Russia Archives - Unintended Consequences

Over two years ago, I started writing a lot about the emerging pandemic. That crisis unfolded with a quaint stateliness and simplicity compared to the situation in Ukraine. (I also had a personal perspective formed by earlier writing about pandemics and work and travel around China so I wrote sooner and more often about that topic.) While the pandemic hit different populations in somewhat similar ways across the globe depending on infrastructure, medical care, policy, social beliefs, and more, the situation in Ukraine is different.

There are different camps of support, countries will be impacted differently by changing commodities costs and social preferences, and the military situation is still a question. But speed is one notable characteristic.

War Doves

People are again making a big deal out of Pope Francis’ 2014 dove-release-for-Ukraine-peace gone wrong.

“At the Vatican, Pope Francis called for an end to violence in the Ukraine before releasing two white doves as a symbol of peace. Moments later, a black crow and a seagull attacked the doves in front of the horrified crowd.”

Continue reading “War Doves, War Norms, War Moms”

People seek asylum for different reasons. Sometimes, a country becomes unsafe because of one’s identity — as a member of a targeted ethnic, religious, or political group. And sometimes one’s actions — sometimes even unintentional — make their home country unsafe.

The idea of seeking safety elsewhere in the world is an interesting one because, even with the recent refugee crises, it has historically been relatively uncommon. (Asylum is the protection a nation grants to someone from another country, often as a political refugee. An asylee to the US requests asylum while in the US but a refugee requests that protection while still outside the US.)

But today — and maybe because I’m both a friend of the individual and a writer — I’m focused on an instance of someone seeking asylum because of something that they wrote. Continue reading “Asylum from a Pack of Wolves”