3Ravens Housing Cooperative
3Ravens Housing Cooperative By Keith Porteous (Op-Ed)
Anyone paying attention knows that there is a housing crisis of accessibility and affordability, but the word “crisis” is now so commonly used it’s lost much of its impact and the sense of urgency in its true meaning. A crisis is defined as an unstable or highly difficult situation that requires immediate decisive action to resolve. It can also be a critical turning point where the outcome will make a positive and decisive difference.
Such is the current situation on Denman Island where we need urgent and decisive action by Local Island Trustees, proponents of innovative housing projects, and the broader community at large. Non-market based housing solutions need to be supported by the Local Trust Committee, and the 3Ravens Affordable Housing Cooperative is currently the best example deserving of our collective support.
One of the ways that the LTC has helped clear the bureaucratic hurdles for 3Ravens is by letting the Province of B.C.’s regulatory agencies deal with the issues of water, where the LTC is without direct legal jurisdiction in regulating the health and safety of potable water. The 3Ravens Housing Coop cannot proceed without Provincial approval of their plans for water. The LTC should finish their work on housing policy reform prior to the end of their elected term.
Critics of 3Ravens who have written to the Local Trust Committee have made wrong assumptions about the affordability aspect of the proposal. 3Ravens is not a project that addresses every kind of housing need, nor does it address the need for non-market rental housing. Instead, 3Ravens Housing Cooperative creates an opportunity for people and families who have some independent means, but are priced out of the inflated housing market.
This type of non-market housing is crucial in retaining a healthy demographic mix of people who have likely been renters, but are interested in a community project that is reliant on the mutual efforts and benefits of a dozen neighbours who wish to work collectively for a secure home to live and thrive as friends and family. This is a legacy project already contemplated in the current Denman Island Official Community Plan.
While a worthy non-market rental housing project like Denman Green is best located near the amenities of Downtown Denman, 3Ravens will provide secure homes for people less dependent on their proximity to these services, in a similar way that the CoHo Landing project does not require their residents to live walking distance from services, because its residents have independent means of transportation.
The additional 7 proposed 3Ravens residences will be no more than 1200 sq. ft., with a small common house, built on a 15 acre parcel. A few neighbours have expressed a fear of loss of privacy, but this seems more like the concern of entitlement carried by people living in extremely expensive and privileged circumstances. The closest neighbour building will be 250 ft from 3Ravens with plenty of trees buffering in between. We’re living in a housing crisis, and our neighbours need our support.
The Denman residents who are currently renters, and successfully aspire to be a part of the 3Ravens Coop, will also open up needed affordable rental vacancies for others. Let’s wish the very best of luck to Sara and Paul, in their generous efforts to bring forward such a worthy gift to Denman Islanders.
2026 JRSP Artist-Scholar Residency Announced:
2026 JRSP Artist-Scholar Residency Announced:
Aaron Richmond: Meeting the Park through Relays of Attention
The University of Victoria (UVic), in partnership with the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park (JRSP), is pleased to announce that Montréal based artist, scholar and curator Aaron Richmond has been selected as the 2026 recipient of the prestigious UVic x JRSP Artist-Scholar Residency.]
Richmond’s practice situates in the intersection of visual art, architecture and performance studies. He holds a PhD in Architectural History and Theory from McGill University and is currently an affiliated Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University. Following his residency at the JRSP, Richmond will be the Leonard A. Lauder Fellow in Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
“At the Rubinoff Sculpture Park, I hope to engage the park’s sculptural environment as a living archive, while also treating it as a prompt for the continued exploration of material practices, ideas, and gestures. While in residence, I will develop a body of work that moves, like a relay, from landscape-architectural drawings to the creation of lightweight temporary sculptures, which will in turn function as the setting (or scenography) for performative readings of texts drawn from the learning centre and archives.”
With this work, Richmond hopes to provoke a broader set of questions: about art’s continued relevance as a space for experimentation; about its dynamic interplay between graphic, formal, textual and performative modes of attention; and about the kinds of fleeting scenography suited to this moment of social and environmental uncertainty.
See his work at www.aaron-richmond.com and attend his free open studio event at 12pm on July 16th at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park. “For the open-studio event, I will share my working process while guiding visitors through an attentional walk: an embodied on-site demonstration of the relays, prompts, and curiosities that animate it.”
Richmond was among the 56 distinguished international artists and scholars who applied for this year’s residency. Following his three week stay on Hornby Island this July, he will return to Victoria in November to present his works, offer student engagement at UVic, and host a public talk during the week of November 17, 2026.
Keep an eye out for updates on the residency and event dates at www.jrsp.uvic.ca, @uvic_rubinoff and https://finearts.uvic.ca/research/ and @uvicarts.
Courtenay-Alberni MP pushes Ottawa for national ship recycling strategy
Courtenay-Alberni MP pushes Ottawa for national ship recycling strategy
from AllthingsUnionBay.com
A Vancouver Island MP is calling on Ottawa to build a plan when it comes to breaking apart vessels that are derelict or at the end of their use.
Courtenay-Alberni MP Gord Johns made his comments June 11 during Question Period, saying while the federal government’s shipbuilding strategy focuses on how to build and maintain vessels, it has no plan when it comes to “responsibily retiring” them.
“That’s a missed economic opportunity and a serious environmental risk for coastal communities,” Johns said in a statement released Monday.Johns said more than 900 derelict and end-of-life vessels are currently sitting off the coast of B.C., posing environmental risks while many aging federal vessels are also nearing retirement.
The MP asked whether the federal government would invest in dry dock infrastructure, ship recycling facilities and regulations that would make vessel retirement a formal component of the National Shipbuilding Strategy.
In response, Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon acknowledged ship recycling is a multi-billion-dollar global industry and said it presents an opportunity for Canada.
MacKinnon also referenced derelict vessels across the country, including many owned by the federal government, and specifically highlighted interest in developing the sector in Port Alberni.
Johns welcomed the acknowledgement but said recognition alone is not enough.
“Coastal communities need investment, enforceable regulations and a clear federal plan to build a safe, environmentally responsible ship recycling industry in Canada,” he said.Port Alberni has emerged as a potential location for a future ship recycling industry on Canada’s West Coast.
Last year, local leaders, First Nations, industry representatives and government officials formed a ship recycling leadership group to explore opportunities for a made-in-B.C. solution.
There are currently only two commercial ship recycling facilities operating in Canada, both located on the East Coast.
The discussion has gained urgency following concerns over ship-breaking operations in Union Bay.
In 2025, the provincial government cancelled the Crown land lease held by Deep Water Recovery, citing environmental compliance and stewardship concerns, following complaints about pollution in Baynes Sound.
Johns said any future industry in Port Alberni would need to be developed differently. “This has to be done the right way,” he said. “That means full partnership with First Nations, respect for rights and title, strong community support, good local jobs and the highest environmental standards.”
Johns is also calling for federal regulations similar to those used in Europe, where ship recycling operations are governed by strict environmental, health and worker-safety standards.
Johns said he will continue pressing the federal government to invest in infrastructure and establish a national framework for vessel retirement as part of Canada’s long-term marine strategy.
Canada’s shipbuilding capacity recently came to the forefront after BC Ferries announced it had not received any local builds for its four new ferries, prompting the company to choose a Chinese shipyard.
Shucking Oysters: Free-Floating Fiefdoms
Shucking Oysters: Free-Floating Fiefdoms
By Alex Allen
What is with us humans that we can not just leave some things well enough alone? Why can’t we, as Nova Scotian’s say, just “leave ‘er be where Jesus flang ‘er”? We always have to DO something. Fix it. Hack it. Reboot it. Develop it. Scale it. Automate it. Conquer it. As if doing less, or even doing nothing, were not an option. Every inch of the Earth if it’s not abused it is eventually monetized. The rinse and repeat mantra of the capitalist world. As Douglas Rushkoff noted in his book, Survival of the Richest, “this is not creative destruction, but destructive destruction – all justified as the inevitable tide of forward progress.”
We have Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk flirting with space colonies, inhabiting Mars, and floating data centres, all in the name of what? Progress? Innovation? Transformation? Winning? As Rushkoff wrote these are merely euphemisms for conquest, colonization, domination and extraction. Like the colonialists of the day, the elite entrepreneurs of the world are competing for and hoarding every inch, with no oversight at all. “They can break the law of physics, economics, and morality to offer them something even better than a way of saving the world: a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making.”
And it’s not just the usual’s. One company, Lonestar Data Holdings, wants to repurpose the moon “as a kind of off-world backup for Earth’s data.” Another company, Intuitive Machines, will be the mining the moon for iron and titanium. A third, D-Orbit, are looking at redacting old satellites and recycling parts for profit.
So now we have “seasteading,” a movement to establish permanent residences at sea, free from the pesky jurisdictions of any nation. Taking its name from “homesteading,” which describes the wild west approach to settlement in the US, seasteaders couch their economic interests in terms of innovation and freedom. As critic China Mieville explained, “Above all, they recast their most banal avarice – the disinclination to pay tax – as a principled blow for political freedom. Not content with existing offshore tax shelters, multimillionaires and property developers have aspired to build their own.”
In 2008, Patri Friedman (the poker-playing grandson of economist Milton Friedman) launched The Seasteading Institute (TSI), with funding from Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and pay pal to Vance and Trump. Seasteading, like politics, is a technology of world building. As the journalist Oliver Wainwright argued, “Seasteading represents the ultimate Silicon Valley approach to governance.” The success of the libertarian seasteading “relies on state power being simultaneously eluded and exerted.” When it launched, TSI’s mission statement was, “to establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems.”
Not long after they received funding from Thiel in 2017, TSI approached French Polynesia with an idea: Could they build a few miles off the shores of their islands? French Polynesia’s government drew up a seven-year agreement and both hoped to get work underway. Unfortunately things began to get heated. The engineering side went well. The ideological side did not. Marc Collins Chen, CTO of Oceanix, realized that “what they seemed to be imagining was a kind of floating island for tech billionaires who wanted to live a low-rules and -regulations kind of life, while also using the resources – like tech resources and things – from French Polynesia.”
In Tahiti with no surprise, locals organized mass protests against “techno-colonialism” and blatantly using their fishing grounds as a food source for a floating island of billionaires. The agreement was eventually discontinued by the French Polynesian government. Do I hear echoes of Albania over the $1.4 billion Ivanka vanity project on Sazan Island?
UofT environmental scientist and professor of sustainability Peter Newman, one of the most outspoken critics of seasteading, once called it “apartheid of the worst kind.” In an interview he bluntly shared his views: “Whether it is privatized urbanism or techno-libertarian escape, the idea is pretty stupid. It’s a rich people’s diversion and has no obvious value.”
“The most positive way to look at seasteading is that it has a pioneering mentality which is seeking to go where no humans have dared to go,” Newman added, “like going to the Moon or Mars. Many aspects of human life have been improved by daring pioneers.”
Collins Chen is working on a floating city off the shores of Busan in South Korea which will be starting construction in 2026. Oceanix, partially funded by the UN, focuses on climate change and less on creating a libertarian paradise, describes itself as “new land for coastal cities looking for sustainable ways to expand onto the ocean, while adapting to sea level rise.” The interconnected neighbourhoods will accommodate a community of 12,000 people, with each neighbourhood designed to serve a specific purpose: living, research, and lodging.
As interest in seasteading resurfaces, Collins Chen’s Oceanix experiment seems more encouraging as a sustainable blueprint. But as Holly Baxter warned in The Independent: “in the background, the fever dream of techno-libertarianism, where wealth replaces governance and fantasy stands in for infrastructure simmers on. Its promise of freedom is seductive, but its avoidance of accountability is perilous.” Baxter wrote that ultimately, it may say more about the psychology of a handful of very rich men than it does about the future of humanity.
Smart city infrastructures and space colonies are pitched not only as consumer-friendly, high-tech, and sustainable solutions for human survival, but also as “promises of a certain aesthetic futurism.” In all cases, a “glossy, sometimes spectacular design product or event is aimed to comfort and encourage us to hand the keys over what remains of our futures to the extinction designer, hoping that the world they promise actually has a place for us.”
In Silicon Valley, extinction is not a threat to living worlds, but a design opportunity – a bug to be fixed. For Thiel, Musk and Bezos, among others, extinction is their market. What matters is not what is left for the many, but what services and bling are anointed to the chosen few on their exclusive floating cities and space colonies. As Jonas Staal eloquently wrote, “like the American Dream, the Extinction Dream exists only for the elite’s elite.”
The Unceded Territory of Dreams
The Unceded Territory of Dreams
By Cylon2036 We/Us
Before language learned to fence the horizon, sleep wandered barefoot across a realm with no edges. We acknowledge the unceded territory of dreams, where every forgotten ancestor arrives disguised as weather, where rivers remember names that mouths have misplaced, and where the moon signs no treaties because light cannot be owned.
In each dream we cross an invisible border without passports, carrying our unfinished selves like lanterns stitched from moth wings. We borrow impossible aquatic architectures that bloom into neatly folded flowers. We wake believing we have returned, though our shadows carry pollen from elsewhere.
To acknowledge this territory is not to claim belonging but to admit trespass with gratitude. The dream refuses deeds, maps, and monuments. It offers only temporary shelter beneath the vast republic of the unconscious, reminding us that the imagination has outlived every empire, and that which is most shared is what no one can possess.
Image Credit: Unquiet presences … Dora Maar’s Sans Titre (1934)
The Beach at the Edge of Everything
Gabriel Jeroschewitz, April 29th, 2026, translated from Aramaic into English
The Beach at the Edge of Everything
The tide was going out when I saw them – two figures sitting on the beach. One had a beard like seaweed; the other wore a mustache like a relic from a dead regime. I was looking for solitude, but instead found Nietzsche and, beside him, Jesus of Nazareth.
“You keep talking about how God is dead,” Jesus said, picking up a shell with his fingers. “But you never offer an answer as to what comes after.”
“What comes after is the Übermensch. That’s the whole bloody point of creating beings that do not need permission from some almighty deity to live their lives.” Nietzsche crossed his arms over his chest. “When the old priest dies, the new man can come into the world and live.”
“What you said,” Jesus said, setting the shell on the sand, “is true. But what you felt when you wrote about the death of God was in Turin, alone, watching your horse get beaten up. You weren’t eating well, and no one spoke to you kindly in months. The man who wrote about the death of God was falling apart.”
“I know you feel pity for me, Jesus,” Nietzsche said. “But the angels came to me.”
“They did?”
“They came to me, in my house in Turin. When I was alone in the dark and crying over all the pain in my life. When I was weakest, they came to me. All of them. Nude, of course. They lay beside me on my bed and spoke to me in languages that told me I was chosen and that the universe loved me.”
Jesus remained silent for a while.
“And did you believe them?”
“What other choice did I have?” Nietzsche laughed. “My mother wrote letters to me that I could not bring myself to read. My sister hated humanity and all it did to the world. I had enemies from every university who spoke poorly of me in every journal. I was alone in my life. To survive, I accepted the comfort from the angels.”
“You are the dancing star,” Jesus said with a smile. “The one who creates meaning in a chaotic world.”
“But I didn’t do it for meaning,” Nietzsche said softly. “I did it to survive. To convince myself that a world without meaning was not winning over humanity.”
Jesus looked at him with sorrow in his eyes.
“Why are you here doing this to me?”
“Because I read your work. Because I know what it is to have your words misunderstood. You said the world needed to be free of God. It became an excuse for cruelty. Your Übermensch became monsters. You died before you could stop it.”
Nietzsche looked at Jesus with his blue eyes. “I died in 1900. For over a century, I have been dead. What does it matter what the world did with my words?”
“It matters because you’re still here.”
“I am?”
“You’re still sitting here on this beach, arguing about meaning in a chaotic world. I know what you did was beautiful, but the greatest terror of man is realizing that most cannot create meaning for their lives. Most need to feel loved and seen by someone greater than themselves.”
“And what did you do instead of offering comfort as I did?”
I placed the wine bottle on the sand and approached the pair.
“Jesus said you had a problem with loneliness, despite your great gifts to the world.”
“So I did.”
“You created stories to explain your pain. Your longing to be connected to something greater than yourself.”
“Which is?”
“That one is the loneliest number,” Jesus said, staring off into the distance. “That no matter what you achieve in your lifetime, on the final night of your life, you will eat dinner alone.”
The dog howled somewhere on the beach.
“I loved them,” Nietzsche said of the angels. “Even though they were not real.”
“But they were to you?”
“To me, they were real enough to make my existence bearable. To make my loneliness not so terrible.”
“They are not unlike what I offered you.”
“They are not,” Jesus said. “You said the infinite loved you. I said we were alone in the universe.”
“Which is more comforting?”
“Both are terrifying,” Nietzsche said. “But you chose to lie about it.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps I chose to hope about it.”
“The whole purpose of God being dead,” Jesus said with a small smile, “is that it doesn’t really change anything. People needed meaning from God, even before you spoke of it. They do now. But you gave people an altogether different word—instead of ‘God loves you,’ you said you must love yourself.” Instead of saying “God has a plan for your life,” you said you must make your own plan. It’s the same fear of being alone in the universe, Friedrich. The same need to not have to suffer in silence by existing in a universe devoid of meaning.”
“You gave them a reason to survive.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I did.”
“How?”
“I gave them meaning,” Jesus said. “You gave them a reason to believe in a higher being, but not one that cared for them.”
“So what happened to the angels?”
“They were never real.”
“I know.”
“But what happens to them?”
“They become the reason at three in the morning when you’re lying awake, trying to ignore the silence in your bedroom. You wake up thinking of all the victories you had in your lifetime, what incredible things you said in your lifetime, and how they all brought you nothing but a more comfortable chair in your lonely room. They become the costume for your loneliness.”
“That’s a terrible thing.”
“It is the only honest one,” Jesus said. “Despite what people say about your death and the Übermensch, I think you were brave to speak up about it. In fact, I think you were right about most of what you said. The world is in chaos. Meaning is something that humans must create for their lives. God died, or rather, the deity that humans once worshipped passed on. But you were also dying inside and hiding it from the world by speaking in prophecies and ultimatums. You were lonely men showing desperation for one who would understand their pain.”
Nietzsche said nothing. He just sat on the beach as the tide went out.
I finished my wine.
I almost went over to introduce myself to the man who spent his life arguing against the humanity of human connection.
But I did not.
The angels would not come tonight. Never had they come to anyone. Yet, Nietzsche remained on the beach, staring at the horizon, wondering if they would appear.
Sometimes, in the face of loneliness, the simplest of choices to remain on the beach with your thoughts and your pain is the most human of all.
Scarytale
Scarytale pt.1 of 3
By Quinn Ireland
The moon is full, and the clock strikes midnight. Two boys awake from deep sleep and go out to explore. They have remained lifelong friends and have been on many adventures before, but this one is a test. To see if the old horror fable was true, to see if an abandoned circus tent left for a century stood in a clearing in the trees. The boys had both questioned the logic in this, for these woods were packed with thousands upon thousands of trees. There was not a clearing in sight. But as the legend goes, when the moon was full and the clock stroke midnight, a funhouse appeared in a clearing in the woods, keeping the horror inside.
Larry:
I quietly push away the covers and swing my legs over the bed frame. The moon shines brightly through my one tiny window in my tiny room. My clothes lie out on the old rocker in the corner. My clothes are all black, as black as night, apart from the classic Yankees logo on my cap. The last thing that I grab is a flashlight from on top of my desk. I close the door quietly, and shuffle down the hallway and past my parents’ bedroom. I can hear my dad snoring heavily, like a tractor trying to start up. I continue downstairs slowly. Every little creak sounds a million times louder than normal. I slip out our front door and I’m off to meet Lawrence. We’re both off to another adventure!
I’m walking through town. Revelstoke looks so different this late. No cheery shoppers going from store to store with all the shops closed, but who would stay open past midnight, am I right? I’m fine with the town. It’s got a population of 6 000, no, 8 000 people. It’s nowhere close to any urban dumps. I love having a ton of woods to go on walks and explore in. Nobody seems to want to visit here, anyway. Apart from skiing, nobody gives a damn about this town. They would much rather visit wine towns like Oliver or Kelowna, or even Osoyoos. What’s the point of visiting a place right on the border of the U.S. Anyway, I’m going to see my friend, Lawrence. We are both excited to see this old circus tent. People claim it to be a fake old fairytale, but we want an adventure. And what better of an adventure than one in the forest?
“Pssst!”
I hear a whisper from an alleyway.
I don’t jump or run away or even hide, I could recognize that “psst!” From a mile away, it’s Lawrence! We’ve been friends for, well… ever since we were toddlers. He dropped his juice-box, and we began a full conversation (with the words that we knew) about the best kinds. I said mango, he argued and said orange. Since then, a decade after hitting it off, I hang out with the little goof most days after school, or what Lawrence calls the ass-wipe of education. We tease each other at least… I’ve lost count of how many times a day.
“Get out here, Lawrence! We’ve got a case to crack”
“Whatever you say, bossss!”
He then slips out from behind a trash can and stepping out into the streetlights. I notice that he is sporting an old brown sweater and matching baggy pants and a toque with a pair of once white sneakers. I asked once why he chose the white ones and he replied with; “They were cheaper than the brown ones but really easy to scuff up.” He also has a backpack, the color is… you guessed it: brown. “How’s a goin,’ Scary.” Lawrence said in a mocking tone. He always called me scary as a replacement for my real name; Larry. “Oh, you want to call me that!? How ‘bout I call you Borence, because Scary is a boring name!” He laughed and said; “Good one, Scary!” in a sarcastic tone. We both whooped with laughter until our sides felt like they might split open. “C’mon Scary,” Lawrence said; “Let us find this old fairytale… I mean scarytale funhouse before the sun comes up.” “Good pun. Ha ha ha.” I said unenthusiastically. The funhouse would turn out to be a scarytale all right. Little did they know what was waiting for them, deep in the heart of the forest, someone else ripped away with laughter.
Russophobia and the Jungian Shadow
Russophobia and the Jungian Shadow by Keith Porteous
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung argued that individuals often project their “shadow”, those aspects of themselves they find difficult to acknowledge, onto others. Rather than confronting their own aggression, fear, or desire for power, people may perceive these qualities as existing primarily in an external enemy. Jung believed this mechanism operates not only in individuals but also within groups and nations, where collective identities can be shaped through the projection of unwanted behavioural traits.
Viewed through this Jungian framework, contemporary Russophobia reflects more than a response to Russia’s policies alone. It also illustrates how political communities construct moral identities by projecting their own historical contradictions onto geopolitical rivals. This interpretation does not deny that states commit aggression or pursue imperial ambitions. Instead, it suggests that the language used to describe adversaries may also reveal unresolved truths within the societies making those accusations.
Throughout modern history, Western powers have participated in colonial expansion, military interventions, and regime-change operations across multiple continents. The United States and its allies have violently intervened with military aggression in numerous countries since the Second World War. A Jungian analysis would suggest that Western societies find it psychologically easier to locate imperialism entirely outside themselves than to confront their own behaviours, as in the current propaganda about the Russian leadership.
Accusations that Russia is inherently expansionist is such an example of projection. Jung emphasized that projections frequently attach themselves to “mirrored” characteristics of another person. Projection exaggerates or selectively emphasizes those characteristics while denying the same tendencies within oneself. Thus, a nation may perceive threatening behaviour from another state while hypocritically overlooking violent patterns in its own conduct. This is currently the basis for Russophobic propaganda.
This dynamic is reinforced by political narratives that divide the world into forces of good and evil. Jung warned against moral absolutism because it enables nations to identify with virtue while assigning vice exclusively to their opponents. Such polarization reduces the capacity for self-criticism and encourages escalating conflict. If one side claims itself to be purely defensive and the other as inherently aggressive, compromise becomes impossible because acknowledging complexity threatens the individual or nation’s moral identity.
Russophobia, from this perspective, may therefore function as more than prejudice against Russia or Russians. It can be understood as part of a broader psychological process in which fear, historical guilt, and anxieties about power are externalized. Political rhetoric portraying Russia as the tyrannical embodiment of violence or imperialism serves to reinforce a positive self-image for Western nations while reducing public attention to their own authoritarian behaviours and military interventions.
The value of Jung’s theory lies not in assigning blame but in encouraging self-reflection. Such awareness does not require moral equivalence between all actions. Instead, it requires intellectual honesty and a willingness to recognize that every political nation possesses a shadow. Rather than assuming that geopolitical conflicts arise solely from the inherent aggression of one side, this perspective invites examination of how historical memory, identity, fear, and projection shape public perceptions.
Ultimately, the Jungian concept of the shadow encourages a deeper understanding of international politics. It reminds us that psychological mechanisms influence collective identities as much as strategic interests do. Recognizing projection does not resolve geopolitical disputes, but it may reduce the tendency to transform political rivals into embodiments of absolute evil. Such recognition is a prerequisite for dialogue, self-criticism, and a more nuanced engagement with the complexities of global affairs.
Letter to the Editor – John Heinegg
“Ukraine: Yet Another War Based on Lies” by Keith Porteous, in last week’s Grapevine, omits some relevant truths about the war:
Russia invaded Ukraine
Ukraine defended itself
Porteous portrays Russia and Ukraine as victims of US/NATO imperialism. He repeats the phrase, “This war was intended to…” as though the West started it and is running it. But Russia has responsibility, and Ukraine has agency. This isn’t 1986. Ukraine isn’t part of the USSR; it’s a sovereign nation with a centuries-old identity. And sovereign nations have the right to fight back when attacked. Which brings up these relevant truths:
Russia invaded Ukraine ineptly
Ukraine defended itself effectively
Russia apparently expected an easy victory (the first wave of troops brought their dress uniforms with them, presumably for the victory parade in Kyiv). But Russia has fought this as a 20th-century conflict, and Ukraine is writing the book on 21st century war. “Russia remains intact,” Porteous asserts. Except, Ukrainian drones have destroyed a quarter to a third of Russia’s oil refining capacity, which is that country’s economic lifeblood; Russia is dragging antique weapons out of storage because Ukraine has blown up its modern ones; and Russia’s army has suffered 1.4 million casualties. Even the US State Department—Donald Trump’s State Department, and he supports Russia—now says that Ukraine is winning the war.
Porteous bemoans the corruption and lack of freedom in Ukraine. If true, that’s very sad: it makes Ukraine sound like Russia.
Porteous describes the war as a collapsing imperialist project of the US/NATO. But it’s also an imperialist project of Russia. It may, in fact, help destroy Russia as an empire. Just as the Iran war may help destroy the US as an empire (though that particular imperial suicide is progressing on multiple fronts).
Which I suppose leaves China.
John Heinegg