Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Zinger tweets: "Candidate for Prime Minister of Canada"

Well, the other day Pierre Poilievre changed his twitter bio to call himself "candidate for Prime Minister of Canada" -- dumb, of course, because Canadians do not elect their Prime Minister directly and Poilievre should know this, he's been a federal politician his entire adult life after all. 
Of course Twitter rocked with laughter and people immediately started declaring themselves to be "Candidate for Prime Minister of Canada" too. 
Here some of the better zingers:
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Today's News: The Battle of Donbas is beginning


I don't know where it was taken or when, but this is one of the Ukraine photos Zelenskyy shared in a recent Ukrinform post.
The news of the day is that the Battle of Donbast is beginning. Here's the area where it will be fought:


This map is from Markos, showing the Russian pipe-dream fantasy of how they think they might stop the Ukraine Donbas offensive. Kos writes: 
Every meter costs Russia equipment and troops it can no longer easily replace, while extending frail supply lines they struggle to protect and maintain. And while that terrain is mostly flat and open, there are also trees growing their spring leaves, and destroyed houses perfect for future ambushes. 
In this salient, Russia only controls the roads, and even so, only tenuously. General Mud will be around for a while. Plenty of time for Ukrainian artillery to keep pounding cold, wet, miserable Russians and separatists waiting to die. Also time for new Ukrainian artillery to arrive, adding to the pressure. Russia’s pipe-dream pincer maneuver ain’t happening. And at this point, neither is any major offensive.
More at the link.

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Monday, April 18, 2022

Today's News: Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst

My theme tonight is from a Maya Angelou quote: "“Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.” First, the Ukraine refugee crisis had topped 5 million: So in just the last 6 weeks, more than 5 million Ukrainians have had to refugee from their homes in Ukraine. There are already likely some military lessons to be learned from the Russia Ukraine War, but one lesson I think we also need to consider is the importance of getting civilians out of the way of war more quickly. 
That kind of planning didn't appear to be happening in Ukraine last winter, even though the CIA was telling the US government last fall that Putin intended war, and Biden was highlighting this information publicly.
Then when disaster struck in February, millions struggled to get out and to get their children out - no time anymore to assemble "go" bags or set up transportation, they were poorly organized, unpacked, lacked medicines and money, abandoned their pets and farm animals. 
Here's a typical article from md-February, nine days before Putin's war began:
...For several weeks, residents of the capital dismissed the Russian buildup as posturing and the US warnings as overblown. Pulled between Zelensky’s calls on the West to refrain from creating a panic, Moscow’s denials of any intention to invade and the drumbeat of warnings from Western leaders on missions of shuttle diplomacy, Ukrainians went about their lives with admirable calm. Shops in the capital remained stocked, there was no run on the banks and there were no signs of panicked shopping for necessities. 
 And here's another one, from just three days before Putin invaded: 
Even as tensions boil with more than 150,000 Russian troops along the border in annexed Crimea and in neighbouring Belarus, just one in five Ukrainians think the full-scale conflict is inevitable. 
Only 20.4 percent of Ukrainians believe that a “full-scale invasion” will happen soon, and only 4.4 percent are adamant it is “definitely” taking place, according to a survey by the Gorshenin Institute, an independent pollster, conducted between February 2 and 14. 
A staggering 62.5 percent think the invasion is not going to happen “in the nearest future”.... 
But we all should have known what Putin would do to cities in Ukraine, because he has done it before. A March 16 AP story describes the horror and despair as the hundreds of thousands remaining in Mariupol realized they could not get out: 
This agony fits in with Putin’s goals. The siege is a military tactic popularized in medieval times and designed to crush a population through starvation and violence, allowing an attacking force to spare its own soldiers the cost of entering a hostile city. Instead, civilians are the ones left to die, slowly and painfully. 
Putin has refined the tactic during his years in power, first in the Chechen city of Grozny in 2000 and then in the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2016. He reduced both to ruins.
Damn it, we all knew what Putin would do to people he considered nothing but animals. 
But we just didn't want to believe it. Ukraine didn't want to believe it. Nobody wants to believe it. Its a dangerous kind of wishful thinking that we have to stop indulging ourselves in.
And by the way, Canada's own Emergency Preparedness Week is coming up May 1 to 7 -- you owe it to yourself, and your family, to check this out and pull your own kit together.

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Sunday, April 17, 2022

On the lighter side

So many of my posts are about wars and politics. Here's some tweets I have assembled from the "lighter side" that everyone will enjoy, I hope: Be sure to follow the thread for this one:
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Today's News: A mind is a terrible thing to lose

Does anyone remember the time Vice President Dan Quayle mangled the United Negro College Fund line "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" when he said " What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." But really, at least every decade or so, the United States actually does seem to lose its collective mind. 
As Republicans turn over every rock searching for something they can use to pummell the Democrats in the midterms, they're losing their minds again: And now it's happening in Canada too: Scrimshaw writes: 
...the Tories have decided it is better politically for them to lie than to fight honestly – and part of the reason is the spinelessness of the media. 
 What is the penalty accrued to the Conservative Party for lying? They’re still booked on every edition of Power and Politics, every edition of Power Play, their leader’s response still gets in the video package for every Trudeau announcement on The National, they bend over backwards to book Conservative strategists for two segments of debate, and they bump important stories to cover a political party who are 50/50 to be lying in every public statement. What penalty does the Conservative Party pay, what consequence accrues, for lying to the public? Nothing, because the media lets them get away with it. 
Canadian media are busy right now tying to turn Polliver into a "he's -too- sexy- for- his- cat" version of Trump -- "the rallies! look at the rallies!" -- but they're in Alberta for heaven's sake. 
Polliver just isn't going to be as popular in suburban Toronto. 
Meanwhile, from Ukraine, here are the stories I am reading today: 
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Saturday, April 16, 2022

Today's News: Catching up



DeAdder does such great cartoons, doesn't he. 
And yes, I also believe that the only reason Elon Musk is interested in Twitter is because Trump desperately wants to tweet again.
Here's another related comment: Turning to the latest from Ukraine, first I want to share a tweet I sent out today, related to my blog post from a few days ago: The nuclear question is the riderless horse in this metaphor -- we just don't know what will happen. Today, I read more news of possible nuclear threats, and more discussions about whether to take this seriously or not:
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Friday, April 15, 2022

Today's News: Spring is here

(Image from Daily Kos)

A few weeks ago, in response to someone's tweet about Russia vehicle movements in Ukraine, I replied "Spring is coming". 
It seemed to confuse people - they didn't understand what I meant. 
First, it was a minor homage to the ominous "winter is coming" line from Game of Thrones. 
Second, I also meant it ominously -- I knew Russia had started its war too late, and if Ukraine could only hold out until winter was over and the Ukraine fields were no longer frozen, it would be virtually impossible for Russia to drive masses of tanks and heavy artillery equipment into the fields of Ukraine -- even driving ordinary trucks on their dirt roads would be terrible. 
I think many who live in cities, or who come from different kinds of agricultural areas, have never seen and may not even be able to imagine gumbo mud - the soupy, sticky, thick, slippery, tire-grabbing, wheel- spinning, sink- to- the- axels mud that winter leaves behind in good silty-soiled wheat-growing fields, here in southern Saskatchewan and there, in southern Ukraine. It lasts several weeks after the snow melts and throughout the May rains, before the spring winds dry the fields enough for planting. 
Now that spring has sprung across the southern and eastern Ukraine steppes, Russia is finding out: Russian media have been lying for years about how strong Russia is and how weak Ukraine is. Now that Russia is losing the war they have lost their minds: And I was afraid Russia would think it could resort to nukes at some point. I expect the West will not stand for this: Finally, I can't seem to find any new information tonight about whether Mariupol still lives or not.


 

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Thursday, April 14, 2022

Today's News: Putting on the pressure

Russian warship, go fuck yourself!

In the last two days, we're had news that Ukraine hit an important north-eastern railway line over a bridge outside of Belgorod, Russia. Earlier, we heard they hit a fuel depot also in this city. 
Then today Ukraine scuttled the warship Moskva in the Black Sea south of Odesa -- this was the warship told by the Snake Island squad "Russian warship, go fuck yourself!" in the first days of the war, a moment now commemorated by a Ukrainian stamp.
Seems like Ukraine is hitting at a fairly wide range.
And Russia is simply furious! Russia keeps announcing that Mariupol has fallen, and it keeps not being true. When Russia finally does defeat Mariupol, this is what it will get: And here's an interesting thread, an analysis that the Russian soldiers fighting and dying in Ukraine are from the poorest and most ethnic areas of Russia. Not a single soldier from Moscow has died yet: Some other Ukrainian stikes: More to come:
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Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Today's news: More American support

I love this photo, from this tweet.
Carefully and cautiously, the United States appears to be taking a larger and more direct role in the Russia Ukraine War. 
I'm not sure whether this will end up being a good thing for Biden and the world -- Jen Psaki has been very clear at the White House press podium that US voters didn't elect Joe Biden to make war on Russia, and of course there's that pesky risk of nuclear armageddon! -- but Biden and most western leaders now appear to be on the same page, agreeing that Ukraine is their line in the sand, that Putin cannot be allowed to win this war if Ukraine can prevent it, and that Ukraine actually will be able to prevent it if they get more military help. Tonight all over twitter and in articles across the internet, I'm seeing an increasing concensus on the crucial importance of timely military aid.
The US military is taking a more active role too:
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Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Today's news: Just a few items tonight

 

Photo from this tweet.
I wasn't feeling very well today -- I did my first rapid test, luckily negative (though then I read this, so we'll see) -- but for safety's sake I decided not to go out and so I just got some extra rest, so I didn't get much reading done. 
But here's a few interesting items:
From Ukraine: Ukraine has undermined Russian air superiority and this is still crucial for the fight: There were some awful reports today of a chemical weapons attack in Maruipol, which hasn't yet been confirmed. But here's what Twitter expects: Here is an incredible story - read the whole thread:
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Monday, April 11, 2022

Today's News: Doing whatever we can to help Ukraine



It struck me today just how many people around the world are doing whatever we can to help Ukraine. 
For example, like the European street artists in the story linked above.
And like myself -- I'm a retired administrator half a world away from Ukraine. But I do have the time and experience to read through a wide variety of stories and tweets every day and create a blog summary that I hope is useful as a reference. 
And like actor Sean Penn - he was in Ukraine for months before the war started working on a documentary about Zelenskeyy and he just gave a fascinating interview to Hannity (spit!):
And like Chef Jose Andre, who cooks. He goes anywhere he is needed, so people in the midst of disaster will still have something to eat-he has a massive organization now, 
World Central Kitchen, and it is now active in Ukraine: And like Pen Farthing, a former British soldier who now rescues dogs - he got several hundred 
animals out of Afghanistan last summer, and I just saw today that he is travelling in Ukraine to 
rescue abandoned pets: In today's news, Hunter observes that the new plan that Russia is using to defeat Ukraine at Dondas is pretty much the same plan they tried to use to defeat Ukraine at Kyiv. 
And they failed: 
 In principle, Russia's new plan appears to be to sweep south from Izyum and north from the Mariupol region to capture all or most of Donetsk and Luhansk, cutting off the dug-in Ukrainian positions that have held stable in the war against Russian-backed separatists for years. 
 In practice, this all relies on Russian commanders showing skills that they haven't yet shown, marshaling forces on a scale they haven't yet been able to marshal, the protection of supply lines longer and more tenuous than the ones that quickly fell to pieces around Kyiv, all with a makeshift assemblage of battered troops pulled from other offensives and, theoretically, mercenary forces pulled from elsewhere. 
Yes, Russia has a new general now, but Hunter isn't impressed: 
It's unclear what new order this new Russian general is being installed to impose, but a campaign of shelling cities, destroying granaries and missile strikes on crowds of fleeing civilians is something that all the other Russian generals have been accomplishing very well on their own. It may only be another name to pin the resulting war crimes to, in the aftermath of all this. 
 If Gen. Dvornikov doesn't fall out of a Moscow window a month or two from now, of course. 
I thought this was a perceptive observation: More news from today: 
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Sunday, April 10, 2022

Today's News: "An opportunity to forgive"


I just saw this great photo from Brandi Morin's great piece last week in the Toronto Star, 
showing Dr. Wilton Littlechild celebrating in Rome after Pope Francis apologized for the residential schools. 
Morin writes:
I ran outside to the square after the apology, and the weight was suddenly lifted from my shoulders. The atmosphere had shifted. The sun had burst past the rain and the sounds of Indigenous songs echoing through the plaza reverberated in my heart synchronizing with every beat of the drums.
Dr. Wilton Littlechild, from my home territories in Treaty 6, Alberta, stood up from his walker and joined the dancing, grinning from ear to ear. It was his 78th birthday. 
He was taken to residential school at age six and endured all the atrocities of evil there. A former commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which called for this apology in 2015, he had personally heard the tormenting accounts of abuse from nearly 7,000 survivors across Canada.
He lived to see this day after decades of unrelenting advocating for Indigenous rights around the world and petitioning the Catholic Church for an apology. And it was a wondrous thing to see him celebrating.
This is the first step in reconciliation with the Catholic Church, but it’s an extraordinary step. Because now there is hope for healing, now reconciliation with the church can begin and healing within our communities. 
As Littlechild told me, “How do we move forward with reconciliation? Once you’ve had the apology you have an opportunity to forgive. I think that piece (was) still missing and that’s why our communities are still hurting. Then, with an apology, people will begin to feel a sense of healing. And once that happens a new emotion originates — a sense of justice. To say ‘Yes, wrong was done to me. I’m forgiving now and going to heal and I feel justice has been done.’ ”
Planning for the Pope's visit to Canada is already underway:
Moving to Europe, here's some good news:
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Saturday, April 09, 2022

Today's News: Odds and ends


Tonight's photo: the children's play area at Warsaw's Museum of Modern Art. The Museum has transformed itself to aid Ukrainian refugees

Tonight I don't have much that is "new" in the Russia Ukraine War -- just a miscellaneous collection of odds and ends, tweets and stories. 
Overall, Ukraine has been making some more progress, but so has Russia. 
First, Russia is perhaps getting its act together a little better now, compared to the chaos in March. But then again, Russia's military objectives are still being distorted by the political demand that Russia wants to declare Mission Accomplished by early May. So the chaos may continue: This isn't a good sign: But also, this: A month ago, at the end of February, I wrote that Ukraine had to find a way to hold on in Kyiv until more arms could arrive from the US and other countries. Now, I feel that way again -- that once again, Ukraine has to find a way to hold on in the Donbas until more arms can arrive. 
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Friday, April 08, 2022

Today's News: "Ukraine is fighting our fight, for democracy"

A fascinating "history" of the Russia Ukraine War: Here's some other interesting pieces today: 
Associated Press Russia’s failure to take down Kyiv was a defeat for the ages Today was Budget Day in Canada -- though you would hardly have known it if you only watched CBC and CTV, because neither broadcaster could resist the temptation to continually chop up Freeland's speech with their own hot takes and the gratuitous slams from the Opposition parties. It was so frustrating we finally switched to CPAC and I'm glad we did because I was just in time to hear her powerful remarks about Ukraine and democracy, and laying out the rationale for why Canada needs to help Ukraine. 
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Thursday, April 07, 2022

Today's News: Maybe a gamechanger

The Switchblade drones now on their way to the Ukraine Army will likely be gamechangers for the Ukrainian defense. And offense. The Switchblades allow Ukraine to target the trains, to prevent Russia from sending reinforcements to its troops.
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