eastern Ukraine has resisted Russia fiercely.
......... a rising China might be able to peacefully integrate Taiwan and maybe even draw Japan into its sphere of influence; that scenario seems highly unlikely at the moment. ....... None of the ambiguous and ambivalent reactions to Putin’s war outside the Euro-American alliance suggest a sudden springtime for the liberal-international world order. .Will the Ukraine War End the Age of Populism? . If the past 10 years of Western history have featured an extended wrestling match between populism and liberalism, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has inspired many liberals to hopefully declare the contest over, their opponent pinned. ....... a shameless pivot. Which is to say: Don’t be surprised if Donald Trump somehow evolves into the biggest Russia hawk you’ve ever seen come 2024. ...... Now, though, if you look at polls of Republican voters or listen to G.O.P. politicians, what you see is mostly a reversion to straightforward hawkishness, to a view that the Biden White House probably isn’t being confrontational enough — which is to say, to where the party stood before the Trump rebellion happened. ........ it’s not a global coalition confronting Putin so much as a Euro-American one ...... “A Russian defeat will make possible a ‘new birth of freedom,’” Francis Fukuyama ........ Fukuyama framed the current moment as an opportunity for Americans and other Westerners to choose liberalism anew, out of a recognition that the nationalist alternative is “pretty awful.” ........ the spirit of 1989 was itself as much a spirit of revived Eastern European nationalism as of liberalism alone. Which is one reason countries like Poland and Hungary have sorely disappointed liberals in their subsequent development ....... Putin’s invasion disproves “all the nonsense about how the West is decadent, the West is over, the West is in decline, how it’s a multipolar world and the rise of China.” With the West rallying to a resilient Ukraine, “all of that turned out to be bunk.” ........ What was bunk was the idea that Putin’s Russia represents some kind of efficient postliberal or traditionalist alternative to the problems of the West, and one whose military could simply steamroller Eastern Europe. .
How to Defeat Putin and Save the Planet Let this be the last war in which we and our allies fund both sides. ........ Western nations fund NATO and aid Ukraine’s military with our tax dollars, and — since Russia’s energy exports finance 40 percent of its state budget — we fund Vladimir Putin’s army with our purchases of Russian oil and gas. ....... you don’t see the North and the South (Poles) both melting at the same time ..... an ice shelf the size of New York City had collapsed in East Antarctica at the beginning of this freakish warm spell. ....... if all the water frozen in East Antarctica melts, it would raise sea levels more than 160 feet around the world. ....... Now Biden is begging the Saudis to dramatically increase their production to bring prices down. But the Saudis are mad at Biden for being mad at them for murdering the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi — and are reportedly not taking Biden’s calls. ....... it was the collapse in global oil prices between 1988 and 1992, triggered by Saudi overproduction, that helped bankrupt the Soviet Union and hasten its collapse. We can create the same effects today by overproducing renewables .......... When cars, trucks, buildings, factories and homes are all electrified and your grid is running mostly on renewables — presto! — we become increasingly free of fossil fuels, and Putin becomes increasingly dollar poor. ........ Electric cars are now flying out of the showrooms. ........ In World War II, the U.S. government asked citizens to plant victory gardens to grow their own fruits and vegetables — and save canned goods for the troops. Some 20 million Americans responded by planting gardens everywhere from backyards to rooftops. Well, what victory gardens were to our war effort then, solar rooftops are to our generation’s struggle against petro-dictatorships. ......... If you want to lower gasoline prices today, the most surefire, climate-safe method would be to reduce the speed limit on highways to 60 miles per hour and ask every company in America that can do so to let its employees work at home and not commute every day. Those two things would immediately cut demand for gasoline and bring down the price. ........... “It now costs more to ruin the earth than to save it.” It also “now costs less to liberate ourselves from petro-dictators than to remain enslaved by them.” .
Why So Many Doctors Treat Their Mental Health in Secret . Certain memories are seared into physicians’ psyches. The chirp of the pager. Driving home half asleep in a postcall haze. The strangest objects found in human orifices (cockroach in the ear). The most hours we continuously stayed awake. Delivering our first baby, watching our first patient die. These are all rites of passage. I’ve found it’s easy to discuss the funny memories, but the disturbing ones are harder. Even with the closest of friends, recounting the tough moments feels like passing on a burden. ........ A 15-year-old needed a sexual assault kit. A 3-year-old tested positive for the dad’s meth. A man dipped his 6-year-old’s feet in boiling oil. I once had two children die within six hours of each other. After each death, I choked back the welling tears, picked up the next patient’s chart and soldiered into the next room. The culture of medicine discourages doctors like me from crying, sleeping or making mistakes. Worse, we can even be punished for seeking mental health care. ......... Even before the Covid pandemic, mental health issues were an occupational hazard for physicians. ...... roughly 29 percent of resident physicians experienced depression or depressive symptoms. ....... 8 percent of Americans age 20 or older had depression in any given two weeks. ........ 16 percent of emergency physicians met the criteria for a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis. The pandemic seems to have made things worse ....... fall of 2020 .... as many as 36 percent of frontline physicians suffered from PTSD. ....... Doctors also have a high risk of death by suicide compared to many other professions. ......... Residency can consist of sleep deprivation, hunger, constantly being told you are not a good enough doctor and working a torturous 100-hour week, all while six figures in debt. Resident physicians routinely work on weekends and holidays, often with only four days off per month. ........ The merciless culture of medical education can revel in publicly shaming students; the practice of peppering residents or medical students with rapid-fire questions in front of colleagues and patients is called pimping. .......... Despite the grueling experiences, the medical profession often stigmatizes physicians who seek mental health care and erects barriers to such care. As of last spring, medical boards in 37 U.S. states and territories asked questions that could require a doctor seeking licensure to disclose any mental health treatments or conditions. These questions can be intrusive and overly general. ......... Ticking those boxes can feel like risking everything we have worked toward over years. It could result in the medical board reviewing our personal medical records, possibly in psychiatric and drug testing and perhaps even in having our medical license reviewed, suspended or revoked, all under the guise of establishing our professional competence. The questions have a chilling effect on doctors. ........ In a 2017 paper, nearly 40 percent of physicians reported being reluctant to seek mental health care because they worried it would jeopardize their chances of getting or renewing their medical licenses. In a 2016 survey of female physicians, close to half said they believed they had met the criteria for a mental illness but avoided care, in part for fear of licensing boards. ....... When physicians summon the courage to seek help, they might have to do so at the very hospital where they work and could be recognized by patients and colleagues. ...... He explained why his physician patients struggle to admit that they need care: “You’re supposed to know everything in a life-threatening crisis. There isn’t room for self-doubt,” he said. ........ This all has helped create an underground market of sorts for physician mental health care. An often unspoken rule: If you must seek mental health care, do it quietly. Find a therapist outside your city who documents only the bare minimum in your chart, pay with cash only, don’t let it be billed to your insurance company. Make sure there’s no paper trail. ........ As we enter the third year of the pandemic and creep toward one million dead Americans, it’s time for American health care to recognize the toll on its doctors and what it owes. The past two years have been characterized by violent attacks against doctors, accompanied by even longer hours, sicker patients, limited hazard pay and family sacrifices. A survey conducted in the second half of 2020 found that around one-fifth of doctors were considering leaving their practice within two years. Perhaps the saddest part is that the doctors we are often losing are the very ones we need: the gentle ones who you want holding your mother’s hand, the thoughtful, meticulous ones who call you on their day off. ......... It is time we collectively agree that physicians are worthy of the same compassion we give our patients. ........ We, as doctors, bear witness to humanity’s ugliest and most glorious moments, so it is only natural that we are deeply moved and sometimes disturbed by it all. Acknowledging this vulnerability isn’t weakness. It makes me a better doctor. It is what allows me to hold a patient’s hand under the fluorescent lighting of a sterile hospital in the middle of the night or stroke the congealed blood out of an infant’s lock of hair. ....... Doctors’ audacity to be human must outshine the medical institution’s cold, indifferent check box. .
Driven From City Life to Jungle Insurgency . Fleeing the military’s brutal crackdown, Myanmar’s newest rebels have abandoned cafes and professions to join a near-daily battle with long odds. .......... More than a year after Myanmar’s military seized full control in a coup — imprisoning the nation’s elected leaders, killing more than 1,700 civilians and arresting at least 13,000 more — the country is at war, with some unlikely combatants in the fray. ........ tens of thousands of young city-dwellers who have taken up arms, trading college courses, video games and sparkly nail polish for life and death in the jungle. ........ these Generation Z warriors have thrown off balance a military that has long made war crimes its calling card. And the conflict is escalating ........ Myanmar’s army, known as the Tatmadaw, is forced to fight on dozens of fronts, from the borderlands near India, China and Thailand to the villages and towns of the country’s heartland. There are skirmishes nearly every day, and casualties, too. ......... “All the Tatmadaw knows how to do is to kill,” said Ko Thant, who said he was a captain before he deserted from the army’s 77th Light Infantry Division last year and has since trained hundreds of civilians in battlefield tactics. “We were brainwashed all the time, but some of us have woken up.” ......... The opposition to the military’s coup in February 2021 began with an outpouring of millions of people into the streets of Myanmar’s cities and towns. ....... Within weeks, the Tatmadaw reverted to its old playbook. Army snipers targeted protesters with single, deadly shots to the head. ......... Some young people who had come of age during Myanmar’s decade of reform saw little utility in the message of nonviolent dissent coming from veteran democracy activists. They wanted to fight back. ........ There are now hundreds of civilian militias across Myanmar, organized loosely into what are called the People’s Defense Forces, or P.D.F. Each militia pledges allegiance to a civilian shadow government, the National Unity Government, which formed after the putsch, and some battalions are led by ousted lawmakers. ........ With little hope of outside help, the shadow authority has partnered with the ethnic insurgent groups that control territory in Myanmar’s border regions. Together, they have formed an underground railroad to bring young people to safety — and to train them in basic warfare. ........ The National Unity Government claims that the People’s Defense Forces, fighting alongside more experienced fighters from the ethnic militias, killed about 9,000 Tatmadaw soldiers from June 2021 through February 2022. (About 300 militia members have died in combat, according to the shadow government.) ........ He did not tell his family where he went for fear that the Tatmadaw would retaliate against them; some relatives of soldiers who deserted have been imprisoned and tortured. For all his child knows, he said, he might have been killed in combat. ....... “They are cowards,” he said, of the armed forces he had joined at the age of 15. “They are robots who cannot think.” ........ For members of Myanmar’s young generation, the coup was a return to an almost unimaginable past, one without Facebook and foreign investment. ........ United Nations investigators have said that the Myanmar military’s treatment of some of the country’s ethnic minorities bears the hallmarks of genocide. This month, the United States designated the Tatmadaw’s campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority as a genocide, as well. .
@hkbeech #burma besides #ukraine https://t.co/IuwftI3Oz2
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) March 30, 2022
Late Night Has Fun With Trump’s Missing Phone Records “The only time there should be a seven-hour gap is when you’re trying to remember what happened on St. Patrick’s Day,” Jimmy Fallon said. ........ “This is the thing with Trump — you never know. You never know if he’s more evil or lazy. He could have been plotting the overthrow of the government, or he could have been watching Fox News in the bath — you just don’t know!” — JAMES CORDEN .
— Chris Brocheré (@ChrisBrochere) March 31, 2022
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