Putin's war on Ukraine

Putin is an imperialist set on conquering Ukraine. His goal is to install a corrupt, pro-Putin kleptocracy. This is a classic good vs. evil conflict. I see it mostly as concentrated power and wealth fighting against more distributed power and wealth, roughly tyranny vs. democracy. It is sad and deeply discouraging to see this. One can hope that Putin changes his mind and leaves, but that seems increasingly unlikely. 

Much of the death and physical destruction in Ukraine are on Putin's hands. How much? I don't know. How much of a role did corrupt radical right authoritarianism in the US play? Maybe little or none. Maybe more. Putin uses the excuse of NATO expansion as a key propaganda argument. But since NATO was always a defensive pact, it never represented a major invasion threat to the Russia, no matter how many times he lies about it. It never even represented a minor threat. NATO was never intended to invade Russia.

Eastern European countries are unsettled by Putin's imperialism. The New York Times writes:

“Nobody here trusted the Russians before and we certainly don’t trust them now,” said Mieczyslaw Zuk, a former Polish soldier who oversees the once top-secret nuclear site. The bunkers were abandoned by the Soviet military in 1990 as Moscow’s hegemony over East and Central Europe unraveled in what President Putin has described as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Now Eastern European countries fear a catastrophe of their own could be in the making, as Mr. Putin seeks to turn back the clock and reclaim Russia’s lost sphere of influence, perilously close to their frontiers. Even leaders in the region who have long supported Mr. Putin are sounding the alarm.

Warnings about Moscow’s intentions, often dismissed until last Thursday’s invasion of Ukraine as “Russophobia” by those without experience of living in proximity to Russia, are now widely accepted as prescient. And while there has been debate about whether efforts to expand NATO into the former Soviet bloc were a provocation to Mr. Putin, his assault on Ukraine has left countries that joined the American-led military alliance convinced they made the right decision.  

Fear that Mr. Putin is capable of just about anything, even using nuclear weapons, is just “common sense,” said Toomas Ilves, a former president of Estonia.

Mr. Ilves announced this week on Twitter that he was “accepting apologies” for all the “patronizing nonsense from Western Europeans” who complained that “we Estonians were paranoid about Russian behavior.”

In a telephone interview, Mr. Ilves said he had not received any apologies yet but was gratified to see Russia’s “shills and useful idiots getting their comeuppance.”

Western Europeans who once scoffed at his dark view of Russia, he added, “have suddenly become East Europeans” in their fearful attitudes. “This past week marks the end of a 30-year-long error that we can all come together and sing kumbaya.”

Apparently, Putin could not hide the fact that he is attacking Ukraine from his own people any longer:

A War the Kremlin Tried to Disguise Becomes a Hard Reality for Russians

Moscow posted a death toll [498 dead Russians] from its attack on Ukraine for the first time, and Russians who long avoided politics are now grappling with the fact that their country is fighting a deadly conflict.

On Feb. 23, Razil Malikov, a tank driver in the Russian Army, called his family and said he would be home soon; his unit’s military drills in Crimea were just about wrapping up.

The next morning, Russia invaded Ukraine, and Mr. Malikov hasn’t been heard from since. On Monday, Ukraine published a video of a captured soldier in his unit, apologizing for taking part in the invasion.

“He had no idea they could send him to Ukraine,” Mr. Malikov’s brother, Rashid Allaberganov, said in a phone interview from the south-central Russian region of Bashkortostan. “Everyone is in a state of shock.”

The reality of war is dawning across Russia.  

Russians who long avoided engaging with politics are now realizing that their country is fighting a deadly conflict, even as the Kremlin gets ever more aggressive in trying to shape the narrative. Its slow-motion crackdown on freedoms has become a whirlwind of repression of late, as the last vestiges of a free press faced extinction. 

 

Background: Russian military vehicle on fire

Foreground: a dead soldier

Police in Moscow arresting an anti-war protester

See? It really is a war of tyranny vs. democracy. It is the same war that China and other dictatorships are waging against the US and other democracies.

Your thoughts? Is it good vs. evil, or something else?

Hypothetical questions…

Fighting for the principles of freedom and democracy sounds noble in theory. But how about in fact?

Ukraine is experiencing this reality right now: Defending the principles of a democracy.  Many are willingly laying down their lives to defend their country, in the name of precious freedom. 

Shifting gears now to America/the U.S., and its love of freedom and democracy.  Right now, it is said that <1% of the US population volunteers for military service, a pretty large chunk of which includes minority races and less fortunate members of America’s opulent society. It’s true, some may see the military as their only viable choice for advancement in life (with technical training and/or paid education, which can lead to future job opportunities, etc).

 

Hypothetical Questions:

Though we so-called “know” it’s probably not possible, what if America came under attack, like Ukraine is now?

Question 1: How willing would people of military age in the U.S. be to sign up to fight?  Please rate along the spectrum of Very Willing to Not Willing at All.  Defend your answer. I.e., why?

Question 2: If you personally are of military age, would you be patriotic/freedom loving enough to sign up to help?  If it depends on something, what would that something(s) be?  Explain.

Thank you for posting. 

Some climate scientists get angry: A a supernova of stupid or not?

The New York Times writes:

Evidence on global warming is piling up. Nations aren’t acting. Some researchers are asking what difference more reports will make.

“We’ve had 26 Conference of the Parties meetings, for heaven’s sake,” he said, referring to the United Nations global warming summits. More scientific reports, another set of charts. “I mean, seriously, what difference is that going to make?”

It was this frustration that led Dr. Glavovic, 61, a professor at Massey University in New Zealand, and two colleagues to send a jolt recently through the normally cautious, rarefied world of environmental research. In an academic journal, they called on climate scientists to stage a mass walkout, to stop their research until nations take action on global warming.

Predictably, many researchers balked, calling the idea wrongheaded or worse — “a supernova of stupid,” as one put it on Twitter. But the article gets at questions that plenty of climate scientists have asked themselves lately: Is what we’re doing with our lives really making a difference? How can we get elected officials to act on the threats that we’ve so clearly identified? Do we become activists? Would we sacrifice our credibility as academics, our cool composure, by doing so?

For scientists of many kinds, the coronavirus pandemic has fueled the sense that scientific experts and political authorities are uneasy allies at best, that distrust and misinformation have weakened society’s capacity to work toward complex collective goals.

These thoughts were percolating as Dr. Glavovic worked alongside nearly 270 other experts on the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that assesses climate research. The new report, all 3,675 pages of it, was issued on Monday and concludes that global warming is outpacing our ability to cope.  

Each I.P.C.C. assessment is a huge, multiyear effort by researchers and representatives from 195 governments. Every line, every chart, is fine-tuned to ensure it is backed by evidence. The hours are long; the work is unpaid. The panel, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, has given global climate talks a crucial grounding in scientific fact. But its reports deliberately do not prescribe policies for governments to enact. They just lay out the options.

They are all the same: Climate science denier tactics, just like 

tobacco industry tactics, just like chemical industry tactics, 

just like Christian nationalist tactics, just like Republican Party tactics

What they and others like them all have in common is ruthless use of dark free speech to (i) attack inconvenient knowledge, (ii) attack the messengers trying to warn about inconvenient knowledge, and (iii) sow confusion and doubt about inconvenient knowledge. When big money and power is involved, lies, deceit, unwarranted doubt, slander and social division works every time as far as I can recall. 

Early on, climate science deniers vehemently disputed the science, arguing that (i) climate change was not real, (ii) climate scientists were a cabal of communists and Democrats hell-bent on enslaving Americans and destroying our economy, and (iii) the science was not persuasive and too uncertain. Talking points (ii) and (iii) are still popular with Republican elites and climate science deniers. They have successfully delayed taking action against climate change. 

In American politics it is ~25 times harder (my estimate) to get something done than it is to block it and do nothing. Unifying and building is hard and difficult. Dividing and destroying is easy, and for the elites at the top ~0.1%, incredibly power and wealth accumulating. That's just the way our political system was set up.

For decades, cigarette companies successfully (i) fooled tens of millions of Americans into a false belief that cigarettes did not cause cancer, and (ii) stopped government from taking serious action in defense of the public interest.

For decades and continuing today, oil and chemical companies successfully (i) fooled tens of millions of Americans into a false belief that plastic would be recycled, and (ii) stopped government from taking serious action in defense of the public interest, including an increasingly plastics-polluted environment. Today those same companies continue to block government action on climate change by quietly funding disinformation. These people are expert at sowing doubt, confusion and divisive false beliefs. 

For decades, Christian nationalists and the Republican Party have adapted and used the same tactics to deceive tens of millions of Americans into believing all kinds of divisive lies, slanders and crackpottery in their lust for power and wealth for the elites at the top. They have applied the full weight of their propaganda efforts to denigrate and neuter climate change as an important issue. This comes at the expense of, e.g., democracy, truth, the public interest and the rest of us. 

That is not to say that the tactics of deceit, division, doubt, slander and etc., are new. Those tactics have been in use for centuries.

Climate scientists: Consider their situation and weakness

The NYT correctly articulates the immense weakness of honest people honestly trying to inform and warn: Would we sacrifice our credibility as academics, our cool composure, by doing so? That is the key question. If climate scientists become activists, they would lose even more credibility in the face of a vast barrage of anti-environmentalist deceit, lies and slanders that target their activism. The scientists would be smeared as mendacious, self-serving political partisans and traitors. 

Climate scientists cannot be activists without losing their credibility. But by God, oil and chemical companies, other polluters and Republican ideologue extremists can be activists and they claim 100% credibility, even when they are lying through their teeth. See the major power asymmetry here between unifying and building vs. dividing and destroying (polluting for profit)? 

Once again, Republican hypocrisy and double standards are front and center. Polluters could not care less because there is so damn much money to be made.

Right now the Republican Party is dead set against taking climate change seriously in terms of government action. If anything, they may be open to the private sector and unregulated markets doing whatever they want, including polluting even more. The do-nothing Republican anti-climate science attitude is made crystal clear in the only statement about climate in a recent Republican policy document: 

The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs.

That is all that corrupt Republican ideologues are willing to say. That's it.

Republican elites are obviously not serious about climate change. In their open contempt of climate science and climate scientists, Republican elites do not even bother to distinguish between weather and climate. The issue is at best a silly joke for them, but far more likely a threat to the profit interest of some of their major financial donors (oil and chemical companies, etc.) and their own government-hating dogma.

Climate Science Update: Some not good news

The New York Times writes:

The impacts of global warming are appearing faster than expected, according to a major new scientific report. It could soon become much harder to cope.

The dangers of climate change are mounting so rapidly that they could soon overwhelm the ability of both nature and humanity to adapt, creating a harrowing future in which floods, fires and famine displace millions, species disappear and the planet is irreversibly damaged, a major new scientific report has concluded.

The report released Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, is the most detailed look yet at the threats posed by global warming. It concludes that nations aren’t doing nearly enough to protect cities, farms and coastlines from the hazards that climate change has already unleashed, such as record droughts and rising seas, let alone from the even greater disasters in store as the planet keeps heating up.

Written by 270 researchers from 67 countries, the report is “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” said António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general. “With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change.”

Global temperatures have already increased by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, as humans have pumped heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere by burning coal, oil and gas for energy, and cutting down forests.

Many leaders, including President Biden, have vowed to limit total global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic climate impacts increases significantly.

But achieving that goal would require nations to all but eliminate their fossil-fuel emissions by 2050, and most are far off-track. The world is currently on pace to warm somewhere between 2 degrees and 3 degrees Celsius this century, experts have estimated.  

Poor nations are far more exposed to climate risks than rich countries. .... That disparity has fueled a contentious debate: what the industrialized nations most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions owe developing countries. Low-income nations want financial help, both to defend against future threats and to compensate for damages they can’t avoid.

Compare and contrast: Democrats and Republicans

Democrats are concerned about climate change and they try to deal with it. Republicans and polluters effectively oppose and block government efforts to deal with it. The big lies there are (i) unregulated free markets running free and wild will solve the problem, while (ii) government regulation will make climate change worse and enslave us all in evil socialism. So, people who want more climate change can vote Republican. People who want less can go pound sand.

In the recent Republican 11 point plan to save America from evil tyrant Democratic Party cannibalistic pedophiles and their evil socialism, the word environment does not appear once, while the word climate appears once in this sentence:

The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs.  

So, there you have it. The weather is always changing. That's a blistering insight. 

The Republican plan is to not be hysterical or adopt nutty policies. That's Republican Party policy no matter how much economic damage climate change inflicts on the US or how polluting the saved jobs are. In the Republican mind, nutty policies are ones that would attempt to actually deal seriously with climate change. For Republicans, there is no such thing as the tragedy of the commons[1], just like there is no such thing as the common good, general welfare or public interest. For Republican elites, there is only me, myself and I.

Logically, Americans can reasonably expect the gridlock on climate change (and most everything else) in Washington to continue as long as the climate science denying Republican Party remains as ideologically rigid, incompetent and corrupt in its raging hate of government and its all-consuming authoritarian culture war mindset.

Or, is that criticism of the Republican Party way over the top? In view of the 'excellent' climate results [sarcasm] we see today, should it be up to individuals and the private sector, not government, to deal with regulations and climate change?

Footnote: 

1. Wikipedia: In economic science, the tragedy of the commons is a situation in which individual users, who have open access to a resource unhampered by shared social structures or formal rules that govern access and use, act independently according to their own self-interest and, contrary to the common good of all users, cause depletion of the resource through their uncoordinated action. .... Although open-access resource systems may collapse due to overuse (such as in over-fishing), many examples have existed and still do exist where members of a community with regulated access to a common resource co-operate to exploit those resources prudently without collapse, or even creating "perfect order."

A climate science update: A bit of good news

The Washington Post writes:

One of the biggest obstacles to avoiding global climate breakdown is that so many people think there’s nothing we can do about it.[1]

.... the best climate science you’ve probably never heard of suggests that humanity can still limit the damage to a fraction of the worst projections if — and, we admit, this is a big if — governments, businesses and all of us take strong action starting now.

For many years, the scientific rule of thumb was that a sizable amount of temperature rise was locked into the Earth’s climate system. Scientists believed — and told policymakers and journalists, who in turn told the public — that even if humanity hypothetically halted all heat-trapping emissions overnight, carbon dioxide’s long lifetime in the atmosphere, combined with the sluggish thermal properties of the oceans, would nevertheless keep global temperatures rising for 30 to 40 more years. Since shifting to a zero-carbon global economy would take at least a decade or two, temperatures were bound to keep rising for at least another half-century.

But guided by subsequent research, scientists dramatically revised that lag time estimate down to as little as three to five years. That is an enormous difference that carries paradigm-shifting and broadly hopeful implications for how people, especially young people, think and feel about the climate emergency and how societies can respond to it.

This revised science means that if humanity slashes emissions to zero, global temperatures will stop rising almost immediately. To be clear, this is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Global temperatures also will not fall if emissions go to zero, so the planet’s ice will keep melting and sea levels will keep rising. But global temperatures will stop their relentless climb, buying humanity time to devise ways to deal with such unavoidable impacts. In short, we are not irrevocably doomed — or at least we don’t have to be, if we take bold, rapid action.  

Nonscientists can reasonably ask: What made scientists change their minds? Why should we believe their new estimate of a three-to-five-year lag time if their previous estimate of 30 to 40 years is now known to be incorrect? And does the world still have to cut emissions in half by 2030 to avoid climate catastrophe?

The short answer to the last question is yes. Remember, temperatures only stop rising once global emissions fall to zero. Currently, emissions are not falling. Instead, humanity continues to pump approximately 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere. The longer it takes to cut those 36 billion tons to zero, the more temperature rise humanity eventually will face. And as the IPCC’s 2018 report made hauntingly clear, warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius would cause unspeakable amounts of human suffering, economic loss and social breakdown — and perhaps trigger genuinely irreversible impacts.  

Knowing that 30 more years of rising temperatures are not necessarily locked in can be a game-changer for how people, governments and businesses respond to the climate crisis. Understanding that we can still save our civilization if we take strong, fast action can banish the despair that paralyzes people and instead motivate them to get involved. Lifestyle changes can help, but that involvement must also include political engagement. Slashing emissions in half by 2030 demands the fastest possible transition away from today’s fossil-fueled economies in favor of wind, solar and other non-carbon alternatives.[2] That can happen only if governments enact dramatically different policies. If citizens understand that things aren’t hopeless, they can better push elected officials to make such changes. (emphasis added)

Footnote: 

1. The other biggest obstacle to avoiding adverse global climate changes is a toxic combination of the American Republican Party, a big slice of the American business community, e.g., the energy and chemical sectors, capitalist ideologues, crackpot climate science deniers and crackpot conspiracy theorists and decades of anti-climate science propaganda and lies that have successfully blocked most serious meaningful action.  

2. "Other non-carbon alternatives" include nuclear power (and maybe geothermal power). Each time the press fails or refuses to say or write the words "nuclear power" is a major mistake. It's an opportunity that cannot be recovered. It leaves the possibility out of the public's mind. Because it is failing on climate change reporting, the MSM gets a well-deserved grade of F. 

Conservatives elites at CPAC voice their concerns and victimhood

We deserve to know, but the GOP ain’t gonna tell us 

until after they get back in power

Then, it will be a surprise and not for the faint of heart

The New York Times writes:

.... at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of the right wing of American politics, the news convulsing the world seemed oddly distant. Instead, the focus was on cultural grievances, former President Donald J. Trump and the widespread sense of victimization that have replaced traditional conservative issues.

Like so many of the Republican officials who have remade themselves in his image, Mr. Trump, in a speech to the conference on Saturday night, sought to portray himself as a victim of assaults from Democrats and the news media. He said they would leave him alone if he were not a threat to seek the presidency again in 2024.

“If I said ‘I’m not going to run,’ the persecution would stop immediately,” Mr. Trump said. “They’d go on to the next victim.”

Mr. Trump had broad support at the event: Of those who responded, 85 percent said they would back him for the Republican nomination for president again, and 97 percent said they approved of his performance as president, according to a straw poll of CPAC attendees. Asked who should be the G.O.P. presidential nominee in 2024, 59 percent said Mr. Trump and 28 percent said Gov. Ron DeSantis. of Florida — though Floridians made up 37 percent of CPAC attendees.

Eight months before the midterm elections, familiar Republican themes like lower taxes and a muscular foreign policy took a back seat to the idea that America is backsliding into a woke dystopia unleashed by liberal elites. Even the G.O.P. was more than a bit suspect.

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump grass-roots group focusing on millennial conservatives, denounced “the Republican Party of old” in his speech to the conference, known as CPAC and held in Orlando, Fla., this year.

“Conservative leaders can learn something from our wonderful 45th president of the United States,” Mr. Kirk said. “I want our leaders to care more about you and our fellow countrymen than some abstract idea or abstract G.D.P. number.”

Placing cultural aggrievement at the centerpiece of their midterm campaigns comes as Republicans find themselves split on a host of issues that have typically united the party.

On Capitol Hill, Republican senators are debating whether to release an official policy agenda at all ahead of the midterms. The lack of urgency was encapsulated in a statement by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who dismissed a question about what Republicans would do if they took back Congress in 2022. “That is a very good question,” Mr. McConnell said. “And I’ll let you know when we take it back.”

In lieu of a united policy, Republicans are hoping that a grab bag of grievances will motivate voters who are dissatisfied with Mr. Biden’s administration. At CPAC, Republicans argued that they were the real victims of Mr. Biden’s America, citing rising inflation, undocumented immigration at the Mexican border and liberal institutions pushing racial diversity in hiring and education.

Every speaker emphasized personal connections to Mr. Trump, no matter how spurious, while others adopted both his aggrieved tone and patented hand gestures. 

Speakers largely brushed off the war in Ukraine, beyond blaming Mr. Biden, and on Friday few people mentioned Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Mr. Biden’s new choice for the Supreme Court.

John Schnatter, the pizza magnate who in 2018 resigned as chairman of the Papa John’s franchise after using a racial slur in a comment about Black people during a conference call, mingled among the crowd, saying he was among those unfairly canceled. Senator Rick Scott of Florida warned of “woke, government-run everything.”  

At CPAC, there was no shortage of stories about the horrors of cultural and political cancellations — though the speakers offered scant evidence of actual suffering.

Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, after saying he would “never, ever apologize for objecting” to Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, said he and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio were victimized when they were removed from the House committee investigating that day’s attack on the United States Capitol in 2021.

“We both got canceled and kicked off the committee by Nancy Pelosi,” Mr. Banks said.

Regarding the unwoke, government hating liar and hypocrite Rick Scott, this is some of the introduction of his recently released 11 point plan to save America from the evil, radical socialist Democrats:

The militant left now controls the entire federal government, the news media, academia, Hollywood, and most corporate boardrooms – but they want more. They are redefining America and silencing their opponents.

Among the things they plan to change or destroy are: American history, patriotism, border security, the nuclear family, gender, traditional morality, capitalism, social responsibility, opportunity, rugged individualism, Judeo-Christian values, dissent, free speech, color blindness, law enforcement,  religious liberty, parental involvement in public schools, and private ownership of firearms.

Is this the beginning of the end of America? Only if we allow it to be.

The Biden Administration’s unprecedented combination of radical left-wing policies and gross incompetence is bringing great harm to the American people. Roaring inflation, the dangerous mismanagement of our border, the disastrous escalation of spending and debt, the shamefully inept withdrawal from Afghanistan, the use of public schools for left-wing indoctrination, and the incredible lawlessness on our streets… Americans are angry, and rightfully so. 

I’ll warn you; this plan is not for the faint of heart. 

It will be ridiculed by the ‘woke’ left, mocked by Washington insiders, and strike fear in the heart of some Republicans. At least I hope so.

It is clear that Republican Party elites with their radical fundamentalist Christian nationalism and radical laissez-faire capitalism have declared all-out culture war. So is any recognition of any the responsibility the Republican Party has for the messes it helped create and now complains bitterly of. They don't even pretend that policy is important or relevant. All that counts is power and wealth. 

Self-proclaimed GOP elite victims are intent on overthrowing democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and secular government, schools and society. They intend to replace all of with brutal fundamentalist Christian Sharia law and autocratic kleptocratic laissez-faire capitalism. Scott is right about one thing. The Republican plan for America is not for the faint of heart. It is brutal, cruel, intolerant and bigoted. 

Oh yeah, to hell with Papa John's pizza. And papa John. 

Republican lies and irrational 

scare mongering