The other day, I saw a video of a Palestinian girl in Gaza, about 8 years old. She's wearing a pink top and gold earrings; her dark, braided hair is covered in dust. The person behind the camera asks her about the neighboring building; she says, Yes, my best friend lives there. The camera pans to the building, which is just pancaked and turned to rubble. The camera pans back to the girl, who is asked what happened to her best friend. She's dead, the girl says. I saw them bring her out of there. She's martyred.

Her face is expressionless, blank.

Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me. I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.

But now I see that's not it.

A story:

I've had an online stalker since 2019. He is a former Army Ranger that did time for assaulting a federal officer, who told me "they should put your ass to sleep." In 2020, he won early release bc Covid, at which point he started emailing me about "a Covid 19 date." 1/ I didn't respond but I called the police. They investigated and a male detective called me back and said, essentially, "well, if you never said 'no' to this guy, how is he supposed to know that you don't want him to contacting you?" Apparently, not responding wasn't enough. 2/

A 6th grader in Russia drew an anti-war drawing in art class. Her father was detained and beaten by the FSB, who also had "a discussion" with the girl. She was taken to an orphanage, the single father is facing criminal charges and loss of custody.

meduza.io/feature/2023/0… Their home was searched, their savings seized. During his time at FSB offices, they hit the father's head against the floor and the wall, then left him alone in a room with the Russian national anthem at full volume for two hours, at which point an ambulance had to be called.

Part 1:

https://twitter.com/bgrueskin/status/1594815252339646464

Part 2:

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1594863646244745216

Hmmmmm, I wonder why @TuckerCarlson left all this batshit anti-Semitism out of what he aired on @FoxNews ? 🧐

vice.com/en/article/3ad… @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews At another point, when complaining that his children are going to a school that celebrates Kwanzaa, Ye added, “I prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa. At least it will come with some financial engineering.”

Why are men, part 2,624 I’ve gotten men writing me unsolicited letters telling me that they couldn’t concentrate on what I was saying because my hair was in my face, because I mispronounced one word (I didn’t).

Question to my male colleagues, this happens to you all the time, too, right? Right?

20% of Biden's ambassadorships are vacant.
One reason? Women nominees have a hell of a time getting out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Republican members hold them up because they don't like their "tone" or assume they are rabid abortionists.
puck.news/washingtons-ne… “There is a layer of unconscious bias holding back women, that isn’t there for the male nominees. This includes spouses saying things about Trump or the way in which women talk and represent themselves, where Rs have been viscerally opposed to just how the women communicate.”

First Marjorie Taylor Greene, now Erick Erickson is calling to defund the FBI.

How quickly things turn from "defend the thin blue line" to "defund the FBI" Now Rep. Paul Gosar also wants to.

Call me crazy, but if you’re a public figure and you do things like help one party shut more and more people out of the political system, thereby cutting off their ability to channel their grievances into productive political action, then yeah, you might get yelled at in public You cannot shut people out of the political system and then act surprised when they resort to things like street protest or getting in your face in a restaurant. And you can’t be ruthless and honestly expect civility from the other side.

Russian political talk show, ondering why people in Europe and the former Soviet republics like Georgia (which Russia invaded and took 20% of its territory) are so anti-Russian!
1tv.ru/-/jwslk Look at how differently Europeans spoke to Russians in the 1930s and after 1945, says one guest. When Russia wins, he says, "even these types who don't love us will sit in the background and be quiet."

Totally and completely chill.

Ten years ago today, the Russian police violently cracked down on a peaceful protest in Moscow. It spelled the end of the Snow Revolution. My grandmother, who was 77 at the time, was there. An old dissident, she went to almost every protest that winter and spring. Here she is getting ready for the protest on March 5, 2012. She brought a book in case she got arrested.

I played by the rules and the rules gave me shit for financial aid, despite being the child of refugees who had no money. Still, my parents and I played by the rules paid off the loans we all took out to pay for my college education. I—and they—fully support loan forgiveness.

https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/1519658467652521984

Because we saw that the rules are shit. Just because we got screwed, doesn't mean everyone else should be, too.

Two of my very close friends are Chechens who survived both Chechen wars. I've heard their stories, I've seen the tiny, dank cellar where one of them slept for months to avoid the artillery strikes, and have seen how they have struggled watching the war in Ukraine unfold. 1/ This week, they both published extraordinarily moving pieces about the experience. The first is by the incredible @GroznyMazay, about what it feels like to villainized as a Russian when your whole childhood was marked by being the enemy of the Russians.
nytimes.com/2022/03/21/opi…

People in the West keep hoping for the mothers of Russian soldiers to speak up against the war—and some have. But some mothers, even those whose sons have died in the war, are vehemently pro war—and vocally against even Ukrainian civilians.
dw.com/ru/mat-soldata… "I hate them all," the mother of a dead Russian soldier says of Ukrainians. "I have no pity even for the civilians." The war was necessary—"we had no choice"—because "if we didn't bomb them, they would've bombed us." "My son fought for us, for Russia...he didn't die in vain."

A former employee of Russian state media asked a former colleague what they thought of Marina Ovsyannikova's protest. "Everyone was stunned while also being in awe of her courage. Their comments were mostly positive. They said, 'How brave! Atta girl!'"

republic.ru/posts/103353 "Tonight, they put all these security guards at the newsroom entrance. They must be scared that someone else can burst in with a poster. I don't see the point...Any editor can pop into the broadcast. Everyone knows that. You can make a poster at the last minute."

My first boss, David Remnick, interviews Stephen Kotkin, the king of Soviet history and the reason I went into this whole Russia business, and the result does not disappoint. Holy shit.

newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/s…

Perhaps because Putin's justifications for invading Ukraine don't make sense, Kremlin news and the Ministry of Defense now claim that they've magically discovered the Zelensky government's plan to invade the Donbas. “The only question that remains,” says the MOD spox, “is how deeply their allies in the US and NATO were involved in this.”

Of course, they don’t show the “document.”

Russian state TV about Russian attacks on the Chernihiv region: "The fact that a special operation is happening is evident only from columns of Russian military vehicles and checkpoints." Re: civilians "their safety is a priority for our military personnel.

Chernihiv: Some other details: the Ukrainian government is called "Nazis," the Ukrainian military - "nationalist formations." Russians, according to Kremlin TV, are being greeted as liberators and are providing humanitarian aid to local population after Ukrainians shut off energy/food.

"Although I respect congressional members who are against any military action, I fear that they have a healthy critique of U.S. imperialism but little understanding of Russia’s own colonial history and present." @Russian_Starr's essay is excellent. foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/11/pro… @Russian_Starr Terrell's progressive critique of the progressive stance on Ukraine—which has been mind-bogglingly myopic and ahistorical—is powerful in that it comes from a progressive, which is why it resonates for me. Terrell has spent a decade, on and off, living in Ukraine. He knows.

This afternoon, I received an Amazon package. I was expecting a couple, so I eagerly opened it up and inside, I found a pillow. In the shape of a penis. But a cartoon, anime-ish penis? This is the pillow.