What’s up with this?

Source: The Unz Review.

A good summary of the realist perspective on how the 2022 war in Ukraine started.

Missing are the details of Russia’s original invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Actually, invasion is the wrong word. Russia’s early engagement in the Donbas was somewhat like the U.S. early engagement in the Vietnam war. That is, Russia at first provided materiel and advisory support to an indigenous Donbas resistance against Kiev. This later escalated to providing boots on the ground to support the Donbas local militias. One could say that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine back in 2014 was by invitation, but this nuance is ignored by many commentators.

Russia Launches Large-Scale Strikes On Some 20 Ukrainian Cities In Response To “Terrorist” Crimea Bridge Blast

Biden Should “Back Off” Armageddon Language, Quickly Get Russians To Negotiating Table: Adm. Mullen

Russia appears to be initiating a new, more aggressive phase of its war plan in Ukraine. This makes Adm. Mullen’s advice to begin preparing for a diplomatic solution even more urgent than it might have been as a response to President Biden’s reckless rhetoric about Armageddon.

https://tinyurl.com/2jv6mup8

Town Hall Lives and Liberty lost to Deep State

The question that needs to come before the court is, ‘can Congress authorize an Executive Branch Agency to do what the Constitution prohibits it to do on its own?’

It’s time for SCOTUS to take a chainsaw to the administrative state.

https://tinyurl.com/4akdjkz6

The Russian Ministry of Defense claims to have thwarted a Ukrainian assault on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. To support this claim it released a video with footage from an attack helicopter destroying a troop-carrying barge. Pretty dramatic stuff and the story was spread by TASS, other Russian outlets, Reuters, and others in the West.

https://tass.com/politics/1500941

Too bad it was a total fake. The “barge” destroyed turned out to be the remnants of an old bridge nowhere near Zaporizhzhia. For those of you who uncritically swallow Russian propaganda, learn from this episode and don’t.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.10751

This is a new study confirming what has been very apparent since the beginning of the Covid pandemic. Republicans have been killing themselves with silly partisan stupidity about public health measures. The study found not much difference between Republicans and Democrats UNTIL vaccines became widely available. From that point on the registered Republican’s risk of death has climbed substantially above that of the registered Democrat. Before the vaccines the excess death rate for Republicans was 1.6% above Democrats. After the vaccines that excess climbed to 10.4% higher.

No individual Republican is doomed by these findings. All you have to do is get vaccinated.

Of course, no one has a crystal ball. No one knows for sure how the war will end, but Timothy Snyder has some interesting ideas. The article is a bit long, but worth a read.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-does-the-russo-ukrainian-war?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=auto_share