Song for a deadly peacemaker and kitten

It is Day 436 of the Russian Criminal War of Genocide against the People of Ukraine.Volodymyr, with the call sign ‘Malysh,’ [“Baby,” according to Google Translate] is a sergeant in the 128th separate mountain assault Transcarpathian brigade. He signed his first contract at the age of 19. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Volodymyr’s unit has been at all the main frontline areas – Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Donetsk. Near Bakhmut, Volodymyr was injured. “Everything was working against us there – cannon and rocket artillery, mortars, tanks, grenade launchers, snipers… And no contact with the outside world,” says the brave warrior. Yet, despite all the extreme challenges and horrors of the war, Volodymyr and his brothers- and sisters-in-arms remain fully loyal to their heroic profession. “I do not regret joining the Armed Forces and will never regret it,” declares Volodymyr.  –Photo and text source: Ukrainian World Congress

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Слава Україні. Героям слава.
Slava Ukraini. Heroyam slava.
Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the heroes.

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For much more about the war, the people, the art, the history, and the music, see my comprehensive post of May 14, 2022, Oh, Red Viburnum in the Meadow – Ukraine’s Second Anthem

Oi u luzi chervona kalyna (Oh, in the meadow a red guelder rose / kalyna tree flower) is a Ukrainian folk song, the anthem of the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen of the early 20th Century. It is like a “second national anthem” and a deeply cherished patriotic song in Ukraine. It is also known as “Hey, Hey, Rise Up!” It heralds the indomitable spirit of the Ukrainian People.

Below: Military orchestra rendition performed by active duty Ukrainian Soldiers. Premiered April 16, 2022 (2 months after the Russian invasion started).

“Hey hey, rise up!” Full original text with English subtitles (YouTube link https://youtu.be/vZbONSSp2Ig)

English text also presented below the video.

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Do not bend low, Oh red kalyna, you have a white flower.
Do not worry, glorious Ukraine, you have a free people.
And we’ll take that red kalyna and will raise it up,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
And we’ll take that red kalyna and will raise it up,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!

Marching forward, our fellow volunteers, into a bloody fray,
For to free, our brother-Ukrainians, from hostile chains.
And we, our brother-Ukrainians, we will then liberate,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
And we, our brother-Ukrainians, we will then liberate,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!

Oh in the field of early spring wheat, there’s a golden furrow,
Then began the Ukrainian riflemen to engage the enemy,
And we’ll take that precious early wheat and will gather it,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
And we’ll take that precious early wheat and will gather it,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!

When the stormy winds blow forth from the wide steppes,
They will glorify, throughout Ukraine, the Sich riflemen.
And we’ll take the glory of the riflemen preserving it,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
And we’ll take the glory of the riflemen preserving it,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!

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Visit the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC).  Subscribe to their newsletter to keep up on all matters pertaining to the war, locally and internationally.

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#DefeatRussia          #StandWithUkraine          #BraveLikeUA

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The Putin Circus and a child’s love of her homeland in song

Please share this funny Putin video if you like it.  That’s why I post them.  So you can share them.  This is the YouTube link to share: https://youtu.be/t-wFKNy0MZQ if you are not foolish enough to share the link to the blog post you are looking at.  Doesn’t matter.  I’ll never know.  But I do not mind at all being a fool for the glory of Ukraine, in silly ways and others.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you … below the comedy here, there’s also the April 24, 2022 world premier official music video of the Ukrainian very young lady Alicia Kishe, accompanied by her father Timothy, singing the song she wrote, “Ukraine is a World of Love” sung in Ukrainian (a language that gets more beautiful the more you hear it) with English subtitles.  I think some people will like it; fools like me and otherwise.  Please share it when you get done adoring it.  Then adore it some more.  Let Alicia be Ukraine to you for a while.

TURN ON CAPTIONS (CC AT THE BOTTOM OF THE VIDEO WINDOW) TO SEE THE ENGLISH SUBTITLES.  It works best if you watch it at the YouTube site.  For a special treat, run them in full screen mode.

Vladimir Putin – Putin, Putout (The Unofficial Russian Anthem) by Klemen Slakonja

[The name Vladimir means “ruler of the world” or “ruler of peace.”]

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Enough of the funny stuff.  Now for the heart-melting beautiful stuff, what you always come here for, of course …

Long Live the Dead

Watch this 97-minute Netflix documentary now released for free viewing in YouTube (or catch it on Netflix if you have it), “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom.”  It is about the 2014 Maidan (or The Maidan Revolution) by fearless, relentless, unstoppable, unarmed, non-violent protesters against ruthless militarized police forces and brutal mercenaries in Kyiv, Ukraine when the president sold out to Putin instead of signing an agreement with the European Union as promised to a People yearning to build upon the freedom they claimed when they declared their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 (is this still a sentence?).

This is a story that we can learn from, if we are to defend our freedom when our time comes, and it seems to be coming sooner than I ever believed it could.  Democracy in the United States is at greater risk than ever.  I know people don’t get it, don’t think so, can’t believe it.  They just don’t know, because, like Putin’s duped citizens, they can’t.  Some others may have to die because of it, if we are to succeed.

Watch this documentary and see what the dead can do when they know the truth and fight for it, when their courage inspires victory for the living, when they find out just how fragile democracy can be, and how precious, and give their lives for it.

Don’t waste your brain energy calling me pessimistic.  It doesn’t matter anymore.  Whether I am pessimistic or not, the warning must go out.  Whether my efforts are pessimistic or not, I must continue, especially because so many others will not prepare for the trouble we so likely face.  The Autocracy Party has just about all the guns, and the willingness to use them for delusional reasons.  Are you ready for that?

I am preparing for the fall of democracy in the United States.  You should, too.  You have nothing to lose by being prepared, and a free nation to gain.

My truly optimistic take on it says that with preparation and dedication to protecting our civilization, we can succeed.  Otherwise, we go into something like a Dark Age.  An optimist looks ahead and sees ways to succeed, not ways to act in the future, or to hope to do, but ways to act now for the sake of the future.  Preparation is optimistic.  It says there is a way, so take it.  Optimism is not merely about hoping for the best.  In fact, that’s just stupid in many instances.  Hope can be stupid.  I am preparing, not hoping.

Now, in 2022, Putin wants to take away from Ukraine what they earned in the past, what death bought for them in 2014.  Watching this documentary, you’ll see why they will NEVER let him take it from them, and they will continue fighting from the grave that they do not fear.

Me neither.  My grave is not something to fear, except by our enemies.

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Slava Ukraini!  Glory to Ukraine!  Learn from them to never give up!

Long live the dead.

Olena was wounded on February 24, 2022, the day Russia invaded Ukraine.  She and over forty-four million Ukrainians and other residents there need our help.  Helping them helps us.  It may even save us from ourselves.

Wounded Olena Kurilo in Kharkiv Feb 24, 2022. (Color pencil derived from photo.)

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We don’t know — Arctic methane says so

We don’t know how long we have.  The more we heat up the planet, the more we reach “tipping points,” where “positive feedback loops” that we set in motion become Earth’s way of consuming itself.  Our models for predicting effects of human-caused climate change do not — cannot — take into account the potential for the feedback loops running out of control, beyond reach of any mitigating efforts we may make.

So, what, then?

We have to simply stop feeding carbon into the air.  Just stop, in every way we can, as much as possible, everywhere, and punish those who resist.  They don’t call it “an existential threat” for nothing.  Why treat it as less?

Lesser efforts, lesser objectives, raise the risk beyond our ability to measure, as shown below in the new PBS Nova episode, “Arctic Sinkholes.”

As the authors explain, the craters look like sinkholes to the naked eye, but they are not sinkholes.  They are massive, explosive and incessant methane leaks from the arctic permafrost.

The rate of increase in the arctic temperature is twice that of the planetary average.  The permafrost — ground frozen continuously for at least two years, but also thousands of feet deep for millennia — is thawing, and opening big methane vents at alarming rates.

We don’t know how many there are, or will be.  We don’t know their ultimate effect.  We don’t know if our feeble efforts to stop killing our planet can begin to take into account the effects of thawing permafrost.

Telling the Times; Carl Sagan and many others warned us of the shining city in a ditch.

Call this scribblement pessimistic if you must, but calling it so does not change anything.  Optimism begins with noticing, not with self-delusion.  It may begin with noticing self-delusion, too.  I want to point out some things we’ve been told about the soul of a nation and democracy in peril.  I want to tell of their telling, and tell of my seeking, and suggest yours.

If, however, a reader wants to use their idea of pessimism as an epithet, read on and enjoy your conviction.  Just give yourself the benefit of the doubt by reading.

Call this scribblement didactic if you want.  That doesn’t change anything either.  Try responding to something in it, optimistically.  Try acting on it, even if only in words.  That would be a change.

George the Prophet

There were no official political parties when they wrote the Constitution.  It was not a negotiation undertaken by political parties.  It was an agreement undertaken by the people.

Below are crucially important and prescient excerpts from President George Washington’s Farewell Address in 1796.

I wrote some comments that I may post another time. For now, I’ll shut up and let George do all the talking. If you listen, you may wonder why nobody told you the so-called Father of the Nation was a profound prophet, as if looking right at our generation when he wrote this.