U.S. Battles Putin by Disclosing His Next Possible Moves Declassified information is part of a campaign, backed by Britain, to complicate what officials say are Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine. ......... After decades of getting schooled in information warfare by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the United States is trying to beat the master at his own game. ....... hinted that Russian officers had doubts about Mr. Putin. ....... All told, the extraordinary series of disclosures — unfolding almost as quickly as information is collected and assessed — has amounted to one of the most aggressive releases of intelligence by the United States since the Cuban missile crisis, current and former officials say. ........ the administration is warning the world of an urgent threat, not to make the case for a war but to try to prevent one. .........
The hope is that disclosing Mr. Putin’s plans will disrupt them
......... giving Mr. Putin a chance to reconsider the political, economic and human costs of an invasion. ........ Before the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration released intelligence that officials said justified pre-emptive action, including purported intercepts of Iraqi military conversations, photos of mobile biological weapons labs and statements accusing Baghdad of building a fleet of drones to launch a chemical attack on the United States. The material was all wrong, reliant on sources who lied, incorrect interpretations of Iraq’s actions and senior officials who looked at raw intelligence and saw what they wanted to see. ..............“In Iraq, intelligence was used and deployed from this very podium to start a war,” Mr. Sullivan said on Friday. “We are trying to stop a war.”
.......... a full-fledged information battle. ........ these disclosures are freaking the Kremlin and the security services out ........ The Ukrainian government has expressed unease with the American disclosures. President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that “too much information” about a possible Russian offensive was sowing unnecessary fear. .......... how difficult it is for any democracy to go toe-to-toe with an autocratic state, like Russia. Unconstrained by truth, the Kremlin is simply better at such unconventional warfare. ....... “Remember, Vladimir Putin is a K.G.B. guy. He doesn’t think like Biden does” ....... When masked men began taking over government buildings in Crimea in February 2014, Moscow said they were part of a locally led pro-Russian uprising. Only after Crimea was taken over was it clear the “little green men” were Russian military forces. ............ was “aimed at undermining and discrediting Russia’s fair demands for security guarantees, as well as at justifying Western geopolitical aspirations and military absorption of Ukraine’s territory.” ........... Senior Obama administration officials recalled their frustration when the intelligence agencies would not allow the White House to tell NATO, let alone the public, what Washington knew about Russia’s moves. ....... The United States or its allies could release information about Mr. Putin’s top lieutenants, for example, or the oligarchs who support him. That could sow doubt about people’s loyalty, or expose their wealth. ......... .Madness and scaremongering continues..what if we would say that US could seize London in a week and cause 300K civilian deaths? All this based on our intelligence sources that we won’t disclose.Would it feel right for Americans and Britts?It’s as wrong for Russians and Ukrainians https://t.co/Zai1tpowO7
— Dmitry Polyanskiy (@Dpol_un) February 6, 2022
‘We understand all the risks,’ Ukraine’s leader says, but still urges calm. . President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Saturday continued to play down American warnings of an imminent Russian invasion, urging calm and saying he had not seen intelligence showing that Moscow was poised to attack. .........
and ridiculed news media reports that Russia could be planning to invade on Wednesday.
......... The Ukrainian leader has for weeks voiced frustration with the American messaging in the crisis, criticizing the Biden administration for sowing panic in Kyiv and spooking foreign investors. .Moscow dismisses U.S. warnings of war as propaganda.
7 Simple Exercises To Strengthen Your Relationship . Romantic relationships take work during the best of times, but the pandemic has created a unique set of challenges — and opportunities — for many couples. ........ About one-third of couples said that their relationships improved during the pandemic, in part because they learned better communication skills and enjoyed spending time together. ....... Keep track of the good stuff. ....... cooking dinner or cleaning up ...... Ramping up the positive and kind gestures in a relationship may help insulate your relationship from the inevitable bad days. ........ Generosity was defined as “the virtue of giving good things to one’s spouse freely and abundantly,” such as simply making them coffee in the morning, showing affection often or being willing to forgive. ........ Hold hands. ......... The Beatles were just singing about love when they wrote “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” but science has proved them right. .......... when the woman was holding her husband’s hand, the calming effect was even greater and was similar to the effect of a pain-relieving drug ........... research suggests that a supportive marriage or committed partnership gives the brain the opportunity to outsource some of its most difficult neural work. This basically means that when partners take our hands, they are also carrying some of our emotional burden. .......... Read to each other. .......... people grow closer to each other when we reveal something about ourselves and share new thoughts and ideas. ....... relationships benefit when couples experience new things together. ....... Accept the small problems. .......... Write down one or two of your partner’s annoying habits that create occasional conflict in your relationship. (Often, these small conflicts involve domestic chores, such as paying bills, doing laundry or making the bed.) ............ identify a positive trait that might help explain the behavior. Maybe your husband drops his things in the entryway every night. Is it because he’s rushing to see the kids before bedtime? Is your wife grumpy after work? Maybe it’s because she skipped lunch during work so she could be home sooner with the family. ......... Rather than trying to force change, acceptance therapy encourages partners to learn to accept each other’s differences. When partners feel accepted and understood, they are more likely to change willingly, often making more changes than requested. ............ Share your perfect day. ........... Imagine your perfect day, and share it with your partner over a meal. Discuss it in as much detail as possible so that you reveal information about your likes, dislikes, hopes and dreams. ........ facilitate closeness between strangers, they created a series of questions to help people get to know each other quickly. “What would constitute a ‘perfect’ day for you?” is on the list of those questions. .......... Feel each other’s heartbeat. ........ eye contact and touch create feelings of closeness ...... Practice gratitude together. ...... Showing gratitude on a daily basis is a common mindfulness practice proven to boost happiness, help us get better sleep and even reduce illness. .......... gratitude “a booster shot” for romantic relationships. The bottom line is this: The more you practice gratitude toward your partner, the more connected you’ll feel. .
We Underestimated Putin Once. We Can’t Make That Mistake Again. . history shows we should not underestimate Mr. Putin’s willingness to violate another country’s sovereignty. ........... There was nothing the Ukrainian military could do — years of corrupt management had left it ill equipped and unprepared. Attempts to retake Ukrainian bases and rescue their personnel would inevitably have led to a blood bath. ......... Even if we had seen troop movements weeks or months in advance, we never would have imagined Mr. Putin would take such a risky and blatantly illegal action. ........ with Mr. Putin amassing some 100,000 troops at the Ukrainian border, threatening to invade and redraw the global chessboard. To stop him, we must learn the lessons of Crimea and stand up to Russian aggression. ............ By late February 2014, more than 100 anti-Yanukovych demonstrators had been shot in cold blood. As the protests swelled and the government lost control of the situation, Mr. Yanukovych fled to Russia. While we were focused on that situation, Mr. Putin made his brazen move on Crimea days later. ........ it was because of our focus on Donbas that the United States and the international community effectively set aside the Crimea situation and set the stage for the crisis today. ........ We took the international pressure off Mr. Putin’s revanchist violations of sovereignty in Ukraine — just as we had done in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of another neighbor, the Republic of Georgia, in 2008. (Russia still occupies 20 percent of its territory.) ........ Donald Trump downplayed Russia’s meddling in our elections and was willing to break U.S. law to withhold assistance to Ukraine, an action that led to his first impeachment by the House of Representatives. He also questioned the value of NATO, the alliance protecting eastern European states from Russian violations of their sovereignty. ......... Yes, Russia is a nuclear power and Europe depends on its energy supplies, but the world should stop being intimidated into excusing Moscow’s actions. ........ If Mr. Putin is allowed to invade Ukraine again unscathed, then what’s to stop other authoritarian powers from doing the same elsewhere? ......... To emphasize the pariah treatment, the Biden administration should, along with allies, expel Russia from international forums and impose export controls across all continents, as we do to confront Iran and North Korea. .
Europe Thinks Putin Is Planning Something Even Worse Than War . In the final weeks of World War I, a German general sent a telegram to his Austrian allies summarizing the situation. It was, he wrote, “serious, but not catastrophic.” The reply came back: “Here the situation is catastrophic, but not serious.” .............
“The U.S. thinks Putin will do a full-blown war,” he said. “Europeans think he’s bluffing.”
........ The many decades of peace in Western Europe, combined with the continent’s deep dependence on Russia’s oil and gas, incline officials to assume aggressive Russian moves must be a ruse. .........the situation was “dangerous, but ambiguous.”
......... they see him as more malicious. War, they reason, is not the Kremlin’s game. Instead, it’s an extensive suite of tactics designed to destabilize the West. For Europe, the threat of war could turn out to be more destructive than war itself. ......... The Kremlin wants a symbolic break from the 1990s, burying the post-Cold War order. That would take the form of a new European security architecture that recognizes Russia’s sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space and rejects the universality of Western values. Rather than the restoration of the Soviet Union, the goal is the recovery of what Mr. Putin regards as historic Russia. ........... the Kremlin, whatever it might do next, won’t stay still. Russia will not simply step back ...... Europeans and presumably Ukrainians believe that a hybrid strategy — involving military presence on the border, weaponization of energy flows and cyberattacks — will serve him better. ......... The policy of maximum pressure, short of an invasion, may end up dividing and paralyzing NATO. ......... To see how that might play out, we need only look to Germany. Before the crisis, Germany was America’s closest ally in Europe, boasted a special relationship with Moscow and was the most important partner for Eastern and Central Europe. Today, some in Washington have questioned the country’s willingness to confront Russia, Berlin’s relationship with Moscow is fast deteriorating, and many Eastern Europeans are agitated by Germany’s apparent reluctance to come to their support. Germany’s difficulties are a hint of what could come if Mr. Putin continues his brinkmanship, without providing the certainty of an actual invasion. ............. Germany, crucially, has not changed — but the world in which it acts has. (The country is “like a train that stands still after the railway station has caught fire” ............. Today, geopolitical strength is determined not by how much economic power you can wield, but by how much pain you can endure. Your enemy, unlike during the Cold War, is not somebody behind an iron curtain, but somebody with whom you trade, from whom you get gas and to whom you export high-tech goods. Soft power has given way to resilience. .............. “If you invite a bear to dance, it’s not you who decides when the dance is over,” the Russian proverb goes. “It’s the bear.” .
D.C. and Joyce — Both Incomprehensible
when Mitch McConnell is the guy calling out his own party that many top Republicans are freaking out.
. ........ Nixon had the plumbers. Trump’s the one who needed them.Can Democrats See What’s Coming? . If you had to distill the ambitions of the Democratic Party down to a single word, you might well choose “Denmark.” But “France” would also work. Or “Germany.” Any Western European nation, really, with the social insurance options many of us envy: universal health care and affordable child care, to name but a few. Much of modern American liberalism is designed to close those gaps, to build here what already exists there. .......... But what about building here what does not already exist there? ......... Over the past few years, social insurance programs did much to ease suffering, but it was mRNA vaccines that did the most to protect human life. And this points toward a place where American liberalism could dream bigger dreams. ........... technology is central to how we make the future look different from the past. To leave that to the market, or to think it apolitical, is abdication. .......... The rich needed more reason to work. The poor needed more punishment if they didn’t work. Corporations needed more reason to invest. Their prescription followed logically: tax cuts for the rich, spending cuts and work requirements for the poor and a bonanza of financial and environmental deregulation. ......... the effort to impose a global minimum tax. That would raise U.S. tax revenues, which could finance more investments, and push companies to compete based on production and innovation, rather than by gaming tax systems. ............. Build Back Better is a grab-bag of longstanding Democratic proposals jammed together into a superbill designed to evade the filibuster. Or maybe I should say: That’s what it was. But Build Back Better is, at this point, a dead letter. ..........
a horror of where markets are leading us — into climate crisis.
.......... The government’s role is to step in when markets fail, andclimate change is a market failure
. .............. In most of these bold areas, business often is risk averse. .......... “This isn’t about government controlling the means of production,” he told me. “It’s about government controlling the ends of production. Deciding what we are producing toward, what we are building for.” ........... authorize between $250 billion and $350 billion to reinvigorate American semiconductor manufacturing, rebuild critical supply chains, finance regional innovation hubs across the country .............. added support for admitting more high-skilled immigrants, which is the single easiest way to build our supply of talent ............. Venture capitalists can brag about their failures, but bureaucrats are flayed for them. ....... That the Obama administration funded Solyndra is canon. That the same program threw a lifeline to a struggling electric car manufacturer named Tesla is trivia. ....... Democrats have run scared from accusations of big government for decades, and so they continue to try to show that they will leave the market to its magic, the scientists to their beakers, and confine government to cushioning the blows or looking after the children. .......... “The New Dealers or World War II builders are dead and gone. My lifetime has been a story of a shift toward another sensibility of economics and politics, where that kind of aggressive government building is looked down upon as backward and inefficient. There’s been an ascendance of thinking markets can solve the problem more quickly.” ...........The market would build more housing if local zoning czars would let them.
Companies were clamoring to sell more rapid tests earlier, but the F.D.A. wouldn’t let them. All across the country, nuclear and solar and wind projects are being tied up in red tape. ............Good regulations are good, bad regulations are bad. But bad regulations are hard to unwind, and they’re often unseen.
............. in many localities, it seems the restrictions on local zoning make it extremely hard to build affordable housing and keep prices high. ........... If Democrats want to claim a bigger role for government in shaping our future, they need to be the ones who are most outraged when it is government that is holding us back. ....... But to do that, they need a vision of America’s future that’s not just lifted from Western Europe’s past.Business Booms at Kroger-Owned Grocery Stores, but Workers Are Left Behind A number of the stores’ nearly 500,000 employees have reported being homeless, receiving government food stamps or relying on food banks.
Far From the Big City, New Economic Life Incomes are low in small-town Tennessee, but so is the cost of living. That attraction could be a key to reviving many rural areas........ “People are moving from Arizona and California, New York and New Jersey.” ........ While Jackson County’s typical household makes $35,207 a year, just over half the national average, the low cost of living allows residents to punch far above their weight in economic terms. .......... Carol Abney has 250 clients for an internet-based accounting practice she runs from her husband’s auto-repair shop in Celina, about half an hour north of Gainesboro in Clay County. “I’m booming,” she said. .......... It has long drawn summer tourists for hunting and fishing, as well as retirees who come from as far away as Ohio to settle among the rivers, lakes and hollers. ........ an exodus of workers fleeing the cost of living in big cities. The area is about an hour-and-a-half drive from Nashville, allowing for a not-unreasonable commute. Many of the new residents are coming from farther away. ......... If remote work remains widespread, their counties could benefit from a decisive price advantage. ............. the household income of a typical worker who never finished high school in Cookeville is about $43,000. In New York it is $58,000; in San Francisco, $62,000. .......... Big cities are not that good a deal for even highly educated workers. They do earn much higher wages in New York than in Cookeville — indeed, the college educated reap a bigger pay premium if they work in bigger cities than their less-educated peers. But according to the researchers, all the extra wages are eaten up by higher costs. ......... Last November, the typical home in Cookeville cost $217,303, according to Zillow. That’s one-fourth of the median price of a home in Los Angeles and one-sixth of the price in San Francisco. Median rent in Jackson County is $548 per month. ............. “The notion of ‘go to the city, young man or woman,’ is simply not true.” ...........
In 2020, 110,000 more people left Los Angeles than arrived from other parts of the country; New York City lost 150,000 people.
........ “California is the main source of people, also New York and Oregon for some reason,” Mr. Porter said of Jackson County. “Folks sell their home, move here and can buy a house that’s twice the size for half the price.” ............. They have a deal to buy the building in which the Stolen Coin sits — which they rent for $800 a month — for $54,000. ......... The explosion in sales filling the coffers in Jackson and Putnam Counties was propelled in part by the multitrillion-dollar economic rescue packages passed by Congress in 2020 and 2021. That stimulus is largely over. ........... workers who were leaving cities during the pandemic mainly moved to nearby suburbs and exurbs. ...... There is a downside to out-of-towners' snapping up cheap real estate. The median home price in Cookeville has risen over 60 percent since the end of 2016, according to Zillow, outpacing a nationwide increase of 50 percent and vastly outstripping price increases in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. .............. Local residents “don’t want people to come with the intent to change the community,” Mr. Porter said. The question, perhaps, is whether that is the price of prosperity.Harris Says Replacing Lead Pipes Is a Priority, Despite Limited Funding Some civil rights leaders have grown frustrated with the lack of action behind administration proposals that would help Black and Latino communities. ......... Ms. Harris used the event to highlight $15 billion in funding to remove lead pipes that is part of the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package that Mr. Biden signed in November. ....... Mr. Biden initially proposed $45 billion in the infrastructure bill for lead removal. Another $10 billion is tucked in a sprawling social-safety net and climate package torpedoed by congressional gridlock. Other administration proposals that supporters celebrated for promoting racial equity have since been cut or removed entirely as Democrats try to salvage the plan, including investments in affordable housing, clean energy provisions, home health care work and reconnecting neighborhoods divided by highways. ........ “Nationwide, frustration is building given the failure to cancel student debt, expand voting rights and pass police reform” ........ lead exposure, which can damage the brain and kidneys and interfere with red blood cells that carry oxygen to all parts of the body. The neurotoxin poses a particular danger to children, whose nervous systems are still developing. ....... removing every lead pipe in the nation could cost $60 billion
