Soviet leader Joseph #Stalin died on March 5, 1953 — 70 years ago this week.
Stalin’s body was put on display at the Hall of Columns in the House of the Unions, remaining there for three days, while more than five million mourners came to pay their respects. (By contrast, about 250,000 Americans passed by the coffin of President John F. Kennedy after his assassination a decade later.)70 Years Ago: The Death of Joseph Stalin
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EU Eyes ‘War Economy’ in Push to Rush Ammo to Ukraine
EU defense ministers will discuss Wednesday plans to raid their stockpiles to rush one billion euros’ worth of ammunition to Ukraine and place joint orders for more to ensure supplies keep flowing.
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Ministers meeting with their Ukrainian counterpart Oleksiy Reznikov in Stockholm will debate a three-pronged push to meet Kyiv’s immediate needs and bolster Europe’s defense industry for the longer term.
The first part of the plan, as laid out by the EU’s foreign policy service, envisions using a billion euros ($1.06 billion) from the bloc’s joint European Peace Facility to get member states to send shells in their stocks to Kyiv within weeks.
Ukraine’s European allies have already depleted their shelves, committing some 12 billion euros of military support, with 3.6 billion euros coming from the joint fund.
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The second part of the plan is to pool together EU and Ukraine demands to place massive joint orders that would incentivize ammunition producers to ramp up their capacity.
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“European industry is not adapted for the needs of a high-intensity conflict,” European internal market commissioner Thierry Breton told journalists Tuesday.
“Our defence industry must quickly switch to ‘war economy’ mode.”
Army 10th Mountain, 101st Airborne division soldiers deploying to NATO’s southeast flank
Elements of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division are deploying to Europe to replace a 101st Airborne Division team that has been operating out of a strategic hub in Romania for the past nine months, the service said this week.
Besides the 500-soldier 10th Mountain headquarters, nearly 4,000 soldiers from the 1st Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Ky., will replace that division’s second brigade.
“The Mountain Division is no stranger to deployments across the globe...,” Maj. Gen. Gregory Anderson, commander of the 10th Mountain Division, said in a statement Tuesday.
…Last summer, President Joe Biden ordered a rotational brigade to Romania, the first such mission of its size in the region.
In the past, most Army rotational brigade combat teams were dispatched to Poland….
“The Bastogne Brigade is ready to assume the critical mission of assuring our NATO allies and deterring Russian aggression on NATO’s eastern flank,” Col. Kevin Sharp, commander of the 1st BCT, 101st Airborne, said in the statement.
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Currently, about 100,000 U.S. troops are carrying out missions in Europe, up from the roughly 80,000 [in February 2022]
The 101st units were initially ordered to Romania in June. They operated mostly out of Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, which serves as a hub for the Army in the Black Sea region.
During their time in Europe, 101st soldiers have been tasked with monitoring events in Ukraine….
“The (new) deployments will ensure that the United States continues to be well-positioned to provide a robust deterrent and defensive posture alongside our allies across the European continent,” the Army said in its statement.
France also increased the number of military in Romania.
US-Delivered Air-Launched JDAM Smart Bombs Operational in Ukraine
The US has delivered Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range (JDAM-ER) precision-guided bombs to Ukraine. The weapon is capable of hitting targets 45 miles (72 kilometers) away.
Chief of US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), Gen. James Hecker, revealed that the delivery took place three weeks ago.
“Recently, we’ve just gotten some precision munitions [to Ukraine] that had some extended range and go a little bit further than the gravity drop bomb and has precision [guidance],” The War Zone quoted Hecker as saying at a symposium.
“That’s a recent capability that we were able to give them probably in the last three weeks.”
The Pentagon announced sending the “precision aerial munitions” to Ukraine as part of a $1.85-billion package announced on December 21.
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The JDAM warhead is also much heavier than the HIMARS-launched Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System warhead at 200 pounds (91 kilograms).
US Army is moving to get tanks to Ukraine ‘as quickly as possible’
The U.S. Army is already executing on a plan to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the Army’s acquisition chief said Wednesday.
The Pentagon announced early this year it would send General Dynamics Land Systems-made Abrams tanks to Ukraine….
[S]peaking at a webcast hosted by Defense News, Doug Bush said Wednesday the Army already has a plan. “We’re executing it,” he said. “We just can’t talk about the details.”
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“It’s not just sending a tank,” he said. “A tank by itself is not a military capability, you have to send the whole package. That includes ammunition, vehicles to maintain it, fuel, you have to do the training on the system so that it can be sustained in combat.”
Moon of Alabama
Right at the same moment the New York Times publishes a shoddy ‘officials say’ story about alleged intelligence about the Nord Stream terror attack the Germany weekly Die Zeit, which has strong U.S. secret services ties, comes up with an equally unbelievable tale of a ‘Ukrainian owned’ sailing boat playing the major role in the attack:
Nord-Stream-Ermittlungen: Spuren führen in die Ukraine
Ermittler haben das Boot identifiziert, von dem aus die Anschläge auf Nord Stream ausgeführt wurden. Offenbar wurde es von einer Firma gemietet, die Ukrainern gehört.
My translations:
Nord Stream investigation: Traces lead to Ukraine
Investigators have identified the boat from which the attacks on Nord Stream were carried out. Apparently, it was rented by a company owned by Ukrainians.
No, it is not the USS Kearsarge, the U.S. amphibious assault ship which ‘trained’ ‘mine removals’ near Bornholm island next to the pipelines just days before they blew up, which the ‘investigators’ identified.
AZ @AZmilitary1 – 13:52 UTC · Sep 27, 2022
An expeditionary detachment of US Navy ships led by the universal amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge days ago was in the Baltic SeaIt was 30 km from the site of the alleged sabotage on the Nord Stream-1 gas pipeline and 50 km from the threads of Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline
The new claim is that some rather small yacht, which would not even be able to carry the necessary equipment to perform such a deed, was the main instrument in this:
Following joint research by [German main public TV news unit] (ARD’s capital city studio), the ARD political magazine Kontraste, [German public TV] SWR and DIE ZEIT, it was possible to reconstruct to a large extent in the course of the investigation how and when the explosive attack was prepared. According to this, traces lead in the direction of Ukraine. However, investigators have so far found no evidence of who ordered the destruction.
Specifically, according to information from [these news sources], investigators have managed to identify the boat that was presumably used for the secret operation. It is said to be a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, apparently owned by two Ukrainians. The clandestine operation at sea is said to have been carried out by a team of six people, according to the investigation. It is said to have involved five men and one woman. According to the report, the group consisted of a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a female doctor, who are said to have transported the explosives to the crime scenes and placed them there. The nationality of the perpetrators is apparently unclear. The assassins used professionally forged passports, which are said to have been used, among other things, to rent the boat.
According to the investigation, the commando set off from Rostock on September 6, 2022. The equipment for the clandestine operation was previously transported to the port in a van, it is said. In the further course, the investigators succeeded in locating the boat the following day again in Wieck (Darß) and later at the Danish island Christiansø, northeast of Bornholm, according to the research. The yacht was subsequently returned to the owner in uncleaned condition. On the table in the cabin, the investigators were able to detect traces of explosives, according to the research. According to information from [the mentioned news sources], a Western intelligence service is said to have sent a tip to European partner services as early as in the fall, i.e. shortly after the destruction, according to which a Ukrainian commando was responsible for the destruction. Thereafter, there have allegedly been further intelligence indications suggesting that a pro-Ukrainian group could be responsible.
No. You do not dive down to 80+ meter for an industrial size job, involving the placement of hundreds of pounds of explosives in eight individual charges on very sturdy pipelines, from a sparsely manned boat. Such deep dives require special gases, special breathing equipment, special training, a decompression chamber for emergencies and lots of well trained people to maintain all that stuff.
This is just more chaff thrown up to divert the attention from Seymour Hersh’s revelations that the U.S. military, under order from the White House, carried out the sabotage act.
Gonzalo Lira @GonzaloLira1968 – 18:54 UTC · Mar 7, 2023Just now, the German news site Zeitung is ALSO blaming the Ukraine for the Nord Stream pipeline bombing!
Coupled with The NY Times piece earlier today, this is clearly a coordinated misinformation campaign.
Was this why Olaf Schultz and Biden met?
Nord-Stream-Ermittlungen: Spuren führen in die Ukraine
Gonzalo Lira @GonzaloLira1968 – 5:21 UTC · Mar 8, 2023Zelensky’s regime can deny its involvement in the Nord Stream pipeline terrorist attack all it wants—but it won’t matter.
Clearly, a very strong faction of the Deep State wants to blame UA so the West can pull out of the Ukraine disaster.
ft.com – Ukraine denies any involvement in Nordstream pipeline explosions
What we are seeing here is a disinformation campaign comparable to the Skripal ‘poisoning’ affair in Britain. Following that tens of ‘officials say’ news items were released that were each more illogical and unbelievable than the previous ones. The campaign was designed to flood the information space with so much nonsense that no one would be drawn back to the roots of the story (i.e. a UK turncoat asset getting violently silenced after he attempted to go back to Russia).
I am pretty sure that soon more will be released about the real perpetrators of the Nord Stream attack. This sudden throwing of ‘officials say’ chaff, a month after the Hersh story, is just an attempt to preemptively divert from it.
Kirsten Francescone
Protests against the Tía María copper mining project in Islay, Arequipa Region, Peru. Photo by Diario Correo.
Canadian firms benefit from state-sanctioned police protection and impunity at the expense of human rights and the environment.
On January 18, 2023, as thousands of Peruvians were taking to the streets in Lima to denounce the spiralling political crisis in the country, Canadian Ambassador Louis Marcotte was meeting with the Peruvian Minister of Energy and Mines. Protests have been ongoing since December when populist President Pedro Castillo was deposed from office by congressional vote, a move which was almost immediately condemned by Castillo’s base. Demonstrators have been met with widespread arrests and brutal violence. According to Yves Engler, since former Vice President Dina Boluarte assumed power (a move which the Canadian government endorsed) the Canadian mission has met with numerous top-level Peruvian officials in unprecedented fashion.
Since Boluarte assumed the presidency mobilizations have exploded across the country. Although they differ in their diversity of demands, they coincide along four main points: a call for new general elections for 2023, the closure of congress, Boluarte’s resignation, and the calling of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. But these immediate political demands have historical roots. As one collection of Peruvian NGOs stated, the mass movement of Peruvians from the south and peripheral regions is born out of a sense of indignation at a political and economic system which is highly racist and discriminatory. In Puno, the epicentre of protests and extreme police repression, delegations of rural community members travelled to Lima to demand political reforms and solutions to the toxic environmental liabilities which have contaminated their water sources with heavy metals and led to dangerously high toxins (many of which are present in children). With few exceptions, these communities have had their waterways affected by mining and industrial activity.
Ambassador Marcotte tweeted several photos from the meeting, using the occasion to promote mining as a benefit for communities and to express Canadian support for the upcoming Peruvian delegation who will attend the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) annual conference in Toronto from March 5 to 8. Each year, the world’s largest mining convention draws tens of thousands of industry experts, company officials, and government representatives to talk industry trends and promote an expansion of mining—with little concern for the consent of those most affected, including in Peru.
At the time of the meeting, Lima was gridlocked with demonstrations calling for new elections and a constituent assembly. Only days prior, 17 people were killed by police in the cities of Juliaca and Puno. And in the days following the meeting, the oldest university in the country, San Marcos, was invaded by armoured tanks. Hundreds of students and rural protestors were detained, strip searched, assaulted and deprived of their rights. Fifty-nine people have reportedly been killed during the last few months—the overwhelming majority of them civilians from rural and periurban Indigenous and mestizo backgrounds—at the hands of an unbridled police force. It’s unlikely the ambassador could have moved around the city without observing repression and police violence.
For years, MiningWatch Canada and the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP), alongside organizations including Red Muqui, Cooperacción, Derechos Humanos Sin Fronteras-Cusco and Derechos Humanos y Medio Ambiente DHUMA, have documented the many harms caused by industrial large-scale Canadian mining to rural communities, as well as the associated police violence that often accompanies the imposition of these projects. While the current protests in Peru are not explicitly about resource extraction, calls for a new constitution to address the systematic and often violent exclusion of Indigenous, peasant and rural peoples from the political economic system, as well as the legacies of land dispossession and contamination, are indeed linked to centuries of extractivism. The ambassador’s tweet has to be taken within a context of centuries of colonial and decades of post-colonial violence against rural peoples at the behest of resource extraction.
The Canadian embassy could have used the moment to publicly denounce police violence and insist the rights of Peruvian protestors be protected. Instead, Ambassador Marcotte chose to promote more Canadian mining investment in the country and plug PDAC 2023—where a session dubbed “Peru Day” promises to discuss “opportunities in the context of enhancing the virtues of the Peruvian mining industry and overcoming the flaws that have slowed down its dynamism in recent years.” Canada’s priorities in Peru could not be more clear.
Canadian Ambassador to Peru and Bolivia, Louis Marcotte, left, with Óscar Vera, Minister of Energy and Mines of Peru. Photo courtesy Ministry of Energy and Mines of Peru/Twitter.
The economic importance of Canadian mining in Peru
According to the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines, Canada was the third most important investor in mine construction in 2021. Canadian companies invested over $8 billion in 10 projects, representing 15 percent of total investment in mine construction in the country. Canadian companies were the second most important player when it came to exploration (unsurprising, given Canadian companies typically focus on prospecting and exploration) representing 28 percent of the total investment in exploration, with $165 million spent on 21 projects.
Canadian companies are also operating mines in Peru. Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals operates the Constancia mine; Vancouver’s Pan American Silver operates the Shahuindo and La Arena mines; and Teck Resources’, also headquartered in Vancouver, operates the Antamina mine, with a 22.5 percent ownership stake in the project. Antamina is Peru’s largest mine, ranking among the top 10 producing mines in the world in terms of volume, and is the single most important producer of copper, silver, and zinc in the country. In 2021, the mine generated over $6 billion in revenue and nearly $3.7 billion in gross profits.
Canada also ranks high in terms of importing Peruvian metals and minerals. Of the total value of Peruvian mineral exports in 2021, Canada was the third most important global importer after China and India—coming in at 6.5 percent of total exports. This importance becomes even clearer when considering gold, as Canada was the second largest importer of Peruvian gold. Canadian imports represented over $3 billion in 2021, just shy of two percent of Peru’s GDP for the same year.
When it comes to making statements about egregious human rights violations in the country, however, Canada’s position has been lukewarm. Canada signed the most recent OAS statement on the political crisis in Peru—a watered-down declaration which assigns blame, and thus responsibility, to both protestors and the government of Peru as if they were equal players. The Canadian government continues to parrot this position, even as almost all the victims over the past several months have been civilians killed by an indiscriminate use of police violence—by the same national police force that has signed contracts to provide security to Canadian mining companies.
Private contracts with police
When Canadian mining companies are embroiled in a conflict with local communities outside of Peru, they often depend on henchmen or paramilitary forces to repress dissent. In Peru, companies benefit from state-sanctioned police protection and impunity. Companies can sign service contracts directly with the National Peruvian Police, and off-duty police officers are permitted to work for private security companies while using state property, such as weapons, uniforms and ammunition. Police are guaranteed immunity from criminal prosecution in the event that they fatally injure a protestor. They have the authority to use live ammunition and shoot to kill. And they’ve used it.
Mining companies also benefit from unfettered securitization of their assets. According to local sources, Hudbay’s Constancia mine and MMG’s Las Bambas operations have been fortified under the pretense of “preventing attacks on the mine camps”—effectively state-provided protection that serves to solidify the dominance of these companies in the regions where they operate.
Violence isn’t only used against rural peoples at blockades or during massive marches; it’s a daily occurrence which, according to several international and Peruvian non-governmental organizations, threatens the safety of human rights and environmental defenders and prevents them from exercising their rights. As one report notes, the “existence of these [security] contracts [with the police] creates a hostile scenario that puts human rights at risk.” As the Cusco-based organization Derechos Humanos Sin Fronteras has demonstrated through several environmental and social impact studies related to Hudbay’s Constancia mine, these contracts not only permit explicit state violence, they also form the backdrop of racialized and class-based intimidation and threats against community leaders to prevent them from speaking out against these contracts in the first place.
Promoting Canadian mining at PDAC
During the 2022 PDAC conference, the Peruvian Episcopal Commission for Social Action (CEAS) wrote an open letter to the conference delegates expressing that, contrary to the promises made by Ambassador Marcotte and others, mining has “not brought the promised improvement in quality of life” for most communities in the mining areas. On the contrary, she wrote, “it has resulted in corruption and environmental contamination and has infringed on people’s rights to life and health, leaving behind social conflict, disease and even death.”
These harms are not minimal: contamination of agricultural lands and waterways around Pan American Silver’s Quiruvilca mine and the criminalization of community leaders and land dispossession due to environmental contamination at Shahuindo; violation of Indigenous self-determination and the right to a clean environment around Plateau Energy’s proposed lithium and uranium mine, sitting atop the region’s most important tropical glacier; undercutting of economic benefits for communities most affected by mining operations, and more.
Yet the Canadian embassy in Peru has a track record of ignoring the concerns of human rights and environmental defenders affected by Canadian mining projects in the country—even ignoring the concerns of Canadian citizen Jennifer Moore who was detained in 2017 by Peruvian police while screening a documentary film with Quechua communities affected by Hudbay’s Constancia mine. Moore, who was subsequently banned from re-entering the country and labelled a threat to national security, is the focus of a recent report by the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP) on the role of Canadian embassies in prioritizing the interests of Canadian mining companies at the expense of their own policies and commitments regarding the protection of human rights defenders.
The Canadian embassy in Peru will no doubt continue to work alongside the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines to promote more Canadian mining investment in the country. But it should be made clear: when the embassy chooses to promote mining in Peru during PDAC, it is doing so knowing the reality of what these activities mean for people who are facing ongoing threats, intimidation, and explicit state-sponsored violence.
Dr. Kirsten Francescone is an assistant professor in International Development Studies at Trent University and former Latin America Program Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada.
Europe is continuing its suicidal mad dash towards the militarisation of society. After a year of war in Ukraine, almost everywhere there is talk of reintroducing compulsory military service, reopening a debate that was thought to be definitively closed and that had led almost all European countries to abandon compulsory military service.
In Italy, rumors of a possible reinstatement of compulsory military service have been around for a long time. Matteo Salvini has spoken about compulsory military service on several occasions. … “I believe that a year of teaching the rules, good manners and duties would make good citizens”. And as its interior minister, he said he was “studying the costs, ways and times to evaluate if, how and when to reintroduce military service for a few months for our boys and girls so that they at least learn some education that mum and dad are not able to teach them”.
Ignazio La Russa, President of the Senate, will be proposing a kind of voluntary military mini-service. “I have prepared a bill that will be presented by a group of senators (not by me, because as president I can’t) to increase the voluntary service to 40 days. He added: “If we were able to ensure that young people between 16 and 25 could if they wanted to, spend forty days of their summer learning what is not only love of Italy, love of country, but the civic duty that each of us has to help others in difficulty, we would be doing Italy an enormous service”. In short, compulsory military service as a great “formative moment”.
Minister Crosetto claims that restoring compulsory military service is not on the government’s agenda because “it requires a law and financial coverage” to rebuild and modernize barracks and provide weapons and equipment for the formation of conscripts. Will our young people be able to sleep easy and avoid spending months in the barracks, or will the money suddenly be found at the cost, as always, of primary rights such as health and education?
Compulsory military service is also being debated in Germany. Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said. “Abolishing it was a mistake and could demonstrate the importance of these institutions for the functioning of our society”, stressing that “the advantages of military service must now be the subject of collective reflection”. The head of the German navy, Jan Christian Kaack, also proposed a return to compulsory military service: “I believe this will ensure a higher level of consciousness for a nation that needs to be more resilient in times like these”.
In France, Macron is seriously considering reinstating compulsory military service, which will last between three and six months and will also be extended to women. Military service, Macron says, will be “national, compulsory, and universal”. “Military experience not only leads you to develop experiences but also behavioral qualities,” the French president said, recalling that companies are “delighted” to hire ex-military personnel. According to some estimates, at least 700,000 young people could be recruited each year.
In January, Latvia reintroduced compulsory military service after 15 years.
The Netherlands is now considering adopting the Swedish model, which selects four to five thousand eighteen-year-olds each year for an eleven-month compulsory military service; Denmark, which still maintains compulsory service, is considering extending it to women; and Greece has recently extended it to one year.
In Spain, where compulsory military service has been abolished, young people are still considered reservists and could be forced to enlist in case of emergency and without any legal possibility of objection, since objection is no longer provided for by law.
Poland, which suspended compulsory military service in 2008, is calling up citizens under the age of 63 as reservists. Call-up letters have also been sent to Poles abroad who have dual citizenship. If they refuse, they will lose their Polish citizenship.
It is clear that the very talk of reintroducing conscription contributes to feeding the culture of war and that our governments, instead of listening to the voice of their citizens, choose the suicidal path of a third world war, submissive as they are to Washington’s orders.
That is why, on April 2nd, we, the invisible, the majority of the population, want to reiterate with strength throughout Europe and the world that the only way out of the madness of the war we are living through is peace, non-violence, dialogue, cooperation and a diplomatic solution that will put an immediate end to the suffering of the Ukrainian people and to a war that could lead to a clash of nuclear powers.
Rainer Shea
There’s an explanation for why even after the United States has been exposed a thousand times over as a perpetrator of war crimes, and its ruling institutions have betrayed its own people by engineering horrors like the Ohio chemical spill, there are still actors who uphold the lies that let it continue committing these evils. That explanation is found in The Denial of Death, the legendary psychological science book that Ernst Becker wrote in response to learning he was dying. On why human beings defend unjust systems, the conclusion Becker came to was that their goal is to defy their limited lifespan by advancing something they hope can be made immortal:
Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world. Human conflicts are life and death struggles—my gods against your gods, my immortality project against your immortality project. The root of humanly caused evil is not man’s animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst…Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world. Human conflicts are life and death struggles—my gods against your gods, my immortality project against your immortality project. The root of humanly caused evil is not man’s animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst. We want to clean up the world, make it perfect, keep it safe for democracy or communism, purify it of the enemies of god, eliminate evil, establish an alabaster city undimmed by human tears, or a thousand year Reich.
Because Becker’s chosen job was not to become the best at class analysis, his perspective was limited in a way which led him to the common liberal view that communism is merely another religion. Should he have had the opportunity to discover how many medical advancements, environmental benefits, transportation innovations, and poverty reduction successes communism has brought in spite of its historical errors, he may have come to think differently. As a resident of the imperial center, it was clear the main thing he aimed to condemn was how the drivers of his society have obstinately invested themselves in upholding a system that’s indefensible. The United States was and is the greatest instigator of violence on the planet. It’s extended its original indigenous genocide into a project to subjugate the entire formerly colonized world, a project that’s taken tens of millions of lives throughout dozens of invasions. And those are only one category of its atrocities. The USA’s coups, carried out to protect corporate interests, have brought about dictatorships and pseudo-“democratic” regimes that are collectively behind many millions more murders.
Mass incarceration, the militarized police who execute citizens in public, the unaccountable War on Terror prison network, and our government’s other tools for inflicting violence on its own people are the logical conclusions of this campaign to maintain profits by sacrificing lives. As are the policies of warfare upon the working class that our ruling oligarchs have been progressively imposing for the last half-century. In an effort to maintain the system as it’s entered into an unprecedented stage of crisis, these elites have created a situation where the people fall into perpetually deeper poverty, while law enforcement gets ever more tools for terrorizing them. The combination of catastrophes that the people are experiencing—toxic industrial accidents, climatic disasters, an unprecedented new economic crisis, a pandemic with more fatalities in America than anywhere else—are the system’s fault too. Our government has betrayed us in favor of the corporations that own it, condemning us to a crisis that we were already made unequipped for.
This is a social system that’s more than morally bankrupt. It’s a system that didn’t need to be corrupted in the first place, as it’s always existed to advance profits above all else. The system’s partisans defend their support for it by pointing to how capitalism is a historical improvement upon the previous social order. But even Marx, Engels, and other major communists have recognized this, agreeing with how capitalism advanced society beyond feudalism and how the 1776 revolution was progressive in its context. And these facts don’t negate their thesis, which is that at this stage in history, capitalism is the reactionary force and socialism is what can bring civilization to the next stage. Communists hold the dialectical view that whatever relative good the present order represented at one point, it’s since outlived its usefulness. The upholders of the discredited liberal order insist that it’s not discredited, as they leave out this context and claim capitalism brought the final developmental stage.
It’s possible for those who benefit from the bourgeois order to embrace the dialectical view, and fight for the rights of the proletariat in opposition to their own material interests. Engels was from a bourgeois family, Castro dispossessed his own family of land as part of his revolutionary program, Mao chose to be a revolutionary despite having had the opportunity to ascend the capitalist hierarchy. Whether one helps reaction or progress is a question of priorities. Do you care more about your immediate material benefits, or more about freeing the people from exploitation and subjugation?
Those upholding NATO and its propaganda narratives, who include not just conservatives and liberals but leftists as well, have chosen the selfish path. They claim to merely care about stopping “autocrats,” and protecting “sovereignty” or “human rights,” but if this were true they wouldn’t be working to aid the United States. Their true concern is whether the imperial project survives, and is allowed to continue robbing the Global South. That’s why Washington provoked Russia into intervening: because it wanted a war which weakens Russia enough that it collapses, leaving China vulnerable in the great-power competition and thereby keeping Washington in control of its neo-colonies.
This goal of theirs to destabilize Eurasia has at this point been proven unrealistic, so much that I barely need to keep reiterating it. The IMF is predicting Russia’s economy will grow, and that alone represents defeat for the empire on the geopolitical chessboard. For a while the empire’s narrative managers were promising that Russia’s unexpected ability to withstand the sanctions will ultimately prove temporary, but when the empire’s own prime neo-colonial economic institution has admitted Russia is resilient to this degree, those claims simply aren’t plausible. China, Russia, Iran, and the other challengers to American hegemony will continue building a new order which makes the imperial project untenable. And for its desperate efforts to reverse this trend, in geopolitical terms the empire will get nothing besides an accelerated disappearance of its influence.
In this situation where the immortality project they’ve chosen to fight for is in terminal decline, the cult of NATO’s agents have not chosen the correct path. They won’t give up on imperialist opportunism and join the fight for proletarian revolution. They’ll continue to promote the lies the empire concocts to try to appear credible, even after revelations like the one about how the U.S. side blew up Nord Stream. They’ll keep accepting payments, whether monetary, social, or in terms of career opportunities, to narratively fight against the anti-imperialist movement.
This is how these actors can keep benefiting from the system, and by extension from the record oil profits the Ukraine war has provided this system. Through price gouging, monopolization, arms profiteering, and further austerity, our corporate rulers are finding ways to keep their parasitic arrangement alive following the fall of the U.S. empire. An economic system doesn’t go away until it’s exhausted every means to stay in existence. The only way capitalism can function at this stage is by driving the people into destitution, while allying with fascists to wage war against the people. This is the future that NATO’s agents have doomed us to. We can only gain our freedom by forcing them and their corporate masters out of power.
Amid incessant NATO aggression and escalation of hostilities within Russia, now also including US-backed Kiev regime terrorists targeting schoolchildren, Moscow has started revamping the doctrinal approach to the use of its strategic arsenal. Rather curiously, the new document, published by the “Military Thought” magazine run by the Russian Ministry of Defense, attracted little attention in Western media. It should be noted that such changes are made only once in several decades or even longer. The strategic posturing of countries, particularly superpowers, is usually “set in stone”, meaning that changes are prompted only by major events of historical proportions.
It was only a week ago that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Russia is suspending its participation in the New START arms control treaty. Putin cited continuous, blatant US and NATO violations of the agreement as the primary reason for the decision. With the treaty becoming a mere formality, Russia is not bound to honor it anymore, as this would undermine its own strategic security. With that in mind, the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) started implementing new ways to deter any possible direct US/NATO attacks on Russia, particularly as the belligerent thalassocracy has repeatedly floated the idea of “decapitation strikes” on Moscow in the last several months.
The authors of the document are Deputy Commander of the RVSN Igor Fazletdinov and retired Colonel Vladimir Lumpov. They argue that the US is on a collision course with Russia, as Washington DC and its vassals are becoming increasingly aggressive due to their political elites’ frustration with the loss of the “sole superpower” status. With America seeing Moscow as the main culprit for this, it plans on defeating Russia in a “single blow”, thus eliminating the main obstacle to total US global dominance. Fazletdinov and Lumpov argue that Washington DC plans to defeat Russia in a “strategic (global) multi-sphere operation”, the primary goal of which will be the elimination of its strategic arsenal.
“[The US believes] this goal is only achievable in the event of an instantaneous nuclear strike against the RVSN or at least with the deployment of ABM [anti-ballistic missile] systems around Russia. The US plan is to destroy at least 65-70% of Russian strategic nuclear forces as part of its Prompt Global Strike concept, with the rest eliminated by American ABM systems. The US would then launch an all-out nuclear attack on the Russian Federation in order to destroy it,” authors warn, further adding: “We aim to repel a potential [US] nuclear strike, preserve our own nuclear capabilities, suppress the deployed US missile defense systems and cause unacceptable damage in case of [US/NATO] aggression.”
Russia certainly has the capability to almost instantly change its strategic doctrine. Unlike its NATO rivals (including the US itself), Moscow leads the world in several key military technologies, which also include at least a dozen operational hypersonic weapons deployed over the last 5-10 years. And indeed, in early December President Putin stated Russia could adopt a US-style concept of preemptive strikes. The program mentioned by Russian military experts, called PGS (Prompt Global Strike), is a US attempt to develop a capability that enables it to attack enemy strategic targets with precision-guided weapons anywhere in the world within just one hour. Still, the US is yet to deploy a weapon that can achieve that.
On the other hand, with the Mach 12-capable “Kinzhal” air-launched hypersonic missile carried by modified MiG-31K/I interceptors and Tu-22M3 long-range bombers, the Mach 28-capable “Avangard” HGV (hypersonic glide vehicle) deployed on various ICBMs and the Mach 9-capable scramjet-powered “Zircon” hypersonic cruise missile deployed on naval (both submarines and surface ships) and (soon) on land platforms, Russia is the only country on the planet with the capability to immediately implement such a program. And yet, Moscow still refrains from going ahead with such plans, although its justification for this would hold much better than that of the US.
The authors further emphasize “the need to make sure the US was perfectly aware of the impossibility of the complete destruction of our strategic capabilities and the inevitability of a crushing retaliatory nuclear strike”. However, the problem with this is that the establishment in Washington DC has become so detached from reality that they believe the Kiev regime has the capacity to not only “push Russia back from Donbass”, but also “retake Crimea”, despite relevant reports on the Neo-Nazi junta’s staggering losses. It can hardly be expected from them to be aware of Russia’s wholly undeniable capability to obliterate the continental US in minutes.
American policymakers take advice from former high-ranking generals and officers who somehow managed to lose a war against outnumbered and outgunned AK-wielding insurgents in sandals while wasting trillions of dollars and deploying hundreds of thousands of troops during the two decades of continuous NATO aggression in Afghanistan. This is without taking into account the technological disparity which was so overwhelmingly on the side of the aggressors that it can quite literally be measured in centuries rather than decades. Still, delusions and living in parallel reality seem to be a given for the warmongers at the Pentagon.
In addition, considering the fact that Afghanistan became more peaceful and safer after the US and NATO have been soundly defeated and driven out of the country devastated by decades of incessant conflict, this clearly implies that being able to militarily beat the political West is of utmost importance for the safety of any given country. Russia’s new strategic doctrine will certainly ensure this, not just for itself but also for the entire world, as the Eurasian giant will surely remain the only global power with such a capability in the foreseeable future.
Der Friedensstifter