6 mins read
The U.S. is welcoming Finland and Sweden to NATO. That’s a mistake.
Instead of lowering the chances of war, the membership of the two Nordic countries increases the risk for the entire alliance.
6 mins read
Instead of lowering the chances of war, the membership of the two Nordic countries increases the risk for the entire alliance.
10 mins read
Lithuania is waving a red cape at the Russian bear.
6 mins read
The United States will need to take into consideration historical shifts in the balance of power and influence in the world.
11 mins read
Empty mall parking lot and existence of a munitions plant nearby raise questions about official narrative advanced in mainstream U.S. media
3 mins read
Russia’s Ukraine miscalculation dates to 2014 when the Kremlin refused the request of the Donbass Russians in Eastern Ukraine to be reunited with Russia. Historically part of Russia, the Donbass region was attached to the Ukrainian province of the Soviet Union by Soviet leaders as was Crimea. These Russian populated territories, historically part of Russia, rejected the anti-Russian rule installed in Kiev when Washington overthrew the Ukrainian government and installed a puppet regime. Had the Kremlin accepted the request of the Donbass Russians, there would have been no necessity for a Russian intervention in Donbass.
5 mins read
Incongruity was the hallmark of the extraordinary NATO summit just concluded in Madrid. NATO offered bluster and promised muster: more troops against its “most significant and direct threat ,” Russia. Meanwhile, Russian “cauldron”maneuvers in Donbas methodically destroyed or enveloped major units of Kyiv’s army, further strengthening Russia’s position there.
6 mins read
As the war in Ukraine drags on, already diverging camps in the Atlantic Alliance are likely to fracture further.
3 mins read
We’re used to hearing about state-backed Twitter campaigns from the likes of Iran and Russia, but why do we never hear about US and UK social media ops? (Spoiler: it’s not because they don’t exist)
5 mins read
As NATO holds its Summit in Madrid on June 28-30, the war in Ukraine is taking center stage. During a pre-Summit June 22 talk with Politico, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg bragged about how well-prepared NATO was for this fight because, he said: “This was an invasion that was predicted, foreseen by our intelligence services.” Stoltenberg was talking about Western intelligence predictions in the months leading up to the February 24 invasion, when Russia insisted it was not going to attack. Stoltenberg, however, could well have been talking about predictions that went back not just months before the invasion, but decades.
10 mins read
The west is nostalgically caught up with outdated ‘containment’ policies, this time against Global South integration. Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world is moving on, together.
4 mins read
Yesterday I mentioned the burning shopping center in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, of which the Ukrainian president Zelensky falsely claimed that thousand people had been inside.
7 mins read
Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid spared no expense to build the sumptuous Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul during 1843 and 1856, which was constructed to impress the world. It had the largest Bohemian crystal chandelier ever installed and fourteen tonnes of gold to gild the ceilings.
5 mins read
As a result of the recent G7 and NATO meetings the world's
“sleepwalking” progress toward a nuclear holocaust got a big
boost. And the main reason is Joe Biden.
6 mins read
With each passing day, it is becoming more evident that the lunatics have taken over the asylum, and words that would have been considered the height of self-destructive folly just a few years ago, are becoming normalized in today’s political discourse.
35 mins read
The eminent scholar on the worsening threat of nuclear warfare, how to end the war in Ukraine, the self-justifying myths propagated by imperial powers, why the Global South finds American moralizing laughable, and more.
8 mins read
Kiev faces a choice: make peace for its people or war for its supposed friends?
6 mins read
Instead of lowering the chances of war, the membership of the two Nordic countries increases the risk for the entire alliance.
10 mins read
Lithuania is waving a red cape at the Russian bear.
6 mins read
As the war in Ukraine drags on, already diverging camps in the Atlantic Alliance are likely to fracture further.
5 mins read
As NATO holds its Summit in Madrid on June 28-30, the war in Ukraine is taking center stage. During a pre-Summit June 22 talk with Politico, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg bragged about how well-prepared NATO was for this fight because, he said: “This was an invasion that was predicted, foreseen by our intelligence services.” Stoltenberg was talking about Western intelligence predictions in the months leading up to the February 24 invasion, when Russia insisted it was not going to attack. Stoltenberg, however, could well have been talking about predictions that went back not just months before the invasion, but decades.
10 mins read
The west is nostalgically caught up with outdated ‘containment’ policies, this time against Global South integration. Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world is moving on, together.
7 mins read
Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid spared no expense to build the sumptuous Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul during 1843 and 1856, which was constructed to impress the world. It had the largest Bohemian crystal chandelier ever installed and fourteen tonnes of gold to gild the ceilings.
7 mins read
The main message of the neocons is that the US must predominate in military power in every region of the world, and must confront rising regional powers that could someday challenge US global or regional dominance, most important Russia and China.
6 mins read
The United States will need to take into consideration historical shifts in the balance of power and influence in the world.
11 mins read
Empty mall parking lot and existence of a munitions plant nearby raise questions about official narrative advanced in mainstream U.S. media
3 mins read
Russia’s Ukraine miscalculation dates to 2014 when the Kremlin refused the request of the Donbass Russians in Eastern Ukraine to be reunited with Russia. Historically part of Russia, the Donbass region was attached to the Ukrainian province of the Soviet Union by Soviet leaders as was Crimea. These Russian populated territories, historically part of Russia, rejected the anti-Russian rule installed in Kiev when Washington overthrew the Ukrainian government and installed a puppet regime. Had the Kremlin accepted the request of the Donbass Russians, there would have been no necessity for a Russian intervention in Donbass.
3 mins read
We’re used to hearing about state-backed Twitter campaigns from the likes of Iran and Russia, but why do we never hear about US and UK social media ops? (Spoiler: it’s not because they don’t exist)
4 mins read
Yesterday I mentioned the burning shopping center in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, of which the Ukrainian president Zelensky falsely claimed that thousand people had been inside.
3 mins read
Germany’s Der Spiegel removes clip in which Azovstal evacuee criticized Ukraine
7 mins read
Barbara Tuchman’s March of Folly wins again.
5 mins read
So Biden, where is the “imminent Russian Invasion of Ukraine?” Where, Jake Sullivan, is the “major military action that could begin any day now?” Where UK government, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, NY Times, Bloomberg, Washington Post, BBC, and the rest of the presstitutes are the Russian hordes that are supposed to be overrunning Ukraine?”
5 mins read
Incongruity was the hallmark of the extraordinary NATO summit just concluded in Madrid. NATO offered bluster and promised muster: more troops against its “most significant and direct threat ,” Russia. Meanwhile, Russian “cauldron”maneuvers in Donbas methodically destroyed or enveloped major units of Kyiv’s army, further strengthening Russia’s position there.
5 mins read
Conflicts have a history of spinning out of control. Trotsky, the one-time close comrade of Lenin, reportedly said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you”. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians were not interested in war until President Volodymyr Zelensky took his counterproductive stance on NATO membership and President Vladimir Putin subsequently launched his invasion and united most of Ukraine’s people against him.
6 mins read
After lying for months, the media are preparing the public for Ukraine’s military collapse.
6 mins read
The intensity of the Ukrainian conflict continues to rise. There’s a non-stop flow of statements by high-level US and EU officials suggesting Russia is the top threat to the world’s security and portraying Vladimir Putin as a mix of Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadhafi, Osama bin Laden all rolled into one.
15 mins read
What is the Institute for the Study of War? And why do America’s elite media outlets trust it?
7 mins read
Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook recently admitted under oath that prior to the 2016 election Mrs. Clinton personally approved feeding the media a bogus story that Donald Trump had a back channel to Alfa Bank in Moscow.
Vladimir Emelyanovich Maximov (Russian: Владимир Емельянович Максимов, born Lev Alexeyevich Samsonov, Лев Алексеевич Самсонов; 27 November 1930, — 26 March 1995) was a Soviet and Russian writer, publicist, essayist and editor, one of the leading figures of the Soviet and post-Soviet dissident movement abroad.
Born in Moscow into a working class family, Lev Samsonov spent an unhappy childhood in and out of orphanages and colonies after his father was prosecuted in 1937 during the anti-Trotskyism purge. He went to Siberia to travel there under an assumed name, Vladimir Maximov (to become later his pen name), spent time in jails and labour camps, then worked as a bricklayer and construction worker. In 1951 he settled in one of the Kuban stanitsas and started to write short stories and poems for local newspapers. His debut book Pokolenye na chasakh (Generation on the Look-out) came out in Cherkessk in 1956.
In 1956 Maximov returned to Moscow and published, among other pieces, the short novel My obzhivayem zemlyu (We Harness the Land, 1961) telling the story of Siberian hobos, courageous, but deeply troubled men, trying to find each their own way of settling down into the unfriendly Soviet reality. It was followed by Zhiv chelovek (Man is Alive). The former caught the attention of Konstantin Paustovsky who included it into his almanac Pages from Tarusa. The latter found its champion in Vsevolod Kochetov who in 1962 published it in Oktyabr, which he was then in charge of. It was met with both public and critical acclaim and was produced in 1965 by the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre. In 1963 Maximov became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers and in the mid-1960s joined the Oktyabr magazine's staff. All the while, though, his literary output was getting harsher, darker and more pessimistic.
Two of Maximov's early 1970s novels, Sem dnei tvorenya (Seven Days of Creation, 1971) and The Quarantin (1973) proved to be the turning point of his career. On the one hand, in retrospect they marked the high point of his creativity. On the other, steeped with the longing for Christian ideals and skeptical as to the viability of the Communist morality, both went against the grain of the norms and the criteria of Socialist realism. They were rejected by all Soviet publishers, came out in Samizdat, were officially banned and got their author into serious trouble. In June 1973 he was expelled from the Writers' Union, and spent several months in a psychiatric ward. In 1974 Maximov left the country to settle in Paris, and in October 1975 was stripped of the Soviet citizenship.
In 1974 Maximov launched the literary, political and religious magazine Kontinent to take up what many saw as the Hertzen-founded tradition of supporting the Russian literature in exile. It became the center point of Russian intellectual life in Western Europe, attracting such diverse authors as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Galich, Viktor Nekrasov, Joseph Brodsky and Andrey Sakharov, the latter describing Maximov as "the man of unwavering honesty." Maximov remained the magazine's editor-in-chief up until 1992, when, during one of his visits to Moscow, he transferred it to Russia and granted all rights to his colleagues in Moscow. He was also the head of the executive committee of the international anti-communist organization Resistance International.
Among Maximov's best-known works written in France were the novels Kovcheg dlya nezvanykh (The Arc for the Uninvited, 1976), telling the story of the Soviet development of the Kuril Islands after the World War II, an autobiographical dilogy Proshchanye iz niotkuda (Farewell from Nowhere, 1974—1982), and Zaglyanut v bezdnu (To Look Into the Abyss, 1986), the latter having as its theme Alexander Kolchak's romantic life. All three, based upon historical documents, portrayed Bolshevism as a doctrine of ruthlessness, amorality and political voluntarism. He authored several plays on the life of Russians in emigration, among them Who's Afraid of Ray Bradbury? (Кто боится Рэя Брэдбери?, 1988), Berlin at the Night's End (Берлин на исходе ночи,1991) and There, Over the River... (Там, за рекой, 1991).
The drastic change in political situation in his homeland and the fall of the Soviet Union left Maximov unimpressed. He switched to criticizing the new Russia's regime and, while still a staunch anti-Communist, started to published his diatribes aimed at Egor Gaidar-led liberal reforms regularly in the Communist Pravda, to great disdain of some of his friends.