258 Comments

I think a broader approach to news is essential. I contend that US citizens are increasingly ethnocentric because the news is cherry-picked to meet consumers wishes and interests rather than to give understanding of the larger world. Through PBS I have been able to broaden my news intake to include BBC and DW and receive a larger world picture (but still incomplete), and I hear stories that never make our local or national news programs. Unfortunately, in order to survive, our news services feel they have to cater to their viewers.

Racism and xenophobia has metastasized within White America and is destroying our compassion for those least like us. This trend is actively cultivated by our politicians with the express purpose to create divides and dehumanize the "others" in our country and abroad. Look what is happening regarding the grandstanding against the current Supreme Court appointment -- an appointment we should all be lauding no matter our party or skin color! Reporting diverse news is one answer -- but not the only answer. The problem is so complex, I don't know what the other answers are...

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This piece did a great job between respecting the seriousness of the Ukraine situation while also calling out the bias in media coverage of different wars. I live in the Czech Republic and it's been very heartening to see the fast and immense reaction to both assisting displaced Ukrainians and sanctioning Russia. However, I feel anger and frustration knowing that when Syrian refugees were making their way to Europe in the millions, also due to a terrible war made worse by indiscriminate Russian bombing, they were turned away by the Czech Republic and its neighbors. Many spoke of "an invasion" and the country hardly took a dozen refugee families. The disparity is sickening.

No doubt a greater diversity in government and the press here would have changed things. However, Czech society is very racially uniform and the national identity is grounded in an ethnic one as well. I hope as an immigrant there I can be part of the change, despite myself being of white European descent. At least I try to engage people online and wake up their sense of humanity.

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I wonder if the fat cats of the world would ever be so moved or so frightened by the possible extinction of humanity that they would divest themselves of their billions so we could spend it to save the world. Shift the greed dynamic that underlies our worldview to caring about each other as much as we care about ourselves and the barbaric activity of war would cease. Everyone, aware of our oneness, then could turn to creating the beautiful world that would just take our agreement to produce. Let’s see — how about commandeering one of those Russian yachts we’ve seized and calling a meeting?

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Lawlessness can lead to indiscriminate killings. Minorities are often targeted and scapegoated."

these two statements are so real. Thank you. And do you know that authorities have too much power in these times?

Be it in the armed forces, be it among civilians in the world of the government agencies, the public authorities, politics or public health. Those who abuse their authority are oppressors, megalomaniacs, bullies. They order others around with only one goal: their own personal profit. This is inhuman and unfair. Nobody has the right to continue on this path in this way. Would you let an oppressor hurt somebody if you could do something about it?

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Thank you Dan Rather for your continued factual reporting.

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Civilian deaths are a tragedy. But they are not a mistake. Is it not possible, perhaps even likely, that things like the savage annihilation of the city of Mariupol including attacks on Maternity Hospitals and on civilians sheltering in a theater, are planned? And that they are intentional? It increasingly begins to appear, at least to me, that these heinous acts may be designed to elicit a response from the Ukrainians. Then, after the Ukrainians act in their justified outrage, Mr. Putin may declare an after the fact justification for his death-dealing invasion based on the reaction of the Ukrainians nearly a month into the war. That would be an even greater tragedy than the death of innocents, which is a great tragedy in itself. The world should bear the burden of responding to what we see Putin and his soldiers doing to Ukraine, so that Ukraine does not have to--such as pursuing a lawsuit in the International Criminal Court in the Hague to declare Mr. Putin a war criminal under international law. Like President Biden, we can all see that is what Putin is: a war criminal. Now let the world act to condemn the war criminal, so that Ukraine does not have to taken action into its own hands.

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Mar 22, 2022·edited Mar 22, 2022

As an American of European ancestry, I need to set the record straight.

I have a lot of German ancestors who came to America around 1880. I was born in the 1950s and my father served during WWII in the Pacific for a year in a squadron that lost 2/3 of its members. Even so, I have experienced animosity based on my German ancestry and the events of WWII. I also know for a fact that German Americans were treated poorly during that war by the general population, even if their people had been in the US since before they were born.

I have been treated with derision since I was in high school based on the fact that I have blond hair and fair skin. I’ve been called “white bread,” certainly not a term of endearment and in fact a racial slur, referred to as a “golden-haired princess” in a way that was not at all complementary, and treated with contempt because people think, based on my coloring, that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. In fact, I grew up one of the poorest kids in a lower working class neighborhood, the daughter of an elementary school teacher who worked his way out of the coal mining region of Pennsylvania via the GI bill.

I have recently learned that I have a little ancestry on my mother’s side with roots in Puritan New England, made the mistake of mentioning it to some people, and had a decidedly negative reaction. I guess the Puritans have a bad rep, too.

I also have a little Irish ancestry, but I don’t need to tell you about that. I think everyone knows how the Irish were treated.

It’s possible that I might also have a little Polish or Russian ancestry. Hmm, I guess with the current situation over there I’d better keep my mouth shut about that!

One does not need to have darker skin to experience prejudice and racism.

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Thank you Dan Rather for helping us all to stay steady! Pam M

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Thank you. This race based "others" has been in the forefront of my mind. As I get most of my news from sources outside the US I have read and listened to discussions on this topic. India based WION news has covered this subject extensively. Thank you for bringing it to the US discussion so eloquently.

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Thanks for this, has been nagging the back of my mind for a couple of weeks now. This latest Post confirms and clarifies those thoughts. If we want to have respect, we need to earn it through unbiased actions. Thanks.

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After spending my life travelling the world for work, I have seen firsthand how different races are treated poorly! It has sickened me since I was very young to today! Now this by Russia, seriously! Just unspeakable horror and we are watching this from our chairs. NATO and the US won't do anything, so why can't we get 1 million civilians to go to Ukraine with weapons to help them out before there is nothing left! You can start the civilian army! They won't have to worry about World War III. Just yet.

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The fact that the leader of Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow is supporting Putin is a sad complicating factor.

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Dear Mr R, As usual your points are right on target. I am currently reading "The Gates of Europe," an historical account of Ukraine from BCE to modern time. It sets me to wondering how much civilization has evolved over the centuries. Sometimes the answer seems to 'not that much.' I totally agree that we should know and understand more of the world, and not just the parts of it that seem the most like us, and I firmly believe that if e had done something about Chechnya we might not today find Ukraine in the grip of Putin's terror and death.

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I believe you left one thing out. The war on Ukraine is very much like what Hitler did accept now it is the people of Ukraine instead of Jews. You failed to mention how Russia is taking these poor people forceably into Russia. You fail to mention that this is the largest evacuation ever. We are in a 3rd world war now. It just has not been called yet. Next comes food insecurity. Ukraine was one the the largest exporters of wheat and grain. Canada is an exporter also but we have had so many droughts in the past years, it will be hard to keep up with the demand. Not only is Putin killing innocent people, he is spreading disinformation that cannot ever be fixed. He is part of the food insecurity that is coming soon. Putin started the disinformation on vaccines. He now keeps spreading disinformation about Ukraine. God bless and Glory to Ukraine.

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Yes. We need more reporting not less. We need more reporters who can speak to what’s happening in other places from a local perspective. Love you said this!

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Zelensky compels me to relate a story often told in my childhood.

This is a story about a very particular slice of Jewish history that begins in 1903 with a poem. Those of you who saw the film Fiddler On The Roof, may recall the film ends with the family leaving their homes. They were fleeing pogroms.

Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.” Historically, the term refers to violent attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire (in which tens of thousands of Jews were murdered, and thousands of Jewish girls and women were raped by their gentile neighbors).

On Easter Sunday 1903, the first pogrom of the 20th century occurred in Kishinev (then Russia and now Moldova). The young Hebrew poet, Chaim Nachman Bialik was sent to Kishinev to “collect documents, to interview witnesses and survivors, to take pictures of the damage, to compile statistics and to collate all available published sources.” You can read, one woman’s recorded story of the massacre and gang rapes here; https://www.jstor.org/stable/27649747?seq=1

Bialik returned from the massacre to write and publish the poem “In the City of Slaughter”. Nomi Nonacs describes the poem and its impact very well.

“The poem itself is a long epic, drawing masterfully from Biblical and Talmudic writings, and, from the perspective of G-d, describes gruesome image after gruesome image—a Jew and his dog, both headless, lying on a mound; a baby unable to suckle from the breast of his dead mother; a mother and daughter both raped by multiple men—that appear in the unnamed “city of slaughter.” It is not, however, the gruesome imagery that makes the poem stand out. Instead, it is Bialik’s unsympathetic depiction of Jewish men who, rather than protect their wives, daughters, and sisters, watched and prayed for their own lives as their women were raped and humiliated. He laments that the “sons of the Maccabees,” a militarily powerful sect of ancient Jews, were so unaffected by the violence committed upon their loved ones, that their only reaction was to visit the Rabbi the next day to ask if they were still permitted to have sex with their raped wives. Bialik’s anger at the perceived cowardice of Jewish men and his call for them to stand up and fight for themselves and their women has made “In the City of Slaughter” the “most famous and influential modern Hebrew poem,” as well as “inspired the creation of Jewish defense groups in Russia” whose members would later form the Haganah, a precursor to the modern Israeli army.”

Bialik would immigrate to Israel, where he became Israel’s Poet Laureate.

Hebrew loses its cadence when translated into English, but you can find the poem here.

http://faculty.history.umd.edu/BCooperman/NewCity/Slaughter.html

Today, the Israeli army and education still require the teaching of this poem. You can find Nomi Nonacs critique of this practice here. https://leviathanjewishjournal.com/2019/06/04/masculinity-nationalism-and-in-the-city-of-slaughter/

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