[This blog post started out as a post to my Instagram account (cherylejohnson0806). Over the course of the day, it has grown into the below. It is long. I am very tired; hopefully you will overlook any editorial mistakes. Praying there are no gobbledegook phrasings. I hope you make it to the end. Thanks for reading.]
With Putin by His Side, Xi Outlines His Vision of a New World Order
“China’s close ties with Russia in countering American dominance point to a geopolitical rift that could shape the conflict between Israel and Hamas.”
@nytimes by David Pierson, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Tiffany May
Not going to quote this story. But for a recap:
Chinese President Xi Jinping not only hosted 150 leaders of developing nations to this summit, but also Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Xi made most of the press commentary, but Putin was constantly by his side. (Btw, from a PR standpoint, that only shows Russian weakness and how Putin isn’t able to prosecute his war against Ukraine on his own. Russia can only throw raw manpower into a meat grinder.)
China can give Russia armaments; but what Putin has to offer in return isn’t clear. He can promise to overrun Europe. But the Communists had their chance to expand power over 70 years ago; it was a limited win of Eastern European satellite countries and a Communist East Germany that are now independent nations with democratic governments primarily. (Of course, Germany was itself reunified with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.)
Why Orban wants to bring his country back into the old Soviet order Putin wants to create is beyond me. I had the dearest of friends, born in Hungry, who was a young woman when the Russian tanks rolled in during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. She, her husband (political activists) and their baby son made it out just in time.
She has told me how hard her emigration to the U.S. was; being held at refugee camps/centers abroad and here in the U.S. before making safe landing among relatives and friends in Indiana and Illinois.
Then there was the language issue that kept this brilliant woman from ever feeling truly confident in her English skills, especially on paper.
She taught herself to speak English by watching soap operas. Upon her retirement, she was a manager and specialist in the chemical processing of photographs – particularly for the creation of IDs. She was so valued by her company, they sent her abroad to troubleshoot problems and train others at plants there.
She remained a political activist, especially for Women’s Rights and, though battling cancer, she marched as part of the historic 2017 Women’s March. That January 21st saw as many as 7 million women world-wide, most here in the U.S., rise up the day after Donald J. Trump willingly swore on his own mother’s Bible to the following oath:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
The women marched because of Trump’s well-known misogyny, and because they feared for their rights in this country and abroad. Margaret and they knew Trump couldn’t be trusted. January 6th, 2021, proved them more than right. It was worse. (So glad she was not here to see it.)
She suffered the loss of her beloved son when he tragically died at 21.
She also raised a daughter who became a nurse who is a retired Major of the U.S. Army Reserve Corps. Her granddaughter, a college graduate, is a communications specialist working at Yale. Her great-granddaughter, a recent graduate of Scripps College who started college-life with a full scholarship to Smith College, is finding her own voice through creative cultural projects involving the expression of movement. She has her grandmother’s photographic eye. I marvel at her photos on her social media accounts.
All are brilliant, strong, beautiful women.
My friend never, ever missed voting in an election. A Democrat through and through, she was very current on domestic politics. She recognized in Trump the dangerous and repressive leadership she had escaped Hungry so she and her family could be free.
But she never lost her love of Budapest, the intellectual life she was discovering and left behind, the traditions of Hungarian culture.
She was also a fantastic cook who introduced me to the Chicken Kiev I begged her to make on every visit we had over 48 years of friendship. (We met at work when I was 18 and she was 36. I would within a few months go on to live in California for more than two decades before settling here in Georgia. Margaret lived in Indiana, then Florida upon her retirement.)
She was a Master Gardener and her Florida home showcased her vigilant care of the state’s native plants that filled her property. She was a lover of classical music, PBS, Ina Garten and museums.
She introduced me to my first museum experience at 18 at the Art Institute of Chicago. I saw my first Monet there. On that same trip I had my first experience at Macy’s, where I rode my first escalator and felt “oh so chic” for purchasing my first bottle of White Shoulders. I saw Lake Michigan from the top of Sears (now Willis) Tower, and had my first meal at a restaurant rattled every so often by a passing El. We laughed at how it shook our table, splashing our water everywhere.
In addition to Chicken Kiev, our visits over the years continued to include museums, including an exhibition of Andrew Wyeth’s “Helga ” series at NOMA we happened upon by accident on a rainy New Orléans’ day that canceled that afternoon’s other vacation plans with her sister. Also on show: an exhibition of the famed Russian Fabergé eggs.
Our last trip was a twofer: the Morse Museum in Winter Park that houses the largest collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s work, and the Norton in West Palm Beach. Then cancer came for my friend a second time.
She remained intellectually curious to the very end. She had begun reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of “Leonardo Da Vinci.”
I read it to her in hospice as I came back and forth from Georgia to Florida on extended stays. Her daughter was kind enough to send it to me after her mother passed.
My friend’s name was – is – Margaret.
I felt it important given this point in history to tell what I know of her immigration story in these fraught times, as we [the United States] support two countries that others are saying have no right to freely exist: Ukraine and Israel. No, make that three: Palestine too.
That Putin is committed to the genocide of Ukrainians and has been for nearly seven years is self-evident. He wants the land, its resources and the ability to reassert control not only to European energy markets, but grain exports from one of the world’s great “bread baskets.” (See statistics at chart below from Stastica.)
As China has been the largest recipient of that grain in the past year, it is little wonder this – among many other economic reasons that involve renewed U.S. technological innovation and sales – is why Xi had Putin by his side at yesterday’s (October 17th, 2023) Belt and Road Summit.
While it may be a growing axis of power arraying itself against the U.S. and other Western democracies, I have to wonder: how long will Putin let himself stand in Xi’s shadow? I think there will ultimately be a clash of egos here.
How long Russians are willing to send their children to their deaths as aggressors in war is up to them.
Tolstoy tried to tell you of such futility during a time of monarchy in the 1860s.
Solzhenitsyn tried to tell you about the futility of it during communism under Soviet rule in the 1960s and 70s.
Navalny has been telling you of this danger embedded in the autocratic rule of Putin since the latter ascended to power in 2000, first as Prime Minister and -since 2012- in his permanent Presidency. This has cost Navalny his health (Novichok poisoning) and his personal freedom as he is held in quarantine (isolation) in the I-6 maximum prison 250 miles east of Moscow. Россия, открой уши! Смотрите своими глазами! Слушайте свои сердца!
Meanwhile those immediately reacting first to what they are seeing in social media about the tragic loss of life at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the center of Gaza City – your anger, your grief, your outrage, your desire to protest – those are natural, human emotions and actions.
But here is my question to you:
Why, after the horrors of the Holocaust, do you feel Jews shouldn’t have the right to a nation state in their place of origin? (Just as Palestinians should have a homeland of their own!)
Why aren’t you angry at Iran for funding terrorism that yielded the October 7th barbaric attack on Israel? It has caused the current state of affairs.
(Please, I well understand why you are angry with Western leaders, including my own country. But while our current President, Joe Biden, has continued to support our agreement to aid Israel and our belief it has a right to exist, that Jews as a people have a right to exist, do people not realize things in the Gaza Strip would be much worse off were this particular man not President at this particular moment? (My opinion.) That the relative restraint being shown by the Netanyahu government versus his initial statements about all-out war is because of Biden and Secretary Blinken? That if humanitarian aid is delivered to Palestinians who so desperately need it, it will be thanks to the efforts of these two men? Have you ever seen a U.S. President come to a war zone to advocate for Palestinian aid? Where is MBS? El-Sissi? King Ab-Dulla II? Najib Mikati? Erdogan? Not among you, are they?)
Why isn’t the Arab community as angry with their leaders about the fate of the Palestinians as they are – rightly – with Israel and the West? They have had over 70 years to help create a Palestinian state. They’ve done little but paid lip service to the Palestinian cause when each Arab country decided in its turn it couldn’t rule it.
Yet they keep their borders closed to immigration. When they do accept refugees, they leave them stateless, to live in encampments. Is that humane? Is that how governments should behave if they want regional stability? Why aren’t they providing humanitarian aid?
(Again, admittedly the U.S. record is little better. Still, of all the countries in the world, Margaret and her then husband chose to settle here. Here, where – if democracy and restorative justice don’t always flourish – at least there are those among us willing to water what grows and reseed the ground.)
Why aren’t China and Russia providing Palestinians aid? No! They are forming alliances with Iran, which funds the terrorists who started this latest chapter of more than 70 years of conflict, confusion and chaos by burning old women in their chairs and babies in their cribs. My heart breaks for that and for the deaths of any of the children that make up 40 percent of the Palestinian population.
Did you know, genetically speaking, Palestinians and Jews share much in common? More so than with other Arab nations?
How can Jews, Muslims, and yes, Christians, all descended from the same Abrahamic faith, be so hateful to each other and yet claim the same sacred space as the Holy Land?
In the name of God, Abba, Adoni, Allah, Elohim, Yahweh…whatever you care to call him…how can we have let us fail to show each other His love, mercy and forgiveness, rather than offer each other vengeance, violence and an unceasing cycle of death?
Please, everyone, I beg you, stop. Breathe. Mourn. Grieve. Cry. Shake your fists in angry protest. Sit-in. Write letters to University presidents. Make angry statements. Breathe.
Now…just stop.
Let humanitarian aid come in to Southern Gaza where so many Palestinians have waited for aid.
Let all Israeli hostages go.
Let those from other countries trapped in Palestine go home.
Let every leader come together to bring peace…to the Middle East, and to both Israel and Palestine. Come to a final and binding agreement for a two-state solution. To Ukraine and the right of it to exist as its own country, filled with its own people. To Taiwan and its right to be its own nation.
May peace and prosperity reign then forever, especially for the children. Always for the children.
A Senior Moment 