A corpse in a car minus a head in the garage. That’s the scene in Pulp Fiction when Harvey Keitel as Winston Wolf fixes the bloody car problem.
About half way into a 3-hour Tell Gordeeva profile, practicing philosopher Volodymyr Pastukhov talks about his work for Russia’s Merck Sharp & Dohme during the 1990s, conjuring up Harvey.
There were no bodies to dispose of on my watch, which ended before Volodymyr’s began. We hired our own “cleaners” who, in some regions, doubled as enforcers. Komi comes to mind. Those were the salad days — the pre-payment-in-dollars phase — of our little op, which precluded batshit shenanigans that needed to be “fixed.” Those kerfuffles probably involved wholesalers or million-dollar esoteric cotton-for-drugs arrangments with clans in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan inspired by MSD’s VPs attempting to inflate annual sales.
On the Ukraine jacket, Z this week chatted up frustrated civil society leaders.
The president is looking for ideas to incorporate in his so-called Action Plan (a.k.a. Internal Strengthening Plan, for Ukrainians). The Peace Formula and Victory Plan, it turns out, were sets of proposals concocted for foreign benefactors.
On the war jacket, Selydove.
The town had a population of 20,000 before the war. It’s looking likely Russian invaders will also occupy Toretsk, Kurakhove and Pokrovsk in the coming days and weeks. This link maps the advances.
Because it is Friday, let’s end on a wildly optimistic note.
Have a great weekend!