Boris Wilke

Social research, political analyses - International Security, Conflict Studies, South Asian and Eurasian Politics - RT≠endorse, likes = bookmarks

[Reza Nasri @RezaNasri1]

In Eugène Ionesco's 1959 play Rhinoceros, the inhabitants of a provincial town begin, one by one, to transform into rhinoceroses. What terrifies is not the beasts themselves but the ease of the metamorphosis, the way neighbors, colleagues, and respected intellectuals rationalize their surrender, discover reasons to admire the herd, and trumpet their new conformity as a kind of courage.

Ionesco, who had watched friends in interwar Romania embrace the fascism of the Iron Guard, understood that tyranny rarely arrives as a single catastrophe. It advances by increments, each small enough to seem reasonable, until the unthinkable becomes the ambient noise of respectable opinion. Only Bérenger, the flawed and ordinary holdout, refuses, and finds himself alone.

That is precisely the banality on display today. The casual, almost bureaucratic ease with which U.S. officials, media outlets, members of Congress, and think tanks debate bombing Iran's energy infrastructure — the deliberate destruction of civilian lifelines, a grave breach of international humanitarian law — is its own form of rhinocerization.

War crimes are floated as policy options, weighed like quarterly projections, stripped of the human catastrophe they describe. And the silence surrounding this — from Western governments, from the United Nations, from the international figures who invoke the "law-based order" only when convenient — is not neutrality. It is the quiet trampling of the herd.

Trump's rise belongs to this same pattern. It is not the eruption of something alien but the accumulation of small consents, the steady normalization of what should provoke revolt. Each accommodation makes the next easier, until the trumpeting drowns out every objection.

Ionesco's warning was never really about monsters. It was about how ordinary people, discerning nothing amiss, quietly become them.

[Físico Impuro @FisicoImpuro]

Para los que no lo vieron, este fue el gol que le anularon a Egipto.

EL ROBO MÁS GRANDE EN LA HISTORIA DE LOS MUNDIALES https://t.co/SBorXcWXP8

[Karl Sharro @KarlreMarks]

Not the first Frenchman to rob Egypt

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

If you were to write this headline or article in a variety of US, UK, German or French media outlets, your career might be on the line and you’d probably be accused of antisemitism.

And yet the author of this piece is a former prime minister for Israel.
https://t.co/xUqPAHxsab

[Moshik Temkin @moshik_temkin]

The Germans have a long and storied tradition of having an absolutely awful and destructive impact on world affairs. They are not a mature country on the global stage, and they suffer from unintelligent, bigoted leadership incapable of learning the correct lessons from history

[Gérard Araud @GerardAraud]

Une défaite sans précédent. Un événement historique.

[Kanwal Sibal @KanwalSibal]

Germany’s failure to get elected to the UN Security Council in the recent election
has a lesson for its bid to become a permanent member of a reformed UNSC.

India will need to have a fresh look at the G 4 ( India, Brazil, Germany and Japan) strategy to together push for permanent membership.

[Tariq Ali @TariqAli_News]

This formerly secret document explains why the Pakistan Army removed Imran Khan from power. Those of us who argued that this was the case at the time were criticised by the 'Left' for imagining Imran was an anti-imperialist. What this infantile argument ignored was the fact that regardless of what Imran was/is, the US was not prepared to tolerate any dissent from a 'loyal ally.'
https://t.co/LXFW1CCBTM

[Ivan Katchanovski @I_Katchanovski]

Orwellian: Bandera OUN adopted greeting "Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!" [Slava Ukraini! Heroiam Slava!] along with fascist hand salute based on similar greetings & salutes of other fascist parties, including Nazi party. https://t.co/IO4EtGJJWN

[Javed Hassan @javedhassan]

Waiting for Vance

A dusty checkpoint at dusk. Two policemen stand beside a barricade that blocks an empty, silent road stretching into the hills. Sirens wail in the distance, then fade, then return, like a thought that won’t settle.

First Policeman: “They said today.”

Second Policeman: “They always say today.”

(A long pause. A stray dog wanders through the barricade, unbothered, then exits.)

First Policeman: “The roads are closed.”

Second Policeman: “Yes.”

First Policeman: “No one is coming.”

Second Policeman: “No one can.”

(They both look down the empty road, as if expecting it to apologize.)

First Policeman: “Maybe they took another route, another road. Not even come.”

Second Policeman: “But they said he’d come. He must come. All the roads are closed.”

(A helicopter passes overhead. They both crane their necks, hopeful. It disappears.)

First Policeman: “That must be him.”

Second Policeman: “Yes.”

(Pause.)

First Policeman: “It wasn’t.”

Second Policeman: “No.”

(A longer pause. The light fades further. One of them shifts the barricade slightly, then puts it back exactly where it was.)

First Policeman: “Should we open the road?”

Second Policeman: “We can’t.”

First Policeman: “Why not?”

Second Policeman: “He might come.”

(Silence settles in again, heavier this time.)

First Policeman: “Will we still be here tomorrow?”

Second Policeman: “If he doesn’t come today.”

First Policeman: “We will wait tomorrow?”

(They continue staring at the road as the stage slowly darkens. The sirens start again, faint, distant, unnecessary.)

[Leonid Ragozin @leonidragozin]

The motto of Soviet journalism was “turning your pen into a bayonet”, but Julian Röpcke goes even further by leaving the Bild and joining a drone company he won’t name because it’s too secret. A more honest way of war profiteering than previously, hence laudable.

[Tariq Ali @TariqAli_News]

Can German political culture ever recover? Shame on Tagespiegle!

[Ilhan Niaz @IlhanNiaz]

Pakistan being only mildly insulted in the headline after halting WW3 by this imperialist rag is quite the achievement - what a canny troubled country Pakistan is! One might even call it uncanny in some ways!

[Dr. Brahma Chellaney @Chellaney]

The 1956 Suez Crisis is widely regarded as the moment Britain’s global primacy came to an end. The question now is whether Trump’s Iran war debacle marks America’s own Suez moment. Even @nytimes has raised the possibility that this episode marks “the waning of American power and credibility in the world.” https://t.co/mkXOvAgD3A

[Mushahid Hussain Sayed @Mushahid]

Pakistan is doing Right by helping our UAE brothers in distress who badly need back the $ 3.5 billion loan they provided Pakistan; after all, UAE is already heavily committed: UAE promised President Trump $ 1.4 trillion + proactive role in the Sudan & Yemen! Just a piece of brotherly advice: they better watch their backs as 4.3 million of 10 million UAE population is Indian, given India’s expansionist ‘Akhand Bharat’ (Greater India) designs in the region!

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

A desperate Germany is begging China to bail it out of a war that Germany - with its mindless hawkishness and blind deference to Israel - has helped bring about. Sad.

[Ian Proud @proud_diplomat]

Calling Iran 'reckless' is a bit like criticising a rape victim for scratching the face of their attacker.

[f.luebberding @luebberding]

Das ist der europäische Trumpismus. Trump hat mit seiner Politik der brutalen Rücksichtslosigkeit die Institutionen des Westens zerstört, die auf Kooperation und vereinbarten Verfahren beruhen. In Ungarn wird gewählt und das Ergebnis haben wir zu akzeptieren. Aber in Brüssel macht man daraus einen geopolitischen Konflikt, der aus Ungarn ein Schlachtfeld im Krieg gegen Russland gemacht hat. Das liegt allein daran, dass man nicht bereit ist, die vertraglich vereinbarten Regeln und Grenzen einer gemeinsamen Außenpolitik zu akzeptieren, weil ihnen Ungarn und die Slowakei nicht zustimmen. Schon in Rumänien nutzte man die Lüge, um reguläre Wahlen zu annullieren. Ob die Ungarn Orban wiederwählen oder nicht, ist allein Sache der Ungarn. Es ist nicht die Aufgabe eines Brüsseler neoautoritären Trumpismus, das zu verhindern. Der macht noch nicht einmal vor einem Journalisten wie @hussedogru halt dessen Familie die Lebensgrundlagen entzogen werden - und darauf ist man in Brüssel sogar noch Stolz. Wir sind nicht besser als Trump, sondern in dem Fall sogar schlechter. In den USA hat es Trump noch nicht gewagt, offen Verfassungsbruch zu begehen. Bei uns sind wir schon einen Schritt weiter.

[Carl Zha @CarlZha]

Every accusation is a confession

[Moeed W. Yusuf @YusufMoeed]

I don’t use social media to pontificate but this needs to be said.

If no off-ramp is found within the next week, history will write of this Middle East conflict as WWIII. Very soon, it will resemble a global conflict in terms of the number of countries involved, the intensity of violence, and the spread of its absolutely catastrophic consequences. Those who can must prevent this from happening.