It started with a look at the progress of construction of the Feenstras’ new house and outbuildings. Arend is basically a one-man contracting team, with some of the children — mostly the boys — as trainee subcontractors learning on the job from Dad.

Acquiring materials, power tools, electrical service, etc., seems to have been simple enough; and luckily, Arend knows what he’s doing, as he mentioned that they have built other homes in Canada. So in addition to the house (which is acquiring a front deck at the moment), there will be a workshop, a combination schoolhouse/guest house, and goodness knows what else before the farm is finished. It does take time, though, and there have been delays; for example, the siding that was supposed to have arrived this week . . . didn’t.

All in all, though, it seems that if anyone can survive in difficult circumstances, the Feenstra family can. They are true pioneers.

And speaking of surviving, about halfway through the broadcast Arend mentioned that he will be going in tomorrow (whichever day that is, presumably Monday) for gall bladder surgery. And my reaction was:

Because over the years, I have heard horror stories about medical care — and especially hospital care — in Russia. Unless, of course, you happen to be a member of Putin’s inner circle.

But then we viewers were treated by Arend to a litany of the problems of medical care back in Canada: hours of waiting in emergency rooms, being sent home too soon after surgery, the entire medical system caring more about the money than the patient, etc. And then he told us how impressed he’s been with his care in Russia: the thoroughness of the pre-op testing, the personal concern of the doctors, the two-to-three-day stay in the hospital following surgery, etc.

By the end of the broadcast, he almost had me thinking I should head over there to have my back problems taken care of. But don’t worry — I came to my senses before doing anything rash, like checking to see whether Medicare would cover my plane fare.

So now we look forward to following the saga of Arend Feenstra’s recovery from gall bladder surgery, and his return to the construction phase of their settlement on the farm in Russia.

Which is precisely what my grandparents risked everything to escape from, all those years ago . . . for which I still thank them, each and every day.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/3/24

At 2:00 a.m. today (or before going to sleep last night for the early birds), everyone in the United States — except in Arizona and Hawaii, where the people obviously enjoy a much higher level of intelligence — had to turn their “un-smart” clocks and watches back one hour. The so-called “smart” devices did the honors themselves.

And so we all got to reclaim that hour of sleep we lost in March when we went through the reverse procedure.

Now, if by some miracle we, the people of the United States, were able to convince Congress to do away with this idiotic thing known as Daylight Saving Time, and do our bodies the favor of not having to go through this weird adjustment twice a year . . . would that mean that we would actually get to live one hour longer?

I don’t know whether that’s a valid hypothesis, but somehow it feels right. And at the very least, we wouldn’t have to give back that hour of shuteye next March.

So, all of you sleep-deprived folks out there: Who’s with me on this? The daylight hours get longer in the summertime anyway — why does it have to stay light until 9:00 p.m. or later? It’s hard to put young children to bed when it’s still bright and sunny outside. And it’s disorienting for our four-legged friends, you know. Just think of what it does to a dairy farmer’s milking schedule!

And by the way, does anyone know how Daylight Saving (not Savings) Time got started in the first place? I do . . . but I’m not telling. You can Google it, like I did.

So anyway, turn back your watches and “dumb” clocks, and within the next four months let’s see if we can get that crowd on Capitol Hill to do something useful for a change . . . or for no change (of time, that is).

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/3/24

This past week saw another Russian political travesty in the news: 62-year-old Robert Shonov, a Russian citizen who had worked for the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok and for a private contractor that provided services to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, convicted on charges of “confidential collaboration with a foreign state.”

And — rather oddly — there is the case of one Daniel Martindale — or someone who purports to be Daniel Martindale — an American who has allegedly been fighting with the Russian military in Ukraine for the past two years, and has just been “removed” from the battleground and brought to Moscow, where he claims he wishes to become a Russian citizen.

And each day it becomes more painfully clear that world opinion, and world condemnation, mean nothing to Vladimir Putin.

*. *. *

As for the hostages remaining in Putin’s prisons, we continue to remember them and to fight for their return. They are:

David Barnes
Staff Sergeant Gordon Black
Marc Fogel
Robert Gilman
Stephen James Hubbard
Ksenia Karelina
Michael Travis Leake
Eugene Spector
Laurent Vinatier
Robert Romanov Woodland

And all of the others whose identities are not known to me. They are not merely prisoners; they are HOSTAGES, who must be brought home as quickly as possible.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/3/24

Two more days. Just 48 hours of campaign emails and texts cluttering up our phones and laptops and tablets. Then no more messages about voting (I already have, thank you). No more snarky comments about opponents; no more AI-created half-truths and fantasies and outright lies.

No more freakin’ election.

Then we just have to live with the results.

And in a couple of years — assuming we survive that long — it will all start again. After this last campaign, I’m all for setting a limit — one year at the most — on campaign length.

Anyone care to join me in campaigning for that?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/3/24

Either way, Daniel Martindale’s life will never be the same from this day forward.

It’s a developing story, but here is what little is known so far.

As reported this morning by RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, Russian media is claiming, without substantiation, that the government has “removed” a U.S. citizen — one Daniel Martindale — “from territory controlled by the Ukrainian armed forces.” He allegedly has been aiding Russian forces in Ukraine by “transmitting coordinates of Ukrainian military” for the past two years. [RFE/RL, November 2, 2024.]

According to RIA Novosti, a man identifying himself as Martindale appeared at a press conference and said he was in Moscow voluntarily and wished to obtain Russian citizenship. Displaying a well-worn U.S. passport and a birth certificate, and speaking in English, he was quoted as saying:

“My name is Daniel Martindale. Here is my passport. It went through the war with me, you can see in what condition it is.“ [Guy Faulconbridge, Reuters, November 2, 2024.]

He further stated that he was under no duress, and predicted that Russia would win the war in Ukraine. He allegedly had worked as a missionary, and entered Ukraine from Poland in early 2022 — just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — adding that:

“I’ve wanted to go to Russia for a long time, I realized that this is the moment I’ve been waiting for.” [Id.]

No further information is available at this time, and no comment has been forthcoming from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

*. *. *

RFE/RL has found a page on VKontakte (VK) (the Russian equivalent of Facebook) purportedly belonging to a Daniel Martindale, last updated in February 2022, and listing his residence as Poland. But it is not yet clear that this is the same individual now claiming to be a Russian recruit . . . although the references to Poland and the February 2022 date do match his current claims.

So what is the truth? Is this man an American who has gone over to the other side? Or is he a captive of the Russian forces — a propaganda tool being forced to “reveal” his activities of the past two years to the world? Is he even Daniel Martindale? If his story is indeed real, what is his background? And why was he extracted from Ukraine and paraded in front of the world at this particular time?

I suppose we shall now have to await word from the Kremlin, though that is likely to produce nothing more than confirmation of what has already been offered by its official news source.

Most disturbingly, if this Daniel Martindale is a genuine American-turned-traitor, one has to wonder how many more “Daniel Martindales” are out there.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/2/24

And another nail in the coffin of U.S.-Russian relations.

The latest victim of the Kremlin’s psychotic roundup of dissidents and enemies — real or imagined — is not an American or other foreigner to be held as collateral for a future swap, but a Russian citizen. Robert Shonov, 62, worked for 25 years at the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok, until being forced to leave in 2021 due to new Russian restrictions on local staff working for foreign missions. He then found a job with a company that provided services as a private contractor to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow — entirely within the parameters of Russian law.

And today — after already spending about a year and a half in “detention” since his arrest in 2023 — he stands convicted of “confidential collaboration with a foreign state,” and sentenced to four years and ten months in prison, plus a fine of one million rubles ($10,280). He will then spend another year and four months on parole restrictions following completion of the nearly five-year sentence. [RFE/RL, November 1, 2024.]

He is accused of collecting information on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the associated mobilization efforts, and of analyzing their potential impact on public protest activities leading up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, for the benefit of the United States government. [Id.]

Because of the nature of the charges — despite the fact that Shonov is not a U.S. citizen — the case has created a further exacerbation of the ever-worsening relations between the United States and Russia.

The U.S. State Department has, of course, condemned the arrest, characterizing the charges as baseless, saying that Shonov’s “only role at that time of his arrest was to compile media summaries of press items from publicly available Russian media sources.” [U.S. Department of State Press Statement, May 16, 2023.]

In addition, in connection with the same case, Moscow expelled two U.S. Embassy diplomats — First Secretary Jeffrey Sillin and Second Secretary David Bernstein — in September 2023, accusing them of acting as liaisons for Shonov.

*. *. *

It’s all just becoming SSDD: Same Sh*t, Different Day — disturbingly reminiscent of the years between the end of World War II and the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

Accusations of spying, insults, threats, expulsion of diplomats, prisoner exchanges . . . I wonder how long it will be before someone — Russia or the U.S. — finally acknowledges that we are engaged in Cold War, Part Two.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/2/24

“When other friendships have been forgot,
Ours will still be hot.”
(Lyrics from “Friendship,” by Cole Porter)

At a meeting yesterday in Moscow, North Korea’s Foreign Minister, Choe Son Hui, told her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, that her country will back Russia until victory is achieved over Ukraine:

“Our traditional, historically friendly relations, which have travelled the tested path of history, today . . . are rising to a new level of relations of invincible military comradeship.” [Dmitry Antonov, Reuters, November 1, 2024.]

She tactfully remembered to add a few words of praise for both her president, Kim Jong Un, and for Lavrov’s boss, Vladimir Putin, saying that, under Putin’s “wise leadership,” the Russian army and people would “achieve a great victory in their sacred struggle to protect the sovereign rights and security interests of their state. And we also assure that until the day of victory we will firmly stand alongside our Russian comrades.” [Id.]

Excuse me, Madame Foreign Minister — the 1950s are calling, and they want their rhetoric back.

Lavrov also spoke of the “very close ties” between the two countries’ military forces, which he said would enable them to solve important security tasks together. But neither mentioned the 10,000 North Korean troops who have been sent to Russia, or the statements of the U.S., NATO, South Korea and Ukraine on that subject . . .

. . . about which the ever-present, always delightful Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, had separately tossed in his two rubles’ worth on Friday, stating simply that he had “nothing to add to what has already been said.” Not helpful, Dima.

Foreign Minister Lavrov did state, however:

“We are deeply grateful to our Korean friends for their principled position regarding the events that have now unfolded in Ukraine as a result of the West’s course of advancing NATO to the east and encouraging an openly racist regime to exterminate everything Russian.

”Very close contacts have been established between the military of the two countries and along the security services line — this also allows us to solve practically significant and important tasks for the security of our and your citizens.” [Id.]

(So now the North Koreans are “principled” and the Ukrainians are “racist.” Everybody got that?)

And Foreign Minister Choe added that North Korea and Russia must continue to deepen their ties in accordance with a treaty signed by Presidents Putin and Kim in June — a treaty that includes a mutual defense provision.

Is it any wonder that I can’t sleep at night?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/2/24

I’ve always known, of course, that some of our fellow primates — monkeys, chimps, baboons, apes, politicians — are very smart. After all, Darwin tells us we’re their direct descendants. (Well, maybe not the politicians.)

What I had not heard of, though, is something known as the “infinite monkey theorem” — a thought-experiment used to explain the principles of probability and randomness. The basic tenet is that, given an infinite amount of time, a monkey randomly pressing keys on a typewriter would eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare.

Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! That’s truly incredible . . . except that it could never happen.

Or so say two mathematicians from Australia. Researchers Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta have conducted a peer-reviewed study that determined that the amount of time it would take for a monkey with a typewriter to reproduce all of Shakespeare’s works — plays, sonnets and poems — would be longer than the lifespan of our universe. [Hannah Ritchie, BBC News, October 31, 2024.]

Wait . . . what?!! Our universe has an end date? That’s not what I wanted to hear today . . . or ever.

But I digress. Back to the monkey business.

Woodcock and Falletta’s calculations tell us that, while mathematically acceptable, the theorem is “misleading.” And this was not just their gut feeling; they did the hard calculations, which were based on the current global population of chimpanzees, which is around 200,000.

And they concluded that, enlisting every chimp in the world, and teaching them to type one key per second until the end of the universe (mercifully, they don’t say when that is expected), they still wouldn’t come close to producing Shakespeare’s complete works. In fact, there would only be a 5% chance that a single chimp would even type the word “bananas” in its own lifetime. And the probability of that one chimp constructing a random sentence would be one in ten million billion billion. [Id.]

But give that little monkey-face a whole bunch of bananas for making the effort.

The study’s conclusion is this:

“It is not plausible that, even with improved typing speeds or an increase in chimpanzee populations, monkey labour will ever be a viable tool for developing non-trivial written works.” [Id.]

So it seems that our hairy brethren are destined to remain forever the purveyors of party tricks, much like J. Fred Muggs and his appearances on the Dave Garroway Show of yesteryear.

*. *. *

By the way, the BBC article went on to discuss the most widely-accepted hypothesis for the end of the universe. In typical scientific double-speak, it is called the “heat death theory,” although it envisions a slow, cold death. Go figure.

Whatever it’s called, it describes a final act wherein the universe “continues to both expand and cool — while everything within it dies off, decays, and fades away.” [Id.]

Sounds pretty much like any individual human being, getting older — expanding, cooling, decaying, and fading away — also with no known “use by” date.

God really does have a diabolical sense of humor.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/1/24

They’re survivors and heroes, those hostages of Vladimir Putin who walked out of his prison camps in an historic prisoner swap on August 1st of this year.

They were in prison because of their opposition to the blatantly corrupt, authoritarian government of a man who would rule the world . . . and rule it with an iron fist.

Well, the good news is that, although they may now be living in forced exile, their love of their home country — the one not ruled by a bloodthirsty tyrant — has not diminished. Nor has their determination to continue the fight against Putin’s tyranny, to restore freedom and hope to Russia, and to return home once more.

So Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin have joined with Yulia Navalnaya — widow of Putin’s principal opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, until his unexplained death in a prison camp in February of this year — in organizing a major anti-war demonstration in Berlin, Germany, on November 17th.

Their purpose? To demand the resignation of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Wow! “Go big or go home” takes on new meaning with this crew — as well it should, considering what they, and so many of their countrymen, have suffered.

In a video made on October 30th, Navalnaya said that “. . . we must show ourselves and the whole world that there is an anti-militarist and free Russia.” [RFE/RL, October 30, 2024.]

Yashin, in an announcement on his Telegram channel, said that the march will demand the “withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, while holding Vladimir Putin accountable as a war criminal, and the release of all political prisoners.” [Id.]

And in Prague, when meeting with supporters, Yashin said that he, Navalnaya and Kara-Murza would soon present an “anti-war, anti-Putin initiative” to include many emigres as well as people still living in Russia. [Id.]

*. *. *

Inasmuch as unauthorized protests are now prohibited in Russia, and permits are routinely denied for anti-war demonstrations, staging such events outside of the country is one of the few options open to Putin’s opponents. Hopefully, there are enough groups in exile, and a sufficient number of supporters, to render the demonstration in Berlin a huge success.

Not that there is really any hope of forcing Putin’s resignation any time soon. But protests have a way of spreading. And who knows what the future may bring?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/1/24

In the Russia ruled by Joseph Stalin (from 1924 to his death in 1953), if you were foolish enough, or simply unfortunate enough, to displease him in any way, you could be fairly certain of two things: that your life was about to end, and that all traces of your existence would disappear with you.

Long before the days of artificial intelligence and today’s digital photoshopping, Stalin’s photo technicians were adept at altering pictures to make someone (usually Stalin) look better, to change the background or the wording on signs . . . or to make a person disappear completely, as in the famous photos below. In other words, to rewrite history.

The names and any mention of disgraced individuals would also be deleted from all printed material. I can only imagine how many times the country’s textbooks and encyclopedias had to be reprinted.

In the decades following Stalin’s death, political life in Russia slowly — very slowly — became less terrifying. And in the 1990s, after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the institution of the Gorbachev reforms, the repressions of the Soviet era began to fade into distant memory. But not for everyone.

In 1991, October 30th was officially designated as Russia’s Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression. Since then, each year on that date memorial events — known as “Returning the Names” — are held in cities and towns across Russia to honor the victims of Soviet-era atrocities. A memorial stone, known as the Solovki Stone, has been erected on Moscow’s Lubyanka Square — in front of the notorious headquarters of the former KGB (now the FSB). And each October 30th since 2006, the Memorial Human Rights Center has held an annual ceremony at that spot. [RFE/RL, October 30, 2024.]

In cities from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, participants in similar ceremonies have included relatives of the dead and survivors of the Gulag, rights activists, and others who simply want to be a part of the remembrance. The names, ages, occupations, and dates of execution or imprisonment of the victims are read aloud. The past must be remembered in order not to be repeated.

But . . .

Recent actions of the Russian government may be placing the future of these remembrances in question. For example, the Prosecutor-General’s Office “announced plans earlier to review past decisions on the rehabilitation of repression victims, prompting fears that the state may seek to rewrite or diminish the historical narrative surrounding Soviet atrocities.” [Id.]

In June, changes were announced to the official Concept on Victims of Political Repressions that “eliminated references to the mass nature of Soviet purges and removed calls to commemorate their victims, effectively sanitizing the historical account of state-sponsored violence.” [Id.]

And this week, the decision to cancel the Returning the Names event in Moscow was blamed on a “sharp increase in COVID cases” [id.] — always a handy excuse, but in reality just one step in a concerted effort by the government to draw attention and discussion away from past Soviet crimes . . . and from the repressive actions of the Putin regime of today.

*. *. *

In the shadow of other world events, these may seem like minor concerns. But they amount to one very major issue: rewriting history. Think of how much easier that will be now, with the advent of artificial intelligence and the government’s exclusive control of mass media.

And seen in conjunction with other recent occurrences — the broad use (or misuse) of the new “Foreign Agents” law, the imprisonment of journalists and dissidents, the unexplained deaths of political opponents — well . . .

The calendar may say it’s 2024, but in Russia it’s beginning to feel like 1950 again.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/1/24