They were trained to want blood, and now they want blood

I guess it is a good sign that I’ve deleted a few Ukraine updates because I don’t see anything new and fresh to include here. Even so, here are a few things from over the last couple days. On Monday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Bucha and Irpin, two of the towns Russia recently vacated, leaving behind evidence of war crimes. Hunter of Daily Kos briefly described the visit, then wrote about the war shifting from Kyiv to Donbas:

The next phase of the war is almost certain to be far more bloody than the current phase. We have seen that Russian forces are effective mostly in terrorizing and murdering unarmed foes; now that their goals have seemingly been reduced to seizing smaller bits of territory, Russian commanders might be even less circumspect about erasing any civilians who appear to be unenthusiastic about their arrival.

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the cities near Donbas that are likely to be in the news a lot as Russia tries to encircle Ukrainian trenches and Ukraine tries to prevent that from happening. In a few updates to that post ... The New York Times reported that ...

satellite imagery confirm that many of the bodies in Bucha were left lying on the street for weeks, destroying any doubt about the nature of Russian actions there.

Then Zelenskyy addressed the UN Security Council, describing some of those war crimes. A couple things he said: “Where is the security the Security Council is supposed to provide?” and “The UN system must be reformed immediately so that the veto isn’t a right to kill.” Sumner discussed a thread by military analyst Rob Lee about the difference between what the world is hearing about Russia leaving the Battle of Kyiv and what Russians are hearing:

Not only are the folks back in Moscow getting a very rosy picture of success in the war, they are still being given a narrative in which Russia is fighting back the evil Nazi hordes, liberating grateful civilians, and trouncing a weak Ukrainian military. In the words of so many Russian apologists on social media, “everything is going exactly to plan.” That plan includes approximately 15,000 dead Russian soldiers and over 2,400 lost tanks, transports, helicopters, and other vehicles. So far. But the lies don’t stop with what has happened up to this point. Russians are also hearing a false narrative that extends into the future, where commentators on Russian television are frequently calling for Ukraine to be utterly wiped from the map, or even for Russia to carry the war beyond the borders of Ukraine. They’re being whipped into a kind of victory-or-nothing frenzy. ... Russia can continue to lie about Nazis and continue to lie about Bucha, and that may work for the people who consume nothing but Fox News Moscow Edition as their own possible outlet. But it will be harder to continue to lie about the thousands of missing soldiers, the inability to catch a flight to 90% of the world, the closed stores, silent factories, and empty shelves.

I’m not convinced of that last statement. They can continue to lie about the isolation, closed stores, and silent factories the same way tyrants always do – see how the world is oppressing us? Would you gladly take one for the team? As for the thousands of missing soldiers, will families and neighborhoods hear about more than a handful? Yeah, they may be told about their husbands and sons and the wives and mothers will tell their friends. But there won’t be news about thousands so how will citizens know about the true extent of the deaths? Brian Stelter of CNN tweeted a comment from Julia Ioffe of the same network that was used to link to an article. Ioffe said:

The Russian propaganda machine has trained the Russian public to want blood, and now they want blood.

Sumner discussed war crimes again. I had earlier reported Russians had mobile crematoriums. There was speculation Russia would use them to cremate their dead soldiers to hide the number they’ve lost. But there’s another possible use, reported by the Kyiv Independent:

Mariupol City Council: Russia uses mobile crematoriums to erase evidence of its war crimes. According to the council, Russia’s special brigades collect and burn the bodies of murdered residents. Tens of thousands of civilians may have been killed in Mariupol, it added.

The town’s mayor said Russia has turned his whole city into a death camp. What was the saying after Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, and many others – something about “Never again”? Laura Benshoff of NPR discussed the war in Ukraine and how that might influence changing energy sources. On one side is Biden sending huge amounts of liquefied natural gas to Europe as they try to lessen their use of Russian oil and gas. That’s to the delight of American gas producers and their lackeys in Congress. On the other side is the much larger push to cut overall fossil fuel demand. Germany is speeding up its plans to 100% renewable. Lauren Sommer of NPR discussed the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body that has been warning of climate change for many years. The summary: We have the technology and solutions to make a substantial cut emissions, but we’re running out of time to deploy them. There are three parts to the report. First, the cost of solar and the batteries needed to make them viable have dropped by 85%. This makes renewables a good economic choice with the added benefit of improved public health. But they’re not being deployed fast enough. Because of the cost in money and damage U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a speech, “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” I’d be pleased to see trillions of dollars of “stranded” or worthless fossil fuel infrastructure. Second, we need to suck carbon out of the air. Gas powered cars sold today will be around for a decade or two. Technology to do that isn’t yet feasible – it requires too much energy, generating as much carbon pollution as it extracts. There is also the issue that the fossil fuel industry will consider carbon capture as a free pass to keep polluting. Or we could go with what Mother Nature has already shown works – trees. Alas, we keep cutting them down. Third, change cities. Redesign and rezone to allow people to live closer to where they work – close enough they can walk or bike. Make buildings more energy efficient. Use less pavement. Increase the infrastructure for electric cars. Rachel Martin of NPR talked to Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned scientists. The solutions have been around for a while. What is lacking is political will – not surprising with the intense lobbying by the fossil fuel companies. One way out of that is climate litigation, which is gaining interest here and around the world. Another is the Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing a rule to require businesses to have a climate risk disclosure. And policymakers need courage. Laura Clawson of Kos discussed a report by the Washington Post:

At the Big Lie-fueled absurdity end, there’s a movement to require hand-counting of ballots, an idea that would massively slow down the vote-counting process while introducing human error and opening up opportunities for partisan sabotage.

Currently 99.8% of ballots are counted by machine that leaves a paper trail. Since the conspiracy theories say vote counting machines are how the election was stolen from the nasty guy (it wasn’t stolen), we had better get rid of the machines. But requiring a hand count is political theater. In addition to introducing human error and a greater possibility of sabotage hand counts take a long time. In a county with 3,500 votes the clerk said hand counting, at current staffing levels, would take 30 days. Remember the cry of fraud that went out when counting took a couple days? Samantha Balaban of NPR spoke to Colin Kaepernick, who has a new children’s book out. When Kaepernick was five the class assignment was to draw your family. He realized that since he was a black boy adopted in a white family – and the only one in class like that – he colored everyone yellow and himself brown. The book, titled I Color Myself Different is about that moment. He thinks it is supercool to be different and that different is also normal. This NPR post includes images that Eric Wilkerson drew for the book. They’re quite good. The book also include some examples of actual kid art.