Towards Dialogue And Negotiations: Conflicting Narratives And The UN’s Potential Role In Ending The War In Ukraine

• by: Heikki Patomäki

Heikki Patomaki – Photo: University of Helsinki

11-25-2024 ~ The war in Ukraine appears to be nearing its end. It is time to start considering what the peace process could look like.

Introduction

Military solutions received the most attention in Europe and the US during the first two and a half years following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In late 2024, the situation has started to change. In the West and Ukraine, peace negotiations are now discussed more widely. What a lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia would look like and how could it be achieved? For example, after the June 2024 “Ukraine Peace Conference” (held in Bürgenstock Resort in Switzerland on 15–16 June 2024), both the Swiss organisers and President Zelensky have said that Russia should be involved in the next phase of the Conference. In September 2024, Zelensky explained that Ukraine’s attack on Russian territory was pre-emptive and part of his plan to force Russia to negotiate. President Putin has in turn said he would be willing to revive negotiations on terms first discussed at talks in Istanbul at the start of the full-scale invasion.

The shift also reflects changes in the domestic politics of various countries. According to many reports, there is deep war weariness in Ukraine and the tension between stated goals (winning the war) and actual situation and actions (willingness to sacrifice for a common cause) is becoming sharper. Although Russia’s economic situation has remained relatively good despite the war and sanctions – and probably also because of them – the long-lasting war of attrition is eroding the legitimation basis of Putin’s regime. In Western countries, right-wing populism favours peace negotiations, and it is difficult for conventional parties not to react to their proposals. In the US, President-elect Donald Trump has promised to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. In Germany, as a response to the rise of the nationalist-populist Alternative for Germany (AFD) and the more left-leaning party of Sahra Wagenknecht, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said it is time to rekindle diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Moreover, from a global perspective, it is clear that the vast majority of humanity is either ambivalent about the war or inclined to adopt a Western-critical attitude towards it and background factors such as the expansion of NATO. Russia is a key member of the expanding and evolving BRICS coalition, which is increasingly partaking in articulating the voice of the global south. Read more

Canada Reinvents The Xenophobic Wheel

• by: Saurav Sarkar

Saurav Sarkar -sauravsarkar.com

11-22-2024 ~ Bikram Singh is running out of time on his post-study work visa in Canada.

Singh is one of about 70,000 migrants who were sold on the Canadian dream of eventually making the country their home but now face an uncertain future with their work permits set to expire by December 2024. They came from places like India, China, and the Philippines, and sold their land and belongings in their home countries, took out loans, or made other enormous commitments to get themselves to Canada.

“We came here for our future. They promise you an easy permanent residency here.” However, due to the backlog of the Canadian immigration system, it has become more difficult to secure permanent residency now compared to in the past, he says.

“We are demanding a fair chance. Now they are saying, ‘We never promised [permanent residency],’” Singh says.

Canada has a system of post-study visas for students who graduate from Canadian colleges and universities. This year, with an upcoming election in 2025, Canada’s political parties are playing with the lives of migrants by tightening the country’s immigration policies, resulting in their visas no longer being eligible for renewal—as they were during the COVID-19 pandemic. The parties have also been engaging in xenophobic campaign tactics.

Singh says, “All political parties are playing this dirty [blame] game,” where immigrants are blamed for unemployment, housing crisis, and inflation. As a result, Canadian voters “don’t know their real enemy. The ruling class of Canada diverts their anger,” says Singh, from the “Canadian imperialist capitalist system.” Read more

Cities Made Differently: Try Imagining Another Urban Existence

• by: David Graeber & Nika Dubrovsky

11-22-2024 ~ We know from history that there are many ways we can live together—let’s explore the idea.

In thousands of ways, we are taught to accept the world we live in as the only possible one, but thousands of other ways of organizing homes, cities, schools, societies, economies, and cosmologies have existed and could exist.

We started a project called Made Differently: designed to play with the possibility and to overcome the suspicion—instilled in us every day—that life is limited, miserable, and boring.

Our first focus is Cities Made Differently, exploring different ways of living together. Read and imagine four different kinds of cities taken from our book which are listed below, and continue your exploration, downloadable at a4kids.org, for drawing and dreaming.

City of Greed
What if you had to live in a city whose citizens must pay not only for housing and health care but also for the air they breathe?

The dystopian novel The Air Merchant takes place in a secret underground factory city. Mr. Bailey, the factory owner, condenses air from the atmosphere and sells it to his fellow citizens for a profit. Eventually, the Earth’s atmosphere thins, creating a catastrophic shortage of breathable air. With the price of air increasing, fewer and fewer humans can afford to keep breathing. Read more

COP29 Ignores Militarism, Putting Meaningful Climate Deal Out Of Reach

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

11-22-2024 ~ Leaders of the world’s top polluting nations skipped COP29, which also failed to address how militarism fuels emissions.

The 2024 UN climate change conference, COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, is now nearing its end and reports are that talks are deadlocked. The two biggest elephants in the room are militarism and climate financing.

Wars generate more carbon emissions than many countries, while the U.S. military is the single largest institutional source of greenhouse gas emissions, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have resulted not only in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, but have caused catastrophic damage to the environment and paved the way to hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. For example, it’s estimated that the first two years of Russia’s war on Ukraine will have generated 175 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. This is more than the total emissions generated individually by many countries, including the Netherlands, Venezuela and Kuwait.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s future habitability is very much in doubt. In just the first six weeks of the assault, Israel dropped a staggering 29,000 bombs on Gaza, with the majority of the bombs being 2,000 pounds and supplied to Israel from the U.S. Emissions from just the first 120 days of Israel’s war on Gaza (October 2023-February 2024) exceeded the annual emissions of 26 countries and territories, according to a study by an international team of researchers. When the war infrastructure (built primarily by Israel but also including that built by Hamas) is taken into account, the total emissions increase to more than 36 countries and territories, while the emissions associated with the rebuilding of Gaza are “projected to be higher than the annual emissions of over 135 countries,” according to the same study. Read more

Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power Sweeps General Election

• by: Shiran Illanperuma

11-17-2024 ~ On October 15, data from the Election Commission of Sri Lanka showed that the National People’s Power (NPP) coalition scored a decisive victory in Sri Lanka’s first general election since defaulting on its external debt.

With 61.56 percent of the popular vote, the NPP won 159 seats in Parliament. This gave President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) a supermajority in parliament and the power to make constitutional amendments.

The NPP won a majority of the popular vote in 21 out of 22 electoral districts in the country. In the southern district of Hambantota, a traditionally left-wing Sinhala nationalist constituency that was the stronghold of the Rajapaksa family, the NPP secured 66.38 percent of the vote.

In the central Nuwaraeliya district, where many of the voters are Tamil-speaking workers in tea estates, the NPP secured a 41.57 percent plurality of the vote. In the northern Jaffna district, a stronghold of conservative Tamil nationalist parties, the NPP secured a plurality, with 24.85 percent of the popular vote.

This is a significant turnaround for the NPP, as during the presidential election, AKD polled poorly in both the north and in the central tea estate regions.

These developments may indicate that traditional identity-based parties are undergoing a significant crisis of legitimacy, as economic grievances and bitterness toward the established political elite take center stage.

They also indicate the success of the NPP in driving a grassroots campaign that emphasized national unity, or in their words, “a national renaissance.” Read more

U.S. Recruits South Korea To Help Colonize And Militarize Space

• by: Dae-Han Song

11-15-2024 ~ The United States is colonizing and militarizing Earth’s orbit, recruiting allies such as South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol administration. More specifically, the U.S. Space Force is creating a “swarm” of satellites that, when combined with AI, seeks to attain a god’s eye view across all domains of war. This proliferated warfighter space architecture (PWSA) of small low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites would allow the United States—in its Department of Defense’s words—“to sense, make sense, and act at all levels and phases of war, across all domains, and with partners, to deliver information advantage at the speed of relevance.” These actions have started an international arms race to space. In 2020, China applied to the United Nations International Telecommunication Union to launch its own LEO satellites.

Yet, saddled with $35 trillion in debt, the United States can’t do it alone. It needs its arms industries and allies such as South Korea. This has led the Yoon administration to launch its own NewSpace program to nurture its own aerospace industry. The colonization and militarization of Earth’s orbit will generate trillions of dollars for war profiteers while impoverishing humanity and the planet.

On October 19, 2024, dozens of activists from struggles across South Korea held their first national gathering—the “National Discussion on the Space Industry And Militarization of Space”—opposing the Yoon administration’s NewSpace program due to its destructive military, economic, and environmental costs.

South Korea’s NewSpace
Held as part of Space4Peace’s annual “Keep Space for Peace Week” actions (timed to coincide with the UN’s World Space Week), the conference was held in Daejeon, one of the three locations for Yoon’s regional space cluster. Sung-hee Choi, of the People Against the Militarization of Space and Rocket Launches, explained that LEO satellites are promoted for their potential to provide universal internet access, such as SpaceX’s Starlink, with little mention of their dual military purpose. The U.S. Air Force recognized in 1996 that this dual purpose would give it the “ultimate high ground” in warfare. Read more