Reading Time: 10 minutes A Canadian embarrassment involving a Ukrainian WWII soldier given undue applause is being put to bed with a political resignation. But we need to deal with the underlying illiteracy in our war history as well.
war crimes
Posted inFilm/TV
Whose justice will emerge from ‘Under the Cloak of War’?
Reading Time: 13 minutes This week’s main episode of Strange New Worlds, which was moved up to accommodate the surprise early launch of a crossover episode on July 22, enters difficult territory. On the surface, “Under the Cloak of War” bears some resemblance to facets of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which grappled with Klingon-Federation peace and what […]
Posted inWar and Peace
The morality of cluster bombs in the perverse logic of war
Reading Time: 4 minutes Cluster bombs are terrible weapons which endanger civilians long after hostilities have ended. But they may be the swiftest way to defeat Russia and end the Ukraine war, which will save more lives overall.
Posted inDeep Dive
Kissinger’s century, and US complicity
Reading Time: 8 minutes As Henry Kissinger turns 100 on Saturday, and his actions and legacy are once again reviewed, it’s important to remember that he was not a solo actor but an agent of US foreign policy and philosophy.
Posted inWar and Peace
Wagner Group in Sudan: The paramilitarization of war continues
Reading Time: 6 minutes One bad war easily gives way to others. In recent leaks of US espionage, one name figured highly: the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary outfit that has been contracting work in conflict zones for the last few years, and which is a key presence in Russian operations in Ukraine. The concern in US espionage documents […]
Posted inWar and Peace
Too little, too much: This week in war crimes, leaked intel, and book bans
Reading Time: 5 minutes One key facet of humanism is the importance of being informed. How can one pursue policy that improves human agency without a clear understanding of what limits us? But in at least three ways this past week, we’ve been presented with the challenges of staying informed in as useful a manner as possible: through footage […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
What makes a ‘bad’ human being?
Reading Time: 7 minutes On Wednesday night, I was robbed at gunpoint—an efficient affair, and my second time since moving to Colombia in 2018. Both times, I’d made the mistake of relaxing my guard because there were others around me; this time, I was on my home turf, a block from my building, with neighbours strolling ahead of and […]
Posted inWar and Peace
War crimes in Ukraine: pacifists should support war crimes tribunals
Reading Time: 4 minutes A United Nations commission investigating the Ukraine-Russian War issued a report this week concluding that Russian forces have committed the “vast majority” of war crimes in the conflict. But it also found two cases in which Ukrainian forces committed war crimes. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine counts as the first criminal act. And then there were […]