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The pictures of Putin in Kursk wearing military garb instead of the suit we’ve been seeing him in lately were interesting. It’s almost as if he were taking his cue from Zelensky. Or putting on a show of manliness for his friend in the White House.🤣🇺🇦

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Too many clocks around here that need resetting after a time change, and I forgot that someone born a few decades before me might be using any one of them. Open question whether we’ll make it to her appointment on time.

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Blog categories again: One overarching theme seems to be justice, although I haven’t made it explicit. Maybe it’s time to change that. Merely adding the word as a category won’t work, but perhaps I could start by reflecting on the theme and how it manifests in a number of past posts.

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Tata Kepler, a Ukrainian volunteer and activist, gave a powerful address to the European Parliament on International Women’s Day. She centered it on the stories of individual women and girls she’s worked with and can’t forget. youtu.be… (13 min.) 🇺🇦

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I’ve been tweaking the blog’s categories again, and not all posts are caught up with the changes. This happens with living documents like the weblog or the digital garden.

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An explainer for journalists that the rest of us can benefit from: “Understanding Information Disorder” by Claire Wardle, September 22, 2020, First Draft, firstdraftnews.org….

At First Draft, we advocate using the terms that are most appropriate for the type of content — propaganda, lies, conspiracies, rumors, hoaxes, hyper-partisan content, falsehoods or manipulated media. We also prefer to use the terms disinformation, misinformation or malinformation. Collectively, we call it information disorder.

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Four women in a row with their backs to the camera dressed in indigenous Pueblo dress with a large United States Army seal in the middle of their backs and related service patches.

Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, July 18, 2015:

Members of the Native American Women Warriors, a Pueblo, Colorado-based association of active and retired American Indians in U.S. military service, at a Colorado Springs Native American Inter Tribal Powwow and festival in that central Colorado city.

Credit: Gates Frontiers Fund Colorado Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Further details, including names and ranks, at https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2015633463/.

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Enjoyed a Ukrainian concert tonight that Jerry Heil gave in Kyiv last March. Lots of kids in the audience who knew the words, youtu.be….🎵🇺🇦

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“Trump Says Recession Unfortunate but Necessary Step to Get to Depression,” The Onion, March 10, 2025, theonion.com….

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Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat offers valuable, but concerning insights into the current disordered information spaces we live in: conversation with Chris York, Kyiv Independent, youtu.be….

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Warm enough to eat outside today!

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Ukraine has been proving the value of U.S. arms these past three years. Now Trump is using Ukraine to demonstrate the achilles heel of high-end American arms. Their effective use depends on the U.S. political system, which is proving vulnerable to malign domestic and foreign actors.

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This is bad: “US to stop participating in future military exercises in Europe, Swedish media reports,” Kyiv Independent, March 8, 2025, kyivindependent.com. Talk of a pivot to Asia is all well and good, but who there will trust us?

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📺 I’m in the middle of “The Eastern Gate” [Przesmyk], TV miniseries (Poland, 2025), a gripping and topical spy drama involving the Suwałki Gap. Its star, Lena Góra, is spellbinding as Ewa Oginiec.

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If you pretend this isn’t real, it’s very exciting.

– Laurie Kilmartin on “Have I Got New for You” (U.S.), s. 2, ep. 4, March 8, 2025.

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Only Orange Choad could side with the Russian Bear and think that doing so makes him look strong. #RussoUkrainianWar #RussiaIsATerroristState #ПутінХуйло 🇺🇦

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Cover of latest Stern magazine shows Trump and Putin bowing to each other over the corps of Ukraine. German text is discussed in main post.

The title of this cover from a prominent German news weekly borrows from a famous Ronald Reagan quote: “Axis of Evil” (Die Achse der Bösen). Only this time a Republican president is casting the United States on the side of evil. The remaining text points to the “danger of war in Europe” and asks “what Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine means for us."1 The cover also mentions a statement by Joschka Fischer in an interview: “Germany needs conscription again."2

POSTSCRIPT: See comments for connection to 1939

  1. “Us” could refer to Germany, given the magazine, but note the European flag that the two bowing men are standing on—with the corpse of Ukraine laid out face down between them. If the corpse is hyperbole, the betrayal and its geopolitical consequences are very real, ↩︎

  2. Fischer was a politician in the Greens who served as Germany’s popular foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005. ↩︎

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Apropos of Russia’s meat assaults, which throw their soldiers' lives callously away:

In the town of Polyarnye Zori in Russia’s Murmansk region, members of the country’s ruling United Russia party marked International Women’s Day by giving flowers and meat grinders to the mothers of soldiers killed in the war against Ukraine.

Story via Meduza: “United Russia party gifts meat grinders to dead soldiers’ mothers,” meduza.io/en….

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Orange, white, black, brown, and tan poster depicting nine women of various backgrounds engaged in different activities, including arts, activism, and blue-collar work. The accompanying text reads: 'Radical Women Annual Conference – 1976'. 'A New Era for Women Workers, Minority Women and Lesbians': 'Women in the Labor Movement', 'Feminism and the Minority Woman', 'Gays and the Class Struggle.' 'Panels; Workshops; Role Playing; Dinner & Party, Saturday.' Held on Sat. and Sun., October 9–10, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, along with addresses, phone numbers, and a few more details.

A New Era for Women Workers, Minority Women and Lesbians. 1976 poster by a Seattle organization called Radical Women.

Via Library of Congress, Yanker Poster Collection, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016649885/.

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Does Felonious Husk even think about the probable consequences of his reliance on self-dealt government contracts come the midterm elections? Do his investors and boards? Add to that the destruction of his cars' reputation, and he is poised to fail hard.

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French Senator Claude Malhuret describes what’s happening in the United States in stark terms and explains the consequences of Frump’s traitorous behavior for Europe: youtu.be….

#MoscovianCandidate #RussiaIsATerroristState

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Sad, but sensible for a country in their position: “Lithuania sends ‘strategic message’ as it leaves cluster munitions convention” by Saulius Jakučionis, Lithuanian Radio and Television (LRT), www.lrt.lt/en/….