Fools Rush In

While it is difficult to grasp all that’s going on in our world today, there is this certainty: there’s a lot of evil going on.

I can’t even summarize well. But here’s the bare bones outline:

Putin threatened for a long time and finally invaded its neighbor Ukraine. Putin is not part of Western Civilization; we should not expect him to think the way we do.

map found here

Ukraine is one of the top ten most corrupt countries in the world. I don’t know if that includes their current elected leader, who was an entertainer, not a politician, and whose election seemed to surprise everyone. Is he part of the corruption, a puppet of it, or a hindrance to it? I don’t know. But he does seem to be inspiring his people to stand stronger than expected.

Our current president is deeply involved in Ukraine’s corruption (remember this); that should be considered in evaluating anything he or his administration says on the subject.

Putin may be an evil power monger, but he is also against the worldwide Great Reset cabal; he’s an interference in someone’s programs, and having an excuse to get rid of him might be part of their planning.

Parts of Ukraine are ethnically Russian. It appears the people in that region would like some level of independence or representation. I’m picturing as Quebec in Canada, or as any one of the United States. It does not follow that those people would prefer being under Putin’s dictatorial regime, simply because Putin is Russian.

It appears to me that neither Ukrainians nor Russians—the people, not the governments—want war. They are the ones suffering for decisions of leaders they cannot control.

Back in 2014, Russia invaded Crimea, without consequence. Those who allowed him to do that are the very ones saying how wrong he is to do this.

image found here

Our country’s leaders just very recently botched our exit from Afghanistan, for no reason beyond either their foolishness or their purposeful effort to weaken America and strengthen those who hate us. There are still abandoned Americans there. Such leaders should not be given any support in sending our troops and treasure to a far-off nation that is not a direct danger to us.

However, our country set up Ukraine for this situation. As J. D. Vance pointed out,

Our leaders foolishly pressured Ukraine to give up their nuclear arsenal in the 1990s, which stripped them of their leverage to deter an eventual Russian invasion. These supposed “experts” wrongly predicted that these moves would deter Russia instead of provoking them; on this, as with so much else, they were catastrophically wrong.

Putin cannot be threatened by a possible acceptance into NATO of Ukraine. NATO is strictly defensive, so it is no threat to him—unless he is on offense. Allowing Ukraine into NATO only binds us, the major component of NATO, to step in militarily, rather than helping in less kinetic ways.

US oil independence was a deterrent to Russia. We had that—until Biden got in, shut down the Keystone Pipeline, meanwhile greenlighting Russia’s Nord Stream 2 oil pipeline to Europe, and quickly made the US oil dependent again. Purposefully.

Meanwhile our own southern border is kept open, with record numbers of illegal aliens flooding in. We cannot seriously consider sending troops across the world to defend someone else’s border when we do not defend our own.

All of this is to say, I am only in the beginning stages of learning about this situation, and I have not reached any personal conclusion about how the Ukrainian people should be helped. They should be helped. Let us—our churches, our nonprofits, whatever resources we have—find ways to help the beleaguered people who are suffering.

image found here

But our nation’s resources and resolve are and must be limited while we have the current regime in power. Calls from either Democrats or Republicans (and both are calling) to rush in militarily are premature at best, and possibly intended to further weaken America.

Below I have collected some of the voices I’ve been reading and hearing—very little of any sort of mainstream news, which I have learned I cannot trust to tell the truth about anything, let alone something so momentous. I’m finding more and will continue. But these below I have found useful in gaining information, history, and perspective.

 

Written Resources

·         “J. D. Vance Issues Statement on Russia Invasion of Ukraine” full statement, February 24, 2022. 

·         “An Unserious People Confront a Serious Man” Erick Erickson column, February 24, 2022. 

·         “Ukraine: Putin's Misadventure Unites the West” Larry Elder column, March 2, 2022. 

·         “The War in Ukraine” Glenn Greenwald, February 24, 2022. 

 

Video Resources

·         “Ep. 102: Russia Invades Ukraine? Canada Off the Rails! Olympics & MORE!” Viva & Barnes livestream, February 27, 2022. 

·         “Ukraine: Why It Happened and Why It Matters |Dr. Kori Schake” We Hold These Truths podcast, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, March 1, 2022. 

·         “The ACTUAL State of Our Union: Wars & Rumors of Wars... | Glenn TV | Ep 175” Glenn Beck Special on The Blaze, March 2, 2022. 

·         “Is Putin Dying?” Mr. Reagan podcast, March 1, 2022. 

·         “Russia, Ukraine, and the West | Frederick Kagan| The JBP Podcast | #230” Jordan Peterson interviews Frederick Kagan on the Jordan Peterson podcast, February 28, 2022. 

·         “How Israel is THREATENED by Russia's Ukraine Invasion | Watchman Newscast” Erick Stakelbeck on The Watchman podcast, March 1, 2022. 

·         “What you don't know about the war in Ukraine” сФилином (translates from Russian as “with Owl”) podcast, February 25, 2022.  

·         “Ukraine-Russia PROPAGANDA Revealed in MEDIA as WHITE HOUSE Prepares for SOTU” Robert Gouveia podcast, February 28, 2022. 

·         “Putin's mind, is he mad?” Dr. John Campbell podcast, with Vlad Vexler, February 28, 2022. 

·         “Vladimir Putin: Body Language Reveals REAL Anger to Ukraine and USA” The Behavior Panel podcast, March 2, 2022. 

·         “Victor Davis Hanson | War in Ukraine” John Anderson podcast, March 2, 2022. 

Too Much for a Soundbite

One of my (very minor) superpowers is being able to gather and synthesize information, and then lay it out for easier understanding. But there are limits. So, today I’ll show you a bit what is in the process of coming to an understanding, not fully ready for certainty.

But one pattern I’ve seen: If the enemies of freedom,prosperity, and civilization accuse their opposition of something, you can assume they’re doing that very thing.

Glenn Beck, explaining the Ukraine Scandal, October 4, 2019
screenshot from here

Last Thursday I watched the full two-hour chalkboard presentation Glenn Beck did of the Ukraine Scandal. I’ve included the 51-minute essential video below. But it was too much for me to digest in a sitting. Or two. So I went through it again, piece-by-piece, taking notes, to see it in writing. So I might as well share that. After that, I’ll share some additional materials you can check out to educate yourself.

·         February 2014 Ukraine got a new president.

·         March 2014 Obama administration offers help to financially strapped Ukraine. Joe Biden placed to oversee the help.

·         Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, along with John Kerry’s son, has set up an investment firm—for which the younger Biden has no experience (although he does have a record, having been kicked out of the military for drug problems, and is known for other scandals. See YouTube “Joe Biden Scandal in Ukraine.”)

·         April 2014 Joe Biden, along with Devon Archer, flies to Ukraine.

·         May 2014 Devon Archer (Biden’s friend) is made a board member of Burisma, a gas company. Also, Hunter Biden is placed on that board (without experience in oil and gas)—where he receives $50,000 a month (or $600,000 for a year). The oligarch owner of Burisma is too corrupt to get a visa to enter the US.

·         Also in May 2014 Obama offers a $1 Billion loan guarantee, plus $320 Million in general assistance, plus $118 Million for security equipment and training, plus $20 Million for law enforcement reform, plus lots of advisors—for banking, politics, energy, media, and human rights.

·         November 2014 Obama administration insists that Ukraine establish a national anti-corruption bureau (NACB), with the US as a partner. This puts the US in a position to get direct information on anything this bureau uncovers. Advisors include Greg Craig, former Obama White House Counsel; Tad Devine, Bernie Sanders’ chief strategist; and Tony Podesta, brother to John Podesta (who was counsel to Obama in 2014-2015); Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist; Joel Benenson and John Anzalone, Obama campaign pollsters.

·         Meanwhile, the corrupt oligarch owner of Burisma gets $1.8 B of money going to Burisma to be placed in his private bank—and that money disappears in a “banking error.” And at this point, the ban on his visa to the US is lifted, meaning he is no longer considered corrupt.

·         June 2015 Trump announces his presidential candidacy.

·         Late 2015, in the climate of corruption tied to Obama operatives, the Democrat National Committee (DNC) hires Alexandra Chalupa, daughter of Ukrainian, to do opposition research on Trump. (She had been doing work for the DNC since 2004.)

·         January 2016 Chalupa approaches DNC officials, suggests (no evidence; she just has a feeling) that Trump is connected somehow to Russia. This is before Manafort or Papadopoulos were in the picture for the Trump campaign, and before the Steel dossier. She focuses on Paul Manafort, who had worked for the campaign of the ousted Ukrainian president in 2014, but ignores the fact that Tad Devine and Tony Podesta had also advised the ousted president (these two were later appointed as advisors to the new president).

·         January 2016 Ukraine NACB meets with White House about two issues: Joe Biden and his son related to Burisma, and Paul Manafort. Only Manafort gets investigated. Those at the meeting later report they were pressured not to investigate the Burisma $1.8 B loss of money that had come from US taxpayers. (Contrast this with the current claim that possibly Trump pressured Ukraine to look into this very thing.)

·         March 2016 Ukraine prosecutor Shokin had been looking into Burisma; Joe Biden steps in and gets him fired. (He later brags about this; there is video.) According to Shokin testimony in another case, when he was fired, there had been no complaints about his work, and Biden presented no incidents of his supposed corruption. He claims he was fired because of Biden and assumes it was because of his investigation into Burisma, because of Biden’s son’s connection with that company. But he was also investigating an NGO supported by both the US government and a George Soros-owned organization.

·         Also in March 2016, another “accounting error” loses and additional $2.2 million in US taxpayer IMP loan to Ukraine.

·         Also in March 2016, Lutsenko takes over as prosecutor in Ukraine.

·         Also in March 2016, Manafort briefly works for the Trump campaign. And Chalupa, still a DNC operative, starts working directly with the Ukrainian Embassy in the US, where she worked to (mis)direct reporters researching Manafort and Russia, to damage the campaign of the Republican candidate for president.

·         April 2016 Chalupa spoke at Open World Society forum on Manafort, bringing in Michael Isikoff, whom she had connected with the Ukrainians. In a May email she hinted about a Trump connection she was working on. Later Isikoff wrote a story on the Steel dossier; he had received that dossier—which eventually showed up with the FBI and was used to obtain a FISA warrant to investigate Trump.

·         Also April 2016, the DNC hired FusionGPS to investigate Trump. Bruce Ohr of the DOJ was married to a woman who worked for FusionGPS, which was hired by the DNC. It is reasonable to say, then, that the DNC was colluding with Ukraine to interfere with a US presidential election.

·         June 2016 The FBI officially combined with the Ukraine NACB.

·         June 2016 A black ledger containing financial records kept by the former Ukrainian president, used for under-the-table payments. The black ledger was put together by head of NACB, Sytnyk and Leshchenko. They illegally release these documents in August 2016. The same day that info comes out that sends Manafort to jail, Tony Podesta (who had been doing the same work for the former Ukrainian president) retires, closes doors on his lobbying business, and no one investigates.

·         Also in June 2016 Obama appoints a new US Ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch. She calls in Lutsenko and instructs him not to investigate Burisma (and the missing $1.8 B) or the Soros-connected organization (and the missing $2.2 M), or a number of unnamed Ukrainians. Lutsenko, the new prosecutor for Ukraine, wanted to meet in the US with the DOJ. But the ambassador refused visas to him and his team. Specifically, they had wanted to discuss the following:

Glenn Beck explains what prosecutor Lutsenko wanted to share with DOJ
screenshot from here

o   DNC and Ukrainian officials were trying to gather dirt on Trump.

o   Misappropriation of $7 B in US money.

o   Ukrainian officials who admitted to influencing the US election.

o   Records showing Burisma sending $3 M to Hunter Biden (apparently way beyond his $600,00 in pay for being on their board).

o   Report of Biden pressuring Ukraine to fire Shokin.

o   US officials had interfered in cases in Ukraine.

·         November 2016 Trump won the election, a surprise to all these operatives.

·         July 12, 2017 Sarah Huckabee Sanders, at that time the incoming White House Press Secretary, in an off-camera briefing, tells media any actual collusion had happened between the DNC and the Ukrainian government and had specifically targeted people in the Trump campaign to influence the election. No follow-up questions from the media.

·         October 2017 Two Ukrainians (Sytnyk of NACB and Leshchenko) are found guilty of interfering in US election. US media doesn’t cover this. Evidence included prosecutor Lutsenko mentioning, in April, an audio the Americans had of Sytnyk conversation at his home, discussing how he would like to help Hillary, who was of the US and world hegemony, even though Trump would be better for the American people. Rosenblat leaked the audio recording, after the court heard it, in October 2017. It was front-page news in Ukraine, but not covered here.

·         Throughout 2018 Mueller investigation underway in US, and political upheaval is underway in Ukraine.

·         April 18, 2019 Mueller report shows there was zero collusion between Trump campaign and Russia.

·         April 29, 2019 Ukraine elects a comedic commentator as their new president, following an anti-corruption campaign.

·         May 2019 Trump fires US Ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovitch.

·         Also May 2019 DOJ investigates the investigation into Trump. (Results are due out in the near future. There is some speculation that the impeachment talk is an effort to discredit the president and his administration ahead of this report.)

·         July 2019 New Ukrainian president recalls the Ukrainian ambassador to the US for corruption. Now no one is in the way of what prosecutor Lutsenko wanted to tell the US.

·         July 2019 Trump has a phone conversation with new Ukrainian president.

·         September 2019 a whistleblower with no direct information on the phonecall reports that Trump was pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. The next day Trump provides the entire transcript of the call showing there was no wrongdoing; that same day Nancy Pelosi announces that ongoing committees will now be called an impeachment inquiry.

Earlier today, Glenn Beck interviewed investigative journalist John Solomon, who has done much of the digging into this story. The audio is available here (about 125 minutes in, during the 3^rd hour of the radio broadcast). 

Here are a couple more explanations from Glenn Beck:

·         “What Whistleblowers Are Supposed to Do,” procedures that were not followed in this case. Here on Facebook

·         This second one is more about the DNC operative: “The Chalupa Behind the DNC’s Ukraine Scandal.” Here  on Facebook

Here are several of the stories coming from John Solomon for The Hill:

·         March 20, 2019 “Senior Ukrainian official says he's opened probe into US election interference”    

·         April 1, 2019 “Joe Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived” 

·         September 26, 2019 “Solomon: These once-secret memos cast doubt on Joe Biden's Ukraine story" 

·         October 8, 2019 “John Solomon claims newdocument shows 'significant shift' in 'factual timeline' of Ukraine matters”  Fox News Sean Hannity interview

John Solomon (left) being interviewed by Sean Hannity
screenshot from here

Here are a few more articles on the issue:

·         May 13, 2019 “Why Isn’t the Senate Investigating Joe Biden’s Son Hunter Over China, Ukraine Dealings?” for American Thinker by Monica Showalter 

·         September 26, 2019 “When Hillary Clinton Colluded with Ukraine” for American Thinker by Daniel John Sobieski 

·         October 10, 2019 “Ukraine President: We’re Ready To Investigate Ukraine’s Alleged Meddling In 2016 U.S.Election” for The Daily Wire by James Barrett 

Most of what you’re hearing on mainstream media is about Trump trying to discredit Biden and maybe hinting at something in a phonecall to the president of Ukraine. They’re missing the largest part of the story. You can find the facts, but it’s not that easy. The Glenn Beck Ukraine Scandal Explained video, below, was shadowbanned—meaning that some algorithm made it difficult to find even though it was much searched for.

The people who tried to effect a particular outcome in 2016 will be trying (harder) to do that in 2020. At least arm yourself with some truth. 

No One Has the Right to Rule Over Us

I don’t know if it’s obvious, but I don’t spend a lot of time covering the top news stories of the week here. This is more about the principles that lead to freedom, prosperity, and civilization—which come under the category of political philosophy, rather than actual politics.

One of the principles of freedom is that the people grant government its powers, not the other way around. And we should always beware of power mongers—tyrants, who feel an inherent right to rule over other human beings.

So, this week’s news has been distracting me, as it probably has most people. But the underlying point is to understand and prevent tyranny.

To sum up,

·         The Democrats put announced there was a whistleblower’s report that a phonecall between the newly elected President of Ukraine and President Trump was a quid pro quo, pressuring Ukraine to investigate corruption that could be a political advantage to Trump. The call was simultaneously transcribed by several workers, whose words are then aligned to create as accurate record as possible. The whistleblower was not one of those transcribers, but apparently heard a leak that came, presumably, from one of them, each of whom would have had a security clearance that such a leak would violate. (Why is no one talking about the illegality of such a leak, and finding out who leaked?)

·         President Trump, with permission from the Ukrainian president, within a day put out the full unredacted transcript of the 30-minute phonecall, about 10 minutes of which was under question. Obviously, what was claimed about the phonecall was not actually spoken or done. No pressure. No quid pro quo.

·         Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, announced, the day after the whistleblower’s claim came out, that there would be an “official” Impeachment inquiry—a re-labeling of six committees already involved in a search for misconduct of the president. That is, not investigations into actual wrongdoing, but various searches for wrongdoing. Calling these already existing investigations officially an impeachment inquiry changes nothing about what they were doing, but it puts the word “impeachment” front and center. By the time she made this pronouncement, the transcript of the phonecall in question was already public, but she’d already set her plan in motion.

·         When it was clear the phonecall itself was not what they’d claimed, they then said the President was blocking the actual whistleblower report. So he had that released, with mild redactions (for national security and protection of names in the intelligence community). The additional claims were that there was a delay in giving certain aid, or selling certain arms, to Ukraine—with a claim that there was an implied quid pro quo of withholding those things until Ukraine followed through on the corruption investigation Trump advised in the phonecall.

In order to believe the claim that there was an impeachable offense, one must attribute motives and thoughts to the President that were not spoken and mostly do not coincide with records and timelines.

The “whistleblower,” who had no direct knowledge, observed some things that, if they were connected, might be construed to be pressure on a foreign government. But the whistleblower account reads much more like analysis than factual reporting.

Such analysis happens all the time. Think back to Jack Ryan, the analyst in Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. He sees some facts, and, based on his background understanding of one of the people involved, comes up with the theory that the Russian submarine Red October isn’t intending a renegade attack; it’s attempting to defect. It’s a wild speculation. In the meeting in which Jack Ryan presents it, his superior is concerned at how foolish such a wild speculation makes them look. But, because it’s fiction, the analysis gets traction, and the rest of the movie ensues.

An analysis isn’t a whistleblower report; it’s one person’s speculation about the meaning surrounding facts based on the analyst’s experience and biases. If it isn’t convincing to his superiors, it’s just another data point, set aside unless and until something more comes along to make it worth a second look. This “whistleblower,” reportedly someone in intelligence with an anti-Trump bias, wasn’t satisfied with his/her theory/speculation not being taken as fact, so he/she put it out as if it were a stifled whistleblower report (something that required a change in rules concerning whistleblowers in order to qualify).

People read the phonecall transcript differently, depending on how much they hate having Trump as our president. That doesn’t make it a fair reading.

I think it’s a fair assessment that the whole situation is evidence that there is indeed a Deep State—officials within government working toward wielding their own power, regardless of who the people elect—and that’s power mongering, which is antithetical to our constitutional republic.

Today on Andrew Klavan’s show [partial video on Facebook, entire audio podcast at The Daily Wire], he talks about this pretty accurately. Here’s the transcript from his Big Idea segment:

Andrew Klavan, September 30, 2019, screenshot from here

In a world of fake news, it’s important sometimes to remember the real news, the story that’s not being covered. And that story is this: The heads of the intelligence community, under Barak Obama, used Russian disinformation, bought and paid for by the Democrat Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign, to launch a spying operation on an opposition candidate, namely Donald Trump. They then engineered and launched a two-and-a-half-year investigation into a Russia collusion hoax in order to distract from their incredible act of American subversion.

Today, as the Department of Justice Inspector General prepares his report on these doings and his DOJ Prosecutor John Durham leads a separate investigation, a completely meaningless story about Trump and the Ukrainian president, has replaced the collusion hoax as the tool of distraction, and is being covered by the press with the same breathless and reckless hysteria as the Russian hoax—and for the same reasons.

It’s as if the Russian hoax had never been exposed, but it has.

Now, why do I say the Ukraine story is meaningless? I say it because no one cares. Zero percent of the population of the United States cares if our loudmouth president said stupid stuff to the president of Ukraine. To put that in numerical terms, no people care. None.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are people who care very deeply about hobbling Trump and getting him out of office. And they care very deeply about what they hope to get out of the Ukraine story. And there are people who care very deeply about defending Trump from the Deep State, and they care about disproving the story. But no one cares about the substance. It makes absolutely no difference to anyone if Trump was nudging the Ukrainian president to investigate Hunter Biden’s obviously nepostistic sinecure with their stupid gas company, and Joe Biden’s likewise obviously compromised integrity because of it.

At the very worst—and I don’t believe this at all, by the way—but at the very worst, Trump was organizing a jerry-rigged, tape-entwined version of what Obama did to him using the full power of the government. It’s the exact story that the press, not only won’t cover, but is covering up what Obama did to Trump. And now Trump—if the worst of this is true—is sort of, kind of, maybe a little trying to do that to Joe Biden—which is absurd, because he would have much rather run against Joe Biden than Elizabeth Warren.

Now, you may say, well this could still be serious if it leads to impeachment. And we know that would be serious, because people keep saying that it’s serious. Reporters, politicians, commentators. Just listen to them. They all keep saying impeachment is a serious business. But, in fact, nothing is serious if it’s not done seriously. An impeachment show about something no one cares about, that will not result in the president leaving office, is only serious in the sense that it disgraces a legislature that no longer actually legislates, but spends all it’s time in politically motivated investigations and show trials when it’s not raising the debt ceiling to pay for the politically motivated investigations and show trials.

Want to know the news? Follow the Obama story—Obamagate. It’s a big scandal, and a dangerous scandal. And if anyone actually covers it and investigates it, it may begin to root out a Deep State that is willing to do and say anything to cover up the fact that it has gotten way, way out of control.

A bit later in the podcast, Klavan shares a couple of montages. First is one minute of a five-minute montage of the press fawning over Obama. Next is the media dishing up the “impeachment” idea, starting in November 2016, before Trump had taken office, on up through this past week.

from the montage included in the Klavan podcast
screenshot from here

What we have is a segment of society—and media, politicians, and other elites fit in here—that refuses to accept the results of an election. It was an election Hillary Clinton, with the help of a sitting president, attempted to secure through illegal means, and yet she lost. My guess is that Nancy Pelosi’s giving in to talking about impeachment now, after three years, when an election will come up before an actual impeachment could take place, is a desperation move intended to taint the president, because, based on the state of the economy and the increase in personal freedoms after Obama, the Democrats greatly fear Trump will be reelected, despite all their efforts.

As Klavan says later, this isn’t about any of the things they claim it is about:

The target is you. The target is to teach you a lesson: "Do not vote for whom we do not want you to vote for."

Those who feel they have the right to rule over us are tyrants, who should be kept as far away as possible from any of the reins of government.

If there is anything good that can come out of this, I hope it’s that truth will reveal the nefarious works of those trying to undermine the best and most important experiment in self-government in the history of the world.

Trump is not the enemy of our freedom. Maybe, as unpleasant as he is in the Twitter world, he’s exactly the tough leader we need to stand up to the tyranny. I hope he wins this particularly uncivil war against him, against us, and against our constitutional republic.

Freedom Is a Universal Desire

It is my belief, here at the Spherical Model, that freedom from repression is interrelated with prosperity and civilization. It’s easy to see why people want civilization and prosperity. And since tyranny limits civilization and prosperity, while the freedom of small government limited to protecting God-given rights leads to flourishing, it is logical that anyone with understanding will also want freedom. People will yearn for it. They will recognize the unfairness, the corruption—the evil—of tyranny. They will want to move “northward” the way a swimmer moves up to the surface for air.

We can see evidence of this universal desire for freedom. This past week one example is Ukraine.

We haven’t been getting very much news out of Ukraine, but there have been protests in the streets for some months. If I have gathered accurately, the Ukrainian people have wanted to remain European, connected to the European Union, with increased capitalism, while their president, Yanukovich, has been leaning toward Putin’s Russia. There are ethnic differences. Within the country’s boundaries is a significant minority that are Russian rather than Ukrainian, and wouldn’t mind reconnecting with Russia.

But you have the Ukrainian people who lived under the repressive Soviet Union until just over two decades ago, who gained their freedom, who want to grow and live in freedom—these people have absolutely no incentive to submit to yet more tyranny.

Things reached a turning point this past few days. Police snipers, presumably on orders from the president, shot as many as 100 protesters in the streets. (Government reports claim the number of deaths is a mere 77; however, 577 were injured, and 369 hospitalized.) Then the president was deposed. I’m not sure exactly how the deposing too place. There is some discussion that Yulia Tymoshenko, prime minister recently released from prison, may be willing to step up. President Yanokovich has disappeared from his luxurious estate. Word this morning was that he hasn’t yet attempted to leave the country, so he may be in hiding somewhere. His home had been off limits to fellow countrymen for years. He used it for state dinners, one would suppose. But it was astoundingly opulent in a nation where average families get by on $500 a month.

We had neighbors some years ago who took their family on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to visit their relatives in Ukraine. They loved the people, who were so giving. But they were a little shocked at conditions. This was a relatively middle-class Ukrainian family, who were able to send their daughter to America to study abroad for her senior year. But in preparation for our friends’ visit, they upgraded their home by getting a new wooden toilet seat for the outhouse. It wouldn’t be surprising for people who have patiently waited as slow growth brings them prosperity to be very angry to learn of their president’s lifestyle.

Photos showed the estate this weekend, with people invading and looking around—in shock, because apparently his exorbitant lifestyle was kept hidden from the people. Yet, at least in the photos I saw, people looked around like tourists—no windows broken, no looting, no one even entering the house. There were however attempts to recover paperwork, some of which had been partially burned, and some which protestors were beginning to sort out.

Among some of the most effective word that got out was a YouTube video, uploaded 2-10-2014, called “I Am Ukrainian.” A young woman named Yulia makes an impassioned plea, in English, with video and photos backing up her words, asking for help getting the word out. I attempted to transcribe her words (sorry for any errors), which verify the basic belief that people everywhere yearn for freedom.

I am the Ukrainian, the native of Kiev. And now I am now in Maidan [??], in the central part of the city, to know why thousands of people all over my country are on the streets. There is only one reason: we want to be free from a dictatorship. We want to be free from the politicians, who work only for themselves, who are ready to shoot, to beat, to injure people just for saving their money [or “saying their minds” ??], just for saving their houses, just for saving their power. I want these people who are here, who have duty, who are brave—I want them to lead a normal life. We are civilized people, but our government are barbarians.

It’s not the Soviet Union. We want our courts not to be corrupted. We want to be free.

I know that maybe tomorrow we’ll have no phone, no internet connection, and we will be alone here. And maybe policemen will murder us one after another. Then it will be dark here. That’s why I ask you now to help us. We have this freedom held inside our hearts. We have this freedom in our minds. And now I ask you to build this freedom in our country. You can help us only by telling this story to your friends, only by sharing this video. Please, share it. Speak to your friends; speak to your family; speak to your government and show that you support us.

[written on screen]: Please contact your representatives and demand they support the Ukrainian people in their fight for freedom and democracy.    

Before it’s too late.

This video was made in early February 2014.

Hopefully, thanks to you and the strong people of Ukraine, things will get better.

Please take time to view the entire two-minute video:

 

 

Meanwhile riots and reprisals continue to worsen in Venezuela as well. Our friend who was living there has returned to her native Uganda, so I’m relieved for her. The people there have for some time been seem clamoring for goods, promised to them by their failing socialist government (I know, “failing socialist government” is redundant). The question there is whether the people know to ask for freedom in order to get prosperity and civilization, or whether they have been successfully turned into government dependents who are now simply throwing tantrums that they are not getting what they were led to expect. You can’t simply demand “better” socialist government and expect that will lead to better prosperity and thriving civilization. You have to start by living civilized lives (religious people, strong families), where honesty, self-reliance, hard work, and caring for others become natural. Then you get better prosperity—and you realize tyrannical government is in the way of the flourishing that’s building up pressure to happen.

But what is happening now could bring to everyone’s awareness the innate need for freedom—for life and liberty. The government oppression of its people—usurping control over their words, their acts, and their very lives—may wake the people up to the disastrous choice it is to exchange material “security” for the freedom to work and prosper. I don’t know what the people will do there, but I hope they will seek freedom as if their lives depend on it, because they do.

Those of us who have some freedom (as long as we can keep hold of it), know to value it, and we want it for all peoples. We offer our support and prayers to any people reaching northward toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization.