The contradictions of war and peace

This week Condoleezaa Rice went public saying that Vladimir Putin is unrecognizable. According to the former US secretary of state, the Russian president would no longer be a political leader with whom she had contact in the past.

Condoleezaa Rice lamented the Ukrainian casualties of the war, but was able to be self-critical about the role she played in instrumentalizing the killing of Iraqis by US troops during the period in which she was part of the Bush Jr administration. The hypocrisy of the former US state secretary becomes more evident if we take into account another important fact. She did not criticize NATO's expansion towards the Russian border, the US participation in the 2014 coup staged in Kiev, or the subsequent unconditional support given to that country's Nazis.

As fighting continues in Ukraine, Europe and Russia another war has been declared. Russian news portals were banned by countries. In retaliation, Russia banned the operation on its territory of some news portals maintained by European governments.

Disinformation is the main weapon of war, propaganda the tool that enables its perpetuation and even its expansion. But reciprocal censorship will not pacify the region. On the contrary, it will only increase distrust and resentment between Europeans and Russians.

A significant portion of the Western press is saying that the civilized West does well to distance itself from Russia. Some journalists even suggest that Russians are barbarians.

The belief that Russians are backward barbarians was at the heart of Nazi ideology. When they felt the 'heat' caused by the weapons of the USSR, the German soldiers were shocked. They simply did not believe that the Russians were capable of designing and building sophisticated and extremely reliable and efficient battle tanks and fighters.

Adolf Hitler was a big movie fan. The way he viewed and described Russians was probably influenced by the film Die Nibelungen: Kriemhilds Rache (1924). At this point, the Western press also seems to be obsessed with the aesthetics of this Fritz Lang film. From him, journalists extract the new image they attribute to Vladimir Putin.

Netflix's civilizations will be destroyed by NATO freaks morons?

This question is pertinent, because as European populations are radicalized by the pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian press, NATO commanders are moving to transform the Ukraine conflict into a European war. This would be achieved through a no-fly zone guaranteed by the alliance's fighter jets, which would inevitably put them in the path of Russian fighter jets that destroy important targets to ensure the progression of Kremlin ground troops.

Concerned by this scenario, Russia has said that the result of a NATO-guaranteed no-fly zone in Ukraine will provoke nuclear war. That doesn't seem to bother NATO commanders. Like the German Nazis of the 1930s they appear to be filled with a static devotion to the void, the culmination of which is the certainty of the death of all human beings in a cataclysmic Götterdämmerung. No one will win the war, they assure Russia. The fact that Europeans will also lost it doesn't seem to bother them.

And since we're talking about scenarios influenced by Nazi ideology, we can't help but notice that Kiev has put in place its own version of the Nero Decree. A Ukrainian warship was sunk to avoid falling into Russian hands. It is impossible to say who started the fire at a nuclear plant, but we cannot rule out the hypothesis that it was done by Ukrainians to stop the progression of Russian troops.

Hatred, paranoia and fear enter the world through the door that Kiev opened when the government began to flout the ceasefire agreements made in Minsk. The Kremlin's successful military campaign does not ensure tranquility in Russia. The threats made by NATO and the US cannot be ignored. The contradictions created by the conflict itself - sanctions harm the Russian economy and hurt the interests of that country's oligarchs, predisposing them against Putin - could shake the political environment in Russia.

Americans and Europeans cannot rest easy either, as Russia, China and Iran threaten to abandon dollar trade altogether. This would significantly affect US hegemony and the interests of all States and investors who use the dollar as a store of value. No one can get out of a conflict by expanding it. It is not possible to contain a conflit when the forces it has unleashed are becoming unmanageable. But expanding this conflict could mean guaranteed mutual destruction without either side winning.

The paradoxes and dilemmas created by the Ukraine war seem evident to all but the civilians affected. Their problems are more modest and no less dramatic. They need shelter, security, food, etc., in other words, Ukrainian refugees need everything that some European countries have denied to Syrian and Yemeni refugees or what Israel denies to Palestinians in their own territories.

Recognizing the horror of war in one place and minimizing it in another is part of the game. What game is this? What are the rules by which it must be played?

The rules that should guide states' relations have been flouted by the US for decades. How can the Americans want to impose them on Russia? Human rights were granted to all human beings without any distinction. How were we able to allow just a few victims (those with white skin and blue eyes) to arouse the compassion of the international community?

2/3 of the 650,000 Brazilian deaths in the pandemic may have been caused by Jair Bolsonaro. Despite the denunciations that have been made, the gears of the International Criminal Court hold the Brazilian president to account. But in the case of Ukraine, that Court seems determined to act quickly. Are the lives of Brazilian mestizos worth less than the lives of Ukrainians? Will that Court retain its credibility if it makes distinctions for political or racial reasons?

"Dear Professor, the Vice Rector for Didactics has informed me of a decision taken with the rector to postpone the course on Dostoevsky", says the email sent by the Italian University to a professor of literature.

I thought even western bestiality had a limit, but I found I was wrong. The West has entered a time machine. Some institutions returned to the Middle Ages, others began to glorify the old school Nazism of the 1930s.

And to end a grotesque and funny episode: A Brazilian right-wing politician went to Ukraine to support Ukrainians. He took pictures next to Molotov cocktails... and was recorded saying "Ukrainian women are easy [easy has sexual connotations in Brazil] because they are poor. BOOM... suicide with verbal Molotov cocktails.

Upon listening to the disgusting audio, the politician's Brazilian girlfriend broke up with him. The Ukrainian community in Brazil will ask for the revocation of his parliamentary mandate. He fucked himself and won't fuck anyone for awhile.