2: Russia

Talked with a Professor at Harvard Law yesterday about this. Can confirm. pic.twitter.com/mYsZUMYrvq

— David Hogg ☮️ (@davidhogg111) February 16, 2023

Study on Harvard finds 43 percent of white students are legacy, athletes, related to donors or staff https://t.co/ZPdiLvTxV3

— Delores Handy (@deloreshandy) February 25, 2023

I was trying to politely explain to a Radiologist today that I thought he was overlooking some structural damage in my throat on my MRI Scan and he responded with: “I went to Harvard”. So I followed up with “So did Ted Cruz”. He wasn’t too pleased with that.

— Marky Mark (@MrkStdngr) February 25, 2023

A warning from Harvard Professor Steven Levitsky… pic.twitter.com/wYgOKs56C9

— Jeffrey Levin 🇺🇦 (@jilevin) February 25, 2023

Bouddhanath stupa during Monsoon, Kathmandu.

[Khasti Chaitya in Nepal Bhasha & Jarung Khashor in Tibetan is one of the largest Buddhist stupas in Nepal and the world which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.]

1971 AD @Vintage_Nepal pic.twitter.com/zv5t8nLWvs

— Vintage Nepal (Rare Historical Pics & Vids) (@Vintage_Nepal) February 22, 2023

A Tibetan woman adjusts her traditional headgear near a portrait of the Dalai Lama during a function organized to mark 'Losar,' or the Tibetan New Year, in Kathmandu, Nepal. More photos of the week: https://t.co/QyGEtexdvl 📷 @NaveshChitrakar pic.twitter.com/UjVkqqgwTX

— Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) February 26, 2023

Mayor of Lalitpur Metropolis, Chiri Babu Maharjan has asked Kathmandu Metropolis Mayor Balen Shah to take the lead in the construction of metro in the valley. Mayor Maharjan submitted a letter to Mayor Shah, saying that metro is the only public transportation option.

Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/85FvyZ9VqH

— No Next Question (@NoNext_Question) February 25, 2023

The Chinese Proposal Is A Start

You have to start somewhere. An obvious starting point would be to get both Russia and Ukraine to agree on a ceasefire and for Russia to pledge to no longer issue nuclear threats. With that the peace negotiations can begin.

It is not going to be possible for Ukraine to cede any territory, but it could proactively pledge to not join NATO and Russia could pledge to not cross its borders in the future, with China and the US as guarantors for the pledge.

Ukraine could pledge to rearchitect its constitution and have a federal structure and a major devolution of power.

War crimes and destroyed infrastructure and buildings are going to be thorny issues. Instead of making the Russians to pay for it all, the US, China and the EU could help take off some of the load. Bucha asks for judicial action. Some Russian army units might have to face The Hague, or something designed separately and of limited jurisdiction in time.

At that point all sanctions can be lifted.

And the refugees can come home.

25: Poland

Tempered in a Crucible of Violence, Zelensky Rises to the Moment In much of the world, President Volodymyr Zelensky, once brushed off as a political lightweight, has become a household name, representing Ukraine’s tenacity and underdog victories against Russia........ one thing remained constant: Mr. Zelensky showing up in selfies filmed on his phone, to deliver speeches and to appear in slickly produced videos beamed into foreign parliaments, his haggard, bearded but defiant appearance becoming the face of Ukraine’s struggle at home and abroad. ........ After three successful counteroffensives, in which his army defeated Russian forces on the battlefield and upended long-held ideas about the balance of military power in Europe, Mr. Zelensky, 45, has grown more confident and battle-tested. ......... Zelensky has been transformed by the war into a leader on the world stage with as much gravitas as any other. ........... He has softened his early chiding of foreign leaders over weapons supplies, which irritated Western officials, including Mr. Biden; he was cordial and diplomatic in meetings with European leaders this month — in part because he has largely gotten what he wanted from them. ......... “He has a clear understanding what Ukraine should do. There is no ambiguity: There is no peace with Russia, and Ukraine must arm itself to the teeth.” ........ As commander in chief, Mr. Zelensky decides key military questions, like the major offensives Ukraine has undertaken, but otherwise delegates to his generals. He is briefed on battlefield developments early every morning .......... Television news broadcasts from several channels were banded into one, for example, controlled by the state, which critics say stifles free speech. ........... And in a country accustomed to pluralistic politics, opposition parties have seen in Mr. Zelensky’s leadership an over-personification of Ukraine’s struggle, centered on him at the expense of the thousands of other top officials and the millions of Ukrainians engaged in the war effort. .......... once the invasion began, Mr. Zelensky decided he would need to maintain a continual public presence, to show the country that he was confident and had no fear ...........

Zelensky is often said to lead through public relations

.......... copious wartime output — in videos, ad-libbed comments on his cellphone and nightly addresses to Ukrainians ........... recurring themes: Ukraine will prevail through unity and patriotism, Russia is a terrorist state, and Ukraine will be blunt in asking for aid from allies. ............ He is doing a great job as commander in chief. He became the face of Ukraine and a face the world admires.” ............ Through 2021, Mr. Zelensky had tried, without success, to revive talks with Moscow over settling the conflict in eastern Ukraine that had been simmering since Russia intervened militarily in 2014. And, brushing off criticism of naïveté, in 2019, Mr. Zelensky even surrendered territory to Russian proxies in a policy of disengagement along the front line, in hopes of easing talks. ........... A more forceful tone emerged when Mr. Zelensky thought it necessary — and it became a hallmark of his wartime interaction with allied governments. His relationship with Western allies has at times grown tense as he pressured them for more aid and resisted suggestions from leaders like Emmanuel Macron of France that he should negotiate a peace deal. ....... .

Adam Tooze: How Poland Became an Economic Powerhouse Its economy has skyrocketed since the end of communism, but so has its wealth disparity. ......... post-communist Poland hasn’t only been a success on matters of diplomacy and security. It has also been the most successful economy in Europe, in relative terms, since 1989—more dynamic not only than other Eastern European countries but also Europe’s big heavyweights France and Germany. That economic story is a central part of Poland’s growing influence on the continent and in the world more broadly.

The Promise and Peril of a ‘Normal’ Politician I do not want to hear any more about how we need an American Caesar or that the time has come for full revolution. ........... “the craziest son of a bitch in the race.” ...... online platforms, where sounding like the kind of person people would avoid at parties can get you incredible engagement. ......... Our media has a tendency to favor extremes — telling us a lot about the people on the farthest fringe (cult members, Instagram influencers who think that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote) and less about the people those extremes leave behind. ........ There is something alienating about any form of fame, any type of visibility in which many people can see you and know you and develop very deeply held opinions about you but you can’t see or know them back. .......... I’m a biracial bisexual adult.

25: India

My message in India: To fight climate change, improve global health Climate change and global health are inextricably linked. We need to make progress on both problems at the same time. ....... More than two decades ago, I set out to give the vast majority of my resources back to society. My goal from the beginning was to help reduce the awful inequities I saw around the world. ....... When I started this work, my biggest focus was global health, because it’s the worst inequity in the world and it’s a solvable problem. That’s still the case today. ........ Hotter temperatures will make poverty reduction harder by increasing food insecurity and the prevalence of infectious diseases and diverting resources away from those who need them the most ........ It’s no exaggeration to say that India’s agricultural future is growing right now in a field in Pusa. ....... The country eradicated polio, lowered HIV transmission, reduced poverty, cut infant mortality, and increased access to sanitation and financial services....... India has developed a world-leading approach to innovation that ensures solutions reach those who need them. When the rotavirus vaccine—which prevents the virus that causes many fatal cases of diarrhea—was too expensive to reach every child, India decided to make the vaccine themselves. They worked with experts and funders (including the Gates Foundation) to build factories and create large-scale delivery channels to distribute the vaccines. By 2021, 83 percent of 1-year-olds had been inoculated against rotavirus—and these low-cost vaccines are now being used in other countries around the world.

India is winning its war on human waste In India toilets are saving lives and boosting the economy. ....... Modi said: “We are living in the 21st century. Has it ever pained us that our mothers and sisters have to defecate in the open?... The poor womenfolk of the village wait for the night; until darkness descends, they can`t go out to defecate. What bodily torture they must be feeling, how many diseases that act might engender. Can`t we make arrangements for toilets for the dignity of our mothers and sisters?” ........

I can’t think of another time when a national leader has broached such a sensitive topic so frankly and so publicly.

........ installing 75 million toilets throughout the country—75 million! ...... Of the 1.7 million people worldwide who die from unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene each year, more than 600,000 are in India. A quarter of young girls there drop out of school because there’s no decent toilet available. When you factor in the deaths, sickness, and lost opportunity,

poor sanitation costs India more than $106 billion a year.

......... Indian researchers are testing a variety of new tools, including redesigned toilets that don’t require sewer systems and advanced ways to treat human waste. ......... In 2014, when Clean India began, just 42 percent of Indians had access to proper sanitation. Today 63 percent do. And the government has a detailed plan to finish the job by October 2, 2019, the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. Officials know which states are on track and which are lagging behind, thanks to a robust reporting system that includes photographing and geotagging each newly installed toilet....... Even India’s currency features the Swachh Bharat logo. ......... Today more than 30 percent of Indian villages have been declared free of open defecation, up from 8 percent in 2015. ...... What I love most about Clean India is that it identified a big problem, got everyone working on it, and is using measurement to show where things need to be done differently. As the old saying goes, What gets measured gets done.

This War May Be Heading for a Cease-Fire On the battlefield, battered armies contest small strips of territory, at a terrible cost. ...... one war stands out for its relevance to the current blood bath in Ukraine: the war in Korea from 1950-53 ...... In Ukraine, an end to the war seems a long way off. ....... In Korea, the situation was similar: Neither North nor South Koreans, nor their sponsors, were in a hurry to end the war. But the conflict — which claimed as many as three million lives and destroyed entire cities — gradually fizzled out, leading to a cease-fire and a temporary division of the Korean Peninsula that proved more lasting than anyone could have imagined at the time. ......... North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950, soon capturing Seoul and pushing forward in a grand sweep that could well have ended with their capture of all of Korea. ....... It was clear by the summer of 1951 that the war was not going anywhere, yet it took two more years — punctuated by a lethal artillery barrage across the line of control and intermittent fighting — before the fighting was brought to an end. ......... many Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war showed no interest in being exchanged, preferring to stay with their captors. ........ It was only with Stalin’s death in March 1953 that Soviet leaders reconsidered the whole misadventure and prodded their allies toward an agreement. ......... Technically, the war is still frozen, not finished. ......... In the 1970s North Korea began to fall substantially behind in economic competition with the South. ........ if we have learned anything from the Korean War, it is that a frozen conflict is better than either an outright defeat or an exhausting war of attrition........ Today, the glittering metropolis of Seoul — savaged by the Korean War — stands as a reminder that it is not those who win the war who matter, but those who win the peace. .

Wonking Out: Conservatives Face a Rude Fiscal Awokening The document uses the word “woke” 77 times, and — weirdly for a fiscal blueprint — also manages to mention critical race theory 16 times. ........ the Florida officials who wanted to know whether the Advanced Placement course in African American history was “trying to advance Black Panther thinking.” ....... In modern America, however, some of the biggest beneficiaries of means-tested programs are rural white people — who also happen to be the core of the Republican base. ......... the beneficiaries of these programs are disproportionately children. Medicaid covers 39 percent of all American children under 18; in West Virginia, another almost all-white and very Trumpy part of the Eastern Heartland, the number is 46 percent. More than 65 percent of SNAP recipients are families with children. ........ Childhood safety net programs lead to improved outcomes in adulthood, including better health and greater economic self-sufficiency........ there’s another benefit to Medicaid, in particular: It helps keep rural hospitals alive. America has a growing crisis in simple availability of medical care in rural areas, presumably tied to the growing geographic divergence that has stranded places like eastern Kentucky. ......... Medicaid doesn’t just help its direct recipients; it helps anyone seeking medical care, by helping to keep hospitals afloat. .

24: Nepal

Why the West Is Afraid of Ukraine’s Victory The West’s historical anxieties have made it impossible to come to terms with the war’s reality. ...... The West at the time thought it would be easier if Ukraine simply surrendered. ...... European and Western countries in general agreed and accepted beforehand that another European nation might be deprived of its sovereignty, freedom, and independent institutions, and it might find itself militarily occupied. (If this isn’t how they felt, then they wouldn’t have evacuated their embassies in Kyiv.) ........ The West’s political discourse, rationalized in the ivory tower language of non-escalation and nonprovocation, is still basically about how best to ensure that exposure to the continued risk of military aggression and death is restricted to Ukrainians. ......... The first is the West’s profound non-revolutionism. Ukraine is now bearing an unthinkable price for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the so-called Friedliche Revolution (or Peaceful Revolution) of 1989 that was so much celebrated in Germany. .........

Ukraine’s victory over Russia would indeed mean a genuine revolution for the West.

.......... And the third one was a war Euromaidan, when the whole country became one armed revolution opposing Russia’s military invasion in February 2022. .......... The second reason the West cannot come to terms with a Ukrainian victory over Russia is because of its own colonial legacy and its current post-colonial position. The West has effectively shifted its experience with colonialism to the past and maintains a blind eye toward colonial experiences in other parts of the European continent. This is motivated in part by a bad conscience as well as the West’s own self-recognition and direct involvement in these ongoing experiences of oppression. Europe’s East is invisible in the Western post-colonial discourse precisely because it is so central. ........... Eastern Europe has struggled with Russian imperialism for decades at the very least—and in some cases even centuries. ......... the EU indulged in its repressed colonial mindset and separated itself from the so-called under-civilized, second-hand Eastern Europe. .......... From a hegemonic viewpoint, it is the colonized who are not supposed to be equipped to apply violence—much less to win. It is only the colonizers who are allowed to fully possess and dispose of the right to violence at their own discretion. .......... What characterizes the West’s constant belatedness and inability to act is a time out of joint, to quote William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It’s a profoundly wicked logic that requires another mass grave to trigger the next set of sanctions against an aggressor or deliver a minimal portion of arms to a country in dire need. ........... Zeitenwende is actually a form of political self-deception that shows how hard it is for the West to really be contemporary, to keep pace with the demands of the present. ......... Violent events like revolutions or wars especially depend on time—if one doesn’t act when needed, then the situation only deteriorates and becomes more violent. ........ the actual choice the West is currently confronted with is either to apply all the military, political, and economic means it has without delay to defeat Russian aggressors and restore Ukraine’s borders or to intervene when that aggression has proliferated elsewhere and Eastern Europe has become a battlefield again. .

CHEAP TESLA DID TESLA JUST ACCIDENTALLY LEAK WHAT ITS $25,000 CAR WILL LOOK LIKE? IT'S A COMPELLING DESIGN. In 2023, a $25,000 price point is a seriously aggressive target for Tesla, considering its current cheapest offering is the Model 3, which starts at well over $40,000. .



काठमाण्डौंमा साँढेको लडाई अन्त्य भएपछि मात्र हाम्रो काम हो : डा. राउत
प्रधानमन्त्री प्रचण्ड र अध्यक्ष ओलीबीच छलफल



रामचन्द्र पौडेललाई राष्ट्रपतिको उम्मेदवार बनाउने कांग्रेसको निर्णय
राष्ट्रपति र सरकारबारे निर्णय लिन एमालेको सचिवालय बैठक सुरु
एमालेका झन्डै १०० महत्त्वपूर्ण पद धरापमा !
प्रधानमन्त्रीमा प्रचण्ड, देउवा र नेपालको आलोपालो
ओलीले चेतावनी दिँदै भने–...नत्र भोलि नै सरकारबाट बाहिरिन्छौँ बैठकमा प्रधानमन्त्री प्रचण्डले एमाले अध्यक्ष ओलीसँगबारे गुनासो समेत पोखेका थिए । ‘ओलीजीसँग सहकार्यका लागि धेरै प्रयास गरेँ । तर, सत्तारुढ गठबन्धनभित्र रास्वपा र राप्रपासँग छुट्टै साँठगाँठ गरेर ममाथि अनावश्यक दबाब दिने काम भयो,’ बैठकमा सहभागी एक नेताले प्रधानमन्त्रीको भनाई उद्धृत गर्दै भने, ‘मलाई काम गर्नै दिएनन् । उहाँले फेरि एउटा अवसर गुमाउनुभयो । उहाँको दम्भले गर्दा नै कोर्स करेक्सन गर्न बाध्य भएँ ।’

24: Russia

22: Ukraine

5/8/23 Update: Goshen (NY) puts Third World corruption to shame, thanks to greedy, corrupt, unethical lawyers like Andra Dumais. ..... I toppled a Third World dictator and German Radio called me Robin Hood On The Internet. I am not going to get intimidated by some small-town racist. Andrea Dumais is a small-town racist. ....... You are treating me worse than the people 2,000 years ago.

21: Putin

21: Putin, Biden

Two Supreme Court cases this week could upend the entire internet An expansion of apps and websites’ legal risk for hosting or promoting content could lead to major changes at sites, including Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube, to name a few....... Many Republican officials allege that Section 230 gives social media platforms a license to censor conservative viewpoints. Prominent Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have argued Section 230 prevents tech giants from being held accountable for spreading misinformation and hate speech. ........ Rulings in the cases are expected by the end of June. ........ The case involving Google zeroes in on whether it can be sued because of its subsidiary YouTube’s algorithmic promotion of terrorist videos on its platform. ........ Google and other tech companies have said that that interpretation of Section 230 would increase the legal risks associated with ranking, sorting and curating online content, a basic feature of the modern internet. Google has claimed that in such a scenario, websites would seek to play it safe by either removing far more content than is necessary, or by giving up on content moderation altogether and allowing even more harmful material on their platforms. ......... Friend-of-the-court filings by Craigslist, Microsoft, Yelp and others have suggested that the stakes are not limited to algorithms and could also end up affecting virtually anything on the web that might be construed as making a recommendation. That might mean even average internet users who volunteer as moderators on various sites could face legal risks, according to a filing by Reddit and several volunteer Reddit moderators. Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and former California Republican Rep. Chris Cox, the original co-authors of Section 230, argued to the Court that Congress’ intent in passing the law was to give websites broad discretion to moderate content as they saw fit. .......... In recent years, however, several Supreme Court justices have shown an active interest in Section 230, and have appeared to invite opportunities to hear cases related to the law. Last year, Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch wrote that new state laws, such as Texas’s that would force social media platforms to host content they would rather remove, raise questions of “great importance” about “the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”

The housing market correction just took a new turn Brutal. That’s the best way to describe KB Home’s fourth quarter, which saw its buyer cancellation rate spike to 68%. That figure dwarfed the publicly traded homebuilder’s 13% cancellation rate from the previous year’s period. It also surpassed the industry’s peak cancellation rate of 47% during the darkest days of the 2008-era crash.

‘Treason!’ Wagner boss slams Russia’s military leaders They want to ‘destroy’ Wagner, says Yevgeny Prigozhin about Russia’s defense minister and army chief........ Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the private Wagner Group, has claimed that the Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, are trying to “destroy” Wagner — marking an escalation in hostilities between the influential paramilitary boss and Russia’s military establishment. ......... Prigozhin’s remarks are another sign of infighting in the Russian military. Ultranationalist figures such as Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov have long pushed for a restructuring of the top echelons of the military command. ....... The Wagner boss has been continuously increasing power in the shrinking inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin

How Vladimir Putin sells his war against ‘the West’ Unable to explain setbacks in Ukraine, the Kremlin appeals to past victories. ....... “It’s unbelievable but true: we are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who traveled to Volgograd to deliver a speech on February 2. “Again and again, we have to repel the aggression of the collective West.” ........ Putin’s statement was full of factual inaccuracies: Russia is fighting not the West but Ukraine, because it invaded the country; the German Leopards being delivered to Kyiv date back only to the 1960s; there’s no plan for them to enter Russian territory. ......... But the Russian president’s evocation of former victories was telling — it was a distillation of his approach to justifying an invasion that hasn’t gone to plan. These days in Russia, if the present is hard to explain, appeal to the past. ........... “The language of history has replaced the language of politics,” said Ivan Kurilla, a historian at the European University at St. Petersburg. “It is used to explain what is happening in a simple way that Russians understand.” ........ Putin has long harkened back to World War II — known in the country as The Great Patriotic War, in which more than 20 million Soviet citizens are estimated to have died. ............. On the streets, however, Russians seemed confused. ........ The term “special military operation” at least was somewhat clearer. It suggested a speedy, professional, targeted offensive. ...... As the special military operation turned into a protracted conflict, and the facts on the ground refused to bend to Putin’s narrative, the Kremlin has gradually been forced to change its story. ......... by spring the terms “demilitarization” and “denazification” had practically disappeared from the public sphere .......... In October, Putin declared that one of the main goals of the war had been to provide Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, with a stable water supply. .........

But the appeal to history has remained central to Putin’s communication effort.

......... In June, he referenced Peter the Great’s campaign to “return what was Russia’s.” And during an October ceremony to lay claim to four regions in Ukraine, it was Catherine the Great who got a mention. ......... “Especially in spring and early summer, there was an attempt to Sovietize the war, with people waving red flags, trying to make sense of it through that lens.” ........ Throughout, the Kremlin has sought to depict the conflict as a battle against powerful Western interests bent on using Ukraine to undermine Russia — a narrative that has become increasingly important as the Kremlin demands bigger sacrifices from the Russian population ......... “What we observe today is the culmination of that feeling of resentment, of unrealized illusions, especially among those over 50” ......... “We are moving away from a special military operation towards a holy war … against 50 countries united by Satanism,” the veteran propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said on his program in January. .............. Russians are now expecting the war to last another six months or longer. “The majority keep to the sidelines, and passively support the war, as long as it doesn’t affect them directly” ........... reports of Western weapons deliveries have been used to reinforce the argument that Russia is battling the West under the umbrella of NATO — no longer in an ideological sense, but in a literal one. ........... “What started out as a historic metaphor is being fueled by actual spilled blood.” .......... In newspaper stands, Russians will find magazines such as “The Historian,” full of detailed spreads arguing that the Soviet Union’s Western allies in World War II were, in fact, Nazi sympathizers all along — another recycled trope from Russian history. ......... “This level of hatred and aggressive nationalism has not been seen since the late Stalin period”

Zelenskyy: Macron is ‘wasting his time’ with Putin ‘It’s a useless dialogue,’ Ukraine’s president says. ........ Macron added that although he wished for the Kremlin to lose, the war would end not on the battlefield but with peace talks — and that France would “never” support “crushing Russia.” ........ “He likes vodka? If that’s the case, we have some of the finest quality in Ukraine — we can offer him some,” Zelenskyy said. ........ The Ukrainian president also commented on recent reports from the U.S. that China was ready to send weapons to Russia, saying he hoped Beijing would keep a “pragmatic approach,” to avoid a “Third World War.”

Biden’s Military-First Posture in the East Is a Problem A singular focus on countering the threat of Chinese aggression made America neglect economic ties in the Indo-Pacific. ........ Changi Naval Base, which sits on the east coast of Singapore near the busy shipping lanes of the Singapore Strait, has in the first months of 2023 been welcoming well-armed American visitors. Less than two weeks into the new year came a visit from the USS Makin Island, an amphibious assault ship. Days later, the USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier with a small city’s worth of crew members, made a port call—accompanied by three destroyers. ........ U.S. troops have access to five military bases in the Philippines, which is a former U.S. colony and America’s oldest treaty ally in Asia. Earlier this month, the two countries reached an agreement that gives U.S. forces access to four more. That announcement followed a decision by American and Japanese officials to enhance their military cooperation. ........

The aim—sometimes spoken, other times left unsaid—of such developments is to counter China’s more assertive presence in the region.

Washington now views Beijing as a growing threat to America and its partners and allies there. These concerns have only intensified since a spy balloon launched by China was shot down two weeks ago. Hence the Biden administration’s focus on defense and security in the Indo-Pacific.

19: Russia

19: Ukraine