MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Why Ukraine Matters
By artappraiser on Sat, 02/19/2022 - 5:00am |Just offered as a quality thought-provoker -
URL:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/defending-ukraine/622063/
- 18063 reads
Comments
Lordy! I didn't think of this! What a tangled web Putin weaves for himself -
by artappraiser on Sat, 02/19/2022 - 4:28pm
The way that the writer speaks of "the Ukraine" reminds me of how people once spoke of "the Congo." Also, there's a bit of a build up of Vladimir Putin that reminds me a bit of the build up with Saddam Hussein.
Like Hussein, I get the feeling that the West knows that Russia has an economy that is the size of Italy and as he attempts to maintain the tiny sphere that he has, the West sees the opportunity to finally get him.
Also, if the writer is hoping for an intervention in Ukraine, the America that could do such things is not today's America. There was patriotism and the love for community that that affords when the Wall fell, during the Gulf War and even after 9/11. People knew their neighbors and communicated with each other. These things matter in a conflict.
by Orion on Sat, 02/19/2022 - 5:35pm
Italy doesn't have ultrasonic nukes, cyberhacking cred, massive tanks & troop formations, a Black Sea fleet, a history of slicing off pieces of countries, and a track record of controlling the US executive branch for 4 years. There's a Hussein-like dangerousness to Putin, but Putin as a Security Council member and heading a country covering 13 time zones is a lot more fearsome, even if he seems a bit pettable. Underestimate at great peril
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 02/19/2022 - 8:02pm
Italy does have a history of slicing off countries. Also, multiple countries that have bought missiles from Russia complained that they don't work.
by Orion on Sun, 02/20/2022 - 12:19am
I assume we're talking since WWII, i.e. the modern period, where not noted.
Note sure what faulty Russian armaments has to do with this - pretty sure most of the pieces they use themselves will work, even though there was some mention of crappy poorly prepared campsites in Belarus waiting to deploy.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/20/2022 - 7:13am
by artappraiser on Sun, 02/20/2022 - 1:38am
Russia is adding 170k+ infections a day these last 2 1/2 weeks, 800 dead a day (if the real numbers aren't higher). How the average Alexei feels about war adventurism during a huge pandemic, Idunno. And yes, contagious soldiers grouped close together on deployment may not be the safest against contagion spread, nor would their combat effectiveness be.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/20/2022 - 7:33am
Do soldiers still get sent out like that? I thought we do drone wars now.
by Orion on Sun, 02/20/2022 - 4:26pm
by Orion on Sun, 02/20/2022 - 4:25pm
You never know what you've got til it's gone, as Joni Mitchell once said. I will admit to liking the language of articles like this, where they mention a "western alliance:" https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-west-new-normal-ukraine-crisis-...
Without an external enemy, the West appears to turn on itself. That's a big takeaway of the past decade.
by Orion on Sun, 02/20/2022 - 4:32pm
New intel adds to US fears that Russia is readying for military action
By Jim Sciutto and Natasha Bertrand, CNN Updated 6:42 PM ET, Sun February 20, 2022
Splains a lot for me about Biden messaging. Especially that he also got this from the contrarian wing The sources cautioned that orders can always be withdrawn or that it could be misinformation meant to confuse and mislead the US and allies.
by artappraiser on Sun, 02/20/2022 - 8:28pm
and today's official statement fits that perfectly:
by artappraiser on Sun, 02/20/2022 - 8:41pm
In the "too weird but par for the course" department...
Interesting how far all that Conservative Christian stuff went past simply jumping the shark.
(what's happened to Falwell Jr.? no conservative ever just goes quietly into the night, right Newt?)
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/20/2022 - 8:55pm
He never forgot W's story about Putin showing him mom's crucifix? Or what? W eventually ended up like: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. But Franklin still believing?....can't imagine what personal good this would do him
by artappraiser on Sun, 02/20/2022 - 9:11pm
Russia is one of the only places on earth where a conservative form of Christianity is active. It makes sense Graham would look there. He's not about to tell his flock to pray for Pope Francis.
by Orion on Mon, 02/21/2022 - 3:19pm
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/21/2022 - 2:58am
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 02/21/2022 - 5:03pm
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/21/2022 - 7:12pm
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/21/2022 - 7:16pm
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/21/2022 - 7:30pm
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/21/2022 - 7:54pm
she's for real. specializing in Race and Blackness in USSR & GDR
pinned at the top of her Twitter page:
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 12:49am
I knew a Russian guy once. When Obama was brought up, he said, "In Russia, we didn't know much about Obama. People just called the 'Monkey of America.' Russians are very racist." Curious what her book is like.
by Orion on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 5:32am
Do you understand that this casual racism towards 144 million Russians based on 1 Russian contact is just as bad as whichever Russians judge black people based on their skin or because they met few other blacks.
But here are a few anecdotes based on the 70k or so blacks who live in Russia. Obama campaigned in 2007-8, was in office 8 years, left office 5 years ago, so it's possible a new generation of Russians is more used to blacks in 2022.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53055857
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 7:00am
Kimberly just retweeted this tweet by Zelinksy in Ukrainian:
which Twitter translates as
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 10:32am
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 10:36am
by Orion on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 5:38am
Found via David Frum retweet. A good one to show Lulu if he ever drops by again.
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 8:34am
Or African wisdom to live by:
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 9:31am
Kenya's UN consulate can write a fabulous letter, too . As I implied there, woke tribalists and "anti-racists" should take note! Grievance olympics takes you worse places than nowhere - Wakanda is fantasy, Rwanda was real.
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 10:32am
juicy stuff from guy who was recently NPR's Moscow correspondent, for 5 years
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 10:22am
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 6:51pm
You should maybe include all of the NATO states in there, because it's them, like the Gulf Arab states with Saddam Hussein, who are truly alarmed by what Putin does.
by Orion on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 7:57pm
Bernie's on board:
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 8:45pm
https://youtu.be/TRTakARMODE
by Orion on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 10:05pm
A little shock here - check out the angle Democracy Now is taking:
I prefer this angle:
by Orion on Tue, 02/22/2022 - 10:42pm
Hardly surprised with Amy. Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Syria (+Turkey), Libya, recently Belarus & Kazakhstan - odd these 2 clowns mention none of Putin's incursions, support for separatists, public displays of intimidation (along with radiation poisonings and journalists falling off of balconies)
So NATO should just go away so we pick up where we left off - effing brilliant, guys.
As for a Ukrainian resistance, having a resistant population that speaks Russian in its own turf isn't to be minimized.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 1:04am
There is a long, long history of Ukraine being oppressed by Russia. Think of Josef Stalin and the Holodomor.
Nevertheless, like Iraq, intervention could end up leading to an explosion that few in the West understand enough to control.
by Orion on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 2:03am
well if you are going to bring that up, there's a thousand year history of the areas now called Ukraine being invaded and taken over by hundreds of others besides the Soviet Union, including Mongols, Galacians, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, nation states of Poland and Germany, the Hapsburg Empire etc. etc.
I know because I have researched that for genealogy purposes as one set of my grandparents came from the western general area in the early 20th century, both from a little town known then as Polish, named Wola Wielka (they didn't know each other until in the U.S.)
They both identified as Polish, my grandfather spoke for my grandmother who was illiterate (and never learned much English), though. And there were always these stories and memories from my mother and her 6 siblings which indicated to me in various ways that they were really not both "Polish" as in Polish Polish, that they came from different cultures. Such as my grandmother's family probably being Eastern Rite Catholic and remembering attending an octagonal church, my grandmother's handicrafts looking somewhat Russian-influenced. And my grandfather's being strict Roman Catholic including belonging to a youth group run by a Jesuit, who incidentally taught him that the Jewish religion was a good one, precursor to Catholicism, had a rebbe from the nearby shtetl come and speak to them--so much for stereotype of anti-Semitic Catholicism in Poles, he passed that story down to all of his American children.
And my grandfather also told the story to his children about how the first time he saw electric lights was in a trip to Lviv, which is generally thought of as Ukrainian culture but was basically a crossroads city of Europe for a millenia and again, with numerous invaders.
AND when we finally got the internet, I look that up and find: VOILA, Lviv is only 89 kilometers from Wola Wielka. I am able to access both their records from Ellis Island and VOILA, when the agents asked them their citizenship they both said "Austro-Hungarian Empire" but when they asked "what race or people are you from?", my grandfather said "POLISH" while my grandmother and her cousin said "RUTHENIAN"!!!
And then as time went on with the internet, VOILA, travelers started to post pictures of this neat little old octagonal wooden church they saw in Wola Wielka, Poland, one that looked just like quite a few they had seen in Russia. My grandmother's church memories confirmed-Eastern Rite Catholic, not Roman Catholic.
I concluded that my grandmother's genetics and family culture was probably more "Ukrainian" and my grandfather's more "Polish", even though they were both from the same small town. (Of course this upset some of my aunts who had been taught by my grandfather in the nationalist stories of a proud Poland, so I had to shuddup about that, but now they all moved on to another planet.
)
BACK TO TOPIC: these "Ukrainian" people, whoever they are, whatever the genetic and cultural mix of the makeup have chosen a nation state with borders under a shared creed now and they want to defend it. IT IS BASICALLY THE SAME ARGUMENT AS KENYA'S CONSULATE. KENYA GETS IT, it's about the communal creed and past is past and if you don't like the country we made go to another one. And the majority don't want to share the creed of Putin's Russia nor did they want to share that of the U.S.S.R.
by artappraiser on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 4:13am
Honestly, that far right kids camp looks a lot healthier than how we treat children here in the United States. I'm just saying that some people might be alarmed when they find out that's who sees opportunity in conflict with Russia.
by Orion on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 4:11am
The nice thing about being descended from inbred horse thieves is my family tree looks like a donut.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 6:59am
news summary from new Twitter events page heading lots of news tweets on topic
interesting tweet I ran across from a well-known Afghani female film director who fled to Tehran with the fall of Kabul in 2021
by artappraiser on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 3:10am
You say we're Russian? We say: THINK AGAIN!
I checked out the tweeter/freelance reporter and photographer, they seem legit.
by artappraiser on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 5:58am
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 8:12am
I found this video really fascinating. Candace Owens using "we" the way old leftists used to. It looks like conservatives are now the "Blame America first" crowd. https://youtu.be/mEU9JOfalA0
by Orion on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 8:10pm
Zelensky speaks
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 9:05pm
Praise for Biden's handling from someone who really has been around the block more than a few times on how this works:
by artappraiser on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 9:34pm
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 10:27pm
Ukraine's defense options
https://kyivindependent.com/opinion/illia-ponomarenko-even-if-russia-att...
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 10:50pm
Not going to happen, but a curious twist, and nice to point out Russia's an illegitimate bastard - hi, Vlad!
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 1:25am
Finland's Marxists speak out - long thread or link to full article at the end, but a refreshing statement from an EU source (one right on Russia's border & noted for Cold War neutrality/docile capitulation, which may drive Finland to join NATO now, as they've been cooperating in the background anyway).
Unlike Amy Goodman & Democracy Now, whose only noting of the conflict is to scare us about possible nuclear war* (and the need for the US of course to give up its nukes while hoping maybe Russia would give up its...) this guy points to Putin's love of fossil fuels that support the Russian economy as a major cognitive dissonance with people on the left who are supposedly worrie about global warming but still back the imperialism of 1 of the 3-4 fossil fuel pushers on the planet. (oh yes, Putin stole many of those oil companies for his & fellow oligarchs' private funding)
*yes, they've been playing the nuclear war thing since the Russians first entered Donbas in 2014 & when the Russians stole Crimea - "just give Pootie what he wants or there'll be a nuclear war that'll wipe out all mankind!!!"
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 3:30am
Democracy Now "Expert" - proved wrong in 24 hours.
But Kruscheva served a purpose - she rubberstamped the "we really didn't know he'd invade" canard for them.
Of course that will be "he didn't actually invade Ukraine, only Donbas - ok, Donbas extended a bit.
And he had to wipe out military airstrips all across Ukraine to protect the Luhansk & Donetsk democracy.
How much can Amy piss on her brand now? Or does it even matter?
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 3:47am
Oh wait, that *is* her brand.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 3:52am
Deripaska spewing BS like a good supportive oligarch (will Manafort still act like his sock-puppet?)
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 6:27am
Kruscheva still wrong a week later (as is Amy Goodman)
Khrushchev’s granddaughter ‘embarrassed’ by Putin invasion and says Soviet leader would find attack ‘despicable’ | The Independent
Amy talking to Jan Egeland - "nobody thought that the world would be so senseless that there would be an attack of this size, an invasion" [Narrator: uh, correction, yes, many many did.] Note she doesn't use the P word or R word. In another interview she is much more overt, but the concolusion of that weasly discussion (& she never quite gives her own sense of things *except* to lead it to this obviously fucked up conclusion:
Narrator: no, America and Britain really didn't "press for NATO membership for Ukraine".
"Say good night, Dick." "Good night, you dick."
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/01/2022 - 4:06am
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 7:04am
Watch The Moscow Times:
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 7:19am
what Zelensky said to Russian citizens on TV, translated by the Moscow bureau chief for the NYTimes:
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 7:37am
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 7:23am
holy shit, I presume ordinary rush hour traffic is not that bad:
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 7:47am
dupe deleted
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 8:43am
dupe deleted, see below
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 8:43am
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 8:41am
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/24/2022 - 10:21am