A War of Propaganda and War Crimes

"Militarily, the city and its bridges serve as a Russian toehold on the southwest bank of the Dnieper River, which cuts Ukraine in two. Russian control of Kherson allows the Kremlin to continue to use the city as a base to try to capture the neighboring ports of Odesa and Mykolaiv, thereby crippling Ukraine’s export-based economy. Conversely, liberating Kherson is probably a prerequisite for Ukraine to recapture several other cities."

"U.S. and European weapons have already helped bring a halt to Russia’s slow advance in the east and created the potential for Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive. If that aid can be sustained — and undeniably, there are challenges and costs involved — it will make Russia’s invasion less and less sustainable. That’s ultimately what will gravely weaken the Kremlin’s illegal occupation of Ukrainian cities and its impetus to take what it wants through force, something that’s a threat not only to Ukraine but also to the U.S. and its allies."

Sébastien Roblin, military writer, Think: Opinion, Analysis, Essays

A Ukrainian soldier patrols along an undisclosed frontline position in Mykolaiv Oblast, Ukraine, on Aug. 23.  Alex Chan / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via AP

 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has invited Russian soldiers to abandon their ill-fated mission that the Kremlin dispatched them to fulfill in invading and occupying Ukraine and slowly destroying towns and villages, emptying cities, flattening neighbouhoodrs and civil infrastructure, shelling schools and hospitals indiscriminately and generally indulging in massive human rights abuses, in their commission of war crimes. "If they want to survive, it is time for Russian soldiers to flee. Go home."

 

It has long been known that Ukrainian forces have been massing in the Donbas for an eventual planned offensive with the determination to retrieve from Moscow's clutches vast tracts of Ukraine's territory in the east that belongs to sovereign Ukraine and which Russia now claims as its own. This war began in 2014 when the Kremlin surreptitiously committed to supporting, training and arming ethnic Russian Ukrainian terrorists who succeeded in capturing with the help of the Russian military, most of Donetsk and Luhansk, declaring them to be autonomous republics.

 

To cap off their adventure in international criminality Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, establishing its deep-water port on the Black Sea for its fleet. Both Lohansk and Donetsk have been declared by Vladimir Putin as Russian territories. But not if the government and people of Ukraine have anything to say about it and they have quite a lot invested in its history, geography, heritage and culture, not to speak of national pride.

 

Increased supplies of Western military aid has little by little allowed the Ukraine military to advance its restoration agenda, of shoving back on the Russian military. The cost to both sides in terms of lives lost; military for Russia in the tens of thousands, and both military and civilian in Ukraine's case, in equally large total numbers, remains substantial and tragic. But loss of human life, and wholesale destruction of a nation's infrastructure rings no soothing sounds of compassion from the Kremlin.

 

Moscow's propaganda machine has been churning out lies at an incredible rate and nothing, absolutely nothing that issues from Russian official sources can be trusted. Ironically, Russian media speaks with utter contempt of Ukraine's propaganda machine. In league with their president who claims Ukraine's neo-Nazi character is a potential security risk to Russia's tolerant and patient government, a threat that must be expunged and Ukraine freed from the shackles of fascism.

 

Spurring pacifist Russia to invade and to destroy its neighbour with absolute abandonment of humanity. Ukraine has now announced the start of its long-hinted-at counteroffensive meant to restore its territorial integrity from rapacious Russian intentions. For its part, Moscow has already dismissed talk of a Ukraine offensive, speaking of it as an ill-designed strategy that has already cost Ukraine dearly in lost troop lives. 

 

Russian shelling continues to target port cities such as Mykolaiv, even as the Kremlin solemnly claims time and again that the Russian military never targets non-military sites. Russian occupation in the south and east of Ukraine continues in artillery bombardments and airstrikes with swaths of Ukrainian territory near the Black Sea coast including the city of Kherson which were captured by Russia early in its invasion. Ukraine's southern command spokeswoman points out its troops began offensive actions n the south, in the Kherson region, north of Russian-annexed Crimea.

 

Ukrainian soldiers prepare artillery at the southern front line near Kherson last month  Getty Images

For its part, the Ukrainian strategy of making use of sophisticated Western-supplied weapons, hitting Russian ammunition depots and wreaking havoc with supply lines, have had their effect in demoralizing Russian troops. Ukraine struck over ten sites in the past week alone that had "unquestionably weakened the enemy". Statements that the Russia-appointed governors in the occupied territory dismiss as "Ukrainian propaganda".

Moscow claims that Ukrainian troops' attempts at an offensive in southern Mykolaiv and Kherson regions had ended with the area sustaining significant casualties: "Enemy's offensive attempt failed miserably", reported the RIA news agency quoting a local Russia-appointed official reporting the evacuation of people from Nova Kahokva in the east of Kherson following over ten missile strikes by Ukrainian forces. 

Mykolaiv is a shipbuilding centre and port on the Southern Bug river off the Black Sea and has suffered heavy Russian bombardment during the course of the war, yet still remains in Ukrainian hands. The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in south Ukraine is anticipating a mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate the plant's vulnerability and condition resulting from nearby shelling in the facility's vicinity. 

The mission is to assess physical damage, evaluate working conditions and check safety and security systems, and "perform urgent safeguards activities", referencing tracking nuclear material. The Kremlin refuses to vacate the nuclear site even as the United Nations, United States and Ukraine call for withdrawal of military equipment and personnel from the complex, to completely remove the possibility that it will become a target in this war of attrition.

 

Caught in the Online Consumer Web : Come Into My Parlour Said the Spider to the Fly

"It's acquiring this vast set of data that Roomba collects about people's homes."

"Its obvious intent, through all the other products that it sells to consumers, is to be in your home"

"[And] along with the privacy issues come the antitrust issues, because it's buying market share."

Ron Knox, Amazon critic, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, anti-monopoly group

"It's hard to think of another organization that has so many touch points as Amazon does to an individual."

"It's almost overwhelming, and it's hard to put a finger on it."

Ian Greenblatt, head, tech research, J.D. Power, consumer research and data analytics

"You can almost see them just trying to paint a broader picture of an individual."

"It's about the inferences that they're able to draw about you specifically, and then you [are] compared to other people."

Krisen Martin, professor of technology ethics, University of Notre Dame

"We do not use home maps for targeted advertising and have no plans to do so."

"[Customers' health information will be handled separately from all other Amazon businesses; Amazon would not share personal health information outside of One Medical for] advertising or marketing purposes of other Amazon products and services without clear permission from the customer."

Lisa Levandowski, spokesperson, Amazon

The Amazon logo is seen outside its JFK8 distribution center in Staten Island, New York, U.S.. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

 

When an enterprise becomes hugely monopolistic there is no limit to what it can potentially aim for, and in the case of Amazon, the giant online retailer with wide tentacles across the world of the Internet and commerce, it has raised the shopping experience to a level never before hinted at, becoming a global colossus. Large and influential to people's acquisition options as it is, the enterprise is nowhere near the point of stagnation in growth.

The larger, and more widespread it becomes with the acquisition of other, related businesses in the effort to expand its own, the greater its grasp and its intention to use artificial intelligence and the power of dependence and algorithms to keep expanding while making the great global shopping public more dependent on the convenience of its acquaintance with intimate shopping expressions of the individual too busy to mind being manipulated.

 

Amazon has virtual eyes and ears everywhere, a great grasping mercantile industry whose raison d'etre appears to be ever-expanding sales opportunities unleashed by an international corporatism of greed and power over those addicted to the comfort and simplicity of online ordering of anything and everything consumers are convinced they require to get on with their lives in the 21st century. Amazon can claim it is thinking of helping its consumer base by making things easier for them through its relationship with intimate knowledge of the individual's habits.

In recent weeks, Amazon bruited about its intention to spend billions in two huge acquisitions. Approved, those greater-reach-enabling good buys will substantially broaden Amazon's presence in consumers' lives. The two areas targeted, health care through a $3.9 billion buyout of primary care company One Medical, and the "smart home" where plans to expand an already obvious presence through a $1.7 billion merger with iRobot, manufacturer of robotic Roomba vacuum.

Privacy concerns about how Amazon gathers personal data and what it plans to use it for have heightened with these two planned mergers. The most recent line of Roombas use sensors to map and remember the floor plan of a house. A feature the consumer can choose to opt out of, but few would, since it enhances the usefulness and efficiency of the robot floor cleaner.

There are estimates that indicate the retail giant controls approximately 38 percent of the U.S. e-commerce market which allows it to gather granular data on shopping preferences of millions of Americans and greater numbers worldwide. Its Echo devices housing voice assistant Alexa dominate the U.S. smart speaker market, accounting for an estimated 70 percent of sales, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Acquired for $1 billion in 2018, Ring monitors doorsteps, helping police track down crime, even though its users may be unaware. Amazon is testing a palm-scanning technology at select Amazon and Whole Foods stores, allowing customers to pay for items by storing biometric data in the cloud, which sparks concerns over risks of a data breach. "We treat your palm signature just like other highly sensitive personal data and keep it safe using best-in-class technical and physical security controls", Amazon announced reassuringly.

Amazon's gain through collecting data is moving steadily toward achieving its primary goal of selling products. "For them, data is all about getting you to buy more and be locked into their stuff", remarked Alex Harman, director of competition policy at the anti-monopoly group Economic Security Project.

Russia's Ukraine War of Attrition

"There are craniocerebral injuries, limb fractures, many patients with explosive and shrapnel injuries, burns."

"People were in a difficult condition, both physically and psychologically."

"Now our efforts are focused on the children who suffered. We work with four children. Three children out of four are in serious condition. In addition to severe stress, they have blast and shrapnel injuries, burns and fractures."

"The children are in serious condition."

Tetyana Kvitnytska, deputy head, Dnipropetrovsk regional health department

People stand next to a residential house destroyed by a Russian military strike on Wednesday in Chaplyne, in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region. (Dmytro Smolienko/Reuters)

 

 On the anniversary of Ukraine's independence from Russia, there was a general alert to all Ukrainian citizens to be aware and to take shelter at any air raid signals. Independence anniversary celebrations were officially cancelled for fear that the Russian military would target large crowds of civilians. Despite being under threat, Ukrainians decided they would celebrate anyway, and they did on their national Independence Day holiday.

 

There was a surprise attack on a train station in Chaplyne, a small town in the central Dnipropetrovsk region on Wednesday, exactly six months since the Russian 'special military operation' was launched into Ukraine. The Kremlin stated that its military had targeted a troop-carrying train, killing 200 Ukrainian troops. 

 

In actual fact, 25 people were killed as a result of that deadly strike, and 31 injured. According to witnesses, some of the victims which included at least one child, burned to death either trapped in burning train cars or in passing cars. "Everything sank into dust", 65-year-old Chaplyne resident Olena Budnyk, stated. "There was a dust storm. We couldn't see anything. We didn't know where to run". 

And once again a nuclear meltdown fear is pervading the area surrounding the Ukrainian nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia, which Russian occupation is endangering, with Russia using the plant as a base from which to shell surrounding towns and Ukrainian military bases. On Wednesday the last remaining electrical transmission wire powering the plant was damaged. Fortunately a backup power line re-connected the plant, with the use of electricity from a different, but non-nuclear plant.

 

Russia has been trying to modernize its army in recent years, including by increasing numbers of contract soldiers   Reuters

 

During the six-month conflict Russia has lost tens of thousands of military personnel, as has Ukraine. Russia's losses include military commanders, a  highly unusual number for such a short period of time. A testament to Ukrainian defiance of a larger, better-equipped, but inferior-motivated army that has been demoralized by the heavy losses it has sustained. To compensate for those losses, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a major increase of his military forces in the light of a projected long grind ahead in his determination to conquer Ukraine's spirit.

The aim is to increase troop numbers by an additional 137,000 servicemen, roughly13 percent, to 1.15 million by year's end. The question of where those 'volunteers' would be coming from, to augment the dwindling troop numbers, whether by increasing draft numbers, or recruiting additional volunteers is yet unknown. Some Russian military analysts expect more reliance on volunteers to prevent the Russian public from creating a backlash should the draft be expanded.

Acco9rding to the U.S. Pentagon, up to 80,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded, thus impairing Moscow's plans to plan large offensives. Military analysts feel the planned troop levels may not in fact meet the needs of sustainable operational numbers. While the Kremlin speaks of reliance on volunteers to augment the ranks, it is questioned where those volunteers will come from. Even promising imprisoned criminals sentence forgiveness in exchange for volunteering for military service, has resulted in few volunteers.

Another expert has pointed out that training is time-consuming; complex modern weapons training normally take three years to ensure competence, while draftees serve one year only. "A draft won't help that, so there will be no increase in the number of draftees", state RIA Novosti news agency quoted military expert Alexei Leonkov, as warning of the difficulties that lie ahead. 

 

A Russian soldier guards an area at the Alley of Glory in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, which was captured in March. Photograph: AP

 

The situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant remains chaotic and volatile, not only because of Ukraine and Russia blaming one another for shelling at the plant but because of other issues. The Russian-installed regional government now accuses Ukrainian troops of having caused not only the fire that damaged the transmission lines, while Ukraine's nuclear energy agency Energoatom pointed to "actions of the invaders", but nature too has taken a hand in increasing the element of danger to the plant and the areas surrounding it most immediately.

"The situation is extremely dangerous. I'm receiving reports that there are fires in the forest near the power plant. We still have to examine this issue more", warned Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. Wildfires in nearby forests either attributable to natural causes or to dry conditions being ignited by stray shells or missiles hitting the forests. Either way, it's an increase in the danger level of the potential for disaster at the plant.

 

Canada's Campaign for Inclusivity, Anti-Racism

"I said the contract had to be cancelled. I alerted him and I persistently communicated with the minister in his office, from the day I learned about it, until today, and aggressively demanded that action be taken."

"Action could have been taken more quickly."

"[I am] very pleased that the minister and his office had been collaborative with me, but I believe that the action should have been taken more swiftly."

"[There needs to be a] thorough review in the Department of Heritage as to how this happened [and processes need to be in place to make certain it doesn't re-occur]."

"I think we all want to understand how, when it was relatively simple to Google what Mr. Marouf has said over the last 20 years that was insulting not only to Jews, but to other groups like French Canadians, how the department awarded a contract to a group that is so closely tied to Mr. Marouf and his partner."

"His name was listed as one of the people providing the training at the first few training sessions. Nobody noticed this."

Liberal Member of Parliament, Anthony Housefather

"There is a Canadian Ministry of Heritage that is not accepting accountability despite a vetting process that just wasn't there."

"The key question is, what is the vetting process? How does a guy like this get through?"

"[It's] important for the Heritage committee to get some answers."

Conservative Member of Parliament Melissa Lantsman 

Laith Marouf outside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in a photo he posted to social media while employed as a Government of Canada “anti-racism” coordinator. In an accompanying caption, Marouf expresses his wish that the memorial (which contains the names of more than 7,000 Black soldiers killed in the conflict) should contain “millions” more names. Photo by Twitter

 

The 'guy' in question over this clumsy, inept mess that saw a Syrian-Palestinian 'activist' whose main purpose in life appears to be the vilification of Israel as an Apartheid oppressor of Palestinians, and whose contempt for Jews and 'Zionist scum' leads him to repeatedly in public forums state his willingness to shoot Jews in the head, slandering them as sub-human, straight out of a Goebbels propaganda manual, found Canada's Heritage Ministry hiring a committed racist as an authoritative speaker on behalf of a government-supported program on anti-racism, spout hatred and divisiveness instead.

Equality and Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen oversaw a contract between Heritage Canada and the Community Media Advocacy group, whose senior consultant was a well-known racist, to design an anti-racism strategy for the broadcasting sector. The Canadian Press reported a week ago on tweets emanating from that senior consultant, Laith Marouf. After which Minister Hussen stated he requested that Canadian Heritage "look closely at the situation involving disturbing comments made by the individual in question." The follow-up a day later was a formal announcement that funding would be cut to CMAC.

Now a prominent member of Parliament has come forward to reveal that he contacted the minister even before the news was widely reported in the media. In April a press release  from CMAC touted the launch of consultations on building an anti-racism strategy for the Canadian broadcasting sector. "In Canada, diversity is a fact, but inclusion is a choice. Our government is proud to contribute to the initiative", Ahmed Hussein stated in a news release. In point of fact, the Community Media Advocacy Centre is comprised of only two individuals; Marouf and his wife. A little factoid the minister was unaware of when he stated he planned to ask CMAC how they came to hire a racist.

"Mr. Minister: You are taking us for fools. You are calling on CMAC to answer ‘how they came to hire Laith Marouf’?"

"Are you not aware that he and his wife Gretchen King are CMAC? That they and CMAC share the same address?"

"That it was you and Marouf who announced this program?"

 UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer

"I have a motto: Life is too short for shoes with laces, or for entertaining Jewish White Supremacists with anything but a bullet to the head."

"You know all those loud-mouthed bags of human feces, AKA the Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they come from, they will return to being low-voiced b*****s of their Christian/secular white supremacist masters."

Laith Marouf

Russia, the Moral Outcast

"Now, I do not see any possibility for diplomatic contacts. And the more the conflict goes on, the more difficult it will be to have a diplomatic solution."

"[The UN has become mired in] politicization [because of the war and that has] damaged the authority of the UN and its organizations."

"We do not have any contacts with the Western delegations. On the protocol side we do not see each other. Privately we do not have any contacts, unfortunately ... we simply do not talk to each other."

"And so they will fight until the last Ukrainian."

"[Western countries are using the war] as a matter of pressure on Russia, as a tool of isolation of Russia .. damaging our position, economically, politically."

"They do not care about the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian soldiers."

Gennady Gatilov, Russian permanent representative to the UN, Geneva

Tank barriers are seen in front of a barricade in Zaporizhzhya, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

 

Ukraine has always stated it is prepared to discuss an end to the conflict; it is the victim, Russia is the aggressir. Offers by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet personally with Russian President Vladimir Putin have gone unanswered. Russia's main complaint is that its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is being condemned by Western democracies, leaving it in bad odour in Europe, and alarming its near neighbours that they might be next on Russia's agenda for a ;special military operation' aimed at them.

Ukraine's victimization, as far as the Kremlin is concerned is its own fault, for its pro-Nazi, fascist government. It proved itself to be just that when Ukrainians rejected Moscow's choice for President of Ukraine in favour of their own selected alternative, loyal to Ukraine, not to Russia. An event which led to an insurrection by ethnic Russians who mostly populated eastern Ukraine, declaring themselves leaders of a new Luhansk and Donetsk, one allied with Russia, and with Russian assistance fought a conflict to occupy part of the Donbas, enabling Putin to declare he had every right to seize the Crimean Peninsula.

A view of the Russian navy Frigate 'Pytlivyy' docked in the port of Sevastopol. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte /AFP /Getty

Russia's UN Ambassador Gatilov complains bitterly that the UN has failed to support Russia's claim that it has acted with honour intending to liberate Ukraine from the clutches of its neo-Nazi government. It is, in his estimation, the United Nations accepting the Western allies of Ukraine asserting that Ukraine is a sovereign nation with the right, internationally recognized, to make its own decisions how it will align itself and who its allies would be. 

It is the West, he avers, responsible for Ukrainian deaths, not Russia, for encouraging Ukraine in its unreasonable decision to defend itself against a larger, better equipped neighbour, and inciting it to fight the Russian military rather than accept the inevitable, as Moscow sees it; surrendering the eastern provinces to Russia and allowing itself to once more assume the position of satellite state to Russian hegemonic imperialism.

 

A firefighter works at the site of a Russian military strike, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via Reuters

 

Ukraine will admit to having lost an estimated nine thousand servicemen in the defence of their country, to date. Western intelligence puts Russian losses at an approximately similar number, with the added loss of a surprising number of elite commanders. Russia is apoplectic with outrage that Ukraine has managed to hit its military and destroy its materiel by explosives hitting behind Russian lines. With the use of drones and long-range missiles supplied by sympathetic countries, Ukraine is holding its own.

 

As brutal and as brazen as Russia is in ordering its military to shell civilian infrastructure, giving them free rein to bomb schools and hospitals, to mutilate and murder ordinary Ukrainian civilians, Moscow is still in a state of disbelief that Ukraine would dare aim over its border into Russian towns to blow up weapons and gas depots. Ukrainian towns and villages are disposable, Russian ones are inviolate.

 

A Ukrainian serviceman rides atop a tank near a front line in Mykolaiv region on August 10, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues. Photo: Reuters

 

The Kremlin and Vladimir Putin have embarked on a mission to re-write the rules and regulations of international conflict striving to ensure they are as humane as possible in protection of civilian lives along with non-combatants, while Russia seems intent on opening the floods of wartime derangement of human values to encompass all civilians as long as they're Ukrainian.

In the initial month of the occupation, the Russian military was tasked with entering Kyiv and either killing or taking prisoner the government of Ukraine. Likely to stand trial, if they survived, charged with being Nazis deserving of capital punishment. Ukrainian pride and resolve in protecting its own, pushed them back to eastern Ukraine. Now the shortage of regular troops sees Russia releasing criminals from long sentences, to fight in the front lines.

 

Ukrainian soldiers from the Azov Battalion who surrendered at besieged Mariupol: "Some had needles inserted into their wounds, some were tortured with water", said Vladyslav Zhaivoronok, who lost a leg. "They undressed us, forced to squat while we are naked. If any of the boys raised their heads, they began to beat them immediately", added Denys Chepurko.

 

Russia's intelligence agency claims a woman from the Azov regiment planned and carried out the assassination of 29-year-old media personality Darya Dugina, daughter of Vladimir Putin's principle adviser on the Ukraine conflict, Alexander Dugin, who shares all the potent hatred that Putin has been quoted with in his 'reasons' for despising the notion that Ukraine is a nation, claiming it has no culture and is a den of Nazi scorpions. 

Russia, proud of what it considers to be military 'victories', speaks with heated contempt of base Ukrainian motives in resisting the Russian occupation. A country, as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned, that has no right to exist outside of Russia's orbit, and one he is doing his damndest bit by bit to destroy. So far, close to 6,000 Ukrainian civilians dead, towns and cities in rubble, food and energy shortages beleaguering the poorest countries of the world as well as the most advanced.

Ukrainian military officers travel on a wheeled-BTR fighting vehicle in Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on 22 August. Photograph: Ammar Awad/Reuters