The Nova Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine, controlled by Russia, has been destroyed. One consequence is a humanitarian disaster that, had it not taken place within a war zone, would already have drawn enormous international assistance. Thousands of houses are flooded and tens of thousands of people are in flight or waiting for rescue. Another consequence is ecological mayhem, among other things the loss of wetland and other habitats. A third is the destruction of Ukrainian farmland and other elements of the Ukrainian economy. So much is happening at once that the story is hard to follow. Here are a few thoughts about writing responsibly about the event.

1. Avoid the temptation to begin the story of this manmade humanitarian and ecological catastrophe by bothsidesing it. That's not journalism.

2. Russian spokespersons claiming that Ukraine did something (in this case, blow a dam) is not part of a story of an actual event in the real world. It is part of different story: one about all the outrageous claims Russia has made about Ukraine since the first invasion, in 2014. If Russian claims about Ukrainian actions are to be mentioned, it has to be in that context.

3. Citing Russian claims next to Ukrainian claims is unfair to the Ukrainians. In this war, what Russian spokespersons have said has almost always been untrue, whereas what Ukrainian spokespersons have said has largely been reliable. The juxtaposition suggests an equality that makes it impossible for the reader to understand that important difference.

4. If a Russian spokesman (e.g. Dmitri Peskov) must be cited, it must be mentioned that this specific figure has lied about every aspect of this war since it began. This is context. Readers picking up the story in the middle need to know such background.

5. If Russian propaganda for external consumption is cited, it can help to also cite Russian propaganda for internal consumption. It is interesting that Russian propagandists have been long arguing that Ukrainian dams should be blown, and that a Russian parliamentarian takes for granted that Russia blew the dam and rejoices in the death and destruction that followed.

6. When a story begins with bothsidesing, readers are being implicitly instructed that an object in the physical world (like a dam) is really just an element of narrative. They are being guided into the wrong genre (literature) right at the moment when analysis is needed. This does their minds a disservice.
Part of the city of Kherson is now under water

7. Dams are physical objects. Whether or how they can be destroyed is a subject for people who know what they are talking about. Although this valuable NYT story exhibits the above flaws, it has the great merit of treating dams as physical rather than narrative objects. When this exercise is performed, it seems clear that the dam could only have been destroyed by an explosion from the inside.

8. Russia was in control of the relevant part of the dam when it exploded. This is an elemental part of the context. It comes before what anyone says. When a murder is investigated, detectives think about means. Russia had the means. Ukraine did not.

9. The story doesn't start at the moment the dam explodes. Readers need to know that for the last fifteen months Russia has been killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, whereas Ukraine has been trying to protect its people and the structures that keep them alive.

10. The setting also includes history. Military history offers an elemental point. Armies that are attacking do not blow dams to block their own path of advance. Armies that are retreating do blow dams to slow the advance of the other side. At the relevant moment, Ukraine was advancing, and Russia was retreating.

The pursuit of objectivity does not mean treating every event as a coin flip, a fifty-fifty chance between two different public statements. Objectivity demands thinking about all the objects -- physical objects, physical placement of people -- that must be in the story, as well as all of the settings -- contemporary and historical -- that a reader would need in order to come away from the story with greater understanding.

An unprecedented record of medieval live comedy performance has been identified in a 15th-century manuscript. Raucous texts—mocking kings, priests and peasants; encouraging audiences to get drunk; and shocking them with slapstick—shed new light on Britain's famous sense of humor and the role played by minstrels in medieval society.

The texts contain the earliest recorded use of "red herring" in English, extremely rare forms of medieval literature, as well as a killer rabbit worthy of Monty Python. The discovery changes the way we should think about English comic culture between Chaucer and Shakespeare.

Throughout the Middle Ages, minstrels traveled between fairs, taverns and baronial halls to entertain people with songs and stories. Fictional minstrels are common in medieval literature but references to real-life performers are rare and fleeting. We have first names, payments, instruments played and occasionally locations, but until now virtually no evidence of their lives or work.

After expressing zero remorse and heralding himself to a federal judge as a “political prisoner” who “like Donald Trump only committed the crime of opposing those who are destroying our country,” Oath Keeper Elmer Stewart Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role leading and orchestrating a seditious conspiracy to stop America’s transfer of presidential power by force on Jan. 6, 2021.

It would have been surprising if Rhodes took any other tack when it was his chance to speak.

But Rhodes offered no surprises at the Prettyman courthouse in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

He was unrepentant, just as he was at trial when he testified on his own behalf for a little over a day. Even then, as a jury actively held his fate in their hands, he publicly smeared proceedings in jailhouse interviews while comparing himself to Nelson Mandela. And just four days ago, in yet another interview from jail, Rhodes kept up The Big Lie.

Members of the public watching the coronation on television, online and in parks and pubs will be invited to swear aloud their allegiance to the monarch in a “chorus of millions of voices” to be known as the Homage of the People.

People around the UK and abroad will be invited to say the words “I swear that I will pay true allegiance to your majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God”, in a declaration that replaces the traditional homage of peers.
Saturday’s service will also involve for the first time the active participation of representatives of faiths other than Christianity. Rishi Sunak, a Hindu, will give a reading from the Bible in his capacity as PM, despite Church of England law in effect barring other faiths from taking an active role in its services. “There is no issue about [Sunak’s] personal faith, we’re delighted that he is doing [this],” said a Lambeth Palace spokesperson.

The service will start with a procession of faith representatives of the Jewish, Sunni and Shia Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Bahá’í and Zoroastrian communities. Peers from different faiths will take part in the presentation of regalia, and at the end of the service the newly crowned king will receive a greeting spoken in unison by representatives of Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and Buddhist communities. This will be unamplified because of the prohibition on using electricity on the Jewish sabbath.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has rekindled Poland’s old fear of its giant neighbor. Amid escalating tensions, the Kremlin is now rewriting one of its darkest chapters ― the 1940 massacre of over 22,000 Poles in the Katyn Forest (in Russia’s Smolensk region) by Soviet forces. This comes 13 years after the Duma (the Russian Parliament) apologized to Poland for that war crime during the early years of World War II. The Federal Security Service (FSB), the principal security force of Russia and successor agency to the Soviet Union’s KGB, has now released a document attributing this war crime to Nazi Germany and exonerating the USSR.

The debate on responsibility for that bloodbath seemed to have been settled during the rapprochement between Warsaw and Moscow more than a decade ago, but times have changed and friction between the two countries is red hot. “The debate in Russia over the unclear circumstances of the Katyn case continues,” states an article published in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official journal. “This is partly because of the openly hostile position Poland has taken towards Russia in recent years and the destruction of monuments to Red Army soldiers who died during the liberation of that country from the Nazis,” says the article, echoing the publicly released FSB document.

A team of United Nations experts has arrived in the US on a tour that will focus on racial justice, law enforcement and policing.

On Monday, the Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the Context of Law Enforcement, an independent panel appointed by the UN human rights council, began its two-week visit to the US.

The panel, which was established in response to widespread outcry following the killing of the Black man George Floyd in 2020 by a white police officer, is set to visit Washington DC, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and New York City.

Floyd’s death was just one of many instances of racist killings by police in the US but – spurred by powerful video shot by bystanders – it triggered widespread protests across America, which then spread internationally.

The UN trip is to “further transformative change for racial justice and equality in the context of law enforcement for Africans and people of African descent”, said the UN.

In addition to visiting government officials at federal, state and local levels, the team will also visit law enforcement authorities, civil society organizations and places of detentions.

“We look forward to gaining first-hand insight about the lived experiences of people of African descent in the United States, and to offer recommendations to the government at all levels, to support efforts in combating systemic racism and excessive use of force, and ensure accountability and justice,” Juan Méndez, a panel member said in a statement.

Why can’t we have the nice things that other wealthy nations have few problems providing them for their populations? It’s not just the greed and the power-hungriness of America’s richest. It’s race. But that’s impolite to mention.

The nation’s trouble is not that it has a racist bone that simply needs removing but that it is disturbingly slow to recognize that racism is the sharp pain that helps us locate the fractures. I write about race because finding the fractures in our society and our democracy is a necessary step toward healing and strengthening, not destroying, the whole of the nation.

Race is that locked door of the mind behind which our macho, therapy-averse culture refuses to look. Until it does, the pathologies will pass from generation to generation as in dysfunctional families.

“Shame is a toxic emotion, and it often causes people to direct hostility outward rather than inward,” Peter Wehner wrote last week.

We have yet to break the chain.

This is a great editorial based largely on Theodore Johnson's piece in the WaPo "You cannot love America and avoid the topic of race"