On Aug. 4, a Russian court convicted Brittney Griner of drug smuggling and possession and sentenced her to nine years in jail. She was arrested in February for carrying cannabis vaping cartridges through the Moscow airport.

Griner, an African American athlete, played during the off-season in Russia. Many WNBA stars take similar international gigs due to unequal pay compared to their male counterparts. 

NPR reports: “The Olympian and [W]NBA champion says she must have put the cannabis in her bag by mistake. Her defense team notes that Griner has a medical marijuana card in Arizona to help her cope with injuries sustained over years of competition. But personal cannabis possession is illegal under any circumstances in Russia, similar to U.S. federal law.” 

Brittney Griner should be free. Instead, she has the misfortune of being one of the few diplomatic cards Russia holds at a time when U.S. imperialism is waging a global war against that country. Currently, it takes the form of a proxy war in Ukraine and economic sanctions. But like the recent U.S. provocations against the People’s Republic of China, it threatens to spill over into a world war.

A socialist government, or even a progressive bourgeois-nationalist one, would understand the value of releasing Brittney as a gesture of goodwill to the Black community in the U.S. Unfortunately, that is not the Putin government’s orientation. 

But the movement and community here need to know that there are nongovernmental organizations in Russia that oppose the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine and support the cause of the Donbass republics, which have been working for Griner’s release.

Among these groups is the Foundation to Battle Injustice headed by Mira Terada, an unjustly convicted Russian citizen kidnapped by the U.S., who spent two-and-a-half years in U.S. prisons. It was Terada who proposed the prisoner swap idea that the Biden regime is now taking credit for.

On Aug. 5, Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia is ready to discuss a prisoner swap for Griner, “within the framework of the channel that has been agreed by the presidents. There is a specified channel that has been agreed upon by [Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden], and no matter what anyone says publicly, this channel will remain in effect,” Lavrov explained at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit.

Biden & Co. ignored Brittney Griner’s plight for months, refusing to negotiate with the Russian authorities in good faith while they were busy setting up the war crisis in Ukraine and vicious sanctions on Russia. Griner’s case might never have reached the point of a trial or conviction had Washington acted differently.

It must be pointed out that many thousands of Black and Brown people have languished in U.S. prisons for years, even decades, for possession of marijuana and other recreational drugs. In 2020 Forbes reported, “An estimated 40,000 people today are incarcerated for marijuana offenses even as the overall legal cannabis industry is booming.”

The best way we can support Brittney is to demand that the White House make serious concessions to gain her release and allow her to return home – including ending the multi-billion-dollar weapons shipments fueling Ukraine’s war on Donbass that began more than eight years ago. 

On the same day Griner was convicted, U.S./NATO-supplied long range weapons were used to target a funeral in the capital of Donetsk, killing at least 8 people, including a 12-year-old girl. U.S.-supplied weapons have also recently been used to scatter anti-personnel mines across the city streets, killing and wounding civilians.

The people’s movement in this country must fight to stop the brutal U.S.-NATO-Ukraine war that is killing people daily and end the sanctions and military threats against Russia’s people. The billions of dollars being spent on the U.S. proxy war are dollars stolen from the Black community and other poor and working-class people here at home.

Tell Joe Biden: Free Brittney Griner! And stop the U.S. war on Russia and Donbass!

On August 2, a Baltimore City grand jury issued an eight-charge indictment, including first-degree murder, against a 15-year-old squeegee worker accused of killing a white motorist in downtown Baltimore. The shooting occurred after a 48-year-old white man, Timothy Reynolds, parked his car and approached a group of squeegee workers, most of whom were teenage Black men. Mr. Reynolds swung his bat at the group of teenagers, after which, one of the workers shot him in self-defense. 

From the moment the shot was fired, local media, politicians and police painted this young worker as a murderer. Baltimore City State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, followed up this fervor by taking a first-degree murder charge to the grand jury. For now, this move ensures that the squeegee worker will be prosecuted as an adult, even though he was only 14 at the time of the alleged incident. 

The prosecution of this young Black worker is another step in a long line of attempts by the local corrupt Democratic Party and its business allies to criminalize Blackness and push the Black community out of commercial areas in the city. The Democratic nominee for Baltimore state’s attorney, Ivan Bates, announced a plan to “clear the corners” of squeegee workers. At the core of Bates’ plan would be lifting the restriction on individual officers that currently prevents them from citing or arresting squeegee workers without consulting a supervisor first. 

Essentially, Bates’ plan is to harass and intimidate these majority-young, majority-Black workers out of their jobs, using the city’s brutal and racist police force to accomplish this task. In the recent Democratic primary election, Bates defeated two-term incumbent, Marilyn Mosby. Mosby is known for her decision to prosecute the cops who murdered Freddy Gray and to cease prosecutions of drug addicts and sex workers. Her successor brings a more traditional right-wing “law and order” pedigree to the office. Bates was elected with significant support from local restaurant owners and police unions. 

Whether it is Marilyn Mosby or Ivan Bates, this squeegee worker will be prosecuted for a murder he did not commit. Whoever fired at Timothy Reynolds that day, did so in self-defense after being charged by a white man nearly three times their age swinging a baseball bat. 

In this city and this country, the police can murder with impunity and rarely face accountability. Their murders are called protecting and serving. Young white killers and rapists like Kyle Rittenhouse and Brock Turner walk away from their horrific crimes relatively unscathed. If a Black 14-year-old defends themself, that’s called murder and they’re threatened with life in prison. 

For some perspective, George Zimmerman, the Florida racist who followed and murdered 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in cold blood, was never indicted on charges of first-degree murder. A grown man can hunt and murder a Black teenager, but a Black teenager can’t defend themself and their friends against a grown racist swinging a bat. That’s the real American justice system. 

The real criminals are the people roaming the streets wearing badges and their fascist allies, not Black teenagers trying to help feed their siblings. End the criminalization of Black life! Down with racist police terror! We need government that fights for the people, not restaurateurs and investment banks!

 

Havana, Jul 28 (Prensa Latina) The first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), Miguel Díaz-Canel, described unity among the world’s communist groups as necessary and urgent, Granma newspaper reported on its website on Thursday.

According to the newspaper, in a message to the International Forum of Marxist Parties, held virtually and organized by the Communist Party of China, the Cuban head of State expressed gratitude for the opportunity to exchange theoretical advances and practical experiences of these organizations.

In the text, read in front of representatives of 109 parties from all over the world by Rosario Penton, rector of the Ñico Lopez PCC Superior School, the head of State stressed that since its emergence, Marxism have given the scientific foundation to the class struggles of the world proletariat and of the international working class.

He pointed out that the objectivity of its postulates is revealed in a particular way in times of crisis.

Diaz-Canel referred in the letter to the mistakes made in the name of the Marxist tradition, the setbacks and deformations; although he highlighted the ways in which Marxism in Cuba merged with the best of the revolutionary national tradition, which had among its highest exponents Jose Marti and Fidel Castro Ruz.

He affirmed that for Cubans, being a Marxist means permanent learning from practice to integrate the development of the social sciences.

Diaz-Canel highlighted the ideas, concepts and guidelines approved in the 8th PCC Congress, and pointed out the three main tasks that have become strategies for partisan work: the economic battle, unity and struggle for peace and ideological firmness.

He pointed out that Cuba is working on the formation of a critical and transforming subject of prosperous, sustainable and democratic socialism, as part of the process of updating its development model.

We are firmly convinced that socialism is the only path to development with social justice as a creative overcoming of capitalism, its unsustainable irrationality and the values that guide it, he added.

Diaz-Canel recalled the positive and negative lessons of other countries that have previously embarked on this path and what it means to be close to and permanently stalking an adversary as powerful as the United States Government.

He denounced the growing aggressiveness of that power against Cuba, as well as the use of perverse instruments of unconventional warfare, the media intoxication laboratories, the disinformation campaign, lies, double standards and hypocrisy, through social networks.

“The reality of today’s world confirms that it is increasingly necessary and urgent for Marxist parties to unite to face the great challenges that lie ahead. Only unity in diversity will ensure victory,” the message concluded.

Source: Prensa Latina – English

China is no threat to the people in the United States or to the world;  Wall Street and the Pentagon are. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the third highest ranking U.S. government official, landed in Taiwan on August 2. This reckless and aggressive move that infringes on the sovereign rights of over 1.4 billion Chinese people pushes the needle ever closer to a larger, more destructive global war. 

The capitalist press portrays Pelosi as a lone individual, a political leader who single-handedly is defying the Chinese government. Nothing can be further from the truth.

Pelosi flew on a U.S. military plane flanked by Air Force F-35 fighters. Instead of flying directly over the South China Sea, her aircraft flew west around the Philippines. All the while, the massive nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group lay nearby. This battle group, armed to the teeth, includes a guided missile cruiser and nuclear submarines. 

U.S. violates “One China” policy

Taiwan is part of China, a fact that even the U.S. officially recognizes through the “One China” policy. The U.S. has signed three separate agreements with China confirming the One China policy. “One China” is also recognized by the United Nations

In response to Pelosi’s hawkish actions, the Chinese government issued a statement on August 2 that reads, in part:

“Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, 181 countries have established diplomatic relations with China on the basis of the one-China principle. The one-China principle is a universal consensus of the international community and a basic norm in international relations.

“In 1979, the United States made a clear commitment in the China-U.S. Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations – ‘The United States of America recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China. Within this context, the people of the United States will maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.’”

(Link to full Chinese Foreign Ministry statement)

Words and treaties are one thing with U.S. imperialism, but deeds are another. The Indigenous Nations could attest to this.

The Pentagon seeks to turn Taiwan into a military outpost

House Speaker Pelosi’s visit, while publicly lighting the match, has not been the only action by U.S. imperialism egging on and propping up Taiwan separatism. 

In November 2021, Struggle-La Lucha, reported: 

“On Oct. 7, (2021) the Wall Street Journal reported that about two dozen U.S. special operations and support troops were ‘secretly operating in Taiwan to train military forces there for at least a year.’” 

The Global Times points out that:

 “Since the U.S. has exposed the news through anonymous officials, it has taken a step forward to undermine, from covertly to semi-overtly, the key conditions for the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Chinese mainland and the U.S.” 

From the same Struggle-La Lucha report: 

“The U.S. government officially recognizes that Taiwan is a province of China, not a separate nation. Therefore, what the Biden administration is now doing — secretly sending special forces into the Chinese province — is in violation of both U.S. and international law.”

Additionally, in March 2021, Nikkei Asia reported that the United States was discussing stationing offensive missiles on Taiwan that would have violated the INF treaty.

Taiwan is manufacturing center for semiconductor chips

Taiwan is a major manufacturing center for semiconductor computer chips that power cars, laptops, phones and appliances. It produces 92% of the world’s advanced semiconductors. 

China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner. While China is building semiconductor plants on the mainland, breaking this supply chain is obviously intended to disrupt Chinese global production. The U.S. produces a mere 12%. It faces a shortage because it was more profitable for U.S. businesses to import from Asia.

That’s what’s behind the Chips and Science Act just passed by Congress on July 28. The act includes more than $52 billion for U.S. companies to take over computer chip production. Reports indicate that the goal is to turn Taiwan production away from China and toward the U.S.

China defends itself 

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is presently continuing exercises blockading the island. The Global Times reported the details of China’s response.

The headline reads: “PLA drills around Taiwan continue to ‘rehearse reunification operation’ amid Pelosi’s visit, ‘exercises blockading island to become routine’

“Joint military exercises around the island of Taiwan by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continued Wednesday with a joint blockade, sea assault, and land and air combat trainings, involving the use of advanced weapons including J-20 stealth fighter jets and DF-17 hypersonic missiles after the drills started on Tuesday evening when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed on the island which seriously violates China’s sovereignty.

“The exercises are unprecedented as the PLA conventional missiles are expected to fly over the island of Taiwan for the first time, the PLA forces will enter the area within 12 nautical miles of the island and the so-called median line will cease to exist, experts said, noting that by surrounding Taiwan entirely, the PLA is completely blockading the island demonstrating the Chinese mainland’s absolute control over the Taiwan question.”

The U.S./NATO proxy war — the 2014 U.S.-assisted coup and the consequent puppet regime in Ukraine — cannot be ignored by the Communist Party of China. Taiwan as a U.S. colony would be a clear existential threat to Chinese sovereignty. 

China cannot allow this, and the Pentagon knows it.

U.S. imperialism wants war — we must organize to stop it!

As the global capitalist crisis deepens, the U.S. imperialist system is propelled toward war. The drive toward war is independent of political administrations or individual intentions, regardless of how venal or corrupt. 

The people of the United States have nothing in common with the multi-trillion dollar war industry that profits off of dumping its weapons on Taiwan and all around the globe. The capitalist system and its bankers seek global domination while workers’ livelihoods are threatened by inflation and recession.

War brings nothing but more repression, misery, death and climate destruction. 

Prepare now: This is not just Pelosi but the whole damn system.

 

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S House of Representatives, landed in Taiwan Province on August 2. Her trip is a dangerous provocation against the People’s Republic of China.

Pelosi arrived on the 58th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson claimed Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin had attacked a U.S. Navy destroyer.

The Pentagon Papers later admitted this was a lie, a complete fabrication. That it was a lie didn’t stop LBJ, who used the lie to start bombing Vietnam.

Even the United States government concedes that there’s only one China. Because it’s an island, Taiwan is the only part of China that wasn’t liberated in 1949 by the People’s Liberation Army during the Chinese civil war.

With U.S. assistance, the defeated dictator Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan Province in 1949. His regime had already slaughtered 28,000 or more people in Taiwan during a massacre that began on Feb. 28, 1947. 

It’s doubtful that TV’s talking heads will mention that atrocity or that “democratic” Taiwan was under martial law from 1949 until 1987.

Nancy Pelosi claims she is going to Taiwan Province because of her concern for “human rights.” The Chinese Revolution is one of the greatest triumphs of human rights. 

In 1959, the People’s Liberation Army abolished serfdom in Tibet. Nancy Pelosi likes to be seen with that former serf owner known as the Dalai Lama.

What’s more of a human right than the right to live? When Mao Zedong declared “China has stood up” on Oct. 1, 1949, and the People’s Republic of China was born, Chinese people lived to be on average just 36 years old.

By 2022 life expectancy had more than doubled to reach 77.3 years. That’s a longer lifespan than in the capitalist United States.

Capitalist mouthpieces like The Economist, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and The Wall Street Journal have attacked the People’s Republic for its public health measures against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite China having over four times the population of the United States, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus is 70 times as large. As of Aug. 1, there have been 1,026,937 deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. compared to 14,735 deaths in the People’s Republic. (With 9,506 of those deaths occurring in Hong Kong.)  

The real attitude of Speaker Pelosi towards human rights can be seen in her trip six months ago to “Israel,” which is really occupied Palestine.

Pelosi didn’t visit Gaza, which is the world’s largest ghetto. Instead, she declared that U.S. support for the Israeli apartheid regime was “ironclad.”

Nancy Pelosi’s Baltimore

Although Speaker Pelosi’s congressional seat is in San Francisco, her hometown is Baltimore. Pelosi’s father, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., spent eight years as a congressman there before becoming mayor of a thoroughly segregated Baltimore from 1947 to 1959. Her brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III, was also Baltimore’s mayor from 1967 to 1971.

Pelosi’s father was mayor when 24 people were arrested on July 11, 1948, for playing on the all-white tennis courts in Baltimore’s Druid Hill park. White and Black tennis players, as well as their supporters, were jailed for defying segregation laws.

H.L. Mencken ― who had suggested to Clarence Darrow to put William Jennings Bryan on the stand during the Scopes “Monkey Trial” ― denounced these Jim Crow arrests in his last newspaper column. Many of the brave activists were supporters of the Communist Party and the Progressive Party, whose presidential candidate Henry Wallace was denouncing the Cold War.

One of the many humiliations suffered by Black people in Baltimore when Pelosi’s father and brother were mayors was when it snowed. While the all-Black Flag House projects remained covered in snow, the streets were swiftly cleaned next door in all-white Little Italy.

The city officials claimed they had no responsibility to plow the driveways of a public housing project, which the Flag Houses were. The 14th amendment right to equal protection didn’t exist in Baltimore, Charm City.

The D’Alesandro family lived in Little Italy. Black candidate Billy Murphy challenged the white mayor William Schaefer in the 1983 election. Here’s newspaper columnist Michael Olesker quoting Nancy Pelosi’s father:

“On the night of the election, I saw D’Alesandro at Schaefer’s campaign headquarters. I was now writing a column for the Baltimore Sun.

“’How did the vote go in Little Italy?’ I asked.

“’Schaefer won, 487 to 1,’ D’Alesandro said. One vote for Murphy in the entire community?

“’Yeah,’ D’Alesandro said. “And we’re gonna find that guy.’” 

Nancy Pelosi was silent about her father’s threat to the anti-racist who cast their vote for a Black candidate. While Pelosi was not yet a member of congress, she had already been chair of the California Democratic Party. 

We’ll always remember Viola Liuzzo, the mother in an Italian-American family who fought for Black freedom and was murdered by FBI informant Gary T. Rowe in Selma, Alabama. Father Jim Groppi, who fought racism alongside Vel Phillips and Lloyd Barbee in super segregated Milwaukee, won’t be forgotten.

Nancy Pelosi wasn’t a fellow freedom fighter. She was 23 years old and missing in action when hundreds of people were arrested on July 4, 1963, so Black children could attend Gwynn Oak amusement park just outside of Baltimore.

Driving Black people out of San Francisco

Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco is the most gentrified major city in the United States. The median household income in her 12th congressional district is $120,000. Many poor and working people can’t afford to live there.

Seventy-seven billionaires live in San Francisco. That’s more than London’s total.

It’s these billionaires that Pelosi represents when she denounces the People’s Republic of China. Not the 8,000 homeless people living in San Francisco, including 4,000 human beings who live on its streets.

Nancy Pelosi’s own fortune has been estimated to be $135 million. 

Since 1970, more than 50,000 Black people have been driven out of the metropolis. While San Francisco was 14% Black in 1970, today it’s less than 6% Black.  Meanwhile, 40% of San Francisco’s homeless population are Black. 

Speaker Pelosi is also representing the reactionary forces who oppose the Chinese Revolution. Just as Miami is a center for Cuban counter-revolutionaries, so San Francisco is one of the centers of those who hate the People’s Republic of China.

It’s the social conditions of California ― with 161,000 homeless people and 205,000 people locked-up in jails and prisons ― and the exploitation it represents that Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to bring to China.

Taiwan was stolen from China by the Japanese Empire in 1895. Three years later the United States occupied the Philippines and killed a million Filipinos.

The People’s Republic of China will recover Taiwan sooner than later. Nancy Pelosi’s dangerous trip needs to be rejected by poor and working people.

On July 29, the FBI violently raided the African Peoples Socialist Party’s Uhuru House in St. Petersburg, Florida, and their Uhuru Solidarity Center in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as the private residence of APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela using flash-bang grenades and then handcuffing him and his partner in their home. 

Chairman Omali is 80 years old, and this unjustified intrusion was amplified by the violence of the FBI. He was never accused of possessing weapons or participating in violent actions to justify this terror against his family.

His supposed crime? Helping to disseminate “Russian propaganda,” working with an alleged agent of Russia and taking his direction — not to plant bombs or pass on State secrets mind you — but simply for purportedly having the same opinion and giving a platform to words that counter the U.S. narrative about its wars.

Flimsy excuses like these were used by the FBI in orchestrating the violent slaughter of members of the Black Panther Party, some while they slept like Chairman Fred Hampton in Chicago. And more new evidence recently came out about the culpability of the FBI in the assassination of Malcolm X.

In fact, the history of this country is littered with false accusations, sabotage, and assassinations of Black political organizations. When J. Edgar Hoover led the FBI, his racism-inspired hatred of the civil rights movement and Black people in general, justified with his crusade against anyone he deemed a communist, is well documented.

As progressive organizations dedicated to building social justice in this country, we must especially be in complete solidarity with the Black victims of this latest attack against yet another Black organization by the FBI and reject the use of this newest anti-communism. Despite Russia now being a capitalist country, this Cold War propaganda from the Soviet era utilizes the same big lies and vilifications as an attempted club against solidarity. 

These lies attempt to hide the hypocrisy of a government that uses the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, and others to sponsor regime change worldwide and encourage many to instigate violence against popular movements. In addition, the alleged Russian agent, Alexander Ionov, who is not accused of fomenting violence, is targeted for simply supporting the efforts of those who oppose U.S. imperialist policies abroad.

In response to the charges, he wrote: “Stop looking for enemies everywhere. No one threatens democracy in your country except those people who infringe on women’s reproductive rights, create unbearable conditions for migrants, and also oppress people on racial grounds! You are now supplying weapons to Ukraine and other countries. You are interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. I have been and will be a friend of many Americans. If you see me as your enemy, then this is your right, but it is not on the side of justice!”

The U.S. capitalist class, which had hoped the trillions spent on war would solve its economic contradictions and growing political isolation – is now desperate to cover itself, threatening anyone mentioning its naked oppressiveness with arrest.

Instead of protecting the public against terrorist white supremacist groupings, the FBI is trying to stifle dissent to hide the fact that the U.S. is using the war in Ukraine to expand NATO and as a proxy war against Russia and China, recklessly flirting with World War III.

In demanding allegiance to its narrative, Facebook was pressured by the U.S. government into giving the reins of monitoring and censoring of posts over to the pro-NATO Atlantic Council. The Atlantic Council’s board of directors includes former CIA Directors Michael Morell and Leon Panetta and former Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Frances Townsend. In a letter explaining the purpose of this and the recent hijackings of other social media, including TikTok, Twitter, and Reddit, by U.S. intelligence agencies, Facebook explains, in summary, that it is to ensure that the narratives presented on social media correspond with U.S. foreign policy goals.

These “goals” are to distract us from the highest inflation rate in 40 years; the crumbling of vital infrastructure; the lack of a functioning health care system; the rise in homelessness and the desperation of working and poor people in this country.

This must be a wake-up call to all our organizations and activists fighting for a better world. We must not let them isolate any of us and pick us off one by one. In this historical period, our most important task is to unite and fight the power of reaction. Today, the U.S. government’s support for fascist movements abroad and their refusal to stop white supremacist terror here is a march toward fascism. And, as far away as it may seem for some today — as history informs us — that ideology and its accompanying terror could turn the desperation of workers into a tool used against themselves.

Not only is it urgent that we stand in solidarity with the APSP but also with all those affected by these FBI raids, which hope to use this attack to test and extend their political persecution more generally across our entire working class. In fact, although the FBI seemed to reserve their greatest violence against the APSP, other non-Black organizations have been indicted with the same ridiculous charges.

We remain in solidarity with the APSP and others targeted by the FBI and reject this new version of McCarthyism and racist terror.

FBI and the U.S. government, stop your racist targeting of Black organizations!

We the undersigned have the right to fight against the U.S. war, for liberation, and for social and economic justice!

Socialist Unity Party
Black Alliance for Peace

United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)
Martin Luther King Coalition of Greater Los Angeles
Partido Nacional de La Raza Unida

Association of Raza Educators Los Angeles
Puerto Rican Alliance
Harvard Boulevard Block Club
Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice

San Diego Coalition to Free all Political Prisoners
Struggle-La Lucha newspaper
Peoples Power Assembly
Unemployed Workers Union
Youth Against War & Racism
Women In Struggle/Mujeres En Lucha
Prisoners Solidarity Committee

Solidarity with Donbass & Antifascists in Ukraine
Malcolm X Center for Human Rights & Self Determination
LA MAS

 

August 1 — Yesterday, 200 people took to the streets to fight for abortion rights, childcare, healthcare, and more. The streets rang with rage against racist, sexist, anti-worker Attorney General Jeff Landry who, in service to his millionaire backers, is heading a right-wing campaign to rip away the rights of women and all other gender-oppressed people capable of pregnancy.

This was the latest protest in the ongoing fightback against the Louisiana abortion ban. Recent protesters in Indiana and Georgia also engaged in militant action against the right wing, with the Indiana protesters shutting down the state legislature.

We need to keep the fight up! In order to win back abortion rights – and more – we have to build a movement like the one that won Roe v. Wade, to begin with. To be part of building this movement, contact us at Louisiana4AbortionRights@gmail.com.

El salar de Atacama, ubicado al norte de Chile y con una extensión de 1.200 kilómetros cuadrados, es la mayor fuente de litio del mundo. Estamos de pie frente a un acantilado, observando la gran fosa, al extremo sur del salar, protegida de la vista del público. Es allí donde las grandes empresas chilenas se han instalado para extraer el litio y exportarlo – en gran parte sin procesar – al mercado mundial. “¿Sabes quién era el suegro del rey del litio en Chile?”, nos pregunta Loreto, quien nos guió hasta este mirador para contemplar las blancas arenas del salar. Su respuesta no nos sorprende mucho: se trata nada más y nada menos que del difunto dictador militar Augusto Pinochet (que gobernó Chile de 1973 a 1990). Con el “rey del litio”, se refiere a Julio Ponce Lerou, el mayor accionista de la empresa minera de litio Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (SQM), y yerno de un dictador.

SQM y Albemarle, las dos principales empresas mineras chilenas, dominan el salar de Atacama. Es imposible conseguir un permiso para visitar el extremo sur del salar, en donde han establecido sus operaciones. Las empresas extraen el litio bombeando salmuera del subsuelo del salar y dejándola evaporar durante meses antes de llevar a cabo la extracción. “SQM nos roba el agua para extraer el litio”, declaró en 2018 la ex presidenta del Consejo de Pueblos Indígenas Atacameños, Ana Ramos, según Deutsche Welle. El concentrado que queda tras la evaporación se convierte en carbonato de litio e hidróxido de litio, que luego se exportan, y forman materias primas clave utilizadas en la producción de baterías de iones de litio. Aproximadamente un tercio del litio mundial procede de Chile. Según Goldman Sachs, “el litio es la nueva gasolina”.

Lo que hace la necesidad

​​La propiedad del salar es disputada entre el Estado, los pueblos originarios de este territorio y empresas privadas. Pero, como nos dijo un miembro de la comunidad Lickanantay – una de las comunidades indígenas que reconocen el salar de Atacama como su hogar –, la mayoría de los propietarios de la tierra ya no viven en la zona. Juan, que se dedica a la cría de caballos y desciende de una familia dedicada al pastoreo, nos cuenta que la gente ahora “vive de las rentas de la tierra. No les importa lo que pase acá”. Sin embargo, Juan sabe que estas rentas son minúsculas. “Lo que nos pagan por explotar nuestras tierras es prácticamente una propina”, dice. “No es nada comparado con lo que ganan. Pero sigue siendo mucho dinero”. Para la mayoría de los Lickanantay, dice Juan, “el litio no es un tema, porque, aunque se sabe que daña el medio ambiente, nos está proporcionando dinero”. “La necesidad lleva a la gente a hacer muchas cosas”, añade.

Los impactos ambientales negativos de la extracción de litio han sido ampliamente estudiados por la comunidad científica y observados por las y los guías turísticos de la zona. Angelo, un guía, nos cuenta que le preocupa que las reservas de agua se contaminen debido a las actividades mineras y el impacto que esto tiene sobre la fauna del desierto de Atacama, incluidos los flamencos rosados. “De vez en cuando nos encontramos un flamenco rosado muerto”, dice. Cristina Inés Dorador, doctora en ciencias naturales, quien participó en la redacción del nuevo proyecto de Constitución de Chile, ha publicado varios trabajos sobre el declive de la población de flamencos rosados en el salar. Sin embargo, Dorador también ha dicho que se podrían utilizar nuevas tecnologías para evitar el impacto ambiental negativo generalizado. Ingrid Garcés Millas, doctora en Ciencias de la Tierra por la Universidad de Zaragoza e investigadora de la Universidad de Antofagasta, señaló en un artículo para Le Monde Diplomatique que el uso actual de la extracción de litio ha provocado el deterioro de las “formas de vida de [los] pueblos andinos”. Un ejemplo que aportó fue que mientras la industria del litio utiliza el suministro de agua subterránea, las “comunidades se abastecen [de agua] con camiones cisterna”.

Según un informe de MiningWatch Canadá y el Atlas de Justicia Ambiental, “para producir una tonelada de litio en los salares de Atacama (Chile), se evaporan 2.000 toneladas de agua, lo que provoca un daño importante tanto en la disponibilidad de agua como en la calidad de las reservas subterráneas de agua dulce”.

Mientras tanto, en la región de Atacama no parece existir la urgencia de un debate sobre la extracción de litio. La mayor parte de la gente parece haber aceptado que la extracción de litio ha llegado para quedarse. Entre los y las activistas hay discrepancias sobre cómo abordar el tema. Las personas más radicales creen que el litio no debe extraerse, mientras que otras debaten sobre quién debe beneficiarse de la riqueza generada por su extracción. Otros, como Angelo y Loreto, creen que la voluntad de Chile de exportar el litio sin procesar niega al país la posibilidad de explorar los beneficios que podría reportar el procesamiento del metal dentro del país.

Bienes comunes naturales

Justo antes de las elecciones presidenciales en Chile de noviembre de 2021, entrevistamos a Giorgio Jackson, ahora uno de los asesores más cercanos al presidente de Chile, Gabriel Boric. Nos dijo que el nuevo Gobierno de Chile estudiaría la posibilidad de nacionalizar recursos clave, como el cobre y el litio. Esto ya no parece estar en la agenda del Gobierno, a pesar de la expectativa de que los altos precios del cobre y el litio podrían financiar las tan necesarias reformas al sistema de pensiones y la modernización de la infraestructura del país.

La idea de la nacionalización se discutió en la convención constitucional, pero finalmente no fue incluída en el texto del proyecto de constitución, que se someterá a votación el 4 de septiembre. En su lugar, la propuesta de constitución se basa en el artículo 19 de la constitución de 1980, que establece “el derecho a vivir en un medio ambiente libre de contaminación”. Con la aprobación de la nueva constitución quedará establecida, en el artículo 134, la existencia de los bienes comunes naturales, sobre los cuales el Estado “tiene un deber especial de custodia, con el fin de asegurar los derechos de la naturaleza y el interés de las generaciones presentes y futuras”.

En los últimos días del Gobierno del ex presidente Sebastián Piñera, el Ministerio de Minería de Chile adjudicó a dos empresas – BYD Chile SpA y Servicios y Operaciones Mineras del Norte S.A. – derechos de extracción de 80.000 toneladas de litio (a cada una) durante un plazo de 20 años. La Corte de Apelaciones de Copiapó atendió una petición del gobernador de Copiapó, Miguel Vargas, y de varias comunidades indígenas. En enero de 2022, el tribunal suspendió el acuerdo; decisión que fue confirmada en junio por la Corte Suprema. Esto no implica que Chile vaya a dar marcha atrás en la explotación del litio por parte de las grandes empresas, pero sí sugiere que se está desarrollando un nuevo interés contra la explotación generalizada de los recursos naturales en el país.

Hasta 2016, Chile producía el 37% de la cuota de mercado mundial de litio, lo que convertía al país en el mayor productor mundial de este metal. Cuando el Gobierno de Chile aumentó las tasas de regalías a los mineros, varios de ellos redujeron la producción y algunos aumentaron su participación en Argentina (SQM, por ejemplo, ingresó en una empresa mixta conjunta con Lithium Americas Corporation para trabajar en un proyecto en Argentina). Chile está, actualmente, detrás de Australia en términos de producción de litio en el mercado mundial, cayendo del 37 al 29% entre 2016 y 2019 (con la perspectiva de que la participación de Chile caerá aún más, hasta llegar al 17% en 2030).

La observación de Juan sobre que “la necesidad lleva a la gente a hacer muchas cosas” recoge el estado de ánimo entre los atacameños. Las necesidades de las personas que habitan esta región parecen estar sólo por detrás de las necesidades de las grandes empresas. Los familiares de los antiguos dictadores acumulan riqueza a costa de la tierra, mientras que las y los propietarios de la misma – por necesidad – la venden por una propina.

Este artículo fue producido para Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad es un historiador, editor y periodista indio. Es miembro de la redacción y corresponsal en jefe de Globetrotter. Es editor en jefe de LeftWord Books y director del Instituto Tricontinental de Investigación Social. También es miembro senior no-residente del Instituto Chongyang de Estudios Financieros de la Universidad Renmin de China. Ha escrito más de 20 libros, entre ellos The Darker Nations y The Poorer Nations. Sus últimos libros son Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism y The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power (con Noam Chomsky)

Taroa Zúñiga Silva es escritora asociada y coordinadora de medios en español de Globetrotter. Es co-editora, junto con Giordana García Sojo, del libro Venezuela, Vórtice de la Guerra del Siglo XXI (2020). Forma parte del comité coordinador de Argos: Observatorio Internacional de Migraciones y Derechos Humanos. También es parte de Mecha Cooperativa, un proyecto del Ejército Comunicacional de Liberación.

What do the New York Times, Kiev Independent, Euromaidan Press, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, TikTok here in the U.S. have in common?

They are all funded by or staffed by Western and U.S. intelligence members pushing the U.S. narrative about the war in Ukraine. This is why Struggle-La-Lucha.org organized a fact-finding mission to Ukraine and Russia to report on the suppressed information that challenges the narrative of NATO and its member states, led by the U.S. This is the second part of my report. (Part 1: Fact-finding trip to Donbass: A front-line shelter in Rubizhne)

The social media outlets are an open door to organizations like NATO, military suppliers, and the Atlantic Council, with executives making decisions about what content is allowed to circulate widely on social media and what content is encouraged to support U.S. foreign policy goals. Some of these same organizations sold us the misinformation about weapons of mass destruction regarding Iraq — like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, funded by the U.S. government and its defense industry contractors. They partner with Twitter and others to allegedly stop misinformation and provide “alternate” information that counters or eliminates views that don’t agree with the Pentagon’s narrative on Russia, China, or Ukraine.

In John Pilger’s 2016 documentary, “The Coming War on China,” he says: “ASPI has played a leading role — some would say, the leading role — in driving Australia’s mendacious and self-destructive and often absurd China-bashing campaign. The current Coalition government, perhaps the most right-wing and incompetent in Australia’s recent history, has relied upon the ASPI to disseminate Washington’s desperate strategic policies, into which much of the Australian political class, along with its intelligence and military structures, has been integrated.”

Russian stereotypes return

Thanks to the actual “big brother” watch dogs, Russian stereotypes that are as sophisticated as the 1960s cartoon characters Boris and Natasha are showing their ugly heads again. However, this time — in addition to pushing war and anti-communism despite the fall of the Soviet Union — the media is elevating fascism along with apologies for fascist organizations.

And, of course, Hollywood must get involved to help the lies go down smoothly with Hollywood movies like “Old Man” with Jeff Bridges or “Stranger Things” (third and fourth seasons), reinforcing those messages as we relax in front of the tube. 

In fact, in a video interview, novelist Stephen King thought he was talking to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, praising Stepan Bandera. Bandera, a Ukrainian fascist and war criminal, was the head of efforts to assist Nazi Germany in their genocide in Ukraine, killing tens of thousands of Polish and Jewish people. King also said during the video meeting that he would even consider screening a fake film passed off as authentic, praising the neo-Nazi Azov Batallion and vilifying Russians.

All this to make those who used to know better forget that the people of the Soviet Union and Russia were responsible for defeating one of the greatest threats to humanity — fascism — during World War II, losing 27 million of their people doing so.

Celebrating May 1 and May 9

I got reminded of the pride felt by the Russian people in defending humanity from fascism while making my way to the Lenin monument at October Square in Moscow on May 1 of this year. This was one of the many celebrations of International Workers Day leading up to the “Great Patriotic War” celebrations on May 9. Many shops along the way had posters proudly displaying the hammer-and-sickle flag of the Soviet Union to show that pride.

In addition to the activities by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the second largest Party in Parliament, other celebrations were being held by the Union of Communists — which my organization, the Socialist Unity Party, has worked with in the past — which I also attended. 

One of the Brazilian participants who is now in Moscow studying Russian said: “I am here because I think it is very important, the fight of workers in all the world who are working in difficulty in all countries. Many are without jobs or have low salaries and in my country, people are living in the roads. So, this is a very important moment to gather together to say we need a just world, we need better social conditions all over the world. There are people here who are communists and remember their conditions were better under the Soviet Union so it is important to celebrate here with Lenin.”

At home with organizer Olga

An organizer for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Olga, made her way to this celebration after participating in her organization’s parade earlier. She explained why May 1 is so important: “It’s a great day, the first of May. We remember that this was founded by Chicago workers who were the first to come on the street to fight for their rights in 1886. In this time people in many countries celebrate, including Russia too, because we know it should be free education, free medical care and we still have lots of problems that must be decided together.” Olga mentioned that the policies of the Soviet Union regarding free medicine continued in Russia after its fall and it helped the Russian people, including her mother, handle the COVID crisis better.

In Moscow, I was accompanied by Leonid Ilderkin, from the Union of Political Refugees and Political Prisoners of Ukraine. He is one of the many individuals forced to flee Ukraine due to the political persecution of communists or members of many labor or workers organizations. Leonid and members of the socialist organization Borotba helped us organize this trip and provided translation for me.

After the powerful speeches, we were invited to join Olga and her family for dinner to discuss the movement in the U.S. and my questions about Russia today. The type of hospitality we experienced reminded me of being down South in the U.S., and not fitting the stereotype of the cold Russians at all.

After leaving her family’s home and enjoying a great meal, we came away with a better understanding of the connections that people here have with people living in Ukraine. They are in solidarity with their friends and family, who are now targeted by the allies of U.S. imperialism. When discussing Ukraine with Olga’s mom, she cried, telling me about her friend who was caught in the violence by fascist forces there.

We are now being told that the Russian people are also bloodthirsty and are purposely targeting civilians and committing unspeakable war crimes in Ukraine. In part one of these articles, I mentioned the National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored Kiev Independent, published in Ukraine. That media’s reliance on unsubstantiated reports and videos given them by one of the fascist regiments, the Azov Batallion, is then passed on to Western media without any verification of its content.

Euromaidan Press — U.S. sponsored media

Another media source out of Ukraine also funded by Western intelligence sources — the Euromaidan Press — does a thorough job of keeping the U.S.-sponsored narrative alive.

For example, their accounts of what went on immediately after the Russian intervention on February 23 and the current situation in areas of Ukraine that I visited were completely different from my experience. 

During the first month after the Russian intervention in Ukraine, the Euromaidan Press reported “evidence” and videos indicating that the main targets of the Russian military were civilians.

However, in an exposé published by Newsweek, “Putin’s Holding Back,” analysts and advisers working for the Pentagon became unlikely whistleblowers. Covering most of the same period Euromaidan Press was referring to — the first 24 days after the Russian intervention on February 23 — Newsweek quotes U.S. military officers and analysts, all were surprised at how little civilian loss there was on the part of the Russian military. One of the quotes from an adviser who is also a U.S. Air Force officer makes clear their message and intentions: “I’m frustrated by the current narrative — that Russia is intentionally targeting civilians, that it is demolishing cities, and that Putin doesn’t care. Such a distorted view stands in the way of finding an end before true disaster or the war spreads to the rest of Europe.”

About two months before I arrived there, Euromaidan Press wrote about a village in the Lugansk region of Ukraine called Rubizhne. See what essential detail is twisted in this report. The article “How the Russian Invasion Destroyed My World,” by Orysia Hrudka, shares an account of someone who was in touch with relatives and friends in Rubizhne about two weeks after the Russian intervention in Ukraine:

“Since 8 March I have been unable to contact my close ones in Rubizhne. … My grandmother, together with many other people from Rubizhne in Luhansk Oblast, was brought to the town nearby. The town was not yet ready to place the refugees in one of the buildings. Food and mattresses were just being brought there. …

“On 11 March, at 10:56 pm, I learned that my friend’s husband’s parents had been shot at a checkpoint on the way from Rubizhne to Kreminna. Her husband’s parents were kind people and were bringing food from the village to Rubizhne because the city was cut off from food supplies. The mother died immediately, and the father was able to call his son and say his last words. The son talked with his father until his father’s heart stopped. We still can’t find the bodies of our friends’ parents. …

“On 25 March, my friend’s mother was killed in the Russian shelling. She came to bring the water to the South district in Rubizhne. Her body is still there.”

What I saw in Rubizhne

This is a heart-wrenching account of brutality and neglect, the lack of water and food, danger in leaving and coming to Rubizhne at that time. It generally corresponds with what I heard from the people of Lugansk at the shelter where there were 350 people who had escaped as their homes were bombed by tanks. They were left with nothing and totally dependent on the humanitarian aid of food and water to survive and the protection of the military to stay alive. However, they all said it was the Ukrainian military — not the Russian military — that shot into their homes with guns and tanks; that abandoned them with no food, water, or transportation. In fact, the residents of the shelter in Rubizhne I spoke to said if not for the protection of the Russian soldiers they would not have survived. See Part 1 for the full interviews of Rubizhne residents forced to flee their homes.

“Ukrainian soldiers did not help at all,” said a teary-eyed Larisa, who was in charge of the shelter and reflected on the hardship for the children there. “That is unacceptable. No one from the Ukrainian side asked us or visited us. I had supported Ukraine, but after I saw how they left these people I no longer supported them.”

The thunder heard around us while we were there was a constant reminder of how the area was still very dangerous. That thunder was not from lightning. It was the sound of exploding artillery shells that, like lightning, hit a nearby apartment building while we were there. And, to be clear, that artillery was fired from Ukrainian military positions.

When I arrived in Rubizhne on May 6, the area was under the control of the Russian military and the Lugansk Peoples Militia, which brought in humanitarian aid. In my short time in Lugansk, from the border to the shelter, I witnessed many trucks bringing water, grains, diapers, milk, etc. My clumsy attempt at helping to bring the supplies in, ending in an almost dropped box, confirmed these items were diapers and foodstuffs.

How residents got aid

The Euromaidan Press account also left the impression that the Russian forces were targeting civilians at checkpoints and on the dangerous roads they controlled. However, this area only came under Russian control a little over three weeks prior to our visit on May 6. According to Alexey Alba, an organizer with Borotba who accompanied me in Lugansk: “The roads here, although dangerous now, were even more dangerous during Ukrainian control, so leaving was not a safe option then. It became more possible after the area came under Russian control.” 

Larisa added: “We tell people it is not safe, but if they want to leave here, of course, they can. No one will stop them.”

Alexey, once a resident of Odessa who moved with his family to Lugansk, was an elected member of the Odessa Regional Council and a former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Alexey barely escaped with his life in the violence of fascists after the 2014 coup, a coup financed by the U.S.

Instead of discouraging and shooting at civilians trying to bring food to Rubizhne, as the journalist from Euromaidan Press implied of the Russian soldiers, Alexey explained a different reality: “Because of the war, getting assistance to the shelter was difficult. The trade unions in charge of delivering food in Lugansk were unable to due to the area becoming a war zone. So, they had to hand over that task to the military.”

Despite the danger and the fact that the Ukrainian military still controlled the area, Alexey continued, “the Russian and Lugansk soldiers, at great risk to their own lives, were determined to get aid to the residents of the shelter even before the area was liberated.”

Why such a different view from Euromaidan Press, a view contradicted by U.S. military sources covered in Newsweek and my own live interviews and experience there?

Funded by U.S. National Endowment for Democracy

Euromaidan Press is an NGO partly funded by the National Democratic Institute, one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy. Euromaidan Press is also partly funded by the British Embassy in Kiev. And Euromaidan Press is partly funded by the International Renaissance Foundation subsidized by the Soros’ Open Society Foundation, which funds regime change efforts and was heavily involved in funding the anti-Russian opposition in Ukraine.

Alya Shandra, the editor-in-chief at Euromaidan Press, and Christine Chraibi, an editor, both state in their profiles their wish for European integration, especially, said Chraibi, in terms of NATO membership.

Orysia Hrudka, the writer of this particular piece in Euromaidan Press, is also employed at the Agents of Change School, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — a U.S. government agency— and the U.S. Embassy Democracy Fund, which, according to their website, “supports unique and promising projects that promote the capacity building and self-sufficiency of NGOs in Ukraine.”

Since the first U.S.-sponsored coup in 2004, those NGOs were how the U.S. government poured billions of dollars into regime-change efforts, culminating in the second undemocratic 2014 coup in Ukraine.

Euromaidan Press also ran stories pushing the allegations of rape by Russian soldiers, “confirmed” by former Ukrainian Ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova who said that 25 teenage girls were kept in a basement in Bucha and gang-raped; nine of them are now pregnant. After evidence showed those claims were false, the accusations called into question the legitimacy of other Ukrainian government claims. The Ukrainian Parliament promptly fired Ombudsman Denisova with the advice: “Check the facts before publication” and “disclose only information for which there is sufficient evidence.” 

The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion

Another staff person at Euromaidan Press is Bohdan Ben. According to his description on the site, Ben is a researcher in the field of social and ethical philosophy and the field of local governance. He was among the winners of the program “Youth Will Change Ukraine” organized by the Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Foundation.

On November 4, 2019, Ben did a piece countering the letter circulated by 40 U.S. House members asking that the Azov Battalion be put on the terrorist list. In it, he characterizes the Azov Battalion as a mixture of various ideologies leaning towards far-right politics but stresses that they cannot be considered a neo-Nazi organization since they are an official part of the Ukrainian military.

However, his admissions in the article remarkably defeat his premises and lousy logic. In denying that the Azov Batallion has aided and abetted terrorists around the world he says, reflecting on the letter: “That the Azov Battalion ‘openly welcomes neo-Nazis into its ranks’ is true in some cases. Indeed, several radically far-right individuals were fighting or training in this detachment … several commanders of the Battalion previously belonged to right-wing Ukrainian NGOs or political parties. Naturally, volunteers with nationalist political backgrounds preferred serving in Azov rather than other detachments, to have like-minded people around. This is entirely within the legal framework.”

It should be noted that the “legal framework” has been radically changing since 2014 to favor fascist organizations and ban and criminalize their greatest opposition —  the communist parties.

He also states that the political entity most affiliated with the Azov Batallion, the National Corps, is a separate organization and cannot be assumed to represent the views of the Azov organization when they promote Nazism and terrorism. When he then mentions that the Corps is led by Andriy Biletskyi, who he admits is “a far-right nationalist who espoused white supremacist views.” He also forgets to say that Biletskyi founded the Azov militia group in 2014. Ben also quotes Biletskyi in 2010 saying the Ukrainian nation’s mission was to “lead the white race of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen.” Untermenschen is an unscientific term used by Nazi Germany, implying an ethnic designation. They are supposedly inferior people who fall into a category of basically anyone not “accepted” by the German Nazis.

Ben also admits:

“Azov Battalion and the National Corps Political Party indeed had contacts with persons who called for violence or committed crimes … Olena Semeniaka, for example, acknowledged contacts with the American Rise Above Movement (RAM) and said that RAM members came to Ukraine to ‘learn how to create youth forces in the ways Azov has’… However, there is little evidence of any calls for terrorism or violence by members of the Battalion.”

Azov and ‘Unite the Right’ riot in Charlottesville

After this meeting with RAM that Ben was referring to, three RAM members participated in and helped organize the August 11, 2017, Unite the Right riot of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, North Carolina, where Heather Heyer was killed by a white supremacist driving into the counter-protest she participated in. Those three were arrested in Virginia for inciting and organizing violence there, and sentenced to a little over two years in prison.

It’s especially clear how far from the truth Euromaidan Press is willing to go in allegiance to the Azov Battalion when comparing what Ben is saying to the 2019 report by TIME.com – which is no friend of Russia or the Donbass republics and is a supporter of the Ukrainian military. That report — “Like, Share, Recruit: How a White-Supremacist Militia Uses Facebook to Radicalize and Train New Members — contradicts Ben’s assertion that the Corps is not related to nor speaks for Azov.

TIME reporters Simon Shuster and Billy Perrigo expose that the National Corps, instead of being separate from Azov, is an integral part of an Azov recruitment center in Kyiv. They write: “The main recruitment center for Azov, known as the Cossack House, stands in the center of Kyiv, a four-story brick building on loan from Ukraine’s Defense Ministry [my emphasis -JP]. In the courtyard is a cinema and a boxing club. The top floor hosts a lecture hall and a library, full of books by authors who supported German fascism, like Ezra Pound and Martin Heidegger … On the ground floor is a shop called Militant Zone, which sells clothes and key chains with stylized swastikas and other neo-Nazi merchandise. [my emphasis -JP]

The reporters interviewed the person Ben mentioned, Olena Semeniaka, who has almost achieved celebrity status in the white supremacist world:

“It could be described as a small state within a state,” says Olena Semenyaka, the head of international outreach for the Azov movement. On a tour of the Cossack House in 2019, she told TIME that Azov’s mission was to form a coalition of far-right groups across the Western world, with the ultimate aim of taking power throughout Europe.

Semenyaka is speaking for the Azov organization. However, Ben said the National Corps she represents is separate. The TIME reporters also agree with Semenyaka regarding the direction of Azov. They write:

“Outside Ukraine, Azov occupies a central role in a network of extremist groups stretching from California across Europe to New Zealand, according to law enforcement officials on three continents. And it acts as a magnet for young men eager for combat experience. Ali Soufan, a security consultant and former FBI agent who has studied Azov, estimates that more than 17,000 foreign fighters have come to Ukraine over the past six years from 50 countries.”

Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 Muslims in March 2019 as they worshiped in a Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque wrote in his manifesto that he visited Ukraine. He also wore the emblem of the Battalion when he did the killing and featured the Azov emblem in his manifesto. By the way, the recent killing in Buffalo, New York, of 10 Black people in a supermarket was done by an 18-year-old white supremacist who said he was influenced by Tarrant — and the beat goes on.

The Facebook algorithm driving white supremacists

TIME explains how Azov grew such a wide and influential global presence — in a word, Facebook and other social media. However, it was Facebook’s algorithm driving white supremacists and disaffected youth toward them that allowed Azov exponential visibility growth.

In a simple experiment done while writing this article, I was able to get to an Azov Battalion recruiting video simply by searching the word “Azov,” on Facebook, which led me in about two clicks to the recruitment video on Youtube with the Azov logo, the Sonnenrad. You can find my search here: My_Search_for_Azov.  

Why have social media outlets in the U.S., that were quick to act when it was revealed that ISIS was successfully recruiting members through Facebook and Youtube and other social media, refused to act on white supremacist terrorism and recruitment?

Perhaps a former leader of the Atlantic Council, the NATO entity which regulates Facebook, can answer that.

Alina Polyakova, at the time working as Director of Research for Europe and Eurasia at the Atlantic Council, where she developed and led the institute’s work on disinformation and Russia, is quoted in an article in Jacobin on Stepan Bandera saying:

“The Russian government and its proxies in eastern Ukraine have consistently branded Kyiv’s government a fascist junta and accused it of having Nazi sympathizers. Moscow’s propaganda is outrageous and wrong.” Given Ukraine’s deepening economic woes, she continued, “should Ukraine watchers be concerned about the potential growth of extreme right-wing parties?” Her answer: “Absolutely not.”

Regarding the U.S. proxy war against Russia, the sole purpose of U.S. and Western European-sponsored media outlets like Euromaidan Press and Kiev Independent is to be a disseminator of Nazi propaganda about the war and handle international public relations for fascist organizations in Ukraine.

Their coverage of events around the same time I was in Lugansk as compared to what I saw and heard from residents there exposes the lies of their sponsors and puppet masters, especially those in the U.S.

2014 massacre at Odessa House of Trade Unions

What is scarcely covered, however, are horrors like that which occurred in the city of Odessa in Ukraine on May 2, 2014, at the House of Trade Unions, witnessed by those I interviewed here in Moscow at a memorial outside of the Kremlin. “Today is the second of May,” said a journalist covering the event. “Eight years ago my city of Odessa was full of beauty on the seashore, for artists, writers, musicians. We had the best architects who built the opera theater house. But those Ukrainian Nazis burned the Odessan people alive and shot them. They say there were 48 who died but that number is not correct since there were many more victims reported in the morgue. They burned alive people who were hiding, and those who escaped the building were beaten with sticks and iron pipes and shot at. None of the perpetrators were punished. Innocent people died for their right to speak their language by a Nazi regime. This was repeated in Mariupol on May 9, 2014, with killings in that Russian-speaking area. I was there in Mariupol as a journalist also. It’s been eight years, and nobody cared, and they continue to kill us using weapons originating in the USA and European Union. And any honest journalists reporting on this are being hidden there in Ukraine.”

He then introduced me to Vasilly, who had been trapped inside the House of Trade Unions. He took many photos of the situation then —  from the beginning of the incident until about 8:30 p.m. when people began to jump out of the windows of the burning building. “By 7 p.m. it started, before that, there was a fight outside … I have many photos and showed these to many journalists from the West but they did nothing with them,” he said.

I asked him what he thought about Zelensky appointing a governor of Odessa a few months ago who is affiliated with fascist organizations. “Zelensky is not only a comedian, he is also a clown. He is not an independent person, he works for Biden. What is there to think about a person who goes to Great Britain and first meets with the chief of MI6, his other boss? Our great regret is that there was a president Yushchenko in 2004 who also pushed to power oligarchs, and he began inviting Nazis and gave the highest honor to Bandera.”

Another commemorator who had just finished placing roses at the monument, then making the sign of the cross on his chest, showed me his cell phone with texts he had just received from someone also trying to commemorate the day, but unable to. His friend texting him at that moment was in Odessa, but a curfew was established to discourage such activity. This curfew was being enforced with bullets from the Ukrainian police, his friend who was witnessing the violence there told him. “One woman was injured and the police were ordered to shoot, with no warning, anyone holding public commemorations outside,” he read from his phone.

Here in Moscow, where that terror did not exist we visited another commemoration in another part of the city with mainly youth carrying signs with the words “Odessa May 2, 2014.” At the front of the thousands who were lined up to pay tribute by placing roses where the pictures of the dead victims were, another witness of the Odessa tragedy was playing Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor on a piano moved right there on the sidewalk. The intense piece she chose was fitting because in 1898, one of the many titles of that piece introduced to the west by a London publisher was called “The Burning of Moscow.”

Commemorations on May 9 for the victory over Nazi Germany are also outlawed in Ukraine. But, like the May 2 commemorations, here in Russia, celebrating the defeat of the Nazis is welcomed.

Coming in part 3: Two cities in Ukraine, two ideologies, two experiences of war.

 

In its Article 9, the Japanese constitution promulgated in 1946 under the U.S. post-war occupation renounces war as a means of resolving international disputes and proscribes maintaining land, sea and air forces. This article is widely supported by the Japanese people. To those in the countries and areas in Asia that Japan invaded and colonized during the Asia-Pacific War, Article 9 is a pledge by the Japanese people not to repeat colonial and military violence.

Yet, in the early period of the Cold War, the U.S. occupation changed its course from disarming Japan to turning it into a bulwark against the communist bloc. Around the time of the Korean War, Japan started to re-arm itself, first with the National Police Reserve, which soon became the Japan Self Defense Forces (JSDF). Despite the persistent argument by peace activists that the JSDF is a breach of Article 9, the Japanese government has won public support for the JSDF through decades of promoting the forces as the disaster rescue organization and an insistence on an “exclusively defense-oriented-policy.” The JSDF have now grown to be one of the world’s largest militaries.

In addition to this fundamental contradiction concerning the possession of an armed force, the Japanese constitution encounters a profound problem because Article 9 was never implemented on Okinawa, the southernmost archipelago of the country that was directly occupied by the U.S. military from 1945 to 1972. Even after Okinawa’s reversion to the Japanese administration, the U.S. military continued to be stationed in Okinawa, which consists of only 0.6% of the entire land mass of Japan yet hosts about 70% of the U.S. military facilities in Japan. These Okinawan facilities have catered to the various needs of the U.S. military in waging wars in Asia and beyond. Meanwhile, for more than seven decades, the U.S. military has violated the basic human rights, safety, and security of the people of Okinawa with virtual impunity. The U.S.-Japan military alliance has caused tremendous negative impacts on the people of the host community, including contamination of the soil and water by toxic materials, unbearable noise caused by military training, and sexual violence committed by the troops and other personnel, to name a few.

The upgraded RIMPAC 2022, with the largest-ever number of participating countries, reinforces the military ties between the United States and Japan. To this year’s RIMPAC 2022, Japan Maritime Self Defense Force is sending its largest vessel, JS Izumo (DDH-18), and other vessels and aircrafts including JS Takanami (DD 110), JS Kirisame (DD 104), P-1 maritime patrol aircraft, and others as well as about 1,000 troops. Although Izumo is categorized as a helicopter destroyer, it underwent modification in recent years to become effectively an aircraft carrier with increased interoperability with the U.S. military and where fighter jets such as F-35B of the U.S. Marine Corps can land and launch.

The JSDF units participating in RIMPAC 2022 are part of their annual Indo-Pacific deployment, which lasts for several months and involves other joint exercises and calls to various ports in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Under the strategy of “Open and Free Indo-Pacific,” a central framework of Japan’s defense policies laid out in the most recent Defense White Paper, this is part of the intensification of the military alliance against China led by the United States in the Indo-Pacific region.

This ideology of deterrence, involving the competitive exhibit of coercive power, is a deeply masculine and militarized idea. This patriarchal ideology and the structure of the security policies undermine the security and well-being of people, particularly those who are made vulnerable and deprived of their autonomy, as feminist peace activists/scholars have pointed out.

These JSDF activities have already gone beyond the “exclusively self-defense-oriented policy,” yet public discussion on the issue is hardly found in Japan. It is partly because there is very little media coverage, and also because the negative impacts of reinforced militarization disproportionately affect only a small portion of the entire Japanese population, most notably the people of Okinawa, which constitutes a racist aspect of the military security of Japan and the United States.

The Japanese government is also moving forward with its plan to construct a new, massive U.S. military facility in Henoko, which the people of Okinawa have long opposed and which even a conservative U.S. think tank believes won’t be completed in a decade. Last year, it was revealed that the JSDF and the U.S. military made a secret agreement in 2015 to station the JSDF’s amphibious unit at the Henoko facility. This planned “replacement” of the U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station has proven to be equipped with more functions than an air station to become a staging area for the display of U.S.-Japan deterrent power in the region around Taiwan against China.

The JSDF has been slowly and carefully increasing and consolidating its presence in Okinawa, which has required overcoming a deep-seated antagonism that goes back to the Japanese Imperial Army’s strategy during the last stage of the Asia-Pacific war to protect the Emperor in Tokyo by prolonging the ground battle in Okinawa. Now, the JDSF, as evident in the secret deal with the U.S. military, is gaining more of a foothold in and around Okinawa, particularly on the small remote islands of Miyakojima and Yonaguni, as it replaces the U.S. deterrent capabilities near the Taiwan Strait. Once again, Okinawa is being made the forefront of the military strategies of Japan and the United States.

The U.S. military stationed in Okinawa continues to be a source of insecurity for the people of Okinawa.  PFOS and PFAS, toxic materials with possible carcinogenicity used for fire extinguishers by the U.S military, were found outside the military bases and even in the drinking water. Troops have been arrested for drunk driving and crimes against the local population. Service members have committed sexual assaults. U.S. military aircraft drop their parts and other materials in civilian residential areas. Stray munitions have damaged civilian homes.

These are not accidents. Rather, they represent a structural problem of militarism, which prioritizes the military activities and values, and of a patriarchal and racialized defense alliance, which fans the flames of military competition. RIMPAC 2022 is exacerbating further the hostile environment in the region, imposing more burden on the people of Okinawa. Article 9 has become an even hollower provision of the constitution. RIMPAC is a giant step in the wrong direction for peace in the region.

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Kozue Akibayashi works with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in Kyoto. Suzuyo Takazato works with Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence. This is part of a series produced between the Feminist Peace Initiative and Foreign Policy In Focus featuring critical voices on the militarization of the Asia-Pacific region. You can read the first essay in the series here as well as other articles on U.S.-NATO coordination, South Korea’s expanded military footprint, the U.S.-China arms race, the militarization of Hawai’i, and the view from Guam.

Source: FPIF