The South Side
The journey from the south side north was always in some way interesting.
Then on certain dayz, just plain outrageous.
Today was one of those.
I decided to cut over from 44th and 6th west past the pawn shop.
From there I proceeded north behind Food City to the neighborhood, then coming up out of the neighborhood to 33rd, then up and over to south 6th avenue.
I was about four blocks into the neighborhood, heading north.
As I approached the 5th block I felt a vibe.
Vibes are an integral part of my life on a nano to nano basis.
For vibes have been the main ingredient regarding my continuous daily occurrence of exhaling CO2 on this treacherous planet.
I casually glanced 25 degrees to my left.
Thank you vibe.
There stood, over waist high, thick and built, four Pit Bull dogs. All about a year old.
These beasts were all white except for one.
He was white with black spots, and a big black spot covering his left eye.
Adding character as it were.
I proceeded forward, then looked again left.
Seemingly this team of pups were walking my way.
Their determination in their pursuit to check me out was relentless.
Upon their approach they all took up their decided positions.
The first Pit positioned himself directly in front of me. Actually in my direct path.
The second pup positioned herself on my left.
The third escort walked around me, taking his position to my right.
Spot eye picked up my rear flank.
I did not stop my walk.
My escorts just calmly fit themselves in cadence.
There I was, as it were, walking in the middle of a south side hood street chaperoned by my newly acquired friends.
At this point, we walked, I talked.
Softly.
Very Calmly.
Telling these pups how beautiful they were and how damn big they were.
Forget for a moment they were very large Pit Bulls.
They were absolutely some of the biggest dogs I had ever seen.
So we walked and talked.
After four blocks I commented to my newly assigned troops how big they were.
That they're doggie parents must be very large as well.
I inquired at that point as to where were their Momz and Popz.
That's when I caught it.
On a front lawn, inclining upwards at about 20 degrees stood for sure the biggest damn Pit Bull, dog I had ever seen.
Mom.
Mom figured, what the hell.
She joined in on this bazaar march.
Mom took up right flank.
I told her she was surely big.
I said Popz had to be as big as well or, God Forbid, bigger.
Just as the period appeared on my vocal sentence, there he was. Approaching from the right.
For sure, without a doubt, he was Big Dog.
He joined the parade.
We all walked on for another block, me and the whole dog Famdamily.
Out of the wild blue, big pup in front hit the deck, rolled over, Started licking my legs.
Then sister and brothers joined in this street love while Momz and Popz looked on.
After a few minutes of love they all approached me to receive Some serious behind the ear petting.
Then, just as they approached me, they all disbanded and went their various ways.
Then, exhibiting a choreographed cheerleader move, they all Looked back and nodded their heads to the right as if signaling Farewell.
I looked up.
I muttered to HIM.
Uh Huh.
Walking with Wild Pit Bulls.
You for sure Trippin Lord.
Then in a quick lickety, a strong desert breeze brushed it's Sweetness over me followed by three butterflies passing directly In front of me and just to make sure HE was clear, a black bird Descended before me screeching his, "Have a good day Buddy".
I proceeded to 32cd street, then cut over to south 6th avenue.
As I made my way north up south 6th avenue, approaching 31st street I noticed on the east side corner on 6th avenue and 31st street three young Mexican men, 17 to 18 years old Standing there, more like securing that particular part of the Tarmac.
These teenagers were dressed in red.
Red bandanas.
Bloods.
With these young men were two very beautiful young Mexican Girlz.
Maybe sixteen years old.
I continued north on south 6th.
I always walk opposite of the traffic flow.
As I approached 30th, one of these young ladies made her approach towards me.
Crossing south 6th to my side of the street.
As she grew closer, to what I call my meet and greet space I said;
"Yo señorita aplogize. no soy una perspectiva buena."
For my single lingual readers. Defined> I apologize. I am not a good prospect
Young girl positioned herself to my right, without a word, fell in lock step with me.
The time was 8:45.
Sunday morning.
We walked in this manner, silent for the next three blocks.
Without any props, out the wild blue, this beautiful young girl said to me;
"¿Tiene algún licor?"
For my single lingual readers. Defined>Do I have any liquor?
"No, te puedo asegurar que no lo haga. ¿No es demasiado joven para beber licor. Así que es muy pronto."
For my single lingual readers. Defined> No, I sure don't. Are you not too young to be drinking liquor. As well it is so very early.
"Hace que vaya más rápido"
For my single lingual readers. Defined> It makes it go faster.
"Que quiere decir los hombres y todas las repeticiones?"
For my single lingual readers. Defined> You mean the men and all the repetition?
"Si"
"We walked on for a bit."
"Se puede orar por mí?"
For my single lingual readers. Defined> Will you pray for me?
"Sí. Rezaré por usted. ¿Cómo se llama usted?"
For my single lingual readers. Defined> Yes. I will pray for you. What is your name?
"Mi nombre es Monique."
For my single lingual readers. Defined> My name is Monique.
"Para que Monique. Que Dios los bendiga."
For my single lingual readers. Defined>For sure Monique. God Bless You.
With that Monique trailed off east, across 6th avenue.
I turned right off south 6th avenue, west up south 28th street.
I walked another 10 steps up south 28th.
My tears started to hit the hot tarmac like exploding mortars.
I looked and said through the torrential onslaught of tears;
Lord, God Almighty, Please, Oh God, Please Intercede and Find This Young Lady. Save Her Lord. Oh God Please Save Her.
Can't say how long I stood there begging My Lord God Almighty To Save This Beautiful Young Girl from the spoils of war.
Tears finding this keyboard as I type.
The treacherous, wicked world for now safely at bay.
Ryan. Out.
I found this article interesting.
Source;
Realclearworld.com
A real newz source
What does Vladimir Putin want in Ukraine?
Subversion from within – not attack from without – has emerged as the Russian president’s favoured technique for controlling events in Ukraine
If Vladimir Putin wants to change the
world bequeathed by the West’s victory in the Cold War, then where
exactly does this mission end? Photo: AFP/Getty Images
6:20AM BST 15 Apr 2014
1036 Comments
When is an invasion not an invasion? No Russian tanks have rolled across
Ukraine’s eastern frontier and no spearhead infantry units are ravaging the
post-industrial wastes of the Donbas, yet the Kremlin has still managed to
seize de facto control over a string of towns inside its neighbour.
This shadowy operation in eastern Ukraine reveals much about the temperament
of President Vladimir Putin. Ordering a conventional military invasion – a
sort of Operation Barbarossa in reverse – would have been far too obvious
for this KGB graduate. While Nato’s high command fretted over the presence
of between 35,000 and 40,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s border, he chose a
more subtle method of coercing his neighbour.
Subversion from within – not attack from without – has emerged as Mr Putin’s
favoured technique for controlling events in Ukraine. A full-scale invasion
may yet happen, but for now at least, the Kremlin has chosen to wage a
deniable war in the twilight.
Stage one of this operation began 10 days ago when armed men seized government
buildings in Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk, the capitals of Ukraine’s three
eastern regions with large Russian minorities. Then, on Saturday and Sunday,
this campaign suddenly escalated. Within the space of 24 hours, the gunmen
occupied police stations and other official buildings in six towns across
the Donetsk region.
Their modus operandi summoned comparisons with the fate of Crimea, which fell
under de facto Russian control in a few days in February. As in Crimea, the
men in the vanguard of these assaults flew Russian flags from their
conquests. As for their aim, they demanded total autonomy for their home
regions – or straightforward union with Russia.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, drew an explicit parallel with Crimea
yesterday, noting how the “forces” in action in eastern Ukraine were
“behaving in exactly the same way as what turned out to be the Russian
forces in Crimea”. All this amounted to a “gross, deliberate and
premeditated violation of the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine”, Mr
Hague added.
So will eastern Ukraine go the way of Crimea and end up as another region of Russia, or is Mr Putin playing a more subtle game? No one can doubt that he has already achieved his first objective, namely to impale Ukraine’s post-revolutionary government on the horns of an impossible dilemma. If the country’s new leaders rise to this challenge and deploy their army to wrest back the occupied towns and government buildings, then Russians might well be killed – and Mr Putin would have his pretext for a full-scale invasion.
Hour after hour, Russian television pumps out propaganda about how Ukraine has fallen into civil war and the February Revolution brought “fascists” and “extremists” to power. Mr Putin would claim any bloody incident as proof of his case. If he chose to invade, he would present the onslaught as the only way of calming the chaos, hoping that we would forget his part in causing it.
If, on the other hand, Ukraine’s leaders ignore the provocation and leave towns like Slovyansk in the hands of their enemies, then the central government will steadily lose control over the east. Groups of masked men would carry out one occupation after another. The map might remain the same, but in reality, the border between Russia and Ukraine would be submerged as the Kremlin proceeded with the creeping annexation of large areas of its neighbour, building by building and town by town.
In theory, the government in Kiev has made its choice. On Sunday, Oleksandr Turchynov, the acting president, gave the armed men until yesterday to leave all public buildings or face an “anti-terrorist operation”. But the deadline attached to this threat expired with no sign of an assault, suggesting that Mr Turchynov and his colleagues are still wrestling with their dilemma.
That will not have disappointed Mr Putin. He has carefully left his adversaries with a way out: they can escape from their agonising predicament, but only by doing exactly what he tells them.
Russia has already spelt out its objectives in Ukraine: the Kremlin wants the country to have a new constitution allowing total autonomy for the eastern regions. In addition, Russia demands that this new settlement must guarantee Ukraine’s non-aligned status – in other words, rule out membership of Nato or the European Union for ever. Taken together, these diktats would guarantee that Ukraine remains firmly inside Moscow’s orbit.
With the manoeuvres of the past few days, Mr Putin hopes that he has won the leverage to bend Ukraine’s leaders to his will. “There are two possible interpretations of these events,” says Dr Alex Pravda, a Russia specialist at St Antony’s College, Oxford. “Either this is part of a long-term strategy to partition Ukraine. Or it’s a series of tactical moves designed to leverage influence over Kiev. I think it’s the latter.”
But Mr Putin is running risks. The first is that Ukraine’s leaders might choose the first horn of the dilemma and meet force with force. If they wrest back a town, killing a dozen or so Russians in the process, then Mr Putin could find himself under pressure to invade, whether that is part of his plan or not. “More than five or 10 casualties would be a very difficult situation for him to manage,” says Dr Pravda. “He’s trying to create a chaotic situation where he has managed leverage, but it’s high risk.”
Moreover, the people of eastern Ukraine might not behave in quite the way that Mr Putin hopes. If he wanted to trigger a groundswell of popular revulsion against the revolutionaries in Kiev, then it has not happened yet. Only a few hundred people have been directly involved in the occupations, supported by relatively modest crowds of demonstrators.
Unlike in Crimea, ethnic Russians are a minority in eastern Ukraine, albeit a sizeable community of 38 per cent in the Donetsk region. None the less, opinion polls suggest that support for joining Russia is a minority cause. Over 83 per cent of voters in Donetsk backed independence for Ukraine in a referendum accompanying the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. So it is far from obvious that Mr Putin is working with the grain of popular opinion. If he does invade, the inhabitants of eastern Ukraine could wage an eternal partisan war behind the lines even if he achieved a conventional military victory.
There is, however, a still more important question. What exactly are Mr Putin’s long-term goals? In his speech announcing the return of Crimea to Russia last month, he denounced the iniquities of the post-Cold War settlement, forced upon his country at its moment of maximum weakness. He promised a rapturous audience that he would reverse those injustices and restore Russian greatness.
That ambition clearly included annexing Crimea. But does it also require a forcible redrawing of the map of eastern Ukraine to incorporate more Russian-speaking regions into the mother country? And what about the Baltic states, all of them members of Nato and the EU, while also being home to significant Russian minorities?
If Mr Putin wants to change the world bequeathed by the West’s victory in the Cold War, then where exactly does this mission end?
Perhaps he is only really interested in the Slavic heartland of the old Soviet Union, namely Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Equally possible is that he does not know the answer to that question. But the fate of eastern Ukraine in the weeks ahead will help to reveal how far Mr Putin is prepared to go in his burning ambition to restore Russia’s greatness.
So will eastern Ukraine go the way of Crimea and end up as another region of Russia, or is Mr Putin playing a more subtle game? No one can doubt that he has already achieved his first objective, namely to impale Ukraine’s post-revolutionary government on the horns of an impossible dilemma. If the country’s new leaders rise to this challenge and deploy their army to wrest back the occupied towns and government buildings, then Russians might well be killed – and Mr Putin would have his pretext for a full-scale invasion.
Hour after hour, Russian television pumps out propaganda about how Ukraine has fallen into civil war and the February Revolution brought “fascists” and “extremists” to power. Mr Putin would claim any bloody incident as proof of his case. If he chose to invade, he would present the onslaught as the only way of calming the chaos, hoping that we would forget his part in causing it.
If, on the other hand, Ukraine’s leaders ignore the provocation and leave towns like Slovyansk in the hands of their enemies, then the central government will steadily lose control over the east. Groups of masked men would carry out one occupation after another. The map might remain the same, but in reality, the border between Russia and Ukraine would be submerged as the Kremlin proceeded with the creeping annexation of large areas of its neighbour, building by building and town by town.
In theory, the government in Kiev has made its choice. On Sunday, Oleksandr Turchynov, the acting president, gave the armed men until yesterday to leave all public buildings or face an “anti-terrorist operation”. But the deadline attached to this threat expired with no sign of an assault, suggesting that Mr Turchynov and his colleagues are still wrestling with their dilemma.
That will not have disappointed Mr Putin. He has carefully left his adversaries with a way out: they can escape from their agonising predicament, but only by doing exactly what he tells them.
Russia has already spelt out its objectives in Ukraine: the Kremlin wants the country to have a new constitution allowing total autonomy for the eastern regions. In addition, Russia demands that this new settlement must guarantee Ukraine’s non-aligned status – in other words, rule out membership of Nato or the European Union for ever. Taken together, these diktats would guarantee that Ukraine remains firmly inside Moscow’s orbit.
With the manoeuvres of the past few days, Mr Putin hopes that he has won the leverage to bend Ukraine’s leaders to his will. “There are two possible interpretations of these events,” says Dr Alex Pravda, a Russia specialist at St Antony’s College, Oxford. “Either this is part of a long-term strategy to partition Ukraine. Or it’s a series of tactical moves designed to leverage influence over Kiev. I think it’s the latter.”
But Mr Putin is running risks. The first is that Ukraine’s leaders might choose the first horn of the dilemma and meet force with force. If they wrest back a town, killing a dozen or so Russians in the process, then Mr Putin could find himself under pressure to invade, whether that is part of his plan or not. “More than five or 10 casualties would be a very difficult situation for him to manage,” says Dr Pravda. “He’s trying to create a chaotic situation where he has managed leverage, but it’s high risk.”
Moreover, the people of eastern Ukraine might not behave in quite the way that Mr Putin hopes. If he wanted to trigger a groundswell of popular revulsion against the revolutionaries in Kiev, then it has not happened yet. Only a few hundred people have been directly involved in the occupations, supported by relatively modest crowds of demonstrators.
Unlike in Crimea, ethnic Russians are a minority in eastern Ukraine, albeit a sizeable community of 38 per cent in the Donetsk region. None the less, opinion polls suggest that support for joining Russia is a minority cause. Over 83 per cent of voters in Donetsk backed independence for Ukraine in a referendum accompanying the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. So it is far from obvious that Mr Putin is working with the grain of popular opinion. If he does invade, the inhabitants of eastern Ukraine could wage an eternal partisan war behind the lines even if he achieved a conventional military victory.
There is, however, a still more important question. What exactly are Mr Putin’s long-term goals? In his speech announcing the return of Crimea to Russia last month, he denounced the iniquities of the post-Cold War settlement, forced upon his country at its moment of maximum weakness. He promised a rapturous audience that he would reverse those injustices and restore Russian greatness.
That ambition clearly included annexing Crimea. But does it also require a forcible redrawing of the map of eastern Ukraine to incorporate more Russian-speaking regions into the mother country? And what about the Baltic states, all of them members of Nato and the EU, while also being home to significant Russian minorities?
If Mr Putin wants to change the world bequeathed by the West’s victory in the Cold War, then where exactly does this mission end?
Perhaps he is only really interested in the Slavic heartland of the old Soviet Union, namely Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Equally possible is that he does not know the answer to that question. But the fate of eastern Ukraine in the weeks ahead will help to reveal how far Mr Putin is prepared to go in his burning ambition to restore Russia’s greatness.
