robbo203
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“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.
Those exploding pagers…
Unnamed US and Israeli officials told Axios that the explosions were initially planned as the opening move in an “all-out” offensive against Hezbollah. But in recent days Israel became concerned Hezbollah had become aware of the plan – so they were detonated early.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz04m913m49o
and the possible repercussions…
People here will continue to support UK policy.
Some people will but I have noticed quite a lot of other people don’t, on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. You notice connections being made between, for example, between the apparent ease with which the UK government finds itself able to generously support the authoritarian Zelensky regime in the war against the authoritarian Putin regime but when it comes to providing UK pensioners with the traditional heating allowance suddenly the money has mysteriously run out and the state coffers are empty. Flag-waving nationalist loonies might not think much about the war possibly escalating into a nuclear conflict but a lot of people are worried and I think this does act as a kind of constraint on policy as well – perhaps not so much in the case of the sociopathic nutjobs that run the so-called Labour Party in the UK but certainly in Washington where decisions carry greater weight
“In 2017 Labour said 4,000 pensioners would die if the universal winter fuel allowance was scrapped & Angela Eagle said such a move by the Tories would be outrageous
Eagle is now a govt minister and says its needs to be scrapped because the economic situation is different”
