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clarkivanramos · 2 years ago

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1.Nick Joaquin's

May 4, 1917 – April 29, 2004) was a Filipino writer and journalist best known for his short stories and novels in the English language. He also wrote using the pen name Quijano de Manila. Joaquin was conferred the rank and title of National Artist of the Philippines for Literature. He has been considered one of the most important Filipino writers, along with José Rizal and Claro M. Recto. Unlike Rizal and Recto, whose works were written in Spanish, Joaquin's major works were written in English despite being a native Spanish speaker

Literary prominence, as measured by different English critics, is said to rest upon one of Nick Joaquin's published books entitled “Prose and Poems” which was published in 1952. Published in this book are the poems “Three Generations”, “May Day Eve”, “After the Picnic”, “The Legend of the Dying Wanton”, “The Legend of the Virgin Jewel;”, “It Was Later than we Thought”. Among these, the first of the mentioned written works were deliberated by editors Seymour Laurence and Jose Garcia Villa as a “short story masterpiece” (1953). The poem was also chosen as the best short story published in the Philippine Press between March 1943 and November 1944

2 F. Sionil Jose

Francisco Sionil José (December 3, 1924 – January 6, 2022) was a Filipino writer who was one of the most widely read in the English language. A National Artist of the Philippines for Literature, which was bestowed upon him in 2001, José's novels and short stories depict the social underpinnings of class struggles and colonialism in Filipino society. His works—written in English—have been translated into 28 languages, including Korean, Indonesian, Czech, Russian, Latvian, Ukrainian and Dutch. He was often considered the leading Filipino candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

José attended the University of Santo Tomas after World War II, but dropped out and plunged into writing and journalism in Manila. In subsequent years, he edited various literary and journalistic publications, started a publishing house, and founded the Philippine branch of PEN, an international organization for writers. José received numerous awards for his work. The Pretenders is his most popular novel, which is the story of one man's alienation from his poor background and the decadence of his wife's wealthy family.

José Rizal's life and writings profoundly influenced José's work. The five volume Rosales Saga, in particular, employs and integrates themes and characters from Rizal's work.Throughout his career, José's writings espouse social justice and change to better the lives of average Filipino families. He is one of the most critically acclaimed Filipino authors internationally, although much underrated in his own country because of his authentic Filipino English and his anti-elite views.

3.Edith Tiempo

Edith Cutaran Lopez-Tiempo (April 22, 1919 – August 21, 2011),[1]was a Filipino poet, fiction writer, teacher and literary critic in the English language.[2] She was conferred the National Artist Award for Literature in 1999.

Tiempo was born in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya.[2] Her poems are intricate verbal transfigurations of significant experiences as revealed, in two of her much anthologized pieces, "Halaman" and "Bonsai."[2] As fictionist, Tiempo is as morally profound. Her language has been marked as "descriptive but unburdened by scrupulous detailing." She is an influential tradition in Philippine Literature in English. Together with her late husband, writer and critic Edilberto K. Tiempo, they founded (in 1962) and directed the Silliman National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City, which has produced some of the Philippines' best writers.

4.Bienvenido Lumbera

Bienvenido L. Lumbera (April 11, 1932 – September 28, 2021) was a Filipino poet, critic and dramatist.[1] Lumbera is known for his nationalist writing and for his leading role in the Filipinization movement in Philippine literature in the 1960s, which resulted in his being one of the many writers and academics jailed during Ferdinand Marcos' Martial Law regime.[2][3] He received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communications in 1993, and was proclaimed a National Artist of the Philippines for literature in 2006.[4][5] As an academic, he is recognized for his key role in elevating the field of study which would become known as Philippine Studies.

Lumbera was born in Lipa on April 11, 1932.[7] He was barely a year old when his father, Timoteo Lumbera (a baseball player), fell from a fruit tree, broke his neck, and died.[8] Carmen Lumbera, his mother, suffered from cancer and died a few years later. By the age of five he was an orphan. He and his older sister were cared for by their paternal grandmother, Eusebia Teru

Carlos Sampayan Bulosan (November 24, 1913[1] – September 11, 1956) was an English-language Filipino novelist and poet who immigrated to America on July 1, 1930.[2] He never returned to the Philippines and he spent most of his life in the United States. His best-known work today is the semi-autobiographical America Is in the Heart, but he first gained fame for his 1943 essay on The Freedom from Want.

Bulosan was born to Ilocano parents in the Philippines in Binalonan, Pangasinan. There is considerable debate around his actual birth date, as he himself used several dates. 1911 is generally considered to be the most reliable answer, based on his baptismal records, but according to the late Lorenzo Duyanen Sampayan, his childhood playmate and nephew, Carlos was born on November 2, 1913. Most of his youth was spent in the countryside as a farmer. It is during his youth that he and his family were economically impoverished by the rich and political elite, which would become one of the main themes of his writing. His home town is also the starting point of his semi-autobiographical novel, America is in the Heart.

Following the pattern of many Filipinos during the American colonial period, he left for America on July 22, 1930, at age 17, in the hope of finding salvation from the economic depression of his home. He never again saw his Philippine homeland. Upon arriving in Seattle, he was met with racism and was forced to work low paying jobs. He worked as a farmworker, harvesting grapes and asparagus, while also working other forms of hard labor in the fields of California. He also worked as a dishwasher with his brother Lorenzo in the famous Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo which opened in 1958 or almost three years after Bulosan had died.

In 1936, Bulosan suffered from tuberculosis and was taken to the Los Angeles County hospital. There, he underwent three operations and stayed two years, mostly in the convalescent ward. During his long stay in the hospital, Bulosan spent his time constantly reading and writing.

6.Carlos P. Romulo

5.Carlos Bulosan

Carlos Peña Romulo Sr. QSC GCS CLH NA GCrM GCrGH KGCR (January 14, 1898 – December 15, 1985) was a Filipino diplomat, statesman, soldier, journalist and author. He was a reporter at the age of 16, a newspaper editor by 20, and a publisher at 32. He was a co-founder of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines, a general in the US Army and the Philippine Army, university president, and president of the United Nations General Assembly.

Carlos Romulo was born in Camiling, Tarlac and studied at the Camiling Central Elementary School during his basic education.

Romulo became a professor of English at the University of the Philippines in 1923. Simultaneously, Romulo served as the secretary to the president of the Senate of the Philippines, Manuel Quezon.

During the 1930s, Romulo became the publisher and editor of The Philippines Herald, and one of his reporters was Yay Panlilio. On October 31, 1936, the Boy Scouts of the Philippines (BSP) was given a legislative charter under Commonwealth Act No. 111.[1][2] Romulo served as one of the vice presidents of the organization.

At the start of World War II, Romulo, a major, served as an aide to General Douglas MacArthur.[3][4] He was one of the last men evacuated from the Philippines before the surrender of US Forces to the invading Japanese, as illness had prevented him from departing with MacArthur, finally leaving from Del Monte Airfield on Mindanao on April 25.[5] Active in propaganda efforts, particularly through the lecture circuit, after reaching the United States, he became a member of President Quezon's War Cabinet, being appointed Secretary of Information in 1943. He reached the rank of general by the end of the war.[3][4]

7. Virgilio S. Almario

Virgilio Senadren Almario (born March 9, 1944), better known by his pen name Rio Alma, is a Filipino author, poet, critic, translator, editor, teacher, and cultural manager.[1] He is a National Artist of the Philippines. He formerly served as the chairman of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF), the government agency mandated to promote and standardize the use of the Filipino language. On January 5, 2017, Almario was also elected as the chairman of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).[2]

Growing up in Bulacan, Almario sought his education at the City of Manila and completed his degree in A.B. Political Science at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

His life as a poet started when he took master's units in education at the University of the East where he became associated with Rogelio G. Mangahas and Lamberto E. Antonio. He did not finish the program.[3]

He only took his M.A. in Filipino in 1974 at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

8.Francisco Arcellana

Francisco "Franz" Arcellana (September 6, 1916 – August 1, 2002) was a Filipino writer, poet, essayist, critic, journalist and teacher.

Francisco Arcellana was born on September 6, 1916. He already had ambitions of becoming a writer early in his childhood. His actual writing, however, started when he became a member of The Torres Torch Organization during his high school years. Arcellana continued writing in various school papers at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Later on he received a Rockefeller Grant and became a fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa and at the Breadloaf Writers' Conference from 1956– 1957.[2][3]

He is considered an important progenitor of the modern Filipino short story in English. Arcellana pioneered the development of the short story as a lyrical prose-poetic form within Filipino literature. His works are now often taught in tertiary-level syllabi in the Philippines. Many of his works were translated into Tagalog, Malaysian, Russian, Italian, and German. Arcellana won 2nd place in the 1951 Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, with his short story, The Flowers of May. Fourteen of his short stories were also included in Jose Garcia Villa's Honor Roll from 1928 to 1939. His major achievements included the first award in art criticism from the Art Association of the Philippines in 1954, the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan award from the city government of Manila in 1981, and the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas for English fiction from the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipino (UMPIL) in 1988.

The University of the Philippines conferred upon Arcellana a doctorate in humane letters, honoris causa in 1989. Francisco Arcellana was proclaimed National Artist of the Philippines in Literature on June 23, 1990 by then Philippine President Corazon C. Aquino.[4]

In 2009, or seven years after his death, his family came out with a book to pay tribute to National Artist for Literature Arcellana. The book entitled Franz is a collection of essays gathered by the Arcellana family from colleagues, friends, students and family members, including fellow National Artist Nick Joaquin, Butch Dalisay, Recah Trinidad, Jing Hidalgo, Gemino Abad, Romina Gonzalez, Edwin Cordevilla, Divina Aromin, Doreen Yu, Danton Remoto, Jose Esteban Arcellana and others.[5]

Arcellana is buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Arcellana died on August 1, 2002. As a National Artist, he received a state funeral at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

His grandson Liam Hertzsprung performed a piano concert in 2005 dedicated to him.

9.Francisco Balagtas

Francisco Balagtas y de la Cruz (April 2, 1788 – February 20, 1862),[1] commonly known as Francisco Balagtas and also as Francisco Baltasar, was a Filipino poet and litterateur of the Tagalog language during the Spanish rule of the Philippines. He is widely considered one of the greatest Filipino literary laureates for his impact on Filipino literature. The famous epic Florante at Laura is regarded as his defining work.

Francisco Balagtas was born in Barrio Panginay, Bigaa, Bulacan as the youngest of the four children of Juan Balagtas, a blacksmith, and Juana de la Cruz. He studied in a parochial school in Bigaa and later in Manila. During his childhood years. Francisco later worked as a houseboy in Tondo, Manila

Balagtas learned to write poetry from José de la Cruz (Joseng Sisiw), one of the most famous poets of Tondo, in return for chicks. It was De la Cruz himself who personally challenged Balagtas to improve his writing. Balagtas swore he would overcome Huseng Sisiw as he would not ask for anything in return as a poet.

In 1835, Balagtas moved to Pandacan, Manila, where he met María Asunción Rivera, who would effectively serve as the muse for his future works. She is referenced in Florante at Laura as 'Selya' and 'MAR'.

Balagtas' affections for MAR were challenged by the influential Mariano Capule. The latter won the battle for MAR when he used his wealth to get Balagtas imprisoned. It was here that he wrote Florante at Laura—in fact, the events of this poem were meant to parallel his own situation.

He wrote his poems in the Tagalog language, during an age when Filipino writing was predominantly written in Spanish.

Balagtas published "Florante at Laura" upon his release in 1838. He moved to Balanga, Bataan, in 1840 where he served as the assistant to the Justice of the Peace. He was also appointed as the translator of the court. He married Juana Tiambeng on July 22, 1842, in a ceremony officiated by Fr. Cayetano Arellano, uncle of future Chief Justice to the Supreme Court of the Philippines—Chief Justice Arellano. They had eleven children but only four survived to adulthood. On November 21, 1849, Governor General Narciso Clavería y Zaldua issued a decree that every Filipino native must adopt a Spanish surname. In 1856, he was appointed as the Major Lieutenant, but soon after was convicted and sent to prison again in Bataan under the accusation that he ordered Alferez Lucas' housemaid's head to be shaved.

He sold his land and all of his riches, in order for him to be imprisoned in 1861, and continued writing poetry, along with translating Spanish documents, but he died a year later—on February 20, 1862, at the age of 73. Upon his deathbed, he asked the favor that none of his children become poets like him, who had suffered under his gift as well as under others. He even went as far as to tell them it would be better to cut their hands off than let them be writers.

Balagtas is greatly idolized in the Philippines that the term for Filipino debate in extemporaneous verse is named after him: Balagtasan.

10.Lualhati Bautista

Lualhati Torres Bautista (December 2, 1945 – February 12, 2023) was a Filipina writer, novelist, liberal activist and political critic. Her most popular novels include Dekada '70; Bata, Bata, Pa'no Ka Ginawa?; and ‘GAPÔ

Bautista was born in Tondo, Manila, Philippines on December 2, 1945, to Esteban Bautista and Gloria Torres. She graduated from Emilio Jacinto Elementary School in 1958, and from Florentino Torres High School in 1962. She was a journalism student at the Lyceum of the Philippines, but dropped out because she had always wanted to be a writer and schoolwork was taking too much time.[citation needed] Her first short story, "Katugon ng Damdamin,"[1] was published in Liwayway magazine and thus started her writing career.[2]

Despite a lack of formal training, Bautista as a writer became known for her honest realism, courageous exploration of Philippine women's issues, and compelling female protagonists who confront difficult situations at home and in the workplace with uncommon grit and strength.

Bautista garnered several Palanca Awards (1980, 1983, and 1984) for her novels ‘GAPÔ, Dekada '70 and Bata, Bata… Pa'no Ka Ginawa?, which exposed injustices and chronicled women's activism during the Marcos era.

‘GAPÔ, the Palanca Awards 1980 grand prize winner, published in 1988, is the story of a man coming to grips with life as an Amerasian. It is multilayered scrutiny of the politics behind US bases in the Philippines, seen from the point of view of ordinary citizens living in Olongapo City.

Dekada '70 is the story of a family caught in the middle of the tumultuous decade of the 1970s. It details how a middle-class family struggled and faced the changes that empowered Filipinos to rise against the Marcos government. These events happened after the bombing of Plaza Miranda, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, the proclamation of martial law and the random arrests of political prisoners. The oppressive nature of the Marcos regime, which made the people become more radical, and the shaping of the decade were all witnessed by the female protagonist, Amanda Bartolome, the mother of five boys.

Bata, Bata… Pa'no Ka Ginawa?, literally, "Child, Child… How Were You Made?", narrates the life of Lea, a working mother and a social activist, who has two children. In the end, all three, and especially Lea, have to confront Philippine society's view of single motherhood. The novel deals with the questions of how it is to be a mother, and how a mother executes this role through modern-day concepts of parenthood.

Bautista's 2013 book In Sisterhood received the Filipino Readers' Choice Award Nominee for Fiction in Filipino/Taglish in 2014, organized by the Filipino Book Bloggers Group.[3]

In 2015, Bautista launched the book Sixty in the City, about the life of friends Guia, Roda and Menang, who are in their mid-60s and realize that there's a good life in being just a wife, mother and homemaker.[

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michelemoore · 2 years ago

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THE TASTE OF HUNGER

by Barbara Joan Scott

A family saga about Ukrainian immigrants in the early 20th century, the power of desire, Baba Yaga fairytales, and a moment that changes everything.

Takhuk / November / 2022 SPECIAL EDITION

I’m so excited to share with you this news of a fantastic novel by my friend Barbara Scott, who some of you already know. Since you may think I am biased, I offer below a couple of reviews from other authors but I do want to say that I could not put The Taste of Hunger down. Yes! - it is one of those so when you start it, make sure you have a weekend to just dig in. I read a lot of books in a month and there are so many great authors and stories, but only a few seem to really stick, as in, weeks and months later, I can still remember the story, the images, the characters. The Taste of Hunger is definitely one of those. Below is a short synopsis, followed by two reviews by other authors whose remarks are right on the mark.

In Saskatchewan in the late 1920s, a fifteen-year-old Ukrainian immigrant named Olena is forced into marriage with Taras, a man twice her age, who wants her even though she has refused him. Stuck in a hardscrabble life and with a husband she despises, starved for a life of her own choosing, at every turn Olena rebels against her husband and her fate. As Olena and Taras drag everyone around them into the maelstrom that is their marriage, they set off a chain of turbulent events whose aftershocks reverberate through generations. In her novel The Taste of Hunger, Barbara Joan Scott masterfully explores the pull of family, the fallout of thwarted desire, and the power of redemption and forgiveness.

THE TASTE OF HUNGER has the chops to be the next great Canadian (Prairie) novel. This multi-generational novel is set in early 20th-century Saskatchewan and tells the story of Ukrainian immigrants. It is literary, thematically powerful, and perhaps best of all, a compelling, page-turning mystery. (Jane Baird Warren, Goodreads)

“Raw and haunting, The Taste of Hunger takes the reader on a tumultuous journey from Ukraine through three generations of women on the Canadian prairies. Passionate and fiercely independent, each woman faces staggering obstacles as she struggles to define her life and find love on her own terms, burying secrets along the way. But not all secrets remain hidden, and when the darkest of all is unearthed—a secret that implicates all three generations—one woman and her husband are forced together to confront it in an alarming way. Beautifully written, tough, tender and unrelentingly human, this is a story that cannot be forgotten.” – Joan Crate, author of Black Apple

www.michelemooreveldhoen.com

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foreverlogical · 4 years ago

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Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney. | Rey Del Rio/Getty Images

Federal investigators are looking into Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine as potential evidence of criminal conduct.

Federal law enforcement is ramping up their investigation into Rudy Giuliani, leaving Trumpworld on high alert.

Giuliani was formerly President Trump’s personal lawyer and became one of his most loyal defenders, becoming a central figure in Trump’s failed efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Now, he may be paying the price for that loyalty. On Wednesday, FBI agents, armed with search warrants, raided his home and office in Manhattan, seizing electronic devices.

Giuliani is currently the focus of an ongoing criminal probe from the US attorney’s office in Manhattan, centering on his business dealings in Ukraine and potential illegal activity involving his efforts to investigate Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. Wednesday’s raid confirms the seriousness of the investigation, which required Justice Department approval due to Giuliani’s status as a lawyer. The raid clarified the potential for Giuliani, and perhaps other Trump figures, to face federal charges.

The investigation hinges on Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine

Investigators are looking for evidence related to Giuliani’s role in the firing of Marie Yovanovitch, Trump’s former ambassador to Ukraine and a central figure in his first impeachment trial, according to the New York Times. Yovanovitch was ousted at the behest of Giuliani, who felt she was standing in the way of his attempts to find damaging information on the Biden family.

That saga played out as a small part of the larger impeachment probe regarding Trump’s conduct with Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Yovanovitch testified in 2019 that Giuliani was working with Ukraine’s former prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko, asking him to open inquiries into political enemies including Hunter Biden related to his time on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, and initiating a smear campaign against her when she attempted to follow protocol in arranging meetings between Ukrainian and American law enforcement officials.

Now, the Justice Department is investigating whether Giuliani’s conduct in that situation, and others in Ukraine, were a violation of federal lobbying laws, according to the Times. Lobbying the US government at the behest of a foreign official without registering the activity with the Justice Department — which Giuliani never did — is a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Giuliani went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show Thursday night to dispute the claims against him.

“I never represented a Ukrainian national or official before the United States government,” he said. “I’ve declined it several times. I’ve had contracts in countries like Ukraine. In the contract is a clause that says I will not engage in lobbying or foreign representation. I don’t do it because I felt it would be too compromising.”

Giuliani also claimed to have hard drives from Hunter Biden’s laptop that the agents were uninterested in despite his pleas, said he could have destroyed the evidence any time over the last two years in which he has known about the probe, and asserted that the Justice Department, under Biden, was making up a case against him. He called on the officials overseeing his investigation to be investigated themselves, likening the situation to “East Berlin before the wall fell.”

Robert Costello, Giuliani’s lawyer, said in a statement that the investigation was “legal thuggery” and evidence of a “double standard” in which the Justice Department will investigate prominent Trump supporters but will not open inquiries into Democrats such as Hunter Biden, whom he accused of “blatant”, though unsubstantiated, crimes.

Agents also obtained a warrant for the phone of Victoria Toensing, a lawyer who collaborated with Giuliani on efforts to investigate the Bidens in Ukraine. Toensing handed over her phone on Wednesday morning, according to The Journal.

The New York Times has reported that in addition to Giuliani’s dealings regarding Yovanovitch, federal investigators are looking into his conversations with Lutsenko regarding a draft retainer for legal consulting services that eventually fell through. The investigation hinges on whether or not Giuliani was solely representing Trump in his dealings with Ukrainians, or if he was also working on behalf of Ukrainian officials and business associates’ interests.

The DOJ’s hard line could have implications beyond Giuliani

The raid is a major escalation of the federal investigation into Giuliani, and represents a serious willingness by the Justice Department to look into the shadowy dealings of Trump figures. Considering Giuliani is a lawyer protected in his dealings with Trump by attorney-client privilege on some level, the fact that investigators obtained a warrant indicates the high-level nature of the investigation and the potential for consequences of the informal relationships between Trump figures. Giuliani’s work for Trump was often done informally — limiting the scope of what attorney-client privilege can protect.

Sources close to the former President told CNN that the raid on Giuliani has left them uneasy about what else the Justice Department might be investigating.

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pled guilty to charges of tax fraud, false statements to a bank and campaign finance violations, flipped on his former boss in 2018. On CNN, he said he expected Giuliani to eventually do the same.

“Prior to Donald becoming president, Rudy didn’t like Donald and Donald didn’t like Rudy,” Cohen said on CNN. “He certainly doesn’t want to follow my path down into a 36-month sentence.”

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chiseler · 4 years ago

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Edison and the Rise of the Snuff Film

“Fog and smog should not be confused and are easily separated by color. Fog is about the color of the insides of an old split wet summer cottage mattress; smog is the color and consistency of a wet potato chip soaked in a motorman’s glove.” – Chuck Jones

The Execution of Mary Stuart was made in August of 1895, produced by Thomas Edison and directed by Alfred Clark. It has a running time of 18 seconds and depicts the last moments of Mary, Queen of Scots. It is notable for several reasons: as the first costume drama period piece—still a wildly popular genre in the Republic, as proven by The Tudors or Game of Thrones; and as the world’s first horror film (Méliès’ Le Manoir du Diable, which usually takes this accolade, was made the next year). It is also thematically linked to the most famous American flick, our Revelation of St. John or Epic of Gilgamesh: Zapruder’s footage of the Kennedy assassination. This 60-second saga, shot by a Ukrainian-born clothing manufacturer, is so famous that it is probably impossible by now to watch it like one watches other films. The massive literary exegesis/sequel, The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, some 26 volumes in length, shows clearly the aura of holiness around a reel that can hardly be called just a ‘movie’.

Despite its relative obscurity, Edison’s Mary is a more influential production than is usually given credit. Its lingering effects include the modish cult of ‘snuff’ films, short clips showing actual murder with a violent sexual patina, as well as the execution propaganda of insurgent studio systems—most notably those of the Levantine organization, ISIS.

The similarities are instructive, formally and practically. The ISIS films also use editing at the denouement, but unlike Edison’s, they do not actually show the moment itself. The focus is instead on the horrible aftermath (at least visually), in order to work on the schooled imagination of the viewer. In the most crucial difference, the ‘star’ is actually murdered. Perhaps their most ambitious production, Though the Unbelievers Despise It, took four hours to make and features at least four cuts, not to mention the lives of some 20 Syrian soldiers. But we will here concentrate on the films that show a single slaying, such as Another Message to America and Its Allies, as the true exemplars of their cinema. Its larger-scale spectacles can never hope to compete with even the most pedestrian shots of the aerial bombardment of a city. But when they work pared down to the essentials, ISIS’ productions are a match for anyone’s.

Here, the sophistication of cinema ISIS relies on color and several well-placed edits, while the static position of the camera remains a self-conscious homage to early documentary. ‘Realism’ is a deliberate pose, as the framing of the films make clear—the executioner may be the real executioner, or just one of ISIS’ soldiers, as the killing is not shown on camera; the empty desert behind the statue-like figures is a stark abstract strip. The films were made in studios with high production values and sophisticated technology, a fact that has led some people to see them as off-Hollywood psyops projects produced with Saudi or American assistance (or at least with the sponsorship of Adidas, as footage of their columns’ early marches into Syria plainly shows). Whatever the case, simple elements are used to maximal effect. The use of free distribution platforms, a sadistic insight into audience fetishism, and the need to produce images for a legitimacy far beyond mere international recognition make ISIS anything but ‘medieval’ fundamentalists. As the movement declared its state, it also declared a foundational myth and for this myth, it knew it must create a cinema.

In Edison’s film, Mary is played by Robert L Thomae, which seems to have been his only role (he is mentioned in several sources as an employee of the Edison Company and may have been a choice of the moment, as with ISIS’ executioner-actor). The action is as follows: Mary steps up to the headsman block. The executioner lifts his axe, dispatches the last Stuart and then holds her severed head up for the audience—that is, for the courtiers and for the film viewer, a dual audience. A crude edit allows for the substitution of a mannequin, making the film also an early example of Grand Guignol special effects.

Historical killings on film were first done as mock-ups. There is film of Archduke Ferdinand reviewing his troops, but no one shot the assassination. Zapruder’s film can be seen an American remake: it shows the doomed President reviewing not his soldiers but the people outside Camelot; his motorcade passes and the good king dies with assassin off-camera (depending on who you ask). There is also footage of Czar Nicholas and other heads of state, but by the time of the First World War newsreels were utterly ubiquitous: anyone could appear on film. The early immortality of the nobles had quickly vanished forever. They were condemned to look like actors or be subsumed into family vacation footage. Zapruder’s accidental film returned some of the glow of eternity to history caught on celluloid, yet constant repetition since then has taken it apart frame by frame and it has disappeared into memorabilia.

Conversely, ISIS’ productions are avant garde agit prop: glowing images brilliantly worked in an uncanny mise-en-scène, a martial, immediate nostalgia for Year One. The use of green screen shows that the production team is more interested in color than with naturalism and is willing to spend money and time for scenes that could have easily been shot verité (Influence of Hollywood on ‘Caliph’ al Baghdadi’s cinema, rather than the 9th Century Baghdad school of optics—which shows again that he is no traditionalist). Offscreen fans blow the hair and flags of the participants; the executioner appears on a miraculous nuclear plane, half future earth and half divine ordination. Obscenely, the Day of Judgment in one man’s death is reduced to a symbol, then reduced again to a threat for tourists. As the brutal killings occur off-screen, the rather clumsily-simulated aftermath is obviously an aesthetic decision. Deciding what is shown and what is not marks every single filmmaker, from a kid with his cellphone to the Bollywood mogul.

ISIS may be most remembered for its cinema—if you discount its innumerable victims in Syria and Iraq, as the Western media always does. Its shrinking land holdings should properly be considered a last pitch to a captive audience or a vast studio lot now under hostile competitor control. Their films are exercises in total Technicolor modernism, with aspects both archaic and experimental, as befits their robust and seductive ideology. There is a Pirandellism even in their military operations—though they are hardly the first. The attack on Palmyra was Epic Vs. Epic, staged in front of the ruins as if these ruins were Caberia or Intolerance. Caberia was partly written and promoted by D’Annunzio; Intolerance was De Mille’s agonized revision of Birth of a Nation, the latter an opportunist attempt at making money from the perverse visions of lynch mobs.

But the greatest invention of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed (studio) head of ISIS, comparable to Howard Hughes but somewhat distinct from ISIS as a collective auteur project, was himself. More lost than the fabled reels of Ambersons and Greed, the final cut may rest deep in impregnable Langley or in the sub-basement of an Ankara post-production house, never to see the light of day. All we have are these eerie franchises played out with grave seriousness in places where empires compete, scored with real screams. Fake desert, fake Caliph, fake enemies.

The contradiction of supposed ‘snuff’ films is that they have always existed, but as war footage or disaster reels, easily available for free on prime-time television or called up via a million online videos. The selling point is the illegality and home-made aesthetics of ��outlaw’ works, made for an exclusive conspiratorial club—of which the films of ISIS are really no different than a Netflix True Crime series. They combine the savviness of Silicon Valley with Old World American shell game, brute force and reaction, the poetry of murder and the thrill of feeling like you are the only one watching. For that reason, we can trace a line from Edison straight to the throat-cutters, passing through the gardens of those quiet suburbs our haunted secret agents swear to protect. The real art of the ISIS Corp lies in its Fordian project for a total community, a reworking of the past that is cinematic and available to everyone. It was the United States that understood the epos of the past needed to be self-reflecting if they were to be at all. Pharaoh must be an actor playing Pharaoh (Jack Hawkins, say), just as ISIS’ Caliph—far more film Pharaoh than historical Caliph, neither righteous nor even louche—must be an actor who employs another actor, just as al Baghdadi apparently did for his voice-overs and his doubles (one of them wearing a Rolex). To accuse ISIL, ISIS, Dae’sh of fanaticism obscures the professional, provocative point of their filmmaking. Like CIA, they adhere to a solid critique of realism, similar to Langley’s promotion of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s against the USSR’s Stalinist line on socialist realism.

The representation of death obsessed Edison as much as it did ISIS. His company competed with Westinghouse in what was called ‘the war of the currents’, with Edison promoting a direct and Westinghouse an alternative current to power the electric chair. His West Orange laboratory was used to test his design on animals, most famously on Topsy the Elephant in 1903—which Edison naturally filmed. The two firms finally reached a temporary compromise, and William Kimmler was successfully electrocuted on August 6, 1890. But the killing was botched and agonizing to behold—also the case for ISIS over a century later, who could not allow itself to be seen as incompetent on film. Swiftness says efficiency, and the way around the problem was death offscreen, a sword stroke made all the more poignant by being put into relief. As for Edison and electrocution, Judge Dwight’s ruling had stated that “although the mode of death described is conceded to be unusual, there is no common knowledge or consent that it is cruel; it is a question of fact whether an electric current of sufficient intensity and skillfully applied will produce death without unnecessary suffering.”

Edison made The Execution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison in 1901, six years after his Mary Queen of Scots film. Leon Czolgosz had assassinated President McKinley that same year and was indeed executed, but Edison’s film was a fake, made to sell his new improved electric chair after the Kimmler debacle a decade earler. A far more ambitious work than any of his previous, perhaps because product placement was involved and contracts were to be won, it begins with a long panoramic shot of dead trees and marshland, ending on the walls of the prison and a cut to the interior. There are four cuts in the film and the execution of the anarchist Czolgosz is more convincingly rendered than the earlier death of the Scots Queen. The establishing shot of the lonely area prefigures those of ISIS in their fastness, and the film is so roughly pixelated in contemporary digital reproduction that this landscape looks like a model in an atom age monster movie.

That the eyes see for a few seconds after decapitation is a perpetual folktale. Also that beheading, like drowning and the chair, is quick and comparatively painless.

by Martin Billheimer

[1] I admit here to not actually having seen any of the ISIS oeuvre. There is no point—they have been seen by millions and watching them would be like falling into the Zapruder spiral. Looking for clues and secrets is an arrogant pastime which reduces everyone to the misery of an 'expert'. It has been noted that ISIS' films do include audio of the off-camera killings, which are real if not in time, just as the ‘confessions’ of the doomed men, recited over the earlier part of the films, are also ‘real’. This adds to the dislocation of watching a ‘mock’ execution which ends in a real one, with 'real' sound over posed images. The whole cruel and disorienting puzzle makes, I imagine, a viewing experience that is both indelible and banal.

[1] Though none of these torture and sex films were actually discovered at the time of the craze (1970s), they did surface later, made by killers who were inspired by the very public investigations launched to uncover them. The original legal targets were standard fare—a series of Japanese shockers with the moniker Guinea Pig (the filmmakers had to show the old rushes in court to prove that their actresses were very much alive, giggling and covered in red syrup); or utter trash, like 1975’s Snuff, which was picketed after the film’s producers spread a rumor that its totally unconvincing killings were real ‘South American’ murder footage.

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dianastevanblog · 6 months ago

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Mother: An Unheralded Heroine

Mothers, unheralded heroines, deserve our attention. They’re the ones whose tireless efforts to raise a child in our increasingly complex world are often overlooked. To honour her mother who had just died, Anna Jarvis, an American peace activist, started Mother’s Day in the US in1905. In her work with Mother’s Day Clubs devoted to the wounded soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War, she…

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#writing #Diana Stevan #family saga #mother #mother&039;s day #my mother #story #storyteller #Ukrainian #unheralded heroine

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deepartnature · 2 years ago

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Ukraine war: The families who made it through the new Iron Curtain

“Moscow's move to annex parts of Ukraine has sent a new Iron Curtain down across a vast swathe of territory - cutting off an unknown number of people from their own country. Until 1 October, Ukrainians were able, with difficulty, to move to and from across the front lines. From a crossing point at Vasylivka, on the eastern bank of the Dnipro river, some would travel to nearby non-occupied Zaporizhzhia to visit relatives, buy food or medicines. But many left for good, carrying what they could with them, in search of new lives in areas not under Russian occupation. Some travelled on to Europe. ...”

BBC

Apathy Keeps Russia’s Death Cult Alive

Vanity Fair - “Dad, You Have to Come—Or We Will Be Adopted!”: One Ukrainian Family’s Harrowing Wartime Saga (Video)

Damaged and burned vehicles are seen at a destroyed part of the Illich Iron and Steel Works Metallurgical Plant in Mariupol, April 18, 2022.

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nummero123 · 3 years ago

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How to Help Ukraine's SEO Community and How You Can Benefit

SEO and other digital marketing firms are assisting folks in Ukraine who are suffering in a variety of ways.

Here's how you can contribute.

Ukrainian streets, which used to be alive with children's laughter and hurried walks of people on their way to work, are now deserted.

Workers of all kinds have been forced to leave their jobs to flee their homes or, in the worst-case scenario, to take up arms to defend their families.

For millions of Ukrainians, life as they knew it has come to a halt as a result of Russia's invasion.

As many companies and employees hail from the embattled country, outpourings of support from the search engine optimization and digital marketing industries abound.

Ukraine's IT industry is worth $6.8 billion, and many of its 4.4 million residents work in it.

Many of us are personally affected by this invasion, including the family who is currently fighting to defend the people and land of Ukraine.

The SEO and digital marketing community are like a family.

And when members of our family are in need, we do everything we can to help them.

This list will be updated when new information and ways to help become available.

Google Makes a $15 Million Donation and Fights Misinformation

Google and its employees are donating a total of $15 million in cash and in-kind assistance to disaster relief efforts.

In addition, the search engine giant will donate $5 million in advertising credits to humanitarian and international organizations that it deems trustworthy.

"We are taking exceptional measures to halt the spread of misinformation and disrupt disinformation campaigns online in this unusual moment," Google President of Global Affairs Kent Walker said in a statement on March 1.

"We will continue to watch the situation and take additional actions as necessary," he said, adding, "and we join the international community in expressing an earnest wish for a peaceful and sovereign Ukraine."

In addition, YouTube channels from RT and Sputnik have been disabled across Europe, according to Google's announcement.

For the time being, monetization possibilities for Russian state-funded media have been suspended across all Google platforms, and RT has been barred from advertising outright.

As Google tries to comply with government penalties, products like Google Pay may become inaccessible in some areas, according to Walker.

A $35,000 donation has been made instead of a canceled conference event.

"We had speakers from Ukraine," said Christoph Cemper, the event's organizer.

LRTcon had some excellent speakers from Ukraine.

We had Ukrainian visitors.

Many professional and kind Ukrainians attended LRTcon...

I'm quite pleased with myself for being able to assist in such a large and timely manner.

"And with that, the saga of LRTcon comes to a close."

The conductor will pay the draftees' salaries to their families.

Conductor Seth Besmertnik offered updates on employee Oleksander Lytvyn, who was risking his life patrolling the streets as his family hunkered down in a parking garage, on LinkedIn this week.

"Our Ukraine team has repeatedly proven to be loyal, devoted, proud, and eager to improve."

Besmertnik penned a piece.

As Russia provoked and threatened the country, Conductor saw the writing on the wall more than a month ago, Besmertnik noted.

They offered aid and incentives to their Ukrainian team for them to flee.

The majority of them elected to flee, but the remaining half chose to remain.

Every 12 hours, they send messages to team members in Ukraine, giving monetary and other aid.

Volunteer Journalists Initiative: SERPstats Sends Blog Editor

Serpstat, a Ukrainian all-in-one SEO platform, announced on March 2 that Taras Prystatsky, its Blog Editor, had joined the Ukrainian Volunteer Journalists Initiative.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine Fund receives a donation of nearly $150,000 from WebCEO.

The WebCEO team gave more than $150,000 to the Armed Forces of Ukraine Fund during the early days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Because many members of the WebCEO team have ties to Ukraine, they continue to donate to the Armed Forces of Ukraine Fund as well as other humanitarian organizations that said Ukraine's civilian population and Ukrainian refugees abroad.

The WebCEO internet marketing platform has banned Russian users' access to its online services since March 4th.

The WebCEO Team has also compiled a list of helpful links to assist you in making a gift to the Ukrainian Army Fund and humanitarian funds, as well as links to reliable Ukrainian news in English.

How SEO Experts Can Assist Our Ukrainian Colleagues Hire a Ukrainian Remote Worker

Olesia Korobka has put together a haphazard database of Ukrainian SEO and digital marketing experts looking for distant work.

Alexis Rylko, an SEO professional, has put up a list of 'Awesome SEO & Digital Marketing Tools Made in Ukraine' for individuals who want to help the cause with their business.

Invest in Ukrainian Companies

Julia Nesterets, CEO of Jet Octopus, a crawler and log analyzer tool, tweeted from her car as she and her newborn baby delivered medical supplies, gathered money, and provided demos while working remotely.

Dmitry Gerasimenko, the CEO of Ahrefs, is a Ukrainian who has promised to double subscriptions to anyone who pays to groups that support peace in Ukraine.

If a customer donates enough to cover the cost of a six-month plan, Ahrefs will provide them with a year of service.

SE Ranking has a message supporting Ukraine on their website, including links on how people may help.

One website is HelpUkraineWin.org, which was built by Bohdan Kit, Tumblr's head of product.

There, he includes a donation form for one-time or monthly donations, a list of alternative options to donate or volunteer, and a Twitter feed from #StandWithUkraine.

Svetlana Shchehel, the head of content at SERanking and a contributor to Search Engine Journal, suggests that people donate to Unicef to help Ukrainian children in need.

"We vehemently reject any act of war, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine," Olga Andrienko, VP of brand marketing at Semrush, tweeted.

Prowly, our Polish subsidiary, is coordinating an initiative to deliver direct aid to people in need in Ukraine with the help of non-governmental organizations."

Non-governmental organizations interested in assisting them can reach out to them directly at [email protected].

Switch out of Malta, a digital marketing agency has a page dedicated to Ukraine assistance on their website, and each team member donates one hour each day to humanitarian causes.

There is also a contact form where people can request or offer assistance to the Ukrainian people.

Commit to helping animal shelters.

Anton Shulke, Duda's Head of Influencer Marketing, is collecting donations to help Ukrainian animal shelters get through this difficult time.

All earnings from his Buy Me A Coffee site will go to various dog and cat shelters in need, ensuring that these sanctuaries have the food and supplies they require.

Every pledge is important, and no amount is too small.

Shulke has raised around $19,310 for animals in Ukraine as of March 17.

Check everything for accuracy.

There is a lot of information and misinformation regarding the Ukrainian crisis out there, but a group of public relations experts in Kyiv wants to make sure the world only hears the truth.

According to a press release, more than 100 public relations professionals built a Google form where journalists may request first-hand stories from specialists, volunteers, and eyewitnesses.

They can also get photos and videos from the fight.

Check the charity's legitimacy before making any gifts or providing services to help Ukraine.

People frequently take advantage of adversity and calamity to profit.

Others have noble intentions but are illegally supporting the cause.

Conclusion

The world's attention is focused on the people of Ukraine, who are fighting for their freedom despite tremendous odds.

As Russian soldiers battle not just the Ukrainian military but also civilians, thick smoke billows from the ruins of bombed-out buildings, and gunfire echoed across the streets.

Nummero stands for the people of Ukraine in their hour of need and asks everyone to help the hundreds of innocent individuals caught in the middle.

We are Bangalore's top digital marketing company, offering a wide range of services such as web design, SEO, web development, content writing, and so on... We are also Bangalore's best web design agency.

#How to Help Ukraine's SEO Community and How You Can Benefit #Digital Marketing Strategy #digital marketing services

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96thdayofrage · 3 years ago

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REVEALED: US diplomat in Kiev sent classified email in 2016 warning that Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine 'undercut the anti-corruption message' his VP father was advancing

Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine while his father was still vice president 'undercut' anti-corruption efforts in the country, warned a top U.S. diplomat stationed in Kiev in a classified email sent to the U.S. State Department in 2016.

The email, obtained by Just the News, was published one day after the New York Times sued the State Department for allegedly withholding emails involving Hunter Biden that were sent or received by officials at the US Embassy in Romania between 2015 and 2019 that involve Hunter Biden.

The email, dated November 22, 2016, was written by George Kent, who was at the time the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. The Harvard-educated diplomat detailed a discussion about a 'saga' surrounding the case against Mykola Zlochevsky, a former Ukrainian natural resources minister and founder of Burisma Holdings, which paid Hunter Biden $1 million a year to sit on its board, according to the email.

Kent was one of the Democrats' key witnesses in their first successful attempt to impeach former President Donald Trump in 2019.

However, his email said that the 'real issue to my mind was that someone in Washington needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter’s presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine.'

Kent went on to say that 'Ukrainians heard one message from us and then saw another set of behavior, with the family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known for not playing by the rules in the oil/gas sector.'

Kent had previously testified behind closed doors that he raised concerns about Hunter Biden's business dealings with Burisma in 2015, according to reports.

The email, labeled confidential, was sent to former State Department official Jorgan Andrews and others whose names are blacked out. It was not produced during impeachment proceedings, Just the News reported.

On Monday, the New York Times sued the State Department for allegedly dragging its feet in handing over emails from Romanian embassy officials connected to Hunter Biden and his former business associate Tony Bobulinski

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Manhattan federal court, seeks emails dating from 2015 to 2019. The Times alleges that the State Department is failing to address its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in a timely manner. When the Times asked when the State Department would get around to the request, the paper was told to expect an answer on April 15, 2023, according to Politico.

The Times appears to be looking into whether embassy personnel did any special favors on behalf of business officials, including the president's son and Bobulinski. Joe Biden was serving as vice president for two of the years the emails cover, 2015-2016.

Emails on Hunter's abandoned laptop, obtained by DailyMail.com in 2021, reveal how Joe Biden's son and his colleagues leveraged their US government connections and plotted a propaganda campaign for grafting Romanian tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu.

Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), anyone advocating for foreign entities to US government officials, or acting as a publicist for a foreign entity in the US, must add themselves to a Department of Justice public register.

However, an exception applies for attorneys representing a client in a foreign court case, who are not required to register under FARA.

Emails show Hunter's colleagues, Christopher Boies and Michael Gottlieb - partners in the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner - were seeking to set up meetings with the US ambassador to Romania after discussing among themselves whether he would intervene in Popoviciu's case.

Hunter brought in political heavyweight and family friend Louis Freeh, the former director of the FBI, to use his US law enforcement contacts for Popoviciu's advantage, and was offered a referral fee as a result.

Hunter and his colleagues also discussed a media campaign, including to major U.S. publication the Wall Street Journal, to support their client who was later found guilty of bribery.

None of them were required to register for this work under FARA, due to various exemptions including those for lawyers of foreign defendants.

The FOIA also seeks information on Rudy Giuliani, who was dispatched by former President Trump to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden's business relationships with Ukraine.

Giuliani tipped off the New York Post about the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop.

In 2020, Senate Republicans investigated Hunter Biden's $50,000-a-month seat on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, then mired in corruption, while his father helped shape policy toward Kiev.

The matter was at the center of Trump's first impeachment trial accusing the president of pressuring Ukrainian officials to investigate Hunter's business dealings. Giving the appearance of a conflict of interest, Hunter's board seat alarmed some State Department officials.

The elder Biden leveraged $1 billion in aid to Ukraine to force the country to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma at the time. But the then-vice president's office said the U.S. wanted Shokin gone because he was not investigating corruption among the country's politicians.

But while the investigation found no evidence that Biden as vice president improperly manipulated policy in favor of his son.

The Republicans' investigation also found that Hunter had received massive sums of money - some in the seven-figure range - from foreigners in China, Russia and elsewhere while his father was in office.

Politico reports that the FOIA request threatens to revive an old feud between the Biden White House and the Times' money and influence reporter Ken Vogel, who has spearheaded coverage of the president's son.

Then-deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield wrote to the Times' executive editor Dean Bacquet and accused Vogel of 'egregious journalistic malpractice.'

Then-rapid response director Andrew Bates has also sparred with Vogel on Twitter.

'SCOOP from Philadelphia: KEN VOGEL (@kenvogel) is a COWARD,' Bates tweeted in Feb. 2020.

Bates claimed that Vogel's report on Hunter Biden's Ukraine dealings in May 2019 'for the first time amplified this misinformation campaign into the mainstream.'

Emails found on the laptop pointed to an effort by Hunter to set up a meeting in 2015 between Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser at a Ukrainian energy firm. The FBI had since seized the laptop from the Delaware computer repair shop owner, who says Hunter dropped it off to him in 2019 and never came to retrieve it.

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xtruss · 3 years ago

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“Russian Hacking”: NATO Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Revealed

CrowdStrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch (center) at the US-NATO Atlantic Council, 2014 (AC)

— Published: December 2020 | Swiss Policy Research

The “Russian Hacking” NATO PSYOP Has Finally Been Solved.

Independent geopolitical analysts have long suspected that the so-called “Russiagate” saga – consisting of claims of “Russian hacking” and “Russian collusion” as well as the Skripal and Navalny “poisoning incidents” – may have been a US and NATO psychological operation aimed at containing a resurgent Russia and a somewhat unpredictable US President.

In particular, several claims of the “Russian hacking” story had already been disproven by a group of independent IT forensic investigators. In early November of 2020, however, British researcher David J. Blake essentially solved the “Russian hacking” psyop, down to the operational level, as described in his new book “Loaded for Guccifer 2.0”.

US/NATO-controlled IT used for “Russian” hacking and phishing operations (DJB)

Blake shows how the “Russian hacking” psyop was initiated by the US and NATO in 2014 in response to Russia’s reaction to the US regime change in Ukraine, when Russia retook control of the Crimean Peninsula and supported the de-facto secession of Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

The US/NATO psyop was inspired by the actual amateur hackers “CyberBerkut” in Ukraine and “Guccifer” in Romania. Blake shows how in 2014, NATO created a “Cyber Defence Trust Fund” and used this entity to initiate false-flag “hacking operations” against the US and other NATO members that would then be falsely “attributed” to alleged Russian “state-sponsored hacking groups”.

Regarding the most prominent such case, the alleged “hacking” of the US Democratic Party (DNC) and the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Blake shows how the emails and documents in question were in fact exfiltrated by the FBI and FBI cybersecurity contractor CrowdStrike, whose founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a Senior Fellow at the US-NATO think tank Atlantic Council. (1)

Blake shows how the mysterious persona of Guccifer 2.0, who claimed the hack, was played by none other than Alperovitch himself, while the technical infrastructure, including the notorious website dcleaks.com, was provided by US and NATO intermediaries in NATO member Romania.

Later, former FBI director Robert Mueller would pretend to “investigate” the cyber operation, attributing it to alleged “Russian hacking groups” named “Cozy Bear” and “Fancy Bear” based on information provided by FBI and DNC contractor CrowdStrike and its CTO Dmitri Alperovitch. (2)

Blake also shows how other alleged “Russian hacks”, including the “hacking” of the German parliament in 2015, relied on the very same NATO-controlled technical infrastructure. Blake was able to show this based on archived information about previous owners of IP addresses, name servers, and SSL security certificates – all pointing to the US military, NATO, and the Ukrainian government. (3)

Archived IP and SSL data tying covert operations to NATO and the Ukrainian government (DJB)

In the case of the staged hack of the US Democratic Party, Blake shows how FBI cybersecurity contractor CrowdStrike added false “Russian fingerprints” by embedding the documents into previously published CyberBerkut documents and inserting additional false signatures. However, CrowdStrike made a few technical mistakes that ultimately revealed their US time zone. (4)

Blake highlights the important fact that in all of these false-flag “Russian hacks”, originating from NATO-controlled infrastructure, either no data or only trivial data was released to the public. Some questions continue to remain open, however, such as the role of murdered DNC employee Seth Rich and the actual source of Wikileaks, whose founder Julian Assange is still in British custody. (5)

In the wake of the 2014 US regime change in Ukraine, the family of then Vice President Joe Biden exfiltrated millions of dollars from Ukraine, protected against corruption investigations by Joe Biden himself, as leaked phone recordings confirmed. As of 2021, the professionals behind the Ukraine regime change and the “Russiagate” pysop will once again be in full control of the US government.

Most US and European media have promoted the “Russiagate” and “Russian hacking” psyops and will continue to do so. This is because most US and European media, both liberal and conservative, are themselves embedded in networks linked to NATO and the US Council on Foreign Relations. It is only some independent media that have been seriously investigating these topics.

Are there real Russian state-sponsored hacks against Western targets? Yes. Blake argues that, for instance, the hacking operation against the British Institute for Statecraft and its “Integrity Initiative” – itself deeply involved in the “Russiagate” psyop – was likely a professional Russian operation. The problem is that such real operations are much harder to “attribute” than fake ones.

Notes:

(1) Another well-known Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council is Eliot Higgins, founder of the Bellingcat group, which appears to serve as a civilian front organization of British military intelligence and was involved in psychological operations both in Ukraine and the Syria war.

(2) Blake was even able to show, based on archived IP address and SSL certificate data, that the FBI prepared its “Russia Special” operation on an “off-the-books”, inofficial web-based email system that was created by or for Robert Mueller during his time as FBI director (2001-2013).

(3) The alleged “Russian hacking” of the Swiss Ministry of Defense and Swiss arms manufacturer RUAG, in January 2016, may also have been a NATO false-flag operation. The same applies to the alleged ‘Drovorub’ malware attack, published by the FBI and NSA in 2020.

(4) According to an investigation by Reuters, the very first Twitter accounts to promote the so-called “Q Anon” persona, in early November 2017, were also allegedly “linked to Russia”. Given the revelations by David Blake, this might indicate that “Q Anon” was an FBI cyber psyop, too.

(5) For instance, Seth Rich might have been part of the FBI operation, posing as a DNC leaker and relaying the emails to Wikileaks (as Assange himself seems to have indicated); or he might have learned of the FBI operation; or his death might be unrelated to the FBI cyber operation.

CrowdStrike founder and Atlantic Council Senior Fellow, Dmitri Alperovitch, in 2016 (Esquire)

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