There Is No Bottom for This Loathsome Treasonous Former *GAG* President

 

Link to the tweets. 

Putin is a Genocidal Maniac

Putin is a genocidal maniac. 

If his people do not remove him from power, they are complicit in war crimes. 

 F*ck all western media who frame Putin and Russia’s sadistic genocidal war crimes as anything less than what they are, or fail to call for his removal. Seriously. F*ck you. 

It’s a gd stain on all of democracy that journalists & news outlets are not joining in the call for Putin’s removal. Shame on all who fail to do this. Shame. 

US news outlets & media pundits make it their regular course of business to endorse politicians or call for their removal But ending the reign of a genocidal maniac is somehow crossing the line? F*ck you all.

 

Women are being raped. Children bombed. Civilians shot point blank simply for daring to exist. F*ck you for betraying human rights. F*ck you for failing to call for the removal of the man responsible for these war crimes. 

 F*ck you for your hackery - for your both sides-isms - for you utter abandonment of decency. Putin is a genocidal maniac, and he must be removed from power. 

33 of the Day: Book Banning, Censorship and Fears of Rightwing Blowback

Hull, 33, couldn’t understand it: None of those books had been formally challenged by parents, even though she knew that activists across the country were targeting books featuring discussions of race, gender and LGBTQ identities for removal. The growing national furor had already arrived in Hull’s corner of Pennsylvania: Parents at a high school in Lancaster County, she said, had requested the elimination of “Gender Queer,” a memoir about being nonbinary, and “Lawn Boy,” a young-adult novel that includes a description of a sexual encounter between two boys. 

Slowly — over months of meetings, investigations and secret conversations with fearful librarians across her counties — she came to understand the disturbing reality. 

Administrators, afraid of attracting controversy, were quietly removing books from library shelves before they could be challenged. “There’s two battles going on at once,” Hull said, referring to parallel pushes from parents who want titles stricken and from school officials who are removing books preemptively. “And it’s been really difficult to fight both of those.” Interviews with librarians in eight states and nearly a dozen districts revealed similar stories that paint what they describe as a bleak picture of their profession, as they fret about and fight against American schoolchildren’s shrinking freedom to read. School book bans are soaring. 

Although the vast majority of challenges go unreported, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom counted 330 incidents of book censorship in just the three months from September to November 2021 — marking the highest rate since the association began tracking the issue in 1990. 

The questioned texts have mostly been “books about LGBTQ people and race and racism,” according to the National Coalition Against Censorship, and many removals sprang from challenges launched by White, conservative parents spurred on by pundits.

It's messed up. for sure. 

Bush Administration War Criminals In the News

 In the SCOTUS confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson.

I wish she would have said they were in fact war criminals, but that would have likely jeopardized her confirmation.

Putin Is a Terrorist

Over 3 decades, this is the handiwork of the man Trump called a "genius" and Pompeo called "savvy." 

This is what the GOP and Fox are supporting and defending when they pump out Putin's propaganda and mindlessly embrace Russian talking points. 

Innocent people lived and died in these places.

These are war crimes.   

The Ukraine War on Twitter

 I've been following a lot of great accounts on twitter about the war (all basically pro-Ukraine and I am very pro-Ukraine in this conflict):

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko

https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM

https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance

https://twitter.com/RALee85

https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture

https://twitter.com/OlgaNYC1211

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko

https://twitter.com/New_Narrative

https://twitter.com/AVindman

https://twitter.com/mikenelson586

https://twitter.com/AdamParkhomenko

https://twitter.com/djrothkopf

https://twitter.com/AndreaChalupa

What Is the Military Reality in Ukraine?

... We’re seeing lots of imagery of downed plans, shattered tanks, captured tanks, often with detailed information about where and how they were destroyed. But that flood of information often leaves us — even if we don’t know it — unclear on the big picture. 

This thread notes that many of us are getting an incomplete view of the situation in Ukraine because Ukraine’s (and its supporters’) social media efforts have been so effective. The issue here isn’t deception or misinformation, though there’s certainly some of that. It’s that the supporters of Ukraine are doing a very effective job surfacing imagery every time the Ukrainian army scores a tactical victory — destroying a tank, shooting down a plane. 

And we’re seeing much less of the fact that Russia is continuing to make progress on the ground — just slowly. Maybe very slowly. But they are making progress. As the thread I noted puts it, “the view of the war that we are getting from expertly curated UKR IO is giving a lot of folks an impression of not only RUS incompetence but also UKR dominance.” 

The account’s judgment is that if Russia is willing to endure the battlefield casualties and the full weight of the economic sanctions they can probably eventually conquer Ukraine. Whether that’s an accurate prediction is way above my pay grade. It’s hard to get this balance just right. 

I think the point is that the Ukrainian military is wildly over-performing and the Russian military is beset by a level of logistics breakdown that appears to be stunning to the most knowledgable people. But don’t go from the mix of over-performance and under-performance to the idea that Ukraine is winning in purely military terms or that Russia can’t slog it out. 

(snip) 

But one thing that comes up again and again in war reportage out of Ukraine are individuals and regions that were generally more aligned toward Russia doing an about face toward a Ukrainian nationalism that is deeply anti-Russian and generally looking to Europe for protection. Some of this is likely a version of a rally-around-the-flag effect. And while bombs are falling there’s probably little public room for public expressions of anything but antipathy toward Russia. 

But it’s hard to believe the ferocity and intensity of this onslaught won’t be a defining experience for a generation of Ukrainians. War on your own territory will do that. It is another example of something you see in every dimension of this. 

As outsiders to Great Russian nationalism it’s hard for Americans to evaluate the importance that Vladimir Putin and many other Russians attach to reuniting Ukraine with Russia. But even though Russia may still win this war, it’s hard to imagine a greater strategic catastrophe either economically or militarily. 

If Russia conquers Ukraine it seems likely to be a restive and hostile population that will be hard to control or hold. Fighting a domestic insurrection will only further drive Ukraine into eventual economic union and military alliance with the rest of Europe. 

The NordStream 2 gas pipeline project that seemed like an inevitable has already be ditched and the company behind it has filed for bankruptcy. It’s not impossible to imagine a Russian climbdown or withdrawal that would include removing many of the sanctions that are crippling the Russian economy. 

But it’s difficult to imagine a return of the pipeline project any time soon or maybe ever. Meanwhile, far from resetting or upending the post-Cold War security regime in Europe, Putin has put it on steroids. The key NATO member states are pledging dramatic increases in military spending and falling over themselves to reinforce NATO’s eastern frontier. The future that is coming into view is pretty dark for everyone. But it’s a nightmare scenario for Russia. 

Does seem clear that Putin has committed serious war crimes.   Especially the hospital bombing in Mariupol.

The Corrupt Mafia Culture of Russia Leads to a Loss of High-Tech Industry

A snippet:

Let's discuss Russian economy. Many underestimate its dependency upon technological import. Russia's so deeply integrated into Western technological chains that severing these ties will lead to its collapse. Sanctions are already effective and can be made even more efficient. (snip)

Mafia is quite simple. It can't administer something complicated without either destroying the production completely or evolving to something that wouldn't be a mafia anymore. If they entered machinery production for example, they would either go bankrupt or stop being a mafia 

Imagine if they entered some complicated business and had to directly engage into a Schumpeterian Creative Destruction. Soon they would have to recruit nerds. Then promote them. And eventially the balance of power *within* mafia gang would irreversibly change in favour of nerds 

I'd argue that processes critically important for an organisation's existence define its evolution. If sth is existentially important, those providing it will have more leverage. And former strongmen become irrelevant. That's how many mafias of old evolved into sth different Ergo. 

Economic processes aren't neutral power-wise. That's a major factor of evolution of power structures. That would also explain why many in power would sabotage economic development. If it's too complex for them to administer, it will change power balance not in their favour