You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Again… what’s your point? Is there one in your festival of whataboutery?
You have got so confused, presumably due to the outrage ignited over the mention of a former associate editor of Guardian, that you have forgotten that it was you who decided to challenge me, not the other way round.
I'll remind you that you went into a rage, calling Milne a genocide-excusing racist, after I had the audacity to say, quote, "the only Guardian columnist I have ever read with any sort of vague regularity has been Seamas Milne".
A simple "I never liked Seamas Milne" would have done.
And as for "your festival of whataboutery" are you for real? You somehow managed to bring Pol Pot into the conversation and you then asked me what about if Milne was a Holocaust denier!
I didn't answer that question as Milne is not a Holocaust denier, but just for clarity I would of course not hesitate to denounce him ...... it's really not difficult or complicated.
Although it might be for you - you once claimed that politics is like game. Which presumably means that you pick a side and stick with it.
Oh give it a rest FFS 🙄
LOL! You have no self awareness! 😆
Binners is accurate on Seumas Milne and doesn't deserve Ernie getting personal.
Just sent the above message to the moderators rather than launch into a personal attack on you, Ernie.
Maybe we could talk about Guardian as is rather than what it was ?
I think that’s a bit of a generalisation. Sometimes he is, just as often he isn’t. But we’re all entitled to our opinions and I doubt we’ll agree.
Of course it's a generalisation but I'd align with him on Gaza and the current Labour party for sure. I wouldn't align with him on economics though. Doesn't stop him being mostly right side of the debate.
But compare his moral compass to slavish nature of the rest of the columnists - probably apart from Monbiot and Aditya Chakrabortty they're all raving market loving liberals!
But we've all got our perspectives.
Oh yes, the Guardian. As I scrolled through this morning one headline summed up what appears as a slow news day in the Guardian, because even the US and UK at war in Yemen barely registers with the Guardain and you have to read half way down the article to find British jets took part in the strikes. Anyhow the headline to sum up the day:
"Editors’ picks: 5 ways to incorporate a puffer jacket into your wardrobe – in pictures"
It's so cosy reading the Guardian in the morning. 🙂
you have to read half way down the article to find British jets took part in the strikes.
Strange, that fact is in the third paragraph of a long article (29 paragraphs or so) on the matter on my versions.
Wow a headline in the fashion section is about fashion - who’d have thought it.
they’re all raving market loving liberals!
Mainstream paper has mainstream views shocker...I should write headlines, I'd be ace at it.
It does what I’d rather all papers did… report the news and reflect on it from many different positions. It only looks Left Wing compared to other papers because that breadth of coverage includes people left of centre. The Independent used to do the same before it was wrecked, and the Times sort of still does (but with a narrower range and more right wing weighting than the Guardian). Other papers just pick a position and ram it home, hard… with most doing so from a position to the right of whoever is in government, whatever the party or parties in power.
This for me is why I subscribe to The Guardian.
I don't need media that I 100% agree with, but I (and all of us IMO) need media we can trust. Currently they're the only MSM doing this (I'm ignoring the likes of Private Eye and a multitude of YouTube channels I also trust), therefore I want to financially support them to ensure there's a chance they can continue.
because even the US and UK at war in Yemen barely registers with the Guardain
Wars are so passé. This is some kind of Special Military Operation, I think.
Currently they’re the only MSM doing this
If you can call it mainstream, the FT does this but at nothing like the low cost the Guardian achieves. I looked at an annual sub for the FT a while back (my Guardian one is about £50.00 annually) and it was over £450.00 for just on line access, and the premium product is over £700.00, it's clearly designed to be a business expense, but its reporting is most often the "facts led" reportage that's largely missing from most other UK mainstream press.
One of Seamas Milnes many articles, this one in the Guardian, where he argues that Stalin was just … you know… a bit misunderstood
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but that’s not what the article linked to seemed to be saying to me.
"The market" is how any economy works. It makes no sense to say things like "market loving" as a pejorative term. How the market is organised and regulated is obviously important, but there's not really any room for debating its importance as the cornerstone of the economy.
Don't we (almost) all want to rejoin the EU's Single Market? It's not about love or worship but about organising society and the economy in an efficient and fair manner.
And for an added bonus, his Putin apologism, just like Comrade Corbyns, hasn’t aged well either.
It's like old times - binners ranting about "magic grandpa". Any time now we can expect a Life Of Brian meme.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-jeremy-corbyn-right-putin-oligarchs
Binners is accurate on Seumas Milne and doesn’t deserve Ernie getting personal.
Just sent the above message to the moderators rather than launch into a personal attack on you, Ernie.
I have no idea why you think the mods are interested in yours and binners opinions of Seumas Milne, and whether it is accurate. Other than to stifle opinions which you don't agree with?
And what are you on about me getting personal?!? Binners is perfectly entitled to his opinions concerning Seumas Milne, I certainly haven't tried to defend Seumas Milne.
And the reason I haven't bothered is because it is clearly pointless trying to have a rational debate with someone who claims that a former associate editor of the Guardian was a genocide-excusing racist, and then asks me how would I feel if he was a Holocaust denier, before accusing me of "whataboutry".
I will stick to my original comment - the only Guardian columnist I have ever read with any sort of vague regularity has been Seamas Milne. If that offends you and binners then deal with it - I won't be bullied into changing my opinions to suit you, or anyone else.
Any time now we can expect a Life Of Brian meme.
Those will come out when he has a hissy fit about people daring to respond to his derailing.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but that’s not what the article linked to seemed to be saying to me.
Me neither. Some of the slurs thrown at Milne here are in the realms of David Starkey type revisionism. It's somewhat bemusing to see such a scathing attack when there's clearly very little actual understanding of what Milne actually wrote.
I'm not sure why Edukator decided it was up to him to take sides and run off to tell his dad. This is proper playground stuff.
Alternatively, DrJ, in 2015:
https://khpg.org/en/1440711983
And in 2022
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/jeremy-corbyn-urges-west-to-stop-arming-ukraine
I suggest you read milne's Wiki page if nothing else, Kramer. Milne is known for claiming Stalin's atrocities are exagerated and bigging up soviet "successes" which ignoring the realities of living under the regime. My personal grudge is that Milne/Corbyn deliberately led a Labour remain campaign that was so halfharted it amounted to a leave campaign.
Alastair Cambell, Seumas Milne, Dominic Cummings... or when advisors and spin doctors have far to much influence in politics.
All these handbags flying around provoked me into reading the comment article that binners linked to...and it simply doesn't say anything close to how he represented it. It explicitly refers to "Stalin's crimes" and "Soviet repression". It basically just says he didn't kick off WW2 which (I'm no historian) doesn't seem that extreme a point of view.
Either a severe lack of reading comprehension, or dishonesty. If you have a point, binners, you haven't made it very convincingly.
FWIW I'm not a particular fan of Seumas Milne, neither am I a fan of Brexit apologist Simon Jenkins, but the Guardian is still probably the best of a pretty poor lot as far as newspapers go.
I suggest you read milne’s Wiki page if nothing else, Kramer.
I suggest you read what Kramer actually wrote, which was "that’s not what the article linked to seemed to be saying to me". But quoting articles without actually understanding their content seems to be the thing to do, judging by the ones you cited.
My personal grudge is that Milne/Corbyn deliberately led a Labour remain campaign that was so halfharted it amounted to a leave campaign.
It's okay not to like Seumas Milne and Jeremy Corbyn, you are entitled to your opinions.
But there's just no need to launch attacks and go running to the mods if other people don't agree with you.
I reported this to the mods:
LOL! You have no self awareness! 😆
It's a provocative personal attack. It's there to get a rise.
I'm not sure what we are disagreeing about DrJ. Both Milne and Corbyn are/were soviet enthusiasts and that enthusism is still to be seen in their sympathetic attitude to Russian aggression. Corbyn may have warned about the oligarchs which is logical enough as they are capitalists but if you read the two articles I linked he is very much on Putin's side in Ukraine. He tried to justify the Crimean annexation and now objects to supplying weapons to Ukraine when the obvious consequence of that is fascilitating Putin's invasion.
Yes I think binners lacks self-awareness, he accused me of "whataboutry" as well as accusing me of looking for an argument.
I have no idea what that has to do with the mods.
I’m not sure what we are disagreeing about DrJ. Both Milne and Corbyn are/were soviet enthusiasts and that enthusism is still to be seen in their sympathetic attitude to Russian aggression
Well we are disagreeing precisely over that - Corbyn doesn't have a sympathetic attitude to Russian aggression, which is maybe why he wrote this:
https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1499699236228808710?s=20
It basically just says he didn’t kick off WW2 which (I’m no historian) doesn’t seem that extreme a point of view.
Seamus wrote: "Stalin was "Hitler's accomplice", the Economist insisted and called it revisionism. Well, Stalin did invade Poland alongside the Nazis in 1939 as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. So in that respect Stalin at least was a Nazi accomplice, and Milne is wrong.
Milne also asserts that "Given that the Soviet Union played the decisive military role in Hitler's defeat at the cost of 25 million dead" which is true as far as it goes, but obviously fails to mention that without Lend-Lease, the Soviets would've surrendered in 1942, and that many of the Soviet dead were in fact killed by the Soviets themselves (about a million. Estimates vary) and obviously, it's very easy to not give a shit about human life if you're a dictator. Whether numbers of dead as a "top trump" has any validity in war; is an argument for another day probably
Milne is famously a Communist, he's going to have a "view on the Great Patriotic War" that's probably at odds with other historical views. I think it's probably still only the Guardian that would give space for those sorts of opposing or non-mainstream "western" views.
I don't do X. So why does Corbyn not want the west to arm Ukraine? Corbyn is a master of double speak. For example officially in favour of remain while along with Milne undermining the campaign within th eparty as other Labour MPs denounced. His justification of Russia's annexation of Crimea read just like Putin's, I've linked it read it.
I don’t do X.
Your choice, obviously. Mine is to not continue this conversation.
but obviously fails to mention that without Lend-Lease, the Soviets would’ve surrendered in 1942
Be good to see your 'evidence' for this comment.
It's normallyy up to the challenger to provide evidence, intherborders. If you diss what someone says you provide links to back it up. That's what I've been doing on Milne/Corbyn. Sometimes that results in a more nuanced view and progesses the thread.
WWII and the soviet era is rife with whataboutary (Binner's ain't wrong), revisionism and speculation. If you look at the quanties of arms and food delivered under lend-lease it was clearly a major factor in the Russian defence and advance, decisive even. Where would Ukraine be now without the arms deliveries Corbyn objected to in 2022? And where would the rest of Europe be?
It’s normallyy up to the challenger to provide evidence
Eh? So basically someone could go full gish gallop and in your mind be treated seriously? Admittedly having seen the quality of your "evidence" I can see why you like that position.
That’s what I’ve been doing on Milne/Corbyn.
No you havent. Lets take your claimed evidence about Corbyn having a "sympathetic attitude" and "double speak".
The latter is generally a red flag since it often translates to "well they didnt say this but why let it get in the way of my opinions".
You could reasonably claim his attitude is naïve about how to resolve it but if you bother to read past the selective headline it doesnt support your claims.
it was clearly a major factor in the Russian defence and advance, decisive even
You are, conveniently, answering a different claim from the one being made about the USSR being out of the war in 1942.
Also announcing something is "clear" means you should be able to back up your claims with facts.
Be good to see your ‘evidence’ for this comment.
Khrushchev said in his memoirs.
I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so
Milne is famously a Communist
Did the Scott Trust know this when they appointed him associate editor of the Guardian?
To get away from who started World War Two and back onto the topic of the Guardian's editorial policies.
How many years is it since Milne worked for the Guardian?
Many. But it’s still the only Guardian column Ernie has read regularly, which is why we’re all talking about it.
Many. But it’s still the only Guardian column Ernie has read regularly, which is why we’re all talking about it.
It explains why Ernie might wish to talk about it.
But it’s still the only Guardian column Ernie has read regularly
I am touched that some people believe that a short off-hand comment I made concerning my preferred Guardian columnist deserves the derailment of this thread, and a long discussion concerning who was responsible for World War Two, but seriously, try not to be too concerned that I have opinions of my own which don't necessarily fit in with yours 💡
To return to the subject of the Guardian - here is today’s cartoon - a popular anti-Semitic trope depicting Jews as puppet masters. Oh. No. It’s not Jews, it’s Iranians. So that’s ok then.
Khrushchev said in his memoirs.
That doesnt support your specific claim about 1942. Indeed it doesnt even support the lend lease part.
William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich places the Soviets close to collapse at the end of 1942, and the winter of 1942 is when the first convoy shipments - airplanes, boots and aluminium reached Murmansk and Archangel. Without those, it's likely - As Stalin, Churchill and Harry Hopkins (Roosevelt's Lend Lease representative) agreed, the Soviet Union couldn't have carried on fighting the Nazis
When Khrushchev is talking about Stalin saying "He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us" He's talking specifically about the lend lease program.
Are we still talking about World War Two with regards to the Guardian?
Then perhaps this article needs to be mentioned. Apparently in the pre-war 1930s the Guardian Newspaper thought that Hitler was just "a bit misunderstood".
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/nov/14/research.highereducation
Bearing in mind the overwhelming evidence at that time of Nazi brutality, and the fact that Jews were desperately trying to flee Germany, I don't know if that makes Guardian editorial writers genocide-enabling racists.
Apparently according to the Guardian Hitler was some sort of idealistic Christian:
The newspaper went on to claim, remarkably, that Hitler was "definitely Christian in his ideals".
The Guardian also thought that it was important for democracy that the Nazis were included in the government:
The Guardian thought on September 25 1930 that the exclusion of the Nazi party from Reich government, given its electoral success, was not in the best interests of German democracy and that their involvement would "in the long run ... help to perpetuate this democracy".
The Guardian also thought that Hitler's anti-semitism was exaggerated because after all Jews controlled much of the German press in the 1930s, which I think is exactly what Hitler was complaining about:
The Observer, in its article on March 20 1932, hinted that attacks on Hitler's anti-semitism exaggerated the danger, adding: "It must not be forgotten that the major part of the German Republican Press is in Jewish hands."
And the Guardian thought that Hitler, bless his little leather jackboots, didn't even want to be German Fuhrer:
the newspaper claimed Hitler had never been the "real master" of the Nazi movement, which had pressed him into demanding that he should be "Germany's Mussolini against his own better judgment".
Can we move on from World War Two now and talk about how the Guardian was opposed to the creation of the NHS in 1947?
It’s a provocative personal attack. It’s there to get a rise.
Without wanting to speak for binners, I suspect he can cope with being accused of having a lack of self-awareness. He's probably had much worse from the Rose and Crown regulars.
I've said this before, but this place is not the Oxford debating society, it's an internet forum FFS. This level of sensitivity and snowflakery really isn't necessary.
I’ve said this before, but this place is not the Oxford debating society
I think if you presented the level of historical revisionism on display in this thread, you'd be laughed out of the ODS very quickly.
My personal view of the Guardian may differ to those of others on here. To me, it's a media content provider led by mainly white, affluent, middle class liberals, and reflects the views of that demographic. There are a few token writers from other backgrounds, but there is rarely any real meaningful voice given to other groups. I think it does acknowledge its own position mostly though, and there's some very good journalism at times. And I quite like Milne's analysis of history as an alternative to a very anglocentric narrative usually promoted by the British media.
To return to the subject of the Guardian – here is today’s cartoon – a popular anti-Semitic trope depicting Jews as puppet masters. Oh. No. It’s not Jews, it’s Iranians. So that’s ok then.
The demonisation of Islam and Muslims is something I've wearily come to accept from the UK media. That those at the Guardian fail to recognise the parallels of such a cartoon, with other material they have been very quick to condemn, reveals the overall lack of self-awareness that comes with such social privilege. Self-awareness isn't something that neoliberals think they need, though. Obviously.
I hope he's ok. I love his columns and he just seems like a thoroughly nice bloke.
If you've read his accounts of his earlier life, then its no great surprise he may have serious health issues as he got older. I've just dug the painfully honest article out he wrote about his deacde of heroin addiction. Well worth a read
I was a heroin addict and had given up on myself. Then suddenly, briefly, I felt a desire to live
I detest his columns and have given up reading them in th einterests of my own mental health, but I wish him well all the same. Get well soon and take a long break from work, John. Anyhow, what is a Guardian journo doing working past retirement age and depriving a younger person of the job.
The weekly column by Chiles, with his face like a sellotaped bawbag, is weirdly compelling in that always feels like it’s generated by an AI programme run on a ZX81. The fact that a semi-literate dimwit like him has managed a career in broadcasting and publishing has always remained a mystery
😂 Sounds just like Dementia Don! I’ll have to keep that for later use!
A lot of people, incl. typically on stw, automatically dismiss anything in the Daily Mail without giving it much thought.
In contrast they will often automatically accept something written in the Guardian because it is the Guardian. Which is why wherever possible if I want to provide a link on here I try do it to an article in the Guardian.
For years I read first The Sun, then The Mail, because my step-dad bought them. I, along with most of STW, dismiss what it says for perfectly good reasons. I don’t actually read any newspapers; all my information comes via Flipboard, which gives me an incredibly broad range of opinions from all over the world. Well, from anywhere that isn’t paywalled, at least. Rolling Stone is one of my favourites.