On June 25 of this year, I was lured out of bed with news  that Russian helicopters were shooting at Russian armed columns on their way to Moscow. When I got out of bed it was even better: twenty-five thousand armed Wagner mercenaries had seized control of Rostov-on-the-Don and were on their way to Moscow. 

Then it was all over by lunch. Prigozhin changed his mind, and called the whole thing off. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin, former hotdog salesman, now commander of Wagner private army

Blink - or sleep in - and you would have missed it. Never in my life has such a huge news story amounted to so little. 

For the briefest of moments - less than an afternoon in fact - it looked like the world world was entering into a new phase. One of the world's biggest and most problematic countries was about to implode in on itself. Who knows what it would look like afterwards, but at the very least, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was through. Putin couldn't possibly fight a civil war and a foreign war at the same time, especially if the rebels controlled the border areas. Russian forces would have to come home, or else wind up unsupplied and encircled. It was over.  

Until it wasn't. 

You ever been awoken from a deep sleep, in the middle of an amazing dream, because your fucking air conditioner chose that moment to "CLANG"?  That's what it felt like. For a couple hours, it really felt like Victory was around the corner. If you think we're disappointed, imagine how the Ukrainians must feel! 

Still, it's difficult to see how this could fail to benefit Ukraine somehow or other. At the very least it'll further demoralize Vatniks on the front line: bickering leadership is rarely condusive to morale. And a couple expensive Russian helicopters were shot down. . .

If I made too much of it, in my defense I wasn't the only one: I daresay most of the internet, experts and amateurs alike, assumed full-scale civil war was on. When twenty-five thousand armed mercenaries start marching to the capital, it's not an unreasonable assumption to make. Death and destruction seemed far more likely than *poof* - nothing. I'm in the middle of Antony Beevor's Russia: Revolution and Civil War, and this was more or less how the last Russian civil war started, so it was not exactly a ridiculous thing to think. 

What the hell was Prigozhin playing at? Who the hell knows. Commentators are all a tizzy because there really is no logical explanation (not that logic ever had a place in Russia) or rational justification for it. Was he bluffing? Did he realize he bit off more than he could chew? Did he think his support was not strong enough? Or some other end game we can't even imagine and won't know for years to come. That'd be my guess. 

The whole thing is weird. The only thing I'm certain of is you'd have to be a Grey Zone imbecile to think either Putin or Prigozhin has come out of this stronger. 

 

 The Nova Kakhovka Dam has been blown, flooding large parts of southern Ukraine. Thousands will need to evacuate. Thousands lack clean drinking water. Untold numbers will drown. Thousands are without power. Agriculture in the region has been ruined. Most of the animals in Nova Kakhovka Zoo have died. It is a humanitarian, ecological, and economic catastrophe.

Both sides are blaming the other. Since lying is Russia's national sport, (I wouldn't trust Dmitri Peskov to spell his own name), I am inclined to believe Ukraine. These are lands Ukraine considers its own, and hopes to liberate soon. It will be inheriting a massive mess, one they're hardly likely to be imposed upon themselves. Not to mention how much it complicates their plans for counter-offensive in the area. Sabotoging one's own counter-offensive seems one double bluff too far. True, Russia also claims the territory. And the Russian side of the river has gotten the worst of it. But Russia has historically never given a shit about its own people, and never shied away from causing ecological catastrophes (Kara-Bogaz anyone?), so I have no problem believing they'd do this to their own side. Scorched earth is their way, or in this case, soaked earth.

Roger Waters off a Pig's Back.

 Are there no surprises left in life? Now for my third returning special guest. 

Having written here: 

https://stevedylan.blogspot.com/2022/08/being-roger-waters.html

that Roger Waters seemed to enjoy the trappings of authoritarianism much too much to fully condemn them, he's come out in full support of Putin. He's also under investigation in Berlin for anti-semitic imagery, and a uniform just a bit too naziesque for local liking: 

https://www.itv.com/news/london/2023-06-06/religious-leaders-criticise-pink-floyd-bassist-after-nazi-style-costume-stunt

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-denounces-roger-waters-performance-in-berlin-as-antisemitic/

I think he was allowed to wear it in the end, but still, that floating pig emblazoned with the Star of David is a bad look. 

With Boot Firmly on the Same Foot: Grey Zone at it Again

Now for some returning guest stars!

Up first, Putin fan club newsletter Grey Zone, they of the "we caught some chick in a crowd wearing death's head cufflinks, proving Ukraine is the Fourth Reich!" brand of wisdom. They struck again with another piece of irrefutable evidence, this time proving beyond all reasonable doubt Ukraine was behind the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. What is this Quod Erat Demonstratum smoking gun? 

They found a boot at the bottom of the North Sea. 

That's right, a boot. 

Hardly OJ Simpson's glove, is it? 

This is the standard of evidence upheld by these jokers. Evidence that the flying saucer people would dismiss. But not the tankie/vatnik crowd, who will grasp at any straw. 

Now Ukraine may or may not have been behind the sabotage (to what end, who knows), but her involvement is ever revealed, it will not be on the pages of Greyzone News. 

Next up, the return of slimeball, sleezebach Sachs, Jeffery, he of the "Mediator's Guide to Peace in Ukraine", which absolved Russia of all blame, and put responsibility for the current bloodshed squarely on the shoulders of NATO, and those Eastern European countries who had the nerve to join it. Those countries are supposed to be Russia's playground you see, and their inhabitants, Russian property. 

Sachs recently signed a letter to the New York times, under the heading "The US Should be a Force for Peace in the World", which regurgitated all these claims. 

You will notice, (after guffawing at the wildly inaccurate map of Europe) how the signatories apparently reserve the right to invade Canada and Mexico.

As a Canadian, I can say that if the US were in the habit of invading us, stealing our grain, storming out capital with tanks and defenestrating our Prime Minister, you're DAMN RIGHT we'd seek protection from whomever might be able to provide it. We have not, because it has not been necessary. The US has not threatened our national sovereignty since 1814. We don't even guard the border anymore. Letting us do our thing has not hindered US power or prosperity or prestige in any way.  It has proven a highly successful, mutually beneficial arrangement. Russia could learn something from it. 

These assholes though don't see it that way. They have more in common with Russia's way of thinking. So of course, they support Russia's claims. They don't want to help Ukraine, and if they had their way, wouldn't help the rest of Eastern Europe either. The days when  Russian tanks could storm Warsaw, Budapest, or Prague with impunity were the good ol' days for them, a time of peace an stability. 

This is what it means to blame NATO expansion. It assumes only great powers have interests or rights or legitimate security concerns. 

Sachs is also behind a number of articles claiming "Russia was provoked", a standard refrain of the blame NATO crowd, which assumes Russia has no free will of its own. Russia didn't choose to send a hundred thousand troops across a national border, it can only respond to Western stimuli like so many Pavlov's dogs. Would he invoke this kind of blame-the-victim excuse in any other context? "My ex was flirting with another dude, so I had to kill them both!". 

Fuck off Sachs. 

The Grey Zone vs Grey Matter

 

There are a lot of useful idiots out there.

The latest zany bunch of pitiful Putinistas I had the mispleasure of running into have been the putrid pile of pinheads running The Grey Zone, an online tabloid so blatantly anti-Ukrainian, they’re either run by the Kremlin, or really love the Kremlin (and no, I’m not providing a link) .

The cover story involves some dude in the background of a Zelensky photo-op. There’s a dot on the dude’s backpack that you or I might have mistaken for a brand logo, but which the Eagle Eyed folks at Grey Zone assure is a Nazi death’s head. They magnify it for us, so it looks like a dollop of spilled oatmeal. Nazi death’s head they assure us, and computer enhance it later in the article.

I am reminded of those flying saucer people who saw spaceships every time someone waved a pen-torch.

Is this blob on a backpack really supposed to be a smoking gun? Irrefutable proof that Ukraine is irredeamably nazi and presumably must be destroyed? Or, at the very least, not assisted? Gimmie a break.

The question is not whether Ukraine has neo-nazis. Of course it does. It’s got a well-documented problem with neo-nazis and unhealthy far-right nationalism, as do a lot of countries, especially in Eastern Europe – you think Russia doesn’t? The question is whether this justifies the annihilation of the country! 

What makes for a nazi country? Depressingly popular arm patches? Problematic Black Metal lyrics? Popular misconceptions of history? Backpack pins you need an electron microscope to see? Or is it something more systemic – a government actively implementing race-laws, building concentration camps, and actively pursuing genocide with all the power of the state. This is what the tankies have to prove – not these little gotchya moments, which aren’t nearly as shocking as they think they are.

Is it not interesting that Russia’s chief Rabbi has condemned the invasion? You’d think he’d be all over that. How about Israel? How about Zelensky himself, a Jew whom Ukrainians elected as President???

Thing is, Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around. Russia is bombing Ukrainian apartment blocks, maternity wards, playgrounds, and powerplants, not the other way around. Russia is looting Ukrainian cities, not the other way around. Russia seeks to erase Ukraine’s existence, not the other way around.

None of this is balanced out by some dude wearing a pin.  

useful links: 

https://medium.com/muros-invisibles/grayzone-grifters-and-the-cult-of-tank-fbd9b8e0dbe2

https://www.rferl.org/a/zizek-interview-russia-denazification-ukraine-war/32204259.html?fbclid=IwAR1tZ8yDxFGjspCKcDyH9SdxfSUQ0pDHAm85y4191aH126ym3dGk3FBsrDY

On Yet Another Lame-Ass Peace Proposal from a Clueless Western Wonk.

Even as Ukraine fights for her very existence, there are a great many comfortable westerners tutting that she may not be facing genocide today if she had only been less pushy in Donbass or Crimea back in the 2000s.   If she would just talk to her would-be exterminators, the assertion goes, maybe hand over Kherson, all would be just fine. 

A recent example of this Chamberlainesque balderdash is a Russophilic wank by one Jeffrey Sachs,  inanely titled  A Mediator's Guide to Peace in Ukraine.   

He starts off saying the invasion was wrong, because that’s what you’ve got to say to not sound like a complete and utter moron, and then goes on to blame the Ukraine and the West for everything. Before we even get into his verbatim recitation of the Kremlin’s other talking points, or its nauseating US centrism, I draw your attention to his claim that this was all the fault of NATO expansion, to the extent that it’s the first thing he lists in his prerequisites for peace in the final paragraph.

If I hear one more of these blowhards bleep about NATO expansion, I will scream.  I have screamed. I’m screaming now. Condemning NATO expansion grants one automatic non-revokable citizenship to Idiotland. Saying it with a straight face is akin to wearing a bright neon green sandwich board sign reading in all caps made of LED lights I AM A DOLT. Committing it to paper outs one as a contemptible Muscovite goon.

How so? Because it treats all of Eastern Europe as Russia’s personal playground. It asserts that the people and the land are basically the property of Russia, their cultures and institutions only existing at the discretion of Russia. It dignifies Russia’s self granted right to do as it pleases with its neighbours. It abandons those people to Russia’s tender mercies. Jeffrey Sachs joins Noam Chomsky, Henry Kissinger and Roger Waters in regurgitating this particular brand of geopolitical barf. 

You know who’s missing from all this self-satisfied  pronunciomento?

Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Czechia, Slovakia,  Hungary, Albania, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and basically all the countries who wanted, well-nigh begged to part of that expansion. Did it occur to Msrs. Sachs and co for a fleeting drunken moment that these countries of some hundred million people might have had some say in all that? Did they ponder for moment WHY these people wanted in?

CAN THEY GET IT THROUGH THEIR THICK SKULLS THAT THESE PLACES HAD “legitimate security concerns” OF THEIR OWN???

I’m bloody well sick of these clowns.   Russia has no “legitimate security concerns”. No one wants to invade Russia. The aforementioned countries do no want to invade Russia or take its resources or force it to use gender neutral bathrooms. They want Russia to stay the fuck home and not invade their own countries. When the Muscovites (and their toadies like Sachs) understand this, then there will be peace. 

 

Normal Things: On Stranger Things 4

 

`Normal Things:

SPOILERS, which I am honour-bound to report, though I’m sure there are embryos in  test tubes who got to the end before I did. . .

Skipped a bunch of episodes and finally gotten to the end. Much of my impressions constitute tidbits, which I will leak out in drips and drabs later, but suffice it to say:

a) it included my second least favourite cinematic trope: the one –sided military confrontation.

b) included my least favourite cinematic trope. 

I could see it coming a mile away. “Oh GOD!” I thought. “Don’t go there.

“Please don’t go there. Please don’t go there. PLEASE don’t go there. Please DON”T go there. Please don’t GO there. Please don’t go THERE. PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEpretty please? With a lump of sugar on top? Pleasepleaseplease FORTHELOVEOFGOD don’t do that, having gotten so far. You can come up with something, you can think of something, all that creativity, all that ingenuity, all that je ne sais quois, you can do something, ANYTHING AT ALL! Any unseen, unforeseen, unanticipated twist or turn you can pull straight out of thin air, something, anything at all, but for Fuck’s Sakes, PLEASE DON’T GOT THERE!!!!”

I was lied to when I was young: saying “please” never works. They went there.

So Vecna’s got ‘em all down for the count, all our heroes on both sides of the Berring Straight hogtied in otherworldly tendril, all he’s got to do is snap is fingers to crack the portals open and flood our world with unspeakable Eldritch horrors. Checkmate right?

But no, the good guys still have a card up their sleeve. All is not lost. What ingenious, unforeseen ploy have the Duffer Brothers cooked up to knock us on our asses?

Get this: Mike loves El, see? So all he has to do. . .wait for it. . .

Tell her!

Yup, all he has to do is tell her he loves her, and that’ll give her the strength she needs to break free and save the day with her magic powers.

Why didn’t he think of it before?

So we come to my least favourite cinematic trope (at least for now. The old “Stalk her and she’ll learn to love me” one is probably worse.)  the last minute emotional steroid boost. A sudden gust of extra strong feelings that gives them the strength to break free. As if all we needed to achieve anything was to feel a bit more.  

Drives me up the wall. I mean, it’s been used effectively elsewhere – Disney’s Something Wicked This Way Comes springs to mind (it’s more complicated in the book). Hell, I’ve used it in my own fictions. But context matters, and while it made perfect sense in Something Wicked, it really doesn’t feel right here. Maybe it’s overused, maybe it’s too easy. To neat. Too “we can’t think of anything else”.  Too “beentheredonethat”: if there were a fault in the just about faultless first series, it was overreliance on El’s powers. Here they go back to it, and everyone else’s effort really don’t amount to anything. I mean, I suppose the other senior characters got to use flame throwers to good effect, but it was really an after-thought. The important thing was the El just had to try harder.

After nine episodes and more than a dozen hours of buildup, it seems more than a bit bathetic. It certainly dampened my enthusiasm, and made it harder to enjoy the epic goings on.   

And for all those cliches and contrivances, they still couldn’t save Eddie. Oh Eddie, poor ol’ Eddie, the most charismatic character on US TV since god-knows-when, and they didn’t feel like keeping you on. To think what you could have done and where you could have gone on further adventures[i]. Alas, alas.

How much more it would have meant if his sacrifice hadn’t been so senseless: supposedly, he was trying to buy time for the others, but by then they were already deep in Vecna’s clutches, so what was the point?  And Vecna didn’t need those batty things anyway, so Eddie achieved pretty much nothing.

At least he got to play a solo first. It would have been criminal to send him out without one.

To be fair, his character arc did rather suggest a kind of tragic redemption through sacrifice – this whole “I’m no hero” business. His scene with Dustin on the hill -
“Don’t change Harrison!” – was backed to the brim with foreboding, though that might have had more to do with idiot Twitter spoilers. Either way, I found it infinitely moving,  and I swear I teared up. Why? Maybe it was just moving to see this somewhat aloof jester-figure finally understanding how much he meant to his young acolytes, and how much they meant to him. But even more, because it felt such a corrective to the show’ relentless theme about change – yes, things change, but there’s also such a thing as consistency, and some things, like courage, integrity, individuality, and yes, friendship, ought not to be so fickle. Certainly, it was an antidote to season’s 3’s poisonous portrayal of role-players. Here’s the proper message: role-playing is cool, nerds are cool, and however you might grow or evolve over time, don’t ever stop being you.

So Eddie’s gone, but Hopper and Joyce are back, and Vecna’s vanquished, and about a hundred threads left untied – Dr. Owens? Dimitri? The General? Jason?[ii] There’s very obviously going to be another series. I do hope it continues along the same line – disappointments aside, it was gripping and moving. I liked the extra length episodes (though they wreaked havoc on the sleep schedule), for giving us a deeper story and more time with the characters, which still felt insufficient. A tenth episode would surely have wrapped things up more smoothly, but would the public had the patience for it?

For all my griping, my impression is still pretty positive. The series was gripping all the way through, clever, atmospheric, occasionally funny, but not so much to dampen a sense of menace. It gave the brain and the imagination a lot to chew on. And I haven’t been this invested in a set of TV characters since Peter Capaldi was Dr. Who. So despite reservations, gold stars all around.

Horns up. \m/

Final thoughts:

-          let’s give a shout out to the other awesome characters that don’t get enough hype. Murray (Brett Gelman) and Erica  (Priah Ferguson) lit up the screen every time they walked on. I even liked Robert Morgan’s world weary Officer Powell, who was clearly counting down his days till retirement, clearly sick of all that supernatural shit.

 

-          Good for Robin, who might get a happy ending after all.   

 

-          Vecna’s origins? Call me naïve or dim, but I didn’t see it coming at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

[i] And the current repulsive trend of origin stories wouldn’t help: what’s the point of following a character up ‘til their starting point? Before all the major character development? Knowing full well he’s doomed? How are we supposed to watch and enjoy the character in action knowing their fate in advance? Never understood that.

[ii] I am reliably informed by https://strangerthings.fandom.com/wiki/Jason_Carver that he was killed in the end, I have no memory of this scene. Pitty. I’d be curious how these god-boys would behave in the aftermath.

(Stay off this site by the way. Don’t let obsessive fandom shape your impressions).