There are only 156 people who belong to Kyiv’s Small Penis Fitness Club listed, but this number might be misleading.
More and more members are out and about these days, shuffling in their carbon-plated sneakers, wearing the club’s new merch. I suspect many of them are out-of-work lawyers evading the draft.
Many articles about Z’s meeting with Donald. The president reportedly briefed him about Ukraine’s Victory Plan, the details of which ordinary Ukrainians know very little about. Former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, a true peckerhead and MAGA sychophant, attended the meeting. Maybe Kash was there, too. Dunno.
Which brings me to the article in The Atlantic appearing on September 27, 2024.
Many Western analysts had been trained as Russia specialists. Implicitly, perhaps subconsciously, they viewed Ukraine the way Russian imperialists did: as adjunct to Russia. In many cases ignorant of Ukrainian history, and even dismissive of its claims to national identity and political cohesion, authors of nearly a quarter of the reports we read did not even attempt to describe Ukraine as anything more than a target set for Russia. Many had never visited Ukraine, or spoken with Westerners—including members of allied training missions who had served there—who might have had different and better-informed views.
Eliot and Phillips did not include foreign jornos in their study who reported for the first eight years of the war that Ukraine was fighting separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Owens at The Spectator writes about what ‘victory’ means for Ukraine in the war1.
Ideally, ‘victory’ should combine both peace and justice. But the reality is that the territorial partition of Ukraine has, tragically, already happened. Like other partitions and annexations it has been unjust, illegal, bloody, horrific. But as negotiators in Dayton found in the aftermath of the Yugoslav war, it is practically impossible to reverse ethnic cleansing and return ravaged lands to the previous status quo.
We are in the survival and escape phase and anything is possible.
And, finally, this excerpt from Timothy’s ruminations about freedom2.
So any shift to capitalism in the Soviet Union had to be understood as part of a longer political history, not as a clearing of the slate that would generate perfect markets. From the starting point of the Soviet reality around me in November 1990, laissez-faire was not going to lead to the right result. Oligarchy, rule by the very wealthy, is also an equilibrium. A heavy bell can just stay on the ground.
Methylene dioxyamphetamine came to mind. And the Hotel Moskva, where I spent weeks holed up converting rubles to dollars before the putsch. For all intents and purposes Russia’s representative democracy died in 1993. Laissez-faire was unfettered if you had bodyguards with firearms.
What does ‘victory’ for Ukraine look like? (The Spectator, September 27, 2024)
How the Collapse of the Soviet Union Took America By Surprise. What Freedom Means in Moments of Economic and Political Transformation (Literary Hub, September 17, 2024)