The Washington Post reports on the fierce battle for Mariupol, which has been under siege for weeks:
As Russia appears poised to capture Mariupol more than six weeks into the invasion, the governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region said Friday that while Ukrainian troops remain in control of the strategic port city, Mariupol “has been wiped off the face of the earth” by Russian forces.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor, told CNN that troops are still “courageously defending Mariupol” against the Russian forces that have bombarded the city on the Sea of Azov, leaving it in ruins.
“The enemy cannot seize Mariupol. The enemy may seize the land that Mariupol used to stand on, but the city of Mariupol is no more,” Kyrylenko said. “The city of Mariupol has been wiped off the face of the earth by the Russian Federation, by those who will never be able to restore it.”
This is barbarism.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Rape is part of Russia’s playbook:
I know an Austrian-born American whose female relatives were brutally raped by Russians after WWII.
Horrendous war crimes and crimes against humanity, including rape, shelling of civilians, mining of civilian areas, mass deportations, targeting of Ukrainian speakers. And all of this is likely to get much, much worse as Russia reacts to being routed by doing to the Donbas what it did to Mariupol. Whether it will do this to the major prize of Odesa is a question because there are a LOT of Russian speakers there. However, Putin miscalculated terribly. He was not greeted as a liberator by Russian-speaking Ukrainians. He managed to unite the entire country, almost, against him. Ukrainians, whatever their primary language, will have long memories of this Russian brutality. And this war is unwinnable for Russia. If it were to win, it wouldn’t be able to hold the country. There would be along and very bloody insurgency, ending with a retreat like that by the Russians after its long, brutal, bloody invasion of Afghanistan.
Google “Russian soldiers rape Berlin.” Many accounts say that every female in Berlin from 8 to 80 was raped by Russian soldiers. This is typical.
https://english.alarabiya.net/amp/features/2018/03/11/PICTURES-The-largest-mass-rape-in-history
Rape may or may not be an official terror strategy of the Russian Military. Or the force may be totally undisciplined . But either way going back 77 years to the end of a conflict that killed 20 million Russians, is a silly exercise.
Terrorizing the civilian population seems to be part of the Russian army training.
Evil
Another important book: “A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in a Conquered City.” A brutal story of mass rape by Russian soldiers.
Fact of the day: The GDP of Russia is less than that of Texas.
A little backgrounder for those not hip to this history:
It’s really sad what happened to Russia as a result of misuse of its resources and rule by strongman. Basically, the Communist Party for decades ruled with an iron fist and spent much of the country’s meager resources (It’s GDP is less than that of Britain, France, or the state of Texas) on its military in order to maintain parity with the U.S. Most of its GDP comes from sale of fossil fuels (oil, gas, timber). So, for decades, the Soviets spent on guns instead of butter. By 1991, after oil prices had dropped worldwide, Russia was hurting badly. Grocery store shelves, even in places like Moscow and St. Petersburg, were empty. There were food riots in Moscow. The opposition leader, liberal democrat Boris Yeltsin, bravely stood up to the regime. I remember watching television, live, and seeing the Russian government tanks rolling up to a demonstration being led by Yeltsin in front of the Russian White House. Then, the tanks stopped, started opening, and soldiers climbed out of them and went over to join the demonstrators!!!!!! One of the most breathtaking things I’ve ever witnessed.
After that, there was a period of capitalist free-for-all. Yeltsin auctioned off former state-owned industries (oil, gas, aluminum, timber, printing, etc), and a group of incredibly wealthy oligarchs emerged. Yeltsin was, alas, a drunk, and was ill and not in control, and there was a lot of corruption. The former great reformer couldn’t fix things, and he had heart problems. In a surprise to everyone, Yeltsin resigned and appointed a relatively unknown former low-level KGB guy, Putin, to take over for him (he had previously made Putin head of the successor to the KGB, the FSB). It’s likely that Yeltsin did this because Putin appeared to be a democrat AND had demonstrated loyalty to his former boss, the mayor of St. Petersburg, whisking him off to Paris to avoid a corruption trial. Yeltsin’s health was failing, and he needed to step down, and he wanted a guy in place who had that loyalty and wouldn’t prosecute him for corruption in the auctions of state assets. But, Putin was relatively unknown. So, then a series of apartment bombings started happening. In the middle of the night, people would be blown up. One of the bombs failed to go off, and it turned out that it was made from materials available only to the Russian military and intelligence services. But Putin blamed these on Chechen terrorists and vowed to go after them. This catapulted him to fame, and Putin was elected president in a landslide. Russia has a bicameral legislature (two chambers), the upper chamber called the Federation Council and the lower called the Duma. The Senators in the Federation Council are appointed by regional governors. The Duma is elected, like Senators and Representatives in the U.S. However, after more apartment bombings, blamed by Putin on Chechen terrorists but likely a false flag operation to raise Putin’s profile, Putin changed the constitution so that HE chose those who could stand for election to the Duma, and the elections were simply TO AFFIRM THOSE CHOICES. So, he basically did away with the short-lived democratic reform in Russia. In recent years, he has conducted a war on opposition journalists, killing or imprisoning them, and he has very recently closed all opposition media. So, now, there are only officially sanctioned state media. Most Russians get their news from TV, and that’s completely controlled by the Kremlin.
Putin brought with him and put in charge of all the ministries his old KGB buddies from his days in Dresden and in the FSB. These are the so-called Siloviki, or strongmen, who run Russia today. Putin is basically the Krestniy Otets, or Godfather, and the Siloviki are his capos, or head crooks in this Mafia state. Not long after taking power, Putin called a meeting of the oligarchs and basically let them know that from then on, he got his cut, his vig, or else. And then he proved this by arresting and imprisoning the wealthiest of the oligarchs, the oil billionaire Mikhail Khordorkovsky. In Putin’s Russia, any big business deal involved in some part a series of shell company contractors to which part of the money was siphoned off to Putin and/or his representatives.
In recent years, Russia has spent lavishly on modernizing its military. Many, many billions of rubles. But because of the culture of corruption that Putin created, much of that money was siphoned off, stolen, by a network of corrupt military officials. So, instead of buying good tires, they would buy cheap ones from China. And instead of exercising the vehicles with those tires, they let them sit. If you don’t operate a vehicle, its tires will degrade. So, all over Ukraine today, there are Russian military vehicles stranded because the tires on them have exploded. And it’s estimated that 60 percent of the missiles that Russia fires are duds. They don’t work. Another result of the culture of corruption, cutting corners, pocketing the money that was supposed to go to the modernization. This was all a big surprise to Putin, who thought himself the boss of one of the world’s most powerful military organizations. He had made the mistake that all autocrats make of isolating himself and creating a climate of fear and relying on people who only told him what he wanted to hear.
A few Putin critics have advised that one problem is supplies for military efforts need to be available within 80 miles of where they are needed.
This is the substance of a good lecture that all Americans should hear. Knowledge matters. Lecturing is effective. Thank you, Bob.
Thanks, Ponderosa. I very much appreciate this. One drops these pieces onto social media and rarely knows if anyone reads them. So, that’s good to hear.
I read them all.
That’s astonishing, given that you are also writing books and daily posts and tweets!!!
Given that, Diane, I should definitely write less!!!
cx: told him only what he wanted to hear
It’s so easy to misplace the modifer “only”!
modifier
Bob, even though Russia spent billions on its military, much of the money was siphoned off or misspent in corrupt deals by the well-connected wealthy, so the military is hobbled. Bob, that sounds like education in the United States. I’m surprised Russian soldiers don’t have to stop fighting every few weeks needing to score proficient on a high stakes standardized test in order to requisition supplies.
lol. We need to send them some of our Ed Reform geniuses.
Wait . . . send them all!!!
“Bill Browder asks for US ban on visas for British lawyers enabling Russian oligarchs”-
Boris Johnson appears sympathetic to Browder’s point (Guardian)
Also of note from other supporters of Ukraine on the broader topic of Russian oligarchs -alleged concerns about Concord investments, New York, and the National Association of Realtors, New York.
Very worried, here, about Putin’s Plan B in Ukraine. Putin has called up another 135,000 hapless and untrained Russian conscripts, and he will have no hesitation about sending them to be slaughtered as he did the previous batch of Russian teenagers. His Plan B will not fix many of the problems with his Plan A (misjudging the will to fight and training of the Ukrainians, untrained troops, unsecured communications, poor and inflexible lines of command, poor supply chains and logistics, unmaintained and antiquated equipment). With regard to the Ukrainian will to resist the invasion, as the U.S. General Keith Kellogg has put it, “It’s not the dog in the fight; it’s the fight in the dog.” Putin misjudged the fight in the dog AND the capabilities of his forces.
There are problems with Plan A, however, that Putin CAN fix in Plan B, even though he had had to put one together hastily. Because he is concentrating on the East and South, now, his resources will not be spread out on so many different fronts. He can use anti-aircraft equipment stationed in Crimea and in Russia, along the Eastern Ukrainian border, to achieve air dominance in the East and South, and he can also use bombardment from Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. And the border with Eastern Ukraine, control of Crimea, and a strong navy in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov can help to prevent the broken or absent supply lines and poor logistics that led to the route on the Northern front. If he throws a lot of aerial and naval attack and raw, untrained troops at these smaller areas, he might be able to achieve dominance, though at the cost of lots and lots of lives. And soon the ground will be solid enough that Putin can move tanks and artillery and other vehicles across ground and so avoid the convoys on highways that plagued the attempted invasion of Kiev.
So, Plan B is likely to make the horrors we’ve seen already (Mariupol, Bucha, etc) look like a church picnic, and this is just what Zelenskyy said the Russian Plan B would be in his recent address to the people of Greece.
Given all this, it is extremely important for the West to do all it can to ensure that Putin continues to have the problems he had with Plan A, including sending Ukraine the fighter jets and artillery and heavy-duty anti-aircraft and anti-missile technologies it needs.
Of course, the liar Putin just went on Russian television, even as he was hastily putting together a Plan B that he didn’t have before, that his “special operation” is “going strictly according to plan.”
And even if he did win this brutal war, there’s no way he could hold Ukraine. As I wrote here when some were still parroting Putin’s lie that he had no intention of invading Ukraine, even if he “won,” he and his country would lose, big time, for the result would be a vastly strengthened and united NATO and a long, bloody insurgency that he would eventually lose.
Putin and his Russian enablers have proven that for some reason most Russians can’t be trusted to be civilized. And to think this is a country that has the ability to destroy the planet and destroy most life on Earth with its nuclear arsenal.
How many enablers does Putin allegedly have in Russia at this time?
“After EU and U.S. sanctions against Russian officials as a result of the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s approval rating reached 87 percent, according to a Levada Center survey published on 6 August 2014. In February 2015, based on new domestic polling, Putin was ranked the world’s most popular politician.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/putins-public-approval-soared-as-russia-prepared-to-attack-ukraine-history-shows-its-unlikely-to-last
I do not think Putin will back down. Hopefully, PBS is right, and his popularity in Russia will end up flushed down toilets and the majority of Russians will pull the rug out from under him, then stake him to a road in front of a column of Russian tanks that will then roll over him until nothing is left but a smear on the pavement.
This is not about Russians not being civilized, Lloyd. It’s about information being strictly controlled in Russia. Contemporary Russia is a totalitarian state, and according to the information Russians are receiving, the country is conducting a special military operation to rescue Russian brothers and sisters being made victims of a genocide by Ukrainian neo-Nazi nationalists, and this operation is going smoothly and according to plan. Lies. More lies. Followed by some lies.
We are what we know.
This is why the knowledge vacuum that America’s K-12 skills-centric curriculum creates is so problematic. I think it’s at the root of Americans’ susceptibility to the Crazy on the Internet. Good knowledge crowds out bad knowledge; but our schools have abandoned the effort to impart good knowledge claiming, with Freire, that “the banking model of education has been discredited”. That’s a lie. So our kids confront the Internet with a mind that’s empty except for “critical thinking skills”. But these mighty critical thinking skills fail as badly against the Internet’s myriad lies and distortions the Maginot Line or Russia’s “mighty” army in Ukraine . In truth, we’re not giving the kids anything. The transmission of skills is an illusion; any skills we possess are innate. What empowers these innate skills is knowledge. We need to arm kids with weapons that work: knowledge, like the knowledge Bob gave us about Putin’s ability to select who runs in elections. Right there is proof that Russia is no democracy, a fact that is not at all clear to many who flirt with Putin-philia. This FACT enables us to think clearly and accurately about Russia. No “skills” practice gives this ability.
Schools should be teaching lots of CONNECTED facts about the world. Instead they’re assigning arid skills practice that doesn’t actually build any skills, sprinkled with bits of the Woke doctrine that all teachers under 50 imbibed in college. Herein lies the radical failure of our public schools that few people are talking about. This is why I cannot get excited about Diane’s crusade to protect public schools against outside attacks. They’ve been destroyed from within.
I dearly wish that educators would stop using the term “skills” altogether because this leads to vagueness and puffery and lessons from which children emerge having learned or acquired NOTHING new. If they used “procedural knowledge” instead, this would encourage them to think more concretely and come up with news kids can use. So, to give a concrete example, some people possess the “skill” of being able to plane a piece of wood to make it smooth, and others do not possess this “skill.” But when you look closely at the “skill,” it turns out to be a lot of knowledge. Use a sharp plane. Work in the direction of the wood grain. Use long, continuous, light strokes. After planing, use a coarse sandpaper block, then successively lighter sandpaper blocks. Then use microabrasion finshing cloths. Finally, clean it up with a tack cloth. To make a sandpaper block, cut some small rectangular blocks. Cut sandpaper to the size of the block. Glue the sandpaper to the block. Bring the block to the wood surface and move it to sand. Alternately, take a piece of acrylic and glue to it various grits of sandpaper. Then bring the word surface to the sandpaper and move it across it.
And this is always the case. Look closely enough at the “skill,” and it turns out to be procedural knowledge, either knowledge explicitly learned or acquired incidentally. And if the teacher has not thought carefully enough to break the “skill” down into step-by-step procedural knowledge to be taught, he or she will not actually be “teaching the skill.” THIS IS REALLY BASIC, but it’s missed by most teacher preparation courses. Here’s another example. Imagine that you want to teach the “skill” of speaking melodiously. Well, what does that skill consist of? Melody is created by variation of pitch in the speaking voice. So, teach kids about vocal pitch and pitch range. Then, point out that most people speak too much in the top of their vocal range. Show them how to find the midpoint of their usual range. Then have them find a point a little below that. Finally, have them practice varying their pitch more than they usually do around that new, lower midpoint. I hope this illustrates the principle. It’s all about teaching the PROCEDURAL KNOWLEDGE necessary to do the thing.
It would be best practice, I think, to abandon the use of the term “skill” altogether and stick to the terms descriptive knowledge and procedural knowledge.
Fox News watchers are almost as propagandized as Russians. Schools could do so much more than we are doing right now to immunize kids from propaganda (Right and Left). We have a captive audience. But we’re losing the public’s trust that we can uses this platform responsibly because, despite denials to the contrary, SOME teachers are using school to indoctrinate kids into the social justice cult. The California Council of the Social Studies is very blatant about promoting this type of teaching. We need to restore trust by pledging to be neutral and factual. And then lay a strong foundation of knowledge about what the world really is especially by teaching lots of history and science and literature as vividly as possible to make it stick. And let kids form their own opinions about political issues. But the Leftists in education keep saying “there is no neutrality”. This will not end well.
The word “skill” is derived from Old Norse meaning discernment, knowledge. When we say someone is skilled, we are saying they do something well. I’m not ready to throw out the word. I never did figure out how you could teach thinking skills without some content to think about. There are “procedures” for thinking about content which make usage of that content more facile. According to Piaget there are stages in our cognitive development. Not all of us reach an advanced level of thinking, although more of us could if given the chance to develop the skills. That being said, there is no way in the world you could ever make a theoretical physicist or mathematician out of me although I suppose there more chance of that than becoming a theoretical mathematician. Those thinking skills sure as H*** ain’t innate in me, and you could try to cram me full of descriptive and procedural knowledge, but you would fail.
I’m not sure what I am saying other than this discussion doesn’t feel quite right. I feel like there is something missing. Maybe it is my special ed background.
speduktr, I spent much of my life working in the textbook publishing industry. If I had a nickel for every “skills” lesson I’ve read from which the student would walk away having learned absolutely nothing new of any substance, I would be very wealthy. As I said above, the use of this vague term often papers over total lack of substance in the lesson. Oh, we’re practicing our inferencing skills. GIVE ME A BREAK. People who say things like that haven’t a clue what they are talking about.
The word “skill” is derived from Old Norse meaning discernment, knowledge. When we say someone is skilled, we are saying they do something well. I’m not ready to throw out the word. I never did figure out how you could teach thinking skills without some content to think about. There are “procedures” for thinking about content which make usage of that content more facile. According to Piaget there are stages in our cognitive development. Not all of us reach an advanced level of thinking, although more of us could if given the chance to develop the skills. That being said, there is no way in the world you could ever make a theoretical physicist or mathematician out of me. Those thinking skills sure as H*** ain’t innate in me; you could try to cram me full of descriptive and procedural knowledge, but you would fail.
I’m not sure what I am saying other than this discussion doesn’t feel quite right. Maybe it is my special ed background. I feel like there is something missing.
Try to imagine, speduktr, every time you feel compelled to use the term “skill,” replacing it with “procedural knowledge.” How does your perspective on what you are doing change?
Honestly. The Russians don’t believe one word of Putin propaganda. They hear it alright, but they don’t believe it. There is no seduction, MAYA, confusion or absence of info. Ukraine Genocide is the price to be paid for a life style. Simple as that. True in Moscow, Berlin, Dublin, London or on USA Wall Street. But in living color, it is 🩸 Bloody. How inconvenient and difficult to deny. Zelenskyy rubs it in our faces, as he should. We are all covered in complicity and we know it. So does Putin. Better than anyone. He has served as our global Superfly Addictive Pusherman. Democracy is the antidote.
The lifestyle in Moscow will not be as pleasant for the elites as it used to be. The Russian economy has lost access to most western goods, and sanctions have frozen most of their bank accounts.
Education is the foundation of reasonableness. Teachers can only do what the limits on them allows them to do. And the limits are monumental. Too much work, and too little autonomy in making decisions.
In the book ‘Trusting teachers with School Success’ autonomy is shown to be the means by which teachers make meaningful decisions for their students and school. Without autonomy then teachers have to follow directives which are ultimately destructive.
There are a number of teachers, such as Pernille Ripp, Nancy Atwell, Penny Kittle, and many others, teacher authors, who show the unquestionable importance of reading, and also how to teach children how to love reading. In some schools however the library is a black hole.
From Asimov to Obama, to people like Michio Kaku, reading was the foundation on which they built reasoning and creativity. But reading cannot be forced; it can be fostered by a school with libraries, and teachers who are allowed the time. Students must be allowed to read what they love and guided by teachers who know how to move them gently upward.
To some extent it comes down to the voter. If the voter chooses DeSantis over a sane person, it is because many of them have not read. Good readers can read anything well, including their history, math, and science. Their reading allows them intellectual growth in other areas and the capacity to think. Ms. Ravitch has said that we have to spend more on the poor schools, and we must do so, in order to give our teachers the things they need to take our student body upward.
Amen, Mr. Lewis!
It’s hideous and bone chilling beyond words, the destruction and massacres continue unabated. You have a grizzly bear, with the world’s 3rd largest army attacking a much smaller pit bull. Keep sending in the arms as Zelenskyy has requested.
One of thousands and thousands of stories. Russian soldiers showed up at a house. The young husband went out to investigate. They shot him. Then, they came into the house and told the young woman, “We shot your husband because he is a Nazi.” Then they repeatedly gang raped her while her five-year-old listened to this from a closet. Another: a shop keeper in Bucha was shot in the legs and arms and beaten with wooden boards with nails in them. Another, a car with a sign reading “Children” in the window. Inside, bodies of the adults and the kids. Again and again and again and again. Unbelievable atrocities. Ukraine says that there is no way right now to count the civilian dead. 20,000 at least in Mariupol alone.
They beat this guy with a board with nails in it, impaling him again and again. Utterly sickening sadism. The Russian MO in Ukraine.
Mariupol captured citizens are being distributed AGAINST their will to other parts of remote Russia. They are being given paperwork stamped by the Ministry of Internal Affairs/DPR recording them as “eligible” for RU citizenship.
Putin is sending thousands to Siberia, North Caucasus, Far East. He is building a Labor Force in a mineral/resource rich part of the world. Uninhabitable unless you are a Gulag Slave Laborer. A Death Sentence. Conquering Ukraine will give him the bread basket required to feed the recently enslaved.
This is only PART of a Master Plan very long in the making. Those in the USA who have “flourished” on Putin’s Payroll may not have read the fine print but they knew the general outline. They are COMPLICIT.
Amen. This is legally a Crime against Humanity as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 7(1)(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population.
What have they done to you, Mariupol?
To your beautiful theatre with its park, your many museums, your galleries, your grand churches and synagogues and mosques, your restaurants, your 81 schools, your football club and water polo team and canoeing club and basketball club, your 60 hospitals and medical offices, your stunning beach on the Sea of Azov, your 20 newspapers, your 7 television stations, your nightclubs, your gardens, your parks and play facilities, your cinemas, your restaurants and cafes, your libraries, your marina and its sailors, your 500,000 men, women, teenagers, children, toddlers, babies? Where are your old men playing chess, your young people strolling and in love, your children at their games, your gorgeous, friendly people dancing and singing at one of your many festivals? Where are your guilds of artists, journalists, poets, novelists, dramatists, actors, musicians? What has become of your monuments? Your homes?
Where are Alla and Anatoly, Vasylyna and Vitali, Yeva and Ivan, . . . Maryna and Maksym, Natalia and Nazar, . . . Sofiia and Stepan, Titiana and Tymur, . . . Yuliia and Yakiv?
Gone. Obliterated. Turned into smoke and ashes and body parts and blood by war criminal Chekist reptile Tsar Vladimir.
The Russian forces may well take as much of Ukraine as they can to save face. That is taken it by conventional forces.
The issue they will then have is to deal with a low level insurgency as irregulars and no doubt ‘special forces’ wage a guerrilla war, which will be no holds barred on both sides.
Between 1945 -1955 (approx) Ukrainian Nationalists waged one against the USSR’s internal forces. That was one with minimal Western Support.
There must be many a USSR era conscript who served in Afghanistan shaking their heads and saying ‘Not again. Not our children,’
And maybe even older greyer heads who served in the Ukraine in the 1950s muttering…’If they want it, get out of The Kremlin and fight for it themselves’
yup
I never thought….
That I would see
an end to the strife in Northern Ireland.
People tearing down the Berlin Wall with their bare hands
News of a lone Russian sub commander who saved the world with his restraint
The end of the Soviet Union
So perhaps I will see the end of this horrific invasion, and once again families will be allowed to dwell in peace. How far away that seems now.
Meanwhile, according to General Laura J. Richardson, Commander of SOUTHCOM, China has built and owns more than thirty ports on the coastline of South America. This is what has happened while American politicians were concerning themselves with CRT and with naked mice in storybooks.
Meanwhile, Breaking News!!! Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have a late breakfast! Story inside!!!!
Those ports are a HUGE problem for USA. And you are correct, this is The strategy moving forward. Distract with GOPee diversions on race, curriculum, gender, voting rights, pandemic and more. All the while taking $ from Putin & China and in return those dictatorships spread their smash democracy ideology far and wide.
The Chinese are playing the long game. They are playing Three-dimensional Go, and we seem to think the game is Tic-tac-toe.
The New Silk Road. China is pursuing what it calls a global “integration” strategy/Belt and Road Initiative. Building global infrastructures favoring China. It has signed agreements with 138 countries in spite of warnings from USA that those countries risk becoming Militarized China Debtor Colonies. ForeignPolicy.com