Adrian Botan

Chief Cheerleading Officer

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

Every woman should fear this!

[Christopher Bouzy (spoutible.com/cbouzy) @cbouzy]

This is the crazy shit I have ever seen a presidential candidate do in the middle of a campaign.

[umichvoter @umichvoter]

🚨 WE HAVE A NEW EDIT

[Alex Cole @acnewsitics]

This is so good.

[Pablo Pérez @PabloPerezA]

Kaja Kallas on Russia and its negotiation tactics.

[Jason Jay Smart @officejjsmart]

“Every country has its own mafia.

In Russia, the mafia has its own country.”

- Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63)

[Jo @JoJoFromJerz]

So, Donald Trump wants us to feel sorry for him because he was convicted of crimes he committed.

And while I’m sure this will come as no surprise to anyone, I gotta say… I don’t feel the least bit sorry for his criminal”, co-conspirator con-man ass.

But do you know who I do feel sorry for?

I feel sorry for the military widow who had to listen to him say that her husband “knew what he had signed up for” because he had the audacity to die serving his country in uniform.

I feel sorry for the schoolgirl Trump pardon recipient and war criminal Eddie Gallagher shot and killed for fun.

I feel sorry for the parents of Otto Warmbier who had to listen to our president tell the world he “fell in love” with their son’s murderer.

I feel sorry for the Gold Star families who lost more than I dare to even contemplate, who he attacked and disparaged because some had the nerve to speak out against him.

I feel sorry for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died from Covid while he was golfing.
I feel sorry for the loved ones left to stare at an empty chair while he tweeted about ratings.
I feel sorry for the doctors and nurses who died trying to save lives because he was playing games with their medical supplies.

I feel sorry for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss who were terrorized simply for doing the right thing because he needed to push a baseless lie.

I feel sorry for the family of Officer Brian Sicknick, the families of the other Capitol police officers who took their own lives in the wake of January 6th, and for every single hero who withstood being sprayed with chemicals, beaten, crushed and tased while protecting the citadel of American liberty from the rabid mob Trump sent to stop the certification of an election he lost.

I feel sorry for the human beings who come here looking for better lives he so casually and so frequently claims are “poisoning the blood of our country” when the truth is anything but.

I feel sorry for the more than 64,000 women and girls who’ve had to contend with pregnancies resulting from rape in 14 red states since his justices helped strip a fundamental human right from so many of us despite saying under oath that they wouldn’t.
I feel sorry for the 10-year old Ohio girl who had to leave her state to get an abortion after she was raped.
I feel sorry for the women who have been left unable to bear children because doctors in their states had to refuse them emergency medical care.

I feel sorry for the transgender community he so often villainizes because it chums the hateful base. I feel sorry for the LGBTQ+ community because his bigoted vitriol has made them less safe here than they were a few short years ago.

I feel sorry for the countless victims of gun violence who might still be here if he hadn’t needed to court the ammosexuals who fetishize their weapons of war.

I feel sorry for the loved ones of Heather Heyer who was mowed down for standing up to the Nazis he called “very fine people.”

I feel sorry for the fallen of war who paid the ultimate price for their “commander in chief” to call them suckers and losers.

I feel sorry for a nation torn apart over and over again by a sociopathic madman with a penchant for stoking division and violence because it makes him feel powerful when nothing else does.

I feel sorry for the mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, brothers and sisters who can no longer break bread together because if their family member can support someone who brags about sexual assault, mocks the disabled and refers to their fellow human beings as “vermin”, they know they can never truly see eye to eye on anything ever again.

I feel sorry for all the “pretty” pageant contestants and game show competitors he’s objectified. I feel sorry for the women he’s assaulted, harassed and pressured into sex.

[Mikhail Khodorkovsky @khodorkovsky_en]

Putin's tactics: police forcefully drags a voter out of a voting booth, suspecting he spoiled his own ballot

🧵Don't believe the numbers here's what really happened in polling stations across the country (real people messaging me):

[(((Tendar))) @Tendar]

Nothing could describe Russian “elections” better than this.

Source: Telegram / Uniannet

[Velina Tchakarova @vtchakarova]

I think one of my great advantages next to having zero expectations is that I’m constantly underestimated.

[Adrian Botan @Botzan]

This outright scary

[Republican Accountability @AccountableGOP]

Jack Posobiec at CPAC: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.”

Trump’s Republican Party openly wants to end democracy. We must stop them.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

Holy shit SNL nailed it. 🤣

“Sen. Katie Britt delivers the Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union Address.”

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

It helps to know history. It gives you a sense of dignity and confidence amidst the propaganda of war and genocide. Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski demonstrates this here at the UN.

[Adrian Botan @Botzan]

Timing is everything

[Vivek Naskar @vivek_naskar]

@historyinmemes Well, Leslie Nielsen has been using the fart machine on multiple occasions. 😅

[Joe Biden @JoeBiden]

The last guy had the worst jobs record since the Great Depression.

Our record is a little different.

[Elizabetmore7 @Elizabetmore7]

Sorry, but it’s a strict rule. Whenever President Obama to Trump is trending, this must be reposted.

[Halifax The Forum @HFXforum]

“We have to believe dictators. When you look at their list of promises, they keep delivering on them.” - @Kasparov63

#HFX2023

[Larry & Paul @larryandpaul]

👇🏻 #FridayFeeling: A message to the @Conservatives on behalf of the British people.

#ThankYouTories 🙏🏻

[Dmytro Kuleba @DmytroKuleba]

To those who have missed the previous 30 years, here is a short list of the results of negotiations with Russia that it never respected:

1. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Russia agreed to “respect independence, sovereignty, and the existing borders of Ukraine” as well as “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”. Breached by Russia invading Crimea in 2014.

2. The Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty of 1997. Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and “reaffirmed the inviolability of the borders” between the two countries. Russia breached it in 2014.

3. The OSCE Istanbul Summit in 1999. Russia committed to withdrawing its troops from Moldova’s Transdniestrian region and Georgia until the end of 2002. That never happened.

4. The 2008 Georgia ceasefire agreement following Russian aggression against the country. Russia agreed that “Russian military forces must withdraw to the lines prior to the start of hostilities”. That never happened.

5. The Ilovaysk “Green Corridor” in August 2014 and other “humanitarian” death corridors. Russia pledged to let Ukrainian forces leave the encircled town of Ilovaysk in the east of Ukraine, but instead opened fire and killed 366 Ukrainian troops. In the following years, Russia attacked numerous humanitarian corridors in Syria.

6. The “Minsk” agreements of 2014 and 2015. Russia agreed to cease the fire in the east of Ukraine. There had been 200 rounds of talks and 20 attempts to enforce a ceasefire, all of which the Russian side promptly violated. On February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

7. The 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative. Russia pledged to “provide maximum assurances regarding a safe and secure environment for all vessels engaged in this initiative." It then hindered the initiative's operation for months before withdrawing unilaterally a year later.

NB: I am only focused on deals made with Russia to address specific issues and conflicts. I am not mentioning almost 400 international treaties that Russia has breached since 2014.

There are no conclusions to be drawn here, except that no one can seriously use the words "Russia" and "negotiations" in the same phrase.

Putin is a habitual liar who promised international leaders that he would not attack Ukraine days before his invasion in February 2022.

Russia's tactic has remained consistent in its many wars over the last three decades: kill, grab, lie, and deny.

Why would anyone genuinely believe that Russia in 2023 is any different from Russia in 1994, 1997, 1999, 2008, 2014, 2015, and 2022?

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

A guy who...

- was once appointed as a successor in the presidential office by an agreement of oligarchic elites
- never had any political career before taking power
- never participated in any real competitive elections
- has spent a quarter century in power and intends to keep it until his very death
- is about to enter his 5th presidential term next year
- had his alcoholic buddy pretending to be a president for 4 years only to give the office back as ordered
- has literally all of his political rivals either murdered, expelled abroad, or jailed for up to 25 years
- has an absolute state monopoly and propaganda machine serving his interests, with free media completely erased as a notion
- puts people in jail for up to 15 years for even saying the word "war" in the middle of the biggest European war since WWII that he unleashed
- labeled even his tiniest critics as "foreign agents" harassed by political police and brutally quelled the smallest protests
- shamelessly raped his country's constitution and simply lifted restrictions regarding the number of terms he can serve as the 'president'

... and this guy prohibits his propaganda mouthpieces from calling Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky a president and orders them to call him "the chief of the Kiev regime."

You know, Zelensky, who won the presidency in a brutally competitive campaign in a country that had had 4 presidents since Vladimir Putin took power in Russia last century.

You just can't make this up.