Arthur K

Opinion | Lessons From World War II to Avoid World War III

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/o...

With Shestov in Ukraine - Liberties Dawn in Podil. The Jewish quarter of Kyiv from times past. March 21, 2024, sunrise and missiles over the Dnipro river — although it was impossible to see the sunrise from inside the bomb shelter. In a...

Some wisdom and history here from @marcishore.bsky.social and Kyiv.
libertiesjournal.com/articles/wit...

Please repeat over and over:

“Bending to the whims of a bully will not end his cruelty. It will only embolden him. The response to authoritarianism isn’t acquiescence. Bullies respond to one thing, and one thing only: a punch in the face.”

—Gov. JB Pritzker

Opinion | Trump’s Gulag Archipelago Trump is seeking to establish a truly chilling proposition: that no one can stop his administration from imprisoning anyone it wants, anywhere in the world.

Usefully clear reasoning here.
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/o...

In Dissent - Jewish Review of Books What gives people the courage to stand against oppressive governments? Why do regular citizens dissent?

“How do individuals and societies emerge from totalitarianism?” Benjamin Nathans asks.

One could add: And do they?

If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.

PEN Ukraine and Sensor Media compiled the list of 100 books to help understand Ukraine The list emerges as a response to many requests from foreign libraries, publishing houses, embassies, and institutions that would like to share knowledge about Ukraine with their audiences 100 books f...

100 books to help understand Ukraine, featuring Oleh Sentsov's Diary of a Hunger Striker, co-translated by Dmytro Kyyan and yours truly. Thanks for compiling, PEN Ukraine.

pen.org.ua/en/ukrayinsk...

YouTube video by RADICALIZED: Truth Survives Podcast Episode 129: This Is Not a Game with Professor Marci Shore

Thank you to @heidicuda.bsky.social and @highfidelity.bsky.social for a very serious conversation about what happened in the Oval Office on Friday.

Very apt observations, especially regarding the consumption of Russian media (often for such basic reasons as language/cultural barriers).

WHAT WAR IS A poem by Ostap Slyvynsky

"i know you’re afraid of blood so we’ll write it with water

the water the wounded man asked for when he could no longer swallow and just

looked at it

water that seeps through a shelled-out roof

water that can replace tears"
WHAT WAR IS
Ostap Slyvynsky
Full poem: snyder.substack.com/p/what-war-is

Looking at Women Looking at War by Victoria Amelina review – a precious and powerful work of literature This tragically unfinished account of the Russian invasion of Ukraine bears witness to both grave crimes and the strength of the human spirit

“I somehow see Ukraine after the war. I don’t know if we are in the future, but there is Ukraine after the war."--Victoria Amelina

Porcelain War, a documentary about the life during the russian full-scale invasion, was nominated for an Oscar.

The film tells the story of 3 artists from Kharkiv who remain in the frontline city and decorating destroyed buildings with porcelain figurines.
Watch and share❤️

I would be deeply grateful if you could lend your wings to my words - read, retweet, and help carry my Kharkiv post further. Your support breathes life into my words and purpose into my voice.

Writing like this has made me love Odesa, and I've never even been there.

Democracy Dies in Bezos The latest in anticipatory obedience.

Please share to fight censorship:

YouTube video by Kino Helios Polska ZIELONA GRANICA - Zwiastun PL (Official Trailer)

Thinking about Syria, and Russia, and our interconnected, mutilated world: please watch this remarkable film by the brilliant Agnieszka Holland about Syrian refugees trapped in the forest between Belarus and Poland, about human cruelty, human indifference, and human compassion.

TikTok video by Сергій Жадан

www.tiktok.com/t/ZTY9TJMKT/

I never thought I’d hear Ukrainian spoken in a Hollywood film of the 1930s, but recently I did… And the speaker is none other than the bard of émigré extras, my dear Alexander Voloshin! A little 🧵. 1/6

‘Decolonizing’ Ukrainian Art, One Name-and-Shame Post at a Time Oksana Semenik’s social media campaign both educates the curious about overlooked Ukrainian artists — and pressures global museums to relabel art long described as Russian.

'Ukrainian Art History' by Oksana Semenik, art historian and journalist from Ukraine. [gift article/ no paywall] www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/w...

Nothing Bad Has Ever Happened — ARROWSMITH The stories of the dead and the monuments commemorating them aren’t meant to end a conversation, but rather to launch one.

"No city is doomed to be haunted forever. We break the spell not when we banish the ghosts, but when we invite them to breakfast. A true home is a place where you have neighbors you know by name. This includes those who were killed and those who helped kill them. . ."--Victoria Amelina