Ukraine; tragedy and farce.

The tragedy; the NATO proxy war between the Ukraine and Russia is creating swathes of the dead and dying, which, at worse, is pushing the eventual road to a possible nuclear death. And at its 'best' NATO will create yet another total collapse of Russia, the largest country in the world, as a result of a hollow, western 'victory'. The farce; well, just look at Boris and his clowns all firing away behind his own British type NATO called JEF. It was built after eight years of UK pressure. Boris is now apparently the leader of the 'anti-Russia coalition', and now has just overthrown seventy years of neutrality in Sweden and Finland. 

NATO has swollen drastically since the East German wall fell. The Russian leaders, including Gorbachev, agreed that the wall and East Germany would not be over-run, so long as NATO, then with 12 members, did not move across eastern and northern Europe. What happened? NATO rolled eastward and now northward and at present has 30 members. The new honour of Britain's JEFF will add 2 more. Britain's public-school gurus have always wanted a medium type war since the banking crisis of 2008 as a result of the utter military failures of the UK in the Middle East. A serious diversion is also called for in order to cover up the UK's increasing failure in their economy and between its increasingly separate nations.

The good old BBC offers daily summaries about the various results of the battles in the Ukraine. The corporation is careful to make it clear that the BBC cannot exactly offer a fully true description of the military movements, their 'successes' or their 'failures'. From time to time various speculations emerge about the wider canvass and huge considerations bubble up. These bubbles, like the 'withdrawn' of Putin in his speech on May 9 victory parade, when his war planes did not fly because of the rain, was an example. It caused a plethora of commentator sensations. Before the destruction of Mariupol, Ukraine was right, said the western pundits. Ukraine was going to win! Then the battle of Mariupol was over and those creeping but progressing Russians were going to make it a matter of years. Then some BBC 'experts' discovered that the Russians were 8% down on their economy but the Ukraine was 30 to 50% down. (The UK is on 9% inflation.) Oh no! More quick calculations discovered that for Ukraine's recovery it would require much more than the Marshall plan that the US re-built for Germany in 1945 - 8! A new hesitant wave in the West is now speculating about a possible truce.  

Boris's farce continues. He has his war and another battle with the EU. He desperately hopes that the war and the EU clatter will be enough to grab the next General Election. The real crisis in Britain is the shocking collapse of wages, of the millions that are now one and a half percent more declining than the pressure on the wealthy, of the collapsing health and welfare systems and of the mass poverty and hunger. 

The breakup of capitalist globalisation.

Recently President Biden asked the Saudis to open up more OPEC oil in order to reduce the staggering costs of fuel in the West and to reduce the role of the particular horde owned by Russia. Mohamed bin Salman, Saudi's Crown Prince (and known as the murderer of journalist Jamil Khashoggi) refused point blank. He is close to Jared Kushner, Trump's son in law. Notwithstanding Jared's lack of experience he has just recently invested $2 billion in his new investment firm. All of course incidental. And all another  small part of the increasing mangling of the greatest proposition of modern capitalism; that of globalisation.   

The collapse of globalisation and its results have been with us before Covid. But Covid and now an east-west war have rapidly increased the coming capitalist break up. Shell has just reported their largest quarter profit ever; $9 billion. BP, Shell bosses etc., are all hugely delighted. But they are also all frightened -  between the clink of champaign glasses and the scary future. For example BP has said that they were aching to offer a windfall tax! The British Tory government declined, so far stating that these companies are going to need their super pile for worthy investment when the oil runs out. Meanwhile Shell needs to increase their pile saying that it will be used as a windfall to buy back company shares, which will increase their company's stock. They are laughing but they smell a crash to come. We are no longer in the great, worldwide, constant, global miracle. Capitalism has always collapsed in its centuries of domination. But this time, after every means that have been used, a global economic catastrophe is the worst so far. And this particular collapse is already being threatened with nukes.

Look around. The 10 leading shipping lines in the world are in profit in 2021 to the record of $120 billion; the highest profits in 117 years. That is in Covid times. In February 2022, the 'investment monitor' tells us that 'the constraining supply and pushing prices up' and globalisation as we know it is gradually on the retreat and 'US-Chinese-trade tensions (are) rising levels of protectionism everywhere.' Shipping, the most important mechanism of globalisation, unstuck up to now from any particular country or tax, is declining fast.

Do you like bread? Global food crises are erupting. Tom Stevenson in the LRB explains the coming catastrophe. Just in case, as is often described by scared politicians, it was all Covid causing these crises. But it is just not so. While Ukraine and Russia account for huge parts of the export of grain, particularly Sudan, which in this case will double its acute hunger to 18 million in the next couple of months, more generally the Food, Agriculture Organisation states that the war 'revealed the fragility of the dominant global food system.' Egypt, Lebanon, Syria etc etc, are facing starvation in the millions. The World Food Program tells us 'an unparalleled global hunger crisis' is ahead.' Stevenson states 'an important part of the story has to do with the movements of poorly regulated commodities markets, dominated ... by a handful of financial institutions and corporations. Investor speculation drove the price of food out of the reach of most of the world's poor during the economic crisis of 2008.'  

Does any thinking person, somebody not already yet crushed by war and starvation, avoid the conditions to come? The portents are with us all. Of course 'nicer' leaders than Trump, or his extremely unpleasant echoes, can be found in abundance, but what are we understanding? The old 'nice' leaders have already failed. They failed because their decades of the status quo has failed. The leaders that have insisted on the status quo cannot believe that their domination cannot, anymore, set themselves in the history of Western capitalism because its history has gone and Jared Kushner grabs the wealth. It is particularly in the shrinking west, that the traditional leaderships have been creating their own downfall. 

There are now two roads in the current life of today's capitalism. China's The Belt and Road Initiative is a global infrastructure strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 70 countries and international organisations. A third of it has already been broken up by corruption. But the two great movements through Africa and the East, led by China, is an effective construction against the West's imperialist long histories. China, using their $ trillions-plus to create a Chinese led, state capitalism, development, strikes a new and positive capitalist turn in low and medium developed countries. The US, of a Biden or a Trump type basis will ultimately go to war to prevent China's new empire against US hegemony. 

The second path of late capitalism has already partly started. Centred in the crucible of the West, a thorough and essential destruction of all the social benefits in society is the only means of revivifying a new capitalism's increasing progress in respect of the ruling classes and their police, army etc.. Again, as with the China proposal, the result will be war, but internal of the sort that Trump began in his fight for the 'States'. Capitalism will not, despite the mechanical theorists that see inevitable stages that draw definitive lines in history, simply fade away. But its future is now much more limited in its possibilities.

The alternative? The second wave of socialism. Is there any other holistic alternative that is based on human needs and the right of self organisation, on the collective requirement of all equals, the control of all human discovery and a planet supported for life?