Is Russia Burying the US?

On the 100^th anniversary of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, the current Russian boss, Vladimir Putin, is fulfilling his communist predecessor’s threat to bury us.

Just read the daily news headlines and you’ll easily see that this is so.

While addressing Westerners on November 18, 1956, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev brazenly declared: “About the capitalist states, it doesn’t depend on you whether or not we exist. If you don’t like us, don’t accept our invitations, and don’t invite us to come to see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.” “Нравится вам или нет, но история на нашей стороне. Мы вас похороним.”

Despite naïve explanations at the time that Khrushchev didn’t really mean what he said, you can’t misinterpret the Russian “my vas pokhoronim” – we will bury you, we will inter you, we will place you six feet underground, etc.

White House officials, politicians from both sides of the aisle, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea are following the evolving scandal of Russia’s cyber invasion of America with unrestrained interest. Is it possible that a major global power attempted to undermine another major global power with the use of harmless social media? Did the Kremlin have moles or sleepers in the United States? Were Americans naïve, gullible and greedy?

The answers are yes, indeed. In an attempt to destabilize the political structure of the United States, the Kremlin created a diabolical plot aimed at subverting the 2016 Presidential Elections via social media.

The plan was simple. Russia generated content and information, and developed a foolproof plan of execution – the Internet. The formula is quite straightforward and uncomplicated to implement after mastering the technology and the victim’s trusting and avaricious psyche.

According to reports, Russia-linked accounts sent more than 1.4 million automated tweets about the US elections. Ultimately, to its credit, Twitter suspended these accounts. Furthermore, “fake information” posted on Facebook reached 126 million Americans – about one-third of the population.

Emphasizing how widely content on the social media platform can spread, Facebook said in prepared testimony it submitted Monday, October 30, to the Senate Judiciary Committee that while some 29 million Americans directly received material from 80,000 posts by 120 fake Russian-backed pages in their own news feeds, those posts were “shared, liked and followed by people on Facebook, and, as a result, three times more people may have been exposed to a story that originated from the Russian operation.”

Posts from Russian-backed Facebook accounts from January 2015 to August 2017, by Facebook’s estimation, reached potentially half of the 250 million Americans who are eligible to vote. None of the 80,000 posts generated by fake Russian-backed pages includes the 3,000 Facebook advertisements purchased by Russian entities, according to others familiar with the issue.

The shared content that Facebook estimates reached 126 million Americans was likely hard, if not impossible, for users of the social media platform to identify as originating from Russia. But nonetheless it did appear in cyberspace.

Google said in a blogpost it has discovered 1,108 videos uploaded to its YouTube video site, which were viewed a total of 309,000 times in the U.S. from June 2015 to November 2016, by accounts linked to Russian operatives. The videos encompass 43 hours of content from 18 English-language accounts, it said. In addition, Google said two accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency spent $4,700 on search and display ads during the 2016 elections.

The House Intelligence Committee released ads connected to a pro-Russian troll farm. Along with the ads, the committee released metadata showing that some advertisements were targeted at teenagers as young as 13. The messages, carried on Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube, showed efforts to divide Americans, with some aimed at both liberal and conservative constituencies.

This exercise demonstrated that the notion that Russia curries allies in one or the other political or ideological camp – for example, Democrats, liberals, leftists – is false. Russia leaches into all facets of American life with the sole intention of subjugating the body politic and the republic.

The partisan bickering about who opened the door and let in Russian trolls and subversives will continue without end. Except for criminal responsibility, “who done it” is irrelevant. However, the essential take away is that Moscow penetrated the United States and tried to subvert it, to weaken it and make it ripe for collapse. Russia successfully invaded the United States, the bastion of freedom, without declaring war.

Tech giants Facebook, Twitter and Google, testifying before Congress this week about Russian cyber-invasion, were subjected to scathing interrogation by lawmakers, who belatedly challenged them to wake up to the Russian threat. Ironically, Ukrainian and other captive nation representatives in the US have employed this same admonition when addressing US-Russia and US-Ukraine issues since the end of World War II. As a matter of fact, the lawmakers’ castigations could have been expressed by any Ukrainian American civic leader.

Russian efforts to interfere amounted to “an act of war,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said Wednesday, November 1, caustically adding that to question otherwise plays right into Russia’s hands.

“You’re falling into Russia’s trap. Russia is spending money in this country to convince us that this is nothing more than what’s been done since the beginning of time,” Cardin said. “It’s a conscientious effort to say ‘we all do this, so why is America getting upset?’ And we’re falling trap to it because we’re giving legitimacy to this.

 “Cyber is an attack against our country. When you use cyber in an affirmative way to compromise our democratic, free election system, that’s an attack against America,” he continued. “It’s an act of war. It is an act of war.”

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) chastised the social media companies about their irresponsibility, emphasizing: “This is about national security ... [and a] deliberate and multifaceted manipulation of the American people by agents of a hostile foreign power.”

Virginia’s Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, poignantly underscored the ongoing nature of the Russian threat. Undeniably, Russia hasn’t stopped fulfilling its global mission of domination. Russians are using social media to “set us against ourselves and to undermine our democracy,” he said. “They did it during the 2016 US presidential campaign. They are still doing now.”

Despite the social media representatives’ efforts to excuse and explain their companies’ folly, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) didn’t believe them. “I don’t think you get it. I think the fact that you’re general counsels, you defend your company. What we’re talking about is the beginning of cyberwarfare.”

Burr said he takes Russia’s effort to meddle in US politics through social media very seriously. “A foreign power using that platform to influence how Americans see and think about one another is as much a public policy issue as it is a national security concern,” he said.

The Russians didn’t just go after presidential campaigns. Their global plan included subverting elections in other countries and additional dirty tricks.

Evidence reveals Moscow tried to break into the private email of the US secretary of state, attempted to steal the private correspondence of a manager working on Lockheed Martin’s stealth fighter program, and sought to break into the accounts of thousands of others, including the punk band Pussy Riot and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

About 19,000 lines of data, recently shared by cybersecurity firm Secureworks, show that Fancy Bear — the hacking group blamed by U.S. intelligence agencies for disrupting last year’s presidential election — tried to break into more than 4,700 Gmail inboxes between March 2015 and May 2016.

The Ukrainian government said it had warned Facebook and US officials years ago that Russia was conducting disinformation campaigns on its platform including account takedowns and fake news, as the impact of social media on politics came under the spotlight. Dmytro Shymkiv, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, told the Financial Times that it warned Facebook and US officials about “aggressive behavior” from Russia spreading disinformation on social media in an “information propaganda war” in 2015.

The America cyber geniuses and officials inside the Beltway didn’t pay attention.

This is a severe indictment of the America’s current state of affairs and its gatekeepers. No one believed in the existence of a Russian threat and this nonbelief paved the way to gullible acceptance of Russia’s two-faced friendship. It reminds me of Mina Harker’s acceptance of Dracula.

In the horror classic, young Mina was rescued. I fear that the US may not be easily saved.

According to the latest survey from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a DC-based nonprofit, one in two US millennials, the powerful demographic cohort that will soon rule the country, say they would rather live in a socialist or communist country than a capitalist democracy. Furthermore, 22% of them have a favorable view of Karl Marx and a surprising number see Josef Stalin and Kim Jong Un as “heroes.” This reveals a troublesome lack of education and political awareness on the part of young American men and women.

“Millennials now make up the largest generation in America, and we’re seeing some deeply worrisome trends,” said Marion Smith, executive director of the foundation. “Millennials are increasingly turning away from capitalism and toward socialism and even communism as a viable alternative.”

But do they even know what it is? Do they know the blood that was shed by the likes of Stalin? Or will they again open the door for Moscow to broaden its power across the US?

The survey, which was conducted by research and data firm YouGov, found that millennials are the least knowledgeable generation on the subject, with 71% failing to identify the proper definition of communism.

These are dark days for the country and the world with Russia’s cyber adventurism in the US, its invasion of Ukraine, and its belligerence in Syria and other parts of the world. It will take an enlightened leader to pull the US and world out of this morass and shackle Russia in its cave until it reforms.

War is Hell – A Woman’s Perspective:

Aggressors Kill, Rape, Violate Human Rights

The death and destruction that war brings are easily observable. You see lifeless bodies of soldiers and civilians strewn about at the site of skirmishes and in the destroyed vestiges of what were once homes, schools or office buildings.

War also leaves devastating repercussions in the minds of the survivors, many of which are women.

Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, deputy prime minister of Ukraine for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, speaking at the UN Security Council open debate on Women, Peace and Security, on October 27, elaborated on how the violence of Russo-Ukraine War of 2014-17 will reverberate in the Ukrainian women long after the Russian invaders have been expelled from Ukraine.

“The Russian aggression against Ukraine and temporary occupation of the part of the Ukrainian territory has resulted in widespread human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence. According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission, since the beginning of this aggression 32,252 conflict-related casualties were recorded, including 2,505 killed civilians,” Klympush detailed.

“A direct consequence of the Russian aggression against Ukraine has been a displacement of individuals and families with 1.7 million internally displaced persons registered countrywide. Of them, older persons make up 78 %, women — 58 % and children — 8 %.”

Despite the well-documented list of crimes against humanity committed by Russian soldiers and their mercenary allies, no one has been held accountable for these transgressions. Klympush noted that sexual violence is not among the least offenses perpetrated by Russian invaders.

“This is partly due to the fact that the conflict is ongoing and that a part of Ukraine’s territory remains under the control of illegal armed groups, supported by the RF (Russian Federation). While there is still much to do, Ukraine has made significant progress towards implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda,” she said.

Sexual violence – a euphemism for rape – is a violent crime in every decent society and it’s not seriously considered in the thus-far unproductive Minsk negotiations. Rape, even in time of war, has been denounced by the United Nations: “Sexual violence in conflict needs to be treated as the war crime that it is; it can no longer be treated as an unfortunate collateral damage of war.”

Rape, a war crime, in the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine must be included in a future Nuremberg Trial against Russia.

Klympush applauded the UN system and leadership for their tireless commitment to women’s rights and empowerment and continued efforts and support to Ukraine in its pursuit of peace and security. However, she continued: “War and conflicts are devastating communities across the world today. In recent years we have also seen widespread targeting of women and girls in conflict zones. Since the adoption of the UN Security Council resolution 1325 in 2000, the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda remains relevant and critical in the face of rising violence, extremism and deadly conflicts.” She urged the UN Security Council to endlessly reinforce the importance of implementing existing WPS resolutions.

Klympush believes that a solution to the danger facing women and girls in conflict zones is for law enforcement security forces and peacekeeping missions that are supposed to protect civilians to do a better job of seeking out and listening to the needs of women and prioritizing their participation and protection.

“The international community must pay sufficient attention to providing and delivering the necessary protection to women in conflict-affected areas, in parallel with ensuring a meaningful women’s participation, so as to ensure complementarity between both pillars,” she said. “Thus the deployment of senior gender advisors and senior women protection advisors is critical to ensure that missions have sufficient gender expertise, authority, capacity to address those objectives.”

Klympush suggestion that senior women advisors’ visible role at the peace table can have positive results. Women can improve the negotiation process, contribute to a more comprehensive peace agreement, and bolster the prospect of sustainable peace. Indeed, the historic and notorious absence of women from this process has led to recurrent wars around the world.

Women at the peace table, she said, provide an “important window of opportunity to set an agenda for sustainable peace that includes the needs of the often-excluded half of the population.” Klympush made noticeable reference to countless peace negotiations that focused on ceasefire, combatants, and weapons. She rightly indicated that the other half of the population – woman – have priorities that focus on families, children and life after hostilities have ended that also need to be addressed.

“Ukraine recognizes the importance of equal and full participation of women in all activities for the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace-building and peacekeeping,” Klympush declared. “I am proud to say that in the two last years that Ukraine has been a member of the Security Council, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 has been our great and long-standing daily priority.”

Klympush told the council members that the Ukrainian government integrates women, peace and security in on-going security and defense reform programs. Kyiv has conducted a comprehensive gender impact assessment of the security sector and will soon adopt a multi-year Gender Equality Strategy for Security and Defense, she said. The result will be a comprehensive integration of gender equality and women’s rights in all areas of security and defense reform.

“Over the last two years Ukraine has achieved progress in improving the recruitment policies. This resulted in a steady increase of a number of women working in the security and defense sector,” Klympush said.

While still in a minority, Klympush said Ukrainian women play a prominent role in the peacebuilding process. President Poroshenko appointed a woman to a position in charge of the process of peaceful settlement in the Donbas region and two women in Minsk working groups are dealing with humanitarian and political issues.

“Building peace in my country requires women’s participation and influence, including the Minsk processes. It also requires action to stop the attacks against women and making sure that women will not be attacked with impunity. We will continue to work towards development of a full range of judicial and non-judicial measures, and institutional reform in line with the international standards,” she said.

However, as with all facets of life in Ukraine, talk of progress is overshadowed by the deadly effects of Russia’s murderous aggression. Klympush said as long as foreign aggression continues, “For the majority of women in the territory of Ukraine, peace and security will remain a far-fetched and almost unattainable notion. Women will continue lacking protection, living in fear, having almost no recourse to justice, remaining economically disadvantaged and living in limited freedom.

“The situation in Ukraine, suffering from the Russian aggression showed the importance of striking a balance between the two main pillars of the women and peace and security agenda: protection and participation. We believe the Security Council must prioritize these two.”

War is hell. But peace for the perpetrator of war should not be a well-deserved respite.

IN MEMORIAM: A veteran of the Anti-Terrorist Operation against Russian invaders, Ukrainian police lieutenant, ethnic Chechen Amina Okuyeva has been killed in the second assassination attempt this year. Her car was ambushed at a rail crossing near the settlement of Hlevakha in the Kyiv Oblast, and gunfire was opened from roadside shrubs. Okuyeva died of wounds on the spot. Her husband Adam Osmayev was wounded, however, his condition is non-life-threatening. Rest in Peace.