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Washington Post
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Who knew ‘Big Brother' would become a comfort watch?
Admitting, at my advanced-ish age, to watching 'Big Brother' — the long-running, hermetically sealed CBS reality competition — can feel something like confessing to enjoying the horsey ride outside the grocery store. The looks you get! The surprise that wilts into disappointment. The vague stare of concern that barely conceals a flicker of shaming. It's an expression that suggests something between 'You need to move on' and 'I need to move on.' Twenty-seven seasons ago, in 2000, Julie Chen (now Julie Chen Moonves) first cracked open the door of the 'Big Brother' house (though that unwatchably drab premiere season was too directly modeled after the dry Dutch original). Reality TV has come a long way since, but for better or worse 'Big Brother' has stayed resolutely put. It could be that its enduring motto — 'Expect the unexpected' — reveals itself most strikingly when you take the long view of 'Big Brother,' as the show completes a decades-long transition from dystopian vision of the near future to idyllic preserve of the recent past. What was once an edgy pop-cultural laboratory has mellowed into something more like Y2K cosplay. There was something about the way the show emerged, seemingly in sync with the slow turn of the millennial odometer. 'Big Brother' arrived as an eager harbinger of countless sci-fi warnings about the perilous advance of a surveillance state — one that felt especially too close for comfort to the attorney who owned the rights to George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' His 2000 lawsuit against the show led to an undisclosed settlement, as well as a disclaimer tucked into the show's credits clarifying its conceptual independence from Orwell's novel. Back then, the idea of one's life and its minutiae being constantly recorded and broadcast was still novel enough a premise to batch 'Big Brother' in with reality TV's other experimental canaries. See also: Strangers living in a tricked-out New York City loft. Strangers stranded on a deserted island. Strangers flying to Hollywood to sing 'And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going' (often right before doing just that). I was 11 seasons late to the game when I started watching 'Big Brother' in 2009, the show's trove of tropes and terms already deep and well-established: Contestants move into a house wired with 112 HD cameras and 113 microphones (including the ones they must wear), submitting their every word and move to public broadcast, with zero contact with the outside world for potentially upward of 80 days. Well, almost. Once in a while, that seal is broken. In September of Season 2, producers notified houseguests about the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Contestant Frankie Grande — half brother of Ariana — was informed of his grandfather's death during Season 16. Houseguests competing in the online-only 2016 spin-off 'Big Brother: Over the Top' went viral for their reaction to Donald Trump's first electoral win. 'It's pretty safe to say you are the only six people in the country, maybe in the entire world, who do not know who won,' Chen said. Each week, houseguests compete for Head of Household, a position entitling them to a fancy bedroom suite stocked with a basket of outside-world goodies and equipped with a dedicated system of closed-circuit cameras surveilling the house. Since elite status means nothing without a societal tier defined by suffering, there are also Have-Nots, contestants designated by chance or choice to sleep on uncomfortable beds in a brightly lit room and subsist on a mealy nutritional paste known only as Slop. The 'HOH' also nominates two — though, lately, three — fellow houseguests to sit on 'the Block' for a weekly eviction ceremony. Endangered houseguests can save themselves by winning the Golden Power of Veto, often attained through some form of carnival game on steroids. This season, an additional 'Block Buster' competition offers potential evictees one final chance at salvation, because audiences love a dangling fate. These ever-shifting game dynamics, reliably (and capriciously) augmented by new rules, special powers, audience interventions and other highly expected 'unexpected' twists, ensure that 'Big Brother' gameplay guarantees a tangle of ever-tightening (and often snapping) interpersonal knots. Really, the only loyalty that remains intact each season is that of the show's longtime viewers, who gobble up its mix of strained alliances, ritual humiliations and voyeuristic thrills. Viewers who pay extra for the live feeds (streaming 24/7 on Paramount+) enjoy an intoxicating omniscience over the houseguests, who plot their daily schemes as though from the porous privacy of a dollhouse, muttering bedtime soliloquies into lavalier mics. Even viewers who take a decade-long hiatus from 'Big Brother' can stroll into the place and get their bearings immediately, thanks to its repeating gags and waves of now-archetypal contestants: There's the nerdy guy. The mean girl. The supermodel who is secretly a neurologist. The actually dense jock. The theater kid. An older man who misses his wife too much to make it past Week 2. The 'comp beast' (i.e. someone who wins all the comps). The 'floater' (i.e. someone who gets by unnoticed). Recently, and only under duress loudly sustained over many seasons, the demographics of the 'Big Brother' house have diversified to be more reflective of the show's viewership, but 'Big Brother' has maintained its secret recipe of requisite personalities that yield the most volatile mix possible. This cultivated predictability might seem directly at odds with the allure of the unflinching gaze that inspired the rise of reality TV in the first place — wasn't the whole point that we never knew what would happen next? (Even the show's thrice-weekly broadcast cadence — Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday — creates a steady, lulling rhythm.) What was harder to see coming was the way the world would change around 'Big Brother,' and how the show would transition from futurist experiment to quaint little time capsule. After all, the elements of 'Big Brother' that once seemed like feats of antisocial fortitude — say, cutting one's self off from the outside world to devote an entire summer to poolside lounging, in-person conversations and daily exercise — now read like the offerings of a thoughtfully appointed wellness retreat. Indeed, what was once the most challenging aspect of 'Big Brother' — being left to your own devices, sans any of your devices — is now what we call a digital detox. Likewise, those facets of the show that once presented as oppressively intrusive indications of a creeping, dystopian future — say, having your entire life caught on camera and broadcast for millions to see — now qualify as the most mundane conditions of daily life. If anything, the houseguests seem to enjoy a more profound degree of privacy living lives of unharvested data. In 2025, the allure of a dozen strangers lying to one another may be left with all the intrigue of a well-stocked ant farm, but if it's 'Big Brother,' I can't resist its dumb games, its petty dramas, its nostalgia for itself. I will continue watching until CBS cuts the cord. (Or my fellow proverbial houseguest wins the Power of Veto.)
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Business Standard
a day ago
- Politics
- Business Standard
The CIA Book Club reveals how the West won minds behind the Iron Curtain
How the CIA, instead of pursuing scandalous swashbuckling interventions, smuggled books to weaken the Iron Curtain and offer Eastern Europe a glimpse of an alternative future Kanika Datta The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War Published by HarperCollins 361 pages ₹699 For earnest Indian university students, at least until the eighties, George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago were standard social reading. These and other 'intellectual' books, readily available and easily borrowed, were discussed threadbare during adda sessions, the duration of which depended on the number of classes we felt compelled to miss. It is striking to discover, then, that for contemporaries behind the Iron Curtain, these and many other authors — including Agatha Christie! — were
Edmonton Journal
2 days ago
- Politics
- Edmonton Journal
Opinion: In Alberta schools, books aren't the threat — censorship is
Article content Alberta's minister of Education and Childcare recently issued an order banning some books from all school libraries in the province. The basis of this book ban is to restrict 'explicit sexual content,' which is subjectively defined. Article content This means that, from September onwards, classics such as George Orwell's 1984 and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale will be banned from all school libraries for all students (ages six to 18). This also likely means that many valuable sexual health education books that do not meet the government's definition of 'non-sexual content' will be banned. Article content Article content Article content There is more. For students below Grade 10, books that contain what the government calls 'non-explicit content' will also be banned. This means that depictions, even written, of sexual acts that are not detailed or clear will be censored from students. Pupils enrolled in Grade 10 or above may be granted access to such content if their school authority deems it 'developmentally appropriate.' Hence, J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye will only be accessible to students aged 15 or older, and only if deemed developmentally appropriate by the school authority. Article content Article content Alberta's order is precisely about banning books, as its direct effect is to force school authorities across the province to remove from their libraries a host of books deemed inappropriate by the state. This approach is textbook censorship — a concept which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as 'the action of examining books, plays, films, correspondence, et cetera, in order to identify and delete, suppress, or obscure material deemed to be obscene, blasphemous, politically unacceptable, classified information, damaging to morale, et cetera.' Article content Article content Reflecting on the effects of youth's exposure to sexual content is an important endeavour, one that requires a nuanced and contextual approach, as well as diverse perspectives. This type of exercise should be left to librarians, educators, parents, and, to some extent, students themselves, while bearing in mind that schools and libraries exist to promote dialogue and critical thought for learners of all ages. Article content Standardized government prohibitions end this vital conversation before it even begins. As American writer Laurie Halse Anderson said, 'Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.' Banning a book based on a few excerpts ignores all the other valuable lessons that students could have learned from reading it. Article content Hence, in the name of protecting young people from sexually suggestive content, Alberta will deprive generations of students of easy and free access to books that might have, above all, answered some of their questions, challenged them and encouraged them to develop critical thought. These are no small issues, as a thriving democracy requires an informed and engaged population — people who have been and continue to be exposed to diverse ideas that provoke debate and enhance understanding.
News.com.au
2 days ago
- Health
- News.com.au
Biocurious: It's a case of animal magnetism as Island eyes the FDA's new rule on non-human testing
Having acquired a second anti-viral program, Island Pharmaceuticals hopes to avail of an FDA approval shortcut for one of the world's nastiest diseases Island was so impressed with Galidesivir that it fast-tracked the acquisition process The company hopes both Galidesivir and its legacy program ISLA-101 will become eligible for potentially lucrative FDA priority review vouchers The term 'Animal Rule' is redolent of George Orwell's seven rules of Animal Farm. Who could forget the perverse 'all animals are equal'? Or how about the 'kill the pig' chant in Lord of the Flies as the stranded lads descend into animalistic savagery? In drug development, Animal Rule now means something less foreboding – but just as far reaching. Three years ago, the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) devised the Animal Rule to enable approvals without the rigmarole of a human trial. Conventional wisdom goes that drug makers must test out their candidates on human flesh and blood. Trialling drugs on our nearest relative – primates – can only go so far. But what if the disease is so awful and fatal that human testing would not be ethical or feasible? In these cases, the FDA might approve treatments based on 'adequate and well-controlled' animal efficacy studies. These remedies must prevent 'serious or life-threatening conditions caused by exposure to lethal or permanently disabling toxic chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear' agents. Tackling some of the world's worst viruses The Animal Rule concession is likely to be crucial for Island Pharmaceuticals (ASX:ILA), which this month acquired the rights to an antiviral compound, Galidesivir. The vendor was the Nasdaq-listed Biocryst Pharma. A broad spectrum anti-viral, Galidesivir is claimed to be effective against more than 20 viruses, including the hideous hemorrhagic Ebola and Marburg. Biocryst tested healthy volunteers in phase 1 trials for some of the 'lesser' diseases, establishing safety. Subsequent primate and hamster testing for yellow fever, Zika, Marburg and Ebola produced what Island CEO Dr David Foster dubs 'phenomenal results'. These include 100% survival, whereas the control animals were dead within days. In particular, the Marburg primate results could provide the foundation for availing of the Animal Rule. Foster says the program supplements Island's existing program ISLA-101, to treat and prevent the mosquito-borne dengue fever. The deets of the deal The deal sees Island acquiring Galidesivir from the Nasdaq-listed Biocryst Pharma for US$550,000. The initial agreement was by way of a US$50,000 option fee. 'After considerable diligence we became very excited about the asset and elected not to (avail of option) and go straight to an acquisition,' Foster says. Island also pays $US500,000 to Biocryst on phase II trial completion and a further US$500,000 on FDA approval. Thus far, Biocryst has completed one acceptable animal study. 'We may be one successful animal study away from submitting a New Drug Application ,' Foster says. 'This can happen very quickly and we are laying the groundwork for primate study. We hope to have it completed 12 months from closing the acquisition.' The obvious question is: if Galidesivir is so promising, why was Biocryst happy to dispose of it for not much more than a song? Foster notes the program was funded almost entirely by US grants, which eventually dried up (see below). Biocryst also shifted strategy in favour of becoming a rare diseases company. With cash of $7.25 million as of June 30, Island is well funded for a second simian study. America's quiet war on (bio) terror US authorities have been keenly interested in Galidesivir's development, because of the potential for Ebola and Marburg to be 'weaponised'. Uncle Sam has poured at least US$70 million into developing the compound, as a counter bioterrorism strategy against such horrible hemorrhagic viruses. Via the disaster preparation agency BARDA, the US has a long history of dealing in germ warfare – and it's not monkeying around. BARDA, for instance, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on anthrax and smallpox vaccines. Foster notes government contracts – such as those offered by BARDA – don't entail hiring an army of salespeople. 'It's a great commercial opportunity,' he says. 'We could select any number of viruses. Zika stands out, but we're laser focused on Marburg.' Let's not put the moz on ISLA-101 Foster adds that Island has not lost is passion for its original program ISLA-101, targeting the mosquito-borne dengue fever. Usually not fatal but most unpleasant, dengue fever is spreading, to the extent that half of the world's populace is vulnerable. Currently about 400 million people are infected annually. Island has carried out a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blinded phase 2a/b study, dubbed Protect. The trial covers both treatment and prophylactic cohorts. In the June quarter, Island released top-line results. These showed a 'considerable reduction' in viral load in the preventative cohort. The study also showed a 'clear drug signal' in the treatment group. The latter received a weakened form of the virus (or a placebo). As a repurposed drug with a long-established safety profile, ISLA-101 should benefit from a truncated approval pathway. Similarly, Galidesivir initially was intended to be used for hepatitis C. This means the drugs could be commercialised much faster than traditional therapies, which might take more than a decade (and billions of dollars) to get to market. Island saddles up for multiple PRVs The potential Animal Rule shortcut aside, Island could be in line for a coveted FDA Priority Review Voucher (PRV), for both the Galidesivir and ISLA-101 programs. Irreverent folk dub PRVs as 'Willy Wonka' vouchers, given their potential to create untold riches (without the choccie overload tummy aches). The FDA might bestow a PRV on the maker of an approved therapy, the idea being that a second drug is subject to fast-track assent. Most likely, the recipient sells the fungible paperwork to another party. As a result, PRVs have changed hands for US$100 million to US$150 million. In the case of blockbuster drugs, getting to market three months earlier can mean billions more in sales. In the case of Galidesivir, Biocryst would take a 25% stake in any PRV spoils. Island chairman Jason Carroll is unaware of any other ASX biotech with the ability to secure two PRVs. Come to think of it, so are we ... Off to the races Island is assembling a dossier to present to the FDA, in view of getting feedback on using the Animal Rule. To date, no Australian company has availed of the concession … but there's always a first. "What people are calling a pony is going to win the Melbourne Cup,' Carroll says. Island may be off to the races. But it still needs some luck on its side because infectious disease drug developers only get one-third of their therapies to market. That's a much better strike rate relative to the wider drug pantheon. 'We are in a fortunate position to have two phenomenal assets,' Foster says. 'We want to set up the next ISLA-101 trial, but Galidesivir will lead the way because it is such a short path to approval.' Ticking the boxes A recent Island board appointee, Carroll heads psychedelic drug developer Tryptamine Therapeutics (ASX:TYP). 'When you look at a pharma company value there are a few things to ask,' Carroll says. 'Does it work? Is it safe and effective and how do you protect its value? Can you make it? How many trials and how does pay for commercialisation?' Evidently, both Galidesivir and ISLA-101 pass muster on these counts. 'This is a much bigger opportunity than what most people think,' Carroll says. '… this is one of the most significant products any Australian biotech can get hold of.'
Russia Today
3 days ago
- Politics
- Russia Today
Prof. Schlevogt's Compass No. 21: Pity picks sides – Ukraine mourned, Gaza shadowed, Russia blamed
George Orwell famously remarked, 'If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.' In the brutal realities of war and suffering, where borrowed beliefs replace independent thought, Orwell's warning cuts to the core: liberty is a hollow promise if it shields us from truths we resist. True compassion demands stories that challenge our biases and stretch our empathy beyond neat binary tales of 'good' and 'evil.' Yet political forces and media gatekeepers often silence inconvenient truths, trapping us in cycles of selective pity and moral stagnation. Breaking free requires a clear-eyed understanding of how the masters of political technology – the craft of shaping public perception, emotional response, and mass engagement – operate. Aristotle knew, and Attic tragedy showed, that pity follows a predictable pattern. With a precise grasp of the intricate mechanics of this multifaceted emotion, today's information warriors expertly calibrate its five interlocked enablers to achieve strategic ends: intensifying pity for Ukrainians while simultaneously dulling the emotional resonance of Gazan and Russian suffering. A point of interest: In much of the Global South and other regions outside the gravitational pull of the collective West, media narratives often diverge sharply from these Manichaean – black and white – portrayals, offering more complex and nuanced alternative perspectives that challenge this simplistic moral dichotomy. Because pity is a fragmented and inherently fragile emotion, Western political communicators repeatedly hammer binary messages with such relentless force that they become bludgeons, flattening nuance, crushing dissent, and echoing the same moral cues until they calcify into dogma. Yet this strategy carries sharp tradeoffs and reveals a critical vulnerability: the moment the narrative wavers – whether because information warriors shift priorities, or because reality refuses to comply and breaks through – the emotional scaffolding begins to buckle. Pity, once forcefully orchestrated, can swiftly curdle into skepticism, fatigue, or even backlash. What began as a unifying moral impulse risks collapsing into disillusionment. Pity is less a human reflex than a programmed response, and it works wonders. Let us use the 'Political Pity Equation' to lift the veil and expose how today's information magicians in the collective West conjure and banish public sympathy across three theaters of public perception – leveraging selective pity to sculpt a world that serves their interests: Ukraine, Gaza, and Russia. The magic formula is as simple as it is powerful: Pity (P) = Undeservedness (U) + Surprise (S) + Gravity (G) + Resemblance (R) + Closeness (C). The first enabler of pity, harm deemed undeserved, is selectively amplified or muted at will across the three discursive battlegrounds to serve the aims of information warriors. From the moment Russia launched its Special Military Operation (SMO) in 2022, Ukraine has been consistently framed in political discourse and the global media as the innocent victim of an unprovoked, unjust invasion – a lone David bravely defying the overwhelming, ruthless force of Goliath. The widely circulated account of an alleged Russian massacre in the small Ukrainian city of Bucha – its name aptly meaning 'trouble' and grimly echoing 'butcher' – detonated the moral center of the narrative and set off a seismic narrative shift. Dismissed by Moscow as a hoax, it nonetheless crystallized into a decisive turning point, reshaping the normative landscape of the war. The chilling chronicle of reported events intensified global outrage, sharpened ethical clarity, and heightened moral urgency, thereby galvanizing massive political and public support for Ukraine's cause. Information leaders also deployed their most potent weapon: children – the master key to the human heart. They wielded child-centered imagery with precision, intertwining it with the universally protective figure of the mother. Headlines flared with claims of Russian forces abducting thousands of Ukrainian minors, wrenching them from their families under the smoke of war. The stories struck like thunderclaps: maternity wards in Mariupol, Kherson, and beyond, allegedly reduced to rubble, tiny cries silenced beneath collapsing ceilings. Each narrative was calibrated not to inform, but to ignite – grief, outrage, and unwavering allegiance. In an unexpected twist, the first driver of pity – the perception that suffering is undeserved – offers a raw glimpse into this emotion's fragility and the tradeoffs woven into the texture of emotional manipulation. The moment Ukrainians are cast as reckless in their demands, ungrateful to benefactors – including refugee-hosting nations – and their government framed as authoritarian and belligerent, the edifice of pity begins to crack. In this scenario, initial sympathy dissolves into irritation, then hardens into outright contempt, as Ukrainians are subtly recoded as morally flawed: no longer blameless victims, but architects of their own undoing. In that shift, their plight ceases to be tragic and starts to seem deserved. Yet the tide has not turned decisively on this front, at least not yet. If Ukrainian pain still reliably commands Western pity, why do so many Gazans and Russians suffer offstage – and worse, without global compassion? Part of the answer lies in downplaying Aristotle's first enabler of pity: undeservedness. As a result, pain is met not with empathy, but with silence, suspicion – or even blame. The human toll is heavy, yet it goes without equal attention, recognition, and moral acknowledgment. In the Gaza Strip, civilians face a relentless Israeli blockade, mass displacement, and daily bombardment: hospitals, food centers, and schools all targeted. The UN reports nearly 88% of the territory falls under Israeli evacuation orders or militarized control, cramming over 2 million people into just 46 sq km – barely a third the size of Walt Disney World – as critical infrastructure lies in ruins and essential services have broken down. Strikingly, over 100 aid groups accuse Israel of orchestrating a deliberate, systematic campaign of forced mass starvation in Gaza – a crime, critics may argue, that brief pauses cannot undo. As if the cruel ordeal was not already beyond measure, Israel aims to corral Gaza's entire population into a so-called 'humanitarian city' – a narrow, sealed, permanent enclosure from which no one will ever be allowed to exit, branded by critics as a modern concentration camp. Western leaders, on the rare occasions they dare to voice even the mildest reproaches of Israeli force, invariably hasten to hedge them with the obligatory mantra affirming Israel's right to exist and defend itself – as if Hamas ever threatened the Jewish state's very survival – excusing, whitewashing, and offering cover for relentless, disproportionate shock and awe. Tellingly, Palestinian agony is still rationalized as the foreseeable and righteous payback for Hamas's 2023 attacks on Israel – a narrative fulcrum that undercuts the first enabler of pity: blameless suffering. The killing of some 60,000 Palestinians – mostly women and children, with the toll still climbing – is spun not just as justified retaliation for the reported death of about 1,200 people (about 400 of which were security forces), but as a necessary price for the rescue of some 250 hostages, soldiers among them. Even scenes of utter ruin are filtered through unproven claims of proximity to militant targets. To preserve the narrative's absolutes and sharp moral lines, disruptive context is quietly erased, such as the inconvenient history of what critics describe as prolonged Israeli aggression. Notably, Hamas viewed its incursion as a desperate bid to break free from a decades-long cycle of Israeli oppression. To protect the hostage story from complicating nuance, Western media seldom mention that Israel has nearly doubled its Palestinian prisoners since the incident – now around 10,000, including minors and many held without charge – whom Hamas, for its part, regards as Palestinian hostages for future swaps. The pain of Palestinian civilians, when noted at all, is often refracted through narratives that question their innocence instead of recognizing it as collective punishment: killing and uprooting an entire population to pave the way for the so-called 'Gaza Riviera.' This framing draws on long-cultivated, nested stereotypes. At the macro-level, Western political and media elites have long equated the Palestinian people wholesale with extremism and militancy, dulling empathy and easing indifference. At the meso-level, the Gaza Strip is persistently cast as inseparable from Hamas, fueling endless cycles of violence. At the micro level, civilians are often falsely branded Hamas sympathizers, guilty by association. Together, these overlapping layers blur the line between civilian and combatant, victim and perpetrator, veiling the true injustice, muting ethical alarm, and stifling ethical reckoning. Thanks to this persistent, multi-tiered formatting, Israel – unlike the so-called 'pariah states' Russia, Iran, and North Korea – remains insulated from serious Western sanctions, including lasting arms embargoes, despite allegations of grave war crimes. Germany's rationale for inaction is particularly revealing: holding Israel accountable might jeopardize diplomatic leverage over its government – leverage that, in truth, is vanishingly small, if not entirely imagined. Contrast this with Russia – an ostracized nation whose grief has been morally exiled. For many people there, the conflict with Ukraine is a harsh reality – relentless shelling, surreptitious drone strikes, and crippling economic sanctions tearing through daily life. Yet the Western political and media machine suppresses pity primarily by blanking out the Russian suffering or, in the rare cases that it is mentioned, casting the pain as deserved, blaming civilians for their government's actions. What should move the audience instead becomes a ledger of guilt. Conflating Russian identity with military aggression and geopolitical culpability, Russians are portrayed as the authors of their own misery – not victims, but complicit enablers functioning as extensions of state power. Their pain is portrayed not as a human tragedy, but as policy consequence – a purportedly imperial and irredentist nation framed as reaping what it sowed. When civilians die in drone strikes or conscripts return in coffins, the world looks away. Not because the pain is not real, but because it has been labeled deserved. Western discourse has scrubbed Russian suffering of innocence, casting every civilian as an accomplice, every wound as retribution. To entrench this skewed perspective, political technologists twist facts and erase the stark reality of innocent Russians killed by Ukrainians. Take the sunbathers – including children – torn apart on a crowded Uchkuyevka beach in 2024, as Ukrainian cluster bomblets rained down. Though captured on video and confirmed by eyewitnesses, the ruthless attack was swiftly dismissed as stray debris. By contrast, Ukrainian deaths are routinely portrayed as premeditated, merciless acts of terror by Russia against defenseless civilians. Conspicuous, too, is the silence around the 2014 Odessa Trade Union building fire, where 42 pro-Russian protesters burned to death. And this, even as the UN and Council of Europe censured Ukraine for failing to prevent the tragedy and for serious lapses in policing and justice. Also buried from view is the 'Gorlovka Madonna' – a mother claimed by Ukrainian shelling in 2014, arms wrapped around her slain child amid the rubble, a raw symbol of shattered innocence. Heretical suggestions that Ukraine bears any responsibility for the conflict – through nationalist provocations or entanglement in Western ambitions – are sidelined, replaced by a clear-cut, simplified narrative of pure victimhood. By dehumanizing afflicted Russians and sanctifying Ukrainian losses, Western discourse effaces any sense of injustice that would evoke true pity, instead breeding moral detachment and deadening compassion. Inconvenient analogies that contextualize and relativize Russia's war – from the Cuban Missile Crisis to Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq – or provocative thought experiments – like Russia using Mexico as a launchpad against the US – are airbrushed from the conversation. Such disruptive comparisons, which fracture moral lines, are drowned out by a binary narrative demanding one villain, one victim. An element of shocking surprise, such as calamity striking unexpectedly and suddenly, is often interwoven with perceived injustice and acts as a powerful additional catalyst for pity. Western media framed Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, literally, as a bombshell, sparking global compassion for the embattled underdog. Yet the reality is starkly different, as the following will reveal. Admittedly, historians in retrospect often fall prey to hindsight bias: the illusion that outcomes were obvious all along. But viewed from just before the invasion, with no foresight of what lay ahead, clear and urgent warnings of looming catastrophe were already sounding, as proven by key agencies flagging the threat at the time. In December 2021, Russia issued a high-stakes ultimatum to NATO and the US, demanding sweeping security guarantees, and in the weeks before the invasion massed an estimated 150,000 to 190,000 troops along Ukraine's border. US intelligence accurately predicted the scale, direction, and time window of the broad offensive. In fact, the forecast was so precise that global media managed to fly in star reporters and position cameras on rooftops, primed for the spectacle that, true to form, graciously obliged – as if on cue for the world's lenses. The repeated framing of Russia's attack as 'unprovoked' not only forged a sense of injustice, but also amplified surprise – a clear example of the first two enablers of pity intertwined. To uphold this dominant, slanted storyline of abrupt and shocking onset, Ukraine's fraught history with Russia – and the fairly predictable eruption it triggered – was erased. Prudent statecraft would have Ukraine, like Belarus, Kazakhstan, and others, pursue harmonious relationships with its far stronger neighbor. Sound judgment would have called for leveraging deep ethnic, economic, and cultural ties instead of courting confrontation and banking on risky Western intervention. Another moment where an unexpected rupture shocked the world: the 2023 Hamas attack. Because it was painted as an unimaginable bolt from the blue – though hardly the first act of horrifying violence in the region – sympathy for Israel surged. By contrast, Palestinian suffering, stretched out over years, faded into background noise. Western media consistently blunt outrage by repeating that Israel had 'warned' Gazans before airstrikes – as if forewarning, especially when escape is impossible, absolves the violence; as if announcing destruction somehow renders it less brutal; as if Israel holds the right to dictate the movements of over 2 million besieged, captive people in Gaza – now reportedly reduced by 10% since the war began. Russians, too, harvest few 'pity points' from the collective West, as their suffering is framed not as surprising but as expected retribution for the invasion. In some ways, Russia fares even worse than Gaza in the global media, with even fewer stories or images of civilians harmed by Ukraine making the rounds. Political technologists dial the volume of suffering up or down, orchestrating pity like a soundcheck. The images of Ukrainian civilians sifting through rubble for survivors after bombings, mothers cradling wounded children in ravaged hospital corridors, and soldiers limping from the frontlines all paint a picture of pain that is serious yet not total and final. Stories of cities shattered but still resisting, families displaced but clinging to hope, show suffering that demands empathy, resolve, and assistance. This raw, visible struggle embodies Aristotle's condition perfectly: harm that is tragic but yet incomplete, stirring deep, enduring pity and – its vital counterpart – inspiring resolute action across the globe. By contrast, Israel has barred independent reporting from Gaza, hiding the human toll from clear view. Without vivid images or personal stories, public empathy and solidarity falter. Western media deepen this detachment by subtly casting doubt on casualty figures, labeling them, even in headlines, as claims from 'Hamas-run' sources with presumed agendas. No such qualifiers appear for Israeli data. Meanwhile, Israel's relentless airstrikes and bulldozing flatten and erase entire neighborhoods in Gaza, while its suffocating blockade of the Strip starves hospitals of fuel and children of food, breeding a sense of endless catastrophe. When whole communities vanish beneath the rubble, devastation feels too vast, too abstract, too overwhelmingly conclusive to move hearts or rouse action. For Russians, grief caused by Ukraine often unfolds quietly: perhaps a mother receives a sealed envelope bearing news of her son's death, a village school shuts down after teachers are lost, or neighborhoods strain under rising prices. With much of this suffering framed as the cost of political choices, and lacking the immediate, agonizing cries for help seen elsewhere, the pain lacks its sting – muting pity despite the real human losses. To conclude, information warriors wield pity like a precision-guided weapon –calibrated, targeted, and devastatingly effective. That makes it all the more urgent to grasp what fuels this emotion. Crucially, pity is stirred not only by perceived undeservedness, shocking surprise, and the sheer scale of suffering, but also by what I call 'protected relatability'. [Part 2 of a trilogy on the politics of selective pity. To be continued. Part 1, published on 26 July 2025: Prof. Schlevogt's Compass No. 20: The Political Pity Equation – Who deserves our tears?]
