Posted by: 4q8 | Oct 13 2023 15:59 utc | 578
Salaam,Karlof1 @265-blowing up Al-Asqa,means lights out for Israel and all of the planet.

Playing devil’s advocate:
Background:
historic rapprochements between Iran and Saudi A, the recent signup-up onto BRICS+ of most Gulf States, some factions in Israel also negotiating rapprochement with S.A., easing of tensions between Turkey and Syria mediated by Russia and so forth. In other words the region aligning with go-forward Eurasian Rise thrust, returning to their traditional relationship with the ‘World Island’ going back millennia.
What if this signifies a lessening of Religious versus a return to Realpolitik drivers viz BRI, multipolar partnerships and so forth? Traditionally (I read long ago), Arab culture is more centered around place than faith. Maybe the chance to make their place a great civilizational zone again trumps sectarian strife?
Thus: what if the leadership WON’T go crazy about Al Aqsa because they now have bigger fish to fry (even if the street gets frenzied)?
Put another way: how far are they willing to go to stop Israel from continuously pushing the Palestinians out of their territory (because unless forced, they will never stop)? Or: are they willing to make a deal: you get your territory and we’ll take your displaced locals (but then you settle down already!) and we get our new world order without your endlessly ruining our region with your incessant chaos and violence.
Those are the two options: either expel Israel from the region, or create a workable solution which, unfortunately, means that the two-populations-one-state model has got to go.

Posted by: Scorpion | Oct 13 2023 18:54 utc | 1203

To: PeterAU1 @ #592 & DoesItReally Matter @ #598.
Thank you both for answering my plea, above. Yes, that is the essay to which I was referring. My interest in it concerns the Daily Express article from 1933 reproduced therein, AND his incisive critique of what passes for “jewish history.”
i.e. it fits the cockamamie horseshit we’re being drowned in by “Israel,” re Gaza, like a glove.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 13 2023 19:05 utc | 1205

William Gruff | Oct 13 2023 16:55 utc | 590
Thanks, interesting comment on the “Trotzkyist” CIA.
Similar to how the ruling class have studied Marx’ works more carefully than (most of) the proletariat. He assumed that the development of class consciousness was inevitable, but didn’t see/ underestimated the many ways to distract and divide a population.

Posted by: smuks | Oct 13 2023 19:10 utc | 1207

In support of Greg, from the previous thread
What annoys me particularly is people, who for example run a blog, often from another country, some of who’m have never actually lived in Manchester or London, and they think they know anything – or everything about the people who live here..like just because most of our politicians and journalists are corrupt racist scum, that we are too and must be like them.
It simply is not true.
The vast majority of people do not care about the colour of your skin, nor what religious or political views you believe in.
The people in Control, do not Represent us.
They are the corrupt racist scum as they have made quite clear.
We just want to get along, whilst recognising the psychopaths, and not engaging, except when they are really annoying and upset you, cos of their corruption and depravity.
England is actually a very peaceful place, and it is safe to walk the streets of London, alone, late at night, black or white.

Posted by: tony_0pmoc | Oct 13 2023 19:31 utc | 1209

The mother in law of the Scottish first minister who lives in Gaza: https://t.me/myLordBebo/9830
There are reports that the Zionists bombed a convoy in Gaza. 70 people died, 200 are injured.

Posted by: Apollyon | Oct 13 2023 19:41 utc | 1211

@ suzan | Oct 13 2023 17:20 utc | 593
“It is too complicated and vague for me to know… Who what to believe?”
Yes, I think that too. No doubt all the ‘players’ have sought to take advantage whenever possible.
Read, for example, Gabriel Kolko’s book The Politics of War: The World and U.S. Foreign Policy 1943-1945
or Alexandar Werth’s Russia At War and you begin to get the idea that none of us should be pontificating
about things. There is so much going on that does not get out (accurately) that our comments are just
surface chatter. Of course none of us have to admit that, at least to others, and some sincerely believe they know.
They don’t.
I have just finished watching BBC’s delightful 1972 20 part series of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, two episodes an
evening for ten days. There’s a lot there that reminds me of the terrible times in Ukraine and Palestine that we talk
of here. The final scene from 1820 is Pierre looking out the window recalling the comet of 1812 and musing on
what ‘it’s all about’ and what the world will be like when the comet returns. Then Natasha calls him to bed
and the camera pans out with the two of them snuggling in each other’s arms.
My wife just called to me. G’nite.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Oct 13 2023 19:56 utc | 1213

Ed @600: “I would have thought that the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who developed the concept of cultural hegemony, would qualify as the most recent significant refinement of Marxism, or at least the most important refinement.”
Gramsci’s interpretation is too close to the Frankfurt School for my taste. Too middle class. Too metaphysical. Too many “feels” and not enough economic realism. Gramsci argues the revolution failed in western Europe because the population was basically hypnotized by the ruling class, which is sorta true. The problem is you cannot hypnotize the unwilling. Europeans allowed themselves to be remote-controlled by the ruling class because capitalism was still, to a degree, delivering the goods. Pillaging Asia, Africa, and Latin America was still profitable enough for the elites to maintain a middle class and have some crumbs left over to throw to the working class. Trotsky avoided that dead end by keeping in mind that culture is decoration on top of economic reality. Culture, at the level Gramsci and the Frankfurt School concerned themselves, does not drive the economy, but rather the opposite: economic reality determines culture.
Basically, Gramsci represents a less venal form of the Frankfurt School. His approach is an effort to reconcile Marxism with “middle-class values” and shovel the blame for Europe’s failure down onto those easily fooled “deplorable” working people. Trotsky never condescended to blaming the working class.

Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 13 2023 20:19 utc | 1215

William Gruff | Oct 13 2023 16:55 utc | 590
Cool post. I should have used the word ‘Trotskyoid’! Though he advocated undermining traditional institutions like faith and family, subversive approaches clearly widespread today as part of an organized, revolutionary, initiative.
But agencies like the CIA keep the Powerful in power, preventing true revolutions, albeit often by using Troskyoid tactics both to flush out dissidents and/or channel resistance into furthering their aims. Like on January 6 2021 wherein ordinary protestors were transmuted into Insurrectionists branding more than half the nation as domestic terrorists, thus criminalizing dissent. So their aim might be quite different from classic Trotsky but some of their methods end up being almost identical.
According to Peter Myers in his latest book ‘The Cosmopolitan Empire’ communism is part of the Globalist Conspiracy (one of four) who wish to do away with all nation-states and their sovereign governments, hence their predilection for Revolution (achieving their aim by force not persuasion or consent, making it unlawful and indecent in my book). It remains to be seen if the current ex-communist nations’ drive toward multipolarity, described as promoting civilizational sovereignty, does not later morph into a Globalist One World government (damn: Fooled Again!). In which case the current disruptions like covid, the SMO and now perhaps a regional religious war are merely latter-day Trotskyoid Revolutionary operations whose intended turmoil serves their anti-nation state, One-World Globalist ends.

Posted by: Scorpion | Oct 13 2023 20:21 utc | 1217

Old activist in Bethlehem:
https://sitrepworld.info/everyone-must-get-out-on-the-streets-friday-on-every-country-on-earth-to-stop-genocide-by-mazin-qumsiyeh/
He always has interesting takes being someone whose entire life has been involved in the struggle.

Posted by: Scorpion | Oct 13 2023 20:29 utc | 1219

https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/is-putin-in-cahoots-with-the-globalists
Critical analysis of Putin’s policies which converge with the globalistas. He raises some good questions. Not for the faint-hearted!
Also during covid in 2021:
https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/i-believe-we-are-facing-an-evil-that
(Is tangentially on topic because it involves the multipolarity business which of course is a core dynamic in why this tumult is happening now in Israel-Palestine.)

Posted by: Scorpion | Oct 13 2023 20:34 utc | 1221

Couldn’t give a cr@p about the white man’s opinion. He should f**ck off back to Europe/Ukraine/Russia.
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Oct 13 2023 7:20 utc | 408
It always amuses me how when the politically correct elite wants to be racists, they want to refer to the Israelis as “Whitey.”
There wasn’t ever a single person who was not able to distinguish between them and your average White dude. Wherever they were, wherever they came, over millennia.
I’m perfectly happy calling them Jewish scum.
As for the remainder of your post, I more or less wholeheartedly agree, but your dishonesty is staggering. I guess second-generation Muslim immigrants shouldn’t have the same rights as Swedes now?
Now do fuck off.

Posted by: Tichy | Oct 13 2023 20:43 utc | 1223

“Dear Ismael. You were born in Jerusalem on May 5th, 1969. You’re 54 years old. Now fuck off back to Russia.”
Go Die In A Fire.

Posted by: Tichy | Oct 13 2023 21:03 utc | 1225

@Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 13 2023 20:19 utc | 609

Basically, Gramsci represents a less venal form of the Frankfurt School. His approach is an effort to reconcile Marxism with “middle-class values” and shovel the blame for Europe’s failure down onto those easily fooled “deplorable” working people. Trotsky never condescended to blaming the working class.

Where do I start? Gramsci was raised in poverty in Sardinia, then got a scholarship to study on the mainland. After a little while in university he left to take up direct activism and revolutionary journalism, finally becoming the head of the Italian Communist Party. He was then jailed by Mussolini where he lived in pain (lack of medical treatment for his severe physical ailments) while writing the Prison Notebooks (have you actually read these?). He is the very opposite of “middle-class values”. He certainly never blamed the working class.
His position was based in historical materialism and his conception of bourgeois cultural hegemony was an additional tool of the elite, to add to violence and compulsion. He understood Mussolini as the response to the failure of bourgeois hegemony (the two Red Years, the Biennio Rosso, of 1919 and 1920), which required a greater use of violence and compulsion – i.e. Fascism. The same reason that the elites brought Hitler to power in Germany, and Wilson imposed a quasi-fascist state from 1917-1920. You need to also look at McCarthyism and COINTELPRO in the US 1950s. Cultural hegemony is only one tool in the elite’s box of tricks, used in conjunction with violence and compulsion.
Gramsci is night and day from the “critical theory excluding historical materialism” of the Frankfurt School which was directly supported by rich US individuals and the US state during the Frankfurt School’s decade plus in the US. Many of the Frankfurt School actually spent time working for the US state, including the precursor to the CIA. His work pre-dates the Frankfurt School BS by more than two decades, so it cannot be a “form” of the Frankfurt School.
Many “critical” theorists have cherry-picked Gramsci, steering clear of his groundedness in Marxism and historical materialism. If you are working off derivative sources then you do not know Gramsci. Read his Prison Notebooks, they are extremely well written and very readable – amazing for a man slowly dying in prison. His rationale for why revolution was successful in Russia but not in the bourgeois societies was one of so many exceptional insights.
Trotsky was born into wealth, both Gramsci and Stalin were born into poverty. I was part of the Trotskyist SWP in my youth but found it self-defeating in its purity tests. No revolution was ever good enough for it. A bit like the WSWS and other such sites. Also seemed to me to be heavily penetrated by the security state, just like the Frankfurt School.

Posted by: Roger | Oct 13 2023 21:21 utc | 1227

Posted by: Roger | Oct 13 2023 21:21 utc | 615
More insightful take on Gramsci than mine. His Notebooks are very much a great read. Thanks for the post.

Posted by: warxism | Oct 13 2023 21:46 utc | 1229

Posted by: Roger | Oct 13 2023 21:21 utc | 615
thank you, and thanks for exposing the Frankfurt School, a bunch of overated hacks in my opinion.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Oct 13 2023 21:52 utc | 1231

@Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 13 2023 20:19 utc | 609
“Basically, Gramsci represents a less venal form of the Frankfurt School. His approach is an effort to reconcile Marxism with ‘middle-class values’ and shovel the blame for Europe’s failure down onto those easily fooled ‘deplorable’ working people. Trotsky never condescended to blaming the working class.”
———————————————————————————————————————
My reading of Gramsci is very different from yours. Gramsci did not “reconcile” Marxism with “middle-class (bourgeoisie) values, he EXPLAINED how the working class can be led by the capitalist class to accept “bourgeois” values without using the coercive aspect of the state unless absolutely necessary. Cultural hegemony is the basis of “bourgeois democracy.”
This is done through the control of social culture, such as consumerism, art, news, the education of children from an early age, and much more: Thus, Cultural Hegemony is a weapon that can be used not only by the capitalist class but by the working class as well.
This is important for the class struggle not only in a combating capitalist-controlled society, but cultural hegemony is also absolutely necessary if and when the working-class size state power and tries to build a socialist society.
Nothing middle class about that.

Posted by: Ed | Oct 14 2023 2:09 utc | 1233

A side note about Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, acknowledging Gramsci’s sister-in-law Tatiana Schucht’s essential contribution to bringing his Prison Notebooks to the public eye, a role of support, not unlike the mostly unacknowledged productive roles of many women’s contributions to social reproduction, but Tatiana’s contribution being at an intellectual support level:

Gramsci’s sister-in-law, Tatiana Schucht, a Soviet citizen and sister of Giulia, the revolutionary’s wife, was instrumental in securing him a plot at the cemetery. She’d been a student in Rome, living with her father, Apollo Schucht, who’d fled Tsarist rule. Tatiana was devoted to her brother-in-law; and, in Giulia’s absence (in the Soviet Union), cared for him during his confinement [imprisonment where he wrote his prison notebooks]…
Tatiana is the great unsung heroine in the Gramsci saga, her brother-in-law’s political and emotional lifeline, not only burying him but keeping him alive, too, recovering all of his thirty-three notebooks, one of the most original and prodigious documents of western Marxism. From andymerrifield blog .

Posted by: suzan | Oct 14 2023 2:59 utc | 1235

Short and sharp…
BBC asking for it. !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ94wm33oJs

Posted by: denk | Oct 14 2023 3:52 utc | 1237

Link to Amit Sengupta, very accurate geographical explanation of how and by whom 5000 missiles got into Gaza prior to Oct 8th. [Spoiler: Red Sea >>> Egypt >>> Gaza]. But no link or proof provided re any Ukrainian origins. Obviously there were Arab middlemen — as yet unidentified … unless of course the US or Israel themselves assisted (tin foil hat on).
https://youtu.be/cEfq78Jxmp0?si=Bre_jT_TI_k6Yurv

Posted by: Sandy Freeman | Oct 14 2023 5:21 utc | 1239

HREF=https://youtu.be/cEfq78Jxmp0?si=o5R34NFNVi4DA1w6
Better link for above.

Posted by: Sandy Freeman | Oct 14 2023 5:24 utc | 1241

Thank you Roger.
The Trotsky / Lenin origin story is also still largely unknown.
By their hagiography we can understand that they were the most refined tools.
Afaik Trotsky didn’t end up to rot in a jail as Gramsci did.
A fate that has been shared by Mandela last century and Assange in this.
We are the brutal, fascist dictatorship, yet we have been convinced we are the only civilised peoples on the Earth in all its history! The old slave mentality which meant there were whole tribes and settlements of just slaves , knowing their whole reason to exist was to be a slave and breed many babies as slaves, still persists.
These cuddly Bedouin still have such villages.
We were serfs of lords and kept in their parishes by their sheriffs.
Only Gentle Folk were allowed to travel out of their parish without permission.
There were stocks and beatings for these who transgressed.
A return to that is promised by the digital money control systems.
Try leaving your parish on a bus or train and your card will not work!
Never mind plane ticket to the free multipolar world.
Yes a bit dystopian but let me tell you what the clear chains of bondage are that Gramsci identified, updated to our modern day.
It is Television. Not just any TV – it’s the Police Procedural shows, which have refined and multiplied to an endless production line, often with the same actors in different roles – because that is how the message is reinforced
Who needs actual chains when the mental slavery of these old tribes of slaves , is taken on board by the whole populations of the West.
A police mentality, a worship of law and order, no matter that it is just some unreal ideal.
Don’t let yourself even think anything different- else your soul is forever damned!
It’s the same role that once the strict teachings and attendance to churches to listen to the sermons imbibed into the folk. God fearing, blasphemy denouncing, witchcraft accusing – the madness of the crowd.
You don’t need physical slave masters at every corner, when the slaves control themselves.
You don’t need police when the slaves believe themselves to be police and righteous , like their heroes on tv.
Because that is the pulpit and instead of having to attend just say nice a week , we willingly chain ourselves to it daily, and BELIEVE we are free, righteous and just.
Gramsci was right and would have been horrified had he seen the mental slavery that we have embraced.
The only place for freedom of thought are platforms such as this.
That is why all the law enforcement legislation has been ratcheted up to control all these ‘free churches’.
The troll armies are just the vanguard.

Posted by: DunGroanin | Oct 14 2023 13:41 utc | 1243

Friday night there was a very civil, lively, informative debate/discussion
between Israel supporter lawyer Arkady Itkin &
Former UN Weapons Inspecter, and USMC Major Scott Ritter
U.S. Tour of Duty:
https://www.youtube.com/live/mELJQKCcsHA?si=JsJ48cOG5L8ae7Mk
======
======
This article by Ritter is mentioned a few times in the debate/discussion:
Why I no longer stand with Israel, and never will again
Scott Ritter
Oct 13, 2023
https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/why-i-no-longer-stand-with-israel
After ~30 years of supporting Israel, including years of working with
Israeli intelligence, and after his observations on Oct 7, 2023 –
Former UN Weapons Inspecter, and USMC Major Scott Ritter
changed mind about standing with Israel.
=====
=====
=====
How Much Longer Will Palestinians be a Martyr People?
By Eric Margolis
It’s not a real war. The bloody carnage in Israel and Palestine that we now witness is a large prison uprising being crushed by Israel’s military might.
M-16 lightweight rifles against Merkava tanks; home-made rockets (little more than flying pipe bombs) versus US-state of the art F-15 and F-16 fighter bombers; a few thousand Hamas fighters versus 600,000 or more Israeli soldiers and police backed by drones and heavy artillery.
American-made bombs and rockets are now shattering what’s left of Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated places. Israel, which suffered over 1,200 dead innocent civilians from a Hamas-led attack on a music festival and waves of rocket barrages, vows Biblical revenge on the Palestinians.
Continues:
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/october/13/how-much-longer-will-palestinians-be-a-martyr-people/
===
===

Posted by: Toby C | Oct 14 2023 20:19 utc | 1245