“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
I’m writing this on Day 12 of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mariupol, cities with millions of residents, are being smashed to pieces. Almost two million refugees have streamed into countries to the West. Putin shows no sign of calling off his murder campaign – my deliberate choice of words. We’ve watched this before, most recently in Syria , where Russians and Syrians under Assad dropped barrel bombs on […]
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In one respect the war in Ukraine has broken into binaries, the most prominent being Putin and Zelensky. For whatever reasons he has – a dream of being the Russian who restored his country to its former Soviet power and geographic immensity, the old KGB man who wants to hit back at the West’s arrogance and hypocrisy, the paranoid who believes he must strike his enemies, whomever he imagines them […]
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As I am writing this, the Russians are shelling Kharkiv, a European city of 1 and ½ million. Ukrainians call it ‘the city of poets.’ Kyiv, the capital city, is under siege. It holds about a million more people than Philadelphia. There’s much speculation about what Putin is trying to achieve by seeking to smash and conquer Ukraine. One may read of the many political and historical reasons for this […]
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Put Covid aside for a moment. Disorder is the more worrisome virus. It is a world-wide phenomenon. There are no ‘centers’ anymore, no median ground unless that place or people are held in thrall by state terror, by Orwellian surveillance and secret police. In those nations whose dictators seem terrified that their own power will not endure without utter ruthlessness, the center does hold but only under the threat of […]
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