At Amazon, Miranda Divine, Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide.
Saturday, March 19, 2022
Friday, March 18, 2022
Survivors Emerge From Bombed Ukrainian Theater (VIDEO)
At WSJ, "Survivors Emerge From Ukrainian Theater Bombed in Russian Airstrike":
Rescuers freed 130 people from the building in Mariupol and hundreds more remained trapped, as Russian forces continued shelling in Ukraine. LVIV, Ukraine—Rescuers in Mariupol evacuated 130 people from the wreckage of a theater hit by an airstrike this week and searched for more survivors, as Russia expanded its air assaults on Ukraine’s west, striking an aircraft-repair facility near the Polish border, officials said. “Hundreds of Mariupol residents are still under the debris,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during an address to the nation. “Despite the shelling, despite all the difficulties, we will continue rescue work.” Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to press on with his invasion of Ukraine in a rare public appearance before a crowd of tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters in a Moscow stadium, and President Biden warned Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a call on Friday that Beijing would face repercussions if it provided assistance to Russia in its military assault. In Mariupol, about 1,300 people remained trapped in the basement of the theater where residents had sought shelter from Russian shelling, said Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s human-rights commissioner, adding that it was difficult to be certain of the number of survivors. She didn’t confirm any casualties. “We hope that they will be alive but as of now we have no information about them,” she said in a local television interview. The building was hit during an attack on Wednesday. Efforts to sort through the wreckage and rescue any survivors are being hampered because rescue services have been nearly wiped out by the attack on the southern port city. Getting medical treatment to those injured could be difficult, because “a lot of doctors have been killed,” former Gov. Sergiy Taruta said overnight. More than 9,000 people were evacuated from Mariupol, Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address. He said that more than 180,000 Ukrainians have been rescued and tons of essential supplies have been delivered. Still, he said, aside from seven humanitarian corridors that have been opened, Russian forces “continue to block the supply of humanitarian aid to the besieged cities in most areas.” Mr. Zelensky called on Russia to negotiate and said that in the coming days he will address other nations like Switzerland, Israel, Italy and Japan, just like he did the U.S., Canada and Germany. “It’s time to meet. Time to talk. It is time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be so huge that several generations will not be enough to rebound,” he said. “Ukraine’s proposals are on the table.” Russian missiles hit an aircraft-repair facility in the western part of the country on Friday, in a long-range strike far from the heaviest fighting while attacks continued on other cities. The Ukrainian air force said Russia fired six cruise missiles from the Black Sea. Two were intercepted, preventing them from reaching their target near the airport in the western city of Lviv, about 50 miles from the Polish border. Polish immigration authorities said Friday that the number of people who have fled Ukraine for Poland has now surpassed two million. More than three million Ukrainians have fled the country since the war began, according to the United Nations refugee agency. A building at the air facility was destroyed, according to Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, who said work at the facility had been suspended before the strike. One person was wounded, and rescue workers were on site putting out a fire, said Maksym Kozytskyi, the head of the Lviv regional military administration. Friday’s strike on the Lviv facility followed a Sunday air attack on a similar location in Lutsk, also in western Ukraine. Workers at each site repair and modernize Ukrainian combat aircraft of various types. Oleg Zhdanov, a reserve colonel in the Ukrainian army and a military analyst, said the strikes showed that Ukraine’s air fleet, modest and aging, continued to frustrate the Russian war machine. “This can only mean that our aviation is becoming a big problem for Russia,” he said. Most of the fighting between the invading Russian forces and Ukrainian troops has been concentrated further east and south. In the eastern city of Kramatorsk, at least one missile hit a residential building overnight, killing two people and wounding 16, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the regional military administration in the eastern region of Donetsk...
Ukraine Could Win
From James Holmes, at 1945, "Yes, Ukraine Could Beat Russia":
Which antagonist—if either—will prevail in Ukraine? The longevity and success of Russia’s offensive is a hot topic of debate among foreign-policy practitioners and the commentariat. Nor is it an idle topic. But beware of too-confident assessments. Canvassing military history indicates that campaigns tend to sputter over time. A campaign may stagnate, and reversals of fortune are far from rare. It takes not just a proficient military machine but leadership possessed of ingenuity and force of character to keep the momentum going, or regain it if it slips way. So Russia isn’t predestined to be the victor over Ukraine even though it’s the stronger combatant—by far—by the numbers. Indeed, the Russian offensive has shown signs of faltering since day one. A lesser combatant that makes maximum use of its latent combat power can stymie an opponent that wastes its potential. Ukraine has a chance...
Still more.
The New York Times Finally Admits Hunter Biden's Laptop Is Real
From Michael Goodwin, at the New York Post, "The New York Times hates to say The Post told you so."
Here's the story, "Hunter Biden Paid Tax Bill, but Broad Federal Investigation Continues."
See here, smack dab at the middle column:
Biden Warns China of 'Consequences' if It Aids Russian War
We'll see. I'd love to see China shut down with a barrage of sanctions to match or exceed those imposed on Russia. Hoo boy, that would be something.
At the New York Times, "Biden Tells Xi There Would Be Consequences to Helping Russia":
Russian forces extended their bombardments into a relatively unscathed part of western Ukraine on Friday, striking a warplane repair plant about 50 miles from the Polish border, as President Biden warned President Xi Jinping of China not to provide military aid to Russia amid a scramble of diplomatic efforts to end the violence engulfing Ukraine. During a nearly two-hour video call, Mr. Biden warned Mr. Xi, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that there would be “implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians,” according to the White House. But a senior administration official declined to discuss what kind of penalties the United States would impose on China if it provided Moscow with military hardware or offered it financial relief. The official also declined to say how Mr. Xi responded to Mr. Biden’s warning. “We will continue to watch until we see what actions they take or don’t,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said...
Chinese President Vows to Control Covid Outbreak With Smallest Cost
Well, Xi must have gotten some blowback for welding his population in apartment blocks to stop the spread.
Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to reduce the impact of Covid-control measures on the economy and people’s lives, a first acknowledgment from the Chinese leadership of the costs of the government’s stringent policies to rein in outbreaks. As other countries have moved away from lockdowns and social distancing, Beijing has touted the success of its draconian measures in keeping the number of cases low, despite a mounting toll on its people and economy. However, Chinese officials have scrambled to boost confidence in the Chinese economy as the more contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus has prompted a surge in cases. The costs of fighting outbreaks add to recent headwinds, as Mr. Xi’s campaign of regulatory tightening last year has slowed economic momentum more than expected. The geopolitical crisis over the war in Ukraine, and the potential costs to China of its recent alignment with Russia, have also rattled investors’ nerves. In a Thursday meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist Party’s top decision-making body, Mr. Xi asked officials to minimize the impact on the Chinese economy and people’s lives from Covid-19 control measures, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. China is facing the biggest wave of Covid-19 infections since Wuhan became the original center of the pandemic in early 2020. Several local governments have resorted to the same playbook used over the past two years to stamp out new outbreaks by ordering large-scale shutdowns and mass testing. Mr. Xi still urged officials to curb the spread of infection as soon as possible and said the central government would hold local officials accountable if they fail to respond to outbreaks promptly, Xinhua reported. Several officials in Jilin province in China’s northeast, where most of the recent cases have been reported, have been removed from their positions. However, Mr. Xi said China must “strive to achieve the biggest prevention and control effect with the smallest cost, and minimize the impact of the Covid situation on economic and social development,” Xinhua reported. Over the past two days, the rise in cases appears to have abated slightly. On Thursday, China reported 2,432 cases, including both symptomatic and asymptomatic infections. Of those, 1,157 were in Jilin. Mr. Xi’s remarks came a day after senior officials moved to reassure investors rattled by the prospect of widespread factory closures and trade disruptions...
Thursday, March 17, 2022
Bari Weiss Has a Lot to Say
A very important piece from Ms. Bari. RTWT.
Here, "Things Worth Fighting For: What we can learn from President Zelensky."
The Runaway Cost of Virtue-Signalling
From Batya Ungar-Sargon, at Spiked, "Working-class Americans are paying a heavy price for their elites’ moral posturing":
As gasoline prices in the US continue to surge to an unprecedented $7 a gallon in some places, President Joe Biden seems more interested in finding someone to blame than mitigating the problem. ‘Make no mistake, inflation is largely the fault of [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’, the president said on Friday at the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference. The president then cited a ‘fact checker’ in the New York Times and a Washington Post op-ed to counter anyone daring to lay the blame for skyrocketing prices at the feet of the president of the United States. As gasoline prices in the US continue to surge to an unprecedented $7 a gallon in some places, President Joe Biden seems more interested in finding someone to blame than mitigating the problem. ‘Make no mistake, inflation is largely the fault of [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’, the president said on Friday at the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference. The president then cited a ‘fact checker’ in the New York Times and a Washington Post op-ed to counter anyone daring to lay the blame for skyrocketing prices at the feet of the president of the United States. I guess if you’re going to gaslight working-class Americans who have been struggling with historic levels of inflation for over a year now, it’s good to have legacy media outlets backing you up. Of course, Biden is right that his decision to ban Russian oil and gas from the US market – a popular move, which 80 per cent of Americans approved of – has exacerbated these trends. But in trying to lay the blame of a year-long trend entirely at Putin’s feet because of a war that started three weeks ago, Biden is erasing the ongoing struggle American families have been facing, enlisting a foreign foe to cover for his domestic failures. And it’s the very people the Democratic Party claims to care about who are suffering the most as a result of those failures. A new Wall Street Journal poll found that 35 per cent of black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters were feeling the sting of inflation, compared to just 28 per cent of white voters. Among black women and Hispanic men, the proportion was even higher, at 44 per cent. And of course, for those making less than $60,000, it was the worst, with half feeling the pain of inflation – compared to just 13 per cent of those making over $150,000. It’s perhaps no surprise that it’s those whose incomes protect them from the sting of inflation who are most vocal about how willing they are to pay more for petrol – lecturing those who can least afford it about the importance of doing so on moral grounds...
Arnold Schwarzenegger Makes Impassioned Plea to 'End This War' in Ukraine (VIDEO)
This is quite an address. Schwarzenegger's father fought for the Nazis in Leningrad during WWII.
At SF GATE, "Arnold Schwarzenegger's plea to Russian people, soldiers amid Ukraine invasion goes viral."
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows
From the blurb:
Everything Flows is Vasily Grossman’s final testament, written after the Soviet authorities suppressed his masterpiece, Life and Fate. The main story is simple: released after thirty years in the Soviet camps, Ivan Grigoryevich must struggle to find a place for himself in an unfamiliar world. But in a novel that seeks to take in the whole tragedy of Soviet history, Ivan’s story is only one among many. Thus we also hear about Ivan’s cousin, Nikolay, a scientist who never let his conscience interfere with his career, and Pinegin, the informer who got Ivan sent to the camps. Then a brilliant short play interrupts the narrative: a series of informers steps forward, each making excuses for the inexcusable things that he did—inexcusable and yet, the informers plead, in Stalinist Russia understandable, almost unavoidable. And at the core of the book, we find the story of Anna Sergeyevna, Ivan’s lover, who tells about her eager involvement as an activist in the Terror famine of 1932–33, which led to the deaths of three to five million Ukrainian peasants. Here Everything Flows attains an unbearable lucidity comparable to the last cantos of Dante’s Inferno.
And purchase here.
Nina Agdal
One of my all-time favorites has been out of the limelight, especially since Sports Illustrated Swimsuit shut down it's annual hotties on YouTube, the losers.
Plus, a country gal in seriously ripped jeans.
Also, Ariel Winter.
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl
At Amazon, Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster.
Julia Ioffe Interview on FRONTLINE (VIDEO)
She's an amazing woman. It's especially interesting to listen to her for 45 minutes. Born in Moscow, her family emigrated to the U.S. when she was 7 years old.
It's just fascinating to hear her pronounce the name of Putin's cronies, sounding so Russian.
She's lovely:
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