PE—You may say that all stupidity is malevolent, which I won’t deny, but the common forms of it are accidentally so, and it is chiefly an introduced quality in America, where elements of cruelty and hatred are cultivated non-stop by what is risibly called Capitalist culture.  It seems the toxicity is really in his DNA, since all he does exudes the nasty tang of venom, yet that can’t be true.

Capabilities, susceptibilities, even inclinations, may be genetically determined but behaviors must be instilled and conditioned by life experiences.  This means his constant malevolence has to have been a learned and trained compulsion.

RS—If we defeat this narrative in the popular consciousness, the workers will be exposed to a profound reality about what’s happening to today’s global civilization; a reality that can only be comprehended through recognizing China’s Marxist character. What China’s socialist development successes reveal is that a proletarian political structure can use markets to unleash the productive forces, in a way that the anarchy of production under capitalist rule could never do. Which shows that the accelerated monopolist consolidation and integration we’ve been seeing since the pandemic has created unprecedented means for the construction of socialism, bringing the entire globe closer towards replicating what China has achieved.

GEN REZAEI—I promise our dear people that, although we are truly facing a very powerful enemy — and I constantly advise all my brothers, both within the Guard Corps and the army: do not underestimate the enemy, keep your vigilance, do your rajaz [chants of warrior defiance], but do not underestimate the enemy. Despite these recommendations, thank God, during that same ceasefire period which the enemy abused, we too were able to fix some of our weaknesses, to make up for them, over those two or three months. However, we must manage the war methodically.

OBB—Fedorov’s sudden removal last week incited large protests in Kyiv and other major cities, with demonstrators demanding either Fedorov’s reinstatement or Syrskyi’s immediate dismissal.

Syrskyi had faced steep criticism from rank-and-file soldiers, veterans, and military reformers for maintaining a rigid, top-down Soviet-style command system that often ignored tactical innovation and led to high human casualties. But he seemed to enjoy the support of many senior figures in Ukraine’s armed forces and that of the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade.

Further, Fedorov’s popularity was due in large measure to the apparent, though disputed success of Ukraine’s recent drone wars which had gained headline approval from Ukraine’s sponsors in the political West and mainstream media.

JM—World Wars, as I have argued before, are each unique, transformed by technological and civilization change, with different battlefields in different realms — military, economic, informational, among others. In most cases, a World War is not just one war but many at the same time.

The “First World War” was coined in September 1918 by British Lieutenant Colonel Charles A. Court Repington in his diaries,but his war was just the “Great War” term until September 1939 when war with Germany started again and Time Magazine needed something catchy. The term did not become “official” in the US until the war as over.

LJ—As of September 1, 2022, Russia controlled approximately 55–60% of Donetsk oblast. The Wikipedia article on the annexation, referring to the situation at the time of the September 30, 2022 annexation declaration, states that Russia held about 60% of Donetsk at that point. PBS reporting from June 2022 put the figure at roughly 50%. The trajectory between those two data points — 50% in June, 60% at end of September — places September 1 at approximately 55–58%.

Donetsk oblast is 26,517 km². Of that, Russian-backed separatists had held approximately 8,800 km² — roughly one-third — since 2014, centred on Donetsk city. The 2022 invasion extended Russian control southward through Mariupol (which fell May 20, 2022) and northward through the Sievierodonetsk corridor. At September 1, 2022, the major Ukrainian-held cities in the oblast still included Bakhmut (then under intense attack but still Ukrainian), Avdiivka, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Kostiantynivka, and Zaporizhzhia city — all of which would become the focal points of subsequent fighting.