Author Archives: John Lusk

Tweet from Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed)

https://twitter.com/SanaSaeed/status/1498076694380437506?s=20&t=XgGkBl5tfDGeBe-PhOSgOA

This doesn’t seem good.

Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) Tweeted: “We are together: the Moroccans, the Arabs and the Blacks. On the other side, (are) the Ukrainians. A bus arrives every 15 mins to pick them up and us, every 4 hours. They choose who will ride. The borders are not far, they are about 100m away”

Support for Ukraine could get a little dark

https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/1498201449297321986?s=20&t=aIE65WIaUkbK2kKS3I-H7g

https://twitter.com/GoharHayrapety1/status/1497974158105456650?s=20&t=aIE65WIaUkbK2kKS3I-H7g

İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي (@iyad_elbaghdadi) Tweeted: Who else is seeing something really ugly lurking underneath all the talk of the “civilized West”? War is bringing back a euphoria of standing up for principles, but is also bringing a lot of darkness to the surface

Tweet from Franklin Harris (@FranklinH3000)

https://twitter.com/FranklinH3000/status/1498116398228381699?s=20&t=Fu_Y6HjW4M84ay8IXejacw

I’m not going to remember what I meant in 6 months, but:

MAN. We’ve been outdone by Europe again. The best we could come up with was Barack Obama. (Well, and Al Franken.)

I couldn’t help but laugh.

Franklin Harris (@FranklinH3000) Tweeted: I had to check these weren’t Photoshops. Zelenskyy really made a movie called “Corporal vs. Napoleon.” This war was pre-memed.

“I just want to live in our country.” – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/26/world/ukraine-russia-war

Obviously, I don’t know how to New York Times. Better link:

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000008230025/ukraine-volunteers.html

So, the Snake Island 13 and the old woman telling Russian soldiers to put sunflower seeds in their pockets was hard core, but this… She’s crying but she’s still going to point the weapon downrange at another human and pull the trigger. She might be afraid, or mourning her own impending death, or the death of a 19-year-old Russian soldier, but she’s still going to do it, and THAT’S hard core.

P.S. who knows how long this link will show the crying schoolteacher.

China Direct: When your best pal picks war — EU dismay — Taiwan’s watching – POLITICO

https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/china-direct/when-your-best-pal-picks-war-eu-dismay-taiwans-watching/

No. China is Russia to Taiwan’s Ukraine, not Ukraine to Taiwan’s Donbas. We are returning to the old days of imperialism and geopolitics with “spheres of influence”.

«On the other hand, the fundamental geopolitical dynamics underlying Putin’s invasion of Ukraine are anathema to sovereignty-obsessed Beijing. Just imagine Taiwan declaring independence like the separatists in Donbas and turning to a sympathetic nuclear superpower for recognition?»

How long before we resume our forward & upward path of democracy, human rights, and capitalism (in the form of free trade, as opposed to rent-seeking, crony capitalism, and kleptocracy)? Overblown language, but I feel it.

Finnish left now apparently more interested in NATO membership

https://twitter.com/jmkorhonen/status/1496047631969234944?s=20&t=4uXTxGEl-Sb7_zVNVAp8GQ

Interesting thread.

Janne M. Korhonen 🇫🇮🇪🇺🐟🇺🇦 (@jmkorhonen) Tweeted: Greetings from a Finnish leftist! The international situation has apparently left many people in the English-speaking countries confused. I write this thread in the hopes of sharing a perspective I believe is widely if not unilaterally shared in Finland, most leftists included.


Also, makes me think the Baltic republics totally knew what they were doing when they immediately joined NATO.

‘It’s a chain reaction’ Political scientist Andrey Kortunov on why a full-fledged Russian invasion of Ukraine is unlikely — but not impossible — Meduza

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/02/14/it-s-a-chain-reaction

This is interesting.

«There’s also a third argument: I think that if such a task [starting a hot war] had been set, then it would have been met in completely different ways. Look at how the operation in Kazakhstan was carried out[1] — very quickly, within a few hours. Everything was done without too much pomp — and the 2014 Crimean operation was the same. A modern level of mobility — including [the mobility] of the Russian Armed Forces — doesn’t require the accumulation of troops over the course of several months in order to finally get ready and begin an attack. This is archaic — typical of 1914: a mobilization, troops traveling by rail, and that sort of thing.

Today, in order to minimize losses and demoralize the enemy, they act quickly — before anyone could blink an eye, they’d be marching on the central squares of Mariupol and Kharkiv. What’s happening [now] is too apparent, too obvious.»

[1] (If memory serves, I read a military-science-history-y paper claiming that Russia basically stumbled into Kazakhstan because they gave local military leaders too much control, and have since rectified that problem.)

Biden’s Fed nominees in limbo after Republican vote boycott | Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/senate-panel-vote-advancing-bidens-fed-picks-raskin-under-microscope-2022-02-15/

Dems again not playing hardball like Republicans do. What the heck?

«Rules agreed at the start of this session of Congress ensure that Senate committees cannot advance legislation or nominees unless at least one Republican is present, a change from the previous Congress when Republicans had an outright majority on committees and could move ahead even when Democrats staged walkouts.»