SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) --
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
(Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
It is within this context that Kramer [NYTIMES] puts forth the astonishing claim that World War II started with the Soviet Union’s invasion of Poland. He writes:
World
War II began in what is now Ukraine in 1939 with a Soviet invasion into
territory then controlled by Poland in western Ukraine, at a time when
the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were in a military alliance. When that
pact broke down in 1941, Germany attacked and fought from west to east
across Ukraine.
This assertion is a violation of the
basic chronology of the war. World War II began not with the Soviet
entry into the eastern one-third of Poland on September 17, 1939 but
with the Nazi blitzkrieg against the country’s eastern two-thirds on
September 1, 1939.
The Times, confronted with a flood of
hostile letters, cynically altered the sentence, without explanation,
and in a manner that perpetuates the aim of the original falsification.
The sentence was changed to read, “World War II reached what is
now Ukraine in 1939 with a Soviet invasion into territory then
controlled by Poland in western Ukraine…” The surreptitious verb swap
does nothing to alter Kramer’s intention. The reader is meant to believe
that the Soviet Union “started” WWII.
In that critical period, when experience of the SARS-CoV-1 outbreak told us containment should have been the sensible response, the public was subjected to a barrage of minimizing and obfuscating messages, and containment wasn’t even attempted.
***
By
meekly conceding to follow such a policy approach, instead of insisting
on a real solution to the problem, which would have involved proper
containment the way SARS-1 was contained back in 2003, society agreed on
previously unimaginable levels of death and disability, in perpetuity.
The
Seattle Times has fired recently-hired columnist David Volodzko after
he wrote one piece for the paper. Volodzko was a member of the Times'
editorial board -- briefly -- and was let go on Thursday, a day after he
tried to "well, actually" Adolf Hitler's track record of evil.
The
paper's newest scribe wrote a column about the famous statue of
Vladimir Lenin in Seattle and why it should be removed (it's on private
property, FYI). After the column was published, he took to Twitter and
claimed Hitler was less-evil than Lenin because, according to Volodzko,
Hitler only targeted people he believed were harmful to society, while
Lenin even targeted people he believed were not. Which -- you know what,
let's not even get into a debate over that.
Here are two of his now-deleted tweets:
Record-setting fastest “you gotta hand it to Hitler” tweet from a newly hired member of a metro newspaper’s editorial board pic.twitter.com/3oizeueo4r
The
man wrote one column for the paper after being hired, then in record
time defended Hitler's track record on Twitter. The speed at which it
happened is simply incredible.
Some
advice for all of our readers who plan to engage polite society, Rule
No. 1: Never defend Hitler or attempt to minimize his level of evil.
As with every document produced by the imperialist powers, the NATO
communique is rife with hypocrisy. The US and European powers talk about
defending national “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” when they
themselves have launched wars of aggression in every corner of the
globe. They insist on the absolute right of Ukraine to choose its
“strategic partners”—that is, to join NATO—but deny that right to China
and Russia. They insist on the right of NATO to provide unlimited arms
to Ukraine but treat any military assistance to Russia as a veritable
act of war.
When the document speaks of upholding a “rules-based
international order,” this means an “order” in which every country must
do the bidding of the imperialist powers, above all, the United States.
To
this end, the “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization has been transformed
into a Frankenstein monster that asserts its interests and “values” in
every part of the globe. “The Black Sea region is of strategic
importance for the Alliance,” the communique states. “The Middle East
and Africa are regions of strategic interests. … The Indo-Pacific is
important for NATO.”
On what map, one might ask, does North Africa
and the Middle East, let alone the Indo-Pacific, touch the shorelines
of the North Atlantic?
Even in the Arctic, in outer space and in
cyberspace, NATO wants to ensure “security.” A cyberattack can serve as a
pretext for war: “A single or cumulative set of malicious cyber
activities could reach the level of armed attack and could lead the
North Atlantic Council to invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, on a
case-by-case basis.” Article 5 obligates all NATO members to provide
assistance to a member under military attack.
Particularly
ominous in the document are the repeated references to nuclear war,
which has entered into the calculations of the imperialist war planners.
“We will individually and collectively deliver the
full range of forces, capabilities, plans, resources, assets and
infrastructure needed for deterrence and defence, including for
high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed
peer-competitors,” it states. “Accordingly, we will strengthen training
and exercises that simulate conventional and, for Allies concerned, a
nuclear dimension of a crisis or conflict, facilitating greater
coherence between conventional and nuclear components of NATO’s
deterrence and defence posture across all domains and the entire
spectrum of conflict.”
The document exposes the political
bankruptcy of the strategy of the Putin regime, which has pursued a
policy aimed at putting pressure on the imperialist powers for “security
guarantees.” But the US and European imperialist powers do not want
compromise, they want world domination. Despite the obvious failure of
the Ukrainian counteroffensive, the United States and NATO will do
everything in their power to perpetuate the war no matter how many
Ukrainians are killed. Russia has been drawn into a trap from which it
can find no exit. The longer the conflict drags on, the greater the
pressure on the Putin regime to either escalate or capitulate. Within
the framework of the capitalist-based politics of the regime, there is
no palatable middle ground to be found.
But the policies of NATO,
as they find expression in the Vilnius Communique, have a thoroughly
delusional and reckless character. The grandiose plans for world
conquest and domination stem from the crisis of global capitalism. For
more than 30 years, the US, supported by its European “partners,” has
tried to make up for the decline of its economic dominance through
military force—with devastating consequences for Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya and numerous other countries.
They have only one answer to
the incompatibility of the social and international character of modern
production, on the one hand, and private property and the nation-state,
on which capitalism is based, on the other: the violent redivision of
the world under their domination. This was already the cause of the
First and Second World Wars.
The war plans of the imperialist
powers will enormously escalate the growth of social conflict. The
document pledges all the signatories to commit “at least 2% of our Gross
Domestic Product” on war. However, it states, “in many cases,
expenditure beyond 2% of GDP will be needed in order to remedy existing
shortfalls and meet the requirements across all domains arising from a
more contested security order.”
And who will pay for it? The
escalation of war abroad is at the same time the escalation of the
assault on the social programs, wages and jobs of the vast majority of
the population, the working class.
The summit participants are
well aware of this. Throughout the document, there are veiled references
to internal conflict. It refers to the need to “boost our national and
collective ability to ensure continuity of government,” “enable civil
support to military operations” and “promote societal resilience.” The
document even refers to the possibility of using Article 5 against
domestic opponents of governments—“non-state actors”—that “target our
political institutions, our critical infrastructure, our societies, our
democratic systems, our economies, and the security of our citizens.”
NATO’s
claim to impose its will on the whole world, as formulated in the
Vilnius summit document, borders on madness. But it is the madness of a
ruling class with its back against the wall. For all their
saber-rattling and threats, the members of NATO held their summit in
Vilnius under conditions of extreme crisis. The ruling elites of the
major imperialist powers are trying desperately to hold everything
together, including between themselves and within their own governments.
Above all, they confront growing social opposition in the working
class.
The end of war will come only through the fusing of the
developing struggles of the working class with opposition to
imperialism. The objective conditions for such a movement are developing
rapidly. This year has already seen mass protests and strikes in the
US, France, Germany, the UK and all the major capitalist countries. All
the governments overseeing the escalation of war are despised, and there
is massive latent opposition to war in the international working class.
The
task is to make this objective movement politically conscious, to
develop within the working class an understanding of the need to connect
the fight against inequality and exploitation with the fight against
imperialist war and the capitalist nation-state system. We urge all
those who agree with this perspective to join and build the
International Committee of the Fourth International and its sections,
the Socialist Equality Parties.
In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the new
Lithuanian bourgeoisie promoted the rehabilitation of its
Nazi-collaborating ancestors. While occasionally issuing, for reasons of
political expediency, pro forma and callous statements of official
regret over the extermination of Lithuanian Jewry, the government and
major parties minimized and covered up the scale of the crimes committed
between 1941 and 1945.
As
one of its first acts, the new Lithuanian parliament rehabilitated
Lithuanians convicted of collaboration with the Nazis by the Soviet
government. Streets were named
after LAF leaders like Škirpa. Lithuania’s state-run Military Academy,
which is affiliated with other NATO military academies, was named after
Jonas Žemaitis, another infamous Nazi collaborator. Meanwhile, Holocaust
survivors who fought with the Soviet partisans against the Nazis and
their Lithuanian allies were put on trial for “collaboration” and “war crimes.”
The
case of the Lithuanian fascist Jonas Noreika has acquired international
notoriety. Executed in the Soviet Union after the war, he was
posthumously celebrated by the post-1991 Lithuanian regime as a fighter
against “communist tyranny.” Streets were renamed in his honor, and
Noreika was awarded the Cross of Vytis, the highest honor bestowed by
Lithuania upon a deceased person. But in the year 2000 Noreika’s
granddaughter came across long concealed family documents that revealed
that he had “ordered all Jews in his region of Lithuania to be rounded
up and sent to a ghetto where they were beaten, starved, tortured, raped
and then murdered.” [Op-ed published on January 27, 2021 in the New York Times, “No More Lies. My Grandfather Was a Nazi,” by Silvia Foti]
Despite
these revelations, Noreika is still honored in Lithuania as a national
hero. A memorial plaque honoring his memory remains in place at the
Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. A documentary denouncing this travesty
of historical truth, titled J’Accuse, has been recently completed and was viewed in December 2022 at the Miami Jewish Film Festival.
If only the Senate rules could be changed to prevent the minority of
Republicans from blocking liberal legislation propounded by Biden and
the Democrats, she suggested, the United States would bloom like a
garden. She did not bother to note that it was Senate Democrats who
refused to limit the filibuster and that Biden himself supported this
decision because he was seeking bipartisan agreement with the
Republicans, along with his stated aim of maintaining a “strong
Republican Party.”
Most importantly, Ocasio-Cortez said nothing at
all about the central policy of the Democratic Party and the Biden
administration—the war in Ukraine against Russia. The administration and
congressional Democrats have repeatedly backed new arms packages to
Ukraine, expanding the scope of the war and escalating the risks of a
full-scale military confrontation between the United States and Russia,
threatening the world with the prospect of a nuclear holocaust.
The
cost of the war is being placed squarely on the backs of American
working people, in terms of cuts in social spending and attacks on
democratic rights, beginning with the right to strike.
In
December, Congress approved the legislation banning a rail strike,
including the votes of AOC and two other DSA Democrats. Biden’s
Department of Labor is now moving to impose a sellout deal on the West
Coast longshore workers and to block a strike by 340,000 UPS workers at
the end of this month. Within days, Biden is expected to announce the
appointment of a White House representative to oversee the auto industry
contract negotiations. In each case, Biden has relied on the union
bureaucracies, backed by the DSA, to block any struggle by the rank and
file, while readying the use of federal coercion through legislation or
injunctions if they fail to do so.
Ocasio-Cortez is now the dean
of a growing faction of Democratic members of Congress linked to the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). She is regularly given a
platform on the Sunday television interview programs. AOC is also moving
up within the leadership of the House Democratic Caucus.
Representative
Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and
Governance Committee, has named her as his deputy, an indication of his
political confidence that she will cause no trouble to the Biden
administration should the Democrats regain the majority in the House of
Representatives.
A United Nations panel of human rights experts issued a statement
Wednesday condemning Israeli military operations in Jenin and elsewhere
on the West Bank, declaring they “amount to egregious violations of
international law and standards on the use of force and may constitute a
war crime.”
The three-member group, which operates under the
aegis of the UN Human Rights Commission, pointed to a series of actions
by the Israeli military which had resulted in “killing and seriously
injuring the occupied population, destroying their homes and
infrastructure, and arbitrarily displacing thousands.”
The two-day
attack on the large, semi-permanent refugee camp outside Jenin, with
14,000 residents, led to pitched battles with Palestinian militants and
deliberate and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure,
including water and electricity supplies and healthcare facilities. At
least 12 Palestinians were killed, including four teenagers. More than
100 were injured, and one-quarter of the camp’s population was forced to
flee.
Eyewitnesses, including journalists, described both houses
and larger structures destroyed by the Israel Defense Forcea (IDF),
which sent 1,000 soldiers, most drawn from elite commando units, into
the densely populated residential area.
According to the UN
panel, “The attacks were the fiercest in the West Bank since the
destruction of the Jenin camp in 2002.” They included air strikes, the
first in two decades. The healthcare system was a particular target,
with multiple reports of ambulances being prevented from evacuating the
wounded, and IDF troops firing tear gas into Jenin General Hospital.
“The
attacks constitute collective punishment of the Palestinian population,
who have been labelled a ‘collective security threat’ in the eyes of
Israeli authorities,” the UN panel said. “The Palestinians in the
occupied Palestinian territory are protected persons under international
law, guaranteed of all human rights including the presumption of
innocence... They cannot be treated as a collective security threat by
the occupying Power, all the more while it advances the annexation of
occupied Palestinian land, and displacement and dispossession of its
Palestinian residents.”
In
the American media, however, there is virtually no mention of the
actual conditions on the ground in Jenin, or of the findings of the UN
panel. The reporting on the Israeli operation has generally been limited
to rehashing claims that its purpose was “counter-terrorism.” The Washington Post devoted a single sentence to the UN panel’s condemnation of the Israeli operation as a violation of international law. The New York Times wrote nothing at all. The television networks were equally silent.
Here
is the brutal reality in the West Bank under Israeli occupation:
ongoing and systematic violence and repression against the Palestinians.
Both Israeli soldiers and ultra-right settlers are murdering people,
shooting them down, destroying their homes, pillaging the land where
they have lived for centuries.
The government of Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu is a coalition of right-wing parties, including
outright fascists, with a large base in the illegal settlements on the
West Bank. The regime is preparing for the logical conclusion of this
campaign of terror and murder: the forcible displacement of millions of
Palestinians, and the incorporation of the West Bank into Israel.
Leaders
of the fascist parties speak openly of their determination to remove
the entire Arab population of the West Bank and annex the territory. In
this, they are modeling themselves on the pogroms against Arabs which
accompanied the foundation of Israel in 1947-48. This campaign, which
today would be called “ethnic cleansing,” transformed an Arab-majority
territory of Palestine into a Jewish-majority state of Israel.
The
Israeli aggression on the West Bank is taking place with the full
approval of the US government. The Biden administration certainly
green-lighted the operation in advance, and voiced approval of it after
the fact. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday,
“We have said this many times: We support, certainly, Israel’s security
and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, and other terrorist groups… Israel is a close ally and partner,
and we are in touch with the national security and, certainly, the
defense officials. So don’t have anything to read out on our
conversation, but we are in regular contact.”
The coverage in the
corporate media took its cue from Biden in its indifference to the
barbarism displayed by Israel on the West Bank, where military violence
has been combined with rampages by armed settlers against Palestinian
towns and villages to enforce the increasingly stifling grip of the
occupation regime. At least 155 Palestinians have been killed by
soldiers and settlers so far this year, the largest total since the
second intifada in 2002.
Meanwhile, the media witch-hunts
anyone who criticizes the conduct of the state of Israel, condemning
them as anti-Semites. This is especially directed against public
figures, most recently the musician Roger Waters, founder of the rock
band Pink Floyd, who has been a principled supporter of the Palestinian
people for many decades, and now is one of the few prominent opponents
of the US-NATO war in Ukraine.
The
American media maintains a shameless double standard in relation to the
war in Ukraine and the ongoing attacks on Palestinians living in the
West Bank. While covering up Israeli violence and dispossession in the
occupied territories, the media has been engaged for more than a year in
a hysterical campaign claiming the Russian military is engaging in
genocidal crimes in Ukraine.
There is no reason to disguise or
excuse the brutality of the Putin regime, which represents the interests
of the oligarchy of capitalist billionaires who built their fortunes on
the dismantling of the Soviet Union. But the same standard should apply
to the Ukrainian regime of President Volodymyr Zelensky, riddled with
fascists and worshippers of the Nazi stooge Stepan Bandera. And it
should apply as well to the crimes of the state of Israel, long the
principal ally of American imperialism in the Middle East.
Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post bothered
to comment editorially on the Israeli onslaught in Jenin, although such
an operation by a regime at odds with the US government would have
provoked strident denunciation.
The day before the attack, the Post published
an editorial with the headline, “Hold Russia accountable for its war
crimes.” It cited the findings of an array of UN and human rights
organizations about Russian actions in Ukraine—the same type of evidence
that it ignores or dismisses when it comes to the Israeli operation in
Jenin.
The editorial draws the remarkable conclusion that in
addition to specific atrocities, “In fact, Mr. Putin and a coterie of
his top advisers have committed a broader offense by unleashing the war
in the first place—the crime from which all the subsequent atrocities
arose. They should face prosecution for waging a crime of aggression—the very charge used against Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg trials after World War II.”
The World Socialist Web Site has
repeatedly cited the Nuremberg precedent as applying to the actions of
American administrations, from George W. Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq
onward. There is no government in the world which is more steeped in
“waging a crime of aggression” by unleashing war than that which resides
in Washington, DC.
The Nuremberg Tribunal also convicted the main media apologists of the Nazi regime of war crimes. The editors of the Post, faithful advocates of every US military adventure, should be careful what they wish for.
Like many young workers of his generation, Porter was radicalized in
the 1960s by the conditions in the cities, the collapse of the Civil
Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. This was a period in which
radical-sounding black nationalism had a real influence on African
American youth. It was the heyday of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and
the Black Panthers. But Porter was among a layer of the youth won to
Trotskyism, precisely in political struggle against these tendencies.
This
was fortunate for the working class. Porter’s political career now
spans a half-century. Working for years as a welder in both steel and
auto, including at Bethlehem Steel and Chrysler Corporation, Porter has
fought for socialist consciousness among all sections of the working
class—autoworkers, steel workers, educators, health care workers—and
sought to unite workers of all races.
He has reported extensively
on the horrific social conditions that have developed in Detroit over
the last 30 years. In 1993, he helped investigate and chaired the
Citizens Inquiry into the Mack Avenue Fire, the result of Detroit Water
Department’s inhuman policy of water shutoffs. In 2010, Porter led a
group of Detroit residents in creating the Committee Against Utility
Shutoffs (CAUS). In 2013, he chaired the Workers Inquiry into the
Bankruptcy of Detroit and the Attack on the DIA and Pensions. Between
2015 and 2017, he focused on reporting and mobilizing workers against
the bipartisan coverup of the lead poisoning of Flint’s water supply.
Throughout
his career, Porter has been continuously active in opposing identity
politics and, above all, fighting to bring an international socialist
Trotskyist perspective to the struggles of the working class.
