I don’t have a Smerch O’Clock graphic, so just pretend…
Weapon of Retribution.
It’s our land! pic.twitter.com/XbE0v5YaeZ— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) October 23, 2022
See Smerch O’Clock!
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump:
Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!
Today we can already report that in all our regions, which became the target of yesterday’s Russian terrorist attack, the technical possibility of electricity supply has been restored.
I am thankful to each and every one who worked tirelessly to bring light to people.
Of course, in many cities and districts, our energy companies have to apply stabilization shutdown schedules. This is done so that all our people have access to energy – in conditions where it is not possible to produce it in sufficient quantities.
Restoring energy facilities destroyed by terrorist attacks is a much longer and more difficult task. But over time, we will provide that, too. Over time…
This time must be passed. Therefore, today and in the future, as before, we should consume electricity very consciously. Please remember to limit the use of unnecessary and energy-consuming appliances.
Separately, I want to address community leaders and mayors of our cities: please make sure that energy is not wasted. Now is definitely not the time for bright shop windows and signs. It is necessary to be really frugal with energy consumption in public space.
Reconstruction continues in the de-occupied territory. Every day I receive new reports about the connection to gas, water, electricity of hundreds of households in liberated areas. In particular, just today in only two districts of the Kharkiv region, 346 households have gas again. The city of Vovchansk – 750 more households with electricity. The city of Izyum – 300 more households with electricity. This is constant work that does not stop for a single day and continues throughout the liberated territory of Ukraine.
Wherever Russia has brought death and degradation, we are restoring normal life. This is precisely about Ukrainians. Where Ukraine is, life is never destroyed. But wherever Russia comes, it leaves behind mass graves, torture chambers, destroyed cities and villages, mined land, destroyed infrastructure and natural disasters.
So when today the Russian Minister of Defense organizes a phone carousel and calls foreign ministers with stories about the so-called “dirty” nuclear bomb, everyone understands everything well. Understands who is the source of everything dirty that can be imagined in this war.
It was Russia who blackmailed with the radiation disaster at the Zaporizhzhia NPP.
This is the trajectory of Russian missiles that goes, in particular, over Ukrainian nuclear facilities.
Those are Russian troops who mined the dam and aggregates of the Kakhovka HPP and are blackmailing with their detonation.
It is Russia that uses phosphorous munitions, banned anti-personnel mines and the entire range of weapons against civilian infrastructure.
Ukraine is always about recovery. Always about life. And there’s only one subject who can use nuclear weapons in our part of Europe, and this subject is the one who ordered comrade Shoigu to call somewhere.
If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means one thing: Russia has already prepared all this. I believe that now the world should react in the toughest possible way. If Russia has prepared another round of raising stakes and another escalating step, it must see now, preemptively and before its any new “dirt” that the world will not swallow that.
Even the very Russian threat of nuclear weapons – and even more so against our country, which has given up its nuclear arsenal under promises of security from the largest nuclear powers – is a reason for both sanctions and even greater strengthening of support for Ukraine. Because the stronger the support for us is, the sooner this war and any possible Russian threats will end. When a terrorist state raises the stakes, it must feel that it won’t work.
During the upcoming week, this will be the number one task for our diplomats – to explain what is happening. And I am sure: the world will be with us. The world will understand.
It is very important that today the sixth ship with food chartered in the framework of the UN World Food Programme left our port. This vessel is bound for Yemen, with wheat. Ethiopia, Yemen and Afghanistan are three countries that have already received food thanks to our exports and the UN food program.
Such programs are exactly what we in Ukraine are thinking about. How to help get out of the crisis – not how to create a crisis. How to help solve a problem – not how to drive someone into a problem. How to restore the destroyed – not to destroy even more.
This is what distinguishes Ukraine from Russia. This is what will help us win in the end. Because we fight and work for life.
Glory to Ukraine!
I spoke by phone today with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu, who requested a follow up call. I rejected any pretext for Russian escalation & reaffirmed the value of continued communication amid Russia’s unlawful & unjustified war against Ukraine. https://t.co/yzfk4oEeIy
— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) October 23, 2022
Here’s the readout from the DOD:
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Readout of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III’s Phone Call With Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu
Oct. 23, 2022Attributed to Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder:
“Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke by phone Oct. 23 with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu, who requested a follow up call. Secretary Austin rejected any pretext for Russian escalation and reaffirmed the value of continued communication amid Russia’s unlawful and unjustified war against Ukraine.”
Here’s the context to today’s call:
NSC spokesperson https://t.co/MbsSJ89Q2R
— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) October 23, 2022
Keep in mind with these sorts of claims that Russia spent a few years in Syria claiming a false flag chemical attack was going to happen once a fortnight, and nothing came of those claims, nor did they pre-empt Syrian government chemical attacks. It's just their propaganda churn. https://t.co/N6Pih6AxZQ
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) October 23, 2022
Presumably fake stories like this serve two purposes: prepare the Russian public opinion for the possible use of TNWs while attempting to influence Western threat perceptions by signalling such preparation. Hopefully the second is the main reason. But we just don’t know. https://t.co/67kdMVK1x0
— Sergey Radchenko (@DrRadchenko) October 23, 2022
And Ukraine’s response:
Every day, #UAarmy liberates our land from rus dirt.
The thought of a "dirty bomb" is repulsive to us.
We invite @UN @iaeaorg monitoring missions to visit🇺🇦.The world should provide a response to rus nuclear blackmail.We demand adherence to paragraph 4 of the Budapest Memorandum pic.twitter.com/aE3G4pd1XF— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) October 23, 2022
Good night, world 🌙#Ukraine is fighting evil. And Ukraine will prevail 🇺🇦#StandWithUkraine#UkraineWillWin#russiaIsATerroristState#ArmUkraineNow#CloseTheSky pic.twitter.com/HQyCwgdP7h
— Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine – Ukrainian Parliament (@ua_parliament) October 23, 2022
This woman’s response isn’t to the Russian agitprop, but it might as well be:
She speaks for all of us.
“Shob vin zdoh, blyat” is a polite way of wishing Putin death in Ukrainian. pic.twitter.com/nJgmX8OWQX
— Saint Javelin (@saintjavelin) October 20, 2022
Another Russian fighter jet has crashed into a building in Russia:
Another Russian warplane (an Su-30) has crashed into a residential building, this time in Irkutsk. The two pilots reportedly died. pic.twitter.com/0j25ycJ8eV
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) October 23, 2022
Footage of the crash itself. https://t.co/7yx8mhgVqJ pic.twitter.com/EB6woUDMIr
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) October 23, 2022
Treason is never good:
Never a dull development with Ukraine’s Motor Sich. Security Service confirms arrest of company’s president Vyacheslav Boguslayev on treason, embezzlement charges, claiming he provided Russia with MS engines to produce, repair its attack helicopters, despite ban on export to Rus. https://t.co/l5jVsUwT1H
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) October 23, 2022
They’re going to have to move for a change of venue for this guy to get an impartial jury (that’s sarcasm).
#FreedomIsOurReligion pic.twitter.com/F79JxYIkSg
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) October 23, 2022
That’s enough for a Sunday evening.
Your daily Patron!
Do you remember the stamps with my image? Part of the profit goes to equipment for sappers, and another part to the needs of animals that suffered during the war. Me and @smelyansky_igor (CEO of @ukrposhta) brought booths and food to the first 2 shelters personally. Thank you! pic.twitter.com/w09sBZ01kf
— Patron (@PatronDsns) October 23, 2022
And will make again. Thank you 👊🏻
— Patron (@PatronDsns) October 23, 2022
For those who wish to purchase and are having trouble with the official UKRPOSHTA site, here’s the link where I purchased mine at Amazon. The ones at the Amazon link are the official UKRPOSHTA stamps and postcard. Here’s the info on the seller who is handling the transactions for UKRPOSHTA on Amazon:
And a new video from Patron’s official TikTok:
@patron__dsns Спрацювало?😀 #песпатрон #патрондснс
The caption machine translates as:
Did it work? 😀 #PatrontheDog #PatronDSNS
Open thread!
bbleh
second call between Russian and US defense secs in a couple days. Shoigu also spoke with UK, France, Turkey counterparts today. Reports suggest he raised prospect of …
… fleeing for his life and conditions for asylum.
WaterGirl
Seeing the number 242 in the title, it’s so awful that the people of Ukraine have been subjected to this for so long.
Alison Rose
putin must have been the kid who would grab your hand and smack your face with it yelling WHY ARE YOU HITTING YOURSELF. The mendacity is incomprehensible.
I’ve said a few times that I wish we could settle things by having Zelenskyy and putin fight, because we know Ze would kick the shit out of him. But now I kinda want to send that lady in the ring, too. They can tag team. Done and dusted.
I also ordered my stamps from the Amazon shop and they look great–you also get a cute postcard and a couple envelopes.
Thank you as always, Adam.
Gin & Tonic
Boy, I love that old woman on the bike – a) she is the archetypal Ukrainian village grandma, every Ukrainian knows somebody exactly like that; b) she is cursing like a sailor, despite what Saint Javelin may say; c) she calls Putin a “підорас,” pronounced “pee-do-ras,” or “pederast,” which is the lewdest and vilest insult you can direct at a man in Russian or Ukrainian. The subtitles miss probably 30% of what she actually says. As I’ve noted, in Ukrainian the verb for “to die” is different when you are talking about people than when you are talking about animals – you needn’t guess which one she uses in talking about Putin.
cain
So I was talking about this in /r/politics on reddit – and I was curious to see how many Ukrainian Americans will switch their votes to Dems. I mean, they must know what is at stake. The GOP made a tactical error in telegraphing that they have no plans to support Ukraine going forward. That means, that all those slavic votes are up for grabs – and I know they generally vote GOP because they are indeed quite conservative. Like the Latino’s anything that smacks of leftist/communism/socialism probably gives them nightmares.
Someone says that the there are a lot of them in Pennsylvania. I’m not sure how the Russian American contingent thinks – I know that the two communities probably mix all the time. I can’t help but feel that that we are going to get a lot of slavic votes thanks to McCarthy. You can bet that there are a bunch of other eastern european americans who probably also thinking that if we dont’ stop Putin here, he’ll be eyeing the other countries next.
Gin & Tonic
@cain:
Nothing good can ever come from that. You know that, right?
cain
Lol – yeah, but mostly it’s been with fellow travelers. I don’t get trolled much. But as I said, I’m hoping that many Ukrainians will vote Dems down ticket or at least at the federal level.
dmsilev
@cain: Might be of interest:
In Ohio, Vance faces backlash in Ukrainian community over war stance
cain
@dmsilev: The GOP is doing an excellent job of taking away GOP votes away from their party. Once they vote Dems, maybe they’ll be willing to vote Dems again.
This is why I’m not sure about how the polling is going to play. They are busy pissing of entire communities of people.
Alison Rose
@Gin & Tonic: One of my mom’s grandpas was from Ukraine (Lviv) and I love knowing I’m descended from people this bad-ass.
dmsilev
Also, I had to laugh at the correction at the end of that Post article:
You just know they got deluged with complaints.
Eolirin
@cain: There’s a reason McConnell is pushing back on that line as hard as he is and pledging continued support. Not that you can trust a damn thing McConnell says. He’s also been against the attacks on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid that Rick Scott and now House Republicans have been making, and unwilling to take a position on a national abortion ban. These are all losing issues for the Republicans. They need to be kept quiet until after the election if not avoided entirely.
He’s much better at this game than McCarthy. If he still had the ability to command party message discipline we’d really be in trouble. But the MAGAs aren’t following his lead anymore.
Mike in NC
J. D. Vance has an eminently punchable face.
Adam L Silverman
@cain: I know the sizable community in Ohio is not particularly thrilled with JD Vance. I don’t know whether that will make a difference at the polls.
lowtechcyclist
@cain:
Poland understands from hard experience what’s at stake for Ukrainians, and I’ve got to wonder how much of that carries over to Americans of Polish descent. There’s more than a few of those.
Gin & Tonic
@dmsilev: They apparently want war.
Adam L Silverman
@cain: The major issue with the polling is that we’ve never had models that account for the current weird situation. Unemployment is way down while inflation is up. The party not holding the presidency normally does really well in the first midterm of a presidency, but we have no real idea what the effect from the Dobbs ruling is. NBC/MSNBC just released a vote with likely voter responses. Then they noted this is the first time they’ve ever surveyed likely voters. So we have no context for what those responses mean. And I’m still not sure that the well established polling models have yet figured out what their sample demographics should look like, which has been a major issue for the past six years.
And I write all that despite you all knowing what I think is going to happen. Because I put that on the front page months ago.
Splitting Image
@WaterGirl:
Certainly sucks, but it’s better than three days of war and 239 days of occupation, which was the original plan.
All anybody can do on this side of the ocean at this point is vote to keep the artillery going.
WaterGirl
@Splitting Image: I did think of that as I typed the comment.
dmsilev
@Gin & Tonic: I’m sure the battle lines are firming up as we speak.
Andrya
@cain: And a lot of Finnish-American votes. They know perfectly well that if (G-d forbid) putin pulls this off, he’s coming next for Moldova, then the Baltic states and Finland.
oldster
I’d love to know where that huge barrage of missiles was headed.
And I’d hate to be on the receiving end of it.
A thought about donations:
Any money that you send to the Ukrainian cause is good, and don’t let me dissuade you from it.
But if you want money to go to Ukraine, then *nothing* is more important than keeping the US govt. in the hands of the Democratic Party.
You can donate 50 bucks. Uncle Sam can donate 50 *billion*.
If the treasonous Republicans can be kept out of power.
So, think about donating to the BJ thermometers, or to the DCCC or the DSCC, to keep the house and the Senate in Democratic hands. Your money will go to Ukraine, 100-fold.
dr. luba
Patron video: They say if you tap twice on the screen, the dog Patron will appear…..
Carlo Graziani
@Gin & Tonic: That…I’d take a language course for that.
Within Italy, the Tuscans, and especially the Florentines, are especially talented at vile invective, although their specialty is the kind of blasphemy that makes even confirmed atheists start thinking about stepping out of the immediate lightning-strike blast zone. I know of one or two grandmas with paint-scorching tongues like the one in the video.
Chetan Murthy
This is a good reminder that UA has a vibrant high-tech military sector, and even though some parts of it have been destroyed, they have the part that matters: the people, the brainpower. And when this war is over, UA will be able to produce armaments not just for themselves, but for NATO.
Heidi Mom
I watched the “Freedom Is Our Religion” video and need some help with it. Having reread Taras Bulba recently, I recognized the Cossack at the beginning, but are Ukrainians being portrayed as –please forgive my ignorance– his inheritors (they were certainly committed to their own freedom) or his opponents (in their dying words, according to Gogol, they praised “our Holy Russian Orthodox Church”)?
Geminid
@Adam L Silverman: Ohioans with ties to other eastern European countries may be similarly motivated to vote against Vance.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Russian Dirty Bomb talk is interesting because it was being noted that nuclear weapons have a limited shelf because of the half life of the radioactive materials and with the way the Russian defer maintenance, or lie about it, likely most Russian nukes have degraded to dirty bombs by now.
Brit in Chicago
@Adam L Silverman:
“…you all knowing what I think is going to happen. Because I put that on the front page months ago.” —I missed it, would you please supply a link?
Chetan Murthy
@Brit in Chicago:
I hope that when/if Adam puts up a link or a repost, everybody remembers to not dump on him. He’s giving a diagnosis, and whether or not that diagnosis agrees with our desires/hopes/beliefs, it’s his diagnosis, period.
ETA: b/c IIRC, last time when he posted it, people got het up and angry at him for it.
Gin & Tonic
@Heidi Mom: The mythology and iconography of the Zaporizhzhian Cossacks is strong in Ukraine, and the current armed forces are viewed as their spiritual descendants. Don’t forget that during the time of Taras Bulba the primary enemy was Poland, not russia and there was only a Russian Orthodox Church – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, particularly in its modern, autocephalic incarnation is a far more recent development. The religious distinctions here are actually pretty complex – I believe I’ve written in more detail about them, but I’m tired and I’m neither going to look for that nor try to do it again right now.
As to the actual text of Taras Bulba, there are two versions, with “political” differences between them. But luckily Gogol’s wife is a frequent commenter here, and I’m sure can provide much more erudition than I can.
Bill Arnold
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
This is false.
catclub
@WaterGirl:
Syrian civil war started in 2011, right.
also this:
The Second Chechen War took place in Chechnya and the border regions of the North Caucasus between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, from August 1999 to April 2009.
catclub
@oldster: well put.
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks; uncertainty sustains hope.
More uncertainty: surprises are often sprung in the last 2 weeks before an election, timed to attempt to dominate news cycles.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike in NC:
Backpfeifengesicht.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: The problem is that “Russian” could be Russian or could be Rus’-ian, so not technically Russian in the modern sense. There is a lot of controversy about the 1835 and 1842 versions of Taras Bulba and whether Gogol was trying to make it more Russian-Imperial-friendly or not. I have no dog in this fight, since it’s not a work I’ve studied that carefully.
Princess
@dmsilev: There are a million Czechs, Poles and Slovaks in Ohio (taken altogether, and not all, of course, of voting age). That’s a lot of voters for Vance to lose.
Tony G
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: At this point I’m surprised when any Russian equipment and weapons actually work. The whole culture at this point — civilian or military — seems to be based on corruption and theft. Looting washing machines from a war zone, for Christ sake!
Adam L Silverman
@Brit in Chicago: I’ll try to find the link for you tomorrow. I’m getting ready to rack out.
Another Scott
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott: OK, that made me laugh out loud for reals, yo’! Whoever comes up with these tapestry-cartoons is an excellent humorist.
dww44
@Adam L Silverman: So I missed all that. So can you reshare what you think is going to happen, I have a bad feeling that your prediction won’t be one that I like.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: I think ErikAukan creates them.
There’s an on-line tool for creating them. It took me a while to figure out how to do text – Just click on the canvas and start typing. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
One of the things pilots should be taught is to not hit power lines. Planes don’t like it.
This guy apparently skipped out of class that day…
(via Oryx)
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Tony G:
When the upper level of your government’s citizens is all about corruption and theft there is very little left for the common citizen. So theft and corruption becomes the norm because that is how one survives. Recovery from rampant corruption and theft is possible but difficult because for many corruption and theft is all there is and all they know and rebuilding from that basis is damn near impossible. It’s why so many people are willing to leave, the entirety of their lives are being corrupted and that brings the value of those lives to the corruptors to basically zero.
Fake Irishman
@Another Scott:
low attitude combat flying is a dangerous business, but playing dodg’em with land and infrastructure obstacles, AA guns and a million handheld SAMs are still better that getting your plane blasted out of the sky by an S300 or S400
Marc
It’s nearly impossible to see power lines or cables in flight if they aren’t marked. You may have seen colorful balls on power lines that cross valleys, a lot of them were paid for by a foundation set up by the widow of a helicopter pilot who hit a power line. As a glider pilot, I was trained to look for the pylons or poles and assume there was something between them. Two of my friends nonetheless managed to hit power lines. One while flying along a ridge at 120 knots, he did not survive. The other one while landing in a field, the glider was destroyed, he survived, but decided to give up flying.
Fake Irishman
@Princess:
Not to mention Slovenes, Croats and Lithuanians. My wife’s aunt is a extremely conservative Republican, but she remembers very well with great bittnerness what happened to her Dad’s business and home in the Baltic states after the Second World War. ForeIgn policy rarely figures in an election but maybe on the margins this one does….
Tom Levenson
@dww44: It won’t be.
But while I have a depressing faith in Adam’s clarity of thought, both some of the early data on turnout and the fact that Ds have outperformed polls post Dodd by a surprising margin, plus the utter randomness of the world right now makes it possible for Adam, as he noted above, and the rest of us to see some possibility where in the spring there was nothing but bleak horizons.
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus:
I’ve wondered from time-to-time about this (and I think you’re right). There’s a trope that people from certain countries are incorrigibly corrupt — for instance, in India bribery is rampant, to the point where, when I was a kid visiting during high school, my grandmother gave me the renewal form for the radio license, the money for the fee, and “something for the clerk”. It was just the way things worked. And yet, Indians in Western countries don’t behave in any more of a corrupt manner than any native-born Westerners. And this repeats itself in many other countries.
I wondered to myself, if the phenomenon of widespread corruption — permeating itself thru many layers of a society — is a product of elites, and of their over-representation and over-consumption, rather than any aspect of the society itself. That is to say, maybe the cause of corruption, is entirely the fact that elites want more of a society’s fruits, than is sustainable, and this is what produces corruption.
Heidi Mom
@Gin & Tonic: Thank you!
Spadizzly
@Gin & Tonic: Beautiful! Going back to 2014 or so, around our house, we tend to greet putin’s image on our telescreen with a hearty and sincere “щоб він здох сука блядь!”
Hopefully sooner than later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrtVvHyiRbc
Another Scott
@Marc: Thanks for your comments. I’m sorry if I brought back painful memories.
I remember hiking with friends in the hills in Dolly Sods, WV and hearing an indistinct, low rumbling and wondering where it was coming from, and looking up just in time to see a couple of A-10s swoop up the hill over us seemingly just above the trees and disappear.
I remember the 1998 case of the US pilots in Italy hitting cable car cables and causing the car to crash. :-( And them lying about it…
Yes, power lines are dangerous to combat pilots, especially if they don’t have up-to-date maps of the lines (and russia was reportedly working from 40 year old maps in some of their planning…). It’s yet another reason for VVP’s people to go home. ;-)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Carlo Graziani
@Chetan Murthy: The prevalence or absence of corruption in societies and institutions is one of the points that I wrote about in The Resumption of History, specifically in Part 4. The point there was that the kind of constitutionalism whose point of departure is a suspicion of power, which sets up instituions designed to limit the exercise — and particularly the abuse — of power, over time creates societies that are less susceptible to corruption, whether pecuniary or otherwise. The resulting set of societal attitudes help explain the noticeably lower level of corrupt practice of the type that you note in Western Europe and in the US, in my opinion.
However, what is happening in Russia is a whole different phenomenon from the routine “background” of petty corruption that is the usual experience in most of the world. Putin appears to have taken his vision of the Russian Idea —- essentially a tribal appeal to ethnic and religious loyalty, coupled to an attitude towards non-Russians that ranges from condescension to loathing, under a political outlook of nihilistic illiberalism, and connected to Russian history through the twin continuities of Russian imperial drive to conquest and implacable grievance over conquest thwarted — and used it to construct one of the most spectacularly succesful kleptocracies in history. He is reported to get a cut of every business deal involving a government contract, and the fruits of this monetizarion of his government position have been very visible in the network of palaces that he has had constructed for himself.
Well, as they say, a fish rots from the head. Why shouuld any Russian citizen be loyal to the state, if the President himself steals with such impunity? Why should any Russian government employee not follow Putin’s example, monetizing their government position to gain material comfort? In fact, it seems pretty clear that a number of them have done precisely this — hence the supernaturally excellent intelligence on Russian intentions that the Biden administration appears to acquire so effortlessly, presumably purchased at competitive rates from an active market.
The story of Russian purchases of Iranian drones is both ironic and instrucive, I believe. Both countries have the “usual, background” type of corruption. Both are laboring under draconian export-control sanctions. Both are largely mineral wealth-driven economies, Iran, however, has managed the trick of outfitting itself with its own supply chains that allow it to circumvent the export controls, despite being in a low-level hot war with Israel. Russia, on the other hand, has had over two decades of time to prepare itself by deepening its pathetic economy, which does mineral-wealth extraction and finished products based on imported industrial inputs, with nothing in-between. They’ve realized what a vulnerability this is at least since 2014, when they were stung by sanctions over the first invasion, and they still did nothing to correct the problem.
The difference is that Iran has a real unifying ideology that many people buy into. As despicable as the mullahs’ rule is, they have the loyalty of millions, including many in government service, who believe in what they are doing. Likewise, during the Soviet era, the Soviet Union was notoriously one of the hardest intelligence targets of all time, because millions of Soviet citizens still believed in Marxism-Leninism, and government employees by-and-large believed in a common mission.
I doubt that there are 10 people working in Russian government service who feel that way today. The country has gone through a corruption of its ideology and arrived at an ideology of corruption. Stealing is the purpose of a government job in Russia today.
Chetan Murthy
@Carlo Graziani: Carlo, while I do agree with your observations about Russia, I think you’re giving too much credit to the US and Western systems of government. India’s government was supposedly based on the British system, and yet corruption became rampant. And I see it happening in both the US and UK as we live and breathe. Sure, nowhere near as bad as in Russia. But OTOH, I remember back when Indonesia had those explosions of “crony capitalism” near the end of Suharto’s reign, and we were patting ourselves on the back about how that could never happen here. Haha, so wrong were we. So wrong were we.
trollhattan
@Another Scott: I watch crop dusters here in the Valley with wonder. Powerlines abound and for them to do their jobs they’re consistently flying under the things. {shudder}
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
Sort of what I’ve been saying about Russia over the last few months. Corruption is rampant from the top down so everyone is used to it being there, it’s normalized. It’s likely not the only country that is but it’s what so many have to do, go along to get along. There are places like this everywhere humans live, it’s just that some places it is far more prevalent. Here we have a culture of shopping and purchasing more than basic necessities and a democratic government is more open to more of society, which leads to less corruption. But being human it never, ever gets to zero.
Carlo Graziani
@Chetan Murthy: I was careful to write “less susceptible”, not “immune”. The argument is much more nuanced (and lengthy) than what I’ve dropped in a paragraph here. And it’s really not a cultural argument, so much as one about the proper foundations of governance.
In any event, it’s a side-issue here, the main point being the distinction between the background of everyday corruption that most of the world accepts as a normal part of life, and the monster kleptocracy that is Russia.
bjacques
And if you’re at the bottom of the food chain, if you have no power to steal anything material, you can at least steal back your time. Blowing off scheduled maintenance but signing off on it anyway is the conscripts’ stochastic revenge against an army that robs its own soldiers when it can’t find an enemy to plunder and even when it can.
tokyokie
@Carlo Graziani:
Not only does Russia have an ideology of corruption, Putin wishes to export that ideology worldwide. And the trump-led gop is eager to accommodate him. Every day trump remains unincarcerated, is a blow against the rule of law.
columbusqueen
@cain: There’s 80,000+ Ukrainian Americans in Ohio, mostly in the Cleveland area. Am hoping Vance’s bs comment about not caring what happens in Ukraine costs him most of their votes.
Jinchi
They pretend to pay us. We pretend to work.
They pretend to train us. We pretend to fight.
I’m sure it’s the same reason so many perfectly functional tanks get abandoned in the field, instead of driven away.
Uncle Cosmo
@Carlo Graziani: I have a slim 5-language dictionary of obscenities (bought a generation back at Schoenhof’s Foreign Books around the corner from Hahvahd Yahd) – French, Spanish, Italian, German and Russian – and the nastiest of the contents were en español, viz.:
Scatology, coprology and blasphemy, in one neat package… :^D
Bill Arnold
One possibility with the Dirty Bomb talk is that is is being floated as a possible narrative if a single Russian tactical nuclear weapon fails, because the well-funded Russian nuclear forces have made it clear, either directly or through side channels, that a considerable percentage of the tactical stockpile won’t work as nuclear devices (e.g. the primary fizzles) due to “lack of testing for 40 years” or whatever plausible (and maybe even partially true) excuse would work. “Dirty Bomb” would not survive forensics, but might if evidence-dispersal/contamination were done with a working device.
Extremely dumb scheme, if so. (Also, if such a plan were executed, ruthless justice-by-death for all those involved, over time, probably. The US at the end of WWII did not have a stockpile it was maybe 3 bombs per month[1]; there was no possibility of the destruction of civilization. Now there is. )
[1] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf
“So you can figure on three a month with a possibility of a fourth one. If you get the fourth one, you won’t get it next month”
Bupalos
@cain: I actually participated in a talk yesterday on Carpatho Rusyn ethnicity and raised the point and I know votes changed. I doubt a $1000 donation could compete with a simple 2 minute explanation complete with a quote from JD Vance. Votes changed. Angry cranks that I know were in the room stayed quiet, and babas nodded that we have to back ukraine to the hilt and shook their heads and moaned at Vance’s “I don’t care…”
I can’t stress enough that in this case the pervasive attitude among politically mobilized here of “don’t bother speaking to Republicans, just GOTV” is self-harming. Find their issue. Republicans have found an air-war strategy of racism and fear of the future that is incredibly potent. But we can fight on the ground on issues, because they have given up on issues. We just have to find them.
Bupalos
@columbusqueen: it goes way beyond ukrainians. Poles, Slovaks, Romanians, Czechs, Hungarians… we’ve mostly dropped the ball, so many of these people vote R and will change their vote on this issue. This can rebrand D for them. But the issue is under the radar, many many many assume opposition to Russia is the provenance of the party of Reagan.
Andrya
I realize this thread is probably dead but…. AGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!
According to the Washington Post today, 30 members of the House Progressive Caucus (including, damn him! Fuck, fuck, fuck! my own Representative, Ro Khanna) sent a letter to the White House saying the US should negotiate with russia over Ukraine’s head!!!!! What are these guys thinking? russia would love a ceasefire- currently they are on the run, a ceasefire would give them a chance to regroup and fix some of the problems with the russian military that the war has identified. And if we- the US- force Ukraine to make territorial concessions as part of a negotiated settlement, there is NO WAY to hold putin to any concession he makes- he will just wait until he believes he’s improved his military, then come back for more. This is like Neville Chamberlain thinking Hitler could be trusted to keep his word! Fuck, fuck, fuck!
If this isn’t pulled back, I will make it my sacred duty to insure that Ro Khanna has an effective primary challenger next time around.
Bill Arnold
@Andrya:
Here’s the letter, and the list (extracted manually from the pdf) of “progressives” infested with weaponized Russian brain worms. (Seriously; they are huffing multi-hand but uncut Russian Imperialist propaganda. This is a nuclear-armed gangster kleptocracy, and arguably a pathocracy, twits.)
https://progressives.house.gov/_cache/files/5/5/5523c5cc-4028-4c46-8ee1-b56c7101c764/B7B3674EFB12D933EA4A2B97C7405DD4.10-24-22-cpc-letter-for-diplomacy-on-russia-ukraine-conflict.pdf
Pramila Jayapal
Earl Blumenauer
Cori Bush
Jesús G. “Chuy” García
Raúl M. Grijalva
Sara Jacobs
Ro Khanna
Barbara Lee
Ilhan Omar
Ayanna Pressley
Sheila Jackson Lee
Mark Pocan
Nydia M. Velázquez
Gwen S. Moore
Yvette D. Clarke
Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr.
Rashida Tlaib
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Mondaire Jones
Peter A. DeFazio
Jamaal Bowman, Ed.D.
Marie Newman
Alma S. Adams, Ph.D.
Chellie Pingree
Jamie Raskin
Bonnie Watson Coleman
Mark Takano
André Carson
Donald M. Payne, Jr.
Mark DeSaulnier