17 апреля 2014 г. Квартал-95 хорошо оттянулся в Горловке, над которой уже висел флаг ДНР. Зе сказал там, что его задача – «максимально шатать действующую власть» (т.е. Турчинова и Ко).
«Мы в принципе не можем быть против русского народа, потому что мы один народ»
В интервью донецкой «Муниципальной газете» Зеленский заявил:
«Вот сейчас очень важный момент. Я хочу, чтобы мы все говорили на одном языке — на том, на котором сейчас говорим. Понимая друг друга. Мы в принципе не можем быть против русского народа, потому что мы один народ. И наша „квартальская“ позиция — не за правительство Украины, а за украинский народ. И не против русского народа, а против российского правительства. Как мы можем его не любить? Мы же не идиоты! Мы читаем одни и те же книги.».
Фото: gorlovka.ua
«Вчера в Горловке выступил коллектив „Студии 95 квартал“
18 апреля 2014 года на сайте издания «Горловская правда» появился материал под заголовком «Вчера в Горловке Владимир Зеленский и „Студия 95 квартал“ шутили над политиками». В статье говорилось: „Вчера в Горловке в КСКЦ „Стирол“ выступил коллектив „Студии 95 квартал“.
«Мрази» и заработки
Cудя по комментариям к публикации, от визита Зеленского в Горловке далеко не все были в восторге:
«95 квартал твари продажные».
«Рубильщики бабла. Надоели».
«Шуты царей и иуд, после последнего концерта я вас теперь перестала уважать».
резидент Украины Владимир Зеленский в последнее время превратился в настоящего «ястреба». Грозные заявления звучат одно за одним — украинский лидер позиционирует себя как решительного и бескомпромиссного борца с «российским влиянием».
Грозный «ястреб»
Вслед за закрытием трех оппозиционных каналов последовали обвинения в государственной измене в адрес известного украинского журналиста Анатолия Шария.
«Над зданием городского совета сейчас возвышается флаг «ДНР»
Как выяснилось, нынешний президент Украины, взявшийся за искоренение «пророссийских партий и пропагандистов», сам в 2014 году оказался в довольно двусмысленной ситуации.
14 апреля 2014 года портал «Вести.ua» сообщал: «В Горловке пророссийские активисты штурмовали мэрию и провозгласили новым градоначальником главу самообороны Горловки Александра Сапунова. Над зданием городского совета сейчас возвышается флаг так называемой „Донецкой национальной республики“… Захватчики контролируют помещение и не пускают туда даже депутатов».
Таким образом, 14 апреля Горловка, по крайней мере, частично, контролировалась сторонниками ДНР. Что не помешало Владимиру Зеленскому вместе с коллегами тремя днями позже провести там концерт.
В тот же день на сайте Gorlovka.ua появилась статья под названием: «„Студия 95 квартал“ пообещала во время гастролей в радиусе 100 километров обедать и ужинать только в Горловке».
В ней рассказывалось о том, что после концерта артисты ужинали в пабе «Берлога». Владелец паба Сергей Пилипчук рассказывал следующее: «Пришли к нам всей командой и даже привели с собой тех, кто ждал их и должен был встречать в Донецке. По-моему, остались очень довольны и пообещали при любых гастролях в радиусе сто километров от Горловки обедать и ужинать только у нас».
«Мрази» и заработки
Что не мешало ему продолжать совместные с российскими коллегами комедийные проекты. В частности, Зеленский чрезвычайно переживал, когда новый сезон сериала «Сваты» не удалось снять из-за санкций, наложенных на российских актеров, а сам сериал при Порошенко вообще оказался запрещен к показу.
Да и ныне борец с «российским влиянием» умудрился продать в Россию франшизу своего проекта «Лига смеха». Видимо, потому что патриотизм патриотизмом, а бизнес бизнесом.
Накануне заседания СНБО “Страна” напомнила Зеленскому тур по Донбассу весной 2014
Незадолго до заседания СНБО ряд СМИ снова вспомнил о поездке студии “Квартал 95” в Горловку в апреле 2014 года, практически в разгар боевых действий на Донбассе. Среди них издание “Страна”, СМИ боевиков, российские СМИ, издание “Українські новини” и блогер Анатолий Шарий.
Информационным поводом стал пост от 17 февраля со страницы Анжелики Безлер. От ее имени часто пишет Игорь Безлер, один из полевых командиров так называемой ДНР. В нем “Бес”, как называют Безлера, жалеет, что не убил Зеленского еще тогда.
Издание “Горловская правда” сообщало, что концерт прошел в зале завода “Стирол”.
“Горловские зрители мирно, гостеприимно и доброжелательно встретили долгожданных гостей из столицы. Концерт прошел с аншлагом”, — сообщили в издании.
Горловский ресторатор Сергей Пилипчук, который владел горловским пабом “Берлога”, в котором ужинали артисты, рассказывал изданию, что артисты “остались очень довольны и пообещали при любых гастролях в радиусе сто километров от Горловки обедать и ужинать только у нас”.
На сайте билетного оператора “Карабас” действительно можно было купить билеты на выступление “95 квартала” 17 апреля 2014 года в Горловке.
“Украинская корпорация юмора, отечественная машина смеха и креатива — “Студия Квартал-95″, несмотря на непростую ситуацию в стране, продолжает радовать всех своим замечательным творчеством”, — говорилось в описании к мероприятию.
Также СМИ вспомнили о якобы поездке “Квартала” в Донецк за два дня до выступления в Горловке, когда уже захватывали Славянск. Тогда Зеленский якобы заявлял, что “русские и украинцы — один народ”.
“Вот сейчас очень важный момент. Я хочу, чтобы мы все говорили на одном языке – на том, на котором сейчас говорим. Понимая друг друга. Мы в принципе не можем быть против русского народа, потому что мы один народ. Проблемы правительства России и его отношения, в силу различных обстоятельств, к правительству Украины вылились на нас с вами”, — заявлял Зеленский в Донецке.
По словам якобы Зеленского в интервью, позиция “95 квартала” – “не за правительство Украины, а за украинский народ”.
“И не против русского народа, а против российского правительства. Как мы можем его не любить? Мы же не идиоты! Мы читаем одни и те же книги. Но мы не стесняемся выказывать свое отношение к правительству Российской Федерации. Как, собственно, и отношение к нашему правительству”, — якобы заявлял Зеленский в интервью местной “Муниципальной газете”, часть которого опубликовала Страна, ссылаясь на пост главного редактора “Муниципальной газеты” Елены Блохи. “В апреле 2014 Зеля отметился не только в Горловке. Вот интервью Зеленского в донецкой “Муниципальной газете” от 18 апреля 2014 года. Кроме Горловки “95 квартал” во вторник, 15 апреля, дал концерт и в Донецке. Тогда он говорил: “Мы в принципе не можем быть против русского народа, потому что мы один народ”. Но потом что-то пошло не так”, — пишет Блоха у себя в Facebook. Елена продолжает жить в Донецке. На ее странице написано, что работает она в “ДНР”.
Отметим, Алексей Арестович, который сейчас находится на должности в украинской делегации ТКГ по урегулированию ситуации на Донбассе, в 2019 году в программе “Рандеву с Яниной Соколовой”, вспомнил выступление Зеленского в Горловке.
“Когда уже были погибшие украинские военные, конфликт шел второй месяц, говорят, что в тот же день, как убили Рыбака, “95 квартал” умудрился дать концерт в Горловке. То есть они не считают это личным конфликтом. Им еще нужно будет пройти нелегкий путь, чтобы осознать конфликт с так называемыми “ДНР”,”ЛНР” как свой собственный”, – говорил Арестович.
В день выступления Квартала похитили депутата горсовета Владимира Рыбака, а спустя несколько дней нашли его тело под Славянском, рассказывала его вдова Елена Рыбак в 2019 году. Рыбак пытался снять “флаг” террористов “ДНР” и вернуть украинский флаг на здание горсовета. После этого мужчину похитили.
На предыдущем заседании президент Украины Владимир Зеленский ввел санкции на 5 лет против нардепа от “ОПЗЖ” Тараса Козака и его компаний, владеющих телеканалами ZIK, “112 Украина” и NewsOne. Вещание телеканалов прекращено.
Узелок на память. 17 апреля 2014 г. Квартал-95 хорошо оттянулся в Горловке, над которой уже висел флаг ДНР. Зе сказал там, что его задача – «максимально шатать действующую власть» (т.е. Турчинова и Ко). Президент Зеленский на этом основании введёт теперь санкции против Квартала? pic.twitter.com/vS1JovLjSq
Личный состав батальона был одет в немецкую полицейскую униформу, без каких-либо национальных символов. Украинские офицеры первоначально не имели погон, но впоследствии приказом Эриха фон дем Баха они были присвоены офицерскому составу. Батальон нёс охрану дорог и мостов в районе Могилёв — Витебск — Лепель.
Весной-осенью 1942 года батальон принимал участие в акциях против партизан на территории Белоруссии. Первая потеря личного состава произошла 1 мая: унтеркорпорал первого взвода первой роты Виюк подорвался на мине, пытаясь снять красный флаг, вывешенный советскими партизанами недалеко от штаба батальона.[52] Наиболее крупные столкновения с партизанами произошли 16 июня (потери составили два человека), 20 июня, 25 июля (потери — 3 человека) и 19 августа. 29 сентября на дороге Лепель-Ушачи севернее деревни Жары 1-я рота совместно с немецким подразделением уничтожила из засады колонну советских партизан, потеряв при этом двух человек.[52] После боя Моха приказал отвезти раненых в Лепель. Для сопровождения был выделен взвод Кашубинского. Южнее Жар колонна попала в засаду, организованную партизанами из сводного отряда бригад Ф. Ф. Дубровского и Н. М. Никитина и была полностью уничтожена.[53][54]. Потери составили 22 человека украинского личного состава и 7 — немецкого.
Одним из последних сообщений о действиях батальона в Белоруссии стал отчёт о бое 3 ноября 1942 года в 20 км от Лепеля[55].
За 9 месяцев пребывания в Белоруссии, по собственным данным, «Украинский легион» (201-охранный батальон) уничтожил более 2000 советских партизан, потеряв 49 человек убитыми и 40 — ранеными[56].
Полковник дивизии СС «Галичина»Евгений Побегущий утверждал в своих мемуарах то, что белорусы хорошо относились к 201-му охранному батальону[57]. Подобное же отношение отмечал и другой член ДУН Теодор Крочак[58].
Однако белорусские исследователи несогласны с подобными свидетельствами. Так, Сергей Ёрш утверждал, что деятельность Романа Шухевича в качестве офицера 201 полицейского батальона, вызывала недовольство не только советского руководства, но и белорусских националистов[59]. Одна из групп БНП приговорила Шухевича к смерти за якобы совершённые им расправы над мирным населением и даже организовала на него покушение. Но Шухевичу удалось спастись. Тем не менее предпринимались определённые попытки установления контактов между ОУН и представителями белорусского национального подполья (сторонниками Винцента Гадлевского). Возможно, летом 1942 года даже состоялась встреча Шухевича с лидерами БНП. Однако каких-либо конкретных результатов эти контакты, очевидно, не дали[60].
В июле 1942 года сотрудниками гестапо в Киеве при попытке задержания был застрелен краевой проводник ОУН на Восточных украинских землях Дмитрий Мирон (Орлик). В ноябре двое военнослужащих 201 батальона — командир роты Василий Сидор и командир взвода Юлиан Ковальский, взяв краткосрочные отпуска, приедут в Киев, где в качестве мести выследят и застрелят на улицах города причастных к убийству Мирона—”Орлика” двух агентов гитлеровской СД[61][62].
К ноябрю 1942 года из батальона дезертировало много служащих[3]. В конце 1942 года весь личный состав батальона отказался продлить контракт на службу в германской армии, в связи с чем он был разоружён, расформирован и отправлен обратно в Генерал-губернаторство[63]. М. Лебедь позже заявлял, что в конце 1942 года он предлагал Шухевичу перебросить батальон на Волынь и Полесье для борьбы против немцев и советских партизан, Шухевич ответил, что подумает об этом[3].
В июле 2017 года Служба безопасности Украины опубликовала документы о жизни и деятельности Романа Шухевича. Большая часть обнародованных материалов — протокол допроса жены Шухевича, Натальи Романовны Шухевич-Березинской, состоявшегося 20 июля 1945 года в городе Дрогобыч. В ходе допроса она заявила, что в 1942 году получала продукты питания на себя и детей, как семья военнослужащего немецкой армии, спустя 6 месяцев из-за ухода Шухевича из немецкой армии снабжение прекратилось. Также Наталья рассказала на допросе о том, что по её личному ходатайству через местные немецкие власти она получила 3000 польских злотых для воспитания детей. Это было в конце 1942 или в начале 1943 года[64][65].
В январе 1943 года 201-му батальону шуцманшафта было приказано вернуться во Львов
Service in Belarus
Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 leaders, with Roman Shukhevych (sitting, second from left), 1942
On March 16, 1942 the battalion traveled east and on March 19 its first subunits arrived in Belarus where it served in the triangle between Mahiliou–Vitsebsk–Lepel. The battalion wasn’t concentrated in one place, but was spread out in order to guard various strategic areas. For example, one group guarded large ammunition and weapon warehouses while other groups were stationed in various Belarusian villages. They guarded bridges, protected the German administration, and hunted in the woods for Soviet partisan bases. The conflicts between Germans and Ukrainians, evident during the training, continued during these operations; relations between the German and Ukrainian officers were poor.[8]
The stay in Belarus provided the Ukrainian soldiers not only with to opportunity to gain experience in partisan warfare but also provided insight into the German tactics of fighting against partisans.
Participation in the Holocaust
German-Polish historian Professor Frank Golczewski (University of Hamburg)[9] describes the activities of the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 in Belarus as “fighting partisans and killing Jews”.[10][4] John Paul Himka, a specialist in Ukrainian history during World War II, and Ivan Katchanovski of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Harvard University both note that while no one has studied the specific activities of the 201st battalion from this perspective, it is known that Schuma battalions such as the 201 in Belarus were used to fight partisans and murder Jews, that (according to Katchanovsky) there was a strong likelihood that the 201 Battalion was involved in genocide of Jews and Belarusians, and that this topic is worthy of more investigation, although it hasn’t been studied in depth.[5][11]
David R. Marples notes that Wiktor Poliszczuk claimed that the 201 Schutzmannschaft Battalion in Belarus completed brutal pacification of Belarusian villages, and the men had experience with elimination of the Jewish population; however he also describes Poliszczuk’s book as a polemic, written from the Soviet perspective, and one-sided.[12]
According to OUN’s own records, more than 2,000 Soviet partisans were killed by battalion personnel during its 9-month stay in Belarus.[13] Historian Anders Rudling noted, that the so-called “partisans” were nearly synonymous with Jews, as according to Arthur Nebe, the leader of Einsatzgruppe B,
“The view that “The Jews are without exception identical with the concept of partisan” was a key assumption of the architects of the German counter-insurgency campaigns”.[2]
Disbanding
On 1 December 1942 after the expiration of their contracts, the members of the Legion refused to promulgate it.[1] As the result, the 201st Battalion personnel was taken into detention and relocated to Lviv.[1]
The German command suggested to all those who had been in the Battalion to gather in Lublin to form a new unit, however, none of the Ukrainians signed up, and very few reported to Lublin. Some were arrested and placed in the jail on Lonsky street, Roman Shukhevych escaped, and went into hiding.[6]
Личный состав батальона был одет в немецкую полицейскую униформу, без каких-либо национальных символов. Украинские офицеры первоначально не имели погон, но впоследствии приказом Эриха фон дем Баха они были присвоены офицерскому составу. Батальон нёс охрану дорог и мостов в районе Могилёв — Витебск — Лепель.
Весной-осенью 1942 года батальон принимал участие в акциях против партизан на территории Белоруссии. Первая потеря личного состава произошла 1 мая: унтеркорпорал первого взвода первой роты Виюк подорвался на мине, пытаясь снять красный флаг, вывешенный советскими партизанами недалеко от штаба батальона.[52] Наиболее крупные столкновения с партизанами произошли 16 июня (потери составили два человека), 20 июня, 25 июля (потери — 3 человека) и 19 августа. 29 сентября на дороге Лепель-Ушачи севернее деревни Жары 1-я рота совместно с немецким подразделением уничтожила из засады колонну советских партизан, потеряв при этом двух человек.[52] После боя Моха приказал отвезти раненых в Лепель. Для сопровождения был выделен взвод Кашубинского. Южнее Жар колонна попала в засаду, организованную партизанами из сводного отряда бригад Ф. Ф. Дубровского и Н. М. Никитина и была полностью уничтожена.[53][54]. Потери составили 22 человека украинского личного состава и 7 — немецкого.
Одним из последних сообщений о действиях батальона в Белоруссии стал отчёт о бое 3 ноября 1942 года в 20 км от Лепеля[55].
За 9 месяцев пребывания в Белоруссии, по собственным данным, «Украинский легион» (201-охранный батальон) уничтожил более 2000 советских партизан, потеряв 49 человек убитыми и 40 — ранеными[56].
Полковник дивизии СС «Галичина»Евгений Побегущий утверждал в своих мемуарах то, что белорусы хорошо относились к 201-му охранному батальону[57]. Подобное же отношение отмечал и другой член ДУН Теодор Крочак[58].
Однако белорусские исследователи несогласны с подобными свидетельствами. Так, Сергей Ёрш утверждал, что деятельность Романа Шухевича в качестве офицера 201 полицейского батальона, вызывала недовольство не только советского руководства, но и белорусских националистов[59]. Одна из групп БНП приговорила Шухевича к смерти за якобы совершённые им расправы над мирным населением и даже организовала на него покушение. Но Шухевичу удалось спастись. Тем не менее предпринимались определённые попытки установления контактов между ОУН и представителями белорусского национального подполья (сторонниками Винцента Гадлевского). Возможно, летом 1942 года даже состоялась встреча Шухевича с лидерами БНП. Однако каких-либо конкретных результатов эти контакты, очевидно, не дали[60].
В июле 1942 года сотрудниками гестапо в Киеве при попытке задержания был застрелен краевой проводник ОУН на Восточных украинских землях Дмитрий Мирон (Орлик). В ноябре двое военнослужащих 201 батальона — командир роты Василий Сидор и командир взвода Юлиан Ковальский, взяв краткосрочные отпуска, приедут в Киев, где в качестве мести выследят и застрелят на улицах города причастных к убийству Мирона—”Орлика” двух агентов гитлеровской СД[61][62].
К ноябрю 1942 года из батальона дезертировало много служащих[3]. В конце 1942 года весь личный состав батальона отказался продлить контракт на службу в германской армии, в связи с чем он был разоружён, расформирован и отправлен обратно в Генерал-губернаторство[63]. М. Лебедь позже заявлял, что в конце 1942 года он предлагал Шухевичу перебросить батальон на Волынь и Полесье для борьбы против немцев и советских партизан, Шухевич ответил, что подумает об этом[3].
В июле 2017 года Служба безопасности Украины опубликовала документы о жизни и деятельности Романа Шухевича. Большая часть обнародованных материалов — протокол допроса жены Шухевича, Натальи Романовны Шухевич-Березинской, состоявшегося 20 июля 1945 года в городе Дрогобыч. В ходе допроса она заявила, что в 1942 году получала продукты питания на себя и детей, как семья военнослужащего немецкой армии, спустя 6 месяцев из-за ухода Шухевича из немецкой армии снабжение прекратилось. Также Наталья рассказала на допросе о том, что по её личному ходатайству через местные немецкие власти она получила 3000 польских злотых для воспитания детей. Это было в конце 1942 или в начале 1943 года[64][65].
Ряды УПА в период с 20 марта по 15 апреля 1943 года пополнило от 4 до 6 тысяч членов «украинской» полиции, персонал которой в 1941—1942 годах был активно задействован в уничтожении евреев и советских граждан. Практически сразу вооружённые формирования ОУН(б) начали активные действия против мелких отрядов советских партизан и сёл с этническим польским населением[71].
In Germany in November 1941, the Ukrainian personnel of the legion was reorganized into the 201st Schutzmannschaft Battalion. It numbered 650 persons who were given individual contracts that required the combatants to serve for one additional year.[39]
Shukhevych’s titles were that of Hauptmann of the first company and deputy Commander of the Battalion, which was commanded by Yevhen Pobihushchyi.[2]
On March 19, 1942, the battalion arrived in Belarus where it served in the triangle between Mahiliou–Vitsebsk–Lepel.[32] With the expiration of the one-year contract, all the Ukrainian soldiers refused to renew their services. On the beginning of January, 1943, the battalion was sent to Lviv and there it was disbanded. Its former members formed the core of the OUN (B) security service. The other part joined the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 57, returned to Belarus and continued to fight with the partisans and civilians. Shukhevych decided to join OUN (B) and quickly gained the leading role in the organization.[2]
Polish-German historian and Holocaust expert Frank Golczewski [de; pl] from the University of Hamburg[40] describes the activities of the 201st Schutzmannschaft Battalion in Belarus as “fighting partisans and killing Jews”.[2][41]John Paul Himka, a specialist in Ukrainian history during World War II, notes that although units such as the 201st Battalion were routinely used to fight partisans and kill Jews, no-one has studied the specific activities of the 201st battalion from this perspective and this ought to be a subject for further study.[42] It is alleged that more than 2,000 Soviet partisans were killed by the Battalion during its operation in Belarus.[31][39]
On some issues Marxists are right. For example, when they point out that chauvinism, racism and ethnic hostilities are a weapon that the privileged elites use to distract the down-trotted masses from the class struggle, from the fight for their rights.
The essence of the cancel culture movement is exactly that: a weapon that the privileged elites use to suppress the poor folks. You know, “the basket of deplorables“, “the Trumpists“, ” the white supremacists” or whatever other labels they use against the poor working class. Here is one little example.
“This is a tale of how race, class and power collided at the elite 145-year-old liberal arts college, where tuition, room and board top $78,000 a year and where the employees who keep the school running often come from working-class enclaves beyond the school’s elegant wrought iron gates.”
“We used to joke, don’t let a rich student report you, because if you do, you’re gone,”
A privileged elitist girl Oumu Kanoute, who graduated from one of the best private elitist college prep boarding schools in the world (Westminster) and then went on to attend the elitist Smith college, trespassed on a cafeteria reserved for little children. When an elderly cafeteria employee Jackie Blair mentioned that to Ms. Kanoute, she dismissed her. An elderly janitor, who was required to notify security if he saw unauthorized people, did so, and an elderly campus policemen came over. He recognized Ms. Kanoute as a student and they had a brief and polite conversation, and he apologized for bothering her.
Later that night Ms. Kanoute accused not only the policeman, but also the janitor and the woman employee – the entire spectrum of servants at Smith – of an assault on her on racial grounds. She wrote on Facebook that the officer, carrying a “lethal weapon,” left her near a “meltdown”. “All I did was be Black. It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a woman of color.”
Immediately upon that, the entire establishment went ballistic against these elderly blue collar janitor, cook and policeman. The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC and all other mass media attacked them.
“I don’t feel safe on my own campus!” – cried Kanoute on national TV.
Kanoute then went on to publicize the names, photographs and emails of all three blue collar people involved, plus another janitor who had nothing to do with this episode, (“They are racists! They’re essentially enabling racist, cowardly acts”) and they received threats by mail and were attacked at their own homes.:
“Within days of being accused by Ms. Kanoute, she said, she found notes in her mailbox and taped to her car window. “RACIST” read one. People called her at home. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” a caller said. “You don’t deserve to live,” said another.”
Ms. Blair has lupus, a disease of the immune system, and stress triggers episodes. She felt faint. “Oh my God, I didn’t do this,” she told a friend. “I exchanged a hello with that student and now I’m a racist.”
Students walked out of autumn convocation in solidarity with Ms. Kanoute. The Black Student Association wrote to the president saying they “do not feel heard or understood. We feel betrayed and tokenized.”
The college’s president, Kathleen McCartney, offered profuse apologies and put the janitor on paid leave. Smith officials pressured Ms. Blair to go into mediation with Ms. Kanoute. “A core tenet of restorative justice,” McCartney wrote, “is to provide people with the opportunity for willing apology, forgiveness and reconciliation.”
Less attention was paid three months later when a law firm hired by Smith College to investigate the episode, found no evidence of bias. The report cleared Ms. Blair altogether and found no sufficient evidence of discrimination by anyone else involved, including the janitor who called campus police. The report said Ms. Kanoute could not point to anything that supported the claim she made on Facebook of a yearlong “pattern of discrimination.”
After finding out how viciously Ms. Kanoute had maligned these servants of hers, Smith College officials immediately acted. No, they didn’t restore justice or reprimand Ms. Kanoute for her malicious behaviour. Oh no. They declared “reconciliation and healing”, ordered a raft of anti-bias training for all staff, a revamped and more sensitive campus police force, and the creation of dormitories set aside for Black students and other students of color, as demanded by lying Ms. Kanoute and her lying A.C.L.U. lawyer .
Smith President said the report validated Ms. Kanoute’s lived experience, notably the fear she felt at the sight of the police officer. “I suspect many of you will conclude, as did I,” she wrote, “it is impossible to rule out the potential role of implicit racial bias.”
Rahsaan Hall, racial justice director for the A.C.L.U. of Massachusetts and Ms. Kanoute’s lawyer proclaimed that false accusations against innocent people are a good thing: “It’s troubling that people are more offended by being called racist than by the actual racism in our society. Allegations of being racist, even getting direct mailers in their mailbox, is not on par with the consequences of actual racism.”
Ms. Blair and other cafeteria and grounds workers found themselves being asked by consultants hired by Smith about their childhood and family assumptions about race, which many viewed as psychologically intrusive. Ms. Blair recalled growing silent and wanting to crawl inside herself.
Professor Marc Lendler said that such training for working-class employees risks becoming a kind of psychological bullying. “My response would be, ‘Unless it relates to conditions of employment, it’s none of your business what I was like growing up or what I should be thinking of. Race is discussed far more often than class at Smith,” said Prof. Lendler. “It’s a feature of elite academic institutions that faculty and students don’t recognize what it means to be elite.”
Asked in the interview about employees who found the training intrusive, the president responded: “Good training is never about making people too uncomfortable or to feel ashamed or anything. I think our staff is content and are embracing it.”
In addition to the training sessions, the college has set up “White Accountability” groups where faculty and staff are encouraged to meet on Zoom and explore their biases
The janitor who called campus security quietly returned to work after three months of paid leave and declined to be interviewed. The other janitor, Mr. Patenaude, who was not working at the time of the incident, left his job at Smith not long after Ms. Kanoute posted his photograph on social media, accusing him of “racist cowardly acts.”
“I was accused of being the racist,” Mr. Patenaude said. “To be honest, that just knocked me out. I’m a 58-year-old male, we’re supposed to be tough. But I suffered anxiety because of things in my past and this brought it to a whole ’nother level.”
As for Ms. Blair, the cafeteria worker, stress exacerbated her lupus and she checked into the hospital last year. Then George Floyd, a Black man, died at the hands of the Minneapolis police last spring, and protests fired up across the nation and in Northampton, and angry notes and accusations of racism were again left in her mailbox and by visitors on Smith College’s official Facebook page.
This past autumn the university furloughed her and other workers, citing the coronavirus and the empty dorms. Ms. Blair applied for an hourly job with a local restaurant. The manager set up a Zoom interview, she said, and asked her: “‘Aren’t you the one involved in that incident?’”
She talked to a reporter recently from a neighbor’s backyard, as a couple of hens wandered the patio.
“What do I do?” she asked, shaking her head. “When does this racist label go away?”
Those tensions come at a time when few in the Smith community feel comfortable publicly questioning liberal orthodoxy on race and identity, and some professors worry the administration is too deferential to its increasingly emboldened students.
“My perception is that if you’re on the wrong side of issues of identity politics, you’re not just mistaken, you’re evil,” said James Miller, an economics professor at Smith College and a conservative.
In an interview, Ms. McCartney said that Ms. Kanoute’s encounter with the campus staff was part of a spate of cases of “living while Black” harassment across the nation. There was, she noted, great pressure to act. “We always try to show compassion for everyone involved,” she said.
The atmosphere at Smith is gaining attention nationally, in part because a recently resigned employee of the school, Jodi Shaw, has attracted a fervent YouTube following by decrying what she sees as the college’s insistence that its white employees, through anti-bias training, accept the theory of structural racism.
“Stop demanding that I admit to white privilege, and work on my so-called implicit bias as a condition of my continued employment,” Ms. Shaw, who is also a 1993 graduate of Smith and who worked in the residential life department, said in one of her videos. After months of clashing with the administration, Ms. Shaw resigned last week and appears likely to sue the school, calling it a “racially hostile workplace.”
Quoting:
Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College
Back in the spring last year, a 45-year-old man went to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston because of a COVID-19 infection. Doctors treated him with steroids and discharged him five days later.
But the COVID infection never went away — for 154 days. “He was readmitted to the hospital several times over the subsequent five months for recurrence of his COVID-19 infection and severe pneumonia,” says infectious disease doctor Jonathan Li at Harvard Medical School who helped to treat the man.
“So this is an extraordinary individual,” Li says.
So extraordinary in fact, that this man’s case is offering scientists surprising clues about where the new coronavirus virus variants emerged, and why they’re causing explosive outbreaks on three continents.
To be clear here, the man wasn’t what doctors call a “long hauler,” or a person who clears a COVID infection and then continues to have health problems for months. This man had living, growing virus in body for five months, Li says. The same infection lasted for five months.
“That is one of the remarkable aspects of this case,” Li says. “In fact, he was highly infectious even five months after the initial diagnosis.”
This man had a severe autoimmune disease, which required him to take drugs to suppress his immune system. So his body couldn’t fight off the COVID infection as well as a healthy person. He would get better for a while and then the virus would counterattack. He would fall sick again. Eventually, he ended up in the ICU. He passed away five months after the initial diagnosis.
Throughout the man’s infection, Li and his colleagues ran an illuminating experiment. Every few weeks, the team extracted coronavirus from the man’s body and sequenced the virus’ genome.
Li couldn’t believe what they found. “I was shocked,” he says. “When I saw the virus sequences, I knew that we were dealing with something completely different and potentially very important.”
The sequences showed Li and his team that the virus was changing very quickly inside the man’s body. The virus wasn’t picking up just one or two mutations at a time. But rather, it acquired a whole cluster of more than 20 mutations. Scientists had never seen SARS-Cov-2 mutate so quickly during the whole pandemic.
Furthermore, laboratory experiments have shown that some of those mutations help the virus bypass detection by antibodies.
“Toward the very end of his life, he was treated with monoclonal antibodies, from Regeneron,” Li says. “And shortly thereafter, we saw evidence that suggested the virus was developing resistance or escaping from these antibodies as well.”
Li and his colleagues published their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine back in early November 2020 with little fanfare. Then about a month later, the pandemic took a surprising turn — and this peculiar case in Boston took on a new importance.
Scientists in the U.K. and South Africa announced they had detected new variants of the coronavirus. These variants were causing huge surges of COVID-19 in these countries.
When researchers looked at the genes of these variants, guess what they found? A cluster of mutations that looked remarkably similar to the mutations found in the virus from the Boston patient. The set of mutations weren’t exactly identical, but they shared important characteristics. They both have about 20 mutations and they share several key ones, including a mutation (N501Y) known to help the virus bind more tightly to human cells and a mutation (E484K) known to help the virus evade antibody detection.
Since Li and his colleagues published their findings, several other teams reported similar cases in which the virus evolved rapidly inside an immunocompromised person with a chronic COVID infection.
“So we have a number of examples, around the planet, in which patients’ viruses suddenly have a whole mess of new mutations all at once,” says virologist Jeremy Luban at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. And other cases have likely gone undetected, he says.
So scientists are starting to think the two phenomena could be related. That perhaps, the new variants arose inside people similar to the man in Boston – that is, people who are immunocompromised and have long-term COVID infections.
“I think that’s the leading theory,” Luban says.
In other words, perhaps, the coronavirus virus uses long-term infections as a mutational testing ground. While inside one person, they can try out all these different combinations of mutations and figure out, through trial and error, which ones are best at evading the immune system or helping the virus become more infectious.
Most of these viral versions probably don’t spread beyond the chronically infected patient. But every once in a while, as the theory goes, a variant gets lucky, infects a large number of people and launches a new whole stage of the pandemic.
And this process is likely happening again right now, worldwide, in other immunocompromised patients. Eventually, these new variants could mutate again and create even more dangerous forms of the virus.
Wuhan Institute of Virology google maps captures from January 24 2020 and January 29 2020 shows different locations 15 miles away from each other…..something smells fishy in Wuhan
US Scientist Who Led Charge Against COVID Lab Leak Theory Admits He Was Trying To Protect Chinese Scientists
Andrew Kerr Investigative Reporter January 18, 2021 3:47 PM ET Font Size:
Dr. Peter Daszak orchestrated a statement at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that condemned “conspiracy theories” that the virus doesn’t have a natural origin.
Daszak admitted on Friday through a spokesman that he issued the statement to protect Chinese scientists from online criticism.
Daszak has worked directly with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and allegedly played a key role in directing taxpayer-funded grants to the research center.
The State Department announced on Friday that it has obtained evidence showing that researchers at the WIV became sick with flu-like symptoms in Fall 2019, prior to the first known cases of COVID-19
Possible Early Covid-19 Cases in China Emerge During WHO Mission
WHO team scrutinizing cases of 90 patients with coronavirus-like symptoms in October 2019, two months before Beijing acknowledged first infections
Lab Theory ‘Extremely Unlikely’: What WHO Team Learned in WuhanYou may also likeUp Next
By , and Updated Feb. 10, 2021 7:00 pm ET
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BEIJING—About 90 people were hospitalized with Covid-19-like symptoms in central China in the two months before the disease was first identified in Wuhan in late 2019, according to World Health Organization investigators, who said they pressed Beijing to allow further testing to determine whether the new virus was spreading earlier than previously known.
Chinese authorities performed antibody tests on about two-thirds of those patients in the past few months, according to the investigators, and said they found no trace of infection by the virus. But members of the WHO team probing the pandemic’s origins said any antibodies could have subsided to undetectable levels during the delay.
“Further studies are needed,” said Peter Ben Embarek, the food-safety scientist who led the WHO team, which wrapped up a four-week visit to China on Wednesday.
Team members said they urged China to conduct wider tests on blood samples collected in autumn 2019 around Hubei, the province that is home to Wuhan, to look for evidence about when the virus was first circulating. Chinese authorities said they hadn’t yet obtained necessary permissions to test samples, many of which are held in blood banks, WHO investigators said.
China’s disclosures to the WHO raise questions about the possibility that Covid-19—which has now killed more than 2.3 million people—was already spreading in China as far back as October 2019 and that earlier detection could have helped contain the outbreak before it became a global pandemic. Beijing says the first patient identified in China developed symptoms on Dec. 8, 2019. To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In
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Opinion: State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses
A woman wearing a protective suit at a hospital in Wuhan, China. (Aly Song/Reuters)
Opinion by Josh RoginColumnistApril 14, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. UTC
Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.
In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.
What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.AD
“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)Global Opinions writer Josh Rogin has obtained a 2018 U.S. diplomatic cable urging Washington to better support a Chinese lab researching bat coronaviruses. (Josh Rogin/The Washington Post)
The Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The cables argued that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further support, mainly because its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous.
As the cable noted, the U.S. visitors met with Shi Zhengli, the head of the research project, who had been publishing studies related to bat coronaviruses for many years. In November 2017, just before the U.S. officials’ visit, Shi’s team had published research showing that horseshoe bats they had collected from a cave in Yunnan province were very likely from the same bat population that spawned the SARS coronavirus in 2003.AD
“Most importantly,” the cable states, “the researchers also showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and prevention.”
The research was designed to prevent the next SARS-like pandemic by anticipating how it might emerge. But even in 2015, other scientists questioned whether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks. In October 2014, the U.S. government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments.
As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley.AD
“The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not being adequately conducted and protected,” he said.
There are similar concerns about the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab, which operates at biosecurity level 2, a level significantly less secure than the level-4 standard claimed by the Wuhan Insititute of Virology lab, Xiao said. That’s important because the Chinese government still refuses to answer basic questions about the origin of the novel coronavirus while suppressing any attempts to examine whether either lab was involved.
Sources familiar with the cables said they were meant to sound an alarm about the grave safety concerns at the WIV lab, especially regarding its work with bat coronaviruses. The embassy officials were calling for more U.S. attention to this lab and more support for it, to help it fix its problems.AD
“The cable was a warning shot,” one U.S. official said. “They were begging people to pay attention to what was going on.”
No extra assistance to the labs was provided by the U.S. government in response to these cables. The cables began to circulate again inside the administration over the past two months as officials debated whether the lab could be the origin of the pandemic and what the implications would be for the U.S. pandemic response and relations with China.
Inside the Trump administration, many national security officials have long suspected either the WIV or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab was the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak. According to the New York Times, the intelligence community has provided no evidence to confirm this. But one senior administration official told me that the cables provide one more piece of evidence to support the possibility that the pandemic is the result of a lab accident in Wuhan.AD
“The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on the other side,” the official said.
As my colleague David Ignatius noted, the Chinese government’s original story — that the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan — is shaky. Research by Chinese experts published in the Lancet in January showed the first known patient, identified on Dec. 1, had no connection to the market, nor did more than one-third of the cases in the first large cluster. Also, the market didn’t sell bats.
The Chinese government, meanwhile, has put a total lockdown on information related to the virus origins. Beijing has yet to provide U.S. experts with samples of the novel coronavirus collected from the earliest cases. The Shanghai lab that published the novel coronavirus genome on Jan. 11 was quickly shut down by authorities for “rectification.” Several of the doctors and journalists who reported on the spread early on have disappeared.
On Feb. 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a new biosecurity law to be accelerated. On Wednesday, CNN reported the Chinese government has placed severe restrictions requiring approval before any research institution publishes anything on the origin of the novel coronavirus.
The origin story is not just about blame. It’s crucial to understanding how the novel coronavirus pandemic started because that informs how to prevent the next one. The Chinese government must be transparent and answer the questions about the Wuhan labs because they are vital to our scientific understanding of the virus, said Xiao.AD
We don’t know whether the novel coronavirus originated in the Wuhan lab, but the cable pointed to the danger there and increases the impetus to find out, he said.
“I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. I think it’s a legitimate question that needs to be investigated and answered,” he said. “To understand exactly how this originated is critical knowledge for preventing this from happening in the future.”
‘Heinous!’: Coronavirus researcher shut down for Wuhan-lab link slams new funding restrictions
Peter Daszak, president of the research organization EcoHealth Alliance, describes how he has been caught in political cross-hairs over his partnership with a virology lab in China.
NEWS Q&A 21 August 2020
‘Heinous!’: Coronavirus researcher shut down for Wuhan-lab link slams new funding restrictions
Peter Daszak, president of the research organization EcoHealth Alliance, describes how he has been caught in political cross-hairs over his partnership with a virology lab in China.
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has reinstated a research organization’s multimillion-dollar grant to study how coronaviruses move from bats to people — which it cancelled in a controversial move earlier this year. But as Peter Daszak, the head of the small non-profit organization — EcoHealth Alliance in New York City — found out in early July, the funding can’t be used unless the organization meets what he says are absurd conditions. The demands, detailed in a letter from the NIH, are politically motivated, he says.
To carry out its research, EcoHealth Alliance partners with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, which has been at the centre of unfounded rumours that the COVID-19 pandemic was caused by a coronavirus released from its laboratory. The NIH cancelled EcoHealth Alliance’s grant in April, days after US President Donald Trump told a reporter that the United States would stop funding work at the WIV.Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world’s most dangerous pathogens
EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak have been working with Shi Zhengli, a virologist at the WIV, for more than 15 years. Since 2014, an NIH grant has funded EcoHealth’s research in China, which involves collecting faeces and other samples from bats, and blood samples from people at risk of infection from bat-origin viruses. Scientific studies suggest that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus most likely originated in bats, and research on the topic could be crucial to identifying other viruses that might cause future pandemics. The WIV is a subrecipient on the grant.
The NIH makes seven demands of EcoHealth; these were first reported by the Wall Street Journal this week, and have been viewed by Nature. The agency asks EcoHealth to obtain a vial of the SARS-CoV-2 sample that was used by the WIV to determine the virus’s genetic sequence. It also requests that EcoHealth arranges an inspection of the WIV by US federal officials.
Daszak calls the demands from the NIH “heinous”, and worries that the funding freeze is delaying vital work to identify and prevent the next pandemic. The NIH declined to comment, saying that the agency does not disclose internal deliberations on a specific grant.
In an e-mail to Nature, Shi calls the NIH’s demands “outrageous” and echoes Daszak’s assertions that the agency’s demands are unrelated to the WIV’s collaboration with EcoHealth.
Nature spoke with Daszak about being caught in the political cross-hairs.
Peter Daszak on the rooftop at his New York office.Credit: EcoHealth Alliance
How have you been doing since your grant was suspended?
It’s just a very difficult and disappointing and worrisome time. I’ve lost people that I know to COVID-19. It’s a bat-origin coronavirus. We should have been there trying to find out why this thing emerged. And right now I’m sat in my house, looking out the window, unable to do this work, because the NIH has told us that it’s not appropriate. It’s extremely frustrating.
What is the aim of the project that’s been affected?
We have specific aims: to go into rural regions of China to find bat-origin coronaviruses and determine which ones are high risk, then to work with local communities in rural China in five provinces. We target communities that are at high risk for viral ‘spillover’ and see whether they’re getting infected — and then finally see whether people are getting sick from novel coronaviruses.Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world’s most dangerous pathogens
How have you responded to the NIH’s letter?
We’ve written to the NIH and said: we think that this is inappropriate and wrong for the following reasons. Please, allow us to continue this work. But I doubt they’re going to do that right now.
How do you plan to continue your work?
The NIH have told us not to work on this project. Obviously, we’re not going to break any NIH rules. But we have an ongoing collaboration, we have data that we’ve gathered over 15 years of working in China — 5 years under a previous grant from the NIH — which haven’t been published yet. So we need to carry on with that work.
How is your work relevant to the pandemic today?
We estimate that every single day, somebody in China or in southeast Asia gets infected with a new bat coronavirus. Right now, somebody is walking around, and they might be developing the first signs of a cough from the next COVID. We fully intend to be an organization that helps to prevent the next pandemic. That is our mission.
The NIH has asked you to obtain a vial of isolated SARS-CoV-2 from the WIV. Did you work on the novel coronavirus during your project?
The grant isn’t used to fund work on SARS-CoV-2. Our organization has not actually published any data on SARS-CoV-2. We work on bat coronaviruses that are out there in the wild and try to predict what the next one is. We don’t work on sequencing SARS-CoV-2.
It’s absurd because it’s absolutely outside the remit of the work we do.
Your grant has received widespread attention in the past few months. How has that been?
Conspiracy-theory outlets and politically motivated organizations have made Freedom of Information Act requests on our grants and all of our letters and e-mails to the NIH. We don’t think it’s fair that we should have to reveal everything we do. When you submit a grant, you put in all your best ideas. We don’t want to hand those over to conspiracy theorists for them to publish and ruin and make a mockery of.
What are you most worried about?
We’re not a political organization. We’re just trying to do good work to prevent pandemics.
We’re feeling the pressure of a very aggressive administration in the US picking fights with a country where we happen to be collaborating. And it turns out that they decided that this issue and our work is going to be one of the angles of attack. That’s extremely unfortunate. The winner in all of this is the virus, and not just this virus — SARS-CoV-2 — but all the other viruses. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02473-4
As confirmed cases of a novel virus surge around the world with worrisome speed, all eyes have so far focused on a seafood market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the outbreak. But a description of the first clinical cases published in The Lancet on Friday challenges that hypothesis.
The paper, written by a large group of Chinese researchers from several institutions, offers details about the first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). In the earliest case, the patient became ill on 1 December 2019 and had no reported link to the seafood market, the authors report. “No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases,” they state. Their data also show that, in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace. “That’s a big number, 13, with no link,” says Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University.
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1 CAS Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China. yifanfs0224@163.com.
2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. yifanfs0224@163.com.
3 CAS Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China. chiukal@163.com.
4 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. chiukal@163.com.
5 CAS Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China. zlshi@wh.iov.cn.
6 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. zlshi@wh.iov.cn.
7 CAS Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China. peng.zhou@wh.iov.cn.
8 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. peng.zhou@wh.iov.cn.
During the past two decades, three zoonotic coronaviruses have been identified as the cause of large-scale disease outbreaks⁻Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Swine Acute Diarrhea Syndrome (SADS). SARS and MERS emerged in 2003 and 2012, respectively, and caused a worldwide pandemic that claimed thousands of human lives, while SADS struck the swine industry in 2017. They have common characteristics, such as they are all highly pathogenic to humans or livestock, their agents originated from bats, and two of them originated in China. Thus, it is highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China. Therefore, the investigation of bat coronaviruses becomes an urgent issue for the detection of early warning signs, which in turn minimizes the impact of such future outbreaks in China. The purpose of the review is to summarize the current knowledge on viral diversity, reservoir hosts, and the geographical distributions of bat coronaviruses in China, and eventually we aim to predict virus hotspots and their cross-species transmission potential.
The predecessor of Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences was the Wuhan Institute of Microbiology, prepared to be built in 1956, jointly established by the famous virologist academician Gao Shangyin and the famous microbiologist academician Chen Huagui and a batch of older generation scientists, formally announced to be established in 1958, mainly engaged in agricultural virus and environmental microbe research. At the beginning of 1961, Wuhan branch institute and the Guangzhou branch institute merged to set up the Zhongnan Branch of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan Microbiology Research Laboratory was hence renamed as Wuhan Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In October 1962, it was again renamed to Wuhan Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1966, the local branch institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences was cancelled. In 1970, Wuhan Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences was placed under the leadership of Hubei Province, changed its name to Hubei Provincial Institute of Microbiology. In 1978 on the eve of holding the National Science and Technology Conference, it returned to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, known as Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has made a series of important progresses in terms of insect virus, animal virus, molecular virus, virus classification preservation, environmental microbes, fermentation microorganisms and microbial sensors. A number of research achievements have earned national level, Chinese Academy of Sciences and provincial & ministerial level awards for scientific and technological advancement.
In 1998, the Chinese Academy of Sciences launched a pilot project for knowledge innovation. Wuhan Institute of Virology had been centering on the institute reform, setting its strategy in the virus, microbe application research and biological high-tech innovation, and developing a comprehensive supporting reform implementation plans. In 1999, it successfully passed the classification and positioning of Chinese Academy of Sciences, was included in the high-tech research and development base-type research institute. In 2002, it was formally approved into the institute knowledge innovation project pilot sequence, the work of the entire institute had entered into a new stage.
In 2003, SARS virus broke out in our country, the state and the Chinese Academy of Sciences promoted the prevention and control of newly emerging diseases to a new strategic height, Wuhan Institute of Virology adjusted the discipline layout in a timely manner, on the one hand it was to have the advantage integration for the traditional preponderant disciplines such as insect virology, aquatic animal virology, biological control, analysis of biotechnology etc.; on the other hand, through the training and the introduction of talents, it was to lay out a series of medical virus-related discipline groups, engaged in the researches of HIV, influenza virus, hepatitis virus, tumor virus and zoonotic virus and virus replication and antiviral drugs etc. In 2004, the Chinese and French governments signed a cooperation agreement on fighting and preventing new diseases, stressing the active cooperation between China and France in the construction of high-level biosafety laboratories and the system construction of biosafety laws and regulations etc. In order to implement the spirit of Sino-French agreement, in 2005, Wuhan Institute of Virology undertook the task of building a national biosafety laboratory of Wuhan, Chinese Academy of Sciences. With nearly 10 years of unremitting efforts, the laboratory completed the physical facilities in January 2015. In August 2016, it obtained the recognition and authentication certificate for the critical protection equipment installation and commissioning. After the completion of the laboratory, it is expected to carry out the scientific research on the prevention and control of new infectious diseases and biosafety in order to meet the needs of early warning, detection, research and biosecurity prevention system for newborn and strong infectious diseases in China. It is expected to become the prevention & control research and development center for China’s newly born diseases, virus seed storage centers and WHO reference laboratory, which shall play a basic, technical support role in China’s major newborn infectious diseases prevention and control, effectively improving our defense and resilience towards biological wars and terrorist attacks, maintaining the national biosecurity.
The strategic positioning of Wuhan Institute of Virology is to face the national population health, sustainable development of agriculture and national security, look on the international frontier for the research field of virology, focusing on the researches on newly emerging, outburst infectious diseases and biosecurity, major viral infectious diseases etiology and innovative drug for agriculture, environmental microbes and ecological protection, virus bionic and emerging biotechnology, virus identification, system classification and bioinformatics and other aspects, in the construction of high-level biosafety research and technology system, biological nano-devices, green agricultural technology Integration and application and other scientific frontiers, it is to make the original innovation contribution, enhance our emergency responsiveness to new and sudden infectious diseases, built the Wuhan Institute of Virology into a comprehensive virology research institution with international advanced level.
Wuhan Institute of Virology is equipped with a general office, scientific research planning office, organization & personnel department, finance department, graduate student office , with five functional management departments, logistics support center, network information center, public technical service center (including analysis and testing center, experimental animal center, BSL -3 laboratory, isotope room, etc.), Virologica Sinica (English version), Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, State Key Laboratory of Virology and other support departments.
In the scientific research layout, there are 37 discipline groups, belonging to the molecular virology research center, analysis of microbiology and nano biology research center, microbial virus seed resources and application center, virus pathology research center, new infectious disease research center which are 5 research centers. It is to build the national high-level biosafety laboratories, China’s virus preservation center, the State Key Laboratory of Virology, the national emergency laboratory for outburst public health event, the national level international cooperation research center and other five national R & D base. It possesses the key laboratory of Chinese Academy of Sciences for newly emerging and fulminating infectious disease pathogen and biosecurity, key Laboratory of agricultural and environmental microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hubei provincial virus and disease engineering technology research center, Hubei provincial small and medium enterprises common technology biopesticide R & D promotion center, Wuhan new infectious disease key laboratories which are five provincial and ministerial level R & D bases. It has initially shaped a characteristic platform with level IV biosafety laboratory as the core, biosafety level III laboratory (BSL / ABSL-3) (Qty.: 2) and biosafety level II laboratory (BSL-2 / ABSL-2) (Qty.: 17) as the cluster, it can carry out more than 10 kinds of class I and class II pathogenic experiment activities, in the research of new infectious disease prevention & control and biological prevention field, it is to provide strong support and important guarantee.
Founded in 1956, Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), was initially named as Wuhan Microbiology Laboratory. It was among the earliest national institutions established after the founding of the New China. In 1961, it became the South China Institute of Microbiology of CAS, and was redesignated as Wuhan Microbiology Institute CAS in 1962. In 1970, under the administration of the Hubei Commission of Science & Technology, it was renamed as Microbiology Institute of Hubei Province. In June 1978, it was returned to the administration of CAS, and adopted its current designation.
Through continuous reorganization and sustained efforts of our researchers, WIV has remained strong in such research fields as microbiology and virology throughout its history. Characterized by persistence and diligence, the scientists in WIV have made great achievements in the studies of virology, applied microbiology and biotechnology by addressing national strategic demands and cutting-edge scientific questions. The achievements marked the S&T strengths of WIV in agricultural and environmental microbiology. In particular, being at the forefront of basic and applied researches on insect viruses, WIV has made great achievements in isolation of insect viruses and production of viral insecticides. For example, WIV developed Helicoverpa armigeranucleopolyhedrovirus (HearNPV) as the first viral insecticide registered in China, which has been widely utilized. WIV has also developed microbiological mosquitocide, contributing much to the control of disease-transmitting mosquitoes. The commercialized standards and application of Bacillus thuringiensis won the 2nd Award for National Science and Technology Progress. Furthermore, WIV developed the first biosensor (Biochemical Oxygen Demand biosensor for the detection of environmental pollution) in China.
Since 2002, by joining the CAS Knowledge Innovation Program, WIV has extended its research areas from agriculture and environment-related fields to medicine-related fields in order to meet the national strategic demand of public health, national security, and sustainable agriculture development. From then on, WIV has undergone major reorganization by means of retaining researches into major disciplines, recruiting and training innovative talents in new disciplines and developing appropriate research platforms. Pathogenic study of emerging infectious diseases has become one of the major research fields. Great achievements have been made in animal origin studies of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-Cov) and avian influenza viruses.
Chances Are BY STEVEN STROGATZ APRIL 25, 2010 5:00 PM April 25, 2010 5:00 pm Steven Strogatz Steven Strogatz on math, from basic to baffling.
Have you ever had that anxiety dream where you suddenly realize you have to take the final exam in some course you’ve never attended? For professors, it works the other way around — you dream you’re giving a lecture for a class you know nothing about.
rolling diceCameron Miles | Dreamstime.com Rolling the dice: Teaching probability can be thrilling. That’s what it’s like for me whenever I teach probability theory. It was never part of my own education, so having to lecture about it now is scary and fun, in an amusement park, thrill-house sort of way.
Perhaps the most pulse-quickening topic of all is “conditional probability” — the probability that some event A happens, given (or “conditional” upon) the occurrence of some other event B. It’s a slippery concept, easily conflated with the probability of B given A. They’re not the same, but you have to concentrate to see why. For example, consider the following word problem.
Before going on vacation for a week, you ask your spacey friend to water your ailing plant. Without water, the plant has a 90 percent chance of dying. Even with proper watering, it has a 20 percent chance of dying. And the probability that your friend will forget to water it is 30 percent. (a) What’s the chance that your plant will survive the week? (b) If it’s dead when you return, what’s the chance that your friend forgot to water it? (c) If your friend forgot to water it, what’s the chance it’ll be dead when you return?
Although they sound alike, (b) and (c) are not the same. In fact, the problem tells us that the answer to (c) is 90 percent. But how do you combine all the probabilities to get the answer to (b)? Or (a)?
Naturally, the first few semesters I taught this topic, I stuck to the book, inching along, playing it safe. But gradually I began to notice something. A few of my students would avoid using “Bayes’s theorem,” the labyrinthine formula I was teaching them. Instead they would solve the problems by a much easier method.
What these resourceful students kept discovering, year after year, was a better way to think about conditional probability. Their way comports with human intuition instead of confounding it. The trick is to think in terms of “natural frequencies” — simple counts of events — rather than the more abstract notions of percentages, odds, or probabilities. As soon as you make this mental shift, the fog lifts.
This is the central lesson of “Calculated Risks,” a fascinating book by Gerd Gigerenzer, a cognitive psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. In a series of studies about medical and legal issues ranging from AIDS counseling to the interpretation of DNA fingerprinting, Gigerenzer explores how people miscalculate risk and uncertainty. But rather than scold or bemoan human frailty, he tells us how to do better — how to avoid “clouded thinking” by recasting conditional probability problems in terms of natural frequencies, much as my students did.
In one study, Gigerenzer and his colleagues asked doctors in Germany and the United States to estimate the probability that a woman with a positive mammogram actually has breast cancer, even though she’s in a low-risk group: 40 to 50 years old, with no symptoms or family history of breast cancer. To make the question specific, the doctors were told to assume the following statistics — couched in terms of percentages and probabilities — about the prevalence of breast cancer among women in this cohort, and also about the mammogram’s sensitivity and rate of false positives:
The probability that one of these women has breast cancer is 0.8 percent. If a woman has breast cancer, the probability is 90 percent that she will have a positive mammogram. If a woman does not have breast cancer, the probability is 7 percent that she will still have a positive mammogram. Imagine a woman who has a positive mammogram. What is the probability that she actually has breast cancer?
Gigerenzer describes the reaction of the first doctor he tested, a department chief at a university teaching hospital with more than 30 years of professional experience:
“[He] was visibly nervous while trying to figure out what he would tell the woman. After mulling the numbers over, he finally estimated the woman’s probability of having breast cancer, given that she has a positive mammogram, to be 90 percent. Nervously, he added, ‘Oh, what nonsense. I can’t do this. You should test my daughter; she is studying medicine.’ He knew that his estimate was wrong, but he did not know how to reason better. Despite the fact that he had spent 10 minutes wringing his mind for an answer, he could not figure out how to draw a sound inference from the probabilities.”
When Gigerenzer asked 24 other German doctors the same question, their estimates whipsawed from 1 percent to 90 percent. Eight of them thought the chances were 10 percent or less, 8 more said 90 percent, and the remaining 8 guessed somewhere between 50 and 80 percent. Imagine how upsetting it would be as a patient to hear such divergent opinions.
As for the American doctors, 95 out of 100 estimated the woman’s probability of having breast cancer to be somewhere around 75 percent.
The right answer is 9 percent.
How can it be so low? Gigerenzer’s point is that the analysis becomes almost transparent if we translate the original information from percentages and probabilities into natural frequencies:
Eight out of every 1,000 women have breast cancer. Of these 8 women with breast cancer, 7 will have a positive mammogram. Of the remaining 992 women who don’t have breast cancer, some 70 will still have a positive mammogram. Imagine a sample of women who have positive mammograms in screening. How many of these women actually have breast cancer?
Since a total of 7 + 70 = 77 women have positive mammograms, and only 7 of them truly have breast cancer, the probability of having breast cancer given a positive mammogram is 7 out of 77, which is 1 in 11, or about 9 percent.
Notice two simplifications in the calculation above. First, we rounded off decimals to whole numbers. That happened in a few places, like when we said, “Of these 8 women with breast cancer, 7 will have a positive mammogram.” Really we should have said 90 percent of 8 women, or 7.2 women, will have a positive mammogram. So we sacrificed a little precision for a lot of clarity.
Second, we assumed that everything happens exactly as frequently as its probability suggests. For instance, since the probability of breast cancer is 0.8 percent, exactly 8 women out of 1,000 in our hypothetical sample were assumed to have it. In reality, this wouldn’t necessarily be true. Things don’t have to follow their probabilities; a coin flipped 1,000 times doesn’t always come up heads 500 times. But pretending that it does gives the right answer in problems like this.
Admittedly the logic is a little shaky — that’s why the textbooks look down their noses at this approach, compared to the more rigorous but hard-to-use Bayes’s theorem — but the gains in clarity are justification enough. When Gigerenzer tested another set of 24 doctors, this time using natural frequencies, nearly all of them got the correct answer, or close to it.
Although reformulating the data in terms of natural frequencies is a huge help, conditional probability problems can still be perplexing for other reasons. It’s easy to ask the wrong question, or to calculate a probability that’s correct but misleading.
Both the prosecution and the defense were guilty of this in the O.J. Simpson trial of 1994-95. Each of them asked the jury to consider the wrong conditional probability.
MORE IN THIS SERIES From Fish to Infinity (Jan. 31, 2010) Rock Groups (Feb. 7, 2010) The Enemy of My Enemy (Feb. 14, 2010) Division and Its Discontents (Feb. 21, 2010) The Joy of X (Feb. 28, 2010) Finding Your Roots (March 7, 2010) Square Dancing (March 14, 2010) Think Globally (March 21, 2010) Power Tools (March 28, 2010) Take It to the Limit (April 4, 2010) Change We Can Believe In (April 11, 2010) It Slices, It Dices (April 18, 2010) See the Entire Series » The prosecution spent the first 10 days of the trial introducing evidence that O.J. had a history of violence toward his ex-wife, Nicole. He had allegedly battered her, thrown her against walls and groped her in public, telling onlookers, “This belongs to me.” But what did any of this have to do with a murder trial? The prosecution’s argument was that a pattern of spousal abuse reflected a motive to kill. As one of the prosecutors put it, “A slap is a prelude to homicide.”
Alan Dershowitz countered for the defense, arguing that even if the allegations of domestic violence were true, they were irrelevant and should therefore be inadmissible. He later wrote, “We knew we could prove, if we had to, that an infinitesimal percentage — certainly fewer than 1 of 2,500 — of men who slap or beat their domestic partners go on to murder them.”
In effect, both sides were asking the jury to consider the probability that a man murdered his ex-wife, given that he previously battered her. But as the statistician I. J. Good pointed out, that’s not the right number to look at.
The real question is: What’s the probability that a man murdered his ex-wife, given that he previously battered her and she was murdered by someone? That conditional probability turns out to be very far from 1 in 2,500.
To see why, imagine a sample of 100,000 battered women. Granting Dershowitz’s number of 1 in 2,500, we expect about 40 of these women to be murdered by their abusers in a given year (since 100,000 divided by 2,500 equals 40). We can estimate that an additional 5 of these battered women, on average, will be killed by someone else, because the murder rate for all women in the United States at the time of the trial was about 1 in 20,000 per year. So out of the 40 + 5 = 45 murder victims altogether, 40 of them were killed by their batterer. In other words, the batterer was the murderer about 90 percent of the time.
Don’t confuse this number with the probability that O.J. did it. That probability would depend on a lot of other evidence, pro and con, such as the defense’s claim that the police framed him, or the prosecution’s claim that the killer and O.J. shared the same style of shoes, gloves and DNA.
The probability that any of this changed your mind about the verdict? Zero.
NOTES:
For a good textbook treatment of conditional probability and Bayes’s theorem, see: S.M. Ross, “Introduction to Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists,” 4th edition (Academic Press, 2009). The answer to part (a) of the “ailing plant” problem is 59 percent. The answer to part (b) is 27/41, or approximately 65.85 percent. To derive these results, imagine 100 ailing plants and figure out (on average) how many of them get watered or not, and then how many of those go on to die or not, based on the information given. This question appears, though with slightly different numbers and wording, as problem 29 on p. 84 of Ross’s text. The study of how doctors interpret mammogram results is described in: G. Gigerenzer, “Calculated Risks” (Simon and Schuster, 2002), chapter 4. For more on the O.J. Simpson case and a discussion of wife battering in a larger context, see chapter 8. For many entertaining anecdotes and insights about conditional probability and its real-world applications, as well as how it’s misperceived, see: J.A. Paulos, “Innumeracy” (Vintage, 1990); L. Mlodinow, “The Drunkard’s Walk” (Vintage, 2009). The quotes pertaining to the O.J. Simpson trial, and Alan Dershowitz’s estimate of the rate at which battered women are murdered by their partners, appeared in: A. Dershowitz, “Reasonable Doubts” (Touchstone, 1997), pp. 101-104. Probability theory was first correctly applied to the Simpson trial by the late I.J. Good, in: I.J. Good, “When batterer turns murderer,” Nature, Vol. 375 (1995), p. 541. I.J. Good, “When batterer becomes murderer,” Nature, Vol. 381 (1996), p. 481. Good phrased his analysis in terms of odds ratios and Bayes’s theorem, rather than the more intuitive “natural frequency” approach presented here and in Gigerenzer’s book. Good had an interesting career. In addition to his many contributions to probability theory and Bayesian statistics, he helped break the Nazi Enigma code during World War II, and introduced the futuristic concept now known as the “technological singularity.” Here is how Dershowitz seems to have calculated that fewer than 1 in 2,500 batterers go on to murder their partners, per year. On page 104 of his book “Reasonable Doubts,” he cites an estimate that in 1992, somewhere between 2.5 and 4 million women in the United States were battered by their husbands, boyfriends, and ex-boyfriends. In that same year, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 913 women were murdered by their husbands, and 519 were killed by their boyfriends or ex-boyfriends. Dividing the total of 1,432 homicides by 2.5 million beatings yields 1 murder per 1,746 beatings, whereas using the higher estimate of 4 million beatings per year yields 1 murder per 2,793 beatings. Dershowitz apparently chose 2,500 as a round number in between these extremes. What’s unclear is what proportion of the murdered women had been previously beaten by these men. It seems that Dershowitz was assuming that nearly all the victims were beaten, presumably to make the point that even when the rate is overestimated in this way, it’s still “infinitesimal.” Good’s estimated murder rate of 1 per 20,000 women per year includes battered women, so it was not strictly correct to assume (as he did, and as we did above) that 5 women out of 100,000 would be killed by someone other than the batterer. But correcting for this doesn’t alter the conclusion significantly, as the following calculation shows. According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 4,936 women were murdered in 1992. Of these murder victims, 1,432 (about 29 percent) were killed by their husbands or boyfriends. The remaining 3,504 were killed by somebody else. Therefore, considering that the total population of women in the United States at that time was about 125 million, the rate at which women were murdered by someone other than their partners was 3,504 divided by 125,000,000, or 1 murder per 35,673 women, per year. Let’s assume that this rate of murder by non-partners was the same for all women, battered or not. Then in our hypothetical sample of 100,000 battered women, we’d expect about 100,000 divided by 35,673, or 2.8 women to be killed by someone other than their partner. Although 2.8 is smaller than the 5 that Good and we assumed above, it doesn’t matter much because both are so small compared to 40, the estimated number of cases in which the batterer is the murderer. With this modification, our new estimate of the probability that the batterer is the murderer would be 40 divided by (40 + 2.8), or about 93 percent. A related quibble is that the FBI statistics and population data given above imply that the murder rate for women in 1992 was closer to 1 in 25,000, not 1 in 20,000 as Good assumed. If he had used that rate in his calculation, an estimated 4 women per 100,000, not 5, would have been murdered by someone other than the partner. But this still wouldn’t affect the basic message — now the batterer would be the murderer 40 times out of 40 + 4 = 44, or 91 percent of the time. A few years after the verdict was handed down in the Simpson case, Alan Dershowitz and the mathematician John Allen Paulos engaged in a heated exchange of letters to the editor of the New York Times. The issue was whether evidence of a history of spousal abuse should be regarded as relevant to a murder trial, in light of probabilistic arguments similar to those discussed in this post. Dershowitz’s letter to the editor and Paulos’s response make for lively reading. Thanks to Paul Ginsparg, Michael Lewis, Eri Noguchi and Carole Schiffman for their comments and suggestions.
Editor’s note: This column was updated to add Note 9 on April 30.
For those readers who want to print this column, our default print option, below, works well for this week’s format, so there is no PDF version included.
For a good textbook treatment of conditional probability and Bayes’s theorem, see:
S.M. Ross, “Introduction to Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists,” 4th edition (Academic Press, 2009).
The answer to part (a) of the “ailing plant” problem is 59 percent. The answer to part (b) is 27/41, or approximately 65.85 percent. To derive these results, imagine 100 ailing plants and figure out (on average) how many of them get watered or not, and then how many of those go on to die or not, based on the information given. This question appears, though with slightly different numbers and wording, as problem 29 on p. 84 of Ross’s text.
The study of how doctors interpret mammogram results is described in:
G. Gigerenzer, “Calculated Risks” (Simon and Schuster, 2002), chapter 4. For more on the O.J. Simpson case and a discussion of wife battering in a larger context, see chapter 8.
For many entertaining anecdotes and insights about conditional probability and its real-world applications, as well as how it’s misperceived, see:
J.A. Paulos, “Innumeracy” (Vintage, 1990);
L. Mlodinow, “The Drunkard’s Walk” (Vintage, 2009).
The quotes pertaining to the O.J. Simpson trial, and Alan Dershowitz’s estimate of the rate at which battered women are murdered by their partners, appeared in:
A. Dershowitz, “Reasonable Doubts” (Touchstone, 1997), pp. 101-104.
Probability theory was first correctly applied to the Simpson trial by the late I.J. Good, in:
I.J. Good, “When batterer turns murderer,” Nature, Vol. 375 (1995), p. 541.
I.J. Good, “When batterer becomes murderer,” Nature, Vol. 381 (1996), p. 481.
Good phrased his analysis in terms of odds ratios and Bayes’s theorem, rather than the more intuitive “natural frequency” approach presented here and in Gigerenzer’s book.
Good had an interesting career. In addition to his many contributions to probability theory and Bayesian statistics, he helped break the Nazi Enigma code during World War II, and introduced the futuristic concept now known as the “technological singularity.”
Here is how Dershowitz seems to have calculated that fewer than 1 in 2,500 batterers go on to murder their partners, per year. On page 104 of his book “Reasonable Doubts,” he cites an estimate that in 1992, somewhere between 2.5 and 4 million women in the United States were battered by their husbands, boyfriends, and ex-boyfriends. In that same year, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 913 women were murdered by their husbands, and 519 were killed by their boyfriends or ex-boyfriends. Dividing the total of 1,432 homicides by 2.5 million beatings yields 1 murder per 1,746 beatings, whereas using the higher estimate of 4 million beatings per year yields 1 murder per 2,793 beatings. Dershowitz apparently chose 2,500 as a round number in between these extremes.
What’s unclear is what proportion of the murdered women had been previously beaten by these men. It seems that Dershowitz was assuming that nearly all the victims were beaten, presumably to make the point that even when the rate is overestimated in this way, it’s still “infinitesimal.”
Good’s estimated murder rate of 1 per 20,000 women per year includes battered women, so it was not strictly correct to assume (as he did, and as we did above) that 5 women out of 100,000 would be killed by someone other than the batterer. But correcting for this doesn’t alter the conclusion significantly, as the following calculation shows.
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 4,936 women were murdered in 1992. Of these murder victims, 1,432 (about 29 percent) were killed by their husbands or boyfriends. The remaining 3,504 were killed by somebody else. Therefore, considering that the total population of women in the United States at that time was about 125 million, the rate at which women were murdered by someone other than their partners was 3,504 divided by 125,000,000, or 1 murder per 35,673 women, per year.
Let’s assume that this rate of murder by non-partners was the same for all women, battered or not. Then in our hypothetical sample of 100,000 battered women, we’d expect about 100,000 divided by 35,673, or 2.8 women to be killed by someone other than their partner. Although 2.8 is smaller than the 5 that Good and we assumed above, it doesn’t matter much because both are so small compared to 40, the estimated number of cases in which the batterer is the murderer. With this modification, our new estimate of the probability that the batterer is the murderer would be 40 divided by (40 + 2.8), or about 93 percent.
A related quibble is that the FBI statistics and population data given above imply that the murder rate for women in 1992 was closer to 1 in 25,000, not 1 in 20,000 as Good assumed. If he had used that rate in his calculation, an estimated 4 women per 100,000, not 5, would have been murdered by someone other than the partner. But this still wouldn’t affect the basic message — now the batterer would be the murderer 40 times out of 40 + 4 = 44, or 91 percent of the time.
A few years after the verdict was handed down in the Simpson case, Alan Dershowitz and the mathematician John Allen Paulos engaged in a heated exchange of letters to the editor of the New York Times. The issue was whether evidence of a history of spousal abuse should be regarded as relevant to a murder trial, in light of probabilistic arguments similar to those discussed in this post. Dershowitz’s letter to the editor and Paulos’s response make for lively reading.
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Steven Strogatz is the Schurman Professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University. Among his honors are MIT’s highest teaching prize, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a lifetime achievement award for communication of math to the general public, awarded by the four major American mathematical societies. A frequent guest on National Public Radio’s “Radiolab,” he is the author, most recently, of “The Joy of x,” which grew out of his previous Opinionator series “The Elements of Math.” He lives with his wife and two daughters in Ithaca, N.Y. Follow him on Twitter @stevenstrogatz Inside Opinionator
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A Bayesian approach is particularly useful when predicting outcome probabilities in cases where one has strong prior knowledge of a situation. Suppose, for instance (borrowing an old example that Silver revives), that a woman in her forties goes for a mammogram and receives bad news: a “positive” mammogram. However, since not every positive result is real, what is the probability that she actually has breast cancer? To calculate this, we need to know four numbers. The fraction of women in their forties who have breast cancer is 0.014, which is about one in seventy. The fraction who do not have breast cancer is therefore 1 – 0.014 = 0.986. These fractions are known as the prior probabilities. The probability that a woman who has breast cancer will get a positive result on a mammogram is 0.75. The probability that a woman who does not have breast cancer will get a false positive on a mammogram is 0.1. These are known as the conditional probabilities. Applying Bayes’s theorem, we can conclude that, among women who get a positive result, the fraction who actually have breast cancer is (0.014 x 0.75) / ((0.014 x 0.75) + (0.986 x 0.1)) = 0.1, approximately. That is, once we have seen the test result, the chance is about ninety per cent that it is a false positive. In this instance, Bayes’s theorem is the perfect tool for the job.
This technique can be extended to all kinds of other applications. In one of the best chapters in the book, Silver gives a step-by-step description of the use of probabilistic reasoning in placing bets while playing a hand of Texas Hold ’em, taking into account the probabilities on the cards that have been dealt and that will be dealt; the information about opponents’ hands that you can glean from the bets they have placed; and your general judgment of what kind of players they are (aggressive, cautious, stupid, etc.).
But the Bayesian approach is much less helpful when there is no consensus about what the prior probabilities should be. For example, in a notorious series of experiments, Stanley Milgram showed that many people would torture a victim if they were told that it was for the good of science. Before these experiments were carried out, should these results have been assigned a low prior (because no one would suppose that they themselves would do this) or a high prior (because we know that people accept authority)? In actual practice, the method of evaluation most scientists use most of the time is a variant of a technique proposed by the statistician Ronald Fisher in the early 1900s. Roughly speaking, in this approach, a hypothesis is considered validated by data only if the data pass a test that would be failed ninety-five or ninety-nine per cent of the time if the data were generated randomly. The advantage of Fisher’s approach (which is by no means perfect) is that to some degree it sidesteps the problem of estimating priors where no sufficient advance information exists. In the vast majority of scientific papers, Fisher’s statistics (and more sophisticated statistics in that tradition) are used.
Bayes’ theorem is stated mathematically as the following equation:[2]
P ( A ∣ B ) = P ( B ∣ A ) P ( A ) P ( B ) {\displaystyle P(A\mid B)={\frac {P(B\mid A)P(A)}{P(B)}}}
where A {\displaystyle A} and B {\displaystyle B} are events and P ( B ) ≠ 0 {\displaystyle P(B)\neq 0} .
P ( A ∣ B ) {\displaystyle P(A\mid B)} is a conditional probability: the likelihood of event A {\displaystyle A} occurring given that B {\displaystyle B} is true.
P ( B ∣ A ) {\displaystyle P(B\mid A)} is also a conditional probability: the likelihood of event B {\displaystyle B} occurring given that A {\displaystyle A} is true.
P ( A ) {\displaystyle P(A)} and P ( B ) {\displaystyle P(B)} are the probabilities of observing A {\displaystyle A} and B {\displaystyle B} respectively; they are known as the marginal probability.
A and B must be different events.
For random variables
For two continuous random variablesX and Y, Bayes’ theorem may be analogously derived from the definition of conditional density: f X ∣ Y = y ( x ) = f X , Y ( x , y ) f Y ( y ) {\displaystyle f_{X\mid Y=y}(x)={\frac {f_{X,Y}(x,y)}{f_{Y}(y)}}} f Y ∣ X = x ( y ) = f X , Y ( x , y ) f X ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{Y\mid X=x}(y)={\frac {f_{X,Y}(x,y)}{f_{X}(x)}}}
Therefore, f X ∣ Y = y ( x ) = f Y ∣ X = x ( y ) f X ( x ) f Y ( y ) . {\displaystyle f_{X\mid Y=y}(x)={\frac {f_{Y\mid X=x}(y)f_{X}(x)}{f_{Y}(y)}}.}
Examples
For events
Bayes’ theorem may be derived from the definition of conditional probability: P ( A ∣ B ) = P ( A ∩ B ) P ( B ) , if P ( B ) ≠ 0 , {\displaystyle P(A\mid B)={\frac {P(A\cap B)}{P(B)}},{\text{ if }}P(B)\neq 0,} P ( B ∣ A ) = P ( B ∩ A ) P ( A ) , if P ( A ) ≠ 0 , {\displaystyle P(B\mid A)={\frac {P(B\cap A)}{P(A)}},{\text{ if }}P(A)\neq 0,}
where P ( A ∩ B ) {\displaystyle P(A\cap B)} is the joint probability of both A and B being true. Because P ( B ∩ A ) = P ( A ∩ B ) {\displaystyle P(B\cap A)=P(A\cap B)} , ⇒ P ( A ∩ B ) = P ( A ∣ B ) P ( B ) = P ( B ∣ A ) P ( A ) {\displaystyle \Rightarrow P(A\cap B)=P(A\mid B)P(B)=P(B\mid A)P(A)} ⇒ P ( A ∣ B ) = P ( B ∣ A ) P ( A ) P ( B ) , if P ( B ) ≠ 0. {\displaystyle \Rightarrow P(A\mid B)={\frac {P(B\mid A)P(A)}{P(B)}},{\text{ if }}P(B)\neq 0.}
For random variables
German scientist says 99.9% chance coronavirus leaked from Wuhan lab
Year-long study of pandemic’s origin concludes it started with ‘laboratory accident’ in Wuhan
Head conditioning engineer at WIV Wang Liang testing equipment in lab. (Russian.news.cn archived photo screenshot)
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A new study based on a year of research by a German physicist has concluded that the Wuhan coronavirus started with an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Dr. Roland Wiesendanger, who specializes in nanoscience at the University of Hamburg, on Feb. 18 published a 105-page report on ReasearchGate titled “Study on the Origin of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” The study was carried out from January to December 2020 based on scientific literature, print articles, online media, and correspondence with international researchers.
In his report, Wiesendanger listed six “significant indications” that the coronavirus pandemic started with a leak from the WIV.
No natural host found
Wiesendanger points out that unlike SARS and MERS, no intermediate host between bats and humans has been found more than a year since the start of the pandemic. Thus far, there is no evidence for the zoonotic theory to explain the outbreak.
Indeed, during the joint China-WHO report issued on Feb. 9, Liang Wannian, head of the Chinese National Health Commission’s Expert Panel of COVID-19 Response, stated that 50,000 samples of wild animals from 300 different species (including bats) as well as 11,000 farm animals in 31 Chinese provinces — taken between November 2019 and March 2020 — had all tested negative for SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19.
Well-suited for hACE2 receptors
The researcher claimed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is “astonishingly effective” at binding to human receptor cells (hACE2). He said this is due to its special hACE2 binding domains paired with the furin cleavage sites of the virus’ telltale spike protein.
He stated that this is the first time a coronavirus has exhibited both characteristics and that it points to a “non-natural origin.” Within the betacoronaviruses of sarbecovirus lineage B, the polybasic furin cleavage site is unique to SARS-CoV-2, according to News Medical Life Sciences.
Wrong bats in Wuhan
Wiesendanger noted that there were no bats sold at the infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the first known superspreader event began. Liang has stated that no animals or “animal products” had tested positive for the virus there and that individuals who contracted COVID early on had not visited the market.
The types of bats endemic to Wuhan do not carry the kinds of coronaviruses associated with SARS and COVID-19. Those coronaviruses are only found in horseshoe bats nearly 2,000 kilometers away in the caves of Yunnan Province.
What Wuhan does have, however, is the WIV, which holds “one of the largest collections of bat pathogens in the world,” observed Wiesendanger. He asserted that it is “extremely unlikely” bats made the 2,000-km journey to Wuhan and started an outbreak that just happened to be near the WIV and at least two other labs researching bat viruses in the city.
History of making chimeras
The scientist then mentioned that a research group, which is headed by Shi Zhengli (石正麗), also known as “Bat Woman,” has since 2007 been researching how spike proteins in natural and chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses bind to the ACE2 receptors in the cells of humans, bats, and other animals. Wiesendanger alleged that the goal of this research is to make these viruses “more infectious, more dangerous, and more fatal.”
Lax safety measures
Wiesendanger wrote that the safety measures had been “documented as being insufficient” before the start of the coronavirus epidemic. In early March of last year, photos taken in 2018 from within the lab surfaced showing a warped seal on the door to a freezer holding pathogens.
In 2017, Chinese state-run TV released a video showing WIV scientists talking about being bitten by bats. Other footage from the program shows scientists collecting potentially infectious bat feces while wearing short sleeves and shorts and with no noticeable personal protective equipment other than porous nitrile gloves.
Direct indications of lab leak
Wiesendanger then cites several incidents that are indicative of a lab accident, such as reports that a young researcher in the lab, identified as Huang Yanling, was allegedly “patient zero” and had disappeared after contracting the disease. The WIV and Chinese government have vehemently denied she was infected, but over a year later, her whereabouts are still unknown, and all information about her has been scrubbed from the WIV website.
He also touched on analysis by American intelligence agencies of a private report purporting to have found evidence of a “shutdown” and “hazardous event” allegedly taking place at the WIV in October 2019. More recently, on Jan. 15, the U.S. State Department released a report stating that several scientists inside the lab had become ill with “symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses” in the fall of 2019.
In an interview with the German newspaper ZDF, the scientist claimed he is “99.9 percent sure” that the coronavirus emerged from the laboratory. He did, however, concede that the current body of evidence pointing to a lab leak, although extensive, is currently “circumstantial.”
During an interview on “Face the Nation” on Sunday (Feb. 21), former Deputy National Security Advisor (DNSA) Mathew Pottinger said that the “Chinese military was doing secret classified animal experiments in that same laboratory” as early as 2017. He added that there is “good reason to believe” an outbreak of a “flu-like illness” had occurred among the scientists at the WIV in the fall of 2019, just before the first cases of a new type of pneumonia were being reported in Wuhan.
In 2018, Diplomats Warned of Risky Coronavirus Experiments in a Wuhan Lab. No One Listened.
After seeing a risky lab, they wrote a cable warning to Washington. But it was ignored.
On January 15, in its last days, President Donald Trump’s State Department put out a statement with serious claims about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. The statement said the U.S. intelligence community had evidence that several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory were sick with Covid-like symptoms in autumn 2019—implying the Chinese government had hidden crucial information about the outbreak for months—and that the WIV lab, despite “presenting itself as a civilian institution,” was conducting secret research projects with the Chinese military. The State Department alleged a Chinese government cover-up and asserted that “Beijing continues today to withhold vital information that scientists need to protect the world from this deadly virus, and the next one.”
The exact origin of the new coronavirus remains a mystery to this day, but the search for answers is not just about assigning blame. Unless the source is located, the true path of the virus can’t be traced, and scientists can’t properly study the best ways to prevent future outbreaks.
In late 2017, top health and science officials at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing attended a conference in the Chinese capital. There, they saw a presentation on a new study put out by a group of Chinese scientists, including several from the Wuhan lab, in conjunction with the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Since the 2002 outbreak of SARS—the deadly disease caused by a coronavirus transmitted by bats in China—scientists around the world had been looking for ways to predict and limit future outbreaks of similar diseases. To aid the effort, the NIH had funded a number of projects that involved the WIV scientists, including much of the Wuhan lab’s work with bat coronaviruses. The new study was entitled “Discovery of a Rich Gene Pool of Bat SARS-Related Coronaviruses Provides New Insights into the Origin of SARS Coronavirus.”
These researchers, the American officials learned, had found a population of bats from caves in Yunnan province that gave them insight into how SARS coronaviruses originated and spread. The researchers boasted that they may have found the cave where the original SARS coronavirus originated. But all the U.S. diplomats cared about was that these scientists had discovered three new viruses that had a unique characteristic: they contained a “spike protein” that was particularly good at grabbing on to a specific receptor in human lung cells known as an ACE2 receptor. That means the viruses were potentially very dangerous for humans—and that these viruses were now in a lab with which they, the U.S. diplomats, were largely unfamiliar.
Knowing the significance of the Wuhan virologists’ discovery, and knowing that the WIV’s top-level biosafety laboratory (BSL-4) was relatively new, the U.S. Embassy health and science officials in Beijing decided to go to Wuhan and check it out. In total, the embassy sent three teams of experts in late 2017 and early 2018 to meet with the WIV scientists, among them Shi Zhengli, often referred to as the “bat woman” because of her extensive experience studying coronaviruses found in bats.
When they sat down with the scientists at the WIV, the American diplomats were shocked by what they heard. The Chinese researchers told them they didn’t have enough properly trained technicians to safely operate their BSL-4 lab. The Wuhan scientists were asking for more support to get the lab up to top standards.
Any theory of the pandemic’s origins had to account for the fact that the outbreak of the novel coronavirus—or, by its official name, SARS-CoV-2—first appeared in Wuhan, on the doorstep of the lab that possessed one of the world’s largest collections of bat coronaviruses and that possessed the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2, a virus known as RaTG13 that Shi identified in her lab.
Shi, in her March interview, said that when she was first told about the virus outbreak in her town, she thought the officials had gotten it wrong, because she would have guessed that such a virus would break out in southern China, where most of the bats live. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China,” she said.
By April, U.S. officials at the NSC and the State Department had begun to compile circumstantial evidence that the WIV lab, rather than the seafood market, was actually the source of the virus. The former explanation for the outbreak was entirely plausible, they felt, whereas the latter would be an extreme coincidence. But the officials couldn’t say that out loud because there wasn’t firm proof either way. And if the U.S. government accused China of lying about the outbreak without firm evidence, Beijing would surely escalate tensions even more, which meant that Americans might not get the medical supplies that were desperately needed to combat the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States.
Large parts of the scientific community also decried my report, pointing to the fact that natural spillovers have been the cause of other viral outbreaks, and that they were the culprit more often than accidents. But many of the scientists who spoke out to defend the lab were Shi’s research partners and funders, like the head of the global public health nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak; their research was tied to hers, and if the Wuhan lab were implicated in the pandemic, they would have to answer a lot of tough questions.
Likewise, the American scientists who knew and worked with Shi could not say for sure her lab was unconnected to the outbreak, because there’s no way they could know exactly what the WIV lab was doing outside their cooperative projects. Beijing threatened Australia and the EU for even suggesting an independent investigation into the origins of the virus.
In May, Chinese CDC officials declared on Chinese state media that they had ruled out the possibility that the seafood market was the origin of the virus, completely abandoning the original official story. As for the “bat woman” herself, Shi didn’t think the lab accident theory was so crazy. In her March interview, she described frantically searching her own lab’s records after learning of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. “Could they have come from our lab?” she recalled asking herself.
Shi said she was relieved when she didn’t find the new coronavirus in her files. “That really took a load off my mind,” she said. “I had not slept a wink in days.” Of course, if she had found the virus, she likely would not have been able to admit it, given that the Chinese government was going around the world insisting the lab had not been involved in the outbreak.
***
A key argument of those Chinese and American scientists disputing the lab accident theory is that Chinese researchers had performed their work out in the open and had disclosed the coronavirus research they were performing. This argument was used to attack anyone who didn’t believe the Chinese scientists’ firm denials their labs could possibly have been responsible for the outbreak.
But one senior administration official told me that many officials in various parts of the U.S. government, especially the NSC and the State Department, came to believe that these researchers had not been as forthcoming as had been claimed.
What they were worried about was something called “gain-of-function” research, in which the virulence or transmissibility of dangerous pathogens is deliberately increased. The purpose is to help scientists predict how viruses might evolve in ways that hurt humans before it happens in nature. But by bypassing pathogens’ natural evolutionary cycles, these experiments create risks of a human-made outbreak if a lab accident were to occur. For this reason, the Obama administration issued a moratorium on gain-of-function experiments in October 2014. https://bb759c0b6fcd227d9d7f2e3c3a48134d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
The Wuhan Institute of Virology had openly participated in gain-of-function research in partnership with U.S. universities and institutions. But the official told me the U.S. government had evidence that Chinese labs were performing gain-of-function research on a much larger scale than was publicly disclosed, meaning they were taking more risks in more labs than anyone outside China was aware of. This insight, in turn, fed into the lab-accident hypothesis in a new and troubling way.
A little-noticed study was released in early July 2020 by a group of Chinese researchers in Beijing, including several affiliated with the Academy of Military Medical Science. These scientists said they had created a new model for studying SARS-CoV-2 by creating mice with human-like lung characteristics by using the CRISPR gene-editing technology to give the mice lung cells with the human ACE2 receptor — the cell receptor that allowed coronaviruses to so easily infect human lungs.
After consultations with experts, some U.S. officials came to believe this Beijing lab was likely conducting coronavirus experiments on mice fitted with ACE2 receptors well before the coronavirus outbreak—research they hadn’t disclosed and continued not to admit to. In its January 15 statement, the State Department alleged that although the Wuhan Institute of Virology disclosed some of its participation in gain-of-function research, it has not disclosed its work on RaTG13 and “has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.” That, by itself, did not help to explain how SARS-CoV-2 originated.But it was clear that officials believed there was a lot of risky coronavirus research going on in Chinese labs that the rest of the world was simply not aware of.
“This was just a peek under a curtain of an entire galaxy of activity, including labs and military labs in Beijing and Wuhan playing around with coronaviruses in ACE2 mice in unsafe labs,” the senior administration official said. “It suggests we are getting a peek at a body of activity that isn’t understood in the West or even has precedent here.”
This pattern of deception and obfuscation, combined with the new revelations about how Chinese labs were handling dangerous coronaviruses in ways their Western counterparts didn’t know about, led some U.S. officials to become increasingly convinced that Chinese authorities were manipulating scientific information to fit their narrative. But there was so little transparency, it was impossible for the U.S. government to prove, one way or the other. “If there was a smoking gun, the CCP [Communist Party of China] buried it along with anyone who would dare speak up about it,” one U.S. official told me. “We’ll probably never be able to prove it one way or the other, which was Beijing’s goal all along.”
Back in 2017, the U.S. diplomats who had visited the lab in Wuhan had foreseen these very events, but nobody had listened and nothing had been done. “We were trying to warn that that lab was a serious danger,” one of the cable writers who had visited the lab told me. “I have to admit, I thought it would be maybe a SARS-like outbreak again. If I knew it would turn out to be the greatest pandemic in human history, I would have made a bigger stink about it.”
By March, the wild-virus theory was still the most likely explanation of the origin of SARS-CoV-2–but it was starting to look a little ragged around the edges. For one thing, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, not far from the animal markets in downtown Wuhan, houses the world’s largest collection of coronaviruses from wild bats, including at least one virus that bears a resemblance to SARS-CoV-2. What’s more, Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists have for the past five years been engaged in so-called “gain of function” (GOF) research, which is designed to enhance certain properties of viruses for the purpose of anticipating future pandemics. Gain-of-function techniques have been used to turn viruses into human pathogens capable of causing a global pandemic.
This is no nefarious secret program in an underground military bunker. The Wuhan lab received funding, mostly for virus discovery, in part from a ten-year, $200 million international program called PREDICT, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and other countries. Similar work, funded in part by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, has been carried out in dozens of labs throughout the world. Some of this research involves taking deadly viruses and enhancing their ability to spread quickly through a population—research that took place over the objections of hundreds of scientists, who have warned for years of the program’s potential to cause a pandemic.https://8c8c7e5252a235c48c82ffa0a7c0e187.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
In the years since the SARS outbreak, many instances of mishaps involving the accidental release of pathogens have taken place in labs throughout the world. Hundreds of breaches have occurred in the U.S., including a 2014 release of anthrax from a U.S. government lab that exposed 84 people. The SARS virus escaped from a Beijing lab in 2004, causing four infections and one death. An accidental release is not complicated and doesn’t require malicious intent. All it takes is for a lab worker to get sick, go home for the night, and unwittingly spread the virus to others.
The Wuhan Institute has a record of shoddy practices that could conceivably lead to an accidental release, as officials at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reportedly warned in a cable on January 19, 2018. “During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the cable, according to the Washington Post.
To be sure, there’s no evidence that SARS-Cov-2 came from the Wuhan lab, nor that the virus is the product of engineering. Most scientists believe, based on the evidence available, that a natural origin is the most likely explanation. But neither have they ruled out these possibilities. “At this stage, it is not possible to determine precisely the source of the virus which caused the COVID-19 pandemic,” says the World Health Organization in a statement to Newsweek. “All available evidence suggests that the virus has a natural animal origin and is not a manipulated or constructed virus.”https://8c8c7e5252a235c48c82ffa0a7c0e187.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
The circumstantial evidence is strong enough to warrant putting the lab’s programs and practices at the heart of the investigation. And it’s worth looking anew at whether scientists, in their efforts to protect the public from the threat of natural pathogens, overreached.China Is Censoring Research on COVID-19 Origins, Deleted Web Page SuggestsRead more China Is Censoring Research on COVID-19 Origins, Deleted Web Page Suggests
Animal Passage
Ten years ago, the viral pathogen most in the news was not a coronavirus but influenza—in particular, a strain of flu, designated H5N1, that arose in birds and killed a high proportion of those who were infected. For a while, the virus made headlines. Then it became clear that nearly everyone who caught the bird-flu virus got it directly from handling birds. To cause a plague, it’s not enough that a virus is an efficient killer. It also has to pass easily from one person to the next, a quality called transmissibility.
Around this time, Ron Fouchier, a scientist at Erasmus University in Holland, wondered what it would take for the bird flu virus to mutate into a plague virus. The question was important to the mission of virologists in anticipating human pandemics. If H5N1 were merely one or two steps away from acquiring human transmissibility, the world was in danger: a transmissible form of H5N1 could quickly balloon into a devastating pandemic on the order of the 1918 flu, which killed tens of millions of people.https://8c8c7e5252a235c48c82ffa0a7c0e187.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
To answer the question, scientists would have to breed the virus in the lab in cell cultures and see how it mutated. But this kind of work was difficult to carry out and hard to draw conclusions from. How would you know if the end result was transmissible?
The answer that Fouchier came up with was a technique known as “animal passage,” in which he mutated the bird-flu virus by passing it through animals rather than cell cultures. He chose ferrets because they were widely known as a good stand-in for humans—if a virus can jump between ferrets, it is likely also to be able to jump between humans. He would infect one ferret with a bird-flu virus, wait until it got sick, and then remove a sample of the virus that had replicated in the ferret’s body with a swab. As the virus multiplies in the body, it mutates slightly, so the virus that came out of the ferret was slightly different from the one that went into it. Fouchier then proceeded to play a version of telephone: he would take the virus from the first ferret and infect a second, then take the mutated virus from the second ferret and infect a third, and so on.
When Fouchier submitted his animal-passage work to the journal Science in 2011, biosecurity officials in the Obama White House, worried that the dangerous pathogen could accidentally leak from Fouchier’s lab, pushed for a moratorium on the research. Fouchier had done his work in BSL-2 labs, which are intended for pathogens such as staph, of moderate severity, rather than BSL-4, which are intended for Ebola and similar viruses. BSL-4 labs have elaborate safeguards—they’re usually separate buildings with their own air circulation systems, airlocks and so forth. In response, the National Institutes of Health issued a moratorium on the research.
What followed was a fierce debate among scientists over the risks versus benefits of the gain-of-function research. Fouchier’s work, wrote Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch in the journal Nature in 2015, “entails a unique risk that a laboratory accident could spark a pandemic, killing millions.”
Lipsitch and 17 other scientists had formed the Cambridge Working Group in opposition. It issued a statement pointing out that lab accidents involving smallpox, anthrax and bird flu in the U.S. “have been accelerating and have been occurring on average over twice a week.”
“Laboratory creation of highly transmissible, novel strains of dangerous viruses… poses substantially increased risks,” the statement said. “An accidental infection in such a setting could trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control. Historically, new strains of influenza, once they establish transmission in the human population, have infected a quarter or more of the world’s population within two years.” More than 200 scientists eventually endorsed the position.https://8c8c7e5252a235c48c82ffa0a7c0e187.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
The proponents of gain-of-function research were just as passionate. “We need GOF experiments,” wrote Fouchier in Nature, “to demonstrate causal relationships between genes or mutations and particular biological traits of pathogens. GOF approaches are absolutely essential in infectious disease research.”
The NIH eventually came down on the side of Fouchier and the other proponents. It considered gain-of-function research worth the risk it entailed because it enables scientists to prepare anti-viral medications that could be useful if and when a pandemic occurred.
By the time NIH lifted the moratorium, in 2017, it had granted dozens of exceptions. The PREDICT program, started in 2009, spent $200 million over 10 years, sending virologists all over the world to look for novel viruses and support some gain-of-function research on them. The program ran out of funding in 2019 and was then extended.https://8c8c7e5252a235c48c82ffa0a7c0e187.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
By the time the current pandemic hit, animal-passage experiments had become commonplace. Scientists in many of the more than 30 BSL-4 labs around the world had used them to enhance the transmissibility of respiratory-tract pathogens.
Did the work help during the current pandemic? In a recent article in the Lancet, Colin Carlson, an expert in emerging infectious diseases at Georgetown University, argued that work funded by PREDICT helped virologists rapidly isolate and classify the SARS-CoV-2 virus when it came out. However, the research “could have been better positioned for an overall impact.” Although the program found hundreds of new viruses, it’s nearly impossible for scientists to assess their risk to humans. The only way to tell is to “observe a human infection.”
Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers, put it more bluntly. “The PREDICT program has produced no results—absolutely no results—that are of use for preventing or combating outbreaks. There’s no information from that project that will contribute in any way, shape or form to addressing the outbreak at hand. The research does not provide information that’s useful for developing antiviral drugs. It does not provide information that’s useful for developing vaccines.”https://8c8c7e5252a235c48c82ffa0a7c0e187.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, not far from the animal markets in downtown Wuhan, houses the world’s largest collection of coronaviruses from wild bats. The facility is among a handful of labs around the world cleared to handle Class 4 pathogens (P4) – dangerous viruses that pose a high risk of person-to-person transmission. HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images
China’s role
The Wuhan Institute of Virology is one of many labs to receive PREDICT funding. Shi Zheng-Li, a virologist known as “bat woman” for her group’s work in collecting hundreds of coronaviruses, and her staff at the Institute explored the same bat caves that were thought to have given rise to the original SARS virus in 2002. Her scientists penetrated remote caves, swabbing bats’ anuses and collecting their excretions. When they returned to the lab, they cultured the viruses they found, determined their genomic sequences and tried to determine how they infect cells and animals in the lab.https://8c8c7e5252a235c48c82ffa0a7c0e187.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
The Institute began a program of gain-of-function research into bat coronaviruses in 2015. That involved taking selected strains and seeking to increase the ability of those viruses to transmit from one person to another. The gain-of-function research went hand-in-hand with the surveillance project. As scientists identified new classes of bat viruses that have the ability to infect human cells, that raised the question of what changes would have to arise in nature to make that virus transmissible in humans, which would pose a pandemic threat.Coronavirus Outbreak Is A Wake-Up Call Showing How Unprepared We AreRead more Coronavirus Outbreak Is A Wake-Up Call Showing How Unprepared We Are
In 2015, the Wuhan lab performed a gain of function experiment using cut-and-paste genetic engineering, in which scientists take a natural virus and directly make substitutions in its RNA coding to make it more transmissible. They took a piece of the original SARS virus and inserted a snippet from a SARS-like bat coronavirus, resulting in a virus that is capable of infecting human cells. A natural virus altered with these methods would be easily flagged in a genetic analysis, like a contemporary addition to an old Victorian house.
A virus produced with animal passage methods would be much harder to spot. These viruses are not directly manipulated. When the virus passes from one animal to the next, it undergoes something similar to what would happen in the wild during the course of its evolution. A wild coronavirus passed through 10 ferrets would be difficult to identify as having been engineered or manipulated.
There is no published record of animal-passage work on coronaviruses in the Wuhan Institute. The lab got its first BSL-4 lab in 2018, which is now considered a requirement for this kind of work (though some work proceeds in BSL-3-enhanced labs). It’s possible that researchers started animal passage work in the BSL-4 lab but didn’t finish it in time to publish before the current pandemic, when China tightened up on publications. It’s possible that the work was done in secret. It’s possible that it never happened at all. But some scientists think it’s unlikely that an expensive BSL-4 lab would not be doing animal-passage research, which by 2018 was not unusual.https://8c8c7e5252a235c48c82ffa0a7c0e187.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
Tracing the origins
To figure out where SARS-CoV-2 came from, Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research and his colleagues performed a genetic analysis: they published the work, which has been widely cited, on March 17 in Nature Medicine. The researchers focused on certain genetic features of the virus for telltale signs of “manipulation.”
One feature was the spike of protein that the virus uses to attach so effectively to the human body’s ACE2 receptors, a molecular feature of the cells in our lungs and other organs. The spike in SARS-Cov-2, the authors conclude, differs from that of the original SARS virus in ways that suggest it was “most likely the product of natural selection”—in other words, natural, not manipulated in a lab.https://8c8c7e5252a235c48c82ffa0a7c0e187.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
However, the paper’s reasoning as to why animal passage, in particular, can be ruled out, is not clear. “In theory, it is possible that SARS-CoV-2 acquired the… mutations during adaptation to passage in cell culture,” the authors write. The theory that the virus mutated in mammalian hosts such as pangolins “provides a much stronger… explanation.” Whether or not that includes animal passage in a lab, they don’t say. Andersen didn’t respond to Newsweek requests for comment.
Rutger’s Ebright, a longtime opponent of gain of function research, says that the Andersen analysis fails to rule out animal-passage as an origin of SARS-CoV-2. “The reasoning is unsound,” he wrote in an email to Newsweek. “They favor the possibility ‘that the virus mutated in an animal host such as a pangolins’ yet, simultaneously, they disfavor the possibility that the virus mutated in ‘animal passage.’ Because the two possibilities are identical, apart from location, one can’t logically favor one and disfavor the other.”Who Should Doctors Save? Inside the Debate Over Rationing Coronavirus CareRead more Who Should Doctors Save? Inside the Debate Over Rationing Coronavirus Care
Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist at UC Davis, says that the preponderance of evidence, while not definitive, suggests that the virus came from nature, not a lab. “There’s no hint there that there’s something unnatural, that is, genetically engineered or manipulated,” he says. But “there is some wiggle room” in the findings that admits the possibility that the virus was concocted in a lab via animal passage. “Passaging is hard to test for. Escape from a lab is hard to test for,” he says. “If [Wuhan researchers] collected something from the field and they were doing some experiments in the lab with it, and some person got infected and then it spread from there, that would be really hard to distinguish from it having spread in the field directly.”
Wuhan is in possession of a virus, RATG13, that is thought to be the most similar to SARS-CoV-2 of any known virus—the two share 96 percent of their genetic material. That four-percent gap would still be a formidable gap for animal-passage research, says Ralph Baric, a virologist at the University of North Carolina who collaborated with Shi Zheng-Li on the 2015 gain-of-function research. “You keep running into problems that just don’t make it likely,” he says. Wuhan would probably have had to start with a virus closer to SARS-CoV-2 than RATG13, which is within the realm of possibilities.https://8c8c7e5252a235c48c82ffa0a7c0e187.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
“The only way to resolve it,” says Baric, “is transparency and open science and have some real investigation into it. I don’t think the Chinese are going to allow that. I don’t know what any country would do in this situation. I would like to think that the U.S. would be transparent.”
4/30/2020 10:40 pm. Correction: The passage on the PREDICT program was changed to make it clear that most of the program’s funding went for virus discovery activities. Also, the second 5-year funding for the program was slated to end in 2019, not 2018 as previously reported, before being extended. Request Reprint & Licensing, Submit Correction or view Editorial Guidelines SPONSORED CONTENT
NJ Congressman Claims Wuhan Lab Was Making COVID-19 More Contagious Before Accidental Release
WASHINGTON, D.C. – New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith who represents the northern region of the Jersey Shore this week said that not only was the COVID-19 virus unleashed from a lab in Wuhan, China but that the Chinese Communist government was experimenting with the virus to make it more deadly and contagious. Smith, a Republican said the U.S. government was aware of the research being done at the lab.
“To think that such a highly transmissible virus could be, not have the safeguards, not have the protections and not have people properly trained is unconscionable,” Smith said. “Frankly they were doing things…trying to boost the transmissibility of this disease, not necessarily to send it out to the world, but to make something more highly contagious than it is better have every safeguard as humanly possible.”
“Мы обращаемся к нашим единомышленникам в других городах – выходите на улицы своих городов, создавайте свои Евромайданы. Не будьте равнодушными! Судьба Украины в наших руках!” – подытожено в заявлении.
Его подписали лидеры оппозиционных партий Арсений Яценюк, Виталий Кличко, Олег Тягнибок и “оргкомитет Евромайдана”.
Напомним, митинг на Европейской площади организован политическими партиями, а акция на Майдане – общественными активистами.
Во время встречи Маккейна с лидерами оппозиции – Виталием Кличко, Арсением Яценюком и Олегом Тягнибоком – речь шла о возможной помощи Украине. Как отмечает пресс-служба партии “УДАР”, Виталий Кличко заявил,
Украина
Сенатор Маккейн в Киеве пообщался с оппозицией, властью и посмотрел на Майдан
Во время двухдневного частного визита в Киев влиятельный американский сенатор-республиканец Джон Маккейн встретится с представителями власти, оппозиции и гражданского общества Украины.
Во время Народного вече в Киеве в воскресенье, 22 декабря, было принято решение о создании всеукраинской организации Народное объединение “Майдан”, в которую, кроме политиков, вошли также известные журналисты, общественные деятели и певцы.
О составе нового объединения с трибуны Майдана объявил заместитель председателя партии “Батькивщина” Александр Турчинов.
Лидер фракции “Батькивщина” Арсений Яценюк заявил, что новосозданное народное объединение “Майдан” имеет целью восстановление политического баланса в Украине и создание новой Конституции.
Оппозиция также говорит, что будет продолжать требовать отставки правительства, и призвала людей не расходиться.
Как передает корреспондент ВВС Украина, на Майдане Незалежности в Киеве в этот день собралось около 100 тысяч человек.
Евромайдан оформили в Майдан
Сопредседателями нового объединения кроме Виталия Кличко, Юрия Луценко, Арсения Яценюка и Олега Тягнибока стали также ректор Киево-Могилянской Академии Сергей Квит, певица Руслана Лыжичко и экс-премьер Юлия Тимошенко.
В состав Совета народного объединения “Майдан” вошли 37 человек. Среди них журналисты, общественные деятели, политики и певцы.
“Вся Украина должна стать единым майданом, чтобы очистить от Януковича нашу страну. С этой целью и с целью дальнейшей координации нашей деятельности, ее углубления и расширения мы, участники Народного вече, решили основать Народное объединение “Майдан”, в состав которого могут вступать политические партии, общественные организации и граждане”, – говорится в резолюции новой организации.
“Мы были, есть и в дальнейшем готовы к длительной борьбе, к тому, что Майдан будет стоять и бороться ровно до тех пор, пока Янукович не услышит голос миллионов. Майдан – это постоянно действующий очаг сопротивления… Это и есть наша свободная Украина, территория, которая уже неподвластна Януковичу”, – говорится в резолюции “Майдана”.
Лидер фракции “Батькивщина” Арсений Яценюк, выступая на вече, заявил, что основные политические задачи новосозданного народного объединения “Майдан” – это восстановление политического баланса в Украине и новая Конституция.
Среди задач, по его словам, также формирование плана изменений для Украины – в судебной системе, прокуратуре, милиции.
При этом Яценюк отметил, что основным требованием оппозиции продолжает оставаться отставка правительства Азарова.
В то же время Юрий Луценко призвал людей стоять до тех пор, пока “режим Януковича не будет свергнут”.
С такими призывами выступил и лидер ВО “Свобода” Олег Тягнибок. Он призвал людей “партизанскими выходками” блокировать административные здания и “не давать жить-спать негодяям во власти”.
“Мы создадим такой ад для этой власти! И они поймут, что с волей народа надо считаться”, – заявил Олег Тягнибок.
Не те люди?
Между тем в адрес новой организации уже раздается критика. В частности, обозреватели и журналисты обращают внимание на то, что в “Майдан” не вошел комендант Евромайдана Андрей Парубий, а также другие непосредственные участники протестов.
Журналист Вахтанг Кипиани на своей странице в Facebook написал: “По персональному составу совета НОМ у меня есть три замечания – там нет авторитетного украинского фейсбукера Мустафы Найема, каждый пост которого читает более 50 тыс. человек, нет коменданта Майдана Андрея Парубия, нет депутатов Олеси Оробец и Анатолия Гриценко”.
Еще более критический отзыв разместил в Facebook общественный деятель Евгений Глебовицкий. “Еще один пример профанации идеи. Это мне напоминает политическую кампанию Нашей Украины “Не предай Майдан”, собственно, от тех, кто Майдан -2004 предал. И Турчинов как святая троица. Он и в политике, и в религии, и за гражданское общество расписывается”.
Политолог Владимир Кухарь обращает внимание на размытость требований оппозиции и отсутствие четкого плана действий, за что в последнее время оппозиционных политиков много критикуют. “Вчера нам обещали План наступления. Сегодня объявили план, как дождаться выборов-2015”, – написал он на своей странице в Facebook.
Накануне оппозиция заявляла, что на Народном вече в воскресенье, 22 декабря, будет объявлен план наступления.
В эти выходные исполнился месяц с начала массовых акций протеста в Киеве. За это время в столице прошло несколько самых массовых митингов за последние 22 года.
По разным данным, в центре Киева собиралось от нескольких сотен тысяч до более миллиона человек.
На Народное вече в воскресенье, 22 декабря, пришло около 100 тысяч, передает корреспондент ВВС Украина.
Гражданское противостояние на Украине перерастает в революцию: репортаж «Ленты.ру»
Лидеры парламентской оппозиции Виталий Кличко (партия «Удар»), Арсений Яценюк («Батькивщина») и Олег Тягнибок («Свобода»), приехавшие к людям после встречи с иностранными послами, заявили, что требуют отставки Януковича и правительства Николая Азарова, досрочных выборов президента и парламента, а также отставки и судебного преследования главы МВД Виталия Захарченко. Яценюк объявил собравшимся, что в воскресенье, несмотря на судебный запрет, состоится марш от парка имени Шевченко по Крещатику до площади Независимости ― на него, попросил он киевлян, должны выйти не меньше 200 тысяч человек. Новая акция получила название «всеукраинское мирное вече».
Толпа то и дело скандировала «Ре-во-лю-ция!», но этот призыв пока не находил отклика в речах политиков. Лидер «Свободы» Тягнибок отправился общаться с народом. Он терпеливо разъяснял, что «для революции нужно достаточное число не боящихся милиции людей, которых пока нет». «Нужен штурм, но для борьбы нужна армия, поэтому сначала нужно собрать десять тысяч боевиков, а не просто недовольных, понимаете?» — уговаривал он окруживших его людей.
«Боевики», впрочем, вскоре начали тренироваться прямо тут же, на площади у монастыря. Около пяти десятков националистов из так называемого «Правого фланга» с лицами, скрытыми под капюшонами и масками, отрабатывали приемы борьбы с «Беркутом». Взяв в руки палки, они по команде двигались строем вперед, перестраивались в круг или «свинью», отходили назад, дрались друг с другом. Их командир периодически кричал: «Пра-вый фланг!» или «Слава нации!» — и стоявшие в строе вскидывали кулак, некоторые отвечали фашистским приветствием.
Их попыталась остановить только одна девушка, которая почти кричала: «Вы что, хотите сказать, что это нормально? Вы хотите идти на “Беркут” с палками? Вы представляете угрозу!» Ее грубо отталкивали, пытаясь объяснить, что в сложившихся обстоятельствах иначе уже нельзя: «Девушка, что за байда? Вы видели, что вчера было на майдане?» Среди митингующих у Михайловского монастыря многие считали, что время для мирных акций подошло к концу и теперь оппозиции нужно действовать решительнее. «Праздник кончился, никто больше разговаривать не будет. Это народное восстание в Киеве, революция началась», — объясняли мне в толпе. Общее настроение было боевым.
— Бить надо по колену, — веско, как специалист, говорил высокий мужчина в черной куртке, стоявший в окружении еще шестерых приятелей. — Лучше втроем налетать, валить на землю и *******, — отвечал другой. — Или чтобы один флагом махал, отвлекал, а другой в это время ******. — У меня, кстати, есть две ракеты [петарды]. — Надо в них запульнуть. — Она если дернет, то дырку с кулак в бронежилете сделает. — Да, лучше просто арматуру прихватить. — И, как ниндзя, их лупить, — завершил диалог первый мужчина в черном.
Стихийный митинг на Михайловской площади — видимо, чтобы не подливать масла в огонь, — власти разгонять не стали, и люди спокойно простояли около монастыря до утра следующего дня.
На майдан
Воскресным утром площадь Независимости все еще была оцеплена милицией. На протяжении всего минувшего дня стоявших в оцеплении за заборчиком спецназовцев атаковали прохожие. «За девочку ответите», — говорил пожилой мужчина и грозил пальцем. «Как вы могли? Детям будет стыдно о себе рассказывать», — добавлял другой. Те, кто помоложе, просто материли спецназовцев, иногда кричали «Милиции ганьба!» (позор). «Беркутовцы» почти не реагировали. В лучших российских традициях (накануне митинга 6 мая 2012 года на Болотной площади там начались дорожные работы, в частности был вскрыт асфальт) рабочие начали перекладывать на площади плитку.
Бойцы «Беркута» в оцеплении. Киев, 1 декабря 2013 года Фото: Василий Федосенко / Reuters
К полудню перед университетом имени Тараса Шевченко собралось не меньше сотни тысяч человек. Впервые за последние дни появились флаги политических партий. Возник и новый контингент: стяги «Батькивщины», например, в основном несли пожилые женщины (на Украине есть классический типаж старушки, обожающей Юлю Тимошенко). Впереди колонны шел ближайший сторонник сидящей в тюрьме бывшей главы правительства Александр Турчинов. За ним несли большой украинский флаг, который держали в том числе Кличко, Яценюк, Тягнибок и присоединившийся к ним бывший польский премьер Ярослав Качиньский. Пока колонна, скандировавшая «Киев, вставай!», «Зека геть!» и «Слава Украине — героям слава!», двигалась по бульвару Шевченко и Крещатику в сторону майдана, милиция бездействовала. Ее вообще не было видно.
Более того, спецназ покинул майдан, как только пришедшие туда люди начали разбирать ограждения. Кличко, Яценюк и Тягнибок, дойдя до майдана, поднялись на покинутую стелу, где их ждали освободившие площадь молодые парни в масках. «На кабмин», — недвусмысленно предлагали они лидерам план действий, но Яценюк в ответ лишь многозначительно заметил, что «майдан теперь принадлежит украинцам», и вместе с коллегами ушел обратно на Крещатик. Новой сценой майдана стала машина со звукоусиливающей аппаратурой, которую поставили среди толпы на проезжей части.
Люди тем временем украшали так и не достроенную властями искусственную елку ― после разгона студентов ее прозвали «кровавой». В верхушку воткнули флаги трех оппозиционных партий и национальный флаг Украины, чуть ниже прицепили венок с портретом Януковича и надписью «Здохни падло». Елка стала любимым объектом шуток местных хипстеров: например, по майдану ходил парень с плакатом, на котором были нарисованы елочки с надписью «они оху»; по Михайловской площади накануне бродила девочка с плакатом «Подавись своей елкой». Вообще же, лозунги на майдане, на который собралось по разным оценкам от 250 до 500 тысяч человек, были разные: от рассчитанного на западную аудиторию «Yanukovich we are fucking angry» («Янукович, мы ***** как злы») до максимально доходчивого «Янукович *****».
В толпе в ожидании выступлений лидеров обсуждали, что делать дальше.
— На Банковую (там расположено здание администрации президента Украины — прим. «Ленты.ру»)! — кричал плотный мужчина в шапочке. — На Банковую идти ни к чему. Депутаты из Партии регионов начали переходить на сторону оппозиции (фракцию Партии регионов за выходные покинули не менее шести человек — прим. «Ленты.ру»), потом они примут закон об импичменте. — Да это москали кричат, — пошутил кто-то. — Кровь за кровь, зуб за зуб! — скандировали другие.
Выступавшие на митинге, как могли, пытались успокоить народ. «Зло можно победить только добром. Творите добро с божьей помощью. Слава Иисусу Христу», — рассуждал, например, предстоятель Украинской грекокатолической церкви кардинал Любомир Гузар. Впрочем, ограничиться призывами к мирным протестам удавалось не всем. Турчинов заводил толпу, вопрошая: «Готовы ли вы к бою? Готовы ли выиграть войну?»
Бывший глава МВД Юрий Луценко (один из лидеров оппозиции, который, в отличие от тройки Яценюк-Кличко-Тягнибок, в Верховной Раде не заседает) прямо сказал: «Это не акция, это — революция». Правда, тут же добавил, что она «может быть только мирной». По словам Луценко, с понедельника митингующие должны заблокировать квартал, где находятся парламент Украины, кабинет министров и дворец президента. «Мы объявляем пятидневную забастовку! Пять дней блокады — и власть будет наша. Завтра не надо идти на работу или в институт! Вся наука тут, на улицах», — сказал Луценко.
— У-и-и-и-и-и-и! — радостно отозвалась девушка в розовом пуховике.
Кличко назвал выход на майдан первой победой и, как обычно, упомянул про нового президента (он уже заявлял, что хочет баллотироваться в 2015 году), который выполнит волю народа, раз этого не делает нынешний. Яценюк обозвал украинскую раду «зрадой» («измена» по-украински), попросил всех быть решительными и не делать ни шага назад. Тягнибок в свою очередь заявил, что на Украине началась «революция украинской нации», и рассказал, что лидеры оппозиции решили никуда не уходить с майдана, открыв здесь центральный штаб общеукраинского протеста.
Штурм Киевской рады
Пока большая часть вышедших на майдан людей послушно внимала речам своих лидеров и собиралась обживаться на майдане, «Правый фланг» атаковал фактически брошенное противником на произвол судьбы здание столичной администрации на Крещатике, где заседает Киевская рада. Еще за час до начала митинга бойцы «Правого фланга» на Михайловской площади, отойдя в сторонку, готовились к битве. Прогуливавшийся промеж них с тяжелой палкой в руке лидер киевского Конгресса украинских националистов Николай Коханивский (он известен тем, что когда-то отбил нос у памятника Ленину на бульваре Шевченко) признался, что «все хотят драться». «Политики думают все перевести в формат выборов, но мы устали терпеть и хотим войны», — сказал мне Коханивский.
Очевидцы пересказывали мне, как проходило взятие горадминистрации: люди ринулись на штурм здания, быстро разбили окна первого этажа и выломали дверь. Внутри их ждали несколько милиционеров, которых быстро обратили в бегство. С завхозом Киевской рады удалось договориться, и он милостиво разрешил митингующим использовать для своих целей коридор первого этажа и колонный зал. Остальные помещения захватчики пообещали не трогать и для верности забаррикадировали их столами и другой мебелью.
Спецназ встал во внутреннем дворе Киевской рады, а власть в самом здании захватили представители «Свободы». Националисты с флагами наводнили роскошный колонный зал, где обычно проходят официальные церемонии. Все происходящее напоминало каноническую картинку захвата революционными солдатами и матросами Зимнего дворца из фильма Сергея Эйзенштейна «Октябрь». Активист «Свободы» Юрий Левченко объяснил мне, что захват здания никаким захватом он не считает, поскольку Киевская рада, как парламент, «принадлежит не власти, а народу». «Мы вообще здесь находимся для обеспечения бóльшей безопасности, будем кормить людей, они смогут тут греться», — добавил националист.
В оккупированное здание тем временем толпами хлынули зеваки, чтобы сделать историческую фотографию. «А что? Это экскурсия! Ведь обычно сюда никого не пускают», ― говорили люди, прогуливаясь по Колонному залу или разглядывая стеклянные витрины с «ценными подарками» столичному парламенту. Люди сидели на сцене или в зале, пили чай с сушками или оладьями, в углу кто-то пел под гитару. Периодически кто-то начинал играть национальный гимн Украины на стоявшем на сцене белом фортепьяно, и весь зал вставал и запевал хором. Студент Киево-Могилянской академии рассказал мне, что провел все дни на «евромайдане», так что взятие Киевской рады с разгоном сторонников евроинтеграции по накалу страстей не сравнится. «Рада ведь и так принадлежит народу, и мы просто в нее зашли посмотреть», ― сказал он.
К вечеру здание Киевской рады превратилось в «главный штаб революции», о чем уже гласило граффити на входе. Тут же стоял молодой человек в каске и в пятилитровую пластиковую бутылку собирал на эту революцию средства. В гардеробе раздавали еду и горячее питье. Ближе к ночи засевшие в штабе революционеры улеглись спать вповалку прямо на паркете колонного зала, хотя в Киевскую раду продолжали приезжать любопытствующие, среди них несколько католических священников и прибывший из Москвы арт-активист Петр Верзилов, муж участницы группы Pussy Riot Надежды Толоконниковой.
Осада здания администрации президента
Захват городского парламента лидеры оппозиции приветствовали и рассказывали о нем со сцены толпе, численность которой оценивали уже за 300 тысяч человек. А вот о попытке взять штурмом здание администрации президента этого не скажешь ― они считают ее провокацией власти.
Примерно в то же время, когда националисты брали штурмом здание Киевской рады, другая группа митингующих, проигнорировав призывы лидеров протестовать дальше мирно, отправилась на Банковую улицу, где расположена администрация президента. По дороге они нашли брошенный бежавшими с майдана рабочими бульдозер. По счастливой для митингующих случайности в замке зажигания торчал ключ (после этого пошли разговоры, что это могла быть намеренная провокация властей), оппозиционеры облепили его и отправились к колоннам спецназовцев уже на нем. Банковую улицу перекрывали автобусы «Беркута», перед которыми выстроились бойцы в полной экипировке. В «Беркут» сразу же полетели камни и бутылки, некоторые из нападавших были с дубинками, а у одного даже была цепь. Пробегали люди в масках, потрясая трофеем ― отобранным милицейским щитом. В какой-то момент на оцепление «Беркута» прямиком поехал бульдозер, но наступление противников президента Януковича захлебнулось.
Митингующие закидывают камнями и фаерами бойцов милицейского спецназа перед зданием президентской администрации в Киеве, 1 декабря 2013 года Фото: Сергей Гриц / AP
И сторонние наблюдатели, и оппозиционеры сходятся на том, что националисты пошли в атаку на «Беркут», поддавшись призывам многочисленных провокаторов. Действовали ли они по сговору с властями или по собственному почину, не имеет принципиального значения ― бóльшую часть дравшихся с милицией составляли молодые люди вроде тех, что накануне тренировались на Михайловской площади. Об этом говорит и МВД, по информации которого к событиям у администрации президента причастны более 300 радикально настроенных членов организации «Братство» под руководством Дмитрия Корчинского. Сам он в своем фейсбуке признался, что принимал участие в атаке на администрацию президента, а оппозицию обвинил в бездействии.
В ответ на нападение «Беркут» применил слезоточивый газ. Закидав толпу националистов газовыми гранатами, спецназ побежал вперед. Тех, кто не успел убежать или спрятаться во дворах и закоулках, «Беркут» бил беспощадно. Отогнав националистов на Институтскую улицу, спецназ отошел на исходные позиции к зданию администрации.
Возвращавшиеся беркутовцы зло цедили сквозь зубы: «******* штопаные», «как ******* ********»; один саркастически бросил: «Тоже мне мирная акция». Кто-то из спецназовцев обратил внимание на разломанный шлагбаум, а вот лежавшего рядом мужчину с разбитой головой проигнорировал. Ему помогали медики-волонтеры в жилетках с красным крестом. Когда мужчину подняли и повели в сторону машины скорой помощи на Институтской улице, на земле осталась лужа крови. Пострадали и несколько десятков журналистов ― кого-то избили дубинкой, кому-то специально разбили камеру.
Когда передовой отряд «Беркута» встал на исходную позицию, оппозиционеры сменили тактику. Вместо того чтобы идти в лобовую атаку, они обрушили на спецназ град булыжников. Камней было много, и спецназ начал медленно отходить назад. Окрыленная успехом толпа, продолжая забрасывать «Беркут» камнями, ринулась вперед с криками «су-у-у-уки». На это спецназ ответил не только дубинками и свето-шумовыми гранатами, но и камнями. Как только возникла передышка, «Беркут» снова пошел вперед, окончательно рассеяв нападавших. С частью из них я укрылся в гостеприимном Доме писателей, где со стены на представителей обеих сторон немного с укором смотрел Тарас Шевченко.
Только в этот момент до Банковой добрались наконец лидеры оппозиции. Кличко обошел активистов с мегафоном в руках, потребовав прекратить нападения на милиционеров. Подчинялись ему далеко не все. Старик с украинским флагом вместо шарфа встал перед «Беркутом», который угрожающе стучал щитами, на колени: «Коли вы оккупанты, вам тут хана». «Иди отсюда, иначе трупы на вашей совести будут», ― кричали ему из толпы манифестантов. Какой-то парень с двумя пивными бутылками в руках закричал «Беркуту»: «Идите на **** отсюда», — а потом принялся спорить с кем-то, кто уговаривал его уйти. Довод в споре был все тот же: «Вы были на майдане, где они нас били?»
Протестующих уговаривали уйти с Банковой на майдан депутат Рады и бывший глава Минобороны Анатолий Гриценко и бывший глава МИД Петр Порошенко. Последний подходил к «Беркуту» и просил их отойти на десять шагов назад, затем вместе с Тягнибоком он начал переговоры с начальством спецназа. Вскоре сторонникам мирного протеста удалось выстроить цепочку из ветеранов Афганской войны в самом начале Банковой, через которую пускали только журналистов. Просьбы, мольбы и угрозы радикалов из молодняка пропустить к «Беркуту» на «афганцев» не действовали. Второй кордон из мирных протестующих встал в непосредственной близости от спецназа, который отошел ближе к зданию администрации и отгородился от протестующих не только щитами, но и металлическим сборным забором. «Мусора ― ********», ― периодически скандировала толпа, оставшаяся между двумя кордонами, прерываясь лишь на исполнение национального гимна.
***
Другой точкой, где столкнулись протестующие и спецназ, оказался пятачок перед памятником Владимиру Ленину на бульваре Шевченко. Монумент советскому вождю стал фактически вторым по важности объектом в центре Киева ― после администрации президента только к нему в воскресенье выдвигались «беркутовцы». Митингующие, нескончаемым потоком проходившие мимо по бульварам, кричали вставшей в каре милиции: «Детей бьют, а памятник охраняют!» Вечером же депутаты от партии «Свобода» вознамерились снести памятник, но успели только написать на нем «Слава нации» и приставить к нему стремянку, когда в дело вступил «Беркут». Впрочем, защитить Ленина спецназу не удалось, националисты закидали правоохранителей дымовыми шашками, вступили с ними в рукопашную, и спецназ счел за благо ретироваться в автобус, который едва не перевернули.
После установления на Банковой шаткого перемирия митингующие начали обустраивать майдан на площади Независимости для жизни и обороны. Периодически к ним выходили лидеры оппозиции и заклинали их никуда не уходить. «Мы должны остаться на майдане, мы должны выстоять несколько дней, и тогда мы победим», ― говорил Кличко. Тут же оперативно возводили новую стационарную сцену (к полуночи она была готова). Еще вечером митингующие захватили Дом профсоюзов, на котором размещен огромный информационный экран, где все дни евромайдана показывался ролик о достижениях главы киевской городской администрации Александра Попова. После захвата здания оппозицией на экран вывели флаг Евросоюза.
Все подходы к майдану были перекрыты баррикадами, для них использовали не только забор, которым милиция ранее обнесла майдан, но также брошенные там хвойные блоки для елки, скамейки и другие подходящие предметы. Ломать, кстати, практически ничего не стали (на майдане и Крещатике вообще не было вандализма и мародерства). Баррикады укреплялись автомобилями, которые подгоняли туда те, кому их не жалко ради революции. К вечеру на майдане начали устанавливать ставшие символом «Оранжевой революции» палатки. Раньше их не было из-за соответствующего запрета суда, однако после столкновений с милицией и захватом нескольких зданий терять оппозиционерам было уже нечего.
Оппозиционеры разбивают палаточный лагерь на площади Независимости, 1 декабря 2013 года Фото: Илья Питалев / РИА Новости
Ночью на майдане осталось около пяти тысяч человек, которые, как и захватившие Киевскую раду националисты, до утра ждали от спецназа очередного штурма. Однако, так его и не дождавшись, в шесть часов они выступили в сторону здания кабинета министров. В понедельник на Украине должна начаться всеобщая политическая забастовка, протестующие намерены полностью заблокировать квартал, где находятся основные правительственные здания, а лидеры оппозиции продолжат борьбу с режимом Януковича в Верховной Раде.
Украинская оппозиция выдвинула три требования к властям
фото ИТАР-ТАСС
Это отставка правительства, освобождение задержанных участников протестов и наказание виновных за силовой разгон «Евромайдана» неделю назад. Как заявили лидеры оппозиции – Арсений Яценюк Виталий Кличко и Олег Тягнибок – только после выполнения этих условий они готовы сесть за стол переговоров с представителями власти. Речь пойдет о досрочных выборах президента и парламента, а также о формирования технического правительства.
20.47 А тем временем на пресс-конференции лидеров оппозиции Олег Тягнибок призывает украинцев ехать в Киев.
17.12Виталий Кличко, Петр Порошенко и Олег Тягнибок стали между экстремистами и силовиками, передает УНН. По словам корреспондента, оппозиционеры пытаются успокоить обе стороны. Есть пострадавшие, как минимум пять человек.
16.24 Тем временем лидеры оппозиции провели пресс-конфренцию в Доме профсоюзов на Майдане Незалежности.
Петр Порошенко сообщил, что штурме Администрации президента участовало 500 “титушек”. “Этовооруженые до зубов люди, цель которых спровоцировать наш мирный протест. Я призвал людей прекратить эту провокацию, однако, меня в грубой форме сбросили с трактора, на который я взобрался и не дали возможности говорить. Там остались наши люди. Но мы заявляем, что не давали команды митингующим штурмовать административные здания”, – сказал Петр Порошенко.
Порошенко сообщил, что его помощника попытались ранить ножом, но пострадала лишь куртка мужчины.
Слова политика подтвердил и лидер “Свободы” Олег Тягнибок.
16.21На Банковой снова гремят взрывы. У милиции пытаются забрать щиты. В правоохранителей и с их стороны летят гранаты и дымовые шашки. Все в дыму.
Фото: А. Темченко, “Вести”
16.17 Полтора десятка правоохранителей госпитализированы в результате столкновений с митингующими под зданием Администрации президента на Банковой в Киеве, сообщил агентству “Интерфакс-Украина” источник в правоохранительных органах.
“Пятнадцать милиционеров госпитализированы с различными травмами в результате столкновений с митингующими возле администрации президента”, – рассказал источник.
16.11На Банковой в милицию все так же летят камни.
Мимо корреспондента на носилках пронесли пострадавшего.
16.08 Милиция на Банковой двинулась вперед и начала вытеснять митингующих.
16.07 В захваченном митингующими Доме профсоюзов вскоре начнется пресс-конференция защитника экс-премьера Юлии Тимошенко Сергея Власенко и ее дочери Жени Тимошенко.
раненых митингующих.
15.56 На Банковой постоянно взрываются светошумовые и газовые гранаты
15.50 У Администрации президента гремят взрывы, идет серьезное столкновение. В милицию полетели куски брусчатки и коктейли молотова.
15.40 У АП с беркута срывают шлемы и бьют, звучат взрывы. валяются горящие палки. Опять пустили газ.
15.45 Толпа у Администрации президента двинулась на “Беркут”. Митингующие атакуют милицию с битами и палками.
На второй день лидеры оппозиции Арсений Яценюк, Виталий Кличко и Олег Тягнибок тоже больше занимались переговорами, чем координацией людей на улицах. За последних отвечает полевой командир «оранжевого» майдана Юрий Луценко. Три оппозиционера готовились к сегодняшнему заседанию парламента. В Раду они принесли и отдали спикеру свои требования. Главные из них: отставка правительства, привлечение к ответственности главы МВД Виталия Захарченко и решение вопроса Юлии Тимошенко.
В воскресенье, 1 декабря, в центре Киева было многолюдно. И страшно.
Вечером воскресного дня, выступая на Майдане, Арсений Яценюк призвал митингующих собраться 2 декабря в 8 утра, чтобы вместе требовать от парламента отставки Кабинета Министров Украины.
Евролюция. Кто и за что выходит на Майдан Незалежности?
02-12-2013 09:38
Именно студенческая «Революция на граните» дала Украине нынешних политических лидеров. В ней принимали участие оппозиционные депутаты Верховной рады Олег Тягнибок (глава партии «Свобода»), Олесь Доний, Вячеслав Кириленко, Павел Розенко (партия «Удар»), а также журналист Вахтанг Капиани, музыкант группы «Океан Эльзи» Святослав Вакарчук и многие другие участники сегодняшних событий.
Студенты дали массовый прилив протесту. Не только в Киеве, но и во Львове, Тернополе, Ивано-Франковске выходили протестовать от 5 до 20 тысяч человек, организовано отправлялись в Киев на автобусах «группы поддержки» из регионов. «Энеджайзером» событий на Майдане в Киеве стала певица Руслана, победившая в 2004 году на «Евровидении». Дни и ночи она проводила на Майдане с протестующими, где установили палатки, баки для костров, была организована кухня и горячие напитки. На митинге выступали музыкальные группы, лидеры оппозиции Виталий Кличко, Арсений Яценюк и Олег Тягнибок, гражданские активисты, деятели культуры.
1 декабря на народное вече в Киеве, которое объявили лидеры оппозиции, вышло по разным оценкам от 500 тысяч до полутора миллионов человек. Протестующие активисты собрались в парке Тараса Шевченка, прошли по Крещатику, по пути захватив здание Киеврады, дошли до Майдана Независимости и там захватили здание Дома профсоюзов. Радикальные активисты попробовали захватить администрацию президента на Банковой улице. В ход шли камни, цепи, пруты, петарды. «Беркут» отвечал светозвуковыми гранатами, слезоточивым газом и неменьшей жестокостью. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWNdeRtBmWA
В результате пострадали десятки активистов, сотрудники милиции и несколько журналистов. Лидеры оппозиции отреклись от этого нападения, обвинив в провокации «титушек» — гопников, которых за деньги нанимает власть для организации провокаций. Ряд оппозиционных депутатов, в том числе лидер фракции «Удар», известный боксёр Виталий Кличко приходили к администрации на Банковую улицу, чтобы остановить столкновения. В здании Киеврады обосновался штаб протеста. Спикер Верховной рады Владимир Рыбак призвал сесть за стол переговоров в понедельник.
Основная ударная сила атакующих на Банковой состояла из «Патриота Украины» — официальной молодежной организации ВО «Свобода». Патриотовские повязки мелькали на Банковой повсюду. То есть, его радикальное националистическое величество Олег Тягнибок сейчас, выступая на одной площади с Яценюком, Кличко и Порошенко, попросту сливает всю ударную молодежь своей партии. Трудно завидовать «свободовцам», которые шли биться за Украину, и вдруг оказались чуть ли не нанятыми Кремлем «неизвестными провокаторами».
На Украине продолжается «Евромайдан» — митинги несогласных с приостановкой евроинтеграции страны. Митингующие, пришедшие пикетировать здание украинского правительства в Киеве, совершили попытку штурма кабинета министров, передает РИА Новости со ссылкой на главное управлении МВД Украины в Киеве.
Правоохранители рассказали, что в столкновениях протестующих с милицией пострадали как минимум 2 стража порядка.
У здания администрации президента Украины протестующие в масках в воскресенье, 1 декабря, пытались прорвать оцепление спецподразделения милиции “Беркут” с помощью бульдозера. Кроме того, демонстранты начали бросать в сотрудников сил безопасности камни после того, как на месте столкновений был применен слезоточивый газ. Как сообщает агентство “Интерфакс”, осталось невыясненным, кто учинил провокацию с газом – милиция или люди из числа демонстрантов.
В результате по разным данным госпитализировано от 5 до 15 милиционеров, А также пострадали не менее 5 демонстрантов, передает интернет-портал Lenta.ru. Прибывший на место происшествия украинский бизнесмен и политик Петр Порошенко призвал собравшихся не совершать провокаций. Столкновения с милицией продолжаются более полутора часов.
Протестующие в Киеве захватили здание мэрии и Дом профсоюзов
Лидер украинской партии “Свобода” Олег Тягнибок заявил о начале национальной забастовки в стране. Протестующие в Киеве захватили здание мэрии и Дом профсоюзов.
Лидер оппозиционной украинской партии “Свобода” Олег Тягнибок объявил в воскресенье, 1 декабря, о начале общенациональной забастовки. Он также сообщил, что на Майдане Независимости протестующие против действующего президента и правительства страны уже монтируют сцену и устанавливают палатки. По словам политика, в сложившейся в Киеве ситуации “очень важно не поддаваться ни на одну провокацию, чтобы не было пролито ни одной капли крови”, передает агентство “Интерфакс”.
Участники протестов уже проникли в здание Киевского городского совета. По оценке украинских СМИ, там находятся около 100 человек. Прорвавшиеся к мэрии люди уверяют, что они ничего не собираются громить. Кроме того, протестующие захватили Дом профсоюзов, где предположительно разместится штаб оппозиции, сообщает интернет-портал Lenta.ru.
Украина
Киевский суд запретил митинги на “Евромайдане”
Массовые акции запрещены в период с 1 декабря по 7 января 2014 года. Тем временем Янукович и Азаров выразили возмущение разгоном демонстрантов, а оппозиция готовится к митингу в парке имени Тараса Шевченко.
После встречи лидеры партий пообещали вернуться на Майдан Незалежности и рассказать митингующим о результатах переговоров.
КИЕВ, 13 дек — РИА Новости. Лидер оппозиционной партии “Свобода” Олег Тягнибок, глава партии “УДАР” Виталий Кличко и руководитель оппозиционной парламентской фракции “Батькивщина” (“Родина”) Арсений Яценюк со сцены на Майдане Незалежности объявили о том, что едут на встречу с президентом Украины Виктором Януковичем.
ний Яценюк со сцены на Майдане Незалежности объявили о том, что едут на встречу с президентом Украины Виктором Януковичем.
“Мы встречаемся с Януковичем, чтобы передать ему ваши требования, требования Майдана. Во-первых, это освобождение политзаключенных, во-вторых, наказание виновных в разгоне мирных акций и, наконец, мы требуем досрочных выборов президента и парламента”, — сказал Яценюк со сцены на Майдане.
“Мы доведем до власти ваши требования о недопустимости силового разгона мирных акций”, — заявил в свою очередь Тягнибок.
Митинг оппозиции: Луценко говорил по телефону, Кличко купался в овациях
Понедельник, 08/04/2013
Вчера, 7 апреля, в Киеве прошел внеочередной митинг оппозиции. Внеочередной, потому что планировалось, что сначала оппозиция – “Удар”, “Батькивщина” и “Свобода” со своими лидерами – объедет другие города, а финальный митинг состоится в столице 18 мая.
“Евромайдан” принял резолюцию об отставке Януковича
Участники массового митинга в Киеве потребовали отставки Януковича и приняли соответствующую резолюцию. Недовольные отказом правительства Украины от сближения с Евросоюзом собирают народное вече.
Тысячи людей, собравшиеся на Майдане Независимости в Киеве в пятницу, 29 ноября, приняли резолюцию об отставке президента Украины Виктора Януковича. Кроме того, недовольные отказом украинского правительства от подписания соглашения об ассоциации с ЕС участники “Евромайдана” предложили сформировать координационный совет из числа политических экспертов, общественных активистов, студенческих организаций и представителей оппозиционных партий для ведения диалога между украинским гражданским обществом и Евросоюзом. Как передает агентство “Интерфакс”, резолюцию зачитала известная украинская певица и общественный деятель Руслана Лыжичко.
На митинге выступили представители оппозиционных политических сил Украины Виталий Кличко, Олег Тягнибок, Арсений Яценюк, и Юрий Луценко. По словам Кличко, “срыв подписания соглашения об ассоциации с ЕС является государственной изменой”.
“Мы требуем немедленного голосования за отставку правительства Азарова-Азирова! Мы призываем наших зарубежных партнеров применить санкции к режиму Януковича. Это не просто революция, это поднятие национального духа. Долой эту власть! Долой Януковича! Его для нас не существует!” — закричал Яценюк.
Кличко призвал оставшихся у администрации президента идти на Майдан
“Среди протестующих есть экстремистские силы, и эти экстремистские силы проводят сейчас линию на захват государственных учреждений и зданий. Ими захвачено здание мэрии, блокирована работа администрации президента Украины, правительства и нашего парламента”, – сказал премьер, выступая на министерском заседании ОБСЕ в четверг в Киеве.
Пшонка: суд постановил освободить захваченные админздания в Киеве
Станет ли это основанием для штурма, генпрокурор не сообщил.
2
Генпрокурор Виктор Пшонка сообщил о наличии судебных решений об освобождении административных зданий в Киеве, захваченных митингующими.
“Я обращаюсь ко всем организаторам и участникам акций: относительно всех захваченных помещений есть решение суда с четким требованием освободить захваченные здания”, – заявил Пшонка в видеообращении, размещенном на сайте Генпрокуратуры в среду.
Виновные в захвате госзданий привлекутся к уголовной ответственности, – Пшонка
14 Фото: Макс Левин
Виновные в захвате зданий госорганов будут привлекаться к уголовной ответственности.
Об этом заявил генеральный прокурор Украины Виктор Пшонка, передает РБК Украина.
Пшонка сказал, что захват зданий и сооружений, обеспечивающих деятельность органов государственной власти, органов местного самоуправления, объединений граждан, блокирование движения на дорогах – это уголовные преступления.
“И кто бы их ни совершил, будет отвечать по закону!”, – заявил он.
По словам Пшонки, к ответственности также будут привлечены провокаторы, которые с помощью экскаватора пытались атаковать шеренгу милиционеров возле АП 1 декабря.
“Они пришли на митинг хорошо “подготовленными” – дубинки, металлические цепи, слезоточивый газ. И действовали эти лица с четкими указаниями своих руководителей. Именно они провоцировали драки и подстрекали народ. Такие действия не имеют ничего общего с мирными акциями. Это нарушение закона и уголовная ответственность”, – добавил он.
Евромайдан. День четвертый. Онлайн-репортаж “ГОРДОНА” Четвертый день подряд по всей Украине продолжаются митинги в поддержку евроинтеграции страны. Представляем хронику киевского Евромайдана.
00.45. Арсений Яценюк спорит с Мустафой Найемом. Яценюк призывает Мустафу вести Майдан на Европейскую. Мустафа заявляет, что он Майдану не командир, пусть Яценюк ведет сам. Яценюк спорит с Найемом. Фото: facebook/olexander.mykhelson Яценюк спорит с Найемом. Фото: facebook/olexander.mykhelson
Кличко: Влада так боїться, що робила все, щоб я не потрапив на мітинг у Києві
11,066 views•Nov 24, 2013
Арсеній Яценюк просить усіх кликати друзів на Майдан – стояти до перемоги
7,531 views•Dec 1, 2013
Арсеній Яценюк 17.7K subscribers Тут треба буде стояти не годину, не один день. Тут треба стояти до перемоги. Прошу всіх подзвоніть друзям, знайомим, родині, звертаємось до всієї України. Вся Україна – на Майдан за нашу свободу, за нашу країну і за наше майбутнє. Слава Україні!
Протестующие заняли Верховную раду и администрацию президента
Верховную раду и администрацию президента заняли протестующие. Комендант Майдана Андрей Парубий заявил, что отряды самообороны берут под свой контроль весь Киев.
Участники отрядов “самообороны Майдана” в ночь на субботу, 22 февраля, заняли здания Верховной рады и президентской администрации. Об этом сообщает интернет-издание Lenta.ru со ссылкой на коменданта Майдана Андрея Парубия. По его словам, внутри здания Верховной рады находится седьмая сотня отрядов самообороны, а также подразделение “Правого сектора”. Кроме того, активисты охраняют президентскую администрацию, здание Кабмина и здание Министерства внутренних дел.
Парубий добавил, что активисты приглашают милиционеров присоединяться к охране Майдана и переходить на сторону оппозиции. Для этого им советуют надевать сине-желтые ленты, которые раздают активисты оппозиции. “Мы имеем достаточно сине-желтых лент, и мы знаем, что там есть много порядочных людей. Обращайтесь, и мы дадим вам ленты и будем совместно работать для обеспечения порядка в Киеве”, – заявил Парубий.
Интернет-портал NEWSru.com приводит слова Парубия о том, что Майдан берет под свой контроль весь Киев. “Нам важно показать, что когда Киев находится под контролем Майдана, то в Киеве будет порядок такой, которого не было никогда”, – отметил он. Парубий пояснил, что согласованием действий протестующих занимается Военный штаб, который располагается на Крещатике.
По данным некоторых участников “Правого сектора”, к этой организации могут принадлежать несколько праворадикальных группировок, в частности “Патриот Украины”, “Тризуб” и другие.
В Киеве костяк организации составляют русскоязычные футбольные фанаты, которые поддерживают националистические взгляды.
Основными информационными рупорами “Правого сектора” являются сайт организации “Тризуб”, а также страницы “Правого сектора” в сетях Facebook и Vkontakte.
Активисты движения негативно относятся к государственному аппарату России, а также выступают решительно против вступления Украины в Таможенный союз.
С другой стороны, “Правый сектор” в основном не поддерживает вступление в ЕС, потому что считает эту структуру “угнетателем европейских народов”. Активисты считают Украину частью Европы.
Нынешнюю ситуацию в организации расценивают как возможность разрушить старый государственный костяк, чтобы начать строить новое государство.
“Правый сектор” не ассоциирует себя с парламентскими оппозиционными партиями, в том числе и националистической “Свободой”, которую в организации считают слишком либеральной и конформистской.
Все три лидера оппозиции, в том числе лидер партии УДАР, чемпион мира по боксу Виталий Кличко, осудили действия людей, штурмовавших кордон милиции, и назвали их провокаторами.
Как указано в заявлении “Правого сектора”, принятие 16 января парламентом законов, ограничивающих права человека, положило конец надеждам украинцев на мирное решение общественно-политического кризиса.
The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada adopted a resolution on the immediate disarmament of illegal armed groups. The most notorious is the nationalistic Ri
The pro-Europe protest movement of 2013-2014 was augmented by members of the violent far-right militant group known as ‘Pravy Sektor’ (Right Sector), a loose alliance of nationalist organizations. Some see the core strength of the revolt amidst the “Right Sector” movement and football hooligans. In the 2001 version of Article 296 of the Criminal Code, hooliganism is “flagrant violation of public order motivated by overt disrespect for society, accompanied by particular impudence or exceptional cynicism.” After anti-protest laws were enacted on 16 January 2014, peaceful anti-government demonstrations in Ukraine escalated into fierce street battles in the capital Kiev between radical nationalists and security forces, leaving hundreds wounded and prompting warnings of a civil war.
On 22 January 2014 US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf said “The United States strongly condemns the increasing violence on the streets of Kyiv, which has led to casualties and the shooting deaths of two protesters. We urge all sides to immediately de-escalate the situation and refrain from violence. Increased tensions in Ukraine are a direct consequence of the Ukrainian government’s failure to engage in real dialogue and the passage of anti-democratic legislation on January 16. However, the aggressive actions of members of extreme-right group Pravy Sektor are not acceptable and are inflaming conditions on the streets and undermining the efforts of peaceful protestors. We likewise deplore violence by unofficial groups known as “titushki.” We also condemn the targeted attacks against journalists and peaceful protestors, including detentions.”
The Tryzub (Trident) movement initiated the creation of the “Right Sector” – a union of nationalist movements taking part in the protests. It also included the Social-Nationalist Assembly is a member – as well as smaller organizations, like Carpathian Sich, White Hammer, etc.). The core of Pravy sektor is made of the activists of radical groups, including ‘Trizub’, ‘Patriot of Ukraine’, as well as UNA-UNSO and the ‘Svoboda’ (Freedom) ultra-right party. Perpetrators of racially motivated incidents tended to be from extremist groups, including: skinheads, the Ukrainian National Labor Party, Group 82, Patriot of Ukraine, and Svoboda (Freedom). Many of these neo-Nazi and skinhead groups have connections to groups in Europe and the US.
In addition to hundreds of blue and yellow Ukrainian flag and the red and black flag associated with Ukrainian nationalists, there were also the specific red and black flags of Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian National Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO) [and of the World War II-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)] and the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN), the blue flags of the Svoboda party and the yellow flags of Tryzub, another group claiming to be followers of Stepan Bandera, the World War II resistance leader. Bandera, who was killed by a Soviet spy agent in 1959 while living in exile in post-war Munich, was later proclaimed ‘a martyr’ and a ‘national hero’ by the offspring of the founding fathers of the Ukrainian ultra-right movement.
The presence of the group added a volatile element to the standoff that analysts say both the government and the mainstream opposition are struggling to contend with. The particularly radical protesters at Hrushevskoho Street say they are ready to escalate things further. If their core demand for the president to step down is not met, they say, the fight will continue. Armed with wooden sticks or iron rods and for the most part young men, they dominated the city’s main street, Khreshchatyk. Many wore construction or ski helmets and goggles. They built barricades out of snow-filled sacks, and pried cobblestones from the icy road to throw at police.
The Pravy Sektor manifesto, announced in early January 2014 when Ukrainian radicals staged their first attacks on the police, features a large dose of firey rhetoric: “All those who at this point would try to tame the revolutionary energy of the masses should be proclaimed traitors and punished in the most severe way. The time of peaceful singing and dancing at Maidan is over. This is waste of time. There can be no negotiations, no compromise with the ruling gang. We will carry high the fire of national revolution.” Members of the “Right Sector” write that peaceful protests of Ukrainians led to nothing and now the struggle has reached a new level. “Death to the regime of internal occupation! Freedom or death! Glory to Ukraine!” says the group in their appeal to the nation.
Extremist groups in Ukraine espouse a wide range of ideologies. Groups such as the UNA-UNSO and Patriot of Ukraine are ultra nationalists, while the Ukrainian National-Labor Party and the Ukrainian Movement Against Illegal Immigration have a neo-Nazi following. The group Bratsvo has an anarchic outlook while the Russia-based Eurasian Youth Union promotes Russian neo-imperialism. These fringe groups lack political clout but promote intolerant ideologies, which can influence alienated youth and contribute to social problems such as hate crimes.
Svoboda (Freedom), a “neofascist” party, first made it into parliament in the elections in the fall of 2012. Headed by Oleh Tyahnybok [Oleh Tjahnybok], Svoboda called for all Soviet monuments to be dismantled and for the country to finally come to terms with its communist past. He had demanded introduction of a paragraph called nationality in Ukrainian passport so that non Ukrainians will not be accepted into government jobs.
In July 2004, the media reported that the then-main opposition bloc in parliament, Our Ukraine, expelled Oleh Tyahnybok, a Member of Parliament (MP) who made an anti-Semitic speech during a campaign rally in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. Tyahnybok called Ukrainians “to take automatic guns and fight against Moskali ( Russians), Germans, *** ( Jews) and other scum”. A regional court ordered that charges of inciting ethnic hatred be dropped because of a lack of sufficient legal grounds to open a criminal case. Moreover, in a March 29, 2005 national television interview, Tyahnybok refused to apologize for his campaign speech.
Patriot of Ukraine was originally the youth wing of the Svoboda political party, dissolved in 2004. In 2005, it was registered as a civic organization and is not officially connected with Svoboda or any other political party. Patriot of Ukraine protested against Kharkiv court rulings making Russian the second official language in the city. It has local branches in Kyiv (2006), Poltava (2008), and Chernihiv (2008). Its official ideology is Social Nationalism, a cult of the nation within a state, which is anti-immigrant (“Ukraine for Ukrainians”), anti-capitalist, and anti-globalist. In April 2008, it began to cooperate with organizations such as the Ukrainian National-Labor Party and pro-Russian Crimean Cossack groups.
Ukrainian National-Labor Party is an unregistered organization led by Yevhen Herasymenko. This party bases its ideology on national-socialism. Its members are mainly skinheads and neo-Nazis believed to have been involved in physical attacks against minorities. It has regional representation in the cites of Simferopol, Uman, Vinnytsia, Zaporizhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Kirovograd, Lviv, Kotovsk, Rivne, Ternopil, Kharkiv, and Kherson. The organization is reported to cooperate with Svoboda and the Ukrainian Conservative Party lead by the president of the Interregional Academy for Personnel Management (MAUP) Heorhiy Shchokin, known for promoting anti-Semitism.
y Keith Darden and Lucan WayFeb. 12, 2014 at 8:28 p.m. UTC
Joshua Tucker: The following is a guest post from political scientists Keith Darden (American University) and Lucan Way (University of Toronto) addressing the question of who is protesting in Ukraine, and how much support do the protesters actually have. Their conclusion: Ukraine’s protests may not be driven by the far right, but they are not supported by a clear majority of Ukrainians … and neither is a turn toward Europe. You can find links to previous posts from The Monkey Cage on the ongoing political turmoil in Ukraine at the end of the post.
For over two months, anti-government protesters have camped out in the center of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. Coverage in the media has presented vastly different images of who these protesters are and what they represent. Recently, some commentators have depicted the protests as emblematic of a Europe-wide resurgence of chauvinistic nationalism. They point to the presence of the Right Wing among the protest movement and the prominence of “ultra-nationalist” groups in the recent violence.
In stark contrast, others have seen the protesters as fighters for democracy expressing the views and interests of the broad Ukrainian public to join Europe and rid themselves of Russian subjugation. Along these lines, the conflict in Ukraine has been viewed from a geopolitical perspective as a battle for and against efforts by the Kremlin to seize Ukraine, with critics of the protests seen as abetting such efforts or potentially even being on the Russian payroll. Asserting that “the movement as a whole merely reflects the entire Ukrainian population, young and old,” influential supporters of the Maidan in the academy have concluded that nationalist forces represent a “minor segment” of the protests and therefore a focus on such radicals is “unwarranted and misleading.”
What then do the protesters represent? What is the role of the far right in the protests in Ukraine? To what extent does the movement “reflect the entire Ukrainian population,” and how would we know?
Available research on the protesters and public opinion data from Ukraine suggest a reality that is more complicated than either of these competing narratives. First, there is no evidence that the majority of protesters over the past two months have been motivated primarily by radical nationalism or chauvinism. Surveys of the protest participants conducted in early December and again at the end of January suggest that the main driver of the protests has been anger at President Viktor Yanukovych as well as a desire for Ukraine to enter the European Union (see also Olga Onuch’s prior post on The Monkey Cage). Notably, the most unifying factor seems to be opposition to Yanukovych’s efforts to crack down on protesters. This is consistent with the ebb and flow in the size of the protest movement over the past months. Initially quite small, the protests exploded after a violent crackdown on them at the end of November and then again in mid January after Yanukovych pushed through a series of draconian laws to limit protest and dissent. None of the protest demands reflect an obvious chauvinist or nationalist agenda.
Yet, in Ukraine today, it is equally misleading to state that the nationalist right represents a “minor segment” of the current protests. The protest leadership (to the extent that it exists) consists of three opposition parties in parliament – one of which, the Svoboda party, is clearly on the far right. Svoboda, which captured 38 seats and 10 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections, until 2004 called itself the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine and employed neo-Nazi and SS symbols. While the party changed its name and symbols in 2004, Svoboda’s leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, continued to argue that the opposition should fight the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia running Ukraine” and praised the Ukrainian Insurgency Army (UPA) in World War II for fighting “against the Moskali [Muscovites], Germans, Zhydy [Jews] and other scum, who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state.” The party does not hide its glorification of the interwar fascist movement, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). In December they held a torchlight rally on the Maidan to honor the OUN leader, Stepan Bandera, and they regularly fly the red and black flag of the OUN, which has been banned as a racist symbol at soccer matches by FIFA.
The explicit harkening back to the songs, slogans, and symbols of the nationalist movement of the 1930s and 1940s — with its aspiration to achieve an ethnically pure Ukrainian nation-state free of Russians, Jews, and Poles — has been one of the most significant differences between these protests and the Orange Revolution of 2004. The right-wing groups have been particularly active among the organization of the protest movement on the ground, particularly as the number of protesters has dwindled over time and revealed a resilient right-wing core. Svoboda’s deputies control the opposition-occupied Kiev city administration building, its flag is widely visible and a portrait of Bandera hangs in the central hall.
And Svoboda is just one of many signs of a strong far right presence in the organization and mobilization of the Maidan. Andriy Parubiy, the “commandant” of the Maidan and the leader of the “self-defense” forces that guard the protest camp in the center of Kiev, was a co-founder of the Social Nationalist Party with Oleh Tyahnybok. In recent weeks, the coalition of smaller right-wing organizations called “Right Sector” spearheaded the violent turn in the protests – using stones, Molotov cocktails, pipes, and siege weaponry against police. While this group has not been welcomed into the protest leadership, it is clearly an important player on the ground and has reportedly been arming itself in the event that talks fail to achieve Yanukovych’s resignation. More generally, nationalist activists from Svoboda and these other groups have provided the opposition with its most “fearsome demonstrators” who according to the New York Times “led some of the more provocative efforts to occupy buildings and block government offices.”
Despite the strong right-wing presence, are the protests nonetheless pro-democracy? The answer to this might seem obviously yes – given that they are directed against authoritarian behavior and an autocratic president. Yet recent work on mass mobilization has suggested that we need to be careful about assuming that politicians’ and analysts’ master narratives about “democratic revolutions” reflect the actual motivations of those on the street. Princeton University Professor Mark Beissinger has shown that Ukrainian protesters in late 2004 had a “weak commitment to democratic ends” – despite the fact that the protests were sparked by electoral fraud. More recently, a December survey of the current protesters in Ukraine cited above shows that less than 20 percent were driven to protest by “violations of democracy or the threat of dictatorship.” More broadly, it is important not to assume that opposition to a non-democratic regime is the same as support for democracy. History is littered with examples of opposition movements that governed in an authoritarian manner after they took power – from the opponents of the Shah in Iran in 1978/1979 to the anti-Soviet nationalist movement in Armenia, which harassed opposition, and engaged in serious electoral fraud after taking power in 1990-1991; to the dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who started off as an opposition parliamentarian in Belarus in the early 1990s.
Moreover, the protests themselves are not particularly representative of the views of a broader Ukrainian polity. The claims that “the movement as a whole merely reflects the entire Ukrainian population, young and old,” find very little support. In this, as in virtually every area of political opinion, Ukrainians are pretty clearly divided. Surveys taken in the past two months in the country as a whole range both in quality and in results, but none show a significant majority of the population supporting the protest movement and several show a majority opposed. Recent surveys provide suggestive findings that quite large majorities oppose the takeover of regional governments by the opposition. The most reliable and most recent survey shows the population almost perfectly divided in its support for the protest: 48 percent in favor, 46 percent opposed.
The protesters’ inability to garner greater support is surprising given the fact that Yanukovych’s popularity is far below 50 percent (although he is still apparently the most popular political figure in the country). One reason for this failure is that anti-Russian rhetoric and the iconography of western Ukrainian nationalism does not play well among the Ukrainian majority. Almost half of Ukraine’s population resides in the South and East of the country, what was once called “New Russia” when it was settled in the 19th century by a very diverse population of migrants from within the Russian empire. It is an area that has, for over 200 years, identified strongly with Russia, and nearly all of these Ukrainian citizens are alienated by anti-Russian rhetoric and symbols. The anti-Russian forms of Ukrainian nationalism expressed on the Maidan are certainly not representative of the general view of Ukrainians. Electoral support for these views and for the political parties who espouse them has always been limited. Their presence and influence in the protest movement far outstrip their role in Ukrainian politics and their support barely extends geographically beyond a few Western provinces.
Relatedly, there is little evidence that a clear majority of Ukrainians support integration into the European Union — despite the fact that the turn away from the European Union sparked the initial protests. While different polls show varying levels of support for European integration (e.g. this recent one from SOCIS), most show around 40-45 percent support for European integration as compared to about 30 to 40 percent support for the Customs Union – a plurality for Europe but hardly a clear mandate.
In conclusion, we should always be very wary of claims that protests speak “for the people.” We should be particularly wary when “the people” referred to are the people of Ukraine. If 20 years of scholarship and surveys teach us one thing, it is that Ukraine is a country that is deeply divided on virtually every issue pertaining to relations with Russia or the West, with very deep historic divisions that continue to bear on contemporary politics.
Ukrainians are, however, quite unified in the desire to be governed better than they have
Kiev’s two-month-long “Euromaidan” protest turned violent on Sunday as people in masks, outraged over restrictive protest laws hurriedly passed last week, marched on parliament and ran into police cordons that they pelted with stones and Molotov cocktails. Police hurled gas canisters, stun grenades, and a water cannon and rubber bullets at them, setting off a wave of clashes previously unknown at the largely peaceful protest.
Spearheading the clashes with police was Right Sector, a group with ties to far-right parties including the Patriots of Ukraine and Trident, which BBC Ukraine reported is largely comprised of nationalist football fans. In a statement the next day, the group claimed credit for Sunday’s unrest and promised to continue fighting until President Viktor Yanukovich stepped down.
“Two months of unsuccessful tiptoeing about under the leadership of the opposition parties showed many demonstrators they need to follow not those who speak sweetly from the stage, but rather those who offer a real scenario for revolutionary changes in the country. For this reason, the protest masses followed the nationalists,” the statement read.
The surge in violence sparked by Right Sector has revealed how uncritical and undiscerning most of the media has been of the far-right parties and movements that have played a leading role in the “Euromaidan,” the huge protests for closer ties to Europe that flared up in November and have taken over Kiev’s Independence Square (“Maidan Nezalezhnosti”). Protest coverage focused on the call for European integration and the struggle against the Yanukovich regime has largely glossed over the rise in nationalist rhetoric, often chauvinist, that has led to violence not just against police, but also against left-wing activists.
According to Maksim Butkevich of the coordinator of the No Borders Project of the Center for Social Action NGO, which works against discrimination and xenophobia, far-right groups have grown in popularity over the course of Euromaidan.
“I wouldn’t say it’s big, that huge numbers of activists will join far-right groups after this, but they became more acceptable and in a way more mainstream than before for many active citizens,” Butkevich said.
Although the outcome of the protests is still up in the air, if they lead to snap elections, nationalists could win greater political power, Butkevich said, especially Svoboda, the far-right parliamentary party in the coalition of three opposition parties leading the protest. (Right Sector criticizes all three for “pacifism,” including Svoboda.)
It was Svoboda that was responsible for the most iconic image to come out of Euromaidan: On December 8, masked protestors waving blue Svoboda flags and yelling “Hang the Commie!” toppled a 67-year-old statue of Vladimir Lenin in the city center. Svoboda leader Ihor Miroshnychenko, who has faced charges for pulling down a Lenin statue in another city, told journalists his party was responsible.
Svoboda is the most visible party on the square, it has essentially taken over Kiev City Hall as its base of operations, and it has a large influence in the protestors’ security forces.
It also has revived three slogans originating in the Ukrainian nationalist movement of the 1930s that have become the most popular chants at Euromaidan. Almost all speakers on Independence Square—even boxer-turned-opposition-leader Vitaly Klitschko, who has lived mostly in Germany and has a US residence permit—start and end with the slogan, “Glory to Ukraine!,” to which the crowd responds “To heroes glory!” Two other nationalist call-and-response slogans often heard on the square are “Glory to the nation! Death to enemies!” and “Ukraine above all!”
Progressive activists have “to fight on two fronts, against a regime that supports harmful police violence … and also against extreme nationalism, which is recognized and legitimate on Maidan,” Nikita Kadan, an artist and activist in Kiev, said via Skype during a discussion of nationalism at a Moscow bookstore in December.
The Euromaidan protests began on November 21 after the government halted the process of signing an Association Agreement and a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union. The EU offered Ukraine what many have framed as a “civilizational choice” between East and West, which have recently been at odds over a traditionalist social agenda—including a controversial law against gay propaganda—implemented under President Vladimir Putin in Russia.
The association agreement would have reduced tariffs but would not have led automatically to visa-free travel or the ability for Ukrainians to work in Europe. (EU politicians and even Senator John McCain have come to Kiev to stump for European integration, and McCain had dinner with Svoboda’s head and the two other leaders of the opposition coalition.) Instead, President Yanukovich, who is from the generally Russian-speaking eastern half of the country, later signed an agreement with Putin that will see Russia buy $15 billion in Ukrainian government bonds and discount the gas it delivers to Ukraine by a third.
The protests come amid a resurgence of nationalist sentiment in Ukraine that can be compared to a Europe-wide rise of nationalist parties. Svoboda, which was originally known by the Nazi-esque moniker “Social-National Party of Ukraine” and whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok is infamous for a 2004 speech in which he argued that a “Moscow-Jewish mafia” was ruling Ukraine, entered parliament for the first time in 2012 by winning 10.44 percent of the popular vote. Before this, the party had come to dominate regional parliaments in three provinces in the largely Ukrainian-speaking west of the country. In last year’s elections, Svoboda notably finished second in cosmopolitan, Russian-speaking Kiev.
“In the 2010 and 2012 elections, it became visible that a big part of the youth are moving toward nationalism,” said Georgy Kasyanov, a researcher at the Institute for the Development of Education. He noted that one factor is youth unemployment, which is rising in Ukraine as in the rest of Europe.
Despite its leading role at Euromaidan, Svoboda’s political program is at complete odds with the “European values” for which the protestors at Euromaidan are ostensibly agitating. (Admittedly, some of the party’s populist economic program is in fact relatively progressive.) During its time in parliament, the party was best known for introducing a bill to ban abortions, but in its program, it also promises to abolish gun control, “ban the communist ideology,” criminalize “Ukrainophobia,” ban the adoption of Ukrainian children by foreigners and reinstate a “nationality” graph on passports and birth certificates.
On New Year’s Day, Svoboda led about 15,000 people in a torchlight march in honor of Stepan Bandera, the controversial leader of the wartime Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought the Soviets for an independent Ukrainian state but also ethnically cleansed tens of thousands of Polish civilians. (Right Sector also announced its own march that day in honor of Bandera.) Some historians have accused the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of cooperating in the massacres of thousands of Ukrainian Jews during the Nazi occupation, and Tyahnybok even commended the rebels in 2004 for fighting “Russians, Germans, Jewry and other crap.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center put Svoboda at number five on its 2012 list of top anti-semitic slurs, citing Tyahnybok’s “Moscow-Jewish mafia” comment and Miroshnychenko calling Ukrainian-born actress Mila Kunis a “dirty Jewess.”
How can the slogan “Ukraine above all!” sound on Independence Square alongside the slogan “Ukraine in the EU!”, Ukrainian progressive activist Olga Papash asked in a recent piece on the politics and culture website Korydor. Any ideology has a certain point that integrates dissimilar ideas into a single system, Papash argued.
“I think the attachment point, that shared place of rightist ideology in Ukraine today, that ‘ideal’ that removes the contradiction between different calls to action and messages, is the fear of (dislike of, reluctance toward) entering into any sort of ‘civilized’ relationship with Russia,” Papash wrote.
Even Yury Noyevy, a member of Svoboda’s political council, admitted that the party is only pro-EU because it is anti-Russia.
“The participation of Ukrainian nationalism and Svoboda in the process of EU integration is a means to break our ties with Russia,” Noyevy said.
For now, Svoboda and other far-right movements like Right Sector are focusing on the protest-wide demands for civic freedoms government accountability rather than overtly nationalist agendas. Svoboda enjoys a reputation as a party of action, responsive to citizens’ problems. Noyevy cut an interview with The Nation short to help local residents who came with a complaint that a developer was tearing down a fence without permission.
“There are people who don’t support Svoboda because of some of their slogans, but they know it’s the most active political party and go to them for help,” said Svoboda volunteer Kateryna Kruk. “Only Svoboda is helping against land seizures in Kiev.”
Kruk freely admitted she doesn’t support Svoboda’s nationalist platform and “would be very concerned” if the party won a majority in parliament. Nonetheless, she volunteers for Svoboda because she likes “the idea of a party that is Ukrainian-focused” and thinks it is the most active of the opposition parties.
This kind of reserved support of Svoboda as the party most likely to enact change despite its intolerant rhetoric was echoed by several protestors on Independence Square. Katerina, a doctor who also declined to give her last name for fear of repercussions at work, said although she disagrees with Svoboda’s nationalist program, she supports them “for now” for their strong anti-oligarch stance.
“They’re not afraid to make demands,” she said.
Alexander, who came to Independence Square from a village outside Kiev, said that the nationalists have been essential to the growth of Euromaidan. “Without nationalists, there wouldn’t be any protest,” Alexander said, declining to provide his last name.
Ivan Kozar, a Cossack from Khmelnitsky who came with his brethren to provide security on Independence Square, said Svoboda “is the one political party that has a well-formed concept.”
“Sure there are those who say, ‘Beat Moskali!’” he said, referencing the derogatory term for Muscovites sometimes heard on the square, “but they are few in number.”
Nonetheless, some left-wing parties, including the Marxist party Borotba, don’t support the protests because they worry about the growing power the demonstrations have given to Svoboda. Their concern alludes to a darker side to patriotic hymns and sayings.
The fact that nationalist slogans “became mainstream of course points to the danger of providing greater legitimacy to groups promoting positions that yesterday were really marginal, and this danger is still in place,” Butkevich of No Borders said.
But rhetoric can quickly escalate into action, and already protestors with apparent nationalist sentiments have taken part in a spate of attacks on left-wing activists on Independence Square. On November 27, activists with signs reading “Freedom, Equality, Sisterhood,” “Europe is sex education,” “Europe is equality” and “Organize trade union instead of praying for Europe” said they were assaulted by “far-right thugs” calling themselves “organizers of the protest,” who tore the banners. On November 28, several men with covered faces pepper-sprayed a group of feminists and tore a banner reading “Europe means paternity leaves.”
On December 4, labor organizer Denis Levin and his two brothers were beaten by a small crowd shouting “Glory to Ukraine” and “Death to Enemies” after a nationalist writer on the stage pointed them out as “provocateurs” with red flags, Levin told The Nation. Shortly before and after the attack, Miroshnychenko, a member of Svoboda’s political council, came by the tent where the brothers were agitating for the Confederation of Free Labor Unions, Levin added. The nose of one brother was broken, and Denis suffered from the irritative gas used against the trio.
Men wearing armbands with the wolfsangel nationalist symbol also started the violent clashes on nearby Bankova Street on December 1 that led to riot police counter-attacking and beating journalists, photos from the incident show, although it’s not clear in whose interests they were acting.
“People are not thinking about how an association with the EU will actually affect us, they’re still finding simple answers for complicated questions. They are blaming the Moskali for everything,” Levin said.
“The main mistake of Maidan is that the parties came, and social questions were replaced by nationalist ones,” he added. “Maidan didn’t grow into Occupy [Wall Street], it became reactive.”
However, Noyevy denied Svoboda activists had beaten the Levin brothers.
“I know this situation, unfortunately Svoboda wasn’t involved in this action,” he said. “Thank god everything turned out okay. Those provocateurs are mainly extremists, they have an extremist liberal ideology and are using the funding of western organizations.”
“Anyone who says he’s a communist is a provocateur,” he added. “We will be against any left-wing party.”
Former Svoboda member Ivan Ponomarenko, an architect from Kiev, said the party is ineffective politically and will not be able to enact its measures, as its leadership is only “pretending” to be extreme nationalists for their own political and economic gain.
“They are playing at Klu Klux Klan,” Ponomarenko said.
But political analyst Kost Bondarenko, commenting on Svoboda’s recent torch-lit march in Radio Free Europe/Radio Svoboda’s Russian service, said that as the dominant far-right political party, Svoboda could benefit politically from any continuation of radical actions at Euromaidan.
“Any radicalization on the right, and Maidan is right-wing in its essence and ideology, will lead to a growth in the ratings … of this political force,” Bondarenko said. “On the other hand, such a turn of events is desirable to the authorities, I think, since Viktor Yanukovich understands that he will win if Oleh Tyahnybok makes it to a second round” in the presidential election in 2015.
For his part, a bright-eyed Noyevy promised to implement a radical nationalist platform.
“Svoboda is going to be the biggest winner among the opposition parties in increasing its level of support after Euromaidan,” he added. “Right now the majority of people on Maidan demand more radical actions, and I don’t see how other parties will enact these wishes.”
Alec LuhnTwitterAlec Luhn is a Moscow-based journalist who has written for The Guardian, The Independent, Slate, GlobalPost, and other publications.
As violent scenes play out on the streets of Kiev, we look at the major role extremist right-wing movements have played in Ukraine’s “pro-democracy” movement.
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Ukraine’s far-right is gaining support and confidence through its role in the street protests, with the Svoboda party assuming a leading role in the movement and paramilitary groups leading the street fighting.
In December US senator John McCain travelled to Ukraine to offer his support to the opposition, appearing on stage with leaders of the three opposition parties leading the protests – including the far-right Svoboda party.
Svoboda is currently Ukraine’s fourth biggest party and holds 36 seats in parliament. It is also part of the Alliance of European National Movements, along with the BNP and Hungary’s Jobbik.
Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok is one of the faces of the protests, appearing regularly along with opposition leader and former boxer Vitali Klitschko (see picture right) voicing opposition to Putin’s influence over the region.
However, Tyahnybok has provoked controversy in the past with his anti-Semitic claims that a “Moscow-Jewish mafia” controls Ukraine.
His party was registered in 1995 and initially used a swastika-style “wolfsangel” rune as its logo. It restricted membership to ethnic Ukrainians. Until 2004 it had a paramilitary wing called Patriots of Ukraine, and though it ended its link to the group in 2005, the two continue to be closely associated and to participate in protests together.
Svoboda has played a leading role in the protests. Its member of parliament, Igor Myroshnychenko, claimed responsibility for the toppling of the statue of Lenin, and it led the occupation of the city hall.
In December inside city town hall, an organisational hub for the protests, a white power logo was displayed in the centre of the stage alongside Svoboda party flags.
Fascism is like a fashion now with more and more people getting involved. Sergey Kirichuk
It has helped to revive 1930s Ukrainian nationalist chants, which even Vital Klitschko has now adopted, shouting “Glory to Ukraine!”, to which the crowd reply “To heroes, glory!”.
Svoboda flags have been a permanent fixture in Independence Square, with pictures from clashes also revealing the presence of militant far-right groups carrying neo-Nazi flags and the red and black Ukrainian “insurgent army” flags.
On new year’s day, Svoboda led a 15,000-strong torch-lit march in memory of controversial Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, who fought against the Soviets during world war II.
As violent scenes played out in recent days, groups of “autonomous nationalists” separate from Svoboda, who recruit from far-right football hooligan groups, have taken a leading role in the fighting.
Acting under the name Pravy Sektor, they are reported to have 500 militants inside government buildings seized by the protesters.
Sergey Kirichuk, a member of the group Borotba, which publishes and anti-fascist magazine in Ukraine, told Channel 4 News that these neo-Nazis are the most violent elements on the streets.
“These people are separate from Svoboda, though they will have many links through activists – but they are not controlled by any one group,” he explained.
“They are the ones throwing molotovs and trying to kill policemen, the most violent element fight at European Square.
“When left-wing groups tried to join the protests they were attacked and beaten by fascists. Svoboda are leading ideologically now. Fascism is like a fashion now, with more and more people getting involved.”
(Above: militants carry shields marked with neo-Nazi logos)
Paramilitaries from the Patriot of Ukraine group, Svoboda’s former paramilitary wing, have been present throughout the protests. Their masked activists, wearing distinctive yellow armbands, have been pictured carrying chains and bricks through the crowd and leading attacks on riot police.
In 2012 the presence of a violent and highly organised far-right in Ukraine and Poland became global news ahead of the Euro 2012 tournament.
The dominance of racist chants, Nazi salutes and neo-Nazi banners among football fans provoked controversy ahead of the tournament, prompting President Yanukovych to promise matches would be closely watched by security services.
Anti-Semitic attacks
The World Jewish Congress has called for Svoboda to be banned for its hardline anti-Semitic stance, and public Jewish events celebrating hanukkah were cancelled last month due to fears of violence, with Jewish leaders urging people to “increase security everywhere”.
An ultra-Orthodox Jewish student, Dovbear Glickman, was stabbed while leaving a synagogue last week, suffering massive blood loss. It is the second anti-Semitic assault this month after a Hebrew teacher was followed home from synagogue by a gang before being beaten.
Exclusive: Leader of Far-Right Ukrainian Militant Group Talks Revolution With TIME
Dmitro Yarosh, the leader of Pravy Sektor, a coalition of ultra-nationalist groups in Ukraine, stands with some of his fighters at the scene of the worst clashes last month between the group’s fighters and police in Kiev. Maxim Dondyuk By Simon Shuster February 4, 2014 5:06 PM EST
Take the smell of an army barracks, add a bit of char and gasoline, and you’d have a rough idea of the air on the fifth floor of the House of Trade Unions, the headquarters of the revolution in Ukraine. When protesters first occupied the building in December, their leaders divvied up its floors among the political parties and activists involved in the revolt. Since then, the only floor off-limits to journalists has been the fifth, which houses the militant arm of the revolution, Pravy Sektor (Right Sector), the coalition of right-wing radicals that grew out of the uprising. They had good reason to avoid publicity. After their violent clashes with police last month, their members could face years in prison if the ruling government survives the revolt.
But on Sunday night, their leader Dmitro Yarosh agreed to give his first interview to a foreign media outlet. It was not so much an act of vanity as a political coming-out. He has clearly grown tired of being the movement’s anonymous enforcer. In recent days, as a negotiated end to the crisis has started coming into view, the need for a military wing of the revolution has diminished. And so has the trust in its upper ranks. The mainstream opposition leaders, like the former world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, have faced growing pressure to distance themselves from Pravy Sektor, which the U.S. State Department has condemned for “inflaming conditions on the streets.” Increasingly marginalized, the group has grown much more assertive and, in some ways, has started going rogue.
In his interview with TIME, Yarosh, whose militant brand of nationalism rejects all foreign influence over Ukrainian affairs, revealed for the first time that Pravy Sektor has amassed a lethal arsenal of weapons. He declined to say exactly how many guns they have. “It is enough,” he says, “to defend all of Ukraine from the internal occupiers” — by which he means the ruling government — and to carry on the revolution if negotiations with that government break down.
But so far, those negotiations have been making significant strides toward resolving the crisis. On Tuesday, the parliament began debating a sweeping reform of the constitution, while allies of President Viktor Yanukovych suggested for the first time that he is ready to consider early elections. Both moves would mark a major breakthrough. But Yarosh, watching from the sidelines, has begun to doubt whether the negotiators have the interests of his men at heart. “This whole peaceful song and dance, the standing around, the negotiations, none of it has brought real change.” Dozens of his men, he says, remain behind bars after their street battles against police two weeks ago.
With that in mind, Yarosh and another militant faction began a parallel set of negotiations over the weekend. On Monday, they claimed to be in direct talks with Ukraine’s police forces to secure the release of jailed protesters, including members of Pravy Sektor. Mainstream opposition leaders said they had not authorized any such talks. At the same time, Yarosh has demanded a seat at the negotiating table with the President. Once again, he was flatly denied. His ideology, it seems, is just too toxic to let him in the room.
But neither can Klitschko and his fellow politicians easily sever their ties with Pravy Sektor. The group serves some of the uprising’s most essential functions. Its fighters control the barricades around the protest camp in the center of Ukraine’s capital, and when riot police have tried to tear it down, they have been on the front lines beating them back with clubs, rocks, Molotov cocktails and even a few catapults, in the mold of siege engines of the Middle Ages. Around the country, its fighters have helped seize government headquarters in more than a dozen cities. “Pravy Sektor has proved its loyalty to the ideals of freedom,” Yarosh says. “Now we needed to present this movement as a source of leadership.”
In any kind of fair election, that would be nearly impossible. Pravy Sektor’s ideology borders on fascism, and it enjoys support only from Ukraine’s most hard-line nationalists, a group too small to secure them a place in parliament. But taking part in the democratic process is not part of Yarosh’s strategy. “We are not politicians,” he says in his office, a pack of Lucky Strikes and a walkie-talkie on the table in front of him, while a sentry in a black ski mask and bulletproof vest stands by the door. “We are soldiers of the national revolution.” His entire adult life has been spent waiting for such a revolution to “steer the country in a new direction, one that would make it truly strong, not dependent on either the West or the East.”
Through all his years in the nationalist movement, Yarosh, a 42-year-old father of three, says he has never had any form of occupation apart from his activism. The son of two factory workers, he was born and raised in a provincial town in eastern Ukraine, and became involved in the nationalist underground in the late 1980s, just as the Soviet Union was disintegrating. Nearly all of the satellite states of the USSR, from the Baltics to Central Asia, were then pushing to break away from Moscow’s control, and in 1988, Yarosh joined one of the more radical groups fighting for an independent Ukraine.
The following autumn, months after the Soviet Union pulled its troops out of Afghanistan, Yarosh was drafted into the Red Army, a common form of punishment for political activists at the time. He was stationed briefly in Belarus before being transferred to Siberia, where he served as a guard at strategic missile sites. The Soviet doctrines of unity between Russia and Ukraine did little to soften his views. “If anything, the army made me more convinced that my path is correct,” he says. When Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Yarosh went on hunger strike to demand a transfer to the newly established Ukrainian army. His commanding officers ignored him.
In 1994, a few years after he was discharged and returned to Ukraine, he joined a right-wing organization called Trizub (Trident), and slowly climbed its ranks before assuming leadership in 2005. Along with several other far-right groups, Trizub formed the core of Pravy Sektor when the current uprising broke out in Ukraine two months ago. Its main adversary has always been Russia, although it also has little patience for Western influence on Ukraine. “For all the years of Ukraine’s independence, Russia has pursued a systematic, targeted policy of subjugation toward Ukraine,” Yarosh says. “So of course we will prepare for a conflict with them,” he adds, especially after Russia’s recent invasion of another one of its former satellites, Georgia. “If they stick their faces here like they did in Georgia in 2008, they’ll get it in the teeth.”
So far, his jabs at the leaders of the opposition in Ukraine have not been quite as pointed. He has accused them of vanity and ineffectiveness, but he has also observed the truce they called a week and a half ago to allow their negotiations to proceed. “Not a single Molotov cocktail has gone flying since then,” he says proudly. “A truce is a truce. They want to negotiate, let them negotiate.” But as Yarosh realizes, he and his men have staked a great deal on the outcome of these talks.
If the ruling government holds on to power, Pravy Sektor could be forced to take the blame for the violence that left dozens of police officers in the hospital two weeks ago. “All those criminal charges are already waiting in the prosecutor’s office,” he says. On the other hand, if the opposition forms a new government, they are not likely to carve out a place for Yarosh and his men in the halls of power. So it is no surprise that he has begun to show some political initiative.
For the past two decades, he has been waiting and preparing for the start of the “national revolution,” and now that he finds himself at the head of its armed division, he does not seem ready to let it pass peacefully away, at least not on anyone else’s terms. “People have gotten in touch with us from around the country, saying, ‘Guys, don’t let us down. Take us to victory, to independence, if the other leaders are incapable of that,’” Yarosh says. “So if the time has come for an active struggle, I am ready to carry it to the end. I am not afraid of that responsibility. I see no reason to hide my face.” Subscribe to TIME
Militaristic and anti-democratic, Ukraine’s far-right bides its time
Why We Wrote This
There are few countries in Europe that don’t have a problem with the far-right. But for Ukraine, where political stability is tenuous, the defiance and impunity of ultra-nationalist groups pose an acute concern.
Ukraine’s far-right groups, some of which include armed veterans of the war in Donbas, are an extremely controversial topic. And despite considerable stabilization in Ukrainian society over the past five years, the danger they pose appears to be growing.
Activists claiming to be Right Sector members were involved in Kiev’s Maidan protests from late November, but the group did not attract much attention until violent clashes with police in central Kiev on 19 January, in which it played a leading role.
By early February Mr Yarosh was saying the Right Sector had 500 fighters on Independence Square and could mobilise up to 5,000 nationwide, although close observers of the protests doubt this.
Ideology
A leading figure in the Right Sector, Andriy Tarasenko, says it aims not for closer ties with Europe but rather to “build a nationalist Ukrainian state and stage a nationalist revolution”.
Dmytro Yarosh calls himself a follower of Stepan Bandera, a nationalist leader who fought Polish and Soviet rule in the 1930s and 1940s but is seen in Russia and eastern Ukraine as a Nazi collaborator.
Mr Yarosh rejects accusations of racism, saying he regards anyone who fights for Ukraine as a comrade. Right Sector leaders have recently assured the Israeli ambassador that they reject anti-Semitism along with other forms of chauvinism and xenophobia.
Some far-right activists interviewed by the BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse in Kiev in early March made it clear that they wanted a Ukraine “just for Ukrainians”.
The nationalist Svoboda party – also a significant player in the Maidan protests – now has three powerful posts in the interim government: acting chief prosecutor, deputy prime minister and chairman of the National Security Council.
1h · The Maidan massacre rationale? “Oleh Tiahnybok, who was one of the top Maidan leaders and the far-right Svoboda party leader, and Ruslan Koshulynsky, the deputy head of the parliament from Svoboda, stated in their separate interviews that a Western government representative during their meeting told them that the Western governments would turn on Yanukovych after casualties among protesters would reach 100 (Kapranovy, 2017). Such specific conditionality contained at the very least a moral hazard to provoke the government to commit such casualties or to “sacrifice” 100 protesters covertly and attribute them to the government forces killings to fulfill such condition for turning on Yanukovych.”
researchgate.net(PDF) The far right, the Euromaidan, and the Maidan massacre in UkrainePDF | This study examines the role of the far right in the Euromaidan in Ukraine, primarily in the Maidan massacre and other key cases of violence. The… | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
10h · XNot a single person is convicted or under arrest for the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police seven years after one of the most documented mass killings in history. The Zelensky government continues stonewalling of the investigations and trials and cover-up of the involvement of the Maidan oligarchic leaders and the far right in this mass killing, which led to the Ukrainian government overthrow and escalated into the secession and annexation of Crimea by Russia, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military interventions in Crimea and Donbas, and major conflicts between Ukraine and Russia and the West and Russia. The Ukrainian & Western media and governments, with some exceptions, continue to propagate fake news, aka disinformation, concerning the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. They continue to ignore or deny overwhelming evidence of involvement of Maidan leaders & the far right. https://www.researchgate.net/…/337947623_The_far_right…
academia.eduThe Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: Revelations from Trials and InvestigationsThe massacre of the protesters and the police in Ukraine during the “Euromaidan” mass protests on February 18-20, 2014 contributed to the overthrow of the Ukrainian government and ultimately to a start of the civil war in Donbas, Russian military
Ivan KatchanovskiThe Ukrainian & Western media and governments, with some exceptions, continue to propagate fake news, aka disinformation, concerning the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. They continue to ignore or deny overwhelming evidence of involvement of Maidan leaders & the far right. https://www.researchgate.net/…/337947623_The_far_right…
Ukraine’s Revolution Has Reached Its Climax. These Factors Will Determine What Happens Next
Yanukovich set out for Kharkiv, in the country’s Russian-speaking east to meet with regional governors, trying to play for time and find support among his base, but instead making that fatal error: leaving the capital at its most critical hour. Soon, a cheer went up from the stage on the Maidan with one announcement: “Yanukovich has resigned!”
The Russian media has been telling its citizens that these were radicals trying to seize power, but today you could see how patently untrue it was
По словам народного депутата, 10 представителей ВВ Украины уже совместно патрулируют здание Кабмина вместе с протестующими
Самооборона киевского Майдана полностью взяла под контроль правительственный квартал города, заявил представитель партии «Батькивщина» Андрей Парубий. Об этом сообщает агентство УНН.
«7-я сотня Самообороны стоит возле Верховной Рады. Также под Верховной Радой стоит сотня «Правого сектора». 19-я и третья сотни охраняют администрацию президента, пятнадцатая сотня охраняет Главное управление МВД», — заявил народный депутат. По его словам, протестующие уже не раз призывали милиционеров переходить на их сторону, отметив свою униформу бело-желтой лентой. Парубий рассказал, что уже сейчас 10 представителей ВВ Украины патрулируют здание Кабмина вместе с протестующими. «Уже сейчас мы должны обеспечить, чтобы титушки, которых свезли со всей Украины, не занимались мародерством. При этом на нас большая ответственность», — сказал Парубий.
Накануне сообщалось, что в Верховной Раде зарегистрирован законопроект об импичменте президента Виктора Януковича. Подробности документа не сообщались. Известно, что автором постановления выступил депутат Николай Рудьковский, который входил в «Партию регионов» до начала протеста на Майдане Незалежности. Отставка Януковича — одно из ключевых требований манифестантов «Евромайдана».
KИЕВ. 22 февраля. УНН. Самооборона Майдана взяла полностью под контроль правительственный квартал. Об этом со сцены Майдана сообщил комендант, народный депутат фракции “Батькивщина” Андрей Парубий, передает УНН со ссылкой на пресс-службу Всеукраинского объединения.
“7-я сотня Самообороны стоит возле Верховной Рады. Также под Верховной Радой стоит сотня “Правого сектора”, – сообщил Парубий.
“19-я и третья сотни охраняют Администрацию Президента, пятнадцатая сотня охраняет Главное управление МВД”, – добавил комендант.
Он отметил, что уже сейчас под Кабмином десять молодых ребят из внутренних войск стоят вместе с самооборонцами и патрулируют порядок.
А. Парубий отметил, что сейчас необходимо показать такой порядок в Киеве, как никогда не было – упорядочить Киев и всю Украину.
Original Article
Ultraright Party Politics in Post-Soviet Ukraine and the Puzzle of the Electoral Marginalism of Ukrainian Ultranationalists in 1994-2009
Andriy Parubiy left the party in 2004 and later joined centre-right party Our Ukraine of president Viktor Yushchenko. The party changed its name to the All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” in February 2004 with the arrival of Oleh Tyahnybok as party leader.[14] Tyahnybok made some efforts to moderate the party’s extremist image.[21] The party not only replaced its name, but also abandoned the Wolfsangel logo[8][14] with a three-fingered hand reminiscent of the ‘Tryzub’ pro-independence gesture of the late 1980s.[8] Svoboda also pushed neo-Nazi and other radical groups out the party,[22] distancing itself from its neofascist past while retaining the support of extreme nationalists.[21]
Political scientist Tadeusz A. Olszański writes that the social-nationalist ideology adhered to has included “openly racist rhetoric” concerning ‘white supremacy’ since its establishment, and that comparisons with National Socialism are legitimized by its history.[14][23]
Протестующие заняли Верховную раду и администрацию президента22.02.2014Верховную раду и администрацию президента заняли протестующие. Комендант Майдана Андрей Парубий заявил, что отряды самообороны берут под свой контроль весь Киев.Участники отрядов “самообороны Майдана” в ночь на субботу, 22 февраля, заняли здания Верховной рады и президентской администрации. Cо ссылкой на коменданта Майдана Андрея Парубия. По его словам, внутри здания Верховной рады находится седьмая сотня отрядов самообороны, а также подразделение “Правого сектора”. Кроме того, активисты охраняют президентскую администрацию, здание Кабмина и здание Министерства внутренних дел.Интернет-портал приводит слова Парубия о том, что Майдан берет под свой контроль весь Киев. “Нам важно показать, что когда Киев находится под контролем Майдана, то в Киеве будет порядок такой, которого не было никогда”, – отметил он. Парубий пояснил, что согласованием действий протестующих занимается Военный штаб, который располагается на Крещатике.https://www.dw.com/…/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D1…/a-17450605
DW.COMПротестующие заняли Верховную раду и администрацию президента | DW | 22.02.2014
Андре́й Влади́мирович Паруби́й — украинский политик. Секретарь Совета национальной безопасности и обороны Украины с 27 февраля 2014. Народный депутат Украины. Комендант Евромайдана[1], руководитель Самообороны Майдана с ноября 2013 года по февраль 2014 года[2].В 1991 году наряду с Олегом Тягнибоком был одним из основателей нео-нацистской Социал-национальной партии Украины (СНПУ), переименованной в 2004 во Всеукраинское объединение «Свобода»[5].С ноября 2013 по февраль 2014 года координировал ежедневное функционирование «Евромайдана» (г. Киев, Площадь Независимости); выступал фактическим комендантом его палаточного лагеря и руководителем отрядов Самообороны Майдана[1].После подписания президентом Украины Виктором Януковичем и лидерами оппозиции 21 февраля 2014 года Соглашения об урегулировании политического кризиса на Украине, в ночь с 21 февраля на 22 февраля отрядами Самообороны, под руководством Парубия, был взят под контроль правительственный квартал в Киеве — здания Верховной Рады, Администрации президента, Кабинета министров и МВД, что являлось нарушением только что подписанного соглашения.
Андре́й Влади́мирович Паруби́й — украинский политик. Секретарь Совета национальной безопасности и обороны Украины с 27 февраля 2014. Народный депутат Украины. Комендант Евромайдана[1], руководитель Самообороны Майдана с ноября 2013 года по февраль 2014 года[2].В 1991 году наряду с Олегом Тягнибоком был одним из основателей нео-нацистской Социал-национальной партии Украины (СНПУ), переименованной в 2004 во Всеукраинское объединение «Свобода»[5].С ноября 2013 по февраль 2014 года координировал ежедневное функционирование «Евромайдана» (г. Киев, Площадь Независимости); выступал фактическим комендантом его палаточного лагеря и руководителем отрядов Самообороны Майдана[1].После подписания президентом Украины Виктором Януковичем и лидерами оппозиции 21 февраля 2014 года Соглашения об урегулировании политического кризиса на Украине, в ночь с 21 февраля на 22 февраля отрядами Самообороны, под руководством Парубия, был взят под контроль правительственный квартал в Киеве — здания Верховной Рады, Администрации президента, Кабинета министров и МВД, что являлось нарушением только что подписанного соглашения.
WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS CALLS SVOBODA A NEO-NAZI PARTY
14.05.2013 16:09KYIV, May 14 /UKRINFORM/. The World Jewish Congress has called on European governments to consider a ban on neo-Nazi parties, among which the participants in the event listed the Ukrainian party Svoboda, the Jerusalem Post reported.
«Патриот Украины» — (укр. Патріо́т Украї́ни) украинская военизированная неонацистская[1][2][3] праворадикальная организация, зарегистрирована в Харькове в 2006 году. Лидер (Белый Вождь[4]) организации — Андрей Билецкий. Выполняет функции силового крыла политического движения «Социал-национальная Ассамблея» Украины. снован в конце 1999 года руководство Социал-национальной партии Украины. «Патриот Украины» возглавил член Комитета уполномоченных СНПУ — Андрей Парубий.https://ru.wikipedia.org/…/%D0%9F%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%80%D0…
RU.WIKIPEDIA.ORGПатриот Украины — Википедия
It is noteworthy that of these various Ukrainian nationalist parties the SNPU was the least inclined to conceal its neofascist affiliations. Itsofficial symbol was the somewhat modified Wolf’s Hook (Wolfsangel),used as a symbol by the German SS division Das Reich and the DutchSS division Landstorm Nederland during World War II and by a numberof European neofascist organizations after 1945.33 As seen by the SNPUleadership, the Wolf’s Hook became the “idea of the nation.” Moreover,the official name of the party’s ideology, “social nationalism,” clearlyreferred back to “national socialism”—the official name of the ideologyof the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) and of theHitlerite regime. The SNPU’s political platform distinguished itself byits openly revolutionary ultranationalism, its demands for the violenttakeover of power in the country, and its willingness to blame Russia forall of Ukraine’s ills. Moreover, the SNPU was the first relatively largeparty to recruit Nazi skinheads and football hooligans.https://www.researchgate.net/…/0deec5298f357bc…/download
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imon Gladin It is noteworthy that of these various Ukrainian nationalist parties the SNPU was the least inclined to conceal its neofascist affiliations. Its official symbol was the somewhat modified Wolf’s Hook (Wolfsangel), used as a sym… See More
RESEARCHGATE.NET(PDF) Ultraright Party Politics in Post-Soviet Ukraine and the Puzzle of the Electoral Marginalism of Ukrainian Ultranationalists in 1994-2009
The Patriot of Ukraine – The group was described as having racist and 𝙣𝙚𝙤-𝙉𝙖𝙯𝙞 political beliefs.[1][2][3][4][5] It constituted a paramilitary wing of the S.N.A., an assemblage of 𝙣𝙚𝙤-𝙉𝙖𝙯𝙞 organizations and groups[6][7][8]
CHANNEL4.COMHow the far-right took top posts in Ukraine’s power vacuum
про неонацистскую – “ничегошеньки”? “Parubiy was the founder of the Social National Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler’s 𝙉𝙖𝙯𝙞s, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians.”https://www.channel4.com/…/svoboda-ministers-ukraine…
Vladislav RutenburgSimon Gladin А фашисты протестовать не могут?! Андре́й Влади́мирович Паруби́й — украинский политик. Секретарь Совета национальной безопасности и обороны Украины с 27 февраля 2014. Народный депутат Украины. Комендант Евромайдана[1], руководитель Самообороны Майдана с ноября 2013 года по февраль 2014 года[2].В 1991 году наряду с Олегом Тягнибоком был одним из основателей нео-нацистской Социал-национальной партии Украины (СНПУ), переименованной в 2004 во Всеукраинское объединение «Свобода»[5].С ноября 2013 по февраль 2014 года координировал ежедневное функционирование «Евромайдана» (г. Киев, Площадь Независимости); выступал фактическим комендантом его палаточного лагеря и руководителем отрядов Самообороны Майдана[1].После подписания президентом Украины Виктором Януковичем и лидерами оппозиции 21 февраля 2014 года Соглашения об урегулировании политического кризиса на Украине, в ночь с 21 февраля на 22 февраля отрядами Самообороны, под руководством Парубия, был взят под контроль правительственный квартал в Киеве — здания Верховной Рады, Администрации президента, Кабинета министров и МВД, что являлось нарушением только что подписанного соглашения.
CHANNEL4.COMHow the far-right took top posts in Ukraine’s power vacuum
Vladislav RutenburgSimon Gladin А фашисты протестовать не могут?! Андре́й Влади́мирович Паруби́й — украинский политик. Секретарь Совета национальной безопасности и обороны Украины с 27 февраля 2014. Народный депутат Украины. Комендант Евромайдана[1], руководитель Самообороны Майдана с ноября 2013 года по февраль 2014 года[2].В 1991 году наряду с Олегом Тягнибоком был одним из основателей нео-нацистской Социал-национальной партии Украины (СНПУ), переименованной в 2004 во Всеукраинское объединение «Свобода»[5].С ноября 2013 по февраль 2014 года координировал ежедневное функционирование «Евромайдана» (г. Киев, Площадь Независимости); выступал фактическим комендантом его палаточного лагеря и руководителем отрядов Самообороны Майдана[1].После подписания президентом Украины Виктором Януковичем и лидерами оппозиции 21 февраля 2014 года Соглашения об урегулировании политического кризиса на Украине, в ночь с 21 февраля на 22 февраля отрядами Самообороны, под руководством Парубия, был взят под контроль правительственный квартал в Киеве — здания Верховной Рады, Администрации президента, Кабинета министров и МВД, что являлось нарушением только что подписанного соглашения.
Parubiy was the founder of the Social National Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler’s Nazis, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians.
The Social National Party would go on to become Svoboda, the far-right nationalist party whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok was one of the three most high profile leaders of the Euromaidan protests – negotiating directly with the Yanukovych regime.
Overseeing the armed forces alongside Parubiy as the Deputy Secretary of National Security is Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of the Right Sector – a group of hardline nationalist streetfighters, who previously boasted they were ready for armed struggle to free Ukraine.
По словам народного депутата, 10 представителей ВВ Украины уже совместно патрулируют здание Кабмина вместе с протестующими
Самооборона киевского Майдана полностью взяла под контроль правительственный квартал города, заявил представитель партии «Батькивщина» Андрей Парубий. Об этом сообщает агентство УНН.
«7-я сотня Самообороны стоит возле Верховной Рады. Также под Верховной Радой стоит сотня «Правого сектора». 19-я и третья сотни охраняют администрацию президента, пятнадцатая сотня охраняет Главное управление МВД», — заявил народный депутат. По его словам, протестующие уже не раз призывали милиционеров переходить на их сторону, отметив свою униформу бело-желтой лентой. Парубий рассказал, что уже сейчас 10 представителей ВВ Украины патрулируют здание Кабмина вместе с протестующими. «Уже сейчас мы должны обеспечить, чтобы титушки, которых свезли со всей Украины, не занимались мародерством. При этом на нас большая ответственность», — сказал Парубий.
Накануне сообщалось, что в Верховной Раде зарегистрирован законопроект об импичменте президента Виктора Януковича. Подробности документа не сообщались. Известно, что автором постановления выступил депутат Николай Рудьковский, который входил в «Партию регионов» до начала протеста на Майдане Незалежности. Отставка Януковича — одно из ключевых требований манифестантов «Евромайдана».
“Потерянные доказательства, документы. Нет людей, нет свидетелей. Некоторые говорят, что в целом на местах после этой трагедии, всех этих событий многие убрали. Самое сложное дело, которое есть у нас в стране – это Майдан”, – сказал он в эксклюзивном интервью агентству “Интерфакс-Украина”.
Зеленский указал, что этими делами точно “занимаются все”.
“Знаю точно, что занимаются быстрее, чем это было несколько лет до этого. Когда они найдут заказчиков, ведь с убийцами более понятно, – не могу сказать. К этим делам привлечены все силы, и мы делаем все возможное”
Не несите чушь. Ни один из украинских блюстителей порядка (или, как Вы их называете в своей украинофобии, “мусорье”) не был осужден за стрельбу по “беркутам” и “небесной сотне” из гостиницы “Украина” и/или из здания Консерватории 20 февраля. И на “Университетской” вообще ничего не произошло, так как Вы не знаете ничего про Киев. Вы путаете её с Институтской. 🙂 И то, что нет никаких оснований подозревать правительство Украины и Януковича в том, что они “заказчики” снайперов, которые стреляли в “беркутов” и “небесную сотню”, и что власти нарочно не расследовали эот дело, подтвердил президент Украины, который, разобравшись в этом деле, скромно сообщил:
“Потерянные доказательства, документы. Нет людей, нет свидетелей. Некоторые говорят, что в целом на местах после этой трагедии, всех этих событий многие убрали. Самое сложное дело, которое есть у нас в стране – это Майдан. Знаю точно, что занимаются быстрее, чем это было несколько лет до этого. Когда они найдут заказчиков, ведь с убийцами более понятно, – не могу сказать.”
Революции имеют свои естественные последствия, особенно в демократических государствах. Большевички устроили свою “Великую Революцию” в октябре 1917 г. и на многие десятилетия получили власть над страной. Но за это они получили отсоединение регионов – Польша, Прибалтика, Финляндия – гражданскую войну и интервенцию со стороны Британии, Франции, Германии, Японии, Польши и т.д. Вы сделали то же самое. Вы же почитаете Петлюру, так? Почему УНР имела право после революции устроить себе независимость на немецких штыках, а ЛНР и ДНР не имеют право на независимость? Не хотите развала своей страны – не устраивайте кровавых революций.
Общественная экспертиза. Почему украинцы так и не услышали правды о Майдане Виктор Левицкий Тарас Козуб 18 февраля 2021, 07:36
Андрей Портнов, известный юрист, экс-замглавы Администрации президента:
— Эти имена названы. В принципе, обществу известно, кто совершал массовые убийства на Майдане, кто провоцировал убийства и кто их скрывал. Почему эти люди не стали осужденными за умышленные убийства? Потому что лица, причастные к умышленным убийствам, подпали под закон об амнистии. Напомню, что кроме убийств они себя амнистировали и от статей по вымогательству, хищениям, кражам и грабежам. Это все было в законе об амнистии.
Максим Могильницкий, управляющий партнер адвокатского объединения “Могильницкий и партнеры”:
— События на Майдане расследуются весьма однобоко — лишь в отношении “беркутовцев”, а также следователей, прокуроров и судей, привлекавших к ответственности участников массовых беспорядков. Что же касается самих участников, то вести расследование и собирать доказательства в их отношении запрещено законом. Вы наверняка слышали о так называемом законе “об амнистии участников Майдана”. Потому никто и не стремится докопаться до истины. Уверен, что многие причастные уже допрошены, но правовая оценка их показаниям не дана. Убийства правоохранителей не расследуются вовсе. То есть убийства сотрудников правоохранительных органов попросту узаконили, загодя освободив виновных от ответственности.
The massacre of the protesters and the police in Ukraine during the “Euromaidan” mass protests on February 18-20, 2014 contributed to the overthrow of the Ukrainian government and ultimately to a start of the civil war in Donbas, Russian military interventions in Crimea and Donbas, the Russian annexation of Crimea and an international conflict between the West and Russia. The research question is as follows: What does evidence made public by the Maidan massacre trials and the Ukrainian government investigations reveal about which of the parties of the conflict was involved in this mass killing? This paper analyzes several hundred hours of video recordings of the Maidan massacre trials, over 2,500 court decisions, testimonies of wounded protesters, relatives of the killed protesters, prosecution and defense witnesses, and top officials of the Yanukovych and Maidan governments, results of forensic ballistic and medical examinations and investigative experiments, and videos and photos of the Maidan massacre made public during the trial. It includes several online video appendixes containing the data. The Maidan massacre trials and investigations have revealed various evidence that four killed and several dozen wounded policemen and at least the absolute majority of 49 killed and 157 wounded Maidan protesters were massacred on February 20, 2014 by snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings and areas. Such evidence includes testimonies of the absolute majority of wounded protesters, several dozen prosecution witnesses, and dozens of defense witnesses. Videos presented at the trial showed that times of shooting of the absolute majority of protesters did not coincide with times of shooting by the Berkut policemen, who were charged with their massacre. Forensic medical examinations determined that the overwhelming majority of the protesters were shot from steep directions from the sides or the back. Initial ballistic examinations did not match bullets extracted from the bodies of killed and wounded protesters to the Berkut Kalashnikovs. Forensic examinations of the bullet holes by the government experts for the Maidan massacre trial suggested that Berkut policemen were shooting in the Hotel Ukraina snipers above the Maidan protesters. The analysis shows cover-up and stonewalling of the investigations and trials by the Maidan governments and the far right. The prosecution denied that there were any snipers in the Maidan-controlled buildings. Not a single person is convicted or under arrest for the massacre of the protesters and the police almost seven years after one of the most documented mass killings in history.
Верховна рада, Кабінет міністрів, адміністрація президента, Міністерство внутрішніх справ взяті під контроль Самооборони Майдану, заявив народний депутат від фракції «Батьківщина» Андрій Парубій.
Neocons and Small-Government Conservatives, Consciously Uncouple
A country can remain constantly at war, or enjoy low taxes and civil liberties protections, but it can’t do both.Conor FriedersdorfMarch 27, 2014
Once the Cold War ended it didn’t make much sense for neoconservatives and small-government conservatives to remain in a coalition. But breakups take time, and post-9/11 politics briefly created the illusion that Bill Kristol and George Will belong in the same political party. I am here to tell you that they do not, even if many people who identify as small-government conservatives still don’t realize it.
There are kind, intellectually honest neoconservatives who genuinely believe that their hawkish, imperial approach to foreign policy would bring about a better world. Their notion of the good is still incompatible with small-government conservatism and libertarianism. And the darkest strains in neoconservatism—the zealous defenses of torturing prisoners, for example—are incompatible with the professed beliefs of a lot of social and religious conservatives, too. How could the GOP possibly serve the agendas of all these factions?
If neoconservatives got their way, as they did during George W. Bush’s first term, the United States would spend more on its military and wage war in more countries. Neoconservatives still believe the Iraq War was a good idea. They’d have preferred to keep our troops in Afghanistan longer. They urged greater American involvement in Egypt and Libya. They wanted President Obama to intervene in Syria. https://90bf6e1727558741199c99ca22f722e9.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
As they urge actions that would require spending tens of billions of additional dollars in the Middle East and North Africa, they also insist that NATO grant security guarantees to countries like Georgia, as if the sanctity of its borders is worth risking nuclear war. And having urged a geopolitical strategy that stretches America thin across much of the rest of the world, they criticize the Obama Administration for not doing enough to “pivot toward Asia” in the Pacific.
Many small-government conservatives may be morally comfortable with interventionism. What they must realize is that neoconservatism’s particular agenda would require dramatic tax increases, or significant borrowing, to carry out; that neoconservative strategists have shown an utter inability to produce competent analysis of how the interventions that they favor will unfold; and that the costs are often borne by the young Americans who are killed or maimed in lost wars.
What are the monetary costs of the neoconservative agenda? Rank-and-file Republicans often underestimate them. If neoconservative publications favor expensive wars but advocate against liberal domestic spending, is that a wash? Hardly. Once everything is factored in, the Iraq War alone may cost America $6 trillion. $6 trillion!
That’s roughly $20,000 for every living American.
Small-government conservatives are also inclined to forget that war is the health of the state. Every significant war that America undertakes significantly increases the power of the federal government, even outside the realm of war, exacting heavy costs in liberty. War can still be necessary. I’d put the Civil War and World War II in that category. Other times, war brings more costs than benefits. But virtually all wars concentrate more power in the state and reduce domestic freedom. America’s war and small-government factions are at cross-purposes.
When one wins the other loses.
Neoconservatives aren’t alone in touting imprudent foreign interventions and allying with the national security state even when it is infringing upon the rights of innocent people. Though Hillary Clinton comes from a different intellectual tradition, for example, she has supported numerous wars of choice and illiberal policies. And the aughts featured a host of Republicans who weren’t exactly neoconservatives, but backed the invasion of Iraq, torture, and indefinite detention.
But a hyper-interventionist foreign policy is the thing that neoconservatives care about most. It’s the priority that they’ll negotiate for, not a soft preference they’ll negotiate away. That’s why it makes sense for small-government conservatives to do all they can to diminish neoconservative influence within the GOP, just as it makes sense for neoconservatives to do all they can to diminish libertarian influence.
This may become much more clear to Republicans in the next presidential election. The odds of any given matchup coming to fruition are long. But if Election 2016 turns out to pit Rand Paul against Hillary Clinton, lots of neoconservatives will vote for the Democrat, as they should, given their ideological notions of what’s right for the world. If that happens, it will be fascinating to see what The Weekly Standard publishes in the back of the book circa 2017. https://90bf6e1727558741199c99ca22f722e9.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html1
As political pollster Rasmussen tweeted Wednesday, a lot of voters agree with Trump that the election process in America is deeply flawed: “Almost half of ALL VOTERS are concerned about US election integrity: – President Trump left office w/ a job approval of 51%. – 47% of ALL VOTERS believe there was election fraud in Nov 2020. – 45% of ALL VOTERS want a debate on election integrity.”
A Ramona man says he was fired at his job at SDG&E after a stranger posted a picture of him on Twitter and accused him of making a white power sign with his hand black lives matter Published June 15, 2020 Cafferty is Mexican American and says he comes from a diverse family of all races. He says he’s proud of SDG&E for taking any allegations of racism seriously, but he wants his job back. SDG&E said in a statement: “We hold all SDG&E employees to a high standard and expect them to live up to our values every day. We conducted a good faith and thorough investigation that included gathering relevant information and multiple interviews, and took appropriate action.” NBC 7 spoke to the man who originally posted the picture on Twitter. He has since deleted his account and said he may have gotten “spun up” about the interaction and misinterpreted it. He says he never intended for Cafferty to lose his job. https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-over-alleged-racist-gesture-says-he-was-cracking-knuckles/2347414/
Fans of KGB will greatly enjoy the intimidation of whistleblowers by the US authorities!”I am not scaring you. But 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮”“My only goal is to protect you”“I’m not … while I am, actually, 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐭𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 a little bit because in that … your mind will kick in,” “We’re here to protect you.””Anything you say or do may be used against you in the court of law and … administrative proceedings. “”OK, best you can do right now – we have techniques that … help the mind to remember.””We have Senators involved…DOJ involved…The reason they called me in is to 𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐦, try to reel it back in before it gets really crazy.”“My only goal is to protect you”
Simon GladinSo, basically, a “no.” But on the spot, unless you are a self-employed genius who is very careful at selecting his like-minded clients.
Vladislav RutenburgSimon Gladin In total defiance of the First Amendment, the University of North Texas has fired a math professor for criticizing the concept of microaggressions and for refusing to attend extra diversity training to correct his views, which the math dep… See More
Vladislav RutenburgMathews, 65, was attending to the patient on Sept. 10, 2016, shortly before the general election, when the patient asked her who she thought would win. The nurse said she was hoping for Trump to win and that she was “praying for him.” She was informe… See More
Vladislav RutenburgA popular Michigan high school teacher and coach says he was fired simply for expressing his support for President Donald Trump.Walled Lake Varsity baseball coach and social studies teacher Justin Kucera retweeted the president on July 6, commenting:… See More
Vladislav Rutenburg“And if you were a peaceful demonstrator against election fraud, you will be automatically labeled a racist, anti-semite and a white supremacist! And anybody who criticizes President Biden, is a racist, anti-semite and a white supremacist!” Even though President Biden himself is a racist over-privileged white male.
Vladislav Rutenburg“You are a famous lesbian LGBTQ activist, and being a feminist, you want to prevent men from dominating women’s sports? You dared to write: “Letting men compete as women is unfair”?! You are a homophobe and a transphobe! You will be fired!”https://thefederalist.com/…/tennis-legend-martina…/
Vladislav Rutenburg“Simply reducing hormone levels — the prescription most sports have adopted — does not solve the problem. A man builds up muscle and bone density, as well as a greater number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, from childhood. Training increases the di… See More
Every totalitarian regime – Russia, Germany, China – starts by re-writing history and teaching the population that their country’s history and its heroes are shameful and despicable. That black is white and white is black. https://www.sfchronicle.com/…/Washington-and-Lincoln…
A Federal Communications Commissioner on Monday blasted two prominent House Democrats for suggesting that video providers should drop Fox News and other channels. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr slammed the effort by California Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney as a “chilling transgression” of free speech, Mediate reported. “The concerted effort by Democrats to drive political dissent from the public square represents a marked departure from these First Amendment norms,” Carr said in a statement. The lawmakers on Monday sent letters to a dozen cable, satellite and streaming video companies pushing them to address their “disseminating misinformation to millions” of users from some networks. The letters suggested that companies — including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Apple, and Amazon — played “a major role in the spread of dangerous misinformation that enabled” the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 and “hinders our public health response” to the coronavirus pandemic. They charged that “right-wing media outlets, like Newsmax, One America News Network (OANN), and Fox News all aired misinformation about the November 2020 elections.” The lawmakers asked if the companies planned to continue carrying those channels, and “If so, why?” “What moral or ethical principles… do you apply in deciding which channels to carry or when to take adverse actions against a channel?,” the letters asked. In his statement, Carr said Democrats were sending a “troubling” message that “regulated entities will pay a price if the targeted newsrooms do not conform to Democrats’ preferred political narratives.” “This is a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys,” he said. The FCC head that the lawmakers’ demands to know how private companies decide which channels to carry “cannot be reconciled with bedrock principles of free speech and journalistic freedom.” “I call on my FCC colleagues to join me in publicly denouncing this attempt to stifle political speech and independent news judgment,” he said. The letters came ahead of a hearing House Democrats are set to hold on Wednesday called “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.” The hearing will be hosted by a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on which both Eshoo and McNerney sit.
Sad coincidences happen. Especially around Clintons. Like Seth Rich, who worked for the Democratic National Committee, and who was killed during a robbery 5 days after Wikipedia published internal DNC emails exposing the collusion between Hillary’s team and the DNC. Pure coincidence.
Vladislav RutenburgSad coincidences happen. Especially around Clintons. Like Vincent Foster — former White House Counsel, a childhood friend of Bill Clinton and his associate in the Whitewater affair. He had significant knowledge of the Clintons’ financial affairs and was a business partner with Hillary. He coincidentally committed suicide by a gunshot wound to the head right in the middle of the Whitewater investigation. Pure coincidence.
Vladislav RutenburgSad coincidences happen. James McDougal, Clinton’s convicted Whitewater partner, a key witness for Whitewater prosecutors, died of an apparent heart attack, while in solitary confinement. He was a key witness in Ken Starr’s investigation. Pure coincidence.
Vladislav RutenburgSad coincidences happen. Especially around Clintons. Like Paul Tully — DNC Political Director, died of a heart attack in a Little Rock hotel room. Tully was a key member of the damage control squad and came up with some of the Clinton strategies. Pure coincidence.
Vladislav RutenburgSad coincidences happen. Especially around Clintons. Like Ed Willey — Clinton fund raiser. Found in the woods in Virginia with a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide. At the same time as Willey was killing himself, his wife was allegedly being groped by Bill Clinton. She said she’d gone to the Chief Executive looking for a job to help her family out of its financial crisis and found herself fending off his advances. As she raced home from that controversial meeting, Ed Willey was driving his Isuzu on a country road, one of his tires blew, he stopped, walked into the woods and shot himself. His wife Kathleen Willey claims her husband’s death bore striking similarities to that of Vince Foster. Pure coincidence.
Vladislav RutenburgSad coincidences happen. Especially around Clintons. Like C. Victor Raiser – former National Finance Co-Chairman of Clinton for President. Died in a private plane crash in Alaska. Raiser was considered to be a major player on the Clinton team. Pure coincidence.
Vladislav RutenburgSad coincidences happen. Especially around Clintons. Like Herschel Friday, an Arkansas lawyer who had been on the Clinton presidential campaign finance committee. Died in a private plane crash on 1 March 1994. Just like Victor Raiser. Pure coincidence.
Vladislav RutenburgSad coincidences happen. Especially around Clintons. Like Kathy Ferguson — former wife of Arkansas State Trooper Danny Ferguson, the co-defendant with Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Found dead on 11 May 1994 in her living room of a gunshot w… See More
Vladislav Rutenburg Sad coincidences happen. Especially around Clintons. Like Bill Shelton — Arkansas state trooper and fiance of Kathy Ferguson. Shot himself in the head over Kathy Ferguson’s grave on 12 June 1994. Ruled a suicide. Pure coincidence.
David Ng Lap Seng (Chinese: 吳立勝; pinyin: Wú Lìshèng; born June 1948)[1][3] is a Macau-based Chinese billionaire real estate businessman, chairman of the Sun Kian Ip Group (新建业集团). He is a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).[1]
Criminal investigation
Ng Lap Seng is the subject of an American investigation, and faces bribery, money laundering and other charges, as he allegedly that he paid bribes via intermediaries totalling US$500,000 to former UN General Assembly president John Ashe.[4][5]
On the 7 March 2015 Ng’s Sun Kian Ip Group signed a “cooperation agreement” with the Director of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), Yiping Zhou. In April 2015 the Deputy Director of the UNOSSC, Inyang Ebong-Harstrup, met with Ng in Macau. In August 2015 the Sun Kian Ip Group sponsored a High-Level Strategy Forum for the UNOSSC. The Forum was also attended by former President of the UN General Assembly, John William Ashe. Ashe was arrested, along with Ng and others, in October 2015 by the FBI.
Since October 2015, he has been confined to his New York City apartment on US$50 million bail, with very tight restrictions.[4] As of January 2016, two suspects have pleaded guilty.[5] In March 2016, a third suspect, Francis Lorenzo, deputy ambassador to the United Nations from the Dominican Republic, pleaded guilty.[6]
US prosecutors estimate that Ng’s net worth is in excess of US$1 billion.[4]
Ng Lap Seng was also part of a Democratic fund-raising scandal when Bill Clinton was president, and is mentioned in the Panama Papers.[7]
In July 2017, the U.S. District Court in Manhattan found Ng guilty of all charges he faced, following a month-long trial.[8][9]
CaptBeach Adamantium Member Join Date Oct 2010 Location Va. Posts 6,684
Anyone remember the Clinton Body Count…add one more
Breaking now…UN official set to testify against Bill and Hill and the Clinton Foundation found DEADED…bar bell crushed his wind pipe when he was working out alone in his NY home.
06-27-2016, 10:13 AM #4Monte Elite Member Join Date May 2011 Location Central Mississippi Posts 942
The Clinton Body Count
The Clinton body count is quite a long one, full of suicides, car accidents, plane crashes or explosions, people dying of gun shot wounds and people dying from falling out of high apartment buildings. Since the overwhelming majority were officially ruled as suicide, the Clintons enjoy plausible denialability, which the elite regularly use as a legal shield behind which to hide their horrendous crimes. Here is a partial list of those who knew or were close to the Clintons:
July 1978: Susan Coleman is shot in the back of the head after allegedly becoming pregnant to Bill Clinton. Verdict: “suicide”.
August 1991: Danny Cassolaro is found dead in bathtub after investigating corruption including the Clintons. Verdict: “suicide”.
July 1992: C. Victor Raiser II (and son Montgomery) die in a plane crash/explosion, and Herschel Friday dies in a separate plane crash/explosion, both deemed “accidents”.
September 1992: Paul Tulley dies to unknown causes.
December 1992: Paula Gober, speechwriter for Clinton, dies in a car accident.
December 1992: Jim Wilhite dies in a skiing accident.
January 1993: Ed Cauley, former Clinton Arkansa campaign manger, dies.
May 1993: John Wilson, former DC city councilman with inside knowledge of Whitewater, is found hanged in his room. Verdict: “suicide”.
July 1993: Paul Wilcher, an attorney, wrote a 105 page letter to then attorney general Janet Reno, describing knowledge of the Mena, Arkansas gun-running and drug-dealing activity. He is found dead in his apartment. The coroner did not rule on the cause of death.
August 1993: Jon Walker, a senior investigator for the Resolution Trust Corporation, looking for source of a suspicious $50 million transfer related to $40 million embezzlement scheme involving Whitewater and the Clintons, falls to his death from a high apartment building. Verdict: “suicide”.
September 1993: Dr. Stanley Heard and Attorney Steve Dickson, family doctor for the Clintons, are killed in 2 plane crashes.
March 1994: Dr. Donald Rogers, family dentist of the Clintons, is killed in plane crash, ruled an “accident”.
May 1994: Gandy Baugh, attorney, commits “suicide” by jumping out of an apartment building.
June 1994: Stanley Huggins, a partner in Memphis law firm investigating the Madison loan, is found dead of viral pneumonia.
July 1994: Calvin Walraven dies of a gun wound to head. Verdict: “suicide”.
October 1994: Florence Martin, who had the PIN to bank account of $1.46 million set up for Barry Seal, is found dead of gun shot wounds to the head.
November 1996: Barbara Wise, worker at the Department of Commerce, is found dead.
Finally, here is a quote from Aldrich who worked in the White House as a FBI agent:
“My name would be mud, my FBI career would be over, and I might even be in danger, if the stories coming from Little Rock were true – about how so many enemies of the Clintons ended up having fatal accidents.” – Gary Aldrich, special FBI agent assigned to the White House
The above list of the Clinton body count is only a partial one.
Bush Family Rushes To Hillary Clinton Side After Top UN Official Set To Testify Against Her Found Dead
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
In what a new Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) report circulating in the Kremlin today calls a “master incestuous maneuver”, the Bush Crime Family has rushed to the side of Hillary Clinton after a top United Nations official set to testify against her in a US District Court yesterday was found dead by FBI agents who were set to deliver him before a Grand Jury. [Note: Some words and phrases appearing in this report are English language approximations of Russian words and phrases having no exact counterpart.]
On 6 October 2015, Ashe was arrested and charged,[12] along with five others, in a criminal complaint filed by federal prosecutors in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, reflecting an expansion of a probe into the dealings of Macau real estate developer Ng Lap Seng. The complaint accused Ashe of using “his official position to obtain for Ng potentially lucrative investments in Antigua” as part of an alleged broader scheme to funnel more than $1 million in bribes from Chinese sources to facilitate business dealings, particularly in real estate.[13][14] He died while awaiting trial.[15]
UN Diplomat John Ashe Dies While Awaiting Trial To Testify Against Clinton Foundation Donor
In what some are calling convenient timing, a top suspect in a bribery case involving Clinton Foundation donors and the former United Nations General Assembly President has suddenly died of asphyxiation from a barbell. John Ashe, 61, was pumping iron in his Westchester, New York home when authorities say he dropped a barbell on his own throat, crushing his larynx, according to the local medical examiner, reports CNN. The autopsy report will take around 16 weeks to complete.
John Ashe UN Diplomat John Ashe Dies While Awaiting Trial To Testify Against Clinton Foundation Donor LINK
John Ashe, 61, was pumping iron in his Westchester, New York home when authorities say he dropped a barbell on his own throat, crushing his larynx, according to the local medical examiner, reports CNN. The autopsy report will take around 16 weeks to complete.
This report comes as a shock to many, including the U.S. government who believes Ashe to have been complicit in accepting and facilitating more than $1.3 million in bribes from Chinese billionaire business magnate Ng Lap Seng, a major Clinton Foundation donor. Ashe was awaiting trial and was set to testify on his role in the scandal soon.
Ashe was amid plea negotiations, according to a letter sent to U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick last month from Ashe’s lawyer, Jeremy Schneider, which raises suspicion on whether or not his death is in fact an accident or a murder conducted on behalf of associated parties.
Ashe was accused last year by United States federal authorities of turning his powerful UN position into a “platform for profit” along with Francis Lorenzo, the ambassador to the UN for the Dominican Republic, who’s been accused of helping Ng pay bribes to Ashe and others political figures in the Caribbean.
Blogger falsely ties death of U.N. official to Clintons
Yes, Ashe died in 2016, and yes, there was a criminal case. But no, he wasn’t going to testify against either Bill or Hillary Clinton.
Now, for the back story.
John Ashe represented Antigua and Barbuda at the United Nations and at one time served as president of the General Assembly. In October 2015, the FBI accused Ashe of receiving at least $500,000 in bribes to benefit a Chinese businessman named Ng Lap Seng.
Ng isn’t a household name today but back in 1998, a Senate report identified him as the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars funneled through an Arkansas restaurant owner to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton-Gore campaign in the mid 1990s. Ng visited the White House 10 times.
That is the known extent of any Clinton connection.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttp://archive.is/BUvvJ
June 23, 2016
Bush Family Rushes To Hillary Clinton Side After Top UN Official Set To Testify Against Her Found Dead
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
In what a new Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) report circulating in the Kremlin today calls a “master incestuous maneuver”, the Bush Crime Family has rushed to the side of Hillary Clinton after a top United Nations official set to testify against her in a US District Court yesterday was found dead by FBI agents who were set to deliver him before a Grand Jury. [Note: Some words and phrases appearing in this report are English language approximations of Russian words and phrases having no exact counterpart.]
According to this report, former UN President John Ashe was scheduled to testify against Hillary Clinton yesterday in a New York City US District Court, but when FBI agents arrived at his Dobbs Ferry, New York, mansion he was found dead of what current UN President Mogens Lykketoft said was a heart attack—but that SVR intelligence analysts say in this report is impossible to determine prior to an autopsy being performed and medical tests conducted.
06-27-2016, 09:30 AM #1CaptBeach Adamantium Member Join Date Oct 2010 Location Va. Posts 6,684 Anyone remember the Clinton Body Count…add one more Breaking now…UN official set to testify against Bill and Hill and the Clinton Foundation found DEADED…bar bell crushed his wind pipe when he was working out alone in his NY home.
CRG-Suarez International Combat Pistol Instructor SIG SAUER CERTIFIED ARMORER M400, 516, 716, M4, AR15, M16
Liberty is a Man-Of-War, and we are all crew. Reply With Quote 06-27-2016, 10:13 AM #4Monte Elite Member Join Date May 2011 Location Central Mississippi Posts 942
The Clinton Body Count
The Clinton body count is quite a long one, full of suicides, car accidents, plane crashes or explosions, people dying of gun shot wounds and people dying from falling out of high apartment buildings. Since the overwhelming majority were officially ruled as suicide, the Clintons enjoy plausible denialability, which the elite regularly use as a legal shield behind which to hide their horrendous crimes. Here is a partial list of those who knew or were close to the Clintons:
July 1978: Susan Coleman is shot in the back of the head after allegedly becoming pregnant to Bill Clinton. Verdict: “suicide”.
August 1991: Danny Cassolaro is found dead in bathtub after investigating corruption including the Clintons. Verdict: “suicide”.
July 1992: C. Victor Raiser II (and son Montgomery) die in a plane crash/explosion, and Herschel Friday dies in a separate plane crash/explosion, both deemed “accidents”.
September 1992: Paul Tulley dies to unknown causes.
December 1992: Paula Gober, speechwriter for Clinton, dies in a car accident.
December 1992: Jim Wilhite dies in a skiing accident.
January 1993: Ed Cauley, former Clinton Arkansa campaign manger, dies.
May 1993: John Wilson, former DC city councilman with inside knowledge of Whitewater, is found hanged in his room. Verdict: “suicide”.
July 1993: Paul Wilcher, an attorney, wrote a 105 page letter to then attorney general Janet Reno, describing knowledge of the Mena, Arkansas gun-running and drug-dealing activity. He is found dead in his apartment. The coroner did not rule on the cause of death.
August 1993: Jon Walker, a senior investigator for the Resolution Trust Corporation, looking for source of a suspicious $50 million transfer related to $40 million embezzlement scheme involving Whitewater and the Clintons, falls to his death from a high apartment building. Verdict: “suicide”.
September 1993: Dr. Stanley Heard and Attorney Steve Dickson, family doctor for the Clintons, are killed in 2 plane crashes.
March 1994: Dr. Donald Rogers, family dentist of the Clintons, is killed in plane crash, ruled an “accident”.
May 1994: Gandy Baugh, attorney, commits “suicide” by jumping out of an apartment building.
June 1994: Stanley Huggins, a partner in Memphis law firm investigating the Madison loan, is found dead of viral pneumonia.
July 1994: Calvin Walraven dies of a gun wound to head. Verdict: “suicide”.
October 1994: Florence Martin, who had the PIN to bank account of $1.46 million set up for Barry Seal, is found dead of gun shot wounds to the head.
November 1996: Barbara Wise, worker at the Department of Commerce, is found dead.
Finally, here is a quote from Aldrich who worked in the White House as a FBI agent:
“My name would be mud, my FBI career would be over, and I might even be in danger, if the stories coming from Little Rock were true – about how so many enemies of the Clintons ended up having fatal accidents.” – Gary Aldrich, special FBI agent assigned to the White House
The above list of the Clinton body count is only a partial one.
Gregg Jarrett: Lynch, the Clintons and a series of fantastic coincidences
I don’t believe in coincidences. Not when it comes to crimes. Especially when they involve political corruption.
No such thing as a coincidence. Doesn’t exist.
Yet, we are led to believe it was merely a coincidence that Bill Clinton just happened to be on the tarmac of an Arizona airport at the same time as then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch. We are supposed to accept that their private meeting on board Lynch’s plane had nothing whatsoever to do with the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton which the A-G was overseeing at the time.
Right. They just “schmoozed” about grandkids and what-not.
I guess it was also just a coincidence that a few days after the furtive tarmac meeting the decision was announced that criminal charges against Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, would not be filed, notwithstanding compelling evidence that she repeatedly violated the Espionage Act by storing highly classified documents on her private, unauthorized and unsecured email server in the basement of her home.
Sure. Makes perfect sense. To a naïve, gullible fool.
Right. They just “schmoozed” about grandkids and what-not.
I guess it was also just a coincidence that a few days after the furtive tarmac meeting the decision was announced that criminal charges against Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, would not be filed, notwithstanding compelling evidence that she repeatedly violated the Espionage Act by storing highly classified documents on her private, unauthorized and unsecured email server in the basement of her home.
Sure. Makes perfect sense. To a naïve, gullible fool.
Maybe it was purely a coincidence that there was another FBI investigation going on involving Russia’s corruption-fueled purchase of U.S uranium assets and which also happened to implicate the Clintons, but was kept hidden from Congress and the American people by Lynch and her predecessor, Eric Holder. Hmm…
And perhaps it was simply an odd coincidence that the investigation of this uranium bribery, extortion, money laundering and kickback case was supervised by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, his successor James Comey, and then-U.S Attorney Rod Rosenstein, all of whom appear to have covered it up but are now directly involved in the Trump-Russia probe.
Strange confluence of people and events, eh?
I don’t buy any of it. Not for one minute. And not entirely because I don’t believe in coincidences. It is because all the above-mentioned people are known to trifle with the law or ignore disqualifying conflicts of interest. They seem to be without principles –devoid of the kind of scruples that should guide people in service of our government.https://378ef20ed35d6d061137c4e28109584e.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
Mueller is serving as special counsel in the Trump-Russia case. He reports to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who appointed him.
Yet both Rosenstein and fired FBI Director James Comey are witnesses in the case, since Rosenstein recommended to President Trump that Comey be fired.
It is well established that Comey and Mueller are long-time friends, allies and former partners. How can Mueller be fair and impartial given these glaring conflicts of interest? He cannot. And he should recuse himself. Rosenstein should also step aside in overseeing the case. He cannot be prosecutor and witness simultaneously.
Their conflicts are compounded by recent reports that all three men were involved in the Russian uranium case which was kept hidden from Congress. How can Americans have confidence in the outcome of the Trump-Russia case if they engaged in a cover-up of the Clinton-Russia case?
Which brings us to Hillary and Bill. The Clinton name is synonymous with scandal. The sleazy Whitewater land deals, an illicit affair with a young White House intern that led to impeachment, deceptions following the Benghazi murders, Travelgate, cattle futures, suspected slush funds, evidence of perjury, the list is seemingly endless.
Through it all, the ability of the Clintons to evade indictments would make Houdini proud. They are escape artists of the highest order.
Loretta Lynch should never have presided over the Hillary Clinton email case. She owed her career to none other than Bill Clinton who nominated her to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York which nicely positioned her for elevation to Attorney General a few years later.
She should have recused herself from the Hillary probe from the outset, but did not. Only when the ethically-challenged tarmac meeting took place did she step aside. Belatedly. Supposedly. I have my doubts.
On Friday, Lynch met behind closed doors with the House Intelligence Committee. Too bad the public was deprived of witnessing an attempt to elicit the truth. But secrecy is endemic in Washington, which is precisely why it is so easy to obscure the truth when power corrupts.
Lynch was likely asked to explain the full content of the infamous tarmac conversation with Bill Clinton that lasted approximately 30 minutes. Did Clinton remind Lynch of how much she owed him? Are we to believe that he never broached the potential indictment of his wife with the very person who could decide her fate?
It is likely Lynch was asked by the Intel Committee if she ever directed Comey to mischaracterize the Clinton email case as a “matter” instead of what it truly was, a criminal investigation. Was Lynch downplaying the case because she planned to scuttle any criminal charges? Did she assure anyone in the Clinton orbit that prosecution would never happen, incriminating evidence be damned?
Finally, why did Lynch allow Comey to usurp the power of the Attorney General in announcing that no criminal charges would be forthcoming against Clinton? It was bad enough that Comey misinterpreted the law on “intent” and “gross negligence,” but Lynch appears to have allowed her office to acquiesce in Comey’s decision. Why?
Since Friday’s hearing was secretive, we may never learn the answers to serious questions that appear to involve lawlessness and rampant corruption.
16A038 The Clinton Body Count by Jim Davies, 10/25/2016 This election is getting a bit serious: at this writing, the polls say Hillary will win. Any of the candidates would be awful, but she would be by far the wor
Former U.N. General Assembly President John Ashe of the twin-island Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda died on Wednesday in the United States as he was facing criminal charges in a bribery case. He was 61.
Ashe died at his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York, according to Sgt. Vincent Ingani, of the Dobbs Ferry Police Department. He gave no other details.
Current U.N. General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft confirmed his death, saying Ashe died of a heart attack.
Ashe was a former U.N. ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda who served in the largely ceremonial post of president of the 193-nation assembly from September 2013 to September 2014.
He was accused last year by U.S. federal authorities of turning the position into a “platform for profit” by accepting more than $1 million in bribes.
The alleged conspiracy involves six others including a billionaire Chinese real estate mogul, two diplomats and a humanitarian organization officer.
Ashe pleaded not guilty to the charges and his lawyer had said he would be vindicated. It wasn’t clear how Ashe’s death would affect the bribery case.
UN Official John Ashe Killed the Day Before He Was to Testify Against Hillary Clinton
Former U.N. Diplomat John Ashe did die in a June 2016 accident, but his trial was not set to begin five days later, and he wasn’t testifying against Hillary Clinton.
Ex-UN Official John Ashe died suspiciously the day before he was scheduled to testify against Hillary Clinton. Example John Ashe was set to be interviewed about Hillary Clinton and Chinese billionaire Ng and died the morning he was supposed to go in. It was first reported as a heart attack and later an asphyxiation from a dumbbell dropped on his neck.
“During the trial, the prosecutors would have linked Ashe to the Clinton bagman Ng His death was conveniently timed. pic.twitter.com/vv8g55yOKq — Rex Richard (@TrumpLion1776) June 27, 2016
Former UN Official John Ashe died in June 2016 at his Dobbs Ferry home. His death was initially misreported as a heart attack rather than an accident, and he was about to begin pre-trial meetings related to corruption charges at the time he died. What’s False
Ashe’s corruption trial wasn’t set to begin just days after his death, and he wasn’t going to testify against Hillary Clinton.
Origin
On 22 June 2016 John Ashe, a former United Nations diplomat from Antigua, died at his Dobbs Ferry, New York, home. According to various accounts, Ashe’s death occurred just five days before he was set to stand trial on corruption charges; Ashe’s cause of death was initially misreported as a heart attack, but subsequent news accounts attributed his demise to a weightlifting accident:
Ashe, 61, died of injuries while lifting a barbell on a bench, the Westchester, New York, medical examiner’s office [said]. Earlier U.N. spokesman Dan Thomas told CNN that Ashe died of a heart attack. He now tells CNN that the information came from a newspaper report in Antiqua, as well as a former colleague of Ashe’s. The medical examiner clarified Ashe died from traumatic asphyxia and suffered laryngeal fractures while lifting.
The day after reports of Ashe’s passing hit the U.S. news cycle, a conspiracy site claimed that Ashe had been slated to testify against Hillary Clinton on the day he conveniently (that is to say, suspiciously) passed away:
In what a new Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) report circulating in the Kremlin today calls a “master incestuous maneuver”, the Bush Crime Family has rushed to the side of Hillary Clinton after a top United Nations official set to testify against her in a US District Court yesterday was found dead by FBI agents who were set to deliver him before a Grand Jury. [Note: Some words and phrases appearing in this report are English language approximations of Russian words and phrases having no exact counterpart.]
According to this report, former UN President John Ashe was scheduled to testify against Hillary Clinton yesterday in a New York City US District Court, but when FBI agents arrived at his Dobbs Ferry, New York, mansion he was found dead of what current UN President Mogens Lykketoft said was a heart attack — but that SVR intelligence analysts say in this report is impossible to determine prior to an autopsy being performed and medical tests conducted.
That claim stemmed from a single source: a blogger working under the nom de plume “Sorcha Faal” who publishes fabricated “news” accounts on the political conspiracy site whatdoesitmean.com. RationalWiki says of that blog and author:
Sorcha Faal is the alleged author of an ongoing series of “reports” published at WhatDoesItMean.com, whose work is of such quality that even other conspiracy nutters don’t think much of it.
Each report resembles a news story in its style but usually includes a sensational headline barely related to reality and quotes authoritative high-level Russian sources (such as the Russian Federal Security Service) to support its most outrageous claims. Except for the stuff attributed to unverifiable sources, the reports don’t contain much original material. They are usually based on various news items from the mainstream media and/or whatever the clogosphere is currently hyperventilating about, with each item shoehorned into the conspiracy narrative the report is trying to establish.
Prior fabrications from the same site and blogger held that President Obama ordered the military to nuke the city of Charleston, that Rear Admiral Rick Williams was fired because he revealed Obama’s purchase of a mansion in Dubai (Williams was actually terminated for misconduct), and that Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama were locked in a potentially conflict-starting battle over the practices of the Monsanto agribusiness corporation. The claim about Clinton was also a variation on the long-circulating (and equally false) “body bags” rumor holding that the Clintons have frequently “done away” with once-loyal associates who became political liabilities.
We contacted the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of New York to verify the claims about Ashe and Clinton. According to the individual with whom we spoke, CNN’s report that Ashe’s corruption trial was set to begin just five days after his death was not accurate: Ashe was only scheduled to attend some standard pre-trial meetings in the following days.
Moreover, the U.S. District Attorney’s spokesperson told us that no portion of Ashe’s court case pertained to Hillary Clinton. Not only was he not set to testify against Clinton five days before he died, neither was he slated to do so at any point during the trial. A copy of the 5 October 2015 complaint against Ashe and several co-defendants (which involved Ashe’s taking bribes from developer David Ng to support one of Ng’s real estate projects at the U.N.) can be located here [PDF].
Paula Corbin Jones (AP)Time Line Key events in the Jones v. Clinton lawsuit: May 6, 1994 Paula Jones files a civil suit against President Clinton in U.S. District Court in Little Rock, Ark., seeking $700,000 in damages for “willful, outrageous and malicious conduct” at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock on May 8, 1991. Her court papers accuse Clinton of “sexually harassing and assaulting” her, then defaming her with denials.
Paula Corbin Jones (AP)Time Line Key events in the Jones v. Clinton lawsuit: May 6, 1994 Paula Jones files a civil suit against President Clinton in U.S. District Court in Little Rock, Ark., seeking $700,000 in damages for “willful, outrageous and malicious conduct” at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock on May 8, 1991. Her court papers accuse Clinton of “sexually harassing and assaulting” her, then defaming her with denials. August 10, 1994 Clinton files a motion to dismiss Jones’s suit on grounds of presidential immunity. December 28, 1994 U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright rules that a trial cannot take place until Clinton leaves office. But she also rules that fact-finding procedures such as taking sworn statements can proceed. January 17, 1995 Jones asks the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis to reverse the decision postponing a trial. February 24, 1995 Wright delays fact-finding in the case, pending a ruling by the appeals court. September 14, 1995 A three-judge appeals court panel hears Clinton’s lawyers argue that allowing Jones’s case to proceed while the president is in office would distract him from more important matters. Jones’s lawyers argue she should have the same rights as anyone else bringing a lawsuit. January 9, 1996 The appeals panel rules 2 to 1 that Jones’s lawsuit can go to trial. May 15, 1996 Clinton asks the Supreme Court to delay Jones’s case until he leaves office. June 24, 1996 The Supreme Court agrees to consider whether Jones’s lawsuit should be delayed until Clinton leaves office. The move puts the lawsuit on hold until after the November election. May 27, 1997 The Supreme Court rules the lawsuit can move ahead. August 22, 1997 Wright sets a May 27, 1998, trial date but dismisses the claim that Clinton defamed Jones. September 9, 1997 A federal judge allows Jones’s lawyers to withdraw from the suit but directs that the case stay on course for the May trial date. December 8, 1997 Jones reduces the damages sought in her suit against Clinton to $525,000 and drops defamation claims against Clinton’s co-defendant, former bodyguard Danny Ferguson. January 16, 1998 Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr receives formal approval to expand his inquiry to investigate the possibility of subornation of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Jones case; Linda R. Tripp, confidant of former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, briefs Jones lawyers about an alleged sexual relationship betweeen Lewinsky and Clinton. (For more on the Lewinsky allegations, see the Clinton Accused special report and the Clinton Accused Time Line.) January 17, 1998 Clinton is questioned under oath by Jones’s attorneys in the Washington office of his lawyer, Robert S. Bennett. January 29, 1998 U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright issues a ruling that excludes all evidence relating to former White House aide Monica S. Lewinsky from the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton because of the “inevitable effect of disrupting” Starr’s investigation. February 17, 1998 Clinton’s legal team files a motion asking Wright to throw out Paula Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit, arguing that she has not proved she suffered career harm or serious emotional anguish. March 13, 1998 Arguing against the dismissal, Jones’s attorneys file 700 pages of documents alleging that Clinton made advances at several women and took part in a “vast enterprise to suppress evidence.” March 28, 1998 Jones’s attorneys file documents, though no firsthand evidence, alleging Clinton raped a woman in the late 1970s. April 1, 1998 Federal District Judge Susan Webber Wright dismisses Jones’s lawsuit, granting President Clinton’s request for summary judgment in the case. April 16, 1998 A teary Jones announces she will appeal. “I believe what Mr. Clinton did to me was wrong,” she says. July 31, 1998 Jones files her appeal. October 20, 1998 A federal appeals court hears arguments about the Jones appeal. November 13, 1998 President Clinton reaches an out-of-court settlement with Jones, agreeing to pay her $850,000 but acknowledging no wrongdoing. December 2, 1998 The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismisses Jones’s appeal in response to the settlement. Source: The Associated Press, washingtonpost.com staff reports
THE CLINTON BODY-COUNT Updated for Hillary’s 2016 run!
“An apparent pattern of violence and intimidation has befallen a number of men and women with ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, their partners in business, law and politics, and people investigating their affairs…” (The Arizona Republic, June 7, 1994)
THE MOST RECENT DEATHS
In an exclusive interview, Kathleen Willey discusses what it’s like to be at ground zero in one of the biggest political and sex scandals of the century.
On November 6, 2007, her book Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton was published by WND Books, an imprint of World Ahead Media and WorldNetDaily. In her book, Willey claimed that on Labor Day weekend 2007, her house was burglarized, with the only thing stolen being a manuscript of her book. Willey stated that she believes individuals with ties to the Clintons were responsible for the break-in. She also filed a police report.[19]
Willey draws similarities in her book between the circumstances of her husband’s death on November 29, 1993 and of the death of Vincent Foster,[20] although she does not claim to know that any wrongdoing took place.[21]
Turkey’s military battle for control of Kurdish-majority Afrin in northern Syria is in its second week. The advance of Turkish forces has been methodical, although with civilian casualties, and has achieved tactical successes on the ground at the expense of the militia of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) that is closely aligned with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). YPG fighters have withdrawn to the center of the city and have resorted to asymmetrical warfare tactics in order to slow the Turkish advance.
The attack on Afrin highlights the consequences of that collapsed front. Jihadists and secular forces — all using the FSA brand — marched alongside the Turks. Many who support the revolution are in favor the idea of maintaining Syrian territorial integrity, an integrity they see threatened by the Kurds in Afrin, according al-Yafai.
The FSA fears the region in northwestern Syria might one day no longer be Syrian territory, but Kurdish territory, perhaps even part of an independent Kurdish state. That is a goal the Democratic Union Party (PYD) that rules the region around Afrin rejects, but Turkey and the FSA marching by its side are both wary.
There is one discrepancy the FSA can’t elude: The people they attack in the name of Syrian territorial integrity are Syrian Kurds, members of the republic the FSA pretends to be defending. Political ideology and military practice contradict one another.
It seems as if the uprising in Syria no longer has a goal. Supported by Russia and Iran, Assad is still in power. It is less clear what the rebels of yore are continuing to fight for these days.
On 2 December 2013, rebels led by the Free Syrian Army recaptured the historic Christian town of Ma’loula. After the fighting, reports emerged that 12 nuns had been abducted by the rebels. However, the FSA disputes this and said that the nuns had been evacuated to the nearby rebel held town of Yabrud due to the Army shelling.[239][240] In early December, the Islamic Front seized control of Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, which had been in hands of FSA.[241] The groups also captured warehouses containing equipment delivered by the U.S. In response, the U.S. and Britain said they halted all non-lethal aid to the FSA, fearing that further supplies could fall in hands of al-Qaeda militants.[242] On 9 December, the Army took full control of Nabek,[243] with fighting continuing in its outskirts.[146]
More worrying for the Syrian Kurdish region now though are the recent clashes with Arab fighters battling against Assad.
Dozens of Kurdish militiamen were killed in battles with Free Syrian Army fighters this month over control of Aleppo’s Kurdish districts. Rebels see the PYD working with Assad.
“It’s a sign of what will happen in the future,” said PYD activist Mohammed Said.
Already Free Syrian Army rebels are claiming control of oil assets elsewhere. The Jaafar bin Tayyar Division, a Syrian Arab rebel unit in Deir al-Zor, said its fighters had taken control of the al-Ward oil field near the Iraqi border on Sunday.
Efforts were underway Wednesday between the leadership of the rebel Free Syrian Army and Kurdish representatives in Turkey to negotiate an end to the clashes, in which scores of hostages have been seized and more than 40 fighters on both sides killed.
Everyone Is Denouncing the Syrian Rebels Now Slaughtering Kurds. But Didn’t the U.S. Once Support Some of Them?
It’s a lazy, cynical rewriting of history to pretend these groups have nothing to do with the U.S., or were never backed by the U.S., in their current form.
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Фото: Макс Левин
Арсеній Яценюк
In July 2004, the media reported that the then-main opposition bloc in parliament, Our Ukraine, expelled Oleh Tyahnybok, a Member of Parliament (MP) who made an anti-Semitic speech during a campaign rally in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. Tyahnybok called Ukrainians “to take automatic guns and fight against Moskali ( Russians), Germans, *** ( Jews) and other scum”. A regional court ordered that charges of inciting ethnic hatred be dropped because of a lack of sufficient legal grounds to open a criminal case. Moreover, in a March 29, 2005 national television interview, Tyahnybok refused to apologize for his campaign speech.
Dmitro Yarosh, the leader of Pravy Sektor, a coalition of ultra-nationalist groups in Ukraine, stands with some of his fighters at the scene of the worst clashes last month between the group’s fighters and police in Kiev. Maxim Dondyuk By 
“Parubiy was the founder of the Social National Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler’s 𝙉𝙖𝙯𝙞s, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians.”
UNN.COM.UAСамооборона Майдана взяла под контроль правительственный квартал – А.Парубий
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