Folks,
Hope everyone had a better Thanksgiving than the British girls who wanted to spend the holidays helping out at a school in Zanzibar. Don’t mean to make that sound funny — it’s a good reminder that limited access to firearms can increase the brutality of the weapon. OK, on to the links:
Top story of the week is a no-brainer. This is the moment Ukraine-watchers have been fearfully awaiting for the past five years. Are we on the verge of an actual war in Eastern Europe? Many people marvel at the ease and speed at which authoritarian countries can move, especially when compared with slow-moving and messy democracies. But democracies are more prosperous and make better and longer-lasting allies. Will it matter? Just so happens that a few days before the capture of the Ukrainian vessel, I saw this cri de coeurfrom a liberated Ukrainian. What do you think people like this are willing to do for their freedom?
Meanwhile, a cyber attack shut down the Finnish ministry jobs website. Ten guesses as to who’s behind that.
And Russia is still on the march in the Arctic.
This week’s movie idea based on a true story: Russian arms dealers, Turkish middle men, Mexican drug cartel buyers and corrupt Hungarian counter-terrorism agents vs. the DEA.
What is it with China and babies? If they’re not subjecting them to state-ordered destruction, they’re conducting human experimentation on them. There are good arguments for genetically editing babies — but the arguments become drastically less righteous when a nation as amoral as China is the one doing the editing.
