If I am to believe this version from the Guardian, I’m pretty cool with it. Putin,,of course, would ban them and poison them to make sure, and if that wasn’t enough then put them in prison. And keep adding to the sentence.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...nds-11-political-parties-with-links-to-russia
On the Lotus Eaters thing, I haven’t watched it all (those guys give me the creeps, Carl Benjamin especially) but I’m quite prepared to believe atrocities are being committed by the Ukrainian side. It’s a war, propaganda flooding in from all sides. I don’t know if the Russians are really targeting hospitals, buildings like the theatre which was destroyed etc etc (I suspect they are, but I don’t know) but you can guarantee that the Ukrainians are surrounded by war crimes stories all the time, and revenge is a powerful emotion, and the Russians are being told that their soldiers are heroes fighting Western fascists, and most of them believe that too.
It’s hard enough to judge what is true and what is fake nowadays in what passes for normal times, in war I have no idea how you triangulate and verify the stories.
I’ve mentioned it before but I am re reading Savage Continent by Keith Lowe, an account of the orgy of revenge and violence that went on after the end of the Second World War. This is meticulously researched history, and it’s sickening. I can believe humans, and ordinary humans at that, are capable of the greatest acts of inhumanity when driven by vengeance and desperation.
