Now here is a wonderful protest. Russians and Ukrainians marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in a protest against Putin’s war in Ukraine.
They joined together to denounce the war, to oppose fascism in Russia, and to counter Russian propaganda. They mocked Putin as a modern-day Hitler. The two allied groups live in harmony in Brooklyn.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, that protest is going to be a lot more effective than the student anti-genocide protests. I’m sure Putin is shaking in his boots over 12 people 6,000 miles away walking over a bridge!
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Dienne, it does raise the question of why students have not held anti-Putin protests on campuses across the US and Europe.
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One huge difference is that we do not fund and supply the weapons that the Russians use as the US does for Israel.
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Diane: I’m not getting how the horror that happened to the Jews in the Holocaust makes for Israel’s international impunity for engaging in genocide for the rest of history, and not even if Gaza were full of German Nazis. CBK
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CBK,
No one can or should defend what Israel is doing in Gaza now. I don’t. As you or someone else pointed out, Netanyahu needs to cling to power to avoid standing trial for corruption. He must be voted out ASAP.
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Hello Diane: From what I’ve seen so far, I think you are right . . . though of course there are also many factional nuances going on.
What I said about Israel’s unstated impunity for genocide, however, is not what I think, but it seems like a kind of unspoken idea floating around in some people’s heads.
The other elephant in the room idea floating around (it seems to me) is that the civilian people of Gaza are innocent of genocidal hate for everything Israel. CBK
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dienne77: The bridge walk by Russians and Ukrainians probably will be blown up in Putin’s mind to become another source of his paranoia about “the West.”
Don’t make the bully mad . . . it just makes the bully’s degenerate fantasies worse. CBK
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Putin is a control freak. And he hates ANY opposition, however feeble. So, yeah, IF the news of the bridge walk gets through to him (what information he gets is carefully controlled out of fear, as was the case with Stalin), he might well try to take measures against the people involved BECAUSE HE IS VINDICTIVE AND PSYCHOPATHIC. He is NOT SANE.
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You people are unhinged. Putin would laugh at a pathetic protest like that. For that matter, if all 350 million Americans were in the streets screaming about him, he’d still laugh because there’s still nothing the protesters can do. This idea that protesting Putin in this country is some kind of brave stance is risible.
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Obviously Putin doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him and his criminal behavior. He doesn’t care what Russians think, since he controls all media and tells them what to think. Like his buddy in North Korea.
But unlike you, I don’t mock the protests against his war by Russians and Ukrainians who live in the U.S.
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Bob: Yes . . . and projecting one’s ideas of reasonableness or even of sanity onto Stalin-esque people like Putin is a MAJOR weakness of people who have been born and brought up in a relatively sane and civilized environment, not to mention honest.
First, you have to realize the possibility of dishonesty, unreasonableness, and insanity.
BTW, one of the problems emergent in SOME (not all) of the mainstream press (real, not fake) right now is their trying to keep up the idea of fairness (both-sides’ kinds of discussions) when one side wants to destroy the very idea of freedom of the press that enables fairness and the airing of “both sides” in the first place. And that’s a hard knot to unravel. CBK
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deinne77: Do you realize you are making my point?
I don’t know if Putin would laugh at people protesting on the bridge (and neither do you); but if he did, history shows that it would not be out of line with his sending his goons to do murder and because, like Stalin (and Trump), he has no conscience or sense of shame at doing things that sane people do and take for granted in others.
If he laughs at protesters, it’s because he knows they are not thugs like him but rather are his universal version of “weak.”
Do you laugh at people precisely because they act in terms of having a conscience? CBK
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You can protest Putin all you want. It’s performative because it will make no difference. If you want to make a difference, look at what your own country is doing that you are supporting with your silence. You are American, not Russian. You are responsible for your own government, not foreign governments.
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The campus protests are performative because the universities have no intention of divesting from Google, Meta, and Amazon. Furthermore, Congress just voted overwhelmingly to fund more weapons for Israel. I personally would pressure Israel to declare a ceasefire but I have no public platform. I would also demand that Hamas stop its terrorism and using civilians as human shields but they wouldn’t listen.
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See my note, below, Comrade.
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So cute you think Putin is communist.
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Putin is no Communist. He’s a billionaire kleptocrat.
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I certainly do not. I was being tongue-in-cheek because you, a Putin worshipper, fancy yourself a Communist, which I find bizarre in the extreme.
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I know this is a hard concept for you, but it is possible to understand that 90% of what U.S. media says about Putin is lies while still recognizing that he’s a billionaire capitalist and not “worshipping” him.
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I do not rely on “U.S. Media” for information on Putin and Russia but upon Russian scholars. Thank you. Our media are a bad joke.
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Do you deny that Putin has crushed dissent and the limited independent media? Do you deny that he has imprisoned or murdered anyone who challenged his absolute rule? Do you deny that freedom of speech no longer exists in Russia? What part of reporting about Putin’s iron dictatorship is lies?
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Everything about Putin and Russia not written by Caitlin Johnstone, Dmitry Peskov, Sergey Lavrov, Patriarch Kirill, or Alexandr Dugan is US propaganda. All the scholarhip. All the on-site reporting. All lies. Just ask Dienne.
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Diane, you are a citizen of a country that is trying to ban TikTok (and has banned other media) because it shows what is happening in Gaza. You are living in a country that is sending armed, violent thugs against unarmed, peacefully protesting students. You are living in a country that has by far the highest per capita prison population, complete with forced prison labor with no compensation – i.e., slavery. I don’t want to hear about Putin’s crushing dissent and limiting media until we clean our own house.
BTW, speaking of killing dissenters, what do you make of the fact that two people who were scheduled to testify against Boeing “died” rather conveniently?
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Dienne,
Your comparison of the U.S. to Russia is astonishing. I don’t support banning anything. But I don’t conclude that freedom of speech and dissent have been extinguished in the U.S. if TikTok must have an American owner. What you call “armed, violent thugs” are the police. I am opposed to disrespecting and vilifying the police. When the protestors at Columbia broke into Hamilton Hall, smashed windows, and took control of the building, that’s vandalism, not free speech.
No criticism of a ruthless dictator until we are a perfect society?
You have made the ultimate statement of whataboutism.
Every form of media—including the mainstream media—has shown what is happening in Gaza.
I recall that on October 8 and thereafter, you insisted that nothing much had happened to the people in the kibbutzim near Gaza, that anyone who died was killed by Israelis, that no woman was raped, etc. Your rage is selective. You want Israel to be eliminated as a nation.
Why not haunt some other blog?
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There is a point where the left becomes so extreme that it mirrors the far right.
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And include ending Putin’s War On Education.
“Wars are won by teachers.” Vladimir Putin’s education reform now mandates patriotism, Western influence PURGE, quashing of professor & student dissent.
Putin Dismantled St. Petersburg State University’s prestigious humanities program! The Curriculum is to Belittle Ukraine, glorify Russia & whitewash history of Totalitarianism.
Washington Post
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Sounds familiar, eh! Putin/Russia taking a play from the xtian nationalist theocrats here in the US.
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Duane, Putin is a xtian nationalist theocrat.
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Or at least he’d like all to believe that, eh!
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No, really. The Washington Post has started an in-depth series about Putin. He’s wrapping himself in the garb of the Russian Orthodox Church, urging women to have 8 or more children, persecuting LGBT, taking total control. President for life.
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The bloody little Chekist Tsar Vladimir Putin is no more a Christian than Trump is. These are pretend Christians who use the Church as it has so often been used before, to rally the rubes under one flag and claim a moral high ground that they do not actually stand upon. There’s a lot of that going around in the Repugnican Party these days.
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Putin, Trump, and Victor Orban have that in common. They stand for “traditional values,” family values, old-fashioned Christianity.
People who believe that will believe anything.
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Kathyirwin1: Like Stalin, I think Putin would take as a compliment what you say about him. Like Trump, they have stamped every vestige of shame from having a place in their interior lives. CBK
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Anyone familiar with the Russian and Ukranian populations in Brooklyn knows that this is a big deal, even though overall sentiment among Russians may be divided on Putin.
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As follow-up to the reader who mentions the absence of anti-Putin protests in the US, we can ask about the absence of rallies, demonstrations, marches, etc. to help energize and focus us on preserving democracy and fighting possible imposition of autocracy in the US (not even to mention the absence of discussion of what we might do to counter the impact of autocracy if the former president is back in office).
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Ron: It was only in a one-time brief man-on-the-street “interview” . . . but the guy didn’t like it that “Biden acts like Putin is our enemy.” What can you say when faced with such historical ignorance? CBK
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As to what individuals can do in regard to the election, there are many outstanding individuals and groups working to defend our democracy, most, if not all, of which have been referenced by Diane. For just a few examples, the daily posts of Jessica Craven, Jessica Valenti, Heather Cox Richardson, Simon Rosenberg, and Robert Hubbell are invaluable, not only for the information and understanding provided but for connections to individuals and groups doing all kinds of work in service of defending our democracy as well as actions that any of us might consider joining in.
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xoxox
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Why the students don’t engage in anti-Putin protests? Maybe because we don’t fund Putin’s illegal war (as we do in the case of Israel), quite the opposite. And the US government has come out against Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and imposed sanctions against Russia. Putin doesn’t give a damn and continues the slaughter in Ukraine without letup. We should continue to send arms and humanitarian supplies to Ukraine.
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I wonder if Putin will send his assassines after the Russians that marched across that bridge. No one is safe from Putin anywhere in the world as long as they are easy to find.
“Nerve agents, poison and window falls. Kremlin foes have been attacked or killed over the years”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-kremlin-enemy-navalny-prigozhin-litvinenko-skripal-958c2ed6b8d60ecc4f64092fc1f9ceb5
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HAAAAAAA. There’s your historical unity of the Russian and Ukrainian people, Tsar Vladimir the Defenestrator!
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The US’s military support and funding of Israel is certainly a legitimate, even compelling, factor in considering who, what, and where we protest, but where US funding goes cannot be the only reason for protest, marches, demonstrations, etc., of which we are much in need of in the service of preserving our liberal democratic republic, however imperfect it is, as well as other worthy causes inside and outside of our country.
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Russia didn’t start the “war” now happening in Uraine. Russia escalated a conflict taking place since 2014, when the last democratically elected leader of Ukraine was forced from office in a coup implemented with the assistance of the U.S. Between 2014 and 2021, thousands of Russian-speaking men, women, and children were murdered in Ukraine. For various reasons, between 2014 and 2021, diplomatic efforts to stop the violence in Ukraine were unsuccessful. Alas, U.S./NATO efforts to fight a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine have failed. Negotiations for a peaceful settlement are long overdue. When will U.S./NATO “leaders” allow for a negotiated settlement to happen?
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Russia started the war much earlier. Its goal all along as dictator Putin made clear was to seize a sovereign nation on the way to restoring the USSR. The Maidan Revolution was a grassroots effort to overthrow a Russian puppet and establish closer relations with the West. Ukraine wants to be a democracy, not a satellite of Putin’s thugocracy. That’s why so many Ukrainian citizens have fought so valiantly to defeat Russia. Who would want to live in Russia or under Putin’s control? He has stamped out dissent, freedom of the press, freedom of speech. He murdered Navalny. He persecutes LGBT people. He is restoring Stalin-worship. Orthodox Christian autocracy. No communism, just traditional family values and persecution of dissenters.
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One can always count on Dienne and James to give the Russian propaganda machine “alternative facts” version of Ukrainian history.
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Interesting, James, that you put “war” in quotation marks. I tend to agree. Massive bombing of civilians, utter destruction of civilian cities, deportation of children against their will, widespread rape of women of all ages, from girls to grandmothers, bombing of civilian utilities and infrastructure and cultural centers and schools, use of thermobaric and chemical weapons–these are not war. They are war crimes being perpetrated by Russia. One hopes that eventually Putin and the siloviki and propagandists around him who are perpetrating these crimes will end up standing in the dock before the International Court of Criminal Justice. So, good call. Not a war. War crimes. Crimes against humanity. Mass slaughter. Genocide. Not war.
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No negotiation with the criminal aggressors!!! Ukraine should yield not a single square nanometer of Ukraine to Putin la Puta. The war will end when Russia has been entirely driven out, including out of the Donbas and Crimea.
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If you wish to pass commentary on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in which Russia is more sinned against than sinning you would do well to consult history in the Long View.
By this it is necessary to look back to the rise from Muscovy to Russia in the 14th to 16th century and its conflicts with the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, The Ukrainian Cossacks, The Tartars and the Ottoman Empire to name but a few. The land which is now Ukraine was a frequent battleground, which over the centuries Russia viewed as ‘its own’ and seeing the Ukrainians as a lesser folk. The Hapsburg Empire arguably late on the scene was allowed to take part in a partition.
The animosity between rulers and ruled grew in the 19th century with the rise of Ukrainian Nationalism. Finally to break into conflict in the turbulence of the latter years of WWI and in the post WWI conflicts prevalent in those times.
Although there were brief attempts to create Ukrainian Republics these fell due to in-fighting and the eventual imposition of rule by the USSR. There was during these years a great famine which with war claimed a high loss of life. In the years of Stalin Ukraine suffered his trademark authoritarian rule. This led in WWII to a bloody series of wars involving German, Soviet and Ukrainian Nationalists Communists and Fascists in a complex struggle which continued beyond WWII.
The USSR’s collapse led several disruptions centred around Russians either settlers or ‘settled’ by the government over the years of Soviet rule. Thus in 2014 ethic tensions arose in the Donbas region, which Russia saw as opportunistic to intervene in as a reaction to the Ukrainian’s own reaction to a pro-Russian government (See the Orange Revolution). Thus the 2014 war continued.
You should note by now that Russia considers the Ukraine as part of its own, while the Ukrainians do not. To say they should accept this, suggest you might as well tell the Irish that they are part of the British Isles.
Therefore this conflict it can be seen has roots that go back centuries. Putin should have played a soft power card, but accepting the 2014 Orange Revolution then mending bridges with Ukraine along the lines of ‘We’ve been through a lot together. Mistakes were made. But hey, trust us, you can trust those Westerners. Let’s make deals,; …..But in the classic brooding Czar mode he used force.
To try and suggest that Russia had no choice or it was a reaction to pro-western attempts to ‘do something’ is to over simplify the Long History.
History shows Ukrainians are by no means pure and simple folk fighting for freedom, they in part are guilty of more than a few historical crimes, and so is Russia. In this episode the fault lies with the Kremlin. It could have used soft power. The guilt for this conflict lies there.
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Well said, Determined!!!
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Thanks. Sorry if I went on a bit
There’s this ironically shared quality between the American ‘New’ Right and sections of the European Left (the part which has a heritage of giving Moscow a free pass) of over simplifying the situation which does irritate me…..once I start…😤
Thanks again 🙂
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“Sorry if I went on a bit.”
Absolutely not. The truth requires a complex response. I actually resisted the urge to add more. ROFL.
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Please do, that would be interesting.
History is a long journey back and never a just one straight road either.
I’m listening to an audio book ‘How The World Made The West’ by Josephine Quinn, confirming that civilisations did not start with ‘Classical Greece’. In fact they were rising and falling a few centuries before ‘Classical Greece’
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Nailed it
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This comment was meant for Diane. NOT, definitely NOT, for James.
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James and Dienne have a truly bizarre, distorted, mythological conception of recent Ukrainian history straight from the spokespersons of the Russian propaganda machine and their sock puppets in the West. These two are ideologues, so they are not going to bother to learn the actual history. Don’t look up, guys! However, if YOU are interested in learning the actual history, gentle reader of Diane’s blog, check out the magnificent FREE history of Ukraine offered by Timothy Snyder through the Yale Open Courses. I loved this so much that I listened to the whole series TWICE.
Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine. Class 1: Ukrainian Questions Posed by Russian Invasion (youtube.com)
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For some reason, every comment I make is going into moderation.
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Bob, my reply to James also went into moderation. Bizarre. That never happened before.
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WordPress can be extremely glitchy.
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BOB and DIANE: Me too. CBK
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An uplifting piece of news. Most welcome in these gloomy tragic days.
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