The Captain and the Kremlin: standing behind the sword

TASS/Getty Images, c. 2017

Alex Ovechkin: a gifted hockey player, yet a fool; expresses shock at the backlash provoked by his cameo appearance in a propaganda spot for Putin’s political party; insists he harbours no pro-war sentiment, even as evidence proves otherwise. {ESPN 17 September}

https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/49965058/ovechkin-says-supports-russia-not-pro-war

Not pro-war, are we? —

FTA: In the campaign video that aired in Russia earlier this month, Ovechkin stands with supporters of Putin's United Russia political party as Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov delivers a monologue warning anyone who comes at Russia "with a sword" to "expect no mercy: we will rise together, as we do today." Ovechkin, wearing a black polo shirt, stands stoically behind Lavrov.

Ovechkin's appearance earned international condemnation from critics of the regime, which has mounted an offensive against Ukraine that began in 2014 and expanded to a full-scale invasion in 2022 that has resulted in more than 1 million military and civilian casualties. In a letter to the NHL this week, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., called on the league to consider banning Ovechkin over his participation in the ad.

—--

The series of TV advertisements features more than 30 Putin supporters. One of them is Maria Lvova-Belova, a Russian official who has been involved in the kidnapping and "re-education" of Ukrainian children. Lvova-Belova, in a televised meeting with Putin, said she had personally taken a Ukrainian boy from war-ravaged Mariupol. The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for her arrest in 2023. Ovechkin stands alongside her and others in a large group shot featured in the ads.

Academic experts in Russian propaganda said Ovechkin's appearance signifies a critical victory for Putin in his bid to justify the country's costly military campaign in Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities have accused the Russian military of murdering more than 17,000 Ukrainian civilians, including more than 700 children.

"You can't look away from the fact that Russia is perpetuating a genocide on Ukrainian people," said Sarah Oates, a senior scholar in the field of political communication and democratization at the University of Maryland. "Putin has said Ukraine and Ukrainians have no right to exist. And this is a key reason for the invasion. Ovechkin supports Putin, he supports the Russian regime, and that means he supports genocide."

Asked about assertions that Russia is responsible for a genocide, Ovechkin told ESPN, "I hope it's not gonna, it's not gonna be like that," before he and a team media relations representative ended the interview.

He hopes ‘it’s not gonna be like that’; well, either this fellow is a coward speaking out of both sides of his mouth, or else an impossibly aloof simpleton, utterly oblivious to what is happening immediately about him save when he happens to be upon a sheet of ice. 

I numbered myself among those who called upon the National Hockey League to expel all the Russian players — even the vaunted Ovechkin, presently the game’s all-time leading goal scorer and, arguably, the league’s most recognisable star — at the very onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Obviously, the NHL hearkened not, and shall decline once more to do the right thing now. All that concerns the league, the Washington Capitals, and their sponsors alike is the wringing of every last dollar out of the general public before society at large comes crashing down about us; whilst the American people have demonstrated, with abundant clarity, that they care nothing whatsoever for the plight of Ukraine and her people. 

I fully anticipate that Ovechkin shall be greeted with a standing ovation at the Capitals’ season opener in Washington — and be warmly received within every arena he visits, this expected to be his final season prior to retirement — whilst Ukrainian children continue to suffer abduction and death amid the war. 

Perchance, though, karma shall one day pay Alexander Ovechkin a visit. To anyone inclined to regard him as some manner of victim: he is nothing of the sort. —

FTA: Throughout Ovechkin's career, Capitals officials and people close to Ovechkin have suggested in media interviews that he was under pressure from the Kremlin to support the president and could not safely criticize Putin with his family living in Russia.

In 2022, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the then-Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan said Russian players were trying to navigate "what they can say, what they can't say," and "the repercussions that could happen back home." Of Ovechkin, he said: "He gets pressure from all sides -- from North America, from Russia, from family."

"It's a cop-out," said Slava Malamud, a Russian-born former Sport-Express hockey reporter who said the Capitals revoked his press credential in 2014 after he criticized Ovechkin's "Save Children from Fascism" post.

"All of these excuses presuppose the existence of an alternative Ovechkin no one has ever seen, one who is meekly doing what a brutal dictator tells him to do," Malamud told ESPN. "That is not an Ovechkin we have ever seen. We see a man who is proud of his president, who is standing next to war criminals.

"I don't think it's a coincidence after signing his last contract that he comes out with his unambiguous support for the war."

Unlike the great multitude of Russians, Alexander Ovechkin possesseth the means to depart Russia altogether, and might well become a leading dissident voice, were he truly devoted unto peace and unto the deliverance of children from the grip of fascism. Instead, he elects to return thither when his playing days are ended, thereby demonstrating his continued fealty unto a veritable demon. In so doing, he may thereby have secured a one-way passage unto Hades. At least I hope it be so.

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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

Teaching abstinence, cutting answers

generated via ChatGPT

Trump regime shifts teen pregnancy policy to abstinence and marriage, echoing Project 2025's theocratic vision. {NYT 22 June}

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/us/politics/teen-pregnancy-prevention-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zlA.Ha1r.i8N3P--W_B9M&smid=url-share

As one who believes our world is already profoundly overpopulated, and that humanity's present trajectory is environmentally unsustainable, I have no desire to see more teenagers becoming parents… or most anyone else. Bringing a child into the world ought to be among the most carefully considered decisions any person ever makes, not something undertaken casually or because of social pressure, religious dogma, or political ideology.

Suggesting that teenagers delay sexual activity is not, in and of itself, unreasonable. Expecting abstinence, however — particularly as the centrepiece of public policy — is another matter entirely. Decades of evidence tell us that comprehensive sex education and reliable access to contraception are far more effective at reducing unintended teenage pregnancies than abstinence-only programmes. Teen pregnancy rates have fallen dramatically over recent decades, and access to contraception is absolutely the reason why. It works, and it ought to be readily available to anyone who needs it without any shame or guilt.

Alas, the Christian Nationalists (or ‘Christofascists’) will never be satisfied with that conclusion because abstinence is not truly the destination they seek. Their broader vision places marriage and childbearing at the centre of young adulthood, reflecting a social order more reminiscent of the nineteenth century than the twenty-first. Modern societies are more complex than agrarian communities of centuries past; young adults spend longer in education, enter stable careers later, and face housing costs and economic pressures unknown to previous generations. Encouraging earlier marriage and parenthood does not resolve those realities; it does not merely ignore reality, it openly defies it.

Ideology is increasingly replacing evidence. Public-health policy ought to be judged by measurable outcomes rather than theological preference. If a programme demonstrably reduces unintended pregnancies, improves maternal health, and gives young people greater control over their futures, abandoning it for ideological reasons strikes me as not merely profoundly irresponsible, but sinister in its intent.

Humanity already consumes resources at a rate the planet cannot sustain, whilst climate change increasingly demonstrates that ecological limits are not theoretical abstractions. Obviously some level of reproduction is necessary to keep the species from extinction, but we should be encouraging thoughtful, deliberate parenthood, not treating reproduction as a cultural or political obligation. Bringing children into the world should be an act of responsibility, not ideology, and I do not believe every man or woman deserves the privilege (another rant for another day).

I predict, within a few years, America shall begin seeing teenage pregnancy rates climb once more as comprehensive sex education and access to contraception continue to be undermined. When that day comes, we shall know exactly who bears responsibility. After all, this is what y'all voted for, #Muricans.

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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

Secrets in the wine

generated via ChatGPT

Trump: FBI ‘wasting time’ in investigating the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham. {NBC News 14 July}

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/rcna587500

Translation: his puppet master Putin was the culprit, so nothing to see here, folks. 

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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

Sen. Lindsey Graham hath passed, aged 71

Reuters

Would not have to explain myself to John McCain, and am thinking suicide. RIP all the same: Sen. Lindsey Graham is dead. {Washington Post 12 July; photo: Reuters}

https://wapo.st/4f6QMNV

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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

The return of an old scourge and the lessons we forgot

generated via ChatGPT

Measles returns with a vengeance in the former US, 25 years after ‘elimination’, forcing doctors to relearn how to combat it. {Washington Post 6 July}

https://wapo.st/4gjahFm

Entirely shameful, and entirely preventable. Religious freedom should not mean religious supremacy. As was demonstrated very clearly during the COVID pandemic, these anti-vaxxers and assorted types chanting muh freedumb do not believe in the freedom of others to be protected from them and their bloody germs. Liberty to them is the liberty to impose themselves on others. They are the types who blast obnoxious music at all hours of the day, and become offended when asked to stop and shout ‘it’s a free country!’ They have been the types, throughout my thankless life, who have hassled me at every turn when my aching psyche just wants everything around me to slow the hell down and quiet down. Respect for others is tyranny to these people, and all too many of them out there.

Hell, most Americans — and not even merely the anti-vaxxers and Christofascists — could not even handle the simple concept of social distancing. They would be miserable living in Germany, where quiet on Sundays is simply a societal custom that doth not need enforcing by law; it is just respected by nearly all people.

Call me insane, in what we are still told is the most prosperous and educated nation on earth — obviously less and less true with each passing year, but stay with me — for expecting to be able to step outside and be reasonably certain I am not going to contract a deadly disease on any given day. Diagnose me with 'TDS' if some simple civility and respect for others is infringing upon the individual ‘rights’ of lunatics, bullies, religious zealots, and other assorted tyrants of society who make up the Trump/GOP base. Call me a bigot against people of faith — and I do consider myself a Christian, albeit a very poor and not particularly devout one, and my faith is not particularly strong at present — if the right of the general public to be protected against a scourge that was supposed to have been eliminated decades ago is less important than the feelings of bigamists, cultists, and all these assorted and dangerous weirdos who are only growing in number in this most horrific of timelines.

Somebody shoot me, I am so over all of this bulls**t.

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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

A politically motivated splinter from the US Episcopal Church descends into turmoil after its presiding prelate stands accused of sexual assault, bullying, and plagiarism

image generated via ChatGPT

It is always the most zealous among these types with the most skeletons in the closet. Excerpt from the Washington Post, 23 October:

The Anglican Church in North America — forged from the headline-grabbing conservative revolt against the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop — is now confronting allegations by clergy and parishioners against two of its top leaders: One is accused of sexual misconduct, while the other allegedly abused his power by allowing men with troubling histories into the church. 

The denomination’s senior-most official, Archbishop Stephen Wood, 62, has been accused by a former children’s ministry director of putting his hand against the back of her head and trying to kiss her in his office in April 2024. The incident allegedly occurred two months before he was elected to the helm, according to a new church presentment, which The Washington Post obtained in advance of its Monday submission.

The woman, who gave an interview to The Post, also accused Wood of giving her thousands of dollars in unexpected payments from church coffers before the alleged advance. Wood, a married father of four sons, remains the rector of St. Andrew’s Church in the Charleston, South Carolina, area, and a bishop overseeing a diocese of more than 40 churches across the South.

If the presentment triggers an ecclesiastical trial, Wood could be defrocked and forced to step down. He is the first archbishop in the Anglican Church in North America to face a presentment, a denomination spokeswoman said.

Prediction: Stephen Wood shall remain the archbishop of this renegade denomination for years to come, comfortably astride the lucrative anti-woke, men-as-victims bandwagon—or, to use the plainer term, the Trump Train. There exists no vestige of shame within the various organs of this grotesque cult of personality that has devoured all reason, all restraint, and, indeed, the very moral fabric of a nation in collapse.

I commend those within their sect who still labour for accountability; yet, in truth, there is none left to be found in the blighted realm of #MAGA, to which they have gladly lent both sanction and allegiance for the past decade. —Arthur Newhook, 23 October 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook.

“We're seeing these things like that we rarely saw in the country before.” Measles outbreak in upstate South Carolina

Shutterstock

{WYFF 3 October} ‘DPH: Measles outbreak reported in Upstate, South Carolina’

At least eight cases have been confirmed, five traced to a single school which, apparently, remains open. The report further notes that vaccination rates have declined markedly since 2020, when the anti-vaccine smear campaign achieved viral and mainstream traction. This, alas, is but the visible tip of a far greater catastrophe to come—especially now that public health in the now-former United States lies in the hands of lunatics and half or more of its population rejects science and common sense.—Arthur Newhook, 4 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} A close-up photograph shows a young girl lying on her side, her face and upper body marked by the distinctive red spots of measles. Her pale skin contrasts sharply with the inflamed lesions scattered across her forehead, cheeks, and arms. She gazes softly toward the camera with weary blue eyes, her expression subdued, a mixture of fatigue and quiet resignation. The soft lighting and muted bedding lend the image a fragile, intimate stillness, underscoring the vulnerability of childhood illness. The photograph captures both the physical manifestation of disease and the poignant stillness of convalescence.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook), PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Has anything changed? Thoughts on the 60th anniversary of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

AP

#OTD 1963: KKK terrorists perpetrate a bombing upon the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, which resulted in the death of four children and inflicted injuries upon others. Sadly but tellingly, particularly since a certain Donald J. Trump entered the political arena with his venomous rhetoric, it hath been irrefutably demonstrated that the kind of mindset that impelled these Klansmen to commit such a heinous deed still persists; and is far more widespread than most of us have been willing to acknowledge or confess.

We all do recall the terror of June 17, 2015, when a white supremacist did slay nine congregants at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. America has scarcely progressed any further in terms of enlightenment regarding matters of race, and is just as prone to violence and deliberate ignorance as it was in 1963. If anything, in the era of Trump, we appear to be regressing, which is a genuine affront to the memory of all those innocent souls who suffered torment and perished solely due to the color of their skin. {CNN 9/15 - 60 years after 4 little girls were killed in a KKK attack on the 16th Street Baptist Church, memories of the lives that were taken live on} 

Copyright 2023, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 and @FloydEtcetera on TWITTER, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, and POST - @arthurnewhook.

President Biden’s industrial policy begins to bear fruit

 

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

‘The US appears poised for a manufacturing boom as companies tap into Biden administration subsidies with pledges to spend tens of billions of dollars on new projects.’ {FT 4/17} - https://www.ft.com/content/b6cd46de-52d6-4641-860b-5f2c1b0c5622

Copyright 2023, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 and @FloydEtcetera on TWITTER, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, and POST - @arthurnewhook.

Odds and ends: Thoughts on why #Murica is so screwed up in the 21st century, COVID rates multitudes higher than reported, as are Russian death totals in Ukraine, more

New York Post

The 21st century has been awful. Plagued by maladies that in more normal times (the late 20th century) we believed were no longer, or ever, supposed to occur in America - large scale terrorist attacks, pandemics, severe economic turmoil, race riots, disputed elections, the revival of global Fascism, the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs winning championships; and I’m only scratching the surface. Today, I find myself wondering if all this chaos, hatred, and degradation is what people want. The only thing that everybody can seem to agree upon is that the country and the world are in a bad place. Logically, it would stand to reason that people would want to each do their part to fix the overall malaise ailing us. Yet, logic typically has so little to do with human thinking and decision making. Certain types of personalities do exist that thrive on chaos. Considering how large of a role entertainment plays in this culture - is there anything Americans demand more than the privilege of being entertained at all times? - perhaps the modern American is subconsciously bored by stability and order? Not an absolute thesis, just brainstorming.

Hollywood nutjobs battle in court - This is the nonsense #Murica has been paying the most attention to over the last few months. Not the plight of the Ukrainian people, or the threat Vladimir Putin and his nuclear arsenal pose to humanity, not COVID, and not the continuing erosion of our constitutional republic. Two Hollywood weirdos airing their dirty laundry to the world. So, if some sleazy actor is legally allowed to extort millions of dollars from a woman, does that mean I get to take my second-to-last girlfriend - a uniquely horrible person, who has offended me worse than any individual I’ve ever known, and that is saying a lot - to court for the hell she put me through? Does this mean I can sue my former high school classmates for emotional damages, because I know I could put a reasonable case together there? I’ve toyed with the idea of seeking legal council against a few individuals from a ‘fellows**t’ I made the mistake of being part of for nearly five years. But, I’m not some privileged a**hole like Johnny Depp, so I’d be laughed out of court, and nobody would be rooting for me as they root for one or the other litigants in this case. For better or worse, being a bitch is not a crime - and that is a resting bitchface if I’ve ever seen one, albeit she is quite gorgeous - and I have a hard time mustering up any sympathy for a sleazy actor who may have missed out on a part or two because of rumor and innuendo spread by the aforementioned woman that I had never ‘heard’ of until very recently.  Rome is burning, and most of us are choosing to be Nero playing our fiddles. (AP 6/01)

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Current COVID-19 infections may be up to thirty times higher than being reported - Quote: ‘It’s almost as though we’ve created a national ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ Covid policy – and that is a perfect way to promise that Covid will spread rapidly.’ (The Guardian 6/02)

Just another weekend in #Murica: Mass shootings in Philadelphia, Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina, and Arizona (New York Times 6/05)

Why are ‘deaths of despair’ increasing in the United States, but not in other industrialized nations? (JAMA Psychiatry 2/02)

Reuters

An estimated 40,000 or more Russian troops have been injured during the ‘special operation’ against Ukraine (Evening Standard 6/01)

Incredible photographs from inside the Azovstal steel plant (The Guardian 5/23)

Copyright 2022, Sunking278. Stay up-to-date: Twitter – @Sunking278 and Facebook – click here. DONATIONS - click here.

Eugene Robinson on America's 'descent into lip-blubbering, self-destructive idiocy'

Getty Images

Eugene Robinson: How dumb can a nation get and still survive? - 

T.S. Eliot wrote that the world ends "not with a bang but a whimper,” but I fear our great nation is careening toward a third manner of demise: descent into lip-blubbering, self-destructive idiocy. 

How did we become, in such alarming measure, so dumb? Why is the news dominated by ridiculous controversies that should not be controversial at all? When did so many of our fellow citizens become full-blown nihilists who deny even the concept of objective reality? And how must this look to the rest of the world? 

Read the headlines and try not to weep: 

Our elected representatives in the U.S. Senate, which laughably calls itself “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” agreed Thursday not to wreck our economy and trigger a global recession — at least for a few weeks. Republicans had refused to raise the federal debt ceiling, or even to let Democrats do so quickly by simple majority vote. They relented only after needlessly unsettling an international financial system based on the U.S. dollar. 

The frequent games of chicken that Congress plays over the debt ceiling are — to use a term of art I recall from Economics 101 — droolingly stupid. In the end, yes, we always agree to pay our obligations. But the credit rating of the planet’s greatest economic superpower has already been lowered because of this every-few-years ritual, and each time we stage the absurd melodrama, we risk a miscalculation that sends us over the fiscal cliff. 

Today’s trench-warfare political tribalism makes that peril greater than ever. An intelligent and reasonable Congress would eliminate the debt ceiling once and for all. Our Congress is neither. (Read more) 

Copyright 2021, Sunking278. Stay up-to-date: Twitter – @Sunking278 and Facebook – click here.

GOP senator told President Biden he only played along with Hunter Biden allegations to placate Trump supporters

AP

Sen. Lindsey Graham has all the integrity of a sewer rat, and is playing everybody for fools.  -

The South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham called Joe Biden after his victory over Donald Trump to tell the president he only joined attacks on his son, Hunter Biden, as a “bare minimum” to satisfy Trump supporters. 

The detail was included in a lengthy profile of Graham and his Washington manoeuvres published by the New York Times. It said the call, intended to “revive a friendship damaged by [Graham’s] call for a special prosecutor to investigate the overseas business dealings” of Hunter Biden, was “short, and not especially sweet”. (Read more)

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