The war in Ukraine rolls on, seemingly an endless aggression which seeks either a capitulation or the nation’s complete destruction. This morning a report that a hospital has been bombed killing 41 civilians and injuring dozens more adding to the already horrendous toll of lives lost. The hospital treats children for cancer and heart problems as well as severe injuries.
Meanwhile in Gaza more bombings causing more destruction and death as the number of fatalities on the Palestinian side climbs to 40,000, mainly women and children. This time a UN school where people were seeking shelter from the ongoing bombardment which is reducing the last remaining buildings in Gaza to rubble.
Both Russians and Jews have a history marked with violence and oppression.
Perhaps the answers lie in their histories.
Tolstoy’s War and Peace covers the period of the Napoleonic Wars and the threat posed to Russia as the invading army progressed its bloody march on Moscow in 1812. The defenders of Moscow decided it would be better to burn the city and retreat, leaving nothing for the invaders to capture and occupy, and then with the onset of winter see them retreat in the bitter cold. Whether it was the Russian resistance or the severity of the winter which defeated the invading forces remains an interesting question, but leaving no protection from the elements forced the retreat it appears.
Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment describes life in Czarist Russia as brutal. Life was hard, poverty was rampant, corruption and desperation were the orders of the day.
In attempting to gain a warm water port in the Pacific to support the growing of the empire and with Czarist Russia seeking to expand its empire to included Manchuria and even the Korean peninsula brought it into conflict with Japan in 1904 and resulted in two naval battles, both of which were losses to the Russians and came at a high cost in terms of lost shipping and personnel. These losses exacerbated tensions between the Duma (parliament) and the Czar. and laid the foundation for political changes and the Russian Revolution.
The Revolution of 1917 and the murder of the Czar and his family was the prelude for a bitter civil war as the Red and White factions of the Revolutionary forces battled for control and the lives of ordinary Russians were turned upside down: a new political orthodoxy complete with secret police and dissent harshly dealt with.
And then there were Stalin’s purges. It is estimated that over 1.6 million people died in the Gulag Archipelago (as the author Alexander Solshenitsyn named the Siberian Prison camp system where he was imprisoned and claimed that as many as “some 40 to 50 million people served long sentences” but figures released by Soviet historians in 1989 show the total was about 10 million. Many tried in closed courts, or many more just sent, accused of dissent, whatever that means).
The siege of Leningrad (now St Petersburg) by the German army from September 1941 till January 1944 saw about 1.4 million civilian casualties and more than a million soldiers killed, with the total fatalities somewhere in the order of 2.5 million people. Of the civilians, most were women and children. Russian casualties during WWII were over 20 million.
The aftermath of WWII saw Russian influence grow in Easter Europe with Communist regimes in Poland, East Germany, and through the Baltic states creating a Communist bloc, politically opposed to that of Western Europe which embraced capitalism and multi-party democracies. These states also came under the defence umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
The fall of Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of communism in Russia and its satellite states saw a number of inept governments formed and the rise of oligarchs who essentially plundered the economy, leaving the population essentially leaderless and destitute.
Along came Vladimir Putin to save the day, with a reform agenda which included rebuilding the Russian Empire, reinstating the Russian Orthodox Church to unify the nation and give a spiritual base for the restructuring of the national identity. The rebuilding of the old empire has been a centerpiece of Putin’s leadership, regaining Crimea and parts of Ukraine. The ambition to retake Ukraine has met with resistance leading to the current conflict. Most Russians agree with the concept of rebuilding Russia, a sort of Trumpian thing to Make Russian Great Again, and in a nation where personal freedom has never been idealistically promoted. The value of human life, both on the Ukrainian side and the loss of Russian soldiers is not so much cause for alarm as it would be in countries like Australia where personal freedom is valued.
The history of violence for Jews goes back a lot further; to Roman times where the restive people of Judah were not happy having the Romans ruling over them. Also, as part of a string of rebellious groups, Jesus of Nazareth emerged as a charismatic leader and teacher, and even after he was brutally killed, his followers just kept growing in number and became seen as threats to the religious culture of Rome. Many were killed in most gruesome fashions, crucifixions were a common form of punishment with corpses generally left rotting on the crucifix for birds to pick at, or in the arenas, coliseums, to be attacked by wild lions, or to fight gladiators to the death as public sporting entertainment.
The uprisings of about CE70 saw the destruction of the temple in the capital city of Jerusalem and the forced expulsion of the religious leaders and teachers; the beginning of the Jewish diaspora.
Over time, these leaders proselytised in the communities where hey settled, mainly through Eastern Europe and having strict rules of conformity lived alongside the traditional groups. The rise of Christianity through Europe in the ensuing centuries saw these people more and more marginalised. One major point of distinction was that the Jews were denied full participation on land ownership since they chose to not legally exist. Early church leaders kept the records of births, marriages and deaths, but recorded baptisms instead of births and only recognised church sanctioned marriages, the Jews did not legally exist since they circumcised male children instead of baptising, so their existence was not recorded, hence they could not own land which was the principle source of wealth.
Being educated – since all Jews were taught to read and write to learn from their religious literature – they developed skills which were useful in administration and business, and so became scribes and accountants, bankers and traders. When these activities proved successful, animosities arose and the Jews were expelled, to be reinvested into those roles when economies failed.
One of the consequences of this was the Spanish Inquisition established in 1478 to maintain a Catholic Orthodoxy. Essentially, the Jews were welcome to stay but must renounce their religion and become good Catholics. Failure to do so was penalised and neighbourhood watches were established to ensure compliance. Punishments were severe with new and exciting tortures invented to ensure that survivors would become good Catholics, renouncing their Judaism.
The movie Fiddler on the Roof is based on a story of the expulsion of Jews from parts of Ukraine between 1918 and 1921 and was part of a series of Pogroms. orchestrated throughout Eastern Europe and Russia which was a lead up to the holocaust of Nazi Germany.
The pogrom in Poland became one of the severest. The Warsaw Ghetto was established in October 1940 and was totally destroyed in May 1943. The area of the Polish city of Warsaw which was the Jewish centre was walled off and as many Jews as could be rounded up were sealed into that part of the city, an area of about 3.4 square kilometres. Up to 400,000 people were crammed into that space and as many as 92,000 literally starved to death. Over 300,000 were either killed in the gas chambers of Treblinka and Majdanek or were shot.
During the rule of the Nazi regime in Germany almost six million Jews were killed as an organised genocide targeting Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other non-conforming people.
I have skimmed through these histories to try to understand why the Russians in Ukraine (and earlier in Chechnya) and the Israelis in dealing with Palestinians both in Gaza and in the occupied West Bank have been unrelentingly brutal in the waging of those wars. And to some extent I can see that the long histories of violence and marginalisation has laid a foundation of fear but also a determination to survive, to the preservation of their ethnic identities. But I then try to balance that with the periods of reckoning which occurred after WWII with the forming of the United Nations and the work done, in the Nuremberg Trials and the writing of the Declaration of Human Rights as a consequence of the holocaust and the opportunities Russia has had to restructure after the fall of communism to consider a more open form of governance and a willingness for earlier national identities to re-emerge.
And the question which remains is which humanity is the most deserving?
The definition that best fits the ‘me’, or can we work to a more all-embracing definition which will include all humanity?
In the meantime, children starve in Gaza, families mourn the loss of lives and bombs keep flying. To what end? Till objectives have been met? Are those objectives complete destruction, dare we call it genocide in the case of Palestinians or in the case of Ukraine, complete submission to imperial overlords… again?
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Yes and no, but why this ongoing equivalence between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Netanyahu and Hamas regimes’ corrupt codependent narcissism, and many other conflicts in this world are ignored as usual?
Like both of the aforementioned, (esp US legacy RW media & Fox etc. fringes) media have been guilty of zooming out to the false claims about Ukraine with NATO/EU provoking Putin and claiming Russia saved the world when WWII started in 1941 (?!)…. and the longer term Israel-Palestine conflict and ignoring views of regional Arab/Muslim neighbours who are mute?
Both conflicts have been covered by Anglo and other mainstream media without much insight, and in the Anglo case, an opportunity to wedge Biden Dems, Starmer Labour (even when in opposition) then locally Albo, Wong and the ALP?
Meanwhile the right has been disappeared by the RW MSM, just in case people see the contradiction of and within, especially the white Christian nationalist far right who are both anti-semitic and Islamophobic, while those against Ukraine have interesting allies, with RW ‘libertarian’s and white Christian nationalists, sharing talking points with faux anti-imperialist ‘tankies’ of the left, with neither a blush nor media scrutiny?
Our guy Tony ‘family values’ Abbott, Fox Board, ARC, GWPF and guess now former UK Trade Advisor in Hungary at the Danube Inst. is not under scrutiny, except to claim credibility due to a very convenient sanction for PR by Russia.
However….. his own boss (formerly MI6 & Quadrant’s Euro correspondent) and (Russian speaking, former Ambo & analyst at our ONA) international advisor (allegedly works at Danube Inst. too) were not sanctioned, yet all are in an anti-Ukraine ecosystem led and funded govt. of PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban? While they furiously Tweet otherwise or about anything else…..to avoid any linkage?
Abbott like Truss et al has presented at Atlas – Koch Network Heritage in the US and it’s also partnered with the Danube Inst., but here is GOP never Trumper Bill Kristol on Heritage and Ukraine:
‘Bill Kristol 10 Dec 2023
Heritage Foundation and Viktor Orbán are not simply against aid for Ukraine. They are against Ukraine. They hate Ukraine, because a) they’re pro-Putin, and b) they hate liberal democracy, especially one fighting to defend itself against a brutal dictator.’
https://x.com/BillKristol/status/1733892421895746022
It’s great to see Bert Hetebry looking at the history of the Ukraine conflict, trying to establish a big-picture view of what is happening. I thank him for that.
Yet I have to introduce a note of criticism because Bert gave no mention of the US role in prolonging this ongoing tragedy.
Even long-term critics of US foreign policy who have been aware for decades of the cynicism, the lies, the hypocrisy and the murderous brutality that US policies constantly display, are shocked to see the unprecedented level to which these repugnant qualities have been taken, as the US supports Israel’s efforts to bring about a Final Solution in Gaza. The US actions in calling for peace while supplying weapons and moral support for the slaughter, (“Israel has the right to self-defence don’t yer know!”) have even alienated long-term supporters of the US to such an extent that many now openly criticise US justifications for it’s position, and openly support the Palestinian position. This was inconceivable just a few months ago.
The near-unanimous criticism at this blog of US actions in Gaza, by article contributors and commenters, has been heartening to see.
And yet, despite correctly seeing US policy in Gaza as the epitome of evil, a few here cannot or will not make a connection to US policy in Ukraine.
The US, a nation that has demonstrated for decades that it has contempt for democratic aspirations both at home and abroad, does not suddenly provide massive financial and military support for a small nation half a world away, out of altruism or the defence of democratic ideals.
It provides that support to further its own geo-political agenda.
It has spent untold billions, particularly since the end of WW2, overturning democracies and installing dictatorships. That’s what the US does. That’s what it sees as its role in the world.
For any Australian to assume noble intent by the US after its undermining of our own democratic processes, and that within living memory, is astounding. It leaves me speechless.
As an article at Pearls and Irritations put it just last April,
“It took some years for Americans to realize they’d been lied to about the war in Vietnam. Thanks to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and thanks to the antiwar movement, Americans eventually learned about the injustices and failures of that war. Likewise, it took several years after the starts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for Americans to realise they’d been lied to about those wars as well. Americans are just now starting to realise that they’ve been lied to about the war in Ukraine.”
As former U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock put it;
“Interference by the United States and its NATO allies in Ukraine’s civil struggle has exacerbated the crisis within Ukraine, undermined the possibility of bringing the two easternmost provinces back under Kyiv’s control, and raised the specter of possible conflict between nuclear-armed powers. Furthermore, in denying that Russia has a “right” to oppose extension of a hostile military alliance to its national borders, the United States ignores its own history of declaring and enforcing for two centuries a sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere.”
And for those who might think that the US has been a passive by-stander to events in the region, consider this from US ambassador Thomas Graham, who served under six U.S. presidents and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a weakened Russia sought closer ties to the West and even helped George W. Bush fight the war on terror. But instead of helping Russia fight Chechen rebels, which Russia considered to be terrorists, the U.S. lent support to those rebels. The U.S. pressed its advantage, aggressively expanding NATO, instigating regime change operations in countries friendly to Russia, and undermining Russian energy exports.”
And so we have Richard Sakwa, Professor at Univ. of Kent and author of multiple books on Russia and Ukraine stating “The argument that the invasion was unprovoked is completely false. The global north, once again, it’s got this obsession, obsessive tendency to fall into war, endlessly. So the global north clearly is shooting itself in the foot. Blowback is going to be massive.”
A nation that undermines its friends and allies will have no hesitation in undermining its perceived enemies. And that is what is behind the US involvement in Ukraine. The undermining of a perceived enemy in Russia.
One does not have to accept that this is the full story of US involvement there, but the very briefest level of familiarity with the history of US foreign policy and the stated aims of US foreign policy, should be enough to bring into question any and all statements by the US regarding Ukraine.
US/Western propaganda regarding developments in Ukraine promotes fear of Russia’s wider intentions. Europe is now preparing for a Continental war. People in the West and particularly Europe, are being programmed to expect the worst from a conflict that would have been over in weeks had the West not flooded Ukraine with weapons and personnel. We are inching ever closer to a nuclear holocaust for no better reason than to further US geo-political ambitions.
The same playbook is being used by the West to instil fear of China and to destabilize China, as we see here — https://johnmenadue.com/what-western-mainstream-media-wont-tell-us-about-china/
The author concluded an excellent article with — “Consequently, we’re being fed a litany of lies about China, about their intentions and their policies. If we had any neutral mainstream media we’d know of things like the Hong Kong terrorist plot. (Funded by foreigners. I wonder who.) We’d know about the Joint Declaration, the Joint Communiques on Taiwan. (In which the US pledged to leave Taiwan.) We’d learn the reality of Xinjiang, (where the UN has found no abuses by China, but has found problems for locals caused by the US) and we’d have both sides of every China story to make our own judgements. As it is, with only the negative half of the story, much of the Western world believes that China is a threat to them. They are not; the real threat comes from the people telling us China is a threat.”
Or as a perceptive commentator once put it,
“Sheep spend their whole lives fearing the wolf, only to be eaten by the shepherd. Once you understand this statement the game changes and you start to understand politics.”
It seems that Putin and Netanyahu daily compete against each other to see who can commit the most egregious crimes against neighbouring countries and get away with it.
At least the West grants Ukraine the right to defend itself as a sovereign nation but we stubbornly refuse to allow Palestine the right to be recognised as a sovereign state and this, it seems, presents a legal barrier to their right to defend themselves against a vicious invader bent on genocide.
Thanks Bert, AS and SD.
When Steve Bannon says, “Flood the zone with shit”, it seems it’s interminably flooded with shit, and variously temporarily topped with multi-coloured puff and fairy floss regularly subsumed.
It would seem that motives for both the shit and the puff and fairy floss are the same – strains at supremacy. The lowest form of which kills citizens of whatever stripes.
The fundamental aspect of plans is that they are abstractions from which we will invariably depart. History seems to reveal as much. So expecting the unexpected seems to be what we are all left with. Perhaps its best to have a small footprint, the eyes and ears open, and never be press-ganged.
How about we start to label the conflict in Ukraine correctly. This is not Ukraines war, they are simply providing the stage and the blood.
This is the USAs latest war of oppression, with the aim of diminishing Russia.
The Ukrainians were persuaded that they, too, could make some $`s out of war, which is ok for some, but terminal for the civilian population who are not allowed a peaceful resolution.
I don’t think our species is capable of living in absolute peace with our neighbours. History is rife with examples of this and even now in the 21st century we are no better. The petty bickering about and our failure to let go of the past and think of the future of our only home seems lost in the wilderness when more ‘important’ things like; destroying those who are difference to us and taking their resources seems to be at the top of the agenda of the larger stronger (militarily) nations. Corruption, greed, lust for power, win at all costs, if your not with us you’re against us, etc. I often wonder whether our world would be much better off if every country was run by women rather than men, who can’t help themselves but to compete over who’s dick it bigger!
That’s a very relevant set of questions Bert is asking there, and it as ancient – dating back thousands of years – as it is of immediate urgency.
I found myself repeatedly confronted with these issues throughout my life, beginning from a fairly young age: I was 9 years old at the time of Willy Brandt’s Kniefall von Warschau. I subsequently found myself trying to make sense of the grainy black-and-white TV pictures of the last helicopter out of Saigon, to reconcile my youthful revolutionary urges with the realities of the German Autumn, and to pick through the question of whether to acquiesce to the West-German government drafting me into compulsory military service, and thus becomes a willing part of the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD for short.
Short of a full historiological treatise of this complex of questions, conducted with the tools of dialectical materialism, which would obviously require the writing of many, many weighty tomes, and therefore impossible to communicate in an electronic discussion forum like the AIMN, I can only report that I have come to believe the root cause to be profound ignorance – I concur with the Socratic conclusions that “Virtue is knowledge”, and that “No one desires evil willingly” – coupled with a very steadfast hubristic resolve to continue to studiously ignore one’s own profound ignorance – and that, too, is a realisation that dates back to Socrates.
Lance Morrow offered a succinct exposition of the heinous, yet at the same time bafflingly banal dynamics of ignorance in his The Times article It’s the Stupidity, Stupid. I find it resonates rather well with the notion of the “Banality of evil”, as expounded by Hannah Arendt in “Eichman in Jerusalem”.
Add in the fact that, all too often, rank ignorance masquerades as greed and/or gluttony, and you have some very solid starting points for the materialistic analysis I mentioned above.
Be warned, though: this analysis, if conducted with the requisite personal integrity and unflinching intellectual honesty, is bound to lead to some very unflattering and disturbing insights. “I have seen the enemy, and he is us!”
Steve Davis, As I think I said in the article, I was looking at the history of both Russia and Israel and their violent histories to seek out a mindset which is able to wage such wars as are current, to see how the brutality can be rationalised.
When a people’s history is steeped in violence, the stories told of the value of life are different from those stories of a people who have not endured such suffering.
That is a different story than the complicity of American involvement, or American attitude to life, their own military as opposed to that of perceived enemies. That is a topic to be explored at a later date. An interesting reference recently published is a book Putin’ Playbook by Rebekah Koffler.
Bert.
Ah yes, Terence, some lives are far more precious than others, Ukraine is a European nation, so the people are European, perhaps far more civilised and worthy of support…. or could it be that Russia is not a friend of the west and Ukraine stands between us and them?
As for the Palestinians, well, they’re arabs after all… and dare to still be there 75 years after they were told to disappear.
I had the distinct pleasure of spending time with a group of ‘Arab’ musicians recently, the music was amazing, the companionship warm and heartfelt. The too are fully human, and worthy of respect.
Bert.
John C,
Does that mean we don’t even try?
Humanitarian attitudes start with each one of us as individuals. People playing politics, bullies, supremacists will always find cause to hate, but we, as individuals can choose the path of ‘love’. When we engage with others, when we join organisations such as political parties where we can sit in meetings and propose an more humane way of dealing with those who are disenfranchised in any way, through colour, ethnicity sexual identity, whatever the difference is.
For me, it starts with me. (And sometimes that means putting up with some pretty heavy shit)
Bert.
Totally off the top of my head, no backgrounding, no expertise, just simply an accumulation of observation along with a fair serve of autodidactism (if that’s even a word), but tend to agree with both Bert in his above question to John C, and with JC also. Humans have been clocking each other over the head since the year dot. Cruelty has played an enormous part in hostile exchanges… my years in Asia with visits to the museums and Japanese torture chambers, old prisons, old government and regal ruins where the tools of punishment were on display… only one or two words for it… utterly appalling… to try to comprehend how people were made to suffer before their deaths. And that’s just Asia!
There’s no such thing as a civilised war, however we pretend otherwise. Rip the social veneer off, and we’re savages.
The British Isles, in former years, were equally barbaric, as were the colonisers wherever they took possession of other people’s lands and wealth. Most of the European nations also, with their wars that span millennia… in fact I don’t think it’s possible to find a single spot on the earth where bloodshed and brutality hasn’t been the order of the day at some points in time, and often repeatedly, punctuated by peaceful intervals.
By all means, Bert, do try. Any reasonably sane person would want the same. But history has demonstrated, time & again, man’s willingness to slaughter his fellow kind with whatever means he has at hand, and as is more often the case than not, to slaughter not only his immediate antagonists but the innocents as well.
I’ve made this point before in these pages, not that anyone commented on it, but there is a deadly serious psychological flaw seemingly hard-wired into the makeup of the human animal, and until it is eradicated… which will never happen by fiat or diktat.. the killings will never cease.
Bert, thanks for your reply.
You said “When a people’s history is steeped in violence, the stories told of the value of life are different from those stories of a people who have not endured such suffering. That is a different story than the complicity of American involvement,…”
I don’t know that this is a different story Bert — I think there’s a definite and obvious connection to US involvement.
I believe that the US has forgotten the full story of the trauma of war, i.e. physical, emotional, financial and spiritual trauma. After all, the last battles they had on home soil against a foreign enemy was the Brits in the first half of the 1800s, if my memory is correct. This loss of national memory is impacting on US policy today.
The people of the US have a very different emotional approach to defence of the homeland to that of Russians, who suffered unimaginable losses in WW2 as allies of the West. That is, within living memory.
This partly explains, but by no means excuses, the failure of the US to understand the Russian position when Russia said “Never again on Russian soil.”
This was a failure of respect. A failure of respect, as US ambassador Jack Matlock put it, in denying that Russia has a right to oppose extension of a hostile military alliance to its national borders. A failure of respect for a recent ally in the war against terrorism.
That lack of respect for other viewpoints has become a feature of US policy since the demise of the Soviet Union, and is inching us ever closer to nuclear war.
Canguro
What recommendation flows from this conclusion: Submit to the coldly rational mercenary calculus that invariably aimes at maximising the self-interest of the “homo economicus” which has excited the phantasies of every neo-liberal chancer since before Ayn Rand?
Or is there more to it than that? And if yes, exactly what?
Come to think of it, even Cormac Mc Carthy did not actually walk all the way to this end of The Road.
Arnd, there are regions in Myannmar, Thailand, China, Korea and Japan where the landscapes are defined by Buddhist temples, stupas, shrines and statuary; all obviously reflecting the sublime benefit of the wisdom of the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama on the peoples of those times around two millennia ago. Similarly, the great cathedrals and churches and mosques of Europe and Eurasia reflect the wisdom of the teachings of early Christianity & Islam.
We, the people, in this era, fail to have the benefit of exposure to such enlightened beings as the Buddha, or Christ, Muhammad and other divine beings whose teachings gave rise to the great religions that mankind have been gifted with.
The countless generations of interpretation, dilution, misunderstanding, failure to recognize the esoteric importance of the messages embedded in the teachings, along with of course the wilful misuse of these teachings for personal gain by profession ‘religionistas’ (are you listening, Catholic church people, Evangelicals, et al?) and others has inevitably resulted in a bastardised, corrupted & watered-down set of teachings which fail to serve the purposes for which they were originally intended, with limited exceptions.
Humanity can be graded into esoteric, mesoteric and exoteric. The great majority, a wise man once told me, more than 99.999% of humanity, reside on the exoteric level, and have no hope whatsoever, zero, zip, nil. A much smaller number inhabit the mesoteric level, and a vanishingly small number the esoteric. You can see the problem, can’t you, Arnd?
Materialism is no substitute for an awakened spiritual awareness. Ersatz religion is just that, it’s junk. Americans will say ‘Praise the Lord’ and put a bullet through your head before heading off to McDonalds for a hamburger. Insanity, writ large.
No truly enlightened being will ever advocate for violence, for they have a deep recognition of the sacredness of all living things.
Canguro, well said.
Although we have to operate politically at the worldly level, we should always have one eye on the spiritual level.
This is one of the attractions of anarchism, which has long had an association with the spiritual — Buber, Tolstoy, Arshinov, Woodcock, just to name a few.
And most likely this is what I despise most about liberalism; a system that strips society of spiritual values and replaces those with narcissism.
Steve, yes I agree, the book I refenced above deals in part with the points you raise
Canguro:
Materialism is no substitute for an awakened spiritual awareness.
Can you please define “spiritual awareness”?
leefe, I may have posted this before, if so, round two; I think you’ll get the gist and I’m not convinced you need a definition, given your M.O., more an opportunity for polemical engagement.
Canguro, thanks for your reply.
I’m mildly, but persistently suspicious of all things “esoteric”. I’m rather with Oscar Wilde (even if I take him slightly out of context): “The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
W.K.C. Guthrie, in his commentary to his translations of the Meno and Protagoras, assigns to Socrates a distinct reluctance to engage in metaphysical speculations, precisely because of the necessary uncertainty of such hypothesizing. Here too, I found myself pre-empted by old Soc!
Nevertheless, following my own updated version of Pascal’s Wager, I do subscribe to the tenets and soteriology of Christianity – even if in a very haphazard and incomplete manner.
And, please forgive me, but the little happiness film clip you posted? In all honesty, it’s just a little too cashed-up, middle class, new-age, saccharine, expanded consciousness for my liking! For most of our 8 billion fellow men and women, real life looks a lot different.
So I gather there is general accord here that V Putin is completely absolved of any responsibility for the numerous documented atrocities committed by his army against civilians during the military invasion he chose to unleash upon his neighbouring nation because
A) ‘the west’ didn’t show sufficient respect to his paranoid sensitivities.
B) Ukraine could end the war at any time by surrendering & ceding soil and sovereignty to their invaders.
Why the blatant brutality against civilians?
Because it is, apparently, justifiable.
PS, I make no mention of the warcrimes of Netanyahu on account of there being no-one here trying to absolve Bibi of blame for the IDFs murderous enormities.
Bert, it seems we are on the same page now, or close to it, so let’s go on.
You also said “I was looking at the history of both Russia and Israel and their violent histories to seek out a mindset which is able to wage such wars as are current, to see how the brutality can be rationalised.”
Fair enough, but when considering a particular “current” war we must look at all participants, and so again the position of the US is relevant. More on that in a moment.
You seem to imply that Russia is displaying an unusual level of brutality, to which I will respond. My apologies if I have mis-read you on that.
Instead of presenting alternative outcomes for the sufferings of Russia that you concede, you’ve gone for the most uncharitable — that this produced a predilection for brutality. Is it not also possible that a more positive conclusion is that after seeking cooperation with Europe and being rejected, Russians decided they have suffered enough and so developed a will to survive at all costs? Could it be that simple?
Your conclusion might be right of course, but if so, we must look also at the other main player, the US. Did historical suffering by the US shape its thinking also, as with Russia?
Howard Zinn in A People’s History of the United States writes — “Mark Twain commented on the Philippine war: We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag. And so, by these Providences of God—and the phrase is the government’s, not mine—we are a World Power.”
And when censorship of the war was finally lifted, newspapers began carrying reports like one filed early in 1901 by a correspondent from the Philadelphia Ledger.
“Our present war is no bloodless, fake, opera bouffe engagement. Our men have been relentless; have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people, from lads of ten and up, an idea prevailing that the Filipino, as such, was little better than a dog, noisome reptile in some instances, whose best disposition was the rubbish heap. Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to “make them talk,” have taken prisoner people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down as an example to those who found their bullet-riddled corpses.”
What episode from US history can explain or produce that level of brutality? None that I recall.
It must be kept in mind that a good number of those who participated in the Philippines atrocities took part also in the massacre at Wounded Knee a decade or so earlier, so there’s a bit of a pattern here, a pattern that continued with My Lai and Abu Ghraib.
The only conclusion I can come to is that if there is a nation that stands alone in levels of brutality over an extended period, then that country is the US.
So can we see that brutality at work in Ukraine? Of course. Ukraine has been fed a lie. US support will continue only while it suits US interests. If the US and NATO were really determined to liberate Ukraine they would have armies of boots on the ground there now. But they do not.
Ukrainian lives are being sacrificed at a rate of a thousand or more per day, with no end in sight, merely to de-stabilise Russia.
Now that, is brutality.
Corvusboreus:
Thanks, and yes, that seems to be the general direction in which this thread is headed … – and count me out of this apparent general accord.
BUT:
The ruling class of the political West DID did win the Cold War. The ruling class of the West did loudly claim political, economic and, most importantly, moral superiority. The ruling class of the West did, ex machina, and with a stupendous degree of self-righteous sanctimony, subject the former Soviet Union and its population to the strictures of the so-called “shock doctrine”. The ruling class of the West did enable, AND profit very handsomely, from the emerging Russian oligarchy. And the ruling class of the West profits very handsomely from the war in Ukraine right now.
In short, the ruling class of the West has been pulling the strings – yanking Russia’s chain, more like – all the way since before Reagan called on Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall”.
And don’t forget, or blithely discount, the fact that even in the many conflicts not directly and immediately connected to either Ukraine or Gaza – I include here Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya – the ruling class of the West has consistently acted in a manner to undermine its own moral and political authority, and drive the local population into the welcoming arms of local warlords.
So yes, as far as I am concerned, the ruling class of the West bears a disproportionate part of the responsibility for what is playing out right now in Ukraine.
And in Gaza and the West Bank, thank you very much.
“that seems to be the general direction in which this thread is headed.”
Arnd, what on earth is going on here?
My consistent thrust in this discussion that began months ago, has been that we in the West were lied to about Ukraine. That is the line I have pursued here.
Am I required with every comment to add, “But don’t forget that all sides in wars commit terrible acts” in case I hurt someone’s feelings or someone feels left out?
Have we been completely infantilised by Western propaganda?
Can we not have a mature discussion without having to stroke every ego?
Certain things go without saying. Deal with it.
Arnt,
Agree, spooks and apparatchiks of various western regimes have repeatedly provoked instability in various regions to profit their own power.
The US are particularly obvious offenders, especially regarding the ME, SE Asia and central America, and regime change between ruling parties doesn’t seem to alter the pattern overmuch.
I can see the obvious US complicity in the Israeli programme of ethnic cleansing being pursued in Gaza, both in terms of tacit political enablement and direct supply of arms.
Have spoken of my rejection of such, repeatedly in this and other forums
However, I draw the line at standing with neo-tankie bootlickers who explicitly refuse to acknowledge that Putin bears any (and I mean ANY) responsibility for the numerous warcrimes commited by his troops operating under his orders, including the deliberate targetting of civilians.
I gladly acknowledge that you are not part of that particular clique.
Corvy it seems, has a comprehension problem.
Did I not say “Certain things go without saying.”
Was that too cryptic for him?
Or perhaps my question “Have we been completely infantilised by Western propaganda?” has been answered in the affirmative.
Canguro, it never ceases to amaze me that a simple assertion such as your “Materialism is no substitute for an awakened spiritual awareness” almost invariably encounters negativity.
A great paradox of spiritual awareness is that those who deny it, experience it.
The warm glow we get from a simple act of kindness to a stranger has no material basis, yet it is universal.
It’s a spiritual experience.
corvusboreus: it’s not just a few individual spooks and apparatchiks of the political West which I blame – I’m saying that the whole system – the whole industrial-military-financial-political complex, seamlessly segueing, as it it did, from 19th century Eurocentric imperial global colonialism, to 20th century corporate global Coca-colonialism – could not produce any outcome other than the the one that we’re so busy bemoaning and decrying right now.
Thus, the important point is that, if we in the West, having secured global dominance at the end of the 80s, had been serious about the ethical and pragmatic implications of that position as the King of the Heap, the likes of Putin could not have done what they did and still are doing. Yapping on interminably about the obvious and undeniable ethical depravity of their
actions amounts to exactly so much empty performative hand-wringing, when it was clearly us who enabled and encouraged this behaviour in the first place!
Steve Davis: did you read the rest of my post from which you quoted?
Yes!
No!
This is deeply unfortunate. But as someone who has followed, if intermittently, how this whole discussion is playing out in Germany, I find myself siding with corvus about the importance of continued clarification of one’s position vis-a-vis Putin and his cabal of gangsters in high places.
Steve,
Maybe so. But if we want to be serious about establishing “warm inner glow” as a solid basis for global human interaction, we need to attend to the much more prosaic “mechanics” of the human condition, in materialistic ways, and with more hands-on determination than merely singing the praises of “Eat, Pray, Love”.
Or as you said yourself: “… we have to operate politically at the worldly level …” Although, in order to do so correctly, it is of course immensely helpful to have some sort of reliable handle on one’s own approach to questions with metaphysical dimensions.
Indeed Arnd, indeed.
Steve, yes, American Exceptionalism is an interesting story to bind this together.
Unlike Russian and Israeli or Jewish histories, Americans have not fought defensive wars on their own lands but have extended their influence by waging wars or supporting wars in other places. Americans value their own lives in part because they have not died in defence of their own country, so have not suffered loss as Russians and Jews have.
That latter part is what I was exploring in my article. That the USA has been spared the destruction of war has enabled them to capitalise, building the huge Military Industrial complex supplying the means of death and destruction to allow wars to be waged without costing American lives and heaping huge profits into the coffers of the manufacturers.
We here in Australia too have a bit of that mindset, we have not fought wars in defence of our country but mourn or celebrate the sacrifices of our soldiers who died in foreign wars or wars fought for our ‘motherland’ Great Britain or as allies to our (maybe) protector, the USA, far more than say the Vietnamese mourn or celebrate the loss of their millions during their fight for independence from colonial masters.
In all this, either through the lessons of history that the Russians and Israelis have endured, or the sense of exceptionalism, the idea of supremacy, of difference, of being more worthy that those seen as adversaries leads to a violence which denies basic human rights to those who we refuse to even name as humans, calling them terrorists or some other form of dehumanising name calling, just as the Romans called those ‘lesser beings’ barbarians.
And another thing Steve,……
American Exceptionalism could well be the reason that the red flags warning of 9/11 were missed, the American focus is more on what others are doing in other places, American soil is sacred and will not be violated, but it was.
The mindset of exceptionalism seeks answers that are less human focussed. Preferring surveillance as a spying tool rather than really infiltrating enemy society.
The Israelis have spies in Gaza, passing on information, the spies are ‘invisible’ in that they look and sound and act just like any other person living in Gaza. The Israelis were aware of the imminent attack of October last year but chose to ignore it, possibly to hand then an excuse to conduct the aggressive demolition the Gaza strip and Gaza City, one of the most beautiful and ancient cities which has been inhabited for over 3,000 years and had some of the first Christian churches built.
Russians plant ‘sleeper spies’ in enemy countries who are educated professionals and manage to be employed in important industries or administrations, waking to provide real intelligence, rather than make up something from surveilled ‘intelligence’ which is then viewed as the interpreter sees it.
Thanks for the conversations, interesting, but sometimes a tad difficult to follow when sarcasm enters the to and fro.
It seems a long and brutal conga-line of participation, always in the direction of attaining supremacy, whether by open conflict, subversion, coercion, joining forces or kowtowing. It may be that the original religious masters had intention towards peace and equity, although their explanations were invariably drawn to make comparisons from their observations, and in turn be open to subversion – in the apparently perpetual cycle of ‘othering’. And it would seem that the same can be said of philosophers and historians.
Although the complex web of ever interacting binaries appears to be what we opt for, and the accumulation of ‘evidence’ is an inevitable part of reasoning and determination, it seems to remain fraught by investigative and interpretive bias even though tested by peers and commoners. Can we know what is in the heart and mind and soul of people, and its expression, when it is likely they do not know themselves?
Apparently, to overcome vagaries and doubt, we make rules, and more rules and more rules. Yet it seems more by convenience than accident that those rules are ignored, broken or circumvented. It is so often reported, with accompanying high dudgeon, but the wheels of enforcement, judgement and penalty are frequently obscured, unless it suits the rhetoric of the promulgators. In this modernity of light-speed communication, nearly all people are aware of the wheels within wheels, and so, to suit their cause, screech their beliefs loudly, forgoing the pros and cons of evidence, going to battle with those of contrary purpose and belief. They may self-righteously claim, “What else can be done, other than my vote?”
So, democratic process gets splintered to ineffectiveness, and / or in reactive response, absolutism and perniciousness. Until, maybe, people conclude that anarchy would likely be hard work, and short-lived or impossible. Even when we attempt to mind our own business, we may find ourselves intrigued and maybe confused, and with it either patient or angry, but when we seek to mind the business of others, the likelihood of intrigue and confusion being greater, any ability to resolve it by patience or anger will surely be strained. Since we’ve been able to etch a glyph, relate a story, make a rule and writs it seems we have flooded ourselves with musings at the expense of taking action to harmonize ourselves with the earth that we live on.
Signs are, that now science and blather has many peering at the edge of doom, screeching absurdities and brutality are being cast out as toxins to our imaginings, and that we’d be better served by a retreat to universal humility. It is another matter, for just how long we can manage our reasonable aspirations when we allow them to be tampered with by the guile of the psychopaths?
I guess we’ll have a better sense of that as mortality permits.
Thanks Bert, yes I agree with all that.
You said ” We here in Australia too have a bit of that (military) mindset, we have not fought wars in defence of our country but mourn or celebrate the sacrifices of our soldiers who died in foreign wars or wars fought for our ‘motherland’…”
This is a bit of a concern for me.
The way the Coalition in particular has tried to make the War Memorial a sacred place, a place of worship, spending millions to house objects of little value while people go homeless.
This gets uncomfortably close to the 1930s fascists mythologizing war for political purposes. And your point that we have not fought to defend our country makes it far easier for false history to get traction. To be romanticised. We do not have sufficient memory of destroyed homes and businesses for people to say enough’s enough.
Clakka, the sad truth is that over the span of history, nothing much changes except for technology which makes the killing easier because the victim is not met face to face, so the grim reality is obscured.
Rules, yes, they are rewritten time and again but are essentially the same, and if not to one side’s liking they are ignored.
To the point that any legal structure designed to judge the perpetrators can be ignored simply by not agreeing with the very need or existence of the court. The US and Israel have not signed up to the International Court of Justice, the USA because they are exceptional and will deal with their own miscreants through their justice system. (Look out if you are black?) Israel? They can do nothing worthy of facing such a court.
But go back a few thousand years and the same battles were being fought over the supremacy of one group over another, one orthodoxy versus another, one difference over another. It seems like it is in our DNA to wage war, but that is a very defeatist attitude
Canguro
No, I asked because I want to know; because it’s a vague term, and I can’t truly grasp the intent of your post without that term being properly defined. And I’d prefer your own words rather than a third-party video of indeterminate length which may, or may not, have captions; I seldom have time or mental energy for such things.
Whilst we are on the subject of the perfidious United States of America, here is a link to YouTube video. It is in German, but with English subtitles:
Bert,
The way you and the AIM in general keep invoking exceptionalism as a driving force of National behaviour simply doesn’t apply. Exceptionalism is a judgement of a nation’s achievements in comparison with those of other contemporary nations. If anything, exceptionalism when recognised is more likely to be a driving force in opposing the exceptionalist nation that is perceived as outcompeting nations of lesser achievements. That is why China is unfairly accused by declining formerly exceptionalist nations like the US of aggressive expansion. Thus the outcry of the US and its lackies is that China must be contained. It has no right to be an outstanding nation in its technological and social advances. It must be opposed and its successes must be curtailed so that lesser performing countries can compete in the manner to which their former superiorty has accustomed them.
Even the US’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ wasn’t a prediction people believed in, nor was it a driving force. it was a judgement of observations made after the facts. Only after it had happened could it be described as manifest. Economics drove US expansion, not a belief in exceptionalism. Every time the US achieved further expansion they attributed it to manifest destiny. The real driving forces are not inspired by a sense of superiorty. The belief in superiorty is invoked as an excuse to justify actions after they have been made, not before. Recall how appalled the US was when they realised that Soviet achievements in space exploration far exceeded their own modest efforts. If US exceptionalism had been a driving force the US would never have fallen so far behind, which they did because they so saw no economic justification for the massive investments required for space exploration. So the US wasn’t driven by exceptionalism but by the desire to oppose evident Soviet exceptionalism, to eventually become itself exceptional in space exploration.
leefe, I’m a big fan of DYOR, given we’ve all got access to the internet and that it’s the biggest repository of information in recorded history.Spoon-feeding answers and replies to questions is all well and good but one eventually reaches a position where it’s legitimate to ask, why, or pourquoi if you’re French, por qué if you’re Spanish, or even Wèishéme if you’re Chinese.
Nevertheless…
Breaking it down; what is ‘spirit’, and what is ‘awareness’? Clearly, spirit is immaterial, as in a non-physical ‘thing/phenomenon.’ Awareness, for want of a better word, might be called consciousness, and some suggest it’s a kind of analogue function that ranges from the dullest to the finest, in terms of vibrational frequency; from mineral through vegetable to animal and human through to cosmic, solar. I have no idea about this, it might be digital for all I know, as in quantum, as in the discrete energy levels of electrons surrounding atomic nuclei.
We have a life force, something that animates and vivifies the cellular composition of our machine; an extraordinary hierarchy that ranges from the quantum mechanical subatomic through to molecular then to cellular subunits that in turn aggregate into higher levels of function and to the more macro aspects of physiology; as above, so down below, as it’s been noted.
All of us are more or less aware, as we also are of those in the wider community; some people are clearly more awake than others, more switched on, more ‘conscious’, more ‘aware’. Who’s to say where the spiritual awareness comes into play? It’s impossible to observe it in another, and I’d argue it’s fundamentally a private matter, whether naturally endowed or by virtue of karma or the endless cycles of reincarnation that are a foundational element of the Buddhist canon, given that the Gautama noted that all humans will eventually become enlightened, but not necessarily within their present lifetime. So, we return to the issue, awareness of spirit. A realisation that I am more than this body. That while I have an imperative to function while I exist, in human form, on this earth; that there is no relief or escape from this imperative, it is a burden to be borne by virtue of existing in human form, at the same time I may come to realise that what I truly am is something else, a something closer to spirit, to something ineffable that has found form in a human body, a something that animates that body until it doesn’t, until the machine breaks down and ceases to support that animating spirit. And that that spirit is common to all sentient life forms, each in their unique aspect of vivification and function and degree of consciousness; rocks to suns.
There’s an enormous amount of evidence for the existence of spiritual awareness. Sages and teachers have been passing this matter on to their followers since the year dot, possibly in all cultures across the planet. The human being is a unique experiment in the cosmic scheme; whether we succeed or fail is another matter for another time.
You may not agree.
Related, a quote from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks — “Culture… is the ability that our mind has to understand life, the place we hold there, our relationship with other people. Those who are aware of themselves and of everything, who feel the relationship with all other beings, have culture…So anyone can be cultured, can be a philosopher.”
We could replace “culture” here with “spirituality” with no loss of meaning.
Bert, SD & Canguro et al
Bert, I’m not so sure that “It seems like it is in our DNA to wage war.” I prefer the possibility that it’s in our DNA to survive. And from that, at some early stage of existence, that process is ignited. Be that at the making of a zygote or after cell divisions or later, who knows, protein combinations are weird.
Microscopy reveals that within all living things protein combinations seem autonomic or say, like spaceships, yet within about 3 days of heart cessation, all human type cells have stopped functioning, digested by the non-human microbiome within us. I guess it’s weird to contemplate that about 60% of our body is water, of the remaining 40%, at least 70% is a fungal or bacterial microbiome and various viruses. That doesn’t leave much by way of specific human cells. Even our gene expressions include microbiome effects. Anyway, to me it all indicates an essential interdependency and need for collaboration to achieve a balance. Even though we may not be ‘conscious’ of any of this.
It seems to us that at some point after we are born we develop ‘consciousness’ (or ‘spirit’), and from that point we are harvesting information, firstly from our immediate surrounds, perhaps establishing what is ‘normal’, through to a later point where we realize there is a world of which we are part – per se the formative years, where come what may we adopt a coping for survival in that ‘normalcy’. From there on as we venture out into that world harvesting information and experience, it is most likely we are comparing it to our baseline ‘normalcy’ deciding safety and survival, whether to accept or reject, and in the extreme, whether it requires fight or flight. Of course, the degree to which we respond likely depends upon whether we have been taught / learned to negotiate, or simply react. And on and on it goes.
As for maintaining balance, there is much to be said about ‘additives’ from old elixirs through to sophisticated chemical cocktails and nowadays inert bootstrapping viral replicas and mRNA therapies. Many of us rely on them for our existence. And there’s more physical approaches, like surgical intervention, exercise and yoga for example.
Canguro & SD, interesting that the conversation moved further into culture, consciousness and spirit.
Then there’s matters pertaining to the mind, ‘consciousness’ (‘spirit’) and behavior, for which we have love, friendship and understanding, and from an intervention perspective, for example, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), regression (hypnotic) therapy, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and meditation (now cutely called ‘mindfulness’), all encouraging us to look inward at ourselves or reveal ourselves to the observer.
The mind is surely a tricky thing, seeking to harvest everything, and comparing the harvest to what we know, or think we know, even though it may have concealed some of those knowings from us (rightly or wrongly to protect us). We ought ask at this point whether our (conscious or unconscious) memory is reliable sufficient for reasonable deliberations. Prima facie it seems reasonable that we remember burning ourselves on a hot stove, and from there on extrapolating that to being wary of all hot things, but not stopping us from using stoves. There is plenty of evidence for the existence of repressions, for example from the horrors of war, leaving the observer a later victim of ‘shell shock’, now PTSD, that can be triggered by barely related stimuli. For the takers of hallucinogens, there’s the phenomenon of ‘flashbacks’. For children in their formative years experiencing familial brutality, and for those held captive, there’s Munchausen By Proxy syndrome and Stockholm syndrome, and so on and so forth.
I remember an anecdote by a Raja Yoga leading practitioner, about typical educational control, where Little Johnny when naughty was sent to the naughty corner to sit cross legged on the floor facing the corner wearing a conical dunce’s cap. She said it was an excellent device to focus the mind, “To sit and in the mind’s eye watch the wild horses gallop off across the horizon.” I have heard it said by another guru, “Everything is a device.”
For interest’s sake I subjected myself to Regression therapy, and for a start, volunteering to it is significant. To my intrigue and amusement, I encountered numerous audio-visual effects that I had embedded from legends, novels, movies and TV, and stitched them together in a convenient story line. I have quizzed others who have participated in Regression and they concur. Albeit, some experience significant trauma – it’s not a party game. Wilhelm Reich said, “… rather than looking in, some look over their shoulder, perhaps to before they were born, add up the score, and seek to balance the books.” (thus the term ‘Past Life Regression’).
Seems we are prone to playing within the mind, and being played with by the mind. Being acculturated by things we know or thought we knew, by memories reliable or unreliable, and archetypes and metaphor.
It’s interesting to contemplate our and other’s playground and for that matter battleground, and how and to what extent it is immutable, modeled or infinitely malleable, and whether and how much we have a choice in it.
Maybe for now I’ll entertain doubt, retreating to universal humility and taking action to harmonize with the earth that we live on, until next time I fall foul of the tamperings with my ambitions, or get attracted by playing in humorous wit and absurdity.
I like the drift.
I have this thing about “tolerance”, and the ability with work with difference.
“Intolerance”, I cannot tolerate.
Clakka, I agree with just about everything, and the couple of differences I have are too trivial to detail.
Great work.
Douglas, nice to inject a little humour into a serious topic.
We have to keep smiling.
Canguro:
All the research in the world – apart from the method I used of asking you – will not tell me what you mean when you use that term. It’s a phrase that has different meanings and a myriad of nuances depending on the user.
I can’t say I agree but I can’t say I disagree either. I just don’t know; no-one really knows, it is all only conjecture. We don’t even really know that we are unique – we simply lack evidence to say one way or the other, and we always will unless some small green furry creatures from Alpha Centauri (or wherever) turn up at some stage.
I do agree that there is more to life than materialism. Would I call that more “spiritual awareness”? I don’t think so. Personally I’d be happy if everyone just learnt a greater appreciation for, and understanding of, the basic interconnectedness of all living things and the processes which make them possible.