alanjjohnstone
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The market responded quickly…a fall in the pound on the foreign exchange…something that will impact on me personally and not help in my cost of living price rise crisis.
Russia will regard Ukraine’s attempts to retake Donbass and other territories as attacks on its lands, if the referendums held there produce positive results, according to Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov “Everything is very clear on this score,” he said. “If there is an act of accession to Russia, then, accordingly, the relevant provisions of our Constitution will take effect.”
Next time I update the Socialist Standard links on the blogs I will amend it to read
“Give someone a copy and you provide a three-hour lesson on socialism”
Something I read once about the Socialist Standard
Just to check
On our blogs, Matt has given the description of the Socialist Standard as “the oldest socialist journal in Britain.”
Does that still stand?
The data reveals how the party’s bureaucrats, whose nominal function is to serve the interests of the party, attempted to undermine members supportive of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader from 2015 to 2020.
MS and TM, we seem to be faced with a classic case of mission creep. When there is a military set-backs, the first reaction is to escalate.
Putin learned the military maxim, no plan survives the first contact with the enemy and the first shot.
If annexation goes ahead, Russia will not be able to cede any of its conquered occupied territories in any negotiated peace for it will be against its 2020 constitution.
Putin is digging his hole even deeper so that it will be harder to extricate Russia from the war. It must be complete victory or unending war.
An all-out war and the end the pretence of the euphemistically called “special military operation”
But it would be foolhardy for any of us to predict the course of this war.
Recall Sudetenland and the German-speaking people in Czechoslovakia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudeten_GermansMore suspect for some here is Chomsky’s understanding.
First, he begins with an important caveat.
“…let me make it clear that I have nothing original to say about the military situation, and have no expert knowledge in this area. What I know is what’s reported, almost entirely from Western sources…”Later he makes this qualification
“It’s also useful finally to reiterate a familiar word of warning. Propaganda never ceases and rises to peaks of intensity at moments of crisis. Triumphant claims are always worth inspection”But he confirms what we said a long time ago, that peace was possible and it was the West and in particular Boris Johnson who sabotaged it.
He cites Foreign Affairs journal
“According to multiple former senior US officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement. The terms of that settlement would have been for Russia to withdraw to the positions it held before launching the invasion on February 24. In exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”
Chomsky remarks “On dubious evidence, Hill and Stent blame the failure of these efforts on the Russians, but do not mention that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at once flew to Kyiv with the message that Ukraine’s Western backers would not support the diplomatic initiative, followed by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who reiterated the official U.S. position that Washington’s goal in the war is to “weaken” Russia, meaning that negotiations are off the table.”
If one cares to review posts from that time, it will be confirmed that this was also the interpretation of most of us on this forum.
Chomsky too recognises the geo-political cause of the war.
“All of this is part of the reconfiguration of global order that has been going on for some time and was spurred onward by Putin’s criminal aggression. A side consequence was to deliver Europe into Washington’s hands. This most welcome gift was provided free of charge by Vladimir Putin when he rejected French President Macron’s last-minute efforts to avert an invasion, at the end with undisguised contempt, a major contribution to Washington’s Atlanticist project of global hegemony.”
When it comes down to it, in the end, the working class is of no importance, neither Ukrainian nor Russian.
As Scott Ritter is a commentator respected by many on the forum, and one who I had cited long before others, his view on Putin’s new phase of the war is of interest.
It partially reflects something I posted earlier.
“the decision to conduct the referendums in the Donbass and occupied Ukraine, radically transforms the SMO from a limited-scope operation to one linked to the existential survival of Russia. Once the referenda are conducted, and the results forwarded to the Russian parliament, what is now the territory of Ukraine will, in one fell swoop, become part of the Russian Federation — the Russian homeland.
All Ukrainian forces that are on the territory of the regions to be incorporated into Russia will be viewed as occupiers; and Ukrainian shelling of this territory will be treated as an attack on Russia, triggering a Russian response. Whereas the SMO had, by design, been implemented to preserve Ukrainian civil infrastructure and reduce civilian casualties, a post-SMO military operation will be one configured to destroy an active threat to Mother Russia itself. The gloves will come off…”
Ritter’s analysis returns to the roots of the problem, “the continued pursuit of a decades-long policy of isolating and destroying Russia is a matter of existential importance”And from the very beginning of this very long thread, the geo-political pretext for the war was fully explored and explained. Ukraine’s “rights” to join NATO and the “self-defence” of the two republics were mere cover for the real motives.
A historian may well refer to the 19th Century, the same perennial problem recurring over and over through the decades. The Bear V the Eagles
Prominent scientists opposed Sunak’s lies that Johnson slavishly “followed the science”.
Clinical epidemiologist Dr. Deepti Gurdasani tweeted: “we weren’t empowered. The govt (which you are a part of) continued to make policies which had no basis in science, and killed >200,000 people & disabled hundreds of thousands while we screamed helplessly at every step.” She described Johnson’s decision to delay the first lockdown for weeks as “an action that very likely cost tens of thousands of lives. That’s on you. Do you think SAGE [Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies] were ‘empowered’ then? They were dismissed. By you [Sunak].
“You can try to revise history all you like – because the dead can’t speak. But there are many who won’t let them be forgotten.”
“Indeed, though the Party was formed in 1900 under the name “Labour Representation Committee” (changed to Labour Party in 1906) it was admitted by the Secretary of the Party in 1918, the late Arthur Henderson, that until that year they were not a political party at all: “they had never in the proper sense claimed to be a national political party” (Labour Party Conference Report 1918, p.99).”
TM, a lesson in actual history is reading what was said at the time.
Alien1 is right, we should all further our knowledge and understanding with deeper analysis, rather than the partisan media outpourings from both sides of the conflicts.
A beneficial use of one’s time would be to read our extensive archive of Socialist Standard articles published month by month during all the wars.
From our past record of protecting free speech during times of war
The LNG lobby explained.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/22/gas-industry-ukraine-war-biden-policy
Alien1, your civility is much appreciated. Forum exchanges do get heated and I did express my feelings a bit too strongly.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, our reasons for opposing this war may differ, but we all hope it draws to a close.
Both sides have to compromise and make concessions.
Zelenskyy UN speech is not going to be the basis of a negotiated peace and nor will Putin’s intransigence.
If surrendering some territory is the price of ending the war, so be it.
As Marx said, “The working men have no country. We cannot take away from them what they have not got.”
