#in wartime: stories from ukraine

[bshocommons]

Many also do not see that much of the Russian propaganda aimed at depicting Ukraine as a kind of Third Reich reincarnated is a sort of displacement activity. It is, after all, Russia which is in the grip of nationalistic euphoria and whose once nascent democracy has died as people rally round its one and only unchallenged leader. Ukraine’s problem, however, is that there are indeed real unpleasant elements that give its enemies the opportunity to exaggerate their significance. All European countries have the same extremists, but the issue of their existence is not a neuralgic political one because they are not fighting wars. 

Tim Judah, In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine

[dontforgetukraine]

Evening railway station in Kyiv, Ukraine on June 12, 2024. (Danylo Pavlov / The Kyiv Independent)

Unexpected tears

A chance encounter on a train initially brought tears to the eyes of Kyiv resident Olha Hrianyk, and led her to experience grief she thought she would never endure again. Hrianyk, 63, and her husband were traveling from Chernivtsi to the capital last May when a tall young man entered their compartment. The couple noticed a very familiar and cherished unit badge on his backpack. "'Are you from the Azov brigade?' My husband asked," Hrianyk recalls. "He said: 'How do you know?'" "I told him that our son was an Azov fighter." Hrianyk's son Oleksandr helped liberate Kyiv Oblast in the early months of the full-scale war. He was then transferred to defend Mariupol, ending up at the Azovstal steel plant, the last Ukrainian stronghold in the city, where he was killed on May 8, 2022. He was 29. Vladyslav, the young man they accidentally met on the train, was undergoing training to join Azov. Some of his commanders had known Hrianyk’s son Oleksandr well: "He told us it was a great honor for him to meet us," Hrianyk says. The elderly couple and the young soldier talked until late at night, opening their hearts and sharing stories about military service and the war: "I looked at him thinking, 'Son, you’re so bright, you're so proud to be there (in Azov). What amazing young people we have,'" says Hrianyk. "In that brief time, that child became like family to me." They shared phone numbers and kept in touch with Vladyslav while he was undergoing military training in Kyiv, often inviting him over for dinner or simply to rest after being on duty. One day last September, Vladyslav's mother suddenly called Hrianyk, expressing relief at finally contacting the couple her son had accidentally met on the train and had told her a lot about. But then she delivered some heartbreaking news: Vladyslav had been killed in combat near Bakhmut. He was only 19. "We printed his portrait and put it at the fallen soldiers’ memorial (next to the St. Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv). (The portrait of) our Oleksandr is there too," Hrianyk says. “Now, as we come there to see our Sasha, we come to see Vlad, too.”

Source: From strangers to friends: How Ukrainians meet and bond during wartime train travel

[mariacallous]

This week sees the one thousandth day of the war launched by Vladimir Putin in February 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the largest European conflict since World War II, and one of the first major wars to be covered in real time on social media. Audiences around the world have watched in disbelief as the Russian army has advanced into Ukraine, reducing entire cities to rubble and displacing millions of people. For almost three years, this unfolding tragedy has been the world’s leading news story.

Few expected Ukraine to reach this week’s grim milestone. Indeed, on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the consensus was that any organized Ukrainian resistance would likely crumble within a matter days. In retrospect, it is now clear that both Vladimir Putin and the vast majority of international observers were equally guilty of underestimating Ukraine.

While their country has surpassed all expectations, Ukrainians have little to celebrate as the war passes the 1000-day mark. The Russian invasion has inflicted unparalleled suffering on Ukraine, with hundreds of thousands killed and more than fourteen million people forced to flee their homes. Huge numbers of Ukrainian service personnel and civilians have suffered life-changing injuries. For the men and women defending the country on the front lines, the physical and psychological toll from almost three years of relentless fighting has been immense.

Beyond the battlefield itself, the Russian invasion has plunged the entire Ukrainian population into a mental health crisis that will last for decades. Almost everyone has experienced some kind of personal loss or wartime trauma. In towns and cities across Ukraine, people have grown used to the daily routine of air raid alarms, bomb shelters, and electricity blackouts, all accompanied by gut-churning news of the latest Russian atrocities.

Despite the many horrors and hardships, Ukrainians have remained broadly united by a shared sense of purpose. While most people are understandably desperate for peace, there is also widespread recognition that Ukraine is fighting for national survival and faces destruction if Russia’s invasion succeeds. This has been made abundantly clear by the actions of the Russian army in areas of Ukraine under Kremlin control, with thousands of potential dissenters abducted and children sent for indoctrination to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage.

Most Ukrainians acknowledge the need to fight on, but there are growing concerns over continued international support. During the initial months of the invasion, the watching world was awed by Ukrainian courage and tenacity as the country fought back against the might of the Russian military. This helped convince Western leaders that arming Ukraine was both morally right and worthwhile. However, as the war has dragged on, grumbles over the cost of supplying the Ukrainian military have grown louder, as has the chorus of voices calling for some form of compromise with the Kremlin.

Every time Western leaders delay the delivery of military aid, the cost can be measured in Ukrainian lives. These delays enable Russia to bomb Ukrainian cities and advance further along the front lines of the war. Shortfalls in military support are also making it significantly harder for Ukraine to mobilize new troops for the army, with many potential recruits left alarmed by the prospect of being sent into battle without adequate weapons or armor.

While Kyiv struggles to convince wavering Western leaders, Moscow is creating an axis of autocrats to bolster the Russian war effort. Since the start of the full-scale invasion almost three years ago, Putin has strengthened ties with China, Iran, and North Korea, receiving a range of support including sanctioned high-tech weapons components, attack drones, ballistic missiles, and vast quantities of artillery shells. This alliance is playing an increasingly direct role in the invasion of Ukraine, with North Korean soldiers recently appearing on the battlefield.

Donald Trump’s election victory is now fueling anticipation that the war is about to enter a new phase, with the incoming US administration expected to push for a negotiated settlement. Nobody wants to end the war more than Ukrainians, of course. At the same time, there are mounting concerns that Western efforts to pursue peace from a position of weakness may lead to Kremlin-friendly terms that would end up emboldening Putin and setting the stage for further Russian aggression.

Ukrainians have particularly painful memories of the failed peace process that followed Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. For eight years, Russia refused to even acknowledge its direct involvement in hostilities, insisting instead on noncombatant status. This farcical situation made it virtually impossible to achieve any meaningful progress toward peace. It is now clear that while Moscow was pretending to engage in diplomatic efforts to end the war, Russia was busy preparing for the full-scale invasion of February 24, 2022.

Ahead of any peace talks, Ukrainians will be hoping their international allies have not lost sight of the huge costs they will face if they fail to stop Russia in Ukraine. The invasion launched by Putin one thousand days ago has already transformed the geopolitical landscape and led to the emergence of a formidable authoritarian alliance that shares a common commitment to ending the era of Western ascendancy. Russian success in Ukraine would dramatically strengthen this alliance, with alarming ramifications for the security situation everywhere from Central Europe to East Asia.

As the world reflects on one thousand days of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the Ukrainian nation is exhausted but remains determined to end the war on terms that will allow the next generation to live in peace. This will not be possible without continued international support. Putin was wrong to assume that Ukraine would collapse in the wake of his invasion. Western leaders must now convince him that he is equally wrong to believe he can outlast them in Ukraine.

[ozkaterji]

My latest episode of This Is Not A Drill is out now!

This week I'm joined by Ukrainian war reporter Illia Ponomarenko, where we discuss the Battle for Kyiv & his new book 'I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv'.

Available now on all podcast platforms!

[torillatavataan]

This year, St. Nicholas Day is special. Not only because it is overshadowed by war, but because we all are confident that good has incredible power and prevails. Because we strongly believe that no evil can ever prevail. Our children ask St. Nicholas to bring peace and victory to Ukraine, while we all make miracles for each other during wartime. We support and help each other, warm up the hearts of others with good deeds, and fill our own hearts with warmth.

This is a gift from a 14-year-old Henriikka from Finland. Since Russia’s full-scale war began, she decided to help our people in every possible way. She began knitting warm woolen socks and selling them to donate for Ukraine. At her request, one of these pairs of socks reached me. I am grateful to Henriikka and her grandfather Antti Puijola @pontinalku!

Each story like this inspires and gives strength to carry on. Especially on a day like this. Believe in your dreams and the dreams of others, believe in good, peace, love, justice, and believe they will surely prevail. Believing in this means believing that Ukraine will prevail, too.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Yale Environment 360:

It was a monumental disaster. The dynamiting of the Kakhovka dam on Ukraine’s Dnieper River just before dawn on June 6 last year rapidly emptied Europe’s largest hydroelectric reservoir. Some 14 million acre-feet of water hurtled downstream for more than 100 miles to the sea. Around 80 villages were flooded, more than 100 people died, and more than 40 nature reserves were engulfed. In the Black Sea, the flood delivered a flush of industrial toxins, land mines, agricultural chemicals, sediment, and freshwater that killed fish and unleashed swarms of algae along the coast.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, called it the “largest man-made environmental disaster in Europe in decades” — since the meltdown at the country’s Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986. Within days, his government pledged to rebuild the dam.

But now the ecological consequences of this war crime — widely presumed to be perpetrated by the dam’s Russian occupiers — are being seen in a different light. The bed of the former reservoir is rapidly rewilding, with extensive thickets of native willow trees growing. The country’s ecologists are calling for plans for a new dam to be dropped, in favor of nurturing the ecological renewal. And they argue that some of Ukraine’s short-term wartime environmental catastrophes — on rivers, in forests, and across the country’s precious steppe grasslands — can be turned into long-term ecological gains.

“War-wilding” can benefit a country still chained to Soviet-era infrastructure, they say. After the war ends — which Zelensky said during a visit to the U.S. in September could be “closer… than we think” — Ukraine could secure its inadvertent ecological gains and ensure that reconstruction puts the environment at its heart.

There is no doubt that the breaching of the Kakhovka dam 16 months ago was a catastrophe for people living downstream. Many ecosystems were badly damaged. The question now is whether and how nature will recover. At least in the 155-mile lengths of the drained reservoir, the prognosis is remarkably positive.

Ecologists initially warned that the sediments exposed on the reservoir’s bed would either turn to desert and unleash dust storms laced with toxic detritus, or else be invaded by alien species. Neither has happened, according to Anna Kuzemko, a botanist at the M.G. Kholodny Institute of Botany in Kyiv, who has made three field trips to the reservoir bed, during one of which she was shelled by Russian mortars. The river has resumed its flow down old channels. Sturgeon have made it upstream to old spawning grounds near the dam. Nourished by rich sediment, native willows have grown across the reservoir floor, with reed beds fringing water courses.

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

They’ve also turned up alarm from the United States and its allies that growing coordination between anti-West countries is creating a much broader, urgent security threat – one where partnerships of convenience are evolving into more outright military ties(..)

P.S. The West (America) was warned in time about the threats posed by Putin's regime already in the early 2000s, but the stupid Westerners chose to reduce their armies, open the borders to Russian spies and inject huge sums of money into the Kremlin's economy, even in wartime, Western strategy in Ukraine since 2014 is simple: Too little, too late, and God forbid, Ukrainian defence will become too effective...!!!

The modern West's policy is such unbelievable hypocritic bullshit...at least last twenty years! Well, you already know all these stupid blah, blah ... stories about the "new democratic" Russia, and that a communist KGB's agent in the chair of the president of Russia, it's nothing bad, no problem with mass murders, if comrade Putin gives good profits to Western business. It's not a problem for the West, if he finances terrorists, dictatorships, steals Western technology, sends spies to America and murders civilians....

It was quite possible that the stupid politicians and greedy business of Western Europe would have made Europeans almost completely dependent on Russian natural gas imports...! Fortunately, the Russians started the war much too early against Ukraine in 2014... and at least investment in the Russian dictator's economy slowed down a bit... Now, enjoy the results created by West's the incompetent "useful idiots"...who tried to make Moscow's dictator happy....and appease him at the expense of Eastern European security...

[workersolidarity]

China's push to hijack enemy satellites could be 'game over' for US, national security expert warns

Unlike the majority of journalists and commentators, I do not buy for one moment the official US media and govt's official story about the recent Pentagon Intelligence Leaks.

All this began when reports started popping up a few weeks ago about a US intelligence leak released on a discord server. These leaks purported to show intelligence on the Russo-Ukraine War, including troop concentrations and casualty counts that differed from public statements by officials.

Soon after the documents became public knowledge, the MSM media went into overdrive to uncover the leaker, literally doing the work of the FBI for them, with the NY Times and CIA news-front-organization Bellingcat tracing the leaks back to a 21 year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman named Jack Teixeira.

But how did a 21 year-old National Guardsman with a penchant for bragging on gaming discords get his hands on what appears to be high-level intelligence destined for high level officials including the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

Well, we know some things about how the US conducts its security protocols with regards to Military technicians who edit and put together intelligence for the Pentagon.

For one, it is standard protocol to investigate and monitor the various online profiles of Military service members with access to highly classified documents. This is done by multiple departments within the Federal Bureaucracy.

So I find it EXTREMELY not credible that an Airman First Class with the Massachusetts Air National Guard, with access to Top Secret Intelligence for whatever the purposes, could have been disclosing photos of Intelligence on a gamer Discord server without those agency's knowledge.

I find it far more credible that these agencies were in fact aware of Mr. Teixeira's penchant for braggadocio online and used him to release intelligence that they couldn't credibly release any other way.

The whole story was suspect from the beginning and after the leaker was revealed, it became obvious to me something else was going on here.

As far as I can tell, and this not an uncommon tactic during wartime, especially before an offensive, is that these leaks are part of a counterintelligence operation designed to mislead Russian military planners before the beginning of the coming Ukrainian counteroffensive. If I'm correct, they will likely be backed by various false telecommunications and radio transmissions designed to be intercepted by Russian intelligence.

This intelligence may suggest troop buildups in the wrong places, give wrong coordinates for ammunition depots, or it may misstate the size and direction of troop concentrations. Usually this is done in preparation for a large-scale offensive, especially, if as is the case with Ukraine, you've spent most of the last three months making public statements announcing your impending offensive.

The Russians, predictably, have spent that time building up fortifications and supplying troops in the areas they expect the offensive to come. At this point, it has become quite obvious the Ukrainian counteroffensive will be extremely costly for Ukraine, both in terms of military hardware and equipment, and also in terms of manpower, two things the Ukrainians can no longer afford to lose. The Pentagon is well aware of this and they're well aware of the likelihood that Russian Forces will go on the offensive again the moment Ukrainian troop formations are weakened, exhausted and running out of ammunition.

So what's the solution for the Pentagon?

Well if I'm right, these Leaks are designed to make sure at least some Russian troop formations are placed in the wrong places at the wrong times.

Their hope, if this succeeds, is to cut the landbridge connecting Russian-held territory in the Donbas with Crimea. At that point they will still be exhausted and running out of ammunition, but if US Counterintelligence can succeed in their manipulations and misdirection, enough troops and equipment may survive to hold and occupy the territory for long enough to call for a ceasefire and begin negotiations with the Russians before Russian Forces can go on the offensive again and retake the lost territory.

The reason I say this is because it's becoming more and more obvious that the US and NATO can no longer continue to procure enough ammunition and hardware to keep the war going beyond this offensive, and leaders in Washington and the Pentagon are already turning their attention towards China and ratcheting up tensions over Taiwan. They cannot fight both Russia and China, and when it comes down to it, China is the larger threat to US Hegemony.

And that brings me to this article on Fox and more confirmation to me that this Intelligence leak was on purpose.

Apparently, some of the intelligence leaked had nothing to do with Ukraine or the Russians at all. Some of the intelligence is apparently about China.

Specifically, the intelligence claims China is developing its cyber capabilities to include the ability to hijack or destroy enemy satellites. Needless to say this technology could be devastating to US or NATO forces ability to operate it's Forces, command the seas and defend Taiwan in close coordination in the event of war.

It seems very convenient that once again, this leak includes intelligence that, contrary to hurting US interests, actually reinforces the US narratives around China and Taiwan.

The article goes so far as to claim China is only investing in cyber and space technology in order to "disrupt, degrade and destroy US space capabilities".

The article quotes John Hannah, former Vice President and noted War Criminal Dick Cheney's National Security Advisor, as saying, "The future of warfare, one of the most contested domains, is going to be space. Space, in essence, is the new high ground. [The] country that controls space and the next battlefield is effectively, I think, got the best chance of actually winning the war,"

"If China is able to knock out our ability to see what the enemy is doing, our ability to exert command and control and communications between our own forces, it's virtually game over for us on the battlefield here on Earth," he continued.

The real goal over the coming year or two will be to wrap up the Ukraine War and ramp up a whole new one with China over Taiwan, using proxies, sanctions, preventing technology transfers, and direct confrontation on the South China Sea in an effort to contain and slow China's rise.

These Neocons in the Biden Administration just hop from one crisis to the next, crushing and destroying anyone and anything in their wake, regardless whether they pose any actual threat to the US Empire or whether they're threats are just perceived in the minds of the war planners.

[denimbex1986]

If you have not watched Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus yet, there is still time to see it in theaters. A 100-day cinema run is a rarity these days, and the fact Nolan was able to secure it attests to his clout in Hollywood. But brilliant as it is, the film is not without faults, although most will go unnoticed by regular viewing audiences and only miff the worst of nitpickers. But Poles are particularly peeved whenever our contribution to great historical events is erased from the narrative for the sake of pacing.

To set the record straight right from the get-go, this is not intended as a criticism of Nolan’s film. But it is vexing to see the Polish contribution treated like something most easily disposed of when the story needs to be simplified. Even in the old days, when films such as 1969's “The Battle of Britain” and 1977's “A Bridge Too Far” were made, Poles got slightly more respect than Rodney Dangerfield.

Nowadays, we see films such as the 2014 film “The Imitation Game,” which tells the story of Alan Turing and his Bletchley Park team of codebreakers working on cracking the Enigma code. As Dr. Grażyna Żebrowska, an adviser at the Polish embassy in D.C., said of the film, “there was an audible sigh in Polish cinemas when [its] contribution was reduced to just one line.”

But Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki, and Henryk Zygalski, who broke the code back in 1932 and whose work later allowed Turing to crack successive, more sophisticated versions of the Enigma, were absent from the film, and, after all, it is a film about Turing, not about them. Perhaps they deserve their own film?

Similarly, “Oppenheimer” is a story about none other than Robert Oppenheimer. But with so many characters, many of whom the audience will probably struggle to even remember the names of (those strange foreign names, like Teller, Szilard, Fermi, Bethe, Bohr, Lomanitz, Alvarez, Rabi, and a certain inconspicuous old man named Einstein), it just seems almost deliberate that not once is Stanisław Ulam even mentioned.

There is no point in wallowing in self-pity. If Nolan did not think Ulam was an interesting enough character to include in his picture, let him have his way. In the meantime, here is the story of Stanisław Ulam, who, like Rejewski, Różycki, and Zygalski, probably deserves his own film.

Stanisław Ulam was born on April 13, 1909, in Lviv, modern-day Ukraine, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and known by the Polish name Lwów, or Lemberg in German.

He was the son of Józef and Anna. His father was a lawyer, and the well-off Ulams were assimilated into Polish culture, which is attested to by the fact that Stanisław received a typically Polish name associated with two Polish Roman Catholic saints.

The outbreak of World War I forced the family to leave the city, which fell to the Russians before being retaken by the Central Powers later in the war. His father being a staff officer of the reserve mobilized for the war effort, the family moved around the Habsburg empire during wartime, initially to Vienna and then to Moravská Ostrava in what is now the Czech Republic. It was during that time that Stanisław learned German. But young Ulam did not only have a knack for languages. His mind was definitely mathematically oriented.

Even at a young age, he displayed a genius for numbers and would independently come up with solutions to mathematical problems he encountered before learning about how to solve them later in school. His father initially wanted Stanisław to study law and take over the family business but recognized that his son’s talents lay elsewhere, and ultimately Stanisław Ulam went on to study engineering at the Lviv Polytechnic in 1927.

But it seems that engineering was a bit too practical for him. He would spend more time attending courses in math taught by such great minds as Stefan Banach than engineering classes. Ultimately, he decided to pose himself a challenge: should he successfully solve a yet unsolved mathematical problem, he would abandon engineering in favor of studying mathematics.

After all that we have learned about him, will it be a surprise to anyone that Stanisław Ulam ultimately received his doctorate’s degree in mathematics at just 24?

Lviv was a major hub of what is now called the Polish School of Mathematics, which achieved many breakthroughs in the field during the interwar period. It was a great place for forward-thinking mathematicians, but Ulam thought it unlikely that he would be able to attain a professorship in his home country. Mathematics being a universal language, he therefore went on to lecture abroad, initially in Western Europe and then in the U.S.

Ulam lectured at Princeton and then at Harvard. In the summer of 1939, he briefly returned to Poland to collect his younger brother, Adam, who got into Brown University and went on to become a prominent scholar (philosopher, historian, political scientist, Sovietologist, and Harvard professor) in his own right.

While on their way across the Atlantic, the brothers learned of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact via the wireless and of the German invasion once they arrived in the U.S. Stanisław and Adam would be the only members of their immediate family to survive the war, while the rest perished in the Holocaust.

In 1940, Stanisław Ulam got the post of professor at the University of Wisconsin, where he also met his wife, Françoise Aron, a French student of English literature. Next year, he was also granted U.S. citizenship. With his country of birth under brutal occupation and with the U.S. bracing itself for the inevitability of joining the conflict, Ulam felt a need to contribute to the war effort, but he was turned back by the military on account of his poor eyesight (this was also the case with his brother). But he continued to seek an opportunity to work for the army, and in 1943 he was recommended for the Manhattan Project.

The recommendation came for Hans Bethe, whom you could see in Nolan’s film portrayed by Gustaf Skarsgård (yes, of the Skarsgårds).

To put it in brief, Ulam’s job at Los Alamos entailed him doing the thing he was best at, which was coming up with novel and innovative solutions on how to calculate things that were not even theorized about before. The physicists came up with the theory, and when they stumbled upon a problem, they tasked Ulam with doing the calculations.

As the project was nearing completion, some of the scientists at Los Alamos, including Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, and Stanisław Ulam, were delegated to a branching out “Super” bomb project, which would eventually evolve into the hydrogen bomb. In essence, a hydrogen bomb uses a nuclear bomb (which operates on the principle of splitting atoms, known as nuclear fission) as a charge to launch the process of nuclear fusion, during which atoms of hydrogen are rammed together with enough power to fuse into atoms of heavier elements. To realize how powerful a reaction that is, you have to do nothing more than look up at the Sun.

In 1945, Ulam was struck by a bout of acute encephalitis but managed to recover following emergency surgery, although he did briefly lose the ability to speak, and he feared that the illness could have adversely influenced his mental faculties. Reportedly, after waking up from the post-surgery coma, he was unable to answer the doctor’s question as to what is the product of adding 13 and 8, but upon being asked what is the root of 20, he answered that it was about 4.4. Ulam’s illness had also caused a brief panic at Los Alamos, one reason being the fear that in his fragile state he might spill some secrets and the other being the supposition that his condition may have been caused by radiation, although this turned out not to be the case.

In 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear bomb. Its development was facilitated by several scientists working for the Manhattan Project who were either spies motivated by communist ideas or were morally apprehensive about the imbalance of power caused by only one country being in possession of such a powerful weapon.

Yes, because what could possibly be wrong with the proposition that a balance must be maintained between democracies and genocidal dictatorships by giving the latter access to weapons of mass destruction?

This galvanized the U.S. effort to develop an even more powerful “super” bomb, the hydrogen (or thermonuclear) bomb mentioned earlier. Edward Teller headed the project, but the work appeared to be going nowhere as there was no immediately apparent method to exert enough force on hydrogen atoms to start the fusion reaction. Ever the innovator, Ulam suggested some tweaks to the design, which inspired Teller to change it even further and eventually come up with what eventually became the Teller-Ulam design (or configuration), which the two presented in a classified paper in early 1951. The first thermonuclear bomb was successfully tested the next year.

It is odd that anyone would want to compete for the dubious honor of inventing a weapon with a destructive force thousands of times stronger than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the only one who appeared to want the honor purely for himself appeared to be Teller, who went so far as to say that Ulam himself never believed in the design and merely signed the paper upon Teller’s request, thinking that otherwise no one would believe in its feasibility.

It is impossible to know the definite truth, as the documentation remains classified even seven decades later, but other people involved in developing the H-bomb credited both Teller and Ulam to a greater or lesser extent equally, and perhaps Hans Bethe put it in the wittiest manner:

“After the H-bomb was made, reporters started to call Teller the father of the H-bomb. For the sake of history, I think it is more precise to say that Ulam is the father, because he provided the seed, and Teller is the mother because he remained with the child. As for me, I guess I am the midwife.”

As for Ulam himself, he claimed in his autobiography titled “Adventures of a Mathematician”, that he believed the development of a weapon so powerful would make the war an impossibility, except if someone made a mistake.

As we know with the power of hindsight, Ulam was a brilliant mathematician but not much of a prophet. Fortunately, thermonuclear weapons have never yet been used in conflict.

And this is the story of Stanisław Ulam up to the point of the development of the hydrogen bomb. Afterward, he returned to academia and lectured at various U.S. universities. In the aftermath of World War II, Poland became part of the Soviet-dominated communist bloc, whereas his city of birth found itself annexed by the Soviet Union and incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. All of his family, except for several cousins, were murdered by the Germans during the Holocaust.

In 1976, the London-based Polish government-in-exile, which, although largely unrecognized internationally, lingered on until communism in Poland finally collapsed and it dissolved itself in recognition of the now-democratically elected authorities in Warsaw, awarded Ulam the Commanders’ Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, one of Poland’s highest state awards.

Stanisław Ulam died of a heart attack in Santa Fe on May 13, 1984, exactly one month after his 75th birthday. His widow, Françoise Aron Ulam, buried him in her own country, at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, and was laid to rest by his side when she died in 2011.

Their only daughter, Claire Ulam Weiner (1944–2020), served as a consultant when her father’s 1976 autobiography “Adventures of a Mathematician” was adapted on screen by German film director Thorsten Klein with an international cast and crew. The German, Polish, and British co-production was released in early 2020, and Claire could still see the story of her father on screen before she passed away in December of that year.

Yes, that is correct. Stanisław Ulam does actually have a film telling his story. Based on a book he himself penned and filmed with the contribution of his family.

So if you believe that it is possible to make an interesting film about a person such as a physicist or a mathematician (apart from “Oppenheimer” and “The Imitation Game”, there is, after all, “A Beautiful Mind”, the acclaimed film about John Nash starring Russell Crowe), perhaps you might want to give “Adventures of a Mathematician” a go.'

[blue-mystique]

I feel compelled to correct misinformation being spread. Please consider using the SIFT method: Stop. Investigate the source. Find better coverage. Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context. I have great compassion for all civilians suffering the consequences of war, and we need to tell their stories accurately.

TRUE: Israel cut water, electricity, and food to Gaza until Hamas releases up to 150 civilian hostages kidnapped from Israel. The humanitarian situation for Palestinians in Gaza is indeed very dire. (Source: Reuters, BBC)

MOSTLY FALSE: Israel is not telling civilians in the West Bank to hunt down Palestinians with rifles. That is inflammatory fearmongering. What we do know is that 10,000 rifles are being purchased to arm existing "civilian security teams linked to the Israel Police's Border Police" and are not just being given to random people off the street. (Source: Times of Israel)

MIXTURE: Israel did bomb the Rafah Crossing on 10/10/23, but has not bombed it since then. Rafah Crossing remains closed due to Egypt's rejection of setting up safe corridors for refugees fleeing Gaza. Egypt's president stated that Palestinians of Gaza should "stay steadfast and remain on their land." Israel did tell civilians to flee to Egypt on 10/10/23 but reversed the statement later that day. (Source: Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Reuters)

MOSTLY TRUE: Israel bombed the Rafah Crossing on 10/10/23 as a signal to Egypt that its aid and fuel trucks heading towards Gaza should turn back or be destroyed. However, OP's phrasing of "threatened the Egyptian government" is vague and could imply a response as drastic as Israel declaring war on Egypt. (Source: Middle East Monitor, Times of Israel).

TRUE: Entire families are being killed or left homeless. As of 10/14/23, the death toll has reached 2,228 people in Gaza and 1,300 people in Israel as bombing continues. (Source: ABC News)

MIXTURE: Reports that babies were beheaded remain unverified, however Hamas did behead soldiers and kill several babies. The rumor about beheaded babies originated from an IDF interview with i24NEWS. (Source: NBC News)

FALSE: OP's evidence for genocidal intent is a tweet of a video interview with a former Israeli prime minister, not a current government official, explaining that wartime means not providing electricity to your enemies. (Source: The Hill)

MOSTLY FALSE: The UK never decided to cut aid to Palestine and could not have reversed a decision that never happened. OP's link itself states the UK is under pressure to suspend aid, the opposite of what OP claims. It's actually the EU that said it would suspend aid but was forced to backtrack by member states. (Source: Telegraph)

MOSTLY TRUE: The US actually spends $3.3 billion annually in foreign aid to Israel, not $3.8 billion. In 2022, that amount was second only to $12 billion in foreign aid sent to Ukraine. (Source: U.S. Department of State, USAID)

UNPROVEN: OP's source on cancelled interviews is a tweet by one Palestinian professor. It has screenshots of three texts cancelling interviews with him: 1) No explanation. 2) Cancelled in favor of video from a Gaza refugee agency. 3) Using his pre-recorded interview. It's misleading to frame this as silencing, and there's no evidence that it's widespread. OP's claim that "Israelis tell lies unchecked" is pure opinion and contradicted by their own earlier link to a former Israeli PM pushed back on by Sky News.

IN PROGRESS: At least one Arab American civil rights group said they received multiple reports of "Palestinian nationals detained by ICE, and/or visited by the FBI" including at mosques. The situation is ongoing, so we should document how it develops so the government can be held accountable. (Source: The Intercept)

MOSTLY FALSE: Europe, Canada, and the US did not ban pro-Palestine protests. OP's evidence is an Instagram post that doesn't even say that and cites no sources either. There have been many pro-Palestine protests in Europe, Canada, and the US. Germany did ban all activity supporting Hamas specifically, which is considered a terrorist organization, but other pro-Palestinian protests are allowed such as a rally in Dusseldorf. France did ban all pro-Palestinian protests. OP corrected this part of their original post, but the misinformation has already been reblogged thousands of times. (Source: Euronews, CBC, PBS, The Guardian, Politico)

Israel has cut water, electricity and food to Palestinians in Gaza. They are buying 10.000 M16 rifles and plan to distribute to civilian settlers in the West Bank to hunt down Palestinians. They're bombing the only way out of Gaza through Egypt, after telling refugees to flee through it, and have threatened the Egyptian government in case they let aid trucks pass through. Entire families, generations, are being wiped out and left to wander the streets hoping they don't get bombed.

Palestinians are using their last minutes of battery to let the world know about their genocide and are being met with a wall of "What about Hamas? What about the beheaded babies? Killing children on either side is bad!" even though the propaganda claims have been debunked over and over again. How cruel is it to ask somebody to condemn themselves before their last words? Or before grieving the loss of their entire families? When there's no such disclaimer to Israelis even though their government has shown over and over genocidal intent? Like who are you even trying to appease? What will your wishy washy statement do against decades of zionist thought infiltrating evangelical and Jewish stablishmemts?

Take action. Israel will fall back if public opinion turns its tide. The UK fell back on its bloody decision to cut aid to Palestine under public scrutiny. The USAmerican empire spends $3.8 billion dollars annually solely on this proxy war while its people suffer under a progressively military regime as well. News outlets are canceling last minute on Palestinian speakers while letting Israelis tell lies unchecked. Palestinian refugees are being targeted in ICE establishments and mosques are already being hounded by the FBI. Europe, Canada and the US have banned pro-Palestine protests but people are still resisting. You have the chance to stop this from turning into repeat of the Iraq war.

I want to do something but there's hardly anything for me to do from Brasil besides spreading the word and not letting these testimonies fall on deaf ears. I'm asking you to do this same ant work from wherever you are.

Follow:

Eye On Palestine (instagram / twitter)

Mohammed El-Kurd (instagram / twitter)

Decolonize Palestine (website with a chronological explanation of the occupation and debunking myths)

Muhammad Shehada (twitter)

Plestia Alaqad (directly from Gaza. Many of her videos are interrupted by bombs)

If there's a protest in your city, please attend. Here's an international calendar of events:

Friday, October 13

ALBUQUERQUE, NM (US) – Fri Oct. 13, 3 pm, UNM Bookstore, University of New Mexico. Organized by Southwest Coalition for Palestine.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA (US) – Fri Oct 13, 6 pm, Sproul Hall (Vigil), University of California Berkeley. Organized by Bears for Palestine.

DOUAIS, FRANCE – Fri Oct 13, 6:30 pm, Place de’Armes.

GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN – Fri Oct 13, 5:30 pm, Brunnsparken. Organized by Palestinska samordningsgruppen Gothenburg.

GREENSBORO, NC (US) – Fri Oct. 13, 4 pm, Wendover Village, 4203 W Wendover Ave, Greensboro, NC. Organized by Muslims for a Better NC.

LONDON, ENGLAND – Fri Oct 13, 5 pm, Keir Starmer’s Office, Crowndale Center, 218 Eversholt St, London. Organized by IJAN UK.

MEANJIN/BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA – Fri Oct 13, 6 pm, King George Square.

MIAMI, FL (US) – Fri Oct 13, 4:30 pm, Bayfront Park. Organized by Troika Kollectiv.

NAPOLI, ITALY – Fri Oct 13, 4:30 pm, Piazza Garibaldi, Napoli. Organized by GPI and Centro Culturale Handala Ali.

NGUNNAWAL/CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA – Fri Oct 13, 5:30 pm, Carema Place.

PERTH/BOORLOO, AUSTRALIA – Fri Oct. 13, 5:30 pm, Murray Street Hall, Boorloo/Perth. Organized by Friends of Palestine WA.

PORTLAND, OREGON (US) – Fri Oct 13, 3 pm, 1200-1220 SW 5th Ave, Portland.

PORT RICHEY, FL (US) – Fri Oct 13, 7:30 am, Route 19 and Ridge Road, Port Richey. Sponsored by: Florida Peace Action Network; Partners for Palestine; CADSI

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA – Friday, Oct. 13, 7 pm, UP Main Campus, DSA Building opposite Thuto. Organized by PSC UP.

WITSWATERSRAND UNIVERSITY (SOUTH AFRICA) – Fri Oct 13, 1 pm, Great Hall Piazza, Flag demonstration. Organized by Wits PSC.

Saturday, October 14

ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND – Sat, Oct. 14, 2 pm, St. Nichlas Square. Organized by Scottish PSC.

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – Sat Oct 14, 2 pm, Aotea Square, Queens St, 291-2997 Queen St. Organized by PSN Aotearoa.

DETROIT/DEARBORN, MICHIGAN (US) – Sat Oct 14, 2 pm, Ford Woods Park, 5700 Greenfield Road. Organized by SAFE, PYM, SJP, Handala Coalition, more.

DUNDEE, SCOTLAND – Sat, Oct. 14, 2 pm, Place TBA. Organized by Scottish PSC.

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND – Sat, Oct 14, 2 pm, Princes Street at Foot of the Mound. Organized by Scottish PSC.

FRANKFURT, GERMANY – Sat Oct 14, 3 pm Hauptwache, Frankfurt am Main. Sponsored by Palestina eV, Migrantifa Rhein-Main and more.

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND – Sat. Oct 14, 2 pm, Buchanan Steps. Organized by Scottish PSC.

HOUSTON, TEXAS (US) – Sat Oct 14, 2 pm, City Hall, 901 Bagby St. Organizd by PYM, PAC, USPCN, SJP and more.

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND – Sat Oc 14, 12 pm, Church St. Organized by FRFI.

LONDON, ENGLAND – Sat Oct 14, 12 pm, BBC Portland Place, London. Organized by a broad coalition.

MILANO, ITALY – Sat. Oct 14, 3:30 pm, Piazza San Babila. Organized by Young Palestinians of Italy, UDAP, Palestinian Community, Association of Palestinians.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA – Sat Oct 14, 3 pm, Lake Eola at Robinson and Eola, Orland. Organized by Florida Palestine Network.

TORINO, ITALY – Sat. Oct. 14, 3 pm, Piazza Crispi. Organized by Progetto Palestina.

VALPARAISO, CHILE – Sat Oct 14, 6 pm, Plaza Victoria, Valparaiso. Organized by Comite Chileno de Solidaridad con Palestina.

WASHINGTON, DC (US) – Sat Oct 14, 1 pm, Lafayette Square. Organized by AMP.

Sunday, October 15

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS – Sun Oct 15, 2 pm, March from Dam Square to Jonas Daniel Meijer plein.

NAARM/MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – Sun Oct 15, State Library Victoria.

TARDANYA/ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA – Sun Oct 15, 2 pm, Parliament House.

AUSTIN, TEXAS (US) – Sun Oct 15, 3 pm, Texas Capitol. Organized by PSC ATX.

GADIGAL/SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – Sun Oct 15, 1 pm, Sydney Town Hall.

SANTIAGO, CHILE -Sun Oct 15, 11 am, Plaza Dignidad, Santiago. Organized by Comite Chileno de Solidaridad con Palestina.

[bshocommons]

When I met Fule he said that given the way Putin had begun fighting for Ukraine—and this was before Crimea was stripped from Ukraine and a single shot fired in the east—he seemed “like a dog with its teeth clamped into a man’s neck.” A year later it seemed rather that the dog had its teeth clamped onto Ukraine’s leg. Ukraine could not shake its bleeding leg free, but the dog, unable to do more harm, still would not let go.

Tim Judah, In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine

[swissforextrading]

Summer profiles: Recognising and supporting survivors of sexual violence

Send us a text (https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/915097/open_sms) Conflict-related sexual violence has existed for as long as war itself – forever. “It is a weapon of war. I would say it’s a weapon of mass destruction. It is really maximising harm,” says Esther Dingemans, Executive Director of the Global Survivors Fund. In Inside Geneva’s final summer profile, we talk to a woman working to support survivors of sexual violence…from Sudan, to Ukraine, to Syria, or Chad. “Young girls have been raped in front of their parents. Fathers are bound to chairs and forced to watch that. Or that an older – a woman in her 80s is raped in front of her son-in-law,” says Dingemans. The 1949 Geneva Convention prohibits wartime rape and enforced prostitution. But even today there are few prosecutions. And what about the survivors? “Survivors doubt themselves. Most victims of sexual violence will always question themselves. ‘Am I to blame?’” explains Dingemans. The Global Survivors Fund works for reparation – not just money, but health care, counselling, and above all, recognition of the harm done. “What is really important, particularly for survivors of sexual violence - which is often surrounded by so much shame and stigma - is that they are acknowledged, that harm has been done to them, and that it was not their fault,” concludes Dingemans. Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva. Get in touch! • Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch (mailto:insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch) • Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter. For more stories on the international Geneva (https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/topic/international-geneva/) please visit www.swissinfo.ch/ (https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/) Host: Imogen Foulkes (https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/author/imogen-foulkes/) Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain (https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairemarie4ba1ab16a/) Distribution: Sara Pasino (https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/author/sara-pasino/) Marketing: Xin Zhang (https://www.linkedin.com/in/xin-zhang-70327481/) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12xQ-msfKUQ (Source of the original content)

[mariacallous]

Ten years ago, Eliot Higgins could eat room service meals at a hotel without fear of being poisoned. He hadn’t yet been declared a foreign agent by Russia; in fact, he wasn’t even a blip on the radar of security agencies in that country or anywhere else. He was just a British guy with an unfulfilling admin job who’d been blogging under the pen name Brown Moses—after a Frank Zappa song—and was in the process of turning his blog into a full-fledged website. He was an open source intelligence analyst avant la lettre, poring over social media photos and videos and other online jetsam to investigate wartime atrocities in Libya and Syria.

In its disorganized way, the internet supplied him with so much evidence that he was beating UN investigators to their conclusions. So he figured he’d go pro. He called his website Bellingcat, after the fable of the mice that hit on a way to tell when their predator was approaching. He would be the mouse that belled the cat.

Today, Bellingcat is the world’s foremost open source intelligence agency. From his home in the UK, Higgins oversees a staff of nearly 40 employees who have used an evolving set of online forensic techniques to investigate everything from the 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine to a 2020 dognapping to the various plots to kill Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Bellingcat operates as an NGO headquartered in the Netherlands but is in demand everywhere: Its staffers train newsrooms and conduct workshops; they unearth war crimes; their forensic evidence is increasingly part of court trials. When I met Higgins one Saturday in April, in a pub near his house, he’d just been to the Netherlands to collect an award honoring Bellingcat’s contributions to free speech—and was soon headed back to collect another, for peace and human rights.

Bellingcat’s trajectory tells a scathing story about the nature of truth in the 21st century. When Higgins began blogging as Brown Moses, he had no illusions about the malignancies of the internet. But along with journalists all over the world, he has discovered that the court of public opinion is broken. Hard facts have been devalued; online, everyone can present, and believe in, their own narratives, even if they’re mere tissues of lies. Along with trying to find the truth, Higgins has also been searching for places where the truth has any kind of currency and respect—where it can work as it should, empowering the weak and holding the guilty accountable.

The year ahead may be the biggest of Bellingcat’s life. In addition to tracking conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, its analysts are being flooded with falsified artifacts from elections in the US, the UK, India, and dozens of other countries. As if that weren’t enough, there’s also the specter of artificial intelligence: still too primitive to fool Bellingcat’s experts but increasingly good enough to fool everyone else. Higgins worries that governments, social media platforms, and tech companies aren’t worrying enough and that they’ll take the danger seriously only when “there’s been a big incident where AI-generated imagery causes real harm”—in other words, when it’s too late.

[rusialeksis]

Grave of the Fireflies

I am just going to start by saying what an incredible film that was. Like wow, the mix of emotions I had was unexplainable. Watching Grave of the Fireflies was an emotional and unforgettable experience. This animated film,set in Japan at the end of World War II, tells the story of two siblings, Seita and Setsuko, who try to survive after losing their mother in an air raid and their father to the war. Their journey shows both their resilience and the harsh realities of war and what the majority of people go through in such events.

The film shows the severe hardships faced by civilians, especially children, during wartime Japan. It highlights issues like food scarcity, homelessness, and society's indifference to others' suffering. These themes are not only relevant to Japan's history but also resonate globally, as wars continue to affect millions of innocent lives around the world, as mentioned in the previous blog, we have war at this moment between Russia and Ukraine and Israel with Palestine. However, Seita and Setsuko's story reminds us of the human cost of war, which is a universal concern.

As a student, I felt deeply touched by the film. It made me think about my own life and experiences, particularly the challenges I've faced and the importance of family. While thankfully I haven't experienced the horrors of war, the bond between Seita and Setsuko reminded me of the strength and support my family has provided me. Despite their hardships, and their unexpected challenges from her aunt, that even though they are related, she was tired of helping them, the siblings found moments of joy and comfort in each other's company, showing the human spirit's ability to find light even in dark times. The scene where Seita started doing acrobatics on the pole, after finding out his mother was killed, really made me question what is he doing, but then I was amazed by the fact that he did all this in order to make his little sister happy. He was trying to find happines in a world of suffering and appreciate every moment he had with his siset.

The themes in Grave of the Fireflies also connect with the ideas in Victimization and 'Response-ability.' Both the reading and the film talk about how war affects society and the importance of empathy and compassion. The reading explains how the film's emotional portrayal of trauma and suffering helps viewers understand the history and the bigger picture of war. It stresses the need for mourning and examining political actions, encouraging us to think more deeply about how society remembers and represents trauma.

Overall, I believe Grave of the Fireflies is a powerful and heartbreaking film that leaves a lasting impact. It addresses important issues both specific to Japan and relevant worldwide, making us rethink how can we cause such trauma and problems to each other. I wish we were just all one, and having learnt from past events, we should prevent such scenarios taking place in the future.

[tallmantall]

James Donaldson on Mental Health - Study finds increased suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts among adolescents exposed to early phase of war in Ukraine

by The University of Turku Data Collection in the War-Affected Donetsk Region and Non-War Kirovograd Region. A new study carried out by a multinational research group showed high levels of suicidal thoughts and attempts in adolescents, which were strongly associated with wartime traumatic experiences, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety. Dr. Sanju Silwal from the Research Center for Child Psychiatry in the University of Turku, Finland, one of the lead authors, says that the study was conducted in two regions that were differently affected by war. "The Donetsk region, which has experienced war since 2014, was affected to a greater degree, while the Kirovograd region, located in central Ukraine, was not affected by the war as directly," Silwal says. The study was conducted from September 2016 to January 2017 with participants aged 11 to 17 years. The study surveyed adolescents on their experiences of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, and wartime traumatic stressors. A total of 1,449 participants from the Donetsk region and 1,303 from the Kirovograd region took part in the survey. The research article "Suicidality and Self-Harm Behavior of Adolescents During the Early Phase of the War in Ukraine" has been published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. The study revealed a high prevalence of suicidality in the war-affected region of Donetsk (31.7%) compared to the less directly affected region of Kirovograd (18.6%), with girls reporting significantly higher rates than boys. Adolescent girls in the war-affected region reported more suicidal thoughts (39.3% vs. 19.6%) and suicide attempts (9.5% vs. 5.1%) compared to those living in regions less directly affected by war. Boys in the war-affected region reported more suicidal thoughts (16.9% vs. 9.8%) than their peers in the region less directly affected by the war. #James Donaldson notes:Welcome to the “next chapter” of my life… being a voice and an advocate for #mentalhealthawarenessandsuicideprevention, especially pertaining to our younger generation of students and student-athletes.Getting men to speak up and reach out for help and assistance is one of my passions. Us men need to not suffer in silence or drown our sorrows in alcohol, hang out at bars and strip joints, or get involved with drug use.Having gone through a recent bout of #depression and #suicidalthoughts myself, I realize now, that I can make a huge difference in the lives of so many by sharing my story, and by sharing various resources I come across as I work in this space.  #http://bit.ly/JamesMentalHealthArticleFind out more about the work I do on my 501c3 non-profit foundationwebsite www.yourgiftoflife.org Order your copy of James Donaldson's latest book,#CelebratingYourGiftofLife: From The Verge of Suicide to a Life of Purpose and Joy www.celebratingyourgiftoflife.com Link for 40 Habits Signupbit.ly/40HabitsofMentalHealth If you'd like to follow and receive my daily blog in to your inbox, just click on it with Follow It. Here's the link https://follow.it/james-donaldson-s-standing-above-the-crowd-s-blog-a-view-from-above-on-things-that-make-the-world-go-round?action=followPub Suicidal thoughts and attempts associated with PTSD, depression and anxiety symptoms The study also showed exposure to a number of wartime traumatic stressors significantly associated with increased risk for suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. Notably, those exposed to five or more wartime traumatic stressors were three-fold more likely to experience suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. Most adolescents in the war-affected regions reported being victims of violence, forced separation from parents or family members, property damage or witnessed civilians being killed or injured. In addition, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts were strongly associated with post-traumatic stress symptoms, depression or anxiety symptoms. The lead author, Professor Andre Sourander, MD says children and adolescents are among the most vulnerable groups during wars. "One of the strengths of the present study is that it gives adolescents their own voice in the context of war. "The Russian ongoing invasion of Ukraine has resulted in deaths of families and friends, serious injury, displacement, separation, collapse of community life, social isolation, financial hardships and a multitude other wartime traumatic stressors. "One out of three adolescents living in a war-affected region report suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts, emphasizing the detrimental influence of war on children and adolescents' mental health," says Professor Sourander. The findings of the study are particularly relevant given the ongoing Russian full-scale invasion in Ukraine in 2022, which has entered its third year. "Addressing the mental health needs of young people during humanitarian emergencies, such as war, poses a significant challenge. Policymakers and clinicians need to scale up efforts in delivering mental health support to war-affected adolescents," Professor Sourander says. Read the full article

[head-post]

King Charles joins veterans at D-Day 80th anniversary commemorations

Rishi Sunak’s election campaigning and King Charles’s convalescence from cancer will be put on hold for 48 hours, as the two men join veterans to mark the 80th anniversary of D-day on the south coast of England and in Normandy.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who has pledged to ensure D-Day lessons are taught if he becomes Prime Minister, also attends the event.

The King greeted the crowd gathered in Portsmouth with a wave of his hand as he and the Queen took to the stage. He told the audience:

“The stories of courage, resilience and solidarity which you have heard today and throughout our lives cannot fail to move us, to inspire us and to remind us of what we owe to that great wartime generation, now tragically dwindling to so few. It is our privilege to hear that testimony, but our role is not purely passive. It is our duty to ensure that we and future generations do not forget their service and their sacrifice in replacing tyranny with freedom.”

Prince William said he was “honoured” when he spoke on stage at the Remembrance Day event.

Wednesday’s UK commemorations, which included readings, music and reenactments from the period, also featured recollections from D-Day veterans, mainly in pre-recorded videos.

However, Roy Hayward — who was aged 19 at the time — took to the stage to speak of his emotions eight decades on. The veteran, who later in WWII lost both his legs below the knees to amputation, said:

“I always considered myself one of the lucky ones that survived, because so many of us didn’t. I represent the men and women who put their lives on hold to go and fight for democracy and this country.”

Rishi Sunak also turned to the words of a soldier to make his contribution. He read out Field Marshal Montgomery’s address to the troops before the D-Day landings.

First Minister John Swinney represents Scotland at the ceremony. Mr. Swinney paid tribute to the “brave men and women” who took part in the military operation during the World War II before attending the commemoration.

The event was hosted by Dame Helen Mirren, with military musicians and special guests leading the opening ceremony.

In Normandy, the Princess Royal will join British and Canadian military veterans for the commemoration. Princess Anne is taking part in a series of events to honour the sacrifices of Allied troops on the anniversary on the eve of the decisive invasion of Europe.

Earlier, US President Joe Biden landed in France to take part in commemorative events to mark D-Day. Mr. Biden will spend five days in the country. He is due to give a high-profile speech and hold an official state visit with President Emmanuel Macron.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky is set to deliver a speech to the National Assembly on June 7, the last day of the European election campaign. This manoeuvre makes the opposition shudder.

Olivier Marleix, chairman of the Republicans (LR) group, denounced the visit as “regrettable 48 hours before the European elections” in the National Assembly on June 4. Visiting Paris as part of D-Day commemorations to which Russia was not invited, Zelensky will appear before the Assembly for the first time in two years.

Troops from Britain, the US, Canada and France attacked German forces on the beaches of Normandy in northern France on June 6 1944. The Normandy landings were the largest naval invasion in history, and the World War II battle laid the groundwork for the Allied victory in Europe.

Read more HERE