Nesrine Malik: Let the horror in Ukraine open our eyes to the suffering of war around the world

By Dilip -

Too many frame the invasion as an attack on ‘civilisation’, uniquely awful because it happened in Europe. That approach demeans us all    Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has sharpened two terrifying realisations. The first is that Putin does not function within the realm of the usual finely balanced checks and balances, sticks and carrots, that the west hoped would contain him and maintain an uneasy truce in Europe. The second is that decades of work since the second world war to learn from the mistakes of the past and fortify against them in the future have failed. Here again, we have not a civil war, but an invasion of a sovereign state in defiance of the rest of the world. Here again, we have images that are only known to us as historical reels, of frenzy and panic as thousands attempt to flee to safety.

But there is a third realisation that appears to shape the perception of too many western journalists justifiably appalled at the defiling of Europe. From the tone of much coverage, this seems uniquely distressing and more alarming to them because the lives of non-Europeans have less value, and their conflicts are contained, far away from us.

I thought it was just clumsy phrasing from a couple of reporters under pressure, but soon it became clear that it was, in fact, a media-wide tic. From Al Jazeera to CBS News, journalists were appalled that this was not happening in “Iraq or Afghanistan” but in a “relatively civilised European city.” One said: “The unthinkable has happened. This is not a developing, third world nation. This is Europe.” Another reflected: “These are prosperous middle-class people … these are not obviously refugees getting away from the Middle East. To put it bluntly, these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from Ukraine … They’re Christian, they’re white, they’re very similar.”…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/01/let-the-horror-in-ukraine-open-our-eyes-to-the-suffering-of-war-around-the-world


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Robert Fisk: In the cases of two separate holocausts, Israel and Poland find it difficult to acknowledge the facts of history // ANDRÉ LIEBICH - Righteous indignation: On the Polish Holocaust law debate


Ai Weiwei: History of Bombs review – high-impact reminder of our insatiable desire for destruction


Book review: The Tragic sense by Algis Valiunas


Dan Diner - Memory displaced: Re-reading Jean Améry's "Torture"


Books reviewed: Pope Pius XII, Hitler’s pawn?


The knights of Bushido : a history of Japanese war crimes during World War II


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JAMES SPRINGER: Remembering the Fall of Saigon, 45 years on


An era passes: legendary Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap Dies at 102


Waging Peace: Vietnam's anti-war exhibition brings GIs and Viet Cong together


Evelyn Theiss - The Photos That Caused Americans To Ask ‘What Are We Doing In Vietnam?’ The My Lai Massacre 50 years later


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An era passes: legendary Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap Dies at 102


Pentagon Papers and time when media was trusted


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Daniel J. Berrigan, Defiant Priest Who Preached Pacifism, Dies at 94 // Catonsville 9 Statement written by Dan Berrigan, S.J.


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