Frank Seaman-Baldaro

All I do is 🍝 and 💤 and 🎤

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

No, sweetie.

Donetsk was a city of a million roses when its own Ukrainian flag flew above it.

Back then, it was also the fastest-growing and most rapidly prospering city in Ukraine -- home to what was the finest regional airport in Eastern Europe, one of the world's best football stadiums, a state-of-the-art railway terminal, and one of the cleanest, best-maintained cities in the region.

Its elites were running Kyiv, and every time I visited Donetsk as a student, riding the famous trolleybus Route No. 2 through the city, I was amazed by how many new office buildings were appearing, how much money was flowing into the city, and how many international companies were opening their doors there.

Fifteen years ago, to us kids from Donbas, Donetsk felt like the center of the universe because it had everything one could possibly dream of. It was a young city of universities and libraries, where the overwhelming majority of boys and girls from across Donbas went to study, including those from my own small hometown an hour away by bus.

Names like Liverpool or Detroit Rock City may mean nothing to you, but our Ukrainian Donetsk was a city of great rock clubs and unforgettable concerts. We traveled there to see Western bands perform.

We bought rock merchandise at the legendary Right House store near Krytyi Market. Scorpions, Rihanna, and Beyoncé performed at the famous Donbass Arena. Schoolchildren from across Donbas were bused in to watch Shakhtar Donetsk matches. The city even had a famous monument to The Beatles.

It was a city where we sang songs on guitars in its beautifully maintained parks and along the Kalmius embankment before heading out to buy the famous "green Donetsk burgers." Our older friends moved there after graduation, formed rock bands, recorded full albums, and held wedding celebrations in the squares around Donbas Arena. We traveled there to visit the legendary Radio Market in search of films, music, and books.

And then you arrived.

And you turned the wealthiest, most prosperous Ukrainian city into a piece of shit.

You deceived many of its people with sweet promises of Russian oil-fueled prosperity broadcast from television screens, but what you brought instead was war.

You transformed a thriving city into a criminal wasteland ruled by ethnic gangs from Russia, into a kingdom of Stalinist terror straight out of the 1930s, complete with torture chambers in the infamous Izolyatsia prison camp. You turned the magnificent Donetsk Airport into lifeless gray rubble, while the vast stands of Donbas Arena have spent a second decade slowly being reclaimed by weeds instead of hosting Champions League finals and Metallica concerts.

You swept away an entire generation of the city's men through your forced mobilization and threw them against Ukrainian machine guns until there were barely enough people left to keep basic municipal services running. Because of you, prosperous Donetsk became a withered desert without reliable water, because your war destroyed the canal system that carried water from the Siverskyi Donets River into Donbas. For years now, people have lived with chronic water shortages and have been reduced shitting into plastic bags forever.

You dragged Donetsk back like seventy years in time. You turned it into a depressed backwater, devoid of hope and future. Even ten years ago, tens of thousands of people, the most active, the most talented, the most entrepreneurial, fled the city and found refuge in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine. Many of them still remember our Donetsk with tears in their eyes, the Donetsk that existed before the arrival of the "Russian World."

You transformed it into something that even my pro-Russian acquaintances are shocked to see when they return after years of occupation.

It was you who trampled the million roses of our Ukrainian Donetsk into shit beneath the tracks of your tanks and the boots of your death troops, turning them into a foul swamp of death and despair.

And that stain will forever remain on the conscience of fascist Russia, which brings nothing but destruction, decay, and death wherever it goes.

[Hania T. Mumtaz @haniainabox]

The Pope is a great example of the idea that cruelty is actually dumb and that kindness and openness come from intelligence. A great juxtaposition to the (techno)fascists of our time. It takes a mind to create a better world, it takes zero to destroy it.

[Senator Ruben Gallego @SenRubenGallego]

Israel should not be in the business of cashing in on Russian war crimes.

If Netanyahu’s government chooses to legitimize this kind of behavior, the repercussions will extend far beyond Ukraine. An ally should act like an ally.

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

This is unforgivable

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Even today there are tombs to be opened, and often the stones sealing them are so heavy and so closely guarded that they seem to be immovable. Some weigh heavily on the human heart, such as mistrust, fear, selfishness and resentment; others, stemming from these inner struggles, sever the bonds between us through war, injustice and the isolation of peoples and nations. Let us not allow ourselves to be paralyzed by them! #Easter

[ONLY POEMS @onlypoemsmag]

Joan Didion, “Why I Write”

[Olena Halushka @OlenaHalushka]

Tomorrow, many of you will think of Ukraine.

As Ukraine faces pressure to accept capitulation, remember: there will be no peace without justice.

We owe justice to every innocent life taken by russia's war.

For every fallen defender. For every murdered civilian.

For Mariupol.
For the bombing of the Drama Theater.
For the Bucha massacre.
For the mass graves in Izyum.
For Kherson and the human safaris.
For the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
For the playground bombing in Kryvyi Rih.
For nuclear terrorism at the Zaporizhzhia power plant.

For Pokrovsk, Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Volnovakha, Popasna, Maryinka, Lysychansk, Vovchansk — and hundreds of towns and villages erased from the map forever.

For freezing Ukrainians in winter and killing energy workers.
For every double tap against first responders.
For murdering doctors, targeting ambulances, bombing hospitals. For Kyiv's Okhmatdyt.
For every civilian bus, car, bike deliberately struck.
For every child abducted.
For every prisoner of war tortured, injured, or killed in captivity.
For every woman, man, and child raped.
For every person buried beneath the rubble of their home.
For every torture chamber under occupation.
For every filtration camp.
For the indoctrination of Ukrainian children.
For looted Ukrainian culture.
For destroying Ukrainian farmland and stealing Ukrainian grain.
For confiscating property under occupation.

For countless other crimes that continue as we speak.

There will be no real peace without justice.

Never.

[Richard Woodruff 🇺🇦 @frontlinekit]

I really don't think @Olympics understand the visceral feeling anyone in Ukraine has when they see that blood soaked flag being waved.

Every time it's shown anywhere it brings huge anger, disgust and discomfort.

That flag means death, rape and burnt kids bodies, it's not ok.

[Olga Tokariuk @olgatokariuk]

It is shocking how little coverage there is of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine due to Russia's destruction of its energy grid. It's -20C outside and half of the country experienced a total blackout today. Metro trains stopped operating in Kyiv and Kharkiv today. Rolling blackouts have been ongoing for weeks, often with no heating and running water inside people's houses. People get sick and die because of this. In the meantime, Russians laugh and call for more strikes to punish Ukraine for its unwillingness to surrender. These are strikes affecting millions of civilians amid the harshest winter in decades. These are crimes against humanity that Russia is confident it will get away with. We cannot let that happen

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

ICE Agent: “You raise your voice, I erase your voice.”

This is what a police state looks like.

[Jared Shult @jared_shult]

I hope the next viral trend is empathy and critical thinking skills

[Josh Rogin @joshrogin]

Maher Tarabishi, age 62, was taken by ICE last October when he exited his immigration check-in appointment in Texas. He was the primary caregiver for his 30 year old son Wael, who suffers from a chronic muscular condition called Pompe disease. His father provided 24 hour care for many years.

Wael died today, his family told me. Wael’s heath had been declining ever since his father’s detention. He never got to say goodbye to his father. Maher will never see his son again.

Maher came to the United States in 1994. He is not a criminal. He paid taxes. He raised a family. He was attending his immigration check ins reliably. Now that family is destroyed. For what?

If our government has any compassion, Maher Tarabishi should be released from detention now. He should be allowed to attend his son’s funeral. May Wael rest in peace.

Is this what America has become? Is this what we want America to be? Spread the word: #FreeMaherTarabishi

[Meg Hunter-Kilmer @MegHunterKilmer]

Went to Mass today to pray for the conversion of violent ICE agents engaging in unjust and dehumanizing behavior.

Came out of Mass to discover that ICE had executed another citizen.

How anyone can claim to be Christian and support this is utterly beyond me.

[Mira of Kyiv 🇺🇦 @reshetz]

Genuinely just thank you to World Central Kitchen for being here

[Gillian Branstetter @GBBranstetter]

Editorial in the National Catholic Reporter: "[JD Vance]'s comments justifying the death of Renee Good are a moral stain on the collective witness of our Catholic faith. His repeated attempts to blame Good for her own death are fundamentally incompatible with the Gospel."

[ian bremmer @ianbremmer]

after nearly four years of relentless war, ukraine continues not to target russian civilian casualties.

russia continues to target ukrainian casualties day after day after day.

we should not forget this.

[Joshua McElwee @joshjmcelwee]

Pope Leo said in a Christmas Eve sermon that the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn should remind Christians that refusing to help the poor and strangers today is tantamount to rejecting God himself. For @Reuters

https://t.co/Z91z9fGMKB

[Maria Shriver @mariashriver]

I try to rise above the noise all the time, but this individual has no human decency. This goes beyond. It’s absolutely disgusting. We should all be horrified and disgusted by this inhumane behavior, because that’s what it is. Rob and Michele Reiner were good, kind, loving people. They were good human beings and good friends to me and countless others. Their family is in deep, unimaginable pain. What kind of human being would share a statement like this, much less a president? Rob and Michele would tell me to just ignore him, but I can’t. I just can’t. And I hope you don’t either. They deserve so much better, as does their family.