#Lessons from Russia Ukraine war

[davidaugust]

Giving parts of Ukraine (which aren’t ours to give anyway) to russia will make the US and the world _less_ safe, not more safe.

There is no appeasing putin in any way that will make him less likely to invade more places.

[maidservant-hecubus]

My father is an Ashkenazi Jew. His parents were first generation Americans. Their parents escaped the pogroms in Russia and Ukraine and came to find their American dream. They fought in wars and opened businesses and assimilated and my generation barely has a few words of Yiddish between us. My mother is as much of a WASP as it gets. American Revolutionaries and Signers and some household name civil war feature players. Not old money, but old America and undoubtedly white. I'm patrilineal. Not a Jew to a lot of Jews. Not a Jew to a lot of my Jewish family. Even though i was raised Jewish. Even though I look like my father. Even though i got enough of something in my DNA to get asked "What are you?" more often than not. More often than I'm just accepted at face value as "white". When i was little we lived in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. Like the 5-10 kids in every family sort of Irish catholic neighborhood. The kids calling me a christ killer and refusing to play with me because they heard it from their parents sort of irish catholic neighborhood. For some reason my parents tried to send me to the catholic school down the street. I lasted less than a week because i didn't understand their rituals and their language and they found out my father was a Jew and they couldn't have a christ killer in their midst. I was just sad i didn't get to wear the cute plaid skirt anymore. So i went to the public school and my well meaning shiksa mother who never converted but learned the Chanukah prayers and helped cook Seder dinners came to the school to teach the class about Chanukah. She taught them songs and all the kids got dreidels and had so much fun spinning the top for chocolate coins. It was nice to feel normal. A few weeks later a boy in a higher grade attacked me on the way to the bus and smashed my art project (we had made pig noses from solo cups to celebrate reading charlotte's web) into my face and called me a filthy jew. I didn't understand, i was more upset to lose the project i was so proud of. Other things happened. Things I wont talk about because putting them in context would doxx me. But a million reminders that i wasn't one of them. I wasn't welcome because i was Jewish. My parents divorced. My mother left. Far away so I'd only see her a handful of times growing up. And I went to live with my Dad in a city that seemed like it was overflowing with Jews. Everyone knew my holidays! In public school the teachers looked like my family and had familiar sounding names. We had the high holy days off just like christmas or easter. We sang Chanukah songs in the winter recital and nobody's mom had to come teach them to the class. Finally I belonged! My friends and cousins started planning for their b mitzvah celebrations and i asked for my own. I asked to go to hebrew school so i could be more like the people i belonged with and celebrate the things i loved about myself and them. "But you're not jewish." My father would say. This was news to me. The christ killer. The filthy jew. But a 10 year old has little power over their lives. So i didn't go. I didn't have a bat mitzva while my cousins had theirs. It was okay because i still belonged more than i ever had. But i was still jewish enough to keep the holidays and pray and fast and get sent with a box of matzo to my WASP grandmothers for easter, and have matzo packed in my lunch to eat in AP algebra in 7th grade and get asked if I'm a "Yid" by the teacher. And still to this day not know if it was endearment or insult but by then I knew even in this magical city being a Jew wasn't always safe. in highschool I tried to take hebrew lessons with a friend in a similar situation as me. She was also hungry to reconnect. I don't remember why the classes or the friendship fell through, but they did. My next "friend", a goy raised catholic from another neighborhood, liked to accuse me of being money driven when i picked up a penny on the sidewalk or tried to ask who was going to pay for the zine's she wanted to publish.

 "What are you?" I'd get asked a lot on the street by curious strangers, "Where are you from?" "Are you Italian?" Always Italian. I never really understood that, but its become code in my head for "You look like you're white but something about you is very not white and I just can't place it, so Italian seems safe and polite." I'm not here to unpack the Italian part of all that. I don't even know what I'm unpacking for myself by writing this except I've been sick for days and I'm so tired and this is all that my foggy brain can wrap itself around. Later I'm an adult and on my own and getting bloodwork done. The Nurse is a black woman and so sweet to me. She can tell I'm nervous about the needles because I've already stumbled through my apologies for my herd to find veins. So she distracts me with small talk. Where do i live? I tell her. She looks worried for me. Tells me that it used to be a nice neighborhood before white people took it over and she warns me like she's my own mother to be careful because they aren't safe. I doublecheck the skin she's putting a needle into. Whatever she sees isn't white. I love her for it. For a moment I belong there with her. She doesn't ask what I am or where i'm from, but she knows what i'm not. I'm the only one keeping the holidays with my family. We celebrate Passover because I go home to my fathers and cook the dinner and print out the Haggadah and lead the Seder to the tune of my drunk catholic stepmother eating my food and telling me i'll never be a jew. She's more of a jew than I'll ever be because she grew up in a jewish neighborhood and her friends were all jews and she married a jew and i was just playing pretend. I stopped going home for holidays and they stopped observing anything except Christmas. I marry a goy. "Is he a jew?" is the first thing my father asks and he's disappointed when i say no. He's abusive, i run. I end up living in the attic of this older old money WASP couple who need a live in house sitter. They're pillars of their church and they know someone from the WASP side of my family very well and its a funny coincidence and they think i belong there. I know from their divest from Israel bumper stickers that i don't. Then they find out I consider myself Jewish and i see the light in their eyes die and its replaced by something hard and disappointed. Now, while writing this, i can laugh about being the jew in someone's attic. But then, it was only a few months after that they started coming up with excuses for why I needed to move out. I did, their excuses never manifested into reality. I got married again. A jew this time! a Jewish medical professional liek grandma always wanted. She's a convert and her ex was a rabbinical student. I think maybe i'm home finally. She has to understand. I'm not Jewish enough for her. We don't keep holidays at home because i'm not a jew. I cry every year when pesach comes and goes and i haven't recited the plagues or eaten matzo piled high with horseradish. She insists on putting up a christmas tree. She turns abusive. I run.

I'm alone now and no longer in that magic jewish city. I'm far away and surrounded by mega churches and cows and the bagels suck and people quote the bible at me like some call and response that i don't have the cheat code for and I don't belong here at all but i'm finally finally free to light my menorah and recite the plagues and study torah with the group i found here on tumblr who love and accept me even though i'm patrilineal. Oct. 7th happened a few weeks after I moved here. I worry about my family back home and i think no one will look for Jews here among the cows and mega churches, so I can be a safe place for them to run if things get bad again. But i still don't fit in here. I don't look right. The last name I have now is common here and too white for whatever people see when they look in my face. I get interrogated about it a lot. But i learned quickly how to smile and say "have a blessed day". I hide my menorah when maintenance comes to work on my apartment. I flew home last month. Just for a visit. I've never been away from home this far or this long. And I'm the type that covers nerves and anxiety with chattiness, so at the airport i made a for-now-friend while we both waited for the plane to board. She's Puerto Rican. We talk about our lives. Our families. Her twin sister and i go by the same nickname and so we're family now. We talk about food. So much food and how much we love cooking and how important food was at home. "Are you Italian?" she asks as we're stepping through the hatch into the plane. Why always Italian? I wonder for the millionth time in my life. And I freeze up for a moment between fighting my carry-on over the gap and terror that I'm about to see the light go out behind her eyes and i'll lose this for-now friend. "No," i laugh but its not a real laugh and i see the concern in her face as we squeeze through the aisle because she can hear the apprehension in my voice, "I'm Jewish." And something strange happened because her face lit up and she smiled and said "No way?! You guys have GREAT food!"

[mariacallous]

When Vance took the stage in Munich, most people were expecting him to hold forth on the topics that had animated the huddles and discussions around the venue leading up to his speech: European defense spending and the fate of Ukraine.

But those subjects only got a passing sentence each. Instead, Vance spent the bulk of his 20 minutes on stage criticizing what he characterized as a European retreat from the West’s “shared democratic values” driven by excessive censorship of free speech.

“The Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. Consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled elections—were they the good guys? Certainly not, and thank God they lost,” Vance said.

“Unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners,” he added, before rattling off a list of examples aimed at illustrating his point: European Union officials’ threats to shut down social media “the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful’ content,” Germany’s raids on people posting misogynistic speech online, Sweden’s jailing of an activist who burned the Quran in public, and “safe access zones” around abortion clinics established in the United Kingdom.

For Europeans and others watching, Vance had a MAGA message: “In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town, and under [U.S. President] Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square,” he said, to scattered and hesitant applause—one of the few times he got any.

“Utterly, utterly frightening.” Several times in his speech, Vance singled out Romania, which late last year annulled its elections due to alleged Russian interference uncovered by Romania’s security services and is scheduled to hold them again. “You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections—we certainly do—you can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with,” he said.

The U.S. vice president also spoke at length about the alleged threat posed by immigration, a major right-wing talking point on both sides of the Atlantic that he described as the most “urgent” challenge the nations represented in Munich face. “In England, they voted for Brexit—agree or disagree, they voted for it,” he said. “And more and more all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration.”

Most of the speech was met with stunned silence. “Gobsmacked” was a word used repeatedly in the aftermath, and SitRep overheard one attendee walking out of the Bayerischer Hof describe the speech as “utterly, utterly frightening.”

One senior European official, who spoke to SitRep on the condition of anonymity, said Vance “did something whilst being in Germany that Germans are pretty good at: Teaching lessons to others.”

Another official had far stronger words. “It was total bullshit. We don’t know what planet he is on,” the official said. “At least when we met Keith Kellogg, we could talk geopolitics,” they added, referring to Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine. “With Vance, we can’t even agree what a democracy is.”

Whither Europe? While Vance told Europe early on in his speech that “we are on the same team,” the more lasting impression appears to have been left by his final words: “Good luck to all of you, God bless you.”

Conversations we’ve been having with European officials in Munich over the last two days have betrayed deep concerns about the United States’ status as a reliable partner, even amid a recognition that Europe must do more for its own defense. “A stronger Europe works with the United States to deter the threats we have in common as partners, and this is why we believe that trade wars and punitive tariffs make no sense,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said onstage to loud applause earlier in the day, a veiled swipe at Trump’s Thursday move to slap reciprocal tariffs on all U.S. trading partners.

Vance, who took the stage right after her, didn’t mention trade at all. But his speech drove home a key message for former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. “If that wasn’t a wake-up call for Europe, I don’t know what is,” Landsbergis told Foreign Policy. “We have to get our act together and figure out how to manage our problems on our own.”

[yourreddancer]

The terrifying perils of appeasing a warlike Russia

THE ECONOMIST

Finland’s cold-war past offers urgent lessons for Ukraine’s future

Nov 16th 2024

IN BARRACKS SQUARE in old Helsinki stands an unusual monument to a war. A towering sculpture of a soldier’s winter snowsuit, its polished steel body is pierced with large round holes, as if still standing after a strafing by cannon fire. It is Finland’s national memorial to the winter war of 1939-40. During that conflict, Finnish troops withstood a huge Soviet force for 105 days, inflicting heavy casualties on the invaders before succumbing to the Red Army’s larger numbers. The Soviet Union imposed harsh terms, taking 10% of its neighbour’s territory. Peace proved fragile, and Finland was soon swept up into the second world war, fighting with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Red Army from 1941-44.

Unveiled in 2017, the memorial’s message is more timely than ever. The winter war has new resonance for Finns. Their country has known 80 years of peace. It boasts one of Europe’s most capable armies, backed by extensive military service for young men and large reserves. Yet even after ditching decades of neutrality to join NATO in April 2023, Finland remains haunted by Russia, its former imperial ruler and neighbour along a 1,340km shared border. “When Russia attacked Ukraine it was as if Finland’s wars were happening yesterday,” says a member of Finland’s tight-knit establishment. Indeed, this old hand worries about younger Finns being “too bold” in denouncing Russia. Membership of the European Union and NATO is all very well. But Finland is a small country whose fate has often been decided by great powers, and Russia will always be there. “We know that the big guys can always agree things above our head. We can always be alone.”

This is a moment for all Europe to ponder that memorial in a Helsinki square. For that battered, but still-recognisable uniform—hollow and headless, with the sky visible through its many holes—presents an important question. What can a country afford to lose, and what must it preserve, and still be true to itself? …

[engin-program]

Welcome to the ENGin Program!

What is the ENGin Program?

The ENGin Program is a non-profit organization geared towards helping young Ukrainians gain English skills. The organization also aims to establish cross-cultural connections between Ukrainians and people in other countries across the globe. Through English fluency and culture literacy, ENGin wants to connect Ukraine to the world.

How does the program work?

ENGin pairs young Ukrainians with English-speaking volunteers. In weekly virtual sessions, these Ukrainians practice their English and share and learn from different cultures. These sessions are free of charge and available to Ukrainians age 9-35.

How does ENGin support Ukraine during the war?

When the war is over, Ukraine will need to rebuild itself from the ground up. This rebuilding can only happen through investment from foreign companies and international organizations. But for this to be possible, more Ukrainians need to learn to communicate confidently in English. And, in a time when Russia is trying to isolate Ukraine from the rest of the world, it's more important than ever for Ukrainians to connect with people worldwide.

By giving free English lessons through people of countless different backgrounds, ENGin hopes to create a generation of English-fluent, culturally competent young Ukrainians to rebuild their homeland.

Does the ENGin Program work?

The numbers speak for themselves!

As of 2022, ENGin has served 16,350 Ukrainians. In the next five years, the program hopes to reach its goal of 100,000 students.

93% of ENGin students see significant progress within three months of enrollment. As for the volunteers, 95% of them are happy with their student match!

How do I get involved with ENGin?

It's easy! Just go to the volunteer tab on our home page. Becoming a volunteer is an incredibly easy process. ENGin only has three requirements for applicants:

Must be fluent in English.

Must be 13 or older.

Must be able to commit to at least one hour of sessions per week. If you want to volunteer more hours, we can accommodate that!

Volunteer today and make a difference in a young Ukrainian's life!

[queenwille]

So Russia doesn't owe anything to anyone either. And I don't need to explain or prove anything to anyone either. European Nazis killed my people during World War II. You Jews always downplay the huge role of Russians in winning World War II. Where would you be now, Jew, if Hitler had won? Why did your Americans and British only join the war at the end of the war? Why are you deaf and do not hear that the Russians do not want to see American bases near their borders. Americans wanted a NATO base in Crimea, Ukrainians they got a war. Soon a Maidan will begin in Georgia, just like in Ukraine, and all this will be arranged by the USA and the hypocritical West, and this is disgusting and vile!!!

first of all, don’t call me a jew in that tone, you effing twat. i am a proud jew and you do not get to use it in a degrading tone.

second, did i ever say the russians owe me anything? we don’t downplay it, we simply know we were not in their interests, like at all. i don’t have the time or patience to give random uneducated people history lessons online, but basically the only reason the red army joined the war was because hitler and nazis completely lost it and broke their agreement with them and invaded russia/soviet union.

why did the americans and brits join at the end? well, they ended it, so… but i guess you’re asking why it took so long? idk why it took so long, i don’t have the answers to everything, maybe it was easier to ignore, maybe they didn’t know, maybe they didn’t want to know idk, i didn’t have a family in the holocaust tbh

regarding your inquiries about americans/ukrainians/georgians. i’m neither, so, again, i don’t know. i’m a jewish argentinan with few russian, romanian and belarusian roots, but 80% polish. my great grand parents from both sides left europe post war world one and settled in argentina. my father’s side in a new jewish community near buenos aires, my mother’s side simply in buenos aires, making her promise as a child to never step foot on polish soil in her life, as it is soaked with jewish blood.

and where would the jews be if hitler would have won? he probably would have never won because he was very greedy and just wanted more and more and more like breaking his agreement with the soviet union, so there’s no need to dwell in that. ah look, i ended up giving you a little lesson after all ;)

[beardedmrbean]

North Korea could lose 30,000 to 45,000 troops per month in Ukraine after sending more soldiers to the frontlines, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW)'s Russian offensive campaign assessment published on January 22.

Why It Matters

Pyongyang will reportedly send additional troops to the battlefield by mid-March, and if they maintain the current pace of assaults in Kursk, they may suffer significant losses, the Washington-based think tank said in it's recent assessment.

The ISW's prediction that North Korea could lose up to 45,000 soldiers per month indicates that they are not capable of sustaining the war effort in Kursk, suggesting they are not prepared for battle. Further, the sustained losses of troops will only add to Russia's manpower problem and could possibly sour relations between Moscow and Pyongyang.

What To Know

An anonymous senior U.S. defense official told the New York Times that North Korean reinforcements are expected to arrive "within the next two months," but they did not specify the number of troops, if Pyongyang is rotating its forces, or if they are increasing the size of its total force grouping in Russia.

South Korea previously reported in late December that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) will deploy more troops and send additional equipment to Russia after North Korea suffered significant losses. Russia has previously dismissed reports of North Korean troops fighting in Kursk as "fake news."

Noting the time period in which North Korean troops reportedly trained for at least a month in eastern Russia before engaging in battle, the ISW wrote: "This timeline roughly coheres with the possibility that a fresh contingent of North Korean forces could undergo training and replace the shrinking North Korean group in Kursk Oblast by mid-April 2025, assuming the reported next batch of North Korean troops will train for the same duration as their predecessors, and deploy to Russia imminently in late January or early February 2025."

The ISW predicted that additional DPRK troops are "unlikely to decisively improve Russian operations" and will suffer about 30,000 to 45,000 casualties per month if they "sustain Russia's tempo of operations despite heavy losses."

Part of the issue stems from a lack of ability to communicate between the two forces. In addition to two alleged clashes between the allied forces due to "troop identification errors," a Ukrainian commander claimed that North Korean troops had added a translator who speaks Russian, but suggested that "these groups are still not very effective."

As such, the ISW assessed that "North Korea's high casualty rate and interoperability difficulties with Russian forces will affect the lessons that the North Korean military command will learn from fighting in Russia's war."

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that 3,800 North Korean troops had been killed or injured in Kursk in early January, as the fighting has escalated on the frontlines.

A total of 12,000 North Korean soldiers were initially deployed to Russia and were first reported to have engaged in battle in November 2024. As they had not engaged in serious combat since 1953, the troops appeared underprepared and therefore have sustained such high casualties.

What People Are Saying

Anton Gerashchenko, the former Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: "North Korea will soon send a new group of military personnel to the war against Ukraine, The New York Times reported, citing the Pentagon. Reinforcements are expected "within the next two months," according to one senior U.S. defense official. Overall, North Korea's armed forces number 1.2 million. It is one of the largest regular armies in the world. Last fall, North Korea sent about 11,000 soldiers to aid Moscow's forces in the Kursk region of southern Russia."

"Since their first combat engagement in early December, roughly one-third of the North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded, Ukrainian and American officials said," Gerashchenko added. "Even before it sent troops to Russia, North Korea was a major supporter of Russia's war effort. It has sent Moscow millions of artillery shells — which now account for about half of the Russian munitions fired daily — and more than 100 short-range ballistic missiles, according to Western and Ukrainian intelligence officials."

In a previous comment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described reports of North Korean troops on the frontlines as "contradictory," saying: "North Korea is our close neighbor, our partner, and we are developing our relations in all areas. This is our sovereign right. This should not worry anyone because this cooperation is not directed against third countries."

Peskov added: "[Moscow would] continue to develop this cooperation."

What Happens Next

It is unknown how Ukraine and the global powers will respond if North Korea deploys additional troops and equipment to Russia and if the DPRK troops aid Moscow in seizing more territory.

[julibernardo]

"Ukraine, struggling with the same post-Soviet legacy as Russia, proved something else: Freedom and democracy are possible but only when challenges are recognized, faced, and overcome. Time after time these past 30 years, Ukrainians have done what Russians have not: prevented any one figure from gaining total control, defending the outcome of free elections, while accepting that their country would benefit from friendly cooperation with its neighbors. None of this happens automatically; all of it depends upon taking responsibility and taking risks. When Zelensky chose to stay in Kyiv a year ago, he was doing (as he told me) what he felt he had to do. But no larger force made him do it. He did it as a person taking a risk and taking responsibility."

I love Timothy Snyder ❤️

[darkmaga-returns]

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025 is far from being a standard defense bill.

It represents a calculated effort by Congress to hamstring President Trump’s incoming administration, entrench progressive priorities, and strip the executive branch of its constitutional authority.

By embedding provisions that codify perpetual support for Ukraine, prioritize controversial diversity and inclusion initiatives, and favor legacy defense contractors over innovative companies like SpaceX and Anduril Industries, this bill threatens to derail the Trump agenda and compromise American sovereignty.

1. Ukraine and Russia Provisions: Codifying Endless War

The NDAA’s treatment of the Ukraine conflict is emblematic of its broader assault on executive authority. Key provisions, such as Section 1303, explicitly prohibit any recognition of Russian sovereignty over Ukrainian territory, tying the President’s hands in potential peace negotiations. Historically, territorial concessions have often been used as tools to end prolonged conflicts. However, by codifying this restriction, Congress ensures that diplomatic solutions involving such measures are rendered impossible, forcing the U.S. into an unending conflict.

Equally concerning are Sections 6412 and 6413, which mandate continuous assessments and working groups under the guise of "lessons learned." These provisions institutionalize U.S. involvement in Ukraine by creating a bureaucratic framework that perpetuates the conflict. They are not about accountability or oversight—they are designed to trap the administration in a cycle of dependency, escalation, and inevitable resource drain. Any attempt to redirect focus to pressing domestic issues or prioritize American interests over a European stalemate will face overwhelming resistance.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jill Filipovic at Substack:

It is one week until Election Day in the US. In many states, early voting is already underway. I hope you’re all casting your ballots or have plans to vote, because it really does matter. Many leftists and progressives, though, are saying that they will refuse to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz because of Harris’s role as vice president in an administration that has funded and supplied weapons to Israel for their ever-expanding war — in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, and on and on. Some Muslim and Arab voters who previously supported Democrats are now refusing to vote for them; some are publicly backing Trump, while others are abstaining or supporting Jill Stein.

Look: I’m not going to lecture anyone here. I understand that withholding one’s vote over an unconscionable war can be a legitimate expression of one’s most deeply-held morals. But I’m going to make the case that you should vote anyway — and vote for Kamala Harris. As Rebecca Solnit put it, voting is not a valentine; it’s a chess move. A vote is not an endorsement of everything a candidate has ever done. In the US, it is a binary choice. If the Democratic candidate wins, the Republican candidate loses; if the Republican candidate wins, the Democratic candidate loses. There may be third parties, but in this particular setup and in this particular election, there are not actually third choices that stand any chance of ascending to power. Voting for one of them — say, perennial grifter Jill Stein — does not send a message so much as it increases the chances that the Republican Party wins and the Democratic Party moves right.

And what if the Republican Party wins? I’ve seen some people on social media argue that things couldn’t get worse, which strikes me as objectively insane. Things can always get worse. The worst things you can think of?��They could have been worse. Trump has given no indication that he will do anything other than green light Israel’s actions — as well as Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and potential Chinese actions in Taiwan. Every single thing Trump and his team have said about Palestinians indicates that they see the group as subhuman — as terrorists from the time of toddlerhood, as Rudy Giuliani just put it at a Trump rally (“The Palestinians are taught to kill us at two-years old,” he said as he accused Harris of wanting to resettle Palestinian refugees in the US). It’s worth noting here that during Trump’s first term, he cut the number of Muslim refugees resettled in the US by 91%. While more than 38,500 Muslim refugees were resettled in 2016, those numbers dropped to just 3,312 by 2018. The percentage of Christian refugees admitted also declined, but not nearly as precipitously: From 25,633 to 16,012.

[...] But perhaps that isn’t enough; perhaps your argument is that a vote for a third party, or no vote at all, will send a message to Democrats that they need to move left. And while I like that idea and wish it were true, I have personally never seen it work in American politics. It has worked in primaries — see, e.g., 2016 Bernie voters pushing Hillary Clinton left, and in 2020 with the Black Lives Matter protest movement pushing just about every Democratic candidate left. But in general elections, when the center-left candidate loses to the far-right candidate, the conclusion is never, “the Democrat should have moved further left.” The conclusion is that there are more conservative and moderate voters in the country than liberal and left ones, and if the liberal party wants to win, it needs to moderate. This indeed was the lesson of 2016 that manifested in 2020: Four years after that stunning loss, Democratic voters chose Joe Biden, the most conservative of the Democratic primary bench, as the candidate. Voters weren’t in love with Biden. They were largely thinking strategically, and had concluded that a moderate white guy was the only hope to get Trump out of office. Reader, they were right. (For the record, I was a Warren supporter).

I would like to see the Democratic Party be a more progressive party. I am happy to see, for example, the party’s unapologetic embrace of abortion rights post-Dobbs. But the party gets more liberal when liberals win. There are no benefits to Palestinians if Trump wins, and many greater potential costs. There are no benefits to the American political system if Trump wins — Democrats will not look at a Trump victory and conclude that the answer is a leftward shift. And there are huge costs to just about everyone else: Undocumented immigrants and their families. Refugees. Women seeking abortions. International students. LGBT people generally and trans people in particular. The free press. The list goes on.

I personally don’t think the damage Trump can do is worth the virtually non-existent benefits of voting third party or not voting at all. I truly do understand feeling disgusted with Biden and Harris for their total cowardice when it comes to Israel. But I don’t think that sense of personal disgust, and the related desire to punish them in the voting booth, justifies all of the downstream effects that will come if Harris is not elected. And the fundamental reality is that if Harris is not elected — if enough people do not vote for Harris — then Donald Trump will be elected. And that will be the fault of the people who voted for Trump, but also of those who did not vote for Harris, and certainly of those who encouraged others not to vote for Harris. This is how elections work. There is just not a magical third option here where not voting for Harris but also not voting for Trump gets people who want to stop the shedding of Palestinian (and Lebanese and on and on) blood any closer to that aim.

[...] I’m not an idiot: I don’t think a President Harris is going to do what I want when it comes to US support for Israel. But I know that Trump is definitely not going to do what I want. And I suspect he will take the status quo to new levels of horror. If you also believe that’s true, I hope you’ll cast your ballot for Harris. You don’t have to be happy about it. But you do have to make a moral calculus: What are the real costs if Trump wins, to Palestinians and also to people the rest of the world over? How do those compare to the costs in Harris wins? If you do that math and still decide to sit it out or vote for someone who is not Harris — effectively decreasing her chance of taking office — well, that is certainly your right, and it may indeed feel quite righteous. But the real-world outcome is one you’re going to have to live with.

Jill Filipovic wrote an excellent Substack post making the case that electing Kamala Harris as President is a moral must.

[originalleftist]

Democrats panicking and saying we can't win should learn a lesson from Ukraine.

Plenty of "experts" said Ukraine couldn't win. That it couldn't survive. I pretty much thought so too, at first. The general expectation IIRC was that it would fall in weeks, or days. That any war would be not the conventional war we have seen, but an insurgency in a Russian-occupied Ukraine. Zelensky was offered a flight out to escape. He refused.

Go back further, too. Unlike Americans, who are now faced with a choice between a democratic republic and a Kremlin-aligned fascist regime, Ukraine started this struggle already under the rule of a Russian proxy ruler. They rose up and threw him out in 2014. They built a new, more democratic nation, and they have defended it valiantly for over a decade.

We don't know how the war will end. Maybe Russia will win in the end. Maybe not. But Ukraine has already survived more than two years longer as a sovereign country than those "experts" thought it could.

[thewoundedmind]

War will never end. That's my life.

I know, there maybe after few years or decades the war will be ended. But it will never stops for me - cause I lost so many years, that I can't get back and I'll need to cope with that. I will never get home, actual home that will be my property, cause, well, you know what life is exactly we living now.

I couldn't get a degree - there was depression in my head and even if I did everything to get it, back there, at home, there, in free lands in Ukraine it'll be not legitimate.

I was in a cell of some idea. "Russian world" huh. True picture of their world indeed.

War will never end. I know a woman, who's cannot move on, cannot start a new life here without thinking that someday it all stops and she will need money for reconstruction of her apartments or else. She cannot believe that It'll continue any longer. She believes, there is an end.

I can understand her - I heard in 2016 that war will end in a couple months, maybe bit later, in 2017… There was then… 2018… 2019…

You know, I'll stopped believe in any end. I just hoped that I can run away, somewhere where is no fucking war, no fucking slavic people, somewhere where I'll be free and happy. Without war.

Sometimes I believe, World is teaching me a lessons. I hated cooking - so he throw me into a Shelter's Kitchen and I understood cooking. I believed, I'm a weak person, than I stuck on a hardworking, traumatizing my hands and still proceed to work. I was thinking I'm actually not a queer person but a person just confused, than World introduced me to local LGBTQIA+ community, that accepted me as a person who I am and I felt… So much happy. Loved. World teaches me a lesson everytime when I thinking I can't do something.

The World never let me go in Russia, and when I choose to escape in Ukraine, It let that happen immediately. Without troubles. No one cared. But It doesn't let me go forward, from Ukraine - I stuck here, and this taught me a lesson - to understand the truth, to learn a history, to fell in love with something, that my parents taught me to hate. I fell in love with my culture, with my land, with Ukraine.

But what it tries to teach me, when I can't find anything, to live a normal life? Can't find a job, can't stop getting myself in a heavier depts? What it tries to teach me, getting myself sick and preventing me to get a job or continue working.

And what World is trying to teach us all, letting this war continue for more years?

War will never end, until we all learn something.

[mariacallous]

The year was 1998. Walking down Pushkin Boulevard in my native Donetsk, I listened to English lessons on my Walkman and dreamed of America—a country I would soon call home.

At age 20, I couldn't form a sentence in the language of the USSR's arch-enemy; my teachers, who didn't speak English themselves, made sure of that.

Born and raised in Ukraine, I had just graduated from Donetsk State Tech University, but I couldn't speak Ukrainian either.

Russian was my native language; though it wasn't me who chose it, Russian colonialism did just as it chose to plaster the names of Russian chauvinists, like Pushkin, all over my city.

I was gaslit by the evil empire, and so were you. Let me correct this: So are you.

In the fall of 1982, I remember the nannies at my kindergarten weeping over the death of "our dear leader," Leonid Brezhnev. Perhaps I cried, too. The earliest childhood memories are notoriously faulty.

But in 2024, I hold no illusions about Russia: What it has done, what it seeks to do, and what will happen if the Free World fails to stop it.

Rewriting History: A Soviet Mirage

It took me a lifetime to un-dim the metaphorical lights—to escape the unreality Moscow constructed for the peoples and lands it colonized.

It all started with a perverted version of history that provided all the answers but left no room for questions.

For example, when did World War II start? Sorry, my mistake—the "Great Patriotic War," as it's called in Russia. Everybody knows it began in 1941 when Nazi Germany invaded the USSR.

Except it didn't. Adolf Hitler's betrayal of Joseph Stalin didn't start the war—their secret pact to invade Poland did.

What the world remembers, and what Russia tries desperately to forget, is that Europe's worst calamity began with the unholy alliance of two evil regimes hellbent on colonization.

Growing up in the USSR, doubt and skepticism, at the heart of the Western intellectual tradition, were out of reach.

It took me decades to understand that the Soviet Union was never truly a country, but rather an oppressive Russia Empire by another name.

When the "brotherhood" of 15 nations is praised and celebrated all around you, it is almost unimaginable that one of those "brothers" was prepared to kill, rape, and torture in a zealous pursuit of its imperialist ambitions, which, in Russia's case, always took categorical precedence over human life.

The Victory That Wasn't

When the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War order crumbled before our eyes, many in the West mistook it for a victory. But who exactly did we defeat?

During the 70 years of the USSR's existence, the evil of communist ideology was merely layered atop the evil of a Frankenstein state, one that desperately wanted the world to see it as a nation.

By 1991, Communism was gone, the USSR fell apart, but the revanchism and a deep-seated fear in Moscow—that the Russian Federation would collapse under the weight of its own contradictions—remained.

Empires thrive on perpetual expansion, as vividly demonstrated by Russia's invasion of Ichkeria, Georgia, and now Ukraine.

Caught in a relentless cycle of conquest and domination, Moscow's legitimacy and stability hinge on the constant acquisition of new territories, the appropriation of other nations' histories, and the subjugation of their peoples.

Suppressed History Is a Harbinger of More Violence

In seventh grade, we studied the "Great Famine" of 1932-1933 and learned about the "kulaks" hiding grain and how the righteous Red Army was fighting the imperialists who wanted the Soviet project to fail.

But did I know what role Stalin's monstrous and deliberate policy to starve millions of Ukrainians by engineering Holodomor had to do with my own life story?

Why did everyone around me speak Russian in Ukraine at the tail-end of the twentieth century? How did my Armenian father, born and raised in Georgia, end up coming to Donbas—the Soviet Union's promised land of his youth?

Colonialism is the answer. Moscow knew that to bury the Ukrainian dream—escaping the empire's yoke—required repopulating the land with outsiders to prevent even a possibility of a grassroots national movement rekindling.

Finding myself both complicit in Russia's imperial project and its victim was as confusing as it was unsettling.

Raphael Lemkin, the man who introduced the concept of genocide to the world, recognized Moscow's Holodomor as a systematic effort to destroy the Ukrainian nation, culture, and people through starvation and repression.

Yet, as I grew up, his name and his views existed in a separate realm of knowledge and awareness from the one I inhabited. The two were meant never to cross.

Had I not escaped the morass of endless lies sustaining the evil empire, I would've never understood that we are witnessing another genocide attempt and that history is indeed repeating itself.

A Breath of Fresh Air

The year was 1998. Walking down 900 East Street in Salt Lake City, Utah, as a fresh-off-the-boat American, I had much to look forward to and little to reflect on.

Between naïveté and arrogance, I managed to strike both with the thought that my individual journey was forerunning the path Ukraine was to inevitably take: From the dark past of oppression and suffering all the way to freedom and prosperity.

I didn't think much about Russia at the time. Surely, it must have wanted the same thing for itself, but it was for the Russian people to decide their future.

When I swore allegiance to the U.S. flag in 2005 and began my career in international relations, the rose-colored glasses started to come off. The straitjacket of lies that had enveloped my mind since childhood showed signs of wear and tear as it came into contact with history books that weren't Russian propaganda.

Not only did I start to understand the past, but Moscow was also unmasking itself fast in real time—murdering thousands of Chechens for defying their colonizers, meddling in the affairs of Ukraine and other neighboring states, and reverting to ruthless authoritarianism after a brief flirtation with democracy in the nineties.

Meanwhile, Ukrainians were rejecting a rigged election and uniting in what became known as the Orange Revolution, demanding accountability from their government.

It was evident that Russia and Ukraine were on different paths, but I was unprepared even to imagine the magnitude of this difference.

From Public Service to Global Diplomacy

After five years of U.S. government service, working on development projects from agriculture in Moldova to renewable energy in Mongolia, I applied for a graduate degree in Public Administration at Harvard.

For a kid from Donetsk, a son of a coal miner, getting an admission letter felt like something out of a fairytale.

Arriving in Cambridge, MA, I delved into the mechanics of democracy and governance; conversations with professors and peers sharpened my vision. I saw more clearly than ever how Moscow had twisted its colonial history and appropriated or perverted histories of the lands it controlled.

My education was no longer a means to an examined life; it was to become a weapon against the empire of lies that had once claimed my allegiance.

My next stop was the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where I covered regional affairs for a portfolio of countries including Russia and Ukraine. Moderating panel discussions with ministers, activists, and opinion leaders often revealed deep historical tensions.

Ukraine faced significant challenges on its path toward Europe, with freedom, prosperity, and nationhood at stake.

What remained obscured to me at the time, however, was the extent to which Russia would resist and sabotage Ukraine's progress at every turn.

The heir to the bloodthirsty tsars and commissars, the Russian Federation was firmly set on a trajectory toward totalitarianism, oppression, and, ultimately, fascism.

With hindsight, I realize that my gaslit mind mistook a bit of situational awareness for enlightenment. Back then, though, I believed—indeed, I knew—Russia couldn't invade Ukraine.

Now, I can see that for the Moscow-centered empire, colonial conquest was all but inevitable.

The West Deliberately Refuses to Understand What Russia Is

Pick up any map, and you'll easily spot a vast country called Russia. But make no mistake—this is no nation; it has no national interests, only imperial ambitions.

Bizarrely, we justify Moscow's criminal actions eagerly at our own peril, despite the threat it poses not just to Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland, etc. but to the entire world and, paradoxically, to the population of Russia too.

Don't take my word for it, ask the people of Tatarstan, Bashkiria, Dagestan or any other Eurasian folk Moscow had colonized. The veritable prison of nations spent decades, if not centuries, attempting to erase their identities, languages, and cultures.

Our stubborn refusal to face the facts is confounding.

What is holding us back from processing the lessons of Russia's bloodstained history, from believing Russia when it tells us it plans to commit what I see as genocide? Why can't we act decisively on this knowledge?

Given an opportunity to restore deterrents, rebuild our credibility, and reassert our commitment to the values we profess, we flounder time and again.

To help Ukraine defeat the aggressor is not charity, it's in our strategic interest. Any other outcome creates a much more problematic future for each of Ukraine's allies individually, and all of us collectively.

The Peril of Inaction, Cloaked in Excuses and Laced With Cowardice

Gaining clarity of vision and decolonizing my mind has been a decades-long process, still ongoing.

I finally learned Ukrainian, and I no longer speak Russian. After all, Moscow used the pretext of "protecting" Russian speakers in Donbas to justify its invasion.

As an unhumorous joke goes, no matter where you are or who you are, if you continue to speak Russian, the motherland will come to "save" you one day.

Reflecting on my journey, I see much of it mirrored in the painstakingly slow and reluctant awakening of the Free World to the realities of Ruscism (Russian Fascism).

But we can't afford decades of incremental enlightenment; we must now recognize that the policy of "with Ukraine as long as it takes" has failed. From the start, it was grounded in our misunderstanding of Moscow.

History makes it clear that Russia responds to indecisiveness and weakness by raising the stakes, but when faced with strength and determination, it retreats.

The humiliating defeat of the Tsarist Russia by Japan in 1905 is one such example. More recently, In 1989, a nuclear-armed superpower—one of only two in the world—was forced to withdraw from Afghanistan after another devastating loss.

Its equally violent successor, the Russian Federation, has claimed victory in every conflict it initiated since, with the consequences all too obvious.

We, in the Free World, can no longer afford to be willfully gaslit by Moscow's lies. The stakes are too high, not just for Ukraine but for every democratic nation.

Our moral and historical obligation extends beyond thoughts and prayers; it demands decisive action. We owe this to the generations before us, and even more to those who will follow.

The time has come to end incrementalism and commit fully to Ukraine's victory, securing not a temporary ceasefire–certain to boomerang back as a yet more dangerous war–but a lasting peace for Europe and the world.

[biryukzlodei-artblog]

I can suggest you diplomatic solutions that Europe can implement to end the conflict:

1. Discounting all aid to Ukraine.

2. Recognition of the Ukrainian regime as Nazi and criminal.

3. Disband NATO as a military criminal organization.

4. The trial of the organizers of this war (Obama, Trump, Biden, Nuland, Callas, von der Leyen, Meloni, Macron, Johnson etc.)

5. Withdrawal of all American bases and troops from European territory.

6. Retribution for Russia’s victory in the war and compensation for illegal sanctions and acts of terror against Russian citizens.

7. History lessons in all Western educational institutions focus on the true beginning of this war and why it’s so bad and painful to be a Russophobe.

But these European snobs will never agree to these fair demands, so I think it would be easier to kill them all in a war than to re-educate.

[argyrocratie]

"SUDAN: first results of the solidarity campaign, it will continue untill all sudanese anarchists have shelter."

(...)

"Since April 13, 2023, a civil war between two factions of the Sudanese army (the official army and the Rapid Support Forces, RSF) is ravaging Sudan.

This war is fueled by opposing geostrategic interests (Ukraine, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey on the army side, Russia and the United Arab Emirates on the RSF side) on a country occupying a geostrategic position (control of the sources of the Nile, control of the Red Sea and trade through the Suez Canal).

But much more, it is a war between two counter-revolutionary factions who wish to crush the Sudanese people who dared to rise up against the Islamist dictatorship then against the military dictatorship and dared to set up an organization of society civil society in a horizontal way, via the Revolutionary Committees. (On the Sudanese Revolution, read: SUDAN 2022: LESSONS FOR ANARCHISM, https://cnt-ait.info/2022/01/14/sudan-lessons)

The young anarchist companions of Sudan participate in the revolutionary movement. As such, they are among the victims of the horrible crimes that strike all those who dare to resist the armed factions.

In previous issues of our newspaper « Anarchosyndicalisme ! », we launched a call for solidarity with our African companions, a call which was heard in France and more widely internationally. The appeal was notably translated into Chinese, Indonesian, Czech, English, Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, etc. … It was relayed by other groups, solidarity debates were organized in Caen or recently in Clermont-Ferrand by the Ephémère library. Other solidarity debates are planned in Ambert, in the North, etc.

We have already collected more than 3,300 euros (list below), which has already been transferred to the Sudanese companions.

In a message received in June, the companions from Sudan told us:

“We were able to shelter 6 companions. They are now safe in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Kenya. There are a few of us who still remain in Sudan. We will coordinate to continue our liberation activities from abroad [because the situation here is too dangerous]. You supported us very strongly, you saved the lives of our companions who were in very dangerous regions. We hope your support does not stop. Every day we suffer, but my attachment to the ideas and to anarchism continues to grow. Long live solidarity! »

We have since carried out an interview with the companions, in which they share their situation, their difficulties and their hopes. This interview can be read online here:

INTERVIEW WITH A SUDANESE ANARCHIST COMPANION : « We do not support any of the parties engaged in the war ; we want it to be stopped immediately. »

(...)