Every warship launched signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed

I watched the Oscars last evening. I was delighted to see the movie CODA won in all three categories for which it had been nominated. These were Troy Kotsur for best supporting actor, Siân Heder for best adapted screenplay, and best picture. I quite enjoyed the movie when I saw it and pleased a movie about deaf people and one of its deaf actors were so highly honored. Best supporting actress went to Ariana Debose who played Anita in the new version of West Side Story. She is a lesbian. A lot of posts on Daily Kos are about how bad the Russian army has been in its invasion of Ukraine. Mark Sumner discussed the 1962 book The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. It won a Pulitzer Prize. The general idea that Sumner pulled from the book is that the Russian army has always been terrible. As for their victories... In the case of Napoleon it was the weather. In many other cases it is because Russia is willing to put up with losing a much higher number of soldiers. They keep piling up the Russian dead until the other side quits. An autocratic ruler can feed intolerable numbers to the meat grinder without political consequences. Sumner included a tweet by Jack Detsch about another Russian general killed in the war. Detsch wrote that the generals are closer to the front because of the challenges in issuing order, challenges of both technology and discipline. Western estimates say nearly 35% of the generals first sent to the war have been killed. Kos of Kos discussed the importance of rivers in the defense of Ukraine. The cities that Russia hasn’t been able to surround are all next to rivers. And the one that is surrounded, Mariupol, is not near a river. As Ukraine switches to offense those rivers will be more of a hindrance than an asset. Sumner provided an update though a tweet from Dr. Sarah Taber. A lot of people have bee reporting that Ukraine and Russia grow 25% of the world’s wheat exports. What will be missing because of the war will be only 1% of the world’s wheat crop. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed an interview between Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent and historian Timothy Snyder. Wrote Dartagnan:

Snyder believes one of the primary reasons Putin launched this ill-conceived war was a perception that the West—and particularly the U.S.—would fold under the weight of its own internal discord and divisions. The Trump-inspired insurrection that occurred in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021—and the subsequent efforts by Republicans to ignore, sanitize, and whitewash it—provided Putin with the confidence that any U.S. response to his war would simply underscore its innate weakness and impotence.

And Snyder wrote:

But the deeper point is that Trump’s attempt to overthrow the election on Jan. 6 made the American system look fragile. They think, “One more Trump and the Americans are done.” In invading Ukraine, they think they’re putting huge pressure on the Biden administration. They’re going to make Biden look weak. That probably was their deep fantasy about the West: Successful military occupation in Ukraine; the Biden administration is totally impotent; we humiliate them; Trump comes back; this is a big strategic victory for us.

Dartagnan concluded

Trump’s Big Lie and the subsequent lies that have now metastasized through the entire Republican party quite literally provided aid and comfort to Vladimir Putin, bolstering his confidence that he could start an unprovoked war without any serious consequences to himself or his own country. The refusal by Republicans to take responsibility for those events and own up to Trump’s lies gave him all the motivation he needed.

Hunter of Kos discussed another possible reason why Russia seems to be doing little more than reducing cities to rubble.

It is not necessarily that Russian generals are itching, on each battlefield, to turn to war crimes. It's more likely a symptom of entrenched military cowardice. Why are Russian generals firing into Ukrainian cities, at targets that can't and won't fire back? Because it's one of the few logistical operations the grift-riddled, impossibly corrupt military infrastructure can still execute. If you're a Russian general looking to show that you're working hard to achieve implausible Kremlin objectives, parking yourself outside Mariupol or Kharkiv and shelling neighborhoods into wastelands of broken concrete is a no-muss path to, if not glory, at least not being called back to Russia in preparation for your fatal “heart attack.”

Dmitry Muratov of Russia won the Nobel Peace Prize (along with Maria Ressa of the Philippines) in 2021. Both are investigative journalists working to uncover the corruption of their governments. Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote about a couple things related to Muratov. Muratov said he will donate his Nobel medal to the Ukrainian refugee fund so that it can be auctioned off to raise money to help refugees. There have been previous auctions of Nobel medals raising ¾ million to 4¾ million so it could raise a good chunk of money. Muratov founded the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta back in 1993. When Russia invaded Ukraine Muratov and his newspaper were highly critical. Then a new censorship law was passed on March 4. Muratov polled the staff and readers, who wanted him to stay open. A WaPo article reported:

Novaya Gazeta is technically complying with Russia’s new law, but is far from cowed — relying on visual storytelling, firsthand testimony, transparency about omissions, and implied meaning to convey the horror of the war to a Russian readership that can read between the lines. “Listen, I am not going to shoot myself in the foot just to walk away from this information battle,” Muratov said in a telephone interview from Moscow. “When the government wants to shut us down, they’ll shut us down. But I am not going to go against the will of our journalists and our readers and turn the lights off here on my own.”

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, took the anniversary of the death of President Dwight Eisenhower (he died in 1969) to include a quote of his “The Chance for Peace” address of 1953 as posted near his grave:

Every gun made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed... This is not a way of life at all... Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

We’ve seen over and over, and definitely in the last year, Republicans pass a gigantic defense budget, then claim there isn’t enough money to feed, clothe, and shelter the poor. They certainly claim there isn’t enough money to help the poor out of poverty. I’m glad to see Eisenhower figured that out in 1953. With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan, Andrej tweeted new words to a G&S song. Here’s the first of three verses:

I am the very model of a Russian Major General My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal

Laura Clawson of Kos discussed why Clarence Thomas should resign or be impeached. As I mentioned a couple days ago his wife Ginni Thomas had been exchanging text messages with the White House Chief of Staff discussing how to overturn the 2020 election. A bit more than a year later Clarence Thomas was the only Supreme Court Justice to vote on the side of the nasty guy when he tried to shield documents from the January 6 committee. All the other justices said the nasty guy no longer had executive privilege. Which raises the question – did Clarence vote that way to protect his wife? That’s definitely a conflict of interest. This batch of texts from Ginni were not in the batch of documents that Clarence voted on. But this won’t be the last batch of documents requested by the Jan 6 Committee. And Clarence doesn’t recuse himself from cases were there is a conflict of interest. In one of Greg Dworkin’s pundit roundups for Kos, he quoted Josh Marshall of TPM. It summarizes to: Of course Ginni talked to Clarence about this. Claiming she didn’t is absurd. Rico of the Kos community discussed map projections – some of the ways we project the spherical (mostly) earth onto flat maps. All of these ways distort something, such as shape or size. For example, in many maps Greenland is shown 14 times larger than it really is. These distortions affect how we look at the world. Then Rico presented data I’ve seen before, though it is good to see some of it again. He explained the world population as if there were 100 people in the entire world: 5 would live in North America. 9 would live in in Central and South America. 11 would live in Europe. 15 would live in Africa. 60 would live in Asia. 6 men would not be able to read. 11 women would not be able to read. 15 would be undernourished. Almost half would live on less than $2 a day. 26 are children younger than 15. 13 of those children would live in poverty.