Category: In the news Page 2 of 21
The latest Ramstein meeting was both encouraging and disappointing. Encouraging news came in the form of commitments to improve Ukraine’s air defense capabilities including accelerated training in the use of the systems being provided. Disappointing news came in the form of less than hoped for promises of heavy armored vehicles, especially modern main battle tanks (we’re all staring at you, Germany).
Ukraine is fully expected to face a new major offensive from Putin’s armies of war criminals. Ukraine’s outnumbered armed forces are preparing to face this offensive as well as working to mount their own offensive and they need all the modern armor they can muster.
Here is a recent video report proving some perspective:
Ukraine does not have the population that would be required to survive and win a protracted war of attrition defending itself from Russian aggression. Ukraine’s success in this conflict depends on being able to significantly outperform Putin’s forces. Ukraine’s allies need to stop dithering about which weapons systems can be used. Ukraine’s military needs more training, more ammunition, and more heavy and/or longer-range equipment. If that means ramping up production, then so be it.
Poland, the Baltic states, and other Russian border states understand all too well what is at stake. Failure to defeat Russia in Ukraine will automatically raise the threat level from Putin’s megalomania. The Putin contagion must be eliminated now before it has a chance to spread.
Let’s start with this recent report:
Russia’s actions in the war they started with Ukraine have no limits. There is no line they won’t cross, there is no action too appalling, no atrocity off-limits. This isn’t state-sponsored terrorism, this is state perpetrated terrorism. There is no attempt at a fig leaf of plausible deniability. The fact is that Russian propagandists openly acknowledge the terrorism and call for more, including wiping France, The U.K., and Germany off the map with nuclear weapons.
NATO and many other countries are providing aid to Ukraine, and the more the better. However, at some point NATO needs to draw a line re Moscow’s attempt at slow-motion genocide in Ukraine. Russian success in Ukraine will only lead to further adventures in the rest of the former Soviet states. This needs to be stopped sooner rather than later.
58) The place where this total waste of food, water, and oxygen chose as a career path: “repeat offender criminal”: Florida man sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for receiving kilos of cocaine in the mail
59) The place where this dumb-fuck shit-for-brains decided that he always wondered what police thigh tasted like and now was the time to find out: Florida man bites officer after hitting another with car, dancing in traffic, police say
60) The place where so-called humans repeatedly try to answer the ages-old question “Just how stupid can you be?”: Florida burglars call 911 to get help moving stuff: sheriff
Yesterday, Russia carried out the most massive shelling of Ukraine’s energy system since the start of a full-scale war, Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko said. He noted that this attack could have an impact not only on the energy system of Ukraine but also on the energy systems of some of its neighbors.
From the Ukraine NOW Telegram:
According to the US State Department, since February 24, 260,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly removed from Ukraine to remote regions of Russia
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said that they are aware of numerous facts of how Russian invaders deliberately separate Ukrainian children from their parents and kidnap children from orphanages, and then give them up for adoption in Russia.
“Various sources, including the Russian government, indicate that the Russian authorities have evicted 260,000 children from [Ukraine] to Russia, often to remote areas of the Far East,” Patel said.
As the right wing drifts ever farther into madness, some form of morality police will no doubt arise in the U.S., most likely in Texas first. They will probably call themselves the “Purity Posse” or something similar. The racial connotation and explicit authorization are carefully chosen. You have already seen the first stages with laws encouraging snitching and allowing third parties to sue suspected abortion lawbreakers.
This more organized form of moral vigilantism will then spread to other states. Meanwhile, demagogues looking to promote themselves on the national political stage will start submitting competing – and ever more draconian – federal legislation to force conformity.
You have been warned.