It's all excuses, highlighting our differences not our common humanity !!!

One of my ex-comrade in arms has posted the following:

"POUTINE. Il n'a pas brûlé la Syrie .. Il n'a pas détruit l'Irak .. Il n'a pas affamé l'Afrique .. Il n'a pas pillé la richesse des pays faibles .. Il n'a pas jeté de bombes Du phosphore sur les enfants de Palestine .. n'a pas lancé de bombes nucléaires sur le Japon .. n'a pas déclenché la guerre sectaire au Rwanda .. n'a pas détruit les montagnes de Tora Bora .. n'a pas fait exploser l'Etat de Libye .. n'a pas divisé la Somalie ....

Néanmoins, ils ont attiré dans nos esprits qu'il le premier ennemi de l'humanité. Quant à ses adversaires qui ont tué, détruit, déplacé et pillé des patries, ce sont des démocrates et des humanistes !!

C'est ainsi que les médias effectuent le lavage de cerveau du public "

My reply :

Yes , it is true that in many Western democracies , its concerned institutions , the intelligence agencies and media conglomerates, are determined to control the narrative on issues of interest to them and not allow an alternative narrative to take hold.

But there have always been pockets in the West and in other democracies that have stood up for objective information as opposed to their vile propaganda- In the US and elsewhere, we have had many protest marches and clashes/fights against McCarthyism, the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, ….citizens voicing their outrage against racial inequalities and the violent attacks of civil rights protestors ..…protests that continued for six days, marking a monumental moment that has inspired decades of activism within the LGBTQ+ community…

No, the Western media and cohorts, did not succeed in getting hold of all of us turning us into chatwas ; we were young rebels with a cause; we were always fighting back, condemning them, their imperialist policies and injustices; We were students then; you recall our protests, manning the barricades against the war in Vietnam, our solidarity with the Palestinian people , our call for the "Indian Ocean as a zone of peace ", rallying behind the cry ‘Down with imperialism and neo-colonialism!! Ran nou nou Diego !!!

And with the same fervour, same passion, we condemned the atrocities of Stalin, Mao, the Khmer Rouge…on the other side of the iron curtain and welcomed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the totalitarian dictatorships.

And more recently, we joined the protests of the vast displaced/oppressed minorities condemning their mistreatment/killings/genocide at the hands of intolerant regimes-the Tutsis, the Yazdis, the Kurds, the Armenians, the Syrian Copts, the Romas, the Chechens, the Kashmiri pandits, the Rhoyingas, the Adivasis, the Tibetans and the Uighurs…u name it…

Now, we are back on the frontlines hollering again and again that “We want no war ! “ and unequivocally condemning, unlike China, India, Pakistan ,South Africa, and others …, that the Russian army’s attack on Ukraine is a flagrant violation of international law and the UN charter. There is no justification for war. Where are you , my friend, why didn't join us this time when we were rallying against these big powers war games ? why didn't you join us when we , ordinary civilians, were refusing to bear the brunt for the folly and ambition of these potentates caught in their dangerous imperialist schemes ?

We are aware that the West is not innocent; they did not do what they could to avert this war; what is now needed, is a comprehensive ceasefire, the withdrawal of all troops and a return to the negotiating table! The international peace movement must join forces to oppose any war policy in solidarity with the peace forces in Ukraine and Russia.

We have always maintained that in the new global context that saw the emergence of the nation-state in place of the multi-national dynastic empires or spheres of influence, US, EU and Russia are still clinging to or have problems in adjusting their imperialist ambitions…

We can proudly say that we did not get caught by their alluring promises about their dystopian “Brave New World” . We , convincingly and in no uncertain terms, challenged their psychological manipulation and classical conditioning .

But can we say the same of the people under intolerant authoritarian regimes who dare express diverse views……what is happening to the protesters commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, known as the June Fourth Incident; how democracy is being dismantled in Hong Kong ,India…!!! What was happening in Chechnya, Belarus, Georgia…, What is happening now to the protesters in Russia ? (The words “war,” “attack” and “invasion” are now banned from the media. Only information from “official Russian sources” – the defence ministry – is now permitted. Information about military losses or troop moral had already been classified since October. Any attempt to provide such coverage is liable to result in prosecution or inclusion on the “foreign agents” list.) Like other authoritarian governments, Russia is determined to tighten controls over the internet so as to track users, censor information flows and prevent the mobilisation of political opposition.

We have failed in supporting them. We not only allowed the media to call the shots, we have also been condoning these regimes like the “rightwing populists who express admiration for Putin, beginning with former US president Trump, who called Putin a “genius” and “very savvy” after his invasion of Ukraine. Populists including Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour in France, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, leaders of the AfD in Germany and Hungary’s Viktor Orban have all shown sympathy for Putin, a “strong” leader who acts decisively to defend traditional values without regard for petty things such as laws and constitutions. The liberal world has brought about huge increases in gender equality and tolerance for gay and lesbian people over the past two generations, which has provoked some on the right to worship masculine strength and aggression as virtues in themselves.”

Yes , the big media conglomerates and instruments are more powerful now but this is only part of the story; the other part is that many of us are looking and interpreting the world differently; we have changed glasses opting for the more tinted ones. We have been won over by the system; we have grown tired of fighting back , of our militancy ; as we grow older, we have turned reactionary. There is an odour of betrayal, of intellectual collapse - the consummate political apostate . We have become what we once abhorred.

Someone rightly said “ it was a loss of the Augustinian kind -the God that failed-it was an experience akin to watching a former self die." To erase this sense of insignificance that awaits any sentient person, he has to replace it by a new faith- a one-dimensional world view- reducing the complexities to false dichotomies of good and bad, us and them, and right and wrong. That’s about it.

These lines from David Horowitz, one of the famous political apostates, may perhaps help to understand those who abandoned the revolutionary hopes: “For the first time in my conscious life I was looking at myself in my human nakedness, without the support of revolutionary hopes, without the faith in a revolutionary future—without the sense of self-importance conferred by the role I would play in remaking the world. . . . I was nothing.”

When you are faced with such crippling despair, you seek refuge in identity or popular politics that thrives when ideas and practices enter and transform domains of life like family life, caste, kinship, marriage, ideologies and popular religion focussing on our differences instead of our common humanity .

Are you still there , my friend, taking sides ,witnessing this "carnage and destruction" in Ukraine !!!

Do you think that you are still fighting for a better tomorrow..?

I doubt it !!!

15Prakash Neerohoo, Paul Lismore and 13 others

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Stop the War !!!

We don’t want this, Why are we doing this?

“The war will end. The leaders will shake hands. The old woman will keep waiting for her martyred son. That girl will wait for her beloved husband. And those children will wait for their heroic father. I don’t know who sold our homeland. But I saw who paid the price."

Extracts:

These are the words of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who saw death and destruction in his homeland. Darwish was writing not just about Palestine but the cost of war waged anywhere in the world. It could be anywhere in the jungles of Africa or urban warfare in Iraq, Syria or Europe, the result is invariably the same: Ordinary civilians bear the brunt for the folly and ambition of leaders.

Some world leaders are pushing for peace in Ukraine, but some people/media are questioning their motives. “They claim to be honest brokers, but it is just a fig leaf to cover their moral bankruptcy”. Whatever !

Our inscrutable Putin wants to talk. He’s demanding four things.

The first two are that Ukraine cease military action — one assumes as part of a wider ceasefire — and change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, likely meaning it must pledge to stay out of NATO. Putin is also demanding that Ukraine and the West acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory and recognize the separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states.

These should be seen as a starting point for meaningful discussion, something sadly lacking before the invasion.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a catastrophe and should be condemned in no uncertain terms.

We live in a messy, complicated world in which effective diplomacy that saves lives requires give and take. We hope the leaders of all involved in the current crisis spare no efforts to contain the conflict, secure a ceasefire and push for negotiations.

10Prakash Neerohoo, Raj Ramlugun and 8 others

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Two different interpretations of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Francis Fukuyama of the "End of History" fame : “Putin’s war on the liberal order” and

Arta Moeini of the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, “How Western elites exploit Ukraine”

Francis Fukuyama has described the invasion as Putin’s war against the liberal democratic order. "The problems facing today’s

liberal societies did not start and do not end with Putin, and we will face very serious challenges even if he is stymied in Ukraine. Liberalism has been under attack for some time now, from both the right and the left. Freedom House in its “Freedom in the World” survey for 2022 notes that global freedom has fallen in the aggregate now for 16 years in a row. It has declined not just because of the rise of authoritarian powers such as Russia and China, but also because of the turn towards populism, illiberalism and nationalism within longstanding liberal democracies such as the US and India".

Arta Moeini “So far as the Western legacy media is concerned, we really do live in the post-historical age Francis Fukuyama triumphantly proclaimed in 1989, with liberal internationalism the only acceptable paradigm through which to understand the world. Alternative views are now tantamount to championing tyranny. In each instance, the dictator comes to personify internationally Hegel’s thymotic, if savage, primitive man — the inhumane antithesis of the “last man” — fighting maniacally against liberal democracy, the march of modernity, and progress itself. Assad, Ghaddafi, the Taliban, and Vladimir Putin all fit this archetype as reactionary actors par excellence necessitating a holy alliance to confront and civilise.

Such a melioristic framing of international politics justifies and indeed privileges a Manichean narrative of good and evil. In this context, rationality itself is bound to the good, defined as effective conformity with liberal hegemony."

A comment : "You think you are capable of making your own mind up but unfortunately you have been bamboozled by your own moral righteousness or tinted glasses in an area and region you know nothing about. ...let us get out facts right first and learn more about.... Which ones, from where..?

4Prakash Neerohoo, Paul Lismore and 2 others

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