I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are; that, in their sacrifices to humanity, they ran no risks, not even to their property; that after all, they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls.

—Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience: A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1866).

Die Zeit:

Nach Angaben Selenskyjs wird sich die Ukraine dabei nicht nur auf die Gebiete konzentrieren, die sie vor dem russischen Überfall im Februar kontrolliert hatte. Auch die Territorien der von Russland unterstützten Separatisten im Osten des Landes und Städte auf der seit 2014 von Russland annektierten Krim würden zurückerobert, kündigte der 44-Jährige an: „Denn die gesamte Ukraine muss frei sein.“

What can he actually mean here?

George Galloway and Craig Murray 20.01.2020

San Francisco Chronicle:

Americans have “moved on” from pandemic, poll finds

Concern about COVID-19 has hit a low point in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, even though hundreds of Americans are still dying every day from the virus, according to the latest and final Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index released Tuesday. While White House officials anticipate another fall and winter surge, “the latest results find a country that has largely — though not completely — moved on from the pandemic,” states the report which has been running regularly since mid-March 2020. Only 37% of the respondents in the latest poll said they still sometimes wear a mask in public spaces, compared to 71% in September 2021. Few are worried about the most severe or long-term outcomes of the disease. Only about 18% said they are concerned about the symptoms of long COVID; 12% are worried about hospitalization; and 11% about death. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents said there is a small risk or no risk in returning to their normal, pre-COVID life — and nearly half said they already have.

Shall I go off and away to bright Andromeda?
Shall I sail my wooden ships to the sea?
Or stay in a cage of those in Amerika??
Or shall I be on the knee?
Wave goodbye to Amerika
Say hello to the garden

So I see – I see the way you feel
And I know that your life is real
Pioneer searcher refugee
I follow you and you follow me
Let’s go together
Let’s go together
Let’s go together right now

—Paul Kantner, Let’s Go Together

It amuses me to recall listening to this song forty-some years ago, imagining being part of a group of technically proficient political dissidents in some future dystopia. We’ve certainly got the dystopia. Where are my revolutionaries? Where is my starship?

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone ‘picked me out’. On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me, her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear (everyone whispered there) – ‘Could one ever describe this?’ And I answered – ‘I can.’ It was then that something like a smile slid across what had previously been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]

—Анна Андреевна Ахматова

full text

I picked this up the other day. I first read it in English in 1975. Two very nice young men from Haverford College taught a class on Existential Literature at my alternative school where four students – only two of us regularly attended the class – read classics by Sarte, Camus, Dostoevsky. I remember being very affected by Solzhenitsyn. For one thing, I told the instructor that while in Pennsylvania it was autumn at the time and nights were cool, reading the book made me feel frozen cold. Yes, I remember he smiled in agreement. At that time the Soviet Gulag was far away. It was Communist, foreign. We were lucky to not be Soviet, luckier still to not have been sentenced to the Gulag. And in 2022 I think, well, here we are.

Apartment building of Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner