Writer Bogdan Syrotiuk has been detained and a prominent socialist site blocked, while a new list of Ukrainian media enemies is released. The Western press response? Silence
Thanks for reminding us. How long can the Poltroons kill the heroes until there are no heroes left and only the Poltroons?
RIP Gonzalo Lira, a Chilean-American war commentator known for his critical views on the Zelensky regime and Russia-Ukraine conflict, passed away on January 11, 2024, in a hospital in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Lira's death followed an eight-month imprisonment on charges of ”justifying Russia's military actions in Ukraine”, sparking international controversy and raising questions about freedom of speech and human rights during wartime.
US seems to have done nothing to get Gonzalo Lira released by the Ukrainians, although just one phone call from Biden or Blinken would likely have done the trick. Contrast the State Dept's and media's "treatment" of Lira with the ruckus they raised about the female athlete detained in Russia for having drugs in her baggage, and cry.
Well no cost to other men is too great for me to sacrifice for Democracy. No other man's child or wife or husband is too great a price for them to pay, according to me.
It's not like we had to extrapolate it, they are saying it publicly, like Pelosi did at the Oxford Union. Maybe I would be okay with some benign king stepping in and suspending everyone's democratic rights because it had been determined that the world had gone mad and couldn't vote their way out of their madness. But I am certainly not going to capitulate to the likes of Nancy Pelosi who is like some wine sopped Grandma who's thought processes reveal another agent whose mind has deteriorated beyond repair. They can't accept new information or inculcate them into their crystalized minds, in a world where information has become all the rage.
Now, pretend that this had happened in Russia or any other country that the Empire doesn't like.
The worldwide howls of outrage would be deafening. MSM mouthpieces would be slathering fawning praise on Syrotiuk and would hasten to assure us that any threat to his freedom is a threat to us all. "I am Bogdan Syrotiuk!" would be on everyone's lips.
But since Ukraine is an American pet, nobody dares raise a peep, lest wrongthink ensue.
Matt, congratulations on writing articles like this and I hope you keep up this kind of reporting. I also hope you have some great defense lawyers on speed dial in case you get an early morning knock on the door by the FBI with CNN reporters filming.
Exactly. At first glance, it's absurd to imagine Matt being arrested and escorted, perp walk style, in front of CNN cameras. But at second glance: not absurd. Dark Times.
The level of shade that the MSM keeps its readers in is staggering. In the NYT I made the innocuous, and truthful, observation that Zelensky is no longer president of Ukraine and was hit with several scolding replies inquiring as to my citizenship status in Moscow, and how my Russian was coming along. They not only can’t handle the truth, they make fun of it.
My construction carries my point much more forcefully. Yours implies an independence and separation between the press and the security state which I and others contend no longer meaningfully exists. But thanks!
Independence and separation between the press and the security state which you and others contend no longer meaningfully exist is a charming and sentimental notion, but, at bottom, is a phony construction, a chimera, and always has been.
Independence and separation between the press and the security state couldn't possibly exist---save for in the minds of dreamy romantics, third-rate editorial writers, and elderly bachelors wearing velvet suits. You're welcome.
I'm sure there are many politicians (and their journalist lackeys) in Washington right now who would love to be able to do the same thing in America. I suspect that the time is coming when they may try (in the interests of National Security of course).
I am so glad you wrote about Texty.org.ua. Per Anitwar.com, "A State Department-linked Ukrainian NGO published a study on June 6 that listed hundreds of individuals and organizations that oppose aid to Ukraine in an effort to smear them as spreading “Russian propaganda...The American Conservative, which was also included in the list, reported that Texty.org.ua was co-founded by Anatoly Bondarenko. Bondarenko has worked as an instructor for a State Department program known as TechCamp, which provides training for foreign journalists and activists." It seems as though everybody and their mother is listed by this group, "from Trumpists to Communists". This is so out of contol, but thank you for staying on top of these hydra headed, continually proliferating shady organizations.
Not all Nazis are created equal in the eyes of the national security state and its media lackeys. Ukrainians who wear Nazi symbols and name their paramilitary units after Nazi collaborators are not actually Nazis. Americans who support the wrong major-party candidate or express views that were mainstream until 5 years ago are the REAL Nazis.
Ukraine has been torturing and murdering dissidents and Russian speakers for 10 years without a peep from the Western Press. I'm not even sure they reported the daylight assassination of a Ukrainian peace negotiator at the beginning of the SMO. It's impossible to get search engines to pull up stories from the independent press, but I recall that at least one independent Western journalist besides Lira was murdered, a French journalist was beaten up, and a Spanish journalist working in Ukraine was held in a Polish prison.
That's because the press has been running interference since Zelensky was anointed as the boss after the US-backed "regime change" (yet another disgusting euphemism for "coup") deposed Yanukovych.
Yanukovych may have been a typically corrupt Ukrainian politician, but it's clear why Z. gets only good press.
This article raises the question of which country, Russia or Ukraine, is least ripe for an infusion of liberal democracy and becoming a stalwart member of the rules based order.
Maybe I'm just dumb, but suspect nothing good will come from our involvement in the current Ukraine carnage.
For comparable follies, what good ever came from our involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Chile, Viet Nam (in the 60s), Iran (in the 50s) and all the other places the US tried to plant its flag. Maybe I'm just missing the point.....
It's so sad to see peace activists identified as "enemies of the state." Not only peace activists, but people calling for negotiation, compromise, and an end to the war with all its murderous destruction.
Yet, if you're for endless war in Ukraine, you're saluted! WTF is wrong with us?
Who knows: maybe people will jump for joy when nuclear missiles start flying. That'll show Putin! (And us.)
I have a suggestion, let's send pallets full of freshly minted, backed with a wish & a prayer, crisp new fiat currency greenbacks to the Ukrainians as punishment for putting our fellow Americans on "enemies lists."
That should teach them a lesson.
Ooh...ooh...then we can follow that up with a shit load of weapons & Russian sanctions & blown up Russian pipelines & CIA advisors.
If that doesn't make Zelensky a contrite little fellow I don't know what will.
What's the old joke? If you want to know who the US will be at war with tomorrow, look at who they're arming today."
Or Dave Mustaine's foreign policy of "Peace sells, but who's buying?"
It's got to be hard for a country like America, whose exports have been pared down to war, debt & fat people, to blather on about "peace" when peace is antithetical to one of their main exports.
But hey, that's what marketing, PR & spin are for &, after decades of using TV as a propaganda delivery system & testing ground, enough Americans are pliable enough & easy enough to coax into going against their own self interests that these shitheads remain in power.
Rachel Maddow sits on TV with a straight face bemoaning Trump's future alleged vengeance spree on liberals after she just spent 4 years selling a very real liberal vengeance spree on Trump & her audience doesn't even see the glaring dichotomy of it all. They just nod in unison & & hiss "Trump" into the ether like a cult of meat mannequins.
Remember the teachers grade school comparison between bread and freedom? People who have never tasted/experienced it don't know what it is.
Obviously there are people somewhere who feel threatened by freedom of speech, movement, opinion and the countless other liberties Americans enjoy. Whence the lie on the scale and magnitude it exists and the demand that everyone else has to believe as well? And we the people should relinquish our personal liberty in the process? To who? And why? For what?
The money? The greatest upward transfer of wealth in human history is still under way. Someone, at the expense of free peoples, economies and nations across the world, has pocketed a lot of money. They have all the money. But the poor American up before dawn working two jobs for inflated dollars is somehow such a threat that he has to be surveilled, commodified and stripped of his basic human rights? Something, someone, somewhere is knowingly lying through its nasty little teeth. It doesn't matter why because, I think we can all agree, a lie is a lie. The problem is the harm the lie is inflicting. We see it, experience and discuss its inhuman consequences every day.
Lets us not lose sight of the fact that we are attempting the creation of a solutions oriented truth/fact based American national conversation capable of putting real solutions on the table. All that matters is the Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen. Everything else is the lie.
In the past all of this partisan nitpicking seemed to be part of the dog & pony show of American politics.
Even Clinton's impeachment seemed more like a Jerry Springer potboiler than an actual attempt to unseat a president.
Both sides have always pantomimed hating each other but it always seemed more for our benefit as voters. Liberals hated GW for Iraq but Pastor Obama opted, as Matt has pointed out, not to go anywhere near doing anything to Bush & Cheney. Pastor Obama was "looking to the future" rather than "dwelling on the past."
And for all of Pastor Obama's empty blather about the Iraq War he wasn't deterred for even a minute from blowing the shit out the next 5 countries on the Neo-Con/Neo-Lib empire building hit list.
Trump's crimes, whatever the fuck they were & are, seem to demand an unprecedented response from the DNC, but no one in the DNC or their propaganda wing can explain why, beyond empty statements like "Trump will end democracy" or "Trump's a Russian spy," this is so.
As always I suggest that we sit Joe down for a Fireside Chat where he takes an hour or more to explain why, minus all hyperbole & rhetoric, Donald Trump requires us to flush chunks of the Constitution down the toilet. We both know that Joe wouldn't be able to make 5 minutes before his radiator overheated & started sputtering, "Look, man!"
Every politician talks to me like I'm a half-witted step child.
It has grown old.
And while I've never been a Trump fan I don't hate him either.
But, on some level, I do admire him a bit for being able to take a DNC rap to the mouth, spit his tooth out on the pavement, and then hit them with a shit eating grin while simultaneously flipping them the bird.
The DNC & their propaganda division has talked about Donald Trump, and pretty much nothing else, for 8 straight years. They sound like the obsessive spouse who turns stalker because she/he can't live with the fact their old mate doesn't need them anymore. It's mental.
And, as Jimmy Dore has pointed out, these same people used to love Donald Trump. He had a hit TV show that was, I believe, actually nominated for an Emmy. He was in movies & rap videos & hung out with Bill & Hill & other DC power couples. Then he won the presidency and became a Russian spy...no wait, he became an insurrectionist...no, wait he became Adolph Hitler...
I mean, what's next? The Anti-Christ?
All I want is a president with a modicum of integrity who I can muster some trust for so when he comes on TV talking about war I can safely believe that he tried every other option & wholesale murder really is our last resort.
But since I've never felt that way in my life I'm not holding my breath for a happy ending here.
Hey sometimes you have to detain a few journalists to protect Democracy.
Or kill them like Gonzalo Lira.
Thanks for reminding us. How long can the Poltroons kill the heroes until there are no heroes left and only the Poltroons?
RIP Gonzalo Lira, a Chilean-American war commentator known for his critical views on the Zelensky regime and Russia-Ukraine conflict, passed away on January 11, 2024, in a hospital in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Lira's death followed an eight-month imprisonment on charges of ”justifying Russia's military actions in Ukraine”, sparking international controversy and raising questions about freedom of speech and human rights during wartime.
US seems to have done nothing to get Gonzalo Lira released by the Ukrainians, although just one phone call from Biden or Blinken would likely have done the trick. Contrast the State Dept's and media's "treatment" of Lira with the ruckus they raised about the female athlete detained in Russia for having drugs in her baggage, and cry.
These are venal men who can't be bothered to put their pen to paper unless it's about filching wealth and power to themselves.
If you are not a Qatari intelligence with ghost written articles appearing in the WaPo, then you don't count.
and if they die. meh...
Sometimes you even have to arrest them.
Well no cost to other men is too great for me to sacrifice for Democracy. No other man's child or wife or husband is too great a price for them to pay, according to me.
Ah, so. The Sacred Democracy--One Oligarch, One Million Votes. Not since the Etruscans has there been such a fervent service to the Gods . . .
This is the next step in protecting democracy--flows naturally from cancelling elections (because-- democracy).
It's not like we had to extrapolate it, they are saying it publicly, like Pelosi did at the Oxford Union. Maybe I would be okay with some benign king stepping in and suspending everyone's democratic rights because it had been determined that the world had gone mad and couldn't vote their way out of their madness. But I am certainly not going to capitulate to the likes of Nancy Pelosi who is like some wine sopped Grandma who's thought processes reveal another agent whose mind has deteriorated beyond repair. They can't accept new information or inculcate them into their crystalized minds, in a world where information has become all the rage.
'
Now, pretend that this had happened in Russia or any other country that the Empire doesn't like.
The worldwide howls of outrage would be deafening. MSM mouthpieces would be slathering fawning praise on Syrotiuk and would hasten to assure us that any threat to his freedom is a threat to us all. "I am Bogdan Syrotiuk!" would be on everyone's lips.
But since Ukraine is an American pet, nobody dares raise a peep, lest wrongthink ensue.
Matt, congratulations on writing articles like this and I hope you keep up this kind of reporting. I also hope you have some great defense lawyers on speed dial in case you get an early morning knock on the door by the FBI with CNN reporters filming.
Or, "early morning knock on the door by CNN reporters with the FBI filming."
Exactly. At first glance, it's absurd to imagine Matt being arrested and escorted, perp walk style, in front of CNN cameras. But at second glance: not absurd. Dark Times.
Knock on the door? We're not far away from midnight 'vanishings' a la the Soviet Union, circa 1938. I say by 2026.
Or a late night knock on the door from Fox executives with the FBI filming.
The level of shade that the MSM keeps its readers in is staggering. In the NYT I made the innocuous, and truthful, observation that Zelensky is no longer president of Ukraine and was hit with several scolding replies inquiring as to my citizenship status in Moscow, and how my Russian was coming along. They not only can’t handle the truth, they make fun of it.
That rag is exhibit A in the case that the US press serves as the mouthpieces of the US security state.
"A" mouthpiece not "the" mouthpiece "for" not "of" the US security state.
My construction carries my point much more forcefully. Yours implies an independence and separation between the press and the security state which I and others contend no longer meaningfully exists. But thanks!
Independence and separation between the press and the security state which you and others contend no longer meaningfully exist is a charming and sentimental notion, but, at bottom, is a phony construction, a chimera, and always has been.
Independence and separation between the press and the security state couldn't possibly exist---save for in the minds of dreamy romantics, third-rate editorial writers, and elderly bachelors wearing velvet suits. You're welcome.
This is very good. However, I'm an incurable optimist and will continue to insist we strive for better.
Did they ask you about the weather in St. Petersburg? I got that one often when poking fun at their lemming-like idiocy.
What has possessed these people to turn into outright nasty, mean, rude, arrogant, incurious, ignorant, close minded, know it all .... idiots?
High tax brackets and degrees from the Ivies and their "journalism" schools.
But it's okay because we're defending democracy in Ukraine.
And Ukraine was so nice to Gonzalo Lira.
So I don't think there's anything to worry about.
So what you're saying is Ukraine is still the most corrupt shithole country in Eastern Europe?
Thank you for writing this depressing article.
exactly.
I'm sure there are many politicians (and their journalist lackeys) in Washington right now who would love to be able to do the same thing in America. I suspect that the time is coming when they may try (in the interests of National Security of course).
Scott Ritter’s passport was yanked by our government before he was to fly to Russia. I don’t have any other information...
I am so glad you wrote about Texty.org.ua. Per Anitwar.com, "A State Department-linked Ukrainian NGO published a study on June 6 that listed hundreds of individuals and organizations that oppose aid to Ukraine in an effort to smear them as spreading “Russian propaganda...The American Conservative, which was also included in the list, reported that Texty.org.ua was co-founded by Anatoly Bondarenko. Bondarenko has worked as an instructor for a State Department program known as TechCamp, which provides training for foreign journalists and activists." It seems as though everybody and their mother is listed by this group, "from Trumpists to Communists". This is so out of contol, but thank you for staying on top of these hydra headed, continually proliferating shady organizations.
So the Ukrainian Nazi government wants TAC writers murdered??
Anyway I see a House committee is at least demanding this spook front is defunded. But a dozen others will spring up in its wake like cockroaches.
Now that the Ukrainian Nazis are funded and backed by America, is it still OK to shout, gas the nazis ?
Asking for a friend.
Not all Nazis are created equal in the eyes of the national security state and its media lackeys. Ukrainians who wear Nazi symbols and name their paramilitary units after Nazi collaborators are not actually Nazis. Americans who support the wrong major-party candidate or express views that were mainstream until 5 years ago are the REAL Nazis.
I heard they all hide orange hair.
Ukraine has been torturing and murdering dissidents and Russian speakers for 10 years without a peep from the Western Press. I'm not even sure they reported the daylight assassination of a Ukrainian peace negotiator at the beginning of the SMO. It's impossible to get search engines to pull up stories from the independent press, but I recall that at least one independent Western journalist besides Lira was murdered, a French journalist was beaten up, and a Spanish journalist working in Ukraine was held in a Polish prison.
Matt—do you have these details?
That's because the press has been running interference since Zelensky was anointed as the boss after the US-backed "regime change" (yet another disgusting euphemism for "coup") deposed Yanukovych.
Yanukovych may have been a typically corrupt Ukrainian politician, but it's clear why Z. gets only good press.
This article raises the question of which country, Russia or Ukraine, is least ripe for an infusion of liberal democracy and becoming a stalwart member of the rules based order.
Maybe I'm just dumb, but suspect nothing good will come from our involvement in the current Ukraine carnage.
For comparable follies, what good ever came from our involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Chile, Viet Nam (in the 60s), Iran (in the 50s) and all the other places the US tried to plant its flag. Maybe I'm just missing the point.....
Nigeria
"Nothing good" includes WW III.
It's so sad to see peace activists identified as "enemies of the state." Not only peace activists, but people calling for negotiation, compromise, and an end to the war with all its murderous destruction.
Yet, if you're for endless war in Ukraine, you're saluted! WTF is wrong with us?
Who knows: maybe people will jump for joy when nuclear missiles start flying. That'll show Putin! (And us.)
I have a suggestion, let's send pallets full of freshly minted, backed with a wish & a prayer, crisp new fiat currency greenbacks to the Ukrainians as punishment for putting our fellow Americans on "enemies lists."
That should teach them a lesson.
Ooh...ooh...then we can follow that up with a shit load of weapons & Russian sanctions & blown up Russian pipelines & CIA advisors.
If that doesn't make Zelensky a contrite little fellow I don't know what will.
What's the old joke? If you want to know who the US will be at war with tomorrow, look at who they're arming today."
Or Dave Mustaine's foreign policy of "Peace sells, but who's buying?"
It's got to be hard for a country like America, whose exports have been pared down to war, debt & fat people, to blather on about "peace" when peace is antithetical to one of their main exports.
But hey, that's what marketing, PR & spin are for &, after decades of using TV as a propaganda delivery system & testing ground, enough Americans are pliable enough & easy enough to coax into going against their own self interests that these shitheads remain in power.
Rachel Maddow sits on TV with a straight face bemoaning Trump's future alleged vengeance spree on liberals after she just spent 4 years selling a very real liberal vengeance spree on Trump & her audience doesn't even see the glaring dichotomy of it all. They just nod in unison & & hiss "Trump" into the ether like a cult of meat mannequins.
Remember the teachers grade school comparison between bread and freedom? People who have never tasted/experienced it don't know what it is.
Obviously there are people somewhere who feel threatened by freedom of speech, movement, opinion and the countless other liberties Americans enjoy. Whence the lie on the scale and magnitude it exists and the demand that everyone else has to believe as well? And we the people should relinquish our personal liberty in the process? To who? And why? For what?
The money? The greatest upward transfer of wealth in human history is still under way. Someone, at the expense of free peoples, economies and nations across the world, has pocketed a lot of money. They have all the money. But the poor American up before dawn working two jobs for inflated dollars is somehow such a threat that he has to be surveilled, commodified and stripped of his basic human rights? Something, someone, somewhere is knowingly lying through its nasty little teeth. It doesn't matter why because, I think we can all agree, a lie is a lie. The problem is the harm the lie is inflicting. We see it, experience and discuss its inhuman consequences every day.
Lets us not lose sight of the fact that we are attempting the creation of a solutions oriented truth/fact based American national conversation capable of putting real solutions on the table. All that matters is the Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen. Everything else is the lie.
I agree.
In the past all of this partisan nitpicking seemed to be part of the dog & pony show of American politics.
Even Clinton's impeachment seemed more like a Jerry Springer potboiler than an actual attempt to unseat a president.
Both sides have always pantomimed hating each other but it always seemed more for our benefit as voters. Liberals hated GW for Iraq but Pastor Obama opted, as Matt has pointed out, not to go anywhere near doing anything to Bush & Cheney. Pastor Obama was "looking to the future" rather than "dwelling on the past."
And for all of Pastor Obama's empty blather about the Iraq War he wasn't deterred for even a minute from blowing the shit out the next 5 countries on the Neo-Con/Neo-Lib empire building hit list.
Trump's crimes, whatever the fuck they were & are, seem to demand an unprecedented response from the DNC, but no one in the DNC or their propaganda wing can explain why, beyond empty statements like "Trump will end democracy" or "Trump's a Russian spy," this is so.
As always I suggest that we sit Joe down for a Fireside Chat where he takes an hour or more to explain why, minus all hyperbole & rhetoric, Donald Trump requires us to flush chunks of the Constitution down the toilet. We both know that Joe wouldn't be able to make 5 minutes before his radiator overheated & started sputtering, "Look, man!"
Feel free to swipe at will.
I don't trust any of them.
Every politician talks to me like I'm a half-witted step child.
It has grown old.
And while I've never been a Trump fan I don't hate him either.
But, on some level, I do admire him a bit for being able to take a DNC rap to the mouth, spit his tooth out on the pavement, and then hit them with a shit eating grin while simultaneously flipping them the bird.
The DNC & their propaganda division has talked about Donald Trump, and pretty much nothing else, for 8 straight years. They sound like the obsessive spouse who turns stalker because she/he can't live with the fact their old mate doesn't need them anymore. It's mental.
And, as Jimmy Dore has pointed out, these same people used to love Donald Trump. He had a hit TV show that was, I believe, actually nominated for an Emmy. He was in movies & rap videos & hung out with Bill & Hill & other DC power couples. Then he won the presidency and became a Russian spy...no wait, he became an insurrectionist...no, wait he became Adolph Hitler...
I mean, what's next? The Anti-Christ?
All I want is a president with a modicum of integrity who I can muster some trust for so when he comes on TV talking about war I can safely believe that he tried every other option & wholesale murder really is our last resort.
But since I've never felt that way in my life I'm not holding my breath for a happy ending here.