Thursday, April 7th 2022
A very honest and crazy video by a blogger from Kiev, Anton Somewhere. He returns to his City to have a look around.
From CBS News
This is a translation from Ria Novosti: https://ria.ru/20220406/provokatsiya-1782179299.html
Kyiv is preparing a provocation with chlorine in the Kharkiv region, said the Ministry of Defense The Ministry of Defense announced the plans of the SBU to blow up a storage facility with chlorine near Kharkov
MOSCOW, April 6 – RIA Novosti. Ukrainian special services are preparing “a major provocation using poisonous substances” in Pervomaisky, Kharkiv region, said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
“On the territory of the Khimprom production association, employees of the SBU mined a storage facility with 120 tons of chlorine,” he said.
According to a representative of the department, Russia is going to be accused of “creating a chemical disaster that caused the death of local residents.”
It’s also interesting to note that cruelty begets cruelty. Here is an article from novia gazetta talking about how captured Russian soldiers are being tortured.
A video of the torture of Russian prisoners of war was published on the Internet Records of torture of, presumably, Russian prisoners in Ukraine appeared on social networks.
THERE IS A SEQUEL
“If one side violates humanitarian law, this is no reason for the other to do the same.” How international law regulates the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians – the lawyer explains
Two entries were published on Twitter by journalist Maria Dubovikova. The wounded are interrogated there. Most of them had wounds in their legs, many had packages on their heads, one of the soldiers, as the person behind the scenes says, had a broken leg. The first military man shown in close-up is unconscious. Another soldier says that he is Azerbaijani and that he ended up in Ukraine because an order came.
In the second video, the prisoners are shot in the legs near the car. A man behind the scenes asks: “Who are the officers?”.
Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia Alexander Bastrykin instructed to check the published records. “According to some reports, illegal actions took place at one of the bases of Ukrainian nationalists in the Kharkiv region,” the ministry said.
This is how Ria deals with this story:
What is Russia fighting for in Ukraine?
From time to time, complaints arise about the operation to liberate Ukraine: what exactly is the highest meaning of what is happening? Here we are denazifying the territory, but what picture of the world do we bring there?
That is, it is not enough to work and suffer in the war, it is also necessary to simultaneously feed the denazified population with spiritual food. Present him – and the world community – some kind of ideology.
I’m not sure if any ideology is needed here. .in fact, to all interested parties – both Russians and Ukrainians – everything is extremely clear and understandable. The Russians came to liberate their land from the Nazis. We already did this in 1943-1944, exactly on the same territory. .then, except that the scale of local collaborationism was smaller. And so everything is one to one.
But if necessary, you can explain. Russia brings its civilization to the territory of the former Ukraine. .it is very different from what Ukrainians have become accustomed to at home over the past thirty years.
We do not torture prisoners in Russia. Our soldiers do not kill their own citizens, and then they do not arrange installations from their corpses for the amusement of Western journalists. .we do not lie – this, by the way, is the “weakness” of our military propaganda. We know how to expose fakes, making them is impossible, disgusting.
In Russia, it is not customary to tie people to poles, pull off their pants and beat them with the whole world. .this is disgusting and shameful. We don’t do that.
We do not shove bribes left and right: traffic cops, doctors, teachers, nurses – as is customary in Ukraine. We have almost everywhere finished with racketeering. .in Russia you can open your own business, and a man with a gun will not come to you the next day. Our godfathers sit on bunk beds or go on the run, and do not crush entire cities and regions under them.
But then this:
***
By the way, today is opening day for Major League baseball. I am going to try and catch two games. Tonight at 11:00 p.m. for me is the Mets opening day and then tomorrow sometime will be the Giants opener. I don’t know how much of my time I’m going to invest in baseball games this year. I might just be a stats guy and read the box scores. Maybe it’s enough.
There is one change that should be noted in baseball this year other than the national league changing to the designated hitter, which is the end of civilization if you ask me. But after more than a century, the Cleveland baseball club has decided to change their name. They will no longer be known as the Indians and will now be known as the Guardians.
This is not the first time that an American sports team has changed. Last year, the NFL Washington Redskins became a completely nondescript Washington football club. I don’t really mind this really. America has quite a few problems and racism is one of the major social flaws. I definitely think that becoming aware that skin color should not be one of the prime motivators of social interactions or how we perceive each other.
As far as Cleveland is concerned, I can say that allowing the rather racist name to go is socially a very good thing. On the other hand, I’ve always liked the Chief Wahoo symbol. Not so much because of the egregious representation of a native American but because of what it looked like in silhouette. Cheers.
***
Good morning. Most of what is above came from between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. this morning. I don’t know what to tell you. You wake up, you check the time, you take a look around and see what’s going on and stuff like this gets in your face. I guess it’s kind of like this everyday for everybody who deals with the internet as a large part of their lives. I guess I do. I’d love to get away from it. I’d love to quit it all together but my business, well, what there is remaining of my business is online and has been for about 6 years. There are not really any variants available so, it’s really hard to say what to do.
I’m basically retired. I’m retired in that I don’t have much of an income these days but I’m also retired because there’s not a whole lot I can do about it. I understand I’m kind of in a weird situation, what with the war going on next door and atrocities being verified on both sides. And I’m paying right now to set up my garden and I have to be incredibly frugal with my money. I don’t have loose cash to play with. I am on an extremely tight budget.
It’s all so hard to say what I feel about the water retention situation. My ex-partner jumped on the job and on her first day, she sent me so many links that you would think getting these things would be easy. I actually asked her to just go through it and tell me the best usable deal she could find. I understand that I do not pay her to be my secretary and technically, she doesn’t owe me anything. But she also is interested in sharing this Garden space and we do share some time together.
Making a decision is a hard thing for her though. She’s great about digging up stuff she finds but it’s up to me to sift through what she has found and then it all has to go back to her to make phone calls to these people. No, the problem is not speaking Russian. Я очень хорошо разговариваю по-русски. The problem is that the moment they hear my voice or my accent, immediately their entire world changes. You’ve heard this drill a million times. Not only does the money become absolutely ridiculous, either it’s manipulated in price up because I’m obviously a millionaire or it becomes a mysterious thing because what they really want is a close friendship with me.
The position that I asked my ex partner to occupy is that of a beard. Unfortunately, she doesn’t want to be my beard and she doesn’t even like my beard. All of this just makes everything harder and more of a headache.
This morning I talked to her briefly about this cut up cube. The guy claims that there’s never been anything in it but soup. Maybe it’s true and maybe it’s not. He also said he would deliver it for only 20 rubles making the entire price 100 rubles, about 35 bucks, but we don’t even know if the thing will hold water while sitting on its side. It also looks like a piece of junk. Not that this particularly bothers me because I also look like a piece of junk. It’s just so many variables and none of them is very professional at all.
When I first saw the price list of these water cubes and barrels, I put a cost analysis in my mind and came up with a number that I could afford to spend for 3,000 L of stored water. I won’t bore you with why I think 3,000 l will be enough. Let’s just say with an extremely moderate investment of money that I actually have, we can do almost everything possible to have water on hand during the summer to keep our garden going.
Yes, I am planning on drought. Yes, if Las Vegas was taking odds on it, I would bet the house on it. Yes, I believe in global warming as an absolute scientific fact and yes, I believe also as a scientific fact that it is a man-made endeavor and that the men who made this man-made endeavor are the same men who are mutilating other men just across the border from me about 40 km away.
Yes, this is about exploitation of people, exploitation of natural resources, exploitation of the media and exploitation in any human way to understand exploitation. This is a parasite’s Paradise. The world is being sucked dry and nobody cares that the host dies despite all scientific evidence showing how stupid we actually are.
And me? I’m just a dog howling in the wind. Nobody’s listening to me. Nobody has been listening to me for years and all anybody, ANYBODY wants from me is to be one of my parasites. Hideous. Horrific. Heinous. Inhuman and inhumane.
Probably I have upset her even more by declaring that I’m not going to town today. I could and my plans could change depending on any number of things. I don’t have anything specific that I need to do in town right now.
I could visit my ex partner but it’s hard for me right now. We could start getting into the expected sex roles of men and women for this. We could get into a number of personal things that I really don’t wish to discuss. We could go a lot of directions with this argument. Probably the truth is that I really wish this little endeavor of mine was functioning a little better. I really wish I had a better team helping me or at least some better help from the team I have.
Let’s not even get personal in this. Let’s not even get into the fact that this is the same exact feeling that I had with my ex-girlfriend. This is an Adam thing, there’s no doubt about that. I am persnickety. Probably I am anal retentive. You could probably put all kinds of psychological problems on me. But the bottom line is, I like things that function and I don’t like dysfunctional things. I like functional people and I don’t like dysfunctional people. I like functional relationships, functional businesses, functional hobbies and absolutely, functional governments. I do not like dysfunctional variance on any of these things and being forced into the company of dysfunctional people is incredibly difficult for me.
You want to blame my lack of alcohol? You want to blame my sex life? You want to blame my upbringing, my passport, my nationality, my religion, the color of my skin, my age or my political leanings? I don’t give a shit where you look at my body, dysfunctional is dysfunctional and I don’t like it.
I like things that work. I like people who do their job. I like people that fix problems and not people who make problems. I like people who show up to work on time and do their job and I don’t like people who complain and give me excuses for not doing their job. I like people who do what they say they are going to do and I don’t like people who say stuff as if blowing air over their voice box is just a physical habit the same as a cow going moo!
I am not a physical specimen of particular note. Perhaps when I was a young man, I was very strong and athletic and perhaps I have mastered a few physical talents in my life. Perhaps this business of having attained some sense of quality physically in my life paints my view of things. I’m not saying I was Barry Bonds, but I was a good hitter. And maybe the truth is that nobody wants Barry Bonds to be a hitting instructor because nobody else is Barry Bonds. Barry Bonds was perfect. Barry Bonds was literally baseball perfection. But how does a complete and utter perfectionist, a physical perfectionist who understands what physical perfection is, teach someone who is without understanding of what perfection means as an achievement?
Again, I did not see myself as the highest level of humanity on this planet. I am not saying that I am better than you.
What I am saying is that there are certain levels of achievement that bring pleasure and certain levels of non-achievement that just make you wonder why money was spent on the project.
I’m looking around my kitchen right now and truthfully, I think most people would consider most of this junk. And I agree, to the non-discerning eye, it is junk. There was not a ton of money spent on this kitchen, there is no European styling to it. There isn’t even any particular aesthetics to it. It’s just a very, very old fashioned, old world slapped together assembly of stuff. nothing you would ever want to put on Instagram.
But this place functions. This place functions without a freezer. This place functions in all seasons. This place functions by using a little sweat and effort and knowledge of the natural world and it allows you to save food, cook food and even start plants under these windows.
This gas stove next to me is as cheap as you can get but it works. The big Skillet on top of it was bought for an amount of money that doesn’t even exist anymore. The amount I paid for it has been so inflationed, you could not even do the math to figure out what would be left. Less than an American penny. But you could bury this pot with me or give it to my great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren and it will still do its job.
My little coffee pot was bought for little or no money and a friend of mine was kind enough to put a handle on it that will also last about a hundred years and it makes beautiful coffee everyday. I have two more original iron skillets hanging on the wall and an iron Dutch oven sitting next to the stove. This cook set will be around in a century and it’s perfectly good for everyday cooking.
I mean, I have a Bosch blender. It’s already old. It’s been well used. But it’s overkill for its job and it has never even thought of failing in all the years I’ve had it.
This is all I’m saying. I just don’t understand why the world doesn’t appreciate function. I don’t understand all of this style over substance. I don’t understand why we need an engine or a motor or an electrical cord on every damn thing we buy when a chunk of steel and a piece of wood will last you a hundred years and all you need to add to make it work is you.
If you were sitting here in the room with me right now and actually looking at my body and then walked through my kitchen door and out onto my field and took a look at what I did by hand, you might be impressed. I’m a pretty humble guy but I’m impressed. And then after a couple of years when all of these gardens have given way to their final occupants and all the trees grow and mature and the place is shady and nice and cool, I’m going to remember what it took to build it.
It took an idea that was functional, some effort, a little bit of sweat, a little bit of time and a little bit of thinking to make sure that all the components were functional and we made something that will just keep on functioning for many years.
You know, they just never found it in their hearts to allow Barry Bonds into the Hall of Fame. With baseball starting again, I have to tell you that this tiny bit of corruption, this dysfunction in the propaganda of the game of baseball has me off. Playing with the game every year to make it faster or fit in with modern ideas has nothing to do with a picture throwing the ball and a batter trying to hit it and run the bases. And telling us what players are clean and what players are dirty is just a dirty business.
You can’t take the humanity out of the game that was invented to allow us to look at humanity. The game is about trying to do something functional while another team is trying to create chaos. All the computers and graphics in the world don’t change the fact that it’s supposed to be played by human beings. And all the people who say that the greatest baseball player of all time cannot be recognized as the greatest baseball player of all time in the building that was created to help us remember the greatest baseball players of all time is inhuman. It’s hateful. It’s arrogant. It’s all the things that they claimed Barry Bonds was.
So that’s it. I’m wandering here. I’m going to do some digging. I don’t know if my new boy is going to show up today or if I have to do something to get some money. I don’t feel like going to town today. I don’t need groceries and I don’t have any bureaucracy and I just don’t need it this week. I’d rather be here and take care of myself. I’d rather enjoy the fresh air. I’d rather just do my job.
***
https://youtube.com/shorts/ejlnKu7cmec?feature=share
This sort of thing is just never helpful.
***
It’s about 2:30 and I’m taking a break. I did some Garden building this morning and unless I want to open up new territory, I’m kind of done. There is still the matter of feeling the raised boxes. I haven’t heard anything from my guy so proceeding is either my original plan or a new plan but we just don’t know. There hasn’t been any words whatsoever from my ex partner about water containers. Everything has just sort of come to a halt and so have I.
I mean, there’s always something to do. There’s too much to do. Pretty much anywhere I stand on my territory there is something to do. It’s all just a matter of physical effort.
In the middle of working today I noticed that my legs felt good. That was a definite plus. I’ve been fighting my legs all spring but perhaps they are coming around. Maybe I’m building up some muscles in there. Really it’s been a long time since I felt good walking.
The bike ride yesterday felt good too. I can’t really argue my situation. I mean, of course I can. There’s this bloodthirsty war and everybody is committing war crimes against each other. And I take a break and I walk around the internet for 3 minutes and the president of Belarus beating an American journalist to death with the usual rhetoric. He’s right in his way. It’s not justifying The invasion of Ukraine. It’s not doing anything but blaming the Americans for everything that Russia does. But he’s right. You can’t be an American and point fingers. It’s like not throwing rocks when you live in a glass house.
I’m a peacenik. I’m not in favor of waging War for resources. I’m not in favor of waging War. There are lazy people in the world who look for the laziest way to take care of themselves. I’m probably one of these people. Maybe right now I’m working a little harder for my basic needs than most people do. But that’s not even close to true if you think globally. If you think of all the people who rely on agricultural work to get by, I’m not even on their spectrum of competency. I’m just a hack by comparison.
But surely there is a way to make sure that everybody has enough food. Surely there is a way to make sure that everybody has enough food while not encroaching on the environment. Surely there is a way for people to start thinking ecologically and in some kind of peaceful manner towards living on this planet well. Certainly we can live here without destroying our habitat or driving all of the animals to Extinction or poisoning our land with a layer of plastic Sludge that’ll be with us for a million years. Surely we have some capacity for intelligence as a species.
Or not and we are all just spitting in the wind. We are suicide bombers. We are kamikaze pilots. We are mass murderers. We are the people that bring automatic weapons into elementary schools. We are the people who travel to other countries to murder people just so we could take whatever we want from their houses and rape their women and kill their men. Maybe we are just some kind of bloodthirsty Satanist cult that is simply insatiable for our hunger for blood.
I’m not hungry for blood. I’m hungry for some justice. I’m hungry for fair play. Maybe I’m hungry for some noodles. But I gave up blood and I’m a happier man for it.
I’m tired of pretending I’m a carnivore. I’m tired of feigning excitement for women. I’m tired of pretending I give a shit what someone else has or what someone else does. I’m tired of lying to myself and to other people.
This is what happened when I gave up meat. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a very good thing. It’s an honest thing and there’s less pain in it for myself and for everyone else.
I just want to be a little comfortable just like everyone else. I just maybe want a little love, just like everyone else. I just want to hang out with people I like and respect. I’m sure this is no different from anyone else. I just don’t give a shit about power. I don’t give a shit about my power and I don’t give a shit about your power.
I don’t give a shit about dominating anybody and I particularly don’t aspire to be dominated by anybody. I do not have the slightest urge for s&m sex. I do not want to beat anybody and I don’t want anybody to beat me. I don’t want anybody sucking up to me and even the thought of sucking up to someone makes me physically ill.
I gave up meat. I gave up blood. I don’t believe it’s the correct food for our species. I believe the world would be a lot better if y’all gave this a reasonable amount of thought and came to the same conclusion. I’m healthier, I’m happier, I’m calmer and most probably I have less of a chance of getting colon cancer, if that means anything.
I just think the carnivore world is so disgusting and full of shit. I think carnivore people are disgusting and stupid and full of shit. This predator shit has got to go.
***
It’s about 20 minutes to 8:00 and it’s time to close up shop. I would not say that today was such an amazing day as far as work is concerned. I’m not sure I did the things that I really needed to do. I did some aesthetic touch ups though and I defined probably the last of my gardens for this year. I have more land but perhaps I don’t need to colonize everything. I’ve either done great work or I’ve done enough damage already.
But right now, I need to start thinking clearly about my planting plan and what I want to grow. You need these plans because you need to understand what plants need trellises and what sorts of things grow better under plastic. This is just the beginning of this Garden. Technically, it’s my second season on this land but I was sort of a red shirt freshman the first year. Last year, I was mostly just an observer. I liked this situation very much and probably could have done exactly the same for the rest of my life. But I got ambitious and I really am interested in growing some food and learning to grow things generally.
I spent a lot of time today just staring at the Garden. It’s a pretty big place really. I don’t know what the government authority is going to do about my request to extend my lines deeper into the forest. There’s really no contest about it and I’m pretty welcome to do what I like in there. I’m not really free to cut down the trees but I’m certainly free to take the Deadwood out of there. It looks like I have a simple contract for pre-cut firewood and this will be pleasantly reassuring. But it’s also good to know that I could take care of myself with just a little bit more exercise.
I know I mentioned before that I had a good day on my feet today and I’m glad about it. I’m definitely getting stronger and getting better. It’s not perfect but it’s much more pleasant when you feel stable and are not in chronic pain.
I’m still not in Farmer shape though. Maybe I never will be. I don’t have so many hours of work in me before my body just tells me to stop. I’m really limited, much, much more limited than I was when I was younger. My heart works though. Perhaps that’s the best thing of all. I don’t have any heart problems or problems with blood flow right now. I just find my muscular limit and need to break away. The muscles fail, not the heart.
I had an idea in my head to do an oddly shaped Garden right near my house. I didn’t follow up on the thought because I probably have enough Garden space already. I wanted to make a place specifically for lettuce and spinach and greens. We are going to grow a lot of cabbage to eat and to save. I just think it would be nice to have a salad and Herb Garden right next to the kitchen. It’s not really such a long walk to get to the boxes and maybe I’m making a mistake. But I put some steaks in the ground to show where this little piece of the jigsaw puzzle would go. Maybe I’ll do it.
The biggest thing that happened today was a bit of a catharsis. I am passing some stage and entering another. It has to do with clarity of thought. I’m no longer thinking of building and I’m starting to move my mind towards planting. The reason I’m mentioning this is that it seems as though something is taking me along for a ride. Maybe it’s the season or maybe it’s some ESP on the wind from my neighbors. Maybe it’s even something inside my DNA from several millennia of regional and seasonal activities. But it’s a very tangible difference. Maybe it’s the weather.
Or maybe it has something to do with my relationship to my ex partner. During the winter and when I was living in her flat, there was a particular relationship that made her feel very different than she does now. I am speaking both empathetically and how I feel about the relationship. Last year, we just split up completely. She just wasn’t around to do anything when I genuinely needed help and frankly, she didn’t give a damn. Certainly she made up for it when things got extra spicy in late fall last year. She definitely saved my ass and made my hospital stay infinitely better than it would have been otherwise. But now we’re getting into something different. Now we’re getting into the labor. And she’s just not there.
This is the real key to this new manner of thinking. I am completely accepting the fact that absolutely nothing is going to happen unless I do it myself. I don’t have enough money to pay someone a living wage and I don’t have anyone willing to be connected to me on a personal level. I’m in the middle of something that I truly want to do and I’m also in the middle of something that I created. I bought this house and I created this Garden in my mind and it will be a good Garden. But probably I’ll have to do it alone because I’m the only one who cares.
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