These LinkSwarms tend to get pushed back to days when there’s not a big story jumping up and requiring my attention. It seems like the Olympics have created a bit of a news lull
Heartening, but I can’t help but notice that some of the same people appear in this video as the one from that town hall meeting in December. Makes it hard to gauge just how widespread black America’s dissatisfaction with Obama is…
Mainly linking to this story for the amazing photos. As if living in an Ex-Communist country wasn’t bad enough, a winter storm just dumped several feet of ice on them.
“Walking in a Winter Wonderland” takes on quite a different meaning when the weight of the ice brings forests worth of trees crashing to the ground.
Driving doesn’t look like much fun either, though the frozen landscape looks amazingly alien.
Another video (skip ahead a minute to omit getting out of the parking garage):
All this should make you feel better about your current weather….
Via Will Shetterly comes the Social Justice Warrior Argument Generator. You can generate entire blogs or just Tumbler insults! Why go into six figures of debt for a Womyn’s Studies Degree to make your prose unreadable when a computer can do it for you for free?
If you’ve always wanted to auto-generate phrases like “atphobic misogynists like you deserve to die, you white-privileged ableist!!!!” or “you should quit erasing transracial & skoliosensual-identifying polykins, you middle class-elitist fascist!!!!”, now you can!
SCREAMING CAPITAL LETTERS and Way! Too!! Many!!! EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! included at no additional charge!
Lots of news from around the world, where the global economy is handing like a Kia that’s just started losing traction on an icy hill:
Every time I hear someone say that feminism is about validating every choice a woman makes I have to fight back vomit.
Do people really think that a stay at home mom is really on equal footing with a woman who works and takes care of herself? There’s no way those two things are the same. It’s hard for me to believe it’s not just verbally placating these people so they don’t get in trouble with the mommy bloggers.
Having kids and getting married are considered life milestones. We have baby showers and wedding parties as if it’s a huge accomplishment and cause for celebration to be able to get knocked up or find someone to walk down the aisle with. These aren’t accomplishments, they are actually super easy tasks, literally anyone can do them. They are the most common thing, ever, in the history of the world. They are, by definition, average.
Amy Glass, come down and collect your coveted Trolly! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The good news from Ukraine: most of the totalitarian laws suppressing free speech have been repealed and prime minister Mykola Azarov has resigned.
The bad news: brutal thug and Putin toady Viktor Yanukovych is still President, and opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is still imprisoned.
Says one writer in the Moscow Times:
The Yanukovych administration is marked by two main features. First, Yanukovych is essentially a small-time criminal, and such people have a unique profile. They are typically rather dull, always looking for an opportunity to steal and incapable of anticipating the long-term consequences of their actions.
Second, Ukraine is actually ruled by Yanukovych’s eldest son and his friends — all filthy rich. Since coming to power, Yanukovych has fired all of his original associates and alienated his initial sponsors, such as oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov and Dmytro Firtash.
Current map of the situation:
Updated map 18.00 of Ukrainian people protest, by Sergii Gorbachov. http://t.co/bLQUOVIdJU | #euromaidan #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/2LlCCe3bXJ
— Euromaidan PR (@EuromaidanPR) January 27, 2014
Other Ukraine/Euromaidan news
During the less than four years of its rule, Viktor Yanukovych’s regime has brought the country and the society to the utter limit of tensions. Even worse, it has boxed itself into a no-exit situation where it must hold on to power forever – by any means necessary. Otherwise it would have to face criminal justice in its full severity. The scale of what has been stolen and usurped exceeds all imagination of what human avarice is capable.
On a lighter note, all I could think of when viewing this pic was “Ukraine’s furry contingent has joined the fight for freedom!”
What’s going on in Ukraine right now? Good question. The situation is probably best described as “fluid.”
A ceasefire has been reached. I don’t think this would happen unless President Viktor Yanukovych is worried he might lose the showdown.
Protesters stormed three governor’s offices, one of whom resigned.
A good summary of the situation, including the role of Yanukovych’s Berkut stormtroopers, the neutrality (so far) of the army, and the fractured nature of the opposition.
From that I’ve also stole this video of the Berkut in action:
More Berkut:
Ukraine police leaving the force?
Ukraine police torture naked protester in the cold?
Dramatic day for Ukraine in one infographic: red regions where local govts seized by #Euromaidan, pink – under siege pic.twitter.com/dUicLNT8pf
— Maxim Eristavi (@MaximEristavi) January 23, 2014
Heh:
There are some truly incredible pictures from the Ukraine protests. This is my favorite: pic.twitter.com/dwCAneoQxY
— John Pugh (@JohnPugh) January 23, 2014
Ted Cruz has condemned the crackdown and called on all branches of the United States government to support the opposition.
So what have Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry said about the latest crises in Ukraine? As far as I can tell: Nothing. Indeed, the Ukraine office of the State Department has issued only mild, per-forma tut-tutting.
This is the most important foreign policy question in the world right now, and they’re asleep at the switch.
Or maybe they just don’t care.
Finally, here’s a Euromaidan livestream:
And another:
Other livestreams can be found here.
Hot on the heels of Yanukovych’s rubberstamp parliament passing numerous dictatorial laws, he decided it was time to clean up these filthy peasants protesting for democracy and closer ties to Europe. (Background here.)
Twitter and Facebook have reportedly been blocked in Kiev:
facebook/twitter are down for a lot of ppl in downtown Kyiv. i've found my way around, but i don't believe it's coincidence
#Euromaidan
— Maxim Eristavi (@MaximEristavi) January 22, 2014
The government is tracking protesters using their cell phones.
Search Twitter for #Euromaiden.
Video:
They even cracked down on that notorious violent, subversive organization, The Red Cross:
Some photos from Twitter:
PHOTO: Rioters burn tires in central #Kiev as unrest enters fourth day http://t.co/fvCVOVRHn4 #euromaidan pic.twitter.com/VznCIWqllQ
— RT (@RT_com) January 22, 2014
Intense photo of clashes in #Kiev by @AP Efrem Lukatsky #euromaidan pic.twitter.com/CEun0TclmY
— Patrick Witty (@patrickwitty) January 22, 2014
Crisis in Kyiv: #Ukraine tonight, #euromaidan pic.twitter.com/mLckK0heDj
— NATOSource (@NATOSource) January 22, 2014
В Киеве сечас так. pic.twitter.com/UnrvBV6put
— Ilya Varlamov (@varlamov) January 23, 2014
Honestly, the protestors should consider that it’s time to stop burning tires, and start burning secret police headquarters….
Welcome to your complimentary Friday LinkSwarm. I steal collect these from all over, including Ace of Spades HQ, Instapundit, Twitter, Facebook, and a dozen other places
In 2009, retiring Arkansas representative Marion Berry presciently warned that Obamacare was setting up the Democrats for a huge defeat in the 2010 midterms, just like “Hillarycare” had led to a loss of 54 House seats in 1994. Obama scoffed at such concerns. According to Berry, the president told him, “Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.” Republicans went on to win 63 House seats and six Senate seats. It was the largest swing in the House since 1938. So I guess the difference was him.
I am heartened to see that not a single commenter supports his absurdist whitewash.
From Dwight comes word that today is the 120th birthday of Mao Tse-Tung (aka Mao Zedong). Most people know he ruled Communist China and published his “Little Red Book” of quotations.
Fewer people know that he’s the greatest mass-murder in history, having killed somewhere between 65 million and 77 million of his own people. (Whether Hitler or Stalin comes in second depends on just how you apportion World War II deaths among them. Does the fact that Stalin waited a whole 16 days before helping Hitler dismember Poland absolve him of all blame for the final body count? I think not…) Between the mass collectivization famine of the Great Leap Forward, the subjugation of Tibet, and the Cultural Revolution, Mao was a very nasty piece of work indeed.
And his political heirs are still running China today.
Given conservatism’s understanding of flawed, immutable human nature, our outlook can tend toward the cynical. (Or, as we like to call it, the realistic.) But every now and then, event turn out somewhat better than we expected. The most peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union was one example, and the reign of the post-Apartheid government of Nelson Mandela, who died today at age 95, was another.
Conservatives were deeply skeptical of Mandela’s African National Congress due to its close ties to the South African Communist Party at a time when brutal communist regimes were making life hell for the citizens of Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique. SACP was fond of “necklacing” political enemies by placing tires filled with gasoline around their necks and setting them on fire. Conservatives wanted to end Apartheid, but didn’t think sanction or Mandela were the right way to do it.
Nelson defied our expectations by presiding over a mostly peaceful, mostly legitimate and mostly democratic (and, ineed, far more of any than the average state in Sub-Saharan Africa). South Africa did not descend into civil war like Mozambique, or become an economic basket case like Zimbabwe. For that all the world owes Mandela thanks.