Washington Post:

Russia, blaming U.S. sabotage, calls for U.N. probe of Nord Stream – The Washington Post
„World leaders quickly suggested Russia was responsible, a view still not entirely dismissed but that some Western intelligence assessments and officials have come to doubt.“

Which world leaders quickly suggested Russia was responsible? On what basis? Did other world leaders suggest a nation other than Russia was responsible? If the view that Russia was responsible is „still not entirely dismissed“, what would cause it to be entirely dismissed? Is it more subject to dismissal today than in September? Why? What are the Western intelligence assessments? If these assessments doubt Russian responsibility who do they suggest might be responsible? The Washington Post does not seem ready to engage with these questions.

George Packer, Die Zeit:

Nach 20 Jahren des Versagens in Afghanistan und im Irak ist es geradezu schockierend zu sehen, dass Washington immer noch weiß, wie man eine Allianz zusammenhält. Biden und seine Berater handeln kompetent. Und es macht mich schon stolz, wenn Ukrainer sich für die amerikanische Hilfe bedanken. Es gibt einem das Gefühl, dass wir doch etwas in der Welt bewirken können, ohne dass es im Debakel endet. Putins Entscheidung hat ironischerweise den Niedergang der amerikanischen Macht in der Weltpolitik umgekehrt.

…

ZEIT ONLINE: Sie haben die Ukraine bereist, und über das intensive Gefühl der Ukrainer für ihr Land geschrieben – fast als hätten Sie dort etwas gesehen, das in den USA heute fehlt.

Packer: Ich war überrascht, einen Patriotismus vorzufinden, der nicht von oben verordnet ist. Die ukrainische Gesellschaft ist mobilisiert, aber von unten her. Und der Patriotismus, den ich da erfahren habe, richtet sich auch gegen die korrupte, autoritäre Tradition des eigenen Landes. Das hat mich mit einiger Wehmut erfüllt: Die Werte, für die die Ukraine eintritt, verfallen in Amerika. Dort versucht man gegen extreme Widerstände eine Demokratie aufbauen, während wir in den USA ihrer Zerstörung zuschauen. Darum muss, wie ich finde, die Ukraine als Modell verteidigt werden. Die Alternative zu ihrem Sieg wäre ein Terrorregime mit Konzentrationslagern und Abertausenden von Deportierten. Ich gebrauche eigentlich selten solche Begriffe, aber hier geht darum, das Böse zu stoppen. Eine nackte Machtpolitik im Dienst einer furchtbaren Ideologie nationaler Größe. Und so etwas sagt man eigentlich auch nicht, aber ich finde, da unterscheidet sich Putin nicht von Hitler.

This is pretty interesting. If you do an Internet search for „Matt Lee John Kirby Ukraine“ you find tweets, YouTube videos, web pages commenting on Matt Lee making a fool of John Kirby speaking about NATO expansion and Ukraine. And indeed, Kirby looks silly. Except if you stop for a minute and think about the actual wording – Russian battle groups moved „near the border“ with Ukraine? „Little green men“ inside Ukraine? If you just do a search for „John Kirby“ you find he’s a national security spokesman for the administration, and you can find him in this role speaking to Fox News. In a suit, not a uniform. The Matt Lee/Kirby clip is from 2014, however it was posted multiple places last week, and is commented on as if the exchange happened last week. This is eerie stuff.

The media about this is sobering to read. Wagenknecht is criticised for the scandalous statement „Putin nicht so sei, wie er im Westen dargestellt werde: ‚ein durchgeknallter Nationalist‘.“ Here Wagenknecht very much agrees with what I’ve read over the years from Charles Clover, former Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, or Timothy Frye, PoliSci Russian expert at Columbia. I think she handles Lanz’s baiting well. Kevin Kühnert’s silent fidgeting is the Olaf Scholz SPD posture exactly: „Damn! Why did a war have to happen on our watch?“

Andrew Cockburn, Harper’s:

Every year on the first of December, the Committee to Protect Journalists publishes its global prison census, documenting the number of journalists behind bars around the world. The 2022 edition set a grim record: 363 jailed journalists. Scanning the list—organized alphabetically by first name—and scrolling down to the J’s, we see that Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro, publisher of the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa, has been locked up since 2021 on charges of money laundering, part of the Ortega dictatorship’s crackdown on independent media. Next is Juret Haji, the director of the Xinjiang Daily, detained since 2018 after a colleague was accused of being “two-faced,” a common Chinese government accusation. Julian Assange would fit neatly between these two names, but he fails to appear, as has been the case since the founder of WikiLeaks was dragged from London’s Ecuadorian Embassy in 2019 and locked in solitary confinement at Belmarsh Prison, dubbed “Britain’s Guantánamo.”

The omission is striking for anyone who recalls the thunderous impact made by Assange’s revelations of U.S. government secrets. But the significance has faded for many, if it ever took hold in the first place. There are few high-profile public demands for an accounting of or prosecution for the crimes exposed through his reporting. In toto, WikiLeaks took away the filters through which we are normally directed to view the world. Without it, we would have little idea of the number of civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan during the American invasion, or of the United States’ war crimes, such as the execution of eleven handcuffed people, including five children, in a 2006 raid on a house in Iraq. We would not know that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was fully aware that Saudi Arabia was a source of “critical financial support” for the Taliban and Al Qaeda; or that the British government was misleading the public about its intentions for the former inhabitants of Diego Garcia, many of whom were displaced in the Sixties and Seventies to make way for an American base. How does the CIA approach the business of so-called targeted assassination? WikiLeaks gave us the agency’s inside view, as well as the methods it developed to bug our TVs and take control of our cars. Did the Democratic National Committee maneuver to rig the 2016 primary campaigns? WikiLeaks showed that indeed it did. “It’s an archive of American diplomacy for those years,” said John Goetz, a former reporter for Der Spiegel who worked with Assange to publish documents. “Without WikiLeaks, we wouldn’t know any of that.”

These achievements have cost Assange more than ten years of confinement and imprisonment.

Pretty happy to have this.

Die Zeit:

Pre-Covid discussions of European autonomy, including that of a Macron-advocated independent European defense force, seem very far away indeed, as does any public recognition of the pre-invasion state of corruption in Ukraine.

Ray McGovern describes Olaf Scholz’s relation to Biden as that of a battered spouse. The visit of Biden, a man openly suffering from dementia, to a khaki clad television comedian serves here, in Die Zeit’s eyes, to demonstrate Europe’s shortcomings. There are endless pious accolades for those brave Ukrainian freedom fighters protecting otherwise defenseless German democracy from the cruel ravages of lawless totalitarianism. This constant spew would have just a few short years ago appeared slapstick humor, as would have the vision of Annalena Baerbock leading a chorus of Die Grünen calls for tanks, jets — you name it — to Ukraine. We daily have both these comedy acts, however mainstream media shows no signs of laughter at what seems so obviously farcical.

SZ: