Here is your test for “Never Again”

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos posted another update on Ukraine this morning. As in his previous updates it includes several videos of various parts of the attack and defense. A couple bits from the post: SWIFT is a system banks use to send transactions to one another. Barring Russia from SWIFT (and isolating its banks from the rest of the world) is not yet part of the sanctions applied to Russia. Sumner wrote:

The Ukrainian foreign minister has a message for European leaders—actually, for Germany, which is the only nation holding this up: “Every year at ceremonies you repeat the words: ‘Never again.’ Time to prove them. Russia is just now waging a terrible aggressive war in Europe. Here is your test for ‘Never Again’ — disconnect Russian from SWIFT and isolate it everywhere!”

Putin is calling on Ukrainian soldiers to turn on the “band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis” that he claims make up the Ukrainian government. Sumner included a tweet from Yair Rosenberg that includes a video:

The director of the main synagogue in Odessa tearfully bids goodbye to the synagogue, asks people to pray for them as they evacuate during the Jewish Sabbath. ... Odessa was once had the third largest Jewish population in the world. Then came pogroms, Stalin's purges, and the Nazi Holocaust. The city, once half Jewish, had fallen to 6 percent Jewish by the time the Soviet Union collapsed. And now this.

Sumner added:

Putin says “denazification” but what he means is destroying historic Jewish communities. It’s weak cover for a policy and actions that are blatantly anti-Semitic.

Kos of Kos reported on the four fronts of this war – on the south side with Russians out of Crimea, on the east side with Russians pushing through the Donbas region, on the northeast side with Russians aiming for Kharkiv, and on the north side with Russians aiming for the capital Kyiv. Kos included maps and discussions on what is happening on each front. Ukrainians are doing a lot to block Russian efforts, though that may not be enough. There has been fighting in the Chernobyl exclusion zone because that is along the direct path to Kyiv. While the core of the reactor is still safely under a slab of concrete there is still a lot of radiation in the area. Soldiers on both sides will be facing cancer. Summary: Putin thought it would be a swift strike. And it isn’t that.

Never underestimate the power of morale—the longer Ukraine holds firm in key towns, the better it rallies the populace and the rest of the country’s defense forces. Meanwhile, the opposite is true for Russia, with conscripts suddenly finding themselves facing their ethnic kin after weeks of hearing Putin say that Russia had no plans to invade. This isn’t Chechnya, where they were killing Muslims. It’s a much harder sell pitting neighbors against neighbors. And unlike China, there is no great firewall keeping out alternate viewpoints. They all have phones. They can watch the videos and photos. No one wants to be a POW. Putin wanted a quick and decisive victory, one that would prevent internal dissent from crystalizing, both among military ranks and the general populace. That may still happen! Some western observers are predicting Kyiv will fall in a matter of hours or days. But there still appears to be plenty of fight among regular military units. The longer this drags on, the more time for Ukraine to fortify its positions and get resupplied by the West, the longer the Russian people can rally for regime change, and the longer for Russia’s military establishment to decide its had enough. We’re just in Day One. Dark days lie ahead. But this won’t be the cakewalk Putin clearly expected.

Laura Clawson of Kos reported on some of the anti war protests in Russia. She noted reports of 1,600 people arrested in 50 Russian cities, more than 900 of them in Moscow.

The protests in Russia were noteworthy because a brutal response was expected and explicitly threatened, with the government warning of “severe punishment for mass riots.” As the arrest numbers show, that response did materialize.

There have also been protests across the US and around the world. Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote that many in Ukraine are regretting giving up their nukes. When the Soviet Union broke apart a sizable chunk of the USSR nuclear arsenal was in Ukraine which then was the world’s third largest. Jay’s history lesson is rather long, so I’ll briefly describe his various chapters. In the 1990s Ukrainian leaders debated what to do. Some wanted to keep the nukes as deterrence. Some knew maintaining the arsenal was too expensive and couldn’t be done without Russia’s help. They would be hostage to their own missiles. In 1994 Ukraine gave up its nukes and signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non nuclear weapons state. The warheads were sent to Russia to be destroyed. The uranium was processed into reactor fuel and returned to Ukraine to power nuclear plants. In exchange the 1994 Budapest Memorandum gave Kyiv security guarantees from Russia, Britain, and the US. Those guarantees lasted until 2014 when the Russian puppet prime minister was forced from office through citizen protests. Russia declared the new government to be illegitimate, and not the one he signed the Memorandum with. He voided his part of the deal. The Memorandum had no enforcement provisions. In the US the nasty guy and his minions undermined the Ukraine security guarantees. Republicans spread Russian disinformation about Ukraine. They disavowed the guarantees. Ukrainians now see the guarantees were worthless. Many say they should have kept the nukes. Can and will Biden undo the damage?

What’s at stake could be the future of efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons. If the Budapest Memorandum’s security guarantees are shown to be worthless, it will deal a blow to nuclear arms non-proliferation and make the world a much more dangerous place. It will discourage countries like Iran and North Korea from giving up their nuclear weapons programs. And it will encourage more nations like Saudi Arabia and South Korea to pursue their own nuclear arms programs as a deterrent.

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, shared several interesting quotes. From a tweet from Garrett Graff:

One thing worth keeping in my mind today: There’s a straight line from Russia’s attack on the US election in 2016 to 1/6 to today’s new invasion of Ukraine. The chaos that Russia unleashed with the election of Trump weakened us to the point Putin feels confident invading Europe. I wrote in 2017 that Russia’s election attack was probably the most successful intelligence operation in history, and today’s developments bear out just how much it changed the world stage and how much space it gave Putin to operate.

Dworkin quoted a tweet by Gabrielius Landsbergis:

We in Lithuania know it very well that Ukraine is fighting not just for Ukraine, but for us in the region, Europe and everyone in the democratic world. It is our obligation not just to punish Russia for its actions but to help Ukraine with all and every means available. Now.

And from a thread by Garry Kasparov:

Ok, after years of warnings were ignored and hearing "Garry, you were right!" all damn day today, I'll repeat what I said in 2014: Stop telling me I was right and listen to what I'm saying now. My recommendations follow: -Support Ukraine militarily, immediately, everything but boots on the ground. All weapons, intel, cyber. -Bankrupt Putin's war machine. Freeze & seize Russia's finances & those of him and his gang. -Kick Russia out of every intl & financial institution. PACE, Interpol, etc -Recall all ambassadors from Russia. There is no point in talking. The new unified message is "stop or be isolated completely". -Ban all elements of Putin's global propaganda machine. Turn them off, shut them down, send them home. Stop helping the dictator spread lies & hate. -Expose and act against Putin's lackeys in the free world. If Schröder and his ilk continue to work for Putin, bring charges. Ask the owners & advertisers of networks platforming Putin propagandists like Carlson why they allow it.

On to a couple other things in my browser tabs. Moscow Mitch (that name feels a bit more ominous today) had said the Republican Party would not issue a platform, instead run against whatever Biden is doing. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Sen. Rick Scott, the guy heading the Senate Republican election effort, filled the void. His 11 point plan (with 128 action items) is, as McCarter described it, “full-on fascist.” Some parts of his plan: Eliminate the Department of Education and fund private (and segregated and preferably Christian) schools. Build that southern wall and name it after the nasty guy. Because he declares there are only two genders government forms will not ask about gender identity or sexual preference (note “preference” implies orientation is a choice, and it isn’t). No government assistance unless you are disabled or aggressively seeking work. All Americans should pay at least a small amount of income tax to have skin in the game (currently half of Americans don’t). The IRS will be halved (so they can’t go after the wealthy who pay no taxes). Socialism will be treated as a foreign combatant. All federal legislation sunsets in five years. Sell off all non-essential government assets, buildings, and lands (goodbye national parks). Prohibit debt ceiling increases unless a declaration of war and stop all non-essential government spending until the budget is balanced (goodbye national and global economy). Stop left-wing efforts to rig elections. Wrote McCarter:

Scott’s ideas are an amalgam of standard Republican economic principles—keep taxes low for the rich, punish the olds and poor—and bats--- Fox News, MAGA culture warrior propaganda fueled by conspiracy theories. It’s a fun—albeit terrifying—gift for Democrats. There it all is: what Republicans really think about the majority of Americans and how they intend to suppress us. No wonder McConnell didn’t want to put out an agenda; he knew it was going to be full of this kind of stuff. Too late, though. It’s been embraced by the Republican National Committee (RNC)—you know, the official Republican Party that said the Jan. 6 insurrection was “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

That little bit about halfway through saying all Americans need to pay taxes (just before the bit about gutting the IRS so the rich can cheat)? Yeah, that one. McCarter reported that on that point Scott had to backpedal furiously. And Democrats have already jumped on it for a campaign ad. McCarter wrote:

About 50% of Americans earn so little they don’t pay federal income taxes, or what they would have to pay is reduced by tax credits. That half of America that can’t afford to pay federal income taxes already pays plenty in federal payroll tax, state income and sales taxes, gas taxes, and other state and local levies. The people who don’t pay federal income taxes are mostly the disabled, working poor, retirees, and of course, the unemployed.

Meteor Blades of Kos reported that the Interior Department has released proposed name changes for 660 federal sites that include “squaw” in the name. That word is to be written as “sq---” in all future department communications. Racist terms have no place in place names. I’ve heard the word means “Indian whore.” There is a spreadsheet with all 660 names (in small print) plus five alternative names for each. I took a look at the Michigan names. I was surprised at the number of places – eleven – in my state named “Sq--- Creek” and thirteen named “Sq--- Lake” plus one “Sq--- Creek Lake.” Add in Island, Brook, Point, and Bay for a total of 32 places in the state that use that word.