O-blog-dee-o-blog-da

By Melanie Nathan, March 16, 2022

My friends, mostly Democrats, mostly liberal Democrats are conversing about the Putin War on Ukraine. This yields a mixed bag of sentiment. Some feel America should bomb the hell out of the Russian forces as they surround Ukrainian cities and villages. “Just go in and bomb the crap out of them,” noted a decently woke friend. The sentiment is mostly born out of frustration and little understanding of international law, treatise, policy and strategy. Yet these are valid thoughts in an era when truth, respect for rule of law, treatise are ignored and heightened propaganda sets ill-forged justification on the side of the aggressor. In trying to solve one must frame this for what it is – as with that framing comes the solution. A real-time ongoing 20 day WAR CRIME, if seen as WAR, can draw in the biggest mistake of a generation….

And so it is complex and we feel frozen.

We stew in faithless sanctions as if it will do little and cannot operate quickly enough to end the tyranny that will costs that one too many a life that must be saved. The bombed pregnant woman and her baby. Who did she hurt? Can she wait for the impact of the now gone McDonalds and VW and Swift and and and…… AND the bomb-fervor ramps up-  as the looming decimated Russian economy brings an early threat of nuclear action by the madman who started this for no rhyme or reason other than insanity gone mad! (Or so it seems.)

The Economist notes that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “could yet become the biggest military action in Europe since 1945. It also marks a new era of high-risk economic warfare that could further splinter the world economy. The measures the West has imposed on Russia are so potent that they have triggered chaos in its $1.6trn economy and prompted the president, Vladimir Putin, to issue nuclear threats. The instant immiseration of a big economy is unprecedented and will cause alarm around the world, not least in China, which will recalculate the costs of a war over Taiwan. The West’s priority must be to win the economic confrontation with Russia. Then it must create a doctrine to govern these weapons in order to prevent a broader shift towards autarky.” (A worthy read HERE.)

No matter what we do – Americans frustrated must be aware that America is not the almighty here. We have others closer to the impending WW3. Perhaps that is the greater realization. In this European realm, we are nothing without the NATO alliance and we are nothing without unity and that means we cannot succumb to our false notion of our right to once again go into some other country and bomb the EFF out of it!

So with that realization what do we do?  FIRST – Check your frustration in at the entry door…. or rather at the steps before you climb your way to the entry door. Study and learn and understand before opining with frustration and ignorance.

Know and understand the global consequences and what is at stake is more than just your opinion. That a myriad of experts and historical context provides analysis and renders collateral damage in all its answers – in the hope that whatever solutions are rendered by the collective GOODIES (nope not the BADDIES) – will have measured the least lost and the most remedied!

As noted in ECONOMIST:

Russia’s bombardment of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, continued on yesterday, the 20th day of the war. A 35-hour curfew went into effect in the evening. Around 2,000 cars left Mariupol, the second day running on which people had been successfully evacuated from the besieged southern port. Previous attempts had been thwarted by Russian shelling. Meanwhile Vladimir Putin’s Stalinisation of his own country is in full swing. Sanctions against Russia—extraordinarily severe and including an American ban on imports of Russian oil—are tightening. Many Western firms have pulled out of Russia.

Meanwhile the war-crime takes a new turn as a 16-storey apartment block in the Sviatoshynskyi district in the early hours of the morning on March 15th is struck by a Russian missile. For hours, the telescopic ladders of fire engines worked to rescue people trapped by thick smoke and leaping flames. One victim, already zipped into a black body-bag, lay on the ground under her burning home. Paramedics bundled an injured woman, her jaw hanging open in shock, into an ambulance. “The babushka (granny) has only a one percent chance of surviving,” said a medic, clambering out of the ambulance after administering frantic treatments for ten minutes.

And so I believe, while it seems like WAR – we must keep our sight strictly focused son the instruments of WAR CRIME…. and how to bring a mad man to justice and quickly. The biggest WAR that can be waged will be the one against propaganda. How to infiltrate Russia and reach its people – to speak truth of their PUTIN WAR-CRIME that is slamming their economy into oblivion.

It starts one person at a time and may be waged over months while more lives are lost. BUT it may be a smaller price to pay for the World at large – rather than the WWW3 so grimly beckoning. Putin wants us to WAR with him. So he can call it a WAR. So he can finally find his justification and pretend it was always the truth. But for as long as it remains HIS WAR-CRIME – he will lose.

That loss must come from within. Russian Revolution is the only answer. And so we must counter the propaganda. And that is where we can curb our frustration with peaceful action – find ways to reach Russians. Let us find ways to reach Russians – an underground network of truth tellers. Come on tech people – make it happen. Let this be the ARAB SPRING delivered from West to East…..

Avoid WAR at all cost…. play your part… people…

With all that said – I do believe the U.S. should heed Ukraine’s call for humanitarian corridors and no fly zone  airspace- however will bow to the measured balance that will keep us out of WAR and the Putin aggression continuing to be framed as a WAR CRIME.

Melanie Nathan
AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS COALITION
www.AfricanHRC.org

PRIVATE COURTS INC.
Partnersmediation.com

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