After a year of war in Ukraine, there are about as many Russian soldiers dead or injured as reported for the “special military operation” a year ago. What for? After the first year of war, Ukraine is devastated; the government has sacrificed a significant portion of the population to its fight against the Russian invasion. What for? A year after Chancellor Scholz’s “historical turning point,” the West is surveying the costs of its anti-Russian intervention in Ukraine. What is it all for?
Women enjoy plenty of public respect. This fits wonderfully with the fact that the female sex has to deal with all kinds of social disadvantages and a full-blown culture of personal, even sexual attacks and assaults. This article explains where social discrimination and private assault against women come from, why the counterculture of special respect is part of it, and why it does not change anything.
Back to the starting point: Russia conducts a “special military operation” targeting Kiev and eastern Ukraine with the explicit aim of ousting the government that complies with the West — the EU and NATO — and replacing it with a pro-Russia one. Occupying territories bordering the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in the east of the country that are loyal to Moscow is supposed to protect them against constant incursions and attacks by Ukrainian forces and secure the annexation of Crimea by military means. At the same time, Russia declares that its much broader strategic goal is to secure its own existence against the advance of the Western military alliance up to its western border. It sees NATO and the EU’s co-opting of its Black Sea neighbor as an anti-Russian outpost, possibly also for stationing American medium-range missiles, as a fundamental threat to its own strategic defense capability — a threat that must be repelled.
These two objectives are on quite different levels.
Three parties are involved in the war in Ukraine: Russia as the aggressor that is carrying out a “special military operation”; Ukraine as the attacked state with its USA/NATO–trained and equipped army; and the West, i.e., USA and NATO in a newly united front including the EU. This third one may not be a direct party to the war, but it is a double one. It is firstly financing the Ukrainian state and organizing its military power.
Companies wage their own kind of power struggle against each other. It is called “competition,” takes place in “free markets,” and is considered the epitome of economic efficiency and the greatest possible satisfaction of needs. As is well known, it looks different in practice. A lot of effort is put into cornering the dear competitors in such a way that they disappear from the free market if possible. This struggle for the expropriation of free private owners is explained in the continuation of our treatise on the competition of capitalists: “Growth through centralization of capital: The competitive struggle to overcome competition.” The role of the state and that of finance are discussed, both of which ensure that the struggle for monopoly is not the end of capitalist competition, but its daily routine.
There is war in Ukraine. So once again, we get to witness just how ruthless states can be when they see their self-preservation at stake. The warring powers leave no doubt that they alone decide when their existence is on the line and what that entails for their people. And yet, the same people, across the globe and especially in Europe, feel morally obligated to take sides.
Have they lost their minds?
Right in the middle of our beautiful Europe with its wonderful peaceful order, suddenly there’s war again? Just how could it come to this? Yes, how indeed? One thing is for certain: war did not just break out all of a sudden in the midst of the most beautiful peace. Nor did some crazed Russian autocrat rush into war for some inexplicable reason. As is always the case, the reasons for this war were created in peace. They were created by states that have once again reached a point in their dealings that they each think they have to inflict a crushing defeat on the other.
Some Japanese John Doe once had a criticism of money. Not that the average person always has too little of it and has to work long and hard to earn it. His criticism was that its price fluctuations make it unreliable for private payment transactions, and that it does not really belong to "all of us" who want use money to pay and exchange because all kinds of authorities from the central bank to speculators are involved and misuse it. The solution was quite simple: he invented a free money for free citizens on the Internet, bypassing the demonized authorities, and christened it Bitcoin. Now, a few years later, the stock market professionals from radio and television will explain to you how the price jumps of Bitcoin make it such an exciting investment opportunity, which, however, it is better for ordinary people to keep their hands off. On the other hand, if you have enough money left over that you don't need to spend, you can become filthy rich with a little luck by speculating on this strange something that the financial critic has put into the world. But actually, money is there for something other than what the critics of state-money imagine. Our article explains Bitcoin's career from digital monstrosity arising from a false criticism of the state's money to object for speculation.
A new housing shortage has broken out in Germany’s major cities. Average wage earners currently pay around a third of their income for housing — and rents continue to rise. The fact that this elementary living condition is a luxury the working majority can hardly afford is officially recognized at the highest levels as a “social problem.” Especially during election campaigns, politicians promise to ensure that housing remains affordable. And really that says it all: after 150 years of capitalist growth, for many it is not.
What does the most gigantic economic rebuilding program of all time announced in the US under the title "Build Back Better" have to do with the increasingly fierce internal American culture war over issues such as abortion or theories of race and racism? At first glance, nothing, but for the world power, its leadership and its people, apparently a great deal. In our article on the subject, you can read about what the US is actually suffering from and why its leaders are so single-minded in thinking that they have to take care of the "soul of America."