The struggle against imperialist war and white supremacy is global. Pictured: Brooklyn protest after the police murder of George Floyd, June 1, 2020; Victory Day 2016 in Lugansk. SLL photos: Greg Butterfield

This May, as U.S. imperialism wages a criminal proxy war against Russia on the territory of Ukraine and the Donbass republics, the workers’ movement should take steps toward organizing to defeat imperialist war and fascism. Three days of fight-back give us an opportunity to begin that urgent work.

May 1 is International Workers’ Day, commemorating the 1886 Haymarket protest and deadly police repression in Chicago. The day of international working-class solidarity is celebrated around the world. In the United States, anti-communism and anti-Sovietism nearly wiped out May Day for decades, until it was revitalized by the struggle of undocumented immigrant workers in the early 2000s. 

May 2 marks the anniversary of another massacre: in Odessa, Ukraine, in 2014, carried out by U.S.-backed neo-Nazis. At least 48 anti-fascist protesters were killed when supporters of the illegal Maidan coup set fire to the House of Trade Unions and slaughtered those who tried to escape the burning building. This massacre isn’t yet well known in the U.S. but should be, since it illuminates the ugly reality behind Washington’s “Stand with Ukraine” war propaganda.

May 9, meanwhile, is recognized in the former Soviet countries and much of the world as Victory Day – marking the final defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. It’s no surprise that this day isn’t celebrated in the U.S., since it challenges the well-cultivated myth that the U.S. was the lynchpin in the defeat of the Third Reich. But in reality, the USSR and its partisan allies across Europe defeated German imperialism – at the cost of 27 million civilian and military lives and the destruction of much of the socialist country’s infrastructure.

In the Donbass people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, in Russia, and until eight years ago in Ukraine itself, the period from May 1 through 9 is an important holiday time when people remember those who sacrificed so much to defeat the 20th century fascist menace. 

Since 2014, it has gained new meaning in Donbass, as people also honor those family members and neighbors who’ve died defending the republics from Ukraine’s NATO-armed military – including the neo-Nazi battalions that form the backbone of the current Ukrainian state.

This May 1-2, it’s been announced that Odessa will be under day-long curfews to prevent any expression of working-class struggle or opposition to the Zelensky/NATO regime. Ukrainian President Zelensky recently appointed the leader of the fascist Aidar Battalion as governor of the Odessa region.

Victory Day commemorations have been banned in Ukraine since 2014. Elders who have taken to the streets in defiance of the Ukrainian regime to mark Victory Day have been arrested by police and beaten by neo-Nazis.

War on workers

President Joe Biden has requested a $33-billion addition to the U.S. war budget to pump even more weapons into Ukraine to counter the Special Military Operation of the Donbass republics, Ukraine’s anti-fascist underground and the Russian Federation. The aim of the Special Military Operation is to denazify and disarm the NATO-controlled Ukrainian regime. 

Given the eagerness of Democrats and Republicans alike to support the U.S. proxy war, there’s little doubt Biden’s request will be granted – if not more.

Along with the military-industrial complex, U.S. Big Oil and Big Banks will profit handsomely. A key motivation for launching a major European conflict was to cut off the supply of Russian fuel to Washington’s Western European allies, to ensure their money flows into U.S. coffers.

But the war drive is a disaster for working-class and oppressed people. While Washington pours a fortune into war, sacrificing the lives of Ukrainian and Donbass workers for Wall Street’s gain, people here are left holding the bag in the aftermath of the devastating pandemic. 

Rents are skyrocketing and evictions alongside them. Inflation is slamming the lives of workers from the grocery store to the gas pump. Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress have reneged on every promise they made to their voter base: protecting the right to organize, stopping police brutality, defending reproductive rights, LGBTQ2S rights and Black voters’ rights, canceling student debt, action to stop climate change, and on and on.

An even more devastating economic crisis looms. On April 28, it was announced that the U.S. economy shrank and the Gross Domestic Product fell 1.4%, the first contraction since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Censorship and hate-crime propaganda have soared to new heights. The Biden administration and Big Tech have methodically censored workers’ access to factual information and alternative views on the conflict in Ukraine. Washington is setting up a “Disinformation Governance Board” under the Department of Homeland Security to deepen the war censorship.

At the same time, the recently announced buyout of Twitter by super-rich bigot Elon Musk with the backing of big banks indicates that, in tandem with the war censorship, the weak curbs introduced on social media fascists after Jan. 6, 2020, will be removed, giving white supremacists free reign to escalate their divide-and-conquer attacks that fuel violence against people of color, trans people and other oppressed sections of the working class.

Unite the working class

“During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government,” wrote Marxist leader V.I. Lenin in 1915. “This is axiomatic, and disputed only by conscious partisans or helpless satellites of the social-chauvinists. The opponents of the defeat slogan are simply afraid of themselves when they refuse to recognize the very obvious fact of the inseparable link between revolutionary agitation against the government and helping bring about its defeat.”

Unfortunately, in 2022, many of the socialist, communist and other organizations that claim to represent the working class have forgotten this critical lesson. Many anti-war and left groups have bent to the intense pressure of imperialist propaganda and thrown their support behind the U.S. proxy war directly or indirectly. Others are keeping their heads down, afraid to take to the streets or go to the working class to refute Washington’s war lies.

But there are signs of hope. Of particular significance are the powerful union-organizing drives at Amazon and Starbucks, fueled by young workers, Black and Brown workers, women and queer workers, including the ground-breaking victory of the Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island, New York. In Oakland, California, teachers and longshore workers united to shut down the city’s schools and ports April 29 to fight racist gentrification. Grassroots movements are fighting tooth-and-nail to defend trans youth and people who need abortions from repressive laws in Texas, Florida and other Republican-dominated states.

Despite the grim conditions facing our class, we must remind ourselves that it has been less than two years since the George Floyd uprising against racist police terror shook the ruling class with the biggest movement for social change in the country’s history. Today’s right-wing offensive from the top is a reaction to that powerful struggle.

We know that millions of people can and will fight back. The job of the revolutionary left is to connect the dots of the many struggles, to help the workers overcome the divide-and-conquer politics of the capitalists by building solidarity with the most oppressed, and to show how the bosses’ war against workers here and U.S. wars around the world are one and the same.

Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite – to defeat imperialist war and fascism!

Will Washington’s seizure of $300 billion Russian assets end domination of dollar as global currency?

On Feb. 26, the U.S. blocked Russia’s access to over $300 billion in foreign reserves held in banks in the U.S., the European Union and Japan. This was part of the sanctions U.S. President Joe Biden announced as part of the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia.

China did not freeze Russian assets. China’s banking regulator said it would not participate in sanctions against Russia, adding that the sanctions “have no legal grounds.”

Another way to put it is that the U.S. taking $300 billion in Russian assets is illegal – a robbery.

Russia responded with counter-sanctions, requiring all payments from “unfriendly countries” in rubles. The list of “unfriendlies” includes all G7 and EU nations, as well as Ukraine. Since assets in the form of dollars or euros might be seized by the U.S., requiring payment in rubles is reasonable.

What are foreign reserves?

Foreign reserves are a government’s holdings of gold, foreign treasury bills and foreign currency — dollars, euros, pounds, yen and yuan. Although a country can hold foreign reserves in its own banks, governments often choose to keep their reserves overseas to avoid costly cross-border transactions and gain direct access to foreign markets.

U.S. President Joe Biden has imposed severe sanctions on Russia, including the freezing of Russia’s foreign reserves. The impact of this U.S. economic and financial warfare is expected to raise the prices of oil, industrial metals, natural gas, fertilizer and food. 

CNBC reported April 6: “A fertilizer shortage, worsened by war in Ukraine, is driving up global food prices and scarcity.” The shortage is not because of any military activity; it’s because of the sanctions. Sanctions are not an alternative to warfare, as some might claim. Sanctions are economic warfare.

Hidden for now is the potential impact the seizure of foreign assets will have on the dollar-dominated international monetary system.

The U.S. world empire consists of a series of institutions – military, financial, trade and political. These institutions, whose roles have evolved over the years, include NATO, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and even the U.S.-dominated United Nations Security Council. Plus, importantly, the U.S. dollar-centered international monetary system.

The world’s reserve currency

The U.S. dollar was designated as the world’s reserve currency by the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. The world’s central banks all operate on the dollar standard, holding their international monetary reserves in the form of U.S. Treasury bills, U.S. bank deposits and U.S. stocks and bonds.

More than a century ago, central banks had kept their reserves in the form of gold and silver. By the beginning of the 20th century, central banks started to hold some of their reserves in treasury bills of other countries, which enabled central banks to earn interest on their reserves, something they couldn’t do with gold bars.

However, both gold bars and treasury bills can be stolen, as fictionally dramatized in the James Bond “Goldfinger” story.

Venezuela’s central bank had about $2 billion “safely” deposited in the Bank of England, which was “frozen” (stolen) by the U.S./NATO imperialists as part of the economic and financial war (sanctions) against Caracas.

Turns out, central banks aren’t neutral or safe havens.

U.S./NATO defeat in Afghanistan

The war on Afghanistan was a U.S./NATO operation. The U.S. had 100,000 troops at 800 military bases in Afghanistan. In addition, under U.S. command, an additional 130,000 troops from other NATO countries were stationed at 400 NATO bases in Afghanistan. 

The war was a major defeat of the imperialist forces. When the U.S./NATO withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, the U.S. government froze $9.5 billion in dollar reserves of the Bank of Afghanistan. This threw the economy of Afghanistan into a deep crisis, devastating the whole population.

The U.S./NATO war had already driven the country into total poverty. In July 2020, before the Taliban returned to power in Kabul, the Ministry of Economy in Afghanistan had said that 90% of the people in the country lived below the international poverty line of $2 a day. 

The freezing of Afghanistan’s dollar reserves, according to the U.N. Development Program, “means only 5% of the population has enough to eat, while the number of those facing acute hunger is now estimated to have … reached a record 23 million. Almost 14 million children are likely to face crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity this winter, with 3.5 million children under the age of five expected to suffer from acute malnutrition, and 1 million children risk dying from hunger and low temperatures.”

Freezing bigger dollar assets

Until now, most assumed Washington’s freezing of monetary reserves held in U.S. Treasury bills or other dollar-denominated assets was confined to small countries like Venezuela or Afghanistan.

If other countries, like the People’s Republic of China, fear their central bank reserves might be frozen by the U.S./NATO imperialists, won’t they shift their reserves to gold?

The U.S. dollar domination of the world economy is already in decline. Will this lead to not just decline but destabilization? 

As researchers working for the Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs cautioned: “The move by the U.S. and its allies to freeze Russia’s central bank out of much of its foreign currency reserves has raised concerns that countries could start moving away from using the dollar, due to worries about the power the currency grants the U.S.”

Open letter for May Day

On May Day, the international day of solidarity of the workers of the world, the following groups and individuals proclaim our united opposition to the greatest threat to the global working class: imperialist war. We declare our refusal to accommodate ourselves to the war drive of world imperialism against Russia. We hoist on our banners today the following:

• Down with NATO’s proxy imperialist war in Ukraine!
• For the right of Russia to defend itself against imperialist encroachment!

Those on the left who seek to emulate the propaganda of the ruling class by reducing this global conflict to a national struggle for Ukrainian “self-determination” ignore the following:

Although Russia has been a capitalist state since 1991, it is not an imperialist power in its own right. Imperialism is more than when one state employs military force against another. Imperialism is a stage of capitalism represented by the dominance of finance capital. Russia is not part of the “imperialist club” but a relatively backward, dependent capitalist economy. 

The military operation of Russia in Ukraine is a desperate effort to stop it from being used as a spearhead in the long held plans of western imperialism to turn Russia into a semi-colony to loot its vast internal resources. Ukraine’s integration into the NATO war machine was well advanced before Russia launched its defensive military operation. Russia faced the prospect of its entire western border becoming part of the NATO alliance and a staging ground for the deployment of advanced weaponry, including nuclear weapons, missile defense systems and troops aimed squarely at Russia. 

The 2014 Maidan coup, led by fascist shock troops on the ground and guided by U.S. imperialism, installed an effective puppet government in Kiev. Since the coup, this government has not only been a direct tool of U.S. imperialism, but has violently suppressed all leftists, ethnic Russians and other minorities. The repression provoked a bloody civil war in Ukraine as residents of the Donbass established the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk to defend themselves from the violently Russophobic Kiev regime and its fascist attack dogs.

This is why we reject the policy of “revolutionary defeatism” being advocated by many centrist Marxist tendencies. It is not enough to just oppose NATO intervention in Ukraine. Opposition to imperialism means extending support to those directly in its crosshairs. This means offering support to both the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk and to the Russian state. Russia has the right to defend its sovereignty by military force against imperialism’s proxy war. 

We are also committed to the genuine independence of Ukraine. However, this cannot be achieved under the aegis of an imperialist war alliance that is using Ukraine as a pawn.

We oppose the proxy war in Ukraine because it is part of imperialism’s drive to World War 3.  The efforts to subordinate Russia through sanctions, war and regime change, are part of U.S. imperialism’s ever more reckless efforts to maintain its global hegemony and reverse its economic decline against both its imperialist rivals in Europe and rising China. The rivalries are fuelled by the ongoing capitalist economic crisis deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic. A NATO victory in Ukraine would not lead to peace but only advance imperialism’s war plans against China. 

A war between NATO and its allies against either Russia or China risks wiping out billions of lives in a nuclear war and unleashing horrors that would dwarf the worst infernos of the 20th century. 

On May Day we recommit ourselves not only to resistance to imperialism but to building an independent movement of the working class internationally to overthrow capitalism through world socialist revolution. The signing and sharing of this statement on May Day is aimed at starting to rebuild concrete links between the genuinely anti-imperialist Marxist forces as part of this process. 

The struggle against imperialism must be forged into a struggle against the capitalist system and all the capitalist ruling classes! War will only truly end when there are no more nation states or classes!

Workers of the world unite!

Groups that have already signed include:
Revolutionary Communist Action (Greece)
Classconscious.org (Australia/USA)
Communist League (LCFI-Brazil)
Consistent Democrats (LCFI-Great Britain)
Militant Trend Bolshevik (LCFI-Argentina)
Socialist Workers League (LCFI- USA)
Bolshevik Group (South Korea)
Trotskyist Fraction Proletarian Vanguard (Brazil)
Socialist Fight (Great Britain)
Red Border (Brazil)
Socialist Unity Party (USA)
Anti-imperialist Aotearoa
Brazilian People’s Communist Party
Planning Beyond Capitalism (USA)
Socialist Party (USA)
Young People’s Socialist League (USA)
US Friends of the Soviet People
Nigeria Automobile Technicians Association, NATA
New Communist Party of Britain
Communist Workers League (USA)

Individuals that have already signed include:
Mohammad Basir Ul Haq Sinha, Bangladesh
Willi Eberle, Zurich, Switzerland
Mark Andresen, Great Britain
Elizabeth Hoskings
Alex Jordan Dillard, USA
Mike Gimbel, Retired Executive Board member, Local 375, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, USA
Joana Marisa Borges Boaventura, Brazil
Marcelo Bastos, Brazil
Márcia do Amaral Miranda, Brazil
JM Considine
James Hall, Great Britain
Irene Bolger, Australia
Anthony Hubert Codjoe, Ghana
Karen Harris, Canada
Moises Delgado, USA
Mark Copestake, Great Britain
Elizabeth Hoskings, Great Britain
Botagoz Datkhabaeva, Kazakhstan
Andy Coombes, UNITE member, Great Britain
Angie Graham, Great Britain
Kevin O’Connor, Great Britain
Candice McKenzie, Australia
Paul Humphries, Great Britain
Clive Healiss, Great Britain
Louise Hart, Great Britain
Jane Elliot, Great Britain
Danny Coll, Great Britain
Issac Cohen, Great Britain
Kathy McConaghie, USA
Myung-Seok Kim, South Korea
Chang-Won Kim, South Korea
Diana Isserlis, Great Britain

To sign the letter please send an email to: ClassConscious@protonmail.com or emancipacaotrabalho@gmail.com.

MONDAY, MAY 2 AT 6 PM – 6:45 PM
In memory of the victims of Odessa massacre 2014
20th & N. Charles Street — next to 2011 N. Charles Street, Baltimore

On May 2, 2014, 48 people were massacred at the House of Trade Union, including one child, by fascist Maidan coup supporters. Most died when they could not escape the fire, trapped by Nazi sympathizers and right wing Ukraine forces.

Those responsible for their deaths have never been brought to justice.

We commemorate their lives and continue to demand No U.S./NATO war on Russia and Donbass.

Statement by Borotba (Struggle), a revolutionary Marxist organization banned in Ukraine since 2014. Translated for Struggle-La Lucha by Greg Butterfield.

May 9 marks the 77th anniversary of the Day of Victory over Nazi Germany.

Almost a century separates us from those events. However, right now we see what a colossal impact they continue to have on the entire world community.

World War II didn’t just start. It didn’t come out of nowhere. A tangle of contradictions in international politics led to it, which they didn’t try to untie by diplomatic means, but to cut with the help of war.

The reasons that divided the world into supporters of the ideas of Nazism and anti-fascists more than 80 years ago still exist today. Western corporations and finance capital, which for many years armed Hitler, created a combat-ready army in order to send it against those from whom they felt threatened: the Soviet Union.

Now we see exactly the same thing: Western transnational corporations and financial capital over the past 8 years have been very intensively creating an army of Nazis, supporters of white supremacy, in order to direct it against Russia. More than 120,000 well-motivated fighters, pumped up with far-right propaganda, were gathered at the borders of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LPR and DPR), preparing to kill the peaceful civilians of Donbass and Crimea, just like their predecessors in 1941.

However, this was not allowed to happen.

Today, speaking about the process of denazification, it is important to understand the causes that led to the world war 80 years ago, and which still exist in the world.

It is important to realize that in Ukraine, it is not Russia that is fighting against Ukraine, but two political currents fighting: anti-fascists and Nazis. That is why thousands of far-right militants from all over the planet wearing runes and swastikas poured into Ukraine. That is why we see stripes with a hammer and sickle on the soldiers of the Russian special forces, and red flags of Victory on the tanks.

We want to appeal to our brothers and sisters from other countries of the world:

Comrades! Know this! In Ukraine, we are fighting, including against your enemies. Against those who came from your hometowns. Against the Nazis of America and Georgia, against the far right from Poland and Sweden. Against those trained by Spanish and Lithuanian instructors.

We know that the future of all humanity is being decided in Ukraine today!

And we urge you not to be silent!

May 9 is the Day of Victory over fascism! On this day, we call on everyone to take to the squares of your cities to pay tribute to the anti-fascists of Spain who died in the battles against Franco, the Italian partisans who fought against Mussolini! To the Greek People’s Liberation Front (ELAS) fighters, anti-fascists from the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia! To the prisoners of concentration camps and the participants in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising!

We call for rallies in memory of those who did not give up! In memory of Ernst Thälmann, Aris Velouchiotis, Bruno Buozzi, Jean Moulin and millions of others who died at the hands of Nazism!

Today, like 80 years ago, the world is divided into two halves: supporters of Nazism and their opponents. We know you are on the right side!

Show it to everyone on May 8 or 9, 2022, by going to the main square of your city with red flags and St. George’s ribbons raised high!

We will win!

Source: Borotba

Resolution on Puerto Rico passed at the XVII Congress of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (FDIM/WIDF) in Caracas, Venezuela

Mujeres en Lucha-Women in Struggle declares that until the Boricua sisters live in a free country, women in the United States will not enjoy full freedom.

Women in Puerto Rico have been under the colonial yoke imposed by the United States since its invasion in 1898, so their struggles and victories against the oppression of the patriarchy are limited by the nature of a failed colonial state that, not being sovereign, obeys an imperial and hegemonic power that does not recognize women’s rights even in their 50 states.

Only under independence can we advance towards a society with a fairer system that recognizes the values and rights of women.

The movement that fights for the independence of the Puerto Rican archipelago urgently needs international solidarity.

And in response to this call, the XVII Congress of the FDIM, gathered in Caracas from April 24-28, 2022, resolves to send a solidarity greeting to the movement for the freedom of Puerto Rico and its organizations; and to the extent possible, they will demand of the U.S. Embassies and/or Consulates in their respective countries immediate independence with compensation for Puerto Rico.

Caracas, April 27, 2022.

Resolución sobre Puerto Rico aprobada ahora en el XVII Congreso de la Federación Democrática Internacional de Mujeres (FDIM/WIDF) en Caracas, Venezuela

Mujeres en Lucha-Women in Struggle declara que hasta que las hermanas boricuas no vivan en un país libre, las mujeres en los Estado Unidos no gozarán de una plena libertad.

Las mujeres en Puerto Rico se encuentran bajo el yugo colonial impuesto por los Estados Unidos desde su invasión en el 1898, por lo que sus luchas y sus victorias en contra de la opresión del patriarcado se ven limitadas por la naturaleza de un estado colonial fallido que  al no ser soberano, obedece a un poder imperial y hegemónico que no reconoce los derechos de la mujer ni siquiera en sus 50 estados.

Solo bajo la independencia se podrá avanzar hacia una sociedad con un sistema más justo que reconozca el valor y los derechos de la mujer.

El movimiento que lucha por la independencia del archipiélago puertorriqueño necesita urgentemente de la solidaridad internacional.

Y respondiendo a este llamado, el XVII Congreso de la FDIM, reunido en Caracas desde el 24-28 de abril de 2022 resuelve enviar un saludo solidario al movimiento por la libertad de Puerto Rico y sus organizaciones; y en la medida posible, exigirán a las Embajadas y/o consulados estadounidenses en sus respectivos países la independencia inmediata con indemnización para Puerto Rico.

En Caracas, el 27 de abril de 2022.

Because it has become widely known that Google search-results exclude any find that proves the falsehood of the U.S. government’s key allegations regarding international relations (such as the U.S. government’s allegation that Ukraine’s government is not controlled by racist fascists or “nazis” as it actually is and has been ever since February 2014), many researchers have started using other search-engines, such as DuckDuckGo, which advertises on America’s neoconservative liberal National Public Radio (NPR) network as being an alternative to Google. However, on March 9th, DuckDuckGo’s CEO & Founder, Gabriel Weinberg, issued a tweet saying “Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create. #StandWithUkraine. At DuckDuckGo, we’ve been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation.”

There was immediate blowback from researchers who hate Google because it does what DuckDuckGo had just admitted there that DuckDuckGo ALSO does: filter out information that the U.S. government doesn’t want the public to know (such as that Ukraine’s nazis control Ukraine and are backed by the U.S. government).

So, Weinberg quickly followed up with “In addition to down-ranking sites associated with disinformation, we also often place news modules and information boxes at the top of DuckDuckGo search results (where they are seen and clicked the most) to highlight quality information for rapidly unfolding topics.”

That didn’t quell the blowback; so, on April 17 he tweeted that “there is a completely made up headline going around this weekend. We are not ‘purging’ any media outlets from results. Anyone can verify this by searching for an outlet and see it comes up in results.”

That response from him was assuming what he undoubtedly knew to be false: that the users’ concern was whether or not a given “outlet” that’s being searched-for by a user will be found if specifically searched-for on DuckDuckGo. He’s not so stupid as to actually believe that that is what users are actually rebelling against — he knows that instead they are rebelling against having a search-engine, whether Google or DuckDuckGo or any other, pretend to be able to predetermine which allegations or types of allegations that are accessible through the Web are true, and which are false (or ‘low quality’). Obviously, no search-engine can do that; any that pretend to are committing fraud. But that sadly includes every search-engine.

Any intelligent user of the internet knows that ANY censorship on the Web is dictatorial, NOT democratic. It’s at least as dictatorial if it is coming from billionaires such as Gabriel Weinberg, or Jack Dorsey, or Mark Zuckerberg, or their agents, as it is if it comes from the government itself — which the user can vote against at election-time without needing to purchase shares of stock in some corporation in order to become enabled to vote against its CEO and other officials. Corporate dictatorship is what Mussolini proudly advocated for in 1920s Italy and called alternatively “fascism” and “corporationism.” That’s what we’ve now got in the U.S. and its allied countries.

One of the U.S. government’s mouthpieces, the neoconservative liberal website Slate (owned by the neoconservative liberal Donald Graham who had sold the neoconservative liberal Washington Post to the neoconservative liberal Jeff Bezos), headlined on March 15th “The DuckDuckGo Users Furious at Its Response to the War in Ukraine”, and tried to marginalize the opponents of censorship by pretending that all of them are far-rightwingers:

More than 30,000 users on Twitter have responded to Weinberg’s post with largely negative comments about the decision, accusing the company of engaging in censorship and injecting bias into search results. Breitbart ran a piece attacking DuckDuckGo as “Diet Google,” and high-profile libertarian YouTubers have also told their followers to stop using it.

DuckDuckGo’s executives have been trying to quell the unrest. “The whole point of DuckDuckGo is privacy,” Weinberg wrote back to one of his critics. “The whole point of the search engine is to show more relevant content over less relevant content, and that is what we continue to do.” The company also released an official statement, which read in part, “It’s also important to note that down-ranking is different from censorship. We are simply using the fact that that these sites are engaging in active disinformation campaigns as a ranking signal that the content they produce is of lower quality, just like there are signals for spammy sites and other lower-quality content.”

DuckDuckGo didn’t originally set out to be a conservative-friendly “free speech” platform, even though many of its users seem to see it that way.

On March 10th, a thread was started at Reddit titled “Whelp no more DDG for me” and users were asking there for recommendations of search-engines that are NOT being controlled by agents of the U.S. government. Allegations were made there that the Brave Browser’s Brave search-engine isn’t censoring its finds. However, I have consistently found that the Brave search-engine is just as cleansed of finds that are in sites that America’s billionaires and the government they control blacklist as is Google and DuckDuckGo. Someone instead recommended — and it was seconded — “Yandex.” That is a Russian search-engine, but — at least in America — it rides on the back of Google and thereby excludes finds that U.S. billionaires and their agents blacklist. I have tried other search-engines as well, but never yet found one that doesn’t censor-out almost all of the sites that publish (or have published) my articles. In fact, I know that some excellent sites that publish or did publish my articles were closed down by the FBI, and that others have told me that they received warnings from Google to stop publishing articles from me. Almost all of the sites that publish my articles fail to show up in any search-engine when the article’s title is web-searched. Instead, mirror-sites that automatically republish from sites that publish me show up, and sometimes ONLY such mirror-sites show up in a web-search for an article from me. You can try it yourself (such as by web-searching the title — including the quotation-marks surrounding it — of the first linked-to source in the present article, “Zelensky’s Secret CIA-Nazi Ukrainian government”). Most of the finds are mirror-sites, not sites that actually accepted and published the article that I had submitted. The U.S. regime doesn’t seem to be trying to crush mirror-sites, but only to crush independent publishers. And, so, independent publishers, in U.S.-and-allied countries, tend not to last very long, because they are blacklisted, by the billionaires and their government.

Source: Pressenza

According to recent Western media, Russian forces have buried up to 9,000 Mariupol civilians in “mass graves” in a town just west of the Ukrainian city. These reports use satellite imagery as supposed evidence and repeat the claims of officials loyal to Kiev that “the bodies may have been buried in layers” and “the Russians dug trenches and filled them with corpses every day throughout April.”

I went to the site in question and found no mass graves.

On April 23, I joined RT journalist Roman Kosarev on a visit to the location, in the town of Mangush. What I saw were new, orderly grave plots including some still empty ones – an extension of a cemetery that already exists at the spot. No mass pit. Many of the graves have placards with the names and dates of birth of the deceased when available, and the remaining plots were numbered according to burial.

Since the media is essentially copy-pasting from the same source – the former mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko (who seems to be far from the city now) – I’ll cite from the Washington Post’s article.

Boichenko, the article notes, “called the site the ‘new Babyn Yar,’ referring to one the largest mass graves in Europe located in the outskirts of Kyiv, where 33,000 Jews where killed by Nazis in 1941 during World War II.”

This is ironic on several levels. A mayor who is whitewashing the neo-Nazis who have run amuck in hso city – notably those from the Azov Battalion, who have used civilians as human shields, occupied and militarized civilian infrastructure, point-blank executed civilians – is comparing an alleged (non-existent) mass grave to a Nazi massacre of WW2.

Meanwhile, the Kiev regime has re-written history, making WW2 Nazis and their collaborators heroes of the nation. The most notorious example being the World War Two figure Stepan Bandera.

Boichenko’s other alarming claim was that the alleged “mass grave” was “the biggest war crime of the 21st century.” We are only 22 years into it, but we’ve already seen the US-led invasion and destruction of Iraq, the levelling of Syria’s Raqqa, Saudi Arabia’s ongoing war in Yemen – all of which are much stronger contenders than the nowhere-to-be-found “mass graves” of Mangush.

In reality, the site has around 400 individual plots, including nearly 100 empty ones. The 9,000 bodies and “biggest war crime of the 21st century” were unverified claims made by a mayor who fled his city, promoted by media which down the page admitted they could independently verify the claims – but by then, the damage had been done.

Gravediggers disprove mass grave claims

While walking around the site, two men responsible for burials arrived, and when presented with the former mayor’s accusations of mass graves they vehemently rejected the claims.

“This is not a mass grave and no one is throwing bodies into a pit,” one told me.

According to them, they bury each person in a coffin and separate grave, details are logged in the morgue, and when any documents regarding name and age are given, the plot is marked with a placard containing those details. Otherwise a number is used.

Interestingly, they also noted that a section of the new graves included buried Ukrainian soldiers. “They’re human, too” one of the men said.

For those in doubt as to the location, see Roman’s report: his drone footage shows that it’s precisely the same location as shown in the satellite images used by Western media.

Meanwhile, as Roman noted while walking, mass graves is something Ukraine has previously been accused of. He cited DPR leader Denis Pushilin as having stated that at least 300 such sites have been discovered since 2014.

He also spoke of what he witnessed. “In 2014 or 2015, mass graves were discovered as Azov or Aidar fighters retreated from the Donetsk region. I even saw a woman, she was dug up, she had her arms tied behind her back, she was in the late stages of pregnancy and she had a hole in her head, so that means she was executed.”

American journalist George Eliason, who has lived in Lugansk for many years, has written about these alleged atrocities. In a documentary on the issue, he said: “I’m here for five minutes and then I’m told the first five people they found, it was five decapitated heads. They were all civilians. Who does this to people?”

This story of a mass grave in Mangush is another fake from the Western corporate media, which previously pushed incubator babies being thrown on the floor by Iraqi soldiers, pushed lies about WMDs in Iraq, and carried reports of a chemical attack in Douma that never happened, to name but a few of their litany of hoaxes.

Meanwhile, when I was in Mariupol on April 21 and 22, yes there was destruction – thanks to those Neo-Nazi & regular Ukrainian forces occupying upper floors of residential buildings and using them as military positions, thus drawing return fire on the buildings – but I also saw people in the streets, and the beginning of the cleaning up process before rebuilding can occur.

I’ll repeat what I’ve said on Western media reporting on Syria (which in my experience, from on the ground in that country, is largely dishonest): those who promote these hoaxes and war propaganda have blood on their hands.

After the countless lies emanating from Western corporate media, I would hope people would exercise critical thinking whenever a new claim is pushed, particularly when it is repeated in chorus by the usual suspects.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years). 

In February, President Joe Biden made it clear that the U.S./NATO military escalation in Europe was not about Ukraine. Since taking office in 2021, President Biden has been more focused on Germany and Russia, in particular the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. 

The July 2021 meeting of Biden with then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel was icy. Politico reported July 15, 2021, that “Biden and Merkel still don’t see eye to eye on Nord Stream 2.” 

Nord Stream 2 is a new pipeline designed to deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany at double the capacity of the existing pipeline. Construction of Nord Stream 2 was completed in September 2021, but it has not yet been opened for service.

The Trump administration had unsuccessfully tried to shut down Nord Stream 2. Now Merkel is out as German chancellor, replaced by Olaf Scholz. With a U.S. proxy war unleashed in Ukraine against Russia, Scholz announced a suspension of the opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

No U.S. troops in Ukraine, yet 

The Biden administration has not yet sent U.S. troops into Ukraine, but it has launched an economic war. 

Natural gas is a primary energy source in the European Union and is the dominant source for home heating and cooking. The EU imports 40% of its natural gas from Russia. In the EU, Germany is the most dependent on gas piped directly from Russia. That is why Germany built the Nord Stream 2 pipeline with Russia. 

The U.S. is now forcing the European Union, particularly Germany, to move away from purchasing natural gas from Russia. The U.S. says they should get natural gas from the U.S. or Qatar, a U.S. Big Oil subsidiary. 

On Feb. 7, Biden said of the German-Russian project: “There will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”  

On Feb. 22, Germany announced the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. This was not a decision made in Berlin; the order to do this came from Washington. 

Natural gas from Russia can be piped into Western Europe at a relatively low cost while natural gas from the U.S. and Qatar must be liquified – liquified natural gas or LNG – then shipped by sea to Europe. Germany does not have a port to receive LNG directly, adding to the transport costs. 

On Feb. 27, Chancellor Scholz announced that Germany will construct two port terminals for LNG and also plans to lease floating LNG terminals as well. 

Cutting off natural gas from Russia is a big bonus for the U.S. oil oligarchy. The United States is the world’s largest exporter of LNG. Liquified natural gas has a higher price than piped-in gas and prices for U.S. LNG are now expected to double. 

OilPrice reported April 24: “Right now, U.S. LNG exports are booming, and most are going to Europe, where the prices are the highest and demand is the strongest. … After the war started, demand went off the charts as the European Union vowed to reduce EU demand for Russian gas by two-thirds before the end of the year.” 

Another bonus for U.S. capitalists

There’s another bonus for U.S. capitalists. The increase in the price of natural gas across Europe will raise the prices of commodities produced by European industries, particularly German products. 

German commodities dominate the markets in Europe and have been rising in the global marketplace. In 2015, Ben Bernanke — former chair of the Federal Reserve System — publicly complained of the strong rise in German exports taking markets away from the capitalists of other countries.

The U.S. economy has been in a long-term decline. Increasingly, the “U.S. consumer” buys and consumes commodities that are produced outside of the United States. The great bulk of both material production and surplus value — unpaid labor contained in commodities — is being produced outside of U.S. capitalist ownership.

Forcing the European Union to pay higher energy prices will increase the cost of commodity production in the EU, which opens the possibility that U.S.-owned industry might be able to take markets away from German and other European capitalists.

The proxy war in Ukraine has been a gift to the U.S. military-industrial complex, with over $3 billion in armaments already poured into Kiev. This may line the pockets of a few billionaires, but it won’t reverse the U.S. economic decline. 

Military spending produces the means of destruction, that is, the money does not go to expanding commodity production. Military spending actually contracts the capitalist market. Factories that normally produce commodities for profit are instead producing the means of destruction, so there’s no profit, in Marxist terms. 

Military spending rots the economy by destroying the productive forces. Also, the expanded military spending in the U.S. is a cause of inflation, though that’s hidden in most economic reports. 

U.S. expanding military in Europe

While the U.S. is not yet sending troops into Ukraine, it is expanding U.S. military operations in Europe. In March, the New York Times reported: “NATO doubles its battlegroups in Eastern Europe.” NATO already had 175,000 troops lined up on Russia’s border and in February launched an additional 40,000-strong rapid response force.

The U.S. now has more than 100,000 soldiers deployed in Europe, the most since the overturn of the Soviet Union. About 40% of the U.S. armed forces in Europe are stationed in Germany.   

Germany remains very much an occupied country. The Federal Republic of Germany, built on the ruins of the defeated Third Reich by the U.S. occupation forces and later incorporating the (East) German Democratic Republic, is a sort of protectorate of the United States. The U.S. rebuilt Germany in order to fortify the dominant position of the U.S. over Western Europe following World War II.  

European trade and investment prior to the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia had seen a rise in commerce between Germany, France and other Western European countries with Russia and China. One of the goals of the U.S. is to hold Germany and Western Europe firmly within the U.S. economic orbit. 

According to Washington’s policy, Europe is supposed to impose sanctions on Russia and give priority to imports from the United States at the cost of raising energy and agricultural prices, particularly in Germany.

Up to now the interests of West European capitalists, including German ones, have coincided with those of the U.S. But Washington’s need to reverse the long-term decline of U.S. industry’s position in the world market has begun to change that. First came Trump’s trade war and now Biden’s economic war on Russia.