ALB
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Maybe it is a question of semantics but, if you are going to have a meaningful discussion, the terms used do need to be clearly defined.
There is a whole range of breaches of “law and order” ranging from nation-wide revolution to local riot. Insurrection is near one end of the spectrum while riot is at the other end. In between might be rebellion and revolt.
A distinction can also be drawn between armed attempts to overthrow the government (revolution) and armed attempts to resist the implementation of a particular law. It seems that at the time of the US Insurrection Act of 1807 the word “insurrection” meant the latter and if the 6 January event had occurred at any time up to, say, the 1850s it could have been classified as an insurrection. In more recent times the Act has been used against riots.
In Britain the terminology has been different where there were both Insurrection Acts (applied to Ireland, the land of armed conspiracies) and the Riot Act. This suggests that in English law the 6 January event would have been regarded as a riot rather than an insurrection.
So insofar as semantics are involved maybe it’s the difference between the use of the term “insurrection” on the two sides of the Atlantic? But politics are involved too, with the Democratic Party having an evident vote-catching interest in labelling (labeling!) the 6 January event an “insurrection”.
So Ukraine isn’t a proper “bourgeois democracy” that Western politicians and media give the impression it is. In fact the political and economic superstructure in Ukraine is not much different than that in Russia. So the argument that it is “democratic” while Russia isn’t and that “we” must support it to defend “democratic values” doesn’t wash.
The present tensions are not about that but about the US-led Western capitalist bloc wishing to incorporate Ukraine into its sphere of influence and capitalist Russia resisting this. Naked power politics. Not an issue worth the shedding of a single drop of working class blood.
No, it isn’t. And the Wikipedia entry doesn’t say that. The present Ukrainian government might aspire to but it has not happened and probably won’t for the time being. Russia has made it clear that it, if it did, this would be a cause for war and NATO has no intention of defending Ukraine militarily. They are only rattling economic sanctions.
Another Tory denounces the Johnson government as “socialist” for stealing Labour’s clothes.
Nonsense of course since the Labour Party has nothing to do with socialism.
Be interesting (well sort of) to see how the capitalist class, via the traditional Conservative Party elements, get rid of a prime minister who is clearly unsuitable from their point of view. Actually, his government was more a Brexit government than a traditional Tory one.
Review here in this month’s Socialist Standard up online today.
I thought you were talking about popular opinion rather than government policy. Anyway, here’s more about Rumania and Russia.
History, I suppose. I think it is only people in the Baltic States (which were independent states after WW1 until 1939 when they were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union under the Nazi-Soviet pact to divide up Eastern Europe) and in Poland (which was divided under the same treaty and parts of it incorporated into the Soviet Union). I don’t think other East Europeans are particularly anti-Russian. Some might even be pro-Russia, if you include Roumania and Bulgaria as east European where Russia was historically seen as the state that championed the Christians there against Turkish rule.
But, as you say, it is conflicts between states that have left a legacy of antagonism between different groups, so they identify with their “nation-state” and the interests of its rulers rather than with their fellow workers in other states.
Nobody wants confrontation except the US government and its poodle, not even Ukraine.
Them stealing our name is a cross we have to bear. That does mean that we should let them get away with it by calling ourselves all the time “SPGB” or “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”. We are the Socialist Party.
Under the unwritten British constitution, going to war has been a “a royal prerogative”, ie something the government can do off its own bat without needing to get the approval of Parliament first. However, if a government did this against the will of parliament it wouldn’t last long as a parliamentary majority would vote it out of office. As Alan has said, the practice has grown up of governments formally consulting Parliament before authorising military action. In one case, over Syria in 2013, they didn’t get it.
But let’s not exaggerate. The UK government is planning to double the number of British troops in some NATO countries bordering on Russia — from 800 to 1600. Russia is going to be trembling in its boots over that.
The only interest I can think of for British capitalism in Ukraine would be to weaken Russia generally. In other words, it wouldn’t be about the Ukraine as such. This could be an advantage because, due to global warming, a north east passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific will be open as a regular commercial trade route which Russia could control. Can’t think of anything else.
Looking for something else I came across this from 2015 when Trump was only running for the nomination.
The irony is that, under Trump, this crisis might not have happened. So who was the imaginary “lesser evil” on foreign policy: Biden the Bellicose or Trump the Isolationist? This is assuming of course that the military establishment wouldn’t run rings around him as they did over Syria.
I see the President of Ukraine has just complained about alarmist stories about an imminent invasion causing the Ukrainian economy to slow down.
You mean like the fanatical Serbian nationalist who shot the Austrian Crown Prince in Sarajevo in 1914, providing Austria and Germany with a pretext to mobilise?
You’re right mad ultra-nationalists are quite capable of this sort of thing. But the Ukrainian ones would be very silly to do that as the West have said that there will be no military response to a Russian invasion. So Ukraine would be on its own and would probably have to hand the eastern part inhabited by a Russians back to Russia.
I think that last week Western propaganda was warning of something like this as a “false flag” operation by Russia. The sensationalist media (that’s all the daily papers and all commercial TV stations) love this sort of thing as it sells papers and gets more people watching ads before, during and after the news. Advertising revenue of course is what they are in business before and how they generate income, part of which is their profit.
