Weekly Review

“The special military operation is proceeding strictly in line with the timetable according to plan,” said Russian president Vladimir Putin, before threatening Ukraine’s statehood.^{1 2} “If that happens, they will have to be blamed for that.” glory to ukraine / glory to the heroes / putin is a dickhead / death to the enemy read electric-vehicle charging stations in Russia after they were hacked by the Ukrainian company that manufactures their parts.³ Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “nuclear terror” after Putin’s forces took control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.^{4 5} Russia invited a group of countries, including BJP-led India, to the First International Antifascist Congress in Moscow this summer, then blocked citizens’ access to Facebook and took two TV and radio broadcasters off the air.^{6 7 8 9} “Reading that Russia has blocked Twitter & Facebook? Can people in Russian confirm this news?” tweeted Michael McFaul, a professor of international studies at Stanford.¹⁰ The number of refugees who have left Ukraine since the war began surpassed 1 million, and Israel’s interior minister expressed dismay at the fact that 90 percent of Ukrainian refugees arriving at the border were not Jewish.^{11 12} “We can’t keep going at this rate,” he said. Neither Canada, which still has not made good on its plan to admit 40,000 Afghan asylum seekers, nor the United States, where migrants can be deported as long as they’re sent to “places where they will not be persecuted or tortured,” have fully opened their borders to Ukrainian refugees.^{13 14 15 16} The Taliban lamented civilian casualties in Ukraine. Russian police detained thousands of antiwar protesters, including Yelena Osipova, a survivor of the 1941 Siege of Leningrad.^{17 18} Fearing association with the Russian president, a diner in Quebec removed the word “poutine” from some of its marketing materials.¹⁹ “If you want to cancel something … cancel homelessness. Cancel education inequality. Cancel poverty,” said Andrew Cuomo, during whose tenure as New York governor homelessness reached its highest levels since the Great Depression.^{20 21} “Be outraged, but be outraged at what really matters.”

U.S. legislators proposed a ban on Russian fossil fuels, global oil prices reached their highest levels since 2008, and fossil fuel companies lobbied Republicans to block the confirmation of Sarah Bloom Raskin, who has called climate change a global threat, to the Federal Reserve.^{23 24 25 26} New data revealed that the parliaments of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mexico rank second, third, and fourth in the world, respectively, for gender parity, while the United States ranks 72nd.²⁷ At least 56 people were killed when a mosque was bombed in Pakistan, and hundreds of motorists joined a lawsuit against the rental car company Hertz for falsely accusing them of stealing cars.^{28 29} Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, was accused of bragging on a Zoom call about having “the biggest dick” in the Windy City.³⁰ “We have become so boring as a city … I want us to become a city of excitement,” said New York mayor Eric Adams, while it was reported that the city’s cops were ticketing street vendors at pre-pandemic levels.^{31 32 33}

“You can ignore wild pigs all you want until you can’t ignore them,” an expert in Saskatchewan said, warning that Edmonton could become the first Canadian city where the feral animals would remain indefinitely.³⁴ In Texas, a screening of The Batman was paused when a live bat entered the theater.³⁵ “The school does not need to teach our children how to do oral sex,” said a woman in Idaho while her state legislature considered banning librarians from providing students with “sexually explicit” materials.³⁶ “That’s my job.” An Indiana educator with a Teacher of the Year award to his name was granted early retirement after he hit a student in the face.³⁷ “Shit happens,” a man reportedly told police after smearing a woman’s face with feces in a New York City subway station.³⁸ Scientists debated new evidence that there were three kinds of Tyrannosauruses, and a box of human heads meant for medical research was stolen from a van in Denver.^{39 40 41} An internal report on New Zealand’s National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies revealed a “toxic and unproductive culture that is paralysing, isolating, and divisive.”⁴²—Sam Needleman