Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Consistently wrong since 2002

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Everybody saw this coming.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Fight them, without becoming them!

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Our messy unity will be our strength.

White supremacy is terrorism.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Foreign Affairs Open Thread: Snippets from the Conflict

Foreign Affairs Open Thread: Snippets from the Conflict

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(h/t Origuy)

BOROVSK, Russia, Dec 14 (Reuters) – Over 20 years, Russian pensioner Vladimir Ovchinnikov gained a following for his street murals in the small town of Borovsk, some 70 miles (115 km) southwest of Moscow, many of which depicted the plight of victims of Stalinist-era repressions.

But on March 25, just over a month after Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, Ovchinnikov created a new work, one that would place him in serious legal jeopardy.

He painted a girl, in a blue and yellow dress, the colours of the Ukrainian flag, with a bomb falling onto her from above. Beneath her, in block capitals, he wrote: “STOP”.

The mural fell afoul of new laws passed by the Russian government effectively criminalising opposition to the military campaign in Ukraine…

The mural was painted over and Ovchinnikov ordered to pay a 35,000 rouble ($554) fine for the new offence of “discrediting the Russian army”, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

In response, he painted a new piece, writing the word “bezumiye” (“craziness” in Russian), spelt with a Latin letter Z, which has become a symbol of what Moscow calls its special military operation in Ukraine. The police promptly painted over it.

It triggered a game of cat-and-mouse between Ovchinnikov and police in Borovsk, a town of 12,000 people

In place of the painted-over mural, he drew the words “pozor” (shame), “fiasco”, and “basta” (enough), each with a Latin Z. Each in turn was painted over by the police…

Equal billing –

Reader Interactions

12Comments

  4. 4.

    lowtechcyclist

    Gotta agree with that last tweet. If Putin were to back down, all the Russian soldiers sacrificed in this war would be meaningless. I don’t think it would immediately cause him to lose power, but his grip on power would certainly be shakier. So he’s got to keep at it as if things are going well, and setbacks have been minor.

  5. 5.

    scav

    I think that at this point Russia’s actions in Ukraine more reflect internal Russian politics than any sort of coherent strategy.

    Essentially the same thing could be said about Twitter’s actions in general, only with the internal politics being entirely the internal Muskian psychodrama.  Whole lotta acting out going on.

  6. 6.

    Ruckus

    vlad’s only goal in Ukraine is to save face.

    Which of course he has zero idea how to do.

    So he’s going to kill Ukrainians until he runs out of ammo or they are all dead, have no place left to live (or take over, he doesn’t care which).

    He is an extremely shitty excuse for a human being, only interested in his own ego. A somewhat smarter and a lot shittier version of Shit For Brains. He is the epitome of a useless, worthless, asshole of a human being and the wold would be a better place if he was no longer inhaling/exhaling in it.

  7. 7.

    Geminid

    @Jay: I have to give Turkiye and its stubborn President some credit for the continued grain shipments. With his country’s naval and air strength in the Black Sea region, Erdogan was in a position to insist that shipments continue and he apparently did.

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    This from the AP article on Bice hit home:

    “You see? He’s comforting me — not me him,” she said.

    When one’s children become adults there is an inversion of the parent/child roles and it’s hard, really hard to accept.

    I know I can’t, but I still want to protect them, to reassure them, to comfort them, to hold them tight and keep them safe.

  10. 10.

    James E Powell

    I think that at this point Russia’s actions in Ukraine more reflect internal Russian politics than any sort of coherent strategy.

    Like the US in Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden’s death.

    Or the US in Vietnam almost the whole time.

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