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