Because they are.

The victory over a mercilessly cruel regime deserves to belong to the millions of Iranians who have risked and given their lives to defeat tyrannical rule--not to a cowardly narcissist who self-interestedly launches missiles to distract attention from his own role in child rape and trafficking.

Maksym Butkevych is right: "And in this war for truth, we cannot lose."

Today marks 14 years since 17-year-old, unarmed Trayvon Martin was shot and killed while walking home. 14 years later, we’re still demanding a country where our children can walk home in peace — without being treated like a threat.

If you’re wondering why the Trump Administration is cutting off health care for people across our state - look no further than the President’s own words: “retribution is coming”

I would just modify the verb tense to the present progressive: “we are witnessing”

Professor Marci Shore @ the Munk School, Toronto, this evening: Four Years into Full-Scale War: The Gap between Past and Future. @marcishore.bsky.social is an amazing communicator: plain-spoken and eloquent, absolutely precise when necessary (phenomenology! Husserl!), ... 1/

Over the past four years, thinking has felt sharper to me in Ukraine than anywhere else.

"Everyone breathed in dust and wiped condensation dripping from the ceiling off their faces. They were forced to sit constantly. Legs became swollen from immobility. Skin cracked and began to rot. They slept sitting down. They died sitting down."--Angelina Kariakina and Hanna Mamonova

On this twelfth anniversary of the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, I'm thinking of Vasyl Cherpanyn's observation that the revolution on the Maidan “was so fundamentally European that it turned out to be too European for today’s EU.”

Jake Sullivan why Europeans did not believe Americans: “[T]he evidence we presented to them was overwhelming. It’s not like we held back something that, if only they had seen it, would have made all the difference. They were just seized with the conviction that this simply made no sense.”

La méthode employée par Trump et ses sbires s’apparente à celle de gangsters. « On attise les masses, on excite leur colère, puis on la canalise vers un bouc émissaire jusqu’à les pousser à lyncher des gens. » Tout est là devant nos yeux «Rien n’est caché. » @magdalineboutros.bsky.social

Cartoon by @mluckovich.bsky.social.

22 февраля на телеканале «Дождь» — премьера русско-язычной версии документального фильма “Предупредить Запад,” шпионской истории ранней холодной войны, с редкой канадской точки зрения. Смотря фильм, у меня было такое ощущение, что эта история ещё не закончилась.

For those in Toronto, please join me and @lucanway.bsky.social in thinking together on a macabre anniversary.

Anyone near Lexington, Virginia should not miss this:

"Tehran’s Islamo-fascist rulers pose a very real threat . . it is not the biggest reason Israel is becoming an apartheid state . . .that title goes to the govt. of messianic zealots, Arab-hating nationalists and anti-modern ultra-Orthodox Israelis put together by Netanyahu to keep himself in power."

We should not fund a Department of Homeland Security that terrorizes children and forces them to spend their dying days trying to see their father one last time.

"I asked a crane operator, Yevhen Bilousov, when he thought the war might end. The question itself was meaningless, he told me, 'because everything depends not on when but on how the war ends.'"--Nataliya Gumenyuk Gift article:

"It can seem that the world watches Russia’s war on Ukraine as if it were a film. When attention wanes, there is a demand for an ending — if not good, then bad. For Ukrainians, this is not cinema but reality. It will last as long as it lasts."--Nataliya Gumenyuk

"Under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not," Arendt wrote. "Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.” Mr. Nobody reminds us that these "some people who will not" matter.

"There’s that proverb, it takes a village to raise a child. I think we’ve learned that it takes a very powerful network to abuse so many children."--journalist Anand Giridharadas

Österreichs Verhältnis zu Russland: eine nüchterne Betrachtung: @martinma.bsky.social

This is where we are.

"As much as some may wish otherwise, a fire on a ship concerns all passengers, regardless of the class of ticket they hold."--Serhiy Zhadan

"The strategy of waiting out the present as a forced pause is wrong; the notion of the future as an opportunity to simply return everything to how it was is wrong. A future as a deferred version of the past is an illusion. The future will consist of us. . .as we will be able to be.--Serhiy Zhadan

The photo shows the reaction of Vladislav Heraskevich's father and coach to his son's disqualification from the Olympics because of a helmet with portraits of killed Ukrainian athletes.

Rep. Johnson: "We have the Epstein Victim survivors here today…How many lives have been derailed because your department was either sloppy and incompetent or willfully trying to intimidate and punish these ladies for coming forward?" Bondi: "Your time is up."

This is an entire presidential administration that operates through blackmail, bribes, and ritual humiliation.

'Have you apologized to President Trump?' 'Have you said thank you?' This is the authoritarian rhetoric of ritual humiliation.

Jamie Raskin to Pam Bondi: "You acted with some mixture of staggering incompetence, cold indifference, and jaded cruelty towards more than 1000 victims raped, abused and trafficked."

"You redacted the names of abusers, enablers, accomplices and co-conspirators, apparently to spare them embarrassment and disgrace, which is the exact opposite of what the law ordered you to do. Even worse, you shockingly failed to redact many of the victims’ names."-- @raskin.house.gov

Ted Lieu: "I want to know, were there any underage girls at that party or at any party that Trump attended with Jeffrey Epstein?" Pam Bondi: "This is so ridiculous, in that they are trying to deflect from all the great things Donald Trump has done."

Rep. Raskin: “If Donald Trump can get $10 billion theoretically from the DOJ, how much should these people get for a far worse violation of their privacy rights and a far greater danger established to them and their lives?" Bondi: *doesn't answer the question*

BREAKING: Congressman Ted Lieu just exposed Pam Bondi for lying under oath. This is a federal crime. Wow.

This is what moral sanity sounds like.

"I have seen this pattern before. It begins with claims that certain people are dangerous. That ordinary legal safeguards should not apply to them. . ..State terror is rarely announced. In my experience, it becomes normalised."-- @janinedigi.bsky.social

“There’s no way you run a billion-dollar international child sex-trafficking ring with just two people committing crimes.”-- @raskin.house.gov

Modern-day Faust exhibit 1:

I find it calming to hear a sane adult just describe what is right in front of us. Thank you @jasmineforus.bsky.social

Thank you to @jasmineforus.bsky.social for being eminently sane at a time of madness.

We will remember this winter. When an entire nation froze in the cold right on the border with the European Union, fought against the Russian army's advance, but did not give up.

Upside for Yale — this freshman journalist has published an unforgettable last sentence. yaledailynews.com/articles/gel...

"Being a convicted sex offender did not make Mr. Epstein an outcast, not when he seemed to have something to offer. His transactional amorality actually seemed to add to his appeal to people who were convinced that the rules didn’t apply to them."-- @mollyjongfast.bsky.social

I'd like to add that Michelle Obama, in Manchester, New Hampshire in October 2016 and in Kalamazoo, Michigan in October 2024, gave two of the most important feminist speeches of the 21st century. This is an excellent moment to listen to them again with your children.

"Every crime is singular, but no crime is so terrible that it exceeds the bounds of comparison. To exempt any act—or, indeed, any individual or state—from comparison is to vitiate the very possibility of moral reasoning."--Peter E. Gordon

"By 'unequivocally' rejecting all analogies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has erected a fence around the Holocaust that ensures that its moral lessons will be forgotten."-- Peter E. Gordon

"It is an old point in the literature on fascism that if you allow fascism somewhere – in Guantánamo Bay, in Israel, on the streets of American cities – it will soon leak out everywhere."--Jason Stanley

When do we get to the part in the movie when the good guys start winning?