Ukraine Starting Over

If one digs around far enough in Ukraine's panorama of random history, look at the odd things, one can connect all sorts of unrelated dots, add a little bit of  fantasy,  fictional interpretation, and voila : the story leaps off the script ! Events have gone well into the outrageous and unbelievable, information has openly been faked, distorted, and social media is off the charts with innuendo. Why can't it just go back to the most peaceful country on Earth ?  By the way : some of the very best fresh baked pastries/ ever ! can be found here at this little shop in Kiev. I think it's near the American medical Center (no relation ) Maybe it's just me being bored and feeling weird, wanting to write something outrageous... Don't get me wrong, but Victor Yanukovych sold himself to the voters, inveigled his image as some sort of master of pragmatism,  was he thought of  as the go -to guy who could  handle the tough business with the Russian Federation ? . Sort o

Well the mood on the Trans- Atlantic Metro is that Ukraine probably isn't capable of doing much of anything to defend itself beyond the apparent basics it has at it's disposal, even reading the Art of War, it won't get them very far (or something like that) But being underestimated can be a great advantage : the West does want to help in this Narnia style struggle for Europe's future. The Russian class system never ended, it underwent moulting, reformulations based on tactical advantages, some did transcend it, based on pure ruthlessness.In the West, we do have rule of law that is more accessible to the lay person. While we also have arcane forms of corruption that are deftly exploited by the elites, it is not perhaps so egregious as the Eastern Europe, Post communist reality. China, as an ambitious global player has hacked into the soft underbelly of Russia, smoothly positioning itself as a neutral player, stripping away the easy trade agreements in grain supp

I remember that time , closing in on one year, visiting friends in Simferopol, meeting new friends, people asked what it was like on the Maidan, since I don't speak Ukrainian, I could only give my rough impression of what I was hearing being said and things like that: People were nice towards me. In general, it came across to me as unbelievable, an unparalleled situation. In all, I had no right to any opinion, just impressions of it, sharing photos and so forth. My friends in Crimea go back many years, and I am open to some dialogue about the pragmatic aspects of the CIS, in all it felt useless to speak in any detail about anything with them relating to politics. Of  course, I find politics in Ukraine vastly more interesting than USA, I am often thinking how , not trivial, but near sighted people get caught up on issues, friends, family. Not to detract from what they  see as important. Ukraine did not ask for 8 million of it's people to be killed in the Second World War.

I think that for sure, Monday I did not want to look at anyone's mood on the metro. I had enough turmoil on my mind that I didn't want to cross the line of sharing. That lasted until Tuesday evening when I noticed that everyone had a wonderful mix of moods as they finished work and were going home, bright cheery, thoughtful. These people may start the day in a semi-monolithic mood, but they choose how they want to feel, rather than depend on external forces to shape their mood ; the job may own their work time, but not their feelings. One of the aspects of the war in East Ukraine is that people are mixing into Kyiv, my friends from Donetsk and other places are often uneasy, being dislocated from their homes and apartments by geopolitics, and worrying that people in Kyiv blame them in some ways, label them as part of the problem rather than an aspect of the answer. But I also see genuine gestures of welcoming, warmth and understanding being extended to my friends from the East.

Forget about the Metro everybody watches each other here the feelings that happen on the metro stays on the Metro we are maybe living in a sick time like some gargantuan wave that can loom un sus·pect ed·ly   in a calm sea Why do I find it weird that the young Eminem looks a lot like the Leland Stanford Junior ? did you know that when he was a baby, his parents brought him to the guest dinner table inside  a silver serving dish, like some prize for the guests ? The World is a ghetto_ maybe too bad he died young : it's a tidbit of education History in America. a case of mistaken Historical souls lost in anxiety ? What sort of a trade off is that ? to go from being the Scion of one of the most wealthy families in America to being a formerly scrappy rapper of the Modern Era ? I'd take it any day )' the beautiful  pain.... ************** I can feel the heat rising Everything is on fire Today is a painful reminder of why We can only get brighter The furth

I think that my read on the mood in the metro today was that no one wanted anybody checking their mood: It's really been far too long of a conflict and most of them are prepared for this to last years, to fight for their territory to the bitter ends of time, they feel ripped off by the EU, Russia, the USA, for talking them into giving up the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and at the time then, for peanuts. This whole scenario might not have taken place if they kept the nukes, or at least a decent  set of them operational. Not that every guy or gal one meets on the street is thinking about it that way. It sets a bad precedent, no other nation on Earth will ever give up their nukes after what has happened to Ukraine. If people in your family were killed, wounded and disabled, tortured, or just radically displaced, if your money lost half it's value in a year, it is all a lot to think about. Are the working people in Russia happy now , that Putin has got his goat

 It has been a well known weakness of Ukraine's infrastructure that it's electrical and power industry depends on intermediate coal fired power generating plants, between the Hydroelectric, and Nuclear powered generating stations. Among the many advantages Moscow's strategists viewed in terms of fomenting war and political upheaval in the Donbass, was the strategic value of it's Industrial capacity, underpinned by significant energy resources such as coal and possibly fracking in the future. And of course, there is the potential trillion dollar stash of off shore oil and gas waiting to be developed in Crimea. And the Kremlin knows that the rules for joining NATO require a country to be not at war, so they may think it is more easy to maintain a perpetual  low level war, just to make their point that NATO on their border with Ukraine is unacceptable to them. As foreigners, most of us, we are not really able to understand the full whiteboard of Ukraine's economi

There are many variants of reality to the crisis in Ukraine: If one travels due East from Kiev and goes just a bit above the Kharkiv'ska Oblast, to the small towns, villages that skirt the border, one finds a taciturn, calm, easy going feeling. No local person who lives on the border is terribly worried about tanks, APC's  rolling into town :The background of this photo is Russia, the pile of fall squash, pumpkins and the smart brick house looking out across the lake, it's in Ukraine. Local people can come and go through the local border checkpoint if they are from that area on either side of the border, the border guards stay alert, but they are generally easy going and happy to facilitate a person's safe transit. Of course, they are all concerned about the trend of Geopolitics and how it might affect their work and lives. The border guards rotate into hazardous duty in the ATO zone. The families that share this region probably don't think a lot different on one