Posts Tagged ‘Ukraine’

Now that Ukraine is taking back territory from Russia, now is the time for the New York Times to return Walter Duranty’s tainted Pulitzer

Posted: September 11, 2022 by John Ruberry in media, News/opinion, war
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Pro-Ukraine protest in downtown Chicago this spring

By John Ruberry

There is good news out of Ukraine, its forces have made gains in the Kharkiv region and they are near Russian border. There is much ground still to liberate, not only land that Russia has seized in the war that began early this year, but also the area that have been controlled by Russian separatists in the Donetsk region since 2014, as well as Crimea, which Vladimir Putin annexed the same year.

Ukraine has endured an unhappy history. World War II and the Holocaust devastated Ukraine. And in order to impose communism on wealthier peasants in Ukraine, Josef Stalin engineered a famine in the early 1930s, known there as the Holodomor, translating roughly into “man-made starvation.” Roughly four million people perished as a result of Stalin’s atrocities against the kulaks in Ukraine.

Even in a closed society, it’s difficult to coverup a famine. And news trickled out of Ukraine about the Holodomor. But a New York Times reporter, based in Moscow, Walter Duranty, dismissed such stories, instead of “famine” he wrote of “malnutrition” in Ukraine, for instance. 

For a series of 1931 articles about the Soviet Union, Duranty, for his “dispassionate interpretive reporting,” he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. 

While in Moscow, Duranty, was granted a rarity, interviews with Stalin; he also enjoyed another rarity, a luxury apartment in the Soviet capital. During the entire history of the USSR, housing of any kind was scarce. In Moscow Duranty had a mistress, whom he impregnated, and a chauffeur. Automobiles were also rare in Russia in the 1930s. 

In 1933, another journalist, or I should say, a real one, Gareth Jones, visited Ukraine and he was horrified by what he found. “If it is grave now and if millions are dying in the villages, as they are, for I did not visit a single village where many had not died, what will it be like in a month’s time?” Jones wrote for the London Evening Standard. “The potatoes left are being counted one by one, but in so many homes the potatoes have long run out.” 

Duranty’s response to Jones was a New York Times article, “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving.” That same year, Duranty wrote to a friend, “The famine is mostly bunk.”

Another shameful sentence from Duranty, about Stalin’s brutal policies as the Holodomor continued, “To put it brutally,” Duranty wrote for the Times, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

Since the war began attention has been brought to Duranty’s undeserved Pulitzer. Even NPR took notice. “He is the personification of evil in journalism,” Oksana Piaseckyj told NPR earlier this year of Duranty. She is a Ukrainian-American activist who emigrated here as a child over 70 years ago. “We think he was like the originator of fake news,” Piaseckyj added.

The New York Times admitted on its corporate website about Duranty’s work, “Since the 1980’s, the [Times] has been publicly acknowledging his failures.” But it has not returned the tainted Pulitzer. It also notes that twice, most recently in 2003, the Pulitzer board has decided not to revoke its award to Duranty. 

It’s time for them to reconsider.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Someone Explain This to Me….

Posted: May 22, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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Billions of Dollars invested in China by the NBA and it’s players clearly affects how the league responds to outrageous actions there but supposedly Billions of dollars bet on games here in the US have ABSOLUTELY NO effect on the results of games.

When placed under oath Robby Mook contradicts every single assertion that the Media has made for years concerning the Russia probe yet no media outlet seems the least bit upset and the prospect of supposedly “being taken” for years on the subject.

Supposedly the Democrat left the whole “Black Lives Matter” business was about saving lives yet according to this data homicide rates in the black community are up 50% since this entire enterprise began.

Sending 40 Billion dollars to help defend Ukraine shows support for Ukraine, but sending 40 Billion dollars to Ukraine and having an Inspector General make sure the money actually goes to defending Ukraine is shows you oppose defending Ukraine.

For the last 20 years I never heard a public service ad advising people for the signs of aneurisms, but since those totally safe vaccines that absolutely aren’t causing unexpected deaths my radio is suddenly regularly playing ads warning about the early signs of this, all sponsored by the maker of the COVID vaccine.

Five Fast Thoughts Under the Fedora The CNN+ Mystery, No Argument, Gas Attack, Klepto Problems, and the cost of a stolen election in Dollars.

Posted: April 28, 2022 by datechguy in under the fedora
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There are wastes of space and articles like this:

What doomed CNN+? How rival strategies and executive intrigue fueled the streaming service’s rapid demise

Seriously, it’s because of rival strategies and executive intrigue that CNN+ failed. How about the idea that it was trying to get a population to pay for a product that they haven’t been able to give away free.

God how stupid do they think we are?

Nothing illustrates how deadly the idea of people being able to make their case to the general public without leftist censorship to the electoral prospects of Democrats as the complete and utter meltdown of the left over the Elon Musk purchase of Twitter.

Again when your opponents have bad arguments it’s not hard to dispute them, when they have better arguments that’s the time to rethink your positions or panic. The left has chosen the later

As Ann Althouse put it: “It’s interesting how much free speech the opponents of free of speech already have.”

Anyone surprised by Russia’s move to cut of Gas to Poland and Bulgaria has no sense of history or of how Russia thinks.

In terms of how they think, anyone who has followed this history of the last 200 years knows that once Russians decide someone is their enemy no amount of local hardship is unendurable if it causing said enemies to suffer. That’s how Putin will sell it to his people and they’ll buy it.

Secondly all of the history of the last forty years of the USSR & Russia funding groups in the west to decrease energy self sufficiency was precisely for this eventually where Russia would force their potential foes into tough choices.

Not sure how this ends.

Speaking of Russia and the war while I distrust all the various sources all we have seen thus far shows the weakness of the crony system of procurement.

When you’re busy stealing and skimming it can be a problem when suddenly the equipment you have turns out to be substandard. Furthermore in a Kleptocrocary which in many ways Russia is the idea that you would use state funds to enrich yourself rather than solve a problem is considered the norm.

It’s very possible that the Russia’s performance in the war in Ukraine is the natural end result and this time around there won’t be the US sending convoys of arms and equipment to save them.

Finally I got an oil bill earlier this month that perfectly illustrates the cost of a stolen election.

It was a split bill for the 180 gallons of oil I got. Half of it was priced at the pre-pay price that I paid under Trump before the election. The other half showed the current price under Biden.

You can talk about the costs of a stolen election in terms of what it’s done to our country, our foreign policy and our freedoms but I have a concrete figure of how much this stolen election is costing me in cash. And that cost is a full week’s take home pay every time oil is delivered.

Multiply that times every voter who sees snow and cold in the winter and that tells me that they’ll have be even more blatant next time to push that walking corpse in the White House over the line.

Under the Fedora Ukraine Developments, An Interesting Holy Week, A Pitiful Display, Expectation Games Trump vs Biden, Getting What you deserve in Seattle

Posted: April 13, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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While Don Surber is right to hit General Miley both on his destruction of the morale, discouraging recruitment and getting Afghanistan wrong I have to give him a little bit of a mulligan in terms of Kiev.

To my knowledge while very few people were cheering for Russia to conquer Ukraine to my knowledge very few outside observers anticipated a successful defense of Kiev. In fact I think the only public figure that had any confidence in Ukraine resisting Russia was Zelenskyy.

It is of course still early and the Russian Bear might return in force or even bearing battlefield nukes but right now it looks like Ukraine will still exist as a nation and the person who deserves the credit for it is Zelenskyy who shocked everyone by deciding to stay and fight rather than take the money and run.

Corruption and patriotism are apparently not mutually exclusive.

Between Catholic Cardinals and Bishops in Germany saying we need to rethink the catechism on Sodomy in Germany and Pope Francis excluding the crucifix from an event in Malta in Lent so as to not offend Muslim migrants who might attend it’s a very interesting time to be a Catholic of faith.

A great way to get though this is to remember that while people and cultures may change neither God, nor the message of Christ nor truth has and Truth is always pastoral and that this isn’t the first time we’re run into this kind of thing (remember when there were multiple Popes all claiming the chair of St. Peter?)

The Best way to get though it however is to keep the basics

  1. Go to mass
  2. Pray (particularly the Rosary)
  3. Have faith in the Holy Spirit and Christ words that the gates of Hell will not prevail against his church

And never forget love is being willing to say the truth to a person who might not want to hear it, but needs to hear it.

The most interesting thing about the pushback on the Florida law not allowing teachers to push sex on kids eight years old and younger and younger is the absolute apoplexy of teachers, particularly gay and transgender teachers at the thought of not be able to do so.

By any objective standard this should be the golden age for such people in the west. In three generations this stuff has gone from being illegal to being celebrated and affirmed to the point where if you don’t completely embrace the LGBTQ ETC ETC ETC agenda you risk your livelihood, your reputation and angry mobs harassing you.

So why are such folks, during the easiest time in the last 1000 years to be gay or lesbian or transgender in western civilization so insecure about their identifies and proclivities that they can’t function without pushing it on kids?

My own theory is that reality doesn’t care about such false cultural trappings. I think a creature that is made in the image of God can’t run from the internal, even instinctual feeling that something about them is wrong, so no amount of affirmation is enough to get them though the day.

That’s what happens when you take God out of society and replace it with an idol.

Having my own sins to deal and per the command of Christ I can’t judge such people but I do pity them.

The latest inflation numbers are out and are the worst that Americans under 40 have ever seen. and the worst since the days of Carter.

That Brings up an interesting thing about both the Biden and Trump administrations, I had very low expectations for both of them.

The degree of success he had both at home and domestically of those years was astounding. Repeatedly the good economic news was reported as “better than expected” by a press flummoxed by said success. The Trump years were the most prosperous years of my life since the early days of the George W. Bush Administration.

Trump not only exceeded my low expectation but did so beyond my wildest expectations.

As for Biden my expectations were even lower given the theft of the election. I expected a tough time.

We now have war in Europe, Inflation at Carter Admin levels, Oil and gas prices through the roof, Supreme Court Justices who don’t know what a woman is and don’t believe in natural rights and food shortages. FOOD SHORTAGES!

As I said I had very low expectation for the Biden administration but even these failures were beyond my wildest dreams.

If you told me in 1997 that twenty five years later I’d consider Bill Clinton would the most competent Democrat to hold the Whitehouse since Johnson and the Least Corrupt since Carter I wouldn’t have believed you.

Finally apparently we’re reached the point in Seattle where if you’re the victim of a sexual assault as far as the city is concerned you’re on your own:

So here we are in 2022 and as predicted the public safety situation has become untenable. The city lacks enough officers to investigate sexual assault cases. Maybe no one predicted this specific outcome but many warnings were given multiple times over the past 20 months that public safety was going to suffer because of the lack of staffing. That’s what happened. The predictions were correct. The defund the police supporters on the city council put the city in this position. They should be the ones answering for this mess.

This would be bad news for the woman of Seattle but as neither the mayor’s office nor the police are staffed by biologists apparently the city won’t come to that conclusion.

I find myself completely unable to muster any outrage over it as the people, like many others in blue cities are getting exactly the government they deserve.

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