This seems right. https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1500199112859344898?s=21
I don't want to make light of all of this violence and murderous depravity but it occurred to me recently that I cannot precisely recall the last peak of liberal/progressive/educated urbanite Russophilia: was it as far back as Yeltsin and the era of American slackers moving to the former Soviet Union to start careers as tedious opinion journalists? Or has there been some mid-Putin "Russians are so much more soulful and poetic than Americans; the shop clerks don't even try to smile!" phase?
If she was really carrying large quantities of weed on a flight with a scheduled layover in Russia, and hasn't been fitted up, she's clearly too stupid to be allowed out without her mother at this time or any other. Do the Russians have any real motive to fit her up? The suggested exchange sounds a bit thin.
2: There's of course tankie shit that sometimes bubbles up to Jacobin, but since Putin positioned himself as World's #1 Homophobe, I don't think any bien pensant liberals have even been tempted to say anything positive.
I feel like I've seen a lot more attacks on hypothetical tankie shit than actual tankie shit.
3: You mean Griner or the woman from 2019? A vape cartridge isn't great, but it's not 10 grams of pot either.
5. Agreed. I believe it's out there, in recent weeks I've seen some specific examples that were egregious, but it's not part of the dialogue I encounter on my own at all.
This is all horrible, especially since she's a lesbian in Russia, but I don't really have a sense of whether the charges are trumped up or real. Of course they could well be real *and* Russia could try to use her for leverage. It doesn't seem likely to me that some high ranking KGB-types are sitting around saying "Of all the foreigners in Russia right now which is the best one to throw in jail on made up charges so we can have leverage when we invade next month, oh I know a WNBA star." Like they do know that the reason she's playing in Russia in the first place is that the WNBA isn't very popular? Of course marijuana possession shouldn't be a crime, so it's bad.
Could just be CBD oil ( Do not travel with it in this region)
Of all the foreigners in Russia right now which is the best one to throw in jail on made up charges so we can have leverage when we invade next month, oh I know a WNBA star
I agree. Another possibility is a low-level frameup - an inspector looking for a payday from an American - which some higher-ups seized on for potential leverage when they heard about it.
Yeah, or like usually the owner of her team would just bribe someone to get her released, but that didn't work because someone too high level got involved due to the leverage possibility.
5: I was talking about prewar discussion (which was Flip's question). I saw a lot of "both sides are fascist empires" stuff in the first 2-3 days, but even then very little pro-Putin sentiment. Now it's settled down to conspicuously half-hearted condemnations of Russia.
Oh, and stuff like this, from Jacobin's Foreign Editor.
|| Could really use a check in thread so I can rant about what a complete cunt my father is being about getting my uncle's rolltop desk shipped to me?|>
The national DSA had to intervene to walk back some of the none-more-tankie statement of its International Committee, though not far enough imo. Not my circus, at least, and thankfully tankies are pretty rare offline.
I was talking about prewar discussion/i>
Yeah, I do think a lot of people did not actually believe Putin was going to invade and that it was being hyped by western propaganda. While it could be argued that western propaganda does have a rather unsavory track record, this turned out to be a rather huge misdiagnosis of the problem. That perspective seems to have melted away once tanks started to roll.
Then again, I see that Glenn Greenwald is grievously concerned about Ukraine violating the Geneva Conventions by showing POWs on TV.
14: The old one has a good review of Hamilton.
I don't know if Griner is a political prisoner, but she's not just "a WNBA star," she is one of the biggest stars in women's basketball, period. (She was drafted just ahead of a player I have reasons to support, so I've been paying attention to her career for a while even though I'm not really into basketball).
Is the WNBA not the most prestigious women's basketball league? At any rate, you can replace "WNBA star" with "women's basketball star" without changing the intended meaning of my sentence.
What about college players? I'm hardly the one to go by, but NCAA women's basketball is something people watch here and WNBA really isn't something I've seen anyone watch.
Not very much on topic, but I once took a seat at a bar while Ohio State men were playing in the NCAA tournament. Some drunk guys decided that the relationship between my taking that seat and the improved play of Ohio State's was causal. So they bought me beer so I'd stay in that seat for the rest of the game.
The study was under powered but the trend was in support of the intervention having the intended effect.
Sometimes that's the best you can hope for.
Years later, that bartender would see me kick a car in the middle of the street.
One time as a kid my grandparents took me and my brother on a day cruise off the coast of Florida. I guess one reason people do that is so they can gamble once in international waters. My brother and I were walking past the slots when some lady won something and she decided we were good luck so she offered to buy us sodas. But I said no since you're not supposed to take things from strangers.
The simple joys of a monkey knife fight.
Most of those fights are actually kayfabe.
Monkey knife fights only appear more violent in Florida because of their Government in the Sunshine Act.