Tag: russia

Russia says it will not strand American astronaut in space despite media reports

Last week, a flurry of news reports worryingly claimed that Russia was threatening to strand an American astronaut on the International Space Station in direct response to sanctions placed on the country as it continues to invade neighboring Ukraine. But Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos is trying to put those fears to rest, saying that it will bring home the astronaut as planned.

The NASA astronaut in question is Mark Vande Hei, who has been living on the International Space Station since April 2021. Vande Hei launched to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan, along with two cosmonauts. While living on the ISS, his stay was extended to a full year, and he is slated to return home in another Soyuz capsule on March 30th. When he returns home, he’ll have the record for longest continuous spaceflight by an American astronaut, at around 353 days.

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We’re Moving Into More Dangerous Mob Mentality

We’ve seen with BLM, COVID, and other topics how the narrative can get out of control and squash the people who question or counter it. We saw, in Canada, to what lengths the government would go to crush peaceful protest — not by legitimately arresting people who might be blocking a street — but by doing things like freezing people’s bank accounts without due process of law and blocking GoFundMe accounts to crush the protest.

We’re seeing something like that bubble up again when it comes to the situation with Russia and Ukraine. Sanctions on the government of Russia — or oligarchs who prop it up — make a lot of sense. But discriminating against all Russians and all things Russian because you think that somehow virtue signals that you care is madness. That shouldn’t need to be said. But, it does, because that’s exactly what some are doing. It’s a crushing of people who the narrative deems “wrong”– in this case, for the “crime” of being Russian.

Alexander Malofeev is a 20-year-old piano prodigy. He isn’t an oligarch and he isn’t a friend of Vladimir Putin. He’s just a guy who had piano performances scheduled with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra over the past few days. But they were canceled. Not because he supported the war — he was against the invasion and he said so. He even has family members in Ukraine. But because he happened to be Russian.

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Cops in America Have So Much Militarized Gear, They are Sending It to Ukraine

There is no question that police in the land of the free have become the Standing Army that the founders warned us about. Armed to the teeth with tactical gear fit for the battlefield in Afghanistan, American cops are prepared for war domestically. In fact, they are over prepared, and they have so much military gear that they are now sending their surplus to be used in Ukraine to battle the Russians.

“Many of our Department of Defense (DOD) and State Department contacts have asked the law enforcement community for equipment to help the Ukrainian people push back against this violence and protect their citizens,” Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman said on Twitter — noting that his department is sending hundreds of ballistics helmets to Ukraine.

Hoffman is one of many sheriffs and law enforcement personnel sending their equipment to Ukraine to be used in war against Russia.

As VICE News reports, the Colorado Department of Public Safety said it was donating more than 80 sets of body armor and 750 helmets, and that it was accepting donations from other law enforcement agencies in the state.

“This is equipment that we are no longer able to use because it is beyond life cycle, or in some cases it may have been replaced or upgraded by some equipment that maybe better fits our needs or is safer,” Colorado DPS spokesperson Patricia Billinger told local station KARE9.

In true American political fashion, however, this move is not free from corrupt practices.

Though much of this equipment is at the end of its life cycle Hoffman said that the Pentagon is attempting to “supply more than 50,000 helmets and law enforcement supplies in the coming weeks” from a weapons manufacturer in his town — a claim the Pentagon denies.

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In Praise of ‘Whataboutism’

When war propaganda prevails regarding Ukraine or any other place where the hegemon is doing its dirty work, it is reasonable to ask probing questions. Why are the deaths of 14,000 people killed by Ukraine’s civil war swept under the rug? Why is it forbidden to ask about the U.S. destruction of Libya? But once having asked a good question, one will be told that raising the topic is proof of the whataboutism sin.

The word whataboutism is in the dictionary and is defined as, “the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse.” That meaning is accurate and also completely defensible.

The charge is meant to censor the speaker, excuse U.S. actions, and defend its human rights violations. The denials and apologies are exactly why whataboutism should be defended. It is terrible when lies and crimes are not countered with verifiable information exposing them.

The term has gained popularity in part because there is so much hypocrisy to point out and there are so many adherents to American exceptionalism who defend what they should condemn. When the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it would begin investigating “the Situation in Ukraine” corporate media and their political partners gloated and pointed fingers at Russia.

They didn’t point out that the U.S., like Russia, is not a signatory of the Treaty of Rome which brought the ICC into existence. Not only is the U.S. not a member state, but in 2002 Congress passed the American Service Members Protection Act , popularly known as the Hague Invasion Act. It gives the U.S. the right to extract any American held at the court in the Hague. The removal part isn’t even necessary because the act prohibits the extradition of Americans to the ICC.

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5 Stories Ignored by Mainstream Media While They Focus Solely on Ukraine

As we have been reporting for the last three weeks, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is horrific. Russian president Vladimir Putin is a thug who is committing war crimes and who is killing innocent Ukrainians while endangering the people of Russia — all the while threatening nuclear war. While this war is not near American soil, because of the United States’ involvement in NATO and its relationship with Ukraine, it most certainly affects all Americans.

US sanctions on Russia have helped to drive oil prices up nearly 50 percent since this conflict began, which is undoubtedly going to drive up the cost of literally everything else.

These things most assuredly affect the lives of millions of Americans and this war deserves coverage in the media. That being said, given the track record of US media, and their tendency to deceive the American public to get them to accept wars for profit, we shouldn’t be so quick to let down our guard and unquestioningly absorb the constant barrage of information coming from them.

If the mainstream media was so concerned about wars and illegal invasions why don’t they ever report on the genocide in Yemen which is being aided by the United States or any of the other places the US has invaded over the years? The corporate press is actively avoiding these conflicts while conveniently using the Ukraine crisis as a means of ignoring other very important stories that also affect your life.

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