mood shifts
yesterday, after a J-4 peek at the (my ) US Government's Disney style PR event in Kiev, and all other small things, thoughts noted, I had to reopen my blog and convey a less Diplomatic, San Francisco style post, I hope it's not too hard to follow. At least the Ukrainian youths appeared to be having fun )
******
the mood on the Kiev Metro appears to shift in subtle fashion, week by week, from cautious, guarded optimism one week, to pensive, inward focused retrospection the next week. It seems certain that the elites have largely left on summer vacations, business trips. Cafes sit mostly or entirely empty, few shops have customers who buy much of anything, it is simply now, a place as I see it, of the real people, those who have few options other to get to their work every day, take their days off in the park and not spend too much. The well off folks aren't entirely gone, you can still see plenty of nice late model Range Rovers, Mercedes, Lexus and other luxury brand cars rolling the streets. Who knows what they are doing to bolster their social and economic positions in these times of war.
And now, it is a looming war, threatening to either become further street protests, or go into some scary phase of massed assaults from both sides of the front lines in the Donbass. Ukraine can't defeat Russia Militarily, and they know it. Maybe they can make a show of trying to press a campaign against the now ever more organized opposition . http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/30/apparent-russian-base-found-in-ukraine.html
Everyone seems to worry can be the start of the third world war, and in my opinion the USA continues on with a sort of lame strategy overall. Maybe, maybe not in our/ cautious military posture, but the Public Relations war has, what I see as a terribly shallow rhetoric. We can't be up front about our crucial mistakes in fending this conflict off.
I can only imagine our US State department, if they were to post a Native American to some high/ mid level position, what an up the hill struggle it would be for that person to explain their own culture and heritage in a place like Ukraine. I hope there will be a Native American President in my lifetime, yet I don't see who she/ he will be. I have been reading S.C. Gwynne's
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/books/review/excerpt-empire-of-the-summer-moon.html?_r=0
how did the Comanche Nation totally control over 620,000 square Kilometers in the heart of America, and how did they ultimately lose ? to go from being unbeatable masters of the plains to a defeated remnant of greatness never to be seen again ? For sure, no one is perfect, there was a time they wanted to make deals near the height of their power, deals that could have had validity, but the treaties all were violated (by the US Indian Agency and to some extent the Indians tribal groups had no cohesive policy enforcement to what they'd agreed to, the terms, details, reality. But they kept up a 40 year battle and held up the expansion of America significantly. So the total geographic area of Ukraine ( is 603,550 square kilometers ) equals the total size of the then 1850 Comanche controlled territory.
Maybe people on the Metro are worried they will end up being moved onto "THe Rez " reservation system ? It is the one thing Ukraine people appear to learn in History lessons : Our Native people got pushed onto mostly empty tracks of sub prime lands.
Perhaps this is a subtle undercurrent here? this vague, apparent discontent and pensive feelings expressed , will this be a 40 year war, only to decay into some Dystopian sci-fi style guerilla warfare going far in the future (will they be able to secure their border ?? -as written in the Minsk accords )
Who will live on the reservations in this imaginary scenario ? who puts them there, ultimately, and why ? I don't properly hear or understand the issues of Ukraine's Right sector, as much as I am here, maybe I know a few guys that I think are reasonable : there is never a translatable opportunity for me to hear their full views (and the English print media avoids exploring that ) . Where is the voice of liberal Democrats in all this, and are there any Socialist Party types with much influence ? What is a Socialist party party politician here like versus say, Bernie Sanders in USA ? Will a middle way emerge that makes this all a "happy neighborhood " of Desperate Housewives ? WHO knows ? The media seems to be free here, and not to sugar coat the reality. Maybe nobody talks too much about those luxury powerboats motoring up and down the Dnieper burning Russian benzene, the idiosyncratic hypocrisy of the pleasant lives of the elites. Yet in my mind, the working people need the elites, they'd really be in trouble without them : this economy would totally fail. And the better part of the Ukraine elites really do seem to deeply care, mostly they aren't selfish, just protective of what they have, so they can invest in this future, or theirs < ? The Russian elites have been jumping ship, moving their Russian Imperial furniture to Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo, 5th Avenue...
there is of course a balance between making a National culture "accessible " and avoiding dark references to such gonzo style movies in popular culture such as Training Day ..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKTVQPOH8ZA
Yet the US State Department seems to be stoically trying to sugar coat all things and portray our Disneyland driven , positive, modern culture and foreign policy. Revolutions are messy, difficult and irregular. Ukraine is going through the first serious revolution of the digital era. There appear to be many contradictions in the process, and now it seems people do start to ask why they are in a war with Russia, how could it have been avoided. Would I admit it was simply all a matter of bad communication ? If there was a full blood American Indian running the State Department, be they a she or he, would the communication style be different ? Smoke signals ? A Lakota Peace pipe for Mister Putin ? He has a reputation as a Dark Shaman with powerful dreams and a nuclear arsenal to back up his idealistic bent. All the guys I talk to in Ukraine say they would probably rather just straight on deal with the Russian Army professional than some random adventurers, sadists, thugs mercenaries and punks. Russia may be using some of the same tactics in Ukraine that the US used against the Comanche Nation (Russia's right Wing is in a fight with Ukraine's Right wing in some ways like the US used one Indian tribe that hated another Indian tribe to track, fight and defeat their own neighboring people ) Like white hunters Killing the Buffalo herds for simply selling hides, leaving the meat to rot on the plains, Killing Ukraine's "food supply" would be the destruction of the Industrial base in the East, and building a railroad or Autobahn to Crimea through Mariupol really wouldn't be hard to do, but it would result in a stand off threatening a third world war. Or will China keep buying up long term leases on the land and make food just too expensive for the regular folks ?
Now I want to see the better part of Russia, learn the details of how they managed their Native People over such a vast land area, yes I know at least one in lady friend from Ukraine who looks straight on like an American Indian, maybe Athabascan, they are out there, there was a land bridge, people walked across it, maybe canoed, kayaked a couple places. We are all ultimately a common human heritage. If this war is just about money, can't we just pay some money to make it go away ?
Just who is the good cop and the bad cop ? What wisdom escapes or guides us through the smoke hole in the teepee ?
******
the mood on the Kiev Metro appears to shift in subtle fashion, week by week, from cautious, guarded optimism one week, to pensive, inward focused retrospection the next week. It seems certain that the elites have largely left on summer vacations, business trips. Cafes sit mostly or entirely empty, few shops have customers who buy much of anything, it is simply now, a place as I see it, of the real people, those who have few options other to get to their work every day, take their days off in the park and not spend too much. The well off folks aren't entirely gone, you can still see plenty of nice late model Range Rovers, Mercedes, Lexus and other luxury brand cars rolling the streets. Who knows what they are doing to bolster their social and economic positions in these times of war.
And now, it is a looming war, threatening to either become further street protests, or go into some scary phase of massed assaults from both sides of the front lines in the Donbass. Ukraine can't defeat Russia Militarily, and they know it. Maybe they can make a show of trying to press a campaign against the now ever more organized opposition . http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/30/apparent-russian-base-found-in-ukraine.html
Everyone seems to worry can be the start of the third world war, and in my opinion the USA continues on with a sort of lame strategy overall. Maybe, maybe not in our/ cautious military posture, but the Public Relations war has, what I see as a terribly shallow rhetoric. We can't be up front about our crucial mistakes in fending this conflict off.
I can only imagine our US State department, if they were to post a Native American to some high/ mid level position, what an up the hill struggle it would be for that person to explain their own culture and heritage in a place like Ukraine. I hope there will be a Native American President in my lifetime, yet I don't see who she/ he will be. I have been reading S.C. Gwynne's
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/books/review/excerpt-empire-of-the-summer-moon.html?_r=0
how did the Comanche Nation totally control over 620,000 square Kilometers in the heart of America, and how did they ultimately lose ? to go from being unbeatable masters of the plains to a defeated remnant of greatness never to be seen again ? For sure, no one is perfect, there was a time they wanted to make deals near the height of their power, deals that could have had validity, but the treaties all were violated (by the US Indian Agency and to some extent the Indians tribal groups had no cohesive policy enforcement to what they'd agreed to, the terms, details, reality. But they kept up a 40 year battle and held up the expansion of America significantly. So the total geographic area of Ukraine ( is 603,550 square kilometers ) equals the total size of the then 1850 Comanche controlled territory.
Perhaps this is a subtle undercurrent here? this vague, apparent discontent and pensive feelings expressed , will this be a 40 year war, only to decay into some Dystopian sci-fi style guerilla warfare going far in the future (will they be able to secure their border ?? -as written in the Minsk accords )
Who will live on the reservations in this imaginary scenario ? who puts them there, ultimately, and why ? I don't properly hear or understand the issues of Ukraine's Right sector, as much as I am here, maybe I know a few guys that I think are reasonable : there is never a translatable opportunity for me to hear their full views (and the English print media avoids exploring that ) . Where is the voice of liberal Democrats in all this, and are there any Socialist Party types with much influence ? What is a Socialist party party politician here like versus say, Bernie Sanders in USA ? Will a middle way emerge that makes this all a "happy neighborhood " of Desperate Housewives ? WHO knows ? The media seems to be free here, and not to sugar coat the reality. Maybe nobody talks too much about those luxury powerboats motoring up and down the Dnieper burning Russian benzene, the idiosyncratic hypocrisy of the pleasant lives of the elites. Yet in my mind, the working people need the elites, they'd really be in trouble without them : this economy would totally fail. And the better part of the Ukraine elites really do seem to deeply care, mostly they aren't selfish, just protective of what they have, so they can invest in this future, or theirs < ? The Russian elites have been jumping ship, moving their Russian Imperial furniture to Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo, 5th Avenue...
there is of course a balance between making a National culture "accessible " and avoiding dark references to such gonzo style movies in popular culture such as Training Day ..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKTVQPOH8ZA
Yet the US State Department seems to be stoically trying to sugar coat all things and portray our Disneyland driven , positive, modern culture and foreign policy. Revolutions are messy, difficult and irregular. Ukraine is going through the first serious revolution of the digital era. There appear to be many contradictions in the process, and now it seems people do start to ask why they are in a war with Russia, how could it have been avoided. Would I admit it was simply all a matter of bad communication ? If there was a full blood American Indian running the State Department, be they a she or he, would the communication style be different ? Smoke signals ? A Lakota Peace pipe for Mister Putin ? He has a reputation as a Dark Shaman with powerful dreams and a nuclear arsenal to back up his idealistic bent. All the guys I talk to in Ukraine say they would probably rather just straight on deal with the Russian Army professional than some random adventurers, sadists, thugs mercenaries and punks. Russia may be using some of the same tactics in Ukraine that the US used against the Comanche Nation (Russia's right Wing is in a fight with Ukraine's Right wing in some ways like the US used one Indian tribe that hated another Indian tribe to track, fight and defeat their own neighboring people ) Like white hunters Killing the Buffalo herds for simply selling hides, leaving the meat to rot on the plains, Killing Ukraine's "food supply" would be the destruction of the Industrial base in the East, and building a railroad or Autobahn to Crimea through Mariupol really wouldn't be hard to do, but it would result in a stand off threatening a third world war. Or will China keep buying up long term leases on the land and make food just too expensive for the regular folks ?
Now I want to see the better part of Russia, learn the details of how they managed their Native People over such a vast land area, yes I know at least one in lady friend from Ukraine who looks straight on like an American Indian, maybe Athabascan, they are out there, there was a land bridge, people walked across it, maybe canoed, kayaked a couple places. We are all ultimately a common human heritage. If this war is just about money, can't we just pay some money to make it go away ?
Just who is the good cop and the bad cop ? What wisdom escapes or guides us through the smoke hole in the teepee ?
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