[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 30 September 2019 21:00.
Statue of Bandera in Western Ukraine.
Ukrainian Nationalism and its Demons from the Past
By Sébastien Meuwissen at Visigrad Post
Poland/Ukraine – On January 1st, 2019, several thousands of Ukrainians marched in the streets of Kiev, Lviv and Khmelnytskyï (Western Ukraine) to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of Stepan Bandera. These past years, there were plenty of similar processions in Ukraine, in particular in the Western part. Thousands of young Ukrainians take part in these nationalists marches, where they wave flags picturing Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. Even though they contributed to the creation of an independent Ukraine, the two men have been guilty of many war crimes in their collaboration with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Nowadays Bandera and Shukhevych remain controversial historical figures. For some they are national heroes and for others they are criminals.
A territory coveted by its powerful neighbours
In a matter of territorial size, Ukraine is the third biggest country in Europe (behind Russia and France). The name “Ukraine” (in Ukrainian: Україна [ukrɑˈjinɑ]) was used for the first time in reference to the territory of Kievian Rus in the XIIth century. Throughout its history this huge territory was targeted by many invasions and was annexed by some European powers.
During the XVIIth century almost the entire territory of what is now Ukraine fell under the control of the Kingdom of Poland-Lithuania. Later during the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries, the Austro-Hungarian (at the West) and Russian (in the Center and at the East) empires shared this Eastern European territory. After the First World War, Poland reappeared on European maps and took most of the Western parts while USSR took the rest of the territory under its control.
The Soviet context and the “Holodomor”
Ukraine suffered tremendously from soviet occupation. The most obvious example of this harsh time is certainly the Soviet caused famine of 1932-1933. The Ukrainian famine named “Holodomor” (in Ukrainian: голодомо́р, extermination by hunger) is seen by many people as a mass murder that can be related to a genocide (even though this event isn’t in a lot of history books).
In a period of just a year and a half, this starvation caused the death of six to eight million people, according to various sources, with two to five millions solely in Ukraine. Even though most of the victims were ethnically Ukrainians, they were not the only ones afflicted by the murderous policy of Stalin (hundreds of thousands of Russians, Tatars and Kazakhs also died).
A coveted multicultural area
During the first half of the XXth century, ethnic, cultural and religious tensions considerably grew in Western Ukraine. According to a population census from 1931 the Ukrainians (mostly Orthodox) constituted the major part of the local population (64%) in the Western region of Volhynia. Other ethnic and religious groups were the Poles (15,6%), the Jews (10%), Germans (2,3%) and other groups less numerous (Czech, Slovaks, Belorussians, …). (1) The already existent tensions between these various groups would considerably grow during the ’30s to evolve into a true hate during the Second World War.
At this time two Ukraines seemed to emerge. On one hand the Western Ukraine that was earlier under Polish and Austrian influence and on the other hand the russified Eastern Ukraine. To the eyes of Ukrainian independentists, Poland and the USSR were hereditary enemies of the Ukrainian nation and should be fought to allow for the creation of an independent Ukrainian state. This was precisely this goal of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (or OUN), created in 1929.
The strategy of the OUN to reach the creation of an independent Ukraine included violence and terrorism against those who were seen as enemies of an independent Ukraine. Among those cited as the “external” enemies of Ukraine – Poland and USSR – and the “internal” enemies, so to say all people who weren’t ethnically Ukrainian or suspected to collaborate with the enemy. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (or UPA) was a paramilitary nationalist army engaged in a series of conflicts during the Second World War. It was composed by various fighter groups of the OUN. The OUN and the UPA had for leaders, respectively, Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych.
Collaboration with Nazi Germany
A few years later, the Second World War began. In 1940, many Western Ukrainians saw Nazi Germany like a partner susceptible to help the creation of an independent Ukrainian state. Hitler was considered a symbol of hope in front of the soviet domination. The act of restoration of the Ukrainian state from the 30th of June, 1941, is very clear on this:
“3. The newly formed Ukrainian state will work closely with the National-Socialist Greater Germany, under the leadership of its leader Adolf Hitler which is forming a new order in Europe and the world and is helping the Ukrainian People to free itself from Muscovite occupation.” (2)
On April 28 the division “SS Galizien” was created. It was a military formation mostly made up by Ukrainian volunteers from the region of Galicia (Western Ukraine). Under the initiative of the Wehrmacht, the SS Galizien division slaughtered practically the entirety of the Jewish population of this region.
The massacre of Volhynia
Once the Jewish population were eliminated, the Poles were targeted. It is principally in the Western region of Ukraine that the slaughter of the Polish minority took place. While the Second World War was raging, Ukrainian nationalist leaders commanded their supporters to slaughter the Polish population in the region. Here is a passage of the order given by the OUN on the 2nd of February 1944 to its members:
“Liquidate every inch of Polishness. Destroy the Catholic churches and other Polish cult places (…) Destroy the houses so there is no trace that someone lived there (…) Keep in mind that if something Polish remains, then Poles will come to claim our territories.” (3)
The groups of Ukrainian nationalists went to the towns of Galicia and Volhynia and killed between 40,000 and 60,000 people, mostly women and children. None were spared. On the 11th of July nearly 100 villages were plundered and the population was slaughtered in the most brutal way. Besides murdering the local population, the Banderas tortured with a rare atrocity. Despite the absence of resistance, civilians were killed in their houses, at school, in the churches, or in offices. As practiced later by the Soviet army, rape was largely used as a terror weapon.
The legacy and the demons from the past
The Polish writer Jan Zaleski said: “The Poles living in Volhynia were killed twice. The first time by a weapon and the second time by silence.” With these words he was referring to the way the history of the massacre of Volhynia is often avoided and to the Ukrainian denial of the atrocities that were committed. Besides the numerous crimes committed by the members of the OUN and the UPA, many Ukrainians consider the leaders of these organizations as national heroes. We can see as a proof the various monuments to the glory of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych in the Western part of the country, particularly in the city of Lviv where they are regularly maintained.
The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Andrej Babis, has slammed policies promoting mass migration and population replacement which are both propagated by globalist governments in Western Europe.
While touching on the subject which is commonly referred to as ’Replacement Migration‘ during an interview with Die Welt, Babis said, “We do not see migration as a means of counteracting a shrinking population, as in Western Europe.”
Echoing his Visegrád partner Viktor Orbán, Babis also spoke about how he would like to increase the low birthrates of his own country where women, on average, have just 1.7 children.
“We want to get the Czechs to have more children,” Babis said.
After the German reporter asserted that it’s “not very climate-friendly” to set government incentives for people to have more children, Babis responded, saying: “I have four children. Then I’m probably climate-damaging.”
In Germany, a country where a large portion of the population seems to have lost touch with reality, there are now certain climate activists who measure everything in terms of carbon dioxide and would, therefore, prefer to ban child-bearing.
Babis went on to say that the only people who immigrate to the Czech Republic are invited by its government.
“We welcome foreigners, more than five percent of our population is born abroad, but we are the ones who decide who comes here and who does not,” the Czech Prime Ministere declared.
Throughout his tenure as the leader of the small central European country, Babis hasn’t wavered in his opposition to mass migration from the third world – something the EU technocrats are certainly not happy with.
In the past, Babis has suggested that the EU should model its asylum policy after the Australian model, which processes those seeking asylum outside of the country.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 26 September 2019 19:08.
Putin: Israel is a ‘Russian-speaking country’
“Russians and Israelis have ties of family and friendship. Our nations are united by common and often tragic pages in history,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at Keren Hayesod’s annual conference in Moscow.
JNS, 20 Sept 2019: Russian President Vladimir Putin called Israel a Russian-speaking country and talking about ties between the two countries on Tuesday.
“We consider Israel a Russian-speaking country,” he said at the Keren Hayesod foundation’s annual conference held in Moscow. “Russians and Israelis have ties of family and friendship. Our nations are united by common and often tragic pages in history.”
He noted that Russia invited Israeli leaders to Moscow next year to attend celebrations marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Putin also discussed the importance of teaching future generations about the war, according to The Moscow Times.
He explained, “The positions of Russia and Israel, the peoples of our countries, coincide. We consider any attempt to revise the outcome of the war, to distort the truth and justify fascism and its lapdogs, completely unacceptable.”
Israel is home to the world’s largest population of Russian Jewry, with about 17 percent of the country’s population is Russian-speaking, according to research.
And while Putin acknowledges that Jews are at home in both Israel and Russia, encouraging the deepening of that interplay, he invites those Jewish diaspora who might be uncomfortable with their liberalism’s intersectionality in Europe to come to Russia…
Zionist Report 4, 26 Sept 2019
2.62K subscribers
“Russian President Vladimir Putin invited Jews to come to Russia after listening to the President of the European Jewish Congress Vyacheslav Kantor complain about attacks against Jews in Europe, during a meeting with the European Jewish Congress in Moscow, Tuesday.”
Posted by DanielS on Friday, 20 September 2019 05:09.
Reflecting on his decision to go public with classified information, Snowden says, “The likeliest outcome for me, hands down, was that I’d spend the rest of my life in an orange jumpsuit, but that was a risk that I had to take.” Courtesy of Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden Speaks Out: ‘I Haven’t And I Won’t’ Cooperate With Russia
In 2013, Snowden was an IT systems expert working under contract for the National Security Agency when he traveled to Hong Kong to provide three journalists with thousands of top-secret documents about U.S. intelligence agencies’ surveillance of American citizens.
To Snowden, the classified information he shared with the journalists exposed privacy abuses by government intelligence agencies. He saw himself as a whistleblower. But the U.S. government considered him a traitor in violation of the Espionage Act.
After meeting with the journalists, Snowden intended to leave Hong Kong and travel — via Russia — to Ecuador, where he would seek asylum. But when his plane landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, things didn’t go according to plan.
“What I wasn’t expecting was that the United States government itself ... would cancel my passport,” he says.
Snowden was directed to a room where Russian intelligence agents offered to assist him — in return for access to any secrets he harbored. Snowden says he refused.
“I didn’t cooperate with the Russian intelligence services. I haven’t and I won’t,” he says. “I destroyed my access to the archive. I had no material with me before I left Hong Kong, because I knew I was going to have to go through this complex multi-jurisdictional route.”
Snowden spent 40 days in the Moscow airport, trying to negotiate asylum in various countries. After being denied asylum by 27 nations, he settled in Russia, where he remains today.
“People look at me now and they think I’m this crazy guy, I’m this extremist or whatever. Some people have a misconception that I set out to burn down the NSA,” he says. “But that’s not what this was about. In many ways, 2013 wasn’t about surveillance at all. What it was about was a violation of the Constitution.”
Snowden’s 2013 revelations led to changes in the laws and standards governing American intelligence agencies and the practices of U.S. technology companies, which now encrypt much of their Web traffic for security. He reflects on his life and his experience in the intelligence community in the memoir Permanent Record.
On Sept. 17, the U.S. Justice Department filed suit to recover all proceeds from the book, alleging that Snowden violated nondisclosure agreements by not letting the government review the manuscript before publication; Snowden’s attorney, Ben Wizner, said in a statement that the book contains no government secrets that have not been previously published by respected news organizations, and that the government’s prepublication review system is under court challenge.
Interview Highlights
On how researching China’s surveillance capabilities for a CIA presentation got him thinking about the potential for domestic surveillance within the U.S.
I’m invited to give a presentation about how China is hacking the United States intelligence services, defense contractors, anything that we have available in the network, which I know a little bit about but not that much about, because they have the person who is supposed to be giving the presentation drop out. So I go looking ... seeing what exactly is it that China is doing? What are their capabilities? Are they hacking? Are they doing domestic surveillance? Are they doing international surveillance? What is occurring?
And I’m just shocked by the extent of their capabilities. I’m appalled by the aggression with which they use them. But also, in a strange way, surprised by the openness with which they use them. They’re not hiding it. They’re just open and out there, saying, “Yeah, we’re doing this. Yeah, we’re hacking you. What are you going to do about it?”
And I think this is a distinction: I think, yes, the NSA is spying — of course they’re spying — but we’re only spying overseas, we’re not spying on our guys at home. We wouldn’t do that. We have firewalls, we have trip wires for people to hit. But surely these are only affecting terrorists, because we’re not like China. But this plants the first seeds of doubt where I see if the capability is there.
Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 15 September 2019 15:42.
The attacks were claimed by Yemen’s Houthi group, a rebel group aligned with Iran and currently fighting a war against the Saudi-led coalition which has seen a spate of similar attacks.
Iran warns U.S. after drone attacks on Saudi refineries
Smoke is seen following a fire at an Aramco factory in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, September 14, 2019 in this picture obtained from social media.
Iran has warned the U.S. that its bases and aircraft carriers are within range of its missiles after Tehran was blamed for drone attacks on two oil refineries in Saudi Arabia.
The attacks on Saturday—which knocked out half of Saudi Arabia’s oil output and caused massive fires—were claimed by Yemen’s Houthis, a rebel group aligned with Iran and currently fighting a war against the Saudi-led coalition which has seen a spate of similar attacks.
But U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Tehran late on Saturday, arguing that there was “no evidence” that the attacks came from Yemen.
Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy. Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply. There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.
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9:59 PM - Sep 14, 2019
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A commander in Iran’s revolutionary guard hit back on Sunday, warning that U.S. bases within 2,000 kilometres of the country were “within range of our missiles”. He was also quoted as saying that Iran “has already been ready for a fully-fledged war.”
Later, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi, speaking on state TV, dismissed the U.S. claim as “pointless”.
The attacks, which took place early on Saturday, caused huge fires that were later extinguished by the Saudi authorities, a Saudi interior ministry spokesman said. The attacks also cut about 50% of the company’s crude oil output, the energy minister said in a statement, according to Reuters.
UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab weighed in after speaking with his US counterpart.
He called the attack a “reckless attempt to damage regional security and disrupt global oil supplies.”
“The UK condemns such behaviour unreservedly,” he added.
Just spoke to @SecPompeo about this egregious attack on the security of Saudi Arabia. This was a reckless attempt to damage regional security and disrupt global oil supplies. The UK condemns such behaviour unreservedly.
4:11 PM - Sep 15, 2019
109 people are talking about this
Yemeni TV channel al-Masirah said the Houthis had deployed 10 drones against the sites in Abqaiq and Khurais, and the group pledged to widen the range of its attacks on Saudi Arabia.
Abqaiq, 60 km (37 miles) southwest of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province contains the world’s largest oil processing plant and Khurais, 190 km further southwest, contains the country’s second-largest oilfield.
MuradمرادAbdo@MuradAbdo22
BREAKING: #Yemen’s #Houthis Spokesman appeared in a televised statement and claimed responsibility for drone attacks against #Saudi’s #Aramco oil facilities - #SaudiArabia #US @UN
10:39 AM - Sep 14, 2019
Tensions high
Tensions are running high in the region after attacks in June and July on oil tankers in Gulf waters that Riyadh and Washington blamed on Iran. Tehran denies the accusations.
Iran-aligned Houthi fighters have also launched attacks over the border, hitting Shaybah oilfield with drones last month and two oil pumping stations in May. Both attacks caused fires but did not disrupt production.
Security forces foiled an al Qaeda attack on Abqaiq in 2006.
US Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Pompeo’s tweet an “irresponsible simplification”.
“The Saudis and Houthis are at war. The Saudis attack the Houthis and the Houthis attack back. Iran is backing the Houthis and has been a bad actor, but it’s just not as simple as Houthis=Iran,” Murphy tweeted.
Aramco is preparing to float shares as early as this year as part of efforts to diversify the economy of the world’s top oil exporter away from crude. It has hired nine banks as joint global coordinators to lead the IPO and has been meeting bankers this week in Dubai as it speeds up the listing plans.
Statue of Bandera in Western Ukraine.
Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Andrej Babis
Reflecting on his decision to go public with classified information, Snowden says, “The likeliest outcome for me, hands down, was that I’d spend the rest of my life in an orange jumpsuit, but that was a risk that I had to take.” Courtesy of Edward Snowden