OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Special Representative on Political Prisoners @repcohen.bsky.social issues a statement urging the leaders of democratic nations to prioritise the release of all civilian captives as part of any ceasefire in Ukraine. Time to put #PeopleFirst www.csce.gov/statements/i...

A weaving loom being used for neurological rehabilitation at the inspiringly innovative UNBROKEN Center in Lviv. #unbroken_ua

Allez, je mets la nécrologie, elle vaut la lecture. C’était semble-t-il une grande dame de la littérature européenne qui vient de s’en aller. www.eurozine.com/to-compose-a...

Very helpful comments imo also here, towards the middle, re refusing of shame... www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg6a...

Just heard about the death of Slavenka Drakulic at the end of June. This hits hard. She was an outstanding journalist and author. I taught her book "How We Survived Communism..." in my intro level European History class. Here is an appreciation by Marci Shore www.eurozine.com/to-compose-a...

Class 3: What is fascism? (Guest Lecturer Marci Shore) - Timothy Snyder: Hitler and Stalin Today 🎥 Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and Timothy Snyder youtu.be/ceqleHuLUwQ?...

Class 6: Why was Communism appealing? - Timothy Snyder: Hitler and Stalin Today (Guest Lecturer: Marci Shore) 🎥 Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and Timothy Snyder youtu.be/I44X855AcsY?...

Thanks for this. I agree. I'm reminded of a lecture from a few years ago: youtu.be/FvnJlTigQuk?...

Sharing this lovely tribute by Marci Shore on writing & truth "what novelists understood and scholars sometimes failed to appreciate was that human empathy came into being only at the level of the individual person." www.eurozine.com/to-compose-a...

"Think" (in the imperative)--an Arendtian sign at a demonstration in Lviv against Zelensky's dismissal of Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

Yesterday's Briefing: Dr. Trita Parsi @tparsi.bsky.social | Anna Grzymala-Busse @annagbusse.bsky.social | Marci Shore @marcishore.bsky.social soundcloud.com/user-8304426...

Trump is trying to create a state of emergency around a communist menace. This has nothing to do with universal health care. It's Freudian projection: communist regimes invoked "enemies of the people" as a pretext for arbitrary violence and terror. This is how the Trump administration behaves.

OTD in 1963 Egon Bahr proposed “Wandel durch Handel” (change through trade) with authoritarian regimes so as to bring about positive political change. It’s been a brilliant success cos we’ve never invaded anyone and totally haven’t used your money on weapons & war.

For Samuel Kassow, Yuri Dmitriev, Sergei Lebedev, Roman Tymoshevskyi, Maksimas Milta, @janinedigi.bsky.social @iwm.at @trpforjustice.bsky.social @enmemorial.bsky.social and everyone past and present working to document and preserve truth.

Jason Stanley, renowned philosopher and leading scholar calls the silence of American Medicine on Dr. Abu Safiya a scandal, saying: the protection of Medical Personnel CANNOT be selective! I AGREE!! #SaveAbuSafiya tinyurl.com/SaveMD

Healthcare workers: please join my friend @kaminskimed.bsky.social , a brilliant Israeli pulmonologist working to save his colleague, Dr. Abu Safiya, director of what had been the last functioning hospital in North Gaza. Illegally detained, Dr. Safiya is now dying in Israeli prison.

Each attack on Kyiv echoes with conversations I had during Book Arsenal. My Ukrainian friends described the surreal coexistence of normal and abnormal. Within a sentence, someone might comment on the type of missile being fired, poetry, or pastries. It all exists together.

As a writer, Slavenka Drakulić sought to evoke the life of the single individual in a way that made empathy possible, writes her friend @marcishore.bsky.social www.eurozine.com/to-compose-a...

Slavenka was… irrepressible. @eurozine.bsky.social

"A Black woman sat in front of the Senate and described the character of the man they were about to empower, and the men in the room decided her account mattered less than his confirmation. The country has lived with that decision ever since."--Kahlil Greene

"You feel once again. . .how awful this gulag in particular was, and the Soviet system was, when dealing with individual human beings. It's a terrible, awful piece of human history that one needs to keep in mind to warn us against the potential of this happening again."-- Norman Naimark

Opposition to aid for Ukraine on the left often strikes me as self-absorbed. The fact that we Americans have done bad things does not mean everyone should. “If one had to be perfect to make any kind of moral argument about the world, we'd all be silenced.” youtu.be/Vg6a9gsdMxM

"There are things for which it is worthwhile to suffer."--Jan Patočka (1907-1977) An exquisite lecture about Patočka last days, and they're meaning for our time, by Ludger Hagedorn: @iwm.at

When you’re finally reading Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI and you gasp because he quotes Hannah Arendt and you immediately think of @marcishore.bsky.social - the collision of worlds is beautiful.

"What happens next is not inevitable. It depends, as it always has, on us." @timothysnyder.bsky.social

On the the 250th anniversary of July 4th: I took this photo in front of Vienna's Café Sperl, where for years my late friend Martin Pollack (1944-1925) did his writing. He believed deeply that we could only more forward as a society by looking at the truth of the past with eyes wide open.

“No future Russian president can realistically think that invading Russia's smaller, western neighbours will not result in immediate, effective and sustained retaliation across all of Russia.”

"Truth will be written somewhere, and this will be useful for future generations."-- Slavenka Drakulić @heidicuda.bsky.social

"Their elation had nothing to do with any real prospect of victory, but rather with the palpable pleasure they took in killing. Hegseth quite wrongly equates the high he feels when others die with the political phenomenon of victory in war."-- @timothysnyder.bsky.social

"Once they are sent onto the battlefield, Russian fighters survive an average of 20 to 35 minutes."--Peter Frankopan

Russian playbook www.eurozine.com/on-yuri-dmit...

This is very reminiscent of tactics the Kremlin has used against dissidents.

“I want every Russian soldier who has set foot on our land to carry that paranoia with him. . . I want him to look at the grandmother at the market, at the bus driver, at the doctor in the clinic, at the ordinary passerby on the street—and to see in each of them his own potential destruction.”

"I frequently saw that here is two, and there is two, but a human being almost never adds it up: 'two plus two equals four.' This astonishing phenomenon of blindness is really bewildering."--Merab Mamardashvili

"Certain nations and people stand face to face with something and don’t see it. . . It’s enough to take a closer look at some episodes of Russia’s history to see that these are situations when no one learns from experience.”--Merab Mamardashvili

OTD in 2023 the Wagner mutiny began. I found out that giving a psychopath his own private army of criminals was not a good idea. Since then, my trolls have acted as if that happened in a different dimension. & Pretended the same is imminent for the Ukrainian army.

«В противоположность всем законам человеческого общежития, Россия шествует только в направлении своего собственного порабощения и порабощения всех соседних народов.И поэтому было бы полезно не только в интересах других народов, а в ее собственных интересах-заставить ее перейти на новые пути»-Чаадаев

Die großartige kroatische Journalistin und Schriftstellerin Slavenka Drakulić ist von uns gegangen. Ohne ihre Bücher und Artikel wäre vor allem der Jugoslawienkrieg und alle seine Folgen für viele schwieriger zu verstehen.

“Ordinary people could not what these monsters did. We are ordinary people, therefore we cannot commit such crimes. But once you get closer to the real people who committed those crimes, you see that the syllogism doesn’t really work.”--Slavenka Drakulić (1949-2026), observing trials in the Hague

"Being a decent human being is a choice."--Michelle Obama

History Professor Marci Shore explains how one of the most profound issues facing Russia today is a failure to recognize the subjectivity of the perpetrators of Stalinist terror, instead interpreting the evils of Russia's past as a metaphysical act of nature.

"Všechny podstatné kroky kupředu a výš, na vyšší rovinu byly vždycky nepravděpodobné–jako je ostatně nepravděpodobný všechen život. Pravděpodobné jsou klamy a sebeklamy, omyly i lži–vrcholně nepravděpodobná je pravda. Ale právě na té krajně nepravděpodobné pravdě závisí vposledu všechno."--Hejdánek

For Hannah Arendt, 20th-century totalitarianism distinguished itself by effacing the boundaries between public and private. Today, fascism in a postmodern key strives to efface different boundaries: between reality and non-reality, human and non-human, truth and untruth.

We need a think piece from the Quincy Institute for appeasement about how this degrades the nuclear triad and makes Russia both more likely to use nukes and also the sort of rational, sane actor who wants a peace deal.

“The tormentors of undocumented immigrants – the ICE thugs – are pictured as benign caretakers, who want only to capture and release the subhuman creature—the invasive species—back into its natural environment."-- David Livingstone Smith

Truly exceptional reporting by Heidi Blake. As for the depravity of the Tate brothers, I am thinking of the Polish aphorism "Sumienie miał czyste, bo nieużywane"-- "his conscience was clean, never having been used."

“Ukrainians are now fighting not only for their freedom but for Russia’s freedom as well. Perhaps the time will come when Russia can take its subjectivity back from Putin and stop this shameful war. But until then, Russia has no subjectivity and no legitimate interests.”--Nikolay Koposov

Thank you to @hanyangsydney.bsky.social in Sydney for a lively conversation about--among other things--why I find John Mearsheimer's position intellectually weak and morally bankrupt.

Thank you, Scott Pelley. This is damning to Bari Weiss who, it seems, willfully attempted to disguise a murder.

Unfortunately all too accurate.