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In the past week, a pair of major stories have blown the doors off the dominant narrative about the Ukraine war, opening the possibility that a ceasefire — or even a peace deal — may be more achievable than previously thought.
The first comes from Politico, which reported Wednesday that American and European officials are "quietly shifting their focus from supporting Ukraine's goal of total victory over Russia to improving its position in an eventual negotiation to end the war."
The U.S. and Europe, according to Politico's sources, have already started to push Ukraine to shift toward defensive operations following a failed counteroffensive earlier this year — a shift that would focus on giving Kyiv a strong hand at the negotiating table.
The report suggests that President Joe Biden's recent comments about Ukraine having won "an enormous victory already" could be the first step in an effort to shift the narrative around eventual concessions. If the reporting is true, then the West is far more open to accepting the idea of territorial concessions in Ukraine than previously thought.
But, as Politico notes, a move toward a pro-negotiation posture will face substantial political difficulties given the Biden administration's previous insistence that it will defend Ukraine "as long as it takes" to achieve Kyiv's key aim of removing Russian troops from the entirety of Ukraine, including Crimea.
And, despite public pronouncements from the Kremlin that it's ready for talks, Ukraine and its strongest Western backers have long argued that they see no hope for negotiation until Russian President Vladimir Putin is removed from power. His goal, they argue, is nothing short of the full subjugation of Ukraine, and a negotiated peace would represent Chamberlain-style appeasement.
That brings us to the second story, which the New York Times (somewhat inexplicably) published on the Saturday before Christmas. Putin, the Times reports, has been signaling since at least September that he is ready for a ceasefire along the current lines in Ukraine.
A "senior international official" told the Times that Putin's public comments about the war are mostly bluster and that the Russian leader has shown consistent interest in pausing the war on current lines. A former Russian official confirmed that the Kremlin is content to stop the fighting as it currently stands but added that Putin is "not willing to retreat one meter."
Moscow's willingness to enter a ceasefire agreement is based on its view that average Russians, despite supporting the war effort in principle, would happily accept a "victory" that falls short of some of the Kremlin's professed aims, the Times reported.
Notably, this openness to talks is nothing new. According to the Times, Putin first signaled his interest in a ceasefire back in the fall of 2022, when a Ukrainian counteroffensive swept Russian troops back to the lines that have more or less held since. The revelation suggests that the Biden administration's long standing argument that there is no partner for peace in Moscow is, at best, misleading.
It also raises questions about what Mark Milley, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, knew when he argued in December 2022 that the war would likely not end in a decisive military victory for either side and that the time appeared ripe for a negotiated peace. Was this a clever response to Putin's overtures? The possibility is hard to ignore.
Taken together, these stories suggest that an opportunity is opening to pursue talks, whether quietly or in a more public forum, to bring this brutal war to an end after nearly two years of fighting. They are also a reminder of a common theme in modern war: No matter how long or hard you fight, you almost never achieve all of your stated goals.
Of course, neither of these stories bears on the thinking of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has his own domestic issues to deal with and promises to keep. Of particular importance is his commitment to joining NATO, a move that Putin had sought to block by invading in the first place.
And, while Russians may be ready for an end to the war, the Ukrainian public has made clear its opposition to losing any territory. Russia's invasion has left Ukrainians so frustrated that they've even decided to move Christmas from January 7, the Russian Orthodox date, to December 25.
Just a few days ago, a majority of Ukrainians celebrated their first Christmas in December. "It's historical justice," a Ukrainian soldier told AP News. "We need to move forward not only with the world but also with the traditions of our country and overcome the imperial remnants we had."
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
— The blockade of Poland-Ukraine border crossings by Polish truckers could finally be coming to an end, according to Reuters, which reported Wednesday that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is making progress in his efforts to settle the dispute. The main issue is the truckers' demand that the European Union reinstitute a system of permits for Ukrainian trucks entering European territory that was suspended due to Russia's invasion and blockade of Black Sea ports. Though the current regulations will likely stay in force until at least June, the recent election of Tusk — a former president of the European Council — has reportedly facilitated talks to end the blockade, which some officials now say could be over before the new year.
— Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met with Putin on Wednesday during a multi-day trip to Moscow, with talks focused on building a multipolar world order, according to the New York Times. Jaishankar's visit highlights India's unique place in international politics as a powerful state with strong ties to both Russia and the West. The Ukraine war was also reportedly on the agenda, though it is unclear if the diplomat broached the possibility of peace talks.
— Russia threatened a harsh response if the West follows through on its plans to seize Russian Central Bank assets stored in the United States, according to the Guardian. Among the options for retaliation are seizures of Western assets under Russian control or even a full breakdown in relations between Washington and Moscow.
— The Kremlin lashed out at U.S. claims that Russia rejected a prisoner swap, arguing that talks are "extremely delicate" and that a resolution to the issue could be "hampered by being actively discussed in public," according to Reuters. The comments confirm that talks are ongoing to secure the release of ex-Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, both of whom the U.S. government considers wrongfully detained. The U.S. envoy for hostage negotiations told PBS that the U.S. is in frequent contact with both men and their families, adding that he hopes to "get them both at the same time."
U.S. State Department news:The State Department did not hold a press briefing this week.

The Biden administration's foreign policy record in 2023 won't give the president much to boast about in next year's election. The U.S. is even more overstretched at the end of 2023 than it was at the beginning, and the president has had very few policy successes. For most of the year, there weren't any major debacles, but that changed over the last two months as the president gave the Israeli government a blank check to wage a brutal war in Gaza. The president committed Washington to support another foreign war in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel while the conflict in Ukraine settled into a stalemate. Even though the U.S. was under no obligation to support this war, the president made a point of turning it into one of his signature policies and linked it closely with support for Ukraine in his public rhetoric. Biden did not, and has not made a compelling case that unconditional support for Israel's campaign is in the best interests of the United States, and the costs of that support have been rising ever since. Furthermore, backing the war exposed U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria to renewed attacks from local militias, and it has also led to increasing risks for U.S. ships in the Red Sea as the Houthis have been launching attacks on commercial shipping to protest the war. The risks that the conflict could escalate and spread into other parts of the region have been growing, and so has the risk that the U.S. could become directly involved in a multi-front war. The president's instinct to back Israel to the hilt has made a wider war more likely and it has put U.S. forces in greater danger.U.S. support for Israel in Gaza has not only overshadowed the rest of Biden's foreign policy agenda, but it has also tied the U.S. to an indiscriminate bombing campaign and a punishing siege that is driving hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians into famine conditions. The Biden administration has not only torched whatever remained of Washington's credibility on human rights and international law, but it has closely associated the U.S. with the war crimes committed against Palestinian civilians.The damage to America's reputation has already been considerable, and the damage to American interests in the Middle East and beyond over the longer term will likely be significant.The setback for Biden's own agenda has been undeniable. The administration's biggest diplomatic initiative of 2023 — the ill-advised pursuit of Saudi-Israeli normalization — stalled when the war in Gaza showed the administration's understanding of the region to be fundamentally flawed. Having bought into the false assumption that U.S.-facilitated normalization agreements between Israel and Arab clients would stabilize the region, the administration failed to recognize how bad things were getting in occupied Palestine. Like their predecessors, the Biden administration did nothing to keep Netanyahu's coalition government in check as it pursued its creeping annexation of the West Bank. Believing that the Palestinians could be safely sidelined and that their grievances could be ignored, the administration was trying to find out what inducements it would take to get Mohammed bin Salman to endorse normalization. If they had been successful, it would have meant another security commitment and more costs for the United States, so it was just as well that this policy was derailed.It isn't clear how much of a factor the push for Saudi normalization was in contributing to Hamas' decision to attack, but it clearly wasn't helpful for the U.S. to waste so much effort on trying to entice the Saudis into a deal while tensions between Israel and the Palestinians was about to explode. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's infamous line uttered shortly before the start of the war about how the region was quieter than it had been in decades reflected how much the administration had come to believe its own press releases. Support for the war has cost the U.S. a lot of goodwill in countries of the Global South, and the administration's stubborn opposition to a ceasefire has left the U.S. as deeply isolated at the United Nations as it has ever been on a major issue. The administration had earlier emphasized the importance of competing for influence with other major powers in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, but with its hardline position on Gaza it seems to have frittered away most of whatever gains it has made. Especially for an administration that constantly talks about the importance of America's leadership role, it has outdone itself in alienating and driving the rest of the world away from the U.S. on this issue.U.S. support for the war in Ukraine has been undermined by backing for the war in Gaza in two ways. First, it has diverted U.S. attention and resources away from Ukraine as the U.S. has turned its focus once again to the Middle East. It has also made a mockery of the administration's rhetoric in support of Ukraine. The U.S. spent the better part of two years extolling the importance of international law to rally support for Ukraine, and then demonstrated that the U.S. doesn't hold its own clients and partners to the same standard that it expects from other states. The Biden record this year wasn't all bad. On the plus side, the U.S. made some modest progress in stabilizing relations with China near the end of the year after months of deteriorating ties in the wake of the spy balloon incident in February. There was a small diplomatic breakthrough with Iran in the summer that led to the release of five Americans that had been wrongfully detained by the Iranian government. Unfortunately, the administration then reneged on releasing Iranian funds that had been frozen under "maximum pressure" sanctions because they didn't want to be seen as "rewarding" Iran following Hamas' attack.The administration also recently secured another prisoner release agreement with the Venezuelan government. While these were positive results, they were also hardly earth-shattering.The Biden administration had more success in working with established allies. They further developed the technology-sharing AUKUS arrangement with Australia and Britain, and they took advantage of a temporary improvement in relations between South Korea and Japan to strengthen ties with both. In both cases, the administration was pushing on an open door, and it is questionable whether either arrangement will endure, but they can at least point to these things as examples of advancing Biden's agenda. Even more than in previous years, the Biden administration's foreign policy in 2023 has been defined by too much reliance on military tools and too little effort put into diplomatic engagement. That may be one of the reasons why the public now broadly disapproves of Biden's handling of foreign policy. Both for his own sake and for the sake of U.S. interests, the president needs to make some major course changes in 2024 in Gaza and in his overall approach to the world.

Since October 7, Pope Francis has paid special attention to the war in the Holy Land. As Israeli bombs began falling on Gaza in response to an unprecedented Hamas attack, the pontiff spoke often with parishioners at the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City, where hundreds of Palestinians had taken shelter.
The pope called the church "every day to say 'hello', to ask how they are doing, and to impart his blessing," according to parish priest Fr. Gabriele. The frequent contact with Gaza's only Catholic church is perhaps one reason for Francis's emphatic stance against the war. It also helps explain why, when an Israeli sniper allegedly killed two Christian women who had taken shelter at the church, the pope pulled no punches in his criticism.
"Unarmed civilians are the objects of bombings and shootings," Francis said. "And this happened even inside the Holy Family parish complex, where there are no terrorists, but families, children, people who are sick or disabled, nuns."
"This is war. This is terrorism," he said. "May the drawing close of Christmas reinforce the commitment to open the paths to peace."
As the faithful gather to celebrate Christmas, the Vatican finds itself facing a world in crisis. Well before the Gaza conflict kicked off, Pope Francis had already taken to saying that we are living through a third world war, with battlefields spread around the globe. "This is something that should give us pause for thought," he told America Magazine last year. "What is happening to humanity that we have had three world wars in a century?"
The pope is in a unique position to fight back against this trend. In Catholic tradition, Pope Francis is both shepherd to his flock, which sometimes huddles in the world's darkest corners, and a head of state, with the backing of a seasoned corps of diplomat-priests trained at the prestigious Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome. He also has a nearly unparalleled ability to garner media coverage of his views.
Put simply, the pope is a stakeholder in nearly every world conflict, and he has the tools to do something about it.
Since his 2013 election, Francis has focused on fighting climate change, building ties with other faiths, discouraging war, and, of course, protecting Christians. These laudable goals have always been in tension, but the past year's events have strained them even further.
Ukraine is a case in point. Despite pressure from Ukrainian Catholics, the pontiff has stubbornly refused to pin all of the blame for the war on Russia and insisted that the conflict can only end through talks. "I am simply against reducing something complex to the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys, without reflecting on the roots and interests, which are very complex," he said last year.
Ukrainian bishops reacted with fury when Francis praised figures from Russia's imperial history in an August call with young Russian Catholics. The comments "are painful and difficult for the Ukrainian people, who are currently bleeding in the struggle for their dignity and independence," argued a letter from the leader of Ukraine's Greek Catholic church, which is in communion with the Vatican.
But Pope Francis has remained steadfast in his neutral stance on the war, a position that gives him more room to maneuver than those who have firmly backed Russia or Ukraine. At nearly every public audience since the war began, he has mourned the "martyred" Ukrainians and called on both sides to lay down their arms, highlighting the conflict's enormous impact on civilians.
Notably, his careful efforts to rebuild ties with the Russian Orthodox Church have also borne some fruit.
The Holy See has led an initiative to swap noncombatant prisoners via a winding backchannel, according to the Washington Post. First, Ukrainian officials pass on lists of prisoners to the papal nuncio (the Catholic equivalent of an ambassador) in Kyiv, who then forwards them to the Vatican. Then, the Holy See sends the documents along to the Russian Orthodox Church, whose leader, Patriarch Kirill, personally delivers them to the Kremlin. This effort has resulted in several prisoner swaps.
The pope's more ambitious project — facilitating talks to end the war — has been less successful. In May, Francis appointed Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi as his "peace envoy" for Ukraine. Zuppi, who helped end a civil war in Mozambique in 1992, quickly set off on trips to Ukraine and Russia before a July stopover to the United States, where he met with President Joe Biden for two hours.
Zuppi scored a notable victory for papal diplomacy in September, when he visited Beijing and secured a high-level meeting with a Chinese official — "the first-ever meeting in the Chinese capital between the Holy See and a senior Chinese official," as Alejandro Reyes recently noted in RS. With a new cold war brewing, the Vatican has managed to maintain or even improve ties with each of the world's great powers.
Recognizing that peace talks remain far off, Zuppi has pivoted to focus on the repatriation of Ukrainian children who have been taken from their families and resettled in Russia. As the Pillar has reported, Francis's peace envoy has signaled that there is some momentum on this front. "Progress is slow, but something is moving," Zuppi said last month.
Ukraine, then, demonstrates both the extent of and limits on the pope's ability to affect events. The pontiff can focus world attention on the human costs of war and force leaders to think about peace, but he has no real mechanism to enforce his will.
This brings us back to Gaza, where more than two months of war has left more than 20,000 Palestinians dead and much of the strip in ruins. As Israel began its full-scale invasion of Gaza in October, Pope Francis reportedly told Israeli President Isaac Herzog that it is "forbidden to respond to terror with terror."
The call apparently went so poorly that neither side opted to publicize it. (Israeli officials have studiously avoided any public criticism of the pope.) A Vatican spokesperson told the Washington Post that the call, "like others in the same days, takes place in the context of the Holy Father's efforts aimed at containing the gravity and scope of the conflict situation in the Holy Land."
Since the pope has limited leverage over Hamas or Israel, he has largely used his media megaphone to highlight the plight of civilians and call for an end to the war. Francis held separate audiences with the families of people who had died in Gaza and the loved ones of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, with each group hoping that the meetings would focus world attention on their plight. A ceasefire remains elusive.
Last Christmas, Pope Francis called on believers to turn their gaze to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. "We must acknowledge with sorrow that, even as the Prince of Peace is given to us, the icy winds of war continue to buffet humanity," he lamented.Despite the pontiff's best efforts, those winds have now swept into the Holy Land. In Bethlehem, there will be no public celebrations of Christmas this year.

It's that time of year, and despite all the budgetary drama unfolding on Capitol Hill, lawmakers have already finished most of their holiday shopping for their favorite children: Pentagon contractors. Through cryptic "program increases" to the defense budget appropriations for fiscal year 2024, most with no listed author and little to no justification, Congress has added more than $25 billion to the Pentagon's procurement and research accounts for fiscal year 2024. Based on the continuing resolution that Congress passed in November, Congress has until February 2 to either pass another stopgap measure, or pass a final Pentagon spending bill, at which point we should be able to see which program increases make the cut. If history is any indication, almost all of them will be in the final bill.In the meantime, a new database created by Taxpayers for Common Sense reveals each of these program increases, whether they fund projects that weren't funded at all in the Pentagon's budget request, and whether they fund projects requested in Unfunded Priorities Lists (UPLs), extra-budgetary wish lists that Congress requires military service branch and combatant command leaders to submit to Congress each year.The numbersLawmakers on the House Appropriations Committees got to work early, adding 479 program increases for a combined $9.5 billion. When their Senate counterparts got to work, they included 636 program increases in their bill worth nearly $15 billion — so all in all 1,115 program increases. Broken down by bill section, there were 172 increases for procurement between the House and Senate at a cost of $14 billion, and 943 for research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) at a cost of $10.5 billion. When the House version of the Defense Appropriations bill came to the floor, lawmakers added 11 more program increases for procurement, and another 90 for RDT&E, for a combined $1.1 billion.While these kinds of adds are nothing new, their numbers do seem to be growing, particularly in the RDT&E category. In fact, the number of RDT&E top-ups has grown by 72% in the past four years, from 600 for FY2021, to 776 for FY2022, to 996 for FY2023, up to 1,033 for FY2024. More troubling still is that 1,010 of the total 1,216 increases, or $14.5 billion of the $25.7 billion lawmakers have added to these accounts, are for projects the Pentagon didn't fund at all in its budget request.Are they earmarks?According to Congress, these increases aren't earmarks, but in practice, they often serve the same purpose and are not subject to transparency reforms traditional earmarks have faced since 2007.Traditional earmarks, rebranded by Congress as "congressionally directed funding" or "community project funding," support projects that fund a specific entity for a specific purpose in a specific place. This made them a favored tool for lawmakers to funnel taxpayer dollars into their district or state. But these earmarks come with rules, requiring members to put their names on them, and in the House's case, requiring members to list their earmarks on their websites. Program increases are not bound by these rules. They have no name attached (apart from amendments, which list their sponsors) and generally lack any accompanying justification. In the Senate Appropriations Committee report on the Pentagon spending bill, a section on "funding increases" stipulates that "funding increases shall be competitively awarded, or provided to programs that have received competitive awards in the past." So Congress seems to differentiate these increases from earmarks on the basis that they're competitively awarded, unlike traditional earmarks. In practice, that rationale breaks down.Next-gen earmarksOne program increase allocates $2 million for "urban subterranean mapping technology," a fancy name for tunnel detection. This increase has appeared in every Pentagon spending bill since FY2020, for a total of $17 million over five years, but there's almost no publicly available information about this project. That is other than Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) regular celebrations of funding for West Virginia-based Marshall University to research urban subterranean mapping technology in press release after press release after press release after press release, all of which were published before the funds they celebrate were formally awarded.Some adds are even more blatantly noncompetitive. In the House, someone added $7 million for "Omniblast water sensor technology." If that sounds weirdly specific, it's because it is. The Omniblast water sensor is a trademarked product, owned by a company called Advanced Materials and Devices (AMAD), Inc. It goes without saying that program increases for patented products can only be fulfilled by the patent owners, so AMAD Inc. is more than a shoe-in for any "competitive" award process. And while AMAD Inc. was awarded a contract for "a wearable underwater blast sensor" in 2022, it was the only bidder, suggesting a not so competitive process in the past.As to whether this funding, like an earmark, is meant to serve the political interests of a specific lawmaker, we can't know for sure without knowing the author. But AMAD Inc. is based in Reno, Nevada, in the district of Rep. Mark Amodei's (R-Nev.), who sits on the House Appropriations Committee. While AMAD Inc. hasn't made any political contributions to Rep. Amodei's campaigns, it did spend $150,000 on lobbying in 2022, and $120,000 on lobbying in the first three quarters of 2023, expenses paid to a lobbying firm called Cornerstone Government Affairs. Cornerstone donated $3,000 to Rep. Amodei so far in the 2024 election cycle, its first time contributing to any of his campaigns.Unjustified adds, unjustifiable secrecyAsked about these program increases, a Senate Appropriations Committee staffer pointed to the unfunded priorities they fund as a justification. But there are two problems with that argument. One is that Unfunded Priorities Lists (UPLs) are just that: unfunded, meaning the Pentagon didn't find them important enough to include in its $826 billion request. Almost by definition, items on these UPLs are non-priorities for the Pentagon. The second problem is that UPLs only accounted for about $1.9 billion of the $25.7 billion lawmakers added to the Pentagon's request for procurement and RDT&E. The staffer also argued that the Pentagon sometimes "relies upon congressional increases to keep production lines open or to sustain readiness of the military." This tack obfuscates the fact that for a lot of the funds Congress adds, it subtracts funds from elsewhere in the Pentagon budget. While the offsets for the committee adds are as opaque as their authors, the offsets listed in amendments overwhelmingly raid the Pentagon's Operations and Maintenance account. That's Congress' prerogative, but lawmakers can't raid O&M to pay for procurement and research adds and then say with a straight face that those adds are about supporting military readiness.All this isn't to say that none of these projects are worth funding. There's more than 1,200 of them, so surely some are. But with the lack of transparency for who requests and approves them, whether the funds are competitively awarded, and whether they align with any cogent national security strategy, who's to say? If lawmakers think cramming another $25 billion for procurement and research into a $826 billion budget of an agency that just failed its sixth audit is worthwhile, they should at least let us know who's adding what and to what end.

As the war between Israel and Hamas rages on, with horrifying humanitarian toll for the civilians in Gaza, the United States is continuing its unwavering support for Israel: it is not only sending Israel arms and shielding it from criticisms at the United Nations, but also boosting the deterrence against the so-called "axis of resistance," which includes Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.The U.S. moves to show solidarity with Israel are understandable. However, unless they are complemented by a credible diplomatic strategy in pursuit of a comprehensive stabilization in the Middle East, not only will they fail to bring the U.S. any benefits, but, to the contrary, they would risk entangling it in a wider regional war. To prevent such a dire scenario, Washington should, in addition to its existing contacts in the region, launch a direct channel to Tehran and seek serious talks about the future not only of Gaza and Palestine, but the broader Middle East.Since the war started on October 7, following Hamas's terrorist attack on Israel, Washington reportedly warned Tehran, through third parties, against expanding, either directly or through allies, the front against Israel. To deter Iran, Biden sent an attack submarine to the Persian Gulf, in addition to two aircraft carriers with warplanes and other military assets already dispatched to the region in the immediate aftermath of Hamas's attack.The usual suspects in Washington were quick to jump on the war's bandwagon to push for their favorite obsession: make it all about Iran. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), true to form, threatened military action to target Iran's oil infrastructure. United Against Nuclear Iran, hawkish advocacy group, painted doomsday scenarios of impending multi-front "Iranian escalation" against Israel. And others like the Atlantic Council's Matthew Kroenig fell back on a tired cliché of Iran and its allies being the principal source of all instability in the Middle East.Making the Israel-Hamas war being all about Iran not only completely denies Palestinians' own agency and conditions under the occupation. It also misreads actual Iranian policies, as opposed to the rhetoric.As usual, Tehran presents a mix of ideology and pragmatic pursuit of national interest. Top officials, starting with the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while expressing full support for Hamas, clearly emphasized that Iran had no operational role in the attack of October 7. Iran is not willing to confront Israel or the U.S. directly as such a conflict would be too destructive for it and its most prized assets in the region, like the Lebanese Hezbollah. Hence, Tehran insists that the "resistance front" has autonomy in its actions against Israel and the U.S.Another factor that the rulers in Tehran need to take into account is that the Iranian population on the whole cares far more about the difficult economic conditions in their own country rather than Gaza. With the regime hard-liners doubling down on divisive policies, such as insistence on mandatory hijabs for women, the gap between the establishment and significant portion of the Iranian population is growing. Since the commitment to Palestine is one of the Islamic Republic's enduring identity badges, it is not surprising that a growing disaffection with the system translates into a weaker support for Iran's involvement in what many Iranians consider a foreign conflict.The fact that Iran is compelled to act, so far, in a restrained fashion, opens a window of opportunity for some bold, creative diplomacy on the U.S. side. A true diplomatic effort should go far beyond sending warnings to Tehran through third parties like Qatar, Oman, or Iraq. It should include direct talks not only about how to end the war in Gaza, but also the outlines of a broader order in the Middle East.Given the entrenched enmity between the U.S. and Iran, it may seem like a tall order. Yet, as international relations scholar Stephen Walt reminds us, some of the roots of the current situation could be traced to the Madrid peace conference on the Middle East in 1991 and subsequent Oslo agreements on Palestine. While crediting then-President George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state James Baker with a serious effort to bring peace to the Middle East, Walt points to a fatal flaw of the Madrid/Oslo process: the exclusion of Iran and the whole "rejectionist" front from the discussions, which only incentivized Iran to act as a spoiler against a regional order that was being shaped explicitly against its interests.Importantly, that happened at a time when Iran, exhausted by the long, brutal war with Iraq and under the pragmatic presidency of Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani was showing signs of moderation and willingness to re-engage with the U.S. Rebuffed, Iran turned to Islamic Jihad and other extremist Palestinian groups that contributed to a collapse of the peace process.As the U.S. and its allies ponder their next steps, they should avoid repeating the same fatal mistake. The costs of non-relationship between Washington and Tehran are already highlighted by the almost daily attacks by the Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq on U.S. military assets in those countries. The U.S. retaliates in what it claims to be "self-defense strikes" against Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In the absence of a meaningful diplomatic track and de-escalation mechanisms, these exchanges could easily spiral out of control and lead to a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Iran.In such a scenario the U.S. would have little regional support as the Arab and Islamic world is focused on ending Israel's war in Palestine, not joining a new one against Iran. It is highly meaningful that it was the war in Gaza that provided the context for the first visit of Iran's president Ebrahim Raisi to Saudi Arabia after years of hostility — for a joint meeting of the League of Arab States and Organization Islamic Conference. A handshake between Raisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman in Riyadh would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.The U.S. should encourage these regional reconnections and establish its own direct dialogue with Iran. The alternative — dividing the region neatly into the moderates (such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Jordan) and pariahs (Iran and its allies and proxies) — has been tried and failed abysmally. The consequences of this failure are being tragically played out in Gaza. Establishing direct talks with Iran will not solve all of the region's problems. It may also carry domestic political risks for Biden in the pre-election year. But doubling down on the strategy of exclusion of Iran from any solution in Gaza and future security configuration in the Middle East is guaranteed to perpetuate the cycles of violence in the region.

Western officials are starting to broach the idea of peace talks with Russia as the situation on the ground in Ukraine has devolved into a stalemate, according to a major new report from NBC News.American and European diplomats reportedly used a recent round of talks in Malta to encourage Ukraine to consider what concessions it may be willing to make — a significant shift from the public messaging around the summit, which was largely framed as an opportunity to build support for Ukraine's maximalist peace plan.Officials are now privately referring to the situation on the ground as a stalemate, and some "have privately said Ukraine likely only has until the end of the year or shortly thereafter before more urgent discussions about peace negotiations should begin," the report notes.A State Department spokesperson denied NBC's reporting on Tuesday, reiterating the administration line that "nothing should happen about Ukraine without Ukraine" and saying that the U.S. is "not aware of any conversations with Ukraine about negotiations outside of the peace formula structure that you've already seen a number of engagements take place on."The news comes at a difficult time for Ukraine as the world's attention has largely turned toward Israel and Palestine, where weeks of intense fighting has left Gaza in a humanitarian disaster. The West's differing reactions to the two conflicts have further complicated efforts to bolster Global South support for Ukraine.In the United States, President Joe Biden is now attempting to link $14.3 billion in aid for Israel to an additional $61.4 billion in funding for Ukraine, a move that House Republicans have so far rejected. The chances that there will be a gap in American funding for Kyiv have continued to grow as a potential government shutdown looms later this month.And in Europe, many leaders have begun to move away from full-throated support for Ukraine given the stalling efforts on the battlefield and the economic impact on the continent. Even Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has staked out a distinctly pro-Ukraine stance since taking office earlier this year, told Russian pranksters posing as African Union officials that "there is a lot of fatigue" in Europe due to the war."We [are] near the moment in which everybody understands that we need a way out," Meloni added.None of this guarantees that Russia is prepared for talks. Some experts argue that Russian President Vladimir Putin sees a chance to wait Ukraine and the West out through a war of attrition, a serious possibility given the extent of Ukrainian losses (the average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now reportedly 43 years old) and the relatively low appetite for future funding among Republicans in the U.S.In fact, Russia appears to have already leaned into this approach with its renewed bombing campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, a move that could cause blackouts across Ukraine during its often brutal winter.If Russian President Vladimir Putin does end up pursuing his advantage, Ukraine's strongest boosters may be kicking themselves for ignoring the advice of more skeptical voices, including former Joint Chiefs head Mark Milley, who said late last year that the winter could provide "a window of opportunity for negotiation.""There has to be a mutual recognition that a military victory is probably, in the true sense of the word is maybe not achievable through military means, and therefore you need to turn to other means," Milley said.As Branko Marcetic recently argued in Compact, the consequences of ignoring Milley's advice may be severe."[J]ust as pro-peace voices had warned, Ukraine is now looking at the worst of both worlds: accepting a far inferior peace deal, while having weathered the tremendous human and economic costs of a prolonged conflict," Marcetic wrote. "Most perversely, [Kyiv] has been put into this position by those who postured as its most ardent supporters, the hawks who thought of the war as a way of humiliating Russia on the cheap."In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:— The European Union executive recommended Wednesday that Ukraine start formal talks to join the bloc as soon as next year if it completes the necessary reforms for membership, marking one step closer to Kyiv joining the EU, according to Reuters. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the move a "historic step," though it does not completely clear the way for Kyiv, which will still have to convince holdouts in Hungary and now potentially Slovakia that Ukraine should be permitted to join the EU.— The foreign ministers of the Group of 7 (G7) reaffirmed their "steadfast commitment to supporting Ukraine's fight for its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity" following a series of meetings in Japan on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to Al Jazeera. The group, which was keen to swat down the argument that events in Gaza have pulled their attention away from the war in Ukraine, also held a virtual discussion with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. G7 members include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union.— Russia formally withdrew Tuesday from a post-Cold War treaty limiting the deployment of conventional weapons in Europe, drawing condemnation from NATO, which will now suspend its participation in the pact, according to Reuters. Moscow, which said the decision was a result of NATO's eastward expansion, had already stopped active participation in the treaty in 2015.— Egypt may give military equipment to Russia after reportedly reversing a decision to sell missiles to Moscow earlier this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. After the missile deal was scuppered, the report says, Russian officials asked Egypt to give back 150 helicopter engines that it had previously sold to Cairo in exchange for forgiving some Egyptian debts and guaranteeing a continued supply of Russian wheat to the country. The report, which cites three people "with knowledge of the incident," says that Egypt has agreed to the terms and the engine shipments could begin next month.— On Thursday, Russia struck a civilian ship in a Black Sea port near Odessa, Ukraine, raising questions about the safety of a new shipping corridor that Kyiv put in place following Moscow's withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal, according to Reuters. The blast killed one crew member and injured four others. Ukraine played down the incident and said shipping traffic continues "despite Russia's systematic attacks on port infrastructure."U.S. State Department news:In a Tuesday press conference, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel defended Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's decision to delay elections, arguing that Russia's occupation of large swathes of Ukraine and its continual bombing of civilian targets would make a fair vote impossible. "We also have made clear with our Ukrainian partners our commitment to supporting not just Ukraine in its fight but our commitment to support a careful and constitutional approach to keeping democracy strong in wartime," Patel said.

 I know that I should not even bother to engage with such things, but I saw someone retweet this from Christopher Rufo on X-Twitter. I think that it is revealing about two fundamental different ways of thinking about diversity and differences in a university. First, as Judith Butler states in the video posted below (11:49), that classes in women and gender studies are filled with debate and discussion. This is something that I think anyone who has been in a classroom would probably agree with. I would argue that it extends that it goes beyond gender studies to other subjects of supposed indoctrination such as critical race theory or even Marxism. Christopher Rufo's response to this is to focus not on what happens in such classrooms, he has probably never been in one, but to cite some supposed fact that faculty in gender and interdisciplinary studies are 100% left. I am not sure what he means by that, or if he is including all interdisciplinary programs, but I am going to assume that the left he is referring to is voting patterns, since that is an obsession of many critiques of higher education. 
One could say if one wanted to be generous that what we have is two different ways of thinking of what difference means. Butler focuses on the differences internal to the classroom, the debates and discussion of issues of gender and sexuality, and Rufo focuses on voting, on what happens outside of the classroom. If one wanted to be generous one could call this a differend, in Jean-François Lyotard's sense, a disagreement about the terms of disagreement itself, about what it means for something to be the same or different. That is too generous, however, it is more like a bait and switch. The right's critique of indoctrination in the classroom often uses activity and speech outside of the classroom as a supposed indicator of internal classroom dynamics. Voter registration of faculty is supposed to be an indicator of what and how people teach. Or, to take another example, a faculty members activity outside the classroom, a tweet or protest, is taken to be an indicator of their bias in the classroom. I have even had this happen to me in which my blog, this one, was offered as evidence of my supposed bias in teaching. Just to be clear, if your argument about faculty bias or indoctrination looks to such evidence as faculty voter registration, tweets, political engagement or other activity outside of the class as evidence then you have not proven what you claim to prove. That does not stop people from using this standard. I even know of faculty who have internalized this standard, who curtail their own political activity so as not to appear biased, to be objective. I have heard of political science professors who refuse to register with a party or donate to candidates for fear of appearing biased. Academic freedom and free speech are confused enough to curtail each. The focus on electoral politics also explains one of the ongoing obsessions of the right wing pundit sphere. There is a whole niche publishing market of books arguing that liberalism, Marxism, postmodernism, critical race theory are all THE SAME. I believe that Christopher Rufo even wrote such a book.  Such a claim is demonstrably false from the perspective of the respective histories, ontologies, and epistemologies of different political ideologies. It does, however, make sense on one level and that is the one thing that all these different politics and philosophies have in common is that they are not likely to vote Republican. All of these shoddy, intellectually dishonest, and often anti-semitic books about the secret history of Cultural Marxism and Critical Race Theory are all attempts to give an intellectual basis to a rather Schmittian distinction of friend versus enemy, to prove that everyone who is against you is actually part of the same conspiracy. That your enemies are enemies of freedom and rationality itself. The focus on voting registration or party affiliation also seems to carry an odd assumption that the political makeup of any activity, any institution, or group, should reflect the overall division of the US. That unless a college major, or discipline, is roughly thirty percent Republican and Democrat, with forty percent unaligned or uninterested in the whole thing, it must be because of indoctrination. It seems odd to suppose that every part of society should function as a microcosm of the society. Would one also assume that all rifle clubs, churches, country clubs, and so on must reflect society at large? Which brings me to the last assumption of this overanalyzed tweet, and that is a causal one. It is assumed that the uniformity of voting or party affiliation, or whatever other paltry measure, of a department of discipline is an effect of what happens in the classroom. That is the supposed indoctrination. As Spinoza argues, however, one of the fundamental aspects of imagination, of what we could call ideology, is confusing effects for causes. I can only speculate here, but I can imagine that maybe the students who sign up for a gender studies course, or women studies, might already have a politics that corresponds with their interest. The same thing could be said for a course on global warming or the history of civil rights or any other issue seen as indoctrination, the students are already educated, already engaged, before they enter the classroom. To put it bluntly, a party that has made ending abortion rights (not to mention in Florida the persecution of gay, lesbian, and trans people) part of its central platform should not be surprised that a women studies or gender studies course has no members in it. All of this obsession with the political make up of different major and disciplines is happening at the same time that one party is openly declaring hostility towards knowledge about science (climate change, Covid), history (slavery), society (gender), and even current events (the 2020 election). I stress open hostility, because the other party, the Democratic Party might declare that climate change is real, but that does not mean it is going to do anything about it--active nihilism versus passive nihilism. Universities seem ill equipped to deal with this assault, maintaining their standard neutrality towards "both sides" of any issue, but this neutrality towards politics on part of the institutions of knowledge is being confronted by a politics that is anything but neutral with respect to knowledge. 

The vitriolic dispute between Poland and Ukraine brings out some aspects of the West's approach to the war in Ukraine that the Ukrainian government would do well to study carefully.

The dispute originated in charges by Poland and other central European governments that Ukraine's greatly increased grain exports to Europe — a consequence of the Russian closure of the Black Sea to Ukrainian maritime trade — were flooding European markets and depressing prices for Polish and other farmers.

The relaxation of EU limits on Ukrainian shipments was supposed to allow Ukraine to resume exports to Egypt and other countries where vulnerable populations are suffering from increased prices as a result of the war. A considerable proportion has in fact gone to the EU itself instead. The EU imposed a temporary ban, which, however, it refused to lift when it expired on September 15th. Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have however continued the ban, in defiance of EU rules.

The Ukrainian government has brought charges against Poland at the World Trade Organization, and alleged that the Polish move has been motivated chiefly by the government's desire to hold onto farmers' votes in next month's Polish general elections. Speaking to the United Nations, President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Poland and other countries of engaging in theatrics and "making a thriller out of grain." Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki hit back ferociously:

"I want to tell President Zelensky never to insult Poles again, as he did recently during his speech at the U.N. The Polish people will never allow this to happen, and defending the good name of Poland is not only my duty and honor, but also the most important task of the Polish government."

Polish President Andrzej Duda added:

"Ukraine is behaving like a drowning person clinging to anything available. A drowning person is extremely dangerous, capable of pulling you down to the depths…and drowning its rescuer."

In a move widely interpreted as retaliation for Ukraine's protests against the grain ban, moreover, Poland has halted arms shipments to Ukraine, insisting that it will now concentrate on equipping its own armed forces to defend Poland.

What makes this so extraordinary is that Poland has long portrayed itself as Ukraine's greatest friend in the West, and has accused other Western governments of cowardice for not doing more to arm and support Ukraine.

The first lesson to be learned from all this is that even in countries whose populations are most supportive of Ukraine, that support will have limits when it imposes high and visible costs on themselves, and that politicians will inevitably exploit the resulting political backlash. This has implications in particular for Ukraine's chances of joining the European Union.

In the case of Poland and other former Communist states of Central Europe, their path to EU membership was helped by copious amounts of EU financial assistance. The EU's Regional Development Fund continues to support depressed areas of Poland and its neighbors. Supporting Ukraine to the point where it could enter the EU will, however, be a task of a different order of magnitude. Even before the Russian invasion, Ukraine was one of the poorest countries in Europe, with an average GDP per capita in 2021 of only $4,828 (compared to an EU average of $38,436) and its chances of joining the EU in the foreseeable future were considered vanishingly small.

Moreover, EU countries (in Western as well as Central Europe) were always fearful of cheap Ukrainian food imports. Ukraine's Association Agreement with the EU explicitly barred most Ukrainian grain exports as part of the EU's strategy of defending European farmers through its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This ban was removed by Brussels only in response to the Russian invasion and blockade. Poland has now restored it.

In March of this year, the World Bank estimated the cost of postwar reconstruction up until then at around $411 billion, and that cost will of course increase further the longer the war goes on. The whole of EU spending on depressed areas within the EU in the seven years from 2014 to 2021 was $200 billion. To judge by Poland's latest moves, it seems improbable that a future Polish government would ask its voters to pay Poland's share of such costs; and if Poland won't, who will?

The other thing to which Ukrainians should pay attention is that, as dramatized by Poland's latest actions, hatred for Russia and real sympathy for Ukraine are not at all the same thing and may even contradict each other. Concerning Polish hatred of Russia, there can be no doubt; but underlying the remarkably harsh rhetoric of recent days has been the fact that historically speaking, Poles and Ukrainians also used to be bitter enemies.
The Polish kingdom, and the Polish republic between 1919 and 1939, sought to Polonize their Ukrainian subjects just as the Russians tried to Russify theirs. Ukrainian revolts against Polish rule massacred Poles along with Jews. Political struggles between Poles and Ukrainians for control of Galicia helped undermine the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the years before 1914. After 1918, Poland annexed the Ukrainian areas of Galicia by force, and held them until they were transferred to Soviet Ukraine by Josef Stalin as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - which is why they are in Ukraine today, and not in Poland.
During and immediately after the Second World War, Ukrainian nationalist partisans massacred tens of thousands of ethnic Poles, and Ukrainians serving in the 1st Galician Division of the Waffen SS participated in ruthless German operations against the Polish resistance. In recent years, both Kyiv and Warsaw have sought to play down this history, but memories of it continue to flow very close to the surface on both sides.

This history is peculiar to Poland and Ukraine; but with regard to the United States too, Ukrainians should ask themselves how much of U.S. support for Ukraine is motivated by real sympathy for them, and how much is devoted to killing as many Russians as possible and weakening Russia as much as possible, no matter how many Ukrainians die and how much Ukraine is weakened in the process — as some statements by U.S. politicians and officials have tended to suggest. Thus Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) recently boasted, "We are destroying the Russian army without losing a single American soldier."

Other hawkish U.S. commentators have argued that it is necessary to defeat Russia in Ukraine in order to weaken China - which is not why Ukrainian soldiers think they are fighting and dying.
An indefinite war with no clear victor will indeed weaken Russia; but it will also ruin independent Ukraine — something that now appears to be a key Russian war aim; and a ruined Ukraine will never be able to join the EU. If this is the case, then Western promises and declarations about Ukraine's Western path will ultimately count for nothing. Ukraine will remain — as it was for most of history — an impoverished borderland between Poland and Russia.That is not an outcome that the West should be working towards, however much Russia may also be hurt in the process.

Politics in the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, located east of Australia, can be turbulent, with constant chessboard moves among parliamentary members with fluid party ties and frequent no confidence motions. But the strategic importance of the country to the U.S.-Australia alliance and China was a factor in the recent abrupt expulsion of the 10-month-old government led by then-Prime Minister Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau.In late August, Kalsakau lost a vote of no confidence against him by opposition leader Bob Loughman, who has for years backed China's increasing influence in the Pacific nation. After disputes about the vote result, Loughman was appointed deputy prime minister in the new government under Prime Minister Sato Kilman, who took the helm on September 4. The sudden change in administration came a year after Loughman, a former prime minister, ceded his leadership after parliament was dissolved and he avoided a vote of no confidence against himself. The snap election which followed in October last year saw Kalsakau take the top job.While the government is contending with domestic issues, such as a struggling economy, unemployment and contentious debates about the minimum wage, the main trigger for the latest political crisis was a security agreement with Australia signed by Kalsakau in December last year and due for parliamentary ratification. Vanuatu is one of many Pacific Island states that do not have their own armed forces and depend on military assistance from bilateral partners when needed.For Loughman, the unratified bilateral pact, which would increase military and law enforcement, but also disaster and humanitarian relief and cybersecurity co-operation with Australia, could have risked Vanuatu's relations with China. New Prime Minister Kilman claimed there had been a lack of consultation about the pact with ministers. Yet it was not an unknown or hasty development. Discussions about the agreement had been occurring between Australia and successive governments in Vanuatu for five years. "Australia respects Vanuatu's sovereign decision-making processes, including in relation to the bilateral security agreement that began in 2018 and was signed in 2022," Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs responded. The signing of the pact followed deep concerns by the U.S. and its allies about China's security agreement with the Solomon Islands that was announced last April.Soon after taking office, Kilman vehemently denied any geopolitical reasons for the crisis, claiming that the country had always and will continue to be "neutral" in big power contests. "We are not pro-West and we are not pro-Chinese," he said. "We adopt a non-aligned policy." Indeed, Vanuatu has a spectrum of development and aid relations with Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan, and its mobile paramilitary police force has also received support from Australia, New Zealand and China.Yet, in being non-aligned, Vanuatu was swift in 2016 to declare its support for China's territorial claim to islands in the South China Sea that are at the center of a heated sovereignty dispute and military provocation between the East Asian powerhouse and several of its Southeast Asian neighbors. And, for U.S. commentators, a high-risk site for potential conflict.Despite the Pacific nation remaining outside of any direct military involvement in U.S.-China geopolitics, it has, under some political leaders, become increasingly receptive to China's political influence. Last year, Loughman signed an array of agreements with China on technology, energy, infrastructure, health and economic development and, the year before, a multi-million dollar bilateral grant agreement on economic and technical cooperation. In 2018, Chinese funding and construction of a massive port development in the provincial, but geographically strategic, coastal town of Luganville, attracted international attention. Security experts speculated that, due to its exceptional size, it could potentially be used as a warship base.In contrast, Kalsakau has been publicly critical of China's penetration of Vanuatu's political life for several years. In 2018, he told the Australian media there wasn't enough internal scrutiny of the massive inflow of Chinese loans, businesses and influence and "he feared China was pursuing its strategic interests by showering Vanuatu with largesse and deepening its influence in the country." Last year, Vanuatu's public debt totalled 40 percent of GDP. China, its largest foreign creditor, is owed more than one third of its total external debt, which totals about $314 million and constitutes 32 percent of GDP.French President Emmanuel Macron expressed additional concerns during a visit to Vanuatu in July. "There is in the Indo-Pacific, and particularly in Oceania, new imperialism appearing and a power logic that is threatening the sovereignty of several states; the smallest, often the most fragile,"Macron said.Vanuatu, like many Pacific Island states, is a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy. But its statecraft is heavily influenced by norms of Melanesian customary governance that have prevailed for centuries. The power of traditional clan leaders in island societies is determined by their ability to acquire and distribute wealth and resources to their constituencies, rather than adherence to an ideology or party-driven policies. While political cultures in the Pacific are evolving, this legacy makes politicians particularly vulnerable to China's strategies of economic largesse and coercion which entails reciprocity.During his recent tenure as prime minister, Kalsakau attempted to broaden his country's international relations, bringing in other development partners, such as Saudi Arabia, and working for wide-ranging global support of its legal probe of climate justice at the UN General Assembly. He also took steps to reform Vanuatu's controversial citizenship-selling program in response to security concerns by the EU which has had a visa waiver arrangement with the nation.There is no doubt that Pacific Island leaders are opposed to being parties in the regional U.S.-China rivalry and are reasserting their rights of sovereignty above all else. At a meeting in August of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, an inter-governmental organization of southwest Pacific Island states, leaders emphasized their refusal to take sides in geopolitical battles.But regional analysts also point to Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Samoa being located on a key geographical axis, which is crucial to maritime access into and across the Pacific Ocean by the U.S., Australia and China.Yet, despite the political upheaval, the new prime minister has not dismissed closer security ties with Australia; only that the pending agreement won't be ratified in its current form. "My view would be to revisit the agreement with both sides, the Australians and the Vanuatu government, and see if there's any sticking points and then address that," Kilman was quoted on September 4.Some Australian strategists support Vanuatu's greater scrutiny of the pact, claiming that it is a sign of democratic processes at work. But, in terms of a timeline, it is unlikely to be an immediate priority for the new leadership.

Last week saw former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin retire from politics after a poor election showing, and join the Tony Blair Institute, where she will be "advising political leaders on their reform programs." The news raised some eyebrows for several reasons.For one, former British Prime Minister Blair's long history of advising authoritarians for money, as well as the Institute's own funding from the Saudi government, already sits awkwardly with the non-profit's original rationale of at "articulat[ing] a vision of liberal democracy that can garner substantial support," as well as "progressive values." Also there is Blair's leading role in the invasion of Iraq, which sits squarely at odds with Marin's hawkishness on Russian President Vladimir Putin's similarly illegal and disastrous invasion of Ukraine. Over her tenure, Marin rejected U.S. President Joe Biden's suggestion of giving Putin an "off-ramp" to end the war, offered to transfer fighter jets to Kyiv, and declared she would back Ukraine's war effort for as long as 15 years, because a lack of military victory would lead to "decades of this kind of behavior."But there's also the fact that Blair's institute was until recently at least partly funded by sanctioned Russian billionaire Moshe Kantor, a figure with close ties to the Kremlin and the largest shareholder in the strategically significant Russian fertilizer company Acron. As prime minister, Marin was one of the leading supporters of Western sanctions on Russia, calling for them to impact "the everyday lives of ordinary Russians," and vowing that Finland would grit its teeth through the "long winter" their blowback would cause. Thanks to those sanctions, Fins paid €5 billion more in electricity costs over 2022 and the country tipped into a recession, even if a mild winter meant predictions of blackouts didn't materialize. This was all meant to be worth it to defend the "values of a free and democratic world." Yet here Marin is, taking a paid position with an institute partly funded by a sanctioned, Kremlin-connected billionaire, and run by someone responsible for an illegal invasion of his own. Marin is not the only Western hawk who has displayed such hypocrisy. Since August, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has been embroiled in a potentially career-jeopardizing scandal over her husband's business interests, when it was revealed a trucking company he co-owned continued to do business in Russia long after Moscow's invasion began. Worse, the company was part of the supply chain providing Russian security forces with tear gas — which means Kallas and her husband were indirectly profiting off the Kremlin's repression of anti-war protesters. Yet Kallas has been a strident hawk on the war. She has labeled calls for negotiations "very dangerous," has repeatedly called diplomacy to end the war mere "appeasement," banned tourist visas for ordinary Russians while urging others to do the same, and demanded tighter sanctions while admonishing local companies to find a "moral compass" and avoid deals that would let Moscow circumvent sanctions. Thanks to those sanctions, Estonia saw the EU's single biggest price hikes for food and fuel.Others may not have financial ties to Russia, but have histories of cozy relations with Kremlin-connected oligarchs or even Putin himself. Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson took a hardline position on the war, insisting it could only end through total military victory instead of peace talks, vowing to "squeeze Russia from the global economy, piece by piece," and traveling to Kyiv to scuttle a reportedly tentative peace deal in the war's early months, preferring to inflict more military damage to Russia. Johnson, whose party received a deluge of Russian-connected donations since he became prime minister in 2019, has long been close with Russian oligarchs. He helped make the UK a destination for oligarchs to park their cash free from accountability, and had several personal relationships with them. That includes Evgeny Lebedev, son of an oligarch and former KGB spy who helped Putin win power and tried to help him win Western support for annexing Crimea. Johnson personally intervened on the younger Levedev's behalf to get him peerage in the House of Lords, despite a security risk warning from MI6. Johnson isn't alone among British prime ministers. Blair himself has engaged in hawkish rhetoric on the war, arguing for military defeat of Moscow as a way toward peace. Yet he had a close and friendly relationship with Putin when he was in 10 Downing Street, tacitly backing and admitting to sympathizing with the Russian leader's war in Chechnya, and even refusing to rule out advising him in exchange for money.In the United States, Hillary Clinton has been a vocal liberal hawk, suggesting early on that Ukraine be turned into an Afghanistan-like quagmire for Russia, and declaring the best way for the war to end "is for Ukraine to win." Clinton herself was once embroiled in a Russia-related scandal: while her office was responsible for helping approve a deal that gave Russian state atomic agency Rosatom control of large percentage U.S. uranium reserves, her husband, former president Bill Clinton, received a $500,000 speaking fee from a Kremlin-connected bank that promoted the stock of the Canadian mining company being purchased by the Russian firm.Putin, whom Clinton visited at his home on the trip, personally thanked Clinton for the speech. Back in 2006, he himself lamented that, even as he expressed unease about Putin's authoritarianism, the U.S. government was being too critical of the Russian leader. Even some ultra-hawkish columnists once started out with far less strident positions on Putin. Atlantic columnist Anne Applebaum, who recently wrote that "even the worst successor imaginable, even the bloodiest general or most rabid propagandist, will immediately be preferable to Putin," once wrote about the Russian leader's "bold and unexpected decision" to ally himself with the United States after September 11 and argued that the Russian military's friendliness with U.S. adversaries and Putin's disinterest in a free press didn't mean "we shouldn't cooperate with Russia." Chess champion Garry Kasporov, who recently all but accused Biden and his team of being in cahoots with Putin for being nominally open to the idea of negotiating, once called Putin and his coterie "people with whom the West could do business," and explicitly justified his Chechen war. Explaining that the Chechen rebels were "bandits" and needed to be cracked down on for the government to "win support for painful economic reforms," he urged the West to "not demand that Mr. Putin immediately halt the Chechen operation" or threaten cutting off financial assistance over it. It's striking that at a time when McCarthyite accusations are rife in Western debate on the war and on the subject of diplomacy specifically, so many of those who have taken the most uncompromising positions publicly either have a history of more pragmatic stances, or of their own financial and personal connections to Kremlin-linked figures and Putin himself. It raises the question of how sincere the maximalist rhetoric and drive for escalation over diplomacy really is, and whether at least some hawks are engaging in risky and reckless behavior they don't fully believe — perhaps as a form of overcompensation in a jinogistic climate.

Let's break out the handkerchiefs and violins for
poor old Republican state Rep. Tanner Magee, who
says too many people are holding him accountable for him doing his job for him
to do his job.

After the veto session concluded, Magee revealed
he would not seek reelection. Magee at present serves as speaker pro tempore,
the second-ranked position in the House of Representatives. Last year he ran
for an appellate judgeship and lost convincingly. This resounding defeat plus
that a new governor, almost certainly a Republican and likely GOP Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry who has clashed with House
leaders on some issues, where governors typically have influence in legislative
chamber leadership selection when of the same party, also loom as factors that
may have played into Magee's decision.

His publicly articulated reason for letting go is
that, he says, "[State legislative politics is] moving more in a direction of a
D.C. style and I don't want to spend the next four years missing my kids and
being away from family and not really enjoying the process." This very much echoes
a recurring theme from Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards,
who in his two terms typified dissent to his agenda as a divisive "Washington"
politics while agreement with it denoted a desire to "unify" and make progress.

Magee also said that "Much of my class, people I
came in with [beginning with the 2015 election cycle], really are not there
anymore, it's dwindling down, I miss them and I am going to miss them in the
future, but it's really changed." Finally, he asserted as a negative that "[Special
interest groups] are more interested in recording how you vote, than they are
passing meaningful legislation that will help people in Louisiana, because for
them politics is just a game."

These statements rival those issued by Edwards
from time to time in the sheer breadth and depth of sanctimony and hypocrisy,
beginning with the fact that Magee participated in an authoritarian
leadership team more interested in stamping out opposition when criticized,
whether internal to the chamber party or externally from the public, than in
trying to build a unifying consensus. As one example, when Republican state
Rep. Danny
McCormick last year resisted a bill favored by Magee and his boss GOP Speaker
Clay Schexnayder
and he rallied grassroots public resistance to it, Magee on the floor
disparaged the citizen input as manufactured, as if opposition to the measure inherently
was illegitimate and possible only as fakery of some kind.

And the wistful longing to hang with the class of
2016 legislators elected with him? Tell that to Republican state Reps. Raymond Crews
and Dodie Horton,
also elected then, who Schexnayder and Magee
punished with removal of their capital outlay projects because they had
backed a move to spend fewer dollars than leadership wished this fiscal year. Magee
publicly noted that if they weren't going to want to spend more collectively on
capital outlay, then their constituents could stand losing projects.

It's all right if you're in leadership to crack
the whip to encourage discipline. But then don't go around saying you don't
endorse "D.C. style" politics because in exerting power this way you're being
as confrontational as what happens in Washington, or in any other state capitol
for that matter.

But his most offensive remarks concern publicizing
his voting record, which he sees as antithetical to "meaningful" legislation,
as if the two can't coexist. Publicizing records is essential to democratic functioning
as a vital accountability linkage, facilitating the ability of voters to judge
whether their representatives satisfactorily express their interests. When a
particular viewpoint wins an argument, it does so through convincing majorities
of its wisdom who then pass that along to their representatives, according to
democratic theory. Unless that preferred policy seems manifestly unwise,
whereupon the legislator uses his judgment potentially to act contrary to it, representatives
act accordingly in line with the public to produce "meaningful legislation."
This can't happen without information about representatives' actions being publicized.

Except that to him Magee indicates exposure of records
is a bad thing, This implies he views the task of publicizing, engaged in by an
interested public, as a hindrance to good policy-making, as if he and his ilk
are the only ones who truly understand what's best for the people and if they
could operate without their votes disseminated to a wider audience that might
disagree, which apparently threatens their ability to produce good policy if
not their very legislative tenures, then things would be better.

The breath-taking arrogance and elitism of this
claim stands out. Such a statement shows Magee very much believes in old-style
Louisiana politics, where you act like a good old boy around your constituents,
have them vote for you because they think you're a good guy and that you "care"
(regular church attendance and social conservatism are plusses), and then once
elected you have license to engage in all sorts of wasteful spending and unneeded
government control over their lives. Just as long as the people don't know what
you're doing, you can do what you think is best, and you think you know what is
best for them even if they disagree on these accounts.

In other words, beleaguered Magee simply doesn't
like it when he gets criticism for stupid votes. By the Louisiana Legislature Log voting scorecard,
he hasn't done badly in the three years previous to this, averaging over 83, or
a bit below the House GOP average (higher scores mean more conservative/reform
voting, which is what the second-ranked leader of House Republicans ought to
aspire to). But he made stupid vote choices from time to time, most recently preventing
successful veto overrides of HB 81 and HB 466, both
of which could have used his affirmative vote (which almost every member of his
party gave) s these failed by close margins – important bills for supporting
parental rights as
previously explained.

And in doing that to Magee, forcing him to wield
power with people looking over his shoulder and telling him and the world when he
made what they explain are mistakes – where to him those actions of his promoted
"meaningful" policy and prevented the opposite because of the monopoly of
wisdom he dreams that he has – is no fun anymore, the inability to do whatever he
wants without consequences of criticism or electoral survival. It's most decidedly
not a game to them, because they have to live with the consequences of his
mistakes, magnified by his leadership position.

Maybe whiny Magee is a great guy, but by his
statements he simply isn't suitable to serve in any elective office. You don't
like the heat, get out of the kitchen; nobody is forcing you to wield power. Magee
is doing so, to which people who found his abilities and commitment
insufficient to improve the dismal governance those like him have foisted on
the state decade after decade advise: not to let the door hit him on the way
out.

Jack Twyman is an intern at the ASI.Take a look at any national newspaper and, as an alien from outer space, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the United Kingdom was under siege by an aggressive foe. Constant news headlines decry the government to "Send in the army to halt migrant invasion", adding "Rescue boats? I'd use gunships to stop migrants". The Express is desperate saying "We can't stop migrant chaos", and that "Migrants take all new jobs in Britain."It comes as no surprise to say that is not remotely the case. In 2022, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) recorded the highest ever net migration to the UK at 606,000 people. The ONS also recorded the 45,746 people who arrived illegally. Of those, 25,119 would be allowed to stay in the UK as refugees. Accounting for this, illegal arrivals accounted for just under 8 per cent of the total of net migration. In 2023, as of 13th June,  there have been 9,062 illegal arrivals so far.  So what is leading the current UK government to assert that passing one of its five main targets is to pass new laws to stop small boats, and ensuring the swift detainment and removal of illegal entrants? Looking at opinion polls, the picture distorts further. An IPOS UK poll from March 2023 found that only 19 per cent of the public have passing new l was to stop small boats crossings as one of their top four priorities. Easing the cost of living, 67 per cent, reducing NHS waiting lists, 50 per cent, growing the economy, 36 per cent, halving inflation, 31 per cent, all out pace in importance for the public. Additionally, a Poll by the Law Society of England and Wales of 1,954 people in March 2022 found that almost two thirds of people said refugees who arrive in the UK illegally should have the same rights as those who come legally. However, it is still clear that a great deal of voters care deeply about the issue. Since government rhetoric has increased, and the Rwanda policy became more likely, trust in the Conservatives on asylum and immigration increased to 1 in 3 in March, up since February. POLITICO found that among 2019 Tory voters, 41 per cent see illegal migration routes are a priority. 'Why are my hard-earned taxes, in a time of rising inflation and economic uncertainty, being used to put migrants up in 4 star hotels?' voters argue. Rishi Sunak is so convinced that he claimed "stopping the boats is not just my priority, it's the people's priority." The government of course has the resources and funds available to continue allocating efforts into sustaining the refugees, but the impasse of claim processing has exacerbated the issue further. Data from The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford shows that decisions had already failed to keep pace with applications before the huge increase in claims in 2021 and 2022. This gap has only widened further, with outstanding cases awaiting final decision at the end of 2022 at 132,000 asylum applications.So there is a real issue is in processing, where slow rates have created a backlog that has created a situation where asylum processing centres are overwhelmed and overfilled. The government now spends on average £4,300 per asylum seeker per month in private-provided housing for refugees, equivalent to a £6.2m daily cost of housing asylum seekers in hotels. Last year, the UK spent £3.7 billion, or 29% of its aid budget, supporting refugees within the UK, drawing criticism from aid groups, international NGOs and domestic politicians alike. Surely there must be a better way? The obvious choice would be to train more civil servants to process the claims, but this is costly, currently inefficient, and would be a lengthy process. I propose that we procure private firms as processors, paying them per asylum claim processed. This outsourcing and privatisation will create a healthier competition and increase diligence and duty of care as the claim assessor stands to lose more than if they were in a non-commercial, government position. It will also avoid the currently concerning plans to house refugees in former military bases and so-called "rudimentary accommodation" in the words of Immigration Minister Rober Jenrick. Private firms are proven to respond quicker to market demands, and there will surely be a host of providers created overnight if this scheme was put forward. But there is still more to be done. We must ask ourselves the question why we currently prohibit asylum seekers from working whilst their claim is being processed? In an era of high job vacancies, should these migrants not be seen as an opportunity, or gift for the country? A proactive approach would see these migrants start contributing from the offset, giving the government the opportunity to recuperate some of the funds used to support them, and allowing the migrants to bring benefit to the economy. I would also propose allowing asylum seeker applications to be made in embassies abroad. Sure, there are foreseeable issues with this proposal in countries where there are a high number of prospective applications, but allowing application in France or other similar countries will prevent the need to dagerous journeys to be made overseas, and the subsequent strain on the emergency services responding the the dire humanitarian results. I am not alone in this proposal as in fact 68 per cent respondents for an Ipsos  poll of the UK public support this proposal. Ultimately, I am sureI align with the vast majority of my fellow countryfolk in not sharing Jenrick's belief  that Asylum seekers who arrive in the UK by crossing the Channel in small boats "cannibalise" communities.  Certainly he is correct that the continued uncontrolled situation threatens "the compassion that marks out the British people." Yet claiming that the protestors outside migrant hotels are a "warning to be heeded, not a phenomenon to be managed" is at best a reach. The Daily Express Editor Gary Jones recently claimed that after concerted effort by Stop Funding Hate was a signficiant factor in rethinking editorial direction around sensitive topics like the Channel migrants. This serves as a reminder how the public can exercise non-political rights to enact change and achieve a voice irrespective on whether elected representatives are in agreement. Sure, the UK is in danger of neglecting necessary action on the issue, however this is not equivalent with a mutli-million pound deal to ship arrivals to Rwanda and elsewhere, nor pay huge sums to house migrants in hotels, or former military bases. With a pragmatic approach that reaches out of government and into enterprise the situation can be more effectively dealt with, and far faster that without. Election ploy or not, securing the stability of UK society must be a priority.

A year and a half ago I published an Op-Ed article and
Blog post on the great popular revolt in Cuba motivated by economic hardship
and the lack of future prospects, aggravated by the pandemic. I speculated that
since the Army was the country's most powerful and best-organized institution, some generals might try to maintain their advantageous economic
positions by avoiding participating in the repression and seeking a reformist
accommodation. This was not the case. The week after the revolt, five high-ranking
generals died without the causes being clarified and a few months later General
Luis-Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, head of the business and financial
conglomerate of the Revolutionary Armed Forces that controls the main landmarks
of the Cuban economy, including the tourism sector, and one of the most
important men in the command structure in Cuba, also died suddenly.

Cuba had experienced in July 2021 the largest
anti-government protests since the Revolution. The previous crisis, the
Maleconazo of 1994 (the subject of the documentary Balseros, co-produced
by TV de Catalunya and nominated for an Oscar) ended with 300 people arrested.
The 2021 revolt generated 1,400 detainees, 790 prosecuted and 128 sentenced to
prison terms of up to thirty years.

Between the two crises, the Cuban opposition lost its
historic leaders. Oswaldo Payá was the victim of a probable assassination
attempt; Gustavo Arcos, whom I visited in Havana, died; Elizardo Sánchez, whom
I also met, was held captive by spies and infiltrators. Cardinal Jaime Ortega
must be in Heaven.

In parallel, the exile voice in Miami has almost been extinguished
after the death of its veteran leaders and the adaptation of the next
generation born in the United States. Neither the conservative Mas Canosa nor
the social democrat Jesús Díaz, in whose magazine I collaborated, are among us
anymore, while my friend the liberal Carlos Alberto Montaner has already
written his memoirs. The last time I went to the Café Versailles on 8th Street,
it looked like an abandoned place.

According to economist Albert Hirschman, there are three
alternatives to a political regime: voice, loyalty, and exit. As I have
described, voice has been harshly repressed in Cuba for the last year and a half. But at the same time, the economic situation has worsened, and loyalty to
the regime has diminished.

Last September there was a referendum on gay marriage and
other family issues, which could have been viewed positively given the
Revolution's homophobic record. But it turned into a plebiscite on the regime
and more than half of the census did not vote or voted against, null or blank.
In November there were municipal elections in which 40% of the census did not
participate or rejected the candidates selected by the single party. This
disaffection is unprecedented in Cuba, where in Fidel Castro's time 95% voted.
In the regime's typical response mobilization, they had to get Raul Castro out
of bed, at 91 years of age and without any official position, to see if this
would revive the revolutionary spirit. 

Hirschman explains that when the voice is eliminated and
loyalty is lowered, the only alternative is the exit, i.e., emigration. Thus,
since the July 2021 revolt, some 250,000 Cubans have left the island, a figure
far higher than the sum of all previous emigration crises.

Leaving Cuba by sea is illegal without a visa. Donald
Trump dismantled the U.S. consulate in Havana and suspended the issuance of
visas. But according to the Cuban Adjustment Act, anyone who sets foot on land,
even without a visa, is considered a refugee. Faced with the massive flight, the
U.S. Coast Guard has captured at sea and returned to the island more than two
thousand Cubans trying to reach Florida this past year. At least 100 died in
the crossing.

The other way out requires traveling by plane to the
Bahamas, Panama, Nicaragua, or Mexico and attempting to cross the Mexican
border with the United States on foot. For a Cuban with an average salary
equivalent to thirty-three dollars a month, this type of journey involves a cost
of eight to ten thousand dollars, including ransoms to coyotes and polleros
and bribes to corrupt officials. Despite all this, the number of Cubans who
manage to cross the southern border of the United States has steadily increased
to 35,000 in a month.

During the year 2022, with the presidency of Joe Biden,
the US issued some 20,000 immigrant visas. A few days ago, on January 4, the
Consulate in Havana resumed its services. Long lines and hundreds of thousands
of petitions to leave the island legally are expected, the vast majority of
young people without vital expectations.

Fidel Castro repeated several times his curse that
"first the island will sink into the sea before abandoning
communism". Posthumously, he may end up succeeding.In Catalan and Spanish in daily ARA:https://www.arabalears.cat/opinio/cuba-enfonsa-mar-josep-colomer_129_4596330.htmlCOMMENTSResumen certero, conciso y por desgracia triste, de la actualidad de Cuba. Lo he circulado en mi chat hispano-latinoamericano (aún hay irredentos que creen en la revolución cubana).Saludos cordiales.RamónRamón Puig de la Bellacasa AlberolaEmbajador…Impresiona lo que cuentas sobre Cuba, en lo que te veo te has involucrado a fondo. Yo recuerdo mis amigos nicaragüenses, y ahora veo con lo que tienen que vivir, si es que no han salido del país…Víctor Pérez DiazSociólogoMuchísimas gracias por el último articulo que me has enviado sobre cuba.Un fuerte abrazoJose Manuel BandrésTribunal SupremoTerrific article. Gracias.Alfred CuzanWest Florida UniversityTriste realidad!Pedro FreyreAkerman's International PracticeMuy difícil el panorama cubano; no hay mejor metáfora que la referida maldición de Castro que citas. Acabo de regresar una semana, entre la inflación y la depauperación generalizada…Carlos-Manuel Rodríguez-ArechavaletaUniversidad Iberoamericana, MéxicoBellísima y elocuentes palabras. Gracias por abordar este tema. No había pensado lo del vacío de liderazgo miamense que mencionas.Javier CorralesAmherst College, MassachusettsGracias, Josep, por un elocuente y triste artículo.Leandro Prados de la EscosuraUniversidad Carlos IIIAgraït . Desconeixia les actuals tensions a Cuba.Josep M.BricallBarcelonaArtículo muy interesante, como todos los tuyos, que leo con devoción. Merece amplia difusión. En los tiempos que corren, visto lo que sucede en Brasil, USA y Europa, provoca gran curiosidad lo que pueda suceder en Cuba en relación con la democracia.Oscar Rodriguez BuznegoUniversidad de OviedoEnhorabuena por lo atinado de tu texto, aunque sea un escenario lamentableManuel AlcantaraUniversidad de SalamancaMolt bé Josep! El curs passat vaig ser uns mesos a RDom i ho vaig veure d'aprop. El 10 de Febrer me'n hi torno.Joan Maria ThomàsUniversitat Rovira i VirgiliMolt bon article. Important trencar el silenci.Andreu Claret SerraEl PeriodicoMuchas gracias! Un recordatorio necesarioManuel Villoria MendietaUniversidad Rey Juan CarlosExcel·lent. Com sempre.Carlos Castro SanzLa Vanguardia

Kryzys druku – spowodowany, jak się wydaje, digitalizacją i transformacją mediów cyfrowych – stanowi jeden z problemów współczesnego dziennikarstwa. Z tej też przyczyny w ciągu trzech ostatnich lat na Ukrainie gwałtownie (o 3 mln egzemplarzy, tj. 27%) spadł obieg prasy drukowanej. W najtrudniejszej sytuacji znajdują się lokalne środki przekazu, które od 2016 roku z rąk władz stopniowo przechodziły do sektora własności prywatnej. Spóźniona reforma doprowadziła do sytuacji, w której wydawnictwa bez doświadczenia w biznesie mierzą się z poważną recesją: niektóre już ogłosiły koniec działaności, inne ledwo przetrwały we współczesnych warunkach rynkowych. Konwergencja mediów niesie ze sobą groźbę marginalizacji mniejszych publikatorów i – co za tym idzie – ich odbiorców, których głosy nie zostaną wysłuchane. Dzieje się to już w sektorze prasy centralnej, ponieważ najpotężniejsze media drukowane należą do największych spółek: Star Light Media, UMH Group, Inter Media Group, 1 + 1 Media i Media Group Ukraine, których właściciele angażują się w ukraińską politykę. Odmawia się natomiast wsparcia lokalnej niezależnej prasie. Ukraina może pójść drogą wielu innych krajów europejskich stosujących się do teorii "spirali cyrkulacyjnej". Według niej gazety o najwyższym nakładzie otrzymują więcej środków pochodzących z reklam oraz prenumeraty, natomiast mniejsze tytuły otrzymują pomoc państwa w celu zachowania pluralizmu myśli, zapobiegania zanikaniu małych publikacji oraz uniknięcia zbyt dużej koncentracji środków masowego przekazu. Projekt ten opracowano w 2016 roku, аle nie został zatwierdzony przez rząd, utrzymywał bowiem zależność gazet od władz publicznych i korupcjogenny model dystrybucji funduszy. Sytuacja niepewności jest korzystna dla władz, ponieważ pozwala wpływać na wydawców, zwłaszcza podczas wyborów. W czasie recesji finansowej wydawnictwa łatwo poddają się sugestiom polityków i dokonują nadużyć polegających na wypuszczaniu materiałów obliczonych na wsparcie wizerunkowe działaczy. Badacze mediów odnotowali 28,1% tego rodzaju publikacji w prasie regionalnej. Negatywny wpływ na sektor medialny mają również stały wzrost taryfy pocztowej za dostarczanie prasy oraz redukcja stacjonarnych oddziałów Ukrposzty, które także znajdują się w recesji finansowej. Innym problemem jest brak regulacji w sprawie statusu mediów elektronicznych, które często zaangażowane są w piractwo własności intelektualnej, co negatywnie wpływa na media drukowane. Odbiorcy w młodym і średnim wieku rzadko są czytelnikami gazet, dlatego czasopisma muszą przekształcać swoje treści w materiały dostępne online. Prasa szuka dodatkowych kanałów przyciągających uwagę czytelników w Internecie, korzysta ze stron internetowych, sieci społecznościowych, hostów wideo, różnych modeli konwergencji, rozmaitych technologii. Centralne środki przekazu – w przeciwieństwie do mniejszych, regionalnych – szybko dostosowały się do panujących trendów. Ponad połowa lokalnych mediów nadal jednak nie ma witryny internetowej. Z powodu niskiego poziomu tabloidyzacji mediów drukowanych mało przydatne jest tworzenie popularnych kanałów informacyjnych, takich jak infotainment. Ledwie w odosobnionych przypadkach wydawnictwa podejmują starania przejścia od tradycyjnej informacji do komunikacji z czytelnikami, a redaktorzy próbują wykorzystywać modele crowdsourcingu i croudfundingu do generowania treści oraz zbiórki funduszy na wsparcie i rozwój nowych pomysłów. Od 2017 roku Lokalna Agencja Wsparcia Mediów uczy kreowania nowoczesnych treści i zarabiania na reklamach – rezultatem są 23 witryny internetowe agencji, liczące sobie 130 700 użytkowników i 620 000 wyświetleń (2018 rok). Mimo kryzysu potrzeba informacji nie maleje, czas pokaże zatem, w jakim formacie istnieć będzie ukraińska prasa. Możliwe, że – podobnie jak w Polsce – będzie to już przede wszystkim gazeta internetowa. ; The print crisis – caused, it seems, by the digitization and transformation of digital media – is one of the problems of contemporary journalism. For this reason, over the past three years, the circulation of the printed press in Ukraine has sharply decreased (by 3 million copies, ie 27%). The most difficult situation is that of local media, which since 2016 have gradually been transformed into private ownership by the authorities. The delayed reform has led to a situation where publishing houses with no experience in business are going through a serious recession: some have already closed, some have barely survived under modern market conditions. The convergence of the media carries the risk of marginalization of smaller publishers and, consequently, of their recipients, whose voices will not be heard. This is already the case with the central press, as the most powerful print media belong to the largest companies: Star Light Media, UMH Group, Inter Media Group, 1 + 1 Media and Media Group Ukraine, whose owners are involved in Ukrainian politics. On the other hand, support for the local independent press is refused. Ukraine can follow the path of many other European countries following the "circular spiral" theory. According to her, the highest circulation newspapers receive more advertising funds and subscriptions, while smaller titles receive state aid in order to maintain pluralism of thought, prevent the disappearance of small publications and avoid excessive media concentration. This project was developed in 2016, but it was not approved by the government as it maintained the news-papers' dependence on public authorities and a corrupt model of fund distribution. The situation of uncertainty is beneficial for the authorities as it allows publishers to be influenced, especially during elections. During a financial recession, publishing houses easily succumb to politicians' suggestions and make abuses consisting in releasing materials designed to support their image. Media researchers recorded 28.1% of such publications in the regional press. The media sector is also negatively affected by the steady increase in the postal tariff for delivering the press and the reduction of Ukrposzta's stationary branches, which are also in the financial recession. Another problem is the lack of regulation on the status of electronic media, which is often involved in piracy of intellectual property, which negatively affects the print media. Young and middle-aged audiences are seldom readers of newspapers, so they need to transform their content into online material. The press is looking for additional channels, attracting readers' attention on the Internet, using websites, social networks, video hosts, various convergence models, various technologies. Central media – as opposed to smaller, regional ones – quickly adapted to the prevailing trends. More than half of the local media still doesn't have a website. Due to the low tabloidization of printed media, it is of little use to create popular news channels such as infotainment. Only in isolated cases do publishers make an effort to shift from traditional information to communicating with readers, and editors try to use crowdsourcing and croudfunding models to generate content and raise funds to support and develop new ideas. Since 2017, the Local Media Support Agency has been teaching how to create modern content and profit on advertisements - the result is 23 agency websites with 1,307,000 users and 6,200,000 views (2018). Despite the crisis, the need for information has not diminished, so time will show the format in which the Ukrainian press will exist. It is possible that – as in Poland – it will be primarily an online newspaper.

At the end of the 1970s, Peru was getting ready for the first democratic elections after several successive military dictatorships. However, this change of political regime was altered by the declaration of war on the Peruvian state in 1980 by the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path (pcp-sl) and in 1984 by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (mrta). The Peruvian armed conflict lasted until 2000, entailing a very high human and material cost. During that time, women in both pcp-sl and mrta broke traditional gender roles therefore they received bigger judicial, social and symbolic punishment than their male counterparts.Prisons became an essential part of the ideological, military and symbolic struggle for both organizations/armed groups and for the state. Peru was then a democratic regime, but the human rights of imprisoned people were systematically violated, as reported by numerous national and international Human Rights associations. The fieldwork was carried out from 2007 to 2009 and This work is based on the memories of 16 women who have been in prison –some of them are still inside–. After serving an average sentence of 15 years in prison, the identity of these women that lived these exceptional and complex situations was alter or transform in many different ways. Ideology became a key element to "break the penal system" and survive to it. Understanding ideology as something beyond the political convictions of a specific organization. The beliefs by which a person has been socialized and which they have subsequently made their own; It would be the cognitive universe considered as desirable and belonging. In these terms, the Peruvian prison was seen as an institution that brought two opposite ideological groups face to face: the armed organizations, which already had a political work prior to and during the conflict; and the Peruvian state, which would try to bring back 'citizenship' to those people who regretted their actions. The ideology of the Peruvian state would be the 'Peruvian hegemonic citizenship', symbolized in the Peruvian flag and national anthem. For this purpose, different categories of political prisoner were created: disassociated, reformed, independent and innocent. ; A finales de la década del setenta del pasado siglo, Perú se preparaba para las primeras elecciones democráticas después de varias dictaduras militares sucesivas. No obstante, este cambio de régimen político se vio alterado por la declaración de guerra al Estado peruano en 1980 del Partido Comunista del Perú-Sendero Luminoso (pcp-sl) y en 1984 del Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (mrta). El conflicto armado interno duró hasta el año 2000, conllevando un altísimo coste humano y material. Al quebrantar los roles de género tradicionales, las mujeres del pcp-sl —especialmente por ser mayor en número— y del mrta recibieron mayor castigo judicial, social y simbólico que sus compañeros varones.Las cárceles se convirtieron en parte esencial de la lucha ideológica, militar y simbólica tanto para ambas organizaciones o grupos armados como para el estado. Y aunque fuera un régimen democrático, dentro de estas se vulneraron sistemáticamente los derechos de las personas encarceladas, como denunciaron numerosos colectivos de derechos humanos nacionales e internacionales. El presente trabajo está basado en la memoria 16 mujeres que han estado en la cárcel —incluso algunas continúan en ella— a través del trabajo de campo llevado a cabo desde 2007 hasta 2009. Tras cumplir una media de 15 años de condena, las mujeres que viven estas situaciones excepcionales y complejas alteran o transforman su identidad de diferentes maneras. Con el fin de romper el sistema penitenciario y de sobrevivir a él, la ideología se convirtió en la pieza clave, pero entendida como algo más allá de las convicciones políticas de una organización concreta. Sería, entonces, el universo cognitivo considerado como deseable y de pertenencia, es decir, las creencias por las cuales se ha socializado una persona y que posteriormente ha hecho propias. Bajo este prisma, la cárcel peruana como institución total enfrentó dos grandes grupos ideológicos: el de las organizaciones armadas, que ya tenían un trabajo político anterior al conflicto y durante este, y el del Estado peruano, que intentaría volver a ciudadanizar a aquellas personas que se arrepintieran de sus actos. En el último caso, la ideología sería la ciudadanía hegemónica peruana, simbolizada en la bandera peruana y en el himno nacional, creando para ello diferentes categorías para designar a las y los presas/os políticas/os: desvinculadas/os, arrepentidas/os, independientes e inocentes. Imagen de portada: Ana Casamayou. Serie "Prisiones" ; No final da década de 1970, o Peru preparava-se para as primeiras eleições democráticas depois de várias ditaduras militares sucessivas. No entanto, essa mudança de regime político foi alterada pela declaração de guerra ao Estado peruano em 1980 pelo Partido Comunista do Sendero Luminoso do Peru (pcp-sl) e em 1984 pelo Movimento Revolucionário Tupac Amaru (mrta). O conflito armado interno durou até o ano 2000, acarretando um custo material e humano muito elevado. Ao romper com os papéis tradicionais de gênero, as mulheres do pcp-sl –especialmente por serem em maior número– e do mrta receberam maiores punições judiciais, sociais e simbólicas do que seus homólogos masculinos. As prisões tornaram-se uma parte essencial da luta ideológica, militar e simbólica, tanto para as organizações ou grupos armados quanto para o Estado. E ainda que se tratasse de um regime democrático, nelas os direitos das pessoas presas eram sistematicamente violados, conforme denunciaram numerosos grupos de direitos humanos nacionais e internacionais. O presente trabalho tem como base os relatos de 16 mulheres que estiveram na prisão –algumas continuam nela– recolhidos durante pesquisa de campo realizada de 2007 a 2009. Depois de cumprir em média 15 anos de prisão, as mulheres que vivem essas situações excepcionais e complexas transformam sua identidade de diferentes maneiras. Para "desmontar o sistema prisional" e sobreviver a ele, a ideologia tornou-se o elemento-chave, ideologia aqui entendida como algo que ultrapassa as convicções políticas de uma organização específica. Tratar-se-ia do universo cognitivo considerado desejável e de pertencimento, ou seja, as crenças a partir das quais uma pessoa foi socializada e que posteriormente são tomadas como suas. Sob esse prisma, a prisão peruana como instituição total enfrentou dois grandes grupos ideológicos: o grupo das organizações armadas, que já exerciam uma função política antes e durante o conflito; e oa do Estado peruano, que tentaria devolver à 'cidadania' aquelas pessoas que se arrependessem de suas ações. Neste último caso, a ideologia seria a 'cidadania peruana hegemônica', simbolizada na bandeira peruana e no hino nacional, criando diferentes categorias para designar presos(as) políticos(as): desvinculados(as), arrependidos(as), independentes e inocentes.