Old Socialist seeks to jog the memory, of those who seek to forget!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Oct 13, 2025

Editor: Here are the documents of the R2P. Reader note that this Doctrine is the twin of Neo-Conservatism’s unslakable bloodlust under a ‘Liberal’ guise!

World Summit Outcome Document

138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

139. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

• 1Pillar OneEvery state has the Responsibility to Protect its populations from four mass atrocity crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.
• 2Pillar TwoThe wider international community has the responsibility to encourage and assist individual states in meeting that responsibility.
• 3Pillar ThreeIf a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the UN Charter.

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Editor: Ignatieff’s amenable chatter:

Albanian-born political theorist Lea Ypi has built her reputation on turning the ruins of communism into poignant meditations on freedom and dignity. Her new book presents a moving portrait of her grandmother, though its reliance on fictionalized scenes undermines the power of lived memory.

VIENNA – Three decades ago, history swept away communist regimes across Europe. Yet the habits, bureaucratic practices, and instincts of submission and obedience endure, even as societies have established democratic institutions – courts, parliaments, constitutions – and privatized state property.

Since 1989, the most stubborn barrier to democratic change in Central and Eastern Europe has been in the heads and hearts of the region’s people. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, for example, has remained in power for 15 years of “single-party democracy” by offering voters a recognizable imitation of authoritarian predecessors like the fascist-era leader Admiral Miklós Horthy and the communist János Kádár and their brand of reactionary or communist national populism.

The persistence of authoritarian patterns tells us that opening to the global market and copying Western institutions can leave untouched the deepest reservoirs of allegiance within a population. Human consciousness remains haunted by vanished pasts. It clings to habits that have been repurposed by new demagogues, pushes back against the myriad new freedoms on offer, and maintains forms of inner obedience as protection against a headlong rush into an unknown future.

Freedom and Its Discontents

One of the most interesting observers of our inner reluctance to accept the acceleration of history is Lea Ypi, an Albanian-born political theorist who teaches at the London School of Economics. Her 2021 book Free made her famous, in part because of its ironic and ambiguous one-word title, which implied that one freedom – within her childhood home and among her vividly remembered parents and friends –was lost when the communist regime collapsed and the chaotic new “freedom” of the West prevailed.

Through a mordantly comic and ironic retelling of her childhood in the collapsing communist “paradise” of Enver Hoxha, who ruled Albania for 41 years, Ypi put a question mark after the word freedom itself, stripping it of the self-congratulatory insularity of the West’s post-Cold War narrative. She revealed both what was lost when this freedom came and what was violent, rapacious, and corrupt about its arrival. Yet as Ypi herself understood when she left to study philosophy in Rome and later completed her doctorate at the European University Institute in Florence, once Western freedom arrived, there was no going back.

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Editor: Recall the fact that Ignatieff was just not just smitten with Isaiah Berlin, but abased himself at the feet of the master!

Sir Isaiah Berlin interviewed about his life by Michael Ignatieff

Isaac and Isaiah: The Covert Punishment of a Cold War Heretic by David Caute – review

Tariq Ali on a renowned scholar’s vendetta against a fellow refugee

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/20/isaac-isaiah-david-caute-review

Editor: Michael Ignatieff defends moderation.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/jan/22/politics.society

Old Socialist.