Celebrations are ongoing across the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, marking 75 years of the Lao People’s Army. 

The army was founded on Jan. 20, 1949. By 1953 — along with allied Vietnamese forces — this army and the broad masses managed to drive out the French colonialists. By 1975, they kicked out the U.S. invaders, the world’s dominant capitalist power.  

The Socialist Unity Party and Struggle-La Lucha newspaper salute the people, party, state, and army of socialist Laos for these achievements. 

Laos demonstrates what a revolutionary people can achieve when they have a revolutionary state. That lesson is a pressing one for us today as the U.S. imperialists unleash terror in Palestine. The Palestinian people need a revolutionary state, too. 

The U.S. imperialists dropped 2 million tons of bombs on Laos between 1964 and 1973, making it the most bombed country per capita in the history of the world. This was a campaign of extermination directed, in no small part, by Henry Kissinger, who finally died this past November. It is an outrage that he was never tried for his crimes. 

Many bombs have yet to explode, with people being killed and maimed to this day. These bombs have killed some 20,000 since the end of the war in 1975. Half of the victims are children.  

Nevertheless, Laos progresses despite the odds. Today, landlocked Laos and China are connected by a high-speed rail line built through collaborative efforts between the two countries. The U.S. has no such lines. This is just one example of Laos’ continuing advancement.

If I must die / You must live / To tell my story …

These are the first three verses of a poem written by Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian professor assassinated by Israel on Dec. 6, 2023.

Yesterday, I learned of the assassination by medical neglect, if not direct torture (we will learn this in the future, I hope) of Chilean-American journalist Gonzalo Lira in a prison in Ukraine.

Julian Assange is yet another example of a journalist who is agonizing in Belmarsh, a British high-security prison, for the sin of letting the world know of crimes against humanity committed by the USA. USA is asking for Julian to be extradited to the USA and incarcerate him for 175 years. There was a plot by the CIA to assassinate Julian Assange, but they were caught.

Journalists, real ones, not the ones who repeat the lies of the mass media ad nauseam, are in danger of extinction. Since Oct. 7, Israel has killed 117 Palestinian journalists, so it is obvious that Israel is trying to bury the truth.

Another example, and in his case not so well-known, is the case of journalist Pablo Gonzalez. His grandfather was a child refugee. One of many Basque children whose lives were spared by Russia, giving them refuge in Moscow when Fascist Franco bombarded their Basque towns (like Gernika, Durango, etc.) during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Three generations later, Pablo Gonzalez was born in Moscow, although as a 10-year-old, his mother took him back to Spain. He later on in life became a freelance journalist.

He was on his way to Ukraine to work as a journalist when, on Feb. 28, he was detained by Polish authorities and incarcerated without formal charges but outrageous accusations of being a Russian spy. One of the accusations is that he speaks several languages, Russian and Spanish being two of them. Apparently, speaking several languages can become a hazard in a world of ignorance.

Pablo Gonzalez’s requests for warm clothing (this is the second winter in a freezing cell), being able to talk to his children via Zoom, etc., have been consistently denied. He has three little children, and the youngest of them is having psychological issues due to not being able to comprehend what happened to his dad.

His family started a petition on Change.org asking to respect his rights as a journalist: “Respeten los derechos del periodista Pablo Gonzalez, detenido en Polonia el 28 de febrero.” 

And this is his address in the Polish prison: Pablo Gonzalez Yagües // Alexia // AS Radom // UL. Wolanowska 120 // 26600 Radom // Poland.

In the hope that more people knowing Pablo Gonzalez’s unjust incarceration will spare his life and wishing for a world in which we care to know the truth,

Iña Martinez

Leila Khaled, the celebrated Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine militant who continues to be a source of inspiration for revolutionary movements across the globe, spoke to Madaar in early December about the current revolutionary movement taking place in Palestine and across the West Asian region, Israel’s genocidal response, and the world’s epic show of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

In over 100 days of war, Israel has killed over 24,000 Gazans, nearly 10,000 of them children. The scale of the Israeli killing of innocent Palestinian civilians has caused widespread grief in the Arab region, with nearly 97% of the respondents expressing some kind of distress and over 84% claiming it to be “great psychological stress.” Since October 7, the scale of the war has only grown. On Friday, January 12, in retribution for the solidarity Yemen’s Ansar Allah has shown to the Palestinian people, the U.S. and Britain launched several airstrikes inside Yemen.

Below is a part of Khaled’s dialogue, in which she discusses the implications of the Palestinian resistance:

Madaar: In your opinion, what are the major implications of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle?

Leila Khaled: All peoples rose up with this overwhelming attack, and the most affected was Israel. This entity was shaken, and the first attack was carried out on a military squad, something their intelligence did not expect.

Israel relies on its military strength … and until this moment, it has not achieved any form of victory, but its ugly face, the face of murderers and war criminals, has appeared. This has become the image of the Zionist entity. The Palestinian narrative has risen, defeating the narrative that the Zionist movement has worked on for a hundred years…

The West was also shaken by the demonstrations in various European countries, which it shares with Israel. We all noticed how heads of state came, the first of whom was Biden, who came to announce that he supports Israel and came with battleships and all kinds of weapons to support this entity.

This entity is considered a cat’s claw in the Arab region, and in fact, it was a cat’s claw, but on the land of Palestine, it was always faced with resistance. The resistance has not stopped since the occupation of the country, the establishment of this entity on our land, and the displacement of our people and the masses of refugees in different countries. Yes, Palestinian society was destroyed in 1948, but this people restores itself every time.

But this time was completely different, so the entity did not have a plan for confrontation, and it resorted to one method, which was to kill the people in a complete extermination process, genocide, and ethnic cleansing, and this is what it wanted because they bombed the homes in the presence of its residents, including children, women, men, the elderly, and the youth. This is what actually happened up to this moment. They said that their goal in this war, in response to the attack, was to root out and eliminate Hamas. It is a country that has 200 nuclear warheads and is facing an organization, as it did in 2006 when it faced an organization called Hezbollah…

It does not attack armies, so where will it strike? It does not see the place of Hamas in Gaza, so it was surprising that the resistance, along with Hamas, of course, fought battles for more than 60 days. It was the one that asked for the fighting to stop. Note that this was the first time in the history of the Zionist entity to request protection from America and the West, so they came with their weapons and their support… Blinken, the American Secretary of State, came to Israel and said, “I came as a Jew, not as a foreign minister.” But later, the U.S. Secretary of State became part of the war council prepared by Israel.

All of these repercussions are still continuing until this moment, until America asked Israel to stop the fighting because they feared that the army that entered Gaza would collapse and continued to enter and exit due to the resistance.

As for the ceasefire, the resistance benefited from it by bringing in aid and set conditions to replace its detainees with our detainees in the prisons, including children and women. The Zionist society is now divided. The army used to go to fight, whether in Lebanon, Gaza, or the West Bank… it would unite behind it, and it would be forbidden to criticize it or criticize the government. However, we heard the criticism, and we heard many soldiers left the front and returned. Two battalions whose soldiers returned and said: We could no longer fight in the face of the ferocity with which the resistance faced them.

So, we are talking about this being the beginning of the liberation battles. Liberation battles begin with strikes on all places in this body called the Zionist entity, and this will not be the last time. Our people will also fight other battles, and liberation means withdrawal from Palestinian land, and now we are witnessing that. After the first strike, Ben Gurion Airport was crowded with thousands of people leaving.

Their press even criticizes the army and the methods it uses, meaning killing children and women and demolishing homes on top of their owners. The world no longer accepts this, and therefore, there is no unified discourse for them… each one speaks differently and contradicts the other. The whole goal is to eliminate Hamas, but they are unable to do so. They were unable to release the prisoners, and so they returned to strike again in Gaza.

All our people in Gaza say we are with the resistance, we are protecting it. We hear from inside Gaza those standing on the rubble of houses chanting: We are with the resistance and we will remain with it.

We are reassured because this battle has also united other arenas, as the West Bank is also rising up.

M: It is being promoted that the battle is the battle to eliminate Hamas. How do you view this? How do you see the resistance’s management of the battle in the field?

LK: Let me say, let us wait for what will happen in the field. Now there are no more secrets. Everything is exposed both audio and video and no matter how much the Western media tries to spread misinformation and illusions, it will not be able to cover the image. The Internet is working and the social networking sites are working, and everyone communicates and receives images. Consequently, the world did not believe Israel with all its nonsense, and on this basis, I said that it was the beginning of the liberation battle because there were political achievements achieved through October 7. I will not call it an operation because it is an epic, a true epic in our history, just as we were talking about the armed struggle, the first intifada, and the Children of the Stones as epics. It is an expression of the position of the entire people and not of a group here or there.

The people united with the resistance, and in the field, everyone is united, except for those who talk about losses and what we won … We won freedom …

We are continuing. If they do not want to exchange, we still have their soldiers. If they do not want them, let them bomb them. They are free if they do not want to release their prisoners. But if the enemy believes that under the constant bombardment, they will displace people, our people said that we will not be displaced after ’48.

This is a unified word: we will not be displaced, we will die on our land with honor and we will not leave, this is what everyone repeats. Although they cut off water, electricity, food, and everything else from Gaza to put pressure on its people until they are displaced, they will not immigrate and do not accept immigration to any destination.

Everyone says that even if our homes are destroyed, we will rebuild them. This is the people’s position. Some may leave, but the displacement process will not take place as Israel was planning outside the Gaza Strip … They will not emigrate while their children are still under the rubble. How will they emigrate when they have not taken their women out from under the rubble? How will they migrate? Not possible. These people learned the lesson in 48, generation after generation … They are not the same generation that left, about which Golda said: “The old die and the young forget.” This fourth generation is stubborn and carries the idea and is moving towards achieving it.

Liberation is not achieved at the negotiation table. The negotiations carried out by the leaders of the [Palestinian] Liberation Organization were tried for 30 years, during which arrests increased, settlement increased, land confiscation increased, the demolition of homes increased, uprooting of trees, and people were prevented from moving between cities through the checkpoints erected in the West Bank. Sharon left Gaza because he considered it like a hornet’s nest. He said, we will leave Gaza, and we will besiege it. Indeed, it was besieged, but did our people surrender? Did the resistance surrender? No, so what comes next holds surprises, including political surprises.

There was a meeting in Doha where the head of the CIA and the head of Mossad met to search for a solution. What solution are they talking about? Some of them talk about a Palestinian state, and this was rejected by Israel a long time ago, even if America said, as Biden said: We support the two-state solution, but the Palestinian state is difficult to achieve! Why did he say this? Because they want to create an administration for Gaza after Hamas. I assure you that Hamas and the resistance exist and will not end. One person is martyred, and others leave ten, twenty, and a thousand…

Iraq strikes American bases, and Israel raises the flags of other countries on the basis of covering up its ships, but its matter is easy to detect, as any ship can know through Google where it is coming from and what it is carrying. They will close this door on them, and this will affect the economy, trade, and the oil they bring from the Arabs. This is in Yemen, where today, millions are taking to the streets in support and launching ballistic missiles.

And Hezbollah, from the second day, said, we have entered the battle on the northern border of Palestine, and they are still fighting to this moment, and this is in agreement and in full coordination with the Palestinian resistance and Hamas.

So we are faced with two scenes: a scene of resistance with all the wounds and pain and the execution of people in their homes… although it is difficult. On the other hand, there is another scene, which is the collapse of their economy. Despite the unlimited support that America and the West provide to Israel, the economy is at a standstill. Regarding the settlements, will the settlers return? They will not return because they were not protected, despite all the allegations. They were not protected, so they left and never returned. All this affects the course of the battle. They know they are losing.

In London, every Saturday, half a million take to the streets. They could turn against the Prime Minister. America is having a crisis now. Millions are going out in more than forty out of fifty states in demonstrations. They gathered in Washington for a million-man demonstration… and are still demonstrating, questioning the human rights, democracy, and justice their countries claim. Later we will see how many problems will occur in Europe and in America itself. In Canada, what is happening now? They want to put their president on trial!!

This article was translated and adapted from an interview originally published in Arabic on Madaar.

Source: Peoples Dispatch

New updated book

January 21, 2024, marks 100 years since the death of V.I. Lenin, the leader of the first successful socialist revolution in history, the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Newly released on this centennial is Gary Wilson’s “War and Lenin in the 21st Century.”

Vladimir Lenin, the revolutionary leader of the Soviet Union and a key contributor to Marxist theory, wrote “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” in 1916, more than a century ago. It is still one of the most influential critiques of imperialism.

After the first imperialist world war broke out, Lenin’s main interest was promoting a socialist revolution to end the war. To this end, he exposed the war’s economic roots and explained why the popular Social Democratic anti-war movement had crumbled.

Lenin identified imperialism’s key features: monopoly capitalism, finance capital, the export of capital, and colonialism, leading to the competitive division of the world among the imperialist powers.

Does Lenin’s analysis of imperialism hold up today?

20th-century imperialism brought about more wars, revolutions, and counterrevolutions than any preceding century in recorded history.

World War II ushered in a shift in imperialist relations. The United States emerged from WWII as the world’s most powerful imperialist country, gaining control of European and Japanese empires in Asia and Africa. It established the U.S. dollar as the international currency and engaged in endless wars to maintain what the Cubans call ‘The Empire.’

Unlike in 1914, the U.S. military-industrial complex dominates the imperialist world. Today, the Pentagon has more than 750 bases in more than 80 countries. The U.S.-commanded military alliance called NATO is an imperialist war machine dominating Europe and beyond.

Pentagon contracts are gutting the U.S. and NATO allies’ economies. The U.S. government’s budget is dominated by military spending, now almost $1 trillion a year. Military contracts drain the budgets of every NATO member. To pay for this war budget, services are cut, and austerity imposed; the working class is being impoverished.

As in Lenin’s time, the conclusion is that socialist revolution will end imperialist war, enabling workers to meet their own needs.

Get “War and Lenin in the 21st Century,” available now from Amazon, either as a paperback or Kindle.

51 DOCUMENTS
Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis
By Lennie Brenner
Barricade Books, Fort Lee, New Jersey, 2002, 342 pp.

By Barry Sheppard

This book is important reading now in the context of the Israel-U.S. genocidal war in Gaza, part of a drive to expel Palestinians from the land Israel rules from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and from Egypt to Lebanon and Syria.

It was first published in 2002, but received little notice or reviews by mainstream or even left publications, but current events warrant that be corrected.

The book is a collection of documents from the different wings of Zionism, from Nazi and other sources, that Brenner has found and collected. Translations into English were made when necessary. Brenner gives short introductions to each document, but lets the documents speak for themselves. In an introduction, Brenner says, “This book presents 51 historic documents to indict Zionism for repeated attempts to collaborate with Adolph Hitler. The evidence, not I, will convince you of the truth of the issue.”

Theodore Herzl was the founding leader of the Zionist Organization (which became the World Zionist Organization) in 1897, in a conference of European Zionist groups held in Basel, Switzerland. Herzl held that the cause of anti-Semitism was the presence of Jews in Christian Europe, and that the governments of Europe “will be keenly interested in assisting us to obtain the sovereignty we want” by aiding Jews to emigrate to Palestine and establish a new Jewish state on the land of ancient Israel.

He said that “the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.”

A document that appears early in Brenner’s collection is by Russian Zionist  leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, written in 1923, that explains that the Arabs in Palestine will never submit to the Zionist settle-colonialist project, and that the Zionists would need the support of an “outside Power” to subdue them.

Another one is by arch defender of the British Empire Winston Churchill from 1920, titled “Zionism Versus Bolshevism. A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People,” which he explains is a conflict between “Good and Bad” Jews, the nationalist Jews and the internationalist Jews.

In the first main section of Brenner’s book, on the “World Zionist Organization and Nazism before the Holocaust”, there is a June 1933 proposal from the German Zionist Federation(GZF) to “the New German state,” i.e. the Nazi regime that took power in January 1933.

In it the GZF proposes to collaborate with the “German State of National Awakening”, and states “Zionism believes that a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group.”

The GZF proposal also says that  Zionism would be hurt by “resentment abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda — such as is carried on against Germany in many ways — is in essence unZionist…”

The concrete agreement that emerged as a result was to transfer German Jewish money and goods to German Jewish immigrants in Palestine, the Ha Avara pact.

The World Zionist Organization (WZO) ratified the position of the GZF.

The WZO raised an argument that was repeated in other documents in the book, that the “traditional” Jewish tactics of protest etc. for their rights came from the “Ghetto” way of thinking and had to be replaced by the “real” solution of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine.

Brenner includes a number of documents along these lines. Of course these hopes of accommodation between German Jews and the Nazis were dashed in the 1938 programs across Germany known as “Crystal Night” and later the Holocaust.

There was another development in world Zionism which is referred to in 14 of the documents in Brenner’s book. That was the split in the movement with the formation of the Zionist Revisionists led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, while the official group would eventually become the Labor Zionists, with socialist trappings.

The Revisionists were openly fascist.

In 1934, a Nazi, Baron Mildenstein, visited Zionist settlers in Palestine. To commemorate the expedition, Propaganda Minister Goebbels had a medal struck, on one side was the swastika, on the other the Zionist star. The Baron wrote a 12-part series on his trip in Goebbels’ Nazi party organ, Der Angriff  (“The Attack”). His first article, reprinted in Brenner’s book, demonstrates that everyone, Nazis, Italian Fascists, leftists and other Zionists recognized the Revisionists as fascist.

In June 1933, the head of the Jewish Agency in Palestine who negotiated the Ha Avara pact was assassinated by a Revisionist, who was captured by the police, but was acquitted on a technicality because the law system remained the Turkish system, even though Britain was granted a “mandate” by the League of Nations over Palestine when the Turkish Ottoman Empire was defeated in WWI.

One Revisionist, Georg Kareski, accepted office under the Nazi government as Reich Commissioner for Jewish Cultural Affairs. A 1936 article in the London-based Jewish Chronicle comments on an interview with Kareski in Goebbel’s Der Angriff.

The Revisionists were especially enamored with the Italian Fascist government. They were able to enroll Revisionist youth in Mussolini’s maritime academy for the training of navel officers. Revisionist members of the Blackshirts University Fascist Youth became part of the founding cadre of the future Israel navy.

The Revisionists in Palestine had an armed wing, the National Military Organization (Irgun Zvai Leumi). In 1940 it split, with one side led by Avraham Stern claiming to be the “real” Irgun. Later that year, Stern made a proposal in the name of the NMO to Nazi Germany.

The proposal said in part, “The NMO, which is well acquainted with the goodwill of the the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and toward Zionist emigration plans, is of the opinion that:

“1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO.

“2. Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed folkish-national Hebraium would be possible and,

“3. The establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.

“Under these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany’s side.”

This proposal never reached Germany. The Stern group changed its name, but became known as the “Stern Gang”. The other fascist wing kept the name of the Irgun, and Menachem Begin became its leader.

One document in Brenner’s book is a December 4, 1948, letter to the editor of the New York Times warning of a visit to the U.S. by Begin. The letter was signed by over two dozen Jewish leaders. Three names that I recognized were Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, and Sydney Hook.

The letter said in part, “Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the ‘Freedom Party’ … a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing chauvinist organization in Palestine.”

The letter named Menachem Begin as the party’s leader and warned not to be taken in by his current claims of being for democracy, etc., but to look at their record. “A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin” [some months before the letter] on April 9, 1948, during the war with Arab countries, when the Irgun and the Stern Gang “attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants — 240 men, women and children — and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem.”

The letter says, “Within the Jewish community, they have preached an admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead that have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model.”

The letter also said, “During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and widespread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and extracted a heavy tribute.”

The first governments of Israel were formed by the Labor Zionists. However, former Revisionists were brought into the new regime. Begin’s party absorbed former Stern people, and he was elected to the first Knesset (parliament), and went on to form the Likud rightist party, currently led by Netanyahu, and was elected Israeli Prime Minister in 1977. The same year, Israel issued a commemorative postage stamp honoring Stern.

Labor Zionism has all but disappeared, and the current Israeli government, leading the genocidal war against the people of Gaza, is the most right-wing in Israel’s history.

Lenni Brenner was raised in an orthodox Jewish family. In the 1960s, he was active in the civil rights and antiwar movements and was a revolutionary socialist.

Brenner’s book can be ordered from Amazon, either as a paperback or Kindle. Other of his books on this issue are also available there.

Despite the onset of Carnival season, New Orleanians have not stopped marching for Palestine. And on the cold night of Jan. 16, several dozen gathered outside the Hale Boggs Federal Building to rally for Yemen.

The action was called by New Orleans for Palestine, NOLA Freedom Forum, Tulane Students for Palestine, Freedom Road Socialist Organization New Orleans, New Orleans Stop Helping Israel’s Ports, and Students for a Democratic Society.

The crowd chanted, “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around!” and “Hands off Yemen!” 

All of us who participated support the heroic actions of the Yemeni resistance, who have struck real blows against the Zionist regime and its genocidal campaign in Gaza.

When Gaza called, Yemen answered – despite the fact that some 377,000 Yemeni people have died in war over the past few years, with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia being primarily responsible.

The blood from those deaths is on the hands of Biden, Trump, Obama, and company. So when Biden orchestrated the retaliatory bombing of Ansar Allah (“Houthi movement”) forces on Jan. 11, he wasn’t doing anything new. In fact, it was all too predictable. 

Washington continually brutalizes Yemen, one of the poorest countries on Earth – poor because of imperialism. The governments of the U.S., Britain, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands – the coalition of imperialist forces that carried out last week’s attacks – are a bunch of rotten cowards.

The Yemeni people, on the other hand, are heroes. They will not be deterred. For our part, we, in the belly of the beast, must also vow to keep fighting until both Palestine and Yemen are free.

“Any time that we provide items like white phosphorus to another military, it is with a full expectation that it’ll be used in keeping with … legitimate purposes and in keeping with the law of armed conflict,” said U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. 

White phosphorus weapons are a part of the billions of dollars in U.S. munitions that flow to Israel every year.  Biden administration officials say: “The United States is not conducting real-time assessments of Israel’s adherence to the laws of war,” 

Credible evidence that Israel used white phosphorus weapons in its genocidal attack was reported by Gaza Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International. They say that Israel has used white phosphorus in Lebanon and Gaza beginning in early October. On Jan. 12, it was reported that more than 50 patients in Nasser Hospital were being treated for phosphorus burns.

According to data collected by ACLED, a group that monitors war zones, Israel has used the munition more than 60 times in Lebanon’s border areas in the past two months. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Dec. 2 that Israel’s use of white phosphorus has “killed civilians and produced irreversible damage to more than 5 million square meters of forests and farmland, in addition to damaging thousands of olive trees.”

White phosphorus munitions ignite when exposed to oxygen. They cause burn injuries. Inhalation of the vapor inhalation can lead to asphyxiation. Fragments of their casings cause other injuries. Phosphorus burns carry an increased risk of mortality due to the absorption of toxic phosphorus into the body through the burned area, causing multiple organ failure.

Burning white phosphorus produces a hot, dense, white smoke consisting mainly of phosphorus pentoxide in aerosol form. The smoke is more dangerous in enclosed spaces. It sticks to various surfaces, including skin and clothes; the burning substance is difficult to extinguish. White phosphorus can cause deep burns down to the bones, and remnants of the substance in the tissues can ignite again after the initial treatment. 

It is difficult for military doctors, who are usually limited by medical resources, to provide timely and full assistance to the victims. In addition, fires caused by incendiary projectiles can destroy civilian buildings and property and damage crops and livestock. 

International protocols and conventions on warfare, such as the Geneva Convention, ban incendiary weapons as “any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target.” Other bans prohibit the deliberate use of incendiary weapons against civilian targets and the use of air-delivered incendiary weapons against military targets in civilian areas. Incendiary phosphorus bombs may also not be used near civilians in a way that can lead to indiscriminate civilian casualties. 

The majority of U.S. white phosphorus munitions are produced at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The Pine Bluff Arsenal munitions production plant was originally built as part of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Warfare Service during World War II. The plant then went on to produce biological weapons, such as weaponized anthrax, until 1969, when that biological weapon was internationally banned.

Lenin on the economic essence of war

Lenin wrote in “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”: 

“I trust that this pamphlet will help the reader to understand the economic essence of imperialism, for unless this is studied, it will be impossible to understand and appraise modern war and modern politics.”

In the new book “War and Lenin in the 21st Century,” author Gary Wilson writes about industrial capital merging with banking capital, creating “finance capital,” a financial oligarchy. This combination allows financial institutions to exert significant control over the economy as well as the government.

The banking institutions of monopoly capitalism own the arms manufacturers that are supplying weapons of genocide in Gaza warfare. The competitive drive to expand profitable investments and to absorb an ever-greater proportion of the U.S. government’s budget is fueling the broader war fronts all across the globe. It is threatening to develop into a Third World War. 

The shadow banking system

BlackRock (BLK) is the largest private asset manager, holding about $10 trillion in assets as of 2022. The company became the leading asset management operation after it acquired several large firms’ portfolios, including Merrill Lynch Investment Management and Barclay’s Global Investors (BGI). 

According to data from WallStreetZen, as of April 2023, 61.87% of BLK shares were owned by institutional investors, investment firms, and asset managers. This means that over half of the Blackrock shareholders are investment firms and asset managers, similar to BlackRock. 

As of April 2023, the institutions with the most BLK stock were The Vanguard Group, State Street Corp, and Bank of America (BofA). BofA is the second biggest bank in the U.S. after JP Morgan. 

The Vanguard Group is a U.S.-based asset management firm that oversees more than $8 trillion in assets for both individual and institutional investors.  

Capital Group Companies manages more than $2.3 trillion in investments. In 1953, an investment in Royal Dutch Petroleum made Capital Group one of the first U.S.-based finance capital firms to invest outside the U.S. After WWII, U.S. finance capital became dominant globally with the U.S. dollar becoming the world currency.

State Street Global Advisors, Inc. is the world’s fourth-largest asset manager, with nearly $4.14 trillion in assets in December 2021.

These institutions are known as the shadow banking system. Shadow banks are not regulated and include hedge funds, private equity funds, mortgage lenders, and some large investment banks. 

Their lethal assets 

RTX (formerly Raytheon) is the second largest U.S. defense contractor behind Lockheed Martin. RTX manufactures weapons and military electronics. It is the world’s largest producer of guided missiles and special-mission aircraft, including the Patriot system, a shoulder-fired stinger missile.

General Dynamics supplies technologically advanced wheeled combat vehicles, including the Abrams tank, Stryker combat vehicles, LAVs and AJAX armored fighting vehicles. They provide weapons systems, nuclear submarines, and munitions for naval, air, and ground forces across all weapons platforms, boasting that they “offer lethality on the battlefield.” 

Lockheed Martin provides helicopters and rotary-wing military aircraft to all five branches of the U.S. armed forces, along with military services and commercial operators in 40 nations. Lockheed claims their aircraft can target static or moving targets with rockets and laser-designated air-to-ground missiles. Their long-range, guided missile carries a 500-pound class blast fragmentation warhead. 

In a joint venture, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman prepared a high-tech system they call a ”force multiplier” that is supposed to provide aircrews with automatic target detection while enabling rapid, multi-target engagement in all weather conditions over multiple types of terrain.

In 1993, Lockheed purchased the Fort Worth-based jet fighter division of the General Dynamics Corporation, giving them the F-16 fighter program and a greater stake in developing the F-22 “stealth” fighter. The $3.5 billion F-22, by the way, is not yet working. The U.S. Air Force says it can’t use the F-22 jets because it would require too much effort and cost too much to get the aircraft ready for battle.

Northrop Grumman pioneered stealth technology to keep military aircraft virtually unseen. They claim to lead in advanced multifunction systems that will deliver intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic attack, and multi-domain networking capabilities for the U.S. defense and intelligence community and international customers.

They are the prime contractor delivering the $21 billion B-21 Raider, a so-called strategic bomber. The B-21, only one of which has been built, making a single test flight in November 2023, is designed to be a nuclear bomber.

In April 1994, the company was formed when Northrop Corporation acquired Grumman Corporation. Lockheed Martin then acquired Northrop Grumman in July 1997.

Boeing designs, manufactures, and sells military weapons, including attack helicopters, combat aircraft, missiles, bombs, battlefield laser systems, and intelligence and surveillance systems. Boeing’s AH-64 is a combat helicopter for the U.S. Army and many other countries’ military forces.

The Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system is the United States missile defense program. As prime contractor, Boeing designs, produces, integrates, tests and sustains all GMD components deployed across 15 time zones.

TransDigm, as a subcontractor, buys up companies the military depends on for spare parts. By providing maintenance and parts for weapons it creates a locked-in market.

Forbes magazine reported in May 2023 that the expansion of NATO has opened up a big new market for U.S. military-industrial complex defense contractors. It’s “a big win” for Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. “More importantly, aligning with NATO is a commitment to interoperability with the American defense ecosystem. This directly benefits the big U.S. contractors. The market for their goods is expanding and they will face no competition for the foreseeable future. …

“The F-35-ification of European armies might be a bigger deal, though. In addition to the cost of the units, corresponding ground support, spare parts and maintenance, there is a lock-in factor. Europe is now committed to America-made gear for decades to come.”

Weaponry acquired by the Defense Department is a process that is most easily navigated by experienced defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics.

The 10 most expensive weapons systems in the world total $868 billion in research and development and manufacturing costs. The Department of Defense has commissioned each of the 10 weapons systems. 

Weapons contractors set their own inflated prices

Military contractors overcharge the Pentagon on almost everything the Department of Defense buys each year, expert Shay Assad told 60 Minutes on May 21, 2023. Assad is now retired after four decades negotiating weapons deals for Raytheon and then for the U.S. Defense Department. 

Assad points to the Patriot weapons system purchased by the U.S., NATO, Ukraine, and Taiwan. In 2015, Assad ordered a review, and Army negotiators discovered Lockheed Martin and its subcontractor, Boeing, were grossly overcharging the Pentagon and U.S. allies by hundreds of millions of dollars for the Patriot’s PAC-3 missiles.

Shay Assad said, “The average profitability that was negotiated in a firm fixed price contract was typically between 12% and 15%. But Pentagon analysts found total profits approached 40%.”

In 1993, the Pentagon, claiming that it was aiming to cut costs, urged defense companies to merge. Fifty-one major contractors consolidated into five giants. In the early 2000s, the Pentagon, in another cost-saving move, cut 130,000 employees whose jobs were to negotiate and oversee defense contracts. 

Assad said. “They were convinced that they could rely on the companies to do what was in the best interests of the war fighters and the taxpayers.” 

Now that Raytheon is the sole supplier of stinger missiles, the cost is seven-fold more than in 1991. 

The cost of Lockheed Martin’s troubled F-35 program, seven years behind schedule – is now $90 billion over the original estimate and may end up costing taxpayers $1.3 trillion. The Pentagon had ceded control of the program to Lockheed Martin. Lockheed and its suppliers retained control of design and repair data – the proprietary information needed to fix and upgrade the plane. The weapon system belongs to the defense department. However, the data underlying the design of the airplane does not.

When a part breaks, it’s likely to come from a subcontractor like TransDigm, which has seen its stock soar as it buys up companies the military depends on for spare parts. Assad’s review team found the government “will pay” the company “$119 million” for parts that “should cost $28 million.”

Since 2002, total arms sales among the 100 largest arms manufacturers have increased by 60%. Over half of all arms sales that year were made by 10 companies with the highest revenue from arms sales.

On 13 January, the President of Namibia, Hage Geingob, criticized Germany for giving its backing to Israel in the genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) brought by South Africa. The President condemned Germany’s own role in committing genocide, a history that is not limited to its Nazi era but includes the internationally recognized genocide that Germany carried out in Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Between 1904 and 1908 Germany waged a military campaign, in its colony of German South West Africa (Namibia), against the indigenous Herero and Nama peoples. The goal of the campaign was to exterminate these peoples and take over their lands. People were driven off their lands into the desert, where there was absolutely no means of survival. Germany killed tens of thousands of people.

It took till 2015 for the German government to even refer to the killings as genocide, but it still refuses to accept that this is genocide in legal terms so it can avoid international legal obligations to make reparations. It was only in 2021 that Germany issued some public expression of apology, but still, today, it will not fully resolve the reparations issues.

President Geingob’s statement about Germany’s support for Israel’s case at the ICJ was released here on X.

* * *

Namibia rejects Germany’s Support of the Genocidal Intent of the Racist Israeli State against Innocent Civilians in Gaza

On Namibian soil, #Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions. The German Government is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil. Therefore, in light of Germany’s inability to draw lessons from its horrific history, President @hagegeingob expresses deep concern with the shocking decision communicated by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany yesterday, 12 January 2024, in which it rejected the morally upright indictment brought forward by South Africa before the #InternationalCourtofJustice that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in #Gaza.

Worryingly, ignoring the violent deaths of over 23 000 Palestinians in Gaza and various United Nations reports disturbingly highlighting the internal displacement of 85% of civilians in Gaza amid acute shortages of food and essential services, the German Government has chosen to defend in the International Court of Justice the genocidal and gruesome acts of the Israeli Government against innocent civilians in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza. Various international organizations, such as Human Rights Watch have chillingly concluded that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza.

President Geingob reiterates his call made on 31 December 2023, “No peace-loving human being can ignore the carnage waged against Palestinians in Gaza”. In that vein, President Geingob appeals to the German Government to reconsider its untimely decision to intervene as a third-party in defence and support of the genocidal acts of Israel before the International Court of Justice.

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Activist and Chairperson of the December 12th Movement Viola Plummer has died. Her passing was announced on Monday. She was 86.

“This evening it is with a heavy heart that we announce the Black Liberation Movement’s loss of one of its most resolute and determined leaders, Cde. Viola Plummer, Chairperson of the December 12th Movement,” a statement said.

A longtime civil rights activist, Plummer previously served as chief of staff to Brooklyn Assemblyman and City Council Member Charles Barron.

In an interview with the AmNews, Plummer said she had been a freedom fighter since 1954, and always believed that “our people should unite as one against our oppressors.”

At the age of 17, she joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) after witnessing what she calls a racist unjustified act by the United Nations.

“I didn’t just want to be a witness, I wanted to be a part of the movement,” she said.

In 1986, along with Sonny Abubadika Carson and many other activists, Plummer created The December 12th Movement. After Carson’s death in 2002, Plummer became the head of the organization.

“I am so glad that through the 62 years of being a freedom fighter, I meet people who still have the same views as me,” Plummer told the AmNews in 2016. “It is important for our young people to know that you have to fight for justice, and that they, too, have a role to play in securing our rights for self-determination.”

Funeral arrangements will be announced soon. For information, call (718) 398-1766
and D12m.com

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