#RIGHT AFTER the collapse of the soviet union

[boycritter]

my mom will just drop the craziest lore ever and move on with her life

[mariacallous]

It is over and everything is lost. This is the refrain repeated by Armenian families as they take that final step across the border out of their home of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In just a handful of days more than 100,000 people, almost the entire Armenian population of the breakaway enclave, has fled fearing ethnic persecution at the hands of Azerbaijani forces. The world barely registered it. But this astonishing exodus has vanished a self-declared state that thousands have died fighting for and ended a decades-old bloody chapter of history.

On Saturday, along that dusty mountain road to neighbouring Armenia, a few remaining people limp to safety after enduring days in transit.

Among them is the Tsovinar family who appear bundled in a hatchback littered with bullet holes, with seven relatives crushed in the back. Hasratyan, 48, the mother, crumbles into tears as she tries to make sense of her last 48 hours. The thought she cannot banish is that from this moment forward, she will never again be able to visit the grave of her brother killed in a previous bout of fighting.

“He is buried in our village which is now controlled by Azerbaijan. We can never go back,” the mother-of-three says, as her teenage girls sob quietly beside her.

“We have lost our home, and our homeland. It is an erasing of a people. The world kept silent and handed us over”.

She is interrupted by several ambulances racing in the opposite direction towards Nagorno-Karabakh’s main city of Stepanakert, or Khankendi, as it is known by the Azerbaijani forces that now control the streets. Their job is to fetch the few remaining Karabakh Armenians who want to leave and have yet to make it out.

“Those left are the poorest who have no cars, the disabled and elderly who can’t move easily,” a first responder calls at us through the window. “Then we’re told that’s it.”

As the world focused on the United Nations General Assembly, the war in Ukraine and, in the UK, the felling of an iconic Sycamore tree, a decades old war has reignited here unnoticed.

It ultimately heralded the end of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway Armenian region, that is internationally recognised as being part of Azerbaijan but for several decades has enjoyed de facto independence. It has triggered the largest movement of people in the South Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Azerbaijan has vehemently denied instigating ethnic cleansing and has promised to protect Armenians as it works to reintegrate the enclave.

But in the border town of Goris, surrounded by the chaotic arrival of hundreds of refugees, Armenia’s infrastructure minister says Yerevan was now struggling to work out what to do with tens of thousands of displaced and desperate people.

“Simply put this is a modern ethnic cleansing that has been permitted through the guilty silence of the world,” minister Gnel Sanosyan tells The Independent, as four new busses of fleeing families arrive behind him.

“This is a global shame, a shame for the world. We need the international community to step up and step up now.”

The divisions in this part of the world have their roots in centuries-old conflict but the latest iterations of bitter bloodshed erupted during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Karabakh Armenians, who are in the majority in the enclave, demanded the right to autonomy over the 4,400 square kilometre rolling mountainous region that has its own history and dialect. In the early 1990s they won a bloody war that uprooted Azerbaijanis, building a de facto state that wasn’t internationally unrecognised.

That is until in 2020. Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, launched a military offensive and took back swathes of territory in a six-week conflict that killed thousands of soldiers and civilians. Russia, which originally supported Armenia but in recent years has grown into a colder ally, brokered a fragile truce and deployed peacekeepers.

But Moscow failed to stop Baku in December, enforcing a 10-month blockade on Nagorno-Karabakh, strangling food, fuel, electricity and water supplies. Then, the international community stood by as Azerbaijan launched a 24-hour military blitz that proved too much for Armenian separatist forces. Outgunned, outnumbered and weakened by the blockade, they agreed to lay down their weapons.

For 30 years the Karabakh authorities had survived pressure from international powerhouses to give up statehood or at least downgrade their aspirations for Nagorno-Karabakh. For 30 years peace plans brokered by countries across the world were tabled and shelved.

And then in a week all hope vanished and the self-declared government agreed to dissolve.

Fearing further shelling and then violent reprisals, as news broke several Karabakh officials including former ministers and separatist commanders, had been arrested by Azerbaijani security forces, people flooded over the border.

At the political level there are discussions about “reintegration” and “peace” but with so few left in Nagorno-Karabakh any process would now be futile.

And so now, sleeping in tents on the floors of hotels, restaurants and sometimes the streets of border towns, shellshocked families, with a handful of belongings, are trying to piece their lives together.

Among them is Vardan Tadevosyan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s minister of health until the government was effectively dissolved on Thursday. He spent the night camping on the floor of a hotel, and carries only the clothes he is wearing. Exhausted he says he had “no idea what the future brings”.

“For 25 years I have built a rehabilitation centre for people with physical disabilities I had to leave it all behind. You don’t know how many people are calling me for support,” he says as his phone ringed incessantly in the background throughout the interview.

“We all left everything behind. I am very depressed,” he repeats, swallowing the sentence with a sigh.

Next to him Artemis, 58, a kindergarten coordinator who has spent 30 years in Steparankert, says the real problems were going to start in the coming weeks when the refugees outstay their temporary accommodation.

“The Azerbaijanis said they want to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh but how do you blockade a people for 10 months and then launch a military operation and then ask them to integrate?” she asks, as she prepares for a new leg of the journey to the Armenian capital where she hopes to find shelter.

“The blockade was part of the ethnic cleansing. This is the only way to get people to flee the land they love. There is no humanity left in the world.”

Back in the central square of Goris, where families pick through piles of donated clothes and blankets and aid organisations hand out food, the loudest question is: what next?

Armenian officials are busy registering families and sending them to shelters in different corners of the country. But there are unanswered queries about long-term accommodation, work and schooling.

“I can’t really think about it, it hurts too much,” says Hasratyan’s eldest daughter Lilet, 16, trembling in the sunlight as the family starts the registration process.

“All I can say to the world is please speak about this and think about us. We are humans, people made of blood, like you and we need your help.”

[matan4il]

Today is Erev Yom Ha'Shoah (Eve of Holocaust Memorial Day) in Israel. It will be observed by Jews outside of Israel, too.

The Hebrew date was chosen to honor the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It's also a week before Erev Yom Ha'Zikaron Le'Chalalei Ma'archot Yisrael (Eve of Israel's Memorial Day for its Fallen Soldiers and Terror Victims), which is itself observed a day before Yom Ha'Atzmaut Le'Yisrael (Israel's Independence Day). A lot of people have remarked on the connection between the three dates. On Yom Ha'Atzmaut, we celebrate our independence, which allows us to determine our own fate, and defend ourselves without being dependent on anyone else, right after we remember the price in human life that we have paid and continue to pay for this independence, and a week before we mourn the price we've had to pay for not getting to have self defence during the Holocaust. NEVER FORGET that in one Nazi shooting pit alone (out of almost two thousand) during just 2 days (Erev Yom Kippur and Yom Kippur 1941), more Jewish men, women and kids were slaughtered than in the 77 years since Israel's Independence War was started by the Arabs. This unbreakable connection between the living and the dead, between our joy and our grief, is often addressed with the Hebrew phrase, במותם ציוו לנו את החיים, "With their death, they ordered us to live."

On this Erev Yom Ha'Shoah, I'd like to share with you some data, published on Thursday by Israel's Central Bureau for Statistics (source in Hebrew).

The number of Jews worldwide is 15.7 million, still lower than it was in 1939, before the Holocaust, 85 years ago (that is what a genocide looks like demographically).

7.1 million Jews live in Israel (45% of world Jewry) 6.3 million Jews live in the US (40% of world Jewry)

Here's the data for the top 9 Jewish communities in the world:

There are about 133,000 Holocaust survivors currently living in Israel. Most (80%) live in big cities in central Israel. Around 1,500 are still evacuated from their homes in northern and southern Israel due to the war (back in January, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, there was a report about 1,894 survivors who also became internal refugees due to the war. Source in Hebrew). One Holocaust survivor, 86 years old Shlomo Mansour, is still held hostage in Gaza. He survived the Farhud in Iraq.

I haven't seen any official number for how many survivors had been slaughtered as a part of Hamas' massacre, despite everyone here being aware that Holocaust survivors had been murdered on Oct 7, such as 91 years old Moshe Ridler. Maybe, as we're still discovering that some people thought to have been kidnapped during the massacre, were actually killed on that day, no one wants to give a "final" number while Shlomo has not yet been returned alive.

Out of all Israeli Holocaust survivors, 61.1% were born in Europe (35.8% in the countries of the former Soviet Union, 10.8% in Romania, 4.9% in Poland, 2.9% in Bulgaria, 1.5% in Germany and Austria, 1.3% in Hungary, 4.2% in the rest of Europe), 36.6% were born in Asia or Africa (16.5% in Morocco, 10.9% in Iraq, 4% in Tunisia, 2.6% in Libya, 2.1% in Algeria, 0.5% in other Asian and African countries) and 2.3% were born elsewhere.

Out of all Holocaust survivors in Israel, 6.2% managed to make it here before the establishment of the state, despite the British Mandate's immigration policy against it (up until May 13, 1948). 30.5% made it to Israel during its very first years (May 14, 1948 until 1951), another 29.8% arrived in the following decades (1952-1989), and 33.5% made Aliyah once the Soviet Union collapsed, and Jewish immigration to the west (which included Israel) was no longer prohibited by the Soviet regimes (1990 on).

The second biggest community of survivors in the world is in the US, the third biggest (but second biggest relative to the size of the population) is in Australia. I heard from many Holocaust survivors who chose to immigrate there that they wanted to get "as physically far away from Europe as possible."

For a few years now, there's been this project in Israel, called Maalim Zikaron, מעלים זיכרון (uploading memory. Here's the project's site in Hebrew. In English it's called Sharing Memories, and here's the English version of the site) where Israeli celebs are asked to meet up with a Holocaust survivor (it's done in Hebrew), and share the survivor's story and the meeting on their social media on Erev Yom Ha'Shoah (which is today). Each year, there's also one non-Israeli Jewish celeb asked to participate (in English. This time around it's Michael Rapaport, he's meeting Aliza, an 81 years old survivor from the Netherlands, who was hidden along with 9 other Jewish babies for two years. He uploaded a preview of his meeting with her here, where he asked her what it means to her to be a Jew, and from what I understand, he will upload more today to the same IG account). This year, there will be an emphasis on Holocaust survivors who also survived Oct 7 (with 6 of the 20 participating survivors having survived Hamas as well). Here's a small bit from an interview with one such survivor, 90 years old Daniel Luz from kibbutz Be'eri:

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[wintersmitth]

I once got called xenophobia for saying that a whole lot of Americans are American centric and frankly culturally imperialistic... I'm American myself, so I guess I'm xenophobic against me and not just... observing something true

Anyway, here's my point in relation to what you were saying

It seems that for many American's it's just impossible to conceive of the idea that no everywhere has American dynamics when it comes to things like race, and that what we see as white might not mean shit

Like... I don't get it, cause it only takes a couple seconds of paying any attention at all to notice things like the discrimination that places like the UK tend to have towards Eastern Europeans, that clearly skin color doesn't really matter there... and... it's also pretty damn clear that for all the talk russia does about "russian speaking Ukrainians" they don't actually give a damn about them cause they see Ukrainians as inferior

Just don't get it, don't get how lefties here can talk about cultural relativism and then not... apply it... and actually... acknowledge that not everywhere in the world has a US cultural lens, that not every dynamic everywhere is the same

Drives me nuts

Also I suppose my real point here is just trying to say that you're so right about all this privilege talk... I've been following since this invasion started, I've been actually paying attention and learning about what russia's been doing since the collapse of the soviet union

And I've also been paying attention to how Ukraine dropped off the map after like... one, maybe two months. News stopped talking about it, and the majority of Americans never were paying attention even then

We had mike johnson dip his hands elbow deep in blood as he refused to put aid up for a vote for month and months

...and then Ukrainians are privileged

"This is how they talk about a white hospital being bombed", they didn't fucking talk about... about the maternity hospital, or that concert hall with "children inside" or... dear god the universe would end before I could write everything russia's done that almost no one in the west talked about

"Imagine if russia did this!" ...they did, not just in Ukraine but in Syria, and Georgia, and Chechnya. I wasn't paying attention back then, but I'm paying attention now, and that's just what the russian military does

Fucks sake, you don't have to compare victims of genocide, you can support them both. The correct number of dead civilians is zero

It feels like I'm going crazy with how noone can understand that... or... more like they're all going crazy and I can't fucking get through to people. Or like... for me even if I didn't already dislike the GOP here, I couldn't vote for them cause of how they treat Ukraine, but meanwhile you have all these people talking about not voting out of spite and... they can't seem to see the russian propaganda oozing out of those words, like literally there's a 100% chance a lot of the "people" saying this are kremlin bots and troll farms (like 2016)

(And bonus complaint, I thought we all cared about Iranians... but... it feels like we forgot them too, and worse still it feels like some people are willing to support the Iranian government to own the US and... I... I really don't fucking know what's wrong with people)

So sorry for the weird and long ask, I just want you to know that I hear exactly what you're saying and you're so right

These people don't get that they're still doing American exceptionalism except we're the best at being bad, and that they make every fucking thing about America always forever

They can't fucking exist without projecting American race politics on to every situation. They can't hear about people being killed in another country without talking about how sad it is for them that this'll be WW3 (it won't... if you were paying attention you'd get how it won't be)

You're right to feel how you do, you're right to say "what privilege?" because there's none. They act like everyone's fawning over Ukraine and giving them special treatment, but I'm watching and I've been watching and we're only barely drip feeding any amount of support and then everyone wrings their hands about if we've upset russia and might get nuked, after all... if we sent you stingers we might get nuked... wait... that's from the start of the war, sorry I meant if you were allowed to blow up russian air bases with US weapons we'll get nuked

It's sick how Ukrainians get treated, and the people who talk about how Ukrainians are treated don't even pay a moment of attention

Slava Ukraine

Thank you for this message.

You are so absolutely right on every account there.

I suppose the most insane thing for me is people comparing genocides. You said right there: the correct number of victims is zero. And honestly I can't expect everyone to fact check everything, but the way people are misusing that damn UN report is malicious. It's meant to undermine our struggles, it plays right I to russian propaganda.

There is so much I got to say, but none if it is a coherent at the moment.

It's infuriating how people on internet go "Look at them talking about white hospital" well first of all this is by far not the first hospital Russia hit. Has been hitting. Word outside doesn't know 1/3 of what is actually happening here.

And then we get vilified for talking about our losses?! That's some privilege.

There's another message in my sitting which I got a few days ago and it is something along the lines "fuck you for telling people to vote for Biden he's committing genocide" and I'm just. Sitting here thinking that I don't want to be genocide either.

Anyhow. Yeah lots of Americans are so self centered it's insane. Even marginalized group, who seemingly should know a thing or two about never being listened to, brush away our words like nuisance. A few weeks ago I told some American scholar on twitter that writing USA has a war on its land is disrespectful to us living in actual warzone and got shut up with "white people always talk over black folk". The exchange had nothing to do with race. It's just systematic brutality and a threat of dying from a missile are different dangers ya kno.

Anyway, thank you for this message.

[politicalprof]

It helps to remember that the radical House Republicans believe that all one has to do to get what you want in politics is to enact "leadership," which is usually defined as performatively being strong and aggressive, which will then cause all opposition to melt away. Thus in forcing McCarthy to comply with their will they are compelling him to lead. Subsequently, the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Democratic-controlled Presidency will fold and the right wingers will prevail. After all, all Reagan had to do to make the Soviet Union collapse was tell Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, right?

[reddest-flower]

The Soviet intervention in Hungary and the Khrushchev revelations produced in Europe a process that led – gradually – to the Eurocommunism of the Communist Party of Spain’s leader Santiago Carrillo, who said, in 1976, ‘once Moscow was our Rome, but no more. Now we acknowledge no guiding centre, no international discipline’. This was a communism that no longer believed in revolution but was quite satisfied with an evolutionary dynamic. The European parties, correct in their desire for the right to develop their own strategies and tactics, nonetheless, threw themselves onto a self-destructive path. Few remained standing after the USSR collapsed in 1991. They campaigned for polycentrism but, in the end, achieved only a return to social democracy.

Amongst the Third World communist parties, a different orientation became clear after 1956. While the Western European parties seemed eager to denigrate the USSR and its contributions, the parties in the Third World acknowledged the importance of the USSR but sought some distance from its political orientation. During their visits to Moscow in the 1960s, champions of ‘African socialism’ such as Modibo Keïta of Mali and Mamadou Dia of Senegal announced the necessity of non-alignment and the importance of nationally developed processes of socialist construction. Marshal Lin Biao spoke of the need for a ‘creative application’ of Marxism in the Chinese context. The young leader of the Indonesian Communist Party – Dipa Nusantara Aidit – moved his party towards a firm grounding in both Marxism-Leninism and the peculiarities of Indonesian history. [...]

In the Third World, where Communism was a dynamic movement, it was not treated as a religion that was incapable of error. ‘Socialism is young’, Che Guevara wrote in 1965, ‘and has its mistakes.’ Socialism required ceaseless criticism in order to strengthen it. Such an attitude was missing in Cold War Europe and North America [...] After 1956, Communism was penalized by the Cold Warriors for the Soviet intervention in Hungary. This played some role in the Third World, but it was not decisive. In India, in 1957 the Communists won an election in Kerala to become the ruling party in that state. In 1959, the Cuban revolution overthrew a dictatorship and adopted Marxism-Leninism as its general theory. In Vietnam, from 1954, the Communists took charge of the north of the country and valiantly fought to liberate the rest of their country. These were communist victories despite the intervention in Hungary.

[...]

Much the same history propelled the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) forward from 1951, when it had merely 5,000 members, to 1964, when it had two million party members and an additional fifteen million members in its mass organizations (half of them in the Indonesian Peasants’ Front). The party had deep roots in the heavily populated sections of east and central Java but had – in the decade after 1951 – begun to make gains in the outer islands, such as Sumatra. A viciously anti-communist military was unable to stop the growth of the party. The new leadership from the 1953 Party Central Committee meeting were all in their thirties, with the new Secretary General – Aidit – merely thirty-one years old. These communists were committed to mass struggles and to mass campaigns, to building up the party base in rural Indonesia. The Indonesian Peasants’ Front and the Plantation Workers’ Union – both PKI mass organizations – fought against forced labour (romusha) and encouraged land seizures (aksi sepihak). These campaigns became more and more radical. In February 1965, the Plantation Workers’ Union occupied land held by the US Rubber Company in North Sumatra. US Rubber and Goodyear Tires saw this as a direct threat to their interests in Indonesia. Such audacity would not be tolerated. Three multinational oil companies (Caltex, Stanvac and Shell) watched this with alarm. US diplomat George Ball wrote to US National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy that in ‘the long run’ events in Indonesia such as these land seizures ‘may be more important than South Vietnam’. Ball would know. He oversaw the 1963 coup in South Vietnam against the US ally Ngô Đình Diệm. The West felt it could not stand by as the PKI got more aggressive.

By 1965, the PKI had three million party members – adding a million members in the year. It had emerged as a serious political force in Indonesia, despite the anti-communist military’s attempts to squelch its growth. Membership in its mass organizations went up to 18 million. A strange incident – the killing of three generals in Jakarta – set off a massive campaign, helped along by the CIA and Australian intelligence, to excise the communists from Indonesia. Mass murder was the order of the day. The worst killings were in East Java and in Bali. Colonel Sarwo Edhie’s forces, for instance, trained militia squads to kill communists. ‘We gave them two or three days’ training,’ Sarwo Edhie told journalist John Hughes, ‘then sent them out to kill the communists.’ In East Java, one eyewitness recounted, the prisoners were forced to dig a grave, then ‘one by one, they were beaten with bamboo clubs, their throats slit, and they were pushed into the mass grave’. By the end of the massacre, a million Indonesian men and women of the left were sent to these graves. Many millions more were isolated, without work and friends. Aidit was arrested by Colonel Yasir Hadibroto, brought to Boyolali (in Central Java) and executed. He was 42.

There was no way for the world communist movement to protect their Indonesian comrades. The USSR’s reaction was tepid. The Chinese called it a ‘heinous and diabolical’ crime. But neither the USSR nor China could do anything. The United Nations stayed silent. The PKI had decided to take a path that was without the guns. Its cadre could not defend themselves. They were not able to fight the military and the anti-communist gangs. It was a bloodbath.

[...]

There was little mention in Havana of the Soviet Union. It had slowed down its support for national liberation movements, eager for detente and conciliation with the West by the mid-1960s. In 1963, Aidit had chastised the Soviets, saying, ‘Socialist states are not genuine if they fail to really give assistance to the national liberation struggle’. The reason why parties such as the PKI held fast to ‘Stalin’ was not because they defended the purges or collectivization in the USSR. It was because ‘Stalin’ in the debate around militancy had come to stand in for revolutionary idealism and for the anti-fascist struggle. Aidit had agreed that the Soviets could have any interpretation of Stalin in terms of domestic policy (‘criticize him, remove his remains from the mausoleum, rename Stalingrad’), but other Communist Parties had the right to assess his role on the international level. He was a ‘lighthouse’, Aidit said in 1961, whose work was ‘still useful to Eastern countries’. This was a statement against the conciliation towards imperialism of the Khrushchev era. It was a position shared across many of the Communist Parties of the Third World.

Many Communist parties, frustrated with the pace of change and with the brutality of the attacks on them, would take to the gun in this period – from Peru to the Philippines. The massacre in Indonesia hung heavily on the world communist movement. But this move to the gun had its limitations, for many of these parties would mistake the tactics of armed revolution for a strategy of violence. The violence worked most effectively the other way. The communists were massacred in Indonesia – as we have seen – and they were butchered in Iraq and Sudan, in Central Asia and South America. The image of communists being thrown from helicopters off the coast of Chile is far less known than any cliché about the USSR.

Red Star Over the Third World, Vijay Prashad, 2019

[good-old-gossip]

"Last month, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called Gaza 'a graveyard for tens of thousands of people and also a graveyard for many of the most important principles of humanitarian law'. The reality may be even worse.

I fear it may become the graveyard of liberalism itself. Three decades ago, liberalism was the lead chariot in the procession of the liberal democratic project.

New democracies were emerging in Europe; the Soviet Union had crumbled, and Russia was in transition; the Berlin Wall had fallen; and South Africa's apartheid regime was collapsing.

Even China exhibited signs of change. Liberal democracy appeared invincible, both in practice and in theory.

There appeared to be no real competition as it stood out as a triumphant and principled form of governance. Ask any well-versed liberal arts student and they will recite that liberalism is a political and philosophical ideology centred on the principles of individual liberty, equality and limited government.

They will point out that it emphasises the protection of individual rights and freedoms, including freedom of speech, religion and assembly, as well as the rule of law and democratic governance.

While advocating for a market-based economy with private property rights, free trade and minimal government regulation, liberalism also promotes social welfare programmes to alleviate disadvantages and ensure equal opportunities for all citizens.

Additionally, liberalism supports the idea of pluralism, tolerance and diversity, aiming to create societies where individuals can pursue their own interests and live according to their own beliefs without undue interference from the state.

The essence of liberalism lies in its commitment to the rule of law and human rights. Sounds amazing, so what’s the problem, you may be asking? Those observing the “plausible genocide” without a propaganda lens over the last six months have had front-row seats on a systematic erosion of liberal values and ideals.

Gaza has exposed western hypocrisy and double standards, and it has shaken liberalism to its core. Both domestic and international commitment to the rule of law, human rights and a rules-based order are being undermined by, arguably, the most powerful lobby in the world. Pro-Israeli lobbies have hijacked most western liberal democracies.

The whole world is now privy to the shameless pimping of western politicians previously documented in Congressman Paul Findley's 1985 book They Dare to Speak Out and reinforced by the 2007 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

As an anonymous commentator wrote: “People think Gaza is occupied, but in reality, Gaza is free but the whole world is occupied.” Liberal elites and leaders who joined millions in support of free speech and proclaimed “Je suis Charlie” in solidarity with the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo after terrorists killed 12 people at its Paris offices in 2015 to try to shut it down, are now calling for suppression of free speech. By a vote of 377-44-1, the US House passed a resolution that the "slogan, 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' is antisemitic and its use must be condemned".

Of course, the statement is not threatening or condemnable if you substitute “Palestine'' with “Israel”, as you see being done by many Israeli supporters and in the Likud manifesto.

The University of Southern California, in an unprecedented move, cancelled its Muslim valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, who minored in genocide studies, from delivering her address because of alleged threats from pro-Israeli groups.

They cited unspecified “security concerns”. I thought the idea was to never give in to what are clearly “terrorist” demands. To make matters worse, due to the fallout, in another unprecedented move, the university subsequently cancelled all other speakers and honorary doctorate presentations during convocation. Where are the “Je suis Asna” calls from liberal elites and institutions? Hundreds of students and faculty at Columbia, Yale and New York University have been arrested peacefully (in the words of the police chief) protesting against the killings by Israel.

Another 200 mostly Jewish protesters were arrested in front of Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, where they gathered for the seder, a ritual that marks the second night of the Passover holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide. No free speech mobilisation by liberal elites anywhere to be seen.

Those who championed freedom of expression are now banning the keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headdress, because it is making some people uncomfortable.

Last week, the Ontario legislature banned the headdress, forcing a scheduled meeting between legislators and pro-Palestinian protesters to be held outside the legislative buildings because the activists had donned their keffiyehs. Israeli military dog tags, Israeli flags and other political symbols, of course, are not political in the same way.

The situation is no different in many European countries. Who thought that liberalism was so fragile and malleable by those who seek to subvert it for their own illiberal goals, namely promoting ethnic cleansing by the ethno-nationalist and racist state of Israel.

In the wake of the mass killings of the Second World War and the Holocaust, the new liberal world order enacted human rights treaties and enacted humanitarian laws to make sure that such massacres and abuses were "never again" repeated. Rising out of the horrors of the Second World War we saw the establishment of the United Nations and the drafting of the international bill of human rights that would obligate "every state to recognise the equal right of every individual on its territory to life, liberty and property, religious freedom and the use of his own language".

The bill consisted of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. We also saw the enactment of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which sought to improve the legal protection of non-combatants, medical personnel, medical facilities and equipment, and wounded and sick civilians.

Despite these advances claimed by liberals, today we are witnessing war crimes, crimes against humanity and “plausible genocide”, according to the International Court of Justice, being live-streamed to our devices.

If liberalism cannot offer a moral and ethical form of governance, then what good is it? What are the grandiose declarations, pronouncements and treaties good for? In the midst of such an unprecedented attack on a corralled civilian population by a western colonial implant and ally, if liberalism shows no will, ability or desire to protect civilian life, regional security, a nation's own national interests and global order, then its mission-defining claims of principle and competence collapse.

Liberal intellectuals have long claimed the moral high ground by championing justice whether it be in favour or against western interests. Why is the Israeli situation different? When blind loyalty becomes the sole or primary consideration, then what makes liberalism different from tribalism? When global security and safety can be sacrificed at the altar of friendship and similarity, then what becomes of the West’s claim to authority as a political and military custodian of a rules-based international order? Might and dominance can be mistaken for right, but let's not forget that dissenting minorities, the oppressed and colonised may conclude that their only choice is to resist by any means necessary, and revolution is always a higher likelihood.

Even domestically, history has proven that societies that combine responsiveness to the will of their people with robust protections for individuals and minority groups are in the best position to strike a flexible and sustainable balance among these competing forces. We can only hope and pray (sorry are we still allowed to do that?) that this is some sort of glitch or malfunction, and liberal elites and intellectuals will wake up from their slumber and remind liberal politicians that the very raison d’etre of the liberal democratic project is under threat of collapse. It is almost too late, but there may be a sliver of hope.

How liberal elites respond to the Gaza challenge and salvage whatever shreds of credibility remain will dictate the legacy of liberalism.

Liberals must stand up for their principles or forever hang their heads in shame. ✍️ Faisal Kutty

[daughterofthetwopomegranates]

Please reblog this!

These are testing times for Armenian-Israeli relations, but we should navigate these rough waters to harness our many shared assets.

Last week, Armenia became the 145th country to recognize the state of Palestine – even as Israel continues its difficult fight against Hamas in Gaza. Last year, Armenians suffered a terrible ethnic cleansing at the hands of Azerbaijan, which was armed to a significant degree by Israel. You’d think two nations are at odds – and indeed a Jerusalem Post editorial presented things that way. But look beneath the surface and a different story appears.

There is a deep sense of shared history, affinity, and like-mindedness between Armenia and Israel, which endures despite Israel’s military dealings with Azerbaijan and Turkey. There is no underlying antisemitism in Armenia, just as there is no inherent Armenophobia in Israel. Both nations have faced persecution and genocide, defining themselves not territorially but through a duality that exposes them to tough choices during international crises.

These are testing times for Armenian-Israeli relations, but we should navigate these rough waters to harness our many shared assets. Our global communities collaborate in combating extremism and in developing innovations, such as vaccines created at Moderna, a company with Armenian roots. The significant Israeli-Armenian community can serve as a bridge for mutual understanding and cooperation. There is also a growing Jewish community in Armenia, consisting of Russian and Ukrainian citizens who have fled hostility and military drafts. Many of them are contemplating settling down in welcoming Armenia and starting their new lives.

Strategically, Armenia is undergoing a dramatic geopolitical reorientation, moving closer to the United States and contemplating EU membership while joining regional integration and transport projects that will shape the future Eurasian trade. Israel should consider supporting US policies in this region to help Armenia strengthen its democratic institutions and contribute to reshaping its security strategies. This cooperation will enhance both countries' footprints in the region and beyond, including in India and the Gulf states.

So why did Armenia recognize Palestine?

This recognition came after decades of similar acknowledgments by former Soviet and Warsaw block countries, all of Armenia’s neighbors, and several EU member states. While this move may seem ill-timed, especially for those who have long advocated for closer ties with Israel, it is essential to understand the underlying principles guiding Armenia's decision.

Armenia emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Empire as an independent nation in a challenging and hostile neighborhood. Historically, Armenia has struggled to ensure its survival and preserve its distinct identity as a representative of Western civilization in the Middle East. Poor in resources and militarily outpowered by regional rivals, Armenia has heavily relied on international legitimacy - the right to self-determination, the prevention of genocide, and the non-use of force in disputes as cornerstones of its foreign policy.

Last September, Azerbaijan attacked and invaded the ethnic Armenian-populated enclave of Artsakh, ending the self-government which had been in place since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and indeed was in effect during the communist period and indeed was in effect during the communist period and before. Heavily reliant on Israeli weaponry, the Azerbaijani forces compelled the exodus of the entire population of over 120,000 people.

But the tragic even is not, despite what Israelis might suspect, the reason for the recognition of Palestine.

Rather, this had to do with the country’s self-declared obligations regarding internationally recognized self-determination cases, including Palestine, and potentially Kosovo, South Sudan, and others in the future.

The timing of Armenia's recognition of Palestine has stirred controversy both at home and in Israel. Many perceive that the act during the Gaza conflict sends wrong signals to the belligerents. If this is the case, it is a regrettable externality not anticipated by Armenian policymakers. Armenia's decision might have been influenced by powerful regional actors, highlighting her increased susceptibility to pressures from invigorated neighbors like Turkey after the 2020 Armenia-Azerbaijan war.

The reaction in Israel has been particularly vehement, with media backlash and stern warnings from the Israeli MFA about potential deterioration in bilateral relations. This reaction contrasts sharply with the responses to similar recognitions by Spain, Slovenia, and Belgium. It raises the question of why Armenia's recognition is perceived as less forgivable than that of the 144 other countries.

Armenia’s recognition of Palestine aligns with its long-standing principles and should not be viewed as a detriment to future Armenian-Israeli relations. Instead, both nations to reaffirm their shared values and work towards a more stable and prosperous future together.

*once again please reblog!*

[avelera]

So I was on a panel about cyberwarfare as it relates to the Russian invasion of Ukraine back in December 2022 and afterwards while talking to some people said that the boldest statement I was willing to put money on was that we were closer to the end of the war in Ukraine than to the start of it and that Russia would fail and collapse sooner than people thought, just like the Soviet Union where people were blindsided by the collapse.

I pointed out that there’s fractures everywhere in their front that entirely relied on plugging by throwing untrained bodies at the problem, which would inevitably be unpopular at home. That besides the size of their force, Russia was completely outclassed. That they’d expected an easy fight and got blindsided. That corruption had gutted their effectiveness to the tune of billions in money stolen by the oligarchs. We couldn’t say when it would all fall apart but the West was still buying into Russian propaganda to continue to see strength where there was nothing but floundering and weakness propped up by brutality.

I pointed out that just about every objective that Ukraine claimed it would achieve, they had, and nearly every objective Russia had claimed they would achieve they’d failed at, and eventually those would add up and to stop thinking there was some deeper clever play at work. That they were in a shit ton of trouble, the question was just when it would all come crashing down.

And it was a bold thing to say! Possibly naive! It might still be naive if Wagner really does achieve their goals and do as they promised and turn around and go back to the front. But that seems a long shot only from the sheer internal disarray caused by them abandoning it. I can’t imagine those soldiers are going to want to go back. The parallels to the Bolsheviks is jaw dropping that Russia would again put all their political dissidents in prison, then recruit from prisons for a war, thus giving all their political enemies military training and cohesion.

I also can’t help but think that the Wagner leader saw this was the best chance he’d ever have to seize power with the experienced army at his disposal and with threat of assassination looming over him he was basically given Caesar’s choice and had to cross to the Rubicon or die.

But anyway. There’s still no way of knowing how this plays out. This is a truly chaotic situation reminiscent of the days of Rome’s Soldier Emperors or Machiavelli’s warring Italian cities, when the man with the biggest, most effective army could take over empires if he moved cleverly enough, or combust spectacularly in the attempt. It’s truly mind boggling to behold in the modern era with such a major state.

My greatest hope is that this proves enough for Ukraine to achieve a decisive victory and regain all its territory while Russia is distracted.

And, I admit, I’m feeling a little vindicated right now after saying this to a room of people who had largely bought into Russia’s claims about its own power. These current events are not things that happen to a successful, stable world power.

[mariacallous]

Alexei Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021. Right before he boarded the plane, he posted a film titled “Putin’s Palace: The Story of the World’s Largest Bribe” on YouTube. The video, nearly two hours long, was an extraordinary feat of investigative reporting. Using secret plans, drone footage, 3-D visualizations, and the testimony of construction workers, Navalny’s video told the story of a hideous $1.3 billion Black Sea villa containing every luxury that a dictator could imagine: a hookah bar, a hockey rink, a helipad, a vineyard, an oyster farm, a church. The video also described the eye-watering costs and the financial trickery that had gone into the construction of the palace on behalf of its true owner, Vladimir Putin.

But the power of the film was not just in the pictures, or even in the descriptions of money spent. The power was in the style, the humor, and the Hollywood-level professionalism of the film, much of which was imparted by Navalny himself. This was his extraordinary gift: He could take the dry facts of kleptocracy—the numbers and statistics that usually bog down even the best financial journalists—and make them entertaining. On-screen, he was just an ordinary Russian, sometimes shocked by the scale of the graft, sometimes mocking the bad taste. He seemed real to other ordinary Russians, and he told stories that had relevance to their lives. You have bad roads and poor health care, he told Russians, because they have hockey rinks and hookah bars.

And Russians listened. A poll conducted in Russia a month after the video appeared revealed that one in four Russians had seen it. Another 40 percent had heard about it. It’s safe to guess that in the three years that have elapsed since then, those numbers have risen. To date, that video has been viewed 129 million times.

Navalny is now presumed dead. The Russian prison system has said he collapsed after months of ill health. Perhaps he was murdered more directly, but the details don’t matter: The Russian state killed him. Putin killed him—because of his political success, because of his ability to reach people with the truth, and because of his talent for breaking through the fog of propaganda that now blinds his countrymen, and some of ours as well.

He is also dead because he returned to Russia from exile in 2021, having already been poisoned twice, knowing he would be arrested. By doing so he turned himself from an ordinary Russian into something else: a model of what civic courage can look like, in a country that has very little of it. Not only did he tell the truth, but he wanted to do so inside Russia, where Russians could hear him. This is what I wrote at the time: “If Navalny is showing his countrymen how to be courageous, Putin wants to show them that courage is useless.”

That Putin still feared Navalny was clear in December, when the regime moved him to a distant arctic prison to stop him from communicating with his friends and his family. He had been in touch with many people; I have seen some of his prison messages, sent secretly via lawyers, policemen, and guards, just as Gulag prisoners once sent messages in Stalin’s Soviet Union. He remained the spirit behind the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a team of Russian exiles who continue to investigate Russian corruption and tell the truth to Russians, even from abroad. (I have served on the foundation’s advisory board.) Earlier this week, before his alleged collapse, he sent a Valentine’s Day message to his wife, Yulia, on Telegram: “I feel that you are there every second, and I love you more and more.”

Navalny’s decision to return to Russia and go to jail inspired respect even among people who didn’t like him, didn’t agree with him, or found fault with him. He was also a model for other dissidents in other violent autocracies around the world. Only minutes after his death was announced, I spoke with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader. “We are worried for our people too,” she told me. If Putin can kill Navalny with impunity, then dictators elsewhere might feel empowered to kill other brave people.

The enormous contrast between Navalny’s civic courage and the corruption of Putin’s regime will remain. Putin is fighting a bloody, lawless, unnecessary war, in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians have been killed or wounded, for no reason other than to serve his own egotistical vision. He is running a cowardly, micromanaged reelection campaign, one in which all real opponents are eliminated and the only candidate who gets airtime is himself. Instead of facing real questions or challenges, he meets tame propagandists such as Tucker Carlson, to whom he offers nothing more than lengthy, circular, and completely false versions of history.

Even behind bars Navalny was a real threat to Putin, because he was living proof that courage is possible, that truth exists, that Russia could be a different kind of country. For a dictator who survives thanks to lies and violence, that kind of challenge was intolerable. Now Putin will be forced to fight against Navalny’s memory, and that is a battle he will never win.

[emilybeemartin]

Hi! I just wanted to say I loooove your Sharpe art. I've never watched the movies, so I have quite different visions of characters since it's all based on my interpretations of them from the books, but it's so great seeing art of these characters! Teresa in particular, she's one of my fav characters alongside Patrick, Hogan and Nairn.

Thank you!! I agree, I had really different visions of them when I read the books before watching the show. Daragh O'Malley is great in the role, but I pictured Pat totally different. And of course the description of Sharpe in the early books is as a dark-haired Londoner, but now Cornwell has retrofitted the recent ones to account for a Yorkshire accent. There's a handful of the audiobooks read by Rupert Farley, and man, when he spits that Sheffield "bastard!" you'd think it was Sean.

The good* thing about most of the side characters like Hogan and Nairn and even Wellington is that if one actor doesn't fit your mental image, chances are high they'll be replaced the following season, because the actors kept getting severely ill from contaminated food and water. They were filming in Crimea right after the collapse of the Soviet Union and there was almost no reliable infrastructure, so everybody got sick, and if they didn't get sick, they got hurt from poorly-managed practical effects. So even though Brian Cox is perfect as Hogan, he's only there for two (I think?) episodes, to be followed by a revolving door of other spymasters. And then of course our favorite heroine gets fridged, but that's a canon event so we can only weep quietly for hours every night.

*not actually good, quite bad in fact

[tomorrowusa]

Here is Jordan Klepper's entire special on how the GOP became the Party of Putin.

Brace yourself in that vid for another display of MAGA ignorance and stupidity.

The Kremlin is still using unmoderated social media and fake news sites to push disinformation and propaganda into the conspiracy-loving minds of Trump supporters. GOP members of Congress are among them.

The MAGA love for Putin is not due only to media manipulation. Putin's domestic policies closely mirror how the far right would govern in our country: official homophobia, greater income inequality, special treatment for billionaire oligarchs, rigged elections, a de facto official religion, poor consumer protection, censorship, restrictions on abortion, assassination of political opponents, and a lot more. What's not to like in Russia for a US far right fundamentalist? The fringe right pines for the days when women were in the kitchen, Jesus was in the classroom, gays were in the closet, and blacks were completely out of sight.

To truly understand Russia, it's absolutely necessary to talk with its neighbors – not with Tucker Carlson. So Jordan visited Estonia and met with Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.

IMHO, part of the Putin love by some Americans stems from an almost pathological ignorance of Eastern Europe. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, some idiots began proclaiming "the end of history" and whatever little learning about Eastern Europe which may have taken place in K-12 education then vanished totally.

Putin, a former officer in the Soviet secret police, wants to revive the Soviet Union in all but name. And imperialism is part of that plan.

People in the US who cheer Putin are like the Americans who applauded Hitler in the 1930s. As long as there is substantial support for Putin here we should worry about such people trying to make the US more like totalitarian Russia.

[hetalia-club]

So I told you guys about the Russian Pepsi fiasco circa 1989. Now let me tell you another lesser known fact about Pizza Hut in 1990. Gorbachev loved Pizza Hut. When I tell you this man loved Pizza Hut I mean he LOVED it.

He begged for America to allow Pizza Hut to come to Russia. For the longest time America said no. He would eat at Pizza Hut for every meal when he came to America. The man was absolutely foaming at the mouth for Pizza Hut pizza. After McDonalds opened their first location in Moscow America was like “you know whatever take your pizza, don’t say we never did anything for you”

The man campaigned for this restaurant so hard he neglected his country for a few months. He filmed a commercial that aired internationally. You can go and watch it on YouTube right now. Just search Gorbachev's Pizza Hut Commercial. This commercial aired all over the world for the longest time. He did it for his love of pizza and nothing else. How bizarre is that?

In fact it’s argued that because of Gorbachev's love of American food and pop culture is the reason the Soviet Union Collapsed. Because he was just bringing so much outside stuff in they were getting to see the rest of the world and they wanted more. In a weird way the commercial is a symbol of a capitalist victory. My Russian is pretty meh. But I know a Russian meme that was popular for awhile was A little old lady being asked if she liked Gorbachev and she responded with “Thanks to him, we have Pizza Hut!” Fucking wild.

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Ronin

The first time I watched Ronin I was sitting on a friend’s sofa down the road from where I was living with my parents. It was the early 00s. I was learning about movies from a fan of movies, seeing things I’d never seen before from someone I wasn’t good at being friends with. The second time I watched Ronin was last night.

1998 was a long, long time ago. 1998 was a time when people who grew up with the cold war in their lives were realising that maybe it was definitely over, and now, four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they had to come up with something else to do to justify all that spy stuff that was done. You know, all those listening programs and the manipulations and the lies and the counterprogramming and the language skills and peeing in weird places, like, that had to be for something, right?

Right?

Ronin is a 1998 sorta-spy movie, sorta-crime movie, mostly action movie made by people whose work I cannot meaningfully put in a good context but also had a script written by a guy people recognise called David Mamet. He wasn’t credited because, the trivia goes, there was a fight about it, and that makes it a thing to know about this movie, to show that you have done your time in the trivia mines.

The movie centres on a character named Sam, and is framed around the imagined story of the Samurai tradition of the Ronin. Sam is a former spy (maybe) doing crime work (maybe) for a non-state actor (maybe). He has to retrieve a case (or not) and it’s for this purpose or another. To describe the plot is to deflate it because this isn’t really a movie built around a plot as much as it is a movie built around a sequence of very tightly controlled events. Every single scene is setting up something for the next scene and there are very few times where something is set up in scene A only to fail to pay out until scene D.

It’s a movie that’s very well made, in that nothing feels to me like it’s out of place or weird or inappropriate. It is full of real-seeming things to me, creating a very tangible sense of excitement when you see a car plowing another card off the road. It even has a whole lady character in it, and her name isn’t something ridiculous like Vaginas O’Clock, which means that in the genre of spy action stories of the time, she’s doing okay!

Despite the way the movie feels really cool and like it’s perfectly put together, there’s something about it that nags at me. It’s that the opening uses title cards to explain what a Ronin is, in a German style script, and then the ending is narration, offered by a specific actor in their specific voice, relating to the experience of spending their time with another character in that movie. And… like, I can see why there’d be a challenge in making those two bookends the same, but not that hard of a challenge? As it is, it’s a movie introduced by one thing and concluded by another, for some reason I don’t understand. It’s a seam, it makes me think about why they couldn’t do this a better way.

Ronin is a type of movie that I used to think of as a Dad Movie in that it was the kind of movie a Dad would sit down to watch with glee knowing that broadly, sure, okay, there was violence in it if a kid walked in and saw it but it wasn’t going to involve having to explain anything to the kid that wasn’t a matter of degrees. If I was thirteen and my dad was watching this movie, I could probably (?) watch it with him, and he wouldn’t have to come up with an explanation for anything that made him uncomfortable to see me around.

It means that Ronin is a movie that largely is made up of sequences of people kicking ass and being cool, split into two halves where the first is a team coming together for an exciting heist and then the second half is where it’s all gone a bit wrong. Just describing what’s in Ronin is a kind of analysis itself; what someone notices in how they outline the movie versus what they choose to leave out presents something because this is a movie that is deliberately dense with information and sparse with explanation. Characters have relationships and backstory that are never explained because to the story that you’re getting here, in Ronin, it doesn’t matter at all.

And the whole thing is centrally about a bromance between two cool guys doing spy stuff! That’s fun!

I didn’t find anything in Ronin of a greater message, I think. It’s more like it’s archetypal; this is a movie about dudes, and rocking, and the way that dudes rocked, in that particular period of space and time. I mean it’s a well-made tersely directed movie created by people who are really good at making movies. You see, I say, waving my hand as if holding a vape, When Jean Reno, holds a gun, and he is sad, that, that is cinema.

Saying it like that feels as if it is to say that there’s nothing to Ronin is to imply that somehow what’s here is insubstantial. It’s not. It’s really cool, it’s extremely interesting and unmoored from most of its parameters, it’s got all these scenes of characters being really good at their jobs doing things that are cool, with style. If you’re familiar with the time and the space and the metaphor, you might be able to appreciate some subtly inferred and cleverly constructed meaning. To me, the meaning that’s there is the fantasy of an American spy successfully doing the thing that they supposedly do because they’re good at their jobs and they can get the results they want through the actions they commit.

All spy movies are fantasy movies.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[warsofasoiaf]

I kept wanting to post my ideas on what a full term gus hall presidency would look like and yet I never had the energy or time to do it. so basically I think the best description of him would be something like an american robespierre. Initially targeting groups genuinely hated and for some, justly so, by the general american public. like american fascists and nazi sympathizers as well as the cia and fbi for their roles in targetting the civil rights movement. Though using lies and manipulative tactics to get rid of threats and push forward radical policies and that are initially favored as well as putting supporters into power so he can rule by decree. like better rights for those historically discriminated. though as time goes on he then targets less "just" enemies like moderates on both sides, and those who while sympathetic to what he's trying to do, are opposed to his methods like harrington or labor unions until he's going full stalinist, killing even other leftists and anyone who isn't sufficiently loyal. If he succeeds in keeping power then his US is just an american USSR with all the implications that brings. if he fails and overplays his hands he gets removed and risks a civil war or opening up the US to a military dictatorship or a future demagogue.

While this is a lot better than what the Hall writers seem to have come up with, this doesn't really mesh with Gus Hall as he was in real life.

In our own history, Gus Hall was a dedicated vanguardist who offered his full-throated support for the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Domestically, he demanded the New Left fall in line and refused to even deign any of their criticism of the Soviet Union. He facilitated Soviet espionage through the CPUSA, laundered Soviet money, and was openly pro-authoritarian. The Hall writers, in this thread, largely ignored Hall's support of the Soviet invasions into Eastern Europe and Hall's own parroting of the Soviet line in favor of portraying him as a sort of well-meaning extremist and someone who regularly broke with the Soviets (ignoring that 90% of the time, he didn't). They portray his domestic policy using the CPUSA's policy from the 1990's after the Soviets fell, before that they were unflagging supporters of the Leninist model.

Hall in the TNO-verse would be uncompromising and brutal, regularly throwing any suspected counter-revolutionaries into prison. Hall (and one of the prominent people in his arc, Angela Davis) talked a big game criticizing the US's prison-industrial complex but issued glowing statements about the USSR's system of prison labor for dissidents - there's no reason to think that this wouldn't be the case in a Hall USA. Prison camps, extrajudicial violence, these would be as commonplace in a Hall USA as they would be in a Yockey USA.

Heck, given the TNO-verse, which has the Soviet Union collapse due to following Bukharinist thought, Hall should be even more extreme. The prevailing idea among TNO-verse Communists is that the Lenin NEP the reason that the Soviets failed against the Nazis, so they'd look to purge that sort of weakness from the nation that would cause it to collapse in the face of an ascendant Reich.

I don't know why the writers dropped the ball so spectacularly with Hall. The writers largely found the Hall they want to portray and worked backwards to justify it, ignoring all countervailing evidence, and it's honestly very disappointing. My theory is that there was pushback from his earlier portrayal, which definitely had its problems (the Lavender Scare) , which led them to overcorrect.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[frasier-crane-style]

Treadstone (2019) is "from the world of Jason Bourne" (and "based on an organization from the novels by Robert Ludlum," the credits tell us). It doesn't at all manage to capture the nervy energy of the movies, but don't worry--it's bad in its own right, too.

Tim Kring is the showrunner and he seems to be aiming for a repeat of his Heroes success, with a vast and diverse cast sprawling across the globe. But whereas the fun of Heroes was watching the characters intersect and slowly join together for an apocalyptic climax, almost everyone in Treadstone is off in their own little world. One storyline is set in 1973! Characters regularly disappear from the narrative for entire episodes on end and when they reappear, it's a chore to remember where we last left them and what they're up to.

The main thrust of the plot would seem to be a North Korean plot to buy a nuclear missile from Russia that's aimed at Washington DC--though the only person that seems to care about this is an intrepid reporter, while other agents are tasked with pressing concerns like investigating a shot-up 7/11 or taking over the contraband pain pills business in the Midwest (no sir, I am not joking).

Where you'd think all the individual threads would come together at the end of this ten-hour series to stop the threat once and for all, the show leaves pretty much nothing resolved, everything on hold for a canceled second season.

The storyline would seem to involve Russian sleeper agents called Cicadas who are being reactivated to cause trouble--or maybe they're American sleeper agents--and aren't they all a bit young to have anything to do with the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991? Han Hyo-joo was born in 1987. Did the Russians train her to snap necks as a toddler?

Maybe I'm being facetious, since the CIA turns out to be corrupt and involved in a nasty plot involving American big business, a Russian obligarch, and a North Korean coup. Why, if the bad guys were running the CIA, could they not have just ordered the good CIA agents to stand down? Or prevented them from knowing there was a plot in the first place? I guess they're just bad at their jobs.

After all, we're told that the longer a Cicada is inactive, the more their programming breaks down... which would seem to miss the entire point of a sleeper agent, if you ask me... leading to virtually every protagonist being a Treadstone agent who is able to defy orders and do whatever they want. Just in case you thought Jason Bourne was a one-in-a-million fluke.

I feel like I'm underselling how hard it is to keep track of everything that's going on... the Bourne movies had complicated plots, but they earned being complex, they felt like they were really depicting, with verisimilitude, how these characters would operate in the real world. Treadstone features a character recovering his lost memories because he takes drugs with a hippie. Now, why didn't Matt Damon ever think of that?

I'm just going to list every main character and you tell me if you think they should've pared this story down somewhere.

*John Randolph Bentley is a CIA agent in 1971 for a sort of Jason Bourne: Origins story. He breaks out of a Soviet brainwashing factory after being held there for nine months, then has to prove that there's no way he could've been brainwashed.

*Petra Andropov is the woman responsible for brainwashing Bentley and she also fell in love with him. In the present, she's an old lady guarding the nuclear missile everyone (well, one person) is worried about. Despite the missile being key to the bad guys' plot, the show states that she's been forgotten about and the missile left to rust--no one thought to check up on it before they needed to use it?

*Tara Coleman is the reporter who somehow ends up being the tip of the spear for tracking down the nuke and stopping Washington from getting nuked.

*Matt Edwards is the CIA agent who starts off a little concern about Washington glowing in the dark, but then gets sidetracked by a Cicada/Treadstone agent who went a bit nutty.

*Ellen Becker is a CIA chief who is basically on looking at big monitors and going "Jesus Christ, that's Jason Bourne" duty.

*Doug McKenna is another Cicada/Treadstone agent whose wife turns out to be his handler, because she fell in love with him while brainwashing him. Did we really need two takes on this rapey dynamic?

*Soyun Park is a Cicada/Treadstone agent in North Korea. Since she's a woman, her spouse is just a normal dude and she angsts instead about taking care of her kid.

If this doesn't sound like a lot of characters, keep in mind, almost none of them are sharing a subplot. They all have their own storylines which barely intersect with everyone else's story. I get that the intent is to show all or at least most of the tentacles of this vast conspiracy, but did we really need to know all these aspects of the conspiracy? Did it have to be so vast that it includes the opiate crisis, North Korea, Soviet nukes, the year 1973...

I think if they had just edited it down to a few characters whose story was all wrapped up at the end of the season, they could've been onto something, but the show as is just takes on so much and covers so much ground that none of it comes together. It all just ends up feeling like random noise. Say what you will about 24, but at least it has an ending every season.