I don't think it's hard really. The more humiliation Russia suffers, the more they missiles they will use to flatten Ukraine. It's not the "actual opposite" of what I'm saying, it's what's happening.

If you don't know the difference between defensive and offensive, you can look it up. I've been polite with you till now, but you've been insulting one too many times.

It boils down to the fantasy, which is what it is, that you think Ukraine will be able to defeat a NUCLEAR armed country. It won't. The fact that you can't get this through your head, is more a signal of your own inabilities to understand how fucked up this situation is, than any alleged shortcomings I may have.

So keep on dreaming about Ukraine defeating Russia, "helping" the Ukrainians get slaughtered, which is what you are advocating for. — Manuel

Look, I could perhaps discuss with you what helping or abandoning the Ukrainians could mean for them, but I don't see the point. Your response to me has nothing to do with what I wrote, which is indicative of someone whose mind is not on the actual conversation.

You are afraid that the conflict may escalate into a full-scale nuclear war - you've said as much many times. You might be unhappy about the damage that it does to your country's economy and energy security. And perhaps you are uncomfortable with your country getting embroiled in the conflict, however indirectly, which makes it kind of your business, whereas you would have preferred it to be something distant that doesn't lose you any sleep, like so many other awful things going on elsewhere in the world.

I get it. But then say what you think and quit with this fake concern for Ukrainians' wellbeing.

My guess is as good as anyone's.

I don't think the war will formally end any time soon, if ever, in the sense of signing a formal peace treaty or even an armistice. But Russia will probably seek to freeze the conflict for a time while holding on to as much territory as it can. If they stop with the suicidal offensive pushes and seriously dig in along defensible positions, they can hold out for a while, even if Ukrainians try to stay on the offensive. (It looks like they may have already resigned to losing Kherson.) The urgency of stopping the invading hordes from the East gone, Western support will slacken and, willing or not, Ukraine will have to go along with the new status quo. But how long that status quo can hold is hard to predict - too many variables are in play.

(I should add that this fairly pessimistic prognosis is entirely at odds with how the future prospects are perceived from inside Ukraine.)

Putin at a summit in Astana: "2.5 million people live in Crimea. They [Ukrainians] cut off the water [from the Dnieper to the peninsula] just like that - so the [Russian] troops had to go in and open the water to Crimea. Just as an example of the logic of our actions."

Simple as that :roll:

lol

It's not so much that the West tells Ukraine to do whatever they want, and Ukraine must do it, it's more in line with, we are giving you weapons, so you better fight the Russians to the end, don't focus on negotiations, as Johnson said, for instance. He was almost surely following the US/NATO line. — Manuel

So how do you imagine this? Ukrainians constantly cajole, shame and bully their allies into sending them more and better weapons faster, but they don't actually want to use those weapons to fight the Russians? What do they need them for then? And how does the US/NATO make Ukrainians on the ground go into battle and sacrifice their lives? By giving them dirty looks, or what?

Sometimes you say something so absurd I just can't imagine how you even come by such notions.

And as for negotiations, the situation is exactly the opposite to how you present it. It is the Ukrainians who are concerned that Western resolve may crack and they'll seek to make peace with Russia at their expense - and they have every reason to fear that.

Around the period of major advances in technology such as radio, the automobile, the electric light bulb in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, do you think there was a change in how the Western world thought about energy and energy transfer? Like from the eighteenth century onward, there seemed to be this conception that energy represented something an object possessed – as a person possesses physical energy, or a ball has energy when airborne – and at some point when theory about light, electricity, time, and space, began to predominate over simple mechanics it seemed that a transition took place from energy being thought of as a property of an object into it being thought of as an abstract entity itself that could be part of a wave or motion between atoms; something that could be harnessed and stored. — kudos

I don't think that this latter transition happened as you describe it. Energy is not thought of as being an entity in its own right, as opposed to a property like mass. What happened over the past three centuries was that physical ontology has been expanded to include not only tangible objects of direct experience, such as billiard balls, but also theoretical entities such as microscopic particles, fields, chemical bonds, and so on. Those entities can still possess energy in more-or-less the same sense in which billiard balls and such possess energy, although the laws of energy transfer can differ:



Sometimes people use the word "energy" as a shorthand for some of those intangible entities, in particular electromagnetic fields. But it is the field that possesses the energy, in addition to all its other characteristics.

As for the terrorist attack, it is defined in numerous ways, Oxford for instance defines it as "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims."

Is the bridge in Crimea used for civilian purposes in addition to military ones? Yes.

Is it a legitimate target? Sure. Was it a smart action to do this? I don't think so, look at the results of such actions. This much was predictable. — Manuel

"Terrorist attack" is how Russian officials and media frame it, and this shrill opinion piece seems to hew closely to their talking points. The author also calls it a "suicide bombing" without any evidence, which perhaps is just rhetorical flair (because suicide bombers = terrorists). While that is a possibility that has not been ruled out, there are reasons to doubt it (not that blowing up an unwitting civilian is any better from the ethical standpoint).

The Kerch bridge is the primary supply route for the Russian invasion force in South Ukraine. Destroying it would have severely degraded Russian logistics, so of course it was a legitimate target. The bridge supplies the very weapons and ammunition that the Russian military uses to kill civilians on a daily basis, so an argument could be made that a few civilian casualties (four people died in the attack) were an acceptable tradeoff for destroying it.

However, the actual damage, according to experts, is not expected to seriously disrupt the supply route, at least not for long. There is some debate over whether this was an unsuccessful strategic strike, or whether the effect was always intended to be primarily psychological. That the attack was apparently timed to Putin's 70th birthday speaks in favor of the latter hypothesis. (This is also one reason why it probably wasn't a suicide bombing: the driver made a rest stop just before entering the bridge, delaying the attack until the following morning.) The bridge was Putin's pet project - he saw it as one of his crowning achievements. And I agree with you, escalated attacks against civilians should have been entirely predictable. Personally, I am queasy about this affair.

On the other hand, it is de facto taken to be part of Russia. Obama applied the mildest of sanctions when the Russia annexed Crimea. It has important military value for Russia, given the naval base they have there. — Manuel

The fact that the bridge is located within Ukraine's internationally recognized borders is something of a red herring: since Ukraine is in a state of war with Russia, it would have been perfectly justified in attacking military and strategic targets inside Russia. Which it has done on a limited scale - without provoking WWIII, despite all the talk about Putin's supposed red lines. (And there have been some spectacular ops within Crimea as well.)

The scale has been limited perhaps more by Ukraine's military capabilities than anything else. Whether they cannot or will not carry out large-scale offensive operations against Russia, they make the best of this situation by maintaining strategic silence about the attacks that they do conduct, even within Crimea. Which is why it would have been very surprising if Ukraine's "special forces" openly admitted to carrying out an attack that was clearly designed to fall below the threshold of attribution. (Not that there is a lot of doubt about the actual responsibility.)

As for the US role in all this, they cannot "authorize" any attacks - unless one accepts the Russian propaganda line about Ukraine being controlled by the West. However, they do have a say in how the weapons that they supply to Ukraine are used, and they have always insisted that they should not be used to attack Russia on its soil (Putin's red lines again). That is also given as the reason why longer-range missiles are not supplied to Ukraine, even though they could have helped in the fight.

Crimea presented a difficult dilemma for Ukraine's Western allies, in that it is formally considered to be an occupied territory, but for Putin it is thought to be even more sensitive than actual Russian soil. Nevertheless, the stance that was adopted is that Crimea is fair game. This has been known for a long time, so all these scandalous revelations that the article strains to make (citing such explosive intel as an old interview in The Times of London) look rather ludicrous.

Not that any of this is of any relevance here: the bridge almost certainly was not attacked with Western weaponry.

Forgot who was asking, but here is the evidence of US/Ukraine bombing of bridge:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/10/10/ymsa-o10.html — Manuel

Wow, Manuel. I knew you weren't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but this? This is your source of information? This is your standard of evidence?

On Friday, Ukrainian special forces organized a suicide bombing on the Kerch bridge connecting Crimea and the Russian mainland, killing three people and collapsing half of one span of the bridge. — World Socialist Web Site

"Ukrainian special forces organized a suicide bombing" - this is given as an established fact. How was it established?

The Ukrainian special forces immediately admitted having carried out the attack to the New York Times. — World Socialist Web Site

I follow the New York Times and I didn't see such a claim published there. This would have been front page news everywhere if true. Notably, there is no link or any other reference.

In an expression of the consummate cynicism that pervades all aspects of US reporting on the war in Ukraine, the media acted as though the jury was out on who carried out the attack.

News outlets said Putin “blamed” the Ukrainian military and “alleged” that the suicide bombing targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure was a “terrorist attack,” as though this was not self-evident. — World Socialist Web Site

Wait, didn't they just say that the media - the New York Times, no less - already admitted this? Did they make that up? But who cares - it's self-evident!

The latest attack on Crimea comes despite Biden’s explicit public pledge that the United States would not allow its NATO proxy to attack Russian territory. “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders,” Biden wrote in May, announcing the deployment of the HIMARS system to Ukraine.

It has now emerged that this, like everything else the United States has said about limitations on its involvement in the war, was simply a lie. By pumping Ukraine full of the world’s most advanced weapons systems, backed by the full might of the NATO military-industrial complex, the US has allowed its NATO proxy to score a wave of battlefield advances that set the stage for the latest terror attack. — World Socialist Web Site

Here they simply brush off the fact (cited earlier in the article) that the US, along with almost every other country in the world, considers Crimea to be part of Ukraine, not Russia. And the phraseology, such as "pumping Ukraine full of the world’s most advanced weapons systems" (накачка украины оружием - google this phrase) is straight from Russian propaganda playbook.

Check out Schubert's piano trios if you haven't. The Andate of the 2nd trio (and it miraculous recapitulation in the finale) haunted me for the longest time.


Since you like chamber music, you may like Ginastera's quartets - I know I do. I also like his piano, cello and violin concertos. This is potent stuff.

I am not all that much into Grisey or Johson, but I like a few things. Grisey: Partiels and a couple of other things. Johnson: Combinations for string quartet, especially Tilework and Combinations V. Narayana's Cows (I don't much care about all this mathematical structure behind the music; I just find the music itself - complete with the reading of the text - hypnotically attractive). And this is just fun:

The emphasis on keeping the element of surprise was blown via U.S. Intelligence. — Paine

Tell that to all those Russian soldiers who found out that they were invading Ukraine only when they started seeing Ukrainian road signs from their APCs!

Poulenc Organ Concerto — Tom Storm

This is great.

Poulenc: Gloria

Timothy Snyder published an essay How does the Russo-Ukrainian War end? He argues that Putin is very unlikely to make true on his vague nuclear threats, and that in any case that is not what we should be focusing on. He also argues that "Putin will need no excuse to pull out from Ukraine, since he will be doing so for his own political survival."

And anyone with a post-kindergarten level of understanding Russian/Soviet actions understands that it will happen. Not perhaps with the ferocity as during the war, but still in a way that anyone clear headed would call it a war. The first the Russians will deny is the existence of a war or insurgency, if they can. I guess you have absolutely no idea how long the Lithuans fought against the Soviet invader after WW2, well into the 1950's. Or that the last "Forest Brother" were killed in 1970's in Estonia. — ssu

One doesn't even have to be an insurgent to end up in one of FSB's or DNR/LNR many torture basements. Ever since the Russian 2014 coup the grim expression na podval (into the basement) has entered the common lexicon in Ukraine. The Russians are looking for anyone who has a military or law enforcement experience, or who might give up such contacts. You can get in trouble for social media posts or pictures found on your phone - or for the lack thereof, which can raise suspicions. For a "nationalistic" tattoo, such as Ukraine's national emblem. Or simply because a neighbor or colleague denounced you.

As a matter of curiosity, what Cage have you listened to? What do you think of Morton Feldman? — ThinkOfOne

I don't remember TBH, but I did try a few works of Cage that came recommended (and I don't mean stunts like 4'33''), but nothing left an impression. Same with Feldman.

Since you come from a classical background, what recordings of the various combinations of strings or strings plus piano would you highly recommend? — ThinkOfOne

That's not a fair question, is it? :) There are too many works in the classical repertoire that match the description. Personally, I love Schubert - quartets, quintets, trios.

I'd also be interested in hearing what modern classical has particularly impressed you. — ThinkOfOne

Well, let's see... There are the big 20th century names - don't know if you'd consider them modern: Bartok, Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, Satie, Messiaen, Britten... Stravinsky, the quintessential 20th century composer, spanning the gamut from late romanticism to modernism, neo-classicism, serialism. Hindemith, once ubiquitous, now semi-forgotten, I am not sure why. (There is an old man-walks-into-a-bar joke that I came across once, which you can tell must go back at least half a century, because the punch-line implies that Hindemith could be the greatest 20th century composer. It also involves Orff.)

Of the later generations of composers, I like Takemitsu (pretty much everything), Ginastera (the late period, but his nationalist period is also nice). Some things of Ligeti, Schnittke, Gubaidulina. The only Boulez that I have liked is Sur Incises. Steve Reich, Tom Johnson, Gérard Grisey, Henri Dutilleux, Arvo Pärt. Other odds and ends.

John Luther Adams: Canticles of the Holy Wind: The Hour of the Doves

I think Isaac took a page from Russian propaganda here. It's not a war crime if there is no war, and it's not a war if you don't agree to call it a war. There - done.

By that token, Belgian atrocities in Congo do not count - because Belgium was not at war with Congo at the time. Neither do Soviet and German mass killings of Poles count.

I do so like those old-fashioned cartoons with their scrupulous banners, callouts and footnotes!

* Note - X indicates where Japan landed.

Or instead of "surrender", we can call it a "stop" in violence. — Manuel

Yeah no, you can't, unless you are living under a rock or you are Russia's useful idiot. This is what surrender looks like:





Those who dismiss Russia's talk about the "denazification of Ukraine" as nothing but propaganda rhetoric are not paying attention. They are very, very serious about it, in their own perverse way. As serious as the actual historical Nazis were about their "final solution."

This is a cartoonization of the real world. Reminds me quite a bit of the propaganda used in WWI. Very dangerous thinking, in my opinion. — Manuel

Or, you know, the propaganda used in WWII. Which reasonable people like yourself would not believe.

Surrender assures peace and save lives. — frank

Except, of course, it does neither, as we can see in front of our own eyes. What it does though is relieve the West from the cost and the responsibility for the war. (Especially in the eyes of those who believe that the white man the West automatically assumes all of the agency and the responsibility wherever it so much as casts a sideways glance.)

Another detail making it more likely to be Russia is the ease of access. It’s being said they could just wheel explosive down the pipe using the inspection pig. — apokrisis

That the pipes were blown up from inside would be very obvious to even a casual inspection, I would think. Unless they want everyone to know and don't care even for a modicum of deniability, that would be extremely stupid. But we'll know soon enough.

Interesting, so what are your objections to this, considering you had previously expressed doubt that Russia sabotaged their own pipeline? — _db

The "bridge-burning" theory is plausible, but highly speculative. Still, the alternatives are even more problematic. The players who more obviously stand to gain from the destruction of Nord Stream are Ukraine and the US. Both benefit from burning the bridge that would tempt Europe to backslide and make a deal with Russia. US LNG producers and exporters have a better incentive for long-term investment now that they know that they won't be priced out of the market by cheap Russian gas any time soon. And Ukraine now controls one of the main remaining transits for Russian gas into Europe.

But I don't see the US doing something so desperate for a modest commercial gain. Even for Ukraine this would be a very perilous move. If they were caught, this would seriously undermine their vital relationship with Europe, because Europe would see an attack on their infrastructure as a hostile and treacherous act. Besides, it is doubtful that Ukraine actually had the capability to pull off such an attack.

Russia has the capability, and it has nothing to lose reputation-wise. Of all the players it is the only one reckless and desperate enough to do something like this - if they wanted to.

I am coming from a mostly classical background, and from there expanding into more difficult (for me) modern music. Lately I've been listening to more modern than classical - part of the reason being that tonal, melodic music gives me earworms something fierce, and the emotional response can be unbalancing. But I just can't get into highly "conceptual" music like Cage's.

My exposure to jazz is pretty light. I like jazz circa 1950s-1970s, from Parker to Monk, but that's probably because I don't know much else.

But I harbor no illusions of changing minds - and it's too late now to do anything about the past. — Manuel

You can't change minds by repeating for the umpteenth time these weak and tired arguments.

Wait a minute! Didn't Joe Biden talk about it a lot? You remember? The thing you didn't believe was true / was just US propaganda? — ssu

And likewisen, he takes Putin's nuclear threats seriously enough - I don't know where @Manuel gets the idea that he is the lone voice in the wilderness while everyone else remains oblivious to the danger when this is being discussed and debated at all levels, everywhere.

What he said to Macron was that he needed assurances that Ukraine would not be militarized. He did not get this, hence the invasion. — Manuel

Yeah, right. Putin would've cancelled the invasion that he had been planning for at least a year if only he got the right assurances at the last moment.

I do not think Europe has been wise here at all. This whole situation is because of NATO expansion - despite what some here are saying — Manuel

Despite, well, pretty much everything.

Lots of Russian oligarchs see the war is going poorly; they just want to pull back the troops and reopen for business so they can start making money again. Putin blowing up the NS2 pipeline could be his way of telling these oligarchs that he is committed to this war and that there's no going back now. — _db

This is basically the theory that Branislav Slantchev has proposed: Putin is like the commander who orders the bridge to be blown up so that his troops are not tempted to retreat.

In this case, Putin has two bridges he might have wished to burn, an international and domestic one. On the international side, his signal is that he is irrevocably committed to seeing this war through no matter what the West does. The problem with Western dependence on Russian energy sources actually goes both ways because Europe is also the largest client. While most people focus on Putin’s leverage and blackmail, the Europeans have also had substantial leverage with their threats to limit or stop their buying. One argument was always that Putin can’t really afford to lose that buyer, and so the threats to continue the war or keep the gas off were not credible. (I have made this argument as well.) Turning off the tap does not solve this credibility problem — you can always turn it back on if you are sufficiently incentivized. Blowing up the lines, however, removes this option and so you no longer have the choice. Because the lines have become inoperable for a long time (one of them, I understand, potentially permanently), the Europeans have lost the leverage that their money was giving them.

On the domestic side, this is a move designed to consolidate power. Putin must know about the substantial discontent his policies have created among the elites, and he might be worried about conspiracies against him. One driving force behind any such conspiracy is the hope that with Putin gone, relations with the West can be regularized (I would not say “normalized” or “restored” because even the most optimistic Russians must realized that this is impossible for the foreseeable future.) While the West will remain quite hostile to Russia for a long time, this does not have to mean that business relations of some sort would not be able to resume. And so, potential conspirators might be hoping that replacing Putin could salvage the business relationships with Europe (more generally too, not just in the energy sector), and they may even think that Europe’s loss as a customer is not inevitable. If Putin were merely to turn the tap off, they can simply turn it back on when he’s gone. Destroying the lines, however, means that his potential replacement would not be able to resume delivery through them no matter how much they want to. The massive rift the sabotage will cause with Europe is also going to make resumption of relations a lot harder. This decreases the incentives of potential coup plotters to remove Putin since one of the largest benefits from doing so is now gone. What’s the point of removing him if this will not change anything with respect to the economy? — Branislav Slantchev

Max Reger "Cello Suites" — ThinkOfOne

Max Reger "Sonatas for Solo Violin" — ThinkOfOne

I see you like Max Reger - or just exploring? Like most, probably, I am not very familiar with his quite voluminous output. Hadn't heard these works before. Bach's cello suites and violin sonatas and partitas are my favorites, so I was curious about Reger's take. I liked them a lot, especially the cello suites. But I must say, I like Reger best when he is writing more as Reger and less as ersatz Bach.

On a related note, one of my favorites from the same period:

And its companion piece:

And more early Ligeti:

Here is another map with more detail:

(That pocket in the north of Donetsk Oblast has since been closed.)

György Ligeti: Requiem : II Kyrie

The other movements:


Alfred Schnittke: Piano Quintet


(yeah, I am not in a cheery mood)

Putin today: "People of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhie are now our citizens. Forever."

Putin eight years ago (upon the annexation of Crimea): "Don't believe those who are making a boogeyman out of Russia, who say that after Crimea other regions [of Ukraine] will follow. We are not looking to partition Ukraine, we don't need that."

At least now (with the Baltic gas pipeline sabotage) Gazprom can refer to force majeure and not be worried about fines from not holding up gas deals — ssu

Gazprom already declared force majeure earlier this year, apparently due to its "problems" with turbines. They already turned off Nord Stream 1, with every indication that it would stay off for the foreseeable future. And Nord Stream 2 was under sanctions, although Moscow lobbied hard for it to be turned on, even after it cut off Nord Stream 1. So I find it hard to explain how the catastrophic sabotage of both pipelines (it looks like they are gone for good) could benefit Russia. They have already demonstrated that they could turn the flow of gas on and off at will, using it either as a bargaining chip or a weapon. If they blew it up, they have robbed themselves of this tool, because they no longer have any choice in the matter. Not to mention that they have sunk a very costly investment.

I see you like Vexler. I agree with his argument that the whole 'NATO as a threat narrative' is a scam. It boils down to complaining that they won't let Putin be an asshole without consequences. — Paine

I am skeptical about grand metaphysical explanations of world events, but speaking of 'NATO as a threat narrative', Foreign Policy reports that Russia’s Stripped Its Western Borders to Feed the Fight in Ukraine:

Of an original estimated 30,000 Russian troops that once faced the Baltic countries and southern Finland, as many as 80 percent of them have been diverted to Ukraine, according to three senior European defense officials in the region, leaving Russia with only a skeleton crew in what was once its densest concentration of military force facing NATO territory.

Now, defense officials across the Nordic-Baltic region are questioning how, and when, Russia could ever reconstitute its military forces along NATO’s northeastern flank, particularly as Finland and Sweden stand poised to join NATO.

“The redeployment of ground forces has been necessary because there is a desperate shortage of trained soldiers,” wrote Harri Ohra-aho, an intelligence advisor to the Finnish defense ministry and the former uniformed chief of defense intelligence, in an email. “It has nothing to do with the NATO threat (which hasn’t existed except in the rhetoric of the Russian leadership).”

Germany's Olaf Scholz obtaining a LNG deal with the UAE few days ago — ssu

He looks so anxious! I can't blame him.

Meanwhile, the "partial mobilization" is going well. It was initiated blyatzkrieg-style, much like the war on Ukraine, only this time the target was the Russian people. As with the war, authorities strenuously denied that it would happen the whole time (even just days before Putin's announcement). Then when it was finally announced, they said with an innocent face: oh but this is partial mobilization, not general mobilization (special operation, not war).

It quickly became evident that there is nothing "partial" about the it. This follows from Putin's decree, the actual practice, and statements from some of the local commissars in charge of the campaign. General mobilization doesn't mean that everyone gets called up all at once - the Russian military couldn't handle even a fraction of all eligible people anyway (even though that's much less than the claimed 25 million). The Soviet military reserve system, whatever its shortcomings, was pretty much dismantled in the 2010s, and there is no evidence that any preparations have been taken even after the war started. The military seems to have been taken as much by surprise as everyone else.

Even with the professional ("contract") army we have had plenty of reports about their poor equipment and inadequate supplies in the field. Some of the looting was simply due to the fact that soldiers didn't have enough food and clothing. A typical story was that of a kontraktnik from a supposedly elite division borrowing money to buy his own gear before deployment. Some described the first aid kit issued to them as consisting of a gauze bandage, a rubber band and a bottle of iodine.

This sorry state of logistics will become much worse with the mobilized troops. There are already videos making the rounds showing mobiks being quartered in abandoned barracks with rickety walls and no beds, and being asked to buy their own sleeping bags and mats, and improvise first aid kits from hydrogen peroxide and women's tampons (apparently they work pretty well for stanching the blood flow). Oh, and training? Forget about it, you are going straight to Kherson!

Russia has declared it cannot repair the leaks because of the sanctions. So a bit of hybrid warfare? — ssu

Gasprom just issued an ultimatum to Ukraine's gas operator Naftogas. The likely outcome of this is that unless Ukraine consents to deliver Russian gas to Europe at no charge, this pipeline will be cut off as well, reducing the current amount of Russian gas flow to Europe by half.

I'm skeptical of the NYT and the like. — Manuel

Not sure what you consider to be "the like" of NYT. It has few peers, in my opinion. (That is, if you are after reporting and analysis. I generally avoid opinion columns.)

I am always wary of people in the West (don't necessarily mean you, Manuel) who proudly declare that they don't get their information from mainstream media (spoken with a sneering contempt). You can rightly criticize mainstream media for a lot of things, but what are the alternatives? More often than not, it is trash like conspiracy blogs, misinformation enterprises like RT, Infowars (or thegrayzone), partisan media that cares more about ideology than accuracy and depth, and generally anything that tells you what you want to hear.

NYT, Guardian (which still has an active live stream for the war news), Washington Post all do professional reporting and analysis. BBC is OK for news updates (their Russian studio does good coverage of the war, but of course you need to know Russian). NPR, like much of US media, has scant international coverage. The most complete and timely news can be found in independent Russian and Ukrainian media.

Timothy Snyder's Yale course The Making of Modern Ukraine (ongoing)

Ukraine must have existed as a society and polity on 23 February 2022, else Ukrainians would not have collectively resisted Russian invasion the next day. What does it mean for a nation to exist? Is this a matter of structures, actions, or both? Why has the existence of Ukraine occasioned such controversy? In what ways are Polish, Russian, and Jewish self-understanding dependent upon experiences in Ukraine? Just how and when did a modern Ukrainian nation emerge? For that matter, how does any modern nation emerge? Why some and not others? Can nations be chosen, and can choices be decisive? If so, whose, and how? Ukraine was the country most touched by Soviet and Nazi terror: what can we learn about those systems, then, from Ukraine? Is the post-colonial, multilingual Ukrainian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?

I haven't listened to it, but will give it a try when I have time.

1 Ukrainian Questions Posed by Russian Invasion
2 The Genesis of Nations
3 Geography and Ancient History
4 Before Europe
5 Vikings, Slavers, Lawgivers: The Kyiv State
6 The Grand Duchy of Lithuania

On the SCO summit’s first day, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov made Putin wait for him before issuing a joint statement – even though Kyrgyzstan hosts a Russian military base, and at least one million of its citizens work as labour migrants in Russia. — Al Jazeera

Not just the president of Kyrgyzstan, but the leaders of Turkey, India and Azerbaijan also made Putin wait for them.

And Erdogan has done this to Putin before.



Remember how Putin made everyone wait for him?



How the times have changed!

It may seem a bit childish to gloat like that, but in politics optics matter, and this is an apt illustration of the point made in the article.

One factor pointing toward the status of taking Kyiv being a central goal at the beginning of the invasion is how the failure to do so has greatly diminished the utility of Belarus in the conflict.

One imagines that the situation in that country would be very different if it was now the favored access path to a Kiev ruled by a puppet government. — Paine

If the original plan was a blitzkrieg, as the evidence indicates, then the military utility of Belarus would end with the cessation of hostilities. As it is, although the ground invasion from that direction failed, Belarus still hosts Russian air force, which pounds Ukraine from the safety of its airspace.

The Russian "guests" would not be leaving in any event though. Belarus has effectively ceded its sovereignty to Russia.

The set of mental faculties with which we are born is rather limited, so in a literal sense, the answer to your question is, obviously, no. But in a less literal sense, it is not clear what exactly you are asking. Would we develop the same sort of morals if we were never taught any morals? A feral person's moral development would be very constricted, at best, but it hardly makes sense to talk about the morals of someone who is not even living in a society: where would they exercise their moral behavior? And for a typical person, moral development is impossible to disentangle from socialization, beginning with the family. Most morals are taught not through explicit instruction in moral maxims, but by example and ostension, which is how we learn most things as we grow up.

Perhaps your question concerns so-called moral instincts. But even if there are such instincts (and there is a good deal of research in support of that idea), they won't amount to much if they are not given proper nurture and exercise, and that is impossible without social interaction.

All of which is to say that, no matter how you look at it, morals, as they are usually understood - that is, a matured moral outlook, and not just a potential for developing one - have to be taught, even if implicitly.

That was true once, but nowadays we don't need to wait years or decades for court historians to write their politically correct histories. We can get news and analysis just as events are progressing. We can get a survivor's account of Russian occupation days after it's been lifted. There is no glory there. And the dead - they talk as well, perhaps louder even than the living, because they have no reason to suppress or distort.