Putin is More Popular in Russia!

I was watching a news report a few days ago that said that Putin is even more popular in Russia now versus before the start of the "Special Military Operation."  This was supposedly based on a poll of Russian people and was reported.

 Reported by who?  Well, they never said, but these days there is only one source of news in Russia and it is completely controlled by Putin.  But let's just say it was a legitimate poll and was legitimately reported.  So would Putin having an 80% popularity in Russia now versus his 75% popularity rating before make sense.  Absolutely!  Why you say?

Well between the earlier poll and now there have been a few laws passed in Russia in case you haven't noticed. By the way, these laws are in direct violation of the Russian Constitution (there is one you know), but that doesn't make any difference if there is no one to hold anyone accountable to their constitution.

So these days saying the "Special Military Operation" is actually a war will get you 15 years in prison.  Saying anything publicly that is contrary to the official reports by the government as provided by their controlled broadcasts (all other non-government media have been shut down) will get you 15 years in prison.  To contradict Putin that "everything is going according to plan" will get you 15 years in prison.

So is an 80% popularity rating surprising?  Frankly, yes.  I am astounded that he didn't have a 100% popularity rating.  That other 20% of the people have some serious strength of character and guts. Think about it.

If you lived in Russia these days and someone wanted to interview you for a poll and asked you if you supported your president and his "Special Military Operation" in Ukraine, what would you say?  Would you say what you actually believe, or would you consider the 15 year consequences of saying something that might be interpreted as not fully in support.  I saw the look on the face of one of Putin's staff when being questioned about something.  The staff person was trying to be vague to avoid a direct answer.  People really try not to lie.  Putin smiled slightly and asked his question again and again as you could see the terror in the staff person's eyes until he delivered the unequivocal answer Putin was looking for.  Then there came the look of relief.  Putin smiled as the staff person began to breathe once again.  Yes, I am really surprised Putin does not have a 100% popularity rating these days.     

Servant of the People

 I discovered yesterday the there is one season of a 2015 TV series on Netflix where the protagonist is President Volodymyr Zelensky of the Ukraine.  The series is "Servant of the People".  I have only seen part of one episode since you have to read subtitles because it is in Ukrainian.  Still, what I have seen was indeed pretty good, especially when the main character, Vasily Petrovich, a high school history teacher, suddenly and quite unexpectedly becomes President of the Ukraine.  This appears to have happened because of a video recording of him ranting about how bad everyone in government really is these days.

I was talking with my wife about this and showed her some of it and then something occurred to me.  Putin's worst nightmare would be that Russia and Ukraine would actually become united as one country, but Zelensky would be named its President and Putin would be alive to see it happen!

 I intend to watch the series (23 episodes) when I have time to read it!

Scream

 Today I just want to scream!

I have spent quite a lot of time lately watching the latest news about Putin's Special Military Operation, no, let's call it what it is, WAR in Ukraine. I have watched information from Russian civilians, and interviews with random people on the streets in Russia.  I have watched what the Russian government has told and not told its people.  I have watched the news reports from multiple journalists across Ukraine.  I have watched interviews with Ukraine civilians.  I tried desperately to understand what is happening and why it is happening.

What has become abundantly and overwhelmingly clear is that this is one man's war.  It is the direct result of one man having too much power for too long.  It is one man who is absolutely following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler.  All of this because he has too much power and literally no one can talk to him candidly and tell him he is wrong without literally risking being killed.  His closest advisors cannot "advise" him because all they can really do is tell him everything he thinks is correct and everything he wants to do is the right thing to do.  No one can advise him on any negative consequences of anything.  Then when his actions go horribly wrong, like invading Ukraine, he removes his advisors for being wrong or misleading him.  How warped is that?  He is a man no longer living in reality and no one can help him.

Somewhere deep inside Putin knows all of this, but he is a prisoner of his own thinking.  He knows what he is doing has gone wrong.  However, for him it must always be someone else's fault because he cannot be wrong.  Yet he even knows everything is so wrong that his own people, those who actually know him, have to be removed from their positions because he realizes those are the people in the best position to remove him from office on a permanent basis.  The only way to survive is to limit the number of opportunities to remove him.  No one can be trusted.  Putin is and has always been KGB.  He knows how the system works.  He knows that he can be removed with prejudice in the blink of an eye.  One wrong move, one thing overlooked and it can all be over.  He has to eliminate all opposition and somehow make everything work because he has to be right and somehow make sure that everyone sees that he is right no matter what.

Yes, that above paragraph makes no sense, but somehow that is what is going on in Putin's mind.  He is desperately trying to rationalize the irrational.  He will ultimately fail, but at what price?  How many people will it cost?  How much destruction will it take?  How much collateral damage will there be?

 I just want to scream!

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

So what is my perspective on the whole Russia entering Ukraine with it's military and trying to take control? My perspective is that there are a whole lot of people in positions of power, authority and control who are acting like 3 year olds throwing temper tantrums with people's lives in the balance. 

So who do I believe?  I believe a little of both sides and I disbelieve a little of both sides.  Is Ukraine, NATO and the United States in general blameless?  No.  Is Putin liberating Ukraine? No.  Is Putin trying to rid Ukraine of Nazis?  No.  Are there neo-Nazi's in Ukraine?  Yes.   

Regardless of all the posturing and name calling the bottom line is this, Russia, under the leadership of Putin, is invading another sovereign country and attempting to eliminate its government and put them under his control.  Does that sound like anyone else we remember?  Yes.  Has the West been guilty of doing similar things?  Yes.  Does either one doing such things make it right for anyone else to also do them?  No.  

In the mean time, there is documented evidence of Russian attacks on civilians throughout Ukraine.  This includes attacks on residential areas, apartments, and public areas including memorials, hospitals and schools.  There is no moral high ground to be claimed here by the Russians in behavior fitting of someone else in the mid 20th century.  Then at the same time cutting off his country from any news that isn't "state owned and operated."  

Putin is a war criminal.  The Russian military is perpetrating war crimes.  What the Russians are doing is NOT a "Special Military Operation" it is a WAR initiated by Russia on the Sovereign country of Ukraine.  It needs to stop and it needs to stop now.  It is time for 19th century thinking to come to an end.

Misfire versus Accidental Discharge of a Loaded Weapon

There is a lot on the media with regard to the firearm incident that occurred on the set of Alec Baldwin's Rust movie. It is very distressing and I am deeply saddened that the Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed and Director Joel Souza was seriously injured.  Also at least two other people were directly involved with the handling of the loaded weapon prior to Mr. Baldwin firing the fatal shot.  That would be the Armorer who was responsible for setting up the weapons and an Assistant Director who obtained the weapon and delivered it to Mr. Baldwin prior to the incident.  A lot of lives will be changed forever.

There is something else about this whole sad incident that disturbs me; the exceptionally poor media reporting of what happened.  I read multiple accounts that all seemed to be parroting the same source and misrepresented a rather serious issue that is highly pertinent to what happened.

In multiple media accounts there was mention about a concern regarding a weapon (possibly the weapon used in the incident) that had "misfired" a couple of times before the fatal shooting.  I read account after account and was puzzled why this was such a big issue.  Why? Because a misfire is a "failure of the weapon to fire when it is SUPPOSED to do so."  A misfire in itself is not dangerous, but how you handle a misfire IS important.  A misfire can be the result of a number of factors.  The trigger and firing pin mechanism may have become jammed and failed to strike the primer, the primer may simply not have been struck hard enough to initiate a fire, or the primer can be faulty and incapable of firing.  

A misfire is first handled by "not doing anything" for at least 60 seconds in the unlikely event that the firing mechanism may "un-jam" and fire late.  So during the 60 seconds you keep the weapon controlled and pointed in a safe direction.  After this a person with adequate experience or qualifications may proceed to unload the weapon and determine the nature of the problem.  This can all be done safely and is not terribly difficult.

So I kept wondering how a gun "misfiring" was pertinent to shooting someone with a live round.  Then I read this...

"New Mexico workplace safety investigators are examining if film industry standards for gun safety were followed during production of “Rust.” The Los Angeles Times, citing two crew members it did not name, reported that five days before the shooting, Baldwin’s stunt double accidentally fired two live rounds after being told the gun didn’t have any ammunition.

"A crew member who was alarmed by the misfires told a unit production manager in a text message, “We’ve now had 3 accidental discharges. This is super unsafe,” according to a copy of the message reviewed by the newspaper. The New York Times also reported that there were at least two earlier accidental gun discharges; it cited three former crew members."

Did you see what the actual safety concern was?  I did.  The concern was not about a gun that "misfires" it was about either two or three "accidental discharges" of a loaded firearm on the set. That's a whole different situation and one the media could not even report correctly when staring a quote right in the face while writing their article, "We’ve now had 3 accidental discharges. This is super unsafe.” 

This ranks up there with CNNs use of the terminology "Full  Semi-Automatic" to describe a mode of weapon use that DOES NOT EXIST.  This is possibly hoping to get viewers to conflate this with fully automatic weapons (i.e., machine guns).  

This absolutely atrocious reporting is why I have little to zero respect for those who would like to consider themselves to be journalists.  

So, what should have been done that might have prevented this.  First, there is no way in the world any live ammunition should have been anywhere on or near the set (i.e., completely banned from the premises).  After the first incident (if the reports are true), the whole set should have been shut down and everyone in the cast and crew should have been handed their heads if they were found to have brought any live ammunition onto the set.  Their career should be over on that day with every director in the industry notified what happened and who was responsible.  Who should have done this?  The Producer.  Second, everyone handling a firearm should have been well trained in how to check and clear a firearm properly.  In this case the Armorer, the Assistant Director, and the cast member handling the gun for the scene (Alec Baldwin).  Third, the very first "accidental discharge" of a weapon should have been immediately reported to authorities for a full investigation.  Who should have done this?  That would be the Producer.

The producer, or in this case producers, would appear to bear a lot of responsibility for mis-operation of the production leading directly to the fatal event.  It is literally their job to be responsible for the production.  The producers are: Allen Cheney, Ryan Donnell Smith and Alec Baldwin.  

What should be done now?  The movie should be shut down with no prospect of a restart.  All investment money that has not been spent should be returned to investors.  All the people involved should be indicted and tried in a court of law.  Then civil lawsuits should be filed for damages by the Director and the family of the Cinematographer. 

Will the courts get it right? Why should this time be any different than the court case involving John Landis and the Twilight Zone movie? By that I mean, probably not.           

Friends and Loneliness

I have debated with myself about releasing this.  Then I started thinking about my previous posting.  After all, there is no indication anyone but me will ever see it.  What am I afraid of?  Maybe someone won't like what I am saying.  So what?  There is a lot of things other people say that I don't like and that hasn't impeded them.  So, here it goes.  

It seems that things are different these days compared to many decades ago.  People don't often have a lot of friends.  They might have one or two and getting together to do things is not very common.  Then 2020 happened and the whole bottom fell out of being personally in touch with ... anyone.  It's been Zoom this, Skype that, Team something else plus working from home so that you don't even have in-person contact with co-workers.  I am retired since 2018 so I didn't even have that the last few years.  Everyone is just a picture and voice coming out of a computer or phone.  

My wife does much better at keeping in touch with remote friends.  She calls them  just to say hello and they call her just to talk about what's going on.  I do good to send a Christmas card once a year.  I am awful about maintaining contact with people over long distances.  It's kind of strange since I am the one whose hobby has been talking to people hundreds and thousands of miles away that I have never met personally.  

What I find with the remote interactions these days is such an artificial environment where I don't feel like I know anyone and I don't feel comfortable with letting anyone actually know me.  The exceptions to this are rare for me.  It doesn't help that the one time in my life that I felt like I had personal friends it all turned out to not be real.  It was all artificial, manipulation and fake.  I wasn't being fake but it seems that everyone else was.  As a result I developed a deep seated distrust of people because the people I trusted I found out were not trustworthy.

 In so many "remote" interactions with people I end up sitting there and saying absolutely nothing.  I listen, watch, and then after a while I just disappear fully convinced that no one ever even notices or cares for that matter.  I know this sounds depressing and it is.  I wish life was different and I think it was different at times in the past.  I am just not optimistic about where we are headed in the future.

 I relate to all the people who, for whatever reason, don't feel like they have ever been able to express who they really are inside.  Me too.  No, I don't have any deep dark secrets, but I think we all hide the parts of us that we don't feel are acceptable to those we are around.  It wears on  you.  You get so caught up in not being you until you finally discover you don't even know who you are anymore.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day and I will start over and try to be my best self once again.

Where I Am With Regard to Religion

I've thought about writing this for a very long time.  It's been years in the making and over that time it has become increasingly something I have thought about.  Here's the short version.  I am no longer religious nor have I been for many years.  This is after growing up as a kind of generic Christian, later becoming a Lutheran, still later being part of a Baptist Church and yet another Baptist Church, Then becoming part of a non-denominational church, and then attending several other churches over a period of a few years. 

By saying I am no longer religious, I mean that I simply no longer believe in a God or gods.  I am not claiming that no God or gods exist, just that I am not convinced that any exists.  God or gods either exist or they don't, I just have not seen evidence that would convince me to the point of being able to convict a God of existing.  Any God.  All this means is that I now have a default lack of belief in something because I have not been convinced that it exists (rational thought process).  In the past I believed because everyone around me believed and I simply thought that they knew something that I just accepted as being true without full examination.  

 Having taken a good hard look at the situation for myself, rather than trusting others, I find no convincing evidence for belief.  When people cite evidence for the Christian God, it generally boils down to something said in the Bible which is a book that people claim "comes from God" without any supporting evidence that this is so.  Then they claim that God exists because of some philosophical reason which was never why they came to believe that a God exists themselves.  The philosophical reason, which is invariably flawed, simply has become the rationalization for the belief that they already had.  The result is a poor attempt to prove that God exists that often starts off by assuming that God exists and trying to show that this makes logical sense (circular reasoning).  

When all else fails what I hear mostly is that you just have to have faith.  As it turns out, faith is just the excuse people use for believing something when they have no evidence that it is true (otherwise they would cite the evidence/reason(s) for their belief).  Faith amounts to gullibility for believing something that is "too good to be true" and has no real supporting evidence for being true.  Faith simply is not a reliable path to truth since you can just as easily believe something that is NOT true by faith as something that IS true.   

I will pause to say the following.  If there really was a God who is maximally powerful, omniscient, and full of grace and truth, I believe such a God would have the power to convince me that he, she, or it actually existed.  Of course there are those who say God won't do that because it violates "free will."  Nonsense.  According the the biblical narrative the Devil himself absolutely would know that God exists and that didn't violate his free will.  Also, the God of the Bible violated a lot of people's free will whenever it suited him.  Knowing that God exists would simply give people a choice based upon knowledge, rather than giving them no choice (believe or go to Hell) based upon lack of knowledge.  

Any God who depends upon only ignorant people believing in him, is not really a God (Excuse me, why does God need a Starship?).  Yes, that is from a Star Trek movie, but it illustrates the problem of not questioning any agent claiming to be a God (a very powerful being was pretending to be God to get what he wanted - out of prison).  

By the way, for what it's worth, I don't believe in Satan/Devil/Lucifer/Baal either. It's just another character in the same mythology.  No I don't worship Zeus either and most likely neither do you for the same reason I gave up on the Christian God (also, not Allah, or anyone else).  

So now everyone who doesn't agree with me is probably thinking I am some immoral person who does terrible things because I am without God to give me moral guidance.  Sorry, but that is laughable once you actually read the Bible (Ex. 21 for example). No, there is NO excuse for the Bible (supposedly from God) telling you HOW to go about acquiring your slaves, how to beat them in an acceptable manner, how to own people as property and leave them to your descendants, and cheat them out of possible freedom.  Oh, but that was in the Old Testament people will say.  Well, guess what, slavery was treated as something completely acceptable in the New Testament as well. This kind of makes sense because the Bible says God is the same yesterday and today.  Yes, God, as described by the Bible, didn't change because a "perfect" God can't change (even if he is perfectly wrong).

Perhaps you get the idea that I am mad at God and "just want to sin."  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I can't be mad at something that does not exist.  That would make about as much sense as being mad at Voldemort from the Harry Potter books.  Also, my sense of morality does not come from a mythological being and instead tells me when that being is acting immorally (commanding murder of men women and children on multiple occasions, drowning the world to fix a problem he created, and playing games with human lives like in Job).  With regard to sin, that's about doing something against God which you can't really do if God doesn't exist.  Regardless, no I don't run around doing evil things.  Quite the opposite in fact.  Am I perfect?  Heck no.  Neither is any religious person I have ever met either.   

Frankly, even if the Christian God proved that he existed, assuming he was exactly as portrayed in the Bible I still would not worship him, her, it.  That God is a travesty.

There, I've had my say and I won't harp on it.  If you have any questions you can let me know, but I doubt that will ever happen.  As I said initially, this is the short version and there is a lot more to say on the subject, but it won't be happening here.  In the mean time I hope you all are recovering from what has been happening for the last year and a half.  This certainly wasn't the way I expected to spend my retirement.