Category: Russia

The Soviet Fall and the New Right Failure

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Problems 34: Freedom as Misunderstood by Liberals

  • How Gorbachev Wrecked the Soviet Union
    • Looking at how the man messed up.
    • A reminded that the Soviet Union worked well in the 1950s and 1960s.
  • Notes on Asocialism
    • People go wrong by imagining themselves as autonomous individuals who could and should exist independently of the wider society.
    • How the New Right took advantage of moral uncertainty following the radical and necessary changes demanded by 1960s radicals and protestors.
    • Why the unregulated internet is not an answer.

Also available as a PDF, Problems 34 – Freedom Misunderstood

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Labour Affairs – April 2019 Updates

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Latest update.  April Editorial: The Last Throw Of The Dice?  Mrs May ignores mass protests in favour of a fresh vote.  Just as protests in 2003 at the planned Iraq War were ignored.

From December 2018: News from France (Froggy), and Parliamentary Notes.  Also Notes on the News: State Aid: Bad for Everyone Except Me, Socialist Failure?, Feed-the-Rich Economics, The Last March of Donald Trump, A Man, a Plan, an Abomination – Venezuela, Dams Damned.

Also everything for April 2018: Editorial: Rush To Judgement  (Nerve Gas Attack); Parliament And World War One; Froggy;  Notes on the News; Diary of a Corbyn foot soldier; Parliamentary Notes; Letter from New Zealand; Boris Johnson and the alleged Russian Nerve Gas Attack; The Wapping Dispute of 1986 (Print Workers); Poems: Eunuchs United; The Inklings Of Whitehall.  Also available as a PDF, Labour Affairs 286 April 2018

Labour Affairs – March 2019 Updates

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Latest update.  March Editorial: Paper TIGers.  The eight Labour MPs who resigned from the party last month, and formed themselves into The Independent Group, hope to wreck Labour’s chances of winning the next general election.  They want to prevent anything being done about the unfair accumulation of wealth and the squeezing of the needy.

From December 2018: News from France (Froggy), Parliamentary Notes 1 – Mrs May, and Parliamentary Notes 2 – Legal Position;.  Also Notes on the News: Bush Senior, the Vice President, They Shall Not Grow Old: They Were Stupidly Slaughtered, US Republicans – Make Hate, Not Love, Climate Change – Not Always Warm, But Mostly Worse, Climate-Change Extinction?  Or Hitler Plus?, Taiwan: Not Gayly Wed, Not Separatist, Ukraine Versus Ukraine, But Blaming Russia, From Brexit to Poxit?

Also everything for March 2018:  Editorial: Labour’s Poisoned Chalice; Parliament And World War One; Froggy;  Notes on the News; Diary of a Corbyn foot soldier; Walter Citrine in the Soviet Union in 1925. Part 3; Letter from New Zealand – Eugenics; Parliamentary Notes; Listening to Italy.  Also available as a PDF, Labour Affairs 285 – March 2018

The Russian Revolution Was Necessary

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Brendan Clifford on the Russian Revolution.  Parts 1 to 3.  Parts 4 to 6.
“I had many discussions … trying to get my head around the idea that the [Russian] revolution was destined to failure by international circumstances, but that it also failed, because it was betrayed by those who assumed the leadership of it.  To my mind the idea that it was betrayed implied that it might have succeeded…

“Going through Trotsky’s later accounts of why he did not become leader in 1924, I found much of his pre-Revolution dislike of Leninism re-surfacing as criticism of Stalinism, but with the addition of distaste for the uncouth company of the workers who were increasingly encountered in Stalin’s circles.”

Hitler, the 13th Chancellor

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Problems 30: Jews as ‘Collateral Damage’ in the Fall of the British Empire.
Part Two: The 13th Chancellor

  • The British government could have contained Hitler without a World War, but acted mainly from selfish power-political calculations.
  • The British ruling class were indifferent to the fate of German Jews
  • Karl Lueger – Moderate Antisemitism as the root of Christian Democracy
  • Why many Italian Jews supported Mussolini’s Fascism
  • The ‘Protocols of Zion’ were boosted by Henry Ford and by the London Times

Also available as a PDF, Problems 30 – the 13th Chancellor

Labour Affairs – April 2018 updates

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Rush To Judgement.  April 2018 Editorial: Theresa May pointed the finger of guilt directly at the Russian government.

Plus News from France (Froggy), Notes on the News, and Parliamentary Notes for December 2017, and February 2018.

Also everything for March and April 2017:

April 2017: Editorial: The PLP: Labour’s Timid Tendency; Parliament And World War One; Froggy; Labour’s Industrial Strategy; Worker Representation in Companies; Notes on the News; Theresa May’s letter to Donald Tusk; Parliamentary Notes; Listening to Italy; Poems: Nimby; A Steppe Too Far.  Also available as a PDF, Labour Affairs 276 – April 2017

March 2017: Editorial: Testing Times For Corbyn And Labour; Jewish Socialist Group on Gerald Kaufman; Parliament And World War One – entry of the USA; Froggy;  Citrine and Bevin Part 2; Notes on the News; Diary of a Corbyn foot soldier (No 9); Parliamentary Notes; Listening to Italy; Poems: Conditioning, Outlaw.  Also available as a PDF, Labour Affairs 275 – March 2017

Nerve Gas attack on Sergei Skripal

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Did Russia do the Nerve Gas Assassination?

  • A botched attack on an unimportant paid traitor of Russian origin is called a planned aggression by Putin.
  • Russia’s demand that Britain follow the standard and agreed rules for accusations about illegal use of nerve gas is treated as proof of guilt.
  • A demand for hard evidence and a reminder of the massive lying over the Iraq war is treated as weakness or treason by most of the British press.
  • It’s not that hard to make nerve gas.  A small Japanese sect attacked other Japanese in 1995, killing several.