“It is hard to imagine that even nuclear strikes will allow Russia to break Ukraine’s will to resist,” they wrote on September 7. Mykhailo Zabrodskyi warned there is a “direct threat” of Russia using nuclear weapons. NOTE: Items posted to the WCN Blog Pages are the opinions of the writer, and do not necessarily the opinion of the Wilson County News, its management, or staff.The commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, Gen. A former lawyer, prosecutor, professor, and community college dean, he writes for various publications. There is literally no time like the present.īrad Wolf is Executive Director and co-founder of Peace Action Network of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Hopefully, we will unite and realize the power we have before we all are boiled alive. We have “weapons” of our own, nonviolent and effective. We have it within our means to not only “avoid World War III,” but to fundamentally change the world and create an enhanced quality of life for all. But these are ineffective against a united people informed of their real power. They then employ a corporatized political system to divert the populace with culture wars, consumerism, economic insecurity, racism, and xenophobia. That’s why they create armies, domestic militias, sedition laws, and prisons to insulate and protect them. Thinking we can continue to survive in a “fundamentally divided world” of nuclear powers who have ripped “the gloves off” is a pipe dream.Įvery government lives in terror that its people will one day realize the collective power it has and use it. Allowing half the world to starve and hoping it will not turn into a cross-continent war is a pipe dream. Doing nothing about climate change in the hope it will take care of itself is a pipe dream. The real pipe dream is turning up the heat on the world’s largest nuclear power hoping it doesn’t realize it is being boiled alive. We all must feel equally safe and secure. Changing war governments and war economies to peace governments and peace economies cannot happen in only one country.
This invoking of our inherent Power of Attorney would have to be implemented not just in the U.S. These are powerful, proven, effective nonviolent tools. At least one hundred and ninety-eight of them, according to Gene Sharp way back in 1973 (updated now to more than 350 such tactics). Like the nuclear-armed Russians, we are not a powerless frog. Massive general strikes, refusal to fund governments by not paying taxes, closures of weapons plants through work stoppages, interrupting rail and shipping of weapons through nonviolent blockades, preventing key government officials from leaving their homes through blockades, social media messaging and coordination, essentially all the tools of nonviolent resistance should be considered if we are to save ourselves. The men and women in charge have lost their ability to reason. It is time to withdraw that compliance and invoke our Power of Attorney. The degree of power they have is the degree of power we give. This Power of Attorney comes in the form of compliance given by us to them. The citizens of a democracy or an authoritarian regime hold something akin to a Power of Attorney over their rulers if those rulers become incapacitated, either physically or mentally, and can no longer rationally carry out their duties.
One must ask, is this the best the leaders of the world can do? Are we all to be the frog slowly boiled to death? “The gloves are off.”Īdding to that grim news comes a report that a powerful Russian missile exploded less than 900 feet from the reactors at the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant, narrowly avoiding a nuclear catastrophe. director at International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research group. “This is the first General Assembly of a fundamentally divided world,” said Richard Gowan, the U.N. Tensions are expected to be high between Russia, the United States and European countries over Ukraine between China and the United States over Taiwan and trade and between developing nations and the West over the allocation of development funding and other aid.” Our world is blighted by war, battered by climate chaos, scarred by hate, and shamed by poverty, hunger, and inequality. “The General Assembly is meeting at a time of great peril. Do President Biden and the Pentagon truly think Putin hasn’t realized the ever-increasing caliber of weapons sent to Ukraine?Īntónio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, said in reference to their annual meeting: While that may be an interesting (and cruel) biology experiment, when the frog is the world’s largest nuclear power the consequences are a bit more severe. “Boiling the frog” refers to a person or thing in a gradually worsening situation without any realization of the peril until it is too late.
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