ALB
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Now they are saying that only 3 were killed in that hit on the hospital in Mariupol. No babies discovered under the rouble.
This looks like the babies on bayonets moment. Note how the report uses the words “says” and “claims” as if it does not really believe what Zelenksky says. In fact his claim seems to be contradicted by the regional Governor who says only that 17 people were injured. Today other reports are saying that there were no deaths. Clearly a maternity hospital was hit but can’t have been completely reduced to rubble. Otherwise there would be hundreds of deaths.
Extreme scepticism would seem to be in order.
Revealing news item in today’s Times
“RT website faces ban
Ministers are considering blocking RT’s website in Britain amidst a surge in traffic … Daily visits to RT.com hit nearly eight million in February, up 95 per cent on last year.”So the government wants to ban an off-message website because too many people are looking at it. Most will just be people looking for more information on what going on so they can inform their own opinion or maybe just want to know what the other side is saying. The government, apparently, sees them as naives who are going to be misled by Russian state propaganda and must be protected from this and have access only to its own propaganda. Talk about the nanny state. Or a flawed democratic state.
NATO to give warplanes to Poland, so Poland can pass them on to Ukraine, which will bring Russian retaliation on Poland, a NATO member.
This is another false lead. The truth seems to be the exact opposite. Poland to give planes to NATO so that NATO can pass them on to Ukraine. To which the response has been: no thanks, we don’t want to provoke a Third World War.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/08/poland-mig-29-jets-us-ukraine
Incidentally, this shows that, like it or not, having nuclear weapons is a deterrent. If Russia didn’t have them then NATO wouldn’t have had any qualms about attacking. No wonder other capitalist states want to acquire nuclear weapons and, in increasing numbers, probably will — it’s Theodore Roosevelt’s big stick. Or, like it or not again, join a military alliance like NATO even if that means having to follow the lead of the state that holds the big stick. It’s logical under capitalism. What a crazy system.
Finland to join NATO.
As might be expected, the Daily Excess got it wrong. What the Finnish President was suggesting was not a speedy decision to join NATO but a speedy debate on the pros and cons of doing this.
Meanwhile the Swedish prime minister has rejected Sweden joining.
Mironova Street is in the city of Donetsk itself.. Also the the photo is from TASS, the Russian news agency.
Looking for something else I came across a revealing mistake. It is in this article. Scroll down and you will see a photo of a “badly damaged residential building” after a shelling attack. The idea was presumably to show the result of Russian forces targetting a residential area. They are indeed shelling such areas (and how), whether intentionally or as “collateral damage”. But look at the address: Mironova Street in Donetsk. But that means it is in one of the breakaway republics. So the residential area would have been shelled by Ukrainian forces. Maybe even with weapons supplied by NATO.
Then there’s the 1969 film Z about a murdered pro-democracy Greek politician. The title doesn’t work well in British English as zee the American way of pronouncing zed means “he lives” in Greek.
Incidentally, at that time Greece was a military dictatorship but that was no problem for NATO of which Greece was a member. Which confirms that NATO was not (and still is not) about defending democracy. It’s always been about opposing Russia, whether allegedly communist (as when it was the USSR) or avowedly capitalist) as now.
Boris Johnson has just let slip that it’s all about spheres of influence, not “freedom” or “democracy”.
Here’s a joke. The International Court of Justice has been asked to make an order telling Russia to stop its invasion of Ukraine.
If the judges want to avoid making a laughing stock of themselves they should find some way to avoid making such an order. They should realise that under capitalism might is right in relations between capitalist states. On the other hand, perhaps they should make an ruling ordering Russia to stop as it will be ignored, so demonstrating to the world that under capitalism might is right. And that they are useless bunch of pettifogging logic-choppers.
Marx seems to have a bit of a South African accent. I suppose he might have inherited that from his mother who came from Holland.
Amnesty international accuses Ukraine a war crime in exposing Russian POWS to public curiosity.
According to the UNHCR map here 47,800 refugees have gone to Russia (presumably not including those from the Donbas republics?), which is about the same as have gone to Rumania. And 357 to Belorussia. I suppose these are the numbers the UNCHR registers or has reported to it.
I don’t know if everyone will be able to watch this but it looks as if the Indian media might be where to find reasonably balanced reporting on the war. At least you won’t hear it said that what has happened was “unprovoked” and the “sole responsibility” of Russia as the pro-NATO politicians are always claiming. Both sides are to blame and a plague on both of them.
It’s capitalism and its built-in clashes between states over markets, sources of raw materials, trade routes and investment outlets and spheres of influence to protect them that is the ultimate cause of all wars. It’s the system, stupid.
Not all Ukrainians are the fanatical nationalists we are told they are:
“Ukrainian men try to escape country in car boots
Men have hidden in the boots of cars and jumped on trains in desperate attempts to flee Ukraine, the country’s ministry of internal affairs has said.
In its latest update, the ministry said some men had also pretended to be foreigners or tried to bribe border guards.
Ukrainian men of fighting age are currently not allowed to leave the country and are being strongly encouraged to fight against Russian forces.
One man was discovered in the boot of his wife’s Lexus at a border checkpoint in Luzhanka on the Hungary-Ukraine border.
Another was found hiding among possessions in the boot of a Mitsubishi car.
The man had then tried to pay the border guards,
Another man jumped on a train and tried to cross the border without passing border control, the ministry said.”Good luck to them but I hate to think what the “Ministry of Internal Affairs”will be doing to those they caught.
