Save Breedlove

The Independent has offered quite a piece of reading: "Nato commander calls for return to service of U-2 spy plane to help conduct surveillance on a resurgent Russia".

Well, I am not going to discuss the evident fact of Russia being resurgent; I'm rather into another evident fact: this is an insufferable event for some of the big guys around there, and Philip Breedlove is not an exception.

The very idea of bringing back U-2 for surveillance over Russia sounds as kind of a mental diagnosis to a formerly brave US fighter pilot and presently NATO supreme allied commander, who is to step down this spring.

56 year ago, on May 1, 1960 a U-2 did a great service in breaking US-USSR relations; Gary Powers did not commit suicide... Surely, for the US military those were good old times and bright hopes; a great war seemed to be round the corner. Luckily, then, in the sixties, big guys succeeded to overcome all crises and kept the strategic peace till now (I am not talking about local wars; those bloodsheds did not threaten the very existence of life on Earth).

Now, in 2016, the Breedlove's idea is not only desperately outdated; it puts under question the very ability of the high-ranked military to perceive reality adequately.

Thinking of Responsibility

About 10 days ago, at the conclusion of the ASEAN summit in California Barack Obama said, in particular:

Russia is a major military. Obviously a bunch of rebels are not going to be able to compete with the hardware of the second-most powerful military in the world.

Surely, sounds not that bad for Russia. Furthermore, in fact, it sounds like Mr. President talks about a kind of counterweight to the first-most powerful military that helps the world to balance on a thin edge of peace (I mean the absence of a world war; unfortunately, all we know there are many local hot and bloody spots in the world).

But just 23 months ago we heard him describing Russia using quite a different wording, the US News and World Report reminded in the same publication. He said then Russia was "a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness".

However, Russia is simply tooooo huge to be able to change itself in the course of just two years. There were no revolutions in Moscow; the Western world conducted just the very same, old as mammoth shit, politics of trying to squeeze Russia out of her spheres of interests. Russia has been remaining just the same, and in more or less the same geopolitical circumstances that some powers always try to make unfavourable.

Thus, a question rises.

There are lots of campaigns for  responsible doing this or that: responsible driving, responsible caring of pets and bringing up children, responsible using natural resources, etc, etc.

And all that responsibility stuff is very important for human beings dwelling on our little Earth, indeed. But there are things that are even more important. Do people care of a responsible presidency in the most powerful military? Do people prefer responsible cooperation to confrontation?

And if they do, why it seems they do not?

Who Is to Get out of Ukraine?

On Saterday Mr. Joe Biden (for those who do not care, he's vice-president of the USA). Even the CNN noted that speaking at the Munich Security Conference he "served up some blunt talk".

The American diplomacy looks unbound.

Though the AP does not show his 'blunt talk', and neither does ABC, there are some sources that are not so peculiar and let people hear Biden's unmanipulated words. Listen very attentively from 0:40.

President Putin has to make a simple, stark choice. Get out of Ukraine, or face continued isolation and growing economic costs at home.

What? Who are you, Mr. Biden, to fucking tell Russia or Putin what to do?

Geopolitical Physics

From the holy scripts of major religions we know there are the good and the evil. These definitions exist only in tandem: how could one judge if something is good or evil without knowledge of the both?

From the basic course of school physics we know there are always two poles, North and South, plus and minus, positive and negative. Here, terms 'positive' and 'negative' have no good-or-evil connotation, it's just a pair of physical effects, whether electric, or magnetic, or whatever else.

Sometimes you have to choose sides (or poles, for the matter). During the Civil War in Russia after the October Revolution, you could be either Red — a bolshevik/communist yourself, a conscripted soldier fighting for them and with them, or a peasant voluntarily or involuntarily feeding them, or, say, a worker helping them to build up a new state on the ruins of former Russian Empire, — or White, supported by the so called world community (the UK, the USA, Japan, Germany, Poland, etc.) and fighting against or supporting this fight.

During the WW2 the choice was different, yet there was one. One alternative; either you were with Hitler, or against him. At times of great challenges the choices are also great; so the UK, the USA and the USSR were wise enough became allies. (Those who say 'the USSR switched sides during the WW2' just loudly express their shameful, though understandable ignorance in history; I'll come back to the matter later.)

During the so called Cold War world was kind of 2.5-polar: the 'Capitalist World' fought against the "Socialist World' (for propaganda purposes usually called the 'communist' one), and both sides were trying to attract as many third-world-countries as possible; those did not form a general power by themselves, but were developing with assistance of their patrons.

Since the collapse and disintegration of the Warsaw Treaty (and the Council of Economic Mutual Assistance, kind of the EEC for the socialist countries) first and then the USSR itself, the world became monopolar, with the only real super power (with the greatest economy) atop.

Yet was it a time of succes on a global scale? Did the life of all billions of people improved? Or at least that of the Golden one? Did the world become a more peaceful place? Did the number of bloodsheds decreased?

I think there should be no surprise at all that the world tend to come back to a more stable stand, at leats bipolar. And definitely I am satisfied my country takes part in this movements, regaining its strength and weight on the political scene of the world.

And I am definitely dissatisfied with Obama/the USA desperately trying to convince the world they remain the one and only one political being on the world's map which meaning counts. By the way, I've heard the Chinese economy has outgrown that of the USA recently. If not yet, it will definitely do so in the nearest future. And as far as I know loosing its economic leadership is not the only trouble the USA facing now externally and internally. Looks like they desperately need war, as big and bloody as possible to keep thing going, still going monopolar.

However, the newest history knows examples of peaceful consolidation of people around their leaders. For us Russians the (re-)incorporation of Crimea in March, 2014 became such a point. It was done in so a peaceful and purely democratic way that future schoolbooks will definitely describe this incorporation as an exemplary way of settling territorial disputes. And the percentage of those who support our President now is already about 85% here in Russia; I believe your leaders do not even dare to dream of such a figure.


'The West' hypocritically calls the coup-d'etat in Ukraine 'the Revolution of Dignity'; if 'dignity' means blood of the innocent, shelling on the civilians and destruction of economy by Ukrainian nazis (no necessity to follow the CNN or Euronews or RT for the matter; just follow Graham Phillips, a brave and honest British journalist working on site) — we live in different worlds and definitely have opposite ideas of good and evil.

By the way, from my photography-connected background I, just like any photographer out there, know that the most stable support for a camera should have three legs; namely, tripods are such supports; even if the ground below is totally uneven, three legs stand absolutely stable and solid.

Should the world have three poles, to really be a better place?