putin’s lifetime.

A former nationalist politician, Navalny helped foment the 2011-12 protests in Russia by campaigning against election fraud and government corruption, investigating Putin’s inner circle and sharing the findings in slick videos that garnered hundreds of millions of views.

The high-water mark in his political career came in 2013, when he won 27% of the vote in a Moscow mayoral contest that few believed was free or fair. He remained a thorn in the side of the Kremlin for years, identifying a palace built on the Black Sea for Putin’s personal use, mansions and yachts used by the ex-president Dmitry Medvedev, and a sex worker who linked a top foreign policy official with a well-known oligarch.

In 2020, Navalny fell into a coma after a suspected poisoning using novichok by Russia’s FSB security service and was evacuated to Germany for treatment. He recovered and returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was arrested on a parole violation charge and sentenced to his first of several jail terms that would total more than 30 years behind bars.

Putin has recently launched a presidential campaign for his fifth term in office. He is already the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin and could surpass him if he runs again for office in 2030, a possibility since he had the constitutional rules on term limits rewritten in 2020.

Natalia Arno was fully inside the hotel room before she noticed the smell. It was sickly sweet, like a cheap perfume at the drug store, only more nauseating. [...] The Russian activist and non-profit director had been on the road, meeting with donors and organisers looking for ways to bolster democracy back in Russia. [...] Three hours later, Arno woke up with an excruciating pain inside her mouth — a burning sensation so unbearable she could barely open it. [...] By the time she had checked in at the airport, she could no longer stand straight. Her vision was blurred; she wobbled. In her mouth, she tasted stone. On the plane, Arno began hallucinating. Ever since Vladimir Lenin set up his poison factory, known as the “Special Room”, over a century ago, poisonings have become one of the Kremlin’s preferred ways to eliminate, cripple or terrorise enemies and critics. Over the decades, it has built up unrivalled expertise in the field. [...] Most targeted poisonings are, by design, hard to detect. [...] The horrific details of Russian poisoning attacks have accumulated over decades: the hiding of a ricin pellet inside the tip of an umbrella said to have been used in 1978 to stab the Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov in the leg, killing him in less than a week. The placing of a radioactive isotope, Polonium-210, in the green tea drunk by the former Russian security services agent and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The smearing of one novichok variant, a deadly nerve agent, on the British double agent Sergei Skripal’s door in 2018 and another on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s underpants in a Siberian hotel room in 2020. [...] In October 2022, Elena Kostyuchenko, a Russian journalist working for the independent news outlet Meduza, became violently ill on her way back to Berlin from Munich. The same month, Irina Babloyan, a radio journalist with an independent station, got sick on the day she was meant to travel back from Tbilisi to Berlin via Armenia. Kostyuchenko and Babloyan experienced similar symptoms: sharp pain in the upper abdomen, palms that burnt or swelled, severe vertigo and fatigue. [...] Western governments may struggle to keep up with the security threat. The universe of potential toxic chemicals is limitless — and the advance of technology has multiplied the ways in which an enemy might use them. “There are agents we don’t even know exist that are out there [being used] right now . . . That makes it really hard to do analytics,” Holstege said. Most toxicology labs do not have experience in examining state-sponsored poisonings using unusual toxic agents. [...] When we spoke over the phone, Grozev was unfazed by the argument that the victims weren’t high-profile-enough targets. “Talking to insiders in the security services, there’s a clear understanding that the concept of a ‘traitor’ is much more easily assigned these days than before,” he said. “Any Russian who opposes the war or criticises Putin now is a potential victim.”

Russia’s terrifyingly effective poisoning operation

VOR tend to be a good lens for a lot of evaluation of politicians imo due to how often 'great' leaders are just leaders who existed at chaotic times; its why I tend to be only lukewarm on Lincoln, for example, a poor military leader who was only able to abolish slavery because anyone could have at that point, all the pro-slavery politicians just launched an insurrection and quit Congress. (He does have his accomplishments ofc, he is good, just not great) Or say how Lenin is an S-tier world-historical figure in 1917, before collapsing into mediocrity by 1919, because he was a far more talented insurrectionist against the Russian system than he was a leader of a new one, and he was coasting on the weakness of the opposition and his past successes.

A lot of supposedly-great leaders fade away under a VOR lens, while you gain a new appreciation for others (My god is Genghis Khan's VOR insane, like what the fuck how is that possible).

On Saturday the 14th of October 2023, at a rally for Palestine in Dundee, Scotland, 3rd year student Tánaiste had a speech read out in his absence. In his speech he called out the University of Dundee for refusing to release a statement condemning ethnic cleansing and war crimes against Palestinians, contrasting this with his university's speedy condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In this speech he declared that, if the university has not released an appropriate statement by Friday the 20th of October, then beginning on Monday 23rd Tánaiste fully intends to start a hunger strike. His stated aim is to organise the students and staff at the uni into a campaign that will cause the faculty leadership to reconsider whether silence in the face of genocide is truly in the best interests of the institution. Updates are likely to be shared on Tánaiste's instagram, which can be found here, and on the Dundee University Socialist Society's facebook page, which can be found here.

The full text of his speech is as follows:

I am in England and am unable to be here. Thank you to my comrades for reading this out for me.

My name is TAW-nish-ta (Tánaiste) I'm a 3rd year Community Education student at the University of Dundee. I remember when Russia invaded Ukraine on Saturday 20th February 2022, by Thursday my university and student union had put out a statement: "It is our sincere hope that, even at this stage, a more peaceful solution can be found to the current conflict that avoids bloodshed and tragedy."

A fortnight later, they put out a further statement outlining: "the University’s unequivocal condemnation of the invasion... We must continue to hope that international pressure on Russia will have a positive effect, however bleak the situation may look today."

No public statement has come this time, as we face the real prospect of a genocide, aided and abetted by our own government and so called Leader of the Opposition. I directly asked the Principal why we have put out no statement. This was the University’s response: "The current situation is tragic with a shocking level of unjustifiable violence against innocent people. But it is also very complex and there will be many different perspectives on it. For that reason the University will not be taking a public stance on the matter."

I have no words for this act of moral cowardice. No words. What is complex about ethnic cleansing? What is complex about collective punishment? Which syllable of genocide do they need repeating? I saw a tweet which summed it up so well: "Universities be like 'We support genocide and apartheid. Please seek mental health support.'"

The leadership of my university are making the judgment that it is not in their institutional interest to even condemn genocide. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps the balance of power and PR is that actually to remain silent is in Dundee University’s best interest.

Our task as students is to change their calculation by all means available to us. There are many methods available. We have a student council and student union. They can be used. We can organise mass letters. And other tactics exist.

Our cause is moral, is just, and is seen to be so by the majority of students and staff at my university. They are waiting to be stirred at action, to be mobilised, to be quickened. I would like to announce my contribution to this campaign.

If the university has not issued an appropriate statement by Friday 20th October, I shall not eat food until the University publicly denounces the war and calls for an immediate ceasefire. I do not pretend this will end the war, but as my Principal said, "We must continue to hope that international pressure" will work.

One thing we have learnt so brutally in the comparison of how Ukraine and Palestine have been treated is that Black Lives Don't Matter. The imminent extermination of 2 million Gazans does not provoke our governments let alone our universities, to offer even token support for universal human rights. In the circumstances, a hunger strike for an achievable victory is the least I can do.

I know the University cares about its public image. I gently suggest to them that "Dundee student dies on hunger strike because University won't denounce genocide" will be bad PR. Their open day on 28th October will be marred by day 6 of a hunger strike for all prospective students to see.

I hope that my University looks at the prospect of a white British student starving to death and extends its compassion to the millions in Palestine who, for only the crime of existing, are being hourly killed.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets in Georgia in the South Caucasus in recent weeks to protest a controversial proposed new law that many fear, if passed, would be the death knell of a once-promising young democracy and drive the country firmly into Moscow’s orbit.

The “foreign agents” law would require organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as “agents of foreign influence.” It is modeled on similar legislation that Russia enacted in 2012 and has used to cast independent media and civic society groups as doing the bidding of foreign governments and to crack down on dissent.

Georgia has been convulsed by bouts of street protests in recent years over the proposed law and other actions by the ruling Georgian Dream party that critics fear could consolidate its power and draw the country closer to neighboring Russia, a deeply unpopular move in the former Soviet nation where an overwhelming majority of the population supports joining the European Union, according to opinion polls.

Georgia was offered long-awaited EU candidate status by the bloc last year, which could be placed in jeopardy if the foreign agents legislation is adopted. In a statement last month, Brussels’s diplomatic service urged the country’s leaders to “adopt and implement reforms that are in line with the stated objective of joining the European Union, as supported by a large majority of Georgia’s citizens.”

On Thursday, Georgia’s ambassador to France resigned in protest over the proposed legislation, becoming the first senior official from the country to do so. “I no longer see my role and resources in this direction: the move towards Europe,” said Gotcha Javakhishvili in a post on social media.

The law was first introduced in February 2023 but was quickly withdrawn in the face of massive street protests in the capital, Tbilisi. It was then reintroduced in April of this year. Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who is independent of the Georgian Dream, has promised to veto the legislation if passed, but her veto would likely be overridden by the government’s parliamentary majority.

“It seems clear to me, anyway, they have made a decision to go the path of one-party rule, of shutting down basically all checks and balances on executive power, and this Russian law is the last instrument that they need to put in place,” said Ian Kelly, former U.S. ambassador to Georgia.

The protests this time around are markedly different from earlier iterations, though—but not because of the demonstrators or their demands. What makes the latest round of unrest different is the level of violence and intimidation meted out against protesters and civil society as well as the government’s apparent determination to pass the law, which is due for a final reading on May 13, despite the public outcry and condemnation from the European Union and the United States.

Security forces have used water cannons, rubber bullets, and tear gas in a bid to disperse crowds of demonstrators in the capital, Tbilisi, while protesters have reported being violently assaulted by groups of men dressed in black in what they say appear to be premeditated attacks.

In recent days, civil society activists, journalists, and their relatives have reported receiving menacing phone calls from anonymous callers threatening them in Georgian and reciting their home addresses in an apparent bid to intimidate them, said Eka Gigauri, executive director of Transparency International Georgia. Gigauri said she had received dozens of calls from unknown numbers in recent days but declined to answer them.

On Wednesday evening, four government critics, including two members of the United National Movement opposition party, were attacked by unknown assailants outside their homes and in the street. Overnight on Wednesday, posters featuring the faces of prominent civil society activists, journalists, and opposition politicians branding them as enemies of the country and foreign agents were plastered near their homes and offices across the capital.

“What happened during these two days is just an unprecedented level of targeting,” said Eto Buziashvili, a former advisor to the Georgian National Security Council based in Tbilisi.

In 2019, when police used water cannons, rubber bullets, and tear gas to disperse protesters, it sparked a national outcry and further protests calling for snap elections and the resignation of the interior minister, Giorgi Gakharia.

Now, accusations of more sinister tactics are afoot as the role of the unknown assailants dressed in black has drawn comparisons to pro-government thugs known as titushki who were allegedly paid for by the embattled government of Viktor Yanukovych to cause disruption and attack protesters during the Ukrainian revolution in 2014, Buziashvili said.

After a 2003 uprising known as the Rose Revolution, Georgia embarked on a dizzyingly ambitious reform program under the presidency of Mikheil Saakashvili, who was then a darling of Washington’s. He sought to stamp out corruption and put the country on a firmly Western trajectory, tilting it away from Moscow, which fought a short but shocking war with Georgia over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008.

Saakashvili was imprisoned in 2021, accused of abusing power while in office. His supporters see the charges as politically motivated.

The Georgian Dream, established by the eccentric Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, came to power in 2012 promising a less confrontational approach to Moscow while paying lip service to the country’s aspirations to join NATO and the European Union.

Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Moscow in the 1990s, served as prime minister for just over a year, stepping down in 2013, but has widely been viewed as the one still calling the shots behind the scenes as the Georgian Dream has undermined the country’s hard-won democratic gains and poured salt on the relationship with the United States.

“The person who seems to be driving all of this is Bidzina Ivanishvili,” said U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speaking about the foreign agents law.

In October, the Georgian government accused the United States Agency for International Development of trying to foment a coup in the country.

The Georgian government’s claims echo similar allegations made by Moscow over the years that have accused Washington of pulling the strings in a series of pro-democracy uprisings in the former Soviet Union known as color revolutions, including in Ukraine.

“I think it’s Russian disinformation. It’s a deliberate effort by Russia to stoke divisions in the country,” said Shaheen, who has a long-standing focus on Georgia.

On April 29, in a rare public address infused with conspiracy theories, Ivanishvili—who formally serves as the party’s honorary chairman—depicted the country as wrestling for its independence against shadowy, unnamed foreign forces, describing Georgia’s nongovernmental organizations as a “pseudo-elite nurtured by a foreign country.”

Although Ivanishvili’s personal wealth is equivalent to roughly a third of the country’s gross domestic product, he is “borrowing from the Orban and Trump playbook, highlighting how the urban elite is running counter to Georgian traditional values,” Kelly said, referring to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and former U.S. President Donald Trump.

In March, a senior member of the Georgian Dream announced a raft of constitutional amendments cracking down on LGBT rights and banning any public efforts to promote same-sex relationships, echoing Russia’s “gay propaganda” law passed in 2013.

In the April speech, Ivanishvili explicitly referenced parliamentary elections set to be held later this year as a motivation for reintroducing the foreign agents law and the anti-LGBT legislation, noting that it would force civil society to “expend the energy” ahead of the vote, saying it would leave them “weakened” and “exhausted.”

Kelly criticized the Biden administration for not taking more concrete steps to deter Georgian politicians from pursuing the legislation. “Right after April 29, they should have started the first round of imposing costs, and the really easy one is, ‘You’re not welcome to get a visa,’” he said.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller condemned the violence against protesters on Thursday and called for a “full independent and timely investigation,” but Kelly said that such statements don’t go far enough.

“It’s useless. It’s worse than useless,” he said. “I don’t know if they really take us seriously.”

US Threats led to rupture of vital military ties, Nigerien leader says - WaPo

A crucial military relationship between the United States and its closest West African ally, the country of Niger, ruptured this spring after a visiting U.S. official made threats during last-ditch negotiations over whether American troops based there would be allowed to remain, according to the country’s prime minister.

In an exclusive interview, Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine put the blame for the breakdown squarely on the United States, accusing American officials of trying to dictate which countries Niger could partner with and failing to justify the U.S. troop presence, now scheduled to end in the coming months. Niger has been central to efforts to contain a growing Islamist insurgency in West Africa.

The rift between the former allies has created an opportunity for Russia, which has moved quickly to deepen its relationship with Niger, dispatching troops to the capital, Niamey, last month to train the Nigerien military and supplying a new air defense system. Russian and U.S. troops now occupy opposite ends of an air base.

After a military coup d’état ousted Niger’s democratically elected president last year, the United States froze security support as required by U.S. law and paused counterterrorism activities, which had involved intelligence gathering on regional militant activities from a massive drone base in the country’s north. The United States has kept more than 1,000 military personnel in place while negotiating with Niger over their status and urging the junta to begin restoring democracy.

“The Americans stayed on our soil, doing nothing while the terrorists killed people and burned towns,” Zeine said. “It is not a sign of friendship to come on our soil but let the terrorists attack us. We have seen what the United States will do to defend its allies, because we have seen Ukraine and Israel.”

Niger’s insistence that American troops depart culminated in the U.S. announcement last month that it would withdraw them. The pullout, which two U.S. officials said would begin in coming months, represents a significant setback for the Biden administration and will force it to reconfigure its strategy for countering Islamist extremists in the volatile Sahel region.

Though tense discussions between U.S. and Nigerien officials have been previously reported, Zeine’s remarks revealed the extent of the disconnect between the two countries. While the Americans were pressing their counterparts over democracy and their relations with other countries, Niger was asking for additional military equipment and what it considered a more equitable relationship between the two forces, according to his account. He also revealed just how exasperated the Nigeriens had become with the United States.

Relations with the United States have been strained since the junta took power, appointing Zeine, an economist, as prime minister two weeks later. The U.S. government condemned the coup and called for the release of President Mohamed Bazoum, who was put under house arrest.

Zeine said leaders of Niger’s new government, known as the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland, or by its French initials CNSP, were bewildered that the United States had frozen military support while insisting on keeping the troops in the country without justifying their continued presence. The American response in the wake of Niger’s coup contrasted sharply with that of other nations, including Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, he said, which have welcomed the new Nigerien leaders with “open arms.”

He said the Nigerien leaders took particular umbrage at remarks by Molly Phee, the State Department’s top official for African affairs, who he said had urged the government during a March visit to Niamey to refrain from engaging with Iran and Russia in ways objectionable to Washington if Niger wanted to continue its security relationship with the United States. He also said Phee had further threatened sanctions if Niger pursued a deal to sell uranium to Iran.

“When she finished, I said, ‘Madame, I am going to summarize in two points what you have said,’” recounted Zeine, who has led negotiations with the United States. “First, you have come here to threaten us in our country. That is unacceptable. And you have come here to tell us with whom we can have relationships, which is also unacceptable. And you have done it all with a condescending tone and a lack of respect.”[...]

Since 2012, the United States has maintained a military presence in Niger, with most U.S. personnel stationed at the Agadez drone base, which cost about $110 million to build. That base has been “impactful” for counterterrorism efforts across the region, said Gen. Michael E. Langley, who heads U.S. military operations in Africa. In an interview earlier this year, Langley warned that the U.S. losing its footprint in Niger would “degrade our ability to do active watching and warning, including for homeland defense.”[...]

When Phee first arrived in Niger in December, Zeine said, he showed her photographs of Nigeriens waving American flags during protests against France, Niger’s former colonial power. While protesters set fires and smashed windows at the French Embassy, he noted, they left the U.S. Embassy untouched.

“Nigeriens were saying, ‘Americans are our friends, they will help us this time to annihilate the terrorists,’” said Zeine. “But there was radio silence.” He added that Niger would have not looked to Russia and other countries for help if the United States had responded to requests for more support, including for planes, drones and an air defense system.[...]

Although Niger is insisting that the U.S. military leave, Zeine said that his government wants to continue economic and diplomatic relations with the United States and that “no Nigerien considers the United States as the enemy.” He said he told Phee and Campbell that Niger would rather have American investors than soldiers.

“If American investors arrived, we would give them what they wanted,” he recounted telling the States Department officials. “We have uranium. We have oil. We have lithium. Come, invest. It is all we want.”

14 May 24

🇺🇸 🚨

UNITED STATES CONGRESS PASSES SERIES OF ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND PRO-WAR BILLS DESPITE PUBLIC OPPOSITION

The United States Congress and Senate passed a series of bills, including three controversial anti-democratic and pro-war bills, two of which were tied together, on Saturday, bypassing public opinion and popular opposition to the profligate, pro-war, globalist, Neolib/Neocon agenda currently driving United States domestic and foreign policy.

Included in the bills passed was a bill to force TikTok to divest from its connections with China at risk of being banned immediately, which naturally was tied to a Foreign aid bill.

However, as even Republican Senator Rand Paul mentioned in an opinion piece in Reason Magazine, the Bill is almost certain to lead to more power for American political elites and their administrations to pressure companies like Apple and Google to further ban apps and sites that offer contradictory opinions to that of the invented narratives of the American Political class.

Before long, Americans, many of whom are already poorly informed, and heavily misinformed by their mainstream media, could lose access to critical information that contradicts the narratives of the United States government and corporate elites.

Horrifically, this only the start. The US Congress also extended the newly revised FISA spy laws, which gives the United States government the power to spy on the electronic communications of foreigners, while also conveniently sweeping up the conversations of millions of Americans, as we learned years ago thanks to the sacrifices of whistle blowers and journalists like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.

The new FISA Law goes further than this, however, granting US Intelligence agencies the power to spy on the wireless communications of Americans in completely new ways.

A recent Jacobin article describes these new powers as a, "radical expansion of government surveillance that would be ripe for abuse by a future authoritarian leader", or it could just be used by the authoritarian leadership we have right now, and have had for decades.

In fact, when one commentator described the new powers as "Stasi-like," Edward Snowden himself replied with a long post in which he remarked, "invocation of "Stasi-like" is not only a fair characterization of Himes' amendment, it's probably generous. The Stasi dared not even dream of what the Himes amendment provides."

The amendment in question just "tweaks" the current law's definition of an "electronic communication provider," which is being changed to "any service provider," something extremely likely to be abused by the government to force anyone with a business, a modem and people using their broadband to collect the electronic communications of those people, while also forcing their victims into silence.

The government could essentially force Americans to spy on other people and remain silent about it. Cafe's, restaurants, hotels, business landlords, shared workspaces all could get swept up into the investigations of the Intelligence agencies.

Worse still, because picking out the communications of a single user would be next to impossible, all of their victim's data would end up being surrendered to the authorities.

Sadly, the assault on Americans by their own political elites didn't end there, to top this historic day in Congress, at time when the United States public debt is growing at an astounding rate of $1 trillion every 100 days, US lawmakers also passed a series of pro-war aid packages to American allies (vassals) totalling some $95 billion.

Included in the foreign aid bill are aid packages totalling $61 billion for the Ukraine scam, $26 billion for Israel's special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, and $8 billion to the Indo-Pacific to provoke WWIII with China, at the same time we're also provoking a nuclear holocaust with the Russian Federation.

Also buried in these aid packages is the authorization for the United States government to outright steal the oversees investments of the Russian Federation, and thereby the Russian taxpayers.

Astonishingly, and in direct opposition to the wishes of their own voters, Republican support was won without the possibility of conditioning the aid to any kind of border security, this despite the issue being among the top biggest concerns of Republican voters.

Although much of the money is to be used replenishing the heavily depleted stocks of America's weapons and munitions, it remains unclear where the munitions are expected to come from, as US defense production has remained sluggish and slow to expand despite heavy investments and demand in recent years, despite the rapid urgency with which the policy elite describe the situation.

It bodes poorly for working Americans that only a relatively small handful of lawmakers opposed the bills, producing unlikely bedfellows like Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Mike Lee in the Senate, opposing the FISA bill.

While in the House, the loudest opposition to the foreign aid bill mostly came from populist Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie and Paul Goser. Only 58 Congresmembers voted against the Foreign Aid Bill in which the TikTok ban was tucked.

Not one word from American politicians about the need to raise the minimum wage, which hasn't been increased since 2009 despite considerable inflation, nor a word about America's endlessly growing homelessness crises, property crime increases, or the 40-year stagnation of American wages, the deterioration of infrastructure, and precious little was said besides complaints about border security over the immigration crises sparked by American Imperialist adventures and US sanctions.

What we've learned today is that we are highly unlikely to see any changes to the insane behavior of the US and its allies any time soon, neither with regards to the absolutely bonkers Neocon foreign policy leading us to the edge of abyss, nor the spending-for-the-rich/austerity-for-the-poor Neoliberal domestic policy of the last 45 years.

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Imagine that someone—perhaps a man from Florida, or maybe even a governor of Florida—criticized American support for Ukraine. Imagine that this person dismissed the war between Russia and Ukraine as a purely local matter, of no broader significance. Imagine that this person even told a far-right television personality that “while the U.S. has many vital national interests ... becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.” How would a Ukrainian respond? More to the point, how would the leader of Ukraine respond?

As it happens, an opportunity to ask that hypothetical question recently availed itself. The chair of the board of directors of The Atlantic, Laurene Powell Jobs; The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg; and I interviewed President Volodymyr Zelensky several days ago in the presidential palace in Kyiv. In the course of an hour-long conversation, Goldberg asked Zelensky what he would say to someone, perhaps a governor of Florida, who wonders why Americans should help Ukraine.

Zelensky, answering in English, told us that he would respond pragmatically. He didn’t want to appeal to the hearts of Americans, in other words, but to their heads. Were Americans to cut off Ukraine from ammunition and weapons, after all, there would be clear consequences in the real world, first for Ukraine’s neighbors but then for others:

If we will not have enough weapons, that means we will be weak. If we will be weak, they will occupy us. If they occupy us, they will be on the borders of Moldova and they will occupy Moldova. When they have occupied Moldova, they will [travel through] Belarus and they will occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. That’s three Baltic countries which are members of NATO. They will occupy them. Of course, [the Balts] are brave people, and they will fight. But they are small. And they don’t have nuclear weapons. So they will be attacked by Russians because that is the policy of Russia, to take back all the countries which have been previously part of the Soviet Union.

And after that, if there were still no further response? Then, he explained, the struggle would continue:

When they will occupy NATO countries, and also be on the borders of Poland and maybe fight with Poland, the question is: Will you send all your soldiers with weapons, all your pilots, all your ships? Will you send tanks and armored vehicles with your young people? Will you do it? Because if you will not do it, you will have no NATO.

At that point, he said, Americans will face a different choice: not politicians deciding whether “to give weapons or not to give weapons” to Ukrainians, but instead, “fathers and mothers” deciding whether to send their children to fight to keep a large part of the planet, filled with America’s allies and most important trading partners, from Russian occupation.

But there would be other consequences too. One of the most horrifying weapons that Russia has used against Ukraine is the Iranian-manufactured Shahed drone, which has no purpose other than to kill civilians. After these drones are used to subdue Ukraine, Zelensky asked, how long would it be before they are used against Israel? If Russia can attack a smaller neighbor with impunity, regimes such as Iran’s are sure to take note. So then the question arises again: “When they will try to occupy Israel, will the United States help Israel? That is the question. Very pragmatic.”

Finally, Zelensky posed a third question. During the war, Ukraine has been attacked by rockets, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles—“not hundreds, but thousands”:

So what will you do when Russia will use rockets to attack your allies, to [attack] civilian people? And what will you do when Russia, after that, if they do not see [opposition] from big countries like the United States? What will you do if they will use rockets on your territory?

And this was his answer: Help us fight them here, help us defeat them here, and you won’t have to fight them anywhere else. Help us preserve some kind of open, normal society, using our soldiers and not your soldiers. That will help you preserve your open, normal society, and that of others too. Help Ukraine fight Russia now so that no one else has to fight Russia later, and so that harder and more painful choices don’t have to be made down the line.

“It’s about nature. It’s about life,” he said. “That’s it.”

“Putin kills whoever he wants, be it an opposition leader, or anyone else who seems as the target exactly to him. “After the murder of Alexei Navalny, it’s absurd to perceive Putin as a supposedly legitimate head of a Russian state and he is a thug who maintains power through corruption and violence.” “He has just yesterday tried to send us all a clear message as the Munich Security Conference opened, Putin murdered another opposition leader. “So please, let’s not fear Putin’s defeat and the destruction of his regime. Let’s instead work together to destroy what he stands for. It is his fate to lose, not the fate of the rules based world order to vanish.” “Do not ask Ukraine when the war will end. Ask yourselves why Putin is still able to continue it.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's response to Putin's terrorism, including his murder of Alexei Navalny in prison yesterday. Note especially: Putin has NO legitimacy and the modern Russian state he has created has NO legitimacy. This is a terror state that built an infrastructure to protect the endless self-enrichment of thieves, and which murders anyone who gets in the way of that goal. Such a terrorist infrastructure also needs to invade other countries in order to maintain power. PUTIN MUST BE STOPPED NOW.