Ukraine: a prelude to a peace deal - or a ramping-up of the war? & Jeremy Clarkson and some farmers: much ado about nothing?

One thousand days after Russian forces were sent to invade Ukraine, President Zelenskyy is back addressing the European parliament (on zoom), reminding its members that they are "together" in this "glorious" war against "Putin".

    "Slava NATO" might be a more appropriate slogan than "Slava Ukraine", since there would be no war at all, without NATO's weapons. And everything Zelenskyy says just confirms this - but he also confirms what a willing proxy he is in this terrible slaughter.

    Worse, this sickening and infantile glorification of an entirely avoidable bloodbath is echoed sanctimoniously by his puppet-masters who are cynically playing on the reactionary nationalism of both sides of the conflict.

    And now the stakes have been upped: Biden has given the green light for the deployment of long-range ATAC-MS missiles which can strike deep into Russian territory - despite the possible counter-threat from Putin's regime that this would mean a direct war with NATO. In fact six of these missiles have already been launched, striking a large weapons arsenal near the town of Karachev in Russia's Bryansk region, over 1156km from the Ukrainian border.

    So yes, this is a "dangerous escalation" given Putin's threat. But so too, is the unprecedented deployment of 11,000 North Korean troops by the Russian General Staff. They have apparently been sent into Kursk - the part of Russia recently invaded and occupied by the Ukrainian army.

    In the meantime Keir Starmer and his Foreign Secretary David Lammy, have not yet given the go- ahead for Ukraine's use of British Storm Shadow missiles. Neither has President Macron said the Ukrainians can fire the French Scalp missile.

    The reason isn't as one would expect, however. Never mind that former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on X: "Russia could retaliate with WMD against Kyiv and key Nato facilities, wherever they're located... That means World War III".

    For them the much bigger issue is the impending Trump presidency and Trump's stance on this war. He said he would finish it "in days".

    If they allow the serious escalation which the use of these missiles implies, this might sabotage Trump's "peace" mission to Russia and Ukraine. And they know very well that it's not a good idea to get on the wrong side of the leader of world's largest economy. All the more so in the case of Starmer, who above all else needs to ensure that the US-British special relationship remains intact. Preserving capitalist interests, trade and profit, comes way before any consideration for the preservation of human life...

On Tuesday, farmers and tractors came to Whitehall to protest against the imposition by the government of inheritance tax on farms, cheered on by the right-wing former BBC TV Top Gear presenter, Jeremy Clarkson (sacked for punching a producer on the BBC team).

    He is now a "farmer", apparently - having joined other rich people in investing their money in agricultural land as a way of avoiding inheritance tax. This tax avoidance has significantly pushed up the value of farm land, thus increasing the number of farms valued at £3m or more - which will, in the future, make their heirs liable to the tax. However, this didn't stop Clarkson from pretending to lead the farmers' protest!

    But was this protest actually rational in the first place? Because it's true that only a minority of farms will fall into the taxable category (and only by 2026). In fact the give-away that this was a put-up rabble-rousing job, rather than a genuinely spontaneous protest of angry farmers, was the enthusiastic participation of Tory shadow minister for farming, Victoria Atkins, suitably clad in a jacket made out of a Union Jack. That, and the speech from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who told farmers that the Tories "had their backs..."

    reminding rich landowners that after all, the Tories are their "natural party" and "please come back to us"!

    Labour ministers are accused of knowing nothing about rural life - nor farmers' problems. This may well be true. But what was also clear was the anti-working class nature of the protest. One of the farmers' spokespersons said that the £5bn subsidy allocated to farmers, was chicken feed from a government which had just given £6bn to its "union friends"... By which he meant the pay rise for public sector workers, some of whom hadn't had a pay rise for 5 years.

    One should add too, that a vast number of farmers in this country are tenants: they don't even own their farms. For them the issue isn't inheritance tax, but that they can't even make ends meet. What really would make all the difference is if farmland was nationalised and its output planned rationally (and ecologically!) according to need!

    But under the capitalist system, private property remains "sacred" - and no government would dare to implement such a radical change. Even if it is the only one which would be the interests of all. Farmers would then, of course, become "public sector" workers...