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Editor’s Notebook

© by John Arkelian

The best of writing, photography, art, and argument – on everything from film to foreign policy.

“Ever dreamed of subscribing to a cultural magazine that doesn’t seem to be eating out of the hand of half a dozen media magnates? Something pluricultural and unassuming but nonetheless covering everything worth seeing, reading, doing or listening to for a season? Well, it exists, and in Canada to boot!”

“There is no on-line version or web site, which either makes John a dinosaur or a man of character. (I opt for the second, since the editorial team occasionally has a kind word for me.)”

John Howe — Canadian artist and co-conceptual designer on all three “The Lord of the Rings” motion pictures.

* Editor’s Note: The age of the dinosaurs has at last come to an end — with the arrival of this website!

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Artsforum Magazine

Editor’s Notebook

“Nymph” – copyright © 2021 by Pamela Williams

© By John Arkelian

The best of writing, photography, art, and argument – on everything from film to foreign policy.

“Ever dreamed of subscribing to a cultural magazine that doesn’t seem to be eating out of the hand of half a dozen media magnates? Something pluricultural and unassuming but nonetheless covering everything worth seeing, reading, doing or listening to for a season? Well, it exists, and in Canada to boot!”

“There is no on-line version or web site, which either makes John a dinosaur or a man of character. (I opt for the second, since the editorial team occasionally has a kind word for me.)”

John Howe — Canadian artist and co-conceptual designer on all three “The Lord of the Rings” motion pictures.

* Editor’s Note: The age of the dinosaurs has at last come to an end — with the arrival of this website!

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About our featured image:  Canadian photographer Pamela Williams has found inspiration for her elegant, evocative B&W photography in unexpected places – the cemeteries of Paris, Rome, Genoa, Milan, and Vienna.  There, she has found sculptures that evoke moods as varied as the imagination.  You will find serenity, repose, sorrow, contemplation, grace, and painful beauty in Williams’ flawlessly sensitive images.  Her three volumes of photography are reviewed in our Books in Brief section, where you will also find a gallery sampling her exquisite images, remounted from our hardcopy magazine’s cover story on her work (Artsforum #15 – Summer/Fall 2008)  at:  https://artsforum.ca/books/books-in-brief

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The Imperative of Defeating Aggression in Ukraine

On January 20, 2023

© By John Arkelian

“Let it not be said that the dedication of those who love freedom is less than the determination of those who would destroy it.”  (Margaret Thatcher)

There are a myriad of compelling reasons why we must defend freedom and defeat aggression in Ukraine.  The moral imperative to act is that a fellow democracy is the victim of an unprovoked attack by a bigger neighbor.  Protecting freedom, democracy, and human rights is at the very heart of our core values.  Without those core

Copyright © 2022 by Michael de Adder

values, we are nothing.  If our professed allegiance to those values has any meaning, we must stand ready to fight to protect and preserve them — at home and abroad.

The humanitarian imperative to act is the responsibility to protect those who are in mortal peril from lawless violence and oppression.  And the violence being perpetrated by the Putin regime in Ukraine could not be more wanton, lawless, and cruel.  Civilians are being targeted, countless lives (of men, women, and children) have been lost, millions have been forced to flee their homes, entire cities have been destroyed, and the contrast between right and wrong could not be clearer.  This is one conflict that has no shades of grey, no moral ambiguity.  A ruthless autocrat and his own duped citizens have inflicted a murderous war of aggression on their neighbors and erstwhile kin.

The legal imperative to act is our obligation to defend and enforce the legal tenets to which we have sworn fealty.  Engaging in a war of aggression is a crime in international law; so, too, are war crimes (such as targeting civilians or acting with a reckless disregard for their safety), crimes against humanity, and genocide.  All of those crimes are on blatantly open display in Ukraine — with the systematic bombing, rape, torture, forced deportation to Russia, or outright murder of civilians.  We expect to be free from those outrages; we must ensure and enforce that same expectation for others.  Our commitment to justice and to the rule of law requires us to act when the most sacred of laws are being shamelessly contravened.  And, there is another legal imperative.  The United Nations was founded in 1945 in order to save mankind from the scourge of war:

We have sworn allegiance to those principles, and we have a consequent moral and legal obligation to uphold them.  Alas, the U.N. Security Council is hobbled in its ability to prevent wars of aggression by the presence among its permanent (veto-power wielding) members of two of the world’s worst bad actors — Russia and China.  The United Nations serves some useful purposes; but, it generally cannot fulfil its core mandate — to prevent wars of aggression — because two of the worst state-villains can (and do) block it from acting.  The Free World therefore needs to do what the U.N. cannot — by forcefully intervening to defeat aggressors and to thwart systemic human rights abuses around the world, using its might to defend the weak when others would oppress, enslave, or kill them.  Because Ukraine is not a member of NATO, there is no contractual (treaty) obligation for us to defend it, but, that matters not one whit in the face of the other compelling imperatives that impel us to do exactly that.

The geopolitical imperative to act ought to be crystal clear.  We learned at great cost, 90 years ago, that appeasing aggressors does not work.  The only effective response to aggression is to meet it head-on with force and to defeat it.  Failing to do so only emboldens the aggressor and invites more of the same.  The West failed to respond adequately (or sometimes at all) when Putin’s regime used lawless brute force within Russia itself (in Chechnya) and elsewhere (in Georgia, Moldova, Syria, and, in 2014, in Ukraine).  Our weak responses to those acts of aggression did nothing to disincentivize Putin from ‘upping the ante’ with a full-blown invasion of Ukraine in 2022.  Defeating aggression elsewhere is therefore not just a matter of altruism, it is also a compelling matter of our own vital self-interest.  As the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said, “The war of Russia is not only the war against Ukraine.  Russia is trying to defeat the freedom of all people in Europe, of all the people in the world.  It tries to show that only crude and cruel force matters.  It tries to show that people do not matter.  The world must stop the war.  I thank everyone who acts in support of Ukraine, in support of freedom.  But the war continues…”

Note:  Our in-depth analysis sets out the moral, humanitarian, legal, and geopolitical imperatives for us to act to defend freedom and defeat Putin’s aggression against Ukraine.  It considers what the West’s objectives should be and how much force is required to achieve them.  It makes the case for not blinking in the face of nuclear blackmail.  And it posits sixteen new rules of engagement designed to defeat and expel invading Russian forces from Ukraine.  See “The  Imperative of Defeating Aggression in Ukraine” at:  https://artsforum.ca/ideas/in-depth

 

 

The Shirtless Czar Who Became a Naked Aggressor and Cowed the West

On February 25, 2022

© By John Arkelian

On February 24, 2022, the unthinkable happened:  Vladimir Putin launched a full-

Ukraine peace — Illustration © 2022 by Linda Arkelian

scale invasion of Ukraine by land, air, and sea….  Europe is at war — and not just any war, but a war of premeditated aggression. T he Prime Minister of Lithuania, Ingrida Simonyte, captured the grave magnitude of the situation:  “Putin just put Kafka and Orwell to shame:  [There are] no limits to [the] dictator’s imagination, no lows too low, no lies too blatant, no red lines too red to cross.  What we witnessed… might seem surreal for [the] democratic world.  But the way we respond will define us for generations to come.”  Surreal is the word for it.  With the appalling exception of the savage internecine conflict in the disintegrating Yugoslavia of the 1990’s, we all thought we were done forever with wars of aggression in Europe.  And yet, for months, thanks to one ruthless autocrat, we have lived with the looming specter of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, only to see those worst fears realized.

For an analysis of Putin’s autocratic regime, his war of aggression against Ukraine, and what we should be doing about it, see:  “The Shirtless Czar Who Became a Naked Aggressor and Cowed the West” at:  https://artsforum.ca/ideas/the-wide-world

No Hill to Die On: The Dos and Don’ts of Public Protests

On February 20, 2022

© By John Arkelian

No wonder many of are losing confidence in the judgment of our elected leaders, the efficacy of our public institutions, and the inclination of those with opposing points of view to engage in civil discourse.  For their part, protesters took over downtown of the national capital for a protracted raucous stay, disrupting the lives of Ottawa residents in the process.  And, on the other side, instead of enforcing existing laws, the federal government improperly invoked emergency powers in blatant violation of the terms restricting the use of those powers.

With admonitions for protesters, governments, the media, and everyone else, see: “No Hill to Die On: The Dos and Don’ts of Public Protests” at:  https://artsforum.ca/ideas/regional-perspectives

The Trouble with China

On October 25, 2021

© By John Arkelian

The trouble with China is that it is an autocratic one-party state with a world-view that is inimical to our core values.  It is hostile to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.  It freely violates treaties, international law, and the shared precepts of the rules-based international order.  It is expansionistic, seeking to impose its will on other countries and to usurp international waters.  It is aggressive, openly threatening its nearby neighbor Taiwan and relentlessly expanding its military might with the stated objective of neutering the West.  It is ruthless (and shameless) in its use of genocide, the hostage-taking of foreign nationals, heavy-handed police state tactics, cyber-crime, malign interference with other countries’ governance, the corrupting of foreign leaders, intellectual property theft, and obstructing a full investigation into the deadly COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.  It is a stranger to truth, with a regime that lies through its teeth without hesitation.  It is gaining in economic and military power, with the stated ambition of achieving predominance in the world, wresting that position away from the Western democracies….  The trouble with China is that it is a totalitarian dictatorship which is hostile to all we hold dear and intent on imposing its will upon the rest of the world by any and all means at its malevolent disposal. We should not let that happen.

Even a middle power like Canada has plenty of ways it can stand up to China, though it seems too shamefully timorous to use them.   See “The Trouble with China” at:  https://artsforum.ca/ideas/the-wide-world

With “Friends” Like These…

On October 31, 2021

© By John Arkelian

The Free World needs to be far more discriminating about whom we call allies, let alone friends.  During the Cold War, we supported any number of repugnant regimes throughout the Third World.  If they were hostile to communism and pliable to our economic interests, it mattered not one whit if they savagely oppressed and murdered their own people.  That shameful legacy continues to run riot today.  Principles, values, legal accountability, even mere common decency — they count for nothing against perceived material benefit or short-term geopolitical expediency.  Consider the case of Saudi Arabia.  Its vile regime is antithetical to all we hold dear.  It has contempt for human rights; indeed, disagreeing with that regime can be a capital crime.  It is an undemocratic tyranny; it oppresses women; it imprisons or kills non-violent critics; it wages a ruinous war in neighboring Yemen (with our tacit blessing) which has created a major humanitarian crisis.  It is beholden and allied to ‘Wahhabism,’ a harsh, hateful, and extremist form of Islam that spawned the 9/11 terrorists (most of whom were Saudis).  And, it encourages us in protracted hostility toward its sectarian and geopolitical rival Iran, when, in fact, there is little to qualitatively recommend one of those antagonists over the other.  It brazenly murdered a resident of the United States who was a journalist with a leading American newspaper.  And, it, and/or some of its agents, may have aided and abetted the murderous 9/11 attack upon the American homeland. And so we ask: With “friends” like these, who needs enemies?

See “With ‘Friends’ Like These…” at:  https://artsforum.ca/ideas/the-wide-world

The Ignominious Debacle in Afghanistan

On August 25, 2021

© By John Arkelian

Abject failure is a hard thing to face; yet that is precisely what has been unfolding before our eyes on a daily basis as the 20th anniversary of 9/11 draws near.  The complete and ignominious collapse of our long mission in Afghanistan has manifested itself with a suddenness and a gravity that are nothing less than shocking.  The chaos and panic occasioned by our hasty departure is tough to watch, awakening memories of the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.  Throngs of frightened civilians crowd the airport runway desperate to escape, a few of them clinging to the outside of an aircraft as it accelerates for take-off.  A cargo plane meant for 100 passengers is packed with over 600.  Mothers with outstretched arms lift or fling their infants over razor-wire to Western troops.  People wade through raw sewage, desperate to find a way into the temporary sanctuary offered by this last bit of territory held by Western forces.  It didn’t have to be this way.

See “The Ignominious Debacle in Afghanistan” at:  https://artsforum.ca/ideas/the-wide-world