Putin, without irony, always says that Ukraine should hold elections for the government to become “legitimate,” as if there are real elections in Russia. t.me/tass_agency/...

I hope the Trump envoys negotiating with the Kremlin are paying attention to how much Putin lies about what territory Russia controls. He has been claiming for weeks that Russian soldiers control Kupyansk, where Zelensky took a selfie a couple days ago.

The White House published a website detailing what it calls “false and misleading” media coverage….Once again the Trump administration aping the Russian Foreign Ministry, which has been doing this for about a decade. Despite the vitriol directed at “Communists” it sure does love Bolshevik tactics.

Big win in NYC for Starbucks workers: A $38.9 million settlement with City Hall over violations of New York City’s law guaranteeing fair working conditions, a resolution that city officials said was the largest worker protection settlement in the city’s history.

Ms. Hill suggested this type of branding was part of the “populist, strong man” approach to everything. “Trump does exactly the same,” she said. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/w...

A reader was inspired to send me a haiku about this Mariupol story (He does it periodically for various NYT stories): The lights winking out The rank grass prepares cover For the blameless bones www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/w...

X has changed their policy and now you can see where the accounts are based. Here’s an “influencer from Texas”

RIP American penny. A nickel for your thoughts? Inflation! www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/b...

Seven Years for Antiwar Stickers? Russian Activist Would Do It Again. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/w...

NYC tabloid goes to town on Mamdani win with even a little Cyrillic abuse.(aka faux Cyrillic) Theme continues inside with headlines like “Mamdani Paints the town red” No boldface reference to Islam, however..

Happy Halloween!!

Amazon just announced 14,000 layoffs. Its CEO made over $40M last year. UPS announced 48,000 layoffs. Its CEO made over $24M last year. Intel announced 20,000 layoffs. Its new CEO's pay package is valued at nearly $69M. This is what I mean when I say the system is rigged.

E-bikes in NY: Recently, mayoral candidate Mamdani was filmed releasing one of the hefty e-bikes on the Upper East Side. A bystander, apparently not a fan, yelled out: “Communist!” The candidate smiled as he pedaled away. “It’s pronounced ‘cyclist,’” he said. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/n...

The United States used to dominate the list of the world's most powerful passports, defined by how many countries grant U.S. citizens entry without a visa. As of this year, it is not even in the top 10 anymore. Waning influence... www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The global drift toward right-wing populism must also be confronted, she said, otherwise “the world itself and people will become even more terrifying, even more monstrous.” “The people who hold power today are trying to shut us up,” she added. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/w...

Today, Oct.2nd, is the anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder by Saudi agents.

I dunno... Signaling you'll nationalize the Russian units of Raiffeisen & UniCredit kinda sounds like threatening EU regulators with a good time www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Disapproval of the Gaza war appears to have prompted a striking reassessment by American voters of their sympathies in the decades-old conflict, with slightly more voters siding with Palestinians 1998.https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/polls/israel-gaza-war-us-poll.html?smid=url-share

Jumbo bottles of Tylenol are America's version of universal healthcare.

Health insurance costs are about to rise by a record amount. This is happening after the seven largest publicly traded health insurance companies reported a combined $71 BILLION in profits in 2024. Instead of addressing this, Trump is spreading misinformation about Tylenol.

The Florida judge said that Trump’s 85-page complaint against the NYTimes was unnecessarily lengthy and digressive. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/b...

Most media organizations sued by Trump caved because their giant corporate parents fretted that fighting would harm their larger business interests. The New York Times is family owned and has long been anticipating this battle. The lawsuit is basically whining that he dislikes the coverage.

The utter devastation of so many Syrian cities is difficult to grasp and around Damascus there is simmering anger that the capital was spared while their lives are wrecked. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/w...

In the U.S., paltry social benefits like broad lack of health care compared to a place like Sweden is one reason losing your job here can be so devastating. @petersgoodman.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/b...

Russia, seeking to emphasize its stance on peace negotiations as European leaders gathered in the White House, issued a lengthy statement on Monday rejecting the deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine as part of any security guarantees.

Trump keeps advocating for trilateral negotiations involving Putin, Zelensky and himself. So far met with stony silence from the Kremlin. Putin has not refused outright, but has long made clear that he does not consider the Ukrainian president either legitimate or his equal. .

President Trump keeps saying that coming to the U.S. was a difficult thing for Putin. What? Putin has been diplomatically isolated by Western leaders since he invaded Ukraine in February 2022, so how could ending that isolation be difficult for him? Widely viewed as a BIG win for the Kremlin.

The right-wing cable channel Newsmax has agreed to pay $67 million to settle a libel lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems had brought against the channel for falsely claiming that the voting machine company had rigged votes in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/b...

Nordic & Baltic states tell it like it is, no weak pandering to dictators: Experience has shown that Putin cannot be trusted. Ultimately it is Russia's responsibility to end its blatant violations of international law. Russia's aggression and imperialist ambitions are the root causes of this war.

With no money from Iran for reconstruction, US and other donors to Lebanon hope pressure from street for help will push Hezbollah to give up its weapons. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/w...

The #Kamchatka peninsula -- near the epicenter of a massive earthquake in the #Russian Far East -- features as a territory on the #Risk board game, but for more than that here is a previous story on a land of volcanoes, bears and #salmon. With @evazinaida.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/t...

Oops: On Joe Rogan’s podcast in September 2018, Tulsi Gabbard acknowledged that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Rogan called it “amazing” that it took until 2016 for foreign election influence to become a major issue in the U.S.

Another investigation shows that American Airlines and to some extent United Airlines are still price gauging solo travellers compared to the same fair on the same route for two or more travellers. Delta has apparently stopped doing it. www.economist.com/business/202...

Sales of tickets, though cheap, had been sluggish to see #Gergiev, the Russian conductor and Putin toady, in his first concert in Europe since #Russia invaded #Ukraine. But it seems to be the politics that got the event scrubbed. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/a...

The weakening of Iran, particularly the return of Syria to the Sunni axis, seems like an inflection point in the Mideast www.nytimes.com/2025/07/13/u...

The playbook that Israel is using against Iran was first deployed in decapitating Hezbollah (and Hamas in Gaza), but attacking a country with one of the world's largest militaries is a different order of magnitude from a nonstate militia. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/15/w...

Crimea, still a key source of tension between Ukraine and Russia, finds itself isolated and increasingly Russian amid the war. To report this story from afar, we basically got in touch with anybody we had ever interviewed there before the war. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/w...

Trump HHS Department under Kennedy pushing new policies on children's health citing studies that do not exist: The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues.

Trump on Fox News conflating his own way of thinking with Putin: “Putin is tired of this whole thing….He’s not looking good, and he wants to look good…Don’t forget, this was supposed to end in one week.” 1. Putin believes he is winning, with time on his side. 2. The war economy is booming and ….

In Russia, nothing quite says "The Bolsheviks are back" than creeping public restoration of monuments to Stalin, the man responsible for murdering or imprisoning millions of Russians. Under Putin, a growing admiration of brutality. www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/05/15/m...

The Trump Arabian Peninsula grift summarized: www.nytimes.com/video/world/...

The cavalier attitude that the #Kremlin has toward Russians, still treating them more like subjects than citizens, is reflected in the tens of thousands of missing soldiers from the #Ukraine war and a backlog of 15,000 unidentified corpses. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/w...

Pressed about what concessions #Russia had offered in peace talks, Trump said, “stopping taking the whole country.” Russia predicted at start of invasion that they would take #Ukraine in three days, but turned out it lacked a competent army. Giving up something unachievable is not a concession.

Mountains of shame on Shari Redstone and everyone else involved here trying to settle such a ridiculous and baseless legal action. They’re so poor, all they have is money and they will eventually pay the price for their grotesque behavior.

Vice President Vance gives no indication of what territory Russia would have to give up if conflict frozen along current lines. “Now, of course, that means the Ukrainians and the Russians are both going to have to give up some of the territory they currently own.”

Lived in so many countries like Russia and Egypt where people were constantly harassed by petty officials at the behest of the government and now that miserable system has come to the USA. For what? www.freep.com/story/news/l...

60 Minutes could find no criminal records for 75% of the Venezuelans the U.S. sent to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador. https://cbsn.ws/4clubLP

In Viareggio, Italy, the annual carnival parade is famous for political satire. One float featured a 50-foot statue of Meloni. The float’s creator had dressed the figure in a pink suit jacket, swaying inside a pair of oversize gray jodhpurs like those once favored by Mussolini. shorturl.at/jwTXH

Kennedy hires another quack -- one who actually practiced medicine without a license. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/h...

The extraction of this KGB double agent from Moscow across the Finnish border is a gripping yarn that bests Le Carré in that it is true. The story forms the heart of the book “The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War” by Ben Macintyre. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/w...