Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Tonitrus]

I am sympathetic towards a lot of Libertarian ideas...but the people (organized party types) lean heavily fruitcake.

[Caliga]

I am sympathetic towards a lot of Libertarian ideas...but the people (organized party types) lean heavily fruitcake.

I think they used to be semi-sane, but they went full batshit when the Tea Party stuff all started up.

[The Larch]

Brittney Griner freed from Russian prison in exchange for Viktor Bout
Basketball star released as US agrees to free convicted arms dealer in dramatic prisoner swap

Russia freed the jailed US basketball star Brittney Griner on Thursday in a dramatic high-level prisoner exchange for the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, who had been held in a US prison for 12 years.

Joe Biden, who had made Griner's release a top priority after she spent almost 10 months in jail on drugs charges, said in an address from the White House he had spoken with Griner and found her "in good spirits".

"She's safe, she's on a plane, she's on her way home after months of being unjustly detained in Russia, held under intolerable circumstances," he said. "Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones and she should have been there all along."

But the president expressed regret the deal did not include Paul Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive jailed since December 2018 on espionage charges his family and the US government say are baseless.

Biden said: "Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul's case differently than Brittney's. And while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul's release, we are not giving up. We will never give up."

Griner's wife, Cherelle, stood beside Biden and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and said she was "overwhelmed with emotion".

"The most important emotion that I have right now is just sincere gratitude for President Biden and his entire administration. He just mentioned this work is not easy, and it has not been," she said.

"Today my family is whole, but as you all are aware, there's so many other families who are not whole. [Brittney] is not here to say this but I will gladly speak on her behalf and say that BG and I will remain committed to the work of getting every American home, including Paul, whose family is in our hearts today."

The second such exchange in eight months, following the freeing of Trevor Reed in April, procured the release of the most prominent American detained abroad.

Griner is a two-time Olympic gold medalist whose imprisonment on drug charges brought unprecedented attention to the population of wrongful detainees. She was convicted in August and sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony.

Biden's authorization to release Bout, once nicknamed "the Merchant of Death", underscored the pressure his administration faced to get Griner home, particularly after the resolution of her criminal case and her transfer to a penal colony.

An anonymous US official told CNN that leaving Whelan out of the deal had been "a difficult decision" but "it was a choice to get Brittney or nothing".

The Russian foreign ministry confirmed to state media that Griner had been exchanged for Bout in a secret swap at an airport in Abu Dhabi. The ministry did not give any more details. Lawyers for Griner in Russia did not respond when asked to comment.

A lawyer for Whelan said he had not been approached. But, he added, these swaps were usually worked out behind the scenes by intelligence services.

"Lawyers aren't usually approached with these questions," he told the Guardian. "All these questions are decided by the security services secretly, and we and even the prisoners only find out at the end."

In a statement, Whelan's family said they welcomed the Griner exchange but were "devastated" Whelan was not freed.

Russian and US officials had conveyed cautious optimism after months of negotiations, with Biden saying in November he was hopeful. A top Russian official said last week a deal was possible before year's end. Even so, the fact that the deal was a one-for-one swap was a surprise given that US officials had for months expressed determination to bring home Griner and Whelan.

Bout is a former Soviet lieutenant colonel who the US justice department once described as one of the world's most prolific arms dealers. He was serving a 25-year sentence for conspiring to sell tens of millions of dollars in weapons US officials said were to be used against Americans.

But the detention of one of the greatest players in WNBA history contributed to a swirl of unprecedented public attention for an individual detainee case.

Griner was arrested in February. Her status as an openly gay Black woman, locked up in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LBGTQ+ community, infused racial, gender and social dynamics into her legal saga.

Her case emerged as a major inflection point in US-Russia diplomacy at a time of deteriorating relations prompted by Moscow's war against Ukraine, yielding the highest-level known contact between Washington and Moscow – a call between the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov – in more than five months.

Blinken revealed publicly in July that the US had made a "substantial proposal" for Griner and Whelan. People familiar with it said the US offered Bout. Such a public overture drew a rebuke from the Russians and risked weakening the US hand. But the announcement was meant to communicate that Biden was doing what he could and to pressure the Russians.

The release followed months of negotiations involving Bill Richardson, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, and his top deputy, Mickey Bergman.

Griner was arrested at the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow when officials said they found vape canisters with cannabis oil in her luggage. She pleaded guilty in July, though still faced trial. She said in court she had no criminal intent and the canisters' presence in her luggage was due to hasty packing.

Before being sentenced on 4 August and receiving a punishment her lawyers said was out of line for the offense, Griner apologized "for my mistake that I made and the embarrassment that I brought". She added: "I hope in your ruling it does not end my life."

In May, the US state department designated her as unlawfully detained. A separate trade, the marines veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in a cocaine-trafficking conspiracy, spurred hope of more exchanges.

Whelan has been held since December 2018. The US also classified him as wrongfully detained. He was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison.

His brother, David Whelan, said: "I am so glad that Brittney Griner is on her way home. As the family member of a Russian hostage, I can literally only imagine the joy she will have, being reunited with her loved ones, and in time for the holidays.

"There is no greater success than for a wrongful detainee to be freed and for them to go home. The Biden administration made the right decision to bring Ms Griner home, and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn't going to happen.

"This time, US government officials let us know in advance that Paul would be left behind, unlike last April ... that early warning meant that our family has been able to mentally prepare for what is now a public disappointment for us. And a catastrophe for Paul.

"I do not know if he is aware yet, although he will surely learn from Russian media. Our parents ... will surely speak to him soon."

[grumbler]

Not sure who that is supposed to attack... Just Zelensky or also FDR and Obama? If it is the former, just Zelensky,surely there are better candidates to provide poor company for him. Like Stalin and Khomeini or so.

Is it even attacking anyone?  The words are gibberish, so it isn't clear to me that it isn't saying that Hitler was not a murderous authoritarian psychopath because history has NOT, in fact, "named" him any more than any of the others shown.

[grumbler]

Those complaining about the US swapping for Griner and not "former Marine" Paul Whelan seem to forget that the reason is is a "former" Marine is that he was court-martialed for fraud and larceny and dishonorably discharged.  His conviction was a joke, but he clearly was not the most deserving candidate for the swap.

[The Brain]

A low-level drug smuggler for a "merchant of death"? Bargain 100.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The whole premise is grotesque--it is akin to the drama around getting Bowe Bergdahl back from the Taliban. The principle should be we want Americans who are being unjustly held for political reasons released, and particularly in the case of someone like Bergdahl--a POW. If they are scumbags otherwise or even have some outstanding criminal liability (as Bergdahl did), that should be on us to deal with them in American custody.

There is no real rational principle behind the sentiment of "fuck em", unless you truly believe America has no responsibilities at all to its own citizenry.

[DGuller]

I think we want Russia to have more people who sell off all their military equipment, not less.

[Maladict]

Putin: Only Russia can protect Ukraine from Polish invasion

According to Vladimir Putin, Poland has grand designs on Ukraine and has made the bold claim that Russia is the country's only saving grace. According to Faytuks News, Putin claims that Russia is the only guarantor of Ukraine's territorial integrity.
[...]

Poland needs some new space when the 1871 boundaries are restored in Germany.

[Barrister]

So I ran across an interesting podcast/Youtube series: Making of Modern Ukraine by Timothy Snyder.

It's actually a free class from Yale distributed on the internet, apparently being a general survey of the history of the territory of Ukraine.  This is a topic I am more than a bit familiar with (I have a copy of Ukraine: A History by Orest Subtelny at home, a 1990s-era edition which obviously leaves out almost everything post-USSR) but I'm still finding it fascinating.

But this series was started this fall and is heavily influenced by the war.

I'm three episodes in and Snyder hasn't really gotten into the bread and butter of dates and times, but rather with much broader themes of what does it mean to be a nation, how is a nation formed, and how is Ukraine seen as a nation.  Obviously this is heavily informed by Putin's essay that Ukraine is not a nation, and has always been a part of Russia.  The future episodes do look like they dive into all the details of history though.


One very minor point though - at one point Snyder pats himself on the back saying this is probably the only university course on Ukrainian history in the US, or if it isn't there are probably only two.  That is to say, courses specifically in Ukrainian history, not eastern europe, or that cover Ukrainian history in conjunction with Russian history.  I know he specified in the US, but I could find multiple courses in Ukrainian history (and specifically Ukrainian history) at both my alma mater the U of Manitoba, and at the U of Alberta.

[The Minsky Moment]

Easy solution for Whelan - trade Nick Cage for him.

[OttoVonBismarck]

My guess is Whelan will eventually be released in a spy exchange. If you read on the events leading up to his arrest dude was involved in some shady shit. Sloppy enough I like to think he wasn't an American spy, but he was doing something sketch for someone (maybe he was working to acquire stuff himself for sell) and he got caught.

[Razgovory]

The Libertarian party has been taken over by the Alt-Right.  They played with fire and got burned.

Only a few years after its greatest triumph, the Libertarian Party is collapsing, torn apart by an insurgency of alt-right sympathizers with racist tendencies. Libertarianism, the idea that state power must be absolutely minimized, relies on ideas of individual rights that seem flatly inconsistent with racism. And yet libertarian rhetoric has always had powerful attractions for those who wanted to resist racial equality. How is that possible?

There is in fact a connection, but it is one of psychology and political history rather than logic.

I just published a history of libertarianism. The book is a critical introduction to this ideology, which has done so much to shape American politics. I focused on its major thinkers — Hayek, Friedman, Epstein, Rothbard, Nozick and Rand — and sought to address their strongest arguments. None of them were racists, and most rejected racism vehemently, so I largely ignored the linkage with racism. Yet now it presents itself.

In May, the party was taken over at its national convention by the so-called Mises Caucus, a far-right group, some of whose members have been associated with racist and antisemitic ideas. The caucus is named after the libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises, whose philosophy was pretty crude (as I explained in the book) but who firmly condemned racism.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire tweeted (in a later deleted post) that "America isn't in debt to black people. If anything it's the other way around." Caucus members have called for violent repression of antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters. The new leadership's first and most prominent decision was to remove from the party platform language declaring, "We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant."

As a result, the party is facing mass defections. In 2016, Gary Johnson was the most successful Libertarian presidential candidate in history. He got almost 4.5 million votes (3.3 percent of the votes cast, three times more than any previous Libertarian candidate, including Johnson himself in 2012).

The crackup is in part the result of crass political machinations. The insurgents are funded by donors who have been close to former President Trump, suggesting that the takeover is part of a coordinated Republican stratagem to destroy a party that has been draining away Republican votes. If Trump had gotten every Libertarian vote in 2020, he would have won. The chairman of the New Mexico Libertarian Party wrote that the leadership has "adopted messaging and communications hostile to the principles for which the Libertarian Party was founded, serving no purpose other than to antagonize and embarrass." That may indeed be the purpose. Battles for control of the state party are also happening in Virginia and Massachusetts.

This stratagem would not be possible unless the alt-right people were available for recruitment. There is a reason why they joined the Libertarians instead of the Greens, another third party whose principles are equally antithetical to them.

The connection between libertarianism and race dates back to 1964. After he had the Republican presidential nomination, Barry Goldwater (himself no racist) voted against the Civil Rights Act on libertarian grounds: In a speech co-authored by future Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, he said that "the freedom to associate means the same thing as the freedom not to associate." In so doing, he transformed the Republican coalition. Eisenhower had gotten about 40 percent of the Black vote in 1956; Nixon in 1960, about a third; Goldwater, 6 percent. Goldwater was the first Republican ever to win in Georgia and the first since Reconstruction to carry Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina.  Richard Nixon's eagerness to woo the voters who had supported George Wallace in 1968 consolidated the racial polarization of American politics.

Racism seems to be part of libertarianism's appeal to some Americans. It is easier to oppose government power if you don't like what that power will be used for. Some of the libertarian leadership noticed that and has made racist appeals for decades. Some libertarians even dream of abandoning the state for clusters of self-governing enclaves, some of which could be all white. Ayn Rand called racism "the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism." But her condemnation of unproductive, parasitic "moochers" has more resonance when you think you know who those people are.

Libertarianism offers a peculiar vision of the heroic solitary individual who sustains himself without any external support. It says, "I don't depend on anybody. I can take care of myself." This fantasy of autarky can also involve the capacity to separate from people one doesn't like. It denies any obligation to them that might be based either on shared membership in a community or on a history of wrongs that one has involuntarily benefited from. The fantasy is easy to swallow if it means that one gets to keep more of what one has. Here as elsewhere in libertarian thought, there is an active partnership between delusion and greed.

Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at Northwestern University, is the author of "Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed" (St. Martin's Press). Follow him on Twitter @AndrewKoppelman.

[/quote]

[Razgovory]

Dammit.

[The Minsky Moment]

Dammit.

I'm impressed that you've been published.  The commute from Missouri to Northwestern must be hell though.