By NOMOS: CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH ON LAW, CULTURE AND POWER
On February 24, 2022, Russia has begun waging war on Ukraine. Fighting is taking place all over Ukraine, civilians are being killed or forced to flee their homes. In just seven days about 800.000 people have fled the war seeking shelter in neighbouring countries. No political reasons can justify the invasion of a country and the killing of its people. And it is appalling that the officially declared nature of the operation and its objectives are very far from reality and rooted in an ideological and revisionist conception of the history of Eastern Europe, by abusing the term genocide, the memory of World War II and the Holocaust.
This conflict is taking place against the background of a growing international political and military disorder, in which wars are waged against the othered in Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the mentality behind such wars is expanding into new terrains. But as history is never tired to tell us, the repercussions of war are not only catastrophic but also unpredictable, and those who end up paying the highest price are always the working classes and the civilian populations who are destined to live in material deprivations for years.
The dire situation in Ukraine burdens Critical Legal Scholarship with the task of supporting the defence of life and a global peaceful existence against the politics of death. To this end, the Nomos Centre asserts its firm rejection of any form of imperialist aggression and expresses its solidarity with the Ukrainian people and with those critical voices that have been silenced by the brutal repression of the police in Russia.
Main site – Nomos: Centre for International Research on Law, Culture and Power –
Not a single mention of the 2014 Maidan events, not a single mention of anti-maidan protesters being burned alive in odessa, not a single mention of 14000 people killed by azov in the east, not a single mention of the banning of the communist party in Ukraine. Worst! Not a single mention of NATO, not a single mention of USA and the fact that they needed this war, not a single mention … (Endless)… Are you really Critical legal Thinking Or just some white European supremacist with Russophobic intentions engaging in Influencing the world about the superiority of European Tribalism. Please do not spoil this space which many of us follow with your one sided uncritical statements and childish simplistic analysis. You call yourself Critical! Come on..
I agree with you, Bodh. It is nauseatic and repulsive the lack of independent thinking and the hypocrisy of the so-called ‘critical’ legal academics with respect to what happens now in Ukraine. The Academia, and the heroic, beautiful, ‘speaking truth to power’ critical side of it, has proved to be only collaborators of the criminal global actors that have the interests to have Russia involved in a war in Ukraine.
This virtuous communique of the Nomos center is a shame for this center and for the criticallegalthinking page who agres to publish this piece of propaganda. The double standards are stridently shouting in the face of any good faith observer, and yet all are turning theire gaze from it.
Why does Nomos say nothing about the war waging rhetoric of the US and the West, through their controlled media – a.i. all outlets so called respectable in the Western world, including Bloomberg, CNN, New York Times, the Guardian, the leftist media especially – a few weeks before Russia hit the first strike? Waging war should also be a breach of article 39 UN Charter, in the form of a threat to the peace.
What about the heavy weaponry sent relentlessly into Ukraine, the mercenaries financed by the West to kill Russian soldier in Ukraine, the NATO soldiers sent by legions to Ukraine’s neighboring countries? Aren’t these acts of war too, breaches of peace within the meaning of article 39 of the UN Charter? There is an Armagedon of heavy military western technique and NATO warriors gathered at the borders of Ukraine. Doesn’t NOMOS know that financing and providing military aid to a beligerant party is also a breach of international law?
What about the crippling economic sanctions adopted against Russia? Don’t the virtuously indignated brilliant jurists at NOMos know that economic pressure can also equate military aggression and war? There is something wrong with these jurists then. Are they aware with the decades of economic sanctions against Iraq who have destroyed a country and a generation of Iraqis just because the US wanted so?
Why does this virtuous communique say nothing of the censorship being operated in Western media over Russian media outlets letting us in the West no possibility to hear the other side’s voice also? I thought critical thinking meant to hear the voices of the ‘other’ knows. I was so naive, it seems now it doesn’t matter anymore to have an open debate about what happens in Europe. We only need to behave like animals, unleash as hypnotised bullies against Russia. No need to think, just rally against whoever the brainwashing propaganda machine is telling us to unleash.
And then Ukraine – before Russia to attack, haven’t the smart guys and women in NOMOS notice that Zelenski was publicly asking the West to end the inflammatory rhetoric they were using against Russia, noting himself that the irresponsible behaviour of the US and other Western US puppets was rapidly escalating the situation? Have not the jurists at Nomos noticed that there were provocations at smaller scale in Donbas and Lugansk only and only to determine Russia to intervene by force? If they were careful observers, the Polish colleagues at Nomos would have noticed then how Zelenski fell like a fool in the trap set by the US, seeing his country alone in a conflict with Russia, pushed into it by the US, and then left alone with the US withdrawing. He was a fool to believe the West will stand by him when they encouraged him to scream like mentally deranged that he wanted NATO membership. What would the West say if Mexico and other Latin American countries would be courted to enter in a military alliance with Russia and China? Would they consider this as a provocation? And then Zelenski now – so desperate to attract NATO and the US in the war that he is screaming for a no-fly zone over Ukraine. And if the dear Polish colleagues at Nomos are so concerned and heart broken for the civilians who are fleeing Ukraine and die in the conflict, then they should immediately respond to the following points: 1. what public position did they take when hundreds of thousands civilians dies in the US aerial bombings over Iraq? – Note that in Iraq the US did not have the curtesy to use land troops, as Russia is doing, but safely opted for aerial attack with minimal costs for US soldiers and countless collateral casualties among the innocent Iraqis. Were were the world-wide sanctions and indignation against the US operations then? And does anyone remember what was the reason for which the US destroyed Iraq, besides the lies presented by the US in the UN Security Council tat Sadam Husseyn had weapons of mass destruction, which were never found? NOMOS, respond to this! What public position did you take then? 2. If you are so concerned by the loss of civilian lives and attribute it to Russia’s responsibility, what do you make of Zelenski’s decision, which I find criminal and irresponsible – but is hailed in the propaganda machine of the West which is trying to brainwash us completely – of giving civilians military weaponry to allegedly defend mother Ukraine of the Russian invaders, without exercising any kind of control against that civilian population? It is not an orderly conscription of civilians into the army, under military command, as normal in times of war, civilians are given arms and left on their own on the streets of Kiev! Even the Western propaganda machine has leaked information that Ukrainian criminal gangs now armed with military weaponry furnished by the West, are killing amongst each other, and loot stores in Kiev. Is this responsible behaviour, or the criminal actions of desperates cowards, who are in turn aiming to attribute to Russia the loss of lives of those poorly managed civilians? The Russian Defense minister has warned already that it is putting civilians to risk to arm them and let them loose on the streets. Whose position here do you think shows more restraint? I would say Russia’s position definitely. 3. If you are so concerned, Nomos, about the horrors of war the lives of civilians, what do you make of the most recent horrific diversion attempted y Zelenski, who attacked his own Zaporozhizhia nuclear power plant trying to frame it as an attack by Russia in his desperation to attract NATO into the conflict? Is this a fair, responsible behaviour?
We know that Poland has always been heavily pro-American, to the point of fanaticism. There might be historical reasons for this attitude, which is also the attitude of Baltic states, and Romania – to a lesser extent hopefully. These countries lack subtlety in assessing international relations and the world dynamics. The other day a former president of Lithuania instigated to war agaisnt Russia, saying that we only can stop a war with another war. I find her declaration a criminal offense, She should be now in prison for war propaganda. The fact that your forefathers suffered from the interactions with RUssia is not good enough reason you to practice double standards now and to risk a third world war for it. Russia is not more evil than America has aboundantly proven it is, even in the current conflict, not to talk about the military crimes committed by the US in the last 3 decades. Any time one issues a communique such as this one, condemning RUssia without acknowledging everybody else’s part of the blame, you are personally responsible of the loss of lives you declare you deplore. And so is this site, critical legal thinking, for publishing such a one-sided, full of bias, declaration. Shame on you both, war mongers!
The piece focuses on the invasion and the killings. That is what matters the most right now. As to that you are both not saying much so one draws their own conclusions about your motivation.
Nothing that happens in the world is ahistorical. I believe being critical means having the ability to problematize a context, but that is not enough, for to be critical also means having an independent ability to historicize the context. Only then, I believe, will we get a clearer picture of what appears to our senses. A social reality is not one that simply appears and engages our senses, there are too many layers of construction that one must delayer. What one sees is not what one gets, social reality is too complex to be read in such simplistic ways.
If you seek to know my motivation on the assertion made above, then I will, with all humility state that am totally and completely anti-war, and what is happening in Ukrain is nothing short of horrendous, but this space I believe is a critical space of people who attempts to see the invisible, who attempt to decipher the role of the vested interest, who unravels the underlying social reality in order to clearly see who profits from wars and above all else, this is a space where people invest energy to connect the dots, that at face value seems totally disconnected. This I believe is how one can begin to see things in the round and not be betrayed by emotions that simply reacts, picks and chooses what to believe and what to negate. To me criticality means challenging doxology. To be critical is to be able to see reality as it is and not as one wants it to be.
We are living a difficult moment in human history, we cannot afford to consume mainstream narratives without putting such narratives to the test of criticality.