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Moscow

A Cuppa For Peace

March 11, 2022 by Jim Leave a Comment

Post Card from Moscow Coffee Bean. Photo by Peg Redwine

Starbucks Coffee Company has suspended operations in all 130 of its Russia based coffee shops as a protest to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The first shop opened in September 2007 in Moscow. Peg and I were in Moscow in 2003. We are Americans. We drink coffee. We were in anguished caffeine withdrawal almost the whole week we were in Russia. I applaud Starbuck’s gesture but worry about those people who are forced back to the pre-2007 coffee-less culture in Russia. Of course, the blame lies with Putin but the headaches are visited on the Russian proletariat as war is visited by Putin on the Ukrainians.

In 2003 Peg and I, after long and frenzied searching, located one coffee shop, The Coffee Bean, in Moscow. As this was our first trip to Russia we had been unaware of Russian culture which at that time considered one cup of instant coffee in tepid water good enough for such foreigners as we. The cold turkey shock treatment made us acutely aware of a society where vodka and cognac were more available at breakfast than coffee.

I do not expect Putin to come to his senses on his own so his war on Ukraine will most likely play out as such debacles always have. There is the initial shock and awe, then the search for weapons of mass destruction, the trading of lies and misinformation, then death, injury and misery followed by years of confusion and remaking of history by the survivors.

I do wonder what Putin’s thought process was that led him into this tar pit. He keeps making public statements and allegations about NATO and Ukraine’s belligerence. His statements and actions appear to arise from paranoia, what most of the world sees as an unreasonable fear that Ukraine and the other pre-1991 Soviet Union countries along Russia’s western border will be used as bases for the United States and our allies to attack Russia.

Putin may have reasoned that as Ukraine was steadily building up its ties to democracies such as America, if he did not strike now, he would have no viable defense to a stronger Ukraine that might become a member of NATO later. Such an analysis seems ludicrous to us but it is not our thought process that is in question. If Putin believes it, even if it is false, then his actions may make sense to him.

He also may have been misled by the relative ease with which Russia took over Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. In today’s attack his objective may have mainly been to take over that part of Ukraine, such as Odessa, that borders the Black Sea. But then he made a common tyrant’s mistake. He got too greedy and decided to grab what was left of the remainder of Ukraine beyond Crimea.

By this time, Gentle Reader, if you are still with me, you are asking, “What does any of this have to do with coffee?” Okay, as Fareed Zakaria might say, “Here’s my take”. I hope the Russian people will have become so hooked on coffee after 2007 that this forced Starbuck’s withdrawal will cause them to see Putin for the despot he is. Then perhaps the aroused common citizens will rise up and replace the warmongering Putin and his incompetent military leaders. If the Russians feel anything similar to the way Peg and I did in 2003, revolution is not so farfetched.

JPeg Osage Ranch Coffee Bar. Photo by Peg Redwine

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Filed Under: America, Foreign Intervention, Gavel Gamut, JPeg Osage Ranch, Military, Russia, Ukraine, War, World Events Tagged With: Black Sea, caffeine withdrawal, coffee, Crimea, Fareed Zakaria, Gentle Reader, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Moscow, NATO, Odessa, paranoia, Putin, Revolution, Russia, Starbucks, The Coffee Bean, Ukraine

Justice In A Box

January 25, 2019 by Jim Leave a Comment

What happened to Christmas? Only one month ago there were carols, candles, colored lights, presents and happy people. Then came January and cold, grey gloomy weather with glum people wondering where the sun went.

On the other hand, if you are in need of more self-flagellation you could be where American Paul Whelan is, a courtroom in the glummest of all places, Russia in January. You talk about grey. Being in Moscow and Volgograd, Russia in the winter of 2003 was like living inside a wet, icy-cold burlap bag for Peg and me. And as our son, Jim, says, “You can always pick out the American tourists from the Russian natives, the Americans are the only ones smiling”.

Of course, as in all of life there are a few positives of the Russian winter. Russia’s three greatest military generals are January, February and March. Just ask Napoleon and Hitler. And when the National Judicial College sent me to Russia in 2003 to teach Russian judges about jury trials Peg and I spent four days in Volgograd (the old Stalingrad) where a million and a half Russian soldiers and half a million German soldiers slaughtered one another in six months. It is analogous to America multiplying our Civil War by three and cramming it into half of 1863. No wonder so many Russians are not smiling.

Another reason not to smile is the Russian legal system, especially what they call jury trials. That is why the NJC sent me there. In January 2003 Russia had once again, as part of the country’s long history of their fits and starts “right to trial by jury”, reinstituted some jury trials for some alleged crimes. The NJC tasked me to teach Russian judges from all over Russia how America tries jury cases. I do not know what I was able to impart to the Russian judges, but Peg and I sure learned a lot. Mainly we learned that by a mere accident of birth we received one of life’s greatest gifts, American citizenship.

These recollections were brought back to me when I saw a photograph in the Palm Beach Sun Sentinel newspaper of Paul Whelan in a cage in a Russian courtroom. Hang on. I know it’s Florida, but as you can readily see I am not just lounging on the beach. I am working; at least I am writing this column.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. I have no idea if the former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan is a spy as charged by Russia. He says he is not, what a surprise. However, he received a Bad Conduct Discharge from the Marines for theft and he has citizenship in four countries, United States, Ireland, Canada and Great Britain. That sounds suspicious but may just mean he likes Anglo Saxons. That alone might make him a suspect in Russia, a country that used to be the heart of the old Soviet Union with its conglomeration of fifteen countries and seventy-seven languages, none of which had an Anglo, Saxon or Celtic base.

What the photographs show is Whelan in a cage, in a courtroom, trying to communicate through a translator with his attorney and through the bars and in front of everyone. When the Russian judges asked me to critique a jury trial of a man charged with murdering two people, I had difficulty being diplomatic. With the judge and jury in place and the Russian prosecutor wearing a blue military type uniform seated between the mothers of the two murder victims right in front of the jury, the courtroom doors burst open and this is what Peg and I and the judge and jury saw: four guards armed with AK 47 rifles escorting the handcuffed defendant into court and locking him into a cage.

 Well, Gentle Reader, you see the problem.

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Filed Under: America, Democracy, Gavel Gamut, Judicial, Law, Russia Tagged With: AK 47, Gentle Reader, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Justice In A Box, Moscow, murder victims' mothers, Paul Whelan, Russia's three great generals January February March, Russian defendant cage, Russian prosecutor, spy suspect, Stalingrad, trial by jury, Volgograd

© 2022 James M. Redwine

 

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