The Invasion is ongoing...Part 8

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Following on...

At university there was a question-and-answer session with some members of the Royal Shakespeare Company and one of the 40-something actresses was shocked that her niece had never heard of the Holocaust

I think that many people will know about the Holocaust.

I don't think many people will understand how Germany got to the point that it was transport its own citizens away to camps and then murdering them in their millions.

And how those who forget history and don't learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.

Without being a cliche...
The poem "First the came for" is happening right now

As well as Michael Rosen's poem about fascism

michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/fascism-i-sometimes-fear.html

I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.

Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house,
give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you...

It doesn't walk in saying,
"Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution."

@Jisforjelly

Am I the only one who believes he will stop at Ukraine as his finances are running out due to the sanctions and so on? Isn’t that the point of them?

I do think this is possible. It really depends on the state of the army - I am not sure what to believe/what not to believe re the outdated equipment/low morale! The hopeful part of me thinks that Ukraine can hold on until the cost to Russia becomes too much to bear, as long as the shipments of artillery and rockets keep coming.

@fiefofum - that Kremlin article of 27 Feb was fascinating - thanks for posting it.

Re the teaching of history, people could do a lot worse than watch The World at War from the 1970s. I think it streams on UKTV Play as they broadcast it on Yesterday and you can also buy the box set for £50. Although old I still think it’s a seminal piece of work as it is full of interviews with people who were actually there.

Tbh so many threads I see across MN And elsewhere show the glaring lack of general knowledge about the Soviet Union.
Also chairman Mao etc etc.

Big Huff, and.. there are enough properly trained Ukrainian soldiers to weald those weapons

@CaveMum

Re the teaching of history, people could do a lot worse than watch The World at War from the 1970s. I think it streams on UKTV Play as they broadcast it on Yesterday and you can also buy the box set for £50. Although old I still think it’s a seminal piece of work as it is full of interviews with people who were actually there.

Scenes being repeated now.

The World at War was filmed about 28 years afterWW2 finished. That's basically the equivalent of 1994 to nowadays.

1994 doesn't seem too long ago.

It is such a powerful TV series. From people who were there.

The Russians in East Germany and Berlin. The Japanese in China in WW2. The many, many recorded incidents of what happens historically after a beseiged city falls - rape and killing of the civilian population was almost guarenteed. As well as soldiers 'letting off steam" (if you can call it that) it was a weopon for the future as well, to encourage other cities to open the gates to the conqueror as opposed to resisting them.

Rape is a normal weopon of war and as far as I am aware it was only in 1949 that it was outlawed in the Geneva Convention (though my knowledge is patchy). But in a high-adrenaline, high suffering situation those rules are kinda far away. Civil wars especially are brutal I suspect, or ones where the resistance is a great deal higher than expected or where the attackers are taught to consider the civilians as lesser or sub-human as in the China/Japan war.

More on logistics.

twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1499891108309987328
Thread by a former Major General (Australian) on the practicalities of encircling and taking Kyiv.

Take home points. Even if they use the entire Russian force, they probably don't have enough to be able to completely encircle the city (this is good) which means the defenders should be able to get at least some supplies in and out.

This is probably where tactical use of aircover really is important to both parties (maybe why Russians haven't done much with their planes???)

The second point is trying to split the city in half by taking out the bridges and the third point is not really wanting journalists there to witness it (even if the BBC go, the sheer number of independent freelancers covering the war suggests some will stay to the bitter end).

The most important one is the power though. So I'm guessing thats really what they are going to try and focus on before trying to take Kyiv.

Its interesting.

Re the teaching of history, people could do a lot worse than watch The World at War from the 1970s. I think it streams on UKTV Play as they broadcast it on Yesterday and you can also buy the box set for £50. Although old I still think it’s a seminal piece of work as it is full of interviews with people who were actually there.

I think this is important because now it's only people who are well into their nineties who were active during the War, and only those in their mid-eighties onwards who will even be able to remember much of it. Hence as we have seen on these threads a lot of people really didn't know much about how WW2 started and who did or didn't act.

@CaveMum

Re the teaching of history, people could do a lot worse than watch The World at War from the 1970s. I think it streams on UKTV Play as they broadcast it on Yesterday and you can also buy the box set for £50. Although old I still think it’s a seminal piece of work as it is full of interviews with people who were actually there.

GET YOUR KIDS TO WATCH NEWSROUND!!!!

Seriously.

I owe a lot of my knowledge to watching the news. Growing up with only 4 tv channels come 6pm it was the six oclock news. Kids today aren't getting the same background general knowledge.

Its just a drip drip of info.

I've vowed that DS will be expected to watch the news in some form as he grows up.

But yes I do think that series is exceptional. I remember being shown episodes at school during the 90s when it was already 20 years old.

1994 doesn't seem too long ago.

To me that seems like yesterday, but there will be people on these threads who weren't born then.

AFP News Agency @AFP
#BREAKING Russia's Aeroflot says halting all flights abroad from March 8

The second biggest airline ceased flying either today or tomorrow.

And with that, most remaining routes out of the country are closed - much harder to get out by other routes because of the sheer size of Russia.

alltheapples
And failed to mention that Boris Johnson gave a peerage to the son of the head of the KGB.

Lebedev senior was a former KGB officer - not the head of the KGB.

His son - Evgeny Lebedev has lived in the UK since the age of 8 (now 41) and sits as a crossbench peer.

Lord Lebedev and his father bought the Evening Standard newspaper in January 2009. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport at the time was Andy Burnham - his response to a question regarding the KGB link is here;

Andy Burnham (HOC 19 Jan 2009)
The Evening Standard is indeed a well-loved part of London life—a view held on both sides of the House, I hasten to add—and, whatever changes are in the offing, it should maintain its character and journalistic standards on all counts. I am sure that, like me, the hon. Gentleman will accept that what matters is not an individual’s nationality but the plans that they have to uphold those standards and that character...

Lebedev became a British citizen (with dual nationality) in 2010.

@Tigersonvaseline

Tbh so many threads I see across MN And elsewhere show the glaring lack of general knowledge about the Soviet Union. Also chairman Mao etc etc.

I've just looked at the WJEC modules for GCSE history in Wales, and it's four modules subjects are "Welsh History and economy" Russia pre WW1 to the break down of the USSR and then one module on War in Europe covering Nazi Germany and its political rise, the war and the effect on allied countries including a specific element of the effect on women, and the 4th is "how to be a historian"

So hopefully more doing this module will now start to understand Russia's history.

Referring to my previous comment not related to the above, many are correct I was referring to the mass rape and killing of women in Germany in WWE by russian troops, but in general women have been raped and abused by many invading forces, from WW2 to Vietnam, to Iraq and Syria. Women are abused during times of war this is a historical pattern, so getting them out and to a place of safety is the correct thing to do.

GET YOUR KIDS TO WATCH NEWSROUND!!!!

Have you seen the many threads on here complaining about schools doing this?

But then MN does seem to have plenty of posters boasting about never watching the news.

When I was young there was a huge amount of people around who'd lived through WW2. It was a part of people's lives and not a history lesson or knowledge that you'd have to seek out in books and documentaries. One of the reasons I know a little bit about Ukraine is that I knew a Ukrainian man who'd been in the Red Army, was captured by the Germans, sent to a concentration camp because he refused to fight for the Germans, and then was sent to a gulag by the Russians because he'd survived the concentration camp. Someone born in 1939 will be turning 83 this year and things that we'd assumed were common knowledge are becoming things that have to be actively learned.

Thank you for all the war/rape links and info, morbid as it feels to type that. I will go away and digest. I didn’t know about the Geneva Convention only outlawing it in 1949. Presumably it was widespread enough then to merit that. And must have also existed the other way, when Germany invaded Russia in WW2. Obviously doesn’t bit justify what happened in Berlin. So many women. Unimaginable.

Indeed peregrine or how when thefighting supposedly stopped entire countries fell into the icy wicked grip of the Soviets.

It's almost like people just forget or don't know or won't care about this.

@DuncinToffee

GET YOUR KIDS TO WATCH NEWSROUND!!!!

Have you seen the many threads on here complaining about schools doing this?

But then MN does seem to have plenty of posters boasting about never watching the news.

Mine doesn't even watch newsround, he watches the adult news with me 😳 I can hear the clutching of pearls from here.

The only "terrible" thing he has heard is when some poor Ukrainian woman live on BBC breakfast said "fuck Putin" 😂 and then he (DS) epeated it, as the journalist began to apologise for the emotionally but understandable charged language 😂 Nd me going "shh don't repeat that"

These Indian students who feel abandoned by their government were planning to head to Mariupol :/

mobile.twitter.com/srinivasiyc/status/1500042067384274946

@DuncinToffee

GET YOUR KIDS TO WATCH NEWSROUND!!!!

Have you seen the many threads on here complaining about schools doing this?

But then MN does seem to have plenty of posters boasting about never watching the news.

Thats precisely why I put in it bold.

I think these people are nothing short of idiots. I won't muck about and excuse it or sanitise it.

It is handicapping your child's education not to watch Newsround whilst their peers do. Children's education is ultimately about preparing them for adulthood. The more they understand and widen their general knowledge (doesn't need be war) the better equipped they are.

It does seem to be part of a wider 'anti-educational' mindset though.

@workisnotawolf

One moral question I have been pondering is that all of us that have access through media to what is actually happening in Ukraine are we somehow more complicit than certain parts of the Russian population who have no idea due to censorship? I grew up in a German speaking country so spent my teenage years having to discuss the Nazi regime and complicity and how it came about. Modern media has brought this war into the daily lives of billions of people around the world and it raises a big question regarding complicity both for ordinary people, politicians and the organisations who are meant to enforce peace. Personally I am starting to feel that I need to look the other way and not “watch” the news because the feelings of guilt, shame and anger are increasing. I can read analysis but watching images with sound is where I am having to censor myself.

This really resonates with me.

@DrBlackbird

Yeahthat I always find it amusing when someone does one of these patronising treatise on critical thinking/media manipulation/echo chambers - while being unable to hide that they're very heavily on one side of an issue and can't comprehend that anyone else can legitimately think differently.

Great that you’re finding something to feel amused about these days. We could all use a laugh.

If you’re implying that I can’t hide the fact that I’m very heavily on the side of thinking that Putin’s war on Ukraine as nothing short of horrific. Well, yes, you’d be right about that. What is the legitimate other side??

For a "Dr" you're not very good at reading! It wasn't your comment that was quoted.

The reference was to the fact that the PP was attempting to turn this into a debate on immigration. The implication was that anyone who disagrees with him/her on the issue is somehow a victim of manipulation.

Critical thinking 101: Anyone who disagrees with me must unequivocally wrong and a victim of propaganda. There's nothing else to it.

The silly, my dd is also studying Russia at the moment.

But I think more need's to be done at primary school because many DC don't choose history as a GCSE option.