varoufakis96_BULENT KILICAFP via Getty Images_iran protests

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Where in the World Can the Left Find Its Way?

Nov 1, 2022 Yanis Varoufakis

Iran’s protesters will neither submit to the fascism hidden behind the regime’s pseudo-anti-imperialism nor surrender their country to the hegemony of the United States or their economy to financialized capital. The Western left should learn from them.

ATHENS – Dealing with random, unprovoked abuse is never easy. But dealing with random, unprovoked praise can be even harder.

An Athenian taxi driver, a Nazi sympathizer, told me recently, “I am a Golden Dawn voter, but I think the world of you.” I would rather that he had punched me in the stomach.

I had the same sinking feeling the other day when I read far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s proposals for achieving peace in Ukraine – proposals not too dissimilar to what I have been suggesting since Putin’s repulsive invasion began. While Orbán, unlike the Golden Dawn voter, did not praise me personally, the revulsion was the same.

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The Peace Process Ukraine’s Supporters Should Support
SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images

Politics 9

The Peace Process Ukraine’s Supporters Should Support

Yanis Varoufakis urges those not directly involved in the war to help the combatants envisage the terms of a negotiated peace.

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Thomas Salter Nov 6, 2022

WWII was a war in part against fascism. Would you have supported the allies despite the fact they were an alliance of capitalist and Stalinist states? I.E My enemy’s enemies. The balance in the moral and political logic of outcomes and principle (Bentham and Kant) cannot be resolved by an appeal to evidence given the fact value distinction, but you appear to be selective in choosing principle (enemy’s enemy) and outcome (democracy in Russia) without a clear rationale for that selection. In the case of Ukraine the primary political and ethical imperative is whether or not you support the resistance of Ukrainians to having their democratic right to self determination violently taken away by an autocracy, not IMO what the consequences are for the Russian democracy/autocracy of supporting that resistance. Only NATO countries are providing the military support sufficient to make that resistance effective. Are you saying Ukraine NATO countries should not support that resistance and they should submit to Putin’s autocracy, just so you can avoid you having to chose whether to back your enemy’s enemy, the NATO countries providing that support, because of your view la about US imperialism and NATO?
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Peter McLoughlin Nov 1, 2022

Humanity is plagued with “never ending war” because wars are about power. Left-wing unites with right-wing, liberal democrat with autocrat, Christian with Muslim, believer with non-believer because of it. War will continue until people realize power is an illusion.
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/
- P. Kamath Nov 1, 2022
  
  Peter: You are right. But , I don’t understand when you say “power”! I think it is in something more than having mastery over others! In history , one can see backward societies have sent illiterate armies to conquer highly civilized ones and won wars. They have gone to loot etc. then they have gone back to loot something els. So how do you explain that? Here is an example: Mongols over Western or China. Armies from Central Asian states over Indian kingdoms in 11th century!
  
  There many reasons to explain this tribal behaviour😳!
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