alanjjohnstone
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
You ask a hard question
Wez, I think you know the timeline of the Holocaust.
Death camps did not exist in 1939.
There is the belief that the extermination of mentally handicapped, the extremist part of the globally accepted eugenic programme, of the 1930s, was the beginning.
There is a belief that the war atrocities committed on the Eastern Front created the conditions where a more systematic genocide became possible.
Mass killings, mostly by deliberate neglect took place against the millions of Russian POWs.
The Wannsee Conference that rubber-stamped the extermination policy was January 1942.
Did the allies treat the existence of the death camps when they became informed of details as reasons to shift gears in the war and re-prioritize? Not at all.
Has the slaughter and genocide of any peoples affected political positions? Did Rwanda bring any intervention?
In an ideal world such as socialism, if any such mass killings occurred, solidarity would urge us to halt it, even with force. We are not pacifists. Peacefully if possible, violently if necessary, is the old Chartist slogan we have adopted.
But by participating as supporters of the war, would we have supported the Second World War strategy of ending the war with the bombing of German cities and condoning the deaths of German civilians?
It is a question asked also by those who witnessed Japanese cruelty of occupied countries and the inhumane treatment of prisoners. Could we approve of the two atomic bombs?
Even with what we know now I hesitate to justify the war and without the 20-20 hindsight our members face during the war, I cannot think they could be blamed for the stance they made.
How convenient it is to avoid the term war. In Northern Ireland, they called the civil war there, “The Troubles”
TS, this is a 146-page discussion thread that began before the actual invasion. As a latecomer, I don’t expect you to be aware of the details of the long debate that has been conducted before posting your diatribe.
There were already 36 pages of debate on the various pretexts for war even before the actual invasion took place.
Until it actually began, the consensus was the war would not break out and would be settled by diplomacy.
How wrong most of us were.
And we all admit that miscalculation.
But I suppose you with your prophetic powers of prediction could foretell in advance what would happen in the future. Because you are still claiming a special insight into the course of the war.
Contributors, including myself, have been concerned to expose the war-mongers in the West who pushed Ukraine into rejecting peace negotiations and still pressure its leaders into not making any compromises or concessions.
The position held now by ourselves is to advocate for an immediate end of hostilities, even if it does mean Ukraine ceding its sovereignty over the territory now occupied by Russian troops.
And yes we did take a stand in WW2 against fighting Nazis, as did the Communist Party, at least up to 1941 and Barbarossa. We, however, remained consistent in opposing the war
I note that the UK MOD is disputing Putin’s claim that since the embargo was lifted only 60,000 tons of grain has gone to developing countries.
Not true the MOD says. Rather just 30% of the grain has gone to low-mid income countries that are in desperate need of food.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 11 September 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/XE7QGQnZeh
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/88KnwEqDNj
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) September 11, 2022
According to the UN’s Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) – 100 outbound ships have so far left Ukraine, carrying more than 2.3 million tonnes of grain. The JCC stated that 36% of this had gone to EU countries, while 30% of the cargo has so far gone to low- and lower-middle-income countries.
17% reached African countries; (10%), Sudan (3%), Kenya (2%), Somalia (1%) and Djibouti (1%).
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/putin-says-nearly-ukraines-grain-120906213.html
And that is supposed to be good news according to the British MOD
Perhaps anyone who believes that the invasion cannot be called a war but a “special military operation” would have believed Truman’s description that the Korean War was simply a “police action”.
I linked to it, not for the reason that the analysis of why it began is correct. I’m a socialist, he is not so we would not share the same understanding of the causes of any war.
But that it demonstrates that the invasion and the ensuing war does not receive the universal support of the Russian people. That there exists an anti-war sentiment. How strong or popular it is, I really have no idea but it exists and as a socialist, I will do my best to encourage it.
I imagine like any country at war, the majority will favor their own military, for it is their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers who are in danger of being killed by the enemy, after all. Also, as always in war (oops, sorry, SMO), their media will be promoting pro-war feelings of nationalism and patriotism.
I will do my best, no matter how little it might be, to counter-act state propaganda – from both warring sides.
So my motive is similar to Yuferyev’s, as expressed in the article, when he said the petition is really about rallying Russians who are just as concerned as them. “We want to show them that there are many of us, who are against what is going on.”
Tallaght stadium in Dublin tonight pic.twitter.com/FhHtoVGT1L
— Dublin Bhoy (@dublincelticfan) September 8, 2022
Councillors in Smolninskoye, a district of St. Petersburg, the city where Vladimir Putin was born, have accused the Russian president of treason.
https://www.dw.com/en/st-petersburg-district-councilors-accuse-putin-of-treason/a-63079503
On Sept. 7, they petitioned the Russian parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, to remove President Putin from office over the war on Ukraine.
It mentions four aspects in particular: The destruction of combat-ready Russian army units, the death and injury of young, easily employable Russian citizens, harm to the Russian economy, and the expansion of NATO upon the outbreak of the war, alongside the equipping of Ukrainian forces with modern Western military kit, which actually undermines the objective of “demilitarizing” the country anyway.
“We do not see NATO expansion as a direct threat to Russia, but we are trying to appeal to different target groups [within Russia] with different arguments, to convince them that this whole thing has to end,” says Yuferyev.
Just to comment on the Royal apologists statistics,
Polling ahead of the celebrations for the country’s first-ever platinum jubilee earlier this year suggested that 62% of Britons said they supported the monarchy.
A decade earlier, however, the same polling company – YouGov – reported that figure was 11 points higher, at 73%.
YouGov polling also revealed that almost a quarter – 22% – of people in the UK now support abolishing the monarchy, a pronounced increase from a decade earlier.Moderator Word of Caution
This is a public open forum and entitles anyone to comment or question or challenge
Forum Rules
7. You are free to express your views candidly and forcefully provided you remain civil. Do not use the forums to send abuse, threats, personal insults or attacks, or purposely inflammatory remarks (trolling). Do not respond to such messages.
Ukraine – the class struggle continues report
https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-09-10/a-report-on-socio-economic-unrest-in-ukraine
US tv presenter accuses British historian of whitewashing colonialism
Hey, TS, I found your long-lost son ;-p
Could be with an upcoming English translation, his publishers may bring him to the UK on a book tour
If so, be good if he could be coaxed to give another talk but making it a bigger occasion so as to attract the eco-audience.
Degrowth is one of those concepts that we accept and reject, depending on what is meant by it.
As I said on Discord last night I very much hold with a cornucopia vision of socialism but at the same time critical of consumerism and the waste in capitalism in general
What has Russia got to hide by refusing access?
Matilda Bogner told a Geneva news briefing that U.N. monitors had unimpeded access to Ukrainian facilities and had documented incidents of torture and ill-treatment of POWs by Ukraine which may also amount to war crimes.
“The Russian Federation has not provided access to prisoners of war held on its territory or in territory under its occupation…,” Bogner said. “This is all the more worrying since we have documented that prisoners of war in the power of the Russian Federation and held by the Russian Federation’s armed forces or by affiliated armed groups have suffered torture and ill-treatment.”
In response to a question about the Russian-held prisoners she stated, “In terms of the treatment of prisoners of war, certainly some of the issues could rise to being war crimes – issues of torture and ill treatment of prisoners of war,”But can somebody clarify the role of the Red Cross and Geneva Conventions regarding POWs? Isn’t granting ICRC access to POWs an obligation of parties to conflict under the Geneva Conventions?
“The Third Geneva Convention grants the ICRC the right to go wherever POWs are held and we shall also have full liberty to choose the places we wish to visit. Specifically, this means that we have a legal right to speak to POWs repeatedly and in private to understand how they are being treated and to visit all facilities where they are being interned”Once again it is our view that there should be a plague on both houses and that neither side is deserving of the blood being spilt by working people nor the sacrifice being made by the rest of the world.
We don’t indulge in false equivalency. We don’t whitewash one side’s atrocities.
The Queens wealth
https://www.france24.com/en/uk/20220909-where-did-the-queen-s-fortune-come-from
We will never know as in the case of her husband, Philip, her will won’t be made public
The UN’s human rights mission in Ukraine has said both Russian and Ukrainian forces have abused prisoners of war.
