To Be Updated: USAID is sponsoring YouTube channels

How Democracy Can Win: The Right Way to Counter Autocracy

The most important step the United States can take to counter foreign influence campaigns and disinformation is to help our partners promote media and digital literacy, communicate credibly with their publics, and engage in “pre-bunking”—that is, seeking to inoculate their societies against disinformation before it can spread. In Indonesia, for example, USAID has worked with local partners to develop sophisticated online courses and games that help new social media users identify disinformation and reduce the likelihood that they will share misleading posts and articles.

The United States has also helped Ukraine in its fight against the Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation. For decades, USAID has worked to enhance the media environment in the country, encouraging reforms that allow greater access to public information and supporting the emergence of strong local media organizations, including the public broadcaster Suspilne. After Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, our work expanded to help the country’s local journalists produce Russian-language programming that could reach into Kremlin-occupied territories, such as Dialogues With Donbas, a YouTube channel that featured honest conversations with Ukrainians about life behind Russian lines. We also helped support the production of the online comedy show Newspalm, which regularly racks up tens of thousands of views as it skewers Putin’s lies. And even before Moscow’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, we worked with the government of Ukraine to stand up the Center for Strategic Communications, which uses memes [memetic warfare], well-produced digital videos, and social media and Telegram posts to poke holes in Kremlin propaganda.

I still need to look into Newspalm. I’ll update if I find anything. As I don’t know Ukrainian, or Russian, I’m using Google translate for the following information. Note, this is all speculation!

Speculation:

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We don’t have to engage in hysterical crusades against Russia and China

Since the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, many Western leaders have been tripping over themselves in an attempt to be seen to be doing more than their peers to support Ukraine in its war against Russia. The UK’s government’s recent apparent political coup in getting Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to visit Britain before their European partners was portrayed in sections of the British press as a major political victory — scored in part because of the UK’s willingness to up the ante in supplying weapons to Ukraine, now with the apparent promise of fighter aircraft in the future.

We don’t have to engage in hysterical crusades against Russia and China

Capitalism’s Court Jester: Slavoj Žižek

One of the most prominent intellectuals in the contemporary world was named to the list of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” in Foreign Policy magazine in 2012. He shares this distinction with the likes of Dick Cheney, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Mossad director Meir Dagan. The theorist’s best idea—according to this well-known publication that is a virtual arm of the U.S. State Department—is that “the big revolution the left is waiting for will never come.”

Capitalism’s Court Jester: Slavoj Žižek

Related:

Upcoming: Gabriel Rockhill | Why Slavoj Žižek is Capitalism’s Court Jester (YouTube)

The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia

Biden Can’t Denounce Russia’s Annexations and Ignore Israel’s

The United States has repeatedly stated that it will not recognize Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory. U.S. President Joe Biden vowed that “[t]he United States, I want to be very clear about this, will never, never, never recognize Russia’s claims on Ukraine sovereign territory.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged that the “United States does not, and will never, recognize the legitimacy or outcome of these sham referenda or Russia’s purported annexation of Ukrainian territory.”

Biden Can’t Denounce Russia’s Annexations and Ignore Israel’s