robbo203
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A quite interesting and informative article by Chris Hedges on the role of the media in the current conflict
https://x.com/chrislynnhedges/status/1850217151925465400?s=43&t=APE_TKXnYnrsmOJtpqdVfA
“Israel´s War on Journalism
There are some 4,000 foreign reporters accredited in Israel to cover the war. They stay in luxury hotels. They go on dog and pony shows orchestrated by the Israeli military. They can, on rare occasions, be escorted by Israeli soldiers on lightning visits to Gaza, where they are shown alleged weapons caches or tunnels the military says are used by Hamas. They dutifully attend daily press conferences. They are given off-the-record briefings by senior Israeli officials who feed them information that often turns out to be untrue. They are Israel’s unwitting and sometimes witting propagandists, stenographers for the architects of apartheid and genocide, hotel room warriors. Bertolt Brecht acidly called them the spokesmen of the spokesmen.
And how many foreign reporters are there in Gaza? None.”TM
I don’t think it was suggested “we don’t need people to read in order for them to make socialism”, only that we don’t necessarily depend on physical books for that to happen. I would imagine that most people these days acquire the bulk of their information over the internet. How reliable that information is is another matter.
I like books myself but I don’t think we should get too hung about them. I have small library of them but I find when researching stuff for articles etc the great bulk of the information comes via the internet in the form of pdf articles, etc
Personally, I think there was provocation on both sides if we are getting into the game of allocating blame which is not really what we socialists are into. Otherwise, we would be little different from those leftists who say the enemy is imperialism – specifically, American imperialism – and that we are morally obliged to stand up for whatever regime is under assault from said American imperialism.
There was certainly some provocation on the NATO/Ukraine side in the form of the Eastward expansion of NATO after Gorbachev dissolved the Warsaw Pact. I’ve never really understood the reason for this expansion. You would have thought the appropriate response to the dissolution of the Warsaw pact would have been the dissolution of NATO but it didn’t happen. The Russians were clearly worried about NATO expansion in the same way that the Americans were worried about nuclear missiles being sent to Cuba all those years ago. Whats sauce for the goose….
Then there was Donbas. This region broke away from Ukraine after the CIA-backed Maidan coup – another provocation – that toppled the government there. Donbas did not want to remain under the new, clearly Russophobic, regime which, with the support of fascist elements, started shelling cities in Donbas from 2014 onwards. Thousands of civilians lost their lives in Donbas before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
As I understand it – correct me if I am wrong – Russia´s initial response was not to get directly involved. It wanted Donbas to be a kind of semi-autonomous region within Ukraine with guaranteed language rights etc. The Minsk agreements were supposed to resolve the situation there but they did not hold up. The spark that supposedly set off the Russian invasion was what appeared to be a massive build-up of Ukrainian forces on the border with Donbas in preparation for a large-scale invasion and in contravention of the Minsk agreement
That said, the way in which the Russian regime responded to these events demonstrates that it was no less culpable. The so-called special military operation began with an attempt to reach Kyiv and presumably decapitate the regime there (and “denazify” it, as the propaganda put it, although these also hardened fascists fighting on the Russian side). From Russia´s point of view, I would argue making a beeline to Kyiv was an incredibly stupid blunder as it did indeed allow the Ukrainian side to take the high moral ground by describing this as an unprovoked invasion. From that point of view, it would have been better had they just entered into Donbas and supported the separatists there.
But of course, this is to look at the conflict from what might be called a capitalist perspective which indulges such fanciful notions as the “just war” or “unprovoked aggression” and where everything is analysed in simplistic black or white terms by both sides in any conflict. From such a perspective the problem is never capitalism itself but, as socialists, we beg to differ
A painting by this geezer. Quite clever I thought….
It says on FB
“Paweł Kuczyński (Poland), a graduate of the Fine Arts Academy in Poznań, has been awarded more than 140 prizes and distinctions for creating thought-provoking illustrations that comment on social, economic, and political issues through satire.”
“I just don’t get why some people are prepared to cast far and wide for arguments to somehow justify or at least play down the Hamas attack of 7 October, which has also proved disastrous for Palestinian workers.”
——————————————-The point of citing evidence that the Israeli regime very clearly lied through its teeth when it came to accounting for what happened on Oct 7 is not to “justify” the Hamas attack. I do not know how you could have possibly drawn such a conclusion. I no more support Hamas or Hezbollah than you and fully agree that Oct 7 turned out to be a disaster for Palestinian workers….
No, the point in citing such evidence is to illustrate and underline the extent to which this vile racist regime of Israel (that believes it is the land of “God´s chosen people” and that Palestinians are animals to be culled) will go to promote and justify its murderous policies of butchering other people in the repulsive cause of zionist nationalism. Over 20,000 Palestinian kids have so far been murdered by this regime in Gaza. Are we supposed to condone this by merely saying it wouldn’t have happened had Oct 7 not happened?
Oct 7 was not the start of the conflict – merely a moment in an ongoing conflict going back decades. Are we to remain silent about the fact that Gaza had been turned into an open-air concentration camp or that Palestinians in the West Bank have found themselves turfed out of the homes they had lived in for generations, which homes were subsequently bulldozed by racist thugs for the purpose of expanding Israeli settlements there? I sincerely hope not!
The evidence is now pretty convincing that the Israeli regime embarked on a massive campaign of deliberate disinformation to justify its wholly disproportionate and asymmetrical use of military force to raze Gaza to the ground, killing tens of thousands of innocent human beings in the process. Remember the lurid tales of Hamas killing 40 babies? It turns out it was all lies. It now also turns out that it was the Israeli military itself that killed hundreds of Israeli citizens itself and then blamed Hamas for their deaths.
That is not to excuse what Hamas did but, at the same time, we cannot in all honesty stand by and allow such lies to go unchallenged and be used for the purpose of promoting mass murder. Most of the mainstream media went along with the regime’s outrageous narrative and are therefore complicit in its criminal acts. As socialists, we surely cannot possibly do the same
The Hannibal Directive – “How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October”
https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hundreds-its-own-people-7-october/49216
Also this
The section description was written by the same moderator. The Socialist Standard wouldn’t advertise their meetings, unless the SPGB was involved, and I don’t see why this forum should be different.
_____________________________But the forum IS different, surely – almost by definition- I don’t really see the problem with ICC advertising meetings here. As DJP says it has benefits to us as well
BBC bias in reporting on events in Lebanon…
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/bbc-lebanon-israel-reporting-weaponising-crimes-pagers
Another Jonathan Cook article
“But what comes next, as with what came before, will be entirely predictable. Violence doesn’t beget calm, it begets more violence. Israel knows that. Our leaders know that. But they opened the gates of hell anyway.”
https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/in-killing-nasrallah-israel-chose
Lying politicians—-
Blinken Lied To Congress About Israeli War Crimes Because He Knows He’ll Get Away With It
The above has a quotable quote, incidentally. In 1902, the renowned attorney Clarence Darrow said the following in a speech to inmates at the Cook County Jail in Chicago:
“Those men who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing justice, not the slightest in the world.”
If nuclear weapons are used – and it is a big “if” – they will probably only be tactical nuclear weapons and confined to Ukraine (a non-NATO country). I can’t imagine the Russian regime being so foolish as to send a strategic nuclear missile to say, the UK, (which seems to be the most aggressive of the NATO countries) and thereby risking a NATO-wide response. That would be catastrophic for both sides
Translation from Russian
“Britain is currently the main actor in the escalation of our war. The United States is immersed in the electoral process. Trump’s victory risks leading to a total revision of the strategy towards Russia and Ukraine. That is why the main player in the West today is London.
The invasion of the Kursk region, early attempts to land in Crimea, strikes deep into Russia are typical of the British, who always try to achieve military results through information and political methods. The situation at the front is more than sad for us. By the end of the year, we will reach a complete deadlock in Donbass. That is why the British decided to compensate for the failures by “transferring the war” to Russia for escalation.Russia managed to continue the offensive without declaring mobilization, which is why Bankova is now looking for formats to transform the Kursk operation so that the Kremlin is forced to do so.
However, the current stage will not end there. We should expect strikes with Western weapons deep into the Russian Federation. The goal is to provoke protests and a collapse of Putin’s ratings.
This is the final chord before the negotiating track. Next year, we should not expect new counter-offensives by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. There are no material, human or moral resources for this. Therefore, until the end of the year, the West will try to negotiate the most advantageous positions for itself. Who will receive the response for the strikes on Russia? Of course, we will. After all, it will not be Paris and London that will be struck…
On brink of nuclear war.
…………………
It might appear so but it is much more likely just sabre rattling. After all, it does seem very much like Russia is winning the war in Ukraine and will soon achieve the objective of taking the whole of Donbas before focusing on Kherson and maybe Odesa. Would they jeopardise this by engaging in a nuclear exchange with NATO? More likely they will just absorb a few missiles and plough on. If they are going to use nuclear missiles probably Ukraine itself will be the first target. Ukraine, not being a member of NATO, how can NARO respond in kind? In the meantime, the destruction caused will serve as a warning to NATO. I don’t think this is likely, though, and despite the warmongering talk I don’t think the EU is keen to have a nuclear exchange with Russia (we already know that from previous posts in this thread)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump Jr:
“At a time when American leaders should be focused on finding a diplomatic off-ramp to a war that should never have been allowed to take place, the Biden-Harris administration is instead pursuing a policy that Russia says it will interpret as an act of war. In the words of Vladimir Putin, long-range strikes in Russia “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia.
Some American analysts believe Putin is bluffing, and favor calling his bluff. As the Times reported, “‘Easing the restrictions on Western weapons will not cause Moscow to escalate,’17 former ambassadors and generals wrote in a letter to the administration this week. ‘We know this because Ukraine is already striking territory Russia considers its own — including Crimea and Kursk — with these weapons and Moscow’s response remains unchanged.’”
These analysts are mistaking restraint for weakness. In essence, they are advocating a strategy of brinksmanship. Each escalation — from HIMARS to cluster munitions to Abrams tanks to F-16s to ATACMS — draws the world closer to the brink of Armageddon. Their logic seems to be that if you goad a bear five times and it doesn’t respond, it is safe to goad him even harder a sixth time.
