The Art of the Nuclear Deal ?

Well with POTUS meeting up with Mister Putin this week, who knows what will come of it. I can't imagine what it'd be like to be the fly on the wall, or will all forms of insect life be forbidden by the security managers ? At least Trump knows how to say Nuclear the proper way, as opposed to Former president Bush with his drawl down of the term to NUKULAR.
Stuff has come out this week that NATO can't even handle a Russian conventional warfare invasion of the Baltic states.  Yet the Russian Federation has many levers it can use to coerce policy. For sure, it's impolite to insinuate that Nuclear blackmail is part of the indirect dialog. Ukraine , to it's credit removed itself from that equation and that's why my country needs to continue promoting their sovereignty and territorial integrity: they made the world a safer place,  for vastly lower amounts of money than it'd take to buy Iran off the Nuclear stage, or Pakistan, or any other member of the Nuclear club, including now North Korea. Yet Russia's Rosatom seems to be blithely installing a potential second Chernobyl in Belarus that could totally contaminate Lithuania, a country that's stoically backed Ukraine's struggle to turn the tide of Russian aggression.  Could all of the potentially affected parties simply chip in and pay them not to start up the Nuclear power plant?  If , for instance an accident were to only have a cost 1/10th of FUKUSHIMA's melt down, that'd be 18-20 Billion dollars. It starts to sound like the power plant in Belarus is like a series of grotesque errors , and given the need for security and secrecy, what else isn't known about it. Certainly it's well known that Nuclear power plant construction in California was plagued with errors, including building parts of power plants from reversed blueprints (which cost a lot of money to un- reverse later on,  when the mistake was discovered) Ukraine has closed off all dialog with their Russian support teams who had been interfacing with them on the upkeep of the aging Zaprozhia Nuclear power plant . Concerns of safety and risk from terrorist threats are totally justified.  Would any country feel safe with an aging   Nuclear power plant operating  roughly 100/200 miles away from an active war zone supported by  a military super power? Like Chernobyl contaminating Ukraine and Belarus,  of course it would be an incredibly unfortunate situation to cause such extensive Nuclear contamination of the Neris river  flowing directly into  Lithuania from the power plant. Yet an accident at the Nuclear power plant is not an act of war, it's simply an unfortunate thing that every one will feel very bad about. Official figures indicate a shrinking economy in Belarus, and Poland, other neighboring countries don't want the excess power from the Rosatom plant . If it's been plagued with mistakes, including the collapse of the concrete roof due to improper bracing during the construction process, dropping of the main reactor vessel (which they'd agreed to switch out) Maybe the best way to fix all the mistakes is to simply cut a deal to shut it down before it even starts up, or pay them to delay  starting it up.

Who  Knows? As the recent hacking/ Ransomeware attacks revealed, it's all so much more easy to make a little bit of inconvenient war from your couch, watching football, eating chips " I'd miss that good beer they are making in Vilnius . We live in a world now,  where it seems a whole lot smarter to fix a catastrophe before it happens. I know that Rosatom, like Gazprom is an important part of Russian economy , and I don't want to hurt their vacation plans , block them from a Bohemian Rhapsody on the Bulgarian seashore. We are all just people, and we have a natural right to ask our government to do their jobs

One of the things that I learned in  life,  has been a sense of equilibrium , you walk onto a stage, a platform , an environment where you are, and something either slightly treacherous or unstable affects you, but the certainty of your self , propels you forward.  I rode the train down to Crimea , Simferopol that December,  maybe the 26th, 27th 2013 from Dnieper region, where I was hanging out with friends  , enjoying Christmas parties , start of winter : I was hoping to catch up with other friends in Crimea , which I did manage to do.
It all felt fairly normal, yet emptied somehow  many streets without lights on in the windows at night : I sensed at the edges,  a start of  the unravelling. All things relating then, to Crimea's future were being broken down into orchestrated procedures, schedules in furtive, clandestine meetings. People simply ate their meal quickly, and got up to leave the dining room of the Ukraine Hotel in Simferopol with few words to spare.....when an English speaking foreigner was sitting alone in plain sight. I felt like the odd man out, didn't have a GF there, a mate, a buddy, it was just me poking around, killing time in a sense : I'd brought a gift for friends , of a special nature, and was eager to pass it over as it was a heavy load of vintage 1950's ceramic pieces by a unique California pottery known as Brock . It was a good sized set of plates and bowls, or something I forget the tally of pieces.

  honestly, I've felt withdrawn and unhappy recently. I'd reflected on the loss of life and the suffering of my friends, their friends and close people in Ukraine over all this. And I miss the warmth and good feelings of the friends I knew from Crimea, some I have lost touch with, some new people I've connected to. They aren't kidding, when they refer to it as a Paradise, it can be a terrific place, if the Russian security services ease up on the repression and surveillance.  Ukraine and Russia have drawn their red   lines around Crimea's seizure "annexation" whatever you'd call it. For Ukraine to have gone "all in" and launched a counter-offensive at the time, it was too difficult. It's too easy to destroy the roadways and rail lines going across  the marshes and lowlands.

A key media element that annoys me quite a lot , is how Crimea is referred to, as "the Crimean Peninsula" it has to be one of the most lame uses of  uneducated terminology  to delineate a succinct part of global geography, perhaps such terms as " a tectonically upthrusted Continental fragment" are too technical. I think that the Portuguese language,  is perhaps the best one for geographical terminology, but I don't know what single word they'd have  for such a place. It's really a lot more like an Island than a peninsula. If you get there by train, fly there, look at it on Google Earth, there's hardly a part connecting it to Ukraine greater than 10 meters in elevation, just marshes.
however you call the Krim, it's like a cousin, an Uncle, an Aunt for all the people in Ukraine: it is a part of their National Identity that won't be washed away. Yet now it's their turn to try to be patient and tactful: they simply can't take it back by force.

A lot of women here in USA are righteously pissed off that their vote didn't count this time around, due to Russian meddling in our elections and the details of it, lie in the devil's lair. It's a rude way to awaken to a brand new day, on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. All in all, one could say that the election was lost due to the lack of support on a national level from women in families with incomes above 80'000$ per year . It was a lack of enthusiasm for either candidate that shaped the outcome in the electoral college, plus the election hacking...
 Did Trump's people cut a deal to protect Paul Manafort from extradition to Ukraine with President Poroshenko?  Exactly what type of case could they bring against him is hard to be certain of : they could certainly find something there. Certainly if that were to transpire, Manafort could be compelled to spill the beans on the colluding during the election. Probably better for the country not to go down that road , even if it can get it's potholes filled, it'll be a hell of a bumpy ride !

let's just hope that Trump doesn't make the worst of the Nuclear deals this Friday_ I hope it doesn't turn into a shoving match

some Green Day Lyrics come to Mind here :\

Last of the American Girls: "

She puts her makeup on
Like graffiti on the walls of the heartland
She's got her little book of conspiracies
Right in her hand
She is paranoid like
Endangered species headed into extinction
She is one of a kind
She's the last of the American girls

She wears her overcoat
For the coming of the nuclear winter
She is riding her bike
Like a fugitive of critical mass
She's on a hunger strike
For the ones who won't make it for dinner
She makes enough to survive
For a holiday of working class

She's a runaway of the establishment incorporated.
She won't cooperate
She's the last of the American girls

She plays her vinyl records
Singing songs on the eve of destruction
She's a sucker for
All the criminals breaking the laws
She will come in first

I am hopeful that the rule of law and practical economics will eventually triumph. Happy Fourth of July !!