OPINION:
The West has long lived comfortably in the assurance we will never again see the feudal practice of a king claiming new land as a legal right of conquest. In 1066, for example, when William the Conqueror crossed the channel and took England, he nullified all previous legal landholding and allocated every town and farm in all of England to his generals and favorites.
Today in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is serving clear notice that he is asserting a right of conquest by grinding Ukrainian buildings, culture and people into the dust of the earth. He has plans to rebuild the nation in his own image, likely granting his generals and favorites brand new lands of their own.
Chattel slavery was yet another right of conquest, and most recently was sourced in Black Africa. Today, according to reports, ownership of human bodies and minds is a white phenomenon sourced in Eastern Europe. Many thousands of Ukrainians are being deported to Russia where they will work in concentration camps for their new “owner,” laboring without civil or human rights.
Democracy, prosperity and human rights take work, the kind Americans and Europeans no longer seem willing or even able to accomplish.
KIMBALL SHINKOSKEY
Woods Cross, Utah
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