The Trump-Putin Imperialist and Ethnic-Cleansing attack on Ukraine is a major turning point.
The anti-imperialist left everywhere is at a fork in the road : Either With Ukraine or Against Ukraine
UN General Assembly passes resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
The Financial Times reported (February 24 2025) :
The UN General Assembly has passed a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine co-sponsored by Kyiv and EU nations, despite the US voting against it and urging other states to do so.
The resolution passed with 93 votes in favour. The US and Russia were two of 18 votes against. China abstained, alongside 64 other countries.
The US had urged countries to vote against as it has its own resolution that calls for peace in the three-year long war, and does not condemn Russia’s invasion or its ongoing aggression against Ukraine.
The UN Security Council, in which the US and four other permanent members have veto rights, is likely to vote on the issue later in the day.
The General Assembly vote, which came shortly after G7 leaders failed to agree on a joint statement condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine on the third anniversary of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, has exposed the widening gulf between the US and Europe in the early months of Donald Trump’s second term.
The good news is that progressive revolt seems to be starting in the United States of America.
A leading spokesperson is Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator from the New England state of Vermont.
Bernie SandersI don’t want to hear any Republicans talk about “freedom” unless they have the guts to call out Trump for the lies that he is telling about Putin and Ukraine.It was Russia that started the war, not Ukraine.Putin is the dictator, not Zelensky#News&Politics
The ignorant racist anti-Ukraine thug, Vice-President JD Vance, is not welcome in Vermont :
This makes me so happy. Thank you Vermont. This is so deserving to the POS human being vance is. He was beyond rude to a world leader and showed that he had no breadth of the ongoing war in Ukraine. http://www.politicususa.com/p/jd-vance-f…
One man is not joining the growing progressive popular pro-Ukraine in the USA.
His name is Jeffrey Sachs, a right-wing economist whose hands are very dirty ; “Sachs’ methods for stabilizing economies became known as shock therapy and were similar to successful approaches used in Germany after the two world wars”
The anti-Ukraine views of Dr Sachs are endorsed and shared by the ignorant imperialist thugs running the Washington White House, the convicted rapist President Donald Trump and his sidekick JD Vance, who publicly ambushed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28 2025 in the White House.
One person who read this document wrote “shocking”.
Another observed “Galloway, Wagenknecht and now Sinn Féin. And at least one “Leftie” in Ireland moaning about the famous single unvetted male”.
The good news is that sincere anti-racist voters in Britain, Germany, and Ireland are realising that “Red-Brown” politics stink. In the Dublin Central constituency, where one of the 4 Dáil Deputies is SF leader Mary-Lou McDonald TD, the party’s 1st preference vote went down 12.3 per cent. SF got a warning that it was losing support to its left and right.
Many SF members are anti-racists. They must speak out now, because evidence suggests that the party leadership is doubling down to promote a new suite of racist policies.
We, representatives of [Ukrainian] civil society and human rights organizations, decisively condemn the negotiations between the delegations of the Russian Federation and the United States regarding Ukraine, which took place in Saudi Arabia, as well as the plans to create negotiating groups without the participation of Ukraine. Any agreements about Ukraine without its direct participation are not only unacceptable, but also contradict the fundamental principles of international law, the sovereignty of states, and the right of the people of Ukraine to independently determine their future.
Such agreements are fundamentally incapable of accomplishing sustainable peace and international security, creating additional security, economic, and other threats to states that will support them. This path repeats the fatal mistake the international community made during the Munich Agreement of 1938, which, as was discovered later, did not satisfy the encroachment of the aggressor state and led to an even more destructive war.
Ukraine is not an object, but a sovereign state affected by aggression
Russia continues waging a full-scale war against Ukraine in violation of the fundamental principles of international law, including the prohibition to use force against the territorial integrity and political independence of any state enshrined in the UN Charter. This has been recognized not only by numerous decisions of international organizations, but also supported by the majority of countries in the world. The aggression committed by the Russian Federation has already resulted in numerous war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the likely genocide of the Ukrainian people.
Convicted Rapist-President Donald Trump (USA) and wanted international war criminal President Vladimir Putin (Russia) are knifing Ukraine Palestine and Syria, hosted by the Saudi Arabia bloodbath kingdom.
Three sociopathic assassins (Putin, Trump, and Mohammed bin Salman) have form. Barcelona journalist Cristina Mas notes : “This format would have been unthinkable just five years ago, after the murder of journalist and opposition leader Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, a crime that prompted condemnation around the world and the cooling of relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia”
From the pro-Ukraine left, useful interpretations are circulating.
In a highly confrontational speech delivered at the Munich Security Conference opening on 14 February, US Vice President JD Vance declared that the “internal threat” facing Europe was more serious than that posed by Russia and China. He criticised the annulment of a recent election in Romania, the prosecution of an anti-abortion protester in the United Kingdom, and the exclusion of far-right and far-left German politicians from the event itself.
And here we are. This is one outcome of arguing that one imperialism is less bad than another, that some people are oppressed while others either don’t exist (,Putin’s original playbook) or don’t really matter. Palestinians good, Ukrainians, Kurds? Not so much.
Clare Daly (ex MEP; a twice defeated Irish election candidate in 2024) was on the RTÉ 1 TV “Upfront with Katie Hannon” programme on February 17 2025, supporting the Trump-Putin stab in the back of Ukraine. She is like the peace activists who backed the Hitler-Chamberlain 1938 agreement selling out Czechoslovakia. A year later this “peace in our time” deal, promoted by a British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously waving a piece of paper, paved the way for World War 2 in Europe and Nazi occupation of France, Holland, Belgium, Poland plus many more.
We also saw the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939, followed in 1941 by – guess what? – a Nazi invasion of Stalin’s Russia.
Let us recall the various Clare Dalys, spiritual daughters of Stalin – one of whom claimed in 2022 that predictions Putin intended to invade Russia were “insane”.
Pro-Ukraine anti-war activists got it right, for example Donnacha Ó Beacháin :
3 years ago today I was in a TV studio expressing scepticism about Putin’s claim he was withdrawing troops from Ukraine’s borders On the same program Russia’s ambassador said anybody who suggested Russia would invade Ukraine was “insane”. Russia launched its full-scale invasion the very next week
Here is an account of the warnings Stalin ignored prior to the Hitler invasion in 1941.
Unlike the Germans, who saw the Non-Aggression Pact as necessary but temporary, Stalin had illusions that it might be lasting. Owen Matthews quotes from a 1966 interview with Marshal Zhukov, conducted by Lev Bezymensky, a Soviet historian and war veteran. In January 1941, Zhukov and others had warned Stalin of ominous German troop movements. Stalin wrote to Hitler, asking politely whether these reports were true. Hitler replied that they were, but he swore ‘on my honour as a head of state that my troops are deployed … for other purposes. The territories of Western and Central Germany are subject to heavy English bombing and are easily observed from the air by the English. Therefore I found it necessary to move large contingents of troops to the east where they can secretly reorganise and rearm.’ Stalin believed him.
Source : Winston Churchill : His Times, His Crimes, Tariq Ali, Verso Books,
The 2025 Trump-Putin partition policy is a spiritual daughter of the 1922 Treaty which peace politicians used to stab Northern Nationalists in the back by implementing the partition of Ireland. This gave us, in the prophetic words of James Connolly, “A Carnival of Reaction” – 2 sectarian counter-revolutionary states on one small island.
Like James Connolly, Grace Plunkett (widow of 1916 Easter Rising martyr Joseph Plunkett) understood that partition, pretending to be peace, meant a sham freedom for Ireland.
So, today, it should be obvious to all on the left : oppose a peace and partition plan promoted by 2 violent untrustworthy sociopaths.
Ask the people of Canada, of Mexico, of Greenland. Ask the people of Ukraine, of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, of Poland , of Finland.
A dictatorship hosting another dictatorship to negotiate with an aspiring dictatorship about the future of a democracy that’s not represented.
Two superpowers opening discussions on the future of a country which one of them is still invading, without that country
Are the international pro-solidarity left organising solidarity with Ukraine? Answer Yes
A physical and online conference in support of the Ukrainian people’s national and social rights
No to partition! Russian troops out!
This important conference will address the grave threat posed by the incoming Trump administration’s intention of imposing on the Ukrainian people a deal agreed with Putin’s Russia.
Violating international law, it would partition Ukraine and entrench the occupation of territory annexed since 2014 and expanded by Putin’s full-scale war since February 2022. It would produce a “peace” imposed through Western acquiescence in the dismembering of Ukraine, with parallels to the 1938 Munich Agreement that handed Nazi Germany 30 per cent of Czechoslovak territory.
The vulnerable position presently confronting Ukraine’s war of just resistance is a direct result of the failure to provide necessary aid by key states, despite their boasting that they “stand by Ukraine”.
The dire prospect of a partitioned Ukraine partly under Putin’s control would be the product of the appeasement policy of those sections of big business anxious to restore and develop their Russian commercial ties. In contrast, the Solidarity With Ukraine conference of progressive forces—of trade unions, socialists, social democrats, green, feminists and other social movements—will take place on the understanding that the partition of Ukraine cannot bring peace.
The only road to a just and lasting peace requires the complete withdrawal of Russian forces. While they remain in any part of Ukraine it will be impossible for Ukrainians to freely determine their own future.
Any peace negotiations should be with Ukraine as a main partner: the war should not and cannot be solved as a horse trade between the great powers at Ukraine’s expense.
Against the decline in aid and a possible Trump-Putin deal, the organisers and sponsors of the Solidarity With Ukraine conference advocate a surge in military support to strengthen Ukraine’s position in any negotiations, and to be able to continue its just resistance if no security guarantees acceptable to Ukraine are achieved.
That military aid must be accompanied with unconditional financial support for Ukraine’s reconstruction and the cancellation of its debt. We reject the corporations’ self-interested argument that solidarity with Ukraine’s armed and unarmed resistance must mean accepting the dismantling of social rights and services, either inside Ukraine or in the countries giving it support.
The struggles of Ukraine’s working people and their trade union organisations, and of the country’s feminist, environmental, LGBTIQ+ and human rights organisations have been indispensable to the country’s resistance, primarily against the Russian invasion but also against anti-social policies adopted by the Zelensky government. They are also the best guarantee that reconstruction will be in the interest of Ukraine’s social majority.
The message of representatives of such Ukrainian movements will be a central feature of the plenary sessions of the Solidarity With Ukraine conference.
They will also participate in workshop sessions that will provide an invaluable opportunity to increase understanding of Ukraine’s complex reality and develop practical solidarity initiatives with Ukrainian partners.
The conference will also adopt a final declaration, with the goal of giving as much publicity as possible to its position in favour of a just peace and just reconstruction for Ukraine and its people.
The final text and the Solidarity With Ukraine conference program will be published soon.
A friend has begun vital work – examination of the 2025 FFFGBG Programme for Government, which contains lots of measures these parties did not propose during the recent general election campaign.
Alarming things
The programme for government has a few alarming things in it – (and the government has a few alarming people in it) eg there’s lots of commitment to reduce carbon emissions alongside actions and plans that will directly increase carbon emissions. There’s a bunch of mangled science around the particular characteristics of methane and it’s basically a valentine card to those involved in data center construction.
Shutting people up over Israel’s genocide
It also has a commitment to recognise a particular and highly contested definition of anti- semitism which would help those who want us to shut up about Israel’s genocide and occupation – and which was as far as I can remember not part of any single party or politician’s election platform. It would be very interesting to find out how and from where and on whose request this made it into the programme.
Readers may like the explanation of how Irish-American students greeted gullible racists stepping off trains and buses in South Bend Indiana, brought Ku Klux Klan racist thugs down familiar dark alleys, and administered physical education which would never be forgotten.
Many Irish-Americans have a shameful history of collaborating with nativist racists, but counter-examples exist. We thank Dave Schubert for drawing our attention to this fascinating story.
The author of this article, Brendan O’Shaughnessy, gives us a practical link between the past and the present :
Todd Tucker, the Klan story’s chronicler, lives and writes in Valparaiso, Indiana. He said the recent re-emergence of white supremacism and the Klan have clear parallels in the history he researched. Klan members even showed up during his book tour in 2004. “The Klan is a very durable American institution,” Tucker said by phone. “One of the reasons it’s durable is because it’s adaptable. It doesn’t surprise me at all to find them at the front of the mob. Fear of immigrants, fear of change — that we’re changing for the worse. And an ability to capitalize on those fears — they’ve always been really effective at that.”
A Clash Over Catholicism
Notre Dame students confronted the Ku Klux Klan in 1924
Published August 2018
It was May 1924, and the Ku Klux Klan wanted to showcase its power and cement its sudden grip on Indiana politics by holding a picnic and parade in South Bend, the most Catholic area in the state.
About 500 University of Notre Dame students showed their objections by storming downtown and ripping the hoods and robes off surprised Klan members. As the Klan arrived in trains, buses and cars, the students roughed members up in alleys and stole their regalia for battle trophies. They chased the rest to the Klan headquarters downtown at the corner of Wayne and Michigan streets.
Key grassroots leaders of the recently triumphant MAGA movement went to war with Elon Musk on the question of immigration, in a spectacular argument that pointed to political divisions within their movement.
Tensions were already rising as Musk fanboys had started to promote their favourite capitalist as a co-president or ‘the real VP’ which angered the rampant egotism of Donald Trump who does not tolerate any competition. Musk made clear at a recent rally that Musk could never be president. Why? Because “He wasn’t born here”. Musk, a South African who is now naturalised as a US citizen would always ultimately be an outsider for the MAGA people.
This was the kindling for the wider explosion. Just before Christmas Day, Trump appointed US-Indian venture capitalist Siram Krishnan to be policy lead on AI. This was met with anger from some of the MAGA faithful – Krishnan had previously been a Democrat supporter so was seen as a suspect, but also crucially – not American. Well not fully ‘American’ in the way that they care about i.e. white.
On the western and eastern sides of the Atlantic Ocean a ferocious viper war has erupted.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s favourite attack-dog Elon Musk is trying to remote-control British politics.
Reform leader Nigel Farage’s typically British stiff upper-lip response is described below : it is like the Fawlty Towers episode when Basil Fawlty failed to produce a Waldorf Salad for a tyrannical American diner who had paid the bungling guest-house owner a generous bribe :
Financial Times, January 6 2025
Before long Trump will dispose of Musk, just as Russian strongman Putin bumped off Mr Prigozhin.
Musk might, at some point, jangle some of his loose change in the direction of far-right Irish political operators. The nearest Irish equivalent to Musk’s suggested Nigel Farage – Tommy Robinson marriage is a direct link between the beggar-gombeens of the Dublin Dáil and the convicted kick boxer/rapist Conor McGregor. The Independent Ireland (II) party had to dump a McGregor associate, Phil Sutcliffe, from its candidate list after Nikita Hand won a court victory over the kick-boxing rapist.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 