Russian Tensions
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Posts
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Oh. Oh.
I am not sure what to type.
Sugar.
I will miss Matt. I am sorry I did drift away from SP…
Alan: Nothing in socialism is under. We long for that ‘don’t follow leaders, watch for parking meters’ as Matt referenced to me once.
Shit… I am really knocked for six.
Loved him.
Liam (L.B. Neill).Nice and clear from Chomsky:
It was not hard to predict, as we did over the months, that sooner or later Russia would resort to U.S.-U.K.-Israeli tactics: Quickly destroy everything that sustains a viable society. So they are now doing, arousing justified horror among decent people — joined by those who implement or justify these tactics with the “right agency”: us. The strategic incentive is clear enough, especially after Russia’s battlefield setbacks: Destroy the economy and the will to resist. All familiar to us.
Quite definitely war crimes, whether in Iraq, or Gaza, or Ukraine.
And some will still accuse him of being Pro-Putin. Also, interesting on the role of Democrat Presidents.
“TS, no, let’s try this again:
Try this link, and then search within the page for “20,000””Ok, I get it now. So, 20,000 reservists volunteered before being drafted. The 70,000 volunteets are raw recruits. Easily confused.
“It was not hard to predict, as we did over the months, that sooner or later Russia would resort to U.S.-U.K.-Israeli tactics: Quickly destroy everything that sustains a viable society. So they are now doing, arousing justified horror among decent people — joined by those who implement or justify these tactics with the “right agency”: us. The strategic incentive is clear enough, especially after Russia’s battlefield setbacks: Destroy the economy and the will to resist. All familiar to us.”
Both sides have committed war crimes in this capitalist conflict. We should not forget Ukrainian forces shelling of Donbas prior to the Russian invasion. This is what war does to people; it brutalises them. You dehumanize the other side and invent any old excuse for mass murder – like wanting to “denazify” them or whatever.
Ultimately, you cannot separate the means and the ends. If you employ oppressive methods to achieve your goal you will ensure that the goal that you achieve will be oppressive
We should not forget Ukrainian forces shelling of Donbas prior to the Russian invasion.
They are doing it again now, this time with more powerful weapons supplied by NATO. They are shelling the city of Donetsk and other places in the Donbass and hitting civilian targets like schools and hospitals and killing civilians including children. Just like the Russians have been doing to Ukrainian cities. But none of this is being reported in self-censored media in the NATO countries.
Evidently the Zelensky’s regime regards the population of the Donbass not as their own subjects but as Russians who they will inevitably ethnically cleanse of they get their way and conquer the Donbass. All with NATO weapons and money.
And we are being asked to support this as a “defence of democracy”. What hypocrisy !
“They are shelling the city of Donetsk and other places in the Donbass and hitting civilian targets like schools and hospitals and killing civilians including children. Just like the Russians have been doing to Ukrainian cities.”
No, not “just like the Russians have been doing”. The Russians are not deliberately targeting schools and hospitals in acts of terror as the Ukrainians are doing. When the Russians target such buildings it is because Ukrainian soldiers have taken up firing positions there as even regime change front group Amnesty International has admitted.
“Ukrainian forces have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals, as they repelled the Russian invasion”
Like it or not, such buildings become legitimate targets if occupied by military forces.
“Ultimately, you cannot separate the means and the ends. If you employ oppressive methods to achieve your goal you will ensure that the goal that you achieve will be oppressive”
Really? So violence is never justified? How are the Palestinians supposed to free themselves then in the face of Zionist white supremacist genocide?
“Really? So violence is never justified? How are the Palestinians supposed to free themselves then in the face of Zionist white supremacist genocide?”
_______________________________________________More pearls of wisdom from our armchair military strategist too busy urging other workers to go out and lay down their lives for Putin’s capitalist regime than to bother volunteering himself for military duties in Ukraine.
As for Palestinian workers, are you serious? Militarily taking on the might of the Israeli state in a war? That would be the shortest suicide note in history. But then again I guess you don’t really care about the lives of Palestinian workers lost or for that matter the lives of Russian workers lost in the dumb cause of capitalist nationalism that you so eagerly embrace.
<i>So violence is never justified?</i>
The SPGB position isn’t a pacifist one. If a recalcitrant minority was to use force to block the majority from obtaining Socialism, then it would be justified to use force against them. That’s why there is a section in the DoP about the necessity of socialists gaining control of the armed forces.
But the difference between the SPGB and those that think a minority can achieve ‘good by force’ is that the SPGB thinks that socialism can only be bought about through conscious majority co-operative action; since a socialist society will require this kind of conscious cooperation in order to function as such.
“The SPGB position isn’t a pacifist one. If a recalcitrant minority was to use force to block the majority from obtaining Socialism, then it would be justified to use force against them. That’s why there is a section in the DoP about the necessity of socialists gaining control of the armed forces.”
That’s news to me. I have no difficulty accepting such a position. All-in, is this true?
“All-in, is this true?”
Yes, for one example, see this: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1935/1930s/no-366-february-1935/marx-force/
The SPGB position is summed up by the old Chartist saying
“Peacefully if possible, forcibly if necessary”
There is a crucial difference between being anti-war and pro-class war
“The SPGB position is summed up by the old Chartist saying
“Peacefully if possible, forcibly if necessary”
There is a crucial difference between being anti-war and pro-class war”
So do you support the Palestinians’ right to use violent resistance against their Zionazi oppressors?
While being sympathetic to the Palestinian people’s plight does not mean I have to fully endorse all their chosen tactics.
There can be no military solution for the Palestinians. Armed struggle against an all-powerful militarised authoritarian state will fail. That is not up for debate.
Can you explain its purpose other than to give some political credibility to its proponents?
As a tool to challenge the Jewish-Israeli opinion, the rockets and individual acts merely reinforce Jewish-Israeli intransigence. Only a very small minority of Jewish-Israelis support the peace movement such as B’tselem. I once did hold hope when there were protests in the more cosmopolitan Tel Aviv over the cost of living that an alliance would be formed with liberal Israelis and Palestinians. It didn’t develop
It is implausible that the present Palestinian policy of two-states can ever succeed. Economically it is not workable. No airport. No seaport. After the intifada, most of the Palestinian workers were replaced by Asian and European migrant workers in Israel. West Bank has no industry nor manufacturing. No work.
The PA and Gaza governments are corrupt entities and dependent on foreign aid and charities. As Norman Finkelstein often says the cost of Israel’s occupation is cost-free to Israel.
Not only is it Israeli apartheid but it is also endorsing a Bantustan solution because the million Jewish settlers are not realistically going to be evicted by any Israeli government so need to be accommodated.
What may succeed is a non-violent civil disobedience campaign witnessed when the fifth of Israel’s citizens joined in a campaign alongside the West Bank Palestinians.
There is some speculation that a way ahead would be for the Palestinians to start a civil-rights movement to be declared full and equal citizens and West Bank and Gaza become a part of Israel in a form of a new federal constitution. A proposal that the Ukrainian government mistakenly rejected for the DPR and LPR.
Internationally, BDS is also a positive strategy yes that too has limitations as too many countries place their own vested interests before the Palestinian cause. (Perhaps the possible threat of such sanctions being imposed is one reason why Israel so far refuses to join in the sanctions against Russia.)
But personally, I see no answer to the Palestinian problem in the foreseeable future. The Jewish-Israelis have acquired a siege mindset.
No Arab nation is willing to come to the Palestinian’s aid.
There is no Palestinian Mandela to placate the fears of the Jewish-Israelis with the hope of reconciliation.
A political compromise as seen at the end of the Northern Ireland civil war with the IRA becoming a part of its government is not an option
I am pessimistic.
But those who believe that violent insurrection is a solution for Palestinians are callously playing straight into the hands of the Zionist right-wing.
Can any solution be found in seeking ‘points of equivalence’ in any national struggle?
The very things that unite us as human beings should look above nationalism and ethno-political tensions.
The episteme of lived experience: love, child raising, production of meeting all our needs, and so on.
Nationalisms in all their manifestations seem to have an apex of power and control: a ruling ‘top end class’…
Alan, do you think we can rise above the tensions and see each other as sharing a commonality, thus ending history: ending divisional nationalism and seeing one another as mutual beings assisting one another, or is the stirring of ethnic-national tensions a bane that prevents us from becoming the ‘democracies yet to come’?
Not an easy question: just wanted your take on it as I am trying to be optimistic.
Regards
LB Neill
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