ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
‘There are moments in history,” Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said this week, “when the great struggle between freedom and tyranny comes down to one fight in one place, which is waged for all of humanity.”’
So that’s what it is all about ! I was wondering. The struggle between Good and Evil, perhaps even the last and final one. In other words Amaggedon as “the site or time of a final and conclusive battle between the forces of good and evil”, “the last battle between good and evil before the Day of Judgement.”
Who is this Christian Freeland? Is she a Jehovah Witness?
I looked her upon Wikipedia and the Canadian Deputy Prime Minister is not a JW but something else emerged:
“Freeland’s maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak (Ukrainian: Mykhailo Khomiak), had been a journalist before World War II. During the war in Nazi-occupied Poland and later in Nazi-occupied Austria he was chief editor of the Ukrainian antisemitic daily newspaper Krakivs’ki visti (News of Krakow) for the Nazi regime. After Chomiak’s death in 1984, John-Paul Himka, a professor of history at the University of Alberta, who was Chomiak’s son-in-law (and also Freeland’s uncle by marriage), used Chomiak’s records, including old issues of the newspaper, as the basis of several scholarly papers focused on the coverage of Soviet mass-murders of Ukrainian civilians. These papers also examined the use of these massacres as propaganda against Jews. In 2017, when Russian-affiliated websites[which?] further publicized Chomiak’s connection to Nazism, Freeland and her spokespeople responded by claiming that this was a Russian disinformation campaign during her appointment to the position of minister of foreign affairs. Her office later denied Chomiak ever collaborated with the Nazi Germany. However, reporting by The Globe and Mail showed that Freeland had known of her grandfather’s Nazi ties since at least 1996, when she helped edit a scholarly article by Himka for the Journal of Ukrainian Studies.”
Apparently her links (not just family) with Ukrainian ultranationalists in Canada are well known.
Just received a circular email from Борис (no, not that one) who seems to be a “Marxist” supporter of the Russian invasion. What did you say to him? Sounds as if it might have been a home truth or two.
“Boris Ikhlov, secretary of executive committee of Russia’ Marxist political union “Worker”, 5.3.2022
PS. Some English (or American) fool, Robin Cox, was unable to master my text and therefore did not come up with a greater stupidity than to accuse me of nationalism. He, with his zero education and chicken brains, still decided to teach me down! He did not accuse Ukrainians of fascism, who consider themselves a superior race. He did not accuse Americans of fascism who consider themselves a superior race, he accused me, who opposes American and Ukrainian fascism! In fact, this Englishman proved that he, like the whole of Great Britain, is a corrupt cattle licking Biden’s ass.
Robin Cox is not Marxist. He is not communist. He is not internationalist. He is anticommunist. He is Nazi.”Keep it up, comrade !
Why are we being told to write and say Kviv, Lviv and now Odesa instead of the long-standing and well-established English names and spellings for these places: Kiev, Lvov and Odessa?
This recalls the biblical story and may yet come to it:
“The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,” they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth.’” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.“
And if it is not Russophobia or Ukrainomania, why don’t we write and say Moskva, Warszawa or, for that matter, Roma, Lisboa or Athena?
Here is how that group interprets the Ukraine state’s defence strategy:
“Ukraine has no bright future to offer to its patriots. In his well-received speeches the Ukrainian president executes the Ukrainian defence strategy. This strategy is prepared to sacrifice everything and everyone in Ukraine for Ukraine. Assuming that it cannot win a war against Russia, the Ukrainian military strategy is to mobilise its entire society in multiple defence “waves” until the “international community” ends the conflict “on favourable terms for Ukraine” (hence the insistence on no-fly zones to draw NATO into a direct confrontation with Russia). The president’s pitch essentially is: “die for the fatherland until NATO intervenes.”
YMS, as our war games expert, does this make sense as a strategy? It does seem to be that that is their strategy, cynical and a mug’s game for those called upon to die for the Ukrainian state as it is.
This statement on the war is good too. It’s from a group that is against the so-called nation-state ( from an anti-nationalism rather than an anarchist point of view) as well as capitalism. In German they call themselves “Gegen Kapital und Nation”.
A further reminder of NATO atrocities in its 1999 bombing campaign against what was left of Yugoslavia.
Labour — the “party of NATO — was then the government in Britain.
Someone has pointed out to me that the ultimate cause of the present situation is the global capitalist system of economic competition both between capitalist enterprises and between capitalist states. The economic stakes being sources of raw materials, markets, trade routes, investment outlets, and strategic points and areas to protect these.
So, to blame just one side, as in the leftist slogan “No to NATO expansionism” is to exonerate Russia. This was why I was feeling uneasy about reaching the conclusion that the war might be NATO’s fault and so in a way exonerate Russia to some extent. But, to avoid this, is precisely why we do not support organisations like the Stop the War Coalition (of which Corbyn was once the leader) who campaign under this slogan — even though of course we do want the war to stop.
I suppose the situation is similar to the interwar period last century. The world was already dominated by America, Britain and France, so any other capitalist power wanting to challenge this such as Germany and Japan was bound to appear to be the aggressor and in fact to have to be more aggressive. But the blame them exclusively for the war exonerated the already dominant capitalist states and to take their side.
In other words, we always need to bring into any explanation the nature of the whole global capitalist system as creating the conditions for wars.
Yes, we were wrong in not expecting Russia to invade. I still don’t think that that was Russia’s intention from the start but that the massing of troops on the Ukraine border was a move to strengthening its bargaining hand.
Where we went wrong was in underestimating the West’s (ie America’s) intransigence. I thought they would back down. The fact that they didn’t suggests that it was America’s intention to do down Russia from the start.
I know this view aligns with the leftist position that the present situation is due to “NATO expansionism”, but can anyone think of another explanation?
I can’t believe how people forget history.
For instance, when NATO bombed a hospital in its bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999:
“Dragiša Mišović hospital bombing
At approximately 12:50 am local time on May 19, 1999, the University Hospital Center Dr Dragiša Mišović in Belgrade was destroyed by NATO laser-guided bombs. RTS listed the names of three patients killed. Seven soldiers of the Yugoslav army were also killed in the hospital, although their names were listed separately from those of the three patients. NATO admitted that a missile was aimed at barracks in the Dedinje district, which is close to the hospital, went astray.”The NATO politicians denouncing the Russian bombing of a hospital as a war crime are prize hypocrites.
That explains why the Russians spell it Lugansk in Roman alphabet and the Ukrainians spell it Luhansk. I hadn’t realised that the Ukrainian and Russian alphabets weren’t exactly the same. Beyond that that talk was all Greek to me.
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.
