What's going on in Ukraine?

[Uncle fester]

Nah, nationalism is/was stronger than communism. Vietnam ended up taking an independent path.
Let's not forget that the US inserted themselves into an independence struggle against France.
If anything, the American intervention ushered Vietnam into the arms of other communist countries.

[fishfoodie]

Nah, nationalism is/was stronger than communism. Vietnam ended up taking an independent path.
Let's not forget that the US inserted themselves into an independence struggle against France.
If anything, the American intervention ushered Vietnam into the arms of other communist countries.

The Americans promised the Viet Min an end to French Colonialism, & betrayed them. In Korea at least, they kept their side of the bargain with the South, while the Russians didn't keep their puppet under control.

[yermum]

Re: Pilger Chomsky et al. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

East Timor, South Africa.

That's twice. Wrong about almost everything else though

Chomsky gets extra credit for manufacturing consent.

[_Os_]

I couldn't help looking up what the loony Pilger was saying about this war. I got as far as two paragraphs on Wiki and that was enough:


"Operation Orbital" has it's own Wiki page, with many UK government links in the references, it was a publicly announced small training mission after Ukraine was invaded in 2014. I have no idea what there was to make an "expose" from.

There's a group of people like him that managed to spin an entire career out of being loudly anti-Vietnam War and anti-apartheid, they're taken seriously still for whatever reason. But anyway ... "The UK is responsible for the Skripal poisonings and Russia definitely isn't going to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine, in fact the UK is provoking Russia by sending a few guys from the RAF regiment to do some training ... wait Russia did invade? It's NATO's fault Ukrainians don't want this war they want to relinquish half their nation and become a Russia vassal ... wait Ukrainians do want to fight and are winning? Fucking Nazis".

The next move these people always make is to ignore the subject entirely, because there's no way they can return to it without admitting they were wrong about basically everything. They can't talk about it with anyone who has any real knowledge, because they'll be told "that is total bullshit", so they move their roadshow to the next poor country. Carlson and the loony right have decided to go down the same path. They'll all end up deeply hating Ukraine because it'll be a reminder they were wrong.

Yeah, apartheid and the US / Sth Korea / Aus etc intevention in Vietnam were praiseworthy projects.

Go.Fúck.Yourself.

I think you failed to read his earlier post, before writing your excessive reaction. Notably this part.

A lot of his career was built on being anti-Vietnam war and then anti-apartheid, but when you dig into that things start getting weird. He starts from the absolutely correct position of being anti-apartheid and listing various crimes/wrongs, so far so good. Then as time passes he starts making claims which are bullshit but go uncorrected (because correcting them would put those doing the correcting in which camp?), he like others ended up basically equating capitalism to apartheid. He then starts making more claims about South African politics generally which were also wrong, the big one his cohort made was stating the IFP rank and file were apartheid supporters (when they were and still are just Zulu traditionalists that oppose socialism), they basically gave the ANC media aircover to fight (and kill) IFP activists

Mungo uses the past tense "were", but Pilger thinks apartheid is still going in SA, that was the claim he made in his last significant work on SA I'm aware of. Because him and others like him copied the communist line that capitalism and apartheid were the same thing, of course when apartheid ended but SA remained capitalist they then claimed apartheid still existed. When the analysis is that bad they end up wrong about much else. They just ended up being wrong about what apartheid was and wasn't, wrong about the ANC, and wrong about SA generally. Which is why this group of people that once built their whole professional lives around SA, now no longer mention it at all. Returning to the subject of SA would mean having to confront their support of the ANC, and their demonisation of anyone that opposed both the ANC and apartheid too (who unlike them were South Africans and knew exactly what was happening ... and who time has proven correct), it's easier for them to just ignore SA.

They're doing something similar with Ukraine, as are the likes of new contestants like Carlson. They're dealing more in narrative than reality. They would be having more impact with their bullshit if the internet didn't exist and we couldn't access Ukrainian sources directly.

[convoluted]

Regarding those “righty” cunts in the US defending Russia - it’s kinda expected no? ... I’m more disgusted by the likes of Chomsky, Pilger and other “lefties” also defending Russia ...

It's not surprising there's a section of the left that sort of defends Russia. Their outlook is about being anti-Western, they don't have anything else in their locker beyond that ...

Throughout the Vietnam conflict and into its aftermath, John Pilger was never more than a Soviet propaganda-mouthpiece.
Back when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge on April 17 1975, Pilger had exulted at 'the liberation' of Cambodia.
Then through the 3 years 8 months plus of subsequent Red horror inside that country, Pilger made not a solitary squeak.

But in 1978-9 a now-communist Vietnam invades Cambodia with Soviet weaponry and finance to seize that land and its resources (as had been their intent for decades). Needing to justify this blatant invasion of an independent country, Hanoi and Moscow call in their old friend Johnny.

Pilger's subsequent television documentary on Cambodia exposes to the world the full horrors of what Pol Pot had unleashed on his people.
That part of the narration was correct, though the bulk of the documentary functioned as arrant anti-American pro-Hanoi nonsense to deceive the ignorant as to why everything had happened as it did.
And for evermore since, Pilger has posed as the man who uncovered the carnage when in fact for nearly four years he knew what all of us involved in one way or another had known except that he chose at the time to turn his head and look away. Pilger was in fact just about dead-last in screaming about the atrocities.

Perhaps, remembering his earlier pay-for-play services-rendered, Putin has given Pilger another substantial payday to defend his intervention inside Ukraine. Who knows?

Meanwhile, throughout the entire appalling Khmer Rouge regime, Chomsky had actively and loudly defended Pol Pot and his cohorts against all allegations of barbarity.
But when everything was finally out in the open and could no longer be hidden, Chomsky chose to defend his earlier position with a dismissive air-headed "We (who supported them) were right to be wrong."

[convoluted]

Nah, nationalism is/was stronger than communism. Vietnam ended up taking an independent path.
Let's not forget that the US inserted themselves into an independence struggle against France.
If anything, the American intervention ushered Vietnam into the arms of other communist countries.

^^^ All as wrong as could possibly be.
The US initially favored Indo-Chinese independence from France.
But once they understood that Ho Chi Minh was a fully-fledged communist and not the nationalist that he pretended to be, they (correctly) judged that communism posed a more disastrous consequence for the peoples of Indo-China than did colonialism.
Indeed, the Viet Minh always sniggered at how they used 'the watermelon tactic' to deceive the Uncle Fester's of this world -- green on the outside (giving the appearance of nationalism) but Red inside.

As per 'American intervention ushered Vietnam into the arms of other communist countries ' -- Ho Chi Minh had willingly been in deep with Moscow's Comintern (Communist International) decades before any American intervention, exactly as conflict inside Indo-China lasted through into the early 1990s, nearly two decades after the United States had left the region!!

[Uncle fester]

Yet they picked out a careful path of playing China and Russia off against each other to establish and maintain their own independence.

[convoluted]

Yet they picked out a careful path of playing China and Russia off against each other to establish and maintain their own independence.

For starters, your earlier statement of If anything, the American intervention ushered Vietnam into the arms of other communist countries is at least an acknowledgement (probably unwitting on your behalf but certainly correct) that what would become North Vietnam's leadership clique was communist long before any American intervention.

The communist leadership in Hanoi had always been fractured into pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese factions.
After the 1960 Sino-Soviet split, the Hanoi Reds adopted a neutral stance. But from the mid-1960s, as a frail Ho spluttered into the final several years of his life, it was the pro-Soviet Le Duan who called the shots.

A similar divide happened in Cambodia. The Vietnamese communists created the Cambodian Communist Party, with intent that it function as an off-shoot Hanoi lackey.
Hanoi always thought it had Pol Pot in its pocket, not knowing that as early as the mid-60s he'd done the dirty with the Viet. Reds by secretly signing up with the Chinese. When, during the 1970-75 Cambodian civil war, Hanoi infiltrated back into Cambodia the 4000 or so Cambodians they'd been training in North Vietnam since the 1954 Geneva Accords to operate inside Cambodia as Vietnamese stooges, these 'Vietnamese in Khmer skin' were quietly picked off one by one by Pol Pot.

Seriously, the whole simplistic standard Leftist narration of the Indo-China War as indoctrinated into the Western masses by the media and 'academics' is an absolute joke.

[_Os_]

Regarding those “righty” cunts in the US defending Russia - it’s kinda expected no? ... I’m more disgusted by the likes of Chomsky, Pilger and other “lefties” also defending Russia ...

It's not surprising there's a section of the left that sort of defends Russia. Their outlook is about being anti-Western, they don't have anything else in their locker beyond that ...

Throughout the Vietnam conflict and into its aftermath, John Pilger was never more than a Soviet propaganda-mouthpiece.
Back when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge on April 17 1975, Pilger had exulted at 'the liberation' of Cambodia.
Then through the 3 years 8 months plus of subsequent Red horror inside that country, Pilger made not a solitary squeak.

But in 1978-9 a now-communist Vietnam invades Cambodia with Soviet weaponry and finance to seize that land and its resources (as had been their intent for decades). Needing to justify this blatant invasion of an independent country, Hanoi and Moscow call in their old friend Johnny.

Pilger's subsequent television documentary on Cambodia exposes to the world the full horrors of what Pol Pot had unleashed on his people.
That part of the narration was correct, though the bulk of the documentary functioned as arrant anti-American pro-Hanoi nonsense to deceive the ignorant as to why everything had happened as it did.
And for evermore since, Pilger has posed as the man who uncovered the carnage when in fact for nearly four years he knew what all of us involved in one way or another had known except that he chose at the time to turn his head and look away. Pilger was in fact just about dead-last in screaming about the atrocities.

Perhaps, remembering his earlier pay-for-play services-rendered, Putin has given Pilger another substantial payday to defend his intervention inside Ukraine. Who knows?

Meanwhile, throughout the entire appalling Khmer Rouge regime, Chomsky had actively and loudly defended Pol Pot and his cohorts against all allegations of barbarity.
But when everything was finally out in the open and could no longer be hidden, Chomsky chose to defend his earlier position with a dismissive air-headed "We (who supported them) were right to be wrong."

Way outside anything I have any knowledge on, but it sounds about right, it fits the trend. I went thin on details in my posts to make them shorter and easier to follow.

In SA there wasn't just the ANC opposing apartheid. The ANC was in an alliance with the SACP (SA Communist Party) which was/is one of the most dogmatic followers of Moscow, they even sided with the Nazis during WW2 when the Soviets did and switched to the Allies when the Soviets did. The ANC and SACP top leadership are almost always dual members of both organisations. Their support inside SA was limited for a long time, the strongest ANC branches were in London and Lusaka not in SA, they were however heavily backed by the Soviets and some Western countries, which gave them huge resources. Sharpeville (1960) was a PAC protest, and the Soweto Uprising (1976) was BCM inspired/influenced. PAC had black nationalist and Maoist factions, it was backed at various times by Libya/North Korea/China, but never really had much resources. BCM was black nationalist and not backed by any external power (the ANC always claimed Biko who led the group was CIA backed though), they never had any resources. Both Sharpeville and the Soweto Uprising are seminal events in the anti-apartheid struggle, which the ANC has appropriated, but which actually have nothing to do with the ANC. The other group was the IFP, that were/are Zulu traditionalists who support the Zulu monarchy and capitalism and oppose socialism, they're more or less Zulu Tories, they had the backing of the vast majority of Zulus since their formation until well after apartheid ended (Zulus are also the largest ethnic group). The PAC and IFP were both direct splits from the ANC (the leadership of both had once been in the ANC), which also shows how weak the ANC was inside SA. Then there were about a third of whites who had always opposed apartheid and backed liberal parties, they had no external power supporting them but had considerable resources (and if you have resources, it can be converted into support later).

All these groups, and not just the NP government, had to be defeated for the ANC to gain power. The whites could be discredited by calling them racist, it wasn't so easy with the others. After the ANC was unbanned fighters trained in the Soviet Union (mostly East Germany) as well as in camps in Africa moved back into SA and established cells armed with Soviet supplied weapons from their caches. They then waged a war against the IFP in which circa 25k were killed. The IFP having no external backers could only turn to the NP government for support which they did, and this was played up hugely by the ANC (when in reality many of the "battles" were hundreds/thousands of Zulus armed with spears/sticks going up against small groups of ANC gunmen armed with AKs/RPGs, eg the Shell House Massacre). The role of the Western useful idiots was to back the Soviet supported side in all this, whilst blaming everyone else for the chaos and creating propaganda claiming some huge historic backstory of inevitable ANC rule (which didn't actually exist, eg the actual not bullshit history of Sharpeville and the Soweto Uprising). The period of transition from apartheid to democracy was extremely critical, whatever narrative took hold then would always dominate and last until the country started failing, something more grounded in reality could've easily lasted generations.

The thing about someone like Pilger, was that he was a true believer. He actually believed the SACP line that apartheid and capitalism were the same. When poverty or bad working conditions were conflated with apartheid in reporting from that time, the unstated assumption in the reporting was that without apartheid there's no poverty and everyone has high quality employment. When that didn't in fact happen the likes of Pilger run the same analysis they did during apartheid, find there's still poverty and all the rest, then conclude there's still apartheid. Meanwhile none of the ANC or SACP men he helped put into power believed any of that bullshit and are all millionaires or billionaires.

The same old heads are popping up again now on Ukraine, same old support for the Russian side, same old bullshit about anyone opposing them being evil. As you say, fuck knows what's in it for them now.

[MungoMan]

What would Asia and Austrailia look like if they hadn't intervened in Vietnam and Korea. I have an idea

Typo and all, what I wrote was 'the US / Sth Korea / Aus etc intevention in Vietnam'. Sth Korea is referenced as one of the combatants in Vietnam, one which sent many more troops than did Australia. I didn't mention the earlier Korean conflict since O_S didn't, and neither was I thinking of it.

What Australia would have looked like had it sat out the conflicts you mentioned, I have no solid idea. Being placed on the US shitlist -untrustworthy division would have had some effects but exactly how it would have played out in practice is far from clear.

As it happened, Australia bailed out of Vietnam before the US but the fact the US itself was already working out how do so meant this didn't cause an immediate rupture in US/Australian relations.

As a bye-the-bye, I wasn't aware John Pilger was (is) still alive and writing until a day ago.

[Enzedder]

Thou Shall Not Steal

[Biffer]

Worth noting that Ho Chi Min first tried to get support from the USA.

I don’t really understand why the US insisted the British start to dismantle their empire but tried to help the French keep theirs.

[yermum]

Ex British colony in hostile to previous colonial master shocker...

And let's all here it for America's favorite fighting Frenchman

Lafayette

[inactionman]

Worth noting that Ho Chi Min first tried to get support from the USA.

I don’t really understand why the US insisted the British start to dismantle their empire but tried to help the French keep theirs.

Realpolitik, frankly. They're only against empire that isn't in their interest - and having a larger global market with less UK interference is most definitely in their interest. The French in Indochina, not so much.

Like every country in the world, ultimately, but the US do have a way of being notably sanctimonious and hypocritical.

(e.g. they'll have the Panama Canal, thank you very much, but the UK and France better get their hands of the Suez)

[laurent]

Worth noting that Ho Chi Min first tried to get support from the USA.

I don’t really understand why the US insisted the British start to dismantle their empire but tried to help the French keep theirs.

Vietnam was not under French rule when they intervened there. they had brokered the partition and peace terms though.

[GogLais]

Worth noting that Ho Chi Min first tried to get support from the USA.

I don’t really understand why the US insisted the British start to dismantle their empire but tried to help the French keep theirs.

Vietnam was not under French rule when they intervened there. they had brokered the partition and peace terms though.

Weren’t they giving military assistance to the French up to (and including?) Dien Bien Phu?

[laurent]

Worth noting that Ho Chi Min first tried to get support from the USA.

I don’t really understand why the US insisted the British start to dismantle their empire but tried to help the French keep theirs.

Vietnam was not under French rule when they intervened there. they had brokered the partition and peace terms though.

Weren’t they giving military assistance to the French up to (and including?) Dien Bien Phu?

At the very end of the conflict as far as I know (which was too late to do anything useful)

[tabascoboy]

[MungoMan]

Worth noting that Ho Chi Min first tried to get support from the USA.

I don’t really understand why the US insisted the British start to dismantle their empire but tried to help the French keep theirs.

Because communism. Also, Britain's interests ≠ US interests.

[Uncle fester]

How do you work that one out?

Did they prevent Vietnam going communist? No.
Did they prevent it from spilling over in other countries? No.

[MungoMan]

What would Asia and Austrailia look like if they hadn't intervened in Vietnam and Korea. I have an idea

Typo and all, what I wrote was 'the US / Sth Korea / Aus etc intevention in Vietnam'. Sth Korea is referenced as one of the combatants in Vietnam, one which sent many more troops than did Australia. I didn't mention the earlier Korean conflict since O_S didn't, and neither was I thinking of it.

What Australia would have looked like had it sat out the conflicts you mentioned, I have no solid idea. Being placed on the US shitlist -untrustworthy division would have had some effects but exactly how it would have played out in practice is far from clear.

As it happened, Australia bailed out of Vietnam before the US but the fact the US itself was already working out how do so meant this didn't cause an immediate rupture in US/Australian relations.

As a bye-the-bye, I wasn't aware John Pilger was (is) still alive and writing until a day ago.

Firstly ehhh bye. Korea and Vietnam are part of the wider cold War. Did the US make mistakes. Yeah constantly but ultimately the fight in Vietnam became necessary if you subscribe to the domino theory. On the face of it they were mostly successful

The domino theory...

The north saw off the yanks in Vietnam. Dominos should have tumbled like mad things thereafter.

Yet the only wars Vietnam was involved in thereafter were with China and Cambodia / Kampuchea, which as you may recall were both communist at that time. And both of which sent troops into Vietnam as the whistle signalling game on.

In short, meh.

[MungoMan]

How do you work that one out?

Did they prevent Vietnam going communist? No.
Did they prevent it from spilling over in other countries? No.

Pretty much did maintain huge swathes of democracy as they see it across Asia. Are we living in different universes. China shut its gob for about 20 years and its huge rise is more about poor American economic policy

And let's not forget the yanks pulled their head in for a while after exiting Vietnam in dissaray.

It wasn't until after they'd summoned up the courage to bitchslap those supervillains Granada and Panama that the US dared pull its Global Cop regalia out of the closet once again.

[Calculon]

Worth noting that Ho Chi Min first tried to get support from the USA.

I don’t really understand why the US insisted the British start to dismantle their empire but tried to help the French keep theirs.

Don't think that's really true, initially at least. Truman ordered French troops to leave Syria and Lebanon and refused to transport French African troops to Indochina. They dropped them off in Africa instead. It's only from around 1951 that they started to support them as part of the wider cold war and because of fears that the likes of Thailand, the Federation of Malyay, and Indonesia would fall to communism.

Regarding ho chi min I believe he sent telegrams to both Stalin and Truman asking for support and was ignored by both. It's thought that Truman probably never even saw the telegram since HCM wasn't exactly an important person at the time and Truman probably had a lot on his plate

[MungoMan]

The US's interests in Panana are patently clear. They'll invade again if they have to. The only surprising thing is them giving up the canal zone once the lease ended.

Certainly they would. As Lord Palmerston said, ' We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.'.

[fishfoodie]

You know it must be a fuckload worse than they are admitting, when they have to publicly admit how incompetent they were in protecting their own !

Russia has admitted that dozens of its soldiers were killed in a Ukrainian strike on Russian-controlled territory.

In an extremely rare announcement, the Russian defence ministry said that 63 Russian servicemen were killed "as a result of a strike by four missiles" in the occupied city of Makiivka in eastern Ukraine.

It was the biggest loss of life reported by the Russian side so far in the conflict.

The Russian defence ministry did not say when the strike took place but Ukrainian forces are believed to have struck as Russian troops rang in the New Year.

...

https://www.rte.ie/news/ukraine/2023/01 ... k-ukraine/

So now when they eventually tell the 5 or 6 hundred families that their new Lada is on the way; they'll all think how unlucky their son/husband/father was to get blown to pieces, when all the rest of the BTR survived, & then they'll go to graveyard & wonder why there's a lot more than 63 new graves ......

But Putin doesn't give a fuck; so his lies are of the same quality as his defense of their family.

[Flockwitt]

The US's interests in Panana are patently clear. They'll invade again if they have to. The only surprising thing is them giving up the canal zone once the lease ended.

Nothing surprising there, they had to after they forced the English and French to give up their attempts to keep the Suez canal.

[TB63]

[Enzedder]

Film of a Russian attack on Ukrainian military sites.

[laurent]

Apparently this drove mad the Russian tinternet...

[tabascoboy]

[tabascoboy]

Read about there a month ago and the Russians were being bled dry. Wonder what's so strategically important about it

Seems that if they can gain control of the highway there, and also still force their way into Bakhmut then the UA defence will have to fall back some distance to the next defensible line. Soledar has salt mines and extensive tunnels which would presumably be useful for storage of equipment ( assuming that UA hasn't set up countermeasures).

It would be a long-awaited success for PMC and Prigozhin since they aimed to capture it by Dec 26th.

[petej]

Read about there a month ago and the Russians were being bled dry. Wonder what's so strategically important about it

Seems that if they can gain control of the highway there, and also still force their way into Bakhmut then the UA defence will have to fall back some distance to the next defensible line. Soledar has salt mines and extensive tunnels which would presumably be useful for storage of equipment ( assuming that UA hasn't set up countermeasures).

It would be a long-awaited success for PMC and Prigozhin since they aimed to capture it by Dec 26th.

Considering the back and forth around bakhmut and the importance of holding the highway I assume Ukraine will push them back.

[tabascoboy]

Read about there a month ago and the Russians were being bled dry. Wonder what's so strategically important about it

Seems that if they can gain control of the highway there, and also still force their way into Bakhmut then the UA defence will have to fall back some distance to the next defensible line. Soledar has salt mines and extensive tunnels which would presumably be useful for storage of equipment ( assuming that UA hasn't set up countermeasures).

It would be a long-awaited success for PMC and Prigozhin since they aimed to capture it by Dec 26th.

Considering the back and forth around bakhmut and the importance of holding the highway I assume Ukraine will push them back.

Info for now is coming mostly from Rybar which notoriously talks up Russia's actions. Ukraine continues to hold back on info for OpSec. A big freeze will be hitting Ukraine soon, so this could have a big impact on operations with frozen ground being easier to traverse and allow both sides to renew offensives.

[petej]

Does anyone have a link to the full interview?

[fishfoodie]

Thou Shall Not Steal

I had a little, Gedankenexperiment, the other day, where I imagined what would happen if all the Beko white goods in Ukraine, had a 1kg block of plastic, with a GPS locator attached.

Glorious !

If I were in the Ukrainian dirty tricks department, I'd have guys out there building these units by the thousands; so that they could be looted to Russia, with love !

[Sandstorm]

Thou Shall Not Steal

I had a little, Gedankenexperiment, the other day, where I imagined what would happen if all the Beko white goods in Ukraine, had a 1kg block of plastic, with a GPS locator attached.

Glorious !

If I were in the Ukrainian dirty tricks department, I'd have guys out there building these units by the thousands; so that they could be looted to Russia, with love !

It’s ok to blow up Russian civilians?

[laurent]

Some Nice French gear on the way:
AMX10 RC


and


these are likely purchased new using the funds France allocated to Ukraine. (to buy French manufactured equipment)

[Flockwitt]

Some Nice French gear on the way:
AMX10 RC


and


these are likely purchased new using the funds France allocated to Ukraine. (to buy French manufactured equipment)

The French system where they provide like a slush fund and let the Ukrainian's choose what to buy from a list of what's available, rather than simply saying take what's given is good

[tabascoboy]

Rumours that Putin instructed Shoigu to offer a ceasefire along the entire frontline, *possibly* because if Soledar has fallen or looks about to then he may think UA would accept it to stem the tide, equally rumours that it has been rejected. This could also be because with so much focus on Bakhmut and Soledar there are other operations going on or looking likely that are unknown. No strategic reason in my uninformed opinion to offer a ceasefire unless there is suspicion that UA could launch a counter-offensive and RU want to consolidate what they've got.

[Niegs]

Hopefully set up for another rope-a-dope. Some of the footage I've seen from there is WW1-adjacent.