alanjjohnstone
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You are a prime example of friends like these who need enemies, a person ready to spill the blood of another, someone who holds a myopic one-sided perspective of a problem, who has little or no understanding of the issues or their history.
For instance, “Syria still stands with the Palestinians”
Relations between Syria and Hamas were only very recently restored after almost a decade of opposition between them. Syria did, however, maintain close relations with the Abbas PA as do many other nations including Israel, itself.
You will call it either fake news, accidental collateral damage or call it as justified but over the course of the civil war, Palestinian refugee camps in Syria were shelled or bombed by the Syrian military.
Syria has proved incapable of regaining the Golan Heights or stopping the unilateral full annexation of it by Israel just as Russia did for its occupation of Ukraine.
“The only message they understand is violence. Soon the Palestinians will have drones”
Your naivety is fully on display again. Where will they fly from?
Israel has the ability (and for many Zionist extremists, the desire) to commit another Nakba on West Bank and Gaza and guarantee the genocide of the Palestinian people if your drones ever become a real threat. No neighbouring country will permit itself to be used as a launching pad, not even Hizbullah in Lebanon who are able to inflict severe damage on Israel.
I won’t waste any more time or go off-topic again answering your ignorant ideas.
With regard to Jewish-Israeli v Palestine, I see little hope that either community can come together. Even after decades, Israeli-Arabs are still viewed suspect and those in the occupied territories are commonly seen as the enemy. There is no political or popular will among Jewish-Israelis to change attitudes.
Nationalism has increasingly has a polarising effect.
Sometimes we talk of uneven development of consciousness, with cultural lag in the growth of socialist ideas. This seems to be an expression of it.
The Jewish-Israelis have their own version of the Great Replacement where a unified one-state means in time the eventual demographic transformation where they are out-numbered and lose power.
When people think of Belgium, they do not realise it too is a federal state divided into three communities, the Flemish Community, the French Community and the German-speaking Community, three regions, the Flemish Region, the Walloon Region and the Brussels Region and four language areas, The Dutch language area, the French language area, the bilingual (French and Dutch) area of Brussels-Capital and the German language area.
I am sure other such federations can be cited. But then sometimes when such already exist as in the UK or Spain, there are separatists seeking sovereignty.
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.
Military personnel covering public sector strikes over the Christmas period are to be paid daily bonuses of tax-free £20.
ALB -“I am not sure that his views should be described as “Russian thought”. He was of course from Russia but his anarchist-communist views were formed when living in France and the French-speaking part of Switzerland. You could more accurately describe his views as an expression of “French thought”, ”
What do Tolstoy, Plekhanov and Gorky bring to the table?
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
For anyone interested, Chomsky’s latest on the war
Chomsky: Advanced US Weaponry in Ukraine Is Sustaining Battlefield Stalemate
“…the U.S. is gaining enormously in multiple ways: geopolitically by Putin’s self-destructive decision to drive Europe into Washington’s pocket by ignoring very real possibilities for avoiding criminal aggression, but also in other ways. It is not, of course, the U.S. population that is gaining. Rather, those in charge: fossil fuel industries, financial institutions that invest in them, military producers, the agribusiness semi-monopolies, and masters of the economy generally, who can scarcely control their euphoria over bulging profits (which are feeding inflation with markups) and great prospects for moving on to destroy human society on earth more expeditiously…”
There is an accompanying article that can be read but being the NYT, it is behind a paywall. It was fortunate that the video wasn’t.
Matt died from cancer some months ago.
https://groups.io/g/spintcom/topic/sad_news/89683522
https://groups.io/g/spopen/topic/a_touching_tribute_to_comrade/91633904
Matt’s presence as a mentor is something I still miss.
He was the person who said once to me and I have never forgotten, don’t ever say “under socialism”…It has negative connotations, nothing “in” socialism will be “under”
Never take your eye of the China South Sea
The Philippines ordered its military to ramp up patrols in the South China Sea in response to “Chinese activities” in the disputed waters.
https://www.dw.com/en/philippines-responds-to-south-china-sea-encroachment/a-64185110
TS – “Won’t even waste my time reading it.”
It’s a video documentary…you watch those, not read them.
But again you confirm your closed mind to anything that contradicts your own predetermined viewpoint
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000008299178/ukraine-bucha-russia-massacre-video.html
As it is New York Times, you won’t accept anything it says, TS
“I deferred to two experts and my own knowledge of what a body missing a face tends to look like.”
Your two “experts” are Russian journalists, not medical experts who most likely did what you and i did…used Google
TS There were mass graves of people killed during the Russian occupation of the area mostly by Ukrainian shelling. The number of “collaborators” murdered was relatively few in number.
You clearly don’t read links you don’t like
OHCHR documented the killings of 73 civilians (54 men, 16 women, 2 boys and 1 girl) in Bucha between 4 and 30 March 2022 and is in the process of corroborating 105 additional alleged killings of civilians (85 men, 11 women and 9 adults whose sex is yet unknown) OHCHR excluded those shown to have been killed by shelling or flying debris and investigated only deaths from deliberate shootings.
TS “No claim to that effect has ever been made til now by you. Link to a source for your claim, please.”
Russian misinformation tried to debunk a video by Ukraine of bodies on the roadside by saying a hand was seen moving and one of the corpses stood.
Also confirmed is the accuracy and dates of Maxar’s satellite pictures that your link seeks to deny.
https://www.bbc.com/news/60981238
TS “I’m not defending anybody. I’m defending the truth.”
This from a person who rejects the proof given by both Soviet and Russian leaders such as Putin that it was the USSR that carried out the Katyn Forest Massacre and declares the Beria memo produced with Stalin’s signature is a forgery.
This from a person who declares that the 1930s purges were about real Trotskyist-Nazi plot and that confessions extracted under torture were legitimate.
This from a person who claims that the USSR 1939 invasion of Poland was lawful.
This from a person who believes the Russo-Ukraine war is not a war but a Special Military Operation.
DUH
Here are TS and myself, non-medical qualified, endeavouring to conduct a rudimentary autopsy from pictures which are for us very fortunately stench-free.
In the UK to become a pathologist a degree in medicine (five years), a foundation course (two years) and a specialist training programme (five or six years)
Those who do have the appropriate knowledge will in due course release their findings for eventual court proceedings.
TS and I are simply guessing
What we do know is that the Russian explanation that the corpses were fake has been proven false. So other scenarios are required.
TS can continue to deflect with questions about animals not eating the bodies. Or that the preservation of the corpse show a recent time of death. He is privy to the autopsy reports obviously that nobody else has and his photographs are much better than any that we have seen published. How many maggots were there under the clothes corpse were they? I have no idea either.
His argument that Azov conducted all those public killings of so-called collaborators in the hundreds with many burned to cover it up in a matter of a day or two, Azov having arrived according to reliable reports on the 1/2 April, risking victims’ family and friends witnessing it is far-fetched when there are numerous witnesses to Russian shootings and as TS makes much of the Bucha mayor video, he and media was already present. I have already demonstrated that the white armband did not signify collaborator.
The prevalence of the evidence including satellite imagery and interviews indicates that the Russians were responsible for the killings.
Why should TS be so determined to defend Russia while I on the other hand can fully condemn the Ukrainian killing of Russian POWs as war crimes?
Reluctantly I went through YouTube videos of the bodies
TS argued that there was nothing to give the time of death as being during the Russian occupation such as decomposition. But the videos did show the signs that the corpses were not recent and could not have been committed by newly arrived Ukrainians.
Look at the hands at 1.08, 1.34, the skin texture at 1.41
Heavy clothing will slow decomposition more than light clothing. Cold weather slows the rate (i already quoted a reference to it being so cold that a Russian was unconcerned by bodies out in the open)
TS, you are also skilled in deflection and diversion
I quote the Bucha doctor only because of the issue of the white arm bands.
You had claimed earlier that it is worn by pro-Russian friendlies and therefore it was most likely Azov killing collaborators.
I have now given you two examples that the white armband did not signify any such thing.
Alos in a previous post referred to the Azov knowing that Russian soldiers used civilians with white armbands as human shields.
Why no animal predation? Perhaps because the streets were still occupied by Russian troops and traffic. Perhaps there were some that the photos did not show. I don’t claim to know. Those who would know, the investigators, you casually dismiss.
But of course, there are witness accounts that you never accept
“We had to beg the Russians to let us bury them. They told us it was still cold, so it didn’t matter, they could lie there. But the dogs were starting to eat them. In the end we convinced them it was a sanitary issue and they let us dig the grave at the church of Andrew the Apostle since it was near both their military position and the morgue and hospital.”
Note the reference to the temperature being cold that decomposition would have been slowed
But that is from the Guardian
