Tag: violence

Some thoughts on Russia and Ukraine (i.e. How We Got Here)

Although in college I majored in history, with a focus on 19th century American history, my minor was political science with a focus on the Soviet Union and Russia. So I studied Russian history and culture, took three semesters of Russian language and one of Russian literature, and a variety of courses about the collapse of the Soviet Union, the political reshaping of Eastern Europe (including the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia), and post-Communism Russia. It’s a fascinating country, and has loomed large in the history of Europe, particularly its neighbors in Eastern Europe, like Ukraine. I have admired Russian writers, adored Russian composers, and occasionally tried some Russian food, although frankly I liked the food much less than other aspects of Russian culture. Making Russian friends also gave me the chance to practice my Russian language skills, and my mastery of Russian profanity and idioms made some of my Russian friends laugh and at least one stop in her tracks and say “Where did you learn THAT?” My background in Russian also came in handy a bit when I worked in the defense industry. But after I left the industry in 2009, I just didn’t really get the chance to do much with all that knowledge anymore.

Then in 2013, something happened in Ukraine. The Ukrainian parliament had voted overwhelmingly in favor of an agreement with the European Union that the President of Ukraine (Viktor Yanukovych) then refused to sign, apparently due to influence from Russia. Protests began in Independence Square in Kyiv that quickly grew massive as Ukrainians wanting closer relations with Europe began demanding the resignation of not only President Yanukovych but the entire Azarov government as well. The protests which began in November 2013 became known as Yevromaidan (or more commonly in English, Euromaidan) after a Twitter account appeared with that name and quickly gained popularity. Euromaidan soon became the largest pro-democracy movement in Europe since 1989. Protestors were particularly angry with Yanukovych’s blatant corruption, official malfeasance, and especially human rights violations, which was further emphasized by his crackdown on protesters beginning on November 30th, resulting in dozens of people injured (including several journalists) after numerous excessive force incidents by the Berkut riot police. The response by the public was overwhelmingly in support of the protesters, and more than 500,000 Kyivans (some estimates went as high as 800,000) joined them in the streets. Violence continued to escalate the following day and then on December 11 a government force of about 4,000 Berkut, VV internal troops, and government-paid street thugs (known as Titushky) attacked the protester camp just after 1 AM with the intent to clear it out. People were summoned to the square by the ringing of the bells of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery continuously for four hours. Ultimately the protesters prevailed and pushed the government forces completely out of the square.

The government responded by passing severe laws against public protests. This precipitated violent clashes between protesters and police on Hrushevsky Street not far from Independence Square between January 19 and January 22nd, 2014. This led to the occupation of government buildings by protesters all over Ukraine. The anti-protest laws were repealed (mostly) and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov resigned on January 28th. This, plus an amnesty issued to protesters on February 16th, calmed tensions down briefly before violence again broke out on February 18th. The worst violence was on February 20th, when the outbreak of protests that became known as the Revolution of Dignity led to the deaths of nearly 100 protesters and 13 police officers. Most of the protester deaths were from rooftop police snipers, who began firing on the protesters as they advanced. The following day an agreement was signed between Yanukovych and his political opposition that organized an interim government and created reforms such as changes in the constitution and new elections. Despite signing the agreement, and despite the fact that he would have remained president (with some of his powers limited), Yanukovych fled Kyiv in secret that evening. The next day the Ukrainian parliament voted unanimously to remove Yanukovych since he had abandoned his official duties and also voted to reinstate the 2004 constitution.

Yanukovych had fled to Russia, where he had a press conference on February 28th. He declared the planned elections in Ukraine “illegal.” In turn, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared what happened in Ukraine a “coup” while at the same time ordering the Russian military to make plans to seize Crimea. Beginning on February 27, 2014 Russian spetznaz (they had removed all Russian insignia but weren’t fooling anyone) seized control of most of the Ukrainian military bases in Crimea, the Simferopol Airport, and government buildings in Crimea. Putin and Russian media pretended that these “mysterious” troops were locals who had “spontaneously” risen up and uniformed and equipped themselves from military surplus stores and the Ukrainian military. But of course, it was utter bullshit – they were Russian troops seizing Ukrainian territory. Russia’s bald-faced seizure of Crimea was followed by a “referendum” on March 16, 2014 in which local voters were given two choices, neither of which was to remain Ukrainian. The campaign before the election was in essence pro-Russian, with posters accusing the new Ukrainian government of being fascists and Neo-Nazis and featuring crossed-out swastikas. Ironically, the Russians invited election observers from Europe who were entirely from European far-right political parties and groups, some of which were almost certainly actual neo-Nazis. Unsurprisingly, the observers said everything was fine with the referendum, with between 95 and 98% of votes cast in favor of becoming part of Russia. This was the first time a European country had annexed another European country’s territory since World War Two. At the same time that Russia took Crimea, protests that were pro-Russian and anti-Maidan began in parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, the parts of Ukraine where ethnic Russians were concentrated and Russian was more commonly spoken. In the eastern Donbas, this became an active conflict between pro-Russian separatists and the new Ukrainian government. Again, the Russians secretly fed the conflict with men and materiel. By August, 2014 Ukraine had regained much of its territory, which in turn led the Russians to step up their military intervention and help the pro-Russian forces take back most of the lost territory.

An agreement was signed in Minsk in September 2014 that implemented a cease-fire and was supposed to lead to elections in December. But the separatists preempted this with their own elections in November, which of course the Russians embraced, in defiance of the Minsk agreement they had signed. In January 2015 the Russians sent another sizable military force into the war to help the separatists and Ukraine lost control of Donetsk and Debaltseve by the end of the month. So in February a second attempt at peace was made in Minsk with the participation of Belarus, Russia, Germany, France, and Ukraine. Ukraine was struggling. Russia was pouring weapons and soldiers into the area while still pretending that they weren’t, even arguing that they couldn’t help with the implementation of the new Minsk agreement because they weren’t really involved in the war. This absurdity was further complicated by repeated violations of the ceasefire and also by the arguments between the combatants over local elections in the two Ukrainian Oblasts where the separatists were concentrated: Donetsk and Luhansk. After being postponed from the fall of 2015 to the spring of 2016, the elections were postponed to July and then postponed again to November 2016.

This mess continued, more or less, until 2019 when a new agreement was signed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Ukraine, Russia, and the Russian-controlled oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk with their weird Russian-controlled-but-pretending-not-to-be governments. I am not going to try to coherently explain that whole period because frankly, it’s a huge mess. I don’t understand everything, and I have studied it closely. By this time Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been elected President of Ukraine, and his whole story (though fascinating) is beyond the scope of this post. But just know that Zelenskyy tried in good faith (I believe) to end the war in Donbas through the Minsk agreements and probably still thought he could have talks with Putin and achieve peace as late as 2021 or possibly early 2022. But Putin has never, ever, ever, in my opinion, negotiated in good faith. Even after massive troops buildups near the Ukrainian border, Russian officials kept insisting that Russia did not have plans to invade Ukraine as late as February 23, 2022. And so naturally they invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

That brings us up to the war as it currently taking place. It is the largest and bloodiest (by far) war in Europe since World War Two. And the reason it is happening at all is entirely due to Vladimir Putin and Russia. Russia seems to have thought it would be able to capture Kyiv within a few days, and basically control the country within less than two weeks. Putin’s speech he gave on Russian media at the start of the invasion was full of all sorts of ridiculous and totally baseless claims: Russian troops were “peacekeepers” coming in to save the people of Donetsk and Luhansk from Ukrainian “neo-Nazis” that were controlled by the West. He also claimed that Ukraine was committing genocide against ethnic Russians, that Ukraine was trying to build nuclear weapons, and that they were allowing NATO to build secret bases on their territory or some shit. He also claimed Russia just wanted the “demilitarization and deNazification” of Ukraine. The amount of horseshit that is flowing out of Russia concerning Ukraine and the war is enough to fertilize the Sahara Desert. People pushing the Russian talking points CANNOT BE TRUSTED. Sadly, that includes a lot of westerners, including Americans from both the far-right and far-left of the political spectrum. If you think that they aren’t doing it for the money (and I am willing to bet a lot of them are in fact being paid by Russia), you are probably wrong.

I still love much about Russian history and culture. But Russia is led by one of the most awful people on the planet, and nothing and no one will convince me otherwise, ever. The day he is gone will be a joyous day for humanity, kind of like a certain orange person we all know and hate.

So, anyway. Whew. That was a lot of work. Hopefully a good summary. My apologies for the preponderance of Wikipedia links, but since most media is now stuck behind paywalls, my options are much more limited.

-Geoff

It CAN happen in your town. It happened in ours.

Our home town of Winthrop, Massachusetts is normally a pretty boring place, at least in terms of crime. Kelly and I read the police blotter every week in the local paper, and most of the time it is pretty vanilla. Don’t get me wrong, we like the fact that Winthrop does not have the levels of crime that other places do. We somewhat affectionately refer to Winthrop as “Mayberry-by-the-Sea” because the sorts of things that happen around here are usually pretty small.

Last weekend Kelly and I were away from home at a craft fair in West Medford, Massachusetts when we got word that something had happened just around the corner from our house in Winthrop. It first it was not very clear – something about a truck crashing into a building, and then someone involved in that crash shooting at people. It took a few hours before we started getting a clearer picture of what had happened, and even then it was still just bits and pieces.

When we got back to Winthrop that Saturday evening, we had to find a different way to get home because the cordon around the crime scene extended far around the area, including parts of Cross Street, where we normally would have pulled up to get to our house on Almont. We knew things were bad because there were police cars everywhere, and not just from Winthrop. We saw State Police, Boston, Revere, and Chelsea police in addition to Winthrop police.

Within the next day or two, things had cleared up significantly. A guy had stolen a plumbing supply truck and sped through the streets of Winthrop, going about twice the speed limit. He turned from Revere Street onto Shirley Street, speeding down the street past all of the parked cars that narrowed the road considerably. As a result he hit a white SUV more-or-less head on, causing it to crash into a fence and some hedges literally within sight of our back deck. He then lost control of the truck and crashed it into an unoccupied brick building at the corner of Cross Street and Shirley Street. After he got out of the truck, he was met by people who had come out of their homes thinking they could help after the crash. But the guy was armed with two pistols, and at some point he started shooting. First he shot Ramona Cooper, an Air Force veteran and current VA employee, three times in the back. Then he apparently bypassed the opportunity to shoot several other people, and instead went after David Green, another Air Force veteran and a retired Massachusetts State Trooper. Both victims were black, and the shooter whose name I refuse to use was white. It became clear by Monday that there was some sort of racial motivation for what this man had done. He had targeted only black people, and had apparently was responsible for numerous racist and anti-Semitic writings.

Last night there was a memorial service, and it was pretty well-attended. Unfortunately I am heard of hearing and could not hear much of what was said, but it was still a lovely event. I hope people are a little more aware of what is happening around them, and I sincerely hope that people around here will stand up against racism when they see or hear it. That’s what needs to happen.

Try to do right, and be the kind of person your kids (or your dog) thinks you are.

Much love to all,

~Geoff

Election Day 2020

We have been waiting four long years for this day to arrive. Frankly, I am so nervous about the whole thing that I had trouble sleeping last night (as I knew I would). Good thing I have today and tomorrow off from work.

 

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Today is the birthday of Harriet Beecher Stowe

On this day in 1811, Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born to prominent minister Lyman Beecher and his wife Roxana Foote Beecher in Litchfield, Connecticut.  She was the seventh of an eventual thirteen children.

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Harriet Beecher was fortunate in that she received a thorough classical education at a time when most women did not.  She would meet widower Calvin Ellis Stowe in the mid-1830’s after she moved to Cincinnati.  They would marry in 1836.

By 1850 the Stowes were living in Brunswick, Maine, where Calvin taught at nearby Bowdoin College.  Harriet was inspired to write something after the new Fugitive Slave Law was passed in early 1850.  She wrote to Gamaliel Bailey, publisher of the antislavery newspaper The National Era, and told him she wanted to write something in serial form to be published in his paper.  Stowe was paid $400 (a not-inconsiderable sum for its time) for the story, which was published from June 1851 until April 1852.  The story, Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly, was published in book form soon afterward.  The book became a bestseller, selling over 300,000 copies in the U.S. and over 1,000,000 copies in Great Britain in less than a year, thus becoming the second most-popular book in English in the 19th century (its sales were exceeded only by the Bible).

By current standards the book portrays a lot of offensive racial stereotypes of African-Americans.  But it is hard to overstate the influence of the book on attitudes of the 19th century public towards slavery.  In the South, negative reaction to the novel was widespread, and the book was banned and burned in many places.  People caught with copies of the book in the South were at best ostracized by their peers, and at worst they became victims of mob violence and vigilante justice, like a bookseller in Mobile, Alabama who was driven from the city.  But many Southerners instinctively recognized the power of Stowe’s story, and so the novel inspired an entire genre of Southern literature that became known as anti-Tom literature or plantation literature.  But even the bestsellers of this genre never came remotely close to the popularity of the original Stowe novel.

In the North and in other countries, the book was hailed as an agent for social change.  Within five years the book had been published in twenty languages.  In addition to its political themes, the book was a popular culture phenomenon.  One of its characters inspired many parents across the Northern United States to name their daughters Eva.  The book inspired numerous plays and dramatic readings.  It would eventually inspire a number of film adaptations as well.

~Geoff

The Caning of Charles Sumner and the response by Anson Burlingame

I am a bit late to make this a “This Day in History” post, since the actual date in question was May 22nd, 1856.  Still, I wanted to talk about this subject since I have been reading about it and have also recently listened to a rather good podcast about it.  I have only recently begun listening to this Civil War podcast, but I find it quite good so far.  And blogging about history always cheers me up.  Besides, today (May 30th) IS the anniversary of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

Anyway, I have always found the story of the attack on Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts by Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina to be one of the most shocking incidents leading up to the Civil War.  Only in recent years did I learn the role Massachusetts Congressman Anson Burlingame played in the events that followed.  In my mind, Burlingame is sort of the hero of the story, much more so than Sumner, anyway.

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Continue reading “The Caning of Charles Sumner and the response by Anson Burlingame”

On not giving a damn

Disclaimer: Geoff loathes this movie and book upon which it is based.  That’s not why I am posting it here.  That’s just a bonus.  (Love you, sweetie.)

The scene above is important for one really major reason.  For all of their ups and downs and crazy drama, Rhett no longer cares for Scarlett.  At all.  He doesn’t love her, he doesn’t hate her, he just doesn’t care.

This is probably where I should warn you that this post is about unpleasant things.  Trauma, PTSD, abuse – a lot of stuff.  Turn back here should you need to.  Likewise, for a variety of reasons, what I’m going to write may be a bit opaque with oblique references.  This is necessary.  I apologize for the confusion.

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The fallacy of civility, or why it’s OK to be rude to racists and Nazis

There has been much discussion lately about whether or not the left should try to maintain some level of civility in these difficult times.  I can’t speak for everyone, but in my own mind, I don’t think there is any point to trying to be civil to a bunch of people who themselves stopped being civil long ago.  The editorial board of the Washington Post does not agree, and they are apparently clutching their pearls so tightly that they have cut off circulation to their brain.

“We nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and Ms. Nielsen and Mr. Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace. Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?”

I would laugh, except this level of stupidity in one of the supposed flagship newspapers of our era actually makes me want to sob uncontrollably.  Um… news flash, geniuses: those people have not been left in peace for, let’s see, several decades.  In fact, they have been bombed and shot and stabbed and otherwise terrorized in every meaning of that word.  John Salvi killed two people and wounded five right here in the Boston area back in 1994.

It’s like with Trump supporters.  When have they ever been civil, honestly?  They relish being offensive.  It’s one of the things they LOVE about Trump.

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In case you can’t read it, that woman’s shirt says “Fuck your feelings”.  Because civility.

There are times when you can have a reasoned discussion with people who disagree with you.  But we are talking about white supremacists and Nazi sympathizers here.  Oh, sure, maybe there are some Trump supporters who say they aren’t racist.  Maybe, but racism is definitely present in spades among Trumpers, and they are more than willing to put up with a lot of open racism in their ranks, not to mention all the racist garbage spewing from Trump himself and the White House.  And that makes them complicit, or indifferent to evil at best.

Clearly, not all journalists agree with the WaPo editors.  Charlie Pierce had some choice things to say, as did Michelle Goldberg.  She gets it.

But unless and until that happens, millions and millions of Americans watch helplessly as the president cages children, dehumanizes immigrants, spurns other democracies, guts health care protections, uses his office to enrich himself and turns public life into a deranged phantasmagoria with his incontinent flood of lies. The civility police might point out that many conservatives hated Obama just as much, but that only demonstrates the limits of content-neutral analysis. The right’s revulsion against a black president targeted by birther conspiracy theories is not the same as the left’s revulsion against a racist president who spread birther conspiracy theories.

Yes, exactly.  This is NOT a case of “both sides do it.” The right’s criticism that Hillary Clinton and other Democrats are secretly running a pedophile sex ring out of a pizza place IS NOT the same as the belief that Democrats have about President Trump using his office to enrich his family and himself, or that the Russians helped Trump get elected.  So trying to pretend that “both sides do it” is a big reason why we are in this awful place to begin with.  As screwed up as they are, the Democrats don’t hold a candle to the vicious insanity of the Republican party these days.  It’s like trying to point out that both sides are bad because one was caught jaywalking and shoplifting and the other has a basement full of human skins.  Um, no, one is WAY worse than the other, and anyone with more than a handful of brain cells to rub together should be able to see that.  I saw the writing on the wall years ago.  It’s why I left the GOP more than 20 years ago and haven’t looked back.  It’s only gotten worse since then.

So no, I am not going to be civil to these people, not as long as they continue to disregard the essential humanity of immigrants, and gays, and Muslims, and Jews, and everyone else they hate.  I will treat them with the contempt they richly deserve.  It’s far better than the treatment we can expect from them, at any rate.  A lot of them want a second Civil War, or at least a chance to use those guns they have been hoarding.  All we want is equality and justice.

~Geoff

Brexit gets uglier and uglier

Well, now that the consequences of the UK voting to leave the EU have had some time to sink in, it is both fascinating and disturbing to see just what a lot of people thought they were voting for.  Much has been made of the reports that a lot of people in the UK were googling terms like “what is the EU?” the day after the vote.  I am not sure whether or not that data is accurate, and apparently there are other people who feel the same way.  Still, it does seem that a significant number of people in the UK are acting as if the “stay” or “leave” question was not based on the UK leaving the EU, but on whether or not non-white and/or non-British people should “stay” in the UK or “leave”.  And in the minds of many of these people, that answer is pretty clear.

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Brexit, or when people vote to harm themselves

Frankly, I am just stunned that the voters of the United Kingdom decided to leave the EU.  Obviously I am not British, and I can’t pretend I understand all of the issues going on there that might motivate people to vote that way.  But I do know that many of the consequences predicted were not good. And I also know that many of the people who voted to leave are in the parts of the UK that depend on the EU the most, like Cornwall.  The government of Cornwall is now insisting that the UK government make up for the 60 million pounds a year of EU funding that will be lost by Brexit.  To quote from Cornwall directly:

Prior to the referendum we were reassured by the ‘leave’ campaign that a decision to leave the EU would not affect the EU funding which has already been allocated to Cornwall and that Cornwall would not be worse off in terms of the investment we receive. We are seeking urgent confirmation from Ministers that this is the case.

Suddenly Cornwall is like some teenage kid who seriously pisses off his parents, and then suddenly doesn’t understand why they aren’t going to pay his college tuition anymore. You guys really didn’t think this through, did you?  And you believed everything that the Leave Campaign told you?

Oh, dear.

You know, that would be comical if it wasn’t so damn tragic, because there are going to be real consequences now, which will affect a lot of people’s lives.

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That horrific crime in Orlando and two heroes

Kelly and I have both been shocked, horrified, and angry over what happened in Orlando.  Truly, it is stunning to me that such a thing could happen, and even more stunning that we as a society could keep allowing these events to happen over and over and over again.

Kelly vented a lot of anger in her earlier post, and there’s nothing more I can say about how we feel about this.  But I want to be a little specific about some of the intellectually dishonest arguments being made by people around the country trying to explain all this away.  I also want to talk about two people who were there, and who did everything they could to save people’s lives, and still couldn’t save everyone.  They are still heroes, even if they themselves probably don’t feel that way, and probably wouldn’t use that word.

Continue reading “That horrific crime in Orlando and two heroes”