The right side of a safe border
UKRAINE. Should Ukraine eradicate its to Russia by submitting?
I viewed a film on YouTube.
A Russian boys’ choir, who sang like angels. It truly is beautiful. But, from beginning to end, I couldn’t shake out of my mind the thought that these boys will, if they know what’s good for them, also hold automatic rifles as members of their Youth Armies. Angels with Dirty Faces.
Ukraine rose up at Maidan and said, “So far, but no farther.” Its people took a stand against what they believed to be wrong; and I believed it was wrong as well. Yet Russians make no such stand.
Ukraine rose up against oppressors and violent policemen to say, “No” in 2014, and the citizens of Lviv and Kyiv joined hands the whole length of the road between the two cities to show solidarity and unity in 1991. We really needn’t have been surprised at Ukraine’s resistance now, at its vehement “NO!”: they resisted valiantly and in a peaceable manner for 30 years. People forget that. They say, “Stop the war, Ukraine: submit!” They haven’t a clue what it will take to stop this war, not for good; and I’m not even sure if Ukraine and NATO know that. I do, and it frightens me to contemplate it.
Whatever possessed Russia to think Ukraine would roll over and submit is beyond me.
And whatever possesses them to place Kalashnikovs in the hands of angelic choirboys is, likewise, beyond me.
The non-combatants, nota bene: non-combatants, who rail at Ukraine and demand that it stop resisting: if their own country were invaded, say, by, I dunno, Russia, for instance, how vehemently would they resist?
Would they man the barricades and throw improvised molotov cocktails at mighty tanks, organise food and clothing for those who cannot flee, and, as pacifists, succour to the mental needs of soldiers on weary leave from the battlefront?
A courageous trooper, soldiering for peace
It has taken me 13 months of patient waiting. In the last 13 months, I had not a sign nor a whisper nor so much as a hint in response to a question I posed when the Russo-Ukrainian war broke out. And now, I have the response I sought. The question: Is the united Ukraine that is defending itself against attack in any measure assisted by those among its p…
Or would they stand against their own leaders and insist: “Stop resisting, and give in to the aggressor in order to save the economy on which I so depend”?
I cannot even tell you which I would do. In such a case, the decision of fight or flight is not one we can predict. If we could, we’d all be heroes. But I know what would sway me: the thought that doing nothing is siding with the aggressor; and I know what would persuade me: the example of Ukraine. But I cannot tell you what I would actually do: the decision of fight or flight is only easy, when you’re not the one who has to fight or flee.
Or, maybe, those so full of advice for Ukraine would in the end, neither fight nor protest. They would perhaps indeed have already been on the first plane out of danger; to Switzerland, maybe, where it is green and pleasant, and no sound ever disturbs the platitudes emitted from the right side of a safe border.
More on the Russo-Ukrainian War here:
Entrenchment in the Russo-Ukrainian War
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Determinedly going it alone
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A year of tears
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No going back?
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Must you have an interest in peace to want to broker it?
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Ukraine needs tanks
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The Russians love their children too
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To Mr Zelenskiy
Thanks for reading The Endless Chain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. If playing the fool makes fools see what you’re able, And, turning the tables, you preside at round table; Presidentially acting, you’re not found to be acting,
If Ukraine can up its game, then, UK, up yours
Once western USSR’s security, now western Europe’s security “The” Ukraine - it translates as the borderlands - was so named as being the last tract of land before the rest of Europe began. When this war is done, it’ll still be borderland, but the perspective will be reversed: Europe’s borderland to the rest of the former Soviet Union.
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Let's shake up the world
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At the going down of the sun and in the morning
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If a democratic regime follows this one, I'll go back. If the next regime is the same as this or worse, no.
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NATO says
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Referenda
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No faking referenda
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In 1938, then British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, uttered a phrase that was nodded at in approval at the time and, today, would cause a shock-wave of outrage. Upon Germany’s repossession of the Sudetenland and its ultimate conquest of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain referred to the victim as a
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Sir Edward's First
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“It’s Friday, it’s five to five and it’s … Crackerjack!” British kids knew the weekend was here when they heard these words from Peter Glaze and Leslie Crowther, as they kicked off a show of zany humour and goofing around, with no shortage of boy scouts and girl guides to cheer them along. I loved it.
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Wrap-up of the week: W/E 19 May 2023
It’s Friday, it’s five to five and it’s … Wrap-up. Quite a lot of self-promotion in this week’s wrap-up. Well, if you did more, I could do less.Thank you for wrapping with The Endless Chain. Do what you like, I’ll be in yo’ brain. Subscribe to me and get it for free, to receive new posts, then I’ll love you most.
Sack trucks and the Ukrainian war
Image: NATO’s headquarter building in Evere, Brussels. I just used a sack truck to move Billie. Or are they Quadrat? Whatever they’re called, I moved them with a sack truck. Kurt gave a hand, but the sack truck did the heavy heaving. Sack trucks are designed to move sacks. To be fully accurate, they’re designed to help people move sacks. For sacks, on the…
Neo-Nazi musketeers
This article was initially published on LinkedIn on 13 April 2022. It is republished here unexpurgated, despite the demise of the battalion since it originally appeared. The supplement below explains why.Thanks for being all for one with The Endless Chain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Wrap-up W/E 9 June 2023
I have had my tongue firmly installed in my cheek this week. It’s a new tactic, aimed at pushing epiphany through comedy. But, I can assure you, it ain’t very funny. Friday, five to five here’s your Crackerjack of epiphany.Thanks for pulling The Endless Chain. Subscribe for naught to receive new posts and support my work.