John Lee Clark – The Russian Reader

Old Deaf Joke

A Russian and a Cuban and an American were on a train
It quickly came to pass that the Russian took out a bottle of vodka and after a few swigs he tossed it out the window
The other two men exclaimed why throw still have vodka good waste why
The Russian opened his fur coat and showed them rows and rows of bottles and he said there Russia vodka plenty
The two men said oh and settled back in their seats
After a while the Cuban took out a cigar and after a few puffs he tossed it out the window
The other two men exclaimed why throw still have left good cigar waste why
The Cuban opened his suit and showed them rows and rows of cigars and he said there Cuba cigars plenty
The two men said oh and settled back in their seats
After a while a young man came whistling into the car from the next one
The American grabbed him by the collar and belt and tossed him out the window
The other two men exclaimed why throw still young good man waste why
The American made an expansive sweep with his hands and said here America hearing people plenty
The two other men said oh and settled back in their seats

Source: John Lee Clark, How to Communicate (W.W. Norton, 2022), which has been nominated for the 2023 National Book Award in Poetry and won the 2023 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. Mr. Clark (born 1978) is an American deafblind poet, writer, and activist from Minnesota.

Apart from a detailed peace plan to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has a less conventional idea for ending geopolitical crises like these: let dogs run the world.

In the rare downtime he gets as a wartime leader, Zelenskiy, speaking to Reuters by video link on Wednesday, suggested man’s best friend might fare better when it comes to getting along on the global stage.

“Sometimes I’m … looking at all these wars or looking at all the crisis, Middle East crisis. It’s not only Ukraine, everywhere in Africa and the Middle East.

“Sometimes I’m looking at this and think that the best way (is) if this planet will be the planet of dogs,” he said at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, responding to a question about what still makes him laugh.

The Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, now in its 21st month, has upended Europe’s security architecture and sent ripple effects through Africa and Asia, which have seen food shortages thanks to Russia’s de facto blockade of the Black Sea.

Kyiv’s Western partners have provided crucial financial and military support, but are now also dealing with the conflict in Gaza.

Along the front line, Ukrainian forces have been fighting for months to reclaim Russian-occupied territory in a counteroffensive but have made only incremental gains.

Zelenskiy, who is promoting a 10-point peace proposal, said his dogs provide much-needed relief when he spends time with his wife and children, and are “always funny”.

“Sometimes I don’t understand people, really,” Zelenskiy added with a smile.

To view the live broadcast of the World Stage go to the Reuters NEXT news page: https://www.reuters.com/world/reuters-next/

Source: “Zelenskiy hopes for “planet of dogs” to solve world’s crises,” Reuters, 8 November 2023

Today we ask you to support one specific and very important project — Navalny’s Propaganda Machine. It functions very simply: volunteers telephone people in Russia and talk with them, persuading them to turn from Putin supporters into doubters, and from doubters into opponents of Putin and the war.

The more people in Russia start asking questions and stop tacitly supporting everything that the Putin regime is doing, the better for our country. The volunteers of Navalny’s Propaganda Machine are working on this right now.

You can become a volunteer by sending an email to antiwar@navalny.com or supporting the project with a donation. A one-minute call costs two cents. That is, your $10 will turn into 500 minutes of conversation. And $20 is a thousand minutes of conversation with actual residents of Russia, who, thanks to you, can learn the truth and get motivated to fight. Make your contribution at https://acf.international.

Thank you for being on our side!
The Navalny Team

“Navalny has been in prison for 1,025 days”

Source: email newsletter from the Navalny Team (Anti-Corruption Foundation), 9 November 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader