Putin says sanctions are a ‘danger’ to the world; Ukraine counterattacks in Kharkiv while Russian troops are occupied in the south – CNBC

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U.S. ambassador to U.N. says Russia has deported up to 1.6 million Ukrainians to 'filtration camps'

New US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield speaks after meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the United Nations on February 25, 2021 in New York City.

Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that Russian authorities have forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens from their homes to Russia.

"We have evidence that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens including children have been interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported, and some of them sent to very remote areas," Thomas-Greenfield told reporters ahead of the U.N. Security Council meeting.

"I want to be clear, the United States has information that officials from Russia's presidential administration are overseeing and coordinating these filtration operations," Thomas-Greenfield said, without naming Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Thomas-Greenfield outlined the "filtration" process for members of the U.N. National Security Council.

"You're stripped of your clothes, you are interrogated, you're beaten. You hear gunfire and screams from rooms next door. Others deemed more threatening are being tortured and killed. Because you are fighting age, you're asked to fight for Russia," she said.

"When you refuse, you're given a Russian passport and set deep into Russia against your will far away from your family and with no means to communicate with anyone you know or love. You've been filtered," she added.

The Kremlin has denied that it has forcibly detained Ukrainian civilians.

Amanda Macias

U.N. inspectors vowed to continue their visit to a Russian-held nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine despite an early shelling attack on the town next to the facility.

Genya Savilov | Afp | Getty Images

Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya said that Russia tried to exert pressure on IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi during his visit to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Kyslytsya addressed members of the U.N. Security Council.

Grossi, who led a team of investigators to the site earlier this month, published a report yesterday on the nuclear watchdog agency's findings.

Grossi recommended an immediate establishment of a demilitarized zone at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Amanda Macias

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky looks on at a press conference for selected media at his official residence the Maryinsky Palace on March 3, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Laurent Van Der Stockt | Getty Images

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is considering the possibility of participating in the G-20 summit.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said during a national telethon that Zelenskyy may participate but has not yet made his decision. It is not clear if Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the G-20.

The meeting will be held in Bali, Indonesia next month.

Amanda Macias

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a news conference after meeting with top Japanese Ministers at the U.S. State Department on July 29, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Drew Angerer | Getty Images

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his Polish counterpart Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau on ways to continue coordinating support for Ukraine.

"The Secretary thanked Poland for its sustained security assistance and humanitarian support to Ukraine and its generosity in hosting millions of refugees from Ukraine," according to a readout of the call from State Department spokesman Ned Price.

"The Secretary also discussed strengthening bilateral cooperation on civil nuclear power generation in Poland to advance shared energy security, climate change, and national security objectives," Price added.

Amanda Macias

Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he spoke with the new British foreign secretary James Cleverly.

"We see eye to eye on the main goal: Ukraine must win," Kuleba wrote in a tweet.

"We will work actively together to persuade others across the globe to support it, especially those who may still have doubts. The fact that our call was Foreign Secretary's first speaks for itself," he added.

Cleverly became the U.K.'s foreign minister after Liz Truss ascended from that role to prime minister.

Amanda Macias

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends the NATO summit via video link, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 29, 2022.

Ukrainian Presidential Press Service | via Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on the "military, humanitarian and economic situation in Ukraine," according to a German readout of the call.

The two leaders also discussed efforts to support Ukraine during its reconstruction from the war.

"The Chancellor stressed that Germany would not stop supporting Ukraine militarily, but also politically, financially and on a humanitarian level," German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit wrote.

Scholz also received an update from Zelenskyy about the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

The two leaders agreed to remain in close contact.

Amanda Macias

A combine harvester of Continental Farmers Group agricultural company harvests wheat on August 4, 2022 in the Ternopil region of Ukraine.

Alexey Furman | Getty Images

More than 50 agricultural vessels have departed Ukraine for Asia in the first month since exports restarted, Ukraine's Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said.

Under the U.N.-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal to reopen three Ukrainian ports, 54 vessels carrying more than 1 million metric tons of agricultural products have been exported to Asia. He added that so far 16 vessels have departed Ukraine for Africa carrying nearly half a million metric tons of grain and other foodstuffs.

Another 32 vessels carrying nearly 1 million metric tons of agricultural goods have departed for European ports.

Amanda Macias

Doctors Without Borders (MSF), in cooperation with the Ukrainian railways and the Ministry of Health, has just completed a new medical train referral of 48 patients, coming from hospitals close to the frontline in the war-affected east of the country.

Genya Savilov | AFP | Getty Images

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, there have been at least 516 attacks on vital health services in the country, the World Health Organization'sSurveillance System for Attacks on Health Careestimates.

The organization reports that health care facilities were damaged 438 times, ambulances were targeted in 73 cases and at least 144 attacks affected crucial medical supplies. The group also estimated that attacks on health services led to at least 100 deaths and 129 injuries.

The Kremlin has previously denied that it targets civilian infrastructure like hospitals, schools and apartment buildings.

Amanda Macias

A serviceman with a Russian flag on his uniform stands guard near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict outside the Russian-controlled city of Enerhodar in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine August 4, 2022.

Alexander Ermochenko | Reuters

Ukraine's deputy prime minister called on residents near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to evacuate the area amid reports of Russian troops holding Ukrainians in the area hostage.

"The Russians are holding hostage not only the staff of the station. Residents of the temporarily occupied territories adjacent to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are also held hostage. Tens of thousands of people," Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on Telegram, according to an NBC News translation.

Vereshchuk added thatUkraine's Ministry of Reintegration requested a humanitarian corridor in order to evacuate the civilian population from areas adjacent to the nuclear power plant.

"The answer is cynical silence," she said.

Amanda Macias

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping plan to meet next week in Uzbekistan at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization forum, a Russian official said on Wednesday.

Photo by Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping plan to meet next week in Uzbekistan, a Russian official said Wednesday, announcing a summit that could signal another step in warming ties between two powers that are increasingly facing off against the West.

Putin and Xi last met in Beijing in February, weeks before the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine.

The two presidents oversaw the signing of an agreement pledging that relations between the sides would have no limits.

It remains unclear whether Xi knew at the time of Russias plans to invade Ukraine.

Associated Press

People arrive at the central train station from Pokrovsk, in the eastern part of Ukraine on April 11, 2022 in Lviv, Ukraine.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

More than 7 million Ukrainianshave become refugees and moved to neighboring countries since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the U.N. Refugee Agency estimates.

Nearly 4 million of those people have applied for temporary resident status in neighboring Western countries, according to data collected by the agency.

"The escalation of conflict in Ukraine has caused civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure, forcing people to flee their homes seeking safety, protection and assistance," the U.N. Refugee Agency wrote.

Amanda Macias

ISTANBUL, TURKIYE - AUGUST 09: An aerial view of "Glory" named empty grain ship as Representatives of Russia, Ukraine, Turkiye and the United Nations (UN) of the Joint Coordination Center (JCC) conduct inspection on vessel in Istanbul, Turkiye on August 09, 2022. The UN, Russia, and Ukraine signed a deal on July 22 to reopen three Ukrainian ports -- Odessa, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhny -- for grain that has been stuck for months because of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, which is now in its sixth month. (Photo by Ali Atmaca/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

The organization overseeing the export of agricultural products from Ukraine said that so far 96 vessels have left the besieged country since ports reopened.

The Joint Coordination Center, an initiative of Ukraine, Russia, the United Nations and Turkey, said the ships transported a total of 2,212,972 metric tons of grain and other food products.

Amanda Macias

A Russian serviceman stands guard the territory outside the second reactor of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Energodar on May 1, 2022.

Andrey Borodulin | AFP | Getty Images

Ukraine's top nuclear inspector says the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant could be shut down if hostilities continue around the plant. Europe's largest nuclear plant continues to be at the center of accusations between Russia and Ukraine with both repeatedly accusing each other of shelling the Russian-occupied facility.

The head of Ukraine's nuclear regulatory body,Oleh Korikov, said shutting down the plant was under consideration.

"Further deterioration of the situation will lead to the fact that we will be forced to operate backup diesel power generators in order to sustain our security systems, and diesel fuel reserves are very difficult to replenish in conditions of war," Korikov said Wednesday in an interview broadcast on YouTube.

"In fact, we will need four tanks of diesel per day. It is very problematic to bring such a volume of fuel across the contact line now. That is, we can potentially get into a situation where we run out of diesel, which can lead to an accident with damage to the active zone of the reactors and the release of radioactive products into the environment. Then it will have consequences not only for Ukraine but also for other countries," he said.

"The option of turning off the station is indeed considered if appropriate conditions arise that would require such a stop. If this happens, the 6th power unit will be turned off."

The 6th reactor is currently the only one functioning in the plant, which was inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency last week.

In the52-page report, IAEA investigators warned that while ongoing shelling "has not yet triggered a nuclear emergency, it continues to represent a constant threat to nuclear safety and security."

"The IAEA recommends that shelling on site and in its vicinity should be stopped immediately to avoid any further damages to the plant and associated facilities, for the safety of the operating staff and to maintain the physical integrity to support safe and secure operation," wrote IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi.

Holly Ellyatt

Britain's Ministry of Defense has confirmed earlier reports from officials in Ukraine that the armed forces there have been counterattacking Russian positions in the northeastern and eastern parts of the country, as well the south, where a counteroffensive was launched last week.

"Over the last 24 hours, heavy fighting has taken place on three fronts: in the north, near Kharkiv; in the east in the Donbas; and in the south in Kherson Oblast," the ministry said in its latest intelligence update Wednesday.

"Russia's planned main effort is probably an advance on Bakhmut in the Donbas, but commanders face a dilemma of whether to deploy operational reserves to support this offensive, or to defend against continued Ukrainian advances in the south," the ministry added.

Firefighters at the rubble of a building destroyed by Russia's missile strike in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Sept. 06, 2022.

Metin Aktas | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

"Multiple concurrent threats spread across 500km will test Russia's ability to coordinate operational design and reallocate resources across multiple groupings of forces. Earlier in the war, Russia's failure to do this was one of the underlying reasons for the military's poor performance," it said.

Holly Ellyatt

Russia has indicated that plans are being made for President Vladimir Putin to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from Sept.15-16.

Russian envoy to Beijing, Andrey Denisov, told reporters on Wednesday that "in less than ten days we will have a regular meeting of our SCO leaders in Samarkand, we are getting ready for it. In general, this summit promises to be interesting, because it will be the first full-fledged summit since the pandemic," he said in comments reported by Russian state news agency Tass.

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Putin says sanctions are a 'danger' to the world; Ukraine counterattacks in Kharkiv while Russian troops are occupied in the south - CNBC

Putin to be tested by Ukrainian counterattacks commanders face dilemma over focus – Express

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Six months after Vladimir Putin announced the special military operation in Ukraine, Moscows commanders are said to be facing a dilemma. An intelligence update suggests they must choose between pursuing an offensive in the Donbas or to focus on defence in the south of Ukraine.

The UK Ministry of Defence this morning reported: Over the last 24 hours, heavy fighting has taken place on three fronts: in the north, near Kharkiv; in the east in the Donbas; and in the south in Kherson Oblast.

Russias planned main effort is probably an advance on Bakhmut in the Donbas.

But commanders face a dilemma of whether to deploy operational reserves to support this offensive, or to defend against continued Ukrainian advances in the south.

Intelligence officials at the British body added multiple concurrent threats over a large area will test Russias ability to coordinate operational design.

This will relate not only to the designation of troops but of resources.

Military economist Marcus Keupp today told German broadcaster NTV that in a year at the latest, the Russian army will have no more tans if the rate of attrition continues at this rate.

He said: Russia still has artillery superiority.

But within a month, the scale could be roughly tied between Russia and Ukraine with regards to arms.

READ MORE: Weakened Putin 'running out of weapons' - could be level with Ukraine

They said: Earlier in the war, Russias failure to do this was one of the underlying reasons for the militarys poor performance.

The success of Ukraines counterattacks could, however, rely on the ability of the West to continue supplying it with weaponry.

This ability becomes more strained by the week, as the Wests own supplies run dry.

A US defence official late last month told the Wall Street Journal that the level of military storage for certain combat resources are uncomfortably low.

Brad Martin, Director of the Institute for Supply Chain Secure at the Rand Corporation, added: Nations assume the risk that war is not going to take place, and have the assumption they can react when they need to.

It simply might not be true that you can ramp up [production quickly].

See more here:

Putin to be tested by Ukrainian counterattacks commanders face dilemma over focus - Express

Musk cited Putin speech in early attempt to get out of Twitter deal – Business Insider

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Elon Musk wanted to "slow down" his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter months after Russia invaded Ukraine, saying in private texts that it wouldn't make sense to buy Twitter "if we're heading into World War 3."

These texts came to light in a hearing Tuesday about pushing back a trial in October over Musk's deal to buy Twitter, along with other disputes about discovery. Musk told Twitter in July he was officially backing out of his agreement to buy the company in a letter that argued Twitter had wrongfully withheld data on "bots" and spam accounts.

The text messages were sent May 8 to a banker at Morgan Stanley, which is financing part of Musk's deal. In these texts, the billionaire also cited a coming speech from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin gave a speech May 9 for the 77th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, where he said Russia's decision to invade Ukraine in February was the "only right decision" and baselessly claimed the West was "preparing for invasion of Russia."

"Let's slow down just a few days," Twitter's lawyer said, reading out Musk's texts during the hearing. "Putin's speech tomorrow is really important. It won't make sense to buy Twitter if we're heading into World War 3."

A lawyer for Musk, Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, said the characterization of the texts in court was "utter nonsense as the full text chain shows." The full text chain is expected to be filed on the court docket next week.

Musk signed an agreement in April to buy Twitter and take it private. When Musk said he was dropping the deal in July, Twitter almost immediately sued him to enforce the contract and make Musk acquire it at the agreed-upon $44 billion price. Musk is widely seen to be on the back foot in the court battle, set to go to a five-day trial in early October.

Before Tuesday's hearing, Musk's lawyers cited a whistleblower complaint from Peiter Zatko, Twitter's former chief information-security officer, who told Congress last month in a formal disclosure that Twitter was inadequately dealing with various security issues. They said the issues Zatko presented called for more time.

In reading Musk's texts, Twitter's lawyer reiterated the company's argument that Musk was in contractual breach and his only motivation for trying to get out of the deal was personal financial concerns. Lawyers for Musk argued during the hearing that Twitter hadn't found any evidence to support its theory that he dropped the deal over economic concerns. "Their theory about what really happened isn't what really happened," his lawyer said at the hearing.

The Tesla CEO's legal team argues the social-media company intentionally misled him about the number of daily users and spam accounts on its site, amounting to fraud and breach of contract.

Are you a Twitter employee or someone with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.

Contact Grace Kay at gkay@insider.com.

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Musk cited Putin speech in early attempt to get out of Twitter deal - Business Insider

‘Lukashenko Is Easier to Unseat Than Putin’ – The Atlantic

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No revolutionary posters line the streets, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues, as they did when George Orwell left Barcelona to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Nor can you hear loudspeakers bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night, as Orwell did in 1936. Instead, gathered in a basement on a quiet, tree-lined street, the Belarusians preparing to leave Warsaw to join the Ukrainian army look more like a bunch of computer programmers getting ready for a long car trip.

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

Maybe thats because they are a bunch of computer programmersor anyway, some of them aregathered in a basement on a quiet, tree-lined street, getting ready for a long car trip. Canned food, dried sausage, and bags of nuts and raisins are neatly stacked on the floor beside a pile of backpacks. A couple of SUVs are parked just outside. The cars have been donated by Polish or Belarusian sympathizers, or else were left behind by others who have departed for the front. The group I am meeting will be leaving for the Ukrainian border in an hour, and they are speaking with me on the condition that I dont take pictures and dont ask for names. If they are identified, members of their families could be visited, harassed, even arrested by the Belarusian police. Our relatives are hostages, one of them told me. Already, mothers of Belarusian soldiers fighting in Ukraine have been forced to make public statements denouncing their children.

I can tell you that they are young, in their 20s and 30s, and that they are on their way to join the Kastus Kalinouski Regiment, a military unit founded in March as a part of the Ukrainian army but with a separate, Belarusian status. I can also tell you that, appearances to the contrary, they and their leaders are thoroughly grounded in the international history of armed rebellion. They know their 19th-century antecedents: Kastus Kalinouski fought in the failed 1863 uprising against the Russian occupation of what was then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They know their 20th-century antecedents too, among them not just Orwell in Spain but Jzef Pisudski, a Polish general who fought with the Austrian army in 1914 because he hoped, eventually, to liberate Poland. Although Kalinouski was executed and Orwells cause ultimately failed, Pisudski marched his Polish Legions into Warsaw. By 1918, he was the leader of independent Poland. The men in the basement are going to Ukraine both because they are, like Orwell in Spain, sympathizers with another countrys democratic cause, and because they hope, like Pisudski in Poland, to eventually liberate Belarus from the dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for nearly three decades.

From the August 1923 issue: Jzef Pisudski, Aristocrat-Revolutionary

Hope is tempered with realismthey are headed for the front line of one of the most brutal wars of the 21st centuryand bolstered by desperation, the feeling that other, better roads to political change have disappeared. K, a man in his 20sfloppy blond hair, green T-shirt, ripped shortstold me he had begun his career working in a government office in Minsk, but quickly realized what that meant. Your work, everything that you do, is to make sure that the Lukashenko regime remains in power, he said. During a series of mass protests following a stolen election in 2020, a moment all of them call the revolution, K and a friend distributed leaflets with slogans criticizing the regime. The friend is now in prison, serving a four-year sentence (K tells me his name; later I find it on a list of political prisoners). After Russia invaded Ukraine, K was racked with guilt, unable to sleep, angry that the failure of the Belarusian revolution meant that Russian rockets could be launched at Ukraine from Belarus. I understood that we have an obligation to go to Kyiv, he says. And afterwards, we will go to Minsk.

We didnt finish our revolution, we didnt remove Lukashenko, we didnt prevent Russian troops from crossing our border to attack Ukraineall of these are reasons, now, to fight in Ukraine. A long-haired man, R (one of the computer programmers), told me that he, too, took part in the 2020 demonstrations, and that he, too, left Belarus afterward. But then R returned home for a visit. What he saw shocked him. People had stopped protesting: People arent fighting. This lifehe means life under the dictatorshipis enough for them. How can they just go on as if nothing is happening, as if rockets are not flying? To me its surreal.

Most of the men I spoke with have other options; they could have good lives outside Belarus if they wanted to. B, wearing a white T-shirt printed with the slogan INSPIRE, revealed halfway through our conversation that he speaks good English, and we switched from Russian. He has family in the U.S., and has been there several times (Bay Area Yosemite National Park ). His dream was to watch Woody Allen playing jazz in New York, but on the night he went to Caf Carlyle, Allen wasnt there. He describes himself as a digital nomador maybe better to say international homelessand has been traveling around Europe for the past few years. He, too, works in the world of computers, but he has wanted to fight in Ukraine since the war began. In March, it was very cold, and I was very scared. Although I am still scared, he said, those emotional videos, watching them one after another, over and over again, month by month, week by week, finally persuaded him to sign on with the Kalinouski Regiment.

Want to hear more from Anne Applebaum about Russias war on Ukraine? Join her, George Packer, and Franklin Foer at The Atlantic Festival, Friday, September 23. Register and find out more here.

K, R, and B might all be roughly described as Minsk intellectuals. Their leaders, organizing papers in the next room, tell me that among the volunteers are also recent high-school graduates, factory workers, ex-policemen. Some arrive in Warsaw on overnight buses from Belarus with no money and no plans, other than to join the Ukrainian army. On the front gate of the Kalinouski Warsaw headquarters is a sign with a phone number, in case volunteers show up when no one is around. How do they know where to go? Everyone knows, one of them told me.

I was also told about much rougher recruits, including former criminals, though I didnt encounter any myself. One of the exiles who staffs the Warsaw recruitment office put it like this: Certain kinds of people are drawn to the idea of weapons, fighting. Several former members of the Belarusian military and security services are also known to be fighting with the Ukrainian army, some in the Kalinouski Regiment and some in other units. Slowly, they are linking up with one another, and with sympathizers elsewhere. On August 9, a congress of the unified Belarusian opposition appointed Valery Sakhashchik, the former commander of a legendary paratrooper unit in the Belarusian army, as the effective minister of defense in exile; I spoke with him while he was in a car, driving to Ukraine for his first formal meeting with the Kalinouski Regiment. Sakhashchik left Belarus six years agoit was impossible to be a free person there, he told meand has been running a successful construction firm in Poland. He thinks the regiment might not yet be important militarily, but it is important emotionally, because a lot of people believe it represents the future of the Belarusian army.

Whether they make contact in advance or just appear on the doorstep, whether their background is in the military or at a university, all of the volunteers go through a verification process. Pavel Kukhta, the head of the Kalinouski Warsaw recruitment office (and one of the few people who has been public about his association with the regiment), told me that Belarusian kiberpartizanticyberpartisanshave hacked most of the databases used by the Belarusian KGB and can check whether residential, educational, and professional information is genuine. If its not, the men get sent on to the border anyway, where Ukrainian border guards will stop them and question them further. What happens after that to those who have given false information, Kukhta doesnt know.

Anne Applebaum: Russias war against Ukraine has turned into terrorism

Kukhta doesnt know a lot of things. He wont say where the new recruits will be training, or where they will be sent afterward. He cant say with any precision exactly how many of them are already fighting (hundreds). The less you know, the less you can accidentally reveal.

Even putting aside the need for operational security, Kukhta, who has been fighting with the Ukrainian army since 2016, originally in the Donbas, is clearly a man of few words. For this role, he doesnt need many. A couple of times while I am talking with the new recruits, he comes into the room where the men are waiting. He collects their passports, checks their names. There are no inspirational speeches and no drama: Everyone here has already made their decision and accepted the consequences. When I leave, they are lining up in the garden.

The next time I see themor I think I see themis a week later, in a scraggly field behind a parking lot in a suburb in central Ukraine. New recruits, perhaps including some I met in Warsaw, are dressed in camouflage, carrying weapons, and, in a nod to my presence, wearing balaclavas to hide their faces. Their uniforms were crowdfunded or donated by sympathizers in both Poland and Belarus. Their guns came from the Ukrainian army. Their trainer is from one of the Baltic states. He is particularly valued by the Belarusians because he has passed several NATO courses, and they want to learn to fight like NATO soldiers. One of the many ironies of the current moment is how many opponents of Putins Russia, from the Baltic to the Black Sea (and indeed all the way to Central Asia), share Russian as a common language and can use it to organize, even to teach American military doctrine, across national lines.

I watch them with Rokosh, the alias of a man who has been part of different Belarusian-democracy movements since the 1990s. He explains that todays exercises involve training to fight in cities. On other days they go to the Ukrainian armys shooting ranges, or practice trench warfare; the field has been dug up for that purpose. They follow a strict schedulemorning exercise, all-day training, films or lectures in the eveningsand live together in a run-down dormitory nearby.

Rokosh earlier joined me for a longer conversation in an unremarkable basement bar with three other Belarusians associated with the regiment or with the Belarusian opposition. All of them belong to a different generation from the men in the field. They have watched the rise and fall of various opposition movements and leaders since 1994, when Lukashenko first came to power. They watched his regime turn from the soft authoritarian rule of a collective-farm boss into a vicious, violent autocracy that tortures political prisoners and allows the Russian army to launch missiles into Ukraine from its territory. They remember the Soviet Union, and they do not want their country to become part of a neo-Soviet empire. What they want instead, one of them told me, is a radical change in the political system, legal system, economic system, and deep reforms of the entire society to bring Belarus to the principles of democracy and the rule of law. But they do not believe the current regime will disintegrate peacefully.

Like everybody else in the post-Soviet world, Rokosh and the other men have read Gene Sharp, the philosopher of nonviolent revolution and civic activism who died in 2018. They admire his ideas, but they dont think they apply to their situation anymore. Nonviolence was tried in Belarus. It failed. Flowers and demonstrations could not change this situation, one of them says, so it is time to try something else. They tell me about partisan underground movements inside their countryone of them is called Flying Storkswhich have, they say, racked up a few minor victories, including a drone attack on the headquarters of OMON, the Belarusian riot police, in Minsk. They also say they have distributed clandestine training videos designed to help people counter the tactics of the riot police: The peoples right to revolt is justified because all civilized methods of changing the situation were exhausted, one said. Even so, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a turning point, a different level of threat, a shock to the system, a spit in the face. If Ukraine does not win, one of them told me, we will have to say goodbye to any idea of a free Belarus.

They arent the first to draw that conclusion. In the very early days of the war, inspired by another piece of historythe Belarusians who blew up railway lines and train stations to stop the Nazi advance into the Soviet Union in the early 1940sa group of Belarusian railway workers, helped by the kiberpartizanti, sabotaged some of the Russian trains carrying soldiers and supplies to the front. They mixed the signals, snarled the tracks, took down the computer system, damaged equipment. One group of saboteurs came under police attack while setting fire to a signaling box. A Belarusian Telegram channel, Belaruski Gayun, also helped by providing constantly updated information from anonymous subscribers on troop and equipment movements along the border, allowing Ukrainians to prepare. The channel is still going, and is still read carefully by those guarding the territory of northern Ukraine.

The members of the Kalinouski Regiment are motivated by a belief that the Belarusian regime is both much weaker and much more dangerous than many assume. Lukashenko, they argue, is deeply unpopular. They reckon that no more than 10 to 20 percent of the population supports himmostly pensioners, bureaucrats, and security-service employees who depend on the state for jobs in a failing economyand he knows this. Lukashenko has no ideology, but he will do anything to stay in power. That means that when Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens, as he did at the end of June, to transfer nuclear missiles to Belarus, the world should pay attention. Putin might want to avoid the geopolitical consequences of using nuclear weapons for the first time since 1945but Lukashenko might not care.

Putin could also force Lukashenko to send Belarusian troops to fight in Ukraine, but that kind of decision could have unintended consequences. Kukhta, Rokosh, and the others all say their regiment has been contacted directly by soldiers and officers now serving in the Belarusian army who want instructions on how to surrender if they are ordered to cross the border into Ukraine. Kukhta, the man of few words, gave them blunt advice: Put your hands up and your weapons down. He predicts that the majority of the Belarusian armys tanks and trucks would wind up in the control of the Ukrainian army. Although there is no way to verify that claim, at least one Belarusian border guard has successfully escaped to the Ukrainian side already, declaring that he wanted to join the fight against Russia. Sakhashchik, who also predicts that the majority of ordinary soldiers would not fight, made a video appeal back in February, calling on Belarusian soldiers not to join the invasion: This is not our war. You will not defend your homeland, home, or family and will not receive gloryonly shame, humiliation, and death.

The Kalinouski fighters think Belarus has another kind of significance too. After all, if the Russian leader wants to reunite Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine into some kind of neo-Soviet empire, Lukashenkos loyalty is a necessary ingredient. But what if the Belarusian pillar disappears? Then everything elsethe empire, the war with Ukraine, Putinism itselfmight crumble as well. This, they want the world to know, is an opportunity that should be taken, not least because, as one of them put it, Lukashenko is easier to unseat than Putin. Right now nobody other than the Poles and of course the Ukrainians is assisting the Kalinouski fighters. But maybe someday others will. Rokosh tells me that he wants the fighters eventually to get access to better Western and NATO intelligence about what goes on inside their country so that they can plan their next steps better. The Biden administrations warnings last autumn about the coming war in Ukraine convinced many people across Eastern Europe, Belarus included, that the Americans know a lot more than they let on. Alongside Gene Sharp, the fighters have also read Charlie Wilsons War, the book that describes how, in the 1980s, a single congressman persuaded Washington to help the Afghans overthrow their Soviet occupiers. If it happened once, maybe it could happen again?

Before I leave the scruffy field, I watch the volunteers get put through their paces. They are walking in groups of three, one behind the other, as if they were in an occupied city. Some of them are slow and awkward, giving the impression that this is the first time theyve ever held a gun. Some move faster, seem more experienced; one of them told me back in Warsaw that hes had some police training, and I wonder if he is one of the men moving lightly, adeptly, across the field. Several other people, including a young woman, are watching from the sidelines, listening intently to the words of the Baltic trainer. One of them has a Cossack haircutshaved head, except for a ponytailand arms covered in patriotic tattoos.

The trainer turns on heavy-metal music, and that adds a bit more drama to the scene. The sun beats down on the suburb, and I begin to feel bad about the balaclavas. The trainees repeat the same exercises over and over again. Rokosh explains that the idea, as with all military training, is for these moves to become automatic, instinctive. Computer programmers, high-school graduates, government bureaucrats, and maybe the odd thief must learn in just a few weeks to react without thinking when they are attacked.

However wearisome the exercise might be, this is the easy part, the predictable part. They will train, they will prepare, they will be sent to the frontall of that, they know. What they dont know is the true nature of the historical moment they inhabit, or how it will end. They have made a bet, but is it the right one?

Here is one more story told to me by the group in the basement bar: In 2021, a few members of the Belarusian underground started communicating clandestinely with some senior Belarusian officers who said they were ready to oppose the regime. After many months of conversation, the partisans finally agreed to travel outside the country, to Russia, in order to meet them; the officers said they didnt dare do so at home but could not travel abroad anywhere else. The meeting was a trap. As soon as the Belarusian-underground leaders arrived, they were all arrested and imprisoned.

I hear the historical echo in the story, as do the Kalinouski fighters. In the winter of 1945, 16 officers of the Polish resistance, all veterans of the struggle against Hitler, began to communicate clandestinely with Ivan Serov, the Red Army general who had just arrived to run the occupation of Poland. Convinced he wanted to help, they arranged to meet him in March. But it was a trap. They were all arrested, flown to Moscow, and imprisoned in the Lubyanka, the Soviet Unions most notorious prison, where three of them eventually died.

That story unfolded at a moment of maximum Soviet strength, when the Second World War was mostly won, the Yalta Agreement had already divided Europe into spheres of Soviet and Western influence, and no outsidersnot the British, not the Americanswere in a position to help the Poles. In 1918, by contrast, Pisudski liberated Warsaw from czarist occupation at a moment of maximum Russian weakness, when the Bolshevik revolution had begun, the Russian army had collapsed, and Europes other imperial autocracies, in Germany and Austria-Hungary, were failing as well.

But is this 1918, with Russian power waning? Or is this 1945, when it is finally consolidating? The Belarusians dont know, of course, but they want to influence the answer. In the bar, I asked the men if they are waiting for the right moment to return home. We are not waiting for the moment, one of them corrected me. We are working on creating the conditions that will make the right moment arrive.

They believe that if they lean hard on the scales of history and help the Ukrainians win, then both Russia and its Belarusian satrap will be far weaker. They could pay a high pricenot just with their time and effort but with their lives. On June 26, the commander of one of the Belarusian battalions died during the battle for Lysychansk. Ivan Marchuk, alias Brest, was 28. Others have also been killed, wounded, or captured.

But if they dont fight, they might pay another kind of price: If Ukraine loses and Russia is empowered, then Belarus will remain a dictatorship, and they will never be able to go home. Those of us who live in luckier countries, with better geography, dont know what it feels like to have a choice between fighting and exile, but all of the people sweating in this field truly do. Back in Warsaw, one of the volunteers told me that since leaving his country in 2020, he had done nothing but move from place to place, trying to make a different life but never really finding a home. Belarus is his only home, but before he can return there, he has to help change it. I run. And I run. And I run. I would like to stop running.

This article appears in the October 2022 print edition with the headline The Kalinouski Regiment. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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'Lukashenko Is Easier to Unseat Than Putin' - The Atlantic

Six Months of War: What Putin Wanted; What Putin Got – The Moscow Times

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Declarations

In the early morning of the first day of the war on Feb. 24, President Vladimir Putin defined the objectives of the countrys "special operation" as "protecting the inhabitants of Donbas, demilitarizing and denazifying Ukraine," and "bringing to justice those who have committed innumerable bloody crimes."

Continuing a Soviet tradition the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and Afghanistan in December 1979 Putin said that he had "decided on a special military operation" in response to a request from the leaders of Donbas. And he stressed that "Russia has no plans to occupy Ukrainian territories.

Two and a half months later, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov complimented his boss, saying that the special military operation was designed to put an end to the reckless expansion and the reckless course of total U.S. domination." Four months later he corrected Putin: "the geographical objectives of the 'special operation' have changed. Now it is not only the DNR and LNR [Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples Republics], but also a number of other territories." And one of the generals even issued the enigmatic statement that "control over the South of Ukraine is another path to Transnistria [a Moldovan break-away state supported by Russia], where facts of oppression of the Russian-speaking population are also being observed."

Ultimate goals multiplied in the statements of various Russian officials, from security chief Nikolai Patrushev and parliament chairman Vyacheslav Volodin, Sergei Lavrov and presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, and Putin himself. Now they included "preventing war from starting on the territory of Ukraine"; "restoring the statehood of the LNR and DNR within the borders of 2014; and "achieving a guarantee of Ukraine's real neutral status."

The "demilitarization" of Ukraine? In the six months of war Ukraine has received the most modern Western-made weapons worth tens of billions of dollars that it did not have before. Just the latest tranche for weapons, air defense systems, surface-to-air missiles, radars and artillery from the U.S. government was valued at $2.98 billion.

Denazification of Ukraine? It seems that no one except the Russian Chekists doing reconnaissance has seen them, and if someone else did see some Nazis, there were about as many of them in Ukraine as there are on Moscows Pushkin Square on Adolf Hitler's birthday. None of the dozens of journalists from around the world who broadcast their reports from Ukraine have met any Nazis or fascists. But the rhetoric from various Russian official and quasi-official speakers makes us think that some of the thousands of recordings of Hitlers speeches were put to good use.

Protecting the Russian-speaking population of the eastern and southern regions? Where were they protected in the almost completely destroyed city of Mariupol, where more than 89% of the population considered Russian their spoken language? Or in Kharkiv, which has been mercilessly bombed for week after week, killing civilians, and where 95% of the population speak (spoke?) Russian? Or Mykolaiv, where over 50% of the population, according to the census, speak Russian as their mother tongue, and which is being destroyed by cluster bombs, according to a Philadelphia Inquire reporter who was just there? A curious defense strategy: pile up the corpses of the people youre defending.

Putin, and Peskov after him, called the goal of the military operation the restoration of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk republics to their 2014 borders. Today Russian troops control almost all of the Luhansk region and less than 60 percent of the Donetsk. Judging by reports from the fronts, this situation is not going to change any time soon.

It certainly doesnt look like it. A year before the war, in February 2021, there were 4,650 soldiers and officers under NATO command, and now there are almost ten times as many 40,000. In the near future, the number of NATO troops will increase to 300,000. This, military analysts say, is the largest increase in NATO strength since the end of the Cold War. The border between Russia and NATO countries also doubled after Finland and Sweden joined the alliance from 1,207 to 2,575 km.

And now the cost. According to American intelligence, the irrecoverable losses of the Russian Armed Forces in the six months of the war amounted to 70-80,000: 15-20,000 dead (during the 9 years and 2 months of the Afghan war about 15,000 Soviet soldiers and officers were killed), and 60,000 wounded and captured (in Afghanistan over 110 months about 35,000).

Over the six months of war, the Russian army has lost 3-4,000 tanks and armored personnel carriers. Almost all the countrys high-precision weapons have been used, and the production of new missiles is held up because they cant get microchips and semiconductors, which are under sanctions. Anti-ship missiles and Soviet Grads, which have a range of several hundred meters, are being used for strikes.

The shortage of hardware has forced the Russian army to scavenge for weapons, transfer them by quasi-trade ships from the military base in Syria, buy drones from Iran, and even consider North Korea's offer to buy artillery from them.

The situation with manpower is even worse. Due to their heavy losses, Russia is carrying out voluntary mobilization. According to various estimates, 30-35,000 volunteers have been sent to training camps with subsequent deployment in the active army. Soldiers are also being recruited from high-security prisons and deployed in private security companies. Battalions that carried out peacekeeping duties in Nagorno-Karabakh and troops from de facto annexed South Ossetia are also being sent to the front.

Each day of the war costs taxpayers about $500 million. In July, Finance Ministry statistics showed a federal budget deficit of 892 billion rubles, a drop of 22.5% in oil and gas revenues despite high energy prices, and a nearly 30% drop in revenue from tax collection. The expected loss of GDP by the end of the year is 8%, with a further contraction of the economy over the course of a year and a half or two years. These are the calculations for the summer of 2022, when many private Russian banks can still to conduct transactions with the rest of the world and the country is not cut off from SWIFT. But there can be no doubt that the West will choke the Russian economy before it begins to be choked by its own declining level of technological development, and the Russian military-industrial complex will no longer a threat to Europe and the world.

An investigation by Washington Post journalists indicates that Putins initial goal was to totally occupy all of Ukraine.

This seems strange, given that Stratfor military analysts played out five or six scenarios for Russia's war with Ukraine back in 2015 and concluded that the Russian Armed Forces would need between 91,000 and 135,000 troops just to seize the so-called left bank of Ukraine and an equal number to hold the occupied territories. The total is 182,000 to 270,000 troops needed. Military analyst Alexander Goltz wrote in a 2014 article for The New Times that Russia would need at least 100,000 troops to hold southeastern Ukraine alone. Note that both analyses came out before the Ukrainian Armed Forces were reformed and equipped with the most modern weapons.

Today there are approximately 170,000 Russian soldiers and officers on the Ukrainian fronts, and 20% of Ukrainian territory is occupied. A simple extrapolation shows that Russia would need about a million men to occupy and hold the entire country. Meanwhile, Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin signed an order to increase the army by 137,000 starting on January 1, 2023.

My Moscow sources who met with Putin on the eve of the military operation do not believe that the Federal Security Service deceived the Russian president by convincing him that everything was ready by Feb. 24 for a quick capture of Kyiv or a blitzkrieg. This was much discussed in the first months of the war and recently covered by the Washington Post.

First of all, they said that in the week before operation began, Putin listened to a variety of people, both those who supported the war and those who opposed it. It is highly unlikely that Chekists or army officers gave him false information, but they probably gave him the information that he wanted to see.

Secondly, they say that there was no plan for the army to occupy the entire country. The goal was to eliminate President Vladimir Zelensky (or force him to leave the country), and then, the KGB officers thought, there would be a domino effect: mayors and regional leaders would either run or swear allegiance to Russia in droves. The logic was as follows: Yanukovich, a "tough guy" with experience of prison and gangster capitalism, was so frightened by the Maidan demonstrations away in 2014 that he fled the country. So what could anyone expect from "that clown Zelensky"? The fact that Zelensky did not leave, did not surrender, did not ask for peace came as a great surprise to Putin: the habit of thinking that the world is run like it is in Russia and that politicians everywhere are a priori greedy and opportunistic has once again let the Kremlin down.

Then what does Putin want? "To tear Ukraine to pieces," said a source at the top of the Russian political elite. "But now I think the Kremlin is ready to codify the status quo," said another. That is, Putin is ready for peace talks concerning a map in which 20% of Ukrainian territory is controlled by Russian troops.

I am often asked why there is no widespread anti-war protest in Russia. My answer is to cite the figures quoted by OVD-Info. More than 16,000 people have been detained and over 20,000 cases were opened under Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offences ("Violation of the established order of organizing or holding meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches or pickets").

Almost every day the few surviving regional websites report that in one place a man with a "No to War" T-shirt came outside and was immediately handcuffed; and in another place a woman held up a "Putin is a war criminal" banner and was, of course, taken away; or even that in a third place a person held up a Mir (Peace) state credit card and was taken in for protesting.

In recent months 3003 people were convicted of committing misdemeanors under laws of military censorship for "discrediting the army" and hundreds have been charged with "intentionally spreading deliberately false information. What false information did The New Times, for example, disseminate, for which it received four administrative penalties? We wrote about the bombing of Kharkiv, Odesa and Mykolaiv. But since the information the outlet published had not been published on the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the judge concluded that it hadn't happened. Besides, according to the prosecution, as early as Feb. 24, the Commander-in-Chief said that a special military operation was being conducted in order to protect Russia from an invasion ... from the territory of Ukraine.

According to lawyer and human rights activist Pavel Chikov, 85 criminal cases have been opened to date for "discrediting the army. A certain unspoken rule has been established for well-known people: first, the authorities provide three "administrative cases," followed by a window of 3-4 weeks for the person to leave, and if he/she does not leave, there is a search just before 6 a.m. and then arrest.

This was the case, for example, with Ilya Yashin, Marina Ovsyannikova, and Evgeny Roizman. Alexei Gorinov, a municipal deputy in the Krasnoselsky District, did not get an administrative conviction. He was immediately sentenced to a criminal offense for "military fakes" and sentenced to seven years in prison.

So, the first and foremost reason for the lack of large-scale anti-war protest is fear, which had been the main tool of the KGB during the long years of Soviet power.

When I asked people at a market in Tver, What do you think of the special military operation, only unequivocal supporters replied. Everyone else either declined to answer or slipped behind phrases like, we don't know everything" or "who knows who started it? People who agree to speak in a pre-arranged place asked not to specify their profession or place of work since "the town is small and theyll figure it out.

In Pskov, Pskovskaya Guberniya journalists and Yabloko activists were beaten up as early as March 5. After that, many well-known people in the city left for the neighboring Baltic states. The ones who stayed behind dont even post on social networks, leave alone take part in any street actions.

In Novgorod, in front of the hotel where I was staying which I had intentionally not booked in advance there was a large black SUV from which photographs were very obviously taken of all the people Id arranged to meet. They don't talk to strangers about the war there, and if they do agree to answer questions, its because they have a relative in, say, Kharkiv, and they speak with horror about what is happening.

In Serpukhov, none of the people interviewed agreed to speak under their real name. They are afraid of losing their jobs, although one said confidentially that he and a friend agreed that if they are forcibly mobilized, they will immediately surrender to the Ukrainian armed forces.

The second reason for civil passivity is the lack of leaders.

Some like Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza are already in jail, while others many tens of thousands went into exile in the early weeks of the war. People live by example: if celebrities and well-known people have left, I was told, then it means "we will be trampled. They try to find Polish, Baltic, or Jewish roots and leave.

Finally, the restriction on access to information plays an important role. Since the beginning of the war the General Prosecutor's Office and the courts have blocked about 7,000 websites on the basis of laws about military censorship; all independent mass media, central and regional, agencies, foundations are blocked without exception; entire editorial boards have emigrated from the country. Hundreds of politicians, journalists, and public figures have been given the vile label of "foreign agent" in my case, for the money earned from a YouTube channel. At the same time, the number of VPN downloads has risen sharply by 25 times! since the beginning of the war. In July 25 million Russians were using VPNs. In other words, Russians dont only have access to propaganda television channels; they can find alternative information on the Internet.

This does not make life any easier: a whole range of websites, services and banks, from state services to Yandex cards to Kommersant and RBC sites, do not work if the VPN is turned on, phones heat up and their batteries drain at an alarming rate. But the main problem is something else.

During the six months of the war, I did not meet a single person who was more or less well-known, or high-ranking, or rich, who openly supported the war. I was told, however, that one former deputy prime minister and now head of a state corporation came to the offices of the Presidential Administration wearing a black T-shirt with a defiant "Z" on his chest. Whether this person was trolling the administration or wearing the T-shirt as a sign of eternal loyalty remains unknown.

Another source began his conversation with a statement: "The election of a retired KGB officer as president was a mistake, it should never happen again. I didnt argue the point, of course, but it would have been better if this realization had come 22 years ago. A third source insisted we talk on a balcony and stand so close that we were practically embracing. The fourth was so afraid that the Chekists would tap our conversation that he suggested we meet in a restaurant a couple of dozen kilometers from Moscow. The fifth repeated several times that "society has completely failed to thoroughly consider the implications of using Novichok against opponents." Apparently the terror that the door handle of your luxury palace or car might be smeared with a military nerve agent never leaves many of the top Russian ruling elite for a moment. That fifth source also complained bitterly that he could not use his private plane. "All planes immediately stopped getting software updates. Of course, we could ask a young man with a black briefcase to come in and hack the software. But I asked the pilot of my plane, Could there be a glitch with the system when we're in the air? Of course, he replied. We have to fly Aeroflot, although even their software was probably updated by the same young man with the same briefcase."

I asked a variety of people what percentage of the top Russian ruling class supported the war. The answers ranged from a low of 10% to a high of 30%. Hundreds if not thousands of people at the top have lost millions and billions of dollars, expensive real estate in delightful European countries and the United States because of sanctions and/or the collapse of the stock market. All they get for their loss is endless lamentations from wives and mistresses that "living in this Russia" was not part of the deal. Children studying at Western universities and boarding schools in Britain, Switzerland, and the United States were forced to return to Russia when their educational institutions refused to accept their parents' toxic money.

That said, people mentioned the names of a couple of billionaires who, despite the sanctions and huge personal losses, called for "striking" Ukraine with nuclear weapons. There is also grumbling in the middle stratum of power brokers, who have lost a lot in mutual funds and especially in cryptocurrency.

No one can predict how the political situation in Russia will develop now. Some give the regime until the spring of 2023, others predict a further intensification of repression in the coming months and are confident that the regime has enough strength to survive another ten years. They insist that the upcoming 2024 elections and the next round wont change a thing.

I'm not so sure. I'm not sure that Putin's ruling class, which is made up of dollar millionaires and billionaires and is used to making money in Russia and spending it all over the world, will agree to live and die in a cage.

But we shall see.

This article was first published in Russian in The New Times.

The views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times.

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Six Months of War: What Putin Wanted; What Putin Got - The Moscow Times

Putin to come face-to-face with Truss and Zelensky for first time since Ukraine invasion – Express

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Russian forces have occupied much of the sympathetic Donbas region to the east of the embattled nation and a swathe of the south, but have come under heavy fire in key areas such as Kherson in recent weeks.

Ukraines military has made use of Western-supplied missiles to pinpoint Russian military targets in the region, halting a planned referendum in the region widely seen as an attempt to give legitimacy to the occupation.

Ukrainian armed forces and resistance fighters have been able to inflict lasting damage in Crimea as well annexed by Russia since 2014 believed to have crippled the Black Sea fleet aiding ground assaults in the south.

On the backdrop of a war Putin started and, by the time the summit takes place, will be nearly nine months into with no sweeping gains, he may come to breath the same air as the Ukrainian President.

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Putin to come face-to-face with Truss and Zelensky for first time since Ukraine invasion - Express

What Does Putin’s Aggression Mean for Stability in the Western Balkans – Newsweek

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Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo continued to boil over the summer, but a surprise visit by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabi to Kosovo this week seems to have eased tensions.

Analysts warn that Russia may still try to find ways to destabilize the crucial region. "Any potential for destabilization has to do with still unresolved issues from the Serbian perspective," said Kosovar Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi. "We have an issue in the Western Balkans that Serbia is not clear about its borders with their neighbors."

Bislimi, the Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration, Development, and Dialogue in the country of roughly 2 million, has also warned that Serbia, like Russia, presumes to have a sphere of influence inside neighboring countries.

"Escalation in Russia offers a fruitful terrain for new escalations," Bislimi said. "As of 1999, the Serbs have created a new narrative [in which Serbs and Russians are brothers that] only have Romania and Ukraine between them."

This has allowed penetration by Russia's economic interests, such as investment and infrastructure developments, including gas stations and energy suppliers across the Balkans. "Russia also has a military and intelligence presence," he said.

According to a June poll from Belgrade-based Demostat, about 51 percent of Serbians would oppose EU membership in a national referendum, with 34 percent in support of it. The same poll found that 40 percent of Serbs selected Russian President Vladimir Putin as their favorite world leader.

"Russia's intention to misuse the territory of Russia for creating tensions with neighboring countries does not necessarily have the goal of dividing the West," Bislimi said. "It may be to deviate the focus from Ukraine."

During the 1990s, the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia led to some of the worst conflicts in Europe between the end of World War II and the start of the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

The two final chapters of that series of conflicts took place in Kosovo and what is today North Macedonia. A NATO intervention in 1999 in support of ethnic Albanian Kosovar insurgents ended Serbia's counter-insurgency campaign. Kosovo declared its independence less than a decade later, in 2008. Today over 100 countries recognize Kosovo's independence. As a spillover from that conflict, a group of ethnically Albanian guerrillas launched a brief conflict in 2001 before a similar NATO intervention. North Macedonia joined NATO in 2020 after agreeing to change its name from simply Macedonia. Kosovo hopes to one day follow a similar path.

Officials in Macedonia seem less concerned that Russian intervention in Balkan affairs is a pressing concern.

"We don't expect it this minute, nor do we expect it to happen," said Naser Nuredini, Minister of Environment and Physical Planning of North Macedonia. "Of course, we all need to be prepared for any such event."

(Additional reporting provided by Virginia Van Zandt)

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.

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What Does Putin's Aggression Mean for Stability in the Western Balkans - Newsweek

Phillip Schofield: how the TV presenter gave a fresh spin to Putins propaganda – The Guardian

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Name: Phillip Schofield.

Age: 60.

Appearance: The face of Vladimir Putins war on the west.

Really? I guess I was thinking of a different Phillip Schofield. No, no, its the same one.

The former childrens TV presenter and host of The Cube and Dancing On Ice? Thats him.

How did he get involved with Putin? Through his work as co-presenter of ITVs This Morning.

With Holly Willoughby? Correct. This week the pair started fronting a regular Spin to Win competition for viewers, featuring a big wheel and prizes.

Dont tell me: Putin called in and won. No, but along with cash prizes, the wheel now offers viewers a chance to have their runaway energy bills paid for four months.

Didnt they use to give away luxury holidays and stuff? With the average energy bill set to crack 3,600 by this winter, this is the new luxury prize: being warm.

Can ITV afford it? The bad publicity may be worse than the payout, with various commentators likening the competition to something from a Black Mirror episode.

It does seem a bit dystopian, now you mention it. And thats how Schofield became the face of Putins war on the west. The end.

Hang on the stunt may be crass and ill-judged, but its still a long way off taking Putins side. Unfortunately, Russias Kremlin-friendly news outlets have seized on the story as propaganda.

Those bastards. The host of Russian state televisions morning show, Olga Skabeyeva, reported that UK viewers were being offered heating as a prize. Apart from that, one could win 1,000 or even 3,000, she said, but judging from soaring energy prices that have gone up 80% in one go, its clearly much better to win payment for your energy bills.

Shes not wrong. Anyway, This Morning has already made an attempt to address the controversy.

How? It has adjusted the game slightly, so the top prize now covers the cost of living generally. So that could be your mortgage, petrol, food, your energy, said Schofield on Tuesday. You decide, well pay your bills until the end of the year up to a value of 3,000.

That isnt better! Apart from anything else, its still not enough! It might be if you cut back on eating and wear a coat in the house.

Do say: Lets not panic until weve heard Liz Trusss energy plan. Then lets panic.

Dont say: Come on Phillip and Holly, Bradley on The Chase is giving away bags of coal.

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Phillip Schofield: how the TV presenter gave a fresh spin to Putins propaganda - The Guardian

If you rag on Putin, don’t go near the window – The Canberra Times

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Catherine Belton, in her gripping book Putin's People, mentions a trio of deaths by window mishap that occurred within weeks of each other back in 1991, when the Soviet Union was being dismantled and the KGB was busily covering its tracks. All three held secrets about the Communist Party's finances and where the missing billions had gone as the Soviet system unravelled. Thirty years ago perhaps but the fashion for defenestration seems to be making a comeback. In October last year, a senior diplomat fell out of a window of the Russian embassy in Berlin. In December in Moscow, the founder of a nationalist blog who was also a vocal critic of Putin fell to his death out a window. In August, a Latvian-American investment banker and, you guessed it, a vocal critic of Putin, appeared to have fallen from an apartment window in Washington DC. In a "coincidence" likely to snap credulity, his business partner took a window fall from a Moscow apartment in 2017. Four health care workers fell from windows after reportedly protesting the government's handling of the COVID pandemic in 2020. Also in 2020, a scientist working on a COVID vaccine fell to his death from an apartment window in St Petersburg.

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If you rag on Putin, don't go near the window - The Canberra Times

An associate of white nationalist Nick Fuentes claims he interviewed to work on Tucker Carlson’s team – Media Matters for America

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Tucker Carlsons history of hiring extremist-linked staff

Carlson and his team have a history of working with extremist and white nationalist-linked individuals. In 2021, Carlsons team collaborated with Scooter Downey, a director of alt-right and white nationalist documentaries. Downey wrote Carlsons Patriot Purge documentary, a conspiracy theory-laden, InfoWars-style three part series about the January 6 insurrection. The series and its wild claims were nothing more than fascist propaganda.

In 2020, it was revealed that one of Carlsons writers, Blake Neff, was pushing white supremacist content and making racist posts on AutoAdmit, an online forum thats known for hosting questionable content. Tucker Carlson Tonight has also hosted numerous guests with links to white nationalism.

Escandon is the director of The Most Canceled Man In America, a sympathetic documentary following Fuentes and his groyper movement of mostly white, male, young extremists. The documentary includes scenes with fellow Fuentes-linked white nationalists, including Vincent James Foxx and Tyler Russell. Escandon himself appears to be pro-insurrection, pro-Christian nationalism, anti-LGBTQ, antisemitic, and a fan of Carlson.

Escandon and Fuentes appear to have a relationship outside of this as well:

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An associate of white nationalist Nick Fuentes claims he interviewed to work on Tucker Carlson's team - Media Matters for America

The Rings of Power is suffering a racist backlash for casting actors of colour but Tolkien’s work has always attracted white supremacists – The…

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Since Amazon announced actors of colour among the cast of its new series The Rings of Power in February this year, criticisms of their inclusion have gained media attention.

The coverage typically positions criticisms of The Rings of Power as backlash from true, diehard fans resisting so-called wokeness.

This misrepresents the situation. There are also fans who welcome the increased diversity over what is seen in Tolkiens novels and previous adaptations.Racist abuse of actors of colour and a review bombing campaign against The Rings of Power suggest that there is more going on than just fan disagreement about Tolkiens world.

As Tolkien researcher Craig Franson explains, far-right political actors are whipping up the controversy, weaponising it to help get fascist talking points into the mainstream. Franson shows that the right-wing outrage machine stirred up a massive hate mob through mainstream right-wing press.

Fans who feel they are defending Tolkiens legacy are being used as pawns to serve dangerous anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian agenda and siding, whether they mean to or not, with racist extremists.

Fascist appropriation of Tolkiens work may seem surprising given his anti-Nazi statements, which include calling Hitler a ruddy little ignoramus. It is not new, however. In the 1970s, the books became a favourite of Italian fascists who even held a Camp Hobbit festival to promote their politics.

In the early 2000s, the now former extremist Derek Black Jr started a chat forum dedicated to the Lord of the Rings on a major white supremacist website when Peter Jacksons films came out. He told The New York Times:

I figured you could get people who liked with such a white mythos, a few turned on by white nationalism.

Not all racism is fascist (a specific political ideology), but the far-right always has racist elements in its ideologies.

Tolkien made statements against Nazis and also apartheid, but this is not the same as being anti-racist or pro-equality. His condemnation of Hitler, he wrote in the same letter, was for

ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making forever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to preserve in its true light.

The comment shows that he believed that some people were essentially different to and better than others. This notion is foundational to racism.

Tolkiens belief in racial difference translated to Middle-earth. Within the imaginary species (elves and humans in particular) there are hierarchies. Some humans are inherently better than others; we see this when Faramir talks about High, Men of the West the Middle Peoples, Men of the Twilight the Wild, the Men of Darkness in The Two Towers.

Individuals from High races may have moral failings and become evil, but collectively they do not serve it. Physical characteristics (like hair and skin colour) are linked to non-physical traits in ways that reflect the logics of real-world racism.

There are traces of evidence that Tolkien did not imagine good peoples as exclusively white. The ways these are expressed still sometimes reinforce racial hierarchies. In The Return of the King, some people who fight against Sauron are counted as

men of Gondor, yet their blood was mingled, and there were short and swarthy folk among them" because some of their ancestors are not High, Men of the West.

"Good species and races in Middle-Earth are constructed through references to European cultures (especially northwestern Europe), and the bad races are constructed through orientalist stereotypes. Tolkiens letters show the ways that real-world ideas about race influenced Middle-Earth. He wrote I do think of the Dwarves like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations.

In a 1958 letter about a film treatment of The Lord of the Rings he wrote:

Orcs are squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol types.

There is evidence that he revised his representation of Dwarves between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to try move away from anti-Semitic stereotypes. There is no such evidence for Orcs even though he wrestled with the moral problem of a purely evil species of beings.

Read more: The new Lord of the Rings prequel, The Rings of Power, is set in the Second Age of Middle-Earth - here's what that means

The combination of racial stereotypes and hierarchies built into Middle-Earth make Tolkiens work appealing to racists and a useful political tool for the far-right. There is, however, more to the world and stories he created.

Being troubled by racism is also not just a new woke reading of Tolkiens writing. C.S. Lewis wrote a review in 1955 of Lord of the Rings that reported some readers imagine they have seen a rigid demarcation between black and white people draw along clear moral lines.

Given Lewis was Tolkiens friend, its not surprising that he defended the books. A letter in the fanzine Xero from 1963 expressed concern about subtle racism, hierarchies within humanity, and monochromatic representation of elves and orcs in Middle-Earth.

The need to overcome differences to form alliances and make the world better is a central theme in Tolkiens writing. Evil is defeated only when different peoples of Middle-Earth, such as Elves, Dwarves and Humans, fight against it together.

The prosocial values of cooperation and acting for the good of others are embedded in Tolkiens stories of Middle-earth. They are also at odds with racism and fascism which see others as not only different but inferior, dangerous, not to be trusted, that is, as enemies.

Scholar and fan Dimitra Fimi has written:

Tolkiens racial prejudices are implicit in Middle-Earth, but his values friendship, fellowship, altruism, courage, among many others are explicit, which makes for a complex, more interesting world.

Casting actors of colour to play Elves, Dwarves and Harfoots in The Rings of Power does not insert beings who are not white into the imaginary world of Middle-Earth. They were already there, constructed through out-dated (even for Tolkiens time) concepts of racial difference among humans and false stereotypes about real peoples.

Tolkiens imagination was vast and varied, but it was not without limits. The world he created reflected some of the worst aspects of reality with its racist stereotypes and hierarchies.

All adaptations, including of Tolkiens writings, change their source material in ways that reflect the time and place in which they are made.

With The Rings of Power, Amazon, the Tolkien Estate (headed by his grandson Simon) and their partners have decided to protect the positive, humane aspects of Tolkiens legacy which represented the best, rather than the limits, of his imagination.

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The Rings of Power is suffering a racist backlash for casting actors of colour but Tolkien's work has always attracted white supremacists - The...

Soldier Who Said He Wanted Combat Experience to Kill Black People Booted After FBI Probe – Yahoo News

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A former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division who has been arrested said he enlisted to become more proficient at killing Black people and made overt references to white supremacy.

Spc. Killian Ryan was taken into custody Aug. 26 on a charge related to lying on his secret security clearance and was kicked out of the Army the same day, according to the service. An investigation by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force discovered ties to white nationalism and threats of violence against minorities on social media accounts, according to court records.

"I serve for combat experience so I'm more proficient in killing n-----s," Ryan wrote in one social media post on May 27, 2021. That comment was posted roughly two weeks after he enlisted in the Army. His personal email address at the time was "NaziAce1488," a reference to Adolf Hitler and American white supremacy.

Read Next: Military Must Beware of 'Extreme Strain' from Political Divides, Warn 13 Former Defense Leaders

The Pentagon has vowed a crackdown on extremism in the ranks, taking measures such as modifying the vetting process to join the military and asking whether an applicant subscribes to any extremist ideology. But that line of questioning may rely heavily on the honesty of recruits.

Ryan also filled out a Standard Form 86, or SF 86, a questionnaire for his security clearance. In it, he was asked whether he ever advocated for any acts of terrorism.

He was arrested in Cumberland County, North Carolina, which includes Fayetteville and Fort Bragg, on one charge of knowingly making a false statement.

The social media posts and his email handle, which includes the common white supremacy symbol 14/88, were red flags.

The number 14 represents the words in the phrase "We must secure the existence of our people and the future for white children," coined by David Lane, a convicted felon and leader of the now defunct white supremacist terrorist organization The Order. Lane died in prison in 2007. The 88 stands for "Heil Hitler," with H being the eighth letter of the alphabet, according to extremism watchdog groups.

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Ryan was separated from the Army immediately following his arrest, according to a service spokesperson. Two sources with direct knowledge of the situation say he was kicked out due to at least two incidents of driving under the influence of alcohol, or DUI.

However, soldiers typically aren't immediately dismissed for alcohol incidents and the drunk driving was the easiest way to quickly remove Ryan, according to one of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

It is unclear if the chain of command was aware of his ties to extremism ahead of his discharge. Ryan went to basic training in May 2020 and was eventually stationed at Fort Bragg in December 2021. He had no deployments.

The investigation uncovering the white nationalism ties began with Ryan's claims to have no relationship with his father, a convicted felon with a history of drug charges and auto theft. However, a probe into his social media activity found that Ryan and his father frequently talked, as well as the other posts.

The arrest comes as the Pentagon is struggling to understand scope of extremism within the ranks, especially after the Jan. 6, 2021 pro-Trump assault on the U.S. Capitol, which sought to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power to the administration of President Joe Biden. That attack included service members and veterans and brought new attention to the radicalization of troops and the use of military training by extremist groups.

There is no evidence those with a military background are more likely to become radicalized. However, experts have long warned that even the most rudimentary combat training can be attractive for extremist groups, particularly white nationalists. Veterans and service members are also seen as carrying inherent social credibility that can be force multipliers for radical causes.

Military leaders have largely kept the issue at arm's length, with some fears over tackling right-wing extremism being perceived as partisan, even as law enforcement agencies see it as one of the most prevalent domestic terrorism threats.

Military.com reported on a Montana National Guard officer who was allowed to serve, despite accusations from a major hate group of pushing white nationalist viewpoints. The Wisconsin and Virginia National Guards both had soldiers who participated in the Jan. 6 riot and took more than a year to remove them from service.

-- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenBeynon.

Related: An Accused White Nationalist Is Serving in the Montana Guard Despite Efforts Against Extremism

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Soldier Who Said He Wanted Combat Experience to Kill Black People Booted After FBI Probe - Yahoo News

Finding Our Place in the Inland Northwest documentary and discussion begins Sept. 8 – spokanefavs.com

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Finding Our Place in the Inland Northwest documentary and discussion begins Sept. 8

By Matthew Kincanon

Starting Sept. 8, Finding Our Place in the Inland Northwest a new six-session documentary and discussion series kicks off at St. Lukes Episcopal Church in Coeur dAlene.

Organized through a partnership between the Human Rights Education Institute, Museum of North Idaho and the church, the series is intended to create opportunities for thoughtful small group public discussions about realities, challenges and opportunities that are part of life in the Inland Northwest.

Many of us live and work here in North Idaho, but do not know what has shaped and what is shaping the culture and social realities of this region, said The Rev. Dr. David T. Gortner, rector of St. Lukes Episcopal Church. We are creating space for our community to come together to explore multiple topics affecting our region, from both a historical and current perspective. It is our hope that we can foster an environment for learning and greater understanding through shared stories and experiences. We are especially grateful to Idaho Community Foundation for its support of this series through a generous Project Neighborly Grant.

Each session will offer segments of relevant documentaries, a brief presentation by area experts and facilitated small group table discussions to help people think together and share experiences and insights inspiring opportunities to seek wisdom among neighbors.

The discussions are made possible through the leadership and training of The Langdon Group, a subsidiary of J-U-B Engineers, Inc., which specializes in public involvement, facilitation and conflict resolution.

Dates, Topics, and locations are as follows:

This first session focuses on what happens when country becomes city when population influx changes the landscape. This is especially relevant to the Coeur dAlene region with the rapid influx of people and our prairies region quickly filling with housing tracts. The growth has outpaced city planning efforts to anticipate growth. What are costs and benefits? What happens to land and how is land use planned?

History of mining and owner-labor relations. It is part of our life today in the worlds of mining, lumber, farming, healthcare, and the hospitality industries of this resort region. How do owner-worker relations affect life today in our region?

Poverty and working-class conditions in the region.

Experience of Native American Tribes of the region.

Race relations, racism, and efforts against racism in the region.

White supremacy and white nationalism, and their effect on the region.

The events are free and open to all, regardless of faith or other affiliations. Space is limited, and people are encouraged to register to reserve a space through Humanitix.

For more information, please contact St. Lukes Episcopal Church at 208-664-5533.

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Finding Our Place in the Inland Northwest documentary and discussion begins Sept. 8 - spokanefavs.com

Former Trump adviser Michael Flynn at the center of new movement based on conspiracies and Christian nationalism – PBS NewsHour

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BATAVIA, N.Y. (AP) The crowd swayed on its feet, arms pumping, the beat of Twisted Sisters Were Not Gonna Take It thumping in their chests. The people under the revival tent hooted as Michael Flynn strode across the stage, bopping and laughing, singing the refrain into his microphone and encouraging the audience to sing along to the transgressive rock anthem.

Well fight the powers that be just/Dont pick our destiny cause/You dont know us, you dont belong!

The emcee introduced him as Americas General, but to those in the audience, Flynn is far more than that: martyr, hero, leader, patriot, warrior.

The retired lieutenant general, former national security adviser, onetime anti-terrorism fighter, is now focused on his next task: building a movement centered on Christian nationalist ideas, where Christianity is at the center of American life and institutions.

Flynn brought his fight a struggle he calls both spiritual and political last monthto a church in Batavia, New York, where thousands of people paid anywhere from a few dollars to up to $500 to hear and absorb his message that the United States is facing an existential threat, and that to save the nation, his supporters must act.

Flynn, 63, has used public appearances to energize voters, along with political endorsements to build alliances and a network of nonprofit groups one of which has projected spending $50 million to advance the movement, an investigation by The Associated Press and the PBS series Frontline has found. He has drawn together election deniers, mask and vaccine opponents, insurrectionists, Proud Boys, and elected officials and leaders in state and local Republican parties. Along the way, the AP and Frontline documented, Flynn and his companies have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his efforts.

READ MORE: Twitter bans Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell in QAnon purge

The AP and Frontline spoke with more than 60 people, including Flynns family, friends, opponents, and current and former colleagues, for this story. The news organizations also reviewed campaign finance records, corporate and charity filings, social media posts and similar open-source information, and attended several public events where Flynn appeared. Reporters examined dozens of Flynns speeches, interviews and public appearances. Flynn himself sat down for a rare on-camera interview with what he calls the mainstream media.

I dont even know why Im talking to you, honestly, Flynn said as the interview got underway.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, Flynn made more than 60 in-person speeches in 24 states, according to a count by the AP and Frontline. When he speaks, the former top adviser to then-President Donald Trump spreads baseless conspiracy theories, stoking fear and fueling anger and division and grievance.

Flynn is one of the most dangerous individuals in America today, said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and expert on authoritarianism and fascism who wrote the book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.

He is spearheading the attack on our democracy, which is coming from many quarters, and he is affiliated with many of these sectors, from the military to Christian nationalism to election denial to extremist groups, she said. All of this comes together to present a very live threat. And hes at the center.

Flynn has, with mixed success, supported like-minded candidates around the country, and has said his immediate goal is to influence this years elections. In Sarasota, Florida, where he lives, he has worked in concert with members of the extremist group the Proud Boys to influence local politics. Their favored candidates in August won control of the county school board.

Local action has a national impact is his mantra.

We need to take this country back one town at a time, one county at a time, one state at a time, if thats what it takes, he told a crowd in Salt Lake City.

Flynns advocacy of falsehoods and conspiracy theories hardly makes him unique in a fact-challenged America, but his pedigree, military career and high-powered Washington contacts set him apart. Hesa retired three-star generalwho less than two decades ago developed wartime strategies for countering insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His selection as Trumpsfirst national security advisermade him the ultimate insider, giving him nominal control if only for a matter of weeks of the administrations national security strategy. When he later found himself in legal trouble on suspicion that he had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, he cooperated with the same government establishment he now crusades against.

In the weeks after the November 2020 presidential election, Flynnpicked up a presidential pardongrantedto forgive hisguilty plea to lying to the FBI. He immediately became a chief promoter of the Stop the Steal effort and championed bogus claims about foreign interference and ballot tampering that werent supported by credible evidence. But for some voters, Flynns status as a retired general and top intelligence officer gave weight to the empty theories.

Hefalsely said Trump won, called the election outcome part of a coup in progress, suggested Trump should seize voting machines and said Trump could order up the military in some states and rerun the election. In December 2020 he evenmade his way into the Oval Officeto push his ideas directly to Trump.

Called before a congressional committee investigating the Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, Flynn refused to say whether he believed the violence was justified or even whether he believed in the peaceful transition of power. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

WATCH: How new technologies could accelerate the spread of conspiracy theories

Retired Brig. Gen. Steven M. Anderson, who served with Flynn in Iraq, called Flynns ideas antithetical to core values of the American military and the nation itself.

Anderson worries that Flynn is a role model for thousands and thousands and thousands of soldiers and former soldiers, and that his ideas can empower them to take actions that hurt the country.

Weve got a retired three-star, former NSA, who says we can overthrow the election, use our military, Anderson said. The thinking goes, he said, Well, then yes, sign me up for the Proud Boys.

Flynn uses the three stars he earned in the military as his symbol, a shorthand that reminds people he came from the highest levels of the nations power structure and that suggests he has a special knowledge of how things work in the shadowy world of Washington and global affairs.

Its a crying shame that essentially he has evolved into the person he is now, said Anderson, who described his former colleague as a subservient buffoon that unfortunately has forsaken his oath of office.

Doug Wise, a former CIA and military officer who knew Flynn for decades and briefly served as Flynns deputy at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said even in the military, Flynn often pushed the envelope of what was permissible and demonstrated extreme thinking. He believes Flynn hasnt transformed, hes just become more comfortable acting on the anger that burns inside him.

I understand the reasons why he gravitated to the right wing because as his behavior and beliefs became more bizarre, I think they were very welcoming. Because who wouldnt want a highly respected Army three-star to join your group? Wise said.

I think he believed, post-government, and he was right in this that he was too well-connected to fail, Wise said. And he got pardoned.

Flynn sees conspiracies in just about every corner of American life.

Hes repeated falsehoods about Black Lives Matter and said that so-called globalists created COVID-19. He tells the tens of thousands of people who have paid to see him speak that there are 75 members of the Socialist Party in Congress, and has said the left and Democrats are trying todestroy the country. He asserts, above all else, that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. The bedrock, he warns, is crumbling.

The country, Flynn often says in speeches and interviews, is in the midst of a spiritual war, and he goes after many of the institutions and ideas that stand as pillars of American democracy.

He has told audiences he doesnt trust the U.S. government or government institutions that oversee the rule of law. He called the media the No. 1 enemy and said it has done a horrible, horrible disservice to the country by just constantly lying and trying to deceive us. He says elementary schools are teaching filth and pornography. He continues to assert, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, that elections cant be trusted. He says, over and over, that some of his fellow Americans are evil.

They dress like us and they talk like us, but they dont think and act like us, he told a podcaster recently. And they definitely do not want what it is that we want.

Survey data showsmany Americans believe what Flynn says that the 2020 election was stolen and have bought into COVID-19 misinformation and other conspiracy theories that he spreads, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who studies the evangelical movement.

Any of these factors alone could be considered dangerous. But all of them together and the distrust it is sowing in our democracy, Du Mez said. I think its extremely dangerous in this moment.

She points to Flynns role as headliner of a multicity roadshow known asthe ReAwaken America tour, an event that is a potent mix of politics, religion and commerce that has become a prime example of the Christian nationalist movement.

Flynn helped found the tour in 2021 with Clay Clark, an entrepreneur from Oklahoma who had been running business conferences before the pandemic. In his interview with the AP and Frontline in February, Flynn said he considered himself a senior leader of the team thats running it.

The thread of Christian nationalism runs through many of Flynns events. At one fundraiser, a preacher prayed over him saying that America would stay a Christian nation and that Flynn was heavy armaments in the Lords quiver. At the Christian Patriots Rally at a church in Northern California,Flynn was presented with an assault-style rifleon stage. In Virginia in July, he said pastors need to be talking about the Constitution from the pulpit as much as the Bible. In Texas last November, Flynn told a crowd this is a moment in time where this is good versus evil.

WATCH: Examining the crisis in Americas democracy and the polarization of its politics

If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion.One nation under God, and one religion under God, right? he said.

Christian nationalism seeks to merge the identity of Christians and Americans, so that to be a true American is to be Christian and a certain type of Christian. The ideology pushes the idea that the United States was founded on biblical principles and has a favored relationship with a Christian God, said Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma who studies conservative Christianity and politics.

It is distinct from the practice of Christianity, and Perrys research has found that many Americans who are inclined toward Christian nationalism dont go to church.

This has nothing to do with Christian orthodoxy. It has nothing to do with loving Jesus or wanting to be a good disciple or loving your neighbor or self-sacrifice or anything like that, Perry said. It has everything to do with Christian ethno-culture and specifically white Christian ethno-culture.

Flynn casts himself as a victim of the deep state who paid a steep price for supporting Trump. Besides Trump, his supporters say, no one has been persecuted more than Flynn.

Flynns rhetoric us versus them, good versus evil, the idea that God is on our side has been a staple among conservative Christians for decades, and is mainstream in conservative evangelicalism, Du Mez said.

The thinking, she said, can fuel violence.

Theyre out to get us. Therefore, we need to strike first. And the threat is always dire, Du Mez says the thinking goes. And if the threat is dire, then the ends justify the means.

These values arenot unconnected from the violencethat we saw on Jan. 6, she added.

(When the AP and Frontline asked Flynn in February if he is ascribes to Christian nationalist views, he dodged. He first asked what the term meant, then said he was an Irish Catholic then a follower of Jesus, before criticizing the reporter: That was a stupid question to ask me, he said, because that means that you really have not studied Mike Flynn.)

Last October, Flynn was the star attraction at the WeCANAct Liberty Conference, a gathering in Salt Lake City for Utahs Platform Republicans PAC.

The program includeddozens of speakers and exhibitors talking about a grab bag of ideas and causes that have seized and panicked the right about vaccines, human trafficking, elections and the QAnon conspiracy theory.

WATCH: Their loved ones are obsessed with QAnon conspiracies. Its tearing their families apart

Among the sponsors and exhibitors were the John Birch Society; businesses selling everything from texting services for political campaigns to food dehydrators; Ammon Bundys anti-government Peoples Rights group; and Americas Frontline Doctors, which hasspread false informationabout COVID-19 andpromoted unproven treatmentssuch asivermectin, a drug used to treat parasitic infections. State lawmakers from Arizona and Utah spoke, and members of the Utah Republican Partys governing committee were among the organizers.

The program kicked off with an invocation by a preacher who brought the crowd to its feet as he described a prophecy of a Great Awakening where Americans are going to rise up and defeat the cabal.

We are in a spiritual war, and you cant win a war without attacking, he said.

The preacher ended by leading the crowd in what he called a new version of the Lords Prayer that fits the Great Awakening. The crowd repeated after him as he said: Deliver us from the cabal, and from Satans influence. For yours is the kingdom, and the power and the glory. Forever and ever and ever. Amen.

Flynn appeared a few times throughout the day, at one point sitting in the audience. Across the Salt Palace Convention Center, people jostled their seatmates to point him out and craned their necks to see him.

That evening, he gave a meandering speech that he referred to as an ass-chewing from a general. He falsely declared once again that Trump had won the 2020 election, said our government is corrupt, and called for the FBI to be abolished, a surprising applause line in October 2021 that has now being taken up more broadly by some Republicans.

He called the left our enemies and said they are godless and soulless.

One of Flynns companies, Resilient Patriot LLC, was paid $58,000 by the conference. An AP and Frontline review of state and federal campaign finance filings documented nearly $300,000 in payments to Flynn and his businesses from candidates and political action committees since 2021, for things such as speaking fees, travel, book sales and campaign consulting. (Florida congressional candidate Laura Loomerreported paying his company $1,100 in Mayfor public relations services.)

After Flynns keynote concluded, a podcaster helping to wrap things up for the evening came onstage and called him one of the new founding fathers of this republic.

As Flynn speaks and stumps to persuade people to join his movement, he has also been busy building a network of political candidates at the federal, state and local levels.

The AP and Frontline found that Flynn has endorsed 99 candidates for the 2022 election cycle. (He subsequently withdrew a handful.)

The countrys most influential Republican is paying attention. Flynns brother Joseph told an interviewer in May that during a visit the Flynns made to Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate this spring, Trump himself produced a list comparing the success of his endorsed candidates with Flynns.

At least 80 percent of Flynns chosen candidates have publicly spread lies or sown doubt about Trumps 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden, or even participated in efforts to overthrow the election, the AP and Frontline found. Several have suggested they would use their power if elected to change the way elections are run and how people are allowed to cast their vote.

About two dozen were at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 5-6, 2021.

One-third have served in the military.

At least 38 have used Christian nationalist rhetoric. Keith Self, a congressional candidate in Texas, has said hes running for Congress to defend the Judeo-Christian foundations of this nation. Christine Villaverde, a congressional candidate in North Carolina, has vowed to fight to keep America a Christian nation. Anthony Sabatini, a Florida state lawmaker who just lost a bid for Congress, recently posted on Facebook, Only when Christians stand up & get loud, will we take this country back.

READ MORE: Trump should not run for president in 2024, majority of Americans say

Flynns support can be a sought-after prize. An AP and Frontline analysis of Facebook and Instagram ad data found ads from more than 20 candidates promoting their endorsements. Jackson Lahmeyer, an Oklahoma pastor who was defeated in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate by Sen. James Lankford, mentioned Flynn in 48 Facebook and Instagram ads, more than one-quarter of his total buy on the platforms.

Pastor Leon Benjamin, a Republican candidate for Congress in Virginia who denounced homosexuality and called gay marriages illegal in an August speech, said in an interview that Flynns endorsement represents that affirmation and that understanding that weve got to have the right candidates in, and its not always popular, not always goes along with the grain.

If we keep doing the same things over and over again, thats the definition of insanity, he added. So we got to do some different things to get different results.

More than 40 of Flynns endorsements were for candidates seeking state or even local posts, the AP and Frontline found. Flynn endorsed two school board contenders in Camdenton, Missouri, candidates for sheriff in Florida, Nevada and Illinois and a city council candidate in North Carolina. He endorsed candidates for the state legislature in Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Florida, Texas and Missouri. In Arizona, Michigan, California and Colorado, he gave his approval to candidates for secretary of state, a position that typically involves the administration of elections.

A dozen gubernatorial candidates won Flynns backing, including Pennsylvanias Republican nominee, Doug Mastriano, a state lawmaker whom Flynn introduced at his campaign launch. Mastriano, a retired U.S. Army colonel, floated a plan to undo Bidens victory in his state, organized buses to the U.S. Capitol for Jan. 6 and was filmed walking past barricades and police lines that day. Mastriano has denied breaking the law and has not been charged with any crimes. Another Flynn endorsee, Dan Cox, who also organized buses for Jan. 6, won the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Maryland.

Still, Flynns endorsement doesnt guarantee a win. Josh Mandel, the Ohio U.S. Senate candidate, was defeated by JD Vance, who got a late endorsement from Trump. Some Flynn-backed candidates, includinggubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbertin Nevada and Coloradosecretary of state candidate Tina Peters, made baseless claims of election fraud after they lost.

Flynn and his allies have suggested he wants to get back into government, and the growing influence that flows from the network hes building may help him get there, said Ron Filipkowski, a lawyer in Sarasota and longtime Republican activist who now tracks Flynn and other far-right figures online.

Hes going to build this grassroots movement, local elected officials beholden to him, loyal to him, Filipkowski said.

Flynn has expanded his influence further through well-financed groups that advocate, among other things, changes to the way elections are run, based on the false premise that there is widespread voting fraud.

Flynn and Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com, last year launched The America Project, with Flynns brother Joseph as president. The group said it planned to spend $50 million in the 2021 budget year, according to a filing with North Carolina charity regulators. But Joseph Flynn and Byrne separately told AP that it had spent tens of millions less, though each gave different totals.

While Flynn himself is not listed among its officers, he is the face of the group, and its described as General Flynn and Patrick Byrnes America Project. Byrne says Flynn is his closest adviser, telling the AP and Frontline that Flynn is his Yoda and rabbi.

In April 2021, Flynn was named chairman of Americas Future, one of the countrys oldest conservative nonprofit groups. The organization was founded in 1946 and was previously led by ultra-conservative stalwarts, including Phyllis Schlafly and retired Maj. Gen. John Singlaub. Since Flynn took over, the group hired his sister, Mary ONeill, as executive director and appointed Joseph Flynn to its board of directors. The group had about $3 million in assets at the end of 2020, its most recent IRS filings show. Flynn told the AP and Frontline in February that he had raised an estimated $1.7 million for Americas Future since becoming chairman.

The two groups worked in close coordination last year,together donating more than $4.2 millionfor a widely criticized and misinformation-driven review of the 2020 presidential election results commissioned by Arizona Republicans.

The America Project has given about $5 million to grassroots organizations around the country, Joseph Flynn said in a July appearance on an online show.

NEWS WRAP: Trump lashes out in first rally since FBI search of Mar-a-Lago

Many of the groups they support back what they call election integrity, a term often used by election deniers to justify making it more difficult to vote based on the falsehood that American elections are corrupt.

Campaign finance records show The America Project has given more than $150,000 toConservatives for Election Integrity, a group that has supported several secretary of state candidates who have worked to undermine trust in 2020 election results.

The America Project gave $100,000 to a Colorado group,Citizens for Election Integrity, which used it for ads and text messages attacking a Republican candidate for secretary of state who ran against Flynns endorsed candidate. In Michigan, The America Projectgave $100,000 in Mayto Secure MI Vote, whichhas reportedly pushed to roll back voter access.

In Georgia, they just announced theyrebacking an effort to challenge voter registrationsfor tens of thousands of people.

Joseph Flynn said during a speech in May that The America Project also funded and advised many of what he termed audits of elections around the country, including in Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, though he did not give specifics.

In February, Flynn stood in a burger joint in Orlando, Florida, to announce The America Projects most public initiative, Operation Eagles Wings, the goal of which is to mobilize and train poll watchers and precinct captains, and to drive get-out-the-vote efforts.

I think every single person in this country, every American citizen, now has to pay attention to politics. You know, when people go, I dont get involved. I dont do that political stuff. Thats for the politicians. Well, thats exactly why we are here. OK? Flynn told the AP and Frontline during a contentious interview. So, its something else that you wont write or speak about or itll be edited out.

As part of Operation Eagles Wings, The America Project has created affiliate groups inat least nine states. Its Florida affiliate said in a Facebook post last month its seeking America First Poll Watchers and will train organizations for free. Stateaffiliates in IllinoisandVirginia advertisedtrainingsin July and Auguston grassroots social activism, poll watching and how to get out the vote. The promotions also promise to teach attendees to expose weaknesses, monitor and evaluate absentee voting and conduct investigative canvassing.

The initiative has raised alarm bells with pro-democracy advocates.

If people who tried to overturn the 2020 election, or who are fueled by election conspiracies, are trying to recruit their followers or allies to be election workers or volunteers as part of an election denial agenda, that poses real risks to fair and free elections, said Jacek Pruski, of the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy.

With his speeches, endorsements and outreach groups, Flynn has built a legion of acolytes who are listening closely to what he says and are ready to take action. They include Karen Ballash, 69, vice chair of the Summit County Republican Party in Utah, who heard Flynn speak in Salt Lake City.

I totally believe in his message. We have to be the ones who make the change, she said. If we dont do it, we wont have a country.

They include neophytes like Delainna Prettyman, who said shes just become politically engaged in the past year. That sent me deep down a rabbit hole. I dont watch any news, any TV, anything. And I do a ton of research, said Prettyman, who lives in the Salt Lake City suburbs.

She came to love Flynn, and believed everything he says.

Hes got a lot of intel and insight about everything thats going on. Of course, he cant say everything, she said. We need more people like General Flynn.

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Former Trump adviser Michael Flynn at the center of new movement based on conspiracies and Christian nationalism - PBS NewsHour

We’re not as divided as we think – Oneonta Daily Star

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If you watch cable news, youd be forgiven for thinking the United States is a country that has split itself in two, divided not only by divergent opinions, but also by two very different political realities. This is the way cable news likes it, mind you. A pot well-stirred keeps viewers turning in.

On the Tuesday after Labor Day, my lap through the usual morning news shows proved more cognitively dissonant than usual. This was primarily because CNNs New Day programing included John Avlons consistently eye-opening segment, Reality Check. His lesson focused on whether the United States is as extremist as people seem to think it is.

In short, just how crazy are we? Not that crazy, it turns out. Sure, were polarized, but only 29% and 28% of Americans identify as Democrat or Republican, respectively, according to Gallup. Most of the rest, 41%, identify as independent. Yes, 67% of Americans think democracy is on the verge of collapse, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. But 66% of Americans also say that Biden is the legitimate president.

And, sure, weve sacrificed friendships over presidents and may yet again. But were not as divided as some pundits and ratings-driven TV producers would have us believe. Not even close. In fact, were really talking about a relatively small percentage of Americans who would qualify as extremist.

Avlon, who has dedicated most of his career to advancing centrism and fighting extremism, heaps credit on The Washington Posts Philip Bump, who did most of the number-crunching that Avlon used in his own analysis. Both journalists focused, logically, on trying to understand the depth of support on the far right for undermining democracy.

To be an extremist by this definition, one must reject the 2020 election results; embrace candidates who also reject the results; approve of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; and approve of violence as a political tool.

Surely, there cant be many of those folks, I hear you thinking. and youre right. There arent. Heres where actual numbers come in handy: Remember, only 28% of Americans identify as Republican. Even if 66% of Republicans believe that Biden is illegitimate (as a July CNN poll found), thats just a little over 18% of American adults. As Avlon pointed out, even if you add in the one-third of independents who lean Republican, youre still talking about a minority.

A smaller portion of Americans say theyd support an election denier, or approve of the Capitol riot, or think violence is justifiable. So, yes, were divided on what happened in 2020, but were not talking halvsies here. We often talk of our nation as split right down the middle. But the data show that were really only talking about a slice that qualifies as extremist.

Wait, wait, what about all those Democratic socialists on the other side? Arent they extremists, too? They may be, but theyre also a tiny sliver of the population. If you count the Democratic Socialists of America, thats probably fewer than 100,000 people, or about .03% of the U.S. population, says Avlon. Thats not scary at all.

Here is the larger point: We should be spending much less time talking about the extremists on the right or left. Weve always had them and survived. We may be at a turning point in TV viewing there is evidence people are turning away from both broadcast and cable. The ugly cultural issues that politicians and activists have long used to divide us obscure the fact that Americans tend to agree on many things: About 70% of Americans support same-sex marriage and cannabis legalization, according to Gallup, and about two-thirds of Americans are pro-choice.

Military journalist Thomas E. Ricks wrote in Mondays Washington Post that the threat of another American civil war is, in his view, now in the past. Saying he had long worried we were cascading toward such a war because he saw right-wing groups as heavily influenced by white nationalism, hes less pessimistic now encouraged in part because, so far, other riots have not occurred.

Yet, if you channel-surf the morning and evening cable news shows, youll probably think were about to implode. One of the things cable shows noticed after President Donald Trump was defeated was that fewer people were tuning in. The electrical charge that was Trump created historic ratings spikes that enriched his critics and supporters alike.

But as viewership wanes, so, too, go tempers and resentments, leading to the conclusion that the dueling political realities of talk TV may finally have run its course.

Happily, were not crazy enough to watch it anymore.

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We're not as divided as we think - Oneonta Daily Star

Tucker Carlson’s job ads claim he values diversity, but that’s not what he tells his viewers – Daily Kos

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Media Matters for America (MMFA):

Tucker Carlson has been one of the medias most outspoken opponents of diversity, stating that diversity isn't our strength and workplace diversity policies lead to warring tribes fighting each other for the spoils. But postings for jobs with the Fox News host contain language claiming that we are deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion and that diversity makes great things happen.

Carlsonis the host of Fox NewsTucker Carlson Tonightand Fox NationsTucker Carlson OriginalsandTucker Carlson Today. He uses his top-rated Fox News program topushwhite nationalisttalking points. One of Carlsons go-to narratives has been complaints against pro-diversity rhetoric and policies, including in the workplace.

As MMFAs Eric Hananokipoints out, anti-diversity efforts are a majorpart of Carlsons shtick, whether hes defending the workplace from People Who Are Not White, or protecting real Americansfrom immigration.

In the past, Carlson has also fretted that our leaders are radically and permanently changing our country, wholly on the basis of their faith that diversity is, in fact, our strength. And in case youre still not grokking his meaning, he spelled it out clearly in black and white. Mostly in white, though: Diversity isnt our strength.

He also insists that diversity is dangerousto white people.In May,The New York TimesNicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish noted that

No public figure has promoted replacement theory more loudly or relentlessly than the Fox host Tucker Carlson, who has made elite-led demographic change a central theme of his show since joining Foxs prime-time lineup in 2016. A Times investigation published this month showed that in more than 400 episodes of his show, Mr. Carlson has amplified the notion that Democratic politicians and other assorted elites want to force demographic change through immigration ...

Still not convinced that Tucker thinks we should all retreat to our demographic silosso that my lifelong dream of seeing Chuck Grassley and Emmanuel Lewis briskly oiling each other up at a Des Moines Long John Silvers never comes true(it was a weird dream, and I should probably avoid spicy foods and bath saltsright before bed)?

Consider this September 2018 quote from the fascistic seafood scionthat would make even Rudy Giuliani flinch:How precisely is diversity our strength? Since you've made this our new national motto, please be specific as you explain it. Can you think, for example, of other institutions such as, I don't know, marriage or military units, in which the less that people have in common, the more cohesive they are? Do you get along better with your neighbors or your co-workers if you can't understand each other or share no common values?

Yes, God forbid we make an attempt to understand and appreciate coworkers from different cultures and backgrounds. As we all know, life is only worth living if the guy sitting in the next cubicle likes the same brand of processed bologna slices as you do.

Of course, Carlson, whose family fortune was built on middle-class Americans penchant forshoving unhealthy, warmed-over garbage into their heads on a near-daily basis, is now making money hand over fist by following the same formula. But his venture depends on a uniformity of purpose that simply leaves many diverse candidates out. That said, frothing right-wing agitators are always welcome to apply, as MMFA reported in June!

Paul Escandon, a far-right documentary filmmaker, podcast host, and associate of white nationalist Nick Fuentes, claimed on social media that he interviewed to work with one of Fox Newsmost-watchedtelevision hosts Tucker Carlson and his team.

Escandons alleged interview continues a pattern of Carlsons team collaborating with and hiring white nationalist and extremist-linked staffers.

[...]

Carlson and his team have a history of working with extremist and white nationalist-linked individuals. In 2021, Carlsons team collaborated with Scooter Downey, a director of alt-right and white nationalist documentaries. Downey wrote Carlsons Patriot Purgedocumentary, a conspiracy theory-laden, InfoWars-style three part series about the January 6 insurrection. The series and its wild claims were nothing more than fascist propaganda.

In 2020, it was revealed that one of Carlsons writers, Blake Neff, was pushing white supremacist content and making racist posts on AutoAdmit, an online forum thats known for hosting questionable content. Tucker Carlson Tonight has also hosted numerous guests with links to white nationalism.

No word yet on whether Escandon, director of a sympathetic film about the walking hate crime that isFuentes,ever did get thatgig with Tucker. Given Carlsonsdedication to diversity, one can only imagine he has interviews lined up with a wide range of incels whose basements all smell like quiet desperation and Funyuns.

Of course, none of this should surprise us. Without hypocrisy, all conservatives have left is their gauche Ronald Reagan Franklin Mint shit. But if Tucks ever wants to rejoin polite society, maybe he should think about readinghis own companyshiring policy before popping off again.

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthingsfour-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale,Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Lettersto Donald Trump, atthis link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you candownload theepilogue toGoodbye, Asshatfor the low, low price of FREE.

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Tucker Carlson's job ads claim he values diversity, but that's not what he tells his viewers - Daily Kos

Socialism, Nationalism, and Tolkien – by Alec Dent – The Dispatch

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(Image created in Midjourney.)

Deep indeed run the roots of Evil, and the black sap is strong in them. That tree will never be slain. Let men hew it as often as they may, it will thrust up shoots again as soon as they turn aside.

It is with this depressing thought that Borlas begins his dialogue about the nature of evil with his interlocutor Saelon in The New Shadow, J.R.R. Tolkiens scrapped sequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The text is brief, just the beginning of a novel that was meant to show the inevitable boredom of Men with the good. Amazon has brought attention to what occurred before the trilogy in its new series The Rings of Power, but it is worth examining the few pages Tolkien wrote in which he explored what came next. His understanding of human nature makes what little of The New Shadow that he wrote deeply insightful, and an unsettling warning about our own political climate.

As a devout Catholic, Tolkien believed we live in a sinful, fallen world that will never be perfected by human hands. Its a concept reflected in his works; the whole of the Middle Earth writings is a saga about the rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall of evil. Over and over again, Middle Earth is faced with a dark force, which Middle Eartheans band together to defeat, only to see another malevolent threat rise after. The lesson ought to be clear: At best, evil can be guarded against and squashed out when it first starts to rear its head. But the inhabitants of Middle Earth, like those of our world, tend not to go for that strategy, falling, instead, into complacency. As Tolkien noted in one of his letters, mankind has a quick satiety with good.

This satiety is bad enough when it leads to blindness to the rise of a new evil, but in The New Shadow, Tolkien sought to explore a more frightening outcome of it: What happens when people dont just ignore the threat of evil, but forget why it is a threat to begin with. Set in one of the kingdoms of men, Gondor, 105 years after the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Sauron and his Orcs have been relegated to the stuff of legend while all the humans who fought them have died off. Only a few survive who have even the slightest memory of the War of the Ring from their childhood, and having known nothing but peace and prosperity for their entire lives, a restless sect of young Gondorians become fascinated by the evil figures of old. Boys run around committing acts of vandalism pretending to be Orcs, and there are whispers that a cult devoted to the old evil has begun. Our introduction to these goings-on is through the conversation between the elderly Borlas, who was a boy during the War of the Ring, and Saelon, a young man who subtly reveals he may be a part of the new cult. The two go back and forth, each using the conversation to probe the extent of the others knowledge of the cult while debating morality.

The storyline will sound familiar to anyone paying attention to the politics of millennials and Gen Zers today. In our time of unprecedented wealth and safety, the once-defeated foe of illiberalism has made a reappearence. Young leftists have increasingly positive views of socialism, while young right-wingers have increasingly positive views of nationalism. As Jonah Goldberg laid out in Suicide of the West, illiberal views in the West are due largely to a lack of appreciation for how good we have things right now, a lack of understanding of how we got here, and a lack of understanding of how a radical overhaul of society would alter the world as we know it. This is especially true of younger generations, who have little to no direct experience with the failures of illiberalism. Having not witnessed others try and fail, theyre more open to limiting free speech, race-based nationalism, polyamory, and a whole host of other ideas that were long thought unacceptable in America.

Tolkien has a sharp understanding of this peace-time radical mindset, and in the little he wrote of The New Shadow he managed to capture not just how they think and are motivated, but how they operate in early stages as well. In The New Shadow, Saelon never outright says hes in the cult. He hints at it, and tries to draw out Borlas view of it by using language and references that would be familiar to only those in the know. The radicals of today use the same strategies, using words that mean little to outside observers, but show a deeper, esoteric meaning to fellow travelers, like bringing up land acknowledgements to show that youre a true believer on the far left or casually dropping the white nationalist Sam Francis name in conversation to show that youre a true believer on the far right.

(Radical leftists are further along in their project on most issues and are, thus, relatively open about their views compared to the young radical right, who are still generally quiet about the full extent of what they believe. Their influences are little discussed, pulled from unsavory corners of the conservative movement that the generation before them ignoredthey had no reason to read them, these figures were driven out of the movement either directly before or during their lifetimes. As Matthew Rose noted in his book After Liberalism: The Philosophers of the Radical Right: That you might be unfamiliar with some of [the philosophers of the radical right] does not make you unusual. In congressional offices, Republican politicians wont know them all either, but their young aides will. At conservative magazines, senior editors dont read them, but junior staff do.)

Tolkien gave up on The New Shadow, saying in a letter that the story proved both sinister and depressing. (Writing on human nature often is.) What little he was able to complete serves as a reminder of the importance of engendering gratitude in every generation and of avoiding moral complacency. Never underestimate the ability of small wrongs to grow into something bigger. Hew the tree of evil at its first sign of growth.

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Socialism, Nationalism, and Tolkien - by Alec Dent - The Dispatch

Celebrated Author And Anthropologist Rich Benjamin To Speak At Raue Center – Broadway World

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Celebrated author, speaker, and cultural anthropologist, Rich Benjamin, joins Raue Center on October 14, 2022, at 7 pm for "The Divided States of America: Big National Transformations, Small Towns" a special presentation and moderated Q&A discussing his personal experiences engaging with communities in small-town America and his deft observations of modern society, culture, and politics with a goal toward building understanding and openness.

"It's important for us to have honest conversations on Race," Raue Center's executive director, Richard Kuranda. "It helps us move forward. Over the last 5 years, we have opened our eyes to the power of a community wanting to confront the ugly truth that racism does exist here. Hopefully, this discussion will help further that conversation in McHenry County."

Rich Benjamin is a political analyst, a cultural anthropologist, a speaker, an author. Benjamin's cultural and political analysis appears regularly in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, and National Public Radio (NPR). His scholarly research has received support from Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, Brown University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Benjamin was recently a Fellow in the literary arts at the Bellagio Center (Italia), Rockefeller Foundation. Rich has a BA in English and political science from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. He sits on the Board of Trustees of the Authors Guild, the national union of writers that has been protecting authors' rights and free speech since 1912.

He is the author of "Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America" selected as an Editor's Choice by Booklist and The American Library Association (2009). This groundbreaking study is one of few to have illuminated in advance the rise of white anxiety and white nationalism in contemporary public US life. Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, calls Searching for Whitopia, "A daring feat of the 21st Century exploration that will have you laughing and shuddering at the same time." The book is now in its second printing. He is currently at work on a new book, Talk to Me.

"I believe that adaptation requires openness. It requires a willingness to understand others, a willingness to understand oneself. And I believe in that willingness comes an openness to change." - Rich Benjamin

Don't miss this timely discussion, "The Divided States of America: Big National Transformations, Small Towns," with one of America's finest scholars. Moderated by James Knight. Tickets are $20. Student discount is available. For tickets or more information visit rauecenter.org or call Raue Box Office at 815.356.9212.

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Celebrated Author And Anthropologist Rich Benjamin To Speak At Raue Center - Broadway World

Transcript: Jared Holt and Karen Kornbluh on "Face the Nation," Sept. 4, 2022 – CBS News

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The following is a transcript of an interview with Jared Holt of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Karen Kornbluh of the German Marshall Fund that aired Sunday, Sept. 4, 2022, on "Face the Nation."

INTRO: Political violence and riots can often be traced back to the rise of online extremism. We spoke earlier with two experts on the problem and its potential solutions -- Jared Holt, the senior research manager at the institute for strategic dialogue and Karen Kornbluh, the head of the German Marshall Fund's Digital Innovations and Democracy Initiative -- and we began by asking them to characterize the relationship between the internet and democracy.

JARED HOLT: Tenuous. The internet in the way that it is monetized in the current age is through attention, you can get a lot of attention saying crazy stuff and we've seen a lot of people do that, frankly. So you know, as long as the business model of the internet is built around trying to captivate audiences and keep them clicking, reacting, whether that's through rage or diehard support. It's going to be in conflict with democracy, because democracy is not about what gets the most attention. It's supposed to be about, you know, what the best ideas are, how do we compromise? How do we move forward? In this attention-based economy online, is incongruent with that mission.

MAJOR GARRETT: Karen, complete this sentence: the internet's relationship to democracy is?

KAREN KORNBLUH: Fraught, it's definitely fraught, in the early days of the internet, it offered incredible promise, and it still does, you know, all of these movements, Black Lives Matter, Me Too, were able to gain steam online and that it just continues to offer the kind of promise of educating people, informing them, connecting them. But these algorithms really have contributed to the crisis we're in. And the platforms have a real responsibility to fix them, and to help fix the problem that they've helped create.

MAJOR GARRETT: Jared, from a libertarian perspective, one might argue, look, people are out there, they decide what they want to consume, there is agency as you indicated, so the internet isn't a problem. These people are out there. They have their beliefs, and they're going to pursue it- or is it that you're arguing the internet is an accelerator and a multiplier?

HOLT: It's an accelerator and a multiplier, this kind of content, conspiratorial content, extremist movements have existed in America for as long as America has been around, right? These platforms are designed guiding people towards more extreme content, what they're not taking down, what they're giving a free pass to, people who are using these platforms to manipulate audiences, and guide them and steer them.

MAJOR GARRETT: From your perspective, is January 6, and it's magnitude impossible without this multiplier accelerationist effect.

HOLT: It's very safe to say that it wouldn't have happened the way that it did, at the scale that it did coming together as fast as it did, without the internet. A lot of attention was paid to fringe platforms like Parlor, after the riot. But a lot of the agitation and calls to action were happening on mainstream platforms from mainstream figures.

MAJOR GARRETT: For those on the right, who say, you're missing this whole point, the point is, we get canceled, we get de-platformed, and that's big tech silencing us. So, our rights are the ones being trampled, you would say?

KORNBLUH: This is the danger of the whack a mole solution. Not only is it ineffective, too little too late, but it also raises all kinds of free expression concerns because it takes down content and takes down people after the fact. I'd love to see the platforms not only fix their algorithms, but when they publish their terms of service, really commit themselves to enforce what they've put out there, and not have so much discretion. It's this kind of discretion that I think really bothers people and makes them feel that they can't get on these very few opportunities for speech.

MAJOR GARRETT: Jared, what happened in these places you are describing Parler, Gettr, other parts of the web that maybe aren't as well trafficked as others after the Mar a Lago execution of a search warrant?

HOLT: These spaces online, pro-Trump forums, fringe platforms, just really erupted with violent rhetoric. There's these false beliefs that the FBI or law enforcement is out to get conservatives and Trump supporters specifically. But we saw that paired with also a lot of violent rhetoric, taking their existing beliefs that the system is compromised, and ratcheting it up to the next level, saying, you know, we need to do something, whether that's protesting, or whether that's taking it as far as that individual in Cincinnati did, trying to breach the FBI office there.

MAJOR GARRETT: Karen, what can Congress do?

KORNBLUH: There's bipartisan concern, but there's really not bipartisan action. The proposals on algorithmic accountability, I think, offer real promise, but so far, they don't include any kind of enforcement mechanism. Given the tinderbox that we're in, I think we really have to turn to the platforms and ask them to step up.

MAJOR GARRETT: What are you looking at in terms of these realities? They're not going to change before the midterm elections and multiplier effects, accelerationist effect on the web, heading toward the midterms?

KORNBLUH: There are two things, two urgent things, that I would say that the platforms could do. First, they should stop siloing people, directing people into these bubbles that reinforce extremist worldviews and don't let in opposing viewpoints. And second, they should really work with the providers of important civic information, people like election administration officials, to help them amplify accurate information so that people can be empowered and actually know what- what's going on.

MAJOR GARRETT: What does this conversation and these underlying realities mean, as America grapples with what appears to be a rise in white nationalism, white supremacy?

HOLT: The internet has been a really powerful tool for extremist movements in the US, it's been a big accelerant. It's been a big boom. And we've seen consistently on platforms, you know, they all have kind of red lines, that content is not supposed to cross over, if it crosses over. If it's, you know, particularly violent, particularly racist, that kind of material will get banned. But the content that walks right up to that line, that sort of tiptoes on that line, is among the highest performing content on these websites. It's not a level playing field. And that unlevel playing field has been, you know, definitely an accelerant of these issues that we're seeing rise up in American prominence. The kind of stuff that we're talking about today, whether it's misinformation, conspiracy theories, etc. Everybody is vulnerable to this. Rich people, poor people, smart people, not so smart people, everybody can fall victim to this stuff. And it has to do with the manipulative nature of the content. And I just think it's really important to stress that.

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Transcript: Jared Holt and Karen Kornbluh on "Face the Nation," Sept. 4, 2022 - CBS News

Guest Commentary: MAGA Abortion Banners and Election Deniers – The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

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by Scott Steward

You can say it this way or you can say it that way, either way you say it MAGA stands for pain. It stands for Mad Americans Gone Awry. Is there something to be angry about? Absolutely. Worshiping AR-15s is not the answer and following authoritarian Viktor Orban (Hungarys authoritarian leader) into an SS style penal society is not the answer. Going apoplectic at a school board meeting is also not the answer.

The answer is working Americans working together. The Biden administration signed laws to force pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices, apply a minimum tax for corporations, provide veterans (exposed to military waste burn zones) medical care, and take steps to provide us with clean domestic energy security. Thats what government is for.

Most Republicans, most people, independent or otherwise, want corporations to pay taxes, want to stop being gouged by pharmaceutical companies, care for our veterans, and want to have the energy we need to heat and cool our homes and get us where we need to go without sending our dollars to Russia or Saudi Arabia. Having government for the people and not a government reaching into your doctor patient relationship that is what US people want.

Some Americans are all for lining up behind an Orbanesk dictatorship. Donald We love Hungary Trump is one of them. Trump who applies the toddler rules of possession to national security documents. If I like it, its mine. If its in my hand, its mine. If I can take it from you, its mine. For Trump, national security is not the issue. He would say, public office would just be so much better if it was just 100% me.

Who is lining up behind the MAGA minority alt-right grab America way? Who is willing to take democracy down to do it?

Thirteen Election Decertification MAGA leaders choosing Trump over democracy:

#1 Ron DeSantis: 15 week total abortion ban no exception for rape, incest or human trafficking. He, and the gerrymandered Republican legislature, overturned a 2020 law, passed overwhelmingly by Florida voters, to reinstate voting rights for 250,000 people who served their time. A king of voter suppression, he has also put in place a law that makes it a crime for public employees to say gay. Now if you say gay you might be ineligible to vote? This is not enough for DeSantis. He is jealous of other US MAGA Orban Putin power leaders who are prepared to decertify elections if their chosen candidates do not win.

#2 Ted Cruz: Texas Beautiful Ted(Trumps nickname) Cruz. A name earned while in Cancun, waiting out ice storms that knocked out power for weeks in a freezing Texas. The Texas state bar petitioned to remove Ted Cruzs license to practice law after he moved beyond his position as a United States senator by agreeing to represent President Donald Trump and Pennsylvania Republicans as an attorney in litigation contesting the 2020 election. Cruz can also be credited with the hide behind/nothing to see here bearded culprit look.

#3 Greg Abbott: Texas, so reviled he inspired the counter MAGA Mothers Against Greg Abbott movement. Abbott led Texas to become the first state to enact a 6 week near-total abortion ban.

#4 Matt Gaetz: Florida congressman suggests people shoot Silicon Valley executives calling such acts an obligation to use the Second Amendment. No matter that the second amendment has nothing to do with shooting businessmen like them or not. Gaetz recommendations to shoot those you disagree with follows a long troubling history of sexual abuse crimes. A MAGA standard bearer.

#5 Adam Laxalt: Nevada US Senate candidate earned the title of Nevadas Rudy Giuliani. Laxalt does not perspire brown streaks of lies, but he is banking his entire campaign for Senate on the stop the steal slogan and not much else. He is already lining up resources to sue if he does not win in November. Its sad that Nevada supports abortion rights.

#6 Mark Finchem: Arizona secretary of state, January 6th Stop the Steal rally attendee, espouses Qanoon conspiracy theories and is close to right wing militias. Ladies and gentlemen, we know it and they know it Donald Trump won, rages Finchem.

#7 Kristina Karamo: running for Michigan Secretary of State. Calls all abortion child sacrifice, and is certain demonic possession is real. Maybe just an old school headline grabber, she has personally testified that the election was stolen even after her own state upheld the 2020 election after 200 audits disproved fraud had occurred. This a conclusion reached by a Michigan Republican sanctioned report.

#8 JD Vance, living in SF and running for Senate in Ohio. Taking money from famed anarchist Peter Thiel (renowned hater of democracy) who suspects officeholders of imposing a brain-dead, one-world state. Vances bankroller is a short step away from believing that electoral losses can be treated as inherently illegitimate and nonbinding, reports the Washington Post.

#9 Noah Malgeri, Nevada District 3 Congressman openly called for Americas top general, Mark Milley, to be hanged before a live TV audience. Malgeri believes Milley was part of an elitist group that attempted to stage a coup against Trump.

#10 Melisa Carone: Having been barred from running for State Senate in Michigan she is running for Lieutenant Governor. Carone made bizarre statements of election fraud under oath, pushes white nationalism, voter restrictions and banning selected history from schools. Carone is a Marjorie Taylor Green protge and, unlike GAs 14th District, Michigans legislature wants no part of her, proving that not all Republicans will let MAGAs take control.

# 11 Kari Lake: running for Arizona Governor, called for Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (also a 2022 gubernatorial candidate) to be imprisoned for unspecified election crimes (make em up.) Lake believes that the topic of abortion is just a tactic to hide people from the truth (about the stolen election) and her position is that abortion should be determined at the state level echoing trend setter Lindsey Graham.

# 12 Lindsey Graham: South Carolina, framed the most recently quoted position of Republicans about abortion I think states should decide the issue of marriage and states should decide the issue of abortion. What Graham, and what most Republicans running are saying, is that who you choose to marry, what type of health care and when a woman receives health care should be up to gerrymandered Republican State legislature (or one party nation.)

#13 Sarah Palin: The Alaskan has not run for public office since 2008. Palin had this to say about COVID healthcare. Itll be over my dead body that I get a shot. I will not. I wont do it and they better not touch my kids either. Palin, after her now famous August loss to Mary Peltola in the special house election, chose these words to describe Alaskas popular ranked choice voting system, convoluted, cockamamie and untrustworthy. Calling democracy unfair we are hearing a lot of that lately.

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Guest Commentary: MAGA Abortion Banners and Election Deniers - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis