The Evening Blues - 1-20-23
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Son Seals. Enjoy!
Son Seals - On My Knees
“Nobody today is nearly smart enough to make the sorts of weapons even the poorest nations had a million years ago. Yes, and they were being used all the time. During my lifetime, there wasn’t a day when, somewhere on the planet, there weren’t at least three wars going on. And the Law of Natural Selection was powerless to respond to such new technologies. No female of any species, unless maybe she was a rhinoceros, could expect to give birth to a baby who was fireproof, bombproof, or bulletproof.”
-- Kurt Vonnegut
News and Opinion
Poland could send Leopard tanks to Ukraine without German approval
The Polish prime minister has said his country would be willing to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine without securing Germany’s approval if Berlin does not agree to their re-export at Friday’s meeting of western defence ministers at Ramstein airbase.
Mateusz Morawiecki said in a radio interview on Thursday that “consent was of secondary importance” when it came to German-made tanks, because the key issue was to get military aid to Ukraine urgently.
“We will either obtain this consent quickly, or we will do it ourselves,” Morawiecki added, heaping further pressure on Berlin to allow German made Leopard 2s to be sent to Ukraine in preparation for a spring offensive.
His comments came as the US Defense Department formally announced new military assistance for Ukraine valued at up to $2.5bn, including armoured vehicles and support for Ukraine’s air defence. The aid includes 59 Bradley fighting vehicles and 90 Stryker armoured personnel carriers, but not Abrams tanks.
Poland, along with Finland, has said it wants to give 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, which would normally require German approval, but it is one of a number of countries trying to force the pace at a time when Berlin is still negotiating.
Bakhmut Operationally Encircled, Russia Advance Zaporozhye; West Talks Tank Deliveries Ramstein
US “likely” to send long-range missiles to Ukraine
The United States will “likely” announce that it is sending long-range missiles with a range of over 100 miles to Ukraine this week, US officials told Politico. The weapons system, known as the ground-launched Small Diameter Bomb, is a rocket-launched maneuverable glide bomb with double the range of the HIMARS missiles Washington has already provided.
Seeming to confirm Politico’s report, Ben Hodges, former commanding general of US Army Europe, wrote on Twitter: “GLSDB (ground launched small diameter bombs) will reduce sanctuary for Russians. Life is about to start getting very uncomfortable for Russian navy, air force and ammunition handlers on Crimea, along the ‘land bridge’... and hopefully soon for repair crews on Kerch Bridge.”
Hodges’ statement implies that the missiles would be used to attack the Crimean Peninsula.
The announcement would mark a repudiation of Biden’s pledge in May that “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders,” and his declaration that “We’re not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that strike into Russia.”
The announcement is expected to be made Friday at the meeting of the imperialist powers funding, arming and directing the Ukrainian military, which will be held at America’s Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.
Russia moves to leave European treaties
President Vladimir Putin instructed Russian lawmakers on Tuesday to adopt a law that would formally end the country’s participation in 21 treaties and charters related to the Council of Europe. Moscow withdrew from the human rights body last March, claiming it had been captured by the US and its allies and only serves Western political objectives. ...
The CoE was established in 1949 by several Western European countries, with a mission to promote “democracy, human rights and the rule of law.” Russia joined the organization in 1996 and in 1998 ratified the human rights convention.
In February 2022, however, 42 out of 47 members voted to suspend Moscow’s membership, citing the conflict in Ukraine. Russia condemned the “openly political” decision by which the nominally neutral body sided with the US and NATO, and withdrew from the CoE on March 15.
In June, Putin signed a law that declared all verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights after March 15 null and void in Russia. Moscow formally repealed the convention accepting the ECHR jurisdiction in September 2022. The following month, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution urging member countries to declare “the current Russian regime as a terrorist one.”
Peru: growing outrage over protest deaths as president urged to resign
Peru’s capital city is bracing for further unrest as thousands of protesters from across the country pour into Lima to demand the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, after nearly six weeks of turmoil that has claimed close to 50 lives.
Two more people were killed late on Wednesday and another seriously injured in Macusani, a city in the southern region of Puno. After the deaths, protesters torched a police station, forcing officers to flee in a helicopter. In Lima, police fired teargas after clashes broke out with protesters.
Outrage over the rising death toll has powered the growing protests, which began in early December in support of ousted former president Pedro Castillo but have shifted overwhelmingly to demand Boluarte’s resignation, the closure of congress and fresh elections. Boluarte was Castillo’s vice-president, who replaced him after he attempted to shutter congress and rule by decree on 7 December.
Human rights organisations and the UN have accused Peru’s security forces of using disproportionate force in the protests, including firing live ammunition and launching teargas canisters from helicopters.
Edgar Stuardo Ralón, vice-president of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, detailed last week that a fact-finding mission had “received reports of indiscriminate shootings against demonstrators in certain regions … as well as other reports of shots aimed at vital points [of the body] with lethal and high-calibre weapons in violation of the principle of the gradual use of force.”
Jeremy Corbyn on Freeing Julian Assange, the Working Class, Brazil, Peru & Ending Ukraine War
Harvard reverses decision on role for Israel critic after outcry
Following a storm of protest, Harvard’s Kennedy School has reversed its decision to deny a fellowship to the former head of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Kenneth Roth, over criticisms of Israel.
The decision by the Kennedy School dean, Douglas Elmendorf, to refuse Roth a position at the school’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy drew widespread condemnation, including from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other free speech advocates, and hundreds of Harvard faculty and students.
Roth told the Guardian at the time that the move amounted to “donor-driven censorship” over HRW’s exposure of Israel’s human rights abuses and the group’s recent report accusing Israel of practicing a form of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories. Roth said he regarded the move as a reflection of “how utterly afraid the Kennedy School has become of any criticism of Israel”.
On Thursday, Elmendorf told Kennedy School staff and students that the decision had been a mistake and that Roth would be accepted after all.
“I now believe that I made an error in my decision not to appoint him,” he said in the email. “I am sorry that the decision inadvertently cast doubt on the mission of the School and our commitment to open debate in ways I had not intended and do not believe to be true.”
More than 1m march in France amid strikes over plan to raise retirement age
More than 1 million people have taken part in demonstrations across France as transport, schools and refineries were hit by strikes in protest at Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plans to raise the retirement age by two years to 64. The interior ministry said 1.12 million people protested nationwide on Thursday, with 80,000 taking part in the biggest rally in Paris. Trade unions said the figure was even higher.
Police made arrests on the edges of the march in central Paris amid clashes with officers in the early afternoon. Police said 15 people were arrested before the Paris march and 15 during it, for offences such as carrying illegal weapons or throwing projectiles. Shopkeepers around the Place de la République boarded up windows and shopfronts after the authorities warned of a possibility of vandalism after the marches or black bloc-style tactics.
Local and regional train services across France ground almost to a standstill, and public transport in cities including Paris was “very disrupted”, according to operators. Many primary schools closed for the day. Authorities estimated 40% of primary teachers and more than 30% of secondary teachers went on strike. Unions said participation was higher, at 70% in primary schools. ...
The 24-hour strike and protests in 200 towns and cities are the first big test for Macron since his re-election against his far-right rival Marine Le Pen last spring.
Macron has made the pensions issue a marker of his aim to transform France and overhaul its social model and welfare system. He insists he will deliver his key election pledge to change the French pension system – raising the retirement age for most people to 64 from 62 and increasing the years of contributions required for a full pension. Opinion polls have shown most French people oppose these proposals and view them as unjust, even if many agree with a need for change.
The Most Mental Tweet Ever From A Corporate Journalist
Mainstream media ignores Twitter files exposing MSM lies
Manchin Pitches Social Security Deal With GOP
Sen. Joe Manchin provoked outrage Wednesday by suggesting congressional Democrats should agree to pursue changes to Social Security as part of a debt ceiling agreement with Republicans, an idea one advocacy group condemned as "negotiating with legislative terrorists."
In an interview on Fox Business—conducted at the annual gathering of corporate and political elites in Davos, Switzerland—the West Virginia Democrat said that "we have a debt problem" and argued members of both parties should "work together" on solutions. The senator singled out Social Security, even though the program can't by law add to long-term deficits.
While Manchin voiced opposition to GOP calls to privatize Social Security, saying such proposals "scare the bejesus out of people," he said Congress "should be able to solidify it, so the people who have worked and earned it know they're going to get it."
The problem, from the perspective of Social Security defenders, is Manchin's suggested avenue for reforms: Bipartisan congressional committees that critics have denounced as "a Trojan horse to cut seniors' benefits."
"Hell no to even a single penny of cuts to Social Security's earned benefits," the progressive group Social Security Works tweeted Wednesday in response to Manchin's comments. "Hell no to fast-track commissions designed to cut benefits behind closed doors."
Under legislation that Manchin has introduced alongside Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Congress would establish bipartisan "rescue" committees for the nation's trust fund programs—including Social Security and Medicare—and give the panels 180 days to devise "legislation that restores solvency and otherwise improves each." (Analysts and advocates reject the notion that Social Security is in financial crisis and needs "rescuing.")
The bills produced by the bipartisan committees would then be placed on an expedited path to floor votes in both chambers of Congress, with no amendments allowed.
US supreme court says it has not determined who leaked Dobbs draft
The US supreme court said on Thursday it has not determined who leaked a draft of the court’s opinion overturning abortion rights, but that the investigation continues.
According to a 23-page report released by the court after an eight-month investigation, the investigative team “has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence”.
On 2 May, the bombshell leak was made public after Politico published the draft opinion of Justice Samuel Alito that overturned Roe vWade. Within 24 hours, Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the draft’s authenticity and ordered court marshal Gail Curley to investigate the leak.
Investigators “conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees, all of whom denied disclosing the opinion” in sworn affidavits under the penalty of perjury. According to the Wall Street Journal, the interviews were at times fairly brief and included questions such as: “Did you do it? Do you know anyone who had a reason to do it?”
Some employees had to amend their written statements after they “admitted to telling their spouses about the draft opinion or vote count”, the report said, adding that “some personnel handled the Dobbs draft in ways that deviated from their standard process for handling draft opinions”. The court said it could not rule out that the opinion was inadvertently disclosed, “for example, by being left in a public space either inside or outside the building”.
US government hits debt ceiling as Biden and House Republicans face off
The US government has hit the ceiling on its debt, brushing up against its legal limit of $38.381tn and piling pressure on Congress to approve an increase to avoid a debt default in the coming months that would send a shock wave through the global economy.
In a letter to congressional leaders, the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said it would begin taking “extraordinary measures” to make the government’s cash on hand last until Congress acts. These include a “debt issuance suspension period” lasting from today until 5 June, as well as suspending investments into two government employee retirement funds.
“As I stated in my January 13 letter, the period of time that extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty, including the challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the US government months into the future. I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” Yellen wrote.
The countdown toward a possible US government default puts the spotlight on frictions between President Joe Biden and House Republicans, raising alarms about whether the US can sidestep a potential economic crisis.
Heh, it's time for "progressives" to get creative, now that the House has changed hands and their bills have little chance of coming to the floor, much less being passed.
House Dems Introduce Bill to Overturn Citizens United
To end an era in which wealthy corporations have been given free rein to spend nearly unlimited money on political campaigns, Democrats in the U.S. House on Thursday proposed a constitutional amendment that would overturn the hugely consequential Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by U.S. Supreme Court, saying the ruling "has dangerously eroded" the government's ability to serve the public interest.
Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) led dozens of co-sponsors in introducing the Democracy for All Amendment two days before the 13th anniversary of the Citizens United decision, in which the court struck down a ban on corporate independent expenditures. ...
The proposal, said the campaign finance reform group End Citizens United, "strikes at the heart" of the 2010 ruling.
"It would affirm the right of the people to pass state and federal laws by restoring Congress' and the states' authority to place [limits] on political spending," said the group.
In addition to overturning Citizens United, the Democrats aim to overturn the "fundamental flaws" and legal precedents that underpinned the court's reasoning in 2010 and in "an entire line of cases dating back to the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, which prevented meaningful regulation of campaign expenditures by corporations and special interest groups."
Light pollution rapidly reducing number of stars visible to naked eye, study finds
“There is no light in earth or heaven / But the cold light of stars,” wrote the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. But for myriad writers and artists, that source of inspiration could be fading as research has revealed light pollution is rapidly reducing the number of stars visible to the naked eye. The study, published in the journal Science, suggests locations with 250 visible stars at present will have just 100 visible stars in 18 years.
“If these trends continue, eventually it will be very difficult to see anything at all in the sky, even the brightest constellations. Orion’s belt will start to disappear at some point,” said Dr Christopher Kyba, of the German Research Centre for Geoscience and first author of the research.
The team write that the glow produced by artificial lighting grew exponentially over the 20th century with population growth, new technologies, and expansion of towns and cities. However the impact of a shift to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in recent years is unclear. Satellites that can measure skyglow have limited resolution and cannot detect some wavelengths of light emitted by LEDs.
To delve deeper, the team analysed 51,351 citizen scientist observations of stars visible to the naked eye, made between 2011 and 2022 as part of a project called Globe at Night. Participants were asked to use a website to view a selection of star charts for their location – each showing an incrementally greater number of the stars that exist in that patch of sky – and pick the chart that best matched what they could see. ... The results reveal that on average across locations where participants made observations, sky brightness is increasing by 9.6% a year, with the figure slightly lower, at 6.5%, in Europe and slightly higher, at 10.4%, in North America.
Californians ‘harvest’ water during historic storms
When Kitty Bolte looked at her yard at the start of California’s powerful winter storms, she saw more than half a foot of standing water behind her house. At first Bolte, a horticulturalist by trade, contemplated pumping it out on to the street. But with the historic rains coming in the midst of a historic drought, that seemed oddly wasteful.
So instead, she and her boyfriend decided to save it. They found a neighbor selling IBC totes – large 330-gallon plastic containers surrounded by wire – on Craigslist, and filled them up using an inexpensive Home Depot pump. They also dragged some spare garbage cans outside to sit under the downpour, gathering 800 gallons in all.
California has experienced some of the heaviest winter storms in memory this month, causing widespread and destructive flooding. But the influx of water has also prompted another, more hopeful question – how can we keep some of it around for good? ...
Bolte’s plan is to store the water she gathered and use it in the summer to water their native trees, which helps assuage her guilt about cultivating a garden in a drought. “This makes me feel relieved to keep them alive in the summer by not using water that could be used for other sources.” ...
The practice can be as simple as putting out a bucket when it rains. It saves money by reducing future water bills. It also keeps stormwater from carrying trash, chemical and pet waste into the Pacific Ocean – reducing the bacterial spikes that happen after storms. Harvesting also saves energy: 20% of all the power generated in California goes into moving, treating and using water. And when water enters a yard instead of the streets it helps to replenish underground aquifers.
Deforestation in Brazil: Soya farming eats up savanna region
Greta Thunberg blasts decision to let UAE oil boss chair climate talks
Four years after taking the World Economic Forum by storm, Greta Thunberg returned to Davos on Thursday to blast the United Arab Emirates for appointing the head of its state-owned oil company to chair the Cop28 climate talks later this year.
Thunberg said it was “completely ridiculous” that Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), will preside over the next round of global climate talks in Dubai in November.
She told an event on the sidelines of the WEF’s annual meeting in Davos that lobbyists have been influencing these conferences “since, basically, forever”.
“This just puts a very clear face to it,” she added. “It’s completely ridiculous.”
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Israel’s Hard-Right Turn Fails to Raise Alarm in US Media
US Supreme Court About to Eviscerate the Right to Strike
Republicans demand massive cuts in social spending as countdown begins for debt ceiling crisis
FTC Urged to Crack Down on Egg Industry's 'Organized Theft'
San Francisco man arrested after spraying homeless woman with hose
‘All-natural’ Simply Orange Juice has high toxic PFAS levels, lawsuit alleges
Legendary US musician David Crosby dies aged 81
Leftist vs. Liberal Critiques of the Twitter Files
Keenan Anderson: BLM Cofounder Patrisse Cullors Demands Justice for Cousin’s Death After LAPD Tasing
How Adam Schiff directed Twitter censorship
A Little Night Music
Son Seals ~ Going Back Home
Son Seals - Bad Axe
Son Seals - I Can't Hear Nothing But The Blues
Son Seals - Let It Go
Son Seals - Your Love Is Like A Cancer
Son Seals - Buzzard Luck
Son Seals - Cotton Picking Blues
Son Seals - Frank And Johnnie
Son Seals - The Woman I Love
Son Seals - Jelly , Jelly
Son Seals - Sadie
Son Seals - Going Home Where Women Got Meat On Their Bones
Comments
With reference to Julian Assange.
evening humphrey...
pfffffttt!!! that would require a spine.
A play on words.....Thanks but no Tanks.
no tanks to Ukraine or anywhere -
The USA and Germany will not donate tanks yet. - me: good decision
(yet?) - dare you idiots to ever donate tanks.
One of the reasons: it will take a lot of time to train them to operate the Abrams; - me: dishonest and bad and fake excuse or explanation.
I should close my eyes and put some plugs in my ears and ignore all those bullshitters there are.
Good Night from my parts of the woods.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Maybe the reason for for the latest weapons donations is
Write off that inventory!
It's great for shareholder value to not show all that obsolete stuff on the books any more. Helluva tax deduction, that...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
heh...
perhaps the u.s. doesn't want to turn up the heat on the boiling frog so quickly. the neocons probably want to see what happens after they help elensky bomb crimea again.
I am unhappy to realize that I start not saying what I think,
that's the beginning of the end, isn't it?
https://www.euronews.com/live
nah...
it's probably just a justifiable precaution given the changes that our societies have made over the past decades, turning their foundational documents into damned pieces of paper, surveilling every citizen 24/7/365 and using unconstitutional law (such as the espionage act) to punish those who provide the details of their corruption.
naw, just the end of the beginning
takes a while to get there
question everything
Big Serge on the fight for Bakhmut
which used to be an important city for Ukraine to keep control of, but now we’re being told that it isn’t. Serge explains why it actually is.
I see so many people saying that Russia is taking too long to win the war. Ukraine had 8 years to build defenses and Russia doesn’t want to lose lots of people by just throwing them at these defenses. Here’s some of the trenches.
Russo-Ukrainian War: The World Blood Pump
On Serge's homepage he has numerous essays on the history of past wars if anyone is interested in that. It was his 1st essay on this conflict that got me interested in what he has to say. I suggest reading the first one and the one on the politics of war.
Great essay on how NATO is demilitarizing itself..it’s almost funny
Tanks for Nothing: NATO Keeps On Demilitarising Itself in Ukraine
The headline gives away what the essay is about. Russia said that one of its goals was to demilitarize Ukraine, NATO is doing that to itself by itself by clearing out all its own equipment and sending it to Ukraine so that Russia can destroy it. Also it seems like every other day Biden is finding a few billion dollars to spend on Ukraine whilst people here sure can use those dollars instead. Funny how during this fight over the debt ceiling no one is calling that out.
I took Sam swimming in the snow today. She went right for the deep powder and started making snow tunnels with her nose and just had a swell time. Until some dumb woman let her dawg out to play and he kept getting ruff with Sam who unkindly told him to knock it off. I kept telling her that he was playing too ruff. She finally got the hint and went away. Sam went back to snorkeling…
Have a great weekend all. Thanks for the news and blues.
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
evening snoopy...
a lot of people seem to have military advice and criticism for the russians. it doesn't seem like they are having more effect on the russians than commentators in a booth at a football game. somehow, like the commentators, regardless of the ineffectuality of their advice and complaints, they can't shut up and stick to the play by play as the game get played.
re: nato demilitarizing itself. it will be darkly funny at the end of this when putin explains his strategy in ukraine was to proceed slowly enough to let the whining zelensky bleed the west dry of military and economic resources.
glad sam is having fun in the snow despite the occasional rude companion. give sam a scritch for me and have a great weekend!
Why Soledar Matters
I've heard more than a few people say the loss of Soledar has little to no strategic importance. A small town, prewar population 8K, there are many other roads to supply Bakmut. The before and after videos show a town completely demolished, the population is now zero.
Soledar did matter. Now that the Russians have taken Soledar they will move on to another town, and that town will be leveled and depopulated. I doubt many of these towns will be rebuilt. People will take root wherever they end up.
Eventually Soledar and all towns will be part of Ukraine again, and to what end will the thousands of lives lost to demolish a small town serve?
Might want to read the 2 essays I posted
You might learn how much propaganda you are believing that your main news sites are feeding you. Good grief you don’t remember babies being thrown out of incubators and Saddam had WMDs just to name 2 recent events that your media sources got wrong?
What was that Bush saying? "Fool me once shame on you, fool me again shame on me, fool me for the 3rd time there won’t be one cuz I won’t get fooled again."
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
evening ban nock...
i sincerely doubt that soledar will be part of ukraine at the conclusion of the u.s.-provoked hostilities with russia. i see no reason why russia would give it up.
it is terrible and immoral that so many people have lost their lives in the process of this war. it was also terrible and immoral that somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 civilians of the donbass region were slaughtered by ukrainian troops and shelling in the 8 years after 2014 while russia was negotiating with the west and ukraine creating the minsk agreements, which we now know the west negotiated in bad faith never intending to stop killing the ethnic russians in the donbass.
it's sad that people can't learn to just get along.
The outcome of that case in the Supreme Court
has the real potential to make strikes so punishing, why do it.
But, that bill to overturn Citizen's United is a winner! s/
Gonna eat some dinner, listen to some war vids you found for us.
Thanks for all you do, joe!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
It is merely a coincidence that the Democrats waited
until the Republicans were the majority before introducing the Citizens United legislation.
Remember when Pelosi sent McConnell 400 bills
that were for we the people and he just ignored them? She didn’t bother resending them when Schumer was in charge and Biden could have signed them. Didn’t she do the same thing during Bush? How can people not see the game by now?
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
I think if you added
overturning, to the Citizen's United legislation sentence, it would bring greater immediate clarity to something so stunningly obvious, when you think about it.
evening otc...
it's kind of funny that the oligarchs are going after unions, which are their best line of defense against the working class.
if the oligarchs through their flunkies make unions unworkable, people will find other, less savory means of fighting back against their oppressors.
Evening joe and bluesters
I haven't gotten past Son Seals to the news yet. Thank you!
evening janis...
heh, take your time and linger for a while with son seals.
Good evening Joe, thanks for the evening blues.
Whilst scanning a map of Eastern Ukraine, I discovered that Solidar & Bakmut, etc. are east and south of Poltava and Kursk, but not yet close enough to the Black Sea for it to anchor their flank. I do suspect that the Rus brass are looking for a threepeat, and quite likely to get it too. Now all we need is for NATO to send a lot more armor to that area pronto, preferably led by elensky, but anybody will do. I tried to add Borodino to the mix, but the mapware just took me to the Kursk airport, though, as it turns out, it is seriously to the north of Kursk, but due north.
One gets an interesting visual using der googly maps to plot a drive from Lake Peipus to Borodino to Kursk to Poltava to Bakmut, somewhat telling, in fact.
Have a wonderful weekend
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
This map might offer some perspective.
If you open the image in the tweet to anew tab it is expandable and easier to view.
What I wanted to see and visualize was the relative
locations of:
Lake Peipus - Kievan Rus under Nevsky stomp the Teutonic nights
Borodono - Napolean gets his
Kursk - Hitler gets his
Poltava - Charles XII gets his
Solidar/Bakmut - elensky's turn
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
heh, i pulled up the google maps and took a cursory look at bakhmut and it was pointing out hotels and restaurants. no indication that there was heavy fighting going on.
have a great weekend!
Suspect it is too late for tanks
And -elensky wants this too?
question everything
If they hope to match the previous disasters alone the
line I outlined they need to get a ton more troops and armor for the Rus to encircle and wipe out.
be well and Have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
In Times like These
…I’ve been entertained by Caitlin Johnstone’s occasional art bombs, which show up every once in a while in my email. In the moment it takes to read them, my pilot light is relit. When I didn't even know it blew out.
Articles, poems, stories and thoughts by Caitlin Johnstone. Will always remain free.
.
An excerpt from today:
.
As always, thank you for the honest news, Joe. Thanks for lighting the way down the difficult path we here have chosen.
You have left so many of the people you touch in the Evening News, 'bluer" but better than you found them.
evening pluto...
thanks for caitlin's suggestion that now is the time we ought to start thinking and demanding bigger, because, well, what the hell, why not?
i hope that i've given a lot of people the blues in a good way. as far as i'm concerned the blues are the greatest survival medicine that exists.
have a great weekend!
Hi bluesters
Hi all, Hey Joe, Hope it's all good out there!
Still have a Phone Co./dsl problem here. A major problem for us here obviously...
At least we got the blues! Son Seals was really a great player. I can't imagine getting to incubate amongst the greatness like he did at the beginning. He really made it into a great style. Not sure but I might have known the woman he wrote that one for, 'Your Love is Like Cancer'. Or maybe a cousin...
There is little to no research on how light pollution affects nocturnal animal behavior, save at the larger animal levels. Forget it with inverts like insects. But I can assure you, it is devastating to be lit up if you are nocturnal. Prey items get eaten more, and predators stand out more. It is a lose lose situation.
How can people in light-polluted cites understand their place in the universe when they can't see it?
Be well, have good ones all!
Thanks for the great soundscapes Joe!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Great question dystopian
Wouldn't cities be more liveable if they turned the lights out for a period of every night. Might help convert some of the dwellers.
evening dystopian...
sorry to hear about your continuing dsl problem. i hated dsl when i had it, verizon's dsl service was just terrible but it was what i could get at the time.
yep, i live pretty near to one of those light island cities where office buildings stay lit up all night, as do empty parking lots, closed businesses signs and people who have stalag lights on their homes. in my neighborhood we've got people whose lights are on motion sensors which come on whenever a car, person, dog or deer go by. given the numbers of deer we have, those lights get a workout. the numbers of stars that i can see on a clear night around here has dwindled considerably over the decades - it's just another way that industrial society is cutting us off from our natural habitat.
have a great weekend!
Hey remember the flag from Bakmut that Zelensky
delivered to congress after he visited the troops there and there was a lot of hullabaloo? Well now Zelensky is being told to abandon Bakmut by the Biden administration. So much for it being one of the most important cities to defend.
Well Big Serge dares to differ how important it is because of all the major roads leading to other towns in the vicinity. But it’s good that lots of people won’t have to die for something that’s not important. In the tweet I posted you can see how well fortified the defenses are in the area after Merkle, Hollande, Macron and Zelensky made their sham treaty with Russia so they could buy time to build them and get ready for the war they planned with Russia. Apparently Russia is going to take legal action against them.
I wonder what Pelosi will do with the flag now?
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
I wonder what Pelosi will do with the flag now?
She probably put it in her closet with the Kente Cloth and the other props she has used for photo ops.
@snoopydawg I think one of the big
I think one of the big reasons Bakhmut and Soledar matter is that they are (besides Mariupol) two of the most built up defenses in Ukie. As Big Serge covers, there has been 8 years of construction of defensive positions. Soledar sits atop miles of tunnels from the salt mines underneath. If I understand correctly Bakhmut also sits atop lots of tunnels and mines.
Mearsheimer (in a recent talk to Hungarians) suggests that the RU position is that if UA cannot be a good neighbor then they will be reduced to rubble. UA will become a rump, mostly unusable. I am not sure that I totally agree on that point. RU is getting within range of a town called Krivy Righ (sp?) that is home base to some very toxic mining operations. (I know of this just from reading in the past about environmental issues). Toxic mining operations aren't just for fun. Surely they are pulling something out of the ground there that is of great value. RU will want that under their control.
I suspicion that the long game of RU will be to rebuild the 4 oblasts and make it more enticing for neutral minded Ukies to move there. Polling suggests that while the split in UA is around 65-35, many of the 65% that support UA will in the end be neutral minded enough that they will choose to live wherever the economy and lifestyle is better. RU did themselves a huge favor in the beginning of this SMO by making sure pensioners were getting their benefits. Which had been denied to them by the UA gov in some cases since 2014. Governments taking care of the needs of their citizens goes a long way. Remember when our country used to try that?
I'm glad you've brought up
the issues of pensions, and I think even the most comprehensive criticisms of our policies in Ukraine completely leave out the AUSTERITY measures imposed by our post-coup IMF loans to Ukraine, loss of hospital benefits, reduction of pensions, loss of school lunches (nasty) and the like.
But I think a bigger issue is WAGES. Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe, has enormous resources, has a skilled workforce, and yet after the coup it went from being the second poorest country in Europe, after Moldova, to the poorest. Why? How could an "energy holding company," Burisma, afford to pay an American lawyer $50,000 a month for 5 years when the workforce that produced that largess was the poorest in Europe?
That's what this conflict is about. Russia has raised the standard of living of its workforce from the slavery of our Shock Doctrine to a level of prosperity, and our Shock Doctrinaires won't allow that in Ukraine.
As I recall, Beau of Fifth Column vids were being posted at c99%
a while back, and were getting a positive reception?
It seems that at some point the guy was exposed as not being what he presented himself as / not what The Powers That Be’s “perception managers” who promoted him thought he was — somehow I missed all that.
https://news.yahoo.com/effort-stem-online-extremism-accidentally-1200065...