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The U.S. federal government is deliberately terrorizing American cities and is happy to sanction unnecessary and therefore illegal deadly force. The agents might be poorly trained; their leadership and culture is clearly rotten.

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Quoth Shower Cat:

Trump creates an impossible dilemma for those of us who look at the world in analytic terms. We can’t turn our analytic brains off, but it’s impossible to analyze something like this without creating the impression that there is actually a plan of some sort, even when we all agree that there is not.

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Recent Geopolitical Developments

On his YouTube channel, Anders Puck Nielsen offers helpful observations about recent European and American geopolitical developments. Whereas many of us were disappointed in the European Union’s collective unwillingness to seize Russian assets two weeks ago, Nielsen underlines the significance of the €90 billion loan that the EU put together for Ukraine instead. He argues that Europe has now shown itself capable of exercising real geopolitical influence in a situation ostensibly dominated by Russia and the United States.

I agree that this development is a big deal. If Europe is still unable or unwilling to throw its military might around, it has now signaled that it is not to be trifled with in its own backyard. It will help Ukraine stay in its fight against Russian subjugation, regardless of what the fickle United States does.

As for Trump’s latest undertaking against Venezuela, Nielsen questions its strategic wisdom, even if the U.S. military has demonstrated impressive tactical and operational chops. Besides covering the attack’s illegality (according to both international and U.S. law) and its doubtful domestic political support in the United States, Nielsen observes that the world is being divided between imperial spheres of influence. Countries that value their independence need to think about what measures are necessary to preserve their freedom, even as imperial overstretch will place limits on imperial aggressors.

This last insight connects directly to Nielsen’s earlier thoughts on the €90 billion for Ukraine. Europe cannot afford to be complacent. For me, the ambiguous historical example of the Holy Roman Empire comes to mind. It had defensive military heft, but it was vulnerable to internal division. It survived many centuries but proved unable to hold on when faced with the paradigm-breaking French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In my YouTube comment, however, I was more focused on my frustration with the United States.

More people need to call out this administration on the difference between tactics/operations and strategy. This administration is headed by a man with no understanding of such things. He’s banking on U.S. military might while weakening the country’s economic and fiscal health, not to mention all the international links that made the US strong in the postwar era. It doesn’t help that few in our American billionaire class understand the relationship between U.S. soft power and social stability, on one hand, and their wealth, on the other.

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The current U.S. administration knows how to blow stuff up, kidnap people, and promise draconian legal action, but will they be able to make a viable case against Maduro in a U.S. court? Their self-parodying social media posts do not inspire confidence in anything they say or do.

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Small frozen, snow-covered lake. In foreground a sign: 'No Lifeguard on Duty'

Echo Lake, North Conway, NH, on Dec. 28, 2025

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“Malanka: Ukraine’s winter ritual of masks, mischief, and good fortune” kyivindependent.com/malanka-u…

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Seasonal affective disorder, your days are numbered. The winter solstice is only two days away. 😎

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Kyiv Independent video: One night with a Kyiv family amid Russia’s mass attack (29 min)

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Am reading a fascinating collection of Ukrainian World War II narratives preserved in family memories and papers: World War II, Uncontrived and Unredacted: Testimonies from Ukraine, edited by Vakhtang Kipiani (Ibidem, 2022).

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Finished reading Andrey Kurkov’s Diary of an Invasion (Mountain Leopard Press, 2022) and Our Daily War (Open Borders Press, 2024). Lots of good observations and vignettes about life in Ukraine during war, but also before.

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I feel sick every time I hear the U.S. president conflating Ukraine’s gradual loss of land with its overall strategic position. Is his team really so ignorant? Or is this yet another instance of their favoring the interests and nihilism of the few over the interests and values of the many?

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'One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This' by Omar El Akkad

I’ve added Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Penguin, 2025) to my list of books for the current moment. In one sense it’s a fairly short screed about the hypocrisy of Western values. From that point of view, this 2025 winner of the National Book Award had little new to tell me. Moreover, its dark context, the genocide in Gaza and the related suppression of free speech in the United States, led me to put it down several times in recent months. Nonetheless, its unusual and compelling style kept me coming back. On top of that, I was drawn to how he structures his reflections around elements of his own transnational life.

At times, the argument feels bothsidesist, but I don’t think it’s that easy. Besides, why doesn’t Western liberalism work harder to offer a positive vision that lives up to liberal values instead of relying on the adage that the other side is a whole lot worse. It is, but this rhetorical strategy clearly hasn’t worked, and it is irrelevant when it comes to the lives that Netanyahu has extinguished using US weapons. Despite my occasional ambivalence about it, this little book offers anyone who chooses to listen plenty to think about. We can’t overcome the current disorder without doing better in word and deed.

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I took this photo before cleaning off the car and moving it for the snowplow last Wednesday.

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I signed up for Proton Mail for the email. It was never very good, but lately it’s been getting in my way and even undoing my work. Worse, the company shows no signs of trying to improve the experience. Instead they add things I neither want or need: AI, a crypto wallet, documents…

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Capped off a dark, cold day with whole wheat blueberry pancakes and applesauce. Made an octogenarian happy.