Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
“It will be very difficult for us to fight alone with such a huge monster. But the civilized world has two options: to help us restore our 1991 borders, or to throw away all claims of shared values and just watch us bleed,” Serhiy Prytula says.
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“After spending years cultivating public apathy, the Russian president found his people indifferent to his fate,” Anne Applebaum writes.
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A must-read from Politico: “A first-ever oral history of how top U.S. and Western officials saw the warning signs of a European land war, their frantic attempts to stop it — and the moment Putin actually crossed the border.”
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Recently elected Republicans are ready to fire up the base with anger over billions spent to protect allies overseas.
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“In phone calls to friends and relatives at home, Russian soldiers gave damning insider accounts of battlefield failures and civilian executions, excoriating their leaders just weeks into the campaign to take Kyiv.,” The New York Times reports.
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“Donbas could put the Russians back on a successful footing or bring them to what is essentially a defeat,” says General Sir Richard Barrons, the former commander of the UK’s Joint Forces Command.
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Watch President Biden deliver remarks on the united efforts of the free world to support the people of Ukraine, hold Russia accountable for its brutal war, and defend a future that is rooted in democratic principles.
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“They can’t get their hands on money or securities or goods or services. They are outcast and they will over the shorter term freeze to death,” financial services veteran George Ball said in comments to The Washington Post.
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“The war came and the money ran out — the money ran out sooner than the war ended,” said Sergei Aleksashenko.
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“The Russian leader may have thought NATO was in disarray and the U.S. in retreat, but we’ve already seen it’s quite the opposite,” David Rothkopf writes in a piece for The Daily Beast.
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“A deadly virus can’t be ignored, jailed, exiled or co-opted — nor can it be locked down without great economic cost. That puts President Vladimir Putin of Russia in a bind. The pandemic, perhaps his hardiest foe to date, has starkly revealed the limits of his power,” writes Alexey Kovalev, the investigations editor at Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet.
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“After years of ignoring Afghanistan, many close to the Biden White House — and the president himself — feel some major outlets are adopting a pro-war stance,” Huffington Post’s Daniel Marans writes.
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“The United States’ favorability rating grew at least 23 percentage points from last year in France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, and a majority of respondents in all four view the country positively,” The Washington Post reported, summarizing findings from a new survey by Pew Research.
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“A new generation is confronting the region’s longstanding conflict in a very different context, with very different pressures, from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations,” The New York Times reports.
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The New York Times reports on the concern and consternation many people feel around the world as the 2020 presidential election enters its final weeks.
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As neocon John Bolton tries to instigate a conflict with Iran, here’s a reminder that MADtv saw this move coming back in 2007. Watch and laugh… if you can.
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Donald Trump booster and Tim Eyman pal Doug Ericksen has teamed up with disgraced former State Representative Jay Rodne to promote the interests of Cambodia’s authoritarian Hun Sen regime in the United States. The pair have a deal with the regime worth half a million dollars.
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“As much as they loathe one another, they are also codependent: Hamas uses its defiance of Israel to portray itself as the true voice of Palestinian resistance, and Israel’s right-wing government exploits Gaza’s unruliness to argue that it lacks a partner for peace talks.”
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“Qatar’s citizens, today numbering 300,000, have become very rich, very fast. Their average income of $125,000 is the highest in the world, over twice that of the United States or Saudi Arabia. The state cocoons them with free land, cushy jobs and American universities. Gleaming supercars and limousines cruise along Doha’s palm-lined corniche. Poor Qataris are hard to find.”
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Required reading from NPR.
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Mexico’s political leaders have wisely chosen defiance instead of capitulation. In a nationally televised address, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto declared that his country does not believe in walls and will not finance the border barrier that Trump has vowed to build. If the last few days have taught us anything, it’s that by uniting together against Donald’s bigotry, we can stop neofascism in its tracks.
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