A friendly word is better than a heavy cake

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 eating tiger back from China, and parked some planes with Nuclear bombs in Crimea? Do the victories of his ego feed theirs ?

is it true that his goal is to destabilize Ukraine so much that they just say "OK, we give up, you win, it is better to  surrender than live in the shadow of a perpetual , ongoing, low level war, even if we have to live under a totalitarian, grey and soul hardening security state"  Ukraine has already capitulated to him in some fashion, yet I don't see it possible they'd ever give up the struggle. Freedom is a powerful motivation, of course he and his military operatives could just get all like Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now" and then all bets are off as to what can happen. It gives him the power to be totally unpredictable. With a globally traded stock market and many, many friends outside Russia who can get the whisper about what is going to happen in ten days time.....Has anybody done any serious checking of the Putin's best friends who work the London and US markets, the Asia and European markets ? It takes a financial investigative journalist, a high tech Sherlock Holmes with a Poker Face, and probably some CHutzpah. I don't think my tips on the mood in the Kiev Metro is going to make anybody get rich investing in Ukraine's market : they aren't getting great news from the Agriculture Sector, but there is always that fascination for the vulture phase in investing.

  But I think the war of the minds is about showing who is really making money on the sly from all this, why they keep brushing aside the impact of sanctions, laughing about it. Why do they find it so funny that ordinary folks in Russia and Ukraine have less money to buy essentials ? I am sure they would parry the thrust to the middle with the posturing that the West is only choosing to make things worse, that they are merely defending the interest of their people, that those people in Ukraine created the problem. I still don't get why the Verhovna Rada repealed the equal status language law after the departure of Yanukovych. They played all too easily into the hand of the Kremlin Propaganda machine. If NATO had been able to quickly reinforce just the borders of Ukraine, even though they didn't have that kind of mandate, could all this death and destruction have been avoided, or greatly decreased ? It feels like a case of being a day late and a dollar short. I mean I like my country, as much as the US is an imperfect democracy trapped in a 2 party system, for the most part I find our political situation boring in the US, occasionally there are some interesting things.

The firing of Chuck Hagel last week, well sorry about that, all I have to say is that wasn't his red tie not straight ? It was visibly shifted to the right, was this a hidden message ? Some SOS signal to the right wing or the Masonic conspiracy ? Wasn't Biden's trademark silver blue tie a trifle off center too, was it a counter signal ? Now I don't honestly believe in the Masonic conspiracy. Yet is there some sort of Masonic order in Russia ? do they have secret meetings in Vienna ? My immediate family is so painfully far to the left that at times, it's a trifle embarrassing, but all these labels of far right and far left are difficult to apply across a broad spectrum of social and individual dynamics. And of course, that is the most easy mis-step to accuse people of being selfish or overly idealistic, when you don't have the full picture of where they are coming from.

A friend of mine lost his Uncle the other week. His uncle had been orphaned when both his parents were killed for being partisans in Western Ukraine : it's a reality you are going to live with every day of your life. Was he one of those people in Ukraine who said "hey that's crazy, we shouldn't give up our Nuclear weapons ! " And maybe it's one of those things : dammed if you do and dammed if you don't . People high and low are speaking in Ukraine about situations in the DPR and Lugansk being fabricated... nearly as propaganda fodder. But I am sure such banter goes both ways across the now unhappy border. Is it possible Chernobyll was an intentional malfunction , just gone wronger than it was intended? It is hard to imagine it was just some sleepy headed engineer not noticing a dial going outside it's range, but accidents happen and it's a well know problem with Nuclear stuff. There is conjecture of secret experiments using the woodpecker array , since they were tied together . I will have to ask around to see if the tragedy at the CHernobyll was used in the dialogue to eliminate the Nuclear arsenals.

  What secrets lurk in all of this ? Maybe China will double cross Russia and ally with Ukraine, become a military partner without the procedural constraints of NATO as they say in Ukraine :   

a hungry wolf is stronger than a satisfied dog. 

The status stories conflict on this Feodisia Port deal :

http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/05/31/chinese-company-halts-work-on-crimean-deepwater-port/

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/501167.html

word I get is that the Chinese investors got burned on this deal, some money was mis - allocated, displaced, lost in the shuffle somehow. ANd the Chinese never forget of they get burned in a deal .