The Deeper Meaning of Ukraine

Alastair Crooke

Orinoco Tribune | July 09, 2022

The wider Ukraine meaning lies in this insight: Other leaders are no longer naïve when the West offers glass beads (or paper dollars) in exchange for their real riches

The West, in its cavalier manner, entered upon war with the Russia-China axis, without due care.  It expected easy ‘wins’ with sanctions imploding the Russian economy, and with military urban-war tactics borrowed from Syria, bleeding out the Russian army. Instead, it is turning-out to be a monumental débacle. More than that, its multiple failures and insultingly-cocksure propaganda are proving a breakpoint, ushering-in a new era rather than nailing down the old order, as the West had hoped.

Why is this new era so grave?  Firstly, because of that which lies ‘beneath’. The structural weaknesses and ‘dry rot’ that have been accumulating over decades, in damp basements. It was kept away, out of sight. The ‘children’ were removed from earshot, when ‘adults’ spoke amongst themselves, to acknowledge the decay and rot affecting their Mansions.

Unprecedented Protests Create Political Crisis In Sri Lanka

Countercurrents | July 10, 2022

Sri Lanka’s opposition political parties are trying to agree on a new government a day after the country’s president and prime minister offered to resign in the country’s most chaotic day in months of political turmoil, with protesters storming both officials’ homes and setting fire to one of the buildings in a rage over the nation’s economic crisis.

Sri Lankan Army chief General Shavendra Silva on Sunday made an appeal for peace to demonstrators, news portal Colombo Gazette reported.

Both the president and prime minister of Sri Lanka agreed to resign Saturday after thousands of people turned out in protest against them. Mobs even stormed both their homes, and set the prime minister’s home ablaze.

PM resigns, President flees: It’s all happening in Sri Lanka

In the wake of massive protests in Sri Lanka, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his residence. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe announced his resignation to pave way for an all-party government

People’s Dispatch | July 09, 2022

Protesters in front of the Sri Lankan presidential secretariat on Saturday, July 9. Photo: Twitter

Massive protests rocked Sri Lanka on Saturday, July 9, leading to a collapse of government. In the morning, tens of thousands of protesters marched to the residence of the President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who reportedly fled shortly before. By Saturday evening, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe resigned to make way for the formation of an all-party government. Reports also said the president had agreed to resign.

Corbyn case, a piece of democracy

Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents | July 10, 2022

Who opposes democracy? None, but the anti-people, retrogressive forces oppose democracy. They carry on the job sacred to them.

Despite wide preference for democracy as a political system, or process, it has got some problems; and the problems begin with its definition.

With the term democracy, the general perception is bourgeois democracy, which is nothing but dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Lenin exposed this fact decades ago. Mao had a long discourse on the issue in the perspective of the pre-1949-China. Yet, illusions and misperceptions persist, as the aspects/perspective Lenin and Mao discuss are either missed or ignored.

Incidents that go on almost daily, in legislative assemblies, and in acts of executive and judiciary tools of state machine, in advanced bourgeois democracies are eye-openers to perceive the character and nature, to be specific class character and class nature, of bourgeois democracy. Here, the problem is with propaganda and scholarship.

UK: ‘We’re back,’ unions declare in resounding message to the bosses

‘It is time for the trade union movement to be reborn,’ huge crowd at Durham Miners’ Gala hears

Peter Lazenby

Morning Star | July 10, 2022

RMT members at the Durham Miners’ Gala Photo: Neil Terry Photography / neilterryphotography.co.uk

UNIONS declared “we’re back!” in a resounding message to employers at the Durham Miners’ Gala on Saturday as a crowd of more than 200,000 roared their approval.

The declaration came from RMT general secretary Mick Lynch and was backed by speaker after speaker, including Unite’s Sharon Graham, who told the mass gathering: “It is time for the trade union movement to be reborn.

“We must organise, we must mobilise and, crucially, we must act as one.”

UK: As the Tory contenders emerge, so too do their policy blindspots

A Morning Star Editorial | July 11, 2022

The door of 10 Downing Street, London

THE Conservative Party is, without qualification, the most successful political party in Britain.

For most of its history it has proved to be the united political expression of the political and economic interests of the dominant classes in British society.

Where those interests have diverged — and the formidable class unity and discipline of the rich has been under strain — it has been blessed with the good fortune to be opposed by parties like the Liberals and today the Lib Dems, that while they might differ on matters of social policy, rarely depart from a defence of capital often no less ferocious than the Tories’.

Luxemburg’s life for Democracy and Socialism

Tomás Várnagy

Frontier | Vol 55, No. 1, Jul 3 – 9, 2022

Rosa Luxemburg (1871, Zamosc, Poland–1919, Berlin, Germany) is one of the most fascinating and imposing revolutionary figures in modern European history and, at the same time, one of the most discussed to date. Her friends and adversaries emphasize the penetrating acuity of her intelligence, her great willpower, her lively and impatient temperament, her strong combative nature, and her great moral rigour.

She was born in Poland in 1871, the year of the Paris Commune, the youngest of five children in a cultured and relatively wealthy Jewish family. Intelligent and brilliant in her studies, independent and rebellious in spirit, she was involved in socialist political activity from her early youth. When she was a little girl, as a typical cultured Central European, she spoke three languages: Russian, Polish, and German. She became an activist in the Proletariat Party, founded in 1882 (almost two decades before the founding of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks), in which she organised and led striking workers. In 1886, four of its leaders were executed, while others were locked up and exiled.

Shinzo Abe: A controversial visionary

M. K. Bhadrakumar

Indian Punchline | July 10, 2022

‘Sayonara’ – Japan’s controversial statesman Shinzo Abe departs

When politicians die, especially an untimely death in tragic circumstances, obituaries tend to go overboard. A sense of perspectives is lost when obituaries become eulogies. But you can’t falsify history. And in the final analysis, it is the forces of history that write the course of politics rather than individuals, and the fact is Japan has a gory past, a blood-soaked and brutal imperial past. 

Almost all of Japan’s neighbours paid a high price for its hegemonist ambitions and thirst for territorial conquests. Shinzo Abe’s grandfather who founded Japan’s ruling party was himself a war criminal. 

Japan perpetrated unspeakable crimes on conquered peoples even by the standards of colonialism, especially the Korean and Chinese peoples. Therefore, when Abe’s legacy gets evaluated dispassionately some day, as it surely will, what may well stand out as his single most outstanding contribution is that he summarily turned around ‘pacifist’ Japan and dragged it back unwillingly to its ‘militaristic’ past. There is no question about it.