Barackface: News: April 26

The Power of the Squat It’s the one exercise most of us should be doing. But we need to do it right. ........ What is the single best strength-building exercise many of us could be doing right this minute ....... and the answer would likely be a resounding: squats. ....... “For lower-body strength and flexibility, there is probably no better exercise” ........ “It is really a whole body exercise” ....... “It requires core stability and trains the back.” ....... Some people worry that squats can imperil the knees and hips, but the exercise can actually help protect and improve the workings of these and other joints .........
The movement “helps maintain the flexibility, stability and function” of hips, knees and ankles
......... squats are key to living and aging well. “When we clean the house or plant a vegetable garden, we need to squat,” Dr. Duric said. Ditto for easing into and out of chairs and lowering ourselves to toddler level for face-to-face playtime. ......... squats are “one of the most primal and critical fundamental movements necessary to improve sport performance, to reduce injury risk and to support lifelong physical activity.” .

18 Gaslighting Phrases That Experts Say Are Unfairly Belittling Your Emotions Recognizing this behavior early can save you from having to overcome emotional trauma later, psychologists explain. .

Thomas Piketty’s Radical Plan to Redistribute Wealth
I’ve dealt with Putin before: I know what it will take to defeat this brutal despot My own history with Putin goes back to 2000, when we were both prime ministers of our respective countries. It was only when I ran to be president of Ukraine in 2004 that he actively campaigned against me........ the Putin I dealt with then no longer exists. He has since become a completely isolated and brutal despot who cannot stand any opposition. ........ One of the greatest weapons we now have against Putin is international solidarity and support. This is something that really bothers him. ........ Fatigue towards the horrors of war is sadly common; we saw this with Syria, Yemen and our own Donbas. But those of us in Ukraine cannot afford to feel fatigued, or else we risk losing sight of victory. ........ This war is a defining moment, not just in Ukrainian history, but in defence of democracy. This is not just a regional conflict between Ukraine and Russia but a fight against tyranny and imperialism. ....... I strongly believe that victory for Ukraine is inevitable.

Russia warns United States against sending more arms to Ukraine President Vladimir Putin says the "special military operation" in Ukraine is necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia and Moscow had to defend against the persecution of Russian-speaking people.

Attacks Begin in New Country as Russia Warns Nuclear Threat Is ‘Real’ In a significant move, Germany, which has so far refused to supply heavy weaponry to Kyiv, is expected to confirm that it will send 50 anti-aircraft tanks. ........ Another element in the Russian war plans became clearer last week when a Russian general, Rustam Minnekaev, let slip that the proposed “land corridor” would stretch all the way to Moldova, entirely cutting Ukraine off from access to the sea. ....... Under those plans, Russia's military control would stretch all the way into the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, where Russian-backed separatists declared independence 30 years ago and where Russia still has a military base.

Tensions surge after attacks in Moldova's Russia-backed breakaway region Russia’s foreign minister has warned Western powers not to underestimate the “real” risk of nuclear conflict if they continue to funnel weapons to Ukraine in what he says is an undeclared proxy war. ........ Within hours of his remarks, explosions were heard inside the sovereign borders of Moldova. Ukrainian officials believe Russia is launching “false flag” operations in the pro-Russian rebel-controlled enclave of Transnistria in order to justify widening their imperial assault into a second nation.

Russia’s Lavrov Says NATO Is Using Ukraine as a Proxy, Warns Against World War III Ukraine said comments suggest Moscow senses defeat Russia’s top diplomat said the West was engaged in a proxy war with his country that could escalate into a world war with nuclear weapons, as Western nations elevated their commitment to defending Ukraine. ........... “The risk is serious, real. It should not be underestimated,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a Russian state-television interview broadcast Monday night. “Under no circumstances should a third world war be allowed to happen,” he said, adding that “there can be no winners in a nuclear war.”

The War in Ukraine Has Unleashed a New Word In a creative play on three different languages, Ukrainians identify an enemy: ‘ruscism.’ ....... a bilingual society at war with a fascist empire ....... “Pашизм” sounds like “fascism,” but with an “r” sound instead of an “f” at the beginning; it means, roughly, “Russian fascism.” ...... The aggressor in this war keeps trying to push back toward a past as it never happened, toward nonsensical and necrophiliac accounts of history. Russia must conquer Ukraine, Vladimir Putin says, because of a baptism a thousand years ago, or because of bloodshed during World War II. But Russian myths of empire cannot contain the imagination of the Ukrainian victims of a new war. National identity is about living people, and the values and the futures they imagine and choose. A nation exists insofar as it makes new things, and a national language lives by making new words. ......
The new word “рашизм” is a useful conceptualization of Putin’s worldview.
Far more than Western analysts, Ukrainians have noticed the Russian tilt toward fascism in the last decade. ....... A bilingual nation like Ukraine is not just a collection of bilingual individuals; it is an unending set of encounters in which people habitually adjust the language they use to other people and new settings, manipulating language in ways that are foreign to monolingual nations. I have gone on Ukrainian television and radio, taken questions in Russian and answered them in Ukrainian, without anyone for a moment finding that switch worthy of mention. Once, while speaking Ukrainian on television, I stopped for a moment to quote a few words of poetry in Russian, a switch that was an effort for me. But Ukrainians change languages effortlessly — not just as situations change, but also to make situations change, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, or even in the middle of a word. ....... Putin’s ethnic imperialism insists that Ukrainians must be Russians because they speak Russian. They do — and they speak Ukrainian. But Ukrainian identity has as much to do with an ability to live between languages than it does with the use of any one of them. ......... Russian and Ukrainian are very similar. They are pretty close — much as, say, Spanish and Italian are. ....... Russian grammar is similar to Ukrainian — perhaps a tad closer than, say, Ukrainian and Polish ....... The Ukrainian word for “cat” sounds like the Russian for “whale,” while the Ukrainian for “female cats” sounds like Russian for “intestines.” ........ Russians do not understand Ukrainian, because they have not learned it. Ukrainians do understand Russian, because they have learned it. This fact has battlefield implications. ...... President Volodymyr Zelensky generally used Russian as a comedian and almost always uses Ukrainian as a politician — except for when he might switch, midspeech, to using Russian to address Russians, in the full knowledge that Ukrainians will follow along. ........ when Russians use it earnestly, Ukrainians might consider it a sign of “zombification,” зомбування, a word they use rather a lot. One Ukrainian explanation for the use of the letter Z by official Russia as the symbol of the invasion is that “the other half of the swastika was stolen in the warehouse,” a joke about the logistics of the Russian Army — but personally, the Z makes me think of “zombie.” ....... English vowel sounds are also different — broader, lazier and more numerous — than those in Ukrainian and Russian. English speakers have about as many ways of pronouncing “a” as there are vowels in those entire languages. ....... In English, if you believe in racism, you are a racist; if you believe in fascism, you are a fascist. This lexical progression is similar in Ukrainian. “Расизм,” racism, has the associated personal form “расист,” racist. “Фашизм,” fascism, yields “фашист,” fascist. Likewise, the new word “рашизм” has “рашист,” or ruscist. .......
Given the imperial character of the Russian state, a very high proportion of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine belong to national minorities.
This suggests a deeper problem, which is that even soldiers dying for a fascist cause need not be fascists themselves. ........ Russian fascism is certainly a phenomenon that requires a concept. The Russian Federation promotes the extreme right everywhere. Putin is the idol of white supremacists around the world. Prominent Russian fascists are given access to mass media during wars, including this one. Members of the Russian elite, above all Putin himself, rely increasingly on fascist concepts. Putin’s very justification of the war in Ukraine, as an act of cleansing violence that will return Russia to itself, represents a Christian form of fascism. The recent publication, in an official Russian news service, of what I consider an openly genocidal handbook, providing a plan for the elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such, confirms all this. Moscow is the center of fascism in our world. .......... Russia today is a country where it is illegal to call this war a “war,” and where reading a poem or showing a blank poster is deemed a slander of the army. ........ on the battlefield, where the Russian Army is conformist and cowering, and the outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian Army adaptable and creative. .