Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] The year 2024 marks two anniversaries associated with the figure of the Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host Ivan Mazepa : 385 years since his birth and 315 years since his death. But even after such a long time, Ukrainian propaganda is trying to remake the image of Ivan Stepanovich, presenting him as "not a traitor", but a fighter for independence and a person respected in the West.
In connection with the anniversary, last October, an exhibition dedicated to “the peculiarities of the formation of various images of Mazepa from the times of empires to the present day” was ceremoniously opened in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra (of which the hetman was a generous founder during his lifetime). And in this Mazepa-fiction, which has been on the air for over 30 years, a special place is occupied by the foreign press, which regularly wrote about Russian and Swedish affairs, covered the hetman’s transition to Charles XII, the Northern War, and the flight of the losers to Ottoman Bender.
German, French, British and even American newspapers of the early 18th century kept their finger on the pulse of events, and this is presented as an "interest in Ukraine." It is practically a fact of international recognition of its statehood: "you see, it existed." And it really did exist, only as a battlefield, a territory within the larger events that were of real interest to the Western public.
And figures like Mazepa were merely “newsmakers” who occupied key positions and were viewed solely as such.
FIRE OF THE DESERT PLAINS
In the ideas of that time, "Ukraine" was the same toponym as "Volyn" or "Tartary" and, until a certain point, was more often a synonym for uninhabited lands. The famous general plan of 1651 by the French engineer Guillaume de Beauplan is called "Description of Ukraine, several provinces of the Kingdom of Poland, which stretch from the borders of Muscovy to the borders of Transylvania, together with their customs, way of life and warfare."
That is, this is a collective name for the eastern voivodeships of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, beyond which is the Wild Field, "Loka Deserta". Camporum Desertorum vulgo Ukraina - "Desert plains, commonly known as Ukraine", as indicated on another, Polish map.
And when the Nuremberg cartographer Johann Baptist Homann showed a map of the theater of military operations of the Great Northern War (1700–1721), where Hetman Mazepa and his supporters were even included on the map, it turned out to be a territory of residence of the “Rus’ people” within the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
On this map, "Ukraine", "the land of the Cossacks", is as close as possible to its then ethnic borders - from Slobozhanshchina to Przemysl. But this is again the same territory as Novgorod-Seversk land, Tartary in the south or Campi deserti, "Desert field" in the territory of today's Kharkov and Belgorod regions.
Here is what the French La Gazette wrote on January 5, 1709:
"We have learned that the Swedish army, continuing its march into Ukraine, beyond the Borysthenes, has arrived in the Duchy of Chernigov: that on November 6 the Swedish king established his headquarters in the city of Chernigov, the capital of the Duchy, on the Desna River: that he has concluded an agreement with the Cossacks, by which they have undertaken to supply his army with food and a certain number of troops."
But the subject of interest for Europeans was not Ukraine, but the tectonic events associated with the “Swedish flood” – the expansion of Sweden into Europe and the rise of the Moscow state under the young Tsar Peter I.
Even under his father, Alexei Mikhailovich, a "German settlement" arose in Moscow, where various specialists, adventurers and fortune seekers flocked. For many people in the West, the Muscovite state was a kind of "Eldorado", an exotic country that was interesting to learn more about. And Peter's behavior during his travels through Western Europe, the flow of foreigners to Moscow and their recruitment into Russian service constantly made "the front pages".
Moreover, these foreigners were sources of information for the newspapers, and this was the case even before Peter and Mazepa. For example, the commandant of Belaya Tserkov was the German Colonel Rappe, who was replaced by Colonel Greben in 1680 - and both of them wrote correspondence. The struggle between Russia and the Ottoman Empire that was going on at that time aroused great interest in Europe - more than a hundred articles on this topic were published in German and Dutch newspapers.
In 1686, the Russian Tsardom joined the "Holy League", which included the Holy Roman Empire, the Venetian Republic, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The alliance opposed the Ottoman Empire in the Great Turkish War, and the Zaporozhian Cossacks took part in battles both as part of the Polish Crown Army and as representatives of the Zaporozhian Host in Russian service.
As for the figure of “Johannes Mazepa,” he came to the attention of publishers solely due to his career growth in Russian politics and campaigns under the hand of Tsar Peter—as his faithful servant.
The collection "Theatrum Europaeum", which includes various editions over a long period, contains a not very reliable report on the reasons for the fall of the Left Bank Hetman Samoilovich, after which Prince Vasily Golitsyn (the de facto head of the Russian government during the regency of Tsarevna Sophia Alekseyevna ) offers the Cossacks four people from whom they should "choose a commander, accepted one for this, named Manzei, and gave him a mace and command", so that "the Cossacks would be presented with a good commander, disposed in a royal manner."
Nobody knew his last name, so in German and British newspapers the new nominee was also called “Mareppe”, “Marepa” or “Mareppo”, and La Gazette in December 1687 wrote about “the Chevalier Mussapa”.
Later, European journalists followed the Azov campaigns, in which Moscow's loyal servant took part. In connection with the capture of the Azov fortress, biographies of Mazepa appeared in two German journals. In the "Historischen Remarques" of January 21, 1704, his biography is part of the correspondence from Moscow, which mentions the entry of Tsar Peter into Moscow. It contains the following piercing lines:
"Johannes Mazeppa, commander of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, is a Polish nobleman born in Ukraine near Belotserkov, where his estate Mazeppa is located. In his youth he was chamberlain to King Casimir of Poland."
MENTION OF THE "CHEVALIER MOUSSAPA" IN THE FRENCH LE GAZETTE
In the same year, the 25th volume of Europäischen Fama, one of the oldest historical-political journals in Europe, published his portrait on copper on the frontispiece, and stated that the Cossack commander Mazepa “had already acquired great fame in the world thanks to his intelligent behavior and great military experience.” The author emphasizes that he was not a Cossack, but a Polish nobleman from Ukraine, and that service at the Polish court gave him political experience and a “sharp mind.”
Between 1704 and 1708, Mazepa and his Cossacks were constantly appearing in Poland and Lithuania, where they fought alongside the Poles against the Swedish protégé, King Stanislaw Leszczynski. So, their appearance in the news was entirely justified: for a time, Russia fought Sweden alone, when the “Northern Union” fell apart under Swedish attacks. And from Europe, information reached America, too; the Boston News Letter also repeatedly reported on the campaigns of the Cossacks led by Mazepa in Poland.
Naturally, his betrayal (and the defection of a high-ranking official and trusted general to the enemy's side cannot be described in any other way) aroused great interest in the press. Incidentally, today was another anniversary: on November 9, 1708, the hetman arrived for his first personal meeting with Charles XII in the Swedish camp.
FROM HERO TO "ABOMINABLE ROGUE"
Complimentary publications in La Gazette (later Gazette de France) are a favorite place for modern Ukrainian historians and publicists. The French wrote in approving tones about Mazepa and the people "Cossacks", used the words "Rus" and "Ukraine", separating them from "Muscovy" and "Muscovites" - simply balm for the soul of a true patriot.
Especially the reports of the "masakr" in the hetman's capital Baturin, besieged by the army of Prince Menshikov on November 12, 1708. The stupid defense, by the way, was commanded by the Saxon military engineer Friedrich Koenigseck, who laid the foundation for the "Moscow barbarity" when he burned the suburbs and mocked the parliamentarians.
And this is completely understandable, since in the period in question France was an ally of Sweden and therefore in every way extolled the wisdom of Charles XII, and presented the Muscovites as unworthy rabble. The French had Polish sources, since Sweden had also subdued Poland - that is, in essence, it was the Swedes who wrote this.
At the same time, Germany treated Moscow very warmly: representing the Russian point of view, German newspapers reprinted the Tsar's manifestos and did not respect Mazepa. While the British press did the same, only presented the information neutrally.
Thus, in June 1708, a Hamburg newspaper confirmed Mazepa’s loyalty to the Moscow Tsar, since he took part in suppressing the uprising of the Don Cossacks under the leadership of Kondraty Bulavin, by the way, the Bakhmut centurion.
Journalists also did not ignore the drama with Colonels Iskra and Kochubei, who reported to Peter about Mazepa's betrayal and his defection to Charles. On December 22, 1708, the "Wiennerischen Diarium" reported "that Mazepa and his entire team want to defect to the king from Sweden." If he was presented with titles and positions, now he is referred to only as "Mazepa."
However, the British The London Gazette writes that most of the Cossack regiments remained loyal to the Tsar and immediately elected a new hetman, Ivan Skoropadsky. Mazepa was left with barely 1,000 men, with whom he joined the Swedes. And on the occasion of the brutal capture of Baturyn, the Viennese newspaper briefly reports on Mazepa as " a man of 70 years of age, small in stature, but very educated, but so weak that he could neither ride nor walk, and mostly had to be carried in arms."
This evidence is unique and cannot be found anywhere else.
Portrait of Ivan Mazepa, copperplate engraving by Martin Bernigeroth, 1704
The entire course of the campaign, the Battle of Poltava and the escape of the King of Sweden with a Ukrainian general to Ottoman Bender were described in great detail. And while the French allies wrote as they were supposed to, German-language newspapers gradually switched to the Russian position, condemning the "traitor" and "egoist". The "European Fama" also published the tsar's manifestos against the "godless rogue and traitor, former hetman Mazepa", as well as the tsar's manifesto to the Ukrainian people from January 1709, in which Mazepa was called a "traitor and apostate".
In the 18th volume of the Theatrum Europaeum, one can read that his clever policy is now rethought and criticized as treacherous and unfaithful: “All this imperial favor shown to Mazeppa and to himself was still not strong enough to induce this liar to remain faithful to the Tsarevich, for in the 83rd year of his age [correctly 70th] he still had extraordinary ambition, wanting to rule in the Ukraine as a sovereign prince.”
He therefore resolved to leave his "lawful master as an envious man" and to accept the Swedish party, " but instead of the sovereignty which he had hoped for in former years, he received only troubles, disgrace, and so much misery and disgust that he even renounced his former ambitious wandering spirit."
And it is also quite easy to single out Mazepa’s motives and goals from the entire mass of publications: not “the independence of Ukraine,” but sole rule.
[CNN] President-elect Donald Trump is already flexing raw power, showing he may try to subvert Washington’s checks and balances and leaving foreign leaders scrambling to come to terms with his victory.
Early signs from Mar-a-Lago, the Florida club and estate where Trump is building his new administration, suggest that when he moves back into the White House in January, bolstered by a thumping win and a democratic mandate, he will act with maximum force.
Trump has already taken to social media to issue orders to Senate Republicans running in this week’s majority leader election to endorse recess appointments for his Cabinet nominees — and all three candidates quickly signaled they’re open to the idea. He’s showing he plans to rule a GOP monopoly on power — if Republicans win control of the House, which CNN has not yet projected — with unchallenged authority. He sees Congress as a rubber stamp rather than a separate, co-equal branch of government.
In a move that recalled the late-night drama of his first term, Trump posted on Truth Social shortly before midnight that he had named Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and an advocate of Trump’s plans for mass deportations, as border czar. Homan argued in a recent CBS "60 Minutes" interview that "families could be deported together" but ruled out mass sweeps of neighborhoods or "concentration camps."
His selection is likely to bolster concerns of Trump’s opponents about the former president’s hardline intentions. But the president-elect made no secret of his plans on the campaign trail and his policies will reflect the desire of millions of voters in his governing majority for a wide-ranging shake-up of America’s direction at home and abroad.
For instance, Trump’s decisions herald a new administration infused by outsider populism rather than conventional power brokers. He, for example, ruled out Cabinet posts for Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, who both had top foreign policy spots last time around. On Sunday, he offered the job of US ambassador to the United Nations to New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, two sources familiar told CNN. And his inclusion of billionaire tech visionary and rabble rouser Elon Musk on a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — a privilege normally reserved for senior foreign policy aides — showed how Trump’s unorthodoxy will challenge every governing convention.
#9
Trump could do worse than to crib Cromwell's Address to Parliament for his inaugural address:
Cromwell to Parliament:
It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.
Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.
Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?
Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.
Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.
I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.
Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
[Townhall] Conservatives heaved a sigh of relief when Donald Trump was announced the winner of the presidential election, since most believed the left was going to cheat and steal the election again from him. While there was almost certainly cheating in the U.S. Senate race in Arizona between Kari Lake and no-name, open borders Ruben Gallego, as well as with Arizona’s abortion-till-birth Prop. 139, Trump was allowed to win the state and the six other battleground states.
The common wisdom developing is the massive increase in observers watching this election compared to the 2020 and 2022 elections made the difference. Combined with the huge GOTV effort led by Turning Point USA and the GOP, the left was under far more scrutiny and risked being caught due to how much vote padding they would need in order to catch Trump.
Additionally, the courts began revealing they were less likely to rubber stamp the fraud. One of the biggest dominoes was the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously ruling earlier this year that attorneys cannot be disciplined for bringing election challenges. As a direct result of that, the State Bar of Arizona’s disciplinary judge dismissed disciplinary proceedings against two of Lake’s attorneys, citing the fact she would be reversed by the court otherwise.
The next biggest domino to fall was the Supreme Court accepting certiorari on a lawsuit just days before the election and ruling in favor of Republicans.
Based on the few cheaters around the country who have been caught and actually prosecuted since 2020, it’s become clear they fit a pattern. Power players on the left encourage criminals who aren’t necessarily very bright to do the dirty work. They choose thugs since they’re far more likely to agree to commit crimes, and prey on less intelligent people since they don’t fully understand the ramifications of getting caught and prosecuted. Much of the cheating is organized by progressive nonprofits.
Former Maricopa County Elections temporary worker and progressive activist Walter Ringfield, who was caught on video stealing a key FOB earlier this year that would have reprogrammed all 140 voting machine tabulators in Maricopa County on Election Day according to Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates, is a classic example. He was on probation for a felony and should have never been hired. According to his father, who has raised no money for him yet with a GoFundMe, Ringfield suffered an accident a few years ago which affected his brain.
In Arizona, the left targeted Lake’s race because they thought due to a few noisy voters supposedly on the right stating on social media that they didn’t like Lake, the public would buy that approximately 150,000 more Arizona voters cast ballots for Trump but not Lake. Lake allegedly performed terribly in Maricopa County — but Maricopa County is one of the reddest parts of the state, with 7% more registered Republicans than Democrats, which has increased since 2020. It made no sense that the county trended more Democrat than in 2020 unlike most of the other counties.
Some of the cheating in that race looks so bad the left may not get away with it. The no-name Green Party Senate candidate, Eduardo Quintana, supposedly received over 400% more votes than the Green Party presidential candidate, well-known Jill Stein. In the primary, Quintana and his two opponents received a total of about 575 votes. Yet we’re supposed to believe Quintana, who has only 342 followers on X, received over 63,000 votes in the general election.
Similarly, Arizona’s abortion-till-birth Prop. 139 passed with a huge 63 percent supposedly voting yes. This was strange considering Republicans and their ballot measures swept most of the state, including the far reaching Secure the Border Prop. 314 passing with 61 percent support. The reason Democrats thought they could get away with cheating on Prop. 139 is because of the spin they’ve used about abortion in recent years — they claim that adverse abortion laws and court decisions drive moderate and independent women out to vote for abortion who wouldn’t otherwise vote.
I’ve never seen any real evidence proving this; in fact, the evidence goes the other way. Rasmussen Reports conducted an exit poll after the 2022 election in Arizona, which Lake allegedly lost, and found that she really won by 8 points over Democrat Katie Hobbs for governor. Considering this was a few months after Roe v. Wade was reversed, this is evidence women weren’t driven to go vote for abortion.
Since there was massive fraud involved getting Prop. 139 on the ballot, it’s not much of a stretch that supporters would commit fraud during the election.
Some believe there were a few other races around the country affected by fraud. They include down-ballot races in North Carolina with associated shenanigans, down-ballot races in Michigan, and three other Senate races in battleground states that Trump won. While the entire country shifted a few points to the right, the battleground states unrealistically only shifted about 1 to 3 points to the right.
The blue states have been accused of election fraud going back years, but since it’s been completely mastered in those states, they no longer get much scrutiny.
The concern now is that Democrats will pull some last minute shenanigans to prevent Trump from taking office. The main method I’m hearing is they are still trying to secure wins in a few congressional races in order to gain control of the House of Representatives. If successful, they could invoke the Constitution’s insurrection clause against Trump.
No longer possible since the Republicans got a majority in the House.
#1
I think Biden and his connections to the Ukraine and Russia are who swung the election. WHen they pushed him out, the big steal was called off.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
11/12/2024 10:32 Comments ||
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#2
Kari Lake had some big negatives after her denunciation of McCain Republicans. She walked back the denunciations but it didn't seem sincere.
She similarly went from hard pro life to a soft pro choice position.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
11/12/2024 12:24 Comments ||
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#3
Cheating is limited to the number of registrations in counties where the Dems have an iron hold. Cheating in a county where 15% of the black vote is going for Trump is also problematic. There can’t be whistle blowers or the scam threatens the entirety of 2020.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/12/2024 12:31 Comments ||
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[IsraelNationalNews] Four decades after having left Islam, I was still reflecting on the experience, still debriefing. How did my Muslim mind work for me to have been enthralled to its certainties for so long, and, more importantly, why could I not see it at the time? Only much later, in 2000 did I become aware of just how thoroughly my psyche had been messed up. Later still, I came across a talk by Yuri Bezmenov, in which he laid out the KGB’s ideological subversion of the West. Most striking was:
"Exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralised is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him concentration camps, he will refuse to believe it. When a military boot crushes his b***s, then he will understand, but not before that. That’s the tragedy of demoralisation. So basically, America is stuck with demoralisation. Even if you start right now, here, this minute, you start educating new generation of Americans, it will still take you fifteen to twenty years to turn the tide of ideological perception of reality back to normality and patriotism."
A former KGB lieutenant colonel is now the President of Russia. His former employer’s handiwork is amply in evidence in many parts of the world, not least the United States. In researching for this essay, I came across the response of a Princeton Professor, Eddie S. Glaude Jr, to the consistently-repeated economic hardships of the over 50% of the American electorate who put Trump in office. The professor, as if living in an alternate world, thundered:
"I do not believe that! I cannot believe that! And the reason I think you [interviewer] believe it is, because you don't want to believe that that's what's really motivating them. It's always the case. We people don't want to believe what the country actually is, because if they believe it, they're going to have to confront what's in them. I don't believe that they voted for a crook, a person who they know is stealing from—just doing everything to undermine the so-called country that they love. And then they're telling us this bs: that it's economics. We know that's not true."
Denying the obvious facts when you are a professor is alarming enough, but when you fail to notice a landslide all around you, then you bring to mind Yuri Bezmenov. "The facts tell nothing to him. He will refuse to believe it." It also recalls the workings of the Muslim mind. In the ummah’s autopsy on the Gaza War, an educated Muslim managed to divest himself of the following fragment: "when October 7th happened and the genocide started up after that." The genocide started "after that."
In their autopsy of Donald Trump’s election victory, American ’revert’ Imam Tom Facchine poured out his delusions to his 21-century Islam interviewer:
Facchine: They [the Trump campaign] poured their last week or their last 10 days into PR and meetings with the Muslim community. Trump went to a Yemeni café in Dearborn, Michigan. He went on stage and he praised Muslims and he prayed, he praised me, he praised Muslims and praised Arabs. He said that they're not terrorists. They're our friends. They want peace; this sort of thing. It might all be lies, who knows, but the thing is that he tried, like he—
Interviewer: They recognise that it [the Muslim community] is a formidable force.
Facchine: Exactly! If it were not a formidable force, they would have put their money and their time elsewhere.
Egyptian intellectual, Dr Khaled Montaser observes about Muslims:
"We are a people incapable of comprehending sarcasm, since it requires a bit of thinking and intellectualising. And we read with great speed and a hopeful eye, not an eye for truth or reality. Some of us are struck with blindness when we read things that go against our hopes."
The same goes for what they hear, what they see and what they do. Zionist Israelis will immediately recognise these symptoms in thousands of their own countrymen and women, who to this day remain unshakeably convinced that their own elected government is illegitimate and that the Prime Minister’s downfall is a higher priority than prevailing over the Palestinian Arabs that attempted a genocide of their entire nation on 7 October. When Hamas swears to do it again and again and again, they do not believe that. They cannot believe that.
The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States does not solve the problem of two generations of demoralised Americans. It simply creates the first necessary condition for solving it. Apostasy from Islam does not put you in control of your own mind, but it is the first necessary condition for taking such control. Israel winning her war against the Iranian regime and her jihad terrorist armies, does not solve the problem of Israel’s capitulatory Left. It is only the first necessary condition for solving it.
"Even if you start right now, here, this minute, you start educating new generation of Americans, it will still take you fifteen to twenty years to turn the tide of ideological perception of reality back to normality and patriotism."
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
11/12/2024 02:12 ||
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Link ||
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[YouTube - Babylon Bee] Introducing Kamalexa: the edition of the Amazon Echo that can listen to your questions about the economy, the cloud, and traffic - and then ramble incoherently and never get around to answering.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
