< Back UKRAINE EXPOSED AS CIA-MI6 BEACHHEAD - THE GRAYZONE The Grayzone 29 февр. 2024 г. The Grayzone's Aaron Mate and Max Blumenthal discuss a stunning New York Times report which was intended to highlight achievements by the CIA and MI6 in Ukraine, but which wound up confirming Russia's understanding of the post-Maidan government as a blunt instrument of Western intelligence. ||| The Grayzone ||| Find more reporting at https://thegrayzone.com Support our original journalism at Patreon: https://patreon.com/grayzone Facebook: https://facebook.com/thegrayzone Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegrayzonenews Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegrayzonenews Minds: https://minds.com/thegrayzone Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@thegrayzone Previous Next

< Back FAKE COMMUNISM & SOCIAL CHAUVINISM Marx Engels Lenin Institute 28 февр. 2024 г. Tonight Alexander of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute looks at the reactionary political positions of the "communist" party of Britain and the (equally reactionary) "communist" party of the USA. Be sure to check out the MELI website where you can find the latest articles: https://marxengelsinstitute.org/ You can also find more of our work on their Patreon page https://www.patreon.com/marx_engels_l ... If you want to support the work we do here then you can also donate using the link below: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ptrgd1917a If you want to contact us you can do so on the following email address editor@marxengelsinstitute.org Previous Next

< Back EGYPT REGRETS INTERNATIONAL DEADLOCK ON TACKLING GAZA'S CRISIS teleSUR 28 февр. 2024 г. The Palestinian death toll has risen to 29,954 as the Israeli military killed 76 in the past 24 hours. On Wednesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry voiced regret over the international community's failure to properly address the humanitarian suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. He made the remarks during a phone conversation with Tariq Ahmad, the British minister of state for the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Commonwealth, and the United Nations. The two sides discussed the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza and the daily hardships faced by Palestinians, during which Shoukry condemned "double standards" that have applied to the issues. During the talk, Shoukry stressed the crucial need to allow humanitarian and relief aid into the besieged Palestinian enclave, and voiced concern about the severe ramifications of any Israeli ground operations in the southern Gazan city of Rafah. MP Manon Aubry's text reads, "In Gaza, civilians are dying because European countries continue to supply weapons to Netanyahu. They are dying because the European Union refuses to suspend its association agreement with Israel. They die because many legislators here support the risk of genocide and that is why their hands are stained with blood." The two officials reaffirmed the legal, humanitarian, and ethical responsibility of the international community to end the crisis and halt Israeli violations in the region. They also underscored the urgency of implementing a ceasefire, releasing hostages, and achieving a lasting peace. Since Oct. 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation forces have been waging an intense offensive against the population in the Gaza Strip. Their war actions have also affected the Palestinians residing in the West Bank. The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to 29,954 as the Israeli military killed 76 in the past 24 hours, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said Wednesday. Previous Next

< Back A PROFOUND ACT OF SINCERITY Caitlin Johnstone 28 февр. 2024 г. One of the main reasons the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell is having such an earthshaking impact on our society is because it’s the single most profound act of sincerity that any of us have ever witnessed. Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley) One of the main reasons the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell is having such an earthshaking impact on our society is because it’s the single most profound act of sincerity that any of us have ever witnessed. In this fraudulent civilization where everything is fake and stupid, we are not accustomed to such sincerity. We’re accustomed to vapid mainstream culture manufactured in New York and Los Angeles, airheaded celebrities who never talk about anything real, self-aggrandizing Instagram activism, synthetic political factions designed to herd populist discontent into support for status quo politics, phony shitlib “I hear you, I stand with you [but I won’t actually do anything]” posturing, endless propaganda and diversion from the mass media and its online equivalents which are algorithmically boosted by Silicon Valley tech plutocrats, and a mind-controlled dystopia where almost everyone is sleepwalking through life in a psyop-induced fog. That is the sort of experience we have been conditioned to expect here in the shadow of the western empire. And then, out of nowhere, some Air Force guy comes along and does something real . Something as authentic and sincere as anything could possibly be, with the very noblest of intentions. He live-streamed himself lighting himself on fire and burning to death in order to draw people’s attention to how horrific the US-backed atrocities in Gaza actually are. Knowing full well how painful it would be. Knowing full well he’d either die or survive with horrific burns and wish he’d died. Knowing full well that once he connected the flame with the accelerant he poured onto his body, there’d be no turning back. He didn’t back down. He didn’t go home and stuff his face with snacks and gossip in the group chat and see what types of mindless escapism are available on Netflix or Pornhub. He lit the flame. He even struggled to light it at first, and he still did. There’s nothing in our society that can prepare us for that kind of sincerity. That kind of selflessness. That kind of purity of intention. It stops us dead in our tracks, as if the fabric of our world has been ripped asunder. And, in a way, it has. We’re not really living in the same world we were living in before Aaron Bushnell lit himself on fire at 1 PM on February 25th. It was far too sincere an act, committed in the least sincere city on this planet. It shook things around far too much for all the pieces to fit fully back into place. I myself am permanently changed. I find myself reapproaching the Gaza genocide with fresh eyes, renewed vigor, and invincible determination. I now write with a different kind of fire in my guts. And looking around I can see it’s much the same for others. Where previously we’d begun seeing the opposition to the incineration of Gaza beginning to lose a bit of energy due to despair and how hard it is to keep something energized for months on end, we are now seeing electrifying enthusiasm. More importantly, this is shaking things up in mainstream society and not just within the pro-Palestine crowd. We’re seeing Bushnell’s final words about the US empire’s complicity with genocide shared on mainstream networks like CNN and ABC , while Israel apologists run around falling all over themselves trying to tell people nobody cares about what Bushnell did like a guy sending a woman dozens of texts saying he’s totally unbothered that she rejected his advances. A member of the US military lighting himself on fire while screaming “Free Palestine” is absolutely devastating to the information interests of Israel and the United States, because it shakes people awake like nothing else ever could. All around our fake plastic dystopia people are now opening their eyes, saying “Wait, huh? That man did what? Why? I thought nothing matters but my comfort and my feelings and my small circle of people I care about? My country is complicit in a what now? Is it possible I’ve been missing something important?” With his profound act of sincerity, Aaron Bushnell extended the world an invitation to a very different way of looking at life. An invitation to pierce through the veil of superficiality and narcissism to a radical authenticity and a deep compassion for our fellow human beings. To a profound sincerity of our own, with which we can shake the world awake in our own unique ways. At 1 PM on February 25th, Aaron Bushnell lit more than one kind of fire. A fire that drives us to act. A fire that lights the way. A fire that inspires us. A fire that shows us another way of being. A fire which shows us a better world is possible. We won’t forget his message. We couldn’t if we tried. Previous Next

< Back RUSSIAN FM LAVROV TO VISIT CUBA, VENEZUELA, BRAZIL teleSUR/ JF 14 февр. 2024 г. He will meet with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Vice President Delcy Rodriguez. On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry announced that Sergei Lavrov will visit Cuba, Venezuela, and Brazil next week. On Feb. 19, Lavrov will be in Cuba, where he will meet with President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, said Russian diplomat Maria Zakharova. The next day, the Russian foreign minister will visit Venezuela as part of his tour of Latin American countries. During this visit, Lavrov will meet with President Nicolas Maduro and Vice President Delcy Rodriguez. The Russian delegation will also hold negotiations with the Bolivarian diplomats. Lavrov's trip to Caracas comes amid preparations for Maduro's visit to Russia, which was initially scheduled for late 2023. Maduro's last visit to Russia took place in September 2019, at a time when the Caribbean nation was experiencing a difficult economic situation caused by the U.S. arbitrary sanctions against the Bolivarian revolution. Starting on Feb. 21, Lavrov will make a two-day visit to Brazil, where he will participate in a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Twenty (G20) in Rio de Janeiro. Previous Next

< Back IGNORE WHAT WESTERN OFFICIALS SAY ABOUT ISRAEL; WATCH THEIR ACTIONS INSTEAD Caitlin Johnstone 14 февр. 2024 г. Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley) Another fake, stupid story is making headlines in the mass media today about how bad and wrong President Biden secretly believes Israel’s actions in Gaza are. NBC News is now reporting that Biden has been referring to Benjamin Netanyahu as an “asshole” in private conversations and saying the assault in Gaza “has to stop”. “Biden has grown steadily more frustrated with the rising Palestinian civilian death toll in Gaza — now a reported 28,000 — and Netanyahu’s reluctance to pursue a long-term peace agreement,” NBC News reports. Buried all the way down in paragraph 15 of the article, we get to the real story: “Yet, even as Biden has escalated his rhetoric, he is not yet prepared to make significant policy changes, officials said. He and his aides continue to believe his approach of unequivocally supporting Israel is the right one.” All the relevant information in this news story that’s getting so much attention today is contained in paragraph 15. None of the words outside of paragraph 15 matter. Paragraph 15 is the whole entire story. The Biden administration keeps feeding these bogus stories to the press about how “frustrated” they are with Israel’s insistence on massacring civilians with unbelievable savagery, without ever actually making any meaningful policy changes or taking any meaningful actions to stop it. The White House has expressed “concerns” about Israel’s actions in Gaza in more than 20 statements , all without any actual, real-life steps having been taken to curb those actions in any way. It’s absurd to pretend that the things Biden is privately thinking and feeling about Israel and Gaza are of any interest or significance when Biden is actively backing Israel’s atrocities and bombing anyone in the middle east who tries to stop them. Biden’s feelings aren’t going to stop kids from getting ripped to shreds by Israeli massacres Rafah . (As an aside, it’s also absurd to pretend Biden thinks anything of any relevance at all given what we now know about the state of his cognitive decline . Even if he really did call the Israeli prime minister an asshole in private conversations, for all we know he was talking about a long-dead Israeli prime minister from his senate days like Ariel Sharon. Hell, he could’ve been talking about the president of Mexico .) The White House could end this with a phone call, just as it ended the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon with a phone call in 1982 . Israel is fully dependent on the United States to perpetrate these mass atrocities in Gaza, and the Israelis are fully aware of this . The genocidal massacres have continued in Gaza for four months because the US empire wants them to continue. But the shitlib media have taken this ridiculously fake “Biden wants Netanyahu to stop but he just won’t” story and run with it. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell just got together with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius to tell their brainwashed viewers that we’re looking at a “showdown” between the brave and righteous Biden and the sinister and murderous Netanyahu. Really these institutions are just telling American progressives what they want to hear, in the same way Israeli officials provide liberal-sounding messaging for western audiences while spouting genocidal rhetoric in Hebrew to their own citizens. The Biden administration is feeding pleasing sound bites to the mass media about the president saying mean things about Netanyahu in order to placate their base, while having their foot firmly on the gas pedal of concrete actions toward continuing the genocide in Gaza. This is just what Democrat presidencies look like. Republican presidents like Trump and Bush just come right out say things like they invaded Syria “ to take the oil ” and they invaded Iraq because God told them to , whereas the Bidens and the Obamas have to make it look pretty. Obama spent eight years feeding eloquent words to the public while continuing and expanding all the most depraved aspects of the Bush administration, thus accomplishing the necessary straddle of facilitating the violence and tyranny of the empire while simultaneously allowing liberals to feel good about themselves. That’s why you’re seeing this phony song and dance about Biden and Netanyahu being secretly at odds, even while the Biden White House explicitly says “We’re going to continue to support Israel” when asked if they’ve ever threatened to withhold military support if Israel commits war crimes in Rafah. Western officials keep babbling about how “concerned” they are about what’s happening in Gaza without actually doing anything. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken , British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak , British Labour leader Keir Starmer , Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese , Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong , Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau , and Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly have all been making use of the word “concern” with regard to Gaza so as to be seen as publicly fretting about Israel’s actions without actually presenting any concrete opposition to them. The correct response to all this lip service to the stated values of the liberal international order is to ignore their words and watch their actions. This is good advice for government policy on Israel and Gaza, and it’s good advice for all other government policy too. Words can be used to spin narratives and manage perception in ways that concrete actions cannot. Disregard the narrative spin and the public statements and watch the concrete, physical movements of money, weapons and resources. That’s how you penetrate through the distortions of the propaganda matrix and distinguish fact from empty word stories . Ignore their official public statements and the unofficial public statements they feed the press; watch their actions instead. Disregard what they say and watch what they do. That will show you their true position. That will tell you who they are. Previous Next

< Back STALIN – THE HISTORY AND CRITIQUE OF A BLACK LEGEND BY DOMENICO LOSURDO, PT 1 HARPAL BRAR 23 февр. 2024 г. Originally published in Italian in 2008, Iskra press has just released the first authorised translation of this book on Stalin into English, translated by Henry Hakamäkr and Salavatore Engel-Di Manso. The present review is based on a version that was re-translated from the Portuguese edition. ***** History and Critique of a Black Legend is a refreshing change from the countless books on the subject of Josef Stalin written by despicable paid mercenaries pretending to be objective academics, who attempt to pass off their lies as historical truth. Following the second world war , in which she almost single-handedly defeated the Hitlerite war machine , the Soviet Union and its undisputed leader, JV Stalin, were held in the highest regard not only by ordinary people all over the world, but also by large numbers of statesmen, intellectuals and writers who could not be suspected to being partial to Stalin. This was not to the liking of the representatives of imperialism, especially US imperialism , which had emerged from the war much strengthened while other imperialist countries, notably Britain, Germany, Japan and France, lay prostrate. On the other hand, following the legendary victory of Soviet arms, there arose a mighty socialist camp comprising eastern and central Europe , followed shortly after by the victories of the revolutions in China, Korea, Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. The prestige of the USSR, of socialism and of Stalin, the undisputed leader at the time of the international communist movement , stood at its pinnacle. The socialist bloc of states became a pole of attraction for the working-class movement in the imperialist countries, as well as for the national-liberation movements in the vast continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America – a development that could not but shake imperialism to its foundations. In response, imperialism applied a combination of military and economic pressure against the socialist bloc, hand in hand with a relentless propaganda barrage aimed at belittling and maligning the achievements of socialism and the person under whose leadership these earth-shaking developments had taken place, namely Joseph Stalin. Thus started the ‘ cold war ’, in which two camps – the camp of imperialism and the camp of socialism and the national-liberation movements – confronted one other. On the propaganda front, imperialism pressed into service its academics and intellectuals, who wrote atrociously falsified accounts of the socialist movement in general and of the second world war in particular – making a special target of Stalin and his leadership. For their services, this nefarious gentry were, and still are, handsomely rewarded. Falsifying history “The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity,” observed Friedrich Engels , “hence also the writing of history . It is part of its being, of its condition of existence, to falsify all goods: it falsified the writing of history. And the best paid historiography is that which is best falsified for the purposes of the bourgeoisie.” ( Preparatory material for the History of Ireland , 1870) Doubtless the bourgeois falsifiers became the best-paid ‘historians’ of the contemporary world. The less they knew about the substance of actual developments, and the more they rushed forth with falsifications, the more they were recognised as being authorities on the subject and handsomely paid for their flunkey services to imperialism. And these hired pens resorted to hypocritical cant to hide their mercenary activity in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie, sprinkling their writings with concern about ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’, ‘rule of law’ and suchlike empty verbiage. They remind us of the brilliantly shrewd observation of the great Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov: “Marx said very truly that the greater the development of antagonism between the growing forces of production and the extant social order, the more does the ideology of the ruling class become permeated with hypocrisy. In addition, the more effectively life unveils the mendacious character of this ideology, the more does the language used by the dominant class become sublime and virtuous.” ( Fundamental Problems of Marxism , 1907, Chapter 14) Mao Zedong correctly and pithily characterised imperialists as having honey on their lips and murder in their hearts. ( Stalin, friend of the Chinese people , December 1939) People all over the world have pierced through the veil of deception created by the ideologies of the bourgeoisie. With each passing day it becomes clearer that imperialism, and the entire system of exploitation of one human being by another and of one nation by another, is past its sell-by date; with each passing day, the mendacity of the ideology of the bourgeoisie is revealed. Hence the use of sublime and virtuous language by bourgeois politicians, intellectuals and ‘historians’. Domenico Losurdo is one of the small minority of historians and thinkers who have the courage and candour to swim against the tide. Imperialists could never have been so successful in their lying campaign of slander and vilification directed against socialism and against Stalin if they had not received help from an unexpected quarter – namely, from Nikita Khrushchev and his fellow revisionists who, following the 20th congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, joined the imperialist bourgeoisie in a veritable campaign of slander against Stalin and thus helped to sully the banner of Marxism-Leninism . Losurdo tears the mask off the faces not only of the ordinary bourgeois falsifiers of history, but also of their kindred spirits in the camp of Khrushchevite revisionism and Trotskyism alike. Reality and myth in the presentation of Stalin He begins his book with a depiction of the scenes of mourning following Comrade Stalin’s death on 5 March 1953. He says: “impressive demonstrations of grief accompanied Stalin’s passing”; millions of people flocked to the centre of Moscow to pay their last respects to him; millions of the Soviet people wept over his loss as if they were grieving over a loved one; and this reaction was by no means confined to Moscow, but took place in the most remote corners of the vast Soviet land; people everywhere fell into “spontaneous and collective mourning”. (p2) Similar scenes were repeated beyond the frontiers of the Soviet Union – in the streets of Budapest and Prague, and even in Israel where the membership of Mapam (which embraced the leadership of Israel) “without exception cried”. Al Hamishnar, the kibbutz movement’s newspaper declared: “The sun has set.” In the west, tributes to Stalin came not only from leaders and members of communist parties but also from many others. Historian Isaac Deutscher, a devoted admirer of Trotsky, wrote an obituary of Stalin in which he acknowledged his achievements thus: “After three decades, the face of the Soviet Union has been completely transformed. What’s essential to Stalinism’s historical action is this: it found a Russia that worked the land with wooden ploughs and left it as the owner of the atomic bomb. “It elevated Russia to the rank of the second industrial power in the world, and it is not merely a question of material progress and organisation. A similar result could not have been achieved without a great cultural revolution in which the entire country has been sent to school to receive an extensive education.” (p2) In Deutscher’s evaluation there was no place for Trotsky’s accusations against Stalin: “What sense was there in condemning Stalin as a traitor to the ideals of world revolution and as the capitulationist theorist of socialism in one country, at a time in which the new social order had expanded in Europe and in Asia and had broken its national shell?” Ridiculed by the embittered Trotsky as a “small provincial man thrust into great world events, as if by a joke of history”, Stalin had actually been, according to Russian-born French philosopher Alexandre Kojeve, the protagonist of a decidedly progressive turning point of planetary dimensions, with a mission to unify and lead humanity. Stalin’s death, despite the accelerating cold war and the continued war in Korea , produced by and large respectful or balanced obituaries. At that time, people affectionately remembered ‘Uncle Joe’, the great wartime leader who had guided the Soviet people to victory over the military might of fascist Germany and helped to rescue Europe from Nazi barbarity. Deutscher recalled in 1948 that during the second world war statesmen as well as foreign generals were won over by the “exceptional competence with which Stalin managed all the details of his war machine.” (p3) Figures who had a very favourable view of Stalin included Winston Churchill , an incurable enemy of communism, who, on the occasion of the November 1943 Teheran conference, praised his Soviet counterpart as “Stalin the Great”, and long-running prime minister of Italy Alcide De Gasperi. Stalin enjoyed enormous prestige among intellectuals, including Labour party supporter Harold Laski and Benedetto Groce, who emphasised Stalin’s greatness by saying that he had taken the place of Lenin, in such a way that “a genius had been followed by another”. The Fabian Beatrice Webb, from 1931 until her death, referred to the Soviet Union of Stalin’s time as a “new civilisation”. (pp4-5) In the words of Losurdo, “for an entire historical period, in the circles that went beyond the communist movement, the country led by Stalin and Stalin himself could enjoy sympathetic curiosity, respect and, at times, even admiration.” (p7) Even in the in speech Fulton that officially launched the cold war, Churchill felt obliged to say: “I have great admiration and respect for the courageous Russian people and for my wartime companion, Marshall Stalin.” (pp7-8) Khrushchev’s speech of 25 February 1956 marked a radical turn in the image of Stalin. Delivered during the 20th party congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ( CPSU ), it portrayed Stalin as a mad and bloodthirsty dictator, characterised by vanity and possessed of intellectual mediocrity. Not surprisingly, imperialist circles were ecstatic about Khrushchev’s speech. It became a weapon in the cold war, used by the CIA and other imperialist military and intelligence agencies against the homeland of the October Revolution . Step by step, as the Khrushchevites strengthened their grip on power, they went further along the road of ‘de-Stalinisation’, reaching a point where they were left without any form of ideological identity and self-esteem, resulting in their total capitulation and eventually in the dissolution of both their party (the CPSU) and their state (the USSR). Following Khrushchev’s speech, leading intellectuals in the west had little problem forgetting their former sympathy and admiration for the Soviet Union. The Trotskyist movement, long buried and discredited as a tool in the hands of the intelligence agencies of imperialism, received a new lease of life to work its mischief amongst the working classes in the imperialist countries. Apart from portraying Stalin as cruel and inhumane, Khrushchev asserted that Stalin was an absurd figure who learned about Soviet agriculture and the country “only through movies”, films that distorted reality so as to make it unrecognisable; who was driven to repression by his capriciousness and pathological lust for power. Deutscher, forgetting the respectful and admiring portraits of Stalin that he had himself made only three years earlier, now, following Khrushchev’s ‘revelations’, depicted Stalin as “the huge, grim, whimsical, morbid, human monster”. He suspected that Stalin was complicit in the murder of his best friend, Sergei Kirov, so as to provide him with a pretext for liquidating his real or imaginary opponents one by one under the charge of complicity in that crime. (p13) Victory in the war over fascism: truth v Trotskyite lies As to Stalin’s crowning achievement, the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War (WW2), Khrushchev insisted that the war had been won despite the “dictator’s madness”, asserting that it was only because of Stalin’s short-sightedness, stubbornness and blind trust in Hitler that the Third Reich’s forces had been able to enter deep into Soviet territory, resulting in death and devastation on a massive scale. It was Stalin who, Khrushchev alleged, had delayed the modernisation of the Soviet armed forces, which lacked even the most basic equipment with which to fight the war. More than that, “after the first defeats and first disasters on the frontlines”, the man allegedly the architect of these disasters had fallen into despair and apathy, overtaken by a sense of ‘defeat’; unable to react. “Stalin refrained from overseeing military operations and stopped dealing with anything. After some time had lapsed, and finally ceding to pressure from other members of the Politburo, he returned to his post.” We may be forgiven for asking: if he was so useless, why were the other Politburo members pressuring him to return to his post? Of course, this is an entirely fake story, made up by that renegade Khrushchev. Khrushchev further alleged that Stalin was not familiar with the conduct of military affairs and “planned operations on a globe. Yes, comrades, he used to take a globe and trace the front line on it.” And yet, by some miracle, despite Stalin’s allegedly incompetent leadership, victory was achieved by the Soviet Union against all the odds! Only three years separated Stalin’s death from Khrushchev’s attack on him, which was initially met with strong resistance. On 5 March 1956, students in the Georgian capital Tbilisi took to the streets to place flowers on the monument to Stalin on the third anniversary of his death. This demonstration to honour Stalin turned into a protest against the deliberations of the 20th party congress. The demonstrations continued for five days until the afternoon of 9 March, when tanks were sent to the city to restore order. At the time, a fierce political struggle between Stalin’s followers and their opponents was underway in the USSR and in the socialist camp. The Khrushchevites resorted to lies and fabrications, and an absurd depiction of Stalin, in order to delegitimise their opponents. Stalin’s prestige, his “cult of the personality” in Khrushchev speak, was such that the Khrushchevite revisionists stood no chance of coming out on top unless Stalin was lowered in the eyes of the masses of people and in the eyes of the international communist movement. Hence the necessity, in Losurdo’s words, “to cast a god into hell”. Khrushchev’s depiction of Stalin bears comparison with Trotsky’s a few decades earlier, when the latter had presented a picture of Stalin that sought to demean him at the political, moral and personal level as a “small provincial man” characterised by irredeemable mediocrity and pettiness, and “peasant rudeness”. No objective observer could accept the vitriolic and outrageous slanders levelled by pygmies such as Khrushchev and Trotsky against this giant, whose brilliance shone at the political, ideological, moral, intellectual, military and theoretical level. Already by 1913 Stalin had established himself as a brilliant Marxist theoretician with the publication of his Marxism and the National Question . No one reading Stalin’s analysis of the national question could regard him as a theoretical mediocrity. Trotsky, just like Khrushchev, got round that ‘little’ difficulty by the lying assertion that Stalin was not the real author of that work; that its author was Lenin, and that Stalin should be regarded as a ‘usurper’ of the great Bolshevik leader’s “intellectual rights”. Trotsky obviously expected his audience not to know that Lenin had highly praised Stalin’s work on the national question. Khrushchev’s assertions regarding Stalin’s alleged incompetence in the field of military affairs had already been made by Trotsky. On 2 September 1939, anticipating a German invasion of the Soviet Union, Trotsky wrote that “the new aristocracy” in power in Moscow was, among other things, characterised by “its inability to conduct a war”. Losurdo demolishes the assertions of Khrushchev and Trotsky by reference to solid historical evidence, including evidence that comes from the Bundeswehr (German army) as well as from Soviet archives. While the German archives speak of the Red Army’s “numerical superiority” in armoured cars, planes and artillery pieces, of the high level reached by the industrial capacity of the USSR whereby it could supply its armed forces with an almost unimaginable amount of weaponry, the Soviet archives show clearly that at least two years before the Hitlerite invasion, Stalin was literally obsessed with the problem of the “quantative increase” and the “qualitative improvement of the entire military apparatus”. According to the data, whereas during the first five-year plan the defence budget amounted to 5.4 percent of total state spending, by 1941 defence spending had climbed to 43.4 percent. By the time of the Nazi invasion, Soviet industry had produced 2,700 modern planes and 4,300 armoured cars. “Judging by this data, we can say that the USSR arrived anything but unprepared for the tragic confrontation.” (p17) American historian Amy Knight delivered a devastating blow to the myth of the Soviet leader’s despair and abandonment of his responsibilities following the start of the Nazi aggression. She wrote that, on the day of the attack, Stalin had an 11-hour meeting with the leaders of the party, government and military, and that he did the same the following day. Since then, historians have had at their disposal the registry of those who visited Stalin in the Kremlin, discovered in the early 1990s, which shows Stalin immersed in a series of uninterrupted meetings concerned with organising resistance to the barbaric Nazi onslaught. In the words of Losurdo, these were days and nights characterised by plans for organised resistance. In essence, Khrushchev’s narrative was a complete invention and a falsification of historical truth. As a matter of fact, from the beginning of Operation Barbarossa (the name given to the Nazi invasion), Stalin made challenging decisions, ordering the relocation of residents and industrial enterprises from the front line; he also controlled “everything in a meticulous way, from the size and shape of bayonets to the authors and titles of articles in Pravda”. (Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Court of the Red Tsar , 2003) There was not a hint of panic or hysteria. In his diary, Bulgarian communist Georgi Dimitrov recorded that at seven in the morning he received an urgent call from the Kremlin saying that Germany had attacked the USSR; the war had started. Dimitrov added that the atmosphere was surprisingly calm, with resolve and confidence in Stalin and all others. Even more impressive was the clarity of ideas. The strategy of the Great Patriotic War saw the Red Army and the people of the Soviet Union fighting not only for their own liberation but also for the liberation of nations already enslaved by the Hitlerites and of still others the Hitlerites were trying to enslave – thus combining Soviet patriotism and proletarian internationalism into a powerful, irresistible weapon. No wonder that Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels felt constrained to express his annoyance at Stalin’s radio speech on 3 July 1941, for which he “earned enormous admiration in England and the United States”. ( Diary entry , 5 July 1941) Even in the strict realm of military conduct, Khrushchev’s secret report lacked all credibility. Khrushchev asserted that Stalin had paid no attention to the “warnings” from many sources concerning an imminent German invasion. But as Losurdo points out, even information from a friendly source can be wrong. In the lead-up to the Hitlerite attack, the USSR was obliged to navigate a great many diversionary and disinformation operations – emanating from German and other sources. That the British Intelligence service was intent on fomenting a German-Soviet conflict as quickly as possible with the help of false rumours is all too understandable and evident. The situation was further complicated by the mysterious flight by Rudolf Hess to Britain, which obviously had as its sole purpose the aim of uniting the west against Bolshevism, thus putting into operation the programme outlined in Hitler’s Mein Kampf of an alliance of Germanic nations in their “civilising mission”. (1925) All the evidence is that, while acting cautiously in this extremely complicated situation, Stalin took steps to accelerate Soviet war preparations. Operation Barbarossa was launched on 22 June, but between May and June, 800,000 Soviet reservists had been called up, 28 divisions had been relocated to the western districts of the USSR, hand in hand with the construction of border fortifications and the camouflaging of sensitive military objects. On the very eve of the German invasion, vast forces were placed on alert and ordered to prepare for a surprise German attack. Bent upon discrediting Stalin, Khrushchev cited the initial spectacular victories of the German invaders, while ignoring the predictions made by the west at the time. The British intelligence services predicted that the Soviet Union would last only eight to ten weeks before being liquidated, while the USA expected her to last between one to three months. Besides, the width of the front – 1,800 miles! – and the absence of natural obstacles provided the Germans with enormous advantages for penetration and manoeuvres. All the same, the Third Reich’s plan of repeating on the eastern front its blitzkrieg victory in western Europe showed signs of unravelling from the very first weeks of the encounter between the two armies. In the lead-up to the German attack, Goebbels had stressed that the Nazi onslaught was unstoppable in its “triumphal march”, and a few months earlier in his conversation with a Bulgarian diplomat Hitler had referred to the Red Army as a “joke”. It took a mere ten days of the war for these boastful Hitlerite assertions to be shaken, as is repeatedly clear from Goebbels’ diary. The Bolsheviks, he wrote, showed a greater resistance than anticipated by the Germans, particularly in the material resources available to the Soviet armed forces, which were greater than the Germans had foreseen. He added: “With … objectivity, we Germans always overestimated the enemy except in this case with the Bolsheviks.” (19 August 1941) Far from breaking down in the first days and weeks of the German attack, the Red Army put up a tenacious resistance and was well commanded. It was the brilliant resistance of the Red Army that convinced Japan to reject the German request that it should join the war against the Soviet Union. The blitzkrieg plans were already sunk by the middle of July. Not for nothing did Churchill speak of the Red Army’s “splendid defence”, as did Roosevelt on 14 August 1941. Admiration for Soviet resistance, skill and armaments reached beyond diplomatic and governing circles. In Great Britain, according to Beatrice Webb, ordinary citizens, even the conservatively-minded, showed lively interest in the “courage and initiative, as well as the magnificent equipment of the Russian armed forces, the only sovereign state able to oppose the almost mystical power of Hitler’s Germany”. ( Diary entry , 8 August 1941) Stalin’s categorical rejection of the request for a massive relocation of troops towards the border, his insistence on the necessity of maintaining large reserves at a considerable distance, had been a stroke of genius, thwarting as it did Hitler’s plan to lure the Soviet forces to concentrate on the border, “with the intention of surrounding them and destroying them”. (Georgy Zhukov, The Memoirs Of Marshal Zhukov , 1971) In view of the Red Army’s fierce resistance, Hitler was obliged to admit that Operation Barbarossa had seriously underestimated the enemy; that the “military preparations by the Russians must be considered incredible”. (10 September 1941) The Soviet Union was able to mobilise the entire population and all its resources for the war. Particularly extraordinary was the Soviet ability in the most difficult situation of the first months of the war to effect a successful evacuation of, and later to convert to military production, a large number of industrial enterprises. The evacuation committee, set up just two days after the German attack, managed to move to the east 1,500 major industrial installations in a titanic feat of great logistic complexity. What is more, the process of relocation had already begun in the weeks or months before Hitler’s aggression, which is yet another refutation of Khrushchev’s slanderous accusations against Stalin’s supposed ‘unpreparedness’. In fact, the entire industrialisation of the Soviet Union, aiming at eradicating the country’s backwardness, was proof enough of the Stalin leadership’s concern for the security of the socialist motherland. On 29 November 1941, Hitler noted with surprise: “How is it possible that such a primitive people can reach such technical objectives in such a short time?” (p30) One must not ignore the great attention devoted by Stalin to the moral-political dimensions of the war. His courageous decision to celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution on 7 November 1941 in a Moscow under siege and harassment by the Nazi hordes bears testimony to this. The response of the Red Army after the devastating blow by the German aggressors was the greatest feat of arms that the world had ever seen. The attention given to the rear and to the front, in both the economic and political dimensions, as well as to the military aspect of the war, are testimony to Stalin being a great strategist. In view of the foregoing, Khrushchev’s evaluation of Stalin during this long war loses all credibility. To their annoyance, German spies were unable to penetrate the Soviet interior. “The Bolsheviks,” wrote Goebbels in his diary on 19 August 1941, “made great effort in fooling us. Of what kinds of arms they possessed, especially heavy weapons, we didn’t have a clue. It was the exact opposite to what had taken place in France, where we knew everything in practice and couldn’t be surprised in any way.” (p32) Khrushchev was a blatant liar and a capitalist roader who hated most of the things Stalin stood for. His goal was “to transform the great leader – who had decisively contributed to the destruction of the Third Reich – into a foolish amateur who had trouble figuring out a world map; that this eminent theorist of the national question is revealed to have lacked the most elementary ‘common sense’ in that field. The acknowledgements previously given to Stalin are all blamed on a cult of personality that now must be eliminated once and for all.” (p39) At the time, a frontal attack on socialism – Marxism-Leninism – was out of the question. So the capitalist roaders had to undermine socialism by attacking Stalin, who, through the three decades of his leadership of the Soviet Union and the international communist movement, had become a representative spokesperson for socialist construction, for the struggle against imperialism , for the national-liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples, and for the destruction of fascism. By attacking Stalin, in the name of countering the ‘cult of the personality’, the Khrushchevite revisionists defamed socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat ; they sullied the flag of Marxism-Leninism and undermined the hitherto deserved prestige enjoyed by the Soviet Union. Soon after the 20th party congress, the revisionists started putting into effect ‘reforms’, revising the tenets of Marxism-Leninism on a series of important questions. The cumulative effects of which, over a period of four decades, led to the collapse of the glorious Soviet Union. [For more on this, see Harpal Brar, Perestroika, the Complete Collapse of Revisionism , 1992] The cult of personality Losurdo demolishes this Khrushchev lie by giving a few examples to counter it. For instance, when deputy premier of the USSR Lazar Kaganovich suggested substituting the term Marxism-Leninism by the term Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism, Stalin rejected his suggestion in no uncertain terms. Following the end of the war, immediately after the victory parade, a group of marshals reached out to two eminent Bolsheviks – foreign secretary Vyacheslav Molotov and defence committee member Georgy Malenkov – to propose commemorating the victory achieved in the Great Patriotic War by conferring on Stalin the title ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’. Stalin categorically rejected their offer. Four years later, on the eve of his 70th birthday, a conversation took place in the Kremlin to this effect: “He [Stalin] called in Malenkov and warned him: ‘Don’t even think about honouring me again with a star. “‘But Comrade Stalin, on an anniversary like this? The people would not understand.’ “‘It is not up to the people. I don’t want to argue. No personal initiative! Understand me.’ “‘Of course, Comrade Stalin, but the politburo members think …’ “Stalin interrupted Malenkov and declared the discussion closed.” (Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars, 2006 quoted in Losurdo, p43) Losurdo writes that appealing to his vanity did not work with Stalin, especially when decisions of vital political importance were at stake. During the war, he invited his colleagues to express themselves; he actively argued and even fought with Molotov, who for his part stuck to his views and argued back. Judging by the testimony of Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov, the leader “particularly appreciated those comrades who didn’t hesitate in frankly expressing their point of view”. (p43) On the occasion of the Potsdam conference in July 1945, while British prime minister Winston Churchill and American president Harry Truman found time to walk among Berlin’s ruins, Stalin showed not the slightest interest. Without attracting attention, he arrived by train, even instructing Marshal Zhukov to cancel any welcoming ceremony with a military band and guard of honour. One could cite many other examples, but these will suffice. Let it be said in passing that Stalin stands out in glaring contract to American presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D Roosevelt, as well as many others in Europe, who gladly accepted the exaggerated accolades of their supporters and admirers. The assassination of Kirov On 1 December 1934, Politburo member and leader of the Leningrad party organisation Sergei Kirov was shot dead at the front door of his office in Leningrad by a young man called Leonid Nikolaev. In his secret report, Khrushchev had insinuated that the assassination had been carried out at Stalin’s behest. But the Moscow trials had revealed clearly that Nikolaev was connected with the opposition group centred around former Politburo member Grigory Zinoviev. Even bourgeois scholars with impeccable anti-Stalin credentials have debunked Khrushchev’s lie. They have shown that Comrade Kirov was above intrigues, lies and trickery – qualities which had endeared him to Stalin, who cared for and trusted Kirov. On hearing of Kirov’s assassination, Trotsky, who had reason to try and connect Kirov’s murder to Stalin, far from showing any sympathy for his former comrade, wrote: “Kirov, the brutal satrap, stirs no compassion in us.” The victim, he stated, was someone who had inspired the wrath of the ‘revolutionaries’ – ie, of the Trotskyite counter-revolutionary opposition. Thus, between 1935 and 1936, Kirov’s murder was in no way described as a set-up by Stalin’s opponents. Instead, every sympathy was shown towards the terrorist assassin along with a great deal of satisfaction that “every bureaucrat [ie, Bolshevik] trembles before the terrorism” emanating from below. Terrorism, said Trotsky, was the “tragic outcome of Bonapartism [ie, Bolshevik leadership]”, and is characteristic of the severe antagonism between the bureaucracy and the masses of people, in particular the youth. So Trotsky deluded himself in his counter-revolutionary ravings from exile. An explosion, he said, was on its way that was destined to inflict on the “Stalinist regime” the same fate as that suffered by the regime “led by Nicholas” (the overthrown tsar of Russia). (pp73-78) Trotsky was deluding himself with the belief that a decisive civil war was on the horizon and that his joke of a “Fourth International [was capable of] supporting a struggle to the death against Stalinism” in a regime “already condemned by history”. What emerges from these vituperations is the bitterness of a defeated counter-revolutionary at the hands of the Bolshevik party whose undisputed leader was none other than Josef Stalin. Losurdo shows, by reference to the research of Trotskyite historians such as Vadim Regouin, Pierre Broué and Ruth Fisher, all of whom are viscerally opposed to Stalin, that the purges in the Soviet Union, far from being senseless acts of violence, were the only way of defeating the counter-revolutionary opposition that was aiming at Stalin’s physical liquidation; that compared Stalin to Hitler; and that worked for the defeat of the Soviet Union in the impending war. Trotsky himself went so far as to give support to “the liberation of a so-called Soviet Ukraine from the Stalinist yoke” – this at a time when the Third Reich had just carried out the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, and the next target of the Hitlerites was the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine. Even defeated white general Alexander Kerensky, then living in exile in the USA, felt obliged to take a stand against Trotsky’s project (of working for the Soviet defeat), which, he pointed out, was decidedly in line with Hitler’s plans! There was thus a complete convergence between the Nazi leadership’s plans and those of the Trotskyist opposition. Not Hitlerite Germany but “Stalin and the oligarchy” led by him were declared to represent the principal danger to the Soviet Union. (13 April 1940, p95) It is perfectly clear that the Trotskyite counter-revolutionary opposition was at the service of Nazi Germany, ready from the start to follow in the wake of German forces in the event of the latter marching into the USSR. Not for nothing did the Germans instal a radio station in eastern Prussia that broadcast in Trotsky’s name into the Soviet Union. Immediately after the start of Operation Barbarossa, Goebbels was pleased to note that Germany was using three clandestine radio stations in Soviet Russia: the first was Trotskyist, the second was separatist, the third was Russian nationalist – all virulently opposed to Stalin and the Soviet regime. Referring to the treaty between the Soviet Union and Great Britain, and to the joint statement by the two countries, Goebbels’ diary of 14 July 1941 noted: “This is an excellent occasion to show the compatibility between capitalism and Bolshevism. The statement will find scarce acceptance among Leninist circles in Russia.” (Bearing in mind that Trotskyists liked to define themselves as Bolshevik-Leninists, in contrast to the ‘Stalinists’ they described as ‘traitors to Leninism’.) (pp96-7) It was not without reason that the Soviet leadership condemned the Trotskyist opposition as a den of enemy agents. Characterised by the bitterness of a defeated counter-revolutionary, Trotsky did everything in his power to malign Soviet power. Hence his advocacy of Ukrainian independence, in aid of which he accused Stalin of repressing the Ukrainian people, just at a time when the Soviet Union had successfully carried out the ‘Ukrainisation’ of culture, schools, the press, party cadres and the state apparatus! Lazar Kaganovich, who became party secretary in Ukraine in 1925, devoted particular attention to that policy, which had achieved dramatic results already by 1931, the year in which the publication of books in Ukrainian reached a peak of 6,218 out of 8,086 titles (77 percent), while the percentage of Russians in the Ukrainian party dropped from 72 percent in 1922 to 52 percent in 1931. And this is all before speaking of the development of Ukraine’s industrial apparatus, with Stalin insisting on its importance. Even a downright reactionary like Robert Conquest, notorious for his hatred of the Soviet Union and Stalin, was obliged to recognise Soviet achievements in the area of culture, language, the arts and the policy of Ukrainisation. (See his Harvest of Sorrow, referenced at p225) Did it make sense in view of these developments to seek to separate Ukraine from the USSR? Only a hardened counter-revolutionary such as Trotsky could think so. —————————— To be continued … [Part 2 of this review will examine the question of the gulags and allegations of Stalin’s antisemitism.] Previous Next

< Back PALESTINE HAS THE RIGHT TO ARMED STRUGGLE AGAINST ISRAEL: CHINA teleSUR/ JF 22 февр. 2024 г. International law reaffirms the legitimacy of the people's struggle for liberation from foreign domination by all available means, Diplomat Ma recalled. On Thursday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague continued its hearings on "The Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem." During his intervention before the court, Ambassador Chino Ma Xinmin noticed that international law gives Palestinians the right to undertake the armed struggle to liberate themselves from the illegitimate domination of a foreign and colonial rule. “In pursuit of the right to self-determination, Palestinian people’s use of force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an independent state is an inalienable right well founded in international law,” he said. Besides mentioning the United Nations General Assembly's resolutions related to the Palestinian case, the Chinese ambassador indicated that the armed struggle is usually one of the means to which nations resort when seeking to achieve their self-determination. “The 1973 UNGA Resolution 3070 reaffirms the legitimacy of the people's struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle," he stressed. "This recognition is also reflected in international convention. For example, the 1978 Arab Convention for Suppressing of Terrorism affirms 'the right of peoples to combat foreign occupation aggression by whatever means, including armed struggle in order to liberate the territories and secure the right to self-determination and independence'." Ma stated that the armed struggle waged by peoples for their liberation against colonialism, occupation, aggression, and domination should not be considered as terrorist acts. For it is grounded in the international law. "This distinction is acknowledged by several international conventions. For example, Article 3 of the 1999 OAU Convention on the Prevention and Combating the Terrorism," he recalled." Previous Next

< Back KING CHARLES AND THE NHS JT of Class Consciousness Project 15 февр. 2024 г. King Charles III was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had his treatment begin within a week (Photo: Getty/BBC) The news that King Charles III had been diagnosed with prostate cancer was met with a combination of sympathy and indifference by his subjects. Whilst on a human level most people who didn’t have a swinging brick for a heart would wish the King a full recovery, what would have raised the eyebrows of many people in Britain would not have been the fact that a 75 year old man had been diagnosed with cancer, but the swiftness with which King Charles was given treatment for the disease. 2023 saw the worst waiting times for NHS cancer treatment on record, with just under a third of patients not commencing treatment within 62 days of a diagnosis. The increasing waiting times are part of a trend that goes back over a decade and stands in stark contrast to the treatment dispensed to the monarch, who was diagnosed with and commenced treatment for his prostate cancer within a single week. Buckingham Palace did not reveal whether the King was given private or NHS care, but actually the point is moot – ‘private’ healthcare is often provided by the NHS but the private patient has bought the opportunity to skip the queue and get their treatment sooner than if they had gone through the NHS directly. Given that the prompt treatment of cancer potentially leads to life saving outcomes, the fact that a third of patients see no treatment for two months begs the question: How many people with cancer have died because of these delays to treatment? Whilst this is a difficult number to calculate, the British Medical Journal reported that, according to research it carried out on a sample of patients over the period 2010-2020, one month’s delay in treatment increases the risk of dying from cancer by 10%. This will make chilling reading to anybody with cancer and their families and the potentially life-saving swiftness with with King Charles III received his treatment will raise serious questions about the NHS, the way it is run and, with 2024 being an election year, whether any party can do anything to change it. It is difficult to accurately pinpoint an exact date when the decline in the NHS began, because it has been operating on the basis of rationed care for decades. Departments within the NHS have operated despite shortages of staff and cash for so long they have become essentially institutionalised and patients have grown wearily resigned to receiving appalling standards of service at the GP level, which for many is the entry level into broader NHS care, all the way through to poor treatment in hospitals and community care facilities. For the last thirty years, the Government’s policy, regardless of the bourgeois party in charge, has been to essentially privatise the NHS and the care that it provides. The process began under the Conservative Government in 1993, of which the Chancellor at the time was europhile Ken Clarke, but was accelerated exponentially by the Blair Government, who saw Private Finance Initiatives as the magical ‘third way’ – neither solely public or private, but the marriage of private capital and Government underwriting to secure the building of hospitals, clinics and other healthcare facilities in super-quick time. Private companies would build the facilities, with the NHS leasing them back on 25 to 35 year contracts with the private company responsible for their maintenance. It was a plan with apparently with no drawbacks, but was revealed to be an exercise in the industrial-scale funnelling of public money into the coffers of privateers on a scale rarely seen before or since, with the possible exception of the Government’s response to Covid. A Daily Telegraph investigation in 2010 on the debacle of PFI revealed that A hospital was charged £52,000 for a job which should have cost £750. The demolition of a smoker’s shelter (as the NHS banned smoking on all its property) resulted in a PFI contractor charging £2,600 for “extra cleaning”, presumably for the increased amount of cigarette butts the loss of the shelter created. A hospital in Bromley, Kent costing a total of £1.2bn, ten times its actual value. A PFI-built school, standing empty at the time of the report, will cost the taxpayer £370,000 a year until 2027. NHS trusts are creaking under enormous PFI debt repayments, which cancels out almost every proclaimed boost to funding that each Government hands it. PFI became a conduit to channel money from the public to the private sector via the NHS, and the inevitable drain that these schemes have had on patient care can be seen now and will be seen decades into the future. No major party has any answers to the problem, other than to do more of the same – in January 2022, the loathsome Wesley Streeting MP said that he would not “shirk” from using private providers to reduce waiting lists and that it proved “effective” the last time Labour saw power. The fact is that the mess that the NHS is in is a direct result of the use of private sector finance to ‘improve’ healthcare – under Labour, the NHS became a brand name behind which private services were provided whilst crippled with decades of index-linked debt which it struggled to pay, particularly as inflation rose and interest rates have increased with it. The Conservatives offer no solutions, either – they are motivated by the same desire to bring privateers into the fold of the NHS as the Labour Party is. The NHS doesn’t only lack sufficient funds: It also lacks sufficient staffing, it lacks local democratic accountability and departments within the same hospital run in silos, separated and detached from those around them, because of the hugely bureaucratic methods of its management. While it may come as little comfort to people whose cancer treatment started weeks later that it should have done, health provision under a planned socialist economy would eradicate the many and varied problems which beset the NHS and return the provision of truly world-class healthcare, free at the point of use, to the people of this country. Previous Next

< Back VERDICT ON ASSANGE APPEAL TO BE ANNOUNCED AT LATER DATE teleSUR/ JF 22 февр. 2024 г. The Wikileaks founder has been held at London's high-security Belmarsh Prison since 2019. On Wednesday, the United Kingdom High Court concluded its two-day hearing on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's appeal against his extradition to the United States on espionage charges, but the judges said they would give their decision at a later date. Assange, 52, is wanted in the United States on allegations of disclosing national defense information following WikiLeaks's publication of thousands of documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which included an Apache helicopter video footage documenting the U.S. military gunning down Reuters journalists and children in Baghdad's streets in 2007. He has been held at southeast London's high-security Belmarsh Prison since 2019. Lawyers for the United States said earlier that he would be allowed to transfer to Australia, his home country, to serve any prison sentence he may be given. The UK approved his extradition to the United States in 2022 under then Home Secretary Priti Patel after a judge initially blocked it on Assange's mental health concerns. Assange was absent from the two-day proceedings due to illness as two judges at the UK High Court, namely Victoria Sharp and Justice Johnson, heard arguments from his legal team and lawyers representing the U.S. government. Clair Dobbin, a lawyer for the United States, said during Wednesday's hearing that the WikiLeaks founder "indiscriminately and knowingly published to the world the names of individuals who acted as sources of information to the U.S." Assange's lawyers referenced alleged U.S. plot to kidnap or kill the WikiLeaks founder reported in 2021. If the two judges at the UK High Court rule in Assange's favor, a full appeal hearing will be scheduled to consider his challenge and could lead to a new decision about his extradition. If he loses the case, Assange could be extradited within weeks unless his legal team can get an emergency injunction at the European Court of Human Rights in time. Hundreds of supporters of Assange gathered outside the High Court on Wednesday despite rain, holding signs that read "Free Julian Assange" and chanting "No extradition!." Previous Next

< Back BRICS, BACKBONE OF EMERGING MULTIPOLAR WORLD, LAVROV SAYS teleSUR 16 февр. 2024 г. "Today BRICS is one of the "backbones" of the emerging multipolar world. We are doing our utmost to ensure that after its expansion the association further strengthens its position as a reliable and effective promoter of the interests of the World Majority." Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday during a government session in the State Duma that it is necessary to continue working on the creation of alternative payment platforms for BRICS countries. The Russian foreign minister emphasised that the process of transition to national currencies in mutual settlements will continue. "We are engaged in this on a bilateral basis. With the People's Republic of China we already have about 90 per cent of settlements in national currencies, about 50 per cent – with India," he noted. According to Lavrov, at the last summit the central banks and finance ministries of the participating countries were instructed to prepare recommendations on alternative payment platforms for the next such event. The minister also recalled Russia's chairmanship of the BRICS grouping, which began on 1 January, under the motto: "Strengthening multilateralism for equitable global development and security." The tweet reads, " Russia hopes that after expansion, BRICS will further strengthen its position in the interests of the world's majority. During his speech in the lower house of parliament, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov highlighted the important role of BRICS in strengthening multilateralism." "Today BRICS is one of the "backbones" of the emerging multipolar world. We are doing our utmost to ensure that after its expansion the association further strengthens its position as a reliable and effective promoter of the interests of the World Majority," Lavrov said. He added that work is underway to establish a category of BRICS partners in fulfilment of the instruction of the BRICS leaders agreed at last year's summit in Johannesburg (South Africa). In addition, the minister announced the BRICS Parliamentary Forum, which will be held on 11-12 July in St. Petersburg. This is reported on the official website of the Russian Foreign Ministry. "Within the framework of the Russian presidency in the association there will be several major events with the participation of parliamentarians, to which we attach great importance," the foreign minister said. Previous Next

< Back CROCODILE TEARS OVER NAVALNY WHILE IGNORING ASSANGE Caitlin Johnstone 17 февр. 2024 г. Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley) The entire western political-media class are currently rending their garments about the prison death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and are being joined by the propaganda-addled citizenry of the western empire. Meanwhile Julian Assange’s last-ditch effort to appeal against extradition to the United States is coming up in a few days with a tiny fraction of the attention. I really could not have a lower opinion of people who would rather talk about Navalny’s persecution in a far away country that has nothing to do with them than Julian Assange being persecuted at the hands of their own government. It’s the most pathetic, bootlicking behavior imaginable. Ooh yeah, you’re so brave self-righteously shaking your fist at some country on the other side of the planet which has zero power over your own country while refusing to oppose the power structure you actually live under as it slowly kills a journalist for exposing its war crimes. Groveling, power-worshipping bootlicker. Absolutely sickening. If you’re in a country whose government has had a hand in the persecution of Julian Assange, then you can go ahead and shut the fuck up about Navalny. Whenever I see people screaming about the persecution of journalists and political prisoners in other countries when they themselves live in a nation whose government is persecuting Julian Assange, I can’t help but think of Matthew 7:4–5, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” What could be Assange’s final appeal effort against US extradition happens February 20th and 21st in London. Free Julian Assange. ❖ Egypt has reportedly begun constructing a walled camp in the Sinai Desert just south of the Gaza border in order to absorb Palestinians who get pushed out by the Israeli assault on Gaza, a major capitulation to a plan Israel has been pushing since the early days of the onslaught. It sure is a crazy coincidence how every single step of Israel’s “response to October 7” has looked exactly the same as it would look if Israel was just carrying out agendas it’s wanted to carry out for many years. ❖ The Australian government is pushing through new authoritarian laws because someone leaked the contents of a WhatsApp group wherein Zionists plotted to ruin the lives of pro-Palestine voices, which is now being falsely framed as a Hitlerite “Jew list”. World Socialist Website’s Oscar Grenfell has more information . ❖ My favorite Israel apologist line is the one where they imply you must be an anti-semite because you’ve been uniquely focused on Israel’s crimes these last four months, as though Israel’s assault on Gaza isn’t self-evidently the worst thing happening in the world right now. ❖ The active genocide in Gaza is a much, much, much, MUCH more urgent and immediate concern than antisemitism, and should be treated as such. This is self-evident and shouldn’t be controversial to say. ❖ I used to follow a lot of teachers who talked about enlightenment and spiritual practice, and it’s insane how many of them now have nothing to say about Gaza, or are outright siding with Israel. It’s like, what the hell was the point of all that inner work if it leads you to tacitly or explicitly endorse an active genocide? What good are all your insights and realizations if all they do is make you feel nice inside and don’t translate to any positive effects on the world outside your own skull? Who gives a fuck if you’ve had some shift in consciousness and some kundalini fireworks if you’re still a dogshit human being contributing to the disease and dysfunction of your species? If your spirituality doesn’t lead to positive changes in yourself and your surroundings, it’s just glorified masturbation. If you’ve thrown yourself into self-realization and nondual awakening for decades at this point and you can’t even stand up against genocide and ethnic cleansing, then you’ve wasted your life on worthless endeavors. You’d have been better off throwing yourself into internet porn escapism or a nice wholesome opiate habit this entire time. Previous Next