https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/business/mcdonalds-russia.html
This must be the saddest photo of the whole war. Fat Russians pining for their American junk food. What does it tell you about nationalities and what does it tell you about class/education?
Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
A few days ago, an article in The New York Times reported that the Chinese government was aware of Putin's invasion, because the American government warned its Chinese counterpart and the Chinese went and told Putin all about it. It is clear where Putin and the Chinese stand. But where does the US and the West stand? If both knew about the invasion, which there is enough proof that they did, why didn't the leaders of these regions start the sanctions on Russia and its oligarchs BEFORE the invasion? Why didn't they send weapons and make speeches of support BEFORE the invasion? Perhaps then Putin would have thought twice about invading Ukraine. Or is it that the West, thinking of the two people's close ethnic, historical, geographical and cultural ties just figured they will "give" Putin Ukraine, a tit for tat they will collect on later, perhaps military presence in Poland. But all of this sympathy makes the Western governments look "good." Sometimes, the leaders of the world are so stupid that one thinks they must be evil. Same in Afghanistan, same in Iran. Same all over the world. We care only about our own interests. There isn't an iota of true sympathy for other peoples.
Now, western leaders keep making speeches, hold marches, send this and that. Too late. People have died as will many more. So, stupid or evil?
I was extremely critical of this extremely privileged Arab woman, a human rights lawyer, for not speaking out against the genocide in Palest...
