After reading this interview for a second time, I asked myself: ‘Why are you paying so much attention to this guy?!? After all, he doesn’t say anything new…’
Then it hit me!
“Russia” and “we” are two different things.
Russia, the country, cannot indeed afford to “lose”. To ‘lose it’, to be more precise. Russia will survive, no matter how many more ‘mistakes’ the morons currently running it will commit.
“We”, on the other hand, are the ones who can. And eventually will. Lose. Everything.
And the longer those “we” are allowed by Russia itself to run the Kremlin, the worse it will be. For everybody. Us – the rest of the world, included.
‘But when will this nightmare end?’
That I don’t know. All I know is that it will eventually do that. End.
Look at the picture above. When have you seen anything more British than that? OK, fake British. Make-believe British. But British nonetheless.
That was which hit me. That during its entire history, Russia had tried to emulate Britain. The Russian elite has for ever tried to rise itself to ‘British standards’. From Peter the Great to Putin. All the while convincing the Russian People that the road they were trundling on was unique…
The sooner the ordinary Russians will figure out that they have been misled – and enough of the elite will understand that British-ness is good only for the Brits, they will make peace. Among themselves. With the their Ukrainian cousins. And with the rest of the world!
Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a species of cultured animals simultaneously capable to place a highly sophisticated IR telescope on an orbit around their native planet, the Earth, and to reduce a country to a pile of rubble.
Interestingly enough, the technology used to accomplish both, the rocket, has been imagined a little more than a century ago. By, among others, Herman Oberth.
He had built his first rocket as a school project, when he was 14. About then he also came up with the concept of a multistaged rocket. Lack of resources convinced him to study medicine. After only two years he was drafted into the German Imperial Army to serve during WWI. Initially as a foot soldier and then moved to a medical unit. In that period he found enough “spare time” to conduct experiments which had later enabled him to present “designs of a missile using liquid propellant with a range of 290 km to Hermann von Stein, the Prussian Minister of War.“ During WWII he had worked at Peenemunde, were he was awarded a decoration for bravery during an aerial attack, and then at the German WASAG organization developing solid fueled anti-aircraft rockets.
Between the wars he had contributed to a series of experiments in Germany. For one of which he was helped by an 18 years student. Werner von Braun.
Humans, as a species, have harbored the same ‘amount’ of brain for the last 200 000 years. That was when the Homo Sapiens had arrived. But that brain had produced something only about 70 000 years ago. That’s why the second Sapiens was added, by us, to the name of those living since that time. To underline the fact that humans had become ‘fully’ conscious only ‘recently’. That having a big brain was not enough. That becoming fully human also implied self awareness. Wisdom…
Apparently that’s not enough. After experiencing, first hand, the horrors of WWI such a creative mind as Herman Oberth’s was still capable of building offensive weapons for Hitler. After experiencing, first hand, the horrors of WWII such a creative mind as Herman Oberth’s was still able of joining an extreme right political party…
After experiencing, first hand, the horrors of WWII at the hands of the nazi, the modern day, post communist, Russia is capable of inflicting the same kind of horrors to their close cousins, the Ukrainians.
When are we going to become Sapiens enough to stop this insanity? To concentrate our creativity exclusively towards ‘elevating’ purposes?
Being an agnostic, somewhat simplifies things. For me. At the emotional level, I prefer the second interpretation. At the rational level, I appreciate the effort made by the first interpretation towards finding a logical explanation for the whole thing. Which explanation might actually be true. In the sense that the evangelists, all four of them, might have indeed tried to lessen the Roman responsibility for Christ’s death.
What bothers me is why so many of the readers have accepted the story as plausible? A crowd to send a bandit to freedom and an innocent to death? How likely is this?
But what if the crowd was biased?
Well, not the crowd, since the episode was most likely invented. The individuals who had a message to convey to their readers. To us.
Let’s start with the beginning. The Old Testament. According to this writing, the covenants were made between God and the people of Israel. Which gave the people of Israel a special place. They were His people. The chosen ones. The New Testament changes all this. Jesus died for all of those who accept his sacrifice. The Jews are no longer the only chosen ones.
The way I see it, the ordinary Jews have no problem with this. I have no knowledge of Jews discriminating against Christians. Except for the claims made by the anti-Semites… I’m not so sure though about the likes of Caiaphas… “a member of the council when he gave his opinion that Jesus should be put to death “for the people, and that the whole nation perish not”“ After all, Caiaphas – and all those in the same position, were the only ones who had anything to lose as a consequence of Jesus’s teachings. As a consequence of all people, not only those who followed the likes of Caiaphas, being able to consider themselves as being children of the same God. Only the likes of Caiaphas had anything to lose from all followers of Christ considering themselves equal among themselves.
Not at all different from what had happened after Luther had nailed his famous theses to the door of the Wittenberg church. The established hierarchy felt it’s throne was becoming wobbly and reacted forcefully…
What if the real meaning of the whole Barrabas story is for us, the readers of the Gospels, to be extra careful when we evaluate the ‘recommendations’ given to us by the ‘authorities’ of the moment? Specially when those ‘authorities’ are about to loose their clout…
It was shared on a FB-wall and somebody had commented that “Institutionally they are not your friends.”
My ‘jerked’ comment was:
“Institutionally, cops should be your ‘last resort’ friends.
The fact that too many of them are not, and the fact that too many of us consider them, as a category, to be unfriendly, is proof of how dysfunctional our society has become.
Cops used to be ‘unfriendly’ when I grew up. In communist Romania. When the cops were used, by the communist state, to preserve their power. The communist power over the entire society.
In the free countries of today, the cops are the sole barrier separating our persona and private property from the hands of the criminals.
Without their presence…
Or, putting it the other way around, we have but the cops we deserve. Train and motivate them properly and you’ll have good cops!”
At a second glance, I had an inkling. Is it possible for the whole thing to be nothing more than a ‘marketing campaign’? Organized by the only people interested in increasing litigation?
Interested in altering the relative stability of our political establishment?
The police, by properly performing their duties – the world over, not only in the communist countries, contribute to the political stability of those respective countries. For the police to properly perform their duties, there must to exist a proper trust between the general population and the police itself. The population must see the police as their friends of last resort while the police must see the general public as both their employer and their responsibility. The population must be open in their relationship with the police while the police must treat respectfully every individual, including the suspects and the convicts.
In the communist regime I grew up, the police couldn’t fulfill its duties. Exactly between there was a ‘trust’ barrier between the general public and the police. Between the oppressed and the armed hand of the oppressor. The communist regime I grew up under, in Romania, had eventually collapsed. Exactly because of the malignant mistrust between the general public – The People, and the government. The police being nothing but a portion of the government itself.
Who is interested in the collapse of the democratic regimes? Who is mostly interested in wedging apart the government from The People?
No, Putin’s henchmen executing a nuclear attack isn’t the worst case scenario.
This is.
People around the world asking themselves ‘how is it possible for an army belonging to a civilized country – one currently holding the right to veto any UN Security Council decision, might behave in such a horrible manner’?!? How is it possible for a civilized people, the Russian people, to allow something like this to happen?
After the Cold War had been lost by the Soviet Union, the world over was under the impression that the liberal-democratic and capitalist model had ‘won’. That nobody could any longer advocate for an alternative. Nine years later, Russia was on the verge of collapse. After following – ineptly, the capitalist mantra – greed is good, the Russian people was almost dying of hunger. That’s how the Russians had fallen under Putin’s spell. He had turned around the Russian economy and earned the gratitude of the ordinary Russian people.
But he had done nothing but reigning in Yeltsin’s oligarchs… and got filthy rich in the process!
Yes, but the ordinary Russians had enjoyed, for some 15 years, a life they had never thought possible. A life of relative abundance. At a relatively low cost. At a cost they were already accustomed with.
The Russian people has been been accustomed, since always, to keep its mouth shut. That’s so deeply ingrained into their minds that most of them never even dream of speaking up….
OK, OK… but what is the link between your ‘worst case scenario’ and the Russian people being unable to ‘speak up’?!?
Putin is able to do what he is currently doing because nobody is challenging his decisions. Nobody inside Russia…
Because nobody inside Russia is challenging his decisions – and a ‘handful’ of ‘dimwits’ actually executes those decisions, the rest of the world is under the impression that the Russian people is OK with what’s going on in Ukraine.
And who are you to tell us that ‘regular Ivan’ would challenge Putin’s decisions if he had any opportunity?!?
I didn’t say that! If you are under that impression, I’m afraid I haven’t made my point yet.
You see, what we really need to do is to ‘fold’ the Russian people into our ‘Weltanschauung’. To welcome them into our social and cultural space.
The current war will end. One way or another. Putin will die. Sooner or later. But until the Russian people will learn that with us is far better that against us… we – all of us, will live on a ‘tight-rope’.
My impression, watching the horrors committed by the Russian army, is that those horrors have been ordered by Putin for one reason. And one reason only.
To convince us, the rest of the world, that the Russian people is nothing but a bunch of savages. That they deserve no compassion.
That their leader – Putin, must be offered an easy way out – at the expense of the Ukrainians, and that the Russian people must be left to rot at his disposal. That the Russian people deserves nothing. Nothing but to be left at the mercy of their ruthless and mind-twisting sheep-master.
That is the worst case scenario. Us accepting that another people, any people, is worthless.
Putin’s followers – Le Pen and Orban being but the most obvious examples, are eagerly waiting for that to happen.
Putin advisers ‘too afraid to tell him the truth’ on Ukraine: US official “Putin didn’t even know his military was using and losing conscripts in Ukraine, showing a clear breakdown in the flow of accurate information to the Russian president,” the official said.
There are two ‘things’ which collide here.
Dictators tend to drive away really competent people and those remaining tend to put the entire blame on the ‘guy on top’.
As many of you already know, I grew up in the communist Romania. Ruled by Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator who ended up being shot on Christmas Day, 1989.
At 28, I was already familiar with the notion of ‘yes-people’. Decision makers who ruled our daily lives were surrounded by people who provided the ‘right’ answers, effectively isolating the decision makers from the reality. This ‘development’ being the fundamental explanation for how all dictatorial regimes, including the communist ones, ended up in abject failure. For ‘how’, not for ‘why’ – but this is another issue.
After Ceausescu was toppled, I was absolutely flabbergasted when I first heard
‘He didn’t know what was going on. Had his close advisers kept him in touch with the real situation, he would have taken the proper decisions to rectify things’
Really?!?
Who had selected his ‘close advisers’?!?
Who prevented him from asking ‘a second opinion’? From stepping out of his office and ….
Who, step by step, had ‘created’ the ‘atmosphere’ which had driven all those unwilling to lick where ‘he’ had spat to flee, living ‘him’ surrounded by sycophants?
Sycophants attempting, after Ceausescu had been toppled, to pile all the blame on his shoulders…
I’m afraid we are witnessing a replay, with Putin as the lead character.
When I was six, my father took me to a German kinder-garden.
He was learning German, at 35, and thought I should start earlier. In the end, I didn’t exactly learn the language but during the process I met a lot of nice German speaking people.
At 16 I read
The Death Factory, a book about the Auschwitz concentration camp
Well, actually it was translated in Romanian but the original cover is far more suggestive for non-Romanians.
That was when I learned to distinguish between a people as a whole and the atrocities committed by a minority.
As I grew up, under communist rule, I noticed the ‘little compromises’ my parents had to make in order to provide a better life for me. The small bribes offered whenever ‘necessary’, not speaking up their minds in ‘official settings’, allowing stupid, but powerful, individuals to boss them around… As a young adult, I understood how those small compromises, made by almost all of us, added up and eventually caused the entire regime to collapse. Eaten up, from inside, by institutionalized corruption.
As a no longer young adult, after the regime change, I noticed that ‘compromise’ was so entrenched in our habit that it had been carried over into the new regime. As if the new found liberty had been interpreted as the freedom to accept ‘un-earned benefits’ from whoever offered them. In exchange for things which were not ours to give… The same was happening in other ex-communist countries. The closer to Moscow, the more intense the phenomenon.
That was when I learned to dissociate corruption from any particular political regimen.
Soon after that I learned the international dimension of the whole thing.
That was when I learned that democracy alone is not enough to cure corruption. That democracy can also be eaten from the inside by this worm. If ‘the people’ do not pay enough attention!
This morning, on top of the already ‘normal’ news from the Ukrainian front, I learned that
That was when I understood that ‘what goes around, comes around’ is driven by our bad choices. By our unwillingness to make good what we have already learned from past mistakes.
Should have learned from past mistakes…
Really guys? The Red Army had spilled its blood to free the people herded to be killed at Auschwitz and a survivor from Auschwitz is killed by a Russian bomb attempting to ‘denazify’ Ukraine?!? Which Ukraine wanted nothing but to join the EU and NATO? But couldn’t! Crimea was occupied while Donetsk and Luhansk have rebelled against the central government… and NATO – like all other clear headed alliances do not admit new members which are already involved in ‘border disputes’.
So. Putin, spooked by a NATO who doesn’t dare to violate the ‘founding act’ – not even after Russia had occupied Crimea, orders the Russian Army to demilitarize and denazify a country whose independence and integrity was guaranteed by the Budapest Memorandum.
And, caught in the middle, a man whose life had been saved – some 75 years ago, by the Red Army ends up being killed by the Russian one…
Simply because we didn’t pay attention. And allowed what went around to come back!
Boris Romantschenko of Ukraine, along with five other former prisoners, renews the oath of Buchenwald, from April 19, 1945, at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial, in Weimar, Germany, April 12, 2015. Picture taken April 12, 2015. Michael Reichel – Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
Nothing special inside but it illustrates well enough the point I’m trying to make.
At first, Putin’s words are summarized and then proven ‘wrong’. Misleading. Or plain false. In the next section of the article, the author – Paul Kirby, like many more before him, attempts to divine what Putin will do. Starting from the same words which have just been proven false and/or misleading.
?!?
No, the author is not ‘dense’. He simply does what he was trained to do.
We, here in the land of democracy, understand language as a medium for negotiation. And negotiation as an exchange where we let our needs be known, in earnest. As an exchange where we ‘trade’ information with the goal of finding the best mutually acceptable solution for whatever problem we attempt to solve. In this sense, a negotiation is a form of cooperation. And compromise is something which both sides find beneficial.
For people conversant in ‘dictatorian’, ‘compromise’ is something to be shoved down the throat of the weaker side. The bigger the power differential, the harder to swallow becomes the ‘compromise’.
Doesn’t make much sense? To us, democrats? Because we know that shoving things down the throat of now weaker people doesn’t work on the longer time frame?
‘Assuming’ is the worst thing a negotiator may make.
We keep assuming that dictators are rational. Even worse, that they follow the same ‘ratio’ as we do. That we – as in we and them, see the same world and have ‘slightly’ different goals. And express those different goals in the same manner. Using the same kind of language.
We are wrong.
We, the democratically minded, are trained – conditioned is a truer word, to consider ‘the other’ as being equivalent to us. At least some of the others, but that’s another discussion. We actually ‘know’, in our bones, that we cannot ‘do’ anything by ourselves. That we exist only in cooperation with those around us. That everything we have ever accomplished was the result of a common effort.
People conditioned in dictatorial regimes see things rather differently. They don’t cooperate, they just obey. Their existence does not stem from the common effort but from following orders. Language is not at all a medium where information is being passed between equivalent agents but a two way conduit. Orders are flowing from top to bottom and acknowledgments crawl from bottom to the top.
‘And what about ‘information’?!? How does it travel among those people?’
Piecemeal. Exclusively on a ‘need to know’ basis. Nobody ‘volunteers’ any information unless expressly asked about it by a superior.
This is why dictatorships end up crumbling under their own weight.
That’s why we don’t understand, for real, what Putin attempts to communicate. That’s why he is extremely annoyed right know.
Putin no longer understands what’s going on. Let aside the fact that nobody around him dares to volunteer any information – which would be contrary to what Putin wants to hear. My point being that Putin had been accustomed to having his way.
I’m not going to enumerate all the things he had done. Things we should have reacted against… As in ‘reacted’, not meowed meekly. As a consequence, he had grown accustomed to shoving things down our throats…
Suddenly, we have stopped swallowing! Without giving him a ‘reasonable’ reason… A reason he could understand!
Do you remember what I’ve told you? A few moments ago? That dictators don’t care about those who are weaker? Nor about the long term consequences of their decisions? That dictators are concerned exclusively with their own survival?
Ever since Putin had ordered his army to invade Ukraine, I keep hearing about what drove Putin to do it. About his dreams of rebuilding the old Russian Glory. About his drive to become the most important Russian personality. About NATO ‘pushing itself’ closer and closer to Russia’s borders. About…
The map above is the last argument I came by. And the last straw… The person who posted the map doesn’t agree with Putin. Not at all. But cannot ‘forget’ the fact that at one time Kiev did belong to Russia.
Well… I’ll be blunt about it!
This person, along with many others, tries to explain what is going on in a rational manner. They attempt to find an objective reason for a subjective decision.
Putin is flattening out Ukraine because he is afraid.
The Soviet Union had survived 1956 Hungary, 1968 Prague, and 1980 Solidarnosc. All of these ‘movements’ had been, somehow, quashed. Dealt with.
The Soviet Union had, finally, crumbled under its own weight after Afghanistan. After a people didn’t cave in. After a people, an entire people, found it in themselves how to resist. How to say no!
Putin had successfully quashed Yeltsin’s oligarchs, the Chechen rebellion, the first Orange revolution, dealt with Saakashvili, helped Lukashenko save his throne and put a lid upon the recent Kazahstani attempt at making a small step towards democracy. And was contemplating the Western Europe planing to give up burning gas and oil.
‘His’ gas and oil…
He had to do something. Otherwise ‘his’ people were going to throw him out.
If Ukraine was allowed to continue on the self determination path, who was going to stop the Russians from following suit?
So yes, the circumstances described by that map are valid. But it is Putin who bears the entire responsibility for what’s going on. And for creating the circumstances in which ‘next’ is going to happen.
Can you imagine what’s going on in these children’s souls?
882. Oleg the Prophet captures Kyiv and moves the capital of the Viking kingdom from Novgorod to Kyiv. Thus the Rus becomes Kievan.
1703. Peter the Great of Rus-sia established Sank Petersburg as a bulwark against the Swedish Kingdom. The city served as Russia’s capital from 1712 to 1918
Kyiv hasn’t been besieged yet but has already been under heavy bombardment.
I’m Romanian. Romanians don’t have very fond memories of what had happened to their country whenever the Russian soldiers had come by to ‘visit’. As a teenager I read The 900 Days The Siege of Leningrad, 1968, by Harrison Salisbury
And wept.
Now, an already old man, I check out, on the Internet, what’s going out in Kyiv – the former capital of the Kievan Rus.
nicichiarasa 