OPINIONS

Opinions editor: Darlene DukelowBurton viewpoints.opinions@gmail.com OPINIONS March 17, 2022 5

DAESHA GEAR | VIEWPOINTS Democracy at stake amidst crisis in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s power grab brings uncertainty to other nations

DARLENE DUKELOWBURTON OPINIONS EDITOR

After a rambling hour-pluslong pre-recorded speech on television, filled with twisted history and much of Russia’s usual mythical government propaganda, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he was beginning a special military operation in Ukraine on Feb. 24.

He never called it for what it was: another Russian invasion upon a democratic government.

How does a superpower such as Russia come to fear the smaller Ukraine? Ukraine has stood in its way of profting. They are vulnerable with no nuclear weapons, hold free elections, and their President Volodymyr Zelensky is an exemplary leader. Then, when Ukraine wanted to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Putin forbade it.

Putin used fake news reports and stock video on television to inform his troops and citizens that the Ukrainians were committing atrocities on Russian citizens living in the contested sectors of Ukraine.

He said of Zelensky, who is Jewish and lost part of his family in the Holocaust, that he leads this “band of drug addicts and neoNazis.” Putin has told his people this propaganda for years and reiterated it in his war speech at the start of the invasion, adding he “will strive for the demilitarization and denazifcation of Ukraine.”

The subversion of reality Putin employs is despicable. He uses flimsy, inflammatory tales to persuade his people to think he is entering Ukraine on a peacekeeping mission. He doesn’t just lie to the world; he lies to his fellow citizens.

To be fair to them, many Russian citizens only know what Putin and his government tell them and they only hear censored information from inside their country. There is no free press, only government-controlled news.

Putin recently closed the only two trusted Russian news agencies that air the truth because he didn’t like the unrest it caused.

Fortunately, it is common for many citizens to sneak cell phones and computers into the country to reach the internet and learn what the world sees.

Many citizens stay quiet because they fear their government’s special police, the OMON (Special Purpose Mobile Unit), and Spetsnaz.

When a different truth came out about the special military operation, many Russian citizens took to the streets daily to protest the war despite the police. Since their police are known to be violent, the protestors are courageous to confront them, knowing they will be jail-bound for 15 years.

After the Russian forces moved forward with the invasion, they bombed every major city in Ukraine. Non-combatant citizens in the millions fed toward every free country on Ukraine’s border.

Putin ordering strikes on the radioactive meltdown site in Chernobyl was especially surprising.

Russia then turned off the power sustaining the plant, and it is now starting to leak. The threat of radioactive fallout emanating from it once more is assured.

Ukraine’s largest reactor, Zaporizhzhia, has fallen into Russia’s hands. There is fear for the safety of ffteen other online Soviet-era nuclear reactors located across the country.

We must understand that Russia

wants the immense power these sites can provide, and capturing them will cut it off from Ukraine. For years, Russia resentfully paid billions for the leasing rights to send their gas and oil through the Russian-built pipeline running through Ukraine to deliver and sell it to Europe. However, it is ludicrous to think that the Russian government imagines that fghting in nuclear containment felds is safe. It is causing fres in the plants, and the control equipment is far too sensitive for this insanity. It is dimwitted and without conscience to risk poisoning half of Europe and the world for one man’s colossal ego. I see that the Ukrainians are in an ugly situation. A peaceful country was invaded by an enemy from its nightmares. Putin’s Old-World ambitions will tip us all into World War III and in his ignorance, he says he’s willing to press his fnger on the button. Addiction needs to be addressed, not down played

WILLIAM L.G. STEPHENS LIFE EDITOR wasn’t so free after all.

The couple stands relatively close to the general public but the “normies” as we like to call them, have placed a grave distance between them and the junkies. Though to be perfectly honest, I’ve never encountered a normal person a day in my life.

We all seem so put together, working blue collar jobs, shopping at the same grocery stores, even going to the same church on Sundays.

So much so that we forget there’s another six days of the week where we don’t interact with each other.

There’s a saying in AA and in NA, that I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is present in most addiction groups: “Get this or die.”

There comes a point where an individual can get so deep in their addiction, that death doesn’t seem all that bad considering the alternative of being clean and sober.

What the addict tends to forget is the wreckage and carnage they leave behind for their loved ones to sort through.

Addiction has been referred to as a selfsh disease.

I believe that statement can be misinterpreted.

I’ve never heard that statement from six people carrying their best friend in a casket. I’ve never heard that from a mother who found her son dead in his bed because he choked on his own vomit.

In those instances you usually just hear noises.

Noises that you will never be able to get out of your head again.

I’ve let addiction take a great deal from me but my faith that people are still compassionate was restored in my darkest hours.

The problem isn’t that people are oblivious to the fentanyl epidemic happening right in front of their faces here in the Inland Empire.

It’s that people are waiting on someone else to do something about it.

We’d be off to a good start if we treated addiction and mental illnesses the same as we would broken bones and cancer.

It’s going to take courage. It’s going to require us to say that person’s name in our family that we refer to as “they who shall not be named.”

It means telling someone how much you love them, even if there’s a chance you may never hear it back.

I’d rather say it and never hear it back, then never be able to tell them again.

To quote Robert Wakefeld in the 2000 flm “Traffc”: “If there is a war on drugs, then many of our family members are the enemy and I don’t know how you wage war on your own family.”