Sanctions Sanctum or the Great Escape ?

     Renew Sanctions or allow The Great Escape ?

Yesterday on the Metro, I caught a glimpse of a Steve McQueen (70's movie actor) look alike, him getting off the car  as I was getting on, it felt weird. We looked each other in the eyes..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQGAaCSFlJI
The movie Bullit, about the cop who just doesn't fit into the department,  maybe it's close to the feeling of today's Ukraine,  in their struggle to battle corruption and regain a handle on their refreshed engagement with autonomy, or that's how I feel it. Those scenes of 70's San Francisco, what a postcard from the past !
( a backyard Ukraine Oil/gas  operation)

Sanctions, it is such a clinical word,, a subset of light technical Visa and banking restrictions imposed due to egregious behaviors and actions. Many sanctioned individuals have laughed them off as nothing, sanctions on people doesn't affect their ability to delegate business through their family and close associates as is well known, there are many work arounds, and the FSU Nations are experts at that, it is a cultural sport, getting around rules and restrictions .
As sanctions continue to drag down the Russian economy and affect working people, boost up the cost of bread and a jar of pickles, increase the cost of goods, and force them into a lower standard of living, they don't affect the Russian elites all that much, maybe they lost 30 million , they will soon get it back.
     Sanctions probably won't  help the families of the 8000 + victims of the conflict in Ukraine to recover from the loss of their loved ones. Ukraine lost 8 million people in the Second World War, young girls were sent to work as slaves in Germany : it was an ordeal beyond imagination for the average American living in those times. So it came to be that America emerged relatively unscathed from a horrendously destructive war that left Russia and Ukraine, large parts of Europe with a massively degraded industrial base. it's history 101.
     Ukraine chose a path to Peace after gaining their independence. Giving up their Nuclear Arsenal, something that if fully deployed in war , could have easily left large parts of the Earth heavily radiated , certainly half of what they had, could have been more than enough to cause a complete global reset, certainly much worse than the aftermath of WWII .
Disregarding the assurances they gave Ukraine at the time of dismantling their nuclear arsenal (the third largest in the Nuclear inventory in the world,  at that time ) , Russia seems to have rather enjoyed the relative impunity of taking Crimea the way they did. I have turned it over and over in my head, could it have been prevented ?
Having been in Crimea at the start of 2014, just before the armed takeover began , one thing I can say is that the mood and sentiments had more hues and overtones than the media generally conveys. It has a multicultural, multi ethnic composition, essentially viewpoints derive from personal history, and Crimea is and was a place of diverse personal histories. The process of a hurried, heavily controlled, one sided media juggernaut, and a zero option ballot (it did not include the choice of staying part of Ukraine) that provided the semblance of a fig leaf to the armed occupation, it wasn't pretty.

this photo from the Madagascar themed African Restaurant in Simferopol at New Years,  I wonder who's side he is on ? It's  impolite to hazard a guess, while it is all a matter of course, of different conclusions.... Each side (Ukraine and Russia ) appears to have the same predominant subsets of moderate and fairly Right wing,  Orthodox Christian viewpoints, offset by some sort of buffer of a social segment with generally progressive ,  perhaps even some with a  fairly liberal world view.

I have a strong hunch that those green uniforms without insignia were already being delivered and made ready before or during the Holiday season of 2013/2014, maybe they had been made ready years before ? I got a feeling they were delivered  freshly laundered.  It's quite a feat to grab an entire chunk of the planet without firing a shot, but then California joined the USA without a lot of fuss , if one takes Interstate 5 from LA to San Francisco, at Fort Tejon,  they have a memorial site for a battle between Mexican and US "defenders" something like 17 guys got killed. Though there were other situations, that's about it for the war history I know of in California, on our territory.

About Crimea, a  good article here that I find concise and coherent : other than leaving out the fact Crimea was a black hole of corruption in and of itself.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/anton-shekhovtsov/crimean-blockade-how-ukraine-is-losing-crimea-for-third-time

  But asking some friends and folks in Ukraine about stuff here and now, I think they are at least ready to concede it will be a long march in the economic mud for Russia, if they want to maintain their hold Crimea, deal with the inability to do much serious business on illegally seized territory. Despite a power bridge, water will also be a problem, that may be next.  They (Ukraine)  doesn't  want the ordinary people in Crimea, Russia to suffer economically (they are after all brothers, sisters cousins separated by political changes ), yet they will  not  relinquish their Sovereign, claim on their own legal territory. They see the seizure of Crimea, the subsequent war in Donbas  as a continuum, of  unfortunate situation, that  they have to deal with collectively. As much as in the past,  people were often self centered and materialistic ,  they continue, now perhaps in a form of regional and collective chauvinism, they favor the interests of their political party, their region, their own set of friends that they hang out with, that's what's important, they have limited faith in their government as most people do, the world over. The youth I know, here in Kyiv, 18-30+ age group not a lot vote if they aren't from Kyiv region, there are too many obstacles to voter registration, and it's not worth it to them to go home to vote (especially when it's a contested territory)

Certainly it's true, that an economic recovery in Russia can have a sizable spill over effect for Ukraine, if trade and economic ties can be restored.
Turkey had largely replaced Crimea as a vacation destination for people in Ukraine due to the better service and value, the better conditions of the hotels and amenities, yet it was quite central to their National culture and identity .
  I was an informal guest at a birthday party in Kyiv a few days ago with a good number of people, speaking with me about what this group had in common, besides friends of the birthday girl, was that they had all gone every year, to a certain town in Crimea for a lovely party: They can't go back, that memory is now frozen in time, it may be years, or never possible to return to that place.

But, returning to Sanctions... which continue as the elephant in the room, as much symbolically as compared to any fact of impact : what are they seriously doing ?  Doesn't look like they will get more stronger unless something really unexpectedly bad happens.

The reports are still pending about MH17, a unique scenario, tragic, some parts still hard to grasp mentally, will there ever be answers, or just more smoke and mirrors ? Are all the  investigative tools and techniques being employed ? It's a tough nut to crack,  for Ukraine's  security services to investigate a crime that took place on their territory that they don't actually control ... informant networks are as questionable as any other component in evidence gathering : the neighbor of my neighbor says that:

   A great skepticism still  lingers amongst the people of Poland about the 2010  Tupolev -154 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and his entire government delegation. Are there any possible connections with the MH17 tragedy? The Russians kept the plane wreckage, the bodies, the president's satellite phone and the black boxes ? Could a targeted EMF burst have warped the plane's perception of ground based radar, or the planes radar systems ? Any chance of a "Black Ops" team operating in Russia that does stuff without Putin's direct knowledge and involvement ?
A presidential grade  Satellite phone could hold an imprint of something like an EMF burst. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/23/2010-plane-crash-remains-exhumed_n_1376184.html
'
After the crash, did the Russians scour the land within the plane's approach vector with their famous Sulimov dogs ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulimov_dog
I mean if there's a National President and half of his Government killed , it's suspicious circumstances. Regardless of the appearance of an accident,  don't you treat it as a full on crime scene, unleash the bloodhounds ?

One can spend a life time drawing lines on the white board contemplating conspiracy,  while much of the time, pure human ineptitude can account for most aspects of a situation. I don't endorse this guy's account relating to MH17 ( Yoichi Shimatsu ), nor have I fact checked it, but it's cogent in certain ways,
the basic variants for explaining of MH17 ,  are still essentially that it was a blundering Russian separatist crew that did not realize MH17 was a civilian airliner, as they are said to have been without the secondary component of the BUK missile system, basically that they just eyeballed the plane in the sky, thought it was a military transport and flipped the activation toggles and pushed the button.

http://www.rense.com/general96/MH17.html
or perhaps there is some variant diagrammatically opposite / alternate to the suggestions by Yoichi Shimatsu ?

there is always an alternate scenario from the conspiracy theory,  they often tend to hold up better to scrutiny: Yet we  avoid debates in these matters, Yale Debate team versus Dartmouth....
http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm

As to MH17, was this hypothetical missile launch crew ? Are they alive or dead ? Were they Russian Military on "vacation" , or perhaps some foreign volunteers who said "Hey, we know how to operate that thing, just let us borrow it for a few days and we'll bring down some more of those Ukraine Air Force jobs, you guys can catch a weekend of rest and relaxation in Rostov- On-Don ! " Could a self directed Black ops crew have inserted themselves into the conflict zone ? It's not impossible.  Was, is there a mastermind behind it ? If so, Why that plane ? Speculation about some kind of AIDS cure/ Biotech stuff, or other things ? It may well be Someone from the same set of separatist leaders that are so well known in the media....
Each of the 2 mentioned  Polish and Malaysian planes planes downing  occurred associated with exigent meteorological conditions affecting landing/ transit. Certainly, a heavy ground fog, as in the case of the Polish planes allows for a covert ground based crew to set up undetected, and get away.

For sure, It's certainly dangerous for anyone to suggest that spooky stuff is being done within the territory/ under the  aegis of the Russian flag without Putin's knowledge or control, but it's a huge land mass, with many porous borders. Such scenarios  also creates another mask of plausible deniability for their government.
   Of course,  it's well documented, the variants of unauthorized actions by former (ostensibly retired ) elements of the US government apparatus, such as the covert 1980 deal set up by (Former CIA chief)  Bill Casey and most likely George Bush (meeting Iranian clerics in Madrid ) to work behind President Carter's back and delay the release of the 52 American Hostages in Tehran, thus guaranteeing Ronald Reagan's election victory with George Bush as his VP.
    Though it was  going to be a close election, probably favoring Reagan, not getting the hostages freed was the nail in the tire for President Jimmy Carter's 2nd term. Carter was/ is  a decent man,  but it's well known he was unpopular within the CIA,  I'd love to meet him sometime.
Negotiating an arms for hostages swap, to delay exchanging US State department people behind the back of the  President of the United States? Really ? Pretty much yes, I'd say.
I had met Gary Sick who Wrote October Surprise book (got the autograph in the jacket) he worked both for Carter and  President Reagan as National Security advisor, he didn't believe it until he started digging into it. This particular article seems a succinct summation:
https://consortiumnews.com/2013/06/08/second-thoughts-on-october-surprise/

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as to how the big picture of the New World disorder affects the line up for breakfast at the popular breakfast diners in San Francisco Bay Area.....
https://rusi.org/publication/newsbrief/reinventing-european-deterrence
Moscow has shown it has both the political will to annex part of a neighbour’s territory – on the fictitious pretext of ‘protecting the Russian-speaking population’ – and the military capability to do it. At the same time, it has stationed powerful new S-400 air-defence systems in Kaliningrad and Crimea, allowing it to close the skies to NATO aircraft across a wide swathe of the Baltic and Black Sea regions.With a maximum range of up to 400 km, S-400 units in Kaliningrad could reach across the Baltic Sea to the islands of Bornholm and Gotland, and cover the western half of Latvia, the northern half of Poland and all of Lithuania. 
This is more than an unpleasant change: it signals a major shift in Europe’s political and military environment. Russia has shown that it has both the will and the ways to impose border changes on its neighbours through violence. While Russian officials and their supporters deny that theyhave any such intention towards other states, this claim was also made towards Ukraine. Moscow’s word is clearly not an iron-clad security guarantee.
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while the jokes and absurdity of Nuclear deterrence veer into the outlandish... such as the bicycle locks on British Nuclear weapons.... It's quite believable, but sort of Monty Python.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7097101.stm

I certainly get apprehensive when I see a weapon blueprint unveiled that seems custom built to cruise into San Francisco bay, detonate in the mud bottom, and basically make the heart of the Tech industry and perhaps one of America's most favorite cities, distinctly uninhabitable for 50-100 years or more... it's really scary stuff.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-reveals-secret-nuclear-armed-drone-sub/

So does a covert meeting in Madrid lead to the seizure and annexation of Crimea 25 years later ? All things ultimately tend to connect. Somehow, people maybe hope that some hard evidence or disclosures about MH17 will bring down the Putin regime or something. That seems unlikely , is it possible that the Kremlin military leadership guiding the "Nova Rossiya" battles had a complete brain fart, sort of like "what the Hell just happened ?" or do they know every tiny detail of the whole situation ? As it's said, "the Devil, or Heaven is in the details " did they dismantle the missile launcher, erase the serial number, bury it ? A lot of grey evidence points to the Kremlin, but nothing black and white so far, unless one goes back to using some sort of  Feudalistic, Pre- Napoleanic  legal Code  .  Somewhere , there should be a digital file of the actual MH17 missile launch event, those machines record that stuff. But the chances of it being either produced or being believable seem lower than zero. The launch file may have been actually transmitted electronically at the time of the event

well, life goes one, people here in Ukraine seem pretty motivated towards finding Peace and moving on....Russians can ponder what they want to do with Crimea, if it's worth keeping.

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