Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged six people for allegedly operating websites that launched millions of powerful distributed denial of service attacks on a wide array of victims on behalf of millions of paying customers.
The sites promoted themselves as booter or stressor services designed to test the bandwidth and performance of customers’ networks. Prosecutors said in court papers that the services were used to direct massive amounts of junk traffic at third-party websites and Internet connections customers wanted to take down or seriously constrain. Victims included educational institutions, government agencies, gaming platforms, and millions of individuals. Besides charging six defendants, prosecutors also seized 48 Internet domains associated with the service…
Employees at the Texas Department of Public Safety in June received a sweeping request from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office: to compile a list of individuals who had changed their gender on their Texas driver’s license and other department records during the past two years.
The House has approved the removal from the Capitol of the bust of former Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, who wrote the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court decision denying African Americans U.S. citizenship and protecting the institution of slavery.
The measure, passed by a voice vote Wednesday afternoon, directs the Joint Committee on Congress on the Library to remove his bust and replace it with a one depicting late Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American to serve on the Supreme Court. The Senate passed the legislation last week, meaning it now heads to President Biden’s desk. The House passed a similar version last year, but the Senate failed to take it up. …
It was just shy of six weeks after the 2020 election and Jason Miller, a top campaign adviser to former President Trump, had a problem.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, who was playing a leading part in the campaign’s efforts to dispute the result, wanted to blast out a press release. It focused on thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories related to Dominion, a voting systems company that would later sue Giuliani for defamation.
In a text to Mark Meadows, Trump’s White House chief of staff, Miller indicated that others in Trumpworld had concerns about Giuliani’s release. Miller wanted Meadows to intervene and help shut it down.
Hi Chief – sorry to be a stalker, but I wanted to make sure you saw the Dominion/Michigan release I emailed to you for review. The Mayor wants to put it out right away, but Eric (rightfully) thinks it doesn’t make any sense. This would be the first time shooting down a Rudy press release request, so I wanted to get your take on this as well. Thank you, Jason
[…] one of more than a dozen texts related to Giuliani and his team in the trove of 2,319 messages that Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. […] a dramatic illustration of how Giuliani’s team was consumed by election conspiracy theories. They also show how Giuliani was both a key player in the former president’s push to reverse his election loss and a divisive figure in Trump’s world.
Meadows’ messages also include multiple instances of the Giuliani team asking for payment for its services.
[…] By Nov. 7, as major media outlets called the election for Joe Biden, Giuliani was headlining the infamous Trump campaign press conference outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a local Philadelphia business, where he declared, without evidence, that the race was plagued by voter fraud.
On Nov. 19, Giuliani held another press conference where he and attorney Sidney Powell outlined a theory of the 2020 election which attributed Biden’s win to an international necro-communist conspiracy helmed by deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. […] As he spoke at the press conference that Vanity Fair dubbed “batshit crazy” and New York Magazine described as simply “insane,” a substance that appeared to be hair dye oozed down Giuliani’s face. Based on a text she sent Meadows while Giuliani’s event was underway, Ginni Thomas, a GOP activist and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was oozing tears of happiness.
“Tears are flowing at what Rudy is doing right now!!!!????????” Ginni Thomas wrote.
Meadows, seemingly unsure if Thomas was expressing joy, confusion, or despair at Giuliani’s behavior, replied: “Glad to help??”
Thomas […] clarified her own position in response: “Whoa!! Heroes!!!!”
[…] Some, like Ginni Thomas, applauded Giuliani’s efforts, while others, like Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), dismissed an appearance that the former New York City mayor made in Phoenix as “the circus” coming to town in one of his many texts to Meadows.
[…] Giuliani and his team needed to get paid. As he flew to Michigan on Dec. 1, 2020, money is what Kerik [Bernie Kerik,Giuliani’s former police commissioner and a convicted felon] wanted from Meadows. He said he was in touch with another member of the Trump legal team, Christina Bobb, and the campaign’s COO, Mike Glassner. [LOL. The now infamous Christina Bobb, the lawyer who signed an affidavit saying Trump had no more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.]
Sir, we are airborne on the way to Michigan from Arizona. We’re going to need a hotel for the team and two vehicles to pick us up. Christina Bobb, Who is our coordinator back in DC does not have a credit card or authorization for these logistics. I reached out to Mike Glassner who Apparently is no longer on payroll. Can you I have some money coordinate with Christina to handle? Thank you sir
[…] Meadows’ messages indicated multiple Trump allies were working with Giuliani or directed his way, including Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward; former Florida attorney general and Trump impeachment lawyer Pam Bondi; Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA); Roy; Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), who was playing a key part in the election challenge in his home state; former Georgia Sen. David Perdue; and Rep-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
[…] Giuliani’s legal campaign had been a resounding failure. The Trump campaign, under his direction, had testified before hearings in states across the country and filed dozens of lawsuits, all with no result: they lost in all the court cases, and no state legislature was swayed.
[…] Ryan [Maria Ryan, Giuliani’s reported girlfriend and associate] sent Meadows a pair of messages indicating that she spoke with Trump, who had “asked for some talking points for tonight.” [talking points for a rally] Her proposed talking points weren’t so much an itemized list as they were a 1,429-word rant arguing that “the Presidential election of 2020 will go down in history as the most fraudulent election…a direct assault on the American people.” Ryan appeared to have pasted the text multiple times over the course of two sprawling messages to Meadows.
The guidance for Trump in Ryan’s epic magnum opus touched on every page in the election conspiracy playbook. She referenced Dominion machines, an infamous report from Michigan that was based on faulty, mixed-up numbers and false claims about modems in voting equipment.
Ryan was particularly interested in a video that showed Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss doing their jobs, but which was distorted by Giuliani and others to be evidence of fraud. Ryan called the clip the “Zaprota film” in the text to Meadows, an apparently butchered reference to the Zapruder film, which captured the Kennedy assassination. […]
“Among some QAnon devotees, Musk has become a figure of prophecy on par with Donald Trump.”
Twitter owner Elon Musk’s boosting of far-right memes and grievances has injected new energy into the jumbled set of conspiracy theories known as QAnon, a fringe movement that Twitter and other social networks once banned as too extreme.
The billionaire has spread bogus theories about the violent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband to his 120 million followers, and he called for the criminal prosecution of infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci. He has thrown around baseless accusations about adults sexualizing children, helping stir up an angry online mob against Yoel Roth, a former Twitter safety executive Musk praised in October for his “high integrity.”
And on Tuesday, he tweeted a message with an emoji that many people interpreted as saying “follow the white rabbit,”[…] many QAnon believers saw the rabbit as a wink to one of their foundational icons, a secret indicator shared in one of QAnon’s earliest online prophesies, known as “drops.”
[…] One QAnon-amplifying account on Telegram with 118,000 followers, known for spreading a bogus claim that Russian fighters were targeting “U.S. biolabs” in Ukraine, said the tweet was only his latest flirtation with QAnon ideology.
“Elon called out Fauci for creating [covid-19], [is] calling out the woke hive mind, is paving the path for 2020 to be nullified and Trump reinstated … and now he’s directly quoting Q,” the account said. “Elon is an Anon,” the account added, using the term QAnon disciples call themselves.
Logan Strain, a conspiracy theory researcher who uses the name Travis View on the podcast “QAnon Anonymous,” said Musk’s “conspiracist dog whistles” have galvanized a group that was fractured after 2020, when major social networks including Twitter started banning QAnon accounts and Trump lost the White House.
“He’s responding to and validating a rogues’ gallery of right-wing conspiracists … [and] going through a checklist of far-right grievances in a way that has certainly energized them,” Strain said. For QAnon believers, “what they view as a major battlefield in the information war just opened up again.” […]
in QAnon circles, Musk’s ambiguity and plausible deniability have been seen as a strategic way for him to subtly push their dogma into the mainstream. A QAnon-boosting account with 165,000 followers on Truth Social, Trump’s social network, wrote Monday: “At this rate, Elon is on pace to start posting Q drops to millions of normies and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop him.” […]
[Musk] has often framed current events as titanic spectacles of apocalyptic grandeur. Musk on Monday agreed that the world is facing a “mass awakening event or total collapse of society,” and he tweeted that buying Twitter is a way to combat the “woke mind virus,” which must be “defeated or nothing else matters.” […]
On Twitter, Musk is now picking up an average of 200,000 followers every day.
More at the link, including some opinions that Musk is not a good, or not a perfect fit for QAnon.
another option could be to eliminate third-party candidate ballot access altogether.
How on earth could such a blatantly undemocratic measure even be proposed? I’ve commented here before on how the two main parties in the USA have insinuated themselves into the de facto constitution, but I’d never have thought something like this could be considered!
Wait until they realize that they could save ALL the money by just dropping elections altogether.
KGsays
LykeX@8,
That doesn’t seem to be how fascism2.0 operates. In Poland, Hungary, Turkey, even Russia, regular elections are held, but the regime is guaranteed victory by anything from voter suppression of those likely to oppose it, through media dominance, “legal” harrassment of opposition parties and leaders, and fake opposition parties, through to outright electoral fraud.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
A Russian airbase in Kursk was struck on Wednesday night, a senior Ukrainian official has said. Anton Gerashchenko, a senior presidential adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, posted a series of updates on Telegram, saying an “unknown drone” [I love the sound of that] struck the military facility.
Russian shelling has killed two people on Thursday in the centre of the recently liberated city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, a senior Ukrainian official has said. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, said on the Telegram messaging app that the two were killed about 100 metres from the regional administration building, which was hit in shelling on Wednesday.
…
European Union member states failed to agree on a ninth package of Russia sanctions in talks late on Wednesday, diplomats said as EU leaders gathered in Brussels on Thursday for their last summit of the year. Countries moved closer to a deal in Wednesday’s negotiations but Poland and some other countries still have objections, one EU diplomat told Reuters, adding a new draft was expected to be circulated on Thursday evening.
Russia’s recent deployment of additional units of mobilised reservists to Belarus as well as exercising Belarusian troops will be unlikely to constitute a force capable of conducting a successful new assault into northern Ukraine, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. [As always, LOL.] On 13 December, Belarus carried out a “snap combat readiness inspection of its forces” the ministry notes in its latest intelligence report.
Zelenskiy has confirmed another 64 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been returned from Russian captivity. Announcing the news in his latest Wednesday evening national address, he said: “Today, 64 Ukrainians were returned from Russian captivity … Four officers and 60 privates and sergeants. Among them are seriously wounded.”
…
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, has said that further strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure could lead to a serious deterioration of the humanitarian situation and spark further displacement. In a speech to the human rights council following a trip to Ukraine, Turk said Russian strikes were exposing millions of people to “extreme hardship”….
Kherson city without electricity after Russian shelling, says regional chief
Kherson city is without electricity, according to the head of the regional military administration for the region.
Yaroslav Yanushevich said that because of heavy shelling, which killed two people on Thursday, the city does not have any working electricity at the moment.
Posting on his Telegram account, he said: “At the first opportunity, the power industry will begin to restore power grids.”
On this week’s episode of the Fever Dreams podcast, Hannah Gais and Michael Edison Hayden from the Southern Poverty Law Center recalled a cast of characters to host Will Sommer and guest co-host, The Daily Beast’s Sam Brodey. Then, in the podcast’s “Fresh Hell” segment, the hosts dip into American conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro’s growing online movie streaming empire and his burgeoning efforts to create a right-wing Hollywood in Nashville by acquiring the exclusive film and television rights to the books Atlas Shrugged and Pendragon Cycle, along with a forthcoming children’s cartoon about a family of homeschooled chinchillas.
Dec 15 (Reuters) – Tesla (TLSA.O) boss Elon Musk disclosed another $3.6 billion in stock sales on Wednesday, taking his total near $4- billion this year and frustrating investors as the company’s shares wallow at two-year lows.
…Anti-abortion groups have fought hard against attempts to rein them in, arguing that the first amendment shields them from increased scrutiny under consumer protection laws. In 2018, the US supreme court agreed, throwing out a California law that required pregnancy centers to disclose if they weren’t a licensed medical provider and ruling that the law violated their right of free speech.
The result is what Teneille Brown, a law professor and bioethicist at the University of Utah, calls “a regulatory dead zone” that allows pregnancy centers “to dodge all of the legal safeguards that attach to actual health care without being held to even basic consumer protection standards”.
The consequences extend far beyond the reproductive health front, Brown added. “It muddles medical trust,” she said. “They trade on the goodwill of legitimate medicine to defraud patients.”
The Women’s Help center case is an egregious, and unusually well-documented, example of just how little authorities are doing to hold pregnancy centers accountable, even when the evidence – and the risks to women – are significant….
Excellent reporting. I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past that Wendy Brown has an insightful section on this in In the Ruins of Neoliberalism.
A damning official examination into how police forces tackle rape has exposed persistent failings in the criminal justice system, including a failure to track repeat suspects, “explicit victim-blaming” and botched investigations.
The long-awaited independent report into the first year of Operation Soteria Bluestone – launched by the government after a catastrophic fall in rape prosecutions – also paints a picture of a over-worked, traumatised and inexperienced police workforce in England and Wales, which is struggling to cope with an increase in rape reports after years of austerity….
Elon Musk has sold a further $3.6bn worth of shares in Tesla…
The disposal, revealed in a regulatory filing, takes the total amount raised by Musk from sales of his stock in the electric carmaker this year to more than $20bn….
A Bemidji man says his cognitively impaired father was taken advantage of by Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL), a leading anti-abortion group run by the husband of U.S. Rep. Michelle Fischbach, R-Minn.
John Charais of Forest Lake made a gift of almost $850,000 in February to MCCL and its affiliated education fund, completely draining a family trust fund. The next day, he shot and killed himself at age 81.
His son, Nick Charais, stopped payment on the donation checks and says MCCL knew his father wasn’t of sound mind when it took the donation. Now, the anti-abortion group is suing Nick Charais in Beltrami County District Court to get the money…
Zelenskiy says next six months will be ‘decisive’ in war
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that the next six months of the conflict with Russia will be “decisive” in the ongoing war against Russia.
In an online address to the European Council on Thursday, Zelenskiy said: “The next six months will be decisive in many respects in the confrontation that Russia started with their aggression.
“Aggression against Ukraine and against each of you, because Russia’s final target is much farther than our border and Ukrainian sovereignty. The next six months will demand from us even greater efforts than were undertaken over the past period.”
He said that Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure must be stopped and called for more weapons. “We need more modern weapons, a larger volume of supplies,” he said, in comments reported by the Ukrainian Ukrinform news website.
As the war goes into its tenth month, he referred to the liberation of Kherson in November. “This liberation showed the world that our common defense is not something accidental, but our inalienable strength that can’t be stopped.”
whheydtsays
Re: KG @ #7…
Perhaps Raffensperger should be reminded that the Republicans started out as a “third party”.
“In terms of diminishing a military rival, aid to Ukraine might be the most efficient use of American taxpayer dollars ever. The war in Iraq, by comparison, cost nearly $2 trillion from 2003 through 2019.”
We are getting a screaming bargain by supporting Ukraine defending against the Russian genocide. It is 5% of the defense budget, $38 billion for next year.
We spent 4 trillion USD in Afghanistan and Iraq to accomplish nothing.
The Ukrainians are spending far more though. The blood and lives of their children, none of which are replaceable in the next budget cycle.
Billions for Ukraine is the deal of the century
Rick Newman ·Senior Columnist
Wed, December 14, 2022 at 11:55 AM·5 min read
Budget hawks in Congress are worried about granting President Biden’s request for an additional $38 billion in aid for Ukraine to help defeat the invading Russians.
They’re right. Thirty-eight billion isn’t enough. Make it $50 billion. Or even $100 billion. The more, the better, until the job is done.
The Republicans who will take over the House of Representatives next year have warned there will be no “blank check” for Ukraine once they’re able to block funding. Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, in line to be next Speaker of the House, says that with a $31 trillion national debt, the United States has to be more careful about “wasteful spending.” Democrats who still control Congress may be able to approve that aid by the end of the year, but if not, this could become one of the early spending battles in 2023.
McCarthy needs a better budget adviser, because the United States is getting a phenomenal return on its investment in Ukraine. So far, the United States has committed $40 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine. The additional $38 billion is meant to last much of next year. Add it up, and two years’ worth of aid to Ukraine equals about 10% of the Pentagon’s annual budget, or 5% of its funding for 2022 and 2023.
“When viewed form a bang-per-buck perspective, U.S. and Western support for Ukraine is an incredibly cost-effective investment,” analyst Timothy Ash wrote recently for the Center for European Policy Analysis. “A Russia continually mired in a war it cannot win is a huge strategic win for the U.S.”
The Pentagon specifically lists Russia and China as the two most important “pacing challenges” the United States has to keep up with in terms of military modernization. Russia is the most belligerent large country in the world and has the fourth-largest defense budget. It’s not the superpower the Soviet Union was, but Russia still threatens American interests in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. It remains an ominous presence on the Pentagon’s radar screen.
If you asked strategic planners what would be a fair price to pay for the rapid dismantlement of Russia’s military capability, the number would probably be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Maybe even more than $1 trillion, given that Russia’s losses in Ukraine will drastically weaken its military for decades. Yet Ukraine is doing the job for a fraction of that, with some crowd-sourcing help from allies in Europe and elsewhere.
Russia has lost one-third to one-half of its operational tank fleet in Ukraine. What’s left seems to be the oldest and most outdated armor in Russia’s arsenal. The number of dead and wounded Russian soldiers could number 200,000, roughly the size of the entire force that invaded last February. Russia is mobilizing hundreds of thousands of replacement troops, but those are barely trained amateurs that will scarcely be able to form cohesive fighting units. There’s similar degradation in many other parts of the Russian army, including units once designated the tip of the spear in a possible war with the US-led NATO military alliance. Tough sanctions on the Russian economy will make rebuilding difficult no matter what the outcome of the war.
In terms of diminishing a military rival, aid to Ukraine might be the most efficient use of American taxpayer dollars ever. The war in Iraq, by comparison, cost nearly $2 trillion from 2003 through 2019. Some of that included spending on troops, including $200 billion worth of ongoing care for veterans after they served in Iraq.
U.S. involvement in Afghanistan from 2001 through 2021 was another $2 trillion venture. That includes about $233 billion in ongoing care for veterans.
Is the United States getting a better outcome in Ukraine than it did in Iraq or Afghanistan? Quite likely. Afghanistan is now run by the medieval Taliban, which U.S. and allied forces fought to keep from power for more than a decade. Iraq is somewhat democratic, thanks to the U.S. overthrow of tyrant Saddam Hussein. Yet corruption and political violence are endemic, and of course America’s casus belli—Saddam’s possession of nukes and other mass-death weapons—turned out to be a con.
Since there are no American troops in Ukraine, there’s no bill for veterans’ care. There’s also no question of whether Americans should fight and die for the cause, since Ukrainians are willing to do all the fighting needed to defend their homeland. Given that more than 7,000 American servicemen and women died in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans ought to pay special attention when another country is willing to do the fighting.
Ukraine doesn’t even need to win for the United States and its NATO allies to benefit from the decimation of Russia’s military. Russia’s foes benefit for as long as Russian President Vladimir Putin wastes troops, materiel and money on a disastrous war. Ukrainian victory should be the paramount goal of Ukraine’s allies, for moral, practical and political reasons. But the financial payback on aid accrues whether Ukraine wins or not.
In a rational world, the long-term decline of Russia as a military power might prompt some future reassessment of U.S. defense spending. Alas, that probably won’t happen. There’s always China, and if Russia dwindles so much that it ceases to be a serious conventional threat, America’s military-industrial complex will find other ways to persuade appropriators to keep spending. Russia’s vast nuclear forces, meanwhile, are likely to remain an existential threat warranting the best defenses money can buy.
Still, wars tend to become quagmires that devour national wealth, a perennial lesson the United States relearned this century in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that Putin is feeding resources into the furnace, the United States should help keep the fire as hot as possible.
whheydtsays
Re: raven @ #19…
Given the reports that T-55 Russian tanks (a 1950s design) have been seen in Ukraine, the Russian army may not be scraping the bottom of the barrel, but have dug into the ground under it. One might well wonder when the first T34 siting will take place…
In a semi-serious vein… I wonder if the table top war gamers are revising their combat tables for the post-Soviet Russian army.
ravensays
Given the reports that T-55 Russian tanks (a 1950s design) have been seen in Ukraine, the Russian army may not be scraping the bottom of the barrel,…
Yeah, I’ve noticed that too.
It seems like the Russians never throw anything away and just store it.
The Russians are also being very careful with their advanced air craft, the SU series of jets and their Tupolev heavy bombers.
They don’t even have that many of those.
I’m wondering if they can even easily replace their high end weapons.
The Russian industrial base has been hollowing out for decades. They are to some extent still running off of the old USSR and it is starting to show.
One of their foolish decisions was to stop funding education for their children. Their school systems are way underfunded with shortages of equipment and buildings in need of repair.
You can’t run a Hi Tech society with an uneducated population.
People around the world have been flabbergasted to learn that a man who created a business based on imaginary money might be a fraud.
In interviews spanning the globe, respondents expressed shock and disbelief that a firm offering customers wealth by turning their actual money into pretend money could be anything but legitimate.
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around this,” Johan, who is based in Sweden, said. “How could a business built on a foundation of nonexistent dollars somehow collapse?”
“I’m completely gobsmacked by the news,” Caitlyn, who lives in London, said. “Of all of the firms offering big returns on made-up money, this one seemed the most solid.”
Roger, who lives in Michigan, expressed concern about the broader implications of a company swimming in fictitious billions suddenly going bankrupt. “I just hope that one bad apple doesn’t wreck the entire fake-money industry,” he said.
Sometimes logistics can go seriously wrong, as they did in the Fourth Crusade at the beginning of the 13th century. After making a horrible miscalculation about where ships and supplies would be needed, the crusading army found itself deeply in debt to the doge of Venice—a debt they first attempted to pay by using the supposedly Christian army to attack a Christian city for the doge. Then, still short on supplies and deeply in the hole, still far from the target of Jerusalem, and growing desperate, the crusaders became involved in the question of Byzantine succession. They placed their weight behind the son of an ousted emperor, got him temporarily on the throne (well, half the throne), only to see him booted out again before he could open up Byzantium’s diminishing coffers to pay them off. That resulted in the siege and sack of the largest Christian city in Europe by the army that supposedly represented the will of the Pope. Fun times. Meanwhile, the Muslim rulers who controlled everything from Jerusalem, to Arabia, to North Africa, to Iberia were able to sit back, laugh, and grow stronger.
Against this background of chaos, with a general air of failure sinking in across the continent, a name began to be whispered that had first appeared in letters from almost a century earlier. The name of the mysterious Prester John.
Prester John was said to be the priest-king of a huge Christian empire somewhere to the east. Perhaps he was in India. Perhaps China. No one was quite sure. They were only sure that he was out there, he was powerful, and that even if things seemed to be at their darkest, with the Holy Lands forever in the unassailable grip of non-Christian forces … aid was coming. Things would be different when Prester John arrived to help them. Then those heathens would get what was coming to them, you betcha.
I’m bringing up this story this morning because of an interview that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and members of his military staff did with The Economist this week. That interview is overall a fascinating piece, with some good insights into Zelenskyy and into the head of the Ukrainian military, General Valery Zaluzhny. The interview is also remarkably open when it comes to what’s happening in Ukraine right now, with a “triumphant autumn” that has come to a near halt against both the mud and Russian reinforcements of early winter. Russian attacks on infrastructure, in particular, seem to weigh heavily on everyone, even more so than it might seem from reports on Russian bombings.
“It seems to me we are on the edge,” said Zaluzhny. If Russia continues to wage war against the civilian infrastructure, “That is when soldiers’ wives and children start freezing. What kind of mood will the fighters be in? Without water, light and heat, can we talk about preparing reserves to keep fighting?”
Sure. It’s possible this is just another effort to nudge along slow-moving efforts to bring more air defenses to Ukraine. On the other hand, Ukraine clearly needs more air defenses, and that need is urgent. How it can be addressed is a couple of notches down in importance from when, and when needs to be Real Soon Now. Preferably two weeks ago.
The interview then moves into an extended discussion of the fighting at Bakhmut, which includes this paragraph that seems as if it could have been lifted from Daily Kos on any given day:
Bakhmut is not an especially strategic location. Although it lies on the road to Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, two biggish cities, Ukraine has several more defensive lines to fall back on in that direction. What is more, Russia lacks the manpower to exploit a breakthrough.
Ukraine’s military leadership seems to feel that the point of Bakhmut is sort of what Ukraine did at Severodonetsk in reverse—the relentless attack forces Ukraine to relentlessly defend, pinning down a large and increasing amount of their military reserves and keeping those Ukrainian forces from being used elsewhere.
But wait. If Bakhmut isn’t strategic, why doesn’t Ukraine just step back from that location and let Russia have it while they direct their efforts to somewhere they can make progress? Because there’s a concern that if they just let Russia waltz past (or troika past), then they might soon be at a location that actually is strategic, with Ukrainian forces struggling to hold Russia back from important supply lines and cities that have remained more or less intact.
All of that makes Bakhmut kind of semi-strategic. However, all of this may be related to what happened in the last two weeks as Ukraine announced a “new strategy” at Bakhmut and a reorganization that cycled some of their most experienced forces out of the area. It’s quite possible that Ukraine has moved from a policy of “hold Russia out of Bakhmut at all costs and make them pay for every step in bodies” to “slow Russian progress in the Bakhmut area, but do it with a reduced force so we can get on with business elsewhere.”
If Ukraine recognizes that Bakhmut is actually a delaying action on the part of Russia, meant to keep Ukrainian forces pinned down while Russia gets its act together, then it makes one helluva lot of sense that Ukraine should find a way to stop playing into Russia’s plans. What we’re seeing as “Russia finally making progress in Bakhmut” may simply be “Ukraine finally disengaging from Russia’s plans at Bakhmut.”
And finally, it’s the idea of Russia getting its act together that finally brings me back to what triggered all that Prester John stuff back at the beginning of this article. Only this time, it’s not that the forces in Europe are expecting an army from the east to come and save them. This time … I’ll let the general in charge of the Ukrainian military tell it.
“Russian mobilisation has worked,” said Zaluzhny. “A tsar tells them to go to war, and they go to war. “Just as in [the second world war]…somewhere beyond the Urals they are preparing new resources. They are 100% being prepared.” [map at the link: “You could put another Ukraine inside the Russian border, and still not reach the Ural Mountains. Russia is truly vast.”]
Zaluzhny believes that, somewhere in the east, at an unspecified location beyond the Ural Mountains, Russia is actually training a large army — an army that could strike Ukraine as soon as January. The head of Ukraine’s ground forces, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky, agrees. Syrsky also points out that just by putting more untrained bodies on the line, Russia has succeeded in slowing or halting Ukrainian progress in areas where they had been moving through more thinned out Russian forces.
“The enemy shouldn’t be discounted, “ said Syrsky. “They are not weak… and they have very great potential in terms of manpower.”
Zaluzhny and Syrsky express a general fear that the moment we’re experiencing right now—the one in which Russia is fighting to advance in a small space at Bakhmut, while Ukraine determines what happens over the rest of the battlefield—is fleeting. Somewhere out there, the anti-Prester John is waiting, at the head of a huge and at least somewhat better-trained and supplied Russian army, ready to enact another run for the whole of Donbas or even Kyiv.
Does this force exist? I don’t know. Is this simply a ploy for more assistance? I don’t think so.
For Zelenskyy, Zaluzhny, and Syrsky, this sets up a tremendous dilemma. They could push everything to the front now, expend their reserves and materiel resources on an all-in attempt to break Russia right now. But if they do so, they’ll have nothing left to absorb that second hammer blow. If it comes.
The historical Prester John never showed. The vast Russian army beyond the Urals may be no more real than the lost Christian kingdom.
On the other hand, the renewed interest in the mythical king was fueled in part by travelers’ tales of a rising power in the East. That power turned out to be the nascent Mongol Empire that really would shake up the world. Staying prepared for the worst is not necessarily a bad thing.
For those of us following along each day on paper or pixels, the temptation to shout “All in!” and grab one of those pool-cue things from the movies and slide all the tiny men and wooden tanks toward the front lines on the big map table is considerable. Those whose actual job is defending the cities of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people have other thoughts on their minds.
Ukrainian Pravda has an extended article today providing new details on how the Russian warship Moskva became the Russian submarine Mosvka.
Almost no one knows about it, but the first combat use of the Neptunes took place not in April but in the first days of the full-scale invasion by Russia. It was then that three Russian landing ships left the ports in Crimea and headed towards the Ukrainian coast in Mykolaiv Oblast. The landing of Russian troops in this area gave them a springboard to attack both Mykolaiv and Odesa. The first three Neptune missiles were launched to destroy these ships.
Because those first missiles had to actually travel over the city of Odesa, they were pushed up to a higher elevation. That allowed Russian radar to spot them and shoot them down. The first use of Neptunes was a failure. Thankfully, Ukraine tried again.
Russia is vast. It’s not untouchable. [Tweet and video at the link in comment 24. “Footage of a really powerful explosion in the oil refinery of Angarsk in Irkutsk (Russia).”] This is in Irkutsk, just north of Mongolia. So far from Ukraine that it’s hard to get both on the same side of the globe. However, this distant location is not untouched by Vladimir Putin’s folly.
In case you think the gloomy tone of that Economist article means that the dancing soldiers have stopped … think again. [Tweet and video at the link in comment 24. Scroll down.]
Here’s hoping that NATO can bring more of this holiday cheer to Ukraine in a form that Russia finds less than tuneful. [Tweet and video at the link. “Shchedryk” (Carol of the Bells) performed by sergeants and officers of @NATO countries in a snow-covered forest in Latvia. Thank you! It’s very touching.]
Reports of fighting at Stara Krasnyanka, directly south of Kreminna, along with continued reports of advances from Dibrova to the west and more fighting near Zhytlivka to the north. Meanwhile, there are reports from Russian sources of a fight taking place northeast of Kupyansk as Ukraine attempts to clear that remaining wedge of control in the northeast corner of Kharkiv oblast.
JAMEY KEATEN
Thu, December 15, 2022 at 8:13 AM·
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s Foreign Ministry warned Thursday that if the United States confirms reports that it plans to deliver sophisticated air defense missiles to Ukraine, it would be “another provocative move by the U.S.” that could prompt a response from Moscow.
Patriot missiles are a defensive weapon. There is no way they can be used against Russia unless Russia launches attacks.
(Reuters) -Rudy Giuliani violated at least one attorney ethics rule in his work on a failed lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results on behalf of then-U.S. President Donald Trump and should be disciplined, a District of Columbia attorney ethics committee said Thursday.
The committee of the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility will recommend a specific penalty later for Giuliani, who faces accusations that he breached ethics rules against bringing frivolous lawsuits and harming the administration of justice.
The panel could recommend disbarring him, suspending his D.C. law license or formally censuring him…
[…] Thursday morning, with bated breath, like a scant few Americans, I waited. Secretly hoping that the announcement would be that he was dropping out of the 2024 race. Then, drumroll, please … Trump announced he’s selling collectible NFT trading cards with a photo of himself dressed in a superhero, cowboy, football coach, or astronaut costume for a whopping $99 each. You have to see this announcement to believe it! [Tweet and video at the link]
According to his post today on Truth Social, using a website called CollectTrumpCards.com, the 45th president is hawking a “Digital Trading Card collection.”
The description says that the cards “feature amazing ART of my Life & Career!” which can be collected like a “baseball card” but “much more exciting.” And if you’re wondering what to buy your least favorite friend or family member, the post suggests the cards “Would make a great Christmas gift.”
According to a video on the website, each card comes with a chance to win a sweepstake, where fans can win a dinner or Zoom calls with Trump, or a golf outing with friends, to name a few.
Of course, social media exploded in laughter at Trump’s latest grift. [Many examples available at the link] […]
Apparently, even Russian state TV propagandists can barely contain themselves seeing Trump dressed up in a Superman-like costume. [video at the link, shows Russian propagandists laughing.] Link
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 27
And how many years in prison did Osama get? Oh! That’s right. He’s wasn’t white enough to get captured alive and given a hand-slap sentence.
Trump’s major announcement is childish. Actual adults will see this as bizarre & troubling. A FPOTUS cranking this crap out? I can only imagine that our enemies are excited about Trump possibly being back in office.
But people will buy these digital trading cards. It’s nuts.
President Joe Biden:
I had some MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS the last couple of weeks, too…
✔️ Inflation’s easing
✔️ I just signed the Respect for Marriage Act
✔️ We brought Brittney Griner home
✔️ Gas prices are lower than a year ago
✔️ 10,000 new high-paying jobs in Arizona
Yesterday, Donald Trump became the butt of thousands of new jokes when he tweeted TRUTHED that today he would be making a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT, accompanied by the saddest video of him playing dress-up as Superman, with his head on the body of a decades-younger person with chest muscles. Pretty much since then, #MajorAnnouncement has been trending, and it’s just all people making fun of Trump and speculating about what kind of stupid announcement he might be about to make.
Well, it’s stupider than you could possibly imagine. He’s making trading cards — DIGITAL ones! You know, NFTs, the things only the stupidest people in the world AKA his fans buy! — of him with the fake good body and the superhero costume with the comically enlarged codpiece, and they are $99. If you go to the special website, you can see that there are sweepstakes prizes available and that, again, he’s just grifting the dumb hogs who love him.
Should we show it to you? It will hurt your eyeballs and your lunch! Okay, we’re showing it to you, go away now if you don’t want to see it, ready?
…
…
Here goes. [image at the link]
We’re sorry.
Soooooo back to the regularly scheduled reason for this post, which is that Trump’s favorite/least favorite reporter Maggie Haberman and an entire panel sat on CNN this morning and just mocked the living shit out of what a loser he is right now. This has gotta sting, because he hate/loves Maggie Haberman SO MUCH.
Also because he is an unpopular, unloved, unlovable loser. [video at the link]
Kaitlan Collins kicked off the hurtfulness when she referred to funny pollsthat show Ron DeSantis being far more popular among Republican voters than Trump. She referred to “screams from Mar-a-Lago.”
KAITLAN COLLINS: I feel like you can kind of hear the screams from Mar-a-Lago from here over those numbers when it comes to DeSantis.
And then Maggie Haberman cruelly said the CNN poll they were talking about looks like the other polls they’ve seen, and “this is clearly a trend,” Trump being a loser.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: I don’t think any of this is making Donald Trump happy. And this is you know, the CNN poll looks like what we’ve seen with other polls. This is clearly a trend. Donald Trump’s calling card is strength and being seen as strong within his party. And when that starts to erode, it’s very hard for him to keep other people at bay. Now, he’s the only person who’s running right now.
And then she made fun of his lazyass do-nothing campaign that’s doing nothing besides waddling to dinner with Nazis.
HABERMAN: You wouldn’t know that, Kaitlan, because he’s done no events. I don’t, I can’t really remember the last time I saw somebody announce for president and do not literally nothing. I’m told it’s going to change next month, but we’ll see what happens. But this is obviously not where Trump wanted to be.
Loser!
COLLINS: He put out a survey the other day, I should note, you know, I get all the reporters who cover Trump, like the blast emails. He put out a survey asking people where he should hold his first rally since announcing.
HABERMAN: Missed that one. OK.
Loser!
COLLINS: So clearly he hasn’t picked a location yet, but it’s been a month now to the day, I think.
HABERMAN: The rallies are expensive. I don’t know how much money he’s raising. That’s something I think that everybody needs to be keeping an eye on. The rallies cost a lot of money. If you start seeing Donald Trump doing events that are not a rally that is telling about the state of his campaign in a different way. So we’ll see what happens.
Poor loser!
Guess this is why he’s selling internet-only Pokémon cards of himself AKA some shit Barron probably made on the free version of Canva.
DON LEMON: But the announcement, I mean, it was lackluster.The energy was low. As you said, he’s not really doing anything. He keeps teasing stuff. But I mean, it’s honestly, I feel like kind of who cares? Out of sight, out of mind. It’s a little…
Low energy loser!
HABERMAN: There was a column this week by Josh Green at Bloomberg that I thought was dead on, which was that Elon Musk, of all people, is actually really hurting Donald Trump’s campaign because he’s made himself into the main character on Twitter, both as the villain and as the MAGA, you know, aligner. And if you have somebody doing Trumpian things on Twitter, why do you need Trump?
Amazing. Maggie Haberman said Donald Trump is unnecessary because Elon Musk took his place as the biggest MAGA assclown on Twitter, in other words that he’s been rendered completely and totally irrelevant. More screams will come from Mar-a-Lago, we reckon.
Over at Truth Social, aside from announcing his new internet Pokémon cards, Trump is posting laughable McLaughlin polls — pacifiers, really, something for the baby to suck on and make it feel better — that purport to show he IS TOO the most popular and most loved Republican candidate in US American history.
It is almost as sad as the superhero costume. Almost.
EXCLUSIVE: After drawing interest from several high-profile buyers, Rachel Maddow is partnering with one of the biggest players in town on a feature adaptation of her podcast Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra. Sources tell Deadline that Amblin Entertainment has optioned film rights to the podcast from MSNBC and Maddow’s production company Surprise Inside. Steven Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger would produce the film for Amblin, along with Maddow and Mike Yarvitz on behalf of Surprise Inside.
As of right now Spielberg will just produce the film, with the director job open, but insiders add that his longtime collaborator Tony Kushner, (who will also executive produce) and Danny Strong are in talks to co-write.
Ultra, a production of MSNBC and NBC News, is an eight-episode podcast series that examines the history of a seditious plot to undermine U.S. democracy 80 years ago, and the wild fight in and out of the courtroom to try to stop it….
US households are once again able to order free at-home Covid-19 tests, as the government attempts to limit the spread of the virus this winter.
The White House said up to four rapid tests could be ordered from the government website CovidTests.gov.
It announced that the test programme, which was paused in September, would be restarted on Thursday with deliveries beginning the week of 19 December…
tomhsays
@ #30
12 years in prison is a hand-slap? For a failed, wacko kidnap plot that never went anywhere, while two others face life in prison at their sentencing later this month. Sounds like more than a hand-slap.
Poland’s police chief, Jarosław Szymczyk, has been taken to hospital with minor injuries after a gift he received from a senior Ukrainian official exploded, the interior ministry said on Thursday.
“Yesterday at 7.50am there was an explosion in a room next to the office of the police chief,” a statement said. “One of the presents the police chief received during his working visit to Ukraine on December 11 and 12 exploded.”
Szymczyk had met the heads of Ukraine’s police and state emergency services during the visit and the present was a gift from one of the heads of Ukraine’s services, the ministry said.
It described his injuries as minor and said he remained in hospital under observation.
A civilian employee at the national police headquarters also suffered minor injuries that did not require hospital treatment.
“The Polish side has asked the Ukrainian side to provide an explanation,” the ministry said.
From the Guardian nurses’ strike liveblog (link @ #13):
Almost two thirds of the public support the decision of nurses to go on strike over pay, a poll has found.
The survey, conducted today by YouGov, found that 64% of people supported the action, while 28% were opposed.
Among Labour voters, overall support was 84%, while among Conservatives the figure was 48%.
Numerous Labour MPs have joined nurses on picket lines in support of today’s strike.
Party leader Sir Keir Starmer has faced criticism from some over his muted backing of industrial action in various sectors in recent months.
Sir Keir has expressed sympathy with nurses and blamed the government for failing to avert the strikes through negotiations, but has kept in place a ban on members of his front bench appearing on picket lines.
Back bencher Ian Byrne tweeted a number of photos of himself alongside nurses with Richard Burgon, Apsana Begum, and Beth Winter.
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, Zarah Sultana, and Bell Ribeiro-Addy also tweeted photos of themselves on picket lines.
The first day of the nursing strike will mark a “turning point” in the push for better pay for nurses, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing has said.
In a statement, Pat Cullen said: “Today will be a turning point in the campaign for fair nursing pay. At the end of it, ministers find themselves under fresh pressure from unexpected places – their own MPs, NHS leaders and a former chair of the pay review body.”
Speaking this morning on the Today programme, Jerry Cope, who chaired the NHS pay review body from 2011 to 2017, suggested ministers should ask the group to bring forward its next set of pay recommendations to account for the cost of living crisis.
Cullen continued: “Each of these groups, for different reasons, wants the Government to stop hiding behind its current fig leaf.
“On a bitterly cold day, the public warmth towards nursing staff was immense. For my members, this has been about professional pride, not personal hardship – speaking up for nursing, patients and the future of the NHS.”
How a Stanford lepidopterist convinced the world to fear the breeding habits of the poor. Again.
Reginald Selkirksays
@36: It is difficult to speculate when the article is so vague. I am going to guess that the ‘gift’ was unexploded ordinance. And a reminder to all: if you are going to use something like an artillery shell or rocket as a desktop souvenir, it should be disarmed first and have all the explodey bits removed.
It is difficult to square expectations (implied in this interview [with Gen. Zaluzhny – see #24 above]) that Russia could restore offensive potential on a large scale, with Western estimates on dwindling stockpiles of artillery ammo & PGMs. These assumptions setup some rather divergent near term scenarios.
[Julia Ioffe: Which do you think is the one that most overlaps with reality?]
The one where constraints make it unlikely that Russian mil can dramatically restore offensive potential in the near term, beyond localized offensives like Bakhmut. But, it can mount a stubborn defense, with echeloned lines, reserves, ability to rotate forces, etc.
ravensays
It is about time.
EU and NATO almost ready to issue long-delayed joint pledge to back Ukraine.
This sort of misses the point.
By now, Ukraine doesn’t need strongly worded statements condemning Russia.
They need more ammo.
They need more of a whole lot of things up to and including more winter coats and blankets, since the Russians shut off their electricity.
Thread
The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent
⚡️Politico: EU and NATO almost ready to issue long-delayed joint pledge to back Ukraine.
Nine months into the full-scale invasion, the EU and NATO are expected to formally issue a joint statement for Russia to stop its war and leave Ukraine, and to pledge full support to Kyiv.
10:24 PM · Dec 14, 2022
@KyivIndependent
A draft of the declaration was partially reviewed by Politico and the document has been in the works for some time but held up over tensions between Turkey and Cyprus, diplomats said.
The Kyiv Independent
The diplomats reportedly agreed “to fully support Ukraine’s inherent right to self-defence and to choose its own destiny.” And they say that “Russia’s brutal war” has “exacerbated a food and energy crisis affecting billions of people around the word.”
whheydtsays
Denmark’s new coalition government is set to scrap a bank holiday to boost defence spending.
It is one of the first measures agreed by the unusual coalition between centre-left and centre-right parties – the first since the 1970s.
The centre-left Social Democrat party, the centre-right Liberal Party and the centrist Moderate party are all part of the new government.
Incumbent Social Democrat PM Mette Frederiksen will carry on in the job.
….
One of the coalition’s priorities is to reach Nato’s target of 2% of GDP for defence spending three years ahead of schedule. The issue of defence has been at the forefront of Danish political debate since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
To this end, Ms Frederiksen has announced the government will scrap one of Denmark’s 11 public holidays, in the hope of boosting productivity and economic activity.
The axe is likely to fall on Store Bededag (the “Great Prayer Day”), which falls every year on the Friday before the fourth Sunday after Easter and was introduced as a public holiday in 1686.
The measure has sparked some criticism, starting with Denmark’s religious community.
[…] According to [Trump’s] announcement, the images “feature amazing ART” of his “Life & Career,” though that’s not entirely true: Many of the images actually feature his face superimposed onto images of muscle-bound men doing things Trump has never done.
For “only” $99 each, Trump added, you can purchase “all of your favorite Trump Digital Trading Cards, very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting.”
Indifferent to the fact that his pitch sounded decidedly huckster-like, the former president concluded, “Would make a great Christmas gift. Don’t Wait. They will be gone, I believe, very quickly!
This might sound like a scheme to generate some money for his presidential campaign. It’s not. As the website selling the NFTs makes clear, none of the money will go to his political operation or even the Trump Organization. Rather, this is money Trump will collect himself as part of a private licensing deal he reached with an outside company — along the lines of his Trump Steaks deal. [LOL]
Incidentally, the company’s website features a two-minute promotional video in which the former president gives the Trump Digital Trading Cards the hard sell. It’s about as ridiculous as it sounds. [video at the link]
There’s no shortage of questions, starting with some obvious ones. Who convinced Trump this would be a good idea? Is he capable of feeling embarrassment? Does he realize that the market for NFTs has fallen sharply? Is he aware of the fact that he’s earned a reputation as a brazen con man, and this only makes him look worse?
But as notable as those lines of inquiry are, I have a different question that isn’t entirely rhetorical: Is Trump still a presidential candidate? […]
Another day, another story about how anti-abortion conservatives really, really want to start throwing people in jail. […]
The core of the story is that anti-abortion activists are fuming that access to abortion-inducing pills is allowing many Americans to end pregnancies even though a particular cult of theocrats insists that they no longer have the right to, so that means it’s time to start throwing the book at people.
“Everyone who is trafficking these pills should be in jail for trafficking,” quoth the ever-animated president of the Susan B. Anthony antiabortion group. If you mail banned pills to a family member in Dumptruck, Texas, who isn’t yet pregnant but wouldn’t have the money to flee the state for a desired or medically necessary abortion if did happen, it’s prison for you. […]
Did anyone seriously think that abortion opponents would be content with any restriction on abortion that didn’t end in jail time for the people who don’t abide by their religious edicts? […] That isn’t how theocracies work. You don’t impose laws saying that God is offended by women showing their faces in public unless you’ve got a possibly-volunteer, possibly-official goon squad on hand to dish out vicious punishments to those that don’t comply, and you don’t spend your life demanding that abortion, contraception, or same-sex sexual activity be criminalized without coming up with plans for what to do with all the criminals.
The newest Texas Republican plan is to “require internet providers to block abortion pill websites in the same way they can censor child pornography,” reports the Post. But that won’t by itself keep people from being able to order the pills by getting an out-of-state proxy to do it for them, so abortion opponents are demanding that Texas find those proxy Americans, prosecute them, and jail them.
It’s still not going to solve the theocrats’ problems. The only way to prevent pregnancy-preventing pills from getting into Texas is for Gov. Greg Abbott to order the National Guard to seize U.S. mail at the borders and open each package, and that’s … probably … not going to happen.
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #44…
Not unless Abbott wants the US military to show up and open each Texas National Guardsman to see what’s inside…
Montreal police have asked their officers to stop wearing religious symbols while on the job, according to information obtained by Radio-Canada.
Many officers were seen wearing crests paying homage to the Catholic patron saint of law enforcement while monitoring protests related to the COP15 international forum. Photos of the badges with “Saint Michael Protect Us” written on them have been circulating on social media.
However, the law on secularism of the state, also called Bill 21, adopted in June 2019, prohibits the wearing of religious symbols by representatives of the state in a position of authority…
A Sudanese woman charged with adultery has had her life spared and will instead spend six months behind bars after she admitted to kissing a man.
The 20-year-old was initially sentenced to death by stoning, sparking an international outcry.
She was arrested by police after her cousin killed her boyfriend…
The divorcee was sentenced to death after she was found guilty of adultery by a court in the city of Kosti, in Sudan’s White Nile state.
Following international condemnation, the White Nile state court retried the case. Ultimately, the presiding judge changed the charge from “adultery” to an “obscene act” which meant she would instead serve prison time for her actions…
It’s the things they don’t report – was the brother charged with any crime for killing her boyfriend?
She was 20 and a divorcee?
The images were so lazy that based on reverse image searches they were edited photos scraped off the internet. It’s unclear if they were edited by hand or perhaps crafted using AI image generation, though the one image of Trump in hunter garb bears a very distinct resemblance to waders crafted by Banded, a hunting apparel company.
Trump’s cowboy outfit appears to match a leather duster made by Scully Sportswear, a California-based costume and western garb shop.
Gizmodo reached out to both companies to see if they had had any agreement with the NFT project to seemingly use their products, but we did not immediately hear back.
Twitter — and supporters of Musk — are now trying to pass off the growing list of bans as bans for “doxing.” But absolutely none of the posts in question appear to provide anything that constitutes any violation of Twitter rules.
This is the last tweet from CNN reporter Donnie O’Sullivan. It contains only a public statement from the LAPD on top of the information that Musk himself tweeted. [Tweet at the link]
Who will rid Elon Musk of these meddlesome journalists? Apparently whatever remains of a technical team at Twitter is more than willing to pull the switch for the boss.
On Thursday night, Twitter—abruptly, and without notice or warning—began banning or permanently suspending the accounts of journalists. Those known to be affected so far span a wide variety of leading media platforms, including CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, as well as online platforms like substack. All that these writers appear to have in common is that they recently reported on stories connected to Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
Some of those banned had connections with the story of the “@ElonJet” account, which Twitter banned for publishing public information about the flight schedules of Elon’s personal jet. Others reported on a post that Musk himself made earlier in the day in which he claimed that a stalker had pursued a car that he owned, believing that he was inside. Some of those banned did nothing but report on the banning of other journalist.
Those banned include such well known Twitter journalists as Aaron Rupar, and the former sportscaster and political commentator Keith Olbermann. What happens now is up to the chaos agent who has took over one of the largest media platforms in the world claiming he was a “free speech purist.”
As of of 9:30 PM Eastern, the number of journalists affected by the purge continued to grow. [News from Aaron Rupar. Aaron Rupar!!] [News from Keith Olbermann] [News from Steve Herman, Voice of America’s chief correspondent]
The full list includes:
Aaron Rupar: Substack author and popular Twitter presence whose account was taken down for reasons unknown.
Drew Harwell: Washington Post technology reporter. Reason unknown.
Ryan Mac: New York Times technology reporter. Recently posted concerning the ElonJet story.
Donie O’Sullivan: CNN reporter. Last post was a story about Elon’s claim that a “crazy stalker” had followed a car in which his son was a passenger.
Matt Binder: Mashable reporter. Final post was noting O’Sullivan’s suspension.
Tony Webster: independent journalist.
Micah Lee: Intercept reporter.
Steve Herman: Voice of America reporter.
Keith Olbermann: former MSNBC host and sports journalist. Last post was retweeting those of suspended journalists.
Earlier in the day, Twitter also suspended links from the Mastodon social media site. Now users who include Mastodon links within a Twitter post are getting a warning message that prevents the post from appearing directly on Twitter. [Warning message at the link] […]
More at the link.
Elon Musk is determined to prove to everyone that he is a fascistic doofus.
The 38th Airborne Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Belarus, which was transferred to the Ukrainian border as part of a sudden check of combat readiness, is already returning to Brest.
Additional Ukrainian updates:
God watch over them all. Impossible to think about being in this situation for minutes, much less day after day. [Video of action on the front line.]
The recent trend of things in Russian occupied areas going up in very large explosions continues. First reports suggest this time it was another ammunition storage facility. Seems about right based on the fireball. [Video at the link, Luhansk]
When it comes to training an army away from the battlefield, there is one side where we know that’s happening. Ukraine has forces training in Poland, the U.K., and other sites in Europe. Now, the AP is reporting on an increased commitment from the United States.
The Pentagon will expand military combat training for Ukrainian forces, using the slower winter months to instruct larger units in more complex battle skills, U.S. officials said Thursday.
Over 3,100 Ukrainian troops have already gone through some level of U.S. training, but the focus on larger units here seems to be directly connected with how both Russia and Ukraine have had difficulty in launching and coordinating large scale actions. Right now, reports of “major assaults” are often limited to no more than two or three dozen soldiers, and that’s not just on the Russian side.
Past U.S. training efforts have also included working with Ukraine on a form of combined arms tactics that acknowledges the equipment involved in the low-aircraft / high-artillery battle conditions currently present in Ukraine. Expanding that across larger units would certainly help in getting the right resources to the right point on the line. […]
The House passed a stopgap measure Wednesday to give Congress an extra week to complete an overdue omnibus spending package. The short-term continuing resolution, which passed on a mostly party-line vote of 224-201, would give lawmakers until Dec. 23 to complete final fiscal 2023 appropriations, brushing up against Christmas Eve for a final omnibus vote.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
The second mass air attack in days has been launched by Russia across Ukraine with a barrage of rockets fired at several regions across the country. The aim of the mass attack, authorities said, appeared to be to destroy Ukraine’s power grid in the hope that damaging Ukraine away from the frontline will enable Russia to make gains on the battlefield.
In the capital, Kyiv, explosions have been heard in the south-western district of Holosiivkyi, on Ukraine’s right bank, as well as the eastern districts of Dniprovskyi and Desnyanskyi, according to Kyiv’s mayor Vitaliy Klitschko. It is not yet clear if the rockets hit their targets or the sounds were that of Ukraine’s air defence. So far hits have been reported in the southern city of Kryvih Rih, where a residential building, not energy facility, was struck. The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said there may be victims under the rubble and emergency services were on the scene.
Elsewhere, Ukraine’s eastern and central regions of Kharkiv and Poltava, the authorities have reported power outages. The governor of Kharkiv, Oleh Syniehubov, confirmed that energy infrastructure had been hit and Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne said there were power outages in the region. Neighbouring Polatava region is without electricity, according the mayor of the city of Poltava, Oleksandr Fedoryuk. The sound of air defence could also heard in the regions of Dnipro, Ternopil, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Kirovohrad, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi and Vinnytsia.
A senior Ukrainian presidential official said on Friday that emergency power shutdowns were being brought in across the country after Russian missiles hit energy facilities in several regions. Russia launched dozens of missiles at Ukraine, the latest in a wave of attacks on critical infrastructure….
Also from there:
Ukraine state power grid operator, Ukrenergo, has declared an emergency situation after Russian missile strikes across the country led to a more than 50% drop in Ukrainian energy consumption, it said.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said emergency power shutdowns were being brought in across the country after Russian missiles struck energy facilities in several regions. He did not specify which facilities had been hit.
Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said the latest Russian missile attacks have damaged nine power facilities.
In a statement, he said:
What we already see is damage to about nine generating facilities. Now we are still verifying the damage.
In a separate statement, Ukraine’s state energy operator said the mass strikes caused the country’s energy system to lose more than half its capacity.
Ukrainian air defences shot down 60 out of the 76 missiles fired by Russia onto Ukraine this morning, according to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny.
In a statement on Telegram, Zaluzhny said:
According to preliminary data, this morning from the regions of the Caspian and Black seas, the enemy launched 76 missiles, including 72 cruise missiles (X-101, ‘Kalibr’, X-22) and 4 guided air missiles (X-59) at Ukrainian critical infrastructure.
In a separate statement, a spokesperson for Kyiv’s military administration said Ukraine shot down 37 of 40 incoming Russian missiles in the region.
Dnipropetrovsk governor Valentyn Reznichenko also said air defences shot down 10 missiles over the central Ukrainian region.
Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, is without power, heating and water after Russian missile strikes on Friday morning caused “colossal” damage to infrastructure, its mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
In a post on Telegram, Terekhov said:
There is colossal damage to infrastructure, primarily the energy system. I ask you to be patient with what is happening now. I know that in your houses there is no light, no heating, no water supply.
Oleh Syniehubov, Kharkiv’s regional governor, reported three strikes on the city’s critical infrastructure.
Tunisians will vote on Saturday in an election that will lead to a weakened parliament “almost exclusively dominated by men”, as activists warn of a stark deterioration of women’s rights under an increasingly authoritarian president.
The controversial elections, boycotted by all the main parties, mark the final piece of the constitutional jigsaw President Kais Saied began assembling in July 2021, when he suspended the legislature in what critics called a power grab.
After Saied’s move to introduce an electoral law with none of the gender parity provisions that made Tunisia a regional trailblazer for female political representation, the new parliament will not only have few powers but few women, activists warn.
Just 122 female candidates, compared with 936 men, have been approved to run, the electoral commission says, meaning the new chamber is certain to look very different from that elected in 2014, when nearly a third of MPs were women.
As well as removing a requirement for candidate lists to alternate between the sexes, the new law makes additional demands that disproportionately affect women wanting to run and have contributed to their exclusion, its opponents say.
“The Tunisian parliament was once the exemplar of gender equity in the region. With these new changes to the law, that could soon be history,” wrote Salsabil Chellali, Tunisia director of Human Rights Watch, on a blog.
The abandonment of the parity commitments comes at a worrying time for women in a country that had long prided itself as the most feminist in the region.
…
Though dismissed as a figleaf by some feminists, the parity commitment enshrined in the old electoral law was seen by others as one of the bigger gains for women’s rights in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution that toppled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
What began as a requirement for the parliament – the Assembly of Representatives of the People (ARP), which Saied formally dissolved in March – widened in 2017, with an amendment requiring parties competing in local elections to ensure women made up half of their candidate lists. According to Chellali, this led to 47% of city councillors being women after the 2018 elections.
The new law, in which there is no mention of gender parity, also asks potential candidates to submit 400 signatures of registered voters from their constituencies, and to self-fund or privately finance their campaign. Both stack the odds against women, “who are less likely to have the same powerful local networks to sponsor their candidacy as men and the same financial means as their male counterparts”, wrote Chellali.
Ukraine’s state energy operator Ukrenergo has said it will take longer to repair the national grid and restore power than it did after previous Russian missile attacks.
In a statement, Ukrenergo said:
Considering this is already the ninth wave of missile strikes on energy facilities, the restoration of power supply may take longer than before.
Priority will be given to “critical infrastructure facilities” including hospitals, water supply facilities, heat supply facilities, and sewage treatment plants, it said.
News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying. EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct. @elonmusk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.
ravensays
Recent Tweet from Ukraine.
Nine Russian bombers in the air, 60 cruise missiles heading towards Ukraine.
Tweet
(((Tendar))) Around 60 missiles incoming. Ukraine’s air defense crews will have a lot to do today.
Godspeed!
@EuromaidanPR
BREAKING russian 9 strategic bombers detected on the air right now!
They’ve already hit, most were shot down, the rest took out most of the Ukrainian power grid.
This happens every few days.
These are terrorist attacks aimed at 44 million civilians.
It’s time to send long range missiles to Ukraine so they can retaliate in kind by hitting military targets in Russia.
The White House said on Friday the next security assistance package for Ukraine is coming and it is expected to include more air defence capabilities for the country.
“As you have seen in previous packages, I think you can expect to see additional air defence capabilities in this,” John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House national security council, told reporters.
The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said she welcomes the agreement by EU leaders on the ninth package of sanctions against Russia.
EU leaders agreed yesterday to provide €18bn in financing to Ukraine next year as well as to a fresh package of sanctions.
The latest measures designate nearly 200 more people and bar investment in Russia’s mining industry, among other steps.
Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said her country is “clenching its fists, but it is holding on” after Russian missile strikes across Ukraine this morning.
At least two people were killed and eight more were injured when a missile hit a residential building in the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, officials have said.
Among those injured by the attack on central Kryvyi Rih were a boy and a girl aged three, and a girl aged seven, according to Valentyn Reznichenko, head of the Dnipropetrovsk military administration.
Five different CPCs lied to Olivia Raisner about the risks of abortion, including that it causes suicide. These fake “clinics” often receive state funding.
In October, investigative reporter Olivia Raisner visited five anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers—clinics that often receive state funding, despite providing no medical services and pushing disinformation to dissuade pregnant people from choosing abortion—in Indiana. She entered each clinic armed with her pregnant friend’s urine, a button on her shirt that secretly doubled as a camera, and scheduled appointments. There, she declined to sign any paperwork that asked her not to record conversations to “make sure everything I did was legal,” Raisner told me in a phone interview…
Polish prosecutors are investigating a “violent release of energy” at the national police headquarters amid media reports that the chief of police fired a grenade launcher in his office.
Poland’s interior ministry said on Thursday that Jarosław Szymczyk, the police commander in chief, was injured and taken to hospital when a present he received during a visit to Ukraine exploded at police headquarters in Warsaw.
Polish media reported that the present was a grenade launcher and that Szymczyk himself had accidentally fired it in his office, in what would be a serious breach of safety regulations.
In a statement, published on Thursday, a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office said it was investigating “an act consisting of unintentionally causing a violent release of energy that threatened the life or health of many people or property”.
The statement said three people, including Szymczyk, were considered victims, without giving details of possible injuries.
A delivery robot that got stuck in the snow has thanked the man who put it back on the right track.
Graham Smith came across the robot struggling to mount an icy kerb in Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, on Monday.
Posting a photo on Facebook, he said he was concerned about the plight of the “poor little mite”, which said “thank you” after he helped it up the kerb.
Starship Technologies, which run the robots, said they were designed to run at temperatures as low as -20C (-4F).
They were introduced in Cambridge last month.
Heavy snow fell across the city on Sunday night and by Monday it was blanketed in white.
A photo taken late on Sunday shows several of them happily trundling along a snowy pavement in Cambridge.
However, the Cherry Hinton bot hit a bit of bother on its journey the following day.
Mr Smith, who was out walking in Chequers Close, spotted it having trouble and took a photograph.
On his Facebook post he wrote: “Saw this poor little mite trying to negotiate a high, slippery kerb in Chequers Close earlier today, wheels spinning like crazy, we gave it a push onto the path, it very politely thanked us and carried on its way.
“Should it have been let out on its own in these weather conditions? It didn’t even have a scarf.”
He said the robot “looked a little lost” as it came across the road and then became stuck on the snow and ice trying to mount the kerb.
“I lifted its back end up to help it on, and it shunted backwards and forwards a bit, and then said ‘thank you very much’ before heading away.”
A Starship Technologies spokesman said: “Our little helpers are busy delivering in the run up to Christmas, and a light dusting of snow won’t stop them.
“They’re designed to deliver in a range of different weather conditions, and although temperatures in the UK have fallen these past few days, the robot’s batteries are designed to operate at -20C.”
Starship is an Estonian company headquartered in San Francisco.
Months of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have left Ukrainian civilians facing rolling blackouts and interruptions to heat, water, and telecommunications services. Russian state television and pro-Kremlin Telegram channels can’t avoid discussing this reality, but they find ways to spin the facts, either making light of the situation in Ukraine or, when that fails, blaming Ukrainians themselves for the destruction. Meduza collected some glaring examples of the Russian mass media propaganda machine at work. A warning: the collected quotes contain derogatory terms for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people….
A funny thing happened on the way to Russia’s impending conquest of Bakhmut. On Thursday, reports of locations of fighting weren’t just no closer to the city center than they had been on Wednesday, but many of those reports were actually farther away. Then came reports that Bakhmut had stabilized. This was followed by the inevitable third act—reports that Russia has been once again pushed back down the shell-cratered length of Patrisa Lumumby Street. Past the winery. Past the concrete factory. Past menswear and the aisle where they sell vacuum cleaners. And finally …
Additionally there are reports that Russian forces have retreated from the garbage plant, southeast of Bakhmut. This is not yet confirmed.
As for those blocks of streets along the eastern side of the city where Russia was reportedly advancing on Wednesday, it now appears that Russia did move into the city two or three blocks, but only two or three blocks. Telegram sources indicate that Ukrainian forces have isolated the Russian troops in that area and most have either been forced to retreat or eliminated.
Pro-Russian bloggers will just have to put up their party hats and unschedule the “Russia captures Bakhmut” celebration. Again. [map at the link]
This doesn’t mean the situation in the area isn’t still serious. On Thursday alone, Ukrainian forces repelled attacks at 22 different locations along the eastern front. That includes Hryhorivka, Vyimka, Yakovlivka, Soledar, Bakhmutske, Klishchiivka, Andriivka, Kurdiumivka, Ozarianivka, Druzhba, Oleksandropil, Novobakhmutivka, Nevelske, Maryinka, Pobieda, and Novomykhailivka, along with Bakhmut itself. That’s an extraordinary list of attacks, even if each one only involves a few dozen soldiers and a handful of vehicles. However, the key thing about that list isn’t any particular name; it’s the word “repelled.” At none of these locations did Russian forces appear to make any significant advance.
The fight is still difficult. The losses and destruction are still heartbreaking. And … Bakhmut holds. [Tweet and video at the link] Zabakhmutka is a district on the southeastern corner of Bakhmut—exactly where Russia appeared to be invading in the last two days.
There are videos available this morning showing Ukrainian forces hunting down at least two separate groups of what are reportedly Wagner mercenaries in the Bakhmut area. I’m not posting either, as they both end the same way—with a heap of Russian bodies. Let’s just say that it doesn’t appear that Russia is waltzing into Bakhmut this week, and if you’re so inclined, the videos are out there. This video, taken near Ozarianivka 10km south of Bakhmut, shows another Russian force being taken out, possibly with M30A1 “alternate warheads” launched using HIMARS, or by fragmentation and high explosive shells fired from M777 artillery. [WARNING: If you stick around to the end, you’ll literally be watching a body count as Ukrainian forces use drones to total up the Russians taken out by these blasts.]
Earlier reports from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense indicated that long-serving units in the Bakhmut area were being cycled out, new units were coming in, and a “new strategy” was in place. Many analysts (including me) assumed that the apparent losses of territory that happened over the last week were related to this change in strategy. However, at the moment, the new strategy is looking a lot like the old strategy: Hold Bakhmut and let Russia lose lots, and lots, and lots of forces attempting to take it. If anything has changed, it’s not Russia’s enormous casualty rate in the area.
At the moment, we’re probably not back to where things stood a week ago, with Russia still holding positions closer to the eastern outskirts, but things seem to be trending away from Bakhmut, rather than closer.
In addition to ground attacks, Thursday was another big day for Russia, launching missile and drone assaults on civilian centers and utility infrastructure. Reports indicate that Russia launched at least 76 missiles, 60 of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses. One missile strike in Kryvyy Rih struck in a residential area, leaving an unknown number of casualties, and at least one reported death. [Tweet and images at the link.]
Another missile managed to cut power to the Kharkiv area. Since Russia was pushed out of artillery range in September, the hard-hit city of Kharkiv has been the single largest target for Russian missiles. The city continues to face almost daily assault, with missiles, drones, and long-range MLRS fire directed from across the Russian border, with little to none of it apparently aimed at military targets. This image of a “missile graveyard” in Kharkiv, where fragments of fallen missiles have been dragged for safe disposal, dates to Dec. 7. The missiles are still falling. [photo at the link]
According to the General Staff, in addition to the 76 missiles, Russia launched 23 air strikes. Those also included strikes on civilian objects in Kharkiv city. Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second-largest city, but its proximity to the border has kept it Russia’s #1 target … even though there is absolutely no military value in attacking Kharkiv. As of Friday morning, electricity was off over much of Kharkiv city and the surrounding area following the latest round of missile strikes.
In addition to the missiles, Russia reportedly launched a number of Shahed-136 drones from the Black Sea or coastal regions, with at least 13 drones targeting the Kyiv area. All of these drones were reportedly shot down.
Just a few weeks ago, the Shahed drones were routinely penetrating Ukrainian airspace, reaching their targets, and wrecking infrastructure. The drones gave Russia’s shrinking supply of missiles a large and relatively low-cost boost. However, now those drones appear to be all but useless as Ukraine has both added air defenses and learned about how drones can be shot down with ordinary weapons. It may be that the Shahed-136 was a terror weapon for just a few terrible weeks. Now it’s just target practice for Ukraine.
Speaking of shooting down an aircraft with a weapon not designed for air defense, this guy shot down a missile with a machine gun. [Tweet and video at the link] Send him to Kharkiv.
On Thursday evening, pro-Russian sources posted a video of the Russian BMPT “Terminator” armored fighting vehicle in action, supposedly near Kreminna. According to these Russian sources, the Terminator—seen firing all weapons in all directions—so “unnerved” Ukrainian forces that they gave up the attempt on the city.
Except they forgot to tell Ukraine. Because reports on Thursday evening and Friday morning indicate that Ukrainian troops in the forest south and west of Kreminna are closer than ever. On Thursday, Ukraine repelled Russian attacks at Novoselivske and Stelmakhivka near Svatove, and at Ploshchanka and Chervonopopivka near Kreminna. Again, the keyword is “repelled.” Ukraine has consolidated these positions, reinforced them, and now holds not just fire control on the highways west of Svatove, but actual physical control of the highway north of Kreminna. [map at the link]
Russia reportedly attempted to make an advance south of Kreminna, moving around Ukrainian forces in a move toward Bilohorivka. That attack also failed.
Those images of the “terminator” seem to show it moving along a major highway. So if this was in the Kreminna area, it was probably north of the city, where Ukraine continues to advance. In fact, Russia reportedly shelled positions near Zhytlivka, so Ukraine could be closer to the city on the north than this map shows. Also, there was something about those terminator videos. The terminator … terminated itself. [Tweet and video at the link]
Ukrainian Pravda is reporting that a Ukrainian strike on a Russian base at Horlivka, about 5km back from the front lines in occupied Donetsk, was guided to the right position not by drones, but by Ukrainian partisans on the ground.
“The operation became possible thanks to the coordination of the resistance and the Armed Forces. The military received data on the location of the occupiers’ personnel and their equipment. As a result, Ukrainian forces conducted the operation using the coordinates. According to preliminary data, over 100 enemy personnel and equipment were destroyed.”
[…] since I couldn’t find a new dancing soldiers video this morning, you’ll have to settle for Ukrainian forces advancing on Russian positions. [video at the link]
MADISON, Neb. — A Nebraska state court declined to quash charges against Jessica Burgess for concealing the death of another person and aiding and abetting her formerly pregnant daughter’s abortion. Burgess argued that a fetus is not a person under state law and that she was exempt from the aiding and abetting statute; the judge overruled both arguments as a matter of law.
[…] One set of text messages from former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke is a particularly vivid example of Trump-era backstabbing and maneuvering.
Trump’s administration had a record amount of turnover as the president regularly fired Cabinet secretaries and top aides when they crossed him or were consumed by scandal. The end result was an infamous snakepit where rival camps regularly took shots at each other as they sought to rise through the ranks and maintain the mercurial president’s favor.
Zinke has been described as “one of the most ethically dubious members” of the Trump Cabinet due to the more than a dozen federal investigations that were sparked by his conduct. He resigned in 2019 amid the barrage of negative headlines. Texts Zinke exchanged with Meadows seem to capture him in the midst of attempting to get back into the fold.
The former secretary began his power-play pitch to Meadows on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020. The message includes an apparent misspelling of the word “portrait” and Zinke’s last initial as a signature.
On the eve of victory. Keep the faith. In Vegas for the celebration. Portato unveiling on 10 December at Interior. Potus is going to need some warriors around him in his second term. The fight for freedom never ends. Z
“Thanks friend. Let’s make it great again,” replied Meadows.
Zinke unveiled his official portrait at the Department of the Interior on Dec. 10, 2020. It featured a dramatic image of Zinke on horseback in front of a national monument with which he had a decidedly fraught history. The ceremony also included an “unofficial” portrait where Zinke’s head was superimposed on “Death Dealer VI,” a painting by renowned sci-fi/fantasy artist Frank Frazetta. The resulting image featured Zinke waving an ax and riding into battle against a massive serpent. Epic stuff. [image at the link. JFC]
Based on the text log, six minutes after his message to Meadows, Zinke followed it up with an even more explicit push to get back in the Cabinet.
Keep America Great! Post election, sec def and a few others need to go. Let me know if you need an acting to fill in as required. The fight for freedom never ends. Z
[…] While his effort to lead the Pentagon may have failed, Zinke has since punched a return ticket to Washington. Last month, Zinke won an election to represent Montana’s western district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Trump’s eager warrior is set to take office on Jan. 3.
ravensays
Some Holiday good news.
The Satanic Temple has a display in the Illinois Capitol.
I have to admit it is cute, a crocheted snake with apples and a book.
This is an obvious take on the Genesis story and the Tree of Knowledge.
I’m wondering how good their security is and how long it will take for a xian terrorist to vandalize it.
That is usually what happens to nonxian Holiday displays.
Satanic Temple display installed at Illinois Capitol next to Nativity scene, menorah
by WICS/WCCU Staff Thursday, December 15th 2022
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WICS) — Christmas decorations are back in the Capitol Rotunda in Springfield, Illinois for the holiday season.
The Satanic Temple of Illinois showcased a satanic display at the Capitol Rotunda on Monday.
It was set up next to a Christmas tree, Nativity scene, and a menorah.
Satanic Temple display installed at Illinois Capitol next to Nativity scene, menorah (WICS)
This year’s display has a crocheted snake wrapped around apples and a book.
It was set up next to a Nativity scene and a menorah.
In years past, the Satanic Temple’s Illinois has displayed a hand holding an apple with a serpent wrapped around the wrist, and the deity Baphomet as a baby.
The goal of the display was to bring attention to the controversy of banned books this year.
The organization also spoke about being proud of its religion.
More importantly, being comfortable with being who we are as ourselves no matter who we are we all come from diverse backgrounds and many of us are ostracized just for being ourselves being a satanist is declaring yeah we are and we are happy about who we are,” said Minister Adam, co-congregation head of the Satanic Temple of Illinois.
This is the third year they have put up a display.
[…] I decided yesterday to trace down Trump’s business partners in his sleazy trading card grift, and even I was shocked at what I found (and kind of surprised no other news outlet has.)
Start with my favorite part: People who buy these NTFs don’t even fully own them. They are denied all sorts of rights of ownership, but the best: If they find someone to sell the digital cards to, they have to kick back 10% of the sale price to Trump and his fellow grifters.
But going on from there: Trump himself is not producing these NFTs. Instead, in March he set up an entity — called CIC — which holds the rights to his image and name for NFT licensing. Then he licensed it to a group called NFT International, LLC (also set up in March.) The layers and layers of business covers are quite — well, unimpressive, just low-level […] scuzzy type of sleaze. But sleazy nonetheless.
I traced NFT International to a mailbox at a UPS Store in a strip mall in Utah, but then from there to an office building in Wyoming, and finally to a tiny brick house (shown above) in Cheyenne. That house is the corporate “home” for scores of business entities, including a huge number of fraudsters and international criminals.
The companies registered by Wyoming Corporate at 1712 Pioneer, ending up with the final address at 2710 Thomes Avenue, includes a number operated by a rogue’s gallery of criminals. They have included a New Jersey company (strangely called New York Machinery) that sold military car and tractor trailer parts to the Defense Department….former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who was once ranked the eighth-most corrupt official in the world by watchdog group Transparency International. In 2004, he was sentenced to eight years in prison in California for money-laundering and extortion, a scam that used shell companies and offshore bank accounts to hide stolen Ukrainian government funds….Also set up there is Ira N. Rubin – just one more con artist. In 2006, the Federal Trade Commission went to federal court in Tampa, Florida and sued Rubin for fraud. According to the lawsuit, Rubin used at least 18 different front companies to hide his role as a credit-card processor for telemarketing scams.
The story goes on and on, but no surprise: For his “but wait…there’s more!” deal, Trump got into bed with some of the sleaziest of the sleazy.
More on what Lynna just posted about the Trump trading cards.
Xpost from another FTB thread.
According to this article, the Trump NFT collection really did sell out.
There were 45,000 tokens minted.
At $99 a token or unit, that would be $4,500,000 worth sold originally.
Now, supposedly they are on the market and worth a lot more.
“One of these rare trading cards, of the 45th president standing in front of the Statue of Liberty holding a torch, is currently listed at 20 ETH, or about $24,000.” I’d rather have the $24,000 but maybe that is just me.
CoinDesk
Donald Trump NFT Collection Sells Out, Price Surges
ETH-USD
-5.83%
Cam Thompson
Fri, December 16, 2022 at 6:39 AM PST·1 min read
GNO-USD
-5.98%
ETH-USD
-5.83%
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s non-fungible token (NFT) digital trading card collection sold out early Friday, the day after its initial release.
According to data from OpenSea, at time of writing, the collection’s trading volume is 900 ETH, or about $1.08 million. Its floor price is about 0.19 ETH, or about $230 – more than double the original price of $99.
Some tokens are selling for much higher prices. The one-of-ones, the rarest of the NFTs, which comprise 2.4% of the 45,000 unit collection (roughly 1,000), are selling for as much as 6 ETH at the time of writing. One of these rare trading cards, of the 45th president standing in front of the Statue of Liberty holding a torch, is currently listed at 20 ETH, or about $24,000.
According to data from Dune Analytics, nearly 13,000 users minted 3.5 tokens upon the release of the collection. Additionally, 115 customers purchased 45 NFTs, which is the minimum number of tokens that guarantees a ticket to a dinner with Trump; 17 people purchased 100 NFTs, which, according to the Trump Trading Card site, was the maximum quantity allowed to mint. However, additional metrics from Dune show that other wallets held far more.
Currently, 1,000 NFTs, including many one-of-ones, are held in one Gnosis Safe multisignature wallet, which appears to be the wallet receiving royalty payments from the secondary sales of the NFTs.
Waste And Destruction
Like with Trump, we know everything we need to know about Elon Musk. New scandals or outbursts of impulsivity or additional episodes of narcissistic self-absorption are merely duplicative. All that’s left to do is to chronicle the waste and destruction they leave in their paths.
Last night’s Twitter ban of multiple journalists is just further confirmation of numerous sound judgments already made:
Musk is not a free speech champion.
Musk is erratic, inconsistent, unreliable, and attention-craving.
Musk’s actions and decisions are not guided by underlying principles or values.
Musk savors inflicting pain and abuse.
Musk enjoys your scolding and opprobrium because it feels like attention.
Broken, petulant, emotionally stunted rich white men are nothing new. What might be new is that decades of regressive tax policy, feckless anti-trust enforcement, and market worship by policymakers have created an untethered and unaccountable new billionaire class.
For a generation we have been instructed that democracy is a function of larger, impersonal factors, yet both the assault on democracy in the US and the Russian invasion of Ukraine indicate that some of these forces may push in the opposite direction. More interestingly, the defense of democracy seems to involve an unavoidable ethical commitment. This suggests that the way we think and talk about democracy, and our willingness to take risks for it, are essential for its future.
Reginald Selkirksays
@77: Cupping is popular with some of the New Age celebrities. See Google images for Gwynyth ‘Goop’ Paltrow with cupping marks on her back.
The world of cryptocurrencies has seemingly gone on a massive diet through this bear market, as the number of active tokens has decreased by almost 1,000 – the biggest-ever annual decline, according to Statista. The reduction brought the number of active cryptocurrencies from its 2021 high of 10,397 down to a (still) overwhelming 9,310…
Shortly after Twitter suspended accounts that were tracking billionaires’ private planes, including Elon Musk’s, a new poll shows that most people who seek Musk’s precise location are doing so to avoid him.
The poll, from the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, reveals that a visceral fear of encountering Elon Musk is what drives eighty-nine per cent of those who follow his movements.
Drilling down into the results, that percentage is even higher among people who work for Elon Musk.
The widespread anxiety about crossing paths with Musk bodes well for a new Twitter account, launched last night, which indicates locations where the Tesla C.E.O. is least likely to be found.
The account, @WhereElonIsnt, offers users real-time updates on safe spaces where they have virtually no chance of running into Musk, such as blood-donation centers and the Amtrak quiet car.
A QAnon believer who chased U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman on Jan. 6, 2021, and apparently believed he was storming the White House was sentenced Friday to five years in prison. A jury found Doug Jensen, of Iowa, guilty on seven counts, including felony charges of civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding officers, in September. He was one of the first 10 rioters to enter the Capitol during the insurrection.
A Times investigation shows how Donald J. Trump stored classified documents in high-traffic areas at Mar-a-Lago, where guests may have been within feet of the materials.
A minor point. But TPM Reader BR points out that that the private jet at the center of the latest Twitter fracas is not precisely Elon Musk’s. It appears to be a corporate jet owned by SpaceX […]
Musk’s fleet of three Gulfstream jets is owned and registered to a company called Falcon Landing LLC, which BI says is “a shell company with ties to SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California headquarters.” The corporate listing for the shell corporation says it’s located at the same address as SpaceX and it’s agent and manager are also SpaceX. Among the corporation’s inactive directors and officers are SpaceX, Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell (president and COO of SpaceX), along with the corporate service company.
It’s hard to know precisely who owns Falcon Landing based on these registration and corporate records. It’s very possible someone more familiar with the records could discern more. But it certainly seems like Falcon Landing LLC, which owns Musk’s fleet of three planes, is owned by SpaceX. The Washington Post states matter of factly that Falcon is a subsidiary of SpaceX. So I think it’s a safe bet that the fleet is owned by SpaceX. […]
The controversial [Tunisian] elections, boycotted by all the main parties, mark the final piece of the constitutional jigsaw President Kais Saied began assembling in July 2021, when he suspended the legislature in what critics called a power grab. – Guardian quoted by SC@55
This “what critics called” garbage really angers me, and the Guardian is as bad as anywhere at it. Of course it was a fucking power grab!
StevoRsays
Space dot com on the current Soyuz issue at theInternational Space Station here :
The world’s powers need to unite to face the manifold challenges of the climate emergency. Instead too many are battling a paranoid nostalgia that is leading to a rise in authoritarian politics. In the EU, the right longs for old imperial grandeur, pining for a past greatness allied to concepts of ethnic purity. In Britain, this took the form of Brexit. From the east, Putin is working to recreate a Russian land empire that he appears to believe is the only bulwark of virtue against a dissolute west.
Consumer Reports identified both cadmium and lead in chocolate brands like Trader Joe’s and Hu…
The consumer advocacy nonprofit tested 28 different dark chocolate bars from popular brands. They found that all but five of them contained high enough levels of contaminants that eating an ounce per day could put an adult over the levels typically considered safe.
Chocolate from brands including Tony’s, Lindt, Hershey’s, and Hu were found to contain comparatively high levels of lead…
High levels of cadmium were detected in Lindt, Dove, and Beyond Good products, among others…
One Trader Joe’s bar was found to contain high levels of both lead and cadmium.
When businessman Marty Davis made his way into the Oval Office in mid-December 2020, he brought a blanket for former First Lady Melania Trump. Davis, the CEO of a quartz countertop company, also brought a series of wild election conspiracy theories for Melania’s husband.
Davis’ meeting with former President Donald Trump, which has not previously been reported, was revealed in the tranche of 2,319 text messages that the former president’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
[…] Davis is a prime example of one group that had a large presence in the text log: businesspeople with a direct line to Meadows. And Davis — quite literally — seems to have gone further than any of them.
Based on the texts, Davis’ trip to the Oval Office began as he repeatedly peppered Meadows with advice and encouragement to “expose the corrupt election and reverse this result by exposing illegal votes.” In a message to Meadows, Davis indicated he was pressing at least six Republican lawmakers to aggressively challenge Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
Davis is a prolific donor to Republican politicians. On Dec. 9, 2020, as a slew of Trump allies around the country were engaged in efforts to overturn the vote, Davis indicated he was pressing various contacts to get himself a White House meeting. As he sought to enlist Trump’s chief of staff in this effort, Davis dangled the possibility he would host Meadows on a “goose hunting trip.”
Hi Mark How are you? Lewandowski, Ronna and a Caroline have all been trying to pin down a oval for me with POTUS They have Molly in the loop Can you help push it over Id like to come in next couple days I want to thank him and tell him what Im doing to fight now for him! Also, heavily support 2024 if he gets screwed on this thing. Also talked with Jim Jordan on various matters and on POTUS visit too and then will connect with Jim as well… Thx Marty Davis Following all this More importantly We go goose hunting in Saskatchewan or pheasants in South Dakota.. Ill arrange at our camps You told me at my home u love to hunt
Davis’ pitch was evidently successful. Seven days later he wrote another message to Meadows describing his sitdown with Trump. Based on that message, Trump had told Davis he wanted to seize voting machines “for evidence.” Davis also seemed to feel Trump was fixated on the thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories involving Dominion, a voting systems company that loomed large in the imaginations of many 2020 election deniers.
Countless experts — including multiple Trump administration officials — have testified the claims about Dominion had no merit and even Meadows, in some of his texts, indicated he was dubious of the claims about the company.
Ultimately, Dominion filed a series of defamation suits against Trump allies who pushed the theory. While some of those cases are ongoing, Dominion has had some success in initial court decisions. Davis wrote Meadows indicating he was concerned about Trump’s focus on Dominion. He was eager for Trump to get behind other, more run-of-the-mill right-wing conspiracy theories about fraud.
Mark I told Potus there was extensive cheating in Minnesota And there was He asked me to get voting Machines for evidence Machines were not the issue in Minny We had very few Dominium machines in Minnesota! Point was not machines in Minnesota! Cheating was by multiple and egregious ballot creation …. And so in the mail-in voting and ballot harvesting ..!! Not by the machines ! FYI JUST DONT WANT POTUS TO MISUNDERSTAND THAT THE CHEATING WAS FROM ILLEGAL VOTEs from harvest and mail in BEST Marty
[…] When reminded of his text messages, Davis admitted he visited the Oval Office to thank Trump and give “a blanket” to Melania. He also said that he and Trump discussed the election. Davis indicated he was focused on concerns raised by the controversial right-wing group Project Veritas about alleged “ballot harvesting” which the group claimed to connect to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). The group’s supposed exposé contained no evidence and was later labeled a “coordinated disinformation campaign” by experts. Thanks to Davis, that alleged disinformation made it straight to the president’s desk.
“I gave information or input to what I thought they needed to do to investigate it,” Davis said. “I thought they should have had hearings on that.”
[…] Meadows’ immediate predecessor, former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, is one of the Trump White House alums who weighed in.
Random thought to add to your quiver:��an executive order creating a bipartisan commission on election fraud. Won’t solve the problems now, but may 1) prevent them in 2024 and 2) who knows? vindicate what he has been saying all along? The Warren Commission was created by executive order.��Trump could do it.��Biden would never have the balls to reverse it.
[…] Russell Vought, who is the former director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget, also texted Meadows. Vought seemingly pressed Meadows to pursue a variation of the alternate electors strategy through which Republican-controlled legislatures could subvert the vote in key swing states.
I have not heard whether we are seriously considering the state legislature strategy. If we are, we should get that out there bc it would change the narrative from being a no win court strategy. Similar to our vacate strategy on boehner, those GOP legislatures would have no choice to back and the media would be unhinged
[…] “Agreed,” Meadows replied.
[…] John Calvin Fleming straddles two of the worlds represented in Meadows’ text log. He was a Trump administration official and, prior to joining the White House, Fleming served in Congress where he represented Louisiana’s Fourth Congressional District. Along with Meadows, Mulvaney, and six other members, he founded the far-right House Freedom Caucus in 2015.
While there were other former members of Congress in the text log, Fleming’s contribution stands out. He exchanged over 20 messages with Meadows where he aired fevered fears about “fraudulent voting activities,” “corrupt commissioners,” and “PHANTOM VOTES.” Fleming also described coordinating with Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) on efforts to dispute the election. On Nov. 21, 2020, Fleming sent Meadows a pair of links. One was a transcript of the late right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh railing against Dominion; the other was a clip from Rumble, a video platform popular among the far right, that Fleming said showed “how the Dominion algorithm worked.” Fleming followed that up with his own narration of the wild theory.
Basically, the system was set up so that Biden would make up the difference in votes beginning the early morning of Nov 4. There were preset ratios of Trump to Biden votes to be flipped for groups of precincts. But the system repeatedly rolled the ratios from one precinct to another within the group to avoid detection and suspicion. Usually there was less than 5 mins between precincts suddenly changing to the ratio from the previous precinct. Various odd ratios were used to avoid detection, but they all favored Biden of course.
[…] John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster with a reputation for producing questionable numbers who worked for the Trump campaign during the 2020 race, sent Meadows multiple paranoid messages with concerns about voter fraud in ballot drop boxes. He also encouraged the legal challenges and urged Trump not to admit defeat in a text on Dec. 2, 2020, just shy of one month after Election Day.
“Any questions just call. Keep fighting. President can’t concede to keep legal standing to get to fraud,” McLaughlin wrote. […]
AOC Says Elon Musk Deactivated Journalist Accounts While ‘Elevating’ Some That Have Put Her in Danger
People
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Elon Musk’s decision to ban journalists for what he claims are safety reasons comes as he is elevating right-wing accounts that have put her own safety in danger.
On Thursday night, a swath of journalists at high-profile outlets including CNN and The Washington Post saw their accounts deactivated, suddenly and without warning.
Musk, 51, claimed his decision to deactivate the accounts stemmed from the reporters compromising his safety by sharing information regarding the ElonJet Twitter, a page that was tracking Musk’s personal plane using publicly available information.
Musk deactivated the ElonJet account before banning a slew of reporter profiles, including The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, Matt Binder of Mashable, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, The Intercept’s Micah Lee, political commentator Keith Olbermann, journalist Aaron Rupar, and freelancer Tony Webster, per multiple outlets.
In response to Musk’s claim that the journalists “posted my exact real-time location” by sharing the ElonJet account, Ocasio-Cortez said she gets “feeling unsafe, but descending into abuse of power + erratically banning journalists only increases the intensity around you.”
“Take a beat and lay off the proto-fascism. Maybe try putting down your phone,” the Democrat added.
In another tweet, Ocasio-Cortez pointed out the seeming hypocrisy of deactivating accounts that share flight coordinates while elevating right-wing accounts that she said have shared photos of her home and vehicle.
“As someone who has been subject to real + dangerous plots, I do get it. I didn’t have security and have experienced many scary incidents,” she wrote. “In fact, many of the right-wing outlets you now elevate published photos of my home, car, etc. At a certain point you gotta disconnect.”
Even some right-wing personalities agreed with Ocasio-Cortez’s assessment.
Former View co-host Meghan McCain shared AOC’s tweet, saying the lawmaker “is completely right here.”
“Elon is playing by his own set of rules and banning his critics like the last CEO,” McCain wrote.
McCain then noted that Musk has in recent months been working to cast himself as something of a free-speech advocate, releasing internal company emails to show how employees at the social network worked to temporarily suppress a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Though the emails were billed as a “bombshell” by Musk, most of the information published was previously known.
“I look forward to the next round of dramatic ‘twitter files’ showing how it’s only leftists who censors their critics & Elon is some kind ‘free speech warrior,'” McCain added, alluding to the documents Musk released earlier this month.
Adding to the seeming hypocrisy of Musk banning journalists for safety purposes is that he himself has been accused of putting Twitter workers in danger.
The former head of Trust and Safety at Twitter Yoel Roth, who resigned from the company in November, has been facing online attacks and threats of violence following Musk’s release of the internal Twitter documents.
The alleged threats against Roth reportedly increased after Musk apparently supported tweets suggesting, without merit, that the former Twitter employee was sympathetic toward pedophilia, per a CNN report. The Washington Post reports that Roth and his family were forced from their home in the wake of the online harassment.
Since purchasing Twitter for $44 billion earlier this year, Musk has made a number of controversial and at times bizarre decisions, including rolling out the widely panned “Twitter Blue” verification system and laying off thousands of employees.
ravensays
“Some skeptics do not really trust the figure of almost 100 thousand dead Russians,” the statement reads.
I don’t entirely take the Ukrainian numbers seriously either.
There is the usual tendency to inflate the numbers of Russian dead and minimize the number of Ukrainian soldiers dead.
We saw this in Vietnam with the daily body counts that turned out to be fantasy and irrelevant anyway.
Independent observers consider the number of Russian casualties claimed by Ukraine to at least be plausible.
IMO, the Ukrainian casualties are likely to be a lot higher than they claim. This is close quarters warfare that we haven’t seen much of in a long time. In our past wars, we fought at a long distance and killed using artillery and air power. I can’t see how they can be that close to the Russian army without taking a lot of casualties.
The New Voice of Ukraine
Ukrainian military demonstrates how it achieves high casualty rates among Russian soldiers
Sat, December 17, 2022 at 8:53 AM PST·1 min read
“Some skeptics do not really trust the figure of almost 100 thousand dead Russians,” the statement reads.
“They are dying en masse on Ukrainian soil. In this video, you can see how a couple of dozen occupiers were eliminated in a moment.”
StratCom added that the estimate of nearly 100,000 Russian soldiers killed in action is a “modest” guess.
According to the Ukrainian military, Russia has lost about 97,690 of its troops since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as well as about 12,000 pieces of materiel.
ravensays
Elon Musk’s team seeks new funding for Twitter.
Not surprising. Twitter was losing money before Musk bought it and now it is losing even more.
I can’t see why anyone would invest in Twitter right now.
It is worth more with Elon Musk gone than with him there.
Musk drastically overpaid for Twitter anyway.
If he would have bargained, he could have gotten it for half what he paid for it.
Elon Musk’s team seeks new funding for Twitter – investor
TSLA
-4.72%
Hyunjoo Jin
Fri, December 16, 2022 at 1:57 PM PST·1 min read
By Hyunjoo Jin
(Reuters) -Elon Musk’s team has reached out to investors to raise new funds for his struggling social media platform Twitter, one of the investors said.
Ross Gerber, president and CEO at Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, told Reuters that he was contacted by a Musk representative about offering more shares at the same price, $54.20, that Musk paid to take the company private in October.
Jared Birchall, the managing director of Elon Musk’s family office reached out to potential investors this week, news platform Semafor reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the fundraising effort.
Twitter and Musk did not respond to Reuters requests for comments.
Twitter has seen advertisers flee amid worries about Musk’s approach to policing tweets, hitting revenues and its ability to pay interest on the $13 billion debt that Musk took on to buy the social media company.
Musk sold another $3.6 billion worth of shares in Tesla earlier this week, making it nearly $40 billion worth of shares in the electric-vehicle company sold this year.
Tesla shares on Friday posted their worst weekly loss since March 2020, with investors increasingly concerned about Musk being distracted by Twitter and the slowing global economy.
What time is it, boys and girls? [video of HIMARs]
It’s not often that the Ukraine Update spends much time referencing articles or interviews in major U.S. publications or online sources. That’s not because there hasn’t been some sterling reporting in this war. The people who are actually there, on the ground, and doing what war correspondents have done, going back to the Battle of Megiddo—placing themselves in danger in order to bring back to everyone else the essence of the conflict—are generally fantastic.
The problem with most war reporting as it appears in the U.S. is more subtle. It’s the framing. It’s that pretense of impartiality that pulls back from condemning actions, no matter how vile, and holds itself aloof from judgement, no matter how well deserved. I think I can safely speak for everyone who has covered this illegal, unprovoked invasion at Daily Kos when I say that we are not impartial. We not only believe that Ukraine is winning, and will win this conflict, we want them to win. We believe that Vladimir Putin didn’t just make a mistake in invading Ukraine, but that his acts were malicious, self-serving, cruel, and, for lack of a better term, evil.
In the war between democracy and authoritarianism, we have picked a side. And we feel no need to engage in the least bit of apologia for the murderous thugs on the other side in this conflict. Hopefully, that never affects the accuracy of what appears here, but it absolutely affects the tenor. We’ve also, hopefully, dropped the decades of viewing Russia as a Great Power whose every action must be treated with deference.
With that out of the way, there is an article in The New York Times this morning that really deserves your attention. That article, from Michael Schwirtz, Anton Troianovski, Yousur Al-Hlou, Masha Froliak, Adam Entous and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, isn’t well served by the Times online obsession with scrolling images and HTML tricks, because it’s really the text that is worth reading. However, that text is very much worth reading.
The Times article may start off by seeming to paint Russian soldiers as sympathetic figures who are only doing as they are told…
They never had a chance.
Fumbling blindly through cratered farms, the troops from Russia’s 155th Naval Infantry Brigade had no maps, medical kits or working walkie-talkies, they said. Just a few weeks earlier, they had been factory workers and truck drivers, watching an endless showcase of supposed Russian military victories at home on state television before being drafted in September. One medic was a former barista who had never had any medical training.
But where this article goes is toward a perspective rarely expressed in national media — how Putin’s war is not just an invasion of Ukraine, but an unbelievably destructive act of hubris; a nightmare being sold as a dream. One that is taking his whole nation down with him.
And it doesn’t take it long to get there.
“This isn’t war,” Mikhail said, struggling to speak through heavy, liquid breaths. “It’s the destruction of the Russian people by their own commanders.”
From this in media res opening, the article opens up both the timeline and the camera lens, moving back to tell us again what we’ve long understood—Russia, and Putin in particular, thought this would be a cakewalk. They would roll into Kyiv in days, “sprint” across Ukraine, and Putin would soon be on hand to watch Russian forces goosestep through the Park of the Eternal Glory as he commissioned a new batch of Soviet-style monuments to his greatness.
What follows is the meat of the article: A detailed, in-depth, and sober look at the mistakes Russia made, both in their assumptions about Ukraine before beginning the invasion and in the execution of the war. That analysis finds exactly the sort of things we’ve been talking about for months: A blind assumption that the West was weak, and would turn it’s back on Ukraine; intelligence information that was more concerned about currying favor than accuracy; a Russian military that has been gutted by corruption to the point where whole units are ineffective; and a simple failure to execute shot through with inept leadership. Also, that demon logistics.
It’s a story of failure at absolutely every level: Russia’s intelligence was little more than decorating pages with what Putin wanted to hear. The vaunted “cyber” units that were effective at creating chaos in presidential elections were actually useless at doing real hacking. Communications were awful—in many instances, fatally so. And at the highest level Russia seemed to have no mechanism for learning from mistakes or adapting to new situations on the ground. They just made the mistakes again. And again.
“Nobody is going to stay alive,” one Russian soldier said he realized after being ordered into a fifth march directly in the sights of Ukrainian artillery. Finally, he and his demoralized comrades refused to go.
This is an article that recognizes that, even if Russia still holds tens of thousands of square kilometers in Ukraine, even if it is still making daily attacks at Bakhmut and other points along the eastern (and now, only) front, the cost to Russia is f**king enormous.
It also makes it clear that this is Putin’s fault. It’s his fault, not just in the sense that he was the one who made the decision to begin this invasion, and not just because he daily makes the decision to keep it going, but because he has intentionally deprived anyone else of the power to make decisions that might rectify some of those mistakes at the strategic level. Because Putin doesn’t want anyone else to be a hero. He’s so terrified of giving anyone power that might be used against him, that no one has the power to correct Russia’s ongoing mistakes.
If that article fails to emphasize that the cooperation of these same sympathetic “factory workers and truck drivers” is what keeps Putin in power. Or look too deeply at the men who set up torture chambers in basements, shot bike-riding children in the streets, or fired tank shells into the cars of fleeing families … there is still tremendous value here. The effort in research, and the skill in weaving it together, is right there on the page. It’s good. All those involved deserve a round of applause, and I urge you to go read this piece.
And now lets have an article about how those ordinary Russian people can do something to address this, by doing something about the man destroying their nation.
U.K. author and journalist John Sweeney left Ukraine today after many months reporting on the ground. He’s promising to return in 2023. Let’s go back one week to watch one of his reports from Bakhmut. [Tweet and video at the link]
While I’m pointing out good journalism, here’s an article from the other side of the U.S. that touches on an aspect of this war that few have talked about. From The Los Angeles Times…
Since the day Russia launched its invasion Feb. 24, Amazon has been working closely with the Ukrainian government to download essential data and ferry it out of the country in suitcase-sized solid-state computer storage units called Snowball Edge, then funneling the data into Amazon’s cloud computing system.
The purpose of this is to keep both pre-war records, and everything that can be learned as the war progresses, intact and out of reach of Russian propagandists who could use these records to both seek out individuals, and to alter or erase the past. The information is also essential to keeping the Ukrainian government running in case original records in Kyiv and other areas around the nation are lost.
This message from Bakhmut was actually recorded earlier this week, at a point when both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian sources seemed to be in agreement that the fall of Bakhmut was imminent. [Tweet and video at the link] The Bakhmut suburb of Optyne, where this was reportedly filmed, is a location that Russia claimed to have completely occupied earlier this week. Nope.
With what appears to be another costly failure to capture Bakhmut now in the record books, here’s a thread that looks at Just why the Wagner Group exists, what gives it such power in Russia, and how Yevgeny Prigozhin’s creation is inherently flawed.
“An over-reliance on violence suggests an organization that is inherently fragmented, is present-focused, and beholden to the ‘glue’ of power-by-personality. It also suggests a reliance on national myths to both remain relevant, and tie it to external state strategies.”
Within this organization, recruitment from prisons is nothing new. Right now, we may see those troops being dragged to Bakhmut, handed a rifle (if they’re lucky) and being directed toward the kill zone past whatever factory or trash heap Russia is fighting over today, but this is not at all the first time Wagner has used this strategy. In fact, it’s part of how Wagner creates its own cultish persona.
Recruitment from prisons is key element of manipulation, pulling from the ‘bottom’ of society—those who are already ‘othered’ through the legal process—to draw in members who will never attain any real power, and are expendable based on their societal status.
Pull these guys out of cold cells in Russian prisons. Give them a uniform and hot meals. Treat them like equals … then send them to die. Prigozhin certainly didn’t invent such techniques, but they remain effective in putting people on battlefields with a maniacal loyalty to their units.
And honestly, this is only the surface of how Wagner takes people who have already been exiled within their own society and turns them into instruments of destruction. Read the thread, but be prepared for some highly unpleasant information. The more you know about these guys, the more hideous they are.
Russian losses, as tallied by the Ukrainian ministry of defense, remain on target to exceed 100,000 before the end of the year. It will likely happen this side of Christmas. [Tweet and graphic representing total combat losses available at the link]
This mother just received word that her son died in Ukraine. The footage speaks for itself. This scene happened almost 100,000 times before in Russia since February 24. And all those Russians die for one thing:
Ukraine continues to work its way around Russian defenses near Svatove. On Friday, there were reports that Ukraine is moving toward the towns of Sofiivka and Oborotnivka to the northeast of Svatove. That movement reportedly came from the west. [map at the link]
This follows recent actions in which Ukraine liberated Yahidne and Kyslivka along a road moving northeast from the P07 highway. However, roads moving this way to the east are questionable or nonexistent. Someone (that would be me) even suggested that it was next to impossible for Ukraine to extend their wins in this area into further movement to the east, because the combination of vegetation and topology is just … not good. Unless the ground in the area is frozen, it seems more likely that Ukraine is actually moving on these locations along the road from Nova Tarasivka.
It’s unclear how prepared Russia is to hold positions in these towns, as they’re far enough from the highway that they may not have been considered as places needing protection. But since this movement is being reported in Russian sources, Russia is surely aware.
If Ukraine can take Oborotnivka, they could be positioned to get around the Russian forces that have been blocking movement to the east at Kuzemivka. Which could then finally give them that northern approach to Svatove. Or Russian forces may be forced to move to block this new approach, which would force them to step back from Kuzemivka. To coin a phrase, stay tuned.
Further south, Ukraine is reportedly engaged in fighting for the town of Holykove north of Kreminna. This location is off the P66 highway, but it’s fortified by multiple rows of trenches and earthworks, and Russia is using it to maintain fire control over Ukrainian positions along the P66. Today could be decisive for that location.
A judge Friday evening dismissed Rep. Mark Finchem’s lawsuit seeking a do-over of the race for Arizona secretary of state and affirmed Adrian Fontes as winner of the Nov. 8 election.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian issued her ruling eight hours after a hearing that veered from allegations of improper interference with social media platforms to unfounded claims about questionable vote tabulation machines to the prospect of disbarring Finchem’s attorney for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
Finchem, a Republican from Oro Valley, lost to Democrat Fontes in the Nov. 8 election by 120,208 votes. Julian’s ruling affirms that result. Fontes is slated to take the oath of office Jan. 2.
Finchem’s lawsuit revolved around allegations of misconduct by current Secretary of State Katie Hobbs for allegedly failing to ensure the tabulation machines were properly approved by the federal Elections Assistance Commission, despite evidence provided to the court that shows the machines had such approval. Finchem also cited other alleged misconduct, suggesting that the late October suspension of his Twitter account was likely due to Hobbs’ interference.
Julian rejected all of the misconduct allegations. “None of these alleged acts constitutes ‘misconduct’ sufficient to survive dismissal,” she wrote.
Julian also granted a request from attorneys for Hobbs and Fontes for sanctions, giving them 10 days to file their demand.
The judge’s ruling quashes Finchem’s attempt to get a redo of the secretary of state race.
Hmm, what could possibly make the mortal embarrassment surrounding Donald Trump’s recent MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT even worse? Oh, Satan, please send him more tribulation! Exactly how many albino goats does one have to sacrifice to get you to do one’s bidding? Because the goat viscera is really piling up in the garage, and you can’t put it in the city compost for some reason. Just saying.
So you no doubt saw that Trump’s big reveal was yet another grift—this time in the form of NFTs (nonfungible tokens) that are worth … hmm, I guess whatever Trump says they’re worth. But in reality … hahahaha! … nothing. And not only are they worth nothing, apparently any yob with Photoshop and an Amazon account could have made their own versions.
PC Magazine:
[J]ournalists noticed(Opens in a new window) that at least some of the images for the NFTs relied on photos of clothing you can buy online. For example, an NFT showing Trump wearing a cowboy outfit seems to be based on a duster jacket from Scully Leather, which is sold on Amazon(Opens in a new window) and Walmart(Opens in a new window).
Another NFT of Trump wearing a tuxedo borrows imagery of a suit sold on Men’s Wearhouse.(Opens in a new window) Meanwhile, a separate NFT incorporated a photo of a $49 Western Sports coat […]
PC Magazine also noted that Matthew Sheffield of The Young Turks had located some of the source images for Trump’s NFTs—and they weren’t from Trump’s personal Leonardo da Vinci-style sketchbook.
[…] The Trump fighter jet pilot NFT seems to be a Shutterstock image. Did they license it?
[…] And Sheffield had his own writeup about Trump’s latest grift, which is about as tacky a post-presidential pursuit as one could possibly conjure. Imagine if Jimmy Carter stopped building homes for unhoused people and started selling fake Rolexes out of the back of his van. We’d be horrified. Well, this shit is arguably worse.
The Young Turks:
In a recorded video message to supporters, Trump hailed the artistic quality of the images, which appear to be assembled randomly and automatically by a computer program from a pre-defined collection of backgrounds, costumes, and heads, according to listings on the OpenSea NFT marketplace. According to the Collect Trump Cards website, the NFT graphics were designed by an illustrator named Clark Mitchell.
“These cards feature some of the really incredible artwork pertaining to my life and career, it’s been very exciting,” Trump said in the video, also noting that only a limited number of the virtual cards would be released. He also offered several sweepstakes incentives to people who purchased, including a dinner and a chance to speak to him on the Zoom video conference service.
Several of the paper doll-style images used in the cards appear to be barely modified copies of widely available photos seen on clothing retailer and stock photo websites.
Hmm, maybe the creators of these things learned Photoshop at Trump University. Then again, Trump’s supporters are unlikely to notice the piss-poor quality of this “art.” But they might notice not being able to access it.
LMAOOO they bought ’em, but now they can’t find their stupid trump cards! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
[Example at the link]
We deserve these laughs after all the tears this guy has brought us over the past seven years. It’s been a long slog, but I think we might finally be rid of him soon. Though his defenestration could have been a bit more cinematic, perhaps. This is like if Darth Vader had died in a freak scrapbooking accident in the first act of Return of the Jedi.
On the other hand, this is just perfect. Because it’s quintessential Trump—lazy, gauche, overhyped, and utterly absurd all at once. At least one of these fuck-yous to his fans needs to be on his tombstone.
I pick this one. I mean, what could possibly sum up his life better?
Fuck me, is this really one of the NFTs Donald Trump is offering? #NASCAR
Though his estate might need permission to reprint it, because this one was probably stolen, too:
We did some research and I can say with some degree of confidence that this is Donald Trump’s head on Charles LeClerc’s body. […]
The water managers responsible for divvying up the Colorado River’s dwindling supply are painting a bleak portrait of a river in crisis, warning that unprecedented shortages could be coming to farms and cities in the West and that old rules governing how water is shared will have to change.
State and federal authorities say that years of overconsumption are colliding with the stark realities of climate change, pushing Colorado River reservoirs to such dangerously low levels that the major dams on the river could soon become obstacles to delivering water to millions in the Southwest.
The federal government has called on the seven Western states that rely on Colorado River water to cut usage by 2 to 4 million acre-feet — up to a third of the river’s annual average flow — to try to avoid such dire outcomes. But the states have so far failed to reach a voluntary agreement on how to make that happen, and the Interior Department may impose unilateral cuts in coming months.
[…] Many state water officials fear they are already running out of time.
Ted Cooke, general manager of the Central Arizona Project, which delivers Colorado River water to central Arizona, said that “there’s a real possibility of an effective dead pool” within the next two years. That means water levels could fall so far that the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams — which created the reservoirs at Lake Powell and Lake Mead — would become an obstacle to delivering water to cities and farms in Arizona, California and Mexico. […]
Across the West, drought has already led to a record number of wells running dry in California, forced huge swaths of farmland to lie fallow and required homeowners to limit how much they water their lawns. This week, a major water provider in Southern California declared a regional drought emergency and called on those areas that rely on Colorado River water to reduce their imported supplies.
The problems on the river have been building for years. Over the past two decades, during the most severe drought for the region in centuries, Colorado River basin states have taken more water out of the river than it has produced, draining the reservoirs that act as a buffer during hard times. The average annual flow of the river during that period has been 13.4 million acre-feet — while users are pulling out an average of 15 million acre-feet per year, said James Prairie, research and modeling group chief at the Bureau of Reclamation.
In 1999, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the country, held 47.6 million acre-feet of water. That has fallen to about 13.1 million acre-feet, or 26 percent of their capacity. An acre-foot equals 326,000 gallons, or enough to cover an acre of land in a foot of water.
Federal officials have projected that, as soon as July, the level in Lake Powell could fall to the point where the hydroelectric plant inside the Glen Canyon Dam could no longer produce power, and then keep falling so that it would become impossible to deliver the quantities of water that Southwest states rely on. Water managers say such a “dead pool” is also possible on Lake Mead within two years. […]
The mayor of Kyiv said that water was back on and that the city’s subway service had resumed. President Volodymyr Zelensky urged businesses to help set up more “invincibility centers” for the public.
[…] He called on the local authorities to partner with businesses to create additional neighborhood gathering points, called “invincibility centers,” where people can congregate to keep warm, share news and recharge their cellphones. Powered by generators or emergency electricity supplies, the centers have been set up in administration buildings, in shopping centers and in tents on streets around the country to provide some respite for people living without heating and power in freezing temperatures.
[…] Withdrawing Russian troops destroyed much of Kherson city’s energy and utility systems, but the Ukrainian administration has already restored electricity in most areas, and 70 to 80 percent of the population has running water and heating, she said. Still, up to 10,000 people in an area close to the river’s edge have been living under constant attack with no power, heating or water at all, she said. “The situation there is extremely serious,” she [Halyna Luhova, the head of the city military administration] said. […]
The story made headlines far beyond their affluent community in Toronto. Police called the deaths suspicious, and theories swirled about who might have wanted to kill the founder of Canadian generic drug giant Apotex and his philanthropic wife – one of Canada’s richest couples.
Oh yeah, the wife was were giving away scraps from the wealth his husband was aggressively hoarding, let’s smack the wold “philanthropic” on top of them. Total bullshit. Obviously, they were victims in this case, but other victims are never treated the same way.
The Dempster Highway in northern Yukon can be a lonely drive in winter, but one B.C. couple enjoyed some surprising company for part of their recent journey — a raven that flew along for about 45 minutes.
The bird seemed to be riding a draft by keeping close to the front of the truck. Occasionally, it would disappear from view, alongside the truck or in front, only to appear once again as if it were leading the way down the road.
After a while, Lavoie and Young decided to make a pit stop and feed their cat. The raven also took a break, so Lavoie also offered some Temptations cat treats to their new friend. The bird was eating “almost out of my hand,” he said.
When they hit the road again, the bird did too, and flew along for another 20 minutes or so.
Eventually, another raven swooped in and the two birds flew off together. ..
The intense feelings that believers in religion describe as the sensation of being in the presence of — or being embraced by — God, but where do those strong intuitions come from?
A neuroscientist-turned-computational biologist lays out a provocative theory in his new book, where he argues that the connection to God that some people feel comes from the same neural circuitry behind an infant’s love for their mother…
Oggie: Mathomsays
Apropos of absofuckinglutely nothing:
I keep seeing a commercial for a company that makes shirts that are cut to not be tucked in. The company is called Untuckit. And every time I hear the commercial, I think, “Hmmm. I’ve been to Martha’s Vinyard, Nantucket, and I’ve sailed past the Elizabeth Islands. So where is THAT island?”
December 18, 2022 Celebrating Doris Pilkington Garimara
Today’s Doodle celebrates Doris Pilkington Garimara (born Nugi Garimara) who was an award-winning Martu author. Doris’ work recounts the experiences of the Stolen Generations and their reconnection with Indigenous Australian culture and identity. On this day in 2004, Doris Pilkington Garimara received a Western Australian State Living Treasure award for her writing, which has enriched Australian arts and culture.
The Doodle artwork was illustrated by Warumungu/Wombaya guest artist Jessica Johnson who lives and works on Gadigal land.
Doris’s most renowned book, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence * Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, details her mother Molly’s remarkable escape from Moore River Settlement. Moore River Settlement was a camp for Indigenous people that were forcibly removed from their families as a part of assimilation policies. In 1931, 14-year-old Molly and her two young family members spent nine weeks trekking 1,000 miles of harsh desert to escape. They traveled along a fence that stretched across Western Australia, knowing that their hometown, Jigalong, was on the northern end of the fence. The book concludes with Molly’s return home. But she’d have to make the same journey years later when her family was forcibly taken to the Moore River Settlement once again.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Fragile morale almost certainly continues to be a significant vulnerability across much of the Russian force, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said in its latest defence intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine.
In its daily briefing posted on Twitter, the MoD said soldiers’ concerns primarily focus on very high casualty rates, poor leadership, pay problems, lack of equipment and ammunition, and lack of clarity about the war’s objectives.
It said the establishment of two frontline “creative brigades” tasked with raising the morale of troops through providing entertainment and musical instruments among other things is “unlikely to substantively alleviate these concerns”. [LOL]
Russia may attempt to re-enact a version of its original invasion plans, Ukrainian military officials believe, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned this weekend that Vladimir Putin still has enough missiles to order more heavy strikes.
The Ukrainian president was speaking in the aftermath of the latest wave of missiles to target his country’s critical energy infrastructure after Russia launched 98 rockets at 20 cities and towns on Friday.
Officials said on Saturday, however, that repairs had been speedy with water supply restored throughout Kyiv and two-thirds of the capital now connected to electricity while the country’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv, had been reconnected to the grid after suffering a total blackout.
The infrastructure update arrived as a Ukrainian military commander warned Russia may again attempt to seize Kyiv after invading from Belarus in the north, potentially around the late February anniversary of when Putin first ordered his troops to invade.
The people the Greeks called Scythians were formidable warriors and nomads who dominated the Eurasian steppe for more than 1,000 years from about 800BC – long before the creation of national borders.
The fabulous gold weapons and ornaments they left behind ended up in museums across the region, many of them in Ukraine. Since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February, however, much Scythian gold – along with millions of other priceless artefacts – has been looted or “evacuated”.
Serhii Telizhenko, of the National Institute of Archaeology in Kyiv, who has been monitoring the wave of destruction, said he realised there would be losses after the invasion, “but I could not imagine the scale”.
Tunisia has recorded the lowest electoral turnout in its recent history after President Kais Saied’s suspension of parliament and subsequent redrawing of the country’s political map.
Officials at the country’s Instance Supérieure Indépendante pour les Élections (ISIE) announced the final tally of votes in the legislative election as 8.8%, though this may increase slightly as additional votes are tabulated.
Since suspending parliament in July of last year, Saied has introduced a new constitution, greatly reducing the prominence of the country’s political parties, who he characterised as enemies of the people. He reserved particular ire for the Ennahda movement, which has dominated the political scene since the country first led the wave of regional protests against autocracy in 2011.
In the place of traditional parties, on whom Saied has placed much of the blame for the withering economy and ingrained unemployment, the president has encouraged individuals to run in the election on programmes intended to serve their immediate community. The result, 1,055 self-funded candidates competing for 161 seats, has led to a unique electoral contest, with many voters unsure of who was running and a number of constituencies only featuring a single candidate on the ballot.
…
With many political parties absent, the buildup to the vote has been remarkably low-key, with some voters not even aware that an election was taking place.
“I don’t have any hope,” dentist Lamia Kamoun said, explaining that she hadn’t decided whether to vote. “I had hope in the country, not now … Things have got worse,” she said.
…
Announcing the tally, the ISIE president, Farouk Bouasker, appeared to channel the rhetoric of Saied, who has made great play of conspiracies, attributing the low turnout to “the absence of corrupt political money”.
Initial results should be announced on Monday, with the final results not expected until January. The new body is not expected to sit before March, after tied or close contests are rerun.
Max Gallien, from the Institute of Development [sic] Studies, tweeted that Tunisia is “on track to deliver the lowest turnout of any election in modern global history, with half the participation of the previous record holders (Haiti 2015 at 18%, Afghanistan 2019 with 19%).”
Tunisia’s Salvation Front opposition coalition called for Saied to quit on Saturday, saying he had lost his legitimacy given the turnout.
The Front, made up of several political parties including the Islamist Ennahda, which was the biggest party in the previous parliament, called for “massive protests and sit-ins” to demand new presidential elections.
Although opposition groups have previously attacked Saied’s political programme, they had not before said he should quit office.
“What happened today is an earthquake,” said Front leader Nejib Chebbi. “From this moment we consider Saied an illegitimate president and demand he resign after this fiasco,” he said.
He added there should be a short transitional period under a judge followed by presidential elections and a national dialogue.
Taraneh Alidoosti, one of Iran’s most famous actors, has been detained by security forces in Tehran days after she criticised the state’s use of the death penalty against protesters.
She had previously posted a picture of herself on her Instagram page in which she was not wearing the hijab and holding a piece of paper reading “women, life, freedom” – the slogan that has come to encapsulate the fight against the current Iranian regime.
Alidoosti is regarded as one of the most influential Iranian actors of her generation, and her arrest is a sign that the state wants to crack down on celebrities, artists and sports personalities who have used their platform to challenge the regime.
…
Alidoosti has won multiple awards in her career, most notably when The Salesman, in which she starred, won an Oscar for best foreign film in 2016….
Imagine a former U.S. president who, after being summarily tossed out of office by the electorate, incited a pre-planned, all-out assault on the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the election that removed him — an assault which resulted in multiple deaths and millions in property damage — and then doubled down on his rejection from office by enthusiastically propagating a lie that the election was fraudulently decided against him. And then, imagine him sending this message to his base of known violent supporters, after the legal walls began to crash in on him.
“Our Country is SICK inside, very much like a person dying of Cancer. The Crooked FBI, the so-called Department of ‘Justice,’ and ‘Intelligence,’ all parts of the Democrat Party and System, is the Cancer. These Weaponized Thugs and Tyrants must be dealt with, or our once great and beautiful Country will die!!
[Trump posted that on TruthSocial on December 17th, yesterday.]
It’s far long past time that this country stop treating this person as it has been treating him for the past two years— as some sort of distressing anomaly or curiosity to be tolerated and managed, and instead treat him like any other person who makes calculated, violent threats against our justice system and the people who uphold it. Trump occupies a peculiar place in our history, one that should by any reasonable measure hold him to a higher standard of behavior. That is an implicit bargain that an elected official submits to — willingly or not — when he is placed in an office of public trust. The fact that Trump refuses to accept that precept doesn’t negate it; rather, it makes its enforcement all the more critical.
We have to stop coddling this guy or making excuses for him. We have to stop tolerating the excuses others make for him. He’s a menace, a clear and present danger, deliberately trying to be cute and clever by couching his terminology in a twisted and grotesque simulation of what he thinks will pass as “patriotism.” And wrapping himself in the cloak of what he thinks will pass muster as “free speech.”
But this isn’t patriotic. Read it again in the context of someone who incited an insurrection against a lawful election, and keeping in mind the person who is saying this, his position, and his implicit (and explicit) duty and responsibility:
The Crooked FBI, the so-called Department of ‘Justice,’ and ‘Intelligence,’ all parts of the Democrat Party and System, is the Cancer. These Weaponized Thugs and Tyrants must be dealt with, or our once great and beautiful Country will die!!
And please don’t pretend that “dealt with” means anything less than what is obvious. This isn’t a message of complaint or protest against government overreach or malfeasance, in the context of who is delivering it. It is a threat, from a former president and a now-declared candidate for the same office.
This is sedition, and it’s an evocation — and exhortation — to violence and terrorism to achieve that.
Garland and Smith, please. Do. Your. Jobs.
ravensays
Here is an article about why Elon Musk will fail at Twitter.
“There is no pivot in which Musk suddenly becomes serious and starts acting like a normal executive. The frenzied, callous, throwing-ideas-at-the-wall boss from hell you see on Twitter is the one people actually get in Musk world. It’s always been that way. Somehow, during a bull market, in a decade when tech was on top of the world and he was the king of it — that style worked. Now it won’t.”
Musk has also received many billions of dollars of government subsidies and government tax breaks. He isn’t going to get those at Twitter.
Quite a few of his companies have gone nowhere. That would be the Boring company, the home robot company, Neuralink, and maybe Solar City.
Tesla bought Solar City in 2016 from his cousins, and it is part of Tesla. I couldn’t find any information about whether it is profitable or not.
Elon’s stale playbook At Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk was a jerk with a grand vision. At Twitter, he’s just a jerk.
Elon musk juggling a Tesla car and rocket, with Twitter logos falling behind 2×1
Without a big, world-changing vision to distract from his sophomoric product ideas and erratic management, Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover is doomed. Bill Pugliano/Getty Images;
Linette Lopez Insider
Dec 18, 2022, 3:37 AM
Elon Musk has a pretty tried-and-true playbook for doing business — he’s used it for years to build companies from Tesla to SpaceX. Unfortunately for him, it is not a model that can turn Twitter into a profitable company. It’s one that will take the social-media company down in flames.
Here’s the Musk playbook: Enter a field with very little competition. Claim that your new company will solve a massive, global problem or achieve a seemingly impossible goal. Raise money from a fervent group of true believers and keep them on the hook with flashy, half-baked product ideas. Suck up billions from the government. Underpay, undervalue, and overwork your employees. Repeat.
Twitter is the antithesis of an “Elon Musk company.” It’s an influential but small player in a field that is dominated by giant, well-funded competitors. The government is more likely to put the clamps on Twitter than give it some windfall contract. And Twitter’s employees have options: They can leave and work for companies that treat them much better than Musk ever would.
But perhaps most importantly, a lot of people think Twitter — and Musk’s ownership of the company — is part of a global media problem, rather than some grand solution. And without a big, world-changing promise to paper over his sophomoric product ideas and erratic management, Musk’s Twitter takeover is doomed.
Elon is trying to run the same playbook
Musk’s Twitter takeover has led to a lot of shocked pearl-clutching, but if you’ve been paying attention to his businesses at all over the past decade, the brutal slash-and-burn approach he’s taken is unsurprising.
Take his callous treatment of Twitter’s employees. The stories coming from the company’s San Francisco headquarters are certainly ugly: thousands of workers fired days before Thanksgiving, brutal working schedules that have pushed the remaining employees to sleep in the office, and a general culture of fear and mistrust. The lack of respect for his employees is galling, but across all of his business ventures, Musk has proven himself to be a miserable boss. Tesla and SpaceX are known for their grueling workplace culture. SpaceX agreed to pay employees $4 million in 2016 as part of a settlement after they sued the company for failing to provide work breaks and adequate wages.
Tesla factory workers have been intimidated by the company for trying to unionize, and as part of the union push, workers at its California factory said in 2017 they were underpaid compared to their unionized autoworker peers. Tesla has for years been castigated for safety violations at its factories, and has already been hit with lawsuits for its treatment of construction workers at its new Texas plant. And of course, there’s the racism that Musk refused to do anything about. A judge ruled in 2021 that Tesla had to pay $137 million to a Black man who was subjected to racist taunts while working as an elevator operator at the company’s factory in Fremont, California.
This chaotic management stands in contrast to the goals that Musk claims his companies are capable of achieving. Right now, Musk is making big promises about what the future of Twitter will look like to entice people to the platform: amazing video tools, 4,000-character-count tweets, a suite of premium features, an end to annoying bots. These sort of product teases are also standard for any Musk-led Tesla presentation. In 2019, he promised that the company would have “over 1 million robo-taxis on the road” by the next year. So far, Tesla has none. More than two years after taking initial orders, the faithful are still waiting for their Cybertrucks. Even products that do materialize, like Tesla’s Model 3, arrive years later than promised. And as it was being built, employees complained to me that Tesla’s lack of planning and testing in building the Model 3 line led to sloppiness and defects down the road.
Back in 2016, Musk used a sham product launch to convince Tesla shareholders to acquire SolarCity — a solar-energy company that at the time was helmed by Musk’s cousin. Musk, his brother, and SpaceX were heavily invested in SolarCity and were about to take it on the chin as the once fast-growing company went bankrupt. In the lawsuits that followed, emails revealed that Musk staged a flashy launch for a solar-roof-tile product that didn’t exist, misleading Tesla shareholders about SolarCity’s prospects to convince them to acquire the company and absorb its losses. SolarCity has been a headache for Musk and Tesla shareholders.
At previous stops in his career, Musk’s employee-punishing, product-pushing plays worked. Customers seemed satisfied with what he gave them, and he was able to keep around enough workers to eventually build the cars or mount the solar panels or launch his rockets into space. This made him, until recently, the world’s richest man. But with Twitter, this same behavior is already costing him. The social-media company has key differences from his other holdings that turn Musk’s own strategies against him.
O come all ye faithful
At the core of every Musk company is a big, world-changing promise — they sell the idea that their products and services are saving humanity from some intractable problem, whether it’s climate crisis or traffic. But Musk’s promises track more with religion — he has been sent to save us from our earthly sins of waste and pollution — than with science. Think about it a bit and the idea that a luxury sports car can save us from global warming or that the answer for the Earth’s toxification is to move everyone to Mars falls apart, but that isn’t the point. The goal of all this mythmaking is to turn investors, employees, and customers into evangelists.
This is how Musk manages to keep employees on the hook despite the miserable conditions: They are made to feel as if they are saving the world. You can see how this won’t work the same way at Twitter. Its employees joined a company with values very different from Musk’s so-called “free-speech absolutism.” They’re used to a pre-“hardcore” culture in which they could take personal days (the horror!) instead of sitting through late-night meetings or submitting to the random whims of the CEO. And if they want to stay in the industry, they have options: The broader employment market is still strong, and as my colleague Aki Ito reported, many laid-off tech workers are having no problem finding new jobs, some with even higher salaries than their previous stops. Even at Tesla — where he is most relentless about his mythmaking — this grueling pace made for extraordinarily high turnover, especially for employees who had to deal with Musk regularly. One former senior employee told me that the culture shift when Musk took over at Tesla was like when Voldemort’s Death Eaters took over the halls of Hogwarts. Do not be surprised if more Twitter employees head for the exits.
For Musk, having a mission is key, because having a mission attracts money. It allows him to rope in governments, which are more than willing to outsource their intractable problems. Despite his complaints about government subsidies, Musk’s companies are dependent on them. A Los Angeles Times review in 2015 revealed that he had taken over $4 billion in government funding at that point. And since then, Tesla has received billions in government-created regulatory credits from combustion-engine-car companies, over $1 billion in tax breaks and grants to build out more factories in Nevada and New York, billions in contracts for SpaceX, and even payroll benefits from the pandemic stimulus bill. Even his more far-flung ideas have soaked up government cash. According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, The Boring Company, Musk’s tunnel-based solution to urban traffic, has been trying to collect government subsidies all over the country (and in Canada) despite only building a single tunnel in Las Vegas.
Selling the dream is what turned Tesla’s stock into a superstar since it went public. People bought Tesla to be part of Musk’s mission. It didn’t matter that the company only became profitable last year, or that it had an unreliable lineup of vehicles, or that more-established automakers were poised to catch up to its technology. Any journalist or investor who questioned Musk or his mission then — just like now — was subject to bullying and harrassment. The evangelists, the faithful, made Tesla the most valuable car company in the world (for now) based on how Musk said it would change the future. Call me cynical, but I don’t see that happening for Twitter. Musk may claim he bought the company in the name of free speech all he wants, but unlike with his other ventures, he simply does not have enough people out there — be they the media, his customers, his employees, or his users — who believe.
No time to waste
A Musk company is usually the first, and sometimes the only, company in a specific market. Tesla, for most of its existence, has been the sexiest option for high-end electric cars. SpaceX has little competition when it comes to delivering payloads to space. Doing business in a field without competitors (and with generous investors) creates room to test new technologies, and sometimes fail at them. Musk tried to make an auto factory without human workers, and ended up having to trash billions of dollars worth of useless robots when it didn’t work (just like industry experts told him it wouldn’t). To make up for the lost time and space, Tesla ended up having to set up a very human-run manufacturing line in a tent outside its California factory.
There won’t be as much time for these monkeyshines at Twitter. I probably don’t need to tell you that it is not at the top of the social-media pecking order. The company — which derives over 90% of its revenue from advertising — has been squeezed by larger competitors like Facebook and Google and lapped by newer, hotter platforms like TikTok. In other words, advertisers don’t need Twitter if they want to reach people. Revenue is shrinking, but Twitter still has to pay $1.3 billion in debt annually for its own leveraged buyout. Twitter has never made $1.3 billion in a year, and Musk has never run a company in this situation. In the past, he has had time — and money from investors — to burn. And even with all of these advantages, he still almost bankrupted Tesla in 2018.
The house of Musk has never weathered an economic downturn. Both Tesla and SpaceX rode decade-long economic-boom cycles with interest rates set at zero to gain the footholds they have today. Now that the economy is slowing down, debt is getting more expensive to take on, and money is becoming more scarce. To pay Twitter’s bills, Musk will likely have to sell some of his most liquid assets — Tesla shares. This year the stock has fallen by half, and the prospects for growth tech stocks are worsening next year as the Fed continues to raise interest rates. Demand is weakening in China, a huge market for Tesla, and the company brand is hurting as a result of all of Musk’s social-media antics. To deal with these headwinds, any competent CEO needs to have a plan. Based on his most recent quarterly calls with investors — the ones where he is supposed to talk about plans to make more money — Musk does not have one.
There is no pivot in which Musk suddenly becomes serious and starts acting like a normal executive. The frenzied, callous, throwing-ideas-at-the-wall boss from hell you see on Twitter is the one people actually get in Musk world. It’s always been that way. Somehow, during a bull market, in a decade when tech was on top of the world and he was the king of it — that style worked. Now it won’t.
Lynna @ #117, yes, as I noted @ #114, people in the responses pointed out that the Musk tweet Ioffe was responding to was fake, so I assume she deleted hers. With journalists, it’s usually safe to assume that they saw the original tweet firsthand, but on occasion they’re probably seeing it second-hand and making the same assumption. I would ordinarily scroll down and read some of the responses before sharing, but I was pre-tea.
ravensays
I still haven’t quite found out if Solar City, now a Tesla subsidiary is profitable.
This article says probably not.
And, the solar powered roof shingle was fake and still doesn’t exist.
POWERING THE FUTURE Why Tesla’s solar business has not yet taken off as Elon Musk promised
PUBLISHED WED, OCT 6 20218:30 AM EDTUPDATED WED, OCT 6 20218:03 PM EDT
Lora Kolodny @LORAKOLODNY Jeniece Pettitt @JENIECEP edited for length
Why Tesla has struggled with its solar business
In this article
It’s been five years since Tesla acquired SolarCity for around $2.6 billion.
To convince shareholders to approve the deal, Elon Musk hosted a splashy event in Hollywood, where he held up a shiny roof shingle, which he said was a miniaturized solar panel.
SolarCity was founded in 2006 by Musk’s cousins, Peter and Lyndon Rive. It was backed by Musk who served as chairman of the board at both Tesla and SolarCity. Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, had also purchased tens of millions of dollars worth of solar bonds from SolarCity.
The roof tiles were going to be the next big thing in residential solar, according to Musk, and once Tesla and SolarCity combined, the product would juice the company’s growth while delivering clean energy to homeowners.
After the deal went through, however, new installations by Tesla-SolarCity plummeted.
In the fourth quarter of 2017, Tesla reported a 43% drop in solar deployments compared with when it purchased SolarCity. The company ended up losing its market-leading position in 2018 and now hovers around 2% of the residential solar market, according to Wood Mackenzie. In the first and second quarters of 2021, Tesla installed 92 and 85 megawatts of solar, respectively. That’s less than half of what SolarCity was installing per quarter before the acquisition.
Messi is wandering around in disbelief. A huge stoned smile across his face. High on life. No wonder. He’s at the top of the world. But spare a thought for poor Kylian Mbappe, who has just scored a hat-trick in the World Cup final, only to find himself on the losing side. He looks bereft. When the pain subsides … and it will take a while … he’ll look with satisfaction upon his stellar contribution to the greatest World Cup final of all time. Because it was, wasn’t it? What a story! What performances by Messi and Mbappe! What a final.
Never mind the “existential threat” posed by the “satanic” West, this propaganda video tells Russian men the real reason why they should sign up to fight in Ukraine: so they can buy their teenage daughter a new smartphone
Subtitled video at the (Twitter) link. A union is obviously out of the question.
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican has defrocked an anti-abortion U.S. priest, Frank Pavone, for what it said were “blasphemous communications on social media” as well as “persistent disobedience” of his bishop.
A letter to U.S. bishops from the Vatican ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Christophe Pierre, obtained Sunday, said the decision against Pavone, who heads the anti-abortion group Priests for Life, had been taken Nov. 9, and that there was no chance for an appeal.
Pavone had been investigated by his then-diocese of Amarillo, Texas, for having placed an aborted fetus on an altar and posting a video of it on two social media sites in 2016. He posts frequently about U.S. politics and abortion, and the video of the aborted fetus was accompanied by a post saying that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic platform would allow abortion to continue and that Donald Trump and the Republican platform want to protect unborn children…
Today, Terrell and Brown are announcing waitlist signups for Spill, which they describe as “a real-time conversational platform that puts culture first.” They expect that the platform will launch in about six to eight weeks.
As Black creatives and technologists working in social media, Terrell and Brown have watched as Black women, queer people and other diverse communities have powered new trends on platforms like Twitter and TikTok, only to be overlooked. In the same way that Black founders are unfairly dismissed in venture capital, Black content creators have had their work stolen and earn fewer brand deals than white creators, studies have shown…
Yet Another candidate for Twitter replacement. Since I was never a serious Twitter user I will not offer opinions on which might succeed.
snarkratessays
Raven@119, I would add that the $4 billion in government subsidies doesn’t include his heavy use of the expertise of government subject-matter experts on which he has relied heavily.
Yesterday, Mark Sumner noted that over a week of panic over Bakhmut seemed to have culminated, with Ukraine back in control of many of its recently lost positions (including the hilariously mistranslated “wine factory” and the ever-present trash dump.) It is a seemingly dramatic turnaround from last week, when both Russian and Ukrainian telegram were reporting the collapse of entire Ukrainian defensive lines.
I certainly wasn’t panicking, and I didn’t even buy the situation was any more dire than usual. Yes, Ukraine was giving up ground, but that’s not particularly noteworthy, not if you’ve seen Ukraine’s urban defensive strategy. Here is me writing about the defense of Severodonetsk:
On the first day of its assault, Russia declared control of 80% of the city as Russian sources gloated over a mass Ukrainian retreat. Chechen leader/puppet Ramzan Kadyrov took to TikTok to declare the entire city liberated. From all indications, it appeared Ukraine was doing the sensible thing—a fighting retreat to Lysychansk, behind its river, to its higher ground.
Then a funny thing happened. Reports claimed Ukraine had laid a trap, lulled Russia into the city’s center under a false sense of security, then pounced. There were claims that Ukraine had recaptured 50-70% of the city […]
Ukrainian special forces reportedly operate at night, clear blind Russians from their positions, then retreat when Russia responds with its typical smash-everything artillery barrage. With nothing but rubble left standing, Ukraine is no longer restricted by its desire to protect urban infrastructure. Thus, Ukraine can now rain its own artillery and mortar fire from Lysychansk’s high ground anytime Russian forces expose themselves amidst the rubble.
This is what’s called a “flexible defense,” and we’ve seen it time and time again—trade territory for blood, then take advantage of Russia’s unprotected advance positions and undeveloped supply lines to push them back to original positions. Bakhmut is no different, as this interesting report from that front makes clear.
[Ukraine] Holding the first line of trenches (the ‘trip line’ as it was known in German terminology) at all costs is avoided. This leads ‘to artillery damage and significant losses for the defenders.’ Instead, ‘Defensive units should be able to withdraw to reserve positions, and surveillance should be strengthened on attack routes. And then even if someone [enemy] manages to advance under fire to an advanced position, there will be losses… positions from the flanks must be able to cut off the approach of significant enemy forces, and the situation can be restored by a counter-attack of the tactical reserve with armoured vehicles.’
‘It makes no sense to hold a position until the last while the enemy bombards it, and constantly replace people in this position […]
So Ukraine holds the trash dump, but retreats as Russia rains artillery on the location. Russia’s Wagner mercenaries push into the dump and declare victory. They celebrate on Telegram and TikTok as the Ukrainian side despairs [Nope]. Things are tough, and tenuous, and Russia is advancing, Bakhmut is in danger! Oh no, even the “wine factory” is in Russia’s hands!
In reality, those Wagnerites at the vanguard are now exposed, facing Ukrainian concealed defensive positions, as a wall of Ukrainian artillery hinders both the advance and the ability to resupply those troops. Take a look at what that looks like: [Tweet and video at the link]
Wagner doesn’t care much. They are happy to trade the lives of their prison cannon fodder to reveal Ukraine’s concealed defensive positions. In turn, Russian artillery can then pound those spots while the next wave of doomed infantry are lined up.
Thing is, the Wagner assaults can only run so long before they run out of steam, and when that happens, Ukraine is happy to retake their original front lines. So today, Ukraine is back at the trash dump. Yes, this “flexible defense” comes at a cost, but Russia’s is far higher. [Tweet and video images at the link. “I reported yesterday that this Russian position got hammered. Today, Ukrainian troops have retaken the position. The dead bodies of the Russian soldiers were still lying on the ground as recorded by the drone. […] Once the barrage ended an Ukrainian drone checked the situation. At least 16 dead Russians can be seen.”]
The body count at the end is graphic. Today, Ukraine is back in control of that trench complex. And who knows, maybe Russia will muster up a new attack, and Ukraine can then abandon those positions in their flexible defense, and we can repeat the whole bloody affair all over again.
Bakhmut isn’t in danger because Ukraine can’t hold their lines. It’s in danger because Ukraine is happy with the status quo. Ukraine had an entire army group in Kherson oblast not too long ago. Where are they now? We know some of those units relieved the Bakhmut garrison, but not all of them, just enough to hold the line, while sending the bulk of those free forces to wherever their next offensive will take place.
Ukraine is happy to let Wagner burn through Russia’s entire prison population around the town. Heck, Russia’s Ministry of Defense seems happy to let Wagner bleed out in Bakhmut (while attriting Ukrainian forces and ammo.) There is clearly no love lost between the rival armies. But if the town was truly in danger, there are no shortages of Ukrainian reserves to rush into town, nor artillery assets to bring to bear.
[…] If you missed it, Mark’s update yesterday had a ton of good stuff, including more background on Wagner that informs much of what is happening in Bakhmut.
Russia is a bleak place.
The relatives of missing Russian and ‘LDPR’ soldiers are being targeted by scammers, including fortune-tellers, “white magicians” and fake journalists, while soldiers themselves say hundreds have been left wounded on the battlefield for days without help or evacuation. The independent Russian media outlet Verstka reports that after relatives post about their missing loved ones on social media sites, they are often contacted by strangers offering to help them for fees of thousands of dollars, or asking explicitly for ransoms. […] Another similar scam involves someone posing as a member of the Wagner mercenary group involved in negotiating prisoner exchanges. The person invited relatives to transfer money to the account of an apparent career criminal in Novosibersk. […]
You have to be a real ghoul to prey on grieving families.
YouTube link to Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.”
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #129…
About the ghoul remark. I get a lot of (scam) telemarketing calls. Many for my late wife. To forestall the ghouls, when they ask for my wife, I tell them that she is no longer at this number (which is true). If pressed, I state that I do not have a new number for her (also true).
ravensays
Lynna #129
Russia is a bleak place.
Yeah, no kidding.
Human life is cheap and meaningless in Russia.
This is noted by anyone who has ever dealt with them, especially the former captive nations.
Tweet
Jay in Kyiv @JayinKyiv
Thread:
Ukrainians on front line are now referring to enemy as “meat waves”.
100’s of Russians are dropped directly on front line, all killed, next day it repeats.
Strategy seems to be an effort to use up Ukrainian ammunition.
This is exactly what Russia did in World War II.
Human waves of “soldiers” many of which didn’t even have rifles. The idea was they were supposed to pick up the guns of those in front of them who get shot.
The USSR claims 25 million dead in World War II. Likely true and likely that many of those millons were needless deaths. 7 million of them were…Ukrainians, where much of WW II was fought.
You have to be a real ghoul to prey on grieving families.
You are quite literally a real ghoul to send all those young men to their deaths for more or less nothing.
ravensays
Tweet
Mats Bengtsson @MatsLBengtsson
Replying to
@robinFenn5
and
@JayinKyiv
Not only prisoners. There are probably very few of them left anyway.
I saw an interview with a Wagner platoon commander. He said they started out with 90 men, and now there were 20 of them left. The chances of surviving the 6-month contract was in his estimate slim to none.
More on Russia’s view of human life.
These are prisoners mostly.
It gives you an idea of what Russian prisons are like that they end up joining Wagner.
whheydt @132 and raven @133, yep. All too true. It’s depressing. raven is right to say, “You are quite literally a real ghoul to send all those young men to their deaths for more or less nothing.”
Ron DeSantis is a ghoul for using the Florida state government to basically arrange for more Floridians to die thanks to his promotion of misinformation about COVID vaccinations.
We’ve now reached the mass censorship phase of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. On Sunday, Twitter announced that they will now be banning tweets that contain “links or usernames” on the competing social platforms “Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.”
The change in Twitter policy is likely meant to stem a flood of departures from Musk’s now-unstable platform […]
How did we get here? Musk is having a very public crisis and making it everybody else’s problem, that’s how.
[…] Musk is allowing the far-right hoax promoters behind “Pizzagate” and other conspiracies that led to real-world violence back on the site, but reporters who have long been a thorn in Musk’s side for reporting on Tesla’s woes and Musk’s past aggressive targeting of enemies are being scrubbed from his site. That includes Musk critics who seemingly didn’t link to anything about “Elon’s Jet” at all, but criticized him in other ways. [Some of those journalists have since been reinstated.]
This led to another surge of Twitter users fleeing to Mastodon and other social networks over the weekend. And that swiftly led to a new Musk-Twitter policy: No! You can’t do that!
As Musk himself was photographed attending the World Cup final in the company of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner on Sunday, Twitter Support issued the new edict. The company will now be banning tweets that contain “links or usernames” referring to Twitter’s most consequential social media competitors.
At the moment, the list of banned competitors consists of “Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.” The Twitter policy page explaining the new Musk rule specifies that on both tweets and user accounts, “we will remove” any content “such as linking out” to any of those platforms. Examples of banned speech on Twitter:
• “follow me @username on Instagram”
• “username@mastodon.social”
• “check out my profile on Facebook – facebook.com/username”
• “instagram dot com/username”
Multiple offenses “will result in permanent suspension.”
As Musk flails around like a well-beached salmon, let us take this time to note that all of this is deeply damn funny. Elon Musk announced himself to be a free speech warrior when he bought the place. He brought back vaccine conspiracy theorists, elevated the voices of white supremacist groups, and celebrated the return of election hoaxers whose actions led directly to an attempted coup against the United States government—including the coup’s leader, Donald Trump.
And now he’s banning references to Trump’s competing social platform because he’s VERY ANGRY that the people he most wants to “own” are fleeing his site in droves rather than putting up with a site in which Elon’s personal conspiracy theories and hate groups have free rein while journalists who point out Elon’s long, long history of breaking labor laws get axed.
[…] Stop leaving, libs!
I’ve said it before, but: Congratulations, internet. You went up against the once-richest man in the world and utterly broke him using nothing but memes and light criticism. Musk had a well-curated public persona in which he was a can-do-anything ultra-genius; the moment he stepped out of that curated space and into public decision making he erased all of that hard promotional work and exposed himself as the self-indulgent, self-obsessed, flighty, sometimes-criminal high-on-his-own-farts boor he always was.
Sound familiar? Of course it does, it’s been the song of American life for a great many years now. It also needs to be mentioned that Musk’s latest move is yet again to do something that’s explicitly illegal in the European Union, and the culmination of all of these abuses has a nontrivial chance of making Twitter a non-viable company everywhere in the EU. The Federal Trade Commission also has a say in all of this, but so far they’ve been moving rather slowly—possibly because they’re still searching for anyone inside Twitter who’s still employed there and can return their calls.
ravensays
These are typical Russian tactics.
There was a famous tank battle in World War II where Russia just lined up hundreds of tanks and sent them towards the German positions.
The Germans destroyed most of them.
And, then they ran out of ammunition and the remaining tanks rolled over them.
I can’t remember the name but it might have been this one.
“The Battle of Kursk was the largest tank battle in history, involving some 6,000 tanks, 2,000,000 troops, and 4,000 aircraft. It marked the decisive end of the German offensive capability on the Eastern Front and cleared the way for the great Soviet offensives of 1944–”
It’s noteworthy and not at all coincidental that there’s some overlap between the researchers discussed by Joseph and those discussed in the article @ #130.
Ah, the NYT:
Corporate media reporting of false-alarm “schizophrenia gene discoveries” has a long history, and continues to the present day. A widely reported yet non-replicated schizophrenia gene association was published in 1988 by the Sherrington group, who believed they had found “the first strong evidence for the involvement of a single gene in the causation of schizophrenia.” A November 10, 1988, front-page New York Times article about this study proclaimed, “Schizophrenia Study Finds Strong Signs of Hereditary Cause.” The Times also reported subsequently non-replicated schizophrenia gene discoveries in 1995, 1997, 2002, 2006, 2008, and 2013, with headlines such as “Brain-Tied Gene Defect May Explain Why Schizophrenics Hear Voices,” “Schizophrenia May Be Tied To 2 Genes, Research Finds,” “Schizophrenia as Misstep by Giant Gene,” and “Study Ties Genetic Variations to Schizophrenia.” Retractions are few and far between.
This is the clearest declaration of weakness I’ve ever seen from a major US tech platform, and a transparent declaration of anticompetitive intent that a GC would set themselves on fire to prevent (if somebody had that job at Twitter)….
OMG – the State Department’s statement on the Tunisian “elections” begins:
The parliamentary elections that took place in Tunisia on December 17 represent an essential initial step toward restoring the country’s democratic trajectory. However, the low voter turnout reinforces the need to further expand political participation over the coming months….
Turnout was 9%!
Oggie: Mathomsays
raven @137:
There was a famous tank battle in World War II where Russia just lined up hundreds of tanks and sent them towards the German positions.
The Germans destroyed most of them.
And, then they ran out of ammunition and the remaining tanks rolled over them.
I can’t remember the name but it might have been this one. [Kursk]
It could not have been at Kursk. At Kursk, the German Army, in an attempt to regain the initiative after Stalingrad, attempted to pinch off a major bulge in the Russian lines. Unfortunately, intelligence assets in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, leaked plans for the offensive to the Russians. Additionally, it was a painfully obvious place to attempt a minor offensive. The Russians packed the bulge with multiple lines of defense, both fixed positions and mobile armoured units. The Germans bled themselves against both the northern and southern parts of the bulge and then lost much of eastern Ukraine in the Russian’s follow-on offensive.
I have read extensively in European military history. I have my degree in the same. And the only battle I can think of that comes even close to this was the beginnings of the final offensive to take Berlin. The Red Army faced initial heavy defenses which crumbled under Soviet artillery bombardments combined with ammunition shortages for artillery, anti-tank guns, and even machine guns and rifles.
That said, the Russian tactics in WWII (as I have discussed earlier) were extremely wasteful of human life. The Western armies chose a technology heavy approach which was extremely wasteful of weapons and munitions, but achieved victories with far fewer Allied losses. Additionally, Western armies were far more likely to take prisoners, and the prisoners were far more likely to survive, assuming, of course, that the German soldiers survived the massive expenditure in bombs, shells, bullets, and tanks by the western armies.
whheydtsays
Re: Oggie: Mathom @ #143…
One–possibly apocryphal–story had a US commander, faced with taking a hill heavily defended by the Germans, ordering a massive artillery attack and saying, “I’m going to let the tax payers take this hill,” as an alternative to ordering a, probably, expensive (in casualties) infantry attack on it.
The German forces neared Prokhorovka, 54 miles southeast of Kursk, but before they could attack the Soviets countered on 12 July with a force of five tank brigades, leading to one of the largest tank battles in military history. Although the Soviets suffered heavy loses they prevented the Germans from breaching that all-important third defensive belt.
and
Wikpedia Battle of Prokhorovka
Ground engagement
In total, about 500 tanks and self-propelled guns of the 5th Guards Tank Army attacked the positions of the II SS-Panzer Corps on 12 July,[119] doing so in two waves, with 430 tanks in the first echelon and 70 more in the second.[104][120]
Down from the slopes in front of Prokhorovka, the massed Soviet armour charged with five tank brigades of the 18th and 29th Tank Corps, firing as they came at Leibstandarte’s positions.[121] As the Soviet tanks rolled down the slopes, they carried the men of the 9th Guards Airborne Division on their hulls (“tank desant”).[119] The troops of Leibstandarte were not slated to go into action until later in the day. Exhausted from the previous week’s fighting, many were just starting their day at the outset of the attack.[88][122] As the Soviet armour appeared, German outposts all across the corps’ frontage began firing purple warning flares signalling a tank attack. Obersturmbannführer Rudolf von Ribbentrop, commander of a panzer company under the 1st SS-Panzer Regiment, stated that he knew at once a major attack was underway.[78] He ordered his company of seven Panzer IVs to follow him over a bridge across an anti-tank ditch. Crossing the bridge they fanned out on the lower slope of Hill 252.2. On the crest of the hill, Sturmbannführer Joachim Peiper’s 3rd Panzergrenadier Battalion of the 2nd SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment were being overrun.[123][124]
As Ribbentrop’s tanks spread out, he and the 1st SS-Panzer Regiment were suddenly confronted by Soviet tanks of the 29th Tank Corps’ 31st and 32nd Tank Brigades:[125] “About 150–200 meters in front of me appeared fifteen, then thirty, then forty tanks. Finally there were too many of them to count.”[123][126] The Soviet armour, firing on the move, charged down the western slopes of Hill 252.2 into the panzer company, and a tank battle ensued.[123] Rotmistrov’s tactic to close at high speed disrupted the control and co-ordination of the Soviet tank formations and also greatly reduced their accuracy.[88] In a three-hour battle, the 1st SS-Panzer Regiment engaged the attacking Soviet tanks and repulsed them, reporting that they destroyed about 62 Soviet tanks.[127] Later that afternoon, tanks from the 31st Tank Brigade and the 53rd Motorized Brigade overran elements of the 1st SS-Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion and reached Komsomolets State Farm, threatening Leibstandarte’s lines of communication and the division’s command post located at Hill 241.6. The Soviet tanks attacked the division’s 1st SS-Panzer Artillery Regiment, killing some of the crews before they themselves were destroyed by direct fire from anti-tank teams.[127][128]
Oggie: Mathomsays
whheydt:
The actual event may be apocryphal, but the idea behind it has been the US Army’s (and Air Force, Navy and Marines) doctrine since mid-World War II. We tend to wage war in ways that are very sparing of US lives, but extremely deadly to soldiers on the other side (as well as civilians in the zone of conflict).
whheydtsays
Re: Oggie: Mathom @ #146….
Plus, at least during WW2, I think said tax payers would have been happy to exchange some of their taxes for the survival of US troops. (I should probably note that both my father–as an instructor in the Maritime Service–and my father-in-law–as an instructor of Army Air Corps pilot cadets–were in uniform during WW2, though neither were anywhere near any combat.)
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
A Russian drone attack caused “fairly serious” damage in Kyiv region on Monday and three areas in the region have been left without power supply, governor Oleksiy Kuleba has said. Russia unleashed 35 “kamikaze” drones on Ukraine in the early hours of Monday as many people slept, hitting critical infrastructure in and around Kyiv in Moscow’s third air attack on the Ukrainian capital in six days.
Ukraine’s air force says it shot down 30 out of 35 Russian-launched Shahed drones overnight. The Iranian-made Shahed-136/131 kamikaze drones were reportedly launched from the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov, the force added.
…
Rishi Sunak has touched down in the Latvian capital, where he is meeting northern European allies to discuss countering Russian aggression. He will urge fellow leaders of the Joint Expeditionary Force to stand firm in their support for Ukraine, after announcing a major new artillery package for the war-torn nation.
…
Ukraine’s forces are holding on to the heavily contested eastern city of Bakhmut, according to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “The Bakhmut direction is key,” he said in his latest national address. “We keep the city, although the occupiers are doing everything so that not a single undamaged wall remains there.”
Also from there:
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, asked western leaders meeting in Latvia to ramp up the supply of a wide range of weapons systems to his country.
Addressing a meeting in Riga of leaders of countries in the Joint Expeditionary Force, which included Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, Zelenskiy said:
Russian aggression can and must fail. The task now is to make sure it happens faster. I call upon you to do everything to accelerate the defeat of the occupiers.
Millions were left without heat and water after Russia launched further attacks using Iranian drones last night, he said.
He continued:
May I ask you to increase the possibility of supplying air defence systems to our country… 100% air shield for Ukraine, that would be one of the most successful steps against Russian aggression and this step is required right now.
A few minutes ago:
An air raid alert has been issued across Kyiv and most of Ukraine, according to officials….
A Jeremy Clarkson column in the Sun about the Duchess of Sussex has provoked outcry online, with social media users labelling it “vile”, “horrific” and “abusive”.
In an article for the paper published on Friday, Clarkson wrote that he loathed Meghan “on a cellular level”. He said he was “dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”.
He added: “Everyone who’s my age thinks the same way.”
The comments have drawn widespread condemnation….
Examples at the link. Running alongside the Guardian’s near-daily piece explaining how “the diversity and inclusion struggles of rich, famous people say little about the country as a whole outside the lives of those rich, famous people.”
Sending asylum seekers to Rwanda ‘consistent with refugee convention and Human Rights Act’, says high court
And here is the key quote from the summary of the judgment.
The court has concluded that, it is lawful for the government to make arrangements for relocating asylum seekers to Rwanda and for their asylum claims to be determined in Rwanda rather than in the United Kingdom. On the evidence before this court, the government has made arrangements with the government of Rwanda which are intended to ensure that the asylum claims of people relocated to Rwanda are properly determined in Rwanda. In those circumstances, the relocation of asylum seekers to Rwanda is consistent with the refugee convention and with the statutory and other legal obligations on the government including the obligations imposed by the Human Rights Act 1998.
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, says she wants to press on with the Rwanda deportation policy “as soon as possible” in the light of today’s court judgment. She made the comment in one of several tweets on the ruling, saying: “My focus remains on moving ahead with the policy as soon as possible and we stand ready to defend against any further legal challenge.”
Braverman notoriously told an event at the Tory party conference that having a Telegraph front page showing a plane with asylum seekers on it leaving the UK for Rwanda was her “dream” and “obsession”.
Confirmation: Elon Musk’s Twitter poll says he should step down as chief executive of the social media company.
There were 17,379,819 votes. 57.5% were in favour. 42.5% were against.
snarkratessays
I think Jeremy Clarkson needs to be shunned by every woman on the planet (as well as the 10% of males who aren’t assholes)–in addition to many years of therapy. That is one, sick, sick fantasy.
Labour and Lib Dems urge government to abandon ‘unworkable, unethical, extortionately expensive’ Rwanda policy
Responding to the high court judgment, Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said the government should abandon the Rwanda policy because it is unworkable and expensive. She said in a statement:
The Rwanda scheme is a damaging distraction from the urgent action the government should be taking to go after the criminal gangs and sort out the asylum system. It is unworkable, unethical, extortionately expensive.
Ministers have already written a £140m cheque to Rwanda without the policy even starting, with millions more promised even though Home Office officials say there’s no evidence it’ll provide a deterrent and it risks making trafficking worse.
The Rwandan government has said it can only process 200 people a year – or 0.5% of Channel crossings this year.
And the Liberal Democrats have also renewed their call for the government to abandon the policy, on the same grounds. This is from Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dems’ home affair spokesperson.
Whether or not it is lawful, the Conservatives’ Rwanda asylum plan is immoral, ineffective and incredibly costly for taxpayers.
It will do nothing to stop dangerous Channel crossings or combat people smuggling and human trafficking; instead it will give criminal gangs more power and profits.
The Conservatives are betraying the UK’s proud tradition of providing sanctuary to refugees fleeing war and persecution, and breaching our commitments under the 1951 UN refugee convention.
The House Jan.6 committee is expected to formally adopt its final report and vote on possible criminal referrals Monday at a public meeting. It’s the culmination of the committee’s nearly 18-month investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
CBS News will air the proceedings as a special report at 1 p.m. ET on CBS television stations and its streaming network.
Following the meeting, the committee is expected to release an executive summary of the report, details on expected criminal referrals and additional information about witnesses who have appeared before the group, a committee aide told CBS News. While the committee is expected to make criminal referrals, the members have not confirmed who they will refer to the Justice Department for potential prosecution. In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland named Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s own probe into alleged efforts to interfere with the transfer of power in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, one of the members of the committee, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he believes, as a former prosecutor, that they have collected “sufficient” evidence to charge former President Donald Trump.
Another committee member, Rep. Jamie Raskin, told CBS “Sunday Morning” earlier this month that “people are hungering for justice and for accountability and consequences here.”
“I know that people feel that we need to make sure that accountability runs all the way to the top. Just because you’re elected president, or used to be president, does not give you the right to engage in crimes freely,” said Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland….
Sweden’s Supreme Court on Monday blocked the extradition of exiled Turkish journalist Bulent Kenes, a key demand by Ankara to ratify Stockholm’s NATO membership.
There were “several hindrances” to sending back the former editor-in-chief of the Zaman daily, who Turkey accuses of being involved in a 2016 attempt to topple President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the court said.
Some of the accusations against Kenes are not crimes in Sweden, which along with the political nature of the case and his refugee status, made extradition impossible, the court added.
“There is also a risk of persecution based on this person’s political beliefs. An extradition can thusly not take place,” judge Petter Asp said in a statement.
As a result, “the government… is not able to grant the extradition request.”
Kenes is the only person Erdogan has identified by name among dozens of people Ankara wants extradited in exchange for approving Sweden’s NATO membership.
Following decades — or in Sweden’s case centuries — of staying out of a military alliance, the two countries made the historic decision to apply to join NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Apart from Hungary, which is due to ratify Sweden’s and Finland’s membership in early 2023, Turkey is the only country to threaten to prevent the two countries from joining NATO.
Turkey, which has accused Sweden especially of providing a safe haven for outlawed Kurdish groups it deems “terrorists” has held back on ratifying their NATO applications despite reaching an agreement with Sweden and Finland in June.
Ankara says it expects Stockholm in particular to take tougher action on several issues, including the extradition of criminals.
…
Stockholm has repeatedly stressed that its judiciary is independent and has the final say in extraditions.
In early December, Sweden extradited to Turkey a convicted member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who had fled to Sweden in 2015 but had his asylum request denied.
Kenes, who now works for the Stockholm Center for Freedom — an association founded by other Turkish dissidents in exile — told AFP Monday that he was “happy” with the decision, saying the allegations against him were “fabricated by the Erdogan regime.”
“I’m sure that the Erdogan regime will produce some other methods against me here in Sweden and make my life difficult as it can be,” he added.
Ankara has over time increased the number of people it wants extradited: first 33, then 45, then 73, in unofficial lists published by media close to the Turkish government….
The Proud Boys’ seditious conspiracy trial opens Monday in federal district court in Washington, D.C., where five top members of the violent far-right group stand accused of a leading role in the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
The high-stakes trial, which is expected to take at least six weeks to complete, will cover the breadth of the Justice Department’s investigation into the fascist street gang and its alleged plot to upend the 2020 election. Those facing charges include Enrique Tarrio, the gang’s longtime chairman, and four other leaders accused of coordinating and participating in the attack: Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola.
But the implications of this case extend beyond the fate of five extremist leaders and their actions surrounding Jan. 6. It will measure the federal government’s overall response to the Proud Boys — whose six-year parade of violence and bigoted harassment continues today — and the broader extremist threat they represent.
The relationships they’ve secured in law enforcement, right-wing media and the upper crust of the GOP have landed them in a comfortable and supported place in American politics. Their ongoing efforts have served to normalize violence as a justified option in right-wing political campaigns.
In essence, this is as much a case about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, as it is about the crises of political violence and extremism at large. [That sentence could have done with some editing.]
“The continued efforts of Proud Boys after Jan. 6 to create chaos and incite violence locally and nationally is indicative of the risk the group continues to pose to the safety of communities and individuals across the country,” said Dr. Cassie Miller, senior research analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center, in a statement released over the weekend.
She continued: “It is of the utmost importance that the Proud Boys, and all those who helped plan and perpetrate the attack on Jan. 6, be held accountable. Without such accountability, our democracy will continue to be at risk.”
The DOJ has already built an expansive case against the group, with evidence that includes their communications via text and social media, and hours of video showing their movements on Jan. 6.
But there could be some new, bombshell revelations once Proud Boys members take the stand in January. The DOJ has secured plea deals from several top Proud Boys, whose testimony could shed new light on the gang’s ties to the GOP — and, more specifically, Donald Trump’s inner circle — in the lead-up to the insurrection.
…
Despite their leaders in prison awaiting trial, the Proud Boys and other extremist groups have continued to mobilize on the grievances of the GOP and right-wing media. Throughout 2022, they’ve brought violence and harassment to Roe v. Wade demonstrations, events featuring drag queens, abortion clinics and children’s hospitals that feature trans health care programs. Many of these events feature violence at the hands of Proud Boys, who often come armed and alongside other violent factions, including neo-Nazi groups, according to a Vice News investigation.
Meanwhile, GOP leadership has yet to issue a full-throated condemnation of the Proud Boys’ dirty work, or that of their allies. In fact, Republicans have embraced the same brand of political violence as a platform for the party’s future.
Republican leaders joined white nationalists at an annual gala put on by the New York Young Republican Club earlier this month in Manhattan, where they declared “total war” on the left, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets,” NYYRC President Gavin Wax said onstage….
More sick people… “Here’s @KimDotCom and @elonmusk making fun of Ukrainians having no electricity or heat, as they suffer freezing in the winter. Any more questions?”
EU energy ministers have agreed to a gas price cap, a spokesperson for the Czech presidency of the EU, Dmitrij Černikov, said.
ravensays
Kari Lake is a sore loser.
She wants to lock up all the Maricopa (Phoenix) county election officials.
She also made a bunch of vague threats against a bunch of people.
The Hill
Kari Lake calls for imprisoning Maricopa County election officials
Zach Schonfeld
Sun, December 18, 2022 at 7:52 PM PST·3 min read
Defeated Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake called for Maricopa County election officials to be “locked up” on Sunday as Lake gears up to contest her opponent’s certified victory in court hearings this week.
Speaking to a crowd of young conservatives at Turning Point USA’s America Fest, Lake discussed her election contest at length, repeating unproven allegations about both the 2020 presidential election and Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs’s (D) victory last month.
“These people are crooks, they need to be locked up,” Lake said of Maricopa County election officials, after listing off a series of largely disproven claims about election fraud.
Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous jurisdiction that includes Phoenix, has become an epicenter for allegations of voter disenfranchisement after some Election Day vote centers experienced printer malfunctions.
As the new Congress prepares to begin in a couple of weeks, Rep.-elect George Santos stands out as a unique figure. The 34-year-old New Yorker, elected in a Long Island district that President Joe Biden won fairly easily two years earlier, became the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent.
Now, however, he appears likely to be known for something else entirely. The New York Times reported this morning:
By his account, [Santos] catapulted himself from a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved more than 2,500 dogs and cats. But a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters.
…
…This is less a story about a young politician who tweaked his résumé with some mild exaggerations, and more a story about an incoming congressman who appears to have engaged in radical public deceptions about who he is.
Voters were told, for example, that Santos attended NYU. The school has no record of a student matching his name or birth date. He also said he graduated in 2010 from Baruch College, which also “could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.”
The Republican then supposedly worked at Citigroup as “an associate asset manager.” The finance giant has no record of his employment — or his supposed title. He also claimed to spend some time at Goldman Sachs, which came as a surprise to Goldman Sachs.
Santos claimed to help run a tax-exempt organization that the Internal Revenue Service has never heard of, and also claimed to own a company — the Devolder Organization — that is “something of a mystery.” The Times added, “And while Mr. Santos has described a family fortune in real estate, he has not disclosed, nor could The Times could find, records of his properties.”
Not to put too fine a point on this, but the article seems to characterize Santos as having run a successful congressional campaign while touting a personal narrative that was effectively fiction.
The New York Republican wouldn’t respond to the newspaper’s questions, and when a reporter went to his ostensible address — where is registered to vote — the person who answered the door yesterday said “she was not familiar with him.”
The list of questions surrounding reporting like this is not short, but let’s start with this one: Is it too early to talk about whether Santos should resign?
While we’re at it, what is it about contemporary Republican politics that makes it a haven for so many suspected con men?
Finally, how is it possible that Democratic officials in New York failed to uncover this before Santos won by eight points in a relatively “blue” district?
After finishing this piece I have questions re NY-3 Rep-elect George Santos:
– Where does he reside
– What is his real name
– What is his profession
– What did he do before 2019
– Where did his money come from
– What is the most recent crime he committed
The full report from the January 6 House committee might not be released today, but we already have a pretty good idea of what it’s going to look like.
It will be lengthy publication, befitting the 18-month investigation into Donald Trump’s insurrection that included testimony from more than 1,000 witness interviews, a review of more than one million documents, and an analysis of hundreds of hours of video.
Sources close to the inquiry say the report will feature an executive summary and eight chapters, although Politico reported last week that it’s also likely to include appendices that capture more aspects of the investigation, and findings from all of the select committee’s five investigative teams.
Here are the outlines of the expected eight chapters, which Politico says will align closely with the evidence the panel unveiled during its public hearings in June and July:
– Donald Trump’s effort to sow distrust in the results of the election.
– The then-president’s pressure on state governments or legislatures to overturn victories by Joe Biden.
– Trump campaign efforts to send fake, pro-Trump electors to Washington from states won by Biden.
– Trump’s push to deploy the justice department in service of his election scheme.
– The pressure campaign by Trump and his lawyers against then-vice president Mike Pence.
– Trump’s effort to summon supporters to Washington who later fueled the 6 January mob.
– The 187 minutes of chaos during which Trump refused to tell rioters to leave the Capitol.
– An analysis of the attack on the Capitol.
It’s possible we might not see publication of the committee’s full, final report until later this week, possibly on Wednesday. But the panel will vote on its release later today.
As NBC News reported, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian “dismissed his[Republican Mark Finchem’s] misconduct allegations with prejudice — barring them from being brought back in another court — and called some of his claims ‘fatally flawed.’”
In other news about Republicans, and about a Democrat who seems to be leaning toward the Republican point of view: a Washington Post report yesterday briefly noted that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “frequently” advises Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, and I can’t decide whether to find that surprising or not.
…What the NYT did find was a long string of frauds, a history of unpaid rent and several highly questionable business dealings in Brazil, Florida and New York. Santos claims his family owns New York rental properties — and complained that during the pandemic the rents went unpaid by their tenants, yet his financial disclosure forms do not include any such property listings.
Among the many unanswered questions raised by the NYT article are the mysterious source of the financial resources that Santos suddenly seems to have obtained beginning in 2019. His company, The Devolder Organization, has no discernable assets or clients yet it seems to have been able to pay Santos a salary of $750,000, more than 10 times the verifiable earnings from Santos previous confirmed employments.
The NY Times piece ends with a tantalizing reference to the $40,000 Santos spend on travel during his campaign, including a trip to Florida where he stayed in the 5 star Breaker’s Hotel, just 3 miles from Mar-a-Lago.
Wonkette: “GOP Rep-Elect George Santos Might’ve Made Up His Resume, Whole Life”
Republican Rep.-Elect George Santos flipped New York’s Third congressional district in November. President Joe Biden carried the district by eight points in 2020, but Democratic incumbent Thomas Suozzi retired to run for governor. Democrats already had a governor who wasn’t a creep so they stuck with Kathy Hochul. Santos’s decisive victory over Democrat Robert Zimmerman is part of the party’s New York state collapse that helped Republicans clinch a very narrow House majority.
Santos and Zimmerman are both openly gay, which is a first in US history. Thursday, at that sad Log Cabin Republican event in Mar-a-Lago, Santos boasted, “We’ve shattered the glass ceiling, and we’ve shown the radical Left that there are gay conservatives who actually stand for freedom.” This resulted in an adorable back-and-forth with Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu, who reminded Santos that just last week, “169 of your Republican colleagues voted to deny you the freedom to marry someone of the same sex or of a different race. Have fun caucusing with them!” [Tweet and image at the link]
Santos snapped back, “Sorry to tell you that not all gays think alike. I challenge your antiquated thought process and reject your disdain for my beliefs. You should be ashamed. But I know you won’t be.” Is Santos suggesting that not all gay Americans support their own basic civil rights? An overwhelming majority of all Americans support marriage equality, and only a minority of annoying bigots oppose it. Lieu is not the one who should feel ashamed.
Responding like an offended gentleman from a Jane Austen novel, Santos wrote, “Dr. Ted Lieu, my Husband made sure I reminded you that our right to marry was never challenged. I do however look forward to working with you on lowering inflation and crime across our beloved country with the same enthusiasm.”
Oh yes, the old trope that Democrats use “identity politics” as a frivolous diversion from “real” issues that impact Americans, such as inflation, the border crisis, and CVS’s supply of butt plugs. Santos presumably doesn’t keep up on current events, because conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas openly targeted same-sex marriage rights when dancing on Roe v. Wade’s grave this summer. When joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, there was a full-blown Fox News freak out.
Santos was the one talking about gay conservatives standing for freedom. Lieu just pointed out that Democrats are the ones who’ve consistently ensured that gay Americans can live freely.
[…] the Times looked into Santos’s background — perhaps a couple months too late — and discovered:
Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the marquee Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. […]
There was also little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, was, as Mr. Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: The Internal Revenue Service could locate no record of a registered charity with that name.
DID HE LIE ABOUT THE PUPPIES AND KITTENS?
Santos’s self-described family firm, the Devolder Organization, has no public website or LinkedIn page. That’s fine for one of those exclusive New York speakeasy bars, but it’s questionable for an actual consulting company. The Times could also find no record of Santos’s expansive real estate holdings.
The Times reports that Santos has a criminal record in Brazil, where he confessed to stealing the checkbook from a man his mother was caring for as a nurse. He was 19 and this was the distant past of 2008. […]
Perhaps most repulsively, Santos claimed his very real company “lost four employees” at the Pulse nightclub shooting. There is no evidence that this is true.[…]
Democrats should play hardball on Santos, though, because they could likely flip back his seat in a special election. […].
I snipped some of the details that SC had presented earlier.
The Thai navy says 31 sailors are missing after a warship carrying more than 100 crew capsized and sank during a storm in the Gulf of Thailand.
HTMS Sukhothai sank after water flooded its power controls on Sunday night. Images shared by the navy showed some crew who survived in a life raft.
On Monday, authorities said they had rescued 75 sailors, but 31 were still missing in rough seas…
Akira MacKenziesays
Work update:
I had a chance to talk to my supervisor today, and it seems that my situation isn’t as bad as I thought. Seems my tendency to catastrophize my troubles made an ass of me… again.
Thanks for all the suggestions and well wishes to everyone.
Wilmington, Delaware — President Joe Biden and his family held a private memorial service Sunday to mark the 50th anniversary of the car crash that killed his first wife and their baby.
Central New York native Neilia Biden, 30, and the couple’s 13-month old daughter, Naomi, were killed when their car was struck by a tractor-trailer in Delaware as she took the kids to pick out a Christmas tree on Dec. 18, 1972. The couple’s two sons, Beau and Hunter, who were just about to turn 4 and 3 at the time, were seriously injured in the crash.
Joe Biden had just been elected to the U.S. Senate in November of that year and was in Washington, D.C., setting up his new office at the time of the accident…
“Bling” Bishop Lamor Whitehead — the flashy Brooklyn pastor who made headlines earlier this year when he was robbed at gunpoint during a church service — was arrested by federal agents Monday for allegedly defrauding a member of his congregation, among other charges.
Whitehead — who preaches a “prosperity gospel” at his Canarsie church, drives a Rolls-Royce and often wears pricey jewelry and Gucci suits — was indicted on two counts of wire fraud, one count of extortion, and one count of making material false statements, federal prosecutors said.
[…] At the outset of today’s “business meeting” — this, technically, was not a hearing — Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chairman, told the public, “[B]eyond our findings, we will also show that evidence we’ve gathered points to further action — beyond the power of this committee or the Congress — to help ensure accountability under the law. Accountability that can only be found in the criminal justice system.”
As the meeting concluded, the panel acted on that very point. My MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin reported:
The House Jan. 6 committee has decided to recommend the Justice Department pursue criminal charges against former President Donald Trump, including obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiring to make false statements, and insurrection.
Not surprisingly, the committee’s support for the criminal referrals was unanimous.
As today’s proceedings made clear, the bulk of the focus was on the former president and what Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin described as the “more than sufficient evidence” to refer the matter to federal prosecutors. But the committee also made clear that, as far as congressional investigators are concerned, Trump isn’t the only one who broke the law.
There were, for example, multiple references to attorney John Eastman. An executive summary of the Jan. 6 committee’s report also added, “Kenneth Chesebro was a central player in the scheme to submit fake electors to the Congress and the National Archives,” though Chesebro’s name did not come up during today’s presentation on Capitol Hill.
Similarly, the summary points to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani as also allegedly having conspired to defraud the United States.
[…] As MSNBC’s Rubin explained in an item published this morning, such referrals “are just that — referrals. If you’re expecting them to automatically lead to charges against former President Donald Trump, you should temper your expectations.”
[…] Federal prosecutors make their own decisions about which cases to pursue, and while Congress is free to make suggestions, such requests have no force of law. It’s unlikely that today’s developments will, in and of themselves, make prosecutions more likely.
[…] it’s important to understand that the Jan. 6 select committee isn’t just making hollow recommendations about possible criminal charges; investigators are also providing the Justice Department with extensive evidence — evidence that prosecutors may not have already seen — that could be used in upcoming cases.
I lost count of how many times I heard members on the dais this afternoon reference the word “evidence” — and unfortunately for Team Trump, all of that substantiated proof is headed to Main Justice.
What’s more, I’ve long believed that it’s not enough to simply point at evidence of alleged crimes, leaving it to others to assess. Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team tried that, releasing a fairly detailed report that highlighted all kinds of misconduct, and to this day, Trump and his followers continue to pretend that the Mueller report “exonerated” the former president, reality be damned.
In other words, there’s public value to making clear that the former president, during his White House tenure, allegedly obstructed an official proceeding, conspired to defraud the United States, conspired to make false statements, and incited an insurrection. Even if federal prosecutors already have reason to suspect this, a criminal referral helps bring the seriousness of the legal dispute into sharp relief for American citizens.
[…] the historical weight of the circumstances adds a degree of significance that shouldn’t be quickly brushed aside.
No congressional committee has ever formally recommended federal criminal charges against a former American president. That’s precisely what happened this afternoon.
An excerpt from today’s January 6 Committee meeting, providing details we didn’t know before about Ronna McDaniel:
January 6 Committee Claims RNC Chair Agreed To Provide ‘Assistance’ To Fake Electors Scheme
The introduction to the final select committee report contains a notable detail about Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. Much of the introduction focuses on a plan concocted by conservative lawyer John Eastman to send slates of pro-Trump “fake electors” to Congress in the hope Vice President Mike Pence would certify them on Jan. 6, 2021. The committee implicated McDaniel in the scheme:
“Anticipating that the Eastman strategy for January 6th would be implemented
President Trump worked with a handful of others to prepare a series of false Trump electoral slates for seven States Biden actually won.
President Trump personally conducted a teleconference with Eastman and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel ‘a few days before December 14’ and solicited the RNC’s assistance with the scheme. McDaniel agreed to provide that assistance.”
According to the committee, Eastman’s own correspondence indicates he knew the “fake electors plan” was illegal.
[…] Cheney invokes George Washington, a symbol of America’s ironclad tradition of an orderly transition of power.
“Every president in history has defended this orderly transfer power. Except one.”
That guy spent hours watching a violent riot at the Capitol on television.
1:22 “This was an utter moral failure and a complete dereliction of duty” Cheney says somberly. “No man who would do that can ever be in power again.”
Cheney thanks the Capitol Police, as the camera pans to those in the audience, as the committee throws to a highlight reel of the violence and testimony from the prior hearings.
[…] Rep. Zoe Lofgren is up describing Trump’s false declaration of victory on election night and calling to stop count the votes, something he long planned to do, then his efforts to disseminate false allegations of fraud.
Lofgren describes offers by Trump’s allies to give cushy jobs to potential witnesses and pay their legal fees — offers that evaporated when those witnesses wouldn’t play ball.
Lofgren describes the ample evidence presented to Trump that he had lost the election, that there was no substantial fraud to effect the outcome of the election.
“Donald Trump knew and corruptly repeated election fraud lies, which incited his supporters to violence on January 6.”
Now Rep. Adam Schiff is up to detail the state pressure campaign, evidence for the potential obstruction of congress and conspiracy to defraud the US charges. Schiff points to the call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and testimony from Arizona legislator Rusty Bowers that Rudy Giuliani was all over him like white on rice to reverse Biden’s win.
When Trump and his minions realized they couldn’t win in the courts, they ginned up the fake electors and induced them to submit the fraudulent certificates. And when civil servants like Ruby Freeman paid the price — facing death threats and harassment.
[…] Half the White House heard Trump scream at Pence on the morning of the 6th and call him a “wimp” and a “[P-word].” And the whole world heard him blame Pence for his electoral loss in his speech to the armed mob on January 6, then saw the tweet egging the mob on against the vice president when the mob was already inside the Capitol.
[…] Trump always intended to lead the mob in the march on the Capitol. […] “In sum, President Trump lit the flame, he poured gas on the fire, and he sat by for hours watching that fire burn. That was his extreme dereliction of duty.” [said Rep. Elaine Luria]
[…] Rep. Jamie Raskin, a constitutional scholar, will now discuss the criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
He announces that they’re referring Trump and Eastman for violating: 18 USC § 1512(c)’s ban on obstruction of official proceeding; 18 USC § 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States; 18 USC § 1001, false statements; and 18 USC §2383, which penalizes those who foment insurrection and give aid or comfort to those who do so shall be imprisoned and banned from holding office.
Raskin says that Trump had a duty to ensure that the laws of this country be faithfully executed, and “nothing could be a greater betrayal of this duty than to assist and aid in an insurrection.”
Raskin says there will be other referrals as well. [Hmmm. That’s interesting.] […]
From the closing summary of the Guardian liveblog:
…Vladimir Putin has travelled to Belarus to meet the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, as fears grow in Kyiv that Moscow is pushing its closest ally to join a new ground offensive against Ukraine….
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, held talks with his Belarusian counterpart, Sergei Aleinik, in Minsk earlier today ahead of Putin’s visit to Minsk….
Belarus’s defence ministry said it had completed a series of inspections of its armed forces’ military preparedness, hours ahead of Putin’s visit to Minsk…. [LOL]
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine was ready for “all possible defence scenarios” against Moscow and its ally. “Protecting our border, both with Russia and Belarus, is our constant priority,” Zelenskiy said on Sunday after a meeting with Ukraine’s top military command. “We are preparing for all possible defence scenarios.”
The exiled Belarus opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, has warned that the chances of Minsk sending soldiers into Ukraine “may increase in coming weeks”. Kyiv was “right to prepare” for Minsk to join Moscow’s new offensive because the probability “might increase in coming weeks”, Tsikhanouskaya said in an interview with Kyiv Post.
The head of Moldova’s security service, Alexandru Musteata, has warned of a “very high” risk of a new Russian offensive towards his country’s east. Russia still aims to secure a land corridor through Ukraine to the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, Musteata said, adding that his agency believed Moscow was looking at several scenarios to reach Moldova and that it was possible an offensive would be launched in January-February or later in March-April….
Recognizing him for his “relentless contributions to the weariness of humanity,” Time has named Elon Musk the Most Exhausting Person of 2022.
In bestowing the title on Musk, Time cited the Twitter C.E.O.’s “nonstop but fruitless efforts to fill the yawning chasm of his soul by seeking the attention of indifferent strangers.”
In order to win the Most Exhausting crown, Musk bested a formidable list of contenders, including Kanye West, Kari Lake, and Senator Joe Manchin.
Most impressive, he wrested the titled from Donald J. Trump, who had won the honor every year from 2016 to 2021.
The Time editors’ decision drew no immediate response from Musk, who was preoccupied with a Twitter poll asking his followers what he should have for lunch.
Today, quick looks at Russia’s ever-shrinking war effort, failing drone attacks, and the defense of Soledar, near Bakhmut.
Russian artillery tells the story of their ever-shrinking war effort. [map of shelling locations at the link]
There are Russian nuisance artillery strikes on civilian targets in Kherson in the south, near Zaporizhzhia east of there (I can finally spell “Zaporizhzhia” without looking!), and around Kharkiv in the north. Russia is a terrorist state.
But the real action is around Bakhmut, Kreminna, and Svatove. Bakhmut is the only place where Russia is seriously attempting to advance, and the latter two are under serious pressure from methodically advancing Ukrainian forces. It’s quite a change from Russia’s original grand plans. Remember this? [March 16 map at the link]
In that first month of the war, Russia pushed up from Crimea toward Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih, and Mariupol. They pushed west from Luhansk and Donetsk in occupied Donbas. They pushed south from Belarus toward Kyiv and Chernihiv, pushed through Sumy toward Kyiv, and pushed down toward Kharkiv. It was a five-axes attack, with multiple lines of attack in each axis, and it was all far more than Russia’s rickety armed forces and logistics system could handle in the face of fierce and determined Ukrainian resistance. That’s why today, the mighty Russian army is down to a single axis—the Donbas—and even there, it is struggling to hold ground.
Unable to win on the ground, Russia decided to try to terrorize Ukraine into submission, launching a series of rocket, missile, and drone attacks to seriously degrade Ukraine’s electrical and heating grid ahead of the cold winter. Yet last night, Ukraine shot down 30 of the 35 killer drones Russia sent toward Kyiv, and even more air defense is flooding into Ukraine from its Western allies. Russia’s terror campaign is relegated to pretty much this: [Tweet and images at the link: “Last night an #Iranian kamikaze drone destroyed the home of an elderly couple in the #Kyiv region”]
One wonders just what this war might look like if Russia struck military targets instead of attempting to terrorize a population into submission. Russia, of all countries, should know that that rarely works. [Tweet and video at the link]
Western and Ukrainian sources both claim Russia is running out of ballistic missiles, and while Iranian drones are plentiful, Ukraine has gotten really good at shooting them down. One effective tool in their anti-drone arsenal is pickup trucks.
Mykolaiv National Guard fighters created a launcher with PK machine guns to destroy enemy drones. For mobility, it was installed on a pickup truck. It has already shot down three Shahed-136 drones. [images at the link]
These Iranian drones are slow and lumbering, and while their low flight path helps them avoid traditional air defense missiles, it makes them extremely vulnerable to a large network of these mobile air defenses. This is war—new developments spur innovations, then countermeasures, then counter-countermeasures, and so on. The era of the cheap terror drone is already coming to a close.
That’s not to say that these drones won’t continue being a nuisance to Ukraine, and incredibly deadly to people who lose homes or family members to them. But as a strategic factor, the best that can be said about these drones is that they delayed the end of the war by several months as Ukraine prioritized air defenses in their requests from allies.
Yes, Ukraine asked for both air defenses and offensive weapons, but there are political, financial, logistical, and material reasons for allies to prioritize certain weapons systems over others. For example, Ukraine will reportedly soon get a Patriot air defense system (it was supposed to be announced yesterday, but it hasn’t happened yet). That system costs $1 billion. For comparison, that would buy 172 Leopard 2 tanks at $5.75 million each. It would buy nearly 9,000 GMLRS rockets for HIMARS/M270.
The Western allies have been reluctant to provide Ukraine with NATO-standard battle tanks, likely for logistical reasons we’ve repeatedly discussed. So given the choice between Ukrainian requests for air defense or main battle tanks, it seems everyone was happy to jump on the air defense bandwagon. Logistical challenges still apply, but maintaining a handful of batteries is likely easier than hundreds of tanks. And given their locations far behind enemy lines, they might even be maintainable by defense contractors.
If you were following the blow-by-blow of the Battle of Bakhmut last week, you might remember that Russian forces reportedly penetrated a few blocks of the city’s eastern residential neighborhood. Those reports were true. Here is drone video of Ukrainian forces pushing those Russian/Wagner troops out. [video at the link]
I wish I could read the captions, but the overall gist is clear, as is the overall scale of Bakhmut’s destruction. I found it particularly noteworthy that the Russian vanguard was hung out to dry. Russian artillery is too inaccurate to fire anywhere near frontline troops, but I saw no mortar fire hitting the counterattacking Ukrainian forces, and certainly no armor support. They never had a chance. (Yesterday’s update details how Ukraine is defending the city.)
Yet as Bakhmut proper seems relatively secure for the moment, and lines south of the city equally strong, there is increasing worry about next-door Soledar. [map at the link]
Russia has shifted much of its recent attention to the Soledar approach, hoping to isolate Bakhmut from the north, and putting that supply road heading northwest out of Bakhmut under fire control. As always, this is a lot of work and blood for a city with limited strategic value, but Russia is desperate for anything they can call a victory after months of humiliating defeats.
Here, a Ukrainian tank is destroyed by Russia in that Soledar area. Luckily, it looks like the crew got out. It’s tough work. [video at the link]
Russians holding the edge of Soledar aren’t having a much better time of it. [video at the link]
And this is quite the story, following combat medics supporting Soledar’s defenders. This video has scenes of battlefield injuries, so discretion is advised. [video at the link]
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said the situation in four areas of eastern Ukraine – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – that Moscow illegally annexed in September was “extremely difficult”….
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Tuesday condemned Iran’s support for Russia in its war in Ukraine and the ongoing repression of opposition in the country, but said the EU would continue to work with Iran on restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal….
Ukraine is accelerating efforts to erase the vestiges of Soviet and Russian influence from its public spaces by pulling down monuments and renaming hundreds of streets to honour its own artists, poets, soldiers, independence leaders and others – including heroes of this year’s war. Following Moscow’s invasion that has killed or injured untold numbers of civilians and soldiers and pummeled buildings and infrastructure, Ukraine’s leaders have shifted a campaign that once focused on dismantling its Communist past into one of “de-Russification”.
China says Chinese-Russian naval drills beginning on Wednesday aim to “further deepen” cooperation between the sides whose unofficial anti-western alliance has gained strength since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, AP reports. The drills will be held off the coast of Zhejiang province south of Shanghai until next Tuesday, according to a brief notice posted Monday by China’s eastern theatre command under the ruling Communist party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army.
…
Asked about Putin’s comment dismissing the prospect of Russia “absorbing” Belarus, US state department spokesperson Ned Price said it should be treated as the “height of irony”, given it was “coming from a leader who is seeking at the present moment, right now, to violently absorb his other peaceful nextdoor neighbour”. He added that Washington would continue to watch very closely whether or not Belarus would provide additional support to Putin and would respond “appropriately” if it does.
…
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Georgia on Monday to allow its jailed former president to go abroad for treatment to safeguard his health.
Mikheil Saakashvili, president of Georgia from 2004 to 2013, was initially credited with implementing reforms. He was later sentenced to six years in prison on abuse of power charges his supporters say are politically motivated….
NASA’s InSight Mars lander has sent what will likely be its final communication from the Red Planet, posting a picture of its dust-covered seismometer on Twitter accompanied by a tear-jerking farewell message.
“My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send,” the message read.
“Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene.
“If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will — but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.”
InSight — which stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport — landed on Mars in November 2018 tasked with studying the make-up of the planet’s interior and monitoring meteorite activity.
Its landing site, on a volcanic plain near the equator known as Elysium Planitia, was chosen for its flat, featureless landscape, allowing for more accurate seismic measurements to be taken directly from the surface.
A good robot that saw and explored and taught us much with all its human team.
PS. We have severe storms forecast for Adelaide again tomorrow morn. Last time I lost power for three days & nights at my place – much longer for some others – plus in just thel ocal council area there was over $3 million in damages done. Oh & homes badly damaged and cars destroyed. No lives lost that time. It’ll get worse and we all know it. Though some still deny reality.
More than 60 cross-party MPs have written to the Sun’s editor, Victoria Newton, to demand an apology and “action taken” against Jeremy Clarkson for a column where he said the Duchess of Sussex should be paraded through the streets naked.
In a letter, they said Meghan had received credible threats to her life and that columns such as Clarkson’s contributed to an “unacceptable climate of hatred and violence”.
The letter, co-ordinated by the Conservative chair of the women and equalities select committee, Caroline Nokes, was signed by Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, Green and SNP MPs, including the Conservative chair of the Treasury select committee, Harriett Baldwin, Labour’s Harriet Harman and Caroline Lucas of the Green party.
…
The Sun has since withdrawn the column at the request of Clarkson, but a statement from him promising to be more careful in future has been criticised for not including an apology.
In their letter, Nokes and the other MPs tell Newton they “condemn in the strongest possible terms the violent misogynist language … This sort of language has no place in our country and it is unacceptable it was allowed to be published in a mainstream newspaper.”
They add: “We cannot allow this type of behaviour to go unchecked any longer. We welcome the Sun’s retraction of the article and we now demand action is taken against Mr Clarkson and an unreserved apology to Ms Markle immediately.”
Others who signed the letter included Labour’s Stella Creasy, Dawn Butler and Dan Jarvis, as well as the former Conservative cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom and the Lib Dem deputy leader, Daisy Cooper.
After widespread outcry over the weekend, Clarkson issued a statement on Monday, saying: “Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.” [He’s not a 62-year-old man indulging violent obsessions and inciting hate in a powerful paper but a naughty schoolboy. This shtick is so undignified and played out.]
…
The press regulator Ipso has received thousands of complaints about the piece and critics included Clarkson’s own daughter Emily, who said: “I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything my dad wrote about Meghan Markle.”
It is unclear which of Ipso’s rules could have been broken because of its broad guidelines for comment pieces. The chair of the regulator, Edward Faulks, cancelled plans to attend a private dinner with Rupert Murdoch [JFC] on Monday night.
Fb memories today reminded me that 7 years ago we crossed the arbirtrary milestone of 400 ppm atmospheric carbon dioxide.A horrible milestone passed that should NOT have been passed.
180 ppm was the coldest peak of the ice age.
280 ppm was the pre-Industrial level.
350 ppm is the “safe” level by NASA”s erstwhile expert Climatologist.*
Which has serious implications and consequences for our future. Meaning a lot of people will die and suffer when we could have avoided those deaths and that suffering and grief and misery.
The office of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has released several images it says show him in Bakhmut; the scene of heavy recent fighting.
Many of the millions of Ukrainian refugees in central and eastern Europe plan to mark Christmas early this year in solidarity with their hosts, learning carols in new languages to generate holiday cheer despite fears for relatives back home, the Reuters news agency reports.
Ukrainians generally celebrate Christmas on 7 January – in common with Russians – but the country’s Orthodox church has gradually shifted from Moscow’s orbit in recent years.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year, the church has said congregations can now also celebrate on 25 December – something many refugees said they would embrace….
Almost every day, new videos encouraging Russians to join the military appear on “I’ve Been Mobilized,” a public page on the social media site VKontakte. [See #125 above.] Most of the clips depict poor and debt-ridden villagers whose lives are radically transformed for the better after stints in the Russian army. Journalists from the independent news outlet iStories contacted some of the actors from these videos and asked them why they agreed to the roles, whether they support the ads’ mission, and how they feel about Russia’s war against Ukraine.
…Like several of the actors, Alexey Zheleznyak told iStories his decision to be in a pro-war ad was strictly mercenary: he couldn’t say no to the 8,000-ruble ($115) fee the producers were offering. He played the best friend of a character who decided to go to war because his city offered “two life options: either you drink yourself to death or you go to prison.”
When asked whether he supports the premise of these videos — that more people should sign up to go to war against Ukraine — Alexey Zheleznyak paused for a moment before saying yes and ending the conversation.
In another clip, ex-TikToker Denis Dekhan played a young man who works in a factory and is unable to make ends meet. After reminiscing with his friends about experiencing “real life” in the army, they decide to enlist to fight in Ukraine.
In a phone conversation with iStories, Dekhan said that he “doesn’t care” whether people volunteer to go to the front, and that he doesn’t like the war because it led TikTok to ban Russian users from uploading new content. “Of course [I have a] negative [view of the war]. I wish it hadn’t happened. It’s caused me a lot of problems. They shut down TikTok,” he said. “[…] But I support my country and my president. In my view, whatever he chooses — that’s the right choice. I don’t support the fact that people are being killed there, but I support the fact that our enemies are being confronted.”
“And who are our enemies?” iStories’s correspondent asked.
“America,” Dekhan said. “What do you want from me? What are you bothering me for? These are unpleasant questions, if I’m being honest. What are you asking me for? Ask the people fighting the war or ask Putin.” The actor then swore before hanging up the phone.
Oleg Kosyanenko, who played a character in the same video, was also short-spoken: “I don’t want to express my position officially, but I participated in this, which means I’m not against [this video],” he said.
Another actor played a man living in a small village who decides to sign a military contract because he’s sick of earning only 10,000 rubles ($155) per month and waking up at 4:00 a.m. Requesting anonymity, the actor told iStories that he didn’t learn what kind of video he would be acting in until he was already on set. He was also paid 8,000 rubles ($115).
“I don’t share the position that people should sign up to serve as volunteers in Ukraine,” he admitted. “The majority of actors [in the video] were already on set by the time they learned what was happening. Plus, we were told that this video was for some company’s internal use. They deceived us somewhat. I didn’t learn I would end up in a military uniform until I was on set, and I didn’t process it until afterwards. It was mostly just a job.”
Still, the man said he doesn’t believe videos like the one he acted in will convince anybody to go to war: “I don’t think anyone takes these clips seriously. These videos are very poorly made, of course. This one was terribly made, which is why I thought they were [for internal use]; I didn’t think this crap would ever actually be released. They could have been done better. Next time, I won’t act in these kinds of [propaganda videos].”
In another video, actor Alexander Knyazyev played a factory manager whose employee resigns with the words, “I’ve been driving a tractor for 15 years; I raised my son [in that time], and the tractor hasn’t changed. [But] I’ve signed a contract at the military commissariat, and now I’ll be driving a new armored personnel carrier.”
Knyazyev told iStories he only agreed to act in the clip for the money, and that he didn’t read the script ahead of time: “I was only interested in the fee. Not because I’m greedy, but because I need to live — you can’t survive on a pension.”
Knyazyev said the video’s message is at odds with his own beliefs. “I’m not such a bad guy, not completely. I signed a contract, but I didn’t even read the script. During the shoot, the director or his assistant told me that this guy was joining the army as a contract fighter. But I’d already signed the contract. I should have looked ahead of time and read the script, [or at least enough of it to know] what this was about, but I didn’t. [It was] a minor sin, I think. But in general, it’s important to figure out what shit you’re acting in. It was a lesson for me,” he said.
At the same time, Alexander said he doesn’t think these videos will cause significant harm, unlike the aggressive military propaganda shown on Russian television. “My role in this small clip was so meager, so tiny, that you can’t compare it to the propaganda playing on all of the television channels in our country. It’s a drop in the sea. I don’t even know who’s going to see this video. I have some regrets [about the video], of course. But I hope it won’t influence viewers. And viewers, of course, should use their brains. […] Decide for yourself whether to get on this armored personnel carrier or not. It’s people’s own fault that they’re going to die, not mine. We have a lot of idiots. A lot of idiots who are going voluntarily and who are being drafted without asking any questions,” said Knyazyev.
Moscow libraries have received a government-issued list of books that must be written off and “recycled,” due to content that runs against the grain of Russia’s new law against “LGBT propaganda.” This information was published by the journalist and literary critic Sergey Lebedenko, on Telegram.
The memo was distributed to libraries on Friday, December 16. It lists 53 titles, all to be written off and deleted from electronic library catalogs — including books by John Boyne, Michael Cunningham, Stephen Fry, Jean Genet, Haruki Murakami, Sarah Waters, as well as numerous Russian writers — Eduard Limonov, Vasily Rozanov, Oxana Vasyakina, and others.
The directive to recycle these books, writes Lebedenko, probably means that in the end they will be simply burned. While final decisions are left to library directors, libraries are expected to report on their compliance with the memo.
– Earlier this month, Meduza reported that Moscow libraries were hiding copies of books written by authors designated “foreign agents” or writing against the official grain, either by criticizing the Ukraine war or by embracing the so-called “non-traditional relationships.”
– After the new anti-LGBT censorship law took effect, Russia’s larger bookstore chains stopped displaying books like Summer in a Pioneer Tie and What the Swift Doesn’t Say by Elena Malisova and Katerina Silvanova.
Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, has accused Rishi Sunak ignoring his responsibilities to negotiate an end to the health strikes. In a statement ahead of the ambulance strike tomorrow, she said:
In all my 25 years of negotiating deals with employers, I have never seen such an abdication of responsibility as that by the prime minister Rishi Sunak today. It is well beyond time for him to intervene and break the deadlock in the NHS dispute.
The general secretaries of all the unions involved are prepared to negotiate but the PM needs to come to the table now. It’s time to stop hiding behind the discredited NHS pay review body. He needs to name the time and place. If need be Downing Street on Christmas morning – a new deal and the dispute could be nearing resolution before it’s time for Christmas lunch.
Vladimir Putin has made a rare admission of his country’s military challenges in the 10-month-old war in Ukraine as Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited a key city in eastern Ukraine that Moscow has failed to capture despite months of relentless shelling.
In a video message addressed to Russia’s security services, Putin said the situation in the four Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions was “extremely complicated”, and urged security agencies to intensify their efforts to identify “traitors, spies and diversionists”.
The video was released on a special holiday dedicated to Russia’s powerful security services.
Putin’s speech sheds light on Moscow’s growing acknowledgment that the war in Ukraine was not going to plan. Earlier this month, the Russian leader said the conflict in Ukraine could turn into a “long-term process”, after Moscow was forced to abandon some of the territories it annexed illegally in September, notably fleeing the city of Kherson.
Putin’s message on Tuesday came hours before Zelenskiy’s office announced that the Ukrainian leader made a surprise visit to the embattled city of Bakhmut, which has largely been ravaged after nearly five months of fighting and has been referred to by both sides as the “Bakhmut meat-grinder”.
Russia intends to give Iran advanced military components in exchange for hundreds of drones, British defence minister Ben Wallace said on Tuesday.
“Iran has become one of Russia’s top military backers,” Wallace told parliament as part of a statement on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“In return for having supplied more than 300 kamikaze drones, Russia now intends to provide Iran with advanced military components, undermining both Middle East and international security.”
Re #165 and subsequent about Rep.-elect George Santos – it’s suspicious to me that the NYT both seems to have ignored the story (despite oppo research from the DCCC and despite this being a Long Island district) until well after the election and then to have published it in the hours between the World Cup final and the final hearing of the J6 Committee. Naturally, after the initial batch of reports yesterday, there’s been almost no attention to what seems to be a major scandal.
KGsays
Today, amendments to the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) BIll are being debated in the Scottish Parliament: a final vote is scheduled for tomorrow. There will be multiple attempts to weaken the Bill, some probably “wrecking amendments”. The Observer (basically the Sunday Guardian, published a disgracefully transphobic and ignorant editorial yesterday – reproducing scare stories and simply ignoring facts. For example:
Sturgeon’s reforms would allow any man who signs a declaration to have enhanced legal rights to access spaces where women undress and are vulnerable.
This is complete garbage. The Bill changes the procedure for acquiring a gender recognition certificate, making it a matter of self-identification and eliminating the need for a medical diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”, but making a false declaration to obtain a GRC will be a criminal offence. It does not change the legal effects of acquiring a GRC (in practice, these are quite limited: women’s refuges already admit transwomen, and do not require a GRC when doing so, the Scottish Prisons Service attempts, on a case-by-case basis, to accommodate people in a gender-appropriate establishment and does not require a GRC to recognise an inmate as transgender, etc.). It does not change the provisions of the UK-wide Equalities Act 2010 – indeed, it could not do so, as those provisions affect “reserved matters”, on which the Scottish Parliament has no powers.
The article also says:
These reforms will grant a GRC to any male who declares that they intend to live as the opposite sex, despite Scottish ministers being unable to define what living as the opposite sex means in practice.
A requirement to “live as the opposite sex” is included in the current procedure for transitioning. The Bill changes the length of time required, from 2 years to 3 months (or 6 months for 16 and 17 year-olds). It’s not clear why the lack of a definition of what this means suddenly becomes problematic as a result of this change.
There is a less biased explanation of the reforms and their context in today’s Guardian.
The Observer…published a disgracefully transphobic and ignorant editorial yesterday
Wow, is that trash.
From the editorial:
These reforms will grant a GRC to any male who declares that they intend to live as the opposite sex, despite Scottish ministers being unable to define what living as the opposite sex means in practice.
You know your feminism is going great when you’re using “opposite sex” (especially when the bill you’re discussing uses “acquired gender”).
A judge declined Monday to dismiss Kari Lake’s election challenge after oral arguments by attorneys, giving her a chance to try to prove her claims of misconduct by election officials.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson tossed eight of the claims in Lake’s lawsuit, but allowed two to remain that alleged an intentional plot by officials to manipulate the election in favor of Lake’s Democratic opponent, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. In two separate orders, he ruled that a two-day trial will take place before Jan. 2, and that Hobbs and County Recorder Stephen Richer would be required to testify as Lake wished.
Lake has “alleged intentional misconduct sufficient to affect the outcome of the election and thus has stated an issue of fact that requires going beyond the pleadings,” the ruling stated. It continued that Lake must show at trial that the county’s printer malfunctions were intentionally rigged to affect the election results, and that the actions “did actually affect the outcome.”
Details of the arguments at the link.
ravensays
Asked about Putin’s comment dismissing the prospect of Russia “absorbing” Belarus, US state department spokesperson Ned Price said it should be treated as the “height of irony”, …
It’s worse than that.
Russia has already absorbed Belarus.
Something like 80% of the population are Russian speakers and their own current government is suppressing the Belarusian language.
Belarus is probably beyond the point of no return.
They have 9 million people to Russia’s 144 million and no real ability to resist Russian power over them.
Amid darkness from Russian missile strikes, Ukraine lights up Europe’s largest Menorah on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv. It will burn for eight days to celebrate Hannukah- a holiday that marks victory of light over darkness. [Tweet and video at the link
The women and men who have defended Bakhmut so valiantly over the last six months as Russia has hurled tens of thousands of troops and innumerable artillery shells against the city have already earned a place in the history books. On Tuesday morning, those beleaguered, long-suffering forces had an unusual visitor: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. One of the first things that the troops had to say to the visiting president was something that should make every American both proud and determined.
Ukrainian troops handed over the Ukrainian flag to President Zelensky so that he can relay it to the US Congress as a token of gratitude for all the weapons which are used in defending Bakhmut and whole Ukraine. #Bakhmut #Ukraine #Donetsk [video at the link]
Ukrainian soldier: “The soldiers who are here today have written the most beautiful words for our comrades from America. Please give them this flag and our thanks.”
Zelenskyy: “For the weapons?”
Soldier: “Yes. For the weapons.”
Zelenskyy: “We will give them everything.”
It’s a reminder that if not for the assistance the U.S. has provided, Bakhmut would now be occupied by Russia, perhaps along with the rest of Donetsk. Also a reminder that if that assistance falters, disaster won’t be far behind.
No one is quite sure about the meaning of the name “Bakhmut.” It’s an old name, almost certainly dating to before the 15th century, when the place was an outpost in lands that had been part of an expansive Turkish empire. It may simply be a corruption of the old Tatar word for Mohammed. But I’d like to think it comes from the Arabic name “Bahamut.” In folklore, Bahamut is a vast being who serves as a base for the whole world. Considering the burden the city has shouldered over the last six months, that sounds about right. [Tweet and image at the link]
In ages past, it wasn’t unusual to see leaders at the head of a battle, but those ages are long past. While Zelenskyy isn’t quite climbing into his own tank and leading the charge across the no man’s land east of the city, his presence in Bakhmut today may be even more vital to maintaining the powerful bond between Ukraine’s leadership and Ukraine’s front-line forces than his rapid appearance in Izyum and Kherson. Pro-Russian military analysts have rushed to their keyboards this morning to state that since they can’t hear explosions in the background, Zelenskyy can’t really be in Bakhmut. Those analysts are dead wrong. They’re also not listening very closely.
What does courage look like? It looks like those defenders who have help Bakhmut against wave after wave after wave of Russian assault. Held in spite of constant artillery barrages. Held even though every building is rubble and every tree is splintered.
And Zelenskyy? That’s also courage. He may not be personally inspecting the trenches (though hell, considering everything else he’s done, he might do that), but he certainly knows that he is in danger every day. This guy … it’s going to take better historians than me to find the right terms.
In other Bakhmut news today, there are competing narratives. Pro-Russian bloggers and Telegram channels are showing a video of a line of fires in a snowy location that they claim is a Ukrainian military convoy destroyed by Russian artillery fire as it attempted to move east from Bakhmut. To be honest, I can’t make out enough in any of these videos to tell what I’m looking at. There are fires and smoke, but there are also vehicles moving smoothly along what appears to be a highway. There’s a snow-covered field, but other videos of Bakhmut today show no such snow. Is this something that happened a week ago? Is it something that happened at all? I can’t tell.
The other narrative is the one of “declining artillery fire.” For the last few days, since the Wagner group forces were pushed from their appropriate home in the garage dump and sent fleeing back down the street, there have been reports that the rate of Russian artillery fire in Bakhmut has been slowing. It’s not stopping—listening in on any video or audio from the front lines is enough to show that the impact of shells is still all but continuous—but front-line sources are reporting that there are fewer Russian shots incoming than there were in weeks past.
Optimists are interpreting this as Russia running low on shells. That idea has already entered conventional wisdom among pundits to the point where people are dreaming up Things That Ukraine Can Do Now That Russia Is Out of Artillery.
It’s true enough that by now Russia has fired literally millions of shells, and not even the stockpiles built up over decades of Cold War paranoia are likely to be endless. If Russia’s rate of fire exceeds its rate of new shell production (and it does), then stockpiles are going to erode. It probably doesn’t help that Ukraine has blown up dozens of ammunition warehouses and captured dozens more in some of their rapid advances.
However, there are a lot of other potential causes for a short-term slowing of artillery fire near Bakhmut. Maybe they’re moving equipment around. Maybe they’re changing out overworked barrels. Maybe Wagner has decided it would be better to have their prison recruits hand-carry those shells.
Maybe Russia is running low. Hopefully Russia is running low. As kos has noted, Russia’s war effort seems to be fading in almost every direction. But no one should be counting on Russia running dry just yet.
While Zelenskyy is in Bakhmut, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has also been traveling. On Monday, he came down to Belarus to visit Alexander Lukashenko. That’s an unusual move all on its own, because in the past Putin has uniformly summoned Lukashenko rather than hauling himself out to Minsk. Does it represent a shift in the power dynamic between Putin and Lukashenko? Who can say.
As you’re attempting to puzzle that out, take a crack at understanding what the “longest-serving European president” is trying to say here.
“You know the two of us are co-aggressors, the most harmful and toxic people on this planet” – Lukashenko [video at the link in comment 202]
In addition to continuing a multidirectional push for Kreminna itself, Ukraine is reportedly engaged in a Tuesday advance toward the town of Holykove. Forces are reportedly east of the P66 highway north of Kreminna, fighting along the entrenched hillside that leads up to Holykove. [map at the link]
Holykove has a position that allows Russian artillery to retain fire control over the P66, disrupting Ukrainian attempts to bring forces down from the crossing near Ploshchanka. If Holykove can be cleared, Ukrainian positions at Chervonopopivka will be much better positioned to receive additional forces and supplies for a movement south.
Russian sources report that in the area of Zhytlivka, a unit of the 30th Motorized Rifle Brigade and Russian “BARS-20”, 1.5 days ago began an disorderly withdrawal without a corresponding order, having lost centralized control and suffered losses in killed and captured.
There were multiple reports like the one above over the weekend, indicating that Russian forces in Zhytlivka were retreating south and that Ukrainian forces were expected to occupy that location. However there’s been no subsequent update on positions in this area. Ukraine continues to press Russian forces in Kreminna from both the south and west.
If a visit from the president wasn’t enough, Bakhmut had someone drop by who is even more important.
St Nicholas came with weapons and wearing a bulletproof vest under his robe.
But he still brought joy and gifts to people in Bakhmut and other places near the frontlines. [video with English subtitles at the link]
Ukrainian Santa: “If those Russian bastards try to do dirt to Ukrainian, St. Nicholas will show them!”
And then he hands out toys to kids who are still there in Bakhmut. Because he’s Santa, dammit.
These are Turkish A-400 transport planes which have been trapped in Kyiv since the war began and the airspace over Ukraine was closed. They flew out of Kyiv today and back to their home base inside Turkey. Whether this is a one-off, or the beginning of more flights in and out of Kyiv, it’s good to see some traffic at the Kyiv airport. [video at the link]
ravensays
Putin has done more for destroying Russian cultural hegemony than any one since Joseph Stalin.
Roughly half of Ukrainians were native Russian speakers. They are all switching to Ukrainian as soon as they can.
And renaming streets for Ukrainian artists and heroes.
Russian imperialism was such that a lot of Ukrainian artists and writers were persecuted and many were just murdered.
Wartime Ukraine erasing Russian past from public spaces
By JAMEY KEATEN
8 minutes ago
Dec. 16, 2022. Ukraine is accelerating efforts to erase the vestiges of centuries of Soviet and Russian influence from the public space by pulling down monuments and renaming hundreds of streets to honor home-grown artists, poets, military chiefs, and independence leaders, even heroes of this year’s war. (Dnipro Region Administration via AP)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — On the streets of Kyiv, Fyodor Dostoevsky is on the way out. Andy Warhol is on the way in.
Ukraine is accelerating efforts to erase the vestiges of Soviet and Russian influence from its public spaces by pulling down monuments and renaming hundreds of streets to honor its own artists, poets, soldiers, independence leaders and others — including heroes of this year’s war.
Following Moscow’s invasion on Feb. 24 that has killed or injured untold numbers of civilians and soldiers and pummeled buildings and infrastructure, Ukraine’s leaders have shifted a campaign that once focused on dismantling its Communist past into one of “de-Russification.”
Streets that honored revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin or the Bolshevik Revolution were largely already gone; now Russia, not Soviet legacy, is the enemy.
It’s part punishment for crimes meted out by Russia, and part affirmation of a national identity by honoring Ukrainian notables who have been mostly overlooked.
Russia, through the Soviet Union, is seen by many in Ukraine as having stamped its domination of its smaller southwestern neighbor for generations, consigning its artists, poets and military heroes to relative obscurity, compared with more famous Russians.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
If victors write history, as some say, Ukrainians are doing some rewriting of their own — even as their fate hangs in the balance. Their national identity is having what may be an unprecedented surge, in ways large and small.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has taken to wearing a black T-shirt that says: “I’m Ukrainian.”
He is among the many Ukrainians who were born speaking Russian as a first language. Now, they shun it — or at least limit their use of it. Russian has traditionally been spoken more in the eastern and southern parts of the country. Western Ukraine, farther away from Russia, was quicker to shed Russian and Soviet imagery.
Other parts of the country are now catching up. The eastern city of Dnipro on Friday pulled down a bust of Alexander Pushkin — like Dostoevsky, a giant of 19th century Russian literature. A strap from a crane was unceremoniously looped under the statue’s chin.
This month, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced about 30 more streets in the capital will be rechristened.
Volodymyr Prokopiv, deputy head of the Kyiv City Council, said Ukraine’s “de-Communization” policy since 2015 had been applied in a “soft” way so as not to offend sensitivities among the country’s Russian-speaking and even pro-Moscow population.
“With the war, everything changed. Now the Russian lobby is now powerless – in fact, it doesn’t exist,” Prokopiv said in an interview with The Associated Press in his office overlooking Khreschatik Street, the capital’s main thoroughfare. “Renaming these streets is like erasing the propaganda that the Soviet Union imposed on Ukraine.”
During the war, the Russians have also sought to stamp their culture and domination in areas they have occupied.
Andrew Wilson, a professor at University College London, cautioned about “the dangers in rewriting the periods in history where Ukrainians and Russians did cooperate and build things together: I think the whole point about de-imperializing Russian culture should be to specify where we have previously been blind — often in the West.”
Wilson noted that the Ukrainians “are taking a pretty broad-brush approach.”
He cited Pushkin, the 19th century Russian writer, who might understandably rankle some Ukrainians.
To them, for example, the Cossacks — a Slavic people in eastern Europe — “mean freedom, whereas Pushkin depicts them as cruel, barbarous, antiquated. And in need of Russian civilization,” said Wilson, whose book “The Ukrainians” was recently published in its fifth edition.
In its program, Kyiv conducted an online survey, and received 280,000 suggestions in a single day, Prokopiv said. Then, an expert group sifted through the responses, and municipal officials and street residents give a final stamp of approval.
Under the “de-Communization” program, about 200 streets were renamed in Kyiv before this year. In 2022 alone, that same number of streets have been renamed and another 100 are scheduled to get renamed soon, Prokopiv said.
A street named for philosopher Friedrich Engels will honor Ukrainian avant-garde poet Bohdan-Ihor Antonych. A boulevard whose name translates as “Friendship of Peoples” — an allusion to the diverse ethnicities under the USSR – will honor Mykola Mikhnovsky, an early proponent of Ukrainian independence.
Another street recognizes the “Heroes of Mariupol” — fighters who held out for months against a devastating Russian campaign in that Sea of Azov port city that eventually fell. A street named for the Russian city of Volgograd is now called Roman Ratushnyi Street in honor of a 24-year-old civic and environmental activist who was killed in the war.
A small street in northern Kyiv still bears Dostoevsky’s name but soon will be named for Warhol, the late Pop Art visionary from the United States whose parents had family roots in Slovakia, across Ukraine’s western border.
Valeriy Sholomitsky, who has lived on Dostoevsky Street for nearly 40 years, said he could go either way.
“We have under 20 houses here. That’s very few,” Sholomitsky said as he shoveled snow off the street in front of a fading address sign bearing the name of the Russian writer. He said Warhol was “our artist” — with heritage in eastern Europe:
Now, “it will be even better,” he said.
“Maybe it is right that we are changing many streets now, because we used to name them incorrectly,” he added.
whheydtsays
General Staff: Russia moves more personnel, equipment from Far East to Ukraine.
Russia has increased the number of troops, weapons, and military equipment that is being transferred from the country’s Far East for its war against Ukraine, Ukraine’s General Staff reported on Dec. 20.
https://kyivindependent.com/
This–assuming it’s true–suggests that Russian troop numbers are getting thin and that supplies are running low. It also suggests that the Russian army is crossing its fingers and hoping there won’t be any problems cropping up in the Far East in the foreseeable future.
As one of Graydon Saunder’s characters put it in his book The March North, “hope is not a plan.”
The US Air Force has awarded $334 million to defense contractor Leidos to develop the next phase in its hypersonic arsenal: An unmanned craft meant for super-speed spying dubbed “Mayhem.”
This latest contract award comes less than a week after the USAF announced the successful test of its first service-ready hypersonic weapon (defined as able to travel faster than Mach 5 while maintaining maneuverability), the Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW.
Unlike ARRW, Leidos’ Mayhem award isn’t just about building a weapon – it’s for “Expendable Hypersonic Multi-mission ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) and Strike program, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike craft.” A warhead will fit, but this is more like a photon torpedo/probe/space coffin from Star Trek: customizable to meet the needs of the mission.
By now, you’re probably familiar with the Texas bounty hunter abortion ban that shredded access in the state months before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The bill, SB 8, allowed private citizens to sue anyone for aiding or abetting an abortion done after six weeks of pregnancy. But since the state doesn’t enforce the law, there was basically no one to sue and block it from taking effect. But abortion providers were worried about costly and time-consuming lawsuits, so they halted care on their own.
Earlier this year, California decided to protect its residents—and troll Texas—by using the bounty hunter mechanism to ban the sale of assault weapons, as well as the sale of any gun to someone under the age of 21. And Senate Bill 1327 had a unique provision that if a court struck down the Texas law, California’s law would be automatically repealed the following year.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) was explicit about using the same language as Texas lawmakers used. “If they are going to use this framework to put women’s lives at risk, we are going to use it to save people’s lives here in the state of California,” he said at a July press conference after he signed the bill.
Gun rights groups unsurprisingly sued the state, claiming the law was unconstitutional. But this time a federal district judge, Roger Benitez, took the case and struck the law down on Monday…
Ukrainian forces trying not just to preserve the cities and towns that are, but the places that were.
In Kherson region, Ukrainian border guards discovered an ancient Roman settlement during the construction of fortifications on the Dnipro bank. Further engineering work was not carried out there in order to preserve the artifacts valuable for history. [images at the link]
Ukrainian forces throwing back those Russian invaders who had managed to make it into the residential streets on the east side of Bakhmut last week. [Tweet and map at the link]
Ukrainian president Volodomir Zelenskyy visited the front lines in #Bakhmut. Meanwhile Putin is hiding inside his bunker a 1000 k from the front. [video at the link]
Republicanism is inherently crooked. All of American politics is inherently crooked, mind you, but the Trump administration was an unabashed celebration of crookedness in all its forms, to the point where we’ll probably never learn all the crooked things that took place inside crooked White House halls filled with crooks and spokescrooks for the crooks and senior crook advisers who pretended not to see the crooks between meetings with the crooks that would pay them crooked amounts of money to pad their crooked lifestyles after they had their fill of doing crooked things at the rest of us.
With that said, here’s a new story about Donald Trump “senior adviser” Kellyanne Conway! Had you guessing there for a minute, didn’t I? When you hear “member of Trump administration did a crooked thing” there’s absolutely no way to narrow that down past 100 or so most-likely suspects. It’s the world’s worst version of Guess Who.
Politico is now reporting on a newly discovered 2017 financial connection between the seemingly all-powerful conservative dark money saboteur of the nation’s Supreme Court, Leonard Leo, and the Trump senior adviser pushing hardest for Leo’s “handpicked” list of preferred future Supreme Court appointees.
The summary version is this: When Conway took on the Trump administration duty of “senior adviser,” the title broadly given to those inside the White House who were proven to be even passingly effective at reining Donald Trump in during one of his private fits, her ownership of a small private polling company called “The Polling Company” created an immediate governmental conflict of interest. Ethics rules required her to separate herself from the firm, i.e., sell it, but the company was so small that she herself was its only substantive asset. That’s not really a “sellable” company; a better approach would likely be to just shut the thing down.
Or, if you are in American politics and in a position where other people in American politics might find it useful to do you a little cash favor in exchange for your continued abstract or not-abstract support, you might just happen to find that a person who’s been counting on you to push their own personal agenda can “facilitate” a sale that wouldn’t otherwise happen. That appears to be the arrangement Conway found with Leo: Politico reports that Leo, “via one of his dark money groups, helped finance” the sale of Conway’s company to another in a deal worth somewhere between $1 million and $5 million. The sale was to a company allied with Leo’s interests; Politico notes a regulatory paper trail that suggests one of Leo’s own dark money groups helps finance the sale.
So Conway gets a seven-figure payout for selling a company she was not ethically allowed to head when in government service, and Leo coincidentally helps out a Trump adviser who would be among the most aggressive in promoting Leo’s foul-the-Supreme-Court agenda. Wow, what a coincidence. […]
You’re going to ask now how illegal it might be, this whole arrangement of paying actual cash money to ease the life of a White House presidential adviser who can help make or break your own ideological life’s work, and the answer is Hell If Anybody Knows at this point. It’s illegal enough that both Leo and Conway refused to speak with Politico about it, and not-illegal by virtue of the sheer rampant volume of such exchanges inside the Trump administration, inside Congress, and in the government-to-media-to-goverment pipeline.
[…] How does this compare to Scott Pruitt’s many scandals, or to any number of House members who trot into executive positions at companies they did favors for during their tenures? It’s probably not as bad as fomenting a violent insurrection, if we’re keeping track, and probably more explicitly illegal than charging Secret Service agents inflated prices to “protect” you at your own for-profit clubs.
Still, though, to hear that Kellyanne Conway was one of the people on the not-proverbial take—how shocking. How surprising. You think you know a person, eh?
Wonkette: “How Deranged Are The White Fascists Getting About Drag Queens? This Deranged.”
[…] this fake issue isn’t going away. Drag queens have existed for decades, fucked shit up at Stonewall, kicked off the modern gay rights movement, have played host for decades to countless bachelorette parties for straight ladies from the suburbs, but now, suddenly, they are the greatest existing threat to the worldview propagated by insecure white fascist men.
Charlie Kirk, AKA the thing that looks like a Muppet that fell into a trash compactor, has been throwing one of his Turning Point USA confabs for incels and other MAGA faithful, and yesterday on their broadcast, a panelist named James Lindsay made one of the most demented and deranged series of claims we’ve heard about drag queens yet. (Lindsay is a prolilfic purveyor of the “OK groomer” libel against LGBTQ+ people.)
He claimed the Left is intentionally provoking (yep) rightwingers into killing or attacking a drag queen, in order to create a “Drag Floyd” event, by which he meant the Left wants to “create summer 2020 again off of a drag queen or a trans person or something like this.” [video at the link]
We honestly don’t even know how to start with how delusional and insecure a person would have to be to believe batshit like that, but there it is. He thinks the Left is using drag queens to PROVOKE rightwingers (these folks never have any agency of their own) in order to create another summer of terror like the one shivering rightwing men are still hallucinating happened in 2020.
These people do not live in the real world.
A bit of the transcript:
JAMES LINDSAY (TURNING POINT USA PANELIST): I think this is that unconventional warfare. This is what they do in unconventional warfare. They make these provocations. Drag queens are a provocation.
Drag queens are just doing their jobs and entertaining people like they’ve been doing for decades. If you’re one of Charlie Kirk’s Hitler Youth, you might not be aware of that fact, but the drag queens were here before you, they’ll be here long after you.
It’s been an escalating provocation. First, they’re just dressing up in kind of somewhat you know, careful dress with their clown makeup, groomer clowns or whatever reading stories.
“Groomer clowns or whatever reading stories.” Yep, this guy knows about the history of drag.
Next thing you know […] they’re dancing, they’re grinding, they’re sexual dancing, they’re twerking.
First it was the clowning and the reading. Then it was the twerking and the grinding.
The next thing you know, they’re doing simulated sex acts in front of children.
Oh for fucks sake.
This is an unconventional warfare tactic to provoke. The goal — you guys remember George Floyd, the goal is to have Drag Floyd. And I’m serious, this is deadly serious.
We believe that whatever raccoons live in this young man’s brain believe this is deadly serious.
They put a drag queen, “Oh, it’s just a story. Oh, it’s just dancing.” And what you’re going to do is you’re going to give in, at which point they’re going to enter into their generate — generative themes, educational method into living queerly, strategic defiance. This is straight out of their literature that they say is the real goal of drag queen story hour, “We’re going to leave a trail of glitter that will never come out of the carpets” is the last sentence in that paper — talking about your kids’ brains.
This is what happens when you align with the “scholarship” of galaxy brains like Christopher Rufo, who convinces pig-ignorant people that there is some gigantic body of academic literature all the drag queens are following. Ever been to a drag show that started three hours late? You thought it was a wig emergency, but it was actually because they were reading their academic papers.
But yes, people with stage names like Fibonaci Sequins, Gina Lotrimin and Hedda Lettuce are dark lords of the universe taking control of children’s brains and GO ON, SIR?
And then either you give into it and they get to do that, or you go too hard and you mess up and they make a video of you looking bad, and then they start trying to smear you as an anti-groomer, or as rising anti-LGBT hate.
A video like the TPUSA panel we’re watching now?
Also, as we’ve discussed, the primary groomers in American society today are the fundamentalist Christians, who are not only much more likely to abuse children — Google youth pastors abusing kids and then Google drag queens doing the same, we’ll wait! — but are also preternaturally obsessed with trying to force their kids to grow up to be disgusting white fascist bigots just like they are.
[…] we ventured over to Truth Social because we heard a rumor that the former guy is Do Ur Own Research lawyering this morning, and … yikes.
The Fake charges made by the highly partisan Unselect Committee of January 6th have already been submitted, prosecuted, and tried in the form of Impeachment Hoax # 2. I WON convincingly. Double Jeopardy anyone!
[…] Trump said a lot of crazy shit since the House January 6 Select Committee publicly referred him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution yesterday afternoon.
What doesn’t kill him makes him stronger. And the Democratic Bureau of Investigation, AKA the DBI (get it? get it?) just wants to make sure he doesn’t become president again. Also he always knew the election was Rigged & Stolen, because why isn’t Joe Biden in jail for those pictures of his son’s giant penis, which is clearly evidence of Italian space lasers and Chinese thermostats. If only people had been able to see that penis on Twitter, everyone would have voted for Trump, who has a normal-size penis, which looks like a mushroom, and there is no problem there. Believe me!
Well, Your Wonkette is paraphrasing a little. But not a lot, ’cause seriously, the man is outta his freakin’ gourd. Anyway, let’s take a moment to discuss this bullshit about double jeopardy, because it’s so stupid that it’s virtually guaranteed to get traction with the fuckwits who follow him. You will be for shocked to learn that none of these words mean anything like what he thinks they mean.
If you’d like a long answer to the question, help yourself to this August 2000 memo from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) addressing the question of whether a presidential impeachment by the House and acquittal by the Senate foreclosed the possibility of future criminal prosecution — which was not a hypothetical issue for then-President Bill Clinton.
First of all, the impeachment clause of the Constitution itself states pretty clearly that Congress can only boot an official out of office, at which point he or she can be civilly or criminally prosecuted like everyone else: “Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”
But, okay, this does refer to “the Party convicted,” and neither Clinton nor Trump fit that label. So, the OLC gave us about 2,000 words on the Founding Fathers’ understanding of impeachment through the lens of English and colonial law, and honestly you don’t care. But here’s where they ended up:
Impeachment and criminal prosecution serve entirely distinct goals. Impeachment is one of several tools placed in the hands of Congress in order to enable it to check the other branches and thus to maintain the proper separation of powers. The limitation on impeachment sanctions to removal and disqualification from office and the requirement that removal be mandatory upon conviction show that impeachment is designed to enable Congress to protect the nation against officers who have demonstrated that they are unfit to carry out important public responsibilities, not to penalize individuals for their criminal misdeeds. The limitation on sanctions imposable by the Senate reflects the conviction that the national legislature is not to be trusted with dispensing criminal punishments, sanctions aimed not at protecting the integrity of the government’s operations but at penalizing individuals by taking away their life, liberty, or property.
In essence, the only jeopardy you’re in during an impeachment proceeding is potential loss of elected or appointed office. Later criminal jeopardy where you risk going to jail is not the same thing. […]
So, glad we can clear this one up. Your Wonkette likes to be of service.
And, PS, don’t take legal advice from a blog. Or from Alan Dershowitz, who appears to think that a non-binding criminal referral by Congress to the DOJ amounts to a bill of attainder and an ex post facto law.
@ #208
“federal district judge, Roger Benitez, took the case and struck the law down on Monday…”
Benitiz has a long and sordid history of striking down California gun laws, often accompanied by eye-opening analogies. In June, 2021, he overturned California’s decades-old assault weapons ban, beginning his ruling with, “Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment,” Benitez wrote.
In a March 2019 ruling against the state’s limits on large-capacity magazines, Benitez opened with the dramatic stories of three women who ran out of ammo while shooting home intruders – none of which took place in California. In a page 5 footnote, he cited Kristallnacht.
In 2016, nearly two-thirds of California voters approved Proposition 63, which requires people to pass a background check to buy ammo and prohibits possessing large-capacity magazines, or LCMs. However, in 2017, Benitez granted a motion for a preliminary injunction on the part of the law that banned possessing LCMs, which hold more than 10 rounds.
And in March 2019, he ruled that this part of the law was unconstitutional and violated the Second Amendment. “It criminalizes the otherwise lawful acquisition and possession of common magazines holding more than 10 rounds – magazines that law-abiding responsible citizens would choose for self-defense at home,” he wrote. In April 2020, Benitez granted a preliminary injunction against the ammo background check part of the law, calling it “constitutionally defective.”
There’s a reason that gun rights groups in California shop around until they can bring their cases to Benitez.
Public libraries are among the most pure democratic institutions in the country. The goal of the public library is to provide free information to the public. Whether you have a home or not, you are welcome at the public library, no matter your education, your birthplace, or your financial situation. Public libraries serve everyone in a variety of ways. This is precisely why they have been demeaned and underfunded for decades by the more conservative lawmakers in our country.
Taking a page from the GOP playbook, New York City’s new mayor, Democrat Eric Adams, wants to decimate his city’s public library system with massive budget cuts. According to the Gothamist, Adams’ austerity measures (which boost law enforcement funding while cutting every other service that New Yorkers actually want) could mean “a total of $13.6 million in reductions for the current fiscal year (ending in June 2023) and $20.5 million in each of the next three fiscal years.”
The New York Public Library has been forced to do a lot with a very little for some time now, but as Tony Marx, president and CEO of New York Public Library, told a City Council oversight committee last week, “This may push us over the edge.”
Public libraries are not simply a place that people go to get books and movies and newspapers, and use the internet, and talk with people from their neighborhood, and have safe after school time when you’re a kid who doesn’t have anywhere else to go because the city has already cut meaningful after school care, or a place for seniors to have reading clubs and other events. They are a place where people without internet access, or monopoly-weakened internet access, can go to use one of the main information highways in our world. They are an “essential social infrastructure.” […]
[…] Cuts will mean less staff, less hours open, and less classes and events and services available to the communities public libraries serve. Adams’ office has spewed the usual ‘we support public libraries’ out of one side of their mouth while telling reporters, “We must protect the city’s long-term financial stability by taking a hard look at how the city uses all of its limited resources in the face of strong economic and fiscal headwinds.” Of course, as the Jacobin reports, Adams’ budget plan includes creating an $8.3 billion boost of revenue in order to create surpluses. What will those surpluses go to? Clearly not all of the public services he’s cutting from in order to create it.
As of right now, the 2023 cost to New York City, for all three branches of the library, is $468.5 million for the year. The New York Public Library gets just under 60% of its funding from the city, mind you. The rest has to be begged for and fundraised through rich patrons. New York City’s 2023 budget for the NYPD? More than $11 billion. That’s one billion dollars multiplied by eleven. To make this a touch more graphic: [Graphic at the link.] […]
The Jan. 6 committee is sharing more of its records and transcripts freely with the Justice Department after it received a letter from Special Counsel Jack Smith requesting the committee’s documents […]
The select committee began the handoff last week.
The decision shouldn’t come as a surprise for watchers of the probe; committee chairman Bennie Thompson has said repeatedly in recent months that when the probe completed its investigation in full, it would comply with requests for copies of its records and transcripts—but not before.
The final committee report will be made public on Wednesday. An executive summary of the report was released Monday during the panel’s final meeting, where members voted unanimously to criminally refer former President Donald Trump and attorney John Eastman to the Justice Department.
It has been reported in recent days that transcripts and other supporting materials underpinning the final report could be released separately before the end of the year. […]
This would seem to suggest that the committee will delay publishing all of its transcripts in full on Wednesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to visit the U.S. Capitol in person on Wednesday, a Senate aide confirmed to The Hill.
It would mark the first time the Ukrainian president has left his country since before Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24
.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sent a letter to lawmakers on Tuesday encouraging them to “be present for a very special focus on Democracy Wednesday night.”
[…] The visit comes as Zelensky, his top military officials and aides have warned that Russia is planning to renew a large-scale ground invasion, and as the country suffers under devastating aerial attacks that have destroyed its energy and electricity infrastructure entering winter.
Congress on Tuesday proposed to provide Ukraine with $45 billion in military, economic and other assistance related to Russia’s war on the country, as part of the omnibus spending package lawmakers hope to pass by the end of the week.
Update to #196 – I’m happy to say I’ve seen several reports on and discussions of the George Santos scandal throughout the day today. Joy Reid is talking about it now.
Democrats on the main tax-writing committee in the House voted during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday to make six years of former President Trump’s tax returns public — the culmination of years of Democratic efforts to obtain Trump’s financial records and a move that Republicans view as a provocation as they assume control of the House.
The returns encompass years 2015 to 2020 and could be released within a few days, Ways and Means leader Richard Neal (D-Mass.), said Wednesday night after the vote. The returns will be attached to a package of two reports from the Ways and Means Committee to the broader Congress about the presidential audit system of the IRS.
The reports are expected to be released this evening. Trump’s tax returns are being redacted to remove information like bank account and social security numbers and that process could take a few days, committee members said.
The committee voted along party lines, 24-16, to make the returns public, with Democrats voting in favor and Republicans voting against.
Republicans blasted the decision to release the returns, warning that the move will usher in a new era of disclosing personal financial documents as a “political weapon.” […]
Progressive groups cheered on the Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday after the decision release the tax returns to the public. […]
More at the link.
StevoRsays
Disgusting censorship from the F1 governing body here. This :
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has confirmed that he is on his way to the US, his first foreign trip since the war broke out 300 days ago. US president Joe Biden released a statement saying that Zelenskiy will go to the White House on Wednesday before addressing a joint session of Congress “demonstrating the strong, bipartisan support for Ukraine”. A senior US administration official denied that Biden will pressure Zelenskiy to seek a diplomatic end to the war.
Joe Biden will announce “a significant new package of security assistance to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression”, he said in a statement. The package will be worth nearly $2bn, including a Patriot missile battery. The US will, in a third country, train Ukrainian forces in how to operate the Patriot system, it has been reported.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to the US is “extremely significant” and will disprove Russian attempts to show that US-Ukrainian relations are “cooling”, Kyiv’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said. The Ukrainian president’s trip and meeting with his US counterpart will provide an opportunity to explain the real situation in Ukraine, what weapons Kyiv needs to fight Moscow, and why it needs them, Podolyak told Reuters.
…
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has undertaken a surprise trip to Beijing and held talks with the Chinese president Xi Jinping during which he said they discussed the Ukraine conflict. Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, said he and Xi had discussed the two countries’ “no limits” strategic partnership, as well as Ukraine.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, will visit Russia on Thursday for discussions on the creation of a security zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, the Russian state-owned RIA Novosti news agency reported, citing Russia’s envoy to the international institutions in Vienna.
Here’s a link to today’s UK multi-strike liveblog. From there:
Thousands of ambulance workers in England and Wales are beginning a 24-hour strike action over real-terms salary cuts, describing last-minute talks with the government as “pointless” because the health secretary, Steve Barclay, refused to even discuss pay.
Nevertheless, Barclay has used an article in this morning’s edition of the Daily Telegraph to place the blame on the trade unions, accusing them of making a “conscious decision” to “inflict harm” on patients.
We now know that the NHS contingency plans will not cover all 999 calls. Ambulance unions have made a conscious choice to inflict harm on patients.
Union leaders insisted there would still be cover for the most serious calls through a series of local agreements during the strike; the first of two planned industrial actions. Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, said claims many serious calls would receive no response were “misleading” and “at worst deliberately scaremongering” by ministers.
Christina McAnea, the Unison general secretary, said that if there were any deaths during the strike it would “absolutely” be the fault of the government. “They have been totally irresponsible,” she told TalkTV. “It’s completely irresponsible of them to refuse to open any kind of discussions or negotiations with us.”
Earlier, the NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, which collectively represent all NHS organisations, wrote to the prime minister warning they were entering “dangerous territory” and urging him to end to the deadlock.
The members of the three trade unions taking action today – Unison, Unite and the GMB – have been offered nominal pay rises of £1,400 each. These are, in effect, pay cuts because the roughly 4% nominal increase for most staff is far below inflation.
In evidence to the Commons health select committee, the GMB’s national secretary, Rachel Harrison, suggested the government upping its offer to 7.5% would be enough for the union to put to its membership to test if it was enough to end the impasse.
Here’s an update from the Guardian’s Scotland editor Severin Carrell on the pay offer for Scottish nurses:
Scottish nurses have overwhelmingly rejected a “best and final” pay offer from Scottish ministers and are threatening to stage national strike action unless a fresh, better offer is tabled.
The Royal College of Nursing in Scotland said 82% of its members who voted had declined the offer. It said they would now start preparing for strike action in Scottish hospitals, announcing the dates for strikes early in the new year.
The Scottish NHS now faces a wave of strikes in hospitals, community services and amongst ambulance crews.
Earlier on Wednesday the Royal College of Midwives in Scotland said its members had also rejected the upgraded offer, by 65%, and would now consider how and when it will take industrial action. The GMB Scotland, which also covers parademics, announced on 15 December its members had refused to accept the deal.
Julie Lamberth, the board chair of RCN Scotland, said:
It was the right thing to ask our members whether to accept or reject this offer. It directly affects their lives and each eligible member needed to be given the chance to have their say. And the result could not be clearer – we have forcefully rejected what the Scottish government said is its ‘best and final’ offer.
Make no mistake – we do not want to go on strike. Years of being undervalued and understaffed have left us feeling we have been left with no option because enough is enough. The ball is in the Scottish government’s court if strike action is going to be avoided.
The new findings add to the 190 known geoglyphs at the UNESCO World Heritage site, located along the southern coast of Peru. The markings, discovered by researchers at Japan’s Yamagata University in collaboration with Peruvian archaeologist Jorge Olano, are thought to date to between 100 B.C. and A.D. 300…
Jeremy Clarkson will remain host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? “at the moment”, ITV’s boss has said, as the presenter’s comments about the Duchess of Sussex attracted a record number of press regulator complaints.
Kevin Lygo said ITV had “no control” over what Clarkson said in his Sun newspaper column but that “he should apologise” for his comments.
…
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) said Clarkson’s newspaper column had become the most complained-about article in its history, attracting 20,800 complaints by Tuesday evening.
Lygo, the managing director of ITV Studios, told members of the Broadcasting Press Guild: “We have no control over what he says. We hire him as a consummate broadcaster of the most famous quiz on television, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
“So it’s not quite in our wheelhouse but I don’t know what he was thinking when he wrote that. It was awful.”
Asked if ITV would keep Clarkson as host of the quizshow, Lygo said: “Yes, at the moment we are. What he says in the papers we have no control of.”
Asked whether Clarkson represented ITV’s values, Mr Lygo replied: “No, of course he doesn’t in that instance.”…
In Chiles v. Salazar a Colorado federal district court rejected constitutional challenges to Colorado’s ban on mental health professionals engaging in conversion therapy for minors who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or gender non-conforming. In a suit brought by a licensed counselor, the court found no violation of plaintiff’s free speech rights because the Minor Therapy Conversion Law regulates professional conduct rather than speech. Any speech that is affected is incidental to the professional conduct. The court also found no violation of plaintiff’s free exercise rights, saying in part:
According to Ms. Chiles, the Minor Therapy Conversion Law is not neutral because it was “well-known” at the time the Colorado General Assembly enacted the Minor Therapy Conversion Law that conversion therapy was primarily sought for religious reasons…. Therefore, Ms. Chiles’ argument goes, the Minor Therapy Conversion Law impermissibly burdens practitioners who hold particular religious beliefs…. The Court disagrees. The Minor Therapy Conversion Law does not “restrict [therapeutic] practices because of their religious nature.”… [T]he Minor Therapy Conversion Law targets specific “modes of therapy” due to their harmful nature— regardless of the practitioner’s personal religious beliefs or affiliations…. [T]he Minor Therapy Conversion law targets these therapeutic modalities because conversion therapy is ineffective and has the potential to “increase [minors’] isolation, self-hatred, internalized stigma, depression, anxiety, and suicidality”….
The Internal Revenue Service failed to audit former President Donald J. Trump during his first two years in office despite a program that makes the auditing of sitting presidents mandatory, a House committee revealed on Tuesday after an extraordinary vote to make public six years of his tax returns. Mr. Trump filed returns in 2017 for the two previous tax years, but the I.R.S. began auditing those filings only in 2019 — the first on the same day in April the Ways and Means Committee requested access to his taxes and any associated audits, a report by the panel said.
Commentary:
[…] as of this morning, we don’t yet have the tax returns themselves. After the committee vote, the Democratic-led panel said the records would be fully released in the coming days, and members instead released a 29-page report on its investigation.
[…] In the wake of Nixon’s resignation, a series of ethics reforms were created, including an automatic audit of every sitting president’s taxes, every year, regardless of circumstances. A president need not be suspected of any wrongdoing; the reform was simply created to help bolster public confidence.
[…] Trump refused to release the materials, insisting that he couldn’t because he was under audit. Even at the time, the argument didn’t make sense: Trump was free to release the documents anyway, as other modern presidents from both parties had done.
But we now know that the underlying assumption was also wrong: The automatic, mandatory audit didn’t happen.
This is important for a variety of reasons. For one thing, Trump lied. For another, there was an apparent breakdown in the system that warrants additional scrutiny: If the IRS was required to audit the then-president as a matter of course, there should be some kind of explanation as to why this didn’t happen.
But let’s also not miss the forest for the trees: The whole point of the congressional exercise, the foundational basis for Neal’s initial outreach to the Treasury Department nearly four years ago, was a Ways and Means Committee investigation into the IRS’s mandatory presidential audit program.
The former president, his lawyers, and his GOP allies insisted that there was no “legislative purpose” to the inquiry, and the committee’s work on the issue was little more than a political fishing expedition.
Those complaints have now collapsed. The committee set out to scrutinize the IRS’s presidential audit program and it found a problem with the IRS’s presidential audit program.
“The tax forms were really never audited,” Neal said during a news conference after the vote, “and only my sending a letter at one point, prompted sort of a rear-view response,”.
As an NBC News report added, the Massachusetts Democrat has proposed legislation to codify the mandatory audit policy into law, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the idea late yesterday in a statement.
The political conversation about Trump’s secrecy has been going on for years. The policy conversation about the IRS and presidential tax returns is just getting started.
File this one under utterly unsurprising: Former Trump White House lawyer Stefan Passantino allegedly advised former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson to mislead the probe when she appeared for testimony before the Jan. 6 committee.
Passantino was the senior ethics attorney at the White House during Trump’s presidency. […]
Hutchinson, who served as an aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, was reportedly pressured to “say that she didn’t recall something when she did,” according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who sits on the soon-to-be-dissolved Jan. 6 committee.
Hutchinson and the committee disclosed Passantino’s alleged conduct to the Justice Department already. The Fulton County District Attorney’s office, which is investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, also has the information. To be clear: Passantino has not been charged with any crimes or accused of any crimes at this time. […]
The committee claims that the former Trump White House lawyer shared Hutchinson’s testimony with reporters and other attorneys despite her requests that he keep them private. Passantino denied this in his statement to CNN, saying that any external communications made on Hutchinson’s behalf were done with her “express authorization.”
Passantino has since taken a leave of absence from Michael Best & Friedrich, a Wisconsin-based law firm where he is a partner. His biography was not available on the company’s website as of Tuesday morning.
As the Jan. 6 probe wore on, Hutchinson ultimately replaced Passantino with another attorney. Notably, his [Passatino’s] attorney’s fees were being paid by none other than former President Donald Trump’s Save America PAC.
The initial summary of the committee’s final report notes that Hutchinson fired Passantino after she learned who was paying him. Per the report, Hutchinson told the committee that he advised her […] not to “cast a bad light” on the former president.
“No, no, no, no, no, we don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that,” Hutchinson recalled Passantino telling her after a “particular issue” arose during her testimony. […]
Per the select committee’s executive summary:
“The lawyer refused directions from the client not to share information regarding her testimony with at least one and possibly more than one member of the press.
The lawyer shared the information with the press over her objection
The lawyer did not disclose who was paying for the lawyers’ representation of the client, despite questions from the client seeking that information, and told her ‘we’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now.’
The client was offered potential employment that would make her ‘financially very comfortable’ as the date of her testimony approached by entities apparently linked to Donald Trump and his associates. Such offers were withdrawn or did notmaterialize as reports of the content of her testimony circulated. The client believed this was an effort to impact her testimony.”
More details are expected once the committee publishes the transcripts that will accompany its final report.
Passantino, along with a handful of other Trump-connected attorneys, formed their own law practice, Elections LLC, in 2021 and raked in cash from the Save America PAC. […]
[…] Things are going from bad to worse for the man who spent $44 billion in an attempt to return anti-vax and pro-insurrection conspiracy theorists to the nation’s tersest social network. What began as a purge of journalists who so much as mentioned Musk’s removal of an account that tracked where in the world Elon’s jet was, uh, jetting off to led to an exodus of Twitter users citing Musk’s lying tantrum as their last straw, which in turn led Musk to institute a new rule banning “promotion” of competing social networks Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Post, and (snicker) Truth Social, which Twitter’s new policy page defined as having any link to your account on those others sites or having a link that would in turn lead to the information.
That policy was itself reversed by Musk after basically the whole of Twitter and the internets laughed at Musk and only used the rules as further reason to head to one of those other sites rather than put up with the tantrumming baby’s ever-shifting web of new rules and his continued promotion of white supremacists and pandemic conspiracy cranks. But Musk was so butthurt (I’m using the technical term here, there’s nothing I can do about it) that he then posted a new Twitter poll asking site users to vote on whether he should step down as Twitter’s chief, saying he would “abide” by the results.
He lost the poll by a mile and has been double-fuming ever since. Will he abide by the poll’s results?
Ha ha ha ha—yeah, that’s a good one. […] another suck-up gave him the technical solution he needs.
“Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy related polls. We actually have skin in the game” tweeted some dude. “Good point. Twitter will make that change,” replied Musk.
Whew, that was a close one. Musk almost had to abide by the results of a poll that didn’t go his way, except—surprise!—it turns out that on the polls that don’t go his way it is because The Bots have foiled him.
[…] let’s give some special attention to the handful of still-paid Twitter engineers who are now tasked with immediately implementing, then tearing out, each of Elon Musk’s absolutely terrible ideas. They were tasked with coming up with a list of journalists to suspend—then told to reinstate them after Musk put up a Twitter poll in which users voted to undo the suspensions. Musk ordered them to write new code that would ban users from tweeting out links to Facebook, Mastodon, and other competing sites—and were soon ordered to undo those changes after Musk, yes, put up another Twitter poll to ask users whether that really should be the policy.
Now, in response to yet another poll that didn’t go the way he thought it would, the Twitter tech teams are no doubt scrambling to create some back-end flag that will make some and only some polls available only to Musk’s paid subscribers. That’s a lot of work! It’s also yet another change that may or may not run afoul of god-knows-how-many European or American laws, because there’s nobody left there to check for these things, and Twitter is still very much obliged to follow the terms of a consent agreement that requires them to inform the Federal Trade Commission of new product changes before implementing them.
Imagine being one of the few Twitter engineers to make it through Musk’s firing spree, his demand for printouts of your work product for a Musk-led “code review,” his demand that employees sign a new loyalty statement promising to work longer and harder, his refurbishing of unused offices into makeshift bedrooms so that you can comply with his demands to work late and sleep in the office instead of going home, and your reward for all of that is that you get to code all these Musk-demanded changes as fast as you can and stay at the office late to rip them back out again when Musk holds an on-site vote asking whether it was a stupid idea to begin with.
The email, which has not previously been made public, adds to the mounting evidence that the FBI had intelligence warnings that Jan. 6 was a major threat.
[…] That tip to the FBI, from a source who is still used by the bureau and spoke on the condition of anonymity, warned there was a “big” threat of violence on Jan. 6. It was among hundreds of pages of reports viewed by NBC News that this source sent to the FBI in the weeks before the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. The email, which has not been previously reported, warned that the Trump tweet was “gaining hold” on social media.
“Trump tweeted what people on the right are considering a call to arms in DC on Jan 6,” the confidential source wrote on the afternoon of Dec. 19, the day of Trump’s 1:42 a.m. “will be wild” tweet.
The information the source sent to the bureau in the weeks before the attack, pulled from extremist chatter on a variety of social media forums, included discussion of civil war, talk of hanging traitors and calls for militias to take up arms. It highlighted messages like “war is inevitable”; “hell is going to break loose”; “locked and loaded”; “my powder is dry, my guns are clean”; and “I’m not afraid of death and I’ll gladly take lives for the preservation of our country.” It included information on a “boogaloo” extremist who was prepared to die in D.C. […]
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has now arrived in the US, Weijia Jiang of CBS News writes, where he is expected to meet President Joe Biden at the White House and address a joint session of Congress.
The US is reportedly considering formally designating Russia as an “aggressor state” with lawmakers waiting to receive Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s approval of the proposal when he addresses Congress tonight.
The “aggressor state” label is less hawkish than the “state sponsor of terrorism” label that many lawmakers had been pushing the administration to impose on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
The White House has so far resisted, citing the negative consequences that the “state sponsor of terrorism” label could have on US-Russia diplomacy on issues including prisoner swaps, and the UN-brokered deal to allow grain out of Ukraine.
The Biden administration has been working with Congress over the last several months on legislation that would formally designate Russia as an “aggressor state”, multiple sources have told CNN.
If Zelenskiy endorses the proposal, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may introduce the legislation as a standalone bill this week, according to sources.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy will address the US Congress at 7.30pm Eastern Time tonight (0030 GMT on Thursday), according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In an invitation to Zelenskiy to address Congress, Pelosi paid tribute to the Ukrainian president’s “extraordinary” leadership.
She wrote:
America and the world are in awe of the heroism of the Ukrainian people. In the face of Putin’s horrific atrocities, Ukrainian freedom fighters have inspired the world with an iron will and an unbreakable spirit – fighting back against Russia’s brutal, unjustified invasion.
During this dark moment, your courageous, patriotic, indefatigable leadership has rallied not only your people, but the world, to join the frontlines of the fight for freedom. America and our allies have proudly answered your call: imposing devastating sanctions on Putin and ensuring Ukraine has the resources it needs to win this war. And it was a privilege to hear from you and from Speaker Stefanchuk at the First Parliamentary Summit of the International Crimea Platform about how the importance of the free world’s unshakable solidarity with Ukraine.
She said she looked forward to hearing his “message of unity, resilience and determination”, adding:
The fight for Ukraine is the fight for democracy itself.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has announced an $1.85 billion (£1.53 billion) in additional military assistance for Ukraine, including a transfer of the Patriot air defence system.
The assistance includes a $1 billion drawdown to provide Ukraine with “expanded air defence and precision-strike capabilities” and an additional $850 million in security assistance, Blinken said in a statement.
Reginald Selkirksays
@230: Passantino was the senior ethics attorney at the White House during Trump’s presidency. […]
Way to toss in the punchline early!
ravensays
Twitter
Thread
NOËL 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports
The Kremlin is discussing general mobilization and closing it’s borders.
“According to our information, they may not release men under 65 at all,” Danilov said.
12:47 AM · Dec 21, 2022
I don’t see what difference that will make. Most countries aren’t all that interested in letting Russians in any more either.
In fact, the European countries with borders on Russia are building up their border fences right now.
As far as I’m concerned, they could set up the Iron Curtain again and everyone would cheer.
That general mobilization isn’t likely to work either.
Russia is already running out of supplies for their soldiers up to and including rifles and uniforms.
And with more men in their army, there are less to support their economy.
During a televised address with senior military officials, the Russian president said he continued to see Ukraine as a “brotherly nation”…
He claimed the conflict was “the result of the policy of third countries”…
Ali Ahmed Aslam is said to have come up with the dish in the 1970s when a customer asked if there was a way of making his chicken tikka less dry.
His solution was to add a creamy tomato sauce, in some versions of the story a can of tomato soup…
Known to friends and customers as “Mr Ali” he was born in Pakistan but moved with his family to Glasgow as a young boy before opening Shish Mahal in Glasgow’s west end in 1964…
Florida Judge Jared Smith made headlines at the start of 2022 after he tried to deny a 17-year-old girl an abortion because, in his opinion, her GPA suggested she was too immature to make the decision without her parents. (Very logical that someone “not mature enough” to choose an abortion is perfectly fit to become a parent.)
Smith’s decision was thankfully overruled by an appeals court and, in August, Smith lost his reelection to the Hillsborough County Court. But now, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has appointed Smith to one of those appeals courts, effective on January 1. Yes, after voters kicked Smith to the curb, DeSantis decided to give him a job with more power than his old one.
MOSCOW ($1=63.88 Russian Rubles) — The Russian Federation will deploy a new Penicillin sound-thermal reconnaissance system to Ukraine in what Moscow calls a “special military operation.” The system is called Penicillin, also known as 1B75 Penicillin. The information was published by two Russian sources – RIA Novosti and Izvestia.
Elon Musk said on Tuesday that he would resign as Twitter’s chief executive when he found “someone foolish enough to take the job,” two days after he had asked his 122 million Twitter followers whether he should step down as the leader of the social media site and a majority of respondents answered yes.
Mr. Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October, asked his followers the question on Sunday night after facing a backlash for unpopular new content moderation policies and the seemingly capricious barring and reinstatement of high-profile users. Even some once-staunch supporters criticized his actions, calling his antics on the platform “the last straw.”
The survey attracted 17.5 million votes. Mr. Musk had said he would abide by the result, and more than 57 percent agreed that he should step down.
But hours after the poll closed on Monday morning, Mr. Musk stayed silent. When he finally spoke up late Monday, he did not directly address the survey result. Instead, he replied to Twitter users who cast doubt on the outcome and said Twitter would change its poll feature so that only people who paid for its subscription service would be allowed to vote.
ravensays
Just in case anyone cares.
Trump NFTs Tanking as Hype Dies, Floor Price Down 70%.
They might have been better off making these trading cards as real decks selling for $5 or $10 dollars each.
They could sell many as gifts for that Trumper relative you don’t like very much or for the humor for the commies on your list.
Decrypt Media
Trump NFTs Tanking as Hype Dies, Floor Price Down 70%
Andrew Hayward
Tue, December 20, 2022 at 9:28 AM PST·2 min read
Donald Trump’s first official NFT collection was the talk of the crypto world late last week, captivating Twitter and late night TV in the process. But after prices and trading volume surged over the weekend, both metrics have fallen sharply as the hype around the disgraced former U.S. president’s project is apparently fading.
Trump’s digital trading cards, which are minted on Ethereum scaling network Polygon, peaked on Saturday, December 17 with over $3.5 million worth of trading volume, per data from CryptoSlam. Sales price rose even higher on Sunday, with the NFTsselling for an average of just over $680 apiece, although total volume fell to nearly $1.95 million for the day.
On Monday, however, day-over-day trading dropped 57% to about $836,000 worth of ETH, with the average sale price falling to about $466. Today, the cheapest available Trump NFT up for sale on leading marketplace OpenSea is listed at just 0.21 ETH, or about $255.
Trump NFT Prices Nosedive, Then Soar, as SNL Skewers Them
Trump launched his digital trading card NFTs last Thursday, with 44,000 of the NFTs selling for $99 apiece in the primary sale. Buyers were incentivized by the possibility of winning a meet-and-greet or dinner with the former president, amid other potential perks. Another 1,000 NFTs were kept back by the project’s creators, for a total supply of 45,000.
Despite widespread mockery and criticism of the project—even from some of Trump’s own supporters—the project sold out within 24 hours and fueled secondary market demand. Since then, the project has racked up over $8.7 million worth of secondary trades.
Momentum peaked over the weekend, with the floor price—or cheapest listed NFT—hitting 0.84 ETH (about $990) on Saturday. Prices rose and fell in a volatile market ahead of the NFTs being skewered on NBC’s late-night comedy show, Saturday Night Live. Just three days later, the floor price has fallen 74% when measured in USD.
Trump’s digital trading cards project is ranked only 10th on CryptoSlam’s list of the top-selling projects over the last 24 hours. It has about $472,000 worth of sales during that span, while the Bored Ape Yacht Club tops the list with $3.8 million worth of NFT sales.
Beyond it being a pairing of already-divisive subjects (Trump and NFTs), the project has also been criticized for apparently using stolen artwork for some of its cards. Furthermore, the 1,000 NFTs kept by the project’s creators appear to contain a disproportionate amount of the “rare” collectibles, prompting further skepticism from NFT observers.
Akira MacKenziesays
WHOOPS! Sorry, that text should have been blockquoted.
What an amazing moment. [Tweet and video at the link. “An Ukrainian captain of a HIMARS battery relays a gift to President Biden.”]
I hope Biden gets the chance to personally return those medals to the captain after the war.
I want a poster. [Tweet and image at the link. “President Joe Biden welcomes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House.”]
Are we going to follow Zelenskyy around all day? Yes. Yes, we are. [Tweet and video at the link.]
When was the last time a state visit got this much attention? [Tweet, image and video at the link.]
[Nice weather photo of Zelensky on red carpet after leaving the plane that landed in the USA.] The guy with Zelensky is Rufus Gifford, chief of protocol for the United States. Raise your hand if you knew that was a thing.
Clearly, the visit of Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the U.S. Congress was a complete surprise … to everyone not in Ukraine. When the soldiers handed over that Ukrainian flag to Zelenskyy in Bakhmut and told him to bring it to Congress, they clearly knew about his impending visit. Somehow we all watched that, and wrote about it, and failed to get that those troops meant when you go to see Congress tomorrow.
“Where Winston Churchill stood generations ago, so, too, President Zelenskyy stands not just as a president but also as an ambassador to freedom itself.” — Chuck Schumer
That Zelenskyy is coming straight to President Joe Biden on his first trip out of his war-torn country is a vivid signal of just how vital U.S. support for Ukraine has been in keeping Ukraine free from Russian forces. And it’s an equally vivid signal of just how important that support will be as Ukraine continues to free all the lands currently being brutalized by Russia. Zelenskyy is meeting with Biden today, then will give his speech before Congress tonight during prime time. When we have more details I’ll add them to this update. And you better believe we’re going to be here tonight for live coverage of Zelenskyy’s appearance before Congress.
This is Zelenskyy’s first trip outside of Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022. His presence in Kyiv while Russia forces were closing in during the opening days of the war provided an incredible anchor for a nation in crisis. Since then, Zelenskyy has visited locations such as the cities of Izyum and Kherson to help Ukrainians celebrate liberation of large areas from Russian control. He also made that amazing visit to the besieged city of Bakhmut, speaking with the defenders of the city on the eve of his departure for Washington.
Planning for this visit has been reportedly taking place behind the scenes for weeks, and the security concerns about this visit have been demanding. Even before the reason was revealed, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was encouraging members of Congress to remain in Washington tonight for something important. It will be interesting to see how many Republican members of Congress are there, though it’s hard to imagine anyone not taking advantage of the opportunity to meet with a man so at the center of a critical moment in history.
There may be some surprises during the speech tonight, but there are a couple of certainties. One is that we’ll be hearing about the most recent $1.8 billion assistance package. That’s the package that is finally going to send Patriot missile defense systems to Ukraine, and hopefully more details about what that package will include will be revealed today.
When and where the Patriot battery will be deployed has still not been confirmed. Ukrainian troops will spend some time in Germany learning to use and maintain the system before it is dispatched to Ukraine. Also included in the latest package are an undisclosed number of Joint Direct Attack Munitions kits (JDAMs). These are kits that can be used to modify dumb bombs deployed by planes into smart bombs with precision guidance systems. They’re still deployed from planes, so they require a degree of air power to be useful. However, this currently doesn’t appear to be connected to the U.S. providing any American planes to Ukraine. In addition, the new package will include the usual: more vehicles, more ammo, more HIMARS rockets.
When the Ukrainian delegation arrives in Washington, there is definitely one item on their shopping list that is not in the current package: The MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). ATACMS rockets have a range of up to 300 kilometers, and can be fired from either HIMARS or the M270 MLRS. Previously the U.S. has refused to provide Ukraine with ATACMS out of fears that the range would allow these missiles to be used against targets in Russia. However, since the U.S. has recently changed its announced policy and recognized that Ukraine legitimately needs to strike some targets within Russia to secure the liberation of Ukrainian territory, the possibility of securing a truckload of ATACMS might be much better than in the past.
One of the things we’re going to be hearing about, both at that speech before Congress and when Zelenskyy meets with Biden, is the spending bill currently before the House. That bill, which Pelosi is hoping to push through in the few days that remain, contains another $44.9 billion in assistance for Ukraine. That is enough to fund everything Ukraine is expected to need through the end of next year—a year that will hopefully see an end to the invasion. Republicans have been pushing to have a smaller stopgap funding bill passed until a Republican majority takes control of the House in January. That bill contains just $12 billion in proposed funding for Ukraine. No doubt Pelosi hopes that Zelenskyy’s appearance and appeal to the Congress will help move the needle on getting the full spending bill through before the deadline.
In any case, stay tuned tonight. We’ll be watching.
Ukrainian sources are reporting that one day after Zelenskyy left the area, Wagner staged a large assault on Bakhmut. Scenes from multiple sources around the city’s eastern edge show intense, close-range combat in what look to be the now-familiar ruins of factories and industrial sites along Patrisa Lumumby Street. [intense video at the link in comment 244]
Ukrainian sources indicate that the first wave of this attack was not just repelled but destroyed [Good news], resulting in the loss of at least 50 members of the Russian force. However, as of this writing (11 AM ET, 6 PM in Kyiv) heavy fighting was reportedly continuing in the area as Ukraine follows up the defeat of the failed Russian attack with a counterattack of their own. [video at the link: "... counter attack on Wagner fighters]
Whether Ukraine intends to press Russian forces further from Bakhmut is unclear. So far it’s been difficult for either side to significantly shift the front lines that have been just out of the city for months. However, Ukrainian forces have apparently completed the removal of any remaining Russian forces that had reached the residential areas in a push that ended last week. [video at the link]
Soldier: “… enemy takes so many losses, I don’t know, maybe some kind of recycling process of comrades in progress.”
Oh, those Russian troops are getting recycled all right. Just not as soldiers.
Also on Wednesday, heavy fighting is reported in the Soledar area 10 kilometers northeast of Bakhmut. There are a number of areas along the eastern front that have seen repeated assaults. However, this little triangle of towns, including Soledar, Bakhmutske, and Nova Kamyanka, is probably second only to Bakhmut in the sheer amount of Russian bodies that have been expended in an attempt to capture the location.
North of Svatove there’s good news, better news, and WTF news. The good news is that Ukraine is reporting pushing back Russian assaults and suffering shelling at two locations northeast of Kupyansk. The better news is that Ukraine reportedly repelled a Russian attack on the village of Pidkuichansk, northwest of Svatove. [map at the link]
What’s important about Pidkuichansk is that it’s both close to Svatove and it’s on the eastern side of the P07 highway. After weeks of smacking each other back and forth at Kuzemivka and the neighboring town of Novoselivske, it seems like Ukraine may have decided to bypass that location for now and just continue toward Svatove from the northwest. This not only puts Ukrainian forces within 7 kilometers of Svatove on the north, it suggests that Ukraine is very close to encircling those remaining Russian-occupied locations on the western side of the highway. Any remaining Russian forces at Kolomyichykha, Patalakhivka, and Nezhuryne should be worried about this section being sliced loose from Russian lines.
The not good news comes in the form of reports of fighting at Masyutivka, a village north of Kupyansk that is small enough I previously didn’t have it on the map. The presence of Russian forces here suggest there’s a whole pocket of at least disputed territory I had previously failed to indicate. However, other sources continued to confirm the presence of Ukrainian forces along the P79 highway from Dvorichna to Tavilzhanka.
Is this a Russian advance in a peculiar spot, or holdouts that hung in there even as Ukraine liberated all the area around them? Um … maybe.
I should also mention that as Ukraine is reporting what appears to be an advance to Pidkuichansk, Russia is reporting that they’ve conducted a “successful counterattack” along the very same axis all the way to Stelmakhivka, “denying access to the P07 to Ukraine.” Past experience suggest that 90% of all reported Russian advances exist nowhere but in the heads of propaganda writers, but we’ll probably have to wait until tomorrow to see if Ukraine continues to hold reported positions in this area.
Further south, I have no new word on fighting near either Holykove or Zhytlivka north of Kreminna. The only word of fighting on Wednesday appears to be south and west of the city, especially in those wooded areas where Ukraine has been pushing slowly forward. Russia is reportedly attacking to the west near Ploshchanka, hoping to push Ukrainian forces from the P66 highway at that location.
Map note: When we come back after the first of the year, I’m thinking of eliminating the “yellow zone” from these maps. Originally this was intended to mark areas of active conflict, but over time I’ve allowed it to spread until its just the boundary between Ukrainian and Russian control. All too often it’s not even doing that, but only marking locations where there has been fighting, but no immediate conflict is known. For example, on the map above, I have no reason to believe Russia isn’t in control of Kolomyichykha, and no reports of recent fighting, so why isn’t it red? Anyway, I’m likely to switch to just red for areas known to be occupied by Russia, blue for those areas known to be liberated by Ukraine, and no color for areas where we just don’t know. One less set of polygons to maintain.
[Tweet and images showing what is included in the next $1.8 billion in military aid to Ukraine]
Hey look, you can even follow Zelenskyy’s plane in flight. Because that’s the way this works, Elon. [Tweet and image at the link]
Zelenskyy: “One guy who’s really, really a hero, real captain, and he asked me to pass his award, and he asked me to pass his award to President Biden. He’s very brave and he said give it to very brave President, and I want to give you, that is a cross for military merit.”
ravensays
Mayor confirms 5 homeless people froze to death on Salt Lake City, Utah streets.
Just what you want to read about on the Holidays.
Most of the US is under an arctic storm watch so there will be many more in the coming days. The arctic storm stretches from the Pacific Northwest to the East coast.
Mayor confirms 5 homeless people froze to death on Salt Lake City, Utah streets
by VICTORIA HILL and CRISTINA FLORES | KUTV Staff Wednesday, December 21st 2022
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Mayor Erin Mendenhall confirmed five unsheltered people have died in the cold over the span of five days in Salt Lake City.
Mayor confirms 5 homeless people froze to death on Salt Lake City, Utah streets (KUTV)
The first death of an unsheltered person was reported to have occurred on Dec. 15. One man was found in a tent, and another couple died right in front of one of the new homeless resource centers. Their identities have not yet been released.
The medical examiner’s office was working to determine official causes of death.
Volunteers and other non-profit members have been working to raise awareness that people are dying in the extreme cold.
People’s lives are being lost because the system is not working,” said Wayen Niederhauser, the state’s homeless coordinator. “Right now, our resource centers are running at capacity. It’s obvious we need additional shelter response.”
Niederhauser said the state had 340 overflow shelter beds this winter — more than ever before — but it was not enough. He said the state miscalculated the need.
The mayor’s office stated that before last weekend’s drop in temperatures, there were an average of 109 beds available each night in the county’s shelter system.
Approximately 85 homeless people were sheltered in a church over the weekend because there was no space elsewhere.
Several local and state leaders said they will be taking emergency action to open more beds in shelters. Mendenhall on Tuesday signed an emergency proclamation to temporarily expand capacity at two of three homeless resource centers in the city.
Every Salt Lake City resident deserves a safe place to sleep at night,” Mendenhall said. “Together, these moves will allow our partner service providers the opportunity to add 95 beds as soon as they are able. We are working together in a more collaborative and coordinated way than I can remember, and I’m really grateful.”
Millcreek Mayor Jeff Silvestrini and South Salt Lake Mayor Cherie Wood also agreed Tuesday to expand capacity at two of their overflow shelters.
According to a press release, the order “will allow partner service providers the opportunity to add 95 beds as soon as they are able.”
However, Niederhauser admitted those beds won’t open anytime soon as temperatures continue to remain low, because they are short-staffed.
“They are slowly able to get additional staffing, but it doesn’t happen overnight,” he said.
In a press release from Mendenhall, she said “the State has agreed to provide the funding necessary to support staffing and provide the transportation necessary for increased capacity – a critical function to ensure people can get to, and be serviced by providers.”
It was not initially stated when or how the shelters will be getting the much-needed staffing.
The emergency proclamation was announced to be in place for 30 days, after which the Salt Lake City Council may consider and vote on an extension.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 247
Five will get you ten that those five poor souls were either LGBTQIA+ kids who got disowned and thrown out of their homes by their faithful Mormon parents or they otherwise didn’t qualify for state social services which is run by Joseph Smith’s filthy little cult.
Well, I take solace that, thanks to the climate change that the LDS and its followers deny is happening, the Great Salt Lake will dry up resulting in toxic arsenic dust storms that will smother and poison their white-bread-and-mayonnaise paradise.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, announced on Wednesday that he had succeeded in forming a coalition government that is set to bring him back to power at the helm of the most right-wing administration in Israeli history.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has given a defiant address to a joint session of the US Congress in which he vowed that his country would never abandon its resistance to Russian aggression – but said that Washington’s continued support is key to ultimate victory.
Zelenskiy was received with a standing ovation as he arrived to speak wearing his now trademark green military-style trousers and shirt. The Ukrainian leader was repeatedly met with long bursts of applause as he invoked US battles against Nazi Germany and President Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime commitments in a bid to keep American weapons supplies flowing for the war against Russia.
“Our two nations are allies in this battle and next year will be a turning point. I know it. The point when Ukrainian courage and American resolve must guarantee the future of our common freedom. The freedom of people who stand for their values,” he said.
…
“Against all odds and doom and gloom, Ukraine didn’t fall. Ukraine is alive and kicking,” he said.
That survival had produced different kinds of victories, he said.
“We defeated Russia, in the battle for minds of the world. We have no fear. Nor should anyone in the world have it. Ukraine’s gained this victory and it gives us courage, which inspires the entire world.”
But, Zelenskiy said, the struggle on the battlefield remained, and America was central to what happened there.
“I know that everything depends on us, on the Ukrainian armed forces. Yet so much depends on the world. So much in the world depends on you,” he told Congress.
“Russia could stop its aggression, really, if it wanted to. But you can speed up our victory.”
Zelenskiy said that the day before flying to Washington he visited the frontline city of Bakhmut in the Donbas. He described the region as “soaked in blood”.
“Russians use everything they have against Bakhmut and other our beautiful cities. The occupiers have a significant advantage in artillery, they have an advantage in ammunition, they have much more missiles and planes than we ever had,” he said. “It’s true, but our defence forces stand.”
He compared Ukrainian soldiers to American troops who resisted Germans at the Battle of the Bulge in Christmas 1944.
And then he got to his point: Ukranians are fighting and dying. The least America can do is provide them with the weapons to resist.
“We have artillery. Yes. Thank you. Is it enough? Not really,” he said to laughter in the chamber. [I laughed at home.]
Zelenskiy also sought to define his enemy in terms American politicians understand – as a terrorist state allied with another of the US’s enemies, Iran, which has supplied drones used in attacks on Ukrainian cities.
“Russia found an ally in this genocidal policy, Iran. The deadly drones sent to Russia in hundreds and hundreds became a threat to our critical infrastructure. That is how one terrorist has found the other,” he said. “It is just a matter of time when they will strike against your other allies if we do not stop them now. We must do it.”
Zelenskiy also played to the American reverence for the flag. He unfurled a blue and yellow Ukrainian standard he said had come from the front line. [There’s video of the troops giving it to him the other day.] The speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and Vice-president Kamala Harris held it up.
“This flag is a symbol of our victory in this war. We stand, we fight and we will win because we are united – Ukraine, America and the entire free world,” he said….
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
…A former Russian deputy prime minister and a pro-Moscow official were injured when Ukrainian forces shelled the eastern city of Donetsk on Wednesday, Russian news agencies said. Donetsk, controlled by pro-Moscow troops, is in the industrial Donbas region, the centre of recent bitter fighting between Russia and Ukraine.
…
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has called for Europe to reduce its reliance on the US and develop its own defence capabilities while taking a more assertive role within Nato. Speaking to reporters on his return to Paris from a summit in Amman, Jordan, Macron stressed that he doesn’t see his push to develop European defence as an alternative to Nato.
…
In an overwhelming vote of 93-2, the US Senate confirmed the appointment of Lynne M Tracy as the new US ambassador to Russia on Wednesday. Tracy, a career diplomat of the US foreign service, “will be tasked with standing up to [Vladimir] Putin”, the Associated Press quoted the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, as saying.
In November, Cain performed Don’t Stop Believin’ with Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Kari Lake for Trump at his Florida resort.
There’s a video clip at the link, I shudder to say.
This I didn’t know:
Cain, 71, is a member of Trump’s inner circle because his wife, the televangelist Paula White-Cain, is the former US president’s spiritual advisor.
In November, Cain performed Don’t Stop Believin’ with Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Kari Lake for Trump at his Florida resort.
There’s a video clip at the link, I shudder to say.
This I didn’t know:
Cain, 71, is a member of Trump’s inner circle because his wife, the televangelist Paula White-Cain, is the former US president’s spiritual advisor.
In November, [guitarist Neal] Cain performed Don’t Stop Believin’ with Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Kari Lake for Trump at his Florida resort.
There’s a video clip at the link, I shudder to say.
This I didn’t know:
Cain, 71, is a member of Trump’s inner circle because his wife, the televangelist Paula White-Cain, is the former US president’s spiritual advisor.
[Guitarist Neal] Cain, 71, is a member of Trump’s inner circle because his wife, the televangelist Paula White-Cain, is the former US president’s spiritual advisor.
A fire broke out on Russia’s only aircraft carrier earlier today, Russian state media reported.
The Admiral Kuznetsov, a flagship of the Russian Navy, suffered a “minor” fire while docked at the Zvyozdochka shipyard in the Arctic port of Murmansk, located in the far north-west of Russia, according to reports by the Russian state-owned Tass and Ria Novosti news agencies.
Aleksey Rakhmanov, head of the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) which is overseeing a major refit of the carrier, was cited as saying that the blaze was quickly extinguished and caused no casualties.
Tass cited an emergency service source as saying that 20 people had been evacuated.
The Admiral Kuznetsov has been out of service and in dry dock for repairs since 2018. Rakhmanov told Russian media in June that he expected the 43,000-tonne, 1000-foot warship to return to service in early 2024.
Activist groups estimate as many as 16 to 20 people have died of hunger or thirst on a boat that is carrying ethnic Rohingya and stranded off India’s coast. The boat, which is carrying at least 100 people and is currently in Malaysian waters, has been stranded at sea for two weeks.
“We estimate that probably as many as 20 have died … some from hunger and thirst, and others jumped overboard in desperation,” said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, which works to support Myanmar’s Rohingya community.
It is not clear if the boat drifted or was towed to Malaysian waters, or if India attempted to provide aid.
India’s navy and coast guard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Each year many Rohingya risk their lives boarding rickety vessels to reach Malaysia.
“These people have been adrift on a damaged boat for more than two weeks without food and water,” said Lilianne Fan, chair of Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network’s Rohingya Working Group.
“We have heard that up to 16 people may have already died.”
No words.
Insufficent imagination.
Insufficent global compassion and help.
StevoRsays
As for the numbers killed in Ukraine by Putin’s needless invason I can’t even ..I just can’t.
Humans are humans whoever and wherever they are and .. how come we don’t seem to grok that?
It’s the latest fun thing to do: make a list of possible replacements for Elon Musk as CEO of Twitter. Obviously, some of these are not expected to be taken seriously since everyone expects Twitter to die soon. Musk said:
I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!
I think we all know, there are plenty of fools in the world.
Latter song choice probly not remotely the best representation of Randism & very unfair to Steve Earle but .. nausea forebade otherwise and yeah .. some addictive drugs -alcohol included not good understatement so ya.
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill passed! 86 votes to 39! All the Tory attempts to block it by filibustering and spurious points of order, and all the transphobia bile, have failed. I haven’t seen the whole thing yet, and I know there were some amendments the sponsors of the bill were not happy with, but I’d say* it’s still a great day for trans rights.
*As a cishet man, it’s not my call, but the trans commenters on the Scottish Greens’ slack are happy.
Kyle Cheney’s thread about the Cassidy Hutchinson interview transcripts is still going:
…Hutchinson said a GOP member of Congress, who isn’t on the select committee, helped convince her to reconsiderher posture toward the select committee andbe more forthcoming.
As she was wracked with conflict and guilt, Hutchinson said she began reading about witnesses who turned against the nixon White House, including Alexander Butterfield….
She learned about Butterfield from the Watergate Wikipedia page and found out he’d helped with Bob Woodward’s 2015 The Last of the President’s Men, which she bought and read three times. (Screenshots at the link.)
Churchill wore a powder-blue “siren suit” onesie to Washington in January 3, 1942.
Churchill reportedly “became so interested in displaying his one-piece, zipper coveralls, handy in case of air raids, that he forgot all about his original plans” to feed the squirrels in the Spanish Garden, wrote The United Press.
Dominion Voting Systems seems to be gaining some traction in its billion-dollar defamation lawsuit against Fox News over its broadcast of bogus conspiracy theories blaming the company for 2020 election fraud.
The company presented evidence in court Wednesday to establish that Fox News figures knew the claims about Dominion were false but aired them anyway.
“I did not believe it for one second,” Sean Hannity reportedly said in his Dominion deposition.
The NYT:
Mr. Hannity’s disclosure — along with others that emerged from court on Wednesday about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the 2020 election — is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.
The UK government is apparently threatening to block the Gender Recognition Reform Bill from becoming law, using a power that has not been used since devolution in 1999, on the (entirely spurious) grounds that it will disrupt the UK’s Equality Act 2010. They may think they can use this as a “wedge issue” in Scotland, as polls suggest that – at least if you ask the right questions – you can get majorities against key aspects of the bill in Scotland (there’s a link to some polls from my link, but it’s to a TERF site, so may well be highly selective). But the only party with a majority of MSPs against the bill was the Tories (the Scottish Greens and I think the LibDems were unanimously in favour, SNP and Labour strongly but not unanimously so), so they’d be showing their willingness to use their power to over-rule the Scottish Parliament when all parties but their own and more than 2/3 of MSPs voted for the bill. If they do attempt to use this power, there would undoubtedly be a court case, ending up in the Supreme Court, and my guess is that they would lose – despite supposedly being non-political, the Supremes would probably prefer not to reinforce the impression given by the recent case on a consultative independen referendum that they are simply tools of the UK Government whenever it wants to overrule the Scottish Government. But meanwhile, it would be interesting to see what line the Labour and LibDem parties took. And of course, meanwhile trans people in Scotland would continue to be deprived of the right to self-determination.
Last night, Washington, D.C., witnessed a contrast so stark that it’s difficult to say when it might have been matched. On the one hand, Congress welcomed into its chamber a man who is currently leading his nation through a bloody war in which tens of thousands have died and millions have been displaced. Also present—or pointedly absent—were supposed representatives for millions of Americans who showed nothing but disdain for that man, the suffering of his people, and the role they play in saving not just their country but ours.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy brought with him a flag freshly taken from the front lines of the war, signed by soldiers who wanted to express their gratitude to the United States for the assistance it has provided. Those soldiers, fighting in the ruins if their homes, shadowed by death and threatened by a seemingly heartless foe, recognize that on their shoulders falls a burden carried only by a few in any century: the decision as to what kind of world goes forward, both now and for decades to come. Zelenskyy came to the House chamber as an emissary of those women and men, seeking to show their appreciation for aid already rendered as well as their desperate need for the tools that will allow the fight to be prosecuted to conclusion.
That Zelenskyy was in Washington and not in London, Paris, or anywhere else shows just how central the United States still remains—even at this late date, in spite of everything—to the enterprise of freedom. We are still the arsenal of democracy with all the responsibility that brings.
But even as Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were raising that Ukrainian battle flag at the front of the chamber, there were in the same room representatives of the same threat Ukraine is fighting. Their actions and words were not just a despicable shadow across a historic evening, but a sign of how close that enterprise stands to failure.
The people who are assailing Ukraine have no doubt about their purpose in that country, or what role this fight plays in the larger world. It takes no more than a quick look at their state-sponsored media to find the calls for extinction of the Ukrainian people before going on to other opponents.
“The more we burn in Ukraine, the easier it will be for us to bomb Europe and United States”. [video at the link]
That Zelenskyy came to the United States does us honor. That the [meeting] of Congress was opened by the enthusiastic greetings of representatives and senators who have supported Ukraine in its fight was genuinely heartwarming. Those who escorted Zelenskyy into the chamber and those who grew tearful applauding the man in a green shirt as he stepped to the podium have this in common with those fighting in the trenches at Bakhmut and Soledar: They knew they were making history.
But it’s impossible to ignore the shadow that hung over the back rows of that chamber. Some of that shadow was evident in the way that not every seat was filled. Earlier in the day, Pelosi mentioned her father’s presence in Congress on the day that Winston Churchill visited, the day after Christmas in 1941. On that day, every seat was swiftly filled. Doorkeepers placed extra chairs at the rear of the chamber to accommodate the swelling crowd […]
Of course, while Churchill’s dilemma in World War II seems all too similar to the difficulties now facing Zelenskyy, there was one big difference: The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor just three weeks earlier. Only a few months earlier, in March 1941, 135 Republicans had voted against the Lend Lease Act. Had Churchill come to visit at that time, he may well have gotten a reception like that given to Zelenskyy by representatives like Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
Massie has voted against every bill containing any assistance to Ukraine and has declared that he is “proud” of those votes. On Wednesday, he not only refused to come to come to the joint session, he did so with a sneer. “I’m in DC but I will not be attending the speech of the Ukrainian lobbyist.”
Then there were those such as Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz. They did attend, but did so only so that they could show their disdain for Zelenskyy. They not only remained seated when their colleagues stood to greet the Ukrainian president, they made a point of visibly chattering during some of the most moving moments of the speech, of blatantly checking their phones, and of staring stony-faced toward Zelenskyy in those moments when he was urgently calling for the assistance of America.
In fact, the only moments that seemed to cause Gaetz and Boebert to smile during the whole evening was when they deliberately forced their way past the security checkpoint at the entrance of the chamber and pointedly ignored the police who tried to stop them from entering the [meeting]. Because nothing tops off a display of disrespect like adding an extra layer of threat.
They weren’t alone in their refusal to recognize the moment. When even Rep. Jim Jordan stood for one moment of applause, he still couldn’t get Georgia representative and gun store owner Andrew Clyde to stand. “I will not,” said Clyde. “I will not.”
All of these conveyers of contempt were eagerly welcomed by right-wing media, which provided a number of pundits to join in painting the event with sarcasm and disdain. However, as might be expected, it fell to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to really plumb the depths of loathsomeness.
Remarkable moment here where rabid antisemite and Putin apologist Tucker Carlson castigates Zelensky for “declaring war on Christianity”. [video at the link]
Every single Republican who went on Fox seemed obsessed with the idea that America is defined by “the border.” And maybe that’s the basic flaw with everything on the right, because America isn’t a block of land prescribed by borders. America is an idea. Thankfully, not everyone has forgotten that. During his campaign for the White House, President Joe Biden used that phrase as he address the “battle for the soul of this nation.”
[…] We rise and fall together, all of us engaged in the enterprise of democracy. And all of those opposed.
If you want to see what pure evil looks like. Look no further than Rapey McForehead’s [Matt Gaetz’s] face as Zalenskyy passes him on his exit from the house chamber. [video at the link]
TOKYO (AP) — Japan adopted a plan on Thursday to extend the lifespan of nuclear reactors, replace the old and even build new ones, a major shift in a country scarred by the Fukushima disaster that once planned to phase out atomic power.
In the face of global fuel shortages, rising prices and pressure to reduce carbon emissions, Japan’s leaders have begun to turn back toward nuclear energy, but the announcement was their clearest commitment yet after keeping mum on delicate topics like the possibility of building new reactors…
KGsays
Further to #276, if the UK Government does block the GRR (Scotland) Bill, it will be even more interesting to watch the contortions of the SNP minority who opposed it (9 MSPs out of 64 IIRC) and Alex Salmond’s We-Hate-Nicola-Sturgeon Party (aka “Alba”), which has made transphobia one of its key policies, alongside a supposedly more robust attitude to gaining independence. Is their trans-hate sufficiently important to them that they would back the UK Government’s block?
The Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary group answerable to Vladimir Putin, took delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster Moscow’s forces in Ukraine, according to the US.
The US assessment, reported by Reuters and then confirmed by national security council spokesperson John Kirby, suggests the Wagner Group’s expanding role in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters:
We can confirm that North Korea has completed an initial arms delivery to Wagner, which paid for the equipment. Last month, North Korea delivered infantry rockets and missiles into Russia for use by Wagner.
The amount of material delivered by North Korea will not change battlefield dynamics in Ukraine, the source said.
But the US is “concerned that North Korea is planning to deliver more military equipment to Wagner”, they added.
US officials believe the North Korean arms delivery is a direct violation of the UN’s security council resolutions, and plan to raise this with the council.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he is returning to Ukraine “with good results” in his first video message after his visit to Washington.
The Ukrainian leader thanked Joe Biden “for his help, his international leadership, and his determination to win” in a video posted on social media.
He said:
We are bringing to Ukraine, to Donbas, to Bakhmut and to the south the decisions that our Defense Forces have been waiting for.
He added that he met with Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, on his way home today and thanked him “for everything they do for Ukraine and our protection – the protection of Europe”.
German authorities said they arrested an employee of the country’s foreign intelligence service (BND) on suspicion of treason for allegedly passing information to Russia.
The suspect, a German citizen identified only as Carsten L., was arrested in Berlin on Wednesday, federal prosecutors said in a statement. It said police also raided his flat and workplace as well as those of another person.
…
It comes just days after Austria said it had identified a 39-year-old Greek citizen whom it suspects of spying for Russia. The suspect is the son of a former Russian spy who was once stationed in Germany and Austria as a diplomat, the Austrian interior ministry said on Monday.
White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said she felt she had “Trump himself looking over my shoulder” as she discussed with her attorney her upcoming testimony to the January 6 committee earlier this year.
Hutchinson, an assistant to then-president Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, makes the revelation in a transcript of a deposition to the panel that was released on Thursday morning.
In it, Hutchinson, a star witness against Trump in public hearings of the committee this summer, outlines what she saw as sustained campaign of pressure by lawyers paid by Trump to get her to mislead the panel.
CNN reported on Wednesday that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the White House at the time, allegedly advised Hutchinson to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did over Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat to Joe Biden.
According to the transcript, Hutchinson told the panel:
It wasn’t just that I had Stefan sitting next to me; it was almost like I felt like I had Trump looking over my shoulder. Because I knew in some fashion it would get back to him if I said anything that he would find disloyal.
And the prospect of that genuinely scared me. You know, I’d seen this world ruin people’s lives or try to ruin people’s careers. I’d seen how vicious they can be.
Hutchinson, then 26, said she originally thought she was “fucked” because she couldn’t afford a lawyer after receiving a subpoena from the House committee, but was hooked up with Passantino through her White House contacts. It turned out that Passantino was being paid by a Trump political action committee.
Hutchinson also said that Passantino had never explicitly asked her to lie to the panel:
I want to make this clear to you: Stefan never told me to lie. He specifically told me, ‘I don’t want you to perjure yourself, but ‘I don’t recall’ isn’t perjury. [It’s perjury if you do recall!] They don’t know want you can and can’t recall’.
But she said she felt increasingly pressured into misleading the panel. The relationship with Passantino soured, and ended, she said.
The prospect of the far right joining government after Israel’s recent election has left the country’s LGBTQ+ community fearing for the future.
Elements of the incoming coalition led by the prime minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu have not hidden the fact that they are hostile to Palestinians and LGBTQ+ people.
Avi Maoz, the leader of the extremist religious nationalist party Noam that helped Netanyahu’s bloc win, has said queer people are a “threat to the family”, and that the greatest achievement women can make is to marry and raise children.
Maoz is expected to head a new “national Jewish identity” authority [!!!] with powers over some school activities, including minority rights and gender equality.
…
Israel’s cultural and economic capital, Tel Aviv, is also seen as under threat. Noam has called for the cancellation of Gay Pride events.
Hilal Habashi, a transgender Palestinian citizen of Israel living in Jaffa, an Arab-majority area to Tel Aviv’s south, who works in technology, said she found the political situation confusing.
“It seems they will start with small things, removing stuff from the healthcare package, like subsidised medicines. Maybe we won’t get hormones or access to surgery prep … If you need to pay private prices for that, it will affect everyone no matter how much money you make.”
Habashi already makes an effort not to appear feminine when she leaves the house in her neighbourhood, which she describes as conservative. “There already isn’t a lot of sympathy for trans people. If we are going to have a place for this type of talk in public – transphobia and homophobia – it will make it a lot harder for me to live my life, and that’s scary,” she said.
“I fear being persecuted because I’m a trans woman … The Palestinian community is also treated badly by the government, officials and police. What we face is traumatic.”
Some members of the LGBTQ+ community are thinking of leaving. “I felt betrayed by my own people. It is a big disappointment, and still very hard to accept,” said Shay Lerner, 34, a DJ who is planning a move to Germany. “I’m disappointed in my country because this is not the way I was raised: I was raised to take responsibility for my actions and to look at other people and see them as human beings.”
…
“They will begin to refuse us services, and we will feel the loss of the rights which we fought for for so long.”…
According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, criminals are using ads in search engine results like Google and Bing to impersonate brands. These ads send unsuspecting users off to phony websites that look identical to the pages people are actually searching for, where they are then be subjected to ransomware or phishing attacks. The Bureau says an ad blocker can help.
Donald Trump lies a lot, but George Santos seems to have him beat. Santos, elected to Congress in a contested district in New York, ran and won as the openly gay son of immigrants, a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor,” the founder of an animal rescue nonprofit, the descendent of Jews who fled the Holocaust, the wealthy owner of 13 properties and of a company that paid him a $750,000 salary. And then The New York Times started looking into him—after the election, natch—and found that basically none of his story about himself holds up. Days later, the story somehow keeps crumbling, and we’ve now gotten to the point of questions about whether Santos is … really gay?
Earlier in the week, the Times reported that the college Santos claimed to have graduated from had no record of him, the famous financial institutions he claimed to have worked for had no record of him, his animal rescue organization did not appear to be registered as a nonprofit, disclosure forms listed no clients for the family company that allegedly managed $80 million in assets, and there was no record of the real estate properties he claimed. What the Times did find that Santos hadn’t mentioned was unresolved check fraud charges in Brazil and multiple evictions for unpaid rent. You might be sympathetic to him for the latter, but during the pandemic, Santos vocally opposed an eviction moratorium, asking, “Will we landlords ever be able to take back possession of our property?”
That seemed like a lot when the Times first reported it. But the hits keep coming. On Wednesday, the Jewish publication The Forward reported that Santos lied about his Jewish grandparents fleeing persecution. According to Santos’ campaign website, “George’s grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.” But The Forward found genealogical information that Santos’ grandparents were born in Brazil in 1918 and 1927. He described his late mother as Jewish, but her still-existing Facebook page was filled with Catholic references while Jewish references were entirely absent.
Things got so bad that people started questioning—mostly but not entirely jokingly—if Santos is even gay….
Examples and more at the link.
ravensays
Tweet
Paul Massaro @apmassaro3
Zelensky: “Your money is not charity. It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.” Yup
4:54 PM · Dec 21, 2022
Zelensky got that right.
We send Ukraine money and arms that we can easily afford and they spend the blood and lives of their children, none of which anyone can afford.
No wonder he and Ukraine got a standing ovation from the US Congress.
ravensays
Tweet
Stand by Ukraine | Call Russia Initiative
@StandByUkraine
With just 5% of annual military budget, US has been able to cripple 🇷🇺 army, while upholding int’l stability & sending a powerful message to would-be invaders. Hard to think of a better ROI, especially given that much of the aid is outdated equipment US looking to replace anyway.
Quote Tweet
CEPA @cepa
·
“Continued US support for Ukraine is a no-brainer from a bang for buck perspective. Ukraine is no Vietnam or Afghanistan for the US, but it is exactly that for Russia. A Russia continually mired in a war it cannot win is a huge strategic win for the US.” https://cepa.org/article/its-costing-peanuts-for-the-us-to-defeat-russia/
9:54 PM · Dec 21, 2022
We aren’t spending a whole lot of even our defense budget to fight the Russian imperialists.
It’s 5% of our defense budget.
We spent $4 trillion in Afghanistan and Iraq with more or less nothing to show for it.
(FWIW, since Musk bought Twitter, it has been overrrun by Russian trolls. No surprise.)
This flag is still in Bakhmut, in a basement where local residents ride out the storm on Dec. 22, 2022. [photo at the link]
The US Senate has unanimously adopted the amendment to allow assets seized from sanctioned Russian oligarchs and entities supporting Putin to be used to the benefit of the Ukrainian people.
Russia, involuntarily, is starting to pay for Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is (or very soon will be), back in Ukraine. He made a brief stop in Poland this morning, and then likely boarded a train for Kyiv. Naturally, the exact time of that departure isn’t exactly being flashed on billboards, but it’s expected that he will be back home today.
His meeting with President Biden and his appearance before the U.S. Congress on Wednesday evening was a genuinely historic event[…] The New York Times now has a full transcript.
This battle is not only for the territory, for this or another part of Europe. The battle is not only for life, freedom and security of Ukrainians or any other nation which Russia attempts to conquer. This struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live, and then their children and grandchildren
As for the Republicans who embarrassed themselves yesterday with their loathsome behavior, I’ve already given them more time than they deserve. Now all of us should join Zelenskyy, at least metaphorically, and get back to Ukraine.
In Bakhmut, the city that provided that dramatic battle flag that Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker Nancy Pelosi held in front of the joint session, the pace of fighting has been significantly reduced over the past few days. Not only have there been multiple reports of reduced levels of shelling in the area, Russian forces had been pushed well back from previous positions and for the past two days, the wave attacks that have marked the last six months seemed to be completely missing. The sudden silence was so noticeable that a couple of sources even began proclaiming that “for now at least, Ukraine has won the Battle of Bakhmut.” [map at the link]
But as of Thursday, Russian sources are insisting that attacks on Bakhmut have been renewed. According to them, Russian forces have again worked their way through the familiar industrial ruins along Patrisa Lumumby Street, and are again attempting to advance up the angeled Pershotravneve Plaza to Fedora Maksymenka Street along the eastern edge of Bakhmut proper. However, “attempting” appears to be the key word here. This the same route that Russian forces took two weeks ago when they temporarily managed to get a small number of troops into the blocks just west of Maksymenka Street. Then Ukraine threw them back. Right now, there doesn’t seem to be any real sign on the ground that Russia is advancing in this area.
In fact, Ukrainian sources continue to report that, as of now, Ukraine holds all of Bakhmut, and all the area to the east. Meaning that Russia is actually well behind where it was months ago.
However, this doesn’t mean Russia has been pushed back at other points of the line. [Tweet and images at the link] Down by Donetsk, Russia also appears to have control of significantly more of Avdiivka than had been previously recognized. The situation continues to be critical in multiple locations.
To the north, near Kreminna, these images from the woods south of the city show Ukrainian forces working calmly at a location that can be identified by the marker in the picture. [Tweet and images at the link.]
There are other reports that Russian forces that were fighting with Ukraine at close range in the forests south of Kreminna (resulting in some dramatic videos over the last couple of weeks) have now retreated back into the city. Ukrainian forces have likely advanced into this space, which places them directly south of the city. Some analysts are putting today as the day that “the battle for Kreminna really begins.” [map at the link]
However, there seems to be almost no news from the north side of Kreminna. Nothing new from the reported Ukrainian movement toward Holykove or Zhytlivka. Nothing from reported Russian movement toward Ploshchanka. If there is serious fighting going on within Kreminna, that word has yet to leak out.
I should note that many maps, including those from Ukrainian sources, have a bigger “bump” of Russian control extending west of Kreminna to Dibrova. However, the last word I have showed UA forces at Kuzmyne, and I’ve not seen anything since to contradict this so … the line stays where it is for now.
At the very northern end of the line, there are areas where both Russia and Ukraine appear to be advancing. Reported fighting at the village of Masyutivka on Wednesday appears to be real, and is apparently part of a broader push westward from Russian forces from around Velykyi Vyselok. The number of troops on both sides in this area appears to be small, but if Russia can disrupt Ukraine’s use of the highway on the east side of the river, it makes it significantly more difficult for Ukraine to continue with the process of slowly securing villages and towns in northeast Kharkiv. [map at the link]
Meanwhile, Ukraine appears to have continued the push that started earlier this week along the P07 highway at Pidkuichansk. On Thursday, there are also reports that Ukraine is pressing to the northeast from a location near Krokhmalne, toward Volodymyrivka. Both of these moves certainly put pressure on Russian forces in Kuzemivka, where Ukraine and Russia have found a back-and-forth battle in the last three weeks.
The movement though Pidkuichansk would seem to be cutting into positions that had been previously flagged as Russia’s defensive lines around Svatove, and would also be a serious threat to Russian positions west of the highway.
There is a widely circulating video that reportedly shows “50 Russian tanks headed for Svatove.” However, close examination of that video shows car licenses and road signs indicating that it was taken in the Severodonetsk area. It likely dates from several months ago when Russia was advancing on that location. The tanks in that video are likely rusting in a field somewhere at this point.
As of this morning, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense estimates that over 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. [Tweet and image at the link.]
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 285
Because it NEVER occurs to anyone in the government that the Internet or capitalism is the thing that ought to be regulated. No, no, you’re own! Hope that your adblocker will protect you because we, your government that supposedly looks out for your interests, won’t do it. Freedom!
Solidarity with librarians standing up and fighting back against hate all over this country! ❤️✊📚
——————–
Librarians are sick and tired of MAGA culture wars, and they’re beginning to clap back!
[…] The library is set to close its doors permanently in the fall of 2024 after voters rejected a millage that would provide for 85% of its budget, around $200,000.
According to The Mary Sue, the complaint that led to the vote to defund the library began in August. That’s when protests over a young adult graphic novel series, Heartstopper by Alise Oseman, and Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel memoir, Gender Queer, broke out. And even after those titles were relocated to the adult section, the conservative groups protesting the library refused to relent.
Then the library’s director, Amber McLain, came out as LGBTQ. She soon resigned, along with several other librarians, after hate speech in the town became too intense and she and others were accused of pedophilia.
A GoFundMe was launched by author Nora Roberts and others, The Mary Sue reports, and it has raised enough money to keep the library afloat until the fall of 2023.
Like a tidal wave, book banning is engulfing this country’s libraries and schools.
In December 2021, Oklahoma Republican state Sen. Rob Standridge championed SB 1142, claiming it addresses the “indoctrination in Oklahoma schools.” The bill would ban books from school libraries that focus on “the study of sex, sexual lifestyles, or sexual activity.” In March, the bill passed through the Senate Education Committee 8-4, with all three Democrats voting against it, The Oklahoman reported.
Just like their Puritan forebears, who are credited with the first book ban in the U.S. in 1637, Republicans in Texas have jumped into the business of book banning and censorship with both feet.
Last year, a San Antonio-area school district recently proactively pulled around 400 books from its shelves in response to a letter from GOP lawmaker Rep. Matt Krause, demanding schools statewide provide information on 850 books on his list for review.
According to the American Library Association (ALA), the calls for book-banning have been unparalleled of late. Parents across the nation have set their targets on books they allege contain “sexually explicit” content from authors such as Toni Morrison and Alison Bechdel.
“It’s a volume of challenges I’ve never seen in my time at the ALA – the last 20 years. We’ve never had a time when we’ve gotten four or five reports a day for days on end, sometimes as many as eight in a day,” ALA Director Deborah Caldwell-Stone tells The Guardian. “Social media is amplifying local challenges, and they’re going viral, but we’ve also been observing a number of organizations activating local members to go to school board meetings and challenge books. We’re seeing what appears to be a campaign to remove books, particularly books dealing with LGBTQIA themes and books dealing with racism.”
More on the GRR (Scotland) Bill, and the UK Government’s threat to block it. The Guardian analysis, which in this case I agree with, is that Sunak and his cronies are thinking of using the issue to further their culture war against trans people, from which they believe they can benefit politically – and not only in Scotland: see my #276 – all Scottish LibDem MSPs and all but two Labour voted for the Bill, and the Tories will be hoping to embarrass Sir Tweedledum and Sir Tweedledee* who have generally been trans-supportive to some degree, but would much prefer not to talk about the issue. Aside from the issue of gender self-determination itself, Sunak and his advisors must know perfectly well that this strategy would stir up hatred, and potentially violence, against trans people. It would be, in short, stochastic terrorism.
*Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey, pusillanimous Labour and LibDem leaders.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #293….
There’s a lesson in what happened in California decades ago. There was a ballot proposition to ban “pornography”. It was nicknamed “The Clean Amendment”. It was polling pretty well until a group went public stating that if it passed, they would be suing to ban the Bible…based on sections that clearly fell within the propositions definitions of porn. In the end, it failed to pass.
So….start taking action to ban the Bible on exactly the same grounds that the current book banning efforts are using to ban other books. Let the chips fall where they may.
The racist troll who dined with Trump is courting a new online following: raging misogynists.
The former president of the United States wanted his guests to be seen. His meeting with Ye, a.k.a. Kanye West, had already been postponed since the rapper’s antisemitic outbursts this fall had made him a public pariah. But two days before Thanksgiving, Trump led Ye and his entourage to a public table at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The group included a former Trump adviser as well as a young man named Nick Fuentes, an adviser on Ye’s fledgling 2024 presidential campaign—and one of America’s most virulent white nationalists.
Cue a familiar firestorm: Trump’s Republican allies distanced themselves from his behavior without denouncing the man himself. Trump, fresh from his own campaign announcement, said he did not know who Fuentes was, yet failed to condemn him or his ideologies in multiple statements about the dinner.
But for Fuentes, the meeting was a profound success, and perhaps the greatest example of his years-long effort to bring his extremist ideologies into the mainstream. The 24-year-old hosts a nightly broadcast with a cult-like following among young white men who believe they have lost their rightful place in the United States. For the last five years, Fuentes has pushed a vision for an “America First” movement that fuses white nationalism, antisemitism, and authoritarianism in calling for a nation dominated by white Christian men.
In tying himself most recently to Trump—a man accused of sexual assault by 19 women, and who bragged about grabbing women “by the [P-word]”—Fuentes is advancing one of his latest strategies for cultivating followers: making overtures to men who feel aggrieved by women.
Over the past year, Fuentes has made a point of speaking directly to these men—many of whom identify as “incels”—in numerous appearances on his nightly livestream, far-right podcasts, and Telegram. Historically, incels defined themselves as “involuntary celibate,” but the term has become inextricably associated with misogynist incels, men who blame women for their problems and believe women owe them sex.
Fuentes claims to understand them because he is one of them. “I’m an incel, I’m a proud incel,” he claimed on his nightly America First podcast in January. He’d never had sex, he explained, because, “I’m choosing instead to lead a historical right-wing movement.”
Since then, Fuentes has done a lot to back that up, painting women as inferior and thus deserving of the violent fantasies that incels harbor against them. Fuentes’ misogyny is now key to his America First movement, braided with his white nationalism and political aspirations to infiltrate the GOP at all levels, pass legislation to roll back the rights of women, LGBTQ people, Jews, and people of color, and see a president impose his authoritarian vision. […]
The crosspollination is already evident. The n-word litters the recent live chats that accompany his broadcasts, as it usually does. But so too does “foid” and “holes,” slang used by incels to dehumanize women. And the more that misogyny has helped grow Fuentes’ influence, the more he has leaned into the strategy: In a recent livestream, Fuentes riffed about how women have created a “fucked up society” ever since people stopped burning them as punishment for crimes.
The solution, he said: “We need to go back to burning women alive more.”
[…] About a month into streaming, Fuentes dangled bait for incel followers. “Women are irrational,” Fuentes said. “They’re more rational than children, but they’re not as rational as men. And irrationality does not listen to rationality.”
He swiftly combined misogyny with racism: “When a [b-word] going crazy sometimes you got to grab her,” Fuentes continued. “Sometimes you have to control yo’ [b-word]. Listen, I would defer to Blacks on this. They’ve got it figured out.”
He pointed to former Ravens running back Ray Rice, who in 2014 was caught on tape knocking his fiancée unconscious in an elevator. Fuentes cracked a smile. “Dude, when Ray Rice punched that girl, that was hilarious.”
He held back laughter as he recalled another instance of domestic violence. “Remember when Chris Brown beat up Rihanna?” Fuentes continued. “I supported that.” Because hitting women, he argued, is sometimes necessary.
His statements echoed a central aspect of incel ideology: women can’t be rational and often deserve violence. With beliefs like these, it becomes misogyny, more even than shared celibacy, that fuels this community, and makes them a prime target for Fuentes’ ideology.
[…] Fuentes launched into what sounded like a political stump speech in which he outlined the world he would create with his followers’ help. “Why don’t we take the message to the men and say, ‘Hey men, hey men, vote for me, I’ll destroy feminism,” he said, vowing to “make it harder for women to become whores,” and “to incentivize women to be in monogamous marriages for the long term and to have and raise kids.”
[…] says Right Wing Watch researcher Kyle Mantyla. “If they can impose Christian nationalism on this country, that will also solve their incel problem by making women second-class citizens who have no right to refuse to marry them, have sex with them, and bear their children.”
[…] Their support has helped Fuentes make his way into the arms of some of the most prominent aggrieved men in America, from Kanye West to Donald Trump—and headway on his stated goal of moving the window of acceptable political discourse further to the right. “We have, in fact, infiltrated the mainstream flank of the GOP,” said Vincent James, the treasurer of America First, days after the Trump dinner.
He boasted about what could come next: A Donald Trump victory in 2024, followed by the appointment of Fuentes as one of his advisers where together they transform the country. “Don’t say it’s far-fetched,” he said. […]
Handmaids. Fuentes wants women to be handmaids.
Fuentes’ reach is broader than one might think:
Fuentes’ annual America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) continues to attract a range of media personalities and political figures, including elected officials. On February 25, 2022, in addition to white supremacists like Vincent James, four elected officials – Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, and Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers – were speakers
The bill would avert a shutdown and increase spending on domestic programs and the military. The House is expected to consider it Thursday.
The Senate on Thursday adopted a sprawling, roughly $1.7 trillion bill that would fund the government through most of 2023, as Democrats and Republicans resolved a last-minute standoff over immigration and voted to avert a shutdown in the final days of the year.
The bipartisan 68-29 vote teed up the measure for debate in the House, which has until the end of Friday to approve a package that boosts domestic and defense spending, finances President Biden’s economic agenda and provisions a raft of new emergency aid, including to Ukraine.
The compilation of long-stalled appropriations bills, known as an omnibus, would provide nearly $773 billion for domestic programs and more than $850 billion for the military, covering expenses through the 2023 fiscal year, which concludes at the end of September. Republicans had insisted on robust Pentagon funding in months-long talks with Democrats, who secured some — but not all — of the health, education, labor and economic spending they wanted.
The must-pass nature of the bill — the final major piece of legislation before Congress resets in the new year — also offered a window for lawmakers to advance other long-stalled priorities. The sweeping omnibus is filled with provisions that would expand some Medicaid benefits, help Americans save for retirement, reform the presidential electoral vote-counting process and ban TikTok on government devices. Lawmakers later added two measures that protect pregnant and nursing women in the workplace, including the so-called PUMP Act, which requires employers to provide workers time to breast feed.
[…] On the Senate floor Wednesday, Mitch McConnell acknowledged the omnibus “isn’t perfect, but strong,” touting its boost to defense spending. And he stressed that the alternative — a “potentially endless cycle” of short-term funding agreements, which would have frozen federal funds at their existing levels — “is simply not an option we can adopt.”
The omnibus includes a $68 billion increase in domestic spending from the prior fiscal year, according to Democrats, with the money parceled out over a wide array of health-care, education and labor-focused agencies and programs. It funds an increase in the Pell Grant, an award for lower-income college students, by $500. And it provides $3.5 billion for the Food and Drug Administration, an increase from the prior year, in the wake of supply chain crunches and infant formula woes.
Lawmakers also included additional sums to fund Biden’s top economic priorities, especially a bipartisan law to improve the country’s roads, bridges, pipes and ports that passed last year. To implement that package, the spending deal allotted more than $10 billion for water infrastructure, for example, and another $15 billion for clean energy and climate change.
[…] Lawmakers also agreed to send $44.9 billion in emergency military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. The amount exceeded Biden’s initial request, and lawmakers delivered it shortly after the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, spoke to a joint session of Congress. […]
After nearly 10 months of war, but referring to the brutal invasion of Ukraine instead as “a special military operation,” Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday finally called it a “war” for the first time, setting off an uproar among antiwar Russians who have been prosecuted for merely challenging the Kremlin-approved euphemism.
“Our goal is not to spin this flywheel of a military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” Putin said during a televised news conference following a government meeting on Thursday. “This is what we are striving for.” […]
“Alexei Gorinov was sentenced to seven years for calling the war a war at a meeting of the council of deputies,” tweeted Georgy Alburov, an exiled ally of the jailed Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. “Vladimir Putin today also publicly called the war a war at his workplace. So either release Gorinov or put Putin in jail for seven years.” […]
Passantino Accidentally Confirmed Trumpworld Was Paying Him
As the third interview approached, Passantino was growing worried.
He had started off trying to portray Hutchinson as a “secretary” to the committee who didn’t know much, and now they wanted a third interview.
And when Hutchinson indicated she wanted to be more forthcoming, Passantino balked.
“If we even think about engaging with them, there is no way that we can do this without a second subpoena,” he said. “Trump world will not continue paying your legal bills if you don’t have that second subpoena.”
Hutchinson said that Passantino’s slip-up was “burned into [her] memory.”
“That’s the first time that I was like, as I had been stressing these last few months, I have not been crazy,” she said.
The equinoxes are times at which the center of the Sun is directly above the equator, marking the beginning of spring and autumn. The day and night would be of equal length at that time, if the Sun were a point and not a disc, and if there were no atmospheric refraction. Given the apparent disc of the Sun, and the refraction, day and night actually become equal at a point within a few days of each equinox.
The RA [Right ascension] and DEC [declination] of an object specify its position uniquely on the celestial sphere just as the latitude and longitude do for an object on the Earth’s surface. For example, the very bright star Sirius has celestial coordinates 6 hr 45 min RA and -16° 43′ DEC. […]
Shrugging off rampant inflation and rising interest rates, the U.S. economy grew at an unexpectedly strong 3.2% annual pace from July through September, the government reported Thursday in a healthy upgrade from its earlier estimate of third-quarter growth.
A proposal to force cellphone companies to block certain spam texts is gaining momentum. Meanwhile, there are simple things you can do right now to stop spam texts, which I’ll get to shortly…
Following an internal investigation, TikTok owner ByteDance today confirmed reports from this fall that claimed some of its employees used the popular app to track multiple journalists, including two in the US. The ByteDance employees’ goal? To identify anonymous sources who were leaking information to the media on the company’s ties to the Chinese government, according to The New York Times….
On Wednesday, NASA called an official end to the Mars InSight lander’s mission to study the interior of the red planet…
“Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude the spacecraft’s solar-powered batteries have run out of energy – a state engineers refer to as ‘dead bus,'” NASA said in a statement.
The lander initially didn’t respond to communications from Earth on Dec. 18. “The lander’s power has been declining for months, as expected, and it’s assumed InSight may have reached its end of operations,” the agency said at the time. That prediction has now come true. It was last in touch on Dec. 15…
InSight arrived in the Elysium Planitia region of the red planet on Nov. 26, 2018…
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #305…
Perhaps Mars landers should include something like windshield wipers that could clear to dust off the solar arrays periodically.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
A long article on Martian dust storms ending with a possible solution for solar powered probes.
Dust devils work but are localized and erratic.
One try on using Martian sand to clear a panel appeared to work.
On sol 884 (May 22, 2021) we tried the sprinkle. Images showed that some dirt fell on the lander deck as expected—but a dark swath appeared over part of the solar panel where sand had drizzled sideways on top of the bright red dust, partly removing it. The engineering telemetry showed an instantaneous jump in the current from the solar panel—about four percent. This might not sound like much, but the increase enabled InSight to continue its seismic studies in the ensuing months, gathering data on the largest quakes ever observed on the Red Planet.
The probe would need to designed to be able scoop and dump soil on all solar panels. Interesting design problem.
StevoRsays
@ ^ whheydt : : Sounds like a good idea but you know those things need a supply of fluid and Mars gets super-cold and we’re talking particles of dust not droplets of water & they’d need powering with gears, etc,.. so .. probly not as easy as it sounds. Some sort of dust cleaning mechanism would be great if they could engineer one though definitely. In fact one has ben built here :
Which is good even though the party isthankfully in opposition now.
whheydtsays
Re: SteveR @ #308…
I find, in practice, that wipers, even when run dry, will take accumulations of dust off the windshield fairly well. I suspect that if the panels could be tilted to a fairly steep angle, then just a vibration motor might be able to get quite a bit of the dust to just fall off.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, posted a video on Friday saying he was back at work in Kyiv after his landmark visit to Washington this week. “I am in my office. We are working toward victory,” he said in the video posted to his Telegram channel.
Russian forces shelled the recently liberated Kherson region more than 60 times on Thursday, killing one person and injuring two others, according to the head of the region’s military administration, Yaroslav Yanushevych.
Moscow’s troops “shelled the territory of Kherson region 61 times. The invaders attacked peaceful settlements of the region with artillery, MLRS, mortars and tanks”, Yanushevych wrote in an update on Facebook.
About half the strikes hit Kherson city, striking residential blocks, educational institutions and private houses, he said. A kindergarten was also impacted, he added.
A Russian opposition politician has filed a legal challenge over President Vladimir Putin’s use of the word “war” to describe the conflict in Ukraine.
Putin yesterday publicly acknowledged the situation as a “war” for the first time since he ordered his troops to invade Ukraine in February, after 10 months of calling his campaign a “special military operation”.
In March, Putin formally signed a law that would impose harsh jail terms for people who intentionally spread “fake” information about Russia’s armed forces, including calling the war by its name.
But the Russian leader said at a news conference on Thursday:
Our goal is not to spin this flywheel of a military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war. This is what we are striving for.
Nikita Yuferev, an opposition councillor in St Petersburg, has asked prosecutors to investigate Putin for using the word “war”, and accused the president of breaking his own law.
In an open letter, he asked the prosecutor general and interior minister to “hold (Putin) responsible under the law for spreading fake news about the actions of the Russian army”.
He told Reuters that he knew his legal challenge would go nowhere, but he had filed it to expose the “mendacity” of the system.
Yuferev said:
It’s important for me to do this to draw attention to the contradiction and the injustice of these laws that he (Putin) adopts and signs but which he himself doesn’t observe.
I think the more we talk about this, the more people will doubt his honesty, his infallibility, and the less support he will have.
Today is a sea of items like “A senior Russian diplomat has said…,” “Russia’s ambassador to the United States said…,” “The top Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region said…,” “The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said…,” “…according to the pro-Moscow local administration,” “The Kremlin has claimed…,”…
The congressional panel investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol has published its final report, accusing Donald Trump of a “multi-part conspiracy” to thwart the will of the people and subvert democracy.
Divided into eight chapters, the 845-page report includes findings, interview transcripts and legislative recommendations and represents one of the most damning official portraits of a president in American history.
Its release comes just three days after the select committee recommended criminal charges against Trump and follows media reports that it is cooperating and sharing crucial evidence with the justice department.
The panel, which will dissolve on 3 January when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives, conducted more than 1,000 interviews, held 10 public hearings – some televised in prime time – and collected more than a million documents since forming in July last year.
Its report presents an in-depth and detailed account of Trump’s effort to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election and what the panel says was his culpability for a violent insurrection by his supporters.
It makes the case that Trump knew he lost but still pressured both state officials and Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election, then “was directly responsible for summoning what became a violent mob” and refused repeated entreaties from his aides to condemn the rioters or to encourage them to leave.
“The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” the document’s executive summary says. “None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”
In the two months between election and insurrection, the committee estimates, Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure or condemnation targeting either state legislators or state or local election administrators. This included at least 68 meetings, phone calls or text messages, 18 instances of prominent public remarks and 125 social media posts by Trump or senior aides.
The report adds to political pressure already on the attorney general, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, the special counsel who is conducting an investigation into the insurrection and Trump’s actions.
The Punchbowl News website reported that the committee has begun “extensively cooperating” with the special counsel, sharing documents and transcripts including text messages sent by Mark Meadows, the then White House chief of staff….
The toolkit was discovered in 1801—but until recently, researchers didn’t understand its purpose
The findings suggest craftsmen used the tools to make “multi-material objects where a core object was crafted in a material like jet, shale, amber, wood or copper and decorated with a thin layer of gold sheet,” per a statement from the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes, England, which is displaying the objects.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday nominated Hector D. LaSalle—a conservative jurist who has sided with crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs)—to lead the state’s highest court for a 14-year term. LaSalle’s history as a right-wing judicial activist is in direct contrast with the governor’s previous pledges to support abortion rights in New York.
LaSalle was one of seven candidates submitted to the governor by the State Commission on Judicial Nomination, but in a Monday letter, nearly 50 law professors urged Hochul to not pick LaSalle to be chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals because of his “cavalier attitude towards reproductive rights, hostility to organized labor, and a worrying insensitivity to due process.”
The question by Alex Lahey is based on the fact an object moving at high speed through the atmosphere will experience tremendous heating due to air compression on the leading edge. So would it be possible to cook a steak that way? Well, not really. Despite the high heat, it is a terrible way to cook one.
An example of why is what happens frequently when meteorites get to Earth. Their outer layers are heated up and burned off, so what actually reaches the ground is cold. The same thing happens with the steak. Munroe hypothesized that the outer layers would get seared and be ripped off at high speed. For a steak mooing at Mach 5 – five times the speed of sound – the compression will sear it and squish it, but the inside will stay raw.
Tom Fisher and Thomas Rees were researching hypersonic heat transfer at the University of Manchester, UK, and decided to conduct the experiment. They used a “21-day matured beef steak” from British supermarket chain Sainsbury and placed it in a wind tunnel at Mach 5…
A gunman has opened fire in central Paris, killing three people and wounding three others.
Witnesses said the attacker targeted a Kurdish community centre and restaurant and prosecutors said they would look into a possible racist motive.
A suspect, aged 69, was quickly arrested and it soon emerged he had been freed from prison recently.
Authorities appealed for people to avoid the area in Strasbourg-Saint Denis in the 10th district of Paris.
There is no confirmed motive for the shooting, but Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau confirmed that the suspect had previously been charged with racist violence.
That incident – in which he attacked tents at a migrant camp in Paris with a sword – took place at Bercy on 8 December 2021. It was not clear why he had recently been released.
Local Mayor Alexandra Cordebard said the suspect was also wounded in the shooting and that three places had come under fire: the Kurdish community centre, a restaurant and a hairdresser. Two people were shot in the salon.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the murders had been committed by a “far-right activist”. She added: “Kurds wherever they reside must be able to live in peace and security. More than ever, Paris is by their side in these dark times.”
…
The attack took place almost 10 years after the murder of three Kurdish women in Paris in January 2013….
Joe Biden was wrong to declare the coronavirus pandemic over in the US, one of the country’s leading experts on the virus has told the Guardian.
Dr Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s hospital and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said that the US president’s statement in September, that “the pandemic is over”, was mistaken and a poor message to send to the American public.
“Well, it’s certainly not [over],” Hotez said in an interview with the Guardian. “We’re still in 200-300 deaths per day. [Covid-19] is still the third or fourth leading cause of death in the United States. It’s definitely the wrong message to give, given the fact that we’re desperately trying to persuade the American people to take this [bivalent] booster.”
Hotez said that getting the bivalent booster shot is the one of the most important things people can do to protect themselves against Covid. So far, only 14.1% of the total US population above age five has received the bivalent booster shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
“For instance, here in Texas, where I’m based, only 7% of Texans have gotten their bivalent [booster].”
Hotez – who is nominated for a Nobel peace prize along with his colleague Dr Maria Elena Bottazzi for their work developing Corbevax, a Covid-19 vaccine they refused to patent so it could be replicated by middle- and lower-income countries – also issued a chilling warning about the future of this pandemic or any others.
“The next big coronavirus pandemic is coming – the fourth one. I can’t tell you if it’s going to be next year or five years or 10 years, but it’s coming,” he warned.
On assessing where the US stands in comparison with other nations now, Hotez was not able to offer any good news.
“I think the US is not doing well. I think we failed to persuade a third of the country to get vaccines at all, maybe a quarter. And of those who’ve gotten two doses, we’re only persuading around a third [of them] to get their booster,” Hotez said. “So the anti-vaxxers have won this victory. We’re still losing too many lives.”
Since the pandemic began, more than 1 million people have died from Covid-19 in the US – the country with the 16th highest mortality rate per 100,000 people. The current weekly average of new cases in the US is 65,067, a slight 2.9% decrease from the previous weekly average of 67,034.
“I call it the greatest self-immolation in American history,” Hotez said. “It’s just so tragic.”
But the US is not alone in its poor Covid response performance rating.
“The US remains vulnerable. Canada, less so. Australia, less so. Maybe European countries, less so. But the US, India and China, of course, are extremely vulnerable, because China is getting vaccines that don’t protect nearly as well against the variants, and the Chinese refuse to afford effective boosters against BA.5 – either our vaccine or the mRNA vaccines,” Hotez said.
…
So what lies ahead for the pandemic? In the immediate future, the winter season is a playground for illnesses like the flu, the increasingly common respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and variants of Covid-19.
“Right now, we’re in a bit of a holding pattern, wanting to know what happens with these new variants,” Hotez said. “In the past, you know, we’ve had these series of catastrophic waves from individual variants. We had the big, horrible Alpha wave in the winter of 2021. In the last half of 2021, we had the Delta wave, and then we had BA. 1, Omicron in early 2022, then BA.212, and then BA.5.”
“We have seen these bumps in Europe and my prediction is we’ll see one in the US this winter. And maybe we’re seeing the beginning of it right now. How bad it’s going to be is hard to know. We still are seeing 200-300 deaths a day, which is a pretty serious, deadly disease. It’s still something far worse than the flu. Maybe not as bad as it has been. But the key is to get Americans to take two or three appropriate protective measures.”
In addition to masking up and continuing to practice good hygiene, Hotez encourages another protective measure: tuning out anti-science conspiracy theories.
“The globalization of anti-vaccine activists is such a deadly force. Because of the far-right members of Congress, and the CPAC [Conservative Political Action Coalition] conference, and Fox News – and now that’s a globalizing force. So anti-science activism and aggression is now, as societal forces, killing more Americans than gun violence or global terrorism.
The wave of Covid-19 misinformation doesn’t just end on US soil.
“Now you’re seeing all the same style anti-vaccine rhetoric in sub-Saharan African countries, south Asia … It’s a deadly force that we still haven’t even begun scratching the surface of combating and countering,” Hotez said.
“That’s why I get so annoyed at all the phoney-baloney Covid origin stories, because it takes our eyes off the prize – that we’re not actually doing the surveillance needed to determine when the next big one’s going to erupt.”
According to Hotez, the key to preventing the next big pandemic can be found within one animal in particular – bats, which can host myriad viruses, from the coronavirus to Ebola.
“We need to have a thorough landscaping exercise of bats across the face of Asia, especially east Asia – going from China into south-east Asia, Cambodia, Japan – where these coronaviruses are, as well as the Middle East and even parts of Latin America,” he said. “The reason why we’re seeing more and more of this is, in part, because of climate change and urbanization – human migrations encroaching into territories where bats are. It’s a combination of climate change with other social determinants.”
All hope is not lost – yet. In order to get ahead of the next pandemic, Hotez said it will also take a combination of the right technological and political infrastructure.
“We have vaccine technologies at an unprecedented level. We have the technology to solve this. What we lack is the political will to empower low- and middle-income countries to really investigate these outbreaks. Modern technology has outpaced our social and political infrastructures. We have the technical support, but we are not willing to implement it,” he said.
ravensays
This is part of a Twitter thread by Garry Kasparov.
He is a Russian exile and the former World Chess Champion.
Tucker Carlson and Fox NoNews are one of the few US sources that are backing the Russian genocide of Ukraine.
And of course, Tucker Carlson is just lying, calling Ukraine and Zelensky anti-xian and anti-democratic.
Russia has turned into a vicious Fascist dictatorship where dissidents are frequently killed or sent to the Gulags for long prison terms.
Twitter
Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63
Carlson has moved from advocating for Putin to endorsing Russia’s genocide in Ukraine. I don’t know why Murdoch is allowing this on his network, or why advertisers support it, but I will not appear on Fox News again while Carlson is there. A bloody line has been crossed.
Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63
Carlson’s attacks on Ukraine and Zelensky personally are designed to dehumanize and to justify Russian atrocities, which are already ongoing, documented, and publicly known. It’s like still backing the Nazis after Auschwitz was uncovered.
Slandering Ukraine & Zelensky as anti-Christian, undemocratic, etc. sends the message it’s fine for Putin to slaughter as many as he likes. The truth is that Ukrainians are fighting and dying for the American values Carlson sold out for Trump and Putin. Go to hell.
Russia accused of demolishing Mariupol theatre ‘to hide war crimes’
Russian forces have started demolishing a theatre in occupied Mariupol in southern Ukraine which was the site of a deadly airstrike believed to have killed hundreds of civilians, according to an aide to the city’s exiled Ukrainian mayor.
Petro Andryushchenko accused the occupying authorities of attempting to cover up the Russian bombing of the theatre, which was being used as an air raid shelter when it was hit on 16 March.
An investigation by Amnesty International into the Mariupol theatre strike concluded that Russian forces committed a war crime by deliberately targeting the building despite knowing hundreds of civilians were sheltering there.
Video posted on social media appears to show diggers demolishing the last remaining walls of the theatre.
Ukraine’s culture minister, Tkachenko Oleksandr, said the move was an “attempt to hide forever the evidence of the deliberate killing of Ukrainians by Russians”.
The Russian occupying authorities were planning to leave the front of the theatre intact and destroy the rest of the structure, to build a new theatre “on the bones of Mariupol’s people”, Andryushchenko said.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, has called for Iran, North Korea and Belarus to be held accountable for their alleged involvement in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Podolyak’s tweet came a day after the White House accused North Korea of supplying arms to the private Russian mercenary firm, the Wagner Group, to help bolster Moscow’s troops in Ukraine.
Kyiv has accused Tehran of supplying thousands of its drones to Moscow which were used in deadly attacks on cities such as Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia.
After initially denying the presence of Iranian drones in Ukraine, the Tehran government has admitted that it had supplied a “small number” of the unmanned aircraft to Russia months before Vladimir Putin launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine in February.
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has previously allowed the Kremlin to use his country as a platform to send tens of thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine, while Russian war jets have taken off from Belarusian bases. But Lukashenko has not joined the war directly or sent his own troops into the fight.
StevoRsays
So. Just one of many needlessly dead refugees because we (Aussies) are worse now in our policies towards non-white (do I need to say “Obvs?” Do I need to vomit?) refugees than we were back in the 1970”s under Malcolm fn Fraser’s govt :
Plus, oh yeah, someone handing out factsheets on his death I meet tonight who, I think, probly knew him in person & was likely in Manus with him.
One of quite a few people just like you and me and all of us but for luck of birth killed by the sadism of our (Aussie -since Howard & Tampa) anti-“boatpeople” (brown & Asian refugees – y’know a.k.a. people) policies.
Twelve refugees and asylum seekers have died while in Australian immigration detention on Manus Island and Nauru. On World Refugee Day, Guardian Australia acknowledges those who have died and begins a project to record lives lost in offshore detention.
Ukraine plans to open new embassies in 10 African countries, its president has announced, with the aim of increasing Kyiv’s presence in Africa and strengthening trade ties.
Speaking at a conference of Ukrainian ambassadors, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said:
We are already rebooting relations with dozens of African countries. Next year, we have to strengthen them. Ten countries have already been designated in Africa where new embassies of Ukraine will be opened.
There are also plans to develop a “Ukraine-Africa trade house” with offices in the capitals of “the most promising countries” on the African continent, he added.
Zelenskiy continued:
In addition to the existing representation of Ukraine in 10 African countries, together with new embassies and trading houses, we should achieve representation in 30 countries of the African continent.
There’s one item that you might have noticed is routinely missing from Daily Kos’ ongoing coverage of the invasion in Ukraine: Daily updates on movement of troops and vehicles inside Belarus.
In just the last two weeks, media has breathlessly reported on Belarusian forces driving toward the southern border … even though those forces never actually left their home state, never came near the border, and returned to their starting point a couple of days later. That part of their journey drew much less attention.
Then there has been the attention given a reported new Russian buildup in Belarus. This buildup includes video of what’s reportedly a long line of rail cars ferrying 50 fresh new tanks to the front lines. Those videos have been both widely shared on social media as well as cable networks, even though they’ve been carefully staged so that there are no real indications of when or where they were shot. (Similar videos have supposedly shown 50 new Russian tanks, sometimes the same 50 Russian tanks, reportedly “in the Svatove area.” Spoiler alert: Nope.)
Let me just quickly return to what kos has been saying month after month since the invasion began. This applies equally well to the idea that Belarus itself might send forces into the war, or that Russia is assembling a force along the northern border to make a second go at Kyiv.
The rumor seems like total bullshit. But even if true, it hardly presents a real threat to Ukraine’s war effort. Russia is losing ground every single day. Opening up a third front isn’t in the cards.
Count today as another day when we’re not staying on top of every move being made in Belarus.
Where I am this morning, the temperature is -22°C. I wish I could export a bit of this to Ukraine, because it would really help solidify those roads around Svatove and Kreminna. The actual temperatures in the area this week are hovering around freezing; highs a few degrees above zero, lows a few degrees below. So while there is surely some freezing going on, any movement that’s waiting for the kind of deep freeze that would allow rolling T-72s across a corn field is going to have to wait a while longer. [map at the link]
Multiple reports on Friday indicate that Svatove itself has been all but emptied of Russian forces. That’s because everyone available has been pushed out to stop reported Ukrainian advances, including that one near the village of Pidkuichansk, where Ukraine was able to bypass Russian forces located to the north and cut across the highway to come within a few kilometers of Svatove. The two main Ukrainian counterattacks continue to be at Pidkuichansk, and at Volodymyrivka to the north.
On Thursday, Russian sources were reporting that Russia was launching their own attack from Kolomyichykha in the direction of Stelmakhivka. Not only did that attack apparently come to nothing, on Friday there are reports of fighting in Kolomyichykha, with Ukrainian forces advancing on that position as well as another location between Kolomyichykha and Patalakhivka. It looks like Ukraine may finally be cleaning up that area of Russian occupation west of the highway.
If Ukraine is able to push back Russian forces along this line, then Kuzemivka, which was the source of so much back and forth over the last month, could become a backwater—especially if a breakthrough east of Volodymyrivka allows Ukraine access to that north-south route into Svatove. Things have been moving slowly in this area but they are moving, and after weeks of testing various positions along the line, Ukraine appears to be making progress in the area directly west of Svatove.
In the Kreminna area, Russian sources have released drone footage of artillery firing at Ukrainian forces just south of Ploshchanka. It’s not clear when this video was taken, but it does seem to indicate that Russia has no ground force in the area and is restricted to trying to strike the Ukrainian force from a distance. (In the video, they seem to miss.) [map at the link]
Ukrainian forces near Dibrova reportedly repelled a Russian attack to the west, which is a pretty good indicator that Ukraine continues to hold this area. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces in the woods south of the city continue to advance to the north. Russia has reportedly laid out a series of trenches and fortifications that run pretty close to the yellow line of the road you can see around the name Kreminna, and Ukraine should be close to testing that line.
There are some indications that Russia is having difficulty getting supplies to Holykove, but still no signal that Ukraine has made progress in liberating this location. While Ukraine continues to hold the areas it had previously taken around Chervonopopivka, there are currently no reports of new progress north of Kreminna. It’s unclear if Ukraine will attempt to take the city without clearing this approach.
This wins the award for most bassackwards reasoning so far by a Russian leader. That’s a pretty high bar, but I think Gerasimov has set a new standard.
“Ukraine was threatening the world with nuclear terrorism and only Russia was able to save everything,”- Valery Gerasimov, Russian Army Chief of the General Staff and deputy MoD.
His audience is clearly puzzled by this version of events. [video at the link]
Bastards.
The invaders painted the Russian tricolor on the site of the “Milana” mural destroyed in #Mariupol. [before and after photos at the link]
A possible indication of the direction Ukraine might move next. Tokmak is in Zaporizhzhia oblast, north of Melitopol.
The Russian-occupied city of Tokmak has been hit last night by a volley of GMLRS.
Russian troops in that sector are getting soften up. [video at the link]
If you had any thought that the insurrection that we all saw unfold on Jan. 6 might have just been a one-day affair—rather than the ongoing attack on American democracy that it in fact has become—you just needed to see Steve Bannon wrapping up this week’s eliminationism-themed “America Fest 2022” put on by Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA outfit in Phoenix.
Bannon’s speech was like the exhortations of a cheerleading executive, except for the subject. “Are we at war?” he demanded to know at the outset. After a feeble “Yes” from the audience, he repeated: “No! I wanna hear it! Are we at war?” “Yes!!!” the audience shouted. “Are you prepared to take this to its ultimate conclusion and destroy the deep state?” he demanded. “Yes!!!!” they replied. “Root and branch?” “Yeahhh!!!”
[…] “You are an awakened army!” he bellowed. The crowd cheered.
[…] ” He notably also didn’t condemn violent actions.
“From this day forward, it’s no more talk, it’s just action, action, action!” he proclaimed.
When someone in the audience shouted, “Lock them up!” Bannon pointed and nodded. “Lock ‘em up. Lock ’em up!” he agreed. “Lock ‘em up and throw—” He held out the mic as the crowd chanted, “Lock them up!” then added: “And throw away the frickin’ key!”
Bannon claimed that “they” stole both Trump’s presidency by keeping him under a constant onslaught, and then his re-election. “Is there anybody in this audience that thinks Donald John Trump did not win the 2020 election?” “Noooo!!!” they shouted back.
“Trump won! You’re damn right he won, and Trump won big,” Bannon insisted. “Impeaching Joe Biden’s too good for him! Then we gotta bring the criminal charges and send him to prison for treason and selling out this country!”
Bannon ranted that Hunter Biden’s laptop proved that “it was an open coup—by [FBI director Christopher] Wray, and [Attorney General William] Barr, and the DHS, CIA, and the people that worked for them. And we—all politics is performative, until we get the investigations and get to the bottom of every name—the 51 intelligence officers and everybody else that sold this country out! All these traitors must go to prison!” He repeated: “All traitors must go to prison!”
At the speech’s conclusion, he wrapped his audience together:
Are you a cadré now? Are you a vanguard? Are you a tip of a new revolutionary generation that’s gonna save this country? Are you sure about that? [Yeah!] Is your task and purpose every day to take your country back? [Yeah!] Are there any days off? [No!] God bless you. There’s no substitute for victory.
Bannon, of course, was a central player in the insurrection in the first place. Even though he was no longer an official White House adviser, Trump consulted him regularly, and Bannon constantly urged him to keep fighting even after he had lost. That’s how he knew, on Jan. 5, what was going to happen, and why he told his audience that day:
All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It’s all converging, and now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack. … I’ll tell you this: It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. It’s going to be quite extraordinarily different, and all I can say is strap in.
He’s also one of the first non-combatants to be convicted of a crime related to the insurrection: Bannon was convicted this summer of failing to respond to the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena, and sentenced in October to serve four months in prison—though he won’t begin serving until his appeal his settled.
The day he walked into court for his sentencing, he told reporters: “This illegitimate regime, their judgment day is on 8 November when the Biden administration ends.”
That prediction obviously didn’t work out so well for Bannon, who played a major role in whipping up election denialism both before and after the election. When he invited Kari Lake onto his podcast to discuss the Arizona governor’s race she had just lost, they both were rock-solid certain she would still emerge victorious. [Deluded dunderheads.]
As Tim Miller explored in detail at The Bulwark, keeping the insurrectionist army intact and enraged has largely been Bannon’s mission since Jan. 6. His podcast, “Pandemic War Room with Steve Bannon,” has been nothing but a constant platform for right-wing conspiracists and extremists of all stripes, from anti-vax hatemongers to election denialists to European white nationalists. The ongoing message: Be proud of what happened on Jan. 6. Work to make it happen again.
Miller explains that “their effort to overthrow the government has been undeterred by the initial setback of Joe Biden being inaugurated. While Republican elites try to minimize the events of Jan. 6th, the War Room and their minions have continued to take the coup both literally and seriously. In their view the Biden ‘regime’ is illegitimate, and the regime’s medical establishment has covered up nearly a half a million deaths from the COVID ‘vaccines.’” [Deaths caused by vaccines?!]
This is why Congressman Jamie Raskin, the Jan. 6 committee’s chief overseer, emphasized that the committee’s report would elucidate “the clear and continuing present danger of the forces that have been unleashed against us.”
Raskin warned: “The political scientists tell us that the signs of an authoritarian political party are this: 1) they don’t accept the results of democratic elections if they don’t go their way; 2) they embrace political violence or refuse to disavow it […]; and 3) they are organized around a charismatic or allegedly charismatic political figure.”
Indeed, the committee’s final report notes that federal Circuit Judge Michael Luttig reached similar conclusions during his live hearing testimony: “I have written, as you said, Chairman Thompson, that, today, almost 2 years after that fateful day in January 2021, that, still, Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”
The report also observes: “If President Trump and the associates who assisted him in an effort to overturn the lawful outcome of the 2020 election are not ultimately held accountable under the law, their behavior may become a precedent and invitation to danger for future elections.”
Obviously, Bannon readily qualifies as one of those associates—and keeping Trump’s army of insurrectionists alive and seething is almost certainly his best hope of avoiding prison time beyond the four months he’s already scheduled for. It’s why he constantly feeds the MAGA mob the steady diet of red pills to which they are now addicted.
Stanford cyber-security professor Herbert Lin sees what people like Bannon are doing—namely, creating a massive epistemic crisis not just for America but for the world—as the chief obstacle to defending democracy from the insurrectionist onslaught:
We now live in an environment in which no conceivable evidence can persuade true believers to change their minds, and the resulting epistemic fractures translate into a once-unified nation sharply divided against itself. A worse national posture to meet the challenges of coming great-power competition could not be imagined.
As Miller put it:
Last year the faithful acted.
Today they are marshaling their forces and gathering their strength to do so again.
They’ll only succeed, of course, if we keep our eyes closed to the continuing threat and fail to be prepared. Because as far as they’re concerned, they are “at war.” Only a fool would disbelieve them.
ravensays
Putin’s aggression ‘has set Russia back 30 years’.
Or so claims a writer for the Times.
I’m sure Putin has set Russia back although it is anyone’s guess as to how far.
The Europeans have discovered that cheap Russian gas wasn’t really cheap. They had to sell their National Sovereignty and National Security for it.
To my eyes, Russia seems to be running on momentum from the old USSR. They had huge stockpiles of tanks and artillery, all left over from back to World War II. Which are rapidly being depleted.
Russia is also being very careful of their modern weapons such as heavy bombers and the SU series of fighter jets. Likely because they don’t have that many and they might have trouble replacing them.
Throw in a brain drain and Western sanctions and Russia might well end up going backwards for a while.
Putin’s aggression ‘has set Russia back 30 years’
George Grylls, Political Reporter
Friday December 23 2022, 12.01am GMT, The Times
President Putin has weakened the Russian economy and military to such an extent that it may take up to 30 years for the country to recover its superpower status, western officials believe.
More than 100,000 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine while the Kremlin has spent a quarter of its annual budget on the war.
Kyiv has succeeded in destroying half of Russia’s tanks while Moscow has rapidly used up its stockpile of missiles, ammunition and shells. One senior British government source told The Times that it could take Russia between 20 and 30 years to rebuild its economic and military strength.
On a visit to the US this week, President Zelensky of Ukraine described the money given by western countries to the country as an “investment” and urged allies to pledge more military support to neutralise the threat from Russia. “Your money is not charity. It is an investment in the global security and democracy,” he said.
President Biden has agreed to supply Ukraine with Patriot air-defence systems, enabling Kyiv to shoot down ballistic and cruise missiles.
He has refused to sanction the donation of ATACMS, a surface-to-surface missile system with a range of up to 190 miles, and suggested Nato allies were uncomfortable about giving Ukraine an offensive weapon capable of hitting Russian territory.
Zelensky’s visit to Washington came amid warnings of a further Russian offensive in the new year. Ukrainian armed forces believe that Putin could respond to setbacks in the south and east of the country with an attack on Kyiv around the anniversary of the invasion in February.
Putin travelled to Minsk earlier this week to meet President Lukashenko on a visit closely watched in Kyiv amid fears that Moscow could use trains to rapidly redeploy troops to Belarus to prepare for a new push for Kyiv.
“Our expectation is that they will announce military exercises again in January as an excuse to significantly increase the number of Russian troops and the amount of military equipment in Belarus,” a Ukrainian defence source told The Times. “But Lukashenko is making a big mistake. By allowing Russian troops on his territory, he is threatening himself even more than Ukraine.”
Zelensky received a standing ovation from members of Congress on his triumphant visit this week as he secured a major prize from Biden in the form of the $2 billion Patriot system. Western governments were initially reluctant to supply longer-range weapons to Ukraine in earlier packages of military aid, but fears of an escalation have subsided amid an increasing confidence in the West to call Putin’s bluff. Patriot systems have a range of 20 to 100 miles.
One senior western official said that Ukraine was “winning the war”.
“We have gradually ratcheted up our military support. The continuing attacks on civilian infrastructure justify a further response and the Kremlin’s nuclear rhetoric has died down,” they said.
Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, said the Patriot system would be effective for Ukraine.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 328
The American right-wing has been spoiling for a fight since the 60s. They’ve been arming. They’ve been training and preparing. They’ve been making in-roads into the political mainstream. Meanwhile, liberals and Democrats have had their heads in the sand ignoring the threat, naively believing that they were a fringe of a fringe minority that no one would ever taken seriously. Even the death and destruction of the Oklahoma City bombing wasn’t enough to motivate them to act, preferring to pretend the problem would just go away if we don’t antagonize them.
Now, nearly two years after an attempted right-wing coup, Biden won’t even call these thugs fully-fledge fascists (e.g. “semi-fascists”) much less dedicate the military and police power to eradicate this domestic threat. All I hear is whining about violence and all I see is handwringing when a fascist army over 74 million strong still threatens the democracy that the libs supposedly care about.
A Chick-fil-A in North Carolina was busted by the Department of Labor (DOL) this week after a federal investigation uncovered that the franchisee was using underage workers and paying others in food vouchers. The store was fined $6,450, the DOL announced.
According to a statement from the DOL, the store was allowing three workers under 18 to “operate, load or unload a trash compactor,” violations of federal child labor laws that prohibit minors from performing dangerous tasks.
It was also discovered that the company that rakes in around $11.3 billion annually, according to Business Insider, and was asking certain employees to direct traffic and then paying them in meal vouchers rather than wages, a “violation of minimum wage provisions.”
“Protecting our youngest workers continues to be a top priority for the Wage and Hour Division … Child labor laws ensure that when young people work, the work does not jeopardize their health, well-being or educational opportunities. In addition, employers are responsible to pay workers for all of the hours worked and the payment must be made in cash or legal tender,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Richard Blaylock in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Additionally, seven employees at the North Carolina franchise were owed $235 in back wages.
Apparently, this isn’t the first time the Georgia-based fast-food company used underage employees.
In August, a store in Tampa, Florida, was fined $12,478 after investigators found the employer had allowed 17 workers, ages 14 to 15, to work past 7 PM—three full hours past the law during school days.
To many in the LGBTQ community and its allies, Chick-fil-A is synonymous with its biased stance on same-sex marriage and the LGBTQ community.
According to a 2011 report, the former owner of Chick-fil-A, Dan Cathy, gave significant donations to anti-gay watchdog groups and proudly said, “guilty as charged,” when asked if he supported anti-LGBTQ marriage initiatives.
In 2019, after intense pressure and boycotts, executives at the company announced that it would end its support of the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, thus ostensibly cutting ties with virulent anti-LGBTQ charities.
But it’s common knowledge that the company’s foundation is in Christianity. The Bible is frequently cited in operating manuals. Even today, on the Chick-fil-A website, the principles of the company are openly displayed: “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us. To have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A.” (No one has yet provided the scripture responsible for exploiting minors’ labor.)
Cathy told The Atlanta Journal Constitution in 2011, “It’s not a Christian company … It’s a company that operates on biblical principles. … They really work.”
Cathy may have stepped down from Chick-fil-A as its head and handed the reins to his sons, and the company may have said it will end its support of some of the anti-LGBTQ charities, but according to Them, Cathy himself has been quietly lobbying against the Equality Act—landmark legislation that protects equality based on sexual orientation and gender in housing, health care, education, and more.
What Marjorie Taylor Greene has been up to lately:
She accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of being the US’s “shadow president” and skipped his historic address at the Capitol on Wednesday, later posting an image of a Capitol rioter edited to look like the Ukrainian leader carrying a stack of dollars.
On Thursday, she finalized her divorce with her now ex-husband, Perry Greene.
And on Friday, she cast a vote [she voted by proxy while vacationing in Costa Rica] against a $1.7 trillion government spending bill she dubbed the “omnimonster,” which will fund the government through most of 2023, provides billions in new aid to Ukraine, and includes reforms to the Electoral Count Act.
The entire time, the Georgia congresswoman was vacationing with her kids in Costa Rica.
My parents are her constituents, and I thought it was funny how they are freezing right now in Rome, GA while she’s in CR on vacation,” wrote the tipster. Temperatures this week in the northwest Georgia city have averaged just over 37 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Weather Underground.
Reginald Selkirksays
The entire time, the Georgia congresswoman was vacationing with her kids in Costa Rica.
She has custody? I find it difficult to imagine what an immense shitbag her ex must be for that to happen.
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #335…
Where she lives? Probably as near to automatic as makes no difference that the mother gets custody.
Tethyssays
The children of the white nationalist congress woman from GA are young adults, so custody is a non-issue.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Russian strikes on infrastructure more infrequent due to missiles shortage – UK MoD
Russia is probably limiting its missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure because of its limited supply of cruise missiles, the UK’s Ministry of Defence says.
In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said Russia had increased its forces in Ukraine with tens of thousands of reservists since October, easing personnel shortages, but that “a shortage of munitions highly likely remains the key limiting factor on Russian offensive operations”.
It said that just sustaining defensive operations along Russia’s lengthy front line required a significant daily expenditure of shells and rockets….
Ukraine has announced it has killed another 480 Russian troops, according to its latest casualty figures.
The daily publication by the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine said 101,430 Russian service personnel had been killed since the invasion began in February.
It also added another tank, eight drones, eight armoured personnel vehicle and four artillery systems to its battlefield totals.
The figures have not been independently verified by the Guardian, and differ from the totals announced by the Kremlin.
(These figures are hovering around 500 killed per day.)
Zelenskiy: Attacks on Kherson are ‘terrorism’
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the shelling on Kherson that has killed five and injured 20 others is “terrorism”.
Posting photographs of the aftermath of the attacks, including casualties lying on the street, he said: “The terrorist country continues bringing the Russian world in the form of shelling of the civilian population. Kherson. In the morning, on Saturday, on the eve of Christmas, in the central part of the city.
“These are not military facilities. This is not a war according to the rules defined. It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.
”The world must see and understand what absolute evil we are fighting against.”
Eight people confirmed dead after Kherson shelling
At least eight people are now said to have been killed in the Russian shelling of Kherson city.
The office of the prosecutor general said that residential areas had been targeted. “As a result, at least eight civilians were killed,” a post on Telegram said.
Yaroslav Yanushevich, governor of the region said 58 had been injured.
“On a weekend, on the eve of Christmas, the Russians attacked the city center. They attacked the market, shopping center, residential buildings, administrative buildings – the places where the most people are,” he said.
He added that homes, civic buildings and motor vehicles were damaged.
A wild winter storm continued to envelop much of the US on Saturday, bringing blinding blizzards, freezing rain, flooding and life-threatening cold that created mayhem for those traveling for the Christmas holiday.
The storm downed power lines, littered highways with piles of cars in deadly accidents and led to mass flight cancellations.
The storm was nearly unprecedented in scope, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60% of the US population faced winter weather advisories or warnings and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said….
Half a million people a day are being infected with Covid-19 in a single Chinese city, a senior health official has said, in a rare and quickly censored acknowledgment that the country’s wave of infections is not being reflected in official statistics….
…In a statement, they described Putin’s government as a “terrorist regime” and call him, his officials, generals and propagandists “war criminals”.
They called Мама, не смотри телевизор (Mama, Don’t Watch TV), which comes 10 months after Russia invaded Ukraine: “The music of our anger, indignation, disagreement, a reproachful desperate cry against Putin’s bloodthirsty puppets, led by a real cannibal monster, whose place is in the infinity of fierce hellish flames on the bones of the victims of this terrible war.”
The collective, in this instance represented by Maria Alyokhina, Olga Borisova, Diana Burkot and Taso Pletner, said the chorus is based on the words of a captured Russian conscript soldier who told his mother: “Mum, there are no Nazis here, don’t watch TV.”…
“Kyiv says Russia used the Grad MLRS to strike the center of Kherson. Those are extremely imprecise but highly lethal area weapons that aren’t supposed to be used in populated urban environments — unless killing the maximum number of random civilians is your actual objective.”
Incredible scenes in Afghanistan today as male students walk out of their university exam in protest against Taliban’s decision to BAN women & girls from university.
The time is now for men across the country to rise and stand in solidarity!
The Taliban have used a water cannon to disperse a group of women protesting against the ban on female students in Afghanistan attending university.
Videos on social media showed the women taking cover in a lane in the city of Herat to escape a powerful stream of water.
Dozens of women holding a protest march could be heard shouting slogans including: “Education is our right”.
In one clip, women could be heard shouting: “The Taliban are cowards.”
Earlier this week, the Islamist group banned female students from higher education, triggering an international outcry.
The Taliban said women had not been wearing appropriate Islamic attire at university and had been interacting with their male counterparts.
The new ban was implemented with immediate effect by Higher Education Minister Neda Mohammad Nadeem on Tuesday, with public and private universities ordered to bar women from attending.
Mr Nadeem said female students had been “dressing like they were going to a wedding”.
The Taliban arrested five women taking part in a protest in the Afghan capital, Kabul, earlier this week. Three journalists were also arrested.
Guards stopped hundreds of women from entering universities on Wednesday, a day after the ban was announced….
This intercepted call presents evidence for the intensification of disciplinary measures among the Russian troops, namely shooting for being caught drunk or on drugs. The location and the military unit discussed in the call are not specified, except for “25th Brigade”.
Reports say a revolutionary court in Tehran has sentenced Saeed Madani, a prominent political commentator and researcher, to nine years in prison.
Madani was arrested in May accused of “formation and management of anti-government groups”, “holding gathering and conspiring to commit crimes against the country’s security” and “propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
Madani − whose research interests include poverty, drug addiction, child abuse, and prostitution − belongs to the banned Nationalist-Religious Alliance, a small non-violent religious opposition groups that favors political reform and welfare economics.
He has been sentenced and imprisoned several times for membership in the group and for “propaganda against the state.” In 2016, he was exiled to the southern port city of Bandar Abbas after four years of an eight-year prison sentence served at Evin prison, Tehran.
Iran has arrested hundreds of university students, writers and cultural leaders during 100 days of anti-regime protests that began in September.
He has been associated with various opposition groups in Iran, and in response to his criticism of the government’s handling of the COVID pandemic, he was stopped by the IRGC in January this year from traveling from Tehran to take up a post at Yale University.
Madani, 61, a sociology professor at Tehran’s Allameh Tabatabai University, has published several books on social issues in Iran.
Israeli researchers say they have developed gene-edited hens that lay eggs from which only female chicks hatch.
The breakthrough could prevent the slaughter of billions of male chickens each year, which are culled because they don’t lay eggs…
A Russian strike on Ukraine’s recently recaptured city of Kherson killed at least 10 people, wounded another 58 and left bloodied corpses on the road, authorities said.
Kherson regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych told national television the death toll had risen to 10, up from seven reported earlier, Interfax Ukraine news agency said.
Fresh from a trip to the United States seeking weapons to resist the 10-month Russian invasion, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy published photos showing streets strewn with burning cars, smashed windows and bodies, Reuters reports.
“Social networks will most likely mark these photos as ‘sensitive content’. But this is not sensitive content – it is the real life of Ukraine and Ukrainians,” he wrote.
“These are not military facilities … It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”
The latest advances show that Ukraine has reportedly liberated a series of four villages just west of Svatove. This would seem to put Ukraine in control of the critical junction between the P66 and P07 highways, and position them to take the high ground above the city. Meanwhile, the administrative offices of the local “Luhansk People’s Republic” have reportedly been deserted, as Russian officials flee Svatove.
It’s been over two months since the city of Lyman was liberated, and in that time Ukraine has slowly moved toward the cities of Kreminna and Svatove. At both locations, Ukraine has seemingly tried to duplicate the tactics that allowed them to take Lyman with relatively few losses — capture surrounding villages, cut off supply routes, and gradually close in while leaving Russians a single route of escape. However, that’s been much more difficult at Svatove and Kreminna, because the main highway in the area runs north—south, Ukrainian forces were approaching from the west, and the muds of fall have made it nearly impossible to move along the area’s dirt roads.
However, in the last few days Ukrainian forces have reportedly battled their way ever closer to Kreminna, fighting through woodlands south of the city and advancing down a single heavily-mined highway from the west. And now there are reports of even more rapid movement near Svatove, where a breakthrough appears to have resulted in the rapid liberation of a string of villages, putting Ukranian forces in position to move on the city. [map at the link]
On Thursday, there were reports that Ukraine has broken through Russian lines at the small village of Pidkuichansk, 12km northwest of Svatove. This location put Ukrainian forces across the vital P07 highway at a position south of where Russia had been holding up their advance at Kuzemivka. On the following day, there was word that Russian forces still in Svatove had been rushed to the front lines in an attempt to stop this breakthrough. Russian forces also reported mounted a counterstrike of their own, moving from the village of Kolomyichykha toward Stelmakhivka in an effort to cut off the Ukranian forces.
None of that seemed to have worked. Because now Ukraine seemed to have captured a whole string of villages, essentially eliminating the area of Russian occupation west of the highway and giving Ukraine control over the critical highway junction west of Svatove.
To the south, where Ukraine had already reached the village of Popivka some weeks ago, it has reportedly now taken the neighboring village of Nezhuryne. Both of those location were under shelling from Russian artillery across the highway on Saturday morning.
North of that location, Ukrainian forces pressed east from Raihorodka. Russian forces in the village of Patalakhivka reportedly abandoned their location, fleeing toward Svatove without a fight.
And finally, Ukraine flipped the script on Kolomyichykha, moving on that location from three directions and reportedly liberating the last of the Russian-occupied villages in the area.
This now leaves the Russian forves at Kuzemivka to the north with a single supply line to the northeast. That would also be their single line of retreat. With Ukraine in possession of positions north and south of Kuzemivka, and very close to occupying the high ground west of Svatove, it’s not clear that Kuzemivka — which Russia reinforced over and over — remains of tactical value. There are reports on Saturday morning that Ukraine may have already moved into this location. If so, then the entire highway from Kupyansk to the P07 / P66 junction is in Ukrainian control (though Russia still has sections of that road under fire control).
However, what’s going on in Kuzemivka at the moment is very uncertain. Both Ukraine and Russia are reporting the town as shelled by the other side, and there are still reports of Russian troops in the area. No update on the village of Kryvoshyivka.
At both Svatove and Kreminna, Ukrainian forces have reportedly been slowed because Russia heavily mined both roads and surrounding fields. So it seems likely that Ukrainian progress will be hampered by the need for mine removal. But after a period when nothing seemed to be happening fast … things are happening fast.
Edward Kelley was charged with conspiracy, retaliating against a federal official, and solicitation to commit a crime of violence while simultaneously being subject to charges of assaulting an officer during the January 6 riots at the Capitol. Austin Carter was arrested and charged with partaking in the plot.
According to the New York Times, the pair planned to take out a list of 37 agents, but an anonymous individual alerted the authorities after obtaining the list from Carter alongside a USB from Kelley’s home holding video of officers approaching his residence on the day of his arrest.
They were going to start with the agents that arrested Kelley, and then keep going.
Guardian
With the House of Representatives committee on the insurrection preparing to deliver its final recommendations on Monday, 34-year old Edward Kelley of Maryville was charged with conspiracy, retaliating against a federal official and solicitation to commit a crime of violence, reported CNN.
Kelley was already facing charges of assaulting an officer during his participation in the 6 January riots.
Evidently Kelley and his buddy Carter were caught when the person they asked to “stash some stuff”, and told of their plans, decided they wanted no part of this madness.
So when Steve Bannon asks “Are we at war [with the Deep State]”, Edward Kelley and his ilk believe that yes, we are. [See comment 333]
Donald Trump is quite willing to destroy America itself to keep himself out of jail, and Steve Bannon is eager to help him do it.
Since the turn of the millennium, there has been an unusually large number of court cases against artists and curators in Russia. Focusing on prominent cases against the organizers of the exhibitions Caution, Religion! (2003) and Forbidden Art 2006 (2007), Frimmel examines the ways in which the meaning of art and its socio-political effects are argued in court. By placing these cases in a historical context, and comparing them with a number of international case studies, Art Judgements: Art on Trial in Russia After Perestroika (Vernon Press, 2021) reveals how these proceedings have intensified juridical power over artistic freedom (of speech) in Russia over the past two decades.
What does Prehistory mean to us now? In Back to the Stone Age: Race and Prehistory in Contemporary Culture (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2022), Ben Pitcher, a Reader in Sociology at the University of Westminster, uses cultural studies to explore both the human past and our contemporary life. The book examines how ideas of the prehistoric speak to contemporary anxieties, political projects, and even diets and food choices. Moreover, many of these versions of the past are the basis for regressive political projects that use Prehistory as part of racist and sexist agendas, agendas that need to be resisted and countered with the ideas discussed in the analysis. Engaging with a huge range of cultural and social theory, as well as examples from museums and heritage sites, archaeology, and even scientific hoaxes, the book is essential reading across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in understanding the society today.
A groundbreaking examination of austerity’s dark intellectual origins. For more than a century, governments facing financial crisis have resorted to the economic policies of austerity—cuts to wages, fiscal spending, and public benefits—as a path to solvency. While these policies have been successful in appeasing creditors, they’ve had devastating effects on social and economic welfare in countries all over the world. Today, as austerity remains a favored policy among troubled states, an important question remains: What if solvency was never really the goal?
In The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (University of Chicago Press, 2022), political economist Clara E. Mattei explores the intellectual origins of austerity to uncover its originating motives: the protection of capital—and indeed capitalism—in times of social upheaval from below. Mattei traces modern austerity to its origins in interwar Britain and Italy, revealing how the threat of working-class power in the years after World War I animated a set of top-down economic policies that elevated owners, smothered workers, and imposed a rigid economic hierarchy across their societies. Where these policies “succeeded,” relatively speaking, was in their enrichment of certain parties, including employers and foreign-trade interests, who accumulated power and capital at the expense of labor. Here, Mattei argues, is where the true value of austerity can be observed: its insulation of entrenched privilege and its elimination of all alternatives to capitalism. Drawing on newly uncovered archival material from Britain and Italy, much of it translated for the first time, The Capital Order offers a damning and essential new account of the rise of austerity—and of modern economics—at the levers of contemporary political power.
Troopers on scene confirm two fatalities, with a minimum of 46 vehicles involved. Multiple agencies from several counties are continuing rescue operations. White-out conditions persist. Travel is not recommended.
Yaroslav Yanushevych, governor of the Kherson region, said in televised remarks that 55 people were wounded after the shelling in Kherson, 18 of them in grave condition including a 6-year-old child.
Saturday marks 10 months since the start of the Russian invasion.
SC @358, same here. The very idea of Russia invading Ukraine is depressing. The updates that show Ukrainian soldiers and civilians thwarting Russian goals are really uplifting. It’s not always good news, but the trend is obvious: Ukraine is winning. Putin is losing.
I am horrified by the loss of life on both sides.
Henry Kissinger recently wrote an op-ed calling for a cease fire. Putin would use a cease fire to regroup. Henry Kissinger is being naive, stupid, and ill-informed. Unfortunately, some people still listen to that ethically-challenged doofus. Well informed updates keep everything in perspective.
Henry Kissinger now joins the list of prominent figures whose efforts at drafting a peace plan for Ukraine reveal only their delusion about the nature of the conflict. In his plan, the glow of fantasy is fueled by nostalgia for Golden Age nostrums that have no cure-all value for the war that’s actually happening.
In an article for this weekend’s Spectator, the former statesman-historian proposes a cease-fire and a return to the pre-invasion borders of this past February. [WTF!] In other words, he is suggesting that Russia withdraw all its troops from the areas of Ukraine that it has conquered this year—but not from Crimea or the thin slice of eastern Ukraine that it annexed or occupied back in 2014. The disposition of those territories, he argues, should be negotiated or settled through an internationally supervised referendum.
This idea is neither new nor particularly ingenious. Kissinger notes that he proposed the idea in May; others put forth similar ideas before then. There is—and always has been—just one problem: Russian President Vladimir Putin has absolutely no interest in going along with it. He has no interest in withdrawing his troops, an act that he would see, quite properly, as a defeat. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also quite properly, has no interest in a cease-fire—which the Russian army would use as an opportunity to regroup and mobilize—unless Putin first withdraws all his troops.
In other words, the idea is a nonstarter, the article a complete waste of time—except in one sense: It exposes the limits of a way of thinking about international politics, at least as it applies to the Russia-Ukraine war, and it exposes the limits of Kissinger’s relevance to the 21st century. […]
Followup to comment 360, the Henry Kissinger section.
[…] There are no parallels whatsoever between the wars of 1914 and 2022. The present war started when Russia invaded Ukraine, period. Russia was not provoked to invade by any interlocking alliances. (Putin may have feared that Ukraine might join NATO, but there was absolutely no such prospect on the horizon.) Ukraine was not tethered to any alliance at all. (The U.S. and its NATO allies gradually aided Ukraine with weapons and intelligence, as Russia intensified its aggression, but they have resolutely avoided fighting directly.) And neither Russia nor Ukraine is beseeching anyone to stop the war; the leaders of both countries think they can still gain an advantage—Ukraine by pummeling the Russian army on the battlefield, Russia by pummeling Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles.
[…] His [Kissinger’s] peace plan—the cease-fire, followed by Russia’s withdrawal from the territories taken after February, which would then be followed by negotiations over the land annexed or occupied in 2014—is but a means to an end. He states the point plainly:
The goal of a peace process would be twofold: to confirm the freedom of Ukraine and to define a new international structure, especially for Central and Eastern Europe. Eventually Russia should find a place in such an order.
This last sentence is a mind-blower. “Eventually Russia should find a place in such an order”? “Eventually Russia should find a place in such an order”? What is Kissinger talking about? Right now (when Kissinger posits that the time for diplomacy “is approaching”), the actual existing Russia—personified in Putin—has no desire for a place in such an order. Putin disputes the existence, much less the freedom, of a Ukrainian nation. He dreams of restoring the Great Russian Empire of Peter the Great, not some Metternichian vision of Europe; a revived Congress of Vienna is not a part of his vocabulary, much less his agenda.
Kissinger seems not to realize this. “For all its propensity to violence,” he writes, “Russia has made decisive contributions to the global equilibrium and to the balance of power for over half a millennium. Its historical role should not be degraded.”
This, too, is an astonishing statement. […] Russia has hardly been a consistent force for peace or stability in the past 500 years. Its genuinely “decisive contributions to the global equilibrium” came during the Cold War but at the expense of freedom and prosperity for hundreds of millions of people, including its own citizenry. More to the point, Putin is not interested in a balance of power now—not in one that contributes to equilibrium. The world he wants restored is one in which Russia dominates a vast stretch of the map, including all of Ukraine.
Kissinger concludes, “The quest for peace and order has two components that are sometimes treated as contradictory: the pursuit of elements of security and the requirement for acts of reconciliation. If we cannot achieve both, we will not be able to reach either.”
He is right. The problem is, Putin has an outlandish vision of security and no desire for reconciliation. That is the problem we face with this war. Kissinger’s peace plan does nothing to solve it.
Kissinger is 99. You’d think he could retire from war-crime advocacy and general evilling and take up gardening or something, but no.
whheydtsays
A judge has thrown out Republican Kari Lake’s challenge of her defeat in the Arizona governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs, rejecting her claim that problems with ballot printers at some polling places on Election Day were the result of intentional misconduct.
In a decision Saturday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, who was appointed by former Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, found that the court did not find clear and convincing evidence of the widespread misconduct that Lake had alleged had affected the result of the 2022 general election. Lake will appeal the ruling, she said in a statement.
The judge said Lake’s witnesses didn’t have any personal knowledge of intentional misconduct.
“The Court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence,” Thompson said.
Lake, who lost to Hobbs by just over 17,000 votes, was among the most vocal 2022 Republicans promoting former President Donald Trump’s election lies, which she made the centerpiece of her campaign. While most of the other election deniers around the country conceded after losing their races in November, Lake has not. Instead, she asked the judge to either declare her the winner or order a revote in Maricopa County, home to more than 60% of Arizona’s voters.
In the ruling, the judge acknowledged the “anger and frustration” of voters who were inconvenienced in the election and noted that setting aside the results of an election “has never been done in the history of the United States.”
“But this Court’s duty is not solely to incline an ear to public outcry,” the judge continued. “It is to subject Plaintiff’s claims and Defendants’ actions to the light of the courtroom and scrutiny of the law.”
….
Earlier on Friday, another judge dismissed Republican Abraham Hamadeh’s challenge of results in his race against Democrat Kris Mayes for Arizona attorney general. The court concluded that Hamadeh, who finished 511 votes behind Mayes and hasn’t conceded the race, didn’t prove the errors in vote counting that he had alleged.
A court hearing is scheduled Thursday to present results of recounts in the races for attorney general, state superintendent and for a state legislative seat.
The mental state of Donald Trump has been questionable for decades. He has been diagnosed by professionals as a malignant narcissist with sociopathic tendencies. He is a pathological liar. He has delusions of grandeur so extreme that he views himself as the sole savior of America and the world.
This messianic psychosis is evident in everything Trump does and says, particularly when referring to himself. That is hardly the behavior of a “very stable genius.” It is a neurosis that poses great risks to America’s future should he be elevated again to any position of power. And the sanity and patriotism of anyone who would vote for him should be similarly regarded as deranged. Especially after Trump recently dined with a couple of unabashed Hitler lovers and called for the “termination” of the U.S. Constitution.
Trump’s deteriorating psychological sickness continues to be displayed in a disturbingly public manner on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, where he posts daily evidence of his mania. More often than not, Trump is in a rage over his having lost the 2020 presidential election, and is consumed by wholly unfounded fantasies that the the election was “rigged and stolen” from him.
That was the topic once again on Friday as Trump unleashed a barrage of pseudo-tweets lamenting what he said was a “massive campaign fraud in the 2020 Election.” And true to form, his tirade was littered with lies. He began…
“The FBI has just confirmed that it has paid MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to Twitter, … but what they didn’t say was that it was for the purpose of changing the Election results, pushing Biden over ‘Trump.’ Wow!”
The reason that the FBI didn’t say anything about purposefully “changing the Election results” to hurt “Trump” (which for some inexplicable reason he puts in quotes) might have been because that never happened. What Trump is referring to in his badly deviated perception of reality is a disclosure in some recently revealed emails between Twitter staffers that acknowledged receipt of payment by the FBI for work they did to supply the agency with information that it requested. It was a routine and legally mandated payment that Trump, Elon Musk, and Fox News distorted as a political stunt to discredit the FBI.
Notice that Trump has wildly elaborated on the lies exhorted by Musk and Fox News. What began as false allegations that the FBI paid to suppress a bogus story that was tied to a Russian disinformation campaign, Trump turned into a plot to change the election results. That was Trump’s invention and was never even asserted in the “Twitter Files” document dump. But Trump was just getting started. He went on to whine that…
“The FBI used Twitter and Facebook to bludgeon the 2020 Election to Biden. Nothing Negative could be said about him, especially as it related to Hunter’s Laptop From Hell, and ONLY Negative could be said about me. They were illegally after ‘Trump’ at a level of ferocity, hate and yes, desperation, that has never been seen in our Country before. Other Media companies were involved also. The change in the Election was Complete & Total, with Millions of votes switched, at least 17%. TRUMP WON, BIG!”
As usual Trump, in his hyperbolic hysteria, characterizes all of his bizarre claims as atrocities that have “never been seen in our Country before.” And he is, as always, the whining target of unending paranoid “ferocity [and] hate.” Here he escalates his baseless accusation to assert that “Millions of votes switched,” and comes up with a figure of 17% that he pulled straight of his asinine imagination. From there Trump launches into an all-caps harangue saying that…
“SO, WE CAUGHT THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES, THROUGH THE USE OF THE FBI & OTHER AGENCIES, CONCLUSIVELY & IRREFUTABLY CHEATING ON THE 2020 Presidential Election, AND COMPLETELY & ILLEGALLY CHANGING ITS RESULT.”
Needless to say, no one was “CAUGHT” and no “CHEATING” was proved “CONCLUSIVELY & IRREFUTABLY.” Trump has had more than two years and sixty court cases to provide such proof, but neither he nor his legal toadies have ever managed to produce a shred of it. Trump closed this Trumper Tantrum reiterating the lie that…
“The Government of the United States changed our Election Result, and it just doesn’t get any worse than that. Just look at the damage that’s been done to our Country, and the World, in the last two years — It’s incalculable. TRUMP WON!!!”
It’s worth remembering that the FBI that Trump is accusing of switching votes was run by his hand-picked director, Chris Wray, who reported to his hand-picked Attorney General, Bill Barr. And if we are to believe Trump’s crackpot conspiracy theorizing, we also need to acknowledge that all of it happened while he was occupying the White House, but was either ignorant of the corruption in his administration, or incapable of handling it. Why would even Republicans want that kind of incompetent in charge of anything again?
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #365….
Whenever I start to get upset about “dirty” (modern) political campaigns, I think back to a bit of political propaganda from the last third of the 19th century that my mother acquired.
It was a small (les than 1″ long) hollow lead pig. If you looked through it, there was picture on a candidate with the label “Our Next President”. It was distributed by his opponent. It helps to know that the euphemism “in a pig’s eye” is the Bowdlerized version of the original expression.
General Staff: Ukrainian forces hit Russian personnel concentration areas.
Ukraine’s rocket and artillery forces have hit two Russian personnel concentration areas and an S-300 missile system, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in an update on Dec. 24.
The Ukrainian Air Force struck Russian troops, weapons, and military equipment three times, the General Staff said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy used a Christmas Eve video address to say that Ukrainians would create their own miracle this Christmas, by remaining unbowed, despite Russian attacks that have left millions without power.
Most Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians and mark Christmas in early January.
Speaking 10 months to the day since Russia invaded, Zelenskiy said that while freedom came at a high price, slavery would cost even more.
Even in complete darkness, we will find each other to hug each other tightly. And if there is no heat, we will embrace each other for a long time to warm one another.
We will smile and be happy, as always. There is one difference – we will not wait for a miracle, since we are creating it ourselves.”
Referring to Russian strikes on the recently liberated city of Kherson that killed at least 10 on Saturday, Zelenskiy described Russia as a “terrorist country”.
The world must see and understand what absolute evil we are fighting against.”
Russia’s parliament is preparing to introduce a higher taxation rate for people who have left the county, as many have since the war in Ukraine began in February….
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, has defended his country’s position on the war in Ukraine and indicated that Beijing will deepen ties with Moscow in the coming year.
China will “deepen strategic mutual trust and mutually beneficial cooperation” with Russia, Wang said in a video address, according to an official text of his remarks….
Kherson governor issues blood donor appeal after 16 people killed in Russian shelling
At least 16 people were killed and 64 injured in Russia’s shelling of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine on Saturday, the region’s governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said.
Russian forces “opened fire on the Kherson region 71 times” with artillery, multiple launch rocket systems and mortars, Yanushevych said in an update posted on social media this morning….
StevoRsays
Apologies if someone has already beaten me to this :
Scientists working in Greenland identified the oldest samples of DNA ever found on earth. By analyzing the two-million year old genetic material, they’ve revealed how northern Greenland was once a wildly different environment than the cold, polar region it is today. Project researcher Eske Willerslev joined William Brangham to discuss the discovery.
Afghanistan’s Taliban-run administration has ordered all local and foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to stop female employees from coming to work, according to a letter from the economy ministry.
The letter, the contents of which were confirmed by economy ministry spokesperson Abdulrahman Habib, said female employees of NGOs were not allowed to work until further notice.
It stated that the move was the result of some women allegedly not adhering to the administration’s interpretation of Islamic dress code for women.
Aid workers have said female personnel are critical to ensuring women can access support.
Habib said the ban applied to organisations under Afghanistan’s coordinating body for humanitarian organisations, known as ACBAR.
While ACBAR does not include the United Nations, it does include more than 180 local and international NGOs and the UN often contracts such groups registered in Afghanistan to carry out its humanitarian work.
Quite how this order will affect UN agencies, which have a large presence in Afghanistan delivering services amid the country’s humanitarian crisis, is not clear.
It was also unclear whether the rule also applied to foreign women.
Dozens of organisations operate across remote areas of Afghanistan and many of their employees are women, with several warning a ban on women staff would hinder their work.
The International Rescue Committee said in a statement its more than 3,000 women staff in Afghanistan were “critical for the delivery of humanitarian assistance” in the country.
An official at an international NGO involved in food distribution said the ban was a “big blow”.
“We have women staff largely to address humanitarian aid concerns of Afghan women,” the official said. “How do we address their concerns now?”
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said women were “central to humanitarian operations around the world” and that the ban would be “devastating” to Afghans as it would “disrupt vital and life-saving assistance to millions”….
They also have a further quote from the so-called minister of higher education about the ban on women at colleges and universities (see #s 225, 346, and 347 above): “Girls were studying agriculture and engineering, but this didn’t match Afghan culture. Girls should learn, but not in areas that go against Islam and Afghan honour.”
Solovyov attempts to compare Putin to Churchill and makes him sound a lot more like Hitler. “Of course, Putin didn’t travel to America, and didn’t ask for American support…,” says Simes. Of course, another person who, like Churchill, asked the US for desperately needed wartime support, and received it, was Stalin.
The carnival of violence that has for years permeated Russia’s state-controlled media has in recent months given way to a new tone of solemnity and calls for national acts of heroism as the country’s invasion of Ukraine continues to falter.
While the ominous laughter of the authorities can still be heard on Russian television screens as state propagandists discuss the destruction of Ukrainian cities or the use of nuclear weapons, new characters have come to the fore.
Until recently, it seemed that Russia had elevated the behavior of the gopnik (street gang member) to an officially approved style of conduct, one that condoned mocking one’s victims with carnivalesque swagger.
One example of such thuggish behavior was the Wagner Group publishing a video in which one of its mercenaries is brutally murdered with a sledgehammer for surrendering to Ukrainian forces. Days later the group’s founder sent another sledgehammer to the European Parliament covered in fake blood. [!!!]
This type of sinister performance — openly demonstrating the rejection of morality and law, and taking joy in the humiliation of the weak — appears designed to demonstrate Russia’s sovereignty to its enemies and to stress that the conventions of Western civilization [sic], with its norms of basic decency, do not apply here.
…
However, this state of affairs started to change when the military defeats in Ukraine began piling up and mobilization was declared.
It now appears to be time for the public to be aware of the gravity of the moment — after all, the male population of the country is being sent to the slaughter….
…
Singing about Russian heroes with deep melancholy, the performers now seen on state TV sport sallow complexions, dark make-up, and mourning clothing that combine to create a funereal atmosphere.
The visuals consist of images of sacrifice: soldiers go to the front with looks of stern determination on their faces, while billboards list the names of dead children from the Donbas alongside those of soldiers who fell in World War II. A woman sheds a tear while a boy wearing a military cap salutes passing soldiers. All mention of hope and victory is absent — this is a requiem for a Russia doomed to fight eternal wars.
…
The concept of death giving life meaning was also raised during Putin’s recent meeting with the mothers of mobilized conscripts. Amid the president’s soulless musings, his deep misunderstanding of Russian culture and tradition was most evident when he said that their sons’ lives had lacked meaning before they were sent to war, urging them to rejoice in their heroic deaths.
“He did not live his life in vain,” Putin said, contrasting the meaninglessness of a peaceful life with the meaningfulness of dying for the state.
Such an appeal is alien to Russian and even Soviet culture, both of which portray the mother of a dead soldier as an inconsolably tragic figure. The right of mothers to attempt to save their sons was recognized even during the Chechen wars, as demonstrated by the respectful attitude taken by the military authorities towards the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers.
But Putin is clearly devoid of this cultural understanding. The concept of a mother rejoicing in the death of a son is taken from Nazi ideology, in which women are depicted as the producers of children required by the state.
The accelerated Nazification of Russian life has dovetailed with a growing public awareness that the authorities are indifferent to their well-being. Telling soldiers’ mothers to see the death of their sons as the realization of their destiny is never going to be an easy sell.
At the same time, the sadistic carnival of state propaganda that was so prevalent until September is not only now inappropriate in light of mounting Russian defeats on the battlefield, but also, according to TV ratings, no longer in demand.
Brash spectacle can no longer obscure the reality of loss, grief, and death. What we can expect to see in the year to come is the slow but steady victory of reality over the fantasy world created by Russia’s state propaganda machine.
Fischer said this latest drop-off was a political stunt by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, using people as pawns.
“It really does show the cruelty behind Gov. Abbott and his insistence on continuing to bus people here without care about people arriving late at night on Christmas Eve when the weather is so cold. People are getting off the buses, they don’t have coats, they don’t have clothes for this kind of weather, and they’re freezing,” Fischer said.
The scheme, apparently run by Roy Cox Jr. and Michael Aaron Jones, made “enough calls to have called each person in the United States 15 times during just those three months,” the FCC said in a statement.
The calls violated the FCC’s spoofing and robocalling laws and that the violations were so “egregious” that they “deserved a substantially escalated proposed fine,” the regulators said.
They spun the globe using Google Earth and found 120 wildlife overpasses across the world. After measuring the dimensions of all the structures, researchers then zeroed in on 12 in Western Canada and the United States, where wildlife monitoring could help them better understand and calculate effectiveness…
This group’s analysis showed overpasses built between 40 and 60 metres wide produced crossing rates that were twice that of smaller builds, and resulted in a more diverse range of wildlife species use.
Putin says West trying to break up Russia
Accuses Kyiv, West of refusing to negotiate
You are walking down the street. You feel something and catch a thief’s hand in your pocket. “give that back!” you declare. “Be reasonable,” he responds. “Let’s split it 50-50.”
Girls should learn, but not in areas that go against Islam and Afghan honour.
“Honour” !!?? Whose supposed honour?
Reginald @379: Good news. The gathering of actual facts and statistics can be used to improve wildlife overpasses. I’ve seen some of those that looked good and I’ve seen others that looked too narrow.
From text quoted by Reginald @377:
“It really does show the cruelty behind Gov. Abbott and his insistence on continuing to bus people here without care about people arriving late at night on Christmas Eve when the weather is so cold. People are getting off the buses, they don’t have coats, they don’t have clothes for this kind of weather, and they’re freezing,” Fischer said.
Just disgusting.
Some commentary from others:
Christmas, even for non-Christians, is a time of joy, peace, giving and caring. Caring for friends and family and providing a little cheer to strangers less fortunate than us.
Not so it seems for Republicans and their leaders, for whom cruelty towards others outside their clan overrides anything their “God” might have prescribed. This is what TX Gov Greg Abbott did during these holidays, trying to outdo his twin ghoul-mate in FL — drop busloads of migrants after dark in 15F temperatures outside VP Kamala Harris’s house.
[…] Yes, Republikans cannot cut down on the cruelty, not even on Christmas Eve. […]
Reminds me of PZ post Merry humbug in which “Kevin Sorbo and some well-fleshed grinning skulls at Newsmax sharing their gift of ludicrous resentment.”
It was 15 degrees outside the VP’s residence on Christmas Even. So Governor Abbott dropped off a bunch of people who arrived without coats or any other resources.
Meanwhile, President Biden visited a children’s hospital in DC to hand out gifts and spread joy. President Biden and first lady Jill Biden also worked to help sort and hand out gifts at a U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots event earlier this month. They displayed a Gold Star tree in the White House to honor men and women in the military who have lost their lives. They even had holiday decor that honored literature and education — quite the contrast with Republican-promoted book-banning events.
This might not seen at first to have much to do with Ukraine. There’s not a tank or APC in sight and though there are drones, they’re of a very different sort. Still, hang with me for a moment.
There are not a lot of great things to say about 2022, but fans of thoughtful, adult science fiction definitely had reasons to go out of this last year feeling at least somewhat satisfied. The year began with the adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, a deeply evocative look at what it means to create community and preserve culture under the most dire of circumstances. That this show didn’t walk away with an armload of awards, especially for Mackenzie Davis’s performance in the role of the adult Kirsten, only shows that the various academies must have been sleeping through the winter.
Then, late in the fall, viewers got what may be the most nuanced, thoughtful, and well-presented visual essay on the perils of authoritarianism; one that touched on themes that are deeply, deeply connected to both the war in Ukraine and the social schisms in the United States. And viewers got this gem under a banner not exactly known for subtly and politically-challenging drama: Star Wars.
Yes, Star Wars has always been about plucky rebels taking on the fascistic space nazis, but all too often the depth of that theme was about as thick as the plastic armor on a stormtrooper. Motivations were pat, plots were shallow, and any logical discrepancies were overwritten by a quick shout out to the magical force, or a good blaster, or a howling Wookie. Too often, it wasn’t just treated as material for children, it was treated childishly.
That the latest television series set in this “universe” would be the best presentation, not just of the threat fascism brings, but the road we’re all walking toward that darkness, is amazing. Just how much depth is embedded in these series is hard to express, but here’s a start. The show is divided into three arcs, each of them centered on an aspect of society that feeds fascism. Those three arcs are: capitalism, colonialism, and the prison system. That’s not exactly what you expect from a series produced by Disney.
The series Andor, is presumably named for primary character Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna, who played the same character in the film Rogue One. However, it might equally be named for Cassian’s adoptive mother, played by Fiona Shaw, whose role in the series is deceptively important.
Andor streams on the Disney+ service and is, like all Star Wars these days, a product of Disney studios. However, if you’re expecting the usual collection of laser swords, smart-ass robots, and cute aliens, all wrapped in a ball of fan service, you’ve come to the wrong place.
And if you needed it, here’s the phrase SPOILER ALERT, because we’re going to walk this show beginning to end. However, if you haven’t seen the show, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should stop reading now. Because I’m going to leave out almost all the characters and 90% of the plot points.
CAPITALISM’S ROLE IN A FASCIST REGIME
Andor opens with the Latino viewpoint character being unjustly assaulted by a pair of cops after leaving a nightclub. That unwarranted confrontation escalates, driven by the sense of power the cops clearly relish as they demean and brutalize Andor.
The whole first three episodes of the series are devoted to establishing Andor, his community, and their relationship to the fascist empire of which they are a tiny part. Andor is a a refugee, taken in from a world where his whole culture was destroyed after a corporate mining disaster made the place unlivable.
He lives on the ragged edge of poverty, engaged in hard labor jobs and committing minor thefts to generate small amounts of cash necessary to support himself and his ailing mother. Like anyone in this situation, he looks for a way out, but his hopes of finding it — or the sister he was searching for when he visited that nightclub—are slim.
When something happens that at first seems to give Andor a possible means of getting one step away from that ragged edge, it turns out to instead force him to leave his community and abandon his mother — something that causes him far more grief throughout the series than any grand idea.
Over the course of these opening episodes, the relationship between capitalism and fascism is explored. The authoritarian government is happy to tolerate both the corporate structure and the corporate police so long as capitalism is sufficient to keep the people distracted from concerns about the empire. Keeping those workers at the ragged edge, where they worry more about feeding their families is the goal. But the fascists don’t hesitate to directly take the reins when they believe the corporate rulers aren’t being adequately oppressive.
Even for the corporate bosses, the fascist government is as much a looming threat as it is a partner. Under the rule of an authoritarian government, there are no real laws. Except that things can always get worse.
COLONIALISM’S ROLE IN A FASCIST REGIME
Forced away from his home, Andor becomes part of a scheme to steal from an imperial military base on a planet where the locals have all been displaced to make way for the “more important” schemes of the government. Notably, the indigenous population hasn’t been killed directly. Instead, they’ve been driven off their land, directed into “enterprise zones” where they can engage in labor that serves the empire.
In this act, Andor becomes part of a cell of the developing proto-rebellion that includes one guy who wears his own selfishness on his sleeve, and another who is both cataloging the crimes of the empire and writing a guidebook for rebellion. They represent the extremes Andor might choose, but he is still trying to ride the center line. Trying to keep his head down, go along, and get through this with a paycheck.
Even though he is with them, Andor is still not one of them. He has more reason than ever to hate the empire, but hating the empire is not the same as being committed taking the risks needed to initiate change.
The world on which this act takes place is one in which the government has demonstrated it’s ability to erase the local culture. Not only have the indigenous people been removed from their land, their cultural practices have been undercut by limits on important ceremonies. There has also been active cultural appropriation, in which the empire has replaced portions of the rituals of these “simple” local people. Though it’s not seen on screen, representatives of the empire brag about how they’ve used “comfort houses” and “beverages” to distract the “smelly” locals from participating in those events that help hold their culture together.
If all this sounds like what the United States did (and does) to Native Americas, it’s meant to. The forcing of people that were spread thinly across large areas into small industrial zones is also spot on to how colonialism was practiced in Africa and elsewhere. Colonialism serves those in power. Fascism maintains itself by removing any competitors. If religion or cultural traditions can be warped to serve the authoritarian regime, they’re supported. If not, they’re removed.
THE PRISON SYSTEM’S ROLE IN A FASCIST REGIME
At the beginning of the third act, Andor is hoping to use some of the money he obtained in act two to finally relieve his material needs. Only he almost immediately has another run in with the legal system as it exists in an authoritarian state. His arrest is completely arbitrary — or would be, except that it’s largely driven by the fact that he’s an immigrant on the planet where he is arrested.
Though he has committed past crimes, Andor has done nothing at all in this instance. However, it’s in this instance that he’s sentenced to jail for a period of years. This is because in an authoritarian system, justice and punishment are disconnected. Andor doesn’t look right and doesn’t know the right people. That’s all it takes.
Once in the prison, Andor learns that even the pretense of his sentence is not maintained. For both those who resist their captivity, and those who cooperate, the end result is the same — a lifetime of doing free labor for the empire; a crushing, mind-numbing, never ending production line in which they are all engaged in building what, pointedly, turn out to be fresh tools of oppression.
It’s only here, in this final arc, that Andor steps back from his personal needs to realize that it’s not enough to hate the system. He has to take steps to end that system. It’s only here, in a prison that’s actually brighter and cleaner than anywhere else Andor has lived — but at a horrific cost — he sees how corporate oppression, police oppression, cultural oppression, and the subversion of justice all combine to feed the empire and keep individuals focused on their own needs, rather than taking action that might improve things for everyone.
Meanwhile, back on the planet where the story opened, Andor’s mother has died and his friends are being systematically tortured for information about his location—because the vast authoritarian system, held together by fear, is so inefficient that it doesn’t realize it has already captured the man it’s looking for. It’s only in this very last moments of the story that Andor’s mother’s recorded words finally move her oppressed community to rise up against the local oppressors. She has done, in this backwater place, what so many others have failed to do — kick off a rebellion in earnest.
There’s still no Russia in this story. Still no Ukraine. Not even a United States. What is there in Andor is a story of how injustice and oppression are fed by systems that all seem to offer the possibility of individual reward at the cost of betraying the community. The story of how good people are corrupted in moving through this system, and how bad people can exploit it for power. A story about how it is necessary to forcefully oppose an authoritarian system, at every step. Because if you’re not opposing fascism, you are definitely supporting it.
That the story is well acted and amazingly shot is almost a bonus. So are all the little “Easter eggs” that are dropped into the story not as fan service of the “ooh, look, he has a blaster just like Han’s!
variety, but in the sense that even tiny objects and peripheral characters are made to serve the greater theme. […]
Holiday music: YouTube link to Kings Return – Carol of the Bells. It’s their live stairwell performance of “Carol of the Bells.”
We joke around that the stairwell is our fifth member,” says Williams. “People love to see it, and we really like the sound.”
They all started singing in church and went on to study music. “We’re all from music education programs, and we pull in different genres – some jazz, R&B, a little bit of classical and gospel,” he says. “We sing a little bit of everything.”
Excerpts from commentary about the report from the January 6 Committee:
Jennifer Rubin, writing for The Washington Post:
[…] from a historical, legal and national security perspective, the most alarming information comes in Chapters 6 and 8 and Appendix 1. Those sections cover the right-wing extremists who jointly planned and executed the violent uprising — and the degree to which Trump enabled their attack.
First and foremost, the report busts a myth promoted by right-wing apologists that because some insurrectionists began the assault on the Capitol before Trump concluded his “Stop the Steal” speech, he was not the inspiration for the attack. Wrong.
Chapter 6 details the degree to which members of extremist groups (e.g., Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Three Percenters) seized upon Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election. They heard his call to come to D.C. and believed he wanted them to do what was needed to keep him in power. The Proud Boys planned to move ahead of the crowd, which later — at Trump’s instruction — followed them down Pennsylvania Avenue.
EJ Montini, writing for the Arizona Republic:
One thing the House select committee investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection proved beyond a shadow of a doubt is that the U.S. Constitution means essentially … nothing.
If the Constitution meant something, really meant something, none of those who participated in the attack on the Capitol and none of those who gave them “aid or comfort” would ever again have anything to do with the U.S. government.
As part of its 845-page final report the committee suggests that former President Donald Trump should be banned from holding public office. They suggest Congress create a “formal mechanism” to do such a thing. As if the mechanism doesn’t already exist.
When they all know it exists.
We simply choose not to enforce it.
The mechanism to send the treasonous supporters of the Jan. 6 insurrection packing is laid out, simply and succinctly, in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
Kimberly Atkins Stohr, writing for The Boston Globe:
That post-Civil War language was drafted specifically to prevent former Confederate officials from holding elected office. The teeth to enforce that provision came with the passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1870, a law designed to stop the reign of terror against Black people through force, intimidation, and violence. It was one of the vitally important legal provisions that rung in the era of Reconstruction, the crucial effort to rebuild a nation torn apart by a war over slavery and enfranchise Black Americans with the rights to vote, run for office, have access to education, use public accommodations, own land, gain employment, and more.
That effort was short-lived.
Backlash quickly took the teeth out of the Klan Act. With a vote of more than two-thirds of Congress, the Amnesty Act allowed those who fought for and defended the Confederacy to hold office again – and could now allow Trump to do the same.
The committee also left unanswered questions about how the Disqualification Clause operates today. Does it even work anymore? And if so, how? Is conviction of the crime of inciting an insurrection – which expressly includes the penalty of being banned from holding federal office – required?
Dec 24 (Reuters) – A major Russian shipyard that specialises in building non-nuclear submarines said its general director had died suddenly on Saturday after 11 years in the job, but gave no details.
Admiralty Shipyards, based in the western port of St Petersburg, announced the death of Alexander Buzakov in a statement. He had been in the job since August 2012.
His main achievement, it said, had been preserving and strengthening the shipyard’s order books for modern non-nuclear submarines, surface ships and deep water vehicles.
edition.cnn.com/…
Tass news agency said the shipyard is building improved Kilo-class diesel-powered submarines capable of launching Kalibr cruise missiles.
In April, Moscow said it had used a diesel submarine in the Black Sea to strike Ukrainian military targets with Kalibrs.
The shipyard said Buzakov graduated in 1980 and had more than 40 years of experience, indicating he had been in his mid-sixties when he died.
Comments posted by readers of the article:
‘Order books’? So, this guy was the one who knew who bought what, when, for how much, and which corners were cut where to pay for the vodka?
——————-
What’s more dangerous — the Ukrainian front or the Russian command structure?
ravensays
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Putin: 99,9% of our people are ready to sacrifice all they have in the insterests of the motherland
This can’t be true.
If it was, Putin would have been out of office months ago, carried away by a mob of millions of Russians who don’t want their tax money spent and their children dead in Ukraine for nothing.
No one knows what the Russian people are really thinking about this war. They have had centuries learning how to smile and nod and say nothing no matter what happens. There are the mass graves of millions of people all over Russia who actually cared enough to say something and ended up dead shortly afterwards.
My best guess is that most of them don’t care unless it directly affects them. And that anyone who thinks about it, thinks it is a pointless and bad idea that isn’t going well.
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @387:
A major Russian shipyard that specialises in building non-nuclear submarines said its general director had died suddenly on Saturday after 11 years in the job, but gave no details.
Surely he couldn’t fall out of a porthole on a ship, so he must have fallen down a ladder (stairs on a ship) or slipped and fell off of a balcony.
whheydtsays
Re: johnson catman @ #389…
Or fell from the deck of a ship in dry dock. Or maybe fell while inspecting a crows nest or radar antenna. Or he could have fallen out of his office window. The possibilities are endless.
ravensays
Ho Ho Ho.
Looks like 14 thousand people got a right wingnut terrorist attack for Xmas.
Another battle in the War on Xmas, I guess.
3 power substations vandalized in Washington state, over 14K lost power.
This makes 12 power substations attacked by terrorists in the last few weeks, 2 in North Carolina and 9 in the Pacific Northwest.
ABC News 3 power substations vandalized in Washington state, over 14K lost power
EMILY SHAPIRO
Sun, December 25, 2022 at 1:29 PM PST·1 min read
Three power substation facilities were vandalized in Pierce County, Washington, on Christmas morning, knocking out power to more than 14,000 customers, authorities said.
Two of the break-ins were at Tacoma Public Utilities substations and the third was at a Puget Sound Energy station, according to the sheriff’s office in Pierce County, which encompasses Tacoma.
No suspects are in custody, according to the sheriff’s office.
“It is unknown if there are any motives or if this was a coordinated attack on the power systems,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
MORE: Attacks, plots similar to sabotage of North Carolina power grid have threatened infrastructure nationwide
Tacoma Public Utilities said about 2,000 of its customers are still without power and crews are working on restoration.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin last month warning that U.S. critical infrastructure could be among the targets of possible attacks by “lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances.”
Earlier this month, two electrical substations were shot up in North Carolina, causing tens of thousands of customers to lose power and prompting local officials to declare a state of emergency.
3 power substations vandalized in Washington state, over 14K lost power originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Rizwan Sayani, of Waterloo, Ont., is Muslim, but has been celebrating Christmas with his wife and their two children for about seven years. He said they set up a Christmas tree, put up lights and wrap presents…
That Christmas joy has also touched Jayanti Dabhere, a Waterloo resident who has been celebrating Christmas for about 12 years with her husband, Amol Patil, even though they were both raised Hindu…
Carmen Che, another Waterloo resident, said her parents are Taiwanese immigrants who only started celebrating Christmas because she and her sister really wanted to… Che said without ever thinking about it — or intending to do it — she has woven in the culture and traditions she learned from her Taiwanese parents into the way she celebrates Christmas. One of the newest ornaments on her Christmas tree this year is a lucky cat, also known as the maneki-neko…
When the rights and needs of Native communities come into conflict with the greed of capitalists, the government still responds with violence. The reservation system was not set up for the benefit of Native Americans, it was set up to contain them. Understanding that is key to understanding why conditions on those reservations tend to be so bad. And when conditions are bad as a matter of routine, disasters hit a lot harder. The Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota has been hit hard by the latest distortion of the Polar Vortex, to the point where there are snow drifts as tall as houses, and people have had to burn clothes to stay warm:
Another terrorist attack.
A fourth power substation in the Seattle area was broken into and set on fire this evening.
The media and the cops keep dancing around calling these terrorist attacks although that is what they are.
They call them “burglaries” but “PCSD said, adding that nothing had been taken from the substation but the suspect vandalized the equipment, causing an outage.”
Right, burglaries but nothing was taken.
They also can’t seem to think of who is doing this or why.
Sure. Right wingnuts have been talking about attacking our electric grid for months but somehow the police who know this can’t seem to remember it now.
The police aren’t doing much of a job in catching them either.
Fourth vandalism incident in Pierce County today leaves over 1,800 residents without power
by KOMO News StaffSunday, December 25th 2022
TACOMA, Wash. — Deputies are investigating three burglaries that left more than 7,000 Pierce County residents without power on Sunday morning.
According to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department (PCSD), a call was received at 5:26 a.m. reporting a burglary at the Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) Substation at 22312 46th Avenue East. Deputies arrived and noticed a forced entry into the fenced area, PCSD said, adding that nothing had been taken from the substation but the suspect vandalized the equipment, causing an outage.
Effected customers can expect power to be restored closer to 8 a.m. on Monday, according to TPU.
No suspects are in custody, PCSD said, and the motive is unknown. Deputies responded to a second burglary to the TPU substation, this time at 8820 224th Street East, where there was also signs of forced entry and damage to equipment. Nothing was taken from that site either, PCSD said.
A third site was burglarized and vandalized around 2:39 a.m., according to PCSD. Puget Sound Energy reported its substation at 10915 144th Street East was burglarized. Power has already been restored to the site.
A fourth site caught fire at the Puget Sound Energy substation at 14320 Kapowsin Hwy E. around 7:21 p.m. Due to the intentionally started fire and burglary, power is out in the area of Kapowsin and Graham, according to PCSD. As of 9:15 p.m., 1,829 customers are out of power. Restoration is estimated around 10:30 p.m., according to the PSE Outage Map.
TPU said 7,300 customers were without power early in the morning. The company sent an update at 11:30 a.m., saying that number was down to around 2,700.
“Turning down your thermostat during a power outage reduces stress on the system and can aid us in restoring service,” TPU said. “Once your power is restored, wait 30-60 minutes before turning it back on. Follow restoration at MyTPU.org/OutageMap.”
Reginald Selkirksays
Happy Boxing Day! It does not receive much attention in the USA.
A Ukrainian drone attack on an airbase for bombers in southern Russia has left three people dead, Moscow says.
Air defences shot down the drone near the Engels base, but falling debris fatally wounded three technical staff, the defence ministry said…
A stunning revelation in Donald Trump’s vicious, grievance-packed holiday “greeting” posted on Truth Social Sunday was his declaration that he is not only “brilliant,” but “clairvoyant.”
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
The UK’s Ministry of Defence says Russian troops have focused mainly on constructing defensive positions along many sections of the frontline in Ukraine since October.
This includes laying additional fields of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, it said in its latest intelligence update, which would “almost certainly [be] going beyond Russian doctrinal guidelines”.
It continued:
Minefields only present an effective obstacle for trained troops if covered by observation and fire.
A major challenge for the Russian forces will likely be a shortage of surveillance assets and trained personnel to effectively monitor large areas of the new minefields.
[As noted above…] Three Russian army servicemen have died after a Ukrainian drone attack on a crucial airbase deep inside Russian territory, Moscow has said.
According to the defence ministry, a Ukrainian drone was shot down on the approach to Engels base early on Monday morning but falling debris killed three servicemen.
The strike was the second recent attack on the Engels airbase, located about 300 miles away from the Ukrainian border and more than 450 miles south-east of Moscow.
Earlier this month, three servicemen were killed and two aircraft were damaged during an apparent Ukranian drone attack on the Engels air base.
The defence ministry said no planes were damaged as a result of Monday’s attack. The details could not be independently confirmed.
The Soviet-era Engels airbase, named after the communist philosopher Friedrich Engels, is a crucial site for Russian air force operations against Ukraine and for the country’s strategic nuclear forces.
Christo Grozev, from the investigative journalism organisation Bellingcat, describes the announcement by Russia’s defence ministry that a Ukrainian drone attacked a base in Russia’s Saratov region as “mind boggling”.
[“…Official RU announcement says a drone was shot by anti-aircraft defenses ‘causing it to change direction and hit a building where pilots were waiting’, killing three and wounding several more.
A Ukrainian drone flying 800 km through Russia undetected – twice – is mind boggling.
Insult to injury…quite literally for once.”]
Ukraine’s armed forces have published its latest update of Russian losses, which reportedly include 550 Russian service personnel over the past day.
Russia “suffered the highest losses in Kupiansk, Avdiivka and Bakhmut directions”, it writes on Facebook….
Bellingcat’s Christo Grozev has shared a video showing members of the private Russian mercenary company, Wagner Group, calling the Russian armed force’s chief of general staff a “piece of shit”.
The video allegedly shows Wagner fighters in the frontline Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, addressing Valery Gerasimov and saying:
You are a piece of shit. Where are the shells? We have no shells anymore here.
Grozev reports that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian businessman and founder of Wagner Group, said he has “nothing to say about this video”, which Grozev writes means the Putin ally is essentially endorsing the attack on Gerasimov.
Freezing conditions from a deadly winter storm in the United States will continue into the week as people in western New York deal with massive snow drifts that snarled emergency vehicles, and travelers across the country see cancelled flights and dangerous roads.
The storm has killed at least 34 people and is expected to claim more lives after trapping some residents inside houses and knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses….
Four major international aid groups have suspended their operations in Afghanistan following a decision by the Taliban regime to ban women from working at non-governmental organisations.
Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, the Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE said on Sunday they could not effectively reach people in desperate need without the women in their workforces. The NGO ban was introduced a day earlier, allegedly because women were not wearing the Islamic headscarf correctly.
The four NGOs have been providing healthcare, education, child protection and nutrition services and support amid plummeting humanitarian conditions.
…
The flurry of rulings from the all-male and religiously driven Taliban government is reminiscent of its rule in the late 1990s, when it banned women from education and public spaces and outlawed music, television and many sports.
The ban on female students attending universities triggered demonstrations in several Afghan cities and backlash overseas.
At about midnight on Saturday in the western city of Herat, where earlier protesters were dispersed with water cannons, people opened their windows and chanted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) in solidarity with female students.
In the southern city of Kandahar, also on Saturday, hundreds of male students boycotted their final semester exams at Mirwais Neeka University. One of them told the Associated Press that Taliban forces tried to break up the crowd as they left the exam hall.
“They tried to disperse us so we chanted slogans, then others joined in with the slogans,” said Akhbari, who only gave his last name. “We refused to move and the Taliban thought we were protesting. The Taliban started shooting their rifles into the air. I saw two guys being beaten, one of them to the head.”…
Tensions are rising in India over prime minister Narendra Modi’s push to make Hindi the country’s dominant language.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janaya party (BJP) government has been accused of an agenda of “Hindi imposition” and “Hindi imperialism” and non-Hindi speaking states in south and east India have been fighting back….
– Thousands of people face Boxing Day travel chaos across Britain as a rail strike means no services will be running, meaning that many have been forced to cancel or make alternative plans as the industrial action continues.
– Network Rail has said railways across the UK will remain closed today due to the strike by employees who are members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union.
– Shoppers hoping for a Boxing Day bargain could face traffic jams as rail strikes bring train services to a halt, with the AA saying it expects 15.2m cars on UK roads on Boxing Day.
– Soldiers and sailors covering for striking Border Force staff at passport control do not have the power to detain people they suspect of criminal activity, leaked documents show.
– Retailers are preparing for a quieter Boxing Day this year despite freedom from pandemic restrictions as the cost of living crisis weighs on shoppers’ budgets, with an expected 4% decrease on last year.
– The PCS union has said that although it recognises people will be inconvenienced by the civil service strikes, the blame lies with the government rather than the union. Members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union who normally check passports are striking from 23 December until the end of the year, with the exception of 27 December.
Le visage d’une des victimes tuées hier [Friday], Emine Kara, connue aussi sous son nom de guerre Evîn Goyî, est ainsi imprimé sur de nombreuses pancartes. La jeune femme avait combattu Daesh avant de s’exiler en France pour y soigner ses blessures de guerre et s’occuper du Mouvement des femmes kurdes en France. Arrivée il y a un an, sa demande d’asile venait d’être refusée par l’OFPRA. Deux hommes ont également perdu la vie dans l’attaque perpétrée vendredi : un habitué du centre culturel, Abdulrahman Kizil, et un chanteur kurde réfugié politique, Mir Pewer.
The term “European Genizah” refers to thousands of individual pages that were torn out of Hebrew manuscripts centuries ago, and then used to bind books and cover archival files…
The European Genizah is not limited to Hebrew manuscripts. Tens of thousands of manuscripts in Latin, Greek, and other local languages were discarded as worthless throughout Europe, mainly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but also during the medieval era…
Parchment is a valuable material, easy to cut but hard to tear, and light (especially in comparison to the heavy wooden bindings that were common then). Therefore, bookbinders found much use for passé manuscripts that no one wished to read any longer. A handful of scholars understood by the middle of the sixteenth century that bookbinders were in possession of ancient manuscripts that should be rescued from their blades, but the phenomenon continued unabated for a long time and throughout Europe. Tens of thousands of such pages have been discovered recently in various countries, some in old bindings, and some in the covers of archival documents…
According to the present state of our knowledge, it is apparent that Hebrew manuscripts were used in Central Europe to bind books specifically, whereas in Italy they were utilized mainly to cover files of archival documents, and, only to a lesser extent, to bind books. Much rarer still was the use of manuscripts for other, occasionally bizarre, purposes. There is also evidence of such usage of non-Hebrew manuscripts. For example, an English scholar wrote in 1536 of Latin manuscripts that were taken from English monasteries and used to polish boots and candlesticks, sold in grocery stores, etc. Another scholar, from Denmark, wrote in 1701 about the systematic collection of “unnecessary” Latin manuscripts from cathedrals, for use as fuses to light fireworks at a royal wedding that took place in Copenhagen in 1634; about a Danish peasant who ripped out eleven illuminated pages of a manuscript to decorate his kitchen; of ancient manuscripts used by schoolchildren as notebooks, by tailors in their craft, and in other various and bizarre ways…
Put simply – and it is simplistic – the Stirrup Thesis argued that when the Franks discovered the stirrup in the eighth century, they used it to develop a new form of mounted shock combat with the couched lance, made cavalry the dominant military arm and knights the backbone of the military aristocracy (and that then led to a wholesale r/evolution in society to support the horse-owning aristocracy that gets shorthanded in another quasi-mythical concept, ‘feudalism’), and promptly turned back the Umayyad invasion of Gaul from the Iberian Peninsula, thus securing Europe for Christendom.
The problem is, almost all of this is wrong except for Charles Martel winning the Battle of Tours in 732 (also known as the Battle of Poitiers and the Battle of the Highway of the Martyrs by the Arabs)…
ravensays
There are a lot of reports that the Russians are running out of ammunition, mostly artillery shells.
There are a lot of reports that the sanctions and the low prices for their gas and oil are also starting to hit Russia hard.
This is good news for Ukraine and now we have to see how much of a difference this makes to how the war is going.
In the last few days, it looks like the Russian soldiers on the front lines don’t want to be there any more.
Budanov: The Russian Federation is looking for shells for artillery and tanks all over the world
Russia is looking all over the world for Soviet-era shells for artillery, tanks and multiple launch rocket systems.
Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine told about this in an interview with LIGA.net.
The aggressor country has been facing the problem of a shortage of shells since the beginning of autumn.
According to Budanov, the Russian invaders have problems with ammunition for artillery of various calibers, high-explosive incendiary for tanks and missiles for multiple launch rocket systems.
“Now the Russians are also looking all over the world for a place to buy 122 and 152 mm shells, tank high-explosive shells and rockets for the Grad MLRSs and Uragan MLRSs,” Chief of the Defence Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine said.
Kyrylo Budanov noted that there are certain countries that can help the Russians with ammunition, but according to him, in many cases they are sold through third countries.
As previously reported, at the beginning of December, Avril Haines, Director of the U.S. National Intelligence stated that the Russian invasion forces in Ukraine spent more ammunition than the defense industry could produce.
“Russia is using up ammunition “quite quickly,” prompting Moscow to look to other countries for help, including North Korea,” Haines told.
“They are not capable of indigenously producing what they are expending at this stage. So that is going to be a challenge,” she said.
As previously reported, the White House stated that the Russian Federation had turned to North Korea to obtain the necessary weapons. This, in particular, regards artillery ammunition.
Previously, the White House stated that Russian mercenaries from the so-called Wagner PMC had bought weapons from Pyongyang.
[Photo of Ukrainian soldiers celebrating Christmas, deep underground, somewhere on the eastern front]
Luhansk governor on Kreminna rumours. “reports that our military has already liberated Kreminna or… advanced to its outskirts are not true, but the fighting is going on near the city”. Pics: illustrative from area.Also claims Dibrova liberated are unsubstantiated until now. [photos at the link]
Ukraine hit Engels airbase again. [photo at the link] Last time Ukraine hit it, it knocked out several (Ukraine claims 4) strategic bombers—the very ones that have been launching ballistic missiles against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. With luck, Ukraine knocked out a few more.
Rumors of Ukraine entering Kreminna are for sure wrong. Russia has been evacuating its civilians from the town (like they did from Svatove over the last few days), and that seems to have been interpreted by some as “all Russians are retreating.” The reports of looting are real, as well. And Ukraine is pushing ever closer. How close, we’ll know more tomorrow.
Merry f’n Christmas Russia, Ukraine is taking back what belongs to them.
Mark Sumner wrote yesterday about Ukrainian advances toward Svatove. Today, just 50 kilometers to the south of there, Ukrainian forces are storming Kreminna. Some rumors suggest it may already be liberated, though one official Ukrainian government Telegram channel urged caution: “Calm down, have patience.” That certainly hasn’t happened yet.
Last night, Russian forces were looting Kreminna—always a sign presaging liberation. Today, both Russian and Ukrainian Telegram sources reported intense artillery shelling of Russian positions in the town, as well as Ukrainian forces approaching and maybe even entering the city from the the R-66 highway in the north, and from the forest in the west. [map at the link]
It’s been two months since the fall of nearby Lyman. It was at the the tail end of the lightning liberation of Kharkiv oblast, Ukrainian forces pushed to Kreminna’s edge before Russian defenses rallied and finally held their ground. Ukraine has been grinding its way closer ever since.
Let’s look at the bigger strategic picture: [map at the link]
Kreminna complicates logistics up and down the Kreminna-Svatove direction. I’d be shocked if that rail line is operational, but liberating Kreminna cuts a second road from that cluster of Kreminna-Rubizhne-Severodonetsk-Lysychansk up to Svatove. There are other supply routes (Starobilsk remains the big logistical hub, and Ukraine’s main target in this advance), but Russia doesn’t do logistics well. removing options exacerbates those challenges. And even if supplies aren’t running that route, the ability of Russia to easily move troop reserves toward a Ukrainian breakthrough along that entire line is severely compromised.
In effect, this cuts Russian forces in northern Luhansk oblast in half.
Additionally, Ukraine is pressuring Svatove from the west, but efforts to encircle it from the north seemed to be bogged down in mud. Taking Kreminna will allow Ukrainian forces to quickly move up that new road to threaten Svatove from the south. Russia may have fortified that approach, but if not, it’s around 25 kilometers of nothing until the first town, Krasnorichens’ke, which is halfway up the route to Svatove.
Ukraine can also look east toward Rubizhne and back to Severodonetsk, which would be quite the accomplishment. We all remember the massive loss of life this summer, as Severodonetsk’s Ukrainian defenders, surrounded on almost all sides, held out eight weeks before falling on June 25. We can fully expect Russia to dump tens of thousands of their mobilized human speed bumps on that approach.
Taking Kreminna also ends Russia’s dream of somehow regaining the initiative in that corner of the map and pushing toward Sivers’k. [map at the link]
If Russia could take Sivers’k, or at least get close, it would put some key roads and rail back under Russian artillery fire control, and force Ukraine to reinforce those lines rather than accumulate forces for the expected winter offensive (wherever Ukraine decides to strike). Instead, Sivers’k remains well-behind the front lines, Ukraine is happy to bleed Russian forces at Bakhmut, and retains all the strategic flexibility for whatever big offensive comes next.
Oh, and speaking of Bakhmut, Ukraine continues to reverse months of Russian gains in a week-long limited counter-offensive. After pushing Russia out of the city’s easternmost residential blocks and turning the industrial area into no-man’s land (in pink on the map below), Ukraine has now pushed Russia out of the southern suburb of Opytine. (80% liberated, according to most recent reports.) [tweet and map at the link]
To be fair, Russia captured a couple of settlements to Bakhmut’s northeast, but we’re now seeing a see-saw effect in the area. As we’ve noted before—Ukraine is happy to retreat at first contact, drawing in Russian forces, before counterattacking the exposed Russians back to their original positions (or even further back). I wouldn’t sweat the small tactical moves at this point. Ukraine has it under control. And while I’ve wrongly predicted Russia’s culmination around Bakhmut in the past (how could I expect they’d keep assaulting the city 6-20 infantry at a time, with no armor support?), the functional result is pretty much the same. Bakhmut is under no imminent threat.
Well, here’s something to celebrate—confidence in the 2022 election was up significantly from the lows of 2020. Fully 71% of voters felt confident their ballots were counted correctly in the midterm versus just 23% who were uneasy, according to recent polling by the progressive consortium Navigator Research. Just 60% of voters felt confident about 2020 election integrity, while 35% were uneasy.
Once more, nearly all of that increase in confidence since 2020 came from Republicans, while Democrats and independents trusted the integrity of the midterms at about the same rates as 2020.
[…] let’s just say it’s satisfying to see a solid majority of Republicans (58%) expressing confidence in the outcome of an election where nearly as many Republicans (54%) expressed dissatisfaction with the outcome.
Of all the messed up things the anti-vaxxers, COVID conspiracists and QAnon people have done, one of the cruelest has been their obsession the past few years with finding obituaries of people who died from heart issues, or whose obituaries say they “died suddenly,” and harassing their loved ones by baselessly claiming those people died from complications of the COVID vaccine, often accusing them of covering it up. It’s absolutely evil.
Now that Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, it appears to have gotten a lot worse. The night before Christmas, a user calling herself “My Hero Q” posted a video of CNA reporter Julie Yoo collapsing on air, along with the caption “How many on air vax deaths before people who are vaxxed realize their situation? When they cut back to the news reporter the look on her face says she was just told to not say a word…” [Tweet and image at the link]
The answer to that question is “zero.” Julie Yoo is very much alive and fainted on air back in November due to low blood sugar and dehydration.
This woman didn’t know anything about Julie Yoo’s collapse, she didn’t know if Yoo had been vaccinated or not, and she definitely did not know what the other anchor was “told” to do in response to an obviously awkward situation. She literally just made up an entire storyline that fit her agenda.
The tweet was viewed 43.3K times (which is why I’m not linking to it) and retweeted 214 times, and while most of the responses pointed out that Yoo was in fact alive and had merely fainted, the quote tweets show lots of people going right along with what “My Hero Q” said. It’s almost as if they are not quite as great at doing their own research as they claim to be.
Anti-vaxxers have been using Yoo’s on-air collapse as fodder since the beginning of November, but it appears this is the first time someone has claimed she actually died.
In the tweet following this claim, “My Hero Q” took a picture of a 14-year-old kid who died from suicide back in July and claimed that he, too, had died of the COVID vaccine, because a headline about his death said that he “died suddenly.”
“I sent out over 20 tweets in the last week and a half about Children who #DiedSuddendly, [sic]” she tweeted. “Also video of everyday people, reporters & professional athletes dying or cannot compete anymore for unknown reasons. This is the last picture I am sending of a Child, so beautiful”
Yes, so beautiful that she can’t be bothered to actually look up why he died.
This isn’t just about one random woman’s tweet. “My Hero Q” only has about 1,400 followers, and yet her tweets managed to reach over 40,000 people, many of whom clearly took her at her word. That’s a pretty massive reach for such a small account. New Twitter is not just allowing misinformation, it sure seems like it’s boosting it.
Tweets that discourage people from getting a life-saving vaccine, that say living people are dead, and that retraumatize grieving families to further the world’s stupidest agenda are not harmless. They hurt people and put them in actual danger. That “news” made up by some random QAnon devotee on Twitter is pretty much being presented on equal footing as actual, non-hypothetical news is also not harmless. People ought to be able to tell the difference between The Washington Post and Weekly World News, and pretty soon that is not going to be so easy, what with Elon Musk’s plan to take blue checks away from journalists and bestow them upon anyone willing to pay eight dollars a month, including people like this.
[T]his time, Ivanka and Jared were in the Middle East, touring the pyramids and climbing on the backs of camels with their three children on their way to Qatar for the World Cup, where there was business to tend to. They were joined there by an employee from Affinity Partners, the investment firm Kushner founded in 2021, for which he has raised a reported $3 billion — a majority, $2 billion, from the Saudi public-investment fund.
When calls began to come in looking for help, looking for public support, even looking for a response, Kushner refused. Trump’s Nazi associations and overtures are his problem now. Kushner has also started giving out his father-in-law’s number to people who call with the usual asks, whereas in the past he would have positioned himself as a go-between. “He was like, ‘Look, I’m out. I’m really out,’” a person with knowledge of the situation said.
[…] The mutual aid group claimed the Texas Division of Emergency Management sent the buses, presumably under the direction of GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. The governor has not confirmed this, possibly because he was too busy enjoying the Christmas holiday in his warm home. However, the White House condemned Abbott by name.
Abdullah Hasan, a White House spokesman, said, “Governor Abbott abandoned children on the side of the road in below-freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any federal or local authorities. This was a cruel, dangerous and shameful stunt.”
Abbott has sent thousands of migrants to DC, as well as New York, since this spring, as part of his supposed “busing policy.” He has provided little to no advance notice, nor bothered to coordinate with Democratic leaders in the destination cities. It’s the same cruel stunt Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has pulled.
[…] If Abbott was genuinely worried that these migrants were “at risk of freezing to death on city streets,” he wouldn’t have sent them to much colder areas. Abbott is reportedly pissed that the Biden administration might successfully lift the Title 42 border expulsion policy that the Trump administration instituted to rapidly expel migrants over health concerns when the pandemic first began.
The irony here is that Abbott has pretty much operated as if the pandemic doesn’t exist, opposing vaccine and mask mandates. He just wants to keep Trump’s inhumane immigration policies in place. The Biden administration has repeatedly expressed a willingness to work with both parties on border security and immigration reform, but Republicans like Abbott would rather accuse Biden of having an “open border policy” (he doesn’t) and demand he visit the border so they can yell at him. They seem to prefer to use human beings as props in publicity stunts.
Fischer’s mutual aid group found churches and synagogues willing to open their doors for the migrants, many of whom were happy to get closer to family members in New York. During an interview with NPR, Fischer said, “While we know that Governor Abbott’s intentions behind the bussing is really rooted in racism and xenophobia …. at the end of the day, everybody that arrived here last night was able to get free transportation on a charter bus that got them closer to their final destination.”
Abbott might’ve played Scrooge on Christmas Eve, but at least there are groups at there willing to demonstrate the true Christmas spirit.
At least 26 people have died in this weekend’s catastrophic snowstorm, officials announced Monday, marking this blizzard as Western New York’s deadliest in at least 50 years.
Roads remain impassable and more than 12,000 people are still without power as the unrelenting storm is forecast to drop as much as a foot of additional snow, Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz said during a Monday morning news conference. Rescuers are struggling to free people trapped in their cars, while people stuck in shelters and nursing homes are running out of food.
[…] The National Weather Service warned that a “reinforcing shot” of cold air from Canada could cause more snow across the Great Plains and Midwest on Monday, and the eastern half of the country would remain in a deep freeze.
In Erie County, where the death toll almost doubled overnight from 13 to 25, the dead range in age from 26 to 98. They have been found in their cars, homes and in snowbanks. Several suffered cardiac arrests while shoveling — an all-too common consequence of the cold, which can cause arteries and veins to constrict and blood pressure to skyrocket.
In nearby Niagara County, officials said Sunday that a 27-year-old man died from carbon monoxide poisoning when heavy snow covered the vents on his external furnace. A second victim was hospitalized.
[…] Poloncarz expects the death toll to keep rising as first responders eventually reach victims who may have been dead for days.
[…] The Associated Press reported that there have been at least 48 storm-related deaths around the country.
During the peak of the Arctic blast, more than 1.7 million customers were without power on Friday across the country. […]
More photos at the link.
tomhsays
A motion for sanctions was filed today by Maricopa County in Kari Lake’s failed election contest against Kari Lake and her attorneys. It begins:
Before a single vote was counted in the 2022 general election, Kari Lake publicly stated that she would accept the results of the gubernatorial election only if she were the winning candidate. When all the votes were counted and the result of the election certified, establishing that Ms. Lake had lost the election to Defendant-Contestee Katie Hobbs, Plaintiff stayed true to her promise.
…she filed a groundless, seventy-page election contest lawsuit against the Governor -Elect, the Secretary of State, and Maricopa County and several of its elected officials and employees (but no other county or its employees), thereby dragging them and this Court into this frivolous pursuit.
After 15 pages of arguments the motion ends with:
Enough really is enough. It is past time to end unfounded attacks on elections and unwarranted accusations against elections officials. This matter was brought without any legitimate justification, let alone a substantial one. The Maricopa County Defendants therefore ask this Court to impose sanctions against Plaintiff Kari Lake and her attorneys, Brian Blehm and Kurt Olsen.
I acknowledge that Buffalo was hit hard by this latest winter storm, but the “war zone” language is inappropriate, overused, and especially distasteful when there are actual wars going on.
Ukraine’s foreign minister on Monday said that his government is aiming to have a peace summit by the end of February — but that Russia could only be invited to such a summit if the country faced a war crimes tribunal at an international court first…
The summit, which would fall around the anniversary of Russia’s war, would preferably be held at the United Nations (UN) with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as a possible mediator, he added.
About Guterres’s role, Kuleba said: “He has proven himself to be an efficient mediator and an efficient negotiator, and most importantly, as a man of principle and integrity. So we would welcome his active participation.”
South Korea’s military fired warning shots, scrambled fighter jets and flew surveillance assets across the heavily fortified border with North Korea on Monday, after North Korean drones violated its airspace for the first time in five years, officials said.
South Korea’s military detected five drones from North Korea crossing the border, and one travelled as far as the northern part of the South Korean capital region, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
ravensays
COVID isn’t just infecting you—it could be reactivating viruses that have been dormant for years. Or decades.
I’ve seen this before.
A healthy 80 year old caught Covid. He was vaccinated and didn’t get all that sick considering. So far, so good.
Then he came down with Shingles, caused by his latent chickenpox virus, which went for his eyes. He ended up with 2 months of high dose antivirals and managed to clear it.
Well, OK.
He’s never been the same after all that.
He tries to stay active and do things like take his kayak out, but it is all harder for him these days.
This isn’t that unusual.
Infection by Covid-19 virus is known to sometimes activate latent viruses, notably the chickenpox virus.
Fortune
COVID isn’t just infecting you—it could be reactivating viruses that have been dormant in your body for years
Erin Prater
Mon, December 26, 2022 at 3:00 AM PST·6 min read
You had COVID a few months ago and recovered—but things still aren’t quite right.
When you stand up, you feel dizzy, and your heart races. Even routine tasks leave you feeling spent. And what was once a good night’s sleep no longer feels refreshing.
Long COVID, right? It may not be so simple.
A mild or even an asymptomatic case of COVID can cause reservoirs of some viruses you’ve previously battled to reactivate, potentially leading to symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome—a condition that resembles long COVID, according to a recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.
Researchers found herpes viruses like Epstein-Barr, one of the drivers behind mono, circulating in unvaccinated patients who had experienced COVID. In patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, antibody responses were stronger, signaling an immune system struggling to fight off the lingering viruses.
Such non-COVID pathogens have been named as likely culprits behind Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis. The nebulous condition with no definitive cause leads to symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, dizziness when moving, and unrefreshing sleep.
The symptoms of many long COVID patients could be described as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, experts say. Researchers in the October study hypothesized that COVID sometimes leads to suppression of the immune system, allowing latent viruses reactivated by the stress of COVID to recirculate—viruses linked to symptoms that are common in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and long COVID.
Thus, “long COVID” in some may not be an entirely new entity, but another post-viral illness—like ones seen in some patients after Ebola, the original SARS of 2003-2004, and other infections—that overlaps with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
deleted
There is a strong possibility that COVID is weakening the immune systems of “a good deal of people,” Galiasatos added.
“I do think the immunodeficiency—when it’s there, it’s transient—allows those viruses to reemerge,” he said.
whheydtsays
Re: Raven @ #427…
My wife had CFS for about 40 years before she developed the ALS that killed her. Never had COVID,
Republican-led legislatures are mounting an increasingly fierce battle to curb the ability of citizens and other lawmakers to place ballot measures — a move progressive groups say is explicitly aimed at making it difficult to give voters in red and purple states direct say over major issues such as abortion rights.
But those efforts would be severely curtailed — if not downright eviscerated — if conservative legislatures move forward with their own measures to make it harder to place ballot initiatives.
“There’s just so much opposition — not just against reproductive freedoms, but for the vehicles that reproductive freedom groups are now trying to use to protect those freedoms,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, the executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center. “We know that many politicians don’t like to be told what to do — and what will be critically important to the success of the reproductive freedom movement, as well many other issues that rely on this process, is whether we will still have this tool.”
[…]
In Ohio, for example, Republican legislators teamed up with the Republican secretary of state last month to write and advance legislation that would place a ballot measure before voters in a May special election. If approved, it would require a 60% threshold of support for future ballot measures to pass, as opposed to the current majority.
In Missouri, legislators in the House have already pre-filed at least nine measures for the legislative session that kicks off next month, all of which seek to raise the requirements or thresholds necessary to pass ballot initiatives to amend the state constitution. Currently, Missouri law allows all ballot initiatives to pass with simple majorities.
Last month, Missouri voters legalized recreational marijuana after they approved a ballot initiative that amended the state constitution. In 2020, state voters used the same process to expand Medicaid, and in 2018 they similarly legalized medical marijuana.
[…]
Despite the conservative push to curtail ballot measures, Republican legislatures in red and purple states spent the past year actively using the ballot measure process to make it more difficult for voters to amend state constitutions.
[…]
As for the idea that conservatives are seeking to change the ballot initiative process by using the ballot initiative process?
“They’re trying to use ballot measures — to change ballot measures,” said Fields Figueredo of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center. “It’s not lost on me how ironic that is.”
A suggestion by one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming ministers that Israeli doctors should be allowed to refuse treatment to LGBTQ patients on religious grounds has heightened fears that the new government poses an unprecedented threat to gay rights.
The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, has weighed in to condemn the growing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, saying: “The racist pronouncements of recent days against the LGBTQ community and other sectors of the public make me extremely worried and concerned.” The president, whose post is largely ceremonial but who commands a degree of authority, added that such rhetoric undermined Israeli “democratic and moral values”.
Netanyahu – who called Strook’s remarks “unacceptable” – denies his new government will pose a threat to gay rights but critics say he is too weak to control his ultra nationalist and ultraorthodox coalition partners pushing Israel to increasingly adopt what they view as divinely ordained religious heritage.
In a radio interview on Sunday, the incoming national missions minister, Orit Strook, of the Religious Zionist party, was widely understood as implying that Israeli doctors would be able to refuse treatment to LGBTQ patients in the spirit of legislation her party is drafting and in accordance with coalition agreements that provide for amending an anti-discrimination law.
Strook specified that a doctor could refuse care to a patient if doing so violates his [sic] religious beliefs “as long as there are enough other doctors who can give this service”.
After sharp criticism of her remarks, Strook, a leader of the illegal Israeli settler community in Hebron, later tweeted that she had been referring to medical procedures that would be religiously objectionable, not LGBTQ individuals. She did not specify which procedures they might be but stressed that it was inconceivable to force a Jewish doctor to violate Jewish law in a Jewish state “that was established after 2000 years of exile due to Jews who sacrificed their lives for the fulfilment of Torah”.
Strook’s party is advancing an amendment to an anti-discrimination law that allows exceptions to service providers where religious beliefs of the provider would be violated. This principle is also specified in Netanyahu’s coalition agreement with the ultra-Orthodox Torah Judaism party.
Another Religious Zionist legislator, Simcha Rothman, said on Sunday that under the change, hotel owners would be able to refuse rooms to gay groups. “Freedom of occupation means that someone is allowed to act not nicely to the assortment of customers and to boycott or not to boycott them.”
The changes to the law, if they materialise, are also expected to impact on Israel’s Arab minority citizens and pave the way for further inroads by the Jewish fundamentalists of Religious Zionism, who also support annexation of the occupied West Bank. Netanyahu reiterated a pledge that his government would not harm the LGBTQ community, but tellingly, members of his Likud party ruled out changing the coalition agreement.
…
Yossi Beilin, a former minister of justice, stressed that since Netanyahu needed the extreme right parties to help legislate a weakening of the judiciary so that corruption proceedings against him would be cancelled, he might accommodate their demands.
“Since Netanyahu is very, very weak he has no option [of handling] these extremist forces, some of whom are lunatics,” Beilin said. “Maybe he intends not to implement these things but I’m not sure he can avoid doing so. These people are really zealots.”
“We have never been in such a situation. The jury is out. We may be facing a different Israel with halacha [Jewish law] as a point of interest that people living in darkness will support.
Netanyahu intends to hold a vote in parliament on his new government on Thursday 29 December, just days before his mandate to do so expires, the speaker of parliament said on Monday.
Netanyahu’s bloc of rightwing and religious parties won a parliamentary election last month, but the veteran leader has had a harder time than expected in finalising coalition deals.
US public health officials are bracing for a possible Covid-19 surge in the coming weeks following indoor holiday gatherings among a populace that has largely abandoned preventive measures.
Concerns over this uptick come amid rising influenza and RSV cases in America. This so-called “tripledemic,” experts warn, could further strain the already overburdened US health system.
Evidence of an increase emerged in earnest after Thanksgiving…
Hospitalization admissions are also on the rise….
…
While these numbers pale in comparison to the winter 2022 peak in the US – with more than 5.6m new cases reported the week of 19 January – officials are working to thwart this upward trend.
…
Although the US is staring down a possible seasonal increase, it appears that many are not all that worried. Just 14.6% of US residents age 5 and up have received their updated booster dose, which is said to provide greater protection against omicron variants, CDC data indicate.
There have been nearly 1.1m Covid-19 deaths in the US. More than 100m cases have been reported, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
All of my Christmas events were canceled this year, not as a preventative measure but because several people already have fucking COVID (fortunately at least they’ve all had the bivalent booster). Just a total disaster. I think the country has lost its collective mind, to be honest.
Kari Lake reportedly “flipped out” at a suburban 7-Eleven after buying a losing lottery ticket there on Christmas morning, multiple witnesses report.
According to those witnesses, Lake’s failure to produce a winning result in a lottery scratcher game called Cash Craze led her to accuse the ticket machine of being rigged against her and “riddled with fraud.”
While other customers averted their eyes, the former anchorwoman launched into a tirade on a wide range of targets, including the “pathetic” quality of Christmas presents she had just received.
A member of Lake’s extended family who spoke on condition of anonymity called her Christmas visit to the 7-Eleven “unfortunate” but said that “at least it got her out of the house for a few minutes.”
The US Military Academy will begin removing Confederate monuments from its campus, including a portrait of Robert E. Lee that shows him wearing a Confederate uniform.
The academy will undergo a “multi-phased process” during the holiday break to remove all 13 identified references and installations honoring the Confederacy, the academy’s superintendent, Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland, wrote in a letter to the West Point community last week.
That includes the portrait of Lee from the library, a stone bust of Lee from the campus’ Reconciliation Plaza and a “bronze triptych” at the entrance to Bartlett Hall.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said fighting in the eastern regions of Bakhmut, Kreminna and other areas in Donbas are “difficult and painful” for Ukrainian troops.
Addressing the situation on the frontline in his Monday night address, he said:
The frontline. Bakhmut, Kreminna and other areas in Donbas, which now require maximum strength and concentration.
The situation there is difficult, acute. The occupiers are using all the resources available to them – and these are significant resources – to squeeze out at least some advance.”
Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Monday that more than 60% of the infrastructure in the city of Bakhmut, which has been the site of intense fighting, is partially or fully destroyed.
“Russia is constantly shelling Bakhmut’s infrastructure. The enemy is keeping on scorched earth tactics,” he said.
Ukraine’s eastern military command spokesperson, Serhiy Cherevaty, also said that the Bakhmut and Avdiivka areas in Donetsk remain the sites of the heaviest hostilities. He reported that there were 225 shellings from artillery and tanks in the Bakhmut area on Monday alone.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military said dozens of towns in the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzia regions were shelled by Russian forces.
In the Kherson region, Russia shelled populated areas along the right bank of the Dnipro River, Ukraine’s military said.
Over the last 48 hours, fighting in Ukraine has remained focused around the Bakhmut area of the Donetsk region, and near Svatove in Luhansk, according to the latest UK Ministry of Defence report.
“Russia continues to initiate frequent small-scale assaults in these areas, although little territory has changed hands,” the report claims.
“To the north, elements of Russia’s 1st Guards Tank Army were probably amongst the Russian forces recently deployed to Belarus. This formation was likely conducting training before its deployment and is unlikely to have the support units needed to make it combat-ready.”
Ukrainian forces have repelled Russian attacks in the areas of two settlements in the Luhansk region and six in the Donetsk region over the past 24 hours, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in this morning’s operational update.
Russian forces launched two missile strikes and fired 44 multiple-launch rocket systems over the past day, it said.
…
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s armed forces said a further 620 Russian servicemen were killed between 24 December and 27 December, bringing the total Russian losses to 103,220.
It said:
Russian enemy suffered the greatest losses (of the past day) at the Bakhmut and Lyman directions.
It is not possible to verify this report.
…The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, yesterday attended an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a Moscow-led group consisting of former Soviet states, in St Petersburg.
In footage posted by the Kremlin, Putin is seen welcoming the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Since ordering his troops into Ukraine, the Russian leader’s influence has diminished in central Asia and the Caucasus – a traditional Russian sphere of influence – as nations have sought to distance themselves from Moscow’s faltering war.
At the start of the meeting on Monday, Putin made no secret of the growing tensions within the CIS block. He said:
We have to admit, unfortunately, that disagreements also arise between the member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
He added:
The main thing, however, is that we are ready and will cooperate, and even if any problematic issues arise, we strive to solve them ourselves.
Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has posted a series of tweets where he discusses how Moscow has paid noticeably more attention to central Asia, holding more than 50 meetings with central Asian leaders this year.
In turn, Russia is getting drawn deeper into local internal politics and pushing its energy projects to the region, he writes.
He concludes that Russia’s influence shows no signs of going anywhere soon – though its long-term future is less clear.
The Ukrainian parliament’s first deputy speaker, Oleksandr Korniyenko, has called on Russia to be expelled as a permanent member of the UN security council.
Russia’s membership in the UN is “illegitimate”, Korniyenko writes on Twitter, echoing the Ukrainian foreign ministry’s statement published yesterday that argued that Russia had illegally occupied “the seat of the USSR in the UN security council” since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The foreign ministry’s statement said:
From a legal and political point of view, there can be only one conclusion: Russia is a usurper of the Soviet Union’s seat on the UN security council.
Three decades of its “illegal” presence in the UN “have been marked by wars and seizures of other countries’ territories”, Kyiv said.
A Wagner Group-linked Russian officer has been appointed commander of the Russian western military district (WMD), according to Ukrainian intelligence.
In its latest update, the US thinktank Institute for the Study of War said Yevgeny Nikiforov is reportedly commanding the Russian western grouping of forces in Ukraine out of a command post in Boguchar, Voronezh oblast in southwestern Russia.
Nikiforov has reportedly replaced Col Gen Sergei Kuzovlev as WMD commander because Nikiforov is a member of an alliance formed by Sergei Surovikin, the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private Russian mercenary company, Wagner Group, the ISW update writes.
It continues:
Ukrainian intelligence previously reported that Prigozhin formed an alliance with Surovikin and that both Prigozhin and Surovikin are rivals of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Nikiforov has previous experience commanding Wagner Group elements in Donbas from 2014 to 2015, the ISW writes.
Emergency crews in New York were scrambling to rescue marooned residents from what authorities called the “blizzard of the century,” a relentless storm that has left 27 dead in the state and taken at least 60 lives nationwide, according to an NBC News tally.
In New York state, authorities have described ferocious conditions, particularly in Buffalo, with hours-long whiteouts, bodies being discovered in vehicles and under snow banks, and emergency personnel going “car to car” searching for more motorists, alive or dead.
On Monday night, US president Joe Biden issued a federal emergency declaration for the state of New York, authorising government assistance to bolster state and local recovery efforts….
We hear the call of the sea in poems from Coleridge and Eliot to Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, but those words also sound a warning – if only we would listen…
Qazaqs know that the world would care little if russia attacked and genocided us, and we still stand with Ukraine. We know that we would share the fate of Chechens, Georgians, Syrians. We still stand with Ukraine.
Ukraine will become EU, we will not, we still stand with Ukraine. Ukranians are Europeans, we are not, we stand with Ukraine. Ukrainians are white, we are vastly not, we stand with Ukraine. Ukrainians are Christian, we are mostly Muslim. We still stand with Ukraine.
“Color” didn’t protect Ukraine from colonialism. russian empire used Ukraine to increase its territory by eradicating Ukrainians either through exterminational policies and assimilation. Same “color” allowed to call them brothers to conceal genocide.
Crucially: Ukrainians stood for Muslim Chechens during their darkest hour, Ukrainians stand for Muslim Crimean Tatars. Ukraine is a colonized and genocided Europe that understands us.
Ukraine is when an elected Jewish leader in a majority Christian country stands for oppressed Muslims.
We don’t want to be victims. We want to be resilient and self-sufficient. We want dignity and equality. Ukrainians teach us how.
The Russian government has granted its media regulator the authority to block websites containing “LGBT propaganda” without a court order, according to a decree published on Monday.
“Information propagating non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences” now serves as grounds for blacklisting any website in Russia, alongside those containing child pornography, information about suicide methods, and illegal narcotic production.
“Propaganda of pedophilia and sex change” is also listed in the government decree signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
The expansion of state censorship comes following President Vladimir Putin’s signing into law amended legislation that bans the depiction of non-heterosexual identities and relationships to Russians of any age earlier in December.
Lawmakers have drafted a bill that allows for the jailing of those who have already been fined under Putin’s earlier anti-LGBT law, which banned aiming “LGBT propaganda” at minors. Under the draft legislation, repeat offenders could be sentenced to up to five years in jail….
“While disasters now raise suspicions of sabotage linked to the war in Ukraine, poorly maintained infrastructure is a long-standing and persistent problem in Russia — the result of old Soviet-era systems in need of repair and costly maintenance, decades of endemic corruption, and the government’s prioritization of defense and security budgets, as well as the development of major cities over regional towns.”
This article sums up what we know about Russia.
It is falling apart, especially the infrastructure.
Money flows from the hinterlands to Moscow, St. Petersberg, and of course, into the bank accounts of the leadership and oligarchies.
That money isn’t used to maintain the utilities, build houses, or develop the rest of the country.
Besides infrastructure, the school systems are also falling apart. Russia doesn’t spend enough to educate its children and it is starting to show. School buildings are dilapidated, schools are underequipred, and teachers underpaid.
It really looks like the Russian Federation is just running on momentum left over from the USSR. That the RF makes the USSR look good is pathetic.
EUROPE As Russia bombs Ukraine’s infrastructure, its own services crumble
By Francesca Ebel
December 25, 2022 at 1:00 a.m. EST Washington Post
As Russia has launched relentless strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, leaving millions without electricity, water and heat, towns across Russia have been beset by their own, utility-related disasters.
A huge gas pipeline explosion outside St. Petersburg last month, major fires in two separate Moscow shopping malls allegedly caused by dodgy welding, and faulty power grids that have left tens of thousands without heat and electricity are just some of the incidents reported since Russia’s efforts to obliterate Ukraine’s infrastructure that began in October.
In late October, two sewer pipes burst in the southern city of Volgograd, flooding several streets with feces and waste water, and leaving 200,000 of the 1 million residents without water or heating for several days.
Ilya Kravchenko, a local lawmaker who collected testimony from more than 1,000 victims of the incident and filed a lawsuit against the corporation that owns the sewer system, said the sight was “not pretty.”
“This is the worst year on record. The city has never had so many problems,” Kravchenko said.
A few weeks later, a similar, though less drastic sewage problem in the town of Pervouralsk, a small city west of Yekaterinburg, provoked residents to drag buckets of fecal water to the offices of the local water council in protest, claiming authorities had neglected the problem for years.
While disasters now raise suspicions of sabotage linked to the war in Ukraine, poorly maintained infrastructure is a long-standing and persistent problem in Russia — the result of old Soviet-era systems in need of repair and costly maintenance, decades of endemic corruption, and the government’s prioritization of defense and security budgets, as well as the development of major cities over regional towns.
“Not a day goes by that we don’t hear from one region or another in Russia about an accident in the housing and utilities sector,” declared a recent article in a local newspaper in the city of Perm.
“During the last heating season more than 7,300 accidents occurred in housing and utilities sector of the country, and, judging by the way the winter started in 2022, one should not expect the statistics to go down” the article said.
Meanwhile, a Russian senator, Andrei Shevchenko, said last year that utility infrastructure in Russia had depreciated by 60 percent and that the cost of needed repairs exceeded 4 trillion rubles, or about $58 billion. Shevchenko noted that in some regions, the state of public utilities was “of great concern,” and that in some cases the overall wear and tear had exceeded 70 percent.
Analysts say that infrastructure-related disruptions could soon multiply as Western sanctions start to bite, and that ongoing, preexisting problems are adding to growing popular discontent about the consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The frustrations some residents have expressed over deteriorating infrastructure in many Russian cities was summed up in a recent Instagram post by Omsk Ogo, a civil society group in the Siberian city of Omsk, where winter temperatures fall to minus-4 degrees Fahrenheit.
“On TV they say that Europe is freezing, but no one mentions that in Omsk 40,000 houses do not receive gas,” the post said, referring to a 2017 report that found that thousands of homes in the city still use coal or firewood for heating. “The rest of the homes have to regularly turn off the heating, because the infrastructure for utilities has been totally worn out.”
Daniil Chebykin, who founded the group, said that although Russia is regarded as a major oil and gas player, many Russians outside Moscow still live with rudimentary heating and experience regular utility accidents, such as exploding boilers.
Chebykin said that little has changed in the 23 years of Vladimir Putin’s tenure as the country’s political ruler, and that the disparity between the Russian capital and regions has widened. “Omsk can be a very hard place to live,” he said. “Meanwhile, in Moscow, there is a good infrastructure, excellent public transport, and everyone is investing a lot of money there.”
Right before he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had been filming interviews in Siberia that highlighted construction problems and the dangerous living conditions of certain neighborhoods. In one such interview, Daniil Markelov, a local activist in Novosibirsk, showed Navalny around his home.
“Welcome to my district: endless identical panel high-rise buildings, without a trace of any amenities and construction that has gone on for years,” he said. “The biggest problem is that this new housing is literally dilapidated. It is extremely dangerous to live in it. People receive keys to apartments that do not have elevators, railings or electricity.”
In a phone interview, Markelov, who has since immigrated to the United States, said that although life in Novosibirsk had marginally improved in recent years, the center of the city was “a decoration that is hiding poor and dangerous buildings everywhere.”
“Money is flowing to the capital. As a result, small cities are disappearing,” he said.
Analysts said sweeping sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have disrupted supply chains in the country and may significantly curtail Russia’s ability to resolve its own infrastructure problems.
A particular obstacle is the inability to import spare parts and products because of sanctions. Russia has long relied on imported equipment and technology and does not yet have the domestic manufacturing capacity to fill this gap. Since the outbreak of the war, imports have dropped by up to 25 percent, according to Russia’s trading partners.
Ukrainians were shocked in the initial months of the war when Russian soldiers carried out large-scale looting of basic housing appliances in occupied towns and villages — an indication of the disparity in quality of life and access to affordable goods between the two countries.
Nikolai Petrov, a political scientist at the British think tank Chatham House, said that the issue of limited parts could effect “everything,” including aviation and traffic lights. “Without these parts, the whole system, which currently looks more or less reliable and effective, can fall apart very quickly,” Petrov said.
Russia’s infrastructure problems alone are unlikely to lead to popular unrest. The scale of the problems vary from place to place, and larger cities tend to be better maintained.
Several residents of Perm said in interviews that they had not experienced any recent problems with heat or electricity.
Kravchenko said the situation in Volgograd was not as bad as other places. “You can live an all right life in Volgograd, but life could be so much better,” he said. “It is the administration’s unwillingness to improve it that is killing Volgograd. The potential of the city is simply huge.”
However, public patience is potentially wearing thin, especially when outages are set against the backdrop of an unpopular military mobilization drive and a rising death toll on the front.
“Russia’s cup of patience is absolutely full, and each drop can lead to protests and unrest,” Petrov said, adding that since pension changes sparked angry demonstrations in 2018, regional discontent and a willingness to protest has spiked. “It’s important to understand that although we do not have intensive protests in Russia, the situation now is very different from what it used to be prior to 2018.”
Chebykin said only a few people in Omsk connected the local situation to the war but that the number was rising. “When a huge amount of money is spent on bombing the infrastructure of Ukraine, and with this money it is possible to gasify all housing in the city, of course discontent is growing,” Chebykin said.
Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister turned opposition politician, said infrastructure failures would not trigger protests but would contribute to an eventual uprising against the Kremlin.
“There will be a tipping point,” Milov said. “There is a wave of mounting negative impacts on different fronts: Russia’s economic isolation, sanctions and infrastructure problems. It will not spark protests by itself, but it adds to an overall feeling of unhappiness.”
The Kremlin, however, does not seem worried.
On Dec. 13, Putin presided via video link over the opening of a new highway connecting Moscow with major Eastern cities. And last week, with a drink in hand, Putin showed no remorse as he admitted that Russia was attacking Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. “There is a lot of noise about our attacks on the energy infrastructure of a neighboring country,” he said. “Yes, we are doing this. But who started it?”
Milov said Putin had “a thousand-ruble mentality,” meaning that whenever discontent brews, the Kremlin announces small cash handouts (1,000 rubles is about $15) to citizens to stifle unrest. A similar strategy of offering financial benefits has been rolled to mollify the families of soldiers killed in Ukraine.
“Putin and his government are used to thinking that the Russian population are folks who will continue to suffer and tolerate all this negativity,” Milov said, “for as long as they rule.”
Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.
ravensays
Here is a thread where Dmitry Medvedev predicts the collapse of the West next year. Medvedev is the former head of Russia.
He is also a bit of a loon.
I keep saying that Russia is what you get when internet trolls run a country.
And oh yeah, his first and main fan is Elon Musk.
Elon Musk has tilted so far in favor of Russia that he has become a security threat to the USA.
Thread See new Tweets
Dmitry Medvedev @MedvedevRussiaE
Russia government official
On the New Year’s Eve, everybody’s into making predictions
Many come up with futuristic hypotheses, as if competing to single out the wildest, and even the most absurd ones.
Here’s our humble contribution.
What can happen in 2023:
1:23 PM · Dec 26, 2022
Dmitry Medvedev
@MedvedevRussiaE
Russia government official
Replying to
@MedvedevRussiaE
1. Oil price will rise to $150 a barrel, and gas price will top $5.000 per 1.000 cubic meters
2. The UK will rejoin the EU
3. The EU will collapse after the UK’s return; Euro will drop out of use as the former EU currency
Dmitry Medvedev @MedvedevRussiaE
4. Poland and Hungary will occupy western regions of the formerly existing Ukraine
5. The Fourth Reich will be created, encompassing the territory of Germany and its satellites, i.e., Poland, the Baltic states, Czechia, Slovakia, the Kiev Republic, and other outcasts
Dmitry Medvedev @MedvedevRussiaE
6. War will break out between France and the Fourth Reich. Europe will be divided, Poland repartitioned in the process
7. Northern Ireland will separate from the UK and join the Republic of Ireland
Dmitry Medvedev @MedvedevRussiaE
8. Civil war will break out in the US, California. and Texas becoming independent states as a result. Texas and Mexico will form an allied state. Elon Musk’ll win the presidential election in a number of states which, after the new Civil War’s end, will have been given to the GOP
Dmitry Medvedev @MedvedevRussiaE
9. All the largest stock markets and financial activity will leave the US and Europe and move to Asia
Dmitry Medvedev@MedvedevRussiaE
10. The Bretton Woods system of monetary management will collapse, leading to the IMF and World Bank crash. Euro and Dollar will stop circulating as the global reserve currencies. Digital fiat currencies will be actively used instead
Dmitry Medvedev@MedvedevRussiaE
Season greetings to you all, Anglo-Saxon friends, and their happily oinking piglets! Elon Musk@elonmusk
18h
Replying to
@MedvedevRussiaE
Epic thread!!
@elonmusk
and
@MedvedevRussiaE
“Epic thread!” says the person they’ve cultivated as an asset
A Russian sausage tycoon who reportedly criticised the war in Ukraine has died after falling from the third-floor window of a luxury hotel in India.
The body of Pavel Antov, 65, was discovered on Saturday outside his lodgings in eastern Odisha state, where he was on holiday with three other Russian nationals.
His death came just two days after his friend and another local Russian politician, Vladimir Bidenov, was found dead in the same hotel after an apparent heart attack.
Indian police are investigating Antov’s death, authorities confirmed. They told AFP news agency that so far there was no sign of foul play.
Regional police chief Rajesh Pandit said:
All possible angles as regards to the deaths of two Russian nationals are being verified.
Bidenov’s heart attack had likely been caused by binge drinking and a possible drug overdose, he said.
The police chief added:
So far it seems that Antov accidentally fell from the hotel terrace. He was probably disturbed by the death of his friend and went to the hotel terrace and likely fell to his death from there.
[I can’t even.]
Antov was a member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party and a multimillionaire, having founded one of Russia’s largest sausage makers.
His death is the latest in a series of sudden unexplained deaths involving Russian businessmen, many of whom have openly criticised the war in Ukraine.
In June, Antov was accused of criticising Russia’s war in Ukraine after a message appeared on his WhatsApp account described a Russian missile bombardment on Ukraine as “terrorism”.
Antov denied writing the message, insisting that he supported Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Here is the full story on Indian police investigating the sudden deaths at a luxury hotel of a wealthy Russian politician who reportedly criticised the Ukraine war and his travelling companion.
The body of Pavel Antov, 65, was found on Saturday in a pool of blood outside his lodgings in eastern Odisha state, where he was on holiday with three other Russian nationals.
His death came two days after another member of the travel party, Vladimir Bidenov, was found unconscious after an apparent heart attack at the same hotel and could not be revived.
Police said on Tuesday they were reviewing CCTV footage, questioning hotel staff and were waiting on detailed autopsy reports, but so far there was no sign of foul play.
“All possible angles as regards to the deaths of two Russian nationals are being verified,” the regional police chief, Rajesh Pandit, told AFP.
Recognizing that justice, healing and transformation require an acknowledgment of past harms, UCSF has created the Program for Historical Reconciliation (PHR). The program is housed under the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and was started by current Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, Dan Lowenstein, MD.
The program’s first report, released this month, investigates experiments from the 1960s and 1970s involving incarcerated men at the California Medical Facility (CMF) in Vacaville. Many of these men were being assessed or treated for psychiatric diagnoses….
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in front of Congress, his speech included a not-so-subtle hint at what Ukraine needs to prosecute their counteroffensive to a successful conclusion.
Ukraine never asked the American soldiers to fight on our land instead of us. I assure you that Ukrainian soldiers can perfectly operate American tanks and planes themselves.
Handing over American M1A1 Abrams and a squad of F-15s or F16s isn’t completely unreasonable, but it has some pretty extreme challenges. kos has written at length about the logistical difficulties of introducing such systems. It’s not at all a question of where Ukrainian soldiers have the skills to sit behind the controls of a modern American weapon. It’s everything else.
Yet the real answer is the same answer I’ve been giving since the first weeks of the war—operating such gear might not be too hard, but maintaining it is a monumental challenge for Western armies. For Ukraine, dealing with myriad new weapons systems in the middle of a brutal war? Impossible.
This doesn’t mean Ukraine doesn’t absolutely need, or absolutely will not get, modern tanks. However, it may be that they could better utilize something other than an M1A1. There are alternatives. There’s another tank that’s been the target of Ukrainian requests since the war began: the German Leopard 2.
As with many other tanks on the battlefield today, the Leopard has roots that go back into designs of the 1970s. Entering into service at the end of that decade, the Leopard 2 is regarded as a “third generation main battle tank.” However, that tag also applies to both the Russian T-80 and the U.S. M1. It was a period when a lot of different theories of tank design were being applied, and that shows in the specs of these vehicles. Even more so than with fighter jets, that generation label says little about the performance of these weapons in the field. [chart comparing tanks available at the link]
Right now, Ukraine has tanks of the T-64, T-72, and T-80 series (and some captured T-90 tanks courtesy of Russia). They’re all capable of firing the same 125mm shells, they’re all of similar size, and they all have a three-person crew. Though they have several different engines depending on the age of the tank and are outfitted with different levels of electronics and fire control, there is a lot of family resemblance across these tanks.
Both the Abrams and the Leopard are much larger vehicles, with crews of four and main guns that are incompatible with the ammo Ukraine is already carrying around the country in large quantities. They share zip diddly with the tanks Ukraine is currently using, meaning that a long logistical chain—everything from shells, to treads, to electronics, to everything else—would be necessary to keep them rolling.
Not only are the two alternative tanks more similar to each other than anything that Ukraine is now using, they were really supposed to be the same tank. In the 1970s, Germany and the U.S. went through a lengthy process of attempting to create a tank that would be the NATO standard, with changes made to both the prototype Leopards and the M1X to bring them closer into alignment. However, in the end the U.S. opted for their tank while much of Europe went for the German design, and a lot of finger-pointing ensued. The M1 originally had a 105mm gun, meaning NATO wouldn’t even have standard main gun diameter. Thankfully, that was fixed with the M1A1. (Note: It appears only the Abrams can fire the unique depleted uranium “silver bullet” rounds designed to rip straight through other armor).
What would make the Leopard a better fit than the Abrams? One clue might be found in the same reports kos pointed out when talking about the difficulty the Ukrainian army has in maintaining other unfamiliar NATO equipment. Right now even the relatively simple M777 artillery pieces are being shipped across the border into Poland when they need repairs, then back to Ukraine. At any given time about a third of these guns are reportedly somewhere in the repair cycle.
That these fixes can’t be done in the field is frustrating and takes a good deal of the value away from these weapons. However, the Ukrainian military is not in a position right now to free up thousands of people for months of intensive training on system maintenance. There are a number of Ukrainian soldiers being trained to maintain these and other systems. When they get back to Ukraine, they’re supposed to act as trainers themselves. Let’s hope the war is over before they convene their first class.
But you know who already drives Leopard 2 tanks? Poland does. In fact, the Leopard 2 is currently used by—take a deep breath—Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, and Turkey. Germany recently agreed to give some to Czechia since Czechia is sending its T-72 tanks to Ukraine. Those countries that use the Leopard 2 love the Leopard 2 for many of the same reasons that Americans love the M1A1: It has proven highly durable in battle; is especially good when dealing with mines, IEDs, and anti-tank missiles; and it can solemnly tear up older armor.
One big reason for this is that in some critical places the Leopard 2 is carrying 1500mm of armor. Go back and shift the decimal place around if you like. That’s 1.5 meters of steel between the occupants and things trying to get to them. The front upper plate on the Leopard 2 is 860mm thick. Compare that to 280mm on a T-72. It’s mind-boggling.
Why is the Leopard 2 so heavy? That’s why. Compared to something like a T-72, the German tank is hauling around another 20 tons of passenger protection.
That protection has proven to be very effective in practice. Time and again, the tanks have survived being hit with anti-tank missiles, hitting mines, or being blasted by IEDs. In 2008, a Leopard 2 in Afghanistan did lose a driver after running over a large IED because the concussive wave spread to the driver’s chair, which was bolted to the floor. Since then, many models of the tank have altered the seating, putting the crew in harnesses designed to reduce passing along any blow to the hull.
Of course, the M1A1 also has a record. That record includes going through over 2,000 Iraqi tanks in the Persian Gulf War without a single loss. Included in those Iraqi numbers were several hundred T-72s. No doubt Zelenskyy can’t stop thinking of what such a tank could do in Ukraine. And hell, U.S. generals would love to see that test.
They are both great tanks, and Poland does have 250 M1A1s supposedly on the way as part of a promise the U.S. made when Poland handed over most of its older Soviet-era tanks to Ukraine.
However, the Leopard 2 is highly regarded by NATO, widely used in Europe, and Germany plans to keep them in production through 2030. There are mechanics right next door in Poland with years of experience in maintaining the Leopard 2 and there is already a pipeline established by which Ukraine is shipping equipment back and forth to Poland for repairs. That’s a lot more difficult to do with a tank than an artillery gun (something over 60 tons might not even be amenable to going along quietly with a Ukrainian tractor), and tanks break down a lot, even when no one is shooting at them. Still, of the modern tanks, the Leopard 2 is likely the best choice for right now in Ukraine.
Recently a Ukrainian official has suggested that Europe could pool their 2000+ Leopard 2 tanks into a “tank alliance” that could be shifted around to where they are needed. With 200 of them going to Ukraine.
That’s not going to happen. In fact, Germany recently specifically forbid Poland from forwarding any of their existing fleet of Leopards to Kyiv. However, while discussing the situation, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that Germany would not “unilaterally deliver tanks to Ukraine,” which suggests that something like that tank alliance might actually be the key to making this work. If each European country gave up, say, just a couple of Leopard 2s to some kind of independent organization and then that organization loaned 20 or so Leopards to Ukraine, it wouldn’t be everything they needed, but it would be a good test. After all, any such radical introduction is going to have to be treated as an experiment. Supplying these tanks to a few units, determining what materials and what skills are needed to keep them operational on a day to day basis, and then figuring out how to deal with serious damage and breakdowns could all be worked out while leaving the T64 through T90 crews in place. […]
Special counsel John Durham’s investigation proved to be a rather embarrassing failure. As The Washington Post reported, it also proved to be quite expensive.
The special counsel appointed to review the FBI’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign has so far cost taxpayers more than $6.5 million, according to a Justice Department report released Friday. … The special counsel’s work appears to be winding down, but the Justice Department has not yet announced when it will end.
In other words, the $6.5 million figure — in taxpayer money — is where things stand now. It’s difficult to say with confidence how much higher the final price tag will eventually end up.
[…] The original investigation into Donald Trump’s Russia scandal, led by then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller, led to a series of striking findings: The former president’s political operation in 2016 sought, embraced, capitalized on, and lied about Russian assistance — and then took steps to obstruct the investigation into the foreign interference.
The Trump White House wasn’t pleased with the conclusions, but the Justice Department’s inspector general conducted a lengthy probe of the Mueller investigation, and not surprisingly, the IG’s office found nothing improper.
This, of course, only outraged Trump further, so then-Attorney General Bill Barr tapped a federal prosecutor — U.S. Attorney John Durham — to conduct his own investigation into the investigation. That was more than three years ago.
At this point, Durham’s investigation into the Russia scandal investigation has lasted longer than Mueller’s original probe of the Russia scandal.
After an extended period of apparent inactivity, the prosecutor last year indicted cybersecurity attorney Michael Sussmann for allegedly having lied to the FBI. The case proved to be baseless; Sussmann was acquitted; and one of the jurors publicly mocked Durham’s team for having taken the case to trial.
Five months later, Durham and his team also tried to prosecute Russian analyst Igor Danchenko. That failed too, bringing the probe to an apparent, ignominious end.
The tale of the tape is brutal:
Two trials
Zero convictions
One provocative resignation
A largely meaningless guilty plea from an obscure figure
A $6.5 million price tag
By any fair measure, this is the most misguided and inconsequential special counsel investigation in the modern history of American law enforcement.
But the humiliation is not limited to the prosecutor. Every once in a while, Trump still blurts out Durham’s name, hoping the prosecutor might yet bolster some of the former president’s conspiracy theories. As regular readers may recall, [Trump] — who predicted that Durham would uncover “the crime of the century” — has even suggested at times that Durham’s probe could serve as a possible vehicle for retaliating against his perceived enemies.
So much for that idea.
Over the summer, The New York Times’ Charlie Savage wrote a report questioning why the Durham investigation existed. He added, “Mr. Barr’s mandate to Mr. Durham appears to have been to investigate a series of conspiracy theories.”
Those theories, however, lacked merit, which is why the Durham probe is ending with an expensive whimper.
There is a degree of irony to the circumstances: For years, Team Trump insisted that the Russia scandal was pointless but the Durham investigation was real. It now appears these Republicans had it exactly backward: The Russia scandal was real, and the Durham investigation was pointless.
We taxpayers should remember this. Trump’s narcissism and stupidity not only threatens democratic institutions, it also costs us a lot of money.
[Post by Trump:] Merry Christmas to EVERYONE, including the Radical Left Marxists that are trying to destroy our Country, the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is illegally coercing & paying Social and LameStream Media to push for a mentally disabled democrat over the Brilliant, Clairvoyant, and USA LOVING Donald J. Trump, and of course, The Department of Injustice, which appointed a Special “Prosecutor” who, together with his wife and family, HATES “Trump” more than any other person on earth. LOVE TO ALL!
Shares of the Elon Musk-led company fell as much as 8.3% to $112.88, for a seventh straight day of declines. The electric-vehicle maker’s market valuation has shrunk to roughly $357 billion, below that of Walmart Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Nvidia Corp. This latest selloff will cost Tesla its position among the 10-highest valued companies in the S&P 500 Index, a distinction it has held since joining the benchmark in December 2020.
Local officials are extending a driving ban in Buffalo as more snow falls in hard-hit western New York, where more than two dozen people have died in the winter storm.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said Tuesday that Buffalo’s driving ban will remain in effect while a driving advisory is active for the rest of the county.
To enforce the ban and to assist with traffic control, around 100 military police, along with state troopers, will station in Buffalo, Poloncarz added.
“DO NOT try to drive in or into the City of Buffalo. The driving ban remains,” the county executive tweeted.
More than 40 inches of snow fell on western New York over the Christmas weekend, coinciding with freezing temperatures and hurricane-force winds from a devastating low-pressure storm.
While the storm has killed more than 50 people from the central U.S. to the East Coast, western New York accounts for more than half of the death toll. At least 30 deaths have been attributed to the storm in the area.
Erie County has confirmed 28 storm-related fatalities as of Tuesday afternoon. Victims have been found outside in the frigid cold or trapped in their cars. […]
Reginald @456, such a nice schadenfreude moment. Combined with the effects of Elon Musk shooting himself repeatedly in the foot, market forces are reducing his wealth. Bit by bit, he is disintegrating.
Republican Jewish Coalition says Rep.-elect George Santos is not welcome at its future events.
“He deceived us and misrepresented his heritage. In public comments and to us personally he previously claimed to be Jewish. He has begun his tenure in Congress on a very wrong note”
Defeated Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) deleted a tweet accusing the judge who dismissed her election challenge of integrity violations.
The tweet, which was posted early Monday morning, suggested the founding partner of a law firm representing Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs (D) emailed Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson “what to say” as he authored the dismissal.
“The Dismissal of Kari Lake’s Election Lawsuit Shows Voter Disenfranchisement No Longer Matters @Rach_IC:”Legal experts believe his decision [by Judge Thompson] was ghostwritten, they suspect top left-wing attorneys like Marc Elias emailed him what to say,” the now-deleted tweet reads…
A series of new laws—known collectively as Secure Act 2.0—will change the way Americans save for retirement starting in 2023. They are part of the $1.7 trillion spending bill Congress passed late last week, and include upping the age of required minimum distributions (RMDs), allowing unused 529 funds (tax-advantaged savings plan for college expenses) to roll over to a retirement account penalty-free, and making it easier for workers with student loans to save for retirement…
There is no doubt that each side believes firmly in its position with great conviction. The fact that Plaintiff failed to meet the burden of clear and convincing evidence required for each clement of AR.S. § 16-672 does not equate to a finding that her claims were, or were not, groundless and presented in bad faith. Any legal decision must be based on the law and facts rather than subjective beliefs or partisan opinions, no matter how strongly held. The Court has heard all the evidence and arguments. The Court has carefully examined and thought through the facts and evidence before it in the motions and at the hearing.
THE COURT FINDS that Plaintiff’s claims presented in this litigation were not groundless and brought in bad faith under Arizona Revised Statutes § 12-349(A)(1). Therefore,
IT IS ORDERED denying Defendants’ Motions For Attorney Fees And Sanctions.
Lake has said she will appeal the rejection of her election contest.
Re: tomh @ #465…
So being delusional doesn’t meet the legal definition of “bad faith”. Interesting… Why, one wonders would that apply to her lawyer as well? Is he also delusional?
The identity behind the viral Twitter account Libs of TikTok was revealed on Tuesday’s “Tucker Carlson Today,” putting a face to the formerly anonymous creator, Chaya Raichik, whose profile has caused a stir among left-wing ideologues while raising awareness about the goings-on inside America’s classrooms for some time…
(roll-eyes) Their goal is to dox people, and almost all of the political violence we see today is coming from the right.
The Washington Post brings us this day a completely whacko story about guns, an illegal gun range, conspiracy theories, and ‘Moorish American” sovereign citizens in Maryland. Seems a local property owner, 64-year-old Byron Bell, wanted to have friends over to shoot guns on Sundays on his very rural property in Welcome, Maryland, which the Post describes as an “agglomeration of tumbledown farmhouses and newly built homes roped together by winding country roads” in southern Maryland.
The get-togethers on Bell’s land started getting bigger, with firearms classes being organized by Mark “Choppa” Manley,
a social media influencer and former D.C. security guard who promoted the site as home to the “Choppa Community” — an incubator of firearms education and ownership for African Americans. […]
Manley catered in particular to Black residents of the District and Prince George’s County who were seeking to arm themselves for protection amid spikes in violent crime. Visitors were not charged, although ammunition was sold, as well as classes for concealed-carry licenses. “It was like a family day,” Manley said.
At least it was like a family day for people who liked shooting more and more powerful guns and firing more and more rounds, not all of which stayed on Bell’s property.
After neighbors complained — especially after more stray rounds started whizzing through the air of neighboring properties, worrying Bell’s closest neighbor so much that the neighbor started grazing his cattle farther away — county law enforcement got involved. In September the site was declared an unlawful shooting range. Bell could have applied for a zoning exception, but it seems he never bothered. Manley complained he was being tyrannied, but confirmed to the local paper that the gun range would be shut down. The Post reports Manley decided it would be easier to find a new site in Virginia, so this is where he leaves the story.
Good thing, too, because suddenly there were all these weirdass, apparently unrelated claims to the property from the Moorish sovereign citizen dudes. Like all sovereign citizens, they believe some very weird shit about how federal and state laws don’t apply to them, according to the “real” Constitution they made up in their heads, but they join it with some additional pseudo-Afrocentric bullshit alleging that in fact, what most people think is North America actually belongs to the nonexistent “Moroccan Empire.” The Post explains, insofar as it makes anything like sense:
Around the same time, county officials came up against a new challenge. It was heralded by the filing of perplexing documents — adorned with symbols including the star and crescent and the pyramid-tip “Eye of Providence” that appears on the back of the dollar bill — asserting that the dispute over Bell’s land was subject to the terms of an 1836 treaty between the United States and Morocco. […]
Moorish Americans, also known as Moorish sovereign citizens, believe themselves to be the inheritors of a fictitious empire that they say stretched from the present-day kingdom of Morocco to North America, with Mexico and Atlantis thrown in for good measure. They claim the same protections from U.S. legal proceedings that are granted to foreign citizens, while simultaneously asserting their rights to take over properties — often well-appointed homes owned by other people — that they say are still part of the “Moroccan Empire.”
It is super convenient to have a fictional legal system that gives you an excuse to appropriate nice houses when their owners are away, especially if you have guns to back up your fictional legal system.
The leader of this particular group […] is a dude going by the name of Lamont Maurice El, who claims he’s the “Morocco Consular Court at the Maryland state republic.” Again, the Post provides background:
The consul, whose real name is Lamont Maurice Butler, had some experience with Maryland’s judicial system. In 2013, he was convicted on multiple charges stemming from his attempt to occupy a 12-bedroom Bethesda mansion.
Butler had attended the gatherings led by Manley and apparently thought the one thing missing was some crackpot ideology and a chance to grift: He restarted the Sunday shoot-a-paloozas, and started charging 25 bucks per visitor (Manley’s classes had been free). Apparently he took filthy worthless US fiat money without demanding silver or gold. Butler assured attendees that “security will be in full force for everyone’s safety and protection” because after all, now they were being conducted under Moroccan consular jurisdiction. He’s a diplomat, you see.
Bell, the property owner, became a Moorish American in September too, though he explained to the Post he was still kind of a newbie at all this. He said he was still working his way through the doctrine but considered it “very educational.” You can see why!
Among the things he had learned, he said, was that he should consider himself exempt from the county’s legal actions — in part because government officials did not refer to him in court documents by the Moorish variant of his name, Byron David Bell-Bey.
“They weren’t really talking to me,” he said.
Yep, it’s that good old-fashioned SovCit word magic! It’s a bit like that episode of “The Tick” where the American baseball team loses in Mexico and decides they’re all Aztecs, and add “-itlan” randomly to words to prove it.
Sadly, Butler and another Moop, George Neal-Bey (see!) were arrested in November and charged with a bunch of weapons violations, so they’re in jail and plaguing the local court with nonsense pseudolegal garbage. Bell, who had ignored court orders because Maryland’s laws didn’t apply to a self-declared citizen of the fictitious Moroccan Empire, is now taking matters a bit more seriously after a contempt of court order ($350,000 fine, but it’ll be reduced by $1000 each week there’s no shooting on his land). Also, last week his home was raided by sheriff’s deputies, who seized his firearms and a computer.
Bell told the Post the deputies were “very cordial” and that he appreciated that they hadn’t torn his house up. Apparently he didn’t mind too much that the warrant wasn’t even for Mr. Bell-Bey. He told the Post there’d be no more shooting parties on his property, because “You got to follow the rules.”
Including, we guess, the ones some grifter told you were all fake.
We wish Mr. Bell a happy new year and better judgment in who-bey he trusts.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Maternity hospital shelled as Russia intensifies attacks on liberated Kherson
Russian forces have stepped up mortar and artillery attacks on Kherson city in southern Ukraine, forcing hundreds of civilians to flee the recently liberated city amid relentless shelling by Moscow’s troops.
Russian troops fired 33 rockets at civilian targets in a series of aerial and artillery bombardments in Kherson over the course of 24 hours, Ukraine’s armed forces said this morning.
A maternity wing of a hospital in the city was shelled by Russian forces late on Tuesday, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the president’s office. No one was hurt and the staff and patients had been moved to a shelter, he added.
At least 10 people were killed and 58 were wounded by a Russian strike in Kherson on Saturday, authorities said.
Russian forces were forced to withdraw from Kherson city last month, but its residents have faced relentless Russian shelling from the east bank of the Dnieper River.
About 400 people have fled Kherson since Christmas Day, the BBC reported, after a sharp increase in the intensity of the Russian bombardment of the city.
“Chinese hospitals, funeral homes ‘extremely busy’ as COVID spreads unchecked.”
No surprise.
Chinese statistics are so unreliable that to call them statistics is an exaggeration. They are tools of the state.
It is just a guess what is really going on with their current massive Covid-19 outbreak.
They had three years to prepare for this and did not make good use of it.
Some estimates are that they’ve had 250 million cases in the month of December.
The number of Covid-19 deaths will probably be in the millions.
December 28, 20225:42 AM PSTLast Updated 33 min ago Chinese hospitals, funeral homes ‘extremely busy’ as COVID spreads unchecked
By Martin Quin Pollard
Summary
Companies
Hospitals, funeral parlours report surge in COVID infections
China reports three new COVID deaths for Tuesday
CHENGDU, Dec 28 (Reuters) – Chinese hospitals and funeral homes were under intense pressure on Wednesday as a surging COVID-19 wave drained resources, while the scale of the outbreak and doubts over official data prompted some countries to consider new travel rules on Chinese visitors.
In an abrupt change of policy, China this month began dismantling the world’s strictest COVID regime of lockdowns and extensive testing, putting its battered economy on course for a complete re-opening next year.
The lifting of restrictions, which came after widespread protests against them, means COVID is spreading largely unchecked and likely infecting millions of people a day, according to some international health experts.
The speed at which China, the last major country in the world moving towards treating the virus as endemic, has scrapped COVID rules has left its fragile health system overwhelmed.
China reported three new COVID-related deaths for Tuesday, up from one for Monday – numbers that are inconsistent with what funeral parlours are reporting, as well as with the experience of much less populous countries after they re-opened.
Staff at Huaxi, a big hospital in the southwestern city of Chengdu, said they were “extremely busy” with COVID patients.
“I’ve been doing this job for 30 years and this is the busiest I have ever known it,” said one ambulance driver outside the hospital who declined to be identified.
There were long queues inside and outside the hospital’s emergency department and at an adjacent fever clinic on Tuesday evening. Most of those arriving in ambulances were given oxygen to help with their breathing.
“Almost all of the patients have COVID,” one emergency department pharmacy staff member said.
The hospital has no stocks of COVID-specific medicine and can only provide drugs for symptoms such as coughing, she said.
Car parks around the Dongjiao funeral home, one of the biggest in Chengdu, were full. Funeral processions were constant as smoke billowed from the crematorium.
“We have to do this about 200 times a day now,” said one funeral worker. “We are so busy we don’t even have time to eat. This has been the case since the opening up. Before it was around 30-50 a day.”
“Many have died from COVID,” said another worker.
At another Chengdu crematorium, privately-owned Nanling, staff were equally busy.
“There have been so many deaths from COVID lately,” one worker said. “Cremation slots are all fully booked. You can’t get one until the new year.”
China has said it only counts deaths of COVID patients caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure as COVID-related.
Zhang Yuhua, an official at the Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, said most recent patients were elderly and critically ill with underlying diseases. She said the number of patients receiving emergency care had increased to 450-550 per day, from about 100 before, according to state media.
The China-Japan Friendship Hospital’s fever clinic in Beijing was also “packed” with elderly patients, state media reported.
Nurses and doctors have been asked to work while sick and retired medical workers in rural communities have been rehired to help. Some cities have been struggling with drug shortages.
TRAVEL RULES
In a major step towards freer travel, China will stop requiring inbound travellers to go into quarantine from Jan. 8, authorities said this week.
The global financial hub of Hong Kong also said on Wednesday it would scrap most of its last remaining COVID restrictions.
Online searches for flights out of China spiked on Tuesday from extremely low levels, but residents and travel agencies suggested a return to anything like normal would take some months yet, as caution prevails for now.
Moreover, some governments were considering extra travel requirements for Chinese visitors.
U.S. officials cited “the lack of transparent data” as reasons for doing so.
India, Taiwan and Japan would require a negative COVID test for travellers from mainland China, with those testing positive in Japan having to undergo a week in quarantine. Tokyo also plans to limit airlines increasing flights to China.
The Philippines was also considering imposing tests.
ECONOMIC PAIN
China’s $17 trillion economy is expected to suffer a slowdown in factory output and domestic consumption as workers and shoppers fall ill.
News of re-opening borders sent global luxury stocks higher, but the reaction was more muted in other corners of the market.
U.S. carmaker Tesla (TSLA.O) plans to run a reduced production schedule at its Shanghai plant in January, according to an internal schedule reviewed by Reuters. It did not specify a reason.
Once the initial shock of new infections passes, some economists expect Chinese growth to bounce back with a vengeance from what is this year expected to be its lowest rate in nearly half a century, somewhere around 3%.
Morgan Stanley economists expect 5.4% growth in 2023, while those at Goldman Sachs see 5.2%.
Reporting by Marting Quin Pollard in Chengdu, Chen Lin in Singapore and Shanghai and Beijing bureaus; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Christian Schmollinger
Russian Union of Lawyers head Igor Trunov told state news agency Tass the health ministry had responded to his appeal for a free cryobank, and changes to compulsory medical insurance.
Late last week, Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-Sweatervest), […] declared his intention to seek a 15-week abortion ban in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Getting that through the legislature, he seems to think, will finally make him relevant to someone, somewhere, somehow. So he’s prepared to criminalize Virginia’s women and healthcare providers, in the pursuit of a goal he will never- never- achieve.
Pursuant to Virginia’s “Woodrum Amendment”, a budgetary quirk whereby you have to set aside money for the presumed incarceration cost of new criminal laws, Governor Youngkin allocated $50,000 in his budget proposal to prosecute and jail women who violate that law. Horrifyingly, the Governor “found” that $50,0000 by zeroing out the yearly funding spent on financial assistance for women on Medicaid who require abortion care because of Incapacitating physical or mental fetal deformities. Apparently Republican politicians these days don’t care about being overtly and cartoonishly evil, any more than they care about the brazen hypocrisy of supporting the abortions of Herschel Walker and Donald Trump mistresses.
Miscarriages are stunningly common: one in eight women will have one in their lifetime. When I wrote about being the only legislative candidate in Virginia with clinical abortion experience, I noted that abortions are a fairly routine thing ERs across the country have to do. But by “fairly routine”, I mean that in my twelve years as an ER Nurse, I’ve seen an average of about 2-3 cases a year. On the other hand, I doubt I’ve had a single week of my career where I haven’t had to take care of least one patient having a miscarriage. I see the same number of patients having miscarriages as I do heart attacks; probably more!
And the worst time has been the last three years. I’ve had to take care of more patients having miscarriages in the last three years than in the nine combined preceding it.
I want you to imagine this scene. A packed ER waiting room, filled with patients from infants to seniors, who are obviously suffering from COVID, flu, and RSV, hacking and crying and miserable. It’s maybe a six or eight hour wait to be seen, at minimum. And a patient comes in, sixteen weeks along, with severe abdominal and pelvic pain, Cramping. Spotting. But there is nothing we can do; they have to wait like everyone else.
And wait.
And wait.
Finally, the patient rushes to the bathroom. And a minute later, the security guard absolutely screams on the radio for the triage nurse.
The triage nurse rushes in to find the patient miscarrying right there in the triage bathroom. The triage bathroom, where every other sick person visits. Blood everywhere. Sobbing. Incredible pain.
Do you know how many times my colleagues and I had to go through that over the last three years?
Do you have any idea what going through that does to these patients; to those of us who’ve had to help these patients?
Oh, and by the way, now both the nurse and the patient are presumed to be criminals.
Because that’s the only way a fifteen week abortion ban ends up. When you presume any pregnancy that ends after fourteen weeks and six days is a crime, you have to dramatically increase the power of the State to accomplish that.
“What did the nurse see in the bathroom while the patient was in there? What did they tell the triage nurse when she checked in? Did the patient seem suspicious? Are you sure they didn’t seem suspicious? Understand you’re under oath here and if you’re covering for this person, you’re going to do hard time. I’d help you if I could, you know, but that’s the law they passed. You have a future; a family to pay for, a job protecting our community. Don’t jeopardize it by covering for someone like her. Help us put her away for life.”
Now, I can already hear the histrionics the right is going to engage in to deflect this. Oh, no, our legislation would never, ever do that, stop scaremongering! What evidence do we have? None, but you can trust us! I mean, do we look like the kind of folks who’d empower people as bounty hunters to go after their fellow citizens?
Folks, Virginia is now ground zero for this, with off-year legislative elections being held that will be widely regarded as the harbinger of 2024, and every Republican who has eyes on the White House certain to show up to make their mark on it. We need your help- we need everyone’s help- to push back on that.
If you want to make a difference, here’s how you can:
1) Donate, volunteer, or get the word out about Aaron Rouse, who has a special election on January 10th that will effectively decide control of the Virginia Senate. I took our entire campaign team to knock doors for him in early December, knowing how much power he will have to keep the above scenario from becoming a reality.
2) Stand up to support local organizations, particularly in rural Virginia- like the Blue Ridge Abortion Fund- doing the critical work to protect access to reproductive healthcare options as Virginia becomes a safe haven for access to care.
3) Stand behind clinicians with the first-hand knowledge to stand on the floor of the General Assembly building and ream these Republicans a new one- because even if they don’t care about being hypocritical and have no desire to follow evidence-based research, we can take their seats and then relentlessly embarrass them and make them a national laughingstock, showing legislators in other state capitols what’s in store for them.
We have to succeed. The consequence of our failure is too big to contemplate.
ravensays
Do you have any idea what going through that does to these patients; to those of us who’ve had to help these patients?
Oh, and by the way, now both the nurse and the patient are presumed to be criminals.
Because that’s the only way a fifteen week abortion ban ends up. When you presume any pregnancy that ends after fourteen weeks and six days is a crime, you have to dramatically increase the power of the State to accomplish that.
“What did the nurse see in the bathroom while the patient was in there? What did they tell the triage nurse when she checked in? Did the patient seem suspicious? Are you sure they didn’t seem suspicious? Understand you’re under oath here and if you’re covering for this person, you’re going to do hard time. I’d help you if I could, you know, but that’s the law they passed. You have a future; a family to pay for, a job protecting our community. Don’t jeopardize it by covering for someone like her. Help us put her away for life.”
Yeah, this is going to happen a few times here and there.
Don’t believe a word that the cops tell you in these cases. The ER and staff, can’t tell the difference between an abortion and a miscarriage!!! No matter what they tell you.
Jun 28, 2022 — The fact is that no one can tell a medical abortion (one that is accomplished with prescription medication) from many types of miscarriage.
The only way they can tell is if the patient tells them. Never admit to a potential death penalty crime like an abortion, not even to the ER medical staff.
PS In these cases, HIPAA is useless. It doesn’t cover criminal acts and is easy to get around with a subpoena.
ravensays
Norfolk mother and daughter accused of illegal abortion …https://journalstar.com › state-and-regional › nebraska › n…
A Norfolk woman is facing five criminal charges — including three felonies — alleging she helped her teenage daughter abort, burn and bury her fetus earlier …
This Nebraska woman and her daughter are facing 3 felony charges for a DIY medical abortion. The 17 year old was ratted out by her “friend”.
Oklahoma woman convicted of manslaughter after miscarriage https://www.usatoday.com › news › nation › 2021/10/21
Oct 21, 2021 — Brittney Poolaw was convicted of manslaughter in Oklahoma and sentenced to four years in prison after suffering a miscarriage.
There are already quite a few women in US prisons for having a miscarriage.
This woman didn’t even have an abortion, just a miscarriage.
The ER did a blood draw and found methamphetamine in her blood.
There is no evidence that her drug use had anything to do with the miscarriage.
She still ended up in prison with a manslaughter charge.
And oh yeah, it is just a coincidence that she is Native American in a fascist state like Oklahoma.
In Red states, the hospital staff will turn you into the cops for just about anything if you get the wrong ones. Don’t trust them with your freedom.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A Delaware trucker described as a co-leader of the conspiracy to kidnap Michigan’s governor was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison Wednesday, a day after an accomplice received 16 years behind bars.
CHENGDU, Dec 28 (Reuters) – Chinese hospitals and funeral homes were under intense pressure on Wednesday as a surging COVID-19 wave drained resources, while the scale of the outbreak and doubts over official data prompted some countries to consider new travel rules on Chinese visitors.
Chengdu is where the Word Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) is scheduled to be on Aug. 16-20, 2023. The choice to hold it there was already controversial given China’s human rights record and the choice of Guest of Honor (a Russian author who has publicly and strongly supported Putin’s attack on Ukraine).
The Affordable Care Act has been on a winning streak for a while, and as Bloomberg Law reported, the good news continued this morning.
This year, nearly 1.8 million more people have signed up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace than last year, marking an 18% increase, according to the US Department of Health & Human Services Tuesday. Almost 11.5 million people have selected a health plan as of Dec. 15, 2022, said the agency.
Consumers who enrolled by Dec. 15 will see their coverage begin on Jan. 1.
“Unprecedented investments lead to unprecedented results. Under President Biden’s leadership, we have strengthened the Affordable Care Act Marketplace with continued record affordability, robust competition, and historic outreach efforts — and today’s enrollment numbers reflect that,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a written statement. “Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, four out of five customers will be able to find a plan for $10 or less.”
The president issued a related statement of his own, boasting that ACA enrollment has reached “an all-time record,” as the nation’s uninsured rate hits “its lowest level in history.”
It’s worth emphasizing for context that the data will soon look even better: Nearly 11.5 million people signed up for coverage from the HealthCare.gov marketplace by Dec. 15, and that reflects an 18% increase over the same period last year, but the total doesn’t include Americans who sought coverage through state-based marketplaces.
What’s more, the open enrollment period isn’t over yet: Consumers can still get affordable health insurance until Jan. 15, and that coverage takes effect on Feb. 1. […]
Documents from the Trump White House are already damning on a historic scale. But what about the materials that Mark Meadows literally set on fire?
t’s been well documented that Rep. Scott Perry met then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election, which was itself controversial: By all accounts, the Republicans were exploring how best to keep Donald Trump in power, despite his defeat. But just as notable is what happened in the immediate aftermath of their conversation.
Politico reported in May that Meadows, after meeting with the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, discarded papers in a White House fireplace. The revelation came by way of Cassidy Hutchinson, the chief of staff’s top aide.
As it turns out, however, this may not have been an isolated incident. CNN reported overnight:
Additionally, she told the committee that she saw Meadows burn documents in his office fireplace around a dozen times — about once or twice a week — between December 2020 and mid-January 2021. On several occasions, Hutchinson said, she was in Meadows’ office when he threw documents into the fireplace after a meeting. At least twice, the burning came after meetings with GOP Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, who has been linked to the efforts to use the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election.
The information comes by way of transcripts released by the Jan. 6 committee yesterday afternoon.
The CNN report added, “Hutchinson said she did not know what the documents were, whether they were original copies, or whether they were required by law to be preserved.”
To be sure, some of this might sound familiar. […] What we did not know was just how often Meadows set fire to materials in his office during a critically important period of time.
“Maybe a dozen, maybe just over a dozen,” Hutchinson testified, “but this is over a period, December through mid-January too, which is when we started lighting the fireplace.” […]
Akira MacKenziesays
@485
Yes, it’s doing so well we don’t need to have a REAL national health care system like the rest of the civilized world has. Enjoy the $1500+ deductibles and post-hospitalization bankruptcy hearings peasants, all courtesy of Barry, Brandon, and their friends from insurance companies you’re now be forced to buy from.
The select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack dropped 17 more transcripts of witness testimony Tuesday afternoon and there was a hidden gem tucked into one of the 168 pages of depositions.
During his lengthy testimony before the committee, Judd Deere, the White House deputy press secretary for the Trump administration, revealed former President Donald Trump did not know his schedule was public until a few weeks before the end of his presidency.
“Every evening we prepared and released a daily guidance for the following day of the President’s public schedule. Beginning sometime around mid to late December, the President discovered that, for the first time, my understanding, that we released a public schedule of his to the public,” Deere told the committee.
Once Trump learned his schedule was released to the public, he wanted to change the way his staff wrote it, Deere testified.
The White House daily schedule notably changed towards the end of Trump’s presidency and the details of his daily activities became vague and were often replaced with “boilerplate” language.
Deere said Trump directed the White House press office to begin releasing a statement claiming he would “work from early in the morning until late in the evening” and would “make many calls and have many meetings” over the course of the day.
“And so what became the new version of the public schedule was basically a couple of sentences about what his day would consist of rather than specific times and titles of events in an outline form,” Deere added.
Yes, he’s an idiot, that’s public knowledge, but it says a lot about the current Republican Party that he’s their crown jewel.
———————-
Many people are saying that Trump made many calls and had many meetings.
———————–
Deere said Trump directed the White House press office to begin releasing a statement claiming he would “work from early in the morning until late in the evening” and would “make many calls and have many meetings” over the course of the day.
So basically, he described his schedule the way a child would describe their imaginary day when playing “office.” And tens of millions of American Morons still think this fat assclown was a “great” president who did “so much.”
Wonkette: “The Fake Electors Plot As Basically Written By The Coen Brothers, Woodchipper Included”
Kenneth Chesebro, Liz Cheney is about to make you a star! Now, call your lawyer.
Yes, friends, it’s time for another episode of We Read the January 6 Committee Report So You Don’t Have To. Today we’ll be discussing Chapter 3: “Fake Electors and the President of the Senate Strategy.” […]
The chapter centers around Trump’s interaction with two lawyers, Kenneth Chesebro and John Eastman. We’ve all met John Eastman before, but according to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s testimony, Eastman came to Trump’s attention for his “scholarly” work on birthright citizenship (ahem), since Trump wanted to do an executive order unpersoning people born here to immigrant parents. Very on brand! As for Chesebro, he seems to have been a fairly competent practitioner who got red-pilled and weird and reactionary in middle age. […]
In a normal world, people like Chesebro, Eastman, and Jeff Clark would be nowhere near the levers of power. They’d be at the bowling league or Masonic lodge, harmlessly ranting like Walter Sobchak about alternate electors and Italian space lasers. […]
After Trump lost the election, Eastman and Chesebro authored a series of memos outlining their scheme to substitute fake electors for the ones chosen by the voters. In a November 18 memo, Chesebro argued that it was necessary to swear in alternate slates of electors to remain viable in the event that one of the eleventy-seven electoral challenges actually succeeded in overturning the vote in one of the swing states.
Indeed, this is how the idea was sold to the people on the ground who had to be persuaded to put their names on these fake electoral certificates, potentially putting themselves on the hook for federal and state charges. As one of the fake electors, Robert Sinners, testified, “no one really cared if people were potentially putting themselves in jeopardy,” adding later “we were just . . . useful idiots or rubes at that point.” [Yep]
Many of the original electors dropped out. Electors in Pennsylvania got especially jumpy, since what they were doing was pretty clearly a violation of Pennsylvania law, so they asked for both indemnification from the Trump campaign in case of civil suit and a letter from a PA lawyer saying what they were doing was kosher. They got neither, but they did get a memo from Ken Chesebro, so they just went ahead and did it. [!!!]
The Wisco Gippers were a little squeamish, too. But they got over it:
When Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt was notified in late November that “the campaign wants to [sic] list of electors,” he texted his executive director that “I am def concerned about their inquiry” and that “I hope they are not planning on asking us to do anything like try and say we are only the proper electors.” On December 12th, after Hitt received a message about a phone call with Giuliani to discuss the fake elector issue, he texted a colleague: “These guys are up to no good and its [sic] gonna fail miserably.” Despite such concerns, Hitt and many other fake electors participated anyway.
The theory at its inception was that the fake electors would swear themselves in just in case some court overturned the validity of a swing state election. But that never happened, and by December 8, when it was clear that no judge in the land was buying what they were selling, Chesebro was dispensing advice on how to get as close as possible to legality when submitting a slate of fraudulent presidential electors, with the goal of having Mike Pence unilaterally recognize them.
The committee’s key point here is that “President Trump oversaw it himself.” […] In fact, this was an effort spearheaded by the campaign in service of Trump’s plan to remain in power after having lost the election:
On December 6th, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows forwarded a copy of Chesebro’s November 18, 2020, memo to Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Jason Miller writing, “Let’s have a discussion about this tomorrow.” Miller replied that he just engaged with reporters on the subject, to which Meadows wrote: “If you are on it then never mind the meeting. We just need to have someone coordinating the electors for states.” Miller clarified that he had only been “working the PR angle” and they should still meet, to which Meadows answered: “Got it.” Later that week, Miller sent Meadows a spreadsheet that the Trump Campaign had compiled. It listed contact information for nearly all of the 79 GOP nominees to the electoral college on the November ballot for Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And on December 8th, Meadows received a text message from a former State legislator in Louisiana recommending that the proposed “Trump electors from AR [sic] MI GA PA WI NV all meet next Monday at their state capitols[,] [c]all themselves to order, elect officers, and cast their votes for the President. . . . Then they certify their votes and transmit that certificate to Washington.” Meadows replied: “We are.”
Donald Trump was 100 percent in the loop on this, as was the RNC:
President Trump personally called RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel days before December 14th to enlist the RNC’s assistance in the scheme. President Trump opened the call by introducing McDaniel to John Eastman, who described “the importance of the RNC helping the campaign to gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the results in any of the States.” According to McDaniel, she called President Trump back soon after the call ended, letting him know that she agreed to his request and that some RNC staffers were already assisting.
And despite the insistence of Trump’s lawyers and campaign manager Bill Stepien that they were on “Team Normal” and had nothing to do with Rudy and the clown car lawyers pushing lies about election fraud, it’s very clear that these “normies” were perfectly willing to ride along in the back seat if it got results:
All seven of these invalid sets of electoral votes were then transmitted to Washington, DC. [Campaign operative Michael] Roman’s team member in Georgia, for example, sent him an email on the afternoon of December 14th that affirmed the following: “All votes cast, paperwork complete, being mailed now. Ran pretty smoothly.” Likewise, [Trump Campaign Associate General Counsel Joshua] Findlay updated Campaign Manager Bill Stepien and his bosses on the legal team that the Trump team’s slate in Georgia was not able to satisfy all provisions of State law but still “voted as legally as possible under the circumstances” before transmitting their fake votes toWashington, DC, by mail.
It’s cool, you guys, the cosplay electors “voted as legally as possible under the circumstances.” Lordy, look at these dipshits taking selfies while they did crimes.
The next day, Trump Campaign Deputy Director for Election Day Operations G. Michael Brown sent a text message to other campaign staff suggesting that he was the person who delivered the fake votes to Congress. After sending the group a photo of his face with the Capitol in the background, Brown said, “This has got to be the cover a book I write one day” and “I should probably buy [Mike] [R]oman a tie or something for sending me on this one. Hasn’t been done since 1876 and it was only 3 states that did it.”
Meanwhile, the documents from Michigan and Wisconsin didn’t even make it to Congress by the statutory deadline, leading to the effort to get Senator Ron Johnson to hand-deliver them to Mike Pence. [LOL. More farce.]
In the end, Chesebro handed the baton to Eastman, whose early and public racism had won him influence in the White House, where he could put the squeeze on Pence to piss on the Constitution and reject the legitimate electors.
On January 1, 2021, Chesebro sent an email to Eastman and [Boris] Epshteyn that recommended that Vice President Pence derail the joint session of Congress. In it, he raised the idea of Vice President Pence declaring “that there are two competing slates of electoral votes” in several States, and taking the position that only he, or possibly Congress, could “resolve any disputes concerning them.”
And when that failed, they went to the mob. But that is a subject for another chapter.
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Title 42, the Trump administration policy that allows for rapid deportation of most undocumented immigrants even before they can request asylum, will stay in place while the Court considers a lawsuit brought by Republican states. The Biden administration has been trying to wind down Title 42 for much of the year.
Most recently, the program was supposed to end on December 21, but then Arizona and 18 other red states sued to keep it in place. The Supremes poked their heads out of their burrows yesterday, saw Stephen Miller’s shadow, and voila, we have six more months of Title 42. The Court will hear arguments in the case in February, and isn’t likely to change its order blocking the end of Title 42 until it issues a final decision in June, or ever.
As is his occasional wont, Neil Gorsuch voted with the three liberals on the Court to reject the states’ appeal, but the other five Republican appointees voted to hear the case. The Court won’t even be ruling on the constitutionality of Trump’s use of Title 42 to exclude immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic that no Republicans take seriously.
Rather, the justices will be considering whether states can appeal a lower court’s ruling that ordered the Biden administration to end the policy. Yes, the case really is about whether states can demand in federal court that a former president’s executive orders must remain active two years into the succeeding presidency, on the principle that Republican presidents have nearly limitless executive authority while Democratic presidents must be reined in from abusing their power.
The Texas Tribune has the deets on the backgroud to the lawsuit:
The request from the coalition of states for the Supreme Court to weigh in came after Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled last month that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s use of the order — which removes migrants from the U.S. without allowing them to access the asylum process — is “arbitrary and capricious” and a violation of the law because it was not implemented properly.
Sullivan ordered the Biden administration to immediately lift Title 42, then later agreed to give the federal government until Dec. 21 to prepare for the change.
Sullivan’s ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in January 2021 by the ACLU and two Texas-based immigrant rights groups that argued Title 42 violated U.S. asylum laws and that the Trump administration used the pandemic as a pretext to invoke Title 42 and use it as an immigration tool.
But Republicans really like that pretext, so it must stay in effect forever because it’s such a handy tool to turn back people who might otherwise qualify for asylum, which Republicans all know is never justified because there is no oppression anywhere in the world that the US needs to acknowledge, and asylum seekers are all universally lying. [/sarcasm] Please do not remind them of the unaccompanied minors who were deported to Honduras back in 2014 and ended up being murdered there. Crime is a shame but it’s not political oppression, silly.
Fighting in Ukraine is currently at a deadlock as neither Ukraine nor Russia can make significant advances, the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency has said, while Kyiv waits for more advanced weapons from Western allies…
StevoRsays
Just caught part of this 16 min long border wall ABC mini-doco on TV now. Seemed pretty interesteting and informative and thought-provoking to me. YMMV natch.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Reuters have published a handy summary of all today’s key developments in the conflict:
– Russia fired scores of missiles into Ukraine early on Thursday, targetting the capital Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa in the west and other cities in one of its largest aerial bombardments that sent people rushing to shelters and knocked out power.
– Ukraine’s military said it shot down 54 missiles out of 69 launched by Russia. Moscow fired air and sea-based cruise missiles, anti-aircraft guided missiles and S-300 ADMS at energy infrastructure facilities in eastern, central, western and southern regions. The attacks followed an overnight assault by “kamikaze” drones.
– Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said energy facilities were damaged and emergency shutdowns may be implemented to avoid accidents in the networks.
– Houses were hit in Kyiv by the fragments of downed missiles and a business and a playground were also damaged. Three people were injured in the attacks on the city, authorities said. Residential buildings in Zaporizhzia and were also damaged.
– Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told parliament to remain united and praised Ukrainians for helping the West “find itself again”.
– The Kremlin rejected Zelenskiy’s 10-point peace plan, reiterating that proposals to end the conflict must accept Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions: Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.
– Russia announced it would ban oil sales to countries that abide by a price cap imposed this month by the West.
I’ve heard it happen to other people, but it was the first one for me.
I was so tired I slept through the entire five-hour air raid.
ravensays
Not too much new in this article.
“U.S. records 100 million Covid cases, but more than 200 million Americans have probably had it”
We are still seeing 400 people a day dying of Covid-19 in the USA. Most of these are over 80, transplant recipients, cancer patients, and the antivaxxers.
The USA didn’t do great with this pandemic but it didn’t completely drop the ball either. One of the glaring holes in our response is the lack of antivirals. The drug industry really didn’t pursue this very well. There is Remdesivir, Paxlovid, and the Merck drug. We have ca. 30 drugs against HIV.
PS Where is our Herd Immunity? Didn’t the lunatic fringers say if we let the virus run wild, we can kill 4 million Americans and get to…Herd Immunity?
Given how fast this virus mutates, we are never going to get o Herd Immunity, no matter how many people die.
HEALTH AND SCIENCE U.S. records 100 million Covid cases, but more than 200 million Americans have probably had it
PUBLISHED WED, DEC 28 20221:50 PM ESTUPDATED WED, DEC 28 20223:41 PM EST
Spencer Kimball @SPENCEKIMBALL
KEY POINTS
The U.S. has officially recorded more than 100 million confirmed Covid cases, but the actual number is probably at least twice as high.
As the U.S. enters the fourth year of the pandemic, the virus keeps mutating into more transmissible variants, making it even more difficult to control.
About 400 people a day are still dying from the virus and about 5,000 are being admitted to the hospital daily.
People wear mask after New York City’s health officials have issued an advisory, strongly urging New Yorkers to use masks as COVID-19, flu, and RSV cases rise, on December 12, 2022 in New York.
The U.S. recorded more than 100 million formally diagnosed and reported Covid-19 cases this week, but the number of Americans who’ve actually had the virus since the beginning of the pandemic is probably more than twice as high.
Covid-19 has easily infected more than 200 million in the U.S. alone since the beginning of the pandemic — some people more than once. The virus continues to evolve into more transmissible variants that dodge immunity from vaccination and prior infection, making transmission incredibly difficult to control as we go into the fourth year of the pandemic.
China is going to be responding to Covid wave ‘much longer’ than perceived, says Dr. Scott Gottlieb
The U.S. officially recorded more than 100 million cases as of Tuesday, just under one-third of the total population, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data isn’t perfect and likely a huge undercount of the actual number of infections, scientists say. While it counts people who’ve tested positive more than once or caught Covid multiple times, it doesn’t capture the number of Covid patients who were asymptomatic and never test or tested at home and didn’t report it.
Omicron boosters are 84% effective at keeping seniors from being hospitalized with Covid, CDC says
Omicron BQ, XBB subvariants are a serious threat to boosters and knock out antibody treatments, study finds
Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC director under the Obama administration, estimates that the reported data reflects less than half of the actual total.
“There are have been at least 200 million infections in the U.S., so this is a small portion of them,” Frieden said. “The question really is will we be better prepared for Covid and other health threats going forward, and the jury is very much still out on that,” he said.
The CDC estimated last spring that nearly 187 million people in the U.S. had caught Covid at least once through February 2022, more than double the number of officially reported cases at the time. The estimate was based on a survey of commercial lab data that found about 58% of Americans had antibodies as a result of a Covid infection. The survey did not account for reinfections or antibodies from vaccination.
The CDC has subsequently recorded more than 21 million confirmed cases from March through Dec. 21 of this year, although this is an underestimate because people who use rapid tests at home are not picked up in the data.
The more than 21 million additional confirmed cases on top of the CDC’s February estimate of about 187 million total infections gives a low-end estimate of more than 208 million infections since the pandemic began.
“It’s really hard to stop this virus, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve shifted the focus to hospitalizations and deaths and not just counting cases,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health.
The U.S. has made significant progress since the darkest days of the pandemic. Deaths have dropped about 90% from the pandemic peak in January 2021 when more than 3,000 people were succumbing to the virus daily before widespread vaccination. Daily hospital admissions are down 77% from a peak of more than 21,000 in January 2022 during the massive omicron surge.
Despite this progress, deaths and hospitalizations remain stubbornly high given the widespread availability of vaccines and treatments. About 400 people are still dying a day from the virus and about 5,000 are admitted to the hospital daily. The virus is still circulating at what would have been considered a high level earlier in the pandemic, with nearly 70,000 confirmed cases reported a day on average, a significant undercount due to testing at home.
More than a million people have died in the U.S. from Covid since the pandemic began, more than any another country in the world.
“I think people have gotten hardened to it,” Frieden said of Covid’s toll. “Covid is a new bad thing in our environment, and it’s likely to be here for the long term. We don’t know how this will evolve, whether it will get less virulent, more virulent — have years that get better and worse.”
White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is stepping down this month, has said the U.S. can consider the pandemic over when Covid hospitalizations and deaths decline to a level similar to the burden from the flu.
For the first, the two viruses are circulating simultaneously at high levels. From October through the first week of December, flu killed 12,000 people while Covid took more than 27,000 lives during that period.
“We’re still in the middle of this — it is not over,” Fauci told the radio show “Conversations on Health Care” in November. “Four hundred deaths per day is not an acceptable level. We want to get it much lower than that.”
Frieden said 95% of people who are dying from Covid aren’t up to date on their shots and 75% of people who would benefit from the antiviral Paxlovid are not receiving it.
“We should celebrate these great tools we have, but we’re not doing a good job of getting getting them into people and that would not just save lives, but reduce the disruption from from Covid,” he said.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid task force coordinator, has said people who are up to date on their vaccines and get treated when they have a breakthrough infection face almost no risk of dying from Covid at this point in the pandemic. Jha has called on the older Americans in particular, who are more vulnerable to severe illness, to get boosted so they have more protection during the holidays.
“There are still too many older Americans who have not gotten their immunity updated who have not gotten themselves protected,” Jha told reporters at the White House last week.
Michael Osterholm, a leading epidemiologist, said new Covid variants will pose the biggest threat to progress the U.S. has made in 2023.
China has eased its stringent zero-Covid policy, which sought to crush outbreaks of the virus, in response to widespread social unrest during the fall. Infections are now soaring in the country, raising concern that Covid now has even more space to mutate.
The virus has continued to mutate into ever more transmissible versions of omicron over the past year, at the same time that immunity from vaccination or prior infection has waned off.
“We want to believe that after three years of activity, all the immunity that we should have acquired through either vaccination or previous infection should protect us,” said Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “But with waning immunity and the variants — we can’t say that.”
Prosecutors charge 6 people for allegedly waging massive DDoS attacks
Washington Post:
Hello, Readers,
I see that we have rolled over to automatically begin our next batch of 500 comments.
For your convenience, here are a couple of links back to the previous chapter of The Infinite Thread:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2022/10/13/infinite-thread-xxv/comment-page-6/#comment-2161009
Texts Show How Members Of Congress Advanced ‘Antifa’ Conspiracy Theories In The Wake Of Jan. 6
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2022/10/13/infinite-thread-xxv/comment-page-6/#comment-2161011
Alex Wagner last night (YT link) (related to other comments above) – “DeSantis Doubles Down On Covid Paranoia; Vaccine-Rejecting GOP Suffers Higher Death Rate”
Florida’s university faculty tenure under attack by the same power-crazed governor trying to undermine vaccination and public health programs across the board.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-vote-to-remove-bust-of-chief-justice-roger-taney-dred-scott/
whheydt, @4, that’s good news!
In other news: “Texts Expose Giuliani Legal Team’s Divisive Election ‘Circus’ And Requests For Cash”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/feature/meadows-texts-rudy-giuliani
What a clown show.
“QAnon, adrift after Trump’s defeat, finds new life in Elon Musk’s Twitter”
Washington Post link
“Among some QAnon devotees, Musk has become a figure of prophecy on par with Donald Trump.”
More at the link, including some opinions that Musk is not a good, or not a perfect fit for QAnon.
Link from Reginald Selkirk@487 on previous page:
Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger calls for an end to runoff elections:
How on earth could such a blatantly undemocratic measure even be proposed? I’ve commented here before on how the two main parties in the USA have insinuated themselves into the de facto constitution, but I’d never have thought something like this could be considered!
Wait until they realize that they could save ALL the money by just dropping elections altogether.
LykeX@8,
That doesn’t seem to be how fascism2.0 operates. In Poland, Hungary, Turkey, even Russia, regular elections are held, but the regime is guaranteed victory by anything from voter suppression of those likely to oppose it, through media dominance, “legal” harrassment of opposition parties and leaders, and fake opposition parties, through to outright electoral fraud.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
New episode of Fever Dreams – “MAGA Undercover w/ Michael Edison Hayden & Hannah Gais”:
Musk cashes out another $3.6 bln in Tesla stock
Also in today’s Guardian:
“Anti-abortion pregnancy centers are deceiving patients – and getting away with it”:
Excellent reporting. I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past that Wendy Brown has an insightful section on this in In the Ruins of Neoliberalism.
“Scathing report condemns police in England and Wales for ‘victim blaming’ in rape cases”:
Liveblog following the nurses’ strike in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
“Elon Musk sells new $3.6bn tranche of Tesla shares”:
“Chinese doctors and nurses reportedly told to work while infected as Covid surges”: “Some Beijing hospitals have as many as 80% of staff infected, according to one doctor, leading to serious staff shortages…”
Anti-abortion group sues Bemidji man over father’s estate
Guardian liveblog:
Re: KG @ #7…
Perhaps Raffensperger should be reminded that the Republicans started out as a “third party”.
CNN – “Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, DJ for ‘Ellen DeGeneres Show,’ dead at 40.”
I didn’t watch Ellen, but he was an amazing part of SYTYCD. This is shocking, and so sad for his family.
Tony Ortega’s Today in Q: “Elon suspends Twitter account that was following his jet, threatens legal action.”
“In terms of diminishing a military rival, aid to Ukraine might be the most efficient use of American taxpayer dollars ever. The war in Iraq, by comparison, cost nearly $2 trillion from 2003 through 2019.”
We are getting a screaming bargain by supporting Ukraine defending against the Russian genocide. It is 5% of the defense budget, $38 billion for next year.
We spent 4 trillion USD in Afghanistan and Iraq to accomplish nothing.
The Ukrainians are spending far more though. The blood and lives of their children, none of which are replaceable in the next budget cycle.
Billions for Ukraine is the deal of the century
Re: raven @ #19…
Given the reports that T-55 Russian tanks (a 1950s design) have been seen in Ukraine, the Russian army may not be scraping the bottom of the barrel, but have dug into the ground under it. One might well wonder when the first T34 siting will take place…
In a semi-serious vein… I wonder if the table top war gamers are revising their combat tables for the post-Soviet Russian army.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that too.
It seems like the Russians never throw anything away and just store it.
The Russians are also being very careful with their advanced air craft, the SU series of jets and their Tupolev heavy bombers.
They don’t even have that many of those.
I’m wondering if they can even easily replace their high end weapons.
The Russian industrial base has been hollowing out for decades. They are to some extent still running off of the old USSR and it is starting to show.
One of their foolish decisions was to stop funding education for their children. Their school systems are way underfunded with shortages of equipment and buildings in need of repair.
You can’t run a Hi Tech society with an uneducated population.
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
@ 11
Once again, I keep wondering how they’re going to keep Rand’s atheism under wraps as they produce “films” based on her “work.”
Ukraine update: ‘A tsar tells them to go to war, and they go … Russian mobilization has worked’
More updates from Ukraine coming soon.
More updates from Ukraine:
Russia warns of ‘consequences’ if US missiles go to Ukraine
Patriot missiles are a defensive weapon. There is no way they can be used against Russia unless Russia launches attacks.
3 militia members who plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer sentenced to years in prison
Giuliani should be disciplined over 2020 election case, ethics panel says
Trump is mocked, and then mocked some more.
Link
One example:
Apparently, even Russian state TV propagandists can barely contain themselves seeing Trump dressed up in a Superman-like costume. [video at the link, shows Russian propagandists laughing.] Link
@ 27
And how many years in prison did Osama get? Oh! That’s right. He’s wasn’t white enough to get captured alive and given a hand-slap sentence.
Representative Denver Riggleman:
President Joe Biden:
MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT: Maggie Haberman And CNN Pals Can’t Stop Clowning On Irrelevant Loser Trump
https://www.wonkette.com/trump-major-announcement
All the laughs I needed for today!
Deadline – “Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment Developing Feature Based On Podcast ‘Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra’; Tony Kushner And Danny Strong In Talks To Adapt”:
US brings back free at-home Covid tests as part of winter plan
@ #30
12 years in prison is a hand-slap? For a failed, wacko kidnap plot that never went anywhere, while two others face life in prison at their sentencing later this month. Sounds like more than a hand-slap.
Guardian – “Poland’s police chief wounded after gift from Ukraine official explodes”:
From the Guardian nurses’ strike liveblog (link @ #13):
New episode of If Books Could Kill – “The Population Bomb”:
@36: It is difficult to speculate when the article is so vague. I am going to guess that the ‘gift’ was unexploded ordinance. And a reminder to all: if you are going to use something like an artillery shell or rocket as a desktop souvenir, it should be disarmed first and have all the explodey bits removed.
Michael Kofman:
It is about time.
EU and NATO almost ready to issue long-delayed joint pledge to back Ukraine.
This sort of misses the point.
By now, Ukraine doesn’t need strongly worded statements condemning Russia.
They need more ammo.
They need more of a whole lot of things up to and including more winter coats and blankets, since the Russians shut off their electricity.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63982819
I can’t fault the likely choice of which holiday to get rid of…
Followup to comments 29, 31 and 32.
Link
Anti-abortion groups are furious that Americans aren’t yet being jailed for mailing abortion pills
Re: Lynna, OM @ #44…
Not unless Abbott wants the US military to show up and open each Texas National Guardsman to see what’s inside…
Montreal police officers called out for wearing religious symbol on the job
Claudine Gay: Harvard University picks first black president
Sudanese woman jailed for kissing man
It’s the things they don’t report – was the brother charged with any crime for killing her boyfriend?
She was 20 and a divorcee?
Trump’s Badly Photoshopped NFTs Appear to Use Photos From Small Clothing Brands
Thursday Night Massacre: Elon Musk indulges in a personal purge of journalists from Twitter
More at the link.
Elon Musk is determined to prove to everyone that he is a fascistic doofus.
Ukraine update that is kind of funny:
Additional Ukrainian updates:
Link
RollCall:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also from there:
Guardian liveblog:
Guardian – “Tunisia election set to deliver male-dominated parliament and erosion of women’s rights”:
Guardian liveblog:
Julia Davis/Russian Media Monitor (YT link) – “Guest on Russian state TV says Russians don’t understand what Russia is doing in Ukraine”:
“…And many have left, like that guy in a Mercedes.”
Věra Jourová, Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency:
Recent Tweet from Ukraine.
Nine Russian bombers in the air, 60 cruise missiles heading towards Ukraine.
They’ve already hit, most were shot down, the rest took out most of the Ukrainian power grid.
This happens every few days.
These are terrorist attacks aimed at 44 million civilians.
It’s time to send long range missiles to Ukraine so they can retaliate in kind by hitting military targets in Russia.
Huge aquarium bursts in Berlin, releasing floods of water and tropical fish
Guardian liveblog:
Random observation: British people’s reactions to the Harry & Meghan Netflix series are helping me better understand Brexit.
She Went Undercover to a Crisis Pregnancy Center. They Told Her Abortion Is Reversible.
Um…update to #36 – Guardian liveblog:
BBC – cute – “Cambridge delivery robot grateful for snow rescue”:
Starship is an Estonian company headquartered in San Francisco.
Tweet o’ the day.
Meduza – “A propaganda sampler: Russian state TV hosts mock Ukrainians dealing with aftermath of Russian attacks on energy infrastructure”:
Figgy Pudding Spam Review: I ate it so you don’t have to
Ukraine update: Russian forces around Bakhmut forced to surrender ground as assault falters
Judge upholds abortion charges
Read the ruling here.
B.C. acupuncturist committed misconduct by doing blood-letting while banned, college says
Blood-letting? What century is this? Quack quack quack.
Some Holiday good news.
The Satanic Temple has a display in the Illinois Capitol.
I have to admit it is cute, a crocheted snake with apples and a book.
This is an obvious take on the Genesis story and the Tree of Knowledge.
I’m wondering how good their security is and how long it will take for a xian terrorist to vandalize it.
That is usually what happens to nonxian Holiday displays.
Satanic Temple display installed at Illinois Capitol next to Nativity scene, menorah
The Trump NFT grift is worse than you thought:
Link
More on what Lynna just posted about the Trump trading cards.
Xpost from another FTB thread.
According to this article, the Trump NFT collection really did sell out.
There were 45,000 tokens minted.
At $99 a token or unit, that would be $4,500,000 worth sold originally.
Now, supposedly they are on the market and worth a lot more.
“One of these rare trading cards, of the 45th president standing in front of the Statue of Liberty holding a torch, is currently listed at 20 ETH, or about $24,000.” I’d rather have the $24,000 but maybe that is just me.
Link
Reginald Selkirk @71
“Blood-letting? What century is this? Quack quack quack.”
Apparently, cupping is also A Thing; a friend of mine was thinking of having it done.
:(
McSweeneys satire:
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-believe-in-free-speech-so-long-as-i-get-to-change-what-free-speech-means-to-whatever-i-want?fbclid=IwAR3SkBLzcv69LIL46AhENkvO7RM9ghiM_d4zjHGlKxwCMpe4j2AiRCsz2bs
An informative thread by Judd Legum.
Oddly related, “A lecture by Timothy Snyder at the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook, October 19, 2022”:
@77: Cupping is popular with some of the New Age celebrities. See Google images for Gwynyth ‘Goop’ Paltrow with cupping marks on her back.
1,000 Cryptocurrency Tokens Met Their Demise in 2022
2-year-old boy survives being half swallowed – headfirst – by a hippo
Donald Trump tells Jews ‘to be loyal,’ doesn’t mention Kanye West dinner
Yes, even the NYPost is taking shots at Trump.
Slovak government falls after parliament no-confidence vote
India test-fires Agni-V missile amid border tensions with China
Turkey’s Baykar launches new jet-powered drone, aiming for air-to-air combat
That is quite a large step up from the slow, cheap drones they have been producing.
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
NBC News:
New York Times:
Josh Marshall:
Link
This “what critics called” garbage really angers me, and the Guardian is as bad as anywhere at it. Of course it was a fucking power grab!
Space dot com on the current Soyuz issue at theInternational Space Station here :
https://www.space.com/soyuz-capsule-strand-astronauts-international-space-station-crew-safety-risk
Plus ABC article on that here too :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-16/soyuz-russian-space-capsule-coolant-leak/101779624
Whilst Lucy Hamilton ha s agoofd thought provoking article here :
https://theaimn.com/the-fight-against-paranoid-nostalgia/
Dangerous heavy metals like lead found in popular dark chocolate brands, including Hershey’s and Trader Joe’s, report says
Link
Sheesh. What a bunch of dunderheads and doofuses. More at the link.
We don’t have to document that Elon Musk is a right wingnut wacko.
The question is more, just how twisted, weird, and destructive he is.
Despite supposedly banning doxing, Twitter is still the go to place to dox progressive elected politicians such as AOC.
AOC Says Elon Musk Deactivated Journalist Accounts While ‘Elevating’ Some That Have Put Her in Danger
“Some skeptics do not really trust the figure of almost 100 thousand dead Russians,” the statement reads.
I don’t entirely take the Ukrainian numbers seriously either.
There is the usual tendency to inflate the numbers of Russian dead and minimize the number of Ukrainian soldiers dead.
We saw this in Vietnam with the daily body counts that turned out to be fantasy and irrelevant anyway.
Independent observers consider the number of Russian casualties claimed by Ukraine to at least be plausible.
IMO, the Ukrainian casualties are likely to be a lot higher than they claim. This is close quarters warfare that we haven’t seen much of in a long time. In our past wars, we fought at a long distance and killed using artillery and air power. I can’t see how they can be that close to the Russian army without taking a lot of casualties.
The Russians are dying en masse on Ukrainian soil.
Elon Musk’s team seeks new funding for Twitter.
Not surprising. Twitter was losing money before Musk bought it and now it is losing even more.
I can’t see why anyone would invest in Twitter right now.
It is worth more with Elon Musk gone than with him there.
Musk drastically overpaid for Twitter anyway.
If he would have bargained, he could have gotten it for half what he paid for it.
Elon Musk’s team seeks new funding for Twitter
Ukraine update: Putin’s war may be destroying Ukrainian cities, but it’s killing the Russian nation
More updates from Ukraine coming soon.
Additional updates from Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1604195640363581440 [video at the link]
More updates from the link in comment 97:
Arizona Republic
Judge rejects Finchem’s lawsuit seeking new secretary of state election; request for sanctions OK’d
Mary Jo Pitzl / December 16, 2022
You can read the judge’s ruling at this link.
Bwahaha! Trump’s trading card images appear to have been lifted from catalogs and stock collections
tomh @99, all good news!
Not good news:
Washington Post link
New York Times link
It’s quite amazing how media whitewashes billionaires. Here’s a CNN article about a billionaire couple who were mysteriously murdered:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/17/us/toronto-billionaire-sherman-killings-reward-cec/index.html
Oh yeah, the wife was were giving away scraps from the wealth his husband was aggressively hoarding, let’s smack the wold “philanthropic” on top of them. Total bullshit. Obviously, they were victims in this case, but other victims are never treated the same way.
Raven joins road trip down Dempster Highway — for 45 minutes
A new theory in The Phantom God proposes a believers sense of God’s presence stems from their love of mother
Apropos of absofuckinglutely nothing:
I keep seeing a commercial for a company that makes shirts that are cut to not be tucked in. The company is called Untuckit. And every time I hear the commercial, I think, “Hmmm. I’ve been to Martha’s Vinyard, Nantucket, and I’ve sailed past the Elizabeth Islands. So where is THAT island?”
Oggie @ 106
South of Belly Button Cove.
Bubble trouble: How to calm a shaken can of soda
Australia’s Google doodle thingy for today :
https://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-doris-pilkington-garimara
.* My edit to include the trailer of the film later made from the eponymous book here.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Update to #55 – Guardian – “Tunisian parliamentary election records just 8.8% turnout”:
Guardian – “Iranian actor Taraneh Alidoosti arrested after criticism of death penalty”:
Seriously. (Twitter link.)
Correction to #113 – the responses suggest the Musk tweet Ioffe is responding to isn’t real.
Russia to deploy musicians to front to boost morale
I bet the morale of the musicians did not improve.
Holy shit!
SC @113, that Twitter link leads to “… page does not exist.”
This is terrorism, and ignoring it any longer is sheer folly
Here is an article about why Elon Musk will fail at Twitter.
“There is no pivot in which Musk suddenly becomes serious and starts acting like a normal executive. The frenzied, callous, throwing-ideas-at-the-wall boss from hell you see on Twitter is the one people actually get in Musk world. It’s always been that way. Somehow, during a bull market, in a decade when tech was on top of the world and he was the king of it — that style worked. Now it won’t.”
Musk has also received many billions of dollars of government subsidies and government tax breaks. He isn’t going to get those at Twitter.
Quite a few of his companies have gone nowhere. That would be the Boring company, the home robot company, Neuralink, and maybe Solar City.
Tesla bought Solar City in 2016 from his cousins, and it is part of Tesla. I couldn’t find any information about whether it is profitable or not.
At Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk was a jerk with a grand vision. At Twitter, he’s just a jerk.
Lynna @ #117, yes, as I noted @ #114, people in the responses pointed out that the Musk tweet Ioffe was responding to was fake, so I assume she deleted hers. With journalists, it’s usually safe to assume that they saw the original tweet firsthand, but on occasion they’re probably seeing it second-hand and making the same assumption. I would ordinarily scroll down and read some of the responses before sharing, but I was pre-tea.
I still haven’t quite found out if Solar City, now a Tesla subsidiary is profitable.
This article says probably not.
And, the solar powered roof shingle was fake and still doesn’t exist.
Why Tesla’s solar business has not yet taken off as Elon Musk promised
This game is unbelievable.
Argentina wins the World Cup. What a game.
Guardian World Cup final liveblog:
Francis Scarr, BBC:
Subtitled video at the (Twitter) link. A union is obviously out of the question.
Vatican defrocks an anti-abortion priest who once placed an aborted fetus on an altar
Twitter is a mess, so former employees are creating Spill as an alternative
Yet Another candidate for Twitter replacement. Since I was never a serious Twitter user I will not offer opinions on which might succeed.
Raven@119, I would add that the $4 billion in government subsidies doesn’t include his heavy use of the expertise of government subject-matter experts on which he has relied heavily.
SC @120, thanks for the clarification.
Ukraine Update: Bakhmut holds, and that shouldn’t be a surprise
Super informative piece in Undark (via Retraction Watch) – “Draper’s Millions: The Philanthropic Wellspring of Modern Race Science”: “Wickliffe Draper spent his inheritance helping to skew the science of human difference. That mission continues.”
YouTube link to Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.”
Re: Lynna, OM @ #129…
About the ghoul remark. I get a lot of (scam) telemarketing calls. Many for my late wife. To forestall the ghouls, when they ask for my wife, I tell them that she is no longer at this number (which is true). If pressed, I state that I do not have a new number for her (also true).
Yeah, no kidding.
Human life is cheap and meaningless in Russia.
This is noted by anyone who has ever dealt with them, especially the former captive nations.
This is exactly what Russia did in World War II.
Human waves of “soldiers” many of which didn’t even have rifles. The idea was they were supposed to pick up the guns of those in front of them who get shot.
The USSR claims 25 million dead in World War II. Likely true and likely that many of those millons were needless deaths. 7 million of them were…Ukrainians, where much of WW II was fought.
You are quite literally a real ghoul to send all those young men to their deaths for more or less nothing.
More on Russia’s view of human life.
These are prisoners mostly.
It gives you an idea of what Russian prisons are like that they end up joining Wagner.
whheydt @132 and raven @133, yep. All too true. It’s depressing. raven is right to say, “You are quite literally a real ghoul to send all those young men to their deaths for more or less nothing.”
Ron DeSantis is a ghoul for using the Florida state government to basically arrange for more Floridians to die thanks to his promotion of misinformation about COVID vaccinations.
Elon Musk’s Twitter bans mentions of Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Trump’s Truth Social
These are typical Russian tactics.
There was a famous tank battle in World War II where Russia just lined up hundreds of tanks and sent them towards the German positions.
The Germans destroyed most of them.
And, then they ran out of ammunition and the remaining tanks rolled over them.
I can’t remember the name but it might have been this one.
“The Battle of Kursk was the largest tank battle in history, involving some 6,000 tanks, 2,000,000 troops, and 4,000 aircraft. It marked the decisive end of the German offensive capability on the Eastern Front and cleared the way for the great Soviet offensives of 1944–”
Jay Joseph at Mad in America – “The Schizophrenia Genetics Illusion—A Century of Failure and Hype.”
It’s noteworthy and not at all coincidental that there’s some overlap between the researchers discussed by Joseph and those discussed in the article @ #130.
Ah, the NYT:
Here are some (temporarily or permanently) Ukraine-focused links:
Julia Davis’s Russian Media Monitor on YT.
The Kyiv Independent on YT.
Timothy Snyder’s Yale course “The Making of Modern Ukraine” on YT. (This is Class 1.)
Alex Stamos re #136:
Tweet o’ the day.
OMG – the State Department’s statement on the Tunisian “elections” begins:
Turnout was 9%!
raven @137:
It could not have been at Kursk. At Kursk, the German Army, in an attempt to regain the initiative after Stalingrad, attempted to pinch off a major bulge in the Russian lines. Unfortunately, intelligence assets in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, leaked plans for the offensive to the Russians. Additionally, it was a painfully obvious place to attempt a minor offensive. The Russians packed the bulge with multiple lines of defense, both fixed positions and mobile armoured units. The Germans bled themselves against both the northern and southern parts of the bulge and then lost much of eastern Ukraine in the Russian’s follow-on offensive.
I have read extensively in European military history. I have my degree in the same. And the only battle I can think of that comes even close to this was the beginnings of the final offensive to take Berlin. The Red Army faced initial heavy defenses which crumbled under Soviet artillery bombardments combined with ammunition shortages for artillery, anti-tank guns, and even machine guns and rifles.
That said, the Russian tactics in WWII (as I have discussed earlier) were extremely wasteful of human life. The Western armies chose a technology heavy approach which was extremely wasteful of weapons and munitions, but achieved victories with far fewer Allied losses. Additionally, Western armies were far more likely to take prisoners, and the prisoners were far more likely to survive, assuming, of course, that the German soldiers survived the massive expenditure in bombs, shells, bullets, and tanks by the western armies.
Re: Oggie: Mathom @ #143…
One–possibly apocryphal–story had a US commander, faced with taking a hill heavily defended by the Germans, ordering a massive artillery attack and saying, “I’m going to let the tax payers take this hill,” as an alternative to ordering a, probably, expensive (in casualties) infantry attack on it.
Oggie, it might have been this one.
and
whheydt:
The actual event may be apocryphal, but the idea behind it has been the US Army’s (and Air Force, Navy and Marines) doctrine since mid-World War II. We tend to wage war in ways that are very sparing of US lives, but extremely deadly to soldiers on the other side (as well as civilians in the zone of conflict).
Re: Oggie: Mathom @ #146….
Plus, at least during WW2, I think said tax payers would have been happy to exchange some of their taxes for the survival of US troops. (I should probably note that both my father–as an instructor in the Maritime Service–and my father-in-law–as an instructor of Army Air Corps pilot cadets–were in uniform during WW2, though neither were anywhere near any combat.)
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also from there:
A few minutes ago:
Guardian – “Jeremy Clarkson condemned over Meghan column in the Sun”:
Examples at the link. Running alongside the Guardian’s near-daily piece explaining how “the diversity and inclusion struggles of rich, famous people say little about the country as a whole outside the lives of those rich, famous people.”
Guardian liveblogs:
“Government plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda are lawful, high court rules – UK politics live”:
“Elon Musk’s Twitter poll says he should step down as chief executive – business live”:
I think Jeremy Clarkson needs to be shunned by every woman on the planet (as well as the 10% of males who aren’t assholes)–in addition to many years of therapy. That is one, sick, sick fantasy.
Guardian liveblog:
The J6 Committee will hold its final hearing today at 1 PM ET. It will be live on cable news, YT, C-SPAN, etc.
From the CBS report:
I love this tweet.
Yahoo!/AFP – “Sweden blocks extradition of journalist sought by Erdogan”:
HuffPo – “The Proud Boys Sedition Trial And The Violence At The GOP’s Core”:
More at the link.
More sick people… “Here’s @KimDotCom and @elonmusk making fun of Ukrainians having no electricity or heat, as they suffer freezing in the winter. Any more questions?”
(Twitter link.)
German cathedral school allows girl choristers after 1,000 years
Another Russian billionaire has been killed by the FSB.
No one believes this guy fell and died of his injuries.
From his picture, he isn’t even all that old.
The only question is exactly what did he do to merit the summary death penalty.
@159: Stairs? No window was available?
Dmitry:
Subtitled video at the (Twitter) link.
raven @ #159:
He was 50! This is also yet another probable murder committed by the Russian regime in a foreign country.
Guardian liveblog:
Kari Lake is a sore loser.
She wants to lock up all the Maricopa (Phoenix) county election officials.
She also made a bunch of vague threats against a bunch of people.
Kari Lake calls for imprisoning Maricopa County election officials
Steve Benen at Maddow Blog – “Incoming GOP congressman accused of radical public deceptions”:
Yes, once again…
I don’t have access to the NYT story, but Aaron Fritschner:
The Guardian has a US liveblog. From there:
As NBC News reported, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian “dismissed his[Republican Mark Finchem’s] misconduct allegations with prejudice — barring them from being brought back in another court — and called some of his claims ‘fatally flawed.’”
In other news about Republicans, and about a Democrat who seems to be leaning toward the Republican point of view: a Washington Post report yesterday briefly noted that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “frequently” advises Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, and I can’t decide whether to find that surprising or not.
Link
More re Santos – DK – “Does anyone know who Rep. elect George Santos really is because nothing about his resume checks out”:
Someone in the comments links to this tweet:
Some screenshots at the link.
Followup to SC’s comments 165 and 166.
Wonkette: “GOP Rep-Elect George Santos Might’ve Made Up His Resume, Whole Life”
I snipped some of the details that SC had presented earlier.
Thailand warship capsizes leaving 31 sailors missing
Work update:
I had a chance to talk to my supervisor today, and it seems that my situation isn’t as bad as I thought. Seems my tendency to catastrophize my troubles made an ass of me… again.
Thanks for all the suggestions and well wishes to everyone.
As the Bidens mark Hanukkah, the White House gets its own menorah for the first time
@ 173
Oooooo… Kanye isn’t going to like this.
President Joe Biden marks 50th anniversary of death of wife from CNY and daughter
NYC’s ‘bling’ Bishop Lamor Whitehead hit with federal charges for fraud schemes
Devil’s lettuce: Toxic weed harvested with baby spinach causing delirium in Australia
Jan. 6 panel refers Trump, allies to DOJ for criminal prosecution
An excerpt from today’s January 6 Committee meeting, providing details we didn’t know before about Ronna McDaniel:
Excerpts from Wonkette’s live coverage of the January 6 Committee meeting:
From the closing summary of the Guardian liveblog:
Satire written by Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Ukraine update: Russia’s shrinking war effort, failing drone attacks, and the defense of Soledar
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
In related news from the Guardian:
Solidly reported, worrying piece – “Kosovo PM says Russia is inflaming Serbia tensions as Ukraine war falters”: “Albin Kurti warns rising tensions only benefit Putin as ethnic Serbs set up road blocks in north of country…”
“‘We were allowed to be slaughtered’: calls by Russian forces intercepted”: “Calls between Russian soldiers and their loved ones – eavesdropped by Ukraine – reveal reality of war for Kremlin’s forces…”
Vale & thankyou InSight. :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-20/nasa-insight-mars-lander-sends-emotional-final-message/101794158
A good robot that saw and explored and taught us much with all its human team.
PS. We have severe storms forecast for Adelaide again tomorrow morn. Last time I lost power for three days & nights at my place – much longer for some others – plus in just thel ocal council area there was over $3 million in damages done. Oh & homes badly damaged and cars destroyed. No lives lost that time. It’ll get worse and we all know it. Though some still deny reality.
Guardian – “MPs urge Sun editor to act against Jeremy Clarkson over Meghan remarks”:
Today’s Guardian nurses’ (etc.!) strike liveblog – “Rishi Sunak warns NHS strikes could go on for months as he rules out reopening pay offers – live”: “Prime minister issues warning as nurses take action again today, with ambulance staff striking on Wednesday…”
Fb memories today reminded me that 7 years ago we crossed the arbirtrary milestone of 400 ppm atmospheric carbon dioxide.A horrible milestone passed that should NOT have been passed.
180 ppm was the coldest peak of the ice age.
280 ppm was the pre-Industrial level.
350 ppm is the “safe” level by NASA”s erstwhile expert Climatologist.*
Now?
We’re already at 417 ppm Co2 :
https://www.co2.earth/
Which has serious implications and consequences for our future. Meaning a lot of people will die and suffer when we could have avoided those deaths and that suffering and grief and misery.
.* See :
https://350.org/science/
Among other places.
The forecast storm probly won’t be as bad as the last big one here. Probly. Almost certainly.
Guardian liveblog:
NBC – “97-year-old former secretary at a Nazi death camp convicted by German court”: “In what could be the last trial of its kind, Irmgard Furchner — dubbed the ‘secretary of evil’ by German media — was handed a two-year suspended sentence by a court in Itzehoe….”
Guardian – “‘Dark days in Qatar’: Nepali workers face bitter legacy of World Cup debts”: “For thousands of low-paid workers, this year’s games brought back only memories of abuse and exploitation…”
Meduza – “‘I hope this won’t influence viewers’: In their own words, actors in Russian pro-war videos explain why they accepted roles in invasion propaganda”:
Meduza – “From Jean Genet to Sarah Waters: Moscow libraries told to ‘recycle’ books that fail ‘LGBT propaganda’ test”:
Guardian UK liveblog:
Guardian Ukraine liveblog:
Re #165 and subsequent about Rep.-elect George Santos – it’s suspicious to me that the NYT both seems to have ignored the story (despite oppo research from the DCCC and despite this being a Long Island district) until well after the election and then to have published it in the hours between the World Cup final and the final hearing of the J6 Committee. Naturally, after the initial batch of reports yesterday, there’s been almost no attention to what seems to be a major scandal.
Today, amendments to the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) BIll are being debated in the Scottish Parliament: a final vote is scheduled for tomorrow. There will be multiple attempts to weaken the Bill, some probably “wrecking amendments”. The Observer (basically the Sunday Guardian, published a disgracefully transphobic and ignorant editorial yesterday – reproducing scare stories and simply ignoring facts. For example:
This is complete garbage. The Bill changes the procedure for acquiring a gender recognition certificate, making it a matter of self-identification and eliminating the need for a medical diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”, but making a false declaration to obtain a GRC will be a criminal offence. It does not change the legal effects of acquiring a GRC (in practice, these are quite limited: women’s refuges already admit transwomen, and do not require a GRC when doing so, the Scottish Prisons Service attempts, on a case-by-case basis, to accommodate people in a gender-appropriate establishment and does not require a GRC to recognise an inmate as transgender, etc.). It does not change the provisions of the UK-wide Equalities Act 2010 – indeed, it could not do so, as those provisions affect “reserved matters”, on which the Scottish Parliament has no powers.
The article also says:
A requirement to “live as the opposite sex” is included in the current procedure for transitioning. The Bill changes the length of time required, from 2 years to 3 months (or 6 months for 16 and 17 year-olds). It’s not clear why the lack of a definition of what this means suddenly becomes problematic as a result of this change.
There is a less biased explanation of the reforms and their context in today’s Guardian.
KG @ #197:
Wow, is that trash.
From the editorial:
You know your feminism is going great when you’re using “opposite sex” (especially when the bill you’re discussing uses “acquired gender”).
Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian – “In Ukraine, I saw the greatest threat to the Russian world isn’t the west – it’s Putin”: “The Kremlin’s imperial war has made its own culture and language a common enemy for people across its former empire…”
Arizona Republic:
Judge orders 2-day trial in Kari Lake’s lawsuit, but dismisses some claims
Details of the arguments at the link.
It’s worse than that.
Russia has already absorbed Belarus.
Something like 80% of the population are Russian speakers and their own current government is suppressing the Belarusian language.
Belarus is probably beyond the point of no return.
They have 9 million people to Russia’s 144 million and no real ability to resist Russian power over them.
Ukraine update: Zelenskyy goes to Bakhmut, ‘the most beautiful words for our comrades in America’
More updates coming soon.
Followup to comment 202.
More updates:
Putin has done more for destroying Russian cultural hegemony than any one since Joseph Stalin.
Roughly half of Ukrainians were native Russian speakers. They are all switching to Ukrainian as soon as they can.
And renaming streets for Ukrainian artists and heroes.
Russian imperialism was such that a lot of Ukrainian artists and writers were persecuted and many were just murdered.
I just learned that Andy Warhol was Slovakian.
Wartime Ukraine erasing Russian past from public spaces
https://kyivindependent.com/
This–assuming it’s true–suggests that Russian troop numbers are getting thin and that supplies are running low. It also suggests that the Russian army is crossing its fingers and hoping there won’t be any problems cropping up in the Far East in the foreseeable future.
As one of Graydon Saunder’s characters put it in his book The March North, “hope is not a plan.”
US Air Force signs $344m deal for hypersonic Mayhem aircraft
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert Are Fighting
Judge Says California Can’t Do to Guns What Texas Did to Abortion
Ice soldiers mark Russia’s very patriotic Christmas
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #207…
Now watch popcorn futures soar….
More updates from Ukraine.
Link
Reginald @207, stupidest argument on the planet.
In other news:
Link
Wonkette: “How Deranged Are The White Fascists Getting About Drag Queens? This Deranged.”
Wonkette link
@ #208
“federal district judge, Roger Benitez, took the case and struck the law down on Monday…”
Benitiz has a long and sordid history of striking down California gun laws, often accompanied by eye-opening analogies. In June, 2021, he overturned California’s decades-old assault weapons ban, beginning his ruling with, “Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment,” Benitez wrote.
In a March 2019 ruling against the state’s limits on large-capacity magazines, Benitez opened with the dramatic stories of three women who ran out of ammo while shooting home intruders – none of which took place in California. In a page 5 footnote, he cited Kristallnacht.
In 2016, nearly two-thirds of California voters approved Proposition 63, which requires people to pass a background check to buy ammo and prohibits possessing large-capacity magazines, or LCMs. However, in 2017, Benitez granted a motion for a preliminary injunction on the part of the law that banned possessing LCMs, which hold more than 10 rounds.
And in March 2019, he ruled that this part of the law was unconstitutional and violated the Second Amendment. “It criminalizes the otherwise lawful acquisition and possession of common magazines holding more than 10 rounds – magazines that law-abiding responsible citizens would choose for self-defense at home,” he wrote. In April 2020, Benitez granted a preliminary injunction against the ammo background check part of the law, calling it “constitutionally defective.”
There’s a reason that gun rights groups in California shop around until they can bring their cases to Benitez.
Link
Jan. 6 probe now ‘extensively cooperating’ with Justice Department
Zelensky planning to visit US Capitol in person on Wednesday
Update to #196 – I’m happy to say I’ve seen several reports on and discussions of the George Santos scandal throughout the day today. Joy Reid is talking about it now.
Democrats vote to release six years of Trump’s tax returns
More at the link.
Disgusting censorship from the F1 governing body here. This :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-21/formula-1-drives-to-require-permission-to-protest/101796162
is what real oppressionof free speech looks like.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Here’s a link to today’s UK multi-strike liveblog. From there:
Researchers find 168 more ancient images at Peru’s Nazca Lines
A set of articles in the Guardian:
“Taliban ban Afghan women from university education”: “Higher education ministry issues indefinite order three months after thousands sat entrance exams…”
“Qatar’s forgotten migrant workers stuck in a ‘prison where you can work’”: “In a world away from the glamour of Sunday’s World Cup final workers plough on, some still waiting to be paid…”
“War on wokeness: the year the right rallied around a made-up menace”: “A modern-day blend of McCarthyism and white grievance became the focus of a rightwing crusade in 2022…”
“Elon Musk was never a liberal, and his plans for Twitter were never benevolent”: “Tech barons’ lip-service to democracy and pluralism was always conditional on preserving their own positions at the top…”
US federal drug agents say they seized enough fentanyl in 2022 to kill every American.
Oh, also in the Guardian – perfect – “Jeremy Clarkson to remain host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? says ITV boss”:
Court Upholds Conversion Therapy Ban
December 21, 2022
Religion Clause
New York Times:
Commentary:
Link
Former Trump White House lawyer allegedly instructed witness to mislead Jan. 6 probe
After badly losing Twitter confidence poll, Musk says only $8 subscribers should be able to vote
LOL
Cartoon: Santa Kev.
After badly losing Twitter confidence poll, Musk says only $8 subscribers should be able to vote
LOL
Informant warned FBI weeks before Jan. 6 that the far-right saw Trump tweet as ‘a call to arms’
The email, which has not previously been made public, adds to the mounting evidence that the FBI had intelligence warnings that Jan. 6 was a major threat.
Guardian liveblog:
Way to toss in the punchline early!
I don’t see what difference that will make. Most countries aren’t all that interested in letting Russians in any more either.
In fact, the European countries with borders on Russia are building up their border fences right now.
As far as I’m concerned, they could set up the Iron Curtain again and everyone would cheer.
That general mobilization isn’t likely to work either.
Russia is already running out of supplies for their soldiers up to and including rifles and uniforms.
And with more men in their army, there are less to support their economy.
Russia not to blame for conflict – Putin
Glaswegian who ‘invented’ chicken tikka masala dies
Ron DeSantis Appoints Ousted Anti-Abortion Judge to More Powerful Court
Russia deploys acoustic-thermal systems Penicillin in Ukraine
That’s an unusual name for military hardware.
Addendum @ 232
Elon Musk Says He Will Resign as Twitter C.E.O. When He Finds Successor
Elon Musk said on Tuesday that he would resign as Twitter’s chief executive when he found “someone foolish enough to take the job,” two days after he had asked his 122 million Twitter followers whether he should step down as the leader of the social media site and a majority of respondents answered yes.
Mr. Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October, asked his followers the question on Sunday night after facing a backlash for unpopular new content moderation policies and the seemingly capricious barring and reinstatement of high-profile users. Even some once-staunch supporters criticized his actions, calling his antics on the platform “the last straw.”
The survey attracted 17.5 million votes. Mr. Musk had said he would abide by the result, and more than 57 percent agreed that he should step down.
But hours after the poll closed on Monday morning, Mr. Musk stayed silent. When he finally spoke up late Monday, he did not directly address the survey result. Instead, he replied to Twitter users who cast doubt on the outcome and said Twitter would change its poll feature so that only people who paid for its subscription service would be allowed to vote.
Just in case anyone cares.
Trump NFTs Tanking as Hype Dies, Floor Price Down 70%.
They might have been better off making these trading cards as real decks selling for $5 or $10 dollars each.
They could sell many as gifts for that Trumper relative you don’t like very much or for the humor for the commies on your list.
Trump NFTs Tanking as Hype Dies, Floor Price Down 70%
WHOOPS! Sorry, that text should have been blockquoted.
Ukraine update: Zelenskyy comes to Washington to fight another essential battle for Ukraine
More updates coming soon.
More Ukrainian update:
Zelenskyy: “One guy who’s really, really a hero, real captain, and he asked me to pass his award, and he asked me to pass his award to President Biden. He’s very brave and he said give it to very brave President, and I want to give you, that is a cross for military merit.”
Mayor confirms 5 homeless people froze to death on Salt Lake City, Utah streets.
Just what you want to read about on the Holidays.
Most of the US is under an arctic storm watch so there will be many more in the coming days. The arctic storm stretches from the Pacific Northwest to the East coast.
Mayor confirms 5 homeless people froze to death on Salt Lake City, Utah streets
@ 247
Five will get you ten that those five poor souls were either LGBTQIA+ kids who got disowned and thrown out of their homes by their faithful Mormon parents or they otherwise didn’t qualify for state social services which is run by Joseph Smith’s filthy little cult.
Well, I take solace that, thanks to the climate change that the LDS and its followers deny is happening, the Great Salt Lake will dry up resulting in toxic arsenic dust storms that will smother and poison their white-bread-and-mayonnaise paradise.
New York Times:
The Guardian has a fresh liveblog covering Zelenskyy’s congressional address.
They link to this 2019 Aaron Rupar tweet with video of Zelenskyy and Trump the last time he came to the US. I remember this so well.
Also, the Guardian itself has reportedly been hit with some sort of cyber attack.
Oh – they note that Zelenskyy also visited the US last year. I don’t even really remember that.
Zelenskyy is speaking now.
Guardian – “Zelenskiy invokes fight against Nazi Germany in speech to US Congress”:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also in the Guardian – douchebags in disarray:
“Minister admits more needed to ease trade after damning Brexit business survey – UK politics live”: “Mark Spencer says government wants to reduce ‘red tape’ after UK firms say Brexit deal has not boosted business…”
“‘We will not surrender’: Bolsonaro militants demand coup as Lula prepares to take power”: “Concerns grow over bewildering displays of devotion to Brazil’s outgoing rightwing president…”
I love how they try to make the printed signs look handmade.
“Associates of Sam Bankman-Fried plead guilty to fraud charges after FTX collapse”: “Carolyn Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX, said to be cooperating with investigators…”
“Journey bandmates in legal fight over performance for Donald Trump”: “Guitarist Neal Schon issues cease-and-desist order to keyboardist Jonathan Cain over performance of Don’t Stop Believin’ at Mar-a-Lago…”
There’s a video clip at the link, I shudder to say.
This I didn’t know:
Also in the Guardian:
“Minister admits more needed to ease trade after damning Brexit business survey – UK politics live”: “Mark Spencer says government wants to reduce ‘red tape’ after UK firms say Brexit deal has not boosted business…”
“‘We will not surrender’: Bolsonaro militants demand coup as Lula prepares to take power”: “Concerns grow over bewildering displays of devotion to Brazil’s outgoing rightwing president…”
I love how they try to make the printed signs look handmade.
“Associates of Sam Bankman-Fried plead guilty to fraud charges after FTX collapse”: “Carolyn Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX, said to be cooperating with investigators…”
“Journey bandmates in legal fight over performance for Donald Trump”: “Guitarist Neal Schon issues cease-and-desist order to keyboardist Jonathan Cain over performance of Don’t Stop Believin’ at Mar-a-Lago…”
There’s a video clip at the link, I shudder to say.
This I didn’t know:
Guardian – “Minister admits more needed to ease trade after damning Brexit business survey – UK politics live”: “Mark Spencer says government wants to reduce ‘red tape’ after UK firms say Brexit deal has not boosted business…”
Guardian – “‘We will not surrender’: Bolsonaro militants demand coup as Lula prepares to take power”: “Concerns grow over bewildering displays of devotion to Brazil’s outgoing rightwing president…”
Guardian – “Associates of Sam Bankman-Fried plead guilty to fraud charges after FTX collapse”: “Carolyn Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX, said to be cooperating with investigators…”
Guardian – “Journey bandmates in legal fight over performance for Donald Trump.”
There’s a video clip at the link, I shudder to say.
This I didn’t know:
Guardian – “Journey bandmates in legal fight over performance for Donald Trump.”
Guardian – “Journey bandmates in legal fight over performance for Donald Trump.”
Guardian liveblog:
Oz Katerji:
Scientists Created Male and Female Cells From a Single Person
Arizona-Mexico border: Container wall to be dismantled
There but for luck of birth & circumstance.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-22/rohingya-refugees-stranded-in-boat-dying-of-hunger-and-thirst/101802160
No words.
Insufficent imagination.
Insufficent global compassion and help.
As for the numbers killed in Ukraine by Putin’s needless invason I can’t even ..I just can’t.
Humans are humans whoever and wherever they are and .. how come we don’t seem to grok that?
The USA caught between extremes of puritanism puritanismand Randist selfishnes? Too simplistic? Probly still .
It’s the latest fun thing to do: make a list of possible replacements for Elon Musk as CEO of Twitter. Obviously, some of these are not expected to be taken seriously since everyone expects Twitter to die soon. Musk said:
I think we all know, there are plenty of fools in the world.
Gizmodo: CEOs Who Might Replace Elon Musk at Twitter, Ranked
The Register: Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement
CNN: Here’s who Elon Musk could pick to be Twitter’s next CEO
Latter song choice probly not remotely the best representation of Randism & very unfair to Steve Earle but .. nausea forebade otherwise and yeah .. some addictive drugs -alcohol included not good understatement so ya.
The J6 Committee has started releasing interview transcripts, and Stefan Passantino is fuuuuucked (Twitter link).
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill passed! 86 votes to 39! All the Tory attempts to block it by filibustering and spurious points of order, and all the transphobia bile, have failed. I haven’t seen the whole thing yet, and I know there were some amendments the sponsors of the bill were not happy with, but I’d say* it’s still a great day for trans rights.
*As a cishet man, it’s not my call, but the trans commenters on the Scottish Greens’ slack are happy.
Kyle Cheney’s thread about the Cassidy Hutchinson interview transcripts is still going:
She learned about Butterfield from the Watergate Wikipedia page and found out he’d helped with Bob Woodward’s 2015 The Last of the President’s Men, which she bought and read three times. (Screenshots at the link.)
KG @ #268, that’s great news!
“Whew. Hakeem Jeffries is not mincing words about the MAGA circus.”
Video at the (Twitter) link.
Francis Scarr:
Christopher Miller:
Photos and sceenshots at the (Twitter) link.
Link
Exclusive: US says Russia’s Wagner Group bought North Korean weapons for Ukraine war
The UK government is apparently threatening to block the Gender Recognition Reform Bill from becoming law, using a power that has not been used since devolution in 1999, on the (entirely spurious) grounds that it will disrupt the UK’s Equality Act 2010. They may think they can use this as a “wedge issue” in Scotland, as polls suggest that – at least if you ask the right questions – you can get majorities against key aspects of the bill in Scotland (there’s a link to some polls from my link, but it’s to a TERF site, so may well be highly selective). But the only party with a majority of MSPs against the bill was the Tories (the Scottish Greens and I think the LibDems were unanimously in favour, SNP and Labour strongly but not unanimously so), so they’d be showing their willingness to use their power to over-rule the Scottish Parliament when all parties but their own and more than 2/3 of MSPs voted for the bill. If they do attempt to use this power, there would undoubtedly be a court case, ending up in the Supreme Court, and my guess is that they would lose – despite supposedly being non-political, the Supremes would probably prefer not to reinforce the impression given by the recent case on a consultative independen referendum that they are simply tools of the UK Government whenever it wants to overrule the Scottish Government. But meanwhile, it would be interesting to see what line the Labour and LibDem parties took. And of course, meanwhile trans people in Scotland would continue to be deprived of the right to self-determination.
No greater honor, no sorrier shame: Zelenskyy before Congress was a study in contrasts
PS3 Hacker Hired To Fix Twitter By Elon Musk Just Quit, Yikes
Just wait a bit and Musk will have it carved down to a size you can handle…
Japan adopts plan to maximize nuclear energy, in major shift
Further to #276, if the UK Government does block the GRR (Scotland) Bill, it will be even more interesting to watch the contortions of the SNP minority who opposed it (9 MSPs out of 64 IIRC) and Alex Salmond’s We-Hate-Nicola-Sturgeon Party (aka “Alba”), which has made transphobia one of its key policies, alongside a supposedly more robust attitude to gaining independence. Is their trans-hate sufficiently important to them that they would back the UK Government’s block?
Guardian liveblog:
The Guardian now has a US/J6 liveblog. From there:
Guardian – “Israel’s LGBTQ+ community fear for future under far-right government”:
Senate passes $1.7 trillion government funding bill, teeing up House vote
The FBI Says You Need to Use an Ad Blocker
DK – “Gay Republican Rep.-elect Santos neglected to mention his 2019 divorce from a woman”:
Examples and more at the link.
Zelensky got that right.
We send Ukraine money and arms that we can easily afford and they spend the blood and lives of their children, none of which anyone can afford.
No wonder he and Ukraine got a standing ovation from the US Congress.
We aren’t spending a whole lot of even our defense budget to fight the Russian imperialists.
It’s 5% of our defense budget.
We spent $4 trillion in Afghanistan and Iraq with more or less nothing to show for it.
(FWIW, since Musk bought Twitter, it has been overrrun by Russian trolls. No surprise.)
Ukraine update: 100,000 Russian soldiers have died. Bakhmut stands
@ 285
Because it NEVER occurs to anyone in the government that the Internet or capitalism is the thing that ought to be regulated. No, no, you’re own! Hope that your adblocker will protect you because we, your government that supposedly looks out for your interests, won’t do it. Freedom!
EDIT @ 290
No, no, you’re on your own.
https://twitter.com/Naptownasaurus/status/1605781363193368576
Video at the link.
Followup to comment 292.
Link
More on the GRR (Scotland) Bill, and the UK Government’s threat to block it. The Guardian analysis, which in this case I agree with, is that Sunak and his cronies are thinking of using the issue to further their culture war against trans people, from which they believe they can benefit politically – and not only in Scotland: see my #276 – all Scottish LibDem MSPs and all but two Labour voted for the Bill, and the Tories will be hoping to embarrass Sir Tweedledum and Sir Tweedledee* who have generally been trans-supportive to some degree, but would much prefer not to talk about the issue. Aside from the issue of gender self-determination itself, Sunak and his advisors must know perfectly well that this strategy would stir up hatred, and potentially violence, against trans people. It would be, in short, stochastic terrorism.
*Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey, pusillanimous Labour and LibDem leaders.
Biden is giving a Christmas address right now.
The White House looks very pretty.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #293….
There’s a lesson in what happened in California decades ago. There was a ballot proposition to ban “pornography”. It was nicknamed “The Clean Amendment”. It was polling pretty well until a group went public stating that if it passed, they would be suing to ban the Bible…based on sections that clearly fell within the propositions definitions of porn. In the end, it failed to pass.
So….start taking action to ban the Bible on exactly the same grounds that the current book banning efforts are using to ban other books. Let the chips fall where they may.
Hate Leader Nick Fuentes Is Recruiting Incels
The racist troll who dined with Trump is courting a new online following: raging misogynists.
Handmaids. Fuentes wants women to be handmaids.
Fuentes’ reach is broader than one might think:
whheydt @296, good point.
In other news: Senate approves $1.7 trillion omnibus bill to fund government.
Washington Post link
The bill would avert a shutdown and increase spending on domestic programs and the military. The House is expected to consider it Thursday.
Washington Post link
Link
Good explanation of “The Celestial Sphere.”
Excerpt:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/chapter2-2/
Associated Press:
Spam texts are out of control, say all 51 attorneys general
TikTok cops to running “covert surveillance campaign” on Western journalists
NASA’s Historic Mars Insight Lander Mission Ends With Dusty Demise
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #305…
Perhaps Mars landers should include something like windshield wipers that could clear to dust off the solar arrays periodically.
A long article on Martian dust storms ending with a possible solution for solar powered probes.
Dust devils work but are localized and erratic.
One try on using Martian sand to clear a panel appeared to work.
The probe would need to designed to be able scoop and dump soil on all solar panels. Interesting design problem.
@ ^ whheydt : : Sounds like a good idea but you know those things need a supply of fluid and Mars gets super-cold and we’re talking particles of dust not droplets of water & they’d need powering with gears, etc,.. so .. probly not as easy as it sounds. Some sort of dust cleaning mechanism would be great if they could engineer one though definitely. In fact one has ben built here :
https://www.universetoday.com/97597/the-dust-windshield-wiper-that-didnt-go-to-mars/
Which might fly on future missions.
@286 SC (Salty Current) : The Young Turks has this 15 min long video on George Santos here which I saw last night too FWIW.
.***
In Aussie news today, a Nationals party MP, Andrew Gee, has just quit the party over their opposition to an Indigenous Voice to parliament :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-23/andrew-gee-resigns-national-party-indigenous-voice/101804776
Which is good even though the party isthankfully in opposition now.
Re: SteveR @ #308…
I find, in practice, that wipers, even when run dry, will take accumulations of dust off the windshield fairly well. I suspect that if the panels could be tilted to a fairly steep angle, then just a vibration motor might be able to get quite a bit of the dust to just fall off.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Today is a sea of items like “A senior Russian diplomat has said…,” “Russia’s ambassador to the United States said…,” “The top Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region said…,” “The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said…,” “…according to the pro-Moscow local administration,” “The Kremlin has claimed…,”…
The J6 Committee released their 845-page report last night.
From the Guardian’s coverage:
“January 6 panel accuses Trump of ‘multi-part conspiracy’ in final report”:
“The 17 findings in the January 6 committee’s final report.”
Why Noah’s Ark will never be found
They don’t really focus on the real reason, which is that it’s all a fairy tale.
Unearthed Near Stonehenge, This Toolkit Was Used for Goldwork 4,000 Years Ago
Who Built Stonehenge? Genetic Analysis Suggests They May Not Be Who You Think
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Picks Conservative Anti-Abortion Judge for New York’s Highest Court
You Can Sear A Steak By Dropping It From Space, But Not Cook It
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian UK multi-strike liveblog.
BBC – “Paris shooting: Three dead and several injured in attack”:
Guardian – “Nobel-nominated vaccine expert warns of Covid complacency: ‘We’re still losing too many lives’”:
This is part of a Twitter thread by Garry Kasparov.
He is a Russian exile and the former World Chess Champion.
Tucker Carlson and Fox NoNews are one of the few US sources that are backing the Russian genocide of Ukraine.
And of course, Tucker Carlson is just lying, calling Ukraine and Zelensky anti-xian and anti-democratic.
Russia has turned into a vicious Fascist dictatorship where dissidents are frequently killed or sent to the Gulags for long prison terms.
Somehow, Twitter Finds More Workers to Lay Off
Guardian liveblog:
So. Just one of many needlessly dead refugees because we (Aussies) are worse now in our policies towards non-white (do I need to say “Obvs?” Do I need to vomit?) refugees than we were back in the 1970”s under Malcolm fn Fraser’s govt :
https://www.aus4iccwitness.org/node/75
See also :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-21/refugee-waited-for-medical-evacuation-for-12-hours/8461794
& https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/news/refugee-raised-health-concerns-before-he-died-on-manus-island-court-told/news-story/e980c7f00f5ca9cdf1c13597f775b982
Plus, oh yeah, someone handing out factsheets on his death I meet tonight who, I think, probly knew him in person & was likely in Manus with him.
One of quite a few people just like you and me and all of us but for luck of birth killed by the sadism of our (Aussie -since Howard & Tampa) anti-“boatpeople” (brown & Asian refugees – y’know a.k.a. people) policies.
See also :
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2018/jun/20/deaths-in-offshore-detention-the-faces-of-the-people-who-have-died-in-australias-care
Guardian liveblog:
raven @319, Garry Kasparov got that exactly right. I was glad to see him making such statements publicly.
SC @324, such a good idea. Zelenskiy is thinking ahead. I am impressed.
Ukraine update: Russia sends all forces in Svatove to the front lines as Ukraine presses closer
Morale is high and it’s time to dance!
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1605990847605968896
Also available here. Scroll down to see the video.
Christmas in Bakhmut for a little girl who rarely gets to see the sun.
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1605935162419732482
The video has English subtitles.
‘Are we at war?’ Bannon exhorts TPUSA’s ‘awakened army’ to ‘take this to its ultimate conclusion’
Putin’s aggression ‘has set Russia back 30 years’.
Or so claims a writer for the Times.
I’m sure Putin has set Russia back although it is anyone’s guess as to how far.
The Europeans have discovered that cheap Russian gas wasn’t really cheap. They had to sell their National Sovereignty and National Security for it.
To my eyes, Russia seems to be running on momentum from the old USSR. They had huge stockpiles of tanks and artillery, all left over from back to World War II. Which are rapidly being depleted.
Russia is also being very careful of their modern weapons such as heavy bombers and the SU series of fighter jets. Likely because they don’t have that many and they might have trouble replacing them.
Throw in a brain drain and Western sanctions and Russia might well end up going backwards for a while.
Putin’s aggression ‘has set Russia back 30 years’
@ 328
The American right-wing has been spoiling for a fight since the 60s. They’ve been arming. They’ve been training and preparing. They’ve been making in-roads into the political mainstream. Meanwhile, liberals and Democrats have had their heads in the sand ignoring the threat, naively believing that they were a fringe of a fringe minority that no one would ever taken seriously. Even the death and destruction of the Oklahoma City bombing wasn’t enough to motivate them to act, preferring to pretend the problem would just go away if we don’t antagonize them.
Now, nearly two years after an attempted right-wing coup, Biden won’t even call these thugs fully-fledge fascists (e.g. “semi-fascists”) much less dedicate the military and police power to eradicate this domestic threat. All I hear is whining about violence and all I see is handwringing when a fascist army over 74 million strong still threatens the democracy that the libs supposedly care about.
“Despite all of her angry tweets about the Omnibus bill and Zelenskyy, Marjorie Taylor Greene was caught fleeing the country to Costa Rica for vacation earlier this week. She voted by proxy, despite introducing a bill to ban proxy voting earlier this year….”
Executives at Chick-fil-A make around $700K a year, but one location paid its employees in meals
Major Highlights of the January 6 Report
https://www.justsecurity.org/84551/important-elements-of-the-january-6th-report/
What Marjorie Taylor Greene has been up to lately:
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been vacationing in Costa Rica during one of the most consequential legislative weeks of the year
Comment from a reader:
She has custody? I find it difficult to imagine what an immense shitbag her ex must be for that to happen.
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #335…
Where she lives? Probably as near to automatic as makes no difference that the mother gets custody.
The children of the white nationalist congress woman from GA are young adults, so custody is a non-issue.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
(These figures are hovering around 500 killed per day.)
Also in today’s Guardian:
“Huge winter storm hits US with life-threatening cold as holidays begin”:
“Chinese city seeing half a million Covid cases a day – local health chief”:
“Pussy Riot song protests against war in Ukraine and calls for Putin to be prosecuted”:
Here’s the (subtitled) video on YT.
“Kyiv says Russia used the Grad MLRS to strike the center of Kherson. Those are extremely imprecise but highly lethal area weapons that aren’t supposed to be used in populated urban environments — unless killing the maximum number of random civilians is your actual objective.”
Wow – Shabnam Nasimi:
BBC – “Afghanistan protests: Taliban use water cannon on women opposing university ban”:
Dmitri:
Subtitled audio at the (Twitter) link.
Iran International – “Prominent Iranian Researcher Sentenced To Nine Years In Prison”:
Gene-edited hens may end cull of billions of chicks
Or just don’t eat animals, their eggs, or their secretions.
Guardian liveblog:
Ukraine update: The battle for Svatove approaches as Ukraine reportedly liberates four more villages
January 6th Rioter Arrested: Planned to Kill 37 FBI Agents
Some podcast episodes:
Maintenance Phase – “Workplace Wellness”:
NBN – “Sandra Frimmel, Art Judgements: Art on Trial in Russia After Perestroika“:
NBN – “Ben Pitcher, Back to the Stone Age: Race and Prehistory in Contemporary Culture“:
NBN – “Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism“:
Guardian liveblog:
https://twitter.com/OSHP_NWOhio/status/1606432994675363840
Photos at the link. Very scary.
Lynna @ #353, that’s great news!
I appreciate the DK Ukraine updates so much.
Guardian liveblog:
SC @358, same here. The very idea of Russia invading Ukraine is depressing. The updates that show Ukrainian soldiers and civilians thwarting Russian goals are really uplifting. It’s not always good news, but the trend is obvious: Ukraine is winning. Putin is losing.
I am horrified by the loss of life on both sides.
Henry Kissinger recently wrote an op-ed calling for a cease fire. Putin would use a cease fire to regroup. Henry Kissinger is being naive, stupid, and ill-informed. Unfortunately, some people still listen to that ethically-challenged doofus. Well informed updates keep everything in perspective.
Henry Kissinger Wrote a Peace Plan for Ukraine. It’s Ludicrous.
Followup to comment 360, the Henry Kissinger section.
Kissinger is 99. You’d think he could retire from war-crime advocacy and general evilling and take up gardening or something, but no.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/kari-lake-loses-lawsuit-over-her-defeat-in-arizona-governors-race/3113441/
whheydt @363
Ah, this is so well said: “The Court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence,” Thompson said.
I see that Kari Lake is planning to appeal the decision. She must be fundraising based on her bogus lawsuit.
Is Trump’s Rabid Rant Accusing the FBI of ‘Changing the Election Results’ Proof He’s Nuts?
Re: Lynna, OM @ #365….
Whenever I start to get upset about “dirty” (modern) political campaigns, I think back to a bit of political propaganda from the last third of the 19th century that my mother acquired.
It was a small (les than 1″ long) hollow lead pig. If you looked through it, there was picture on a candidate with the label “Our Next President”. It was distributed by his opponent. It helps to know that the euphemism “in a pig’s eye” is the Bowdlerized version of the original expression.
whheydt @366, that made me smile.
Kyiv Independent:
Tweet o’ the day.
This video amuses me:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (suppport them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Apologies if someone has already beaten me to this :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/discovery-of-2-million-year-old-dna-in-greenland-reveals-new-details-about-ancient-life
Guardian – “Taliban stop women from working for aid organisations”:
They also have a further quote from the so-called minister of higher education about the ban on women at colleges and universities (see #s 225, 346, and 347 above): “Girls were studying agriculture and engineering, but this didn’t match Afghan culture. Girls should learn, but not in areas that go against Islam and Afghan honour.”
From Russian Media Monitor on YT:
“Russian propagandist yells at his producers to stop showing the footage of Zelensky’s US visit.”
Solovyov attempts to compare Putin to Churchill and makes him sound a lot more like Hitler. “Of course, Putin didn’t travel to America, and didn’t ask for American support…,” says Simes. Of course, another person who, like Churchill, asked the US for desperately needed wartime support, and received it, was Stalin.
“Head of RT Margarita Simonyan talks about serving the Motherland.”
Watch to the end for the kicker.
Moscow Times – “Putin’s Idealization of Death Reflects Russia’s Growing Nazification”:
Some songs that seem apt ’bout now :
Lennon’s & So this is Christmas
A spaceman came travelling. Absurd probabities but still a better explaination & reckon sweet song & sentiments here.
Miss Sarajevo then echoed by Ukraine now. Please don’t kill us
More migrants dropped off outside VP Kamala Harris’ home on Christmas Eve in frigid temps
FCC calls for mega $300 million fine for massive US robocall campaign
Researchers discover secret of building a better wildlife overpass
Is this your bunny? Lost toy at Vancouver airport waits to be claimed
IOC struggling to find home for 2030 Winter Olympics — and a Tokyo Games scandal is not helping
Putin says Russia ready to negotiate over Ukraine
You are walking down the street. You feel something and catch a thief’s hand in your pocket. “give that back!” you declare. “Be reasonable,” he responds. “Let’s split it 50-50.”
From text quoted by SC in comment 373:
“Honour” !!?? Whose supposed honour?
Reginald @379: Good news. The gathering of actual facts and statistics can be used to improve wildlife overpasses. I’ve seen some of those that looked good and I’ve seen others that looked too narrow.
From text quoted by Reginald @377:
Just disgusting.
Some commentary from others:
Link
Reminds me of PZ post Merry humbug in which “Kevin Sorbo and some well-fleshed grinning skulls at Newsmax sharing their gift of ludicrous resentment.”
It was 15 degrees outside the VP’s residence on Christmas Even. So Governor Abbott dropped off a bunch of people who arrived without coats or any other resources.
Meanwhile, President Biden visited a children’s hospital in DC to hand out gifts and spread joy. President Biden and first lady Jill Biden also worked to help sort and hand out gifts at a U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots event earlier this month. They displayed a Gold Star tree in the White House to honor men and women in the military who have lost their lives. They even had holiday decor that honored literature and education — quite the contrast with Republican-promoted book-banning events.
Ukraine Extra: The one television series that best explains the march into authoritarianism
Holiday music: YouTube link to Kings Return – Carol of the Bells. It’s their live stairwell performance of “Carol of the Bells.”
Lively Times link
Excerpts from commentary about the report from the January 6 Committee:
Jennifer Rubin, writing for The Washington Post:
EJ Montini, writing for the Arizona Republic:
Kimberly Atkins Stohr, writing for The Boston Globe:
The head of Russian admiralty shipyards seems to have died accidentally
Comments posted by readers of the article:
This can’t be true.
If it was, Putin would have been out of office months ago, carried away by a mob of millions of Russians who don’t want their tax money spent and their children dead in Ukraine for nothing.
No one knows what the Russian people are really thinking about this war. They have had centuries learning how to smile and nod and say nothing no matter what happens. There are the mass graves of millions of people all over Russia who actually cared enough to say something and ended up dead shortly afterwards.
My best guess is that most of them don’t care unless it directly affects them. And that anyone who thinks about it, thinks it is a pointless and bad idea that isn’t going well.
re Lynna @387:
Surely he couldn’t fall out of a porthole on a ship, so he must have fallen down a ladder (stairs on a ship) or slipped and fell off of a balcony.
Re: johnson catman @ #389…
Or fell from the deck of a ship in dry dock. Or maybe fell while inspecting a crows nest or radar antenna. Or he could have fallen out of his office window. The possibilities are endless.
Ho Ho Ho.
Looks like 14 thousand people got a right wingnut terrorist attack for Xmas.
Another battle in the War on Xmas, I guess.
3 power substations vandalized in Washington state, over 14K lost power.
This makes 12 power substations attacked by terrorists in the last few weeks, 2 in North Carolina and 9 in the Pacific Northwest.
They aren’t Christian, but they love Christmas. Here’s how they celebrate
Some Peruvians get punches instead of presents as part of a regional tradition to settle scores on Christmas Day
Short-sellers make $15 billion betting against Tesla as shares in Elon Musk’s company sink by 70% this year
Tesla owner says he had to cancel Christmas plans because car would not charge in freezing weather
Holiday music:
Signal boost here for this :
Source : https://freethoughtblogs.com/oceanoxia/2022/12/25/pine-ridge-reservation-needs-your-help/
Another terrorist attack.
A fourth power substation in the Seattle area was broken into and set on fire this evening.
The media and the cops keep dancing around calling these terrorist attacks although that is what they are.
They call them “burglaries” but “PCSD said, adding that nothing had been taken from the substation but the suspect vandalized the equipment, causing an outage.”
Right, burglaries but nothing was taken.
They also can’t seem to think of who is doing this or why.
Sure. Right wingnuts have been talking about attacking our electric grid for months but somehow the police who know this can’t seem to remember it now.
The police aren’t doing much of a job in catching them either.
Happy Boxing Day! It does not receive much attention in the USA.
There is no boxing on US TV tonight, the next live show is on Saturday, 7 January 2023.
Ukraine war: Drone attack on Russian bomber base leaves three dead
Russia Ready To Resume Gas Supplies To Europe Via Yamal-Europe Pipeline, Says Deputy PM
Trump Declares Himself ‘Clairvoyant’; Critics Wonder How He Got Election So Wrong
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Also in the Guardian:
“US storm: freezing week ahead with dozens of lives lost so far”:
“Aid groups suspend Afghanistan operations after ban on women working for NGOs”:
“‘A threat to unity’: anger over push to make Hindi national language of India”:
“Boxing Day strikes: thousands face travel chaos across Britain as action by railway and Border Force workers continues” (liveblog):
Police arrest man suspected of planting explosives in Brazil’s capital ahead of presidential inauguration
Join us for our 9th annual Boxing Day scarf exchange celebration
France 24 – “Au rassemblement kurde à Paris, un besoin de justice et de vérité.”
Cats in the middle ages: What medieval manuscripts teach us about our ancestors’ pets
The European Genizah
The Stirrup Thesis: A transformative technology that wasn’t
There are a lot of reports that the Russians are running out of ammunition, mostly artillery shells.
There are a lot of reports that the sanctions and the low prices for their gas and oil are also starting to hit Russia hard.
This is good news for Ukraine and now we have to see how much of a difference this makes to how the war is going.
In the last few days, it looks like the Russian soldiers on the front lines don’t want to be there any more.
The Russian Federation is looking for shells for artillery and tanks all over the world
Worth reading in full – Patrick Wintour in the Guardian – “The revenge of history in Ukraine: year of war has shaken up world order.”
(My primary criticisms would be the lack of links or proper citations – as usual – and the insufficient attention paid to the Baltic countries.)
Laura Rozen’s long Twitter thread on the transcript of Mike Pompeo’s J6 interview.
A new entry in Wikipedia’s “2022 Russian businessmen mystery deaths”: Pavel Antov, in India.
Ukrainian forces rumored at Kreminna’s gate (update: not quite yet)
Tweet o’ the day. Stepan!
Link
So, even when they don’t like the outcome, most Republicans trust the process.
Wonkette link
https://www.wonkette.com/jared-kushner-donald-trump
Followup to Reginald’s comment 377.
Wonkette link
At least 26 dead in Buffalo as roads remain impassable; more snow expected.
Washington Post link
Video at the link.
More photos at the link.
A motion for sanctions was filed today by Maricopa County in Kari Lake’s failed election contest against Kari Lake and her attorneys. It begins:
After 15 pages of arguments the motion ends with:
Claims differ about the drone attack on Engels airbase.
This source claims it was quite successful.
Buffalo blizzard: Storm turns city into ‘war zone’
I acknowledge that Buffalo was hit hard by this latest winter storm, but the “war zone” language is inappropriate, overused, and especially distasteful when there are actual wars going on.
Ukraine’s foreign minister aims for peace summit at UN in February — but Russia’s invitation conditional
South Korea jets fire warning shots as drones from North Korea cross border
COVID isn’t just infecting you—it could be reactivating viruses that have been dormant for years. Or decades.
I’ve seen this before.
A healthy 80 year old caught Covid. He was vaccinated and didn’t get all that sick considering. So far, so good.
Then he came down with Shingles, caused by his latent chickenpox virus, which went for his eyes. He ended up with 2 months of high dose antivirals and managed to clear it.
Well, OK.
He’s never been the same after all that.
He tries to stay active and do things like take his kayak out, but it is all harder for him these days.
This isn’t that unusual.
Infection by Covid-19 virus is known to sometimes activate latent viruses, notably the chickenpox virus.
COVID isn’t just infecting you—it could be reactivating viruses that have been dormant
Re: Raven @ #427…
My wife had CFS for about 40 years before she developed the ALS that killed her. Never had COVID,
NBC News
After string of abortion-rights wins, conservatives look to curtail the ballot measure process
Progressive efforts to put abortion rights directly on the ballot would be curbed — if not eviscerated — if conservative legislatures make it harder to place ballot initiatives.
By Adam Edelman / Dec. 26, 2022
Andriy Yermak:
Guardian – “Israeli politician suggests doctors could refuse to treat gay patients”:
Guardian – “US public health officials brace for possible Covid-19 surge after holidays”:
All of my Christmas events were canceled this year, not as a preventative measure but because several people already have fucking COVID (fortunately at least they’ve all had the bivalent booster). Just a total disaster. I think the country has lost its collective mind, to be honest.
Followup of sorts to tomh @422.
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
West Point kicks off process to remove Confederate monuments on campus
Appeals court rules Sikh recruits can keep beards at Marine boot camp
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Also in the Guardian:
“US braces for more deaths as ‘blizzard of the century’ grips nation”:
“Serbia puts troops on high alert as tensions with Kosovo rise”:
“The classic ocean poetry taking on troubling new meanings”:
Kyiv Post:
Tweet o’ the day.
Botakoz Kassymbekova:
Andriy Yermak:
Moscow Times – “Russia’s Media Regulator Granted Powers to Block all LGBT Sites”:
Zurich Insurance CEO: Cyberattacks Will Be ‘Uninsurable’
Well, this is seriously worrying :
https://www.space.com/greenland-glacier-melt-model
Whilst this is really grim :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-27/rohingya-deadliest-year-at-sea-refugees-muslims/101811012?utm_campaign=abc_news_web
With this :
https://www.space.com/blue-marble-recreation-climate-model-test
Being impressive in showing how good our current Climate models are.
Why are these 32 symbols found in caves all over Europe | Genevieve von Petzinger
South Korea lifts ban on import of adult sex dolls
“While disasters now raise suspicions of sabotage linked to the war in Ukraine, poorly maintained infrastructure is a long-standing and persistent problem in Russia — the result of old Soviet-era systems in need of repair and costly maintenance, decades of endemic corruption, and the government’s prioritization of defense and security budgets, as well as the development of major cities over regional towns.”
This article sums up what we know about Russia.
It is falling apart, especially the infrastructure.
Money flows from the hinterlands to Moscow, St. Petersberg, and of course, into the bank accounts of the leadership and oligarchies.
That money isn’t used to maintain the utilities, build houses, or develop the rest of the country.
Besides infrastructure, the school systems are also falling apart. Russia doesn’t spend enough to educate its children and it is starting to show. School buildings are dilapidated, schools are underequipred, and teachers underpaid.
It really looks like the Russian Federation is just running on momentum left over from the USSR. That the RF makes the USSR look good is pathetic.
As Russia bombs Ukraine’s infrastructure, its own services crumble
Here is a thread where Dmitry Medvedev predicts the collapse of the West next year. Medvedev is the former head of Russia.
He is also a bit of a loon.
I keep saying that Russia is what you get when internet trolls run a country.
And oh yeah, his first and main fan is Elon Musk.
Elon Musk has tilted so far in favor of Russia that he has become a security threat to the USA.
Guardian liveblog – more re #414:
UCSF (via Retraction Watch) – “UCSF Issues Report, Apologizes for Unethical 1960-70’s [sic] Prison Research”:
More at the link.
Ukraine update: If NATO wants to send Ukraine a modern tank, this is a good choice
Special counsel John Durham’s investigation proved to be a rather embarrassing failure. It also proved to be quite expensive for taxpayers.
We taxpayers should remember this. Trump’s narcissism and stupidity not only threatens democratic institutions, it also costs us a lot of money.
Cartoon: ‘Politicized’
https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1606834657538224129
LOL. So jolly. (Not a parody.)
Convicted leader of plot to kidnap Michigan governor sentenced to 16 years in federal prison
Tesla’s Tumble Obliterates Half of Meteoric 2020 Rally
Link
Reginald @456, such a nice schadenfreude moment. Combined with the effects of Elon Musk shooting himself repeatedly in the foot, market forces are reducing his wealth. Bit by bit, he is disintegrating.
Hero Indiana Cops Find Kidnapped Baby After Black Women Literally Did All The Work
https://www.wonkette.com/hero-indiana-cops-find-kidnapped-baby-after-black-women-literally-did-all-the-work
Yep, that’s a truthful headline.
“Begun his tenure in Congress”:
Three years on, the pandemic — and our response — have been jolting. Here’s what even the experts didn’t see coming
Lake deletes tweet targeting Maricopa judge after officials seek sanctions
Trump attacks reporter after she revealed his 2024 adviser thinks ‘the magic is gone’
Congress just approved 401(k) and IRA changes that affect workers across generations. Here are the key points to know
Arizona Judge Issues Final Judgment Rejecting Kari Lake Election Contest and Confirming Katie Hobbs Win, BUT Denying Sanctions Against Lake on Grounds She Did Not Act in Bad Faith
RICK HASEN / December 27, 2022
Election Law Blog
‘It’s intense’: Wind gusts hit 150 mph as massive winter storm batters Tahoe
Well, it is a mountain top.
Re: tomh @ #465…
So being delusional doesn’t meet the legal definition of “bad faith”. Interesting… Why, one wonders would that apply to her lawyer as well? Is he also delusional?
Face of ‘Libs of TikTok,’ who remained anonymous due to Left’s ‘violent nature,’ finally revealed
(roll-eyes) Their goal is to dox people, and almost all of the political violence we see today is coming from the right.
Is Your Illegal Gun Range Oppressed? ‘Moorish American’ Sovereign Citizens Can Help!
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Ted Cruz Speaks Out Over Joe Biden’s Vacation During Winter Storm
Thus reminding everyone of what Cruz himself did during the Texas deep freeze a couple years ago. Own goal.
WH Aide Testified That Trump Wanted Blanket Pardon For Everyone Involved In Jan. 6
Cassidy Hutchinson says Trump chief of staff used to burn official papers in his office
Stop complaining, says billionaire investor Charlie Munger: ‘Everybody’s five times better off than they used to be’
Eat the rich.
Tweet o’ the day.
“Chinese hospitals, funeral homes ‘extremely busy’ as COVID spreads unchecked.”
No surprise.
Chinese statistics are so unreliable that to call them statistics is an exaggeration. They are tools of the state.
It is just a guess what is really going on with their current massive Covid-19 outbreak.
They had three years to prepare for this and did not make good use of it.
Some estimates are that they’ve had 250 million cases in the month of December.
The number of Covid-19 deaths will probably be in the millions.
Chinese hospitals, funeral homes ‘extremely busy’ as COVID spreads unchecked
Kyiv Post:
He’s not always the most reliable source, but he’s right more often than not.
Sara Wahedi:
Video (no subtitles) at the (Twitter) link.
Russian troops able to freeze sperm for free
Next up: criminalizing miscarriage in Virginia.
Yeah, this is going to happen a few times here and there.
Don’t believe a word that the cops tell you in these cases.
The ER and staff, can’t tell the difference between an abortion and a miscarriage!!! No matter what they tell you.
The only way they can tell is if the patient tells them.
Never admit to a potential death penalty crime like an abortion, not even to the ER medical staff.
PS In these cases, HIPAA is useless. It doesn’t cover criminal acts and is easy to get around with a subpoena.
This Nebraska woman and her daughter are facing 3 felony charges for a DIY medical abortion. The 17 year old was ratted out by her “friend”.
There are already quite a few women in US prisons for having a miscarriage.
This woman didn’t even have an abortion, just a miscarriage.
The ER did a blood draw and found methamphetamine in her blood.
There is no evidence that her drug use had anything to do with the miscarriage.
She still ended up in prison with a manslaughter charge.
And oh yeah, it is just a coincidence that she is Native American in a fascist state like Oklahoma.
In Red states, the hospital staff will turn you into the cops for just about anything if you get the wrong ones. Don’t trust them with your freedom.
A judge hands down a nearly 20-year sentence in plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Whitmer
December 28, 202212:10 PM ET
Associated Press
They Called 911 for Help. Police and Prosecutors Used a New Junk Science to Decide They Were Liars.
Re: raven @ #475…
Chengdu is where the Word Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) is scheduled to be on Aug. 16-20, 2023. The choice to hold it there was already controversial given China’s human rights record and the choice of Guest of Honor (a Russian author who has publicly and strongly supported Putin’s attack on Ukraine).
It’s no accident that ACA enrollments are reaching record highs
How many times did Meadows burn docs in a White House fireplace?
Documents from the Trump White House are already damning on a historic scale. But what about the materials that Mark Meadows literally set on fire?
@485
Yes, it’s doing so well we don’t need to have a REAL national health care system like the rest of the civilized world has. Enjoy the $1500+ deductibles and post-hospitalization bankruptcy hearings peasants, all courtesy of Barry, Brandon, and their friends from insurance companies you’re now be forced to buy from.
Fuck Obamacare and all its defenders.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-didnt-know-his-daily-schedules-were-public-until-his-last-month-as-potus
Followup to comment 488.
Posted by readers of the article:
Wonkette: “The Fake Electors Plot As Basically Written By The Coen Brothers, Woodchipper Included”
Wonkette link</aa.
High inflation is coming for the beaver on your money. How long can the nickel last?
(Canada)
Ukraine fighting is deadlocked, spy chief Kyrylo Budanov tells BBC
Just caught part of this 16 min long border wall ABC mini-doco on TV now. Seemed pretty interesteting and informative and thought-provoking to me. YMMV natch.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Also in the Guardian:
“‘In two days, I will have to beg on the streets’: what the Taliban’s bar on women’s NGO work means”: “Many Afghan families rely solely on female breadwinners, yet the latest restrictions threaten to increase hardship and unemployment lines…”
“Sahra Wagenknecht: heroine of German left could become ally of far right”: “Die Linke politician is receiving overtures from rightwing AfD and is rumoured to be planning a breakaway party…”
No, it’s not too late to see this :
https://www.space.com/solar-system-planets-visible-grand-tour-livestream
Because whilst our daytime stars’s planets do wander they do so rather slowly and next few nights same (ish) here &still alll visible.
Olga Rudenko:
Not too much new in this article.
“U.S. records 100 million Covid cases, but more than 200 million Americans have probably had it”
We are still seeing 400 people a day dying of Covid-19 in the USA. Most of these are over 80, transplant recipients, cancer patients, and the antivaxxers.
The USA didn’t do great with this pandemic but it didn’t completely drop the ball either. One of the glaring holes in our response is the lack of antivirals. The drug industry really didn’t pursue this very well. There is Remdesivir, Paxlovid, and the Merck drug. We have ca. 30 drugs against HIV.
PS Where is our Herd Immunity? Didn’t the lunatic fringers say if we let the virus run wild, we can kill 4 million Americans and get to…Herd Immunity?
Given how fast this virus mutates, we are never going to get o Herd Immunity, no matter how many people die.
U.S. records 100 million Covid cases, but more than 200 million Americans have probably had it