The philosopher and filmmaker Bernard-Henri Levy sees worldwide effects of this non-declared war on Ukraine, the autocrat aggressor pretending not to be invading and the democrat West pretending not to be defending.
Only the Ukraine cannot pretend, the battleground of the destruction.
Is the rest of the world "sleepwalking into a large conflict"? Bernard-Henri Levy was in Jerusalem last week promoting his film Why Ukraine, speaking of "a big alliance that is a real one acting on the world scene: The axis of China-Russia-Turkey-Radical Sunni Islam and Iran."
Are the Allies pulling together again? The West sends money, Eurovision gives first prize to Stefania, the Tories and the Trumpsters vie for news with the constant noise of bombing and the streaming of refugees.
Many countries rattle their neighbors with "both sides" interactions, bi-flirting with EU and NATO while simultaneously making Saudi deals for blood energy. Their Vichy governments are already in place—rigging elections, killing the dispossessed, hurting women. Protecting their own murderers, they slaughter the unarmed Colored, the Kurds, the Palestinians—the wrong Christians, the wrong Muslims, the wrong Slavs. A forgettable crisis in the Bloodlands—was it in Austria-Hungary, the Sudetenland, the Balkans, the Baltics?—a pretense of treaties, a stumbling to war. A neutral Lisbon will hide the escapees and prepare the ships. The only imaginable life is the Present, that blank Buddhist moment in which we breathe and love.
11 JULY 2022
___________________
Jerusalem Post article "What are the global repercussions of the Ukraine Russia war?"
Bernard-Henri Levy's film Why Ukraine
Kalush Orchestra's Stefania
Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands