This conflict began not on February 24, 2022, with Russia invading Ukraine, but in February 2014 during the U.S.-backed Euromaidan coup. That coup ousted the democratically elected, and geopolitically neutral Victor Yanukovych. The U.S. repeatedly escalates the conflict with Russia.

Up until recently, the Biden administration did what they could to escalate while maintaining a “gloves on” approach — the US has provided tens of billions of dollars in weapons, but never allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory, attempting to position Russia as the aggressor and Ukraine as fighting a purely defensive, honorable war for its territorial integrity.

The ATACMS, which stands for Army Tactical Missile System, are tactical ballistic missiles with a range of 300 to 400 kilometers, or 200 to 300 miles, and can be modified to fit a nuclear payload. These missiles cannot reach Moscow, but they can reach the Kursk region, a place where Russia has supposedly stationed 40,000 to 50,000 troops in response to the Ukrainian Kursk offensive which began in August 2024.

These missiles are also capable of reaching a number of civilian targets. Ukraine has shown little restraint when it comes to targeting civilian facilities and infrastructure such as the Crimean Bridge, bridges in Kursk, downtown shopping centers inside Russia, and the bombing of the Nord Stream II pipeline. However, the most dangerous possibility is that Ukraine could target the nuclear reactor in Kursk, a civilian infrastructure target which generates power for the area. This would be deadly for the civilians in Kursk and devastating for the entire region.

According to the New York Times, the U.S. has a low-volume surplus of these missiles currently, and military analysts have commented that U.S. production is not capable of manufacturing said missiles in any high capacity. While the exact number of missiles has not yet been confirmed, it should be understood that such a low number of missiles would be unlikely, if not impossible, to accomplish any military objective, leading to some kind of military victory. If that is true, then what is the overall U.S. objective in sending these missiles at all, so late in the conflict after two years of saying that doing so would be too dangerous an escalation?

If the objective is not military, then it is most likely purely political in nature. Many countries in NATO and the EU have concluded that the possibility of a Ukrainian victory at this point is non-existent. The conflict could continue for months or possibly even years, but the likelihood of Ukraine reconsolidating the four Russian-controlled oblasts — Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — is a logistical impossibility, let alone Kyiv’s objective of regime change in Moscow, which is a delusional fever dream.

Roughly one month ago President Zelensky offered a “peace plan,” which involved a request to President Biden for Tomahawk missiles. Tomahawk missiles have a range of 2400 kilometers, or 1500 miles, and have the capacity to be fitted with a nuclear payload — these could reach Moscow. Russia has stated that the delivery of these missiles would necessitate a major Russian response, as this would threaten the national survival of the country. Knowing this, Biden told Zelensky this was a non-starter.

Ukraine has already used the ATACMS, which demonstrates that this conflict was never “defensive” to begin with, but rather, as many analysts have stated, has always been a proxy war being waged by NATO and the U.S. against Russia, using Ukrainians as cannon fodder in their geopolitical games. The point was never to “defeat” Russia, but to hurt Russia and set them back militarily and economically, as evidenced by the massive sanctions campaign imposed on Russia beginning in 2022. The most likely reason for Biden to authorize the shipment of ATACMS to Ukraine is to create a situation where it is difficult if not impossible for incoming President Trump to de-escalate the conflict.

Why is this such a dangerous escalation? Up until this point, while it was well known that this is a U.S./ NATO proxy war against Russia, the U.S. was able to maintain a hands-off approach, allowing only Ukrainians and international volunteers to die for the U.S.’s geopolitical aspirations. Officially, this conflict was only between two parties, Ukraine and Russia. But Russian President Vladimir Putin stated shortly after the decision that now that the U.S. is authorizing missile strikes into pre-2014 Russian territory, that all parties involved are now considered to be parties to the conflict. Meaning Russia now officially recognizes the U.S. and NATO to be directly involved in the conflict. This is because successfully using the ATACMS requires U.S. satellite geo-tracking intelligence data, and U.S. personnel to operate the missile system.

The US has over 800 military bases across the world, including in Eastern Europe. Many former Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe are now NATO countries, including those on Russia’s border like Latvia, Estonia and Turkey. Finland was also recently accepted into NATO. All these U.S. military assets, and all NATO countries, are now officially fair game for Russian attacks on NATO military assets. Russia President Putin also stated that Russia would be updating its nuclear doctrine to include the possibility of a nuclear attack against any country waging an attack on Russia that was backed by a nuclear superpower; this means Ukraine.

In conclusion, this is a very dangerous and reckless escalation by Biden that serves no military purpose. It is intended entirely only to serve petty domestic politics and throw a wrench in the spokes of peace for incoming President Trump. Rather than attempt de-escalation or peace negotiations of any kind, President Biden has decided instead to bring the world to the brink of total nuclear war and World War III.

#Opinion #AntiWarMovement #International #Russia #Ukraine

The struggle for peace and for the democratic demands of the workers and others oppressed by imperialism is the necessary condition for preventing aggressive imperialist wars and fascism. Since the end of World War II and the advent of the nuclear arms race, the fight for peace and democracy must be one united struggle.

As a freedom fighter in the U.S. I’m opposed to my government claiming that it is a defender of democracy in Europe while it fails to muster up the courage and fortitude to defend democracy in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, or New York. Our government has failed to save the lives of hundreds of thousands during this pandemic, is not building back better, is not addressing the insidious attacks against democracy organized by Trump and his fascist hyenas.

People can shamelessly utter the words of Dr. King, saying “I have a dream” and equate that with a clarion call for war but this is merely indicative of the fact that the U.S. is ready to wage war in the name of defending democracy.

We must reject this blatant hypocrisy that war prosecuted by imperialists can bring peace and democracy. War carried out by the imperialists can only bring an end to democracy, can only bring death and destruction to the peoples of the world.

Frank Chapman

Executive Director

National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression

#ChicagoIL #AntiwarMovement #PeoplesStruggles #Ukraine #Russia #Europe

It is important for Americans to understand that the current crisis in Ukraine did not begin with Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine; rather, it has been a crisis in the making for decades, as the United States has expanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military alliance well beyond original post-Cold War agreements, throughout Eastern Europe and up to Russia’s doorstep.

NATO is a major military alliance that was created in 1949 and was originally composed of the United States and its key Cold War allies in western Europe. The United States helped form this dangerous military alliance in an overtly aggressive move meant to intimidate the Soviet Union and prevent the spread of socialism in post-WWII Europe. In response, the Soviet Union eventually created the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance of its own.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, the United States has gone back on its word to the Russians to maintain NATO’s Cold War borders. Instead, NATO has expanded to include much of Eastern Europe, surrounding Russia with military bases and weapons, all meant to protect American political and economic dominance.

The United States and NATO have been the biggest purveyors of death and violence in the world since the Cold War began, from Korea to Vietnam, Yemen to Iraq, Yugoslavia to Libya.

And in 2014, with specific reference to the current situation in Ukraine, the United States backed an illegal coup against the democratically elected government of Ukraine. The United States armed and supported fascist, neo-Nazi movements, and militias (like the Azov Battalion) in Ukraine, groups that are responsible for killing thousands of ethnic Russians throughout Ukraine in a war that was never ended.

Since 2014, the end goal of the United States in Ukraine has been to incorporate the country into the ranks of the European Union and NATO. Russia made it clear that absorbing Ukraine into NATO would be unacceptable and would be taken as a military threat. But rather than negotiate in good faith, for seven years the United States resorted to sanctions, more arms to Ukraine, and anti-Russia chest-pounding.

So, when it comes to war, especially in Ukraine, the United States has no room to point fingers, serve as a moral compass, or pass judgement on Russia or any other countries. It is laughable to hear U.S. officials denounce this war, when it did everything it could to instigate it.

And it is even more ridiculous to think that the talking heads in the corporate media care about the people of Ukraine, when they have ignored the NATO-backed starvation and murder of millions of Yemenis for seven years now. Besides, why would anyone believe a word the mainstream media has to say about wars abroad, when these are the same fools who tried to sell the American people Saddam Hussein’s imaginary weapons of mass destruction as justification for the U.S. war in Iraq that would for kill 1 million Iraqis?

As American anti-war activists, it is our responsibility to the global peace movement to first and foremost to demand an end to this country's imperialist expansion and aggression, in Ukraine and around the world. It’s our responsibility to pressure our government to stop using Ukraine as a proxy-war with Russia, and to end NATO expansion. As peace activists in the most powerful imperialist country in the world, we must work ensure that the United States does not continue to escalate through unilateral or NATO military action or any form of warfare, including sanctions.

Those of us who truly want peace must demand:

No War with Russia! No to NATO Expansion! No to Sanctions!

#MiamiFL #AntiwarMovement #PeoplesStruggles #NATO #Ukraine #Russia

Minneapolis, MN – Fight Back! News interviewed Meredith Aby-Keirstead, a founding member of the MN Anti-War Committee, on February 27 for her anti-war perspective on the crisis in the Ukraine and the proxy war developing between the U.S./NATO and Russia.

Fight Back!: Why should Americans join with the anti-war movement right now?

Meredith Aby-Keirstead: This is a critical time to stop the U.S. as it fans the flames of war. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress want to send more weapons and more military support to Ukraine, which would be like pouring gasoline on this fire. Not only would it kill any diplomatic solutions, U.S. weapons would end up in the hands of right-wing Nazi militias who will use them to attack ethnic Russians. This would also further inflame tensions.

New polling from the Associated Press shows that Americans don’t want the U.S. to play a major role in this conflict, so we need to make sure that politicians understand this is not what the American people want. Biden in fact just approved $350 million in military aid for Ukraine yesterday. But what we really want and need is money spent on human needs not war.

In the Twin Cities right now teachers in Minneapolis and Saint Paul are about to go on strike to demand resources for our public schools. They are being told at the negotiating table that there are no funds for schools. But there are! Think about what we could do with the $350 million Biden just signed off on yesterday. The U.S. spends billions on war when we should instead be spending those same resources on educating kids, fighting COVID and stopping climate change.

Fight Back!: What do you think of the anti-war protests that have taken place worldwide?

Aby-Keirstead: I’m happy to see an upsurge in the anti-war movement around the world. Peace-loving people everywhere want to see diplomacy from all parties to prevent the conflict from spiraling even further out of control, and to create the conditions for a long-term peace in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Sanctions will only hurt the most vulnerable on all sides and must be firmly opposed. Here in the U.S., we’re focused on opposing the escalatory and aggressive actions of our government, and call for the immediate disbandment of NATO, which has never brought the international stability or human rights that it pretends to stand for.

Some people ask us, in the anti-war movement, why we don’t focus our criticisms on Russia and Putin. But we are living in the U.S. so it is our responsibility to hold our own leaders accountable to the will of the people, and we need to be aware of the U.S. role as an imperialist power. As the anti-war movement it is also important for us to all “out” the selective outrage about the events in Ukraine when Israel, funded by the U.S., commits war crimes in occupied Palestine on a daily basis, and Saudi Arabia continues to bomb Yemen. We need to denounce all wars and acts of aggression, even and especially, those of our so-called allies and the U.S..

Fight Back!: How has the Biden administration been intervening in the Ukraine?

Aby-Keirstead: Even though the U.S. and NATO agreed to stop expanding NATO in the 1990s, they have been courting Ukraine’s membership, and, with the U.S. involvement in the 2014 Ukrainian coup, the Obama administration set in motion events that only brought Ukraine closer to the U.S. and further from Russia.

The U.S. already has 90,000 troops in Europe and Biden has been moving U.S. troops and equipment into Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Similarly, NATO has been moving troops, strike fighters and helicopters to the Baltic states. Since 2014, the U.S. has sent over $2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine which included CIA trainers, defensive systems and Javelin anti-tank missiles and, as I already said, Biden is sending hundreds of millions more.

Fight Back!: What has triggered Russia into sending troops into Ukraine?

Aby-Keirstead: Russia feels threatened by these U.S. and NATO moves to encircle Russia. Additionally, since 2014, Ukrainian nationalists and fascists have violently attacked ethnic Russians in the Ukraine, particularly in Donbass, and Russia is under pressure to defend them. Many people have asked me, “How can you as a queer woman defend Putin?” But saying no to more U.S. imperialism is not the same as supporting Putin. And I think it’s important to note that this is an inter-imperialist conflict between the U.S. and Russia. However, that doesn’t mean that the U.S. didn’t provoke it or that the U.S. doesn’t see an advantage in starting a proxy war next door to Russia that drains Russia’s resources and prevents it from further challenging U.S. imperialism around the world.

Fight Back!: Tell us more about what has been going on in Donbass.

Aby-Keirstead: More than 14,000 people have died in the conflict in Donbas since 2014. What most Americans don’t understand is that there has been fighting between ethnic Russians and Ukrainian military and right-wing nationalist forces since the U.S.-sponsored coup in 2014. Similarly, the U.S. media hasn’t been reporting on the treatment of ethnic Russians in Donbass leading up to this conflict which makes the conflict hard for people here to understand at all. Granted we also have the issue that some Americans still think Russia is a socialist country, which it’s not, and [that they] imagine that NATO is the same as the UN.

Fight Back!: What are the U.S. incentives for intervening in Ukraine?

Aby-Keirstead: In 2019, the RAND Corporation, a pro-war organization of the U.S. military-industrial complex, sent a report to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff in which it stated that the ideal U.S. strategy would be to use sanctions, propaganda and other measures to push Russia towards war with Ukraine in order to make it overextend itself militarily.

Additionally, this conflict is about whether Russia or the U.S. gets to have influence over Ukraine. Both see it as a country rich with natural resources, including large deposits of coal, oil, natural gas, iron, manganese, titanium-zirconium ores and other non-metallic raw materials. The BBC reports that Russia is the second-biggest exporter of crude oil, the world's largest natural gas exporter and that the EU sources nearly half of its gas from Russia. Russia was developing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to deliver natural gas to Germany and the EU under the Baltic Sea. By destabilizing Ukraine, Russia isn’t able to complete their pipeline, which prevents them from being able to keep challenging the U.S. economically. This intervention is a part of a long list of U.S.-sponsored conflicts for fossil fuels. The U.S. sees Russia, like China, as a key hurdle to their imperialistic vision.

Fight Back!: What can we do to pressure the U.S. to stop escalating the conflict?

Aby-Keirstead: Well in Minnesota we should be protesting Senator Amy Klobuchar, and we just held a protest in front of her office in Minneapolis on the 24th. She is definitely a mouthpiece for the Biden administration’s Russia policy. Nationally, we need for there to be protests across the country to say “no” to more U.S. weapons and military aid to Ukraine. We need to be demanding that the U.S. stop promoting NATO expansion and to even be challenging why the U.S. is propping up NATO. We see from Yugoslavia to Libya to Afghanistan the damage that NATO can do. This conflict has the potential to kill a lot of people – especially Ukrainians – so we need to be challenging the Biden administration’s idealistic message that it is “helping Ukraine” when in fact they are making it more likely that this conflict will be bigger and longer while lining the pockets of U.S. weapons manufacturers.

In Minnesota, the Anti-War Committee is building for the Women Against Military Madness protest on Wednesday, March 2 which is a part of the International Week of Actions to Stop War with Russia. We encourage folks around the country to organize anti-war actions between March 1-7!

#MinneapolisMN #AntiwarMovement #PeoplesStruggles #Ukraine #Russia

Minneapolis, MN – On February 24, around 30 people demonstrated outside U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office in downtown Minneapolis with signs and banners calling for no war with Russia and an end to U.S. intervention in Ukraine. Held less than 24 hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine, the protest came amidst a jingoistic frenzy of calls by Western governments and media for actions against Russia.

Protesters emphasized the role that the U.S. and NATO played for years in escalating tensions between Ukraine and Russia. In 2014, the elected Ukrainian government was overthrown by reactionary protesters with U.S. backing. In the ensuing crisis, Russia annexed the ethnic Russian-majority Crimean peninsula, while the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk with significant Russian populations – collectively known as the Donbass region – declared their independence from the government in Kiev.

“Today could have been avoided if the United States had not orchestrated a coup in Ukraine in 2014,” said Mike Madden of Veterans for Peace and the newly-formed Assange Defense Committee. “It could have been avoided if the post-coup regime had not initiated hostilities in April of 2014 by sending military, and Nazi paramilitary, forces to violently reclaim the breakaway provinces.”

The Kiev government’s initial attempts to retake the Donbass by force relied heavily on far-right ultranationalist militias, including the openly neo-Nazi Azov Detachment, which in late 2014 was incorporated into the official Ukrainian National Guard. Despite this, the U.S. has sent $2.7 billion worth of “lethal aid” to the Ukrainian military since 2014.

Ceasefire agreements known as Minsk I and Minsk II were subsequently negotiated between Kiev and the breakaway provinces. Both failed to stop the violence in the Donbass, with Kiev notably refusing to implement Minsk II’s provisions of autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk. From 2014 through the end of 2021, the war in the Donbass had killed over 10,000 people, including many civilians.

Andrew Josefchak of the Anti-War Committee provided additional context for Russia’s tensions with the West. “In the 1990s, the U.S. promised Russia that NATO would expand ‘not one inch east,’ but apparently the U.S. would like to take not just an inch but a mile, in fact 600 miles, expanding NATO all the way up to Russia’s doorstep,” he said. “The U.S. has imposed deadly sanctions on Russia and has moved nuclear weapons within spitting distance of its borders.”

Much of the current conflict revolves around the Kiev government’s stated ambition of joining the NATO military alliance. Despite Russia’s concerns that Ukraine’s instability could inadvertently draw NATO into a nuclear war with Russia, NATO has refused to rule out admitting Ukraine, instead sending military advisors to coordinate with the junta in Kiev.

Josefchak explained, “The idea that the U.S. has deliberately pushed Russia toward war is not just speculation on my part; in 2019 the RAND Corporation, a pro-war organization of the U.S. military-industrial complex, sent a report to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff in which it stated that the ideal U.S. strategy would be to use sanctions, propaganda and other measures to push Russia towards war with Ukraine in order to make it overextend itself militarily.”

Other protesters decried continued increases to the U.S. military budget while domestic social programs languish.

Mira Altobell-Resendez is a member of Students for Democratic Society at the University of Minnesota (SDS-UMN). “I don’t know about you, but my country having the capacity to bomb anyone they want to hell and back doesn’t make me feel secure,” they said. “What would make me feel secure is knowing that my fellow students and I won’t be paying back federal loans for the rest of our lives, knowing that we will never have to worry about being able to afford adequate housing or a visit to the doctor, and having proper infrastructure in place to eradicate health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic without losing millions of unexpendable lives due to the incompetence of our government.”

The protest was initiated by the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition and endorsed by the Anti-War Committee, Women Against Military Madness, Climate Justice Committee, Veterans for Peace, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, SDS-UMN, and other local groups. Organizers chose Senator Klobuchar’s office for the location after the hawkish congresswoman told National Public Radio that morning that she doesn’t “rule anything out” and called for more weapons transfers to Ukraine.

With the conflict continuing to worsen, organizers announced that on March 2 there will be another protest on the Lake Street/Marshall Avenue bridge over the Mississippi at 4 p.m. to demand an end to U.S. escalations and weapons transfers, the dissolution of NATO, and diplomacy to create the conditions for long-term peace in Ukraine.

#MinneapolisMN #AntiwarMovement #PeoplesStruggles #Russia #Ukraine

Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is opposed to the Biden administration’s war preparations against Russia and U.S. intervention in the Ukraine. We urge all progressives and revolutionaries to help organize, promote and participate in anti-war protests. We are against imperialist wars.

In recent years the Pentagon has ranked Russia as a “strategic competitor,” making it one of the main targets of U.S. war plans. Currently the U.S. is sending mountains of weapons to the reactionary Ukrainian government, deploying more troops in Eastern Europe, and is making threat upon threat. The constant barrage of accusations uttered by the Biden administration echo the campaigns of disinformation that preceded the U.S. wars on Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya.

Since the 1990s the U.S. has taken the lead in systematically expanding the NATO military alliance right up to Russia’s doorstep. It has meddled in territories of the former USSR. In the Ukraine, U.S. administrations have assisted right-wing and fascist political forces – often speaking about incorporating the Ukraine into NATO. It is these moves that set the stage for the unfolding crisis.

The reactionary Ukrainian government has been massing troops and carrying out military provocations in and around the Donbass, a heavily industrialized mining region governed by the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics – where people do not want to live under the right-wing Ukrainian authorities. The situation has become a tinder box that could easily burst into flames.

NATO was originally created to confront the Soviet Union and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe. While Russia today is not a socialist country – it is a developing monopoly capitalist power – there is a certain continuity in the U.S. efforts to expand NATO. It is all about maintaining the economic and political reach of the U.S. empire. The decline of U.S. imperialism is accelerating, and the Biden administration is attempting to shore up its tottering empire.

The U.S. is all about waging wars to loot the land, labor and natural resources of others. That is a fact. Regardless of what the Biden administration says about “aggressors” or whoever it blames for firing the first shot, our view is the U.S has no right to intervene, and we are joining with others to oppose U.S war moves.

While we cannot predict the future, we know it always time to oppose U.S. wars for empire.

No U.S. war with Russia, end U.S. intervention in Ukraine!

#UnitedStates #International #AntiwarMovement #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #Russia

Dallas, TX – On February 5, a crowd gathered at the Grassy Knoll in downtown Dallas to protest threats of war by the United States and NATO against Russia. The protest was organized by the Dallas Anti-War Committee, CODEPINK Greater Dallas, Dallas Peace and Justice Center, Party for Socialism and Liberation Dallas-Fort Worth, and Veterans for Peace North Texas. The rally was a part of a national day of action in which over 50 cities participated.

The protest called for total withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe, an end to weapons sales to the reactionary government of Ukraine, and for the disbandment of NATO.

Cassandra Swart of the Dallas Anti-War Committee gave a speech criticizing the expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe as blatant aggression against Russia.

Swart condemned the U.S. support to Ukraine through arms shipments and sending American troops, and demanded an end to U.S. military presence in Europe. “The U.S. sent weapons to the Ukrainian military to commit massacres against Russians, Roma, Jews, trade unionists, and LGBT rights activists,” stated Swart, “We must say no to NATO's aggression against Russia and call for a withdrawal of all American troops in Europe!”

#DallasTX #AntiwarMovement #PeoplesStruggles #Russia #Ukraine #DallasAntiWarCommittee

New Orleans, LA – Anti-war protesters gathered on February 5 in New Orleans at Lafayette Square Park to demand an end to NATO aggression against Russia. Activists carried signs and chanted slogans calling for peace and the disbandment of NATO.

The protest was organized by a coalition including the Communist Party USA, the Democratic Socialists of America, Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

Speakers decried the latest U.S. attempt to escalate the situation in Ukraine, which they said threatens us with a nuclear conflict with Russia. The protest also highlighted the negative role that NATO has played in Ukraine’s internal conflict and the need to oppose imperialism.

Quest Riggs of Freedom Road Socialist Organization said, “When all of the mass movements in this country unite against the war machine, they can hold back the march towards imperialist war and achieve real justice here at home.”

With signs like “Disband NATO” and “Fund healthcare, not war,” the demonstrators gave voice to the demands of the peace movement and showed that the people of New Orleans reject imperialist war.

#NewOrleansLA #AntiwarMovement #PeoplesStruggles #Russia #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganizationNewOrleans

New York, NY – Dozens upon dozens of organizers and anti-war activists gathered at two different rallies to protest the U.S. military threats against Russia.

The first event began at 2 p.m. in Columbus Circle and was organized by Struggle-La Lucha. Organizers gathered near the USS Maine National Monument – the Maine warship exploded due to an accident and became a pretext for the 1898 Spanish-American War. Bill Doares of Struggle-La Lucha explained the important symbolism of the moment and likened it to a false flag operation, similarly to what’s happening in Ukraine now.

Speakers denounced spending money on a new war that neither Russia nor Ukraine are looking to enter.

Michela Martinazzi from the New York Community Action Project and the International League of Peoples Struggle gave a short speech about where the money could be spent instead, pointing out that $700 billion could easily be spent on community resources rather than funding war.

Once that rally was over, the protesters marched and gathered in Times Square for the 3 p.m. rally called by a coalition of antiwar and progressive organizations, such as: Answer Coalition, Black Alliance for Peace, CODE Pink, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, International Action Center, Massachusetts Peace Action, Popular Resistance, Task Force on the Americas, United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), U.S. Peace Council, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom–US, and World BEYOND War.

Speeches and chants filled the crowd as they all were energized despite the incredibly cold and windy weather. The rally ended on a high note of promising further organizing and with a performance by the Raging Grannies, an anti-war singing group.

#NewYorkNY #AntiwarMovement #Russia #Ukraine #NewYorkCommunityActionProject

To mark the anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Fight Back! is circulating the following article by the outstanding Russian revolutionary V. I. Lenin. At the time of the 1917 revolution, the Julian calendar was in use. When the modern calendar was adopted, the revolution of October 25 was celebrated on November 7.

Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution

The fourth anniversary of October 25 (November 7) is approaching.

The farther that great day recedes from us, the more clearly we see the significance of the proletarian revolution in Russia, and the more deeply we reflect upon the practical experience of our work as a whole.

Very briefly and, of course, in very incomplete and rough outline, this significance and experience may be summed up as follows.

The direct and immediate object of the revolution in Russia was a bourgeois-democratic one, namely, to destroy the survivals of medievalism and sweep them away completely, to purge Russia of this barbarism, of this shame, and to remove this immense obstacle to all culture and progress in our country.

And we can justifiably pride ourselves on having carried out that purge with greater determination and much more rapidly, boldly and successfully, and, from the point of view of its effect on the masses, much more widely and deeply, than the great French Revolution over one hundred and twenty-five years ago.

Both the anarchists and the petty-bourgeois democrats (i.e., the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who are the Russian counterparts of that international social type) have talked and are still talking an incredible lot of nonsense about the relation between the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist (that is, proletarian) revolution. The last four years have proved to the hilt that our interpretation of Marxism on this point, and our estimate of the experience of former revolutions were correct. We have consummated the bourgeois-democratic revolution as nobody had done before. We are advancing towards the socialist revolution consciously, firmly and unswervingly, knowing that it is not separated from the bourgeois-democratic revolution by a Chinese Wall, and knowing too that (in the last analysis) struggle alone will determine how far we shall advance, what part of this immense and lofty task we shall accomplish, and to what extent we shall succeed in consolidating our victories. Time will show. But we see even now that a tremendous amount—tremendous for this ruined, exhausted and backward country—has already been done towards the socialist transformation of society.

Let us, however, finish what we have to say about the bourgeois-democratic content of our revolution. Marxists must understand what that means. To explain, let us take a few striking examples.

The bourgeois-democratic content of the revolution means that the social relations (system, institutions) of the country are purged of medievalism, serfdom, feudalism.

What were the chief manifestations, survivals, remnants of serfdom in Russia up to 1917? The monarchy, the system of social estates, landed proprietorship and land tenure, the status of women, religion, and national oppression. Take any one of these Augean stables, which, incidentally, were left largely uncleansed by all the more advanced states when they accomplished their bourgeois-democratic revolutions one hundred and twenty-five, two hundred and fifty and more years ago (1649 in England); take any of these Augean stables, and you will see that we have cleansed them thoroughly. In a matter of ten weeks, from October 25 (November 7), 1917 to January 5, 1918, when the Constituent Assembly was dissolved, we accomplished a thousand times more in this respect than was accomplished by the bourgeois democrats and liberals (the Cadets) and by the petty-bourgeois democrats (the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries) during the eight months they were in power.

Those poltroons, gas-bags, vainglorious Narcissuses and petty Hamlets brandished their wooden swords—but did not even destroy the monarchy! We cleansed out all that monarchist muck as nobody had ever done before. We left not a stone, not a brick of that ancient edifice, the social-estate system even the most advanced countries, such as Britain, France and Germany, have not completely eliminated the survivals of that system to this day!), standing. We tore out the deep-seated roots of the social-estate system, namely, the remnants of feudalism and serfdom in the system of landownership, to the last. “One may argue” (there are plenty of quill-drivers, Cadets, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries abroad to indulge in such arguments) as to what “in the long run” will be the outcome of the agrarian reform effected by the Great October Revolution. We have no desire at the moment to waste time on such controversies, for we are deciding this, as well as the mass of accompanying controversies, by struggle. But the fact cannot be denied that the petty-bourgeois democrats “compromised” with the landowners, the custodians of the traditions of serfdom, for eight months, while we completely swept the landowners and all their traditions from Russian soil in a few weeks.

Take religion, or the denial of rights to women, or the oppression and inequality of the non-Russian nationalities. These are all problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. The vulgar petty-bourgeois democrats talked about them for eight months. In not a single one of the most advanced countries in the world have these questions been completely settled on bourgeois-democratic lines. In our country they have been settled completely by the legislation of the October Revolution. We have fought and are fighting religion in earnest. We have granted all the non-Russian nationalities their own republics or autonomous regions. We in Russia no longer have the base, mean and infamous denial of rights to women or inequality of the sexes, that disgusting survival of feudalism and medievalism, which is being renovated by the avaricious bourgeoisie and the dull-witted and frightened petty bourgeoisie in every other country in the world without exception.

All this goes to make up the content of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. A hundred and fifty and two hundred and fifty years ago the progressive leaders of that revolution (or of those revolutions, if we consider each national variety of the one general type) promised to rid mankind of medieval privileges, of sex inequality, of state privileges for one religion or another (or “religious ideas ”, “the church” in general), and of national inequality. They promised, but did not keep their promises. They could not keep them, for they were hindered by their “respect”— for the “sacred right of private property”. Our proletarian revolution was not afflicted with this accursed “respect” for this thrice-accursed medievalism and for the “sacred right of private property”.

But in order to consolidate the achievements of the bourgeois-democratic revolution for the peoples of Russia, we were obliged to go farther; and we did go farther. We solved the problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in passing, as a “by-product” of our main and genuinely proletarian -revolutionary, socialist activities. We have always said that reforms are a by-product of the revolutionary class struggle. We said—and proved it by deeds—that bourgeois-democratic reforms are a by-product of the proletarian, i.e., of the socialist revolution. Incidentally, the Kautskys, Hilferdings, Martovs, Chernovs, Hillquits, Longuets, MacDonalds, Turatis and other heroes of “Two and-a-Half” Marxism were incapable of understanding this relation between the bourgeois-democratic and the proletarian-socialist revolutions. The first develops into the second. The second, in passing, solves the problems of the first. The second consolidates the work of the first. Struggle, and struggle alone, decides how far the second succeeds in outgrowing the first.

The Soviet system is one of the most vivid proofs, or manifestations, of how the one revolution develops into the other. The Soviet system provides the maximum of democracy for the workers and peasants; at the same time, it marks a break with bourgeois democracy and the rise of a new, epoch-making type of democracy, namely, proletarian democracy, or the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Let the curs and swine of the moribund bourgeoisie and of the petty-bourgeois democrats who trail behind them heap imprecations, abuse and derision upon our heads for our reverses and mistakes in the work of building up our Soviet system. We do not forget for a moment that we have committed and are committing numerous mistakes and are suffering numerous reverses. How can reverses and mistakes be avoided in a matter so new in the history of the world as the building of an unprecedented type of state edifice! We shall work steadfastly to set our reverses and mistakes right and to improve our practical application of Soviet principles, which is still very, very far from being perfect. But we have a right to be and are proud that to us has fallen the good fortune to begin the building of a Soviet state, and thereby to usher in a new era in world history, the era of the rule of a new class, a class which is oppressed in every capitalist country, but which everywhere is marching forward towards a new life, towards victory over the bourgeoisie, towards the dictatorship of the proletariat, towards the emancipation of mankind from the yoke of capital and from imperialist wars.

The question of imperialist wars, of the international policy of finance capital which now dominates the whole world, a policy that must inevitably engender new imperialist wars, that must inevitably cause an extreme intensification of national oppression, pillage, brigandry and the strangulation of weak, backward and small nationalities by a handful of “advanced” powers—that question has been the keystone of all policy in all the countries of the globe since 1914. It is a question of life and death for millions upon millions of people. It is a question of whether 20,000,000 people (as compared with the 10,000,000 who were killed in the war of 1914-18 and in the supplementary “minor” wars that are still going on) are to be slaughtered in the next imperialist war, which the bourgeoisie are preparing, and which is growing out of capitalism before our very eyes. It is a question of whether in that future war, which is inevitable (if capitalism continues to exist), 60,000,000 people are to be maimed (compared with the 30,000,000 maimed in 1914-18). In this question, too, our October Revolution marked the beginning of a new era in world history. The lackeys of the bourgeoisie and its yes-men—the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, and the petty-bourgeois, allegedly “socialist”, democrats all over the world—derided our slogan “convert the imperialist war into a civil war”. But that slogan proved to be the truth—it was the only truth, unpleasant, blunt, naked and brutal, but nevertheless the truth, as against the host of most refined jingoist and pacifist lies. Those lies are being dispelled. The Brest peace has been exposed. And with every passing day the significance and consequences of a peace that is even worse than the Brest peace—the peace of Versailles—are being more relentlessly exposed. And the millions who are thinking about the causes of the recent war and of the approaching future war are more and more clearly realising the grim and inexorable truth that it is impossible to escape imperialist war, and imperialist peace (if the old orthography were still in use, I would have written the word mir in two ways, to give it both its meanings)[In Russian, the word mir has two meanings (world and peace) and had two different spellings in the old orthography.—Translator] which inevitably engenders imperialist war, that it is impossible to escape that inferno, except by a Bolshevik struggle and a Bolshevik revolution.

Let the bourgeoisie and the pacifists, the generals and the petty bourgeoisie, the capitalists and the philistines, the pious Christians and the knights of the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals vent their fury against that revolution. No torrents of abuse, calumnies and lies can enable them to conceal the historic fact that for the first time in hundreds and thousands of years the slaves have replied to a war between slave-owners by openly proclaiming the slogan: “Convert this war between slave-owners for the division of their loot into a war of the slaves of all nations against the slave-owners of all nations.”

For the first time in hundreds and thousands of years that slogan has grown from a vague and helpless waiting into a clear and definite political programme, into an effective struggle waged by millions of oppressed people under the leadership of the proletariat; it has grown into the first victory of the proletariat, the first victory in the struggle to abolish war and to unite the workers of all countries against the united bourgeoisie of different nations, against the bourgeoisie that makes peace and war at the expense of the slaves of capital, the wage-workers, the peasants, the working people.

This first victory is not yet the final victory, and it was achieved by our October Revolution at the price of incredible difficulties and hardships, at the price of unprecedented suffering, accompanied by a series of serious reverses and mistakes on our part. How could a single backward people be expected to frustrate the imperialist wars of the most powerful and most developed countries of the world without sustaining reverses and without committing mistakes! We are not afraid to admit our mistakes and shall examine them dispassionately in order to learn how to correct them. But the fact remains that for the first time in hundreds and thousands of years the promise “to reply” to war between the slave-owners by a revolution of the slaves directed against all the slave-owners has been completely fulfilled—and is being fulfilled despite all difficulties.

We have made the start. When, at what date and time, and the proletarians of which nation will complete this process is not important. The important thing is that the ice has been broken; the road is open, the way has been shown.

Gentlemen, capitalists of all countries, keep up your hypocritical pretence of “defending the fatherland”—the Japanese fatherland against the American, the American against the Japanese, the French against the British, and so forth! Gentlemen, knights of the Second and Two-and a-Half Internationals, pacifist petty bourgeoisie and philistines of the entire world, go on “evading” the question of how to combat imperialist wars by issuing new “Basle Manifestos” (on the model of the Basle Manifesto of 1912[1]). The first Bolshevik revolution has wrested the first hundred million people of this earth from the clutches of imperialist war and the imperialist world. Subsequent revolutions will deliver the rest of mankind from such wars and from such a world.

Our last, but most important and most difficult task, the one we have done least about, is economic development, the laying of economic foundations for the new, socialist edifice on the site of the demolished feudal edifice and the semi-demolished capitalist edifice. It is in this most important and most difficult task that we have sustained the greatest number of reverses and have made most mistakes. How could anyone expect that a task so new to the world could be begun without reverses and without mistakes! But we have begun it. We shall continue it. At this very moment we are, by our New Economic Policy, correcting a number of our mistakes. We are learning how to continue erecting the socialist edifice in a small-peasant country without committing such mistakes.

The difficulties are immense. But we are accustomed to grappling with immense difficulties. Not for nothing do our enemies call us “stone-hard” and exponents of a “firm line policy”. But we have also learned, at least to some extent, another art that is essential in revolution, namely, flexibility, the ability to effect swift and sudden changes of tactics if changes in objective conditions demand them, and to choose another path for the achievement of our goal if the former path proves to be inexpedient or impossible at the given moment.

Borne along on the crest of the wave of enthusiasm, rousing first the political enthusiasm and then the military enthusiasm of the people, we expected to accomplish economic tasks just as great as the political and military tasks we had accomplished by relying directly on this enthusiasm. We expected—or perhaps it would be truer to say that we presumed without having given it adequate consideration—to be able to organise the state production and the state distribution of products on communist lines in a small-peasant country directly as ordered by the proletarian state. Experience has proved that we were wrong. It appears that a number of transitional stages were necessary—state capitalism and socialism—in order to prepare—to prepare by many years of effort—for the transition to communism. Not directly relying on enthusiasm, but aided by the enthusiasm engendered by the great revolution, and on the basis of personal interest, personal incentive and business principles, we must first set to work in this small peasant country to build solid gangways to socialism by way of state capitalism. Otherwise we shall never get to communism, we shall never bring scores of millions of people to communism. That is what experience, the objective course of the development of the revolution, has taught us.

And we, who during these three or four years have learned a little to make abrupt changes of front (when abrupt changes of front are needed), have begun zealously, attentively and sedulously (although still not zealously, attentively and sedulously enough) to learn to make a new change of front, namely, the New Economic Policy. The proletarian state must become a cautious, assiduous and shrewd “businessman”, a punctilious wholesale merchant—otherwise it will never succeed in putting this small-peasant country economically on its feet. Under existing conditions, living as we are side by side with the capitalist (for the time being capitalist) West, there is no other way of progressing to communism. A wholesale merchant seems to be an economic type as remote from communism as heaven from earth. But that is one of the contradictions which, in actual life, lead from a small-peasant economy via state capitalism to socialism. Personal incentive will step up production; we must increase production first and foremost and at all costs. Wholesale trade economically unites millions of small peasants: it gives them a personal incentive, links them up and leads them to the next step, namely, to various forms of association and alliance in the process of production itself. We have already started the necessary changes in our economic policy and already have some successes to our credit; true, they are small and partial, but nonetheless they are successes. In this new field of “tuition” we are already finishing our preparatory class. By persistent and assiduous study, by making practical experience the test of every step we take, by not fearing to alter over and over again what we have already begun, by correcting our mistakes and most carefully analysing their significance, we shall pass to the higher classes. We shall go through the whole “course”, although the present state of world economics and world politics has made that course much longer and much more difficult than we would have liked. No matter at what cost, no matter how severe the hardships of the transition period may be—despite disaster, famine and ruin—we shall not flinch; we shall triumphantly carry our cause to its goal.

October 14, 1921

#Russia #PeoplesStruggles #Lenin #Socialism #OctoberRevolution

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following solidarity statement from Freedom Road Socialist Organization to the Russian Communist Workers Party.

To: Russian Communist Workers Party

From: Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Dear Comrades,

Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) stands in solidarity with you, and we condemn the cowardly attack that was carried out by the authorities of Tyumen at the November 7 event to mark the 103rd anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

We are particularly angered by the police assault on the First Secretary of the Tyumen Regional Committee and Secretary of the Central Committee for Organizational and Party Work, Comrade Alexandr Cherepanov. Leaders of FRSO have meet with Comrade Cherepanov on many occasions at the International Communist Seminar in Belgium, and we have great respect for his views and work.

Working and oppressed people the world over know the proud history of the Russian working class and of the glorious achievement of October 1917. We are glad that Russian communists, such as the Russian Communist Workers Party, are carrying forward the red flag, and are fighting for the reestablishment of socialism. And we stand with you in all who stand in your way!

With Communist Greetings,

Mick Kelly, for the Standing Committee of the CC Freedom Road Socialist Organization

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #Russia #RussianCommunistWorkersParty #Asia

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following solidarity statement from Freedom Road Socialist Organization to the Russian Communist Workers Party.

To: Russian Communist Workers Party

From: Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Dear Comrades,

Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) stands in solidarity with you, and we condemn the cowardly attack that was carried out by the authorities of Tyumen at the November 7 event to mark the 103rd anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

We are particularly angered by the police assault on the First Secretary of the Tyumen Regional Committee and Secretary of the Central Committee for Organizational and Party Work, Comrade Alexandr Cherepanov. Leaders of FRSO have meet with Comrade Cherepanov on many occasions at the International Communist Seminar in Belgium, and we have great respect for his views and work.

Working and oppressed people the world over know the proud history of the Russian working class and of the glorious achievement of October 1917. We are glad that Russian communists, such as the Russian Communist Workers Party, are carrying forward the red flag, and are fighting for the reestablishment of socialism. And we stand with you in all who stand in your way!

With Communist Greetings,

Mick Kelly, for the Standing Committee of the CC Freedom Road Socialist Organization

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #Russia #RussianCommunistWorkersParty #Asia

On May 8, 1945, at 11:01 pm Central European Time – already May 9 in the USSR – the German surrender took effect, ending World War II in Europe. The war with Germany and her fellow members of what we now call fascist allies in Europe – Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Slovakia and Finland – had already claimed the lives of perhaps 50 million people. In the ensuing years, oceans of ink have been spilled by right-wing historians and polemicists in an attempt to distort or even minimize the significance of this date. The purpose of this rewriting of history is in some cases to defend fascism, but in many more it is simply to diminish the prestige of the Soviet Union, the first socialist state. We think it is appropriate to call to mind a few facts.

First, the Nazi empire was guilty of the most astounding crimes, some without any real parallel in history. Over the summer of 1944, some 400,000 Hungarian Jews – almost the whole Jewish population of Hungary – were transported by rail to Auschwitz, a death camp the Nazis had built in occupied Poland, and murdered, down to the last child. Most were gassed, but history records that many of the children were thrown alive into crematory fires – sometimes more than a thousand children were killed this way in a single day. In all, 6 million Jewish people were murdered in the most efficient genocide campaign the world has had the misfortune to witness. Many millions more were murdered among the Romani, Slavic and other peoples the Nazis considered racial inferiors and among Soviet prisoners of war. Still hundreds of thousands more were murdered among people with disabilities, sexual minorities and other targeted groups.

Second, the capitalist world was for a long time complacent about the rise of Nazism. The governments of France, England and Poland stood idly by while Hitler annexed first Austria and then Czechia. The cost of this was enormous. Almost half the tanks used by the Nazis in the conquest of France were built at the Skoda works in occupied Czechia. And this was not an isolated case. Even with Hitler's racism on full display, the democratic governments of Europe were far more concerned with his value as a bulwark against socialism.

Third, it was the Soviet Union which, from the beginning, was the main enemy of Nazi Germany. What we now know as the Axis originally called itself the Anti-Comintern Pact. Long before what is widely considered the start date of World War II, Soviet soldiers had already fought bloody battles against German and Italian fascists in Spain, and against Japanese militarism in Manchuria. Throughout the period of appeasement by the capitalist powers, the Soviet government urged the strongest possible resistance to Nazi aggression, even going as far as to offer one million Soviet soldiers for the defense of Czechoslovakia – an offer which Czechoslovakia would probably have accepted, but the Polish government refused to allow transit or supply of this army through their country. The period of the non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR was an emergency measure, agreed by the Soviets only when it was clear they would otherwise be standing alone against Germany and might have to fight a second front against Japan. Throughout the period of this pact, the Soviet government and people frantically built weapons, constructed defenses, and organized and prepared for the decisive confrontation they knew very well was only a matter of time.

Fourth, the decisive sacrifices and the decisive victories in the war against Nazi Germany occurred on the Eastern Front. Casualty figures compiled by the German military showed that between the start of the war and January 31, 1945, 3.5 million of the 4.4 million German casualties had occurred on the Eastern Front. The single Battle of Stalingrad cost the Germans as many casualties as the entire fighting in France, including both 1940 and 1944. When the German invasion of the USSR began in the summer of 1940, the Soviets faced 3.8 million soldiers and 7000 armored vehicles. When the Western Allies made their greatly delayed landing in Normandy, they faced only 600,000 men and 2000 armored vehicles. Worse for the Germans, the crack Nazi units which had conquered France in six weeks in 1940 had been destroyed in the battles on the Eastern Front and rebuilt with raw recruits. In sacrifice, the USSR lost 27 million of her citizens in the war – by far the most of any country in the European conflict. Many of them were killed in combat, but millions more were murdered in prisoner of war camps and concentration camps or were among the civilians massacred or starved by the invaders.

Fifth, the Soviet victory in World War II was possible only due to socialist construction. In World War I, the Russian empire fielded by far the weakest army of any of the major powers. Though it had an almost unlimited supply of soldiers, its level of training, organization, and equipment was disastrously bad. During World War II, in every single year, the newly industrialized USSR outproduced Germany – at the time, Europe's premier industrial power – in every major category of war material – planes, tanks, cannons, rifles, machine guns. This tremendous advantage in war material was key to the Soviet ability to resist and ultimately defeat an invasion force which had completely conquered Belgium and France – at the time, a major military power in her own right – in just six weeks.

The reality is that the Soviet Union was the most consistent and dangerous enemy of fascism, the worst evil that Europe has ever suffered, and Soviet efforts and the strength of the USSR were key to fascism's defeat. This fact was not lost on many people in 1945, and certainly not on the handful of survivors of Auschwitz concentration camp liberated by the Soviet 322nd Rifle Division on January 31 of 1945.

No objective evaluation of socialism is possible without an objective evaluation of the real world history of socialism. In the long list of accomplishments of real world socialism to date, we must prominently include playing the key role in the defeat of Nazism.

#UnitedStates #International #Asia #Europe #Nazis #WorldWarII #Socialism #Antifascism #Russia #SovietUnion

San José, CA – Earlier in the day, I glanced at oil prices and saw that they were down 40% for the day at about $10 a barrel. Pretty bad, I thought. Then after financial markets closed, I got a call about it. I looked and saw that the closing price was negative $37.63 and let out an f-bomb, the first of about a half a dozen in my three minute conversation.

Oil futures for May fell more than 300%, from $18.27 on Friday, April 17, to deep in negative prices on Monday, April 20. With futures for June down but still at positive at about $20 a barrel, typically speculators could profit by buying the cheap May future, taking the oil delivery, and then selling the June future and delivering the oil in June. Normally this arbitrage would keep the futures prices within about $10 of each other. But the world is so awash in oil that there is almost no place to store extra oil in the United States. Thus, speculators and hedge funds were willing to pay to take the oil off their hands.

This crisis of overproduction in the oil market is mainly because of the steep drop in oil purchases because of the worldwide recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Socialist China, where the pandemic began, had to lock down their country in a successful attempt to control the virus. New infections are now down to less than 100 per day, many, if not most, from Chinese returning from other countries. But the cost was steep, as the total production of goods and services, or GDP, fell more than 6% from a year earlier. This is China’s first fall in GDP since they began to report it in 1992. Even though China’s manufacturing is returning, service industries are slower to come back. Now that China has become the world’s largest importer of oil, world oil markets took a big hit.

But the pandemic situation in Europe, another major oil importer, is much worse. Despite the news about ‘reopening’ some of the economies, COVID-19 is still raging, with the United Kingdom alone reporting almost 6000 new infections. Together with Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, each of which had over 1000 new infections reported, and other European Union countries, there were about 20,000 new COVID-19 cases despite stay-at-home orders across the continent. This has cut deeply into European imports of oil.

But Europe pales beside the United States, with almost 30,000 new infections reported, and much of the country (but not all) trying to stay at home. More than 20 million people in the United States have lost their jobs in just the last four weeks, and layoffs continue. Oil consumption in the United States has fallen by one-third just in the last month. The United States is still the world’s largest consumer of oil, which puts a huge dent in world oil consumption. While the U.S. is no longer a big oil importer, the drop in consumption means that the extra oil is piling up in the United States.

While not the main reason, a trigger for the recent collapse in the price of oil even before today was a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, the two biggest oil producers. While they were trying to gain market share from each other, they had a mutual target in mind: U.S. oil producers, where it is more costly to produce oil.

Even though the price of oil is now well below the cost of producing oil in the United States, U.S. oil companies cannot just turn off production. The big increase in U.S. oil production over the last ten years has been shale oil. The hydraulic fracturing or fracking process has never been turned off before and could lead to equipment damages or even not being able to restart production.

The drop in oil prices dragged down the stock market on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down almost 600 points or 2.5%. The Dow has fallen 20% from its all-time high earlier this year as Wall Street investors have faith in the huge efforts by the Federal Reserve and the federal government. In contrast, oil prices (using the barely positive $1.26 as oil prices bounced back after the close of U.S. trading) are down 97% from the beginning of the year, and show a much more pessimistic view of the real economy right now.

#SanJoséCA #International #US #MiddleEast #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #stockMarket #SaudiArabia #Russia #DonaldTrump #COVID19 #OilFutures

To mark the victory of the Soviet Union at Stalingrad, Fight Back News Service is reprinting the following article by Mao Zedong, that was first published October 12, 1942, in Liberation Daily. The Turning point in World War 2

The Battle of Stalingrad has been compared by the British and American press to the Battle of Verdun, and the “Red Verdun” is now famous all over the world. This comparison is not altogether appropriate. The Battle of Stalingrad is different in nature from the Battle of Verdun in World War I. But they have this in common— now, as then, many people are misled by the German offensive into thinking that Germany can still win the war. In 1916 the German forces launched several attacks on the French fortress of Verdun, two years before World War I ended in the winter of 1918. The commander-in-chief at Verdun was the German Crown Prince and the forces thrown into the battle were the cream of the German army. The battle was of decisive significance. After the ferocious German assaults failed, the entire German-Austrian-Turkish-Bulgarian bloc had no future, and from then on its difficulties mounted, it was deserted by its followers, it disintegrated, and finally collapsed. But at the time, the Anglo-American-French bloc did not grasp this situation, believing that the German army was still very powerful, and they were unaware of their own approaching victory. Historically, all reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct a last desperate struggle against the revolutionary forces, and some revolutionaries are apt to be deluded for a time by this phenomenon of outward strength but inner weakness, failing to grasp the essential fact that the enemy is nearing extinction while they themselves are approaching victory. The rise of the forces of fascism and the war of aggression they have been conducting for some years are precisely the expression of such a last desperate struggle; and in this present war the attack on Stalingrad is the expression of the last desperate struggle of fascism itself. At this turning point in history, too, many people in the world anti-fascist front have been deluded by the ferocious appearance of fascism and have failed to discern its essence. For forty-eight days there raged an unprecedentedly bitter battle, unparalleled in the history of mankind—from August 23, when the entire German force crossed the bend of the River Don and began the all-out attack on Stalingrad, through September 15, when some German units broke into the industrial district in the northwestern section of the city, and right up to October 9, when the Soviet Information Bureau announced that the Red Army had breached the German line of encirclement in that district. Ultimately this battle was won by the Soviet forces. During those forty-eight days, the news of each setback or triumph from that city gripped the hearts of countless millions of people, now bringing them anxiety, now stirring them to elation. This battle is not only the turning point of the Soviet-German war, or even of the present anti-fascist world war, it is the turning point in the history of all mankind. Throughout these forty-eight days, the people of the world watched Stalingrad with even greater concern than they watched Moscow last October.

Until his victory on the western front, Hitler seems to have been cautious. When he attacked Poland, when he attacked Norway, when he attacked Holland, Belgium, and France, and when he attacked the Balkans, he concentrated all his strength on one objective at a time, not daring to disperse his attention. After his victory on the western front, he became dizzy with success and attempted to defeat the Soviet Union in three months. He launched an offensive against this huge and powerful socialist country along the whole front stretching from Murmansk in the north to the Crimea in the south, and in so doing dispersed his forces. The failure of his Moscow campaign last October marked the end of the first stage of the Soviet-German war, and Hitler's first strategic plan failed. The Red Army halted the German offensive last year and launched a counteroffensive on all fronts in the winter, which constituted the second stage of the Soviet-German war, with Hitler turning to retreat and the defensive. In this period, after dismissing Brauchitsch, his commander-in-chief, and taking over the command himself, he decided to abandon the plan for an all-out offensive, combed Europe for all available forces and prepared a final offensive which, though limited to the southern front, would, he imagined, strike at the vitals of the Soviet Union. Because it was in the nature of a final offensive on which the fate of fascism hung, Hitler concentrated the greatest possible forces and even moved in part of his aircraft and tanks from the North African battle front. With the German attack on Kerch and Sevastopol in May this year, the war entered its third stage. Massing an army of over 1,500,000, which was supported by the bulk of his air and tank forces, Hitler launched an offensive of unprecedented fury on Stalingrad and the Caucasus. He endeavoured to capture these two objectives at great speed for the twofold purpose of cutting the Volga and seizing Baku, intending subsequently to drive against Moscow to the north and break through to the Persian Gulf in the south; at the same time he directed the Japanese fascists to mass their troops in Manchuria in preparation for an attack on Siberia after the fall of Stalingrad. Hitler vainly hoped to weaken the Soviet Union to such an extent that he would be able to release the main forces of the German army from the Soviet theatre of war for dealing with an Anglo-American attack on the western front, and for seizing the resources of the Near East and effecting a junction with the Japanese; at the same time this would allow the main forces of the Japanese to be released from the north and, with their rear secure, to move west against China and south against Britain and the United States. That was how Hitler reckoned on winning victory for the fascist camp. But how did things turn out in this stage? Hitler came up against the Soviet tactics which sealed his fate. The Soviet Union adopted the policy of first luring the enemy in deep and then putting up a stubborn resistance. In five months of fighting the German army has failed either to penetrate to the Caucasian oil-fields or to seize Stalingrad, so that Hitler has been forced to halt his troops before high mountains and outside an impregnable city, unable to advance and unable to retreat, suffering immense losses and getting into an impasse. October is already here and winter is approaching; soon the third stage of the war will end and the fourth stage will begin. Not one of Hitler's strategic plans of attack against the Soviet Union has succeeded. In this period, bearing in mind his failure in the summer of last year when his forces were divided, Hitler concentrated his strength on the southern front. But as he still wanted to achieve the twofold purpose of cutting the Volga in the east and seizing the Caucasus in the south at a single stroke, he again divided his forces. He did not recognize that his strength did not match his ambitions, and he is now doomed—“when the carrying pole is not secured at both ends, the loads slip off”. As for the Soviet Union, the more she fights the stronger she grows. Stalin's brilliant strategic direction has completely gained the initiative and is everywhere drawing Hitler towards destruction. The fourth stage of the war, beginning this winter, will mark the approach of Hitler's doom.

Comparing Hitler's position in the first and third stages of the war, we can see that he is on the threshold of final defeat. Both at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus the Red Army has now in fact stopped the German offensive; Hitler is now nearing exhaustion, having failed in his attacks on Stalingrad and the Caucasus. The forces which he managed to assemble throughout the winter, from last December to May of this year, have already been used up. In less than a month winter will set in on the Soviet-German front, and Hitler will have to turn hastily to the defensive. The whole belt west and south of the Don is his most vulnerable area, and the Red Army will go over to the counter-offensive there. This winter, goaded on by the fear of his impending doom, Hitler will once again reorganize his forces. To meet the dangers on both the eastern and western fronts, he may perhaps be able to scrape together the remnants of his forces, equip them and form them into a few new divisions and, in addition, he will turn for help to his three fascist partners, Italy, Rumania and Hungary, and extort some more cannon-fodder from them. However, he will have to face the enormous losses of a winter campaign in the east and be ready to deal with the second front in the west, while Italy, Rumania and Hungary, becoming pessimistic as they see that it is all up with Hitler, will increasingly fall away from him. In short, after October 9 there is only one road open to Hitler, the road to extinction.

The Red Army's defence of Stalingrad in these forty-eight days has a certain similarity to the defence of Moscow last year. That is to say, Hitler's plan for this year has been foiled just as was his plan for last year. The difference, however, is that, although the Soviet people followed up their defence of Moscow with a winter counter-offensive, they had yet to face the summer offensive of the German army this year, partly because Germany and her European accomplices still had some fight left in them and partly because Britain and the United States delayed the opening of the second front. But now, following the battle for the defence of Stalingrad, the situation will be totally different from that of last year. On the one hand, the Soviet Union will launch a second winter counteroffensive on a vast scale, Britain and the United States will no longer be able to delay the opening of the second front (though the exact date cannot yet be foretold), and the people of Europe will be ready to rise up in response. On the other hand, Germany and her European accomplices no longer have the strength to mount large-scale offensives, and Hitler will have no alternative but to change his whole line of policy to the strategic defensive. Once Hitler is compelled to go over to the strategic defensive, the fate of fascism is as good as sealed. From its birth, a fascist state like Hitler's builds its political and military life on taking the offensive, and once its offensive stops its very life stops too. The Battle of Stalingrad will stop the offensive of fascism and is therefore a decisive battle. It is decisive for the whole world war.

There are three powerful foes confronting Hitler, the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States, and the people in the German-occupied territories. On the eastern front stands the Red Army, firm as a rock, whose counter-offensives will continue through the whole of the second winter and beyond; it is this force which will decide the outcome of the whole war and the destiny of mankind. On the western front, even if Britain and the United States continue their policy of looking on and stalling, the second front will eventually be opened, when the time comes to belabour the slain tiger. Then there is the internal front against Hitler, the great uprising of the people which is brewing in Germany, in France and in other parts of Europe; they will respond with a third front the moment the Soviet Union launches an all-out counter-offensive and the guns roar on the second front. Thus, an attack from three fronts will converge on Hitler—such is the great historical process that will follow the Battle of Stalingrad.

Napoleon's political life ended at Waterloo, but the decisive turning point was his defeat at Moscow. Hitler today is treading Napoleon's road, and it is the Battle of Stalingrad that has sealed his doom.

These developments will have a direct impact on the Far East. The coming year will not be propitious for Japanese fascism either. As time goes on its headaches will grow, until it descends into its grave.

All those who take a pessimistic view of the world situation should change their point of view.

#UnitedStates #MaoZedong #Stalingrad #Russia

On March 14, Teresa May expelled 23 Russian diplomats and encouraged allies in the EU and the U.S. to do the same in their countries. She claimed the Russian diplomats are part of Russia's espionage network and their expulsion is a way to weaken Russian intelligence. In addition to this, May has frozen Russian state assets in the UK, suspended high-level Russia-UK contact, and declared that no royal family member will attend the FIFA world cup in Russia this summer. One of the few critics in British parliament was Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was denounced as a 'Russian stooge' for criticizing May's harsh response.

President Donald Trump has sided with the British government and ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats from the U.S. The U.S. has accepted the British judgement that Russia was behind the poisoning without any questions asked. Leaders of the European Union have also sided with Britain with a statement of solidarity and have expelled a total of 33 Russian diplomats from 16 EU countries.

The Russian government has denied the accusations and condemned the poisoning of Skirpal. President Vladimir Putin called the incident 'a tragedy' and denied that Russia would ever do such a thing. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov demanded a sample of the chemical nerve agent so that the Russian government could conduct their own investigation; the British government refused. In response to Britain's hostile actions, the Russian government has expelled 23 British diplomats from Russia and closed the British consulate in Saint Petersburg.

Although such diplomatic hostility against Russia is not new, we have not seen this level of antagonism since the Soviet era. It is difficult to say what is behind the UK's hostile acts against Russia, but there are a few possibilities. First, during the war in Syria waged by the United States and NATO, Russia has defended the Syrian government. Russia has provided military aid to Assad and defended the right of the Syrian people to defend themselves. The diplomatic war against Russia may be a reflection of the real war against Syria that Britain is participating in.

Another reason may be related to Russia's economic activities in Europe. Russia is in the process of building a pipeline that would ship cheap Russian oil to Germany and will pass through a number of EU member states. This would put Russia in a stronger economic position in the oil market, weakening British, European and U.S. business interests. The diplomatic hostility against Russia is very likely connected to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which many EU member states, including Britain, have been opposed to.

Regardless of what one thinks of Russia, it is important not to buy into the Russophobia of the British, European, and U.S. politicians. The measures taken by the British government against Russia are hawkish and should not be supported by anyone who supports peace.

#GlasgowScotland #Glasgow #Russia #Russophobia #Asia

To mark the victory of the Soviet Union at Stalingrad, Fight Back News Service is reprinting the following article by Mao Zedong, that was first published October 12, 1942, in Liberation Daily . The Turning point in World War 2 By Mao Zedong

The Battle of Stalingrad has been compared by the British and American press to the Battle of Verdun, and the “Red Verdun” is now famous all over the world. This comparison is not altogether appropriate. The Battle of Stalingrad is different in nature from the Battle of Verdun in World War I. But they have this in common— now, as then, many people are misled by the German offensive into thinking that Germany can still win the war. In 1916 the German forces launched several attacks on the French fortress of Verdun, two years before World War I ended in the winter of 1918. The commander-in-chief at Verdun was the German Crown Prince and the forces thrown into the battle were the cream of the German army. The battle was of decisive significance. After the ferocious German assaults failed, the entire German-Austrian-Turkish-Bulgarian bloc had no future, and from then on its difficulties mounted, it was deserted by its followers, it disintegrated, and finally collapsed. But at the time, the Anglo-American-French bloc did not grasp this situation, believing that the German army was still very powerful, and they were unaware of their own approaching victory. Historically, all reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct a last desperate struggle against the revolutionary forces, and some revolutionaries are apt to be deluded for a time by this phenomenon of outward strength but inner weakness, failing to grasp the essential fact that the enemy is nearing extinction while they themselves are approaching victory. The rise of the forces of fascism and the war of aggression they have been conducting for some years are precisely the expression of such a last desperate struggle; and in this present war the attack on Stalingrad is the expression of the last desperate struggle of fascism itself. At this turning point in history, too, many people in the world anti-fascist front have been deluded by the ferocious appearance of fascism and have failed to discern its essence. For forty-eight days there raged an unprecedentedly bitter battle, unparalleled in the history of mankind—from August 23, when the entire German force crossed the bend of the River Don and began the all-out attack on Stalingrad, through September 15, when some German units broke into the industrial district in the northwestern section of the city, and right up to October 9, when the Soviet Information Bureau announced that the Red Army had breached the German line of encirclement in that district. Ultimately this battle was won by the Soviet forces. During those forty-eight days, the news of each setback or triumph from that city gripped the hearts of countless millions of people, now bringing them anxiety, now stirring them to elation. This battle is not only the turning point of the Soviet-German war, or even of the present anti-fascist world war, it is the turning point in the history of all mankind. Throughout these forty-eight days, the people of the world watched Stalingrad with even greater concern than they watched Moscow last October.

Until his victory on the western front, Hitler seems to have been cautious. When he attacked Poland, when he attacked Norway, when he attacked Holland, Belgium, and France, and when he attacked the Balkans, he concentrated all his strength on one objective at a time, not daring to disperse his attention. After his victory on the western front, he became dizzy with success and attempted to defeat the Soviet Union in three months. He launched an offensive against this huge and powerful socialist country along the whole front stretching from Murmansk in the north to the Crimea in the south, and in so doing dispersed his forces. The failure of his Moscow campaign last October marked the end of the first stage of the Soviet-German war, and Hitler's first strategic plan failed. The Red Army halted the German offensive last year and launched a counteroffensive on all fronts in the winter, which constituted the second stage of the Soviet-German war, with Hitler turning to retreat and the defensive. In this period, after dismissing Brauchitsch, his commander-in-chief, and taking over the command himself, he decided to abandon the plan for an all-out offensive, combed Europe for all available forces and prepared a final offensive which, though limited to the southern front, would, he imagined, strike at the vitals of the Soviet Union. Because it was in the nature of a final offensive on which the fate of fascism hung, Hitler concentrated the greatest possible forces and even moved in part of his aircraft and tanks from the North African battle front. With the German attack on Kerch and Sevastopol in May this year, the war entered its third stage. Massing an army of over 1,500,000, which was supported by the bulk of his air and tank forces, Hitler launched an offensive of unprecedented fury on Stalingrad and the Caucasus. He endeavoured to capture these two objectives at great speed for the twofold purpose of cutting the Volga and seizing Baku, intending subsequently to drive against Moscow to the north and break through to the Persian Gulf in the south; at the same time he directed the Japanese fascists to mass their troops in Manchuria in preparation for an attack on Siberia after the fall of Stalingrad. Hitler vainly hoped to weaken the Soviet Union to such an extent that he would be able to release the main forces of the German army from the Soviet theatre of war for dealing with an Anglo-American attack on the western front, and for seizing the resources of the Near East and effecting a junction with the Japanese; at the same time this would allow the main forces of the Japanese to be released from the north and, with their rear secure, to move west against China and south against Britain and the United States. That was how Hitler reckoned on winning victory for the fascist camp. But how did things turn out in this stage? Hitler came up against the Soviet tactics which sealed his fate. The Soviet Union adopted the policy of first luring the enemy in deep and then putting up a stubborn resistance. In five months of fighting the German army has failed either to penetrate to the Caucasian oil-fields or to seize Stalingrad, so that Hitler has been forced to halt his troops before high mountains and outside an impregnable city, unable to advance and unable to retreat, suffering immense losses and getting into an impasse. October is already here and winter is approaching; soon the third stage of the war will end and the fourth stage will begin. Not one of Hitler's strategic plans of attack against the Soviet Union has succeeded. In this period, bearing in mind his failure in the summer of last year when his forces were divided, Hitler concentrated his strength on the southern front. But as he still wanted to achieve the twofold purpose of cutting the Volga in the east and seizing the Caucasus in the south at a single stroke, he again divided his forces. He did not recognize that his strength did not match his ambitions, and he is now doomed—“when the carrying pole is not secured at both ends, the loads slip off”. As for the Soviet Union, the more she fights the stronger she grows. Stalin's brilliant strategic direction has completely gained the initiative and is everywhere drawing Hitler towards destruction. The fourth stage of the war, beginning this winter, will mark the approach of Hitler's doom.

Comparing Hitler's position in the first and third stages of the war, we can see that he is on the threshold of final defeat. Both at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus the Red Army has now in fact stopped the German offensive; Hitler is now nearing exhaustion, having failed in his attacks on Stalingrad and the Caucasus. The forces which he managed to assemble throughout the winter, from last December to May of this year, have already been used up. In less than a month winter will set in on the Soviet-German front, and Hitler will have to turn hastily to the defensive. The whole belt west and south of the Don is his most vulnerable area, and the Red Army will go over to the counter-offensive there. This winter, goaded on by the fear of his impending doom, Hitler will once again reorganize his forces. To meet the dangers on both the eastern and western fronts, he may perhaps be able to scrape together the remnants of his forces, equip them and form them into a few new divisions and, in addition, he will turn for help to his three fascist partners, Italy, Rumania and Hungary, and extort some more cannon-fodder from them. However, he will have to face the enormous losses of a winter campaign in the east and be ready to deal with the second front in the west, while Italy, Rumania and Hungary, becoming pessimistic as they see that it is all up with Hitler, will increasingly fall away from him. In short, after October 9 there is only one road open to Hitler, the road to extinction.

The Red Army's defence of Stalingrad in these forty-eight days has a certain similarity to the defence of Moscow last year. That is to say, Hitler's plan for this year has been foiled just as was his plan for last year. The difference, however, is that, although the Soviet people followed up their defence of Moscow with a winter counter-offensive, they had yet to face the summer offensive of the German army this year, partly because Germany and her European accomplices still had some fight left in them and partly because Britain and the United States delayed the opening of the second front. But now, following the battle for the defence of Stalingrad, the situation will be totally different from that of last year. On the one hand, the Soviet Union will launch a second winter counteroffensive on a vast scale, Britain and the United States will no longer be able to delay the opening of the second front (though the exact date cannot yet be foretold), and the people of Europe will be ready to rise up in response. On the other hand, Germany and her European accomplices no longer have the strength to mount large-scale offensives, and Hitler will have no alternative but to change his whole line of policy to the strategic defensive. Once Hitler is compelled to go over to the strategic defensive, the fate of fascism is as good as sealed. From its birth, a fascist state like Hitler's builds its political and military life on taking the offensive, and once its offensive stops its very life stops too. The Battle of Stalingrad will stop the offensive of fascism and is therefore a decisive battle. It is decisive for the whole world war.

There are three powerful foes confronting Hitler, the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States, and the people in the German-occupied territories. On the eastern front stands the Red Army, firm as a rock, whose counter-offensives will continue through the whole of the second winter and beyond; it is this force which will decide the outcome of the whole war and the destiny of mankind. On the western front, even if Britain and the United States continue their policy of looking on and stalling, the second front will eventually be opened, when the time comes to belabour the slain tiger. Then there is the internal front against Hitler, the great uprising of the people which is brewing in Germany, in France and in other parts of Europe; they will respond with a third front the moment the Soviet Union launches an all-out counter-offensive and the guns roar on the second front. Thus, an attack from three fronts will converge on Hitler—such is the great historical process that will follow the Battle of Stalingrad.

Napoleon's political life ended at Waterloo, but the decisive turning point was his defeat at Moscow. Hitler today is treading Napoleon's road, and it is the Battle of Stalingrad that has sealed his doom.

These developments will have a direct impact on the Far East. The coming year will not be propitious for Japanese fascism either. As time goes on its headaches will grow, until it descends into its grave.

All those who take a pessimistic view of the world situation should change their point of view.

#SovietUnion #MaoZedong #Socialism #Stalingrad #Russia #Asia

CIPDH has taken the position that Lisov has the right to a fair and public hearing and presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The CIPDH website – http://cipdh.fr/cipdh-political-ccase-of-stas-lisov – states that the U.S. extradition paperwork includes statements from an FBI agent that Lisov is guilty of hacking; it accuses certain U.S. media of declaring his guilt; and that the case against him is political.

According to Russia Today, from an article in January, “The FBI claims that Lisov, 31, is the creator and administrator of NeverQuest, a banking trojan that has defrauded thousands of people, allegedly to the tune of $5 million.”

U.S. allies in Europe have arrested at least three Russians for hacking crimes in the months since the controversy erupted in the U.S. about possible Russian government meddling in the U.S. elections. The Russian government accuses the FBI of harassing their citizens for political purposes.

The Democratic Party leadership and U.S. mainstream media are obsessed with the alleged Russian hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. The WikiLeaks release of DNC emails proving that the DNC leadership derailed the campaign of reformer Bernie Sanders contributed to Hillary Clinton’s defeat in November.

Many Sanders supporters have maintained that the main reason Clinton lost is that she was a loyal servant of Wall Street, while millions of people in the U.S. are still suffering from the massive bailout of the bankers that took place under the Bush and Obama administrations in 2008.

#WashingtonDC #WashingtonDCDC #PeoplesStruggles #Russia #PoliticalPrisoners #PoliticalRepression

On Sept. 30, 2015, Russian planes began conducting airstrikes against rebel targets in Syria at the request of President Bashar al-Assad. This military intervention signaled a new chapter in the five-year war in Syria, which has pitted the country's national democratic government against foreign-backed rebel groups. Launched for the stated purpose of defeating the growing Islamic State (IS) insurgency, Russia's operations have also targeted U.S.-backed reactionary rebel groups.

For those forces resisting imperialism in the Middle East, the outcome of the war in Syria is of critical importance. Russian air support has significantly bolstered the position of the Syrian government. And while national self-interest, not solidarity, drives Russian intervention in Syria, it has the effect of strengthening the camp of resistance to imperialism in the region.

War in Syria and the camp of resistance

In 2011, neoliberal economic policies pushed by global financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF contributed to a wave of mass protests in countries across the Middle East and north Africa. After protests in Tunisia and Egypt brought down two U.S.-backed regimes, the Western imperialist powers leveraged this political unrest to destabilize Libya and Syria's national democratic governments.

Both Libya and Syria proved too strong for the imperialist-backed opposition to topple alone. In Libya, it took a NATO military intervention to turn the tide against Qaddafi's government in 2011. Similarly, the rebels in Syria lacked broad mass support and proved unable to topple Assad. This prompted a massive influx of arms and supplies from the U.S. and its regional allies – Turkey and Saudi Arabia, in particular – to opposition forces. The U.S. and other imperialist powers also threatened direct military intervention along the lines of NATO's campaign in Libya.

By overthrowing the Assad government, the U.S. hopes to strike a major blow against the camp of resistance to imperialism, Zionism and reaction. Anchored by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the camp of resistance includes Syria, Hezbollah and other patriotic forces of Lebanon, the Palestinian liberation organizations and other allied national democratic movements in the Middle East. Taken together, it is the main obstacle to Western domination of the region.

The significance of the war in Syria

As one of several national democratic states in the Middle East brought to power by popular anti-colonial uprisings in the 1950s and 60s, the Syrian Arab Republic generally charts an independent course from imperialism. State-ownership of some major industries, a robust trade union structure and regulations on foreign investment prevented Western finance capital from dominating the Syrian economy.

Beyond its economic model, however, Syria drew the wrath of Washington for its anti-imperialist foreign policy. Syria backs Hezbollah and according to some reports, serves as a conduit for Iranian support because of its border with Lebanon. Palestinian liberation organizations also enjoyed significant Syrian backing.

A major motivation for the imperialists' proxy war on Syria, however, is the Assad government's close relationship with Iran. Since Iran's national democratic revolution that brought down the Shah in 1979, Syria serves as Iran's closest and most consistent allied government in the Middle East. It provided training, arms and troops to Iran to repel the U.S.-backed Iraqi invasion in the 1980s. The two nations materially supported the progressive and patriotic Lebanese forces resisting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Amid sanctions and threats of U.S. and Israeli aggression, Syria continues to support Iran, and for this, it faces the threat of regime change.

Russian motivations for intervention in Syria

Syria and Russia have enjoyed close relations for decades. During the Cold War, Syria became one of the Soviet Union's two closest regional partners – the other being People's Democratic Republic of Yemen – and it allowed the USSR to build a naval base in the city of Tartus.

The Russian Federation maintained its alliance with Syria, albeit with entirely different motives. After the overthrow of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia's new capitalist ruling class scrambled to maintain its military presence around the world. In Syria, Russia forgave three-fourths of Syrian debt in exchange for expanding the formerly Soviet naval base, and they quickly became Syria's largest arms supplier. Russian corporations began investing in Syria, like a $1.1 billion project in 2010 to build a rival pipeline to Western-controlled energy infrastructure. When the war broke out in 2011, Russian corporations stepped up their investment, which provided the Syrian government with much-needed liquidity to fight the imperialist-backed rebels and maintain the economy.

While Russian support remains instrumental to preventing the fall of Syria's national democratic government, international solidarity is not its driving motive. Rather, the monopoly capitalists who rule Russia hope to strengthen their presence in the oil-rich Middle East by curbing the power of the U.S. and its partners. The Russian Federation is emerging as an imperialist power, although it remains weak and unstable compared to the U.S., Western Europe and Japan. For instance, Russia has 11 military bases in 11 different countries compared to the U.S.'s 900-plus military bases in 130 different countries. Excluded from sharing in the spoils of imperialism by these larger, stronger powers, Russia largely pursues its own agenda in conflict with the larger, stronger imperialist powers.

Russia became a capitalist country in 1991 when a counterrevolution led by Boris Yeltsin overthrew socialism. Oligarchs began buying up Soviet industries as quickly as the newly minted capitalist state could sell them off, which led to a disastrous economic crisis felt most by the working class. This crisis pushed a large section of the oligarchs to favor greater state regulation, with Vladmir Putin as their political representative. Monopolies became the decisive force within Russian capitalism and finance capital largely merged with industry.

National sovereignty and foreign intervention

Regardless of its self-interested motives, however, Russian intervention in Syria is positive for the camp of resistance in the Middle East. The Syrian government has survived the five-year onslaught by imperialist-backed rebel forces for three main reasons: first, the continued support for Assad by a majority of the Syrian people; second, crucial military and economic assistance from Hezbollah and Iran and, third, Russia's military and diplomatic backing.

Unlike the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Russian intervention came at the formal request of the sovereign national government of Syria. This request was in response to protracted foreign aggression by the Western imperialist powers and their partners, not a domestic crisis. The rebellion in Syria was backed and controlled by outside aggressors from its inception – a far cry from the image of a 'popular revolution against a dictator' promoted by the U.S. and Western Europe. In this sense, it differs sharply from requests by U.S.-backed dictatorships for intervention to put down revolutionary unrest, like South Vietnam in the early 1960s.

Furthermore, Syria is not a neo-colony of Russia, nor is Assad a puppet of Russia. The Syrian state came to power from a national democratic uprising, not Russian maneuvering. In 2010, one year before the outbreak of war, Syria's top four trading partners were the European Union (22.5%), Iraq (13.3%), Saudi Arabia (9%) and China (6.9%), while Russia was a distant ninth at 3%. Although Russian investments have become more consequential in recent years, this is the product of crippling international sanctions imposed on Syria by Western imperialism.

The Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union, and we should avoid the mistake of thinking that its motives and aspirations are genuinely anti-imperialist. Nevertheless, Russia's intervention in Syria strengthens the camp of resistance to imperialism, Zionism and reaction. By enhancing the position of the Syrian government, which is a key player in the camp of resistance, Russia actually weakens U.S. imperialism and its partners.

#Syria #MiddleEast #PeoplesStruggles #Russia #antiimperialism

“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.” – Malcolm X

Each year pro-government organizations in U.S. release reports on human rights violations in other countries. These reports become basis of sanctions, military and social propaganda for foreign policy of the United States. Human rights are used as a trigger to push sovereign states, while mass media are preparing the society for “democratic” changes in their country.

It was like this in Ukraine, where up now the blood of innocent is being spilled. We see how human rights are being crudely violated in United States itself. Thanks to independent mass media and Internet, we can receive truthful information about the reasons behind the conflict.

The mass events of expressing people’s will in Ferguson have barely calmed down, when the fire of struggle got lit in Baltimore, where many U.S. citizens are undergoing repressions by law enforcement officers. When police arrests somebody, they use force in such way, that “suspects” usually suffer serious medical injuries. Federal government tries to convince international mass media, that Baltimore is a capital of poor and uneducated people, whom turned the area into criminal playground.

We know that in reality it’s a place where working class is living – regular citizens, struggling throughout their life, not criminals in any way. Criminals are sitting in Washington, DC, carrying the policy of lobbying oil and military corporations, in order to create even more wars. The whole world is tired of infinite conflicts, provoked by U.S. Government. Billions of dollars are spent for military operations and upholding of a huge army, while this money could be used to create new jobs or provide free health care. Put this entire immense budget together, and you could have yourself hundreds of factories, huge state hospitals, etc; but alas, U.S. Department of State and Obama administration spend this budget on arming law enforcement and the Army

One kills inside U.S., another – outside. That is the true face of US ‘democracy.’

Today we’re Rasmea Odeh, Mumia Abu Jamal, Konstantin Yaroshenko and others, who suffered the U.S. government repressions.

#Russia #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #Antiracism #AntiGlobalizationMovementAGM #Baltimore