Archive for the ‘Germany’ Category
How well did the left go in the June 9 European election? – by Dick Nichols, Green Left (Australia)
A recommended article :
Source ;
How well did the left go in the June 9 European Election?
How well did the left go in the June 9 European election?
Provisional results of the 2024 European Elections, as at June 19. Source: results.elections.europa.eu
At first glance it looks as if the parties to the left of the social democracy held their ground against the surge of the far right and mainstream right that marked the June 9 European Union (EU) parliamentary elections (see here for results in detail).
Although the smallest of the European parliament’s seven groups, The Left managed to maintain its EU-wide vote at 5.4% and increase its seat tally from 37 to 39 in the 720-seat assembly.
In addition, left green Members of the European Parliaments (MEPs) and those representing stateless nations (part of the Greens group as the European Free Alliance) at least maintained their numbers in the chamber.
See also
Finland: Mass workers’ strike wave continues against gov’t attacks on workers, unions, welfare
Interview: Fascism and resistance in France today
Ukrainian unionists: Oligarchs, not Europe’s poor, should pay for weapons and aid to Ukraine
Workers’ Party of Belgium gains ground in European, national elections
Yet the Greens group as a whole shrank from 71 seats to 53 while that of the liberals (known as Renew) fell from 102 to 79. This drop reflected that the environmental issues that in part drove the big advance of these parties in the 2019 election were less important for many voters this time.
The campaign was dominated by insecurity about the future, the cost of living (particularly housing), the fear of war, the “immigration threat” and intolerance of difference.
In this grim atmosphere the biggest growth went to the mainstream right European People’s Party and the two far-right groups (Identity and Democracy and Conservatives and Reformists): taken together the right and far right won an extra 30 seats, bring it to 324.
Because it would take only 37 ungrouped MEPs to join them to from a reactionary majority, the June 9 result poses with new urgency two old questions about politics in the European parliament. How much, if at all, does the real balance of political forces in the chamber differ from that among its formal groupings? And how much does membership of a group represent disciplined commitment to its positions?
Left divisions over Ukraine
The questions are sharply relevant in the case of the Left group, where differences over what stance to take towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine were already pointing towards a split before June 9.
On May 31, Li Andersson, chairperson of the Finnish Left Alliance told the Helsinki Times that these differences could not be tolerated in the group in the new legislature. Referring to Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, Irish left independent opponents of military aid to Ukraine, Andersson said: “The Nordic Green Left as a whole [covering Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands] is of the opinion that if they manage to win re-election, they can’t join our group.”
For Andersson, the same went for the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance: For Reason and Justice (BSW), a split in Germany from leading Left group member Die Linke (The Left). BSW opposes military aid to Ukraine and supports resuming the gas trade with Russia, in common with most of Europe’s far-right parties.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Jun 22, 2024 at 12:51 pm
Posted in Anti War Movements, Australia, Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), BSW (Wagenknecht) Germany, Campism, Clare Daly TD, Climate Change, Die Linke (the Left), Eastern Europe, Ecosocialism, Finland, France, Genocide, Global Warming, Green Left Weekly, Human Rights, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Israel, Israel Assault on Gaza, October 2023, Jean Luc Melenchon, Left Evasionism, Left Wing Opponents of Neoliberalism, Left Wing Organisations, Mick Wallace TD, Nordic Green Left, Party of the European Left, Racism, Red Green Alliance Denmark, Red Party (Rødt), Norway, Red-Green Alliance (Denmark), Russia, Sinn Féin, Sweden, Ukraine, Ukraine Russia War 2022, War
Tagged with Australia, Elections, europe, European Parliament Elections June 2024, european-and-local-elections-june-7-2024, Gaza, Human Rights, imperialism, Ireland, Middle East, NATO, open-borders, Palestine, politics, Racism, Russia, Sinn Féin, Ukraine, War
A Leon Trotsky, a Chara – A short post(card) and festive greetings
Thanks to Maurice Casey for this story : a postcard from Paul Kirchoff to Leon Trotsky, sent from Ireland in May 1933. Source ; Paul Kirchoff to Leon Trotsky, Dublin, May 23 1933
My final piece of work before I turned on the ‘out of office’ for Christmas was to return to some sources I accessed in the Leon Trotsky papers, now stored in Harvard, and partly digitised.
Among the documents I looked through were postcards sent to Leon Trotsky from Paul Kirchoff, a German revolutionary and anthropologist who spent part of the early 1930s working with the Harvard-Irish study.
One of Kirchoff’s letters to Trotsky from Ireland stood out because it opened with the Irish-language greeting ‘A Chara’, meaning ‘Dear friend’ (more-or-less). It was sent in May 1933 and is otherwise written in German:
I don’t have any deep analysis of this document for you.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Dec 24, 2023 at 2:27 pm
Posted in Botanic Gardens, Dublin, Germany, History of Ireland, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Leon Trotsky, Maurice Casey, Paul Kirchoff
Tagged with Ireland, Leon Trotsky, marxism, theory, trotsky
Myths and Facts about the War in Ukraine – by Paul Schäfer (Rosa Luxemburg Foundation)
We thank Joan McKiernan for bringing this article to our attention. It is a very thorough analysis of the myths about the genocidal Russian invasion of Ukraine. The author, Paul Schäfer, astutely observes :
Myths and Facts about the War in Ukraine
The Russian invasion must prompt the Left to re-think its geopolitical assumptions
There is good reason to doubt whether we have, in fact, entered a “new world” since the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Nonetheless, 24 February 2022 does mark a historical turning point. It was a watershed moment that raised new questions and intellectual challenges, particularly for the traditional Left, which has not exactly covered itself in glory by declaring that US/NATO imperialism and Ukrainian nationalism are the driving forces behind the war and failing to mention the fact that Russia was the aggressor. Current events should have prompted the Left to recognize its own blind spots and tackle the issues of Vladimir Putin, his regime, and the roots of the long-standing Ukrainian–Russian conflict. But no such reckoning has taken place.
Since the fact that Russia invaded is undeniable, parts of the Left and the peace movement have shifted their focus to the run-up to the war. But while any analysis must undoubtedly look at the run-up to the war, too many are relying on a one-dimensional view that falls back on old, familiar patterns of thinking and categories. A glance at the Russian president’s speeches is enough to reveal the motives and objectives behind the ruling Russian elite’s decision to start a war of aggression. It is astonishing how little-known those speeches are in the relevant circles. Moreover, too little attention is paid to the role of the Russian Federation’s military-industrial power complex and intelligence networks. Looking at these — in conjunction with an analysis of the collapse of the Soviet empire, its consequences, and Russia’s geopolitical decline to semi-peripheral status — would have provided an adequate basis for explaining the war.
If we examine the reasons for such a reductive analysis, it is not difficult to see that parts of the Left are reluctant to give up old ways of thinking.
However, other parts of the Left also took some time after 24 February 2022 to understand the history of the conflict, the reasons behind the establishment of the Putin regime, and the current configurations of international conflict. Peace researcher Klaus M. Schlichte from the University of Bremen recently made a creative and complex contribution to a sourced historical and sociological analysis of the war. In an important forthcoming manuscript, sociologist Klaus Dörre from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena addressed the circumstances and background of the war and identified several open questions. It is essential to build on this if we want to leave the superficial debate behind us.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Jun 22, 2023 at 1:08 pm
Posted in Anti War Movements, Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), Campism, Crimea, Crimean Tatars, Die Linke (the Left), Eastern Europe, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war Basic consensus, European Union, Germany, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Irish Left With Ukraine, Left Evasionism, Migration in Europe, NATO, Neutrality, Non-Alignment, Revolutionary History, Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), Ukraine, Ukraine : Women Raped by Russian Invaders, Westplaining
Germany’s Sozialistische Zeitung gets it wrong on energy and geopolitics – Christian Zeller offers far better explanations – Sabotage of the Nordstream Russian Gas Pipelines in the Baltic Sea
Across the globe left-wing forces over-influenced by conspiracy analysis methods have created propaganda smokescreens about the sabotage of the Nordstream Russian Gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. The left-wing 21st century conspiracists use research methods which are not based on painstaking hard-grind work. Journalists such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought the world’s attention to the 1972 Watergate with evidence based research. Today’s conspiracists begin with their own fantasy theories – and never mind the facts which get in the way. They create a circus 🤡 – it is the method of the bumbling Irish police who attempted to frame Joanne Hayes in the infamous “Kerry Babies” case.
Christian Zeller is an activist in the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine (ENSU). https://ukraine-solidarity.eu/
He is a professor of economic geography and editorial board member of the German-language journal,emancipation — Journal for Ecosocialist Strategy. Zeller is the author of Climate Revolution: Why we need an ecosocialist alternative(available in German).
Article source : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article66834
Germany’s Sozialistische Zeitung gets it wrong on energy and geopolitics
Monday 19 June 2023, by ZELLER Christian
On 6 June, the Washington Post again triggered all kinds of speculation with the publication of an exposé story on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. The journalists “revealed” without providing substantial evidence that a Ukrainian commando destroyed the pipelines on 26 September 2022. Since then, this speculation has been doing the rounds. A few months ago, Seymour Hersh “revealed” that the US had blown up the pipelines. Significantly, the same circles that followed Hersh’s US hypothesis are now following the Ukraine hypothesis….
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Jun 20, 2023 at 12:42 pm
Posted in Anti War Movements, Campism, Climate Change, Crimea, Die Linke (the Left), Eco-Socialism, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war Basic consensus, European Union, Germany, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Left Evasionism, Media Sources - Reliable Versus Unreliable, NATO, Seymour Hersh, Ukraine
“The Nord Stream Pipeline Explosions: Challenging False Narratives”- New Politics (USA)
Simon Pirani’s article is recommended reading.
Left-evasionist and tankie political activists everywhere are promoting a Seymour Hersh post claiming that the USA ruling class blew up the Nordstream 2 pipeline which is designed to allow Russia to supply Germany with Natural Gas, by-passing Ukraine.
In Ireland, Paul Murphy TD (People Before Profit [PBP], Dublin South-West) highlighted this story on the grounds that Seymour Hersh is “one of the world’s best journalists”. In December 2022 a pro-PBP publication, the Irish Marxist Review (a well-produced and often interesting journal published by the Socialist Workers’ Network) carried a Maurice Coakley article which stated “the US Navy were the only force likely to have carried out the attacks on the gas pipeline”. (Maurice Coakley’s article is here : https://irishmarxistreview.net/index.php/imr/article/view/479/464)
Seymour Hersh, decades ago, was a credible journalist. Today he is a conspiracy nut. One correspondent on Paul Murphy’s facebook page, James Doyle, observes “This is all nonsense. For example, Why would the US use a Norwegian aircraft rather than a fake fishing boat in a supposedly covert operation. For those who refer to Hersh as a “respected journalist”, you should know that he thinks the Osama Bin Laden operation was fake and Assad never used chemical weapons in Syria. A good journalist in his day, but sadly has gone off the rails into a rabbit warren of attention seeking conspiracy theories.”
Is this dispute important? It is. In the activist Revolutionary Marxist tradition, theory is needed as a guide to action.
John Meehan February 16 2023
Simon Pirani, The Nord Stream Pipeline Explosions – Challenging False Narratives.
Source : https://newpol.org/the-nord-stream-pipeline-explosions-challenging-false-narratives-2/
See also : https://theecologist.org/profile/simon-pirani
The claim that the Nord Stream gas pipeline was blown up by U.S. special forces, made last week by the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, is being used to reinforce false narratives about Russia’s culpability for the war in Ukraine.
On 26 September last year, explosions damaged three of Nord Stream’s four pipelines, which run under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, and sent a large cloud of methane into the atmosphere. Russia has blamed the United States; western media suspected Russia itself of sabotage.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Feb 16, 2023 at 10:07 am
Posted in Anti War Movements, Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), Campism, Climate Change, Crimea, Eastern Europe, European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war Basic consensus, Germany, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Irish Left With Ukraine, Left Evasionism, Mainstream Media, Media Sources - Reliable Versus Unreliable, NATO, Non-Alignment, People Before Profit, Russia, Seymour Hersh, Socialist Workers’ Network (Ireland), Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), Ukraine, Ukraine Russia War 2022, Westplaining
South Africa trades profitably in weapons with two major capitalist powers, Russia and Germany – “Our identity since Nelson Mandela has been as a moral power – that’s gone now”
Bob Myers examines the decision of South Africa’s African National Congress Congress (ANC) government to conduct joint naval exercises with Russia and China.
Article Source : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article65451
An extract from a Financial Times report (January 28) shows that Pretoria is using Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine to trade profitably with both Moscow and European Union powerhouse Germany.
The full Financial Times report is below, complete with a picture of smiling politicians, the Foreign Ministers of Russia and South Africa, Sergei Lavrov and Naledi Pandor.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Jan 29, 2023 at 9:11 pm
Anyone But England
This ‘Anyone But England’ mentality is petty and reflects badly on us as a nation, and it’s about time we merci d’ignorer le début de ce tweet et de soutenir nos héroïques français contre les anglais.
Source :
This 'Anyone But England' mentality is petty and reflects badly on us as a nation, and it's about time we merci d'ignorer le début de ce tweet et de soutenir nos héroïques français contre les anglais
— Oldfirmfacts (@Oldfirmfacts1) December 10, 2022
Ce soir. Allez Les Bleus. Allez, allez, allez.
Ni dieu, ni maitre. Ni patrie ni patron.
Aux armes citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Postscript by a correspondent :
What’s all the grumbling with the referee about? He gave England two penalties. Was he meant to allow Harry Kane retake them until he scored too? Or was he supposed to give 3 because he missed one? 4 maybe? Weird.
James Doyle
Written by tomasoflatharta
Dec 10, 2022 at 4:57 pm
Ireland should welcome Russians who don’t want to kill Ukrainians – North and South
The article below comes from Sweden via the USA based Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign.
Link : https://www.facebook.com/groups/307530784861174/?ref=share
The same issue arises in the Irish state – like Sweden, a member of the European Union, which is under pressure to draw down a new Iron Curtain partitioning the European continent.
See Also, from the European Network for Dolidarity With Ukraine :
Open the borders for Russians refusing military service!
https://ukraine-solidarity.eu/
Latest news from the anti-conscription movement in Russia : https://ukraine-solidarity.eu/9c8950df16724719b875eece066b3912?v=3bc1cb6bcdb84da2b0a88fdb3783cfdc
OPINION: Sweden should welcome Russians who don’t want to kill Ukrainians
An iron curtain is descending across Europe. But in contrast to the beginning of the Cold War, the curtain is being drawn down by EU countries – not Russia.
Any day now, Finland is poised to ban Russians from entering the country on tourist visas, to keep out men who want to avoid being drafted to fight in Ukraine. Announcing the policy, the country’s foreign minister said Finland was becoming “a transit country for Russians who want to leave their homeland for fear of being forced into war, and this traffic could harm Finland’s international position”. Opinion polls put 70 percent of the public in favour of a ban.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Sep 29, 2022 at 3:22 pm
Posted in "Vpered" ("Forward"), Russian section of the Fourth International, Anti War Movements, Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), Brexit - Britain Leaves the EU, Double Standards, Dublin Governments, Eastern Europe, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war Basic consensus, European Union, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Finland, Fortress Europe, Germany, History of Ireland, Human Rights, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Irish Left With Ukraine, Left Unity, Left Wing Organisations, LeftEast, Mass Action, Mass Action Versus Militarism, Migration in Europe, NATO, Russia, Russian Revolution 1917, Russian Socialist Movement (RSD), Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), Ukraine, Ukraine : Women Raped by Russian Invaders, Ukraine Russia War 2022, Vietnam Anti-War Movement
Germany’s Die Linke on verge of split over sanctions on Russia
Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine is re-shaping the left across Europe and other parts of the globe. In Germany, the die Linke party (the Left) seems on the verge of a damaging split.
For continuous coverage of these events see this and other articles on the ESSF site : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article64000
Leftwing party’s future in balance after series of resignations, as former co-leader calls coalition ‘stupidest government in Europe’
Germany’s Die Linke could split into two parties over the Ukraine war, as the ailing leftwing party’s indecisive stance over economic sanctions against Russia triggered a series of high-profile resignations this week.
The German Left party’s future has hung in a precarious balance since it snuck into the national parliament last autumn under a special provision for parties that win three or more constituency seats. Should three of its 39 delegates resign from the party, Die Linke would lose its status as a parliamentary group and attached privileges over speaking times and committee memberships.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Sep 20, 2022 at 12:08 pm
Posted in Anti War Movements, Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), Crimea, Crimean Tatars, Die Linke (the Left), Eastern Europe, Eco-Socialism, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war Basic consensus, European Union, Fortress Europe, German General Election, September 26 2021, Germany, Guardian Newspaper (Britain), International Political Analysis, Ireland, Irish Left With Ukraine, LeftEast, NATO, Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), Ukraine, Ukraine Russia War 2022
Support Ukrainian Resistance and Disempower Fossil Capital
Several left-wing authors co-operate here arguing for support to Ukrainian Resistance against the Russian imperialist invasion. The authors come from several different parts of Europe.
This is the source : http://europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article63931
Thursday 18 August 2022, by BUDRAITSKIS Ilya, DUTCHAK Oksana, ETZBACH Harald, GEHRKE Bernd, GELINSKY Eva, HÜRTGEN Renate, KOWALEWSKI Zbigniew Marcin , LOMONOSOVA Nataliia, PEREKHODA Hanna, PILASH Denis, POPOVYCH Zakhar, SCHMID Philipp, WÄLZ Christoph, WIELGOSZ Przemysław, ZELLER Christian
Similar debates are occurring on the left in Ireland : https://tomasoflatharta.com/2022/08/22/a-strange-policy-is-reviewed-support-ukraines-resistance-against-an-imperialist-russian-invasion-politically-but-oppose-giving-arms-to-the-resisters-a-critique-of-iri/
On June 9, Heino Berg, Thies Gleiss, Jakob Schäfer, Matthias Schindler, Winfried Wolf published a detailed statement in Junge Welt in which they advocated an “anti-militarist defeatism” and the abandonment of Ukraine’s military resistance to the Russian war of occupation. [1] We take her article as an opportunity for a fundamental response about a necessary anti-imperialist ecosocialist perspective committed to global solidarity. We are appalled at the way they bend the reality of war in this article and ultimately argue in favor of Putin’s oligarch regime. Paternalistically, they recommend that the Ukrainian population submit to Russian occupation in order to end the war. The authors make not the slightest reference to socialist, feminist, and anarchist forces in Ukraine and Russia. They argue from a distinctly German perspective. They are not alone in this. Many statements of the old peace movement turn against the “escalation of the West” and “forget” that Russia has already escalated long ago and wants to systematically destroy Ukrainian society. The statement of the five authors ignores anti-imperialist solidarity to such an extent that we consider it appropriate to set our arguments against it.
Reversal of Responsibility
The statement of the authors reads like many contributions from the old peace movement and a one-sided sham anti-imperialist left. Of course, at the beginning of the text they condemn the invasion of Ukraine “without any reservation or relativization.” But afterwards they do exactly that: they relativize the aggression of the Putin oligarchy. Under the title “No Interest in Ceasefire,” they explain in detail why NATO is much worse than Russia and that the West, first and foremost the U.S., does not want an early ceasefire but is primarily using the Ukrainian battlefield to weaken Russia.
Read the rest of this entry »Written by tomasoflatharta
Sep 14, 2022 at 4:54 pm
Posted in Anti War Movements, Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), Eastern Europe, Eco-Socialism, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF), European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war Basic consensus, European Union, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fourth International, France, Germany, Ilya Budraitskis, International Political Analysis, Ireland, Irish Left With Ukraine, Left Wing Opponents of Neoliberalism, Left Wing Organisations, LeftEast, NATO, Poland, Revolutionary History, Russia, Russian Revolution 1917, Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), Ukraine Russia War 2022, Vietnam Anti-War Movement, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, War, Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewski