The permanent war economy has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.

Last week, in Lviv, an international delegation met with labour organizers and activists. The Swiss weekly newspaper, Die Wochenzeitung, followed the proceedings. What questions are most preoccupying the country’s workers, and why are anarchists angry with parts of the Western left? The following is a report by journalist Anna Jikhareva from Lviv.

With automated systems already trained on inaccurate data—Russia as the trial ground—“publisher classification” systems for analyzing, reporting, targeting and removing dissenting voices, accounts and publications set a dangerous precedent for tracking and blacklisting voices that challenge Canadian foreign policy online with accusations of “fake news.”

While more details on the scope of Western involvement will likely emerge, there is enough information in the public record to conclude that, despite falling below the threshold of direct confrontation with Russia, Canada’s contribution of arms means that we are indeed at war in Ukraine. This reality is compounded by the other retaliatory measures Ottawa has wielded to destroy the Russian economy.

The launch of a basic income for artists has been hailed as “the most significant positive moment for Irish arts since the foundation of the Arts Council over 70 years ago.” Up to 2,000 artists will receive €325 per week for three years under the pilot, a sign of a “seismic shift” in attitudes towards the arts among politicians and the public over the past two years, advocates say.

During the two world wars of the 20th century, Europe was the self-proclaimed center of the world. Now, however, Europe is but a small corner of the world, which the war in Ukraine will render even smaller. Indeed, as Boaventura de Sousa Santos writes, the world is far bigger than what we get to see through European lenses.

Next to starting a war, the most reprehensible act would be keeping one going when more people will die with little hope the outcome will improve. Yet, there are several lines of evidence that suggest that the US is inhibiting a diplomatic solution in Ukraine. Years prior to the war, when diplomatic avenues were open to prevent war, the United States already seemed to be setting up roadblocks.

At the end of the Cold War there was much debate between proponents of two models of the world’s future development. For Russians this debate reflected their own long-lasting dispute between Westernizing liberal historical determinists on the one hand and conservative believers in distinct paths of civilizational development on the other. The latter have won the day, and there may be no turning back.

If Canadian foreign policy had anything resembling a consistent concern for human rights and the demands of oppressed populations, Canada’s leaders would not remain silent as the Biden administration starves the Afghan population as punishment for the US defeat there. If such a policy existed, our leaders would also totally extricate themselves from any involvement in the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

The following interviews are part of a weekly series conducted in English and translated into French by the French online media project Tous Dehors with “A,” a Ukrainian student from Kharkiv. They have also been published by Endnotes, a communist theoretical journal produced by a discussion group of the same name based in Britain and the United States. Reprinted here with permission.