Tag: war

Ukraine: Majorities in North America and Europe want peace: G7 and NATO push for escalation.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

It beggars belief that there are people who are taking bets on a nuclear war taking place by 2025. While gambling addiction has its own dynamic, how does anyone placing one of these bets think they might be in a position to collect their winnings if it does?

The justified fear that the Ukraine war is heading in that direction is one of the factors in driving majorities in both North America and Europe to favour a ceasefire and negotiated peace over continued escalation.

A recent survey by the Institute for Global Affairs showed that more than twice as many people in Europe and the US supported NATO pushing for a ceasfire as opposed it.

The IGA notes that

  • In responding to Russia’s invasion, avoiding escalation with Russia is a top priority — especially among Europeans. Results suggest transatlantic support for a cautious response.
  • More support a negotiated settlement to end the war, with a plurality of Americans and Western Europeans citing the loss of life and casualties as a primary reason.

This is a broadly humane response that is the opposite of the course being taken by the G7 and NATO leaderships. It is perhaps no accident that all of the leaders at the G7 had a negative approval rating; ranging from Georgia Meloni on -10, through Joe Biden on -19 and Justin Tudeau on -33, Olaf Schultz and Rishi Sunak on – 44 to rock bottom Emmanuel Macron on – 52%. Even after just winning the UK General Election, as he arrives at the NATO summit in Washington, Keir Starmer’s rating is -3.

In fact, the same logic on the part of NATO that led to the war in Ukraine in 2022 is the logic that is heading inexorably over nuclear red lines, possibly before the Autumn. The problem with a nuclear balance of terror is that it only works until it doesn’t. And the calculated games of chicken only have to be got wrong once, and its the end for all of us.

It seems clear that the calculation in NATO in the Winter of 2021 that they did not have to take Russia’s attempts to end the smouldering Ukrainian civil war, and defang NATOs eastward expansion, with a

  • mutual security pact that would have guaranteed autonomy for the Russian speaking Donbass within Ukraine,
  • made Ukrainian neutrality permanent
  • and kicked negotiations about the status of Crimea into a possibly interminable negotiation process

seriously because they believed that either

  • Russian military threats were a bluff that could be called, or
  • that if Russia did intervene, that would be the opportunity they wanted for sanctions that would rapidly bring the Russian economy to its knees, creating domestic turmoil through which the well oiled processes of a colour revolution could lead to a “regime change” favourable to the US

were a complete miscalculation in both respects.

With the sanctions only supported by direct US allies,and largely blowing back on them, the Russian economy is doing fine, growing 5.4% in the first quarter of 2024 (compared with 0.6% in the UK, 0.4% for the US and 0.2% for Germany). And the military tide is turning slowly, remorselessly Russian, as the Ukrainian government is forced to resort to press ganging increasingly reluctant conscripts, sending them up to the line half trained, and suffering losses in soldiers and material that they can’t replace.

Faced with the prospect of defeat, the G7 and NATO are trying to up the military ante, rather than do what their populations want and seek a negotiated peace.

This is heading into very dangerous territory. Mark Rutte was confirmed as the incoming NATO Secretary General only after he assured Hungary that no Hungarian finance would be used for, or military personnel deployed to, Ukraine. That implies that other NATO forces will be, threatening the direct clash that could be a tipping point beyond the control of its instigators.

The decisions now being made at the NATO summit, with a dedicated NATO HQ being set up, promising an “irreversible path” to membership, cranked up arms spending, a no fly zone on the Western and Southern Ukrainian border, a green light for Ukraine to try to knock out Russian nuclear early warning systems that cover areas well away from Ukraine – a terrifying piece of irresponsible brinkmanship, as this makes a nervous nuclear armed power unable to tell if it is under fire or not in a context in which it is afraid it might be – deployment of NATO “instructors” within the theatre of conflict, and ever widening permissions given to fire NATO produced munitions into Russia are all edging towards catastrophe.

A letter to the FT by a number of academics and former diplomats, including Lord Skidelsky and Anatole Lieven, calling for a negotiated settlement to allow the world to be “pulled back from the very dangerous brink at which it currently stands” is a sign that the consensus at the top in favour of escalation is beginning to crack. This is likely to grow as the situation becomes more intractable and dangerous.

In this context, its important that positions taken in the Labour Movement do not rest too heavily on myths. A recent letter, Time to help Ukraine to win, signed, among others, by John McDonnell, Clive Lewis and Nadia Whittome, argued that failure on the battlefield has been down to inadequate supplies of munitions from the US and its allies, calling for the UK to “take a leading role” in supplying “all the weapons needed to free the entire country” and that, in the short term, this should take the form of obsolete MOD equipment being gifted instead of sold off, for a war crimes tribunal directed solely against the Russians and for Russian assets to be seized (stolen) by Western Banks.

There are four problems with this approach.

Myth 1. To “free the whole country” would actually be a reconquest of the Russian speaking areas that rebelled against the pro Western coup in 2014 and have been fighting it ever since, at a cost of thousands of dead from 2014 onwards; and, far from being a liberation, would constitute an occupation of those areas. This would not be pretty. Kyrill Budanov, head of Ukrainian military intelligence, has stated that this would require the mass reeducation of people “with a completely different mindset” and the “physical elimination” of some of them. Given what has happened in areas that Ukraine took back at the high point of its military efforts in autumn 2021, this does not have to be imagined.

Myth 2. McDonnell et al seem to assume that the taps can just be turned on from an infinite supply of military hardware. It can’t. The paradox of the NATO military Industrial Complex is that although it outspends the Russians 11 to 1, it characteristically produces immensely expensive and complex pieces of kit that require lengthy training, high levels of maintenance and can only be produced in relatively low numbers; and once they are used, at great expense, they are gone. This is highly profitable for the arms companies and is designed for short sharp wars against Global South countries, not long term grinding wars of attrition with near peers. Stocks are now run down, the obsolete equipment, like Leopard I and 2 tanks, Bradley AFVs and so on have been deployed and destroyed in large numbers. F16s – an aircraft first deployed in 1978 – are the next installment and will fare no better. Plans to increase production of, say, Patriot missiles, can only be incremental – from about 500 to 650 a year. That is why this position is a fantasy. The supplies sent to Ukraine have been the maximum that NATO could scrape together. The only way to shift this would be to completely retool arms manufacture, which would require massive investment over several years; and politically set a trajectory for war that would be very hard to stop. No one on the Left should support this.

Myth 3. The barrel has already been scraped for obsolete equipment. The MOD website Army Surplus Store section notes that as of May 2024 “There is currently no MOD surplus inventory for sale.”

Myth 4. McDonnell et al’s argument that “Ukraine deserves a just and socially progressive reconstruction in which trade unions and civil society can democratically participate. International support should help to restore and expand universal healthcare, education, rebuild affordable housing and public infrastructure, ensuring decent jobs and working conditions. No more advisors from the UK Government should be used to assist in retrogressive reforms of trade union and labour rights” is also, sadly, wishful thinking. The “reconstruction” of Ukraine will be a massive asset stripping fire sale, as its Western “backers” come for their loans like a flock of vultures. It has already been agreed between Western creditors and the oligarchs who have run the war, embezzled a good proportion of the “aid” and siphoned quite a bit of arms supplied into the international black market, that the “reconstruction” will be managed by Blackrock; whose priorities are not those of John McDonnell. Blackrock would, no doubt, wish for a succesful UAF offensive into the Donbass that would allow them to get their hands on the $12 Trillion worth or rare earths that are sitting below the surface there. Such an offensive is even less plausible now than when it was tried in 2022 and the UAF suffered terrible casuaklties to make marginal territorial gains of no strategic significance.

Myth 5. In this context, any notion that Ukraine’s debts will be cancelled is similarly wishful thinking. Its as if NATO powers aren’t in this conflict for themselves. As if it is some genuine genuflection to – a partially applied – principle of national self determintion. The West, will want its pound of flesh. One reason for the Ukrainian oligarchy to keep a hopeless war going is to postpone the time that the aid stops flowing and the debts come due. For NATO countries to unilaterally sieze Russian assets would be another nail in the coffin for any pretence at upholding a “rules based international order”, rule out any serious possibility of peace negotiations and be seen in the Global South as on a par with the appropriation of Venezuela’s assets by the same imperial powers.

Sections of the Left often put forward spurious – slightly fantasised – arguments in order to cover an accomodation to their imperatives of their own ruling class. The paradox of this is that the ruling class itself is more hard nosed. The section of the US ruling class that backs Trump wants to cut its losses, try to impose even more financially ruinous military spending on its European subordinate allies, so that, with or without a ceasefire in Ukraine, the US can concentrate on launching and even more ruinous war in the South China Sea.

That is where the US ruling class is heading. It is why a candidate like Trump, convicted felon and epic shyster, keeps afloat on a sea of money; and now looks like he is going to win, with all the “unpredictable violence” that Boris Johnson thinks is just what “the West needs”. This strategic shift is not because Trump is in some way “Putin’s patsy” but its actually a statement of weakness that the US no longer believes itself capable of fighting two and a half wars at once and prevailing in all of them. They have to concentrate on the biggest target, and if that causes problems for its subordinate imperial allies, so be it. To deal with the twists and turns of all this the section of the Left that finds itself cheerleading for NATO escalation will need to burn its delusions.

After Starmer, Farage’s turn?

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Its been a disaster. Why hasn’t he gone?

The core problem for Paul Mason’s* argument – in his piece for Open Democracy entitled The left has a choice: unite behind Starmer or face Farage rising to power – that a Starmer government has the same potential as Attlee’s to set “a new political consensus”, is that Attlee’s reforms in the 1940s were underpinned by Marshall Aid from the United States, as was the restabilisation of other Western European countries like France and Italy. But, we are now in a period in which the United States – faced with the rising economic weight of China and the BRICs – is no longer able to afford to subsidise its junior partners. In fact we are in a period of a reverse Marshall Plan in which capital is being sucked into the US, not only from the Global South but also its allies; which is destablising them politically and economically.

This analysis of this new decadent and parasitic stage of the Pax Americana by the Tricontinental Institute shows how this works.

This is bad enough under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, attempts to divide the world economy through scanctions and tariffs, drawing the wagons ever tighter around its shrinking zone of economic dominance, while passing the ammunition for the wars they are engaged in in Ukraine and Gaza and preparing for in the South China Sea. Under Trump, if he does indeed have a Second Coming in November, this will be turbo charged, and we will all have to cope with his capacity for “unpredictable violence”, which, according to Boris Johnson, is “what the West needs”.

Mason’s assertion that “in a world where democracy is in peril, and where conservatism is merging with the far right, he (Starmer) stands a chance of making the UK a place of resistance and a model for the rest of Europe” is exposed as the nonsense it is by David Lammy’s attempts to build bridges with the Republicans and explain to us all that Trump has been “misunderstood about Europe”. The rule of Blair, that the key objective of British Foriegn Policy is to “get up the arse of the White House and stay there” remains hegemonic in the shadow cabinet.

Mason’s defence of Starmer’s “project” starts from a false premise, because Labour’s 20 point lead is not the result of a cunning plan by the Labour Right, but primarily a result of revulsion at the Tories. That is evident from

  • polls that shown that only around a third of voters think Labour is fit to govern. Its lead comes from the fact that only a sixth of voters think the Tories are.
  • a recent poll of who would make the better PM, Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak in which the leading candidate was “neither of the above” on 49%.
  • the second TV leaders debate, during which both Sunak and Starmer were laughed at. Sunak more than Starmer, to be fair, as he has pulled one dead rabbit after another out of his hat, but being laughed at before being elected, rather than laughed at on the basis of a dreadful record in office, is not a good sign.
  • the March YouGov Leaders Standing poll, in which Starmer was viewed favourably by 38% of respondents and unfavourably by 53%.

So, this is not glad confident morning and does not bode well for a “honeymoom period”, let alone a “ten year mission”, whatever the size of the majority. Bubbles can be large, but burst quickly if they are thin.

A warning experience of what this might lead to is what has happened in the United States. In 2020, the vote for Joe Biden was primarily an anti -Trump vote. Biden’s record in office, even before his complicity in fuelling the attack on Gaza, means that Trump – despite everything – is back in contention as potential President. That in itself is evidence of a crisis of leadership in the US. In the UK, Starmer’s similarly cautious approach tees up a far right Faragiste Conservative revival – reeking of booze, fags, exhaust fumes and racism – exactly what Mason says he wants to avoid.

There are deeper currents at work here.

  • The scale of the economic stagnation, drops in living standards, life expectancy and eroding public services since 2008,
  • combined with the shifts in global power away from a previously unquestionable Pax Americana – that the UK (and Labour Right) has been an enthusiastic auxiliary of since WW2
  • and the increasingly evident breakdown in the climactic conditions for human civilisation to survive, means that people can’t live comfortable, complacent lives within a “mainstream consensus” expressed in the “political middle ground” any more.

The strange death of steady as she goes, bank manager Conservatism, as the UKs long managed decline becomes unmanagable, is an expression of that. This isn’t yet expressed in any clear move towards solutions, but the presumption that this can only be expressed in a curmudgeonly negativity is used by the Labour Front bench to make change without hope palatable.

Nevertheless, the 79% of people in John Curtice’s recent poll that said the UK system of government needed to be improved “quite a lot” or “a great deal” shows that there is a preparedness for significant change bubbling under.

Its also quite apparent in this election campaign that, given the scale of the Conservative implosion, not only are forces in the ruling class already angling for a Faragiste/Tory rump realignment, they are also trying to rebuild the Lib Dems as the core of a centre ground regroupment on “Change UK” lines. Now is the time for the breaking of Parties.

The result in the same Curtice poll that 45% would not trust any politicians to put “country before Party” is more ambiguous than its presented. The interests of “the country” is often interpreted as the “common interest”, which a lot of people see as being the interests of the majority of the people. But “the interests of the country” is invariably framed in terms of the interests of those who own the country not that of the majority of us who live in it; in the same way that the interests of “the economy” is framed as the interests of those who own capital, not those who work.

The Conservatives seen no contradiction here. The interests of the “country” is taken to be synomymous with that of private capital, of established institutions (including the Conservative Party) and its symbols. The role of the rest of us is to know our place, doff our caps at the right times, salute the flag when its run up a flagpole, work hard, keep our noses clean and not cause any trouble, lest we get defined as “the enemy within”. So, adopting this slogan (and symbols) as enthusiastically as Keir Starmer has, amounts to a quite explicit tug of the forelock. With this formula, “the many” defer to the interests of “the few”.

Mason argues for a strategy of appealing to “patriotic left” voters by supporting what he calls “mainstream positions on crime, immigration and defence” (my emphasis). This presents right wing positions as if they are a consensus (mainstream) and leaves them unchallenged, helping a punitive approach to criminal justice, xenophobia and war mongering to be accepted as default “common sense”; when they are anything but, and widely agreed, when they are not. This actively alienates a large number of people who normally vote Labour looking for a more progressive alternative. Even if they vote Labour again this time, in desperation to be rid of the Tories, Labour’s grip on them is increasingly tenuous.

As well as digging deep into these toxic trenches, Mason argues that “growth strategies based on borrowing, taxing and spending are precluded by … high bond yields and high inflation”. This is wrong on so many levels.

  • There is enormous room for higher taxes on the wealthy. In not proposing to raise them, Labour has left room on its left that even the Liberal Democrats and, especially, the Green Party have moved onto. The Green proposals to raise £50 billion a year by these means have been classed as viable by the BBC fact checker; so its not a wild outlier. So, why does Labour refuse to do so, especially with the Tories having set a £19 billion black hole in the public sector budget as a trap? Starmer and Reeves seem to be walking into this with their eyes wide shut. Their line that this gap will be filled by “growth”, that will appear solely by dint of managerial certainty, what Mason calls “creating the conditions for long term private investment”, is already visibly wilting in the election debate. This line won’t even hold in theory; even less so in fact.
  • Moreover, borrowing only makes any sense if the return on the investment is likely to be lower than the cost of the interest on the additional debt. This is explored in detail here.

This is doubly dangerous because, as Mason points out, “climate change means we need to invest massively in decarbonised energy” (my emphasis). The problem, and Mason knows this, is that Starmer and Reeves are not proposing to do that. They are proposing to invest modestly.

The National Wealth Fund and GB Energy are good steps, but on a very small scale. This has been described by the Guardian as likely to create “tepid” progress towards mitigating climate change. The result of that will be an accelerating drag on “the economy”, as the costs of coping with current impacts – like that of increasing winter rains on sewage systems and farming – get worse and worse. Every 1C increase in temperature hits GDP by 12%. More than the 2008 crash. More than Covid. So a failure to invest, even for people who think getting the books balanced is more important than the survival of human civilisation (and there are a lot of them in the Treasury) is bad for getting the books balanced too.

Voters motivated by “patriotism”, and politicians wanting to pander to them, might note Sir Nicholas Stern’s recent report that for the UK to keep up with the EU and US in infrastructure investment it needs to invest an additonal 1% of GDP. 1% of GDP is £26 billion a year. That figure has a familiar ring to it. Doing less than this is managing decline, no matter how many Union Jacks you surround yourself with. Most of this investment would necessarily be green, to avoid building in carbon emissions that would have to be undone later at greater cost. This is a key point when considering what the proposed Planning reform to build 1.5 million new homes is going to look like.

Putting the constrained resources that will be available in this context into increased arms manufacturing, beating ploughshares into swords, will copper bottom austerity. Mason should recall that the austerity of the Attlee government, that led to its fall in 1951, was driven by the level of military expenditure required to sustain a global Empire under threat from rebellion, to develop nuclear weapons “with the bloody Union Jack on it” (as Ernest Bevin put it) and show its commitment to the US in the Korean war. History in the 2020s could rhyme in this respect, if this course is followed again.

Mason’s argument that this is necessary to counter “Russian aggression” in Ukraine ignores the way the war grew out of NATO’s refusal to even negotiate with the Russians about mutual security guarantees during the Winter of 2021, let alone the national rights of Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea whose rebelion against the NATO coup in 2014 led to them being bombed by the Ukrainian air force and a civil war that lasted for eight years before February 2022.

Had the Labour line quoted with some disdain by Mason, that a Labour government would attempt to “lead efforts to secure strategic arms limitation and multilateral disarmament” been the general view of NATO in 2021, instead of consciously pushing through the well known red lines of a nuclear armed power, there would have been no war. Instead we have “security through strength”. Gaza shows us where that ends up.

Instead of seeking a peace settlement that would enable us all to put resources into stopping climate breakdown – Mason envisages a forever war in a militarised and impoverished Europe, with an entire generation of Ukrainian men fed with understandably increasing reluctance into a horrific meat grinder as dispensible armed henchmen fighting for the retreating US world order, or a possible escalation that is more and more likely to stumble over a final nuclear red line the longer it goes on.

The bottom line here is that we can’t afford a war drive and to invest in stopping climate change at the same time. It is stark how easily the US and its allies find the resources to balloon their military budgets and how difficult they find it to provide the Global South with the climate finance needed to avoid dependence on fossil fuels.

Choosing to play down the chronic certainty of extinction through climate breakdown by building up to a nuclear confrontation that will wipe us all out just as certainly, but quicker, is a bit like President Trump thinking he could stop a hurricane by bombing it.

Mason’s notion that supporting NATO and the Ukrainian oligarchy is “anti fascist” is also a piece of semi conscious self deception, because he knows full well that the European and North American far right have sent some of their most dedicated cadre to fight against the Donbass Republics in Ukraine since 2014; taking Andriyi Biletsky of the Azov battalion at his word when he said that Ukraine’s national purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen”. Funny kind of “anti fascism” to link up with people like that.

Mason says Starmer is “not playing for a five year stint in power” and Reeves talks of “ten years of national renewal” but from an electoral point of view, the problem with their approach is that, because there will be insufficient state investment to generate green growth, especially if they prioritise guns over butter, we will continue to stagnate on our existing unsustainable basis, in conditions of deepening crisis that provide insufficient resources to shore up crumbling public services, leading to a mass rejection of the government presiding over this at the next election – be it in 2029 or earlier – as the current mood gets even angrier.

*Spook warning; Its important to bear in mind that whatever Mason has written is probably run past what he describes as “the official side”. Whether he does or does not have an MI6 handler, as Grayzone allege, is nevertheless, not something he has directly denied.

The UK already spends much more per capita on its military than Russia or China do.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Taking 2023 figures from Sipri,

  • the UK spends $74.9 billion for a population of 68 million.
  • Russia spends $109 billion for a population of 144 million.
  • China spends $296 billion for a population of 1,400 million.

So, the UK spends $1101 per person, almost one and a half times as much as Russia’s spend of $757 per person and more than 5 times as much as China’s $211 per person.

That looks like this.

So, perhaps the UK is on more than enough of a war footing as it is; as its participation in so many wars, overtly and covertly, demonstrates.

If the UK were to go for parity with Russia’s per capita spend, it could save about $20 billion a year (£16 billion). If it were to go for parity with China, it would save $60 billion a year ($48 billion). We could do a lot with that. An additional dividend from these savings might actually be peace.

The United States, of course, is in a league of its own, with a per capita spend of $3,210. If they were to spend what the Russians do, that would free up $687 billion every year. Think what could be done with that.

We won’t die for Zelensky

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Is a sentiment increasingly strongly felt in Ukraine. An unwillingness to die for Grant Shapps is also a majority sentiment in the UK, with just 17% being prepared to “fight for their country” in recent polling (and just 14% of 18-24 year olds).

We are now at a very dangerous point in the war in Ukraine. NATO is having to contemplate a defeat. The Ukrainian armed forces are suffering terrible losses and retreating all along the line of contact. There are increasing reports of surrenders, sometimes whole platoons sent to occupy suicidal forlorn hope forward positions (who are asking the Russians not to include them in prisoner swaps so they don’t get sent back to the front). There are also now a lot of videos of men being press ganged by Ukrainian recruitment officers, involving chases down the road and punch ups. Sometimes they get away, sometimes they don’t. The new conscription bill, to draft younger age groups is deeply unpopular and has been a political hot potato for months. The days of eager recruits is long gone. There have been whatsapp groups used by men to warn each other when the press gangs are around, so they can keep their heads down, for quite some time now. The latest visit from US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is reported to have offered Zelensky a deal; pass the conscription law as the quid pro quo for the US unblocking its latest tranche of aid. Essentially, this translates as Sullivan saying you provide the men to fight and die, we’ll supply the weapons that keep them in harms way. Zelensky’s own standing is undermined by the expiry of his Presidential term this month. Elections have been cancelled until the war is “won”.

There are two problems with this.

1. “Winning” for Kyiv/NATO means;

  • reconquering parts of pre 2014 Ukraine that rebelled against the US/EU backed overthrow of a government they had voted for. 30% of the pre-2014 Ukrainian population spoke Russian as their first language. Calling for an end to “the Russian occupation” would actually require most of the population of Crimea and Donbass to become refugees heading for Russia. Calling for “Russian troops out” means driving the locally recruited Donbass militia, which is now integrated into the Russian armed forces – out of their homes and the land they have been fighting to defend since coming under Ukrainian attack in May 2014.
  • integrating Ukraine fully into NATO – the world’s dominant alliance of imperial predators – as “a big Israel in Eastern Europe” (President Zelensky). A military frontier henchman state for a US dominated bloc that, as we know from long experience, or should, applies the principle recently restated with alarming candour by Anthony Blinken at this year’s Munich Security Conference: “if you’re not at the table in the international system, you’re going to be on the menu.”

Neither of these are outcomes that anyone on the Left should support.

Even if you think that being against “campism” means that you have to defend “principles” like the “right” of a state to join an imperialist military alliance; if you find yourself agitating for that bloc to be more aggressive in supplying arms, there is no basis on which you can oppose the militarisation of our society, and the war drive that our ruling class is engaging in, because you have become a cheerleader for it. This is revealed by the argument in a recent article on Labour Hub from the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign that the impending defeat in Ukraine “has arisen from the self-limiting approach by the democracies providing aid.” My emphasis. Who does he mean by “the democracies”? The world’s richest, most powerful economies, coralled into a military and political bloc that exploits the rest of the world under the leadership of the USA? Those “democracies”? For the author, the core of world imperialism are “the democracies” engaged in a “key battle for democracy with the new authoritarianism.” This is straight State Department terminology and framing.

This way of thinking possibly explains why USCs contribution to the war drive of the countries that account for 75% of global military spending, launched the “war on terror” that killed 4.5 million worldwide and are currently arming Israel in its genocidal assault on Gaza, is to produce wild and lurid propaganda about Russia’s “barbaric methods” that are the contemporary counterpart of those penned by Horatio Bottomly in John Bull during WW1. They have reduced themselves to a descant chorus to the relentless drone of the ruling class narrative in the dominant media. Karl Leibknecht did not say “The enemy is at home – but for the Russians, Chinese, Syrians, Libyans, Cubans, Venezuelans, Afghans, Haitians (add whoever the next target is) we’ll make an exception”.

2 “Winning”, as described above, is impossible and the attempt to do so will destroy what is left of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian offensive last year was a debacle. The Western supplied equipment, and the tactics they advised, failed appallingly. Incremental gains were won at a terrible cost in men and equipment. There is no chance of a repeat. No one now seriously envisages punching through to the Sea of Azov, let alone a march on Rostov on Don. So, what, or who, is the war for?

For NATO, sustaining the war, at the cost of thousands more dead Ukrainians, is worthwhile to “weaken the Russians”, or at least stave off a very visible defeat. NATO is the core imperial alliance. “Losing” in Ukraine would be a loss of face even more severe than that suffered when its Afghan proxy regime collapsed within weeks of direct withdawal. Can’t have that. However, this requires Ukrainians to be willing to keep fighting, with no chance of winning, no light at the end of the tunnel, the only fuel being the sense of keeping faith with the dead, whose sacrifice cannot be aknolwedged to have been in vain. As noted above, this is beginning to wear out. People need, and deserve, a future that is not an endless war.

There are two possibilities in the current situation.

  1. The Russian armed forces continue to make steady incremental gains on the ground and thousands of Ukrainians die in a futile attempt to stop them; leading, eventually, to political collapse in Western Ukraine leading to partition and neutralisation. No amount of Western weaponry short of nuclear war is going to stop this. The argument in the latest article from Labour Hub – Labour and Ukraine: Oppose the Tory arms sales and demand the weapons to win! endorsing a proposal from John McDonnell and Clive Lewis that the UK Ministry of Defence should stop selling off its old inventory, and donate it to Ukraine instead, peddles the face saving delusion that a bit more second hand equipment would magically do in 2024 what it spectacularly failed to do in 2023. In so doing, it postpones coming to terms with what is staring us all in the face. To try to “win” would involve a level of escalation that would not only militarise society – and require “sacrifices” by the working class to pay for it – it would also threaten a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia; which would be suicidal for all of us. We should all oppose that.
  2. NATO escalates? It is not at all clear what they are going to do. NATO intelligence already provides the UAF with satellite data. There are advisers on the ground, Some of them were killed in a recent Russian missile strike on Odessa. The Black Sea operations are being run by a Royal Navy Admiral. There are also some Special Forces and “volunteers” engaged, like the former French Foreign Legion soldiers who took part in the recent UAF incursion across the Russian border (another costly debacle). “Mission creeep” is always on the agenda. There is currently a massive NATO military exercise going on, that started in January and is scheduled to last until May, largely focussed on the area to the West of Ukraine – part of an annual series of rehearsals for a war with Russia that have been going on for decades. This is in addition to increased permanent deployment since February 2022 into the countries that border Ukraine to the West. As NATO puts it itself, “allies reinforced the existing battlegroups and agreed to establish four more multinational battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. This has brought the total number of multinational battlegroups to eight, effectively doubled the number of troops on the ground and extended NATO’s forward presence along the Alliance’s eastern flank – from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south.” So, there are forces poised. Sabre rattling from President Macron, proposing to send NATO troops into Odessa and other parts of Western Ukraine to secure it for “the West” and release Ukrainian reserves to fight and die at the front for many, many more months, kicking a resolution to the war bloodily down the road, has not been endorsed across the bloc, but has led to the deployment of sigificant French forces into Romania in recent days. Doubtless for USC this is another example of “the self-limiting approach by the democracies (sic) providing aid”. It should go without saying that this is incredibly dangerous and I wonder if USC would cheer them in if they marched across the border.

Put very simply, for NATO to attempt to “win” in current circumstances risks nuclear war, which we should all oppose. Sustaining the conflict, even with army surplus goods from the MoD, means many thousands more deaths and the destruction of whats left of Ukraine; with the war as an end in itself that has no end. A peace on the basis of accepting the self determination of both peoples in Ukraine, and securing Ukrainian neutrality could have avoided the war in the first place, and remains the best result now.

Personal post script.

In the early 1960s there was a popular record request programme on the BBC Light Service called Two Way Family Favourites. Well before the internet and mobile phones, this was primarily aimed at allowing service personnel deployed overseas a chance to connect with their family back home by way of requesting a record to be played during Sunday Dinner. A lot of requests came in from BFPO 39 (the Forces Post Office for the British Army on the Rhine) and a regular favourite was the 1812 Overture; Tchaikovsky’s triumphalist celebration of the debacle of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. They would always play the last part; depicting the snow swirling down and enveloping the Grande Armee as it limped West, and ending with the old Russian national anthem played as an up tempo riot, punctuated with cannons going off, heavenly choirs singing and church bells ringing. As a child, I thought at the time that the soldiers were requesting it because of the cannons, but (along with the equally frequent requests for the US President’s phone call to the Soviet General Secretary from Dr Strangelove) I think this was a way of sending the message that contemplating a war with Russia was a really bad idea.

Endless war – a reply to the chair of Labour Friends of Israel

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Writing on Labour List, Labour Friends of Israel chair, Steve McCabe, argues against a ceasefire because of the scale of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7th and that unless Hamas is utterly destroyed this is a “recipe for endless war”.

He asks us rhetorically We should consider whether we as a country would be willing to accept the continuing existence of a terrorist entity on our borders which had just massacred 10,000 Britons – the equivalent per population figure – after 30 years of ever-increasing attacks? Would we not demand, as the Israeli people are understandably doing, that our government protect us and our children by removing that danger?

“Removing that danger”. What anodyne, surgical framing. McCabe would be more honest, with himself let alone the rest of us, if he were explicit about what this has already meant and will lead to.

He does not make the comparable extrapolation that up to Thursday this week the IDF bombing of Gaza so far killed just over 7,000 people. The equivalent per population figure for the UK is 210,000. If he thinks a desire to retaliate is understandable from Israel, what on earth does he think the desire is going to be in Gaza and beyond with a death rate like that?

You can do the Maths if you like. The UK population is 30 times bigger than that of Gaza, so multiply the latest confirmed casualty figures – an underestimate because so many people are buried under the rubble – which will be bigger than the 7,000 confirmed by last Thursday – by 30 and you get the comparable impact of a bombing campaign on the UK.

To get a perspective on this, the equivalent of 210,000 people killed in just under three weeks is four times the intensity of all the casualties killed by Luftwaffe bombing in the UK between 1939 and 1945 by total in an eightieth of the time.

Nor does he reflect that the overall death rate since 2000 has been twenty Palestinians killed for every Israeli.

If Israeli violence is justified in his view by “acts of terror”, how much more terrorised by the IDF are the Palestinian population?

Even leaving aside the systematic discrimination built into the Israeli state (50 racially discriminatory laws) the casually lethal state backed illegal settlements, evictions and arrests and torture, if death through lethal force is justification for more of it, perhaps he should reflect on the dragons teeth the army he supports is sowing.

He argues that a ceasefire now will not disarm Hamas. Nor will it disarm the IDF, which kills far more people. But it will stop a massacre.

A wholesale ground attack now, under cover of a media blackout – with so many journalists killed and mobile networks cut off – has a genocidal logic that means the war will indeed be endless. The “ever increasing attacks” on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank do not lead to peace. On the contrary, a ceasefire now is the essential first step to all children in the region being able to sleep safely in their beds in peace and equality.

Manufacturing consent for a massacre…

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

This is an expanded version of my complaint to Radio 4. You can’t say everything you need to in 2000 characters.

The way that I feel about your coverage this evening is summarised in a letter I wrote to the Observer last week,

In the last two decades the casualty rate from the conflict in Israel Palestine has been twenty Palestinians killed for every Israeli. Given that the suffering on the Palestinian side is so much higher, it is therefore strange that your editorial finds calls for violence  from Israel “understandable”, while considering that violent actions from Palestinians “defy comprehension”. 

Perhaps you should write another editorial explaining the asymmetry of your empathy. 

They didn’t publish it.

Like them, your bias comes out in two main ways.

The tone in which you say things and the presumption you have about who can be trusted. As if Rishi Sunak, the US administration and MI6 don’t have gigantic axes to grind and have never knowingly misled anyone for political purposes.

What you cover.

  • This evening you relegated Palestinian suffering to its customary background level of attention and concern – something to be taken for granted, like wallpaper, like all Global South deaths.
  • You broadcast an item that argued for the Police to suppress people on a small Hizb ut Tahrir demo on Saturday shouting “jihad” on the basis that this could be interpreted as threatening, while managing to falsely imply that this was the character of the main, massive and diverse PSC ceasefire demonstration on the same day – which actually included Jewish people and organisations – and without reflecting for a moment that taking the flag of a country that is imposing collective punishment on 2.3 million people, and has killed over 5,000 of them in the past week, and flying it on public buildings might also be offensive and threatening to many people in this country, and is opposed by most of us.
  • you followed up with a report on the IDF press conference on Hamas atrocities on October 7th,
  • then followed that up with an individual story of what happened to one family on Oct 7th.
  • Then you repeated the Prime Minster’s endorsement of the Israeli claim that the attack on the hospital last week was from a misfired rocket from Islamic Jihad (rockets that have never managed to kill even a handful of people when they have got through to Israel but in this case managed to kill over 400 somehow) without reflecting either the serious debunking the Israeli claims have had, nor noting the other 5 hospitals the IDF have hit, nor the Church that runs the hospital stating that the IDF have warned them twice, nor the Israeli- US rejection of calls for an independent investigation (which is always a bit of a give away).
  • mentioned that 20 lorries have been allowed into Gaza with humanitarian aid, without noting that this is 480 short of the normal daily total after two weeks of a total siege
  • then repeated the rocket claim from our ever trustworthy intelligence agencies (who have never been known to be economical with the truth) just in case anyone missed it the first time.

All of this is designed to build up empathy for one side over the other in a way that reflects the agenda of the IDF, which is to generate compliance for its current and future operations in Gaza.

These have already killed three times as many as died on Oct 7th and will kill many many more if there isn’t a ceasefire; something the overwhelming majority of people in this country support (76% according to a YouGov poll last week).

When you cover an individual story it generates an emotional bond with the people being covered. If you primarily cover one side in this way, it indicates that this is deliberate.

Here’s a suggestion. To be properly balanced and properly to match the current ratio of death and suffering, for every individual story you cover from the Israeli side, you should cover three from the Palestinian side, and keep adding to the ratio as the death toll goes up. As it will. A process that coverage like yours is now enabling.

Class Struggle inside Ukraine

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Two recent articles in Open Democracy report responses from Ukrainian trade unions to the “Lugano Declaration”, which came out of a conference between high Western and Ukrainian officials in Switzerland last week and sets out plans for economic reconstruction “after the war is over” by the Ukrainian Oligarchy* and its major imperial sponsors; the US, UK and EU.

This exposes the way that Ukrainian Oligarchs are ruthlessly using the war to entrench their position against the working class.

Natalia Zemlyanska, head of Ukraine’s Union of Manufacturers and Entrepreneurs commented, “No representatives from Ukrainian trade unions, nor our social partners from the employers’ side, were invited to help develop the reconstruction plan.“

Thus, Ukrainian unions are not considered by their ruling class to be a significantly valuable part of their nation to deserve any voice in discussions about helping shape its future economy. This is not new. As Zemlanskya noted, the principle of social dialogue “died in Ukraine long before the Russian invasion”.

Its worth bearing in mind what the pre war baseline they are “reconstructing” was. Overall, Ukraine was a country in structural crisis and decline. In 2019 the population was down 10 million from the level of 1993, declining at about half a million a year. Its GDP was lower than it was in 1989, with an aging population despite a low life expectancy of just 71.76 years (67 for men) and the shortest healthy life expectancy in Europe. Unemployment was consistently around 9%. It was 88th out of 189 countries on the Human Development Index – well below Russian and Belarus, just below China, Ecuador and Azerbaijan; and just above the Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia and Tunisia.

The reconstruction planned at Lugano will entrench these trends by consolidating the liberalisation of labour legislation that has accelerated since the Maidan events in 2014 – which has now been entrenched by emergency wartime regulations – to further squeeze the space for trade unions to operate, to give employers a free hand, and remove state oversight of the labour market.

This has been supported by countries like the UK for some years. Alongside the military training delivered since 2014, in 2021 the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office funded a propaganda project to make labour deregulation popularly acceptable; in a clear demonstration of what making “development” subordinate to foreign policy imperatives looks like.

This highlights something that at first sight looks paradoxical. While seeking EU membership, Ukraine is moving sharply away from EU labour standards. In October 2020, eighteen months before the Russian invasion, the joint report of the Ukrainian unions and the European TUC , noted that obligations to enshrine “international labour norms in law and in practice, ensure freedom of association and collective bargaining in particular, strengthen social dialogue and capacities of social partners, and gradually align its legislation with the EU Acquis in the field of employment, remuneration, social policies and equal opportunities” were just not being done. As they noted, “no reasonable progress has been achieved“.

Now that the EU powers like Germany and France, which previously might have aimed for a modus operandi with Russia, both militarily and economically, have been brought to heel by the US and will be paying the economic price both for increased arms expenditure and being forcibly weaned off relatively cheap Russian energy supplies, negotiations on labour standards with Ukraine could well be used by neo liberal forces in the EU to leverage a weakening of its own current levels as an unaffordable luxury in straightened times – in an odd mirror image of the downward pressure exerted by the UKs trajectory of a post Brexit race to the bottom.

Before the war, wage levels were already among the lowest in Europe, with one quarter of the population receiving an income lower than the actual living wage, fuelling a persistent and massive exodus of younger workers in a search of better pay in the EU, particularly in the neighbouring countries, and avoiding being conscripted to fight in the Donbass at the same time.

It has got worse since. Employers are now able to suspend employment contracts: so employees do not receive wages, but are still considered employed. And this is being widely used. By 1 April, roughly five million citizens had applied for income loss benefits – 16 times more than the 308,000 registered number of unemployed at the end of May.

This gives carte blanche for ‘shadow employers’ who do not employ people officially. The state now no longer monitors wage debts – a long term problem in Ukraine.

In response to the war Parliament has further suspended parts of workplace protections and collective agreements, put forward legislation to take employees of small and medium-sized enterprises – 70% of Ukraine’s workforce –outside of the scope of current labour legislation and given employers the right to terminate employment contracts at will.

Wages fell by an average of 10% in May, compared to the pre-war period. Wages in raw material extraction, security and manual labour have almost halved.

Future Faking?

Right now, under the impact of the war, six million people, mostly women, have left the country. In Europe, many of them are now living in countries where wages are higher, laws are largely obeyed, and housing and Nurseries are affordable. Their return en masse gets less likely the longer the war goes on, and, after the end of martial law, which forbids men under the age of 60 from leaving the country, many who can will leave the country to join them. A long war will create tensions on this front too.

In the immediate term the state wants to develop microbusinesses to relaunch the economy: which amounts to lending to micro-entrepreneurs or training people in IT skills. This will be hampered by the destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure, low purchasing power and general instability which present small businesses with enormous problems in setting up supply chains or finding customers.

The Lugano Declaration rests heavily on ‘A Blueprint for the Reconstruction of Ukraine’, published by a group of international economists in April, which aims to:

1) introduce more flexible employment contracts and eliminate labour legislation that precludes the development of liberal economic policy;

2) provide government subsidies for foreign companies;

3) large-scale privatisation, including Ukraine’s biggest banks;

4) priority credit support for export sector;

5) use of low-skilled and labour-intensive public works to fix infrastructure;

6) establish a technocratic agency that will distribute international aid.

The kind of future society envisaged here is quite clear.

And this is beginning to generate tensions. As Vitaliy Dudin notes, “Ukrainians were ready to endure any difficulties in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion. But as the tide of the war has changed, not everyone thinks the current situation – where business has advantages over workers – is fair”.

The extent to which this finds expression remains to be seen. This is a very important perception. “As the tide of the war has changed”. A spirit of unquestioning national unity might be viable in the immediate shock of an invasion, or when it looked, briefly, as though the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv might be the prelude for a general victory for Ukraine in the short term. But, the longer the war drags on, and the more Russia advances, the more the class contradiction on the Ukrainian side is likely to find expression.

Dudin’s argument that an alternative based on state investment to create secure, sustainable jobs, with popular engagement and trade union involvement, skills training, proper state scrutiny and regulation of employer practice because, as he puts it post-war Ukrainian society needs integration, and that will be ensured by the development of state-owned and cooperative enterprises that do not make profits to the detriment of society and environment, and this requires policies of redistribution through taxation and the confiscation of surplus wealth from Ukraine’s richest people runs counter the interests of those running the state – who are precisely “Ukraine’s richest people” – and contrary to the kind of society they are fighting the war for; in alliance with the most predatory imperialisms on the planet.

Achieving a programme like Dudin’s won’t be done with the Oligarchs in power, nor with NATO backing them. Zemlanskaya’s argument that “The most important thing is to win – and then to see in what form Ukraine has ended the war, and what the future will look like,” is declaring a class truce while the war lasts – a truce that is not being respected by the ruling class. It also begs two questions

  1. Is the neo liberal dystopia the Oligarchs and NATO have in mind worth fighting and dying for?
  2. When and in what circumstances will the war be over, and what interest do the working class in Ukraine have in the circumstances in which that happens? The US, UK and the gung ho wing of NATO are for fuelling it for as long as possible, years not months; and are quite insouciant what might be left of Ukraine at the end of it. They are pre-emptively opposing diplomatic negotiations.

This is also a question for the international labour movement, being hit increasingly hard by the economic blowback from the war itself and, more severely, the sanctions the US has imposed to pursue it by other means. None of us has an interest in this war continuing.

Arguing against negotiations on the grounds that this would “reward” Russia should bear in mind the consequences for all concerned if the war continues. And that peace on the Russian terms – Crimea and Donbass not part of nationalist Ukraine, Ukraine not in NATO, Mutual Security arrangement (or even long drawn out negotiations around them) – would be better than a resolution on NATO’s terms – forcible reconquest of Crimea and Donbass, Ukraine fully integrated into a triumphant and triumphalist NATO with rapidly increasing military budgets, readying its new 300,000 strong strike force for interventions further east against countries they would consider ripe for plucking.

*Ukraine, we should note, had more politicians named in the Pandora Papers than any other country; 38, twice as many as Russia’s 19. President Zelensky was one of them.

Neither Moscow nor Kyiv, but Washington

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

The commitment by the US of $40 billion to funnel war fighting material into Ukraine makes it clear that this war is being driven by neither Moscow nor Kyiv, but Washington.

$40 billion is ten times Ukraine’s 2021 military budget.

Figures from Wikipedia

If the aid were a country on its own, it would be the tenth biggest military spender in the world, not far below Japan and Saudi Arabia, well above Italy and Australia, and double the budget of Canada or Israel.

Figures from Institute for International Strategic Studies, using average market exchange rates.

This comparison can be seen even more clearly if we leave off the USA and China, as the two countries with an expenditure in a different league to all the others – the US especially.

It is also noticeable on this graph that the UK spent more on its military in 2021 than Russia did.

It is clear from this that the US is pushing for a long war, that it will sabotage peace negotiations and keep sanctions in place even if a ceasefire is achieved. The knock on effects on the rest of the world are already grim and will get worse unless a peace deal is reached.

The UK’s role as the USAs most bellicose supporter will be discussed at an online meeting – Opposing the New Age of Militarism – on June 15th organised by No Cold War Britain.

“No one in the West will believe you”.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Evan Davies, of the BBC Radio 4 PM programme, is so deeply bought into ruling class ideology that he sometimes gives the game away without realising it. My all time favourite is when he commented, on the impending French Presidential election in 2007, that the 35 hour week really had to go because although “it is really good for the people, its really bad for the economy“. Which begs the question of what, or who, “the economy” is supposed to be good for, if its not for “the people.”

He did it again when interviewing the Russian Ambassador to the EU on 26th May. Having asked what Russia’s aims in Ukraine were, and being told that they are

  • an end to military threats against the Donbass
  • and demilitarisation and denazification in Ukraine

and that a Russian perception of an imminent threat of a Donbass invasion set for March 8th, as far as they could make out, was the trigger for the preemptive invasion on Feb 24th; his response was not to challenge any of the assertions or argue whether they were right or wrong, but simply to state, with a sneer you could almost cut, “no one in the West will believe you”.

Before looking at the validity or otherwise of the Ambassador’s statement, it is significant that Davies said “no one in the West“, not “no one in the world“. While “the West” tends to mistake itself for “the world”, or at least, as the only part of the world that matters, this does give the game away that the perception of this war in “the West” is not the same as that in the rest of “the world”; which Davies must be at least subconsciously aware of. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The countries imposing sanctions on Russia are the United States and its direct allies: the European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand – all of them part of the Global North. The Global South has not joined in.

So, taking “the West” as the aberration that it is, could the tendency to dismiss anything the Russians might say as “just what you’ve been told to say”, as Davies put it, have anything to do with the almost complete lack of dissenting voices on our media?

Taking the points one at a time and examining them…

Militarisation of Ukraine and military threats against the Donbass.

Vyacheslav Tetekin, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (the largest opposition force in the country) details the sharp and sustained increases in military spending by Ukraine after 2014, at a time in which living standards are still below the level they were at the time of the break up of the Soviet Union, the involvement of the US and its allies in training and arms supply, and the huge build up of forces focussed on the Donbas, particularly this year. This is cited in an article by John Ross on the military turn of the US in Monthly Review that is well worth reading. As has been remarked, Ukraine is not in NATO, but NATO has certainly been in Ukraine.

After the 2014, “the country’s finances were redeployed from the tasks of improving the welfare of the nation to strengthening the armed forces. Ukraine’s military budget has grown from $1.7 billion in 2014 to $8.9 billion in 2019 (5.9% of the country’s GDP)… Ukraine… spent three times more [as a percentage of GDP] for military purposes than the developed countries of the West…

Hundreds of instructors from the United States and other NATO countries participated in training of the Army. Ukraine was preparing for war under the supervision of the United States.

Huge funds were spent on the restoration of military hardware. During the war against Donbas in 2014-15, Ukraine has not used air combat support, as all combat aircraft required repair. However, by February 2022, there were already about 150 fighters, bombers and attack aircraft in the Ukrainian Air Force. Such a buildup of the Air Force would make sense only for the capture of Donbas.

At the same time, powerful fortifications were created on the border of Donbas and Ukraine… the salary of soldiers at the end of 2021 tripled, from 170 to 510 dollars. The Government of Ukraine has been dramatically increasing the size of its Armed Forces.

The first stage of Ukraine’s preparation for war was successfully completed by the end of 2021. The combat capability of the Ukrainian army has been restored, military equipment has been repaired and modernized…

…the United States has planned two options for using the new, militarized Ukraine… The first one was to capture Donbas and, in case of a successful combination of circumstances, proceed for invasion to the Crimea. The second option was to provoke Russia’s armed intervention…

…Ukraine being under the heel of the United States creates a very real danger. In December 2021, Moscow put forward a demand to the NATO on measures to ensure Russia’s legitimate interests. The West…. ignored these demands, knowing that preparations for the invasion of Donbas are in full swing. The most combat-ready units of the Ukrainian Army numbering up to 150,000 thousand people were concentrated on the border of Donbas. They could break the resistance of the People’s militia of Donbas within 2-3 days, with the complete destruction of Donetsk and spill so much blood of the defenders of the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic]…

Ask yourself if this assessment, by the main opposition Party in Russia, is more or less plausible than the explanations in the media here, and why it is that we hear it so little. Is this because the accepted wisdom here, the cod psychology version; that its all down to a belated mid life crisis for President Putin, or the version that plays up timeless fears of an eternal Great Russian chauvinism, always just itching to expand and reconquer the old Russian Empire, are so weak by comparison?

The Freudian slip by President Bush last week did shed a little light on the way adverbs are used. “A brutal and unprovoked attack on Iraq…err.. Ukraine”. Of course, the Iraq invasion was never described in such terms. we were taking part, so how could it possibly be?

We should not forget that, in this country, at the time of the second Iraq war, there was a majority FOR the war when people believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction capable of being deployed against the UK within 45 minutes. This was on the say so of our Intelligence Services, who told us what it was useful for us to believe, who we are expected to believe that they and their co workers in politics and the media are now telling us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about Ukraine. It was only when it became clear that we had been lied to, that there were no WMD, that majority opinion turned against the war.

In the case of Russia and NATO, there is no doubt that NATO possesses WMD. Were Ukraine to join and they were deployed on its territory, flying time to Moscow would be a few minutes. A small fraction of the 45 that were considered a good enough reason for war in our case.

Denazification.

This is generally dismissed here with a scoffing reference to President Zelensky being Jewish and then the subject changed as quickly as possible. It is seen as absurd hyperbole. Given the tendency for the media here to label any target enemy, from General Galtieri to Saddam Hussein, as the new Hitler, and that we have used that as cover to intervene in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya since 2000 alone, a little self awareness might be in order here too. The airbrushing of the role of the far right in Ukraine goes as far as the BBC and the Guardian rubbishing their own previous reporting (without mentioning it of course, because what is instrumentally useful now must always have been “true”). A glance back at their previous coverage shows how absurd this is.

Here are some headlines from media here before the war started, from the BBC, Politico, Bellingcat, the Guardian and other sources, that have now been consigned to the memory hole because it is now embarrassing to acknowledge reality.

Ukraine celebrates Nazi collaborator; bans book critical of pogroms leader.

Ukraine’s got a real problem with far right violence (and, no, RT did not write this headline).

Hundreds march in Ukraine in annual tribute to Nazi collaborator.

Violent Anti-Semitism is gripping Ukraine – and the government is standing idly by.

Ukraine conflict: “White Power warrior” from Sweden.

Ukraine conflict: child soldiers join the fight.

Far- Right fighters from Europe fight for Ukraine.

Nazi symbols. salutes on display at Ukrainian nationalist march.

Yes. Its (still) OK to call Ukraine’s C14 neo Nazi.

A new Eurasian far right rising.

Far Right extremists in Ukrainian military bragged about Canadian training.

German TV shows Nazi symbols on helmets of Ukrainian soldiers.

Ukraine designates national holiday to commemorate Nazi collaborator.

Kiev’s far right groups refuse to disarm.

FBI: Militia trained by US military in Ukraine now training US White Supremacists

Ukrainian Neo Nazi C14 vigilantes drive out Roma families, burn their camp

Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict

New “Glory to Ukraine” army chant invokes nationalist past

Britons join neo Nazi militia in Ukraine

Neo-Nazis and the far right are on the march in Ukraine

How the far right took top positions in power vacuum

Ukraine’s far right menace

With axes and hammers far right vigilantes destroy another Romany camp in Kyiv

“Defend the White Race” American extremists being targeted by Ukraine’s far right

When the media here talks about the Azov battalion as though they are heroes, this is who they are talking about.

In the context of climate breakdown, the impasse of neo liberalism and the rise of China, politics in the Global North will increasingly squeeze down the democratic space that exists for the left and the labour movement, and the rehabilitation of the far right will advance in leaps.

This issue is explored in further detail in the No Cold War Britain webinar here.

The Speech that Keir Starmer did not Make.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

With Boris Johnson visiting Saudi Arabia, in an attempt to get more oil pumped, just a day after the execution of 81 prisoners by the Bin Salman regime, this is the speech that Keir Starmer could have made but did not.

While he made a general point…“going cap in hand from dictator to dictator is not an energy strategy”, he stopped well short of calling for Johnson’s trip to be called off,and steered well away from any demand for a shift in policy on Yemen remarking instead, “Obviously there’s a real energy crisis in terms of the cost at the moment, so anything that brings the cost down now is a step in the right direction, whatever it is.” (my emphasis).

In this dark hour, our thoughts, our solidarity, and our resolve are with the people of Yemen.

They have been cast into a war, not through fault of their own. But because Mohamed Bin Salman knows that no people will choose to live under his bandit rule unless forced to at the barrel of a gun.

The consequences of Bin Salman’s war have been horrendous and tragic for the Yemeni people but also for the Saudi people, who have been plunged into chaos by a violent elite who have stolen their wealth, stolen their chance of democracy, and stolen their future.

And we must prepare ourselves for difficulties here. We will see economic pain, as we free ourselves from dependence on Saudi Oil, and clean our institutions from money stolen from the Arab peoples.

But the British public have always been willing to make sacrifice to defend democracy on our continent. And we will again.

Saudi Arabia’s neighbours and every other democracy that lives in the shadow of autocratic power are watching their worst nightmare unfold.

All those who believe in democracy over dictatorship, the rule of law over the reign of terror, in freedom over the jackboot of tyranny, must unite and take a stand and ensure Bin Salman fails.

We must make a clean break with the failed approach to handling Bin Salman, which after the intervention into Yemen started in 2015 – has been complicit in more than 20,000 bombing raids on Houthi territory, indiscriminately bombing civilians and hospitals, schools and other infrastructure, killed over 377,000 people, with one child under five dying every nine minutes, displaced millions more, led directly to a cholera epidemic with over a million people infected and much of the country on the brink of famine, with the United Nations describing Yemen as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and turned a blind eye to the arrests of anyone who publicly opposes him, symbolised by the murder of Jamal Kashoggi – and has fed his belief that the benefits of aggression outweigh the cost. We must finally show him he is wrong.

That means doing all we can to help Yemen defend herself -urgently withdrawing the military support that we and our NATO allies provide Bin Salman, and the hardest possible sanctions must be taken against his regime. It must be isolated. Its finances frozen. It’s ability to function crippled. We should even withdraw the after sales services provided by BAE systems for the missiles and aircraft they have so lucratively sold.

And there are changes we must make here in the UK. For too long our country has been a safe-haven for the money that Bin Salman and his fellow bandits stole from the people of the Arabian peninsula. It must end now.

And this must be a turning point in our history, we must look back and say what this terrible day was actually when Bin Salman doomed himself to defeat.

He seeks division, so we must stay united. He hopes for inaction, so we must take a stand. He believes that we are too corrupted to do the right thing, so we must prove him wrong.

I believe we can. But only if we stand together.

Very few words have had to be changed from Starmer’s televised speech at the beginning of the Ukraine invasion – mostly personal names and places. If he were genuinely concerned at projecting “a liberal international order in defence of human rights” we should expect to hear a speech like this directed at UK and US allies and calling for an end to UK complicity in their war crimes.

But we don’t.

Could it be the direct involvement of RAF pilots training Saudi Airmen, or the Royal Navy personnel seconded to the Saudi fleet, and all that money made by UK built munitions that have blown up Yemeni civilians in large numbers, that explains the reticence?