That’s the air raid alert map as of 6:50 PM EST/1:50 AM local time in Ukraine. An alert went up for Zhytomer Oblast shortly after I took the screen shot. As has happened over and over for the past two weeks, the drones will likely be followed by missiles and bombs.
Kharkiv has been under air raid alert for most of the day:
Kharkiv has been under russian drone strikes for hours now. Russia’s attacks on civilians are not strength, but the convulsions of collapse.
All Support Programs for Our People Will Be Continued – Address by the President
5 February 2025 – 20:30
I wish you health, fellow Ukrainians!
I have just signed a decree that enacts the decision of the National Security and Defense Council following its meeting the day before. We have worked thoroughly on every aspect. All support programs for our people – programs that have proven to be effective – will be continued. Millions of people have already been helped, and we will certainly continue the relevant efforts. The Government has been instructed to allocate financial resources for direct support of our people and Ukrainian manufacturers. This is a top priority – the growth of Ukrainian production through our support. This will bring more revenues to the budget, to the citizens, more jobs to our communities, and, most importantly – more independence for our state. The law enforcement agencies have started processing all the materials provided by the Tax Service and the Financial Monitoring Service on the detected violations. There are schemes in the financial sector worth billions. The task is simple: to pull billions out of the shadow economy and use them to enable our state to genuinely help people. Criminal proceedings have already been initiated against those who created the relevant schemes, who have harmed the state and the budget, and sanctions will follow. Severe sanctions. There is also such a directive from the NSDC. Any weakening of the state in times of war – undermining our financial stability and financial security of Ukraine and thus playing into Russia’s hands – will surely lead to accountability. We also continue to work on sanctions that target Russia directly – that target all those who are helping Russia finance its war against Ukraine. I discussed this today with the British Foreign Secretary – he visited Ukraine. It is vital that we keep pressuring Putin’s shadow tanker fleet, which transports oil around the world and earns money for Russia’s terror and war. The United Kingdom is one of the leaders in putting pressure on the shadow fleet. But it is important to impose sanctions not just on the tankers and the companies associated with them, but also on the captains of such vessels and all those involved. Ukraine has such a sanctions decision, and we will extend it to our partners’ jurisdictions.
We are also preparing a new agenda for the NSDC, in addition to the issues related to the financial resilience of our state. We need to support the financial stability of every Ukrainian family, of all our citizens. In many ways, this includes the issue of prices, especially for vital things like medicines. What some pharmacy chains are doing with prices is absolutely unacceptable. And this is the responsibility of the Government, specifically the Minister of Health and the Antimonopoly Committee. Today I had a meeting with them, and I’m tired of waiting for their respective proposals. There is not much time. Everything that needs to be done is quite clear. We need concrete steps, concrete decisions that will allow us to make healthcare more affordable for our people. If there are no decisions on the availability of medicines, then decisions on personnel will follow.
And one more thing. We have significantly intensified our contacts with the U.S. Administration. We also have quite substantial communications with our other partners. Ukraine needs a real, lasting and guaranteed peace, and the means to ensure that Russia always knows what awaits those who wish to harm Ukraine. We are open to strong diplomacy, and we are preparing just such diplomacy. And this requires the resilience of our warriors, the effectiveness of our army, the modernization of our army. Today we discussed some innovations with Pavlo Palisa, a combat commander who knows the mood and needs of the frontline. I thank everyone who is helping us!
And the joy – the joy of this day: we succeeded in freeing another 150 Ukrainians from Russian captivity. Some of them had been in captivity for years. It is very, very difficult to bring our people back, but we are doing it. And we will continue to do so. We must bring everyone back.
Glory to Ukraine!
Georgia:
Rustaveli Avenue is blocked. It is the 70th day of continuous protests in Georgia against Russian-style oligarchy and deviation from the European path.
Polyphonic singing and other cultural elements are a major tool for Georgian self-mobilization.
Tonight, for the first time in a while, people performed “Chakrulo,” a conspiracy song to overthrow a greedy lord that makes life impossible. #GeorgiaProtests
📷 Zurab Batiashvili
A Georgian woman 🔥 to the regime police that outright tortures people:
“Do not touch my scooter! Do not touch my property! Yes, I will obey your requirement but don’t you shout at me! And let me pass now to move away, I don’t want to run you over!”
1/ Mzia Amaglobeli has been on a hunger strike for 25 days. Yesterday evening, on February 4, she was taken to a clinic for examinations. Today, Amaglobeli stated that she does not want to stay in the hospital and is demanding to be returned to prison.
2/ Previously, Mzia said that she would not apologize to the person who spat in her face. She also mentioned receiving numerous letters asking her to end the hunger strike, but she cannot accept these requests because she cannot imagine coming to terms with injustice.
Hospitalized Mzia Amaghlobeli, an unlawfully detained journalist on a hunger strike, was left in a room full of food. To torture her psychologically.
Meanwhile, they announce new anti-media, anti-opposition, and anti-CSO laws. It’s simply impossible to catch up. #terrorinGeorgia
1/7
Acc/to the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA), Temur Katamadze [Jafar Ilmaz], the flag-bearer #GeorgiaProtests in Batumi who has been on hunger strike for 20 days, has become significantly weakened.
GYLA published this information about Temur Katamadze today, February 5, in the evening.
2/7
“He is weaker compared to previous days and shows significant weight loss. During a conversation with his lawyer, he explained that he won’t be able to attend the scheduled hearing at the #Tbilisi Court of Appeals this week due to weakness,” GYLA states.
3/7
Although GYLA has repeatedly requested information about Temur Katamadze’s health condition and medical examinations, the relevant authorities have not provided this information.
The Public Defender has also not received any information.
4/7
GYLA calls on the MIA to immediately provide info about what medical examinations are being conducted on Temur Katamadze and what his health condition is. They also urge the authorities to “follow appropriate medical guidelines & conduct all necessary laboratory and instrumental examinations.”
5/7
Temur Katamadze was arrested twice by police. He was first arrested on January 11, during a protest at the Batumi Police Department, and then again on January 17, immediately after his release from isolation and taken to immigration detention centre.
6/7
After his arrest first, he has wrote a letter to Batumelebi, speaking about physical violence against him by Batumi Police Chief Irakli Dgebuadze and up to 10 other policemen.
Temur is a citizen of #Turkey, a descendant of Georgian Muhajirs.
7/7
Temur began returning to #Georgia, and restoring his Georgian identity in his youth. He has been trying to obtain Georgian citizenship for more than 10 years; he reads, writes, and speaks Georgian fluently. He also knows Georgian history, literature, and modern legislation.
The regime in Georgia does find itself in a very, very peculiar position.
It has now put all cards on a lightning speed dictatorship, outlawing all protests, and jailing everyone (note: the jailing is to a large degree very arbitrary and depends a lot on a random policeman’s random irritation). 1/
that are seriously overstretched if there are even just two simultaneous protests in the country, and even just in Tbilisi. I do not believe that they have the army, or that their possible recruitment of North Caucasians would not backfire big time (not to even mention outright Russians). 3/
Point two: even now, their system is not fully cleansed and consolidated. They are rushing into this process now, but it’s much more risky to announce a dictatorship and THEN establish one in practice rather than vice versa. 4/
Point three: their business elites and enablers did not sign up for this. They hoped for status, respect, posh lifestyle, EU shopping mall, and US birthright citizenships for their children. They wanted to keep the state in a limbo, and must be very cautious of what’s the prospect for them now. 5/
Do not underestimate Georgian nationalism and our inherent anti-Kremlin mobilization. They do not, and I repeat, they do not want to force us to cement anti-Georgian Dream stance into our national identity. 6/
Point four: equating public criticism towards regime officials to serious crimes and enforcing your own dictatorial laws absolutely arbitrarily might disengage some from protests, but inherently makes others say “well, screw it” and violate your laws, making you look weak. 7/
Not to mention that it would also radicalize some people, as it’s just the rule in political theory, unless Georgia reintroduces death penalty (which I wouldn’t exclude, but still).
Point five: Georgia has no economic backbone of its own and it is extremely vulnerable to foreign fluctuations. 8/
No tourist will come, and most investors from the Middle East only invested here because it was a democratic window to Europe in the wider region. I guess they can attempt to make a depopulated (due to mass exile) Georgia a Chinese village, but that can backfire big time in rural areas. 9/9.
Funds that Congress approved for weapons packages to Ukraine during the Biden administration are nearly empty, with most weapons already in Ukraine.
A Dec. 30 package from former U.S. President Joe Biden used up the last of the funding from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which since 2022 has allocated $32.7 billion to buy Ukraine new equipment.
That final package included mostly air defense missiles and ammunition for rocket systems like HIMARS, as well as simpler artillery shells, which are a consistent pain point given Ukraine’s constant need.
Even prior to Trump’s inauguration, the Pentagon’s 2025 request for funding to restock the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative was a relatively meager $300 million.
Of roughly $45.8 billion that has been sent to a separate “drawdown” fund, approved in the last Congress, only $3.8 billion — about 8% — remains.
The structure of these “drawdowns” pays U.S. arms makers to replenish stockpiles of old weapons sent to Ukraine, with the money going to new equipment that stays in America. Anything the Pentagon actually sends to Ukraine will be worth significantly less than $3.8 billion.
The new Congress has yet to approve a new budget for 2025 and any future weapons appropriations to Ukraine are largely in Trump’s hands. Ukraine’s continued dependence on that dwindling U.S. weaponry gives Trump enormous leverage.
U.S. weapons have been critical to Ukraine’s defense. Zelensky recently tallied U.S. weapons packages as about 40% of Ukraine’s total arms supply — still a hefty chunk despite extensive work to expand Ukraine’s domestic defense production.
The slow pace of physical weapons deliveries to Ukraine has also caused controversy, particularly since the end of 2023. Even after the political approval of packages, the physical relocation process was bogged down and tracking remains uncertain.
As funding nears its end, the Pentagon has, it says, already delivered most of what has been allocated.
“As of Jan. 10, the Department of Defense has delivered 89% of critical munitions, 94% of anti-armor systems, and 75% of other fire capabilities committed to Ukraine through Presidential Drawdown Authority,” said Lt. Col. Charlie Dietz, a Pentagon representative.
Remaining arms are set to trickle in. But what’s left in transit is mostly old armored personnel carriers and military trucks.
“The main refurbishments are vehicles, which will continue to be delivered into the summer,” Dietz said.
“Delivery timelines for critical combat equipment, like artillery systems and Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, as well as other armored vehicles, such as M113s and HMMWVs, can sometimes be longer because we must first repair the vehicles.”
American-made vehicles are not at the top of the list of Ukrainian needs at the moment, said Kateryna Bondar, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
“No, Ukraine cannot produce (Bradleys) by itself, but Ukraine doesn’t need this kind of weaponry on the front line right now,” she said.
Ukraine’s actual needs are more rote, according to Bondar. “Simply put: 155 mm explosives. Maybe it’s not very fancy. But artillery, long-range strikes, air defense — expensive conventional systems, this is what Ukraine needs the most.”
Back to Ukraine.
Nemesis unit never stops destroying Russian air defence capabilities and this time targets valuable Russian BUK-M3 air defence system. t.me/nemesis_412/…
When Oleg Rostovtsev hovered between life and death after a serious operation last April, he asked friends and family to do something that, until recently, had been impossible — to pray for him by reading the Tehillim, the Hebrew Book of Psalms, in Ukrainian.
“For someone who is sick, someone who is in trouble, you have to do something. We (Jews) read the Tehillim. If we don’t know Hebrew, why should we read the Tehillim in the language of an aggressor?” said Rostovtsev, a prominent member of Ukraine’s Jewish community and well-known local journalist and historian.
Ukraine is the birthplace of the Hasidic Jewish movement, played a key role in the development of Yiddish literature, and has deep roots in Jewish history stretching back more than a thousand years.
Yet crucial sacred texts — including the Torah — have never been translated into Ukrainian.
Only recently has this started to change, through the efforts of Jewish Ukrainians. Although their work began in part prior to 2022, it has radically expanded and accelerated after Russia’s invasion.
While religious texts are often the most widely translated texts on the planet, the absence of Ukrainian translations of Jewish texts is a consequence of the long-lasting effects of the Holocaust and Soviet rule and repression on Jewish life in Ukraine.
The single most destructive event on the Ukrainian Jewish population remains the Holocaust, when historians estimate over one million Jews were killed in Ukraine. But before and after World War II, repressive Soviet policies and antisemitism took their toll as well, undermining Jewish cultural identity. Russification efforts pushed Jewish and non-Jewish Ukrainians alike to switch to the Russian language.
And, even after Ukraine gained its independence and Jewish life began to revitalize, the Russian language provided a bridge for a still weakened Jewish community to millions of other Russian-speaking Jews in former USSR states, the U.S., and Israel.
Many Jewish communities today are centered in the eastern regions of Dnipro and Odesa, where the Russian language has historically been more prevalent than in western Ukraine.
“The inertia of the Russian language in the Jewish environment is quite powerful,” said Leonid Finberg, a sociologist and director of the Center for Studies of East European Jewish Culture and History in Kyiv.
But Russia’s war in Ukraine has galvanized efforts to provide Ukrainian-language Jewish texts to those seeking to deepen their national identity or sever ties to Russia.
Work for Ukrainian translators has “doubled, maybe tripled” since the full-scale invasion began, estimates Inna Zerkal, a member of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine’s (FJCU) team dedicated to translating classical Jewish literature into Ukrainian.
The prayers read by Rostovtsev’s friends are one of several new translations spearheaded by the FJCU who, among other groups, are working to make Jewish texts available in the country’s national language.
Translators work through power outages and tote laptops to bunkers. The printing presses publishing their work in Kharkiv have come under barrage from missiles. But because of the country’s history, the greatest challenge, say those leading the project, has been gathering translators and editors who have a deep knowledge of Jewish religion and texts as well as fluent enough Ukrainian to capture the nuances and sacred meanings of holy texts.
Despite these challenges, these efforts have already borne fruit in just a few years. For Passover last year, Ukrainians were able to read the holiday’s sacred text, the Haggadah, in Ukrainian for the first time.
Several children’s books about Hanukkah were printed just before the winter holiday, and thousands of copies of the Tehillim are already in circulation.
Many of these Tehillim copies have been delivered to Jewish fighters on the front lines, says FJCU Chaplain Yakov Sinyakov, brought by volunteers along with food, generators, and protective equipment.
“It is specially made in such a format that it can be carried with you,” he said, displaying a palm-sized copy. “The soldiers carry these books with them, in tanks and in their pockets.”
And now, over a thousand draft copies of the newly translated Torah are circulating in sections for feedback and editing ahead of an official printing later this year.
“Those who fight on the front, those who are in the rear, they simply do not want to watch YouTube in Russian, nor read books in Russian, nor have anything to do with the Russian language,” said Rostovtsev, who himself began switching to Ukrainian in 2016, two years after the Russian invasion of Crimea.
“Many people say that they do not want the Russian language — which, for example, I was raised in — to be passed to the next generation,” he said. “I want my grandchildren to go to synagogue so that my grandchildren have a Jewish identity. And when they come, there should be a Torah in Ukrainian.”
Beyond responding to the Jewish community’s needs, however, Rostovtsev sees the translation as important for fighting anti-semitism by making the Jewish religion more accessible to more non-Jews.
“When you understand something, you don’t feel that it’s something so new and unpleasant. People don’t like when something is not clear,” he said.
Not everyone saw the reasoning behind the translation project right away, said Rabbi Levy Engelsman, who heads the FJCU’s publishing department. Some initially felt the existing Russian translations were more practical for the community. When he proposed a new push for Ukrainian translations of holy texts at the start of the full-scale invasion, an acquaintance of his said he didn’t see the point.
“Half a year passed, and this same person is not only interested, but he became a sponsor” of the project, said Engelsman, who expects a final version of the Torah to be printed in the coming months.
“Today, no one asks whether it is necessary at all. It is clear to everyone that we have to do it. It will happen, and we will work on it.”
Translating the Torah has far less wiggle room than, say, translating Hamlet or The Great Gatsby.
“Every word in the Torah has a certain meaning. If you distort this meaning even a little, the meaning of the whole text, the whole message to people, is lost,” said Zerkal, the translator.
While there is no official process for approving a new translation of the Torah, a group of rabbis oversees the project and consults on difficult passages and decisions.
Converting a Russian version into Ukrainian might have been simpler, but they determined that starting from the original Hebrew would bring the final version closer to the original meaning. Every translation, after all, is a series of compromises.
“Russian and Ukrainian are different languages. They have different idioms, different pronunciations of verbs,” explained Shaul Melamed, who volunteers his time as an editor on the Torah translation. “There are many idioms that you can use in Ukraine that are much closer to the original Hebrew meanings.”
Much more at the link!
Kharkiv:
Last night, two russian drones struck Kharkiv, damaging civilian facilities and igniting fires. One man suffered an acute stress reaction due to the attack. Peaceful nights remain just a dream.
Russian forces attacked the Odesa region with a missile, killing one person.
According to the Regional Military Administration, the invaders struck an unfinished residential building. A man was killed, and another was seriously injured and is hospitalized. Both were passing by the building
The bombing on Feb. 1 killed the suspected perpetrator and injured eight service members. Russian operatives recruited the man and then remotely detonated explosives, removing him as an “‘unnecessary’ witness,” the SBU said.
Al Qaeda in Iraq, before the rebranding as ISIS, did this. This tactic actually started with the Lebanese Sh’ia Amal militia, which often used young boys as the ambulatory and usually unwitting conveyors of the bombs.
Hola Prystyn, Kherson Oblast:
💥”Armed Forces of Ukraine struck Hola Prystan, destroying over 10 boats and Russian personnel.” – partisans.
The “Atesh” movement reported that partisans located enemy forces near Hola Prystan, Kherson region, and shared the intel with the military. The strike caused heavy losses.
Somewhere in the streets of Russian-occupied Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, a woman puts a sticker on the wall. It’s a short message, but if she is seen doing it, she will face arrest, prosecution, and likely, torture.
Somewhere in the streets of Russian-occupied Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, a woman puts a sticker on the wall. It’s a short message, but if she is seen doing it, she will face arrest, prosecution, and likely, torture.
The message is: “Soon, we will be home again.” On another sticker, the most dangerous three words in the occupied Crimea: “This is Ukraine.”
What makes it even more risky for their bearer is the language. The words are in Ukrainian.
The woman putting up the stickers is a member of Zla Mavka, an all-female resistance group. She is on a dangerous mission: to give hope.
The prospects for full military liberation of the occupied regions — including Crimea and parts of the Donbas region occupied since 2014 — seem ever more distant.
After seeing the liberation of the parts of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson oblasts in 2022, Ukrainians in other occupied areas have been hoping that their turn will come soon. Now they struggle to find comfort in the latest news.
Nonetheless, Olesia, one of the three women who founded Zla Mavka, an all-women resistance movement that operates across occupied territories, including Crimea and Zaporizhzhia Oblast, says she plans to fight as long as possible. Olesia’s name has been changed and her last name is not being disclosed to protect her identity as she lives under Russian occupation.
“As long as there is hope, we will continue to resist,” she told the Kyiv Independent.
The name, Zla Mavka, or Angry Mavka, harkens back to old Ukrainian folklore — the mavka is a woodland female spirit who uses its beautiful appearance to lure men to their deaths. An image of a young woman, clad in white garb and wearing a wreath of flowers, became the most iconic attribute of their imagery.
Mavkas are not easy to reach. Their members never know when a Russian soldier will stop them in the street to inspect the contents of their phones.
Olesia sends her answers in writing through an intermediary. Audio or video is deemed too risky. Her responses are somber and free of embellishments.
“If we lose, we won’t have a life here,” she writes. “We will have to leave our homes because living under Russian occupation is worse than prison.”
Olesia comes from a city in southeastern Ukraine that was seized by Russia mere days after the outbreak of the full-scale war.
After Moscow illegally declared the annexation of the lands they seized, hers and other cities under Russian control were to be remodeled into Potemkin villages — a veneer of a harmonious cohabitation covering up arrests, torture, and repressions.
On Women’s Day on March 8, 2023 — more than a year after the start of the occupation — Russian troops were lined up in the city’s streets to dutifully hand out flowers to Ukrainian women. The gesture had a different effect than Russia might have hoped.
It was the “insolence of Russian occupiers and their attitudes toward women” that inspired the founding of Zla Mavka, Olesia explains.
“We wanted to remind them that they are not at home, that this is Ukraine, and they are not welcome,” she says.
The trio of founders, one of whom is an artist, began distributing posters bearing an inscription in Russian reading “I don’t want flowers! I want my Ukraine back!” and a drawing of a woman smashing a Russian soldier with a bouquet.
Since these early days, the movement grew to hundreds of activists, forming a decentralized group coordinated through anonymous chatbots on a messenger app. The group spread to different occupied regions and became especially active in Crimea, with a few members hailing even from Donbas.
Zla Mavka may be only one of several resistance groups that sprung up in Russian-held areas, including the Yellow Ribbon and Atesh. But its all-female character and the use of humor and creativity sets it apart from others.
Creativity is the group’s greatest strength, Olesia says, half-jokingly suggesting that women can be more sophisticated in the ways of resistance than their male counterparts.
Among the many acts of resistance since the foundation of the group, Mavkas say they created fake ruble banknotes reminding the Russians that “Crimea is Ukraine,” burned Russian flags, and filled the streets with pro-Ukrainian graffiti, posters, and poetry. At times, they say they mix laxatives into food and alcohol served to Russian soldiers, a treat they mischievously dubbed the “Mavka cocktail.”
Their activities also venture into more usual resistance activities, including the distribution of self-published newspapers to counter Russian propaganda or — according to the Ukrainian military-run National Resistance Center — passing information about the Russian military to Ukraine.
But Olesia emphasizes that Zla Mavka is more than just a resistance group. It has become a source of support for Ukrainians amid the hardship of occupation — a community where anonymity is no obstacle to connection.
Much more at the link!
A couple of points. First, some of the most effective partisan underground fighters in history, especially the 20th century – were women. Second, the Mavka, or white lady, is actually a very common part of folklore in Europe. As is the case with all folklore, there’s lots of variation. The Ukrainian Mavka is a solitary creature. In Germany, France, and the Netherlands it will be the white ladies, three stunningly beautiful women whose promise eternal bliss, but whose embrace means death. In some variants of the mythos, these trio of white ladies have duck feet instead of human ones.
Krasnador Oblast, Russia:
Russian oil depot in the Krasnodar region of Russia burning after tonight’s drone attack. (46.3322560, 38.9368270)
Buzzing drones attacked Primorsko-Akhtarsk, located on the opposite shore of the Sea of Azov from Ukraine, as part of a campaign to enforce peace through force. Eyewitnesses heard multiple UAVs and captured footage of smoke rising in the area of the airfield, where Shaheds are stored.
A Ukrainian drone may have hit the launch/storage area of Russian/Iranian Shahed 131/136 attack drones at the airfield in Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Russia.
Lower left photo shot at: 46.048842, 38.213001.
Source: https://buff.ly/4gu0hWh
It’s me again, Tom L…the bad penny that it seemed had finally vanished forever. Then John tweaked me on Bluesky and here I am. Unintended consequences and all that.
I’ve been absent for a bunch of reasons. For most of the last two years I’ve been under the gun finishing a book that I really wish weren’t as timely as it is. There’s been a lot of stuff in my personal life too..and, well, you know–current events.
And now, there’s another obstacle which I’ve decided to see as the lemon out of which to make lemonade. I’m putting more effort than I ever have in trying to get word out about the new book (called So Very Small, in case you were wondering. To that end I’m trying to write op-eds, get active on Linked In, start to get a handle on short form vertical video (which until the Trump surrender my social media coach (sic) and I thought were bound for TikTok (sic) but will now show up somewhere; I’ll let y’all know, assuming I don’t make a 100% fool of myself). And I’ve started a Substack, which may also migrate to another platform*. That’s a lot of extracurricular writing. but, of course, my home in the blogosphere is here. So I’m just going to post here in parallel with anywhere else. If what I’m talking about ain’t your jam–well, at least it’s worth what you paid for it.
So here’s tonight’s angst, prompted by reports of of a planned ransacking of the National Science Foundation, cross posted at Linked In:
The latest news to cross my desk of the Trump/Musk-led assault on federal agencies and spending has been a on a plan to cut NSF funding in half. (Caution: Politico link):
…”if the White House and its so-called Department of Government Efficiency are serious about slashing NSF, the result would be catastrophic, the same program manager warned. Cutting the $10 billion grantmaking agency in half would “gut the intellectual center of U.S. leadership in science and technology”…
Such a move can–probably should–be read as a unilateral surrender of US to China, which is emphatically not cutting its investment in basic science. The Chinese NSF budget rose 10% in 2024 over the preceding year, and for well over a decade top leadership has seen support for technical research as a strategic imperative.
Which is to say: in this as in so many areas the Trump administration is eating the seed corn the US needs to maintain our wealth and power. Basic science is both a money maker–estimates on the return on each dollar of curiosity-driven research funding run from just over two to eight bucks–and (as implied by those numbers) where we get a keep our technological lead on the rest of the world.
I wrote in The Boston Globe about growing Chinese ambition during the first Trump administration and republished that essay at Inverse Square–my new Substack newsletter–a week or so ago. It remains tragically and unnecessarily on point. (It can be found here: https://lnkd.in/ejgF6an9)
Last, adding to what I posted at Linked In…I’ve become a broken record on Bluesky saying that the actions of Trump, Musk and their minions are indistinguishable from what you’d expect from paid operatives of one or more foreign adversaries. Gutting US basic science does nothing to suggest I’m wrong.
*I know that Substack is a–what’s the word?–contested platform. Adam S. sees it as a platform for and profiting off Nazis, and he has urged me to stay as far away from it as possible. Another front pager here (forgotten who, sorry) has made the argument that we can’t surrender every successful platform to the right. I note that a lot of people whose work I respect are there and have chosen to stay there through some of the controversies. My current response is to stay there and to try to take advantage of the network effects of the platform while doing nothing to profit them. Which is to say: Inverse Square is and will remain free for the foreseeable future. If it slides into (Adam and others would say continues to move towards) X/Twitter territory, then I’ll have to abandon ship. But for now, that’s my uneasy compromise. Feel free to weigh in below.
PS: I do plan to show up with some silly stuff. The current crop of active front pagers is doing so much to cover the present moment that I don’t think I have a ton to add. But, after all, I do put the Tom in tomfoolery.
Cheryl Rofer has a couple of posts at LGM about who she calls “script kiddies” in the Treasury systems. She references Kevin Drum’s theory that they’re writing a “report writer” into the systems. Both Cheryl and Kevin have some experience writing code and/or system architecture, but they’re not working in those fields right now. I am, and here’s my take:
I don’t know any details of the Treasury system that the Musk’s chosen incel has access to, but here’s what Wired has reported:
Despite reporting that suggests that Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force has access to these Treasury systems on a “read-only” level, sources say Elez, who has visited a Kansas City office housing BFS systems, has many administrator-level privileges. Typically, those admin privileges could give someone the power to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.
Based on that, some assumptions/background, and some thoughts on what they could be doing.
Assumptions/Background:
These kids could be the best “coders” in the world, meaning that they could build some pretty complex systems from scratch, quickly. This isn’t relevant to the task at hand, which goes by the name of “maintenance” coding on “legacy” systems — taking a crufty old system written in some language that the cool kids don’t use, and modifying it. They don’t know COBOL, PL/SQL (Oracle’s brand of SQL) or any other old language. They don’t have experience with multi-million row databases that have evolved over the years, that may have columns or entire tables that aren’t even used anymore, but are kept around because “don’t touch it, it might break!”
Given that they are uncomfortable with the system at hand, they will try to do the minimum amount of coding in that system, and build an interface (“API -> Application Programming Interface”) that can be used to perform their mischief in the legacy system. This interface would, I’m guessing, send a message to one of their servers, let the incel-written code on that server do something, and then accept messages back.
Possible Usage:
If Elon wants to stop paying certain payees, one thing this little gateway could do is give a “yes/no” answer on any given payment. So, the legacy system would shoot a message to the incel server, asking it if a certain payee is approved by President Musk. The incel server would say “yes” or “no”. The incel coder would only have to figure out how to shoot payment info to their server, and then shitcan a payment, to implement this little part of the coup. The benefit of doing it this way is all the complexity around denying payment is in the incel server that he knows how to use, and he can use AI magic or other cool tech to figure out how to deny payments to anyone who isn’t worthy.
The danger of doing this is that one of the big problems with junior coders (which, however smart they are, these guys are) is that they don’t understand scale and optimization. So, if they do something dumb like firing an API call every time a check is about to be written, check writing could take weeks instead of hours. There are a ton of other possible issues, such as them not understanding exactly how to shitcan a payment correctly, or only seeing a little part of the whole picture and saying “shitcan” to a payment but really letting the payment through partially. There are probably hundreds of flags and variables involved in paying someone from the Treasury, and even the smartest incel isn’t going to understand those on the first go-round.
Other things to consider:
Since the incel has access to the database on the server (if they have what’s called “root” access in Unix land) they could also just dump the database and send it to their server. The issue here is that our young incel coder, who probably doesn’t know a lot about databases (don’t get me started on why Computer Science and coding bootcamp grads don’t understand databases) is going to have a hell of a time interpreting it. Since government is complicated, I’m guessing that there are probably dozens of tables required to figure out how to pay someone. These tables are related in certain ways, and what each column in each table tells the payment program to do is also super complex, I’m guessing based on years of painful experience. So, having the database without understanding the code is just pure danger. For example, the right wing is currently freaking out about how much money the government pays Politico, but it’s probably just all the Politico subscriptions paid for by government, not some lump sum bribe. This might be traced back to some incel who didn’t understand the database just summing up all payments to one payee without understanding the relationships between the payments and the payees.
In other words, incels having the database means that they can leak important information all over the place, but they might not be able to figure out just exactly what is in the database. Incels having access to code lets them put in trapdoors that can be used to deny payment, but in doing so, they risk side effects that can crash systems.
Can this be fixed? Almost all code is kept in some kind of “version control system” — these allow you to “roll back” code to a certain date and time. So, code can be rolled back. Where the overzealous incel is going to really fuck up is with the database. If their inner Dunning-Krueger leads them to alter the database so their backdoor code can work, they can introduce corruption, which is just a fancy word for data in the wrong place. Databases have backups, but if you corrupt the database and keep running, sometimes the solution is a pretty convoluted fix program that someone who really knows the system needs to write. And, of course, those federal employee programmers are inferior beings. Just ask the 20 year-old with the nickname “big balls”.
Senate Democrats have started what they’re promising will be an overnight marathon of speeches to protest Russell Vought’s nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Vought is expected to be confirmed in a vote Thursday evening.
Republicans control 53 seats in the chamber compared to 47 seats in the Democratic Caucus. That means the GOP has been able to consistently confirm President Donald Trump’s nominees since confirmation only requires a simple majority.
But Democrats can slow down the process…
Democrats have been sounding the alarm on Vought’s ties to Project 2025, and his insistence that the 2020 election was “rigged,” for weeks, but their calls for Trump to pull his nomination only grew after OMB released a memo last week freezing federal funding. This memo was eventually rescinded, but Democrats called it a warning sign for how Vought would run the office. OMB plays a key role in enacting the president’s agenda.
If I had a Democratic senator who was participating, I’d contact them to say thanks.
I know, it’s Bernie Sanders, and I fully understand why lots of Democrats wish the old coot would shut up and go away. I’ve felt that way myself countless times. But every damn word he says here is the truth.
Sanders has been wagging a bony finger and yelling about billionaires for years. He wasn’t wrong then, and he’s not wrong now. In the speech, Sanders spells out exactly what’s happening to the country.
And he says it in plain language while name-checking the oligarchs, authoritarians and kleptocrats and how they profit. So bravo, Bernie.
***
I’ve been following politics more than a normal person would all my life, thanks mostly to my hippie mom. She was raised by right-wing evangelicals but radicalized when Richard Nixon scooped up her little brother right after high school to ship him off to Vietnam, and he returned a broken man.
I’ve seen some shit in my life and witnessed a lot of mind-blowing stuff with y’all over these past dozen years, including the fascist assault on the U.S. Capitol we watched in real time right here. But the national self-immolation currently underway is something I never thought I’d see.
If you saw all this shit coming, congratulations on your foresight. I expected the worst when my fellow citizens saw fit to elevate a man who is the embodiment of everything that is wrong about this country to the Oval Office — again — and hand his party control of Congress. But now I realize I lacked the imagination to comprehend just how catastrophic it would be.
I feel an obligation to bear witness and do the small-beer shit I can personally do to oppose the ongoing right-wing coup, such as contacting the worthless cult members who “represent” me at the state and federal levels and reaching out to vulnerable people to let them know I am here and ready to do what I can if they need help. But I’ll admit it: I am afraid. For all of us.
Had a conversation with our kiddo the other night about what was then the freshest hell, the hell that was soon expanded by metric fuck-tons daily of even fresher hell. It selfishly occurred to me that I’m grateful I got to live most of my life in a faltering, dysfunctional republic.
I’m afraid no such hope exists for the generations after mine, the kids who grew up online. (I don’t think this is a coincidence, by the way.)
The old dysfunctional republic wasn’t “exceptional” by a long shot, despite the self-aggrandizing lies it told itself during every civic occasion. It routinely crapped on more than half of its citizens. It tolerated authoritarian one-party states patrolled by white supremacist terror cells. But the entire country wasn’t 100% controlled by egomaniacal Bond villains, at least not in living memory. It is now.
***
I am old and tired. I want to shut out the noise, focus on the beauty in this world and live out the days I have left with my loved ones in peace. I don’t know what comes next. I don’t know what to do.
But I do know this: Things will get worse before they get better — if they get better, which is by no means guaranteed or even likely.
I also believe we will never get another shot if we aren’t willing to make common cause with people we don’t like. All of us. Are you opposed to the fascist oligarchy? Okay, we’re on the same team. I have no idea if that’s even possible, but I hope it is.
And I believe in my heart that to achieve anything other than a temporary reprieve followed by an even more lawless onslaught, we’ve got to take some fairly drastic action if we do get another shot.
Like Jamelle Bouie said in the column Rose highlighted below, there’s no going back. The existing institutions proved too weak, and we’ll need stronger ones. It scares me to contemplate this because of the opportunities for abuse, but do we have a choice?
The current interpretation of the law is a suicide pact, as we’re seeing with our own eyes. As Sanders says in the video above, the unimpeded flow of money into politics leads to oligarchy. Platforms that serve up lies on an industrial scale to monetize and manipulate are incompatible with democracy.
If we can beat back the current right-wing coup, we must hold the people who subverted our democracy and used its resources and weapons to menace us and the world to account. And by account, I mean “die penniless in prison, motherfucker.” If not, they’ll simply rise again.
To sum up, this is some bad shit, and I don’t know where we go from here. But we’ll go there together. There’s maybe a bit of comfort in that?
Jamelle Bouie has a clear-eyed, devastating op-ed in today’s edition of the New York Times. Titled “There Is No Going Back”, it lays out in no uncertain terms how deep this constitutional crisis goes – in fact, that the very phrase “constitutional crisis” does not capture what’s happening to us. Click here for an NYT gift link, or click here to read on archive.today. Key excerpts:
[I]f Musk had been elected to some office, this would still be one of the worst abuses of executive power in American history. No one in the executive branch has the legal authority to unilaterally cancel congressional appropriations. No one has the legal authority to turn the Treasury payments system into a means of political retribution. No one has the authority to summarily dismiss civil servants without cause. No one has the authority to take down and scrub government websites of public data, itself paid for by American taxpayers. And no private citizen has the authority to access the sensitive data of American citizens for either information gathering or their own, unknown purposes.
The thing, of course, is that Musk isn’t elected. He is a private citizen. He was neither confirmed for a cabinet job nor formally appointed to a high-level position within the administration. He does not even have a presidential commission; he has been designated a “special government employee.”
I always appreciate a good English Civil War reference:
The only institution capable of responding to this with any alacrity is Congress. But Congress is also led by Republicans, and both the Senate majority leader, John Thune, and the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, have declined to take any steps to arrest the president’s illegal arrogation of power or Musk’s destructive effort to run the federal government. Thune and Johnson, acting with the support of Republicans in both chambers, have, in effect, renounced their power over the purse and abnegated their powers of oversight. Their Congress is supine, submissive and subordinate, less the equal of the president than a tool of the executive branch — a subject of his will.
Somewhere, King Charles I is jealous.
This is, for me, the most chilling part:
The president’s opponents . . . still have room to maneuver. But as those opponents strategize their response, it is vital that see the important truth that there is no going back to the status quo ante . . . . And so the president’s opponents, whoever they are, cannot expect a return to the Constitution as it was. Whatever comes next, should the country weather this attempted hijacking, will need to be a fundamental rethinking of what this system is and what we want out of it.
Anything less will set us up for yet another Trump and yet another Musk.
Not to trivialize where we’re at, but the last few months for me have felt like that moment when Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff only to realize that he is standing in mid-air (though you could say we ran off the cliff on January 6, 2021, or in 2016, or 2003, or…). The last two weeks have felt like we’re finally falling.
If this is not the dumbest timeline, it’s certainly not for lack of GOP effort…
Imagine the outrage if Pete Buttigieg had presided over a 5-day period with 2 deadly airplane crashes, several serious incidents on runways including a plane fire & crash, and a critical NOTAM flight safety computer system crash resulting in 1400 flight delays & cancellations
I went to post about the National Japanese American Memorial in D.C., which is beautiful but usually missed by tourists. It is a deeply staggering admission of guilt and a warning to future Americans. I went to link to the inscriptions and-
Well, they took the site down. www.nps.gov/places/japan…
