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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.
Yes the current wave of Russophobia and Ukrainomania is quite irrational. But nobody minds the kleptocrats from the Gulf. Their money is ok and has been for half a century. And they are bigger autocrats than Putin. They are on “our” side, so they can keep their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets, their football clubs, and other “ill-gotten gains”. The hypocrisy of the US-led NATO bloc knows no bounds.
A report from the Arab channel Al Mayadeen alleging that the Azov battalion is preventing civilians from leaving Mariupol by breaking the ceasefires and that it has clashed with the regular Ukrainian army there. Might not be at all that reliable as Al Mayadeen is said to be close to Hezbollah. Looks like Russian disinformation but still something to add to the file.
And then the same, but with Georgia, and a demand that it promise never to join NATO.
Russia has already been there, done that.
Ukraine is not willing to compromise on its territorial integrity in talks with Russia but is open to discussing “non-Nato models” for its future, one of its negotiators told Fox News.
Ukraine has pursued membership of the European Union and Nato, both opposed by Moscow. Vladimir Putin has cited Ukraine’s potential membership of Nato as evidence of what he portrays as Nato aggression toward Russia.
“The response that we are getting from the Nato countries is that they are not ready to even discuss having us in Nato, not for the next period of five or 10 years,” negotiator David Arakhamia said in remarks published by Fox News late on Saturday.
“We are ready to discuss some non-Nato models. For example, there could be direct guarantees by different countries like the US, China, UK, maybe Germany and France. We are open to discussing such things in a broader circle, not only in bilateral discussions with Russia but also with other partners.”Well, well. Looks as if Russia might get its way, though Arakhamia might end up being killed mysteriously like that other member of the Ukraine negotiating team.
