The Wild, Wild East.

I noticed some changes in these couple of days; I took a breather and did a vague reality check. I guess it's all good, the Hurricane downgraded in the Carolinas, a lot of rain that we could use out West here, if it fell right.
 Harrison Ford did his fairly great cameo appearance/ speech at the Climate Change summit, traffic in Babylon By The Bay (San Francisco ) was super messed up, our Millennium tower sank and tilted just another slight half millimeter. Small problems for rich people:
Theater photo is from Crimean territory, maybe late 2012/13 in the town of Sudak.
And what will happen with Mister Kavanaugh's confirmation process today for the United States Supreme  Court  ? Anybody's guess.

A lot of news about the environmental catastrophe in Crimea, my guess is that they shifted the production at the factory to something else, possibly military armaments or something like that. Russia is not winning the battle of the hearts and minds in the occupied territory of Crimea, they have so much land, stretched across so many time zones. Sure, I have friends who did support the "annexation". The geopolitical facts do create constraints in our communication. At best, we can talk about dogs, cats and flat tires. Nothing more.

 Life goes on, I guess. But I am still thinking about the losses, casualties of war, missing people from the Euro Maidan of 2014. Officially it was 53 people went missing, but unofficially close to 300 were vanished, murdered in the forest, etc,  in that  disturbing ,  yet markedly revolutionary  and historical event (I could have been one of the vanished persons) . Yes of course, some parts of it were staged (I didn't stage my part in it ) , Western partners probably had paid some participants (Yet those fevent Nationalists of Ukraine, they wanted to be there and do that anyway ) . I went there on my own dime, spent my own dimes, dollars.

And who did kill my friend, Pavel Sheremet? All of this news about Mister Manafort accepting a plea bargain, would he know anything useful ? I have no wish to blame the man for such an atrocity against a good journalist with tremendous integrity, but this is the rabbit hole that US and Ukraine's investigators should try to explore. It is not to say that Pavel Sheremet was more nice and more decent and caring than the many others, it is simply to say that his was a more politically directed killing. He destroyed no property, harmed no persons, he only shed a light, lit a candle in the dark. Why he was intentionally car bombed during the week of the Republican National convention ? When I met him , 1 year or 9 months before, even then he was mentioning Trump and RUssia.

 Nobody back then, in the EUro_maidan period was talking about a possible re-nuclearization of Ukraine, but now they are quietly, unobtrusively. As I sense this 2 way East and West Game, North Korea is watching Ukraine, Ukraine is probably closely watching North Korean efforts to learn the Polka socio-economic quick step to  prosperity. There is a lot of money at stake, better to bet safe, than bet long economically. Ukraine can build Nuclear bombs quite cheaply, it is only the US, European aid packages that hold them back, for now. For the now, given the long history of adversity and repression, manipulations with Russia , it will be more easy for them to join up with NATO

The Saudi consortiums have an eye on Nuclear parity if Iran gets the Bomb going. If Georgia and Ukraine joins NATO, then Russia probably wants to strip away Turkey from the West. China probably hopes to use Trump'd effects to start shifting focus to the Silk Road Strategy.
Possibly pushing   Mexico into their political/ economic orbit. There are a great many oddly divergent streams of information at play. Do I really care,  if Mexico becomes CHina's NEXT FRONTIER ? Maybe I care, there's a lot of stuff going on, many moving parts on the board.

Ukraine, while it is a big territory, is not all that complicated. Despite the context of the War, it continues as a fairly easy going, mellow place, yes of course they keep many harmless secrets.


Russia's leadership essentially cannot do extreme things in Ukraine, they can only nibble away at Ukraine's Eastern edge, yet I have a pet theory that Russia as we know it today will implode, the collapse will happen all about it's edges: the middle will perhaps continue to live upon a steady diet of Fairy Tales.
Honestly, I hope that the next cycle of change in Russia happens in a  more easy way than it did in Ukraine. Those of us who love the place can still say "Our Crimea" despite the atrocious behavior of the Russian police state that holds it's territory  in Limbo.
About the East of Ukraine, I am sorry, those terrible events, all of them should not have occurred. Power, greed, politics inserted into the equation, shoved aside common sense. Guys I know,  that led platoons into the anti-terror operations in East Ukraine say that about 40% of their guys were from the region. Those platoons were often decimated by well trained, professionally equipped Russian special forces units, covertly inserted into Ukraine as the war intensified.

The wolf will pursue it's prey to the edge of survival. I hope that Russian and Ukraine people at the economic edge of survival can move up together as this winter approaches , it could be quite cold. The rivers will freeze over, or they will not, and that makes a big difference, as far as natural gas supply and different tactical, economic and strategic advantages within the conflict. Ukraine people do not hate Russian people, they want only their freedom, autonomy. They hate what the Russian government is doing to their world.
What is "unknown region" some freaky sites forward my analysis.

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