An Immigrant’s Month in Review #1
In case you want to catch up on what you might have missed — or if you just signed up and never got the letters in the first place.
Seems like a long time ago, but it’s only been about a month and a half since I launched Immigrants as a Weapon. A lot of you have signed up and subscribed since then. And I want to sincerely thank you. Independent journalism — and good, honest journalism in general — has been gutted and has gone the way of Detroit. Your support really makes a difference.
Despite — or more accurately, because of — the collapse of journalism, our news cycle resembles a meth-fueled reality TV war zone these days. We barely have time to process what just happened before a new disjointed scandal or outrage takes over and we’re all expected to drop everything and rush the enemy’s trenches like it’s our last chance at survival, only to be told to pivot again just a few days later and rush some other outrage target. It’s nonstop. Day after day after day. It’s disorienting and psychologically debilitating. I have no idea how people handle it all. My guess is that some get hooked on it, while many others simply shutdown and stop paying attention. That’s certainly my own gut reaction to what’s going on: retreat and withdraw.
I know we’re all inundated with information and constantly pressed for time. There’s just no way all of you have been able to read all the letters that I sent out. But in case you want to catch up on what you might have missed — or if you just signed up and never got the letters in the first place — here’s a recap of all the things I wrote over the previous month or so.
Immigrants as a Weapon: Global Nationalism and American Power: I’m launching a new project that looks at how America weaponizes nationalism and immigrant communities.
Trump, Ukraine and Weaponized Diasporas: People forget today that a big chunk of the “intel” that helped boost RussiaGate was procured and spread around by Ukrainian-American political operatives.
Ukraine: A Short History of Meddling: American meddling in Ukraine goes a lot deeper than Trump’s crude attempt to squeeze kompromat from the country’s new president.
Ukraine and Ukrainegate, Continued: While everyone's focused on using this Trump-Ukraine scandal as a proxy war for 2020, there's a really dangerous development in Ukraine itself...
Betraying the Kurds: The way the Kurds are treated by America is a perfect example of the weaponization of nationalist and sectarian movements: use them when it fits your goals, abandon them when it doesn’t.
America Sponsors Far-Right Holocaust Revisionist Exhibit in Kiev, Part I: Why is a major federal agency funded by Congress helping push this bile on the Ukrainian people?
Radio Liberty Dodges My Questions: And I don’t blame them. How could their PR people possibly explain why the U.S. government sponsored an exhibit glorifying Nazi collaborators?
Weaponizing Venezuela’s ex-ruling elite: When we think “immigrants in America” we rarely consider those who are privileged and weaponized in service of American Empire.
Thanks!
—Yasha Levine
PS: Here’s a Russian killer crow I spotted next to our place in Moscow this autumn.
