You don't have to believe anything that Putin said to see that Tucker Carlson's interview has gotten people talking about Ukraine pre-2022, and starting a discussion is what journalism is all about. And that's a good thing, unless of course you don't want people discussing the historical context of the war in Ukraine. I'll wager that Tucker's critics did not watch the interview. They don't believe it would be informative.

Ring In the New Year!

Many of us have thoughts on the old year, as we ring in the new. R.J. Eskow (The Zero Hour on Youtube) recently published his musing about the past year, and I found my own thoughts on 2023 to be reflected in the essay. The piece is called '2023: The year the monster showed its face'.

Eskow quotes MLK speaking about the three triplets - racism, extreme materialism and militarism - which Eskow likens to the three faces of a monster:

They’re the three heads of a single creature with many arms: social, ecological, imperial, even spiritual. We knew about this monster years ago. The people we admired, like Dr. King and Malcolm X, talked about it. It was debated, protested. Then it was forgotten. Soon, people doubted it was ever real.

But it is. It has shown its face in the destruction of Gaza.

Pro-Palestinian supporters blocking I-5 in Seattle. From this article, with many more pictures, on the protestors calling for a cease fire.

Doing This Yet Again? I Guess We Have To

After the start of the current Gaza war Dennis Kucinich wrote a really good essay about why we should not do war, should not support war (even if it's Israel in their latest pogrom) and so on. The essay is called, 'Thou shalt NOT Kill' and is pretty darn good. It got me to thinking, 'Maybe, maybe it's not entirely useless to protest this damned war and the Ukrainian war and all the others...' Anyway, the essay is worth reading. It does make me wonder, is the obvious disagreement between Kucinich's and RFK, Jr's ideas about the Israel Gaza war what made Kucinich leave the campaign?

Pro-Peace/Palestine March in Washington, DC from NPR

Biden asks Congress for more than $13 billion to support Ukraine and $12 billion for disaster fund

One of the byproducts of this "leak" is that we now know that there are US Special Forces inside Ukraine. Here are Krystal and Saagar offering up a scoop:

I have just finished watching a two hour plus Roundtable Discussion about the current situation in Ukraine, hosted by Gonzalo Lira, Larry Johnson, Andrei Martyanov and Alexander Mercouris. If you are interested enough in coming to a better understanding of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine to spend 2+ hours with a well qualified group of analysts exchanging their perspectives, I can not think of a more thought provoking venue.

In general I have to thank a few of the voices on this site for really opening up my eyes to the urgency of the antiwar efforts. It's not just about war -- as horrible as that is. It's also the single largest carbon producer on the planet. It's also the reason why we can't have nice things. It's also the reason things like terrorism are so prevalent and the west figures so prominently in the targets. And so when I stumbled across this little gem in newsweek, on Christmas Eve no less, I just wanted to spit.