Maidan

If you ask people in any former Soviet republic whether the Holocaust was unqualified evil, only an isolated few would say no. So why don’t they ask? Why year in, year out with depressing regularity do we hear the same shouting about “a revival of Nazism”, along with appalling distortions of the truth? The question, of course is rhetorical.

Do those who are yet again blaming journalists for negative nformation (!) think that instead of anti-crisis measures, next time they can demonstrate to the IMF some kind of anti-crisis “positivism” in the media? (“Crisis? What crisis?”)

True freedom brings with it responsibility. Without this words remain a cheap commodity offered for a song by those wishing to use us for their own ends. Thoughts on the first local authority election victory of a rightwing and extremely intolerant party in Ukraine, and on urgently needed containment measures

Those who argue that we can’t fight the latest idiocy from the National Expert Commission on the Protection of Public Morality because no “pornographic material” can be published without their approval are, I believe, missing the point. The effective ban was not on pornography, but on a NOVEL by the renowned Ukrainian writer Oles Ulyanenko, twenty years almost to the day since the fatwa on Salmon Rushdie

When you can hear totally different versions of historical events, who are young kids supposed to believe? Why should they even understand that there is such a thing as objective truth? They like it one way, not another. We feel horrified and sick when somebody questions whether it was really so terrible under Stalin, or “doesn’t believe” in the gas chambers... (On a so-called longing for dictatorship or iron fist, and worrying muddle of nationalist rhetoric and ideas)

Vasyl Stus demanded both for himself and for his people the right to hold and freely express their own views, and the right to live in a free country. We are also free to resist attempts to use dirty tactics, as those at present over the naming of the Donetsk National University, aimed at blurring the real issue and dividing people

You wonder whether this is not some kind of recurring nightmare where the authorities are incapable of grasping the obvious fact that we all need to be protected from any attempts to use hatred, lies and primitive labels to destabilize the country

The calls for a full enquiry into the killing of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova are pouring in and yet nobody seriously expects those guilty to be brought to justice. How many more deaths are needed before effective pressure is brought to bear on those who can stop the terror and the lawless impunity? Without such measures, then all, including international bodies, can hold their words, their messages of outrage, they have the acrid taste of betrayal

There is surely something wrong when public officials can seek PR through suggesting the need for censorship and the Commission for Public Morality can seriously propose amendments to the law in this area making it even more muddled, subjective and totally unforeseeable

The latest press report from the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Public Liaison Centre pulls statistics out of context and seems more designed to foster harmful stereotypes than to provide information