From now on and until further notice, all of the proceeds from this blog will go to support the families of Ukrainian POWs captured by the Russian invaders.

This means that whenever you read Clarissa’s Blog you are helping some really amazing, heroic people.

Witnessed a discussion about Scott Walker among Ukrainians on Twitter. The central message of the discussion was “WTF is such idiot doing in politics?” Now I’m feeling very embarrassed that Walker’s idiocy is so well-known so far away. 

Yesterday, people in Russia marched in multitudinous protests that they call “Antimaidan.” The goal of the protests was to reject the Ukrainian Maidan movement that had honored its fallen heroes the day before.

“Are the Russians planning to rename their country into Anti-Ukraine?” people quipped on Facebook. “Why can’t they just go about their own business? Why should everything they do be about us?”

Reportedly, the Russian protesters were paid 300 roubles (a little less than $5) each for participating in the march. A pciture is worth a thousand words, so here are some slogans from the Russian Antimaidan. My translations are in the captions.

Russians are besieged by fears that evil Westerners are about to force them to hold gay parades. Many of them are convinced that it is crucial to invade Ukraine to prevent gay parades from happening. And I’m not trying to be funny right now. “Gayropa” is Putinoid speak for Europe.

And of course, the evil America, the bringer of gay parades, should just go die a painful death.

As if anybody was about to give it to them right this very minute.

Just as I’ve been telling you, Russians are already convinced that NATO soldiers (who are all black and drunk) have been fighting in the East of Ukraine. And if you don’t trust my translation, the Antimaidan protesters have helpfully provided a translation of their own:

Their English might not be perfect but it gets the message across for everybody who is willing to notice it.

Russia is ISIS that is 140,000,000 strong with oil and nukes. 

If people were less obsessed with Islam, they’d see how similar the two formations are and how identical their motivation is.

Ronald Reagan was a willing pawn of the greatest hoax in history. The Soviets pretended to “lose the Cold War” in a tactical concession aimed to generating an enormous strategic advantage. The narcissistic and dumb Reagan was so eager to congratulate himself for a victory that he pretended such a victory existed. His self-aggrandizing speeches were, undoubtedly, the best comedy show for Russia’s KGB leadership since they showed how easy it was going to be to outwit the dense folks like Reagan.

George H. W. Bush, one of the most inept and bumbling American presidents ever, allowed the Russians to dupe him back in 1991 into believing there was now a functioning democracy in Russia. Instead of crushing the Russians while they were weak, he started handing them over enormous sums of money and aid just as the Russians were regrouping for a fresh round of Cold War hostilities. 

Bill Clinton, also not the sharpest knife in the drawer, enjoyed humiliating Yeltsin in public but did everything he could to strengthen Russia and make it easier for it to start new wars.

George W. Bush was incapable of finding Russia on a map and had no foreign policy whatsoever. The Russians kept getting stronger and readier for a new war with the West but Bush was completely oblivious.

Barack Obama believes that if he shuts his eyes really really tight, the problems he is refusing to see will disappear. The result of this approach is that Russians feel increasingly more justified in their contempt for the “weak and impotent” Americans.

Sadly, the absolute majority of Americans who will read this post will see nothing in it but an insult to their partisan sensibilities. And while they adore their party-specific idols of choice, the much more united Russia is savoring collective and public fantasies about delivering nuclear strikes on the US.

An act of terror was conducted today by the Russians in my native city of Kharkiv. Three people are dead and 10 are wounded.

Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine and the country’s former capital, has the great misfortune of being located right at the border with Russia. The people of Kharkiv are increasingly worried that the city will be the next target of the Russian invasion.

A few days ago, a ceasefire was signed in Minsk between the sides in this war. Ukraine fulfilled its promise to uphold the ceasefire. Russia used the ceasefire to ramp up the invasion and raze to the ground the Ukrainian city of Debaltseve.

For the past 3 days, Russians have been transferring enormous quantities of weapons and huge numbers of soldiers into Ukraine. There is every indication that the next wave of invasion is about to start.

Based on the way Russians conduct their military operations in Ukraine, their only goal is to destroy as many peaceful cities and towns as possible. They choose a peaceful village or town and then shell it until there’s nothing left. They are not making any demands or showing any willingness to stop the invasion if any conditions are met.

People who have experience with working or studying at UK universities! I need your help.

If a person comes to a graduate program in the UK in the field of Arts and Humanities, are there any internal opportunities to fund the studies, at least partially? Are there any internal awards, TA-ships or RA-ships that international grad students could apply for? 

In short, is there any funding in such programs that grad students could work for while they study?

When I say that the Illinois Board of Higher Education wants to eliminate the Humanities programs at out university, people immediately assume that the goal here is to promote STEM disciplines.

That is not the case, however.  The IBHE is not promoting STEM at the expense of Humanities. It is, rather, promoting online vocational training at the expense of everything else. This is not a Humanities vs STEM conflict. This is education vs online vocational training conflict.

People, it’s time to forget the outdated Humanities vs STEM debates. We are not each other’s enemy. The real enemy are those who believe that people who are not very rich deserve nothing but online courses on how to work in sales, cut hair, or repair cars. 

All I can do is repeat that this is the official position of our state’s Board of Higher Ed: public universities where students meet professors in the classroom to learn literature, physics, math, and history should not exist. Only the very rich deserve this sort of education. 

And mind you, I don’t have any access to any secret information delivered through the back channels. This is all being announced very openly. The only reason why you don’t hear about this anywhere is because nobody cares.

The Russian media have been busily promoting the story of a nurse called Sasha, raped and then chopped into pieces with an axe (or maybe chopped into pieces and then raped) by a group of Ukrainian soldiers. The news reports feature photographs of the beautiful, tragically murdered Sasha.

Two days after this story started getting aired and printed, the famous porn star Sasha Grey issued a statement:

“I (love) my Russian fans, but this propaganda takes it too far. News that I was a nurse killed in the Russian/Ukraine conflict. #f***propaganda. People are dying. People are losing family members and BS outlets mock the deceased with fappery like this.”

It turns out that the actress’s photo was used to illustrate the obviously fake story. Sasha might have starred in a nurse costume in one of her films (I’m not a fan, I’m just making a guess) but she is not a nurse and she is very much alive.

Well, at least we know what the Russian propagandists watch right before concocting their bizarre stories and ranting against the degenerate West in the Russian media.

The Ukrainian town of Debaltseve has been occupied by the Russian troops as a result of the unilateral Minsk ceasefire that allowed the Russians to kill Ukrainians with impunity.

A chirpy BBC correspondent is flitting around Debaltseve asking the people in this town – a town occupied by enemy troops – whom they blame for the destruction of their city.

It doesn’t even remotely occur to the idiot reporter that the interviewees will be in mortal danger if they answer the question.