Ukraine Vigil

The 22nd September seems a long time ago when I chanced upon a gathering in support of Ukraine, here in Cambridge and wrote about it and show some pictures. Today I wanted to be there and so I had a coffee and then went across the road to stand with them a little while..

Michael, the man in the yellow jacket, on the right here, told me how he had been to the first of the vigils. And he kept coming because it mattered to him.

We talked about the modern malaise of people who get involved and then drift off until something else catches their eye like a new fashion. He was there with his wife, Amanda, and they unfurled a Ukranian flag to hold.

And on the left of this group is Peter, who is himself a photographer. I took his photo as we were talking.

Did you hear about the drones the Russians are using? Small drones that hold a small explosive charge. I don’t know whether they are remotely directed or whether they may have a motion sensor program that tells them when to drop the explosives. Either way, they seek our targets that move. They are not looking for soldiers on the battlefield. They are looking for civilians on the streets of the towns.

It seems to me that when Russia sends over a missile it can say it was after a military target. And who is to prove a different intent? But these little hunter-killers specifically directed at civilians? What is the justification?

The conventional wisdom is that an aggressor is always wrong, but a defender is allowed leeway.

I happen to watch a program on TV on Sky History tonight. During the Second World War, Curtis LeMay, he of the Los Alamos atom bomb project, was in charge of a bombing program in 1944 to dislodge Japanese troops from China. He used the tactic of fire bombing that he had learned about from the Allied use of it on bombing raids over German cities.

Technology had moved on and he was able to use the newly developed material, napalm.

Here’s the little quirk of history. Which Chinese city did he first bomb? It was Wuhan – now of COVID fame. The Sky History program was made before COVID, so the narrator was unaware of how the city would be much less anonymous in people’s minds in time to come.