Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The Week Ahead

The Week Ahead

by | 36 Comments

This post is in: 

There are three different things to cover, so I’ll keep them all short.

Join the Fight!

We have 4 zoom sessions coming up this week as an introduction to Join the Fight effort to fight against voter suppression, election subversion, and disinformation in the media and social media.

We decided on zooms for now because we figure that even with the war in Ukraine folks can likely focus on something else for an hour in an interactive setting.  Please don’t prove us wrong!  :-)

⭐️ MONDAY 3/7 @ 8 pm Eastern

⭐️  TUESDAy 3/8 @ 10 pm Eastern

⭐️ WEDNESDAY 3/9 @ 1 pm Eastern

⭐️ SATURDAY 3/12 @ 11 am Eastern

I’ll be sending zoom links out for each zoom in the morning so I can catch all the new people who sign up.

Click here to express interest in joining one of the introductory zooms or the social media training with MomSense.

Click here to sign up to participate in the Join the Fight initiative.

 

War in Ukraine – Lexicon of Acronyms & Military Terms

Thanks to everyone who participated in the post on Saturday, either by listing terms you didn’t know or helping to explain the ones you did!

I put up a first draft.   A very rough draft, basically a compilation of all the answers in the Saturday thread, so lots of repetition for now if several people explained what something was.

You’ll see it changing over the course of the week as repetition is removed and things that aren’t clear are clarified.

The list is located under WAR IN UKRAINE.  You probably know where that is by now, but in case you don’t, it’s in the blue category up top, unless you are on mobile in which case it’s the top item in the mobile menu.

 

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

We currently have 4 donation options set up for Balloon Juice through ActBlue:

International Fund for Animal Welfare: IFAW has partnered with the Poznań Zoo in Poland to provide temporary shelter and care for wildlife rescued from the conflict in Ukraine.   And they are rushing emergency aid to animal shelters in Ukraine.

World Central Kitchen:  Feeding people in Ukraine and refugees at the border

Americares Foundation: Americares has an emergency response team on the way to Poland to support health services for families affected by the escalating humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. The team, which is headed to Krakow, has expertise in coordinating large-scale shipments of medicine and relief supplies and mobilizing emergency medical teams in crisis situations

International Rescue Committee: The IRC is working with partners in Poland and Ukraine that are quickly mobilizing resources to provide critical support to civilians forced to flee their homes.

Sincere thanks to everyone who has donated so far!

If you know of other great organizations that take donations through ActBlue, we can them to our Balloon Juice for Ukraine donation “thermometer”.  Please add their official name in the comments and if you have a link to their site on ActBlue, please include that, too.  It will save us time making sure we have the right organization.



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Reader Interactions

36Comments

  1. 1.

    Joy in FL

    Thanks for this.   I’m not sure if the Tuesday or Saturday time will be better, so I checked both. If I can make the Tuesday time, I probably won’t try for the Saturday time.

  4. 4.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: Not from what I could find yesterday.  thank god!  I would not raise a nickel for the Red Cross

    edit: Though I understand that the Canadian Red Cross is entirely different from the Red Cross we have.

  5. 5.

    debbie

    @WaterGirl:

    Thanks. It was one of the options at my work’s matching program, but I saw the email at the last minute and didn’t have time to research.

  7. 7.

    dr. luba

    Since the Ukrainian thread is done…..

    Many people have been surprised by the fighting spirit of Ukrainians. That’s because they don’t know our history, or our people.  We are not Russians.  We are anti-Russians. We’ve been fighting Russian since the misbegotten Treaty of Pereiaslav.  The Russian empire has tried to kill our language, has killed off our leadership and intelligentsia many times, and perpetrated and genocide (the Holodomor).  But we persist.

    Anyways, some 20 years ago, I was at a summer camp for orphans/kids in government care in the Carpathians,  Our theme that year was the dissidents of the 60s.  The camp leadership wanted to demonstrate to these post-Soviet kids what the times had been like.  So they arranged for one of the teachers to be “arrested” and then the kids would protest.  At which point some staffers, dressed as militia, came in to break up the protest and arrest the kids. To teach them about repression.

    The kids didn’t take it.  They began pummeling the “militia” with sign, fists, etc.  The guys had to run off for their own safety.

    That is the generation defending Ukraine now.

  10. 10.

    Gin & Tonic

    @dr. luba: Timothy Snyder has referred to the generation without a hammer and sickle on their birth certificate. All they have known is freedom.

  12. 12.

    WaterGirl

    @Sure Lurkalot: Yeah, we almost included that one but the funds go to the general VetVoice Fund and not a fund that specifically goes to Ukraine.

    If you or someone else wants to investigate further and get a firm commitment that funds will only go to Ukraine, then we could add it.

  13. 13.

    Miss Bianca

    @dr. luba: 

    The kids didn’t take it. They began pummeling the “militia” with sign, fists, etc. The guys had to run off for their own safety.

    That is the generation defending Ukraine now.

    OMG. I feel like I shouldn’t be laughing at this scenario quite as hard as I am right now. But, here I am. Thank you for that image!

  16. 16.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @WaterGirl: This is what is on the ActBlue page for the Vet Voice/Vindman fundraiser:

    Your donation will go to MOAS to bring medical relief and first response services to civilians affected by the escalating violence in Ukraine. From 25th February 2022 MOAS has representatives present in the field and is working to deploy Mobile Medical Teams to the crisis-affected region, alongside ambulance services and pharmaceutical aid.

    MOAS is a humanitarian service provider and aid delivery organization. MOAS specializes in providing rapid response relief programs to communities in crisis around the world.

    Established as the Mediterranean’s first Search and Rescue NGO in the Mediterranean in 2014, MOAS has since expanded to provide global crisis relief and has reached over 150,000 people with its international programming.

    Like Doctors Without Borders, they do work in many places. The ActBlue page is the only info I could find as to where the money raised by Vindman et. al. will be going.

  17. 17.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @WaterGirl: Yes! I’ll look over the times. Just taking a break from a crappy spring cleaning chore that is aching my back (and I’m not finished, damn!)

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    @Geminid: If you mean the Ukraine Lexicon, absolutely!  Do you have some things in mind or are you just asking generally?

    edit: If you have suggestions right now you can add them to this thread, and then I’ll add them as placeholders to fill in details later.

  22. 22.

    Magrat Garlick

    @debbie: I worked for International Rescue Committee in the 80s — they’re a refugee agency, not connected with red cross

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: I had in mind the “OODA Loop” I half-jokingly referred to yesterday. I figured that others would jump to explain it, but nobody bit.

    OODA stands for “Observe Orient Decide Act.” American Army officers are encouraged to have a tight OODA loop, and to keep opponents off balance by getting “inside” of their OODA loop.

    I think the emphasis on maintaining a tight OODA loop comes with encouraging intitiative among officers, especially at the battalion and brigade level. I wonder how the question of the OODA loop is handled by the Russian Army. I have the impression that they may have another “C”, for Consultation (with superiors). That could turn the OODA Loop into a kind of Moebius Strip.

  28. 28.

    zhena gogolia

    @NotMax: These things are not hitting the Putin supporters. They don’t use Netflix or PayPal anyway. It’s hitting precisely the Putin opponents, educated city dwellers.

  30. 30.

    Another Scott

    Also this week – Science.org:

    […]

    “CERN as a leading scientific laboratory should terminate immediately any cooperation with Russian institutions, because otherwise every crime and every injustice made by their government and their armed forces is seen as legitimate,” says a Ukrainian physicist in Kyiv who works on an experiment at CERN. “We call on democratic society, on scientific society, to stand with us against this tyrant [Russian President Vladimir Putin].”

    The CERN Council, which comprises representatives from the lab’s 23 member nations, will meet in a special session on 8 March to decide how to respond to the crisis. Even physicists who extol CERN’s historical role as an engine for peace expect the council to sanction Russia in some way. “There will be a clear sign towards the Russian government,” says Christoph Rembser, a CERN physicist. “I can’t imagine anything else.”

    Established in 1954, CERN aimed from its inception to help promote peace in postwar Europe, says John Ellis, a theoretical physicist from King’s College London who works at CERN and was on the lab’s staff for more than 40 years. “One of CERN’s mottos is ‘science for peace,’” he says. “And that goes back to the 1950s, when CERN was actually a meeting place for scientists from the Soviet Union and the U.S. and Europe.” Maintaining such ties is important, especially in a time of conflict, Ellis says, noting that CERN did not expel Russian scientists when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Afghanistan in 1979. “My personal attitude is that we should really strive to maintain that collaboration, if it’s at all politically possible.”

    Rembser, who grew up in what was then West Germany, arrived as a student at CERN in 1989, just after the Chinese government massacred protesters in Tiananmen Square. He says that in the aftermath, CERN served as a way station for Chinese scientists and students fleeing to the West. The barracks in which Rembser stayed grew so crowded that he had to take turns sleeping in a bed. “I was woken up by a guy saying, ‘Now it’s my turn,’ and when I came back, there was another Chinese guy in my bed, too,” he says.

    Currently, CERN researchers are striving to aid their 40 or so Ukrainian colleagues. Ellis says he’s trying to help a particular Ukrainian colleague and refugee arrange a temporary position at CERN, and Rembser is leading a committee to support Ukrainians. CERN personnel have already amassed so much aid they may hire trucks to drive the supplies to Ukraine’s border with Poland, Rembser says. Emails seen by ScienceInsider suggest CERN management is working to extend the stays of Ukrainian researchers already at the lab.

    The Ukrainian physicist says CERN should also sever ties with Russia. “Keeping these connections, even on the scientific level, will give these gangsters a chance to further manipulate and terrorize our country and the whole of Europe.”

    But expelling Russian researchers from CERN could be impractical, Ellis says. More than 1000 Russians work there, he says—roughly 8% of the 12,000 scientists who collaborate at CERN. Their sudden departure might leave the laboratory unable to function. Complicating the matter, Ukraine is an associate member of CERN, meaning even though it has no seat on the council, it pays dues. Russia is merely an observer nation that pays no dues. But it contributes significantly to specific experiments—much like the United States.

    Everyone ScienceInsider spoke to acknowledged that the situation has no simple solution. For example, the Ukrainian physicist notes that, on a personal level, Russian colleagues at CERN have been kind and supportive. Many Russian physicists have spoken out against the war, Rembser notes, which could put them at risk if they return to Russia. So CERN could experience an influx of both Ukrainian and Russian physicists looking for refuge, he says.

    […]

    VVP is breaking all kinds of important things with his horrible war.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  31. 31.

    Geminid

    @Geminid:

     

    @WaterGirl: When I think more about it, the “OODA Loop” might be an unneccessary addition to the Lexicon. Unlike the other acronyms, I have not seen it mentioned here or in commentary on the war in other places.

    The Ukrainian Army’s OODA loop does seem to be tighter than that of the Russians, and that seems to be one of Ukraine’s advantages.

  32. 32.

    CCL

    @WaterGirl:   I was afraid of that…our first round will be going to WTC and Doctors without Borders.

    Thank you for all you are doing!

  35. 35.

    persistentillusion

    WaterGirl, thank you for your enormously helpful work in aggregating, vetting and suggesting information.  We are all better informed because of your efforts.

Comments are closed.