Stephen D. Shenfield | Author and Translator
Why the Russian-Ukrainian clash in the Kerch Strait?
- Published on 08 December 2018
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Introductory note
News outlets have reported the recent clash between Russian and Ukrainian naval forces in the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov in the Russian-Ukrainian border region.
This article, which I have translated from the website of a Russian anarcho-syndicalist organization, explains the confrontation in terms of domestic politics in the two countries.
The article is accompanied by the cartoon reproduced here. As the flags indicate, the left side represents Ukraine and the right side Russia. The identity of the fighters is also marked by their facial hair -- 'Cossack' topknot and mustache for the Ukrainian, beard for the Russian. The caption reads: 'Keep going in the same spirit, idiots!' -- Stephen Shenfield
‘They’re pushing patriotism again – it means they’ve been thieving.’ This saying is said to come from the great [nineteenth-century Russian] satirist Saltykov-Shchedrin. Or maybe not: some say it is apocryphal. In any case, it is very popular among critics of the regime in Russia.
And it accurately describes what lies behind the incident in the Kerch Strait.
The world military situation
- Published on 19 June 2018
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The military situation in the world is as threatening today as it was during the Cold War between the West and the old Soviet bloc. The armed forces of nuclear powers are in direct confrontation in a whole series of regions.
The military and the environment
- Published on 19 June 2018
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The two main threats to the survival and wellbeing of mankind and the biosphere -- war and the environmental crisis -- are usually considered separately. In fact, however, the two problems are closely connected: neither of them can be solved without at the same time tackling the other.
Waste and want: Grapes of Wrath revisited
- Published on 01 August 2010
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In his famous novel The Grapes of Wrath (Chapter 25), John Steinbeck described how food was destroyed during the Great Depression:
Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground.
The people come for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges… A million people hungry, needing the fruit – and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.And the smell of rot fills the country.
Burn coffee for fuel in the ships… Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out [with nets]. Slaughter the pigs and bury them…
And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates – died of malnutrition – because the food must be forced to rot.
Letter to a new Jewish mother
- Published on 01 October 2016
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I hear that you just gave birth to your first child – a healthy baby boy. Mazel tov! I also hear that everything is going well, just as it should be. You have no cause for worry.
This should be a happy time for you. And so it is, I am sure.
Well, a happy time on the whole.
No, not altogether happy. Not one hundred percent. There is a fly in the ointment. Something does worry you, however you may try not to think about it. Now and then disturbing images intrude, unbidden and unwelcome.
