A christian zealot in judicial robes. It’s not alarmist to say a theocratic state and society could be in our future. Vote Democratic this fall.

Beautiful day! On my deck drinking Westkill Pilsner. Brewed here in Catskill Mts. A bit pricey, but damn good! A friend of mine once told me his doctor advised him to take fewer pills and drink more Pils. I do my best.

Happy Mother’s Day to my mother, Katherine, and my step mother, Molly. My mother was the emotional ballast and unappreciated caregiver in our family as well as a working woman, piano and organ player, devout catholic, and friend of many and adored by more than a few in the small town in Maine where we lived. But she suddenly left this world much too soon, leaving behind a bereft husband and three grieving and traumatized sons.

Into this emotionally fractured family entered my stepmother, nearly 50 years old and childless up to then, to rescue and give stability to our reeling family. Had she not I’m not sure what would have happened to us, though nothing good for sure. I probably don’t do it well and seldom do it consciously, but I figure I carry pieces of both of them foward in my own journey (or better yet ramble) through life.

Time and moments of reflection only make me appreciate and love each of them more.

On a lighter note this Mother’s Day, my mother and step mother “tried.” There were days that I drove them crazy! So much so that my step mother took me out of the will!

The assertion by most parties in the world communist movement that the war in Ukaine is no more than a “proxy war” between U.S. and western imperialism on the one hand and Russian imperialism on the other, in which one country – Ukraine – is little more than the staging ground for this clash is problematic to say the least. That Ukraine might have its own independent motives, desires, and interests doesn’t figure much in this framing.

To be fair, these parties are critical of Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it is more a footnote than a headline, more a buried subtext than the text, more an afterthought than a framing element. In the same train of thinking, the defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty finds a place in their analysis, but on a much lower register than the competiion and clash of rival imperialisms.

And if you still are unpersuaded by this analysis, they will immediately enjoin that Ukraine’s democracy and governing institutions are fradualent and empty; if anything in the hands of oligarchs and fascists.

This devaluing and displacing of Ukrainain sovereignty and democracy strikes me as a transparent, but in the end ineffective ploy, designed to derail any criticism of their position. But events on the ground in Ukraine, as well as their departure from a fundamental position of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, that is, nations have the right to self-determination. Noe of them considerd this right a tactical or secondary matter.

Such a political posture, it follows, has little to do with working class or socialist internationalism, not to mention political non-alignment.

Here are two articles on this subject that are well worth reading. One by a Ukrainian socialist that addresses some of these issues. The other is written by Bill Fletcher, Bill Gelligos, and Jamala Rogers.