Opinion: Zelensky’s message of defiance

“As he has with different audiences, Zelensky tailor-made his message. Think about being struck from the sky, as on 9/11, however day by day, he instructed People. He spoke about Pearl Harbor, and he cited Martin Luther King. ‘I’ve a dream …,’ he intoned, I can say, I’ve a necessity. I want to guard our sky,” Ghitis famous.

Educate the youngsters

“It is a world-shaking second in historical past,” SE Cupp noticed, “one that may outline a technology, one that would change our maps, and one that’s already seeing horrific loss and devastation.” She is ensuring to indicate her 7-year-old son among the information protection of the Ukraine warfare.

As Jill Filipovic identified, “No photos have captured the hellishness of warfare fairly as starkly as these taken within the aftermath of Russian troops bombing a maternity hospital in Mariupol. In a single photograph, a pregnant girl with a bloodied face is staggering out of a bombed constructing; in one other, an ashen-faced girl lays on a stretcher, her left hand cradling her full stomach. The girl within the second photograph and her child have now each died of their accidents.”

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Russia’s invasion

When Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine on February 24, many individuals anticipated that Russia’s army, thought of the second strongest on the earth, would roll over Ukraine in a matter of days. That hasn’t occurred.

In a dialog with CNN nationwide safety analyst Peter Bergen, retired US Gen. David Petraeus assessed the warfare to this point. “There are numerous causes for the Russians’ abysmal efficiency,” Petraeus stated. “They’re preventing in opposition to a really decided, fairly succesful Ukrainian pressure that’s composed of particular ops, standard forces, territorial forces and even personal residents, all of whom are decided to not enable Russia to realize its goals. They’re preventing for his or her nationwide survival, their homeland and their lifestyle, they usually have the home-field benefit, figuring out the terrain and communities.

“However past that, the Russians are simply surprisingly unprofessional. They clearly have very poor requirements relating to performing fundamental tactical duties corresponding to reaching mixed arms operations, involving armor, infantry, engineers, artillery and mortars. They’re very poor at sustaining their automobiles and weapon programs and have deserted lots of them. They’re additionally poor at resupply and logistical duties.”

Wanting forward, Petraeus noticed, “Clearly, they don’t have sufficient forces to take, a lot much less to manage, Kyiv and among the different main cities, however they do have missiles, rockets, artillery, and bombs and an obvious willingness to make use of them in a really indiscriminate vogue.”

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Nuclear nightmare

For many years, among the most eloquent and knowledgeable voices warning of the hazards of nuclear weapons have been physicians, amongst them Dr. Ira Helfand, previous president of Worldwide Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear Battle, which gained the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.

There are about 13,000 nuclear warheads all over the world. “Specialists have been decrying these hundreds of nuclear weapons as an ongoing existential risk to humanity even earlier than Russian President Vladimir’s Putin’s latest warnings that he might use Russia’s nuclear weapons … A nuclear warfare between Russia and NATO allies can be an unimaginable tragedy.” In a nightmare state of affairs the place 300 bombs are deployed, 75 to 100 million individuals would die the primary day, with the overwhelming majority of survivors dying “over the approaching months from radiation illness, infectious illnesses, famine and publicity,” the physicians wrote.

A serving to hand

In April 1999, then Vice President Al Gore introduced on Ellis Island that the US would soak up as much as 20,000 refugees from Kosovo, who have been fleeing Serbian assaults, recalled Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, which was based because the Hebrew Immigrant Help Society.

Greater than three million individuals have fled Ukraine “however this time, there was no Ellis Island announcement.” He famous that Vice President Kamala Harris talked of serving to Poland with the wave of refugees coming into the nation whereas President Joe Biden solely spoke of taking refugees on a conditional foundation: “If, actually, they arrive all the best way right here.”

Fallen journalists

Brent Renaud, a filmmaker engaged on a undertaking about refugees for Time journal’s studio unit, was shot and killed by Russian troopers exterior Kyiv on Sunday, stated the deputy chief of police in Irpin. Photojournalist Juan Arredondo additionally was injured within the taking pictures.

In Time, Sebastian Junger remembered Renaud as “a highly-regarded freelancer who labored everywhere in the world documenting among the most violent and inhuman circumstances civilians are subjected to, together with desperately poor areas of Chicago.”

Oily politics

The cruelest irony of the Ukraine warfare, wrote Aaron David Miller, is that “whilst President Joe Biden’s administration stands up for Ukraine within the face of Russia’s aggression and preaches the values of democracy and freedom, it’s underneath growing stress to make good and reduce offers with authoritarians.”

With oil costs growing, the warfare has deepened concern about provides from “three authoritarian petro-states (Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) and elevated the urgency of attending to a nuclear settlement with a fourth, Iran.”

Spring ahead no extra?

“The speed of coronary heart assaults spikes by 24% within the days following ‘spring ahead’ in March, in line with a 2014 examine from the College of Michigan.” They argued that there are additionally financial and psychological well being advantages from a everlasting shift to DST.

Within the Washington Publish, Dana Milbank described the Senate’s passage of the invoice as an accident. “There have been no hearings, no dialogue, no debate, and no vote,” he wrote. “It simply occurred, as a result of no person objected — largely as a result of many senators did not even comprehend it was occurring.”

“Reporting by The Publish’s Paul Kane and BuzzFeed’s Paul McLeod signifies Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), prime Republican on the commerce committee, had deliberate to object to the ‘unanimous consent’ request to go what he calls ‘unhealthy laws,’ however determined to not on the final minute as a result of he is centered on extra urgent issues, such because the warfare in Ukraine.”

Now it is as much as the Home and President Biden to resolve if the invoice will change into regulation.

‘Turning Pink’

Within the Pixar movie “Turning Pink,” anytime the lead character “will get riled up, she transforms right into a cuddly, gigantic purple panda.” As Vanessa Hua wrote, “‘Turning Pink’ makes the struggles of this explicit 13-year-old common as she learns who she is and desires to be — in the end embracing her purple panda exuberance.”

“The movie is among the many many films and novels launched lately that painting characters of Asian descent as totally human — flawed, eccentric and dreaming of a much bigger life…” Such depictions resonate at a time when hate incidents in opposition to Asian People and Pacific Islanders have spiked. It has been a yr for the reason that Atlanta spa shootings, through which a White gunman killed eight individuals, six of whom have been ladies of Asian descent. Prosecutors are treating the case as a hate crime.

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March insanity

Christmas morning cannot examine with Michael Croley‘s favourite time of yr, the primary weekend of March Insanity. “Earlier than the web, Dad introduced brackets house from his workplace for us to fill out — all the time Xeroxed copies from the Monday version of Lexington Herald-Chief,” Croley wrote. “Once I was ten, I gained, and Dad introduced house all of the money and handed it to me.”

Croley’s older brother Tim typically shared the ritual of watching the NCAA match with him, as they munched on wings and rooted for the College of Kentucky’s Wildcats so long as they have been nonetheless in it.

A yr in the past, Croley added, “As Tim’s well being worsened, neither of us crammed out a bracket. We watched the video games and we texted. I did not know then that I might by no means fill out a bracket once more. I did not know then that I might by no means spend one other lengthy day with him, watching video games deep into the evening, barely in a position to preserve our eyes open however nonetheless at it as a result of it was March, a recreation was in additional time and a 13-seed had a 4-seed on the ropes.

“I hoped in opposition to what widespread sense and medical science instructed us since he was first recognized with lung most cancers as a result of hope was all we had left by then.”

Do not miss

AND…

Dangerous enterprise

Title your streaming service, choose your story of fakery and enterprise gone improper:

Hulu: “The Dropout”

Apple TV+: “WeCrashed”

Showtime: “Tremendous Pumped”

Netflix: “Inventing Anna”

HBOMax: “Succession”

The newest episode of “The Dropout” featured actor Amanda Seyfried, who performs Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, proclaiming that her firm was “a faith.” The fictional Apple+ collection “Severance” made it clearer than ever final week that the mysterious Lumon firm is a cult whereas a trailer for “WeCrashed” confirmed its protagonist Adam Neumann of WeWork, performed by Jared Leto, evaluating himself to God.

a couple of of those exhibits via the lens of historical past, Nicole Hemmer wrote that the themes they discover aren’t completely new, discovering antecedents in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” the 1955 novel “The Man within the Grey Flannel Swimsuit” and movies and exhibits together with “The Workplace” and “Workplace House.”

Traders appear “to haven’t any method of discerning the distinction between visionary and fantastical, and … the least scrupulous stroll away with probably the most cash, even after their ventures fail. After all, enterprise capital additionally fuels the businesses that succeed.”