US-based labour and social movements authors and organisers Robert Ovetz and James Tracy interview DANIEL GROSS about his new book, Unions of Our Own: Eight Building Blocks to Change Work and the World
ONE of the puzzling phenomena in world capitalism today is the bellicosity displayed by Europe vis-a-vis Russia. The claim that Russia has imperialist designs towards Europe, which the European ruling circles keep repeating, is clearly absurd.
It is Nato that moved eastwards, in violation of a promise made by the US administration to Gorbachev, and provoked Russia; and it is Nato members, notably the US and Britain, that torpedoed the Minsk agreement reached between Russia and Ukraine which would have prevented the war.
Nato’s objective clearly was to subjugate Russia and control its rich natural resources, by recreating the relationship that Western imperialism had developed for a while with that country when Boris Yeltsin had been its president. The claim that it is Russia that wants to overrun Europe, like the earlier cold war claim that it was the USSR that wanted to subjugate Europe, is so absurd that it is almost childish.
While millions face poverty and public services are squeezed, France is committing billions to defence spending and weapons production, in a dangerous shift towards permanent preparation for war, says CONOR BOLLINS
Western nations’ increasingly aggressive stance is not prompted by any increase in security threats against these countries — rather, it is caused by a desire to bring about regime changes against governments that pose a threat to the hegemony of imperialism, writes PRABHAT PATNAIK
Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT



