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Australia’s defence minister said on Friday any move to establish a Chinese military base in neighbouring Solomon Islands would be a concern after a wide-ranging draft security pact was leaked online.
Russia’s defence minister said on Friday any move to establish a NATO military base in neighbouring Ukraine would be a concern after . . .
Rosa Luxemburg didn’t think much of the Ukrainian nationalism of her day. This from her 1918 pamphlet on the Russian Revolution (https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch03.htm):
“Ukrainian nationalism in Russia was something quite different from, let us say, Czechish, Polish or Finnish nationalism in that the former was a mere whim, a folly of a few dozen petty-bourgeois intellectuals without the slightest roots in the economic, political or psychological relationships of the country; it was without any historical tradition, since the Ukraine never formed a nation or government, was without any national culture, except for the reactionary-romantic poems of Shevschenko. It is exactly as if, one fine day, the people living in the Wasserkante should want to found a new Low-German (Plattdeutsche) nation and government! And this ridiculous pose of a few university professors and students was inflated into a political force by Lenin and his comrades through their doctrinaire agitation concerning the “right of self-determination including etc.”
She seems to have regarded Ukrainian as a dialect of Russian and to blame Lenin for artificially creating a Ukraine — a claim also made by Putin.
Too late now of course. Ukraine, after being an administrative unit of the old USSR, has now become a state and Ukrainian a separate language.
Interesting statement from the Zapatistas. I hadn’t realised they had gone anarchist. It maybe the quaint language but I am not sure what they mean by the “resistance• in Ukraine. I don’t think they mean the resistance of the Ukrainian state’s armed forces.
Also interesting on that link is a very revealing interviews with someone from the “Social Movement”;
The “Social Movement” is the name Trotskyists in Ukraine under:
https://rev.org.ua/sotsialnyi-rukh-who-we-are/
As can be seen they have joined up to be part of the armed forces of the Ukrainian state.
Incidentally, they could seek to gain support on the basis that Trotskyy was Ukrainian.
Yes, the end of the world is nigh, as the original Abiezer Coppe, the 17th century Ranter preached (before he calmed down after it didn’t happen).
The ICC statements on the war have generally been good but there is an odd passage in this one:
“Our solidarity with the KRAS comrades does not imply that we agree with all the contents of the statement, such as the demand for “an immediate end to hostilities” which seems to be a concession to the idea that the two bourgeois camps can make peace.”
I would have thought that, from the point of view of the immediate interest of the workers, an immediate stop to the killing and destruction is what is required. It may not be likely to happen but it’s a demand that any organisation committed to the interest of the working class should make.
Some of the other KRAS slogans are more dubious and/or just as unlikely to occur (calls for strikes, mutinies), not that this is preventing us publishing their statement in next month’s Socialist Standard.
We are not expected to believe that obvious Ukraine state propaganda, are we? And from the sensationalist Daily Mail (though the Guardian and the Independent willingly echo Ukrainian state propaganda too).
Here’s another example of obvious propaganda since we seem to exchanging examples:
“Large numbers’ of Belarusian troops refusing to join Russian invasion: Ukraine
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence says the possibility exists that Belarus’s army may join the Russian invasion, but its intelligence indicates that “a large number of personnel and some commanders are refusing to participate” in the war.”
Here’s more On Luxemburg’s criticusm of the so-called “ right of nations to self-determination”:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/wsm/rosa-luxemburg-and-the-national-question/
Here’s a couple of quotes from her:
‘A “right of nations” which is valid for all countries and all times is nothing more than a metaphysical cliche of the type of “rights of man” and “rights of the citizen”.
When we speak of the “right of nations to self-determination”, we are using the concept of the “nation”, as a homogeneous social and political entity . . . In a class society, “the nation” as a homogeneous sociopolitical entity does not exist. Rather, there exist within each nation, classes with antagonistic interests and “rights”.’
Having had to listen to Biden speak recently as over the Ukraine War I have my doubts that he really is the President ie where the buck stops. He seems so lethargic and just to be reading or saying what someone has prepared for him. He seems to be just a figurehead. So where does the buck stop? With Blinken the Secretary of State perhaps. He’s a boring speaker too who has to read everything he says but he seems more with it than poor old Biden.
A news item in today’s Times suggests that Barys the Buffoon and Liz la Gaffe are continuing to exercise a malign influence on the situation.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/truss-fears-france-and-germany-will-let-putin-off-hook-rbglg9623
Before the war broke out Britain didn’t want to make any concession that might have permitted a diplomatic solution and now they are keen to sabotage the talks on a deal that are going on between Russia and Ukraine. They have publicly declared that they want Russia not only to fail but to be seem to fail. But Russia has already gained that Ukraine will not join NATO and so won’t be seen to have failed and the gruesome twosome won’t be satisfied so don’t want to talks to succeed. They would prefer the war to continue until Russia is somehow defeated. They are classic war-mongers.
The alternative explanation is just as unflattering. They are doing it to save in the one case and advance in the other their miserable little political careers. Despicable even by capitalism’s standards.
These people are all turning out to have feet of clay, though admittedly Albert with his dystopian blueprint always had a head of clay as well.
Looks more like reduced than revamped. They must be having a bad time of it. Or those doing the work of maintaining it are getting tired. Pity really, as the forums were (sometimes) quite useful even good even if populated by some nasty and dishonest anti-SPGB anarchists.
A fuller description of the political party bans
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/21/why-did-ukraine-suspend-11-pro-russia-parties
This article should be given the widest possible publicity as it completely refutes the propaganda that the Ukraine state is fighting for “democracy”, “Western values”, etc. The Econonist Intelligence Unit refuses to classify Ukraine even as a “flawed democracy” but only as a “hybrid” between a flawed democracy and an authoritarian regime. This move will mean it goes down a few more notches in that direction.
Zelensky likes to address other state’s parliaments but one state whose parliament he hasn’t addressed is Ukraine’s. That would be a bit embarrassing as the places for a main opposition party with a tenth of the seats and nearly a fifth of votes cast would be empty.
Here is another key passage:
“After the Euromaidan revolution, and Russia’s hostile actions in Crimea and Donbas, however, the pro-Russian camp was marginalised in Ukrainian politics. And at the same time, the pro-Russian label became very inflated. It started to be used to describe anyone calling for Ukraine’s neutrality. It has also started to be employed to discredit and silence sovereigntist, state-developmentalist, anti-Western, illiberal, populist, left-wing, and many other discourses.”
What is ironic (very ironic in fact in view if Barys Johnson’s gaffe) about this is that by the sounds of it as “sovereigntists” some of the banned parties take the same position as the Brexiteers in Britain. But to take an anti-EU position in Ukraine gets you banned.
Yes, we will definitely mention this in the Socialist Standard. Part of the previous English translation will have been made from a German or French translation, so this version, all translated from Russian, will be more accurate.
Confirmation from CNN that it is the Azov Battalion that is holding out in Mariupol at the expense of the lives, limbs and houses of the population there:
“Captain Svyatoslav Palamar, of the National Guard Azov Regiment, said he and his fellow fighters would not surrender in Mariupol.”
“Moscow’s humanitarian promises cannot be trusted, according to Pyotr Andryushenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, and the city is not going to stop defending itself, he said.
“We will fight until the last of our soldiers,” Andryushenko told the BBC.”I don’t know how influential this adviser is but let’s hope that this is just rhetoric and that the mayor has some other, level-headed advisers and that their views prevail. Surely there must be some in authority there who realise what “fighting to the last soldier” will mean in terms of more destruction, more deaths, more bodies lying unburied in the streets.
