Cross-posted from Immanence…
The Washington Post reports that “Ruthenium-106, named after Russia” has been wafting all across Europe.
Two quick observations here.
Plot thickening agents…
26 05 2017Inside Russia’s social media war on America (Time)
The Great British Brexit Robbery (Guardian)
Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War (The New Yorker)
The information war is real, and we’re losing it (Seattle Times)
Comments : 63 Comments »
Categories : Uncategorized
Russian “infowar” & the U. S. elections
13 12 2016As the story of the Russian state’s influence on the recent U.S. elections continues to unfold, here are some web sites that document various dimensions of it, and of Russian media strategies more generally. These are mostly critical analyses, which may carry their own biases. Those seeking defenses of Russian state media, or critiques of U. S. media, of the CIA, and so on, should look elsewhere, as that’s not what this page is about. This list will grow, so check back periodically if you’d like to stay up to date.
Comments : 19 Comments »
Tags: DNC, Donald Trump, hackers, Putinism, Russian infowar, U.S. elections, Wikipedia
Categories : Media war, Russian propaganda, Western media
Rise of the global alt-right
16 11 2016With Donald Trump in power, this web site just might get a new lease on life — reincarnated as a place for examining the rise of what has been called the “global alt-right,” with its network of connections between Putinists (like Alexander Dugin, Konstantin Rykov, and Igor Panarin), Trumpists (like Steve Bannon, Richard Spencer, and Alex Jones, among others), and those filling a similar niche around the world.
The Trump campaign’s connections with Russia, of course, go well beyond such hazy connections as these. Ukrainian fears of these connections are legion. As Natalia Humeniuk puts it,
Comments : 20 Comments »
Tags: alt-right, anti-liberalism, Dugin, global alt-right, Putinism, Trump
Categories : Russian propaganda, Western media
Ukraine update
1 11 2016It’s been a while since I posted anything new on this blog. Since I’ve just returned (to western Europe, at least) from a trip to Ukraine, and since I’ve had a few requests to share my impressions, here they are. This is not a scholarly analysis, and it avoids the vigorous debates going on among political and sociological observers — which, from the outside, may appear as “glass half full, glass half empty” polemics. It is just a general overview rooted in my years of visiting this country.
Comments : 18 Comments »
Categories : Identities, Maidan
Engaging with history in Ukraine
15 08 2015Writing in The Nation, Jared McBride raises some important questions about the uses of (and control over) history in wartime Ukraine.
Marci Shore’s “Reading Tony Judt in Wartime Ukraine” indirectly, but provocatively, answers them.
Andrei Portnov’s “On Decommunization, Identity, and Legislating History, from a Slightly Different Angle” provides a balanced perspective on the same issues.
Comments : 15 Comments »
Categories : Uncategorized
Link dump
26 07 2015Links to various articles relevant to the topics explored on this blog (I may add to this list, so please check back periodically):
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/17/how-we-know-russia-shot-down-mh17.html
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/07/13/open-source-information-reveals-pro-kremlin-web-campaign/
http://voxukraine.org/2014/10/01/trust-and-prejudice/
http://culture.lb.ua/news/2015/05/08/304258_filosofi_tsitiruet_putin_.html
https://www.opendemocracy.net/denis-gorbach/struggle-for-progressive-politics-in-ukraine
http://krytyka.com/en/articles/country-war-love-excerpts-donetsk-diary
http://rbth.com/opinion/2015/02/05/the_real_leviathan_43475.html
Comments : 7 Comments »
Categories : Uncategorized
Nihilist vs. Kagarlitsky
22 04 2015Russophone leftists Nihilist.li provide a “take-down” of prominent Russian left-wing intellectual Boris Kagarlitsky, translated here. Kagarlitsky has been an influential voice on Western Left understandings of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Nihilist arose from the ashes of Left Affair (Liva Sprava).
Comments : 11 Comments »
Categories : Maidan, Ukrainian Left politics
Marples: On the “Fighters for Ukrainian Independence” Law
10 04 2015David Marples provides an astute critique of the new parliamentary law “Concerning the legal status and commemorating the memory of the fighters for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century,” here.
Comments : 11 Comments »
Categories : Uncategorized
Kroker & Weinstein: Maidan as third force
9 03 2015With their talk of supernovas, black holes, and event-horizons, Arthur Kroker and Michael Weinstein’s “Maidan, Caliphate, and Code: Theorizing Power and Resistance in the 21st Century” is not exactly social science in any recognizable form. Read as poetry, however, its rendition of the state of affairs in and between Ukraine and Russia is provocative and worth reading.
Comments : 13 Comments »
Categories : Maidan