It’s taken two years, but today I’ve reached a sort of millennial landmark: an even 1,000 posts to my blog.
Time to celebrate!!
And no, this does not mean I’m quitting. It’s on to the next 1,000 . . . as long as the news keeps coming, and my fingers (and brain) keep working reasonably well, I’ll be here at brendochka.com.
But for now, I think I’ll take the rest of the day off, help myself to a slice of cake and a nice cup of herbal tea, put my feet up, and have a snooze. I’ve earned it.
Or, as they would say on my favorite Brit flick, Midsomer Murders:
Looking back at historic events, as is my wont, I often wonder what the people involved in those events would have thought if they had been able to foresee the eventual fallout from their actions (or inactions). For example:
Would it ever have occurred to the Wright Brothers — Orville and Wilbur — back then on December 17, 1903, that a little over a century later, there would be such a thing as a Stealth bomber? Or that things called drones would be fighting our wars, and causing panic along the U.S. eastern seaboard among people ready to believe they were being propelled by Chinese-Iranian-Martian invaders?
Or . . .
On December 17, 1777, while the newly declared United States of America was fighting its war for independence from Great Britain, France formally recognized the U.S. as a sovereign nation and joined in the fight against the British, helping to win our freedom. Who would then have anticipated that, just 107 years later — on July 4, 1884 — France would also be presenting the U.S. with the Statue of Liberty, or that the outsized “Assembly Required” sculpture would become the enduring symbol of the young country? Or that the United States would go on to be the political, industrial and economic world leader that it is today?
“Lady Liberty”: The Ultimate DIY Project
Or . . .
On December 17, 1892, when the first issue of Vogue magazine was published, that it would still be around in 2024?
Or, for that matter, that there would even be a year 2024?
Vogue Magazine – December 17, 1892
Or . . .
On December 17, 1991, when Boris Yeltsin announced that the Soviet Union would cease to exist as a political entity by New Year’s Eve, giving rise to a new era of hope and optimism amongst the peoples of that country and, indeed, of the world . . . who would have believed that it would take less than a decade for a then unknown and insignificant individual to take the reins of power and bring it all crashing down again?
Handing Over a Nation
Yeltsin was as good as his word, and in fact brought it in ahead of schedule. On Christmas Day, December 25th, he unseated — quite literally, according to an eyewitness source — Mikhail Gorbachev . . . and the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered at the Kremlin for the final time. Gorbachev was out; Yeltsin was in; and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was no more. Technically, at least.
Merry Christmas, Russia.
Down With the Old, Up With the New – Moscow Kremlin, December 25, 1991
For eight years Yeltsin tried to carry on the reforms of his predecessor, and to build on them in order to bring his country into the late 20th Century before it rolled over into the 21st . . . sometimes with success, other times not so much. But he made one enormous, irreversible, utterly disastrous mistake, for which the world is still paying.
He brought Vladimir Putin from St. Petersburg, where he was working as Mayor Anatoly Sobchak’s “go-to guy,” to Moscow to be Yeltsin’s own jack-of-all-trades. And the rest, as they say, is history.
February 24, 2022 – “Reclaiming” Ukraine
*. *. *
It makes you stop and think twice about your own actions, and about the future . . . doesn’t it?
There she was, hiding out in the restrooms on a Delta flight from New York to Paris on November 26th . . . without a ticket or a boarding pass. Her name is Svetlana Dali, and she was, of course, discovered and taken into custody upon landing in Paris.
Svetlana Dali on a Delta flight – November 2024
After one aborted attempt to return her to the U.S. on November 30th, in which Delta refused to carry her when she began raising a ruckus on boarding a return flight, she was finally brought back home on December 4th. She was charged with one count of being a stowaway on an aircraft without consent and released without bail . . . but with a number of conditions. These included not leaving a specified area, surrendering any travel documents, wearing a GPS monitor, abiding by a curfew, and submitting to recommended mental health evaluation and treatment. [Mark Morales, Taylor Romine, Aaron Cooper and Chris Boyette, CNN, December 16, 2024.]
The Russian national, who holds permanent residency status in the United States, said she had nowhere to stay. So a kind-hearted acquaintance from her church in Philadelphia — where she evidently had lived at one time — agreed to let her stay with him for the time being.
But it appears that Slippery Svetlana got the travel bug again, because on Sunday of this week, she managed to cut off her ankle monitor and catch a Greyhound bus headed for Canada on Monday. Her roommate, upon returning home and finding her ankle bracelet without an ankle in it, reported her absence to the authorities. She was later removed from the bus before reaching Canada, placed in the custody of the FBI, and was expected to be turned over to U.S. Marshals in Buffalo, New York today. [Id.]
The Old Ball-and-Chain
No further details are available regarding her location and arrest, as the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, and Dali’s own attorney have thus far declined to comment. [Id.]
*. *. *
So where do we begin? My first question was why she had been released without bail on the stowaway charge. The judge in that case determined that she wasn’t a serious flight risk, because — after all — how many times can a person successfully carry off that kind of a caper . . . right?
Wrong. The judge did impose major restrictions on her movements. But ankle monitors — as now appears obvious — are not insurmountable obstacles for the highly motivated. And while Svetlana had learned her lesson when it came to sneaking onto commercial airplanes, the judge forgot to take into consideration good old Greyhound — cheap, accessible, anonymous, no-security buses to anywhere on land.
And this lady was motivated. She clearly wanted out of the United States. She had applied for asylum in France a few years ago, according to a Paris airport official. [Id.] I don’t know why she thought she needed asylum . . . unless it had to do with those two lawsuits she filed recently, claiming to have been a victim of military-grade chemical weapons and a kidnapping plot. [Id.]
Okay, sure . . . whatever. I once met a man in Kyiv — a coal miner from the Donbas region who was taking part in a demonstration — who wanted me to tell my government in Washington that the KGB had had his mother’s dentist implant a microscopically tiny transmitter in her denture so they could track her.
I try not to judge.
*. *. *
But seriously, what is this woman’s problem? I’m not a medical professional, but it’s painfully obvious that she has one . . . a problem, that is. Lacking details about her history, her family background, her life experiences, it’s impossible even to make an educated guess. But one thing is clear: she needs help.
And I hope she gets it . . . preferably before she heads for the Mexican border.
The reason there is no longer a functioning synagogue in this city in eastern Ukraine is simple: There are few Jews left in Donetsk. Most have fled the country, or taken refuge (for the time being, at least) in Kyiv; only about 3,000 of the original 15,000 — all Russian-speaking — remain. And most of the 3,000 are elderly . . . though there are reportedly still a few children who attend the one remaining cheder — the children’s religious class — in some unspecified location. Their future is uncertain. [Paul Cainer, Thejc.com, November 10, 2022.]
Children’s Cheder– Circa Unknown
The small Jewish community of Donetsk is isolated, unable to cross the war’s front lines to join their relatives or friends. There are occasional communications via Telegram or WhatsApp, though people must of course be extremely guarded in their conversations. [Id.]
Thus, along with the churches and the mosques, the synagogues are also falling victim to Vladimir Putin’s purge of all religions other than the accepted form of Russian Orthodoxy in Ukraine. This sort of maniacal crusade has happened before — in the 1930s and ‘40s under Hitler’s “final solution.”
The world wasn’t watching then, until it was too late; we’d better be more attentive this time.
As of today, Kyiv’s magnificent Saint Sophia Cathedral is still standing, despite the war raging around it . . . though there has, of course, been unspeakable damage to many other historic places of worship since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022.
Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv
And there are other ways of attacking a nation’s faithful while at the same time destroying their visible history.
While you bombard, vandalize and ransack their churches, you simultaneously go after their clergy in quieter ways . . . which is precisely what is happening in the regions of Ukraine presently occupied by Russia.
In the nearly three years since the start of Russia’s war of attrition against its neighbor, dozens of Ukrainian faith leaders in the Russian-occupied areas have been jailed. Others — priests, pastors and imams — have been threatened with lengthy prison sentences, torture, and even death by Russian authorities, or forced into exile. [Ivana Kottasova, Olga Voitovych and Svitlana Vlasova, CNN, December 16, 2024.]
Ukrainian Orthodox Church at Novoekonomichne, following bombardment on September 17, 2024
One such story was revealed by Pastor Dmytro Bodyu, founder of the evangelical Word of Life Church in Melitopol. He told CNN that around 15 armed men — identifying themselves as Russian police and FSB officers — stormed into his home early on March 19, 2022. As his wife and son watched, they took him off to a local police station. There they locked him in a small cell and threatened him with execution. He said they kept telling him they knew he was an American CIA agent hired by the U.S. government to spread anti-Russian propaganda.
“They said they knew for sure because all Protestant churches and Catholic churches are working with the American secret services, and all their pastors work for the US government, because the Protestant church is not a real church,” he said. [Id.]
He was held for eight days, but even after his release he was told he could continue preaching only if he cooperated with authorities; that his sermons would be subject to censorship; and that he would have to pass along potentially damaging information about his parishioners to the Russians.
Pastor Bodyu refused, and eventually left Melitopol. His church was thereafter shut down as part of Russia’s crackdown on any and all Ukrainian religious groups not affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church (a.k.a. the Moscow Patriarchate). [Id.]
Occupied Melitopol, Ukraine
In another southern Ukraine city — Berdiansk — Father Bohdan Heleta, a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, tells of the 19 months he and a fellow priest spent in a notorious Russian penal colony in the occupied Donetsk region of Ukraine. Without repeating all of the horrific details here, the report says he spoke of beatings and torture that — to my mind — would not be survivable. But through a strength that is beyond my comprehension, and an obviously deep faith, both priests did survive and were freed in a prisoner swap in June. Neither had ever actually been charged with a crime. [Id.]
Father Bohdan Heleta
Thus, with a simple, two-pronged strategy, Russia has perfected the means of destroying its perceived religious enemies. Tear down the churches, and the congregations will simply move elsewhere . . . underground, if necessary. But take away their religious leaders, and you’ve taken away the glue that held them together.
Damaged Church in Lukashivka – April 22, 2022Interior Damage to Odesa Transfiguration Cathedral – July 23, 2023
It’s not a new tactic. Vladimir Putin has merely reinstated it.
With everyone screaming for answers, and U.S. officials — including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — calling for action, you’d think we’d have heard something substantive by now about all of those UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) sightings that are being tentatively identified as drones flying above U.S. military installations and Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf course. As Senator Schumer said:
“We’ve seen lots of recent sightings in New York, New Jersey, Long Island, Staten Island. So it’s remarkable, with all these sightings over the last while, why do we have more questions than answers? If the technology exists for a drone to make it up into the sky, there certainly is the technology that can track the craft with precision.” [John Bacon and Thao Nguyen, USA Today, December 16, 2024.]
“We come in peace”
On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tried to reassure us with this announcement:
“There’s no question that people are seeing drones. I want to assure the American public that we in the federal government have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings. It is our job to be vigilant. If there is any reason for concern, if we identify any foreign involvement or criminal activity we will communicate with the American public accordingly. Right now we are not aware of any.” [Id.]
Sorry, Secretary Mayorkas, but somehow I don’t find that particularly comforting.
However, I was delighted to read this from Connecticut Representative James Himes, who seems to have an inside track to . . . well, he didn’t exactly say where, but certainly somewhere . . . and who shared with us in an interview on Fox News Sunday:
“Now, let me say something that I know with confidence. It is not the Iranians. It is not the Chinese. They aren’t Martians. I know that’s very unsatisfying for people who want a Hollywood movie out of this.” [Id.]
*. *. *
Well, Hollywood movie be damned. I’m just relieved to have it on such good authority that they’re not little green men from Mars. I’ll sleep so much better tonight!
It is becoming an all-too-familiar story in far too many parts of the world.
Iranian-American journalist Reza Valizadeh has been sentenced by an Iranian court to ten years in prison for “collaborating with a hostile government.” [Bita Bakhtiari, RFE/RL, December 14, 2024.]
In addition, following the end of his prison term, Valizadeh will be banned for two years from living in Tehran or adjacent provinces, from leaving Iran, and from belonging to any political or social organizations — in effect, remaining a prisoner within the country. [Id.]
Reza Valizadeh
A journalist for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty’s Radio Farda for ten years, he resigned in November 2022, but returned to Iran to visit family in early 2024. He was arrested on September 22nd, although he had been assured by Iranian officials that there was no legal bar to his returning to Iran.
Despite condemnation by the U.S. State Department, as well as calls by multiple organizations advocating freedom of the press, Valizadeh continues to be held in Tehran’s Evin Prison under severe restrictions, with only limited access to legal representation or family. [Id.]
Inside Evin Prison, Tehran, Iran
If all of this sounds too familiar, it’s no wonder. It is a scenario straight from Vladimir Putin’s textbook on how to rid oneself of the voices of opposition. Not that it’s a new tactic to the Iranian government; they are well known to use Westerners and dual citizens as bait for future prisoner swaps. But Valizadeh is the first U.S. citizen known to have been arrested on false charges since a prisoner swap in September of 2023. [Id.]
And it’s happening elsewhere: Andrey Kuznechyk and Ihar Losik in Belarus, Vladislav Yesypenko in Crimea, and Farid Mehralizada in Azerbaijan are just a few examples.
*. *. *
In earlier times, the best way for an oppressor to secure control of a city or state was first to take over its communications and transportation infrastructures. It’s not that easy today: communications are no longer centralized in one or two radio or telegraph stations. So what do you do? You silence the broadcasters: the journalists, the bloggers, the Facebookers and YouTubers. You already control the police and the courts, so you simply charge your adversaries with something — anything — that sounds illegal, and you throw them into prison where they have no access to the outside world.
Which is precisely what is happening, almost on a daily basis, in so many parts of the world today — Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Iran, China and Hong Kong, North Korea. The free press is under attack; and the most frightening thought is how long it will be before no journalist will be willing to take the risks involved in speaking the truth.
And that is precisely what the world’s despots are aiming for.
The good news is: There are no new Russian/Belarusian/Eastern European political arrests in the press this week.
The bad news is: The remaining hostages on our list continue to exist as victims of Putin’s purge of his opponents in prisons in Russia, Belarus and elsewhere, awaiting their Christmas miracle.
Prison Camp at Krasnoyarsk Region – 2002 (by Carl de Keyzer)
But I have pledged to continue honoring them each week until not one remains locked up. And so, once again, here they are . . . at least, those whose names are known to me:
David Barnes Gordon Black Marc Fogle Robert Gilman Stephen James Hubbard Ksenia Karelina Andrey Kuznechyk (in Belarus) Michael Travis Leake Ihar Losik (in Belarus) Daniel Martindale Farid Mehralizada (in Azerbaijan) Robert Shonov Eugene Spector Laurent Vinatier Robert Romanov Woodland Vladislav Yesypenko (in Crimea)
And once again, to the incoming Trump administration, I respectfully urge you to place the release of these hostages at the top of your immediate to-do list in January. Far more vital than the concern over daylight saving time (though I do agree with you on that) are the lives of these innocent men and women. The negotiations by the Biden administration and several of our allies that were so successful in August must be carried on.
That’s not to say you’ll have any real use for every tidbit of information you pick up from day to day — or, for that matter, retain it for very long — but it can be fun. Like today’s word from worddaily.com.
Now, as every online shopper knows, once you’ve bought something, or transacted any sort of business on the internet, you’re fair game for every online vendor, every huckster, and every whack job out there. When I settled in and opened my email today, I found 133 messages. And by the time I had deleted the junk, I had — by actual count — seven left that I wanted or needed to read. And most of those were my daily news reports.
“133??!!!”
But there was one that caught my eye — from “Word Daily” — that I don’t always bother to check because I think I already have a fairly decent vocabulary. But for some reason, today’s word aroused my curiosity:
“Quidnunc“
I like to try to figure things out for myself whenever possible, so I gave it some thought before reading the definition. “Quid” — besides being another name for the British monetary pound — was first a Latin word meaning “something.” And “nunc” is also Latin, meaning “now.”
Well, that didn’t add up to anything useful, unless you’re the demanding sort who wants something, and wants it NOW. So I took a peek at the definition, and it turns out that a “quidnunc” is . . . or in the 18th Century was . . .
“An inquisitive and gossipy person.”
A Quidnunc (L) and a Quidnunc Enabler (R)
See what you can learn with a minimal expenditure of time and effort? Not that I’ll be likely ever to use it, because there is already a perfect term for that sort of person. I mean, who needs to remember “quidnunc” when we already have:
“Yenta”!
Yente the Matchmaker (“Fiddler On the Roof” – 1971)
Still, it could come in handy in a roomful of, say, English teachers, or literary snobs . . . just to show off a little.
As some of my readers may have noticed, I am hooked on history, and especially those little tidbits of trivia from the past that make great fillers for the inevitable, uncomfortable moments during a social gathering when everyone seems to have run out of conversation. You can always break the silence with something like the one I just learned:
“Did you know that Abraham Lincoln, while President, once pardoned his own sister-in-law?” *
[* This is true. Source: “This Day In History,” HISTORY.com, December 14, 2024.]
(Though I suggest you might want to think twice before opening with that one, as it may well arouse the ire of someone in the crowd who is already pissed off at Joe Biden for pardoning his son. But presumably you know your friends’ political views well enough to judge whether it’s worth the risk.)
At any rate, I came across an item in that same column yesterday that caught my attention because — as my regular readers are too well aware — I am also hooked on Russia — her history, politics, music and literature, food, whatever — the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. So my eye naturally was drawn to this caption under the “World War II” header:
“1939. USSR expelled from the League of Nations”
“Aha!” said I . . . another wrinkle to be added to my brain, as I was not aware of the details of this incident. And what I learned today was further reinforcement of my belief in the adage I have repeated countless times:
“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”
That also goes for those who intentionally ignore history. And we can all name a number of world leaders who fall into that category!
But I digress . . .
A little, very brief, background: In 1920, the League of Nations was established in the aftermath of World War I to provide a forum for resolving international disputes and to prevent major wars in the future. It was conceived as a result of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. But for complex reasons — far too many to detail here — it struggled to find its footing until it was finally displaced by the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.
Among the League’s other problems was the issue of what to do with Russia, which — in the midst of the First World War — had become embroiled in its own civil war and been reinvented by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
And then there was Germany.
Both Germany and Japan voluntarily withdrew from the League in 1933, and Italy left in 1937. As we all know, the rise of the Nazi party in Germany during the 1930s ultimately led to World War II and the Axis alliance. The three nations’ withdrawals from the League should have been an ominous sign of things to come.
Poster of Children of the Axis Powers: Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini
But it was also around that time that the Soviet Union — by then a fully-established totalitarian state under the iron fist of Josef Stalin — was showing its true imperial aspirations. In September of 1939, Stalin’s troops invaded and occupied eastern Poland — thus earning its expulsion from the League of Nations — and . . . oh, here is where it begins to sound familiar . . .
“ . . . ostensibly with the intention of protecting Russian ‘blood brothers,’ Ukrainians and Byelorussians, who were supposedly menaced by the Poles.” [“This Day In History,” HISTORY.com, December 14, 2024.]
Yes, that was my true “aha moment.” And if it doesn’t ring any recent bells for you, then you haven’t been keeping up with what’s been happening in Ukraine since February 24, 2022, when Vladimir Putin’s Russian military invaded eastern Ukraine . . . on the excuse of having to protect its Russian sympathizers from the allegedly oppressive “Nazi” regime in Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: Jewish, not Nazi
And there it is: history repeating itself by recycling old excuses for new wars. Vladimir Putin has apparently run out of unique catch-phrases.
But he hasn’t run out of expansionist ambitions. Just as Stalin’s success in Poland inspired and enabled him to terrorize “Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia … into signing ‘mutual assistance’ pacts, primarily one-sided agreements that gave the USSR air and naval bases in those countries” [id.], and to invade Finland without justification, so Putin will claim the same authority if he succeeds in bringing Ukraine to its knees — whether militarily or through diplomatic negotiations in his favor.
And that simply cannot be allowed to happen, for the sake of the rest of Europe . . . and of the entire world.
The United Nations, NATO and the EU must succeed where the League of Nations didn’t. In today’s world, failure is not an option.
The Blog About Everything … and Sometimes Nothing 