Paula Chertok

43 posts

Paula Chertok is a linguist, lawyer and writer. She was born in Soviet Russia to Holocaust survivors from Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. She has degrees in Russian Literature, Slavic Languages, Linguistics, and Law, from Rutgers University and the University of California, Berkeley. Her work focuses on the language of propaganda, the media and civil & human rights. Follow her on Twitter @PaulaChertok

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“Who Was At June 2016 Meeting” — CNN screen grab (July 15)

19 minute read

To Russia with love: pivotal signals to Putin from Trump Jr meeting

This month’s explosive revelations documented in an email chain that Donald Trump Jr. took a meeting explicitly pitched…

11 minute read

Trump’s Orwellian “rigged” campaign is straight out of Putin’s propaganda playbook

The US 2016 presidential campaign is nothing short of Orwellian. A billionaire real estate mogul who’s lived the…

Former national security advisor, former Director of US Defense Intelligence Agency, retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn at a conference and gala dinner celebrating the 10th anniversary of Russia’s propaganda arm, media channel “RT” (formerly “Russia Today”) seated at the head table at the gala, with Vladimir Putin, his then-chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov and press spokesman Dmitry Peskov, among other Russian officials. Also seated at the same table is 2016 Green Party candidate for president Dr. Jill Stein. December 10, 2015 in Moscow. (Image: video capture)

6 minute read

Jill Stein insults Russia’s struggle for human rights and environmental justice

Two of Russia’s fiercest environmental activists have written an open letter to Green Party candidate for president Dr. Jill…

3 minute read

Another death of a Russian opposition journalist: Alexander Shchetinin remembered by Kirillova

Ukrainian authorities have launched a murder investigation into the death of a prominent Russian journalist found shot to death at…

RT America - Kremlin's special operation - Made in Moscow - Danger highly toxic - Handle with care (Image: Euromaidan Press)

7 minute read

Russian propaganda meddling in US election: RT charges Clinton campaign with McCarthyism

Russia’s propaganda channel RT, available on most cable networks across the entire US, courtesy of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin,…

21 minute read

Putin’s Reign of Terror on Russia’s New Dissidents: “Cossacks” Attack Navalny Family as Police Watch

On May 17, 2016, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his family and colleagues from the Anti-Corruption Fund…

8 minute read

Servility and Guilt: Putinists among Russia’s diaspora

Two analysts recently addressed support for Putin among Russia’s diaspora communities against the backdrop of a longstanding tendency…

Vladimir Putin in 2013 standing in front of a Buk missile launcher similar to one used to shoot down the Flight MH17 a year later (source: BBC MH17 Documentary)

5 minute read

Ukraine’s Parliament asks BBC to stop using “civil war” for Russia’s aggression

Ukraine’s Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs sent an official letter to British media giant BBC appealing to the…

9 minute read

Heroes past and present: Remembering Bolotnaya and Russia’s Victory Day

Moscow has been abuzz in “Victory Day” fever for weeks. Toddlers, puppies and tanks are draped in the…

3 minute read

Ukraine’s Chornobyl, like Russia’s Chelyabinsk before it: Symbols of untenable Soviet moral decay

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Chornobyl (Chernobyl) Nuclear Power Plant disaster. On April 25, 1986, workers…

10 minute read

How Russia’s worst propaganda myths about Ukraine seep into media language

Over the past two years, much has been written about the “Ukraine crisis.” This phrase is, in fact,…

22 minute read

Russia’s Criminalization of Protest: Ildar Dadin’s Appeal and Article 212.1

On March 31, in a much anticipated appellate procedure in Moscow City Court, a judge considered the appeal…

15 minute read

Building a new Russia means rooting out Stalin’s destructive Soviet legacy

Sixty years ago at the XXth Congress of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union], Nikita Khrushchev…

4 minute read

Nadiya Savchenko: This is my life you are playing with

Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko finally got to present her “last word,” or closing statement, in the Donetsk (Russia)…

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