There's a war going on, a madman finally showing his - - well, yeah that, but colors, in the cut of his predecessors. How do these people get to national leadership? People let them. An ultimate immorality of the Third Reich was that nobody around him had the courage to bring the man down. Even Stauffenberg had himself in mind, didn't have the character to stay next to Hitler with his briefcase, planted it, left, and, hearing the blast, hurried to Berlin to collect his glory and power.
Are those around this man as gutless? Or are they totally bought-in complicit? Under the spell. Sipping the cool-ade. Police arresting protesters ? But of course we also have that.
Interesting how disaster unifies: 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Ukraine. Apparently even Switzerland on board. Power of protest: Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? brought a president down. Different systems, what would it take there today? Nobody knows. Maybe we'll find out before this is over.
What for distraction? For those so inclined, free range Bible study, both in groups and alone, is fun and challenging. Mind, in the Episcopal Church you may come face to face with the proverb "Seek the Truth, Come Whence It May, Cost What It Will" where the Cost can be very dear indeed if illusions are too dear to be dissed. Where to draw the line or respect a wall when others are affected? I remember my shock at theological seminary, and then the settling into, and finally the challenge: go share what you've learned here.
So. Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side. https://www.gocomics.com . Many favorites in there, but limit self to the two. Everyone who likes comics has prejudices, all valid. For Better or For Worse. Zits. Couple of others. Candorville. Cul-de-Sac.
Solitaire, Klondike, Spider Solitaire.
Sudoku, but you can't let the mind wander, which mine is busily occupied doing most of the Time.
Tear away from war horror on television this week and focus on something local and personal? Confirmation half-session this coming Sunday if anyone signs on, if not, regular Sunday School class. Lent: do anything special for Lent? Time. Time devoted to vocation.
What else? Keep an eye on the madman.
RSF&PTL
T
Late arrival from Navy buddy whose German cousin, reporting from contacts in Ukraine, says food gone, water soon, human catastrophe soon.
If war crimes charges develop, who around the man will hang on and so be implicated. Are people still hanged for war crimes?
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Good morning. David Meyer here in a suddenly very different Berlin, filling in for Alan.
Russia’s ruble has tanked after the West’s freezing of Bank of Russia assets and partial disconnection of the country from the SWIFT payment network. It fell as much as 41% against the dollar before the central bank stepped in by raising its key interest rate from 9.5% to 20% and telling exporters to offload 80% of their foreign currency reserves. “External conditions for the Russian economy have drastically changed,” the Bank of Russia said this morning, accurately.
“This is in effect a financial war now,” wrote Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid in this morning’s note, while Lombard Odier strategist Homin Lee said, “we’re just a few days into a kind of once-in-a-lifetime reorientation in the global order.” Russian billionaires are not amused.
The myriad ways in which Vladimir Putin has messed up could fill a book—and will do so many times over—so let’s switch to bullet points. Apart from destroying Russia’s economy for what he sold to his people as a mere peacekeeping mission, Putin has:
• Brought the West together to a degree that probably most people in the West didn’t think possible. (The “weakness” debatenow appears settled.)
• Brought more NATO firepower to his front door.
• Turned Russia into a global pariah, with even China’s foreign ministry saying this morning that “China and Russia are strategic partners, but not allies.”
• Turned his enemy Volodymyr “I need ammunition, not a ride” Zelensky into a global icon. As intelligence expert “The Grugq” quipped on Twitter: “KGB pensioner loses information war to comedian with a smartphone.”
• Sparked the remilitarization of nearby Germany—a profound psychic shift for that country, which has for a generation seen its weak army as a virtue, while opting to appease Russia.
The invasion itself doesn’t seem to be going very well for Putin, either, with logistical problems and fierce Ukrainian resistance so far stopping his army from taking any major city. As my former Politico colleague Zoya Sheftalovich put it on the weekend, Putin may have been emboldened to invade by the West’s impotent response to the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan last year, “but he got Afghanistan in 1979. Ukrainians aren’t rolling over or welcoming back an old friend. They, and their president, are digging in for war.”
All of which makes Putin more dangerous than ever. The West is doing everything it can to avoid joining a shooting war with Russia, but the steps it has taken instead have nonetheless prompted Putin to put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert. His ally/vassal Belarus has also decided to host Russian nuclear missiles. Given how the dictator has over the last week shattered assumptions about what he is and isn’t capable of, there is every reason to be worried. And even if he doesn’t press that button, there’s a strong chance he will increase the violence of his invasion.
“It’s fair to say that the stakes are enormously high,” wrote Reid. “If you were assessing the current situation, you would now have to at least consider some pretty bleak outcomes.” Indeed. So here’s hoping something positive comes of talks between the Ukrainian and Russian sides, which began at the Belarus-Ukraine border this morning.
speaking of bleak outcomes, the latest U.N. report on climate change landed minutes ago.
David Meyer
@superglaze
david.meyer@fortune.com
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