More Russians died in The Holodomor than Ukrainians

November 30, 2015

Vladimir Timakov Rusvesna.su translated for Fort Russ by Soviet Bear

http://fortruss.blogspot.ca/2015/11/more-russians-died-in-holodomor-than.html

Human losses of Russia in the period of the great famine of the thirties much exceed the human losses of Ukraine – the Russian demographer Vladimir Timakov has come to such conclusion.

For analysis of the humanitarian catastrophe of 1933 Timakov used methods of the American demographer of Russian origin Alexander Maksudov (Babenyshev), who compared the scale of losses by the ratio of survivors of 1933 with survivors of other, more favorable years of birth.

All Soviet and post-Soviet censuses, since 1937 fixed a huge lag in the birth cohort of 1933. There are significantly less people born in 1933 than those born in the 1932 or 1934. This is because in the cruelest year of the famine, people were either refusing to conceive children; either did not bear the already conceived baby, either newborns quickly died from malnutrition and weak immunity. It is the fact that babies are the most vulnerable age category in the face of hunger.

Maksudov himself used this method for localization of the area of starvation deaths, comparing the size of lags in different regions of the USSR. So, he came to the conclusion that the mortality in the Kharkov and Kiev regions was significantly higher than in Voronezh and Kursk, but comparable to the mortality in the Rostov and Saratov regions. The Ukrainian researchers of the Holodomor often refer to Maksudov’s works, published by Harvard University and the Ukrainian Institute of Edmonton (Canada).

Timakov used the Maksudov method to estimate the total magnitude of losses in the Ukrainian SSR, the RSFSR and Kazakhstan (Kazakh ASSR). However, he believed that, although the peak of the famine was in the spring of 1933, the social disaster started to grow at the beginning of collectivization, which reflects the dynamics of the number of survivors recorded by the census of 1939 (see table):

The amount of citizens registered during 1939 census (thousands of people)
Year of birth	UkrSSR	RSFSR	KazSSR
1929	747	2892	137
1930	689	2746	125
1931	550	2512	98
1932	400	2214	82
1933	307	1897	85
1934	494	2036	116
1935	590	2342	151
The difference between the two best and the two worst years	1436 – 707  = 729	5 638 – 3 933 = 1 705	252 – 167 = 85

Timakov came from the fact that the excessive mortality in the Soviet Union was observed not only at the peak of the famine, in the spring and summer of 1933, but also - in smaller scale - for several years after "the year of great change" (1929). And, if the Holodomor in Ukraine and asharshylyk ("famine") in Kazakhstan occurred in 1932-33, in the RSFSR (Russia) the years of 1933-34 were the most tragic (see table).

The author reported that this method cannot measure the absolute number of victims of  famine, but gives the opportunity to compare the magnitude of the tragedy in different republics. There is no doubt that the demographic losses of the RSFSR in the great famine in two and half times higher than the demographic losses of the Ukrainian SSR.

"Undoubtedly, in Ukraine and in the southern regions of Russia the scale of the tragedy in April-June, 1933 was, incomparably greater than in other parts of the RSFSR. However, if we consider the tragedy in a broader time range, Russia suffered more casualties than Ukraine. Finally, death from exhaustion after three or four months of intense starvation is not less tragic than the death from the loss of immunity as a result of years of chronic malnutrition," - said Timakov.

These figures do not allow us to consider the famine as a specifically Ukrainian ethnic tragedy, and especially as an act of genocide, aimed at destroying Ukrainians for the purpose of Russification. As you can see, Russians suffered along with the Ukrainians, and the Russians lost even more people than the Ukrainian.

Timakov called giving the famine of 1933 specific ethnic coloring and use this tragedy to incite ethnic hatred a crime against historical memory of our peoples.

The main reason for the catastrophe he believes was the destruction of the agricultural potential of the country as a result of the forced breakdown of its social life. Similar reasons led to the outbreak of high mortality in the nineties of the twentieth century.

Despite the fact that the mortality times of "shock therapy" is not expressed in such monstrous forms as in the times of the great famine, demographic losses of the Russian Federation and Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet system was higher than the losses of the thirties, says the researcher.

Chicago marches against police crimes on Black Friday Fightback! News Nov 28/15

Frank Chapman marching in Chicago Black Friday protest demanding justice for Laquan McDonald. (Fight Back! News / Staff)

Link: http://www.fightbacknews.org/2015/11/28/chicago-marches-against-police-crimes-black-friday

Chicago, IL - 1500 people marched on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile on Friday, Nov. 27, the day after Thanksgiving. “A Unity March and Rally in Memory of Laquan McDonald” was called as part of the Black Friday protests that originated last year as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.

17-year-old Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by a Chicago cop in October 2014, and only this week did a court compel Mayor Rahm Emanuel to release the dash cam video of his murder.

The Magnificent Mile is one of the ten richest shopping avenues in the world, and most protesters were there to call for a boycott of stores in order to press their demands for an end to police murders. They did so in a militant action that went on for many hours, shutting down Saks Fifth Avenue and dozens of other expensive stores.

Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression was one of the leaders of the march. He said of the crowd’s sentiments, “The people indicted all those who participated in the cover-up.” The killer cop, Jason Van Dyke, was shielded by Mayor Emanuel and Superintendent of Police Garry McCarthy, for 13 months.

Chapman added, “In the name of unity, Reverend Jesse Jackson has endorsed the demand for an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC).” The movement in Chicago has increasingly called for CPAC to establish community control of the police.

The Costs of Equal Opportunity in a Neoliberal Economy Nov 28, 2015 | By Ed Walker

https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/11/28/the-costs-of-equal-opportunity-in-a-neoliberal-economy/


Eric Loomis has a nice discussion of an article in the WaPo titled “White Americans long for the 1950s, when they didn’t face so much discriination.” The article reports these findings:

• 43% of all respondents said discrimination against whites is as much of a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minority groups.

• 60% of the white working class respondents said discrimination against whites is as big a problem today as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.

• White Americans feel put-upon and mistreated — and large shares of non-white Americans do not seem to have any knowledge of the challenges that white Americans say they face.

Loomis concludes that these feelings are the basis of the appeal of Donald Trump:

I will however say that the numbers of the white working class are particularly important because the economic insecurity of an outsourced and automated economy, the effects of which are swept under the rug by the many proponents of unrestricted globalization, are very real. I have said for a long time that if you want a stable society you have to have good paying jobs. Without those jobs, racial and religious prejudice becomes even more powerful than it usually is. That is part of what we are seeing in this recent rise of proto-fascism. It’s scary and should make us rethink a lot about the society we want to build before it’s too late. 

I absolutely agree with Loomis, but there’s more to be said. So here’s a story. I was accepted at Indiana University Law School in the Summer Session of 1971. My college grades were mediocre, but I got a very good score on the LSAT and had two years in the Army to encourage me to study harder. My law class had 200 people of whom 20 were women, as I recall. I graduated 20th in my class, and 10 of the people ahead of me were women. I assume that all the white guys with better credentials than mine got in, so it’s fair to guess that I would have graduated at least 10th if not for those really smart women. As it happened, it didn’t affect my ability to get a great job with a brilliant mentor, Stanley Schwartz, who taught me how to be a real lawyer. But that was a good time for lawyers and for hiring in general. And if I had wanted a job in New York City with a big firm, that move down the graduation rank would have made that unlikely.

The same thing happened to athletes when African-American players were allowed to compete. Lots of really good white players lost their scholarships to better players. The same things happened when police forces opened the doors to everyone on more or less equal terms. The number of jobs didn’t increase much, so the competition meant that some white men who would have been cops or office administrators or anything else didn’t get those jobs. It wasn’t a great problem until the decent jobs were disappeared by the rich. With the vast number of good jobs that had cushioned the entry of women and people of color gone, the previously privileged people, mostly white men, didn’t automatically win. Instead, they had to deal with the fact that there many previously disqualified people who were smarter and better prepared than they were, and many more were at least as smart and well-prepared as they. Just like me, they lost their previous rank.

That is an actual loss for white men. It isn’t just an appearance, or an excuse, it’s a genuine loss.

That was bad enough, but it got worse. When the rich started their drive to collect all the money from work in the Reagan years, they explained to the working people that they needed to be better and smarter, and they needed more education, which the workers were expected to pay for. Then college tuition shot through the roof, and states cut support, first for higher education, and then, in the wake of the Great Crash, for all education. But at the same time, Republicans tell workers it’s their fault, they need to work harder and longer and better and smarter. It’s a horrible double bind. I think the result is that some people respond by blaming themselves, and others respond by blaming the people who beat them out, or the liberals who made equal opportunity more of a real thing.

No one, especially politicians and economists, blames the people who shipped all the good jobs out of the country. Not a single politician or economist points out that if Intel and Apple and IBM don’t ship physical, financial and intellectual capital to Taiwan, there won’t be any semi-conductor manufacturing low-wage jobs there. No one says out loud that if the heavy equipment used to manufacture washing machines isn’t shipped to Mexico, there won’t be washing machine plants in Mexico. Economists of all stripes applauded the hollowing out of US industry on the absurd theory that the benefits to some outweighed the costs to society, assuming, of course, that there are economists who think about the interests of society beyond money. Neoliberal policies, specifically the massive support for unrestrained movement of physical, intellectual and money capital, produced the current state of the US economy.

Certainly, restraints on free movement of capital might not have permanently insured that these jobs remained in the US. But the central lesson we learn from Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is that the pace of change is of crucial importance. See p. 39. The sudden and massive changes in the US economy have produced unnecessary misery, just as the Industrial Revolution did in the early 1800s in England. Whatever benefits there are in cheap foreign labor haven’t gone to the working class in the US, or even to most of the middle class. A government that cared about human beings would have acted to slow down change so society could protect itself. But we had Reagan and a crowd of crappy Democrats.

All this not only explains why people are so angry at both parties, it answers a basic question: why don’t the poorest among us vote? These are the people who benefit from the scraps of safety net left after years of efforts by neoliberals of both parties to destroy it. This is from the NYT:

While Mr. Bevin did not win Louisville, a Democratic stronghold, Mr. Conway did not win by nearly as big a margin here as Democrats usually do. William Benton, a Family Health Centers patient who voted for Mr. Conway, said he was not an inspiring candidate even for committed Democrats.
“A lot of people felt really justified not voting,” said Mr. Benton, a musician and part-time bakery worker who signed up for Medicaid this month to get help for his depression.

Not inspiring? That barely begins to describe a Democratic Party supporting neoliberalism at the expense of poor and the middle class.

Selected 2007-8 Campaign Statements By President Barack Obama on U.S. Trade and Globalization Policy, by Public Citizen org.

Source: Public Citizen

Copyright © Public Citizen 

Link: https://www.citizen.org/documents/ObamaTradeCampaignStatementsFINAL.pdf

Obama On the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and NAFTA Expansion: “One of the first things I’ll do as President will be to call the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico and work with them to fix NAFTA. We’ll add binding obligations to protect the right to collective bargaining and other core labor standards recognized by the International Labor Organization. And I will add enforceable measures to NAFTA, the World Trade Organization (WTO), CAFTA [Central America Free Trade Agreement] and other Free Trade Agreements (FTA’s) currently in effect. Similarly, we should add binding environmental standards so that companies from one country cannot gain an economic advantage by destroying the environment. And we should amend NAFTA to make clear that fair laws and regulations written to protect citizens in any of the three countries cannot be overridden simply at the request of foreign investors.”1 “I voted against CAFTA and never supported NAFTA. NAFTA’s shortcomings were evident when signed and we must now amend the agreement to fix them. While NAFTA gave broad rights to investors, it paid only lip service to the rights of labor and the importance of environmental protection. Ten years later CAFTA – the Central American Free Trade Agreement – had many of the same problems, which is why I voted against it. We must add binding obligations to the NAFTA agreement to protect the right to collective bargaining and other core labor standards recognized by the International Labor Organization. Similarly, we must add binding environmental standards so that companies from one country cannot gain an economic advantage by destroying the environment. And we should amend NAFTA to make clear that fair laws and regulations written to protect citizens in any of the three countries cannot be overridden simply at the request of foreign investors.”2

Obama On the WTO: “I do not support trade efforts that undermine important federal, state and local policies and long-time practices that have been designed and implemented to benefit American families. As such, before expanding GATS to other domestic sectors, I believe we must have a thorough assessment of how such a move would affect the existing practices and goals of U.S. federal, state and local governments.”3

Obama On Imported Food and Product Safety: “As president, I will make sure that any goods coming into America meet American safety standards, and that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration and the For more information, please visit Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch at www.tradewatch.org. other agencies that protect consumers have the tools necessary to make sure that what we’re buying is safe.”4 “I will enforce Buy America requirements to protect specialty crops. I also support immediate implementation of the Country of Origin Labeling law, which will require meat products and specialty crops including fruits and vegetables to indicate their country of origin. I believe that American producers should be able to distinguish their products from imported ones and that consumers deserve the right to know where their food comes from.”5 “As president, I will also mandate independent, third-party system of all children’s toys and other consumer products before they enter the United States. I will dramatically increase resources for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). I will work with the Chinese government and other foreign governments to establish a better system, including the possibility of stationing U.S. inspectors in overseas factories, to monitor and act when dangerous toys, food and other products are identified… I believe that we must have strong standards to accept imports of food and other products. Equivalent standards do not necessarily have to be identical to ours, but they must achieve the same level of protection for consumers. I support ensuring that our trade agreements include protections for consumers that are as good as U.S. safety standards.”6

Obama On Investment Rights: “With regards to provisions in several FTAs that give foreign investors the right to sue governments directly in foreign tribunals, I will ensure that foreign investor rights are strictly limited and will fully exempt any law or regulation written to protect public safety or promote the public interest. And I will never agree to granting foreign investors any rights in the U.S. greater than those of Americans.”7

Obama On Trade Negotiating Authority: “I will replace Fast Track with a process that includes criteria determining appropriate negotiating partners that includes an analysis of labor and environmental standards as well as the state of civil society in those countries. Finally, I will ensure that Congress plays a strong and informed role in our international economic policy and in any future agreements we pursue and in our efforts to amend existing agreements.”8 “I oppose extending or renewing the current Fast Track authority as designed, but would support a redesigned process that provided for greater transparency, more democratic participation, and required labor and environmental provisions in the core of agreements.”9 “I will not support extension of the existing Fast Track process that expired. I have not and would not support renewing Trade Promotion Authority for this President. The current Fast Track process does not mandate that agreements include binding labor and environmental protections nor does it give an adequate role to Congress in the selection and design of agreements. I will work with Congressional leaders to ensure that any new TPA authority fix these basic failings and open up the process to the American people for their participation and scrutiny.”10 For more information, please visit Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch at www.tradewatch.org. “The process used to negotiate NAFTA, the text of the agreement itself having failed to include labor and environmental protections, and the inadequate consideration or transition assistance for those who would lose their jobs in both countries as a result of changing production patterns, all contributed to a failure of governance and that has indisputably hurt us.”11

Obama On Agriculture: “I will work to maintain the American farmer’s competitiveness around the world, and ensure the growth of family farms. My pro-American trade agenda will ensure the interests of farmers and ranchers are not traded off in favor of other industries. I will work to ensure that all trade agreements contain strong and enforceable labor, environmental, and health and safety standards so American farmers are able to compete on a level playing field. I will instruct the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to negotiate agreements that grant American products access commensurate to access provided foreign products to the U.S. market, and I will examine existing U.S. trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA to ensure they do not undermine U.S. farmers. 12

Obama On Labor and Environmental Standards: “I strongly support the inclusion of meaningful, enforceable labor and environmental standards in all trade agreements. As president, I will work to ensure that the U.S. again leads the world in ensuring that consumer products produced across the world are done in a manner that supports workers, not undermines them.” 13

Obama On Global Warming and Trade Agreements: “The U.S. must lead efforts to combat climate change, but the only effective solution to this global problem will require the development and enforcement of an equitable global agreement that includes the participation of all our major trading partners. I will take all necessary and appropriate steps to ensure that policies designed to reduce global warming pollution are not constrained by trade agreements.”14 

Obama on Health Care and Trade Agreements: “I am committed to signing a universal health care plan into law by the end of my first term of office. I will instruct my USTR appointee to examine any existing WTO regulations, as well as proposed policies put forward by the outgoing Bush Administration, to ensure that these are no existing trade regulations that will affect implementation of this goal.”15

For more information, please visit Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch at www.tradewatch.org.

ENDNOTES

1 Letter to the Iowa Fair Trade Campaign, December 26, 2007. Available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/Obama_IFTC.pdf.

2 Response to a Texas Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, March 3, 2008. Available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/TXFairTradeCoalitionObama.pdf.

3 Response to a Pennsylvania Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, April 2, 2008.

4 Letter to the Iowa Fair Trade Campaign, December 26, 2007.

5 Response to a Texas Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, March 3, 2008.

6 Response to a Texas Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, March 3, 2008.

7 Response to a Pennsylvania Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, April 2, 2008. Available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/PA_Fair_Trade_Coalition_Obama.pdf.

8 Letter to Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition,, February 18, 2008. Available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/WFTC_Obama_Letter.pdf.

9 Response to an Oregon Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, May 9, 2008. Available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/ORFairTradeCoalitionObama.pdf.

10 Response to a Pennsylvania Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, April 2, 2008.

11 Response to an Oregon Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, May 9, 2008

12 Response to a Pennsylvania Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, April 2, 2008.

13 Response to a Texas Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, March 3, 2008.

14 Response to an Oregon Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, May 9, 2008

15 Response to a Pennsylvania Fair Trade Coalition questionnaire, April 2, 2008.

In the Dark on the ‘Dark Side’, Nicolas J S Davies, Nov 27, 2015

The “War on Terror” – now more than 14 years long – has trapped the U.S. and other nations in the “dark side” of human behavior, a dilemma that is both moral and practical because the continued use of brutal methods has only made the crisis worse, as Nicolas J S Davies explains.

By Nicolas J S Davies in Consortium News 

link: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/27/in-the-dark-on-the-dark-side/

France and Russia’s military responses to mass murders in Paris and Egypt echo the United States’ response to mass murders in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania in 2001. As Oxford University researcher Lydia Wilson told Democracy Now on Nov. 17, Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) is “seemingly delighted” by this warlike response to its latest atrocities.
In several interviews, Lydia Wilson has cited Abu Bakr Naji’s The Management of Savagery as a “playbook” that ISIS appears to be following closely. Naji called for mass murders in foreign cities and tourist destinations as part of a strategy to draw foreign powers into unwinnable wars that would spread chaos, fuel jihadism and leave Muslim fundamentalist groups in control of more and more of the Muslim world.

This builds on Al Qaeda’s original strategy, which counted on an aggressive response to the 9/11 attacks to expose the iron fist inside the velvet glove of U.S. “soft power” and the hollowness of the U.S. government’s commitment to civil liberties, human rights and the rule of law. Al Qaeda astutely turned its enemy’s military superiority into a liability by provoking the U.S. to unleash disastrous wars on Muslim countries.

The U.S. invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and the concentration camp at Guantanamo became the most valuable assets in Al Qaeda’s propaganda and recruiting campaigns, now complemented by the terror of drone strikes and bombing campaigns in Syria and Iraq.

As the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein of Jordan, told the Council on Foreign Relations on Nov. 16, “it seems that the defenses against chaos and bloodshed that states erected at the close of the Second World War, the laws they wrote and swore to abide by, the agreements and treaties they signed, are giving way to increasing action bound by no principle or any foresight. … Much of the Middle East and North Africa is gripped in deadly conflict with constant, now almost routine, violations of the norms that should protect civilians, and even proxy warfare with greater powers engaged in combat rather than in making peace.”

To briefly take stock of 14 years of war, which our leaders launched and continue to justify as a response to terrorism:

–The U.S. and its allies have conducted over 120,000 air strikes against seven countries, exploding fundamentalist jihadism from its original base in Afghanistan to an active presence in all seven countries and beyond.

–The U.S. and its allies have invaded and occupied Afghanistan for 14 years, Iraq for over eight years, and destroyed Libya, Syria and Yemen for good measure.

–By conservative estimates, U.S.-led wars have killed about 1.6 million people, mostly civilians. That is 500 times the number of people killed by the original crimes in the United States. Disproportionate use of force and geographic expansion of the conflict by our side has ensured an endless proliferation of violence on all sides.

–War, occupation and human rights abuses have driven 59.5 million people from their homes, more than at any time since the Second World War.

–Since 2001, the U.S. has borrowed and spent $3.3 trillion in additional military spending to pay for the largest unilateral military build-up in history, but less than half the extra funding has been spent on current wars. (See Carl Conetta’s 2010 paper, “An Undisciplined Defense”, for more analysis of the Pentagon’s “spending surge.”)

When U.S. support for Muslim fundamentalist jihadis in Afghanistan led to the most catastrophic blowback in our history on Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government declared a “global war on terror” against them. But less than a decade later, it once again began recruiting, training and arming Muslim fundamentalists to fight in Libya and Syria.

The U.S. also made the largest arms sale in history to Saudi Arabia, which is already ruled by a dynasty of Muslim fundamentalists whose role in the 9/11 crimes remains a closely guarded secret. It was only when ISIS invaded Iraq in 2014 that the U.S. government was finally forced to rethink its covert support for such groups in Syria. It has yet to seriously reconsider its alliances with their state sponsors: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other Arab monarchies.

Throughout the past 14 years, whenever the fear of terrorism has temporarily receded, the U.S. government has quickly redirected its threats and uses of military force, covert operations and propaganda to a completely different purpose: destabilizing and overthrowing a laundry-list of internationally recognized governments, in Venezuela, Iraq, Honduras, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and around the world.

In these operations, the U.S. government has never balked at allying with violent groups whom it would be quick to condemn as “terrorists” if they were on the other side. The American people are being treated to a new version of President Ronald Reagan’s comical division of violent groups into “terrorists” and “freedom fighters” based on their relationship to U.S. policy.

In more recent years, patriotic Iraqis who resisted the illegal invasion of their country were “terrorists” and armed neo-Nazis in Ukraine were first noble “protesters” and are now part of a new “National Guard.”

Each new U.S. military operation is justified as a response to some new crisis, while the U.S. role in creating these crises in the first place is obscured (with increasing difficulty) behind funhouse mirrors of secrecy and propaganda.

This pattern of opportunistic uses of force was exactly the strategy outlined by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld within hours of the mass murders on Sept. 11, 2001. CBS News obtained a copy of Undersecretary Stephen Cambone’s notes from a meeting amid the ruins of the Pentagon at 2:40 p.m. that day. Cambone quoted Rumsfeld saying, “Judge whether good enough hit S.H. (Saddam Hussein) at same time – not only UBL (Usama Bin Laden) … Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

In a recent article about the record U.S. military budget, I explained that President Obama’s annual military budgets have (on average and after adjusting for inflation) been higher than George W. Bush’s, 60 percent higher than President Bill Clinton’s and 2½ times what bipartisan experts recommended to the Senate Budget Committee at the end of the Cold War. The U.S. military is now more generously funded than the rest of the ten largest militaries in the world combined.

Investing our nation’s wealth in military forces and deadly weapons and deploying them all over the world is not just a tragic waste in terms of all the unmet human needs in our country and the world. It’s dangerous. By building a global war machine designed to fight anybody anywhere, while rejecting all legal and political constraints on how it may be used, U.S. leaders have set the stage for endless, unwinnable, global war.

As Prince Zeid suggested, the U.S. government has turned its back on the legitimate infrastructure of collective security enshrined in the UN Charter and international law, and reverted to something more primitive: the law of the jungle or “might makes right.”

By fostering the dangerous illusion that illegal threats and uses of U.S. military force can replace the collective will of humanity and the rule of international law as the ultimate arbiter of international affairs, U.S. leaders have set us on a collision course with history.

When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia and China remained on the sidelines. Their oil companies even bid for contracts on new oilfields in Iraq, and Russia allowed the U.S. to ship war supplies through its territory to Afghanistan. In 2011, Russia and China both abstained from a UN Security Council resolution for a “no fly zone” supposedly to protect civilians in Libya when they could have simply vetoed it.

But when the U.S. and its allies abused that resolution to depose and butcher Muammar Gaddafi and plunge Libya into chaos, then transitioned quickly to launch an even bloodier proxy war in Syria, China and Russia finally accepted that the U.S. war machine was really out of control. The U.S. was treating their efforts at appeasement as a green light for aggression that would sooner or later threaten them directly.

In 2012, Russia increased its military budget by 15 percent, the largest annual increase since Vladimir Putin was elected President in 2000. After the destruction of Libya, Russia concluded that it was essential to face down U.S. aggression and that the catastrophic failures of U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya provided an opening for Russian diplomacy to start pushing back.

The U.S. responded to Russia’s support for the Syrian government by engineering a coup against an even more strategic Russian ally in Ukraine. The Western-backed coup threatened to roll NATO expansion right up to Russia’s border and sail NATO warships into its most strategic naval base at Sevastopol.

Russia responded by accepting Crimea’s request to restore its 230-year-old ties with Russia (94 percent of Crimeans had already voted for independence from Ukraine in 1991). Russia also supported the “Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics” in their resistance to the new Western-backed government in Kiev.

U.S. allies in Europe initially supported the U.S. campaign to isolate and sanction Russia over the chaos in Ukraine, but now France and Germany are working with Russia and Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements, which are gradually restoring peace to Ukraine.

Until recently, Russia played a deft diplomatic hand without being directly drawn into combat in Syria or Ukraine. But now Russia has joined the free-for-all bombing of Syria. ISIS has responded by blowing up a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai. Russia has in turn escalated its aerial bombardment of jihadist targets inside Syria. Last week, Turkey shot down an Su-24 warplane along the Syrian border.

It seems that Russia is being drawn into the same escalating cycle of violence as the U.S. and its allies. Much depends on the results of the diplomatic process in Vienna and on the willingness of all the external powers involved in the war in Syria to allow the people of Syria to decide their own political future. That includes the U.S. and its allies just as much as Russia and Iran.

On a larger scale, it is vital for us to recognize that the United States, by authorizing the use of military force in 2001, became a party to this open-ended conflict and shares the responsibility for escalating or resolving it. Demonizing America’s “enemies” is not a responsible or legitimate pretext for endlessly escalating an ill-defined war that has killed far more civilians than combatants.

But by declaring that we are at war with “terror,” “Muslim extremism,” “associated forces” or whoever our leaders decide we’re at war with from one week to the next, the U.S. government has foreclosed many of the ways that wars are usually brought to an end. We cannot meet “terror” at the negotiating table.

The international military competition to “destroy” ISIS at whatever cost in civilian death and destruction, is an irresistible chance for the U.S., Russia, France and the U.K. to display and market their latest weapons technology. But it will not end the “war on terror.” Even a superficially successful military campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq will instead hasten the next mutation of jihadism and drive even more Muslims from around the world into its ranks.

Even President Obama has acknowledged that there is no military way out of the trap that he and other U.S. officials have unwittingly collaborated with the “terrorists” to set for us. Yet he still soldiers on blindly as if there are no non-military alternatives either.

But there are and always have been specific policy changes that the U.S. government could make if it were serious about ending this horrific cycle of violence:

–Repeal the 2001 and 2002 Congressional Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, which have become blank checks for endless war. Reps. Lee (D), Amash (R) and Massie (R) have introduced bills in Congress to do that: HR 1303 (to repeal the 2001 AUMF) and HR 1304 (to repeal the 2002 AUMF).

–Close the U.S. concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Every prisoner must either be released or be granted a free and fair trial in a real court.

–Stop threatening, bombing and attacking Muslim countries – and other ones too.

–Stop destabilizing and overthrowing internationally-recognized governments.

–End drone strikes and comply with long-standing executive orders prohibiting assassination as an instrument of U.S. policy.

–Shut down the “rat-line” of U.S. weapons to jihadi groups everywhere.

–Enforce existing U.S. laws that prohibit arms sales to governments that commit war crimes or human rights abuses, with no exceptions for U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, Israel or Iraq.

–Stop using the U.S. veto to block majority decisions of the UN Security Council on Israel and Palestine.

–Publicly recommit to full compliance with the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and the rule of international law.

–Restore command accountability under U.S. law for war crimes ordered or sanctioned by senior U.S. military and civilian officials.

If these steps seem radical or “politically impossible,” that is only a measure of how far the United States has strayed from the basic standards of international behavior that we and other countries are committed to. But if the U.S. government refuses to take such steps, then we must recognize that we share the responsibility for perpetuating the horrors of this conflict.

As the late historian and former U.S. Air Force bombardier Howard Zinn wrote in a letter to the New York Times in 2007, “The terrorism of the suicide bomber and the terrorism of aerial bombardment are indeed morally equivalent. To say otherwise (as either side might) is to give one moral superiority over the other, and thus serve to perpetuate the horrors of our time.”

On the other hand, if we can restore some legitimacy to U.S. policy, we can begin to regain the moral and legal ground from which to respond effectively to terrorism. If or when there is another mass murder like the ones in the U.S. in 2001 or the recent ones in Egypt, Lebanon and France, we must respond to it as a heinous crime rather than as an act of war, as former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz insisted in the aftermath of 9/11.

Those responsible must be identified, pursued, arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, with only as much help from the military as is needed to bring them to justice.  But as Ferencz warned in 2001, their crimes must not be allowed to become a pretext for wreaking misdirected vengeance on other countries and innocent lives.

This is how we will defeat terrorism – theirs and ours.

======================================

Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.  He also wrote the chapters on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.

Michael Parenti, 'The Darker Myths of Empire', 2012 (Full VID)

Published on 11 May 2012
http://cod.edu
College of DuPage, Writers Read, Heart of Darkness Series - "The Darker Myths of Empire" Michael Parenti Jason Snart, SRC 2800, November 16, 2005, (1 hour and 22 minutes, 57 seconds)

The anti-people role of social democracy discussed by Nick Wright in 21centurymanifesto November 27, 2015

The anti-people role of social democracy discussed
Posted by Nick Wright in 21centurymanifesto
November 27, 2015

link: https://21centurymanifesto.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/the-anti-people-role-of-social-democracy/


Recently 21centurymanifesto carried an important piece by one of its regular contributors, Andrew Murray, who readers will know, plays an important part in the trade union and anti war movement in Britain. We recall that he has a certain reputation in Greece where his fierce defence of the Greek Communist Party against its traducer Loius de Berniers, who’s novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin took  fascist interpretations of the Greek Civil War as its starting point was well received.

In the course of his wide ranging discussion on the singular aspects of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour Party, electoral and class politics and its significance in the struggle for working class political power Andrew Murray made some remarks on recent developments in Greece.
https://21centurymanifesto.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/andrew-murray-on-corbyns-labour/

21centurymanifesto has been particularly active, as an act of solidarity, in presenting to a global English speaking readership the reports and analyses of the Greek communists and thus we are grateful to comrade Lefteris Nikolaou of the KKE for his response to our posting. which is carried below.

We will, in time, invite further contributions to a moderated discussion on the strategic questions raised.

  The struggle of the KKE

A British-based website recently published a long article by Andrew Murray, a cadre of the trade union and anti-war movement in Britain, which engages with the recent election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour party and evaluates this as a positive development, deals with issues related to the immediate tasks of the British labour movement in the light of his election and presents his thoughts about the trajectory of the developments.

We disagree with the central axis of the positions contained in the article. We consider that this analysis of the role of social-democracy is damaging to the labour movement and we will present the positions of the KKE in the framework of a wider and important ongoing political debate.

However, we note that the author of the article in order to support his arguments attempts to utilize the experience of the developments in Greece. Unfortunately he engages in an analysis of the role of the political forces that is not grounded in reality, detaching them from their relationship with the bourgeois class, the bourgeois state, the EU, the capitalist system. Even worse he resorts to making a baseless attack against the KKE.

We are talking about unfounded and unjustified attack with the use of slanderous characterizations, concealing the role of the KKE in the labour-people’s movement, distorting basic elements of its political line and attempting to interpret the electoral results of the KKE in an arbitrary fashion and with a rationale permeated  by parliamentarianism and parliamentary illusions.

We are saddened because this article misleads the workers, popular forces and youth and gives a false picture about the situation in Greece and the KKE. We are saddened, but we will insist on keeping the ideological-political debate at a high level and providing information about the political line of the KKE in a responsible fashion.

 FIRSTLY, The KKE is represented in the National Parliament with 15 MPs and in the EU Parliament with 2 MEPs, who are in the service of the workers’-people’s interests and support the struggle of the communists and class-oriented movement in the workplaces and popular neighbourhoods.

This is where the strength of the KKE is to be found. In the trade unions, in the farmers’ associations, in the associations of the self-employed, the school-student councils, the student unions, the women’s associations, in the committees of the anti-imperialist/peace movement etc.

We could mention that the class-oriented forces have acquired a significant position inside the organized labour movement, especially in the private sector. The class-oriented movement (PAME) has over 22% of the votes in the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE). The class-oriented forces have the absolute majority in dozens of federations and labour centres, in hundreds of local unions… and of course a much stronger position than the forces of the governing SYRIZA party that in practice collaborate with trade union forces of PASOK, and in many instances with those of ND, in order to attack PAME and the KKE.

The same is true in the student movement.

The lists supported by the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) receive over 20% in the student union elections and have the majority or the first position in a significant number of student unions, in comparison to SYRIZA which has about 7%.

This is one aspect of the reality.

There is also another important aspect. In the period when this article with its anti-KKE barbs was published, our party was fighting to organize mass mobilizations all over Greece against the offensive of capital, the EU and the social-democratic SYRIZA-ANEL government which passed (with the votes of ND and PASOK as well)the third and harshest memorandum.

On the 22nd of October PAME organized mass demonstrations in over 60 towns.

In addition communists have played the leading role during this period in mobilizations in workplaces, industrial sectors, in the mobilizations of farmers, school and university students, people with special needs, in interventions to support the refugees and immigrants, in the initiatives of EEDYE against NATO and the imperialist interventions and wars. Interventions that occur on a daily basis.



The communists are in the frontline of all these efforts, the decisive force in organizing the struggle that culminated in the general strike on the 12th of November. A strike that was organized in the face of employer intimidation, the hostility of the fascist “Golden Dawn” gang, in the face of the efforts of SYRIZA and other bourgeois parties to undermine it.

A strike that was carried out in opposition to employer and government-led trade unionism and the reformists, who did not lift a finger to organize this struggle.

The strike shut down hundreds of businesses, factories, ships, services. Dozens of strike demonstrations were organized with the participation of thousands of striking workers in Athens, Thessalonica, Piraeus, Patras, in over 70 other towns.

This brief synopsis of some of the party’s activity in the recent period demonstrates that accusations about the “blustering immobility” of the KKE are slanderous.

 SECOND, social-democracy has been tried and tested in Europe and in other parts of the world, both in government and in opposition.

Even in periods characterized by the rapid growth of the capitalist economy and when in previous decades the system had more room to make concessions, it proved to be a decisive manager of capitalism.

 In reality, it constitutes a basic pillar for the management of the exploitative capitalist system (alternating with liberal parties). It demonstrably defends the interests of capital and is a dangerous and cunning opponent of the working class and popular strata, because it uses misleading slogans, it plays the “anti-right game” and has the ability to co-opt popular forces into supporting the aims of the bourgeoisie.

This is undeniable and is a conclusion drawn from the experience of Greece, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and other European countries, as well as of countries in Latin America etc.

 The basic axes of its political line are the perpetuation of the power of the monopolies, the strengthening of the bourgeois state as an apparatus for the exploitation, for the oppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie-as well as the maintenance and strengthening of capitalist ownership of the means of production, the assimilation of countries in the imperialist European Union or inter-state capitalist unions in other regions.

 The experience of the CPs’ participation in or support for “left”, “progressive” governments in cooperation with social-democracy is painful.  It led to the assimilation and opportunist mutation of CPs. Because these governments undertook the responsibility for implementing anti-worker measures and were on the receiving end of the discontent of working class and popular forces, which then led to the return to government of conservative, rightwing forces.

In all these instances, what we witnessed was a retreat of the labour movement and the entrapment of working class forces in the aims of capital. The level of the workers’ demands fell. This was demonstrated by the self-declared “left” governments in France, Italy, Cyprus, Denmark and other countries.

We do not judge the intentions of CPs that take part in these formations. We are talking about the laws of capitalism, development based on the profit criterion, participation in the imperialist unions (NATO, the EU etc.) and the damage done to the working class through the fostering of illusions. Illusions which the labour movement has paid a high price for and which serve the system (via “progressive” governments) by allowing it to buy time and blunt the people’s discontent and thus perpetuate its power.

THIRD, in recent years with the emergence of SYRIZA, Podemos, the change of leadership of the British Labour Party and the more general adaptations carried out by social-democracy, there is an attempt underway to present it as an alternative, radical and pro-people solution.

This development must not be met with complacency because it constitutes the basis for the mass manipulation of popular forces and poses major risks. The developments in Greece are a characteristic example of this.

 SYRIZA has opportunist roots and was strengthened during the capitalist crisis in the framework of the major erosion of support for social-democratic PASOK and liberal ND and was chosen as an effective manager of the system by powerful sections of the Greek bourgeoisie, supported by leading circles in the USA, France, Italy etc. in the framework of the inter-imperialist antagonisms.



It utilized the people’s opposition to the anti-worker memoranda of ND and PASOK. It trapped the workers inside the false dilemmas of the “memorandum-antimemorandum” rationale, concealing the fact that the memoranda are part of capital’s more general strategy, of the EU’s strategy.

It used promises about providing relief measures for the popular households, about increasing wages and pensions, bringing back collective labour agreements, abolishing anti-people measures, reducing taxation etc.

 In reality, it was transformed into a social-democratic party and with its ascendance to government (in cooperation with the nationalist ANEL party) it has been demonstrated in practice to be a supporter of the anti-people memoranda of ND and PASOK and in collaboration with these parties imposed the third and cruelest memorandum on our people.

After the elections in September 2015, which it won by utilizing the rationale of the “lesser evil” and a “second chance”, it is escalating the anti-people offensive. It is keeping all the antiworker-antipeople measures in place, it is imposing unbearably high levels of taxation, it is abolishing social-security rights and reducing social spending.

At the same time, it is imposing measures that are driving the small and medium farmers off the land. It is in essence also removing restrictions on home foreclosures and is providing new privileges for big capital and funding to the bankers worth billions of Euros.

The foreign policy of the “leftwing” SYRIZA government is even more dangerous. Because it assimilates the country even deeper inside NATO and the EU It maintains the existing US-NATO military bases, is committed to providing new ones and is making existing bases and infrastructure available for the imperialist interventions and wars in the region. While in the recent period it is utilizing repression against strikes and popular mobilizations.

This is the situation in Greece and those parties (abroad) that misinformed the workers, prettified and supported the anti-people political line of SYRIZA bear enormous responsibilities. After the signing of the 3rd memorandum this misinformation continued in the form of support for the “Popular Unity” party, comprised of cadres who were part of SYRIZA’s leading core and who bear responsibilities for its anti-people political line and for the attempt to manipulate the workers with various vague slogans regarding the management of the system. We are referring to slogans such as development in favour of the people and an exit from the Euro, while maintaining the power of capital and capitalist ownership.

FOURTH, In June 2012, in the conditions of SYRIZA’s electoral rise, the emergence of the so-called “left solution” and the support provided to it by many mechanisms of the bourgeois state, in an environment shaped by the orchestrated dissemination of false hopes and expectations, the KKE resisted this direction on the basis of communist principles.

 It refused to participate in any bourgeois government to manage the system. It informed the people about the necessity of a strong workers’-people’s opposition and despite the fact that its electoral strength was reduced (in June 2012), the KKE continued its militant course, won over new forces in the labour-people’s movement, recovered some of its electoral losses and is today in a stronger position to conduct the struggles.

The stable stance, the predictions, the positions of the KKE have been vindicated and reality itself has confirmed the class essence of the recomposition of the political scene and the creation of the monstrosity of fascist Golden Dawn, the anti-people trajectory of the bourgeois parties, the dangerous role of the EU and the social-democratic government of SYRIZA.

Over 60 CPs expressed their solidarity with the KKE’s struggle.

We particularly appreciate this and we thank all the comrades. Of course, there are a small number of supporters of the new social-democracy who not only did not express their solidarity but continue to march together with SYRIZA and to swear fealty to the Party of the European Left, the opportunist formation that supports the EU. Everybody is characterized by the positions they take.

FIFTH, a very important issue related to the strategy of the communist parties has come to the forefront of discussions in this period.

We will briefly clarify that there are two major distortions used by forces that criticize the KKE.

One line of attack says that our party fosters the view that everything will be resolved by socialism and that we do not focus enough on the everyday struggles. This slander, which is advanced by several rightwing and marginal ultra-left opportunist groups, is absurd and is refuted by the multi-faceted daily struggle of the KKE, KNE, the class-oriented movement (PAME) and the militant rallies of the social alliance.

The KKE struggles regarding every problem related to the workers’-people’s needs and attempts to increase the level of the workers’ demands, but it is clear that fundamental problems , i.e. unemployment, can not be resolved on the terrain of capitalism.

The abolition of exploitation and the satisfaction of the people’s needs objectively pose the necessity of struggling for the overthrow of capitalism, for the construction of socialism.

Various opportunist groups that oppose this position once again resort to distortions, by saying that our party poses the question of workers’ power right now and that it does so in direct connection with the parliamentary elections, i.e. as something that can be resolved by parliamentary elections.

This is just crude. The KKE deals with issues and tactics in a very responsible way.

 Our party (from the mid 1990’s) has overcome the rationale of intermediate stages, which in reality are stages on the terrain of capitalism. It came to this conclusion after studying the experience of the communist movement and the factors that led to the counterrevolutions and the overthrow of socialism.

The starting point of the KKE’s analysis is that fact that our era is the era when the necessity of the transition from capitalism to socialism comes to the fore. The era that was inaugurated by the great socialist revolution in Russia in 1917.

 Monopoly capitalism, the final (imperialist) stage of the system, has developed and is strengthening in Greece. The material preconditions for the construction of socialism have matured and consequently the struggle must be directed at resolving the basic contradiction between capital and labour. The character of the revolution in Greece will be socialist.

This framework determines the direction of the struggle in the labour-people’s movement, determines the need for further reinforcement of the revolutionary characteristics of the party, the major demands for party building (in the factories, in the strategically important sectors, etc.). It determines the alliance policy, the work amongst the youth



The stance of a CP that believes in the socialist revolution cannot be vacillating and opportunistic but must be in line with the basic principle that strategy determines our tactics. Only in this way can our tactics become a tool in the service of the overthrow of the system of capitalist exploitation.

 The daily work of the party is subordinated to the strategic goal and today when a revolutionary situation objectively does not exist in Greece and Europe, the focus must be on concentrating and preparing working class and popular forces, on maturing the subjective factor and changing the correlation of forces, on strengthening the class struggle.

This is what the KKE tries to do. Today, it emphasizes the regroupment of the labour movement, so that it acquires more mass characteristics and struggles in a class (antimonopoly-anticapitalist) direction, so that it is supported on strong trade unions which have real bases in the workplaces, so that it can confront the forces of opportunism, reformism (the vehicles of bourgeois ideology in the labour movement) in order to weaken and defeat them. All this requires the decisive intervention and participation of the workers themselves.

At the same time, the KKE is striving to build the social, people’s alliance between the working class, the poor farmers, the urban self-employed, the women and youth from the popular families. The joint struggle of PAME together with the other radical movement organizations (PASY in the small farmers, PASEVE in the self-employed, MAS in the youth and OGE in the women) is the first form of this alliance.

The “People’s Alliance” provides an answer to the following need: that of organizing the struggle to repel the barbaric antiworker-antipeople measures, of fighting for small victories and gathering forces together for the people’s counterattack, for the overthrow of the power of the monopolies.

The “People’s Alliance” has a clear antimonopoly and anti-imperialist orientation and in revolutionary conditions will be transformed into a revolutionary workers’-people’s front that will fight for workers’ power, which is the precondition for the socialization of the concentrated means of production, central planning and workers’-people’s control, socialist construction.

On this basis, the working class and the popular strata will be liberated from the shackles of exploitation and oppression, our country will disengage from the EU and NATO and it will form new mutually beneficial international relations.

The developments are very complex. Our party is well aware of its weaknesses, its deficiencies and tries to confront them and to respond to the heightened needs of the class struggle today.

Lefteris Nikolaou

Member of the International Relations Section of the CC