Let’s go back to 2020 when Cheeto after losing the election pulled all the stops including a ransacking of the Capitol building during the J6 insurrection when Cheeto called on his hoodlums to interfere with the certification of the election
As all the turmoil was being churned now disbarred Guliani and his Nazi cohort of lawyers filed and lost 61 lawsuits in court attempting to push Cheeto’s Big Lie agenda
Well it’s now 2025 and Cheeto is trying to militarize the streets of Democratic cities, first Los Angeles, then Portland, and now Chicago But the federal courts as they did in 2020 have turned the stupidity of the attempt to militarize our cities into what could only be termed sham legalese
So Cheeto being the bully he is, thinks that he can get away his military junta attempt and as JB Pritzker(governor of Illinois) has said that bringing the military is about fear and intimidation of the electorate in the runup to the 2026 midtems Pritzker also suggested on Maddow yesterday that he believes that the Nazi regime will confiscate voting machines
Thank you Ken! It occurred to me that my 43 year old son has never heard of Chernobyl, so I believe we will have a little discussion today, especially focusing on the Russian soldiers filling their sandbags with radioactive sand. Whoa! What is the Russian military command thinking? I guess "thinking" is the wrong word.
Hi Ellen - in 2019 there was an excellent series on HBO called "Chernobyl" starring Stellan Skarsgard and Jared Harris, among others, that very ably explains what happened and why, and how the Ukrainians and Russians dealt with it -- there was a lot of heroism from many parties. It's a drama, but it's quite accurate, and a good way to learn about this calamity. (As it happens, my daughter, who's about the same age as your son, first told us about this show and highly recommended it.)
They considered them already dead. They knew the dose rate with detectors. They were going to die anyway, it was a decision made in a panicked time of a disaster. Some people knew and worked anyway. Some were hero's who suffered a terrible way of Dying.
Outstanding article Ken. Mahalo. May I recommend for a deep dive into what is happening inside Russia, the YouTube "Jason Jay Smart". Western media overlooks this kind of detail. Jason is a journalist with Kyiv Post and spent years inside Russia. In brief, Russia is in trouble and Ukraine is winning.
In this transcript Professor Chenoweth discusses the four elements necessary for a successful social movement. Below are excerpts from the transcript.
The third thing that successful movements do is they innovate new tactics. This is very important because movements that tend to over-rely on a single technique like protests, like demonstrating every Friday, something that becomes very routinized, end up succumbing much more quickly first of all to protester fatigue, but the second thing is they often subject their participants to a higher risk of repression or communal violence from opponents. So movements that are capable of having the capacity to shift to methods of dispersion, like stay-at-homes or strikes or forms of economic noncooperation, tend to be much more effective because they have the capability of maneuver when the state begins to ramp up violence against them.
Those are the four things—numbers, defections, tactical innovations, and discipline. What do we need for those things to happen? We need to organize. I think one of the key reasons why many movements have struggled around the world, including in the United States before now, is that there has been an overemphasis on mobilizing and less of an emphasis on organizing because to have the capacity to do these things skillfully means that there has to be a baseline level of trust, political education, collective identity, and also a sense that the struggle is longer than just the next event we have to plan to be in the streets, that the struggle is a long struggle, and even if there is one particular event that gets derailed, we are still in this, and it's a long-term kind of struggle. Movements that end up planning event to event or march to march or protest to protest are in much more danger of being thrown off-course and having these sort of demobilizational factors affect their long-term trajectories.
Protests in Perspective: Civil Disobedience & Activism Today, with Erica Chenoweth & Deva Woodly | Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
Good luck with that, although I can say I have practiced economic non-cooperation for years, and have intensified it in the last six months, especially in the last two.
I love that term “economic non-cooperation.” Bern doing it myself for years. I think women collectively, who are the drivers of consumerism and shopping, can be a force to be reckoned with. Look what happened when people cancelled their Disney and Hulu subscriptions—Kimmel was back in no time. I used to work at Macy’s years ago. When Trump’s racist and homophobic comments first came to light, Macy’s pulled trump’s and Ivanka’s merchandise out of all their stores. If consumers fought back with their wallets, corporations would have to respond and make changes.
Research WHO you do business with and see WHO they monetarily support. Then make changes. “WE, the PEOPLE” are really the ones in charge.
Absolutely. I think fighting with wallets is the most effective message. Especially with oligarchs and billionaires. If they think they will keep the business a smaller business built up, they have another think coming if they think I will buy the product anymore. Also, I shop a lot at thrift shops and estate sales and I do so much by hand. I do pay more at some smaller stores, but it's important to me that they stay in business.
I'm 75. I've been active since 1965, 60 years. People need to dedicate their lives to change, and to live the change they want. As someone who experienced violence when I was young, I am oh so aware of what can happen in peaceful demonstrations, and even more aware of what happens to people who are elderly people when other people start running. I don't do demonstrations, it's not just me who would get hurt, it's other people too. I vote, I write letters, and I act economically. But I live in Berkeley, where it's easy to shop at alternative stores that have reasonable costs (we are on Social Security). The climate crisis is my big issue, and everything I do is to leave something for our son (money so he doesn't starve.) You guys are pretty much on your own.
This was a frightening but hauntingly beautiful article. It is amazing how the wolves adapted. Will a few humans survive with adaptations after this is all over?
Yes. I always smile when people say, "We have to save the planet." The planet will survive us. What they really mean is we have to keep the planet hospitable for human existence.
Beautifully written Ken, a real testament to why history is so important, and dangerous with the attempted erasure or change to suit a political narrative instead of the truth. Russia via Putin, the U.S. via Stephen Miller and Trump seem to want to blow up the entire world by vainly and ignorantly destroying education and rewriting history, and think they will survive it. They’ll end up like those poor ignorant Russian soldiers…….. but the wolves and maybe other species will end up ruling the world without humans. Proof that lust for power, greed and autonomy is a dangerous path to travel.
If only the big 7 tech companies understood that. They are all in on nuclear in their race to build data centers and rule the world. All they do is move fast and break things for more money and power. Sociopaths all.
Cheeto Didn’t Learn His Lesson In 2021
Let’s go back to 2020 when Cheeto after losing the election pulled all the stops including a ransacking of the Capitol building during the J6 insurrection when Cheeto called on his hoodlums to interfere with the certification of the election
As all the turmoil was being churned now disbarred Guliani and his Nazi cohort of lawyers filed and lost 61 lawsuits in court attempting to push Cheeto’s Big Lie agenda
Well it’s now 2025 and Cheeto is trying to militarize the streets of Democratic cities, first Los Angeles, then Portland, and now Chicago But the federal courts as they did in 2020 have turned the stupidity of the attempt to militarize our cities into what could only be termed sham legalese
So Cheeto being the bully he is, thinks that he can get away his military junta attempt and as JB Pritzker(governor of Illinois) has said that bringing the military is about fear and intimidation of the electorate in the runup to the 2026 midtems Pritzker also suggested on Maddow yesterday that he believes that the Nazi regime will confiscate voting machines
And Pritzker is correct.
thanks
Excellent article.
Thank you Ken! It occurred to me that my 43 year old son has never heard of Chernobyl, so I believe we will have a little discussion today, especially focusing on the Russian soldiers filling their sandbags with radioactive sand. Whoa! What is the Russian military command thinking? I guess "thinking" is the wrong word.
Hi Ellen - in 2019 there was an excellent series on HBO called "Chernobyl" starring Stellan Skarsgard and Jared Harris, among others, that very ably explains what happened and why, and how the Ukrainians and Russians dealt with it -- there was a lot of heroism from many parties. It's a drama, but it's quite accurate, and a good way to learn about this calamity. (As it happens, my daughter, who's about the same age as your son, first told us about this show and highly recommended it.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)
It turns out my son knew about Chernobyl because he saw the HBO series!
They considered them already dead. They knew the dose rate with detectors. They were going to die anyway, it was a decision made in a panicked time of a disaster. Some people knew and worked anyway. Some were hero's who suffered a terrible way of Dying.
Putin and his team of terrorists have the mindset of a cancer.
Outstanding article Ken. Mahalo. May I recommend for a deep dive into what is happening inside Russia, the YouTube "Jason Jay Smart". Western media overlooks this kind of detail. Jason is a journalist with Kyiv Post and spent years inside Russia. In brief, Russia is in trouble and Ukraine is winning.
I watch him, and also Jack Broe, whose daily reports are encouraging and highly informative.
Successful Social Movements
In this transcript Professor Chenoweth discusses the four elements necessary for a successful social movement. Below are excerpts from the transcript.
The third thing that successful movements do is they innovate new tactics. This is very important because movements that tend to over-rely on a single technique like protests, like demonstrating every Friday, something that becomes very routinized, end up succumbing much more quickly first of all to protester fatigue, but the second thing is they often subject their participants to a higher risk of repression or communal violence from opponents. So movements that are capable of having the capacity to shift to methods of dispersion, like stay-at-homes or strikes or forms of economic noncooperation, tend to be much more effective because they have the capability of maneuver when the state begins to ramp up violence against them.
Those are the four things—numbers, defections, tactical innovations, and discipline. What do we need for those things to happen? We need to organize. I think one of the key reasons why many movements have struggled around the world, including in the United States before now, is that there has been an overemphasis on mobilizing and less of an emphasis on organizing because to have the capacity to do these things skillfully means that there has to be a baseline level of trust, political education, collective identity, and also a sense that the struggle is longer than just the next event we have to plan to be in the streets, that the struggle is a long struggle, and even if there is one particular event that gets derailed, we are still in this, and it's a long-term kind of struggle. Movements that end up planning event to event or march to march or protest to protest are in much more danger of being thrown off-course and having these sort of demobilizational factors affect their long-term trajectories.
Protests in Perspective: Civil Disobedience & Activism Today, with Erica Chenoweth & Deva Woodly | Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
Good luck with that, although I can say I have practiced economic non-cooperation for years, and have intensified it in the last six months, especially in the last two.
I love that term “economic non-cooperation.” Bern doing it myself for years. I think women collectively, who are the drivers of consumerism and shopping, can be a force to be reckoned with. Look what happened when people cancelled their Disney and Hulu subscriptions—Kimmel was back in no time. I used to work at Macy’s years ago. When Trump’s racist and homophobic comments first came to light, Macy’s pulled trump’s and Ivanka’s merchandise out of all their stores. If consumers fought back with their wallets, corporations would have to respond and make changes.
Research WHO you do business with and see WHO they monetarily support. Then make changes. “WE, the PEOPLE” are really the ones in charge.
Absolutely. I think fighting with wallets is the most effective message. Especially with oligarchs and billionaires. If they think they will keep the business a smaller business built up, they have another think coming if they think I will buy the product anymore. Also, I shop a lot at thrift shops and estate sales and I do so much by hand. I do pay more at some smaller stores, but it's important to me that they stay in business.
If you have a better plan than Professor Chenoweth, I’d certainly like to hear it.
I'm 75. I've been active since 1965, 60 years. People need to dedicate their lives to change, and to live the change they want. As someone who experienced violence when I was young, I am oh so aware of what can happen in peaceful demonstrations, and even more aware of what happens to people who are elderly people when other people start running. I don't do demonstrations, it's not just me who would get hurt, it's other people too. I vote, I write letters, and I act economically. But I live in Berkeley, where it's easy to shop at alternative stores that have reasonable costs (we are on Social Security). The climate crisis is my big issue, and everything I do is to leave something for our son (money so he doesn't starve.) You guys are pretty much on your own.
Wow, great article!
This was a frightening but hauntingly beautiful article. It is amazing how the wolves adapted. Will a few humans survive with adaptations after this is all over?
Humans may never know the answer.
They do say nature will always reclaim in one form or another, just not humans
Yes. I always smile when people say, "We have to save the planet." The planet will survive us. What they really mean is we have to keep the planet hospitable for human existence.
Great writing Ken
Amazing report. Very evocative. So many hurt and killed due to ignorance and hubris.
Beautifully written. Thank you for this.
Animals deserve this world far more
Slava Ukraini!!!
Beautifully written Ken, a real testament to why history is so important, and dangerous with the attempted erasure or change to suit a political narrative instead of the truth. Russia via Putin, the U.S. via Stephen Miller and Trump seem to want to blow up the entire world by vainly and ignorantly destroying education and rewriting history, and think they will survive it. They’ll end up like those poor ignorant Russian soldiers…….. but the wolves and maybe other species will end up ruling the world without humans. Proof that lust for power, greed and autonomy is a dangerous path to travel.
... which leads one to wonder: would the planet be better off without humans?
Nuclear energy with plutonium is not a stable energy choice. Due to unstable citizenry, the effects of a nuclear disaster are too much.
Obviously, we need more solar and wind sources of energy. The ignorant people in charge don't understand that. Going back to coal? Seriously?
Spot on, Arne. I just had solar panels installed last week.
If only the big 7 tech companies understood that. They are all in on nuclear in their race to build data centers and rule the world. All they do is move fast and break things for more money and power. Sociopaths all.