A Dogfight Against Putin's Flying Monkeys

This will be a short post.  I am trying to get my weekly schedule under control.  However, there is continuing news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and there is therefore need to provide commentary to put it into context.

First, it appears that Vladimir Putin has begun to launch extra squadrons of flying monkeys in order to spread disinformation and to influence world opinion in his favor.  Several thousand such monkeys organized a protest in Germany to oppose the German government's decision to send more effective arms to Ukraine to help drive out the Russian invaders.  And the government of China's Xi Jinping has also tried to pressure the people of Ukraine into accepting a false "peace" which would do nothing to protect them from continued Russian aggression.  There are also the usual highly-placed mouthpieces in the West who are trying to cast doubt on the rightness of the West's continued support of Ukraine.  However, ordinary citizens in the West have begun to organize their own rallies to demonstrate their continued support of the people of Ukraine and their continued opposition to the thuggish Russian invasion.  And Poland has begun openly supplying Ukraine with military aid.  

The Russian government knows that if the West supplies Ukraine with adequate weaponry, the Russian invasion will be decisively defeated.  Therefore the voices of Putin's flying monkeys may well represent a cry of desperation.  For anyone who is genuinely confused about the character of Russia or of the thug named Vladimir Putin, please read the posts I have linked on the sidebar of this blog under the heading, "Russia."

P.S. I still need to do research before I write the next post in my series of posts on precarity and the precariat.  In future posts in this series, I hope to illustrate the connection between the oligarchs who rule Russia and China and some of the oligarchs who have taken root in the West.  Also, there is a bright bit of good news: the Russian invasion of Ukraine has motivated Europe to engage in a massive build-out of renewable electricity generation capacity.  This has resulted in a situation in which today Europe produces more of its electricity from renewables than from natural gas.  If Russia was hoping to use its oil and gas reserves as a tool to enslave the rest of the world, hopefully the Russians are now starting to realize that they have shot themselves in the foot.

The West Must Defeat Russia

Please note the title of this post.  Note that it is not in the passive voice, but the active voice.  Russia has launched repeated all-out assaults in an attempt to break Ukrainian defenses.  The latest assault is against the Ukrainian town of Soledar.  The Ukrainians have repeatedly proven time and time again that they are willing to fight with valor and determination against thuggish Russian aggression.  However, the West has repeatedly been somewhat timorous and restrained in supplying weapons to Ukraine in order that Ukraine might drive Russian thug invaders from its territory.  So the world has had to witness repeated cliffhangers in the story of Ukraine's fight to liberate itself.

This has got to stop.  I cannot believe that we in the West have allowed Russia's dangerous aggression to go on for so long!  The West must have the courage to do whatever it takes to swiftly destroy Russia's military power.  Those in the West who are afraid of what Russia might do if it is defied and confronted should rather consider what Russia will certainly do if it is allowed to win.  Narcissists, bullies and thugs always escalate when they are not soundly and effectively stopped at the first sign of aggression.  Appeasement never works.  We must ask ourselves whether the cowards among us are paving the way for a world in which we allow ourselves to be trashed by Russia.  Russia must be stopped dead in its tracks.  The West must at the very least send to Ukraine whaever weaponry it takes for Ukraine to drive Russian thugs out of its territory and keep them out.  Please write your Congressional representative or senator and write the President also to ask that the United States send whatever weaponry Ukraine needs - including both long-range missiles and heavy tanks - and that this military aid be sent swiftly.  

The Advance of Decompensation

A quick post tonight: there are two things worth mentioning.  First, Russian mercenaries claim to have captured the Ukrainian town of Soledar.  Yet these claims have turned out to be so far from reality that even the Kremlin has denied them.  Putin is perhaps discovering the weakness of relying on mercenaries to win an unrighteous war.  Russia is looking increasingly ill.

Second, the Republican members of the Missouri legislature have introduced legislation requiring women who attend legislative sessions to wear clothing that covers their arms.  These are the same Republicans who threw a wobbly when state health officials tried to impose mask mandates to prevent the spread of COVID-19.  These are the same stupid people who applauded the stupid white males armed with assault rifles who stormed state houses in Midwest states with Democratic governors when those governors issued public health decrees that sought to keep these doofuses from getting sick and dying.  Evidently COVID was not as much of an existential threat as women with bare arms.

Both Putin, Russia, and the U.S. Republican Party are examples of people who are at war with reality.  Unfortunately for them, it's a war they're losing.

A Mistake In The Making

Journalists from every nation are now unanimous in their assessment that Russia is losing the war in Ukraine.  There is overwhelming evidence that this fact is driving Vladimir Putin to severe narcissistic decompensation, with the result that Russia is turning into a bit of Hell on earth under his rule.  Thus Putin is driving an increasing number of Russians to try to flee the country, as he is trying to call up reservists to shore up his sagging invasion.  However, it seems that Russia's neighbors may be making a mistake in their response to the exodus of Russians fleeing the reservist call-up.

Here's my take on things.  First, I despise the Russian "hooray patriots" (ватники) who have supported Russia's desire to Make Itself Great Again by trying to trash the rest of the world.  That means that I despise Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Dugin, and the lying mouthpieces - both in the East and in the West - who have supported the project of Russian empire.  Moreover, I am not very fond of many Russians whom I have met over the last ten or so years right here in the U.S.A.  Their stuck-up cultural narcissism and monstrous sense of entitlement have been a real turn-off.  

However, not all Russians are like that.  Not all people of Russian descent are stuck-up narcissists.  (And not all non-Russians are saints!)  I am thinking particularly about a trip I took to Seattle in early 2020 (before the COVID-19 restrictions), and how once I arrived there I needed to take public transit to keep an important appointment.  On that morning I had stupidly forgotten to get change, so I got on a Seattle public transit bus with nothing other than a $20 bill.  The bus driver - a white man, a Russian - noticed my discomfiture at discovering that I did not have the appropriate change to pay the fare.  He smiled at me and gave me a bus pass anyway.  I should note that he gave me the pass without my asking, before I had a chance to say anything or make any appeal.  And since I was unfamiliar with Seattle public transit, he even helped me by giving me information about the correct connecting bus so that I could make my appointment. (Believe me, coming back from my appointment, I made sure that I had the right change!)

Sometimes we all need mercy.  Therefore although I am not a citizen of the nations I am about to name, I believe (if I may be so bold as to venture my opinion) that Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and other Eastern European nations should give asylum to those Russians who are fleeing from being drafted into Putin's evil little war.  Not only will such a move further weaken the Russian invasion effort, but it is the right thing to do.  As the Good Book says, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."  I think the present refusal of these nations to grant asylum is a mistake.

I would also say that the West must not allow itself to be bullied by Russian threats even if Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons.  Putin must be made to see that the choice he offers us is hell via nuclear weapons vs. hell via Putin's rule.  We should propose a third option: Putin either repents or he eliminates himself.  That way he'll be no trouble to anyone else.

Equity That Can't Be Rescued

It has been now over six and a half months since the start of Russia's attempted seizure of Ukraine, a seizure which Russian president Vladimir Putin schizophrenically described as "a special military operation to remove Nazis." During these past months it has been Russia which has been revealed to be the fascist thug and it has been Ukraine which has been revealed to be the nation of decency occupying the moral high ground.  It has also been revealed that the "mighty" Russian military can be and is in fact being torn to pieces by its intended victims.

It is now being revealed that the seemingly invincible machinery of political conquest which Putin's Russia has built up over the last two decades is unraveling like a badly knitted sweater attacked by a pack of kittens.  That machinery included the sort of dirty tricks which Russia used in 2016 to install Donald Chump in the White House.  (My, how high you all seemed to be riding back then!)  The machinery also included the use of the Russian military as a tool of terror to frighten nations into the Russian orbit.  The motivation for the building of that machinery was the Russian desire to re-establish Russia as the center of empire, an incarnation of the "Third Rome" which would have narcissistically lorded itself over all the other peoples of earth.  

The Russian empire-building exercise has come off the rails in Ukraine.  News reports over the last week have described how the Russian military has lost thousands of square miles of recently conquered Ukrainian territory, and how the Russian military is close to collapse under the weight of fierce Ukrainian counterattacks.  Yet Putin refuses to surrender to reality.  His experiment in empire-building is now a money pit - like a badly built car or termite-eaten house - yet he refuses to come to the point where he chooses to cut his losses and abandon his "investment".  If Putin persists in his war to the point where all his means of coercive force are destroyed, how will he manage to retain his grip on his own population?

The Boil That Must Be Lanced

The Russian invasion of Ukraine which began in late February is now in the midst of its fourth month.  This invasion is not some isolated sudden manifestation of evil, but rather merely the sharpest and most obvious sign of an ongoing, historical evil.  It is the manifestation of the deep-seated evil of Russian national narcissism.  The invasion has been accompanied by verbal threats made by Russia against others of its neighbors, including Poland, because these other nations are building up their defenses to prevent themselves from being invaded by Russia.  These threats, along with the invasion and all the Russian efforts before the invasion to subvert the governments of free and sovereign nations, are the manifestation of Russia's contempt for the entire non-Russian world, the manifestation of Russia's desire to be some sort of "Third Rome" that rules the entire earth and makes Russia great by trashing everyone else.

So we who are not Russian and who do not want to be turned into Russian subjects are once again confronted with the necessity of the task before us.  And we must not look at the world - or at Russia - through the rose-colored glasses of wish-fulfillment fantasy.  Rather, we must face our task with clear-eyed, hard-edged realism.  

We must not become enamored of the idea of "peace through negotiations."  Negotiations only work with people who have "better angels" that we can appeal to.  Putin's Russia has no "better angels."

We must face the fact that our task is to completely shatter present-day Russian power. 

We must create a situation in which Russia's ability to project either hard power or soft power (including cultural power) is annulled.  

Our efforts must continue without slacking until our goal is achieved.

And our goal must be pursued through the evolution of a strategy which combines a number of indirect approaches to cut off Russian power.  (Think of both Basil Liddell-Hart and Salvor Hardin.)  Here I want to re-emphasize the fact that a key component of our strategy must be to eliminate Western economic dependence on Russia as much as possible.  It is heartening to see that both Europe and the United States have begun to cut themselves off from dependence on Russian oil and gas.  This has brought a period of some pain and suffering in both Europe and the U.S.; however, it is opening up opportunities to create a sustainable global zero-carbon economy.  It is interesting that the emergence of such an economy will occur at the same time that Russia is demonstrating its own unwillingness to manage its own internal ecological affairs.  I fully expect that this year, while Putin continues to spend tens of millions of rubles on his futile war, he will fail to spend as much as a dime on preventing the sort of devastating Arctic wildfires that have burned in Russia over the last several years.  Putin's regime is a piece of garbage.

Lastly, our strategy must continue without wavering until the moment when the Russian people overthrow their megalomaniac, kleptocratic leaders and install a government that is willing to live in peace with the rest of humanity.

The Export of Misery

So...Russia has finally decided to go through with their invasion of Ukraine.  This is Russia's punishment of Ukraine for being Ukraine and not Russia - the revenge wrought by Russia for the intolerable narcissistic injury suffered by the Russians in their encounter with a people that has chosen its own separate identity.  Isn't that the way it always is with narcissists?  Their declaration is always, "You must die because you refuse to be an extension of me!"

God damn Putin's Russia.  And God damn Vladimir Putin, Alexandr Dugin, and the whole apparatus of which they are part.  God damn the Russian leadership's division of the world into zones of conquest arrogantly and presumptuously crisscrossed by Russian "red lines."

There is one silver lining in this present cloud - namely, that it has become blindingly obvious what sort of nation Russia has become and what sort of leadership it now has.  The advantage of stealth possessed by wolves successfully camouflaged in sheep's clothing disappears once the sheep costumes have been abandoned.  But there is also a danger - namely the danger that the depredation of the wolf will both continue and expand by means of a lack of moral courage of the sheep, particularly of the bellwethers, the rams of the flock.  This is what almost happened in the late 1930's when Adolf Hitler chose to play a game remarkably similar to the game now being played by Vladimir Putin.  In this re-run of that earlier game, Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson's voice becomes merely a more rabid repeat of the sympathies expressed by Charles Lindbergh toward the Nazi party.  And as for the bellwethers - will the hard necessity of resistance be obfuscated by them as it was by Neville Chamberlain?  That is, will the West lull itself back to sleep with half-measures rather than facing the hard necessities - both moral and intellectual - of successful resistance, of successful defense of a separate identity that one can call one's own, of successful removal of a tyrannical threat?  In the days to come, it won't be good enough merely to say, "I tried."

A further note: many, many ordinary rank-and-file Russians have now begun to make their voices heard by standing against Putin and his narcissistic little war.  They themselves have stated boldly that they want to craft a separate identity of decency and morality for themselves.  They are rejecting the identity of "Putin's Russia."  Pray for them - many of them are now being arrested by Putin's apparatus of goons.  Speaking as I have of wolves in an earlier paragraph, I say now that Putin is expertly acting the part of a son of a dog.

The Stories Prophets Tell

My apologies to anyone who may have been disappointed by the sparseness of my recent posting.  I have come into a season in which once again, to use a favorite expression of mine, I am working like a dog.  But I thought I'd take time tonight to write a few words about something that recently came to my attention.  And I have some upcoming posts in the oven - soon, hopefully, they'll be "ready to eat."

In a previous post I mentioned that I have recently been enjoying some of the fiction of David Cornwell, who became famous under the pseudonym of John le Carre.  (le Carre gave us a kind of spy fiction that is actually palatable.  For a long time I had regarded the genre as simply about a bunch of guys in business suits trash talking each other while brandishing semiautomatic pistols.  Boring after a while...)  The most famous of his stories involve a character named George Smiley, through whom le Carre portrays the psychic cost of trying to achieve good ends by bad means.  The same theme runs through many others of le Carre's stories, particularly A Small Town In Germany.  Naturally I grew curious to learn more about Mr. le Carre, as I listened to BBC audio dramatizations of these stories, and later, as I watched the BBC video dramatizations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People.  What I discovered about le Carre was both intriguing and deeply refreshing - especially his political perspective.

For in describing the outcome of the Cold War, le Carre has often said that "the right side lost, but the wrong side won."  By this he means that the totalitarianism and autocracy of the Soviet Empire had to fall apart.  But in the West, there was nothing to replace it - no grand humanitarian vision that could have elevated all the peoples of the earth.  The West certainly offered nothing that could fill the vacuum left in Russia by the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Thus what happened was a shift from hyper-socialist economic and political control into hyper-capitalism.  Russia became an illustration of the Scripture which says, "Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and does not find it.  Then it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came'; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order.  Then it goes, and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first..."  For the best-positioned members of the Russian ruling class became the oligarchs and kleptocrats of the new order, and Putin became the chief kleptocrat.

Thus the ruling elite of Russia became very much like the wealthiest and most powerful denizens of the West - especially the wealthiest and most powerful Americans.  For the United States had long been in the process of losing its soul.  And so we come to an interview of Mr. le Carre which was conducted for the Fresh Air show on NPR in 2017.  In that interview, John le Carre said the following:

"Let's look, first of all, at the operation influence, if you like, and how that's exerted, what we suspect the Russians are doing, not only in the United States, what they did in Britain for the referendum, maybe in Britain for the election. They certainly interfered in Macron's election in France. So who are these forces? And what is really spooky, I think, and profoundly disturbing is they come from the West as well as the East - that there are oligarchs in the West who are so far to the right that they make a kind of natural cause with those on the other side of the world. Both of them have in common a great contempt for the ordinary conduct of democracy.

"They want to diminish it. They see it as their enemy. They see - they've made a dirty word of liberalism - one of the most inviting words in politics. They've - and so they're closing in on the same target from different points of view..." [Emphasis added]

Note le Carre's assertion - that the oligarchs of both the East and the West have begun to come together in common cause to destroy freedom throughout the world.   This was blindingly obvious during the reign of Donald Trump.  It has become even more blindingly obvious within the last two months.  For Fox News attack dog/talking head Tucker Carlson has boldly spoken in support of Vladimir Putin and against the independent sovereignty of Ukraine.  And a number of Republican politicians - who were historically well-known for their anti-communist and anti-Soviet stands - have suddenly gone quite soft (if not actually silent) on the crisis of Russian aggression against Ukraine and against the West. 

This has some rather interesting implications.  I would suspect that pro-Putin sentiment is quite high just now among many members of far-Right or white supremacist groups in the United States, as pro-Putin spokespersons managed to make significant headway among many white American evangelicals before and during the reign of Donald Trump.  These people should perhaps learn a lesson from the experiences of the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine who got what they were asking for in 2015, and have had to live with the consequences ever since.  Their initial support for Putin has soured, as they have discovered that Putin has not led them to the Promised Land.  They have discovered instead that they have been enslaved by means of sophistry.  (Isn't that frequently how slavery begins?)  The supporters of Putin in the United States will find the same experience waiting for them in due time.  For "the wise woman builds her house, but the foolish tears it down with her own hands."

But a more interesting complication awaits those who support this unholy joining of oligarchs.  For China and Russia have published a joint statement of intent to remake the world according to an image of their liking.  And that will very soon pose problems for those rank-and-file working-class rubes in the United States who hitched their wagon to the the Republican Party, to Donald Trump, and to the Global Far Right.  Under Trump, they were taught to hate China.  But under the coalescing leadership of the emerging league of global oligarchs, they will be forced to love China - not the rank-and-file people of China, mind you, but the autocratic leadership of China.  That is bound to induce some serious whiplash in the souls of many white supremacists and racists in the United States.  Ambulances should be standing by.

Putin's Trojan Horses

I have been following Cosmic Connie's blog Whirled Musings for a while now.  I like her style and her clear-headedness regarding current events and the hucksters who drive many of these events.  She has done admirable work tracking the shenanigans of the right-wing/white supremacist doofuses who have infected not only the United States but the entire Global North as well.  Her latest post describes the increasingly violent threat posed by these idiots against decent people everywhere.  

I thought it good to add a reminder that the source, the main engine and the leadership of many far-Right/white supremacist organizations nowadays is Russia.  I suggest that the reason for the recent uptick in trouble from these groups is tied closely to the fact that Putin is no longer winning his geopolitical games, and wishes to expand his use of hybrid warfare in his assault against the West.  As I mentioned in my last post, Putin's Russia is now good for nothing.

What We All Are Getting From Your Tax Rubles

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis speaks of pride as the deadliest of the sins.  And he notes how proud, arrogant people tend to turn off everyone they encounter.  As he puts it, "I now come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals.  There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else' and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves...The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit..."  I must confess that I myself am guilty of pride, and so I must temper my tendency to condemn pride when I see it in others.  And yet when I encounter those people whose pride - whose narcissism (both personal and national) - moves them to try to turn the world into their own special possession, I do tend to regard as guilt-free pleasure the eventual humiliation of such people.  So we come once again to Russia.

At the time of this writing, Ukraine still exists as a sovereign non-Russian country.  And the events of the last several weeks have shown that Russian president Vladimir Putin is not quite the chessmaster he had made himself out to be.  In fact, he has stumbled rather badly.  Now in the West, many of us have been brought up to believe that the governments of nations exist for the purpose of providing for the common good of their citizens, and that this purpose is the reason why citizens pay taxes.  So I thought it good to enumerate for you who are of the Russian people the things you are getting for your tax rubles.

First, you all know - just from looking around yourselves in day-to-day life - how things are going for you.  I too have some idea, based on materials I have read from reliable sources.  What those sources tell me is that things are not going well for you who are citizens of Russia.  There is the botched response to COVID-19, there is the staggering wealth inequality, the surge in death rates across all regions in Russia, and the death of the Russian middle class.  There have also been awesome ecological disasters, such as the huge wildfires of 2019, 2020 and 2021.  I fully expect that this year, 2022, will see outbreaks of wildfires whose size and extent of damage will dwarf the damage done by the previous years' fires.  I also fully expect your government to do nothing to address these wildfires or any of the other crises I have mentioned.

So then, what exactly are your tax rubles buying?  Perhaps not for you, but for the rest of the world?  Here again I have a fairly strong idea, based on materials I have read from reliable sources.  I know that from at least 2010 until 2020, your tax rubles bought the destabilization of liberal democracies throughout the world.  I also know that your money bought the breaking of sovereign governments in many nations which had been part of the Soviet empire and had managed to break free and re-establish their own national identity after the Soviet collapse.  Such nations include Georgia, Belarus, and Montenegro, among others.  In each of these recaptured nations, the pro-Putin puppet governments have managed to reproduce the same little bits of Putinesque hell on earth that characterize daily life for most Russians.  Your government tried to do the same thing here in the United States, and so for four years we endured the piece-of-garbage presidency of Donald Trump.

Your government has been especially active in the wrongful spending of your money during the last twelve months.  During that time Putin has sent troops into the Czech Republic in order to destroy Czech defense plants.  He has sent troops into Kazakhstan in order to put down a civil resistance uprising against the pro-Putin government there.  Those troops have shot unarmed protesters.  Kazakhstan is interesting, because it is an oil-producing country whose mineral wealth is being stolen by Russia as the pro-Putin government rapes the country to enrich that thieving little man in his bunker.  (It is only natural that ordinary Kazakh citizens would object to this sort of thing.)  And he has sent troops to the Ukraine border in what he thought would be an easy bid to conquer Ukraine.  That bid has turned out to be not so easy.

For Putin has begun to buy a few unexpected things for himself along the way.  His soft power (as well as the soft power of Russia) has begun to erode.  Soft power is at its maximum when a people or nation genuinely demonstrates itself to be a model worthy of imitation because it brings genuinely good things to the world.  I think of Japan as a case in point.  I am a small business owner and recently I discovered some fascinating Japanese commercial cultural practices that make me think that Japan has some really cool people who are worth getting to know because they have something to offer.  I also think of Indonesia and the musical inventiveness which I have seen in some of the artists from that nation.  For instance, there is an Indonesian fingerstyle guitarist named Alip Ba Ta who in my opinion is the current reigning king of those who play an ax.  In short, there are nations which produce cultural or scientific or commercial artifacts which bring genuine pleasure or benefit to the world.  On the other hand, there is Russia as it now is under Putin.  Putin's Russia seems genuinely to be good for nothing.  Rather, to Putin, the rest of the world exists solely as a source of supply of living human victims to sacrifice on the altar of his narcissism.  We are not interested.

Navalny's Sentencing Speech

Those who have been following events in Russia know that Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny has been sentenced to a prison term in a Russian penal camp for his defiance of the regime of Vladimir Putin.  At his sentencing hearing, he gave a hard-hitting speech which summarized a great deal of the sad reality of life for ordinary Russians under the regime of Vladimir Putin.  (Hint: they're not living in Paradise.)  Business Insider has published a condensed translation of his speech, but there are also Russian media outlets which have published what appears to be a full transcript of the sentencing hearing, including Navalny's remarks.  I thought it good to reproduce the full Russian version of his speech here, in case anything happens to those other outlets.  Also, if you want to hear audio of the proceedings, please click here.

And now, Navalny's full remarks (taken from tjournal.ru):

Я хотел бы начать обсуждение с правового вопроса, который мне кажется главным и каким-то упущенным из этого обсуждения. Потому что выглядит все немножко странновато, знаете. Вот сидят двое. И один из них говорит: а давайте посадим Навального за то, что он являлся [в исполнительную инспекцию] не по понедельникам, а по четвергам. А второй говорит: а давайте посадим Навального за то, что он, выйдя из комы, немедленно не приехал к нам отмечаться.

Обсуждают понедельники и четверги, когда он должен был прислать какую-то бумажку. Но хочу сказать о небольшом слоне в этой комнате. Пусть все — и пресса, и люди, — обратят внимание на то, что суть дела в том, чтобы меня посадить по делу, по которому я был уже признан невиновным и оно уже признано сфабрикованным. Это не моё мнение.

Если мы откроем любой учебник уголовного права (надеюсь, ваша честь, вы это делали) мы увидим, что ЕСПЧ является частью судебной системы России. И эти решения обязательны, потому что ЕСПЧ является частью Совета Европы. Я прошел все необходимые стадии судебного процесса, и ЕСПЧ написал, что даже состава преступления в этом деле нет. Дело, по которому я почему-то нахожусь здесь, полностью сфабриковано. Мало того, Россия даже признала решение — половинчато, потому что мне даже выплатили компенсацию. Несмотря на это мой брат 3,5 года отсидел в тюрьме по этому делу, которое еще раз напоминаю, было призанно сфабрикованным. Я просидел год под домашним арестом. Когда мой испытательный срок заканчивался, меня за неделю арестовали, привезли в Симоновский суд, и без защиты продлили еще на год испытательный срок.

Немножко математики: в 2014-м году меня осудили, дали три с половиной года, дали испытательный срок, а сейчас 2021-й год. Но меня продолжают судить по этому делу. Меня уже и невиновным признали, и то что состава преступления там нет, но с упорством маньяков наше государство пытается посадить меня по этому делу. Почему же по этому делу? Уж чего-чего, а недостатка уголовных дел в отношении меня точно нет. Тем не менее, кому-то очень хочется, чтобы я ни одного шага не сделал на территории нашей страны, вернусь, как свободный человек. И чтобы с момента пересечения границы оказался арестантом. Мы знаем кому. Почему это случилось. Причина — ненависть и страх одного человека живущего в бункере. Я нанес ему смертельную обиду тем, что я просто выжил.

Я нанёс смертельную обиду тем, что я выжил. Благодаря хорошим людям — пилотам и врачам. Потом я еще сильнее его обидел — тем, что, выжив, я не спрятался, живя где-то под охраной в каком-то бункере поменьше, который я мог бы себе позволить. А потом случилось вообще страшное. Мало того что я выжил, мало того что я не испугался и не спрятался, я участвовал ещё и в расследовании своего собственного отравления.

И мы доказали, что именно Путин совершил это покушение на убийство. И вот это сводит с ума этого маленького вороватого человека в его бункере. Нет рейтингов — нет поддержки. Этого ничего нет. Выяснилось, что чтобы совладать с оппонентом, нужно просто пытаться убить его химоружием. Все убедились, что он просто чиновничек, которого случайным образом поставили на этот пост, который не участвовал ни в дебатах, ни в выборах. И это его единственный метод борьбы — убить людей. Сколько бы он ни изображал великого геополитика, мирового лидера, его обида главная заключается в том, что в историю он войдет как отравитель. Был Александр Освободитель, Ярослав Мудрый, и будет Владимир Отравитель трусов.

Я здесь стою на этом месте и меня охраняет полиция, Росгвардия, а половина Москвы оцеплена, потому что маленький человечек в бункере сходит с ума. Потому что мы показали, что он не геополитикой занимается, а проводит совещания, как бы намазать трусы химоружием. Главное в этом процессе даже не то, чем он закончится для меня — посадят или нет. Это не сложно. Главное, для чего это происходит — чтобы запугать огромное количество людей. Одного сажаем, чтобы испугать миллионы. У нас 20 миллионов человек за чертой бедности, у нас десятки миллионов людей относятся к тем, о ком говорим — «в Москве еще более-менее, а выйдете за сто километров — там полный швах». Вот у нас вся страна живет в этом полном швахе, не имея ни малейших перспектив. Получая 20 тысяч рублей. И они все молчат, и их пытаются заткнуть вот ровно такими показательными процессами. Посадить вот этого, чтобы запугать миллионы. Кто-то вышел на улицу — посадить еще пять человек, чтобы запугать 15 миллионов.

И главное, что я хочу сказать. Этот процесс, я очень надеюсь, не будет воспринят людьми как сигнал того, что они должны больше бояться. Это же не демонстрация силы — Росгвардия и вот это всё. Это же демонстрация слабости. Просто слабости. Миллионы и сотни тысяч посадить нельзя. И я очень надеюсь, что люди будут все больше и больше осознавать это. И когда они осознают — а такой момент придет, — все это рассыпется. Потому что вы не посадите всю страну. Потому что всех этих людей, которых лишили перспектив, лишили будущего, которые живут в богатейшей стране и получают ноль от национальных богатств… Ноль получают все остальные. Мы только по количеству миллиардеров в мире растем, все остальное падает, понимаете? Я сижу в своей камере и слышу репортажи о том, как подорожало масло, подорожали макароны, подорожали яйца. 2021 год! Страна — экспортер нефти и газа. У нас вся страна говорит о том, что макароны подорожали, мы жить больше не можем. И вот вы этих людей лишили перспектив и вы этих людей пытаетесь запугать. Я призываю всех не бояться.

Судья: вы ничего не сказали по поводу представления.

Ваша честь, вы говорите, что я ничего не сказал по поводу представления. Вот это все представление и есть. И все, что я говорю, — это моё отношение к представлению, которое вы устроили. Бывает такое, когда беззаконие и произвол являются сутью политической системы. И это ужасно. Но бывает еще хуже — когда беззаконие и произвол наряжают на себя мундир прокурора или судейскую мантию. И в этом случае долг каждого человека — не подчиняться тем законам, которые обряжены вот в эти мантии. За вами там, внутри вас — это и есть произвол и беззаконие. Долг каждого человека — не подчиняться вам, не подчиняться таким законам.

Судья: У нас не митинг.

У вас не митинг, у вас моё выступление. Ваша честь, вы не беспокойтесь. Все будет очень хорошо. Вы не перебивайте, пожалуйста, давайте по очереди, пожалуйста. Я высказываю свое мнение. У меня сложилось мнение относительно этого представления, я вам его высказываю. Другого мнения у меня нет, и будьте добры, меня выслушайте.

Ещё раз хочу сказать, что когда произвол и беззаконие оделись в ваши мундиры и изображают из себя закон, долг каждого честного человека — не подчиняться вам и бороться с вами всеми силами. И я, как могу, борюсь. И буду продолжать это делать, несмотря на то, что сейчас, с учетом того, что я оказался полностью под контролем людей, которые обожают все намазывать химическим оружием, наверное, за мою жизнь никто не даст и три копейки. Но тем не менее даже сейчас, даже со своего места, я говорю, что буду с вами бороться, и призываю всех остальных не бояться вас и делать все, чтобы закон, а не ряженые в мундирах и мантиях восторжествовали. Я приветствую всех тех, кто борется и кто не боится. Всех честных людей.

Я приветствую и благодарю сотрудников ФБК, которые сейчас сидят под арестом. Всех остальных по всей стране, кто не боится и выходит на улицы, потому что у них есть такие права, как у нас. Потому что наша страна принадлежит им в той же самой степени, как и вам, как и всем остальным. Мы такие же граждане. И мы требуем нормального правосудия, нормального отношения к нам, участия в выборах, участия в распределении национальных богатств. Да, мы всего этого требуем.

Я хочу сказать, что в России сейчас много хороших вещей, а самая хорошая вещь — это вот те самые люди, которые не боятся, которые не опускают глаза, которые не смотрят в стол и которые никогда не отдадут нашу страну кучке продажных чиновников, которые решили обменять нашу родину на свои дворцы, виноградники и аквадискотеки…

Моё мнение заключается в том, что я требую немедленной свободы для себя, для других арестованных. Я не признаю ваше представление, оно полностью лживо, оно не соответствует закону, и я требую своего немедленного освобождения.

The Shaking of Vladimir Putin?

I've been loosely following the events in Russia over the past week.  For those who don't know, Russia has been rocked by anti-Putin protests sparked by the arrest of Alexei Navalny upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he had received treatment for a poisoning attempt undertaken by Russian agents.  The resulting protests have been so widespread that Russian jails are now running short of space to contain newly arrested protestors.  

Navalny has turned out to be an interesting character.  He and others like him are the inevitable grassroots response to a regime dominated and ruled by parasites.  As scholar Shaazka Beyerle has documented in her book Curtailing Corruption, it is the corruption practiced by the rulers of a crooked regime which frequently opens the door for the kind of effective nonviolent civil resistance that brings in much larger democratic social change.  Navalny has exploited that open door.  But it is important to note that Navalny does not represent a merely reactive response to social injustice.  Rather, he has been proactive - patiently building up organizational capacity over a period of many years in order to wield the organizational power that is now on display in Russia.  Remember that there are only two kinds of nonviolent resistance struggles: the spontaneous, and the successful.  Or, to quote an ancient Internet proverb, "The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.  The second best time is today."  Waging a successful liberation struggle requires a willingness to play a long game.

So what shall we make of Navalny's struggle?  There are some encouraging signs.  A movement that can continue even when its leaders have been jailed is a movement that has built strategic depth.  That depth is on display now in Russia.  It should also be noted that the protest movement has achieved one of the hallmarks of backfire - namely, that increased repression by Putin's agents has led, not to a decrease, but to an increase of public expressions of outrage against the Putin regime.  There are, however, some areas for concern.  Navalny's movement will do well to emphasize the need to maintain nonviolent discipline in its protests.  Otherwise, Putin can use protest violence to bolster his claim to be the bulwark of law and order in the same way that Trump tried to make a similar claim during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.  Second, Navalny's movement will need to guard against infiltration by agents provocateurs.  The BLM protest organizers failed to adequately guard against such agents in 2020.  Third, Navalny's movement must stand for something more than just Navalny himself.  Rather, his movement must articulate a clear vision of the future that can survive and inspire even if Navalny himself does not survive.  Lastly, Navalny's movement can greatly amplify its power if it strategically adds methods of economic and political noncooperation to its primary methods of protest.  For those methods of noncooperation (especially economic noncooperation) are far more powerful than mere mass protest, even though mass protest is a flashy, attention-getting tactic.  My advice to movement participants would be to not rely on the West to apply this sort of economic pressure.  As Gene Sharp says in From Dictatorship to Democracy, "Usually no foreign saviors are coming."  A liberation struggle is a time for self-reliance.

This week, I have also done some further reading on Putin, especially as a rather large bit of his dirty laundry is being hung out on the washing line.  For instance, I learned that he (paragon of moral virtue!) has been divorced since 2013, and has had a few mistresses since then.  Makes the stories of Putin's palace more plausible...  (How's that for alliteration?)

The Gross Polluter of the North

Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Park

Image by Jarek Tuszynski

Posted to Wikimedia Commons on 28 December 2008 under a 

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

"Jalopy": an old car in a dilapidated condition.  Definition by Oxford Languages.  Synonyms: "rust bucket", carcancha.  Rust buckets are often "gross polluters" - that is, cars that can't pass smog or DEQ tests no matter how much money you throw at them.  I know this, because many years ago, when I was still living in Southern California and I was a dirt-poor undergraduate college student, I drove one.

As we look at what are hopefully the last gasps of the Trump presidency, I think it is helpful to explore the role that the Russian government played in Trump's initial rise to power, as well as the motivations which the Russians had for playing that role.  Trump showed himself to be every bit a "blast-from-the-past" racist, bigot, big-shot Republican, friend of the rich, and anti-environmentalist.  In this, he was a mirror of the regime and mindset of Vladimir Putin.  I have previously traced on this blog the motivations for the racism and revanchism ("Let's Make Ourselves Great Again!") of both these men.  (See this, this, and this, for instance.  Also see this by Olga Doroshenko.)  Trump's friendliness toward the rich has obvious motives.  But why did the Russians see fit to help the rise of such a rabid anti-environmentalist?

As I have considered this question over the last few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that the anti-environmental motives of Trump and Putin have less to do with deep psychological causes than with a certain perverted pragmatism.  Let's look at that pragmatism from a Russian perspective, and we'll start with the current state of the Russian economy.  According to Investopedia, Russia's economy in March 2020 was smaller than any of the top ten national economies in the world.  (It is interesting to note that each of the economies of India and Brazil is larger than that of Russia.)  And according to a 2018 Forbes article, Russia's economy is smaller than that of the U.S. state of Texas.  However, the Russian economy is still very heavily dependent on the export of minerals, whereas the economy of Texas is more diversified.  (Don't let that make you complacent if you live in Texas - the U.S. economy also has certain weaknesses, which I will continue to explore in future posts.)  The Russian economy has not been able to transition to reliance on export of high-value manufactured goods, despite recent dubious Russian claims of having invented a coronavirus vaccine.  

To see how dependent Russia is on exports of raw materials, consider the top ten Russian exports according to this source:

1. Mineral fuels including oil (52.2 percent of total exports)
2. Iron, steel (4.3 percent)
3. Gems, precious metals (3.6 percent)
4. Machinery including computers (2.1 percent)
5. Wood (2 percent)
6. Fertilizers (2 percent)
7. Cereals (1.9 percent)
8. Aluminum (1.4 percent)
9. Electrical machinery & equipment (1.3 percent)
10. Copper (1.2 percent)

As can be seen, the export of finished high-value manufactured goods comprises only 3.4 percent of the total value of Russian exports.  The bulk of the export revenue earned by Russia consists of sales of mineral fuels including oil.

But there's a problem.  While it is certainly true that the global peak of production of conventional oil has certainly passed, it is also true that advances in renewable energy technology have made this peak far less relevant and far less disruptive to industrial societies overall than many of the "peakists" were predicting from 2007 onward.  In fact, the German Energy Watch Group, which correctly tracked the peaking of global conventional oil production, also correctly tracked the rise in use of renewables, particularly solar photovoltaic power production.  This rise in use is being driven by continued advances in solar PV cell manufacturing and battery storage which are driving down the cost of solar PV systems and making them affordable to ever-wider markets.

This presents a big problem for countries whose wealth is predicated so heavily on a foundation of exporting mineral fuels.  I would like to suggest the possibility that the power base of Russian elites relies heavily on the foundation of the extraction and sale of raw materials including oil, gas, and other mineral fuels, and that developments which threaten global markets for these resources or which drive down the price of these resources are a serious threat to the survival of the members of these Russian elites.  It is therefore interesting to note the connection between climate science denialism and the positions of many (but certainly not all) of the most prominent members of the Global Far Right.

Thus it is that in Russia, according to a June 2020 Moscow Times article, renewables (excluding hydropower) account for only 0.16 percent of electric energy production.  Investment in renewable energy installation is almost completely nonexistent.  On the other hand, China is one of the world's leading investors in wind and solar energy, and is a major manufacturer of solar and wind energy conversion equipment.  China is also poised to take the lead in innovative renewable energy technologies.  Thus, the future looks bright for Chinese plans to transition to a non-polluting future, according to this August 2020 Forbes article.  And China is by no means the only nation investing in renewable energy technology.  

Therefore technological advances, serious investments, and the emergence of global climate preservation movements have threatened a key source of Russian export revenue.  Let's consider one potential implication of a successful "Green New Deal": a reversal of Arctic sea ice loss that is potentially great enough to deny Russian access to hypothetical mineral deposits as far north as the North Pole.  Putin showed his own belief in climate change by laying claim to these mineral deposits as far back as 2001 - a claim which the Russian government renewed in 2015.  If the Arctic sea ice returns to anything like its normal non-climate-altered extent, that spells the end for cheap and easy Russian access to additional mineral resources.

Let's close with a snapshot of pollution in Russia, which has recently been "enjoying" record high levels of air pollution (including a city which routinely has the dirtiest air on the planet) and coastal waters that are sickening surfers and killing thousands of animals.  A small price to pay in order to keep certain elites in power, eh?  And now you can understand the helpfulness of the Trump administration toward those Russian elites in the rolling back U.S. vehicle fuel economy standards this year.

Maintenance Day November 2020

I have a ton of things I need to do away from a computer today.  So I won't have time to write another research-heavy post.  But I will provide readers with a plan of what I intend to cover in future posts.

First, it appears increasingly undeniable that Joe Biden will become the President of the United States on January 20 of next year.  Trump's courtroom challenges to the legal election results continue to be stricken down.  Yet Trump continues with his courtroom challenges, even though these challenges have no merit.  It can be clearly seen that Trump is trying to invalidate votes cast by people of color.  It can also be seen that there are yet many Americans who continue to align themselves with White supremacy and with Trump as their leader.  Therefore, I will continue my series of posts on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  Those of us who have been historical targets of oppression will need to continue to study the ways in which we can use strategic nonviolent resistance to neutralize the power of our oppressors.

Second, I want to continue to discuss the ways in which the outworkings of damnation move through an evil society.  I have focused almost exclusively on the United States in my previous posts, but I want to shift the focus to include Russia, which is another evil society that is now reaping what it has sown.

Lastly, I want to write posts which explore how decent people can navigate these difficult days.  Meanwhile, please read what the Reverend William Barber has to say about the United States of America.  I like this man's perspective!  "Well, I was trained in theology that whatever you call your spiritual experience, if it does not produce a quarrel with the world, then the claim to be spiritual is suspect..."  Maybe this lack of genuine spiritual experience of conversion explains why so many American evangelicals who claim nowadays that they have been "saved" and "born again" look more like Freddy Krueger than the Lord Jesus Christ.

Repost - The Sunk Costs of Stinkin' Thinkin'

A blog is a voracious beast, and feeding it with high quality material can seem at times like hoisting 50 pound sacks of elephant feed at a zoo.  While I enjoy the workout, there are things I need to fix and clean at my house this weekend, along with two fruit trees that I need to finish harvesting ASAP before the fruit spoils.

Therefore, I'd like to present you with a post I wrote back in 2015.  This post highlights some of the dysfunctional societal results of what had been until recently a highly effective long-term campaign of lobbying and propaganda by the National Rifle Association and the American Right.  (Note also how these two entities were helped along in their efforts by a certain foreign government.)  Enjoy.

Climbing Out Onto The Skinny Branches

Those who have read my blog over the years know that at present I "own" two cats, and that the reason why these cats live with me is that a neighbor foisted them off on me.  (However, I now wouldn't trade them for the world.)  When they were kittens, they frequently got themselves stuck in some of the trees in my backyard as they indulged their impulse to climb things without having learned how to get themselves back down to the ground.  Therefore, from time to time, I had to get a ladder and fetch my cats out of some of the sticky situations they got themselves into.  Eventually they figured out that what goes up must also learn to get down, and they learned to get down out of and off of various high things.  So an evening came in which, as I was leaving my house to go to the store, I looked behind me and saw two cat heads on the roof staring down on me in the moonlight.  Rather spooky it was, but by then I was confident that they'd find their way safely back to earth.

Now a competent cat weighing a handful of kilograms can climb trees and traverse branches that a human weighing several dozen kilos would (or at least should) fear to tread.  And there's a reason why the phrase "going out on a limb" has metaphorical punch even after decades of use.  So it surprised me (and the world) to hear that Vladimir Putin had gone out on a rather skinny limb a few weeks ago with the announcement that Russia had developed the first coronavirus vaccine approved for widespread use.  In response, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up around 2,000 points, and other stock exchanges rose significantly.

An effective vaccine would be welcomed in many corners, and if Russia were the nation to discover such a vaccine, it would certainly boost Russian prospects of being regarded as the most awesomely cool nation on earth.  It would also help Putin's image not only as a physically robust national leader who goes hunting bare-chested in Siberia in the winter, but as a chess master, judoka, expert strategist, and totally awesome dude without equal in the world.  ("Who is like the beast?  Who is able to make war with him?")  But almost immediately, the branch onto which Putin had climbed (bringing his nation with him) began to show some signs of cracking.  For starters,

• The development of this vaccine has been horribly (and irresponsibly) rushed.  
• A number of sources state that the vaccine developers would only have been able to complete Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials within their stated timeframe of development.
• Some sources (such as this and this) state that the reality is that the Russian vaccine has not even yet passed Phase 1 trials.

Add to this the lack of transparency to date in Russian data on the trials of their vaccine, combined with the unfortunate tendency for bad things (falls from windows, poisonings by tea, etc.) to happen to Russians who provide information or criticism damaging to their country's prestige, and one can see why prudent people don't want to climb out onto the branch Putin is occupying.  And even Putin's government has slightly, ever so slightly, walked back some of its rhetoric lately, saying now that the Russian vaccine is now "ready for mass trials."  Some of those trials will take place on people who are not Russian and who don't want to climb onto any skinny branches, but who may find that they have no choice.  For instance, autocrat Philippine president (and Putin groupie) Rodrigo Duterte has stated that large-scale inoculations of his nation's people will begin in October, although Duterte himself won't volunteer for a shot until he sees how well his countrymen respond.  My, what courage!

From these events, we can see the following things:

• First, we see what world leaders and economic ecosystems Putin now has in his pocket.  With a net worth of $200 billion, Putin might have a surprising number of people in that pocket.  Some of those people might be behind the most recent stock market rallies - rallies which are by now completely divorced from the actual on-the-ground economies of the nations these markets are supposed to represent.  Watch also for national leaders who rush to volunteer their populations as guinea pigs for the Russian vaccine.
• Second, we see the harm that the damaging and toxic mix of malignant narcissism and unethical competition can produce.  I am reminded of YouTube videos of Margaret Heffernan discussing the damaging effects of competition on the creation of things of genuine economic value.  One of the reasons for the damage is the intense pressure felt by people in highly competitive environments to overstate their accomplishments, to plagiarize the work of others, and to outright fake results.

As you can tell, I am skeptical about Russian claims of awesomeness in any domain just about now.  But I am going to provide a caveat and thus position myself on the lowest possible skinny branch in case I am proven wrong.  So here it is: I am not a doctor or biologist.  But I can be persuaded by verifiable results.  Let's see how the Russian vaccine developers do when they are judged by a jury of their peers.  As for now, I am still wearing a mask.

A Clarifying of Stance

As regular readers of this blog know well, from October 2017 until a few weeks ago, I took a break from writing posts in order to focus on things that very much need to be done in realspace with real people and not disembodied clouds of electrons.  Many of those things require ongoing work, so my posting will continue to be spotty for the next several months.

However, I do check my stats from time to time, and I noticed that this blog got several hundred hits during the last few days.  I also noticed that visitors to this blog have been reading the extensive back catalog of posts I have written.  There come times in the history of anyone who uses words when they have to eat a few of their own words, and I have lately realized that I need to eat some of mine.  So here goes...

I started blogging back in 2006-2007, when I was just beginning to awaken to the real nature of white American power.  I had been (and still am) a Christian, and a big part of the teaching I received from mainstream American evangelicalism was the notion that I should support American supremacy wherever and whenever possible because America was God's nation, and that the Republican Party was the party of true Godliness and Christian virtue.  My process of detoxing from that Kool-Aid began with my leaving an abusive church run by a family of petty criminals.  From that point I began to notice the patterns of abuse which not only appear in abusive churches whose leaders are not held accountable, but also extend to corporations, political parties, and nations whose leaders put themselves above accountability.

I had voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and in 2004 while still under the influence of mainstream American evangelical Kool-Aid, but in 2006, the contradictions and injustices of the Bush administration proved to be too much for me to swallow.  As a person of color, what especially triggered my gag reflex was the appearance of overt anti-Latino racist campaign ads sponsored by the Republicans.

From 2007 onward, therefore, I began to search for and be drawn to writers whose perspective was not jingoist American patriotism.  That unfortunately was the time during which writers such as Dmitry Orlov were becoming popular.  He was a smooth talker, and his writing accurately captured many of the criticisms I had of America and of the historical and ongoing use of American power to oppress the vulnerable.

Over time (and especially as the police murders of unarmed African-Americans became much more obvious), the criticisms voiced by Orlov were joined by criticisms voiced by other Russian writers and media outlets like Russia Today.  What I did not know was that these voices were not being raised in order to call America to repentance or to provide a viable alternative to the things they were criticizing, but to divide America in order that Russia might take the place of global hegemon.  I also did not fully understand the extent to which national narcissism, exceptionalism, racism, white supremacy, and intolerance of other cultures had become part of the bedrock of Russian culture and society.

Thus it was that if you were reading my posts from 2007 up to 2016, you would have detected a strong pro-Russian bias.  But those days are over.  What ended them was the election of Donald Trump and the revelation of the part played by the Russian government in installing neo-fascist leaders and governments in many nations of the Global North.  What ended my pro-Russian bias was also the revelation of the role played by people like Aleksandr Dugin in the formulation of Putin's geopolitical strategy.  The words I must eat are the words I spoke in praise of Russia (and Putin) as some sort of viable alternative to the oppression which characterizes American power.  Russia is no alternative.  To steal a bit from Tolkien, Russia is to the United States what Boromir and Gollum were to the One Ring.

So...if you want to read my back catalog, please also read a few of these posts:

• The Black Hole At The Imperial Center
• No Strangers to Самовлюбленность
• The Resistance Heats Up In Russia
• Or, any of the posts that fall under the heading of "The Revanchism of the Third Rome."

You can also read blogger Olga Doroshenko's three-part series titled, "Russia as a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Ukraine as a Narcissistic Injury."

Fall-Winter 2019-2020: Please Drive Less

Why, you may ask.  Well, you may have noticed that gas prices have been on the rise here in the U.S.  However, my reasons for asking you to drive less extend a bit beyond trying to save you some change.  My reasons actually extend into the realm of geopolitics, as you might have guessed.  Here are some geopolitical reasons for you to chew on:

First, Russia is largely a petro-state whose economy depends to an excessive degree on exports of raw materials.  This means that the stability of the Putin regime depends on a high price of oil and other exported extractive resources.  The high price of oil between 2007 and 2012 allowed Putin to make a sort of bargain with the Russian people: allow Putin to be an autocrat in exchange for "stability", "order", and "prosperity."  Low oil prices and sanctions have undermined this bargain - hence Putin's attempt to deflect attention from Russian domestic woes by his invasion of the Ukraine and his military operations in Syria.  (Indeed, his intervention in Syria was meant to distract Russians from the failures of his operations in the Ukraine.)

Second, the unraveling of the Russian economy has provided the Russian opposition to Putin with a huge window of opportunity.  The economic stagnation (nay, even contraction!) which Russian society has experienced from 2014 onward has exposed the hollowness of the bargain which Russian citizens were enticed to make with Mr. Putin.  As a result, resistance against Putin has spread like wildfire - especially from 2017 until now.  Russians are increasingly experiencing "cognitive liberation", with the result that the attempts by the Russian government to use harsh punishment to quell public protests have instead made an increasing number of Russians even more determined to protest.  This is a prime example of the dynamic of "backfire" at work in a civil resistance struggle.  Once backfire starts to happen in a sustained way in an oppressed population, the oppressor or autocrat is in dire straits!

Third, it is quite possible that recent events related to the rise in oil prices may be an attempt by Putin to scrape together enough cash to re-instate his "bargain" with his own people.  Consider the drone attack against Saudi oil production facilities a few weeks ago.  Some blamed "Houthi rebels" while Trump blamed Iran.  I certainly do not claim to have the proof needed to tell you exactly who did it.  But I do know that Saudi oil production facilities experienced a cyberattack in 2018, and that that cyberattack originated from the Russian "Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics".  It is also known that Russia has initiated cyberattacks against Ukrainian power distribution infrastructure and other Western targets.  And it is known that Russia and Saudi Arabia are oil production rivals.  The 2018 cyberattack was not the first against Saudi oil facilities.  It seems that whoever wants to knock Saudi Arabia out of the oil exporting game has gone from throwing electronic signals at them to throwing bombs and bullets.  And this past week an Iranian oil tanker was attacked off the Saudi coast.  These are the reasons why oil and gasoline prices have been climbing lately.  High oil prices might prop up Putin's regime a little longer.

Fourth, whatever we on the outside can do to deny Putin what he wants helps to remove from the earth a threatening regime that wants to take over the world.  This reason should actually have been first on the list.  Don't like Putin (or his familiar spirit, Aleksandr Dugin)?  Then walk, bike or take public transit to the places you need to go.  Save a few bucks (and the world) in the process.  By the way, for every finger I point at you, there are three pointing back at me! If I get up early tomorrow (contingent on getting to bed early tonight), I can bike to work...

The On-Line Airing of National Dirty Laundry

To those who may have missed blog posts from me over the last several months, I offer my apologies.  There are things in realspace which have demanded my attention, and there are only 168 hours in any given week...

But I thought I'd post a few links to information that reveals the extent to which mainstream American culture has become blatantly evil.  First, the Fullerton Observer has kindly rendered a good public service in posting summaries of the key findings of the Mueller Report On the Investigation Into Russian Interference In the 2016 Presidential Election.  At the end of their final summary, they have also kindly provided a link to audio recordings of a reading of the entire report.  This means that anyone who wants to know what the report says can get it all straight from the horse's mouth - even if they don't have time to read it all.

Secondly, there are a number of new reports exposing the hypocrisy of the white American evangelical/Protestant Church, which continues to staunchly support the presidency of Donald Trump.  Here's a small sample:

• New Study Exposes Hypocrisy of the Religious Right
• "Someone's Gotta Tell the Freakin' Truth": Jerry Falwell's Aides Break Their Silence
• Her Evangelical Megachurch Was Her World.  Then Her Daughter Said She Was Molested by a Minister.
• Haggard's Law  (Note: in posting this link, let me emphasize that I am a Bible-believing Christian.  However, I object to using "God-talk" to try to gain political leverage to elect candidates to office who use the power of the State to murder dark-skinned people - or to rip the children of these dark-skinned people out of the arms of their parents in order to throw the children into cages - er, I mean, "detention centers.") (A second note: Vladimir Putin may himself be a case of Haggard's Law in action.  Several years ago, during a photo op with Russian citizens, he lifted the t-shirt of a pre-adolescent boy and kissed the boy on his stomach.  You can watch it here.  Recently that boy, who is now a man, stated that he liked the kiss, but if you look at the linked photo, the boy seems to be surprised and slightly revolted.  Maybe he decided that he liked saying he liked it more than he liked the possibility that he would be forced to drink a polonium cocktail!  Putin as Катехон?  Ha, ha!)

Revelations such as these should arouse the kind of moral outrage that should sweep evildoers from power - except that the supporters of these evildoers no longer care about truth or justice or anything else except the naked exercise of power over their fellow human beings.  They have always been like this, but for a few decades between the 1960's and now, they were wolves in badly-done sheep disguise.  At least now they're being straight-up about being wolves.  And no, I don't expect them to listen to the Mueller Report.

One side note: remember all the supposed "terrorist" incidents involving so-called "Arab extremists" in Europe and the United States during the last decade?  These incidents had the convenient effect of turning public sentiment in Europe and the United States against immigrants - especially dark-skinned or non-Christian immigrants.  Many of us wondered at the time who could be behind these attacks, because we considered them to be false flags.  Having examined Russian propaganda over the last few years, I've come to a certain conclusion - a conclusion informed by the fact that Russia actively sought to build a network of regimes in the world's richest countries that worked to exclude the world's dark-skinned and/or non-Christian peoples from the wealth of these nations.  Russia has also become well-known for "hybrid warfare."  You draw your own conclusions...

The Revanchism of the Third Rome: Symphony's Chords

(Some readers may be wondering why my last two posts (as well as the next two or three) are taking a trip down the path of Russian and Byzantine history, especially the history of the Byzantine (Orthodox) church.  You may be asking, "What does that have to do with things happening in the world today?"  Hang in there; I'll try to have a satisfying answer for you at the end.)

Last week's post sketched out the role of the Russian Orthodox church in promoting the myth of Russia as the "Third Rome," the heir to the spiritual and political mantle of the Byzantine Empire.  To see the deeper significance of the "Rome" in the Byzantine empire, it is helpful to see how Church and State were related to each other in Byzantium, and how State and Church rang some changes in that relationship in Russia after the fall of Byzantium.  Let's begin by defining the word "symphony."  And here I will rely not only on Wikipedia definitions, but I will be drawing extensively on Russia and the Nordic Countries: State, Religion, and Society, published by Fondet for Dansk-Norsk Samarbeid in 2016.

In the Byzantine empire, symphony referred to the formal arrangement between Church and State, which was explicitly stated by the emperor Justinian in 535 A.D.  In this symphony, both Church and State were to be collaborators in the project of the "protection and spread of the Christian Church..."  This concept was refined by patriarch (supreme bishop) Photius in the ninth century A.D.  He explicitly stated that emperor and Church patriarch were not merely collaborators, but equal partners in a project which was fundamentally religious in nature.  Therefore, the State was not supposed to dominate the Church, nor vice versa - in other words, the patriarch was not to be head of state, nor the emperor head of the Church.  There is a further significance to the concept of symphony, namely, that under this arrangement, it was not possible "...that the emperor might profess any other religion than Orthodox Christianity...The idea expressed already by Christ Himself that there should be a distinction between what belongs to the emperor and what  belongs to God...seems quite difficult to realize in a construction like the Byzantine theocracy."  In other words, secularization was utterly incompatible with Byzantine symphony.  (Quotes taken from "The History and Theology of Russian Orthodoxy," Gottlieb, Russia and the Nordic Countries: State, Religion, and Society, 2016.)

It is important to note that the establishment of a State church in the original Roman empire did not follow the principle of symphony. According to some sources, when the first State church emerged under the emperor Constantine, he established himself as "Head of the Church," thus establishing himself as a caesaropapist. (Now there's a new word for ya!) It is also important to note that not all Byzantine emperors submitted to the doctrine of symphony; therefore, there were not a few caesaropapists in their number as well. The practice of caesaropapism was a convenient way for a Roman or Byzantine emperor to consolidate and amplify his power, especially when seeking to expand his territory through imperial conquest or to eliminate internal threats to his power.

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Russia (especially Muscovy Russia) sought to lay claim on the title of "Third Rome" in two ways.  First, the Russian clergy established the Russian Orthodox church as autocephalous.  In other words, a Russian cleric became the head (the patriarch) of the Russian Church, independent from Orthodox patriarchs in Constantinople or Greece. This project began in 1448 according to Gottlieb, took over a century to complete, and wasn't formally fulfilled until 1589, according to Laats. (Laats, "The Concept of the Third Rome and Its Political Implications," retrieved on 30 July 2017.) And the Russian rulers first adopted the title of "Tsar" (Царь, literally, "Caesar,") in 1547 with the coronation of Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), thus establishing a Russian head of state as a continuation of the line of the Caesars of the first and second Rome.

How did symphony play out in Russia after 1453?  Well, first of all, we must note that it didn't always play out.  According to Laats, Tsar Ivan IV used the concept of theocracy to promote himself as defender of the Orthodox faith.  "His wars were against 'Muslim unbelievers' and 'the Catholic enemy of Christianity'.  The mission of the Russian church was directly grounded in [Ivan's] military victories...The state or the monarch was the real head of the church.  Ivan the Terrible 'sees the tsardom as a divine commission and himself as head of the church and representative of God on earth...'"

To be sure, the Russian Orthodox Church pushed back against the power of the tsars, with the Patriarch Nikon seeking in 1652 to establish the "preeminence of the patriarch over the tsar..." (Gottlieb).  However, Nikon lost that particular battle, and the attempts by the Russian Orthodox Church to continue the fight resulted in the breaking of Church power by Tsar Peter the Great in the 18th century.  Peter made the Church definitely subservient to the State and made it the "official state church of the Russian Empire."  This arrangement continued under Catherine the Great, and lasted, with some variations to this form, until the revolutions of 1917.

And as for the role of the concept of the Third Rome in Russian internal and foreign policy, Laats says that "The universality of Rome was connected to pax romana.  The goal of Rome was to establish a universal empire, which would supersede the disorderly competition between nations and establish world peace.  The monk Filofei, one of the masterminds of the doctrine of the Third Rome wrote that 'all Christian realms will comne to an end and will unite into the one single realm of our sovereign.'"  Moscow came also to possess an eschatological cultural dimension - not only as special and closer to God than any other city, but as the center of the last Rome, the fulfillment of all history.  The tsar therefore becomes an eschatological ruler, head of both Church and State.  And Russia itself became "holy", "elected by God and having a special task in the divine story within the world."  This is why the ability of the Russian tsardom to use Russian Orthodoxy as a tool for expansion of secular power is so significant.

According to Laats, this concept of Russia as the Third Rome was officially renounced by the Russian Church in 1667, and has not been explicitly stated by Church or State since then.  Yet it has remained the undercurrent and foundation of Russian state policy and identity from that time onward, under Tsar Nicholas I and Tsar Alexander III (and, as some would argue, under Russian communism).

How have Russian Orthodoxy and the concept of  the Third Rome influenced Russian leadership and policy since the fall of Soviet communism?  What bearing do these have on the regime of Vladimir Putin?  I hope to start answering those questions in my next post.  Stay tuned...