Up From Facebook

There's a meme out there on FB about some Ukrainian soldiers who were killed on Snake Island after using some salty language against their attackers. Looks like the announcement of their deaths was premature: "The defenders of Snake Island in the Black Sea, who were initially feared dead, are “alive and well,” according to the Ukrainian Navy. On Monday, a statement from the Navy said that the soldiers on the island, also known as Zmiinyi Island, repelled two attacks by Russian forces but in the end were forced to surrender “due to the lack of ammunition.”" https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-news-02-28-22/h_ae9f942eb344a579e66f0679b3f68c29?fbclid=IwAR0m7KJpnsiF4baqtFEOMozhwiDngx49ysoeidi7d_J1Ncxajw381dSvBrA

The way John Snow (later Sir John Snow) determined that the Broad Street pump was the source of a London cholera epidemic was epidemiology. He found, using a map, that the highest concentration of cases mapped to the houses closest to the pump. Inferring that correlation likely pointed to causation, he had the pump handle removed, and the epidemic ended. There has been much speculation, much of it politically driven, that COVID-19 originated from a virus that escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Extensive sequencing data don't support that inference, but now there's epidemiological evidence that also points away from that model and towards the original inference--that COVID-19 originated at the Wuhan wet market. https://jabberwocking.com/new-studies-confirm-that-covid-19-virus-occurred-naturally/?fbclid=IwAR10127J8wMVM24SNGAOqDOnJglLMLo-lLOmUyUPTAMvIGFqzPt_xrhbAr0

  I think Biden is handling the Ukraine situation well so far. In particular, imposing financial sanctions and rallying our allies to do the same, while ignoring the frothing ammosexuals shows maturity and understanding. Here's a good think piece about what is wrong with the warmongering discourse and why those demanding US military intervention in Ukraine are wrong, crazy and dangerous. "Trying to pull the U.S. and NATO into a wider European war because you have World War II or Cold War fantasies (or whatever it is that drives these sorts of responses) is the opposite of virtuous, or serious. It is reckless in the extreme. It doesn’t show that you care more than anyone about human life. It shows that you are willing to play with the most incendiary kind of material, and risk an untold amount of suffering. There will surely be more of this stuff spreading through the discourse in the next few days. Everyone has to resist it with all of their might." https://discoursebl...

  It's easy to be seduced by the idea that the trends of today will continue indefinitely. I remember growing up in a world in which the USSR seemed permanent. Currently, Putin is polling well with his invasion of Ukraine, just like GW Bush polled well after his invasion and military occupation of Iraq. That didn't last for Bush, and I don't look for it to last for Putin. Time isn't on Putin's side. "Historical data shows that diversionary wars — fighting abroad to draw attention away from problems at home — have rarely worked for Putin. "Daring and expensive military adventures will, over time, decrease the Kremlin’s popularity, history also tells us. "As a scholar of Russia and public opinion, I know that war ultimately requires an enormous amount of public goodwill and support for a political leader — far more than a brief spike in popularity can ensure." As the kids say, read the rest: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/putins-public-approva...

  (from a comment thread at jabberwocking.com ) "Technically, the troops have been "invited" by the "leaders" of the breakaway regions. Once he recognized the regions, he elevated the "leaders" to International status; they became people who could "speak for" their "citizens". And those "citizens" apparently desire Russian troops to "protect" them from the "Nazi's" living in the Rest of Ukraine. Allied leaders understand this nuance and certainly expected it. The rubber hits the road when he moves beyond the Line of Control into the parts of Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast still controlled by Ukraine. If the Allies don't trigger the sanctions at that event they have been bluffing."

I’ve come to believe that Trump will never spend a day in jail and that he’ll never have to pay what he owes to lenders and the IRS. That’s just me being cynical, but someone calling themselves “Mitch Guthman” on a comment thread at jabberwocking.com explains why this is likely to be true: “ . . . lenders have no real desire to call his loans. With [Deutsche Bank], there’s undoubtedly pressure from the German government to avoid an embarrassing situation and, apparently, the bank may not be able to call his loans even if he defaults because what seems to be massive irregularities (even illegalities) in the granting of the loans. “The other lenders probably won’t want to be in the middle of a MAGA firestorm or suffer reprisals from Republicans in Congress and probably from Trump loyalists in the executive branch whom Biden has failed to purge. “Similarly, even though the democrats in congress have written a letter to the GSA, there’s strong institutional pressures to let Trump [sell] t...

  I long ago became convinced by the argument that WWII was really a continuation of WWI, in the sense that the seeds of WWII were sown in 1918-19. What I hadn’t appreciated until I read this book is how much of the violence of WWI continued in various forms long after the Versailles treaty. I’ve read “The Guns of August” and “The Zimmerman Telegram” (Barbara Tuchman), “The Russian Revolution” (both the book by Richard Pipes and the one with the same title by Alan Moorehead), and recently read “Paris 1919” (Margret MacMillan). I’ve read “Balkan Ghosts” and “The Balkans” by Mischa Glenny, in order to better understand the history and nationalist divisions leading to the fall of Yugoslavia, a state that was created in 1918 under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. After I posted my review of “The Fall of the Ottomans” (Eugene Rogan), Edmund Neill recommended “The Vanquished” by Robert Gerwarth. I’d read it before, but I decided to re-read it. Prior to WWI, empires ...