Ukraine is holding its own, but the decline of support from the west is causing them to have to ration.
The destruction of a Russian ship noted in the video below and one last week has kept the civilian shipping lanes open. The reporter says that ships are in and out of Odessa which is “bustling” at the moment. But if the Russians can close it up we will have severe supply chain issues again, particularly affecting the price of food. The nihilists in the Republican Party tried to sabotage the economy for eight years under Obama, and many of them would be perfectly fine sabotaging the global economy to win an election. Will voters hold Republicans accountable if the Ukrainian defense line falls apart?
Sohum Parlance II 
26 comments
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February 14, 2024 at 4:42 pm
Henchman Of Justice
Reckless is funding other culture wars EK, but we know you like war, since war pays those who EK supports…
February 14, 2024 at 4:46 pm
Henchman Of Justice
… and at last check, EK has never volunteered his own wealth up for aid to Ukraine, as the local attorney is quite ecstatic politicians steal from those folks too who disagree with EK…
… must be fulfilling to know one’s politics is funded by the opposition…
February 15, 2024 at 5:07 am
Just Watchin
magoo got so indignant, but forgot that these things are easily checked…..
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/biden-attacked-hur-asking-beau-died-didnt-happen-sources-say-rcna138709
February 15, 2024 at 5:26 am
Jon Yalcinkaya
Important article in NYT today about teaching Israeli/Palestinian conflict in CA high schools under the upcoming ethnic studies curriculum. Lots of “some say” criticisms of power dynamics or comparisons to settler colonialism or “land grabs” is antisemitic but very little attribution. My guess is I know where the SoHum lines are drawn on this.
California has grand ambitions for ethnic studies. By 2025, the state’s public high schools — about 1,600 of them — must teach the subject. By 2030, students won’t be able to graduate high school without it.
For policymakers, a goal is to give California students, 80 percent of whom are nonwhite, the opportunity to study a diverse array of cultures. Research has shown that ethnic studies classes can raise grades and attendance for teenagers at risk of dropping out.
But even in a liberal state like California, scholars, parents and educators have found themselves at odds over how to adapt the college-level academic discipline for high school students, especially because of its strong views on race and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While the name “ethnic studies” might bring to mind a broad exploration of how ethnicity and race shape the human experience, the discipline, as taught in universities, is narrower — and more ideological.
,,,
Ethnic studies focuses on four groups: Black Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans. It aims to critique various forms of oppression and spur students to take action, often drawing analogies across disparate expanses of time and geography. The Palestinian experience of displacement is central to that exercise, and has been compared by some scholars to the Native American experience.
In reworking ethnic studies for high school, California came up with a 700-page model curriculum that captures much of the discipline’s leftist, activist spirit. But it added the stories of other ethnic groups, including Jewish Americans, while eliminating discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It said lessons should include “multiple perspectives” on political issues.
…
Now some prominent ethnic studies scholars and educators say the state has bowed to political critics and censored their field. They are promoting a competing vision, which they call “liberated ethnic studies.” It is truer to how the subject is taught in colleges, but more politically fraught. It largely excludes the histories of ethnic groups, including Jews, who are typically understood as white within the discipline’s context. (Arab American studies is defined as fitting into Asian American studies.) And it offers lessons that are critical of Israel — and, some argue, antisemitic.
A number of California school districts are working with curriculum consultants who embrace liberated ethnic studies, while other districts are drawing upon these materials in creating their own classes.
…
Ethnic studies grew out of student activism at Bay Area colleges in the late 1960s, when Black, Latino, Asian and Native American students went on strike to demand more focus on their groups’ histories and cultures.
Some activists were part of the Third World Liberation Front, a student group that linked racial segregation and discrimination in the United States to colonialism, imperialism and militarism across the globe.
For early scholars and students of ethnic studies, pro-Palestinian activism was also crucial, said Keith Feldman, chair of comparative ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Israel had recently captured Gaza and the West Bank, after defeating Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.
And some ethnic studies scholars have argued that the 1948 founding of Israel, in the immediate wake of the Holocaust, was part of the same general pattern of settler colonialism that brought white Europeans to the Americas and led to the displacement and genocide of Native Americans.
…
Those frameworks are “central to the ethnic studies approach,” said Dylan Rodriguez, an ethnic studies scholar at the University of California, Riverside.
Ethnic studies is not “a descriptive curriculum that speaks to various ethnic and racial groups’ experiences,” Professor Rodriguez said. “That is a bland form of multiculturalism.”
Instead, the discipline “is a critical analysis of the way power works in societies,” he said. (Amen)
For those reasons, several ethnic studies scholars said in interviews, the Palestinian cause should be included in high school classes. It was important, they said, to stand in solidarity with Palestinian American students.
For critics, ethnic studies frameworks — such as categorizing Israeli Jews as European settlers — flatten the Jewish experience in ways that are inaccurate and, some argue, antisemitic.
About half of Israeli Jews identify as Mizrahi, meaning they have lived for hundreds or even thousands of years in the Middle East. And some Jews have always lived on the land that is now Israel, before 1948, among a Palestinian Arab majority.
There is a broad range of views in the Jewish community as to whether and when critique of Israel veers into antisemitism. Some draw a line at suggesting that Israel does not have the right to exist as a Jewish state.
“It’s not appropriate to teach students that Jews are colonizers and have engaged in, quote, ‘land-grabbing,’” said James Pasch, senior director for national litigation at the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group. “That course content will spread antisemitism throughout our high schools.”
When Professor Rodriguez was asked if students enrolled in ethnic studies classes should encounter a competing perspective of Israel’s founding — as a refuge for an oppressed people with deep roots in the region — he acknowledged Jewish ties to the land, and said he was not opposed to assigning writing by Zionists.
But he contested the notion of ideological balance in the curriculum, saying, “It creates false equivalences.” He then asked if creationism should be covered in biology classes, or climate change denialism in environmental science.
Asked if he was comparing Zionism to creationism or climate change denial, Professor Rodriguez responded, “Analogies are not comparisons. I am not saying these are the same thing.”
“A rigorous study of the creation of Israel,” he added, “requires a painful coming to terms with certain historic facts. I would analogize that to learning the history of slavery.”
Lots more specifics but in sum, it seems to me the power dynamics, and I realize that this is encroaching on an antisemitic trope, but this is what is happening, are such that the conflict, even in an ethnic studies class will be sanitized to avoid describing the asymmetry of power and what that means for Palestinians both inside and out of Israel.
February 15, 2024 at 5:28 am
Jon Yalcinkaya
Posting this might be encroaching on an antisemitic trope.
In September, the Anti-Defamation League and several other Jewish groups sued the district on procedural grounds to prevent that material from being taught. A spokesman for the district said he could not comment on ongoing litigation, but noted that the course has not been offered, and that content was still being finalized.
February 15, 2024 at 5:44 am
Jon Yalcinkaya
The article ends with this from Scott Weiner…
Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator who helped craft the anti-bias guardrails, said he still supports ethnic studies, including lessons about Palestinian American immigrants.
“But,” he added, “picking one foreign conflict to teach intensively about and demonize one side — that is the home of one-half of all Jews on the planet — is very problematic.”
But there’s the rub isn’t it? That’s the line between describing what is and antisemitism. Is the problem ultimately that Israel is seen, or is, a Jewish state?
February 15, 2024 at 5:53 am
Henchman Of Justice
reckless is illegals in congress, so Fox prints,
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/illegal-immigration-major-impact-house-seats-electoral-college-experts
February 15, 2024 at 5:56 am
Henchman Of Justice
allied nations intentionally made jews an international problem, go figure voter dummies…
February 15, 2024 at 6:33 am
Anonymous
Ukraine aid:
“Let me be clear about something,” Biden said. “We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores, our own stockpiles with new equipment.”
“Equipment that defends America and is made in America. Patriot missiles for air defense batteries, made in Arizona. Artillery shells manufactured in 12 states across the country, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas.”
[ Politico, 11/29/2023 ]
The article also includes a map detailing the budget portion of each US State. Biden also repeated the above this week.
February 15, 2024 at 3:50 pm
John
The people complaining that we are sending too much money to Ukraine are foolish.
To allow Russia to win will have terrible consequences for decades to come as an embolden Russia will know we are a paper tiger. It will eventually cost us a hundred times what the aid will cost us now.
$100 billion ? $200 billion ? Whatever it takes.
The only way I can vote for Biden in November is if Trump threatens to cut Ukraine off.
February 15, 2024 at 4:15 pm
Just Watchin
Didn’t obama give putin Crimea ?
February 15, 2024 at 5:32 pm
Henchman Of Justice
The money threat is all politics by John, who just throws out scare #’s…
…giving other cultures our tax dollars is destroying USA from within, and Putin understands that…
the national debt.. not getting paid down as it should be when our tax dollars fund foreign wars!
Choosing a president based solely on aiding foreigners or not is un-American…
… it is a chuckle when un-americans complain about UBI, but then decide the same tax funds should be spent in other cultures’ wars… .
math: 330+ million people @ 1000 per month is just over 3% of a typical annual budget… 1.5% if compared to just last year or so…funding foreign wars is just under 1% of budget…
… number of homeless = less than 1 million (700k) + those not in any DATA… clearly not all 330 million +… and as such, just adjusts more favorably when comparing wasted funds on war instead of homelessness…
FIGURE: 1/300th of budget @ $1,000 per month…vastly less than the 1% foreign war aide + amenities, other freebies not tracked in data form provided to foreign cultures…
330 million * 1000 =
three hundred thirty billion
1/300th factorization:
(1 / 300) * (US$ 330 billion) =
1.1 billion US
In constant dollars, U.S. foreign aid obligations jumped from $56.3 billion in 2021 to $70.4 billion in 2022, the latest year for which final data is available from a federal tracker.
February 15, 2024 at 5:40 pm
Anonymous
John, the GOP is blocking aid to Ukraine, at Trump’s behest, right now.
February 15, 2024 at 5:41 pm
Just Watchin
Whitehouse creates a fear frenzy that russia has nukes in space, then does this…..
February 15, 2024 at 5:51 pm
Henchman Of Justice
for last year, at over 6 trillion budget, about 6%…
(US$ 330 billion) / 6 trillion =
0.055 US$
correction: 13% above, not 3%
February 15, 2024 at 5:57 pm
Henchman Of Justice
1.5x, not 1.5%… my bad.
February 15, 2024 at 6:01 pm
Anonymous
Obama didn’t “give” Russia anything, Putin invaded. Neither Obama NOR Trump did enough to help Ukraine, because contrary to far right and far left talking points, the US did NOT want things to escalate to full- scale war and did everything possible to avoid it.
But as we now know, Putin has been hell-bent on conquering Ukraine all along, and the attempts to mollify him were misguided. Most Democrats and many Republicans have learned the lesson. Unfortunately the hard line MAGAs that now control the leadership of the GOP in Congress either did not, or actively wish for Russia to succeed in conquering Ukraine. And their leader, Trump, continues to side with Putin, as he has all along.
Everyone knows there are more than enough votes in the House to pass Ukraine aid, which is why the hardline MAGA minority is desperate to block it from getting a floor vote. Trump, Johnson and their cronies are doing Putin’s bidding, thwarting the will of the majority. It’s disgraceful, and history will not be kind to these traitors.
February 16, 2024 at 5:01 am
Just Watchin
Under obama, russia invades ukraine. Under magoo, Russia invades ukraine. Under Trump, Russia doesn’t invades ukraine. Hmmm……
February 16, 2024 at 6:06 am
Just Watchin
Well magoo, putin called your bluff. The world is watching……
February 16, 2024 at 7:08 am
Eric Kirk
I’m waiting for the statement of anger from Trump.
February 16, 2024 at 7:30 am
Just Watchin
Yea…..I miss those mean tweets too……
February 16, 2024 at 10:33 am
Henchman Of Justice
JW…mean is objective… Attorneys at law have perfected being mean… the FBI can affirm as such… as well as being liars…such meanness…
February 17, 2024 at 7:30 am
Just Watchin
I’m sure Mike Johnson would appreciate this, if he thought that magoo had any idea what he was saying……
February 17, 2024 at 11:10 am
Just Watchin
Kinda makes that NY fine look like chump change……
https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/digital-world-shares-surge-us-regulators-clear-way-merger-with-trumps-media-firm-2024-02-15/?fbclid=IwAR01goOnHmw6kz0mNLEvwggRHyqCPOQdIUfzqAf0P7ajijN83Y15n5yWDF8
February 19, 2024 at 12:17 am
Anonymous
Ukraine has lost the war!
February 19, 2024 at 8:29 am
Henchman Of Justice
2 party system voting Americans have lost their minds!
FUCK UKRAINE!