"This Is Where I Stand" - Janne Robinson

 

I’ve felt really bothered by anyone not standing up right now to be a voice for the violence, oppression and hate ripping through our planet. I’ve lost trust and respect for anyone I follow who hasn’t used their platform to say, “this is where I stand.”

Last week my privilege smacked me in the face. Because I’ve been the person who hasn’t thought it’s my “responsibility” as a poet or artist to speak about politics. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention here’s a recap of world events that happened in January:

1) On Jan 8th and 9th 30,000 people in Iran took to the streets to stand up against the incredibly oppressive Islamic regime. They were first advocating for their economy, and then it shifted into an outcry for human rights. The government instituted a near-total internet and communication blackout during this period and proceeded to kill 30,000+ people in 48 hours. The black out was to conceal the scale of the violence. The last time this many people were killed was the Babyn Yar Massacre in 1941: Over two days, September 29–30, 1941, German Einsatzgruppen and collaborators murdered over 33,000 Jews at a ravine in Kyiv, Ukraine.

2) ICE has been not only detaining “illegal” immigrants but also people here seeking asylum legally, people who are permanent residents. Extreme violence has been to happen to any non-white people — black, native, Indian. Anyone without white skin. Renee Good + Alex Pretti was killed by ICE agents protecting and standing up for what’s morally just and right.

There have been accounts of rape in these detention centers in exchange for mothers being able to see their children by ICE agents. Inhumane conditions with rotten food and people getting sick and denied medical care (war tactics also used by Hitler).

A man who was a caretaker for his son with disabilities was detained and because he was unable to communicate with the outside world — his son died, and when he asked for permission to attend the funeral it was denied. Anne Frank didn’t die in a gas chamber — she died because of the conditions of her concentration camp.

3) Innocent people are still being killed in Gaza. What is occurring in Gaza has never been justified and never will be justified. You do not hold innocent people accountable for the actions of a specific group of people inside of a country. It is not a country that gets held accountable — it is the people who have committed crimes of hate that live within a country that need to be.

4) Russia is still at war with Ukraine. They’re currently cutting out electricity because it’s winter (war tactic). And everyone’s hands are tied because if anyone acts there will be a world war. Meanwhile a completely unjustified and incomprehensible war is happening to innocent people in Ukraine.

5) 300k black women in Brazil marched against racism GBV (Gender based violence). Sexual Violence is often used as a tactic and weapon of war. Rape and sexual assault are deliberately employed by armed forces and groups to terrorize, demoralize, and humiliate civilian populations. It’s a systemic war tactic being used from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia to contemporary conflicts in the DRC, Syria, and Ukraine.

6) The president has withdrawn from the United Nations including funding and stated that “he doesn’t believe in peace.” The Epstein Files contain not just sexual abuse, but murder and cannibalism and likely hundreds if not thousands of innocent children and lives and no one has been held accountable or put in jail.

He has also been posting racist things about the Obamas, which alone should be enough to remove him from the chat. We have felons, sociopaths and pedophiles in charge of some of the biggest choices of our country.

So — I don’t care about your morning routine. And I don’t care about your regular content.

This is a unique moment in time, and your values are showing and people are paying attention. I care about how you act when someone you will never know is treated. I care about your empathy, compassion and your courage for the people outside of your immediate community. I care about your ability to believe that humanity, equality and dignity are non-negotiable values.

-Janne Robinson

Vaccines Are Helping Older People More Than We Knew

Many shots seem to have “off target” benefits, such as lowering the risk of dementia, studies have found. Let’s be clear. The primary reason to be vaccinated against shingles is that two shots provide 90 percent protection against a painful, blistering disease that a third of Americans will suffer in their lifetimes, one that can cause lingering nerve pain and other nasty long-term consequences.

The most important reason for older adults to be vaccinated against the respiratory infection R.S.V. is that their risk of being hospitalized with it declines by almost 70 percent in the year they get the shot, and by nearly 60 percent over two years.      

And the main reason to roll up a sleeve for an annual flu shot is that when people do get infected, it also reliably reduces the severity of illness, though its effectiveness varies by how well scientists have predicted which strain of influenza shows up.

But other reasons for older people to be vaccinated are also emerging. They are known, in doctor-speak, as off-target benefits, meaning that the shots do good things beyond preventing the diseases they were designed to avert.

The list of off-target benefits is lengthening as “the research has accumulated and accelerated over the last 10 years,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Some of these protections have been established by years of data; others are the subjects of more recent research, and the payoff is not yet as clear. The R.S.V. vaccine, for example, became available only in 2023.

Still, the findings “are really very consistent,” said Dr. Stefania Maggi, a geriatrician and senior fellow at the Institute of Neuroscience at the National Research Council in Padua, Italy.

She is the lead author of a recent meta-analysis, published in the British journal Age and Ageing, that found reduced risks of dementia after vaccination for an array of diseases. Given those “downstream effects,” she said, vaccines “are key tools to promote healthy aging and prevent physical and cognitive decline.”

Yet too many older adults, whose weakening immune systems and high rates of chronic illness put them at higher risk of infectious disease, have not taken advantage of vaccination.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in mid-December that about 37 percent of older adults had not yet received a flu shot. Only 42 percent have ever been vaccinated against R.S.V., and fewer than a third received the most recent Covid vaccine.

The C.D.C. recommends the one-and-done pneumococcal vaccine for adults 50 and older. An analysis in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, however, estimated that from 2022, when new guidelines were issued, through 2024, only about 12 percent of those 67 to 74 received it, and about 8 percent of those over 75.

The strongest evidence for off-target benefits, dating back 25 years, shows reduced cardiovascular risk following flu shots.

Healthy older adults vaccinated against flu have substantially lower risks of hospitalization for heart failure, as well as for pneumonia and other respiratory infections. Vaccination against influenza has also been associated with lower risks of heart attack and stroke.

Moreover, many of these studies predate the more potent flu vaccines now recommended for older adults….

-Paula Span, NY Times

Vaccines Are Helping Older People More Than We Knew - The New York Times

 

"The Beatles" February 9, 1964

Songs Performed

First Set:

"All My Loving"

"Till There Was You" (a cover)

"She Loves You"

Second Set:

"I Saw Her Standing There"

"I Want to Hold Your Hand"

The NFL Is “Socialist” on Purpose, and It Exposes Republican Economic Stupidity

 

NFL Super Bowl game was great. The guys wearing blue beat the guys wearing red, and Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga made MAGA snowflakes cry.

But the NFL can also teach Americans a huge lesson about economics, “socialism,” and the differences between Republican “free market” nuts and FDR’s re-regulation of the American economy that created the largest middle class in history and the first in the world to include more than half of a nation’s citizens.

Most Americans would be highly offended, for example, if the NFL took big bucks from Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg or somebody like these monopolists to change the rules so whichever team gave the League the most money could have an extra three players on the field at all times. 

But that’s pretty much exactly what Reaganomics and deregulation have brought us in our marketplaces; it’s the staggering difficulty that every small business in America faces today in the form of massive corporations like Walmart, Facebook, X, Google, and Amazon.

For capitalism to work in a way that doesn’t produce oligarchs and monopolies, it must be regulated. Capitalism, after all, is just a game that people play using money and mutually agreed-upon rules. Just like football.

The NFL heavily regulates football in the United States, at least the football played by its teams. Those regulations include how many players are on the field at any time, exactly what constitutes a down or a touchdown, and rules about how players may physically contact each other, and under what circumstances.

The NFL’s super-socialist regulations also decide which team gets first pick of new players: they decided that the worst-performing teams should have first choice of newly available players, giving every team an opportunity to rise through the ranks in the following season.

It’s much like progressive income taxation and the estate tax, giving the little guy a chance while slightly restraining those already at the top. These regulations guarantee the safety and stability of the game itself, and guarantee that fans of football have a consistent experience, because everybody understands and follows the rules.

That’s not meritocracy; it’s planned redistribution of future resources to maintain league balance. If American public policy worked this way, the millionaire opinion bots at billionaire-owned Fox “News” would spontaneously combust.

The league also pools its television and licensing revenue and divides it equally among all teams: No owner gets richer just because they’re in a bigger market. In a pure “free market,” the Cowboys and Giants would drown everyone else in cash. The NFL says, “Nope, everybody eats.” That’s redistribution by design.

And they impose a hard salary cap so rich owners can’t simply buy championships, and they require owners to spend what is effectively a minimum wage on players rather than hoarding profits. Teams that overspend are punished: that’s collective control of capital to prevent oligarchy, the exact thing conservatives scream about.

NFL teams are also required to spend a minimum percentage of shared revenue on their players. Owners can’t just hoard money; they must reinvest in labor. That’s closer to social democracy than laissez-faire capitalism.

The NFL figured out something America forgot after Reagan: markets only work when rules prevent the powerful from rigging the game.

In other words, the NFL is a regulated market with enforced rules that prevent monopolies, protect labor, and preserve competition. And because of that, small-market teams can win, dynasties don’t last forever, and fans get a fair game. If the American economy were run more like the NFL, we’d have fewer oligarchs, more competition, and a much healthier middle class.

But imagine if Milton Friedman, Robert Bork, or the other idiots like them who first advised the Reagan administration and now have guided Republicans ever since were to have taken over the NFL.

The teams with the wealthiest owners would always get the best players and thus would win every game. They might even decide that the team that gave the NFL the most money could have an extra player or three on the field at various times.

They’d assure us that the teams that didn’t perform as well just have to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” Perhaps their problem is just that their players are “lazy,” these people would tell us, and the solution is to cut their salaries and reduce the amount of protective equipment they can wear so that they will have a “incentive” to play harder and increase their performance.

Then the richest teams would begin buying the poorer teams, until all the teams are owned by three or four billionaires. Sounds like every industry in today’s America. But conservatives would try to convince you it would create a football paradise, right?

Of course it wouldn’t be a paradise: Fans would stop watching, kids would stop dreaming of playing, and the game itself would collapse under the weight of rigging and unfairness. Not to mention that if the socialist NFL ever actually tried some crazy “free market” stupidity like that, Congress would be holding hearings within a week, and the public outrage would be deafening.

But when the same thing happens in our economy, we’re told by Republicans that it’s just “the free market.” We’re told that “monopolies are natural,” that “billionaires are geniuses,” and that working people who can’t get ahead in a rigged system somehow “deserve their fate.”

We’re told by these fools that any attempt to re-write the rules so the American economy is fair again and our middle class can recover from the massive $50+ trillion hit it’s taken from 45 years of Reaganomics is “socialism,” even though FDR’s system is exactly how every successful capitalist system in history has worked.

Franklin Roosevelt understood this. He knew markets don’t self-police any more than football does. Without referees, rules, and consequences, the biggest and most ruthless players take over, the game stops being a game, and democracy itself is put at risk. And when the morbidly rich write the rules, they inevitably only benefit themselves; everybody else gets screwed.

The NFL doesn’t regulate football because it hates competition: it regulates football and “redistributes” wealth and opportunity so competition can exist at all. America once did the same thing with capitalism, and the result was the greatest middle class the world had ever seen.

Two-thirds of us were in the middle class when Reagan came into office and could get there with a single paycheck thanks to FDR‘s and LBJ‘s “socialist” New Deal and Great Society policies. Today it’s only roughly 45% of us and requires two paychecks. All because of 45 years of Reaganomics.

The choice in front of us is simple. We can keep pretending that letting billionaires write the political and economic rules and own the media is “freedom,” or we can remember that a fair game is what freedom looks like. Because when the rules only work for the owners, the rest of us aren’t players anymore. We’re just there to watch, pay, and lose what little we have so the billionaires can buy another super-yacht.

-Thom Hartmann

"Let’s say it: Trump is a racist"

 

Why did it take Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) until Friday, after Trump had posted a video portraying former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, to acknowledge that Donald Trump is a hard-bitten racist? And why has legacy media for so long avoided calling Trump racist?

Perhaps if Scott, or any number of lawmakers, had spoken up as strongly when Trump questioned Obama’s birth certificate or rode down the golden escalator in 2015 and launched his campaign while calling Mexican immigrants drug dealers, criminals, and rapists, Trump would not have won the presidency the first time.

Perhaps if the legacy media had identified Trump as a shameless racist years ago, the political, media, and business elite might have found it harder to normalize him and his neo-Confederate MAGA cohort.

The evidence of Trump’s abject bigotry has been out in the open for decades, from his determination to assign the death penalty to the exonerated Central Park 5 to his nonstop racist commentary about immigrants. His attack on DEI is rooted in this same racism, although the legacy media and timid politicians dare not call it that for fear of being labeled “woke.”

Blaming the 2025 D.C. plane crash on DEI; taking down a tribute to Jackie Robinson; replacing MLK, Jr.’s birthday as a federal holiday with his own at our National Parks; trying to write slavery out of the Smithsonian; and arresting Black journalists…are plainly efforts to demean and erase African Americans from our history.

Even before Trump took office in 2025, the ACLU aptly described precisely what he was doing: This attack on DEI is part of a larger backlash against racial justice efforts ignited by the 2020 killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and the nationwide protests — unprecedented in size and diversity — that followed.

The ACLU explained that anti-DEI ideologues frame “their attacks as a strike against ‘identity politics’ and weaponizing the term ‘DEI’ to mean any ideas and policies they disagree with — especially those that address systemic racism and sexism.” This is nothing more than a tactic in “a larger effort by right-wing foundations, think tanks, and political operatives to dismantle civil rights gains made in recent decades.”

Trump has turned the top ranks of civilian and military personnel into a virtually all-white boys club. He has restored the names of Southern slaveholders to military bases; while refusing to appoint a single Black woman to the federal bench in his second term. He has repeatedly hired neo-Nazis and elevated White Nationalist sympathizers. He selected primarily Black and Muslim countries to enforce restrictions and provoke adverse treatment on visas.

Furthermore, his constant insults directed at women — evidenced by the E.J. Carroll sexual assault verdict, or his ongoing mistreatment of female reporters — leave no doubt about his misogynistic venom. His compulsive dehumanization of immigrants and resorting to enabling White supremacists have been at the heart of his presidency. It is hard to conjure what more proof of deep-seated racism and misogyny would be sufficient to persuade those who feign inability to know Trump’s real motives.

It should be noted that, on Friday, in a candid and refreshing move, the New York Times did report: “President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip…then deleted it after an outcry, including from members of his own party.” The paper also acknowledged the endemic nature of Trump’s racism: 

“Mr. Trump has a history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women and immigrants…. Across Mr. Trump’s administration, racist images and slogans have become common on official sites.” 

However, the Times and other legacy media reporters do not persistently grill him on this topic. In failing to put serial examples of his racism in context, they allow Trump and MAGA politicians to skate along with formulaic denials.

Even now, the regime slides by without serious confrontation. The press should continue interrogating the White House press secretary as to why she originally stated that the Obama video clip elicited “fake outrage.” She needs to be pressed to identify the mystery aide who allegedly posted it erroneously (has that “aide” been fired?) This should be the focus when she returns to the briefing room.

Beyond this incident, corporate/legacy media could confront MAGA politicians, examine the racist views of Trump’s voters, or explain that his policies, however rationalized, are racist. The crusade to destroy the Voting Rights Act could be identified as part and parcel of Trump’s aim to return America to Jim Crow politics, and his plan to make the country whiter through mass deportation could be labeled as the full expression of White nationalism. They could reject his excuses (e.g., DEI is all about “merit”) and refuse to let Republicans scamper away or appear on TV without answering about the most recent racist comment.

Cowed for fear of being labeled as “woke,” elected leaders, sports champions, business leaders, and other prominent figures must stop ignoring the regime’s racist underpinnings, the MAGA party’s White nationalism, and the wholesale assault on pluralistic democracy — which the Supreme Court has aided and abetted (e.g., eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, ending affirmative action).

They should follow Judge Ana C. Reyes’ example: look to Trump’s own words to discern his motives. We need to stop pretending there are benign reasons for policies and personnel decisions that (wow!) just so happen to bolster white men at the expense of all those easily classified as “others.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had it right in demanding his enablers and sycophants aggressively denounce Trump.

Trump might be president, but the time for mincing words and normalizing his ethnic cleansing campaign (disguised as “immigration policy”) has long passed. All decent citizens should ostracize him when he prioritizes frivolous social functions at Mar-A-Lago rather than attending to the needs of the nation (see: snoozing through the Melania premiere while the country grappled with Alex Pretti’s devastating, baseless murder).

Let’s say it: Trump is a racist. The Republican Party tolerates — if it does not actively endorse — his racism. Those who normalize him enable racism. His agenda is grounded in racism.

-Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian is community-supported. Get engaged and join the fight by becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

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• Lesya Ukrainka — a legendary poet, writer, and intellectual whose works championed freedom, resilience, and national identity. Despite lifelong illness, her voice became one of the strongest symbols of Ukrainian cultural strength and defiance.

• Mykhailo Hrushevsky — a renowned historian, scholar, and statesman whose work laid the foundation for modern Ukrainian historical thought and national consciousness. His research helped the world understand Ukraine as a distinct nation with deep roots and continuity.

• Oleksandr Dovzhenko — a pioneering filmmaker, writer, and artist, widely considered one of the founders of poetic cinema. His films reshaped global cinema and brought Ukrainian culture, landscape, and spirit to international audiences. These individuals are just a few examples of how Ukraine’s intelligence, creativity, and determination continue to influence the world. At Ukrainian Apparel, we honor this legacy through designs inspired by resilience, pride, and heritage. Wear more than clothing. Wear legacy and support Ukraine. Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦 With Love, -Ukrainian Apparel Team Ukrainian Clothing Online Shop | Ukrainian Apparel

Why we keep doing this work in Ukraine

Hello Dear Reader, This is Yana Zhuryk, membership growth manager, here at the Kyiv Independent. You haven’t heard from me yet — I usually stay behind the scenes — but you may have seen some of the work I’ve been a part of, like our anniversary campaign in November. Today, I’m writing this email from my dark apartment in Kyiv, curled up under a few blankets with my cat. I feel extremely lucky that she decided to cuddle — it doesn’t happen often, she has that kind of personality. Outside, it’s −15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit). The electricity has been out for around five hours already. My laptop is running on a charging station, and the Wi-Fi is on a power bank. In Ukrainian, February is called лютий (lutyi) — literally “fierce” or “severe.” It’s hard to think of a better word for days like this. I recently had a conversation with my best friends about what keeps us in Ukraine. We’re women — so technically, we can leave (under martial law, men of conscription age are not allowed to leave). We can move abroad, start over somewhere quieter, more predictable. But all of us made a conscious choice to stay. Some because of partners or families. Some because of work. Some because it simply feels right to be here. I’m in that last category. Living in Ukraine during Russia’s full-scale invasion changed my sense of “normal,” especially this winter. I plan my days around the electricity supply schedule — when we even have a schedule. I keep power banks charged at all times. I’ve learned which cafés near my apartment have generators, which streets are too icy to walk on, how to get back online quickly when my Wi-Fi disappears mid-meeting, and where the closest shelters are, for when Russian drones or missiles head toward Kyiv. I started celebrating small things: a hot shower, a working elevator, a quiet night without an air attack. There’s a superstition in Ukraine that you should never throw away bread, no matter how stale it is. It’s rooted, in part, in the memory of the Holodomor, the deadly, man-made famine orchestrated by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s. I remember my great-grandmother, who lived through it, becoming genuinely upset when my mother tried to throw away leftover bread. I think my generation will similarly forever carry its own habits shaped by this time — always having a power bank nearby, thinking about alternative energy sources, and shelters when building homes. This is how Russia is changing our “normal.” And still — life goes on. What keeps me here isn’t heroic resilience. It’s the feeling of being exactly where I’m supposed to be; of doing work that matters, alongside people who care deeply about what they do; of knowing that the journalism we produce, and the community we build, make a real impact on people’s lives. Working at the Kyiv Independent doesn’t feel like “just a job.” It feels like a responsibility — and, in many ways, a privilege. But we wouldn’t be able to do this job alone. The reason we can keep reporting, planning, and thinking beyond the next day is because of the people who support us. Our members are the backbone of what we do. They give us something incredibly powerful: stability in an unstable world. If you’ve ever wondered whether your support makes a difference — it does. On days like this, especially. To everyone who already supports us — thank you, it truly means a lot. If you value our work or feel connected to what we do, or if you simply want to stand a little closer to the people behind the reporting, I invite you to join our community. Becoming a member isn’t just about exclusive content or discounts — it’s about choosing to be part of a community that cares and helps protect independent journalism. Membership Growth Manager Yana Zhuryk

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