- When Mr President of the USA makes International Law
- Lies about Ukraine’s Civil War
- Labour Renewal
- Snippets
- US Politics – Corrupt Long Before Trump
- Gaza’s Yours, the Donbass is Ours ?
- Should Xi try an Aksai Chin gambit? (Pictured)
- A Mess in Bolivia
- Why are honeybees dying en masse in the United States but thriving in China?
When Mr President of the USA makes International Law
After winning World War Two, the three main winners decided to make something that would looklike International Law, but lack the main flaw of the earlier League of Nations.
They recreated a forum in which the balance of global power politics could be aired and tested. But not an authentic and functional legal system superior to individual nations, in the way that domestic law generally does override the will of powerful individuals or families.
In most modern societies, the ruling elites decided they were better off if there was a law they all had to obey, though with many biases and loopholes. But the nations with the big armed forces had no wish to give up that advantage.
In the new UN system, no one was obliged to be honest or unselfish. Everyone was free to give absurd interpretations, like the West currently denying that the Gaza famine visible on most television screens is actually real. Or that Israel’s ‘right to exist’ should extend only to the much smaller territories they were assigned by the UN in 1947. Or that they sabotaged the idea of a real and limited Palestinian state, when Yasser Arafat was willing to settle for that.
And to avoid embarrassment over failures, they gave veto power to five out of seven existing Great Powers. The Indian subcontinent was still part of the British Empire, and no one felt like being fair to the Republic of India when it finally emerged as independent. Germany and Japan were out, and intended to be kept down. France was still the second largest global empire, and intended to remain so. China had kept fighting, and tied down more than a million Japanese troops, and the USA had long dreamed of making a strong China with Christian and US values. The Soviets had a better understanding of the strength of Chinese Communism, and at the time some sort of coalition was widely expected.
The USA was so offended by the collapse of its China dream that it used the inherent dishonesty of the UN setup to keep the Chinese UN seat for the Taiwan exiles. To pretend that they were still the legal government of all China. This lasted until 1971, when Nixon was faced with a brief wave of Soviet expansion and made peace with China. But the USA and 34 other countries still voted against giving Beijing the UN seat and its vital veto power.[1] One of many examples of total dishonesty in votes in the General Assembly.
The veto had the huge advantage of preventing the UN getting involved in anything where it had no real power to enforce. The Soviet Union used to use it a lot, but since the collapse Russia has been more modest. Tried to use it as the basis for power-broking in a multilateral world, whereas the USA now tries to dominate.
The League of Nations failed because it had no significant power: yet had to pretend it did. It was weakened when the US Senate rejected President Wilson’s wish to join. But when I looked up details of its failure, the Chinese-made DeepSeek reminded me of something I’d overlooked about Nazi Germany quitting:
“Withdrew: October 1933
“Reason: Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany almost immediately after coming to power, primarily in response to the World Disarmament Conference failing to agree that all countries should disarm to Germany’s level (as mandated by the Treaty of Versailles). It was Hitler’s first major act of defiance on the international stage.” (DeepSeek)
That’s an incomplete account, because Hitler needed time to become a real dictator. He initially depended on right-wing Nationalists who were equally offended by Versailles, but maybe wanted a good excuse. President Hindenburg’s death in 1934 saved Hitler from the possibility of being removed by someone the army would obey. Removed like the King of Italy removed Mussolini when Italy itself was invaded.
I decided to check how other on-line information systems would spin it:
“Details of withdrawals:
“Germany: Withdrew in 1933, a year after the League of Nations’ effectiveness was challenged by Japan’s aggression in Manchuria.” (Google.)
This reminded me of a joke told by an uncle of mine. Born 1926, he was fond of saying ‘When I was born, there was a General Strike’. But I also suspect that Google has been rigged by its owners to mislead when its owners want it to.
Even a Germany with Hitler growing in power might have stayed had the League been honest but ineffective. It was the worst mix: dishonest and ineffective. German officers working out efficient methods had helped Chiang Kai-shek destroy the Chinese Communists’ bases in the south, beginning the famous Long March. They had mixed feelings on China versus Japan.
Grok, presumably rigged by right-wing maverick Elon Musk, was also better informed:
“Brazil: Withdrew in June 1926, the first founding member to leave, primarily due to dissatisfaction with the League’s structure and its failure to grant Brazil a permanent seat on the Council.” (Grok)
No one else mentioned Brazil. But for Germany, just half of the awkward truth:
“Withdrew in October 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power, citing the League’s refusal to grant military parity with other powers as the reason. This marked the beginning of Germany’s aggressive rearmament and violation of the Treaty of Versailles.” (Grok)
Promises of Universal Peace under Versailles never happened, and I am confident that most of the founding politicians knew it was window-dressing. ‘Upper London’ – the British elite – had to please an electorate that really did want peace. They feared a rising British Labour Party which included both sincere pacifists and enthusiastic anti-Imperialists.
Finally I paid a small yearly fee for Chatbot GPT-5.
Germany — withdrew in 1933 (Hitler repudiated the League and the disarmament process). (Chatbot.)
Questioned more closely, it did mention ‘equality of armaments’, but downplayed it.
Lies about Ukraine’s Civil War
Lenin created a Soviet Ukraine with a theoretical right to secede after the Red Army won their civil war. He might have made it just the Tsarist province that had borne the insulting name Little Russia: that was the actual Ukrainian homeland. There was no obligation to include what the Tsars had called New Russia or South Russia, and was never part of the Kievan Rus that Ukrainian extremists look back to.[2]
Ukrainian identity within wider Rus culture emerged and centred around Kiev from the southern half of Kievan Rus. Did so after a conquest first by Mongols, and then Poles and Lithuanians. The northern half, initially centred about Novgorod, had spread eastwards and incorporated a range of other peoples into a single Russian identity. One that became a powerful state centred on Moscow, which had begun as quite a small place. Which defeated the Golden Horde, the Western Mongols or Tatars who had become Muslim. And then repeatedly defeated the Ottoman Empire, capturing Crimea. Ending its role as the center of massive slave-raiding that had depopulated much of what’s now Eastern Ukraine.
The new lands were settled by a mix of Russians and Ukrainians. But since Ukrainian nationalists wanted it all, Lenin created a large Ukraine. Knew it would be dominated by people who spoke Russian as their first language. Who had mostly dropped the Ukrainian language in the same way the Welsh and Irish became English-speakers. Leonid Brezhnev, disastrous leader in the years when the Soviet Union wasted its opportunities, was one such.
Right-wing Ukrainian nationalists had fought for Hitler at the start and end of WW2. They independently massacred Poles and Jews, and were saved and moved to Canada by the USA. After the Soviet collapse, many came back and began making trouble. But were always much stronger in West Ukraine than in the regions that rebelled against Kiev in 2014.
The CIA had noticed the difference when they were wondering whether something could be started during the Cold War
“A CIA map split Ukraine into 12 separate zones, ranked on ‘resistance’ potential, and how ‘favorable population attitudes [are] toward the Soviet regime.’ South and eastern regions, particularly Crimea and Donbass, rated poorly. Their populations were judged ‘strongly loyal’ to Moscow, having never ‘displayed nationalist feelings or indicated any hostility to the regime,’ while viewing themselves as ‘a Russian island in the Ukrainian sea.’ In fact, as the study recorded, during and after World War I, when Germany created a fascist puppet state in Ukraine: ‘Inhabitants of Donbass strongly resisted Ukrainian nationalists and at one point created a separate republic, independent of the rest of Ukraine. In the following years, they defended Soviet rule and Russian interests, often attacking the Ukrainian nationalists with more zeal than the Russian leaders themselves. During the German occupation in the Second World War, there was not a single recorded case of support for the Ukrainian nationalists or Germans.’”[3]
Crimea declared itself independent after the 2014 overthrow of the legally elected President.[4] [5]The Donbass demanded a vote on autonomy, and were immediately attacked by right-wing militias. These are the ‘Ukrainians’ that the West keeps presenting as oppressed by Russia.
The UN has never said that secession is illegal. In actual cases like Bangladesh, Biafra, Northern Cyprus and Kosovo, majority votes have not recognised the secession and made meaningless calls for peace.
In every case, it is entirely true that armed force has settled each issue. Pretending otherwise does no one any good.
Labour Renewal
The hopeful hard-left vision of the mass of the people waiting to rebel against a handfull of billionaires is unrealistic. Where there is a tradition of meaningful parliamentry elections to change governments, the bulk of the working class will favour Class Struggle rather than Class War. Change the existing system, rather than smash it.
Successful revolutions happen where there were no meaningful elections to settle issues of power politics, even if the forms were sometimes observed.
Parliaments and similar bodies never had meaningful power in 18th century France. They also could not govern meaningfully until Napoleon took over. They were window-dressing in Tsarist Russia, Republican China, and Cuba. Did not even exist in Vietnam, or in what had been Outer Mongolia.
The resultant governments are maybe better, but you can’t hope to invent them where other traditions exist.
So who do we struggle against? Billonaires are just the top layer, with a fifth of the total capital. Probably much less of the political power. There is a global stratum of twenty million multi-millionaires. And beyond this, maybe 200 million who are the ‘Next Nine’ in richer countries. Top 10% and not top 1%, but many hope to move up. Most are doing very nicely, and want inequality to continue.
They include a depressing number of former student radicals. If you’ve grown up with a Marxist view and then lose faith in the Soviet Union, it’s quite easy to lose faith in socialism, or at least socialist economics. To suppose that an abstract ‘capitalism’ is the only possible source of wealth. To ignore the half-forgotten fact that the Mixed Economy was better at wealth creation in the 1950s and 1960s. To turn a blind eye to how Thatcher and Reagan failed to restore Classical Capitalism, and that what we have now is a Feed-the-Rich version of the same Mixed Economy.
Had every single Hedge Fund sunk without trace in the crisis of 2008, that would have been excellent for most people. But not for the 200 million who included most of the politicians and media people.
90% of the population are worse off, but most of the Next Nine conveniently accept the lie that there is no alternative. Top managers now earn hundreds of times the salary of the people they manage, when it used to be tens, all for exactly the same job. And show less respect for customers and for lesser employees than they did back then.
British MPs, with salaries of £93,904 per year, are in the upper reaches of this Next Nine. Most of them line up with it. Most were wholly won over under Blair, and were appalled when Jeremy Corbyn was unexpectedly elected leader.
He should have allowed the ordinary members in the constituency parties to purge themselves of disloyal MPs after he got 12,877,918 votes in the 2017 election, the highest Labour vote since Tony Blair’s first victory. The best since he sounded as if he might cure the economic ills the Tories had made.
He also waited far too long, after it became obvious that Starmer had ratted on his promises. I suspect it was Zarah Sultana who pushed him into it.
And now we’ve got something called The Party. Which has got an enthusiasic rush of betrayed Labour Party members, but still seems unclear what it is.
Labour Renewal is my suggestion. But a depressing number want People’s Party, or something equally vague.
People’s Party – which people? Left, right, centre, and non-ideological will be equally sincere in claiming to serve ‘the people’. It would please many activists, who simply assume that other people should think like them. But it would not be good for winning over the mass of Labour voters who feel betrayed by Starmer.
Snippets
US Politics – Corrupt Long Before Trump
Mark Twain mostly made jokes about a society he failed to understand.[6] But in a novel called The Gilded Age, he mocked the political system that we are supposed to admire.
“In our country it is always our first care to see that our people have the opportunity of voting for their choice of men to represent and govern them–we do not permit our great officials to appoint the little officials. We prefer to have so tremendous a power as that in our own hands. We hold it safest to elect our judges and everybody else. In our cities, the ward meetings elect delegates to the nominating conventions and instruct them whom to nominate. The publicans and their retainers rule the ward meetings (for everybody else hates the worry of politics and stays at home); the delegates from the ward meetings organize as a nominating convention and make up a list of candidates–one convention offering a democratic and another a republican list of incorruptibles; and then the great meek public come forward at the proper time and make unhampered choice and bless Heaven that they live in a free land where no form of despotism can ever intrude..” (Full text at https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3178/pg3178.txt.)
*
Gaza’s Yours, the Donbass is Ours?
It occurs to me that Trump and Putin may have made a secret deal in their ultra-private meeting in Alaska.
- Trump lets Putin win in Ukraine, so long as he settles for the whole Donbass and the halves of two Oblasts he needs mostly as a land corridor to Crimea. Before 2022 he wanted the Donbass to become just autonomous, but could not have let it be conquered.
- Putin for his part goes no further than expressing disapproval if Israel gradually clears all of the Palestinians out of Gaza. And keeps up its erosion of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Speculation, obviously. But so far, things fit very nicely.
*
Should Xi try an Aksai Chin gambit?
Migrants from India have been notably successful in managing big US companies. As had Chinese till Trump started hostilities.
I’ve always seen him as a covert believer in the Ku Klux Klan principles of his father. In his second term, non-whites are not even much wanted as window dressing.
So he doesn’t mind pushing Modi to friendlier relations with China, where he will be paying his first visit in years. For an international congress, but the two top men can meet and make a high-level deal.
I’m hoping that Xi ends the poisonous border dispute that Nehru began. It flared up when Indian journalists saw a Chinese article about a new road along a traditional route between Xinjiang’s Tarim Basin and Tibet. This was the main value of the Aksai Chin, which British India had added to their province of Kashmir. But no Chinese government had accepted it.
They had also never accepted the loss of South Tibet, which the British grabbed as the North-East Frontier Agency, and is now mostly the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. But outsiders thought that China would renounce its claim if India stopped claiming the Aksai Chin. A position already taken by Pakistan, which like India claims all Kashmir. It is believed that a clear majority would separate from India if given a choice.
When Modi split Ladakh from Kashmir, I had wondered if he would then do the deal that Nehru should have done – China drops claims to the former South Tibet and India stops claiming the Aksai Chin as part of Ladakh. But he has elections to win: maybe he can’t afford to.
Xi should maybe risk settling for a neutral zone on the border with Ladakh, and maybe resuming the trade that once existed. And likewise give Japan and even the Philippines tiny sea territories they have a doubtful claim to.
In Chess, a gambit is when one player offers a piece as a free gift to weaken the recipient. But world politics is a multi-player game. India and China might both gain at the expense of the USA.
*
A Mess in Bolivia
“Two decades of leftwing dominance end in Bolivia as rightwingers head to election runoff…
“Deeply unpopular president Luis Arce, of Mas, chose not to seek re-election and instead put forward his interior minister, 36-year-old Eduardo del Castillo, who won just 3.15% of the vote…
19.1% of ballots were null and void – far above the historic average…
“Bolivia’s first Indigenous leader Morales had spent recent weeks urging his supporters to cast null and void votes in protest against rulings by the constitutional and electoral courts that blocked him from seeking a fourth term.”[7]
If Morales mistrusted the leaders of his party who had shut him out, he may well have been right.
*
Why are honeybees dying en masse in the United States but thriving in China?
I got this controversial interpretation from the South China Morning Post, which has details for anyone interested.[8]
I was able to confirm that the widely-reported decline hits just the USA and parts of Europe. Other places, including China, have an actual increase in bee populations.
New Right politics blight almost everything.
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Old newsnotes at the magazine websites. I also write regular blogs – https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams
Copyright ©Gwydion M. Williams.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_2758_(XXVI)
[2] https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Civil-War-in-the-Ukraine-that-Lenin-made
[3] https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/18/declassified-cias-covert-ukraine-invasion-plan/
[4] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/past-issues/2015-07-magazine/2015-07-ukraine-illegally-removed-its-elected-president/
[5] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/46-globalisation/ukraine-kievs-five-day-war-machine/
[6] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/88-literature/45-about-literature-and-art/254-2/
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/18/bolivia-presidential-election-preliminary-results
[8] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3322217/why-are-honeybees-dying-massively-united-states-thriving-china
Labour Affairs 