Eyes wide open

I'm a day late and going to try and cover Minnesota to Greenland, Ukraine to Iran, and an excellent Oscar-nominated documentary literally snuck out of Putin's Russia.

There are moments in history when things shift, perhaps, forever, and it might not be a stretch to say that the cold blooded murder in broad daylight of a male ICU nurse in Minnesota this weekend by ICE “troops” (what do you even call them?) might have been one of them. Ordinary Americans with a conscience who still believed in their right to protest and express their views are shocked, horrified, demanding that something be done. They can write whatever they want online (for now), but I am not sure what lasting impact that will have. Some are calling for a general strike, but frankly, that doesn’t work in a gig economy when millions of workers are one paycheck away from not being able to pay rent and therefore, eviction. Wealthy people sitting behind screens should be very careful what they demand from ordinary Americans just trying to survive. Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway suggested pulling away from those companies actively kissing the White House’s you-know-what. They suggested moving away from Chat GPT to Claude. I have no idea what if anything this might do, but I’m willing to be open minded. They say, of course, that Trump only cares about what the markets do, but even that isn’t totally true, because last winter, Trump let the markets tank with his tariff wars, and he didn’t seem then particularly bothered by the short-term pain many millions of Americans experienced in their porfoltios. Perhaps moves like the powerful letter from former President Clinton:

…or the Governor of New York calling for the resignation of Kirsti Noem, Homeland Security director (some of you may remember her as the woman who has shot her own pets; this weekend she also lied and claimed the victim pulled his gun, which is not true as we have multiple eyewitness videos of the murder).

There is one thing in all of this which I fail to understand, and that is why protestors are using their right to concealed carry. I have heard there are professional arguments, but frankly, to anyone sitting here in Europe, it is a hard pill to swallow to make an argument that any civilian needs to have a gun on them. And yes, I know, we don’t have ICE shooting at us (yet) here. The problem is when everybody has a gun, the good guys and the bad guys, the guns are still the problem, as those fighting to rid us of our guns smartly point out.

I, personally, would not feel safe to protest right now in America. You have absolutely no idea which branch of law enforcment (which ICE are not, right, they are technically border patrol) will show up and how they will feel entitled to behave. Because until now, there have been no real consequences for two cold-blooded murders of innocent civilians. I remember the moment in Russia when protesting simply became untennable, when you knew if you were to show up somewhere with a sign, you would immediately be carried off in the back of a paddywagon, and special forces would have no issues using their sticks to beat protestors. But guns? Even in Putin’s Russia they weren’t given permission to just start shooting in the streets. This is what happens in a country addicted to its weapons, grown men who have had no luck with women in real life but have decades of experience playing violent video games, when they are suddenly given a signing bonus, a uniform, and a false sense of power. Except the lives they take, we don’t get them back. Those deaths are real. Perhaps, too, like the death at the moment to the right of protest and self-expression. I called my college kid and said as a concerned mother, don’t you dare think about going anywhere. Thankfully, for the moment he is more concerned with how to find food in the midst of a huge snowstorm.

Speaking of snow, the storm around Greenland seems to have cooled a bit in the sense that it is now my understanding that the U.S. and Denmark are actually in talks about what a potential solution to Trump’s self-created problem might look like. This Politico article aptly calls the talks “old wine in a new bottle”, arguing much of the framework for the expansion of U.S. bases on Greenland has existed since 1951. How very on-brand for Trump to make much ado about nothing.

“The treaty gives an enormous amount of flexibility to the United States to identify the security interests it thinks are necessary and to have a green light to go execute upon them,” said Iris Ferguson, who served as the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for Arctic and global resilience under the Biden administration. “So on paper, the authorities are there.”

Perhaps the more interesting question is why all the fuss about Greenland, why now? It completeley took over the entire Davos World Economic Forum last week in Switzerland. I listened to one very interesting clip from January 21 with the CEO of Lazard being interviewed by CNBC in Davos, and he suggested all of the noise about Greenland was Trump’s way of buying time and distracting us all while the U.S. moved more aircraft carriers into the Gulf in preparation to do something about Iran.

Trump certainly seems to have the attention span of a toddler, but I don’t think he is crazy or has already lost his marbles, as many like to argue. I believe there is a method to the madness, and we may see more big news this week, distracting not only from Greenland, but now from Minnesota, as the White House has a huge domestic problem on its hands now. A self-created one, yes. But something that could threaten to spillover very easily. People are incensed, and with good reason. A liberal democracy is not supposed to murder its own citizens in the streets. I really have no idea how this will play out. My instinct after living in Russia is to keep my head down, but that isn’t what makes America great. What makes America great is the instinct to stand up and do something for justice and fairness. But we have collectively moved so far away from the fairy tales we were taught in our elementary school social studies classes about balance of power that I really don’t know what to expect.

The 1% are not being shot at and will not be shot at.

In Ukraine, it is still freezing. I saw this train earlier this week in the station in Vienna. The sleeper cars to Kyiv. Electricity in major Ukrainian cities is still only being turned on for a few hours a day, and this means no water and no heat. Many, many families have made the decision to leave. Ukrainians here in Vienna tell me they are hosting friends and their children who could not stand it anymore in Kyiv. You cannot have a normal life while trying to survive in single digits in a cold apartment and without electricity for much of a 24 hour cycle. It is simply not sustainable. So Russia has quietly achieved its goals of shutting down normal life in Ukraine, no matter how many defiant posts you read on social media. A functioning economy cannot work under these circumstances. The more Ukrainians who leave, the smaller the economy becomes. Worse, I heard rumors (three degrees of separation so don’t quote me) that the repair teams explained that even if the war were to end tomorrow, these ongoing electricity cuts would have to continue for years (yes, years) until they could replace the lost capacity. That, to me, reads like a gun to the head of whoever is in charge of Ukraine right now.

Talks took place between the U.S., Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi with no apparent progress. They may pick up again in a week. It is my understanding that Russia wants to demand more territory in a settlement than what it has actually managed to seize on the battlefield (e.g. all of Donestk and Luhansk regions), which would mean for Ukraine to give up cities it still controls. Meanwhile, I understand Russia is making a push further south, to try and grab more territory with troops before any agreement is signed. But by far the biggest damage Russia has done has been to pull normal life out from under the legs of ordinary Ukrainians who so far suffered through four years of war. You see videos of moms with toddlers trying to walk up seven flights of stairs in snowsuits in freezing temps when the elevator doesn’t work because the electricity is off. You see kids going to bed in seven layers. It is all totally insane and totally intentional and I think this really might be the breaking point. Russia has weaponized the cold against Ukraine’s population, and this winter has been especially cruel, with no relief in sight. I just hope for everyone’s sake that some kind of an agreement will be reached sooner rather than later. But years to get back to normal…that is like its own death sentence in a way to the entrepreneurial Ukrainian economy its citizens took so much pride in.

Last night I watched an incredible documentary, Mr Nobody Against Putin. It is now nominated for an Oscar, and absolutley brilliant. The teacher who filmed everything and then snuck it out of Russia when he fled really risked his own life, there is no question. The material is shocking and damning even for those of us who think we know Russia well, and who have spent some time outside of Moscow. It is utterly heartbreaking and also a testament to all the good that can be destroyed with the stroke of a pen of one authoritarian leader. No country, it seems, is immune to this. The documentary is a BBC production but I was able to watch it online with English substitles here.

@kinolorberMR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN is now playing in select theaters and streaming on Kino Film Collection! As Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, primary schools across the country are transformed into recruiting grounds for the war. Facing the ethical dilemma of working in a system defined by propaganda and violence, one brave teacher films what's really happening in his own school.

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This weekend I was very lucky and my best friend came to visit. While I was waiting for her in her hotel lobby, I saw groups of men in tuxedos with long jackets (tails I think you call it?) and women in beautiful ball gowns, and it struck me that amidst all the insanity going on in the world at the moment people are actually still getting dressed up and going to events like that, kind of like a Titanic moment? I then overheard one young man talk about the lack of electricity…and I realized he must have come from Ukraine with his wife for the ball. That just threw my head in a spin, I didn’t know what to do with that information.

I thought about a video I saw this week about a mother leaving Kyiv with her toddler, her husband waving goodbye at the train station, and then a long ride to the Polish border with a cranky, tired toddler, and then another train ride to Krakow, and then a day spent wandering the cold streets waiting for an evening flight, toddler melting down now on a regular basis, and then, finally, an evening flight to Paris, where friends met them and took them in. A few days or weeks of sleeping in warmth. Just insane, if you think about it.

All of this, just like our crisis in Minnesota, created by a handful of people and their orders. Just like all the pain in the Russian documentary above. Even I as a neutral observer can explain the multitude of ways in which Trump and Putin have both impacted my own life. Each of us can. And that is downright frightening. That we have still handed so much power to so few. That we as humanity haven’t figured out a better way than strongest wins.