For socialists, the fundamental understanding of imperialism goes back to World War I and is found in V.I. Lenin’s pamphlet “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.”

Imperialism is not a policy chosen by one government and dropped by another. Imperialism is a system.

The first world war was the outcome of imperialism, Lenin wrote, an imperialist war waged for the political and economic exploitation of the world, export markets, sources of raw material, spheres of capital investment, etc. The imperialist powers raised huge armies and navies, not only to forcibly subjugate oppressed people in the colonies but to wage war against other imperialist countries competing for control.

According to Lenin, the world was already divided among the great capitalist powers when he wrote “Imperialism” in 1916. The war resulted from inter-imperialist competition to redivide the world.

The wars since WWI have changed circumstances. And World War II signaled a turning point in world imperialist relations. The United States emerged from WWII as the world’s most powerful imperialist country, gaining control of former European empires in Asia and Africa.

The overturn of the socialist Soviet Union in 1991 and the breakup of the Soviet republics into individual nation-states dismantled a planned economy, resulting in underdeveloped capitalist economies. Out of these ruins, an imperialist Russia has not suddenly, almost magically, appeared.

Lenin thought that imperialism had a few characteristics, including the rise of finance capital and the export of capital, not just commodities. The U.S., for example, exports not just commodities but capital — mostly in the form of loans or investments. U.S. banks are at the center of world commerce.

Russia’s economy is almost neocolonial

Today, capitalist Russia ranks 55th in GDP (PPP) per capita (a measure of a country’s economic output per person adjusted for the cost of living). Russia’s economy is almost neocolonial, heavily dependent on the export of raw materials like oil, natural gas, and metals. Russia is currently the world’s largest exporter of wheat and a major exporter of other grains like barley and corn. 

This is the classic economic relationship of a colony to imperialist finance capital. In the list of the top 50 banks in the world, not one is Russian. The ruble is not a currency of trade. Russia does not export capital.

During the Soviet period, Russia and the other republics that formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics made remarkable industrial progress. Indeed, between 1921 and 1988, there were no years of negative economic growth — no recessions — except for the World War II years.

The Soviet economy fell into recession only in 1989 as the Gorbachev government began to dismantle the planned economy.

Under Gorbachev and then even more drastically under the openly anti-communist, anti-socialist government of Boris Yeltsin in the Russian Federal Republic and in the new non-Russian former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, the socialist industry was dismantled.

Yeltsin finished the job of dismantling the Soviet economy that Gorbachev began. The years of Yeltsin are now remembered as perhaps the worst period in Russia’s 1,000-year history. This was the greatest economic disaster any country has seen in modern times, in war or peace.

Ukraine had the second-largest economy in the USSR. “Independent” Ukraine is now the poorest country in Europe. By the end of 2020, some 45% of the population was in the poor category, according to a study by the Ptukha Institute. 

Putin’s role

Putin, Yeltsin’s prime minister and chosen successor, took a more protectionist approach, unlike Yeltsin and Gorbachev, who had fawned on the West.

Does that mean Putin moved away from Yeltsin’s and Gorbachev’s policies, which had oriented the economy to exporting raw materials? Did Putin adopt a policy of industrialization?

Under Putin, there has been little growth in Russia’s manufacturing production that the “perestroika” reforms had demolished. Manufacturing is the foundation of any successful modern economy. Yet, under Putin, Russia continues mainly as an exporter of raw materials and grains. Manufacturing is a small part of Russia’s GDP.

Russia now accounts for about 6% of the global aluminum supply, 3.5% of the copper supply, and 4% of the cobalt supply. Russia is also the world’s largest crude oil producer and the second-largest dry natural gas producer after the U.S.

Russia is in the top 10 exporters of grain crops, including barley, corn, rye, oats and especially wheat. From 2017 to 2019, it was the biggest exporter of wheat, accounting for about 20% of the world market.

Russia is a capitalist state, but that does not make it imperialist. Not all capitalist countries are imperialist nations. For example, Indonesia is a capitalist country with an economy (Purchasing Power Parity — PPP) slightly larger than Russia’s, but is Indonesia an imperialist or exploited country? Saying that it is capitalist is not enough to know the answer.

Lenin named five characteristics of imperialism: concentration of production into monopoly; merging of bank capital with industrial capital, creating finance capital; export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities; formation of international monopolist capitalist associations that share the world among themselves; and territorial division of the world among the biggest capitalist powers.

The role of finance capital and the export of capital may be most important. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have taken over the economies of the world. The dollar (not gold) is the currency of world trade. Today, almost every country is capitalist, and most of those are exploited by imperialism, by finance capital.

Indonesia is capitalist but not imperialist. Russia, too, is an exploited country in relation to imperialism, like Indonesia.

NATO targets Russia

Russia is the primary provider of gas and oil to much of Europe. The European Union imports 40% of its gas from Russia, putting Russia in competition with the U.S., the biggest producer of gas in the world. 

The U.S. has been on a drive to control the world market in oil and gas. This can be seen in its attacks, actual acts of war (sanctions) against Iran and Venezuela, as well as its war on Iraq. These are countries that had sought national sovereignty over oil and gas.

Russia, too, has been a target, especially its Nord Stream 2 pipeline, but not just for that. 

NATO is the U.S.-commanded military alliance established in 1949 as a military force aimed against the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist states. After the overturn of the Soviet Union, NATO was expanded to almost every country in Eastern Europe to lock in capitalist retrenchment in the formerly socialist countries. 

Look at a map of NATO’s expansion since the breakup of the USSR. The countries put under NATO include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, North Macedonia.

In 2008, NATO put the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia, both bordering Russia, on the table.

The threatened expansion of NATO’s military force to Ukraine, on the border of Russia, along with NATO naval operations in the Black Sea, are direct provocations aimed at Russia. As Leon Panetta — White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton, CIA Director and Secretary of Defense under Barack Obama — explained, the conflict in Ukraine is a NATO “proxy war” against Russia.

NATO war on Yugoslavia

Despite the war propaganda that’s presented as news these days, the first war in Europe since World War II didn’t just start. That war was launched by the U.S. and NATO against Yugoslavia in 1999. 

For 78 days, from March 24 to June 10, 1999, U.S. and NATO bombers hit Belgrade, Pristina in Kosovo, Podgorica in Montenegro, and several other cities. On the first day, more than 20 buildings in Belgrade were leveled. 

Much of the U.S./NATO bombing hit civilian targets. A passenger train was bombed. Cruise missiles could be seen flying down the streets. The U.S. directly bombed the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Belgrade, killing three Chinese reporters.

Russia understood the lesson of Yugoslavia and told the U.S. and NATO “no” to expansion to Ukraine and Georgia on Russia’s borders – 5 minutes by missile to Moscow.

The former U.S. ambassador to Russia, William J. Burns, who is now director of the CIA, said in a February 2008 embassy cable that Ukraine joining NATO constituted a security threat for Russia. Burns noted that to push for this “could potentially split the country [Ukraine] in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”

The U.S. never withdrew the proposal to include Ukraine.

Maidan coup

In Ukraine, the so-called Maidan coup in 2014 that was openly supported and financed by the U.S. put in a government that made NATO membership a policy mandate. 

The U.S. even picked the prime minister for the coup regime. 

In a leaked phone conversation from 2014, Victoria Nuland, then the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, was heard discussing the political situation in Ukraine with the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. In the conversation, Nuland said, “Yats is the guy.” When Pyatt asked about the EU’s role, Nuland responded, “F**k the EU.”

Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Yats) became Prime Minister of the 2014 coup regime in Ukraine.

When Volodymyr Zelensky was made president in 2019, he repeatedly requested Ukraine’s entrance into NATO. On Feb. 19, 2022 — five days before Russia’s special military operation — at the Munich Security Conference, Zelensky demanded, once again, entry to NATO.

Many Ukrainians resisted the Maidan coup, particularly in the working class. In the Maidan civil war, fascist gangs emerged as a force for the coup. Resistance to the coup was strongest in the eastern section of the country. In Odessa, a neo-Nazi pro-Maidan gang targeted the Odessa House of Trade Unions, near the center of the resistance. The building was firebombed and at least 46 anti-fascists and labor activists were burned alive.

The resistance to the Maidan coup has continued from 2014 to today. The independent Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic were created when the people there voted overwhelmingly (89% and 96%) to secede from the Maidan regime. They have been subjected to continuous attack since then, particularly by the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov regiment, a neo-Nazi stormtrooper-like operation. More than 14,000 were killed in Ukraine’s war on Donetsk and Lugansk before Russia’s special military operation to stop the neo-Nazi war on these independent republics.

As U.S. Ambassador Burns predicted, Russia was pushed into a corner by the unrelenting drive for NATO entry to Ukraine as well as the growing buildup of neo-Nazi militias and the war on Donetsk and Lugansk. Ukraine had promised in the Minsk agreements it signed in 2014 and 2015 that there would be a ceasefire, an end to all fighting, withdrawal of heavy weapons, the release of prisoners of war, and the recognition of self-government in Donetsk and Lugansk. Ukraine fulfilled none of these promises.

Putin may not be an anti-imperialist leader, but the Russian military operation to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine and recognize the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic is a move against imperialism, U.S. and NATO imperialism.

War and Lenin in the 21st century

• Introduction: Imperialism and the road to socialist revolution
• Part 1: U.S. funds war, takes over Ukraine assets
• Part 2: Five key features of imperialism
• Part 3: NATO, the imperialist war machine
• Part 4: Imperialism and the new Cold War
• Part 5: Low-wage workers of the world, unite!
• Epilogue: U.S. complicity in Gaza genocide and military profiteering
• Appendix: Is Russia imperialist?

Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge regarding the two crashes of 737 Max airplanes that caused the death of 346 passengers on two flights: a Lion Air flight out of Indonesia in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight in March 2019. Though Boeing had tried hard to convince the world that these accidents occurred due to poorly trained pilots in the third world, there was overwhelming evidence that Boeing had made significant changes to the flight control systems while hiding them from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the concerned airlines.

The Seattle Times, which has done the most work in detailing the cause of the crashes and the failure of Boeing and the federal aviation regulator, described the settlement, “The plea deal… calls for Boeing to pay an additional $243.6 million fine. That was the same amount it paid under the 2021 settlement that the Justice Department said the company breached.” This is apart from the $1.77 billion in damages to airline customers and a $500 million crash-victim beneficiaries fund. The lawyers of some of the families who lost their members in the accidents have asked the Federal judge to reject the settlement. In a statement, Paul Cassel, a lawyer for some of the families, said, “This sweetheart deal fails to recognize that because of Boeing’s conspiracy, 346 people died. Through crafty lawyering between Boeing and [the Department of Justice], the deadly consequences of Boeing’s crime are being hidden.”

Leaving aside the question of Boeing’s good faith in instituting changes in its engineering and manufacturing practices, which have been further dented by engineering defects such as doors/panels blowing off in flights and various other mishaps recently, this acceptance by Boeing finally puts to bed the initial campaign of blaming the pilots for the accidents. CEO David Calhoun said, “When designing the Max, the company made a ‘fatal mistake’ by assuming pilots would immediately counteract a failure of new software on the plane that played a role in the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents.” But he implied that the pilots from Indonesia and Ethiopia, “where pilots don’t have anywhere near the experience that they have here in the U.S., were the cause of the accidents” The third-world pilots—an Indian and an Indonesian for the Lion Air flight and the two Ethiopians for the Ethiopian Airlines—were simply not good enough unlike the good old American pilots.

Boeing had insisted that it had disclosed all the details of the changes it had made to the flight control system to the companies buying the Boeing 737, and its blaming of third-world pilots was also repeated by major news organizations, all of course located in the West. It was a repetition of what we in India heard after the Bhopal Gas tragedy, that it was not criminal cost-cutting that led to the leak of poisonous methyl isocyanate in Bhopal. It has taken six years for Boeing to finally admit that the accidents that took down the two Boeing 737s were the result of a culture that prized profits over human lives.

What went wrong in the Boeing 737’s two flights is now well established. Boeing had redesigned its aircraft for the new Boeing 737 Max such that the engines, much larger than the original versions, had to be mounted higher and more forward on its wings than its older versions. This led to the plane pointing its nose up under some conditions and the possibility of stalling the aircraft. To address this problem, Boeing decided to add a piece of software called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) that would “correct” this tendency automatically. This is the infamous MCAS that overrode what the pilot was doing. More importantly, Boeing did not inform the pilots about this piece of software. They had no clue that, under certain conditions, the software could override what they were doing, introducing a ghost in the machine.

Worse, the action of overriding the pilot was taken based on a single sensor that measured the angle at which the plane was flying (the angle of attack). In the Lion Air flight, the sensor from which the MCAS took its input was off by 30 degrees. This led to the ghost in the machine: the MCAS continuously overrode whatever the pilots did, leading to the plane’s dive into the sea.

After a second accident, of the Ethiopian Airlines flight, within five months of the Lion Air flight, the recovery of its flight recorder and leaks from within the company made clear that Boeing had lied to the Federal Aviation Authority. It had actively misled them about the amount of change between the 737 Max and its earlier version, the 737 NG. A frank account of the change had implications not only for the price of the aircraft but also for the extra hours pilots would have to spend on flight simulators. All these would have meant slower sales and higher costs for the new 737s, which would have turned many buyers to the Airbus A320.

For those who deal with control systems, any automation that hides what is happening and why it is happening from the operator—in this case, the pilots—is a cardinal sin. This is especially the case in case the automation systems fail, and they can due to sensor error. In the cases of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights, a miscalculation of how much correction should be done, and that the automation software did not indicate to the pilots meant that the pilots were completely blind to what was happening to the aircraft. Having worked on control systems for most of my working life, I know that any deviation from this principle is asking for a disaster, as all machines have the potential for failure. No system is foolproof. Or, as the engineers say, it may be foolproof but not bloody foolproof!

So why did Boeing, one of the engineering leaders in the U.S., violate the fundamentals of their discipline? The answer is very simple: profits. This is also why the U.S. needs to improve its manufacturing. It believes that profits drive share price, and the value of a company is its market capitalization. Under its then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing went from an engineering giant to a Wall Street darling. Its profits jumped by 67 percent, and Boeing’s share price almost tripled during Muilenburg’s tenure. In Flying Blind: The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing, Peter Robinson writes, “Boeing’s chief financial officer, Greg Smith, told colleagues in one meeting that [share price] could top $800 or $900 if the company kept doing what had made shareholders happy: raising the dividend, buying back shares, and keeping expenses low.” For Boeing, aircraft engineering was no longer the key; it was the financial engineering of its balance sheet. This is what neoliberalism is all about, where finance capital rules supreme.

Boeing was and still is one of the largest aerospace and defense contractors in the world. Just as it is trying to put to bed what went wrong in the company and its engineering culture leading to its repeated failures, its new Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft has discovered problems, delaying the return of two NASA astronauts, Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, back to earth. While NASA and Boeing both are playing down the problem of the Boeing spacecraft, the problem of why five out of 28 helium thrusters developed leaks and misfired has yet to be publicly explained. Boeing pushed back the return date from 7 days in the space station to now at least 35 days, if not longer. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is meant to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX spacecraft. Boeing’s engineering culture is obviously focused on its balance sheet and not on what it produces. As it is a major defense supplier to the U.S. military, the American people pay the price of its shoddy engineering.

This article was produced in partnership by Newsclick and Globetrotter. Prabir Purkayastha is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the free software movement.

Por Berta Joubert-Ceci

En Puerto Rico, por ser una colonia, cada una de nuestras luchas, tiene varias ramificaciones y consecuencias. Un simple conflicto huelgario, puede llegar a ser un verdadero conflicto nacional. Este es el caso de la huelga de trabajadores y trabajadoras de la Suiza Dairy que ya llevan manifestándose desde el pasado 11 de junio.

La Suiza Dairy es una de las tres compañías procesadoras de leche en Puerto Rico. Pero a diferencia de las otras dos, desde el 2002, es administrada por un gupo de capital extranjero peruano, el Grupo Gloria. 

La fuerza laboral está representada por la Central General de Trabajadores, la CGT, que en el 2013 firmó un convenio colectivo con la empresa, pero la parte de las aportaciones de la compañía al plan médico quedaron pendientes para negociarse después. Hay que tener en cuenta que por la privatización del sistema de salud, el costo del cuidado médico ha aumentado significativamente.

Ahora, cuando tocó el tiempo para retomar estas negociaciones, la Empresa dio paso atrás y reusó  negociar de buena fe. Pidió más tiempo y en vez de someter una contraoferta, cerró operaciones y despidió a 483 trabajadores. 

Así que desde entonces, el sindicato ha estado manifestándose diariamente frente a la planta. La Suiza, por su parte, al cesar a sus trabajadores, dejó de entregar leche fresca, sobre todo a los sitios más lejanos y montañosos. 

El objetivo más siniestro en este conflicto, es que se está intentando sustituir la leche fresca por la UHT, o ultrapasteurizada, que dura más tiempo y por lo tanto la pueden importar en vez de producirla localmente. Esto destruiría la industria lechera, una de las pocas que nos quedan en esta colonia. Ya lo hicieron con la industria avícola, cuando las compañías gringas inundaron al país de pollos y huevos de Estados Unidos a precios baratísimos y así mataron la producción local.

Pero además de la CGT, otras organizaciones y el pueblo se están uniendo a los piquetes y a la lucha por una soberanía alimentaria. 

Desde Puerto Rico, para Radio Clarín de Colombia les habló, Berta Joubert-Ceci

 

Introduction to the second edition of “War and Lenin in the 21st Century” by Gary Wilson.

Over a century has passed since Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, wrote “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.” This work defined the politics of the last century. That’s in part because Lenin was the leader of the first socialist revolution as well as the de facto leader of the Third (Communist) International. Even if Lenin had not led a socialist revolution, his pamphlet likely would have been influential, though maybe not as much as it has been.

To fully understand the importance of Lenin’s pamphlet, you need to know the circumstances in which it was written and why Lenin wrote it. Lenin always had a specific political purpose for his major writings. 

Lenin wrote “Imperialism” while European capitalism was tearing itself apart in the upheaval of the First World War.

Leaders of the Second International — an international organization that was established in 1889 to unite socialists worldwide — had recognized the growing likelihood of a major conflict among the European powers. While Lenin expected the war, the disintegration of the Second International caught him off guard. As the war unfolded in Europe in the summer of 1914, most of the Second International’s branches caved in. They sided with their own countries against the other countries, effectively ending the Second International.

Before the war, the socialist parties of Germany, France, and other European countries had been agitating widely against war. Workers staged mass anti-war rallies in most capital cities, pledging solidarity with workers of all countries against the bosses. At that time, the anti-war struggle was considered an inseparable part of the working-class struggle against capitalism.

Based on the sizable anti-war movement before the war and the anti-war conferences held by the parties of the Second International from all countries, the outbreak of the war was expected to put the overthrow of capitalism at the top of the Second International’s agenda. The workers of all these countries were united to defend their own interests against the capitalists and their war.

Workers were expected to unite to overthrow their rulers, who were forcing them to take arms against fellow workers in other countries.

Competitive capitalism had transformed into monopoly capitalism. Monopoly capitalism meant imperialism and the competition for colonial domination and for world markets.

As Lenin points out in “Imperialism,” it wasn’t just about colonizing other countries. In the drive for capitalist profits through the exploitation of labor, a small group of powerful capitalist countries maintain dominance through monopoly control of finance and industry. This exploitation took many forms, such as extracting resources, controlling markets, or dominating trade.

Imperialism (monopoly capitalism) was the root cause of the war; therefore, overturning capitalism would end it. That’s what the Second International had vowed before the war. However, too many of the Second International parties in the imperialist countries ended up supporting their own imperialists in the war.

Lenin’s writings in those years were linked to the Second International’s collapse and the efforts to establish a new Third International. From Lenin’s perspective, the new International would be based on the lessons learned from the Second International’s failure. 

The meaning of imperialism 

Today’s socialists face the questions that confronted earlier generations of socialists, both in the U.S. and worldwide, especially the question of imperialism and imperialist war. What is the meaning of the word imperialism? 

What position should you take on the wars now raging in Palestine, Yemen, and Syria and the threatening spread of a U.S. war on Iran? What about the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine? Or U.S. AFRICOM’s operations in Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Niger? Or Washington’s threats targeting Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea? Or the war buildup against China?

The struggle for socialism in 1914 and now

Struggles against imperialism are often fought with socialist goals, such as the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Socialists today support and defend Cuba and the Cuban Communist Party.

However, anti-imperialist struggles are not always led by and for the workers. Sometimes, as we have seen, resistance to imperialism is led by reformist political forces that are pro-capitalist, even reactionary (racist and xenophobic), the opposite of all that socialists believe in. What stand should we take when Biden mobilizes the U.S. Army and Navy, the Air Force and Marines, and NATO, then sends billions in weapons and ammunition to Ukraine for war on Russia to enforce, in his words, a civilizing “rules-based [Western] international order” against the “evil” Putin?

Before World War One, socialists in the Second International opposed the imperialist war against the reactionary monarchy of China as a colonialist war of aggression. But the right wing of the Second International began to argue that imperialism had a civilizing mission. They claimed that Western capitalism was bringing “Western civilization” to the “uncivilized nations” (forgetting that the brutality of Western capitalism, colonization, enslavement, and exploitation is the most uncivilized force ever seen in history). They said those countries must go through a stage of capitalism and become “Western civilized.”

A majority of the leaders of the Second International rejected this. However, the openly pro-imperialist, pro-colonial, racist right-wing Social Democrats who supported the “civilizing mission” of imperialism were tolerated as a legitimate current within the Second International.

Later, the whole Second International was ripped apart as various sections of the International supported their own imperialist governments against other imperialist governments. After this occurred, Lenin and his supporters concluded that the Third International they were trying to build would have to exclude such racist, pro-imperialist, pro-colonial forces.

Uniting two revolutionary currents

Lenin’s pamphlet on imperialism connects two revolutionary currents: the proletarian revolution in imperialist countries and the anti-imperialist liberation struggles in colonized nations. 

Rather than being separate, unequal events, Lenin shows they are interdependent; they are linked.  

Imperialism is global, making the world revolutionary process also global. Lenin’s analysis extended Marxism from being a theory of the proletarian revolution in the advanced capitalist countries to a theory of world revolution. 

Lenin wrote in another document that the Communist International’s entire policy should rest primarily on a closer union of the proletarians in the imperialist countries and the oppressed masses of all countries for a joint revolutionary struggle to overthrow the landowners and the ruling class. (Thus, the slogan “Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite!”) That unity alone can guarantee victory over capitalism. 

Socialism is now the goal of all revolutions, no matter where they occur. As for why the Second International collapsed, Lenin answered based on an earlier suggestion by Frederick Engels that a “labor aristocracy” had risen in the imperialist countries that were “bribed” from imperialist super-profits. 

At that time, the U.S. was an emerging imperialist power. As a settler state, its colonies were internal, starting with the brutal subjugation and genocide of the Indigenous population and the enslaved African American colony. 

Following enslavement, African Americans were forced to sell their labor power at a considerably cheaper price than the white workers and, therefore, perform extra unpaid labor compared to white workers. This extra unpaid labor created a profit above and beyond the average rate of profit, the super-profit that was partially shared with a privileged, segregated labor aristocracy, particularly the labor leaders and politicians.

This is the material basis for the widespread racism among white workers that has so weakened the U.S. working class and the labor unions. The U.S. has also attracted many immigrants from countries around the world who are also super-exploited. Among the most super-exploited were the immigrants from China starting in the late 1800s. The various immigrant communities, in some cases, have served as what amounted to “internal colonies” that produced extra surplus value.

That’s why the fight against racism, against national oppression, for Black and Brown liberation, for gender liberation, and for international working-class solidarity is paramount in the struggle for socialism.

War and Lenin in the 21st century

• Introduction: Imperialism and the road to socialist revolution
• Part 1: U.S. funds war, takes over Ukraine assets
• Part 2: Five key features of imperialism
• Part 3: NATO, the imperialist war machine
• Part 4: Imperialism and the new Cold War
• Part 5: Low-wage workers of the world, unite!
• Epilogue: U.S. complicity in Gaza genocide and military profiteering
• Appendix: Is Russia imperialist?

July 7 — Hundreds marched in the streets of Washington, D.C., under the banner of the Resist NATO Coalition, initiated by the International League of Peoples Struggle U.S. Chapter.

A few days later, the 75th anniversary NATO war summit was to be held on July 11 and 12. The key agenda items were the continuing U.S. proxy war against Russia and war maneuvers against China. 

Activists gathered at Washington’s McPherson Square and marched to the White House and Lafayette Park, where they joined additional protesters from the “No to NATO, Yes to Peace” rally. Ann Wright, an ex-U.S. Army colonel who resigned in opposition to the Iraq war, declared, “NATO represents U.S. militarism. To end war, we need to end capitalism and imperialism.”  

Marchers continued to Farragut Park, chanting, “No bombs in the air, no boots on the ground” for an ending rally.  Protesters carried Palestinian flags along with giant banners.

The previous day, the coalition held a “People’s Summit” prior to street marches. Keynote speakers Nicaraguan Ambassador Lautaro Sandino and Ali Barghouti of the Palestinian Youth Movement spoke to an overflow crowd at the New York Ave Presbyterian Church.

Most participants came from Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia. Erica Caines from Black Alliance for Peace and Andre Powell from Peoples Power Assembly, both from Baltimore, explained the connection between NATO and Cop City. Powell proclaimed, “There is a connection between Baltimore — our suffering, our unemployment, our low wages with NATO and the U.S. war machine.  

“The trillions and I say trillions spent on the U.S. state apparatus which includes not only NATO, U.S. military bases, AFRICOM, the CIA, the FBI, and every rotten fascist cop in every city and rural area — could provide for our people!”

Filipino diaspora organizers denounced U.S. imperialists’ role in building an Asian NATO. BAYAN USA chairperson Adrian Bonifacio declared, “In the Philippines, more than a dozen youth were recently killed by the fascist Armed Forces of the Philippines, who are backed by the U.S. These are youth who dedicated their lives to the cause of national democratic revolution, who, when faced with the convergence of NATO in Asia Pacific, including the Philippines, and the guns of the U.S. military — they did not back down, and they pointed their guns back!.”

A representative of the Palestinian Youth Movement outlined that NATO is “the armed wing of U.S.-led imperialism suppressing liberation movements, led by ‘Genocide Joe’ and ‘Bloody Blinken.’” 

[This article was published on July 11, 2024, the 29th anniversary of the so-called Srebrenica massacre, whose context has been distorted by Western media and governments with the purpose of supporting renewed military interventions allegedly undertaken to stop human rights abuses and genocide.—eds.]

In June 2021, the Biden White House issued a statement approving the decision of the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague to affirm its conviction of Serb General Ratko Mladic for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Srebrenica in the former Yugoslavia, where Serb forces purportedly massacred 8,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslims.

Claiming that the United States had helped lead the international effort to end the atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and bring perpetrators like Mladic to justice, the White House statement proclaimed: “This historic judgment shows that those who commit horrific crimes will be held accountable. It also reinforces our shared resolve to prevent future atrocities from occurring anywhere in the world.”

On May 23, 2024, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution officially designating July 11 as “International Day of Reflection and Remembrance of the Srebrenica Genocide of 1995.”

That resolution, as shown by the voting results, was highly contested. Unlike the two other UNGA genocide resolutions – Rwanda in 2003 and the Holocaust in 2005 – which both passed by consensus, this resolution showed a highly polarized General Assembly. Of the UNGA’s 193 members, only 84 voted in favor, while 19 against, 68 abstained, and 22 did not participate in the voting. This amounts to a passage of only 84 in favor to 109.

The underlying purpose of this resolution was to have that body officially declare the alleged Bosnian Serb “massacre” in Srebrenica a “genocide” and to make any refutation of this still-contested allegation illegal.

Of course, Germany’s motivation is not altruistic. This resolution – especially at this time, when the German government is providing military, legal, and political support to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza – is not because the German government has suddenly become opposed to the crime of genocide. Its official policy throughout history shows the contrary to be the case. The reason would lie closer to Germany’s past and current political objectives.

The German government is ill-placed to accuse anyone of genocide, given the fact that it has never acknowledged that its own crimes committed during World War II had amounted to “genocide” – hiding behind the fact that the term “genocide” was only coined in the aftermath of World War II to describe the horrendous crimes its forces had committed throughout the war.

The German government currently in power refuses to legally recognize that its colonial forces had committed genocide on the Herero and Nama peoples of German Southwest Africa, today’s Namibia, at the beginning of the previous century. Using various tricks, it persists in refusing to pay reparations to the descendants of its victims. (endnote to be added[1])

No German or West German government has ever recognized the legality of the verdicts handed down by the Nuremberg Tribunal. Also, to hide this blemish, the German government was an ardent supporter of the U.S.-initiated kangaroo court set up in The Hague—the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)—for the purpose of providing a bogus judicial image of the legality of U.S.-German support of the right-wing extremist governments in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in their campaign against the Serbs.

Had it not been for the German government’s unilateral recognition of Slovenia and its former World War II fascist ally, Croatia, there may not have been a break-up of Yugoslavia, or at least not one accompanied by the ethnic-motivated violence that ensued.

At this moment, charges are being brought by Nicaragua at the International Court of Justice against the German government for its complicity in genocide on the basis of Germany’s steadfast political, military, and propagandistic support for the genocide being committed by the Israeli regime on the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip.

But most importantly, Germany is seeking to achieve official declaratory international “confirmation” of allegations it cannot prove. On the contrary, not being able to provide the evidence of the alleged massacre of up to 8,000 males, several belligerent countries have been applying pressure on governments in the United Nations to sign on to what amounts to a goose in a sack.

In NATO countries—the EU and Canada among others—efforts are being made to outlaw discussion of Srebrenica, particularly discussion of whether the presumed “mass execution” was ever committed, as well as whether an alleged “mass execution” solely of males, constitutes “genocide”—when the women, children and elderly of the enclave had been orderly evacuated to safety behind Muslim lines.[1]

For nearly 30 years, Srebrenica has provided justification for “humanitarian interventions,” the idea that the U.S. and West have a “right”—even an “obligation”—to prevent massacres and genocide from ever reoccurring by attacking a sovereign country and overthrowing its government.

A factual recapitulation of what occurred in Srebrenica casts doubt on the official narrative.

The truth is buried

Journalist and author Diana Johnstone,[2] who has been closely following the developments in the Balkans for decades, noted in an article published in The Nation:

“When, in the early months of the war, which raged across Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, the Muslim-led government in Sarajevo, seconded by Croatian agencies in Zagreb, presented Western media with reports indicating that the Serbs were pursuing a deliberate policy of genocide, a basic principle of caution, essential to justice was rapidly abandoned. That is the principle that the more serious the accusation, the greater the need for proof since otherwise accusations will become an instrument of the lynch mob.”[3]

In the case of Srebrenica, the lynch mob was ready to turn on anyone who questioned the official narrative of Serb genocide—even though that narrative was built upon unproven reports and disinformation advanced by secret services and public relations agencies.

Sorting fact from fiction

One thing should be made clear—contrary to what the mass media would have everyone believe—the Serb troops, who walked into Srebrenica on July 11, were not an “invading force.”

“Before his death in a road accident in Bosnia, U.S. envoy Robert C. Frasure worked on a diplomatic solution that would have traded the putative safe areas, Srebrenica, Žepa and Gorazde for the Serb-held suburbs of Sarajevo. But the same hardline U.S. faction that arranged illegal arms for Muslim forces, helped kill Frasure’s diplomatic solution in the spring of 1995.”[4]

The Serb forces’ entry into the enclave was the agreed coordinated territorial exchanges in preparation for the Dayton Agreements. The Muslim troops that had been operating out of Srebrenica attacking the surrounding Serb villages had already withdrawn the day before the Serb contingent’s entry.

Srebrenica first became associated with a large-scale summary execution one month after Serb forces had taken over the administration of the enclave. On August 10, 1995, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright hijacked the agenda of a closed session of the UN Security Council, preparing to open discussions on Croatia’s “Operation Storm.” Croatia’s “Operation Storm” ethnically cleansed the Krajina Serb population—the largest ethnic cleansing operation of the Yugoslav breakup. It had been executed with official U.S. and mercenary assistance.

Albright showed aerial surveillance photos purporting to show that Bosnian Serb troops “committed wide-scale atrocities against Muslim civilians” in the aftermath of the July 12 takeover of Srebrenica. She was not more precise than to say “wide-scale atrocities against Muslim civilians.”

When The New York Times, the following day, reported on Albright’s peep-show, the journal noted: “Ms. Albright’s presentation today came as thousands of Serb refugees fled their homes after a Croatian military offensive, carried out with tacit American approval, overran an area of Croatia previously held by rebel Serbs.”[5]

While making her presentation to the Security Council, Albright was already preparing political and public opinion for the fact that there would be no evidence to back up her claims. She warned: “We will keep watching to see if the Bosnian Serbs try to erase the evidence of what they have done.”[6] The question today is, where is all that evidence that Albright was keeping an eye on?

On September 13, 1995, three months after Bosnian Serb troops entered Srebrenica, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published a press statement that stated:

“The ICRC’s head of operations for Western Europe, Angelo Gnaedinger, visited Pale and Belgrade from 2 to 7 September to obtain information from the Bosnian Serb authorities about the 3,000 persons from Srebrenica whom witnesses say were arrested by Bosnian Serb forces. The ICRC has asked for access as soon as possible to all those arrested (so far it has been able to visit only about 200 detainees), and for details of any deaths. The ICRC has also approached the Bosnia-Herzegovina authorities seeking information on some 5,000 individuals who fled Srebrenica, some of whom reached central Bosnia.”[7]

The Associated Press (AP) had obviously fanned out its field reporters to interview various less-informed ICRC employees on details in Gnaedinger’s press statement. Spin doctors then transformed the answers they gave into what became the AP article published by The New York Times on September 15:

“About 8,000 Muslims are missing from Srebrenica, the first of two United Nations-designated ‘safe areas’ overrun by Bosnian Serb troops in July, the Red Cross said today…Among the missing, were 3,000, mostly men, who were seen being arrested by Serbs. After the collapse of Srebrenica, the Red Cross collected 10,000 names of missing people, said Jessica Barry, a spokeswoman. In addition to those arrested, about 5,000 ‘have simply disappeared,’ she said.”[8]

Back in the 1970s, the International Herald Tribune carried a series of articles on the scandal over the discovery of the CIA having manipulated the media into spreading its grey[9] and black[10] propaganda. In one of the articles, The New York Times quoted “an Agency [CIA] official [who had] said that the CIA had in the past used paid agents in the foreign bureaus of the Associated Press and United Press International to slip agency-prepared dispatches onto the news wire.”[11] The fact that the “flagship” New York Times carried this grey propaganda gives more credibility to the story.

Eyewitnesses

However, even the original accounting provided by the Red Cross had itself been false. Gnaedinger used the numbers of “3,000 persons” from Srebrenica, whom “witnesses say” were arrested. Who were those witnesses he was referring to?

They were none other than the Dutch Battalion (“Dutchbat”) UN Protection Force stationed in Srebrenica. They were eyewitnesses to the flight of the Muslim soldiers prior to the entry of Serb forces, to the evacuation of the women, children and elderly to Tuzla by the Bosnian Serb military, as well as to the arrests of the men of military age, who had remained in the enclave. However, the Dutchbat had given a different estimate of how many had been arrested.

During the course of their evacuation from Srebrenica back home to the Netherlands, journalists asked Dutchbat soldiers about the Serb troops’ behavior. Their answers gave quite a different impression than what the media have been reporting since then.

The New York Times reported on July 24, 1995, that the “Dutch peacekeeping troops evacuated from Srebrenica…say that Bosnian Serb invaders…abducted from 150‑300 men aged 16‑60.”[12]

This would mean that the 300 “abducted” Muslim men arrested as prisoners of war by Serb troops, witnessed by the Dutchbat in Srebrenica, had, in the meantime, been multiplied by ten to become the “3,000” that “witnesses” had supposedly reported in the Red Cross’s press statement.

The 200 prisoners the Red Cross had visited in custody would come much closer to the Dutchbat’s imprecise estimate of “from 150‑300 men.”

The Dutchbat had also, in fact, been eyewitnesses to summary executions in Srebrenica. According to The New York Times, “Dutch peacekeeping troops evacuated from Srebrenica…say that Bosnian Serb invaders executed at least 10 Muslim defenders” and explain, “in one incident, Bosnian Serb invaders had taken a Muslim man, placed him against a wall and shot him in the back of the head. In another, nine men had been executed in a house, shot in the back in the same room.”[13]

Summary executions are war crimes. But ten executions would not fit, by any stretch of the imagination, a narrative of “genocide” that Bosnian Muslim authorities and their Western allies have been trying to pin on Serb forces.

The New York Times reports that “the accounts of the Dutch,…given during a series of interviews and news conferences, suggested that the killing they had seen had been more limited than refugees had described.”[14]

However, in order to limit the impact of their testimony, the Dutchbat had to be discredited. This process had already begun during their preparations to return home. The Dutch Minister of Defense, Joris Voorhoeve, at the time, had arrived in Zagreb not only to accompany his troops on their homeward journey but also to begin to discredit them as eyewitnesses. Over the next decades, their eyewitness testimony was largely ignored and discredited, while institutions in the Netherlands compiled voluminous “reports” supporting the unproven narrative of the pro-NATO ICTY.

“We don’t know what happened, where we didn’t have eyes and ears,” Voorhoeve is quoted to have said, and he “insisted that the officers’ version [of what they had seen – GP] did not minimize the possibility that atrocities had been committed.…If only two-thirds of the refugee accounts are true, this adds up to horrible events,” he told reporters. “What we do know is that several thousand men and boys are missing” since the city fell, he said. He stated this even after several journals had reported that thousands of the “missing” had already made it to safety behind Muslim lines.

This is clearly an effort to discredit the Dutch eyewitnesses to what had been—and had not been—happening on the ground in Srebrenica while he was sitting in his office nearly 2,000 miles away in The Hague.

Doesn’t add up

There is another discrepancy in Gnaedinger’s press statement. In speaking of the group of 5,000, who had fled Srebrenica before Serb troops entered, he says “some of whom reached central Bosnia,” which gives the impression that only a handful could be accounted for by mid-September.

Already, more than two months prior to the Red Cross press communiqué—just a few days after Serb forces had entered Srebrenica—The New York Times had reported that “some 3,000 to 4,000 Bosnian Muslims, who were considered by UN officials to be missing after the fall of Srebrenica, have made their way through enemy lines to Bosnian government territory.”[15]

The same day, The Washington Post reported: “About 4,000 Bosnian army soldiers … trudged for five days through Serb-held territory to escape from Srebrenica and reach a safe haven here (in Medjedja, on Muslim-controlled territory).[16]

The Washington Post explained: “The men set off at dawn on Tuesday, July 11, in two columns that stretched back seven or eight miles.”[17]

The Times (UK) reported on August 2, 1995, that “thousands of the ‘missing’ Bosnian Muslim soldiers from Srebrenica, who have been at the center of reports of possible mass executions by the Serbs, are believed to be safe to the northeast of Tuzla….For the first time yesterday, however, the Red Cross in Geneva said it had heard from sources in Bosnia that up to 2,000 Bosnian Government troops were in an area north of Tuzla. They had made their way there from Srebrenica ‘without their families being informed,’ a spokesman said, adding that it had not been possible to verify the reports because the Bosnian Government refused to allow the Red Cross into the area.”[18]

3,016 massacre victims vote…

Two weeks before International Red Cross representatives Gnaedinger and Barry gave their numbers to the press, another spokesperson for the ICRC in Geneva, Pierre Gaultier, provided an important detail. In an interview with the German journal Junge Welt, he explained:

“All together we arrived at the number of approximately 10,000 [missing from Srebrenica – editor’s note] But there may be some double counting [- GP]… Before we have finished [weeding out the double counting – editor’s note] we cannot give any exact information. Our work is made even more complicated by the fact that the Bosnian government has informed us that several thousand refugees have broken through enemy lines and have been reintegrated into the Bosnian Muslim army. These persons are therefore not missing, but they cannot be removed from the lists of the missing…because we have not received their names.”[19]

Later, when Professor Milivoje Ivanisevic at the University of Belgrade took a closer look at the Red Cross’s list, he discovered it contained the names of 500 people who had died prior to Bosnian Serb troops entering Srebrenica. Even more interesting, one year later, when he compared the Red Cross’s list with the electoral list for the 1996 elections in the fall, he also found that 3,016 people listed by the Red Cross as “missing” were also on the electoral list.[20]

In other words, either Bosnian Muslims were having their dead “vote,” signifying that the voters were bogus and the election a fraud; or the voters were, in fact, alive, in which case, this is additional evidence that the mass execution is a hoax.

Back in August 1992, during the George H.W. Bush administration, journalists from Time magazine saw through the game being played on the press and international public. They wrote: “Bosnian Muslims, fighting at the raw level of their rivals, are likewise guilty of barbarism—and of inflating horror stories about the Serbs to win sympathy and support.”[21]

That objectivity changed under the Clinton administration. The Clinton administration had an agenda, and the major media outlets played a crucial role in its implementation.

With all these facts being swept under the rug, it has long since been clear that this was an orchestrated campaign pursuing political objectives. This campaign called for depicting Serbs as being compared to Nazis.

Serbs take Žepa, a second enclave

Within days of the take-over of Srebrenica, Žepa, a second Muslim enclave (and UN Safe Area), was also captured by Bosnian Serb forces. Among the defenders of Žepa were hundreds of the “missing” soldiers from Srebrenica. The New York Times recounts:

“The wounded troops were left behind, and when the Bosnian Serbs overran the town on Tuesday, the wounded were taken to Sarajevo for treatment at Kosevo Hospital. Many of them had begun their journey in Srebrenica, and fled into the hills when that ‘safe area’ fell to the Bosnian Serbs on July 11. These men did not make it to Tuzla, where most of the refugees ended up, but became the defenders of Žepa instead. ‘Some 350 of us managed to fight our way out of Srebrenica and make it into Žepa,’ said Sadik Ahmetovic, one of 151 people evacuated to Sarajevo for treatment today….They said they had not been mistreated by their Serb captors.”[22]

Shouldn’t it seem strange that the Muslim soldiers of Žepa would abandon their wounded comrades and that the 5,000 Srebrenica soldiers would abandon their women and children to an enemy with a reputation—at least in the Western media—of being sadists and rapists out to commit “genocide?” Could it be that the Muslim soldiers knew that they need not be particularly worried about their women, children, and wounded comrades falling into the hands of their Serb countrymen?

The Serb forces medevacked the wounded Muslim soldiers behind Muslim lines to their Muslim hospital in Sarajevo. Is this how one commits genocide? Is this comparable to the treatment Gazans are experiencing? Is this the military force compared to Nazis? Is the purpose also to trivialize Nazi barbarism? Even the fact that the Serbs had provided safe passage to the women, children, and elderly has been interpreted as sinister when it is proof that no “genocide” was being committed.

The Times (UK) article quoted above mentions that 2,000 Srebrenica soldiers made their way to the north of Tuzla “without their families being informed.” Were their families ever informed? Other than the very few articles that took notice of their resurrection from the presumed dead, the public at large was never informed that they were in fact alive. On the contrary.

Since the number of “missing” (and therefore assumed dead) has remained at roughly 8,000 throughout the past 29 years, it can be reasonably assumed that the Muslim government has never furnished the names of those who reached Muslim lines safely to the Red Cross.

POWs disappeared

To maintain the hoax, it is not only necessary to maintain the illusion that there is proof of a massacre; it is also necessary to suppress any evidence to the contrary. Not only must the 5,000 never be accounted for, but not too many of the Red Cross’s “3,000” prisoners of war should resurface from the “assumed dead.”

On January 17, 1996, the British Guardian published an article about one group of the former Muslim POWs from Srebrenica and Žepa who, once liberated from a POW camp, were flown directly to Dublin:

“Hundreds of Bosnian Muslim prisoners are still being held at 2 secret camps within neighboring Serbia, according to a group of men evacuated by the Red Cross to a Dublin hospital from one camp—at Sljivovica….A group of 24 men was flown to Ireland just before Christmas [1995]….But some 800 others remain incarcerated in Sljivovica and at another camp near Mitrovo Polje, just three days before the agreed date for the release of all detainees under the Dayton peace agreement on Bosnia….The Red Cross in Belgrade has been negotiating for several weeks to have the men released and given sanctuary in third countries. A spokeswoman said most were bound for the United States or Australia, with others due to be sent to Italy, Belgium, Sweden, France and Ireland….Since late August, the Red Cross has made fortnightly visits from its Belgrade field office….Teams from the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague have been in Dublin to question and take evidence from the men.”[23]

Why would prisoners of war, who, upon release, their first wish would normally be to reunite with their families and restart their interrupted lives in peace-time, be rushed off to Dublin with “papers to remain in Ireland”? Why would the Red Cross—usually known for reuniting families—be seeking to secretly spirit them out of their homeland, away from their family and friends, so close to the scheduled date of the POW exchange? Were their families ever informed?

The ex-prisoners were widely dispersed. To a second country…:

[The] US decided to accept 214 Bosniaks who…had been detained in Serb camps and give them refugee status.[24] The Los Angeles Times published an AP bulletin additionally explaining that “The Clinton administration will allow 214 Bosnian Muslim refugees to resettle in the United States from Serbia.…State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns [now U.S. Ambassador to China] said Wednesday that the 214 are drawn from about 800 Bosnian Muslims, mostly soldiers, routed from the United Nations ‘safe areas’ of Srebrenica and Žepa by attacking Bosnian Serb rebels.…Australia has agreed to accept 103, France 70 and Ireland an undetermined number, Burns said. He said other countries are being asked to allow resettlement as well.”[25]

“The Association of Camp Prisoners from Republika Srpska gives the example of Munira Subasic, President of the Bosnian Muslim Association of Srebrenica Women, who claimed that her son was one of the Srebrenica Muslim victims. It was later discovered that her son lives in United States under a new name.”[26]

And a third country… The pro-government [Muslim] news agency TWRA reports:

“[One] Hundred‑three Bosnian soldiers who were recently released from prisons in Serbia, were sent to Australia against their will,” claims their commander, Osmo Zimic. Zimic also criticizes the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), whose spokesman claimed these soldiers demanded departure to Australia and by no means return to Bosnia for they would allegedly face criminal charges as deserters there. “This is not true,” says Zimic. Australian immigration & ethnic affairs office spokesman says he was informed [of] Zimic’s allegation from the Bosnian embassy in Canberra and that the investigation was initiated.”[27]

“The Bosnian Embassy in Australia requested the Hague International Tribunal (ICTY) to start an investigation on the deportation of Bosniaks (800 persons) from Serbia to Australia and Europe in which, supposedly, UNHCR assisted, instead [of] involving Bosniaks in the exchange of prisoners, esp. for they had been in the camps in Serbia which claimed not to be involved in the war in Bosnia. The principal witness for the prosecution is Osmo Zimic, a Bosnian Army Officer, one who had been deported to Australia against his will.”[28]

Why were these POWs skirted out of their country just prior to the agreed prisoner exchange? Obviously, the intention was to keep the hoax of a mass execution alive.

It seems that the allegedly non-partisan Red Cross, the allegedly neutral UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), and a host of “Western” governments around the world were engaged in hiding the fact that these men had not been executed.

How many more of those “at least 800” prisoners were similarly slipped out of the country is unknown. What is now known is that neither the Red Cross, which had been visiting the prisoners since August, the Tribunal, in its frantic search for evidence of “genocide” in Srebrenica and culprits to arrest among the Bosnian Serb leaders, nor the Americans have made mention since August 1995 of these men being prisoners of war. Obviously, they were concealing exonerating evidence to the allegation that the Serbs had committed mass executions.

In early January, the Muslim authorities unilaterally postponed the scheduled exchange of war prisoners. Was there a connection between this and the underground emigration?

“Demanding an explanation of the fate of thousands of Muslims missing in Serb-held Bosnia, the Bosnian government postponed one of the largest scheduled exchanges of prisoners of war Monday [January 15, 1996]. The government said the exchange, part of the Dayton agreement, could not go ahead until the Bosnian Serbs provided information about the fate of 24,000 people the government lists as missing.”[29]

“Bosnia’s Foreign Minister, Muhamed Sacirbey, declared Wednesday in Sarajevo, that it is better to postpone an incomplete prisoner exchange than to write off the lives of those persons still held in labor camps.”[30]

The Muslim authorities and their American backers insisted upon the Serbs releasing all of their war prisoners—even unilaterally. But what about Serb prisoners being held incognito in Muslim captivity?

“A Red Cross official took the unprecedented step of publicly accusing the Bosnian government of holding more prisoners than it has listed for release under the peace agreement. Under the pact, about 900 POWs were to be released by all three former foes in Bosnia. A limited release took place Friday. But Beat Schweizer, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that 645 of the prisoners were still being detained by the former warring parties, 318 by the government, 150 by Bosnian Serbs and 177 by the Croats. He said the Red Cross had information that the Bosnian government was detaining in Tuzla prison some Serbs who are not on the list presented to the Red Cross.”[31]

One month after having helped evacuate the Muslim POWs from the country before the prisoner exchange began, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent (ICRC) announced it would form an “expert commission” to search for the fate of “Srebrenica’s missing persons.” This promise was made to quiet protests by Srebrenica’s female refugees outside the ICRC’s Tuzla headquarters. That commission was to include all three conflict parties and “the international representatives, and it would be a proper forum for collecting data on thousands of the missing persons, about whom there had been no news.” Claims on locations where “the missing persons might be, will be checked,” the International Committee of the Red Cross stated.[32] Here it is clear that the families of the evacuees had not been informed.

The hoax of a Srebrenica massacre is the basis for the allegation of “genocide” committed by Serbs in the course of the Bosnian Civil War.

(To be continued.)

1. Mladic addresses Bosnian Muslims in 1995 video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYUhwIbRBOg ↑
2. Diana Johnstone is author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions and other books. ↑
3. Diana Johnstone, “Selective Justice in The Hague: The War Crimes Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia Is a Mockery of Evidentiary Rule,” The Nation, September 22, 1997. ↑
4. Edward S. Herman, ed., The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics (Evergreen Park, IL: Alphabet Soup, 2011). https://www.zaliv.net/forum/priroda-nauka-istorija/istorija/1912-the-srebrenica-massacre-evidence-context-politics ↑
5. Barbara Crossette, “U.S. Seeks to Prove Mass Killings,” The New York Times, August 11, 1995. Contrary to The New York Times article, the Krajina was not an area “held by rebel Serbs” but a region where Serbs had been at home for several centuries, in fact, longer than Europeans had been settled North America. ↑
6. Tim Weiner, “U.S. Says Serbs May Have Tried to Destroy Massacre Evidence,” The New York Times, October 30, 1995. ↑
7. “Former Yugoslavia: Srebrenica: help for families still awaiting news,” ICRC News 37, September 13, 1995. https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/news-release/2009-and-earlier/57jmjl.htm ↑
8. Associated Press; The New York Times, “Conflict in the Balkans: 8,000 Muslims Missing,” September 15, 1995, p. 8. ( https://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/15/world/conflict-in-the-balkans-8000-muslims-missing.html) In fact, the Times simply reprinted an AP article (“Red Cross Says 8,000 People from Fallen Safe Area Are Missing” (http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1995/Red-Cross-Says-8-000-People-from-Fallen-Safe-Area-Are-Missing/id-e819fee986982e076194b1b9b71524a8 ) ↑
9. Grey propaganda is mixed, partially true, or stunted facts to create a false impression, such as in the case above ↑
10. Black propaganda is totally fabricated—fake news. ↑
11. John M. Crewdson, “CIA secretly built, manipulated a Global propaganda network,” International Herald Tribune (NYT), January 3,1978. ↑
12. Alan Cowell, “Peacekeepers at Fallen Enclave Confirm Some Atrocities but Say They Saw No Rapes,” The New York Times, July 24, 1995, https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/24/world/conflict-balkans-refugees-peacekeepers-fallen-enclave-confirm-some-atrocities.html ↑
13. Idem. ↑
14. Idem. ↑
15. Chris Hedges, “Conflict in the Balkans: In Bosnia; Muslim Refugees Slip Across Serb Lines,” The New York Times; July 18, 1995, p. 7. ↑
16. John Pomfret, “Bosnian Soldiers Evade Serbs in Trudge To Safety,” The Washington Post, July 18, 1995, http://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/07/18/bosnian-soldiers-evade-serbs-in-trudge-to-safety/4c0d6c5f-5fc8-45d2-ba4e-aeb34546e02e/ ↑
17. Michael Dobbs and Christine Spolar, “’Anybody Who Moved or Screamed Was Killed,’” The Washington Post, October 25, 1995, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/10/26/anybody-who-moved-or-screamed-was-killed/8204f2e7-b0e9-4b3a-a5b4-00392cff570e/ ↑
18. Michael Evans and Michael Kallenbach, “‘Missing’ enclave troops found,” The Times, August 2, 1995. ↑
19. Pierre Gaultier (interview),“Wo sind die Vermißten aus Srebrenica?” Junge Welt, August 30, 1995. ↑
20. “Faux électeurs… ou faux cadavres,” Balkans Infos, Paris, October 1996 (No. 6); see also Milivoje Ivanisevic, “Un Dossier qui pose bien des Questions,” Balkans Infos, Paris, December 1996 (No. 8). ↑
21. J.F.O. McAllister,“Atrocity And Outrage: Specters of barbarism in Bosnia compel the U.S. and Europe to ponder: Is it time to intervene?” Time, August 17, 1992, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,976238,00.html. ↑
22. Chris Hedges, “Bosnia Troops Cite Gassings at Žepa,” The New York Times, July 27, 1995, https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/27/world/conflict-in-the-balkans-in-bosnia-bosnia-troops-cite-gassings-at-Žepa.html ↑
23. Ed Vulliamy, “Bosnia: The secret War – Serbs ‘run secret camps’: Men freed from clandestine detention tell Ed Vulliamy of random beatings and ‘mobile torture machines,’” The Guardian, January 17, 1996. ↑
24. S.K., “Another Two Mass Graves Discovered,” Press TWRA, January 19, 1996. [NOTE: Do you know what this source is? I don’t. Same for footnotes 27, 28 and 32.] ↑
25. Associated Press, “Bosnia Muslims Held in Serbia Coming to U.S.,” Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1996, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-01-18-mn-25941-story.html ↑
26. Boro Maric, “More Proof of Srebrenica Manipulations,” Politika, October 13, 2007, https://www.b92.net/eng/all-comments/44524 ↑
27. A.S., “Bosnian Soldiers in Australia Against Their Will,”Press TWRA, February 6, 1996. ↑
28. A.S., “Investigation on Deportation of Bosniaks Requested,” Press TWRA, March 9, 1996. ↑
29. Chris Hedges, “Bosnia Foes Finish Pullback but Fail on P.O.W. Release,” The New York Times, January 20, 1996, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/specials/bosnia/context/0120yugo-bosnia.html ↑
30. mz st, Bosnien/Kriegsgefangene; Bosnische Regierung bleibt bei Bedingungen fÅr Gefangenenaustausch, dpa, 17.01.1996 ƒ 16:49 [NOTE: I didn’t do anything with this one.] ↑
31. Associated Press, “More Glitches Appear in Bosnia Peace Plans,” January 24, 1996, https://www.deseret.com/1996/1/24/19221168/more-glitches-appear-in-bosnia-peace-plans/ ↑
32. “ICRC on the Missing from Srebrenica,” Press TWRA, February 1, 1996. ↑

George Pumphrey—born in 1946 in Washington, D.C.—is a long-time anti-racist and anti-war activist, independent researcher, and author. While living in political exile in Paris he became a French citizen in 1986. Today, he lives in Berlin, Germany. He has written various articles on the Srebrenica Hoax, including “The Srebrenica Massacre”: A Hoax? and “The Srebrenica Massacre’: Analysis of the History and the Legend.”  Together with his wife, Doris, he co-authored the book Ghettos und Gefängnisse: Rassismus und Menschenrechte in den USA,” Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne, West Germany, 1982. George can be reached at: pumphrey@ipn.de.

Source: Covert Action Magazine

July 9 — This week it was reported that Cuba thwarted the attempts of a network of Cubans living in the United States who were trying to enter the island illegally with weapons, and with the purpose of starting a social outbreak. The Ministry of the Interior (Minint) disclosed details of a recruitment plan, neutralized in December 2023, directed, from U.S. territory, to promote and organize terrorist actions in Cuba.

In late November 2023, a Cuban citizen illegally entered Cuba by sea with firearms and ammunition. The individual, identified as Ardenys García Álvarez, entered the island through the Manuel Canal area, in the province of Matanzas, with a Jet Ski type nautical motorcycle, registered in the U.S. state of Florida.

Bullets and other arsenals were found during the seizure of the vehicle. Later, the authorities found that Garcia entered with five pistols of various origins and characteristics, cartridges including an American Tactical pistol and two different models of Smith & Wesson, manufactured in the United States, along with a Steyr, from Austria, and a Taurus, created in Brazil, along with rounds of ammunition.

Garcia was already known to Cuban law enforcement. Before immigrating to the United States in 2014, he was already wanted for crimes of robbery with force. A new legal process against him began immediately after he was caught red-handed on December 9.

During his imprisonment, he confessed to having had contact with Willy González, a representative of the anti-Cuban group calling itself La Nueva Nación Cubana en Armas (The New Cuban Nation in Arms).

In Garcia’s statements to the justice system between the time of his capture and May 2024, during his arrest awaiting charges, he confessed that the name of his recruiter was Dayan Quiñones, with whom he had exchanged messages via the social network Telegram. Subsequently, he had participated with the terrorist group in two military trainings.

During the training, the terrorist mentioned a document that gave a reason for this paraphernalia. In this document of undefined authorship, those involved state their “determination to employ armed struggle, putting at risk the lives of a group of determined men, in order to save the lives of many others.” It was a manifesto of their plans against Cuba.

Other real objectives behind this declaration of intentions were exposed in Willy Gonzalez’s multiple calls for the “awakening of the people,” through violence against offices, sugar cane fields, and the tobacco factories of Pinar del Rio…. “We are reaching the level when their will be physical harm,” he assured.

The story is even more sordid and involves many other terrorists who roam the streets of Florida with the full complicity of U.S. authorities, despite Cuba’s denunciations. Another member of the New Cuban Nation in Arms, alluded to by the accused under the nickname of “El Lobo”, is Jorge Luis Fernandez Figueras, promoter and financier of aggressive actions directed against children’s circles, schools, polyclinics and the warehouses of the Basic Electric Organization, especially in the municipality of San Miguel del Padron, in the province of Havana.

The criminal incursion occurred in November, but it is not by chance that the news is only fully coming to light now; a few days before Cuba remembers with pain and shame the violent events of July 11, 2021. The Cuban authorities took time now to remove the mask of the material authors of this act of provocation, which is not the first and will not be the last, as long as the White House turns a deaf ear to Cuba’s condemnations.

Yes, the fact that the results of the ongoing investigation were released shortly before July 11 is calculated but there is another message. Cuba is at peace, but the intelligence forces are alert and active and on the move. Mercenaries that come here from the US to disrupt and try to undermine Socialist Cuba will be caught and face the fullest extent of our laws and they will not be going back to their lairs in Miami anytime soon. Nothing will disturb the tranquility of the people. Cuba is protected.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English

The leading medical journal says that ‘indirect deaths’ of Palestinians from Israel’s destruction of civilian infrastructure would far exceed those killed directly by the bombing