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Saturday, February 26, 2022

The Endgame In Russia

Putin's Russia is a minor size economy. The Putin regime inside Russia is illegitimate. Putin is an autocrat. The people of Ukraine are being asked to fight the fight that the Russians inside Russia needed to fight. I don't see how this is going to go down well for Putin. Putin taking Kyiv is when the countdown begins. It is only a matter of time before the Putin regime implodes. Hopefully, Russia will see a liberal democracy and a subsequent resurgent economy. Ukraine will pave the way. A resurgent Russian economy will earn Russia its rightful place on the world map. This is Putin's Afghanistan. Liberty is worth fighting for. Putin just made a very bad move. Support for him will collapse inside Russia. NATO can not send in troops. But it needs to send in all possible military aid. It needs to organize camps for Ukrainian rebel fighters outside of Ukraine in the neighboring NATO member countries where they may regroup and plan their moves. The president of Ukraine needs to make a strategic retreat and step outside the country to become an active symbol of resistance. This is Afghanistan but it will not last 10 years. Putin is lucky if it will last one year. 

This is not about the United States. This is about Ukraine. This is not about NATO. This is about Ukraine. Ukraine is a sovereign country with the right to decide its own destiny. Putin is in the wrong. Putin's sugar high of the Ukraine invasion will not last. The hangover will kick in fast and will be lingering. 


Street fighting begins in Kyiv; people urged to seek shelter Russian troops are storming toward Ukraine’s capital, and street fighting is breaking out ....... The country's president refused an American offer to evacuate, insisting that he would stay. “The fight is here,” he said. ..........  Skirmishes reported on the edge of the city suggested that small Russian units were probing Ukrainian defenses to clear a path for the main forces. .........  Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered renewed assurance Saturday that the country’s military would stand up to the Russian invasion. In a video recorded on a downtown street, he said he had not left the city and that claims that the Ukrainian military would put down arms were false. ........... Putin is determined to overthrow Ukraine's government and replace it with a regime of his own. ......... quoted the president as saying that “the fight is here" and that he needed anti-tank ammunition but “not a ride.” ......... The U.S. and other global powers slapped ever-tougher sanctions on Russia as the invasion reverberated through the world’s economy and energy supplies. U.N. officials said millions could flee Ukraine. Sports leagues moved to punish Russia, and even the popular Eurovision song contest banned it from the May finals in Italy. ........... The 11-1 vote, with China, India and the United Arab Emirates abstaining, showed significant opposition to Russia’s invasion of its smaller, militarily weaker neighbor. .......... up to 4 million could flee if the fighting escalates. ........ Zelenskyy earlier offered to negotiate on a key Putin demand: that Ukraine declare itself neutral and abandon its ambition of joining NATO. ......... Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, called the sanctions against Putin and Lavrov “an example and a demonstration of a total helplessness” of the West.

As Putin eyes Ukraine invasion, Trump praises his actions as 'genius'.  Donald Trump is calling the actions of the Russian president "genius" and "savvy." .......  Trump praised the Russian president while simultaneously slamming President Joe Biden for the situation. ......... Trump has long expressed an admiration for Putin, saying on Tuesday that as president, he got along "great" with the Russian leader. "He liked me. I liked him. I mean, you know, he's a tough cookie, got a lot of great charm and a lot of pride," Trump said. "And he loves his country, you know? He loves his country."

Putin was playing Biden all along The U.S. president and his aides thought they could manage Putin. Their calculations were dead wrong.  .........  for the past year, Biden tried repeatedly to reason with the steely-eyed strongman. ........... In launching a massive assault on Ukraine this week, Putin proved that he sees the world, and his interests, very differently than Biden hoped. He also proved resistant to many traditional tools of diplomacy and deterrence. ...........  The Ukraine attack and the risk of a larger war in Europe also bodes ill for the administration’s ability to focus on other priorities going forward, in particular the challenge of a rising China. ..........  On Thursday, Biden doubled down on the existing strategy, unveiling more sanctions, deploying more U.S. troops to Europe and promising more diplomacy to keep America and its allies unified. He warned that “Putin’s aggression against Ukraine will end up costing Russia dearly economically and strategically. We will make sure of that. Putin will be a pariah on the international stage.” .........  And on Thursday, the Russian leader dramatically escalated what is already an eight-year-long war, bombing major Ukrainian cities in an effort to take as much of the country as possible. ............  Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, as well as its citizens’ preference for democracy, only added to Putin’s fears that the country could be a long-term threat to his own. ........... At the same time, Putin has watched — and sometimes aided — regimes in places like Syria, Venezuela, and Iran, which have survived despite Western diplomatic threats and economic sanctions. ......... Putin is a believer in the ability of hard power to change the global order, and he may simply be less susceptible to what Biden may see as logical appeals to think about his global reputation..........  Putin, meanwhile, believes time is on his side. He’s planning to stay in power long after Biden departs, and he likely expects that the current united front that America and its allies are putting up against him will crack over time, especially if Europe feels ongoing pain from the blowback on Russian sanctions. ........... U.S. and European efforts to isolate Russia through sanctions will likely lead Moscow to lean on Beijing for trade and other economic relations. A solidified China-Russia bloc could then exert significant pressure on other countries to align with it or to at least stay neutral. .......... if Putin’s gambit in Ukraine succeeds, China might apply some of its lessons to its long-standing desire to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control. 

Putin’s Endgame: Unravel the Post-Cold War Agreements That Humiliated Russia Moscow’s military forces threaten Ukraine, but the bigger prize is restoration of Russia’s sphere of influence stretching through Eastern Europe ........  The world’s attention is on eastern Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces circle. Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions extend far beyond. He wants to renegotiate the end of the Cold War.



India explores setting up rupee trade accounts with Russia to soften sanctions blow.  India is exploring ways to set up a rupee payment mechanism for trade with Russia to soften the blow on New Delhi of Western sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine ........ vital supplies of fertilizer from Russia could be disrupted as sanctions intensify, threatening India's vast farm sector. ....... Russia invaded Ukraine by land, air and sea on Thursday in the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two ........ Such mechanisms are often used by countries to shield themselves from the blow of sanctions and India also used it with Iran after it came under Western sanctions for its nuclear weapons programme ........... Russia's exports to India stood at $6.9 billion in 2021, mainly mineral oils, fertilisers and rough diamonds, while India exported $3.33 billion worth of goods to Russia in 2021, mainly pharmaceutical products, tea and coffee. ....... Russia and Belarus usually account for nearly a third of India's total potash imports. It would not be feasible to replace them amid a rally in fertilizer prices to a record high 





Fast becoming a cult hero, Ukraine leader Zelenskyy snubs US offer to evacuate him
Ukraine President rejects US offer to evacuate Kyiv: 'I need ammunition, not a ride' Putin has been reluctant in paying heed to such calls and even urged Ukraine’s military to mutiny. ........ "Strengthening sanctions, concrete defence assistance and an anti-war coalition have just been discussed" with Biden, Zelensky wrote on Twitter while expressing gratitude for "strong" American support.

Ukraine fight isn't proceeding as quickly as Russia expected, U.S. Defense official says Russia has encountered tougher resistance than it had anticipated from Ukrainian troops ...... About a third of the Russian troops that were placed along Ukraine's borders have now crossed into Ukraine

Should we be worried about nuclear war? . “No matter who tries to stand in our way or … create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.” ........ “Today’s Russia remains one of the most powerful nuclear states,” Putin said. ....... The Russian invasion has relied entirely on conventional weapons — tanks rattling down highways, bombers flying overhead, ships landing in the port city of Odesa — and experts told Vox that in the absence of a shocking escalation, that isn’t likely to change. ........ Russia has about 6,000 nuclear weapons and the United States has about 5,500. Either nuclear arsenal is large enough to kill billions of people — but also to serve as a deterrent against attack. ....... The seven other countries known to have nuclear weapons have much smaller arsenals. Most countries in the world have signed onto the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which limits the development of nuclear weapons. ...... “I think there is virtually no chance nuclear weapons are going to be used in the Ukraine situation,” said Matthew Bunn, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and former adviser to President Clinton’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. ........ The main reason, Bunn said, is that the United States and its NATO allies have made clear that they will not send troops to Ukraine. Without the threat of military intervention, Putin has little reason to use his nuclear weapons, especially since Russia has a staggering numbers advantage over the Ukrainian military. ........ “His objective is to simply swallow Ukraine — and restore not just the [power of the] Soviet Union, but the Tsarist empire.” ........ Russia’s roughly 5,977 warheads make it the country with the largest nuclear arsenal. Kristensen said most of those warheads are in reserves, with only about 1,600 deployed as land, sea, and air-based weapons, such as missile silos or bombs dropped by planes. (When the USSR fell apart at the end of the Cold War, there were nuclear weapons left behind on Ukrainian soil, but Ukraine returned them to Russia.) ......... The countries known to have nuclear weapons are Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. That includes every permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, which have been working to modernize their nuclear weapons over the past few decades, and three members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The total number of weapons has dropped by about 80 percent since the end of the Cold War, from an estimated 70,300 in 1986 to 12,700 in early 2022........... “The element of emotion and anger that’s crept into Putin’s statements in particular is striking,” said Hare. “Normally we’ve associated Russia’s diplomatic style with a kind of laconic, almost sarcastic manner.” ........ It’s worth remembering, Kristensen added, that Putin often makes allusions to Russia’s nuclear arsenal as a show of strength. In 2015, he told a Russian state TV documentary that he had considered putting Russian nuclear forces on alert during the Russian annexation of Crimea a year prior. ....... “He lives in a very small bubble, and he’s deeply paranoid,” Kristensen said. “He’s willing to do really not very rational things.” ...... the threat of nuclear weapons is the reason the US won’t send troops to Ukraine. ....... The existence of nuclear weapons “didn’t help us in Vietnam, they didn’t help us in Iraq, they didn’t help us in Afghanistan ......... “The whole international order is sort of being thrown up in the air. Is the Ukraine attack going to be a prelude to an attack on, say, the Baltic States that are even more vulnerable, or is Putin going to be satisfied with Ukraine?” ........ “We’re starting to see large powers begin to sort of entertain the thought of limited tactical nuclear weapons use scenarios, in a way that they didn’t spend very much time thinking about 10 years ago,” said Kristensen. These are the sorts of unlikely scenarios that have been tossed around in war games as contingencies since the Cold War, and could entail strikes on isolated military targets that are far from population centers .......... North Korea continues to build up its nuclear arsenal, India and Pakistan appear to be engaging in an arms race to build up short-range tactical nuclear weapons, and hostility is ratcheting up between the US, Russia, and China. ....... For decades, Bunn added, about one in every 10 US lightbulbs was powered by uranium from decommissioned Russian warheads, which was sent to American nuclear power plants — a reminder that the world actively worked together to turn a tool of destruction into a force for good. “That’s remarkable,” Bunn said. “It’s never been true before in human history that the most powerful weapon available to our species was widely forsworn.”

Russia-Ukraine latest news: Turkey could block Russian warship access to Black Sea, Zelenskiy suggests, in blow to Putin .



Russia’s Assault in Ukraine Slows After an Aggressive Start The invading forces have faced stiff resistance, but President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could quickly send in more troops, Pentagon officials said. ......... For the Russian military, the difficult part came quickly. ........ It is one thing to cross the border of another country with tanks and artillery, protected by warplanes above, Pentagon officials and analysts say. It is another thing entirely to lay siege to cities and an army populated by people willing to put their lives on the line to protect what they view as their sovereign right to self-determination. ......... as Ukrainian fighters mounted a resistance. No population centers had been taken ....... The Ukrainian air defense and missile defense systems were degraded, he said, but the country’s air force was still flying planes and denying air access to Russia. ......... Russia was conducting most of its initial operations during the day, suggesting that its ability to fight at night — a hallmark of the American military — was less effective. ........ Russia was still in the initial phases of an operation that could take two to three weeks to seize most of the country. ........ The Russian military, with its decisive edge in cyberwarfare, tanks, heavy weaponry, missiles, fighter planes, warships and sheer numbers, dwarfs that of Ukraine. ........ While Russia has established attack lines into three cities — Kyiv in the north, Kharkiv in the northeast and Kherson in the south — Ukrainian troops are fighting to hold all three. ....... Ukrainian command and control remains intact. ......... Russia’s attack lines are bottlenecked, a second official said, as Ukrainian troops fiercely engage against the Russians. The resistance, the official said, is why the Russian troops massed at the border have not all crossed. ....... “But it’s a dynamic situation.” ......... If Russian intelligence has figured out where Mr. Zelensky and the rest of the Ukrainian leadership are hiding, the Russian military will probably try to take them out with rockets and airstrikes ......... “But the narrative that they’ve overrun Ukraine is very premature. We’re just a couple of days into this, and it could go on a long time.” ........ Ukrainian troops and citizens are fighting back ........ “The Ukrainians are badly overmatched in technology and sheer combat power, especially in the air and at sea, but are fighting on their homeland to protect their children and families,” said retired Adm. James G. Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander for Europe. “Motivation is far higher on their side, and the intangibles can help.” ....... The Russian military attack continued on Friday as it started the day before: with the terrifying thud of artillery strikes on airports and military installations all over Ukraine. ....... the Russians, using missiles and long-range artillery, were facing particularly strong resistance near Kyiv and Kharkiv. ....... Why Russia has not launched even larger cyberattacks across the country, and shut down virtually all communications, to cut off military units from their commanders in Kyiv and from each other remained a bit of a mystery on Friday. ......... many of Ukraine’s internet and phone communications go through Russia, Moscow might be leaving some lines open to eavesdrop on Ukrainian civilian and military officials. ......... By midday Friday, Russian forces had fired more than 200 missiles, mostly short-range ballistic rockets but also cruise missiles and rockets fired from the Black Sea, at targets across Ukraine ......... Russia insisted it was not bombing civilian targets and was trying to limit casualties in the Ukrainian military. ....... “Putin’s M.O. is to install new government and have them do the dirty work” ... “It’s unclear if he is underestimating the level of Ukrainian nationalism that’s developed since 2014.” .



Thousands of Russians protest President Vladimir V. Putin’s assault on Ukraine. Some chant: ‘No to war!’ At the demonstrations, many people said they felt depressed and broken by the news of Russian military action. ........ Thousands of protesters took to the streets and squares of Russian cities on Thursday to protest President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, only to be met with heavy police presence. ....... While many Russians credit Mr. Putin with lifting their country out of the economic hardship and instability of the 1990s, others are deeply uneasy about his leadership. And tough sanctions that affect everyday Russians, like potential technology embargoes that could separate Russians from their beloved next-generation phones, could diminish his support at home. .......... years of government oppression made the risks of taking part in anti-Kremlin demonstrations very high. ....... Russian people “will only get poorer because we depend on international trade so much.” ............

Oxxxymiron, one of Russia’s most popular rappers, called for an antiwar movement to be created in Russia that would unite people.

......... “I know that most people in Russia are against this war, and I am confident that the more people would talk about their real attitude to it, the faster we can stop this horror,” said Oxxxymiron, also known as Miron Fyodorov. ........... He referred to American protests against the war in Vietnam as an inspiration. “This is a crime and a catastrophe,” he said, adding that he will cancel his six sold out concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg because of what happened. ..... “I cannot entertain you when Russian missiles are falling on Ukraine,” said Oxxxymiron in a statement, published in his Instagram account. “When residents of Kyiv are forced to hide in basements and in the metro, while people are dying.” ....... But last year, with the economy stumbling and the pandemic raging, opposition groups held some of the largest anti-Putin protests in years. .

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Thursday, February 24, 2022

Putin Is Saddam With The WMDs

Vladimir Putin is Saddam Hussein with the Weapons of Mass Destruction that Saddam was accused of having but did not have, it seems. It is in the nature of a dictatorship that it will lose its internal cohesion and tension if it does not do what Putin just did. Saddam felt the strong impulse to go into Kuwait. 

Nukes will not save Putin. You can't unleash WMDs on Ukraine. You can't unleash WMDs on the Russian masses. I don't see how this can end well for Putin. This is the beginning of the end of the Putin regime inside Russia. But Ukraine will pay a terrible price in the process. 

I think Putin's smart move as he sees it is to not occupy Ukraine. Attack, destroy major military installations, but not occupy. To what end? 



Putin Is Making a Historic Mistake Whereas Mr. Yeltsin had cajoled, blustered and flattered, Mr. Putin spoke unemotionally and without notes about his determination to resurrect Russia’s economy and quash Chechen rebels. Flying home, I recorded my impressions. “Putin is small and pale,” I wrote, “so cold as to be almost reptilian.” ..........  He claimed to understand why the Berlin Wall had to fall but had not expected the whole Soviet Union to collapse. “Putin is embarrassed by what happened to his country and determined to restore its greatness.” ..........  After calling Ukrainian statehood a fiction in a bizarre televised address .........  Because he believes that the United States dominates its own region by force, he thinks Russia has the same right. ......... Instead of paving Russia’s path to greatness, invading Ukraine would ensure Mr. Putin’s infamy by leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance. .......... it would generate fierce Ukrainian armed resistance ....... it would be a scenario reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s ill-fated occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. ........ his competition of choice is not chess, as some assume, but rather judo ..........  the current confrontation has left him even more dependent on China ....... America must insist that Russia act in accordance with international standards applicable to all nations. ......... Ukraine is entitled to its sovereignty, no matter who its neighbors happen to be. 

How to Respond to Putin’s Attack on Ukraine  Vladimir Putin has declared war on Ukraine based on three outrageous lies: that Ukraine does not have a right to exist separate from Russia, that Ukraine is committing atrocities against Russian-speaking people, and that the Russian military needs to “de-Nazify” Ukraine (whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish). 

Dictators Aren’t Pretending Anymore The democratic recession is so severe that autocrats now openly stage coups, steal elections, and invade other countries. ........  Then he ordered a full-scale attack on a sovereign nation. Russian missiles blew up targets in key cities including Kyiv, Lviv, and Kharkiv. Russian troops rapidly advanced into Ukrainian territory. War has returned to the heart of Europe. ....... the world has entered the 16th consecutive year of what the political scientist Larry Diamond has termed a “democratic recession.” In 2021, the number of countries moving away from democracy once again exceeded the number of countries moving toward it by a big margin. ........... Democratic institutions and civil rights deteriorated in 60 countries .........  At the beginning of the democratic recession, about half of the world’s population lived in a country classified as “free.” Now only two out of every 10 people do, while four in 10 live in “partly free” nations like India, and another four in 10 live in “unfree” nations like Saudi Arabia. ..............   Over the past few decades, however, aspiring dictators generally came to power through the ballot box, winning (relatively) free and fair elections. Only then did they start to concentrate power in their own hands, undermining independent institutions and curtailing free expression to such an extent that they could no longer be removed from office by democratic means. ............  In the United States and much of Western Europe, the current crisis is mostly about what political scientists call “democratic backsliding”: the weakening of democratic institutions in countries that have long enjoyed them. But around the globe, the most striking aspect of the current moment may be “democratic despondency”: The number of countries aspiring to democracy has fallen to a record low. ...........  the power of the democratic world is being challenged by a rising China and a revanchist Russia; the world’s dictators can turn to resurgent authoritarian regimes for economic investments, military supplies, and international legitimacy. 



Anti-war Protests in Russia  On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine, launching missiles and sending thousands of troops across its borders. Following the attack, protests erupted in countries around the world—including Russia. Hundreds of people gathered in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and other Russian cities to demonstrate against their government’s actions, and calling for an end to the war. Most of these protests were disrupted by police, and many of the demonstrators were detained.



How China Under Xi Jinping Is Turning Away From the World Global engagement has helped the nation prosper. But now, its leader seems intent on recasting the meeting of minds and cultures as a zero-sum clash............  The miracle of modern China was built on global connections, a belief that sending young people, companies and future leaders to soak up the outside world was the route from impoverishment to power. Now, emboldened by its transformation, the country is shunning the influences and ideas that nourished its rise. ...........  Anything seen as — or, increasingly, tarred as — foreign is vulnerable to attack by vitriolic online nationalists. Celebrities promoting vegetarianism have been accused of peddling Western lifestyles. .............  After the Communists took power in 1949, the first Americans to officially enter China, decades later, were nine table tennis players. ........... More than 6.5 million Chinese studied abroad between 1978 and 2019, with the number rising each year. Chinese tech companies listed on Wall Street, their innovations copied by Silicon Valley. Schoolteachers used songs by Western boy bands to teach English, seen as vital for economic opportunities. ........ Between 2002 and 2018, the number of international students in China grew nearly sixfold. ........ Wariness lingered. Deng Xiaoping, the leader who spearheaded the economic opening, memorably warned that an open window brings both fresh air and flies. .........  Increasing hostility from the United States also prodded Chinese leaders into a more defensive posture. ........ Bent on stamping out infections, China canceled virtually all international flights. State media fixated on the West’s death toll. ......... The number of foreigners living in Beijing and Shanghai has dropped by nearly one-third in the past decade .........  First-timers sometimes came nervously, with concerns and misconceptions about government surveillance. But they left impressed by the high-speed trains and safe cities. Some returned for family vacations. ......... While American films once often sat atop the Chinese box office, domestic ones now dominate. Local fashion designers, long dismissed as second-rate, command higher prices. ........... he plans to use a virtual private network to access blocked overseas websites after moving back. 



The Invasion of Ukraine: How Russia Attacked and What Happens Next Explosions thundered in Ukrainian cities shortly after President Vladimir V. Putin declared the start of a “special military operation.” ............  Explosions thundered in the dim light before dawn, minutes after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia cynically declared the start of a “special military operation” to “demilitarize” Ukraine but not occupy the country. ................ Ukrainians had hoped for months that the forecasts of an invasion from Russia, a nation with which they share much history and culture, could not be true. But on Thursday they awoke to its dire reality. ..............  Russian forces destroyed more than 70 military targets in Ukraine, including 11 airfields, three command points and a naval base ............ Explosions were reported in Kyiv, including at the capital’s airport. Russia said its forces had disabled all of Ukraine’s air defenses and air bases, while Ukraine’s military said it had shot down six Russian planes and one helicopter. ............... He has expressed a sense of humiliation at the collapse of the Soviet Union and grievance at how the West filled the void. ..........  In 2008, NATO said Ukraine and Georgia, both former Soviet states, could also join, without detailing when or how that would happen. For Mr. Putin, that crossed a red line. ..............  The country has written into its constitution a goal of joining NATO. .........  have doubts about the strength of the rule of law in Ukraine, a young democracy with extensive corruption.   



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Tuesday, February 22, 2022

News: February 22: Ukraine

'They Drink A Lot, Sell Their Fuel': Belarusians Give Low Marks To Russian Troops Deployed For Drills . "They drink a lot and sell a lot of their diesel fuel. They are living in tents." ..... The maneuvers, a 10-day exercise set to end on February 20 and involving an estimated 30,000 Russian troops and almost the entire Belarusian military ....... soldiers unloading equipment frequently remain on the tracks even as other trains approach within 200 meters of them. ....... loading ramps, rolling stock, and other railroad equipment were reportedly damaged at Khoyniki ....... "Military equipment is frequently dropped from the platforms during unloading," the channel wrote. "After unloading, a lot of abandoned equipment -- body armor, helmets, personal gear -- remained." ....... The same report claimed the troops left the rail lines littered with trash. ...... "Over a stretch of 3 kilometers there were 100-liter trash bags every 20 meters, as well vodka bottles, empty plastic beer kegs, and empty cookie packages" .......... authoritarian Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on February 18. .

Millions of Americans will be forced into an involuntary polar plunge this week . The thermometer will slip to 30 to 40 degrees below normal by Tuesday and Wednesday, as a strong high pressure system begins to spread Arctic air farther south and east. .... Many cities will see a sharp polar plunge in a 48-hour span. .

On Ukraine, U.S. and Russia Wage Signaling War to Avert Actual War Each side is trying to convince the other that the price of conflict is too high. It is a complex game played with deliberate ambiguity, raising the risk of lethal miscalculation. ........ As their standoff over Ukraine continues, Moscow and Washington are playing an increasingly high-stakes, increasingly complex game of signaling to try to secure their aims without firing a shot. ....... It is a form of high-stakes negotiation, conducted in actions as much as words, meant to settle the future of Europe just as conclusively as if decided by war, by telegraphing how a conflict would play out rather than waging it directly. ........ Russia, by shifting thousands of troops from its far east to Ukraine’s border, hopes to convince Washington and Kyiv that it is willing to endure a major war to secure its demands by force, so those countries are better off meeting Russian demands peacefully. ........ Each side also cultivates ambiguity about what it will or will not accept, and will or will not do, in hopes of forcing its adversary to prepare for all eventualities, spreading its energies thin. .... On Tuesday, Moscow moved to recreate confusion, withdrawing a handful of forces even as it continued nearby war games and as Mr. Putin accused Ukraine of genocide against its native Russophone minority. By feinting simultaneously toward de-escalation and invasion on Tuesday, Moscow builds pressure on the West to prepare for both. ....... A range of factors particular to this crisis, she added — differing political cultures, multiple audiences, rising uncertainty — “makes the signaling in this case very, very difficult.” The result is a diplomatic cacophony nearly as difficult to navigate as war itself, with stakes just as high. .......

Putin has been ambiguous about what he would consider a successful invasion of Ukraine.

........ Mr. Biden, for his part, has sent weapons to Ukraine, a message that he would make any conflict more painful for Russia, and has laid out retaliatory sanctions in detail. He has implied Western unity over sanctions that may be just as much a bluff as Mr. Putin’s war talk. ......... each side’s need to persuade multiple audiences of contradictory things. ......... Mr. Biden must persuade Mr. Putin that Western sanctions would be automatic and severe, while also convincing Europeans, who would bear much of the cost, that sanctions would not hit them too hard or be carried out without their consent. ........... Putin is seeking to position himself to Western leaders as ready for war, while convincing

war-averse Russian citizens

that he is being dragged into one ............ Because Kremlin decision-making is dominated by a handful of intelligence and military officials, Mr. Gabuev said, there is a tendency to assume that Washington operates the same way. .......... Many in Moscow, assuming that Mr. Biden operates like Mr. Putin, believe that Washington has ginned up the appearance of conflict with the intention of declaring a false American victory when the more reasonable Mr. Putin rolls back the deployments he has insisted are defensive ........... That misunderstanding significantly eases Mr. Putin’s option to withdraw.

And many in Russia view the West as the aggressor, and so would take an averted conflict as Mr. Putin triumphing, not surrendering.

....... “The Russian president’s circle of trust has consolidated over time, insulating him from information that does not fit with his prior beliefs” ....... strongmen leaders like him are, for just this reason, likelier to start wars and likelier to lose them. ........ what Washington takes as Russian brinksmanship or bluffing, for example shrugging off sanctions threats or implying that some Ukrainians would welcome Russian liberators, may reflect sincere belief due to political dysfunction. .



रुसले १९४५ पछि कै ठूलो युद्धको योजना बनाइरहेको छ : जोनसन
एमसीसीलाई आइपीएससँग जोडेर किन विवाद?
एमसीसीबारे अमेरिका र चीनलाई नेपालले दियो जवाफ

COVID Won’t End Up Like the Flu. It Will Be Like Smoking. Hundreds of thousands of deaths, from either tobacco or the pandemic, could be prevented with a single behavioral change. ......... Choosing not to get vaccinated against COVID is, right now, a modifiable health risk on par with smoking, which kills more than 400,000 people each year in the United States. ....... if COVID continues to account for a few hundred thousand American deaths every year—“a realistic worst-case scenario,” he calls it—that would wipe out all of the life-expectancy gains we’ve accrued from the past two decades’ worth of smoking-prevention efforts. ........

The COVID vaccines are, without exaggeration, among the safest and most effective therapies in all of modern medicine.

............ “this continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” and vaccine holdouts are indeed prolonging our crisis. ......... Smokers are 15 to 30 times more likely to develop lung cancer. Quitting the habit is akin to receiving a staggeringly powerful medicine, one that wipes out most of this excess risk. Yet smokers, like those who now refuse vaccines, often continue their dangerous lifestyle in the face of aggressive attempts to persuade them otherwise. Even in absolute numbers, America’s unvaccinated and current-smoker populations seem to match up rather well: Right now, the CDC pegs them at 13 percent and 14 percent of all U.S. adults, respectively, and both groups are likely to be poorer and less educated. ....... Nearly half of Americans used to smoke; now only about one in seven does. ........ A randomized trial in nursing homes published in January, for example, found that an intensive information-and-persuasion campaign from community leaders had failed to budge vaccination rates among the predominantly disadvantaged and low-income staff. Despite the altruistic efforts of public-health professionals and physicians, it’s becoming harder by the day to reach immunological holdouts. ...... We haven’t banned tobacco outright—in fact, most states protect smokers from job discrimination—but we have embarked on a permanent, society-wide campaign of disincentivizing its use. Long-term actions for COVID might include charging the unvaccinated a premium on their health insurance, just as we do for smokers, or distributing frightening health warnings about the perils of remaining uninoculated. And once the political furor dies down, COVID shots will probably be added to the lists of required vaccinations for many more schools and workplaces. ......... Secondhand-smoke inhalation causes more than 41,000 deaths annually in the U.S. .......... Without greater vaccination, living with COVID could mean enduring a yearly death toll that is an order of magnitude higher than the one from flu. ......... Endemic tobacco use causes hundreds of thousands of casualties, year after year after year, while fierce public-health efforts to reduce its toll continue in the background. Yet tobacco doesn’t really feel like a catastrophe for the average person. ........... We still care for smokers when they get sick, of course, and we reduce harm whenever possible. The health-care system makes $225 billion every year for doing so—paid out of all of our tax dollars and insurance premiums. ........

Compassionate conversations, community outreach, insurance surcharges, even mandates—I’ll take them all.

.

‘Kill Your Commanding Officer’: On the Front Lines of Putin’s Digital War With Ukraine For years, the Russians have used Ukraine as a proving ground for a new type of digital warfare. Is the West ready? ........ “I don’t follow the news. I don’t worry much,” he said. “If there is a war, then there will be a war, and if not, then no.” ........ If Russia invades, which American officials warn is possible in the next few days, Putin would be orchestrating Europe’s biggest land invasion since World War II; sources in Washington estimate as many as 50,000 civilian deaths. .......... The Russians have for nearly a decade used Ukraine as a proving ground for a new and highly advanced type of hybrid warfare — a digital-meets-traditional kind of fighting defined by a reliance on software, digital hardware and cognitive control that is highly effective, difficult to counter and can reach far beyond the front lines deep into Ukrainian society. ............... has also turned Ukraine, especially its eastern provinces, but also the capital, into

a bewildering zone of instability, disinformation and anxiety

. ......... and wage psychological warfare, like sending threatening text messages to soldiers ........ Digital warfare has threatened more of Ukrainian society since 2021 than traditional munitions. ......... and the use of social networks to undermine morale and confidence of their forces ........... “What I worry about the most is Ukrainian reliance on trench warfare in the face of a 21st century Russian force.” ....... The Russian government’s digital-savvy capabilities are nothing like that which the U.S. military contended with during the long wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and in Syria. .......... Yet a digital incursion was ongoing, the war already unfolding in silence. ........ Another soldier added: “There was a situation recently. A dude gets a call from his mom and dad saying they got a message that, ‘Your son is dead.’ So people get scared. It happens a lot.” ........ First there came the humming of an unmanned aerial vehicle able to clone cellular networks to locate active cellphones, followed by cyberattacks against Ukrainian command and control systems. Their communication systems disabled, Ukrainian forces were unable to coordinate with one another. Then, short-range rocket systems from inside Russia disabled two battalions, including T-64 tanks and amphibious tracked vehicles. Three trucks carrying troops exploded. Stumbling from the transport, one soldier clutched his entrails, and shouted for his mother. The attack killed 30 Ukrainians and wounded hundreds and lasted roughly two minutes. ........... Russian-supported forces could deploy such personalized propaganda and location tracking thanks to its use of UAVs but also its control of cellphone towers and the cellular companies that provide coverage to much of Ukraine. ........ the Leer-3 RB-341V, a drone-based system that can monitor cellular and data transmission networks, suppress wireless communications, locate electromagnetic emission sources and even send text messages to front-line soldiers. .............. “You can’t separate the military from the economy from the technology. That’s why they call it

hybrid warfare

. Russia, they own or operate Ukrainian cellular companies, banks, electricity” .............. Moscow has grown sophisticated in the seamlessness with which it incorporates cyberattacks into its military and social disruption tactics, stirring panic while occasionally causing serious damage that leads to infrastructure and financial losses. .......... on a larger scale, Ukraine’s voting system was hacked and hard drives fried. In 2017, a series of attacks orchestrated through a virus known as NotPetya inflicted $10 billion in damages. It first started as an attack against Ukrainian businesses before going global. ........... While large-scale attacks make headlines, smaller attacks contribute to a sustained disruption of municipal and government services and infrastructure. Ukraine was the victim of roughly 288,000 cyberattacks in the first 10 months of 2021 .............. traditional munitions were exchanged an average of 67 times each day in the Donbas region last year .......... Hungary has blocked Ukraine’s requests to join NATO’s cyber defense center. ....... “Now it all fits into a cell phone,” he said as a cat purred at his feet. “My profession was unnecessary.” ......... After that broadcast, Yaschenko says, separatists “burned” his transmitter. “This was done by electronic warfare professionals, who sent an overpowering signal to the transmitter. They did this for a week, two or three times a day, and we lost a signal. That’s when I realized our radio station was a weapon, and it was up to us how far that weapon could shoot.” ......... “We don’t take information warfare as seriously as we should,” Yaschenko told me. “This is a big blunder from our side. We put a transmitter in Avdeevka to jam their radio station Sputnik … but two weeks later they blew our mast off with a missile.” ............ One woman in Kyiv told me she fled her home in the Donbas after the separatists took over, but could not find work or assistance in the capitol due to rumors that those in the Donbas had not contested the Russian takeover. ............... Conspiracy theories run rampant in the country: On a walk through a small city near the front line, an older man told me, “Jews and Masons divided us.” Among Ukrainian soldiers, I heard rampant disinformation about the current Ukrainian president and witnessed wide divisions over the cause of the current conflict and whether or not Russia was a friend or an enemy. During one car ride, soldiers discussed “the Jewish issue.” In the same breath they then went on to blame the country’s woes on the Azerbaijani diaspora. ..................... “Information and non-kinetic means of warfare are really changing the conflict landscape” ....... Combating Putin’s “firehose” is “a challenge for [the U.S.]” .... “Because our logic is not his logic.” And while the U.S. has historically used what it called “public diplomacy,” its own flavor of propaganda, to further its foreign policy agenda abroad, many claim trying to go toe-to-toe with Putin’s information warfare is antithetical to democracy. .................. I had switched out one of my SIM cards to a local number when the problems began. They came as minor frustrations first — a slow connection, an unplanned reboot, a dropped phone call. Then I began receiving a slew of phishing emails on a scale I have never before experienced. .



Finland's president sees changes in Putin: 'It was a different kind of behavior' He said his nation might consider joining NATO if it felt threatened. ........ he now sounds more “decisive” than in the past. ......... Niinistö said he pushed back against Putin by standing up for his country’s sovereignty. That is when Putin switched tones, he said, then began to “officially” read his list of demands. ....... “Finland is a stable democracy. We are a member of the European Union and part of the West,” he said. “We are not afraid of Russian tanks suddenly crossing the Finnish border.”

Russell Peters leaves Saudi crowd in tears of laughter . Canadian comedian Russell Peters performed at AlUla’s Maraya Theater on Friday, days before his wedding in Los Angeles. ....... the “Act Your Age” world tour. The show is about getting older and the experiences with the new world and new generations. ........ the Kingdom, because of his large fan base. He has also performed in the UAE, Egypt, and Jordan. ........ his mental preparation was before each show to connect with the crowd. ......... “I definitely want to go back to Riyadh, and I have never been to Jeddah, so I would like to go there as well. I am lucky enough to be performing in AlUla now, so we will knock that out of the park and then come back and dip into Riyadh and Jeddah.”

You Just Can’t Tell the Truth About America Anymore . In small towns and big cities alike, would-be commissars are fighting, in the name of a distinct minority of Americans, to stifle open discussion and impose their views on the community at large. Dissenters, when they speak out, are hounded, ostracized and sometimes even forced from their jobs. ......... One of these bills would give parents and state regulators broad authority to ban books or teachings that cause “discomfort” in students, and would put lessons on “the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the world wars, and the civil rights movement” under careful review. Another would permit parents to sue school districts that “encourage classroom discussions” on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in “primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” Critics say this language is so broad as to effectively outlaw any discussion of L.G.B.T. people in elementary school classrooms, or at the very least, strongly discourage teachers from raising those issues, regardless of context. .......... Pushed by militantly conservative activists — and heeding the demands of an increasingly censorious group of conservative voters — Republican lawmakers are, in states across the country, introducing bills that suppress debate and stifle discussion in favor of the rote memorization of approved facts. ....... In South Carolina, lawmakers have introduced a bill — known as the Freedom from Ideological Coercion and Indoctrination Act — that would prohibit any state-funded institution from stating that “a group or an individual, by virtue of his or her race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, heritage, culture, religion, or political belief is inherently racist, sexist, bigoted, ignorant, biased, fragile, oppressive, or contributive to any oppression, whether consciously or unconsciously.” If signed into law, this bill could make it illegal, for instance, for teachers and college professors in the state to criticize members of a white supremacist group since that affiliation might count as a “political belief.” ........... The most disturbing efforts to monitor schools and teachers for wrong-think involve actual surveillance. Bills introduced in Iowa and Mississippi would install classroom cameras that would stream lessons over the internet for anyone to observe. ...... multiple cases of teachers choosing to omit certain facts rather than run the risk of offending these laws, which are often vague and poorly written. ..... As one history teacher in Oklahoma put it, “I am not going to let any of these laws deter me from the things that I think work best for students, but I also enjoy working with students and having a roof over my head.”

Putin’s Baseless Claims of Genocide Hint at More Than War The invocations serve to justify not just Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, but also its wider quest for a new imperial identity rooted in Russian ethnicity. ......... “What is happening in the Donbas today is genocide,” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Tuesday, referring to Ukraine’s east. ........ Extensive coverage on Russian state media portrayed Russian minorities as fleeing a tyrannical Ukrainian military ........ reflect Moscow’s sincere belief that, in a world dominated by a hostile West, it is the rightful protector of Russian populations throughout the former Soviet republics. ....... In that worldview, any break from Moscow’s influence within its sphere constitutes an attack on the Russian people as a whole — particularly in Ukraine, which Mr. Putin considers effectively Russian. ........ Claims of genocide, then, are a way to assert Russia’s sovereignty throughout an ethnic Russian empire that extends well beyond its formal borders — and a right to control that empire with force. ....... In the turmoil of 1990s Russia, nationalist writers like Sergei Glazyev won large audiences by calling Western policies an “economic genocide” against the Russian race. And when relations between Moscow and some of its former satellites broke down in the mid-2000s, charges of genocide became the language of confrontation. .......... a view took hold in Moscow that any threat to its influence over former Soviet republics imperiled the Russian race as a whole. ....... Russia invaded the mostly Russian region of Crimea and backed militants in Ukraine’s mostly Russophone east, presenting itself as protecting populations to which it held a special responsibility. ........... State media saturated Russian homes with false stories, including ones about mass graves filled with Russian minority civilians and a 3-year-old boy crucified by Ukrainian forces that had retaken a separatist-held town. Russian citizens’ support for Moscow’s incursions surged. ............ It tells Russian citizens, who have suffered under eight years of Western-led sanctions in retaliation for Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine, that they are sacrificing for a heroic struggle akin to World War II. It gives them a great empire to once more feel pride in. ..........

And, maybe most important, it provides an ideological justification for a government, otherwise associated with corruption, that offers citizens fewer rights or opportunities.

......... In 2015, as Russia’s economy cratered, Mr. Putin criticized Ukraine’s efforts to isolate Russia-backed separatists: “It smells of genocide,” he said. His government pledged to investigate the “genocide of the Russian-speaking population” in Ukraine. ......... Russia’s foreign minister warned of “genocide through sanctions.” ...... a Kremlin growing steadily more paranoid and confrontational as its sphere of influence has come under greater pressure from crisis in Belarus, an uprising in Kazakhstan and an increasingly hard-line stance toward Moscow in Ukraine. ......... unlike in 2014 .. Russians do not appear to be responding. There has been little of the past groundswell of outrage or sympathy..........

Though Russians widely backed the 2014 invasions of Ukraine, they express little enthusiasm for another.





The Bully in the Bubble Putin and the Perils of Information Isolation . Under Putin, Russia has increasingly become a personalist regime—an authoritarian system in which power is concentrated in a single individual rather than in a ruling party or a military elite. A similar trend has emerged in China under Xi Jinping, in Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and in Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro. Around the world, personalism is on the rise. ....... Putin, for example, prefers to deliberate during small, casual meetings and is so obsessed with secrecy that he doesn’t use a cell phone. This makes it extremely difficult for analysts to understand his policymaking patterns. .......... they choose their circle of advisers based on loyalty rather than competence, surrounding themselves by scared and sycophantic underlings who feed them limited, biased, self-censored, and overly optimistic information. .......... Because personalist rulers are more insulated from the consequences of their actions, they can afford to be more violent and less risk averse than other kinds of autocrats. To repress domestic opposition and keep power, they staff their regimes with devotees from the military and the security services who are prone to aggression and whose hostile outlook begins to permeate foreign policy decision-making. As these courtiers compete for the ruler’s attention, they may leave out inconvenient facts and offer belligerent, eye-catching plans for how to deal with what they see as threats. ...........

the Russian president’s circle of trust has consolidated over time, insulating him from information that does not fit with his prior beliefs

........... The future of Ukraine may hinge on a man ensconced in a bubble that both feeds his aggression and shields him from its consequences. ......... To stay in power, autocrats desperately seek reliable information on the attitudes of their citizens, elite rivals, and foreign threats. But to avoid opposition, they establish political systems that make quality data exceptionally hard to obtain. Leaders suppress dissent, punish free expression, encourage personal loyalty, and divide their security agencies. They therefore struggle to understand both how their people feel and what other states are planning. ........... Consider, for instance, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s behavior before the 2003 Iraq war. Iraqi government records captured by the United States show that he badly underestimated the probability of a U.S. invasion and, in the event of one, expected his troops to put up much greater resistance. That is not because his advisers were (entirely) blind to reality. It is because his underlings—fearful of confronting a dictator famous for violent purges—never challenged his rosy assessments. .............. The Iraq war also, of course, illustrates that democracies can ignore information and make miscalculations, as the Bush administration did by disregarding intelligence that showed Baghdad didn’t have WMDs. But although information problems are not unique to personalist regimes, their structure greatly exacerbates the issue. ............ Their governing bodies can therefore descend into groupthink, and policy can lock onto a single path. This tendency is intensified by the fact that long-standing rulers become more confident in their abilities over time, ignoring or quashing opposition. ...... The FSB, Russia’s successor to the KGB, is playing an increasingly visible role in foreign relations. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by contrast, is now sometimes left out of decisions altogether. .......... a dangerous feedback loop. By most accounts, the president’s advisers uniformly see the West as a grave security threat to Russia, which encourages Putin to adopt an increasingly hostile stance. This in turn provokes the United States and Europe to confront Russia, which only increases the influence of Putin’s hawks by justifying their pessimistic and often paranoid outlook. .......... Rather than bringing central and eastern Europe back under Moscow’s sway, the president’s gambit in Ukraine has breathed new life into NATO. ........ Although the Russian president is certainly willing to use military force if it seems necessary or beneficial, as he did in Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, Syria, Ukraine, and most recently, Kazakhstan, he has never attempted to conquer an entire country. ....... A single person—Putin—acts as the ultimate arbiter of interelite disputes. He makes all foreign policy decisions. No group of other Russian officials has the capacity to consistently constrain him. Instead, rival elites spend their time jockeying for positions in his inner circle—sometimes succeeding, and sometimes being cast out. Putin, for example, jettisoned former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev after his personal corruption (and tendency to sleep during Putin’s speeches) became too embarrassing to tolerate. ............. the information problems created by personalism can hamper a country’s performance on the battlefield and distort its leader’s perception of foreign threats. ....... The security threats Putin sees in Ukraine ... are shaped by his inner circle’s pervasive belief that the West lurks behind every Color Revolution. ........ He would not be the first Russian leader damaged by such a quagmire. During the 1980s, the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan to try to keep Kabul firmly in its camp, and its eventual failure played a key role in undermining public trust in the system.

The Putin Doctrine A Move on Ukraine Has Always Been Part of the Plan ....... During the 1990s, the United States and its allies designed a Euro-Atlantic security architecture in which Russia had no clear commitment or stake, and since Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia has been challenging that system. ......... what he insists is its “rightful” place on the European continent and in world affairs. ........ the tight energy market gives Russia more leverage over the continent. The Kremlin believes that it can bank on Beijing’s support, just as China supported Russia after the West tried to isolate it in 2014. .......... Call it “the Putin doctrine.” The core element of this doctrine is getting the West to treat Russia as if it were the Soviet Union, a power to be respected and feared, with special rights in its neighborhood and a voice in every serious international matter. .......... The doctrine holds that only a few states should have this kind of authority, along with complete sovereignty, and that others must bow to their wishes. It entails defending incumbent authoritarian regimes and undermining democracies. And the doctrine is tied together by Putin’s overarching aim: reversing the consequences of the Soviet collapse, splitting the transatlantic alliance, and renegotiating the geographic settlement that ended the Cold War. ......... Russia, according to Putin, has an absolute right to a seat at the table on all major international decisions. The West should recognize that Russia belongs to the global board of directors. ........ When Putin described the Soviet collapse as a “great geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century,” he was lamenting the fact that 25 million Russians found themselves outside of Russia, and he particularly criticized the fact that 12 million Russians found themselves in the new Ukrainian state. ............ Germany invaded twice, leading to the loss of 26 million Soviet citizens in World War II. ........ The United States and Europe widely embrace the premise that nations are free to determine both their domestic systems and their foreign policy affiliations. From 1945 to 1989, the Soviet Union denied self-determination to central and eastern Europe and exercised control over both the domestic and foreign policies of Warsaw Pact members through local communist parties, the secret police, and the Red Army. .......... The Warsaw Pact was an alliance that had a unique track record: it invaded only its own members. ....... Putin has said that only a few great powers—Russia, China, India, and the United States—enjoy absolute sovereignty, free to choose which alliances they join or reject. Smaller countries such as Ukraine or Georgia are not fully sovereign and must respect Russia’s strictures, just as Central America and South America, according to Putin, must heed their large northern neighbor. .......... As recent events in Belarus and Kazakhstan have shown, Russia is the go-to power to support embattled authoritarian rulers. It has defended autocrats both in its neighborhood and far beyond—including in Cuba, Libya, Syria, and Venezuela. The West, according to the Kremlin, instead supports chaos and regime change, as happened during the 2003 Iraq war and the Arab Spring in 2011. ....... Putin believes Russia’s interests are best served by a fractured transatlantic alliance. Accordingly, he has supported anti-American and Euroskeptic groups in Europe; backed populist movements of the left and right on both sides of the Atlantic; engaged in election interference; and generally worked to exacerbate discord within Western societies. One of his major goals is to get the United States to withdraw from Europe. .......... his ultimate aim: jettisoning the post–Cold War, liberal, rules-based international order promoted by Europe, Japan, and the United States ........... Both Russia and China demand a new system in which they exercise more influence in a multipolar world. ....... during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union mostly respected each other’s spheres of influence. ......... In pursuit of his new system, Putin’s modus operandi is to keep the West off balance, guessing about his true intentions, and then surprising it when he acts. ......... his conviction that the West has ignored what he deems Russia’s legitimate interests for three decades continues to drive his actions ......... He is determined to reassert Russia’s right to limit the sovereign choices of its neighbors and its former Warsaw Pact allies and to force the West to accept these limits—be that by diplomacy or military force. ............ The ultimate result of this crisis could be the third reorganization of Euro-Atlantic security since the late 1940s. The first came with the consolidation of the Yalta system into two rival blocs in Europe after World War II. The second emerged from 1989 to 1991, with the collapse of the communist bloc and then the Soviet Union itself, followed by the West’s subsequent drive to create a Europe “whole and free.” Putin now directly challenges that order with his moves against Ukraine. ........... The current crisis is ultimately about Russia redrawing the post–Cold War map and seeking to reassert its influence over half of Europe, based on the claim that it is guaranteeing its own security. It may be possible to avert a military conflict this time. But as long as Putin remains in power, so will his doctrine.

Why the panic among Boris Johnson’s allies? Because they know Brexit is unravelling . did the wreckers of the European dream slowly begin to realise that if Johnson goes, it shifts the sands from beneath their feet? ......... The past few weeks have been a torrid time for the prime minister. He designed a set of restrictions he said were of critical importance for our safety and for the ability of the NHS to cope with the pandemic. He was right to do so. But disclosures since give the clearest impression that he not only broke the rules, but that he also misled parliament. ............ We all have a clear memory of the Brexit campaign and what was said. That we were being run by Brussels. That European restrictions were holding back our economy and lowering our living standards. That we could keep all the benefits of the single market and customs union, while negotiating trade deals with faster-growing countries in a world that was shifting east. That we had to regain control over our borders. That there would be no new border between Northern Ireland and mainland Great Britain, and that the Good Friday agreement, having ended years of strife, would be fully honoured. .......... Having ousted May, they claimed that a bare-bones trade deal – without most of the benefits of the customs union and the single market – was “oven ready” and would “get Brexit done”. In a straight contest with the unelectable Jeremy Corbyn, Johnson secured his mandate. ........... Lord Heseltine was the deputy prime minister under John Major and a member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet from 1979 until 1986

Putin’s rambling Ukraine speech leaves western diplomats scrambling . His target at one point seemed to be the Bolsheviks, for relinquishing land to the nationalists. ....... Putin said the self-declared republics needed defending from the threat of “genocide”, and parts of Ukraine must be purged of corruption, cells of extremists, and the threat of nuclear weapons being pointed “only in a matter of time” at Moscow. ....... he needs to be taken literally and seriously. ....... Following the logic of Putin’s speech, it seems only a matter of time before a full invasion of Ukraine to reunite the two peoples will have to take place. ........ Yet even now, at this grimmest point, the west does not want to take the final step of breaking off all diplomatic contact with the Kremlin. Diplomats are looking desperately for chinks of light in the gloom. ........ One uncertainty is quite how far the “Russian peacekeepers” will advance. Will Putin recognise all of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent, or just the territory currently held by the Russia-backed separatists? The former would mean pushing his tanks across the line of contact, drastically increasing the possibility of full-blown conflict. The latter is still a breach of international law, and rips up the Minsk accords, but in a way only formalises the existing Russian presence in the area. ...........

the west is not yet unleashing the full big bazooka of sanctions

......... There will be coordinated sanctions in Brussels, London and Washington. They will go after entities and people in the self-proclaimed republics, as well as those close to the Putin regime. But the package is unlikely yet to constitute an imposition of export controls and the drying up of finance for Russia in the London capital markets. ........ Boris Johnson said in Kyiv last week that as soon as a Russian toecap crossed into Ukraine, sanctions would be triggered. But Putin has not quite gone over the brink, hence the caution. ............ A US intelligence official a week ago had likened the west’s tactics in handling Putin to dealing with a kidnapper holding hostages in a booby-trapped building. The first aim was to keep the kidnapper talking. The hope was that a professional negotiator, or a sympathetic family member, perhaps a member of the Russian army, could talk the highly strung kidnapper round and make him realise that whatever his grievances, this is not going to work out well for him in the long term. ......... the consequences of a breakdown – sanctions, shoring up Nato’s eastern flank, preparing for refugees and finding ways to help the Ukrainian army to make Putin’s price of victory so high that his domestic popularity nosedives along with the rouble.

As Putin’s tanks roll into Ukraine, he knows exactly who to feel sorry for: himself . We live in an age of sentimental hardmen – just listen to the Russian leader’s aggressively maudlin demands for ‘respect’ ........ the big question is whether Vladimir Putin is crazy or just pretending to be crazy. .........

this phoney war really does boast an unbelievable headcount of phoneys.

........ Russia experts now seem to outnumber even Russian army personnel. ......... The people who became trade experts in 2016, then became epidemiology ......... Boris Johnson looks like he knows enough about the entire Russia-Ukraine subject to write two newspaper columns on it. Three, tops ......... his referendum campaign speech when he blamed the EU for Putin being forced to invade Ukraine last time round ........ Putin himself – the only megarich Russian who doesn’t get their cosmetic surgery done in London ......... To watch his Lebensraum speech was to be given the shivers, but also to be struck by the grotesque self-pity of it all. Why are strongmen like this? The age has been awash with such politicians, from Trump to Kim to Bolsonaro, with their endless, aggressively maudlin demands for respect. Putin feels like the world-war version of every guy you’ve ever trodden on eggshells around because “his bark’s worse than his bite” or “that way he’ll calm down quicker”, only to discover one day that it isn’t and he won’t. ............ Further along the human centipede, these sentimental hardmen are assisted by media Haw Haws like Fox News’s Tucker Carlson or GB News’s Nigel Farage – guys with such an overwhelming yen for the respect they feel they themselves were denied at some key point in their lives that their deepest human empathy is reserved for a foreign authoritarian also not getting his due. ........... Vlad has been ardently pursuing diplomatic resolution with Ukraine somewhat in the way Dubya Bush was ardently pursing diplomatic resolution with Iraq in early 2003 ....... Perhaps this is what the early stages of war look like. ......... Seconds before he was about to go live on a breakfast TV interview the next morning, Hoon turned frantically to an aide and asked “Are we at war?” “Geoff, we’re in the initial stages,” came the calming response. “Yes, but are we at war?!” Hoon wanted to know. “We’re in the initial stages,” he was firmly told again. I mean … he was secretary of state for defence. Nobody knows anything, do they? ............ The male-female ratio is wild, with giant roomfuls of men in suits from New York to Moscow punctuated by only the odd woman – Liz Truss, say, or Valentina Matviyenko, the sole female at Putin’s security council event. ....... the media appearance in which Putin intimated he was about to liberate Ukraine from itself ...... There are freedoms and “freedoms”, aren’t there?

The Republican party is abandoning democracy. There can be no ‘politics as usual’ . Republicans could not be clearer about their cynicism, yet some establishment Democrats act as if politics as usual is still an option ........ Going back to the Obama era, McConnell has led the Republican Party in a strategy of near-total obstruction which he has pursued with ruthless cynicism. ....... McConnell is also sabotaging any effort to counter the Republican party’s ongoing authoritarian assault on the political system. ....... radicals like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, who fantasize about committing acts of violence against Democrats, are embraced by fellow Republicans, proving they are not just a extremist fringe that has “hijacked” the Party ........ Texas senator Ted Cruz recently intimated that Republicans would impeach Biden if they were to retake the House “whether it’s justified or not” .......... Republicans could not be clearer about the fact that they consider Democratic governance fundamentally illegitimate ........ Democratic leadership has proved mostly unwilling to focus the public’s attention on the Republican party’s authoritarian turn. ......... many Democratic leaders are old. They came up in a very different political environment, when there was indeed a great deal of bipartisan cooperation in Congress. There is no reason to be nostalgic about this – the politics of bipartisan consensus more often than not stifled racial and social progress. .......... the post-Obama reality in which Democratic politicians are almost universally considered members of an “Un-American” faction by most Republicans ....... The way some establishment Democrats have acted suggests they feel a kinship with their Republican opponents grounded in a worldview of white elite centrism. ........ The Republican dogma – that the world works best if it’s run by prosperous white folks – has a certain appeal to wealthy white elites, regardless of party. .......... the “Left”: an agenda seeking to transform America from a restricted, white men’s democracy that largely preserved existing hierarchies to a functioning multiracial, pluralistic, social democracy is indeed a losing proposition for people who have traditionally been at the top ............. much of the country’s Democratic elite still subscribes to an exceptionalist understanding that America is fundamentally good and the US inexorably on its way to overcoming whatever vestigial problems there might still be ....... Acknowledging what the Republican party has become goes against the pillars of that worldview. ......... the American political discourse is still significantly shaped by the paradigm of white innocence. Economic anxiety, anti-elite backlash, or just liberals being mean – whatever animates white people’s extremism, it must not be racism, and they cannot be blamed for their actions. .........

The dogma of white innocence

leads to elite opinion instinctively sanitizing the reasons behind the rise of rightwing demagogues, a common tendency in the commentary surrounding the success of George Wallace in the late 1960s, David Duke in early 1990s, or Donald Trump in 2016. ......... “I actually like Mitch McConnell,” Biden said during a press conference a few weeks ago, providing a window into what he sees in Republicans: No matter what they do, underneath they’re good guys, they’ll snap out of it. Promise. It’s the manifestation of a specific worldview that makes it nearly impossible to acknowledge the depths of Republican radicalization – a perspective that severely hampers the fight for the survival of American democracy.

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Saturday, February 19, 2022

YouTube: February 19

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Wednesday, February 16, 2022

New York Times: February 16: Hong Kong, Omicron, Trump, Bhutan

U.S. caseloads fall below the Delta peak. Deaths remain high at around 2,328 per day. ....... the organizers of the outdoor music festivals Coachella and Stagecoach said on Tuesday that they would not require attendees to be masked, vaccinated or tested for the coronavirus.

Hong Kong Can’t Live With the Virus. It Can’t Stop It, Either. An Omicron surge has exposed the weaknesses of a system that was once a world leader in containing the coronavirus. ......... As Hong Kong sinks under its worst wave yet of the coronavirus, overwhelmed hospitals have left patients waiting on sidewalks. People have stood in testing lines that wind across parks and soccer fields. Cases are still growing exponentially, as officials opt for targeted lockdowns rather than a citywide one. Researchers have warned that by summer the latest wave could kill nearly 1,000 people — more than four times the number that have died of Covid in Hong Kong over the past two years. .......... Until this wave, Hong Kong kept the coronavirus largely in check. The city’s combination of tight social distancing rules and aggressive contact tracing meant that the previous four waves of infection were curbed relatively quickly. For much of 2021, the city recorded no local cases. But the highly transmissible Omicron variant assaulted the cracks in the city’s defenses. ......... Hong Kongers could also prove fiercely resistant to a citywide lockdown. When Mrs. Lam visited a locked-down housing estate last month, residents showered her with insults from their windows — a display of public dissent rarely seen since the imposition of the security law.

P.J. O’Rourke Wrote With High, Cranky Style in a Shrinking Tradition O’Rourke, who died on Tuesday at 74, was a sharp-toothed satirist whose conservatism wasn’t doctrinaire. ...... He was well-read; he was, it often seemed, the only funny Republican alive. ....... Some of his best writing was about the open road. ..... For many years O’Rourke was Rolling Stone’s foreign-affairs desk chief. He was a detector of dichotomies, when he wasn’t camped out like Graham Greene in a hotel bar. “Each American embassy comes with two permanent features,” he wrote: “a giant anti-American demonstration and a giant line for American visas.” ........... “By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness,” he wrote. He added: “It’s a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don’t have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.” ......... Yet he voted for Hillary Clinton. “She’s wrong about absolutely everything,” he said, “but she’s wrong within normal parameters.” About Trump he said, “This man just can’t be president. They’ve got this button, you know, in the briefcase. He’s going to find it.” ............ “Aren’t we pro-life?” he asked. “Aren’t refugees life?” ........ “The weirder you’re going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.” ...... O’Rourke was a charmer, not a haranguer. Each of his essays, I’d guess, won more converts to conservatism than a lifetime of columns by Charles Krauthammer or Michelle Malkin. ...... When my wife is anxious about our tax debt but I badly want to go out to dinner, I remind her, as O’Rourke wrote, that it’s “better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there’s no money.”



Late Night Dunks on Trump for Getting Dumped During Tax Season “It’s like getting divorced on Christmas Eve,” Jimmy Kimmel joked. ...... Last week, Donald Trump’s longtime accounting firm Mazars USA cut ties with the former president and his family, saying financial statements they prepared for him from 2011 to 2020 should “no longer be relied upon.” ....... “If there’s any karma in this world, they dropped him for a younger, hotter client.” — STEPHEN COLBERT ........ “She tested positive for three substances that can be used to treat heart problems. Imagine how devastating that must be: You train your whole life to be in the Olympics, follow all the rules, put in all the hours, eat the right things. Last minute, you accidentally take your grandfather’s heart medicine.” — JIMMY KIMMEL ........ “But again, I’m not saying Russia did it on purpose; I’m not saying that. I’m just saying don’t be shocked when later this week they use 15-year-olds to invade Ukraine.” — TREVOR NOAH ......... “Her lawyer said maybe her grandfather drank something from a glass, saliva got in and this glass was somehow later used by the athlete. Ah, the old ‘must be from Grandpa’s saliva’ defense, huh?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL



‘Improbable Journey’: How a Movie From Tiny Bhutan Got an Oscar Nod “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” was filmed on a shoestring budget in a remote Himalayan village. It’s now an Academy Award nominee, a first for Bhutan. ......... The valley had no electricity. It could only be reached by walking eight days from the nearest village. And the schoolchildren who were expected to star in the film knew nothing about acting or cinema. ....... tells the story of a young teacher from Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, who is assigned to work at a remote mountain school against his will. He dreams of quitting his government job, emigrating to Australia and pursuing a career as a singer. ....... But the teacher, Ugyen, is fascinated by the people he meets in Lunana — particularly 9-year-old Pem Zam, a radiant student with a difficult home life. ........ young Bhutanese increasingly believe that true happiness lies abroad, in places like Australia, Europe or New York City. ......... There was just enough solar power to shoot the movie on a single camera, but not enough for Mr. Dorji to review his footage each night after shooting, as most directors do. So he had to go by his instincts and hope for the best. .... “The camera in front of them could have been a yak, for all they cared,” Mr. Dorji said........ In a scene where Ugyen teaches his students how to use a toothbrush, they aren’t acting; they really didn’t know. ....... the film was made on a $300,000 budget — “peanuts when it comes to filmmaking” ....... “When I was in front of the camera, I wasn’t that excited,” said Mr. Dorji, the schoolteacher, who appeared in the film as an extra. “But after watching it and listening to the children’s dialogue, I realized how much hardship our community has had to overcome.”

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Deepika Padukone

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