davel

Honestly this all seems too good to be fully true to me, like a wish fulfillment fantasy. The NED’s new guard installed at this high a level can’t be this ignorant of the org’s purpose, right? Or perhaps they really can be. Perhaps senior NED staff will have to be re-replaced, or else the whole project scuttled and replaced by something else. Maybe this kind of work has to return to its clandestine roots.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s government may have also sought to undermine Azov, as two bloody friendly fire incidents suggested. First, in July 2022, a Russian pre-trial detention center was reportedly struck in a HIMARS missile strike, killing 40 prisoners from the Azov Regiment. Then, in January 2024, a plane carrying 65 Ukrainian POWs was shot down in Belgorod. Many on board were Azov members.

Accordingly, Farion’s assassination raises the question of whether civil society actors rejecting any form of settlement with Moscow are being eliminated too. The CIA spent expended heavy resources to training a dedicated assassination squad for Kiev. The unit is so effective, US officials fear its operatives could go rogue and execute targeted killings the world over, with one former senior CIA figure reportedly warning: “We are seeing the birth of a set of intelligence services that are like Mossad in the 1970s.” The Washington Post has reported that Ukraine’s proficiency at such operations “has risks for Russia… but it carries broader risks as well” for the rest of the world.

If a CIA-backed outfit in Ukraine is turning its guns on its former sponsors, it would follow a well-document history of blowback. Whether or not Farion’s assassination was the product of an intelligence intrigue, it is clear that Kiev’s chickens are coming home to roost.

The previous books in the series were The Collapse of Antiquity and …and forgive them their debts.

I don’t know how he cranks these out, on top of his articles, YouTube series, and endless interviews.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Horne

Our understanding of China — and U.S.-China relations — has become a defining feature of all global politics. The China Report is a new show produced in collaboration with Pivot to Peace where every week, hosts Amanda Yee and KJ Noh will be helping through all the propaganda with an independent view of the country we are told to hate, but know so little about.

First two episodes:

• Exposed: Pentagon Ran Covert Anti-Vax Operation to Discredit China
• WSJ Accuses China of Secret Spy Bases in Cuba: Cold War Madness Gets Crazier

I’d never heard of Pivot to Peace.

• https://peacepivot.org/
• https://www.youtube.com/@pivottopeace2492

• RT: ‘It was about sticking it to the Russians’ – Scott Ritter on US seizure of his passport
• Malaysia Sun: US seizes Scott Ritter's passport
• Al Bawaba: US confiscates former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter passport
• Daily Beast: Moscow Throws Putin Fanboy Scott Ritter Under the Bus

The interview with Professor Michael Hudson was conducted on 7 May 2018 in Beijing […]. Professor Hudson talked about his formative years, and his turn to economics from music as he found his mentor Terence McCarthy's speech about economics beautiful and asethetic. He recalled his experiences in research and teaching, and the background leading to his writing the many books on imperialism, balance of payment, history of debt, and fictitious capital.

The civil liberties stans try to make sense of Katherine Maher, the new president of NPR, ex-CEO of Wikimedia, ex-Atlantic Council, ex-State Department, and current member of the Council of Foreign Relations. But as usual their liberal ideology doesn’t quite get them there. They see that Maher has a relationship with the ruling class, the state, and imperialism, and they see her coöptation of class & race consciousness while being a beneficiary of her own whiteness and class position, but they’re unable to see the relationships between the capitalist class, the state, whiteness, and imperialism. How they fail to note that NPR is state-affiliated media is beyond me.

They talk about the new FISA expansion bill (which was signed into law today) as well, which to their credit they see as related.

America This Week, April 19, 2024: "To Build a Surveillance State" (transcript). A paid subscription is ostensibly required, so: https://files.catbox.moe/e7xim5.mp3

The Grayzone on Maher previously:

• Jun. 2020: Meet Wikipedia’s Ayn Rand-loving founder and Wikimedia Foundation’s regime-change operative CEO
• Oct. 2023: US regime change activist named Web Summit CEO after founder forced out for condemning Israeli ‘war crimes’

An excellent Critical Theory Workshop lecture and Q&A on fascisms and liberalisms—contemporary but also historical—through a dialiectical materialist lens.