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  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldtoUnited States | News & Politics@lemmy.ml•Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion profile quietly removed from Stanford extremist group list
    52·
    13 hours ago

    MMP’s removal of Azov is significant in that it could be used to guide U.S. foreign policy. Though MMP was created and has operated with funding from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, the papers written by its researchers are cited in academic research, reports and testimony to Congress, government–funded institutions and initiatives, and federal agencies. The website functions as an authoritative source for information on militant and extremist groups, and their interactions and connections over time. At the very least, Azov’s removal means MMP’s list no longer contradicts the State Department’s decision allowing U.S. military assistance to the group, and therefore cannot be used to criticize it.

    Founded in March 2014 as a volunteer unit to fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region, Azov was subsequently incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, and gained international attention for its role in re-taking the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol from separatist forces in June 2014. During this engagement, Azov also received scrutiny for its neo-Nazi iconography, in particular an inverted Wolfsangel superimposed over a Black Sun (the former an ancient runic symbol appropriated by the Nazis, per the ADL, the latter “based on a design commissioned by SS leader Heinrich Himmler, and overwhelmingly used by neo-Nazi and esoteric National Socialist movements,” according to the MMP’s now-removed Azov Battalion profile).

    Azov came to renewed prominence following Russia’s February 2022 invasion due to its high-profile defense of Mariupol that spring. The destructive battle, during which large swaths of Mariupol’s residential infrastructure were damaged or destroyed, ended in a drawn-out siege of the Azovstal steel plant, beneath which surviving Azov and Ukrainian servicemembers retreated until their May 2022 surrender. The battle for Azovstal garnered substantial international media attention due in part to Azov’s use of Starlink terminals to publish videos about the conditions of the Ukrainian defenders.

    This is false. As reported by The Nation, many of Azov’s current leaders, including Commander Denys Prokopenko and Deputy Commander Sviatoslav Palamar, have years-old ties to far-right groups, and the brigade continues to don Nazi symbols on the battlefield and social media. Indeed, Azov has never stopped using the Wolfsangel symbol, which is still part of its official logo and featured on its X/Twitter page. Azov’s founder, Andriy Biletsky, a blatant white supremacist who reportedly said Ukraine’s national mission was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans],” remains closely connected to the unit despite his supposed departure in fall 2014. In his 2022 book From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right, author and journalist Michael Colborne argues Azov has not divorced itself from the far right, writing that “[d]espite unconvincing efforts to separate the two, it’s clear that the Azov Regiment is part of the broader Azov movement and should not be treated as something distinct from it.”

    MMP’s removal of Azov’s profile came a little over a month before the State Department’s decision to lift the longstanding ban on the provision of American weapons to the brigade. The State Department, which originally banned arming Azov due to concerns over its far-right extremism, rescinded this policy because the brigade recently “passed Leahy vetting as carried out by the U.S. Department of State,” as reported by the Washington Post on June 10. While a Congressional ban on military assistance to the “Azov Battalion” remains in place under appropriations laws, the State Department said it didn’t believe the congressional ban applied to the group as it exists today, per the Post.

    “Leahy vetting” is in reference to the Leahy Law, which prohibits the United States from funding “foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights,” per a State Department fact sheet. In reality, not only is the State Department’s original concern around Azov’s ideological extremism still germane, but the force’s human rights record has remained checkered since its founding as a non-state volunteer militia in 2014. Indeed, Azov has been credibly accused of torture, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial killing, all of which are “gross violations of human rights” that would disqualify a military unit from receiving U.S. military aid, according to the State Department’s interpretation of the Leahy Law. Many of Azov’s alleged human rights abuses, which also include the use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes and looting of civilian homes, occurred after the unit was formally integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard in late 2014.

    Stanford launched MMP in 2009 and operated the project until 2012 using funding from the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation. In 2019, MMP received funding from the Department of Homeland Security, per the project’s website. The academics behind MMP also have deep ties to American defense.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldtoToday I Learned@lemmy.world•TIL humans are the only animal with a chin. We aren't sure why.English
    383·
    18 hours ago

    “If you’re looking across all of the hominids, which is the family tree after the split with chimpanzees, there [are] not really that many traits that we can point to that we can say are exclusively human,” Duke University’s James Pampush tells Robert Siegel for NPR. “[T]hose animals all walked on two legs. The one thing that really sticks out is the chin.”

    One of the most popular ideas is that our ancestors evolved chins to strengthen our lower jaws to withstand the stresses of chewing. But according to Pampush, the chin is in the wrong place to reinforce the jaw. As for helping us speak, he doubts that the tongue generates enough force to make this necessary. A third idea is that the chin could help people choose mates, but sexually selective features like this typically only develop in one gender, Pampush tells Siegel.

    The spandrel hypothesis is as good a theory as any, but it too has its problems. It’s hard to find evidence to test if something is an evolutionary byproduct, especially if it doesn’t serve an obvious function. But if researchers one day do manage to figure out where the chin came from, it could put together another piece of the puzzle of what makes us different from our primate and Neanderthal cousins, Yong writes.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.world•"independent journalism"
    31·
    19 hours ago

    Ah, Ian Duncan.

    Oh, I have seen that Sinclair segment as well; I had to rewatch it though; it has been awhile.

    Don’t forget to be critical of him as well; he mostly sticks to certain talking points, like all late-night shows do: Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and many more.

    Some may push a little; one being, when Jon Stewart went on Stephen Colbert and talked about the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory, there was a good amount of blacklash from the establishment types.

    Thanks for sharing!

    Sinclair Broadcast Group: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [18:59 | JUL 02 12 | LastWeekTonight] https://youtu.be/GvtNyOzGogc

    Sinclair Broadcast Group is the largest owner of local TV stations in the country. That’s alarming considering that they often inject political views into local news.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.world•"independent journalism"
    282·
    21 hours ago

    This post reminds me of the video below, where they talk about Sinclair Broadcast scripts:

    Pulling strings: Sinclair Broadcast’s ‘fake news’ scandal | The Listening Post [08:03 | APR 10 18 | Al Jazeera English] https://youtu.be/tN9KAFn1hy8

    Corporations only share certain news and information with the public; we must not be afraid of being highly critical of those with power and influence, especially legacy media and politicians (government and three-letter agencies), due to most of them pushing owner-class talking points.

    By also following journalists that are critical of Al Jazeera, we lower our self made echochambers and bubbles:

    Qatar’s Al Jazeera provides valuable reporting from Gaza but spreads lies about Syria, Russia, and Venezuela.

    The speaker criticizes Qatar and Western liberalism for hypocritically supporting Palestinians on human rights but failing to support wider resistance against imperialism, stressing the need to shatter this hypocrisy for true liberation in Palestine.

    I shared these two quotes in a summary of a video post I made: https://lemmy.world/post/17056614

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