Superyachts symbolize climate breakdown

Their Russian oligarch owners have put superyachts in the spotlight since the invasion of Ukraine. But what makes these billionaires' toys the ultimate climate killers?

Ambramovich's 'spare' superyacht, 'Solaris,' moved from Barcelona to Montenegro this month after he was sanctioned

In the wake of heavy sanctions on Russian oligarchs spurred by the war in Ukraine, some of the world's biggest and most lavish superyachts are being moved out of EU waters, while others have already been compounded.

Billionaire and Putin ally Roman Abramovich, who made his fortune selling oil and gas, has moved two of his megayachts — including arguably the biggest and most expensive on the planet — into sanction-free waters, including in the port of Bodrum in Turkey. 

But as this cat-and-mouse game becomes a glitzy side-story to Russia's invasion of Ukraine — Putin himself is rumored to own a luxury yacht — less is known about the outsized carbon footprint of these lavish hulks that resemble cruise liners.

Luxury mega-yachts can burn up to 7,020 tons of CO2 a year, according to research by

Richard Wilk,  a professor of anthropology at Indiana University, and his colleague Beatriz Barros, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology. They have been documenting the emissions of the super-rich.

They describe such vessels, which are variously equipped with helicopters, submarines, swimming pools and accommodation for up to 100 crew members, as "by far the worst asset to own from an environmental standpoint."

Superyachts are responsible for two-thirds of billionaire carbon emissions

The top 20 billionaires analyzed by Wilk and Barros emitted around 8,000 metric tons of CO2 annually in 2018, while average citizens worldwide had a carbon footprint of around 4 tons— and 15 tons in the United States.

An astounding two-thirds of these super-rich emissions are created by their superyachts. 

Roman Abromovich's superyacht eclipses all others

The biggest polluting billionaire also has two of the largest yachts. Abramovich's "Eclipse," currently moored in Turkey, is said to be the most expensive megayacht in the world. It is also responsible for around two-thirds of the Russian oil and gas mogul's annual carbon footprint, which was estimated at 33,859 metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2018  — more than one-sixth of the whole island nation of Tonga. The Eclipse alone costs around $60 million (€55 million) annually to operate. 

Bill Gates has around 10 times the wealth of Ambramovich with around $124 billion (versus $14 million) yet he emits around a fifth of the pollution because, the authors say, "he does not own a giant yacht" — yet Gates partly makes up for it with private jets.

The 142.81 metre sail-assisted motor yacht Sailing Yacht A, owned by Russian tycoon Andrey Melnichenko

These figures are "the tip of the iceberg," write Wilk and Barros since they don't include "embedded" carbon, which is to say all the CO2 burnt to produce the vessels. Another form of embedded carbon might be the fossil fuel money used to pay for these luxury yachts like the one above. "Sailing Yacht A," which has been seized by Italy, belongs to Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko — who owns the coal company SUEK.

140-meter megayacht ''Scheherazade'' anchors in Turkey in 2020: Is it Vladimir Putin's?

Privacy laws and data protection help shield much super-rich consumption. "Nevertheless," say the authors, "we think our calculations are illustrative and reflect on fundamental issues of climate justice by contributing to ongoing debates over who is responsible for climate change." Indeed, no one even seems to know who owns the 140-meter-long "Scheherazade" superyacht above. Some claims have linked it to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Earth 300 is a green-tech superyacht devoted to science, not luxury

Not all megayachts are climate killers. The Earth 300 will be the world's biggest superyacht, yet it will have zero emissions and aims to unite science and exploration to confront the planet's greatest challenge: climate change. The 300-meter long vessel will accommodate up to 400 people when launched in 2025. Though its carbon footprint will be relatively small, it will controversially be nuclear-powered.

OLIGARCHS' YACHTS: SEIZED OR UNDER SPECULATION — IN PICTURES
Sailing Yacht A
This 143-meter (470-foot) Sailing Yacht A, also referred to as "SY A," is valued at around €530 million ($578 million). Italian authorities seized it after identifying the owner as Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko. He owns major fertilizer producer EuroChem Group and coal company SUEK. Both companies announced recently that Melnichenko had resigned as a board member.
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Edited by: Tamsin Walker

Chechen and Tatar Muslims take up arms to fight for Ukraine

Chechen warlord and Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov boasted of his soldiers' part in Russia's war in Ukraine. But many Chechen and Tatar Muslims are defending Ukraine and settling scores with the rulers of their homelands.

    

Ukraine, seen here before the Russian invasion, is home to a variety of Muslim communities

The number of these fighters deployed to Ukraine is unknown, but their reputation for brutality and ruthlessness in enforcing domestic rule is well-known, and their presence has raised memories of grisly urban combat and guerilla fighting from the Chechen wars in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov, known as one of the most loyal allies of President Vladimir Putin, announced on his Telegram channels that his men would be fighting in the "hottest hotspots in Ukraine."

However, some military analysts have cast doubt on whether his braggadocio on social media has accurately reflected his troops' performance on the battlefield. 

Many believe the Kremlin has sent the Chechen's ruthless warlord (center) and his troops to Ukraine

Across the frontlines, another group of Chechens has also joined the war — but they intend to defend Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

"Dear Ukrainians, please do not see those people as Chechens," said Adam Osmayev, an exiled Chechen leader, in a video published on social media, referring to Kadyrov's soldiers. "They are traitors … puppets of Russia."

"Real Chechens are standing with you, bleeding with you, as they have in the past eight years," he said, holding a gun and standing next to three other armed men with masked faces.

Osmayev leads the Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalion, named after the late Chechen rebel leader. The group is one of the two publicly known Chechen volunteer groups fighting against Russian-backed separatists and Russian forces in Ukraine since 2014. The other one is called the Sheikh Mansur Battalion and is headed by a commander called Muslim Cheberloevsky. 

The identity and the exact number of the Chechen volunteers are unknown. But most of them are believed to be people who left Chechnya either after the end of the war there in 2003 or who have escaped Kadyrov's despotic rule over the past years.

In 2013, the Ukrainian government, then a Moscow ally, imprisoned Osmayev for plotting to assassinate Putin — an accusation he denies. When he was released a year later, he went to the Donbas region to fight the pro-Russian separatists.

Both Russian and Western media have reported alleged links between the  Sheikh Mansur Battalion and the "Islamic State."

Osmayev, the commander of a Chechen battalion, has been accused of plotting to assassinate Putin

When Putin's army began marching toward Kyiv, leaders of both battalions, along with thousands of other foreign volunteer fighters, announced they would continue to defend Ukraine against "their common enemy." 

Their determination to assist Ukraine amid the ongoing Russian invasion stems from similarities they see between what Ukrainians are going through and their own fate.

A long, violent history

Chechnya, now a Russian republic, is home to a majority-Muslim population and has a complicated and often violent history with Moscow.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia waged two devastating wars to keep Chechnya from becoming independent, a goal to which it had been aspiring since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The first conflict broke out in 1994 when Russia sent troops to the Chechen Republic to quash its attempt to break away. Fighting paused only two years later, in 1997, following the signing of a peace agreement in August 1996. 

But in 1999, the Russian army returned after a series of deadly terror attacks organized by Chechen warlords on the territory of Russia. A new war erupted, lasting 10 years and culminating in the siege of Grozny by the Russian troops, resulting in enormous destruction and tens of thousands of civilian casualties.  

The first two years of that war coincided with Putin's ascension to power. The active phase of the war was over in April 2000. Two months later, Putin appointed Akhmad Kadyrov as head of the Chechen Republic, who would rule until he was assassinated by Islamist rebels in 2004. 

His son Ramzan Kadyrov became Chechen leader in 2007 and has remained in office ever since.  

Under Kadyrov's rule, human rights have deteriorated as critics, activists and journalists face clampdowns. He is suspected of having been involved in the killings of several critics outside Chechnya, including Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a former military commander gunned down in Berlin in 2019.

"It is safe to say that a great majority of the Chechen diaspora left their homeland after Kadyrov came to power, not during the war," Marat Iliyasov, a researcher at Lithuania's Vytautas Magnus University, told DW.

Bringing back Chechen memories

For many exiled Chechens, Putin is treating Ukrainians the way he treated them.

"Moscow's attempts today to impose its control over independent Ukraine resonates in the hearts and minds of many Chechens who remember their struggle for independence against the Russian colonizing machine," Albert Bininachvili, a professor of political science at Bologna University, told DW.

Putin aspires to expand Russia's domination to the Soviet borders, he explained, but without the intention of bringing back the Soviet system, "which in effect leaves us with nothing but Russian colonialism."

The battle of Grozny was a turning point for Russia in its war against Chechnya

"Chechens consider the war in Ukraine as a continuation of the war in Chechnya," Iliyasov said. "So they want to contribute to eventual victory against this perceived evil — something not achieved on Chechen soil."

"That's alongside another motivation, which is a kind of moral obligation to help people who are in such situations, and showing solidarity with them," he added.

Cheberloevsky, the head of the Sheikh Mansur Battalion, also considers the latest fighting as part of a much longer conflict. He said in an interview with Radio Free Europe's Caucasus service, "We have been fighting in Ukraine since 2014 to beat our common enemy."

Akhmed Zakayev, the head of the Chechen separatist government in exile, encouraged all Chechens living abroad to fight alongside the Ukrainian government in a video shared on social media.

Discrediting Putin's propaganda

Chechens are not the only Muslim group assisting Ukrainians.

Said Ismagilov, one of Ukraine's top Islamic leaders, who is of Tatar origin, posted a picture of himself in a military uniform beside the members of the Territorial Defence Forces in Kyiv. In another video, he called on the Muslims in the world to stand in solidarity with Ukraine.

The Crimean Tatars, a Muslim ethnic minority indigenous to Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014,  have been resisting Russian occupation since 2015, with some of them fighting in the Ukrainian armed forces. 

In a video widely shared by Ukrainian media, Ayder Rustemov, the head of Crimea's Muslim community as recognized by Ukraine, urged Ukrainian Muslims to defend their country and called on RСаид Исмагилов - Support Ukraine: an appeal to Muslims... | Facebook Russian Muslims to denounce Russia's aggression.

Kadyrov, who adheres to Sufism, a moderate sect of Islam with deep historical roots in Chechnya, tried to brand the battles in Ukraine as jihad, the Islamic term for holy war. "We have an order, we have jihad!" He wrote on his Telegram channel on March 4.

Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have said Kadyrov’s paramilitary forces have a long record of terrorizing, torturing and killing political dissidents claiming they were Islamic rebels.

Kadyrov’s latest claims have particularly come under criticism not just by Muslim activists and leaders but even by believers in the holy war, including jihadis in Syria and Iraq.

"Russia has killed thousands of Muslims and is still killing them," wrote Maysara bin Ali, also known as Abu Maria al-Qahtani, a commander of Islamist group Heyaat al Tahrir Sham, on Telegram. "Strengthening Russia in Ukraine means strengthening criminals."

Edited by: Tim Jones

CANADA, EH

Why Men Might Start Getting Their Own Sperm From 3D-Printed Testicles

FILL IN THE BLANKS

A groundbreaking new experiment opens the door for a future solution to male infertility.


Miriam Fauzia
Innovation Reporter
Published Mar. 25, 2022

Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

Much of the woes and struggles of starting a family center around women and their fertility issues. But for a third of all heterosexual couples grappling with infertility, the problem lies squarely with the man. Faulty sperm tends to be the No. 1 culprit. Around 10 percent of infertile men (and 1 percent of all men) suffer from azoospermia, a condition in which sperm is completely absent in the semen. While there are treatment options available, like medication or surgery, these methods aren’t an option for some men who can’t make sperm at all. So some scientists are instead turning to the world of 3D printing to solve azoospermia.

In a new study published March 16 in the journal Fertility and Sterility Science, Canadian researchers 3D-printed live and functional human testicular cells for the first time ever. This accomplishment likely lays the groundwork for solving sperm-associated forms of male infertility in the future.

Azoospermia comes in two forms—obstructive and non-obstructive. The former has a simple fix: Surgeons unblock or create the tubes that carry sperm from the testes out to the rest of the male reproductive system.

But with non-obstructive azoospermia—the most severe form of the condition—men aren't making sperm at all, and that could be due to many different reasons, some of which can be genetic like Klinefelter syndrome (where less testosterone is made because there’s an extra X chromosome) or hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (where puberty is delayed or completely absent). Solving this problem first required understanding what was happening deep down at the cellular level.

“We needed something as close to the nature within a testicle as possible to be able to study this as a functional unit,” Dr. Ryan Flannigan, a urologist at the University of British Columbia who led the new study, told The Daily Beast.

The new study started with Flannigan and his team growing testicular tissue in the lab and observing how this community of cells organized itself, communicated with each other, and responded to different growth hormones. They began to ask: Why not try regenerating a whole testicle, or at least a clump of testicular cells, with 3D printing?

To do that, they biopsied stem cells from the testicles of a 31-year-old man with non-obstructive azoospermia and grew as many new stem cells as they could in the lab. They then used these cells to 3D-print a structure similar to the seminiferous tubules, structures within the testes where sperm are born.

The researchers kept the seminiferous tubules nourished with the hormones, nutrients, and other chemicals they needed to stay happy and grow. After about two weeks, the cells flourished, much to Flannigan and his team’s surprise. While they didn't form single-and-ready-to-mingle sperm, they were able to advance into stages that are nearly partway through the multi-stepped creation process.

The next step, of course, is to get these 3D-printed testicular cells to make sperm. Once achieved, Flannigan is hopeful they can be used to help provide insight into treating male infertility. Doctors might even use them directly during assisted reproductive procedures like in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Ryan Flannigan and Meghan Robinson in front of the testicular cell 3D printer.
Courtesy University of British Columbia

These 3D printed cells might also be able to help male cancer patients preserve their fertility before undergoing aggressive treatment.

“Pediatric cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy or radiation therapy undergo that before they hit puberty,” said Flannigan. “Some of them will regenerate sperm if they recover from treatment and their testes recover. But a big proportion of them won't recover and won’t have any opportunities to have biological children of their own.”

While there’s no technology available yet to develop stem cells into fully mature, functional sperm, Flannigan said harvesting and freezing a cancer patient’s stem cells before treatment will at least give them a fighting chance for the future.

“The field of regenerative medicine and using approaches like this is probably going to have a bigger presence in the future,” he said. “It’s all fairly early on in development and there’s a lot of people doing parallel research in other organ and disease systems [but] it’s an exciting field to watch out for.”

Kremlin TV Descends Into Screaming Match Over Putin’s War Failures

CHAOS

There’s no hiding the cracks that have formed on Russian airwaves over the war in Ukraine any longer.


Julia Davis
Updated Mar. 25, 2022

ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/RIA NOVOSTI/AFP via Getty Images

As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its second month, the grim picture of destruction and suffering is breaking through on state-controlled television. Before the invasion, military experts predicted a rapid takeover of Russia’s peaceful neighbor in a matter of minutes. Now that the reality is starting to set in, they’re grimly surmising that it will take several decades to subdue freedom-loving Ukraine.

State TV’s talking heads have tried in vain to paint a rosy picture of the Kremlin’s invasion, but the cracks are starting to show. On Thursday, with screens depicting dramatic images of demolished Mariupol flashing behind them, hosts of the state television show 60 Minutes, Olga Skabeeva and Evgeny Popov, tried to point out the “positives.” They noted that Russia promised to pay compensation to some Ukrainians from the “affected” territories—10,000 rubles each, amounting to a mere $100 dollars.

“What do we do now? What’s our plan? Everything is bad, nothing is working out?”

To make matters worse, Ukrainians forcefully deported to Russia might end up in places like the Russian island of Sakhalin in the Pacific, with freezing cold temperatures and stark landscapes. After discussing news reports about ongoing relocations, Evgeny Popov helpfully pointed out: “But in Sakhalin, the salaries are the highest in the country!”

The chorus of concerned voices in Russian state media blamed their country’s information war failures on the fact that the Kremlin’s propaganda channels have been banished in Ukraine. State TV pundit Nikolai Starikov proposed: “When we talk about the organizers of the info-war, I’m convinced that their place is on the same bench where Nazi criminals will be tried.” The hosts, who for years agitated for war against Ukraine under false pretenses, nervously looked on without commenting.


State Duma Deputy Gen. Vladimir Shamanov—who is the former commander of the Russian Airborne Troops—accused the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky of being a “war criminal” for not surrendering to Russia. Shamanov argued: “He has the right to say, “Stop this war,” lay down the arms and save all the people.” This bizarre upside-down narrative is meant to hide the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin, seen by the civilized world as a war criminal, is solely responsible for starting and continuing his unprovoked invasion of a neighboring country.


Russian Troops Are Now Turning on Each Other
MADHOUSE
Allison Quinn


Political analyst Vitaly Tretyakov concluded: “The situation is serious... We have to admit that there was no psychological breakthrough in our operation, where the opposing side would lose their will to resist... The resistance from the Ukrainian side is neither stopping nor weakening.” Tretyakov pointed out that despite the Russian media’s attempted depictions of Zelensky as a drug addict, he is being perceived by the West as a leader of a country that has been attacked. He also questioned the wisdom of “liberating” Ukrainians who don’t seem to want to be “liberated” and vehemently hate seeing the Russian troops on their territory. Tretyakov noted the unwavering determination of Western leaders to “squeeze” the Russian economy by imposing punishing sanctions.

Host Olga Skabeeva was visibly rattled by the depressing realities brought to the forefront by Tretyakov’s comments. She sniped, “So you sprinkled the ashes all over your head, but what do we do now? What’s our plan? Everything is bad, nothing is working out?” Skabeeva angrily questioned whether Tretyakov had anything to offer aside from criticism. After he pointed out that societies tend to get tired of any military campaigns rather quickly, Skabeeva argued, “If you’re tired, that doesn't mean that everyone else is tired.” Visibly angered, she repeatedly shouted at Tretyakov, questioning his support for the Russian military and telling the pundit that his commentary “has a smell of something untoward.”

“It can be clearly predicted that we will have to remain in Ukraine for 30-40 years.”

If Skabeeva was counting on other pundits to lighten the mood in the studio, she was sorely mistaken. Military experts proceeded to hammer additional nails into the coffin of popular delusions about the anticipated outcome of Putin’s war against Ukraine. On Thursday, military expert Igor Korotchenko called for any protests to be stopped by military force and any vocal opponents of the Russian armed forces to be “interned.” Korotchenko called for all Ukrainian flags and symbols to be destroyed, replaced by Russian and Soviet flags. He also demanded that Ukrainians who fled to NATO countries be denied the possibility of returning to their country.

In January, experts on the same show estimated that Russia could overtake the entire neighboring country in a matter of 11 minutes. Their current predictions have shifted from minutes to decades for the Russian armed forces to achieve Putin’s goals in his senseless war against Ukraine.

Korotchenko surmised, “It’s obvious that the process of denazification of Ukraine will take the minimum of 15-20 years.” He predicted that the Russian troops would have to remain on Ukrainian territory, with the Russian military in charge of the entire country for the foreseeable future: “Whether this will take 15, 20 years or more, time will tell.”

General Shamanov was even more pessimistic, as he grimly anticipated that it would take the “re-education” of at least two generations of Ukrainians before they would welcome or tolerate Russia’s dominance. He also noted that Russia’s one-million-man armed forces aren’t enough to meet such a challenge, calling for massive increases to the country’s military might. Shamalov concluded: “Today, it can be clearly predicted that we will have to remain in Ukraine for 30-40 years.”

Won't someone stand up to protest Putin's biggest fanboy?
Kirk Swearingen, Salon
March 21, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin (Photo: Screen capture)

Recently, the world watched with a mixture of astonishment, delight and concern as an employee of Russian state television Channel One interrupted the evening news program by coming onto the set, shouting "Stop the war! No to war!" while holding up a large handmade sign that said: Don't believe the propaganda. They're lying to you here.

News editor and producer Marina Ovsyannikova rushed out behind a female anchor (reportedly a Putin favorite), who was presenting the national state-sanctioned "news," with a sign decrying the lies being told there about Putin's war against Ukraine.

She also released a pre-recorded video, in which she opens by saying, "What is happening right now in Ukraine is a crime, and Russia is the aggressor. And the responsibility for this aggression lies on the conscience of only one person. This man is Vladimir Putin." She then notes that her father is Ukrainian and her mother is Russian and calls what Putin is doing a "fratricidal war."

She movingly calls on her fellow Russians to follow her, to stand up for what is right. Many have already been doing just that.

For her courageous act, Ovsyannikova said she was interrogated for 14 hours and has been fined. She faces an unknown fate — conceivably years in a Putin prison.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised her for the brave act of defiance, for telling the truth in the face of Putin's demand that his war against Ukraine be called a "special military operation" in support of Ukraine.

My question is, who will stand up for journalistic integrity here at home behind Tucker Carlson, the most vocal Putin cheerleader on Fox News? It immediately became a meme, but who will actually do it?

You know, Master Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, pretend populist, who grew up rich because members of the actual proletariat were eating his stepmother's TV dinners; Tucker-of-the-Inevitable-Bowtie Carlson, who somehow manages to get U.S. males whipped up by strategically fretting about men being emasculated; Tucker of the Perpetually Confused Expression, who happily weaponizes stupidity; the Fox News "host" who, with a lot of competition among his colleagues, has stepped up as Putin's No. 1 apologist in the United States — so much so, that the Kremlin has noted how important it is for their propaganda efforts to showcase Carlson's work as often as possible.

I planned to give some examples of Carlson's fawning for Putin, but where does one begin? So many times has Tucker lavished praise on Putin or attempted to undermine Putin's critics that he is being called the "TuckyoRose" of his generation, and some call for him to be investigated by the Department of Justice.

A recent personal favorite of mine was his whining, dexterous double-pandering of "Has Putin ever called me a racist?" (Hm. That he was whining may mean that it was actually a triple pander. Let's enumerate: one, to his main man, Vlad; two, to white supremacists in his viewership; three, to the generally aggrieved viewership of Fox nation, for whom whining — especially by white men — elicits a Pavlovian response.)

Speaking of which, suffice it to say that when it comes to all things Vladimir, Tucker — much like our former president — is like that squirmy little dog that rolls onto its back (occasionally going so far as to pee itself) to show the dominant dog due obeisance. (Imagine that dog wearing a spiffy bow tie.)

No one feels animosity for such a dog, only pity. In the human realm? Well, the feelings may vary.

The question of the moment is this: How can democracies defend themselves against all the weapons utilized by authoritarians? Weapons like relentless propaganda and disinformation campaigns, attacks on journalists and the free press in general, and lawless oligarchs laundering their money in London, Amsterdam and New York while cozying up to officials with charitable giving and political donations.

Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum, author of "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism," who also wrote "The Autocrats Are Winning" last December, will testify to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about what must the world's democracies must do to fight back against what she calls "Autocracy Inc," the loose but potent affiliation of autocrats who want to stay in power. What is needed, she writes, is a complete rethinking of our approach.

First among Applebaum's suggestions is to do a much better job of fighting disinformation. Which naturally brings us back around to the case of Tucker Carlson and his ever-growing ilk.

The founders of our republic knew that democracy had to have an informed citizenry to survive. How can it survive the massive dose of misinformation, disinformation, outright propaganda and bizarre conspiracy theories spewed by Fox News, Newsmax and OAN every day?

Should the First Amendment protect those who constantly muddy the waters — and steal the very possibility of citizens becoming better informed — with blatant lies?

The difference between a real journalistic enterprise and a faux journalistic enterprise, such as the channel perfectly named for a furtive mammal known for its cunning, its whining vocalizations and for pouncing on its prey, is that a misstatement of fact by a real journalistic enterprise is typically inadvertent and will be rectified. Misstatement of facts by Fox News hosts is a fundamental part of the business plan.

And, yes, Fox does have real journalists in its employ — veteran video journalist Pierre Zakrzewski, who was working for Fox, and freelance journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova were recently killed covering Putin's war in Ukraine, while British reporter Benjamin Hall was seriously injured — but the journalism practiced at Fox provides cover for the network's provide cover for their true work, that of Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo, who, as Salon's Amanda Marcotte recently noted, launder conspiracy theories in the Fox News­–QAnon feedback loop, through seemingly innocently bringing the theories up, trusting their viewers will then go online to dig in the garbage.

It is all so over-the-top treasonous that SNL recently cold-opened with a "Fox News Ukrainian Invasion Celebration Spectacular, from Mar-a-Lago," hosted by cast members playing Carlson, Ingraham and Donald Trump.

Comedians, including the truly heroic Zelenskyy, are doing their utmost to save democracy. Can our leaders do as much? And who will step up to be America's Ovsyannikova before the cameras at Fox News?

Bombed out: Why we keep on making war, and tolerating it

War is brand new every time it happens, and it's one of our oldest ideas. We claim to hate it, but it's part of us

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
PUBLISHED MARCH 19, 2022

A man walks amid debris in front of a residential apartment complex that was heavily damaged by a Russian attack on March 18, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Russian forces remain on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, but their advance has stalled in recent days, even while Russian strikes - and pieces of intercepted missiles - have hit residential areas in the north of Kyiv. An estimated half of Kyiv's population has fled to other parts of the country, or abroad, since Russia invaded on February 24. 

(Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

The hardest thing I do as a writer is trying to find words to describe the indescribable. It doesn't matter what it is — beauty or bliss or sadness or tragedy or dullness or despair or horror or ecstasy or the ordinary — it's the writer's job. I remember as a young man having a dream that someday I might come up with one great idea. Just one would do it, but that was my goal. Now I realize what I've been doing for more than 50 years is excavating old ideas and finding new ways to express them.

We are witnessing one of man's very oldest ideas in Ukraine. Call it the will to power or the urge to take what is not yours or the wrath of ignorance and pride, every time war is waged it is the same. War is man's inhumanity to man on a mass scale.

Perhaps that is why we become so readily inured to images of war. We have seen them all before — the anguished, bleeding faces of the wounded, the bleakly inert limbs of the dead, the angry fire of explosions, the darkness and sameness of destruction — to borrow Hannah Arendt's term, the sheer banality of it all.
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RELATED: Ukraine and the dark lessons of war: What does it mean to "take" a country or a city?

War is brand new when it first happens, yet after only a day it is already old to us because it has been headlined on the front pages of newspapers, featured on the covers of magazines, flickered across our televisions, splashed on the big screen of movies in Technicolor, engraved in the text of great novels and first-person reports from the front. The most extraordinary scene in the 1970 movie "Patton," the one that I believe gives it staying power, comes when Gen. George S. Patton is on a bluff in North Africa or Sicily seeming to reminisce about having been at that exact spot before during ancient battles. He ends his oration by saying this about war: "I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life."

I don't know if Patton ever said the lines from the movie in real life, but I do know that after I took my grandmother, Sara Randolph Truscott, to see "Patton" the week it came out, I asked her what she thought, and she turned to me and answered with a little smile, "Why, it was just like being in the room with Georgie," calling him by a nickname only his family and close friends used.

Her late husband and my grandfather, Gen. Lucian K. Truscott Jr., knew Patton and served on the same cavalry posts with him between the wars. It's safe to assume she would have known what the man was like, so that's probably as good an assessment we'll ever get of the movie's essence. In Patton's rumination on war, he is saying the unsayable out loud. It makes him seem like a monster, but we are all monsters, we humans who love war, or at least tolerate it such that we keep waging it over and over and over again.

It chills the soul to think that he might be right, but here we are again, 52 years after "Patton" was released, bearing witness to yet another war being fought over the same ground, in the same cities, for largely the same reasons as the war against the Nazis that Ukraine (and Russia) fought 81 years ago. It's tempting to ask why nothing is ever new, but I'm afraid we know the answer all too well.

There is one image of war we haven't yet seen in the coverage of Russia's war against Ukraine. We've seen people sheltering in subway stations and basements and people traveling by train or by car to get to western Ukraine or Poland to escape the bombing and shelling. But we haven't seen the people left behind who don't have the wherewithal or money or even the energy to escape the cities and towns being bombed, and who end up stuck trying to survive in the ruins. I saw an interview with an expert on Ukraine this week who said that 10 percent of the population already lived below the poverty line of about $5 or $6 a day, even before the war began. It won't take long for as many as 90 percent of Ukrainians to be in the same position, he said.

I am certain that there are already people in Ukraine living in the bombed-out ruins of rural homes and urban apartment buildings with no electricity, heat, source of food or water — just existing on nothing. Because I haven't traveled to Ukraine to cover this war, and because all wars are essentially the same, I'll tell you what I saw in Afghanistan in March of 2004 in the ruins of some old apartment complexes and office buildings on the edge of Kabul.

It was like a landscape out of a near-future movie about the world after the Big Bomb, but it was real: Families had fashioned shelters out of the rubble of the buildings, using scrap wood and metal for roofs and more wood scraps and piles of rubble and cheap carpets and blankets for walls, and they were living in the midst of this horrific destruction without electricity or water and only small cooking fires for heat. Here and there, I could see pits that had been dug out of the dirt and sealed with mud walls to make bread ovens, where they could bake flatbread by slapping dough on the curved walls of the pits. But none of the ovens had fires going, because the families didn't have any flour and water to make dough.

I had stopped at a small bakery next door to the Mustafa Hotel, where I was staying in Kabul, and picked up a bag of sugar cookies that I planned on eating as snacks later in my room. I had the bag stashed in a kilim shoulder bag I was carrying, but almost immediately upon entering the ruins, I was surrounded by a crowd of starving children. Their faces were dirty from having not been washed in weeks, and many of them had open infections oozing pus on their legs and arms. They were pawing at me and chattering in Dari and my translator told me they were asking for food and water, so I took out the bag of cookies and began handing them out. It was like being set upon by a pack of wolves, their fingers were tugging and scratching at my pant legs and arms as I tried to spread the cookies evenly between the children. Within a minute or two, they were all gone and the children disappeared into gaps in the rubble and behind the thin rugs where their mothers huddled in the cold.

With my translator, I tried to talk to a few of the women to get their stories: How they had ended up in these ruins in Kabul, how long they had been there, the usual questions a reporter asks in a war. Their husbands, the fathers of the children, had all been killed in fighting between Afghan factions or by the Taliban or by U.S. soldiers, so there were no men in the ruins. My translator explained that widowed women with children were undesirable and were shunned in their villages, which was why they had traveled from distant areas looking for shelter and work and aid from NGOs in Kabul. They had noplace else to go; that's why they were living in the ruins among the detritus of war.

I went back to the ruins once more before I left Afghanistan and handed out flatbread and some bottled water this time. The scene was the same. The children clawed at me desperately. It was all I could do not to throw down the bag of bread and the water bottles and run.

When I returned to L.A. a week or so later, there was a sore on my left forefinger that wouldn't heal. I went to my GP. He examined my finger and took a swab and asked me to wait while he had it tested. A couple of hours later the test came back. It was an MRSA infection. He asked me what I had come in contact with in Afghanistan that might have caused it, and I thought immediately of the children in Kabul with their open sores and cracked lips and desperate eyes. I had touched them repeatedly while handing out cookies and bread in the ruins.

The doctor gave me a big shot of antibiotics and put me on the only pill known to knock down MRSA infections. The sore got worse for a couple of days and then began to heal. The doctor told me that if I had waited to get it treated for even a day longer, I would probably have lost my finger. If I had neglected the infection longer, I could have lost my hand.

This is one of the very old ideas about war I have excavated: After the bombs have fallen and the artillery shells have exploded and the missiles have found their targets, what is left are women and children with no money, no food, no water, living in bombed-out ruins with no place else to go. That was what happened in Afghanistan, and it happened in Sicily and Vietnam and Korea and Iraq and Aleppo and Rome and Jerusalem and Cairo and Mogadishu, and now it is happening in Ukraine. History becomes present becomes future and nothing changes. The thing that is forever is war.


LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives on the East End of Long Island and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better. You can read his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Read more on the Ukraine war and its consequences:
Endless war is back — as the merchants of death waltz us toward Armageddon
Putin's invasion of Ukraine exposes the Fox News-QAnon feedback loop
Why I'm going to Ukraine: We deserve the truth — and that's my job

How 'shock therapy' created Russian oligarchs and paved the path for Putin

March 22, 2022
GREG ROSALSKY

NPR

PLANET MONEY

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a meeting with Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich (on the left, in the center) in 2010.Alexei Nikolsky/AP

It's been a rough few weeks for Roman Abramovich.

The British government blocked him from entering the country and froze his assets, depriving him of a glittering collection of sports cars, his 15-bedroom mansion in central London, his penthouse overlooking the River Thames, and the Chelsea soccer club.

The European Union is also messing with his finances and banning him from traveling into its 27 member states. No more summering in Saint-Tropez or wintering in Chamonix.

In the United States, members of Congress are now calling on President Biden to sanction Abramovich, threatening his megamansion on the Upper East Side.

It's not just governments. Last week, a Pro-Ukraine activist in Spain chartered a boat and attempted to graffiti Abramovich's 458-foot superyacht, Solaris, which was docked in a Barcelona marina. Although the activist failed, Abramovich directed his two superyachts (he has another one) to head east for safety.

Abramovich, himself, has fled east for safety, back home to Russia, which seems to be one of the few nations where he's welcome these days.

All of this is a lot of unwanted publicity for a man with a reputation for shunning the spotlight. An orphan who grew up in the frozen tundra of Siberia, Abramovich rose from nothing to become a tycoon worth an estimated $13 billion. Younger than most in the first generation of Russian "oligarchs" — as the Russians would come to disparagingly call them — the boyish Abramovich became known as "the stealth oligarch" because, unlike many of his plutocratic contemporaries, he kept his head down.

In the 1990s, Abramovich became the protégé of Boris Berezovsky, who was probably the least stealthy oligarch. Berezovsky had a big mouth. In 2000, he made the mistake of openly challenging a new president by the name of Vladimir Putin, someone Berezovsky had played a big role in helping to get elected president. When Putin threw down the hammer, Berezovsky was forced to flee Russia — and Abramovich, a staunch (and tight-lipped) Putin loyalist, took over much of Berezovsky's oil and media empires. Berezovsky remained a vocal Putin critic after moving to London. He was found dead there in 2013, hanging from a noose in his bathroom. Investigators are divided on whether it was suicide or murder.

With the exception of Abramovich and a few other notables, the cast of characters comprising Russia's oligarchy has been largely replaced since the 1990s, after Putin began purging oligarchs and anointing his own oligarchs in an effort to fortify his reign. However, the power structure remains the same. It's a symbiotic relationship in which the oligarchs' economic power buttresses the political power of the Russian president, and the president's power buttresses the economic power of the oligarchs — like a medieval king getting tribute from his aristocracy in exchange for his protection. It's an arrangement that the West is now fighting to disrupt.

It's impossible to know what would have happened to Russia in an alternate universe, where the nation's transition to capitalism was handled more gradually and fairly, and the oligarchs had never taken the helm of Russia's economy. We do know, however, that their story is crucial to understanding the rise of Putin.

The Rise Of The Oligarchy

The Russian oligarchy arose out of the mayhem of rapid privatization in the 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin, a leader in the revolt against communism, had to figure out how to transition from a command-and-control economy to a market one. Yeltsin turned to the Russian economists Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, who, with the aid of Western advisers, hammered out the details.

There were many economists — including even Gaidar and Chubais themselves before they became government officials — who believed that the transition to capitalism would best be handled gradually. They knew the transition would be complex and painful, and it made sense for Russia to first create the institutions that healthy, competitive markets need to flourish — like independent courts, functioning capital markets, and strong regulatory bodies.

But Yeltsin and his allies believed that time was not on their side. An attempted coup in August 1991 by Soviet hardliners against the reformers almost derailed the whole project. Entrenched Soviet industrialists and party insiders wanted a return to the old order. The Yeltsin administration decided that a program known as "shock therapy" — rapidly unleashing market forces — was the way to electrocute the old Soviet system and jolt Russia into embracing capitalism.

American advisors and global creditors, especially the International Monetary Fund, played a notable role advocating for shock therapy. But some influential shock therapists, like the economist Jeffrey Sachs, then at Harvard, believed such a radical program needed support. He proposed the United States and multilateral development agencies help Russian reformers succeed with a $30 billion aid package, akin to what America had provided Europe after WWII with the Marshall Plan. Sachs also called for the cancellation of Russia's debts. But these ideas were rejected by American leaders.

President Yeltsin delivered the first big shock to the Russian economy when he lifted price controls in December 1991. As the Soviet economy collapsed, however, the policy ended up unleashing hyperinflation. By 1994, consumer prices in Russia would skyrocket to almost 2000 times what they had been in 1990. That candy bar that had cost $1 now cost $2000. Hyperinflation devastated ordinary Russians.

Meanwhile, Chubais was tasked with overseeing mass privatization. That entailed transforming a nation whose almost entire economy consisted of state-controlled industries — manufacturing plants, oil refineries, mines, media outlets, biscuit factories, you name it — into private enterprises. It was, to date, surely the biggest transfer of state assets to private owners in world history.

Privatization was conducted in two waves. The first wave, which began in October 1992, had at least the veneer of being a fair and open process. Russia issued 148 million "privatization checks," or vouchers, to Russian citizens. These vouchers could be freely sold or traded. They could then be used to buy shares of state enterprises going private at public auctions around the nation. It was like the former Soviet Union was holding the world's largest garage sale and vouchers were the tickets to shop.

The people on their way to becoming Russia's first class of oligarchs scoured the nation, trying to buy as many vouchers as they could. Many of the oligarchs had come from nothing. They had initially gotten rich — but not quite buy-superyachts rich just yet — by hustling in the black market or through legitimate businesses when the Soviet Union first allowed private entrepreneurship in the late 1980s. For example, Roman Abramovich made his first pot of money selling rubber ducks and other random objects to Russians out of his Moscow apartment (seriously). He was also a mechanic. By the time privatization began, many soon-to-be oligarchs owned banks and had enough money to buy lots of vouchers.

The oligarchs went on a buying spree, purchasing hundreds of thousands of vouchers, each of which were worth 10,000 rubles, or about $40 or less back in the 1990s. Average Russians, who were struggling during hyperinflation, were often eager to sell. After amassing vouchers, the oligarchs — both come-up-from-nothing hustlers and former Soviet government insiders — used them at auctions to buy up stocks in newly private companies. By all accounts, many of these enterprises were shockingly undervalued — and those who were able to get large chunks of lucrative enterprises became fabulously wealthy in a very short period of time. Between 1992 and 1994, about 15,000 state-run enterprises went private under the program.

By 1994, when the voucher program ended, around 70 percent of the Russian economy had been privatized. But some of the biggest, most valuable industries remained in the government's hands. Chubais had plans to privatize these state enterprises and raise much needed funds for the government by selling them off for cash to the highest bidder in legitimate auctions. However, politics got in the way of the increasingly unpopular privatization drive — and even threatened to reverse it. That's when the Yeltsin administration resorted to a much shadier form of privatization.
The "Loans For Shares" Scheme

By 1995, Boris Yeltsin was very unpopular. Hyperinflation. The decline of law and order. The rise of the mafia and execution-style killings on the streets of Moscow. Russia's inability to pay government salaries and pensions. The sense that unscrupulous men in suits were the only ones winning in the new economy. Plus, Yeltsin was a notorious drunk with serious health problems. Just a year away from reelection, Yeltsin's approval rating fell to the low single digits, and he faced the specter of an increasingly popular Communist challenger who looked like he could win the 1996 presidential elections.

With privatization stalling, the government desperate for money, and a growing fear that Russia was about to slide back into communism, Chubais and the Yeltsin administration turned to a shady scheme known as "Loans For Shares." The secret plot basically worked like this: the richest oligarchs loaned the government billions of dollars in exchange for massive shares of Russia's most valuable state enterprises. When the government defaulted on paying back the loans, as the schemers expected they would, the oligarchs would walk away with the keys to Russia's most profitable corporations. In exchange, the government would get the money it needed to pay its bills, privatization would keep moving forward — and, most importantly, the oligarchs would do everything in their power to ensure Yeltsin was reelected.

Between November and December 1995, twelve of Russia's most profitable industrial enterprises were auctioned off to the oligarchs, including a mining company, two steel companies, two shipping companies, and five oil companies. The auctions were a complete farce. Chubais and his team had predetermined with the oligarchs who would get what and for roughly how much. And the prices the oligarchs paid for these corporations were a steal — almost literally. For example, Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, now well beyond his days of selling rubber ducks, got a large stake in the oil company Sibneft for about $200 million. In 2009, when Putin renationalized the company, Abramovich sold his stake back to the government for $11.9 billion. Talk about a payday.

"Chubais never advertised it publicly — he attempted to keep the goal obscure so as not to alarm the opposition— but loans for shares should really have been called 'tycoons for Yeltsin,'" writes David Hoffman, the former Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post, in his book The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia. "Chubais was willing to hand over the property without competition, without openness, and, as it turned out, for a bargain price, but in a way that would keep the businessmen at Yeltsin's side in the 1996 reelection campaign."

Yeltsin Is Reelected With Oligarch Money

Holding up their end of the bargain, the oligarchs, who often fought with each other, united forces behind Yeltsin's reelection campaign. They donated millions of dollars to the effort. They hired the best political operatives they knew. They laundered government money with their banks, and fed it into the Yeltsin campaign machine. Two of the oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, controlled two of the three major Russian television networks — and they blanketed the airwaves with pro-Yeltsin propaganda. Fueled by the immense power of the oligarchs, Yeltsin conducted Russia's first American-style presidential campaign.

As the election approached, Yeltsin made a cynical move to placate critics of his privatization scheme, publicly firing his super unpopular privatization czar Chubais. "He sold off a big industry for next to nothing," Yeltsin told the press. "We cannot forgive this."

Despite waving the banner of free markets and democracy, the reformers of the 1990s — perhaps ironically — did much of their reforms undemocratically, often by presidential decrees that were hammered out through backroom deals with the rich and powerful. Thanks in no small part to the oligarchic beneficiaries of these deals, Yeltsin beat the odds and won reelection. Russian-style crony capitalism was here to stay.

Weeks after the victory, Boris Berezovsky bragged to The Financial Times that he and six other Russian oligarchs controlled half of Russia's economy. That number seems to have been significantly inflated. Nonetheless, by 1996, the world could see that Russia had a new class of industrialists and bankers who wielded enormous power. A class that made their fortunes not through society-improving ideas, consumer-pleasing products, or technological innovations — but rather through corruption, skullduggery, and the plunder of Russia's raw materials. Many Russians would come to resent the oligarchs and the liberal reformers who empowered them.

As Yeltsin's health continued to deteriorate in the late 1990s, the oligarchs began to worry about who would be his successor. The natural heir to Yeltsin would be whoever occupied the post of prime minister. If Yeltsin stepped down, the prime minister automatically became acting president and would have the advantage of incumbency during election time.

In 1999, Boris Yeltsin and his oligarchic allies agreed that an obscure former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin was the man to become Yeltsin's prime minister, and soon Russia's next president. He was a nobody, barely a public figure, but he had a reputation for loyalty. They trusted that, once in power, he would look after their interests. Little did they know that they were unleashing a monster they soon would be unable to control.

Russia TV's Paris correspondent slams 'propaganda' after quitting

Agence France-Presse
March 22, 2022

Zhanna Agalakova she could no longer be involved in the 'lies' and 'manipulation' of Russian state TV Christophe ARCHAMBAULT AFP

A Russian journalist who for years was senior foreign correspondent for state-run television on Tuesday lashed out at the propaganda broadcast by pro-Kremlin media after dramatically quitting over the invasion of Ukraine.

Zhanna Agalakova, a familiar face in Russian households from two decades work as a correspondent from postings including New York and Paris, had earlier this month announced she was leaving Pervy Kanal (Channel One) due to the invasion.

Speaking in public for the first time since she quit, Agalakova told reporters at a news conference in Paris organised by press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) that she could no longer be involved in the "lies" and "manipulation" of Russian state TV.

"I want the people of Russia to hear me and learn what propaganda is and stop being zombified," she said.

With tears in her eyes, Agalakova said she had hesitated a lot before speaking out in public but then decided "there was no other choice".

Agalakoa, who most recently worked as Paris-based Europe correspondent for Pervy Kanal, admitted that she had "made many compromises in my career" but she described the invasion of Ukraine as a "red line".

There has been intense focus on Russian TV since an editor on the Pervy Kanal barged onto the set of its flagship Vremya (Time) evening news last week, holding a poster reading "No War."

Marina Ovsyannikova was detained and a Moscow court rapidly fined her 30,000 rubles (260 euros). But despite being freed she could face further prosecution, risking years in prison under draconian new laws.

Ovsyannikova said she was quitting her job but not accepting an offer from President Emmanuel Macron of asylum in France, saying she wanted to stay in Russia.
'Huge lie'

Agalakova announced she was leaving her channel in an Instagram video posted last week, symbolically cutting a Pervy Kanal band around her wrist and saying she had already written her resignation letter on March 3.

She described a media system that "just gives the point of view of the Kremlin".

Agalakova pointed to how state television covers President Vladimir Putin with exhaustive coverage of his macho holiday activities but with no scrutiny of his private life which is an absolute taboo.

"Our news does not show the country, we do not see Russia," she said.

"We only see the first man of the country, what he ate, who he shook hands with, we even saw him shirtless. But we don't know if he's married, if he has children," she said.

She lambasted the state media for its repeated description of Russia's opponents in Ukraine as "Nazis", a term that touches a particular nerve in a country still scarred by the sacrifices of World War II.

"When, in Russia, we hear the word 'Nazi', we only have one reaction -- destroy. It's a manipulation, a huge lie."

Justifying her long career as correspondent in New York and Paris, she said: "I thought that by reporting on life in Europe -- and in particular in Paris -- I could avoid being propagandistic."

"I didn't lie, every fact was real. But take real facts, mix them up and you'll end up with a big lie," she said.

'Hostages of situation'

Press freedom activists outside Russia accuse its state television of painting a severely distorted picture of the war in a bid to maintain support for what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation."

Russian lawmakers on Tuesday approved legislation imposing jail terms of up to three years for the publication of false information about Russia's actions abroad.

Agalakova is not the only prominent Russian TV journalist to have quit over the invasion of Ukraine, but so far there has been no mass exodus.

NTV channel news anchor Lilya Gildeeva, who has worked for the channel now owned by energy giant Gazprom, since 2006, said she had left Russia and resigned from her job.

The longstanding Brussels correspondent of NTV, Vadim Glukser, has also said he had handed in his notice.

"Many journalists, producers or people who work in the media think like me," Agalakova said.

"It's easy to accuse them, to ask why they don't resign, don't protest. But those who stay have families, elderly parents, children, houses to pay for. They are hostages of the situation."

© 2022 AFP