Ukraine - Russia

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a fierce Putin critic, is handed a 25-year prison sentence

The Moscow City Court on Monday sentenced Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, to 25 years in a high-security penal colony after convicting him of treason over his criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an unusually harsh sentence that drew international condemnation.

Mr. Kara-Murza’s supporters said the length of the sentence evoked memories of Stalin’s terror, and the verdict will likely send a chilling message to remaining anti-Kremlin activists in Russia and beyond as the Kremlin continues to clamp down on dissent over the war in Ukraine.

Many Russian political activists have been prosecuted since the invasion, including Ilya Yashin, who was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison last year on charges of “spreading false information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine — but the length of Mr. Kara-Murza’s sentence was the longest yet. Ivan Pavlov, an acclaimed Russian human rights lawyer, called it “unprecedented,” saying that even murderers receive shorter prison terms in Russia.

As they get more and more paranoid about the spread of resistance, Daddy State assholes like Putin come down harder and harder on dissidents. It could be a strong signal that Mr Putin is (or at least thinks he is) beginning to lose his grip on power.

“It is a terrifying but also very high assessment of his work as a politician and a citizen,” Maria Eismont, one of Mr. Kara-Murza’s lawyers, said outside of the court, according to Sota, a Russian news outlet. She said the verdict will be appealed.

Mr. Kara-Murza’s mother, Yelena, told Sota after the hearing that she felt like “she woke up in a Kafka novel.”

“We live in 2023, in the 21st century, what is this, what is happening,” she told Sota.

An activist, historian and journalist, Mr. Kara-Murza, 41, has for years been one of the most uncompromising voices against Mr. Putin and had long drawn the Kremlin’s ire, surviving what he characterized several years ago as two state-sponsored attempts to poison him.

Shortly after Mr. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Mr. Kara-Murza, who contributes to the opinion section of The Washington Post, gave a number of speeches in the United States and Europe strongly condemning the invasion.

Though many supporters advised him not to come back to Russia, Mr. Kara-Murza continued to work in the country. He was detained there last April while on a trip to Moscow and accused of disobeying police orders. He was sentenced to administrative arrest, during which the authorities charged him with spreading “fake” information about the Russian Army. He was later charged with taking part in an “undesirable organization” and treason. The verdict on Monday combined all of the charges into one sentence.

The trial, which human-rights organizations decried as politically motivated, took place behind closed doors. Neither the prosecutors nor the investigators presented any evidence in public that would support the treason charge. Vadim Prokhorov, Mr. Kara-Murza’s lawyer, said in a post on Facebook in October that the treason charge related to public statements made in the United States and Europe which criticized the Kremlin.

On Monday, the United Nations human rights office decried Mr. Kara-Murza’s sentencing as “a blow to the rule of law" while Hugh Williamson, the Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, called it “a travesty of justice.”

The U.S. State Department condemned the sentence and said Mr. Kara-Murza was “yet another target of the Russian government’s escalating campaign of repression.” Britain’s Foreign Office said it had summoned the Russian ambassador in London to protest what it described as a “politically motivated” conviction that runs “contrary to Russia’s international obligations on human rights, including the right to a fair trial.” In March, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned three individuals, including a judge and an investigator, involved in prosecuting Mr. Kara-Murza.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman refused to comment on the sentence.

During pretrial detention, Mr. Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dual national, said that he had been denied the right to call his family and his health began to deteriorate rapidly.

In his final address to the court before the verdict last week, Mr. Kara-Murza likened the current climate in Russia to the terror of the Stalin era.

“The day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate,” he told a Moscow courtroom. “When black will be called black, and white will be called white; when at the official level, it will be recognized that two times two is still four; when a war will be called a war, and a usurper a usurper.”

How It's Done

This is how you do it, BTW. There's been some snarky japery online about how Thunberg was joking with the cops and kinda jockeying for good camera angles - implying she wasn't serious about it and so that proved she was "just doing it for the publicity".

Well - yeah - that's how you do this kinda thing. You're not there looking to pick a fight. You're not there to hurt anybody, or to get hurt. You're there to bring a little attention to what you think is an injustice of some kind.

Getting arrested is part of the deal.

It may seem a little weird that there are rules on how you go about breaking the rules, but that's how civilized honorable people behave.

Greta Thunberg detained by the Norwegian police

during pro-Sami protest this Wednesday, March 1

OSLO (Reuters) -Environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg was twice detained during a demonstration in support of Indigenous rights in Oslo on Wednesday, with police removing her and other activists from the finance ministry and later the environment ministry.

Thunberg had on Monday joined protesters demanding the removal of 151 wind turbines from reindeer pastures used by Sami herders in central Norway. They say a transition to green energy should not come at the expense of Indigenous rights.

The demonstrators have in recent days blocked access to some government buildings, putting the centre-left minority government in a crisis mode and prompting Energy Minister Terje Aasland to call off an official visit to Britain.

Norway's supreme court ruled in 2021 that the turbines, erected on two wind farms at Fosen and part of Europe's largest onshore wind power complex, violated Sami rights under international conventions, but they remain in operation more than 16 months later.

- more -

Vote Him Away

YouTuber - Roy Zimmerman (and The ReZisters)

On That Rioting Thing

Branden Michael Wolfe

Mercury News:

A St. Paul security guard was wearing stolen police gear when he was arrested Wednesday, six days after he’s accused of helping to burn down the Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd Precinct during riots following the death of George Floyd.

Branden Michael Wolfe, 23, was fired June 3 from his security job at Menards on University Avenue after the store learned of social media reports that identified him as a participant in the May 28 rioting.

A Menards employee called police after Wolfe tried to enter the store later that day wearing stolen body armor and a law enforcement duty belt and carrying a police baton, according to a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court.anden Michael Wolfe.(Courtesy of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office)

St. Paul police found him in a vehicle several miles from the store, still wearing the body armor and duty belt, which was affixed with handcuffs, a baton, a knife and an ear piece. His name was handwritten on duct tape attached to the back of the body armor, according to the complaint.

In a police interview, Wolfe admitted he stoked the 3rd Precinct fire by pushing a wooden barrel into the flames.

He also reportedly admitted to stealing several items from inside and identified himself in multiple photographs that showed a man standing in front of the East Lake Street precinct holding a police baton as the building burned behind him.

Was the whole "rioting" thing a put on by agents provocateur? Of course not.

But there's an obvious attempt going on to paint the demonstrations as "left wing mob violence", and that's just not true.

“Radical left-wing mobs seek to tear down our monuments & our memorials—everyone from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass & even Gandhi. Misguided movements such as ‘Defund the Police’ seek to leave our communities more vulnerable than ever.” -@PressSec pic.twitter.com/nvbv2lbdgX

— GOP (@GOP) July 7, 2020

From Dictatorship To Democracy

The Atlantic (pay wall):

Sharp’s foundational insight is embedded in an aphorism: “Obedience is at the heart of political power.” A dictator doesn’t maintain power on his own; he relies on individuals and institutions to carry out his orders. A successful democratic revolution prods these enablers to stop obeying. It makes them ashamed of their complicity and fearful of the social and economic costs of continued collaboration.

Sharp posited that revolutionaries should focus first on the regime’s softest underbelly: the media, the business elites, and the police. The allegiance of individuals in the outer circle of power is thin and rooted in fear. By standing strong in the face of armed suppression, protesters can supply examples of courage that inspire functionaries to stop carrying out orders, or as Sharp put it, to “withhold cooperation.” Each instance of resistance provides the model for further resistance. As the isolation of the dictators grows—as the inner circles of power join the outer circle in withholding cooperation—the regime crumbles.

Fallout

It's not all 45*'s fault. He didn't personally bring COVID-19 to us, and he didn't spread this contagion across the country all by himself. Don't be daft.

But he failed to recognize the emergency, and it's possible that part of the failure was deliberate - because he wanted desperately not to have it reflect badly on him.

And then he fucked up the response by trying to monetize the thing, and let his radical Shock Doctrine devotees take a crack at demonstrating how much more efficient and effective "the private sector" is when compared with dumb ol' gubmint.

(Remember, dear - Karma's only a bitch when you are)

So, it's not unreasonable to say that the worst of the pandemic - and the worst of the fallout resulting from the pandemic - are, in fact, his fucking fault.

WaPo:

The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent in April, the highest level since the Great Depression, as most businesses shut down or severely curtailed operations to try and limit the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

The jobless rate was pushed higher because 20.5 million people lost their jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday, wiping out a decade of job gains in a single month. The staggering losses are roughly double what the nation experienced during the 2007-09 crisis, which used to be described as the harshest economic contraction most people ever endured. Now that has been quickly dwarfed by the fallout from the global pandemic.

- and -

“This is pretty scary,” said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel. “I’m fearful many of these jobs are not going to come back and we are going to have an unemployment rate well into 2021 of near 10 percent.”

The sudden economic contraction has forced millions of Americans to turn to food banks and seek government aid for the first time or stop paying rent and other bills. As they go without paychecks for weeks, some have also lost health insurance and even put their homes up for sale.

Also WaPo:

Louise Lara apologized for crying as she told her story. The 54-year-old single mom had just listed her home in the Florida Panhandle as “for sale by owner,” the latest sign that her middle-class life is slipping away amid the nation’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Lara’s saga, like that of so many other Americans, began March 20 when she was furloughed from her longtime job at a spa. The furlough was supposed to be temporary, but it doesn’t look that way now. The resort she worked for just notified her that her health insurance will terminate at the end of the month. She has spent hours on Florida’s deeply flawed unemployment website. She hasn’t received any money despite six weeks of calls and daily log-ins. She even mailed in a paper application. With money running short, she’s putting her home on the market and applying for food stamps.

“It’s a terrifying, terrifying situation,” said Lara, who tried to get a grocery store job but was told there’s a hiring freeze. “I am at the end of my finances.”

Millions of us have been sliding down the ladder into "the lower classes" for a very long time.

Up until now, that descent for most folks has been slow enough that they've been able to adapt fairly well.

This is the big drop - sudden and precipitous.

Maybe now we get an idea of how bad we've been getting fucked - and for how long.

But maybe now is not the time to start feeling the burdens of it all. Because that's what the Daddy State wants. They slam us in the head until we're dazed and confused, and then they "lead" us into the worst fucking aspects of plutocracy and dictatorship anyone can imagine.

Maybe now we get up on our hind legs and really start fighting back.

How You Do It

I've seen this phenomenon play out in a coupla different ways in my experience. And in one very important instance, it came into very sharp focus for me.

I don't need to recount the details here, but it involved my sales-y struggles with a very powerful clinical academic who was always busting my chops about my product and my company's founder "trading on his standing in the medical community, trying to leverage money out of his colleagues..." 

My partner/assistant - a strong-willed woman - just looked at him with a slightly cocked eyebrow at the end of one of his rants, and said - "Oh c'mon, Steve". And that was kinda the end of the fight - actually it was the end of the war, as the good doctor became very cooperative thereafter.

She "mommed" him.

Sometimes, it's basically as "simple" as a woman just standing up and saying, "Stop - what you're doing is bullshit - get real".

Sometimes, it has to be pretty forceful.

And I don't know why it seems like it works for a woman when it almost never works for a man.

But I'll say it again: Women will help us save ourselves if we can figure out how to keep our mouths shut and stay the fuck outa their way.

Don't Get Happy

I'll take a nickel for every time somebody's tried to patronize me with something like - 

"Oh, Mike - you're so angry..." 
or 
"Geez, how can you live your life with such hatred in your heart?" 
or 
"Man, you gotta lighten up - you're gonna give yourself a stroke..." 
or
"Don't you just get tired of being so upset about everything all day every day?"

My main question in response is: Why would I not make every possible sacrifice in defense of my country?

No - I'm not tired at all - not even close.

• I will stay angry.
• I will maintain this healthy level of outrage.
• I will not normalize an illegitimate presidency.
• I will not be silent in the face of racism and other attempts to Divide-n-Conquer.
• I will not accede to a president who is corrupt and morally bereft.
• I will not stop defending democracy.
• I will not stop resisting efforts to replace our form of self-government with plutocracy.
• I will not stop telling the Daddy State to fuck off.

hat tip = @ananavarro

3.5%

Don't let the gun nuts fool ya.

The 2nd amendment is not - and has never been - about an armed citizenry being able to resist its own tyrannical government.

Non-cooperation:

They can have my dead broken body, but not my obedience.

Refresher

Guns guns guns. Kill tear rip shred.

Fuck that shit.

Today's Today

This year, April 2nd marks the day when American women start their Income Year - as compared with American men, who always start their Income Year on Jan 1st.

Privilege is not a system that makes your life easy. It's a system that doesn't put artificial obstacles in your path that make it harder for you to reach some proximate equality with people who're supposed to be your peers.

Unafraid

"I wasn't in favor of rounding up brown people and putting their children in cages, but then I saw a liberal being rude on TV, so I'm here to vote the straight GOP ticket because now I think we should go ahead and kill them all - that'll show those Democrats."

Oh no - don't make 45*'s base mad - they'll turn out and vote, and it'll just get worse.

It's bullshit, even though it's not total bullshit. Getting mad in the face of your legitimate criticism is a predictable reaction of the abusive Daddy State asshole - time-honored, tried-n-true, and it's the first thing they do every fuckin' time outa the box. They do it because it works.

We may indeed feel fear because we've already seen some of what they're capable of doing - the utter depravity they seem to embrace as part of a political strategy.

Your fears are real. The danger is real. 45* has already been signaling the possibility that Americans will start to die some time after the midterms.

The point though is that we have to stand and face it anyway. Because the good news is that a fair bit of that red-faced spittle-flecked anger on the part of the MAGA rubes and Lord Commander Bone Spurs is bluff and bluster.

More than anything else, bullies need to see you cower. Take away the power of the threat - making them put up or shut up - and an awful lot of this bullshit just falls away.

Paraphrasing the little brown man in the funny clothes:
They may arrest me; fine me; take away my possessions. They may put me in prison; torture me, and beat me until they kill me. Then they will have my dead broken body - but they will never have my obedience.

Some bullies are just natural born dicks, always looking to blow things up and knock people down. But they're the exception. Most bullies operate under a false sense of righteousness, thinking they're being reluctant heroes. Challenge that mindset - just telling them they're wrong; that they were lied to - and they can become confused, and downright docile.

I've seen it. I've done it - on more than a couple of occasions. And I've not gotten my ass kicked.

Yet.

Today's Daddy State Lesson

Daddy State Awareness, rule 3:

Every prediction of dire consequences is a threat - either they're causing that dire consequence now so they can blame us for problems of their own doing, or they plan on causing it later in order to manipulate us into doing what they want now.

So let's see what they're up to, shall we?

Jeff Stein, WaPo:

Two U.S. Senators — Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) — are applying for federal money under a $12 billion bailout program set up by the White House to help farmers hurt by trade hostilities, spokespeople from their offices said.

Grassley pressed the Trump administration this spring to relieve farmers who have been pummeled by Chinese tariffs on their exports amid the wider trade war. Tester has also criticized the impact of the tariffs on farmers and called on the administration to help Montana ranchers.

The Agriculture Department confirmed last week it has already sent more than 7,800 bailout checks totaling over $25 million to farmers across the country. The assistance is intended to help farmers survive the trade war with China, which has dramatically widened in scope this month after the U.S. announced it would target another $200 billion in Chinese goods.

And then, a little classic double-speak:

“Sen. Grassley participates in farm programs for which he is legally eligible, including this program, like every other farmer,” said the spokesman, Michael Zona. “Grassley receives no special treatment and is always transparent about his participation. As a family farmer, Sen. Grassley brings firsthand knowledge and experience on behalf of agriculture and rural America to the policymaking tables in Washington.”

How many times have we heard some variation of this:

"The republic will stand...until the populace discover the ability to vote themselves benefits from the public treasury..." ?

Radical Libertarians (people who were once quaintly referred to as "conservatives") have been using that quote as a defensive weapon against us for a long time.

It's part of the overall strategy to delegitimize government at every level - and the very concept of democratic self-governance - to plant the notion that getting together, pooling our resources, and trying to do anything that's best for the most is the "evil of the collective".

They've been teaching huge segments of Americans to be afraid of each other, and to look to "their superiors" for marching orders.

Liberty Hill

The women will save us - from ourselves - again.

Karen Collins is a grandmother, and award-winning quilter with deep Texas roots. She never cared much about politics until the 2016 election. Now her retirement has a new sense of purpose.

Liberty Hill from K&A on Vimeo.

A Poem

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

PROTEST

To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticise oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and childbearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.

On Being An Ally

NPR:

White people policing black presence is not new. I think it's safe to say it had been tamped down a bit, but lately it seems to be making quite the comeback.

And I don't think it's just because we can be made aware of it more easily. SPLC documents a pretty significant rise in the incidence of "hate crimes", coinciding neatly with the growing popularity of  - oh, I dunno - Donald Fucking Trump(?)

Anyway, "If you see something, say something" is a favorite meme of the Daddy State. We can flip that script and use it to hold these authoritarian assholes accountable.

Today's Tweet

This is resistance.

WHAT A HERO:

"Hi, (to Scott Pruitt)

I just wanted to urge you to resign...

This is my son, he loves animals....

He loves clean air...

He loves clean water...

**reads list of Pruitt's crimes/failures**

So, I would urge you to resign

before your scandals push you out." pic.twitter.com/CRETdb13sB

— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) July 3, 2018

Today's Chart

From Pew Research:

Events unique to the history of individual countries cannot be ignored when considering why publics are more positive or negative about how the present compares with 50 years ago. However, our analysis also indicates that views of the current economy are a strong indicator of whether people say life for people like them is better today than it was 50 years ago, even when controlling for the demographic factors of income, education, gender and age. Indeed, across the countries analyzed, people with positive views of the current economy are 30 percentage points more likely than those with negative views to say life has improved for people like them.1

In general, countries that are more upbeat about their national economy are more likely to say life today is better compared with the past. For example, in Vietnam, where 91% say economic conditions are good, a corresponding 88% say life is better for people like them compared with 50 years ago. And in Venezuela, where only 20% say conditions are good, 10% say life is better for people like them. Overall, the correlation between economic assessments and views of the past is quite strong (+0.68).

I got ridiculously lucky, but almost 50 years ago, my high school diploma was enough to start me on a 40-year trip thru a career that put me in the top 3% of income-earners.

My kids will probably never know such things firsthand.

I don't know how to fix it. And there's never a guarantee that it can be fixed. But the one thing that will never fix it is allowing government to remain in the hands of people who are determined to keep us from even trying to fix it.

Resist

Resistance (of the non-violent kind) is what works best.

...and no authoritarian regime has ever be able to stay in power when just 3.5% of its population was in active resistance to it.

Coffee Cast

A new one for me.  Pretty "hard left" (not that there's anything wrong with it).

This episode features Blue Gal and driftglass. Mighty fine.