Further Over the Waves
Ignoring what happens in other countries is an invitation to fascism
***Please take out a membership to support the light of truth.***
Riding trains through Europe I’ve made a point of looking further over the waves, gazing to the farthest points.
For me, it’s become a metaphor for America’s failings to see past its own borders, to rarely look beyond the waves to see the struggles in other countries not being spoon fed to you by billionaire-owned media with a fascist agenda.
If we had done so, we would never have allowed Donald J. Trump to become president in 2016. He was always a Russian asset. Those facts were known and documented.
The facts were there for all to see a decade ago, when Trump became a serious candidate. All anyone had to do was look at Ukraine — spend literally fifteen minutes reviewing what happened in 2014.
I figured it out by reading one paragraph, written by Alexandra Chalupa, who explained in a Medium post from 2016 titled Beyond A Reasonable Doubt: Putin Attacked the US Election that Putin feared Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because she knew he had cheated on his 2011 election. She demanded an international investigation, and he blamed her for the Russian people rising up in massive protests in rejection of his election fraud.
Chalupa wrote:
The threat of Hillary Clinton.
In 2011, Putin accused Secretary of State Clinton of meddling in Russian politics after Putin’s United Russia Party won a landslide of legislative seats in what many experts believe was a fraudulent election, sparking massive protests in Moscow. Clinton has since condemned the invasion of Crimea, sworn to uphold US obligations to NATO, denounced Russian interference during the campaign, and would have likely continued the sanctions against Russia. Trump, in contrast, has been named an “honorary Russian Cossack.” For Russia, not only was Trump a malleable candidate, but Clinton was a fierce opponent to their aims who needed to be stopped.
In that same post, Chalupa also noted that Trump's pro bono campaign manager Paul Manafort had helped to install Ukraine’s Russian puppet, Viktor Yanukovych. He even used the same ‘lock her up’ slogan — they weren’t even inventive.
But we weren’t looking further over the waves. Too many people were watching the Reality TV spectacle, which didn’t bother telling viewers who Paul Manafort was and who Donald J. Trump was — they just got spectacle.
We had a great leader in Hillary Clinton, someone who was actively trying to get us to pay attention to what was actually happening in the world, and we just couldn’t listen. Why?
I’ve spent the last decade answering that question, and you can read my thousands of reports on the subject, but today it is my humble hope that Americans will take an interest in what is happening in Ukraine, Georgia, Romania, Moldova, Belarus, Hungary, Chechnya, Estonia, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Venezuela, Syria — among the countries where Russia has engaged in violence and active measures, in what can be described as the first decade of World War III.
Seeing further isn't necessarily about better vision, but the ability to extract the signal from the noise.
Today, if you’re not paying attention to the country of Georgia, you are missing a revolution by people desperately trying to hold on to their freedom. If you’re not paying attention to Romania, you are missing the frontline fight against Russian election interference through a TikTok puppet.
As the former foreign minister of Lithuania Gabrielius Landsbergis told me:
“What we're facing currently is a new phenomenon, and we’ve seen how it's played out in the United States, but in Europe now it's very clearly seen. For example, in Romania, where suddenly out of nowhere, a candidate appears with an extreme agenda, anti-Ukrainian, anti-European, pro-Russian.
And suddenly, he's just on TikTok, basically talking whatever comes to his mind, and he’s number one. So how do you fight? It's not a public space that we were prepared for. There's no place for arguments. There is nothing like that. And then he has millions of shares and millions of followers, and spread all over, and then you lose a battle.
So this is a very, very new phenomenon. And I'm particularly worried about the role TikTok is playing in this. And I think that we have to start building up new instruments. And maybe Romania, in some way, is actually paving the way. They're being very hard line about fighting this, but from where I stand, they're doing everything that they can to defend their country.
On Georgia, he said:
HSC: Do people in Europe acknowledge that Russian money and rich businessmen are attempting to overthrow governments?
GL: We're still in denial. Clearly, this is still the denial phase of the reality. I've just come back from Georgia, and I met the opposition there, the non-governmental organizations, parents of the people who are political prisoners being held in prisons right now. I mean, it's just so obvious that we are losing the country. The people themselves there are losing their country to Russia, without tanks, just via, as you said, with the political technology, and then capturing the state, capturing the institutions, changing the laws so that they make the country unrecognizable.
Then one day, you wake up in the morning and you understand that it's no longer the country that you've been born into, or that you remember, throughout your life, because it barely resembles a democratic country.
You know, you have political prisoners all over the place, and it resembles Belarus rather than a democratic country. So it's truly horrible, and to think that they're left alone. All the people I met, whoever I talked to, all of them had one request: ‘Can you get Europe's attention? Because nobody's here. We're literally fighting this alone…’
I am grateful for the brave Americans who are fighting against the New Fascist Regime — may their strength hold out and may their numbers grow. It is my belief that only with a massive resistance never seen before in the US will the Trump-Musk duopoly have any chance of being overthrown.
My hope now turns to Europe.
As I wrote recently, Russia’s power is a mirage. It’s a projection of empire held together with flimsy lies. By going all in to support Ukraine, Russia could be decimated before Musk and Trump infuse its crumbling empire with US capital.
By paying attention to other countries, we can see how they are being hit with cheap Soviet-style attacks to deny people their own ability to parse truth.
In my latest Hot Type column for Byline, I wrote:
The subject of trust is fresh on my mind as I learned about a Russian spy ring exposed by Austrian intelligence. My colleague Deitmar Pichler, the founder of the Disinformation Resilience Network, told Byline Supplement:
“In Vienna, a Russian spy cell operated by a Bulgarian woman spray-painted ‘pro-Ukrainian’ slogans alongside far-right symbols, with the intention of portraying Ukraine and its supporters as fascist—perfectly aligned with Russian propaganda. In France, a Russian cell painted Stars of David on buildings in a Jewish neighbourhood to incite tensions between communities following the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Reality is continually under assault by desperate men who have no future if they are out of power.
Hillary Clinton knew this.
She knew Putin feared the Qaddafi ending and said so.
If only we had seen further over the waves to Eastern Europe to learn about the Kremlin’s political technologists who directed a virtual assassination of Clinton. If we had, perhaps Putin would be in prison right now and America wouldn't be deteriorating into a fascist hellscape threatening the well-being of free people the world over.
I don’t know if we’ll get a second chance at democracy. We must demand it, and we must do everything in our power to ensure other countries don’t follow America’s lead.
But it starts with paying attention.
We used to have reliable newspapers with international bureaus, who kept us informed on world events.
Now, we have political technologists who direct our attention to what they want us to see and feel.
They are our enemies.
Separate the signal from the noise.
Look deeply, and don’t be afraid to swim.
****
****
****
Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members.
I expose the corruption of billionaire fascists, while relying on memberships for support.
Thank you in advance for considering the following:
Share my reporting with allies
Buying my ebooks
A private link to an annual membership discount for older adults, those on fixed incomes or drawing disability, as well as activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous/gmail. 🥹
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
🤍
Begin each day with a grateful heart.
🤍
Thank you for giving us perspective. Will they write that we lost WWIII to the political technologists?