№ 789. AI

 

№ 788. Lessons From World War II to Avoid World War III

The meaning of commemoration is to draw necessary lessons and to prevent mistakes from happening again. The lessons from World War II — we have five of them to share — are critical for understanding how to restore and maintain long-lasting and just peace and security in Europe today, when they are again at risk.

1. Appeasing the aggressor leads to more aggression, not peace. 

Concessions on unlawful territorial claims are a disastrous mistake. The partition of Czechoslovakia in 1938 only fueled Nazi Germany’s appetite and resulted in a global war. Learning from this lesson, Ukraine will never accept the legitimization of Russia’s occupation and annexation of any part of Ukraine’s territory. Respect for territorial integrity is a fundamental principle of international law. There will be no sustainable peace and security at the cost of Ukraine’s people, independence, sovereignty or territorial integrity.

2. Spheres of influence never bring peace and stability. 

They bring oppression. World War II began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and secret protocols to it between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, agreeing to partition Poland, the Baltic States and the rest of Europe. Similarly, the victors sought to establish and consolidate their spheres of influence at a meeting in the Crimean city of Yalta in 1945. The cessation of fire in Europe on May 8, 1945, did not bring freedom to many European nations. They remained under Soviet occupation and control and suffered decades of international crimes, oppression and lack of freedom. For many of our states and our people, this nightmare ended only five decades later, with the re-establishment of our sovereignty and independence from 1989 to 1991.

Today Mr. Putin fantasizes about another Yalta, where he can draw borders on Europe’s map, once again undermining international law and the right of nations in Russia’s neighborhood to make their own choices and decisions. We must never allow this. Our principled position is that no third country has veto power over the choice of unions and alliances of Ukraine or any other nation. Ukraine has already made its choice — the choice of the European Union and NATO — and it is not for the Kremlin to scrutinize this.

3. A lack of accountability breeds future atrocities. 

Nazi crimes were widely exposed, condemned, investigated and prosecuted, unlike Soviet ones. It’s very important that both totalitarian ideologies — Nazism and Soviet — receive proper evaluation in Europe. More light must be shed on crimes by the Soviet regime, including the deportations and executions of political prisoners in our countries, the destruction of Kyiv’s city center and the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station dam during the Soviet retreat in 1941, the mass-scale deportations of our people to Siberia, the violent repression of the members of anti-Soviet movements and the genocide of Crimean Tatars through deportation from their native land in 1944, to name a few. Hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly removed from their homes, many packed into cattle cars, and sent to remote regions of Siberia from the Baltics states alone. The crime of the Holodomor genocide, in particular, in which millions of Ukrainians starved to death, should have a more prominent place in the European historical understanding.

Soviet crimes must be properly condemned, including those committed during the Soviet occupation of Europe after World War II. Russia’s failure to properly condemn Stalinism and to compensate for the occupational damage and its overall feeling of impunity led to revanchism and aggression against Georgia and Ukraine. This case highlights the importance of accountability for Russia’s current crimes, including after the future fall of Mr. Putin’s regime.

4. Historical manipulation must be corrected. 

As Russia continues its war against Ukraine and intensifies its hostile actions toward democratic European countries, the need to promote shared European remembrance narratives across the continent and beyond is more pressing than ever. A truthful assessment and profound understanding of history form the foundation of a society’s democratic resilience. We all stand ready to counter Russian disinformation activities and Russia’s attempts to rewrite European history.

Russia has no right to monopolize the victory over Nazism, which was accomplished by multiple nations and peoples. Even the Red Army was multinational, with at least six million Ukrainians fighting in its ranks. Instead of commemorating World War II victims, Mr. Putin’s regime has crafted an ugly cult of victory, utilizing the collective victory over the Nazis to justify its current aggression and atrocities against Ukrainians. The upcoming May 9 parade, in which Russia annually marks the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, is designed as the glorification of this cult. Mr. Putin will use it to rally more Russians to the front lines, solidify his regime and create an impression that his international isolation is fading. These plans must fail.

5. As President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said, ‘Freedom must be armed better than tyranny.’ In the current severe security deficit, sufficient defense capabilities are a must. Si vis pacem, para bellum. (If you want peace, prepare for war.) Ukraine will never accept any restrictions on its armed forces, defense capabilities or defense assistance. Instead, Kyiv is working to expand defense-industrial output and achieve defense self-sufficiency.

Learning these simple but important lessons of World War II is critical both to prevent the outbreak of World War III and to reinvent a fair international system with real security guarantees for peaceful democratic states that offers accountability for aggressors and deterrence of them. We must avoid repeating the mistakes that led to World War II and the subsequent Yalta system. We are confident that with sufficient resolve, we can do better, defend our principles and secure a free, united and secure Europe. We will continue working together to achieve this. Never again. This is the common warning of countries affected by the Treaty of Munich, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Yalta Agreement.

№ 785. "Franciscus"

Pope Francis, who rose from modest means in Argentina to become the first Jesuit and Latin American pontiff, who clashed bitterly with traditionalists in his push for a more inclusive Roman Catholic Church, and who spoke out tirelessly for migrants, the marginalized and the health of the planet, died on Monday at the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. He was 88.

The pope’s death was announced by the Vatican in a statement on X, a day after Francis appeared in his wheelchair to bless the faithful in St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday. The cause of death was a stroke followed by a coma and irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse, the Vatican said.

Throughout his 12-year papacy, Francis was a change agent, having inherited a Vatican in disarray in 2013 after the stunning resignation of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, a standard-bearer of Roman Catholic conservatism.

Francis steadily steered the church in another direction, restocking its leadership with a diverse array of bishops who shared his pastoral, welcoming approach as he sought to open up the church. Many rank-and-file Catholics approved, believing that the church had become inward-looking and distant from ordinary people.

Francis reached out to migrants, the poor and the destitute, to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy members, and to alienated gay Catholics. He traveled to often-forgotten and far-flung countries and sought to improve relations with an antagonistic Chinese government, Muslim clerics and leaders from across the fragmented Christian world.

After some early stumbles, he took strong steps to address a clerical sex abuse crisis that had become an existential threat to the church. He adopted new rules to hold top religious leaders, including bishops, accountable if they committed sexual abuse or covered it up, though he did not impose the level of transparency or civil reporting obligations that many advocates demanded.

In his final years, slowed by a bad knee, intestinal surgery and respiratory ailments that sapped his breath and voice, Francis used a cane and then a wheelchair, seemingly a diminished figure. But that was a misleading impression. He continued to travel widely, focusing on exploited and war-torn parts of Africa, where he excoriated modern-day colonizers and sought peace in South Sudan.

His insistence on shaking up the status quo earned him no shortage of enemies. He demoted conservatives in Vatican offices, restricted the use of the old Latin Mass dear to traditionalists, opened influential meetings of bishops to laypeople, including women, allowed priests to bless same-sex couples and made clear that transgender people could be godparents and that their children could be baptized.

He also refused to endorse calls to deny communion to Catholic politicians supportive of abortion rights, including when he was president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., who said Francis had called him a “good Catholic.”

His avuncular charm and easy smile belied his reputation inside the Vatican as a steely — his opponents said ruthless — administrator as he brought greater transparency to church finances and overhauled the Vatican’s bureaucracy.

The traditional Italian power bases of the Vatican grew frustrated with his purposefully unpredictable governing style, which relied on a small group of confidants, many of them Jesuits like himself, and his own gut.

Conservative Catholics accused him of diluting church teachings and never stopped rallying against him. Simmering dissent periodically exploded into view in almost medieval fashion, with talk of schisms and heresy.

But Francis also disappointed many liberals, who hoped that he might introduce progressive policies. His openness to frank discussion gave oxygen to debates about long-taboo subjects, including priestly celibacy, communion for divorced and remarried people, and greater roles for women in the church. While he opened doors to talking about such issues, he tended to balk at making major decisions.

“We are often chained like Peter in the prison of habit,” he said of the church in 2022 in a speech in St. Peter’s Basilica. “Scared by change and tied to the chain of our customs.”

№ 486. Covid 19 Deaths in Numbers: Finding a Context

Newsday

According to Johns Hopkins University & Medicine tally, today July 7, 2020, the total global deaths from the coronavirus is 538,796.

It is a staggering number.

To help understand this statistic, I'll try to compare it with other data generated on deaths caused by catastrophic events in the past. Just a few examples:

1. The total number of deaths in World War I was about 15 to 22 million.

2. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished in World War 2, which was about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. 2.3 billion).

3.  A total of 1.5 million people died from TB in 2018 (including 251,000 people with HIV).

4. Haiyan, one of the deadliest Philippine typhoons on record, killed at least 6,300 people in 2013.

5. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami caused a combined total confirmed deaths and missing of more than 22,000 (nearly 20,000 deaths and 2,500 missing).

№ 456. The 2020 & the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics

Yes, a Japanese song topped the US charts in 1963. This nostalgic song was also featured in a recent Ghibli film set in that post World War 2 Showa Era.

№ 350. Death of Binary Archetypes

Binary Archetypes

№ 344. Christmas Carol

What's a cure for old age and death? For chaos? For pandora's bane?

When world peace is a sight unseen in a galaxy far, far away, when death and sickness come bearing down on our doorposts, what's the proper response?

The year 2017 will come to a close soon. Like in so many years before it, people will again hope for a better year, for a better world.

World peace will always be a cliche. Climate change may soon be a tired slogan on a fake campaign platform. Gender fairness is so 1990s as one writer admitted.

Humankind is a never ending craft.

№ 339. 21st Century Empires, Globalization and Nation-States

It's ASEAN week in Manila.

"Looking at the different summits that are taking place in our region this week, one cannot but be inspired by the high-mindedness that seems to have summoned the world’s most powerful statesmen to this part of the world at this time. Yet, one cannot miss the irony, too. Here gathered are presidents and prime ministers purporting to offer collective solutions to humanity’s most intractable problems — solutions that, alas, are ultimately drawn from the shallow well of their respective national interests."

№ 301. Decline to Decadence

Party's over, West. Asia is the new center of world. And Asians will no longer play coy about who should rule this part of the world. Move aside pale ghosts of our colonial masters. We are stepping up.