The whole thing has gone from bizarre to outright ridiculous, folks. Today, The Telegraph in the UK has published an article titled

Ukraine crisis: what sanctions would actually hurt Russia?

The West is still discussing which sanctions might have an effect in case somebody decides to impose them a bizillion years from now. In the meanwhile, Putin is bursting with laughter as he invades and annexes territories of another country.

I knew that nobody would do anything to stop Putin’s victorious assumption of the role of the new world leader when I heard that Obama spent 90 minutes talking to him on the phone, trying to convince him that invading Ukraine wasn’t a nice thing to do. Putin must have found that discussion to be extremely entertaining.

Now that the Crimea has been annexed, Russia is considering absorbing the Trans-Dniester Republic (formerly parr of Moldovia). Of course,  there is still a considerable Ukrainian territory located between the Crimea and the Trans-Dniester but that territory has already been invaded by Russian troops.

People keep saying that the annexation of the Crimea and the Trans-Dniester are economically unviable for Russia. Both areas are filled with people who adamantly oppose the idea of working and expect to be kept by the federal authorities. This is a very reductive and a hopelessly Marxist analysis. Putin says openly that the annexation of the Crimea represents an opportunity to thwart the US and take revenge for two decades of humiliation at the hands of Americans. This possibility is worth any amount of money to the Russians.

Today, Putin showed just how much the impotent threats of the West to impose some minimal sanctions on a tiny handful of people scared him. He signed paperwork officially annexing the Crimea and the city of Sevastopol and made a speech indicating that Russia is planning to “defend” many more people outside its borders.

Joe Biden is traveling to Eastern Europe to persuade the Poles, the Estonians and the Lithuanians that they, at least, have nothing to fear from Russia. I’m sure he will tell them that the West will protect them from any Russian aggression:

One senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the vice president’s plans, said his trip is “first and foremost to reassure our allies that we are deeply concerned about Russia’s action in Ukraine and what the deeper implications might be.”

As Putin continues to expand his empire, the Americans will stand by, nodding and repeating, “We are concerned. We are extremely concerned. Just wait some more and you’ll see really scary sanctions.”

In his today’s speech, Putin said that the collapse of the USSR put an end to the stability on the planet. The Cold War meant stability, the end of the Cold War allowed the Americans to run unchecked. They started doing all kinds of wild things, according to Putin, like financing the Arab Spring to impose the values that are culturally alien to the Arabs. The West needs to be checked in its world dominance.

Putin reiterated that there are still millions of Russians in Ukraine that are in need of being protected by him.

I like Russian people. Some of my best friends, well, you know. But sometimes they are just too much.

56,7% of people in Russia support the invasion of Ukraine.

63,8% of the same people, however, are against a war between Russia and Ukraine.

How these respondents process the contradiction is a mystery. Oh, the mysterious Russian soul!

An analyst on the news said that Putin’s goal is to occupy the territories that used to belong to the Russian Empire. This is a dangerously uninsightful analysis.

Restoring the Russian Empire is Putin’s first step. His eventual goal is for Russia to become to the world in the XXI century what the US was in the XX. If you listen to the Russian propaganda, you will hear the following ideas repeated ad nauseam:

1. The US has entered a steep economic, political, spiritual, moral, intellectual, etc. decline. It is rapidly losing its influence on the world arena, and nothing can prevent it from becoming a backwards, insignificant country with no global importance.

2. A new world leader is urgently needed, and nobody can play this role better than Russia.

3. Russia has an exceptional degree of culture and spirituality, which makes it much better than the stupid and materialistic Americans and unintelligent and nonspiritual everybody else.

4. It logically follows from this that the world will be better off from being guided by the people whose language is the most beautiful, whose culture is the most cultured, whose soul is the most spiritual, and who have been, across centuries, the only consistent force for good on the planet.

Welcome to the new world order, everybody.

People are starting to ask why one shouldn’t just respect the results of the vote in the Crimea. Here is why.

Imagine that in 2004 you are planning to vote against George W. Bush at the presidential elections. If that is difficult, imagine that you are planning to vote against Barack Obama in the 2012 elections.

A few weeks before the election, federal troops occupy your town. They remove all of the local and municipal authorities, begin to patrol the streets and assault people. You hear daily reports of people who are suspected of not supporting the incumbent being brutalized. The soldiers don’t leave in peace even small children or elderly people, beating them when a suspicion visits them that these citizens might be unsympathetic towards the sitting president. The headquarters of any organization that might be supportive of the opposition are broken into by the troops who destroy the records and beat everybody they find there. You lose your access to the world outside your town. You can’t leave and nobody can enter the area. Your regular means of communication are interfered with.

On the day of the election, you walk down a heavily patrolled street to the voting poll. There, you see that the urn where you are supposed to place your ballot is transparent and the soldier standing next to you will see who you voted for.

Are you sure you would vote as you originally planned in this situation? Do you believe the results of such a vote should be respected?

Spring is very close, and we need to get serious about preparing for the new season. This week we will be letting out some of the accumulated aggression.

Every day this week we will have a short 10-minute session of letting out the rage. Concentrate and locate the source of the rage inside yourself. If you can yell and pound a pillow with your fists, that’s perfect. If that is not convenient, you need to learn the art of yelling in the shower without making any noise. The rage is the energy that comes out of you, and it doesn’t have to be accompanied with sound.

Alternatively, you can let the rage out during a workout. This doesn’t have to be anything that is noticeable to others but you have to experience this as much more than a regular workout.

Stomping your foot aggressively is another possibility. If nothing helps you to tap into the source of rage, then it is crucial to explore what is blocking the access.

Remember: this exercise needs to have a physical component. Verbal aggression alone won’t cut it.

Let’s rage away, my friends!

A group of Russian patriots broke into the offices of an educational Ukrainian organization in Kharkov yesterday and started beating up people.

I am from Kharkov and I used to belong to that organization. A quieter group of nerds the world has never seen. The Russian patriots’ excuse that they were hunting neo- Nazis at that place is absolutely ridiculous.

About 70,000 – 80,000 people marched in the streets of Moscow under Ukrainian and Russian flags and protested against the invasion of Ukraine.

The saddest thing about Putin’s propaganda is that it says the exact same things Brezhnev’s propaganda said but, unlike the Soviet people of the 1970s and 1980s, today’s Russians believe all of the lies their government tells them.

It is very heartening that at least some people in Russia oppose invading a neighboring country.

I’m discovering to my absolute dismay that there are academics who have convinced themselves that the destruction of tenure lines to create a series of revolving-door short-term postdocs in the Humanities is done to BENEFIT ACADEMICS.

And here I was wondering why my colleagues accepted the possibility of teaching extra courses for free with no objection. They probably think this is the administration’s super kind way of helping them enhance their teaching skills and help them rest from the demands of doing research and having a life.