Welcome to another Hump Day (“Kupros diena” in Lithuanian ): Wednesday, February 19, 2025, and National Chocolate Mint Day. The most famous species in this genus is the Frango Mint, made in Chicago and previously sold at Marshall Fields department store (now Macy’s). The mint-flavored chocolates have a checkered history, as you can see by reading the link. Chicagoans don’t like outside companies selling their mints! Here’s what they look like:
It’s also Iwo Jima Day, marking the beginning of the famous battle in 1945, National Arabian Horse Day, and Prevent Plagiarism Day.
There’s a movie of the iconic flag-raising on Iwo Jima, though the photograph by Joe Rosenthal, taken during the raising, won the Pulitzer Prize for that year and was the model for the Marine Corps Memorial in Virginia along the Potomac River. Here’s the movie:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 19 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*It really bothers me that Trump decided to hold peace talks with Russia about its war with Ukraine—and leaving out Ukrainian President Zelensky. How much more arrogant and self-serving can you get? But he’s upset not only me, but also many European leaders who fear Trump’s têtê-á-têtê with his buddy Putin. (Article is archived here.)
For years, European leaders have fretted about reducing their dependence on a wayward United States. On Monday, at a hastily arranged meeting in Paris, the hand-wringing gave way to harried acceptance of a new world in which Europe’s most powerful ally has begun acting more like an adversary.
President Trump’s plan to negotiate a peace settlement in Ukraine with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, with neither the Ukrainians nor Europeans invited to take part, has forced dazed leaders in capitals like Berlin, London and Paris to confront a series of hard choices, painful trade-offs and costly new burdens.
Already on the table is the possibility that Britain, France, Germany, and other countries will deploy tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers. European governments are affirming the need for major increases in their military budgets — if not to the 5 percent of gross domestic product demanded by Mr. Trump, then to levels not seen since the Cold War days of the early 1980s.
“Everybody’s hyped up at the moment, understandably,” said Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London. “What is clear is that whatever happens, Europe will have to step up.”
That could put its leaders in a difficult spot. While public support for Ukraine remains strong across Europe, committing troops to potentially dangerous duty on Ukrainian soil could quickly become a domestic political liability. Estimates on the size of a peacekeeping force vary widely, but under any scenario, it would be an extremely expensive undertaking at a time of straitened budgets.
President Emmanuel Macron of France, who first floated the idea of a peacekeeping force last year — to widespread skepticism in Europe — has been weakened since his decision to call parliamentary elections last summer backfired and left him with a fragile government.
Germany may not have a new coalition government for weeks after its election on Feb. 23. On Monday, its chancellor, Olaf Scholz, dismissed talk of peacekeepers as “completely premature” and “highly inappropriate” while fighting was still raging.
I want America to be an ally with Europe, not with Russia, and Trump’s osculation of Putin scares the bejeezus out of me. And if the U.S. is so friendly to Putin, there’s no way that we would vote for Ukrainian membership in NATO, as the vote of NATO members has to be unanimous to allow that. I can imagine how steamed Zelensky is.
*For reasons it won’t disclose, the Washington Post has canceled a “wraparound” ad calling for Trump to fire Musk. The NYT gives the details:
An advertisement that was set to run in some editions of The Washington Post on Tuesday calling for Elon Musk to be fired from his role in government was abruptly canceled, according to one of the advocacy groups that had ordered the ad.
Common Cause said it was told by the newspaper on Friday that the ad was being pulled. The full-page ad, known as a wraparound, would have covered the front and back pages of editions delivered to the White House, the Pentagon and Congress, and was planned in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund.
A separate, full-page ad with the same themes would have been allowed to run inside the newspaper, but the two groups chose to cancel the internal ad as well. Both ads would have cost the groups $115,000.
“We asked why they wouldn’t run the wrap when we clearly met the guidelines if they were allowing the internal ad,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and chief executive of Common Cause. “They said they were not at liberty to give us a reason.”
News of The Washington Post canceling the ad was earlier reported by The Hill.
Although it is unclear who made the decision to pull the ad or why, the move comes amid growing concern about the changing mission of the Washington Post newsroom under the ownership of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. The newspaper’s decision last fall to end its longstanding tradition of presidential endorsements and Mr. Bezos’ front-row seat at Mr. Trump’s inauguration have led some to wonder whether the news organization has been accommodating a Trump administration.
But an ad is not an op-ed or an endorsement. It is an ad, for crying out loud, and I can see no reason for the cancelation save the Post‘s fear of angering Trump. I can understand journalistic neutrality in endorsements, but I can’t understand journalistic rejection of ads simply because they may anger the powers that be. Such is the feat that Trump’s blustering has inspired in even the MSM.
*Yet another underwater cable was cut in the Baltic Sea, almost certainly by Russia. This time NATO is responding.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization mounted its first coordinated response to the suspected sabotage campaign against critical infrastructure, after another underwater data cable was severed in the Baltic Sea.
NATO vessels raced to the site of a damaged fiber-optic cable in Swedish waters on Sunday morning, where a trio of ships carrying Russian cargo, including one recently sanctioned by the U.S., were nearby. All three vessels are now being investigated as part of a probe into suspected sabotage of the fiber optic cable, according to several European officials. One ship was detained Sunday.
The incident is the latest in a string of alleged underwater attacks in the region that prompted NATO to announce earlier this month the formation of a surveillance mission called Baltic Sentry. It includes regular naval patrols, as well as enhanced drone, satellite and electronic surveillance of Baltic areas that are crisscrossed by critical infrastructure such as data and power cables, along with gas pipelines and offshore wind farms.
Western officials have said they suspect Russia is fighting a shadow war against the West. Russia has denied it is behind such an effort.
“We have seen elements of a campaign to destabilize our societies. Through cyberattacks, assassination attempts, and sabotage—including possible sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said earlier this month.
Evidence gathered so far in the Baltic investigations hasn’t been conclusive enough to result in prosecutions or arrests, officials familiar with the investigations said.
. . . . . Latvia’s navy identified three vessels that were close to the damage site as potential culprits, the Latvian officials said.
A NATO flag flutters over a ship in Tallinn port, Estonia. Photo: ints kalnins/ReutersOne of the vessels, a bulk carrier called Vezhen, which is registered in Malta and had departed the Russian port Ust-Luga on Friday, was detained and boarded by Swedish police on Sunday, officials said.
If the Russians didn’t do this (and this was at least the second cable damaged), I’ll eat my hat, even if I don’t have a hat. Who else would damage these cables? There was a similar incident near Taiwan recently, and the Chinese are suspects in that one. In the meantime, Trump is cozying up to Putin over the Ukraine war. . . .
*Two Democratic Senators have surprised their colleagues by announcing their retirement. This isn’t great for the Senate, or for us Democrats in the midterms, as there are already 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and 2 Independents in the Senate. And it’s not a certainty that these Senators will be replaced by others from their party.
Those are big wins for the Peters and Smith families and add a big new sense of uncertainty for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It’s not that two surprise retirements doom Democrats’ hopes in the still far-off 2026 midterms. But those open seats aren’t necessarily going to be automatic Democratic wins, an ominous early indicator that the midterms may not be the relief that Trump opponents desperately want them to be. And with JD Vance as the tiebreaking vice president, Democrats need to pick up four seats to regain control of the chamber.
. . . For Democrats, this is the nightmare time. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are rearranging the U.S. government as they see fit. Other than Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, Senate Republicans are acquiescing even to Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks. Trump opponents’ best option for now is through the courts, filing lawsuits by the armload and getting as many injunctions as possible to halt Trump’s agenda wherever they can. It’s a holding action until the midterms, when — theoretically — congressional reinforcements arrive and Trump can be blocked through legislation.
The problem is those midterms may not offer Democrats that much relief.
Yes, the House is about as close as it can get; the GOP holds a 218-215 House majority, but at some point soon, Rep. Elise Stefanik is going to have to resign to become ambassador to the United Nations. (A New York special election will be held to fill the seat within about three months of her leaving.) On April 1, Florida will hold two special House elections for the districts formerly represented by Michael Waltz and Matt Gaetz. Between Stefanik’s imminent resignation and April 1, the House will have 217 Republicans and 215 Democrats.
While a bare-minimum GOP majority in the House makes it tougher for the majority to pass legislation, members in minority still can’t subpoena anything or call hearings, although they can summon witnesses at hearings called by the majority. In the minority, Texas Rep. Al Green’s plan to introduce articles of impeachment against Trump (here we go again!) looks like another futile, impotent Democratic gesture.
With the House so close, Democrats will have a good shot at winning a majority in 2026. But that would only partially hinder the Trump agenda, and that’s not even accounting for Trump’s maximalist interpretation of presidential powers. (His executive orders can be undone by a Democratic president, but who knows when one will take office.)
I can’t afford to worry about this now; I’m just trying to survive the next two/four years of madness, one day at a time.
*The Times of Israel reports that there will be two exchanges of hostages this week, four dead bodies on Thursday and six living hostages on Saturday. For the first time we will see coffins given back to Israel.
Israeli and Hamas officials say that a deal has been reached for the terror group to free six living hostages on Saturday.
In addition, four bodies will be transferred to Israel on Thursday.
Hamas leader in Gaza Khalil Al Hayya says that the six living hostages will include two Israelis, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who have been held for over a decade.
Al Hayya says the release will be conditioned on Israel living up to its part of the first phase of the deal.
Initially three living hostages had been set to go free on Saturday.
The six are believed to be the final living hostages on the list of those to be released in the first phase of the deal. Fourteen of the 33 hostages on the original phase 1 list have yet to be freed; Hamas has said eight of them are dead, and Israel has said that this matches its own information. It is believed that another 24 living hostages would be released under phase 2 of the deal.
A senior Israeli official confirms the details to the Walla news site.
Israel has said it will confirm the identity of the bodies released once they have been definitively identified.
It’s not clear to me whether the dead in their coffins will be identified by Hamas, or whether Hamas will just turn over a list of the dead. In either case Israel will immediately take over the bodies for forensic identification (probably through DNA) and then informing the families. It’s also not clear whether Israel has agreed to release more Palestinian terrorists in return for dead hostages. That’s of course an awful deal, but Israel has done it before, and who am I to tell Israel how to exchange hostage for prisoners. All I can do is register my horror and disbelief at this kind of “deal.”
Update: The NYT says the bodies will include some from the Bibas family: a mother and her two infants. It doesn’t say how many. I was afraid of this, as the family has become iconic to Israelis. UPDATE 2: The BBC and other sources report that Hamas will be returning the three bodies of the Bibas family.
Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s chief negotiator, said in a speech on Tuesday that militants intend to hand over the remains of four Israeli hostages to Israel on Thursday in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Mr. Hayya said that members of the Bibas family — some of the most well-known hostages worldwide — would be among the four bodies handed over to Israel on Thursday, without saying how many. The three remaining members of the Bibas family in Gaza are Shiri Bibas and her two children.
The Israeli prime minister’s office confirmed that the bodies of four Israelis would be returned on Thursday, but officials didn’t respond to requests for comment about whether the Bibas family would be among them. The Israeli military had said until recently that there were grave concerns for the lives of Ms. Bibas and her children, though it had not confirmed their deaths.
For many Israelis, the story of the Bibas family has become a symbol of the brutality of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack: Shiri Bibas was corralled by gunmen and taken to Gaza with her two red-haired children, Ariel, 4, and the baby Kfir, who was just short of 9 months old at the time. Yarden Bibas, Shiri’s husband and the children’s father, was also abducted, bleeding heavily after an assailant struck his head with a hammer, relatives said. Mr. Bibas was released from captivity earlier in February.
Is the world going to feel less amiable towards Hamas when the remains of Shiri Bibas and her two children are handed over to Israel on Thursday? I wouldn’t bet on it. But I bet there will be absolutely no ceremony like the others: no speeches and no certificates. The Red Cross will help Hamas do a transfer completely out of sight.
Shiri Bibas and her children; killed by Hamas. Photo from Times of Israel:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is practicing her pre-pounce position:
A: What are you doing?Hili: I’m preparing myself for the hunting season.
Ja: Co ty robisz?Hili: Przygotowuję się do polowań.
*******************
From Cat Memes:
From Things with Faces; a rock formation
From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs, this well could be faked:
Masih is quiet again, but Emma Hilton reposted this (you can find the upcoming Act here, and
The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act passed in the US House in 2023 and again in 2025. Will any of the @SenateDems vote YES when it comes before the Senate for a floor vote? Here’s why they should.https://t.co/P16QkafQFA
— Kara Dansky (@KDansky) February 17, 2025
Here’s the House vote in 2023, and the Democrats voted against it. Diappointing:
From Luana via Colin Wright. Maher doesn’t understand sex, either:
MAHER: “Now we’re back at ‘there’s only two sexes,’ which is ridiculous.”
Hey @billmaher, I’d be happy to come on your show to explain exactly why there are only two sexes and why it’s important for our laws to reflect this basic biological fact.pic.twitter.com/XeKbb1iD16
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) February 17, 2025
From Barry. Do you think the big bull really raised its trunk in thanks?
Elephant says thank you after the herd crossed the road
— Nature's masterpiece 🍀 (@nature-universe.bsky.social) 2025-02-16T09:42:42.928Z
From Simon, a teeny sign of protest:
Big crowd at the SF Tesla dealership protesting our unelected overlord. A tiny sign hangs from an upstairs window
— Ruth Malone, RN, PhD (@remalone.bsky.social) 2025-02-17T20:31:00.189Z
From Malcolm; cats and kids not playing well together:
That hand of a cat😭 pic.twitter.com/aiCBeacpxH
— Lord of Knives🔪® (@Rathipa_Rampedi) February 3, 2025
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:
A French Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. She was six.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-19T10:53:36.559Z
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, an ocelot (sound up):
Sound on to hear this beautiful #ocelot #manigordo protected in #ACG #CostaRica youtu.be/SHOiv9oLu1I
— Alex Smith (@alexsmithants.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T00:57:11.939Z
. . . and a groaner:
I used to have a young frog whose distant ancestors came from Krakow. He was a tad Pole.
There’s an intersection in a town called Osteen that we go through if we head to Orlando. My daughter calls it the most American intersection because it has a church, a gun store, a country-western outfitters, and a gas station.
How many pumps at the gas station ??? The gas stations here in the exurbs of Houston, where country western outfitters and gun stores can be found in abundance, seem to have a minimum of forty pumps. Everything is bigger…
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Architecture is inhabited sculpture. -Constantin Brancusi, sculptor (19 Feb 1876-1957)
A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it- George Carlin
Those dead children hit so hard… so hard. How do you hold back the tears?
I was reading about that Australian serial pedophile rapist who passed away yesterday… hundreds of victims. All they did was transfer him around or ‘counseling’. Seriously? Counseling out of being a predator?
In my book anyone who hurts children forfeits all of their rights as a human being, period. I can see how someone who tortured adults or lined them up against a wall and shot them could, eventually, repent and become a decent person again. I believe it is genuinely possible. But there’s no coming back from inflicting pain or death on children, it’s a red line you cross for ever. Children are completely defenseless and unaware that adults could harm them.
I recommend reading ‘When I Am Little Again’ by Janusz Korczak, as it is possibly the best insight into the mind of a child ever written. It is also a bit of solace to know that people like him existed, we should never forget them.
Sorry, I’m ranting now, I think I have had enough of horrible news for the day/month/year… sigh.
No. Not a rant. Thank you, Gus.
Well stated Gus.
I’m torn between giving those who harm children the death penalty or to make them live the remainder of their lives being inflicted daily with the same sort of pain and suffering that they did to their victims. I’ve seen firsthand how this physical and sexual abuse damages the lives of children and how it tears apart families in the immediate aftermath as well as in future relationships, and have exactly zero feelings for the perpetrators of such violence.
This is just the argument from incredulity.
You don’t understand how they can’t be counselled out of being a predator. That doesn’t mean they can’t be.
Well, I also suppose someone can counsel Trump out of being an awful human being, but I don’t know anyone who would bet on this.
The problem I see in your hasty statement is how easily the phrase “should forfeit all human rights” flows out of well-meaning mouths. If we want children to be protected from pedophiles, we can’t start by normalizing mob behaviour or mob-raising rhetoric. The fact that this person’s brain is miswired, so that evil actions give him pleasure, does not mean their rights go out the window based on mob’s say-so. You feel powerless because it would be so much easier if people could just team up and murder every pedophile, among other undesirables, like they did in medieval times. But at some point people in most of the world decided to give up this personal power to the justice system, based on the idea that every human has the same rights, unless they are taken away by the Court after due deliberation.
Glad I finally cut my apron strings to the wapo by cancelling my daily, home-delivered hard copy last week. I say cut apron strings because I had read it daily pretty much since college in the 60’s. Deciding to cancel because it was no longer what I first subscribed to involved a similar emotion to what I felt a decade ago when I cancelled my long-standing subscription to SciAm.
Trusted sources pretty much reduced to WEIT, TWiV, Paul Offit, Anna’s AntiSemitism on campuses newsletters, and TFP, though I must say that Bari’s work is starting to look more and more like a supermarket tabloid with keeping “it escaped from a lab”, MAHA, kids ain’t having sex, and such in play.
You kids get off my lawn!
I also discontinued my membership to Audible, owned by Amazon. Way back in 2017, when I read A Hillbilly Elegy, I gave it a fair review. Then when J D Vance was chosen to be Trump’s running mate in July 2024, I updated my review and gave it a scathing “he’s a traitor to democracy” type of review. The day after the election I received a notice from Amazon that my review was removed due to content violations. So it was obviously flagged and not removed until JD Vance was the confirmed VP. That’s how far freedom of speech goes with Bezos. I’ll be letting my Prime membership lapse as well.
There’s a book, “JD Vance is a Fake Hillbilly,” written by a (sadly late) SW VA attorney. I haven’t read it, but it’s apparently pretty good. Maybe you could leave a glowing review for that in retaliation.
I’ve heard of it, thanks.
Amy, this seems like an odd type of review for a book.
Should we also go back and change reviews for Profiles In Courage to one star because Kennedy was a drug addled womanizer?
So you reviewed the book fairly based on your opinion of the content, but then went back and changed it based on your opinion of the author? There are a lot of authors whose books I like who were bad individuals or whose politics I disagree with. Some may be bad but have good public reputations or vice versa. For example, I disagree with NdG Tyson’s stance on gender, but enjoyed his books on astrophysics (but I should go back and give his books one star because I dislike his gender views, right?).
The fact that your review was canceled was not an infringement on your freedom of speech as it was in violation of Amazon guidelines, which include exaggerated or false claims about the book and personal attacks against the author. You did the best thing by canceling since you are not able to abide by those guidelines. Just like the Roolz on this site can get your post removed or you banned, Amazon has their own conditions.
Thanks for your comments. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to review books. Or what is appropriate or inappropriate to say in a review. Yes my review was probably inappropriate and written in the heat of a moment, I don’t even know what I wrote because it is no longer there. The point is that I posted it in July 2024 and I did not get a notice from Amazon that it transgressed their guideline until November 6, 2024. My point is they sent me (and thousands of other reviewers that were removed) a specific message. And it’s not simply that we did not follow their posting guidelines.
Understood. We’ve all been there!
The timing is indeed suspect as well.
I wish more people would cut the Amazon cord. Maybe we could begin to rebuild our local, brick and mortar economies. I buy nothing from that company.
Jim I felt the same last year cancelling after nearly 30 years of NY Times (though only the first few in actual paper form. We are old!).
Too hard left in the past decade.
D.A.
NYC
TFP has another anti-Ukraine piece this morning, the second one. Not happy about that.
Enough from me (I thought this was important enough to mention).
Thank you, Frau Katze. TFP throws so much spaghetti against the wall these days, sometimes I cannot understand what I am reading or whether it is of serious heritage so that I should even try to take the time to understand it. Your comment is very helpful! And yes very important to mention.
Just because Russia is worse doesn’t mean Ukraine hasn’t engaged in wrongdoing. I don’t think FP is pro-Putin by any means. They just report all sides.
All sides? Should we also listen to Hamas’s side? Putin is a vile aggressor. There is no other side.
What has Ukraine done?
So, because Ukraine is not perfect, it deserves to be destroyed, its land joined to Russia by force, and its freedom-loving people slaughtered wholesale.
In fact, I don’t know any flaw of Ukraine that is not present in Western countries as well, often in a worse form.
Never said that. All I said was that it appears Ukraine has engaged in wrongdoing based on the FP stories. That hardly means I’m pro-Putin.
I kept my Scientific American subscription through the last two terrible editors-in-chief, thinking (hoping) that the formerly venerable and reliable publication will eventually reform itself. This month’s print edition only has one place I’m aware of where I groaned. I believe that it used the phrase “pregnant people” in one of the columns or short articles.* The print edition was generally not as bad as the online content—even during the dark days. Maybe it’s turning around. This month’s edition also mentioned that it didn’t oppose having fossil fuels as part of our energy portfolio, although it did recommend moving as quickly as possible toward renewals. That makes sense to me.
*This is from memory. I didn’t look back at the magazine to confirm.
Norman, i cancelled well before the ideological intrusion. I was noticing a decrease in the technical quality of the articles: more were written by non-scientist science writers and fewer by scientists who were good writers; more weasel words in articles such as promises about what the subject science or technology COULD mean and less about what a discovery DOES mean or provide for.
It was a real shame since I had read SciAm since I was in elementary school in the 1950’s and my engineer father had a subscription and it was the first purchase I made for the high school library when I taught math and physics in high school in 1971. Next purchases were probably a Physics Today subscription and a three-volume set of the Feynman Lectures.
I well remember pouring over my dad’s old Scientific Americans as a kid. Do you remember The Amateur Astronomer? Those were heady days.
I saw the decline over many years, just as you say—more science writers, fewer scientists. But I didn’t really see the woke takeover until Mariette DiChristina and, then, Laura Helmuth. That’s when the male columnists miraculously disappeared and the publication declined rapidly. While the future may indeed lie in the direction of a higher proportion of science writers than practicing scientists, I do think that the magazine can recover. It’s really up to the editorial leadership to fix it.
Subscriber since April 1967 when I was 10 years old and my Aunt Ethyl bought me a subscription for my 10th birthday.
What a great gift for a ten-year old! My father’s NASA engineer boss gave me a membership in the ARRL (Amateur Radio Relay League) with a subscription to its monthly technical magazine QST for my bar mitzvah. A great and thoughtful gift for a 13 year old. I passed my novice license a year later followed by a General class license soon after that. Well edited and focussed journals made a positive contribution to my life.
I don’t get the part about fossil fuels. First, they ARE part of the portfolio now; whether anyone opposes them is beside the point, especially if, as you say, they recommend moving as quickly as possible toward renewals. But the general thrust seems to be addressing wokeness at Scientific American. Are you implying that since Trump wants to drill, baby, drill, and the woke left are generally in favour of renewable energy, that it is somehow non-woke and hence good to not oppose fossil fuels?
I think that the moment to oppose fossil fuels is bad. Opposition to them in the West is far more successful concerning their production than their consumption; so it has led to cutting local production, which has driven their prices up (because consumption continues), and this has financed Putin’s takeover of the Old World.
The WaPo used to give a free digital subscription to everyone with a .gov email address, so I was able to read it daily, even for a few years after I retired and lost that email. But they announced a few months ago that they were cancelling that deal (and now there’s almost nobody left to take advantage of it). No big loss, I guess.
I used to get it free with my Amazon Prime membership. Then they took that benefit away.
Despite all the talk about some European nations putting boots on the ground for Ukraine, I doubt they will actually do it. I can understand the reasons, as a country must put its self interest first. But still, it is very sad.
It’s definitely time for the Europeans (and the Canadians, I note) started taking Russia seriously.
Canada has let its military spending crater under Trudeau.
It’s also 100% clear to me the Baltic cable cuttings are deliberate and no doubt by Russia.
Boots on the ground—I don’t know about that but it wouldn’t be a bad idea. If there’s zero will to defend Europe, I do think Russia won’t stop at Ukraine.
Putin likely wants the countries that were part of the USSR, including the Baltics.
Is it 100% clear to you who no doubt sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline?
Yes. It was an act of war by Ukraine against the Russians who had invaded their country.
Why are so many people pro-Russia? I guess Russia’s years of propaganda about Ukraine are paying off.
Putin has control over all of Russia’s wealth. I really think that many of the anti Ukraine comments are paid for bots and trolls. And there is the “anything USA does is bad” propaganda that has been going on without a break since the USSR. And more recently on the right objecting to spending money for foreign causes, I am sure they have been influenced by Putin’s hordes.
Regarding European lack of defense funding I remember years ago talking to some Canadians about why the USA didn’t have national health care and they immediately replied because you spend so much on the military. I think years ago this imbalance in spending might have been just fine with US policy. But since Obama there has been calls for fairer burden sharing. Even Trump in 2016 pointed out how they have put themselves in jeopardy.
I am old enough to remember when people were afraid of nuclear war, and a common sentiment on the left was “better red than dead.”
We made no effort to help countries like Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and people were OK with that because they were afraid of nuclear war.
What has changed? Putin is no worse than the U.S.S.R. was. Why are people so willing to risk nuclear war over some territory in Ukraine?
@Lysander Russia invaded another country in Europe. The USSR did not do that in the postwar period.
Putin has broken the postwar consensus on not invading other countries.
He has made easier for China to justify taking Taiwan. This won’t end well.
USSR invaded Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia 1968.
Thank you! People who are pro-Russia drive me to despair.
By “Trudeau” I take it you mean Pierre Trudeau who was Prime Minister from 1968 to the 1980s. This was during the great expansion of universal free single-payer healthcare driven both by abundant money and by the dazzling development of medical miracles (themselves driven by insurance funding everywhere, including in the United States.). The current Trudeau has just been continuing a tradition that began under his father’s mentors as the baby boomers were coming of age….who found all things military distasteful, influenced by American leftist draft dodgers hanging around our university campuses.
It’s true that most governments in Canada over our lives have been Liberal-socialist spendthrifts but even under two long-lived majority Conservative governments, the military has been seen as a contributor to cuts, not as a beneficiary of cuts to other programs. There is no electoral constituency in Canada — hasn’t been since 1945 — for increased military spending at the expense of other priorities we simply value more, and have not felt risk in doing so. Canada has not achieved 2% GDP defence spending in many decades and did not make progress under Conservative governments.
Similar to Europe, we have been playing the United States since 1949 (when the USSR got The Bomb.) Like Europe, we knew the Americans were more afraid of Soviet Communism than we were and we could count on them to do the heavy lifting to deter the USSR’s global designs while we we spent our taxes on healthcare, French privileges, pensions and now aboriginals and climate change while decrying American war-mongering on the world stage. Given our demographics and what Bryan calls demoralization, it’s hard to see how we could spend much more than we do because we already can’t attract young people to join the military in the first place to spend the money on. Would you as a high school grad take the King’s shilling to fight for what you had been taught from K-12 is a racist genocidal post-colonial settler state where your national pride is a strike against you? And if you become a corporal or a commissioned officer, every female soldier in your command is now a sleeper risk for destroying your career if she alleges sexual harassment or transphobia?
It’s way more complicated than the current Prime Minister and is unlikely to get better no matter who is elected to replace him. The current mood is not that we should pull up our socks (and our own weight) but rather resentment that President Trump is making it an issue rather than smiling and shrugging as American presidents have done since Eisenhower.
Interesting analysis Leslie. THIS part: ” racist genocidal post-colonial settler state…”
Jon Kay talks about it a lot.
Maybe I wasn’t paying attention (we can ignore nice neighbors), but it seems the “racist settler state” nonsense either wasn’t around as much before… or… has wildly increased in the past decade in Canada.
I don’t know the answer to that.
Canada-curious,
D.A.
NYC
They don’t talk about actually fighting the Russians, just as a peacekeeping force. Even if they do this, I don’t think it would be any good. We saw in Srebrenica what use European peacekeepers are.
Nothing will hurt Russia more than cheap energy. Europe should really start fracking.
Keep in mind that Europe’s decision to get its energy from Russia instead of developing its own resources helped fund Putin’s war.
Excellent point. Germany also shut down all its nuclear reactors after Fukushima, leaving even more dependent on outside sources of energy.
True, but a) the war didn’t seem likely at the time and b) whatever one thinks of the decision, letting Putin dictate energy policy, even indirectly, is not a good move.
While there is still some fossil-based energy production in Germany, the fraction from renewables is most higher than most places and growing rapidly.
It seems that MAGA want to drill just because rolling coal is cool, and the anti-woke want fossil fuels because Greta doesn’t like them. Neither is an informed decision.
Cheap shot.
Fossil energy can’t be beat on the combination of cost, reliability, and versatility. Even if sessile retail residential customers can be told to do without electricity on dark windless nights, that won’t work for industry. It will just move to where the lights stay on.
But you do you.
Oh Lysander my friend you amuse me today! Fracking? Are you kidding? Europe won’t do anything sensible about energy until they throw paint, protest without bras and suicide their entire economies towards an insane Net Zero year zero.
Their berserk green religious zeal is a one way ticket to dark poverty so nuclear, fracking drilling etc are off the table. Ask Greta!
D.A.
NYC
Perhaps the U.S. (U.S. businesses) similarly should not offshore manufacturing of U.S. products to China (with its convenient and abundant supply of cheap labor) in order to facilitate U.S. foreign policy of containing China (cost to U.S. consumers notwithstanding).
The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline was certainly convenient for more expensive U.S. LNG suppliers (a result specifically and enthusiastically noted by Blinken), not convenient for European consumers, and not in opposition to U.S. foreign policy of containing and diminishing (and regime-changing?) Russia.
I take it that China is a willing buyer of cheap Russian energy, and that there are or eventually will be Nord Streamesque pipelines connecting the two countries, perhaps also attractive to saboteurs.
So destroy the climate in order to annoy Russia?
While your statement is true in hindsight, there was a genuine hope at the time that more trade with Russia would make war less likely.
To me, Ukraine is more important than the climate.
It seemed that Bill Maher meant that it is ridiculous that we are going back and forth on the # of sexes. Not that it is ridiculous that there are two sexes.
I think the bull elephant was doing a Hitler salute!
No way. That is bending over backwards to avoid criticizing him for (rarely) talking bullshit. Just before that, he said that “Trump has gone way too far on this” and says that there should be middle ground. While Trump has gone too far in the other direction on many things, this is not one of them.
I was really disappointed in Bill here.
I saw another quote from him that iirc said something about there being people who are both sexes (hermaphrodites?) blah blah blah ancient history. So Maher might be using the Argumentum Intersexum.
“I think the bull elephant was doing a Hitler salute!”
🤣
Discounting the fact, I think IIRC only young males are found travelling with females. So at a guess it was probably the matriarch or a senior female. Males are usually loners.
Thought Id add a corny joke:
How does a male elephant find a female elephant in the jungle?
Delightful.
Gosh the comments on the elephant video are just so weird and disturbing. I hope Trump gets ass cancer and humans are always the problem. Etc. it’s a long diatribe how trump and humanity very very bad and the occasional elephant good.
It is disappointing when your team loses but we have always coped and not by wishing destruction to the opposition. It does seem they lack resilience and their coping mechanism is to lash out. This is not normal.
It’s a knee jerk reaction from some very enraged people. Seems they gave to vent their anger over a change of government via a lovely nature video. It is an immature and unstable response.
I feel sick to my core about the Shiri and her babies.
I support Israel in its efforts to eliminate Hamas and to hold accountable those who enable their atrocities. I hope this includes dismantling their tunnel networks and targeting those orchestrating Hamas operations in Iran and beyond. I support Trump in revoking student visas for those openly supporting Hamas and sending them back to the countries that align with their ideology–to those which so richly deserve them.
(FYI, I couldn’t revise the comment above—otherwise, I’d have axed the extra “the.” Normally, we can revise comments for some minutes after posting. I also received a strange error message about being time-restricted, which is odd.)
Update: even stranger is that I’m able to revise this comment–these sentences are post-post. So, I have no idea what’s up.
Much as I sympathize with your last sentiment, sympathizing with Hamas still comes under free speech and they shouldn’t be deported for that. Trump’s already running ragged over the Constitution and grabbing enough power.
However, if these overseas students are also breaking laws or violating university guidelines during these protests (which doesn’t seem unlikely) then sure, ship them out.
Thank you, Sastra—that gave me more to consider. While I’m no legal expert (seriously, I found what follows via Grok3), I do believe there are grounds for revoking visas of Hamas-supporting students that involve more than free speech concerns. That is, it is not solely a First Amendment matter. Notably, see point three below:
Under INA Section 212(a)(3)(B) (codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(B)), an individual is deemed inadmissible to the United States if they:
Engage in terrorist activity: This includes committing or planning acts of terrorism, such as hijacking, sabotage, assassination, or the use of explosives, firearms, or other dangerous devices with intent to endanger people or property.
Provide material support: This covers providing financial aid, lodging, training, expert advice, weapons, or recruitment services to a terrorist organization or its members. Even indirect support can trigger this bar.
Incite or endorse terrorism: This applies to individuals who, under circumstances indicating an intent to cause death or serious bodily harm, incite terrorist activity or publicly endorse or espouse terrorist actions or organizations.
Are members of a designated terrorist group: This includes being a member of a group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government (e.g., under the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list) or any other group that meets the INA’s definition of a “terrorist organization.” Membership alone, even without active participation, can be sufficient for inadmissibility.
Since there is currently a major public debate over whether Hamas is a terrorist organization or a bunch of scrappy freedom fighters nobly defending themselves from colonialist aggressors, I don’t think these rules can (or should) be invoked. While I obviously think the one side is seriously wrong — and demonstrably so to the Hypothetical Reasonable Person in my head — it’s still a live controversy. I’m uncomfortable with using the law to settle these.
I think we have to tread lightly.
Deportation is not a penalty, Sastra. I don’t see a free-speech question here. It is simply administrative removal of an alien who is undesirable, i.e., one whose presence in the country is deemed by the government to be not in the national interest. There is no right to remain in the country, nor to be re-admitted if you stepped over the border to see the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, just because you have a visa. The border guards can refuse (re-)entry to any visa holder, or to any person like a Canadian citizen who doesn’t normally even need a visa to enter as a tourist for any reason. President Trump’s position is that the executive agency that looks after the border can similarly revoke a visa for any reason, including an order from the chief of the executive branch (himself.) And then the alien will have to go home.
There are laws that say under what conditions an alien must be deported, such as, in Canada, conviction of an offence in Canada carrying a sentence of more than six months in jail. But I don’t believe there are any circumstances under which an alien can’t be deported administratively with the possible exception of asylum claimants awaiting a decision. As with many of President Trump’s executive orders, this one may be litigated so we will see what your Courts say the law really is. But it’s not a free-speech issue. Rather, is the executive state’s power to revoke visas unlimited, or does it have to get a conviction under some law first?
There is no right of a foreigner to be granted (or, says Mr. Trump, keep) a visa just because she is not in one of the prohibited categories. Presumably aliens admitted to the USA (or to Canada) did not profess to be members of the organizations Roz refers to when they applied for student or work visas. But if their conduct in the US makes them undesirable in the eyes of the bureaucrat who holds the power to revoke their visa, out they go.
That is correct under US law Leslie. Aliens are very deportable, even on the whim of a border officer at a frontier. Even if they hold a visa.
Foreign citizens here (US and most democracies) don’t have some “right” to stay if they are deemed undesirable – which is a very discretionary status.
Even permanent residents (Green Carders) are removable though the bar to kicking them out is higher than mere student visas.
Eff them the eff out. Send them to Gaza – I hear property prices might go up there soon. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
Immigrant, former student, attorney who occasionally did immigration law.
But they pay full tuition. Losing them means losing a nice source of cash for the school.
Just a thought experiment, but couldn’t the EU hold separate discussions with Ukraine to come up with an plan to end the war from their perspective, and then begin joint discussions with Russia and the US after that? This could include UN-overseen elections in the conquered regions to understand the will of the people there.
I’m against Russia’s aggression but also don’t see a way for the current status to change without massive military hands-on support from outside nations, which has not been on the table. Given this, the only choice seems to be a brokered peace to stop the war and let Russia keep those areas. If this is the only realistic option, and if the US can get Putin to agree to the current status and to stop further military action, then my vote would be to proceed as planned, and to find a way to also bring Ukraine into the same agreement (a must) by either using the EU or the US negotiating with Ukraine. Keith Kellog is going to Ukraine as US envoy, so maybe this will help as well.
Or it’s boots on the ground and let’s get the body bags ready and send EU soldiers in to push Russia back to the original borders. But there’s no way I’d send US troops there to die. Maybe I’m just naive.
No. Most people in Europe see any sort of discussion with Ukraine in order to come up with a plan to end the war as pointless, because Russia started the war. If anything, it should be discussed with Russia, but Putin is not listening. What do people expect? That Russia invades then withdraws because other countries don’t like it? Or that Ukraine says “well, OK, you conquered it, it’s yours now”?
The Ukraine gave up nuclear arms in exchange for independence and the promise of not being invaded by Russia. Putin ignored that. Just a couple of days before the invasion, with troops lined up at the border, Russia said that it was not going to invade.
Any sort of negotiation with Russia is pointless. Accepting that the Ukraine give up territory because it was taken by force is stupid. The result is, unfortunately, that the war will continue until Russia gives up, the Ukraine gives up, or some other country asserts its will by force. Trump has made the third possibility look more likely.
The biggest problem is that if Putin gets what he wants, then so will China (Taiwan), North Korea (South Korea), etc.
While I appreciate his anti-woke stance, and understand why some traditional Democratic voters didn’t vote at all (or even voted for Trump) because they disagree with castrating children, Trump’s foreign policy, including things like threatening to conquer Greenland, is complete bonkers.
Trump should have been the ideal opponent for the Democrats. it should have been as easy as pie to beat such a buffoon in the election. But the Democrats sacrificed all that on the alter of wokeness, and not just the USA but the world is paying the price.
Ukraine didn’t want a single US soldier. All it wanted was enough weapons and ammo to defend itself. After Clinton bullied into surrendering its nuclear arsenal and falsely promised safety in return, US presidents have consistently fed Ukraine to Russia: first Obama, then Biden (whose aid was carefully calculated to guarantee that Ukraine will lose slowly, being bled to death), and now Trump who is openly pressuring it to capitulate.
Meanwhile, US has supported with boots on the ground many people who don’t share Western values and aren’t trustworthy allies. I don’t understand why Ukrainians are singled out as undeserving to exist.
I used to tell Americans, “If you don’t support Ukraine with weapons today, you’ll have to support your NATO allies with boots on the ground tomorrow.” But now I have stopped, because Trump’s America does not consider NATO members its allies and will never support them; its ally is Putin’s Russia.
I don’t understand why some people are so negative about Ukraine either.
Putin spread a lot of lies in English language social media. Things like “Russia was pushed into invading by Westerners suggesting NATO for Ukraine.”
Look up Tenet Media (now defunct) for an example.
I see that NATO line everywhere, including here.
Iwo Jima Memorial
There’s a VERY similar “Independence/Merdeka” Memorial in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia I visited many decades ago.
Also cool:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Monument_(Malaysia)
D.A.
NYC
It’s bad enough that Trump et al. are excluding Zelenskyy/Ukraine from the talks, but Trump recently implied that Ukraine shouldn’t have started the war in the first place, which as we all know is absolutely insane.
It’s only insane if you believe something that is objectively demonstrably untrue and an observer can infer that your thought process is unable to work logically to grasp reality.
What President Trump means, sanely, is that Ukraine could have chosen not to resist the Russian incursion, which is demonstrably true. No one has to fight. Submission is always an option. Not resisting and not killing so many Russian soldiers could have prevented the sunk-cost fallacy from kicking in, which hardened Putin’s resolve to get something worthwhile out of a terribly costly war. It’s possible that he would have rolled into Kyiv, accepted Zelenskyy’s capitulation, and garrisoned the whole country a few days later. Which he is probably going to do soon anyway. It’s also possible that depending on how much of Ukraine Putin wants to control directly, he might have installed a puppet regime in Kyiv and Finlandized the rest of it. Several commenters on this website at the time argued that Ukraine should have done exactly that.
Sounds like a good argument for a rapist. (A male raping a woman in this scenario.)
“She provoked me by showing her hair and too much cleavage. If she just stopped resisting and consented to my attack, none of this would have happened. I would have been much easier on her; I definitely wouldn’t have hit her. She could have made it consensual, it didn’t have to be rape, but she wouldn’t allow that! I’m the victim here.”
But just like your ridiculous scenario, it does mesh with Trumpian logic.
Not at all, Mark. It doesn’t matter if the rapist thinks he was somehow justified in attacking the woman. Totally irrelevant. From the woman’s point of view she doesn’t need to care why she is being attacked, other than that she is seen as something of value. She only has to decide if she can resist successfully and fight off the much more powerful man, knowing that bystanders will do nothing to help her, … or should she submit and hope at least to avoid being killed? Remember the victim knows, because the bystanders are busy studying their phones, morbidly curious about what will happen but not getting close enough to risk their own personal safety, that her assailant will not be punished no matter what he does. There are no police or courts or jails that will ever reach him. And we hope she hasn’t been watching Hollywood action movies that depict a 105-lb woman putting a 300-lb thug in the hospital with a few well-aimed Kung-fu blows and girl power.
And here’s Mark seeming to tell her that her common-sense decision not to resist with violence somehow makes her to blame for getting raped. “If only you’d fought harder…”. “You should have fought to the death.” You’re the victim-blamer here.
And as for what someone else said about Canada being annexed with military force, I sure as Hell hope we would have the common sense not to try to fight the U.S. military.
“knowing that bystanders will do nothing to help her…”
There was a thing called the Budapest Memorandum, which has the signature of the US President under it, though most Americans prefer not to know about its existence.
Anyway, Ukraine achieved amazing successes against Russia.
So…those who initiate aggression are not the actual aggressors. The real aggressors are those who resist because they always have the option of rolling over and submitting.
I had thought Trumps idea of making Canada the 51st state was absurd. But it’s beginning to make sense now. If we invade Canada and they resist then by doing so THEY are starting a war with the US. It wouldn’t be our fault if Canada was so damned aggressive as to actually defend itself.
Ukraine wants to exist and to be free. Ukrainians dared to fight for their freedom. They are heroes. (And the Finns fought for their freedom as well.)
Had they capitulated, Putin would have recruited their men and sent them to conquer other nations, as he did with the Chechens.
I highly recommend Laura Secord’s Frosted Mints. Sorry, only available in Canada.
https://ca.images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrjIehnFbZnzwcBvjbrFAx.;_ylu=Y29sbwNncTEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3BpdnM-?p=laura+secord+frosted+mint&fr2=piv-web&fr=yfp-t#id=6&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2Fe8%2F97%2F33%2Fe89733f5dedbe8b7d30522d9e44b8727.png&action=click
With regard to Trump and Ukraine, I am a peacenik and want the conflict to end. This war, which is a proxy war fought by allies against an adversary without the investment of American (or NATO) blood, is, and has been for a couple of years, a World War I Western Front-type war of attrition with thousands of young men being killed weekly to gain or lose territory the size of a football field. With the additional element of a modern Air Force reducing behind the lines cities and energy infrastructure to rubble. Is this what you want?
Some commentators apparently want this to go on for more years, ignobly willing to fight to the last Ukrainian. laboring under the fantasy that Ukraine is winning, or will win, or could win if we only gave them an Air Force or tactical nuclear weapons. The reality is that Ukraine is losing slowly, will eventually lose everything, and a majority of the Ukrainian people know this, despite their valor.
It doesn’t matter that Putin is a cruel despot who started a war of unprovoked aggression in the service of Russian revanchism. Russia is going to win, and, before then, a lot more death and destruction will ensue. I want it to end and if it takes Trump kissing Putin’s ass in Red Square to make it happen, or for me to do that, I vote in favor.
It’s NOT a proxy war. Putin wants Ukraine for strictly territorial reasons.
To that end he had flooded the West with propaganda about proxy wars, lies about Zelenskyy, false statements that’s he’s a peace-loving guy who reacted sensibly about the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, etc.
Sure it’s an awful war. But ending it is Ukraine’s choice, not Trump’s.
You’re channeling Trump.
https://archive.ph/5z2xq
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/world/europe/ukraine-zelensky-trump-russia-war.html
The Ukraine’s defense of its freedom against a genocidal enemy is a “proxy war” by the West, is pure Russian propaganda.
It is a “proxy war” FOR the West…the United States gets to degrade the military of its adversary and kill its soldiers without expending the lives of its own soldiers, far from its own borders. The United States gives gold, but not blood. This is a Great Power strategy as far back as the Peloponnesian War…read Thucydides…and this reality is not meant to impugn the motivations or valor of the Ukrainians, our proxy. Our foreign policy is not motivated, or not principally motivated, by altruism; the proxy war aspect of this has been openly and widely discussed by foreign policy types the last three years.
“While public support for Ukraine remains strong across Europe, committing troops to potentially dangerous duty on Ukrainian soil could quickly become a domestic political liability.”
Yes, public support is quite easy when one doesn’t risk being obliterated by an artillery round. Stand in a circle and chant “NATO” three times; let the word release its spell over Ukraine. Then Europeans of all stripes and Americans both left and right will race to the recruiting offices and say “Sign me up! I’m willing to die. It’s NATO!” But, of course, they won’t. Many seem to believe that NATO membership would be such a deterrent that Russia wouldn’t dare invade Ukraine or any other country under the umbrella of NATO. Perhaps. But battlefields are full of the bones of those who foolishly believed such guarantees. And a deterrent is no stronger than the capability and the will that underwrite it.
As I said the other day, nobody need wait for NATO membership. Get thee Europeans to Ukraine—or are you waiting for all those MAGA boys, black men, and country rednecks in the US Army to do the dying and killing for you?
The Ukrainians were willing to die for their country, but the Americans forced them to die bare-handed.
Yes, I am saying “Americans”, because it was America who disarmed Ukraine with the Budapest Memorandum and promised to defend it, and it was Biden’s America who has for 3 years told Europeans not to give Ukraine this or that weapon because it would be “escalation”.
Given all the things that are happening in the US at the moment, it is quite shocking to me that people are seriously thinking that the GOP won’t get obliterated at the mid-terms.