ALB
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It is really upsetting what is happening to those who cannot leave Mariupol, because it is so unnecessary for it to continue. But their fate cannot be blamed entirely on the besieging Russian forces. The civil administration there and the defending forces must share responsibility. When it became clear a week or so ago that the military position was hopeless they could have declared Mariupol “an open city”. See the examples here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_city
Instead what we are seeing is the Charge of the Azov Brigade with the remaining civilian population in front of them. It’s not magnificent but it is war.
I am not sure it would be a good idea to let Boris know. It might give him the idea of banning all Remain parties on the grounds that they are traitors and collaborators with the EU against British “freedom”.
Meanwhile more Ukrainian style democracy:
“On Sunday, the Ukrainian leader signed a decree that aims to unite all national TV channels into one platform, citing the importance of a “unified information policy” under martial law.”
I don’t think that Putin has gone so far as banning opposition parties represented in Parliament. Ok, he has prevented some standing for parliament but then at least 4 parties, including the “Communist” Party of Ukraine, had already been banned in Ukraine.
It would be interesting to get the full list of the additional 11 parties that the Zelensky regime has just banned.
Found the list here:
https://www.ukrinform.net/amp/rubric-polytics/3434673-nsdc-bans-prorussian-parties-in-ukraine.html
Opposition Platform – For Life, Sharij’s Party, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, Derzhava, “Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Socialists, and Volodymyr Saldo’s Bloc.
Democracy Ukrainian style:
Zelenskyy suspends parties with Russian links
Ukraine’s president has ordered to suspend the activities of 11 political parties with links to Russia.
The largest of them is the Opposition Platform for Life, which has 44 out of 450 seats in the country’s parliament. The party is led by Viktor Medvedchuk, who has friendly ties with Putin, who is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.
Also on the list is the Nashi (Ours) party led by Yevheniy Murayev.
“Given a large-scale war unleashed by the Russian Federation and links between it and some political structures, the activities of a number of political parties is suspended for the period of the martial law,” Zelenskyy said, adding that “activities by politicians aimed at discord and collaboration will not succeed.”
Killman ! That does seem a not inappropriate misspelling in the circumstances.
At least he only called you an appeaser and not a fascifist as Orwell would have. He just doesn’t get it and can’t see the difference between a state and its subjects.
The so-called “right to national self-determination” is an incoherent concept as it assumes the pre-existence of a “nation” when whether nations exist and what they might be is precisely the point at issue. In practice is the “right” of a particular grouping of capitalists to have their own state. Why should socialists support that?
The hunt for “traitors” in Ukraine is on, including appeals to inform on neighbours for names to be passed on to the secret police:
Boris (he needs to change that name to its Ukrainian equivalent, Barys or whatever it is) the Buffoon has just revealed what he thinks the “freedom” is that we are told the Ukrainian state is fighting for:
“In his speech to the Conservative spring conference in Blackpool, Johnson said it is the “instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom”, with the Brexit vote a “famous recent example”.“
In their next phone call he needs to warn Zelensky not to apply to join the EU as that would be to lose its “freedom” to a nasty European super-state. Putin might well second that emotion.
But of course nobody takes seriously what he says any more than they do the Foreign Secretary, Liz la Gaffe, who can’t disguise her hope that the peace talks with Russia fail so that Ukraine can fight Russia to the last Ukrainian with NATO-supplied weapons.
A warning on where the Western capitalist block pumping weapons into Ukraine could lead:
After the war is over and Russian troops withdraw from most of Ukraine there will a rich vein of anti-Russian feelings that Ukrainian ultra-nationalists will be able to exploit.
But do you think that Biden is not really a religious believer either but just a cynic whose real religion is American greatness? In other words, is not possible to be a genuine religious believer and the head of a capitalist state? Couldn’t Putin really be a religious nutter?
So the Bolsheviks succeeded in neither clearing the capitalists from the Earth nor gods from the skies.
More on Putin’s religion and his belief in “Holy Russia” here:
The breakaway Ukrainian Orthodox Church also (of course) claims descent from Vladimir the Rus who converted all his subjects to Christianity in Kiev. Only they call him Volodymyr.
Incidentally, as Zelensky’s mother tongue is said Russian his real name will be Vladimir. At least he’s probably an atheist not a religious nutter like Putin seems to be.
Good point, James, about Warren Buffet a
referring to “class warfare”. It is clear that he was using “war” in the metaphorical sense just as we do in Clause 8 of our Declaration of Principles when we talk of “waging war” on other political parties.When used on its own I don’t think people do interpret “class war” as necessarily implying armed conflict. The trouble is when it is combined in a slogan in which it is associated with “war” in the literal sense, as in “the only good war is the class war” and “no war but the class war”.
I know that in some cases this intended as a sort of pun, a play on the two different usages of the word “war”. But not in all cases. Some do mean that “the only good armed conflict is the armed conflict between classes.” In any event, it would be very odd to say “No armed conflict but the political and economic struggle of the working class against the capitalist class”.
So, the conclusion is, I suppose, that it’s ok to use “class war” on its own but not together with “war” in the sense of armed conflict.
I notice that Tony Blair is not amongst those joining the “Hang the Kaiser brigade. A wise move by someone who, with President Bush, is widely regarded as a war criminal himself for having started the Iraq War and for the atrocities committed there by British and American troops.
There is nothing like a war for turning wishy-washy liberals into vengeful jingos.
In that article on the arrest of the Kononovich brothers in the Peoples Voice which is the organ of the American “Communist” Party there is an interesting passage:
“After the Soviet Union fell apart in 1990-91, the Ukrainian government abandoned the collective farm system that had defined socialist agriculture in the USSR. The former collectively-owned land was distributed among the members of the farms, however, and bans on further sales were put in place to protect small farmers from being swallowed up by corporate industrial giants.
The Zelensky government reversed that longstanding policy in 2019, leading to fears that Ukrainian farmland—which takes up as much space as France and Germany combined—would be gobbled up by foreign agribusiness giants.”This looks like opening the way for new cohort of oligarchs, Western as well as Ukrainian.
Putin is an Orthodox Christian with the mentality of old-fashioned Panslavist. In fact he is an old-fashioned Panslavist who regards the liberal West as corrupt and decadent. The trouble is that some leftists still seem to think that Russia is the land of international socialism which it hasn’t even (falsely) claimed to be for over 30 years.
