US Deplores Russia’s ‘Shock and Awe’ against Ukraine, but Found its own Against Iraq “Spectacular”

The scenes of the horrible destruction that Russia is inflicting on Ukraine’s civilian cities, from Kharkiv to Mariupol, and the killing of nearly 1,000 civilians, including nearly 100 children, have tugged at the world’s heart strings – and rightly so. Nineteen years ago, when the George W. Bush regime unleashed its “Shock and Awe” campaign on… Read More US Deplores Russia’s ‘Shock and Awe’ against Ukraine, but Found its own Against Iraq “Spectacular”

THE CANCELLATION OF RUSSIAN CULTURE. By Gary Saul Morson

In the medieval era, when a thinker successfully claimed divine revelation, he placed his words beyond dispute. Only the hopelessly benighted or demonically inspired could doubt him. In recent decades, the claim of “science” achieves a similar result. Politicians maintain they “just follow the science” while supportive mass media platforms banish questioners as enemies of… Read More THE CANCELLATION OF RUSSIAN CULTURE. By Gary Saul Morson

Sergei Loznitsa, the Ukrainian film-maker who refuses to be cancelled

On 27 February, three days after Russian tanks rolled into his homeland, the Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa resigned from the European Film Academy. Loznitsa, an ebulliently professorial figure who moved with his family to Berlin in 2001, was furious that the EFA had issued a statement of solidarity with  Ukraine that he saw as too “neutral,… Read More Sergei Loznitsa, the Ukrainian film-maker who refuses to be cancelled

P.B. Mehta: Ukraine invasion has revealed a new world disorder

Even as Ukraine faces extraordinary devastation, a new world disorder is becoming apparent. The United States has to do the balancing act of providing a strong response to Russia. But it is also hemmed in by the fact that it is dealing with an armed nuclear power and needs to avoid direct confrontation. Whether this balancing act… Read More P.B. Mehta: Ukraine invasion has revealed a new world disorder

May the horror and shame unite us. A statement by the editors of the Russian journal ‘New Literary Observer’

NB: Let us salute Russia’s war resisters, who continue a glorious humanist tradition of international peace and solidarity. Let us never forget that the Russian Revolution that began on International Women’s Day in 1917 was a mass anti-war protest of workers and soldiers, which hastened the end of the bloodletting of the Great War of… Read More May the horror and shame unite us. A statement by the editors of the Russian journal ‘New Literary Observer’

JUAN COLE: The US would be on firmer ground declaring Putin a War Criminal if George W. Bush had been Tried / Aditya Chakrabortty: Western values? They enthroned the monster who is shelling Ukrainians today

The bombing campaign targeting Baghdad, a civilian city of 6 million, constituted indiscriminate fire, which is a war crime. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a direct result of events kicked off by the US invasion. Millions were wounded. Four million lost their homes, with a million and a half exiled abroad… Brown University’s Costs of… Read More JUAN COLE: The US would be on firmer ground declaring Putin a War Criminal if George W. Bush had been Tried / Aditya Chakrabortty: Western values? They enthroned the monster who is shelling Ukrainians today

I was arrested at an anti-war protest in Moscow / Moscow police beat and torture women after anti-war protests / Interview with Stephen Kotkin: The Weakness of the Despot

Several protest movements announced anti-war rallies in Moscow on 6 March; the team of opposition figure Alexey Navalny announced a meeting on Manezhnaya Square, just opposite the Kremlin. A coalition of feminists and leftists called a rally at 3pm at another public space, the Square of Three Stations. In parallel, a separate group of protesters… Read More I was arrested at an anti-war protest in Moscow / Moscow police beat and torture women after anti-war protests / Interview with Stephen Kotkin: The Weakness of the Despot

Alfred McCoy – The Geopolitics of the Ukraine War: Putin and Xi Jinping in the Struggle over Eurasia

Just as the relentless grinding of the earth’s tectonic plates produces earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, so the endless superpower struggle for dominance over Eurasia is fraught with tensions and armed conflict. Beneath the visible outbreak of war in Ukraine and the U.S.-Chinese naval standoff in the South China Sea, there is now an underlying shift… Read More Alfred McCoy – The Geopolitics of the Ukraine War: Putin and Xi Jinping in the Struggle over Eurasia