76 days to get it right in Ukraine

76 days to get it right in Ukraine (translation)

With less than two weeks to go until the US presidential election, and with polls showing a tie that will make the result depend on a small number of swing states, states that could fall to one side or the other and change the course of events, the electoral issue marks the global political agenda and represents a special element of uncertainty in the case of Ukraine. All the certainties that have existed until now under the leadership of Joe Biden, who has managed relations with Kyiv for two terms, since he was in charge of the White House during the years of the Obama administration, will disappear the moment it is announced who will come to power next January. Although, without a doubt, a victory for Trump would be more worrying for Zelensky, who apparently did not get the desired support from the Republican candidate at the meeting held during the Ukrainian president’s last visit to the United States, neither would a victory for Kamala Harris mean the end of concerns. The scant presence of the war in Ukraine in the campaign is compounded by speculation about the candidate’s cold relationship with Zelensky, despite the fact that it was Harris who attended the peace summit in Switzerland representing the White House. However, beyond slogans such as “support Ukraine as long as necessary,” the candidate has not at any time suggested what specific policy she would pursue with regard to the war or the relationship with Russia. Electoral needs are marked by issues of national policy and neither the Republican nor the Democrat candidate are making long speeches detailing their proposals.

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What did Lenin have to say about socialism and war?

Source

What did Lenin have to say about socialism and war?

“Socialists have always condemned war between nations as barbarous and brutal. But our attitude towards war is fundamentally different from that of the bourgeois pacifists (supporters and advocates of peace) and of the anarchists. We differ from the former in that we understand the inevitable connection between wars and the class struggle within the country; we understand that war cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished and socialism is created; and we also differ in that we fully regard civil wars, ie, wars waged by the oppressed class against the oppressing class, slaves against slave-owners, serfs against land-owners, and wage-workers against the bourgeoisie, as legitimate, progressive and necessary.”

Related:

Socialism and War (PDF)

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (PDF)

April Theses (PDF)

Full text: Xi Jinping’s speech at the 16th BRICS Summit

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday called on BRICS countries to work for high quality development of greater BRICS cooperation, in a speech addressing the 16th BRICS Summit.

Full text: Xi Jinping’s speech at the 16th BRICS Summit

Related:

“Friends for Peace” Group on the Ukraine Crisis Set up in the United Nations

Meeting with journalists from BRICS countries • President of Russia

Brazil’s Lula toes the Western line and opposes Venezuela’s and Nicaragua’s membership in BRICS

Source: Gringa Brazilien

Brazil, Lula reiterates opposition to Venezuela’s entry into BRICS

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has reportedly informed his international interlocutors that the country will oppose Venezuela’s entry into the BRICS. The newspaper “G1” reported this, pointing out that this “possible veto” would represent a further sign of distancing between Lula and the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, a relationship which, according to sources at the newspaper, “has been frozen for some time now”.

Lula is definitely compromised! As for UNSC reforms, I’m pretty sure that it’s about China and Russia.

Related:

Pro-Western Rio Times: Lula Blocks Venezuela and Nicaragua from BRICS Amid Diplomatic Tensions

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The racial and class question

The racial and class question

Virtually forgotten due to the discourse of Ukrainian unity and the general lack of interest in analyzing the nuances of events, the racial and class question is going virtually unnoticed in this war. If the Donbass conflict had a proletarian aspect that the press mocked in the first weeks of the DPR due to those Soviet-looking press conferences of workers and academics, in the current context, there have not even been any such comments. Presented as a war of national liberation, no aspect other than nationalism has deserved much mention in the Western press or in academia. Volodymyr Ishchenko and Ilya Matveev, who have sought to study the class aspect in the outbreak of the conflict, are the rare exception. To Ischenko’s surprise, RFE/RL published an article last September that dealt, albeit in generalities and without great depth, with the increase in inequality that war implies, an aspect that is, on the other hand, perfectly evident. “As the war drags on, the gaps in Ukrainian society are widening,” the American media headlines.

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Real Liberty

But we did not build this society in order to restrict personal liberty but in order that the human individual may feel really free. We built it for the sake of real personal liberty, liberty without quotation marks. It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. 

Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.

Interview Between J. Stalin and Roy Howard