alanjjohnstone
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Via Cde.Stafford’s Grist
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/z-is-for-zombie-russias-meme-war-against-ukraine
“Historian Kamil Galeev, who has Crimean heritage, argues Putin is fighting a war of acquisition to build a Russian homeland retro-engineered on the dubious basis of the geographical spread of Old Russian and the reach of the Orthodox faith. Galeev, writing on Twitter, sees the Z-War as white supremacist, based on Russia’s idiosyncratic notions of Europe and Christianity. The war looks different through Russian eyes, because Russia has created its own memes about Europe and Christianity, as well as ideas about the subhuman swarms at its borders, to explain the war as a defensive action…Galeev believes Russians have a weaker sense of loyalty than westerners suppose. Patriotism is transactional, and there is no deep sense of traditional values. All that keeps Russia together is fear and favour from the state, and the threat of humiliation from the outside. ”
https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/usda-fails-animal-welfare-act/
After failing to confiscate a single chinchilla from MCR—even as the USDA’s own inspectors issued citation after citation for Animal Welfare Act (AWA) violations over a period of five years from 2013 to 2018—the department finally filed a case in November 2018 against MCR’s owner, dealer Daniel Moulton. Following even more incomprehensible delays, the case finally went to court in 2021.
I understand the risks of a no-fly-zone.
Everytime one has been exercised it was an act of war.
Russia is already threatening that supplying Ukraine with longer-ranged rockets would also be viewed an act of war, as a warning to the West.
Another interesting but mixed-message article
“We need to develop an economy whose main goal is not growth but secure sufficiency for all,” concludes Josh Farley. “Our planet is too small to achieve much more than sufficiency…”
What does that really mean? We are also for a steady-state economy but one that has provided for the global population.
But it touches on our own goals.
“…Your main experience is the core economy, the economy of reciprocity and gifting and providing for your close kin and community, which is totally outside the market.”
“Mainstream economists argue that humans are inherently selfish, that we always act in our own self-interest and can’t cooperate, which is absolutely absurd,” Josh Farley argues. “Humans are the most cooperative species ever to evolve…”
The debate on the environment is no longer simplistic but has become very nuanced, and that is to our advantage.
“On the front of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, desperate fighting continues,” was how prominent Russian news anchor Dmitry Kiselev started his weekly news show on Sunday. “The past week has probably been one of the worst so far.”
The Russian Ministry of Defense called Russia’s large-scale retreat around Kharkiv a successful regrouping operation.
https://www.dw.com/en/russians-debate-military-future-in-ukraine/a-63131313
Some want full mobilisation
The leader of the Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, spoke to Russia’s lower house of parliament, saying the special military operation had escalated into a full-scale war.
“War and special operations differ radically,” he said. “A special military operation can just be ended. But you can’t just stop a war, even if you want to. You must go all the way. War only has two outcomes: either victory or defeat.”
Russia expert Mark Galeotti, said, “It would mean that firstly, the war isn’t going to plan.”
“And secondly, it’s going to alarm a lot of people for whom the war is a long way away,” he added. Until now, the war is being fought by professional soldiers, who are largely ethnically non-Russian. A mass mobilization would draw in many more ordinary Russian families.
The Guardian still publishing the occasional article critical of Royal Family
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/15/jeffrey-epstein-prince-andrew-queen-death
Mariann Wang, who represented more than a dozen Epstein survivors, said it was “beyond shameful to see Andrew being granted any form of state-sponsored honor or privilege, given his past affiliation with Jeffrey Epstein”.
Aurore DeCarlo, senior partner at the law firm CA Goldberg, “The media images of Prince Andrew being adored and sympathized with can certainly give the impression that all has been forgiven, despite lasting pain and damage still lying in his wake.
Post-WW1 arising from the abortive German Revolution in Hamburg there arose National Bolshevism led by Fritz Wolffheim and Heinrich Laufenberg proposing an alliance with the right-wing to wage resistance against the Entente Powers occupying Germany at the time.
Although this was rejected, the KPD and the Nazis did collaborate against the Versailles Treaty and the Weimar Republic
On Dissident Voice some of the authors offer their e-mails or websites which I do when I wrote forit and have had the occasional response. She doesn’t unfortunately and she only has this and another article.
I would have to hunt her down and I would feel I was trolling or harassing her by doing so.
I think the WSM has to be the Big Tent, the movement for all the single issue activists to coalesce around, to muster under our banner as our D of P puts it. The umbrella as I like to say.
Fellow workers can both act in self-defence on specific problems that they believe they face and also still campaign for socialism.
Trade unionism is an example that we have long said was compatible with membership. I would also add environmental concerns.
I know it gets murky in a grey area of what is reformism when it comes to climate and pollution.
Some members have drawn attention regards proposed government legislation to restrict trade union action that can involve us in taking a position against government policy, likewise, we can equally take a position in relation to environmental laws or lack of.
That resembles the “Baltic Alliance” the UK made with Sweden and Finland but not as strong because that agreement does commit UK to actual combat
I’m no international lawyer but when read, actual military intervention by Ukraine’s allies is not clearly mentioned
But we do know such agreements leave the protocols deliberately vague on purpose to be interpreted as seen fit and the use of foreign troops may well be intended.
It may help placate Ukraine to a ceasefire but I simply can’t see how this can reassure Russia and help bring it to peace-talks.
The ever-insightful MediaLens
Imposed Insanity – Royalty, Propaganda And The Coming Catastrophe
“…And it is no accident that corporate editors and journalists are united now in expressing deep affection for the late Queen. When everyone clearly feels obliged to say the same thing, it means they are deferring to a key requirement of elite control. This latest blitz should be no surprise, because wherever there is royalty, there is militarism, organised religion, bipartisan political agreement, patriotism and, of course, concentrated wealth…”
An interesting essay here.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/09/14/no-maga-republicans-are-not-anti-war-allies
“…The anti-war movement should be calling for an end to this proxy war and the NATO alliance which provoked the conflict. But this call for peace must be rooted in internationalism. We need an anti-war movement that opposes the war in Ukraine because it uses the Ukrainian people as cannon-fodder to settle a great power rivalry and subjects the entire world to rising costs of living…”
“…Trumpist Republicans calling out proxy-war with Russia and NATO expansion is a classic example of a broken clock being right twice a day. But what’s driving this Trumpist opposition to proxy-war is an ideology that is incompatible with serious anti-war opposition: isolationism…Far Right politicians call for withdrawing from military alliances and wars that they see as costing the United States more than benefiting.”
“…Anti-war activists need to have difficult conversations and educate our neighbors, friends, and families into empathizing with all humanity without ranking or separation based on arbitrary borders and nationalities. This means winning people away from a Far Right worldview, not finding common ground with it…”
It made me recall a Socialist Standard article from 2007 on the anti-war right-wing libertarians
The Presidential Emergency Board (PEB), a nonpartisan panel appointed by President Joe Biden last month, recommended that rail carriers and union workers accept a contract with wage increases, but unions expressed outrage that the recommendations did not include a paid sick leave policy or address stringent “points-based” attendance rules which requires engineers and conductors to work many days—and sometimes consecutive weeks or months—with no time off, to make up for taking a weekend off.
A banner in the Celtic end was unfurled that read “Fuck the Crown” while another one said “Sorry for your loss Michael Fagan”, a reference to the intruder who broke into the Queen’s Buckingham Palace bedroom in 1982.
The away fans also chanted “If you hate the Royal Family, clap your hands” during the game. There was no minute’s silence for the Queen
(For some cyber mysterious reason my post on this story has not appeared.)
A Russian deserter explaining his reasons.
“I couldn’t just drop my weapons and run away, because for a warrior that’s cowardice. Not everyone understands this, but we’re held hostage by our own patriotism,” he said.
“No matter if it breaks the law, I think Russian society should demonstrate against the war by all possible means,” he said. “Every day, lives are lost on either side, and they’re not coming back.”
It may be propaganda or it may be a genuine story.
