In an annual report on the treatment of children in conflict zones, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "appalled by the high number of grave violations against children in Ukraine" committed in 2022.

"I am particularly shocked by the high number of attacks on schools and hospitals and protected personnel, and by the high number of children killed and maimed attributed to the Russian forces and affiliated armed groups," Guterres said in the report, which was distributed to members of the Security Council on Thursday and seen by an AFP reporter.

According to the document, 477 children were killed in Ukraine last year, including 136 deaths attributed to Russian forces and affiliated groups and 80 to Ukrainian armed forces. A further 909 children were maimed, 518 of them by Russian forces and proxy groups and 175 by Ukrainian forces, the report said.

The report will be released publicly next week.

Human Rights Watch welcomed the UN's decision to call out Russia.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin and much of today’s Russian elite have expressed much angst in recent decades regarding the potential military threat presented by NATO’s inexorable post-Soviet era march east as well as the threat of internal destabilization by “fifth columns” fomented by Western meddling in Russia and its near abroad. In his famous February 2007 speech at the international security conference in Munich, Putin expressed a view of many, though far from all Russians. He decried the West’s broken promise that it would not expand NATO beyond West Germany, drawing the connection between the external threat and Russia’s domestic order.” [Hahn, 20 21:3]

ROME — Pope Francis said that NATO “barking” at Russia’s door may have led to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — and said he has offered to meet the Russian president in Moscow.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Francis reflected on Russia’s lethal aggression toward its neighbor and said while he might not go as far as saying NATO’s presence in nearby countries “provoked” Moscow, it “perhaps facilitated” the invasion.

Francis also condemned the “brutality” of the war and compared it to Rwanda’s civil war in the 1990s, which resulted in a genocide of the Tutsi minority.

https://www.politico.eu/article/pope-francis-nato-cause-ukraine-invasion-russia/

“That is so ironic.” This sentence is used frequently—and usually incorrectly—in American English.

Often the word ironic is misused to remark on a coincidence, such as This is the third time today we’ve run into each other. How ironic.

It is also mistakenly used to describe something out of the ordinary or unusual: Yesterday was a beautiful, warm day in November. It was really ironic. And, unfortunately, it is sometimes used to simply emphasize something interesting. For example, Ironically, it was the best movie I’ve seen all year! We submit that ironic might be the most abused word in the English language

The line “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread” was first written by Alexander Pope in his poem An Essay on Criticism. It is used now as a proverb that means: inexperienced people jump into situations that wiser, experienced people avoid.

Putin is a dictator, but romanticizing Zelensky as if he were the hero of our times is a fool’s rush in where angels fear to tread.

https://medium.com/politics-from-hell/ukraine-or-russia-what-about-peace-511ed584ac87

BBC news: facts or interpretation?

Not to be led astray by news reports, it’s important to draw a line between hard and fast facts and their interpretation. Here are two passges comprising both:

“After facing setbacks on the battlefield, Russian forces have concentrated on attacking Ukrainian power facilities, fuel storage depots and water works.

Shells have fallen near reactors and have hit a radioactive waste storage building at the plant but have not yet caused serious damage.

Ukraine and Russia blame each other for the shelling.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-63721069

The West concentrated its efforts on demonizing Putin and mounted an unprecedented campaign of dehumanizing and drowning him in a torrent of abuse. Just look at the editoreal pages of the flagship of American democracy – The New York Times:

Russian strongman, bare-chested muscleman, villain, unreconstructed Russian imperialist who has malign intent and a planto enlarge his empire, leader of a rogue state, authoritarian ruler, bully who seeks a “Great Russia” in an “outrageous and highly dangerous power-play” [Herman, 2014: 174]

The choice of derogatory terms is taken from American research:

Herman Edward S. and Peterson, David. The Ukraine Crisis and the Propaganda System in Overdrive // Lendman Stephen. Flashpoint in Ukraine. – Clarity Press, Inc., 2014. – 269 p. - P. 173 - 174..

Should the cinematic taboo be Suspended?

sex scenes of any kind between men in mainstream films – let alone sexually frank ones –  are still pretty rare. While progress has been made when it comes to representation, showing "two guys going at it" is still somewhat of a cinematic taboo.
 

"If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck" – suggests that something can be identified by its habitual characteristics.

She has softened her image and resents being linked to Italy's fascist past, but she still embraces an old slogan adopted by the fascists - "God, fatherland and family"

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-63025985