Getting Close to the "Darkest Hour": Ancient Art Destroyed, Lives Lost, A Voice for Freedom Silenced
We are getting close to Mankind's "darkest hour". The Voice for Freedom, silenced in Moscow on 27 February, was that of Boris Nemtsov. It was close to midnight, he was gunned down not far from the Kremlin, as he was walking home from a radio
interview in which he had dared to take Putin to task for his
warmongering in Ukraine.
And of course Putin is behind the failed cease-fire in Ukraine. Merkel and Hollande unwittingly played their part: the agreement they brokered was faulty, the rebels quickly took advantage of the loophole and trapped the Ukrainian army.
As to the situation in Iraq, we can only watch with rising horror as ISIS and like-minded terrorist groups in Libya systematically pursue and behead Christians - putting at stake the very survival of Christians among the Muslims - and, as if this were not enough, destroying ancient art in Mosul, proving to the world that they have sunk to the levels of animals. Yes, indeed, Yeats' poem of the Second Coming, with its image of the beast, comes to mind:
The "darkest hour" is the phrase coined by Winston Churchill to describe the desperate moment when Britain stood alone against Hitler, as the Nazi forces invaded France in 1940 and the Soviet Union in 1941. The "finest hour" is perhaps one of his most famous speeches, delivered to the House of Commons on 18 June, 1940 two days after France had sought an armistice.
It is probably one of the world's greatest masterpieces of oratorical art, both defiant and uplifting.
The peroration of that speech, if you substitute references to Britain with the phrases civilization and "human rights", eerily applies to our situation today.
All we have for now are comments from the UN affiliated organizations. Two stand out:
Naturally, the Security Council also condemned ISIS, but it continues to debate the situation in Syria with no resolution in sight, because of Russia's and China's threat to block any action with their veto. Authoritarian regimes band together to trample human rights, no surprise there.
This week, in a New York Times Op-Ed aptly titled "Unshackle the United Nations", Amnesty International vigorously called for the Big Powers to stop using their veto when human rights were at stake. "2014 was a catastrophic year", it said, listing human rights abuses in 160 countries and noting that the Security Council wielded their veto power on the sole basis of "vested interests and political expediency."
The world has become more dangerous than ever, a dark place. Very sad...
He was a liberal politician, a fighter of corruption, one of the most important leaders in the opposition to Putin. As a young man, he'd been close to Yeltsin, serving as his first deputy minister and many thought that since he was Yeltsin's right arm, he would succeed him; instead, Putin, Yeltsin's left arm, the man picked to spy on several of his colleagues, was the one ultimately chosen - with the catastrophic results we all know.
And of course Putin is behind the failed cease-fire in Ukraine. Merkel and Hollande unwittingly played their part: the agreement they brokered was faulty, the rebels quickly took advantage of the loophole and trapped the Ukrainian army.
As to the situation in Iraq, we can only watch with rising horror as ISIS and like-minded terrorist groups in Libya systematically pursue and behead Christians - putting at stake the very survival of Christians among the Muslims - and, as if this were not enough, destroying ancient art in Mosul, proving to the world that they have sunk to the levels of animals. Yes, indeed, Yeats' poem of the Second Coming, with its image of the beast, comes to mind:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The "darkest hour" is the phrase coined by Winston Churchill to describe the desperate moment when Britain stood alone against Hitler, as the Nazi forces invaded France in 1940 and the Soviet Union in 1941. The "finest hour" is perhaps one of his most famous speeches, delivered to the House of Commons on 18 June, 1940 two days after France had sought an armistice.
It is probably one of the world's greatest masterpieces of oratorical art, both defiant and uplifting.
The peroration of that speech, if you substitute references to Britain with the phrases civilization and "human rights", eerily applies to our situation today.
....However matters may go [...], we [...] will never lose our sense of comradeship with the [Christians of the Orient] ... the Battle of [Human Rights] is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of... civilization. Upon it depends our own [...] life, and the long continuity of our institutions... The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.... If we can stand up to him, all [the world] may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.What a pity the United Nations continues to be bypassed: our best instrument to avoid war and defend human rights remains sadly unused, as the Big Powers take turns to block the Security Council.
But if we fail, then the whole world, ... including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if [civilization and human rights] last for [another] thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.
All we have for now are comments from the UN affiliated organizations. Two stand out:
- One made earlier by Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, a Jordanian prince and the first UN human rights chief from the Muslim and Arab world: reacting to the horrific beheadings perpetrated by ISIS, he implored the Security Council to support efforts to overturn ISIS' “ideology of violence and death” , saying there was no space for it in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No space at all.
- The other from UNESCO. Irina Bokova, UNESCO's head, condemned ISIS' destruction of ancient Assyrian art "as a deliberate attack against Iraq's millennial history and culture, and an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred."
as a deliberate attack against Iraq's millennial history and culture,
and as an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred - See more at:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2015/Feb-28/289122-unsc-condemns-isiss-barbaric-terrorist-acts-in-iraq.ashx#sthash.3VLKW3P0.dpuf
The
head of the U.N. culture, education and science agency UNESCO, Irina
Bokova, also condemned the destruction of artifacts in the Mosul Museum.
"I condemn this as a deliberate attack against Iraq's millennial history and culture, and as an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred," she said in a statement.
- See more at: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2015/Feb-28/289122-unsc-condemns-isiss-barbaric-terrorist-acts-in-iraq.ashx#sthash.3VLKW3P0.dpuf
"I condemn this as a deliberate attack against Iraq's millennial history and culture, and as an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred," she said in a statement.
- See more at: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2015/Feb-28/289122-unsc-condemns-isiss-barbaric-terrorist-acts-in-iraq.ashx#sthash.3VLKW3P0.dpuf
The
head of the U.N. culture, education and science agency UNESCO, Irina
Bokova, also condemned the destruction of artifacts in the Mosul Museum.
"I condemn this as a deliberate attack against Iraq's millennial history and culture, and as an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred," she said in a statement.
- See more at: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2015/Feb-28/289122-unsc-condemns-isiss-barbaric-terrorist-acts-in-iraq.ashx#sthash.3VLKW3P0.dpuf
"I condemn this as a deliberate attack against Iraq's millennial history and culture, and as an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred," she said in a statement.
- See more at: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2015/Feb-28/289122-unsc-condemns-isiss-barbaric-terrorist-acts-in-iraq.ashx#sthash.3VLKW3P0.dpuf
Naturally, the Security Council also condemned ISIS, but it continues to debate the situation in Syria with no resolution in sight, because of Russia's and China's threat to block any action with their veto. Authoritarian regimes band together to trample human rights, no surprise there.
This week, in a New York Times Op-Ed aptly titled "Unshackle the United Nations", Amnesty International vigorously called for the Big Powers to stop using their veto when human rights were at stake. "2014 was a catastrophic year", it said, listing human rights abuses in 160 countries and noting that the Security Council wielded their veto power on the sole basis of "vested interests and political expediency."
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| Wounded Syria girl treated at a hospital. See NPR article |
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