Leaked US-NATO Ukraine War Plans?, Western Diplomacy Failing in Developing World, The "Brawndo Tyranny", Journalistic Objectivity is Passe, Musician Branko Mataja
“Yes, yes, Niccolo….we all know that the first casualty in war is the truth……you don’t need to remind us”, is what you’re thinking, and you’re right to do so.
Everyone is waiting for the much-anticipated upcoming Ukrainian offensive. At the same time, everyone is left guessing where it will be launched, and what its overall targets will be. It’s important to confuse the enemy, and a big part of confusing them is achieved by distributing disinformation.
The New York Times has reported “a significant breach of American intelligence in the effort to aid Ukraine” through the leak of classified documents which have been shared on social media. It correspondents cited “senior Biden administration officials” who apparently tipped the outlet off to the story. Documents circulating on Telegram which closely resemble those referred to by the Times are reproduced at the end of this article.
The Times writes, “Military analysts said the documents appear to have been modified in certain parts from their original format, overstating American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed. The modifications could point to an effort of disinformation by Moscow, the analysts said… The analysts warned that documents released by Russian sources could be selectively altered to present the Kremlin’s disinformation.”
So there was a leak that the NY Times learned through a US Intel tip-off, one in which Russians have modified the documents to make their side look better…..okay.
According to the New York Times, the Pentagon is investigating the leak while the White House is “working to get them deleted.” Twitter owner Elon Musk appears to have confirmed the pressure campaign, sarcastically commenting, “Yeah, you can totally delete things from the Internet – that works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.”
While the documents distributed on Telegram contain important details about NATO and Ukrainian military capacity, and highlight the astounding depth of American involvement in the war, their publication raises a number of questions.
If the documents were partially faked, were they disseminated to help Russia advance its public relations goals, perhaps by minimizing their casualty numbers or inflating those of their foe? They certainly would not be fooling anyone at the Department of Defense, since they obviously have the original files on hand. Or could it be that the United States leaked the documents with faulty intelligence strewn throughout their contents to confuse Russia ahead of a Ukrainian offensive?
Most people discussing this purported leak have focused on this portion:
Perhaps the most notable piece of information contained in the leaked documents relates to military death tolls, with Ukrainian and Russian losses estimated at about a 4:1 ratio. According to one document, 71,500 Ukrainian troops have been killed in action.
That figure is close to the 100,000 KIA’s cited by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a November 2022 speech, before her comments were retracted. It also tracks closely with statements by one of Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky’s top advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, who told the BBC in June of last year that Ukraine was losing between 100 and 200 soldiers per day (200 deaths per day over the course of 370 days between the launch of Russia’s military operation and the date of the documents would total 74,000.)
Other American and EU state officials have offered dramatically different figures placing Russian KIA’s over the six figure mark. For instance, Norway’s defense chief has charted 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead to Russia’s 180,000, while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Miley asserted that Russian losses are “significantly well over 100,000.”
The noise being raised by this supposed leak should make everyone question its authenticity.
Common wisdom had it that Russia would go into Ukraine with overwhelming force. It didn’t. Common wisdom also insisted that the Russian economy would be quickly crippled after the slew of sanctions that followed its invasion of Ukraine. That hasn’t happened. Common wisdom (at least in the West) held that much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America would stand with Ukraine and the West, and side against Russia.
The inability of the US-led West to secure the support of the developing world in its quest to neutralize Russia is its greatest failure since the war began a little over a year ago. The fact of the matter is that not only has western diplomacy failed in large parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, China and Russia are making significant inroads in these places to the West’s detriment.
Unlike the previous century, however, this time around these countries cannot so easily be made to choose, nor should they have to. Russia understands this. The West does not.
It’s no secret that Africa’s been reluctant to overtly condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine, or to participate in Western efforts to sanction and isolate the warring country. Instead, these nations have continued to welcome their long-standing partner with open arms — widely condemning the war, but not Russia.
In Malawi, for instance, Russia’s deliveries of tens of thousands of tons of fertilizer amid global shortages are seen as a heavenly gift by struggling farmers, with the country’s minister of agriculture gratefully describing Russia as “a true friend.” And Moscow’s announced plans to send 260,000 tons of fertilizer to countries across the continent is certain to spread similar sentiments.
In my country of Congo-Brazzaville, the government signed five major cooperation agreements with Russia amid its war with Ukraine, including for the construction of a new oil pipeline and the enhancement of military cooperation.
This charm offensive — prominently led by Lavrov, who has visited South Africa, Eswatini, Angola, Eritrea, Mali, Sudan and Mauritania since January — is nourishing pro-Russian attitudes throughout the continent, and it stands in sharp contrast to the damp squib that was Macron’s recent African adventure.
Russia, like China, is offering investment, aid, and support. OTOH, the West insists on lecturing these countries, often resorting to bullying:
In what was perhaps the most tone-deaf faux pas of his entire trip, when repeatedly asked during a press conference to condemn Rwanda’s support for M23 rebels causing havoc in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — a situation closely resembling Russia’s semi-covert support for Donbas separatists in recent years — for all intents and purposes, Macron failed to do so. He even proceeded to lecture the Congolese president on freedom of the press.
Despite the French president’s effusive rhetoric about “new relationships” and “new starts,” his outburst was yet another bitter reminder of Europe’s long-standing paternalistic and dissonant attitude toward Africa — the same attitude whereby decades of European political and military influence on the continent has failed to generate meaningful progress, if not actively undermining efforts.
Africans are wise to this and refuse to take it anymore, as evidenced by growing anti-French sentiment in West Africa. Russia, China and others — though far from being without reproach — are merely seizing the presented opportunities.
Russia is delivering the goods, while the West delivers sermons:
Moreover, in the last decade, Russia has also become the region’s largest arms supplier, recently running joint naval exercises with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia have all rejected imposing sanctions on Moscow, and Malaysia signed a memorandum of understanding to improve agricultural trade earlier this year.
One cannot fault these nations for cooperating with international partners in the interest of addressing their most urgent societal priorities. Nor can one fault them for taking European discourse on international values and change with a pinch of salt, when this supposed change stems not from the recognition of current flaws but the imposition of emergent global trends.
What lessons can be given about territorial integrity and justice, when the events of 2011 in Libya, and their enduring consequences, remain traumatically fresh in African minds? Or when the posture these countries have taken relative to the war in Ukraine is almost identical to that of Europe toward the conflict in eastern DRC?
What lessons should be drawn from European courts proceeding to seize Malaysian assets and properties worth $15 billion, based on a questionable arbitration authorized by a Spanish arbitrator facing criminal prosecution? And who will really benefit given that this claim on sovereign territories, derived from a mid-19th century agreement between a long-vanished Sultanate and a colonial-era British company, is funded by unknown third-party investors?
Paternalism breeds contempt. When beneficial alternatives present themselves, people will naturally flock to them.
Charles Haywood takes issue with my argument that the USA is not headed towards a systemic collapse or a civil war ;) Betting on this subject is still open to all.
Everyone watching US politics these past few years will note how incompetency is now plaguing governance at all levels. Charles uses this as a data point in his argument in favour of US decline. In this recent essay, he takes a hatchet to the ruling class, one that he views as “drooling and imbecilic”,overseeing a “tyranny” reminiscent of the Mike Judge movie “Idiocracy”.
This our tyranny is something new in history, and I name it the Brawndo Tyranny. The reference is to the prescient 2006 movie Idiocracy, a dark comedy where a future society of morons starves because they irrigate crops with Brawndo, a Gatorade stand-in (the “Thirst Mutilator”), figuring it’s better for plants than nasty water. Our tyranny is the same level of stupid. Oh, certainly, its real-life effects, in lives ruined and people killed, are not a joke, and those guilty must be made, ultimately, to pay for their sins. But those of us who worry that the Brawndo Tyranny will have a long tenure should worry less. It is a lot like a malicious five-year-old who has somehow gotten the keys to a backhoe. Yes, he can cause a lot of damage, but it’s not going to go as he plans, and very soon he’s going to be upside down in the ditch.
Stupidity as endemic in US society:
To be sure, it is not only our ruling classes that are stupid. They have infected much of the country with their stupidity, and thus stupidity dominates nearly all public discourse. Years of propaganda have created a type of harmonic resonance across the land, where stupidity bounces back and forth, increasing in power with each bounce (though of late our rulers have had to resort to blanket censorship to keep reality from dampening the resonance). The best recent example of mass stupidity is reaction to the Wuhan Plague, where public opinion has been characterized by total irrationality and hyper-feminization. There are many other examples, however; it is truly unbelievable how much stupidity America features today. Any prior society with this level of stupid would long since have collapsed, but due to a combination of wealth and historical circumstance, we stagger on, for now. But we can be certain that the end is going to be no different than watering crops with Brawndo.
America as a country now devoid of “the rule of law”, a core concept of western governance historically:
The short version of what follows is that America is now a country without the rule of law. In any federal government action of any prominence, or touching on any aspect of Left power, and in many actions without prominence and without political import, we should assume the rule of law does not exist. I will analyze three separate acts tied to the power of government. First, the September 2020 order from the Centers for Disease Control forbidding evictions. Second, the January 2021 order from the CDC mandating mask usage nationwide. Third, the 2020 debate in Congress around the “Emmett Till Antilynching Act.”
Charles goes at length in describing these three examples, and how they show that the rule of law no longer exists in the USA.
He argues that this state of systemic incompetence cannot continue:
A core principle, on which I am putting most of my rhetorical chips, is that stupid cannot continue for long, and the more stupid, the less long. The usual response to such optimism is to quote Adam Smith, that there is a lot of ruin in a country. But he meant the ruin resulting from bad or unlucky decisions, especially debt and overspending, not the type of ruin we are experiencing that he could never have imagined: the collective insanity of the ruling classes and the handing over of the reins of power to those least able to honorably and capably exercise power.
“What is to be done?”
So what should we do? One choice is just waiting around for the Tyranny to collapse. I have a certain sympathy for this, since as I say my bet is collapse is coming soon, though it will likely require some triggering event, such as a war or an actual pandemic hitting America. But maybe not; sometimes unrest and consequent massive changes result from opaque internal causes, such as in the Great Fear of 1789. Another choice is helping it to collapse. I’d be happy to help it collapse, but there’s no evident mechanism for that, and the regime is still strong enough to deal a lot of damage to those it identifies as enemies, especially if they are acting in isolation and without a triggering event. Some suggest a John Galt-style retreat from supporting the regime, but that’s not effective, both because the state has the reach to simply confiscate resources from the productive, and because the Brawndo Tyranny is already well on its way to removing the competent from any productive role on its own initiative. (I’d be shocked if Elon Musk isn’t targeted soon for being insufficiently woke.)
A third choice is the next step up from pushing the regime—open armed rebellion. This certainly has a long and honorable pedigree in America, and I’ve written earlier at length on when it might be appropriate. The estimable Spencer Klavan recently devoted two episodes of his podcast Young Heretics to an honest analysis of this topic. His conclusion was that we are far from having the justification for a rebellion, and we should go and do the hard work of trying to take back power by recapturing the institutions, as the Left did. I think he is mainlining Pollyanna—there is zero chance the Left would allow this. One man, one vote, once is the nature of their project, and always has been. Klavan himself admits that the offenses against Americans listed in the Declaration of Independence are small beans compared to the offenses against Americans at this moment being committed by the Brawndo Tyranny, which undermines his contention. Still, I’m not certain that open rebellion would be morally justified—mostly because it has to have some chance of success to be legitimate, and at the current moment I don’t see much chance of success. Not to mention that I’m not real interested in taking the risk myself; that’s a game for unattached young men, starting rebellions.
Charles also presents a fourth option which you can read here.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about what some people are calling the “Censorship Industrial Complex” (or “Disinformation Industrial Complex”) thanks to this brilliant essay by Jacob Siegel that I featured in last weekend’s Saturday column.
Governments are desperately trying to re-establish narrative control via doing exactly what they claim to be fighting: engaging in dis/mis/mal/information. When I add this to the reported massive strides in AI tech over the past year or so, I am left wondering just how confused we will be in the very near-future regarding information that is put in front of us. Industrial-scales of censorship and disinformation, proliferation of deepfake videos, and so on. We are going to have a very, very tough time sorting out what’s fake and what’s real. It’s going to get ugly.
When things turn ugly, they tend to snowball. The US media is here to tell us that they too will partake in warping reality by jettisoning what was once the standard of journalism, the core concept of objectivity (at least straining towards it).
Journalistic objectivity as an out-dated concept:
But increasingly, reporters, editors and media critics argue that the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality. They point out that the standard was dictated over decades by male editors in predominantly White newsrooms and reinforced their own view of the world. They believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.
The “need” to move on beyond objectivity:
To better understand the changes happening now, I and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward, a colleague at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, investigated the values and practices in mainstream newsrooms today, with a grant from the Stanton Foundation. What we found has convinced us that truth-seeking news media must move beyond whatever “objectivity” once meant to produce more trustworthy news. We interviewed more than 75 news leaders, journalists and other experts in mainstream print, broadcast and digital news media, many of whom also advocate such a change. This appears to be the beginning of another generational shift in American journalism.
Among the news leaders who told Heyward and me that they had rejected objectivity as a coverage standard was Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor of the Associated Press. “It’s objective by whose standard?” she asked. “That standard seems to be White, educated, fairly wealthy. … And when people don’t feel like they find themselves in news coverage, it’s because they don’t fit that definition.”
You will be defined by your identity, whether racial, gender, sexual orientation, confessional, etc., and not by your actual views and behaviour. This is the future.
Objectivity as a “road block to accuracy”, and that it “has to go”:
More and more journalists of color and younger White reporters, including LGBTQ+ people, in increasingly diverse newsrooms believe that the concept of objectivity has prevented truly accurate reporting informed by their own backgrounds, experiences and points of view.
“There is some confusion about the value of good reporting versus point of view,” said current Post executive editor Sally Buzbee, who noted that many journalists want to make a difference on such issues as climate change, immigration and education. “We stress the value of reporting,” she said, “what you are able to dig up — so you (the reader) can make up your own mind.”
“The consensus among younger journalists is that we got it all wrong,” Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor in chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, told us. “Objectivity has got to go.”
Again, your identity(ies) will define you:
At the Los Angeles Times, reporters and editors have many personal identities, explained editor Kevin Merida. “We find ways for our journalists to share more of that,” including first-person essays on the front page. He cited a Latina reporter’s story about the low vaccination rate in her community, and a gay police reporter’s story about his own marriage and a potential U.S. Supreme Court threat to the legality of gay marriages.
Advocacy Journalism to supplant objectivity:
“I don’t want to throw labels like ‘racist’ or ‘lying’ around willy-nilly, the evidence should be high,” Joseph Kahn, executive editor of the New York Times, told us. “But I think it’s true that, when the evidence is there, we should not default to some mealy-mouthed, so-called neutral language that some people see this as a falsehood, while others do not. When the evidence is there, we should be clear and direct with our audience that we don’t think there are multiple sides to this question, this is a falsehood. And the person repeating this falsehood over and over is guilty of lying.”
Newer, nonprofit news organizations often have launched with stated missions. The national digital news site the 19th, for example, aims to “elevate voices of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community.”
Elizabeth Green, co-founder and chief executive of Chalkbeat, whose news websites across the country cover education, said it adopted antiracism as a core value. “We talk about it a lot,” she told us. “Is this what an antiracist news organization would do?”
Post-objective advocacy journalism is “needed” to save democracy in America:
One essential value for all Americans is the survival of democratic institutions, which are under attack on multiple fronts. Trustworthy journalism by a new generation of journalists and newsroom leaders can ensure that the news media continues to do its part to protect democracy.
So yeah, this is very, very bad.
We end this weekend’s Substack with a look at Branko Mataja, a musician who was arrested by invading Italian forces and sent to Germany in 1941 to work as a slave labourer, and who eventually made his way to Southern California after a stop off in the UK. He is notable for making guitars for famous musicians of the 60s, 70s, and 80s (including Johnny Cash and Rush’s Geddy Lee). He is also becoming more appreciated for the music he recorded. Anna Khachiyan tipped me off to his existence earlier this week, so I had to share this with you.
One day Jerkovich bought a half dozen titles for $7 each from the back room of Counterpoint Records & Books in the Franklin Village neighborhood at the foot of Beechwood Canyon. Jerkovich was not looking, or prepared, to be blown away by a record entitled "Traditional and Folk Songs of Yugoslavia", but here was that record, by someone he'd never heard of named Branko Mataja.
'Traditional Folk Songs of Yugoslavia'
Returning home to turntable, Jerkovich found the record's magic unmistakable from the first notes. In the shimmering electrified guitar tones was something plaintive, pining, a refracted echo of an imagined life as it may have been in an old country of long ago. This was conceptual music of the homeland — familiar tunes filtered through a novel, somewhat bizarre sensibility. It was, Jerkovich immediately realized, the "emotionally saturated" crown jewel of his search — the LP he'd been searching for all along without knowing it. He played it for his roommate (full disclosure, his roommate was me), and we began to obsess over the record and the mystery of this obviously exceptional guitarist. For, as the liner notes to the album bluntly state, "Branko is the consummate artist."
The songs have an otherworldly feel, a bit psychadelic (thanks to Branko’s use of overdubs in production), and somehow South Pacific (and even Mexican) at times as well.
Heads up: Substack is going to launch an amazing new feature later this month (most likely next week). To be frank, it resembles Twitter quite a bit, but with many different features that integrate well with currently-existing Subtack features that you are already using. I’ve been asked to be a beta tester, and so far I’ve been very, very impressed with what I’ve seen. Here’s a sneak peek:
A lot of you will like this new feature (you guys will see it very soon). However, Elon Musk is not very happy about this development (for several reasons that I will not go into here), which led him to instruct Twitter coders to disable likes, retweets, and replies on all tweets containing Substack links, and displaying warnings if you attempt to click on the actual link.
Thank you once again for checking out my Substack. Hit the like button and use the share button to share this across social media. Leave a comment below if the mood strikes you. And don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t done so already.
Also, Happy Easter to everyone who is observing Holy Week!
For those of you who missed it yesterday - https://niccolo.substack.com/p/georgias-rose-revolution-2003