Is Europe Losing Patience with Zelenskyy?

Over the past six months Socialists in every part of the EU have united with anti-war groups, dissenters, and the growing number of ordinary people who are becoming increasingly alarmed by the effects this war and the sanctions against Russia are having on their lives. The limitation of oil and gas in the global economy has driven costs up, accelerating an already developing cost of living crisis; threatening less-well-off people with a bitter winter in which they will be unable to afford the basics of food, heating, and rent. … More Is Europe Losing Patience with Zelenskyy?

The Sabina Coyne Higgins Affair

On Wednesday (27 July 2022), The Irish Times published a letter penned to the letters section of the newspaper by Sabina Coyne Higgins, the wife of the President of Ireland (Michael D. Higgins), in which she wrote: ‘Until the world persuades President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire and negotiations, the long haul of terrible war will go on.’ She was perfectly correct. Without an end to the fighting and without peace talks, the war in Ukraine will continue and many more thousands of people will suffer and die. … More The Sabina Coyne Higgins Affair

Žižek on the War in Ukraine

Žižek’s recent comments on Ukraine have quite understandably bewildered and divided socialists around the world. Ukraine, he says, ‘risked the impossible, defying pragmatic calculations, and the least we owe them is full support, and to do this, we need a stronger Nato.’ But wait! Supporting Ukraine is to support a Nazi-captured state, post-Maidan, and to seek a stronger NATO is to desire a reinforced US unipolarity and the furtherance of American liberal and capitalist hegemony. To the socialist (qua a leftist who reads) this is simply anathema. … More Žižek on the War in Ukraine

Parallel Realities on Russia

The notion that Putin has designs on invading Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, or anywhere else in eastern Europe is unsupported by the facts. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has largely stayed within its own borders. There has been no realistic indication or intelligence that Russia has been planning an assault on Europe. It is plain to see that, like the war in Georgia in 2008, Russia has no plans on annexing Ukraine. … More Parallel Realities on Russia

Zelenskyy’s Dirty Propaganda War

This is the nature of the information war being fought by the Ukrainian government — the side that is the righteous victim, the side that does not need to tell lies, the side that has innocence on its side. Yet, the multiplication of the entities of these stories — their details — point to them being fictitious; they push the boundaries of believability. … More Zelenskyy’s Dirty Propaganda War

Chekhov’s Nuclear War

NATO and the western media have made a great fuss about Russia’s revision of its nuclear strategy; suggesting that, by incorporating a particular nuclear option into its conventional military response, the Putin administration has adopted a fundamentally more aggressive and bullying strategy — and has leapt on this to accelerate the expansion of the anti-Russian nuclear alliance and the buildup of ‘defensive’ forces on the Russian border. Little if anything, however, has been said about why Russia made these revisions in the first place. … More Chekhov’s Nuclear War

The Problem with Russia

Now that the war is happening, and now that we are at — as Noam Chomsky described it — ‘the most dangerous point in human history,’ the West finds itself unable to see Russia correctly. We are still looking at our projection of Russia — a false image of our fears rather than Russia as it really is. In effect, then, Washington and its NATO client states are boxing their own shadows while the real Russia acts in totally unexpected ways because we don’t expect a fiction to behave as anything other than a fiction. … More The Problem with Russia

The Propaganda War

Within Ukraine, there is clear evidence of a disinformation mill churning out outrageous anti-Russian propaganda that is repeated by western Ukrainian journalists in English on their social media pages for western consumption. Naturally, this is picked up by western media and treated — uncritically — as news from the war. It is interesting to note that Lapatina also contributes in English to The Guardian and The New York Times. … More The Propaganda War

But the President is a Jew!

A Jewish president of Ukraine in the context of a war with Russia serves a number of functions — and that is what Volodymyr Zelenskyy is, a US-NATO functionary: he’s the cost the Ukrainian Nazis have to pay the Americans and Israelis who are left feeling a little dirty after being in bed with them, he is clueless and will do what he is told (or, at least, do nothing), and he is the perfect cover in a propaganda war where Vladimir Putin has hit the nail right on the head by identifying the connection between the US and the Nazis. … More But the President is a Jew!