The history of Ukraine and Poland provided by Evan Reif at Covert Action, is informative and well researched, a depressing saga of a land inhabited by ruling elites unable to comprehend any agenda other than race and attendant genocide, for centuries on end.
It is enlightening to learn of the Ukrainian-Soviet partisan Sidor Artyomovich Kovpak who, among other things, provided the only relief and salvation to Polish, Jewish and other Ukrainians being massacred by the Banderite Nazi thugs. This illuminates the poignancy of the city of Bahmut in Ukraine, also called Artyemovsk, presumably after Kovpak.
The social and economic improvement brought by Soviet rule in Ukraine in the interwar years are described in glowing terms and raising literacy from 20 to 95 percent is of course good. Sidor Kovpak was involved in this also.
However farm collectivisation is also mentioned as being part of an economic modernisation and progress in Ukraine. This might eventually have been true. However at the start of the story of Ukrainian farm collectivisation was the hideous disaster of the “Holodomor” – starvation of Ukrainian farmers due to confiscation of their produce by Soviet ideologues. This tragic episode should not have been glossed over in Evan’s otherwise excellent history, as the Holodomor is an important part of the psychological backdrop to Ukraine’s poisoned relationship with Russia.

Posted by: Andrew Sarchus | Sep 18 2023 3:39 utc | 103

Thank you, b, for all you have researched this past week. it feels like a time of transition, and certainly there seems to have been many positive meetings and discussions all around the world, plus I hope that those that can will heed your initial request to give assistance to Yves at Nakedcapitalism. Her clarity on the Special Military Operation in Ukraine has been extremely valuable as she is read by those we would wish to have a better understanding of these matters. As also for her posts of Michael Hudson’s articles and interviews.
I’m going to do another carry-over from the not Ukraine open forum last week:

… he [Jesus] said, “believe in one God,” and to “treat thy neighbor, as you wish to be treated.”
It doesn’t get any simpler than that…
Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Sep 17 2023 14:20 utc | 155

Thank you for this, Sean. Your comment goes with my earlier comment to Debs is dead, that Jesus was, according to his disciples, a good person. I would just though make an important correction. What they did say he said, and what he reinforced when the woman taken into adultery was about to be stoned, was “Love God… and “Love thy neighbor…
I say that he reinforced it on that occasion, because if you read the account of that stoning episode, at two points Jesus himself writes in the sand – the narration does not say what that was, but we can and should infer he was writing the two great commandments on which the entire law and the prophets depend.
I mention this in reference to the reported potential ‘stoning’ of Russell Brand. As far as this forum’s work is concerned, it was right to take note of this.

Posted by: juliania | Sep 18 2023 3:54 utc | 105

I’d love to be able to help out Yves at NC, but I just lost my W2 employment w/ benefits and am on a 1099 gig getting absolutely robbed by Uncle Scam’s taxes but even more by the cost of health “care” in this country – and I’m billing what corporate lawyers did by the hour in the 90s. It’s a joke. Hopefully she can get enough contributions to pay the bills and I’ll chip in when I can even though I don’t really read that site much these days.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 18 2023 4:30 utc | 107

Posted by: Immaculate deception | Sep 18 2023 3:02 utc | 47 and everyone else in the thread.
I think the most reasonable take on Russell Brand I’ve read so far hit my email inbox about 3 hours ago, from Jonathan Cook.
https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/a-few-thoughts-on-the-russell-brand
Don’t get me wrong, I always listen seriously to rape allegations and one of these women (not to mention there was a 16 year old) actually did go to the cops and a rape crisis center, for which there is documentation at the time, but the timing of this is just too suspect. Then again, there’s the “That 70s Show” guy who also just got convicted of rape (legitimately IMO) and he’s not exactly some personality voicing opposition to the Ukraine/COVID/China/Whatever status quo approved messaging, so….
But Mr. That 70s Show guy doesn’t have Brand’s audience across multiple social media, YouTube and streaming platforms and again he wasn’t exactly saying anything all that controversial to The Borg/Swamp.
Of note, Brand’s ex-wife Katy Perry had alluded to something prior to these allegations, and says she’s going to make sure the truth comes out. Her tone strikes me as in favor of Brand if not abjectly against him, so …. SIGH …. I guess I’ll monitor the tabloid news cycle to see what she has to say when she comes out with it.
One more note on the nature of the allegations and timing – Isn’t it interesting how accused perps never have their careers and lives ruined until they become inconvenient to the power apparatus? Meh…too tired to get into conspiracies…FOR NOW!!!

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 18 2023 4:38 utc | 109

@ Naked Lunch | Sep 18 2023 3:23 utc | 51 about what I call ALMOST nakedcapitalism and Susan Webber/Yves Smith
If you have read the MoA bar for long you will know that I was a strong supporter of the site until called “crazy pants” by Susan for my continued support of public finance and opposition to private finance.
That would be my suggested decision maker for contributors. If you support the world of private finance then give her money and if you support public finance then maybe you don’t, like you say, vote with your pocketbook.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 18 2023 4:40 utc | 111

@ Debsisdead | Sep 18 2023 3:11 utc | 49 with the nice Huawei background….thanks
I would like to see a comparison done with the Huawei worker structure and that of Tesla of big ego Musk….I expect it would not show Musk in a positive light.
Repeating your excellent words

For me Huawei depicts everything which 21st century socialism ought to be about, the corporation is divorced from central government but socially responsible and works for the improvement in as many aspects as possible of all workers and their families.
That last bit is to me essential as the reason for the Soviet Union’s ultimate failure was IMO caused by the centralisation that was pretty much compulsory throughout 20th century capitalist & socialist structures. The USSR still relied on local soviets but they became moribund as their leadership aged. This will not happen as new employees entering Huawei bring new ideas and the management structure moves with the times.

Example is a great teacher and we can only hope that lessons are learned during our civilization war about how societies can operate going forward.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 18 2023 4:49 utc | 113

I’m certainly more conscious of Brand having been set up after today. As some may know I don’t use credit cards on principle however there is a few times a year when I need to pay for something online and when it’s an ongoing substack subscription I ask my son and use his bank issued debit card then recompense him with the folding stuff.
Today he received an email from his bank saying they need to immediately sight photo ID more than his driver’s license. He trotted into the bank with his passport and found himself getting interrogated by a bank worker reading questions off a screen asking him what he used his debit card for & a whole bunch of allied queries. His transaction record is straightforward usually in the 100 to 500 dollar range ie all small stuff. This was no routine query because the bank person was as unfamiliar with the questions as he.
It seems someone may be monitoring substack subscriptions and as mine have been for Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi and Aaron Mate it could be that the amerikan alphabet agency mob contact NZ alphabet security the SIS, and they have called in the bank to find out whats what, who’s who in the fucking zoo so to speak.
I doubt they learned much as my son has to be the most obtuse human I know, especially when confronted with a direct question. He will sail round and round a point missing it every time. I wasn’t there but from the length of time it took (very long for a handful of direct questions) I’d say the bank type had to infer answers from a surfeit of specious irrelevancies.
Considering the lengths anyone who has read the twitter files knows the extent those amerikan 3 letter agencies go to to screw with a tweet by a tweeter with 2 followers, my suspicion is not unfounded.
Heh heh I asked him if he wanted to request the reason for the questions from the so-called ‘banking ombudsman’ and he’s considering it as it’s always tough to judge whether following bureaucratic norms is worth the effort.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Sep 18 2023 5:47 utc | 115

Xinhuanet has a posting up about the recent G77 meeting and below is a quote from UN chief Guterres that I thought a bit “out of character”

Speaking at the summit’s opening ceremony, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the voice of the Group of 77 and China will always be essential for the UN system.
Terming the group “a champion of multilateralism,” Guterres called on G77 and China to “champion a system rooted in equality; champion a system ready to reverse the injustice and neglect of centuries; and champion a system that delivers for all humanity and not for the privileged.”

Hasn’t Guterres been working against those goals for all of his time in the UN Secretary-General position?

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 18 2023 6:18 utc | 117

re Brand, reminds me of the Julian Assange smears, I’ll wait and see but my default is suspicion of the intel people.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Sep 18 2023 6:23 utc | 119

The US intelligence agencies, the military, the media and the government are not worth a dime.
A so-called Chinese “spy balloon” shot down off the east coast of the US in February did not actually collect any intelligence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told CBS News on Sunday. Beijing insisted from the outset that the balloon was not a surveillance craft.
“The intelligence community, their assessment – and it’s a high-confidence assessment – [is] that there was no intelligence collection by that balloon,” Milley told the American broadcaster.
https://www.rt.com/news/583105-china-spy-balloon-milley/
Yes, I realise this is not news. Just venting. 🙂

Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Sep 18 2023 8:34 utc | 121

Maybe Yves should not have been banning people left and right for making modest, non-idealist comments, eh?

Posted by: v | Sep 18 2023 8:37 utc | 123

Missing Stealth Fighter Jet
Reward (warm hand shake)
For any information that might help locate the F-35 please call US Base Defense Operations Center.
https://www.rt.com/news/583116-f35-mishap-pilot-eject/

Posted by: C | Sep 18 2023 8:40 utc | 125

Returning to Evan Reif’s history article in Covert Action, it’s a fascinating dive into East Europe’s baleful history with many resonances today. One of them is the pompous Russophobic idea of “Promethianism”.
Between the wars a fascist leader came to power in Poland called Jozef Pilsudsky. There had been a brief war between Poland and the USSR – which Poland won with a victory at Warsaw driving Russia back to post WW1 boundaries.
Quoting Reif:
“Their ideology was called “Promethianism” by Piłsudski and called for maximum effort against Russia and Ukraine to weaken and eventually balkanize the USSR. At first, they struggled alone, but after the ascension of Adolf Hitler to power, the “Promethean” ideology gained active support from Germany, Japan, and Italy.”
President Woodrow Wilson of WW1 USA had – independently I think – called for the same thing, that Russia was too big and should be broken up, or “Balkanised”.
And Promethianism is the same maximalist agenda that US and western neocons have today, without saying it out loud – at least not often. They can’t let go of the Ukraine war and are infinitely indifferent to the loss of life on both sides, since they see (deludedly) a chance to get rid of Russia as a geopolitical power. It’s like a dog that has bitten onto an object so stubbornly that it won’t release its grip even if it’s head is sawn off with a chainsaw. The Promethianism dream is just too intoxicating.

Posted by: Andrew Sarchus | Sep 18 2023 10:12 utc | 127

Posted by: Naked Lunch | Sep 18 2023 3:23 utc | 51
On the one hand, her site, her rules–I have no problem with that. On the other hand, if the net result is that nobody wants to fund her site, I mean, isn’t that sort of an obvious consequence?
___________________________________________________________
Yes…
a day or two ago nakedcapitalism printed an article that was complaining that “We are so far behind our normal fundraising pace that unless things pick up sharply, I am faced with having to make serious cuts.”
I wrote a short comment that maybe if she would allow people to post opinions that did not always have to agree with hers that would give the site a larger pool to draw donations from.
Needless to say, the comment was not published.

Posted by: jinn | Sep 18 2023 12:08 utc | 129

Thinking back that b had a section called Trans Canada in a recent Week in Review… and then I was reading this NYT piece about Montréal mayor, Val Plante, and her policies on bicycles, when I stumbled across this very term — Trans Canada — at the conclusion of this article. I guess it’s like an overview of what’s happening across the country.
Actually it was a above a photo with the following caption: “An exhibit at C.I.A. headquarters on the American diplomats’ escape from Iran. Jason Andrew for the New York Times” I won’t copy and paste all the following bullet points although it’s tempting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/16/world/canada/montreal-valerie-plante-cycling.html
I was reading about Plante because I just found out that she’ll be in New York for Climate Week. A committee meeting including the mayors of London, Paris, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Nairobi and Dakar.

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Sep 18 2023 12:11 utc | 131

re Andrew Sarchus | Sep 18 2023 3:39 utc | 52
It seems I waited in vain for someone else to take their turn to point out what a crock of shit the alleged ‘Holodomor’ was, this propaganda lie has been repeated here about every coupla months or so and since only a few of us have looked into what really happened it always comes down to one of those to point out this amerikan created tosh is a fable.
It seems likely that despite their best efforts after the creation of the Soviet Union there was a famine throughout the Soviet Union in the early 1930’s. This had been a disaster that had occurred about once a decade in Tsarist times and was in fact a prime cause of Revolution as it was widely known throughout the then russian empire that some of these famines had been caused by aristo hoarding of grain to sell it overseas, a regular practise which had caused regular famines resulting in millions of deaths in years of poor harvests.
That is what happened in the early 30’s there was a famine. However the famine wasn’t confined to Ukraine and the Soviet administration did everything they could to alleviate a grim situation but too many died, if many less than had been killed in the Tsarist famines. It only occured once, then Soviet agronomists got a handle on it and it never occured again.
The Holodomor was dreamed up by a journalist for Hearst newspapers, a chap who spent less than three days in the USSR then dreamed up this lie.
I challenge anyone who claims the BS Ukraine Holodomor was real to provide primary sources for this yarn, one that doesn’t rely on western newspaper reports but which quotes first hand accounts of it.
The lie was spread throughout the Ukraine following the Great Patriotic War by the usual forces of darkness to convince the hohols they had been persecuted by the USSR and not the banderist nazis in a failed attempt to have the hohols rise up. It didn’t work back then as too many remembered what had happened, not amerikan BS.
However as the old people who knew better passed away this fantasy was rekindled by hohol nazis to spread the lie that despite the fact the USSR’s administration was top heavy with Ukrainians, the USSR didn’t tolerate Ukrainians.
Since the 2014 amerikan coup the lie has been turbo charged and fed to young Ukrainians.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Sep 18 2023 12:53 utc | 133

When I was in high school, we did a brief lesson regarding South-East Asia and the “Domino Theory” that propelled Western foreign policy in that region for decades. As a 16 year old I thought it was a total crock and it is bewildering to me to this very day how any rational adult could not see the same, but the fuckers who can’t are running the west.
Posted by: ZimZum | Sep 18 2023 10:43 utc | 67
Yes, totally agree, thank you. God help me. McKinder has always sounded like one of those stupid ideas effete elites amuse thenselves with. MacKinder, Domino Theory, and so many more, it is and always was a crock.
I thought is sounded simple-minded when I was sixteen and I still do.

Posted by: Bemildred | Sep 18 2023 13:00 utc | 135

Posted by: ZimZum | Sep 18 2023 10:43 utc | 67
When I was in high school,..I thought [western foreign policy] was a total crock.
One thing China has taught everyone in the world, except the mad dog western positioned monopolist, is people at the bottom of the organization should be deciding who should be at the top and those at the top should serve at the pleasure of those who are at the bottom.
A second thing China has taught everyone in the world, not yet understood by the mad dog western positioned monopolist, is that the growth is maximized when communications is transparent throughout the organization (including the public government part and privately owned NHPs). To be transparent communications must be open, participative, interactive, truthful, fully informative, with no secrets between classes or level of positions held.
The leaders of western nations
1. divided their governments into public [human staffed, secretly operated government] and privately owned, non human parts (NHPs sometimes called NHOs Non Human Organizations) [the NHPs are corporations, partnerships, trust, NGOs, think tank operations etc.].
2. used their positions to develop ways for monopolist to privately own the resources that belong to the government and to its public. The NHPs (private land ownership, private ownership of stocks and bonds) were privatized.
3. developed ways to transfer the monopoly powers enjoyed by public owned parts of government to the privately owned non human parts (NHPs).
4. The public government part has now transferred so much of public owned monopoly power to privately owned NHPs that the government has very little bargaining power left. The private corporations, NGOs, partnerships and the like have taken over the legislative function; the NHPs now dictate the law, and make the rules. The world is living with the result, which is mostly war for profit and government functioning as marketing agents for the enterprises of the NHPs.
Keep in mind that government itself is a Non Human Organization so it was no great feat for this fictitious organization to split itself into two parts: public vs private.
Understanding the divide between Public monopoly power and privately owned monopoly power and how that divide also divides access to information and knowledge is useful to explain the turmoil in the world today.

Posted by: snake | Sep 18 2023 13:02 utc | 137

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 18 2023 4:49 utc | 57
I agree with much , but the overarching reason that the USSR fell was that its leaders were bought. Very simple and much evidence has confirmed this since. Gorbachev and Yeltsin were traitors and should have been hung by their ankles. Putin initially had to get along to go along or whatever the Americans say. He was clever , and once established threw off his disguise of a bad money-grubber and became the patriotic leader he is.
Russia may have lapsed but it could and would have held on…it was the bought-leaders who ruined her.

Posted by: Wondrous | Sep 18 2023 13:03 utc | 139

The Holodomor was dreamed up by a journalist for Hearst newspapers…
Posted by: Debsisdead | Sep 18 2023 12:53 utc | 70
—
In fact, it goes a little further. The origin of the Holodomor myth can be found in the propaganda machine of Joseph Goebbels.
https://mltheory.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/facts-about-the-holodomor-and-why-its-fake/

Posted by: Nobody | Sep 18 2023 13:16 utc | 141

As a poor person, I gave a bit to Yves et al in years past…but then there was that silly argument about “Force the Vote” and I teased Lambert mildly that he had a secret crush on AOC.
Banned.
Sometimes Yves et al are simply WRONG and just like the Dems, she never ever admits it.

Posted by: furies | Sep 18 2023 14:00 utc | 143

ZimZum
You say:
“A second thing China has taught everyone in the world, not yet understood by the mad dog western positioned monopolist, is that the growth is maximized when communications is transparent throughout the organization (including the public government part and privately owned NHPs). To be transparent communications must be open, participative, interactive, truthful, fully informative, with no secrets between classes or level of positions held.”
I wish someone would explain that to the German corporation that I work for (in Belgium). For them their modus operandi is “you in your small corner and I in mine” with communication only permitted along approved lines.
It’s astonishing that now we see the Chinese hybrid of communism and market economics greatly outperforming western capitalism which is looking more and more doctrinaire, inflexible and inefficient, riven by corruption and poisonous agendas. And thus falling behind. The story of Huawei and their brilliant response to US semiconductor sanctions – make their own sanctioned 5G chip in just a few months. An organisation brimming with motivation and creativity.
But walk for one minute through a Chinese city then through a city in Britain, and you’ll see this is the stark truth.

Posted by: Andrew Sarchus | Sep 18 2023 14:05 utc | 145