Amazing to watch Putin's clique's response to the #Navalny poisoning. It's been barely a month, and we've already seen the following explanations:
* he wasn't poisoned at all
* Germans poisoned him
* there is no such thing as Novichok
* Novichok was administered by his own people
Just as it was (and is) with the shooting down of Malaysian flight MH17 over Ukraine, whenever Russians are clearly guilty, their go-to method is to throw as many "alternative facts" out there as possible, no matter how bulshitty and obviously false they are...
The idea is, as always, to confuse and obfuscate, ultimately making people think that everyone is lying (including and especially the victim; Ukraine and Navalny in particular), and there is no such thing as the truth...
If you know of any group of people who are engaged in the same tactic in your country, you should know that they are absolutely and unambiguously guilty and take their cues from Moscow.
I report. You decide.
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I am an atheist Jew. I believe my people deserve a state of their own, not because some infanticidal porkophobic fairy tale villain has promised it to us, but because we have fucking earned it with 2000 years of unimaginable suffering and persecution.
We. Deserve. It.
Don't agree? Suck on our nuclear warhead.
Ethno-states are bad, but our circumstance is special. Don't agree? Think it's hypocritical? Shouldn't have persecuted us for 2000 years, bitch. Suck on the abovementioned warhead and shut up.
So, with these non-negotiables out of the way
Here is my idea outcome: 1) Hamas - dead. To the last pigfuck. Dead and buried and then dug up and killed again and fucking dead. 2) Two states. Palestine gets its own borders and a functioning government, and the whole world helps them with it so it's sustainable and livable.
On the subject of "good Russians", hopefully once and for all...
And, trust me, I am not speaking as a dispassionate outsider. I am married to a Russian citizen, after all.
So, here is my take on what should be the minimally acceptable position taken by anyone with a 🇷🇺 passport
This, of course, isn't for anyone who is actively pro-war and pro-Putin or has taken the cop-out position of "I just want the war to end", "all sides are to blame", "can't we just negotiate" or "this is politics."
These Russians are abhorrent and culpable of abetting war crimes.
However, if you are anti-war and anti-Putin, here is what you should NOT say:
* "This is Putin's war, stop blaming all Russians",
* "Collective responsibility is Nazism",
* "Why are Ukrainians so angry and impolite?"
* "Ukrainian propaganda is no better than Putin's",
A Russian man waiting in line in a health center lost consciousness. Nobody gives a shit. Not a single person.
This is an absolutely normal reaction in Russia, and was so in the Soviet Union when I was growing up. Human life is garbage. One less, one more, who cares.
If you are visiting Russia, the best advice I can give you: never, ever have a heart attack outside. People will just assume you are a drunk and give you a wide berth. You may get picked up by a cop, but more likely, you'll just be left where you are.
Nobody will bat and eye.
In 1991, while waiting for a bus in Izmaylovo, Moscow, I saw a severely drunk man stumbling around on the pedestrian isle in the middle of a busy road. He seemed certain to fall right under the wheels of a passing vehicle. I came over to help him across the street...
In today's issue of Great Russian Culture Discovered, Russia's most popular song of all time.
It's "Rise Up, Holy Russia" by z-singer Yan Osin. In the 🧵 below is my word-for-word translation. I challenge the people I've tagged to find a single flaw in it.
https://t.co/hLlozJ7ZGi
If they do (also attn: @AlexKombarov), I promise to resign my position in NAFO Propaganda Department, of which I am the president and the entire staff.
This schlager (a German word Russians use for their most popular patriotic hymns) has probably topped every single Russian chart
"The war has come, the war is on
Rise up, my holy Rus, come on
It is our fate, from our God
To show Ukies Stalingrad!
We've done this many times before
We come, like Uncle Chernomor
Donbas is ours, so is Warsaw
We'll fight to England's very shore
So, anyway, I am a public school teacher in Baltimore, and I would like to have a short conversation about merit and meritocracy.
While the case I will present here is not a of any single student in particular, it is not a hypothetical. This is literally what I see every day...
So, you are a black high school student in a city whose reputation from "The Wire" is thoroughly earned. Let's also make you a female, just for kicks. And, since we are talking specifically about college admissions, we will make you a black female with goals and aspirations...
This being Baltimore, you are more likely than not to be from a low-income family. And since we are speaking of likelihoods, by "family" I mean a single mother, who is, let's say, not doing well, and at least one sibling.
So, in order to maintain your aspirations, you have to...
So, yes, let's address that "Russian speakers in the East and South of Ukraine who are pro-Russian" talking point you see bandied about by the @elonmusk's of the world.
Like all Russian propaganda, it has a basic, solid truth in its core, with cotton candy of lies spun around it.
Russian-speaking Ukrainians exist, in fact, everywhere in Ukraine, even in the West. Volodymyr Zelensky, as is widely known, is a Russian-speaking Jew from the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.
And yes, some Russian speakers, in 2014, strongly sympathized with Russia...
... even to the point of wanting to live in Russia. This, by the way, has changed for many of them over the course of the Russo-Ukrainian War (many have become ambivalent, many more are violently anti-Russian now), but it's an extremely nuanced subject that needs a separate convo