What happened to NEVER AGAIN?

What happened to NEVER AGAIN?

A little girl lays dead in the street. Winter coats. A backpack. A rolling suitcase. Her family dead around her.

A pregnant woman on a stretcher. Being carried. Rubble of a children and maternity hospital behind her.

People huddled in an air raid shelter. A little girl sings “Let it Go” in a moment of love, hope and beauty.

A boy stumbles alone across the border. Contact information written on his hands. Go. Survive.

Teenagers. Burned. Charred. Sent to kill people themselves. For no reason.

People lined up at McDonalds and Uniqlo while their country murders civilians in their name. Some protest. Some are brutally beaten and arrested. It’s not enough.

Russian warship, go fuck yourself.

Horrific images. Mass murder.

Powerless.

Please god stop this.

Sad. Angry. Tears. Sorrow.

A madman with nuclear weapons.

Daily life continues here, normalcy. The idea that my kids would grow up in a world of peace and hope is slipping away.

WHAT THE HELL CAN WE DO?
If anyone had great answers to immediately stop this, we already would have. Ukraine asks for a No-fly-zone, but there is no way to enforce it without direct military confrontation. At the very least, we need to speed up the inflow of defensive mechanisms and immediate non-offensive support.

Meanwhile, Putin recruits mercenaries from Syria, cuts off food and water to civilians, blows up schools and hospitals, and sets false pretexts for whatever he does next.

Let’s make no mistake, we have been involved in this clusterfuck for years, prioritizing economic and energy benefits over people’s lives, enabling brutal autocrats.

The extent of economic sanctions against Russia is unprecedented. But it’s not enough. According to an article in The Atlantic by Tom McTague (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/03/western-unity-putin-russia-ukraine/627013/) , Europe purchases about $1.1 billion PER DAY in oil and gas from Russia. This is by far the largest part of the Russian economy — it keeps the invasion going and keeps the dictator in power.

THE EU MUST IMMEDIATELY BAN RUSSIAN OIL AND GAS.
Germany must immediately turn off the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. This creates other problems, but we should rise to the occasion. Germany and the EU rely on natural gas for many household heating needs.

We should immediately begin the MASSIVE installation of electric heat pump systems, mini-splits, and ground-source (Geothermal) system. Tens of millions of them. This year. Both in the US and in Europe. Excess natural gas from the US can be shipped to Europe to hold them over for next winter. Winter is just ending and we have 8 months to fix this problem. We should invoke the Defense Production Act to prioritize and expand manufacturing of components and assembly of systems. [Top companies: WaterFurnace, Carrier, American Standard/Trane, Bosch, Mitsubishi, Dandelion Energy. Somehow I feel Elon Musk should organize this.]

Who’s going to install these? We need to immediately train an army of HVAC technicians, plumbing skills, and electrical skills to do installs. This is the realm of community colleges and vocational/tech high schools. We have a matter of months to make this happen. Training should be narrow and specific to installation of specific systems. Teams would be “deployed” across the US and Europe. The experience would provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a generation of young people to help save the world. Upon return, these young people should be provided with additional broader training in their field of choice, scholarships, and no-interest loans to start businesses. Mike Rowe should lead this effort.

CHINA

Next — China, or more specifically the Chinese Communist Party. They could have stopped this, and they still could stop this. Yet, they do nothing. They pledged BFF status with Putin, and they continue to enable him. Intelligence reports show that China asked Russia to delay the invasion until after the Olympics.

From the same Atlantic article:
“Right now, the world’s second-most powerful state, China, is committing genocide against its own people and dismantling the freedoms of a city of several million, but the West continues to trade with it almost as if nothing is happening. Even as Western governments busily sanction Russian oligarchs, they continue to let Saudi oligarchs buy up their companies, sports teams, and homes, despite the fact that their leader, according to U.S. intelligence, approved the butchering of a journalist in one of his embassies. In Syria, long after Barack Obama declared that Bashar al-Assad “must go” and predicted that he would, the dictator remains in power, backed by Putin. Across the Middle East and North Africa, the Arab Spring has largely petered out into a new set of brutal dictatorships, save for one or two exceptions. In Africa and Asia, Chinese and Russian influence is growing and Western influence is retreating.”

GLOBAL TRADE

We have built our economy around global trade on the backs of inhumane labor conditions and environmental destruction in China and others. China seeks to further exploit other countries to build their own “too big to fail” power structure. No more. We must begin to wean ourselves off of trade with despicable regimes.

We could sit around navel-gazing and playing into Russian “Whataboutism” paralysis. We must not fall into that trap. That said, a critical look at the question “are we the bad guys” has been too-often lacking. In this case, even the conspiracy theories are so absurd that we have vast bipartisan agreement — almost shocking unity given our recent politics.

AT HOME

At home — we must never allow wannabe Putin admirers to gain and consolidate power. We must staunchly defend governance through representative consensus with free and open debate. Liars and bullshit artists can go fuck themselves too.