Sunday Reads: History
Posted: March 6, 2022 Filed under: abortion rights, Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Journalism, morning reads, Political and Editorial Cartoons, Putin’s War, Republican politics, Russia, Russia-Ukraine War, Ukraine 28 Comments
History…will teach us nothing.- Sting
Something has been wrong with the WordPress editing app, so hopefully you can see the images from the Cagle website. This one above keeps on giving me problems as I try to embed the image..I don’t know why?
Now for some tweets and stuff:
Remember I mentioned the song Russians by Sting?
On Republicans:
Also this:
Meanwhile:
Here is another Sting song to close this thread:
If we seek solace in the prisons of the distant past
Security in human systems we’re told will always always last
Emotions are the sail and blind faith is the mast
Without the breath of real freedom we’re getting nowhere fast
If God is dead and an actor plays his part
His words of fear will find a place in your heart
Without the voice of reason every faith is its own curse
Without freedom from the past things can only get worse
Sooner or later just like the world first day
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away
Sooner or later just like the world first day
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away
History will teach us nothing
History will teach us nothing
Our written history is a catalog of crime
The sordid and the powerful, the architects of time
The mother of invention, the oppression of the mild
The constant fear of scarcity, aggression as its child
Sooner or later
Sooner or later
Sooner or later
Sooner or later
Convince an enemy, convince him that he’s wrong
Is to win a bloodless battle where victory is long
A simple act of faith
In reason over might
To blow up his children will only prove him right
History will teach us nothing
Sooner or later just like the world first day
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away
Sooner or later just like the world first day
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away
History will teach us nothing
History will teach us nothing
Know your human rights
Be what you come here for
Know your human rights
Be what you come here for
Know your human rights
Be what you come here for
Know your human rights
Be what you come here for
This is an open thread.
peej
Carissa
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Interesting info about Kentucky’s financial ties to Russia. Moscow Mitch and Rand Paul being two of the most abhorrent people in Congress (and that includes MTG and Bobutt)…
I don’t think Mitch ever got his Russian aluminum factory did he? I hate for people to suffer but I hope all their Russian investments implode. Maybe Kentuckians will get a clue who not to vote for.
Finding out that Mitch and Rand have somehow managed to steer the pensions of Kentuckians into propping up Russian banks is just ….
I keep thinking these scum can’t shock me anymore and then, effortlessly, they make me sit here, unable to pick my jaw up off the floor.
I’ve been talking to my friend Alex today. His elderly mother refuses to leave. They’ve had air raids two days in a row and they bombed the local school and airport. His daughter is with her mother down by Moldova right now so they aren’t leaving but can if they need to.
Man oh man. Heroines and heroes, all of them. The steel spines they all have … I am awed.
I’m convinced all the little old lady babushkas in Ukraine are going to win this war.
Recent report of a woman (don’t know if she was old enough to be a babushka) in Kyiv who took out a Russian drone flying in the street below by throwing a jar of cucumber pickles on it.
😆 and also WOW.
(Expert in comments says it’s not that hard to do if your aim is good. Big if. Also need damn fast reflexes!)
About the racism, I know I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: It is not up to the country being invaded to take care of foreigners in their midst. It’s up to the embassies of the various countries. Sadly, most of them have been doing nothing for their citizens. Which, somehow, is supposed to make it the Ukrainians job to save them? Ahead of their own citizens? That’s not the way it works anywhere else.
There probably is plenty of real and even vicious racism going on. It’s not uncommon in Slavic lands. But not every instance of the Ukrainians not taking care of foreigners ahead of citizens is evidence of it. Be nice if reporters remembered that now and again.
Yes. Of course the Ukrainian citizens go first — they’re in the most danger if Russia takes over, compared to foreign nationals. And it’s not all Ukrainians, but the mothers and pregnant women who have priority.
This article has a long description of how many miles these adult Nigerian students had to walk, and how long they waiting in line without any mention that the Ukrainians also had to walk as far and have day-long to multi-day waits.
That this non-Ukrainian lied about being pregnant to try getting a spot which otherwise would go to a pregnant Ukrainian women doesn’t speak well of her.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/05/ukraine-african-refugees-racism/
This was a great show! Bookman was the fall guy all the time for JJ.
Bravo! Holding back from action because you’re afraid of Putin’s response is supposed to help how? His response is only going to be more severe the longer he’s not opposed.
Jacqui C. Williams
Mta2rfch 44 a1t 3so3:754l2e1 PdM ·
At the entrance to the Kiev Memorial Park there is a sculpture of a very thin girl with an extremely sad look holding several classes of wheat in her hands. Behind her back is the Candle of Remembrance, a monument with details reminiscent of authentic embroidery that can be found on traditional Ukrainian costumes. This is a monument that marks the historical event known as Holodomor (Hladomor). But what is Holodomor and what crime does this monument even symbolize?
At the end of World War I Ukraine was an independent state, but it was governed by the Soviet Union in 1919 “sucked” into the community of Soviet states. Ukrainians, who then considered themselves a Central European nation like Poland, not an Eastern European like the Russians, were trying to restore Ukraine’s independence.
Not wanting to lose control of Europe’s main grain, Stalin in 1932 resorted to one of the most heinous forms of terror against a nation. In the process of nationalization, he took the grainy land from Ukrainian peasants, and all its yields, creating artificial hunger. The goal was to “teach Ukrainians” so that they would no longer oppose official Moscow. Thus, the nation that produced the most wheat in Europe was left without a crumb of bread. The peak of the Holodomor was in the spring of 1933. In Ukraine, 17 people starved to death every minute, over 1000 every hour, and almost 24500 every day! People were literally starving to death on the streets.
In the emptied Ukrainian villages Stalin settled the Russian population.
During the next census, there was a large population shortage.
Therefore, the Soviet government abolished the census, destroyed the census documentation, and the censusers were shot or sent to gulag, to completely hide the truth.
It was Holodomor during 1932-1933 hunger killed between seven and ten million people, more than Jews in World War II. Their toxic gas was hunger. Their Hitler was Stalin. Their holocaust was Gladomor. For them fascist Berlin was Soviet Moscow, and their concentration camp was the Soviet Union.
Today, 28 countries of the world classify the Holodomor as a genocide, and you could not teach about it in school because almost all evidence has been destroyed, and the victim was silenced for decades and had no say until recently.
The Holodomor may have temporarily broken the Ukrainian resistance, but it made the desire for Ukraine’s independence from Russia eternal.
(Just a minor footnote on transliteration that’s a pet peeve of mine. Linguists transliterate the Ukrainian (and Russian) “h” as a “g” or sometimes a “kh” to stress the fact that the Slavic h is further back in the throat than the English one. Which is fine when you’re all linguists together, but obviously makes everyone else say the words wrong.
It’s particularly fraught in this case because both “holod” (cold) and “golod” (hunger) are real words. What happened is Ukraine is “golodomor” — transliterating phonetically — death by starvation, and not holodomor, which sounds like somebody is trying to say “death by freezing.”
So by using what I think is dumb transliterating, they change the meaning of the word!)
That sounds about right. There was a movie made in 2017. Did you see it?
Nope. Missed even knowing about it. Although I wouldn’t have seen it anyway since things were so depressing in the Dump years, I never watched anything more difficult that Wallace and Gromit
Anne Applebaum wrote a book about it.
Thank you for this, Q, and it’s not minor. Makes quite a difference in meaning.
Russian is invading an independent foreign county; it’s only appropriate that the US supplies arms to Ukraine to help them defend their country.
Because of course; they’re Putin’s thugs.
I’m not sure even basement-level ethics is a strong argument with hedge fund managers. But aside from that, purely in terms of plus or minus dollars, investments in Hitler’s Germany didn’t have a good, or any, return. Another thing for them to, just maybe, remember.