Russia has long funded mass atrocities in Ukraine with oil and gas money. Now Ukrainian drones are blowing up Russian oil refineries. My fantasy is that Ukraine defeats Russia, tyranny falls, and Ukraine in its reconstruction becomes the avant-garde of clean energy, disability access, inclusivity.
Teachers in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region were instructed to read out an edited version of a speech by Adolf Hitler. Eight out of 12 schools agreed.
The stunt was organized by Belarusian activist Vladislav Bokhan.
He took Hitler’s speech from September 1, 1939,
"I felt like a hypocrite, dirty. I would take three showers a day; the image of his helplessness wouldn't leave me. . . – how could I just stand there and do nothing? How could I, somebody who acts all moral and volunteers with refugees and goes to protests, agree to go along with it?"
My statement on MAGA’s bigoted Anti-Muslim Caucus:
"Every empire will perish one day. . .So the question is not whether the russian empire will fall one day, but how many other countries and peoples will be destroyed in the meantime if we just passively wait."--Maksym Eristavi
On the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a tribute to Marek Edelman and his comrades, to the legacy of the now-largely-forgotten-hopefully-to-soon-be-revived-thanks-to @mollycrabapple.bsky.social Bund, and to the tremendous diversity of understandings of what it means to be a Jew.
For those in Toronto, I'll be in dialogue with Václav Havel's remarkable translator Paul Wilson this Thursday evening. We'll revisit Havel's greengrocer and talk about what he means today.
Thank you to @humanrights.ca
for inviting me to speak last night in their spectacular space. It was a moral boost to be with people who shared an intuition that burying children under rubble is always and everywhere evil, that human rights must be universal, a priori, and non-contingent.
Trump's politics is indeed the politics of the mob.
One of the first history books I ever read was a biography of Jackie Robinson--from the library at Muhlenberg Elementary School in Allentown, Pennsylvania c. 1979 or 1980--and the story has stayed with me.
For friends in Berlin tomorrow:
lcb.de/programm/hau...
A penetrating self-interrogation--in the spirit of Karl Jaspers and "The Question of German Guilt"--on collective responsibility and the meaning of being Russian.
This week is Black Maternal Health Week — and Black women are still being ignored, dismissed, and disrespected, especially during pregnancy and childbirth.
Over 80% of these deaths didn’t have to happen. This is your reminder to listen to Black women.
To my Hungarian friends: I am thinking of you and sending all possible good karma your way. As the Polish insurrectionary slogan goes: for your freedom and ours!
This essay by @epress.bsky.social does an excellent job
illuminating the wrenching cracks among American Jews. It is a sensitively-woven description, not a political argument--and a reminder to those otherwise inclined that "the Jews" are not, and have been never been, a monolithic lobby group.
"The search for German–Jewish dialogue itself becomes hollow, indeed violent, without a clear place for truths that need to be said – publicly – in the name of the friendship between Jews and Palestinians."--Omri Boehm
"Любой учитель, преподаватель, он должен быть провокатор."--Игорь Козловский
Now he's finished killing kids, we can go back to not talking about how he raped them.
An excellent briefing before the hugely consequential (also for the US) Hungarian elections.
www.theunpopulist.net/p/if-orban-l...
"But the experiment may be about to blow up, and the consequences could extend far beyond the borders of this small central European country."-- Laszlo Gendler
"Today, the Bund is largely forgotten. A century ago, though, a reader of this newspaper likely would have heard of it. It was, as Crabapple proves, the kind of movement leftists today dream about. . ."-- @maxstrasser.bsky.social
I feel sick to my stomach waiting around to see what atrocity Trump has in mind for the people of Iran this evening. It's hard to fathom our other elected leaders aren't able to check him in any meaningful way. It's an indictment not just of voters but of our whole system. We're ruled by a mad king.
Après Poutine, Trump, le jour où le dirigeant d'une grande puissance tint un discours génocidaire. "Une civilisation entière va disparaître ce soir"
Thank you. It was a privilege to be able to write this book. The story of the Maidan is a reminder that we, human beings, are capable of something better.
I've taught European history for thirty years. Americans have always asked me how the Holocaust was possible, how Germans could have enabled a madman reveling in mass murder to carry out his plans. Now we can see in real time how this is enabled; now we Americans have front-row seats.
The United States is being run by a madman. What is shocking is how many people are enabling this to happen.
