This is worth your time. It’s the Latvian delegate to the United Nations, Rihards Kols, standing up for what’s right. It’s wonderful to see.

I believe the context for his initial remarks about the so-called “Ukrainian crisis” was the phony peace plan put out by the Chinese government, in which — in deference to their “no limits” friendship with Putin — they refused to call the war a “war” but instead called it a “crisis.” Mr. Kols forthrightly calls it what it is: a war. He points out that members of the Russian delegation — present to hear this — are the elephant in the room. Some of them voted to annex sovereign lands. He says the U.N. is violating its principles of respecting national sovereignty by even allowing these people to be present. Then he has the Big Closer, which I’ll explain in a moment.

Start the video at about 34 seconds in.

I’ll translate that bit for you at the end. (“русский корабль, иди нахуй.”) Kols is quoting the Ukrainians at Snake Island, who, upon being asked by the Russians to surrender, replied: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.”

This man is telling the Russian delegation to fuck themselves, to their faces. (No wonder they walked out.)

Watch the smiles of the other delegates as the translator catches up and they realize what he has just said. In fact, the reaction of the other people in the room is one of the most gratifying parts of the clip. A man on the left is nodding as he says the war started in 2014. When he labels the Russians in the room “war criminals” the men behind him start clapping. And the smiles on the faces of several delegates at the end of his expletive-capped rant is the cherry on top of this defiant sundae.

While the partisan shills in parts of the Republican party line up to fellate Putin, the sensible part of the world is together on this. How could you not be? That is, assuming your mind has not been turned to rancid oatmeal by rank partisan bullshit?

Glory to Ukraine.

As for all you Russian shills, иди нахуй.

I started blogging on February 17, 2003. A lot of the early posts from the first year or two are lost, sort of . . . I think they’re still around on a Blogspot site and could theoretically be moved over again the way they were the first time, but I know that’s my date because I have commemorated it in the past.

I forgot to do so on my 20th anniversary, about a week ago. So this post will have to do.

It could be because I have been so neglectful of my own site that I no longer feel like I have been blogging continuously for x years. Dana and JVW have kept the site alive more than I have, and I think JVW would acknowledge that a good deal of the credit goes to Dana on that front. So let’s take this opportunity to thank her.

That said, I am basically back, after backing away from Twitter. In fact, I have another short post coming in a moment.

Thanks for reading.