Mr. Putin has reportedly insisted that his generals hold Kherson city at all costs. Ukraine has been exploiting this stubbornness by destroying bridges and so pinning Russian troops down in what appear to be indefensible positions with their backs against the Dnieper river. The Russian forces there are now in danger of encirclement with no obvious way to retreat. Surrender may be their only option.
Category: The Economist
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- In an unpopular decision in June, the Supreme Court rescinded a constitutional right to abortion. Since then Mr. Biden’s net approval rating has risen by nine percentage points. The Democrats’ margin has improved by two points in polls asking which party should control Congress.
- In almost every close Senate race this year, Democrats are receiving more in-state donations than their opponents. J. D. Vance (Ohio) has yet to hit $500,000 in contributions, even when including those from outside Ohio. His Democratic competitor, Tim Ryan, is nearing $20m, a third of which is from Ohio. Looking at the in-state donors for which records are available, Mark Kelly (Arizona) has collected $5.2m to his opponent’s $500,000, and Mehmet Oz (Pennsylvania) has $700,000 against Mr. Fetterman’s $4.8m. With polls and fundamental factors favouring Mr. Kelly and Mr. Fetterman, the model puts their chances of victory at 88%.
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Self will still post, though no more joining photo challenges, as WordPress informed her that she had exceeded her storage limit by 120%. This is a really, really long-lasting blog: when she started it, son was still in Cal Poly/San Luis Obispo. She doesn’t want to do what she did last year: She coughed up $300 just so WordPress wouldn’t keep threatening to take her blog down. This year, she paid $96 for the “premium” plan which just means she gets to keep her blog. But she’s not a business; who knows how much longer she’ll be able to keep this up.
Her quote of the day is from the latest issue of The Economist:
In the years to come, NATO armed forces will queue at the door of Ukraine’s general staff to learn from the commanders who halted the Russian army’s march on Kyiv and Odessa and inflicted more than 60,000 casualties in six months of war.
— Leaders, the economist, 20 august 2022Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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Wowee! What a Fun Foto Challenge. Thanks, Cee Neuner!
I love Cee’s gallery. I decided to copy her movement: from “wide view” to “micro”
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Self is participating in bushboy’s Last on the Card Challenge.
Her Last on the Card for June 2022 is a real heartbreaker: Roman Ratushny’s obituary in The Economist of 25 June 2022.
A Ukrainian activist, Roman Ratushny volunteered the first day of the Russian invasion. He was killed near Izyum on 9 June. He was 24.
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Self has such enormous respect for Reznikov. He was Defense Minister for only four months when Russia invaded. He expected “to busy himself with bureaucratic reforms.” Instead, on Feb. 24, he kissed his wife goodbye and went to work. For the next three weeks, he and his core team of advisers “moved around secret sites in the capital: One of the most uncomfortable things was waking up each morning in a new bed.”
No one expected Ukraine to survive. But those canny Ukrainians: in early February, they had already begun secretly moving military units out from their permanent bases. They “hid their air-defence systems and attack aircraft, replacing them with mock-ups.” They rapidly “enacted a new law on territorial defense to arm 100,000 civilians in three days.” Which means they never, not once, entertained the idea of surrendering. All of which would have been clear to Putin or to anyone who’d been paying attention.
Because of this level of preparation, Volodymyr Zelensky made his decision to stay in Kiev. He did not run and form a government in exile. And “with every victory on the battlefield, Western governments began to believe that Ukraine actually had a chance of winning.”
Four months of war. In February, Zelensky had no idea about the kind of wartime leader he would be. Talk about rising to the challenge! He became the leader Ukraine needed.
The Ukrainian people have shown such tremendous courage. “In some areas, Russian forces have ten times Ukraine’s firepower.” Ukraine has lost some territory (Severodonetsk), but whatever gains Russia has made have had to be ground out, inch by inch.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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Recommended by The Economist.
From the Preface:
- Even though books like Anne Frank’s Diary or Eugen Kogon’s SS-State disrupted the process of repression, it was only with the Auschwitz trials beginning in 1963 that many Germans began to reckon with the crimes that had been committed in their name.
It is Harald Jahner’s first book.
Never even heard of the book SS-State! Must look up Eugen Kogon.
Stay tuned.
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I read your article on the situation in Narva, a town in Estonia close to the border with Russia (“Who’s next?” 5 February). Today’s 80% ethnic Russian majority is not the result of a “legacy” of Narva belonging to the Russian empire and then to the Soviet Union. In fact, at the end of the 1930s the overwhelming majority of Narva’s inhabitants were ethnically Estonian. The demographic change was made first in 1944 by Soviet carpet bombing that destroyed 95% of buildings and forced survivors to flee. The Soviets then did not allow Estonian citizens to return to their hometown, which had become part of a new Soviet military uranium mining complex.
Native Estonians were not considered trustworthy to live in that area. They were replaced by people resettled from the Soviet Union. Today’s Russian majority was created by local ethnic cleansing.
A reader
Tallinn, Estonia -
A piece about Merrick Garland in last week’s Economist has self thinking again about Mitch “Leader” McConnell, the state of America, and how we got here.
It is hard to pinpoint a moment at which the Republicans abandoned democratic norms for the end-justifies-the-means power politics that connects Mitch McConnell’s Senate leadership to Donald Trump’s demagoguery. Yet Mr. McConnell’s refusal in March 2016 to hold confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland, an appeals-court judge nominated by Barack Obama to the Supreme Court bench, is a top contender. Though both parties had hitherto been culpable of eroding the Senate’s tradition of compromise and restraint, Mr. McConnell’s ploy raised the damage to a new level. It suggested he would press for maximum partisan advantage at every opportunity, whatever the institutional cost.
The Economist, 22 January 2022When Biden was elected, “Leader” McConnell delivered a curious speech during which he swore — swore — not to allow even one Biden bill to make it past the Senate floor.
In other words, it didn’t matter what kind of bill Biden presented to the Senate — good, bad, indifferent. Nothing would pass. Why? Because Mitch said so.
One year later, Mitch has made good on that pledge. He also succeeded in making Biden, who won on an unprecedented surge of American hope, look like a bumbling incompetent. YAY for Mitch McConnell winning and winning! Wonder what kind of President Mitch will deliver to the American people in 2024. Judging by his previous offering, in 2016, it will not be good.
Stay tuned.
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George Holliday, who recorded the beating of Rodney King, died on September 19th, aged 61.
Lead sentence, The man on the balcony,The Economist Obituary, 2 October 2021:
- For near on nine minutes, George Holliday stood outside his second-floor windows with his three-pound Sony Handycam clamped to his eye.
It is quite an amazing article.
Kanlaon 