information wars in america, russia and ukraine

The 'Information wars' have been going on for some time:

Jay Doubleyou: information wars

Especially information about what's been happening in Russia and Ukraine:

Jay Doubleyou: europe's troublemakers: journalism and the ukraine: tetiana chornovol

Jay Doubleyou: english language media as propaganda in the ukraine

Here's the latest:

IN AMERICA:

Fox News is the most popular TV news station in the US:

2022 State of the Union Ratings: Fox News Is Most-Watched, ABC Is No. 1 Among Adults 25-54

One of their top journalists has defended the actions of the US government:

Fox News Defense Reporter Challenges War Comments on Air | Entertainment News | US News

But she is not the top show on the top broadcaster:

Top Cable News Shows of 2021: Tucker Carlson Tonight Is No. 1 in All Measurements For First Time Ever

Tucker Carlson posted this piece online after airing his comments on his show:

Tucker Carlson: Someone needs to explain why there are dangerous biological weapons in Ukraine | Fox News

This is part of the information wars, as said by Tucker Carson:

’U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine’ claim is Russian disinformation

“Bioweapon labs in Ukraine prove US criminal activity, diplomat says”
— headline of Tass news article, quoting Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, the morning of March 9
“Under oath in an open committee hearing, Toria Nuland just confirmed that the Russian disinformation they’ve been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true.”
— Tucker Carlson, remarks on his Fox News show, the evening of March 9
Russian disinformation often begins with a speck of fact, which is then twisted into a full-blown conspiracy theory. The technique makes it easier to spread and take root among the country’s supporters. Note how quickly the party line uttered by the Russian Foreign Ministry was embraced by Carlson.

’U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine’ claim is Russian disinformation - The Washington Post

Other journalists in the US are not impressed by his stance:

Calmes: Tucker Carlson backs Putin as colleagues die in Ukraine - Los Angeles Times

IN RUSSIA:

The news machine in Russia is very impressed with Tucker Carson, however:

Leaked Kremlin Memo to Russian Media: It Is “Essential” to Feature Tucker Carlson

On March 3, as Russian military forces bombed Ukrainian cities as part of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of his neighbor, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media outlets with a request: Use more Tucker Carlson

“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.” The memo includes a quote from Carlson: “And how would the US behave if such a situation developed in neighboring Mexico or Canada?”
The document—titled “For Media and Commentators (recommendations for coverage of events as of 03.03)”—was produced, according to its metadata, at a Russian government agency called the Department of Information and Telecommunications Support, which is part of the Russian security apparatus.

Leaked Kremlin Memo to Russian Media: It Is “Essential” to Feature Tucker Carlson – Mother Jones

This is part of the Russian state's attempt to create a particular narrative:

Ukraine: Watching the war on Russian TV - a whole different story - BBC News

The War That Russians Do Not See | The New Yorker

Inside the High-Stakes Fight to Control the Narrative on Ukraine | The New Yorker

Russia tightens grip on media amid Ukraine war | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

Seven tips for spotting disinformation on the Russia-Ukraine war

Here are seven disinformation trends Grossman and her team have observed related to the Russia-Ukraine war, along with her tips for seeing through them.
1. Hacked accounts
2. Fabricated claims and false flags
3. Old media circulating out of its original context
4. Manipulated images
5. Unverified reports
6. Fraud
7. Pro-Kremlin narratives

Seven tips for spotting disinformation on the Russia-Ukraine war | Stanford News

Some journalists in Russia are trying to point this out:

Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova fined after anti-war protest during state-run newscast - CBS News

And the last independent newspaper has closed:

Nobel Peace Prize-winner's paper closes amid Russia pressure - ABC News

Russia's top independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta forced to suspend publication over Ukraine war - CBS News

Ukraine war: Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov’s paper closes amid Russian pressure | South China Morning Post

IN UKRAINE:

The attack on Ukraine has been justified by the Russian government as 'denazification':

Why Vladimir Putin Invokes Nazis to Justify His Invasion of Ukraine - The New York Times

Putin wants de-Nazification but how much is Ukraine Nazified? - News Analysis News

How Putin's 'denazification' claim distorts history, according to scholars : NPR

The antisemitism animating Putin’s claim to ‘denazify’ Ukraine | Jason Stanley | The Guardian

Yes, there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine:

Beyond Putin’s Propaganda, the Far Right Is a Major Problem in Ukraine - Lefteast

Azov movement analysis: A far-right battalion has a key role in Ukraine's resistance. Its neo-Nazi history has been exploited by Putin - CNN

But there are neo-Nazis in pretty much every country - including Russia:

CIDOB - “Russia for Russians!”

Russian warlord who led Neo-Nazi 'Sparta' mob shot dead during battle in eastern Ukraine | Daily Mail Online

Putin’s fascists: the Russian state's long history of cultivating homegrown neo-Nazis

The attack on Ukraine has also been justified by the Russian government as a defence of the two 'republics' in the east of the country - as related by Al Jazeera:

Donetsk and Luhansk: What you should know about the ‘republics’

Neo-Stalinism
A 13.5 metre-tall statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin still dominates the main square in Donetsk, the capital of the eponymous breakaway region in southeastern Ukraine.
And the constitution adopted by Lenin’s successor, Josef Stalin, has been restored by the Moscow-backed separatist leaders of Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk after they broke away from the central government in 2014.
This constitution prescribes the death penalty for a number of crimes, making the separatist “People’s Republics” – and authoritarian Belarus nearby – Europe’s only homes to capital punishment.
After almost eight years of existence, the “republics” are understood to have evolved into totalitarian, North Korea-like statelets.
It is near impossible for foreigners to enter the areas. Ukrainians can only visit if they have relatives in Donetsk and Luhansk, and would have to cross into Russia first, which takes about 30 hours and costs $100 – a journey that also involves bribing officials at times. Residents need a Soviet-era residency registration. 

“It looks like the 1930s in the Soviet Union, a classic gulag,” Stanislav Aseyev, a publicist who was kidnapped in 2017 in Donetsk and was sentenced by a separatist “court” to 15 years in jail for “espionage”, told Al Jazeera.

Donetsk and Luhansk: What you should know about the ‘republics’ | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

Indeed, Stalin is everywhere:

Inside the 'Donetsk People's Republic': balaclavas, Stalin flags and razorwire | Ukraine | The Guardian

But this goes back a long time:

Why the Mass Killings? Stalin and the Donbas in the Great Terror | Lvivcenter

Meanwhile, in the information wars:

Telegram: The digital battlefront between Russia and Ukraine
For weeks, Russia’s military assault on Ukraine has been complemented by full-fledged information warfare. The Kremlin has propagandised Russian state media, and is trying to control the narrative online too.
We’ve seen a bombardment of “imposter content" circulating – including fake news reports and deepfake videos – while Ukranians and the rest of the world have scrambled to find ways to tell the real story of the invasion.... The instant messaging app Telegram has surfaced as one of the most important channels through which to do so. But what is it about Telegram that has millions flocking to it amid the chaos?

It seems Telegram finds itself between a rock and a hard place. It’s limited, by design, in how much it can filter content. Yet despite the social and enforcement challenges, it continues to be a lifeline for those resisting the Russian invasion. (The Conversation)

Telegram: The digital battlefront between Russia and Ukraine – POLITICO

Why Telegram became the go-to app for Ukrainians amid war with Russia

Finally, the BBC's weekly Media Show has taken us into the 'information wars':

The Information War in Ukraine

Released On: 02 Mar 2022
Alongside fighting in Ukraine, an "information war" is playing out. While Western media on the ground are describing a brutal war, Russian media offers a very different narrative. Journalists are not even allowed to describe the situation in Ukraine as a "war". So how will the latest crackdown on independent Russian media affect what people in the country see? And what does that mean for the future of this conflict? 

Guests: Ivan Kolpakov, Editor-in-Chief at Meduza; Olga Malchevska, Journalist at the BBC Ukrainian service; Professor Samuel Greene, Director of the Russia Institute at King’s College, London; Luke Harding, Senior International Correspondent at The Guardian; Roland Oliphant, Senior Foreign Correspondent at The Telegraph; Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor at Channel 4 News.

The Media Show - The Information War in Ukraine - BBC Sounds

Ukraine's lessons for the media

Released On: 30 Mar 2022
As peace talks between Ukraine and Russia get underway, the war on the ground continues. How is the war being reported differently by Ukrainian and international media? And is there a danger that the public is losing interest in the war? 

Guests: Oleksiy Sorokin, political editor at the Kyiv Independent; Iryna Matviyishyn, freelance journalist and producer; Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist; Lyse Doucet, BBC Chief International Correspondent; Cristina Nicolotti Squires, director of content at Sky News.

The Media Show - Ukraine's lessons for the media - BBC Sounds

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false flag

A false flag operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party.

The term "false flag" originated in the 16th century as a purely figurative expression to mean "a deliberate misrepresentation of someone's affiliation or motives".[1] It was later used to describe a ruse in naval warfare whereby a vessel flew the flag of a neutral or enemy country in order to hide its true identity. The tactic was originally used by pirates and privateers to deceive other ships into allowing them to move closer before attacking them. It later was deemed an acceptable practice during naval warfare according to international maritime laws, provided the attacking vessel displayed its true flag once an attack had begun.[2][3][4][5]
The term today extends to include countries that organize attacks on themselves and make the attacks appear to be by enemy nations or terrorists, thus giving the nation that was supposedly attacked a pretext for domestic repression and foreign military aggression.[6]

...
Russian invasion of Ukraine
In January and February 2022, Western government agencies predicted that Russia would use a false flag operation in Ukraine.[25] In the days leading up to the 24 February Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government intensified its disinformation campaign, with Russian state media promoting false flags on a nearly hourly basis purporting to show Ukrainian forces attacking Russia, in a bid to justify an invasion of Ukraine.[26][27] Many of the disinformation videos were poor and amateur in quality, with mismatching metadata showing incorrect dates,[27] and evidence from Bellingcat researchers, and other independent journalists, showed that the claimed attacks, explosions, and evacuations in Donbas were staged by Russia.[26][28][29][30][27]

False flag - Wikipedia

What is a false flag?
A false flag is a political or military action carried out with the intention of blaming an opponent for it.
Nations have often done this by staging a real or simulated attack on their own side and saying the enemy did it, as a pretext for going to war.
The term was first used in the 16th Century to describe how pirates flew the flag of a friendly nation to deceive merchant ships into allowing them to draw near.
False flag attacks have a long and ignoble history.
German invasion of Poland, 1939
The night before Germany invaded Poland, seven German SS soldiers pretending to be Polish stormed the Gleiwitz radio tower on the German side of the border with Poland. They broadcast a short message to say the station was now in Polish hands.
Gulf of Tonkin incident, 1964
On 2 August 1964, a sea battle occurred between a US destroyer and North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the Vietnamese coast...
However, President Lyndon B. Johnson and staff decided to believe the initial version of events and presented the incidents to Congress as two unprovoked attacks on US forces by North Vietnam.
It led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed President Johnson to start bombing raids on North Vietnam and greatly escalate US military involvement in the Vietnam War.
'Little green men' in Crimea, 2014
In the early days of Russia's annexation of Crimea, people started to appear on the streets who were dressed and armed exactly like Russian soldiers but without Russian insignia on their uniforms.
The Kremlin insisted they were members of local "self-defence groups" who wanted the territory to be returned from Ukrainian control to Russia...

False flags: What are they and when have they been used? - BBC News

U.S. officials say they are concerned Russia could be preparing to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine after the Russian Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of possibly planning a false-flag chemical weapon attack.
An administration official said the U.S. is worried that the Russians are making the claim “to justify a false-flag operation or them using chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine themselves.”

U.S. warns Russia could use chemical weapons in false-flag operation in Ukraine

We now live in an age where, to some at least, nothing is as it seems, everything can be labelled a conspiracy and no amount of evidence to the contrary will change people’s minds. There have been several documented false flag operations throughout history, and the existence of them goes some way to explaining why thousands upon thousands of people all around the world believe many more covert operations have been carried out regardless of government claims to the contrary. One thing’s for sure – the false flag operation has come a long way since the days of pirate ships flying false colours to get their hands on lots of lovely booty.

The truth about 'False Flags' from Nazi Germany to the Vietnam War | Sky HISTORY TV Channel

Russia has a long and storied history of using false flag operations, many of which were revealed when KGB records reached the public after the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1939, the Soviet Army shelled one of their own villages near the Finnish border, which they then used as a pretext for invasion just four days later. In 1968, Russia used false flag attacks to justify its military intervention in Czechoslovakia after the Warsaw Pact nation began pushing for social democratic reforms.
In more modern history, Russian President Vladimir Putin himself is widely believed to have taken power through his creative use of false flag operations. In 1999, apartment buildings in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk were bombed, killing hundreds of Russian civilians. The bombings were immediately blamed on Islamist Chechen rebels and used as justification for what became the second Chechen war, but perhaps more importantly, served as the impetus for Putin’s sudden rise to power over then-president Boris Yeltsin.
How do we know this bombing was likely a false flag operation? Shortly after the bombings, another undetonated bomb was found in the basement of a building in the Russian city of Ryazan. Investigators were able to track the bomb not to Chechen rebels, but rather to Russia’s own FSB—the direct successor to Russia’s infamous KGB. The FSB went on to declare the bomb a fake that they planted simply as a training exercise.
Putin, it’s worth noting, served in the KGB for 16 years, until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

How false flag operations work and Russia's history of using them - Sandboxx

I decided to re-read David Satter’s August 2016 cover story in the magazine, “The Bloody Czar.”
Satter, an American journalist with extensive experience in Russia and the former Soviet Union, detailed the rise of Vladimir Putin from obscurity to the pinnacle of power in Moscow — and how it all could have been catalyzed by a murderous false-flag operation.
“I believe,” Satter wrote, “that Vladimir Putin came to power as the result of an act of terror committed against his own people.”
2The evidence is overwhelming that the apartment-house bombings in 1999 in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk, which provided a pretext for the second Chechen war and catapulted Putin into the presidency, were carried out by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Yet, to this day, an indifferent world has made little attempt to grasp the significance of what was the greatest political provocation since the burning of the Reichstag."
“I have been trying,” Satter continued, “to call attention to the facts behind the bombings since 1999. I consider this a moral obligation, because ignoring the fact that a man in charge of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal came to power through an act of terror is highly dangerous in itself.”
The apartment bombings — which were quickly blamed on Islamist Chechen rebels — killed hundreds of Russian civilians. Putin, newly named as the political successor to then-president Boris Yeltsin, vowed revenge and was shot into power. He then proceeded to prosecute the war in the breakaway province of Chechnya and crushed the rebels. Combined with a general economic boom, Putin become the undisputed and, for a time, extremely popular, ruler of Russia.

‘The Bloody Czar’: Did a False-Flag Operation Fuel Putin’s Rise?

The Moscow apartment bombings of 1999 and the curious rise of Vladimir Putin

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language in ukraine: "“today the russian language is being used by the russian state to ignite hatred and justify the shameful war against ukraine."

There is a large Russian-speaking population in the Baltic states:

Putin’s War in Ukraine Tests Allegiances of Russian Speakers in Former Soviet Latvia
A large minority in the country looked to Moscow after the Cold War. Some are now reassessing their allegiance, but not all

Putin’s War in Ukraine Tests Allegiances of Russian Speakers in Former Soviet Latvia - WSJ

Amid war in Ukraine, are Estonia′s Russian speakers ready to embrace the West? | Europe | News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 11.03.2022

There is a large Russian-speaking population in Belorussia and Ukraine - but they too are 'reassessing their allegiance' to Russia:

Op-Ed: Speaking Russian doesn't make me a supporter of Putin's war - Los Angeles Times

And other Russian-speakers are not so sure:

Soviet Bloc Immigrants Rethink Their Identity Amid Russia-Ukraine War - The New York Times

A group of Russian writers have made the point that this war is not about language - but about power and propaganda:

A group of eminent writers has appealed to Russian speakers around the world to convey the truth about the war in Ukraine by directly contacting Russian citizens using “all possible means of communication”.
The 17 signatories to the appeal include the Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian author who writes in Russian. She won the Nobel prize for literature in 2015 for writing described as “a monument to courage and suffering in our time”...

The Russian writers say: “We are appealing to everyone who speaks the Russian language. To people of all nationalities. To those who are native speakers. To those for whom Russian is their second or third language.
“Today the Russian language is being used by the Russian state to ignite hatred and justify the shameful war against Ukraine. In Russian, the official media keep repeating endless lies that are creating a smoke screen around this aggression.
“Russian people have been fed lies for many years. The independent sources of information have been almost entirely destroyed. The opposition leaders – silenced. The state propaganda machine is working with all its might..."

Eminent writers urge Russian speakers to tell truth of war in Ukraine | Ukraine | The Guardian

And Russian-speakers in Ukraine don't feel they need 'defending':

These Russian speakers in Ukraine reject Putin's war

March 7, 2022, 3:24 PM GMT
By Mo Abbas and Yelyzaveta Kovtun
KHARKIV, Ukraine — Sheltering in the subway system of his besieged city, Leonid Perevoznik laughed bitterly between rounds of Russian shelling.
“It’s funny because he says he’s going to defend Russian speakers in Ukraine, in Kharkiv,” Perevoznik, 24, said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I’m a Russian speaker, and I can’t see any discrimination against me in Ukraine. It’s funny. It’s like a joke,” the software developer added.
Putin has used the pretext of protecting Russian speakers from what he termed “genocide” and oppression by the government in Kyiv to justify his invasion of Ukraine and earlier annexations of the country’s territory in 2014. 

...

“Almost everyone in Kharkiv speaks Russian, and no one tells us to speak Ukrainian. It’s your choice,” said Serhii Shpak, 28, who fled northeastern Kharkiv last week for relative safety farther west.
“There is no racism or any other kind of ism. … Russian- speaking people don’t need any protection in Ukraine,” said Shpak, also a web developer.
Although Ukrainian is now the default language throughout the country for signs, menus and other everyday documentation, Russian versions are common. Shop and restaurant workers can usually switch effortlessly between the two languages.
Russian is the main language in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and only 25 miles from the Russian border in the country’s northeast. Yet it has been pummeled by Russian missile attacks in recent days, with civilian areas leveled.

These Russian speakers in Ukraine reject Putin's war

Fundamentally, the war is not about 'language':

As the Moscow Times said in 2014:

Putin Fears Democracy in Ukraine - The Moscow Times

And today:

Ukraine crisis: Putin and the kleptocrats fear democracy in Russia, not sanctions abroad

What Putin Feared Most About Ukraine: It's A European Democracy - Worldcrunch

Putin fears Ukrainian freedom and democracy, not NATO | View | Euronews

Vladimir Putin fears Ukrainian democracy not NATO expansion - Atlantic Council

Putin sees Ukrainian democracy as threat that undermines Russia's mission | Stanford News

There are other opinions:

Putin no longer fears a ‘democratic Ukraine’ | Russia-Ukraine war | Al Jazeera

With a response to that:

Earlier this month, the controversial Russia pundit Leonid Ragozin wrote an article for Al Jazeera titled “Putin no longer fears a democratic Ukraine”. The problematic piece lays the blame for Ukraine’s present troubles solely on the West and on Ukrainian political elites, entirely erasing Russia’s agency.
The author’s core contention is that while Putin once feared Ukrainian democracy, the Russian president no longer does because the troubled state of Ukraine today is the best argument against the democracy he used to fear.
He goes on to suggest that the West is not interested in democracy but in creating an “anti-Russia” into which it can move military infrastructure. According to Ragozin, this “geo-political adventurism” is the driver of a conflict that could be solved if the West would simply engage with Russia in good faith.

...

Language laws
When addressing Ukraine’s laws, the article again mischaracterises the facts on the ground. The use of the Russian language is not “severely restricted” by law in Ukraine. In fact, it predominates in major cities in the centre, east and south of the country. No matter an individual’s spoken language of preference, native-level passive comprehension of each language is almost universal. Russian speakers continue to be disproportionately represented in the country’s armed services, and largely Russian-speaking volunteer battalions, such as the Dnipro-1 Regiment, were instrumental in stalling Putin’s advance when war broke out in 2014... 

None of this to say that there are no valid criticisms of the language law. But these problems do not rise to the level of ethnonationialst “forced assimilation”, as the author has sometimes characterized it.

...

A response to Leonid Ragozin’s “Putin no longer fears a democratic Ukraine” - New Eastern Europe - A bimonthly news magazine dedicated to Central and Eastern European affairs

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not every english/swedish/german/russian-speaker is english/swedish/german/russian

Not every speaker of English is English - of course:

List of countries by English-speaking population - Wikipedia

And 'English literature' is simply any literature written in English:

English literature is the literature which is distinctly written in the English language, as opposed to differing languages. English literature includes literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England nor primarily English-speaking nations; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Thomas Pynchon is American, V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, and Vladimir Nabokov was Russian, but all are considered important writers in the history of English literature. In other words, English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the world in countries originally colonized by the British.

Jay Doubleyou: english literature

There is a sizeable Swedish-speaking population in Finland:

Swedish Speakers - Minority Rights Group

Swedish-speaking population of Finland - Wikipedia

And they identify themselves as Finns:

Are there Swedish speakers in Finland who identify as ethnically Swedish, or do they all identify as Finns whose native language is Swedish? - Quora

Finland's foremost composer was a Swedish-speaker:

Sibelius was, after all, part of Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority (as was his great early champion Robert Kajanus). He spoke Swedish as his first language, wrote his diaries in Swedish, gave his daughters Swedish names and, when interviewed by Finnish radio in 1948 at the age of 83, asked if he might speak in Swedish (the request was firmly quashed).
Sibelius was 52 when Finland became independent. He lived the majority of his life under Russian rule and was much influenced by Russian music, as the first symphony shows. In what precise way should this music therefore be described as Finnish, or as the essence of Finnishness?

Holding out for a hero: the spirit of Sibelius is summoned to celebrate Finland's centenary | Classical music | The Guardian

One of the foremost writers in German was a Jewish resident of Prague:

Franz Kafka: German or Jewish? | Gabriel Josipovici

The Israeli and German Archive Battled Over Kafka - The Atlantic

As German as Kafka

Franz Kafka Wrote in German : Czechs Pay Scant Homage to Their Greatest Writer - Los Angeles Times

The foremost writer of detective stories in German was from Switzerland:

The Friedrich Glauser Prize (Friedrich-Glauser-Preis, sometimes Friedrich-Glauser-Krimipreis) honors the best crime novel written in German. It is named after Swiss author Friedrich Glauser, considered to be the first crime novelist to publish in German.

The Friedrich Glauser Prize: A Literary Award for Crime Fiction.

Swiss Germans definitely do not see themselves as German:

A survey conducted in the city of Zurich has shown that Germans are considered less likable than other Western Europeans.

Why Swiss-Germans dislike Germans | Request PDF

Cultural differences between Germany and Switzerland

How is Swiss German Different to German? - Chatterblog

Do the Austrians and the Swiss identify as German people (ethnically, not nationally) or have they distanced themselves like the Dutch? - Quora

Finally, there is a lot of literature written in Russian by Ukrainians:

Historically, many famous writers of Russian literature were born and lived in Ukraine. Nikolai Gogol is probably the most famous example of shared Russo-Ukrainian heritage: Ukrainian by descent, he wrote in Russian, and significantly contributed to culture of both nations. Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev, as well as poet Ilya Erenburg. A number of notable Russian writers and poets hailed from Odessa, including Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, Anna Akhmatova, Isaak Babel. Russian child poet Nika Turbina was born in Yalta, Crimea.
A significant number of contemporary authors from Ukraine write in Russian.[66] This is especially notable within science fiction and fantasy genres.[66] Kharkiv is considered the "capital city" of Ukrainian sci-fi and fantasy, it is home to several popular Russophone Ukrainian writers...

Russian language in Ukraine - Wikipedia

Ukraine's most famous writer today writes in Russian:

Andrey Yuryevich Kurkov (Ukrainian: Андрій Юрійович Курков; Russian: Андре́й Ю́рьевич Курко́в; born 23 April 1961 in Leningrad, USSR) is a Ukrainian author and an independent thinker who writes in Russian. He is the author of 19 novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin, nine books for children, and about 20 documentary, fiction and TV movie scripts. His work is currently translated into 37 languages, including English, Spanish, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Swedish, Persian and Hebrew, and published in 65 countries.[1] Kurkov, who has long been a respected commentator on Ukraine for the international media, notably in Europe and the United States, has written assorted articles for various publications worldwide. His books are full of black humour, post-Soviet reality and elements of surrealism.

Andrey Kurkov - Wikipedia

And he has very strong opinions about the language:

Ukraine's star author Kurkov says his native Russian should be curbed

Writer Andrey Kurkov tells Ukraine’s story: ‘It’s my duty. This is my front line’

Putin’s bombs and missiles rain down, but he will never destroy Ukraine’s culture | Andrey Kurkov | The Guardian

ANDREY KURKOV on how citizens are refusing to bend to Russia's bullying  | Daily Mail Online

Andrey Kurkov: “It’s impossible to say that all the world is behind Ukraine”  - New Statesman

Andrey Kurkov: Ukrainians will never be Russians | News | The Sunday Times

'He is ready to die for the country': Famed Ukrainian writer on Zelensky - CNN Video

You can read this in three languages:

The Archeology of War | The New Yorker

Археологія війни | The New Yorker

Археология войны | The New Yorker

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the first great book on education: what we can learn from rousseau's "emile"

Emile, or On Education (French: Émile, ou De l’éducation) is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the "best and most important" of all his writings.[1] 

Rousseau seeks to describe a system of education that would enable the natural man he identifies in The Social Contract (1762) to survive corrupt society.[4] He employs the novelistic device of Emile and his tutor to illustrate how such an ideal citizen might be educated. Emile is scarcely a detailed parenting guide but it does contain some specific advice on raising children.[5] It is regarded by some as the first philosophy of education in Western culture to have a serious claim to completeness, as well as being one of the first Bildungsroman novels.[6]

Emile, or On Education - Wikipedia

From Blank Slate to a Full Heart: What Schools Can Learn from Rousseau

The educational philosophy of the 17thcentury French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 

His ideas and writings build upon John Locke’s student-centered philosophy of schooling, suggesting an even more asset-based approach to education, one that values the innate character and birthright talents that our children offer. 

In his world, students are not just a ‘blank slate’ to be written upon with knowledge or content, and certainly do not need to be fixed or saved, but should be valued for their natural abilities and innate desire to be free, and thus, to learn.

...

As we consider online learning models, technology integration, standardization, accountability, benchmarks, outcomes, and funding models, we need to remember the work of this important educational theorist and philosopher. 

We need to remember that kids are fundamentally ‘good’, that we all are. We need not fear them, or ‘fill them up’ with bad ideas that might ruin our economy or our world. Rather, we need to honor the innate goodness within our students, our kids, and give them more choice, freedom, and trust in the natural process of learning, one in which we all know works best.

From Blank Slate to a Full Heart: What Schools Can Learn from Rousseau | by Tales from Classroom | Medium

WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?

Rousseau highlights how to teach children. Visually showing a child (learning based) has a significant impact rather than teaching from books. When you visually show a child, they learn and actually have a better understanding of what is being taught. “…Never substitute the symbol for the thing signified, unless it is impossible to show the thing itself” (Rousseau 16.) 

Rousseau showcases this when Emilie and him were exploring a forest and were trying to find their way back home. Emile was tired and gave up. Nevertheless, Rousseau helped them find their way back. This experience helped Emile actually learn instead of forgetting what one learns if it was a lecture taught at home or school. “Teach by doing whenever you can, and only fall back upon words when doing is out of the question” (Rousseau 20). 

Experience plays a vital role on learning. Rousseau’s ideology is connected to Locke’s idea about experience.

Rousseau | School Isn't Everything

Education, unchained
Rousseau’s child-centred ideals are now commonplace but his truly radical vision of educational freedom still eludes us
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile; or On Education (1762) is perhaps the most influential work on education written in the modern world. Rousseau’s advocacy of learning via direct experience and creative play inspired the Swiss educational reformer Johann Pestalozzi, the German educator Friedrich Fröbel and the kindergarten movement. His stress on the training of the body as well as the mind was the forerunner of the mania for organised sports that swept English boarding schools in the 19th century and inspired Baron Pierre de Coubertin to found the modern Olympic Games in 1896. His observation that children develop via a series of clearly demarcated stages, each with its own unique cognitive and emotional capacities, underpinned the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s theories of child psychology in the 1920s. And his insistence on the value of learning in nature lies in the background of today’s Forest School movement.
And yet Rousseau referred to his text as ‘less an educational treatise than a visionary’s reveries about education’. Émile is a thought experiment, in which the philosopher imagines a system of education designed to protect the natural unity of his pupil’s consciousness from the ills of civilisation. Rousseau was renowned for being optimistic about human nature. In the primeval forests of our species’ infancy, mankind was solitary, happy and good – a zen-like noble savage who lived entirely for himself and in the present moment. It was only over time, Rousseau argued, as social bonds were extended and civilisation grew more complex, that this original unity was disturbed. Natural man was solitary and free, but social man – especially as encountered in the salons of Enlightenment Paris – was self-conscious, calculating, deceitful, egotistical and perverse. His aim in Émile was to devise a system of education capable of producing a complete, free and good human being. Émile was to be an unalienated ‘savage’ who could nevertheless thrive in the modern world.
Rousseau called this process ‘negative education’ and urged teachers to begin by ‘studying your pupils better’. Rather than stuffing children full of moral precepts and academic knowledge, the aim was to work with the grain of the pupil’s innate capacities and desires. Rousseau was one of the first proponents of the Romantic belief in the nobility of childhood, its freedom from adult corruption and closeness to the state of nature. Émile was to learn directly from nature in a retired country setting. He would be shielded from the pernicious influence of books until the age of 12, and then would be restricted for several years to a single book, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), for its message of self-reliance and the importance of perceiving things in themselves. Until the age of 15, Émile would learn practical craft skills, rather than theory-laden subjects such as history and religion. The role of the tutor was to design his environment so that he could ‘discover’ the laws of nature and morality for himself. For Rousseau, Émile could be free and good only insofar that ‘he see with his own eyes, feel with his own heart, [and] that no authority govern him beyond that of his own reason’.

It’s time we revived Rousseau’s radical spirit in schooling | Aeon Essays

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voting or lottery: replace elected politicians with randomly selected citizen

"People in power don't like random selection" 

The powerful don't like unpredictability - especially if it might mean losing their positions. 

If you think democracy is broken, here's an idea: let's replace politicians with randomly selected people. Author and activist Brett Hennig presents a compelling case for sortition democracy, or random selection of government officials -- a system with roots in ancient Athens that taps into the wisdom of the crowd and entrusts ordinary people with making balanced decisions for the greater good of everyone. Sound crazy? Learn more about how it could work to create a world free of partisan politics.

What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people? | Brett Hennig - YouTube

What if we replaced elected politicians with randomly selected citizens?
Congress would be made up of ordinary people, selected in lotteries, not elections. It’s an idea that goes back thousands of years—but is getting new attention.

What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected citizens?

The problem with democracy is voters
Why almost everything you think about democracy is wrong.

Two eminent political scientists: The problem with democracy is voters - Vox

In governance, sortition (also known as selection by lottery, selection by lot, allotment, demarchy, stochocracy, aleatoric democracy and lottocracy) is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates.[1]

Sortition - Wikipedia

Voting undermines the will of the people – it's time to replace it with sortition

Our representative form of government divides us but installing ordinary people at the heart of power would be transformative

If we want to fix the way our governments work, the first thing we should do is replace voting with sortition in at least some of our governing bodies. Sortition means to choose – to “sort” – by the use of lots; that is, by random sample, like the method we use to choose jurors for a court case. Instead of voting for members of parliament or congress, we should choose at least some of them randomly. It is the most straightforward way of enabling ordinary citizens to participate in the running of their country, and the effect it would have on politics and government would be transformative.

Voting undermines the will of the people – it's time to replace it with sortition | Australian politics | The Guardian

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language in ukraine: language maps

There has been a history of trying to eradicate cultural and linguistic identity:

Cancelling other cultures - The New European

Russia's push to crush Ukrainian - The New European

It's very difficult to do so if there are lots of different languages: 

Languages of Ukraine - Wikipedia

Here's another map - which shows where the current Russian government would like to split the country:

Languages of Ukraine — Young Pioneer Tours

Russia plans a ‘Korean scenario’ for Ukraine: Intelligence chief | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

Here's a diagram which shows that if you speak Ukrainian, you'll understand Russian and vice versa:

Ukraine vs Russian language | Very Hungry Nomads

However, just because you speak Russian in Ukraine does not mean you identify with Russia:

What do Ukraine’s Russian speakers want? - The Washington Post

Op-Ed: Speaking Russian doesn't make me a supporter of Putin's war - Los Angeles Times

How Russia weaponizes the language issue in Ukraine - Atlantic Council

Language in Ukraine: Why Russian vs. Ukrainian divides so deeply - CSMonitor.com

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language in ukraine: mariupol greek

One city has been in the news of late - with very different perspectives.

The Guardian last week reported on people being 'deported' from the city:

Ukraine crisis: claims Mariupol women and children forcibly sent to Russia | Ukraine | The Guardian

On the other hand, Russia Today reports on how an academic has been 'silenced' in the UK:

Professor faces government crackdown for questioning Ukraine narrative — RT World News

Russia Today prefers to tell us about another city:

Surviving among ruins: life in a Donbass city Ukraine says no longer exists — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union

As Russia Today admits, "the region has a distinct identity and doesn’t fit neatly into either Russia or Ukraine":

Historic roots of the Donbass problem explained — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union

And that includes a Greek-speaking population:

Ethnic Greeks (including Urums) in Donetsk Oblast

Mariupol Greek - Wikipedia

History of the Greeks in Ukraine: Staying Silent We Betray Our Heritage

From the New European:

Greek roots of a seized city

PETER TRUDGILL explains how Catherine the Great’s ‘Greek Project’ led to the naming of Khersón

The Ukrainian city of Khersón (Hersón, Chersón) ... was founded by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great in 1778, and was one of a number of cities established at around that time in “New Russia”, which was the term used by the Russians to refer to the area along the north shore of the Black Sea, which they annexed from the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the 18th century.

Other towns in that region dating from the same period include Mariúpol, Sevastópol (English Sebastopol), Simferópol, Melitópol, Tiráspil (Romanian Tiraspol), and Odésa (English Odessa)...

It is not a coincidence that all these names, like Khersón, are of Greek origin. The -pol ending is derived from the Ancient Greek pólis, Modern Greek póli “city”...

Ancient Greek-speaking peoples settled all round the Black Sea, and many large communities of Pontic Greeks – the Ancient Greek name for the Black Sea was Pontos – were still living all around the Black Sea in the 20th century on the coasts of Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and northern Turkey.

For example, large communities of Greeks, with their own distinctive dialect of Greek, still remain in Mariúpol and the surrounding villages.

On February 26 the Athens newspapers reported that 10 ethnic Greeks in Mariúpol and nearby Sartana had been killed by the Russian bombardment of civilians.

The Greek newspaper Kathimerini released the text of a social media message written by the French President Emmanuel Macron, in Greek, condemning the attack.

Translated, his message read: “It is not just the people of Ukraine who are in mourning today because of the war caused by Russia, but all the people of Europe. Tonight, with grief we think of Greece, which unjustly lost 10 members of its community who lived in the Ukrainian city of Mariúpol”.

Greek roots of a seized city - The New European

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how fantasy utopian literature has inspired a war

The Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015 went to the Belorussian writer Svetlana Alexievich
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Svetlana Alexievich: The Truth in Many Voices
Timothy Snyder
The central attainment of Svetlana Alexievich, this year’s laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is the recovery of Soviet experience from myth; it has made her an acute critic of the nostalgic dictatorships in Belarus and Russia.
October 12, 2015
She is connected to Russia and Ukraine as well as Belarus and is a writer of all three nations; the passage from Soviet state to national state was experienced by them all, and her life has been divided among them. Her method is the close interrogation of the past through the collection of individual voices; patient in overcoming cliché, attentive to the unexpected, and restrained in the exposition, her writing reaches those far beyond her own experiences and preoccupations, far beyond her generation, and far beyond the lands of the former Soviet Union. Polish has a nice term for this approach, literatura faktu, “the literature of fact.” Her central attainment, the recovery of experience from myth, has made her an acute critic of the nostalgic dictatorships in Belarus and Russia.
To say that Alexievich was born in Soviet Ukraine in 1948 is already to indulge in the kind of simplification she has sought to expose from the beginning. Her home city, Stanislaviv, was in a region known as Galicia, which had been part of Poland from the fourteenth century, part of the Habsburg monarchy in the nineteenth, and part of the Second Polish Republic in the 1920s and 1930s. It fell under Soviet rule in 1939 when the Soviet Union invaded Poland following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and then under German power in 1941 when Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union. Jews were the largest population in Stanislaviv before the war; almost every single one was murdered in the Holocaust. Many of the city’s Poles and Ukrainians were killed or deported by either the Germans or the Soviets during the war, and others were drafted into service in the Red Army and died in combat. The Stanislaviv where Alexievich spent the first few years of her life was thus a new Soviet city, both in its administration and its population...

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Svetlana Alexievich: The Truth in Many Voices | Timothy Snyder | The New York Review of Books

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The sort of books the current president of Russia are rather different - with a piece written earlier this month:

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"Third empire". Putin’s special operation
Why does Putin behave in such an arrogant way? Why doesn’t he want peace and doesn’t want to let Ukraine go? Why do his propagandists provocatively threaten to attack European countries, and to start nuclear war with the US, during which they hope to turn America into "radioactive ash"?…
The answer can be found in one book, propaganda-utopia "Third empire". Diplomats, politicians, journalists who have had the opportunity to communicate with the master of the Kremlin, call it Putin’s handbook. If Putin wanted to hide his plans, it would not be noticed. If he took it just in order to read and escape from the monotony of everyday life, it would not lay on his desk for years. If it was not the official ideology of the Kremlin, it would not necessarily studied by the entire leadership of the RF
So, it is a conscious signal, at least, to intelligence services and analysts of Western countries. This instruction of international politics for the Russian autocrat is being implemented now. This is a challenge to the entire democratic world... For a start , let’s talk shortly about its content...

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"Third empire". Putin’s special operation - Dmytro Sinchenko

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But this was spotted many years before - as with this piece from 2014:

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#Ukraine Crisis* Putin does live in another reality: Leonid Bershidsky
The Editor/TheEdge
March 04, 2014 08:19 am +08

(Mar 3): The New York Times reports, third-hand, that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone, worried that he was out of touch with reality, "in another world." To Russians and Ukrainians fearing a Kremlin-ordered military campaign, this sounded like evidence of something they have suspected since Putin asked the parliament for permission to send troops into Ukraine: That Putin is mad.
"Hypertoxic schizophrenia," political consultant Stanislav Belkovsky wrote in a post on Snob.ru, read by almost half a million people and re-posted almost 40,000 times on Facebook: "Putin actually decided he is a great man and can change the course of history."

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Maria Snegovaya, a graduate student at Columbia University, provides a useful analysis of the sources of Putin's ideology, rooted in the writings of early 20th century messianic, nationalist philosophers Nikolai Berdyayev, Vladimir Solovyov and Ivan Ilyin. To them, Russia had a mission to spread and maintain the Orthodox Christian faith on territories it controlled, and the West was the eternal enemy of that mission, perpetually trying to break up the Russian world. Snegovaya also recalls the 2006 book "Third Empire: The Russia That Should Be," by Mikhail Yuriev, an entrepreneur and ideologue popular with Kremlin bureaucrats. In Yuriev's utopia, Russia gathers up the lands of the old Russian empire, grabbing, among other areas, eastern Ukraine after a standoff with NATO. Two years before Russia's small victorious war against Georgia, "Third Empire" described a Russian conquest of the disputed Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

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#Ukraine Crisis* Putin does live in another reality: Leonid Bershidsky | The Edge Markets

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This piece was written earlier today:

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Putin Is Just Following the Manual
A utopian Russian novel predicted Putin’s war plan.
By Dina Khapaeva
MARCH 26, 2022, 7 AM ET
No one can read Vladimir Putin’s mind. But we can read the book that foretells the Russian leader’s imperialist foreign policy. Mikhail Yuriev’s 2006 utopian novel, The Third Empire: Russia as It Ought to Be, anticipates—with astonishing precision—Russia’s strategy of hybrid war and its recent military campaigns: the 2008 war with Georgia, the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the incursion into the Donetsk and Luhansk regions the same year, and Russia’s current assault on Ukraine.
Yuriev’s book, like Putin’s war with Ukraine, is an expression of post-Soviet neo-medievalism, a far-right, anti-Western, and antidemocratic ideology that assigns “Russian Orthodox civilization” a dominant role over Europe and America. Yuriev, a businessman and former deputy speaker of the state Duma who died in 2019, was a member of the political council of the Eurasia Party, which envisions an essentially feudal social order overseen by a political class that rules through fear. Putin and Yuriev knew each other. The Third Empire is rumored to be popular and highly influential in the Russian leader’s circle; one Russian publication described it as “the Kremlin’s favorite book.”
...
Yuriev’s novel is fiction, of course, but should still help the West calculate the risks of appeasing Putin’s aggression. Understanding Russia’s expansionist vision should play an important role in Western decisions regarding the war in Ukraine: Ukraine is not Putin’s only target.

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The Utopian Russian Novel That Predicted Putin’s War Plan - The Atlantic

THIRD EMPIRE Book (download, buy, order) - Rassvet. Books

Mikhail Yuryev - Wikipedia

A Map of Russia’s Third Empire (2053) - Big Think

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increasing vocabulary by playing word games

We love playing games:

Jay Doubleyou: fun and games in the language classroom

Jay Doubleyou: atelic activities

Jay Doubleyou: learn english through gaming

Jay Doubleyou: gamification in learning

Jay Doubleyou: brain food for word games, logic problems and puzzles

Here's another great piece from Liz Granirer of the EL Gazette:

Word games can pay off

Wordle, the five-letter online word game, has become a worldwide addiction, but as well as being the way many of us now start our day, it also appears to have a place in learning English.

As reported in indianexpress.com, writer Anjoo Sharon Navin explains: “Vocabulary quiz games, crossword puzzles and the recent popularity of the word game has garnered success and made people belonging to different age groups develop a new penchant for learning new English vocabulary words.”

Researchers at Talking Hull, part of the University of Hull, agree, telling the site: “Language learning can be ‘high stakes’ or pressurised and games can help with this. People can often feel stressed when learning languages, particularly if English is studied as an academic subject and their future progress depends on learning the language.”

However, the nature of games, with motivational words when you get the correct answer and no penalty if you don’t, take the pressure off.

Of course, no one is suggesting you can become fluent in English by playing word games, but it could be another way of increasing vocabulary, one Wordle at a time.

Word games can pay off | E L Gazette

As well as Wordle, there are lots of other word games to help you with your vocabulary:

Word games develop vocabulary - Thinking Talking

The Best Vocabulary-Building Apps and Games | Apartment Therapy

Playing with Words: The Fun Way to Expand Your Vocabulary : Teachers at Work | Vocabulary.com

Simple Vocabulary & Word Games for Adults: #1 List in 2022

Building Vocabulary Through Fun and Games | Edutopia

10 Vocabulary Activities and Games - YouTube

5 minute vocabulary games - YouTube

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