robbo203
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Not to condone in any way the atrocities the Russian military has committed but the relentless tide of hysterical pro-Ukrainian propaganda in my newsfeed has surely plumbed new depths of hypocrisy and double talk. Here’s the latest: “Russian army ‘writing itself into world history as most barbaric and inhumane'”
I mean, come on. I would have thought the scale of what the American military did in Iraq surpasses what is happening in Ukraine by a wide margin. And what about the bombardment by Ukrainian forces of civilian targets in Donbas since 2014? What is the figure? 8000 dead or something like that? But barely a word from our morally challenged western media
Yes I agree with Alan – it is worth a try contacting Brand to entice him into a response, We have nothing to lose
Incidentally what happened about contacting that free-market libertarian in America who has criticised the SPGB?
Is he contactable? I am wondering what are the prospects of holding some sort of discussion meeting with the guy
“Here’s another way to be selfish. To want socialism.”
Hhhhmm, Yes and No
I think it is a mixture of BOTH egoistic and altruistic values that is called for. Otherwise, we fall into the mindset of bourgeois individualism. Class solidarity requires a measure of altruistic feeling towards our fellow workers
“Took only two minutes for me to be suspended from Facebook after posting this link.
Out of sight, out of mind.”I am just gobsmacked. What reason did FB give? It’s absolutely ludicrous. New Scientist is a fairly reputable mainstream scientific journal is it not?
Putin’s popularity is apparently on the rise in Russia but, one wonders, for how much longer?
Some interesting background info on why the Russian military campaign seems to be stalling
“Rich Russians of London”
This is another quite useful piece on the extent of Nazi influence in Ukraine
Concerning the War in Ukraine: No Love For Putin; No Guns For Nazis
“The Ukrainian military also reported Russian “disobedience” in the Okhtyrka district in the north east of Ukraine, where it said 300 Russian servicemen are refusing to carry out attacks.”
The position of huge swathes of the Left (with a few honourable exceptions), taking sides in support of either the Russian state or the Ukrainian state, bears comparison with what happened in the First World War when the Second International crumbled under the impact of toxic nationalist sentiments and when even lip service to revolutionary socialism was quietly abandoned thereafter. Yet again the disease of nationalism dressed up as the so-called struggle against “anti-imperialism” has claimed more victims.
What did Marx say about History repeating itself, “first as tragedy, second as farce”?
“You ask “Who cares which parasitic class claims to own which patch of dirt?” I imagine the Ukraine workers fighting against Russians don’t give a damn. And I can’t imagine that they are consciously fighting for what you call “the nation state of Ukraine”. Surely they are fighting to defend their own “patch of dirt” because it’s where they live, in their houses, where their children go to school, where their parents, aunties and uncles and friends live, and like all normal people they don’t like someone coming along and blowing it all up and threatening to rule over them”
LOL PGB
You have to have your head truly stuck in the clouds to have scribbled this utter tripe. Those Ukrainian workers you refer to have already got somebody ruling over them now. Its called the Ukrainian capitalist state. That is not going to disappear by them taking up arms to fight someone else “threatening to rule over them”. In any case, pray, do tell us – how do you imagine they are going to defend their patch of dirt and prevent the Russian army from blowing it all up by taking up arms against that army in the name of so-called national liberation? That is the one thing that will surely guarantee that their “patch of dirt” will be blown up and that their lives will be destroyed, as we are seeing right now
The least bad option that Ukrainian workers can take is to simply refuse to engage in this capitalist conflict (which is what it is despite your absurd denials) and, if this is not possible because of conscription, to seek to leave the country. There is no point in being a dead hero for a dud cause. By the same token, the socialist advice to Russian soldiers would be to desert the Russian military in droves or rebel and refuse to fight (there are historical precedents for this). Workers on both sides need to be encouraged to see that there is absolutely no reason for them to fight each other for a cause that is not theirs
What you are advocating stands directly in the way of this happening. The position you are effectively advocating whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, is a pro-capitalist and pro-nationalist one. There is no way you can separate in de facto terms workers taking up arms supposedly to defend their patch of dirt from supporting and aiding and abetting the corrupt plutocratic authoritarian state of Zelensky. Worse still what you are advocating will result in the unnecessary and criminal slaughter of far more workers – Ukrainian and Russian – than would otherwise be the case.
You are effectively preventing the only sane and humane response to this tragic situation which is precisely the one outlined by the SPGB and a few others. You should be ashamed of yourself
