MARCH 2022 BLOG

 

MARCH BLOG 2022

 

Dear Reader,

 

March has always been a dark moth. Perhaps it is because in the northern hemisphere it is the transition from winter to spring. In the ancient Roman calendar, it was the time of settling debts and the assassination of Julius Caesar which made the Ides of March a turning point in Roman history.

March, then is symbolic, signifying a turning point of life as we live it. Covid pandemic created a global turn everywhere and now the Russian invasion of a democratic republic UKRAINE has made us all to reflect on what is the next turning point. To make this blog more significant and bolder, I am adding some reflections from people I know in Canada and add my own story of surviving the Communist ‘horde’ that took over Ukraine and many other countries after the WWII. I mention the HORDE as a name of ancient conquerors – the MONGOLS that in the 12^th century invaded huge areas of what is now Middle East, Ukraine (Kyivan state) and northern China. Details of this story is well written in the book THE HORDE by Marie Farreau.

My story is very much what today the children in Ukraine are suffering and parents helping them to survive both mentally and physically. I remember the hiding in cellars when bombs fell, and airplanes were flying over much of Europe and all our family travelled by train to Slovakia and finally settled in Canada. My father died in a gulag when the Russian army invaded Ukraine in 1942,

I am adding here a note from my friend and namesake Ihor Popadynec MD as he reflects about the times in his life:

“I am a Canadian who was born during WWII who is very concerned about the dire circumstance in which the land of my birth now finds itself.

How unfortunate that America the Brave and President Biden, descendants of the defenders of the Alamo short centuries ago, have for months dodged the cry for help from a brave President and his loyal Ukrainian nation.  They, now hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, have turned to the Bastion of Freedom and Democracy, for aid.  The pleas fell largely unheard onto the ears of a nation purporting herself to be the strongest on the globe and answered with lame excuses that the mad leader of their prime antagonist Russia has uttered insane threats regarding nuclear devices.  Is America herself bereft of that technology? Has the neutralizing doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction which has kept humanity safe for decades of the cold war been relegated into obsolescence?  The enslaved and fearful Russians are awakening and will rise not allowing Putin's conflict to reach that level for their own and Russia's sake, stopping and relegating Putin to an institution for treatment he so badly needs.

The Russians have been injecting additional armour nonstop into the battle fields.  Re-supply of the Ukrainians is now crucial to continue their battle for survival.

 Supply convoys from adjacent NATO countries could get through and do it if given air cover for protection from the Russians.

It has to be done now !  Time is critical”

 

 Here is a short story for those who are not familiar about this event:

The significance of Russia’s missile attacks overnight and invasion of Ukraine cannot be overstated: The world order has been completely upended and another genocide unfolds. February 24, 2022, will go down in history as a dark day, as was February 24, 1920, when the German Nazi Party was founded. And the context matters: Putin's invasion is where his hero, Josef Stalin, starved to death at least 3.5 million Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933 for the crime of refusing to give up their farms to move into his communist collectives. Soldiers murdered farmers, village leaders, and priests then confiscated all harvests and livestock. This is known as “The Holodomor”, or mass extermination by starvation, and was declared by dozens of nations, the Vatican, and the European Union as “genocide”, or the destruction of a group or a nation. Putin’s unprovoked attack against a peaceful country, and denial of its right to exist, is not war. This is another Russian despot bent on destroying the Ukrainian people and eventually others.

Ukraine left the Soviet Union in 1991 but in 2014 Putin recaptured Crimea and some portions of Luhansk and Donetsk in the eastern part of the country. He said as attacks began, that he doesn’t want to occupy the entire place, only to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” it — statements based on two delusions: that the country is predatory and is “fascist, antisemitic, and intolerant toward its Russian-speaking citizens”. But one need only look at 2019 when Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for their current President, Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, was born in Eastern Ukraine and was raised by Russian-speaking parents. On the night of his election, Zelensky, an entertainer known throughout the Russian-speaking world, said: “To all the peoples of the former Soviet Union. See what we’ve done here tonight. Anything is possible.”

To Putin, this was a declaration of war, especially coming from a celebrity. So was Ukraine’s refusal to accept the capture of Crimea and Donbas. Everything began to shift and another famous observer, Garry Kasparov, chess master and former Presidential candidate in Russia, recently noted. “Don’t believe anything the government says but take Putin’s words seriously … he’s sick. This is the end of the post-war WW2 order. We need to reconsider the idea of international security infrastructure against Putin, not involving him.”

This is an outrage against another one of history’s most victimized groups. Putin questions Ukraine’s legitimacy but Ukrainians have been there for centuries even after The Holodomor killed millions. In 1939, they were once again decimated after Stalin joined forces with Adolph Hitler – in the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – to partition Poland. Shortly after they started their murderous spree, Hitler double-crossed Stalin and invaded Ukraine to conquer Moscow. The result was that millions more Ukrainians died – 1.4 million soldiers; 7 million civilians; and 500,000 Ukrainian Jews. Putin likes to tell the world that Russia lost the most people in World War II, but the brunt was borne by its colonies. Belarus lost 25 percent of its population; Ukraine roughly 17 percent of its population, and Latvia and Lithuania lost 14 or 15 percent respectively.

Now Belarus has been recaptured by Russia and an assault is underway in Ukraine, and possibly beyond. Bombing raids last week began the onslaught, designed to knock out military infrastructure across the country and demoralize the populace in order to bring about a speedy surrender. There is panic already and estimates are that full engagement with Ukraine’s force of 250,000 combat troops could result in horrendous casualties. Putin has a “hit list” of leaders, journalists, and activists who will be assassinated or sent to gulags after occupation. The country’s economy — and Russia’s — are cratering. Sanctions and diplomacy are now pointless on the long run.

The world will now watch, in real-time, the destruction of an innocent, democratic nation, abandoned by the West as a result of 30 years of appeasement and collaboration with Russia by Europeans. And once Ukraine’s government caves, Putin will hold Europe hostage by stopping natural gas supplies, that now flow through Ukraine’s pipeline system. He will demand that his NordStream 2 pipeline be put into operation; that NATO withdraws from Eastern Europe and that the West drop all sanctions against Russia and its elite.

Putin’s playbook - British Defense Ministry:

Slow-motion carnage will unfold on television if there is no quick surrender. Bombs will rain down on beautiful cities, apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, churches, and squares. Footage will once more show European families fleeing, children orphaned, defenceless elderly people, and a culture torn asunder. Casualties could be catastrophic and it’s more likely that 10 million, not 5 million, Ukrainians will flee to Europe, creating a humanitarian disaster lasting years.

The world has permanently changed. Markets crash. The United Nations, with Russia as a member with a veto, is no longer functional if it ever was. The European Union without an army and cohesion cannot last, nor can NATO. An America without strong alliances is unsustainable and a nuclear Russia run by Putin — hellbent to destroy ethnic groups and nations and the international order — represents the greatest threat in the history of the world.

 

Diane Francis – (Stanford University) states:

“Vladimir Putin has launched a massive military assault on Ukraine, with the stated purpose of overthrowing the democratically-elected regime there and replacing it with one subservient to Moscow. Russian forces have arrived in the suburbs of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.

Ukraine is a country I know well. My center at Stanford University has run a series of leadership training programs for mid-career Ukrainian activists and officials who are trying to reform their country, and I have visited to teach there many times. Ukraine suffers from high levels of corruption, but my personal experience has convinced me that there is a rising new generation of Ukrainians imbued with democratic values, and who want to join Europe rather than a kleptocratic Russia. I take the invasion very personally: many of my friends—human rights activists, journalists, anti-corruption campaigners—would be the first targets of a pro-Moscow regime were it to come to power.

Prior to the invasion, many observers believed that Putin was bluffing, and that the Biden administration was hyping the threat. The Russian troop build-up and Russian propaganda revived the long-standing discussion in Europe and the US of how NATO expansion threatened Russia, and that the United States was in part responsible for the present situation. There were calls from many “realists” to grant Russia a sphere of influence over the territory of the former USSR, and to negotiate the neutralization of Ukraine.

These arguments were weak even before the invasion: Ukrainian entry into NATO was purely theoretical; no one had pushed for this since 2008, and the Ukrainian military was heavily overmatched by the 190,000 Russian troops gathering on their borders.

In the past week, the Russians have put forward a series of increasingly ridiculous justifications for its actions: that Ukraine was a fascist, neo-Nazi state, that it was committing genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Donbas or was contemplating a huge military operation against Russia. The invasion has made all of these claims utterly hollow. It is crystal clear now that the threat runs only in one direction, from Russia to Ukraine, and indeed, to every country that borders on Russia, and beyond.

Putin’s motives are not hard to fathom since he has talked at length about his worldview and strategic objectives. He stated some years ago that the dissolution of the USSR was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. In a long article last summer, and in the rambling speech he gave on the eve of the invasion, he stated that Ukraine was not an independent nation but an essential part of Russia, one that did not have the right to a separate identity and existence. The demands made of NATO in the discussions that have taken place in recent weeks indicate that Moscow cares not just about Ukraine, but the entire European order created in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It has demanded that NATO cease any military support not just for Ukraine, but for all the countries that joined the organization from the 1990s onwards. He wants, in other words, to restore as much of the former USSR as possible, to neutralize Eastern Europe and turn it into a buffer zone, and to undo the entire post-1991 settlement of a “Europe whole and free.”

A democratic Ukraine does in fact threaten Putin—not the Russian people, but Putin’s view that democracy is not suitable for Slavic peoples, who according to him naturally gravitate towards strong, centralized leadership. The success of a democratic Ukraine and its desire to join Europe suggests that something similar could happen in Russia as well, which would spell the end of Putin and Putinism. Therefore, he would never have settled for a neutral Ukraine that foreswore NATO membership—as long as it remained a democracy, it would undermine his narrative and would need to be eliminated.

We are currently at a critical juncture in world history. If Putin succeeds in overthrowing democracy in Ukraine and replacing it with a puppet regime, he will have set a terrible precedent for the use of naked force. China will take a cue from this, as it contemplates options for re-incorporating Taiwan. The US and NATO will have been humiliated, and a signal will go out across the world that American promises of support are hollow and cooperation among democracies non-existent.

On the other hand, it is just possible that Putin has made a blunder of monumental proportions. The invasion has triggered massive protests in Russia itself; even propagandists and diplomats promoting the Russian line have been taken aback by the fact that the invasion actually happened. It has unified the Ukrainian people like nothing else, and they have shown incredible willingness to fight back. In military terms, Putin does not have remotely enough forces to control a country of nearly 40 million people, or even a city like Kyiv with 2.8 million inhabitants. NATO has been unified in imposing stiff sanctions, including German agreement to cancel the Nordstream II gas pipeline. The Russian offensive may bog down in house-to-house fighting and produce massive casualties among Ukrainians but will also lead to large numbers of Russians returning home in body bags. Russians are already astonished that their military investments are being used in the first instance to kill fellow Slavs and destroy a country with which they feel close kinship.

The outcome of the war in Ukraine will also affect domestic politics in the United States. Former President Trump has over the years expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin, a pattern that has continued up to the past week when he called Putin a “genius” for declaring the independence of parts of Ukraine. Democracies do not decay out of an ideological choice for authoritarian government, the way they might have affirmed Marxism-Leninism. They decay because of an admiration for strength and strong men who can get away with big actions outside the bounds of the checks and balances that exist in rule-of-law countries. If Putin succeeds in his aggression in Ukraine and the Republican Party follows Trump in his admiration for what he has done, then it will be making a decisive break with fundamental American democratic values. This will consolidate the authoritarian turn the party took by affirming the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. Given the importance of the United States to the maintenance of a liberal world order more broadly, this will be a very bad development for the free world.

 

I am asking all readers to help Ukraine in any way you can and reflect on how we all can STOP that madman from hurting all freedom loving people.

 

Children hiding from bombs in subway tunnels in Kyiv, Ukraine
 

 

 

FEBRUARY BLOG - 2022

 

REFLECIONS YARO BLOG - FEBRUARY 2022

 

Dear Reader,

 

My own reflections this month are centred on my story as a man. This is the time to ponder and cleansing (February is the cleansing month). As I was pondering about my life over the years, as I was clearing my drawers, I found a cassette tape. It was from a radio 4EB in Brisbane interview I had about the 1993 – 5 men movement that I was leading and at times participating in gatherings of men across Australia.

One question was: “what are the main issues for men”? As I reflected aloud on the radio then, I now realize that same issues are still with us today. The male identity of: “who am I”? It is even more amplified, particularity for young men. So, I am reflecting about my own journey seeking the answer to that question mentioned above.

I am a ‘war child’ born in Ukraine and my father was taken by the communists that invaded Ukraine after the WWII was just ending and now, we see Russia is threatening to invade Ukraine – again – I never saw my father as our whole family emigrated escaping the Red invasion.

It took me about 40 years to discover who am I as a man. I had some brief male models from my uncles, but the family did not stay together, and I and my mother ended up in Venezuela and after about eight years we moved to Canada. Today, my reflections about men and identity are as follow:

1.      We still have a crisis of identity as many men feel shame and fear regarding how they are in our modern society.

2.      Still more work to be done in enabling and supporting men to get in touch with their inner feelings as men.

3.      Share men’s pain and grief with other men about the ‘missing father’. Fathers still work long hours, travel and do military duties and are not available as much as mothers to their children.

4.       The loss of elders who could help the young men by wise guidance on their journey to manhood.

The current ‘leaders’ in the education system, military, church and politics to mention a few, are not great examples to look up to by the young men. So, I conclude, that there is a real vacuum of real men to emulate and admire.

As I mentioned above, I grew up without a father who was killed by the Communist regime and as a young student in Canada, I was seeking a mentor and finally I found one in my Gestalt therapy teacher in Toronto. I was fortunate to be with him for about 20 years. With my mentor, I discovered that I was not really searching for knowledge by attending workshops getting diplomas etc, but I was looking for my “ideal” father.

 Question: How does one take the journey in life to find the INNER MAN?

Answer: Find a real mentor (teacher or elder) and give all you can to just BE with him as much as possible. In my case, it was my Gestalt teacher and friend for 20 years as mentioned above.

Then, when I moved to live in Australia, I developed a group of men and we spent time in the wilderness sharing each other’s griefs and making rituals of passage with the help of Aboriginal elders and inviting creative men to teach us drumming, dancing and laughing.

In the past, as I was growing up, I was fortunate to participate in several male oriented groups like the Boy Scouts and the Canadian Airforce cadets. The cadets served me to learn discipline and shoot a rifle and the Scouts were a series of challenges like surviving 3 days in the forest. Today, the young men are scared to join any sort of groups for young boys because they developed a fear sourced by the media and stories about some real incidents that have closed many male oriented groups due to paedophilia.

 The greatest fear in men evolved in the years of the great “women liberation” movement that earlier blamed all the bad experiences that women suffered were because of men. My sense is that the notion of divide and conquer is not a long-term solution and, with the surge of the “cancel culture” developed mainly by the academics has created a disaster for young male leaders.

Our men groups that were initially called “THE WILD MAN” based on a novel by the poet Robert Bly, have often created a sad reaction where the news media were calling men gatherings some sort of ‘gay meetings’ in the bush. Such a cancel ideology stopped many young men joining those groups and some even called themselves ‘Feminist men’ to be sure they are not blamed for being so wild.

I like the clear male/female traditions from the Australian Indigenous laws that span about 50,000 years and that is the notion of “WOMEN’S BUSINESS AND MEN’S BUSINESS:

The women had sacred venues where they gathered and spent time in creating art, weaving, songs, and stories and thus teaching the young girls the traditional culture and the men went to their sacred space and involved young boys in initiation into manhood rituals. Such tradition clearly helped maintain a balance of the two energies - male and female.

I have a feeling of sadness that the European colonialism has only a history of destruction, abuse and control but not taking part is some obvious solutions that the first people have developed and had peace and prosperity before the English arrived.

The 1990’s men movement developed many ways to create sacred space for men and as more needs emerged, the movement was formalized by the creation of the Men Health and Wellbeing Association. However, as all organisations, in general, tend to be dominated by committees that eventually become a ‘business model’ with its own rules and definitions as to what to do or not to do. Also, the business needs to have a budget to pay for the events and at the end, all the spontaneity and natural evolving of men in need are lost and the movement dies a slow death.

Today, in 2022, I am reflecting on the outcomes that emerged from those days of ‘wild men’ in the Australian bush and feel a sense a loss of spontaneity of men’s groups that became a sort of ‘school’ that needs a plan of action, a design of events a rule-based program designed by a committee (with good intentions) but little consultation with the men they serve.

However, in my radio talk I reflected on the way men are slaves without knowing it. Even today, men are still slaves to jobs they may resent, slaves to relationships they do not want, slaves to violence, drug and alcohol addiction, slaves to mothers that want the boys to be “nice”, and so on. Therefore, in my opinion nothing much shifted in terms of men healing and growing strong. Particularly it is the case for young men. They are lost now in the social media and virtual reality games that teach young men to be someone that is not useful in real social life. War games, killing games, fast car games are only some examples of what many youths are playing on a global scale.

My suggestion is to join SOUL CRAFT, (check out the web page:  https://www.soulcraftanz.com/ Author of the book is Bill Plotkin - Soulcraft – Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche.

 

Visiting places of nature like our wild parks and discover our true WILD MAN recreating the ancient Indigenous rituals, dances, drumming, and care for the animals and plants helps men to be and become who they really are and connect with their inner Wild Man.

In my groups, I begin with the sacred ritual of smoking before starting the group. Men are gathered on one side and women on the other side of a large circle. The man leader cleanses the bodies of men with the smoke and then the woman leader does the same with the smoke to clean each woman moving the smoke from head to toe with dry leaves from the Eucalyptus tree. This ritual connects us with nature and clears any expectations and mental concepts of who we are told we are.