Ukraine

[Frances_iom]

I can only imagine what would have happened if Johnson had been PM in 1944:.

well you may get the equivalent soon as WW3 breaks out - don't forget Churchill for all he is lauded for his WW2 role was dumped postwar as people recalled his behaviour in the 30s (+ also his disastrous campaign in WW1). Putin has just demonstrated his regard for the UN secretary general by lobbing a couple of missiles towards him and his hosts.

[muzzer]

Johnson hasn’t ‘won’ anything yet. Imagine what he could blunder into. In fact, don’t.

[Maclintick]

It was an uncontroversial adage in my student days to discount politicians' rhetoric and focus on what they actually did - "don't listen to what they say, just watch what they do ". The only way to understand Johnson is to accept that everything he does, and I mean everything, has no integrity in terms of performing his public office or rôle, but is calculated to assist his political survival - everything else is collateral, from Londoners who witnessed the "party of law and order" slashing police numbers on his watch as mayor, and lobbing council tax payers' money to his latest squeeze, to the families of care home residents during the pandemic.

[muzzer]

Yes, agreed. And it gives him a platform to act internationally. Dangerously.

[Ein Heldenleben]

well you may get the equivalent soon as WW3 breaks out - don't forget Churchill for all he is lauded for his WW2 role was dumped postwar as people recalled his behaviour in the 30s (+ also his disastrous campaign in WW1). Putin has just demonstrated his regard for the UN secretary general by lobbing a couple of missiles towards him and his hosts.

I think the “dumping” of Churchill was more to do with the recognition that Conservative governments of the thirties has failed not only to prevent the rise of Hitler but had also not addressed most of the social and welfare justice issues thrown up by the slump. Just as after WW1 people thought there had to be a new social settlement and few believed Churchill had much interest in implementing that. His attempt to portray the Labour Party of Attlee and Cripps as crypto- communists backfired. Britain now is unrecognisable from the Britain of the thirties. A welfare state, the NHS , half the young going on to university , the quality and range of primary and secondary education…

[Serial_Apologist]

Britain now is unrecognisable from the Britain of the thirties. A welfare state, the NHS , half the young going on to university , the quality and range of primary and secondary education…

But for how long?!

Capitalism is in crisis - not permanent, because somebody always pays to get it back in equilibrium; and while the capitalist class goes about rationalising its crisis of profitability, we know who this has to be because it's happened time and time again. Consumerism was never a "natural" state for capitalism which makes its wealth on the back of labour power: it was introduced as a provisional way of shackling the working class to its waste and unsustainability in a Faustian pact. For everybody to be able to climb to the top by education and/or hard work is a contradiction on its own terms.

[soileduk]

I don’t really know how to react to this.

https://mobile.twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1519319344710311937

[french frank]

I don’t really know how to react to this.

https://mobile.twitter.com/pevchikh/...19344710311937

Maria Pevchikh

[soileduk]

I guess she shouldn’t visit Salisbury Cathedral any time soon.

[Jazzrook]

Worse even than Truss, is the idiot Johnson merrily giving away military secrets regarding Ukrainians being trained in Poland. It seems that the oaf would be happy to see the nukes flying as long as he makes himself look big.

What have we done to deserve such people at a time like this?

I fear that the gung ho gang of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Ben Wallace would welcome WW3 if it managed to keep them all in power.

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

Maria Pevchikh

One of today's truly true heroes.

[teamsaint]

Yes, agreed. And it gives him a platform to act internationally. Dangerously.

The shame of it is that large parts of the western world , and not just the UK have political leadership that is incompetent, malign, or in the pockets of those with malign intent, including the usual suspects such as the arms industry .
It would be unwise, IMO, to focus solely on just our own dangerous and incompetent lot, though they should perhaps be our priority.

[muzzer]

One of today's truly true heroes.

I can’t see a separate thread on Gergiev and iirc he’s been discussed on this one. MP posted a long thread on Twitter this week about him, for an audience not previously familiar, and it doesn’t pull any punches. At the risk of sounding flippant, the ownership of Chelsea FC has imho given Putin much more bang for his buck than his patronage of VG, who I’m not sure anyone liked anyway?

[RichardB]

Capitalism is in crisis - not permanent

I think that if you factor in climate change you'd have to conclude that the crisis is permanent, at least permanent either until something fundamental changes in the organisation of society or until that organisation breaks down completely, because, as seems to have become clear, there is no way such a system can halt or reverse that breakdown, don't you think? Capitalist oligarchs like Musk have the resources to mitigate that situation but they prefer to spend billions on ensuring that their own free speech is preserved. People like him and Johnson and Trump and Putin and the rest are enabled by this system to achieve positions of power without ever having had the sense of responsibility that supposedly goes with it, except in disastrous historical precedents like the end of the Roman empire and the Third Reich. These people are not themselves fascists of course (though Trump is a borderline case) but their destructiveness is on a comparable level.

[Dave2002]

A recent update on Mariupol - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61285178

Not sure when the photo was taken - probably not too recently - but there's clearly a swallow or swift flying around. That's bigger than a fly!

This tragic "exercise" seems to be just a very cynical land grab. The last thing Zelensky should do is talk to Putin - at least directly face to face in person, though he has indicated that he may do that.