The weekend Financial Times carried a review of American Overthrow: Moscow’s Endgame in Its Long War with Washington by Keir Giles. “And the same driving principles of power in Russia,” Giles writes in the book, “of exploitation of the masses by a tiny elite at the top of a pyramid of corruption, are the dominant features of a new political system being forged in the United States.”
It is a succinct, accurate, and damning analysis, though Trump would probably be flattered by the comparison.
There were about 30 people at Savor Cinema Tuesday night to watch Mr Nobody Against Putin. The power of the Oscars. It is a depressing and fascinating look at the indoctrination taking place in Russia: The officer who tells his men that they will die, but they will live on in memory as heroes of the motherland, their graves will never lack for flowers. The history teacher who, when asked which figures from history he would most like to meet, mentions some of Stalin’s most ruthless henchmen. After the war in Ukraine starts, he tells his students that Europe is suffering without Russian oil and gas, though France is muddling through because its people eat “oysters and frogs.”
The narrator, Pavel Talankin, notes that this indoctrination and propaganda is not in service to an ideology, like communism, but to a man.
The one uplifting moment comes when you remember that Talankin – a former events coordinator and videographer at a primary school in a provincial Russian city – stood in a tuxedo Sunday night in front of Hollywood’s beau monde.
The bombing of Iran is causing massive destruction of not only its military installations but also its vital infrastructure – in a country that before the war was experiencing a dangerous shortage of water. All Iranians – supporters and opponents of the regime – are suffering, and will be for a long time to come. Iran will need years, and billions of dollars, to recover. And what purpose will all the destruction and killing have served?
What is it about the Winter Olympics? Four days after the close of the winter games in Beijing, Putin invaded Ukraine. Five days after the close of the games in Milan, Trump attacked Iran.
(Googling to find the exact date, I typed the words “Russian invasion” and popping up below came: ‘russian invasion of ukraine,” “russian invasion of afghanistan,” “russian invasion of georgia,” “russian invasion of crimea,” “russian invasion of poland 1939,” “russian invasion of manchuria,” and “russian invasion of finland.)
This week marks the four-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is sickening to think of all the people who would be alive today if not for one man’s monstrous greed. Soldiers and civilians, men and women, seniors and children. Because the largest country in the world believes that it is not large enough, more than half a million lives have been lost. My only hope is that there will be no five-year anniversary, and that the man who caused this tragedy will be brought to justice.
I watched some of the U.S.-Latvia hockey game yesterday and found myself partly pulling for Latvia. When I visited the country in 2001, I learned that ice hockey is to Latvia what soccer is to Brazil. One young woman told me that when Latvia beat Russia in the World Championship in 2000, hundreds of joyous Latvians marched to the Russian embassy in Riga and laid a wreath outside the gate.
Considering what’s happening in this country now, they could lay a wreath – unironically – outside the U.S. embassy.