Tag: Global War and Violence

Why we need a new spirit of internationalism. By EDWY PLENEL; March 4, 2022

The invasion of Ukraine is now forcing the world to face up to the unprecedented threat posed by Russian imperialism. In this op-ed article, Mediapart’s publishing editor Edwy Plenel argues that what is needed is a surge of international solidarity to defend and help the Ukrainian people who are resisting that aggression. A new imperialism is threatening world… Read More Why we need a new spirit of internationalism. By EDWY PLENEL; March 4, 2022

Dilip

Rohini Hensman: The Historical Background to Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine / Chris Hedges: The Greatest Evil Is War

NB: An excellent and well-researched essay. The clinically neutral experts on mass media and academia might do themselves a favour by reading it. Beneath this essay is a comment I wrote yesterday to an article in Scheerpost by Michael Brenner, an American professor of international relations. Here is a far more humane essay on the… Read More Rohini Hensman: The Historical Background to Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine / Chris Hedges: The Greatest Evil Is War

Dilip

Rebecca Solnit: It’s time to confront the Trump-Putin network / George Monbiot: We must confront Russian propaganda / Moscow police detain children for laying flowers at Ukrainian embassy

NB: The UN General Assembly has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for withdrawal. Putin is a gangster in absolute power, and those Indian commentators who find excuses for this brutal invasion in the name of ‘national interest’ are ethical nihilists. By the way, it was the Soviet Union, not ‘Russia’,  which stood by India’s… Read More Rebecca Solnit: It’s time to confront the Trump-Putin network / George Monbiot: We must confront Russian propaganda / Moscow police detain children for laying flowers at Ukrainian embassy

Dilip

Nesrine Malik: Let the horror in Ukraine open our eyes to the suffering of war around the world

Too many frame the invasion as an attack on ‘civilisation’, uniquely awful because it happened in Europe. That approach demeans us all    Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has sharpened two terrifying realisations. The first is that Putin does not function within the realm of the usual finely balanced checks and balances, sticks and carrots,… Read More Nesrine Malik: Let the horror in Ukraine open our eyes to the suffering of war around the world

Dilip

Sergey Faldin: Putin is digging his own grave in Ukraine / Berlin stands up against Putin at huge anti-war rally / Indian Student Killed In Shelling In Kharkiv

The reason you don’t see a revolution happening in Moscow is not that people don’t care about what’s happening in Ukraine. On the contrary, my social media feed is filled with posts from Russians opposing the war. “What happened?” they say. “How did we get to this? This is madness!” People are saying they feel guilty… Read More Sergey Faldin: Putin is digging his own grave in Ukraine / Berlin stands up against Putin at huge anti-war rally / Indian Student Killed In Shelling In Kharkiv

Dilip

Shyam Saran: Russia’s friends are finding it harder to look the other way / Chinese historians speak out against Russian invasion

Ukraine is enveloped in the inevitable fog of war and it is difficult to assess whether Russian forces are on the threshold of overwhelming the much less capable Ukrainian forces. Vladimir Putin’s calculations – that the shock and awe of the Russian invasion would lead to the collapse of the Ukrainian government and surrender of… Read More Shyam Saran: Russia’s friends are finding it harder to look the other way / Chinese historians speak out against Russian invasion

Dilip

Mukul Kesavan: Ukraine – a conflict between two transnational entities / Vladimir Sorokin: Putin sits atop a crumbling pyramid of power

Vladimir Putin anticipated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by writing screeds about the essential one-ness of Russians and Ukrainians, united as they were, in his view, by a common origin in the medieval principalities of Kievan Rus. Putin insisted that Ukraine had no real tradition of independent statehood and blamed Lenin and the Bolsheviks for inventing… Read More Mukul Kesavan: Ukraine – a conflict between two transnational entities / Vladimir Sorokin: Putin sits atop a crumbling pyramid of power

Dilip

Ukraine: India refuses to take a clear position on the Russian invasion / Prominent Russians join protests against Ukraine war amid 1,800 arrests

NB: The article below is provocative. Readers may consider the implications. But two points need to be made about the author’s last few sentences. One, the phrase ‘Putin’s imperial nostalgia’ is misleading unless post-USSR geo-politics are examined carefully. Two, the world’s ‘liberal democracies’ don’t seem very committed to liberal democracy these days, and neither (to… Read More Ukraine: India refuses to take a clear position on the Russian invasion / Prominent Russians join protests against Ukraine war amid 1,800 arrests

Dilip

Kelly Denton-Borhaug: The True Costs of America’s All-Consuming War-Culture / Chris Hedges: Chronicle of a War Foretold

The consequences of pushing NATO up to the borders with Russia — there is now a NATO missile base in Poland 100 miles from the Russian border — were well known to policy makers. Yet they did it anyway. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War, after all, is a business,… Read More Kelly Denton-Borhaug: The True Costs of America’s All-Consuming War-Culture / Chris Hedges: Chronicle of a War Foretold

Dilip