‘On Monday, millions of Swedes will start receiving copies of a pamphlet advising the population how to prepare and cope in the event of war or another unexpected crisis.

“In case of crisis or war” has been updated from six years ago because of what the government in Stockholm calls the worsening security situation, by which it means Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The booklet is also twice the size.

Neighbouring Finland has also just published its own fresh advice online on “preparing for incidents and crises”.

And Norwegians have also recently received a pamphlet urging them to be prepared to manage on their own for a week in the event of extreme weather, war and other threats.’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr4zwj2lgdo

Shades of the UK’s Protect and Survive.

A report on social media, sourcing the Financial Times, (paywalled) says that Estonia’s Foreign Minister has said that if the President Elect of the USA makes a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, one of the terms is that Ukraine does not join NATO, then a European coalition, led by Britain and Poland should step in to fihght on Ukraine’s side. This apparently will stop Russian aggression.

A Sun ‘journalist’ writes that the USA should have provided Ukraine with the missiles it may now have access to at the beginning of the conflict. The latest decision to provide these weapons will not lead to WW3 he asserts. He opines that, ‘Ukraine is maybe Europe’s front line but its soldiers are fighting for more than their homes. They are defending the world as we know it. ‘

What world might that be? Shades of Billy Bragg’s fighting to keep the world safe for capitalism.

‘US President Joe Biden has reportedly authorized Ukraine to use long-range American missiles to strike targets inside Russia’s pre-2014 borders, according to a New York Times reporting anonymous American officials.

The decision, if accurately conveyed by the newspaper, marks a major shift in Washington’s policy and will raise the stakes in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The White House has yet to comment publicly on the matter.

The report states that Ukraine is expected to deploy the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) against Russian forces and alleged North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk Region, where fierce fighting is ongoing. The supposed presence of North Korean forces has been used as part of the justification for the policy change, though there is no verified proof of Pyongyang’s troops operating in Russia.

ATACMS missiles can be fired from HIMARS launchers, which Ukraine has had in its arsenal since 2022. Kiev’s forces have had ATACMS missiles since April, but have until now been limited to using them on land considered Ukrainian by Washington. ATACMS missiles travel at supersonic speed and have a range of 300 kilometers (190 miles).

“The move is a significant escalation and may provoke a direct response from Moscow,” the report notes. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned that any attacks on Russia’s internationally recognized territory with American-supplied weaponry would be viewed as NATO entering the conflict directly. Such actions, he has suggested, could lead to severe repercussions, including retaliation against Western interests.

The reported US policy shift has also divided Biden’s advisers, the newspaper claims. While some argue the change is necessary to counter Moscow’s supposed  military moves, others fear it could further escalate tensions and risk a broader conflict.

Supporters of arming Ukraine more aggressively believe that previous hesitation by the US has emboldened Moscow, while critics warn of potential Russian retaliation against American and Western European assets.

The Times report also highlights that while the Ukrainian military may first target Russian and alleged North Korean forces in Kursk, the strikes could potentially be expanded to other regions.

The long-range capabilities of ATACMS would allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory, potentially disrupting supply lines and troop concentrations.

Kiev’s desire for long-range capabilities has been a longstanding request. With Biden’s reported authorization, the geopolitical dynamics of the conflict could now shift dramatically.’

‘On Monday, millions of Swedes will start receiving copies of a pamphlet advising the population how to prepare and cope in the event of war or another unexpected crisis.

“In case of crisis or war” has been updated from six years ago because of what the government in Stockholm calls the worsening security situation, by which it means Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The booklet is also twice the size.

Neighbouring Finland has also just published its own fresh advice online on “preparing for incidents and crises”.

And Norwegians have also recently received a pamphlet urging them to be prepared to manage on their own for a week in the event of extreme weather, war and other threats.’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr4zwj2lgdo

Shades of the UK’s Protect and Survive.

A report on social media, sourcing the Financial Times, (paywalled) says that Estonia’s Foreign Minister has said that if the President Elect of the USA makes a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, one of the terms is that Ukraine does not join NATO, then a European coalition, led by Britain and Poland should step in to fihght on Ukraine’s side. This apparently will stop Russian aggression.

A Sun ‘journalist’ writes that the USA should have provided Ukraine with the missiles it may now have access to at the beginning of the conflict. The latest decision to provide these weapons will not lead to WW3 he asserts. He opines that, ‘Ukraine is maybe Europe’s front line but its soldiers are fighting for more than their homes. They are defending the world as we know it. ‘

What world might that be? Shades of Billy Bragg’s fighting to keep the world safe for capitalism.

‘US President Joe Biden has reportedly authorized Ukraine to use long-range American missiles to strike targets inside Russia’s pre-2014 borders, according to a New York Times reporting anonymous American officials.

The decision, if accurately conveyed by the newspaper, marks a major shift in Washington’s policy and will raise the stakes in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The White House has yet to comment publicly on the matter.

The report states that Ukraine is expected to deploy the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) against Russian forces and alleged North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk Region, where fierce fighting is ongoing. The supposed presence of North Korean forces has been used as part of the justification for the policy change, though there is no verified proof of Pyongyang’s troops operating in Russia.

ATACMS missiles can be fired from HIMARS launchers, which Ukraine has had in its arsenal since 2022. Kiev’s forces have had ATACMS missiles since April, but have until now been limited to using them on land considered Ukrainian by Washington. ATACMS missiles travel at supersonic speed and have a range of 300 kilometers (190 miles).

“The move is a significant escalation and may provoke a direct response from Moscow,” the report notes. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned that any attacks on Russia’s internationally recognized territory with American-supplied weaponry would be viewed as NATO entering the conflict directly. Such actions, he has suggested, could lead to severe repercussions, including retaliation against Western interests.

The reported US policy shift has also divided Biden’s advisers, the newspaper claims. While some argue the change is necessary to counter Moscow’s supposed  military moves, others fear it could further escalate tensions and risk a broader conflict.

Supporters of arming Ukraine more aggressively believe that previous hesitation by the US has emboldened Moscow, while critics warn of potential Russian retaliation against American and Western European assets.

The Times report also highlights that while the Ukrainian military may first target Russian and alleged North Korean forces in Kursk, the strikes could potentially be expanded to other regions.

The long-range capabilities of ATACMS would allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory, potentially disrupting supply lines and troop concentrations.

Kiev’s desire for long-range capabilities has been a longstanding request. With Biden’s reported authorization, the geopolitical dynamics of the conflict could now shift dramatically.’

‘The US Congress has allocated $182.99 billion to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s military operation in February 2022, according to a report from the Pentagon’s Inspector General.

Of the total amount, around $131.36 billion has been directed towards security-related activities. This includes $46.51 billion earmarked for an increased US military presence in Europe and $45.78 billion for replacing weaponry supplied to Ukraine. In addition, $43.84 billion has been allocated for governance programs, which include salaries for Ukrainian public servants, while $4.08 billion has been designated for humanitarian assistance.

The US has provided a range of military equipment to Ukraine, including vehicles, ammunition, weapons, artillery, and demolition equipment. The aid packages have specifically included Bradley fighting vehicles, which Ukrainian troops have come to prefer over Abrams tanks due to their speed and agility on the battlefield, the report says, adding that American maintenance experts continue to offer remote support for this equipment through secure communication channels.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has allocated $3.9 billion in additional direct budget support to Ukraine, part of a larger $7.84 billion supplemental appropriation approved in April 2024. This budget support facilitates ongoing government operations and the provision of essential services in Ukraine. The funding covers salaries for civil servants and school employees, assistance for internally displaced persons, support for low-income families, as well as subsidies for housing and utilities.

While the administration of US President Joe Biden has maintained its commitment to providing financial and military support to Ukraine “for as long as it takes” amid the conflict with Russia, concerns have arisen regarding the potential impact of President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory on future military assistance.

Trump (has) stated that his administration will work diligently to resolve the conflict, stressing the need to prevent further bloodshed.’

‘Poverty is to blame for rising crime rates in Estonia, the country’s justice and digital minister, Liisa Pakosta, has claimed. The comments came ahead of a European Commission report partially attributing Tallinn’s recent economic woes to severing trade ties with Russia.  

After a decade of decline, crime levels started to grow in 2023, Pakosta told a press conference, as quoted by the ERR public broadcaster. The upward trend has continued this year, with overall crime rates up 4% year-on-year. Scams have seen the most notable jump of 25%, the minister said.

The figures are part of a “wider European trend” of growing crime rates, which analysts blame on the deteriorating socio-economic situation, she added.

“Unfortunately, the number of people who say that they steal because they otherwise do not have money to buy food and basic necessities has also increased,” Pakosta said.

Around 20% of Estonia’s population of 1.37 million people is at risk of poverty, while the absolute poverty rate stands at 2.7%, according to official statistics. Inflation rose by 4.1% in October year-on-year.

Estonia’s gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 3% in 2023, and the country is expected to remain in recession in 2024 amid weak domestic demand, according to the European Commission.

The latest economic forecast released by the Commission’s Economic and Financial Affairs department on Friday projects the Estonian economy growing by 1.1% in 2025. However, growth will remain weak in the coming years “as a result of several factors, including the permanent loss of cheap inputs from Russia.” 

Among other factors are “weak growth in the country’s main trading partners,” which in 2023 were the EU member states, and “lingering geopolitical concerns,” the report states.

YET MORE WAYS THAT SOCIALISM CAN HEAL THE WORLD (Zoom)

YET MORE WAYS THAT SOCIALISM CAN HEAL THE WORLD (Zoom)

Lest We Forget

‘Lest we forget’ the pious legend runs

Around the cenotaph, fallen leaves swept

Away for the marking of that unkept

Promise, the final silencing of guns,

Rumbling ever since. Led by royalty

Decked out in their martial pomposity,

While conflicts with all gross ferocity

Make a deadly mockery of loyalty,

The gathered all silently bow their heads

And whisper to themselves, ‘Never no more!’

But such sentiment does not prevent war:

Indeed the living thus betray the dead.

There’s no peace, not even an armistice

While capitals continue to claim their price.

D. A.

‘Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election has led to the net worth of one of his biggest financial backers, Elon Musk, skyrocketing by $26.5 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.   

The Index is a ranking of the world’s 500 wealthiest people based on their net worth. It takes into account fluctuations in the share price of companies in which they have holdings.    

Musk, the owner of Tesla, SpaceX CEO, and X, has led the ranking as the world’s wealthiest person with a fortune estimated at $290 billion.  

Shares of Tesla surged by 14.8% on Wednesday as investors bet that Musk and his electric vehicle producer will benefit from Trump’s return to the White House.    

Musk, who campaigned alongside the president-elect, supported Trump to the tune of millions of dollars since officially endorsing him in July. According to media reports, he donated about $119 million to the Republican’s political action committee.

Tesla, which dominates sales of EVs in the US with a market share of 48.9%, is expected to make sharp gains under a Trump administration, given the Republican’s plans for extensive tariffs on imports of Chinese cars.  

“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, in a note to investors. “This dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players.”   

Trump has repeatedly warned he will impose tariffs of up to 200% on vehicles imported from China.   

“They’re going to pay a 100% or maybe even a 200% tariff because we’re not going to let them come into our country and destroy what’s left of our auto industry,” he pledged in October.  

Earlier this month, Trump also promised the Tesla CEO a role in his administration.   

Apart from Musk, the fortunes of a number of other billionaires also skyrocketed following Trump’s victory.   

Amazon owner Jeff Bezos saw his net worth surge $7 billion to $223.5 billion, maintaining his position as the world’s second-wealthiest person behind Musk.  

Crypto magnates also made out well. The net worth of Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase, soared by $2.6 to $11 billion, according to Bloomberg, while Binance crypto exchange founder Changpeng Zhao added $12.1 billion following the election, boosting his fortune to $52.7 billion.’

THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION (ZOOM)

The results are in from the American election. Donald J Trump has become the forty seventh President of the United States and now has a second term of four years in the White House.

As the Socialist Standard Editorial, below, points out this is not a win for the working class. Neither would it have been if ‘Democrat’ Vice President Kamala Harris had secured victory.

In Socialism there would be no need for ‘leaders’, for states, or for class conflict. The exploitation of the majority by a minority would be ended.

Americans, who voted for, or supported for any of the five candidates, would

be better served by working toward the replacement of capitalism by socialism. But not the ‘socialism’ as advocated by a standing candidate, Claudia De La Cruz and the Party for Socialism (sic) and Liberation 

The PSL PSL identifies as a Marxist-Leninist party. The party describes its primary goal as the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the institution of state socialism as a transitionary stage toward a communist society, stating that “humanity today has only two choices: an increasingly destructive capitalism, or socialism”. According to Wiki ‘PSL defends the Soviet Union‘s suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The party supports the Communist Party of China,[criticizing only its capitalist economic reforms.PSL argues that “militant political defence of the Chinese government” is necessary to stave off “counter-revolution, imperialist intervention and dismemberment”.[PSL defends China’s human rights records, and strongly denies that the People’s Liberation Army massacred student protestors in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. PSL denies that China has suppressed democracy in Hong Kong. PSL supports Kim Jong-un. PSL describes North Korea as “one of the few top-to-bottom, actually-existing, alternatives to the global capitalist system” .PSL supports North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. PSL rejects criticism of North Korea’s human rights record, which it calls “thinly veiled justification for U.S. aggression toward North Korea”] and argues that “conditions in North Korea are vastly better than those in other developing countries”’.

State socialism’ is state capitalism. The American working class deserve to know about real socialism, not this outdated twaddle instigated by Lenin et al.

Editorial from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘As we go to press the US presidential election is approaching its conclusion amid a febrile atmosphere of fear and mutual loathing, with each side trolling the other during a punishing schedule of rallies in the decisive swing states, and Trump-backer Elon Musk offering to pay $1m a day to petition-signers in Pennsylvania.

‘What happens on 5 November could change the world we live in,’ pants the Guardian, reflecting the breathless fascination of the world’s media for an election which may in truth have a significant bearing on tariff-versus-free-trade tensions playing out across world markets, as well as on Israel and the Middle East war, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the growing power of China, and implications for US carbon commitments. Many fear the consequences of a Trump victory. Many others fear the fireworks Trump may unleash if he rallies his fanbase to reject a defeat.

According to Pew surveys, domestic US voters are not overly concerned with geopolitical questions or foreign trade, and even less with global warming. 81 percent of those polled say their main concern is the economy, which a barrage of Republican disinformation has represented as a failed basket-case under Biden. This isn’t so, objectively speaking. The economy is in fact very healthy, at least for wealth owners, but for many workers it’s a catastrophe of low wages and high prices. Both things can be true, of course. A healthy economy of desperate workers is capitalism’s ideal operating condition.

Many US voters probably grasp, at some deep level, that they don’t matter, their views don’t count, and their needs will go unmet. The Democrats make no apology for standing primarily for the urban, college-educated, white-collar ‘middle class’, by implication writing off the rural, non-college, blue-collar majority as a rabble and a lost cause. If capitalist democracy is a rigged circus anyway, some will think, why not elect the most outrageous clown, if only to wind up the establishment and the liberal woke opposition?

From an outside perspective, this vicious race to the bottom looks frankly surreal, framed as it is partly by America’s privately owned and heavily polarised news media, with Fox touting Trump and CNN touting Harris, and partly by their peculiar libel laws, disguised as ‘free speech’, in which anyone ‘has the right’ to slander and tell lies about anyone else without the legal obligation to substantiate or retract.

Unlike the recent UK general election, there is no foregone conclusion here, with polls showing Trump and Harris neck and neck. But we can certainly predict that, whoever wins, and failing a global environmental disaster or nuclear war, American workers will not see much if any difference. Governments can’t control markets anyway, regardless of ideologies. They are like roller-coaster riders, hanging on for dear life as capitalism hurtles through its booms and slumps, powered by its own insatiable frenzy. The main effect of capitalist elections is not to bring about real change but to promote the illusion of change while the runaway acceleration of exploitation remains unaddressed and undisturbed.

So, whichever way it goes, the working class won’t win. There is no way to win, except by abolishing capitalism in favour of truly democratic global common ownership. Otherwise, all the glamour and fireworks are merely sound and fury, signifying nothing.’

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2024/11/editorial-fireworks-on-november-5-2024.html