REMINDER: Bette’s Happy Hour with Reporter Paul Niland Live in Kyiv
Bette members — please register to join Paul Niland, an Irish reporter based in Kyiv, Ukraine, and the founder of the nation’s first suicide hotline, Lifeline Ukraine — Tuesday, July 23, 10 am PT
***BETTE MEMBERS: You will find the registration link at the end of the post below the paywall. If you would like to join our community events, please take out a membership. This event is open to all levels of membership. PLEASE NOTE: 10 am PT start time.
Welcome to all new members, and a heartfelt thank you to those who have been supporting my work with monthly, annual, and Founding Member donations.
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“It is well established that one of the core foundations of the Putin kleptocracy is brainwashing the masses with propaganda. As a result of that, Russia has morphed into a death cult where there is a strong belief that it is honourable to fight and die ‘for the motherland’. This overlooks the fact that Ukraine is not their motherland, and also overlooks the fact that the marauding Russian army is responsible for perhaps the greatest catalogue of war crimes seen anywhere in the world in decades.—Paul Niland
That quote is from this Paul Niland report in Byline Supplement:
I never take my eyes off Ukraine, and that is why I frequently invite guests from Ukraine to speak to Bette members. It is impossible to understand America in 2024 without understanding what happened in Ukraine in 2014.
It’s important to not look away from the traitors who worked for Putin a decade ago and then worked for Trump for free.
Our collective amnesia is a weakening spell, and as I read reports from other countries, there is an assumption that we are giving up our agency — that we are obeying in advance to the inevitability of Trump.
I don’t believe so. We may be a hot mess, but we’ll pull it together, as we are doing right now.
Here are some important reports from Paul Niland to get a sense of what we’ll be discussing:
Malicious, Stupid, Or Compromised? The MAGA Republican Position On Support For Ukraine
Why Is Boris Johnson Endorsing a Second Trump Presidency in the Name of Ukraine?
If you are new to Bette, scroll down to the very bottom of this post to access the registration link.
As noted: this event is Tuesday, 10 am PT. Paul Niland is based in Kyiv, so we are starting early and hoping he has electricity.
Those of us who care about democracy realize the stakes of 2024. It’s democratic governance vs aligning with the new Axis of Evil.
I stay close to my friends in Ukraine — they are not fooled by Russian information warfare.
When I brought Paul back for Ep96 of RadPod, I knew it would be an important interview, but it still blew me away when he described Russia as a death cult.
“The UK Defense Ministry said the number is 465,000 dead and wounded Russians… they don’t do medevac, they don’t take people off the battlefield… it’s even worse than that, they not only leave their own to bleed out on the battlefield, anyone who is retreating is shot by the Russian side.
“As a result of propaganda, Russia has become a death cult. The way that the supposed heroism of fighting and dying for your country is portrayed in Russia has become a fundamental part of their national identity. And one of the things that leads to that is the militarization of their society — we’ve seen that in the ten years since Russia has been at war with Ukraine.”
When Niland talked about how Russia denied the war in Donbas a decade ago, I think about how Stalin denied that he was starving Ukrainians. Instead, he ran a propaganda campaign to pin the blame on starving peasants and not his failed collectivization. Poland ran its own propaganda campaign, putting up posters of Stalin calling him the “Hunger Tsar”.
“The domestic propaganda has not only turned Russia into a fascist state, but it’s also a death cult, it’s a place where people are indoctrinated into believing the lies about the reasons for this war.”—Paul Niland, Ep96 RadPod
Niland became a reporter after the initial invasion a decade ago, when Russia tried to portray Ukrainians as nazis — poisoning the truth, poisoning reality.
Please have a listen to our interview, and Bette members, please register for our Tuesday event below the paywall.
Good news since last time Paul joined us in May: LifelineUkraine.com received funding to continue doing its very important work! Thank you to Bette members who also supported. Niland founded the national suicide to help prevent veteran suicides after Russia’s first invasion. As we all know, war is hell.
Thank you to everyone who supports my work, and the work of many vital pro-democracy voices in this global fight for truth and humanity,
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Begin each day with a grateful heart.
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