A No to Nato rally at Conway Hall on 25 February, at which I was due to speak, has been cancelled after the venue received threats and abuse online that made them concerned both for staff safety and for funding.
This is just another symptom of the serious threat to free speech in modern society. In fact we are now at the stage where we might say free speech has already been lost.
Neither state nor corporate media would give any space to the views likely to have been expressed at Conway Hall. The war raging in Europe is not allowed to be discussed in any terms, other than as a straightforward conflict between good and evil, with the West as the good guy and Russia as the evil.
Social media posts saying anything else are rigorously suppressed. Because of the successful creation of corporate gatekeeper sites like Facebook and Twitter, the readership of this article will be at a quarter the level of a year ago, due to rigorous suppression of my posts linking here.
Now my position on the Ukraine war is a great deal more nuanced than most of the speakers at the No to NATO debate. I oppose NATO because it is an agent of neo-imperialism and a mechanism for the diversion of huge amounts of resources to the super rich, via the arms and military industries.
But I am plain that while provoked, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was nonetheless illegal in international law. I view those who regard Putin as a defender of democracy or of workers’ rights as seriously deluded.
Putin is a very bad man, and the West is only just achieving the levels of wealth inequality that Russia has experienced (with a push from the West) these last three decades. The oligarchs and military industrial complex rip off the ordinary man in Russia, just as in the West.
This is a disaster for the people of Ukraine, for the people of Russia and for the people of the World. It is going to end with Crimea absorbed into Russia and some kind of autonomous status inside Ukraine for the Donbass regions.
That outcome could have been agreed without war, before thousands had to die and millions be impoverished. It could be agreed today. All the death and destruction and weapons systems will achieve nothing – except massive profits for the wealthy.
Responsible politicians would stop the fighting now. But no politician sees a personal interest in doing anything other than escalating and pouring in more and more weapons systems to mince human flesh.
I worry hugely about the abysmal quality of public debate. I am not sure whether bad education, social media or a race to the bottom in broadcast and print media – which are mostly about commentators not about news – are most to blame.
But quality of thought and depth of understanding are abandoned almost entirely in what passes for public debate in favour of risible extremist positions.
Ukraine is one example, where we have an establishment view that NATO and Ukraine are perfect, that there was no constant pre-invasion shelling of Russian speaking civilians or banning of Russian oriented political parties or the Russian language and publications, and definitely no Nazi influence in the Ukrainian armed forces.
Then you have those brave enough to suggest a counter view, but who claim that Putin is perfect and Russia a workers’ paradise, that all Ukrainians are Nazis, that there are no Ukrainians in the Donbass, and that Russia is only prevented by self-restraint from total military victory.
These are both ideological positions which are self-evidently ludicrous, but the first is in fact adopted by Western governments and the entire mainstream media.
I find I receive continual abuse from both sides for not adopting one crazed narrative or the other.
The market for reason has become very small.
On three current major controversies – Ukraine, covid and trans rights, debate is extraordinarily polarised, and the slightest deviation from the official narrative is heresy. Those who see themselves as heretics despise all but their own, equally extreme, interpretation.
On Covid, the official narrative is that it was a uniquely devastating virus and that humankind was only saved from a serious disaster by a combination of ruthless lockdown and revolutionary vaccines.
On the other side we have those who believe Covid was an engineered virus designed to make a fortune for big pharma and to justify government measures to reduce civil liberties, and that the vaccines are themselves deadly.
Personally, I believe neither of these opposing narratives.
My own view is that covid-19 is a respiratory disease which, in its initial outbreak, was similarly lethal, or possibly a little worse, than one of the major flu pandemics. The “Hong Kong flu” of 1968/9 I vividly remember. I knew a healthy child who died of Hong Kong flu, and my whole family caught it.
The Hong Kong flu killed an estimated 1 to 4 million people worldwide. The famous Spanish flu pandemic from 1919 killed an estimated 25 million.
To say covid-19 was similar to a flu pandemic is not to downplay it: they are terrible things.
The Covid-19 pandemic killed, according to Wikipedia which is curated very close to the official line on these matters, about 6.7 million people – about a quarter of the number killed by the Spanish flu. According to the same source, without vaccines it would have killed about 17 million more, which would be about the same as the Spanish flu.
Although of course the Spanish flu still killed a much larger proportion than Covid-19 of the world’s then much smaller population. Indeed as a percentage of population killed, covid-19 is not out of the same league as the Hong Kong flu of 1968/9.
So Covid-19 is a very nasty virus, which also may have more debilitating long term effects than generally associated with a flu pandemic, but not dissimilar in its mortality rate.
There are difficulties in collating the statistics. The figures for historic flus are not very reliable. The practice of treating as covid-19 deaths anybody who died with the disease, when they actually died of something else, is also perplexing.
If you look at excess deaths (above the 5 year rolling average), it is undoubtedly true that at the minute excess deaths are as high in the UK as at the height of the covid-19 outbreak before the vaccine programme, even though only 5% of current deaths involve covid.
It is also true that they were this high in January 2015 and, in both cases, a severe winter flu paid a role. The official narrative to explain the current death toll features heavily health problems caused by lack of access to medical treatment during lockdown.
Some of my own views on covid-19 are these. The pandemic was comparable to a nasty flu pandemic. The panic caused went beyond the rational, and governments were involved in pumping that up. There was little danger to the young and to healthy mature adults, but real danger to the elderly and unwell.
Accordingly I believe lockdown was too severe and should better have focused on shielding the easily identified vulnerable, rather than placing harsh and unnecessary restrictions on the large majority in society.
There could have been massive infrastructure, physical, moral and psychological support offered by the state to those who needed to shield. Rather than lock down everybody else. Closing universities for example was completely unnecessary.
Just like all pandemics before it, the covid-19 virus is busily following its own self-interest by mutating into a less vicious form that can co-exist more comfortably with its host.
I welcome vaccines as long as they are voluntary. Medical science of course makes mistakes but in general has been a massive force for good. The argument that covid-19 vaccines are a fundamental threat to the world’s health seems to have as little evidence behind it as the argument that covid-19 was such a threat that economies had to be fundamentally harmed.
Vaccines should be voluntary and no sanctions imposed for not taking them. But I regard taking the vaccine, and sharing in any associated risk as well as any associated benefit from herd immunity, as the correct moral position.
I do not claim that I am uniquely right or particularly expect you to agree with me. But I am not in either of the two binary camps.
I am not in the camp that supported every authoritarian crackdown and wanted to put anyone in jail who did not wear a mask, nor in the camp that thinks it was all a sinister government plot.
As with Ukraine I urge you not to switch off your brain and join one “camp” or the other “camp”. Do not sign up to a pre-ordained set of opinions.
Forge your own opinions.
The other issue I want to explore today, on which what passes for “thinking” appears ridiculously polarised, is that of trans rights.
On the one side we have people who argue that it is an inalienable human right to live in the gender of your choice, and that all societal institutions and infrastructure must be organised around that individual choice, which may never be questioned or subjected to scrutiny.
On the other side we have people who argue that sex is immutable and determined at birth, that safe spaces and positive discrimination provisions for women are dependent on strict application of biological sex, and that much of the trans movement is motivated by sexual perversion.
A lack of any willingness to try and synthesise rights and obligations, and take account of the desires and motives of others, seems the defining characteristic of almost everybody actively engaged in this debate.
My own starting point is a libertarian one. I believe people should behave as they wish to behave and be treated as they wish to be treated, wherever possible, and that people should be kind to one another.
Therefore, if somebody presents themselves to me as male or female, I shall treat them as such in society. That seems to me polite. It is not for me to check their genitals, much less to make a judgment on their aesthetic appearance.
I am frequently challenged over this and asked, do I believe that a man can actually become a woman? The answer to which is, that I neither know nor care. It is a matter of human interaction. Life is not a science exam.
The debate is currently focused on Adam Graham aka Isla Bryson, a convicted double rapist who is currently held in a female prison in Scotland, having declared himself a trans woman.
It is worth noting that this has happened not under Scotland’s new Gender Recognition Reform legislation, which is not in force, but under existing UK wide legislation, as interpreted by the Scottish Prisons Service under Justice Minister Keith Brown.
I have to confess, this seems to me self-evidently ludicrous.
There are no absolute rights in our society, beyond the right to breathe. The state can incarcerate you and effectively remove all your rights, for criminal acts or if you are dangerously insane.
That rights are not immutable meets with general acceptance.
I see no reason why trans rights should be different. Anybody who chooses to rape women will lose a lot of rights. They will be incarcerated. Subsequently they will be on a register and unable to live in certain locations, and barred from certain employments.
It seems to me entirely sensible that a rapist or sexual assaulter of women should lose the right to transition in law to another gender. It should be amongst those societal rights they forfeit by their heinous act.
The problem is, this kind of practical approach is unacceptable to both extreme ideologies.
On the one hand, you have those that believe that some people have a right, that may never be gainsaid, to an inner gender identity only they can identify, and that their sincerity may never be questioned.
On the other hand, you have those who believe that everybody should be forced to live a gender role determined by their physical characteristics, whether they want to or not, and no matter if they never hurt anybody in trying to do the opposite.
I am very conscious that it is wrong always to discuss this matter in terms of sexual offence, and the very large majority of trans people are entirely peaceful and innocent.
But that itself is why banning rapists and other serious sexual offenders from changing gender does not affect the principle: a few serious criminals are nothing to do with genuine trans people.
I find some of the “debate” simply baffling. I am sorry I cannot find it now, but I saw one tweet from a lady who had used a unisex toilet and was horrified to have to walk behind the back of somebody using a urinal.
Has she never left the UK? What is offensive about a man’s back? The extraordinary thing is, there were scores upon scores of replies about how disgusting it was to walk past a urinal.
I find myself genuinely baffled by this and by what has become an entire sub-genre about potential behaviour by trans women in changing rooms and toilets, where all of the projected behaviours would remain criminal with or without a gender recognition certificate.
I don’t claim any expertise or genius on the subject. I reject the strange absolutism of both extremist positions.
I do not accept either that we are forced to live in a role according to our physical make-up, nor that a professed personal gender identity may never be queried for sincerity in a criminal.
In comments two articles ago I was called both a transphobe and a pro-trans hater of women, by gender extremists on either side over the same article.
Now on none of these three issues did I set out by looking at varying positions of different camps and trying to find a middle ground. I simply considered the arguments on Ukraine, on Covid and on trans rights on their merits, and came to my views as the best policies for achieving maximum human happiness in difficult situations.
In doing so I find myself at odds with public discourse on both subjects which revolves around clearly defined camps, holding sets of received opinions and arguments to which they stick, and intolerant of anybody who does not subscribe to the same set.
This is a sorry state of public discussion, made much worse by the fact that in each case the government, media and ruling establishment is entirely signed up to one of the binary camps, and itself refuses to entertain any debate or nuance.
Indeed, those who query the Establishment line on any of these issues are subjected to ridicule, ostracism and even legal threat. That may be one reason why opposition is itself so unsubtle in its response.
It is also the case that on all these arguments people become angry, exasperated or impatient that anybody should hold a different view to their own.
The idea that reasonable, well-motivated people need not agree on everything and may agree to disagree on certain issues, is a fundamental basis of a tolerant society. It is an increasingly rare value.
I find that the market for nuance is small, and diminishing.
I want to stress again I am not claiming I have everything right. But I am claiming I have thought through the facts and arguments for myself, as best I can.
I hope this is of some assistance to you in doing the same.
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re: Covid
why is the explanation as zoonosis “unpopular”?
Because it´s not a good story?
I still have this feeling that the need for narrative conclusiveness is dominating over the “uneventfulness” of natural sciences and the complexities and opaque intricacies of how a virus developes as a natural phenomenon in the shadows far from human scrutiny.
Nobody likes such a mystery because you can´t sell it, you can´t explain it, you can´t package it. So stuff is being created in “labs.” Because there everything can be assessed. It´s like a court case. Prosecution witnesses judge.
But that´s not how these things usually work.
Not everything is a movie.
Since I believe The Intercept as first of the “serious” outlets picked up on this, it is an ongoing story.
But do we have real final proof of artifical/lab process behind it?
Substantial developments since the story first “broke”?
I well understand that there were money issues about sponsorship of medical research concerning those labs, money flows between US and China.
But that would touch an entirely different aspect of this problem.
(this is not Nordstream)
This is a serious question and not intended as provocation.
Hi, AG.
There is a bit of loophole in the Biological Weapons inasmuch is although it is illegal to develop, stockpile, acquire, produce or retain biological weapons, it isn’t actually illegal to use a biological weapon. Whenever someone brings this up at the annual BWC meetings, the UK and US immediately burst out laughing and say how on earth could anyone ever use if a biological weapon if they aren’t able to develop, stockpile, acquire, produce or retain them? Then they will start talking about misinformation and then yet another year rolls by without that simple loophole being fixed.
So how can you use a biological weapon if you don’t develop, stockpile, acquire, produce or retain it?
It goes like this. The Pentagon will turn to someone like Dr Peter Daszak of Ecohealth Alliance and say: “You know, Dr Daszak, we are terribly worried about the possibility of a zoonotic pandemic. We wondering if you could write up a grant about how to identify the truly dangerous pandemic viruses from the entire virome and how we can mitigate these risks.”
And so Dr Daszak and colleagues duly prepare a detailed proposal about how to identify pandemic-potential viruses and Pentagon reads it and responds: “You know, Dr Daszak, this is really very very good. But unfortunately due to budget cuts we can’t quite see our way to fund it.”
Then the Pentagon turns a completely different researcher, Dr Weinberger. And says: “You know, Dr Weinberger, we are terribly worried about the possibility of a zoonotic pandemic, we were wondering if you were interested in a grant to try your novel and untested antiviral therapy against a candidate.”
And Dr Weinberger says “Of course, should we try it on Sars (1) or Mers?” and the Pentagon replies: “No, no, no those are select agents, far too much bureaucracy and you have to notify the CDC. The boys at the Naval Laboratory have been out collecting lots of viruses, why don’t we get them to send you around a sequence with a few modifications so we can test it on macaque monkeys later on.”
And of course, Dr Weinberger says he would be delighted and busily starts constructing the sequence that is sent him.
And there you have, a biological weapon that can be used but was never developed, stockpiled, acquired, produced or retained as one.
Nothing like having a first rate legal team.
thx Sean_Lamb
but then as you say correctly that would still be loopohole argument – negative affirmation so to speak.
We know nothing definitely so anything could apply.
However there are probabilities I believe that ought to give some hints and framework for action.
Otherwise its completely void of scientific epistemic processing and analysis and we are back at square one.
I don’t where you got that from but they have been seriously misinformed. The use of chemical and biological weapons was banned in 1925.
https://www.icrc.org/en/document/chemical-biological-weapons
“agree to extend this prohibition to the use of bacteriological methods of warfare ”
https://unoda-web.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/assets/WMD/Bio/pdf/Status_Protocol.pdf
So no, correctly informed.
In any case such a prohibition didn’t stop the US in 1950s drawing up plans and munitions for a massive anthrax attack follow-up for an all out nuclear war (the idea was first there would be a wave of nuclear bombers and then a wave of planes delivering anthrax and other bacterial bombs). It was only after 1972 that the US formally disavowed such research, although still conducting it in secret or under plausible deniable guises
As far as I understand it, we don’t have (and probably never will – maybe with the exception of Moderna’s 2016 patent) undeniable proof that it was manmade (indeed the WHO refused to rule it out) but nor do we that it was naturally, independently, organically zoonotic in origin. Therefore we work from the best fit hypothesis.
If I understand correctly, the scientific approach to hypothesising a virus’ origin is to look at the three facets of its ‘journey’.
So far, the most logical hypothesis I’ve come across contrasts the likelihood of originating from the WIV vs. the Wuhan equivalent of the CDC (a separate lab that was apparently much, much closer to the markets and carried out its own bat cave expeditions for test samples). I can’t remember the specifics of the different stages of a virus’ journey but the explanation I read contrasted them across those two labs and concluded that the Wuhan CDC-equivalent one was a far better fit, logically speaking.
Dear Craig,
what i find astonishing is, that even seasoned commentators seem to fall for the horseshoe theory. Making out perceived “extremist camps” and assuming, that the truth must be somewhere in the middle might make sense intuitively, but i find it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Don’t you think, that precisely this idea is what will prevent scottish independence forever? Unionist vs separatists = The solution must be somewhere in the middle? Wouldn’t you say, that almost anything in the middle will only solidify the status quo in the long run?
Wouldn’t you agree, that perception management through propaganda mechanisms is designed precisely for the purpose of bringing people to certain conclusions, which then seem moderate?
Personally i get the impression, that we have an abundance of opinion without anyone ever pointing out that opinions are the lowest form of mental activity. What we should strive for are points of view, that require gathering information and a thought process but rewarding you with a position, that can be defended and/or expanded. Of course this requires actual energy and effort (our brains consume quite a lot of energy) and our power saving mechanisms need to be overruled, which is where the convenient predigested thought process, that is mass media manipulation, comes in.
People do not want to give up on those easily achieved opinions and the illusion of being well informed.
https://theduran.com/google-hides-the-main-reason-for-americas-arming-of-ukraine/
I have checked, and the assertions made in this article are valid
I’ve just searched the term “U.S. arms exports up 49% in fiscal 2022” on Qwant and Google and the first three pages show multiple sites carrying that exact (or almost exact) headline including finance:yahoo.com, usanews, MSN, reuters itself and a host of other sites I am not familiar with. So, I am not sure that that piece from the duran is as accurate as they think. Perhaps two days ago on Wednesday Jan 25 it was accurate but no longer.
after I read the article – and I am no fan of the author – I checked the assertion, and although every other search engine I tried produced multiple links, Google came up with a complete and utter blank. Nothing.
That may be something as simple as using a different nameserver to ET.
Just did it again (and now I am in France, using a different device and internet connection) –
About 0 results (0.53 seconds)
Your search – “U.S. arms exports up 49% in fiscal 2022” – did not match any documents.
Suggestions:
Make sure that all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Bing.com produces “About 14 800 results” for the same search at the same time on the same device in the same location. Your mileage may of course differ
I’m happy to see the phrase “now my opinion (about Ukraine) is much more nuanced.”
Partly because I hope that my presence here has contributed to the amount of these nuances. It’s not that I’m hungry for recognition, but rather because digging up information and translating it in a form that is digestible for an English-speaking reader takes effort and time.
Partly because Mr. Murray’s early statements about the situation there (sorry) smacked of dogmatism. While some might point out that dogmatism is appropriate in some areas, well, religion comes to mind, but in real life when we interact with people, this trait is rather unattractive. You may agree that we only like a dogmatic politician if we support his set of dogmas; if cooking was dogmatic, we wouldn’t have pineapple pizza; and if dogmatism existed in sexual relations, then instead of sex shops we would have shop windows full of Victorian nightgowns with the notorious hole in the front 🙂
I have no goal of converting someone to “my only true faith”, because I probably do not have any established “faith”. I said once that I’m just a housewife waging my funny little war against big lies, and I remain one. So I’m happy with this phrase of Mr. Murray with my little quiet joy. I’ll probably have to re-print his portrait and hang it in my garland again, between Mrs. Hua Chunyin and Ivan Provorov.
As I learn and develop on this site, I inevitably feel gratitude and a need to give back. May I suggest good music?
Andre Antunes, a talented guy from Portugal creates fusion of Metal and Indian music. His composition with the Nooran Sisters duet went viral
https://youtu.be/mi106DZJhuQ
and here is a brilliant illustration of what I meant about dogmatism and presentation in a digestible form – you cannot miss the chance to see it!
Lyrics by Meera Bai, 16th century Indian poet, performed by Pakistani spiritual music singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, originally it was Cawwali (spiritual music genre), you’d never guess what a Metal Rock remix is like
https://youtu.be/bp9YVQcOjgo
Yeah I’m sure that’s the reason.
Cancelling that public speaking event just broadcasts the extreme weakness of our politicians’ and media’s one approved narrative. They know how vulnerable their stories are on the war’s origins, the logic of escalation etc. The success of their propaganda blitz has depended on maintaining unanimity of message. But no matter how crude their silencing if dissent the Our Values brigade will keep foghorning that free speech is a cornerstone of “Our Values”. By this stage however the rest of the world has its own take on the Our Values brigadel and knows very well what their real values are.
“Just like all pandemics before it, the covid-19 virus is busily following its own self-interest by mutating into a less vicious form that can co-exist more comfortably with its host.”
There’s no evidence of this. If anything the evidence is for the reverse. It may well be getting more infectious and more vicious.
More than anything, “Covid Is Airborne”, just like most of the other diseases spread via the respiratory system. So a huge part of dealing with it globally and dealing with all those other similar diseases is basic air hygiene. Ventilation, air filters, UVC. Avoiding mixing with people when you know you’re sick. And wearing a good mask in potentially infectious, crowded, enclosed places. But that can be expensive when spread across large corporates and institutions which may be why we’re still not doing it.
The other huge part is taking advantage of vaccines when they’re available. Vax works. Get all the vax you can get. Neither of those are lockdown. And frankly the lockdown debate is long since become irrelevant. Except possibly in China.
Apart from some small details like this, good article. It’s ridiculous that so much debate now consists of extremists shouting at each other, and dragging their extreme position into every possible avenue of debate.
“UVC” – specifically 207 – 222nm.
It’s pretty depressing that the WHO’s “mythbusting” page fails to acknowledge the proven effectiveness of far-UVC at between 207 – 222nm in neutralising just about any virus, bacteria, fungus and algae without harming people’s skin or eyes. Instead it makes a sweeping statement about all UVC.
“The other huge part is taking advantage of vaccines when they’re available. Vax works.”
There is no vaccine against COVID. The so-called COVID “vaccine” is not a vaccine. A vaccine gives causes your body to make the same antibodies as it would make if you actually caught the disease, with the result that you then don’t catch the disease and hence do not become infectious. That’s why “vax works”. The COVID “vaccine” neither stops you catching the disease, nor passing it on. It is therefore not a vaccine, but simply a palliative, something that lessens the symptoms of a disease without doing anything to prevent inward or outward infection.
I probably disagree with about 90% of your positions on those three topics, but I’m nobody, so there’s no point in putting forth any of my arguments here.
I do agree, however, that debate and free speech are absolutely essential to human survival, and I am truly sorry that you are being prevented from discussing these things. Even when I disagree with you 100%, I still want to hear your opinion.
Craig, I don’t think it was a good idea to expound your views at length on three controversial topics in one post. I get it that the focus of the post was about intolerance in itself, not about any of the three topics, but the three topics will generate a lot of responses.
Including mine, because the three topics are of very different importance. The Covid lockdowns are over. The trans issues don’t illustrate your main point very well, because there actually is some public debate about them.
But the proxy war in Ukraine could end up escalating to the point of destroying our civilisation. What started as a negotiable issue between two corrupt oligarchies grew, under US/UK influence, into a minor spat between said corrupt oligarchies and finally into an all-out proxy war between nuclear-armed powers. I mostly agree with your opinion about the situation. But on a scale of importance from 0 (unimportant) to 100 (survival of human race) I would rate the proxy war as about 99 and the other two issues in single digits.
case in point.
All strength should be focused on the issue of Ukraine.
The doomsday clock seems to have flown by unnoticed like a summer breeze.
As of now the hard core around POTUS is pushing for war against the Russians.
It´s as simple as that.
And this should be clear to everyone.
(Caitlin Johnstone was quoted here. I couldn´t be more explicit.)
“Incentivizing Russia To Hit NATO”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/01/27/caitlin-johnstone-incentivizing-russia-to-hit-nato/
The Russians have seen it coming for long.
But Europe in its dellusional self-adulation waltzing around like brainless idiots.
After NS sabotage at the latest it became clear Washington could push this little continent around as desired.
With passionate help by its corrupt elites.
But that shouldn´t concern us. The people.
No honest delegate can deny that there are nuclear war plans in place if you show them.
They are known.
No hones delegate can deny that European wealth and clout were built on the dead and deprived of the Global South, Hundreds of millions of fates. We are NOT the good guys here.
No honest delegate can deny that Ukraine does have a major issue with far right fascist ideology for decades now which has continuously grown.
Look into the records and the statements and its there for everyone to read.
It is about ethnic cleansing.
Were it another place may be it would be again NATO who would have long bombed them to ashes by now for their claims of “Ukrainization”.
The major political players in Ukraine hate Russia and would love to destroy it if they could without sacrificing their own.
Nothing has changed since Truman´s and Churchill´s cabinets first planned to carpet bomb Russia (and China) with hundreds of nuclear bombs. Only wrinkle, the Russians cracked the atom too early which made it more difficult.
But that didn´t keep military planning from developing new plans.
These things are facts. They are undeniable. They ought to be disseminated. People must be confronted with them.
I hardly know where to begin replying. Several highly controversial topics with multiple sub-topics allocated a paragraph each. Some align with my own views others don’t.
The difficulty I have is that much of it is pure 100% opinion. “Putin is a very bad man” – even with your impressive record in the foreign and diplomatic services I doubt that you have ever met him. Unsurprisingly neither have I. Therefore if I say “Putin is not a very bad man” then I have successfully countered your argument (assuming that my opinion is worth as much as yours.)
I’ll just refocus myself on your first two paragraphs – I fully agree that those who attempt to shut down free speech are very bad people. I am sorry your speech at “No to NATO” was cancelled.
> It is going to end with Crimea absorbed into Russia and some kind of autonomous status inside Ukraine for the Donbass regions.
I hope not.
I think there’s a chance that Crimea will be Russified. But if some “peace agreement” results in Donbas being ceded, with Putin remaining in position, then any peace agreement is moot; Putin has been very clear that the whole of Ukraine is not a real country, and that it is all part of Russia.
If Putin were to walk back his maximalist demands, in search of a peace agreement, I would be sceptical. Like, he could start walking back now; but there’s no sign of that happening. So if I were Ukraine, there’s no way I’d make a peace agreement with a nation that insists it owns all of my territory.
“> It is going to end with Crimea absorbed into Russia and some kind of autonomous status inside Ukraine for the Donbass regions.”
These places have already been absorbed into Russia to the extent that the russian constitution forbids their secession from Russia.
Russia would be foolish to try to absorb areas with a strong anti-russian sentiment as this would give them the kind of quagmire situation that the Rand plan hopes will contribute to internal destabilisation followed by regime change, dismemberment of Russia and looting of Russia’s resources by western corporations. So it looks like Crimea and the Donbass etc. will be absorbed while the rest has a temporary occupation involving chasing any war criminals and disarmament. After that America and its friends (or the ‘international community’ as they like to call themselves) will form an isolated political and economic block.
Funny how you invent things to attribute to the Russians as their policy. “a nation that insists it owns all of my territory.” is pure fiction, for example, and you know it, if you keep up with the subject (which I can’t be certain of, evidently).
“I think there’s a chance that Crimea will be Russified.”
What do you mean? Crimea is Russia already, always has been. A stroke of the pen in 1956 didn’t suddenly change everyone in Crimea’s ancestry, language and culture. There are still people alive in Crimea who were born and grew up Russian.
“Putin has been very clear that the whole of Ukraine is not a real country, and that it is all part of Russia.”
Ukraine is the last of the post WWII cobblings together of disparate peoples with different ethnicities, religions, languages and cultures into “countries” that owed their boundaries entirely to the bureaucrat’s pen rather than the wishes of their inhabitants. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia have since disintegrated into their component parts and it was always simply a matter of time before Ukraine did so too.
Minor trans Isla’s shenanigans hold no candle to trans Balfours, of the infamous 1917 Declaration. Whilst Islas shenanigans will certainly not spark off any divine intervention, the first loss of the then hitherto undefeated Mongol horde, by divine intervention in 1260 at Ain Jalut at the hands of an inferior Muslim Army (to avert the usual ransack by Mongols), may be a pointer to what may soon be coming to Jerusalem, another divine intervention to put right trans Balfours transitory Declaration!! Anyone for RAPTURE a la pompeo?!!
The future is slouching towards Bethlehem, keep an eye on Megiddo.
Excellent article Craig.
I recall an article you posted at the start of the pandemic re your own memories of 1968. I’m a bit older than you (66) and have clear memories of 1968, having been precociously interested in current affairs and having very articulate and well-informed parents. My main memories of that year were the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the attacks on Eugene McCarthy’s supporters at the Chicago Democratic Party convention, and the massacre of protestors by Mexican police/soldiers outside the Olympic stadium. My most vivid memory is of some athlete saying he wasn’t interested in the latter events as he was only focused on his sport. The machine guns were clearly audible from inside the stadium. I remember the absolute disgust I felt at the sheer narrow minded selfishness of this man. But looking back, the most interesting thing now is what I don’t remember, namely, anything to do with a flu outbreak. This indicates how very differently the 1968 pandemic was handled by governments, media, and the NHS.
I don’t think anyone reasonable doubts that your intentions are anything other than noble, but from where I stand at the edges of society, the two polar positions on any issue are both determined that there should be no third (or neutral) way. Because that is where most thinking people are likely to want to stand.
So your pro-Washington or pro-Moscow, pro-Vaccine or pro-freedom of choice, supports these narrow positon.
You can understand Putin finally losing patience after 8 years of Russian speakers getting bombed and tortured in the Donbas, without supporting anything else. You can consider big Pharma untrustworthy and NHS incompetent, without rejecting the concept of vaccines.
You can consider the screenplay for 911 was written in Washington, and still think terrorists should be hunted relentlessly.
I think more people in the middle ground, should make a bigger noise. But there’s the rub, there are so many of them that they think someone is bound to make the noise for them.
To be clear about the Special Operation by Russia in Ukraine having witnessed the attacks on Donbass in 2014. The onslaught by Ukraine forces on Russians spawned agreements called Minsk to end the blood-letting. Ultimately the US squashed Minsk thus becoming a major conflict, in fact another proxy sham to debase Russia.
Have you ever thought y’all are tilting at the wrong windmills and doing vainglorious battle against fake made up, made to measure enemies and phantom bodies?
Here’s something else to consider and waste time and effort and treasure on denying is a true and accurate reflection of an Earthly condition and perverse situation …. which is only going to very quickly get steadily worse, so prepare yourselves for some exciting actions over which you will have zero command and control leverage. ……. https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2023/01/26/uk_prime_minister_rishi_sunak_chip_strategy/#c_4608742
Hey, the cupboard is bare …. let’s go to war with a far away Eastern enemy. Strewth! Madness in spades prevails and is intent on prospering by all manner of crazy means.
Heaven forbid that you should actually know how everything is made to work so incredibly badly and how one might right such matters with the new tools [and almighty weapons whenever necessary] now so readily ubiquitously available for/from the Virtual Arsenal ….. an incredibly rich and rare raw store filled to overflowing with Immaculately Resourceful Assets of Universally Virulent Forcefulness.
[Trying another tack here, Craig/Mods, assuming site moderation here permits and entertains at least a hyperlink to remote sympathetic alien postings elsewhere on/in the internet/World Wide Web/CyberSpace rather than representing any here in their entirety and unbridled glory. Such is handy information to know if such be the case whenever one’s post is bestickered and anointed with “Your comment is awaiting moderation.“] 🙂
Never a dull moment, eh ? 🙂 Poe’s Law rules 🙂
I’ve been following and arguing about this issue since at least the Euromaidan coup and I have never encountered anyone saying either Ukraine or Russia is perfect, the pro-Ukrainian NATO empire simps usually acknowledge Ukraine’s vast corruption, or that there is a ‘Nazi fringe’, although they do brush over the shelling of Donbass. The so called “pro-Russian” side, to which I belong, certainly does not claim Russia is a “workers paradise”.
You are actually constructing strawman versions of both the opposing sides in the debate in order to position your own as “balanced”, but you own position is equally simplistic. Since I’m on the so called “pro-Russian” side I’ll give a description of my reasoning. This is an unnessiery war deliberately provoked by western powers in order to at least weaken Russia or ultimately break it up, so Russia is then unable to support China when the US provokes a war there by using Taiwan. In other words the Ukraine war is part of a grand neocon strategy of maintaining western global hegemony against the rise of China and it’s BRI which will detract from western naval control of sea trade lanes by constructing an alternative land based trade network, therefore damaging the financial networks based on the sea trade lanes. The US cannot take on China if Russia has it’s back so Russia is the first target.
As such, the reason I ‘support Russia’ has nothing to do with whatever the nature of Russia is, and more to do with an objection to the US provoking wars across the planet to maintain what is in fact brutal a global tyranny. Indeed I would be better described as “anti-NATO” rather than “pro-Russia”. If Ukraine wins this war our reward will be another big war with China, with Europe reduced to perminant vassel status to the US. It’s not my understanding of Russia which leads to my conclusions but my understanding of the west, to which I belong.
As for Russia’s invasion, it maybe illegal, however it was forced to make a choice, Ukraine vastly stepped up shelling of Donbass in the week before the invasion as confirmed by OSCE observers (see link below). It looked like the start of a major Ukrainian offensive on Donbass, considering the widely publicised military build up on both sides in the preceeding month, Ukraine must have intended to provoke Russia to attack. A similar build up had occured in Spring but back then Ukraine didn’t increase shelling and it de-esculated. If Putin had allowed Ukraine to cleanse Donbass of Russia supporting Russian speakers his govt would collapse. He choose to invade that this point because if he didn’t he saw something worse coming in the future, I’m not in a position to cast judgement on that choice, if it hadn’t come now the west would step up another provocation later until t gets one, it’s nessisery to provoke rather than start a war oneself because the west needs the rest of the world to join sanctions on it’s enemies. As such Taiwanese independence will be used to provoke China, just like NATO membership and attacks on Donbass were used to provoke Russia.
https://www.osce.org/files/2022-02-22%20Daily%20Report_ENG.pdf?itok=63057
I saw this war coming years ago, I’d argue Russiagate was preperation of public opinion for it. The reason the British media were so hysterical about England fans attending the World Cup in Russia is because they didn’t want crowds of the working class realising that Russia is okay and Russians aren’t all Orcs. It’s like the invasion genre of literature that arose in the UK before WW I, it’s preparing the public for war, that was evidence in itself to my eyes.
The evidence of the west’s intentions to have this war is plentfull, they knew Ukrainian NATO membership would cause it and that is why they pretended they would let Ukraine join. Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko have all declared that the Minsk agreements were a hoax intended to trick Putin into not invading by pretending to offer peace so they could arm Ukraine for a coming war they clearly intended to happen. Boris Johnson has now added his voice by confirming the Normandy process was a sham intended to trick Russia into accepting a fake peace, although he wasn’t directly involved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjwSNiCSpnw&ab_channel=TheJimmyDoreShow
In 2019 Zelensky advisor Arestovich predicted the war with remarkable accuracy and argued he wanted it to come about, otherwise Ukraine would later slip back into siding with Russia by electing another Yanokovych type President. It follows that if he sees such a war as the means to his ends he will seek to bring that war about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwcwGSFPqIo
I should also add that I read somewhere, near the begining of the war, an interveiw with Zelensky in which he stated that he was privately told by western leaders that Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO anytime soon, but that publically he and they should maintain the appearence that they will. I can’t find the link for this at the moment, but considering they knew this stance provoked Russia, why else would they stick to it in public, unless they wanted to provoke war?
A report was commissioned from the Rand Corporation on ways to weaken Russia, the report suggested provoking it with Ukraine
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB10000/RB10014/RAND_RB10014.pdf
Back in 2008 William Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow, now head of the CIA, warned that if Ukraine moved toward NATO it would cause a civil war in Ukraine and that would then bring in Russia. The US then subsequently followed exactly the policies to bring this about.
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1502177250300600320
The FT published an interview with US Marine Corps general James Bierman, in it he states that the US has been preparing Ukraine for war since 2014, he thinks this has impressive results and states the US is doing exactly the same around China. So Ukraine has gained significant aid from NATO in preparing for this war for years.
https://www.ft.com/content/bf5362de-60a6-4181-8c2a-56b50be61383
The Ukraine war is far more important than any other issue because we are submissively being lead down a path that leads to the extermination of the only known allegedly intelligent life in the universe. I credit you for seeing that danger and making efforts to prevent that, despite my dispute with your understanding of Russia’s actions.
Excellent post Carnyx at 15:33. It pretty much sums up my view of the Ukrainian military position. It also reflects my view that our host’s projection of his so-called nuanced approach relies on straw men. Whilst he correctly suggests that “rights” are not immutable he talks about the war being illegal as if legality itself is some sort of absolute, devoid of social, political and historic context. Societies make laws not some deity and we change them constantly.
Faced with the forces and actions taking place against the population of Donbass and Lugansk and the threats against Russia itself, these actions clearly illegal, it would have been fool-hardy in the extreme, for Russia not to have taken the steps it has. Debating the legal niceties, whilst your people are being killed, is a luxury fostered mainly in western liberal democracies.
Let’s hear discussions over the legality of the invasion and occupation of Palestine or the Saudi bombing of Yemen with British and American weapons. Even within our own extremely limited democracy, from where does the legal basis for supporting the Ukrainian forces derive? I recall no Parliamentary votes, no inclusion in any manifestos.
Carnyx,
A good post, though doubtless I’m biased in so far as I agree with all of it. I have written similar posts on The Guardian online site btl, often in response to a war mongering article by Tisdall or Luke Harding, and they have all been removed. I am now ‘pre-moderated’ by the Guardian which, ludicrously, removed a pleasant comment I made about Pele on the occasion of his death.
I live in Russia most of the time and can still access online versions of UK newspapers although the BBC is not available. No great loss really given what I saw last week on BBC World News when visiting Georgia: one funny moment when some expert being interviewed went off script on Ukraine and the interviewer had to talk over him. On return to Moscow I was stopped at customs and held for 3 hours along with a couple of visiting Ukraine citizens, my new style UK passport providing obvious grounds for suspicion. Everyone was very polite, even the FSB chap who questioned me perfunctorily. I’m not so sure that when I come through Turnhouse airport next month things will be much different.
I gave up on the Guardian years ago, I used to write on CIF a lot, they started clamping down on anything to do with Israel, then in my perception it was during the height of the Syrian war, when every article by Mr Spooky Tisdall was then torn apart by his readership, where they started to clamp down across the board. I used to buy it everyday now I’ll dance on it’s grave.
Carnyx, you say
“He choose to invade that this point because if he didn’t he saw something worse coming in the future”
My opinion on this is:
In December Russia offered some draft treaty to NATO, because our basic Ru-NATO treaty didn’t work by that time and U.S. pulled out of Nuke Missiles Treaty, also some other very important mutual security treaties were neglected.
In that draft treaty there were lines on neutral status for Ukraine.
That Russian proposal was rudely declined.
Then, on Munich security conference, Zelenski mentioned they want NATO membership and nukes. Kamala Harris looks like welcomed that statement.
In March there should have taken place big NATO event, at which, we expected, Ukraine may have been granted membership, as soon as they had ‘NATO partner’ (or sort of) status for years already. They had training and they were rebuilding their military facilities up to NATO standards, I remember it clearly, the reports in the news said about seaports reconstruction to meet requirements. I also remember British military got big money from British government to build the second sea base in Ukraine, somewhere in Azov sea, maybe Mariupol? The first is near Odessa or Nikolaev, maybe Ochacov.
So, I believe Putin had little choice but start the war in February. Perhaps, he saw something worse coming in the future is Ukraine becoming a NATO member, simply kill all the Donbassians, and no chance to save them, other than attack a NATO member. Which means big Ru-NATO war? I think that would be much much worse, and also I think many NATO countries are unwilling to.
Tatyana
There must be talk in Russia about how its military operation has turned into a quagmire. Is there a view in Russia that the country has bitten off more than it can chew?
What exactly is Russia trying to achieve? Full occupation of all lUkraine, including Lviv? That would be insane, the US/UK for all our military might couldn’t pacify Afghanistan, against a primitive ill-equipped Taliban. In such a hostile part of Ukraine, Russian troops would be sitting ducks, picked off at a rate of hundreds a day, with Poles et al flooding in.. a totally unsustainable occupation.
I read recently they’re trying to take Odesa in the belief that if Ukraine loses all its coast, effectively becoming a landlocked country that would be viewed as a disastrous defeat in Kyiv, forcing Zelensky to the negotiating table?
“What exactly is Russia trying to achieve?”
No need to speculate, Putin himself has said they wish to incorporate what was Novorossiya back into Russia and deNazify the rest. The only question is whether this is done by military conquest or negotiation.
Yes.
Many European politicians seem to have convinced themselves this is the late 1930s revisited, and Putin is on a quest to reestablish the Soviet Union, by force, which is utterly absurd. With this mentality in play, the possible scope for a miscalculation, on either side, is high. The US neocons’ current darling, Annalena Baerbock, whose grandfather was a mid-ranking Nazi, of all people, should realise the dangers of stoking war fever on the basis of liberal, self-righteous hyper-morality. It won’t matter who was morally in the right, if we all end up incinerated.
Goose
this story is not about Ukraine. You look at the physical expression of this conflict, and it also has an ideological meaning, and until an agreement is reached on an acceptable form of coexistence, there will be no end to this conflict.
I consider the transition of territories as a method of pressure. (The cynicism of this does not express my emotional attitude to what is happening, but I use it to convey meaning.) I think that such military pressure will continue, as in any war, until the moment when the parties finally sit down to negotiate. Now each of the parties wants to take the most advantageous negotiating position.
As for the prospects for holding these territories, I think it’s difficult to exterminate the ideology of superiority. Especially such an extreme expression as Nazism.
World War II ended, the allies divided spheres of influence, de-Nazification of Germany, Nuremberg, etc… However, watch this comedian trolling the public, 1973
https://youtu.be/Z9TsXZg8lXc
“What? So many old friends here!”
A person teaches how to pronounce Zieg Heil correcttly
https://youtu.be/ZbuSnBsLh20
look at these comments:
Haze_25
– Imagine screaming this at the top of your lungs during a veteran celebration event
Jack Skellington
– If you are doing this, and there’s an issue, you’re hanging out with the wrong veterans.
///
JVBII ANS
– At my veteran celebration we do that regularly… I’m german
GAMER123GAMING
– JVBII ANS God bless
This conversation is modern, comments left a year ago. See the “like” button hits counter
Mr Murray blogged about unusual UN vote on Nazism and discrimination
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/12/protecting-the-nazis-the-extraordinary-vote-of-ukraine-and-the-usa/
The discussion in comments was informative, and I remember it was there when I asked for Mr. Murray’s opinion on Ru-Nato mutual security draft treaty.
António Guterres also said at the ceremony yesterday that this problem is growing at an accelerating rate
“The painful truth is: antisemitism is everywhere.
In fact, it is increasing in intensity.
Over the last year, Orthodox Jews were assaulted on busy streets in Midtown Manhattan, Jewish schoolkids bullied in Melbourne, hateful banners hung on a freeway bridge in Los Angeles, and Swastikas spraypainted on the Holocaust memorial in Berlin.
Survey after survey arrives at the same conclusion: antisemitism is at record-highs.
And what is true for antisemitism is true for other forms of hate.
Racism. Anti-Muslim bigotry. Xenophobia. Homophobia. Misogyny.
Neo-Nazi, white supremacist movements are becoming more dangerous by the day.
In fact, they now represent the number one internal security threat in several countries – and the fastest growing.
From Christchurch to Buffalo, from El Paso to Oslo, with targets from mosques to synagogues, refugee centers to grocery stores:
We are not just facing violent extremism; we are increasingly facing terrorism.
The threat is global – and it is growing.
And a leading accelerant of this growth is the online world.”
https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2023-01-27/secretary-generals-remarks-the-united-nations-memorial-ceremony-marking-the-international-day-of-commemoration-memory-of-the-victims-of-the-holocaust
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said the day of remembrance for the victims of the Nazi Holocaust forces the world to contemplate the horrors to which bigotry, racism and discrimination ultimately lead.
The sadistic brutality of the atrocities inflicted by the Nazi regime on Jews, Roma, Slavs, persons with disabilities, political dissidents, homosexuals and others was nourished by layer upon layer of propaganda, falsifications and incitement to hatred, he said, adding that they were denigrated and smeared; one after another, their rights were refused, and finally, even their humanity was denied.
https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/honouring-holocaust-victims-un-chief-guterres-pledges-battle-anti-semitism-all-forms
—
What I want to say is that Russians are treated exactly in the same way – denigrated and smeared; one after another, their rights were refused, and finally, even their humanity was denied.
We do feel threatened and we see how Western countries give weapons, instead of calling for negotiations. Many here say the West have conspired to kill us. As simple as that.
The nest of hatred for Russians is Ukraine, it was they who began to kill Russians on ethnic grounds. So the issue of territorial ownership is now the least of all Russian concerns.
Tatyana
There were a whole host of provocations, the rejection of diplomatic efforts and Zelensky’s threats to acquire nukes were a major ones, however I think it was the increased shelling that pushed Putin over the edge, that meant he had to do it on the 22nd Feb, give or take a day or so, or else watch Donbass be crushed.
We are now watching another similar process with increasing arms supplies, they keep rulling out things and then sending them on the basis “Russia hasn’t escalated” (which is wrong Russia only started attacking electricty infrastructure after the Crimea bridge attack), they are basically daring Russia to escalate with an attack on supply stores in Poland, they’ll keep doing this till they get it. Neocons are gonna neocon and they are profoundly good at bending western govts to their policies, every single one of which turns out to be an abject catastrophy. Yet no matter how much they fail they only ever fall upwards increasing their grip on foreign policy. This whole Ukraine project is being run by Victoria Nuland, wife of leading neocon Robert Kagan, who is to brother to Fred Kagan (of the AEI) and his wife Kimberly Kagan who runs the Institute for the Study of War, the entire family is bankrolled by the arms industry and Nuland is giving them a bonanza, it is grotesque bloodly corruption and Ukrainians are being used to facilitate it all,157 000 military dead … and counting.
Wonder if the Kagan’s have one of those luxuary bunkers in New Zealand, they certainly can afford it.
Carnyx
I don’t think the increased shelling was the last straw. I recall Ilovaysk or Izvarino, shelling is nothing compared.
I put together the words of our representative Kozak, commenting on the last round Minsk agreement talks. He said Ukrainians openly mocked the negotiations and pretended they do not understand the meaning of the words, so he had to bring the Oxford Dictionary to show them. I think it became clear that Minsk accords are not what they seemed to be. Then, nearly at the same time, German diplomat on Ukrainian TV stated on Minsk accords, that Germany will support Kiev. Then, Macron and Scholz talked to Putin, and Scholtz said something like “funny genocide” when commenting on Donbass.
I put it all together with Narishkin trembling in front of Putin when asked on his perspective. That was a picture telling much to a Russian eye, like reading between the lines. Like a secret code for an attentive reader.
I think it just became obvious that nobody in the West were actually making any slightest effort to settle the conflict in a peaceful way. I conclude this from Putin’s talk to Narishkin, Putin asked if he want to give them more time once again.
Carnyx, can you please check if this video available in your country?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTus44NU1pM
Anavailable for me in Russia.
It must be press-conference of our representative Kozak, in Paris, January 26 2022, after 8 hours talks on Minsk accords. The talks attended by Andrey Ermak for Ukraine, Jens Plötner for Germany, Emmanuel Bonn for France. I expect there must also been many reports on this event in Western media, as the last chance for peaceful settling of the conflict in Ukraine, right? The meeting was in Elysee palace, the interview was in the Russian Embassy in Paris.
Tatyana
video not available in “Holland”
Carnyx, can you please check if this video available in your country?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTus44NU1pM
Just a quick reply to this, No it isn’t.
Not available in Germany.
@ Carnyx
I second that emotion. Excellent, thanks.
This all sounds like it could be plausible and goodness knows the West is also atrociously behaved but if it really is all just about Russia protecting areas that had been attacked in order to provoke it, why is Putin getting Russian forces to attack civilian infrastructure much further West than just those areas it states were shelled by Ukraine…?
Distrac Ted
January 27, 2023 at 21:00
Russia only started attacking electricity infrastructure after the Crimea Bridge attack, Ukraines railways are mostly electric and they are using trains to deploy the military. In order to take out electricity they have to attack the entire network. The US always does is first off when they attack somewhere, they did this in Serbia and Iraq, US military observers where perplexed that Russia didn’t target such infrastructure since day one, it seems the Russians wanted to avoid it, since it is duel use, until the Crimea attack.
And apartment blocks? Hospitals? Schools?
I’m not going to cheerlead for the West as we are indefensible against claims of multiple crimes against Humanity over the decades/centuries.
However, just as I acknowledge that the West bombing citizens’ apartment blocks etc. is inexcusable, I’m not going to pretend that Russia hasn’t been doing likewise in Ukrainian cities far away from Eastern Ukraine so that is where the argument for moral high ground falls apart…
Which ones, some are hit by accident, some are hit by air defence missiles or missiles brought down by them (as Arestovich admitted for Dnipro block this week before being fired), then you have the AFU using civilian infrastructure to hide firing positions, barracks and equipment (as even AI have acknowledged). Each case needs individual examination and that isn’t going to happen in the fog of war.
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/ukraine-military-endangering-civilians-locating-forces-residential-areas-new
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sszYDGv1trw
Western Ukraine is being used to transport and supply NATO equipment from Poland, it’s a logistics hub, of course there are legitmate targets there.
Excellent post indeed. Being german I can´t but follow one former opposition leader (Oskar Lafontaine) who stated that the present german government is the most stupid one that Germany has ever had since 1945. Don´t they say that drunken people and children do speak the truth? Well, our present state secretary of foreign affairs Ms. Anna-Lena Baerbock is certainly not an alcoholic, yet her recent
statement “We are fighting a war against Russia”, spoken out in all absence of even minimum diplomatic skills, is indeed simply true.
“I view those who regard Putin as a defender of democracy or of workers’ rights as seriously deluded.”
Never seen a single individual making these claims this let alone a body of people or camp. What I do see claimed endlessly is that Putin is trying to destroy western democracy. Are you sure you’re not getting it mixed up with that?
In the West, IMO, there is no-one, at all, defending democracy or workers rights, just the opposite in fact. And, that’s nothing to do with Putin, that’s our governments. And to state ‘Putin is a very bad man’ is irrelevant. All our ills are because of the direct actions of our ‘leaders’. Win or lose in Ukraine, our lives are still going to be sh!te, in fact if nothing changes our lives are going to be more sh!te. The only peoples that are trying to dig themselves out of this impending hellscape are the BRICS nations, and that ain’t us. The divide and conquer approach ensures we’ll still be arguing the toss as we are slowly dispatched by the establishment.
“In the West, IMO, there is no-one, at all, defending democracy or workers rights,”
In the West, there’s precious little democracy to defend.
“I view those who regard Putin as a defender of democracy or of workers’ rights as seriously deluded.”
It’s an exaggeration, a caricature of the anti-war left, created by pro-war zealots. Used to smear anyone calling for a ceasefire and negotiations. It’s sad to see Craig deploying this straw man.
Many on the left simply want a multipolar world, in which the US isn’t the overly dominant player. We’ve seen how the US behaves with dominion. Look at the EU and how hollowed out it is diplomatically. How hopelessly subservient to the US its leadership has become. How EU commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and Foreign policy chief Josef Borrell may as well be US diplomats. Does anyone think Nato’s Jens Stoltenberg is truly independent? Or is he an instrument of US foreign policy like former Swedish PM and ‘US influence agent'(WikiLeaks) Carl Bildt? If the US could make China’s and Russia’s leaders equally subservient, they would.
That isn’t the same as supporting Russia’s or China’s current leadership or pretending those countries couldn’t be better, of course they could. But it should be the populations of those countries deciding not Washington or London.
Thanks to the internet, I don’t think there is any lack of independent critical thinking resulting in different, divergent and dissenting views from the consensus of power. But they seem to be ignored, marginalised and suppressed by those in power, who do not use the same critical thinking tools to arrive at their policies and enforcement of those policies – otherwise they would quickly lose their power.
The current state of UK parliament is dire. It seems more preoccupied with its members behaviour and scoring cheap political points against each other than debating in any meaningful way the issues that really matter. The fact that as a country we could be sleep walking our way into WW3, which will pre-empt anything that is happening climate wise, seems to be going totally unnoticed. There did not appear to be a hint of critical discussion about the purpose and wisdom of sending tanks to Ukraine or even of Johnson’s recent visit to Ukraine, which makes Sunak look like a weak fool.
The media corrodes the minds of the politicians, who seem to rely on the trash it produces for their main sources of information with the BBC one big lying machine when it comes to reporting Ukraine for example. The censorship that has occurred is stupidly counterproductive in one sense because because it is always possible to obtain information in other ways from the internet, but also powerful and effective in another because it can then suppress and marginalise those alternative sources as disinformation, conspiracy theories and the like.
None of this is new of course.
Tolerance might be preached in theory but Intolerance is more the norm in reality. The authorities soon suppressed Voltaire’s essay “On Tolerance” once they realised what its true implications were for them.
See the ‘No2’ event is back on and provisionally scheduled for February 25th, at a location to be announced, presumably at short notice? The password at the door is ‘Fidelio’ and attendees should bring a venetian mask & hooded black cloak.
Joking aside. Such gatherings shouldn’t even be be necessary in a healthy democracy, that is, were there debate in the HoC. Party discipline is so tight however, that’s impossible. Starmer will remove the whip from anyone questioning NATO, or the leadership’s unquestioning support for the Conservatives. The floundering Sir Ed Davey’s party may as well merge with Labour. Tbh, we’d be better scrapping political parties altogether; as increasingly they act like an organised conspiracy. Aloof and colluding against democracy and the electorate. There are no newspapers questioning the wisdom of this escalation strategy either. Do we even know who decides foreign policy in the UK? Long serving mandarins at the FCO, supported by MI6? Because it sure as hell isn’t parliament and our elected representatives, no disagreement, no debates, nothing.
Many dislike George Galloway’s bombastic oratory style, but his blistering HoC performances at least allowed a sizeable minority’s voice to be heard back in 2013, when reckless Syrian military intervention was being debated. Manifestos will typically say a few lines about maintaining the US/UK’s pretentious, if noble sounding, ‘international rules based order’ and ‘supporting democracy and human rights’ around the world. But as we know, these rules are subject to the T&Cs of being hypocritically & selectively applied.
Addendum.
To clarify, I don’t want to scrap democracy, far from it. But organised parties are a historical legacy, from a time when there were stark divisions between the interests of Labour and capital and it made sense to organise thus so. Today, they are nothing more than ‘thought prisons’ for our elected representatives, mini dictatorships, creating a fake democratic system and the illusion of choice.
Party conferences are staged-managed affairs; little division, debate and more about message discipline and the false projection of enthusiasm and unity. Those picked to be official candidates are carefully vetted and selected based on likelihood of servility; to be herded into sheep pens always loyal to the party leadership i.e. little more than future voting fodder. Leaderships, which in turn are loyal to and controlled by, a secret, hidden elite. If organised parties didn’t exist and each prospective constituency representative had to publish their own political aims and views, the hidden elite would have no power over us. Imagine every MP acting on their conscience with free will / agency. Wouldn’t that be better than what feels like democracy in a simulated reality?
> But organised parties are a historical legacy
That is naive. “Organized” parties are the manifestation of groups of people with diverse interests joining together to support a platform they feel able to share. That’s not a “historical legacy”; short of direct democracy or sortition, parties are the most-reasonable way of making decisions in a society with complex mixtures of interest groups.
I have never joined a party. Regrettably, parties become tribal, and their supporters behave like football supporters: “my side, right or wrong”. I don’t know how that kind of tribalism might be remedied.
I do realise having 600 ‘independent’ representatives, if implemented, would, in practice, be chaotic. And reaching consensus on anything would prove difficult. But the party structures and discipline within now are so stifling, they represent a direct assault on and call into question, the very notion we are a ‘representative’ democracy. It’s affecting the quality of decision making too, because only the most loyal toadies are welcome to the Westminster club, and it is they who are promoted to cabinet ministerial level.
Starmer has effectively banned PLP debate and dissent, on a range of issues, the threat of losing the whip hovers over those who dare to venture an opinion. Isn’t that such a disgraceful abuse of power it warrants reviewing how our democracy is operating? Starmer is trying to run the Labour party like it’s some intel agency; replete with oppressive levels of surveillance – of both MPs online activities, and those of members – a culture of distrust and suspicion hangs thick in the air, with the threat of severe penalties for going off-message. While stifling levels of secrecy surround party decision making. I’m glad I’m not a member, who’d want to be involve with that? It’s a horrible party to be involved with by all accounts.
“I do realise having 600 ‘independent’ representatives, if implemented, would, in practice, be chaotic.”
Political parties are a lot newer phenomenon than parliaments, at least in Britain. If it worked up until the C19th, it should work again. Parties mean that speeches in parliament are just so much hot air, very few MPs vote along anything but party lines. The idea of speeches was originally to persuade members to vote for the bill in question.
As Craig has pointed out, the party system has removed the last vestiges of democracy from what was always mainly an oligarchy, once it had ceased to be a monarchy. Parliamentary political parties are now almost indistinguishable from corporations.
Your positions are very reasonable, but sadly irrelevant – as always for people whose positions are reasonable. It remains very honourable though and one has to admire your optimism that having fought so hard against such massive odds for Julian Assange (and still going) against the UK/US state and having been thrust into prison as a political prisoner by, in essence, the SNP, with absolutely no recourse or recompense of course, you still hope for reasonableness not the victory of the most powerful. As a socialist of course I take a class view, and see NATO/US/Russia/Ukraine as pretty much the same rats fighting in the same bag, which doesn’t mean that the Ukrainians, Russians and of course Americans currently suffering and dying for all sorts of reasons are the same at all. It is their leaders who are the same. But you’re not a socialist and there is no reason you would hold that position, while as a former diplomat, as with trades union leaders, you job was to find compromises, however they were described. When compromises are not acceptable to those in power, well I suspect you know much more about that in the world of diplomacy than I do (I do know about the trades union side though). It is blindingly obvious to so many of course that stories are invented to justify almost anything – WMD is best known, but in both the First World War and the first Gulf War, the story was virtually the same (“Huns” bayoneting babies, Iraqis ripping babies from Kuwaiti incubators) and so on. We get the side of the story we get. Whether we believe them or not is something else. This may sound nihilistic, a plague on both their houses, but sometimes you have to go there, and not look for reasonable intermediate positions, because if the powers that be are as I argue much the same, and they will never accept (on any of these issues) a reasonable centre-ground position, then reasonable centre-ground positions can be said not to exist at all.
“a few serious criminals are nothing to do with genuine trans people.”
I’m sure you don’t mean that “genuine trans people” cannot be serious criminals, but that is how the sentence appears to read.
“a few serious criminals” means rapists. They are nothing to do with “genuine trans people”. It’s technically impossible for a genuine transwoman to be a rapist (if they have taken hormones, for one point). As I heard on Radio 4 the day before yesterday, there is no case of an imprisoned so-called transwoman having taken hormones. They are men in dresses, who dress up often in order to get into women-only spaces, though there are also other reasons, such as escaping punishment. The case of Bryson/Graham is precisely that. He only started dressing up after the rapes committed. Evidently to escape punishment or to be put in a women’s prison. His ex on the radio thought it a big joke when she discovered it. The photo shows no attempt even to look like a woman.
Personally I’m in favour of medical control on gender change certification. Changing gender is a serious life commitment. Not one to change and change back on a whim.
Wouldn’t it be sensible to mandate that all the self declared lady boys in prison were put on a fast track gender change programme with maybe the first step to remove certain appendages with a scalpel. I imagine there would be less self declarations if this happened, certainly less rapes.
In her most recent article entitled ‘The Mass Media Used To Publish Perspectives On Ukraine That They Would Never Publish Today’, Caitlin Johnston cites a John Pilger Guardian article from 2014 as an example, the headline of which was ‘In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia’. Both articles are well worth checking out, and here’s a link to the JP article for starters:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger
The key thing is this though: What sort of country are we living in (along with just about the whole of the West) where the MSM acts as the propaganda machine for the Establishment, and decieves millions – TENs of millions – about the reality behind the Ukraine war, and turns it all on its head. Ukraine is being devastated and hundreds of thousands of soldiers (on both sides) and civilians are being killed and maimed and crippled and, as Craig says (and many others have been saying in the alternative media since shortly after the invasion), it could all easily have been avoided. But THAT of course wasn’t the goal.
Tens, hundreds of millions of people were lied to about Iraq with lies concocted and contrived to manipulate them emotionally (as is practically ALL black propaganda), as they were Lybia, and my point is that the MSM who channel the propaganda lies to the masses have the blood of millions on their hands in equal measure to the likes of Blair and Bush and the warmongers who want to rule the whole world.
Looking at the scores of trolls exulting beneath the Twitter announcement of your event’s cancellation it is striking that virtually all of them have the same cartoon dog as their avatar in various guises. It could not be a more obvious controlled op, as opposed to a passionate grassroots pro-NATO uprising. That our ruling elites need to pay these astroturf mercenaries to cancel an antiwar meeting in a small venue betrays a serious lack of confidence in their neoconservative, warmongering propaganda.
They’re members of NAFO – the North Atlantic Fellas Organisation, fonso. They club together to troll various pro-Russian accounts, and buy drones etc so that the Ukrainian forces can drop grenades on Wagner penal battalions and the like. They’re mostly grassroots, rather than astroturf. Don’t forget, there are plenty of people in society who are essentially ‘my (government’s) side, right or wrong’.
It does not look very grassroots. Their comments are full of obscure anticommunist? terminology like vatnik, tankie and so on. Stinks to high heaven of integrity Initiative journos, 77th brigade et al.
Thanks for your reply fonso. Terms like ‘vatnik’ and ‘tankie’ aren’t that obscure – they’ve been used on here quite a bit. Vatnik is a mildly disparaging term for a Russian grunt/soldier, coming from the padded jackets that they wear. Tankie is a term of abuse for a Western communist or supporter of the Soviet Union in the Cold War, originating from the idea that they supposedly wanted to see Russian tanks crossing the Fulda gap into Western Europe. NAFO started off mostly in the US with Twitter accounts that have been long-term supporters of NATO and US foreign policy, so Integrity Initiative and/or the Sunset Strippers are unlikely to be involved.
Enjoy the weekend.
To be clear about the Special Operation by Russia in Ukraine having witnessed the attacks on Donbass in 2014. The onslaught by Ukraine forces on Russians spawned agreements called Minsk Subsequently these agreements were sunk by U.S. intervention in support of another proxy war to debilitate Russia.
A very balanced and nuanced argument Craig.
Why can’t people just be nice to each other?
Broadly I agree with what Carnyx has to say, but there is one point in his post that I want to pick up on. That is the use of the word ‘orc’. Almost always this term is used by Ukraine supporters to denigrate Russians. The modern usage of the word owes its ubiquity to Tolkien and LOTR. The point about orcs is that they are manufactured, not born. They have no mothers. They have no children. That separates them from humans, elves, dwarves etc., and means that killing them does not present a moral dilemma. This reminds me that the nazis and Banderites of Ukraine generally see Jews, Poles, Slavs as untermensch, and again one need have no compunction about slaughtering them.
I always have a problem with this (it totally sours LotR and other fiction for me). Inventing a type of living being which can be slaughtered without pity or conscience is far too widespread in fiction. In reality, every killing is immoral – to entertain oneself by wiping out deliberately engineered permitted, targets is demeaning. But it is the essence of propaganda, the othering of the “enemy”, the demonising of the official antagonist. We practise it in fiction and carry it out in the real world.
Interesting TheBlogg/Bramble.
A couple of points on the usage of the word ‘orc’ by some Ukrainians for Russian soldiers (not Russians in general?).
The first and obvious one is that soldiers and their supporters have always used demeaning and disparaging terms for the other side’s troops.
In WW1 (and WW2?) people in England commonly referred to Germany soldiers (and by extension Germans in general) as ‘Huns’.
The sense of a barbarian horde trying to overpower and enslave the Good Guys (TM) is not greatly different from Tolkien’s orcs, except that the Huns were real.
(Tolkien was no Nazi btw, he refused to allow his books to be edited and translated for sale in the Reich.)
People who enjoy Tolkien’s books are very aware of their limitations. Tolkien was a man of his time, a veteran of WW1. The books are short on female characters and on morally ambiguous ones.
But to characterise the ‘orc’ trope as racist, as some do, is unfair.
Tolkien mulled/debated the issue of the origin and nature of the orcs over decades after the publication of LOTR. Were they simply organic robots, animated by the will of Sauron and his predecessor? If so, they could legitimately be destroyed without mercy. As a soldier could legitimately destroy a piece of artillery.
But he seems to have settled on a view (within his fictional world) that the orcs were degraded and debased elves and humans, corrupted and bred as slaves and soldiers.
The logic of that (Tolkien was a devout Catholic) was that the orcs though evil in their typical behavior, were not irredeemable and should (for example) be treated decently in the unlikely event that they surrendered in war.
So if Ukrainian troops mock Russkiy mobiks and Wagner thugs as orcs, suck it up boys.
It could be worse, you could be sunflower fertilizer!
My point was not about Ukrainian soldiers (where I might expect to find disparagement of the enemy), but among literally hundreds of comments I have read BTL on pro-Ukrainian items on YouTube, from people who have no first-hand engagement in the matter. I do not find the equivalent level of insults on pro-Russian posts. Comments in the former case often strike me as gratuitously offensive.
For a Russian take on The Lord of the Rings, read this: https://archive.org/details/TheLastRingbearerSecondEdition
Thanks Bayard.
I’d heard of this piece of “fan fiction” and will read.
I understand that this is a materialistic read on the Tolkien mythos where the Elves are selfish narcissists, bent on preventing industry etc?
An amusing idea and (despite negative reviews) I’ll give it a read.
Thanks again,
John
“I understand that this is a materialistic read on the Tolkien mythos where the Elves are selfish narcissists, bent on preventing industry etc?”
Not really, the story is the narrative of the LOTR, but in a Middle Earth where Tolkien’s version is a propagandised account written by the victors to glorify their part in it. It portrays it more as a clash between a feudal, agrarian society and an emergent industrial one rather than between good and evil.
Journalists getting SLAPPed as a way of suppressing dissenting voices is not limited to the UK and the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uEhWifsthE
The British Courts, though, do seem to me to be particularly corrupt in that way.
Scotland is probably the worst, as Craig Murray knows. Not many other Courts send honest journalists to prison quite so blatantly.
Covid :
The fact that Covid is proving “only as” deadly as the Spanish flu tells us that it is, in fact, considerably more dangerous. Covid was – before vaccines – still killing as many people despite everything modern medicine could throw at it.
Medical science has come on a bit in the past 105 years, you know.
“Despite everything modern medicine could throw at it” doesn’t quite fit when you look at the deliberate delays taken by Johnson etc.
Oh, quite – I agree that our collective response was terrible. Criminal, in fact. But I’m talking mainly about those who landed in hospitals worldwide. There was plenty of medical co-operation and sharing of data (and not the mass conspiracy between medics that some lunatics like to believe), all the tests, scans and various treatments. Yet we still had people dying by the million. This makes me disagree quite strongly with Craig (and Trump, and Bolsonaro) that it was – and is – hardly more serious than flu.
Excellent points.
The latest Twitter files revelations from Matt Taibbi. The huge sociopolitical moral panic around Russia’s alleged malign online influence activities, was built on the baseless suspicion of US, Canadian and British citizens.
Twitter’s then Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth : “I think we need to just call this out on the bullshit it is.”
https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton
“The state can incarcerate you and effectively remove all your rights, for criminal acts or if you are dangerously insane.”
While totally supporting your viewpoint, could I point out that under almost all mental health acts in operation around the world, the state can incarcerate you, suspend practically the whole of your human rights, and submit you to “treatment” that you, along with many of those who experience it, will regard as torture, indefinitely, with practically no right of appeal, without you being a demonstrable danger, just on the fact that you are mentally-disturbed without being frankly “insane.” Don’t think this doesn’t happen in “civilised” countries, they are among the worst offenders. Poor countries can’t afford to lock people up indefinitely.
Otherwise, keep up your good work.