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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“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.”
I’ve never seen this view espoused even below the line at any of the sites I regularly visit;Moon of Alabama, Naked Capitalism, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, or Caitlin Johnstone, much less by the writers. Nor have I seen it from sites that have muzzled me, like The Hill, that frequently push the opposing narrative.
I do see the viewpoint that the US and NATO are primarily responsible for provoking this war by their continued proxy aggressions toward Russia. I haven’t seen Russia attack its allies pipelines, or claim that it isn’t legally bound by the treaties it signs, as the US (I believe) did to Germany, and the UK maintains to this day.
I think Russia is primarily restrained by the need to avoid a nuclear response by the US and NATO, but does evince more concern for human life than its adversaries do.
The Invasion of the Hague Act is the jewel in the crown of the Good Guys but you could watch BBC News for a billion years and never hear it mentioned.
I’ve been here for quite some time and I have a definite impression of Mr. Murray. Some of the postulates that he gives as an axiom seem inexplicable to me. Unfortunately, I have no way to get clarification, so I just note that it is “written in Murray’s charter”. Some of the conclusions he draws from the “primary documentation” seem illogical to me, but here at least there’s an opportunity to discuss and offer my thoughts in the comments. And I also see some gaps in this “documentation”, something is missing. This makes me think that the sources of information used by Mr. Murray are distorting the facts by omitting some essential data.
As for the methods of thinking, it seems to me that Mr. Murray sometimes gets specific, which prevents him from voicing a more general problem.
To illustrate, compare the degree of specificity in the slogans “kill Hitler”, “defeat Germany” and “fight Nazism” and compare which of these would really eradicate the problem.
So his postulate that Putin is a very bad person does not contain any recipe. Putin will leave, another will come, but it will hurt just as much, right?
Tatyana ..
I was watching Maria’s heart rendering account in response to German tank rolling back onto Russian soil..Everyone should watch / read / Listen to this and feel Sad about Wars –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv7yEI5YRZc
We at Craigs Ha German Friends..Just Saying
Personally I think it is a kind of elite (ex-FCO) Cognitive Dissonance ingrained by habitat for so long, even though it reamed him, ejected him and then put him in jail.
I dont think anyone (even Putin) thinks Putin is perfect or is a defender of democracy of the highest order. He must defer such a title to the jailors of dissidents in the UK or the complete alignment of the Federalis with one party in the US.
The fact is that Russia’s actions in Ukraine being considered illegal is, an opinion. One I respect but on balance not one I hold.
Taking apart that Ukraine and the Normandy group deliberately flew in the face of Minsk accord (which was a UNSC resolution and therefore an offense against Int Law) Putin claims collective, pre-emptive self defence an conjunction with the UN backed right of self-determination. He has gone to some lengths to protect that legal position.
The Russians cite precedents on which the West has previously rested but we have to ask do we even live within International Law anymore? Isn’t that what the Rules Based International order is? An alternative and middle finger to International law and with actually limited international support, largely gained by bullying and subterfuge.
At the end of the day though, whether Putin is the Devil of World leading Statesman is just opinion and irrelevant to the Real-Politic.
A nuclear power has repeatedly stated its red lines in terms of proximity to its border (Just like Cuban missiles) and intends to drive out all weapons (some of which are Nuclear capable) away from its border. It also cites the rise and financing of odious and long-standing Nazi elements and since it lost millions of people driving Nazis back 80 years ago, while we wave their despicable flags from our houses, Russians have have an enormous ground-up appetite for this (repeat) operation. Not to mention overwhelming capacity for escalation dominance. The 200 tanks that are dribbling into Ukraine are not only guaranteed to result in more Ukrainian deaths (now c.150, 000) but are technically pathetic when you consider Ukraine have already lost c. 2000 tanks and the Russians have stocks of 10, 000 tanks at their backs which could roll into defense of their back yard.
I regard faith in international laws as a sign of infantilism. Some kind of UN resolution on the Minsk agreements has been issued, so what? Is there a mechanism to punish non-compliance? Ha! Disregard and you’ll be fine. Take an example from Israel, where the UN also issued some resolutions.
It’s time to realize that these conversations in the UN do not have the force of law, because the law provides for responsibility and has mechanisms for enforcing. Everything else is just a gossip platform, a place to sell one’s popitical statements, or, the place to discuss the cost of new gorgeous fashion blinkers for one’s eyes.
When people mention UN resolutions giving them some non-existent meaning, every time I recall ShamWow commercial, which in Russian translation was called the Jesus’ Cleaning Cloth.
The primary propaganda slogan pumped ad-infinitum by UK media (and little doubt all western media) is ‘Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine’. It can even suddenly appear when the ‘pundits’ are gobbing away at something aforeto seemingly unconnected.
” Take an example from Israel, where the UN also issued some resolutions.”
I.E. The powerful and rich get away with their breaches and the ICC is there to convict and imprison African dictators. A truly fair international order – assuredly.
Can a man be a woman, Craig? I think it’s a bit of a cop-out to say you neither know nor care. The answer is “no, he can’t”, and the state forcing lies into the mouths of people to say that he can is Orwellian, tyrannical and so destructive of the human soul that it cannot go unaddressed.
Regarding the Ukraine conflict, yes, the west pushed it too far; yes, we provoked it; yes, Ukraine is as crooked and corrupt a state as Russia, and yes, it’s difficult to know why the west is now putting itself on the line to defend it. But as a former diplomat, you know how realpolitik works. It’s not what’s happened up to now, it’s what’s going to happen tomorrow morning that matters. If Putin were to get too much too easily just by rolling into Ukraine, if the Russians weren’t forced to pay a heavy price, we both know they’d be kicking in the doors of Poland, Hungary and maybe even Germany in due course. I mean, why not? Who’s to stop them?
Nice primitive views on both issues. Better all-out war and smash the Russians, just in case they might have ambitions for which there is no evidence that they do in fact have.
No guarantee Putin would stop with Ukraine either. Do we want to take the risk? Appeasement wasn’t exactly a runaway success last time it was tried.
Go to war on a faint possibility, which has been denied by Russia? You have to be a war-lover to do that. Bring down the western economies including ours, just to satisfy a prospect you’ve thought up but is not in the stated policies of Russia (remember Hitler announced all his plans in advance), that’s classic for the warmongers who are determined to go to war themselves.
Laguerre
I remember repeated denials by the Putin regime that they had any intention of invading Ukraine up ……. till they did.
They were lying then. Why should we believe them now?
Putin hasn’t invaded anyone ! The Russian state undertook a special military operation to de-nazify the Ukraine and protect the Russian speaking areas from USA/NATO/Nazi inspired genocide.
The USA and UK have prevented all attempts by the Ukraine government to negotiate a peaceful solution with Russia.
” Putin hasn’t invaded anyone ”
Not for want of trying! He can’t achieve his stated goals of ‘de-nazifying’ or ‘de-militarizing’ any other way then there’s his claim that Ukraine isn’t a sovereign state but a part of Russia. His intention is clear.
There was no genocide in the Donbas either.
“There was no genocide in the Donbas either.”
Thousands of people have died, but it’s not genocide, so that’s OK, nothing to see here, move along.
“No guarantee Putin would stop with Ukraine either. Do we want to take the risk? Appeasement wasn’t exactly a runaway success last time it was tried.”
If the West doesn’t supply Russia with a reason to invade, as they did with the ukraine, then the risk is low. There are always risks but they can be reduced by being reasonable with reasonable people. Appeasing the West and its nazi creatures wasn’t working for Russia so they stopped doing it. They had no intention of invading but the West insisted.
“No guarantee Putin would stop with Ukraine either. ”
Why wouldn’t he? Why didn’t the US go on to attack Iran, once they had conquered Iraq? They had the men, they had the tanks, they had the money, too.
Agree, APPEASEMENT did not work well for Sadam and IRAQ
Appeasement has worked lots of times. The British and the seppoes didn’t go to war after 1812, the continentals appeased Britain by agreeing to Belgium in 1839; the British and French thwarted Hitler over Sudetenland in 1938. You might find concepts of limited war of interest too.
German Strategy and the Path to Verdun (2007) by Robert T. Foley is rather good on ermattungsstrategie, something that the RF knows quite a lot about.
It’s a primitive world, Laguerre. I’m sorry, I assumed we all knew that, although I acknowledge that in some circles, an affected refinement is considered superior. However, I take your point that there’s no evidence the people invading Ukraine are expansionist or irredentist. Don’t know how I came to that conclusion.
Why, Laguerre? Athanasius has the right thoughts.
Places of Russian interest in Ukraine are concentrated around Lvov, Ternopol, Ivano-Frankovsk, here is a list of monuments to Bandera
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B0%D0%BC%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%83_%D0%91%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5
In Germany, at the Waldfriedhof cemetery, there is the grave of Bandera, a place of gathering and worship of Ukrainian Nazis
https://youtu.be/XWBvbEs0fmc
This is in Munich, such a strange German city where they bake a cake with Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf for the Ukrainian consul’s birthday.
https://static1-repo.aif.ru/1/94/1438561/74ec400df85ac7673c9d417001321d91.jpg
https://aif.ru/politics/world/fashistom_byt_pochetno_ukrainskiy_konsul-antisemit_vosstanovlen_na_rabote
Undoubtedly, there are many here in Russia who’d like to go through this tourist route. it’s just that the old Russian tradition of traveling to Europe in tanks scares him.
I’m sure there are some, indeed many, in Russia who’d like to restore the post-2WW empire. There are many similar in UK – they’re called Brexiters, and they’re in power – who see Britain having the right to restore its imperial position of dominating worldwide trade. Of course it’s only unrealisable fantasy.
But do the Putin government hold this view as official policy? As far as I understand it, they don’t. Putin has specifically denied it, I think. Realism in international politics has been a long-term feature of Russian policy in the last 20 years. The operation in Ukraine was the furthest from adhering to that principle that I’ve seen.
Careful now … the people in power now in the UK are not Brexiters, they are actually NSA/WEF shills who want to sell out the UK to the U$A, eg. The likes of Green Card Sunak and ‘the power behind the throne’ Hunt (the khnt). The UK establishment may have delusions of regaining the British Empire but an awful lot of people don’t want any of that nonsense.
What do you make of the remainers?
There are many statues of Stalin all over Russia. He was responsible for the Holodomor and the Purges which killed millions of Ukrainians. I can understand they don’t want to be part of Russia again as Putin insists they are.
Holodomor is a fake story, written for new Ukrainians by american “historian” Sneider and much money was spent to coin it. Fortunately, there are still many live vitnesses and many archives, saying it was a general famine throughout the USSR/ You cannot rewrite the entire history that has been preserved in all the ex-USSR territories.
I think I wouldn’t like to live under Stalin rule either. But why the alternative should be Nazis?
We have diametrically opposed views about good and bad. In the video from my above comment, Graham says that Bandera is a Nazi collaborator and fascist. And the people who tie the flag of Ukraine on the monument to Bandera retort that in the eyes of Ukrainians he is a hero.
By the way, it’s an Ukrainian YouTube channel, and the title of the video speaks for itself:
“Russian propagandist Graham Phillips desecrated Stepan Bandera’s grave.”
The translation is accurate, that’s right, ‘Russian propagandist’ and ‘desecrated’. These are the only two evaluative emotional words, apparently everything else presented in the video seems normal.
A detailed description under the video clarifies:
“Graham Phillips, a Russian propagandist provocateur of British origin, who has long posed as a journalist, has found a reason why no one from the civilized community will stand up for him anymore.
He found the grave of Stepan Bandera and desecrated it. What the narrow-minded did not forget to brag about, by posting a video on social networks.
This video is proof of his crime.”
Obstructing the glorification of Nazi criminals is being described as a crime. How long to wait until a legislative punishment appears for this type of crime?
I ask because men in the video, they perfectly knew that they were doing a shameful and illegal act, because they turned away their faces and demanded that the filming be stopped. But I would say that they did not feel shame for their actions, rather they were dissatisfied with publicity.
So, I do not rule out that the Ukrainians will demand from Olaf ‘Liver Sausage’ Scholz to make appropriate changes to the laws. And I guess that you, over-tolerant civilized society 🙂 will extend your mercy to the poor suffering Ukrainians and let them praise their heroes.
So we are told by the MSM, so I believe it without question.
TATYANA
I presume you mean Timothy Snyder. There are accounts which predate him. Snyder gives a lot of sources.
Bandera was an anti-Semite and his people were involved in atrocities against the Jews. But the co-operation with the Nazis is easy to explain. They saw them as a force which could drive out the Russians and keep them out.
From what one reads he became a prisoner of the Germans.
Showing some Ukrainians venerate him as a patriot doesn’t in any way excuse the Russian invasion. Nor turning a blind eye to similar atrocities in the USSR.
I am familiar with Holocaust deniers and have no sympathy with them. Holodomor deniers also seem to exist. I feel the same
Who was responsible for the “holodomor” of 1922? Who was responsible for the “holodomor” of 1892? Why no breast beating about those famines? Could it be an example of the invention of tradition? Note the research of Mark Tauger on C20th famines and the belated vindicaion offered him by the “holodomorists”.
Ian, holodomor deniers, you said? A new concept, but quite in line with the image of the victim, which is being constructed for Ukraine.
You won’t convince me. You may not be aware that my opinion is based on my own life experience. My grandparents told about that famine, and other elders also mentioned it. You know, grandmothers like to gather to sit on the benches, and at the same time look after the children. Then there are family gatherings, big holidays, neighborhood parties, work with the elders, vacations with the elders – plenty of opportunities to hear their stories.
Your trust in some book by a distant foreigner looks ridiculous to me. That famine was not an exclusive misfortune for Ukraine. Like the Holocaust, it was not the only tragedy in that war. Not only Crimean Tatars or Chechens were deported, for example, my grandmother buried her daughter on the way to Kazakhstan, not being either a Tatar or a Chechen.
It disgusts me to see how individual facts are snatched out of a big story and served with a special seasoning that incites hostility.
“It disgusts me to see how individual facts are snatched out of a big story and served with a special seasoning that incites hostility.”
Does it? It’s odd that you don’t seem disgusted when the same kind of selective propaganda technique is used to incite Russian hostility towards the Ukrainians.
Wow! A person capable of typing “female with tits emotes”, now want to call me a liar 🙂
What makes you think that I suddenly might be interested to know your opinion about me?
Charming primitivism, unclouded even by the slightest doubt or remorse!
Where have you been for so long, Dawg? The exhibition opened on 26.01 and since then people have been working hard to show their paintings in the most favorable light, while experts like you have not yet been represented. More tits for the tits god!
TATYANA
i had a discussion last year on another forum and I agree other parts of the USSR suffered from famine. The consequences are that many Ukrainians saw the Germans as liberators.
The Ukrainians would have had different experience if they had not been part of the USSR. It is not surprising they do not wish to be part of a new Russian ’empire’.
Snyder uses a range of sources and he can speak Russian, Polish and Ukrainian so can read sources in the original.
Putin has made it clear he does not consider Ukraine as a legitimate separate country. Nor does his media. The people of Ukraine do , probably even in the Donbas despite rigged referenda. The country’s borders were affirmed in the Budapest memorandum in the 1990s.
Novesti put this out shortly after the ‘special military operation began and soon took it down after the defeat of the attempt to take the airport at Kyiv and defeat of the column from Belarus.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20220226/rossiya-1775162336.html
“From what one reads he became a prisoner of the Germans.”
Bandera’s mistake with the Nazis was to think that he had clearance to declare an independant ukraine, relations were hunky dory till then. At least that’s the version of history in this article.
https://cynthiachung.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profile
> A person capable of typing “female with tits emotes”
Err … that’s you, that is. You were the only person who typed that ungrammatical phrase – trying to exploit a sarcastic jibe I made about Patrick Lancaster’s relatively unappealing image in propaganda videos. You seem preoccupied with a small word, but in truth it’s just an obsession with petty and pathetic point scoring – and, of course, yet another deflection from the ongoing argument (which is your real purpose for mentioning it here).
Getting back to the point: You expressed your sympathies with a documentary style video which showed emotive images of the conflict in Donbass to persuade viewers that the Russian invasion was morally justified. Yet that aggressive military action by Russia has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people so far, and will no doubt cause many more. It doesn’t seem very justifiable to me, on humanitarian grounds. We debated the use of selective images in war propaganda – of the type you have just denounced – although in that other argument you were defending a clear example of it. Why? Because it was designed to evoke sympathies with the decision to invade. The contradiction in attitude implies there is some other factor underlying your opinions.
Ian, I can hardly tell you how impressed I am by your experience of last year’s discussion! I hope this was not your first experience discussing tragic facts and you already have some immunity to the emotional consequences of such an experience by now. If not, then please accept my kind, comforting hugs.
Unfortunately, I have to again draw your attention to the fact that I am a Russian person who has lived here all my life. So please forgive the fact that I trust my own experience a little more than yours.
I’m sorry that your involvement in the matter may be unclaimed. As much as I’m sorry to upset you, I’m still not a suitable target for this.
So I suggest you find someone young to discuss your theories with. It will be more convenient for you if such a person does not have living witnesses of the events nearby, I think this is easy to ensure by picking up an interlocutor under the age of 30 years. Also, for this generation, the main source of information is the Internet and cinema, which will undoubtedly lead both of you to have an extremely pleasant conciliatory discussion. I would also recommend including TikTok and YouTube shorts on your exploration adventure, so you can feel like a real trained explorer using all available sources. I think that for your purposes “everything available” will be a necessary and sufficient condition for realizing your involvement in establishing the true truth.
Unfortunately, a discussion with me will not bring you the same amount of pleasure, because I was educated at a time when printed publications and file cabinets prevailed – you may have seen such large boxes filled with strange-looking coded pieces of paper, created according to certain protocoled principles …
Okay, to put it simply, you might have seen these obsolete devices with which we gained knowledge, somewhere in the Harry Potter films.
Dawg
You left too strong an emotional imprint on my mental balance. I am aware that this is not related to you as a person, but only to the views that you express, and the form in which you present them. So I’m not saying that you are a bad person, but unfortunately communication in the current form is unacceptable, because even reading your comments causes me a reaction that I cannot control. Sorry. I suspect synesthesia in me, because pressing the letters D a w g gives me the physical sensation of touching dirt or grease like a piece of margarine. This is the second time in this comment and I don’t want to experience it again.
As the saying goes, there is no second chance to make the first impression.
I’m only human. Sorry.
I took your words about females with tits personally. As long as I’m not a male with tits or a female without tits (and to be honest, such drastic changes are not in my life plans) I see no other way to communicate with you, except for you to change the form of presentation of your views to something less traumatic for me.
I recently rewatched The 6 Demons of Emily Rose with the gorgeous Jennifer Carpenter. I learned the lesson that sometimes you have to endure suffering in order to benefit others. But I’m not religious like her character, which is a pity, because it deprives me of the legal opportunity to lament: Lord, why are you punishing me? – being forced yet to read this.
I’m human. In my case, the incentive to read is simply a reasonable reluctance to fall into a set trap, you may know, the sort of traps where the commenter is deliberately insulted in order to prevent them from posting.
So, Mr. expert on propagandists’s tits prettiness, please forgive me for not typing your handle 🙂 I wonder why you waste energy writing long explanations of your vision of the dialogue, instead of just linking to the topic?
Wouldn’t it be better to stick it here and let everyone form their own opinions?
I believe that Cimarron’s efforts to post the video, coupled with their clarification they don’t want to bring people into the discussion due to the supposed backlash of hardbeaks, is reason enough to link and invite people to the discussion.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/how-a-believer-in-the-western-telling-of-events-in-ukraine-changed-their-mind/
Not to forget my comment addressed to you, with a woman missing a leg and an arm, asking in Ukrainian languge her Ukrainian president to please stop shelling, filmed by CNN, who are not pro-russian bloggers or their girlfriends, and which video was left by you with no response
https://youtu.be/AjwSNiCSpnw?t=369
As it happens, Tatyana, I typed a response 11 days ago which I didn’t post, as Pears Morgaine had just nipped in with a direct contradiction of what you’d just said, which you didn’t address. It seemed to me that your view was reduced to absurdity so you’d given up, and I didn’t see any need to reopen arguments further up the thread. But you’re demanding answers now, and since you asked so nicely, you can go and read that response on the discussion thread.
I look forward to your scintillating reply (if you can wipe the grease off your keyboard). 😉
“Does it? It’s odd that you don’t seem disgusted when the same kind of selective propaganda technique is used to incite Russian hostility towards the Ukrainians.”
Except that it isn’t, it’s inciting hostility against the Ukranian government, whereas the Ukranian government is inciting hostility towards Russians, not the Russian government, but Russian people living in Ukraine. We are urged to support with Ukraine, to stand with Ukraine, but why should we? we should be supporting the Ukranians, standing with the Ukranians. They’re the ones that are dying, not their government. The only way to support the Ukranians is through seeking peace. The only way to support the Ukranian government is to prolong the war and kill more Ukranians.
Ian Stevenson
January 29, 2023 at 10:20
“i had a discussion last year on another forum and I agree other parts of the USSR suffered from famine. The consequences are that many Ukrainians saw the Germans as liberators. The Ukrainians would have had different experience if they had not been part of the USSR.”
The German’s where greeted as liberators mainly in West Ukraine, West Ukraine was not part of the Soviet Union until 1939, it was part of Poland and did not experience the 1932-33 Soviet famine. West Ukraine had never been ruled from Mosow until 1939 having been part of Poland or the Hapsburg empire until then, they had only experienced one single year of Soviet rule before greeting the Nazis as liberators. The Holodomor claim that the famine was an attempt by ethnic Russians to exterminate ethnic Ukrainians is a myth that originates as cold war propaganda.
The famine struck hardest in east Ukraine and southern Russia and Kiev and West Ukrainians were since 2014 busy shelling the descendents of the survivors in Donbass.
Bayard
“The only way to support the Ukranians is through seeking peace.”
And the best way to seek peace would be to get Russia to cease their deadly assault, stop destroying Ukrainian civil infrastructure, and withdraw to internationally recognised borders.
Unfortunately peace negotiations aren’t proving very effective right now, cos Putin ain’t listenin’. But maybe there’s another path: by helping Russians understand that the military invasion and slaughter of Ukrainians is unjustified and illegal under international law, deeply damaging to their country’s prospects, and murderous to their own working male population – so that they condemn the decision, campaign against the war, then undermine and eject their leadership. It’s not hard to appreciate why their dear leader is so keen to control the media and suppress anti-war sentiment.
Ian Stevenson
thx for posting the link re: Ukraine
* * *
below an excerpt from a telephone interview between John Mearsheimer and the New Yorker in November 2022.
The entire interview however surprisingly is still up.
It makes for humorous reading, cause Mearsheimer is grumpy and Isaac Chotiner is pushing him. Haven´t read it since.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/john-mearsheimer-on-putins-ambitions-after-nine-months-of-war
(re: New Yorker, I however must say that the main staff responsible for Ukraine, I believe Masha Gessen, brought forward pretty biased stuff. I remember that one of her long texts in summer was full of allegations and fiction, things Mearsheimer is rightly criticizing – people who ought to be serious journalists just putting out things that are, well, propaganda. One hint for New Yorker not being a really neutral “observer” here, is the first question below – because even 3 months ago they are still playing the Russiagate card. Which is just absurd. Now if a serious outlet does that, what does that say about everything else in that very publication?)
The long Putin piece from 2021 which Mearsheimer refers to would be here:
“Article by Vladimir Putin ”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
And here the New Yorker excerpt:
QUESTION: Russia meddled in the 2016 Presidential election, but Putin says they didn’t. So what does that prove or not?
ANSWER: All we can do is base our judgment on what his intentions were on the available evidence.
Q: So, not on what happened but what he said before the war?
A: Yes. It may be that thirty years from now we unlock the archives and discover that there is massive evidence that he was an imperialist at heart. That is possible, but we do not have any evidence of that sort at this point in time. We have a huge amount of evidence that it was nato expansion and the more general policy of making Ukraine a western bulwark on Russia’s border that motivated him to attack on February 24th.
Q: He has said that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. He said that before the war.
A: He said that in a famous article that he wrote on July 12, 2021. But in that same article, he made it very clear that he recognized Ukrainian nationalism, that he recognized that Ukraine was a sovereign state. There is no evidence in there that he was bent on conquering Ukraine and incorporating it into a greater Russia.
Q: Before he violated Ukrainian sovereignty, he respected Ukrainian sovereignty, because he said he did?
A: I’m just telling you what he said in the July 12, 2021, article that he wrote, the famous article.
Q: I just meant that if he’s saying that he respects Ukrainian sovereignty and then he invades Ukraine, it makes me wonder if we should believe him when he says he respects its sovereignty. I don’t know.
A: I have another point to make that’s really important. What we’ve been talking about are Russian intentions, and in particular, Putin’s intentions. What did he intend to do? We also have to look at capabilities. The Russians did not have the military capability to conquer all of Ukraine. At most, a hundred and ninety thousand Russian troops went into Ukraine. There is no way a hundred and ninety thousand Russian troops could come close to conquering and occupying all of Ukraine.
* * *
(I might add, noone in these discussions in our part of the planet ever seriously brings up OUR lies. That´s astonishing. What in God´s name is the US doing in Ukraine???)
“Unfortunately peace negotiations aren’t proving very effective right now, ”
And who was it who walked out of the peace negotiations and shot one of their negotiators? Not Russia. ”
“But maybe there’s another path: by helping Russians understand that the military invasion and slaughter of Ukrainians is unjustified and illegal under international law, deeply damaging to their country’s prospects, and murderous to their own working male population – so that they condemn the decision, campaign against the war, then undermine and eject their leadership.”
That you think that the current arming of Ukraine and sabotaging of peace negotiations by the West is “helping Russians understand that the military invasion and slaughter of Ukrainians is unjustified and illegal under international law” then you have no idea of the concept of peacemaking. That is a path to war. Warmongers always try to pretend that the only path to peace is through war. Fighting for peace, it’s like f*cking for virginity.
Not only that but it is completely counterproductive. People like war, even those who know they might end up dead or maimed, witness the rush to join up in Britain at the start of WWI, a war that was none Britain’s business. Fighting the Russians in Ukraine is only going to make Putin more popular, in exactly the same way as fighting the Argentinians in the Falkland islands made Thatcher popular enough to win the next election. WWI was a display by Britain of lethal military incompetence unparelleled before or since and did the British rise up and depose their government? This idea is trotted out again and again, but never with any historical justification: it’s just an excuse for warmongering.
Oh, and since you don’t mention it, I take it you tacitly agree your accusation against Tatyana was false. I don’t suppose you might apologise.
“That you think that the current arming of Ukraine and sabotaging of peace negotiations by the West is “helping Russians understand … ”
What are you babbling on about, Bayard? I didn’t mention “the current arming of Ukraine” or “the sabotaging of peace negotiations by the West”: it’s you who dragged those ideas into the conversation. What you go on to deduce from that false attribution is therefore babble.
Let me recap what I actually said instead. I advised that the Russians should cease the military assault, stop the destruction, and withdraw to internationally agreed borders. Now, that sounds very much like peacemaking to me – not “warmongering”, as in your very warped summary.
But of course Putin has refused to stop the military campaign so far, and by all accounts he’s not open to considering that idea. So an alternative path might be “by helping Russians understand”, which is a matter of information and education – not shooting and bombing, as you (weirdly) assumed. (Did you have especially violent teachers or something?!) It might be very difficult to get the message through to the Russian population, given the Kremlin’s tight control of the media – but the mainstream news media isn’t the only means of disseminating information.
“Oh, and since you don’t mention it, I take it you tacitly agree your accusation against Tatyana was false. I don’t suppose you might apologise.”
Again, I can’t stop you imagining whatever you want, but at least I have the chance to correct you. For clarity the answer, whatever “accusation” you’re talking about, is No.
I’d like to persuade you to stop making that kind of unjustified “tacit” assumption. Unfortunately on the basis of your reasoning so far, there’s a risk you might construe any attempt at persuasion as some kind of warmongering intention to send weapons to blow you up. Yes, you are being that ridiculous.
“So an alternative path might be “by helping Russians understand”, which is a matter of information and education – not shooting and bombing, as you (weirdly) assumed. (Did you have especially violent teachers or something?!) It might be very difficult to get the message through to the Russian population, given the Kremlin’s tight control of the media – but the mainstream news media isn’t the only means of disseminating information.”
Thank you for making that clear, but what makes you think that the Russians people give a shit what anyone in the West thinks? This is the arrogance of the West, that we think our attitudes and purported values are somehow universal. As someone from the Third World put it, ” When they come from the East, we get a deal, when they come from the West, we get a lecture.” In any case, why should we be lecturing the Russians about shooting and bombing Ukranians when we never lectured the Ukranians who were shooting and bombing Ukranians (or shooting and bombing Russians in Ukraine, it really doesn’t matter how you think of them, they were still getting shot and bombed).
“Unfortunately on the basis of your reasoning so far, there’s a risk you might construe any attempt at persuasion as some kind of warmongering intention to send weapons to blow you up. Yes, you are being that ridiculous.”
If that’s what you conclude from my reasoning, I think it would be more correct to have finished, “Yes, I am being that ridiculous.” If you haven’t got the grace to admit when you are wrong, you could at least keep quiet about it.
“Thank you for making that clear, but what makes you think that the Russians people give a shit what anyone in the West thinks? This is the arrogance of the West, that we think our attitudes and purported values are somehow universal. … why should we be lecturing the Russians about shooting and bombing Ukranians … ”
You’re babbling again, Bayard. I asked you to stop making assumptions, but you can carry on barking at phantoms in your own head if you wish.
My suggestion wasn’t to lecture Russians about how to think, what to value or what to do – but to provide accurate and complete information about what’s going on and why, so that the population can come to their own conclusions about the real-world consequences of their leaders’ decisions. Ideally their own media would provide that function that for them … but unfortunately due to legal restrictions they’re not allowed to deviate from the official Kremlin narrative.
Do Russians care about international sanctions? Maybe not. Do they care about their menfolk being sent into a bloody war of attrition from which tens of thousands will not return? Probably quite a few do. Do some of them regret the vast humanitarian toll of the invasion, which has clearly multiplied the scale of death and destruction in Ukraine many-fold? That’s a fair bet, at least in some sectors of society. So I think there is some basis for hoping that internal popular unrest might eventually prompt a rethink.
When the armed rebellion began in the Donbass in 2014, the Ukrainian government tried to crush it with a violent crackdown, effectively throwing petrol on the fire (literally in some cases). It brought their military into conflict with well-armed Russian-backed paramilitaries, and the casualties mounted on both sides: 14,000 in total over 8 years, according to most estimates. It was a tragedy, a myopic political failure lamented by many, not least our host Craig Murray.
At what point did the military conflict, and the number of casualties, escalate massively? We can put a definite date on it – 24/2/22 – a date chosen by Putin himself. He’s the only one who can rapidly de-escalate it, by reversing the catastrophic decision he took then. But he can’t be seen to capitulate.
What could be an incentive for Russia to pull back its military forces? At a minimum, international recognition of Russian dominion over Crimea, and a liberation of the Donbass regions (with any future change of status to be determined by an internationally monitored referendum) — these could maybe provide a foundation for a potential ceasefire. As Mr. Murray said above:
“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.”
That would still leave many serious problems, not least how to deal with the repugnant right-wing militias within the reduced Ukraine – but at least that would be an internal Ukrainian issue. There would have also have to be a salient change of attitude from NATO, driven by symmetrical public pressure for peace in the constituent countries; but Russia would have to stop the aggression before that could begin.
Of course it’s an optimistic vision. There are plenty of more depressing alternatives – some of them catastrophic. I would hope that the looming threat of more disastrous outcomes would push the leaders to the negotiating table to work towards the better compromise. But I appreciate that may be wishful thinking.
“If you haven’t got the grace to admit when you are wrong, you could at least keep quiet about it.”
Sorry, Bayard, wrong about what exactly?? In response to my appeal for a Russian ceasefire and withdrawal, you accused me of supporting “the current arming of Ukraine and sabotaging of peace negotiations”, which I never mentioned or even hinted at. That’s a pretty weird and irrational inversion. Maybe you need to calm down a bit and mull things over before clicking the reply button.
A good source of information is Forward ttps://forward.com/news, a Jewish organisation which maps the monuments erected in Ukraine since 2014 to “honour” the Nazi collaborators, not just Bandera but many others.
Since this is Holocaust Memorial time this (edited) extract serves as a useful reminder of the reality of post Maidan Ukraine and as an antidote to Ukraine Nazi denialism. .
“Ternopil — A bust of the genocidal Yaroslav Stetsko (1912–1986), who led Ukraine’s 1941 Nazi-collaborationist government which welcomed the Germans and declared allegiance to Hitler. A rabid antisemite, Stetsko had written “I insist on the extermination of the Jews and the need to adapt German methods of exterminating Jews in Ukraine.” —-
He kept his word —. By the war’s end, Ukrainian nationalist groups massacred tens of thousands of Jews, both in cooperation with Nazi death squads and on their own volition. —
Additional Stetsko monuments are found in Stryi, which also has a Stetsko street, Velykyi Hlybochok, which also has a Stetsko museum (with plaque) and school, Kam’yanky and Volya Zaderevatska. Stetsko also has a joint monument to him and other OUN leaders in Morshyn and streets in Dubno, Khmelnytskyi, Lutsk, L’viv, Monastyrys’ka, Rivne, Rudne, Sambir and Ternopil”.
Then the crunch line.
“After the war, Stetsko — the man who formally pledged his government’s loyalty to Hitler — moved to the U.S., where he quickly rose into the highest circles of Washington. He was lauded as leader of freedom fighters by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush”.
I think his wife / daughter might also have carried on his “good work” in those same exalted echelons of USA political society.
Let’s not forget Canada, home of Chrystia Freeland, has several Nazi monuments.
And if we want to be brutally honest, the American Apollo Space Programme and the Pharmaceutical Industries are monuments to Nazi slave labour and medical experimentation, respectively.
” the American Apollo Space Programme and the Pharmaceutical Industries are monuments to Nazi slave labour and medical experimentation, respectively.”
There is an electrical safety device fitted to you home right now, which will turn off the power, should there be a tiny imbalance between the current in the live supply and the current in the neutral. It is called a residual current device and saves hundreds of lives every year. However, it is based on data on how much electricity it takes to stop a human heart. That data was gathered in Germany during the early 1940s. Do you feel prompted to have any such devices removed from your fusebox?
Europe has been the main victim of the effort to force a heavy economic price on Russia. We could expect the same if there were any attempt to force a heavy military price on the world’s 2nd largest nuclear power. Among the casualties would be many an armchair general/geopolitics expert. Their expertise would not save them.
When Victoria Nuland (of Ukrainian Jewish heritage) was caught saying “fuck Europe” she was prophetic, Europe is now well and truly fucked by the like of Nuland who appear to have a visceral hatred of both Russians and Europeans.
You’ve been reading too much NATO propaganda. Russia’s military is barely capable of defeating Ukraine; it would have no chance whatsoever against an alliance of even just the European members of NATO.
Russia is not the Soviet Union. Its GDP, which in the long run determines military capability, is about the same as Italy’s.
Putin tried hard to get a negotiated agreement on the lines of the Minsk accords (google for them). Only when that failed (due to UK/US advice to Ukraine) did he resort to military action.
More a lack of desire to invade western Europe, than lack of capacity, though that may also be true.
Kind of vacuous Laguerre.
If Russia is struggling to defeat Ukraine (population about 40 million) how can they possibly defeat Poland, the Baltics, Germany, France, Italy, Benelux and England?
And of course Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland.
When all the above have fallen, Ireland will kick the last mobik in the ass.
John
Russia is not “struggling to defeat Ukraine”, they quite rightly don’t want to provoke a nuclear launch from the US.
If the Allies aren’t winning quickly enough for you, take note of the squeals from the US-Ukronazi putschists.
There is no justification for bothsidery with regard to the Russia Ukraine war. Granted, Ukraine was not a paragon of perfection before the 2022 invasion, but Russia is clearly in the wrong here and a strong resistence is needed to the threat to world peace that Russia poses. However, I also think that censorship is wrong and people have the right to express views that the establishment doesn’t like.
What threat to world peace? Only if the US goes to war, as the neo-cons are pushing for (since 1991).
” Russia is clearly in the wrong here”
No it isn’t. NATO is the threat to world peace.
On the contrary, if one is on the side of peace it is impossible to condone war of any kind, but because it is a reality one can only study it dispassionately to understand it. Such study certainly does not lead me to the conclusion that “Russia is clearly in the wrong here”, which results from a constructed framing of its actions as “unprovoked”. If the conflict is seen as a civil way sparked by the illegal 2014 Maidan coup between USA and collective west backed from the beginning by extreme Ukraine nationalists and Donbass dissidents, who received military support from Russia after its efforts to broker peace in the form of the Minsk Accords failed you would not conclude that “strong resistance is needed to the threat of world peace that Russia poses”.
It was not Russia that sabotaged the Istanbul peace talks in April 2022 that could have nipped this terrible conflict in the bud but the Ukraine side which actually murdered one of its own delegates to prevent any resolution. Boris Johnson is reported to have instructed Zelenski following his visit to Kiev in April to stop peace negotiations and continue fighting, in which case he has certainly go blood on his hands along with the rest. The idea that by supplying more and more weapons to bring “victory” to Ukraine, whatever that might mean will result in peace is as senseless and idiotic as they come and is driven, (to revert to a previous blog), by a totally fanatical form of millennialism and that is the mindset of the USA, UK, NATO, EU and all and is certainly not that of Russia.
Crispa
I spoke about the policy of arms supplies from the very beginning. An outrageous level of hypocrisy to talk about peace while supplying weapons.
Everyone here is excited about the news about the supply of German tanks to Ukraine, to kill Russians. I can hardly convey to you this mixture of feelings. It’s something almost joyful, like a relief that the masks are finally thrown off, and instead of uncertainty, there is now known work to be done.
While Maria Zakharova is pushing solemn sad speeches to Olaf Scholz, young citizens are practicing jokes on social networks, such as “My grandfather saved this Russian-German phrase book, said that it would come in handy sooner or later.”
Older people do not need phrasebooks and easily operate with the words “Halt! Hande hoh! March-march, shneller!”
With the news that Facebook and Instagram have adopted a new policy to whitewash the Azov brand name, I think there is a clear understanding here of just how differently the ideology of racial superiority is perceived on opposite sides of the pond.
I see the following dangerous development: some will reasonably say that we are no longer a huge USSR like we were when it happened last time, and the only advantage that will not let us perish is nuclear weapons.
Brings back memories of the Nazi Soviet Pact period?
When the USSR supplied Nazi Germany with raw materials and jointly invaded and occupied Poland and the Baltic States.
Happy times when Russia and Germany had ‘strong leaders’?
Have the NAFO clowns also informed you that Poland itself helped start the war by signing a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1934 and participated in the Nazi-led partition of Czechoslovakia in 1938?
Did they fill you in on what Ukrainian hero Stepan Bandera and his men did to thousands of Polish women and children in 1943-45?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia
Or were these events not mentioned in your Neocon history lessons?
You kinda forgot the Atlantic Convoys and all those hero’s who perished during WW2 providing the USSR with supplies to enable it to defeat the Nazis. Did you also forget the happy times of Irish Neutrality whilst the rest of the world fought the Nazis ?
Memory can be selective !
in fact, Stalin had been dead for several decades by the time I was just born. So no, to me it doesn’t bring back any memories. I rather think of more modern examples like Mrs. Theresa May and her husband from Lockheed Martin.
But if you are talking about historical events, I must tell you that I have a firm position on the irresponsibility of such pseudo-historians who dig up partial facts and present them as a reason for hatred between entire nations. You won’t make me hate the Poles.
I also have a strong position about the truth. Do you know the phrase “tell the truth, the WHOLE truth and nothing but the truth”? So in my version of history, Hitler invaded Poland and the Polish government fled, then Stalin sent his troops to occupy a piece of the country, some special territories. May I remind you what those were? Those were lands that previously belonged to the Russian Empire, and today to Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania. To be more specific, at the beginning of the century, after the WW1 and Communist Revolution, from the outskirts of the collapsed Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire, the Republic of Poland was constructed. Which immediately began fighting for territories in Galicia, in Kharkov, and annexing Lithuanian and Belarusian territories. Nothing is more pleasant than biting off pieces of a weakened neighbor, isn’t it?
The history of mankind is very long and eventful, absolutely any nation can be scraped and unpleasant facts can be found. Lessons must be learned and hostilities should be worked out. I propose to focus on what is going on now.
—
Though I only know ‘kurwa’ in Polish, but an aquarelle of a Polish artist is on my shelf, and Polish opera singer is on my playlist. So, I refuse to hate Poles.
Which pact the behavior of the western powers made completely inevitable. What knowledgeable observers said at the time, what they were surprised at, was not the pact, which they predicted in advance as Stalin’s only option, but how long the USSR had followed its policy of seeking an alliance against Hitler, only to be rebuffed at every turn. See for instance US ambassador Joseph Davies’ memoir Mission to Moscow.
The British and French leaders of the time [justly called then “morons” by Frederick Schuman publicly, “dimwits” by FDR, of course privately] supplied Nazi Germany not with just raw materials, but with whole countries by their diplomacy aimed at giving Hitler a “free hand in the East”. That is the original story, before post war / cold war revisionism rewrote it for political purposes in the West.
And Germany supplied the USSR with more war materials. It got Hitler really concerned. Of course Germany invaded the USSR thanks to US supplied oil. The U S also supplied oil to Japan till 1941. Great help to China, eh!
PS the Poles supported the Jap all-out invasion of China in 1937.
@ j lowrie
The Soviet reply to the 1938 alignment of Britain, France and Germany against the USSR and Czechoslovakia worked to Soviet advantage, high technology for commodities at a good price, the opposite of the usual terms of trade. Try
Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933-41 (1999) by Edward E. Ericson
and
Wages Of Destruction (2007) by Adam Tooze
Germany invaded the USSR eating Ukrainian bread, driving on Caucasian petrol and Far Eastern rubber; the Red Army fought back with weapons made by German machine tools, getting the better of the deal.
Eastern Poland to you, western Belarus and western Ukraine to me. Served the Polish state right for its war of aggression 1919-1921 but not the Polish people, obviously. Plus ca change.
Tatyana, or others well informed,
any suggestions for official/good NGO sites /lists about the global conflicts and their victims, that have been going on 2022 (but been completely ignored by our media in the West)?
e.g. I do have an article from Sept. 2021 about the “Costs of War Project” by Brown University, where it listed the victims of the war on terror (about 6 Mio.) by country/conflict.
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/09/15/up-to-six-million-people-the-unrecorded-fatalities-of-the-war-on-terror/
But I am looking for 2022 obviously.
I am trying to draft some letter/memo to MPs in Germany with a couple of topics and arguments.
Above request could help pointing out our double standard.
p.s. and Tatyana thx for the various “Nazi”-related links.
As German I know Munich. These things are parallel worlds. Considering the harsh reactios in Munich towards non-Ukrainian Nazism. Its all very “confusing”.
But after all major institutions like the mayor´s office, or several University buildings there are in yellow/blue light during the nights.
When I asked whether anyone knew the Iraqi colours I was met with ignorance.
The new Ukrainian ambassador/consul general to Hamburg, Iryna Tybinka, is better educated in what to say and what not but she too is apparently a racist.
AG
your comments here caught my attention and I remember that you are from Germany. Now, since we are discussing sensitive things (Nazism), I would like to arm you with some context. I’m Russian, I live in Russia, my interests are creativity and art, my education is inter- cultural communication, and now my lifestyle allows me to distribute my priorities myself. So my comments have two features – I can describe the emotional component of events, and I can study in detail an interesting piece of information. I am 100% anti-war. My name is real and by clicking on it you can find out more about me, and you can contact me in any convenient way. German was the second language in my university linguistics course, but since it’s been so long without practice, I still feel more comfortable with English.
As for your idea of contacting MPs, please don’t be offended, but I find it a waste of time. The last significant appointment in the form of Mr. Scholz and the appearance of a Baerebock-type figure speaks volume and is in the global mainstream of the appointment of extremely strange figures to key positions, in different countries. The brain of Frau Baerbock is comparable to the intellect of Mrs. Psaki, or Liz Trass. Mr. Scholz’s intellect is unlikely to exceed the list necessary for memorizing the standard ‘claims of the West to Russia’ and I must admit he coped the task rather well after the pre-war ‘talks’ 🙂
Cannot wait for this new Italian woman to start playing her ‘Isabela La Catolica’ part. I expect it to be a truly fascinating performance, new style.
Tatyana thx for response
As I am new to all this online commenting (when I last did such things with vigour it was still called “letter to the editor”).
I have chosen to not operate under real name since my work is depending on public funding. And as we all know too well, rumours can destroy careers or just projects in myriad ways.
As to my letters.
I have been pondering about this. My first ones came about by initial concern February last, so a year ago almost, to people like Wagenknecht and Dagdelen from THE LEFT party.
A few weeks I needed to understand how far-reaching and of historical significance the Ukrainian “issue” truly is – and how little Wagnknecht and Co. could do.
However I cannot hold still.
There are cracks of integrity within the Social Democratic Party. I would not waste my time addressing the chancellory or even Lars-MC-Klingbeil. But the echelons below.
Still in their hearts decent personalities as Ralf Mützenich do respond to letters by private people as I have been told repeatedly.
And he for instance is – whip? – of the Social Democratic Party, after all.
Mützenich found himself on the info-terrorist list this past summer which caused a 24-h-scandal. Long forgotten now.
But to point out to him various things such as the structural character of Nazism in Ukraine (to the umptenth time: Nicolai Petro´s work will help me here) or to remind him of the underlying dangers of devilish details of US nuclear planning for Europe as NATO-ally and the causes for Russian actions, aka: the true threats of NATO expansion.
All this work can also be used for further action.
The thing with open letters by VIPs: it makes no difference. It ought be done every single week.
But that´s a job in itself.
Alternative media outlets ought to form an alliance to show those millions of ordinary people that they are not alone.
As Noam Chomky correctly stated: One of the bigget victories of the system was to make people believe they are alone and that there is no hope.
But there is a way out of this.
I will look into your suggestion.
For anyone else – information about the wars & victims inflicted by our Allies in the year 2022 is appreciated.
@Goose
great panel.
I would have never wanted to miss it.
AG
Hope other people can help you. I’d like to help, but I’m very limited on my side right now.
You want to cover 2022, and it was already a war and restrictions were in place. Firstly, many English-language and most Ukrainian-language resources have canceled access for users from Russia. Secondly, there is a law on information. E.g. the media should not use the word ‘war’, but a ‘special military operation’ (I’m not a media, so I feel free to use ‘war’, because if people kill each other, then this is war, and I don’t want to learn special military terminology, there are professionals for this ) There is also a legislative prohibition to denigrate the actions of the Russian military and something else, I suspect that the number of victims.
In general, I believe that now the real truthful information is not available, so I can not help with something reliable.
If you want to delve into the issue of the formation of the Nazi movement in Ukraine and incorporation into state structures, then I would advise you to contact Anatoly Sharij. He is Ukrainian, he denounced this from the very beginning. He lived there and knows the issue from the inside. The current Ukrainian regime targeted him, so Anatoly fled the country and is now somewhere in Europe, I think in Spain.
Recently he said that one of those Azov guys tried to make an exibition in Spain, so Anatoly exposed him as a Nazi and the authorities cancelled the event.
https://www.youtube.com/@SuperSharij
” Anatoly Sharij. He is Ukrainian, ”
Not according to the Western press, he isn’t. He doesn’t support the official Ukranian state narrative, therefore he’s Russian. https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1605638/Russian-blogger-Anatoly-Shari-arrested-Spain-police-treason-Vladimir-Putin-latest-Ukraine.
Reminds me of what an Olympic athlete of Caribbean heritage once said, “If you win gold, you are English, if you win silver, you are British, if you win bronze, you are West Indian and if you are caught cheating, you are black.”
Bayard
I’m afraid Anatoly would soon find himself a citizen of nowhere 🙂 Regarding his attacks on Russian corruption, including Shoigu and Putin and some more at the very top, his critics on de-nazification, his anti-war position, I really don’t know what is his side. I prefer to believe he has a position of his own, as I do. I tend to think that I’m able to recognise who are “my sort of people” and Anatoly enters my personal lodgement for such figures, leaving almost no barbs on the surfaces. Sometimes I feel that this is the merit of a large amount of lubricant, but more often it is still the feeling of a perfect fit.
TATYANA
thx for the info on the Ukrainian guy (your post a bit lower in the row).
Will check on that story.
And since I was inquiring about victims of US imperialism,
here Chris Hedges´ latest article from yesterday, recommended reading as always with Hedges.
(Special attention to his hyperlinks)
“Ukraine: The War That Went Wrong”
https://scheerpost.com/2023/01/29/chris-hedges-ukraine-the-war-that-went-wrong/
re-writing history: a coupleof days ago in “Der Spiegel”: “Auschwitz was liberated by the US Armed Forces 75 years ago. ….”
statement by the US embassy in Denmark: “75 years ago US troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau”…
Stepan Bandera´s grave in Munich: graves normally “exist” for 20 years or so. If e.g. the family wants to keep it for a longer period of time.it´s : pay for the lease of the site for 5, 10 or more years in advance.. Bandera was buried in the late 1950s.
Marshal Konev, a native of Vologda, Russia, would be very surprised to know that he served in the US Army. No less surprised would be Lieutenant General Petrenko, a native of Poltava, now Ukraine, such a strange set of circumstances that a “US Army employee” receives the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. He would probably want to discuss this oddity with Marshal Konev, twice Hero of the Soviet Union. Let’s add to the company the Soviet doctor Friedland, from Minsk, now Belarus, who took care of the released prisoners and created hospitals for them in the Kharkov region, now Ukraine.
Only a stupid person would doubt that it was the US Army that liberated Auschwitz. In Spiegel, only smart, educated and honest people work. Real professional journalists. They must not be allowed to fall short of the intelligence, education, and honesty of the American embassy staff.
Tatyana,
forget about Der Spiegel. You know German, therefore the following may be of interest:
http://www.anti-spiegel.ru (Thomas Röper.), http://www.nachdenkseiten.de (Albrecht Müller et al), http://www.uncut news.ch. No paywalls!! –
Tatyana, it’s well known, at least in Hollywood, that the US won the war in Europe all on their own. The British were knocked out at the beginning (remember Dunkirk?) and didn’t really have anything to do with it after that.
Bayard
I can’t belive this. I watched The Hacksaw Ridge, because my son was impressed by it and wanted me to watch again with him and to discuss. I cannot belive that an organization who were producing films like that one might expropriate the victory. Any man on this planet would ridicule the idea, by simply asking If so, then why Britain in sitting in the UN SC?
“then why Britain in sitting in the UN SC?”
Because it was a colonial power that wasn’t Germany? You might ask why France has a permanent seat. Its lack of contribution to the Allied victory was real, not just in the minds of the Americans.
Great points Craig, (unfortunately) I agree with you on the terrible russian invasion fiasco.
Judging already back in february, when the war started, it was like Russia did not have a plan, strategy or even tactic.
Russia has now tarnished its own economy, power, army/intelligence, deterrence, reputation, relations, trade. For what? What can they possible win by now? Nothing. How could they have judged this invasion so badly?
It is terrible but I am also not surprised that the West keep arming Ukraine to the extent they do: considering how bad this invasion as been going, such Russian weakness invites more boldness by Nato/US/EU. And Zelensky, the bordering-dictator-slash-actor-slash-narcissist is now glorified and supported like never before!
Along with this you have the supporting media that spread war propaganda like it’s something normal and sane.
The European socialists/Left have abdicated the anti-war cause completely, even the Greens (look at the ruling party of Germany) are as warmongering as the hawkish rightwingers!
In Europe, only Viktor Orban has called out the warmongers and urged for peace.
His latest criticism:
“Hungary’s Orban: Ukraine’s backers have ‘drifted’ into war”
https://apnews.com/article/politics-hungary-government-russia-germany-viktor-orban-55ef9979d7daf7ab3e8d002aa104c91c
You write like lots of commentators on the Battle of Normandy 1944, as if only knock-out victories count. The RF intervened in the civil war unleashed on Ukraine by the US-Ukronazis but the war was inevitably going to involve American Caesar’s Nato lackeys. This is the thing you underestimate when you criticise RF strategy and tactics. Like the Gorlice-Tarnow offensive in 1915 and Normandy 1944, the RF is using its advantages to shred the US-Ukronazis with firepower on the central front, where the war is being won. I expect that’s why the corp-0-rat media and the state broadcaster are bruiting tanks and aeroplanes, they are in the same boat as Hindenburg and Ludendorff at the end of 1916.
Jack
You don’t know the real state of affairs. You see the word ‘invasion’ and you mean some kind of brutal military force going to kill and capture. Perhaps you are influenced by pictures like Yugoslavia or Iraq, where a foreign force comes into a foreign country and simply wipes entire cities off the face of the Earth.
If you were next to me in Krasnodar, Russia, I would introduce you to Olga sitting next to me, whose mother stayed there in Ukraine. I would introduce you to my father, whose distant relatives live in Ukraine. Many people from Ukraine have a family in Russia, and vice versa. We are one people. I do not understand how this war is possible.
We used to have a saying “if someday someone tells a Russian and a Ukrainian to shoot each other, then we should stand back to back and shoot those who said this.”
I rejoice in what you call “fiasco”
That is because it is a fiasco. You really believe Russia would have invaded Ukraine if they knew it would go this bad? You really believe that they somehow planned for a protracted trench war going nowhere pushing 11 months now? So like I said, there is no planning involved here and one could tell that from the getgo of this fiasco.
“You really believe Russia would have invaded Ukraine if they knew it would go this bad? ”
You really believe Russia would have only invaded Ukraine if they thought it would go exactly as they wanted, that they had no Plan B? The “stupid Russians” trope is really only suitable to those who can’t be bothered to think beyond what they are fed by the MSM. It must have been obvious to anyone who was reasonably well informed that war was coming, it was just a question of when and that there were obvious advantages in seizing the initiative, exactly the same as it was obvious at the beginning of the C20th for Germany.
Bayard
“You really believe Russia would have only invaded Ukraine if they thought it would go exactly as they wanted, that they had no Plan B?”
That is my whole point! There is no “plan b” (or plan c, d etc for that matter), that is why the war is going so bad.
Yes one could argue that war was in the making, but I am talking about the actual conduct of the war which is a terrible fiasco.
“That is my whole point! There is no “plan b” ”
So why haven’t they simply gone home? What we are seeing is the “plan B”. If you want to go on about how stupid the Russian military is, go and talk to your chums in NAFO, if they won’t simply laugh at you. Underestimating your opponent is the quickest way to lose a war, as the Athenians discovered in the Peloponnesian War and many have discovered since. On the other hand, getting your enemy to despise you is a quick way to victory.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the original Russian strategy, however imperfectly carried out, was to seize the Donbass and bring Ukraine to the negotiating table. In this they succeeded. However the West torpedoed the peace negotiations and the Russians then had to adopt another strategy, that of military conquest of the remaining Donbass, which is what they have been doing ever since. Yes they have made mistakes, which have resulted in them having to withdraw from large areas, but they have been able to do this without losing troops and equipment, and making mistakes is not the same as not having a plan. They presumably adopted Plan A becasue they knew how difficult Plan B was going to be.
Bayard
“So why haven’t they simply gone home? ”
Why did not US go home from Vietnam earlier? Or Iraq? Why did they stay for 20 years? Because they were fooling themselves that these wars would be a quick and easy war: Same with Russia in Ukraine.
And no, constant mistakes on the battlfield stems from horrible planning. Period.
Shh, Bayard, don’t stop Jack from telling his vision of why the war is going so bad. In his understanding, a good proper war is when the Good Guys come in and quickly kill everyone else.
Not a bad recipe for life on Earth, is it? All you need to do is kill everyone who is not the Good Guys in your opinion. Simple and clear. Jack must be aiming for US presidency.
“Jack must be aiming for US presidency.”
With that command of strategy and military history, it’s more likely to be a top job in the Pentagon.
I believe this the issue, Russia and it supporters are deluding theirself thus every comment, critic pointing out that it is not going good – is attacked. That is why the war is going as bad as it is.
Group-think is the term. Americans had the same plague in the Vietnam war and we all know how that war ended for the americans, it is amazing that Russia did not learn form the american fiasco now making the same mistake.
Jack, americans in Vietnam hardly had to shoot at their family. They were not interested to save anyone there.
“I believe this the issue, Russia and it supporters are deluding theirself thus every comment, critic pointing out that it is not going good – is attacked.”
If someone goes around saying you f*ck goats and you don’t f*ck goats, presumably you would not bother to deny it because everyone will think that, if you deny that you f*ck goats, you are only saying that because you do. What, then is the Jack method of credibly countering falsehoods?
Bayard
My examples of this war as a fiasco is factual, that is the difference.
Like, I am saying: The world is globe shaped – while you claim: -No its flat!
“My examples of this war as a fiasco is factual, that is the difference.”
Well, of course you think they are, I’m saying you’re deluded, not accusing you of lying. However, just because you think they are true doesn’t make them true. Other people, like myself may and do think them to be false and, because they think them false, point out that we think they are false. That doesn’t make them false either, but if they are not false, that just makes us deluded, not liars as you seem to think.
Bayard
Nope, these are irrefutable facts: ” Russia has now tarnished its own economy, power, army/intelligence, deterrence, reputation, relations, trade.”
Jack wrote: Americans had the same plague in the Vietnam war.
How far is Vietnam from America? We dont speak geography in the States(only geophobia) but there appears to be a whole freaking ocean, ever hear of the largest body of water on our planet? So again, what was America doing on the other side of the planet in Vietnam?
The great defenders of democracy. I do not understand your comparison and your misuse of invasion. It is at a time of war and the censors do love to change the meaning of words. Thankfully, they do all the thinking for us at this stage, phew.
Lets get one thing straight, both armies are pleasing the weapons manufacturers, but one nation deciding to intervene in a badly mis-narrated genocide NEXT DOOR to you is magnitudes ahead in morality than a nation building weapons bases in the whole world to abuse it as it pleases. But hey, hur dur war is bad, but make sure our good guys kill the baddies, how dare they defend themselves, amirite?
Oh, dear. Study some virology and epidemiology before making public your opinions on Covid. Otherwise, what is the point? Independent thinker does not mean everything you think is sensible.
To save further study, can I ask what are the virologically and epidemiologically correct opinions on Covid, Ewan?
That is a daft response to the suggestion that Mr Murray make public comments only on subjects he is qualified to judge of. On virology and epidemiology, he should in all humility join the rest of us whose opinions are of no account in looking on as the experts argue, and however reluctantly follow the consensus they arrive at, even as we and they know the consensus may well change with further evidence and analysis.
“in all humility join the rest of us whose opinions are of no account in looking on as the experts argue, and however reluctantly follow the consensus they arrive at,”
Experts can get it wrong and we should hazard a guess as to whether they have on every occassion. Weather forcasters are experts.
” however reluctantly follow the consensus they arrive at,”
What consensus? Getting every expert who supports your course of action together, but excluding those who don’t is not a consensus, however large the numbers in the first party are. There were, from the very beginning, dissenting voices, but they were excluded because they were dissenting.
Thanks for your reply Ewan. It could be said that our host is not an expert in politics: he doesn’t have a degree in it and his only experience of frontline UK politics was losing his deposit (if only by a whisker) when standing as a candidate against Jack Straw in the 2005 general election and then again in a subsequent by-election in Norwich. Does that mean that he shouldn’t write about politics on his blog and instead be content to watch the ‘political experts’ arguing in the Houses of Parliament and Holyrood, and then just go along with whatever they decide without comment?
In deciding on issues such as whether to implement mandatory lockdowns etc in the face of an infectious disease which is lethal to a section of the population, there’s no definitive right or wrong scientific answer. It depends to a large extent upon your values. Over the past few years, many opinion columnists, leader writers and talking heads have expressed various opinions about Covid and our response to it. I doubt whether any of them have included the disclaimer: ‘I want to stress again I am not claiming I have everything right.’
Ewan – Do you believe the vaccination campaign was successful? If so, that means you have post-campaign data that indicates to that effect, right? What is it? Can you summarise it in a sentence or two?
I assume out of courtesy that you know some basic formal logic and you know for example that correlation doesn’t imply causation and that it might be useful to compare heavily vaccinated countries with less heavily vaccinated ones – even using “deaths with SARSCoV2 per 1m population” and disregarding the weaknesses of that stat if it’s the best stat available.
You “assume out of courtesy”… You do realise this is passive aggressive snottiness that at no point touches on what I said? Mr Murray is earnestly conveying his thoughts on Covid as if they have some authority warrants broadcasting them anywhere beyond the pub or family dinner table.
What’s wrong with passive aggressive snottiness rhen?
“as if they have some authority”
Is he saying that though? Or is he simply saying – as stated – that these are merely his opinions?
It is probably shocking for many to know that most GPs have no virology and epidemiology training or skills whatsoever, the ones that do probably only took a short half hour course when they were qualifying.
Sage consists of virtually no virology and epidemiology specialists and, all Politicians are complete f*ckwits on any subject you care to name.
But, alternative media has many virology and epidemiology experts who are being cancelled by the MSM.
Let’s take a look at some of the participants in a SAGE meeting in April 2020 (according to the Graun), Stevie:
Prof John Edmunds – epidemiologist
Prof Neil Ferguson – epidemiologist
Prof Peter Horby – epidemiologist
Prof Graham Medley – epidemiologist
Prof Charlotte Watts – epidemiologist
Prof Maria Zambon – virologist
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/coronavirus-whos-who-on-secret-scientific-group-advising-uk-government-sage
Let’s take Ferguson, the person who’s models have been wrong for every single epidemic he’s been involved in. Thousands of animals slaughtered and people killed because of his dodgy work. The person who had such a belief in his own work that he ignored restrictions to screw his mistress.
His actual qualifications are in theoretical physics. He has no medical qualifications he is, at best, a second rate mathematical modeller. His paymasters may call him an epidemiologist but he is not.
You can check the rest yourself – it’s all on the Internet you know !
Thanks for your reply Stevie. In March 2020, Neil Ferguson’s group estimated that Covid would cause over 500,000 deaths across the UK if the government made *no* interventions. Since then we have had three fairly draconian, protracted nationwide lockdowns, in which people were not allowed to leave their homes except for work (though being strongly encouraged to work from home wherever possible), medical treatment, shopping for essentials and brief exercise, all of which ensured that the NHS didn’t collapse and was still able to offer treatment to people with severe Covid. There was also regional lockdowns of varying degrees of severity; social distancing being strongly encouraged for workers etc; mask-use becoming mandatory on public transport etc; huge amounts of testing & tracing being carried out; and vaccines becoming available from early 2021, with a take-up rate in vulnerable groups (over 65’s etc) of around 95%, which offered protection levels against death from the Delta variant of around 70%, and then boosters which offered 50% protection against Omicron. All of which cost the taxpayer around £400 billion. Despite all of this, over 210,000* people have still officially died from Covid in the UK.
He broke lockdown rules because he was a randy bastard and assumed that, not being in vulnerable groups, he and his lover, Ms Staats (he loves stats & Staats) were at little risk of dying or being hospitalised from Covid, not because he thought his models were wrong. Epidemiologists don’t need to be medical experts, knowing how to treat all manner of diseases – they just need to be able to make reasonable estimates as to what the infection fatality rate and/or hospitalisation rate of the disease they’re modelling is, and what its transmissibility is under various conditions. Millions of farm animals were slaughtered during the 2001 foot & mouth outbreak on the basis of his modelling, but how many would have had to be killed if it had spread to every livestock farm in the country?
* The real number is around 225,000 if you include the people who died in care homes before testing was widely available, whose deaths were attributed to pneumonia etc to save doctors extra paperwork.
Coincidence is not causality. Just because the government made interventions and the death toll was about half what Dr Ferguson said doesn’t mean that the interventions were responsible for that. Dr Ferguson may simply have been wrong. Sweden had no lockdowns and its death toll was not double ours per head of population. The only thing that correlates with numbers of excess deaths is quality of the health service and then only if you discount Africa.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. The UK is not Sweden. On the whole, Swedish people are healthier – they are also more sensible. Sweden was neutral in both world wars. In WWI, the UK only needed to introduce conscription in 1916; in WWII, millions of Brits thought we could beat Hitler on our own. In late March 2020, millions of Brits still thought Covid was a bit of a joke, and they certainly weren’t afraid of it. The only way to keep them out of the pubs & clubs was to shut them, and the only way to stop them from then drinking in each other’s houses etc was to impose lockdown. The Swedish death toll from Covid was several times greater than its similarly sensible neighbours Norway & Finland which did impose lockdowns. Italy has arguably the best health service in Europe, but it still had one of the highest death tolls due to its high proportion of elderly people. Africa has a much higher population of young people compared to Europe.
All that may be true, although your characterisation of the British as moronic is fairly feeble, but it still doesn’t prove Dr Ferguson right.
Also you contradict yourself. You say Africa had fewer deaths because it had more young people and Italy had more because it had more old people, then you say it was the behaviour of the young people of Britain that necessitated the lockdown. If COVID mainly killed the old, what was the point of locking down the young? Wouldn’t it have been better simply to segregate the old and let everyone else get on with their lives?
Thanks for your reply Bayard. I never said anything about the behaviour of young people necessitating the lockdowns. Prof Ferguson’s half a million deaths estimate was based on no restrictions being introduced by government. In that case, there would have been plenty of the older generation prepared to risk it in the pubs & (working men’s) clubs – not that you see too many working men in those – especially in the last week of March before the true horror of Covid became apparent. It may well have been better to isolate the old and vulnerable and let the young get on as normal in the first lockdown. It depends on whether there are any widespread serious long-term effects on the young from the original Covid strains. As Zhou Enlai said about the effects of the French Revolution on world history: it is too early to tell.
“Prof Ferguson’s half a million deaths estimate was based on no restrictions being introduced by government.”
I’m not disputing that. The point is that there was no control experiment, so we will never know whether there would have been half a million deaths if the government hadn’t introduced restrictions. What is certain is that, at that stage, everyone thought that COVID was contagious and it turned out not to be, so it is quite likely that both the Prof’s estimate was wrong and the government’s response did not have as much effect as it was supposed to have.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. If the number of cases per day was growing exponentially just before lockdown, and then began to fall shortly afterwards, it’s reasonable to assume that lockdown was responsible. Apart from you, who now thinks that Covid isn’t contagious?
Trouble flaring once again in the ME.
Imagine the reaction in the West were the Arab League debating whether they should provide training, send tanks and other heavy weaponry to the Palestinians to resist occupation. Does anything better illustrate western hypocrisy, than this long running, one-sided conflict.
29 Palestinians have been murdered by occupation forces on the West Bank in 2023 so far. And we’re not even out of January yet.
Odd how so few write-ups in the MSM mention the name of the synagogue in Neve Yaakov. It was supposedly the Ateret Avraham synagogue.
The victims were coming out of the synagogue, were they? I call bullsh*t.
A synagogue in East Jerusalem with no CCTV? Think of the propaganda effect the publication of CCTV footage would have, showing families walking in a dignified way out of a religious building, looking ever so pious, and nasty horrible types rollling up and shooting them down without mercy.
No armed defence, either?
No inkling that maybe Palestinians might be a bit annoyed that so many have them have been murdered on the West Bank, including nine murdered in Jenin the day before?
Google Maps shows a military base in Neve Yaakov too.
I remember there was once a resistance attack on the site of Deir Yassin, now in Jerusalem. The MSM dutifully reported the location as 1.5km (if I recall correctly) from Yad Vashem, the occupiers’ Holocaust Memorial Centre.
The military base, labelled as “Central Command” on Google Maps, is close to the post office. It’s about 200 metres from the synagogue.
There’s also a police station about 100 metres from the synagogue.
Guess what. The synagogue is labelled on Google Maps as בית חב”ד נווה יעקב
A translator tells me that means “Neve Ya’akov Chabad house“.
Oh deary f*cking me. How many synagogues have they got in the small Neve Yaakov area?
https://www.chabad.org/jewish-centers/2291741/Jerusalem/Synagogue/Chabad-of-Neve-Yaakov
“29 Palestinians have been murdered by occupation forces on the West Bank in 2023 so far. And we’re not even out of January yet.”
Him.
You gotta love ITV news wording on the recent violence tonight, their wording is,” tit-for-tat” talking on the killings, this gives the unaware the impression that both parties are equal and are equally dishing out violence, when that image couldn’t be further from the truth.
Apparently, in this new world order it’s probably antisemitic to point out that the Israelis are carrying out genocide against the indigenous population of Palestinian. It’s the promised land don’t you know, a homeland for dews only.
Goose
“Does anything better illustrate western hypocrisy, than this long running, one-sided conflict”
No it doesn’t!!!!
Talking points repeated ad nauseam:
Only democracy in the ME
Our values
Free world
“Throwing the Jews into the sea”
War on Terror and ME regimes.
BTW was it you that wrote great comment on “whataboutery” while ago? If it is I call this Whataboutery ?
It was the Israelis who chose to dispossess the Palestinians (=ethnic cleansing). All that is pretty well known now. Ethnically cleansing the natives in order to create a so-called democracy which is not one, but a foreign colony in the ME, which insists on a military aggressive relationship with surrounding territories, only says Goose is right.
The fact is, in its current form, Israel only exists now because of financial and military support from the USA and that Russia allows its bad behaviour. Of course, the USA is no stranger to ethnic cleansing of indigenous populations to build a land of the free and home of the brave.
Bonus Question
Would it be appropriate/insensitive to send German tanks to Palestinians to defend/attack “Jewish state”?.
“The online detractors were actively seeking to contact our funders, partners and hirers.”
That’s from the Morning Star piece.
Name the attackers who pressured Conway Hall to cancel. Publish their communications. They don’t want that, so do it.
Go after the b*stards. Or send me the names and I’ll publish them.
No point whingeing and saying oooh, this isn’t very liberal, and ooooh, aren’t they hypocritical. The controllers of several influential British-based discussion sites have been told not to allow stuff that might detract from the push towards nuclear war.
Try even asking “Hey, what country do you think people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporozhe, the Crimea, and Sevastopol want to live in?” on any major site right now. Try it on Mumsnet, Arrse, TheStudentRoom, PoliticalBetting.
Evidence for the claim that “The controllers of several influential British-based discussion sites have been told not to allow stuff that might detract from the push towards nuclear war.”?
Try asking the question I suggested asking, and you’ll find out.
Also look at how the leading figures on those sites have been relating for several months now to the idea that doing a Kenny Everett on Russia would be a goodie and if nuclear war ensued then it would be won, and it’s all very much worth it because if you don’t stop them now those wicked Russians will be wanting a little piece of Estonia, attacking Germany, and then inevitably bivouacking in the Home Counties before parading up the Mall. That’s all propaganda, the f*cking lot of it.
I speak of figures who if you read what they wrote about the Kerch bridge explosion you’d see they are very serious about their responsibilities online.
Hi Him. (First time that I have typed that combination of letters…)
If you do have evidence for the claim that:
“The controllers of several influential British-based discussion sites have been told not to allow stuff that might detract from the push towards nuclear war.”
then why not tell us what it is rather than sending us off to post stuff on Mumsnet?
Thanks,
John
The evidence you seek can be found by seeing the effect of asking the question “Hey, what country do you think people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporozhe, the Crimea, and Sevastopol want to live in?” on any major site right now, like Mumsnet, Arrse, TheStudentRoom, PoliticalBetting, etc. The easiest way to demonstrate this to you is for you to copy that question, go to those sites, paste that question into the relevant box and see what happens. If, as I suspect, the result is that the question simply disappears, how does anyone, in any meaningful way, illustrate that by means of a comment on this site, apart from saying “it disappeared”, which is no more convincing to the sceptic than Him’s original post?
Watching Craig now at the Assange discussion: https://www.facebook.com/SKWAWKBOX/videos/687302709762588/
He’s spot on about the Torygraph front page, shades of OJ’s if the glove don’t fit.
Clears Andrew? lolz. The bath in question looks ample in size to accommodate two adults frolicking.
thx!
Thankyou so much for posting that link.
If I’d been there, I’d have asked Craig just one question:
Did they give him a puke bag when he saw that appallingly hypocritical NUJ poster at the far right (camera viewpoint lefthand) end of the table?
Cancellation of the meeting at Conway Hall is a worrying development. I’m sure that the alleged threats agaisnt the organisers and staff had nothing to do with supporters of the well-known MP for the Holborn and St Pancras consituency in which Conway Hall is located.
I wonder whether another possible venue in central London, such as Friends’ House on Euston Road (friendshouse.co.uk) might also have been subjected to similar threats.
speaking of the pandemic:
Did anyone here watch “This England”? The mini-series.
I gave up on it after 3 episodes despite the “talent” being involved.
One thing about the article I dont get is the notion that Crimea will be “absorbed into Russia” or “Donbass will have autonomy”. That ship sailed years ago.
I think Mr Murray is conflating preferred outcomes with likely ones. Considering the combat loss ratios drasticly favour Russia which is a much larger state to start with.
Then factor in that there is *zero* trust basis on which a “Minsk 3” could be signed. Given that the AFU is being bled white no amount of (insufficient in any case) NATO arms will make up for the men Ukraine is losing. And Russia will eventually have an unbreakable hold of the territories they annexed east of the Dniper, how will they be persuaded to leave?
how will they be persuaded to leave?Easy 🙂 but, I’m not going to tell it out.
I once said that Western understanding of what actually is going on, lags some 6 or 8 months from Russian understanding of it. Huge ‘thanks’ to Russian media ban in the West. So, my advice is, wait. In half a year you will be let to know.
How are the RA losses totaling up Urban Fox?
Are the Russkiy jails empty yet?
Rougthly, anywhere between 15 to 30’000. Depending on if you count Wagner & Donbass militias. The Chechens of course are “officially” Russians.
As for the jails, I imagine the guys most eager for a pardon/money and/or have military experience already choose to go voluntarily .Outright press-ganged criminals would be a liability.
On the other hand the Ukrainians have openly fascist paramilitaries incorporated into their state security apparatus. Guess where fascist gangs tend to recruit :=).
Bye the bye. The Hungarians are now officially alleging that the Ukrainian government is press-ganging men from the Hungarian minority. In order to get them killed, as a deliberate policy of ethocide.
” openly fascist paramilitaries ‘
Like the Wagner Group perhaps.
rather silly.
“Like the Wagner Group perhaps.”
Only if you believe mercenary = fascist, but looking at the mercenaries (sorry, foreign volunteers) on the Ukranian side, you could be forgiven for thinking that to be the case.
Quite agree, a little but of residual liberal wish-fulfilment from our Craig, methinks.
Donbas already absorbed into Russia and Vlad intends it to stay that way. It’s what he has planned for the whole of Ukraine.
“One thing about the article I dont get is the notion that Crimea will be “absorbed into Russia”
To the extent that Crimea was ever anything but a part of Russia that was nominally “Ukraine”. for administrative and logistical reasons.
To finish this Saturday on a humorous note – have you guys heard the latest news about the notorious invisible hand of the Kremlin paying a Swedish radical Paludan to burn the Quran in front of the Turkish embassy, to prevent Sweden from being admitted to NATO?
I don’t often find myself agreeing with this guy, but on this occasion I do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoT9FXcarwg
I’ve seen one noble man from UK, wearing a similar hat, saying true words, defending peace and common sense. I wonder if it’s the same person? The one I’ve seen had much more optimistic face and much less ‘we are doomed’ expression in his eyes.
The BRIC countries I hear are negotiating between themselves to conduct trade in a currency ( or agreement ) which is not the US dollar.
The US rich people ( and those wanting to become richer ) obviously will not be best pleased about this development and if we look at the current situation vis a vis Ukraine then Russia is not being threatened because it is a threat to Ukraine – it is being threatened because it is a member of this group.
Particularly friendly with the main player – China.
Those in the know in capitalist circles have a choice:
You either pitch your lot with failed Neo – liberal economies or you get on the ascending elevator of growing economies.
That’s the choice.
The US thinks it can continue business as usual.
It can as long as it is willing to consider a nuclear war in Europe.
As well as ruining Germany and thereby its rival Trading Bloc – Europe.
Here we go……………….
I’m with you in relation to making sure we never become rigidly extreme and polarised on any issue.. However.. There are extremists in positions of great influence and it seems clear to me that there is some kind of globalist agenda to over ride what remains of democracy and to establish a corporatist state.. i can’t claim to know and understand all the dynamics of this, but I’m very concerned about the fact that the economy is in a very precarious state and looks like the fiat currency is near to collapsing, and the central bankers have been speaking more openly about a digital currency, which looks very much like an opportunity to then implement a social credit score system of control, very similar to what exists in China.. Our right to protest and free speech is being taken away and the ‘punishments for dissenters’ by the establishment will only increase.. The pattern is to be observed in most of the UN member states from what I can see.. Let’s not forget that peaceful protesters in Canada had their bank accounts frozen for daring to question insane mandates around the dodgy injections.
Staying centred amidst it all and examining the details which both polarity camps offer is an art form.. I think it’s becoming clearer that there was indeed some kind of sinister gameplay with the covid situation, especially with the pharmaceutical giants and the military bioweapon labs…
Even if it was an innocent sales pitch lie, many thousands of people have died as a result of being injected with a very hastily produced and administered product (ingredients unknown). It’s now clear, from Pfizer’s own data which they tried to conceal for 75 years, that they knew it was ineffective at stopping transmission of the virus and that many people would die and suffer cardiac problems.. Especially young and healthy people.. They also knew it was dangerous for pregnant women and the statistics on still born children in Scotland alone is off the charts.. A massive crime has been committed the past 2 years and the scale of it is just too much for most folk to comprehend.
The benevolent philanthropath Bill Gates has sold all his shares in mRNA after pushing them on the world population and has now claimed openly that they were useless… That guy should be in prison for his crimes, along with many others.
Bound to happen at some point, a Brigade 77 whistleblower :
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11687675/Army-spied-lockdown-critics-Sceptics-including-Peter-Hitchens-suspected-watched.html
Groupthink and mission creep. Everyone seemingly got swept up in the hysteria that was Russiagate.
I notice the BBC’s anti-disinformation ‘expert’ Marianna Spring hasn’t commented on recent Twitter revelations from Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald. She seems more interested in taking Elon Musk to task for allowing these investigative journos access.
The question now, is whether Musk will allow access to the European Twitter files? Peter Hitchens and David Davis should enquire.
Must be lots of sketchy activity in the UK, Germany and France. The increasingly authoritarian, largely unelected, overreaching EU bureaucracy and NATO too. Senior people in the British Army have talked of the UK being in a ‘hybrid war’ – a mentality that potentially allows any domestic dissent: from the ongoing public sector strikes; to dislike of the deeply unlikeable Starmer; through to support for Scottish independence, to be viewed as non-organic and somehow foreign sponsored.
This unfounded suspicion ends up with intelligence assets like Paul Mason accusing the guardian’s Owen Jones and Novara media’s Michael Walker(both gay) of pushing Kremlin talking points. Jones and Walker despise Putin’s govt, both have spoken out about the Russian Federation’s treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and the legal and social challenges they face in that country.
The EU seems to have gone ‘all in’ on the idea Europe is being deluged with Russian misinformation and disinformation. Do these politicians even use social media? Where is all this Russian disinformation polluting the minds of European citizens? Taibbi reports show the methodologies used by these US ‘anti-disinformation’ experts’ were completely flawed; they wouldn’t pass any ‘validity or reliability’ test in the field of social science research. They crudely observed and assessed that certain individual’s Tweets vaguely aligned with the Russian govt’s position on a given subject, concluding those commenting must be somehow be connected to the Russian state.
Addendum
Some are saying Hitchens’ is “courageous” for going public and calling this out: https://twitter.com/ClarkeMicah/status/1619629571422265345
But why is he? When he’s not done anything wrong? Dr. Emma L Briant the academic cc’d in to the Paul Mason – FCO nonsense, revealed by the Grayzone, has today produced a long Twitter thread, basically lambasting the 77th Brigade, accusing them of lacking the expertise to properly identify ‘misinformation and disinformation,’ In their defence(never thought I’d type that), there was probably so little material that could qualify as disinformation they had pretend they were countering disinformation, when in reality they were just policing dissent and arguing with British citizens who happen to hold different worldview and opinions.
How can sitting Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, be involved with this and it not be a conflict of interest? As Glenn Greenwald stated , there is no truly neutral, truly objective arbiter of what is ‘misinformation and disinformation.’ Everyone brings their own prejudices and political bias whether consciously or otherwise.
Why are the Labour party, Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Greens not concerned? If we must have counter disinformation activities, they should be done openly and transparently, and open to audit. Not by some Big Brother-esque secretive army unit headed by a Tory MP. How will these groups operate in another Scottish referendum campaign , and why doesn’t Sturgeon give a damn?
cont..
Big Brother Watch has an interview with the whistleblower tonight at 8 PM on Youtube : https://twitter.com/BigBrotherWatch/status/1619633614668566529
If all they’re doing is countering disinformation, with verifiable factual information, why the need for any secrecy? The lack of auditable activities and high secrecy, suggest it’s more like the weird Philip Cross arrangement. Which went way beyond making factual corrections, becoming highly politicised and focused on perceived enemies. State psy-ops conducted in support of govt policy should have no place in a democracy.
A little anticlimactic.
Laptop connecting via Tor [sic] for an ‘unbroadcastable’ address, think he meant anonymous. The stuff about liaising with the Cabinet office sounds like someone higher up the political food chain was demanding evidence, any evidence, of some Russian influence op, to present to MPs. Much as in the US, where leading Democrats were demanding ‘proof’ from Twitter, to feed the MSM promoted stories about massive Russian interference. Presumably in the hope such proof would aid further undermining Trump, as he defended himself against the then ongoing Russiagate stories.
Realpolitik is the only way to judge the RF intervention on the side of the Donbas loyalists. The Allies can’t afford to lose and when they win, the US empire will never be the same again. The coming Allied victory will save us all from American Caesar; we should think ourselves lucky that we aren’t Syrians, Afghans, Ukrainians, Palestinians, Yemenis et al. and take every opportunity to sabotage the fascist pigs that run this state.
from Norman Finkelstein Blog
January 22nd
”
Talal Hangari writes:
You may have heard about the Belmarsh tribunal held in Washington yesterday on the continued detention of Julian Assange. I was curious about what the congressional US left has said so I looked it up. In 2019 Sanders said it was wrong for Trump to prosecute Assange. Since then I don’t know if he’s said anything else about the case, and he doesn’t seem to have made any statements mentioning Assange by name.
Tweets from the squad about Assange:
Ilhan Omar – two tweets where she called his prosecution ‘indefensible’
AOC: 0 – in 2019 she said she was ‘concerned’ by the journalism ‘aspect’ of Assange’s case.
Rashida Tlaib: 0
Cori Bush: 0
Jamaal Bowman: 0
Ayanna Pressley: 0
British MPs like Corbyn have been far more vocal.”
All this is common sense truth.
If nuclear holocaust is avoided, the real story to come out of all this is not going to be which bit of steppe ends up being in Russia or Ukraine. Less than a year ago no one in the West had ever heard of any of these far-flung places and nobody will think about them again once the war ends.
No. The big story – taboo among our opinion formers – is the American destruction of Nord Stream and Germany’s craven acceptance of its total humiliation by the USA. A country that twice tried to take over the world and is the undisputed power and pride of modern Europe is having its industrial economy, standard of living and geopolitical status destroyed simply to enrich US fracking corporations and entrench US global hegemony.
The media and political silence extends beyond Germany itself and across the whole continent. That’s because once it is openly acknowledged what the US has done Germany/ Brussels/ Europeans cannot continue giving it the big un or persist in lauding the USA as the world’s last, best hope. Nothing could be the same again. Hence the silence. The elites know it’s the issue of foremost salience to western Europe, but will not openly acknowledge it for fear of the public reaction.
U Watt
personally, I doubt that very much.
The war once frozen, if we manage at least that, will create a permanent state of emergency in Europe. It´s like Europe is the new frontier. Permanently destracted. Permanently with one eye to the east. Permanently pushing against antiwar movement and consolidation. Think Cold War, without the status quo. Can erupt any time.
If you look into Michael Klare´s (scandalous I found) piece about China as an underreported new security threat you will find how this will be achieved – environmental responsibility.
“The Department of Defense Has Delivered Another Massive Intelligence Failure – Chinese emissions represent at least as great a threat to US security as the multitude of weapons enumerated in the Pentagon’s 2022 report—so why was it not addressed?”
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/pentagon-security-china-climate/
They will create a formula in Europe that states something like “If you are for peace and negotiations etc. you are in favour of climate change.”
Via this war EU has been taken out of the game as a possible counterforce to the US.
I don´t say it´s a law of nature.
But right now that´s the likely outcome without popular resistance which however has to first emerge again.
Medea Benjamin is an optimist. Currently I am not. I say 15 years minimum for this.
Game, Set, Match.
Hope I am proven wrong. I will try to support undercut my prediction.
After what’s happened can German-EU populations be kept believing that China and Russia are doing them greater harm than the USA ? What are ordinary Germans saying on social media about the destruction of Nord Stream and its implications for the country?
U Watt
re: China
just one report
“The German Foreign Ministry presents its draft strategy for escalation of the power struggle against China, planing Taiwan’s integration and economic coercion measures – such as boycotts of entire regions”, Nov.18th 2022
https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/news/detail/9087
excerpt:
“In the midst of a power struggle against Russia, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is preparing another escalation in the power struggle against China. This has been confirmed by excerpts from the draft of a new German strategy toward China currently circulating in media reports.”
Of course as of now, German economy is keeping the lid on this.
But if those companies do emigrate to the US in large numbers, as some say- there won´t be any more opposition to this.
We will see.
again no law of nature.
re: the people
There are many who believe the US is a major problem.
But there are as many now who “know” that Russia has been provoked. Know it without reading scholarship, but for a simple gut-feeling.
But is there any resistance?
No. Day to day life is hard enough.
So why expect more restraint in case of China which is even farther away in all aspects – (there are millions here who speak Russian. Which is an advantage. But who speaks Mandarin???)
Ok, may be the distance could turn out helpful, in terms of “respect those you don´t know” and all kinds of Chinese-kingdom-of-wisdom-clichés.
Unless of course Chinese make a “dick move” like the Russians. Which would cost them sympathies. And that could spark real jingoism in no time.
But this PR mis-handeling is what Putin administration should have handled way better I think since 2008. And Chinese know this.
And the Americans.
I really don´t know what US is up to with Taiwan.
I think they don´t know themslves yet.
But German public is depending on how that plays out.
Very interesting AG, thanks. What a criminal mess Baerbock is determined to make of Germany’s relations with China. Simply incredible.
AG
Germany’s economy risks being flattened. Losing cheap Russian gas was a bad enough a blow, now Baerbock is already countenancing war with China?
She seems determined to get her WW3, one way or the other. It appears the ultra hawks’ Baerbock and Habeck are strangely popular too. Maybe the German people just aren’t following politics and paying attention to what she’s saying all that closely?
On China
I read that the ruling party in Taiwan(DPP) took a hammering in recent elections, and the party that is pro-dialogue and good relations with China, KMT, were the main beneficiaries over the China-hostile DPP. There is a general election early next year (2024) in Taiwan. so all this western provocation, US/UK warship China coast sail-bys and talking up the likelihood of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. As if attempting to goad China into action, could have something to do with that?
“I really don´t know what US is up to with Taiwan.”
What puzzles me about what the US is up to with Taiwan is that Taiwan is no Ukraine to fight a proxy war against China. If the Chinese go into Taiwan, what is the US going to do? If it pursues the same policy as it is pursuing with Ukraine, Taiwan is going to run out of soldiers even faster than Ukraine. What will the US do then, send the Marines?
Have the psychos in Washington noticed yet that Taiwan is an island whose nearest neighbour by many, many miles is China ? There is nothing the USA could do if China invaded, which is why it won’t !
Keir Starmer has signalled that he will overrule Scottish Labour and dictate the party’s policy on gender reform:
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23279603.keir-starmer-take-direct-control-scottish-labours-gender-policy/
And the ever naive Gordon Brown thinks a Starmer-led govt will usher in sweeping constitutional reform; supercharge Scottish devolution, federalise England, replete with an elected second chamber of the ‘nations and regions’ ?
Starmer’s a total control freak. If given a majority, he’ll lead a highly secretive, censorial and regressive, neoliberal/neocon inspired hawkish govt. The backlash from disillusioned and disenchanted Labour voters will be immense. What happens then is anyone’s guess.
Starmer is any genuinely progressive voter’s worst nightmare, someone seemingly imposed by the most elitist, out-of-touch, reactionary part of the UK establishment. Any European left or centre-left party + unions would have moved to forced someone like him out of the leadership by now. In the UK it’d have to be via CLP no confidence motions, and union demands for him to step down. Hanging on in quiet desperation [really] is the English way – as the Pink Floyd song goes.
@Goose
re: China
As far as I understand, Scholz´ last visit to China was to assure China of the true loyalties.
As for the German public – there is presumably just like anywhere else in Europe – the public and the public.
The problem with much of the Baerbock criticism is its mysoginist nature.
Which won´t help win over decent people who are unsure.
THE LEFT, were they smart, really could alter the situation, because the unused electoral potential is there for everyone to see.
(I do think 20+% could be pulled of, under ideal circumstances only however)
But they are just too dumb caught in their webs of power brokery and private bubbles.
So instead they stand at 4% or even less.
I also don´t know what and if the French and the Germans are cooking up something.
But even then. The major lines of power have been drawn so far.
Only one thing, I assume, is sure: Berlin would do anything in its power – which is not much – to avoid nuclear exchange.
(One reason I guess Scholz is phoning in to the Kremlin from time to time. Just as he did today.)
What was true in 1957 according to a NATO memorandum to the German government – after 2 war games saw FRG destroyed – is still true today, 2023:
“The FRG must prepare itself for the conditions of nuclear war, even if the decision to wage it is not at its discretion”
(thats machine translated, hope it makes sense)
thx for the info on Taiwan.
(This reminds me of Jack Nicholson in the satire “MARS ATTACKS” – why can´t we all just get along peacfully?” – with a smirky smile on his face)
Yes, it’s sadly all a game to these people, a dangerous game of brinkmanship, a game that was put on pause with Trump in the White House, because he wasn’t one of them – and could never be – part of the political establishment in DC.
I sensed that if Biden won, there’d be renewed effort by the State Dept hawks like V. Nuland to stoke tensions with Russia and so it has proved. Russia fell for the bait by invading, but the trap was set by the US/UK. Urging Zelensky to reject the Minsk agreements, and some kind of neutral status, for Ukraine, in return for peace, was there and available.
Many of us didn’t want Clinton to win in 2016, because of her stated intent to impose a no fly-zone over Syria, potentially leading to an immediate direct confrontation between Russia and Nato. These people are reckless, their belief in the moral righteousness of their cause is the biggest threat to humankind.
Russia and China’s leadership may be brutal and oppressive domestically, but they aren’t the ones driving the world to the brink in pursuit of global hegemony. We really could solve these disputes (Ukraine and Taiwan) with better people in charge and better diplomacy.
A Brilliant Talk By Craig at – #FreeTheTruth: Secret Power, Media Freedom & Democracy
Great Stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdsZgLc_TxM&t=1897s
I reproduce a comment from MoA which I suspect CM needs to read:-
Let me try to reply with a letter I wrote to a rather confused friend. I realize that it answers more than just your question, but the fact that you are asking as you did, suggests to me that there is a lot you do not understand. I am ready to defend any assertion, and questions are welcome
As a preamble, prior to the Ukraine being granted independence, NATO provided the USSR assurances that it would not move a thumbs breadth to the East. The Ukraine agreed to eliminate WMDs from it’s territory, to treat all it’s citizens equally and to lease the Crimea, Russia’s principle naval base back to Russia in a long term arrangement. In 1997, the EU agreed that no security arrangements would be made which might jeopardize the interests of any group in favor of another. Subsequent to the US inspired and enabled 2014 coup, overthrowing the democratically elected pro-Russian government of the Ukraine, all of these commitments were violated or threatened. Despite this, Russia offered a new comprehensive security agreement with NATO, only to see it spurned with contempt in December 2021. In order to “weaken Russia” the US planned a war, the cost of which it would not bear. Invasion of the Autonomous regions of the Donetsk Basin (the Donbas), which had been under attack since 2014, was scheduled for March 6, 2022.
Which brings us to the grounds for the current “Special Military Operation”.
First, Russia did not “invade the Ukraine”. Russia entered an Article 51 regional security agreement with the DPR and LPR after they declared independence from Ukraine. Russia preemptively went to the assistance of these republics which were under intensive artillery bombardment prior to a NATO supported attack on them by the Ukraine and by so doing prevented the massive human cost and refugee crisis this would have produced. The Crimean, LPR, DPR and two other regions (so far, there will probably be more) have held referenda using precisely the same basis as the US took in Kosova, where they have voted, to bece members of the Russian Confederation of Independent States, and Russia has accepted these requests.
Second, Putin represents Russia. He does not determine what Russia does. That’s up to the parliament and security council. Putin and the Russian parliament are democratically elected, and Putin is more popular in Russia than any recent Western leader has been in their own country.
Third, security guarantees, including the undertaking that NATO would not expand one inch or a thumbsbreadth to the East, were given to Russia which have been abrogated. Russia regards this an existential threat over which it will fight. Meaning that these concerns will now be resolved, diplomatically or otherwise.
Fourth, the Ukraine voted to remain in the CIS. This seems to have been forgotten, but will likely be corrected by holding regional referenda for most of the Ukraine before the current Special Operation is finalized.
Fifth, had any component of the USSR or Warsaw Pact not undertaken to relinquish nuclear weapons, they would not be independent today.
Sixth, should any country adjoining Russia threaten to obtain (as the Ukraine did) or attempt to obtain, recreate or host nuclear weapons (as Germany does), Russia would regard this as an existential threat and take appropriate steps required to mitigate the risk, whether diplomatic, military economic or some combination. This puts Poland and Romania, hosting US missiles, and all the border states hosting NATO forces, on notice.
Seventh, you seem to have missed the point that Zaluzhny explicitly stated that with the requested supplies, which would make the Ukraine better armed than any other NATO country, that he could resist (but not beat) Russia, but that he did not expect these supplies, and without them Ukraine will collapse as soon as Russia wants them to (not too quickly as they are still demilitarizing and denazifying the Ukraine), and depending on the cost, which depends on how soon the Ukraine surrenders, Russia may decide to liberate Southern Ukraine, leaving the rump state landlocked.
Eighth, nuclear war is not survivable. 100 medium scale weapons detonated over cities will have the same impact on current species as the End-Permian Extinction had, but with added radioactivity. That extinction event eliminated 57% of biological families, 83% of genera, 81% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species. Humans, as the apex or keystone species and so uniquely dependent on the well-being of the underlying ecosystem would not survive this, so it is probably a bad idea to wish for it.
Ninth, Russia having gained the ability to preempt a US nuclear attack, and the ability to defeat the combined NATO forces, made diplomatic overtures to NATO and particularly the US requesting that it’s security concerns be addressed. This request was summarily dismissed with contempt by the collective West.
Tenth, Russia has acted and is acting in the Ukraine, which, as I pointed out from the beginning, will surrender despite NATO training, support and equipment.
Eleventh, Russia will ensure that it’s security concerns are addressed, whether diplomatically (a position they have repeatedly offered, but which will now be more challenging, due to the bad faith exhibited by it’s erstwhile ‘partners’ and build-up of distrust), or through military action.
Twelfth, from the above, there are only three possible outcomes to the current unstable European situation. Diplomatic negotiations to satisfy Russia’s security concerns, conventional war to enforce Russia’s security concerns after defeating any and all perceived threats, or the extinction of most life on Earth, including all humans.
Thirteenth, China and the rest of the world are fully aware that they are in the USA’s sights, and that Russia is granting them a temporary reprieve. As such, in a more general war China and other parties are likely to engage on Russia’s behalf.
To me, the only sane choice is clear. To make whatever concessions are required to prevent the rest of Europe from deindustrialization and hardship, and to avoid ending up like the Ukraine after 8 years of civil war. Even more critically, even if conventional war cannot be avoided, to avoid thermonuclear war (and the red lines, e.g. biological warfare for which the UK and US have been illegally preparing, that could lead to thermonuclear war), because that means the extinction of most extant life.
Hello Kaiama.
Can you please tell us when NATO provided the USSR assurances that it would not “move a thumbs breadth to the East”?
A link would be great.
Thanks,
John
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early#.WjAX9r_XxYI.twitter
In December 2021 Russia politely proposed to NATO to withdraw all foreign troops from nations which had acceded post 1997.
If things continue the way they are going in Ukraine, that proposal may become a military demand.
You could begin with John Helmer’s critical review, http://johnhelmer.net/stab-in-the-back-not-one-inch-but-right-to-the-heart/ of Mary Sarotte’s “Not One Inch” (Yale University 2022). Then there is the book itself.
John Kinsella
in case of interest:
This TWITTER thread became famous in spring, because it contained many remarks by renown diplomats and scholars of recent years who warned the US from pushing NATO expansion:
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592
* * *
excerpt of Tariq Ali´s erratic review of Mary Elise Sarrote´s study “Not One Inch”, in LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS, May 2022 (less critical than the piece by Helmer posted by CRISPA, I just discovered the post now)
“Not One Inch”
America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate
by M. E. Sarotte
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300268034/not-one-inch/
(And this even though Sarrote is member of the Council on Foreign Relations and not known to be a particularly big fan of Russia.)
(also after what I have read past year I would argue more radically than Ali does here, but it´s a start):
T. Ali :
“(…)The origins of this massive foreign policy failure are the subject of a recent study, Not One Inch, by M.E. Sarotte, a historian at Johns Hopkins and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.* The title refers to the assurance on the limits of Nato expansion given to Mikhail Gorbachev by James Baker, then US secretary of state, in 1990. The Soviet Union had stationed troops in East Germany since the liberation of Berlin; in 1990 they numbered 380,000. Gorbachev was in a strong position militarily. In all other respects, however, he was weak. Sarotte describes him as an ‘idealist visionary’, but neither word really applies. He was a well-meaning reformer. (I witnessed for myself the excitement generated in Russia by glasnost – not only in intellectual circles and the universities but also in factories and among bureaucrats.) As a world leader, however, he was out of his depth. Western flattery went to his head.
Baker played on this weakness and suggested a deal. Would the Soviet Union agree to withdraw from East Germany if the US ensured that Nato did ‘not shift one inch eastwards from its position’? The next day, he repeated his words to Gorbachev in a letter to Helmut Kohl: ‘Would you prefer to see a unified Germany outside of Nato, independent and with no US forces, or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to Nato, with assurances that Nato’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastwards from its present position?’
What Kohl and his foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, preferred was direct talks with Gorbachev, at which Kohl pledged there would be no Nato bases in the former DDR. Until this happened, Washington and Bonn were extremely nervous. They couldn’t believe that the Soviet Union would hand over East Germany without anything in writing. Gorbachev kept his side of the bargain. The US didn’t.
Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state, comes in for special criticism in Sarotte’s account – not only for advocating war (‘Colin, what are you saving this incredible military for?’) but for pushing American advantage at any cost. Nato enlargement was worthwhile because it would demonstrate ‘from Ukraine to the United States’ that the ‘quest for European security is no longer a zero-sum game’.
Other paths could have been taken. An intelligence report presented to Condoleezza Rice in 2008 included this warning:
Ukrainian entry into Nato is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in Nato as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. [Pursuing this strategy] would create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
The author? William Burns, now director of the CIA, whose job involves managing the consequences of his rejected advice.
Critiques of expansionism are not new nor are they confined to the left. Thomas Friedman issued surprisingly sharp criticisms of US policy in two recent columns in the New York Times. In the first of these, he recounted his memories of 2 May 1998:
Immediately after the Senate ratified Nato expansion, I called George Kennan, the architect of America’s successful containment of the Soviet Union. Having joined the State Department in 1926 and served as US ambassador to Moscow in 1952, Kennan was arguably America’s greatest expert on Russia. Though 94 at the time and frail of voice, he was sharp of mind when I asked for his opinion.
He then quoted Kennan’s reply in its entirety:
I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves.
We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [Nato expansion] was simply a lighthearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs. What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was. I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.
Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime. And Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia. Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the Nato expansionists] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are – but this is just wrong.
Putin is a staunch anti-communist, of course, a devotee of both Mother Russia and the Orthodox Church. In 2017 he refused to mark the centenary of the February and October Revolutions, telling an Indian newspaper proprietor (whom I had primed before their private meeting in Moscow) that ‘these revolutions are not part of our calendar.’ At a recent press conference, Putin denounced Lenin as the father of Ukrainian independence. This is partially true. Lenin despised Great Russian chauvinism and the nationalism of oppressor nations. He celebrated the tsarist defeat at the hands of the Japanese which triggered the 1905 revolution. In June 1917, at a critical point between the two revolutions, Lenin condemned the Provisional Government for refusing to carry out ‘an elementary democratic duty’ by declaring support ‘for the autonomy and for the complete freedom of secession of the Ukraine’. Later, he insisted that the constitution of the Soviet Union should contain a clause allowing all nations in the union the right to national self-determination, i.e. the right to secede.
The Bolsheviks agreed soon after taking power that Finland, Poland and Ukraine should be granted independence. They knew that Ukraine was different, that its peculiar national texture (immigrant Russian proletariat and bureaucracy; ultra-nationalist peasantry resentful of Polish landowners and Jews) posed unique difficulties. It was Stalin, as the commissar for nationalities, who went to Finland to deliver the message. Nobody was dispatched to Ukraine, but the local Soviet, the Rada, proclaimed a People’s Republic and insisted that its intention was ‘not to separate from the Russian Republic’. As other Soviets sprang up throughout Ukraine, the national movement was divided between those who signed a separate treaty with Germany (and later with France) and those who remained with the new Soviet state. The Russian civil war split the country, as did the Second World War. Ukrainian defections to Hitler are well documented. In 1954, a year after Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev, the Ukrainian leader of the Soviet Union, backed by the Presidium, enlarged Ukraine by adding Crimea. It was an emotional gesture. No political justification was provided. Few at that stage thought the Soviet Union might implode.
The emergence of a Russian peace movement is one of the more heartening developments of the last few weeks. Most Western politicians pay lip-service to the courage of young Russians facing state repression, but at home both Johnson and Starmer have denounced Stop the War. Putin attacks his dissenters as agents of Nato, which they staunchly deny. Here, Stop the War is traduced for supporting Putin by opposing Nato expansionism and its wars. They could hardly do otherwise: Nato is a military organisation designed to preserve US hegemony in Europe and beyond. By any means necessary? (…)”.
Thanks AG but in that long reply I saw no reference to a NATO commitment “not to move a thumbs breadth to the East”?
Individual politicians maybe but not NATO.
@John Kinsella
The Twitter thread offers the broader context of how the diplomatic apparatus in the West judged NATO expansion focusing particularly on including Ukraine, which is the reason for this war.
However there are two phases to be distinguished which are part of the same NATO policy.
1) the expansion of NATO across Eastern European, former Soviet Satellite, states.
2) the expansion of NATO to include Ukraine (and Georgia).
1) was accepted by the Russians but with increasing worries. (the “not one inch” issue). Even Boris Yeltsin bitterly complained to his pal B.C.
2) was not to be accepted by the Russians. (see the Twitter thread and many posts on this very blog)
The problems and dangers of both were known to policy-makers in the West all along.
That´s what the documentation – be it Sarrote´s book or the Twitter thread – is all about:
The historic fact that these steps of NATO were understood to be wrong/dangerous by the diplomatic corps, retired CIA et al.
There is nothing not to be understood here.
And by now this has been widely accepted.
The only reason that this has no meaning any more in the public is the extremely successful propaganda campaign to turn Russia into the new Hitler Germany.
Because if the enemy is evil, anything you do is sacred and just. May be even atomic bombs.
That´s tactics we know e.g. from witch hunts and the Inquisition. The attempt to dislodge critical and epistemic judgement and analysis from the concrete political case.
The idea creating “crazy” opponents and turn them into evil hostiles serves a logical necessity to use force without limits.
(see German Nazi lawyer Carl Schmitt)
What we are now witnessing with Russia follows the playbook of the War On Terror.
Bush administration was trying to pull all kinds of dirty legislative tricks to create a thin veil of quasi-fascist argumentation to kill people they called terrorists. They were basically saying: these are not human beings. (But then what are they?)
– (see Hollywood movies:
Hollywood satire “VICE” by Adam McKay (2018) or the melodramatic “THE MAURITANIAN” by Kevin Macdonald (2021). Or take British “OFFICIAL SECRETS” by Gavin Hood and American “THE REPORT” by Scott Burns (2019), the latter two would both show the inside perspective of the infrastructure that would enable these gross violations of human rights. The cogs.)
Every decent lawyer in the US knows this history and is ashamed of it.
(good start Marjorie Cohn, former Prof. at the Jefferson School of Law)
For that to work de-humanization of the enemy was necessary. Which also means their claims are illegitimate.
One reason why the word “Barbarians” was introduced by the Ancient Greek. It literally meant those who don´t speak our langauage (properly).
That would be equal to animals back then. And who cares about animals?
Were there any wars and any killed and tortured and scorched places on this planet which not Russia was responsible for before Februay 24th 2022?
(Yes this is rhetorical)
Among those who were responsible for these crimes, who exactly was punished with sanctions? indictments? convictions? detention?
Among those who come to mind were there any politicians or arms VIPs from Germany? France? Italy? Great Britain? Spain? Netherlands? Sweden? Turkey? The USA?
Why these countries? Because they make up 80-90% of the global military budget.
Why does that count?
Because poor countris don´t wage big wars.
Wars are expensive.
one of the sick geniuses of the British Empire was finding a way how to solve this problem without going bankrupt.
And just for start here´s a good text about a few plans by Truman and Churchill to carpet bomb Russia and China with nuclear bombs when it was still considered “safe”.
“From 1945-49 the US and UK planned to bomb Russia into the Stone Age
Was the US Cold War military doctrine really ‘defensive’ and who actually started the nuclear arms race?”
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/from-1945-49-the-us-and-uk-planned-to-bomb-russia-into-the-stone-age
This is not conspiracy. These are government documents.
The questions of national security and of survival go back to this era. This issue is still unresolved. And that´s why we are sitting at our computers now.
It´s an interesting game I sometimes like to play in the middle of the night to wonder, what if the Russians had not detonated a hydrogen bomb in 1949?
(I have always been against proliferation and would have argued against Klaus Fuchs´ solution of the problem, but it is a disgrace they called him traitor.)
Finally throw in the not very intricate study on why Ukraine has to be detached from Russian influence,
“The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives”, 1997, by Zbigniew Brzeziński, President Carter´s National Security Advisor. Add a flavour of Anti-Chinese.
And there you have your geopolitical 101 of this war. Ukraine is only a pawn in this. And that´s why anyone in the West calling for arms, demanding escalation is a criminal. Because it´s our side that has had the escalation dominance all along. Which also means, its our side that can make peace without losing anything meaningful.
@ John (Neocon & MIC shill) Kinsella
“Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major and Woerner”
https://natowatch.org/newsbriefs/2018/how-gorbachev-was-misled-over-assurances-against-nato-expansion
As you will know John, from current circumstances, it only requires one country to veto Nato membership for it to be forestalled. Gorbacev was given assurances by the leaders of many countries that expansion would not happen. It does not require an official policy statement by Nato.
I understand, it’s difficult to ever be right when you’re so wrong on the ‘big picture’.
See also:
“Newly Declassified Documents: Gorbachev Told NATO Wouldn’t Move Past East German Border”
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/newly-declassified-documents-gorbachev-told-nato-wouldnt-23629
correction:
1949 of course no Soviet hydrogen but atomic bomb. former would follow 1955.
(yeah I know, I gotta calm down)
Dude…. Putin and Lavrov are the ONLY consequential statesmen in Europe currently
I mean powerful and taking care of the people they represent.
As for Covid, this is a bioweapon that has been released among us, and is now degenerating in potency, as predicted by Luc Montaignier.
While the mRNA “vaccines” clearly do more harm than good, as evidenced by the wave of excess deaths which follows each inoculation campaign, worldwide.
A double crime against humanity perpetrated by the health authorities.
As to all of that trans nonsense, well, each to their own, just keep them away from our children ffs
The people Putin and Lavrov represent are Putin and Lavrov. Of course they take care of them
Putin and Lavrov are taking care of Russians?
For the last 20-ish years.
Why is Russia still so poor?
All that gas and oil?
Why has Russia no high tech exports?
Why can’t I buy a Russkiy car? A Russkiy computer or TV?
Because Putin and his pals have looted the country.
I worked in a small department in one of the smaller Irish universities.
Out of 20 staff, two were Russian. 10%
Many educated Russians have left Russia, not since the Ukraine invasion but since Putin became President for Life.
So much for Putin and Lavrov taking care of Russians.
John
20-ish years…
How many marque car brands does the UK have left these days? How much of the UK’s infrastructure is foreign owned?
Russia’s national debt last year was $393bn, the US’s $31.42 trillion, the US can service that insane debt only because of the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. The UK’s national debt was £2.4 trillion, or 97% of GDP. Equivalent to around £35,000 per person in the UK. We saw with Liz Truss, the limits of the govt’s fiscal freedom as the markets said nein! to her reckless plans to borrow, to give away in tax cuts.
You’ve got to compare Russia to the Yeltsin chaos Putin inherited. Putin is a Russian ultra nationalist who has restored Russia’s pride in itself. He’s been leader far too long, but that’s for the Russian people to remedy, not the west through interference. No doubt if the west could find some stooge who’d embrace their orthodoxies and trot along to the WEF and Bilderberg to denounce China’s CCP, they’d love that. In fact if the US/UK didn’t have hyper aggressive intel agencies so intent on stoking internal protests in various countries around the world, he’d probably feel it safe to retire already.
Goose
So where has all the money gone?
Outside Moscow and St Petersburg, the wave of prosperity has … dried into the sand.
You compared the nonexistent Russkiy export market in cars with England’s.
A bit Anglocentric?
I’m driving a French car.
I could have bought a German or Italian one.
But not a Russkiy one.
Why?
And where has the money from gas and oil sales gone?
John
That’s a legacy of their centralized command economy during the Soviet era, I’d guess. I don’t doubt there is a lot of corruption and cronyism as a result of near one-party dominance. But we’re backing Ukraine, a country renowned for its endemic corruption.
Russia is certainly no China over the last 20 years, but China’s incredible growth was spurred by 1978 market-oriented reforms, massive foreign investment, cheap labour and high productivity.
“And where has the money from gas and oil sales gone?”
Presumably where it has gone in every other country in the world, apart from, possibly Norway, into the government coffers or into private pockets. However, gas and oil is much much cheaper in Russia than it is in Western Europe, so, to that extent, it has gone into the pockets of ordinary Russians. So unlike our own, dear country!
That you have never heard
of Lada or not imported in Uk
dosn’t mean Russia does not
produce cars. Would nuclear and space
technology count as high tech?
Would missiles and war tech?
If you drive a French car and it happens to be a Renault bought between years 2012 and 2022, it is possible you are actually driving a Russian-made car.
Renault did have a factory in Russia making cars and sold the factory back to the Moscow city government in 2022.
The UK’s real national debt is only around 60% of its GDP, Goose, as the Bank of England owns nearly £900 billion of UK Govt bonds arising from its quantitative easing programme – so effectively, as the UK government owes this amount to itself, it can just be cancelled. A similar situation applies in the States with the Federal Reserve though not to the same extent, meaning that the federal government’s real debt is still around 110% of US GDP. For comparison, the Russian national debt is about 16% of its GDP.
I remember Ceausescu’s Romania paid off all its debts.
Romanians shivered though frigid winters rejoicing in their debt free lives.
Autocracies avoid foreign debt, not for their populations sake but to avoid foreign influence.
And yes, we had Romanian emigres in my university.
No regrets for the justified killing of the Ceausescu leeches.
The traditional reason why communist autocracies didn’t have much in the way of foreign debt, John, was that few people were prepared to lend to them for reasons that should hopefully be obvious.
it can just be cancelled
Cancel the gilts we bought ? Would it really be that easy? Wouldn’t it trigger inflation?
Always struck me as odd that the Treasury is effectively paying interest to itself on assets that it bought with “free” printed money. I’m not an economist tho, so I don’t know the full ramifications of this or whether MMT is viable in practice, all seems a bit utopian.
Thanks for your reply Goose. It would be as easy as a few keystrokes – the inflation has already largely been baked in. The £400 billion the UK government ‘borrowed’ during the pandemic came mostly from QE, which is the main reason that it hit 10%. Substantial quantitative tightening now, where the Bank of England sells the bonds back into the market and then destroys the money it receives, would lead to deflation, which is undesirable when many people/voters have large (mainly housing) debts. This is why it won’t happen. Despite what a lot of people will tell you, MMT isn’t a magic wand which solves everything.
“The UK’s real national debt is only around 60% of its GDP, Goose, as the Bank of England owns nearly £900 billion of UK Govt bonds arising from its quantitative easing programme”
It’s still part of the national debt. So what if the money passed through the hands of the BoE? As you say the BoE is part of the government, so the BoE’s debt is the nation’s debt. It doesn’t matter where the money came from the fact is that the government spent it and spent more than it took back in taxes. The difference between the two is the national debt. ”
“so effectively, as the UK government owes this amount to itself, it can just be cancelled”
No it can’t because it has already spent the money and can’t unspend it. The national debt is caused by government spending, not government borrowing.
“Autocracies avoid foreign debt, not for their populations sake but to avoid foreign influence.”
When you owe the bank £100, you call the bank manager “sir”. When you owe the bank £100,000, the bank manager calls you “sir”. With foreign debt, the debtor can always default. The creditor has far fewer options at their disposal.
In any case there is nothing that says the national debt has to be foreign debt. A large part of the national debt will always be owed to the citizens of that country. In the past it was a majority, although that’s less the case now, as the West has moved from industrial to financial capitalism.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. To answer your points: The BoE has no real debts because it isn’t obliged to redeem its banknotes for silver any more. The government can spend more than it takes in taxes without creating real debt if the BoE is printing money on its behalf, which is essentially what happens in QE. The national debt is caused by government borrowing.
“The BoE has no real debts because it isn’t obliged to redeem its banknotes for silver any more. ”
Thank you for confirming your almost total ignorance of the subject. All the currency in circulation is government debt and is recorded on the Treasury books as such. What do you think happens to the money when you burn £1M in banknotes, as some idiots did a few years ago?
If you’re going to be spiteful Bayard, I’ll stop replying to you. Currency in circulation isn’t recorded as government debt in the Treasury’s book – government bonds in issue (plus a few other things like National Savings & Investments) are recorded as government debt. Banknotes are technically Bank of England debt, but it’s not real debt because, despite the ‘I-promise-to-pay-the-bearer-on-demand etc’ inscription on them, if you turn up at Threadneedle St waving a tenner, the chief cashier won’t even give you ten pound coins, let alone ten pounds of sterling silver.
If you burn a million pounds of banknotes rather than spending them, like the KLF did on the Isle of Jura a few years back, it will cause a tiny amount of deflation in the UK economy (assuming that the Bank of England doesn’t print any more in short succession and that monetary velocity stays the same).
Right. But it doesn’t matter whether one cancels debt that a central bank holds or not. The fact that it holds it means that it is a debt held by a government against itself, in other words, no debt at all. If you write a check to yourself and take it from one pocket to another, you have not put yourself in debt. If you give a check to someone else, say to buy a golden goose, and he returns it, say to buy your flying carpet, the check (pound note, gilt, coin, whatever) is returned to your pocket. That alone means there is no debt outstanding, not whether you cancel it or rip it up.
MMT in this regard is not a novelty, but just accounting. Just (very old-fashioned) economics that respects accounting and what should be common sense. Mainstream, orthodox, commodity theory, neoclassical economics is basically “economics” that says “accounting, we don’t need no feelthy accounting”. So it frequently airily disregards it in piling impossibility upon absurdity – when it is that coherent. It’s about as useful as the astrology of fictional planets.
Selling bonds/gilts for currency is not necessarily inflationary or deflationary. All it does is monkey around with interest rates, not materially changing “the national debt” = “the money supply”. If anything higher interest is inflationary more often and especially so in the long term- the opposite of the pernicious mainstream cult belief.
Thanks for your reply Calgacus. If governments funded themselves entirely by printing money, not taxation, it would lead to substantial inflation as high earners who were now not being taxed would find themselves with a lot more money to spend, thus bidding up prices of goods and services. However this inflation would hurt low earners who were previously paying little tax. This is why most serious exponents of MMT accept the need for taxation to control inflation, with a target of say 2%. Traditionally, governments mostly tax the population and then spend the proceeds. With MMT, they print money, spend it, tax most of it back and then destroy it, which amounts to much the same thing.
If the Bank of England were to sell hundreds of billions worth of its govt bonds back into the market, it would very likely cause deflation, since the price of govt bonds would be bid down, causing bond yields to rise significantly, leading to banks increasing their mortgage rates, and mortgage borrowers having less to spend, meaning that retailers would need to reduce their prices to shift the same amount of units.
” Currency in circulation isn’t recorded as government debt in the Treasury’s book”
Yes it is. When the government issues currency, why does it issue it? Because it wants to pay for something. Effectively, you give the government something valuable, goods or services and they give you a piece of paper with no intrinsic value. Its only value lies in the fact that the government has said it owes you the value of your goods or services and, when you come to pay your taxes, it will honour that debt. In the meantime you are free to transfer that government debt to someone else, who will transfer it to someone else, who after many iterations of this process, will offer the debt back in lieu of taxation. All money that isn’t based on the intrinsic value of the currency is debt. What else could it possibly be? There’s no magic substance applied by the Royal Mint that makes a piece of plastic worth £10.
“but it’s not real debt because, despite the ‘I-promise-to-pay-the-bearer-on-demand etc’ inscription on them, if you turn up at Threadneedle St waving a tenner, the chief cashier won’t even give you ten pound coins, let alone ten pounds of sterling silver.”
Of course not, it doesn’t say “I promise to pay…..ten pounds in silver” (unlike it used to say on US dollar bills), nor does it say “I promise to pay…..ten pounds in pound coins”. The cashier at Threadneedle St can give you another tenner and would be fulfilling the promise. The government redeems that promise when it accepts your money when you pay your taxes.
“If you burn a million pounds of banknotes rather than spending them, like the KLF did on the Isle of Jura a few years back, it will cause a tiny amount of deflation in the UK economy”
Quite possibly, but what is actually happening is that you are relieving the government of £1M which it now no longer has to accept in pieces of paper as payment for taxes. You are giving the government £1M. What else could you be doing? Where else does the value of that £1M go?
Thanks for your reply Bayard. If Bank of England banknotes represented a claim to a real debt, and there was some possibility of that debt being paid, they would have an intrinsic value. The reason they do have a value is because UK businesses are required by law to accept payment in that form. When workers pay their taxes, they are essentially being compelled to give some of the value of their efforts to the government for whatever it wishes to use it for. The government isn’t honouring any debts. The Royal Mint produces coins not banknotes.
Before 1925 when Britain came off the gold standard, banknotes had a real value because anybody could exchange them for gold and/or silver, in the form of gold sovereigns and silver coinage, at the Bank of England. Nowadays that it not possible. The Bank is also under no obligation to exchange them for modern cupro-nickel coinage.
If the KLF had burnt a million pounds worth of UK govt bond certificates rather than a million in cash, they would have relieved the government of some of its debt obligations. They did pay all taxes due on their record sales before burning the money, but if they hadn’t, and burnt the money their accountants advised setting aside for tax as well, they would still have been liable for that tax. By torching the million, they were not giving the UK government a million. Its value, which would have belonged to the KLF alone, went up in smoke. Their choice. What did they achieve? Well they got thousands of people thinking and talking about the nature of money, which wasn’t an entirely bad thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
Russia is doing relatively OK based on PPP, which is arguably more useful than using nominal GDP when assessing the domestic market of a state because PPP takes into account the relative cost of local goods, services and inflation rates of the country.
A good deal better than the UK or France according to the link above.
Russia’s external debt is 12.2% compared to GDP, and most of it is private, not government.
UK: 80.7% ; France: 98.1%
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-by-national-debt
Russia is independent in energy, a crucial benefit as we can see currently, and in food, which we are about to see big time.
And Russia is politically and culturally independent of the USA, not a vassal state like all of Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan are.
A better measure is GDP (PPP) per capita, John, in which the UK and France score considerably higher than Russia. Then there’s the wealth and income Gini co-efficients to think about as measures of economic inequality. Russia’s are some of the highest in the world.
“A better measure is GDP (PPP) per capita, John, ”
GDP is not a good measure of anything, even with PPP taken into account. If A lends B £100, B lends C £100 and C lends A £100, that’s £300’s worth of GDP for no economic gain whatsoever. If I pay A £10 to dig a hole and B £10 to fill it in again, that’s another £20 of GDP for no gain. All financial activity is a zero sum game: I am only richer to the extent that you are poorer, but all that activity contributes to GDP without the total sum of wealth increasing one jot. However, if most of your GDP is activities that add value, your country has a far better and more resilient economy than a country with a similar GDP, where a large proportion of tht GDP is simply pushing money around and skimming a bit off the top.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. GDP is a measure of the value of goods and services produced within a country in a given year. Is it a perfect measure? No, because many people offer their services for free – usually (cis)-women. Does it allow reasonable comparisons to be made between countries’ economies, particularly in its PPP form? Yes.
“GDP is a measure of the value of goods and services produced within a country in a given year”
No it isn’t, it’s a measure of the cost of goods and services, a measure of the total activity whether that activity adds value or not. If a country starts the year with a total wealth of, say £3Trn and ends the year with £3Trn and during the year half of that wealth changed hands, that country would have a GDP of £1.5Trn, but would not have increased it’s wealth at all. What benefit, exactly does the country derive from that GDP? It’s a bullshit metric.
.”Is it a perfect measure? No, because many people offer their services for free.”
That is the least of its problems.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. If I sell you a used car for £5000 that I bought from a dealership, GDP hasn’t increased by £5000 because overall no value has been added to the country as a whole. If I sell you a dune buggy that I’ve built in my garage for £5000 more than the cost of the parts, then GDP has increased by £5000, because £5000 of added value has been created by me. In the latter case, the money that changes hands is used as a measure of the added value.
By the way, with reference to your earlier comment, if three people each lend each other £100, they haven’t necessarily increased GDP by £300. They would only increase GDP by that amount if they were charging 100% APR interest on those loans. Not all financial activity is a zero sum game, because some of it provides a means for productive enterprises to acquire capital.
GDP is not a measure of added value, it is a measure of production, as the name suggests. From Wikipedia: “Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries.”, so activities that add no value, like most financial activities, or digging a hole and filling it in again, are included. If it was a measure of added value it would be called gross domestic added value and be a far more useful metric, but the money-shufflers wouldn’t like that, as they would be excluded and people might start to think that they could do without them.
“Not all financial activity is a zero sum game, because some of it provides a means for productive enterprises to acquire capital.”
It may provide the means, but it is not in itself adding value. That is being done by the productive enterprise.
“
Russia imported 12% of it’s food in 2021 at a cost of $34 billion. Biggest exporter of food to Russia is Germany, food not (yet) subject to sanctions.
Russian economy shrank 4% last year and is expected to do the same this year. Inflation is currently about 11%.
The question to ask is what do you mean by food ? Russia for example is a major exporter of grain. How much of that grain ends up in the ‘food’ Russia imports ? It’s never as black and white as these figures imply.
“Why is Russia still so poor?”
What is your evidence that the Russians are poor?
“Why has Russia no high tech exports?”
Why does Russia need high tech exports? So that it can be paid in dollars which are then stolen by the US?
“Why can’t I buy a Russkiy car? A Russkiy computer or TV?”
Why do you want to and why would the Russians want to sell you one?
“Because Putin and his pals have looted the country.”
It was Bill Browder and other Americans and their pals that looted the country.
“I worked in a small department in one of the smaller Irish universities. Out of 20 staff, two were Russian. 10%
Many educated Russians have left Russia, not since the Ukraine invasion but since Putin became President for Life.”
Really, there is something called a search engine, you know. Ten seconds with one tells you that Putin has never become “President for Life”. Do try a bit harder. Yes, lots of Russians emigrated after the collapse of the USSR, but then Yeltsin and his US mates were busy turning it into a third world country, so it’s hardly surprising.
If I may be of assistance, Bayard.
Re: ‘Where is your evidence that [most] Russians are poor?’
Russian GDP per capita (2022): ca. $14,000. Russian wealth Gini coefficient (2019): 0.88.
Re: ‘It was Bill Browder and other Americans and their pals that looted the country.’
At its peak, Hermitage Capital was worth less than 1% of Russian GDP, and after the Russian authorities took an interest, it was worth a lot less.
Nearly 19 million Russians live below the poverty line, a figure Putin’s former economic adviser Andrei Illarionov expects to at least double as a result of the war.
Poverty:
17.6 million in Russia, population 143 million.
38 million in USA, population 332 million.
13.4 million in UK, population 67 million.
Aren’t we doing well ?
Relative poverty is defined as living on an income less than 60% of median household income. Median household income in the US is around $40,000 per year. So if your household has an income of $23,500, you are classed as living in poverty. In many places in America, at that level of income, there are no federal, state or local income taxes to pay, just federal insurance contributions of around $2000 per year. In addition, in many states, people living on incomes up to 30% above the poverty line now qualify for Medicaid.
Here’s what you can rent for around $7500 a year in smalltown America:
https://www.rentals.com/Tennessee/Selmer/100037993/
Comes with air-con, kitchen appliances, washer & dryer, plus access to a communal fitness room and pool. Living in poverty, US style – with a swimming pool. Fortunately, nearly 90% of US households have managed to elevate themselves above this hardscrabble existence.
In Russia, the median household income is the equivalent of around $10,000 a year. So if your household’s income is just $6500 a year, you are officially not living in poverty.
“Russian GDP per capita (2022): ca. $14,000. Russian wealth Gini coefficient (2019): 0.88.”
See my earlier comment as to the meaninglessness of GDP figures. A country with a lot of rich people who do very little is going to have a lower GDP per capita than a country of poor people who do a lot, but who create very little wealth doing it.
“In Russia, the median household income is the equivalent of around $10,000 a year. So if your household’s income is just $6500 a year, you are officially not living in poverty.”
Which demonstrates that the poverty line is unaffected by what things actually cost. Poor people spend most of their disposable income on three things, food, fuel and rent. If food, fuel and rent are cheap, you are going to have a much higher standard of living on the poverty line than if food, fuel and rent are expensive because the poverty line is defined by the income distribution of the country, not the cost of food, fuel and rent. It’s the standard of living that counts, not the relative size of your income.
Thanks for your replies Bayard. The GDP figures certainly aren’t meaningless. Countries that have a high GDP are almost always wealthy ones. Generally a country’s wealth is three to six times its GDP.
Re: ‘It’s the standard of living that counts, not the relative size of your income.’
That’s what I was trying to point out in my previous comment. Many US citizens who are officially classed as being in poverty can’t really be said by any meaningful measure to be very poor.
“That’s what I was trying to point out in my previous comment. Many US citizens who are officially classed as being in poverty can’t really be said by any meaningful measure to be very poor.”
But also, as many third world countries attest, you are more likely to have a reasonable standard of living being poor in a poor country than you are being poor in a rich one. That’s not to say that there aren’t some poor countries where the poor are very badly off indeed and some rich ones where, as you point out, they are really not that badly off at all.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. In truth, you are more likely to have a reasonable standard of living being relatively poor in a rich country, than being relatively poor in poor country, which is why most immigration is generally from poor to rich countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VePyOsI8Vug
Fantastic performance here at the European Figure Skating Championships
by trans Minna-Maaria Antikainen, representing Finland
Interesting contrast in the LRB between two cases of extradition involving the US and their seemingly inexhaustible contempt for international law:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2023/january/diplomatic-immunity
Couldn’t help but think of Assange and your blog as I was reading.
since it concerns the original topic of this blog entry, here a passage from Alastair Crooke’s al-Mayadeen column, yes via MoA:
original source: https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/the-utter-disconnect-between-realities
“(…)Perhaps the most singular and novel aspect has been the utter disconnect between two ‘realities’ of – on the one hand - ‘what is happening in the Ukrainian battlespace and inside Russia’, and on the other, that which is being published and broadcast in the West. The two ‘realities’ scarcely touch at any point.
Of course, it is possible to diagnose this condition as being that of a West ‘losing its marbles’ – ‘the war’ is veering so far away from the initial western absolute conviction of a quick collapse in Russia, and the humiliation of its’ Putin nemesis, that they have had to resort to denial. But that is too facile.
These types of disruptive narratives are far more common than is acknowledged. One aspect to this infowar revolution has been the inversion of the western media business model: Its revenue no longer derives from readers who buy or subscribe, and who want, and expect, reality.
At the supra-national level, it is government and its agencies which now pay handsomely for their narratives to be read by media consumers (as the Twitter email ‘dumps’ amply revealed). There is no standing apart from this discourse; there is no thinking outside of the social media feed.
And it works … people repeat narrated realties: Alain Besançon has remarked that “it is just not possible to remain intelligent under the spell of ideology”. Intelligence, after all, is an ongoing attentiveness to reality, which is inconsistent with willfulness and fantasy. Nor can it take root in the sterile soil of widespread cultural repudiation.
So arguments no longer revolve around truth. They are judged by their fidelity to the tenets of singular messaging. You are either ‘with the narrative’ or ‘against it’. Remaining loyal to ’the group’ becomes the highest morality. That loyalty requires each member to avoid raising controversial issues, questioning weak arguments, or calling a halt to wishful thinking. And to further reinforce conviction in the rightness of the ‘narrative’, those outside the bubble must be marginalised and, if necessary, their views mercilessly caricatured to make them seem ridiculous.(…)”
Craig said: “This war is a disaster for the people of Ukraine, for the people of Russia and for the people of the World. (1)It is going to end with Crimea absorbed into Russia and (2) some kind of autonomous status inside Ukraine for the Donbass regions. ”
I have begun to doubt both of these arguments the further the war have progressed: there is no one talking about autonomy anymore or have any sympathy for it, Ukraine might simply regain these regions. Regarding Crimea the region seems to be in the constant crosshair of the ukrainians, adding to that, the constant flow of weapons, and more powerful weapons (now the west talk about fighter jets) given to Ukraine by the west I am not sure Crimea would be part of Russia after this war is over.
It’s probably easier to imagine the planet being reduced to radioactive ash than Russia surrendering her centuries-old naval base to the Americans and British.
Ukraine have proved many times that they have the means to cause great damage in Crimea, during the summer some of their strikes destroyed some dozen russian fighter jets and the military HQ have been targeted multiple times not to mention the bridge.
And with the west more and more supportive of the idea it is certaintly not impossible for Ukraine to regain that region.
“U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea
The Biden administration is considering the argument that Kyiv needs the power to strike at the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/us/politics/ukraine-crimea-military.html
The sad fact is that for Ukraine to survive as a viable, functioning entity it will have to concede on Russia’s terms. The more it fights the more it loses and the more likely that it will end up split between Russia and Poland existing as Ukraine in name only, or not ! Ukraine cannot win and Russia cannot lose and the West cannot give a hoot.
In my view both Russia and Ukraine have already lost, Russia is too weak to enforce a win because Ukraine/Nato/US/EU is a little too strong in the end.
You don’t understand what I wrote. Do you think a nuclear armed Russia would surrender its centuries-old naval base to the Americans and British?
He understands but his whole belief system would crumble if he admitted that things aren’t as he states !
I suspect (hope) this year we may see Odessa fall and a link up with Transnistria. That would mean no access to the Black Sea for Ukraine and serious problems for NATO.
I understood clearly the first time, I believe you are not getting what I am saying.
After all, Ukraine have already attacked Crimea, and Russia did nothing of substance in return which of course is the reason why Ukraine and now also west think they can regain Crimea more emboldened.
Yes because they’re psychopaths, willing to risk all life on earth for the prize of “USA is No 1!” I’m not an admirer of their strategy.
Well the battlfield efforts by Russia have simply been too weak for west to be deterred by it so of course they feel emboldened on taking on Crimea.
Jack
“Ukraine have already attacked Crimea”.
You mean a few spectacular failures or half-successes, destined mainly for the media headlines. Yes, I agree NATO knows how to have a propaganda success, better than the Russians. However its the Ukrainians who are getting slaughtered in the water-filled trenches.
Laguerre
They destroyed a dozen or so fighter jets, destroyed Crimean bridge in part and targeted military HQ in Sevastopol so more than a PR stunt.
Well obviously Russians are also being slaughtered in the trenches, if it was only ukrainians that deceased that way the war would be over and Russia the winner long time ago.
“They destroyed a dozen or so fighter jets, destroyed Crimean bridge in part and targeted military HQ in Sevastopol so more than a PR stunt.”
The fighter jets weren’t in Crimea and it wasn’t a dozen, the bridge was reopened the following day and, oh, wow, “targeted” a military HQ. The Russians must be quaking in their snowy boots.
Of course it was in Crimea, Russian warplanes destroyed in Crimea airbase attack, satellite images show
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/11/russian-warplanes-destroyed-in-crimea-saky-airbase-attack-satellite-images-show
OK, it was in Crimea, if you believe the Guardian, but it still wasn’t a dozen and ten planes and a bridge put out of action for a day is not a very impressive total for almost a year of war.
Bayard
Considering that Russia are not near any win after 11 months prove Ukraine do quite a good job and Russia do a horrible one in this war.
“I have begun to doubt both of these arguments the further the war have progressed: there is no one talking about autonomy anymore or have any sympathy for it, Ukraine might simply regain these regions. ”
I think you ought to read the comment immediately above yours again: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/01/intolerance/comment-page-3/#comment-1032271
as you appear to be illustrating very well the latter half of what it is talking about, “the utter disconnect between two ‘realities’ of – on the one hand - ‘what is happening in the Ukrainian battlespace and inside Russia’, and on the other, that which is being published and broadcast in the West.”
Bayard
I’m following facts, I am not an ideologue like you in this war, I step back and judge this as objectively as possible – you support the war and thus seem to be unable to see the other side of things.
Fact is that no one is talking about autonomy for these regions anymore due to this invasion by Russia – that whole project is a goner by now. Ukraine just got served the best gift, because from now on, the claim that russians are discriminated against and need autonomy will be rejected as russian propaganda.
As for your link, perhaps you should turn around and realize that the information you yourself read and believe in is as biased as the one that the western msm produce. Just a thought.
“As for your link, perhaps you should turn around and realize that the information you yourself read and believe in is as biased as the one that the western msm produce. Just a thought.”
The information I read and believe in is produced by the West. There isn’t much of it. I don’t believe what the Western MSM are saying because so much of it is easily proved to be false. The first casualty of war is truth. Both sides are going to be telling lies. You seem to think that one side, your side, is telling the truth and that when I point out that they are not I am only saying that because I believe that the other side is the one telling the truth. That is not so. You don’t have to know what is true to know what is false.
Bayard
As I said, I’m following facts regardless if it is in the western msm or in the russian news. It is you that cannot criticize Russia or get angry with me because I am telling you facts that you do not like – because you read only views from news sites that you agree with.
You do not really have to read the news to understand the constant change up with russian military leaders, the dozen or so killed russian officers, the thousands of dead russian soldiers, the multiple military retreats, imply that the russian war is not going great.
I am well late to this party. What a fine smorgasbord we are presented to chew on by our Ambassador. Thank you sir.
I shan’t stay long, there are already a great many posts. I hope to peruse at my leisure – which is currently limited by year-end financial matters and cruelly, attending the ailing and some funerals!
Yes there has been a ‘spike’ this winter. Whether it is related to being spiked or just a lack of medical treatment at the hands of the wholly destructed NHS, is yet to be finalised. The advertisements for private health insurance along the American model are beginning to proliferate more on the various billboards that I pass and surely are on the television screens – which I continue to avoid in my home.
Anecdotally I can report that many multi jabbed persons have suffered Covid this last month. Some even insist on taking up the offer of a booster even as they are recovering from their second or third bout !
The data is NOT being made available by the ONS, only it’s massaged assessments based on assumptions. Let me repeat that .The base data is being withheld by a supposedly independent non-political body that reports directly to Parliament and not the Government. It is not a department of state and does not have a minister appointed to run it. It is supposed to give facts as well as its analyses. At the moment we are only being given its ,flawed analysis. The facts are not available. It is as if the numbers of Births, Deaths and Marriages being registered and the sexes of these involved are not given just a projection based on some assessment of a few facts! Instead of publishing the daily records.
For the record I still haven’t had any vaccines but have had Covid twice once at the beginning of 2020 and again at the end of 2021.
I trust that addresses one of CM’s incendiary subjects designed no doubt to enliven interest and debate at this great site that I am happy to support with a regular subscription and urge anyone who can to do so.
On Ukraine – it is in my opinion, a choice between Hitlers Germany and Stalins Russia , is almost the exact same choice between the current Natzo proxy and Russia. Churchill infamously claimed he would support fascists ahead of communists a few years prior to the proxy war he was party to running against Doviet Russia then. The mass racist Russophobia is not different to the mass antiGerman o Anti Japanese propaganda then
Of course he was a great white supremacist racist and mass murderer using weapons of mass destruction against non Aryan civilians as he stomped about the world then as most of his bastard proxy children are today. The sooner his statues receive the attention that many other dictators have the better.
A current example of one of his scurvy proxies, Baerbock the greenwashed ‘German’ luster of war of conquest of Crimea and Russias riches, spoke the truth at her conference and was applauded not booed for doing so. Hell if she had finished with a ‘Sieg’ the audience would probably have involuntarily replied with a ‘heil’ – all to be consigned to some me memory hole as some collective ‘misspeaking’ .
They are not even hiding it now. Promising to sen 14 tanks now and 88 in total!
I mean wtff ? In case anyone doesn’t get it look up the significance of these numbers to the neo Nazis of today.
Obviously the smorgasboard that CM presented could have unlimited delicacies to chew on, and he has to make a choice of the menu, I wish he had included one more – the Green agenda and the great white saviour narrative by the corporate and financial giants of the West. Because for sure that is part and parcel of the grand Narrative Construction of this century so far ; which has ranged from the War on Terror, to the War on the Multipolar.
We are reaching the most dangerous phase. When the losing unipolarists and their whole edifice of multiple but linked Narratives is trembling and about to fall, like the house of cards it always has been.
They want to double down and open the hot front against China !
They really are that insane. They think they can retain their colonial boots on the throats of the thousands of African Peoples and their resources, which I believe is the greatest prize.
In their lust to over extend Russia , Putin the master judo practitioner has over extended the natzos in that Old Continent. Freeing itself from France and whatever remains of European and US blood suckers there. Uraaa ! I salute the liberators of the Europe from the Nazis and their concentration camps (a British invention btw in young Churchills Africa adventures – see? It’s all connected ?)
I have a busy few week or two ahead yet but hope to return later with some more Critical Thinking that CM is urging upon us all to practice. Have a fine day everyone.
new piece by Caitlin Johnstone about how much The Guardian has changed in terms of self-censorship
“Dissident commentary about Ukraine that was still published in major Western news outlets in 2014 is entirely gone because these publications have turned to full-fledged war propaganda. ” by C. Johnstone
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/01/30/caitlin-johnstone-what-msm-can-no-longer-say/
Beginning:
“(…)The other day I stumbled across a 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian, “It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war,” by Seumas Milne, who the following year would go on to become the Labour Party’s executive director of strategy and communications under Jeremy Corbyn.
I bring this up because the perspectives you’ll find in that article are jarring in how severely they deviate from anything you’ll see published in the mainstream press about Ukraine in 2023.
It places the brunt of the blame for the violence and tensions in that nation at that time squarely at Washington’s feet, opening with a warning that the “threat of war in Ukraine is growing” and saying there’s an “unelected government in Kiev,” and it only gets naughtier from there.(…)”
I can’t remember now if Craig reported on the decline of the Guardian, he probably did.
This all happened around the time of the publishing of the Wikileaks stuff (2010). The security services decided to neuter the Guardian by embedding security staff within the Guardian and controlling everything they published. The most well known security asset on the Guardian payroll is Luke Harding. The Guardian and Harding was a prime player in the Skripal affair (2018), along with his pal and Skripal’s MI6 minder Pablo Miller (aka. Antonio Alvarez de Hidalgo). Harding is currently in and out of the Ukraine, make of that what you will.
As stated by many, the Guardian is now the security services house magazine. You can safely guarantee that whatever they publish has come directly from MI6/CIA – which is a useful insight in itself !
almost wanted to ask you about Harding but then I was wise and sought out the Declassified UK article from 2019 which probably most commentators here already know and it turned out one the best pieces I have read lately.
I will research the Ukr item and that Hidalgo guy.
so thx.
Dear AG, do stop rootling around in the memory hole. Stuff in there is supposed to be forgotten, it never happened.
only now have I finished the Declassified UK report on GUARDIAN´s demise and understood the true scale and profoundity of this – well, major tragedy. I knew a few bits. But this is shocking. Especially as none of it was reported in Germany. In fact the leftist FREITAG weekly still has its cooperation with GUARDIAN going. Actually using it for PR. I do not know in how far publisher and co-owner Jakob Augstein, who was among the witnesses in the Assange trial 2 years ago, is aware of this.