It's clear the war visited upon Ukraine by Russia is the Crime of Aggression, the supreme War Crime, and that Russia has no case whatsoever for this invasion. The Russian Military action is an abomination, it is disgusting, a horrific act of unrelenting cruelty and evil.
It is also clear that this horror is one more war in a series of similar wars. The ideal of peace in the 21st Century is fading, fast. It faded in 2002 with the invasion of Afghanistan, and then in 2003 the invasion of Iraq. In Ukraine, in the East, and in the West, as the country polarised along lines of irrational belief, it faded in 2014, and has been fading ever since.
It is clear that the situation in Ukraine is beyond horrific, that it is, as I have already written, an abomination. The death and destruction being visited upon Ukrainian civil infrastructure and the upon civilian population, and indeed upon their military is grim, a living hell for those that survive, those that manage to flee.
It is clear that all assistance must be extended by States and people to help prevent more violence and harm.
Why then is the EU not hosting the talks between Russia and Ukraine? The two sides talking on their own, without EU or UN oversight and support for a negotiated ceasefire at the very minimum, to protect the civilian populations is akin to a domestic abuse situation, where the neighbours and police, the social services and the families relatives leave it the warring couple to 'work our their differences' without any support, while the couple harm their children.
Why is the EU/NATO states supplying weapons to Ukraine? Why are they and the media glorifying and enabling the transit of men who want to fight? Why are European Jihadi's now totally acceptable?
Do people not understand that war on either side is a criminal enterprise, and makes criminals of all who participate, as hatred drives engagement after the first fire fight and loss of comrades?
Refugees
And so we see a two way flow, in and out of war. It is always the middle class who flee in cars, the poor are left to run out of harms way on their legs, carrying as much as they can. Their homes become battle staging grounds.
We see people running away from violence and a minority running towards the violence. The former are sensible, the latter lack all common sense, and are intent on escalation that will increase the flow of the former.
Refugees need help and they need peace to be able to return.
It is especially urgent is to provide all possible means of support and care for all who have fled, are fleeing and will flee the violence. Further more, all efforts must be focused on enabling their earliest possible safe return to their homes, farms, villages, towns and cities with fullest possible support from the global community to repair, rebuild and reclaim peace in their homeland. The refugees have left under duress, and most will want to return, to pick up as best they can, and get on with their lives as communities. For that to happen the world's political focus must be upon ending the militarised violence on all sides.
The talk in certain news media of using sanctions to bring down Putin's regime does not mention that the companion to that is the destruction of Ukraine by protected violence, fuelled by flows of money and weapons and fighters into Ukraine. The ethics of competing powers are an unflushed toilet of disgrace, manipulation, greed and cruelty.
Peace talks, a ceasefire, not more War.
As Jeremy Corbyn has said "All wars end in peace talks. Why not skip the war, and go straight to the peace talks?" Those talks must be hosted by external parties dedicated to peace, to a situation that restores healthy governance to the people and states involved.
It is clear to me that this war cannot be understood correctly as an isolated event, rather it must be seen as yet another lethal horrific war within a culture of war making. It is clear to me that we are living within a culture that accepts war making as a normal part of state activity.
The Bully Cult.
Andorra, Aruba, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Curacao, Dominica. Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, French Polynesia, Greenland, Grenada, Iceland, Kiribati, Kosovo, Lichtenstein, Macau (China S.A.R.), Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Federated States of Micronesia, Monaco, Montserrat, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Palau, Panama, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sint Maarten, Solomon Islands, Svalbard (unincorporated region of Norway), Tuvalu, Vanuatu.
It's heart breaking to live in 2022, the 21st Century, and to be witness to all these wars, year after year.
Each war has seen more video, more images, more live video feeds as mobile phones, the internet and live streaming services have expanded. We now have drone views of warfare within hours of the 'action'. Fight Club has gone digital.
What is it to be refugee?
The refugees are not members of the bully cult, they are it's victims. People, families, communities and entire nations victimised by the bully cult.
I cannot imagine what it must feel like to live through the actual realities of war on one's doorstep. Running from one's home, knowing all the neighbours who had cars left days ago. Fleeing at the last minute, possibly seeing neighbours or family members killed or maimed, and not being able to help them. Carrying what one can, carrying small children, assisting elderly relatives. The sudden loss of all of one's home comforts and memories, under extreme duress.
Leaving so much behind, with no certainty as to one's future. This is not a voluntary migration. The USUK language of migrants, illegal immigrants, illegal aliens has been used to deny the reality of refugees from wars the bully cult has had a hand in feeding.
We've seen images of farms, villages, towns and cities emptied of living, working and thriving populations, destroyed by street by street warfare, ghoulish ghettos of grey concrete.
It's too much to bear.
The sluggish response of UK and USA to the need of Ukrainian Refugees is ignoble. The hypocritical reporting of violent resistance to a state being attacked by another state that is revealed by the change in tone in news media approach to different wars.
The Palestinians must not engage violence, the Afghani, Yemeni or Syrians must not engage violence to defend their State, and the Ukrainians must, and are righteous in adopt a violent resistance!
The breathless, jingoist media led war cries of more weapons, more war, death to the invader, glory to the State, we fight for freedom! etc ignores the fact that in spite of the legal and moral right of self defence, we tend to ignore the immense human cost of self defence by violence.
Our democratic leaderships reduce the chances for cessation of violence by cheering on a violent resistance from the side-lines, and promising weapons and money to continue that violent resistance. I get the basic sentiment, and I fear it will not bring relief, it will not hasten peace talks.
In Western culture, entertainment and general knowledge, violent resistance to invaders is romanticised, peaceful resistance is equated to 'capitulation' and it's proponents (conscientious objectors) are often dehumanised or caricatured (unpatriotic, yellow, Freedom Fries not French Fries!) and this has a profound political impact in that it obscures the realities of warfare. People who do not correctly undeestand what war is are more readily convinced on its merits.
Histories of Resistance.
It has to be said that, at first, the Iraqi people in 2003 avoided a violent insurgency. They waited for the USUK and 'coalition of the willing' to make good their promises about bringing democracy to Iraq, Iraqi's hoped for improvement and fulfilment of promises ,made, announced to the world by Blair and Bush.
When these promises failed to manifest, Iraqi civil society protested, peaceably, robustly to no avail, and were banned from protest, and then violently suppressed when they persisted. And so by early 2004, elements of Iraqi society started to escalate violent resistance, leading to the US counter-insurgency operations that together, between 2004 and 2006, caused more many more violent deaths, maimings and destruction than occurred during the invasion itself in 2003.
Iraq suffered greatly, and suffers still today, 19 years later. Here's a report from last year.
Source : Human Rights Watch Report 2021
War, Pestilence, Poverty and Climate.
That all of this is ongoing and Ukraine is overflowing on our news feeds right now, whilst wars in Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kurdistan, Myanmar, and other wars are being prosecuted and fed with weapons, bodies and money, even as COVID continues to wreak havoc on billions of people, and as the very real concerns of Climate Change remain to be faced up to speaks to an urgent need for honesty, unrelenting honesty across all our countries political, cultural and economic domains.
This video presents a short review of the most recent report of the IPCC.
Oh dear, indeed. I made a video back in 2005, entitled T(ypo)Error suggesting the the most critical issue facing us was Global Warring, in that unless we cease war as a tool of foreign policy of the great powers, we will never be capable of the global co-operation necessary to meet the challenges of Climate Change.
I was not wrong then, I am not wrong now. We have work to do, our children's lives depend upon us doing this work, with all due diligence and as much energy and creativity as we can muster. The Militarists are screwing us all.
Honestly...
So I wrote this letter, and sent it out to various news media in Ireland and the UK. I do not expect this one to be published, I may write a more muted version, to see if that might be published. I do feel I am swimming against the flow of the current Western news narratives, barely treading water.
------
Dear Editor
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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