Latest Video Sources:

Sources:                  

2.1

[1] Novosti Press Agency (1977) ‘Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev: A Short Biography’. Publishing House. Moscow. https://www.marxists.org/archive/brezhnev/brezhnevshortbio1977.pdf

“Brezhnev was born into a Russian worker's family on December 19, 1906.” (p.5)

[2] Novosti Press Agency (1977) “At the October 1964 Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev was elected First Secretary (General Secretary from 1966 on of the Central Committee of the Communist-Party of the Soviet Union.” (p.25)

[3] Zubok, V. (2024) The gerontology of power. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-gerontology-of-power/ 

“And the Leader had aged very badly. Brezhnev’s physical and mental deterioration became so pronounced that no artifice of state-controlled media could conceal it.”

[4] Zubok, V. (2024) “His slurred speech and increasingly frequent mistakes made him sound like a nutty grandfather, not the leader of a nuclear superpower.”

[5] Parks, M. (1988) ‘Brezhnev Seen as a Puppet in Last Years’. LA Times. September. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-09-08-mn-2136-story.html  “Although he ‘ceased to understand what was happening,’ he was kept in power, Medvedev charges, by an entourage of corrupt and decadent officials who knew they remained safe while he was the Soviet president and general secretary of the ruling Communist Party.”

[6] Parks, M. (1988) “Brezhnev had suffered a near-fatal stroke in January, 1976, but ruled in a virtual daze for six more years.”

[7] Parks, M. (1988) “The weaker his health—the more of his cronies and supporters he promoted to senior party and government posts.”

[9] Zubok, V. (2024) “Gerontocracy also badly affected the younger cohort of the political class. People between the ages of 40 and 60 were kept in the role of permanent minions.”

[10] Zubok, V. (2024) “The Kremlin leader suffered from overwork, stress, and insomnia, and made ‘a pact’ in the early 1970s with one of the nurses to supply him with strong sedatives. Nobody, even KGB’s Andropov, dared to break up this fateful agreement.”

[11] Zubok, V. (2024) “He collapsed at a summit with Gerald Ford in Vladivostok in December 1974.”

[14] Zubok, V. (2024) and Parks, M. (1988) see above arguments reflecting both US media presentations at the time and scholarly reflections from now.

                                    2.2

[14] Rissman, K. (2024). ‘Desperate’ Trump is ‘hyper-aware’ that he is slipping mentally and making less sense, his biographer says. Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-cognitive-decline-biographer-b2608901.html “Donald Trump, now the oldest candidate to run for president, is facing intense scrutiny over his age and mental sharpness.”

[15] Trump was born 14 June 1946, Apollo landed July 20 1969, Twitter released July 15, 2006. These are just some examples I thought might be impactful, anything could go here.

[16] Rissman, K. (2024). “He’s had a lot of criticism lately for rambling, for being low energy during his rallies, for failing to read the teleprompter properly, mispronouncing words and so his response is to spin it.”

[17] Rissman, K. (2024). “Take a Wisconsin rally last month, when Trump jumped from bacon to wind turbines in a single minute.” - “You take a look at bacon and some of these products and some people don’t eat bacon any more. We are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down, you know, this was caused by their horrible energy – wind. They want wind all over the place. But when it doesn’t blow we have a little problem,” “Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking? Water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?”

[18] Rissman, K. (2024) “He has confused former president Barack Obama and Biden, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and California governor Jerry Brown, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and his former UN ambassador Nikki Haley. He also accidentally called Elon Musk “Leon” at Saturday’s Wisconsin rally.”

[19] Naughtie, A. (2020). Trump insists basic cognitive test was difficult: ‘Person, woman, man, camera, TV’. Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-joe-biden-cognitive-memory-test-fox-news-interview-mental-health-a9633901.html “Donald Trump has yet again boasted of his performance on an elementary test designed to screen for early signs of dementia — this time demonstrating one of the easier tasks during a White House interview. ….. “It’s like you’ll go ‘person, woman, man, camera, TV’. So they’ll say ‘could you repeat that?’ So I said ‘yeah’. So it’s person, woman, man, camera, TV. Okay, that’s very good”

[20] Zubok, V. (2024). “Ten years of senile men pretending to run the country did more than anything to develop a collective sense that not only the leadership but the Soviet Union itself was in terminal crisis.”

[21] Parks, M. (1988). “Although he ‘ceased to understand what was happening,’ he was kept in power… by an entourage of corrupt and decadent officials who knew they remained safe while he was the Soviet president.”

[22] DeSilver, D. (2025). DeSilver, D. (2025). Age and generation in the 119th Congress: Somewhat younger, with fewer Boomers and more Gen Xers. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/16/age-and-generation-in-the-119th-congress-somewhat-younger-with-fewer-boomers-and-more-gen-xers/ . “The median age of voting members of the House of Representatives is now 57.5 years… The new Senate’s median age is 64.7 years.”

                                    3.0

[26] Stelter, B. (2025) The White House bans the AP indefinitely over the use of ‘Gulf of Mexico’. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/14/media/white-house-ap-ban-air-force-one-oval-office-gulf-of-mexico/index.html   “The Trump White House said Friday that The Associated Press is banned from the Oval Office and Air Force One indefinitely.”

[27] Stelter, B. (2025) “President Donald Trump said last month that the US government would rename the body of water the ‘Gulf of America.’ The change has taken effect at government agencies.”

[28] Stelter, B. (2025) “But this week the White House singled out the AP and barred its reporters from presidential events.”

[29] Stelter, B. (2025) “The AP is so foundational to White House coverage that it helped create the pool in the first place.”

[30] Stelter, B. (2025) “But blocking the AP from what are known as ‘pooled’ events, such as Air Force One flights, interferes with the news outlet’s ability to do its job.”

[31] The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Smith) to the Secretary of State (1948) “Censorship regulations for newspaper correspondents in USSR at present require that two copies of telegraph despatches be filed through censorship window at telegraph office.”

[32] Reporters Without Borders (2025a) USA: Trump’s vision of “free speech” comes at the expense of press freedom. RSF. https://rsf.org/en/usa-trump-s-vision-free-speech-comes-expense-press-freedom “Trump’s explicit threats to weaponize the government against the media, which have recently included threats to revoke broadcast licenses in political retaliation, investigate news organizations that criticize him, and jail journalists who refuse to expose confidential sources.”

[33] Reporters Without Borders (2025a) “Instead, the policy appears designed to amplify disinformation, which benefits a President of the United States who has proven willing to spread disinformation that furthered his political interests on matters small and large.”

[34] Reporters Without Borders (2025a) “Trump’s violent rhetoric can also contribute to real-life violence: assaults on journalists nearly doubled in 2024, when his campaign was at its apex, compared to 2023.”

[35] Reporters Without Borders (2025a) “Trump is fighting battles against the American news media on multiple fronts and has pardoned at least 13 individuals convicted or charged for attacking journalists on January 6, 2021.”

[36] Reporters Without Borders (2025b) From Twitter to X, Elon Musk’s transformation from free speech defender to champion of disinformation. RSF. https://rsf.org/en/twitter-x-elon-musk-s-transformation-free-speech-defender-champion-disinformation  “Elon Musk also dismantled the meager trust and safety safeguards in place when he took over Twitter and proceeded to arbitrarily ban journalists who were critical of him from the site.”

[37] Reporters Without Borders (2025b) “Nothing prevents billionaires from taking over services used by hundreds of millions of people and doing what they want with them.”

[38] Reporters Without Borders (2025b) “According to a study by NewsGuard, so-called ‘verified’ accounts have produced 74% of the platform’s most viral false or unsubstantiated claims about the Israel-Hamas war.”

                  4.1

[39] Kurylo, B. (2016). The role of Chernobyl in the breakdown of the USSR. Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History, 6(1), Article 5. https://doi.org/10.20429/aujh.2016.060105 https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/aujh/vol6/iss1/5 “The disaster happened on 26th of April 1986, when the Unit Four of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded twice in a row, emitting high levels of radioactive particles into the atmosphere. As a result, a huge radioactive cloud appeared over Ukraine and Belarus, the west of the USSR and Europe.” (pp.55-56)

                  4.2

[54] Beyer, J., Trannum, H. C., Bakke, T., Hodson, P. V., & Collier, T. K. (2016). Environmental effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill: A review. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 110(1), 28-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2016.06.027 “On April 20th 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) drilling rig led to a catastrophic oil and gas blowout at the BP operated Macondo Prospect (MC252) at 1522 m depth, in the east Mississippi Canyon area (N 28.73667 W 88.38694) in the northern Gulf of Mexico (NGOM), 66 km off the coast of Louisiana (LA). When the well was capped 87 days later a vast area of NGOM was oil polluted. According to decisions in the US v. BP trial (2015) 3.19 million barrels (roughly 500,000 m³) of oil were released into the ocean during the spill, in addition to several hundred thousand tons of hydrocarbon (HC) gases.” (p. 28)

[55] Dickinson, T. (2010). The spill, the scandal, and the president. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-spill-the-scandal-and-the-president-193093/
“He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations by BP – a firm with the worst safety record of any oil company – with virtually no environmental safeguards, using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years.”

[56] Dickinson, T. (2010) “According to reports by Interior’s inspector general, MMS staffers were both literally and figuratively in bed with the oil industry. When agency staffers weren’t joining industry employees for coke parties or trips to corporate ski chalets, they were having sex with oil-company officials. But it was American taxpayers and the environment that were getting screwed. MMS managers were awarded cash bonuses for pushing through risky offshore leases, auditors were ordered not to investigate shady deals, and safety staffers routinely accepted gifts from the industry, allegedly even allowing oil companies to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil before tracing over them in pen.”

[57] Dickinson, T. (2010) “He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations by BP – a firm with the worst safety record of any oil company – with virtually no environmental safeguards, using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years.”

[58] Beyer et al. (2016) “Much of the oil surfaced and formed oil slicks that at their maximum on June 19 reached a size of > 40,000 km², and that cumulatively covered > 112,000 km² of the ocean surface.” (p. 30)

[59] Beyer et al. (2016) “More than 2100 km of shoreline was affected, including beaches, marshes, wetlands and estuaries that are important habitats and nursery areas for a wide range of species.” (p. 30)

[60] Beyer et al. (2016) “Unprecedented deaths and increased strandings have been interpreted as a possible indicator of the low overall health and condition of local and regional sea mammal populations.” (p. 32)

[61] Beyer et al. (2016) “On average, about 240 sea turtles are found stranded in the NGOM annually, but between May 2010 and November 2012 more than 1700 strandings were recorded.” (p. 33)

[62] Beyer et al. (2016) “Seabirds are susceptible to increased rates of mortality if they contact oil, and are usually the most numerous vertebrates found dead following spills.” (p. 34)

[63] Beyer et al. (2016) “As demonstrated by White et al. (2012b), multiple lines of evidence provide a large degree of certainty that observed deep water coral damage is directly related to the DWH oil spill.” (p. 35)

[64] Center for Biological Diversity. (n.d.). Gulf oil spill dispersants. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/energy/dirty_energy_development/oil_and_gas/gulf_oil_spill/dispersants.html
“Dispersants do not reduce the amount of oil entering the environment, but push the effects of the spill underwater. While dispersants make the oil spill less visible, dispersants and dispersed oil under the ocean surface are hazardous for marine life.”

[65] Center for Biological Diversity. (n.d.)  “Moreover, for the first time ever, the EPA approved using dispersants not only at the surface but deep underwater at the source of the spill. Approximately 1.84 million gallons of dispersant were applied, with more than 1 million gallons on the surface and 771,000 gallons pumped deep into the water column to dilute the oil.”

[66] Center for Biological Diversity. (n.d.) “Dispersants pose significant human health risks as well. One of the dispersants used at the BP spill, Corexit 9527A, contains the toxin 2-Butoxyethanol which ‘may cause injury to red blood cells (hemolysis), kidney or the liver’ with ‘repeated or excessive exposure,’ according to the manufacturer's safety data sheet.”

[67] Center for Biological Diversity. (n.d.) “BP's use of the more toxic, less effective Corexit dispersants is under scrutiny since the company that manufactures these dispersants, Nalco Co., has ties to the oil industry. In the 1990s, Nalco formed a joint venture company with Exxon Chemical Company and has board members and executives that have previously worked for Exxon and BP.”

[68] Center for Biological Diversity. (n.d.). Gulf oil spill dispersants. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/energy/dirty_energy_development/oil_and_gas/gulf_oil_spill/dispersants.html
“In the first 30 days of the spill, the EPA did not intervene in BP's decision to use the more toxic, less effective dispersants in the spill. The EPA stated that it approves a list of dispersants, and oil companies are allowed to choose which dispersants to use. On May 20 the EPA issued a directive requiring BP to identify and use a less toxic and more effective dispersant. BP refused in a clash with the federal government, but slowed the use of dispersants shortly thereafter.”

[69] Dickinson, T. (2010). The spill, the scandal, and the president. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-spill-the-scandal-and-the-president-193093/
“For weeks, the administration had been insisting that BP alone was to blame for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf – and the ongoing failure to stop the massive leak. ‘They have the technical expertise to plug the hole,’ White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had said only six days earlier. ‘It is their responsibility.’ The president, Gibbs added, lacked the authority to play anything more than a supervisory role.”

[70] Dickinson, T. (2010). “He calibrated his response to the Gulf spill based on flawed and misleading estimates from BP – and then deployed his top aides to lowball the flow rate at a laughable 5,000 barrels a day, long after the best science made clear this catastrophe would eclipse the Exxon Valdez.”

[71] Dickinson, T. (2010) “Even worse, the ‘moratorium’ on drilling announced by the president does little to prevent future disasters. The ban halts exploratory drilling at only 33 deepwater operations, shutting down less than one percent of the total wells in the Gulf.”

[72] Dickinson, T. (2010) “Four weeks into the BP disaster, when Salazar was questioned in a Senate hearing about the future of the president’s plan, he was happy to stand up for the industry’s desire to drill at any cost. ‘Isn’t it true,’ asked Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, ‘that as terrible as the tragedy is, that unless we want $14, $16, $18, $20-a-gallon gasoline, that it’s not realistic to think that we would actually stop drilling for oil in the Gulf?’ Unbowed by the catastrophe that was still unfolding on his watch, Salazar heartily agreed, testifying that the president had directed him to ‘move forward’ on offshore drilling.”

[73] Baldwin, A. and Miño, P.P. (2020) ‘Chevron is refusing to pay for the 'Amazon Chernobyl' – we can fight back with citizen action’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/17/chevron-amazon-oil-toxic-waste-dump-ecuador-boycott

[74] Revised Information Sheet From the Embassy in the Soviet Union (1949) Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Volume V. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1949v05/d358#:~:text=Under%20Soviet%20law%20no%20person,as%20well%2C%20including%20diplomatic%20personnel.

“Under Soviet law no person living in the Soviet Union may depart from the country without the permission of the Soviet Government in [Page 618]the form of an exit visa. This regulation applies not only to Soviet citizens but to foreigners as well, including diplomatic personnel. Except in the case of diplomatic personnel and other representatives of foreign governments who receive their visas through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow, applications for such visas must be made in the administrative center nearest the applicant’s place of residence to the appropriate office of the Militsiya, or police, which in the Soviet Union is an agency of the central Government, being a branch of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or M.V.D.

Such visas are issued with comparative readiness to foreigners who recently arrived in the Soviet Union with passports properly visaed by Soviet officials abroad, though even such persons may frequently experience considerable delays. For many years, however, it has been extremely difficult, and for the past two years virtually impossible, for all other persons to obtain exit visas. In the case of those who may be claimed by any possible interpretation of Soviet law to be Soviet citizens, it is safe to say that the present Soviet policy is to issue no exit visas for travel to the United States for any reason, however compelling, except the official business of the Soviet Government. No Soviet citizen whose request for an American visa was not officially sponsored by the Soviet Government has received a Soviet exit visa for travel to the United States since October 1947.”