The reason Hamas is currently celebrating victory (while simultaneously, and absurdly, claiming it has suffered genocide) is simple: the consensus in the Western world that Israel is the evil side and "the people of Palestine" (actually Hamas) are engaged in justified resistance. The Western world has come to this conclusion based on two, occasionally overlapping preset conditions:
1) Jews are unpleasant race and are generally on the wrong side,
2) Jews are European, and white, and are thus foreign colonizers, while Arabs are brown and indigenous.

I dislike Netanyahu intensely. I passionately hate the pyromaniac zealots in his cabinet. These folks pervert the original purpose of Israel and make it a nation that will eventually be inhospitable to Jews like me.
I want a two-state solution.
I just wonder who else does. The two-state solution is the framework within which all potential peacemakers in the Middle East, from Anwar Sadat to Donald Trump have tried to find a way to solve the conflict.
But is this framework still alive? Is it still relevant? I wonder.

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

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.

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.

https://twitter.com/zonov_sl/status/1678662638601994240

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 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

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...

https://twitter.com/Howard_Pen4Rent/status/1674523357067509760

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...

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.

https://twitter.com/SlavaMalamud/status/1673673910431150082

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...

A brief history of Russian euphemisms for foreign invasions and colonial wars of conquest.
- 1939 invasion/annexation of Poland: "The Liberation March of the Red Army" (later renamed "military action for reunification of USSR, Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia)... - 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia: "Friendly Aid to Brotherly Czechoslovak People"
- Invasion of Afghanistan: "Entry of a Limited Contingent of Soviet Troops into Afghanistan" (also, "Brotherly Aid of Soviet Internationalist Warriors to Afghan People")

Moldova's Constitutional Court has outlawed the Șor Party, a nakedly pro-Kremlin operation set up by an Israeli citizen and Russian agent Ilan Șor, who is currently wanted in Moldova for bribery and embezzling $1 billion from the country's treasury.

https://twitter.com/CurrentTimeTv/status/1670806859547045890

Șor is a perfect example of what Russia does to destabilize and subjugate its former colonies: set up a "party" with a populist message of protecting Russian-speakers' rights and bringing the country economic benefits from cooperating with the Kremlin, have them be headed by...

Inventing fake Jews and attributing fake quotes to them has been a favorite tool of Russian authorities for more than 100 years. You can date this at least to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", where a Russian Okhrana officer made up a cabal of...
themoscowtimes.com/2023/06/16/put… ... imaginary Yids who, at a suitably macabre meeting at a Prague cemetery, were conveniently overheard discussing their unambiguously evil and extremely detailed plans to rule the world. Millions of people still believe the "Protocols" are genuine. You can buy it on Amazon.

The convention of "A Just Russia", which bills itself as an opposition party, but is in reality fully aligned with the Kremlin, like all other parties in Russia.
Here, the delegates sing what I assume is Russia's most popular song right now (probably by far).
Translation below. The war is on, rise up my nation
Shoulder to shoulder, back to back
This is our fate, we need to win
Russia is strong when times are tough
This isn't our first time
The war is not for Donbas
The war is for all of us
The enemy is at the gate
Let's go, rise up, don't be late

Russians will lose this war because they have made the mistake of all conceited empires: they fail to understand their opponent. Much like Germans had a poor understanding of the Soviet people, much like Americans had no idea what was in store for them in Vietnam... This may sound strange, because Russians and Ukrainians seem so similar, have so much in common, have shared such a long history. Well, this is what Russians think, anyway.
It's the same mistake they are making with the Ukrainian language. It only seems like "funny Russian"...

One of my best friends is quitting his job in Russian sports media. It's a horribly tough decision. He is pushing 60. He is not in any way guilty of supporting the regime. His options are limited to non-existent. But he can't work "for them" anymore. "It's difficult to breathe." He is one of the most sober and clear-eyed people I know. His predictions about Russia were right on the money back in 2008, when I was much more optimistic. He is not too sentimental. He has really reached a point where he'll do anything to not have any contact with them anymore

Here is a bit of esoteric cultural history of Soviet Ukraine for you today. I remember this man from my childhood. Behold, Grandpa Panas, Ukraine's own Mr. Rogers. If Mr. Rogers was a war hero who faced ideological oppression. Grandpa Panas was a popular radio and TV personality who hosted a children's show on Ukrainian-language channels. He read fairy tales for small kids every evening. Panas wrote the script himself and read it from memory, live (no video recording or editing back in the 1960s USSR).

Graduation day in my school. Here is a commencement speeches drinking game. See how long you last.
* Chapter (beginning of, end of)
* Looking back over the last 4 years
* Friendships forged
* Lessons learned
* Journey (embarking on)
* Late-night study sessions
* Stepping stones The summa cum laude speaker, though, who has spent the last two years trying to convert me into Christianity (one of his very rare failures in school) is an absolute unit and I love him to death.

So, @meduzaproject (an anti-Putin Russian media outlet, consistently against the war) has published letters from their readers, like-minded anti-Putin Russians who nevertheless support the war.
Their reasons? The war is bad but losing it is even worse. Can't stand the disgrace... ... can't abide with being the defeated and punished side, don't want to pay reparations, can't imagine having the Motherland undermined and, possibly, dismantled, can't have Ukraine (Ukraine!) come out on top. Yes, Putin is a criminal, but the war must be won.

As Twitter's official Transnistrian (a title I have assumed with all due gravity), I have many emotions about what is undoubtedly the final stage of this troubled region's political saga. I will try to keep the thread short, as most of the historical stuff I've already touched on

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1664999710963163136

(I will append my earlier thread on Transnistria at the end of this one)
Anyway, to get straight to the point: I hope Ukraine throws Russian occupiers out of the region, and I hope it does it mercilessly and completely. At the same time, I know that most locals will not like this

A very good thread. I myself have written about KVN, the unique Soviet comedy competition show that has given birth to Volodymyr Zelensky's fame, and its utter descent into pro-Putin subservience.
Here is my old thread:

https://twitter.com/SlavaMalamud/status/1518781750389919744

https://twitter.com/betelgeuse1922/status/1664555649920032768

As it happens, I have just watched a KVN game yesterday and was, as is normal nowadays, utterly disgusted by its tasteless humor aimed at making Putin's establishment happy and vatniks giddy.

Wait, wasn't Kyle Dubas another one of those 25-yr-old "new gen" GMs who knew all about fancy stats & analytics and who the Corsi Asylum thought would revolutionize hockey?
Because, of course, if Brad Pitt could do it in Moneyball, why can't there be Moneypuck?
How's that going? I am sure that the Corsi Asylum has many excuses lined up. Dubas probably used the "wrong" Corsi. Or something. Or he didn't adjust his Fenwicks the way the Chayka Faction likes. Or such.
Because they all want to be Moneypuck and figure out a formula for a hectic, chaotic game.

Today's thread about Russia's slide into fascist insanity will be dedicated to an object seemingly innocuous but actually responsible for much of what Russia is today.
Behold the worst Soviet-made weapon of mass destruction, Plombir.
No, this isn't Bruce Banner's sperm test. Believe it or not, this is Russian ice cream, invented by Stalin's Minister of Trade and Torture, Atanas Mikoyan.
Plombir's name derives from the French "plombiéres", but while the French original is made with candied fruit, almond extract and other bourgeois additives...