Figureheads like the Guardian’s George Monbiot have wrecked the left’s ability to think critically, encouraging an analysis of power politics more suited to the playground
Monibot and the vaccinated 'left' may be happy lining Big Pharma's pockets as well as supporting the US proxy war in Ukraine, but the unvaccinated 'right' are also happy to support both Big Pharma via big animal ag (pharma's biggest client) and US Imperialism which is carrying out a genocide in Gaza to ensure continued availability of fossil fuels.
So, what is already clear is that this guy is saying that "everybody on the left" thinks the same way. Like they are all the same? Can they think for themselves? Well, if that is the way it is, I doubt Mr. Cook is any different! Sorry, can't support you but, yeah I know how it is!
The American Left, if we can call it that, is pretty lame. So is Britain's Left as well.
Both, the Left in the US and the UK, are afraid of their own shadows.
Both possess NO intellectual honor or integrity.
For once, Jonathan, let's be honest.
The Left in the US and UK have lacked assertiveness and determination for at least the past 25 years!
Why?
Because they live in fear of being labeled "soft" on communism, "soft" on authoritarianism, or "soft" on dictators.
Put simply, the American Left, in 2024, is weak and ineffectual. Where are their voices concerning the genocidal actions of Israel within Gaza. Nowhere.
Like cowards, they are hiding in their congressional offices.
The war in Ukraine is an irrefutable disgrace. How come the "Left" has not demanded a real debate on US foreign policy?
Because the Dems are no different from their GOP neo-con counterparts.
To be absolutely clear, the Dems and the GOP are simply two cheeks of the same ass!!
The media is always diligent, and absolutely obedient, in refusing to ask uncomfortable questions.
As a consequence, the American empire, and its "endless" wars, are never questioned by the 4th estate. No matter how catastrophic or disastrous they may become. Silence. Always silence!!
Jonathan, you are right!
The Left, in the US and the UK, are shameless "cheerleaders" of imperialism's perpetration of misery and death upon the global stage.
Imperialism.
There is no other term for America's or Britain's current behavior. It's grotesque. But quite real!!
It's shocking Monbiot is so blinkered on Ukraine. The best illustration I've seen of that conflict was a cartoon showing firemen labelled “climate crisis responders” rushing to put out a fire, but being stopped and turned away by a policeman labelled “Uncle Sam”, telling them, “before we put out the fire, first we have to help the good guys duke it out and beat the bad guys!”
A lot of good observations, thank you. From a standpoint of function, military security of commerce, trade, scientific exchange and communication infrastructure is needed globally. As is market infrastructure, such as finance of technology advance and corporate accumulation of organization knowledge. These things for example transformed the world post WWII from 20/80 to 80/20 prosperous/impoverished, and continue to do so. The turn of Biden and Sullivan to mercantile armed protectionism looks like a downward spiral, removing the bits of security and commerce utility provided by the US and escalating secessionist conflict apparently to mire the mid level powers (EU, BRICS, Indonesia) and slow their achievement of middle income and security capacity. Alongside being priced out of more infrastructure domains by the BRICS and leveraging phoney green anti energy financing, divisive identity victimology and setting up opaque NGO censorship of social media, it seems the US turn will hasten its demotion.
Monbiot is bought and paid for. The security services always try to recruit prominent left wing voices as they have credibility with those the state wishes to control.
Hence Monbiot is allowed, even encouraged, to rail against corporate capitalism and corrupt state actors to general applause from the gallery.
However, when a serious issue arises, usually of geopolitics significance, the debt is called in and Noy George must heed his masters' call and sing for his supper.
Owen Jones is another, I suspect. Check his role in stabbing Corbyn in the back. As Boxer might have said in Animal Farm. "If Comrade George/Owen says it, it must be true".
Well, he appeared on pro zionist platforms during the defenestration of Corbyn. And I just dont trust mainstream journalists any more. Like Chomsky said to Andrew Marr, if you believed anything else then you wouldnt havecthat position.
I don't disgree with anything about Monbiot that Jonathan has written. He is detestable, pretentious and anyone who doesn't have an anti-imperialist perspective is not serious about the ecological and environmental catastrophe.
But what I do disagree with is the headline 'How the left became cheerleaders for US imperialism.'
I am pretty prominent on the unaligned far left and I cannot recall one single person even mentioning Monbiot let alone praising him. He is irrelevant. Possibly he carries more sway amongst green activists but not those I'm friendly with.
Yes he no doubt appeals to the declining Guardian readership but the Guardian is widely detested today for its use of 'antisemitism' against the Corbyn project Far more prominent is that gadfly Owen Jones whose hostility to Israel's genocide in Gaza, which I have no doubt is genuine, belies a failure to criticise the structure and make up of the state that does it and Zionism.
The only time in the past few years when we targeted Monbiot was when we picketed the Guardian and called out his name a few times for his failure to speak up for a fellow journalist. But that is all.
Maybe Jonathan knows something I don't know. I realise as an ex Guardian journalist that Jonathan regularly targets his ex employer because he feels it has betrayed it. I understand that. As someone who took the paper for close on 40 years and who was a regular letter writer to it I feel much the same but the good writers have gone. It is a neo-liberal rag and despite a few good articles is part of the enemy today.
There is a real problem for some of the left, not least supporters of the old IMG and Fourth International as represented by Prof. Gilbert Achcar in their support for NATO in Ukraine but that has nothing to do with Monbiot.
And yes I agree with the person who said he was not unhappy at the demise of Louis Proyect. He was a poisonous individual who labelled me an Assad/Putin supporter over Syria because I refused to support the Jihadists there.
I think that George Monbriot and Jonathan Cook misuse the idea of 'empire'. In my understanding, a modern empire is primarily an institution where the periphery serves the center. Another kind of empire, usually older, is simply a large organization with centralized authority that serves its subject peoples.
There was a Russian Empire and a British Empire, but these were in no way alike, as the British institutionally exploited its colonies and the Czarist Empire treated all of its people the same. The USSR was never an empire in any definition of that term; in fact, the periphery cost the center and was a drain on its resources. China has experienced a series of great Empires, but modern China is not one as China is a socialist state with "Chinese characteristics."
The American Empire is buttressed by controlling military bases all over the world and it economically exploits the world by its rent-collection and the borrowing it foists on the world due to the petrodollar dominance. The latter is a form of tribute. So, if a country does not pay its rent (technology licenses, copyrights, etc) or pay its tribute, US bases are poised to enforce (think Iraq and Libya). Anti-imperialism in this modern world is exclusively anti-American.
It's not just with 'wars'. Monibot's dogma and idiocy on covid also took people from left to right or completely turned them off reading Monibot, which by extension rubbished the environmental issues he focused on.
Monibot wrote 'Every few days I hear of another acquaintance who has become seriously ill with Covid, after proudly proclaiming the benefits of “natural immunity”, denouncing vaccines and refusing to take the precautions that apply to lesser mortals. Some have been hospitalised. Within these circles, which have for so long sought to cultivate a good society, there are people actively threatening the lives of others.
It’s not just anti-vax beliefs that have been spreading through these movements. On an almost daily basis I see conspiracy theories travelling smoothly from right to left.'
Anti vax is a perjorative term and applies to those who oppose vaccine mandates as well as to people with safety (new to market products have limited data- it is not a conspiracy to say so) and efficacy concerns (the Pfizer (convicted criminals) had an absolute efficacy of 0.85%- thus it protected less than one person in a hundred from getting symptoms said to be an alleged disease with fatality rate and demographic very similar to the 'flu).
The issues surrounding covid policy may well have political objections about the rights of the individual and the collective.
But they also have profound scientific ones (as does the Russian SMO have profound historical issues). The needs of pharma profits were clearly put ahead of both freedom of speech and the provision of evidence- debate on the scientific issues on 'covid' were censored or were ridiculed by numbnuts like Monibot.
The science is never settled especially when the holes in what we were expected to accept were so large a truck could go through them and the ignorance of the scientific method was so profound it brought tears to the eyes.
What you describe here is the great wedge Covid drove into humanity: science versus nature. An experimental gene technology versus natural immune system. People died or were ill on both sides…which should persuade people to more tolerance. Yet it remains deeply divisive, and cuts across any other world issue. Perhaps it’s mostly and old wound now… the racketeering already happened. Monibot (ha!), like many, many others on both sides of this divide was disappointing in abandoning critical thinking.
Hiya Nizami, that's not what i meant to describe! Monibot frames it as gene tech against natural immunity, perhaps science versus nature.
That's not how i saw it at all. The experimental jabs were not shown by science to provide anything other than negligible extra 'immunity' against the alleged new disease over those who didn't have it.
The divide for me was between those who understood the science and those who didn't or who didn't look into it and accepted what they were told.
Brilliant writing, thank you. I’ve long harboured a suspicion that all is not what it seems as regards the British/American narrative of the war in Ukraine. You’ve succinctly pointed me towards various factors that deserve closer scrutiny. Your analysis is a welcome voice in an ocean of oftentimes vacuous inanities.
Monbiot, sadly, is a disappointment. He is another, not-very-well-developed psychologically, self interested individual. Anyone who has b/w views, as in ‘you’re either on the side of Ukraine, or you support fascist dictators’, or the famous post 911 George W Bush warning, ‘you’re either with us — as in don’t dare to question the US — or you’re with the terrorists, or an example I’m personally familiar with, ‘you either support Israel, or you’re an antisemite’… Anyone with this kind of either-or limbic psychology, has little tolerance for complexity.
A dime a dozen, except Monbiot does have some undeserved influence, which is why this article is important. Thank you, Jonathan.
I did not compare *him* to Dubya. I gave an example of something he *does* that Jonathan’s article describes, that follows the same principle as the examples I gave. People are not what they do, they can be more. But what they do is important especially if they have a lot of influence. Jonathan’s article describes things Monbiot does that can give us some clues about his motivation. A judgement of someone’s actions is not the same as a character assassination…
Having had a Quick Look down the OPCW rabbit hole, starting with the quoted Aaron Mate tweet, I may well be wrong but it may also be that Monbiot demonstrated the point of exhaustion anyone can reach in the face of conflicting information…Ergo, yes, why be so unequivocal on Ukraine? The purpose of info war is to conceal facts, even eye witness account, so that we no longer believe what we see. QED par excellence, the MO of hasbora. Im not on twitter but even substack is a drain on time and energy… To be qualified to discuss rabbit holes one has to have explored them fully. That takes huge amounts of time… Not an excuse for Monbiot but maybe a mitigation?
I like your thinking. I agree with what I think you say, that we should know more about something before we express an opinion. But as you also say, there is such a thing as too much information and people can get overloaded, especially these days. I also think though that above all, compassion has to be our priority. If we were capable of putting compassion at the centre, everything would slow down and we would have to be more thoughtful. Compassion, however, does not mean no boundaries, or that anything goes. We can be firm and compassionate. I guess Jonathan was pointing to thinking that is too simplistic. Simplistic thinking, however, can expose unconscious biases, lack of self-awareness in some areas, etc.
This is so true. People want to know which side to be on when the truth is almost never black or white. It takes extra effort and is unsettles the mind to see the truths and lies of acts, propaganda, and untried possibilities on BOTH sides.
Yes, it takes reasonably good development to tolerate ambiguity, tension, the shades of grey of real life and human relationships. Education has progressively dumbed people down, and culturally and economically people have been systematically traumatised, which forces most people into mere survivalism. It is a sad world we have created, but we’re capable of so much more. (I write about this and more on my Substack channel). 🙏
The Guardian started to lose the plot around covid already, and it has been downhill since. Even on Israel and mental health (my two areas) it tends to toe a very cautious, mainstream, cowardly line. They are not guardians of free speech or independent journalism, and have been a perfectly good home for people like Monbiot, who frankly I think do not have the courage to say what needs to be said and toe a careful, self-serving line. I am not right wing at all in my views. But the idea that the so-called ‘Left’ is always right is fiction. I am glad that Jonathan wrote this article. Life is complex and anyone on any side of politics who suppresses discussion or debate on anything is part of the problem not the solution, to use a well-worn cliché.
i think that the Assange affair & it's repercussions was the beginning of the end if not the end of the G as a newspaper to be relied on, inasmuch as any could be.
I hope George Monbiot reads this article and takes it to heart. He needs to look more deeply into foreign affairs and stop, perhaps without realizing his error, supporting the oppressor. He should be wise to the depth and breadth of international propaganda.
I too wish he did, but he probably won’t. If he started to be more reflexive and nuanced, and began to write like Jonathan, he would promptly lose his Guardian secure income. The Guardian need him to confer the aura of enlightenment on them, and he needs them. Perfect symbiosis. I wish people were at least honest about their self-interest. Either they are unaware that they operate out of self-interest, or they pretend they do not. Self-awareness cannot be taught. It is an executive brain function. You either have it or you don’t. Well-developed people cannot lie to themselves, let alone to others.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was also a violation of the UN Charter. For avoiding wars, it matters. And the left needs to be more affirmative of the UN's role as peacekeepers. It also matters that Chinese troops are the majority among the UN's 'Blue Helmets.'
a quick search comes up with: according to the modern war institute "Of the 122 countries that provide troops to UN peacekeeping as of February 2021, China is the world’s ninth leading contributor with 2,464 blue helmets. This commitment dwarfs that of the other permanent members of the UN Security Council: the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and the United States"
is there a better site for more accurate info on the suject?
Perhaps we're both right. I got mine by seaching on current numbers, but this says 'as of' Feb 20212, which could mean something ratner different, such as from the date given back to the 1950s. In any case, if I'm wrong, I'm glad to be corrected.
Monibot and the vaccinated 'left' may be happy lining Big Pharma's pockets as well as supporting the US proxy war in Ukraine, but the unvaccinated 'right' are also happy to support both Big Pharma via big animal ag (pharma's biggest client) and US Imperialism which is carrying out a genocide in Gaza to ensure continued availability of fossil fuels.
So, what is already clear is that this guy is saying that "everybody on the left" thinks the same way. Like they are all the same? Can they think for themselves? Well, if that is the way it is, I doubt Mr. Cook is any different! Sorry, can't support you but, yeah I know how it is!
Mr. Cook: You are absolutely right.
The American Left, if we can call it that, is pretty lame. So is Britain's Left as well.
Both, the Left in the US and the UK, are afraid of their own shadows.
Both possess NO intellectual honor or integrity.
For once, Jonathan, let's be honest.
The Left in the US and UK have lacked assertiveness and determination for at least the past 25 years!
Why?
Because they live in fear of being labeled "soft" on communism, "soft" on authoritarianism, or "soft" on dictators.
Put simply, the American Left, in 2024, is weak and ineffectual. Where are their voices concerning the genocidal actions of Israel within Gaza. Nowhere.
Like cowards, they are hiding in their congressional offices.
The war in Ukraine is an irrefutable disgrace. How come the "Left" has not demanded a real debate on US foreign policy?
Because the Dems are no different from their GOP neo-con counterparts.
To be absolutely clear, the Dems and the GOP are simply two cheeks of the same ass!!
The media is always diligent, and absolutely obedient, in refusing to ask uncomfortable questions.
As a consequence, the American empire, and its "endless" wars, are never questioned by the 4th estate. No matter how catastrophic or disastrous they may become. Silence. Always silence!!
Jonathan, you are right!
The Left, in the US and the UK, are shameless "cheerleaders" of imperialism's perpetration of misery and death upon the global stage.
Imperialism.
There is no other term for America's or Britain's current behavior. It's grotesque. But quite real!!
It's shocking Monbiot is so blinkered on Ukraine. The best illustration I've seen of that conflict was a cartoon showing firemen labelled “climate crisis responders” rushing to put out a fire, but being stopped and turned away by a policeman labelled “Uncle Sam”, telling them, “before we put out the fire, first we have to help the good guys duke it out and beat the bad guys!”
He made a mistake there I agree but at present he doing the right thing . So don’t be so fucking hardline it does help anyone
A lot of good observations, thank you. From a standpoint of function, military security of commerce, trade, scientific exchange and communication infrastructure is needed globally. As is market infrastructure, such as finance of technology advance and corporate accumulation of organization knowledge. These things for example transformed the world post WWII from 20/80 to 80/20 prosperous/impoverished, and continue to do so. The turn of Biden and Sullivan to mercantile armed protectionism looks like a downward spiral, removing the bits of security and commerce utility provided by the US and escalating secessionist conflict apparently to mire the mid level powers (EU, BRICS, Indonesia) and slow their achievement of middle income and security capacity. Alongside being priced out of more infrastructure domains by the BRICS and leveraging phoney green anti energy financing, divisive identity victimology and setting up opaque NGO censorship of social media, it seems the US turn will hasten its demotion.
Monbiot is bought and paid for. The security services always try to recruit prominent left wing voices as they have credibility with those the state wishes to control.
Hence Monbiot is allowed, even encouraged, to rail against corporate capitalism and corrupt state actors to general applause from the gallery.
However, when a serious issue arises, usually of geopolitics significance, the debt is called in and Noy George must heed his masters' call and sing for his supper.
Owen Jones is another, I suspect. Check his role in stabbing Corbyn in the back. As Boxer might have said in Animal Farm. "If Comrade George/Owen says it, it must be true".
I think you’re wrong about Owen Jones . He has gone up in my estimation because of his coverage of Gaza
Well, he appeared on pro zionist platforms during the defenestration of Corbyn. And I just dont trust mainstream journalists any more. Like Chomsky said to Andrew Marr, if you believed anything else then you wouldnt havecthat position.
I don't disgree with anything about Monbiot that Jonathan has written. He is detestable, pretentious and anyone who doesn't have an anti-imperialist perspective is not serious about the ecological and environmental catastrophe.
But what I do disagree with is the headline 'How the left became cheerleaders for US imperialism.'
I am pretty prominent on the unaligned far left and I cannot recall one single person even mentioning Monbiot let alone praising him. He is irrelevant. Possibly he carries more sway amongst green activists but not those I'm friendly with.
Yes he no doubt appeals to the declining Guardian readership but the Guardian is widely detested today for its use of 'antisemitism' against the Corbyn project Far more prominent is that gadfly Owen Jones whose hostility to Israel's genocide in Gaza, which I have no doubt is genuine, belies a failure to criticise the structure and make up of the state that does it and Zionism.
The only time in the past few years when we targeted Monbiot was when we picketed the Guardian and called out his name a few times for his failure to speak up for a fellow journalist. But that is all.
Maybe Jonathan knows something I don't know. I realise as an ex Guardian journalist that Jonathan regularly targets his ex employer because he feels it has betrayed it. I understand that. As someone who took the paper for close on 40 years and who was a regular letter writer to it I feel much the same but the good writers have gone. It is a neo-liberal rag and despite a few good articles is part of the enemy today.
There is a real problem for some of the left, not least supporters of the old IMG and Fourth International as represented by Prof. Gilbert Achcar in their support for NATO in Ukraine but that has nothing to do with Monbiot.
And yes I agree with the person who said he was not unhappy at the demise of Louis Proyect. He was a poisonous individual who labelled me an Assad/Putin supporter over Syria because I refused to support the Jihadists there.
"vice-like corporate hold" indeed, full of vice. But I think you meant vise-like?
Vice = British spelling
Vise = US spelling
I think that George Monbriot and Jonathan Cook misuse the idea of 'empire'. In my understanding, a modern empire is primarily an institution where the periphery serves the center. Another kind of empire, usually older, is simply a large organization with centralized authority that serves its subject peoples.
There was a Russian Empire and a British Empire, but these were in no way alike, as the British institutionally exploited its colonies and the Czarist Empire treated all of its people the same. The USSR was never an empire in any definition of that term; in fact, the periphery cost the center and was a drain on its resources. China has experienced a series of great Empires, but modern China is not one as China is a socialist state with "Chinese characteristics."
The American Empire is buttressed by controlling military bases all over the world and it economically exploits the world by its rent-collection and the borrowing it foists on the world due to the petrodollar dominance. The latter is a form of tribute. So, if a country does not pay its rent (technology licenses, copyrights, etc) or pay its tribute, US bases are poised to enforce (think Iraq and Libya). Anti-imperialism in this modern world is exclusively anti-American.
Monbiot is an unprincipled male whore for the War Machine.
It's not just with 'wars'. Monibot's dogma and idiocy on covid also took people from left to right or completely turned them off reading Monibot, which by extension rubbished the environmental issues he focused on.
Monibot wrote 'Every few days I hear of another acquaintance who has become seriously ill with Covid, after proudly proclaiming the benefits of “natural immunity”, denouncing vaccines and refusing to take the precautions that apply to lesser mortals. Some have been hospitalised. Within these circles, which have for so long sought to cultivate a good society, there are people actively threatening the lives of others.
It’s not just anti-vax beliefs that have been spreading through these movements. On an almost daily basis I see conspiracy theories travelling smoothly from right to left.'
Anti vax is a perjorative term and applies to those who oppose vaccine mandates as well as to people with safety (new to market products have limited data- it is not a conspiracy to say so) and efficacy concerns (the Pfizer (convicted criminals) had an absolute efficacy of 0.85%- thus it protected less than one person in a hundred from getting symptoms said to be an alleged disease with fatality rate and demographic very similar to the 'flu).
The issues surrounding covid policy may well have political objections about the rights of the individual and the collective.
But they also have profound scientific ones (as does the Russian SMO have profound historical issues). The needs of pharma profits were clearly put ahead of both freedom of speech and the provision of evidence- debate on the scientific issues on 'covid' were censored or were ridiculed by numbnuts like Monibot.
The science is never settled especially when the holes in what we were expected to accept were so large a truck could go through them and the ignorance of the scientific method was so profound it brought tears to the eyes.
What you describe here is the great wedge Covid drove into humanity: science versus nature. An experimental gene technology versus natural immune system. People died or were ill on both sides…which should persuade people to more tolerance. Yet it remains deeply divisive, and cuts across any other world issue. Perhaps it’s mostly and old wound now… the racketeering already happened. Monibot (ha!), like many, many others on both sides of this divide was disappointing in abandoning critical thinking.
Hiya Nizami, that's not what i meant to describe! Monibot frames it as gene tech against natural immunity, perhaps science versus nature.
That's not how i saw it at all. The experimental jabs were not shown by science to provide anything other than negligible extra 'immunity' against the alleged new disease over those who didn't have it.
The divide for me was between those who understood the science and those who didn't or who didn't look into it and accepted what they were told.
Brilliant writing, thank you. I’ve long harboured a suspicion that all is not what it seems as regards the British/American narrative of the war in Ukraine. You’ve succinctly pointed me towards various factors that deserve closer scrutiny. Your analysis is a welcome voice in an ocean of oftentimes vacuous inanities.
Monbiot, sadly, is a disappointment. He is another, not-very-well-developed psychologically, self interested individual. Anyone who has b/w views, as in ‘you’re either on the side of Ukraine, or you support fascist dictators’, or the famous post 911 George W Bush warning, ‘you’re either with us — as in don’t dare to question the US — or you’re with the terrorists, or an example I’m personally familiar with, ‘you either support Israel, or you’re an antisemite’… Anyone with this kind of either-or limbic psychology, has little tolerance for complexity.
A dime a dozen, except Monbiot does have some undeserved influence, which is why this article is important. Thank you, Jonathan.
Surely your opinion of Monbiot here is as b/w as any opinion of his? The guy has his faults, but comparing him to Dubya seems OTT.
I did not compare *him* to Dubya. I gave an example of something he *does* that Jonathan’s article describes, that follows the same principle as the examples I gave. People are not what they do, they can be more. But what they do is important especially if they have a lot of influence. Jonathan’s article describes things Monbiot does that can give us some clues about his motivation. A judgement of someone’s actions is not the same as a character assassination…
Having had a Quick Look down the OPCW rabbit hole, starting with the quoted Aaron Mate tweet, I may well be wrong but it may also be that Monbiot demonstrated the point of exhaustion anyone can reach in the face of conflicting information…Ergo, yes, why be so unequivocal on Ukraine? The purpose of info war is to conceal facts, even eye witness account, so that we no longer believe what we see. QED par excellence, the MO of hasbora. Im not on twitter but even substack is a drain on time and energy… To be qualified to discuss rabbit holes one has to have explored them fully. That takes huge amounts of time… Not an excuse for Monbiot but maybe a mitigation?
I like your thinking. I agree with what I think you say, that we should know more about something before we express an opinion. But as you also say, there is such a thing as too much information and people can get overloaded, especially these days. I also think though that above all, compassion has to be our priority. If we were capable of putting compassion at the centre, everything would slow down and we would have to be more thoughtful. Compassion, however, does not mean no boundaries, or that anything goes. We can be firm and compassionate. I guess Jonathan was pointing to thinking that is too simplistic. Simplistic thinking, however, can expose unconscious biases, lack of self-awareness in some areas, etc.
This is so true. People want to know which side to be on when the truth is almost never black or white. It takes extra effort and is unsettles the mind to see the truths and lies of acts, propaganda, and untried possibilities on BOTH sides.
Yes, it takes reasonably good development to tolerate ambiguity, tension, the shades of grey of real life and human relationships. Education has progressively dumbed people down, and culturally and economically people have been systematically traumatised, which forces most people into mere survivalism. It is a sad world we have created, but we’re capable of so much more. (I write about this and more on my Substack channel). 🙏
More than a disappointment. The Guardian used to be a good newspaper. I still get it but have been aware of it's changes for a few years now.
Maybe it's time to leave.
So sad to think we could pick up a trustworthy newspaper at one time.
The Guardian started to lose the plot around covid already, and it has been downhill since. Even on Israel and mental health (my two areas) it tends to toe a very cautious, mainstream, cowardly line. They are not guardians of free speech or independent journalism, and have been a perfectly good home for people like Monbiot, who frankly I think do not have the courage to say what needs to be said and toe a careful, self-serving line. I am not right wing at all in my views. But the idea that the so-called ‘Left’ is always right is fiction. I am glad that Jonathan wrote this article. Life is complex and anyone on any side of politics who suppresses discussion or debate on anything is part of the problem not the solution, to use a well-worn cliché.
i think that the Assange affair & it's repercussions was the beginning of the end if not the end of the G as a newspaper to be relied on, inasmuch as any could be.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-the-uk-security-services-neutralised-the-countrys-leading-liberal-newspaper/
True.
I am in France and the European edition is not good.
They’re all the same including the UK and Australian editions. I am based in Scotland, which tragically for us is still stuck with Westminster…
Hello to your beautiful country............I keep telling my grandkids to go and live there and HOPEFULLY the Scottish people will vote to leave.
Amen to that and they’ll be very welcome!! 🙏🏼😊🏴
I hope George Monbiot reads this article and takes it to heart. He needs to look more deeply into foreign affairs and stop, perhaps without realizing his error, supporting the oppressor. He should be wise to the depth and breadth of international propaganda.
I too wish he did, but he probably won’t. If he started to be more reflexive and nuanced, and began to write like Jonathan, he would promptly lose his Guardian secure income. The Guardian need him to confer the aura of enlightenment on them, and he needs them. Perfect symbiosis. I wish people were at least honest about their self-interest. Either they are unaware that they operate out of self-interest, or they pretend they do not. Self-awareness cannot be taught. It is an executive brain function. You either have it or you don’t. Well-developed people cannot lie to themselves, let alone to others.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was also a violation of the UN Charter. For avoiding wars, it matters. And the left needs to be more affirmative of the UN's role as peacekeepers. It also matters that Chinese troops are the majority among the UN's 'Blue Helmets.'
a quick search comes up with: according to the modern war institute "Of the 122 countries that provide troops to UN peacekeeping as of February 2021, China is the world’s ninth leading contributor with 2,464 blue helmets. This commitment dwarfs that of the other permanent members of the UN Security Council: the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and the United States"
is there a better site for more accurate info on the suject?
Perhaps we're both right. I got mine by seaching on current numbers, but this says 'as of' Feb 20212, which could mean something ratner different, such as from the date given back to the 1950s. In any case, if I'm wrong, I'm glad to be corrected.