Russia-Ukraine thoughts, week 3: Now linguistics is politicized

We start with President Biden explicitly calling for regime change in Russia. Tom Nichols, warhawk at the Atlantic, calls it an "unforced error," then mildly turd-polishes. Dan Froomkin, whom I thought was better than this, more strongly turd-polishes by attacking the NYT messenger who used the world "inarticulate," claiming the MSM never used that about Shrub Bush or Trump. What rock have you been under? I found it in multiple media stories and even one book by a media person, about Shrub, and not words like "inarticulate," but the actual word. Now, we can discuss the idea of whether or not Biden WAS inarticulate. I take him as being straight up, and will say "Freudian slip" rather than "unforced error."

The biggest problem with Biden's statement (especially when seen via the "Freudian slip" angle) is that it makes a negotiated settlement end to the war even harder to achieve. And, contra US / NATO warhawks, it's what's needed. Ending the idea of more pushing of Putin to the wall is NOT "appeasement," it's sensible reality.

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Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo's Zionism-defending head honcho (egregious? yes! true? also yes, as in, he's not gotten the Peter Beinart memo), has decided to politicize linguistics, in my opinion, by babbling about how the origin of Proto-Indo-European was in today's Ukraine. He's either wrong or Not.Even.Wrong., perhaps. First, as Wiki notes, there are several hypotheses for the origin of PIE. Second, IF Marija Gimbutas and the "Kurgan hypothesis" IS correct, guess what? Kurgan culture covered what is today southeastern European Russia as well as Ukraine; indeed, Gimbutas' first era of Kurgan culture includes what is called the Samara culture. Today's city of that name? On the Volga, well inside Russia.. "Shock me" that a nat sec, nut sack, bipartisan foreign policy establishment guy like Marshall would pull this. "Shock me" that at the Texas blogging level, somebody like Kuff would latch on to that.

And, yes, you're politicizing it, Josh. There's no other reason you would just "happen" to write about this issue right now. 

Besides, per my original piece on the war, and others, we have to remember that today's Ukraine isn't necessarily "the" linguistic or ethnic boundaries of historic Ukraine, not just for the last century but the last 10.

UPdate: A NATO-touter warmonger type from the Marshall Center wants Ukraine to go to the Latin alphabet.

Question: After the war has been won, should #Ukraine stop using the Cyrillics and switch to the Latin alphabet? I know it’s not a burning issue at this point but it would symbolize where the Ukrainian nation wants to be — with the West. I ask this especially of our UKR friends.

— Andrew A. Michta (@andrewmichta) March 30, 2022

THAT will teach Putin! (And open the door a bit on Coca-colonialization.)

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The "Russian POWs" that was trending at the start of the week and even had some bloggers note it, is a reminder that both sides are committing war crimes, not just Russia. And, it's "interesting" that the immediate reaction by many was to claim this was either a Russian false flag, or less macabre, faked by Russia. Gateway Pundit's analysis may be right on one point — some Ukrainians hope to provoke a Russian reaction that will draw the ire of the West far more than what Ukraine did to provoke this. "Flypaper." Ukraine was chided more than three weeks ago for putting prisoners on TV, also a Geneva Conventions violation.

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Speaking of flypaper, Greenwald says that the US may view the whole Ukraine conflict as just that.

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Hungary's president Viktor Orban is being attacked for keeping his country neutral. His right, and Ukraine isn't a NATO member. "Hungary is on Hungary's side" is a legitimate stance. If Biden said, "The US is on the US's side," Tom Nichols would call it an "unforced error," but no more.

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Speaking of, just a week after saying he accepted Ukraine would never be part of NATO, Zelensky now wants NATO weapons. And, behind that ask is surely the hope to draw NATO in more directly. More on that here. Buried near the bottom? Zelensky, like Putin, is criminalizing media reporting on military details. In both cases, the law covers foreign as well as domestic media. At least Zelensky got the Rada to pass this and it's not by fiat.

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When your communications is less secure than al Qaeda (which used burner phones when it used cellphones for communication) yes, Russian troops, you're making yourself sitting ducks.

My thought on why so many Russian generals are getting killed? It's due to one thing written about elsewhere — their crappy NCOs, which are due to crappy training of them, etc. Between this and the insecure communications, they're commanding close to the front. And, with the insecure communications, becoming easy targets.