A good background on the Butcher of El Fasher. ca.news.yahoo.com/made-money-s...

The new ruler would be lucky to control the major cities. It's inconceivable they'd control the countryside. Especially when the military is dominated by Maduro loyalists who wouldn't be rushing to follow orders. Meanwhile, the cartels would have the most/biggest guns in much of the country.

Still not a front page story in the biggest Western publications. www.reuters.com/world/africa...

And that's how ethnic Russians make up a majority of all but a handful of Russia's Asian regions.

Penguins fan. One gram of hope. Only need a de-aging machine.

By contrast, the correlation between an NHL team's point total in the previous season and its point total in the current season is 0.54.

This is also what happens when you anger your own constituency while forgetting that opposition supporters live in an entirely different media ecosystem that will never give you credit, no matter how consistent your policies are with their previously stated preferences.

Putin wants legal recognition of Russia's military conquests. But getting that recognition would require Russia to give something in return. Meanwhile, Russia isn't actually offering a single concession. No, promising not to attack (especially given Russia's track record) isn't a serious concession.

The equivalent situation today would be for Russia to push for the annexation of the Crimea, with perhaps some form of an autonomous status (within Ukraine) with a Russian veto for certain decisions in Donetsk and Lugansk. The reason there is no chance for peace is Russia is asking for too much.

Alternatively, countries needed to achieve major military successes to annex a single region. This is because they realized that achieving international legal recognition of an annexation was worth more than military victory. Without such recognition, the value of the land was severely diminished.

Nominal GDP (in trillion $):

California: 4.10
Texas: 2.71
New York: 2.30
Russia: 2.08

Missouri: 0.45
Moscow: 0.42

The other inexplicable part is the public support dispute Putin failing to paint this as an existential war. It's telling that the factor that helped Russia recruit countless soldiers for the war wasn't the claim that NATO was behind the war but a drastic increase in signing bonuses.

That might have some role, but non-ethnic Russians made up a good chunk of the Afghan War casualties, too. Russia has a long history of using ethnic minorities as cannon fodder.

The repression is the highest it's been in post-Soviet times, but still not what it was under the USSR. And the public desire for war was basically nonexistent until the war started. It's entirely a function of highly effective propaganda (and some level of rally around the flag).