Author: NewCourse Staff

Former mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel once said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” BlackRock, Inc. has seemed to heed this sinister advice. BlackRock plans to advise war-torn Ukraine on how that country can best attract international capital for its reconstruction. Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelenskyy and Blackrock CEO Larry Fink signed a Memorandum of Understanding in September 2022, making the investment platform available to the Ukrainian government.

Perhaps Larry Fink is just a Good Samaritan? This might be a plausible explanation if divorced from any context about who Mr. Fink is, or the history of Blackrock. But BlackRock is no ordinary firm. It has been hailed as The Secret Company that Owns the World by numerous outlets and for good reason. Many confuse BlackRock with Blackstone Inc. The CEO of Blackstone Stephen Schwarzman once explained that he and Fink had deliberately chosen a similar name. Larry Fink started what would become BlackRock in 1988 as part of Blackstone Financial Management. Fink’s hedge fund turned a good profit within months, quadrupling its assets in one year. At that point, Fink began to think about spinning his own company off from Blackstone. Schwarzman suggested a name with “black” to signal its Blackstone origins. After splitting with Blackstone, Fink embarked on his mission to build his company into the financial behemoth it is today as the world’s largest asset manager. When BlackRock went public in 1999 at $14 per share, it was already managing $165 billion in assets. BlackRock created its proprietary Aladdin enterprise investment system, which helped the firm acquire the mutual fund State Street Research & Management in 2004, merge with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers in 2006, and buy Seattle-based Quellos Group in 2007, bringing the total value of assets under its management to over $1 trillion. But BlackRock was just getting started. 

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 catapulted BlackRock to the position of financial dominance it has maintained ever since. But Larry Fink set the groundwork back in the 1980s before even starting BlackRock. In 1983 while working at First Boston, Fink helped the investment bank make billions by constructing the Collateralized Mortgage Obligation (CMO). Together with a team from Salomon Brothers, Fink created the subprime mortgage market that would fail so spectacularly in 2008. Instead of sending him to prison for the mess, his CMO had created, the United States government instead tasked Fink with helping clean it up. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner consulted Larry Fink on no fewer than 49 separate occasions over an 18-month period of the financial crisis. The Federal Reserve similarly turned to BlackRock to assist in administering the 2008 bailouts. BlackRock played a key role in financing the $30 billion sale of Bear Stearns to J.P. Morgan, the $45 billion rescue of Citigroup, and the $180 billion bailout of AIG. Little wonder, then, that Bloomberg named BlackRock the ‘Fourth Branch of Government’. The  business plan seemed simple: pursue greed even at the risk of a financial crisis, then make even more money by later stepping in to “help.” 

And BlackRock’s “successes” didn’t end there. In 2019, the World Economic Forum appointed Fink as a member of its Board of Trustees. The same year Joe Biden practically begged BlackRock to support him in his presidential contest against Trump. “I’m here to help,” Fink reassured Biden. Fink’s help paid off after the election when three BlackRock executives took positions in president Joe Biden’s cabinet.  Today, in nearly every major publicly-traded company in the world, BlackRock is either the first, second, or third-largest shareholder. It owns sizeable shares in CNN, FOX, and other mainstream media, meaning it can push bipartisan propaganda for endless wars and new conflicts around the world. BlackRock has billions invested in major weapons contractors including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. These companies are the top recipients of Pentagon contracts and billions in our tax dollars. As with the 2008 crash, BlackRock seeks to prolong the Ukrainian conflict until the firm can secure a new grift in its reconstruction. In this way, the company can both profit handsomely from weapons sales and create more work to be done in post-war Ukraine. The more ruined the country, the better for BlackRock. On November 29, 2022, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced that rebuilding Ukraine would require at least 1 trillion dollars. Kiev reportedly plans to entice Western countries into investing in reconstruction efforts by granting them ‘patronage’ over Ukrainian regions and cities. “We are already engaging dozens of partner countries in the process of rebuilding Ukraine,” said Zelensky, when presenting Odesa’s bid to host the 2030 Expo. He added, “We will become those whose potential in “green” energy will replace dirty Russian fossil fuel for Europe. 2030 is the time when we will be able to celebrate it. To celebrate it together with all Europeans.” It appears that BlackRock is “helping” Zelensky auction off Ukrainian lands to the highest foreign bidder. What can we expect to happen to this special “reconstruction” pot in the most corrupt country in Europe? It will likely end up like the 70% of weapons shipped to Ukraine that ‘disappear’ and never reach the troops. BlackRock experts helped banks and corporations during the 2008 financial crisis throw working-class people out of their homes. In Ukraine, as the country is destroyed and ordinary people there struggle to make ends meet, BlackRock is committed to helping Zelensky and his fellow oligarchs have their best year yet.

No detective can ever solve a crime without studying all of the evidence and trying to stay as objective as possible. Similarly, in knowing history we can’t be confident about what happened without studying the relevant primary sources. The story of the “Holodomor” is one of many disputed cases in modern history. It’s a relatively new term, not just internationally but also in the Ukrainian language, and is made up of two words – “moryty holodom”, which translates as ‘to kill by starvation,” implying that the famine from 1932 to 1933 in Soviet Ukraine was a man-made project that killed millions of Ukrainians. This myth draws together thousands of lies and distorted half-truths. Like a layered onion, the more you peel back the layers, the better your chances of discovering what actually happened. So let’s peel the first layer: the origin of this particular myth. 

It turns out the story began with – surprise! – the nazis. Esteemed journalist Gareth Jones’ March 29th, 1933, press conference in Berlin resulted in a series of articles detailing his discovery of a famine in the Soviet Union (example on the left). The initial stories made no mention of a genocide. Gareth, writing at that time for the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper in Berlin, had also enjoyed “the privilege” of being the first foreign journalist to fly with Hitler on February 23rd, 1933, less than a month after Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Later that year, a newspaper Hitler owned called the National Observer (Völkischer Beobachter) published an article called – “Hunger hell Soviet Russia – the mass deaths in Soviet Paradise” (original “Hungerhoelle Sowjetrussland – Das Massensterben in Sowjet Paradies”). Douglas Tottle situates this newspaper in the context of a larger information war in his book, Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: “In Germany, a country with a history of strong communist, socialist and trade union movements, the Nazis created the first organized propaganda campaign (1933-1935) as part of their consolidation of power.” Völkischer Beobachter’s myth of a deliberate famine was soon picked up and propagated in the USA by the fascist media tycoon, William Randolph Hearst. His “journalist on the ground” Thomas Walker wrote a series of articles portraying a mammoth famine in Ukraine that claimed an estimated six million lives. Hearst Press published Walker’s work in the Chicago American (pictured on the right) as well as the New York Evening Journal. It  was later proven that Walker had in fact never set foot in Ukraine. He had instead recycled photographs of previous famines, from different places. Louis Fischer thoroughly debunked Walker’s article in an exposé entitled, “Hearst’s Russian Famine,” published by The Nation on March 13th, 1935. Not only had Walker’s Ukrainian reporting been fake, but the man himself was also a notorious fraud. Douglas-Tottle revealed the truth about him in “Fraud, Famine, and Fascism” (left).

Even after Walker’s fiasco, America’s number one fascist Mr. Hearst continued his campaign to smear the Soviet Union and perpetuate the myth of what later would become known as the Holodomor. Hearst not only employed Mussolini, but also visited Nazi Germany to meet in person with Hitler. According to an article in  Daily Worker from February 13th, 1935 (right), Hearst brokered a one-million-marks-a-year deal with a Nazi propaganda machine. That he published one fake story after another begins to make sense in light of such perverse incentives.

As the famous Russian saying goes “where there is smoke, there is fire,” meaning there is a grain of truth behind every lie. No one disputes that a famine took place in Ukraine between 1932 and 1933. Indeed, throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, most of the world experienced severe economic hardship. In the USA, it took the form of the Great Depression. This period saw many famines around the globe, but because at the time the United States was further developed than the Soviet Union, both industrially and agriculturally, famine there was less widespread. Even as millions suffered horribly and untold numbers died, this misery was never blamed on capitalism or president Hoover personally in the way the Ukrainian famine has been framed as a crime perpetrated by Stalin in the name of “evil” socialism. It is worth remembering the Soviet Union’s  economic and geo-political conditions leading up to the famine.

First of all, the country was devastated by tremendous losses from World War I. Then, three weeks after the October Revolution, a coalition of 14 countries led by the US and UK invaded the USSR and committed mass atrocities, slaughtering tens of thousands of civilians. Wikipedia, of course, refers to these crimes with the euphemism, Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. The US and its allies followed up their unsuccessful invasion with crippling sanctions and embargoes on the Soviet Union. For example, because the USSR was barred from trading in gold, agricultural goods became the only option for currency. And yet, despite these obstacles, the Bolsheviks prevailed in improving living conditions for their people. Stalin’s administration delivered on its mission to modernize agriculture and raise living standards. In two decades, the USSR made remarkable strides, as life expectancy doubled from 35 years to 70 years in all of the Soviet territory. And when news of a famine in Ukraine (that is today referred to as the Holodomor) reached Moscow, Stalin immediately dispatched relief aid to the affected areas. 

Mark Tauger is an associate professor at the University of West Virginia and specialist in economics and agriculture of the USSR who has conducted extensive research on the history of agriculture and famines in Ukraine. In Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1933, Tauger shows that the USSR’s agricultural yield during 1932 was 20-30% lower than on average. In response to this shortfall, the USSR reduced export of its grain to 1%, with 99% reserved for feeding its population. Tauger argues that in 1932 the Soviets in fact developed an effective food distribution system that provided food to over 40 million people. The same year, Stalin sent 5,000 tractors to Ukraine, while thousands more were purchased from abroad. This begs the question, why would Stalin provide 5,000 tractors to Ukraine if his ultimate plan was to starve its inhabitants? The notion that Stalin committed genocide in Ukraine should be taken about as seriously as the joke that the Soviet leader “ate all the grain and paid the clouds not to rain.”

In his work, Tauger reserves particular ire and criticism for fellow American academic and historian James Mace, widely considered the father of the revisionist movement pushing the Holodomor narrative. On September 21st, 1984, U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine was established “to provide American society with a better understanding of the Soviet system by exposing the role of the Soviets in the Ukrainian famine.” Heading this new commission was a man named James Mace. When American historians greeted with skepticism Mace’s unscientific conclusions about the alleged genocide of the Ukrainian people, he decided to go to Ukraine. While visiting Kiev In the 1990s, Mace helped to mint and circulate in Ukraine a new phrase, “post-genocide society.” Before Mace’s visit, Ukrainians generally didn’t perceive themselves as victims of a historic injustice by the Soviet Union, but following his visit, a narrative gradually emerged. Another boost for the Holodomor narrative around the world was the 1987 film Harvest of Despair, a propaganda piece funded entirely by Ukrainian ultranationalists, themselves placed into positions of authority and influence by the US Central Intelligence Agency. The US helped these ultranationalists found various front groups disguised as academic institutions and to take key positions in universities – where they could more effectively manufacture anti-Russian propaganda and rewrite history to whitewash their collaboration with Nazis during World War II. The film, which passes off photos from the 1921-22 Volga famine as being taken instead during the 1932-33 famine, also interviews several Nazi collaborators as “witnesses.” The film should have been titled, Harvest of Deception. 

The USA and Canada also gave Nazi collaborators a generous second chance, rehabilitating them for use in their imperialist, anti-communist crusade. In today’s new Cold War, just as in the old one, the west has whipped up neo-Nazis in Ukraine so as to wage a proxy war with Russia.

These ultranationalists were mobilized in 2014 to overthrow Ukraine’s legitimate government in a coup d’état, and ever since have been killing thousands of civilians in Donbass. Yet in the west, these fascist thugs are merely lauded as heroes fighting “evil” Russia. Indeed, new accusations of genocide have emerged that echo the Holodomor lie. Western media have spread a new myth that Putin hates all Ukrainians and wants to commit genocide. Western disinformation today bears a striking resemblance to anti-communist propaganda from the 1930s and 1980s. Photoshopped pictures and staged videos are produced as evidence of Russian troops’ atrocities. The so-called Bucha massacre, the siege of Mariupol, and the Izum torturers are just some of the countless doctored stories, created to provoke visceral reactions and manipulate the public. One such hoax, that the Bucha Massacre was perpetrated by the Russian army, has been thoroughly debunked here. As with the Holodomor myth, just because a certain narrative is well-established or relentlessly pushed doesn’t make it true. One should always take the time to peel back all the layers of an onion; always investigate, research, and find the clear and indisputable evidence before drawing your conclusion. Things are rarely just as they seem.

Voluntarily or not, people move. Approximately 281 million reside outside of their birthplace, and this number is constantly increasing.  When a group of people resettles outside their original homeland, the community is called a diaspora. The term “diaspora” is derived from the Greek and translates as – “to sow over, to scatter”. It was originally used to describe the dispersal of Jewish people from their historical homeland. Today, the term is applied to various nationalities. Common to all diasporas is an attempt to maintain their cultural identity. To this end, diasporas establish various support organizations in the host countries. From churches, museums, and cultural centers to banks and credit unions, these institutions serve to help new immigrants feel more at home, even when thousands of miles away.

However, little attention has been paid to the strong influence diasporas can have when a conflict occurs in their home country. Does their involvement tend to resolve or worsen the situation? Most wars today are fought in underdeveloped and poor areas, and diasporas can raise money and transfer it to their homeland. Even during peaceful times, the money migrants send home is usually a lifeline for their families. These remittances help cover necessities such as food, medical expenses, and emergencies. In times of crisis, financial help from the diaspora becomes even more critical. According to the World Bank, Ukraine was the largest recipient of remittances in Europe last year, estimated at $18.2 billion, a figure that is expected to increase this year by another 20 percent. Economic support remains vital post-conflict, when the diaspora can invest heavily in its homeland to stabilize the economy and help rebuild the country.

Beyond financial support, different diaspora organizations also lobby the host country’s government to shape policies, support or challenge the current government, and to fund political parties or social movements. 11 organizations were registered in the USA to work on behalf of  Ukraine in 2021. Ukrainian lobbyists contacted members of Congress 13,541 times last year. According to Quincy Institute for reasonable statecraft: “To put this in perspective, the Saudi lobby – known for being one of the largest foreign lobbies in D.C. – reported 2,834 contacts, not even a quarter of what Ukraine’s agents have done.”

Another way diasporas may influence the conflict in their home country is by advocating for an economic boycott of an enemy state’s exports, so as to weaken its capacity to wage war. For example, Arab countries have boycotted Israeli goods and services for years. This year, The Ukrainian World Congress similarly called on all Ukrainians around the world and their friends to boycott Russian goods and services. They also pressured international companies to withdraw from the Russian market.

We have also witnessed demonstrations in big cities of the western world, organized by the diaspora in support of their birth country or against the government “back home.” Protesters take to the streets to raise awareness and demand action from authorities. In most cases, government officials respond in support of the diaspora’s demands. This creates the illusion of the “tail wagging the dog.” But how is it that every time the diaspora’s interests conveniently align with those of imperialist powers? Perhaps these diasporas are being manipulated to serve the ruling class agenda, assist intelligence agencies, and amplify media propaganda.

Two recent instances involved the Ukrainian and Iranian diasporas. Both received overwhelming support from the general population and the government, even though the conflicts were completely different. The Ukrainian diaspora is demonstrating in support of the ruling class “back home” and for help from western countries in their fight with Russia. The Iranian diaspora, on the other hand, is protesting against the “regime” of their homeland. They are not asking to help their country but rather to sanction it, hoping that international boycotts and pressure will help the people of Iran to overthrow their government. These demands exactly serve the interests of western imperialist powers. It’s not surprising that the US and its allies have done so much to help Ukraine, given they were meddling there for so long to prevent Russian influence over the country. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia became the new enemy, which is why the “pro-Russian” government of Victor Yanukovich had to be overthrown. But the coup d’etat of 2014 was not enough; a full-fledged war was required to weaken Russia. This proxy war benefits the US. Its military-industrial complex can use Ukraine as a new market and testing ground for weapons, politicians can launder money, and the imperialist power can maintain the status quo. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian diaspora doesn’t seem to realize how it has been used to promote the interests of the elite.

Since Iran is another enemy of the west, all kinds of methods are now being used to accomplish what was done in Ukraine – namely, to overthrow its government. Diasporas are exploited not just for demonstrations but also for social media propaganda. Thousands of fake stories and claims are spread online; even while later debunked, their damage is already effective. All of this is done to push the official narrative. Somehow, we never see the Saudi diaspora demanding to free women in Saudi Arabia from mandatory hijabs. Only those diasporas whose home countries are on the US’s extensive enemy list are allowed to demonstrate.  So the Good and the Bad of diasporas are nothing compared to the Ugly – the imperialist powers exploiting immigrants to promote their agenda.

As temperatures drop across Europe, Ukrainians in black-out-induced areas are being told by their government that they have only themselves to blame should the energy difficulties continue. Freezing temperatures are expected to plunge down further, yet Ukrainian president  Volodymyr Zelenskyy advised his citizens, “If consumption increases in the evening, the number of outages may increase…This once again shows how important it is now to save power and consume it rationally.” Zelenskyy claims Ukraine has built over 4,000 “invincibility shelters” to help people endure the winter (yet to be seen or photographed), an unimpressive feat given the United States alone has sent over $100 billion dollars to Ukraine, ramping up its military budget to fund the conflict.

It is ironic that Zelenskyy is asking his citizens to bear the brunt of the ongoing conflict and not seeking more support from the Ukrainian elites who have fled the country in droves since February and continue to prosper. Even before Russia launched its Special Military Operation (SMO) to end the barbaric shelling of civilians in the Donbass, private jets across Ukraine were already departing with some wealthy backers of Kiev’s coup government alongside their families and close associates. The pro-Kiev media outlet Ukrainska Pravda released a short film spotlighting Ukraine’s so-called “Monaco Battalion,” a group of elite men otherwise “fit for service” who instead spend their time gallivanting around the French Riviera on yachts. While the conflict ensues and men under 60 years old are forced to stay and fight, men like Kharkov entrepreneurs Alexander Yaroslavsky and Konstantin Zhevago continue to enjoy a life of luxury. The Mediterranean coast of France was not the only destination for this exodus of the fleeing Ukrainian elite. The list of the countries for their destinations is extensive; some have even formed whole expat neighborhoods in places like Cap Ferrat, the former palace owned by Belgium’s King Leopold II. Not even western mainstream media can hide this corrupt and blatant double standard, fueled by the large amounts of aid going to Ukraine.

CBS news released its own documentary on the ongoing conflict. In it, US Marine Corps veteran Andy Milburn speaks on how aid is not getting where it is supposed to go. “I can tell you unarguably that on the frontline units these things are not getting there. Drones, Switchblades, IFAKs. They’re not, alright. Body armor, helmets, you name it.” His comments echo another recent interview by the Grayzone of a soldier fighting on the Ukrainian side, who said, “Imagine telling an American soldier that we are using our personal cars in the war, and we’re also responsible for paying for repairs and fuel. We’re buying our own body armor and helmets. We don’t have observation tools or cameras, so soldiers have to pop their heads out to see what’s coming, which means at any moment, a rocket or tank can tear their heads off.” However, this fact comes as no surprise to those who have tracked Ukraine’s government following the Maidan coup d’état in 2014. Before Zelenskyy and Ukraine were the darlings of Western media, the country was rightly considered one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. In a 2015 interview regarding the funding of his hospital, consultant anesthetist Konstantin Sidorenko said, “Presumably there is money at the institute, but for some reason that money doesn’t reach the most important places, like intensive care. So it means we have to earn everything ourselves.” It is clear that government corruption funneling funds into the pockets of Ukrainian elites was an ongoing problem that started well before the Russian SMO.

American civilians continue to struggle with high inflation, failing infrastructure, and underfunded social programs, all while the US government remains fixated on starting and waging wars abroad. Whether or not the Biden administration is aware of or even cares about the mishandling of funds, the money it continues to squander could so obviously be put to better use, in innumerable ways. The recent midterm elections caused Zelenskyy and Ukraine to consider the possibility that it could become more difficult so secure endless “aid” from the United States. It was also reported that even Joe Biden has grown frustrated with the badgering requests for more money and arms to Ukraine. Is it possible that rampant corruption is finally catching up with Zelenskyy and the authorities in Kiev? With increased Republican representation after the midterms and growing annoyance on the part of Biden, 2023 may make life more complicated for those who have spent this conflict vacationing on the United States’ dollar.

In early October, a group of deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine submitted to parliament a draft appeal to the UN, the European Union and the Council of Europe, with a request to establish an international tribunal to investigate “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.” Several days later, the appeal was adopted by the Ukrainian Parliament. Although Ukraine’s leadership is appealing to the provisions of the International Criminal Court, it did not recognize its jurisdiction for fear of being held responsible for war crimes committed in Donbass.

RELATED: Ukraine Continues its Terrorist Attacks Against Russia and the Donbass

On October 3, 2022, a group of deputies of the Verkhovna Rada headed by Alexander Kachura, one of Vladimir Zelensky’s closest associates and a member of his Servant of the People faction, introduced bill No. 8094 on the adoption of a “Resolution on the appeal of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to the UN, parliaments and governments of its member states, the European Union, the Council of Europe on the creation of a special the International Tribunal for Criminal Aggression against Ukraine.” On October 7, the resolution was adopted by 283 votes of deputies of the Verkhovna Rada and signed by its chairman three days later.

The resolution notes that “the creation of a special tribunal is necessary, since there is no perfect mechanism yet that could judge the highest political and military leadership of Russia for committing crimes of aggression against Ukraine.” Kiev has already prepared lists of suspects.

Thus, the document states that “in the main case on the aggression of the Russian Federation, 626 suspects are representatives of the military-political leadership of the Russian Federation.” These are ministers, deputies, military commanders, officials, heads of law enforcement agencies, “warmongers and propagandists of the Kremlin,” Ukrainian politicians claimed.

Evasive justifications

In the text of the appeal, in addition to the general points concerning the appeal of the Verkhovna Rada to all possible international bodies, there are several contradictory provisions. As justification for the creation of a new “tribunal,” the resolution states that “the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction to consider cases of aggression against Ukraine.”

However, later in the operative part of the resolution, it is already stated that when creating a “tribunal…the definition of the crime of aggression enshrined in customary international law, in article 8-bis of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, will be applied”.

To understand the reason for this ambivalent position on ICC jurisdiction in Ukraine, it is necessary to refer to another bill adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on September 20 of this year – Draft Law No. 7728 “On Amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine regarding the improvement of cooperation with the International Criminal Court in Conducting Procedural Actions on the Territory of Ukraine.”

The amendments to the National Code of Criminal Procedure signed by President Zelensky do not contain an obligation to ratify the Rome Statute, which regulates the activities of the International Criminal Court. Ukraine signed the international treaty on the establishment of the ICC on January 20, 2000, but has yet to ratify it. The statute’s rules specify that without ratification, the state does not recognize the jurisdiction of the court in criminal cases – except for the condition when it submits a proper application.

Justified concerns

The reluctance of Ukraine’s leadership to join the ICC is likely due to a fear of investigating the involvement of the political leadership of this country in war crimes, according to Nikita Mendkovich, chairman of the Eurasian Analytical Club, in an interview with RT. He recalled that in a recent report of the UN Human Rights Council, the commission’s established facts concerning war crimes by Ukraine’s military, i.e. the summary executions of captured Russian servicemen, were recognized.

“Ukraine’s war crimes against the civilian population of the Donbass republics lasted for eight years and became one of the reasons for the special military operation,” Mendkovich said. “Ukraine’s leadership is afraid that their boomerang will fly back and they themselves will be held accountable. This applies to both the current President Zelensky and the previous one, Poroshenko. Therefore, they shy away from ratifying the Rome Statute of the ICC, and any potentially dangerous international jurisdictions for them.”

Mendkovich believes that the inclusion of a paragraph on alleged sexual violence committed by Russian troops in the preamble of the Verkhovna Rada’s appeal is purely for propaganda purposes. He recalled the dismissal of Ukraine’s Human Rights Chief, Lyudmila Denisova, who “lied so much about fake ‘rapes’ that the Verkhovna Rada itself had to deprive her of her powers.”

“Now this topic is being actively used in the falsification of recent history, as idiotic stuffing by Western media about the issuance of ‘rapist kits’ with Viagra to Russian soldiers. All this has one goal — to create a demonized image of Russia. And then justify any crimes and any violence against our country,” he stressed.

Earlier, Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Maxim Buyakevich, said that in Ukraine, in the regions controlled by Kiev, “terrorist acts planned, committed and prepared for commission by Ukrainian special services, as well as mass killings of civilians” are recorded. At the same time, the leadership of the OSCE and other international humanitarian organizations ignore these crimes.

A rank-and-file slate backed by Teamsters for a Democratic Union has won leadership of Local 135, one of the union’s biggest locals with 14,000 members. Photo: TDU

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After six months of small private organizing meetings, 135 Members First launched its campaign with a bang.

Slate members and volunteers fanned out across the local and campaigned at 20 worksites in a week. At every company, they passed out a flyer with their slate’s platform on one side and the photos of dozens of member endorsers on the other.

“It was a very public showing that Local 135 members were done being scared. We were uniting and using our strength in numbers to win change,” said Jesse Mikesell.

Their launch rocked the union hall, sending incumbents into panic mode. Within days, the top two officers, Danny Barton and Jeff Combs, announced they would retire.

Taking a page from the playbook of longtime Teamsters President James P. Hoffa, who endorsed Steve Vairma of Denver Local 455 to succeed him in the union’s 2021 presidential race, the local officers propped up a successor slate to run against the Members First insurgents.

It didn’t work.

Campaign activists stayed focused and continued to hit the streets. Their network grew as they identified workplace leaders and held campaign organizing and fundraising events.

In just four months, they collected 3,000 phone numbers from supporters and prepared to Get Out the Vote.

The ballot count lasted 18 hours. But when the dust settled, Members First had swept the election, 2,434 to 1,156.

Change couldn’t be coming at a better time, with contract negotiations coming up at Sysco, UPS, T-Force, ABF, YRC, Holland, and across the Kroger Triangle.

More than 20 Members First leaders are attending the TDU Convention this weekend.

“The election win was powered by Local 135 members. But it never would have happened without Teamsters for a Democratic Union,” said Sarah Revard, Secretary-Treasurer elect.
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“This is about more than winning an election,” she said. “We can rebuild our union’s power by educating, informing, and mobilizing the members. That’s what Members First is about—and that’s what TDU is about, too.”

When last week Allied troops quit the right (= western, or in this case northern (1)) bank of the Dnieper and so the regional city of Kherson (original population 283,000), confusion reigned among those with a short-term view of this conflict. Probably they had been listening to Western propaganda for too long. Probably they had forgotten that if Russia had difficulties holding right-bank Kherson, then the Ukraine would certainly have even more difficulties. Let us return to some basic facts in order to clear up some of the confusion

Military Matters

The government of the Russian Federation was reluctant to intervene in the post-regime change Ukraine of 2014. It always hoped that negotiations and diplomacy would overcome Western aggressiveness and stupidity.

The government of the Russian Federation knew that the USA through its NATO vassals was pumping the Ukraine full of arms and training its troops for the eight years between 2014 and 2022.

Therefore the government of the Russian Federation had eight years in which to plan for this conflict, planning different scenarios and also preparing probing and distracting movements, like that towards Kiev last March. One scenario was that the US would continue to intervene on the side of its Kiev puppet and arm it to the teeth, also using NATO countries, officers and huge numbers of mercenaries to prolong the conflict, so that it would develop into a US war against Russia. That is exactly what has happened. Russia defeated the Ukraine in March, but since then it has had to defeat the USA and its NATO allies, demilitarising them just as it demilitarised the Ukraine in the first month of the conflict. This is why there will be no quick end to what the conflict has become – a war of liberation against the Combined West.

A NATO Ukraine with Cargill-Monsanto-Blackstone-Black Rock-owned land, anti-Slav biolabs, potential nuclear arms, US missiles on the border with the Federation, genocide in the Russian East and South, Western globalism and its escaped covid experiment with bioweapons helping it to destroy Russia and so set up its World Dictatorship, became more and more abhorrent. All this made Russian liberation more and more probable. But liberation only of the willing. And who was willing?

The government of the Russian Federation always knew that in the far west of the Ukraine, formerly Poland, there was hatred for Russia and therefore it had no interest in taking that. The government of the Russian Federation and its Allies first had to free its allies in the Donbass and then demilitarise and denazify the rest of the ‘Anti-Russia’ Ukraine, which was threatening its survival.

Today Ukraine is running a budget deficit of up to $5 billion per month, with the country’s military spending increasing fivefold to $17 billion for the first seven months of 2022.

The Ukrainian Ministry of the Economy admitted last month that the country’s real GDP fell by as much as 40% in the second quarter of 2022. The annual decrease in Ukraine’s economic output is expected to reach 35%, according to the World Bank. Ukrainian officials forecast that inflation could reach 40% at the beginning of 2023, possibly turning into hyperinflation. All Kiev can do is to urge its Western backers to pour even more into its black hole.

According to the German Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the US, EU, and other countries promised a total of $93.62 billion to the Ukraine between January and October 2022.

In addition to sending weapons and money to Kiev, the EU is also accommodating Ukrainian ‘refugees’. According to UN data, Poland has taken 1,365,810, Germany 1,003,029, the Czech Lands 427,696, Italy 159,968, Turkey 145,000, Spain 140,391, the UK 122,900 and the USA 100,000. Virtually 3.5 million in all. The possibility of more refugees, this time genuine ones, sends shudders down the already very weak spines of the EU and the UK.

The cost of housing Ukrainians in Europe is considerable, especially given high inflation and the economic slowdown, both caused by the Western politicians’ boycott of Russian energy and natural resources. According to the German Kiel Institute, for some nations the cost of housing Ukrainian refugees has exceeded their overall aid to Ukraine. For instance, Estonia is spending more than 1.2% of its GDP on aid to Kiev and Ukrainian refugees. Latvia’s and Poland’s cumulative aid also exceeds 1% of their GDP.

In addition, popular support for Ukrainian ‘refugees’ has been declining throughout the EU. Ukrainian flags have been taken down nearly everywhere: the novelty has worn off. Many hoodwinked Western people, now impoverished, have realised that most of the ‘refugees’ are not refugees at all, but profiteers. For the most part the ‘refugees’ are the better off Ukrainians. They have fancy German cars, better than those of their hosts, extremely high expectations and an incredible sense of entitlement. They push and shove and do not say thank you. All owe to them. As a result of grasping and downright lazy attitudes, many of them are now on the streets of European towns and cities, having been expelled by their naive sponsors, and there is no-one to rehouse them.

Kiev is running out of resources and money. It cannot obtain frozen Russian assets, because Russia froze an almost equivalent amount of Western assets.

The assistance from the West cannot last forever. The manoeuvre of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to take advantageous positions along the Dnieper switches the special operation to Ukraine’s exhaustion. After a record-breakingly mild October, the warmth has continued in November in Europe. But it will not last.

Conclusion: This will be a difficult winter for the Ukraine and for the Combined West, which is being bled white by the attrition of the Ukraine. The Allies are in no hurry – unlike the Collective West. It now looks as though the Allied strategy may be to push westwards to the natural border of the Dnieper, occupying all the provinces east of it, even if that means abandoning Kherson for a while. This will give the Allies a relatively short and well-protected front. Only then will the Allies consider crossing the river in the south and taking Nikolaev and Odessa – which is quite likely in the longer-term future. And only then, having linked up with Transdnistria would they consider taking back Non-NATO Moldova. And only once they have crushed NATO in the Ukraine, would they consider taking back the three Baltic States, which have mounted such a cruel persecution of their Russian minorities.

Political, Economic and Ideological Matters

For 30 years the Russian Federation has been musing on what to do about the collapse of the USSR and the ensuing injustices and absurd borders of the fifteen republics formed out of it. Huge numbers of Russians found themselves outside the Russian Federation and have been subject to persecution. Since 2000, President Putin has been making allies and friends outside the Federation, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the last few years a Russia-China-Iran axis has taken shape. At the same time the Russian Federation has been cultivating self-sufficiency, a process much accelerated out of necessity by the illegal Western sanctions enforced against Moscow when the Crimea rejoined the Motherland.

The US empire is apoplectic about all of this, as Russia is now the main obstacle to totalitarian US global power, its World Dictatorship, which is what its neocons want. Russia is the ideological leader of the BRICS+ and the Russia-China-Iran axes which have been taking shape. However, it now looks as though even to fail in its aims, the US elite will have to spend another £2.3 trillion on the Ukraine, the same as it spent trying to conquer Afghanistan. And we all know how that ended. As for the US poodle, the British Establishment, having lost its Empire, it is now losing its own disunited and bankrupt kingdom. And the EU? It is in its death-throes.

As a symbol of the victory of the Russian ideology, we quote from an article published on his Telegram-Channel by the journalist Ruslan Ostashko and noted by pravda.ru. He states that Americans from Texas, Detroit, Minnesota and other states have come to fight on the Russian side against globalism and Nazism. The Americans declare that: ‘Russia is the last place on earth which is fighting against globalism, liberalism and for a New World Order, which America is destroying’. ‘Guys, this is the last battle for the world’.

13 November 2022

Note:

1. The right bank is the one on your right, as you sail downstream. This could be on the left as you look at a map. But maps are not reality.

This article was originally published on Greanville Post.

Thousands of Iranians have been protesting in all major cities of Iran for weeks now, with hundreds reportedly killed due to clashes with police and thousands detained. Women are demonstratively taking their headscarves off and even cutting their hair. Anti-government protests are not rare in Iran and we have witnessed them in previous years. They were mainly fueled by economic grievances. This time however, what served as a spark was the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, who died after being detained by the “Morality police” for not properly wearing a headscarf. Protesters are claming that she was tortured by police and died of her injuries even though there is a video of Mahsa Amini collapsing on her own at the police station.

“Women, Life, Freedom“ – protesters have been actively chanting at demonstrations in Iran and different western countries. On Saturday, October 22, approximately 80,000 Iranians and others marched in Berlin alone. Huge protests also happened in London, Toronto and Los Angeles. Iranians living abroad have marched in solidarity with citizens who are uprising in their homeland against the government of Iran, which they call “the evil Islamic regime”. They are calling for tougher sanctions against Iran, to close Iranian embassies and expel diplomats. US Joe Biden recently vowed to “free Iran” in his west coast campaign speech. 

Tellingly, not reported by western media have been the massive rallies in a number of Iranian cities in support of the Islamic Republic and repudiation of the anti-government riots. Demonstrators chanted slogans denouncing the US and Israel, which they blamed for inciting the riots. 

Is it mere coincidence that protests began the day after Iran signed a memorandum to join Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on September 15th, 2022? During a meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in a conversation with Russian President Putin, Iranian President Raisi said: “The relationship between countries that are sanctioned by the US, such as Iran, Russia or other countries, can overcome many problems and issues and make them stronger. The Americans think whichever country they impose sanctions on, it will be stopped, their perception is a wrong one.” Putin replied that relationships were “developing positively” between Russia and Iran and he is supporting Iran’s membership of SCO. Earlier this year, Iran also applied to join the BRICS group. BRICS is a powerful market alternative to the West emerging before our eyes. It is an acronym for five leading economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Besides Iran, other countries have also expressed their interest in joining BRICS (Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt). 

In July, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Iranian capital, where he met with President Raisi to discuss energy partnership. Iran and Russia plan to create an OPEC for gas exports. “The energy giant Gazprom and the Iranian National Iranian Oil Company signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) sealing a $40 billion Russian investment.” Iran holds the world’s second-largest gas reserves. 

The United States and Israel have tried many times to mobilize Iranians to overthrow their government, through sanctions, media propaganda and the Iranian diaspora. Twenty years ago, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister Netanyahu said that the U.S. should attack Iran with TV. It has used that tactic ever since.  No wonder we now hear about protests on every news channel, while social media are full of posts with gruesome pictures specifically designed to cause disturbance and provoke a response. One of the first to report on the current protests in Iran was Masoumeh “Masih” Alinejad-Ghomi (short Masih Alinejad), Iranian journalist-in-exile, who claims to “lead” this revolution attempt in Iran. In her interview to The New Yorker, she said: “I’m leading this movement, the Iranian regime will be brought down by women. I believe this.” Alinejad had lived outside of Iran for more than ten years working for Voice of America Persia (VOAP), funded by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) formerly known as Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). She received at least $628,050, documented here. 

In a Twitter post on September 14th, Alinejad wrote: “22 years old woman Mahsa Amini suffers heart attack after being arrested by morality police for wearing an inappropriate hijab.” Next day she is adding to her story: “In Iran this woman is in a coma because morality police savagely arrest her in order to force her to follow sharia law & wear hijab.” On September 16, her rhetoric changed dramatically when she began using #MahsaWasMurdered in her tweets, implying that Mahsa Amini was killed by the Islamic Republic’s “hijab police” in Iran. From there, Alinejad and thousands of Iranians living abroad and sympathizers started sharing the hashtag and demanding justice for Mahsa Amini. Of course by justice they mean a complete overthrow of the government, even if it requires a foreign invasion. They hope to reproduce a successful color revolution as happened nine years ago in Ukraine or during the 1953 Iranian coup d’état, in which the democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown by the US and UK in order to install the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Unfortunately for them, there are many Iranians still alive who remember the history. And they will not allow the Western Imperialist powers to do it again. The Iranian people are strong and more than capable of deciding their own fate. 

Westerners are taught that evil foreign “regimes” don’t let their people criticize their government, meanwhile westerners themselves are trained to never criticize their government. They’re trained instead to criticize decoy dichotomies — false partisan nonsense — not the real power.

Westerners are trained to criticize the actions of the other party or the beliefs of the other ideological faction, never the foreign or domestic policies which are fully supported by both parties. The power structure which maintains 99.9% of the same policies regardless of which party is officially in charge is the real government, but westerners are trained never to look there. They’re instead trained to fixate on a false two-handed puppet show diversion.

Westerners say “Well I’d rather live here than China or Russia, because here I can criticize my government whenever I want!” Okay. But you don’t. You don’t criticize your government. You just criticize the puppets, and usually only the puppets of the party you don’t like. You never criticize your actual government. Criticizing your actual government looks like attacking the murderous foreign policy that’s supported by both parties. Attacking the authoritarian domestic policies supported by both parties. Attacking the exploitative capitalist systems supported by both parties.

Westerners are trained not to do that. They’re trained to believe that “criticizing your government” looks like saying “Drumpf” or “Let’s go Brandon” while the same tyrannical agendas march forward regardless of who sits in the White House.

Westerners are “free” in the same way “free range” chickens are free; sure the door’s technically open and they can technically go outside, but they’re conditioned never to do so. Western so-called liberal democracy purports to offer freedom while in practice only offering the illusion of freedom. It uses the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever devised to keep people trapped in an existence as blindly obedient gear-turners while cartoons about freedom play in their heads.

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The problem isn’t “wokeism”, the problem is that important conversations like US militarism and imperialism get bogged down in ridiculous conversations about whether the US military is too woke or not woke enough instead of how it’s killing people and threatening the whole world. Engaging in either side of that debate protects the worst impulses of the most powerful and dangerous people in the world, because it moves the crosshairs of public scrutiny from the powerful to the other side of the “wokeness” culture war. This is happening all over the place.

A good example is the way Republicans have been pushing the most horrific agendas of US imperialism but using “anti-wokeness” as a carrying agent for their propaganda, like when Jesse Kelly said on Tucker Carlson that “We don’t need a military that’s woman-friendly. We don’t need a military that’s gay-friendly, with all due respect to the Air Force. We need a military that’s flat-out hostile. We need a military full of Type-A men who want to sit on a throne of Chinese skulls.”

Tucker Carlson’s guest: “We don’t need a military that’s woman-friendly, that’s gay friendly” we need men “who want to sit on a throne of Chinese skulls, but we don’t have that now. We can’t get women off of naval vessels, that should be step one but most are pregnant anyway.” pic.twitter.com/9uNzdbx0ON

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) December 18, 2021

Or when Psycho Rubio said “We don’t need a military focused on the proper use of pronouns. We need a military focused on blowing up Chinese aircraft carriers.”

From a speech @marcorubio gave yesterday.
To a roaring applause.
This is playing with literal fire. Republicans aren’t anti war post Trump, they just got conned into shifting their focus to China, after OBAMA’S Asia pivot.
This rhetoric cannot be accepted. pic.twitter.com/Md5rSLYzWU

— Kyle Matovcik. (@KyleMatovcik) August 25, 2022

The culture war says you should push back on the “anti-woke” rhetoric. Anti-imperialism says you should push back on their omnicidal warmongering. It’s hard to focus on both. This is being exploited by empire managers in myriad ways. They get people chasing decoy dichotomies so they can’t focus on the powerful.

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Step 1: Be a progressive.

Step 2: Ignore a major problem that progressives are supposed to oppose.

Step 3: Keep ignoring it until right wingers start paying attention to it.

Step 4: Frame opposing that problem as a right wing position.

See: See nuclear brinkmanship, Ukraine proxy warfare, Assange, Syria, internet censorship, etc.

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One of the reasons people are so casual about risking nuclear war is because it’s a difficult concept for the mind to wrap itself around. Full-scale nuclear war wouldn’t just kill everyone, it’d prevent every other human who would have been born in the future from ever existing.

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This is how all mainstream Russia hysteria victims think; they’re just not normally this forthcoming about the infantile nature of their worldview. This is how stupid US empire propaganda has made the average westerner. They think like small boys watching a cartoon show. pic.twitter.com/Gj2RguhGYz

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 14, 2022

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I have no special feelings one way or the other about China or Russia, I just acknowledge the indisputable fact that they are quantifiably far less destructive than the US-centralized empire. If they weren’t being aggressively targeted by that empire I probably wouldn’t notice them much.

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Discussion of revolution and communism in the English-speaking world is just fantasy role playing unless it begins and ends with the cold hard reality that the left has been completely neutralized and marginalized here and the numbers are nowhere close to what they need to be. Moving revolutionary leftism out of the farthest margins and closer to the mainstream should be your first and foremost objective before you talk about anything else, because otherwise you’re just LARPing. You’re arguing about a political movement that has no actual movement.

You can do this by outreach and activism. You can also do this by finding ways to make socialism and communism look so fucking cool that people start knocking each other over to be a part of it. Finding clever ways to make it shiny and attractive in a very indoctrinated society.

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Western journalism is becoming more and more illegal. The western empire is guilty of everything it accuses its enemies of doing. https://t.co/96YPlqe8zy

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 12, 2022

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Anyone who tries hard to convince you to like a powerful person has traded their mind for personality cult doctrine, whether their hero is Bernie Sanders, AOC, Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson or Elon Musk. Proselytizing for the powerful is a sign that critical thinking has been abandoned.

Think about it: what would be gained by one more person having positive feelings about Elon Musk or some other powerful figure? How does that benefit the world? It doesn’t, yet people try to win converts for them constantly, just like evangelists proselytizing their religion. This is because they’re all about the individual, not the cause or the policies that individual supposedly stands for.

Anyone who tries to convince me to support a given goal or perspective will have my interest if their case is lucid and well-argued, but anyone who tries to convince me to like a given individual is instantly dismissed as a mindless automaton. I know I won’t be hearing anything intelligent from them.

Pushing agendas serves those agendas. Pushing individuals serves only those individuals. If you care about advancing a cause, then advance that cause. Don’t get caught up in the propaganda-friendly, thought-killing tar pit of personality worship.

Famous people are not your friend, and uplifting the powerful only serves power. This is especially true in the power structure we currently live under where the only people who are allowed to get to the top are those who facilitate the interests of power.

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Filmmakers can trick you into cheering for the seal or for the polar bear just by choosing which one’s being followed by the camera and framed as the protagonist. They can also trick you into cheering for cops, a corrupt legal system, or an imperialist military in the same way.

This article was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone’s Substack.

The Atlantic, which is owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs and run by neoconservative war propagandist Jeffrey Goldberg, has published a pair of articles that are appalling even by its own standards.

Virulent Russiagater Anne Applebaum argues in “Fear of Nuclear War Has Warped the West’s Ukraine Strategy” that the US and its allies should escalate against Russia with full confidence that Putin won’t respond with nuclear weapons.

“Here is the only thing we know: As long as Putin believes that the use of nuclear weapons won’t win the war—as long as he believes that to do so would call down an unprecedented international and Western response, perhaps including the destruction of his navy, of his communications system, of his economic model—then he won’t use them,” Applebaum writes.

Anne Applebaum’s disdain for “restraint,” her insouciance regarding the nuclear threat, and her reckless call for “belief”at the end of this article, is truly chilling. This is the new McCarthyism. @PatPorter76 @samuelmoyn @QuincyInst https://t.co/tG7z6KED6O

— Jeanne Morefield (@JeanneMorefiel1) November 10, 2022

But throughout her own essay Applebaum also acknowledges that she does not actually know the things she is claiming to know.

“We don’t know whether our refusal to transfer sophisticated tanks to Ukraine is preventing nuclear war,” she writes. “We don’t know whether loaning an F-16 would lead to Armageddon. We don’t know whether holding back the longest-range ammunition is stopping Putin from dropping a tactical nuclear weapon or any other kind of weapon.”

“I can’t prove this to be true, of course, because no one can,” says Applebaum after confidently asserting that more western aggression would actually have deterred Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

These are the kinds of things it’s important to have the highest degree of certainty in before taking drastic actions which can, you know, literally end the world. It’s absolutely nuts how western pundits face more scrutiny and accountability when publicly recommending financial investments than when recommending moves that could end all terrestrial life.

On that note it’s probably worth mentioning here that Applebaum’s husband, European Parliament member Radoslaw Sikorski, recently made headlines by publicly thanking the United States for sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

The Atlantic has also published an article titled “The Age of Social Media Is Ending,” subtitled “It never should have begun.” Its author, Ian Bogost, argues that the recent management failures in Twitter and Facebook mean the days of just any old schmuck having access to their own personal broadcasting network are over, and that this is a good thing.

Bogost’s piece contains what has got to be the single most elitist sentence that I have ever read:

“A global broadcast network where anyone can say anything to anyone else as often as possible, and where such people have come to think they deserve such a capacity, or even that withholding it amounts to censorship or suppression—that’s just a terrible idea from the outset.”

Nothing enrages the official authorized commentariat like the common riff raff having access to platforms and audiences. That’s why the official authorized commentariat have been the most vocal voices calling for internet censorship and complaining about the rise of a more democratized information environment. These elitist wankers have been fuming for years about the way the uninitiated rabble have been granted the ability to not just talk, but to talk back.

Social networking had its problems, but the real horror was its evolution into social media (which it did without anyone really noticing).

Making connections for modest use was okay. Turning everyone into constant content creators/sinks was not. https://t.co/Ishu3HDYzG

— Ian Bogost (@ibogost) November 11, 2022

Hamilton Nolan of In These Times posted a recent observation on Twitter which makes the perfect counter to The Atlantic’s snooty pontifications.

“The best thing Twitter did for journalism was to show everyone there are thousands of regular people who are better writers than most professionals which is why the most mediocre famous pundits have always been quickest to dismiss it as a cesspool,” Nolan writes, adding, “Best thing Twitter did for the world in general was to allow anyone to yell directly at rich and powerful people, which drove many of them insane, including the richest guy on earth.”

Of course the imperial narrative managers at The Atlantic would be opposed to normal people getting a voice in public discourse. When your job is to control the narrative, the bigger a monopoly you hold over it the better.

This article was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone’s Substack.

Democratic Party infiltrators are at this moment the biggest threat to the communist movement in the USA. Conversely, the pro-NATO psyop is the largest propaganda operation happening at present. The great priority of our ruling class as of now is to maintain imperial hegemony, which they’re trying to do by using Ukraine as a cudgel to destabilize Eurasia. They’re sacrificing the U.S. economy’s stability, as well as the stability of Europe’s, in order to make their geopolitical ploy in Ukraine pay off.

Dear comrades!

I cordially welcome the participants in the 22nd International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties on behalf of the Communist Party of Ukraine. The party which has been illegally banned in my country, where our comrades and like-thinking people suffer political persecution, arrests and physical violence on the part of the ruling Neo-Nazi-oligarchic regime; a regime which is, in essence, reactionary and fascist.

We have gathered here on the Island of Freedom at a difficult time. The forces of international imperialism–the sharks of globalization in their struggle for redrawing the political map of the world, for resources and commodity markets–resort to any methods and, in fact, act as instigators of the Third World War. The tragedy is that the reactionary forces make active use of neo-Nazism and neo-fascism to achieve their goals.

Analysis of the international situation shows growing aggressiveness of imperialism and a dramatic sharpening of its internal contradictions in two areas:

1) The ideological – between the US-led imperialist west and communist China, which, in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, they consider to be “an empire of evil,” as well as Vietnam and Cuba.

2) The inter-imperialist – the USA seeks to preserve its hegemony and the world order under which it plays the dominant role.

The USA is creating new military blocs in southeast Asia, stoking up tensions in the Middle East and north Africa, and is pursuing an aggressive policy in using Ukraine against Russia, and Taiwan against China. The provocative visit of Pelosi to Yerevan and her pledges of support for Armenia inevitably led to a widening of the conflict in the Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The situation in Central Asia gives grounds for concern (given the recent conflict between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan).

After the breakup of the USSR, it was the USA and Britain that set about creating a neo-fascist state on the territory of the former Soviet Ukraine and became the main sponsors and beneficiaries of it.

The reforms they foisted on Ukraine put capital in control of all the spheres of societal life and ensured total control of transnational corporations over the country’s socioeconomic life. This created the material basis for the advent and establishment in power, as a result of an armed coup in February 2014, of the most reactionary forces: the comprador bourgeoisie allied with neo-fascists and organized crime.

It was these forces in Ukraine that were instrumental in destroying all the socialist gains and economic sovereignty, bringing about a profound lumpenization of society.

It is through these forces that the USA formed a puppet vertical power structure and introduced external control of the country.

It was through these forces that the USA unleashed in Ukraine a fratricidal civil war; a war against the citizens of Donbass, who are upholding their constitutional rights and freedoms. It was these forces which, at the instigation of the US ruling circles, turned civil war in Donbass into a war against Russia.

Humankind has, in fact, already been dragged into a new world war. I would like to draw one of the many tragic parallels.

During the Second World War, Europe was working for Hitler in the war against the USSR. Today, acting in the interests of the USA, Europe is supplying weapons to the pro-fascist regime in Ukraine and is strengthening it financially.

The continuation of this policy will inevitably lead to the spread of the theater of hostilities to the territory of the EU.

The aggressive attempts of some new European countries, notably Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Baltic states, to revise the post-World War II borders will merely accelerate this process.

The former Foreign Minister of Romania, Marga, recently said without mincing words: “Ukraine is within unnatural borders. It should cede territories: Transcarpathia to Hungary, Galicia to Poland, Bukovina to Romania. These are the territories of other countries.”

US senator Lindsey Graham said cynically that with American weapons Ukraine will fight Russia to the last man.

Civilians, innocent people—old folks, women and children — are dying in Ukraine. This is a tragedy.

In backing the fascist regime in Ukraine, the USA and NATO are pursuing a policy which former US senator Richard Blake outlined as: “We don’t care how many Ukrainians die. How many women, children, civilians and military die. We don’t care. It is like a football match and we want to win. Ukraine cannot accept a peace solution. It is up to Washington to take the peace decision, but in the meantime we want to continue this war, we will fight to the last Ukrainian.”

Such statements by war-hawks vindicate our position and the warnings the Ukrainian communists voiced in Izmir last week: the threat of a fascist offensive is real, and the war which the USA and NATO are waging with Ukrainian hands on Ukrainian territory is a war solely in the interests of the USA imperialists.

Billions of dollars are funneled into the production of lethal weapons and ammunition, Britain’s new-baked Prime Minister Liz Truss is prepared to use nuclear weapons, and huge numbers of NATO troops are concentrated on the borders of Ukraine and Belarus.

The imperialists turn a blind eye to the fact that Zelensky’s pro-fascist regime is ruthlessly doing away with political opponents. Any manifestations of free thinking are quashed by punitive units. The crimes of Hitlerites and their accomplices during the Second World War who burned people alive in Oswiecim and who staged Gernica and Khatyn massacres are being glorified.

The monuments and graves of Soviet soldiers, who gave their lives to have the flames in the furnaces of Nazi death camps doused, are being destroyed.

This happens not only in Ukraine but all over Europe. The Moloch of glorification of Nazi criminals devours minds, turning homo sapiens (“the wise man”) into a “mad man.”

The process of recreating a semblance of the Nazi Third Reich is practically underway.

This “Reich,” like its prototype nurtured by transnational capital, American and British corporations, bases its ideology on the superiority of the “indigenous” race. Hence the law on indigenous peoples, which has turned into outcasts the Russians who have always lived on Ukrainian territory – including Donbass, Kharkov, Odessa, Nikolayev, Kherson – indeed, the whole territory of our country. Like Jews in Nazi Germany. We know from history what tragedy it visited on millions of people.

Comrades!

In view of what is happening in Ukraine, I would like to note first of all that, unfortunately, there is no consensus between Communist and workers’ parties on the nature of the armed conflict in Ukraine, nor on the position of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which has supported the special operation.

Since any military confrontation has its own specific features, the very first task of any Marxist is to identify its class-oriented nature with appropriate assessment.

As we believe, the war of Donbass against the Kiev regime should be considered as national liberation struggle; in essence, a war for independence from the ruling fascist regime, for the right of the people to speak their native Russian language and not to follow the anti-Russian course imposed by the United States.

Hence, on the basis of Marxist theory, the military conflict in Ukraine should not be considered as an imperialist war in a literal sense of the word. And moreover, in view of Russia, it is considered as the struggle against an external threat to national security and fascism.

We all understand that the people’s militia of Donbass was not able to resist the Ukrainian army of many thousands equipped with foreign weaponry, so their defeat would have inevitably led to the total destruction of the Russian-speaking population, many of whom were citizens of Russia.

The army of thousands of Ukrainian nationalists under the command of American and NATO instructors concentrated on the borders of the republics; the detailed invasion plan had been developed by Washington generals, in advance. They all were waiting for the command.

Accordingly, in order to protect its citizens and ensure national security, Russia had no other choice but to deliver a preventive strike.

In accordance with the constitution of the Russian Federation, the President has taken the actions stipulated by the law, since it was impossible to resist aggression in any other way.

In addition, the negotiation process within the framework of the Minsk agreements has been deliberately sabotaged by Kiev with the support of the United States and the European Union, since the establishment of peace in Ukraine is not stipulated by the plans of Washington and NATO.

In this regard, the position of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation seems to us quite reasonable.

The increasingly reactionary character of modern imperialism is the result of several factors that have brought about a decline of the workers’ movement and the weakening of the communist and workers’ parties.

Ukrainian communists believe that in working out the tactics of our actions and defining the main areas of struggle, it is necessary to proceed on the basis that the modern balance of forces in the world has tilted in favor of reaction, which is making use of fascism.

Sowing discord within the working classes, using puppet regimes, neo-fascists and neo-Nazis, imperialism intensifies the exploitation of countries and peoples and destroys the foundations of people’s democracy and a just world order.

Modern world trends and constant economic crises, unfortunately, diminish the revolutionary potential of the principles of proletarian internationalism and undermine the unity of the working classes. This is also happening in Ukraine, where a special “working” class of war is being created, the class which lives off the war and cannot imagine itself without it.

The sanctions policy initiated by the USA and Britain and their political satellites inevitably worsens the life of common people, weakens the states’ economic potential, provokes unemployment and consequently increases social discontent and, unfortunately, disunites the workers’ movement. World imperialism uses all these phenomena as a weapon in the class struggle.

What do we see today in Europe and, indeed, in the USA? Prices and tariffs have grown many times over. Enterprises are shutting down, people publicly burn their bills for gas, electricity and water, stage protest actions against their governments. They are demanding, among other things, an end to the sanctions madness and the war in Ukraine. All this is happening against the background of militarization of the economy, politics and the media hysteria around the prospect of nuclear war.

I am convinced that the communist and workers’ parties must channel people’s economic and social demands towards political struggle. The struggle against the threat of fascism and a change of the social system that engenders it; that is, the capitalist system as such.

Today the progressive forces – we have to admit it honestly – are losing the cognitive battle for the minds of people. It is our task to win it. This is the only way, if we want to prevent the catastrophe of a Third World War.

I believe that – in the context of the goals and tasks of our meeting, considering the situation in the world and the need to struggle for an end to the war and the establishment of a just world order – we the communist and workers’ parties should concentrate our efforts on the following areas:

The strengthening of our solidarity; solidarity with other progressive forces in the struggle against neo-fascism and the instigators of a Third World War, by organizing a system of truthful public information about what is taking place in Ukraine today, how it threatens Europe and how it threatens humankind. By explaining to people that the civil war in Donbass (2014-2022), like the Ukraine-Russia war, have been provoked and unleashed by the pro-fascist regimes in Ukraine on the demand and in the interests of the USA, in order to create a bridgehead for the dismemberment and destruction of Russia as a geopolitical rival. By stepping up the struggle against any attempts to glorify the Nazi ideology, restoring the true history of the Second World War. And by supporting (without compromising on our ideological principles) those who call for a peaceful settlement and end to the war in Ukraine, regardless of their political affiliation. Such politicians and such forces exist in every country.

I also consider it necessary to bend every effort at the level of national parliaments and the European parliament to neutralize the provocative actions of the USA and its allies in the Asia Pacific region against China. Combined with the war in Ukraine and the possible direct clash of nuclear powers, China and the USA, and especially against the background of declarations about a Russian “nuclear threat,” the worst forecasts may unfortunately become reality.

Dear comrades!

The struggle to put an end to the fratricidal war in Ukraine unleashed by the transnational corporations and their stooges in the governments of European (and not only European states), the war in which Washington-led NATO is a de facto party to the conflict (through its supply of arms, ammunition and training of Ukrainian armed forces, funding and controlling the military campaign), is the struggle for preventing a Third World War which is but a step away. We must do everything we can to prevent it.

Once again, thank you for the opportunity to address the participants in this international meeting and to express confidence of our victory, a victory of “light” over “darkness.”

The already volatile world of cryptocurrency descended into a frenzy over the weekend when the crypto exchange FTX declared bankruptcy and many investors saw their holdings disappear overnight. The company’s CEO Sam Bankman-Fried founded FTX in 2019, becoming a billionaire by the age 30. Fortune magazine called him the next Warren Buffet. But the fintech celebrity’s meteoric rise came suddenly crashing down in early November when the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance backed out of a potential buyout of FTX. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao declared that the issues it had uncovered at FTX were “beyond our control or ability to help.”

As a result of corporate due diligence, as well as the latest news reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged US agency investigations, we have decided that we will not pursue the potential acquisition of https://t.co/FQ3MIG381f.

— Binance (@binance) November 9, 2022

Zhao wasn’t the only prominent figure in the crypto world who had grown skeptical of Bankman-Fried. Elon Musk disclosed he had been equally unimpressed with Bankman-Fried: “I got a ton of people telling me [that] he’s got, you know, huge amounts of money that he wants to invest in the Twitter deal. And I talked to him for about half an hour. And I know my bullshit meter was redlining. It was like, this dude is bullshit – that was my impression.” Following Binance’s withdrawal decision, it quickly became apparent that FTX did not have the funds available to investors trying to withdraw their holdings. Once valued at $32 billion dollars, FTX has imploded. Some hedge funds with around $100 million dollars invested in FTX are now nursing their losses.

Extreme volatility is a hallmark of the crypto market; in March 2022, the cryptocurrency Luna met a similar fate. However, what makes Bankman-Fried’s FTX unusual was its linkages with the current authorities in Kiev, Ukraine and the Democratic Party, and the emerging role it appears to have played in the 2022 US midterm elections. The mainstream media omits from its celebrity coverage that Bankman-Fried and FTX have played a key role in bankrolling the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In March 2022, FTX and the Ukrainian Government announced a partnership to allow for crypto donations to be quickly converted by the National Bank of Ukraine to use in its fight against Russia. Donors have since funneled an estimated $100 million to Ukraine through FTX.

Following the sudden collapse of FTX, Bankman-Fried’s relationship with certain politicians as well as his generous donations have come under increased scrutiny. In 2020, aged just 28 and with his company FTX just a year old, Bankman-Fried was fourth on the list of donors to the Democratic Party. Only George Soros outspent him during the 2021-22 cycle, when he was the second biggest donor to the Democratic Party. A reasonable person might wonder how such a new company with a young CEO came to so quickly rival an established multi-billionaire like George Soros.

via opensecrets.org

While the story is still developing, it now appears that officials in Ukraine may have used taxpayer funds it received from the US government to invest in cryptocurrency at FTX, some of which Bankman-Fried later used to donate millions of dollars to Democratic Party candidates. Alex Bornyakov, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine was quick to dispel the claim: “A fundraising crypto foundation @_AidForUkraine used @FTX_Official to convert crypto donations into fiat in March. Ukraine’s gov never invested any funds into FTX. The whole narrative that Ukraine allegedly invested in FTX, who donated money to Democrats is nonsense, frankly.” But more investigation is clearly warranted, given the current Ukrainian Government’s penchant for lying.

Bankman-Fried is reportedly residing under house arrest in the Bahamas at the request of the US, as the scandal grows and pressure mounts for an investigation. We will know sooner or later whether or not Ukraine directly invested in FTX. At the very least, Bankman-Fried’s donation history reveals he is deeply invested in helping the Democratic Party maintain its grip on power as well as in perpetuating the Biden administration’s reckless proxy war with Russia.

There is now emerging among congressional Republicans (at last) a recognition that (though they have until recently been every bit as neocon and pro-military-industrial-complex as their Democratic Party colleagues have been and are), the best path forward for the Republican Party to again come to hold the reins of power in the U.S. federal Government is for congressional Republicans to declare the war in Ukraine to be a Democratic Party project (begun, in fact, by Barack Obama, back in February 2014, and even earlier, starting secretly in 2011), and to present themselves as being instead the party of peace, anti-war, and favoring domestic spending instead of spending on foreign countries. So: who, REALLY, have been the leaders in Congress backing the $40-billion+ U.S. expenditure to defeat Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine?

On 23 May 2022, the World Economic Forum at Davos presented the far-right West Virginia Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin saying “I am totally committed as one person to seeing Ukraine to the end as a win” against its next-door neighbor Russia, “not basically resolving itself in some type of treaty; I don’t think that that is where we are and what we should do [i.e., ‘we’ should instead proxy-wage that war by Ukrainians down to its last Ukrainian corpse — NEVER allow Ukraine to continue to retain U.S. support if Ukraine’s government signs “some type of treaty” with Russia].” The great international investigative journalist Caitlin Johnstone headlined about it, “They’re Just Outright Telling Us That Peace In Ukraine Is Not An Option”, and she noted that Manchin added “Ukraine has the determination to do it. We should have the commitment to support it,” and that he also said this included “getting rid of Putin.” So: that’s what American taxpayers are now funding, to the tune of $40B, this war by Ukrainians, to achieve, for America’s billionaires (who control Lockheed Martin, etc.).

The complete video can be seen from Davos; and, in it, (starting at 16:00 in the video) a group of U.S. lawmakers were repeatedly pressed on whether Congress is united in support for Ukraine and would continue with financial aid in the coming months even if Republicans take control of both chambers after the 2022 midterm elections. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Chris Coons (D-DE), and Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY) participated in the conversation. All participants supported increasing military spending and slashing everything else, in order for Ukraine to defeat Russia on Ukraine’s battlefields.

At that same time, the independent foreign-affairs journalist Stephen Kinzer, headlined on 26 May 2022, “Republicans return to their roots as the antiwar party”, and he was the earliest to recognize what was then shaping up:

Since the Vietnam era, Americans have come to expect antiwar rhetoric from liberal Democrats. Cancel that.

With Americans now engulfed in passion for Ukraine, it wasn’t surprising that President Biden proposed sending $33 billion worth of weaponry and other aid to Ukraine’s beleaguered military. Nor was it surprising that Congress raised the number to $40 billion, or that both the Senate and House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor. Hidden within that lopsided vote, though, was a shocker: Every single “no” vote — 11 in the Senate and 57 in the House — came from a Republican.

Since the Vietnam era, Americans have come to expect antiwar rhetoric from liberal Democrats. Cancel that. This month’s votes in Washington signal a dramatic role reversal. Suddenly it is conservative Republicans who oppose US involvement in foreign wars.

The most ringing antiwar speeches during this month’s debate came from far-right members of Congress.Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida sounded like a latter-day George McGovern when he warned of “a dangerous bipartisan consensus that is walking us into war with Russia. Just a year ago we lost a war against goat herders waving rifles. Now we’re rushing to fight a nation that possesses 6,000 nuclear warheads?”
On the Democratic side, by contrast, there was nothing but outrage, denunciation of Russia, and aggressive chest-beating. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described democratic socialist, voted for the $40 billion. So did Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and her ultra-progressive comrades in “the Squad.” Even Representative Barbara Lee, who in 2001 cast the only vote against launching what became the “global war on terror,” supported it.

Finally, the fake ‘left’ in American politics (which is all that still exists in America politics of “the left” — it’s now all gone) is starting to be exposed for what it is: prostitutes to America’s billionaires in the dark, just like virtually everyone else in Congress has been ever since WW II — i.e., after 12 April 1945).

This now leaves congressional Republicans free to blame ‘the Democrats’ if Russia defeats Ukrainians in the battlefields of Ukraine. Suddenly: the Republican Party is becoming ’the peace party’. But this means that the Democrats in Congress need to double-down on spending whatever it takes to defeat Russia in Ukraine — even if that will mean sending U.S. troops there (and cease this war’s being any longer MERELY a war by proxies of the American side, Ukrainians backed by NATO waged against Russia, on Russia’s very doorstep). However, that would be suicidal for the U.S. Democratic Party — even if not for the entire world.

Consequently: this is the biggest political opportunity that the Republican Party has had in recent times — to blame ‘the Democrats’ (not that they don’t all deserve it) for bringing the entire world to the brink of WW III (nuclear termination) for stakes that on the American side have no national-security significance but ONLY “KEEP AMERICA #1” ‘significance’. (Though this war has total national-security significance for Russia, it has none for America, and takes place many thousands of miles away from America.) Fooling the American people to believe that because Obama started this war, it’s ‘a war by the Democrats’ (i.e., WASN’T bipartisan — which it WAS), will be the most successful way for the Republican Party to regain its clear dominance over U.S. politics. If they’re smart, they’ll do it (on the basis of recent history showing how gullible the American public are). It is a huge opportunity for the Republican Party. We’ll soon see how smart they are (or aren’t).

This article was originally published on Greanville Post.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

The United States’ midterm elections took place on February 8th, 2022. Neither the Democrats or Republicans swept the board, the final results are still pending in a few areas, with the House and Senate up for grabs. Many Americans likely tuned out the midterms, jaded by the political gridlock that has paralyzed Washington for as long as they can remember. The corporate media has presented sideshows and “battles” between John Fetterman and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, or Senator Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker in Georgia. Midterm elections in an increasingly unstable United States is of interest to the rest of the world. Should Republicans gain control the House and Senate, President Joe Biden may encounter at least some resistance to sending large checks to Zelenskyy’s regime in Kiev, which would in turn further complicate geopolitical matters in the European Union.

One of the most vocal opponents to the Biden administration’s financial and military assistance to Ukraine has been Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Green. At a recent Save America rally, Green claimed “not another penny” would go to Ukraine if Republicans gained control. Greene who easily won reelection in her district, will hopefully continue to push for a stop to “aid” to Ukraine.

While not being as stern as Greene on the position, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy claims he supports Ukraine, but does not want to continue sending blank checks to the country. If only for reasons Greene and McCarthy both voice a growing concern felt by many Americans as we approach nine months since the Russian Special Military Operation began. About 30% of US voters believe the US government is sending too much assistance to Ukraine, up 6% since March, including about half of Republicans. With an increase in the costs of everything from housing and utilities to groceries, most Americans feel they are worse off than a year ago and as they continue struggle through the holiday season, more Americans are bound to question the billions for Ukraine.

Authorities in Kiev were no doubt somewhat concerned leading up to the election that a “Red Wave” could threaten to stop propping up their government and economy. As the results poured in showing that no such wave formed, the head of Zelenskyy’s party David Arakhamia appeared optimistic: “We’re pretty confident it will remain, although we may expect more discussions about accountability and transparency.” Other politicians in western Europe, including German Parliament member Michael Gahler, agreed that he did not expect much to change. “I believe that the bulk of the Republican Party is not sympathetic to Russia,” he said, “and in substance we would not see a shift in the U.S. policy toward Ukraine.” The Kiel Institute estimates that over 52 billion US Dollars have been sent to Ukraine in the form of advanced military weapons, vehicles, and munitions. With the election results soon to be finalized, the world will have to wait and see if the flow of aid will continue unabated.

Whether or not there is in fact a growing divide between the Democrats and Republicans over Ukraine, they share the view of China as an enemy and a threat. Director of the German Marshall Fund Bonnie Glaser said, “The only issue with full bipartisan support is China,” she said. “I don’t expect a fundamental game-changer. If anything, there is stronger Republican support for strategic clarity on China.” With both parties collaborating on ways to combat Chinese influence and in light the recent arrest of alleged spies, we can be sure to expect a ratcheting up of the anti-China rhetoric and hate when our proxy war with Russia in Ukraine begins to fade from the headlines.

Annually, each year, since 2005, the U.S. Government has been one of only from 1 to 3 Governments to vote in the U.N. General Assembly against an annual statement by the General Assembly against racism and other forms of bigotry — an annual Resolution condemning it, and expressing a commitment to doing everything possible to reduce bigoted acts. For the first time ever, on November 4th, America was joined not only by one or two voting against it, but 55 nations, and almost all gave as reasons that Russia was for it and has invaded Ukraine. Ukraine is the only country that has almost always been joining America in opposing such resolutions; and many countries now vote against the resolution because Ukraine always does, and thus vote in solidarity with Ukraine against Russia — condemn the resolution because Russia supports it.

This year’s Resolution particularly offended America and its allies because “Nazism” is mentioned and condemned specifically in it.

No specific nation is ever mentioned in such resolutions.

The U.N. makes its documents and voting records as difficult as possible for the public to find, but, after many hours I have been able to find the following records regarding the 4 November 2022 resolution and vote.

The Resolution was completed in draft on 29 September 2022, and here it is (though the U.N. tends to change URLs in order to make documents unfindable, and also this and many other documents at the U.N. are designed so as not to be copyable into web archiving services; so, this document might soon become unfindable:
https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/LTD/N22/607/22/PDF/N2260722.pdf. I made the first copy of it at the main web archive, and that archived image is very different, not the document itself. This is typical for the U.N. But, anyway, if you can see it, then at least you will be able to know the Resolution’s text.

The U.N likewise makes its voting records as difficult as possible for journalists to be able to report the specific votes of specific nations — the U.N. provides photo-images (such as in this case) of the nation-by-nation vote so that journalists will need to type everything out character-by-character instead of do copy-pastes, and journalists on rapid deadlines won’t typically retype an entire document. I have done it in this case, and here that is:

VOTE:

Item 66(a) draft resolution A/C.3/77/L.5
Combating glorification of Nazism, Neo-Nazism, and …
DATE: 4 November 2022

IN FAVOR (105): Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Dem. PR [N.] Korea, Djirbouti, El Salvador, Equatorial Gunea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Solomon Islands, S. Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Surinam, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Trinidad, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, UAR, United Rep. Tanza, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe
AGAINST (52): Albania, Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kiribati, Latvia, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, N. Macedonia, Norway, Papua, Poland, Portugal, Rep. Moldova, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, UK, U.S.
ABSTAIN (15): Antigua, Congo, Dominican Rep., Ecuador, Egypt, Mexico, Myanmar, Palau, Panama, Rep. of Korea, Samoa, Serbia, Switzerland, Tonga, Turkiye
ABSENT: Afghanistan, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Comoros, D.R. Congo, Dominica, Eswatini, Gambia, Grenada, Iran, Morocco, St. Lucia, Sao Tome, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, S. Sudan, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Venezuela

Here is the U.S.’s explanation of its vote against the document.

Here is Austria’s.

Since Austria backs the EU’s statement on this, here is that statement from the EU.

The U.S. Government seems to be having remarkable success making even nazism fashionable among its allies.

This article was originally published on The Duran and Greanville Post.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

A new article for The Irish Times by Virginia Tech professor Gerard Toal, titled “Ukraine risks being locked into endless war in bid for perfect peace,” contains a very interesting paragraph:

Ordinary Ukrainians on the front lines are divided on a ceasefire and negotiations. My Ukrainian colleague Karina Korostelina and I surveyed the attitudes of both residents and displaced persons in three Ukrainian cities close to the southeast battlefields this summer. Almost half agreed it was imperative to seek a ceasefire to stop Russians killing Ukraine’s young men. Slightly more supported negotiations with Russia on a complete ceasefire, with a quarter totally against and a fifth declaring themselves neutral. Respondents were torn when considering whether saving lives or territorial unity were more important to them. Those most touched by the war, namely the internally displaced, were more likely to prioritise saving lives. Other research reveals that those farthest from the battlefields have the most hawkish attitudes.

It’s the third from the last paragraph in the article, whose overall content cannot be remotely construed as sympathetic toward Moscow, but it’s very important information.

“Those most touched by the war, namely the internally displaced, were more likely to prioritise saving lives. Other research reveals that those farthest from the battlefields have the most hawkish attitudes.”

Those two simple sentences sum up so much of the attitude we are seeing toward this war, and it applies as much to those cheerleading continual escalation and bloodshed from the comfort of their homes on the other side of the world.

Unlike sofa warriors in the West and elsewhere treating people like plastic figurines on a board, Ukrainians most affected by the fighting tend to be more in favour of talks for a ceasefire and prioritise actual human lives over borders & land:https://t.co/Yh0dto1xPA pic.twitter.com/VcHJwLs6ci

— Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) November 3, 2022

“Other research reveals that those farthest from the battlefields have the most hawkish attitudes.”

Remember this as you watch pundits and politicians calling for escalations in Ukraine from Washington DC, Los Angeles and London.

Remember this as you watch armchair warriors and NAFO neckbeards dogpiling anyone who advocates peace talks.

Remember this as you watch progressives on Capitol Hill pressured into walking back even the mildest support for potential ceasefire negotiations at some point.

Remember this as more and more information comes out about the way bot swarms and astroturf trolling operations have been used to shout down and silence anyone who advocates peace online.

War is the single most horrific thing in the world. It is the most insane thing that humans do, by far. The most destructive. The least sustainable. The most conducive to human suffering. If people could spend even one hour in the cortisol-soaked mind of a mother trying to bring up her kids in the middle of the conflict, grieving people you’ve lost, worried about losing more, working out how to stretch the food and the fuel, trying to keep things as normal as possible for your stressed out children, jumping at every noise, trying to forget the things you have seen, peace would be achieved within that hour. Everyone and everything would be mobilized to stop this hell on earth as soon as humanly possible. It would be clear to all that the tragedy that is unfolding right now is not just causing enormous suffering in this moment, but every minute it goes on trauma is burning itself deeper into the subconscious of every single person going through it which will torment them and their descendents for generations to come.

But because we are primates who evolved in small social groups, humans often have trouble feeling empathy for that suffering until it enters into our own immediate circle. Our own city. Our own house. Our own sons, brothers and fathers going out to fight and never coming home.

So this war has become like a game for people. A vehicle from which to promote their political ideologies and masturbate their propaganda-induced Good Guys vs Bad Guys fantasies. A team sport where they can cheer on the total recapture of all annexed territories in eastern Ukraine from anonymous Shiba avatar accounts online to pass time in their meaningless lives.

The view that diplomacy is bad and the war should go on is held by former colonial powers in the Global North representing, generously, 13% of humanity. It’s Global South states representing ~65% of the world’s people calling for negotiations. Colonial reflex indeed. pic.twitter.com/GNHMO9qsWK

— Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) November 3, 2022

The passive team sports cheerleading spirit that this war has brought on is made all the more obnoxious by the fact that Ukraine is still accepting volunteers to fight on the front lines. If you think this war is good and should continue, the morally coherent thing to do would be to go fight in it, rather than sitting at home eating cheese puffs with one hand and tweeting with the other acting as a pro bono Pentagon propagandist between visits to Pornhub while other people die for your cause.

But that isn’t happening. People are happy to sit in the comfort of their own home and watch their remote war movie unfold on CNN.

This isn’t a game. This is a war the US empire provoked to advance its own strategic agendas and therefore has a responsibility to help end, but instead we’re being hammered by that empire with propaganda, censorship, bot armies and troll farms dedicated to convincing everyone that nuclear brinkmanship is safety and peace talks are danger.

Don’t help them do this. Don’t help manufacture consent for a proxy war whose continuation has less and less support the closer and closer you get to the actual killing. Find some other way to pass your time and scratch your itch for conflict and egoic gratification, one which doesn’t involve spending real people’s lives like video game money. Get a healthier hobby for God’s sake.

This article was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone’s Substack.

I feel like we haven’t been talking enough about the fact that US government agencies were just caught intimately collaborating with massive online platforms to censor content in the name of regulating the “cognitive infrastructure” of society. The only way you could be okay with the US government appointing itself this authority would be if you believed the US government is an honest and beneficent entity that works toward the benefit of the common man. Which would of course be an unacceptable thing for a grown adult to believe.

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It’s still astonishing that we live in a world where our rulers will openly imprison a journalist for telling the truth and then self-righteously bloviate about the need to stop authoritarian regimes from persecuting journalists.

Look at this scumbag:

No member of the press should be threatened, harassed, attacked, arrested, or killed for doing their job. On the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, we vow to continue protecting and promoting the rights of a free press and the safety of journalists. https://t.co/qXYyVoVlbM

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) November 2, 2022

Look at him. Can you believe this piece of shit? The gall. The absolute gall.

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There is no such thing as unbiased journalism. If someone tells you they are unbiased they are either knowingly lying, or they are so lacking in self-awareness that you should not listen to them anyway.

The divide is not between biased journalists and unbiased journalists, it’s between journalists who are honest and transparent about their biases and journalists who are not. There are no unbiased journalists. There are no unbiased people. You’re either honest about this or you’re not.

Of course journalists should try to be as fair and honest as they can. It’s just the epitome of childlike naivety to believe that western mainstream journalists do this.

Reporters who support the mainstream worldview are just as biased as reporters from Russian or Chinese state media; they espouse a peculiar perspective and concrete interests and agendas. The problem is the mainstream worldview is so normalized it looks like impartial reality, so you’ll get mainstream western journalists speaking disdainfully of Julian Assange or The Grayzone or whoever because those people have biases and agendas, as though they themselves have no biases or agendas and are nothing other than impartial arbiters of absolute reality.

Which is plainly ridiculous. The worldview which facilitates the abuses of oligarchy and empire and the status quo politics which serves as their vehicle is anything but impartial. It’s not even sane. But because it’s been normalized by propaganda it looks like baseline reality.

The only reason the mainstream worldview is mainstream is because the world’s most powerful people have poured a tremendous amount of money into making it mainstream. That’s the one and only reason. It’s not the moderate perspective, it’s just the most funded and marketed perspective.

All journalists have biases, and all journalists have agendas. It’s just that most of them have the mundane agenda of becoming esteemed and well-known, and the easiest way to do that is to espouse the mainstream worldview where the tide of propaganda can carry you to shore.

The easiest way to become rich and famous in news media is to promote the interests of the rich and powerful people who own and influence the news media. The easiest way to become reviled and marginalized is to attack those interests. Your values determine which path you choose.

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There’s no such thing as a Hollywood ending.

There’s no such thing as an objective journalist.

There’s no such thing as a moral billionaire.

There’s no such thing as a humanitarian intervention.

There’s no such thing as an honest war.

People should learn all this in grade school.

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You know you’re living in an infantilized bootlicking paternalistic society when the prospect of not having a team of authority figures curating your information feed for you is seen as “dangerous”. pic.twitter.com/5pZCXrn112

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 5, 2022

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Who understands that narrative control is power? Empire managers. Plutocrats. Propagandists. Smearmeisters. Manipulators. Abusers. Cult leaders. Bullies.

Who does not understand that narrative control is power? Pretty much everyone else.

This is the source of most problems.

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Platforms censoring hate speech is not the same as platforms censoring political speech and speech which criticizes the agendas of the powerful. Censoring hate speech is done to benefit the platform’s profit margins; censoring political speech is done to benefit powerful government agencies. You can make slippery slope arguments, but they’re not equal, and they’re not similar.

You can argue with the reality that for-profit platforms will always censor the most repellent forms of speech in order to prevent their audiences from being driven from the platform, but that is reality. And it is very different from censoring on behalf of US alphabet agencies. If what you want is a platform where all legal forms of expression are allowed, then for-profit platforms are not a good vehicle for that. Perhaps you want a nationalized social media platform funded by taxpayers with robust speech protections built into its terms of use.

There’s a massive difference between a platform banning speech which makes that platform a gross place that nobody wants to hang out at and a platform banning the way people talk about a war or a virus because government agencies told them to. It’s unhelpful to conflate the two.

And the conflation goes both ways. People who just want to spew hate will pretend to care about fighting the power, and the powerful who want to censor the internet to suppress inconvenient speech will pretend to care about stopping hate. It’s important to be aware of these obfuscations.

There’s a night and day difference between people who oppose censorship because they don’t want the powerful controlling human speech and people who oppose censorship because they want to say ethnic slurs. They’re not the same. A good tool for making these distinctions is to examine whether the agenda punches down or punches up. If it seeks to suppress speech on behalf of the powerful or harm disempowered communities, it’s punching down.

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Nobody’s ever been able to answer this question: if Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine had nothing to do with western provocations, how come so many western experts spent years warning that the west’s actions would provoke Russia to invade Ukraine?

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Ukraine is a far more celebrated and aggressively defended centerpiece of hawkish American fanaticism than Israel ever was.

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Anyone who believes US policy on Ukraine will change under Republicans is a fucking moron. https://t.co/00O5F0w522

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 4, 2022

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If you find yourself rushing to defend the foreign policy of the most militarily, economically and culturally dominant nation on earth, ask yourself why that is. Ask whom that impulse benefits. Ask how that impulse came upon you. Ask if it could have been put there by propaganda.

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It is false to claim that capitalism, competition and greed are “human nature”. I cite as my source for this claim the fact that I am human. The truth is that those who claim capitalism, competition and greed are “human nature” are not actually telling you anything about human nature. They are telling you about their own nature.

And it isn’t even really accurate to call it their “nature”; it’s just their conditioning. And we can all change our conditioning. The only people who deny this are those who haven’t sincerely tried to yet.

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One reason I publish poetry and share insights about philosophy and spirituality on top of my political and foreign policy commentary is because as the information ecosystem gets more polluted it’s not enough to tell people what you think, you’ve got to show them who you are. As more and more energy goes into distorting and manipulating public understanding of the world, it becomes more necessary to bare your soul to the furthest extent possible so people can decide on their own whether you’re the kind of person they want to pay attention to.

People are very distrusting in today’s environment, and rightly so; we swim in an ocean of lies. You can get around that distrust by manipulating people into thinking you’re trustworthy, or you can do it by taking transparency to the furthest extent possible and letting yourself be fully seen so that people can make up their own minds about you for themselves.

I can’t promise that I’ll always get everything right or that I’ll always be seeing things the most clearly, but I can promise to always be honest and to always be running on maximum transparency about who I am, where I’m coming from, and what my biases and agendas are.

This article was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone’s Substack.

The commander of the US nuclear arsenal has stated unequivocally that the war in Ukraine is just a warmup exercise for a much larger conflict that’s already in the mail.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports:

The commander that oversees US nuclear forces delivered an ominous warning at a naval conference last week by calling the war in Ukraine a “warmup” for the “big one” that is to come.

“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said Navy Adm. Charles Richard, the commander of US Strategic command. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”

Richard’s warning came after the US released its new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which reaffirms that the US doctrine allows for the first use of nuclear weapons. The review says that the purpose of the US nuclear arsenal is to “deter strategic attacks, assure allies and partners, and achieve US objectives if deterrence fails.”

Not only does Richard appear to believe that a hot war between major world powers is a foregone conclusion, he has also previously stated that a nuclear war with Russia or China is now “a very real possibility.”

The US empire really is threatening all life on Earth with potential nuclear apocalypse:

The US military commander who oversees nuclear forces said, “This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup”

“The big one is coming,” he added https://t.co/6c1iLEDOEk

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 7, 2022

Again, this is not some armchair warrior opining from his desk at a corporate newspaper or DC think tank, this is the head of STRATCOM. Richard would be personally overseeing the very warfare he is talking about.

What I find most striking about remarks like these is how passive they always make it sound. Richard talks about “The Big One” like other people talk about California earthquakes, as though a hot war with China would be some kind of natural disaster that just happened out of nowhere.

This type of rhetoric is becoming more and more common. Describing an Atomic Age world war as something that would happen to the US empire, rather than the direct result of concrete A-or-B decisions made by the empire, is becoming its own genre of foreign policy punditry.

This passive, oopsy-poopsy narrative overlay that’s placed atop the US empire’s militarism is nothing new. Back in 2017 Fair.org’s Adam Johnson documented the way western media are always describing the United States as “stumbling” into wars and getting “sucked in” to military interventions, like a cheating spouse making up bad excuses after getting caught:

This framing serves to flatter two sensibilities: one right and one vaguely left. It satisfies the right-wing nationalist idea that America only goes to war because it’s compelled to by forces outside of its own control; the reluctant warrior, the gentle giant who will only attack when provoked to do so. But it also plays to a nominally liberal, hipster notion that the US military is actually incompetent and boobish, and is generally bad at war-making.

This is expressed most clearly in the idea that the US is “drawn into” war despite its otherwise unwarlike intentions. “Will US Be Drawn Further Into Syrian Civil War?” asked Fox News (4/7/17). “How America Could Stumble Into War With Iran,” disclosed The Atlantic (2/9/17), “What It Would Take to Pull the US Into a War in Asia,” speculated Quartz (4/29/17). “Trump could easily get us sucked into Afghanistan again,” Slate predicted (5/11/17). The US is “stumbling into a wider war” in Syria, the New York Times editorial board (5/2/15) warned. “A Flexing Contest in Syria May Trap the US in an Endless Conflict,” Vice News (6/19/17) added.

Syria the Latest Case of US ‘Stumbling’ Into War – https://t.co/uZV7Lu3VFf pic.twitter.com/FVPtSGeery

— FAIR (@FAIRmediawatch) June 22, 2017

So let’s get real clear about this here and now: if there is a hot war between the US and a major power, it will not be because that war was “stumbled into”. It will not be like an earthquake or other natural disaster. It will not be something that happens to or is inflicted upon the US empire while it just passively stands there in Bambi-eyed innocence.

It will be the result of specific choices made by the managers of empire. It will be the result of the US choosing escalation over de-escalation, brinkmanship over detente — not just once but over and over again, while declining off-ramp after off-ramp. It will be the result of real material decisions made by real material people who live in real material houses while collecting real material paychecks to make the choices they are making.

Another thing that strikes me about comments like those made by Charles Richard is how freakish and insane it is that everyone doesn’t respond to them with, “Okay, well, then let’s change all of the things we are doing, because that’s the worst thing that can possibly happen.”

And make no mistake: that absolutely is an option. The option to turn away from the collision course with potentially the most horrific war of all time is available right now, and it will remain available for some time into the future. This isn’t 1939 when war is already upon us; if anything it’s more like the early 20th century precursors to World War I and all the stupid aggressions and entanglements which ultimately gave rise to both world wars.

One of the many ways our cultural fascination with World War II has made us stupid and crazy is that it has caused us to forget that it was the worst single event in human history. Even if a hot war with Russia and/or China didn’t go nuclear, it would still unleash unspeakable horrors upon this Earth which would reverberate throughout our collective consciousness for generations.

That horror should be turned away from. And the time to start turning is now.

This article was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone’s Substack.

The Ukrainian military continues to commit acts of terrorism against Russia and the people of the Donbass, relying on critical support from the West to perpetrate its crimes. On October 25, 2022, a large car bomb exploded in the southeastern city of Melitopol, next to a building housing the Zaporozhye regional TV company, ZaTV. Miraculously, the attack did not result in any civilian casualties, but the media outlet sustained “significant damage” and emergency responders took five people to the hospital with minor injuries. The car bomb detonated in an area with no nearby military targets.

Five days earlier, another Ukrainian attack using a US-made HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) missile killed four civilians. The missile also destroyed 12 cars, injuring a dozen others including children who had been attempting to flee across the Dnieper River. These are just two of the hundreds of war crimes that the Kiev regime has committed against civilians in Donbass, since the US installed the Kiev regime in the 2014 Euromaidan coup d’etat.

Following the events of Euromaidan, the Kiev regime set up an online database called Mirotvorets to identify and target its declared enemies–many if not most of whom are noncombatants. The hit list includes prominent figures from Henry Kissinger to Pink Floyd lead singer Roger Waters. Editor-in-Chief of TheRevolutionReport Donald Courter is on the list as well, among other media commentators and citizens of Ukraine, Russia, the United States, Canada, Germany, and other countries.

RELATED: Meet the 13-year old on Ukraine’s open kill list

In August 2022, the Kiev regime carried out a brazen terrorist attack near Moscow, Russia when it used a car bomb to murder the accomplished journalist and political scientist Darya Dugina, daughter of the eminent philosopher Alexander Dugin. President Vladimir Putin hailed Dugina as a “bright, talented person with a real Russian heart – kind, loving, sympathetic and open,” and condemned the “vile, cruel crime.” While Kiev has denied any responsibility, even the United States admits it believes that Kiev was culpable for Dugina’s murder. The site Mirotvorets later marked Darya Dugina as having been “liquidated,” offering further confirmation, if any more was needed, that the site is in fact a hit list that targets civilians on foreign soil.

Civilian infrastructure in the territories liberated by Russia has also been targeted. On October 9, 2022, Ukraine’s SBU carried out a bombing attack, reportedly planned by British spies, on the Kerch Strait bridge connecting Crimea to the mainland. According to Russian investigative committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko, “a truck was blown up on the automobile part of the Crimean Bridge from the Taman Peninsula [the westbound lanes of the bridge], which led to the ignition of seven fuel tanks of a train traveling toward the Crimean Peninsula. As a result, two car lanes of the bridge partially collapsed.” President Putin condemned the terrorist attack act and three days later announced that authorities had detained eight people in connection with the attacks. The impact of the explosion– in which the driver, perhaps unwittingly, served as a suicide bomber — was widely exaggerated and celebrated in the western press. In fact, the bridge closed temporarily; rapid repairs restored it to partial use within days.

The Nord Stream pipelines are the most prominent recent attacks aimed at severing Russia’s economic relationship with Europe to the benefit of American firms. It now appears that British intelligence had a role in sabotaging the pipelines, at the behest of the United States. Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss while serving as Foreign Secretary appears to have regularly used an unsecured phone to communicate, one much easier to hack. Self-described “internet freedom fighter” Kim Dotcom recently alleged that Truss had texted US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken the words, “It’s done,” a minute after the pipelines were successfully sabotaged. The Russian Defense Ministry was forthright in its explanation: “According to available information, representatives of this unit of the British Navy took part in the planning, provision, and implementation of a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on September 26 this year – blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.” The United Kingdom has predictably rejected this and sought to blame Russia for destroying the German sections of pipeline. But it is itself damning that several NATO countries have investigated the matter and proceeded to seal their findings from the public on national security grounds. If there were any actual evidence that Russia were involved, we would have heard about it, repeatedly.

How do the Russians know that the UK blew up the North Stream pipelines in partnership with the US?

Because @trussliz used her iPhone to send a message to @SecBlinken saying “It’s done” a minute after the pipeline blew up and before anybody else knew?

iCloud admin access rocks!

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) October 30, 2022

Since 2014, civilians in Donbass have endured wave after wave of terrorist attacks. As the Kiev regime grows increasingly desperate, it is difficult to know who and where it will strike next. To put down a country that has now seen fit to behave like a rabid dog, Russia must thoroughly denazify and demilitarize this threat to us all.