Category: Opinion

I confess that at the beginning of September, after the Ukrainian “Kharkov counter offensive”, and influenced by the heavy criticism for Vladimir Putin and his “way of doing things”, for a couple of days I somewhat lost my faith in him. I swallowed all the critics, analysis and reports on several “friendly” channels, I processed the information and concluded that the allies might indeed, after all, lose this war. Also I thought that an “upgrade” from SMO (special military operation) to ATO (anti terrorist operation) was desirable, inevitable and imminent, because it was “so obvious” that Moscow had committed too few troops to the said SMO.

But then I came again to my senses and realised my misjudgement. Or so I think. There are several reasons why.

I believe I understood, like an epiphany, that Russia is fighting one single war on two totally different fronts: one is the conventional, military struggle against NATO on Donbass soil; the other is the economical and geopolitical wrestle against the US hegemony. But I insist: despite these two extremely disparate fronts, this is only one war, and therefore the respective battles must -or should- be fought in coordination.

Yes, it is true that Moscow made a blunder on the Kherzon area; a mistake of which I am confident they have learnt the lesson. It should not be repeated; although of course another blunders will ensue: probably the Russian high command and intelligence services are not performing as they should.

And, yes, it is also true that Moscow has too few troops involved in the SMO. The Kremlin perhaps ought to upgrade to ATO or even formal war, commit more troops and weapons, and finish Kiev off in one week, thus sparing thousands of civilians, soldiers and militias, plus goods, constructions, infrastructure, assets — in the short term. Continue reading “Overcoming defeatism”

Almost four decades ago Hollywood released a comedy titled Trading places. In the plot, two filthy rich old billionaires discuss on whether people, once modeled by their upbringing, can be changed by the environment. One sustains that we basically remain the same throughout all our lives, whereas the other argues that the surrounding circumstances can result in dramatic personal changes. In order to settle the debate, they agree, even at the cost of significant personal expenses, on carrying out an experiment on two subjects by drastically altering their personal lives.

The billionaires make a bet on the result. At the end of the experiment, it turns out that, indeed, a beggar is turned into an educated, well-off and successful broker whereas a very rich businessman will see his life ruined and wrecked. In view of this outcome, the billionaire who loses the wager pays his debt to the other: one American dollar. The bottom line of this comedy is to show how third person’s lives can be changed by the mere caprice of the powerful, just like that, simply for fun.

For the past two decades we have been witnessing how the global elites, by use of their extraordinary influence and control of the finance and media, are imposing their agendas, via social engineering, on a good half of the planet’s population; and there are incessant -and incensed- debates on whether they do it in order to preserve and increase their wealth, or because they genuinely believe that “The great reset” will ultimately result in a better world. Personally, I cannot help but constatly recall Trading places. The way I see it, the global elites are like those billionaires in the comedy: they do not need more money; they have much more than they -and their descendants- will ever be able to spend in the rest of their lives, and can even afford a good deal of losses. They may or may not believe in their own social agendas, but mostly promote them for fun.

I can -and do- perfectly envisage the Soroses and Rockefellers of this world enjoying their yatchs in paradise-like islands while having a good laugh at watching how their social experiments turn out. No particular goal is necessarily involved in such games except that of amusing themselves and enjoying their power. As far as there is no atomic Armageddon at a planetary scale -and they will take good care this does not happen- all there is to it is pure entertainment. Eventually, one of them will say to some other: “Well, I was right. Now you owe me one dollar”.

I am convinced that, unless we seriously consider this plausible scenario, we will not be able to fully understand and apprehend the apparently crazy social changes and political turmoil we are being the victims of.

Visa isuing policies can be either symmetrical or asymmetrical. Whereas the first type is, I assume, a matter of bilateral agreements between two given countries (or blocks), the second type is more likely a result of “the market”, meaning that the most “demanded” or “valued” country sets harder conditions for isuing visas to foreigners from the less demanded ones. We in the west are used to profiting from asymmetrical visa policies: because most emigration streams come to the west from less developed parts of the world, we can afford restricting entrance to foreigners from those regions and enjoy the more laxed visa requirements (often none at all) when we travel there.

Well, I have said “we can afford” but perhaps, to be fair, it would be more precise to say “we must”, because otherwise our countries would be flooded with illegal aliens (or in the best case cheap tourists who do not spend any money here) and risk a deterioration of our own economies and welfare. On the part of those “poorer” countries, however, such caution is not needed because — well, we are richer, spend more money and anyway what kind of westerner is interested in staying illegally in–say–Ethiopia?

For this reason, whenever there is an asymmetrical visa policy between two countries, it is assumed that that which has the lesser restrictions is the poorer and/or weaker, economically and/or politically. This is not always true, but is a common and unavoidable implication.

As an avid traveller, for many years I struggled with the “bizarre” fact that it was so difficult to get a visa to Russia. Being an undeniable reality that there are (or were) many more Russians willing to gatecrash into the west than viceversa, I got even indignant at Russia’s stubborn insistence on a symmetrical visa policy. Why on earth–thought I–they do not just let us in visa-free same as Ukraine, Ethiopia or Georgia does? They would certainly profit from a lot more income from tourism and, gee!, who on earth wants to sneak into Russia? Continue reading “A thesis on visa restrictions to Russians”

Yes, I also uttered that watchword once. But before scolding me with swinish fury in your comments, please let me tell you how it happened.

It was my very first trip to Ukraine. I knew nothing about that country except that it was a former SSR, many people spoke Russian and there were beautiful women. Seizing the chance that no visa was required for European citizens, I simply crossed the border from Poland, where I was by then, and landed in Lviv. There I sought accommodation in a youth hostel, packed as they usually are by young people, in this case mostly Ukrainians–plus some other senior travellers like myself–by whom I felt warmly received. Thanks to Couchsurfing (that extremely useful but ill-fated website) I soon got acquainted with a bunch of other equally welcoming Ukrainians eager to meet foreigners (on which to preach their cause, as I later found out). In less than a week, I saw myself in the company of a dozen new enthusiastic acquaintances who were very happy to join me up, engage in conversations and show me around. It didn’t take me long, however, to realize that there was, among these folks–and generally in Lviv–a sort of atmosphere that felt quite familiar to me, since I had previously seen something similar in two other places: Catalonia (a well-known secessionist region in Spain) and Ireland. Continue reading “Slava Ukraini”