Russia-Ukraine thoughts, week 6: Chomsky triggers nat-sec nutsacks, New Ukrainian war crimes and more

First? Fuck Google.

Googul and its Nazgul nowhere define what "exploits, dismisses or condones" means. Does that mean anything in the US that doesn't conform to the bipartisan foreign policy establishment?  Note the "includes, but is not limited to," in the last paragraph.

I await Twitter tagging me as Russian state media next.

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If putting POWs faces on TV cameras is a Geneva Convention violation, then using IT/artificial intelligence for facial recognition, then showing dead soldiers so recognized to their families' social media accounts clearly violates the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. But? Ukraine is doing exactly that. And, the assist is from Clearview AI, which clearly is unsatified with just helping American governments violate citizens' civil rights. Here's the Twitter thread by the author, in case you hit the Bezos Post paywall.

That said, per Drew Harwell's full piece, this is more likely to backfire, and to increase resolution on the Russian home front, rather than increase dissent. Putin's just going to say now, in essence: "Didn't I tell you?"

But, this is the bottom line the US bipartisan foreign policy establishment will hold:

The West’s solidarity with Ukraine makes it tempting to support such a radical act designed to capitalize on family grief, said Stephanie Hare, a surveillance researcher in London. But contacting soldiers’ parents, she said, is “classic psychological warfare” and could set a dangerous new standard for future conflicts. 

“If it were Russian soldiers doing this with Ukrainian mothers, we might say, ‘Oh, my God, that’s barbaric,’ ” she said. “And is it actually working? Or is it making them say: ‘Look at these lawless, cruel Ukrainians, doing this to our boys?’ ”

Yessir.

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Ten days after talking to the British newspaper The New Statesman, Noam Chomsky talked to Nathan Robinson at Current Affairs. Not much new here. Just more in-depth. But, it sure did trigger the nat-sec nutsacks. It also triggered others, who claim to be non-twosider themselves, like a Brit named Ali Samson on Twitter, who claimed Chomsky was patronizing and denying personal agency. In later convo on Twitter, the guy, who's anti-Tory and presumably Labour, wouldn't talk about what type of Labourite he is when I tried to engage him, via an old Tweet of his, on Starmer vs Corbyn. And, other claims of his aside, I think he is a twosider on the war. Given one older Tweet of his against British "Stop Oil" protestors, maybe he's LibDem, even. Or, at a max, a neo-Blairite. He's also a liar about thinking outside the Ukraine box.

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GREAT take at Counterpunch on both Biden and Putin "playing the China card" on Ukraine. That's part of an larger take on looking beyond sanctions for some sort of negotiated end to the war. The rest of it, with a full read, is more OK than great. If we're talking about reparations, Mr. McCoy, to the degree that the US was behind the semi-coup at the Euromaidan, don't we owe reparations?