!Orthodox Christmas
---
agk's diary
6 January 2023 @ 11:20 UTC
---
written on Pinephone via st (simple terminal)
at truck stop with coffee from the Bunn automatic
---
Not the simple fool's passive faith something new
will light up this dark. Faith of that other fool
this Orthodox Christmas. She tries to understand
the balance of forces, discard false knowledge and
pride, grope blind for what's to be done.
Cut from work at overstaffed hospital, rather than
be a pest at home when my spouse expected a day
without me, I repaired here to the truck stop.
I alternated studying for state nursing license
exam with reading to motivate me to keep studying.
Endless multiple choice questions, poor explanat-
ions of ones I get wrong demoralize; maybe rein-
force what I learned in nursing school, who knows.
I returned to Ukrainian sociologist Volodymir Ish-
chenko, Brit sociologist Jeremy Morris, Hungarian
sociologist Ivan Szelenyi, Serb economist Branko
Milanovic for my reading. They write about power in
Central and Eastern Europe, context to balance war
news I read [^1] and my understanding of warmonger-
ing social forces in my country.
Of course my country's warmongers aren't the only
ones. The political clan in power here's spoiled
for war in Ukraine a long time. Escalation in 2008
& 2014 interrupted 4 years but resumed when they
regained the president's seat.
Kremlinological propaganda's effective. My mom
knows little about post-Soviet societies. She's
certain Putin's a crazed, murderous totalitarian
dictator who personally directs the state. He's
the same cartoon villian as Assad, Ghaddafi,
Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, etc.
Fighting propaganda isn't defending Putin. During
emergency it's about attacking my country's war-
mongers' justification for war: Milosevic didn't
sabotage the 1992 Lisbon peace agreement, escalate
attacks til Bosnian war was unavoidable. US-backed
mujahid veterans of Soviet-Afghan war did. Ghaddafi
wasn't involved in bombing Pan Am flight 103 over
Lockerbie. Iraqi troops didn't yank preemie Kuwaiti
babies from incubators in 1990 or have weapons of
mass destruction in 2003.
Their worst sins were on par with stuff governments
of my country and its allies do: torture, surveill-
ance, mass incarceration, militarism, oppression of
women and minorities, censorship, corruption, etc.
Antiwar tendencies in my country fight their demon-
ization in hopes of preventing destruction of
countries, mass death of innocents by our Herods.
Fighting propaganda isn't enough: an empty mind's
vulnerable to new lies. Positive understanding's
needed. Social forces in Eastern Europe are compre-
hensible as those in my country. Putin's excellent
speeches made the case for defensive war vs anti-
Russian neonazi/ultranationalist paramilitaries
increasing cadence of shelling Donbass civilians,
offensive NATO expansion, renuclearization threats
after many years of failed diplomacy; bad faith
from US and NATO.
Ukrainian militarized extremists serve the same end
as mujaheddin in 1990s Bosnia and al-Qaeda extrem-
ists in 2010s Libya and Syria. My country aided and
supplied far-right extremists around the world to
destabilize rivals since WWII. Our legacy of coups,
death squads, permanent bases, aerial bombing, ass-
assinations, currency manipulation, debt-trap dipl-
omacy, money laundering in the ashes of countries
we destroyed, and systematic dishonesty's horrible
and unequaled in our time.
Putin misleads by omission, as do Shoigu, Lavrov,
and elite guests on Russian talk shows. What they
omit perhaps they can't see. Like counterparts in
my country, they don't serve the interests of the
whole Russian people, but classes with power to
command service. Understanding these social forces
is an antidote to warmongers in the West's personal
demonization of Putin.
1990s Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus transferred
state property to personal ownership by politically
connected guys. As far as ordinary people were con-
cerned---people who worked for a living, pensioners
and veterans who worked their whole lives---their
countries were destroyed by the US-supervised loot-
ing. No more pretending workingpeople were the pro-
tagonists of history. They were robbed of homes,
pensions, savings; their workplaces looted, sold
for scrap, daughters off to Moscow, prostitutes for
partying Western cold war victors. A generation
died, a class was born: the oligarch.
Like US robber barons after our 19th century civil
war or Russian boyars before Peter the Great tamed
them, oligarchs had their own small armies; personi-
ally owned the media and politicians. In Ukraine
they still do.
Belarus's Lukashenko stopped oligarchs in 1994 with
semi-soviet policy that produced less poverty, more
equality than Belarus's neighbors or my country. In
2000 Putin tamed the Russian oligarchs. They stay
out of politics or lose their property. The Russian
oligarchs, of course, would like to own as much of
Ukraine as they can get.
The middle class that grew in Ukraine & Russia,
small in Ukraine, big in more prosperous Russia,
provides professional services: IT, financial, NGO/
charity, management, etc. As a class, they look
west to the EU and strain against the power of the
oligarchs, corruption, etc. In Ukraine, they're an
important part of the anti-Russian social force, in
Russia of the anti-Putin/anti-war force. Everyone I
know in Ukraine and Russia is from this class.
What about everyone else? What about people who
make the cement, steel, glass, ammonia, who make
and lay track, crew trains, make and fire artillery
shells, stock supermarket shelves, serve burgers at
Tasty, Period (formerly McDonalds), childcare and
eldercare workers, janitors, maids, laborers on
farms, construction crews, in slaughterhouses,
yards and gardens, who build the pipelines, drill
the wells, operate the refineries, operate mining
equipment, run powerplants and maintain everything?
In Russia and Ukraine, as far as I can tell, they
matter about as much as we matter in my country.
Oligarchs scaremonger with crap about LGBT to try
to draw us into coalition vs professional & manag-
erial class. Professionals, managers squawk crap
about "he's a dictator!" to try to draw us into
coalition vs the oligarchs. Neither has anything to
offer beyond remains of socialism oligarchs destroy
in Russia and of New Deal Keynesianism they destroy
in my country.
To say Putin isn't a madman or a cartoon villain
isn't to cheerlead the system he represents. It's
bad, maybe worse than the system in my country,
though the comparison's too difficult to do: too
complex, too shrouded in lies in both countries.
Does the government of my country, Ukraine, or
Russia care much about all the people who have
died, been disabled, lost their homes & lifeworlds
in this war? Nah, it's "regrettable."
Nonetheless, Russia will win. It's more capable of
industrial warfare than the collective West. A
Western win would be an existential threat, beach-
head for Russia's future dismemberment. A Russia
win'd only embarrass the West. All my country'll
get from this war's tighter political control over
Europe & theft of some of its manufacturing base.
For that a country'll be destroyed and hundreds of
thousands of ordinary people will die again.
To end this war, my country must stop funding it.
---
[1]: moonofalabama.org & nakedcapitalism.com
UPDATE: Latin American nations pressured by NATO
to send heavy weapons & ammo to prolong slaughter
in Ukraine said no. On 26 Jan, Brazil's president
Lula took a principled position in a phone conver-
sation with French president Macron. I think he's
right.
- Brazil acknowledges Vladimir Putin's Russia vio-
lated Ukrainian territory and this is illegal.
- But NATO's behavior in recent years hasn't coni-
tributed to guaranteeing a relationship of
trust with the Kremlin.
- Brazil defends the establishment of negotiations
with Russia so a ceasefire can be reached.
- Brazil will help bring about peace, but won't
contribute in any way to military operations.
- Brazil's war is against an entirely different
foe: poverty.
