The imperialist global steering committee known as “G7” or “Group of Seven” recently met in Hiroshima to discuss the ongoing proxy war against Russia. G7 includes the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Canada, and Italy. Additionally, the European Union is a non-enumerated member. 

The U.S. claimed the summit’s purpose was to discuss “a number of challenges to peace and prosperity facing the global order while consulting with invited guests.” However, it quickly became apparent that the summit was nothing more than a proxy-war propaganda show. 

There is something sickeningly ironic about the United States holding a claimed peace summit in Hiroshima, where the U.S. Air Force dropped an atomic bomb, marking the first time a nuclear weapon was deployed. Hiroshima was not a military target at the time. The result of the atomic bombing was a wholesale slaughter of the local population. Over 126,000 Japanese civilians died that day. Gen. Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, said, “The real purpose was to subdue the Soviets.”

And now, the U.S., NATO, and their allies walk that same hallowed ground trolling for military aid for the fascist Ukrainian military. Joining the NATO parade was Volodymyr Zelensky, their actor-in-chief of Ukraine. 

Zelensky spent the week soliciting the G7 leaders to ramp up sanctions on Russia and military assistance to Ukraine. In particular, Ukraine is asking for F-16 fighter jets and advanced missile batteries. Over the past year, NATO’s aggression against Russia has created a boon for the U.S. defense industry. There is immense pressure to keep the missiles firing and the profits flowing. 

While in Hiroshima, Zelensky went as far as to compare the capture of Bakhmut by the Russian military and allied Wagner PMC to the U.S. genocidal destruction at Hiroshima in 1945. However, to draw parallels between forces set on the denazification of Ukraine and forces that murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people to threaten the global working class is insanity at best and fascist propaganda at worst. 

The fascist fundraiser disguised as a peace summit sent the banks and defense magnates a clear message: We are open for business in Ukraine. Predictably, Zelensky and his U.S. backers had great success securing support from the other countries in attendance. By the end of the summit, all seven member countries committed to new sanctions against Russian individuals and increased weapons shipments to the Ukrainian military. 

Leading up to the G7 summit, Zelensky attacked Brazilian President Lula da Silva for his refusal to supply the NATO-backed Ukrainian nazi military. The Ukrainian government criticized Lula for attempts to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. In response, Lula agreed to meet with Zelensky at the G7 in Hiroshima. 

Revealing the true nature of this supposed peace summit, Zelensky snubbed Lula, intentionally missing their entire scheduled meeting. 

The U.S. isn’t interested in peace. NATO isn’t interested in peace. Zelensky isn’t interested in peace. The U.S. and NATO are only interested in the destruction of Russia, China, and, consequently, the ability of the global working class to organize itself against imperialism. Russia must be supported in its defense of the Donbass against Ukrainian fascism. 

No more NATO war! End military aid to Ukraine! Victory to the anti-fascist forces!

The Socialist Unity Party and Struggle-La Lucha newspaper condemn the unjust indictment of three members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and the Uhuru Movement along with three Russian nationals, announced by the U.S. Justice Department on April 18. 

The indictment is a naked attempt by the Biden administration to criminalize criticism and resistance to the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine. It is also a continuation of the FBI’s decades-long racist war on the Black liberation movement. 

The indictment accuses this long-standing movement based in the Black community of “conspiring to covertly sow discord in U.S. society, spread Russian propaganda and interfere illegally in U.S. elections.” The defendants each face up to 15 years in prison.

If allowed to stand, this will set a precedent for U.S. officials – Democrats and Republicans alike – to condemn any act of international solidarity or anti-war opposition and use “foreign influence” as an excuse to crack down on struggles for economic and social justice here at home.

We call upon all left and working-class forces to unite to combat this racist repression. 

Violent FBI raids

Last July 29, the FBI violently raided the APSP’s Uhuru House in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the Uhuru Solidarity Center in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as the private residence of APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela using flash-bang grenades. 

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

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

Flimsy excuses like these — criminalizing ideas — were used by the FBI in orchestrating the violent slaughter of members of the Black Panther Party, like Chairman Fred Hampton in Chicago. More evidence recently came out about the culpability of the FBI in the assassination of Malcolm X.

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

U.S. hypocrisy 

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

These lies attempt to hide the hypocrisy of a government that uses the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and others to sponsor regime change worldwide and encourage many to instigate violence against popular movements. 

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

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

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

The people have the right to fight against the U.S. war and for liberation — for social and economic justice!

Donate to the defendants’ legal fund at HandsOffUhuru.org/Donate.  

See also: We remain in solidarity: Hands off APSP & all those targeted by these bogus FBI indictments!

The North American Treaty Organization, or NATO, has two Strategic Commands – one in Belgium, the other in Norfolk, Virginia. And every year Norfolk holds a NATO Festival, complete with a parade, to honor the U.S-led military alliance that supported Portugal in its wars against African anti-colonial liberation movements; led the destruction of Libya and the former Yugoslavia; played leading roles in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and helped provoke the present war in Ukraine by expanding eastward to the very borders of Russia.

This year, the festival took place on Earth Day – totally ironic, since militaries are the greatest polluters on the planet. But along with the thousands who came out  to watch the parade was a small band of antiwar activists holding a bright yellow 5-foot by 10-foot canvas banner that read “Fight Poverty, Racism + Global Warming, not  NATO’s Wars!”

The protest was sponsored by the Hampton Roads Coalition for Peace & Planet and endorsed by Norfolk Catholic Worker, the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality and the Odessa Solidarity Campaign, which has been supporting the antifascist people of Ukraine since 2016.

As the antiwar activists set up along the parade route, just down from the official reviewing stand, they wondered what kind of reaction they might get from those who had come out to view the parade. After all, Norfolk has one of the largest concentrations of military bases in the world, including the largest naval base, and the military is a major economic engine in this port city of 235,000 people, more than 10 percent of whom are military veterans. But the city also is majority people of color, with a poverty rate of 17.4 percent, so there was reason to think the banner’s message might have some chance of resonating with the public.

As it turned out, there was not one hostile comment – or gesture – during the entire hour-and-a-half parade. What was even more interesting was the number of positive responses, both from the onlookers and the parade participants themselves.

Each of NATO’s 31 member countries had a contingent in the parade, complete with a float, but a large number of the marchers were members of high school bands drawn from states as far away as Pennsylvania. There were lots of curious stares and even some smiles from these young people.

When the contingent from Spain marched by and one enthusiastic antiwar protester shouted out, “No a la guerra” – no to the war, a woman leading the young marchers turned and shouted back, “No to war!” – twice.

Several onlookers gave the thumbs-up sign. One young man walked in front of the banner, smiling and holding his hands to make the heart sign.

So the protest concluded without incident. It would have been good to have had more people, but it was important that, in the midst of the only parade in the U.S. honoring NATO, which with the U.S. is carrying out a devastating proxy war against Russia, that there were voices of opposition.

The protest was also important because it came just four days after federal indictments were issued against members of the African People’s Socialist Party, accusing them of acting as agents for the Russian government because the party and its Uhuru Movement has strongly opposed U.S. support for Ukraine in the war with Russia. The day before the protest, the Odessa Solidarity Campaign, a project of the Virginia Defenders, had issued a statement condemning the attack on the APSP. The protest was another sign that antiwar activists would not be intimidated and would continue to speak  out against the roles of the U.S. military and NATO around the world, and particularly in Ukraine.

To read the OSC statement, see https://odessasolidaritycampaign.org.

To read the leaflet passed out at the NATO protest, see LEAFLET.

Phil Wilayto is editor of The Virginia Defender newspaper and coordinator of the Odessa Solidarity Campaign. He can be reached at: DefendersFJE@hotmail.com.

Thousands of people demonstrated across the United States on March 18 on the 20th anniversary of the second U.S. war against Iraq. Protesters denounced the U.S./NATO war against Donbass and the Russian Federation.

Biden can find over $100 billion for a puppet regime in Ukraine but refuses to stop the cuts in SNAP benefits (food stamps) that will spread hunger to millions. Just as depleted uranium munitions poisoned thousands in Iraq, Biden is now planning to ship the deadly uranium shells to Ukraine.

Over 2,500 people came to the White House to tell President Biden and Congress to stop the war with Russia. They gathered in Lafayette Park, where three years ago Trump ordered a tear gas and pepper spray attack on demonstrators demanding Black Lives Matter!

Demonstrations were also called in other cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Detroit. 

Speakers in Lafayette Park included Eugene Puryear of the ANSWER Coalition, Rev. Annie Chambers of the Peoples Power Assembly, Margaret Kimberley of the Black Alliance for Peace, and Jill Stein of the Green Party.

“I have déjà vu…remembering how we marched 20 years ago to try to stop the invasion of Iraq,” said Margaret Kimberley. Attacking the U.S. wars and occupations of Haiti, Syria, and Yemen, Kimberley declared, “You can’t have human rights when you have a gigantic war machine.”

Rev. Annie Chambers asked: “How can the U.S. government talk about peace and justice when our own people are starving in the streets? When people are being cut off from food stamps and social assistance? And these are the very people they want to go out and fight for them.

“Only a handful of people have control of this country,” said Chambers. “But we have the power to take it back. As a Black Panther, I tell you – we know how to take it back. We’re going to stand up and fight back!”

People marched to the pro-war Washington Post, owned by the union-busting billionaire Jeff Bezos. Marchers then went to the historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church for a rally. 

People brought hundreds of colorful signs and banners. Balloons were carried that mocked the pro-war freezy against the People’s Republic of China. Coffins were held bearing the flags of countries that the U.S. has invaded.

Initiated by the ANSWER coalition, the action was endorsed by over 300 organizations and individuals, including the United National Antiwar Coalition, Black Alliance for Peace, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, The People’s Forum, Peoples Power Assembly, Socialist Unity Party, and CODEPINK.

The anti-war movement is back!

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Soaring utility rates, rising food costs, and other inflationary prices are impoverishing many in Los Angeles. And it’s been brewing more and more anger against war spending and escalation in Ukraine. 

Some of that anger was expressed March 18 at the CNN building, with about 200 people demanding an end to the U.S. proxy war on Russia and an end to NATO.

The rally was organized by a coalition including the ANSWER coalition and CODEPINK. Many of those who attended feel that CNN is a co-conspirator with the U.S. in escalating this war. Like other corporate media outlets, CNN censors stories that contradict the U.S. narrative.

John Parker of the Socialist Unity Party was present at a table shared by the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice and the Black Alliance For Peace. Parker was one of the voices censored by CNN and other corporate media, which refused to publicize his eyewitness account from Ukraine and the Donbass region that was reported by Struggle-La Lucha, CovertAction Magazine and Black Agenda Report.

Najeeb Jones, who was also staffing the table, spoke at the rally, representing the Black Alliance for Peace. Najeeb is also a member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party.

Many people who found out about the rally from the postings and emails of the Harriet Tubman Center stopped at the table. Others were attracted by the banner for the campaign to “Roll Back Prices – No to Inflation and War.” 

People signed up for future actions, like tabling at grocery stores and marching against SoCalGas, which has raised utility rates, sometimes by eight times the previous month’s rate. They also signed up for activities of the Black Alliance for Peace. 

Organizers are hopeful that these contacts will help in building even larger actions against the war, reaching further into the working class of Los Angeles.

On the afternoon of March 22, 1943, the 1st company of the SS special unit Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, together with forces from the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118, invaded Khatyn. The Nazis brutally plundered the Belarusian village, located around 50 kilometers north of Minsk. Some soldiers raped a young woman; finally, the more than 150 residents were herded into a barn, which the perpetrators set on fire. People trying to escape the flames were gunned down. The massacre, carried out in retaliation for a partisan attack, left a total of 152 dead, including 75 children and youth; the other victims were mainly the elderly. Only two boys, two girls and the village blacksmith survived.

The Dirlewanger Brigade, one of the most bloodthirsty combat units of the Waffen-SS, is admired and revered in Ukraine – especially now, as the 80th anniversary of the Khatyn massacre is being marked. Their emblem of crossed stick hand grenades can be found time and again on the uniforms and helmets of National Guardsmen, but also on regular soldiers. As videos document, Kiev troops decorated themselves with it in the battle for Kherson in autumn 2022 – some even wear it tattooed on their skin. Even before the Russian army marched in, a Belarusian volunteer from the neo-Nazi Azov regiment posed on social media with a tattoo portrait of Commander Oskar Dirlewanger.

Oskar Dirlewanger’s SS brigade is celebrated by the fascist network Misanthropic Division, which maintains multiple connections to Azov and distributes photos of “Bolshevik safaris” with dead “subhumans.” Many militant Ukrainian right-wingers feel historically, ideologically and culturally connected to it. The 1st company of Dirlewanger’s unit was mainly recruited from fighters from the fascist organization of Ukrainian nationalists who were vassals of Hitler’s Germany. 

Like Dirlewanger’s troops, quite a few Ukrainian neo-Nazis today are characterized by a pronounced desire to pillage and an urge to destroy: For example, on the anniversaries of the Odessa pogrom on May 2, 2014, Misanthropic Division and associated groups published propaganda banners with pictures of Molotov cocktails and barbecues, on which Kolorads (potato beetles), as the Russian-speaking population call them, are roasted. Inscription: “We remember! We are proud!”

Another parallel: like Dirlewanger’s troops, various Ukrainian Nazi units today consist of right-wing criminals and act largely with impunity. This is the case, for example, for members of the Tornado battalion, notorious for the orgies of torture its fighters carried out, mostly for sheer amusement: They chopped off prisoners’ genitals and limbs; brutally raped civilians, including small children; many of the victims were subsequently massacred. Although the battalion was disbanded in 2015 and some members received prison sentences – unreasonably low – President Volodymyr Zelensky released the perpetrators in 2022 and reinstated them into the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

The liberal West is correspondingly open to Dirlewanger’s political grandchildren: The glamor magazine Vanity Fair already presented in 2015 a colorful heroic story about women in the Ukrainian “freedom struggle.” In the accompanying photo series there is a picture of a volunteer named “Anaconda” in front of a vehicle with the Dirlewanger troop insignia and the addition of “1488” (“14” for the belief system of the white supremacy movement; “88” for “Heil Hitler”) – without a word about the meaning of the symbols. Nor about the fact that the woman belongs to a Nazi battalion which, according to a Polish journalist, unofficially maintained its own Dirlewanger unit (it is unknown whether this still exists). In 2020, Zelensky awarded the battalion, which has since been integrated into the regular Ukrainian army as an assault force “for special use,” by “awarding the honorary name” Aidar, as it was initially called after its foundation in 2014.

The incorporation of extremely criminal Nazi gangs into the Ukrainian security apparatus and the appreciation they receive from the head of state reveal something about the racket nature of post-Soviet society. As early as the late 1930s, Marxist researchers of fascism identified the tendency towards gang rule as a phenomenon of decay in bourgeois societies after the (self-)destructive dynamics of capital had been unleashed. However, since the fascist bands of robbers were empowered with the support of NATO, they also reveal a lot about the status of the brutality of “Western civilization.” 

It is revealing that the European and U.S. public pay homage to Azov and Co. as terminators of the old hated enemy. So far, the unpleasant past references of the new heroes have mostly been suppressed: Their weakness for Dirlewanger memorabilia means nothing, according to the growing Internet fan community of Nazi warriors. On the right-hand edge, however, some are picking up ideologically where Hitler’s beasts had to stop thanks to the Red Army in 1945, and long for revenge: Dirlewanger is used for psychological warfare against “the Russkies,” bragged one user recently. “They still have nightmares.”

Translated by Melinda Butterfield

Source: Junge Welt

A statement from the U.S. European Command late on Tuesday said two Russian Su-27 jet fighters had intercepted a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea.

The statement claimed the drone, of the same model used in armed attacks on civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was on an “Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance” mission over “international waters.”

It alleged that the Russian planes buzzed the drone, dumped fuel in its path, and finally clipped its rear-mounted propeller, causing it to crash into the sea.
Mark Sleboda told Sputnik on Tuesday that the U.S. military’s protests over the incident glossed over the drone’s offensive role.

“There’s a big question of what the U.S. is doing flying a Reaper drone in the Black Sea, which is a combat drone,” Sleboda pointed out. “It is not an air intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance platform.”

The Russian Ministry of Defense said the Reaper was detected near the Crimean Peninsula, which voted to reunite with Russia in 2014 after the Euromaidan coup d’etat in Ukraine.

The drone was flying “in the direction of the state border of the Russian Federation” with its identification transponders turned off, the MoD said, “violating the boundaries of the temporary airspace regime established for the special military operation.” It said the unmanned combat air vehicle lost control and crashed after making radical maneuvers.

“The Russian aircraft did not use on-board weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle, and returned safely to their home airfield,” the ministry clarified.

Source: Sputnik

The U.S. ruling class is risking World War III to keep global wealth flowing to them, a U.S. political analyst and anti-war activist says.

“The oligarchs of Wall Street are desperate to keep the wealth of the world flowing into their coffers. They dream of reclaiming the position they enjoyed in the world economy after the Second World War,” said Bill Dores in an interview with Press TV on March 11.

He called on the people of the U.S. to act urgently to stop the corporate servants in Washington from dragging the U.S. into a global conflict that could turn into a nuclear war.

“The menace of a full third world war, even a nuclear one, is very real,” Dores warned.

“It grows by the minute. It does not come from Russia or China or Iran. It flows from the financial desperation of the U.S. corporate ruling class, which owns both political parties, the White House, Congress, the Pentagon and the CIA,” he added.

‘20th-century world wars killed 100 million people’

The analyst said that the “world wars of the 20th century killed upwards of 100 million people.”

“The wars left much of the world in ruins, hundreds of millions maimed, orphaned, and homeless. They saw the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war — by the United States on the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he said.

“But for the bankers and CEOs of Corporate America, many of whom supported Hitler in the 1930s, the world wars were the best thing that ever happened,” he added.

“It’s a problem for them that they have not been able to have another war on that scale,” Dores continued.

Wars made Wall Street the world’s financial center

“World War I put the colonial empires of West Europe, grown rich from the plunder of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, in debt to U.S. banks. New York City replaced London as the world’s financial center,” the anti-war activist revealed.

“World War II’s massive destruction cemented Wall Street’s position at the center of the world economy. In 1945 the U.S. produced 50 percent of global GDP and held 80 percent of the world’s hard currency reserves. The war made the dollar the world’s reserve currency,” he said.

So-called ‘golden age of capitalism’

Dores noted that U.S. historians call it the “golden age of capitalism.”

“It was an age that could only be preserved by war and destruction. The military-financial state in Washington has tried to preserve it that way ever since,” he explained.

45-year mass murder spree called ‘Cold War’

“That was the object of the 45-year mass murder spree they called the ‘Cold War.’ Two years after World War II ended, President Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the U.S. Air Force and the CIA. The permanent U.S. war economy was born. It has kept the world at war for eight decades,” he observed.

“The Cold War wasn’t cold. While they built tens of thousands of nuclear weapons to threaten the USSR, the Pentagon and CIA and its proxies murdered tens of millions of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It was, in reality, a war against the right of the people of those continents to freedom and economic development, a war to destroy any avenues of economic life on this planet that don’t run through Wall Street. It was also used to keep West Europe and Japan under Washington’s thumb,” Dores said.

“The Cold War supposedly ended with the overthrow of the Soviet Union. The U.S. need for war didn’t. Washington launched a 30-year war to regain the near monopoly Corporate America once held on the world’s energy supply,” the analyst said.

‘Russia was inevitably a target’

“Starting with Iraq, Washington invaded, bombed or sanctioned energy-producing countries that didn’t pay tribute to Wall Street. Russia is the biggest. It was inevitably a target,” Dores said.

“In their drive to control the world economy, the U.S. ruling class could not tolerate even a capitalist Russia. NATO’s drive to the east began less than a decade after the USSR fell, before President Putin was elected,” he stated.

“People in the United States have no need for Wall Street banks to command the world economy. We don’t need endless wars for corporate power, especially since those corporations use their power against us. We need to act urgently to stop the corporate servants in Washington from dragging us into World War III,” Dores concluded.

Source: Press TV

PressTV

The majority of people of the United States, especially the working class and oppressed communities, are being “triply plundered” by the Ukraine war, American political analyst and anti-war activist Bill Dores has said.

“First we have our taxes – funds that should be spent on human needs – spent on weapons. Then there is the inflation caused by printing money for the Pentagon. And then there is the price of food, energy and everything else pushed still higher by the shortages caused by war and sanctions,” the analyst explained.

Dores, a writer for Struggle-La Lucha and longtime antiwar activist, made the remarks in an interview with the Press TV website Thursday while commenting on U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s statement that U.S. aid to Ukraine is a “direct investment” in Washington’s interests.

McConnell said that U.S. national security is tied to stability and security in Europe and preventing Russian forces from advancing in the continent.

“As my fellow leading Republicans and I have explained, it is not an act of charity for the United States and our NATO allies to help supply the Ukrainian people’s self-defense,” the former Senate Majority leader said. “It is a direct investment in our own core national interests.”

McConnell pointed out that the United States has largely been sending older weapons from its stockpile to Ukraine.

He urged the Biden administration to act more resolutely in ensuring that its military assistance to Ukraine and investments happen at the “speed of relevance.”

‘Both U.S. parties serve U.S. corporate war machine’

“Senator McConnell apparently feels the tens of billions of our tax dollars the Biden administration has poured into Ukraine is not enough. His remarks underscore how both major U.S. parties serve the corporate war machine,” said Dores.

“The Republican Senate leader is not lying though when he calls that money an ‘investment.’ That is exactly how the bankers, financial managers and corporate bosses making billions off this war see it. For them, the bloodbath in Ukraine is a gold mine. That’s what McConnell means when he speaks of ‘core national interests,’” the activist explained.

He added, “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the paid corporate shills in U.S. Congress the same thing when he addressed them last November: ‘Your money is not charity, it’s an investment.’”

‘An investment that won’t benefit the majority of people in the U.S.’

Dores said, “It is not an investment that will benefit the majority of people of the United States, especially the working class and oppressed communities.”

“But this ‘direct investment’ is already paying off big time for U.S. and British energy monopolies, arms corporations and the banks and asset managers that control them. ‘U.S. oil producers reap $200 billion windfall from Ukraine war price surge,’ the Financial Times wrote in November,” he added.

“‘ExxonMobil reached record profits amid high gas prices, war in Ukraine,’ PBS reported in January. ‘How the Ukraine war is fueling massive profits for energy firms and arms dealers,’ read a February headline in the Times of London. The war in Ukraine rescued the U.S. energy industry from the price collapse of 2020,” he said.

“BlackRock, the world’s largest investment house, is already raking in war profits through its arms and energy holdings. And in December, UPI reported, ‘Zelensky, BlackRock CEO agree to coordinate Ukraine rebuilding investment,’” the analyst said.

“Ukraine could be a ‘beacon about the power of capitalism,’ BlackRock CEO Larry Fink bragged in Davos last month.”

Why is the U.S. ruling class targeting Iran, Venezuela, Russia 

“This profit bonanza is not a windfall or accident,” said Dores. “In 1991, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, Washington embarked on a global drive to recapture control of the world’s energy supply. The first target was Iraq. Libya and Syria were next, along with sanctions and covert operations against Iran and Venezuela. Russia was the ultimate target.”

“These countries are very different, but they have committed a common crime in the eyes of the U.S. corporate ruling class. They have large energy reserves and they don’t pay tribute to Washington and Wall Street,” he explained.

“Cutting Europe off from Soviet/Russian energy supplies has been a prime U.S. objective since the 1980s, when the Reagan regime tried to sabotage the Trans-Siberian Pipeline. It was an object of the U.S.-backed 2014 coup in Kiev and eight years of U.S. military investment in Ukraine,” he noted.

“It is why the U.S. encouraged the Kiev regime’s bloody eight-year war against the people of Donetsk and Lugansk. Washington has pushed NATO expansion precisely to build a wall between West Europe and Russia. ”

Russia began its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 with a declared aim of “demilitarizing” Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed republics. Back in 2014, the two republics, which are predominantly Russian-speaking, broke away from Ukraine, prompting Kiev to launch a bloody war against both regions. The years-long conflict has killed more than 14,000 people, mostly in the Donbas.

Since the onset of the conflict between the two countries, the United States and its European allies have unleashed an array of unprecedented sanctions against Russia and poured numerous batches of advanced weapons into Ukraine to help its military fend off the Russian troops, despite repeated warnings by the Kremlin that such measures will only prolong the war.

The elephant in the room: The Nord Stream explosion

“On September 23 of last year, explosives planted by U.S. Navy divers blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines deep in the Baltic Sea. Stopping the pipelines, which carry Russian natural gas to Germany, has been a declared objective of the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. The revelation by acclaimed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that the sabotage was a U.S. military operation has been suppressed in the U.S. corporate media,” said Dores.

“It gives the lie to Mitch McConnell’s claim that Russia aims to ‘destabilize Europe, invading and killing at will.’ Russia has neither the need, desire or capacity to do that. For the U.S. military-financial state, however, confrontation with Russia is a means to bring Europe back under its thumb,” he noted.

“In a February 26 interview with the TV channel Rossiya 1, Vladimir Putin said that the U.S. seeks to maintain a unipolar world that revolves around its interests. He gave the example of the U.S. forcing Australia to cancel a deal to buy French submarines in favor of those made by U.S. contractors General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls. So much for allies,” the peace activist said.

“Indeed. Washington seeks to wreck any avenues of economic life on this planet that don’t pass through Wall Street. It sees war as the only means to restore its obsolescent position at the center of the world economy,” he observed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Russia is opposed to the emergence of a unipolar world that revolves around Washington’s interests.

Putin said his country is striving to create a multipolar world rather than one that is centered around the U.S.

Some of Washington’s allies also see confrontation with Russia as a unifying cause, eclipsing any differences between them and the U.S., Putin noted.

Marxists Speak Out has been working since February 2022 to bring together the communist forces internationally that support a Russian victory over NATO and support the Russian-speaking territories that have chosen to break from Ukraine. We have done so through joint statements, panels and promoting protests.

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Feb. 24 will mark the first anniversary of Russia coming to the aid of the people in the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, defending those in the Eastern Ukraine region that had seceded in 2014 due to the Kiev regime’s Neo-Nazi ties. German fascism was the spearhead used by imperialism to try and destroy the Soviet Union workers’ state in World War II. Fascist forces have once again been utilized by imperialism within Ukraine, this time to target the people of the Donbass and capitalist Russia. Now that the U.S./EU/NATO bloc have dropped their policy of limited intervention for open escalation, the world is once again on the brink of a destructive war between nuclear-armed powers.

For 30 years, NATO has lied to the Russian people and closed the distance between NATO-aligned countries and the Russian border. Russophobia has been a convenient cover for imperialism as it dismisses any concerns about NATO’s ambition to place weapons on the border between Russia and Ukraine as Russian aggression. We now know that every step of so-called diplomacy of the Minsk Agreement was nothing more than broken promises and opportunities to further prepare for imperialist war. Angela Merkel and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko have both admitted the Minsk agreement was aimed to stall Russia so NATO could supply Ukraine with weaponry.

The fascist militias and battalions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces terrorized the citizens of Donbass between 2014 and 2022, killing thousands of civilians and ultimately leaving Russia no choice but to launch an offensive in the region to protect the Russian-speaking population. Russians have never forgotten how many of their ancestors, who fought as citizens of the Soviet Union, died to defeat Nazi Germany during WWII. Given this history, it was intolerable for many Russians to see the resurgence of the likes of Stepan Bandera gaining a foothold to threaten Russia at the behest of imperialism.

Ukraine has been propped up by imperialist forces from the beginning of the conflict and Zelensky is increasingly calling for more aid from the West: first long-range missiles, then tanks, and now fighter jets. There appears to be no “red line” the Western imperialists will not cross as they escalate the conflict. In addition to the billions of dollars in weapons, the imperialists have stooped to terrorism over the past year, blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline and launching terrorist attacks within Russian territory.

The U.S./EU/NATO alliance is prepared to destroy the working class of their own countries to undermine Russia, destabilize the region and make way for territorial conquest. Many citizens are feeling the real consequences of rampant militarism in the U.S., UK, France, and across all of Europe in the form of austerity and inflation. As many liberal forces bay for war, it is the working class that pays the price. U.S. President Joe Biden has overseen upwards of $100 billion in equipment sent to Ukraine, at a time when Americans are facing layoffs, pay cuts, and growing unrest.

A victory for the U.S./EU/NATO bloc in the current war would spell devastation for the world anti-imperialist struggle. It would likely lead to the break up of Russia and the opening up of its resources for full exploitation by Western imperialism. The removal of Russia as a military obstacle would accelerate the war drive of the U.S. against the People’s Republic of China to complete its aim to dominate the Eurasian landmass. The proxy war against Russia is inseparable from the war drive against China.

The failure of so many Marxist groups across all traditions to oppose the imperialist war against Russia has been an historic failure. However, out of this failure comes the opportunity for genuinely anti-imperialist forces to join together, overcoming traditional sectarian divides. In this way, building the struggle against the war against Russia is a stepping stone to rebuilding and uniting the international communist movement and towards the ultimate victory of socialism!

Defeat for the NATO-led imperialist alliance! Victory to the resistance! No cooperation with imperialist war!

Current Endorsers:

Anti-War West Sydney (Australia)
볼셰비키그룹/Bolshevik Group (South Korea)
Classconscious.org (U.S. and Australia)
κομμουνιστικη επαναστατικη δραση / Communist Revolutionary Action (Greece)
Liaison Committee for the Fourth International, and its sections:

• Consistent Democrats (Britain)
• Liga Communista / Communist League (Brazil)
• Socialist Workers League (U.S.)
• Tendencia Militante Bolchevique/ Militant Bolshevik Tendency (Argentina)

Mohammad Basir Ul Haq Sinha – Socialist Republican Movement (Bangladesh)
नेशनल डेमोक्रेटिक पीपुल्स फ्रंट/ National Democratic People’s Front (NDPF) (India)
Partido Comunista do Povo Brasileiro, PCPB; (Communist Party of the Brazilian People – PCPB (Brazil)
Partido Obrero Socialista CR/ Socialist Workers Party CR (Costa Rica)
RedLine/Κόκκινη γραμμή (Greece)
Socialist Unity Party (U.S.)
Socialist Fight (Britain)
U.S. Friends of the Soviet People

Individuals

Mark Andresen (Britain)
Fábio Sobral (Brazil)
Fernando Gaebler / Organización Internacional Comunista (Brazil)
Gaukhar Datkhabayeva (Kazakhstan)
Askar Aisin (Kazakhstan)

If you would like to sign the statement, send your endorsement to: nowaronrussiaandchina@proton.me

Source: Marxists Speak Out