Review: Patriot: A Memoir

Navalny's last words for everyone to read

When Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was seriously poisoned in August 2020 and recovered in Germany for several months, many warned him not to return to Russia, for fear he could be jailed for a long time.

But Navalny was determined and returned to Russia on January 17, 2021, and despite tens of journalists recording his every move in the airport, he was promptly detained at passport control for violating his parole conditions when he was in Germany recovering.

Why did he go back, knowing this could happen? He explains why in his memoir, Patriot, published posthumously in 2024. His wife Yulia and the Estate of Alexei Navalny own the copyright of the book, which was translated from Russian.

Navalny and his wife Yulia

The memoir spans 479 pages, and Navalny explains in his own words his childhood growing up in a military town near Obninsk, where the first Soviet nuclear reactor was built. He was nine years old when the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl exploded, and his family knew the government was hiding the truth and tried to force the residents there to continue with their daily lives.

Eventually these people were evacuated and dispersed wherever there was accommodation.

To Navalny, the Chernobyl disaster and how it was handled left a very strong impression on him.

"The question most puzzling even to my ten-year-old self was why the authorities were lying like this when everybody around me knew the truth. What kind of pathetic attempt at deception was this? If you are going to lie, you should at least be expecting to benefit from it in some way. You claim to be sick and you don't have to go school; that at least makes sense. But what was the point of these lies? Describing the way the Soviet Union worked, Vasily Shukshin, a Russian writer, memorably said, "Lies, lies, lies... Lies as redemption, lies as atonement for guilt, lies a goal achieved, lies as a career, as prosperity, as medals, as an apartment... Lies! The whole of Russia was covered in lies, like scab." An excellent description of the situation."

At that age Navalny not only knew what was happening, but also thought what the state was doing was wrong and decided to do something about it.

His father was from Ukraine, his mother from northern Russia. Navalny says: "Quizzed for the umpteenth time as to whether I was Ukrainian or Russian, I did my best to avoid a straight answer. It was like being asked whom you loved more, your mother or your father, to which no sensible answer is possible."

Navalny says early on it was his family who taught him to love his country -- not the state. "There was never any talk about whether we ought to emigrate, and I can imagine no circumstances in which there might have been. How could you emigrate when your country is here, when the language you speak is here, and Russians are the world's most wonderful people? A good people with a bad state."

Navalny talks about life in his teen years and deciding he wanted to study law, these were the options for university that his friend jokingly described:

Navalny in prison

1. The law faculty of Moscow State University, which the whole of Moscow was fighting to get into;

2. The law faculty of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, where admission was restricted to string-pulling KGB families and other Soviet elites;

3. The People's Friendship University of Russia, whose students came mainly from Africa or were future KGB agents assigned to spy on those students.

He became a lawyer and after Vladimir Putin came to power, Navalny joined opposition parties, even those on the far right. His legal knowledge would become very helpful, particularly when he became an activist shareholder and disrupted meetings when he asked company officials embarrassing questions on expenditures with the media present.

It seems it was love at first sight when he spotted Yulia during a business trip in Turkey. They got on so well that they moved in together six months after meeting, married two years later. From his admiration of her, it seems they are completely in tune with each other.

Navalny explains how opposition parties operated, and got involved in politics from the grassroots level, and gathered support as he exposed the corruption in their areas. The number of views of his videos reached millions.

To him, the embezzlement of money hindered people's social and economic mobility, as well as the economic development of the country. He has shown through reports and videos the billions of dollars that senior Russian officials took and were used to buy property overseas, or build extravagant villas in the country, while ordinary people are struggling to make ends meet or battling bureaucracy on a daily basis.

He makes a heart symbol to Yulia in the dock

"If you were to ask me whether I hate Vladimir Putin, my answer would be, yes, I hate him, but not because he tried to kill me or put my brother in prison. I hate Putin because he has stolen the last twenty years from Russia. These could have been incredible years, the sort of period that we've never had in our history. We had no enemies. We had peace on all our borders. The price of oil, gas, and our other natural resources was incredibly high. We earned huge amounts from our exports. Putin could have used these years to turn Russia into a prosperous country. All of us could have lived better.

"Instead twenty million people live below the poverty line. Part of the money Putin and his cronies simply stole; part of it was squandered. They did nothing good for our country, and that is their worst crime against our children and the country's future."

The last third of the book Navalny details his life in prison from February 2021 until 2024 [he died February 2024] in diary form. He gives detailed insight into what it is like to live behind bars, how he is treated, and how prison officials try to break his spirit with increasingly terrible conditions, or preventing him from seeing his lawyers and family members. Physically it is trying for his body, but Navalny believes others have it worse than him.

For a long time his family can help him buy food, and he is able to make coffee in his cell, and eat salad and bread; one fan sends him a cake. He can also order books and amasses a big collection. Oh and he received a lot of fan mail in prison, and dutifully replies to each of them.

Near the beginning of the book, Navalny mentions Daniel Roher, the director who filmed the documentary Navalny, and towards the end of the tome, his lawyer shouts to him on a video link that the film won Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards.

"I had a very strange feeling at that moment. It was as if those words didn't belong in this world, but, on the other hand, everything here is so weird and crazy that this world is the only one they belong in." 

Yulia spoke at the Academy Awards

He goes on to thank everyone involved in the documentary, in particular Christo Grozev, the Bellingcat investigative reporter who investigated Navalny's poisoning.

On his birthday, June 4, 2023, Navalny writes how the prison psychologist is amazed that he is mentally fit despite all the torturous conditions he has encountered. His take:

"Let's face it, of course I wish I didn't have to wake up in this hellhole and could instead have breakfast with my family, receive kisses on the cheek from my children, unwrap presents, and say, "Wow, this is exactly what I dreamed of!" But life works in such a way that social progress and a better future can only be achieved if a certain number of people are willing to pay the price for their right to have their own beliefs. The more of them there are, the less everyone has to pay. And the day will come when speaking the truth and advocating for justice will be commonplace and not dangerous in Russia."

He says this many times, how he strongly believes in having convictions, that there needs to be free elections, a fair legal system and no censorship.

But will Russia change? With Navalny gone, who will continue fighting for ordinary Russians?

Some may describe Navalny as stubborn, an idealist, a fighter. 

But above all, he is a patriot, who loves his country and only wants to see it in a better place.

Anne Frank's Story Still Resonates Today

Thinking of Anne Frank on Holocaust Remembrance Day

When I was in elementary school, my mother gave me a copy of The Dairy of a Young Girl and got to know Anne Frank this way, and was impressed by her deep, sophisticated, thoughtful observations and feelings at a young age. This was also how I got to learn about the horrors of the holocaust.

January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day and I just saw a traveling exhibition in a school in Vancouver called "Anne Frank: A History for Today."

Presented by Anne Frank House, there are several large panels that document what was happening in Europe in the 1930s with the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and how these big historical events coincided with those of the Frank family.

Anne was born on June 12, 1929 and had an older sister, Margot, her mother Edith, and father Otto. Anne writes that her father was 36 years old when he married her mother who was 25 in 1925.

The stock market crash in 1929 which led to the Great Depression resulted in growing unemployment, and Hitler of the Nazi party promised jobs, promoted antisemitism, and criticised communism. When his party was voted into power, Hitler began doing as he promised, and began making life difficult for Jews, attacking Jewish people and businesses in Kristallnacht, or Night of the Broken Glass.

Germans were told not to patronise Jewish businesses, or associate with them, and later Jews were forced to give up their businesses to the government. Nazis didn't like gypsies, Blacks or the disabled either.

The Franks were uneasy with the situation and in 1933 they moved to Amsterdam where Otto set up a company that sold spices and pectin to make jam. 

But the Nazis weren't satisfied with just controlling Germany. In 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland and the following year entered the Netherlands, which surrendered in a week. 

In the meantime Otto tried to apply for visas for the United States, Cuba and Britain, but they were either granted and he didn't receive it on time, or their applications were not approved. In July 1942 the family began living in the secret annex behind his office, which is where Anne recorded her innermost thoughts for two years, until they were suddenly arrested in August 1944.

Anne and her sister Margot died days of each other of typhus in a concentration camp, mother Edith died on the way to the camp, and Otto was the only survivor of the family, when he and others were liberated by the Soviets in January 1945.

Watching a documentary about the Franks and Nazism immediately drew parallels with the ICE raids in the United States, in particular what has happened in Minneapolis these last few weeks. Immigration Customs Enforcement agents are violently taking down and arresting who they think are illegal immigrants, detaining them and sending them out of the country.

They are doing President Donald Trump's bidding, as he claimed these undocumented people are violent drug dealers, rapists, pedophiles, murderers, gang members, and terrorists who need to be removed from the country.

The US Department of Homeland Security reports to have removed over 670,000 people, and over 2 million self-deportations.

Now two American citizens are dead after trying to protect these alleged criminals.

It is eerie and shocking to see how this is happening today just south of the border from us. 

How is it that history is repeating itself in 2026!

Review: The Space Architect

Adams designed living spaces for astronauts

After watching the documentary Changing Lanes, I had a quick break eating a Japanese sausage roll (a sausage wrapped in a croissant-like fluffy, flaky pastry), I returned to VIFF to watch The Space Architect, directed by Rebecca Carpenter.

Who's the space architect? It's Constance Adams, a woman who took her skills as an architect and applied them to space, imagining how astronauts live outside of the Earth, what their lives will be like, what they would need, and how they would survive.

She got to experience zero gravity

But she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and contacted Carpenter, her college classmate who is a filmmaker, asking her to come film her last words.

Carpenter rushed over to Houston and filmed Adams, who by this point was quite ill, needing oxygen to help her breathe. Dressed in a green shirt and black vest, Adams looked very animated, and her nails were painted bright red.

She got a bachelors degree in social studies at Harvard, then a masters in architecture at Yale. She interned with Cesar Pelli, then went to Tokyo to work for the architectural firm Kenzo Tange, then Berlin to work for Josef Paul Kleihues.

However, the economy in Germany wasn't doing well following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Adams returned to the US to interview for a firm in Houston. While she was there she toured NASA and thought it was so interesting she left them her resume.

Her inflatable TransHub project

They later contacted her and asked if she was still interested. She was. Lockheed Martin hired her as a consultant and she worked on various projects, though she was best known for TransHab, or Transit Habitat, an inflatable module where astronauts could live and work.

Her way of solving problems was to gather all different kinds of experts together, from engineers to psychologists to talk about various scenarios and imagine what it would be like to live in space and how that would affect design and architecture in space.

Adams says all her work with NASA isn't really about humans going into space and finding the final frontier, it's about finding ways for humans to survive on Earth with climate change happening. To find solutions, she created the Mothership project.

Towards the end of the film, it says that four days after Carpenter finished filming, Adams died at the age of 53.

We were lucky that Carpenter came to Vancouver to talk to audiences after the screening. She started by saying Adams wanted her to tell everyone to get a colonoscopy after the age of 50... if she had done so she would have detected the cancer earlier.

Then she talked about filming Adams, that she was sicker than she thought she was, and they did the best they could.

Adams when she was filmed in 2018

After filming wrapped, Carpenter didn't know what she had and let her daughter watch some raw footage; she said this woman is iconic, and that her story had to be told. Her daughter's friend said the same, and so did a film editor friend.

Then the pandemic hit and Carpenter couldn't deal with this project while isolating, finding it a depressing subject. But it seems like it was a group of women in the film industry who encouraged Carpenter to keep going, and they helped her out to eventually finish the film this year.

Adams' daughters have seen the film and say it captures their mother well, and Carpenter confirms they are doing well under the guardianship of Adams' friend.

One audience member asked Carpenter what she learned from making this film and she replied that she is so grateful for every moment, sharing the moment of being with us, being thankful for everything... it seemed like she basically meant that she was grateful to be alive.

Adams accomplished so much in her short time on Earth, and we need to remember trailblazers like her, and be inspired by her great ambitions for all of us.

The Space Architect

Directed by Rebecca Carpenter

40 minutes

Chretien's Words of Advice Dealing with Trump

Chretien says world leaders should ignore Trump's "crazy"

The G7 Summit will be held from June 15-17 in Kananaskis, Alberta, and a convicted felon by the name of US President Donald Trump will be attending.

Former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien has some words of advice for not only current PM Mark Carney, but also other world leaders attending -- don't engage with the "crazy" from Trump.

Speaking at a conference in Calgary on Thursday, Chretien said leaders can't predict what the American president will do. Chretien said Trump can be a bully and it would be best if the other G7 leaders ignored his outbursts.

Carney had a relatively smooth visit with Trump

"If he has decided to make a show to be in the news, he will do something crazy," Chretien warned.

"Let him do it, and keep talking normally."

He cited the example of how Carney handled Trump during his visit to the White House last month.

"When Trump talked about Canada to be part of the United States, [Carney] just said, 'Canada is not for sale, the White House is not for sale, Buckingham Palace is not for sale," Chretien said.

"Trump said, 'Never say never,' [but Carney] didn't even reply. He just moved on with the discussion. It's the way to handle that."

On Sunday, leaders from France, Germany, Japan the United Kingdom, Italy and the European Union will be attending, as well as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

Canadians Avoid US Travel, and Airlines Scramble

Air Canada is pivoting to fewer US flights, more to Europe

As many Canadians have recently decided not to travel to the United States, either declaring this in polls or by cancelling trips, resulting in a drop of some 13 percent by air, airlines are scrambling to meet domestic demand and fewer routes across the border.

For example, WestJet is adding more flights to "markets of strength", including Europe, and sun destinations like Mexico and Cuba.

Air Canada says as of mid-March, transborder bookings were down about 10 percent for the next six months. As a result the airline is adjusting some of its US flights by using smaller aircraft and reducing frequencies of flights.

The Canadian airline has added a new route for summer, Montreal to Edinburgh, and increased the number of flights to Paris, Rome and Athens.

Meanwhile, Discover Airlines, owned by Lufthansa, will launch a Calgary-Munich route. 

Porter Airlines is also reducing its summer service to the US and shifting to domestic markets.

Mike Arnot, a spokesman for airline analytics firm Cirium says it's unusual to see such a significant dip in demand for Canada-US travel.

"It's a tough place for the airlines to be," he said.

Cirium analyses data from travel agencies and booking websites, and found summer bookings between major Canadian cities and popular US destinations dropped nearly 20 percent compared to last year.

But bookings for July between popular Canadian destinations increased by about 11 percent compared to 2024.

However, if people are still keen on traveling to the US, they might be able to take advantage of lower air fares, perhaps at the beginning of May, says aviation expert John Gradek.

And strangely, you can thank American President Donald Trump for that.

National Pushback Against Musk

Great car, terrible association, Tesla owners regret buying

Word on the street is that Tesla drivers are regretting their purchase following CEO Elon Musk's carte blanche to dismantle several government departments in the name of efficiency.

Some are trying to get rid of their Teslas, or embarrassed to drive it, while others who bought their cars before Musk supported Donald Trump for president will continue driving the car, though they find it awkward being associated with the South African though their vehicle.

Meanwhile in Europe it's quite evident how they feel about Musk:

Trump gives Musk carte blanche to revamp US govt

According to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, car sales are down in France by 6 percent, but when it comes to Teslas, sales are down by a whopping 63 percent. France is the second-biggest electric vehicle market in Europe, behind Germany, where sales of Teslas is down 59 percent.

It keeps going.

In Sweden it's down 44 percent, 38 percent in Norway, and 42 percent in the Netherlands. 

"Weird right? I wonder why that is?" Maddow muses to her audience.

She adds in the United States, polling has been done to gauge how Americans feel about Musk being involved in the government. YouGov took two polls, one right after the US election and another this week, two weeks after Trump took office.

In November,  47 percent of Republican voters want Musk to have "a lot" of influence in government; since the election it has plunged 21 points to only 26 percent of Republican voters wanting Musk to have "a lot" of influence in government.  

Protesters ready to stop Musk at Dept of Labor

"That has dropped like a stone in a very quick period of time," she quips.

When it comes to Democrats, only 6 percent want Musk to have "a lot" of influence, and the same percentage of independent voters. 

"He's polling at like tooth decay levels," Maddow says with a big smile. "That's like funny bone bumped into something sharp levels."

Meanwhile protests in all 50 states have erupted, protesting against Musk. One was in Maine where people occupied a Tesla charging station with signs that read: "Musk is a national security threat". 

At the Department of Labor in Washington DC, a hastily arranged protest drew lots of people to come and prevent Musk and his band of young hackers from entering the building. The protesters succeeded -- for now...

Last Call for Sinovac Jabs in HK

Sinovac was the vaccine of choice of mostly pro-Beijing ppl

Remember when vaccines were first available in Hong Kong during the Covid-19 pandemic and there were two to choose from -- Sinovac from China, and Pfizer-BioNTech from Germany? 

Sinovac is an inactivated vaccines, whereas BioNTech is an mRNA vaccine that doesn't use a live virus to trigger an immune response. Instead it teaches the body's cells to make proteins to trigger an immune response by making antibodies to fight the infection when the virus enters the body.

For the most part in Hong Kong, choosing the vaccine fell along political lines -- those who were pro-Beijing got the Sinovac jab, others the latter, though some people refused to get any kind of vaccination because of total mistrust of the government, which to me was mind boggling.

Then CE Carrie Lam chose Sinovac for her jab

In the end the US Center for Disease Control found in a 2022 report that receiving two or three doses of mRNA vaccine resulted in a 90 percent reduction in the risk of being infected with Covid-19 or death. Having three jabs during the Omicron wave gave 94 percent protection.

Hong Kong continued to offer Sinovac, but that offer ends soon as the government has almost finished using up its supply of Chinese vaccines.

The Centre for Health Protection said it would stop offering the Sinovac jab after its current supply expires on October 3. 

"The vaccine supplier confirmed that they will no longer produce the vaccine," the centre said.

Perhaps it's because the vaccine has been shown to not be very effective?

Interestingly the Hong Kong government is still urging those who have not yet been vaccinated this whole time to do so with Sinovac at least, and then get an mRNA vaccine after.

Review: Oppenheimer

The film is based in a biography of the theoretical physicist

Just watched the film Oppenheimer and it was quite intense, but a cinematic triumph for director Christopher Nolan, featuring an all-star cast bringing to life the complex life and person of J Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb.

The three-hour film is an adaptation of the 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin and Nolan wrote the screenplay. As a result Oppenheimer is a pretty accurate portrayal of the historical events that happened, following the American theoretical physicist as he studies quantum physics in England and Germany, brings the subject back to the United States, and then gets recruited to become the director of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Einstein was a contemporary of Oppenheimer

He brings together a team of scientists to create the atomic bomb, but as they are building it, Hitler has died, and the motivation to stop the Nazis has evaporated. But Oppenheimer believes the Japanese need to be stopped and the project continues. Once the test code named Trinity is a success, the US Army moves in to take the bomb plans to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945 respectively, effectively stopping the Japanese.

However, Oppenheimer is not a straight-forward all-American patriot, especially not during the McCarthy era. And this is what makes the film a complex portrayal of the man. While it is not definitive that he was a card-carrying communist, he tried to help Jewish scientists flee the Nazis, supported the Spanish civil war, tried to unionize professors. It perhaps didn't help Oppenheimer that his brother and wife were active communists.

The film also shows his complicated personal life, how he had a passionate affair with Jean Tatlock, but she broke up with him; he soon met his future wife Katherine "Kitty" Puening, who was with her third husband, also Oppenheimer's colleague.

He had an intense relationship with Tatlock

Later Oppenheimer rekindled his relationship with Tatlock while he was married with his first child, but ended it -- she later committed suicide, which affected him profoundly. He also later had an affair with Ruth Tolman, also the wife of Oppenheimer's friend.

In one scene Kitty is seen drunk and unable to care for their son and Oppenheimer takes the baby to his friend to look after him "for a while"... one wonders if he son experienced abandonment issues. Oppenheimer and Kitty later had a daughter.

After the Trinity test, Oppenheimer realises how the atomic bomb will impact humanity and tries to tell the US government it has to stop what will begin as the arms race in the Cold War. 

Another character in the film is Lewis Strauss, head of the Atomic Energy Commission who wants to be confirmed for Secretary of Commerce. Strauss is personally offended when Oppenheimer humiliates him publicly dismissing concerns about exporting radioisotopes. As a result Strauss orchestrates an elaborate plan to silence Oppenheimer with a closed-door hearing to decide whether the scientist should have his security clearance.

Black and white scenes show historical events

The questioning is intense and harsh, making it hard for Oppenheimer to defend himself effectively, but also reveals his character of being unable or unwilling to fight back, and his trusted colleagues and wife have to do it for him.

The cinematography of Oppenheimer shows calculated shots, and apparently no computer-generated images were used, particularly when it came to the Trinity test. Cillian Murphy as the physicist ages gracefully throughout the film, his big blue eyes are very intense and full of emotion. He is in almost all the scenes.

It was only after watching the film did a friend tell me that the scenes in colour were the story through Oppenheimer's eyes, while those in black and white were events as viewed in history.

Meanwhile the costumes were fantastic, bringing back sharp suits with high-waisted trousers, broad-rimmed porkpie hat. There was also a lot of smoking going on and Oppenheimer has a cigarette lit most of the time; is it surprising he died of throat cancer at the age of 62 in 1967?

Oppenheimer is a complex portrait of the man, how he was not just into physics, but was well read, faced moral issues with regards to humanity and was loyal to his colleagues. Should he have invented the atomic bomb? He was proud of his achievement, but saddened that it resulted in ratcheted tensions with the Soviet Union.

Oppenheimer

Directed by Christopher Nolan

180 minutes

Review: Navalny

Opening scene of Navalny, following the politician's career

On Monday I went to watch the matinee screening of Navalny, which recently won Best Documentary in the Academy Awards. Most of the audience were seniors and at one point I thought I was the youngest in the room, and then some people in their 20s walked in.

Alexi Navalny is? was? the official opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is a charismatic lawyer and politician, tall, handsome, has a wry sense of humour and loves his wife Yulia, as well as their two children.

The film starts with director Daniel Roher asking, so if you die, what message would you like to leave for the people? Navalny says we're not going to make a movie about my death. It's going to be a thriller.

Roher felt a duty to film as much as possible

Roher says in interviews the film was set up to be a thriller from the get-go -- he wanted to do it when he followed the news of Navalny's poisoning in Siberia and was recovering in Germany.

That's where the Canadian director started filming Navalny, tracing his career as a politician, offering a viable alternative to Putin and inspiring millions of Russians to stand up to the authoritarian regime.

Roher has said he was very aware of filming a politician who knows how to use social media and make videos, which is why Navalny the documentary is a well rounded portrait of the man, showing a wide range of emotions and situations from him convulsing on a plane to joking with his daughter.

As a result Roher asks provoking questions, particularly about Navalny associating with far right groups with Nazi leanings. Navalny answers them in a way that makes viewers squeamish about him standing together with these people, but at the same time understanding his need to reach out to all stakeholders regardless of their political views.

Viewers get to know Navalny's team who do investigative stories on Putin, and meet an outsider, Christo Grozev, chief investigator for Bellingcat, an online investigative journalism group.

The moment Navalny gets shocking intelligence

Grozev is Bulgarian but has worked in the media in Russia, speaks Russian and admits he is a computer nerd. He investigates Navalny's poisoning and through analysing phone logs and flight passenger lists, is able to name the people who tried to kill Navalny.

The most dramatic scene is a tense 15 minutes watching Navalny call up some of these people trying to get them to tell him why they did this to him and how. Two or three recognise his voice; Navalny changes tack and pretends to be the deputy of a commander and needs to know the details of the botched assassination attempt to write up for a report.

A man who is a specialist in making chemical weapons is sick at home with Covid-19 and not in the right frame of mind begins to tell Navalny how it all transpired...

There is also palpable tension watching Navalny when he takes a flight home to Moscow, journalists filming him through the whole flight. The constant barrage of cameras is vital to witness how he is whisked away at passport control. Did he know that would be the last time he would hug and kiss his wife? Did he think he would be let off easily? Or was he prepared for this all along?

Grozev is on Russia's most wanted list

Meanwhile protesters at the airport waiting for Navalny are roughed up and arrested by the police -- it is a terrifying reminder of how protesters were treated in Hong Kong in 2019, and how repressive these two regimes are. One Russian protester taken away demands to know what she has done wrong and none of the officers reply. Others have their arms twisted and broken as they are taken away.

Today Navalny is in solitary confinement in a gulag in Siberia, with hardly any contact with his family for months now. He is allowed two books to read and once a day can write with a pencil and paper for half an hour. There is no sign of when his sentence will end, nor if he can even have civilian doctors treat him for his back pains. He had flu symptoms before and has lost a lot of weight. 

His lawyer managed to tell him that he had won an Oscar.

American-educated daughter Daria has told CNN's Anderson Cooper that the government is slowly killing her father.

Meanwhile Putin has put Grozev on Russia's most wanted list, making it very stressful for him to travel and do his work, but he is undeterred in continuing to cover more injustices. 

Yulia gives a message to her husband at Oscars

At the Oscars, Yulia, who is considered the unofficial first lady of Russia, wore red -- her signature colour, meant to invoke Russia. 

"My husband is in prison just for defending democracy," she said before addressing her husband directly: "Alexi, I am dreaming of the day when you will be free and our country will be free. Stay strong, my love. Thank you."

Navalny

Directed by Daniel Roher

98 minutes

San Diego: Tip Top Meats

I took a bite into my pastrami sandwich before taking a photo!

A friend who drove from Orange County to San Diego to visit me wanted to have lunch at a German deli and I didn't say no.

So after we did some shopping at the nearby Carlsbad Premium Outlets, we stopped for lunch at Tip Top Meats. 

Customers order here before eating at their table

When she used to live near the area, on the weekends they would come here for lunch or to pick up some German sausages before going home because it's part restaurant and part grocery store, specialising in food items from Deutschland since 1967. 

The restaurant is actually more of a cafeteria where you order at the cashier and then the food is served to you at the table. But the day we went there was quite a line so we checked out the grocery part first and it was impressive to see all kinds of items, from apple strudels to marzipan, cookies, many kinds of sausages including currywurst, lots of Haribo products to keep kids on sugar highs for days, chocolates and giant slabs of cheese. 

We went back to the lineup and perused the menu printed on a brochure. For a small eatery, it has an impressive array of dishes from breakfast served from 6am to noon, then for lunch and dinner there are cold and hot sandwiches, soups, burgers, meat loaf, osso bucco, beef stroganoff, liver and onions, schnitzel, smoked pork chops, chicken cordon bleu and zwiebel rostbraten or sweet onion stuffed pork roast, all very reasonably priced.

The grocery is stocked with lots of German foods

It probably explains why there are so many seniors who eat here, having a giant portion of food with a pint and then taking the leftovers home for dinner.

I was conservative and had a hot pastrami sandwich that instead of fries came with German potato salad -- with bits of bacon and slightly vinegary. 

When it arrived I was surprised to see three half sandwiches of hot pastrami with melted cheese in between two slices of toasted rye bread and pickles. I only had room for two halves and took the third half home with some potato salad.

If I was hungrier I would have tried the schnitzel but was trying to save my stomach for later. 

Nevertheless what an interesting place to eat at and have a taste of Germany!

Tip Top Meats 

6118 Paseo Del Norte

Carlsbad, CA

92011-1116

(760) 438 2620

Scholz's Beijing Visit Raises Eyebrows

Scholz met Xi in Beijing for a one-day visit

German media are pointing out Chancellor Olaf Scholz "weird" 11-hour visit to Beijing. Aside from the extreme Covid-19 protocols, critics say the German Chancellor is going against the country's strategy with regards to its relationship with China, and this could threaten unity of the European Union.

But first navigating the pandemic in China.

Everyone who got onto the plane with Scholz had to take two PCR tests before arriving in the Chinese capital, and a third as soon as they landed. The "big whites" in hazmat suits did throat swab tests in an airport transporter on the tarmac.

People in hazmat suits tested German delegation

But Scholz did not take the Chinese test -- instead he insisted on using a German-made test with the Chinese watching him have the test done.

The trip was also one day to avoid Scholz staying in a hotel and either contracting the virus or spreading it (if he was positive).

And everyone on board the plane had to sign an agreement that if they contracted the virus in China, they could fly back to Germany to avoid being stuck in quarantine in Beijing.

After the one-day trip was over, the plane flew from Beijing to South Korea where the flight crew were changed before continuing back to Berlin.

One German reporter wryly notes while all the above mentioned stuff was weird, it all points to both countries not trusting each other -- like their respective coronavirus tests for starters.

China allowed to buy a stake in Hamburg port

Many are wondering why Scholz is cozying up to President Xi Jinping, whom many consider a dictator because of the serious human rights violations on the Uyghurs, Hongkongers, and his own people during the pandemic, and how he is threatening to take over Taiwan by force.

It is strange that Scholz pushed for a Chinese state shipping company Costco to buy a  24.9 percent stake in one of Hamburg's port terminals, going against his own foreign minister's advice. 

He also brought a delegation of business leaders to Beijing to do deals even though the country is trying to be less dependent on China. 

Maybe that was all for show, or part of the deal to allow his short visit to go ahead?

"The trip sends a message that even though Berlin should be seriously rethinking the relationship with China, they are going back to business as usual," said Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, an assistant professor at National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan, and a former political advisor to the European Parliament.

Germany giving mixed messages on this trip

"While I think Europe needs to find a way to constructively talk to China from a position of strength, what Berlin is doing undermines that position by pursuing its own interests at the expense of the emerging, yet fragile European unity that we've seen since the Ukraine war," she added.

Scholz's visit is seen as a big win for Beijing -- again making critics wonder why the chancellor was endorsing a dictator. Surely he knew what happened when Germany cozied up to Adolf Hitler? Or perhaps he forgot it didn't have a good ending?