Axis Of Peace?

It is probable that Russia, China and Iran are engaged in an informal alliance against the West. It is not formal and it only acts defensively but each has its own role in diminishing US hegemony – Russia/military, China/economy, Iran/strategic. There is a consciousness of this and Iran was undoubtedly helped in unspecified ways to resist by Russia and China in Round 3 of the war on them.  The West knows but cannot openly respond to this militarily or declare an open war.  All the time provocation is kept within limits, nothing that would spark open warfare, but it all chips away at US power and the petrodollar system.  This may be the fundamental reason for Putin’s restraint in Ukraine. A long game is being played and Iran has shown it is paying dividends.

Pat Walsh

RTE Censorship ?

I have noticed several instances lately whenever RTE publishes a story on the Ukraine conflict it registers the number of comments on that story (as Facebook compels it to do) but access to the majority of those comments is usually denied by RTE using the explanation that ‘“most relevant”’ is selected, so some comments have been filtered out”. 

I have raised this in my own comments in the past on the RTE facebook page but this morning RTE posted a story with the heading “Ukraine peace plan must reflect ‘realities’, says Russia”. However, when you click on the heading expecting to read a report on the topic all you get is a story with the heading “Eight arrested for planning attacks in Moscow for Ukraine” which has nothing to do with the story about Russia’s position in regards to any peace plan. But aside from that the story – which I assume was originally linked to the one with the heading about the Russian attitude to any peace plan – had 24 comments all of which RTE had hidden behind its excuse of “relevancy”. 

I have now posted the following comment on the RTE facebook page with regards to that situation.

“We’ve now reached the ultimate in absurdity when there are 24 comments on this story but RTE censors access to all of those comments using the claim that these comments have no relevance to the story that the comments are commenting on! Surely an RTE audience is best positioned to judge what is and what is not relevant. But maybe RTE haven’t yet reached the ultimate in absurdity as they may censure this comment on the censuring of comments on the basis of it not being relevant to the comments the absence of which is being commented upon.”

Eamon Dyas