Update Mar-Apr 2023

I want to start with an update of what has been going on in the city:

Mar 11th: An American, nuclear capable plane simulated a nuclear attack on the city. 

Plane type:  B-52H Stratofortress

Call sign:  NOBLE61

I understand that the US is a provocative jerk which does this type of thing all the time, but it bothers me that it doesn't attract more news coverage or more significance, because it is a big deal and very dangerous. We are lucky that Russia (and China) are used to this by now and know not to respond.

Why this is important: 

• To remember who is threatening whom with nuclear weapons -- Russia and China have a no-first-use policy, with Russia emphasising that a nuclear war can't be won and must never be fought, while the US has a policy of "strategic ambiguity" and a policy of threatening and sanctioning (also an act of war) nuclear powers which it can't control (and by control, I mean force into submission). 
• To prevent from normalising all of America's provocative nonsense.

Based on my reading, the plane was broadcasting its location (which is required for civilian airplanes, but the signal is often turned off if a military plane or drone is attacking a target or spying on a target). This means that it was an open threat, not a planned attack. 

[Scott Ritter -- start at 37:45]

The plane flew over the Baltic states, so they agreed to this. From what I read, Finland also agreed. The Baltic states have for a long time been more interested in hurting Russia and Russians than protecting their people, but Finland only started being so stupid recently. Note that from St. Petersburg to Tallin or Helsinki is a 6-7 hour drive, not accounting for customs, with the border on the half-way point, so the countries agreeing to this are putting themselves at risk, not only for a counter-attack, but also from the nuclear fallout. 

Apr 2nd: Terrorist attack  

[Scott Ritter]

I was in my apartment when this happened, and rarely go to that island anyways.

My understanding is the individual who did the attack was a Russian liberal taking orders from Ukrainians. She may not understand very much about what she was doing. The target was a blogger from Donbass. My teacher told me that the target was actually a con artist and not a real military journalist. She used to read his work and became disillusioned by it, and she did actually look into his background. Whatever the complete story, this was still a Ukrainian terrorist attack on Russian soil. 

Apr 4th: Finland joining NATO

[Scott Ritter -- start at 27 min]

I don't really have much to add. I am not happy about this, but I can't do anything but to hope that the Finns realise that this is bad and reverse the decision. One thing to keep in mind is that the Finns sided with the Nazis in the blockade of Leningrad, probably because Stalin tried to retake Finland after it broke free from the Russian Empire during the revolution. After the war, Finland and the Soviet Union agreed that Finland would be neutral and independent.

From what I know, before the pandemic people would regularly cross the border to go shopping. When I was in PSI the Finn I talked to had a positive attitude towards neutrality. It is possible that the people are not so interested in joining NATO as the government.

Personal update

I bought an apartment in St. Petersburg. This has been consuming all of my time and energy. I will post photos in the next couple of days.

Some Videos

This refers to the protests in Iran, from a female scholar within Iran:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUucX0FcBBg

This refers to Ukraine, from a Russian liberal anti-war activist who went to Donbass:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OysQ7yQl_o

Update August 2022

So, I have been struggling with a complicated emotional situation, and wanted to talk about the situation to an extent. Ordering this stuff is difficult, and I don't know how in depth I wish to go. In March, when I returned from Russia, I tried to write something up, but I also didn't want to force politics on people. The fact of the matter is that the road that led to the sanctions against Russia and massive Russophobia in the West is long and complex, and to even begin to attempt to explain it in a way for you to understand is probably too much for most.

I don't care if you are for or against Russia's most recent actions. The fact of the matter is that war is horrible and awful no matter what, should only be taken as a matter of last resort, and I don't believe that anyone who doesn't have an in depth understanding of what led to Russia's actions has any right to support it. I personally believe that you should admit that you don't know what has been going on in Donbass and not take sides, but Americans are used to needing to take sides in conflicts and somehow believing they understand what is going on in a country on the other side of the world.

What I care about -- justifying Russian sanctions, justifying Russophobia (both of which predate this year!), spouting CIA talking points, while implying any information source outside of the "mainstream media," is just Russian propaganda and conspiracy theorists, assuming that I have not carefully thought about what people have told me about what is going on in a situation which affects me, forgetting the fact that I have talked with Russians, Ukrainians, and people from Donbass, as well as American and Canadian activists in the past, and that I know what is told in the American media, as well as reports from journalists who have been to Donbass, disbelieving in my ability to put everything in context and analyze the full picture of what is going on, and just in general discounting the experiences and perspectives of the people in Donbass and Russia.

I am going to try to go about this as a summary, to focus on how events have impacted me. For people who wish to actually read into the full history of the current Ukrainian civil war, I can provide some links and some thoughts.

Pushing pass American propaganda 

 -- The government which claims to represent me has announced its intention at the total destruction of my people.

 -- Democracy means that Russians get to choose their government, not the US. Democracy means that Russia stands up for the interests of the Russian people and does not submit to American geo-political desires.

I have a podcast to show you : Government Secrets 31 from 13:55 to 23:10 -- These people talk about how people in the Middle East have dealt with the American interventions there. 

When you listen to this, and think it is not relevant, just remember, sanctions are also war. One way this was explained to me is that during the blockade of Leningrad, the vast majority of the deaths were due to exposure and starvation, not the shelling. The broad sanctions the US and their satellite states applied to Russia starting in February are explicitly designed to destroy the economy of a population, specifically targeting ordinary people, making their lives unbearable, in an effort to persuade them to remove their leaders and put in someone more friendly to the US. 

So, whatever you believe about the war, when you talk about the sanctions against Russia as being in anyway legitimate, remember that you are talking about trying to destroy and subjugate a population and culture. And Russians, like Iranians, Afghans, Syrians, Venezuelans, Cubans, etc, are not stupid and know who is to blame for their suffering. (I find it weird how John Oliver can talk about the poverty and suffering of a people without even mentioning the blatant American sanctions and theft of national property.)

In 2019, I listened to a woman from Donbass describe her experiences. One of the things she said was that when the Minsk Accords were written, they would have worked, but now, after years of bombardment by Kiev, people would never accept their rule. I remember thinking it was a weird note at the time, since governments are always killing their people and trying to subjugate them. Now I realize just how strongly the attacks on Russia, Russian independence, democracy, and culture, by the US establishment affect me, even while realizing that this is normal.

It is funny how at that time, I also thought the comment of another Ukrainian, that the Nazis were freedom fighters, not conquerors, was, while upsetting, not significant. I knew the whole role reversal thing between the Soviet Union and the Nazis in WWII was a common belief in Eastern Europe. (Some links which provide further links -- A, B, C) I guess I never thought about the fact that Americans didn't know this.

The US has a habit of inflating the problems within enemy foreign countries and dismissing the problems domestically in a way to paint a picture of a struggle between good and evil and create consent for their interventions. Even if you don't believe that you fall in line with their dialogs, the news sources you read certainly buy into this narrative, and so do the emotions which you have shown me when we get in these arguments. 

Just note that victims of American aggression, including Russians, don't have the same perspective of the relative importance of American crimes vs non-American ones. Russians very much understand Russian diplomacy has been constantly met by American aggression and arrogance for the past few decades. Seriously, Russia willingly dismantled their empire in an act of peace and good will, while the US used this as an opening to expand NATO up to the new Russian border in order to encircle Russia, while the UK and local allies have disseminated propaganda in ensure consent for this expansion. The US has been systematically leaving cold war arms control treaties since the beginning of the century, preferring to line the Russian border with American weapons pointed at Russia.

And any illusions that these actions are not blatantly hostile and a legitimate threat should be immediately dispelled by NATO's destruction of Yugoslavia as well as the Middle East.

 -- Denial of the right to self-defence.

Look, hopefully I have shown you that it doesn't matter if Russia has done something horrible by entering into Donbass, Americans have no right to judge or be at all ok with any of this manufacturing for consent for attempting to destroy or subjugate Russia. However, what you probably don't know is that Donbass has been experiencing this destruction by the Ukrainian state. 

 -- Belief that you understand something you do not.

For instance, not realizing that Putin was the one responsible for delaying war in Ukraine as long as possible and trying to solve the issues diplomatically, while ordinary people of Russia, Crimea, and the Donbass region have wanted this intervention for years. Not realizing that these same people, which have been begging for the Russian intervention, are motivated in part by their memories of the horrors of WWII and a sheer hatred for war.

Not realizing that Putin has a popularity rating that US presidents could only dream of, which comes from the fact that he forced the oligarchs in line, out of power, thus ending the horrors of the 90s, while standing up to the US, in support of Russian interests. Not realizing that this popularity comes in spite of criticism of Putin, as in people understand his rule in a complex, thought out manner, and not based on these good vs evil, us vs them, fanatic patriot narratives. This fact can be emphasized by the fact that Putin's popularity in Asian countries, for instance China, is actually greater than in Russia.

Not realizing that not all countries go to war to crush their enemies like the US does. Not all countries believe in discriminating against citizens of enemy countries. Not all countries want total dominance of their "allies."

 -- Who are the Ukrainian Nazi? Do they exist? Is this really different from other countries? Is the problem of Nazis and genocide being overstated by Russia? Do either the genocide or Nazis justify Russia entering Ukraine with troops?

I am going to skip over the first of these questions just to go through the yes / no questions. There are plenty of analyses. Here are a couple I quickly found from before this year -- A, B. 

Yes, there are Nazis. Yes, the problem is greater than typical. No, the problem is not overstated. And, no, these problems don't justify Russia's intervention. For anyone who knows about my positions, the last statement may come as a surprise. 

Russia's most recent actions comes as a culmination of an 8 year diplomatic effort, which has been systematically subverted by Western actors and openly neo-Nazi factions within Ukraine. Russia first tried to negotiate a compromise solution to the Maiden protests, only to have that escalate to a coup when a third party began shooting indiscriminately, allowing fascists to force the president to flee. In South-Eastern Ukraine, anti-Maiden protesters came out to protest the coup and the policies of the new government, only to be put down violently in a wave of pogroms and military crackdowns so violent that the majority of the military defected, leading to a civil war. (The mass defection and other issues led to the fascist, openly neo-Nazi brigades being incorporated into the Ukrainian army.) While these people declared their independence and tried to join Russia, Russia refused, instead insisting on them negotiating with Ukraine and coming to an agreement to satisfy everyone. This led to the Minsk Accords, which were never honored by Ukraine, who refused to consider the people of the Donbass republics as legitimate people, Ukrainian citizens, with their own interests and desires. Ukraine, instead of following through on the Minsk Accords, decided to fortify the regions of Donetsk and Luansk which they controlled, preparing for war, as well as never stopping the shelling. (The former Ukrainian president has since confirmed that he never intended to fulfil the Minsk Accords and only used them to help buy time to build up a powerful army.) Russia has tried to deal with this by continuously trying to show the suffering of the people of the Donbass to the West, while pushing to get Ukraine to implement the Accords.

Russia has no right to govern the situation of Ukraine at all in the regions where the population supports Kiev or at the very least has not asked for Russia's help. Russia's right is limited to providing requested help for the people for whom Russia promised aid and protection after request, and to provide that support in the most diplomatic and least confrontational or violent way possible, ensuring every violent action taken is directed at its intended or necessary target. Donbass gets to judge what actions are needed in Donbass, if the discrimination is real and a problem, not Russia or Ukraine. If it were not for the people in the relevant regions asking for help, the legitimacy of this request based on the history and situation, the attempts by Russia to focus on diplomacy and humanitarian aid while waiting for the last possible moment to intervene militarily, continued desires for diplomacy, Russia avoiding striking civilian targets, Russia's obligations to protect Crimea and the legitimate threat to Russia as a result, and the fact that the population of Donbass lived on the border, necessitating a first strike to prevent an invasion, it would not matter how bad the situation were in Ukraine, Russia would have no right to intervene. 

Yes, Russia was not just provoked into war with Ukraine, but forced into it. Putin has for the past 8 years been amazing at refusing to go to war despite ample motive. And, besides, entering into a blatant American trap is a horrible decision, if not absolutely necessary. 

Seriously, the patience from Russia, from China, even from Iran, with respect to the US and their belligerence has just been amazing to watch. Especially given that these people are not exactly peace activists. If the US was on the receiving end of even a fraction of the American provocations, the US would attempt to destroy that country instantly. The US is still blockading Cuba for having the nerve to choose their own government.

 -- Response to: Russia wanted to set up the Minsk Accords to force Ukraine to remain neutral.

Whether or not this is true, Ukraine refused to, and continually refuses to, accept the independence of the people of the Donbass republics. Ukraine has continued to state that they refuse to give up their rights to the land. I bring this up because I have had people tell me that they respect people's right to self determination, but Russia wants the Accords to force Ukraine to be neutral. I don't want to get into the legitimate security concerns of Russia as the US, a state which regularly destroys countries and people to enforce their will, marches to their border and attempts to encircle them, using extremists and manipulating popular sentiment in order to manufacture consent in the surrounding countries. (Russia knows this last point is happening because school textbooks propagating the so-called double genocide theory have been found in Russia as well. These propaganda networks have been linked to the UK government in certain instances.) Certain populations, which were a part of Ukraine, wanted to leave Ukraine due to their population being killed by the Ukrainian state. Ukraine said no. They continue to say no. If they said yes, there would be no more territorial disputes, and they wouldn't need to compromise with the ethnic Russian population to get what they wanted. They would be free to align with Europe against Russia. But they said no. Minsk was set up as a compromise -- they could keep the land (making nationalists happy) and would just not be allowed to subjugate the population on the land -- as in if they refuse to give up the land they must take the people with it. Ukraine still can at any point give up their right to their Russian-aligned territory, declare that it is not worth fighting over people who don't want them, but they continue to refuse to do so. I can't promise that at this point that this would be enough to end the war, as Russia and the Donbass republics understandably would not trust this, but it would certainly help.

 -- Response to: Russia denies this is a war.

While I can't tell you what the Russian government officials are thinking, this certainly is not true for Russians which support the operation. I have never heard anyone say this is not war. No civilian, no matter what they believe, would not call this a war. What people do say (or rather point out) is that the war began in 2014, not 2022.

And I would like to point out some basic linguistic facts. Russia calls their actions a special military operation. A military operation is military, as in it is a part of a war. In fact, in Russian, the word military -- военный, has the same root as the word for war -- война. 

[Update -- My understanding us that the term special military operation refers to technical definitions regarding the laws of war by international conventions. Special military operation has the strictest set of rules in terms of what one may do in the field of war, given that the scope is to be limited, while war is less restricted. I don't know all the details, but Scott Ritter has explained this point on many occasions.]

What happened in February 2022

The US news organizations, acting on behalf of the CIA, started to claim that the CIA had intelligence that Russia was about to invade Ukraine. Zelensky told them to stop (because it was scaring people out of Ukraine, not because he didn't believe it) and Russian officials laughed off the claims in the way that they do when Western voices say something obviously wrong, stupid and blatantly Russophobic. 

One such outlet gave a date, February 16th. I don't remember if it was the 16th or 17th, but around that time, ceasefire violations picked up from the Ukrainian side. This action, as well as intelligence reports of the likelihood of an imminent Ukrainian invasion, caused the Donbass republics to conscript all men and evacuate their entire civilian population into Russia. Russia then past laws to provide support for the refugees. 

Ukrainian saboteurs were caught at the border and attacks on civilian infrastructure were observed. As a result, on the 22nd, Russian Duma passed an almost unanimous decision to recognize the Donbass republics. Putin then took several hours to contemplate whether or not he would accept this recognition. In a solemn tone he finally did, and asked Duma to authorise military support for the Donbass republics. 

The next day, on the 23rd, Russian troops entered the Donbass on the invitation of the local governments. No shots were fired by either side. It had appeared that, at least for a time, the presence of Russian troops was enough to discourage Ukrainian attacks on the Donbass region. Eventually, Ukraine broke the ceasefire, prompting Russia to begin their operation. For the first 4 days of the offensive, Russia avoided heavy artillery, hoping that the ordinary Ukrainian soldiers would just surrender and nobody would need to die. When this wasn't happening, Russia reduced how much they were holding back.

I believe it was Scott Ritter who suggested that the intelligence the CIA probably had that Russia was about to invade was the Ukrainian governments battle plans for retaking Donbass. He is one of several Western military experts analyzing Russia's military actions, and like others pointed out that Russian military actions are characteristic of a reaction and not a planned invasion as well as showing remarkable level of restraint. (One weird example pointed out by Richard Black was a Russian tank stopping when civilians blocked a road.) He also pointed out that the Russian troop movements earlier were real and intended to be a threat / bluff to persuade the US to take Russian concerns seriously, and that the encirclement of Kiev was intended as a feint. 

Support for Russia

[I am not quite sure how much this is/was true. I think the picture is much more complex.] The reality is that most of the population of the world, outside of the influence of the US, view Russia's actions as historic in the same way as when Russia turned back Neapolitan and Hitler. Like both those instances, Russia, not being the good guy and just looking after their own security (as in, trying not to die or be conquered), has successfully stopped and begun the military pushback against the evil empire which had been previously decimating populations. This is why non-Russian speaking civilians in many countries will rally in support of Russia (and they do). It doesn't matter that Russia has a massive corruption problem, an economy based on resource and weapon sales, is blatantly neo-liberal and not socialist (as in supports the wealthy and not the populace), is acting completely based on self interest, has repeatedly done everything they could to avoid confrontation with the US, et cetera -- Russia is finally pushing back the American empire, and this means that their futures have hope.

In Russia, Donbass and Crimea, support for Russia's actions remain extremely high. When Putin finally made the announcement of military support of Donbass, people were celebrating, especially in Donbass and Crimea. While in the Westernized Moscow and St. Petersburg protests against war began, Putin's approval rating, after dropping over the pandemic, began to go up again. Russians developed their own slogans and signs for supporting the operation as a way to fight back against anti-war demonstrations and propaganda. I believe the support numbers are quoted to be in the 70-80% range, but I have not memorized them and they fluctuate. I do know the numbers are higher in the "Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine" than they are in Russia, meaning the population most affected by the situation supports Russia (and will refer to Kiev as terrorist). Most of the dialog with respect to the war is whether or not Russia should have engaged earlier, not whether or not Russia should have engaged at all. Contrast this to every one of the US's misguided wars. 

And when I talk about people supporting Russia, they are not doing it because they are "buying into Russian state propaganda." As I said people believe Russia should have intervened earlier. They had also expressed such positions earlier. Between Minsk and the special operation, coverage of the Ukrainian Civil War had mostly disappeared in Western news sources. Not so in Russia, where many people had actual family connections with people in the region and knew that it was still a war zone. Such images were shown all the time on the news networks. Even without this, since the start of the civil war, Russia has been accepting refugees from Ukraine, and people in the regions where the refugees went know this as they have seen them. One of the numbers I have read was that 400,000 Ukrainians received a Russian passport from the time of the Maidan coup to the time when Russia started offering Ukrainians in Donbass the ability to get a Russian passport. (The cited reason for this being that Donetsk and Luansk documents were not accepted internationally and Ukraine refused to provide services to people residing in the Donbass republics.)

In 2019, I had listened to a woman talk about the civil war, and she said that at the time the Minsk Accords were written, people would have accepted them, but now that they have been bombarded by Kiev for years non-stop, people would no longer accept rule by the Kiev regime. Even if you consider her perspective biased and non-representative, it certainly confirms the bombardment by Kiev which has been a constant feature in the lives of the people in the Donbass region since the start of the civil war.

And to be completely clear, the support for Russia's decision is based on Eastern Ukrainians wanting the war to end and not wanting to die -- that is why the voted for Zelensky, and that is why they support Russia's decision. This is their main priority. Russia will force Ukraine to end the war and bombing, protecting both the lives of the people of the region and their right to have their own culture and speak their own language. If Russia had not acted in that way, Ukraine would have come in, killing any potential resistance, arresting and torturing anyone whom they didn't kill with any traces of Russian sympathies, and force the remainder of the population to "Ukrainize." Their proof is that this is what has been going on, what they have experienced over the past 8 years. The crackdown on both dissent and the Russian culture and language has been (not so) slowly escalating, and while television programming has become strictly censored, people have been appearing on television making blatantly genocidal statements, while politicians and diplomats have also. Every dissenting politician is assassinated. There is a website which has been set up to allow civilians to know their targets and perform these assassinations. 

(Yes, I link to an article about the site because I refuse to link to a blatantly terrorist cite. The links to the site are in the article if you need to confirm its existence. Also strange -- the articles from the images of the site shown are written in Russian, not Ukrainian. The word "ЛИКВИДИРОВАН" stated as being Ukrainian is in fact Russian, not Ukrainian. The text on the side is in English or Ukrainian. The easiest way for people unfamiliar with the languages to tell the difference is the use of the "і" character.)

For Crimea, the residents understand that they would be next after the Donbass. Ukraine, besides cutting off their power and water and trying to intervene to prevent Russia from developing an alternative water source to the dammed river, has made it quite clear that they intend to retake Crimea and don't care at all about the wishes or wellbeing of the population.

Dictatorships vs the Free World

One pattern which I have noticed is that the US calls any country they can't control a dictatorship, while countries under their control can be called democracies. So basically, if your rulers serve foreign interests, you live in a democracy, while if they serve the interest of the people, it is a dictatorship. 

Putin is called a dictator, and otherwise maligned, because he stood up to the oligarchs and the US. This is why he is loved in Russia and why he is hated in the West. Yelson, who was controllable by the US, was a democratic leader, despite the fact that he reigned over the catastrophic 90s in Russia which was an oligarchy and mafia state, and the fact that the US got Yelson reelected is well known. 

Zelensky, on the other hand, who has been privatizing Ukrainian public assets and cutting workers rights (things which are unpopular in Ukraine), is somehow a democratic hero. 

These examples serve two points:

1) There is a kind of role reversal going on with these terms. Obviously, at least to anyone outside of the West, the free world would be the part of the world where the government is receptive to the interests of its people, rather than to, for instance, the American empire. Unprecedented unity in western organizations indicate authoritarian thinking and manufactured consent, which is very clearly enforced by bullying (as in people see the bullying and propaganda involved, not just the unity), while real democratic organizations, like BRICS and the SCO, have countries working together despite the fact that they don't trust each other or like each other.

2) You need to be very careful about the use of these loaded terms. Often times you will get a perspective of a situation very much manipulated in such a way as to invoke consent for American imperial interests, even if you disagree with those interests.

Summary and Conclusion

Nothing I have presented is in any way an authoritative view of what people are experiencing, but rather an expression of my pain when I continuously hear people projecting their sense of superiority on me, denying my experiences and needs.

When I think of and talk of Russia as being democratic in contrast to the authoritarian West, it is because people don't trust the government, don't trust the commentators, don't agree on anything, not because the government is somehow democratic. The understandings and beliefs of people is not uniform. People have different understanding, different experiences. They don't need to take sides, but rather analyze the situation independent of political factions.

Many people in non-Western countries legitimately look to the West for inspiration, as their leaders are horrible, as politicians tend to be. These politicians and officials do act like authoritarian jerks, maybe no more than they do in the West, but it doesn't mean it isn't real, and for people who don't have enough of an understanding to compare between Western and non-Western governance in an honest manner, the image of these wealthy countries being shining examples of democracy and what could be is very appealing. Western countries, besides possessing wealth, have not in recent times domestically experienced the political upheavals and societal collapses that are common in the world.

But yes, I am horrified as to what is going on in Ukraine, what has been going on in Ukraine, and fully believe that the US (and the UK and Canada) should not have done that. 

Some Links, Limited for Now

Information pushback -- 

These are sources, often started by Russian civilians with various political views, intended to cut through the Western narrative and war propaganda on the Russian special military operation.

This one I would describe as an English language pro-Russian propaganda channel. I would characterize their style as providing one side, as in either propaganda by omission and opinion-based reporting, or intended as supplemental to Western coverage. I don't think they are lying, but are blatantly one-sided. I don't actually use them, I just bookmarked them in case I want to find them again.

American dissidents -- 

These are people from the American left, socialists, progressives, etc. who were pushed out of that movement by the liberals when their causes were coopted by the US imperial structures while they insisted on retaining their anti-imperial analysis. One of them who I have been listening to is comedian Lee Camp, former host of Redacted Tonight, which was on RT America. He links news articles from non-mainstream sources here.

American journalism advocates -- 

Investigative journalists and journalism advocates have been another voice in pushing against the American narrative, and being censored and maligned for doing so. 

Some links I have are: Consortium News, Grayzone

Aaron Mate specifically has pushed back against attempts to use loaded terms to accuse journalists of being dishonest with no proof, in order to avoid addressing what they have uncovered.

March - April 2022

Update -- I wrote this in April, but never posted it due to the political analysis included. Much of this is still relevant, but seems weird to update as my perspectives have evolved since then, and retaining the record of my historical perspectives seem useful.

----------------------------------------------------------

So, I have been slow to continue to write. Life has been complicated for me.

I am going to go over a few points: 

Story status -- I don't know. I have a redo of the first chapter ready, but part of the problem is that I haven't been interested in drawing for the past few years. This is normal for me. I tend to phase in and out my drawing interest. When I went back over all the comments I have had from my work, both the drafts and the original prologue, I had noticed that my style requires images to work properly. I hate describing verbally a physical situation, so I need the images for the correct level of immersion. I am sorry I have been so slow, while still not wanting to declare that I am done with this project. I don't know. I like my stories, I am just bad at it. I can publish the text of a draft / outline of a story I have which I don't like so much for complicated reasons but shows certain themes I wish to show. I may decide to do that, or edit that draft some to add more such themes. 

Personal status -- I was in Russia from October to the beginning of March and am planning on returning in May.

Thoughts of current affairs -- I don't know how much I want to tell in this regard, mostly because I don't think people will understand. If I thought I could explain my position in a way people would accept it, I would.

Here is a good video I found of people explaining the situation. Here is an article.

  * What exactly is your position? 

To put it briefly, I believe all people and animals have the fundamental right to self defence. Yes, this includes Donbass (against Ukraine), Russia (against the US and NATO), and Ukraine (against Russia). I will not go further into this besides to note that this is an unusual viewpoint in the modern world, where people tend to value either allowing aggression (as long as it is their own) or complete pacifism.

When I saw Putin announce the recognition of Donbass, I knew right then that the West was going to completely ignore the 30 year advance of NATO, the US dropping out of all Soviet-era arms control treaties, the continual increasing sanctions already put on Russia, including wanting to cut Russia off from SWIFT over the Nord Stream 2 project, the 8 year civil war in Ukraine, the attempts of Putin to resolve Maiden, the civil war, and his concerns with NATO diplomatically, the nationalistic violence and rise to prominence of the Ukrainian nationalists post-Maiden, the anti-Maiden protests which were put down violently, which combined with the pogroms led to the civil war, the fact that Zelensky was elected on a pro-peace, pro-Minsk agreement platform, etc. and call Putin the aggressor. 

I can't really describe what it feels like when I see someone under assault and having everyone else act as if they are the bad guy when they decide to defend themselves, but it makes me feel powerless, helpless, vulnerable. Especially when attempts are made to resolve the issue without resorting to violence first. If you combine this with the fact that the government which claims to represent me (the US) effectively declared war on my people (which is Russia in this case), the whole situation is very traumatising for me. I know the sanctions, Russia-phobia, censorship, etc. have been going on for a while, but it doesn't make it better. The forcible separation of Russia and Ukraine as well as Russia from Europe amplifies the situation, especially for someone who has been in contact with both Russians and Ukrainians while studying Russian.

I know, war is terrible. Russia tried to resolve these issues diplomatically for 7/8/15 years and got nowhere. Well, they got somewhere -- they had more sanctions placed on them, more people dying in Donbass or fleeing the region, more NATO weapons in Ukraine. When they took action in Crimea (or more recently Kazakhstan) they prevented the violence and resolved the issues, which probably partially explains why they decided to switch tactics. 

And yes, all the sanctions and pressure on Russia has had the opposite of the (supposedly) intended effect -- increasing rather than decreasing their likelihood to resort to violence, increasing Putin's popularity, increasing support for nationalism and for authoritarian measures. But the US accepts nothing less than total submission.

However, I am actually against Russia entering Ukraine because I view it as a US trap, especially considering how close the date is to when the US said it would be, and you should never invade a country on the request of an enemy (even if this was what you were planning on doing, as you can just change your plans). Here is an article on this concept. Russia was supposed to invade on the 16th of February, violence against Donbass picked up on the 17th. The civilians were evacuated from Donbass into Russia. After Duma declared Donetsk and Luansk independent, Putin took several hours to make the decision to accept or reject it. 

If it were not for the US trap thing, would I be for or against this war? Well, the second unease in this is the fact that I doubt it will work, as the US does this type of thing all the time and it always fails. I know the Russian people don't have so much experience with "humanitarian intervention," but as an American I understand and am quite uneasy, even when I know that in this case, the threats are quite real, and well documented, and not at all imagined. Besides, even if it did work, it would be at great cost of human life, something which you are trying to prevent, and the divides within the country would become worse rather than better.

 * Where do I get my information? 

The American and other Western dissidents. Many of them use Western diplomats, military advisors, etc, as a source for information and analysis, as the links I provided do. Often they will cite people who are part of the Western government as part of their analysis. Yes, I use Russian sources, but I don't actually trust them until I have confirmation from Western investigative journalists. I bring this up because in the US anything which contradicts Western sources is referred to as Russian disinformation and I want to remind people that there is more than just the US vs Russia.

[Here are a few of the journalists who resisted Russia-gate: The Grayzone which is Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil, Ben Norton, and Aaron Maté, if you recognise any of the names, Glenn Greenwald. I believe Mint Press News also has anti-imperialist coverage based on complex in-depth analysis and getting to the root of the issues. Consortium News is another I have seen others use. You don't need to agree with everything they write, but here is an opportunity to get alternative perspectives to what is going on outside of the American propaganda. They don't do headlines or daily updates, however, just interviews and investigative reports.

It would take me a while to find them all and give a good analysis whether or not I trust all of them, but this is a place to start.]

* Why do you still side with Russia? 

First, I am not sure that I do, or at least not completely. Second, most of the arguments I hear supporting the "Chinese" / "Russian" / anti-imperialist positions on what is going on in this situation rely on history, facts, evidence, due process, and equality of peoples, while the American / European / "Ukrainian" positions rely on emotional appeals, accusations, fear, arrogance, ideology, racism and exclusivity. This is, of course, why Russia is loosing the propaganda war. Third, I still view Russia as my country and the Russians as my people, and don't want to see them destroyed or subjugated to the US (again).

Besides, Americans who don't support all the US wars would never put up with what the West is doing to Russia, whether it is putting US weapons on the Russian border (see the Cuban Missile Crisis), encouraging anti-Russian thought within neighbouring countries (with discrimination against their Russian population and support for Nazi brigades), fostering and supporting dissent within Russia (which is what the Russia-gate conspiracy theory was about), stealing the national wealth of Russia and wealthy individuals (the second point Russians don't care about, but America and many Americans hate), characterising Russians as inherently evil, attempting to cut Russia off from the global economy, denying or re-writing Russian culture (including their victory over the Nazis with great cost to them), preventing Russian athletes from participating in international sports, etc.

 * Why do you want to leave the West? 

I oppose the US on two points. 

The first is not political at all. I have always felt uncomfortable in American culture and society. When I realised there are alternatives that make me feel more comfortable, I started to seek them out. Russian culture is what made me comfortable.

The second involves American imperialism. Look, various people have various views on various topics for their own reasons, and I will never agree on everything, but the US has somehow convinced their people and many others in the rest of the world that they are somehow superior. I freed myself from the ideology involved in constructing this conception and don't want it forced on me again. Even if Russia were as propaganda-prone as the US, (an argument which I don't even want to get into due to the complexity of the situation,) it is irrelevant if I can talk to people and not feel forced into an ideology I broke free from.

 * Why Russia? Have you looked into other countries?

I would like to point out that once I form a connection, I am not going to discard it because it is "politically expedient." I want to live my life and be a person, not just do things so that I will be "safe." I want to be who I am, not who you think I should be. 

Besides, as far as I can tell, Russians are Asian in just the right way for me while still being European in all the important ways. There are more complications to this, but I know it is a good fit culturally, whatever their current government and whatever my differences in thought.

And yes, I have looked into other countries. And there others which are comfortable for me, but I don't have quite the same emotional bond. With Russia, I can be comfortable even when the system sucks or the country is under attack, and I want to learn the language and history, which is a level of bond beyond just "comfortable."

November 2020 Update

Writing

I have been not paying attention to this. Basically, I had a writer's group to help edit the story. Two of the members of that group criticized me for not wanting to lie about how humans work in a way which is detrimental to people struggling with mental health concerns, and I just stopped working on the project. Since I have been in and out of struggling with life, I have been ignoring this process.

Status Update

So, I was sick for about a month early in the fall when our city decided to require masks within residential building common areas. There is an aspect where I needed more masks in order to comply, but couldn't easily obtain them. There is also the aspect that I will often be alone in those hallways. I don't want to go into the details, but it is yet another time in my life when people assume something is simple when it is not. 

Things are a bit better now. I am still slow. I have been working on basic Covid modeling instead of physics. I have still been very slow with the being productive aspect, though. I have finally gotten some support put into place, so I will see if that helps in the next several weeks. 

Election Response

I was unhappy with the election result in March, and actually perhaps earlier, when Joe Biden originally chose to run. I was very unhappy with both candidates, and while I may be slightly relieved that Joe Biden won, I am not quite sure that is actually true.

Covid-19: Trump has been downplaying the crisis, including trying to manipulate the data. Biden has promised a national lockdown and to remove Trump's dissident Covid advisors. Both options are horrendous, promising to make the crisis worse.

International Relations: Again we encounter the reality that both Democrats and Republicans (and whatever Trump is) have favored military action and predatory capitalism (or empire) over diplomacy and public health. 

For Russia, while he originally promoted the arms reduction deals, Biden has become more and more anti-Russian since 2011 [ref] and Trump closed two Russian consulates and taken the US out of the remaining arms reduction treaties. Both also appear to be anti-China and fine with destroying the Middle East as well. 

With trade, like Covid, they seem less in agreement and more in favor of presenting their own brand of horribleness, with Trump favoring crude tariffs and Biden favoring free-trade agreements. 

Immigration: While Biden may appear to be gentler on immigration issues, we should not forget that Obama was nicknamed "the deporter in chief" for a reason. 

Black Lives Matter: Biden's vice president has in the past been very active in promoting problematic policing, and Biden himself has stated that he is not in favor of defunding the police.

Health Care: Biden refuses to put a single payer system into place.

I don't want to analyze everything in depth, but I do want to highlight some basic things to draw attention to the fact that people should not put much hope in Biden to be much better than Trump. Trump just happens to have the advantage of being obviously horrendous because he is not good at playing politics. 

Here are a few other people commenting on this situation: AA, BB. You don't need to read these points, but don't expect me to celebrate Biden winning the election.

Left vs Right News Analysis

This is a comparison of Russiagate (a Democrat conspiracy theory) vs Chinagate (a Republican conspiracy theory). I am sure that a lot of you believe the first one and either know the second as a conspiracy theory or have never heard of it. This journalist has a very emotional reaction to what is going on and the responses she has received to her analysis, but I still would like to show you the analysis as there are some direct comparisons. 

https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/imagine-if-msm-consistently-applied-the-evidentiary-standards-its-applying-to-hunter-biden-s-ddff7e7563b1

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/505077-trump-russiagate-biden-chinagate/

https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1320833227293028352

Covid-19 Response

I wanted to try to write some things to be clear about what my criticisms are as people don't seem to even understand what is going on.

 -- Passive vs. Active Involvement: I know most people like to just donate to causes, then get on with ones life, but this is a big deal to me. For, say, WWII, countries shifted their economy to meet the needs of the war and encouraged people to actively help out, and not just by joining the military, although that was included as well. For me, just asking for donations or asking people to hide in their rooms while we are told to sit back and praise the "heroes on the front line" rather than joining them, is not actively helping out, and is therefore very isolating for me. I could describe this in more detail, but I will stop here.

I could also here mention that trying to get public comment on Covid-19 control measures may also help with compliance, as people are more likely to follow through if they know what is going on, feel a part of the process, and have consented to it.

 -- Shaming and Fear vs. Compassion: I have previously described a personal experience with this type of behavior for a different illness. There are certainly reports of people who get sick with Covid-19 being blamed for getting sick, which has caused people to refuse to get tested, not tell people if they do test positive, and avoid any form of contact tracing, for fear of being exiled from society. Even the fact that people are told to quarantine (from family members) if they test positive rather than quarantining as a group and helping their friends or family who are sick may make the illness worse.  

Much of this is magnified by public health messaging, with authorities blaming increased cases on people not following the rules (despite the fact that this is only one contributing factor and disobedience of policies often being caused by poorly designed policies). Many of these people, instead of having an honest discussion of herd immunity, refuse to even allow the term to be brought up, assuming people using it are denying that there is a crisis. There is also talk of penalizing people for not following Covid-19 ordinances, but very little about trying to stop the shaming (which as I pointed out could also increase compliance). 

This is a major reason why I get annoyed when people complain about others not wearing their masks -- not because I don't think people should be required to wear masks, but because the emotion conveyed is fear and the mentality appears to come from the same place as the Covid shaming. 

 -- Crude Lockdowns and Blame-Shifting: I know that not every city is like this, but it is happening across the world, and people should remember to associate these policies with the ideas of "quarantine," "lockdowns" or "stay-at-home orders,"  because otherwise policy makers may get the idea that these actions are acceptable. 

For the crude lockdown aspect, many places are restricting people's ability to leave there homes, restricting or recommending against meeting friends in person (including outside or in small, closed groups), or restricting access to health care. These are all very basic needs which allowing for doesn't substantially cause problems, but is necessary for people's health. This is what I would be referring to if I were to compare the lockdowns to house arrest -- not the inability to go to sporting events, large parties, bars, or even get ones hair cut, but the basic ability to leave one's house or choose one's associates and to have close contacts. 

The whole blame-shifting aspect and how this ties together with the lockdown design is a whole other aspect. For instance, our university here has put unnecessarily harsh restrictions for being on campus, possibly so that if there is an outbreak, it does not happen on campus, and the university administration does not get blamed. This is not the only aspect, but there is a lot going around with trying to find someone to blame for Covid. (Which seems to not carry over in trying to blame people for the damages done by the "Covid management techniques," although if you were to blame someone for something, this makes more sense than blaming people for the spread of a asymptomatically spread, naturally occurring disease. I am not saying that people should be punished for taking reasonable steps to mitigate the spread which causes some damage, but once the steps become blatantly unreasonable ... if you panic in a crisis rather than manage it, maybe you shouldn't be put in charge of managing a crisis.)

 -- Censorship and Dogmatic Thinking: So, I don't know how much people reading this have been exposed to this aspect, but it is happening, and it is a big problem. Dogmatic thinking issues I have brought up above and in previous posts, so I will talk about the censorship aspect. Basically people (researchers and others) have been told to be careful about what they are saying about Covid-19, to prevent the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. In addition, any dissident voice is censored by the big internet giants, again, "to prevent the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories."

One of the things people have forgotten, however, is that it is precisely these techniques which make people doubt what you are saying, thus encouraging disobedience and the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. It also makes having a rational conversation about what should or shouldn't be done very difficult.

 -- Lack of Long Term Planning: I have previously described the mentality behind the whole ignore things, then shut down everything, but this should be obvious by now. The fact that people talk about the lockdowns or masks as a way to make this thing go away rather than just a way to reduce the spread and keep the hospitals open while we wait for herd immunity just emphasizes this. The fact that people keep on being surprised when cases rise at the times they had been predicted to continues to highlight this. Even things like not recruiting more staff and relying on lockdowns, not putting together field hospitals while cases are low, not making restrictions manageable long-term for people, etc. show this flaw in policy maker's mentalities. 

A Few Links

This includes some video from my time in Yakutia, taken by one of my companions while I was there.

This is the correct link for John Oliver on the call to build the wall.

Ironically, the problem discussed in the video is also a perfect description of the one involving all the misinformation everyone hears and believes about Russia, often perpetrated by "the Left" rather than "the Right" in this case. Here is a description of that for a recent scandal.

This one is on how the Inuit raise their children. I apparently didn't keep any others of this type.

Waiting for the Apocalypse

Update:
Because of my slow pace at writing, much of this content may seem out of date. I have updated stuff to a certain extent, but other things may seem a little off in how they were written.

As far as I can tell, I am basically in stasis, where I have been for the past couple years, waiting for life to be ready for me. The only thing which has worked to some degree for me is to go to Russia, but I need to wait for the risk of being sent to the US to be low.

When the reopenings were starting, before BLM began again, I needed to stop watching the news because most left-wing commentators were against the reopenings. I was always against the complete shutdowns, as I thought they were poorly thought out, poorly implemented, and would cause more harm than good. A couple weeks later, I was told by people I talk to regularly about the events in the US, specifically the protests.

I have been writing, slowly. I am editing the first chapter right now. I had been using a writer's group to help me edit, but the people there were of the type who had no attention span and were criticizing me for not following the typical erroneous and destructive tropes of action-adventure type stories common in fantasy. When one person goes into blatantly insulting me, you know there is a problem. I am sure that is not what she thought she was doing, but that doesn't mean its not a problem.

Work is not happening right now. I have been talking to my PhD supervisor, though, although mostly about Covid research. What he has been working on is here: https://nafshordi.com/welcome/covid/

I am also not working on my Russian, although I am watching Russian TV shows (without subtitles -- I don't know if this is a good idea, but I have weird tastes in TV).

The dog is being walked, although not as much as he should be. The food situation is not so great -- I am eating enough, but not necessarily well. I am not getting enough exercise or vegetables. I have been slowly managing to clean my apartment some, though.

I have been contacting people online. I also have a second DnD group right now as well as my Gloomhaven group.

About the Title:
The apocalypse is the unveiling, which means that I am referring less to a crisis situation as I am to the change in mentality which results. When the old world dies, the new world is born.

On that note, crises -- I have heard comparisons of Covid-19 to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, but these are both singular events, not ongoing crises. For crisis comparison, I tend to use the fall of the Soviet Union or the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, events still strong in the mind of Russians, which I understand to a certain extent.

What I would like to see:
At the very least, I would like there to be a reallocation of resources away from "defense" spending, to healthcare and other actual necessities. I am not going to go further into the details, like the question of "by how much?" What is relevant is the priority shift, where government officials realize that healthcare is a national security issue and the military, at least at the level of emphasis it has in certain countries, is actually a detriment to the safety and well being of citizens.
Here are a couple comments to that regard: Referencing a comment by the UN Secretary General, Gorbachev

One of the other big things is that I would like people to figure out how to slow down society and focus on long-term planning.

Overall Impression of the Current Situation:
Everything is frustrating. Life is like watching a movie -- I see what is coming, I see people headed to disaster, but I can't do anything to stop it. For stories, it is because I am in another reality, but in our reality this effect is caused by much more complex causes, and I am not unaffected.

It appears that every time there is a crisis, people insist on taking the worst possible solution, making it worse rather than better, because they are incapable of following cause and effect chains for more than one step.

I think my understanding of this issue comes back to my interest in non-trivial cause and effect. When I got interested in physics, it was because of my love of counterintuitive effects. This probably explains my interest in time travel, as the effect becomes the cause.

For me, the shutdown would be fine, at least intellectually, if
 a) people remembered and emphasized that the shutdown was to prevent the system from being overwhelmed, not preventing illness, tuned the shutdown accordingly, acknowledged illness or death as a possibility, and didn't refuse to acknowledge herd immunity
 b) people at least properly tried other solutions, like putting more resources and labor into critical infrastructure like medicine as an integral part of the strategy, recommended in addition to recommending the shutdowns, and people demanding to be involved rather than just hero worshiping doctors,
 c) people actually acknowledged and tried to take care of the vulnerable populations like the poor and homeless (rather than ignoring them or using vulnerable populations as a justification for your favorite horrible solution),
 d) people would be intelligent about shutting down travel, based on what made sense scientifically for mitigating damages of the pandemic, not on national borders or nationalism, or the practices of businesses, and let different cities and regions implement different policies based on what made sense in those regions, and
 e) there was an acknowledgement that the crisis is partially caused by a systemic undervaluing of medicine in society and mismanagement within government and medicine.

In general, long-term strategies and acknowledging reality are vital to proper crisis management.

In terms of the last point e, I have had two instances when I had someone apologizing to me during this crisis -- the first when I had asked for someone to call me regularly and she didn't notice the request, the second when I was almost run over by a car. Both times, I broke down because I still want the apology for e, and for the poor handling of the crisis.

Another big thing which has bothered me on the handling of the crisis is the emphasis on experts and expertise, and the crackdown on dissent. Personally, I feel that the attempted implication is that my experience with social isolation, ability to avoid herd mentality, and knowledge of modeling don't count in terms of being able to develop legitimate beliefs and hypotheses. I am not going to go further into this discussion, since it is not simple at all.

Black Lives Matter:
This year, I have been thinking a lot about the events surrounding 1917 and 1991, and the constant predictions (by historians and economists) of the impending collapse of the "American empire." Granted, the way these things work, you can make generalized predictions based on underlying patterns, but not specific ones.

What is going on in the US right now is kind of surreal. The way that middle class white people and the authorities have just turned from opposing such things (as previously people claimed that we can't be anti-police, and emphasized looting and rioting piggybacking on BLM) to supporting them all of a sudden is kind of bizarre to watch.

The two main thoughts I have regarding the resurgence of Black Lives Matter are: "What took you so long? We have known this for decades." and "Don't you know that revolutions often end badly."

I will summarize my response (to BLM) in three points: humans are emotional, the issues are real, and revolutions are messy.
  -- Humans are emotional: I tend to think of the call to "defund the police" like the ones to "build the wall" or "shelter in place." No matter how much people try to convince themselves and others that this is just a shorthand for something rational, reasonable, well thought out, and scientific, the reality is that this is just an emotional reaction to crisis combined with the desire for a quick fix. I am not going to get into the analysis of these things, only saying that I don't believe all of them are equal in validity. [Here is John Oliver on the police and the wall. I may disagree with him and many "liberals" on a lot of things, but many of his analyses are very good. Just avoid anything involving Russia, and be careful about what he says regarding Trump or non-Anglophone countries. Careful research does not undo pre-existing biases.]
 -- Revolutions are messy: The first point here is that we are in a revolutionary state. This one is much more difficult to see, but the US is blatantly polarized and divided, and calls to disband the police and take down statues are blatantly revolutionary. I don't want to say whether we should or shouldn't have a revolution, or whether or not it will be successful, only that this is what is going on.
    The second is that they are often messy. Having one faction exploit a crisis to take control, or years of horribleness primarily affecting the most disadvantaged in society have been the characteristic factor of such political turmoil in the 20th century, and even into the 21st.
 -- The issues are real: I am not going to go through all the details and statistics for black oppression. I will merely start with the most readily available -- The US has the highest per capita (and total) prison population.
    As per riots and looting: I remember reports when there were protests and riots in Ferguson of the police purposefully refusing to stop the looting and destruction to make the situation worse as they attacked the protesters. It was actually the protesters who cleaned up after the mess and repaired the local shops, not the police.
    I am not saying that such things are caused by agent provocateurs. Most of the looters and rioters, like Trumps "base", the nationalists or "neo-nazis," many of the Islamic terrorists, and often even Black Bloc protesters are poor, alienated people who just want to take out their anger on society, without paying attention to if their target is even legitimate, and all the police need to encourage this behavior is to cause violence, typically by attacking the protesters, and to not stop the inevitable wave of violence in response, if it is not targeted at them. When people are in survival mode, they are not very "socially responsible," something which is quite clear when you look at the past 30 years of Russian history.

I hope that people redirect resources from the police to social services -- conflict mediation, mental health, people who help find employment and other opportunities, etc., restorative justice, and even advocates which can help negotiate with employers. Many of these things exist, but they are not very "accessible," I guess would be the best term.

My Experience and Perspective:
Quarantine is very triggering for me (as are prison and slavery). However, some of the experiences which have caused this trauma have also allowed me to appreciate the usefulness of quarantine. Maybe it is just my ability to think things through, I don't know.

Basically, if I was struggling, if I was sick, or if I did something wrong, the response was the same -- isolation. My interpretation was that I was punished for struggling in life. The result is I often needed to work to exhaustion, after which I was forced to isolate.

The belief was that this would force efficiency, but it did the opposite for me. I learned not to wait until the last minute to do work, but I learned how to be inefficient -- to make or find breaks, to take advantage of gaps in events for leisure rather than work.

Being disabled, consensus decision making is basically survival for me. I first figured this out on my own based on issues I had with group therapy in 6th grade, but later, when studying socialism as an undergraduate, learned about the existence of such practices in other societies.

So, how does this relate to our current situation:

I like the fact that things have shut down. It feels like I have the opportunity to slow down, to recover and deal with putting my life together instead of pushing to keep going into work. And, yes, trying just to go into work had become exhausting for me.

Things are difficult, though, because I am not really an internet person. I don't like relying on the internet to make contacts, learn about things, and do everything. I rely on the local gaming circles to develop connections with others.

Part of it is that I can't really handle big crowds. It gets overwhelming for me. Online communities can get big fast, while our local gaming stores have only so many people who go their regularly. What was done with my parents' friends group, using unhangouts, seemed to work well for me, since we could split up the group.

The other big issue I have with online communication is that it is not forced, like it is in person. If I go find someone and can't talk, usually they will ask me what I want, forcing the conversation. Without this, initializing conversation is very difficult for me.

I am also at the point where I am sure that I need to go to Russia, which I can't do while travel is limited. But that will end, and hopefully they will make immigration easier.

Basic Principles:
 -- "Avoid ideology." An alternative way to express this during the current pandemic would be "The next person to tell me 'flattening the curve,' I want to punch in the face."
    Basically, people tend to repeat the same things over and over again. This is the first step in the construction of an ideology. Basically, people do this because it works -- if you repeat something enough, people will believe it. Except, the reality is not so simple. Because repeating the same things doesn't make it true. And many people are resistant to this trick. I typically get very annoyed, because I am usually far past this thought in my thought process (as in "I know that already!"). Others will purposefully misbehave or refuse to believe, or they will sacrifice themselves or their people for the cause, even when it is not actually helping people like they think it is.
    "History is full of libertarian ideas which have been re-purposed into authoritarian ideologies used for societal control." The most obvious case would be the various forms of Christianity, but also Islam, communism, democracy, etc. I am not going to get into the details. You can look at the history and philosophy if you want. But, basically, when the things you are saying are aimed at trying to turn people's brains off instead of trying to get them to think, it becomes a problem. People end up doing things which cause more harm than good, whether by compliance or defiance, because the ideology becomes the cause, not helping people. Furthermore, it becomes very easy for a group of authorities to use this to solidify their power, pretending to be doing this for the greater good (and perhaps even lying to themselves about this).

 -- "If someone is violating the rules, misbehaving, etc., don't attack them, instead find an alternative way for them to satisfy their needs."
    This one feels like I can give you a lot of links, as it is certainly not a novel concept, and should be well known.

 -- "Good leadership requires listening to the needs of those for whom you are responsible, not blindly following the orders of those on top."
    I think I have brought this up before, so I will not go into detail with this.

What about my beliefs, concerns and questions about what is needed and what is happening?
 -- Don't make this a choice between the two worst options.
    The two options in this case are "do nothing" and "quarantine everything." Granted, most places are somewhere between these two options in their policies, but this is still how things are presented. The dialog is framed as one between lives and the economy, and is exemplified by protests against quarantine and the demands for lockdowns. However, there are far more options than these two presented, and the basic dialog defining them is incorrect.
    First, social distancing was proposed in order to prevent the hospitals from overloading, (and possibly even the supply chains from shutting down,) not to cause disease extinction. So the shutdown option was designed to protect the economy and reduce the death rate of the disease, but still relies on herd immunity to end the pandemic. Since there were issues with hospitals and even meat packing plants in the US, the danger this was trying to prevent was there.
    The danger from quarantine is due to the increase in depression, domestic violence, unemployment, etc, all of which cause suffering, increase health risks, and can lead to death, just like the disease. Comparing the death rates is tricky (and probably impossible), but that doesn't mean that you can just ignore one side or the other.
    Basically, both options cause excessive death, suffering, and economic collapse, and thus more intelligent solutions need to be presented, not just the basic reactions. We are still guaranteed to get death, suffering, and economic collapse, but at least we can try to mitigate it, rather than trying to dismiss certain concerns as irrelevant, as people seem to be fond of doing.
    "Accept the inevitable and work on mitigation of damage. Don't try to prevent the inevitable, thus making your situation worse." This is not a giving up hope option, it is an actually doing what you can to deal with an issue option.

    A brief word on masks: As I have experienced when young, as Muslim women have been arguing for the past several years, if the choice is between covering your face or being uncomfortable going into public at all, covering one's face is the more social option.
    Wearing masks to help stop the spread of the disease is something which has a big impact with very little cost. If a single layer of cloth worn while inside is enough to prevent the need of confining people in their homes, something which does actually kill people, then it seems wrong to object to this.

 -- Plan for this to last for years, not weeks.
    One of these things I remember watching as the shutdowns got put in place was that the policies implemented were not sustainable, and not intended to be long-term. I kind of was laughing at the two week school closings and even the couple of months of unemployment payments offered. At this point, you can start to see that shift from amusement to dread -- from "delayed" medical treatment, to the shutting down of parks, to police enforcement of arbitrary social distancing rules, etc. -- to frustration -- seeing the blatant inability to talk about the possibility of retraining people (like they conscript people in times of war). The lack of planning becomes even more obvious when you see the lack of correlation between policies and the current disease situation, issues with compliance (many of which come from the narrow walkways not designed for distancing, others from everyone choosing the same places and times for travel), relaxing of the lockdowns, and various types of protests.
    In terms of short-term vs long-term planing, another obvious such issues is how medicine was defunded before the crisis, even though we knew this was a potential issue after SARS. If people are struggling to get health care treatment when there isn't a pandemic, than this is an issue. But policy makers still think of security and preparing for the worst in terms of policing, building better weapons and war games.

 -- Isolate by urban area, not province or country. 
    One thing I remember people talking about was this debate about whether or not to close borders. One of the things I thought was bizarre about this was the emphasis on closing national borders. While travel did spread the disease, this had more to do with travel from an area that was more heavily infected to one which was less infected, which has less to do with national borders than people seem to think. As such, logically, it makes sense to propose policy and close borders and limit travel based on where people live, i.e. cities, not on political borders. This prevents migration of the disease from the main cities to the smaller ones, allows less infected regions to avoid shutting down their economy, allows for a better understanding of what is or is not necessary travel, and prevents racism. The only issue is in terms of governance.
    However, any such closing of borders needs to be based on an awareness of how exponential growth works, something which triggered my original frustration with the news. Bringing the disease from a more infected region to a less infected region does nothing to impact the curve. Mass migration, though, can seed an infection in an uninfected area without herd immunity or push an infection rate up for a region in the (slow) exponential decline side of an epidemic. The first is inevitable, but can be put off, the second is to be avoided.

 -- I think people who are used to making decisions for themselves will fare better.
    This is where I disagree with basically everyone. When people don't know what to do, they turn to those in charge. However, those people act just as emotionally and also don't know what to do. As I said in the previous, point, I don't believe that we need a uniform policy. Rather, as far as I can tell, we need an adaptable policy, one which can make full use of the known data of the situation at hand and is able to accommodate regional differences in the situation as well as the needs of individuals. As such, we need individuals to be able to make rational, informed decisions, and not decisions based on compliance to or defiance of arbitrary policies given by those on top, or on emotion and habit.

 -- Also, don't rely on our leaders, and don't blame our leaders when things go badly. They are not gods; they are only human, just like the rest of us.

Morality and Ethics:
 -- "Everything in moderation."
    Aristotle's version of ethics may be difficult to call ethics, but is very good advice in life.
Life is a complicated mess of many, many factors, many of which have contradictory requirements to deal with properly. To deal with this, instead of making a priority list, it is often much better to balance these needs properly based on the situation at hand. When that is not a possibility, you can just guess by falling back on the principle, "Everything in moderation." 

 -- Kantian ethics is more focused on sustainability. His basic principle is "That which can be taken to be a universal principle is moral." Since I don't believe in universal principles, I can rephrase this as logical analyses, something requiring more context.

 -- Utilitarianism, "The greatest good for the greatest number of people," is a more traditional ethical principle. I am not going to get into the utilitarian monster (mis)calculation argument.

 -- The Veil of Ignorance is a concept, that when designing a system, you don't know which person you are, so you need to make things comfortable for all. This is true to a certain extent in reality, especially when you consider things such as ageism (as people start young and slowly get older) and ableism (as people can get sick or hurt). Both of these effectively reduce people's life expectancy, as well as interrupting the flow of knowledge from the older generations to the younger generations, facilitating the push of society to a faster pace, which is detrimental to all. Wealth inequality is another thing which does affect everyone, as it is possible to fall out of the higher classes, into poverty. Yes, there are myths of people pushing themselves into higher classes, but this is actually extremely rare, and mostly serves as a myth used to keep the lower classes subservient.

 -- For people not managing whole systems, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," or "Do what you want, as long as you harm none," are more typical moral principles. They also have their flaws and also require some degree of calculation.

Other Lessons:
"Trust your instincts; don't trust others."
This is something I have been learning for the past year and a half. It is difficult, as undoing childhood training often is. Basically as a child we are taught, "If you can't get your work done, you are lazy. If you want something for yourself, you are selfish." I even remember being yelled at and punished for not doing something when I hadn't even realized that I needed to be doing something. If I ask to be treated fairly, or rather with respect, I am just told, "Life isn't fair." Assignments are made based on seniority, not ability. You quickly learn that your needs are unimportant, your instincts of right and wrong therefore incorrect, and only those in charge know what is right.

For me, my instincts and needs are different from those of others. I don't pick up societal cultural norms. That trick, were people get trained as to what is expected, what is right and wrong, never really happened. Therefore, I never left this state as I describe above.

At 14, I was called selfish by my parents. At 10, I volunteered in the library during recess time and was trying to be inclusive of the other individual in my class who was bullied by the students. Yes, people change over time. Yes, people grow up and learn how to deal with others. But sometimes, the adults are just wrong. And sometimes those in a position of authority are wrong.

I don't want to mark this as a general principle, as there are people on the opposite side of this. But, basically, people have an understanding of themselves which no other person can replicate, and they can't really explain to others, i.e. "You know more than you think you do," and "You know your needs better than anyone else." This is complicated slightly by the fact that people often lie to themselves to protect themselves, so sometimes you need the people close to you to tell the truth of who you are. But people often misinterpret the intentions of others as well, including those close to them. A lot of this has to do with how we compare people to others or to societal expectations, which is often not a great guide for proper behavior.