Lt Dmitry Mishov, a member of Russian service personnel who, rather than be sent to serve in Ukraine, defected to Lithuania and applied for political asylum, has given an interview to the BBC in which he said:
I am a military officer, my duty is to protect my country from aggression. I don’t have to become an accomplice in a crime. No one explained to us why this war started, why we had to attack Ukrainians and destroy their cities?
In the military no one believes the authorities. They can see what is really happening. They are not some civilians in front of the telly. The military do not believe official reports, because they are simply not true.
I was not refusing to serve in the army as such. I would serve my country if it faced a real threat. I was only refusing to be an accomplice in a crime.
Had I boarded that helicopter [for an unspecified mission he suspected was deployment to Ukraine], I would have taken the lives of several dozen people, at the very least. I didn’t want to do that. Ukrainians are not our enemy.
that BBC interview linked above begins with:
Dmitry Mishov, Russian airman who defected, gives BBC interview – BBC News
dmitry’s story brought thoughts of an old WWI novel juxtaposed with the current book banning.
excerpt from thisdayinhistory:
russians and ukranians will not be the only ones in a generation that had been … “destroyed by war, even though it might have escaped its shells. wars come in many forms literal ones and figuative ones. those with physical injury and those that injure the spirit.
With stories like that you’d think Putin’s days are numbered, but then what comes next? Could be worse
https://www.newsweek.com/wagner-group-prigozhin-mutiny-shoigu-girkin-defense-ministry-bakhmut-ukraine-1805866
“Wagner Group ‘Mutiny’ as Putin’s Mercenaries Refuse to Follow Orders”
“Shoigu said all voluntary fighters who are fighting for Russia have to sign a formal contract with the Russian Federation by July 1, including the Wagner Group.”
“Prigozhin quickly shut down Shoigu’s demand, saying in a statement: “Those orders and decrees from Shoigu, they apply to employees of the Ministry of Defense and military personnel.”
“In reality, Shoigu’s order may be a consequence of his conflict with Prigozhin and an attempt to take Wagner operatives under his control,” he said.
Yeah, but if Navalny were to become the new, Russian prez, tho gs would be better.
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-body-doubles-doppelgangers-health-ukraine-secret-service-1805591
“Amid rumors that the president’s health is deteriorating, Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that Putin has been using body doubles.”
He would never sit in that car and would never dress like that. He would never talk to alleged local residents, as we know that access to the real Putin in the Kremlin is restricted even for his own entourage—a meters-long table that becomes longer and longer, mandatory quarantines people undergo before meeting him.”
“They [Putin’s body doubles] have different habits, different mannerisms, different gaits, sometimes even different heights if you look closely,” Budanov said.
Will we know if/when Poo-tin is room temperature?
Ergo Navalny will “not succeed”.
(“How far can you “Fly” Comrade?”)
The future of Russia even with a new leader will be extremely “dicey” as the Ukrainers are not about to accept a simple [singsong] cease fire, and let’s all go home now. Whaddya say?
Pence and desantis are just plain box-of-rocks stupid. Morons.
I assume that the start of hurricane season is what has triggered the 10-second ads for ready.gov to make an emergency plan.
Sturg – Morons or just smart enough to be afraid of tRUMPsky’s base?
The whitest man probably hasn’t forgotten how close he was to meeting his maker on J6. He was smart enough not to get in the SUV to be taken to a second location that day; that would’ve probably been the end of him, too.
Still, they are letting the other 80% of voters that they are willing to continue propping up tRUMPsky-the-traitor. Maybe they are just afraid and bad at math.
No, Pence and DeS are simply irredeemably stupid humans.
Reptilian.
Are there smart snakes and stupid snakes? Either way—a snake is a snake.
And Pence and DeSantix are extremely stupid snakes.
And sometime he jus’ he’s dat way.
He might as well just represent himself, he will anyway no matter who he hires…
NBC News: Trump’s arraignment can’t go forward unless he finds local counsel — and it’s unclear whether he has.
At least one prominent Miami-based defense attorney has turned down Trump.
If Trump doesn’t find local counsel, the surrender and first appearance will still happen, but the arraignment may have to be postponed.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/05/economy/recession-chances/index.html
“Yet Wolfers noted the three-month moving average for the unemployment remains extremely low at 3.5%. He described the jobs market as “really freaking good” and said the latest report further disputes the notion that the US economy is already in recession – a belief many Americans have. (In a May CNN poll, 76% of respondents described the economy as in poor shape).”
“We are not in a recession. People have been telling us we’re in a recession for the last two years. They’ve been wrong each and every day,” Wolfers said. “Employment has grown gangbusters. The data is crystal clear on this. There is no recession.”
I hope he has to open the doors for himself, again, when he goes in to have his tiny fingers inked. It’s kind of like The Beverly Hillbillies in reverse, watching Orange Adolf try to navigate the 3D without his lackeys and bootlickers.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-calls-for-protests-indictment-roger-stone-1234768826/
Why in the F did WABC give Roger Stone an outlet for garbage? It sounds like tRUMPsky is, once again, calling for violence in his name. It also sounds like he put a target on Mrs. Smith, just like a mob boss would do.
“Stone sang Trump’s praises as he introduced him on the first episode of Stone’s new radio show on WABC radio that aired Sunday.”
“Deranged Jack Smith,” Trump said. “His wife hates me more than he does. His wife hates Trump more than any human being that’s ever lived.”
“Our country has to protest… We’ve lost everything,” Trump said.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-bill-barr-gutless-pig-1234768835/
The Stone/tRUMP garbage dump continues.
“Trump continued his tirade against Barr during an interview with Roger Stone on Sunday afternoon. “This thing is a disgrace,” Trump said, referring to the indictment that alleges Trump violated the Espionage Act by storing highly classified government documents in a bathroom and other insecure areas of his Mar-a-Lago resort. “Virtually everybody other than a low life like Bill Barr, who as you know I terminated cause he was gutless, he wouldn’t do what he was supposed to do. Everybody says this is a disgraceful indictment. It shouldn’t happen. It was done for political reasons.”
“Later in the interview, Stone asked Trump, “Is Bill Barr part of the deep state and the cover-up of the Biden allegations?” Stone then alleged that Barr tried to bury the investigation into the Bidens while he was attorney general.”
“I think he’s a coward who didn’t do his job,” Trump said. “He was desperately afraid of being impeached… I said, ‘I got impeached twice and my poll numbers went up, not so bad.’ But unfortunately, he was a coward, and we had to live with that… Bill Barr was a mistake. Too bad, but he was a mistake, but you’ll have some of them… He’s certainly friendly with some bad people.”
“Trump also called Barr a “very unpatriotic person” and “very, very bad for the country.”
There’s good reason Satan is serpentine.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/former-italian-pm-silvio-berlusconi-has-died-italian-media-2023-06-12/
“Silvio Berlusconi: former Italian prime minister has died at 86”
“Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media mogul and former Italian prime minister who transformed the nation’s politics with polarising policies and often alarmed his allies with his brazen remarks, died on Monday aged 86.”
“Berlusconi, Italy’s longest-serving premier who counted Russian President Vladimir Putin as a friend and gained notoriety for his “bunga bunga” sex parties, had suffered from leukaemia and recently developed a lung infection.”
“Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party is now a junior partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing coalition…”
“Berlusconi refused to blame Putin for the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, saying Moscow only wanted to put “decent people” in charge.”
Another fascist has gone room temperature, but as the saying goes one should only speak of the dead. He’s dead. Good.
Well, you scooped the entirety of the American MSM on Berlusconi’s death, the headlines on all the sites i checked are mostly Schmucker Carlson nonsense 😒
It’s the top story on BBC.com, of course
If Trump doesn’t find local counsel, the surrender and first appearance will still happen, but the arraignment may have to be postponed.
craig, isn’t delay delay delay his favorite tactic and more than ever in this case so that it’s not tried until after the election?
Although the prognosticators are portraying doom and a public defender for fat orange moron I doubt it will come to that. Somewhere a Saudi black ops group is going to produce an attorney to step in and do the dirty. Enough money and such will get the job done. Will you have sex for thirty-five dollars? No. Okay, how about ten million dollars? Okay, now we have some bargaining range to work in.
They can’t appoint a public defender???
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/10/opinions/declassification-rules-trump-legal-jeopardy-eisen/index.html
“The problem for Trump is that EO 13526 is central to knocking down every variation of his defense that his retention of the documents was somehow authorized. It sets up a declassification process that applies to everyone — even the president — and it says nothing about automatic presidential declassification.”
“…Executive Order (EO) 13526, which reformed the classification system for national security documents. The executive order brought needed clarity by articulating more uniform rules for classification and declassification in place of what had, over many years, grown into a tangled mess.”
“When former President Donald Trump took office in 2017, he left the rules in place. That will surely come back to haunt him in the classified documents probe.”
“To convict Trump under the Espionage Act provision, prosecutors will have to prove a series of elements, including that Trump had “unauthorized possession” of one or more documents (or information) relating to national defense and “willfully retain[ed]” them, failing to deliver them “to the officer and employee of the United States entitled to receive” them.
“A great deal, potentially including Trump’s freedom, will turn on the word “unauthorized,” since there can be no doubt that Trump was in possession of such documents, and willfully retained and refused to deliver them to the government.”
“Indeed, in the quoted conversation, Trump showed a classified document to others after his presidency and admitted that it was still classified, and he no longer had the power to declassify it. No wonder Trump and his allies may be willing to make this automatic declassification argument on cable television, but he and his lawyers have so far not been ready to advance it in court filings or arguments, where they would face penalties for false statements.”
“Trump’s claims that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) justifies his behavior doesn’t pass muster because that statute doesn’t actually have anything to do with the critical question of whether his possession of these documents was authorized — the executive order covers that.”
“Even though Obama was no longer in office when Trump allegedly took documents to Mar-a-Lago, his executive order was and is still in effect, and nothing in the PRA contradicts it.”
“Evaluating Trump’s pattern of statements and actions against the backdrop of the executive order and the rest of the applicable law, it’s clear that he is in defiance of the legal system. That offers a dramatic contrast to the cooperation of both Pence and Biden who, if they did not comply with the executive order and other laws, are at least trying to make it right.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/12/world/un-report-gender-bias-intl-scli/index.html
“Almost nine out of 10 people hold “fundamental biases” against women, a new UN report has found…”
“Half of people globally still believe men make better political leaders than women; more than 40% believe men make better business executives than women; and 25% believe it is justified for a man to beat his wife, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report released Monday found, reflecting the latest data from the World Values Survey.”
*
“Half of people,” not just half of men.
“…undervaluation of women’s capabilities and rights in society constrains women’s choices and opportunities.”
“These biases were shown across regions, income, level of development and cultures…”
“This gap does not reflect education levels. In the 59 countries where women are now more highly educated than men, the average gender income gap remains 39% in favor of men.”
“A global backlash against women’s rights and the far-reaching consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic have worsened the issue, the report notes.”
“Progress toward gender equality is “vanishing before our eyes,” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres warned in March, adding that gender equality is “300 years away,” according to the latest estimates from UN Women, the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and women’s empowerment.”
*300 years!
“Guterres cited high rates of maternal mortality, girls being forced into early marriage, and girls being kidnapped and assaulted for attending school as evidence that hope of achieving gender equality “is growing more distant.”
“Women’s rights are being abused, threatened, and violated around the world,” Guterres said, naming a few countries in particular, including Afghanistan, where he said “women and girls have been erased from public life.”
“Guterres also said that “in many places, women’s sexual and reproductive rights are being rolled back…”
“Centuries of patriarchy, discrimination and harmful stereotypes have created a huge gender gap in science and technology,” Guterres said. “Let’s be clear: global frameworks are not working for the world’s women and girls. They need to change.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/11/europe/germany-violence-against-women-study-intl/index.html
“A group of 1,000 men and 1,000 women aged 18-35 from across Germany were asked to give their views on masculinity for the study, which was carried out online.”
“34% of men from that age bracket admitted to being violent towards their female partner in the past, to “instil respect in them.” 33% said they thought it was acceptable if their “hand slipped” occasionally during an argument with their partner.”
“Just over half of men – 52% – wanted a relationship in the form of a “breadwinner-housewife model,” where they earned most of the money for the household and childcare and household tasks were primarily the woman’s role.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/09/donald-trump-indicted-texas-republicans/
“Today is a very sad day in American history,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on his podcast Friday. “We have never in over two centuries of our nation’s history had a new president who launched the entire Department of Justice, the entire machinery of justice on a vendetta to persecute, to attack, to investigate, to indict, to try to throw in jail the former president who, it should be noted, is also currently the leading contender on the Republican side to run against the current president.”
Now, who gave Lyin’ Ted Cruz that nickname?
Gavin Newsom is on Hannity tonite 9PM. Should be wild!
Chis Christie is on CNN for a town hall meeting tonight, too.
Beat the Heat!
The Heat is On???
Not over yet.
Now it is 🏀🏀🏀
What A Game!!!
Congrats IvyGreen! Congrats Denver!
Thanks, Renee. It was a nail biter!
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