Syria 6yrs

Syria 6yrs further on!
I wrote this back when Putin and Lukashenko were sending refugees into Poland so I may as well post it now that millions are on the move from a fascist invasion of Ukraine.

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The handful of Australian communists who years ago commented at Strange Times fell out about what was happening in Syria in 2015 but now it’s happened.  The issues in dispute were resolved.  So why has there been no reconciliation?  What became of the former commentators?

The refugee stream into the USA is currently being crowded out of the international news reports.  Even within the US, the mostly Democrat biased MSM (still traumatized with the incurable version of the Trump Derangement Syndrome) is turning a blind eye to the smouldering wreckage of a human tragedy that this reality of modern global capitalism is.  Yet despite the variable interests of the liberal elements and the obviously non-solutions of their more ‘woke’ pseudo leftist brethren, that ongoing refugee problem remains the ongoing life-impacting issue for the more precariat masses on both sides of the US border.

The problem will undoubtedly explode again and especially so after the covid pandemic gets to be a rearview mirror issue over the next 1-2 years.  Trump or his chosen successor will thus be marked up by the ‘returning’ voters in the crucial swing states.  The widespread buyer remorse is well deserved so, despite the best efforts of Border Ctzar history maker Kamala Harris and the autocue Reader of the FreeWorld Jo -what’s my name oh yes- Biden, nothing is actually working on this front of what is transparently a world wide phenomena.

Currently, the refugees all over Europe are back in the news reports as the bodies are currently being gathered up in the cold forests of Poland and the English Channel rather than in the usual Mediterranean or now more rare -as a result of the massive efforts of the Turkish government- Agean seas.

What to do about this permanent feature of the 21st century is brutally thrown before us.

Putin policy is blatantly involved in feeding this steam of people into the west!  Lukashenko would not now act against the interests of Putin.  The dramatic events on the Belarus borders with its neighbors -principally Poland but this involves  ALL 3 neighbours.

So; 6 years after its posting, I want to remind people of this post; ‘Syria: the facts and figures – the Syria Campaign’.  Posted on September 25, 2015 by c21styork

‘As Europe struggles to deal with a surge in refugees, attention is now shifting to Syria where most people are coming from. But what is the violence they’re fleeing?   …

It’s crucial that we get the story right.    James Sadri – The Syria Campaign’

Barry posted this just after Putin had in a surprise move sent the first deployment of his air power and special forces into Syria.  At the time, Barry, myself, Arthur, and all the relevant western leaders understood who was doing the vast bulk of the killing in Syria.

Whatever were the delusions that were about to befall Arthur and Barry over the purpose of the Russian deployment, western leaders were like the comrades just not suffering a delusion on that more fundamental starting point either. They knew the Assad regime was a murderous regime standing in the way of the democratic revolution and that it was responsible for the vast bulk of the killing!

But there was clearly a dispute in western ruling elites and in leftist and pseudoleftist circles over what a ‘level one’ democracy would bring forth in Syria.  There was by late 2015 an open worry that now that the complex Syrian civil war had unfolded in the manner that it had the Islamofascists would win out and so a level one democracy would not be achieved!  So a large (even dominant) faction of the western ruling elites held that it was better to leave Assad in power!  With this view if not dominant at least very significant, Putin had more than just something to work with!  He opened his mouth and out came the lies, but all he wanted to do was credibly play for time; so he simply told people what they wanted to hear and then as time went on explained his various ‘problems’ that he would like their understanding over when ‘delays’ emerged.  Some people wanted to believe the lies but others knew it was a lie and cared not one bit that it was.  That is the way of the realists (right or ‘left’).

Our own half theorists were so full of their own genius in working out what the real purpose ‘MUST BE’ that they just left planet earth behind and ‘cancelled’ anyone like me who disputed the very notion they had any fucking clue what was going on!

Putin’s move was just one slice of what had to be understood about the complex war in Syria.  The war that had now dragged in the Russians directly and had already indirectly and directly involved the Turks was becoming clearer as the enclaves were solidified and the rubble spread.  Creating refugees was both an Assad and a Russian policy and -as is now clearly being demonstrated-  refugees remain a central part of the policy mix.

ISIS was the MSM focus at the time so the essence of events in Syria was very often not understood by all manner of people on the left and right.  Instead ‘surface issues’ like ISIS dominated the MSM and the western ruling elites thinking and in the tide that rose Islamic democracy was of course just scoffed at.

Attitudes to the Russian revisionists’ invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 point to the bigger issues of what is often referred to as the western left.  I won’t call it the Soviet invasion for obvious -Maoist- reasons despite the formal existence in a zombie form of the USSR and the inclusion of all manner of nationalities in the troop mix.

8 years later (in 1976) communists who were then known as ‘Maoists’ called the current Chinese regime fascist when this regime first emerged via a coup just when Mao died.  At that time our western ruling elites and their MSM ridiculously referred to those that made the coup as the ‘moderates’.  These days -no surprise- these viciously anti-communist Chinese bureaucrats and elite business owners are proclaimed not as the wonderful moderates but as the dreaded communists!  What do ya know!  Once again ‘totalitarianism’ will get its run in the propaganda of the anti-communists.  Mind you it didn’t get much of a run in the MSM when Sissi took power in Eygpt!

Actually, people like Tony Abbott were glad that the Muslim Brotherhood had been overthrown by Egyptian fascists.  So rather obviously he never got the memo of what the drain the swamp strategy was all about that had been proclaimed over Iraq when he was right in the thick of the Howard government.  So that memo was never ‘sent round’.  The theory was self evidently not understood or accepted.

Sisi is one thing but ‘dictator’ and ‘authoritarian autocrat’ are terms regularly hurled at Erdogan even months after people tried their best to kill him and run a coup of their own!  Go figure.

Putin probably won his elections but they are not free and fair so who cares!  At any rate, Alexander Lukashenko did not win his!

2001 is a long time ago.  By 2015 without the ‘drain the swamp’ theory as a foundation total confusion was the order of the day right across the western ruling elites.  An explanation for why the Arab Spring broke out and what (if there is to be any democracy now for the people of the MENA) is the role of the religiously minded masses is of little interest to these people when set against Islamic terrorism as the western problem that they place 1st on the worry tree.   So there was little hope in western mainstream politics and in their MSM of getting the ducks to line up. Evidently, these people who contest for dominance in two-party dictatorships don’t do theory very well!

So the people at Strange Times had a grasp of the basics and something to contribute and in the washup did fuck all.

Without a Maoist attitude to the democratic revolution and an understanding of the requirement for a people’s army (or the people will have nothing), people were bound to fall into profound errors and they did.

What is real and what is formal but not real is often an issue.

‘Totalitarianism’ as a start or finishing point is not going to cut it when there is -during armed revolutions- life or death at stake for the revolutionaries.  There is nothing more total than death to your enemies and the revolutionary left has always believed in the slogan ‘death to fascism’.

The issue that stands out starkly in 2021 as it did in 1921 is that ‘bourgeois democracy is a fraud’ not democracy is a bourgeois fraud as the fascists have it.

The revolution for the whole MENA would suffer what was to unfold because the Syrian people did not have a people’s army nor a liberating army to invade.  Iraq like Germany, Italy and Japan all those years ago had that liberating army.  The difference is both obvious and yet hardly understood right across the spectrum of humanity. Self evidently, more than just political players in the west don’t do theory very well.  No surprise that Australian Marxist theoreticians did do theory very well; it is exactly what we have been doing for more than 50 years!

Obviously, the people of the whole MENA are by my standards extremely conservative; but so many issues were not understood and causing further errors across the western world (Kurdish issues, Zionism, the national question, the great Shia V Sunnie schism, green issues V oil, globalization, refugeeing issues, on it goes…) but the interests of actual existing western democracies in being required to pitch in the real boots of armed revolutionary forces -if this revolution was not to suffer huge casualties and massive long-term setbacks- was the key strategic error.  That strategic interest was never firmly grasped.  So when the pressure was on it was not grasped at all.

Because of the usual claptrap from liberals, what was an obvious success in the liberation of the peoples of Iraq from the monstrously fascist ‘totalitarian’ Baathist regime of Saddam Hussain was seen instead as a disaster that ‘must not be repeated!

Yet within days of this post by Barry, (‘Syria: the facts and figures – the Syria Campaign’) we Australian communists fell out over the issue of what was Putin’s small deployment sent there to do!

Soon it will be 6 [7] years since Arthur would not be told he was not making any sense and that what he a few months later was waving about as the peace in our time document was a worthless Munich-style piece of paper from Putin.

But as we see, even the decency of total silence would not be forthcoming!

We know that Arthur said the Russian forces were sent to end the regime and thus end the war by bringing on elections and consequently the rebels to power and the sort for basic democracy and so on.

I said the Russian forces were there to kill the rebels then known as the Free Syrian Army that I was supporting.

History has unfolded and we can now say definitively that the Russian forces were sent there by Putin to kill the rebels and not to escort Assad out of the country etc!  We know Assad is still at least titularly heading up the regime that is in control of the big chunk of what used to be Syria but is now just the biggest of the various enclaves that have solidified from the fighting.  The Syrian enclaves – predicted and scoffed at 6 years ago- have become real and are currently -as Putin directs his attention closer to home- in a typical frozen ‘season’.

6×365=2190 the same length as what most people regard as the timespan of WW2!  But ‘civil wars are like that.  Consider for a moment the length of effort of the democratic revolutionaries in China and by that, I focus mainly on Mao and the revolutionary CCP but Sun Yat-Sen before that.

As all communists know the Syrian enclaves won’t stay frozen.  For example, the millions of Syrians living under a democratic regime in Turkey are continuing to build their revolutionary army.   As we saw without a revolutionary people’s army the people had nothing and were bombed into refugees; the fleeing soldiers who would not shoot down unarmed demonstrators that instead formed the FSA started from scratch and were, despite their very great sacrifices over those first five years slowly winning.  Then Putin’s thugs turned up with their mates from Iran and Hezbollah and reversed the direction of the war.

Erdogan has stood firm against the audacious informal Czar as the US is pretending to in the case of Ukraine while Mrs Biden as chief reminder prompts Joe to focus on the autocue.  (Good news for Biden as a new treatment for Alzheimer’s has been approved the other day!)

But at this time last year [2020], Arthur noted that the ‘EU response (presumably to the whole period of the Syrian revolution Arab spring and all the way back to the liberation of the Iraqi peoples from the Saddam Hussein Baathists) is as disgusting as the pseudoleft.  Erdogan is not “blackmailing” them but exposing their stupidity.’

‘I suspect media focus on Erdogan and Putin as bad guys mainly reflects Western desperation to not get involved.

It it is clear enough now that NATO actually wanted Putin doing what he is doing. It cannot save Assad regime or enable a long term Russian presence. Even Iran cannot stay long term.

I think the Turkish-Russian coordination and the Turkish-Kurdish conflict both reflect correct belief among all three parties that Assad regime is ending and they have to settle the outcome of that.

Western media pretends Assad has won but I don’t see it.

The Turks and Russians are on good enough terms for the Turks not to have closed the Dardanelles, but the difference is Turkey will always be there and Russia cannot and both know it.

EU response is as disgusting as the pseudoleft.  Erdogan is not “blackmailing” them but exposing their stupidity.’

Arthur is in effect saying that nobody, like say John Kerry or David Cameron got fooled by the Russian diplomatic efforts.  He says clearly, they wanted what unfolded!  Bullshit they did!

The reality is that Turkey has systematically in three tranches deployed massive numbers of well-equipped troops that will now shoot down anything that flys in any threatening manner to drop bombs near them or the civilians that they are protecting!

Turkey is caring for 3.6+ million refugees that are sheltering within its borders.

Turkey fronts Russian forces in the Azerbaijan / Armenia conflict as it does in Libya as well.

Turkey just for starters has not wanted what unfolded!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQvZ6ct6iLM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaBIDUYWKzA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb5dvXwDL3Y

 

 

 

27 Responses to “Syria 6yrs”


  1. 1 patrickm

    There is so much that is spot on in the following youtube so I won’t pick on any minor shortcomings I can think of from my distant and consequently ill informed Australian and communist viewpoint. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDf6Zf0JrPE In essence I think this is now the Steve Owens view of the war. If so I can’t be critical of him now either. This view is premised on the Ukrainians continuing to build and use Neptune Cruise Missiles. It could not be fair to continue to call out Steve Owens as a ‘missal’ thrower in the face of his support of the country of Ukraine and its war for independence. Steve is now a cruise missile liberal conservative; a garden variety ALPer. But this is who Steve ought to follow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM1Vifk3tWs .
    There are always some political leaders worth listening to about military issues and first among them in the world today are undoubtedly the Ukrainians; and then perhaps the Turkish leaders. The Ukrainians are getting a very good run across the MSM and youtube. Their president sounds a lot like Stalin in wanting ‘arms, arms and more arms’ in order to win their just war. But delivery of arms from the West won’t be enough. The Turks have on the outbreak of the big part of this war shut down the bosphorus to Russian naval movements; they could technically have done this for the last eight years of the small war that obviously didn’t bother so many people outside of the Ukraine but -unfortunately- they didn’t have the nerve nor Western backing to do it. They do now on both counts. But that won’t be enough to bring the Russians to their senses; and that is really only one man who is calling all the moves in Russia.
    2 Ukrainian built Neptune class sea skimming cruise missiles have dramatically sunk the Moskva. That is the most powerful warship sunk since WW2 and is as strategic as the fascist ship The General Belgrano. The Argentinian Junta believed it could ‘restore’ the it never had in the first place Falkland Islands to its volk -in the way that Putin attempted to restore Ukraine to Russian control. As we communists pointed out 40 years ago there was only one answer and that was to fight the fascists. Even the US leadership was confused at the time about the decolonization / western hemisphere Monroe doctrine twaddle and had to be told by Thatcher that they had better get real because she was. The fight today is almost completely accepted by anyone even vaguely attracted to the struggle for democratic and peaceful development of all peoples. People might not have seen this coming but now that there is no choice for the Ukrainians people have accepted that western support is required for whatever long term is required to win.
    But accepting that the Ukrainians must fight and that the Western world must arm them in the manner that the Vietnamese were armed and supported by the Chinese and the USSR in their struggle against US imperialism all those years ago well that won’t generate near enough sinking of Russian shipping so as to end this war either. There is now only silence all around as old positions are abandoned while the new is not understood. Many, me included, even at this early stage think that strategically Putin has already lost this war. At the same time Putin will not back down so he has to be defeated. What will the WIN look like? What will end the war in Ukraine? What are the implications for Syria, Libya, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus and Russia itself. Those countries are just the first to come to mind! Undoubtedly this war is having an effect on the Chinese thinking over Taiwan and all the rest of their ‘great power’ ambitions.
    Back in 1991 the Iraqi fascist army captured Kuwait and were not permitted to keep it. I know that Putin won’t go home just with the imposition of sanctions and so do others that are in favour of an armed resistance to the aggressor. They ought to have known it back in 1991 or they ought to change their mind now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKi3NwLFkX4
    The first signpost to a winning strategy for supporters of any peace for the future points to the grim realisation that Putin MUST lose this war. This is the almost WW2 type moment that has arrived. It was the same clarity of purpose in the moment when Thatcher declared that the Argentinians could leave peacefully or be thrown out but that they would if they stayed, be fought till they were defeated. It was exactly the same clear eyed commitment to victory that saw a firm George H Bush unambiguously declare the annexation of Kuwait would not stand.
    It was the lack of clarity when Putin invaded in 2014 that gave him the confidence to have this second round attack that has shocked the liberal world back into some level of reality. I am on the record as warning back in 2014 that the maps made no sense from Putin’s POV and that he would resume the war at his time of choosing. Others thought he might have engineered a ‘tidying up war’ that could have been excused. But he didn’t! So now that option is closed for him. This is the domino effect. It was the lack of cost to his 2008 attack on Georgia that brought on 2014 and the lack of action over attacking Ukraine that brought on Syria and then his later move into Libya.
    When the scale of the horror of what Putin was re-launching became crystal clear the world changed. It will now change further when the Western answer becomes understood. Ukraine must win will be the answer. It is only now becoming clear to democrats right across the globe that it is in our vital interests that Putin lose this war. For that to happen much more than weapons will be required. The Swedes and the Finns have snapped out of their long sleeps. What is going on with the Germans?
    US generals are now speaking up after realising just how big a disaster the Russians are in.
    Putin has no intention of backing down a second time because he already has from the first battle for Kyiv. He may even have delusions that after his currently incompetent but large and brutal war machine regroups there will be a second battle for Kiev but there won’t be. There is not even going to be a battle for Odessa, or at least not one that the Russians will win. They want to fight this war and NATO whatever the threats must ensure that they can’t.
    The point is people must know that we must win https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No0_pp8PmIU WE can’t be deterred! General (Ret.) Philip Breedlove, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe but the others as well! Ambassador William Taylor, US Institute for Peace… spell it out. Ukraine must win. That is great news for this cruise missile Marxist. All US generals that I am picking up on are now focussed on winning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm_BUaISFsc and the German shift at last… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq4CtoUafOU Now to be the regular monthly event!
    WW3 or smelling defeat? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQyk7Dg6UL0
    The Ergogan government did supply useful weapons and trainers to Ukraine, Libya, to rebels in Syria and to Georgia and Azerbaijan the same can’t be said for Germany and France and Britain etc. Thousands of Turkish troops went into Syria, much later than they ought to have but sooner than any other big deployment from any other democratic country.
    Nobody that attended the Glasgow Climate conference (even if they came from any of the above countries) is now or was back in November worth listening to. They were facing the wrong way and could not see what was coming.
    The genuine leaders had NOT been listened to by the western mainstream ‘leaders’ for the eight long years since 2014. Yet these have been years of a small war and a busy US military training program. The US military obviously were listening. The war has been confined mostly to the trenches of the Donbas region. It has now returned there and in a vastly scaled up and red hot manner. During the small war period all genuine leaders warned of the big war coming. There are leaders from Libya, Syria, Georgia, Azerbaijan and various East European countries who are the most experienced in dealing with the reality of Putin’s war making and who have to think clearly about what is before them and they have now been joined by the West.
    Big war came and was no surprise to me or despite the Obama era neglect the US military and intelligence services. So at the last minute sleepy Joe was not caught napping but was nevertheless unprepared to take the strong measures that were called for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SLH6qBMf4Q Now it’s obvious to all that the efforts are a case study of ‘too little too late’ and the cost of playing catch up is massive. Now we Cassandra types have a resentful audience.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0aQb94rqHY I have not forgotten when this war started and what all manner of people have done about it from the very beginning. Those that have excused Putin are not fooling anyone. People like Obama and Merkel have set the tone for Putin’s mind set.
    I once had a ‘debate’ with a refugee from the anti-war movement where I pointed out how important the US military presence was and is in the Mediterranean to force the Syrian regime to hand over the chemical weapons.
    Well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slf-rgB0DN4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_ZUDMmcyFY
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MejI_9PuA and Afghanistan still exists!

    “Uniquely Stupid:” Dissecting the Past Decade of American Life | Amanpour and Company https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKRuvKtFvqo

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk9igTqTx9s The Putin Files: Masha Gessen It’s not crony capitalism or a Kleptocracy but best described as a Mafia State. The Obama ‘reset’ came after the war in Georgia. We are willing to write off the fact that you have just invaded and seized ⅓ of a neighbouring country both deeply immoral and for western interests totally ineffective! The US sacrificed some of its key foreign policy principles for nothing! And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1HWNcLDK88 she understands Putin in a similar way to me. Putin the strategic disaster! The Putin Files: Julia Ioffe.

    A spot on Russian and some others https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdJT16GRBtY
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlH3S-uLTIw How the radical Left turned America’s cities into “slums” Or listen to the Brendan O’neill / Michael Shellenberger interview back in November 5 2021 re the failure of the Glasgow climate rubbish that we now see the shortsightedness of with the real looming problem being the ramping up of the 8 year war in Ukraine. What was not even noticed coming as the policies are and were funding Putin as he makes war. The Pseudoleft policies that Brendan and Michael have not quite grasped as left in form only. All this woke poison is the right-wing to their woke bootstraps in essence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgI7Zm8pOSM ‘The very questions cause violence’ This is the crap we got from the Greens / ALP re same sex marriage referendum. Pathetic is far too kind. Only me ‘like a broken clock’ saying Putin is going to unfreeze the war in a big way.

    Chomsky in full pseudoleft idiocy mode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdCuW66pOQ8 the sell out of Ukraine on full throttle starting with calling Putin’s invasion inexcusable!

  2. 2 patrickm

    The war in Ukraine is grinding on and the pseudo left are predictably clueless and instead of waking up are turning further woke and hysterical over carbon dioxide. Climate change yabbering is the go too answer for virtually anything that requires thinking about. The western world really has gone quite mad at this point. What’s more there can’t be a quick reversal although it may not get any worse. In short we may have reached the high tide of the woke madness. The reason for this optimism is that real issues have pushed onto the stage. The madness can’t now hide in the rising economic growth, instead it stands out in the falling living standards.

    Here was a common set of views just 3 weeks before the official escalation https://youtu.be/g3NhFfHP3c0.
    This is a currently common view just 6mths into the resumed war
    https://youtu.be/0_fTFPtpL3M

    Putin is in desperate strife, 6 months in, but there will be years of war to come. A tremendous effort before the Ukrainian people and their western supporters will achieve the victory in humanities bright future. Massive suffering and destruction with all manner of setbacks is to be expected. But on the brighter side Belarus and Russia will now come into the era of democratic revolution again!

    Neil Oliver on the right side but confused https://youtu.be/Y_Jk4dt-VjE

    https://youtu.be/XxAAIhy4B5Y This is a good take. John Sweeney
    And this is the correct record of the battle lines over these 6months https://youtu.be/VNphI-6tkSY

  3. 3 patrickm

    https://youtu.be/L5o7MTPHLAM yep and 6 months later it was crystal clear. But Steve Owens called this man all manner of names!

  4. 4 Stephen Owens

    OK I’ll bite. At the 3-minute mark Rita says that Biden has introduced a fracking ban Alex lets this side

    https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2021/09/15/federal-drilling-and-fracking-update-biden-promised-a-ban-hes-doing-the-opposite/

    At the 4 minute mark Alex states that there’s no effort to seriously increase domestic mining (Up to that point there wasnt but you are posting this wrong information now)

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/02/22/fact-sheet-securing-a-made-in-america-supply-chain-for-critical-minerals/

    https://www.energy.gov/articles/president-biden-invokes-defense-production-act-accelerate-domestic-manufacturing-clean

    https://www.ossoff.senate.gov/press-releases/news-u-s-house-passes-sen-ossoffs-solar-energy-manufacturing-for-america-act/

    Just for the record, I am very pro fracking dating back to 2008 when the fracking revolution started and under Vice President Joe Biden the US was able to become energy independent. As to fracking in Europe it will never happen Rio Tinto couldnt even get a lithium mine going in Serbia. If you cant even open a hard rock Lithium mine in impoverished Serbia you have zero chance with fracking for which you need a pro mining environment.

    PS over on the other site Tom has made erroneous claims about Liu Shaqoui Ive pointed this out but have been ignored. In the interest of truth can you read How to be a good Communist and compare it to Tom’s claim.

    https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/liu-shaoqi/1939/how-to-be/ch01.htm

  5. 5 Stephen Owens

    How can anyone argue that the US is restricting fossil fuel energy production (and keep a straight face) 2023 is projected to set a new record of oil production.
    Here’s the outlook for natural gas

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2022/07/25/us-natural-gas-production-set-a-new-record-in-2021/?sh=1634c5a816ac

  6. 6 patrickm

    You have just voted in the ALP and they are true believers of the climate fear mongering twaddle like Turnbull or Prince Charles! They do not get IT. Net zero by any measure is insane junk, and they push this rot. Mat Canavan is about the best we currently have in Oz.

    You ought to buy Epstein’s Fossil Future. I have read it and I think it is the best book I have read in 25yrs! I have also just read Unsettled, False Alarm, San Fransicko, Apocalypse Never, The war on the West, 12 Rules For Life. I recommend them all as vital current reading. All these rightists are far to the left of the Trots and Anarchist rabble on display at the Melbourne meeting.

    As for TomG well what can I say, he wants Erdogan politically attacked as I think you do but won’t make an argument past explaining that he is a Kurdish sympathiser (as all manner of people are including myself). I want the PKK to end their war directed against democratic Turkey. He would not argue his case.

  7. 7 patrickm

    What was Tom’s claim?

  8. 8 patrickm

    There is a difference between the party of Al Gore and the Trump republicans. Your a supporter of the Sanders rubbish. I can’t even begin to think how you could learn logic at this stage because as you have consistently demonstrated it is alien to your whole world view. At least now you are stuck wanting US arms and so forth supplied to Ukraine and the Russians defeated as well as NATO expanded and further integrated!

  9. 9 Stephen Owens

    Every time I look up a claim made by Rita or Alex it turns out to be untrue. At the 3-minute mark of the interview they talk about the “Biden administration fracking ban” I can’t find any fracking ban.

  10. 10 patrickm

    For decades these ALP types have been broadly speaking, people that have been working against fossil fuel use and talking green rot. Now their policies are having the effect that people like me and Dave in his book Bright Future said they were going to have. They have been wrong all along! Epstein has nailed it.

    Look I have no idea why you take off in these strange directions when it is blindingly obvious that the carbon hysteria is trash. Alex Epstein has produced the best book that I can recommend to you. Dave’s is free online as above.

    https://youtu.be/_xJbJDEVOyM Alex is all over this issue to at least the degree that I grasped what was going on with the Pell case lunacy that Andrews won’t investigate because he is the ALP and they are the enemy.

    There are many examples of how you lose the plot and have no interest in trying to regain it when the errors have been pointed out to you. But this green stuff….wtf is the matter with you?

  11. 11 patrickm

    https://youtu.be/eZLEUv6D34o Talking to a rich Egyptian who even working in the oil industry is clueless.

    And you have not explained what TomG claimed and the context.

    COP 27 is going to be held in Egypt. Alex is spot on. This is a racket and all African countries ought to withdraw from the Paris agreement. Everyone benefits from the use of fossil fuels!

  12. 12 Stephen Owens

    What was Tom’s claim? Tom claimed that in the book How to be a good Communist, Liu states that a party member must cultivate themselves and obey the party. When I read the book I find that he says “Tempering and self-cultivation in revolutionary practice and tempering and self-cultivation in proletarian ideology are important for every Communist” and there is no part of the book I can find where he demands obedience to the party.
    As to Alex, I treat him like anyone else who makes claims. He talks about Biden’s fracking ban, there is no fracking ban. He states that renewables were at fault in the Texas freeze, but all power sources failed, mainly gas. He stated that wind speeds lowered during the Texas freeze, but if you check they increased. He states that renewables are affected by cold, but if you check they are used in Antarctica.

  13. 13 patrickm

    You have just not understood that YOU are wrong about the Texas stuff. Nor do you understand unreliables in the slightest. Unreliable energy sources are clearly causing a world wide disaster. Alex is playing an honest open and above board role in exposing the lies and foolishness. Look at the crap you are spreading about Biden not having a role in getting in the way of cheap reliable fossil fuels. It is rubbish he has a different policy to Trump he rejoined Paris and was a ‘hero’ at the cop twaddle last November when the Ukraine energy crisis was looming and they were all talking about the weather!

    Where did TomG say what you are complaining about?

  14. 14 Stephen Owens

    Drilling permits in Trump’s first year = 2,658
    Drilling permits in Biden’s first year = 3,557

  15. 15 patrickm

    https://youtu.be/QG3CrFiAfO8 He is an alarmist that resigned the Paris Shit. Dishonestly walking away from the policies that he and even worse Sanders have been pushing is not solving anything. You are not being genuine in pretending that he is not an alarmist that is anti fossil fuel to the extent that shits like him and Merkel and Obama and Gore can be. You are being deranged and not dealing with reality. 1st day he cancelled the fing pipeline! But never mind you actually support Bernie!!! You want a bigger climate nutter running the show! This stuff matters and these cop conferences matter! It is already clear that this Albanese government will be a shocker. You are now just a garden variety ALP supporter. You can’t even think thru the Erdogan issue let alone Ukraine. You are not very different to TomG.

  16. 16 Stephen Owens

    I have explained before he cancelled the pipeline which means that the oil will be transported by train. Who owns the trains OMG it’s Warren Buffett, a big donor to the Democrats.

  17. 17 patrickm

    Tom was making an accurate observation. He was not quoting but saying what an author was taking about. That is he was looking for meaning in what this little book was promoting. You are wrong yet again. Liu was clearly the leader of the counter revolutionaries. The current fascist Chinese leader was removed and sent to the country during the GPCR. Deng was Liu’s follower. The GPCR was absolutely required. AS was armed resistance to Putin in 2014 when you had no interest and scoffed at the very notion. Now you can’t even think past silence and talk shit about Biden and Sanders! What about the weapons systems and all the casualties?

  18. 18 patrickm

    https://youtu.be/hCE1VqYo22E Kamala…..LA LA LA

    https://youtu.be/LqT9V39dYX0 Lomborg talking to Epstein! Re False Alarm.

    https://youtu.be/mTxCWX6nd9M Naomi Seibt talks to Alex Epstein.

  19. 19 Stephen Owens

    Let me get this straight Liu Shaoqui writes a book in the 1930s, the message of that book is to promote your own interests and give obedience to the party and no one notices. Liu become the second most powerful person in the party until he is placed under house arrest and dies from medical neglect, and you don’t see anything wrong.
    Once Liu is dead then Deng is the most senior Capitalist roader and Mao personally OKs Deng’s rehabilitation back into the Central Committee and you see nothing odd about this.
    PS I support anyone against Trump because Trump is Fascism rising its no coincidence that he has the support of both the KKK and the Nazis and you apparently

    https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html

  20. 20 patrickm

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/29/how-climate-policy-fuelled-our-energy-crisis/
    And
    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/18/the-green-threat-to-the-first-amendment/

    I have to point out that you have said that you don’t believe that Putin is a fascist yet you speak of Trump as fascism rising… you are indeed a curious loony. But the green silliness…. well if you can’t work out that Liu was the leader of the capitalist roaders and that they are fascists then you are bound to hide in this loony green mush and can’t comment in a sensible way about how to fight the war to throw the Russians out of Ukraine. This on the day that the offensive has begun.

  21. 21 Stephen Owens

    I think that you are correct, I had placed Putin in the Kleptocratic category and now am happy for him to occupy a position in the fascist category. I saw him as more gangster than political ideologue.

  22. 22 Stephen Owens

    After thinking it through, I still struggle with Putin as a fascist. Because fascism is a rebellion against modernity and as such is mass based. This is why I don’t put Putin, Saddam or Deng into the fascist category they are not leading their societies against the new industrial society and all its “evils”, democracy, women’s emancipation, urbanisation. Just as British Imperialism wasn’t fascist, neither is Putin.
    Trump on the other hand has fascist elements a street army Proud Boys and the like, a mythologised past when America was great an attempted overthrowing of democracy a crusade against intellectuals. A war on women’s rights. This doesn’t mean that Trump is worse than Putin, it just means that they fit into different categories.

  23. 23 patrickm

    https://c21stleft.com/2022/02/28/fighting-the-tsar-of-all-the-russias/

    ‘Russia’s war on the Syrian people did not make it technically a “belligerent” under that treaty since it was not at war with Syria but allied with the Syrian government iagainst the people, just as the US and Australia were not “belligerents” when the US occupied southern Vietnam and attacked the north in alliance with a puppet “Republic of South Vietnam”.

    Turkey could, and should, have exercised its options under Articles 20 and 21 to “consider herself to be threatened with imminent danger of war” and prohibit passages of Russian warships supporting the Syrian regime despite Russia not technically being a “belligerent”.’
    end

    I missed this 2022/02/28 pathetic admission that Arthur Dent was completely wrong!

    Just what date ought that have happened? What about Arthur’s ‘brilliant’ analysis that Arthur was still holding to in 2018! Arthur wasn’t really holding to it at all! He was just refusing to admit what he had to by then because he and Barry York and Dave and others had comprehensively been shown to have been wrong by the simple march of time.

    Reality.

    But they all ought not be so immodest. Why not point to the proud record over the issue of Putin turning up in Ukraine in both 2014 and 15. After all when I was immediately calling for arming the Ukrainians Arthur Dent was scoffing that they were the 9th largest arms exporter and how sending arms to Vietnam was an entirely different matter because the Vietnamese could win! What about hiding that crap!

    Are yes the glorious record!

  24. 24 patrickm

    Democracy is persisting in Turkey and that is clear even if there are ‘some concerns’ from observers! This result is -given the hell that Turkey is going through, a remarkable win that is now looming for the second round runoff. With inflation and the earthquake and the massive refugee crisis, including now all the Russian youth, and the ongoing war with all the Islamofascists and the PKK Kurds, plus the huge military commitments to the Syrian footprint plus all the efforts for Ukraine and others there is a lot going on. But to the great surprise of the clueless and the woke western media Erdogan evidently still retains a democratic mandate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfv7wNBFfG8 the democratic revolution predicted as the drain the swamp theory is playing out as expected.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AO6TW1TT3Y plenty of clueless western media; oh dear many are dejected! The polls got it wrong!
    ‘These people come from the villages and their values are threatened!’ In other words people must change in a democratic environment not be forced through hoops! At least Ursula von der Leyen got it right!

    Let’s hope that the PKK will come to their senses and bring about their own ‘Good Friday agreement’ soon and this terrible and now criminal war ended. The Kurds clearly have a peace partner and a democratic future in Turkey for the next 5years.

  25. 25 patrickm

    The BBC gets it almost as wrong as the 1/2 theorists.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65650768
    Assad back in the Arab fold? He only has his enclave! There is that big Turkish footprint! The Kurdish SDF footprint protected by the US that have there own footprint and then there is the fall of Putin’s military capacity to meddle as he faces his own problems closer to home.

    This war is not won by Assad at all and I would far rather launch the democratic revolution from 2023 than back in 2011.

  26. 26 patrickm

    Another BBC article that at least gets most of the history and the stats more or less correct and concludes that the current situation is untenable. But suffers from the usual blind spot re Islamist’s having to lead the democratic revolution in the middle east.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35806229

  27. 27 patrickm

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/22/sinan-ogan-endorses-erdogan-in-turkey-election-run-off this is good news I hope his supporters do not become complacent and fail to turn up to vote. If they do he could still lose this but he ought not.
    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/22/five-ways-kilicdaroglu-will-try-to-beat-erdogan-in-turkey-run-off-offs?traffic_source=KeepReading
    ‘Kilicdaroglu also accused Erdogan of colluding with “terrorists” in his May 18 address, after Erdogan received the backing of the country’s pro-Kurdish party, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).’ and that ought to interest Tom G!

    The collusion reference was about peace efforts made between Erdogan’s government and the PKK, which collapsed in 2015.
    Kilicdaroglu said, “I have never sat down with terrorist organisations, and I will never do”, referring to the PKK.

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