Thursday, March 24th 2022
Ukraine latest updates: Zelenskyy rejects Moscow’s ultimatums
Ukraine news from March 21: President Zelenskyy accuses Moscow of seeking to ‘destroy’ Ukraine.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy makes a speech on evaluation the 22nd day of the Russia-Ukraine war during virtually addressing in Kyiv.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has turned down Russian calls to surrender [Ukrainian Presidency/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images]
- By David Child, Zaheena Rasheed, Patrick Keddie and Federica Marsi
- Published On 20President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine cannot fulfil Russian ultimatums and accused Moscow of seeking to “destroy” the country.
- Moscow has warned ties with Washington are close to rupturing after US President Joe Biden last week labelled his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a “war criminal“.
- Odesa’s mayor says Russian forces have struck buildings on the outskirts of the key Black Sea port city for the first time.
- A new curfew has been announced in Kyiv after deadly attacks killed eight in the capital, with the measure set to last from Monday evening until Wednesday morning.
- Russia has banned Facebook and Instagram after labelling parent company Meta an “extremist organisation”.
It’s a quarter to 8:00 and I’ve just finished breakfast which was really just the leftovers from last night’s dinner. It was equally as tasty. I have been thinking that I need to cut down on my food intake. I’m going to need a little bit more body than I seem to have and I need to up my protein intake and cut down on my carbs. I think bodybuilders call this cutting time. That’s about what I need.
I also think we’re due for an extremely hot summer. Global warming is not going to slow down and instead of paying attention to genuine global problems, the Russians are running blocker and demanding all the attention in the world be put on this absolutely stupid oil war. No, we can’t solve social problems because of war. No, we cannot solve environmental problems because of war. No, we cannot feed people or take care of starving communities around the world, especially non-white-skinned people, because of the war. No, we cannot grow or get better or become more intelligent because of war.
Like I said, I think I have to lighten up a little bit.
So in about 100 minutes I’m going to get on my bike and go over to the train. In town, I want to visit both of the markets. I need to visit my friends both for food and mechanical help. Yesterday, we put in the order for about 230 kg of topsoil to mix in with local land I used to fill our boxes. I also got my digging tool that I wanted for difficult places. I do not want to use a spade because I don’t want to use my feet for digging. Also, I admire a strong tool. And, I ordered a speed square because I will be cutting the lumber needed to secure the roof straps that will hold my gutters in place. We have not bought barrels to hold the rain yet but that’s coming next. Yes, this is kind of an expensive moment but it was expected and it will be money that will be well used for hopefully many years. Hopefully, it will be a good investment in food security as well as life.
Of course as I was sitting here enjoying the last moments of my soup, my neighbor pulled out of her house, backed up and sprayed my house with auto fumes. Yesterday while I was working I very calmly told her in one sentence that we would be in court. She ignored the police officer just the way she ignores me. The only thing I can possibly say about my neighbors is that they are in fact pigs. I have no other way to describe people like this. It is a word that my mother taught me. She said things like people who think that their shit doesn’t stink. Pigs. There’s probably a Google page describing this.
What does it mean to call someone a pig?
If you call someone a pig, you think that they are unpleasant in some way, especially that they are greedy or unkind. [informal, disapproval] 4. singular noun [a NOUN, usually NOUN of noun] If you say that something is, for example, a pig of a job, you mean it is very difficult.
Bingo. Touchdown. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Bing, bang, bong, all the bells and whistles. It’s a hole in one. Gooooooooooooooooaaaaaaal.
So pigs, chickens, farm animals; subhumans. Worthy of hate. Unworthy of love. Unworthy of kindness. A waste of time. Deserving of brutality.
I was thinking this morning about when this unfriending thing started on Facebook. I was a long time without social networks. The first one I got on was VK, which is kind of the Russian Facebook, because some of my students said that they were on it. I started doing some simple advertising there in the hope of picking up students. And after a while, it was so prevalent that I started using it as a way of communicating with my students. I think previously I was sending text messages over the phone but now, I was sending homeworks and graded papers back over social network chats. I still use a particular social network to communicate with my students but I have gone to a different one, which is also Russian, that is faster and takes unlimited sized messages etc.
I didn’t get on Facebook until a few years later when I was looking for someone. This is not a general reach out out of loneliness thing. I was looking for someone specific. Stalking? Sure. And I suddenly found that I had quite a few people that I went to high school with who were also there. So I started clicking and asking people to be friends and came in contact with some people that I had not seen in 35 years. Why not?
At first it was kind of fun. I enjoyed these English language conversations and I really didn’t think much of anything except that I was making contact with people who I knew a long time ago. I wasn’t spreading propaganda, I wasn’t looking for spy information, I actually was not looking for money at all, I just thought it was pretty nice to meet familiar faces.
And then in 2014 the world started to change. Russia had been making money in the oil business for about a decade. A lot of money. All Europe enjoyed being their partner and suddenly Russia was becoming a genuine economic power. Just after this however, the social networks began to get flooded with various types of Russian propaganda. There were two types. One was advocating a love of ethnic pride for the Slavic culture and the other was the Russian word жест, cruelty.
Among my teenagers, this wave of ethnic pride started getting in the way of there being good children and working hard. Before this time, I had an extremely good reputation in town. People referred to me by my ochistva, Adam Levovich, this is using my father’s name as my respectful identifier. It’s kind of similar to calling someone Mr or doctor. But then suddenly I was just American or in times of anger, a jew. Just like that. Like in the time it takes to snap your fingers, all the work I had done to build up my business and reputation disappeared under a wave of objectification.
I should mention that one of my ex-girlfriends completely identified with being Russian at this time. She loved me, this I understood clearly, but at the same time we had a subtle under argument that was going on. She believed in Russia. Her mother worked in Moscow and she believed her future was there. Or at least with Russian sensibilities.
Pretty soon everything started going bad. I had to head off to another town because there was no longer enough business to sustain me. In this other town is where I met the folks who I would eventually work with as a translator, also about Russian transgressions. But then when I came back, I noticed that it had started touching Americans.
This was the time leading up to the 2016 elections. These were the elections where Donald Trump became president of the United States. If you all remember how much talk there was about Russia meddling in the elections and all of the extremely obvious evidence that he was in collusions with the Russians. Suddenly, there was an effect on Facebook. Suddenly, we began to take sides against each other.
Up until this time, I had met quite a few Facebook friends who were quite happy to have someone to talk to. This would be both men and women but, for some reason, these were people who actually work kind of lonely and appreciated talking to old friends. Maybe this suited me quite well. But suddenly all of this friendliness gave way because each of us had to State our idealism right up front. Like having a yellow star sown to your garment for identification, we needed up front for everyone to understand our political stance.
Well, I’m an ecologist. I am an environmentalist. I am vegan, though this didn’t come in until a bit later. I am a snowflake, communist, socialist, liberal. I am against world hunger. I am against pollution. I am against cars and the auto business and the oil business. I’m against globalization. I’m against human trafficking. I’m against slavery, both economic and otherwise. I am against factory foods, though this also came later. I am an earthling and I am a clear thinker with clear senses.
Blocked. Unfriended. Disappeared from Facebook. Don’t call me anymore. You can’t even find them on the social networks anymore. It is as if our conversation and history has just disappeared into the cosmos. We just stopped tolerating each other. It was too difficult to listen to each other talk. We had become something awful to each other.
Well, I live here. I was kind of on the ground for all of this. I saw this happening locally. I don’t think my Facebook friends saw this coming or even understood it. And certainly, they did not want to listen to any wisdom from a guy like me.
I was now a traitor, a spy, a turncoat, a Benedict Arnold and a horrible human being. People said I was filled with rage and hate. People said my writing had more hate in it than anyone they have ever seen. Even the lonely women who were thinking that I was the solution to their problems, suddenly got it that this long distance Facebook relationship just was not cutting the mustard, even with the help of electric sex toys and Skype.
Russia. We are all under pressure because of Russia. This little skirmish between white people stealing our attention is Russia demanding our attention and our money. It is cruelty. They practice cruelty. They have taught us cruelty. The oil business has adopted Russian cruelty. The world is now cruel as a way of keeping people from focusing their attention on what is important.
And for this we have two arguments. The only thing that is important is money or the only thing that is important is our environment. I vote for the latter. I say environment is more important than money. I say clean air would be nice. I say clean healthy food is better than all of this drug shit we feed ourselves. I say fair relationships between friends is much better than these power games that we play. I say that looking out for the quality of the community, that we should all be okay and healthy and happy is much better than pissing on each other.
And let’s be fair. In this little village, there are not a lot of people living here. This is not a thriving community. Most everybody who lives here is on a pension. Everybody here is on a very limited income. My particular neighborhood has two families that work and commute the 25 km to town in their cars. These cars are the only pollution in this area except for whatever else is in the atmosphere and the general global warming caused by everybody else who’s like them. Just a couple of pigs. Except that they ruin everything around them. They ruin the quiet, they ruin the land and they ruin the air. And they don’t give a shit about anybody but themselves and they don’t care who suffers because of them. They are Russian.
I’ve got to get going now because I’ve only got about an hour to get ready and I don’t want to miss the train. Sure, it was pleasant sitting in the grass last time but I would rather just get my business done. It’s not a lot. I just need to make sure my papers are in order, the house is locked up, I have what clothing I’m transporting to town in my bag and then it’s a little bit of peddling, some train riding and some bicycling around Pinsk. Just another athletic day for me.
I quit being on Facebook all together. I got tired of being trolled. I am really tired of internet trolls. Sometimes I see something online and I make a comment that I think is amusing but almost universally, I get corrected or shot down. It’s a waste of time and a waste of energy and a waste of life. I started writing online in the hope of at least offering something of a balance point. I was hoping to find a community that actually wished to be literate.
Now, my time on the internet is limited exactly to this, checking my mail and maybe an hour or two a day to catch a ball game or a film. And some days, and these are the best days really, I just leave my phone behind and just hang around in the garden instead. If it weren’t for the pigs next door, I would be in Paradise.
***
I had some excellent stolen food at the market. From luda, I stole one chocolate covered peanut which was really good. And then I stole a garlicky salty pickle from valia. Unbelievably tasty. And then from Vera, I stole one baraki. Now I’m eating an apple that I paid for. What a great lunch.
Unfortunately, I don’t get to eat with my ex partner. I have to go to the other market before they close to talk about gutters.
And I have lots to talk about here too but right now, I have to run.
But I’ll tell you, I quit cooking oil again this week. It’s crazy, but it makes all the difference in the world. It’s like I’m starting to taste food again. The world is just a little cleaner and a little more in focus. It’s clearer and it’s cleaner. Well, I am clearer and cleaner. The world is a bloody garage and it’s disgusting how much poison is in the air here in town. But I feel so much cleaner for not using cooking oil. Crazy, huh?
I’m just saying it’s noticeable.
***
It’s 8:00 p.m. and I am lying on the floor of my ex partner’s apartment. She is at her yoga session and I have not moved in the last 3 hours. I got everything done that I needed to get done. I was a bit impressed that I made all my stops and kept my entire schedule. Everything I needed to do, got done. But then the reality of the accomplishment, the physical reality, struck me and I have been on the floor in Mobile trying with all my heart to avoid further pain. Today was painful. Today was very, very painful.
I had a couple of things that I wanted to talk about before I ended up reaching my limit for tolerating pain. I want to say something about desertification and how I truly, truly wish the state was more modern thinking in its agriculture. The business of using our land for foreign trade, feeding animals and making ourselves useful to other people is painful to look at. Perpetual mono cropping, chemical fertilizers and of course the endless and merciless over tilling. It’s like the word sustainable doesn’t even exist in the lexicon here.
The other day I watched a film of the president speaking to his cabinet. Unfortunately, it’s only in Russian and there are no subtitles. But the general gist is that the president thinks it’s important that we understand that we are in a difficult situation because of the war on our Southern border. But he is very happy that we are ready to dive into the new planting season. The president was a collective farm director before he took the state by storm. Again, I’m sorry if you don’t speak Russian but here is the film.
The reason I’m making a big deal about this is that most of the pain that I’m experiencing right now started in the absolute ludicrous condition of the service road that I need to ride on to get to the train station. The amount of sand on this road makes it like riding on a beach and the obviousness of how bad the land is in the town I’m living in is beautifully illustrated by this picture I took.
Before finally bottoming out, you can see how long of a tail I left behind and how deep the sand is on this road. I am ordering a new gear for my rear wheel and I’m going to start under inflating the tires in order to deal with this. The bike is a bit over geared for these tires to start with. I went with a heavy gear for riding my 28 mm tires. Unfortunately, I moved to the country and trying to ride this road on the skinny 700c’s is absolutely more ridiculous than trying to ride here. And it’s like this all the way from where I live to the train station.
The point I’m trying to make is that the amount of sand sitting on this road which is obviously in between two agricultural fields comes from some very specific reasons. First of all, we can say that the road was not well built and tractors and cars have been breaking it down. But it’s also how much topsoil flies in the wind from the fields that you’re looking at. I’m not making this up and what I’m talking about is very easily found by looking it up on the internet.
Desertification is a type of land degradation in drylands in which biological productivity is lost due to natural processes or induced by human activities whereby fertile areas become increasingly arid.
In general, desertification is caused by variations in climate and by unsustainable land-management practices in dryland environments. By their very nature, arid and semiarid ecosystems are characterized by sparse or variable rainfall.
The fact that we are experiencing this much topsoil loss in a country where it’s supposed to be very wet is as good of an indication of the damage caused by global warming as anything. Literally, the town I live in is supposed to have a giant bog, a swamp, which is basically why we have a forest here. But locals have told me that the swamp has dropped more than one meter over the course of the last few years. And of course we are now looking at 15 years in a row of the highest temperature in the history of History.
Yet, we never learn and we keep doing the same things again and again.
I meant several friends today and I was very proud to show them some pictures from my garden. I’m pretty proud to have done all of this work by hand. But it’s kind of less than I wanted because what I’m doing right now is exactly what I wanted to do last year. People were impressed at the garden boxes and it seems obvious that what I’m doing makes some sense. But when I first got here, I could not for the life of me get the locals to listen to a word I said. Things like not cutting the grass so that we have wild flowers available for pollinators, saving more water and allowing the natural fauna to do what it was going to do are all things that you do to protect and defend the watershed.
Desertification is where the water is no longer being held in the land. To renew the land, you have to build up the vitality and fertility of the soil so that the water has a place to be. And you’re not going to grow anything if you don’t have enough water.
Nobody wants to hear these words. Nobody in my town and obviously not the president or his cabinet diligently taking notes on this year’s agriculture.
What I’m trying to say here is that we are so caught up in this irreversible trap of trying to make money that we never see the forest for the trees. If we stopped trying to raise money crops to sell abroad and simply use the land we have to feed our people, we would be rich. If we stopped mono cropping our fields and stopped tilling everything to death, we would have more than we know what to do with.
At the market this morning, I got into a question about the economics of heating a home. My friend was telling me that he’s thinking of going all electric. He finds it less expensive than traditional methods of using wood, gas heat or even charcoal briquettes. Thinking only of the cost, he has been relying on charcoal which has an absolutely negative environmental effect. You cannot use it as fertilizer when it’s spent and it just simply becomes waste that goes in the landfill.
I told him that I got through the entire winter for very little money and much less would than anybody was telling me I needed. I was told that I needed 7 cubic meters of firewood to get through the winter, I only managed to buy three but I only used 25% of that in the 3 months I’ve been in the house. And my electric bill is pretty much similar to what it was living in my apartment in town. I told him I only heat one room and find other ways to stay active and he told me I was wrong. He told me it was important that he heated every room in his house. He said if you didn’t heat the whole house, the one room would lose heat.
I gave him the numbers. I told him what I did. I told him I was there and I told him I was quite comfortable but he still didn’t want to hear me. He has a way of thinking. Everyone here has a way of thinking and you can’t get them to think any other way. All the way from the president of the country to a guy selling potatoes at the market.
Then he started going on about how he was thinking of changing his entire house over to electricity. He told me the cost of it and that most people were starting to change over. I told him that you shouldn’t get too far away from nature and if you don’t have any backups and the grid collapses, you’re going to lose everything in the frost. That didn’t seem to move him too much. He started talking about how wasteful the charcoal was. He said that the cost was going up. I told him I didn’t use charcoal. I only used wood because I could use the ashes fertilizer on my field. Charcoal briquettes had no other use once it’s spent. He told me he agreed with me and that he was happy that the garbage had to come twice a week to pick up his charcoal remains. I mentioned to him that I only need to throw out the garbage about once a month because the only thing to throw out was the plastic that some of my food comes in. All of the organic waste goes right back into the land.
All the same, he went on again about electricity. He demanded that people are starting to get out of their cars. Gasoline is dying and this war in Ukraine was only for oil and the oil business. He said that one of these days Russia would start sending us electric cars. That would be a good thing he said. I asked him why we couldn’t make these things ourselves. I asked him if he’s ever heard of golf carts. He hadn’t. I asked him if he’s heard of the game of golf. He hadn’t. So I told him that they play this game by hitting a ball down a long long and that they have these cars that they drive if people are too lazy to carry their own bags. They go maybe 25 km an hour or maybe 30, and they use a couple of batteries to keep going but they are plenty good for getting around town if you were too lazy to ride a bicycle or had to take care of grandma.
He mentioned that there were all kinds of electric vehicles available and that you could go to the other market and see a whole line of electric bikes and scooters. I thought it was a great idea and we should all think of these things, especially if you’re too lazy to ride a bicycle.
I asked him again why we couldn’t do this ourselves. He didn’t have an answer except to say that this is not how things are done. Russia tells us what to do and Russia sends us what we need. We exist to serve Russia and whatever other markets are available. Until the markets tell us what to do, we’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing for a long time.
At the other market I asked a friend of mine how work was.
“What work? We have no work. Sometimes there’s something to do and sometimes there’s nothing to do. Sometimes the currency has value and sometimes the currency has no value. There’s no such thing as stability. They scream that we are supposed to have a stable economy but there is no such thing. This country exists in chaos. There is no other way to look at it. We wake up in the morning, we take a deep breath and we go do what we have to do. And that’s all. And if you don’t work, you get arrested, so we go to work even if we don’t get paid.”
Then one of the ladies asked me about the war. Usually, people don’t ask my opinion but she knows that I have English language internet and that I probably hear things that they don’t hear here.
I told her that the ukrainians were probably not going to march on Belarus. It’s possible that they might fire rockets at Luninets. There is a military base there and the Russians fired rockets at Northern Ukraine from there. But then again, she was welcome to come out and visit me in the country. The odds of me getting caught arbitrarily are small. Somebody might come after me personally. That’s a different question. But I am well off the beaten path and there is no reason for the military to come through.
She said that she was not going to the country. She would stay in town and do her job. There were not many people working at selling food. There were a lot of people in the market. There is a holiday where we remember the Dead and people were buying colorful plastic flowers. I don’t know why they love plastic flowers so much but it’s part of the culture and, you know, nobody ever changes any traditions. If they put real flowers on the graves, the organic material could go back into the land. Remembering your loved ones with plastic is just trash for the landfill
***
I’m going to stop here and I’ll get into some of my other thoughts tomorrow. Like I said, today’s been a pretty painful day. It was painful physically and to my sense of reality.
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